THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES THE SECOND

VOLUME III

(Chapters XI-XVI)

by Thomas Babington Macaulay

DETAILED CONTENTS:

CHAPTER XI

William and Mary proclaimed in LondonRejoicings throughout England; Rejoicings in HollandDiscontent of the Clergy and of the ArmyReaction of Public FeelingTemper of the ToriesTemper of the WhigsMinisterial ArrangementsWilliam his own Minister for Foreign AffairsDanbyHalifaxNottingham Shrewsbury The Board of Admiralty; the Board of TreasuryThe Great SealThe JudgesThe HouseholdSubordinate AppointmentsThe Convention turned into a ParliamentThe Members of the two Houses required to take the Oaths Questions relating to the RevenueAbolition of the Hearth MoneyRepayment of the Expenses of the United ProvincesMutiny at IpswichThe first Mutiny BillSuspension of the Habeas Corpus ActUnpopularity of WilliamPopularity of MaryThe Court removed from Whitehall to Hampton CourtThe Court at Kensington; William's foreign FavouritesGeneral MaladministrationDissensions among Men in OfficeDepartment of Foreign AffairsReligious DisputesThe High Church PartyThe Low Church PartyWilliam's Views concerning Ecclesiastical PolityBurnet, Bishop of SalisburyNottingham's Views concerning Ecclesiastical PolityThe Toleration BillThe Comprehension BillThe Bill for settling the Oaths of Allegiance and SupremacyThe Bill for settling the Coronation OathThe CoronationPromotionsThe Coalition against France; the Devastation of the PalatinateWar declared against France

CHAPTER XII

State of Ireland at the Time of the Revolution; the Civil Power in the Hands of the Roman CatholicsThe Military Power in the Hands of the Roman CatholicsMutual Enmity between the Englishry and IrishryPanic among the EnglishryHistory of the Town of KenmareEnniskillenLondonderryClosing of the Gates of LondonderryMountjoy sent to pacify UlsterWilliam opens a Negotiation with TyrconnelThe Temples consultedRichard Hamilton sent to Ireland on his ParoleTyrconnel sends Mountjoy and Rice to FranceTyrconnel calls the Irish People to ArmsDevastation of the CountryThe Protestants in the South unable to resistEnniskillen and Londonderry hold out; Richard Hamilton marches into Ulster with an ArmyJames determines to go to IrelandAssistance furnished by Lewis to JamesChoice of a French Ambassador to accompany JamesThe Count of AvauxJames lands at KinsaleJames enters CorkJourney of James from Cork to DublinDiscontent in EnglandFactions at Dublin CastleJames determines to go to UlsterJourney of James to UlsterThe Fall of Londonderry expectedSuccours arrive from EnglandTreachery of Lundy; the Inhabitants of Londonderry resolve to defend themselvesTheir CharacterLondonderry besiegedThe Siege turned into a BlockadeNaval Skirmish in Bantry BayA Parliament summoned by James sits at DublinA Toleration Act passed; Acts passed for the Confiscation of the Property of ProtestantsIssue of base MoneyThe great Act of AttainderJames prorogues his Parliament; Persecution of the Protestants in IrelandEffect produced in England by the News from IrelandActions of the EnniskillenersDistress of LondonderryExpedition under Kirke arrives in Loch FoyleCruelty of RosenThe Famine in Londonderry extremeAttack on the BoomThe Siege of Londonderry raisedOperations against the EnniskillenersBattle of Newton ButlerConsternation of the Irish

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Revolution more violent in Scotland than in EnglandElections for the Convention; Rabbling of the Episcopal ClergyState of EdinburghQuestion of an Union between England and Scotland raisedWish of the English Low Churchmen to preserve Episcopacy in ScotlandOpinions of William about Church Government in ScotlandComparative Strength of Religious Parties in ScotlandLetter from William to the Scotch ConventionWilliam's Instructions to his Agents in Scotland; the DalrymplesMelvilleJames's Agents in Scotland: Dundee; BalcarrasMeeting of the ConventionHamilton elected PresidentCommittee of Elections; Edinburgh Castle summonedDundee threatened by the CovenantersLetter from James to the ConventionEffect of James's LetterFlight of DundeeTumultuous Sitting of the ConventionA Committee appointed to frame a Plan of GovernmentResolutions proposed by the CommitteeWilliam and Mary proclaimed; the Claim of Right; Abolition of EpiscopacyTortureWilliam and Mary accept the Crown of ScotlandDiscontent of the CovenantersMinisterial Arrangements in ScotlandHamilton; CrawfordThe Dalrymples; Lockhart; MontgomeryMelville; CarstairsThe Club formed: Annandale; RossHume; Fletcher of SaltounWar breaks out in the Highlands; State of the HighlandsPeculiar Nature of Jacobitism in the HighlandsJealousy of the Ascendency of the CampbellsThe Stewarts and MacnaghtensThe Macleans; the Camerons: LochielThe Macdonalds; Feud between the Macdonalds and Mackintoshes; InvernessInverness threatened by Macdonald of KeppochDundee appears in Keppoch's CampInsurrection of the Clans hostile to the CampbellsTarbet's Advice to the GovernmentIndecisive Campaign in the HighlandsMilitary Character of the HighlandersQuarrels in the Highland ArmyDundee applies to James for Assistance; the War in the Highlands suspendedScruples of the Covenanters about taking Arms for King WilliamThe Cameronian Regiment raisedEdinburgh Castle surrendersSession of Parliament at EdinburghAscendancy of the ClubTroubles in AtholThe War breaks out again in the HighlandsDeath of DundeeRetreat of MackayEffect of the Battle of Killiecrankie; the Scottish Parliament adjournedThe Highland Army reinforcedSkirmish at Saint Johnston'sDisorders in the Highland ArmyMackay's Advice disregarded by the Scotch MinistersThe Cameronians stationed at DunkeldThe Highlanders attack the Cameronians and are repulsedDissolution of the Highland Army; Intrigues of the Club; State of the Lowlands

CHAPTER XIV

Disputes in the English ParliamentThe Attainder of Russell reversedOther Attainders reversed; Case of Samuel JohnsonCase of DevonshireCase of OatesBill of RightsDisputes about a Bill of IndemnityLast Days of JeffreysThe Whigs dissatisfied with the KingIntemperance of HoweAttack on CaermarthenAttack on HalifaxPreparations for a Campaign in IrelandSchombergRecess of the ParliamentState of Ireland; Advice of AvauxDismission of Melfort; Schomberg lands in UlsterCarrickfergus takenSchomberg advances into Leinster; the English and Irish Armies encamp near each otherSchomberg declines a BattleFrauds of the English CommissariatConspiracy among the French Troops in the English ServicePestilence in the English ArmyThe English and Irish Armies go into Winter QuartersVarious Opinions about Schomberg's ConductMaritime AffairsMaladministration of TorringtonContinental AffairsSkirmish at WalcourtImputations thrown on MarlboroughPope Innocent XI. Succeeded by Alexander VIII. The High Church Clergy divided on the Subject of the OathsArguments for taking the OathsArguments against taking the OathsA great Majority of the Clergy take the OathsThe Nonjurors; KenLeslieSherlockHickesCollierDodwellKettlewell; FitzwilliamGeneral Character of the Nonjuring ClergyThe Plan of Comprehension; TillotsonAn Ecclesiastical Commission issued. Proceedings of the CommissionThe Convocation of the Province of Canterbury summoned; Temper of the ClergyThe Clergy ill affected towards the KingThe Clergy exasperated against the Dissenters by the Proceedings of the Scotch PresbyteriansConstitution of the ConvocationElection of Members of Convocation; Ecclesiastical Preferments bestowed, Compton discontentedThe Convocation meetsThe High Churchmen a Majority of the Lower House of ConvocationDifference between the two Houses of ConvocationThe Lower House of Convocation proves unmanageable. The Convocation prorogued

CHAPTER XV

The Parliament meets; Retirement of HalifaxSupplies votedThe Bill of Rights passedInquiry into Naval AbusesInquiry into the Conduct of the Irish WarReception of Walker in EnglandEdmund LudlowViolence of the WhigsImpeachmentsCommittee of MurderMalevolence of John HampdenThe Corporation BillDebates on the Indemnity BillCase of Sir Robert SawyerThe King purposes to retire to HollandHe is induced to change his Intention; the Whigs oppose his going to IrelandHe prorogues the ParliamentJoy of the ToriesDissolution and General ElectionChanges in the Executive DepartmentsCaermarthen Chief MinisterSir John LowtherRise and Progress of Parliamentary Corruption in EnglandSir John TrevorGodolphin retires; Changes at the AdmiraltyChanges in the Commissions of LieutenancyTemper of the Whigs; Dealings of some Whigs with Saint Germains; Shrewsbury; FergusonHopes of the JacobitesMeeting of the new Parliament; Settlement of the RevenueProvision for the Princess of DenmarkBill declaring the Acts of the preceding Parliament validDebate on the Changes in the Lieutenancy of LondonAbjuration BillAct of GraceThe Parliament prorogued; Preparations for the first WarAdministration of James at DublinAn auxiliary Force sent from France to IrelandPlan of the English Jacobites; Clarendon, Aylesbury, DartmouthPennPrestonThe Jacobites betrayed by FullerCrone arrestedDifficulties of WilliamConduct of ShrewsburyThe Council of NineConduct of ClarendonPenn held to BailInterview between William and Burnet; William sets out for IrelandTrial of CroneDanger of Invasion and Insurrection; Tourville's Fleet in theChannelArrests of suspected PersonsTorrington ordered to give Battle to TourvilleBattle of Beachy HeadAlarm in London; Battle of FleurusSpirit of the NationConduct of Shrewsbury

CHAPTER XVI

William lands at Carrickfergus, and proceeds to BelfastState of Dublin; William's military ArrangementsWilliam marches southwardThe Irish Army retreatsThe Irish make a Stand at the BoyneThe Army of JamesThe Army of WilliamWalker, now Bishop of Derry, accompanies the ArmyWilliam reconnoitres the Irish Position; William is woundedBattle of the BoyneFlight of JamesLoss of the two ArmiesFall of Drogheda; State of DublinJames flies to France; Dublin evacuated by the French and Irish TroopsEntry of William into DublinEffect produced in France by the News from IrelandEffect produced at Rome by the News from IrelandEffect produced in London by the News from IrelandJames arrives in France; his Reception thereTourville attempts a Descent on EnglandTeignmouth destroyedExcitement of the English Nation against the FrenchThe Jacobite PressThe Jacobite Form of Prayer and HumiliationClamour against the nonjuring BishopsMilitary Operations in Ireland; Waterford takenThe Irish Army collected at Limerick; Lauzun pronounces that the Place cannot be defendedThe Irish insist on defending LimerickTyrconnel is against defending Limerick; Limerick defended by the Irish aloneSarsfield surprises the English ArtilleryArrival of Baldearg O'Donnel at LimerickThe Besiegers suffer from the RainsUnsuccessful Assault on Limerick; The Siege raisedTyrconnel and Lauzun go to France; William returns to England; Reception of William in EnglandExpedition to the South of IrelandMarlborough takes CorkMarlborough takes KinsaleAffairs of Scotland; Intrigues of Montgomery with the JacobitesWar in the HighlandsFort William built; Meeting of the Scottish ParliamentMelville Lord High Commissioner; the Government obtains a MajorityEcclesiastical LegislationThe Coalition between the Club and the Jacobites dissolvedThe Chiefs of the Club betray each otherGeneral Acquiescence in the new Ecclesiastical PolityComplaints of the EpiscopaliansThe Presbyterian ConjurorsWilliam dissatisfied with the Ecclesiastical Arrangements in ScotlandMeeting of the General Assembly of the Church of ScotlandState of Affairs on the ContinentThe Duke of Savoy joins the CoalitionSupplies voted; Ways and MeansProceedings against TorringtonTorrington's Trial and AcquittalAnimosity of the Whigs against CaermarthenJacobite PlotMeeting of the leading ConspiratorsThe Conspirators determine to send Preston to Saint GermainsPapers entrusted to PrestonInformation of the Plot given to CaermarthenArrest of Preston and his Companions

CHAPTER XI

 William and Mary proclaimed in London--Rejoicings throughout England; Rejoicings in Holland--Discontent of the Clergy and of the Army--Reaction of Public Feeling--Temper of the Tories--Temper of the Whigs--Ministerial Arrangements--William his own Minister for Foreign Affairs--Danby--Halifax--Nottingham Shrewsbury The Board of Admiralty; the Board of Treasury--The Great Seal--The Judges--The Household--Subordinate Appointments--The Convention turned into a Parliament--The Members of the two Houses required to take the Oaths Questions relating to the Revenue--Abolition of the Hearth Money--Repayment of the Expenses of the United Provinces--Mutiny at Ipswich--The first Mutiny Bill--Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act--Unpopularity of William--Popularity of Mary--The Court removed from Whitehall to Hampton Court--The Court at Kensington; William's foreign Favourites--General Maladministration--Dissensions among Men in Office--Department of Foreign Affairs--Religious Disputes--The High Church Party--The Low Church Party--William's Views concerning Ecclesiastical Polity--Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury--Nottingham's Views concerning Ecclesiastical Polity--The Toleration Bill--The Comprehension Bill--The Bill for settling the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy--The Bill for settling the Coronation Oath--The Coronation--Promotions--The Coalition against France; the Devastation of the Palatinate--War declared against France

THE Revolution had been accomplished. The decrees of the Convention wereeverywhere received with submission. London, true during fifty eventfulyears to the cause of civil freedom and of the reformed religion, wasforemost in professing loyalty to the new Sovereigns. Garter King atarms, after making proclamation under the windows of Whitehall, rode instate along the Strand to Temple Bar. He was followed by the maces ofthe two Houses, by the two Speakers, Halifax and Powle, and by a longtrain of coaches filled with noblemen and gentlemen. The magistratesof the City threw open their gates and joined the procession. Fourregiments of militia lined the way up Ludgate Hill, round Saint Paul'sCathedral, and along Cheapside. The streets, the balconies, and the veryhousetops were crowded with gazers. All the steeples from the Abbey tothe Tower sent forth a joyous din. The proclamation was repeated, withsound of trumpet, in front of the Royal Exchange, amidst the shouts ofthe citizens. 

In the evening every window from Whitechapel to Piccadilly was lightedup. The state rooms of the palace were thrown open, and were filled by agorgeous company of courtiers desirous to kiss the hands of the King andQueen. The Whigs assembled there, flushed with victory and prosperity. There were among them some who might be pardoned if a vindictive feelingmingled with their joy. The most deeply injured of all who had survivedthe evil times was absent. Lady Russell, while her friends were crowdingthe galleries of Whitehall, remained in her retreat, thinking of onewho, if he had been still living, would have held no undistinguishedplace in the ceremonies of that great day. But her daughter, who had afew months before become the wife of Lord Cavendish, was presented tothe royal pair by his mother the Countess of Devonshire. A letter isstill extant in which the young lady described with great vivacitythe roar of the populace, the blaze in the streets, the throng in thepresence chamber, the beauty of Mary, and the expression which ennobledand softened the harsh features of William. But the most interestingpassage is that in which the orphan girl avowed the stern delight withwhich she had witnessed the tardy punishment of her father's murderer. [1]

The example of London was followed by the provincial towns. During threeweeks the Gazettes were filled with accounts of the solemnities by whichthe public joy manifested itself, cavalcades of gentlemen and yeomen, processions of Sheriffs and Bailiffs in scarlet gowns, musters ofzealous Protestants with orange flags and ribands, salutes, bonfires, illuminations, music, balls, dinners, gutters running with ale andconduits spouting claret. [2]

Still more cordial was the rejoicing among the Dutch, when they learnedthat the first minister of their Commonwealth had been raised to athrone. On the very day of his accession he had written to assure theStates General that the change in his situation had made no change inthe affection which he bore to his native land, and that his new dignitywould, he hoped, enable him to discharge his old duties more efficientlythan ever. That oligarchical party, which had always been hostile to thedoctrines of Calvin and to the House of Orange, muttered faintly thatHis Majesty ought to resign the Stadtholdership. But all such mutteringswere drowned by the acclamations of a people proud of the genius andsuccess of their great countryman. A day of thanksgiving was appointed. In all the cities of the Seven Provinces the public joy manifesteditself by festivities of which the expense was chiefly defrayed byvoluntary gifts. Every class assisted. The poorest labourer could helpto set up an arch of triumph, or to bring sedge to a bonfire. Even theruined Huguenots of France could contribute the aid of their ingenuity. One art which they had carried with them into banishment was the art ofmaking fireworks; and they now, in honour of the victorious champion oftheir faith, lighted up the canals of Amsterdam with showers of splendidconstellations. [3]

To superficial observers it might well seem that William was, at thistime, one of the most enviable of human beings. He was in truth one ofthe most anxious and unhappy. He well knew that the difficulties of histask were only beginning. Already that dawn which had lately been sobright was overcast; and many signs portended a dark and stormy day. 

It was observed that two important classes took little or no part inthe festivities by which, all over England, the inauguration of thenew government was celebrated. Very seldom could either a priest ora soldier be seen in the assemblages which gathered round the marketcrosses where the King and Queen were proclaimed. The professional prideboth of the clergy and of the army had been deeply wounded. The doctrineof nonresistance had been dear to the Anglican divines. It was theirdistinguishing badge. It was their favourite theme. If we are to judgeby that portion of their oratory which has come down to us, they hadpreached about the duty of passive obedience at least as often and aszealously as about the Trinity or the Atonement. [4] Their attachment totheir political creed had indeed been severely tried, and had, duringa short time, wavered. But with the tyranny of James the bitter feelingwhich that tyranny had excited among them had passed away. The parsonof a parish was naturally unwilling to join in what was really a triumphover those principles which, during twenty-eight years, his flock hadheard him proclaim on every anniversary of the Martyrdom and on everyanniversary of the Restoration. 

The soldiers, too, were discontented. They hated Popery indeed; and theyhad not loved the banished King. But they keenly felt that, in the shortcampaign which had decided the fate of their country, theirs had been aninglorious part. Forty fine regiments, a regular army such as hadnever before marched to battle under the royal standard of England, had retreated precipitately before an invader, and had then, without astruggle, submitted to him. That great force had been absolutely of noaccount in the late change, had done nothing towards keeping Williamout, and had done nothing towards bringing him in. The clowns, who, armed with pitchforks and mounted on carthorses, had straggled inthe train of Lovelace or Delamere, had borne a greater part in theRevolution than those splendid household troops, whose plumed hats, embroidered coats, and curvetting chargers the Londoners had so oftenseen with admiration in Hyde Park. The mortification of the army wasincreased by the taunts of the foreigners, taunts which neither ordersnor punishments could entirely restrain. [5] At several places the angerwhich a brave and highspirited body of men might, in such circumstances, be expected to feel, showed itself in an alarming manner. A battalionwhich lay at Cirencester put out the bonfires, huzzaed for King James, and drank confusion to his daughter and his nephew. The garrison ofPlymouth disturbed the rejoicings of the County of Cornwall: blows wereexchanged, and a man was killed in the fray. [6]

The ill humour of the clergy and of the army could not but be noticed bythe most heedless; for the clergy and the army were distinguished fromother classes by obvious peculiarities of garb. "Black coats and redcoats, " said a vehement Whig in the House of Commons, "are the cursesof the nation. " [7] But the discontent was not confined to the black coatsand the red coats. The enthusiasm with which men of all classes hadwelcomed William to London at Christmas had greatly abated before theclose of February. The new king had, at the very moment at whichhis fame and fortune reached the highest point, predicted the comingreaction. That reaction might, indeed, have been predicted by a lesssagacious observer of human affairs. For it is to be chiefly ascribedto a law as certain as the laws which regulate the succession of theseasons and the course of the trade winds. It is the nature of man tooverrate present evil, and to underrate present good; to long for whathe has not, and to be dissatisfied with what he has. This propensity, asit appears in individuals, has often been noticed both by laughingand by weeping philosophers. It was a favourite theme of Horace andof Pascal, of Voltaire and of Johnson. To its influence on the fateof great communities may be ascribed most of the revolutions andcounterrevolutions recorded in history. A hundred generations haveelapsed since the first great national emancipation, of which an accounthas come down to us. We read in the most ancient of books that apeople bowed to the dust under a cruel yoke, scourged to toil by hardtaskmasters, not supplied with straw, yet compelled to furnish the dailytale of bricks, became sick of life, and raised such a cry of misery aspierced the heavens. The slaves were wonderfully set free: at the momentof their liberation they raised a song of gratitude and triumph: but, ina few hours, they began to regret their slavery, and to murmur againstthe leader who had decoyed them away from the savoury fare of the houseof bondage to the dreary waste which still separated them from the landflowing with milk and honey. Since that time the history of every greatdeliverer has been the history of Moses retold. Down to the presenthour rejoicings like those on the shore of the Red Sea have ever beenspeedily followed by murmurings like those at the Waters of Strife. [8]The most just and salutary revolution must produce much suffering. Themost just and salutary revolution cannot produce all the good that hadbeen expected from it by men of uninstructed minds and sanguine tempers. Even the wisest cannot, while it is still recent, weigh quite fairly theevils which it has caused against the evils which it has removed. Forthe evils which it has caused are felt; and the evils which it hasremoved are felt no longer. 

Thus it was now in England. The public was, as it always is duringthe cold fits which follow its hot fits, sullen, hard to please, dissatisfied with itself, dissatisfied with those who had lately beenits favourites. The truce between the two great parties was at an end. Separated by the memory of all that had been done and suffered during aconflict of half a century, they had been, during a few months, unitedby a common danger. But the danger was over: the union was dissolved;and the old animosity broke forth again in all its strength. 

James had during the last year of his reign, been even more hated bythe Tories than by the Whigs; and not without cause for the Whigs he wasonly an enemy; and to the Tories he had been a faithless and thanklessfriend. But the old royalist feeling, which had seemed to be extinct inthe time of his lawless domination, had been partially revived by hismisfortunes. Many lords and gentlemen, who had, in December, taken armsfor the Prince of Orange and a Free Parliament, muttered, two monthslater, that they had been drawn in; that they had trusted too muchto His Highness's Declaration; that they had given him credit for adisinterestedness which, it now appeared, was not in his nature. Theyhad meant to put on King James, for his own good, some gentle force, topunish the Jesuits and renegades who had misled him, to obtain fromhim some guarantee for the safety of the civil and ecclesiasticalinstitutions of the realm, but not to uncrown and banish him. For hismaladministration, gross as it had been, excuses were found. Was itstrange that, driven from his native land, while still a boy, by rebelswho were a disgrace to the Protestant name, and forced to pass hisyouth in countries where the Roman Catholic religion was established, he should have been captivated by that most attractive of allsuperstitions? Was it strange that, persecuted and calumniated as hehad been by an implacable faction, his disposition should have becomesterner and more severe than it had once been thought, and that, whenthose who had tried to blast his honour and to rob him of his birthrightwere at length in his power, he should not have sufficiently temperedjustice with mercy? As to the worst charge which had been broughtagainst him, the charge of trying to cheat his daughters out of theirinheritance by fathering a supposititious child, on what grounds did itrest? Merely on slight circumstances, such as might well be imputed toaccident, or to that imprudence which was but too much in harmony withhis character. Did ever the most stupid country justice put a boy inthe stocks without requiring stronger evidence than that on which theEnglish people had pronounced their King guilty of the basest and mostodious of all frauds? Some great faults he had doubtless committed, nothing could be more just or constitutional than that for those faultshis advisers and tools should be called to a severe reckoning; nor didany of those advisers and tools more richly deserve punishment than theRoundhead sectaries whose adulation had encouraged him to persist in thefatal exercise of the dispensing power. It was a fundamental law of theland that the King could do no wrong, and that, if wrong were done byhis authority, his counsellors and agents were responsible. That greatrule, essential to our polity, was now inverted. The sycophants, whowere legally punishable, enjoyed impunity: the King, who was not legallypunishable, was punished with merciless severity. Was it possible forthe Cavaliers of England, the sons of the warriors who had fought underRupert, not to feel bitter sorrow and indignation when they reflectedon the fate of their rightful liege lord, the heir of a long line ofprinces, lately enthroned in splendour at Whitehall, now an exile, asuppliant, a mendicant? His calamities had been greater than even thoseof the Blessed Martyr from whom he sprang. The father had been slain byavowed and mortal foes: the ruin of the son had been the work of hisown children. Surely the punishment, even if deserved, should have beeninflicted by other hands. And was it altogether deserved? Had not theunhappy man been rather weak and rash than wicked? Had he not some ofthe qualities of an excellent prince? His abilities were certainly notof a high order: but he was diligent: he was thrifty: he had foughtbravely: he had been his own minister for maritime affairs, and had, inthat capacity, acquitted himself respectably: he had, till his spiritualguides obtained a fatal ascendency over his mind, been regarded as a manof strict justice; and, to the last, when he was not misled by them, hegenerally spoke truth and dealt fairly. With so many virtues he might, if he had been a Protestant, nay, if he had been a moderate RomanCatholic, have had a prosperous and glorious reign. Perhaps it might notbe too late for him to retrieve his errors. It was difficult to believethat he could be so dull and perverse as not to have profited by theterrible discipline which he had recently undergone; and, if thatdiscipline had produced the effects which might reasonably be expectedfrom it, England might still enjoy, under her legitimate ruler, a largermeasure of happiness and tranquillity than she could expect from theadministration of the best and ablest usurper. 

We should do great injustice to those who held this language, if wesupposed that they had, as a body, ceased to regard Popery and despotismwith abhorrence. Some zealots might indeed be found who could not bearthe thought of imposing conditions on their King, and who were readyto recall him without the smallest assurance that the Declaration ofIndulgence should not be instantly republished, that the High Commissionshould not be instantly revived, that Petre should not be again seatedat the Council Board, and that the fellows of Magdalene should not againbe ejected. But the number of these men was small. On the other hand, the number of those Royalists, who, if James would have acknowledgedhis mistakes and promised to observe the laws, were ready to rallyround him, was very large. It is a remarkable fact that two able andexperienced statesmen, who had borne a chief part in the Revolution, frankly acknowledged, a few days after the Revolution had beenaccomplished, their apprehension that a Restoration was close at hand. "If King James were a Protestant, " said Halifax to Reresby, "we couldnot keep him out four months. " "If King James, " said Danby to thesame person about the same time, "would but give the country somesatisfaction about religion, which he might easily do, it would be veryhard to make head against him. " [9] Happily for England, James was, asusual, his own worst enemy. No word indicating that he took blameto himself on account of the past, or that he intended to governconstitutionally for the future, could be extracted from him. Everyletter, every rumour, that found its way from Saint Germains to Englandmade men of sense fear that, if, in his present temper, he should berestored to power, the second tyranny would be worse than the first. Thus the Tories, as a body, were forced to admit, very unwillingly, that there was, at that moment, no choice but between William and publicruin. They therefore, without altogether relinquishing the hope that hewho was King by right might at some future time be disposed to listen toreason, and without feeling any thing like loyalty towards him who wasKing in possession, discontentedly endured the new government. 

It may be doubted whether that government was not, during the firstmonths of its existence, in more danger from the affection of the Whigsthan from the disaffection of the Tories. Enmity can hardly be moreannoying than querulous, jealous, exacting fondness; and such was thefondness which the Whigs felt for the Sovereign of their choice. Theywere loud in his praise. They were ready to support him with purse andsword against foreign and domestic foes. But their attachment to him wasof a peculiar kind. Loyalty such as had animated the gallant gentlemenwho fought for Charles the First, loyalty such as had rescued Charlesthe Second from the fearful dangers and difficulties caused by twentyyears of maladministration, was not a sentiment to which the doctrinesof Milton and Sidney were favourable; nor was it a sentiment which aprince, just raised to power by a rebellion, could hope to inspire. TheWhig theory of government is that kings exist for the people, and notthe people for the kings; that the right of a king is divine in noother sense than that in which the right of a member of parliament, ofa judge, of a juryman, of a mayor, of a headborough, is divine; that, while the chief magistrate governs according to law, he ought to beobeyed and reverenced; that, when he violates the law, he ought to bewithstood; and that, when he violates the law grossly, systematicallyand pertinaciously, he ought to be deposed. On the truth of theseprinciples depended the justice of William's title to the throne. It isobvious that the relation between subjects who held these principles, and a ruler whose accession had been the triumph of these principles, must have been altogether different from the relation which hadsubsisted between the Stuarts and the Cavaliers. The Whigs loved Williamindeed: but they loved him not as a King, but as a party leader; and itwas not difficult to foresee that their enthusiasm would cool fast if heshould refuse to be the mere leader of their party, and should attemptto be King of the whole nation. What they expected from him in returnfor their devotion to his cause was that he should be one of themselves, a stanch and ardent Whig; that he should show favour to none but Whigs;that he should make all the old grudges of the Whigs his own; and therewas but too much reason to apprehend that, if he disappointed thisexpectation, the only section of the community which was zealous in hiscause would be estranged from him. [10]

Such were the difficulties by which, at the moment of his elevation, hefound himself beset. Where there was a good path he had seldom failed tochoose it. But now he had only a choice among paths every one of whichseemed likely to lead to destruction. From one faction he could hope forno cordial support. The cordial support of the other faction he couldretain only by becoming himself the most factious man in his kingdom, aShaftesbury on the throne. If he persecuted the Tories, their sulkinesswould infallibly be turned into fury. If he showed favour to the Tories, it was by no means certain that he would gain their goodwill; and it wasbut too probable that he might lose his hold on the hearts of the Whigs. Something however he must do: something he must risk: a Privy Councilmust be sworn in: all the great offices, political and judicial, must befilled. It was impossible to make an arrangement that would please everybody, and difficult to make an arrangement that would please any body;but an arrangement must be made. 

What is now called a ministry he did not think of forming. Indeed whatis now called a ministry was never known in England till he had beensome years on the throne. Under the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and theStuarts, there had been ministers; but there had been no ministry. Theservants of the Crown were not, as now, bound in frankpledge foreach other. They were not expected to be of the same opinion even onquestions of the gravest importance. Often they were politically andpersonally hostile to each other, and made no secret of their hostility. It was not yet felt to be inconvenient or unseemly that they shouldaccuse each other of high crimes, and demand each other's heads. No manhad been more active in the impeachment of the Lord Chancellor Clarendonthan Coventry, who was a Commissioner of the Treasury. No man hadbeen more active in the impeachment of the Lord Treasurer Danbythan Winnington, who was Solicitor General. Among the members of theGovernment there was only one point of union, their common head, the Sovereign. The nation considered him as the proper chief of theadministration, and blamed him severely if he delegated his highfunctions to any subject. Clarendon has told us that nothing was sohateful to the Englishmen of his time as a Prime Minister. They wouldrather, he said, be subject to an usurper like Oliver, who was firstmagistrate in fact as well as in name, than to a legitimate King whoreferred them to a Grand Vizier. One of the chief accusations which thecountry party had brought against Charles the Second was that he wastoo indolent and too fond of pleasure to examine with care the balancesheets of public accountants and the inventories of military stores. James, when he came to the crown, had determined to appoint no LordHigh Admiral or Board of Admiralty, and to keep the entire direction ofmaritime affairs in his own hands; and this arrangement, which would nowbe thought by men of all parties unconstitutional and pernicious in thehighest degree, was then generally applauded even by people who were notinclined to see his conduct in a favourable light. How completely therelation in which the King stood to his Parliament and to his ministershad been altered by the Revolution was not at first understood even bythe most enlightened statesmen. It was universally supposed thatthe government would, as in time past, be conducted by functionariesindependent of each other, and that William would exercise a generalsuperintendence over them all. It was also fully expected that a princeof William's capacity and experience would transact much importantbusiness without having recourse to any adviser. 

There were therefore no complaints when it was understood that he hadreserved to himself the direction of foreign affairs. This was indeedscarcely matter of choice: for, with the single exception of Sir WilliamTemple, whom nothing would induce to quit his retreat for public life, there was no Englishman who had proved himself capable of conducting animportant negotiation with foreign powers to a successful and honourableissue. Many years had elapsed since England had interfered with weightand dignity in the affairs of the great commonwealth of nations. The attention of the ablest English politicians had long been almostexclusively occupied by disputes concerning the civil and ecclesiasticalconstitution of their own country. The contests about the Popish Plotand the Exclusion Bill, the Habeas Corpus Act and the Test Act, hadproduced an abundance, it might almost be said a glut, of those talentswhich raise men to eminence in societies torn by internal factions. Allthe Continent could not show such skilful and wary leaders of parties, such dexterous parliamentary tacticians, such ready and eloquentdebaters, as were assembled at Westminister. But a very differenttraining was necessary to form a great minister for foreign affairs; andthe Revolution had on a sudden placed England in a situation in whichthe services of a great minister for foreign affairs were indispensableto her. 

William was admirably qualified to supply that in which the mostaccomplished statesmen of his kingdom were deficient. He had long beenpreeminently distinguished as a negotiator. He was the author and thesoul of the European coalition against the French ascendency. The clue, without which it was perilous to enter the vast and intricate mazeof Continental politics, was in his hands. His English counsellors, therefore, however able and active, seldom, during his reign, venturedto meddle with that part of the public business which he had taken ashis peculiar province. [11]

The internal government of England could be carried on only by theadvice and agency of English ministers. Those ministers William selectedin such a manner as showed that he was determined not to proscribe anyset of men who were willing to support his throne. On the day afterthe crown had been presented to him in the Banqueting House, the PrivyCouncil was sworn in. Most of the Councillors were Whigs; but the namesof several eminent Tories appeared in the list. [12] The four highestoffices in the state were assigned to four noblemen, the representativesof four classes of politicians. 

In practical ability and official experience Danby had no superior amonghis contemporaries. To the gratitude of the new Sovereigns he had astrong claim; for it was by his dexterity that their marriage had beenbrought about in spite of difficulties which had seemed insuperable. Theenmity which he had always borne to France was a scarcely less powerfulrecommendation. He had signed the invitation of the thirtieth of June, had excited and directed the northern insurrection, and had, in theConvention, exerted all his influence and eloquence in opposition tothe scheme of Regency. Yet the Whigs regarded him with unconquerabledistrust and aversion. They could not forget that he had, in evil days, been the first minister of the state, the head of the Cavaliers, thechampion of prerogative, the persecutor of dissenters. Even in becominga rebel, he had not ceased to be a Tory. If he had drawn the swordagainst the Crown, he had drawn it only in defence of the Church. If hehad, in the Convention, done good by opposing the scheme of Regency, hehad done harm by obstinately maintaining that the throne was not vacant, and that the Estates had no right to determine who should fill it. TheWhigs were therefore of opinion that he ought to think himselfamply rewarded for his recent merits by being suffered to escape thepunishment of those offences for which he had been impeached ten yearsbefore. He, on the other hand, estimated his own abilities and services, which were doubtless considerable, at their full value, and thoughthimself entitled to the great place of Lord High Treasurer, which he hadformerly held. But he was disappointed. William, on principle, thoughtit desirable to divide the power and patronage of the Treasury amongseveral Commissioners. He was the first English King who never, from thebeginning to the end of his reign, trusted the white staff in the handsof a single subject. Danby was offered his choice between the Presidencyof the Council and a Secretaryship of State. He sullenly accepted thePresidency, and, while the Whigs murmured at seeing him placed so high, hardly attempted to conceal his anger at not having been placed higher. [13]

Halifax, the most illustrious man of that small party which boasted thatit kept the balance even between Whigs and Tories, took charge of thePrivy Seal, and continued to be Speaker of the House of Lords. [14] Hehad been foremost in strictly legal opposition to the late Government, and had spoken and written with great ability against the dispensingpower: but he had refused to know any thing about the design ofinvasion: he had laboured, even when the Dutch were in full marchtowards London, to effect a reconciliation; and he had never desertedJames till James had deserted the throne. But, from the moment of thatshameful flight, the sagacious Trimmer, convinced that compromise wasthenceforth impossible, had taken a decided part. He had distinguishedhimself preeminently in the Convention: nor was it without a peculiarpropriety that he had been appointed to the honourable office oftendering the crown, in the name of all the Estates of England, to thePrince and Princess of Orange; for our Revolution, as far as it canbe said to bear the character of any single mind, assuredly bears thecharacter of the large yet cautious mind of Halifax. The Whigs, however, were not in a temper to accept a recent service as an atonement for anold offence; and the offence of Halifax had been grave indeed. He hadlong before been conspicuous in their front rank during a hard fightfor liberty. When they were at length victorious, when it seemed thatWhitehall was at their mercy, when they had a near prospect of dominionand revenge, he had changed sides; and fortune had changed sides withhim. In the great debate on the Exclusion Bill, his eloquence had struckthem dumb, and had put new life into the inert and desponding party ofthe Court. It was true that, though he had left them in the day oftheir insolent prosperity, he had returned to them in the day of theirdistress. But, now that their distress was over, they forgot that he hadreturned to them, and remembered only that he had left them. [15]

The vexation with which they saw Danby presiding in the Council, andHalifax bearing the Privy Seal, was not diminished by the news thatNottingham was appointed Secretary of State. Some of those zealouschurchmen who had never ceased to profess the doctrine of nonresistance, who thought the Revolution unjustifiable, who had voted for a Regency, and who had to the last maintained that the English throne could neverbe one moment vacant, yet conceived it to be their duty to submit to thedecision of the Convention. They had not, they said, rebelled againstJames. They had not selected William. But, now that they saw on thethrone a Sovereign whom they never would have placed there, they wereof opinion that no law, divine or human, bound them to carry the contestfurther. They thought that they found, both in the Bible and in theStatute Book, directions which could not be misunderstood. The Bibleenjoins obedience to the powers that be. The Statute Book contains anact providing that no subject shall be deemed a wrongdoer for adheringto the King in possession. On these grounds many, who had not concurredin setting up the new government, believed that they might give ittheir support without offence to God or man. One of the most eminentpoliticians of this school was Nottingham. At his instance theConvention had, before the throne was filled, made such changes in theoath of allegiance as enabled him and those who agreed with him to takethat oath without scruple. "My principles, " he said, "do not permit meto bear any part in making a King. But when a King has been made, myprinciples bind me to pay him an obedience more strict than he canexpect from those who have made him. " He now, to the surprise of someof those who most esteemed him, consented to sit in the council, andto accept the seals of Secretary. William doubtless hoped that thisappointment would be considered by the clergy and the Tory countrygentlemen as a sufficient guarantee that no evil was meditated againstthe Church. Even Burnet, who at a later period felt a strong antipathyto Nottingham, owned, in some memoirs written soon after the Revolution, that the King had judged well, and that the influence of the TorySecretary, honestly exerted in support of the new Sovereigns, had savedEngland from great calamities. [16]

The other Secretary was Shrewsbury. [17] No man so young had withinliving memory occupied so high a post in the government. He had but justcompleted his twenty-eighth year. Nobody, however, except the solemnformalists at the Spanish embassy, thought his youth an objection to hispromotion. [18] He had already secured for himself a place in historyby the conspicuous part which he had taken in the deliverance of hiscountry. His talents, his accomplishments, his graceful manners, hisbland temper, made him generally popular. By the Whigs especially hewas almost adored. None suspected that, with many great and many amiablequalities, he had such faults both of head and of heart as wouldmake the rest of a life which had opened under the fairest auspicesburdensome to himself and almost useless to his country. 

The naval administration and the financial administration were confidedto Boards. Herbert was First Commissioner of the Admiralty. He had inthe late reign given up wealth and dignities when he found that he couldnot retain them with honour and with a good conscience. He had carriedthe memorable invitation to the Hague. He had commanded the Dutch fleetduring the voyage from Helvoetsluys to Torbay. His character for courageand professional skill stood high. That he had had his follies and viceswas well known. But his recent conduct in the time of severe trial hadatoned for all, and seemed to warrant the hope that his future careerwould be glorious. Among the commissioners who sate with him at theAdmiralty were two distinguished members of the House of Commons, William Sacheverell, a veteran Whig, who had great authority in hisparty, and Sir John Lowther, an honest and very moderate Tory, who infortune and parliamentary interest was among the first of the Englishgentry. [19]

Mordaunt, one of the most vehement of the Whigs, was placed at the headof the Treasury; why, it is difficult to say. His romantic courage, hisflighty wit, his eccentric invention, his love of desperate risks andstartling effects, were not qualities likely to be of much use to him infinancial calculations and negotiations. Delamere, a more vehement Whig, if possible, than Mordaunt, sate second at the board, and was Chancellorof the Exchequer. Two Whig members of the House of Commons were in theCommission, Sir Henry Capel, brother of that Earl of Essex who died byhis own hand in the Tower, and Richard Hampden, son of the great leaderof the Long Parliament. But the Commissioner on whom the chief weight ofbusiness lay was Godolphin. This man, taciturn, clearminded, laborious, inoffensive, zealous for no government and useful to every government, had gradually become an almost indispensable part of the machinery ofthe state. Though a churchman, he had prospered in a Court governed byJesuits. Though he had voted for a Regency, he was the real head of atreasury filled with Whigs. His abilities and knowledge, which had inthe late reign supplied the deficiencies of Bellasyse and Dover, werenow needed to supply the deficiencies of Mordaunt and Delamere. [20]

There were some difficulties in disposing of the Great Seal. The Kingat first wished to confide it to Nottingham, whose father had borne itduring several years with high reputation. [21] Nottingham, however, declined the trust; and it was offered to Halifax, but was againdeclined. Both these Lords doubtless felt that it was a trust which theycould not discharge with honour to themselves or with advantage tothe public. In old times, indeed, the Seal had been generally held bypersons who were not lawyers. Even in the seventeenth century it hadbeen confided to two eminent men, who had never studied at any Innof Court. Dean Williams had been Lord Keeper to James the First. Shaftesbury had been Lord Chancellor to Charles the Second. But suchappointments could no longer be made without serious inconvenience. Equity had been gradually shaping itself into a refined science, whichno human faculties could master without long and intense application. Even Shaftesbury, vigorous as was his intellect, had painfully felt hiswant of technical knowledge; [22] and, during the fifteen years which hadelapsed since Shaftesbury had resigned the Seal, technical knowledgehad constantly been becoming more and more necessary to his successors. Neither Nottingham therefore, though he had a stock of legal learningsuch as is rarely found in any person who has not received a legaleducation, nor Halifax, though, in the judicial sittings of the Houseof Lords, the quickness of his apprehension and the subtlety of hisreasoning had often astonished the bar, ventured to accept the highestoffice which an English layman can fill. After some delay the Seal wasconfided to a commission of eminent lawyers, with Maynard at their head. [23]

The choice of judges did honour to the new government. Every PrivyCouncillor was directed to bring a list. The lists were compared; andtwelve men of conspicuous merit were selected. [24] The professionalattainments and Whig principles of Pollexfen gave him pretensions tothe highest place. But it was remembered that he had held briefs for theCrown, in the Western counties, at the assizes which followed the battleof Sedgemoor. It seems indeed from the reports of the trials that he didas little as he could do if he held the briefs at all, and that heleft to the Judges the business of browbeating witnesses and prisoners. Nevertheless his name was inseparably associated in the public mind withthe Bloody Circuit. He, therefore, could not with propriety be put atthe head of the first criminal court in the realm. [25] After actingduring a few weeks as Attorney General, he was made Chief Justice of theCommon Pleas. Sir John Holt, a young man, but distinguished by learning, integrity, and courage, became Chief Justice of the King's Bench. SirRobert Atkyns, an eminent lawyer, who had passed some years in ruralretirement, but whose reputation was still great in Westminster Hall, was appointed Chief Baron. Powell, who had been disgraced on accountof his honest declaration in favour of the Bishops, again took his seatamong the judges. Treby succeeded Pollexfen as Attorney General; andSomers was made Solicitor. [26]

Two of the chief places in the Royal household were filled by twoEnglish noblemen eminently qualified to adorn a court. The high spiritedand accomplished Devonshire was named Lord Steward. No man had done moreor risked more for England during the crisis of her fate. In retrievingher liberties he had retrieved also the fortunes of his own house. Hisbond for thirty thousand pounds was found among the papers which Jameshad left at Whitehall, and was cancelled by William. [27]

Dorset became Lord Chamberlain, and employed the influence and patronageannexed to his functions, as he had long employed his private means, inencouraging genius and in alleviating misfortune. One of the first actswhich he was under the necessity of performing must have been painful toa man of so generous a nature, and of so keen a relish for whateverwas excellent in arts and letters. Dryden could no longer remain PoetLaureate. The public would not have borne to see any Papist among theservants of their Majesties; and Dryden was not only a Papist, butan apostate. He had moreover aggravated the guilt of his apostasy bycalumniating and ridiculing the Church which he had deserted. He had, it was facetiously said, treated her as the Pagan persecutors of oldtreated her children. He had dressed her up in the skin of a wild beast, and then baited her for the public amusement. [28] He was removed; buthe received from the private bounty of the magnificent Chamberlaina pension equal to the salary which had been withdrawn. The deposedLaureate, however, as poor of spirit as rich in intellectual gifts, continued to complain piteously, year after year, of the losses which hehad not suffered, till at length his wailings drew forth expressionsof well merited contempt from brave and honest Jacobites, who hadsacrificed every thing to their principles without deigning to utter oneword of deprecation or lamentation. [29]

In the Royal household were placed some of those Dutch nobles who stoodhighest in the favour of the King. Bentinck had the great office ofGroom of the Stole, with a salary of five thousand pounds a year. Zulestein took charge of the robes. The Master of the Horse wasAuverquerque, a gallant soldier, who united the blood of Nassau to theblood of Horn, and who wore with just pride a costly sword presented tohim by the States General in acknowledgment of the courage with which hehad, on the bloody day of Saint Dennis, saved the life of William. 

The place of Vice Chamberlain to the Queen was given to a man who hadjust become conspicuous in public life, and whose name will frequentlyrecur in the history of this reign. John Howe, or, as he was morecommonly called, Jack Howe, had been sent up to the Convention by theborough of Cirencester. His appearance was that of a man whose body wasworn by the constant workings of a restless and acrid mind. He was tall, lean, pale, with a haggard eager look, expressive at once of flightinessand of shrewdness. He had been known, during several years, as a smallpoet; and some of the most savage lampoons which were handed about thecoffeehouses were imputed to him. But it was in the House of Commonsthat both his parts and his illnature were most signally displayed. Before he had been a member three weeks, his volubility, his asperity, and his pertinacity had made him conspicuous. Quickness, energy, andaudacity, united, soon raised him to the rank of a privileged man. Hisenemies, and he had many enemies, said that he consulted his personalsafety even in his most petulant moods, and that he treated soldierswith a civility which he never showed to ladies or to Bishops. But noman had in larger measure that evil courage which braves and evencourts disgust and hatred. No decencies restrained him: his spite wasimplacable: his skill in finding out the vulnerable parts of strongminds was consummate. All his great contemporaries felt his sting intheir turns. Once it inflicted a wound which deranged even the sterncomposure of William, and constrained him to utter a wish that he were aprivate gentleman, and could invite Mr. Howe to a short interviewbehind Montague House. As yet, however, Howe was reckoned among themost strenuous supporters of the new government, and directed all hissarcasms and invectives against the malcontents. [30]

The subordinate places in every public office were divided between thetwo parties: but the Whigs had the larger share. Some persons, indeed, who did little honour to the Whig name, were largely recompensed forservices which no good man would have performed. Wildman was madePostmaster General. A lucrative sinecure in the Excise was bestowed onFerguson. The duties of the Solicitor of the Treasury were both veryimportant and very invidious. It was the business of that officer toconduct political prosecutions, to collect the evidence, to instruct thecounsel for the Crown, to see that the prisoners were not liberated oninsufficient bail, to see that the juries were not composed of personshostile to the government. In the days of Charles and James, theSolicitors of the Treasury had been with too much reason accused ofemploying all the vilest artifices of chicanery against men obnoxiousto the Court. The new government ought to have made a choice which wasabove all suspicion. Unfortunately Mordaunt and Delamere pitched uponAaron Smith, an acrimonious and unprincipled politician, who had beenthe legal adviser of Titus Oates in the days of the Popish Plot, and whohad been deeply implicated in the Rye House Plot. Richard Hampden, aman of decided opinions but of moderate temper, objected to thisappointment. His objections however were overruled. The Jacobites, whohated Smith and had reason to hate him, affirmed that he had obtainedhis place by bullying the Lords of the Treasury, and particularly bythreatening that, if his just claims were disregarded, he would be thedeath of Hampden. [31]

Some weeks elapsed before all the arrangements which have been mentionedwere publicly announced: and meanwhile many important events had takenplace. As soon as the new Privy Councillors had been sworn in, it wasnecessary to submit to them a grave and pressing question. Could theConvention now assembled be turned into a Parliament? The Whigs, who hada decided majority in the Lower House, were all for the affirmative. The Tories, who knew that, within the last month, the public feeling hadundergone a considerable change, and who hoped that a general electionwould add to their strength, were for the negative. They maintainedthat to the existence of a Parliament royal writs were indispensablynecessary. The Convention had not been summoned by such writs: theoriginal defect could not now be supplied: the Houses were thereforemere clubs of private men, and ought instantly to disperse. 

It was answered that the royal writ was mere matter of form, and that toexpose the substance of our laws and liberties to serious hazard for thesake of a form would be the most senseless superstition. Wherever theSovereign, the Peers spiritual and temporal, and the Representativesfreely chosen by the constituent bodies of the realm were met together, there was the essence of a Parliament. Such a Parliament was nowin being; and what could be more absurd than to dissolve it at aconjuncture when every hour was precious, when numerous importantsubjects required immediate legislation, and when dangers, only to beaverted by the combined efforts of King, Lords, and Commons, menacedthe State? A Jacobite indeed might consistently refuse to recognise theConvention as a Parliament. For he held that it had from the beginningbeen an unlawful assembly, that all its resolutions were nullities, and that the Sovereigns whom it had set up were usurpers. But with whatconsistency could any man, who maintained that a new Parliament ought tobe immediately called by writs under the great seal of William and Mary, question the authority which had placed William and Mary on the throne?Those who held that William was rightful King must necessarily hold thatthe body from which he derived his right was itself a rightful GreatCouncil of the Realm. Those who, though not holding him to be rightfulKing, conceived that they might lawfully swear allegiance to him as Kingin fact, might surely, on the same principle, acknowledge the Conventionas a Parliament in fact. It was plain that the Convention was thefountainhead from which the authority of all future Parliaments must bederived, and that on the validity of the votes of the Convention mustdepend the validity of every future statute. And how could thestream rise higher than the source? Was it not absurd to say that theConvention was supreme in the state, and yet a nullity; a legislaturefor the highest of all purposes, and yet no legislature for thehumblest purposes; competent to declare the throne vacant, to changethe succession, to fix the landmarks of the constitution, and yet notcompetent to pass the most trivial Act for the repairing of a pier orthe building of a parish church?

These arguments would have had considerable weight, even if everyprecedent had been on the other side. But in truth our history affordedonly one precedent which was at all in point; and that precedentwas decisive in favour of the doctrine that royal writs are notindispensably necessary to the existence of a Parliament. No royal writhad summoned the Convention which recalled Charles the Second. Yetthat Convention had, after his Restoration, continued to sit and tolegislate, had settled the revenue, had passed an Act of amnesty, hadabolished the feudal tenures. These proceedings had been sanctioned byauthority of which no party in the state could speak without reverence. Hale had borne a considerable share in them, and had always maintainedthat they were strictly legal. Clarendon, little as he was inclined tofavour any doctrine derogatory to the rights of the Crown, or to thedignity of that seal of which he was keeper, had declared that, sinceGod had, at a most critical conjuncture, given the nation a goodParliament, it would be the height of folly to look for technical flawsin the instrument by which that Parliament was called together. Wouldit be pretended by any Tory that the Convention of 1660 had a morerespectable origin than the Convention of 1689? Was not a letter writtenby the first Prince of the Blood, at the request of the whole peerage, and of hundreds of gentlemen who had represented counties and towns, atleast as good a warrant as a vote of the Rump?

Weaker reasons than these would have satisfied the Whigs who formedthe majority of the Privy Council. The King therefore, on the fifthday after he had been proclaimed, went with royal state to the House ofLords, and took his seat on the throne. The Commons were called in; andhe, with many gracious expressions, reminded his hearers of the periloussituation of the country, and exhorted them to take such steps as mightprevent unnecessary delay in the transaction of public business. Hisspeech was received by the gentlemen who crowded the bar with the deephum by which our ancestors were wont to indicate approbation, and whichwas often heard in places more sacred than the Chamber of the Peers. [32] As soon as he had retired, a Bill declaring the Convention aParliament was laid on the table of the Lords, and rapidly passed bythem. In the Commons the debates were warm. The House resolved itselfinto a Committee; and so great was the excitement that, when theauthority of the Speaker was withdrawn, it was hardly possible topreserve order. Sharp personalities were exchanged. The phrase, "hearhim, " a phrase which had originally been used only to silenceirregular noises, and to remind members of the duty of attending to thediscussion, had, during some years, been gradually becoming what itnow is; that is to say, a cry indicative, according to the tone, ofadmiration, acquiescence, indignation, or derision. On this occasion, the Whigs vociferated "Hear, hear, " so tumultuously that the Toriescomplained of unfair usage. Seymour, the leader of the minority, declared that there could be no freedom of debate while such clamour wastolerated. Some old Whig members were provoked into reminding him thatthe same clamour had occasionally been heard when he presided, and hadnot then been repressed. Yet, eager and angry as both sides were, thespeeches on both sides indicated that profound reverence for law andprescription which has long been characteristic of Englishmen, andwhich, though it runs sometimes into pedantry and sometimes intosuperstition, is not without its advantages. Even at that momentouscrisis, when the nation was still in the ferment of a revolution, ourpublic men talked long and seriously about all the circumstances of thedeposition of Edward the Second and of the deposition of Richardthe Second, and anxiously inquired whether the assembly which, withArchbishop Lanfranc at its head, set aside Robert of Normandy, and putWilliam Rufus on the throne, did or did not afterwards continue to actas the legislature of the realm. Much was said about the historyof writs; much about the etymology of the word Parliament. It isremarkable, that the orator who took the most statesmanlike view of thesubject was old Maynard. In the civil conflicts of fifty eventful yearshe had learned that questions affecting the highest interests of thecommonwealth were not to be decided by verbal cavils and by scraps ofLaw French and Law Latin; and, being by universal acknowledgment themost subtle and the most learned of English jurists, he could expresswhat he felt without the risk of being accused of ignorance andpresumption. He scornfully thrust aside as frivolous and out of placeall that blackletter learning, which some men, far less versed in suchmatters than himself, had introduced into the discussion. "We are, "he said, "at this moment out of the beaten path. If therefore we aredetermined to move only in that path, we cannot move at all. A man ina revolution resolving to do nothing which is not strictly according toestablished form resembles a man who has lost himself in the wilderness, and who stands crying 'Where is the king's highway? I will walk nowherebut on the king's highway. ' In a wilderness a man should take the trackwhich will carry him home. In a revolution we must have recourse tothe highest law, the safety of the state. " Another veteran Roundhead, Colonel Birch, took the same side, and argued with great force andkeenness from the precedent of 1660. Seymour and his supporters werebeaten in the Committee, and did not venture to divide the House on theReport. The Bill passed rapidly, and received the royal assent on thetenth day after the accession of William and Mary. [33]

The law which turned the Convention into a Parliament contained a clauseproviding that no person should, after the first of March, sit or votein either House without taking the oaths to the new King and Queen. Thisenactment produced great agitation throughout society. The adherents ofthe exiled dynasty hoped and confidently predicted that the recusantswould be numerous. The minority in both Houses, it was said, would betrue to the cause of hereditary monarchy. There might be here and therea traitor; but the great body of those who had voted for a Regency wouldbe firm. Only two Bishops at most would recognise the usurpers. Seymourwould retire from public life rather than abjure his principles. Graftonhad determined to fly to France and to throw himself at the feet of hisuncle. With such rumours as these all the coffeehouses of London werefilled during the latter part of February. So intense was the publicanxiety that, if any man of rank was missed, two days running, at hisusual haunts, it was immediately whispered that he had stolen away toSaint Germains. [34]

The second of March arrived; and the event quieted the fears of oneparty, and confounded the hopes of the other. The Primate indeed andseveral of his suffragans stood obstinately aloof: but three Bishops andseventy-three temporal peers took the oaths. At the next meeting of theUpper House several more prelates came in. Within a week about a hundredLords had qualified themselves to sit. Others, who were prevented byillness from appearing, sent excuses and professions of attachmentto their Majesties. Grafton refuted all the stories which had beencirculated about him by coming to be sworn on the first day. Two membersof the Ecclesiastical Commission, Mulgrave and Sprat, hastened to makeatonement for their fault by plighting their faith to William. Beaufort, who had long been considered as the type of a royalist of the oldschool, submitted after a very short hesitation. Aylesbury andDartmouth, though vehement Jacobites, had as little scruple about takingthe oath of allegiance as they afterwards had about breaking it. [35]The Hydes took different paths. Rochester complied with the law; butClarendon proved refractory. Many thought it strange that the brotherwho had adhered to James till James absconded should be less sturdy thanthe brother who had been in the Dutch camp. The explanation perhapsis that Rochester would have sacrificed much more than Clarendon byrefusing to take the oaths. Clarendon's income did not depend on thepleasure of the Government but Rochester had a pension of four thousanda year, which he could not hope to retain if he refused to acknowledgethe new Sovereigns. Indeed, he had so many enemies that, during somemonths, it seemed doubtful whether he would, on any terms, be sufferedto retain the splendid reward which he had earned by persecuting theWhigs and by sitting in the High Commission. He was saved from whatwould have been a fatal blow to his fortunes by the intercession ofBurnet, who had been deeply injured by him, and who revenged himself asbecame a Christian divine. [36]

In the Lower House four hundred members were sworn in on the secondof March; and among them was Seymour. The spirit of the Jacobites wasbroken by his defection; and the minority with very few exceptionsfollowed his example. [37]

Before the day fixed for the taking of the oaths, the Commons had begunto discuss a momentous question which admitted of no delay. During theinterregnum, William had, as provisional chief of the administration, collected the taxes and applied them to the public service; nor couldthe propriety of this course be questioned by any person who approvedof the Revolution. But the Revolution was now over: the vacancy of thethrone had been supplied: the Houses were sitting: the law was in fullforce; and it became necessary immediately to decide to what revenue theGovernment was entitled. 

Nobody denied that all the lands and hereditaments of the Crown hadpassed with the Crown to the new Sovereigns. Nobody denied that allduties which had been granted to the Crown for a fixed term of yearsmight be constitutionally exacted till that term should expire. Butlarge revenues had been settled by Parliament on James for life; andwhether what had been settled on James for life could, while he lived, be claimed by William and Mary, was a question about which opinions weredivided. 

Holt, Treby, Pollexfen, indeed all the eminent Whig lawyers, Somersexcepted, held that these revenues had been granted to the late King, inhis political capacity, but for his natural life, and ought therefore, as long as he continued to drag on his existence in a strange land, to be paid to William and Mary. It appears from a very concise andunconnected report of the debate that Somers dissented from thisdoctrine. His opinion was that, if the Act of Parliament which hadimposed the duties in question was to be construed according to thespirit, the word life must be understood to mean reign, and thattherefore the term for which the grant had been made had expired. Thiswas surely the sound opinion: for it was plainly irrational to treat theinterest of James in this grant as at once a thing annexed to hisperson and a thing annexed to his office; to say in one breath that themerchants of London and Bristol must pay money because he was naturallyalive, and that his successors must receive that money because he waspolitically defunct. The House was decidedly with Somers. The membersgenerally were bent on effecting a great reform, without which it wasfelt that the Declaration of Rights would be but an imperfect guaranteefor public liberty. During the conflict which fifteen successiveParliaments had maintained against four successive Kings, the chiefweapon of the Commons had been the power of the purse; and never hadthe representatives of the people been induced to surrender that weaponwithout having speedy cause to repent of their too credulous loyalty. In that season of tumultuous joy which followed the Restoration, a largerevenue for life had been almost by acclamation granted to Charles theSecond. A few months later there was scarcely a respectable Cavalier inthe kingdom who did not own that the stewards of the nation would haveacted more wisely if they had kept in their hands the means of checkingthe abuses which disgraced every department of the government. Jamesthe Second had obtained from his submissive Parliament, without adissentient voice, an income sufficient to defray the ordinary expensesof the state during his life; and, before he had enjoyed that incomehalf a year, the great majority of those who had dealt thus liberallywith him blamed themselves severely for their liberality. If experiencewas to be trusted, a long and painful experience, there could be noeffectual security against maladministration, unless the Sovereign wereunder the necessity of recurring frequently to his Great Council forpecuniary aid. Almost all honest and enlightened men were thereforeagreed in thinking that a part at least of the supplies ought to begranted only for short terms. And what time could be fitter for theintroduction of this new practice than the year 1689, the commencementof a new reign, of a new dynasty, of a new era of constitutionalgovernment? The feeling on this subject was so strong and general thatthe dissentient minority gave way. No formal resolution was passed; butthe House proceeded to act on the supposition that the grants which hadbeen made to James for life had been annulled by his abdication. [38]

It was impossible to make a new settlement of the revenue withoutinquiry and deliberation. The Exchequer was ordered to furnish suchreturns as might enable the House to form estimates of the publicexpenditure and income. In the meantime, liberal provision was madefor the immediate exigencies of the state. An extraordinary aid, to beraised by direct monthly assessment, was voted to the King. An Act waspassed indemnifying all who had, since his landing, collected by hisauthority the duties settled on James; and those duties which hadexpired were continued for some months. 

Along William's whole line of march, from Torbay to London, he had beenimportuned by the common people to relieve them from the intolerableburden of the hearth money. In truth, that tax seems to have united allthe worst evils which can be imputed to any tax. It was unequal, andunequal in the most pernicious way: for it pressed heavily on the poor, and lightly on the rich. A peasant, all whose property was not worthtwenty pounds, was charged ten shillings. The Duke of Ormond, or theDuke of Newcastle, whose estates were worth half a million, paid onlyfour or five pounds. The collectors were empowered to examine theinterior of every house in the realm, to disturb families at meals, to force the doors of bedrooms, and, if the sum demanded were notpunctually paid, to sell the trencher on which the barley loaf wasdivided among the poor children, and the pillow from under the headof the lying-in woman. Nor could the Treasury effectually restrain thechimneyman from using his powers with harshness: for the tax was farmed;and the government was consequently forced to connive at outrages andexactions such as have, in every age made the name of publican a proverbfor all that is most hateful. 

William had been so much moved by what he had heard of these grievancesthat, at one of the earliest sittings of the Privy Council, heintroduced the subject. He sent a message requesting the House ofCommons to consider whether better regulations would effectually preventthe abuses which had excited so much discontent. He added that he wouldwillingly consent to the entire abolition of the tax if it should appearthat the tax and the abuses were inseparable. [39] This communicationwas received with loud applause. There were indeed some financiers ofthe old school who muttered that tenderness for the poor was a finething; but that no part of the revenue of the state came in so exactlyto the day as the hearth money; that the goldsmiths of the City couldnot always be induced to lend on the security of the next quarter'scustoms or excise, but that on an assignment of hearth money there wasno difficulty in obtaining advances. In the House of Commons, those whothought thus did not venture to raise their voices in opposition tothe general feeling. But in the Lords there was a conflict of which theevent for a time seemed doubtful. At length the influence of theCourt, strenuously exerted, carried an Act by which the chimney tax wasdeclared a badge of slavery, and was, with many expressions of gratitudeto the King, abolished for ever. [40]

The Commons granted, with little dispute, and without a division, six hundred thousand pounds for the purpose of repaying to the UnitedProvinces the charges of the expedition which had delivered England. Thefacility with which this large sum was voted to a shrewd, diligent andthrifty people, our allies, indeed, politically, but commercially ourmost formidable rivals, excited some murmurs out of doors, andwas, during many years, a favourite subject of sarcasm with Torypamphleteers. [41] The liberality of the House admits however of aneasy explanation. On the very day on which the subject was underconsideration, alarming news arrived at Westminster, and convinced many, who would at another time have been disposed to scrutinise severely anyaccount sent in by the Dutch, that our country could not yet dispensewith the services of the foreign troops. 

France had declared war against the States General; and the StatesGeneral had consequently demanded from the King of England thosesuccours which he was bound by the treaty of Nimeguen to furnish. [42]He had ordered some battalions to march to Harwich, that they might bein readiness to cross to the Continent. The old soldiers of Jameswere generally in a very bad temper; and this order did not produce asoothing effect. The discontent was greatest in the regiment which nowranks as first of the line. Though borne on the English establishment, that regiment, from the time when it first fought under the greatGustavus, had been almost exclusively composed of Scotchmen; andScotchmen have never, in any region to which their adventurous andaspiring temper has led them, failed to note and to resent every slightoffered to Scotland. Officers and men muttered that a vote of a foreignassembly was nothing to them. If they could be absolved from theirallegiance to King James the Seventh, it must be by the Estates atEdinburgh, and not by the Convention at Westminster. Their ill humourincreased when they heard that Schomberg had been appointed theircolonel. They ought perhaps to have thought it an honour to be called bythe name of the greatest soldier in Europe. But, brave and skilful ashe was, he was not their countryman: and their regiment, during thefifty-six years which had elapsed since it gained its first honourabledistinctions in Germany, had never been commanded but by a Hepburn or aDouglas. While they were in this angry and punctilious mood, they wereordered to join the forces which were assembling at Harwich. There wasmuch murmuring; but there was no outbreak till the regiment arrived atIpswich. There the signal of revolt was given by two captains who werezealous for the exiled King. The market place was soon filled withpikemen and musketeers running to and fro. Gunshots were wildly firedin all directions. Those officers who attempted to restrain the rioterswere overpowered and disarmed. At length the chiefs of the insurrectionestablished some order, and marched out of Ipswich at the head of theiradherents. The little army consisted of about eight hundred men. Theyhad seized four pieces of cannon, and had taken possession of themilitary chest, which contained a considerable sum of money. At thedistance of half a mile from the town a halt was called: a generalconsultation was held; and the mutineers resolved that they would hastenback to their native country, and would live and die with their rightfulKing. They instantly proceeded northward by forced marches. [43]

When the news reached London the dismay was great. It was rumoured thatalarming symptoms had appeared in other regiments, and particularlythat a body of fusileers which lay at Harwich was likely to imitate theexample set at Ipswich. "If these Scots, " said Halifax to Reresby, "are unsupported, they are lost. But if they have acted in concert withothers, the danger is serious indeed. " [44] The truth seems to be thatthere was a conspiracy which had ramifications in many parts of thearmy, but that the conspirators were awed by the firmness of thegovernment and of the Parliament. A committee of the Privy Councilwas sitting when the tidings of the mutiny arrived in London. WilliamHarbord, who represented the borough of Launceston, was at the board. His colleagues entreated him to go down instantly to the House ofCommons, and to relate what had happened. He went, rose in his place, and told his story. The spirit of the assembly rose to the occasion. Howe was the first to call for vigorous action. "Address the King, " hesaid, "to send his Dutch troops after these men. I know not who else canbe trusted. " "This is no jesting matter, " said old Birch, who had been acolonel in the service of the Parliament, and had seen the most powerfuland renowned House of Commons that ever sate twice purged and twiceexpelled by its own soldiers; "if you let this evil spread, you willhave an army upon you in a few days. Address the King to send horse andfoot instantly, his own men, men whom he can trust, and to put thesepeople down at once. " The men of the long robe caught the flame. "Itis not the learning of my profession that is needed here, " said Treby. "What is now to be done is to meet force with force, and to maintainin the field what we have done in the senate. " "Write to the Sheriffs, "said Colonel Mildmay, member for Essex. "Raise the militia. There are ahundred and fifty thousand of them: they are good Englishmen: they willnot fail you. " It was resolved that all members of the House whoheld commissions in the army should be dispensed from parliamentaryattendance, in order that they might repair instantly to their militaryposts. An address was unanimously voted requesting the King to takeeffectual steps for the suppression of the rebellion, and to put fortha proclamation denouncing public vengeance on the rebels. One gentlemanhinted that it might be well to advise his Majesty to offer a pardonto those who should peaceably submit: but the House wisely rejected thesuggestion. "This is no time, " it was well said, "for any thing thatlooks like fear. " The address was instantly sent up to the Lords. The Lords concurred in it. Two peers, two knights of shires, and twoburgesses were sent with it to Court. William received them graciously, and informed them that he had already given the necessary orders. Infact, several regiments of horse and dragoons had been sent northwardunder the command of Ginkell, one of the bravest and ablest officers ofthe Dutch army. [45]

Meanwhile the mutineers were hastening across the country which liesbetween Cambridge and the Wash. Their road lay through a vast anddesolate fen, saturated with all the moisture of thirteen counties, andoverhung during the greater part of the year by a low grey mist, highabove which rose, visible many miles, the magnificent tower of Ely. Inthat dreary region, covered by vast flights of wild fowl, a half savagepopulation, known by the name of the Breedlings, then led an amphibiouslife, sometimes wading, and sometimes rowing, from one islet of firmground to another. [46] The roads were amongst the worst in the island, and, as soon as rumour announced the approach of the rebels, werestudiously made worse by the country people. Bridges were broken down. Trees were laid across the highways to obstruct the progress of thecannon. Nevertheless the Scotch veterans not only pushed forward withgreat speed, but succeeded in carrying their artillery with them. Theyentered Lincolnshire, and were not far from Sleaford, when they learnedthat Ginkell with an irresistible force was close on their track. Victory and escape were equally out of the question. The bravestwarriors could not contend against fourfold odds. The most activeinfantry could not outrun horsemen. Yet the leaders, probably despairingof pardon, urged the men to try the chance of battle. In that region, aspot almost surrounded by swamps and pools was without difficulty found. Here the insurgents were drawn up; and the cannon were planted at theonly point which was thought not to be sufficiently protected by naturaldefences. Ginkell ordered the attack to be made at a place which wasout of the range of the guns; and his dragoons dashed gallantly into thewater, though it was so deep that their horses were forced to swim. Thenthe mutineers lost heart. They beat a parley, surrendered at discretion, and were brought up to London under a strong guard. Their lives wereforfeit: for they had been guilty, not merely of mutiny, which wasthen not a legal crime, but of levying war against the King. William, however, with politic clemency, abstained from shedding the blood evenof the most culpable. A few of the ringleaders were brought to trialat the next Bury assizes, and were convicted of high treason; but theirlives were spared. The rest were merely ordered to return to their duty. The regiment, lately so refractory, went submissively to the Continent, and there, through many hard campaigns, distinguished itself byfidelity, by discipline, and by valour. [47]

This event facilitated an important change in our polity, a changewhich, it is true, could not have been long delayed, but which would nothave been easily accomplished except at a moment of extreme danger. Thetime had at length arrived at which it was necessary to make a legaldistinction between the soldier and the citizen. Under the Plantagenetsand the Tudors there had been no standing army. The standing armywhich had existed under the last kings of the House of Stuart had beenregarded by every party in the state with strong and not unreasonableaversion. The common law gave the Sovereign no power to control histroops. The Parliament, regarding them as mere tools of tyranny, had notbeen disposed to give such power by statute. James indeed hadinduced his corrupt and servile judges to put on some obsolete laws aconstruction which enabled him to punish desertion capitally. But thisconstruction was considered by all respectable jurists as unsound, and, had it been sound, would have been far from effecting all that wasnecessary for the purpose of maintaining military discipline. Even Jamesdid not venture to inflict death by sentence of a court martial. Thedeserter was treated as an ordinary felon, was tried at the assizes by apetty jury on a bill found by a grand jury, and was at liberty toavail himself of any technical flaw which might be discovered in theindictment. 

The Revolution, by altering the relative position of the prince and theparliament, had altered also the relative position of the army and thenation. The King and the Commons were now at unity; and both were alikemenaced by the greatest military power which had existed in Europesince the downfall of the Roman empire. In a few weeks thirty thousandveterans, accustomed to conquer, and led by able and experiencedcaptains, might cross from the ports of Normandy and Brittany to ourshores. That such a force would with little difficulty scatter threetimes that number of militia, no man well acquainted with war coulddoubt. There must then be regular soldiers; and, if there were to beregular soldiers, it must be indispensable, both to their efficiency, and to the security of every other class, that they should be kept undera strict discipline. An ill disciplined army has ever been a more costlyand a more licentious militia, impotent against a foreign enemy, andformidable only to the country which it is paid to defend. A strong lineof demarcation must therefore be drawn between the soldiers and therest of the community. For the sake of public freedom, they must, in themidst of freedom, be placed under a despotic rule. They must be subjectto a sharper penal code, and to a more stringent code of procedure, than are administered by the ordinary tribunals. Some acts which in thecitizen are innocent must in the soldier be crimes. Some acts which inthe citizen are punished with fine or imprisonment must in the soldierbe punished with death. The machinery by which courts of law ascertainthe guilt or innocence of an accused citizen is too slow and toointricate to be applied to an accused soldier. For, of all the maladiesincident to the body politic, military insubordination is that whichrequires the most prompt and drastic remedies. If the evil be notstopped as soon as it appears, it is certain to spread; and it cannotspread far without danger to the very vitals of the commonwealth. Forthe general safety, therefore, a summary jurisdiction of terrible extentmust, in camps, be entrusted to rude tribunals composed of men of thesword. 

But, though it was certain that the country could not at that momentbe secure without professional soldiers, and equally certain thatprofessional soldiers must be worse than useless unless they were placedunder a rule more arbitrary and severe than that to which other men weresubject, it was not without great misgivings that a House of Commonscould venture to recognise the existence and to make provision for thegovernment of a standing army. There was scarcely a public man of notewho had not often avowed his conviction that our polity and a standingarmy could not exist together. The Whigs had been in the constant habitof repeating that standing armies had destroyed the free institutions ofthe neighbouring nations. The Tories had repeated as constantly that, inour own island, a standing army had subverted the Church, oppressed thegentry, and murdered the King. No leader of either party could, withoutlaying himself open to the charge of gross inconsistency, propose thatsuch an army should henceforth be one of the permanent establishmentsof the realm. The mutiny at Ipswich, and the panic which that mutinyproduced, made it easy to effect what would otherwise have been in thehighest degree difficult. A short bill was brought in which began bydeclaring, in explicit terms, that standing armies and courts martialwere unknown to the law of England. It was then enacted that, on accountof the extreme perils impending at that moment over the state, no manmustered on pay in the service of the crown should, on pain of death, or of such lighter punishment as a court martial should deem sufficient, desert his colours or mutiny against his commanding officers. Thisstatute was to be in force only six months; and many of those who votedfor it probably believed that it would, at the close of that period, be suffered to expire. The bill passed rapidly and easily. Not a singledivision was taken upon it in the House of Commons. A mitigating clauseindeed, which illustrates somewhat curiously the manners of that age, was added by way of rider after the third reading. This clause providedthat no court martial should pass sentence of death except between thehours of six in the morning and one in the afternoon. The dinner hourwas then early; and it was but too probable that a gentleman who haddined would be in a state in which he could not safely be trusted withthe lives of his fellow creatures. With this amendment, the first andmost concise of our many Mutiny Bills was sent up to the Lords, and was, in a few hours, hurried by them through all its stages and passed by theKing. [48]

Thus was made, without one dissentient voice in Parliament, without onemurmur in the nation, the first step towards a change which had becomenecessary to the safety of the state, yet which every party in the statethen regarded with extreme dread and aversion. Six months passed;and still the public danger continued. The power necessary to themaintenance of military discipline was a second time entrusted to thecrown for a short term. The trust again expired, and was again renewed. By slow degrees familiarity reconciled the public mind to the names, once so odious, of standing army and court martial. It was proved byexperience that, in a well constituted society, professional soldiersmay be terrible to a foreign enemy, and yet submissive to the civilpower. What had been at first tolerated as the exception began to beconsidered as the rule. Not a session passed without a Mutiny Bill. When at length it became evident that a political change of the highestimportance was taking place in such a manner as almost to escape notice, a clamour was raised by some factious men desirous to weaken the handsof the government, and by some respectable men who felt an honest butinjudicious reverence for every old constitutional tradition, and whowere unable to understand that what at one stage in the progress ofsociety is pernicious may at another stage be indispensable. Thisclamour however, as years rolled on, became fainter and fainter. The debate which recurred every spring on the Mutiny Bill came to beregarded merely as an occasion on which hopeful young orators freshfrom Christchurch were to deliver maiden speeches, setting forth howthe guards of Pisistratus seized the citadel of Athens, and how thePraetorian cohorts sold the Roman empire to Didius. At lengththese declamations became too ridiculous to be repeated. The mostoldfashioned, the most eccentric, politician could hardly, in the reignof George the Third, contend that there ought to be no regular soldiers, or that the ordinary law, administered by the ordinary courts, wouldeffectually maintain discipline among such soldiers. All parties beingagreed as to the general principle, a long succession of Mutiny Billspassed without any discussion, except when some particular article ofthe military code appeared to require amendment. It is perhaps becausethe army became thus gradually, and almost imperceptibly, one of theinstitutions of England, that it has acted in such perfect harmony withall her other institutions, has never once, during a hundred and sixtyyears, been untrue to the throne or disobedient to the law, has neveronce defied the tribunals or overawed the constituent bodies. To thisday, however, the Estates of the Realm continue to set up periodically, with laudable jealousy, a landmark on the frontier which was tracedat the time of the Revolution. They solemnly reassert every year thedoctrine laid down in the Declaration of Rights; and they then grantto the Sovereign an extraordinary power to govern a certain number ofsoldiers according to certain rules during twelve months more. 

In the same week in which the first Mutiny Bill was laid on the tableof the Commons, another temporary law, made necessary by the unsettledstate of the kingdom, was passed. Since the flight of James many personswho were believed to have been deeply implicated in his unlawful acts, or to be engaged in plots for his restoration, had been arrested andconfined. During the vacancy of the throne, these men could derive nobenefit from the Habeas Corpus Act. For the machinery by which alonethat Act could be carried into execution had ceased to exist; and, through the whole of Hilary term, all the courts in Westminster Hall hadremained closed. Now that the ordinary tribunals were about to resumetheir functions, it was apprehended that all those prisoners whom it wasnot convenient to bring instantly to trial would demand and obtain theirliberty. A bill was therefore brought in which empowered the King todetain in custody during a few weeks such persons as he should suspectof evil designs against his government. This bill passed the two Houseswith little or no opposition. [49] But the malecontents out of doors didnot fail to remark that, in the late reign, the Habeas Corpus Act hadnot been one day suspended. It was the fashion to call James a tyrant, and William a deliverer. Yet, before the deliverer had been a month onthe throne, he had deprived Englishmen of a precious right which thetyrant had respected. [50] This is a kind of reproach which a governmentsprung from a popular revolution almost inevitably incurs. From sucha government men naturally think themselves entitled to demand a moregentle and liberal administration than is expected from old and deeplyrooted power. Yet such a government, having, as it always has, manyactive enemies, and not having the strength derived from legitimacy andprescription, can at first maintain itself only by a vigilance anda severity of which old and deeply rooted power stands in no need. Extraordinary and irregular vindications of public liberty are sometimesnecessary: yet, however necessary, they are almost always followedby some temporary abridgments of that very liberty; and every suchabridgment is a fertile and plausible theme for sarcasm and invective. 

Unhappily sarcasm and invective directed against William were but toolikely to find favourable audience. Each of the two great parties hadits own reasons for being dissatisfied with him; and there were somecomplaints in which both parties joined. His manners gave almostuniversal offence. He was in truth far better qualified to save a nationthan to adorn a court. In the highest parts of statesmanship, he hadno equal among his contemporaries. He had formed plans not inferior ingrandeur and boldness to those of Richelieu, and had carried them intoeffect with a tact and wariness worthy of Mazarin. Two countries, theseats of civil liberty and of the Reformed Faith, had been preservedby his wisdom and courage from extreme perils. Holland he had deliveredfrom foreign, and England from domestic foes. Obstacles apparentlyinsurmountable had been interposed between him and the ends on whichhe was intent; and those obstacles his genius had turned into steppingstones. Under his dexterous management the hereditary enemies of hishouse had helped him to mount a throne; and the persecutors of hisreligion had helped him to rescue his religion from persecution. Fleets and armies, collected to withstand him, had, without a struggle, submitted to his orders. Factions and sects, divided by mortalantipathies, had recognised him as their common head. Without carnage, without devastation, he had won a victory compared with which all thevictories of Gustavus and Turenne were insignificant. In a few weeks hehad changed the relative position of all the states in Europe, andhad restored the equilibrium which the preponderance of one power haddestroyed. Foreign nations did ample justice to his great qualities. Inevery Continental country where Protestant congregations met, ferventthanks were offered to God, who, from among the progeny of His servants, Maurice, the deliverer of Germany, and William, the deliverer ofHolland, had raised up a third deliverer, the wisest and mightiestof all. At Vienna, at Madrid, nay, at Rome, the valiant and sagaciousheretic was held in honour as the chief of the great confederacyagainst the House of Bourbon; and even at Versailles the hatred which heinspired was largely mingled with admiration. 

Here he was less favourably judged. In truth, our ancestors saw him inthe worst of all lights. By the French, the Germans, and the Italians, he was contemplated at such a distance that only what was great could bediscerned, and that small blemishes were invisible. To the Dutch he wasbrought close: but he was himself a Dutchman. In his intercourse withthem he was seen to the best advantage, he was perfectly at his easewith them; and from among them he had chosen his earliest and dearestfriends. But to the English he appeared in a most unfortunate point ofview. He was at once too near to them and too far from them. He livedamong them, so that the smallest peculiarity of temper or manner couldnot escape their notice. Yet he lived apart from them, and was to thelast a foreigner in speech, tastes, and habits. 

One of the chief functions of our Sovereigns had long been to presideover the society of the capital. That function Charles the Second hadperformed with immense success. His easy bow, his good stories, hisstyle of dancing and playing tennis, the sound of his cordial laugh, were familiar to all London. One day he was seen among the elms of SaintJames's Park chatting with Dryden about poetry. [51] Another day his armwas on Tom Durfey's shoulder; and his Majesty was taking a second, whilehis companion sang "Phillida, Phillida, " or "To horse, brave boys, to Newmarket, to horse. " [52] James, with much less vivacity and goodnature, was accessible, and, to people who did not cross him, civil. But of this sociableness William was entirely destitute. He seldom cameforth from his closet; and, when he appeared in the public rooms, hestood among the crowd of courtiers and ladies, stern and abstracted, making no jest and smiling at none. His freezing look, his silence, thedry and concise answers which he uttered when he could keep silence nolonger, disgusted noblemen and gentlemen who had been accustomed tobe slapped on the back by their royal masters, called Jack or Harry, congratulated about race cups or rallied about actresses. The womenmissed the homage due to their sex. They observed that the King spoke ina somewhat imperious tone even to the wife to whom he owed so much, andwhom he sincerely loved and esteemed. [53] They were amused and shockedto see him, when the Princess Anne dined with him, and when the firstgreen peas of the year were put on the table, devour the whole dishwithout offering a spoonful to her Royal Highness; and they pronouncedthat this great soldier and politician was no better than a Low Dutchbear. [54]

One misfortune, which was imputed to him as a crime, was his badEnglish. He spoke our language, but not well. His accent was foreign:his diction was inelegant; and his vocabulary seems to have been nolarger than was necessary for the transaction of business. To thedifficulty which he felt in expressing himself, and to his consciousnessthat his pronunciation was bad, must be partly ascribed the taciturnityand the short answers which gave so much offence. Our literature he wasincapable of enjoying or of understanding. He never once, during hiswhole reign, showed himself at the theatre. [55] The poets who wrotePindaric verses in his praise complained that their flights of sublimitywere beyond his comprehension. [56] Those who are acquainted with thepanegyrical odes of that age will perhaps be of opinion that he did notlose much by his ignorance. 

It is true that his wife did her best to supply what was wanting, andthat she was excellently qualified to be the head of the Court. She wasEnglish by birth, and English also in her tastes and feelings. Herface was handsome, her port majestic, her temper sweet and lively, hermanners affable and graceful. Her understanding, though very imperfectlycultivated, was quick. There was no want of feminine wit and shrewdnessin her conversation; and her letters were so well expressed that theydeserved to be well spelt. She took much pleasure in the lighter kindsof literature, and did something towards bringing books into fashionamong ladies of quality. The stainless purity of her private life andthe strict attention which she paid to her religious duties were themore respectable, because she was singularly free from censoriousness, and discouraged scandal as much as vice. In dislike of backbiting indeedshe and her husband cordially agreed; but they showed their dislike indifferent and in very characteristic ways. William preserved profoundsilence, and gave the talebearer a look which, as was said by a personwho had once encountered it, and who took good care never to encounterit again, made your story go back down your throat. [57] Mary had a wayof interrupting tattle about elopements, duels, and playdebts by askingthe tattlers, very quietly yet significantly, whether they had ever readher favourite sermon, Doctor Tillotson's on Evil Speaking. Her charitieswere munificent and judicious; and, though she made no ostentatiousdisplay of them, it was known that she retrenched from her own state inorder to relieve Protestants whom persecution had driven from France andIreland, and who were starving in the garrets of London. So amiable washer conduct, that she was generally spoken of with esteem and tendernessby the most respectable of those who disapproved of the manner in whichshe had been raised to the throne, and even of those who refusedto acknowledge her as Queen. In the Jacobite lampoons of that time, lampoons which, in virulence and malignity, far exceed any thing thatour age has produced, she was not often mentioned with severity. Indeedshe sometimes expressed her surprise at finding that libellers whorespected nothing else respected her name. God, she said, knew whereher weakness lay. She was too sensitive to abuse and calumny; He hadmercifully spared her a trial which was beyond her strength; and thebest return which she could make to Him was to discountenance allmalicious reflections on the characters of others. Assured that shepossessed her husband's entire confidence and affection, she turned theedge of his sharp speeches sometimes by soft and sometimes by playfulanswers, and employed all the influence which she derived from her manypleasing qualities to gain the hearts of the people for him. [58]

If she had long continued to assemble round her the best society ofLondon, it is probable that her kindness and courtesy would have donemuch to efface the unfavourable impression made by his stern and frigiddemeanour. Unhappily his physical infirmities made it impossible for himto reside at Whitehall. The air of Westminster, mingled with the fogof the river which in spring tides overflowed the courts of his palace, with the smoke of seacoal from two hundred thousand chimneys, and withthe fumes of all the filth which was then suffered to accumulate inthe streets, was insupportable to him; for his lungs were weak, and hissense of smell exquisitely keen. His constitutional asthma made rapidprogress. His physicians pronounced it impossible that he could liveto the end of the year. His face was so ghastly that he could hardly berecognised. Those who had to transact business with him were shocked tohear him gasping for breath, and coughing till the tears ran down hischeeks. [59] His mind, strong as it was, sympathized with his body. Hisjudgment was indeed as clear as ever. But there was, during somemonths, a perceptible relaxation of that energy by which he had beendistinguished. Even his Dutch friends whispered that he was not the manthat he had been at the Hague. [60] It was absolutely necessary that heshould quit London. He accordingly took up his residence in the purerair of Hampton Court. That mansion, begun by the magnificent Wolsey, wasa fine specimen of the architecture which flourished in England underthe first Tudors; but the apartments were not, according to the notionsof the seventeenth century, well fitted for purposes of state. Ourprinces therefore had, since the Restoration, repaired thither seldom, and only when they wished to live for a time in retirement. As Williampurposed to make the deserted edifice his chief palace, it was necessaryfor him to build and to plant; nor was the necessity disagreeable tohim. For he had, like most of his countrymen, a pleasure in decoratinga country house; and next to hunting, though at a great interval, hisfavourite amusements were architecture and gardening. He had alreadycreated on a sandy heath in Guelders a paradise, which attractedmultitudes of the curious from Holland and Westphalia. Mary had laid thefirst stone of the house. Bentinck had superintended the digging of thefishponds. There were cascades and grottoes, a spacious orangery, andan aviary which furnished Hondekoeter with numerous specimens ofmanycoloured plumage. [61] The King, in his splendid banishment, pinedfor this favourite seat, and found some consolation in creating anotherLoo on the banks of the Thames. Soon a wide extent of ground was laidout in formal walks and parterres. Much idle ingenuity was employed informing that intricate labyrinth of verdure which has puzzled and amusedfive generations of holiday visitors from London. Limes thirty yearsold were transplanted from neighbouring woods to shade the alleys. Artificial fountains spouted among the flower beds. A new court, notdesigned with the purest taste, but stately, spacious, and commodious, rose under the direction of Wren. The wainscots were adorned with therich and delicate carvings of Gibbons. The staircases were in a blazewith the glaring frescoes of Verrio. In every corner of the mansionappeared a profusion of gewgaws, not yet familiar to English eyes. Maryhad acquired at the Hague a taste for the porcelain of China, and amusedherself by forming at Hampton a vast collection of hideous images, andof vases on which houses, trees, bridges, and mandarins were depictedin outrageous defiance of all the laws of perspective. The fashion, afrivolous and inelegant fashion it must be owned, which was thus setby the amiable Queen, spread fast and wide. In a few years almostevery great house in the kingdom contained a museum of these grotesquebaubles. Even statesmen and generals were not ashamed to be renowned asjudges of teapots and dragons; and satirists long continued to repeatthat a fine lady valued her mottled green pottery quite as much as shevalued her monkey, and much more than she valued her husband. [62] Butthe new palace was embellished with works of art of a very differentkind. A gallery was erected for the cartoons of Raphael. Those greatpictures, then and still the finest on our side of the Alps, had beenpreserved by Cromwell from the fate which befell most of the othermasterpieces in the collection of Charles the First, but had beensuffered to lie during many years nailed up in deal boxes. They werenow brought forth from obscurity to be contemplated by artists withadmiration and despair. The expense of the works at Hampton was asubject of bitter complaint to many Tories, who had very gently blamedthe boundless profusion with which Charles the Second had built andrebuilt, furnished and refurnished, the dwelling of the Duchess ofPortsmouth. [63] The expense, however, was not the chief cause of thediscontent which William's change of residence excited. There was nolonger a Court at Westminster. Whitehall, once the daily resort of thenoble and the powerful, the beautiful and the gay, the place to whichfops came to show their new peruques, men of gallantry to exchangeglances with fine ladies, politicians to push their fortunes, loungersto hear the news, country gentlemen to see the royal family, was now, in the busiest season of the year, when London was full, when Parliamentwas sitting, left desolate. A solitary sentinel paced the grassgrownpavement before that door which had once been too narrow for theopposite streams of entering and departing courtiers. The services whichthe metropolis had rendered to the King were great and recent; and itwas thought that he might have requited those services better than bytreating it as Lewis had treated Paris. Halifax ventured to hint this, but was silenced by a few words which admitted of no reply. "Do youwish, " said William peevishly, "to see me dead?" [64]

In a short time it was found that Hampton Court was too far from theHouses of Lords and Commons, and from the public offices, to be theordinary abode of the Sovereign. Instead, however, of returning toWhitehall, William determined to have another dwelling, near enough tohis capital for the transaction of business, but not near enough to bewithin that atmosphere in which he could not pass a night without riskof suffocation. At one time he thought of Holland House, the villa ofthe noble family of Rich; and he actually resided there some weeks. [65] But he at length fixed his choice on Kensington House, the suburbanresidence of the Earl of Nottingham. The purchase was made for eighteenthousand guineas, and was followed by more building, more planting, more expense, and more discontent. [66] At present Kensington House isconsidered as a part of London. It was then a rural mansion, and couldnot, in those days of highwaymen and scourers, of roads deep in mire andnights without lamps, be the rallying point of fashionable society. 

It was well known that the King, who treated the English nobility andgentry so ungraciously, could, in a small circle of his own countrymen, be easy, friendly, even jovial, could pour out his feelings garrulously, could fill his glass, perhaps too often; and this was, in the view ofour forefathers, an aggravation of his offences. Yet our forefathersshould have had the sense and the justice to acknowledge that thepatriotism which they considered as a virtue in themselves, could not bea fault in him. It was unjust to blame him for not at once transferringto our island the love which he bore to the country of his birth. If, inessentials, he did his duty towards England, he might well be sufferedto feel at heart an affectionate preference for Holland. Nor is ita reproach to him that he did not, in this season of his greatness, discard companions who had played with him in his childhood, who hadstood by him firmly through all the vicissitudes of his youth andmanhood, who had, in defiance of the most loathsome and deadly forms ofinfection, kept watch by his sick-bed, who had, in the thickest of thebattle, thrust themselves between him and the French swords, and whoseattachment was, not to the Stadtholder or to the King, but to plainWilliam of Nassau. It may be added that his old friends could not butrise in his estimation by comparison with his new courtiers. To theend of his life all his Dutch comrades, without exception, continuedto deserve his confidence. They could be out of humour with him, it istrue; and, when out of humour, they could be sullen and rude; butnever did they, even when most angry and unreasonable, fail to keephis secrets and to watch over his interests with gentlemanlike andsoldierlike fidelity. Among his English councillors such fidelity wasrare. [67] It is painful, but it is no more than just, to acknowledgethat he had but too good reason for thinking meanly of our nationalcharacter. That character was indeed, in essentials, what it has alwaysbeen. Veracity, uprightness, and manly boldness were then, as now, qualities eminently English. But those qualities, though widely diffusedamong the great body of the people, were seldom to be found in theclass with which William was best acquainted. The standard of honour andvirtue among our public men was, during his reign, at the very lowestpoint. His predecessors had bequeathed to him a court foul with all thevices of the Restoration, a court swarming with sycophants, whowere ready, on the first turn of fortune, to abandon him as they hadabandoned his uncle. Here and there, lost in that ignoble crowd, was tobe found a man of true integrity and public spirit. Yet even such aman could not long live in such society without much risk that thestrictness of his principles would be relaxed, and the delicacy ofhis sense of right and wrong impaired. It was unjust to blame a princesurrounded by flatterers and traitors for wishing to keep near him fouror five servants whom he knew by proof to be faithful even to death. 

Nor was this the only instance in which our ancestors were unjust tohim. They had expected that, as soon as so distinguished a soldier andstatesman was placed at the head of affairs, he would give some signalproof, they scarcely knew what, of genius and vigour. Unhappily, duringthe first months of his reign, almost every thing went wrong. Hissubjects, bitterly disappointed, threw the blame on him, and began todoubt whether he merited that reputation which he had won at his firstentrance into public life, and which the splendid success of his lastgreat enterprise had raised to the highest point. Had they been ina temper to judge fairly, they would have perceived that for themaladministration of which they with good reason complained he was notresponsible. He could as yet work only with the machinery which he hadfound; and the machinery which he had found was all rust and rottenness. From the time of the Restoration to the time of the Revolution, neglectand fraud had been almost constantly impairing the efficiency of everydepartment of the government. Honours and public trusts, peerages, baronetcies, regiments, frigates, embassies, governments, commissionerships, leases of crown lands, contracts for clothing, forprovisions, for ammunition, pardons for murder, for robbery, for arson, were sold at Whitehall scarcely less openly than asparagus at CoventGarden or herrings at Billingsgate. Brokers had been incessantly plyingfor custom in the purlieus of the court; and of these brokers the mostsuccessful had been, in the days of Charles, the harlots, and in thedays of James, the priests. From the palace which was the chief seat ofthis pestilence the taint had diffused itself through every officeand through every rank in every office, and had every where producedfeebleness and disorganization. So rapid was the progress of the decaythat, within eight years after the time when Oliver had been the umpireof Europe, the roar of the guns of De Ruyter was heard in the Towerof London. The vices which had brought that great humiliation on thecountry had ever since been rooting themselves deeper and spreadingthemselves wider. James had, to do him justice, corrected a few of thegross abuses which disgraced the naval administration. Yet the navaladministration, in spite of his attempts to reform it, moved thecontempt of men who were acquainted with the dockyards of France andHolland. The military administration was still worse. The courtierstook bribes from the colonels; the colonels cheated the soldiers: thecommissaries sent in long bills for what had never been furnished: thekeepers of the arsenals sold the public stores and pocketed the price. But these evils, though they had sprung into existence and grownto maturity under the government of Charles and James, first madethemselves severely felt under the government of William. For Charlesand James were content to be the vassals and pensioners of a powerfuland ambitious neighbour: they submitted to his ascendency: they shunnedwith pusillanimous caution whatever could give him offence; and thus, at the cost of the independence and dignity of that ancient and gloriouscrown which they unworthily wore, they avoided a conflict which wouldinstantly have shown how helpless, under their misrule, their onceformidable kingdom had become. Their ignominious policy it was neitherin William's power nor in his nature to follow. It was only by arms thatthe liberty and religion of England could be protected against the mostformidable enemy that had threatened our island since the Hebrides werestrown with the wrecks of the Armada. The body politic, which, while itremained in repose, had presented a superficial appearance of healthand vigour, was now under the necessity of straining every nerve in awrestle for life or death, and was immediately found to be unequal tothe exertion. The first efforts showed an utter relaxation of fibre, anutter want of training. Those efforts were, with scarcely an exception, failures; and every failure was popularly imputed, not to the rulerswhose mismanagement had produced the infirmities of the state, but tothe ruler in whose time the infirmities of the state became visible. 

William might indeed, if he had been as absolute as Lewis, have usedsuch sharp remedies as would speedily have restored to the Englishadministration that firm tone which had been wanting since the death ofOliver. But the instantaneous reform of inveterate abuses was a task farbeyond the powers of a prince strictly restrained by law, and restrainedstill more strictly by the difficulties of his situation. [68]

Some of the most serious difficulties of his situation were caused bythe conduct of the ministers on whom, new as he was to the details ofEnglish affairs, he was forced to rely for information about men andthings. There was indeed no want of ability among his chief counsellors:but one half of their ability was employed in counteracting the otherhalf. Between the Lord President and the Lord Privy Seal there was aninveterate enmity. [69] It had begun twelve years before when Danby wasLord High Treasurer, a persecutor of nonconformists, an uncompromisingdefender of prerogative, and when Halifax was rising to distinction asone of the most eloquent leaders of the country party. In the reign ofJames, the two statesmen had found themselves in opposition together;and their common hostility to France and to Rome, to the High Commissionand to the dispensing power, had produced an apparent reconciliation;but as soon as they were in office together the old antipathy revived. The hatred which the Whig party felt towards them both ought, it shouldseem, to have produced a close alliance between them: but in fact eachof them saw with complacency the danger which threatened the other. Danby exerted himself to rally round him a strong phalanx of Tories. Under the plea of ill health, he withdrew from court, seldom came to theCouncil over which it was his duty to preside, passed much time inthe country, and took scarcely any part in public affairs except bygrumbling and sneering at all the acts of the government, and by doingjobs and getting places for his personal retainers. [70] In consequenceof this defection, Halifax became prime minister, as far any ministercould, in that reign, be called prime minister. An immense load ofbusiness fell on him; and that load he was unable to sustain. In wit andeloquence, in amplitude of comprehension and subtlety of disquisition, he had no equal among the statesmen of his time. But that veryfertility, that very acuteness, which gave a singular charm to hisconversation, to his oratory and to his writings, unfitted him for thework of promptly deciding practical questions. He was slow from veryquickness. For he saw so many arguments for and against every possiblecourse that he was longer in making up his mind than a dull man wouldhave been. Instead of acquiescing in his first thoughts, he repliedon himself, rejoined on himself, and surrejoined on himself. Those whoheard him talk owned that he talked like an angel: but too often, whenhe had exhausted all that could be said, and came to act, the time foraction was over. 

Meanwhile the two Secretaries of State were constantly labouring to drawtheir master in diametrically opposite directions. Every scheme, every person, recommended by one of them was reprobated by the other. Nottingham was never weary of repeating that the old Roundhead party, the party which had taken the life of Charles the First and had plottedagainst the life of Charles the Second, was in principle republican, and that the Tories were the only true friends of monarchy. Shrewsburyreplied that the Tories might be friends of monarchy, but that theyregarded James as their monarch. Nottingham was always bringing to thecloset intelligence of the wild daydreams in which a few old eaters ofcalf's head, the remains of the once formidable party of Bradshaw andIreton, still indulged at taverns in the city. Shrewsbury producedferocious lampoons which the Jacobites dropped every day in thecoffeehouses. "Every Whig, " said the Tory Secretary, "is an enemy ofyour Majesty's prerogative. " "Every Tory, " said the Whig Secretary, "isan enemy of your Majesty's title. " [71]

At the treasury there was a complication of jealousies and quarrels. [72] Both the First Commissioner, Mordaunt, and the Chancellor of theExchequer, Delamere, were zealous Whigs but, though they held the samepolitical creed, their tempers differed widely. Mordaunt was volatile, dissipated, and generous. The wits of that time laughed at the way inwhich he flew about from Hampton Court to the Royal Exchange, and fromthe Royal Exchange back to Hampton Court. How he found time for dress, politics, lovemaking and balladmaking was a wonder. [73] Delamere wasgloomy and acrimonious, austere in his private morals, and punctual inhis devotions, but greedy of ignoble gain. The two principal ministersof finance, therefore, became enemies, and agreed only in hating theircolleague Godolphin. What business had he at Whitehall in these days ofProtestant ascendency, he who had sate at the same board with Papists, he who had never scrupled to attend Mary of Modena to the idolatrousworship of the Mass? The most provoking circumstance was that Godolphin, though his name stood only third in the commission, was really firstLord. For in financial knowledge and in habits of business Mordaunt andDelamere were mere children when compared with him; and this Williamsoon discovered. [74]

Similar feuds raged at the other great boards and through all thesubordinate ranks of public functionaries. In every customhouse, inevery arsenal, were a Shrewsbury and a Nottingham, a Delamere and aGodolphin. The Whigs complained that there was no department in whichcreatures of the fallen tyranny were not to be found. It was idle toallege that these men were versed in the details of business, that theywere the depositaries of official traditions, and that the friendsof liberty, having been, during many years, excluded from publicemployment, must necessarily be incompetent to take on themselves atonce the whole management of affairs. Experience doubtless had itsvalue: but surely the first of all the qualifications of a servant wasfidelity; and no Tory could be a really faithful servant of the newgovernment. If King William were wise, he would rather trust noviceszealous for his interest and honour than veterans who might indeedpossess ability and knowledge, but who would use that ability and thatknowledge to effect his ruin. 

The Tories, on the other hand, complained that their share of power boreno proportion to their number and their weight in the country, and thatevery where old and useful public servants were, for the crime of beingfriends to monarchy and to the Church, turned out of their posts to makeway for Rye House plotters and haunters of conventicles. These upstarts, adepts in the art of factious agitation, but ignorant of all thatbelonged to their new calling, would be just beginning to learn theirbusiness when they had undone the nation by their blunders. To be arebel and a schismatic was surely not all that ought to be required ofa man in high employment. What would become of the finances, what ofthe marine, if Whigs who could not understand the plainest balancesheet were to manage the revenue, and Whigs who had never walked over adockyard to fit out the fleet. [75]

The truth is that the charges which the two parties brought against eachother were, to a great extent, well founded, but that the blame whichboth threw on William was unjust. Official experience was to be foundalmost exclusively among the Tories, hearty attachment to the newsettlement almost exclusively among the Whigs. It was not the faultof the King that the knowledge and the zeal, which, combined, make avaluable servant of the state must at that time be had separately ornot at all. If he employed men of one party, there was great risk ofmistakes. If he employed men of the other party, there was great risk oftreachery. If he employed men of both parties, there was still some riskof mistakes; there was still some risk of treachery; and to these riskswas added the certainty of dissension. He might join Whigs and Tories;but it was beyond his power to mix them. In the same office, at thesame desk, they were still enemies, and agreed only in murmuring at thePrince who tried to mediate between them. It was inevitable that, insuch circumstances, the administration, fiscal, military, naval, shouldbe feeble and unsteady; that nothing should be done in quite theright way or at quite the right time; that the distractions from whichscarcely any public office was exempt should produce disasters, andthat every disaster should increase the distractions from which it hadsprung. 

There was indeed one department of which the business was wellconducted; and that was the department of Foreign Affairs. There Williamdirected every thing, and, on important occasions, neither asked theadvice nor employed the agency of any English politician. One invaluableassistant he had, Anthony Heinsius, who, a few weeks after theRevolution had been accomplished, became Pensionary of Holland. Heinsiushad entered public life as a member of that party which was jealous ofthe power of the House of Orange, and desirous to be on friendly termswith France. But he had been sent in 1681 on a diplomatic mission toVersailles; and a short residence there had produced a complete changein his views. On a near acquaintance, he was alarmed by the power andprovoked by the insolence of that Court of which, while he contemplatedit only at a distance, he had formed a favourable opinion. He found thathis country was despised. He saw his religion persecuted. His officialcharacter did not save him from some personal affronts which, to thelatest day of his long career, he never forgot. He went home a devotedadherent of William and a mortal enemy of Lewis. [76]

The office of Pensionary, always important, was peculiarly importantwhen the Stadtholder was absent from the Hague. Had the politics ofHeinsius been still what they once were, all the great designs ofWilliam might have been frustrated. But happily there was between thesetwo eminent men a perfect friendship which, till death dissolved it, appears never to have been interrupted for one moment by suspicion orill humour. On all large questions of European policy they cordiallyagreed. They corresponded assiduously and most unreservedly. For thoughWilliam was slow to give his confidence, yet, when he gave it, he gaveit entire. The correspondence is still extant, and is most honourable toboth. The King's letters would alone suffice to prove that he was oneof the greatest statesmen whom Europe has produced. While he lived, thePensionary was content to be the most obedient, the most trusty, andthe most discreet of servants. But, after the death of the master, theservant proved himself capable of supplying with eminent ability themaster's place, and was renowned throughout Europe as one of the greatTriumvirate which humbled the pride of Lewis the Fourteenth. [77]

The foreign policy of England, directed immediately by William inclose concert with Heinsius, was, at this time, eminently skilful andsuccessful. But in every other part of the administration the evilsarising from the mutual animosity of factions were but too plainlydiscernible. Nor was this all. To the evils arising from the mutualanimosity of factions were added other evils arising from the mutualanimosity of sects. 

The year 1689 is a not less important epoch in the ecclesiastical thanin the civil history of England. In that year was granted the firstlegal indulgence to Dissenters. In that year was made the last seriousattempt to bring the Presbyterians within the pale of the Church ofEngland. From that year dates a new schism, made, in defiance of ancientprecedents, by men who had always professed to regard schism withpeculiar abhorrence, and ancient precedents with peculiar veneration. In that year began the long struggle between two great parties ofconformists. Those parties indeed had, under various forms, existedwithin the Anglican communion ever since the Reformation; but till afterthe Revolution they did not appear marshalled in regular and permanentorder of battle against each other, and were therefore not known byestablished names. Some time after the accession of William they beganto be called the High Church party and the Low Church party; and, longbefore the end of his reign, these appellations were in common use. [78]

In the summer of 1688 the breaches which had long divided the great bodyof English Protestants had seemed to be almost closed. Disputes aboutBishops and Synods, written prayers and extemporaneous prayers, whitegowns and black gowns, sprinkling and dipping, kneeling and sitting, had been for a short space intermitted. The serried array which was thendrawn up against Popery measured the whole of the vast interval whichseparated Sancroft from Bunyan. Prelates recently conspicuous aspersecutors now declared themselves friends of religious liberty, andexhorted their clergy to live in a constant interchange of hospitalityand of kind offices with the separatists. Separatists, on the otherhand, who had recently considered mitres and lawn sleeves as the liveryof Antichrist, were putting candles in windows and throwing faggots onbonfires in honour of the prelates. 

These feelings continued to grow till they attained their greatestheight on the memorable day on which the common oppressor finallyquitted Whitehall, and on which an innumerable multitude, tricked out inorange ribands, welcomed the common deliverer to Saint James's. When theclergy of London came, headed by Compton, to express their gratitude tohim by whose instrumentality God had wrought salvation for the Churchand the State, the procession was swollen by some eminent nonconformistdivines. It was delightful to many good men to learn that pious andlearned Presbyterian ministers had walked in the train of a Bishop, hadbeen greeted by him with fraternal kindness, and had been announced byhim in the presence chamber as his dear and respected friends, separatedfrom him indeed by some differences of opinion on minor points, butunited to him by Christian charity and by common zeal for the essentialsof the reformed faith. There had never before been such a day inEngland; and there has never since been such a day. The tide of feelingwas already on the turn; and the ebb was even more rapid than theflow had been. In a very few hours the High Churchman began to feeltenderness for the enemy whose tyranny was now no longer feared, anddislike of the allies whose services were now no longer needed. Itwas easy to gratify both feelings by imputing to the dissenters themisgovernment of the exiled King. His Majesty-such was now the languageof too many Anglican divines-would have been an excellent sovereignhad he not been too confiding, too forgiving. He had put his trust ina class of men who hated his office, his family, his person, withimplacable hatred. He had ruined himself in the vain attempt toconciliate them. He had relieved them, in defiance of law and of theunanimous sense of the old royalist party, from the pressure of thepenal code; had allowed them to worship God publicly after their ownmean and tasteless fashion; had admitted them to the bench of justiceand to the Privy Council; had gratified them with fur robes, goldchains, salaries, and pensions. In return for his liberality, thesepeople, once so uncouth in demeanour, once so savage in opposition evento legitimate authority, had become the most abject of flatterers. Theyhad continued to applaud and encourage him when the most devoted friendsof his family had retired in shame and sorrow from his palace. Who hadmore foully sold the religion and liberty of his country than Titus? Whohad been more zealous for the dispensing power than Alsop? Who had urgedon the persecution of the seven Bishops more fiercely than Lobb? Whatchaplain impatient for a deanery had ever, even when preaching in theroyal presence on the thirtieth of January or the twenty-ninth ofMay, uttered adulation more gross than might easily be found inthose addresses by which dissenting congregations had testified theirgratitude for the illegal Declaration of Indulgence? Was it strange thata prince who had never studied law books should have believed thathe was only exercising his rightful prerogative, when he was thusencouraged by a faction which had always ostentatiously professed hatredof arbitrary power? Misled by such guidance, he had gone further andfurther in the wrong path: he had at length estranged from him heartswhich would once have poured forth their best blood in his defence: hehad left himself no supporters except his old foes; and, when the dayof peril came, he had found that the feeling of his old foes towardshim was still what it had been when they had attempted to rob him of hisinheritance, and when they had plotted against his life. Every man ofsense had long known that the sectaries bore no love to monarchy. It hadnow been found that they bore as little love to freedom. To trust themwith power would be an error not less fatal to the nation than to thethrone. If, in order to redeem pledges somewhat rashly given, it shouldbe thought necessary to grant them relief, every concession ought to beaccompanied by limitations and precautions. Above all, no man who wasan enemy to the ecclesiastical constitution of the realm ought to bepermitted to bear any part in the civil government. 

Between the nonconformists and the rigid conformists stood the LowChurch party. That party contained, as it still contains, two verydifferent elements, a Puritan element and a Latitudinarian element. Onalmost every question, however, relating either to ecclesiastical polityor to the ceremonial of public worship, the Puritan Low Churchman andthe Latitudinarian Low Churchman were perfectly agreed. They saw in theexisting polity and in the existing ceremonial no defect, no blemish, which could make it their duty to become dissenters. Nevertheless theyheld that both the polity and the ceremonial were means and not ends, and that the essential spirit of Christianity might exist withoutepiscopal orders and without a Book of Common Prayer. They had, whileJames was on the throne, been mainly instrumental in forming the greatProtestant coalition against Popery and tyranny; and they continued in1689 to hold the same conciliatory language which they had held in1688. They gently blamed the scruples of the nonconformists. It wasundoubtedly a great weakness to imagine that there could be any sin inwearing a white robe, in tracing a cross, in kneeling at the rails of analtar. But the highest authority had given the plainest directions asto the manner in which such weakness was to be treated. The weak brotherwas not to be judged: he was not to be despised: believers who hadstronger minds were commanded to soothe him by large compliances, andcarefully to remove out of his path every stumbling block which couldcause him to offend. An apostle had declared that, though he had himselfno misgivings about the use of animal food or of wine, he would eatherbs and drink water rather than give scandal to the feeblest of hisflock. What would he have thought of ecclesiastical rulers who, for thesake of a vestment, a gesture, a posture, had not only torn the Churchasunder, but had filled all the gaols of England with men of orthodoxfaith and saintly life? The reflections thrown by the High Churchmen onthe recent conduct of the dissenting body the Low Churchmen pronouncedto be grossly unjust. The wonder was, not that a few nonconformistsshould have accepted with thanks an indulgence which, illegal as itwas, had opened the doors of their prisons and given security to theirhearths, but that the nonconformists generally should have been trueto the cause of a constitution from the benefits of which they had beenlong excluded. It was most unfair to impute to a great party the faultsof a few individuals. Even among the Bishops of the Established ChurchJames had found tools and sycophants. The conduct of Cartwright andParker had been much more inexcusable than that of Alsop and Lobb. Yetthose who held the dissenters answerable for the errors of Alsop andLobb would doubtless think it most unreasonable to hold the Churchanswerable for the far deeper guilt of Cartwright and Parker. 

The Low Church clergymen were a minority, and not a large minority, oftheir profession: but their weight was much more than proportioned totheir numbers: for they mustered strong in the capital: they had greatinfluence there; and the average of intellect and knowledge was higheramong them than among their order generally. We should probably overratetheir numerical strength, if we were to estimate them at a tenth partof the priesthood. Yet it will scarcely be denied that there were amongthem as many men of distinguished eloquence and learning as could befound in the other nine tenths. Among the laity who conformed to theestablished religion the parties were not unevenly balanced. Indeedthe line which separated them deviated very little from the line whichseparated the Whigs and the Tories. In the House of Commons, whichhad been elected when the Whigs were triumphant, the Low Church partygreatly preponderated. In the Lords there was an almost exact equipoise;and very slight circumstances sufficed to turn the scale. 

The head of the Low Church party was the King. He had been bred aPresbyterian: he was, from rational conviction, a Latitudinarian; andpersonal ambition, as well as higher motives, prompted him to act asmediator among Protestant sects. He was bent on effecting three greatreforms in the laws touching ecclesiastical matters. His first objectwas to obtain for dissenters permission to celebrate their worship infreedom and security. His second object was to make such changes inthe Anglican ritual and polity as, without offending those to whomthat ritual and polity were dear, might conciliate the moderatenonconformists. His third object was to throw open civil offices toProtestants without distinction of sect. All his three objects weregood; but the first only was at that time attainable. He came too latefor the second, and too early for the third. 

A few days after his accession, he took a step which indicated, in amanner not to be mistaken, his sentiments touching ecclesiastical polityand public worship. He found only one see unprovided with a Bishop. SethWard, who had during many years had charge of the diocese of Salisbury, and who had been honourably distinguished as one of the founders ofthe Royal Society, having long survived his faculties, died whilethe country was agitated by the elections for the Convention, withoutknowing that great events, of which not the least important had passedunder his own roof, had saved his Church and his country from ruin. Thechoice of a successor was no light matter. That choice would inevitablybe considered by the country as a prognostic of the highest import. The King too might well be perplexed by the number of divines whoseerudition, eloquence, courage, and uprightness had been conspicuouslydisplayed during the contentions of the last three years. The preferencewas given to Burnet. His claims were doubtless great. Yet William mighthave had a more tranquil reign if he had postponed for a time the wellearned promotion of his chaplain, and had bestowed the first greatspiritual preferment, which, after the Revolution, fell to thedisposal of the Crown, on some eminent theologian, attached to the newsettlement, yet not generally hated by the clergy. Unhappily the nameof Burnet was odious to the great majority of the Anglican priesthood. Though, as respected doctrine, he by no means belonged to the extremesection of the Latitudinarian party, he was popularly regarded as thepersonification of the Latitudinarian spirit. This distinction he owedto the prominent place which he held in literature and politics, to thereadiness of his tongue and of his pert, and above all to the franknessand boldness of his nature, frankness which could keep no secret, andboldness which flinched from no danger. He had formed but a low estimateof the character of his clerical brethren considered as a body; and, with his usual indiscretion, he frequently suffered his opinion toescape him. They hated him in return with a hatred which has descendedto their successors, and which, after the lapse of a century and a half, does not appear to languish. 

As soon as the King's decision was known, the question was every whereasked, What will the Archbishop do? Sancroft had absented himself fromthe Convention: he had refused to sit in the Privy Council: he hadceased to confirm, to ordain, and to institute; and he was seldomseen out of the walls of his palace at Lambeth. He, on all occasions, professed to think himself still bound by his old oath of allegiance. Burnet he regarded as a scandal to the priesthood, a Presbyterian in asurplice. The prelate who should lay hands on that unworthy head wouldcommit more than one great sin. He would, in a sacred place, and beforea great congregation of the faithful, at once acknowledge an usurperas a King, and confer on a schismatic the character of a Bishop. Duringsome time Sancroft positively declared that he would not obey theprecept of William. Lloyd of Saint Asaph, who was the common friend ofthe Archbishop and of the Bishop elect, intreated and expostulatedin vain. Nottingham, who, of all the laymen connected with the newgovernment, stood best with the clergy, tried his influence, but to nobetter purpose. The Jacobites said every where that they were sure ofthe good old Primate; that he had the spirit of a martyr; that he wasdetermined to brave, in the cause of the Monarchy and of the Church, theutmost rigour of those laws with which the obsequious parliaments of thesixteenth century had fenced the Royal Supremacy. He did in truth holdout long. But at the last moment his heart failed him, and he lookedround him for some mode of escape. Fortunately, as childish scruplesoften disturbed his conscience, childish expedients often quieted it. Amore childish expedient than that to which he now resorted is not to befound in all the tones of the casuists. He would not himself bear a partin the service. He would not publicly pray for the Prince and Princessas King and Queen. He would not call for their mandate, order it to beread, and then proceed to obey it. But he issued a commission empoweringany three of his suffragans to commit, in his name, and as hisdelegates, the sins which he did not choose to commit in person. Thereproaches of all parties soon made him ashamed of himself. He thentried to suppress the evidence of his fault by means more discreditablethan the fault itself. He abstracted from among the public records ofwhich he was the guardian the instrument by which he had authorised hisbrethren to act for him, and was with difficulty induced to give it up. [79]

Burnet however had, under the authority of this instrument, beenconsecrated. When he next waited on Mary, she reminded him of theconversations which they had held at the Hague about the high duties andgrave responsibility of Bishops. "I hope, " she said, "that you will putyour notions in practice. " Her hope was not disappointed. Whatevermay be thought of Burnet's opinions touching civil and ecclesiasticalpolity, or of the temper and judgment which he showed in defending thoseopinions, the utmost malevolence of faction could not venture to denythat he tended his flock with a zeal, diligence, and disinterestednessworthy of the purest ages of the Church. His jurisdiction extended overWiltshire and Berkshire. These counties he divided into districts whichhe sedulously visited. About two months of every summer he passed inpreaching, catechizing, and confirming daily from church to church. Whenhe died there was no corner of his diocese in which the people had nothad seven or eight opportunities of receiving his instructions and ofasking his advice. The worst weather, the worst roads, did not preventhim from discharging these duties. On one occasion, when the floods wereout, he exposed his life to imminent risk rather than disappoint a ruralcongregation which was in expectation of a discourse from the Bishop. The poverty of the inferior clergy was a constant cause of uneasinessto his kind and generous heart. He was indefatigable and at lengthsuccessful in his attempts to obtain for them from the Crown thatgrant which is known by the name of Queen Anne's Bounty. [80] He wasespecially careful, when he travelled through his diocese, to layno burden on them. Instead of requiring them to entertain him, heentertained them. He always fixed his headquarters at a market town, kept a table there, and, by his decent hospitality and munificentcharities, tried to conciliate those who were prejudiced against hisdoctrines. When he bestowed a poor benefice, and he had many such tobestow, his practice was to add out of his own purse twenty pounds ayear to the income. Ten promising young men, to each of whom he allowedthirty pounds a year, studied divinity under his own eye in the closeof Salisbury. He had several children but he did not think himselfjustified in hoarding for them. Their mother had brought him a goodfortune. With that fortune, he always said, they must be content: Hewould not, for their sakes, be guilty of the crime of raising an estateout of revenues sacred to piety and charity. Such merits as these will, in the judgment of wise and candid men, appear fully to atone for everyoffence which can be justly imputed to him. [81]

When he took his seat in the House of Lords, he found that assemblybusied in ecclesiastical legislation. A statesman who was well knownto be devoted to the Church had undertaken to plead the cause of theDissenters. No subject in the realm occupied so important and commandinga position with reference to religious parties as Nottingham. To theinfluence derived from rank, from wealth, and from office, he addedthe higher influence which belongs to knowledge, to eloquence, and tointegrity. The orthodoxy of his creed, the regularity of his devotions, and the purity of his morals gave a peculiar weight to his opinions onquestions in which the interests of Christianity were concerned. Of allthe ministers of the new Sovereigns, he had the largest share of theconfidence of the clergy. Shrewsbury was certainly a Whig, and probablya freethinker: he had lost one religion; and it did not very clearlyappear that he had found another. Halifax had been during many yearsaccused of scepticism, deism, atheism. Danby's attachment to episcopacyand the liturgy was rather political than religious. But Nottinghamwas such a son as the Church was proud to own. Propositions, therefore, which, if made by his colleagues, would infallibly produce a violentpanic among the clergy, might, if made by him, find a favourablereception even in universities and chapter houses. The friendsof religious liberty were with good reason desirous to obtain hiscooperation; and, up to a certain point, he was not unwilling tocooperate with them. He was decidedly for a toleration. He was even forwhat was then called a comprehension: that is to say, he was desirousto make some alterations in the Anglican discipline and ritual for thepurpose of removing the scruples of the moderate Presbyterians. But hewas not prepared to give up the Test Act. The only fault which he foundwith that Act was that it was not sufficiently stringent, and that itleft loopholes through which schismatics sometimes crept into civilemployments. In truth it was because he was not disposed to part withthe Test that he was willing to consent to some changes in the Liturgy. He conceived that, if the entrance of the Church were but a very littlewidened, great numbers who had hitherto lingered near the thresholdwould press in. Those who still remained without would then not besufficiently numerous or powerful to extort any further concession, andwould be glad to compound for a bare toleration. [82]

The opinion of the Low Churchmen concerning the Test Act differed widelyfrom his. But many of them thought that it was of the highestimportance to have his support on the great questions of Toleration andComprehension. From the scattered fragments of information which havecome down to us, it appears that a compromise was made. It is quitecertain that Nottingham undertook to bring in a Toleration Bill and aComprehension Bill, and to use his best endeavours to carry both billsthrough the House of Lords. It is highly probable that, in return forthis great service, some of the leading Whigs consented to let the TestAct remain for the present unaltered. 

There was no difficulty in framing either the Toleration Bill or theComprehension Bill. The situation of the dissenters had been muchdiscussed nine or ten years before, when the kingdom was distractedby the fear of a Popish plot, and when there was among Protestants ageneral disposition to unite against the common enemy. The governmenthad then been willing to make large concessions to the Whig party, oncondition that the crown should be suffered to descend according to theregular course. A draught of a law authorising the public worship of thenonconformists, and a draught of a law making some alterations in thepublic worship of the Established Church, had been prepared, and wouldprobably have been passed by both Houses without difficulty, had notShaftesbury and his coadjutors refused to listen to any terms, and, bygrasping at what was beyond their reach, missed advantages which mighteasily have been secured. In the framing of these draughts, Nottingham, then an active member of the House of Commons, had borne a considerablepart. He now brought them forth from the obscurity in which they hadremained since the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, and laid them, with some slight alterations, on the table of the Lords. [83]

The Toleration Bill passed both Houses with little debate. Thiscelebrated statute, long considered as the Great Charter of religiousliberty, has since been extensively modified, and is hardly known tothe present generation except by name. The name, however, is stillpronounced with respect by many who will perhaps learn with surpriseand disappointment the real nature of the law which they have beenaccustomed to hold in honour. 

Several statutes which had been passed between the accession of QueenElizabeth and the Revolution required all people under severe penaltiesto attend the services of the Church of England, and to abstain fromattending conventicles. The Toleration Act did not repeal any of thesestatutes, but merely provided that they should not be construed toextend to any person who should testify his loyalty by taking the Oathsof Allegiance and Supremacy, and his Protestantism by subscribing theDeclaration against Transubstantiation. 

The relief thus granted was common between the dissenting laity andthe dissenting clergy. But the dissenting clergy had some peculiargrievances. The Act of Uniformity had laid a mulct of a hundred poundson every person who, not having received episcopal ordination, shouldpresume to administer the Eucharist. The Five Mile Act had driven manypious and learned ministers from their houses and their friends, to liveamong rustics in obscure villages of which the name was not to be seenon the map. The Conventicle Act had imposed heavy fines on divines whoshould preach in any meeting of separatists; and, in direct oppositionto the humane spirit of our common law, the Courts were enjoined toconstrue this Act largely and beneficially for the suppressing ofdissent and for the encouraging of informers. These severe statutes werenot repealed, but were, with many conditions and precautions, relaxed. It was provided that every dissenting minister should, before heexercised his function, profess under his hand his belief in thearticles of the Church of England, with a few exceptions. Thepropositions to which he was not required to assent were these; that theChurch has power to regulate ceremonies; that the doctrines set forth inthe Book of Homilies are sound; and that there is nothing superstitiousand idolatrous in the ordination service. If he declared himself aBaptist, he was also excused from affirming that the baptism of infantsis a laudable practice. But, unless his conscience suffered him tosubscribe thirty-four of the thirty-nine articles, and the greater partof two other articles, he could not preach without incurring all thepunishments which the Cavaliers, in the day of their power and theirvengeance, had devised for the tormenting and ruining of schismaticalteachers. 

The situation of the Quaker differed from that of other dissenters, and differed for the worse. The Presbyterian, the Independent, andthe Baptist had no scruple about the Oath of Supremacy. But the Quakerrefused to take it, not because he objected to the proposition thatforeign sovereigns and prelates have no jurisdiction in England, butbecause his conscience would not suffer him to swear to any propositionwhatever. He was therefore exposed to the severity of part of that penalcode which, long before Quakerism existed, had been enacted againstRoman Catholics by the Parliaments of Elizabeth. Soon after theRestoration, a severe law, distinct from the general law which appliedto all conventicles, had been passed against meetings of Quakers. TheToleration Act permitted the members of this harmless sect to holdtheir assemblies in peace, on condition of signing three documents, adeclaration against Transubstantiation, a promise of fidelity to thegovernment, and a confession of Christian belief. The objections whichthe Quaker had to the Athanasian phraseology had brought on him theimputation of Socinianism; and the strong language in which he sometimesasserted that he derived his knowledge of spiritual things directly fromabove had raised a suspicion that he thought lightly of the authorityof Scripture. He was therefore required to profess his faith in thedivinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and in the inspiration of theOld and New Testaments. 

Such were the terms on which the Protestant dissenters of England were, for the first time, permitted by law to worship God according to theirown conscience. They were very properly forbidden to assemble withbarred doors, but were protected against hostile intrusion by aclause which made it penal to enter a meeting house for the purpose ofmolesting the congregation. 

As if the numerous limitations and precautions which have been mentionedwere insufficient, it was emphatically declared that the legislaturedid not intend to grant the smallest indulgence to any Papist, or to anyperson who denied the doctrine of the Trinity as that doctrine is setforth in the formularies of the Church of England. 

Of all the Acts that have ever been passed by Parliament, the TolerationAct is perhaps that which most strikingly illustrates the peculiar vicesand the peculiar excellences of English legislation. The scienceof Politics bears in one respect a close analogy to the science ofMechanics. The mathematician can easily demonstrate that a certainpower, applied by means of a certain lever or of a certain system ofpulleys, will suffice to raise a certain weight. But his demonstrationproceeds on the supposition that the machinery is such as no load willbend or break. If the engineer, who has to lift a great mass of realgranite by the instrumentality of real timber and real hemp, shouldabsolutely rely on the propositions which he finds in treatises onDynamics, and should make no allowance for the imperfection of hismaterials, his whole apparatus of beams, wheels, and ropes would sooncome down in ruin, and, with all his geometrical skill, he would befound a far inferior builder to those painted barbarians who, thoughthey never heard of the parallelogram of forces, managed to pile upStonehenge. What the engineer is to the mathematician, the activestatesman is to the contemplative statesman. It is indeed most importantthat legislators and administrators should be versed in the philosophyof government, as it is most important that the architect, who has tofix an obelisk on its pedestal, or to hang a tubular bridge over anestuary, should be versed in the philosophy of equilibrium and motion. But, as he who has actually to build must bear in mind many things nevernoticed by D'Alembert and Euler, so must he who has actually to governbe perpetually guided by considerations to which no allusion can befound in the writings of Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham. The perfectlawgiver is a just temper between the mere man of theory, who can seenothing but general principles, and the mere man of business, who cansee nothing but particular circumstances. Of lawgivers in whom thespeculative element has prevailed to the exclusion of the practical, the world has during the last eighty years been singularly fruitful. To their wisdom Europe and America have owed scores of abortiveconstitutions, scores of constitutions which have lived just long enoughto make a miserable noise, and have then gone off in convulsions. But inthe English legislature the practical element has always predominated, and not seldom unduly predominated, over the speculative. To thinknothing of symmetry and much of convenience; never to remove an anomalymerely because it is an anomaly; never to innovate except when somegrievance is felt; never to innovate except so far as to get rid of thegrievance; never to lay down any proposition of wider extent than theparticular case for which it is necessary to provide; these are therules which have, from the age of John to the age of Victoria, generallyguided the deliberations of our two hundred and fifty Parliaments. Ournational distaste for whatever is abstract in political science amountsundoubtedly to a fault. But it is, perhaps, a fault on the right side. That we have been far too slow to improve our laws must be admitted. But, though in other countries there may have occasionally been morerapid progress, it would not be easy to name any other country in whichthere has been so little retrogression. 

The Toleration Act approaches very near to the idea of a greatEnglish law. To a jurist, versed in the theory of legislation, but notintimately acquainted with the temper of the sects and parties intowhich the nation was divided at the time of the Revolution, that Actwould seem to be a mere chaos of absurdities and contradictions. It willnot bear to be tried by sound general principles. Nay, it will not bearto be tried by any principle, sound or unsound. The sound principleundoubtedly is, that mere theological error ought not to be punished bythe civil magistrate. This principle the Toleration Act not only doesnot recognise, but positively disclaims. Not a single one of the cruellaws enacted against nonconformists by the Tudors or the Stuarts isrepealed. Persecution continues to be the general rule. Toleration isthe exception. Nor is this all. The freedom which is given toconscience is given in the most capricious manner. A Quaker, by makinga declaration of faith in general terms, obtains the full benefit ofthe Act without signing one of the thirty-nine Articles. An Independentminister, who is perfectly willing to make the declaration requiredfrom the Quaker, but who has doubts about six or seven of the Articles, remains still subject to the penal laws. Howe is liable to punishment ifhe preaches before he has solemnly declared his assent to the Anglicandoctrine touching the Eucharist. Penn, who altogether rejectsthe Eucharist, is at perfect liberty to preach without making anydeclaration whatever on the subject. 

These are some of the obvious faults which must strike every person whoexamines the Toleration Act by that standard of just reason which is thesame in all countries and in all ages. But these very faults may perhapsappear to be merits, when we take into consideration the passions andprejudices of those for whom the Toleration Act was framed. Thislaw, abounding with contradictions which every smatterer in politicalphilosophy can detect, did what a law framed by the utmost skill of thegreatest masters of political philosophy might have failed to do. Thatthe provisions which have been recapitulated are cumbrous, puerile, inconsistent with each other, inconsistent with the true theory ofreligious liberty, must be acknowledged. All that can be said in theirdefence is this; that they removed a vast mass of evil without shockinga vast mass of prejudice; that they put an end, at once and for ever, without one division in either House of Parliament, without one riot inthe streets, with scarcely one audible murmur even from the classes mostdeeply tainted with bigotry, to a persecution which had raged duringfour generations, which had broken innumerable hearts, which had madeinnumerable firesides desolate, which had filled the prisons with menof whom the world was not worthy, which had driven thousands of thosehonest, diligent and godfearing yeomen and artisans, who are the truestrength of a nation, to seek a refuge beyond the ocean among thewigwams of red Indians and the lairs of panthers. Such a defence, however weak it may appear to some shallow speculators, will probably bethought complete by statesmen. 

The English, in 1689, were by no means disposed to admit the doctrinethat religious error ought to be left unpunished. That doctrine was justthen more unpopular than it had ever been. For it had, only a few monthsbefore, been hypocritically put forward as a pretext for persecuting theEstablished Church, for trampling on the fundamental laws of the realm, for confiscating freeholds, for treating as a crime the modest exerciseof the right of petition. If a bill had then been drawn up grantingentire freedom of conscience to all Protestants, it may be confidentlyaffirmed that Nottingham would never have introduced such a bill; thatall the bishops, Burnet included, would have voted against it; thatit would have been denounced, Sunday after Sunday, from ten thousandpulpits, as an insult to God and to all Christian men, and as a licenseto the worst heretics and blasphemers; that it would have been condemnedalmost as vehemently by Bates and Baxter as by Ken and Sherlock; that itwould have been burned by the mob in half the market places of England;that it would never have become the law of the land, and that it wouldhave made the very name of toleration odious during many years to themajority of the people. And yet, if such a bill had been passed, whatwould it have effected beyond what was effected by the Toleration Act?

It is true that the Toleration Act recognised persecution as the rule, and granted liberty of conscience only as the exception. But it isequally true that the rule remained in force only against a few hundredsof Protestant dissenters, and that the benefit of the exceptionsextended to hundreds of thousands. 

It is true that it was in theory absurd to make Howe sign thirty-four orthirty-five of the Anglican articles before he could preach, and to letPenn preach without signing one of those articles. But it is equallytrue that, under this arrangement, both Howe and Penn got as entireliberty to preach as they could have had under the most philosophicalcode that Beccaria or Jefferson could have framed. 

The progress of the bill was easy. Only one amendment of graveimportance was proposed. Some zealous churchmen in the Commons suggestedthat it might be desirable to grant the toleration only for a term ofseven years, and thus to bind over the nonconformists to good behaviour. But this suggestion was so unfavourably received that those who made itdid not venture to divide the House. [84]

The King gave his consent with hearty satisfaction: the bill became law;and the Puritan divines thronged to the Quarter Sessions of every countyto swear and sign. Many of them probably professed their assent to theArticles with some tacit reservations. But the tender conscience ofBaxter would not suffer him to qualify, till he had put on record anexplanation of the sense in which he understood every proposition whichseemed to him to admit of misconstruction. The instrument delivered byhim to the Court before which he took the oaths is still extant, and contains two passages of peculiar interest. He declared that hisapprobation of the Athanasian Creed was confined to that part which wasproperly a Creed, and that he did not mean to express any assent tothe damnatory clauses. He also declared that he did not, by signing thearticle which anathematizes all who maintain that there is any othersalvation than through Christ, mean to condemn those who entertain ahope that sincere and virtuous unbelievers may be admitted to partakein the benefits of Redemption. Many of the dissenting clergy of Londonexpressed their concurrence in these charitable sentiments. [85]

The history of the Comprehension Bill presents a remarkable contrast tothe history of the Toleration Bill. The two bills had a common origin, and, to a great extent, a common object. They were framed at the sametime, and laid aside at the same time: they sank together into oblivion;and they were, after the lapse of several years, again brought togetherbefore the world. Both were laid by the same peer on the table of theUpper House; and both were referred to the same select committee. Butit soon began to appear that they would have widely different fates. The Comprehension Bill was indeed a neater specimen of legislativeworkmanship than the Toleration Bill, but was not, like the TolerationBill, adapted to the wants, the feelings, and the prejudices of theexisting generation. Accordingly, while the Toleration Bill foundsupport in all quarters, the Comprehension Bill was attacked from allquarters, and was at last coldly and languidly defended even by thosewho had introduced it. About the same time at which the Toleration billbecame law with the general concurrence of public men, the ComprehensionBill was, with a concurrence not less general, suffered to drop. TheToleration Bill still ranks among those great statutes which are epochsin our constitutional history. The Comprehension Bill is forgotten. Nocollector of antiquities has thought it worth preserving. A single copy, the same which Nottingham presented to the peers, is still among ourparliamentary records, but has been seen by only two or three personsnow living. It is a fortunate circumstance that, in this copy, almostthe whole history of the Bill can be read. In spite of cancellationsand interlineations, the original words can easily be distinguished fromthose which were inserted in the committee or on the report. [86]

The first clause, as it stood when the bill was introduced, dispensedall the ministers of the Established Church from the necessity ofsubscribing the Thirty-nine Articles. For the Articles was substituteda Declaration which ran thus; "I do approve of the doctrine andworship and government of the Church of England by law established, as containing all things necessary to salvation; and I promise, in theexercise of my ministry, to preach and practice according thereunto. "Another clause granted similar indulgence to the members of the twouniversities. 

Then it was provided that any minister who had been ordained afterthe Presbyterian fashion might, without reordination, acquire all theprivileges of a priest of the Established Church. He must, however, be admitted to his new functions by the imposition of the hands of abishop, who was to pronounce the following form of words; "Take thouauthority to preach the word of God, and administer the sacraments, andto perform all other ministerial offices in the Church of England. "The person thus admitted was to be capable of holding any rectory orvicarage in the kingdom. 

Then followed clauses providing that a clergyman might, except in a fewchurches of peculiar dignity, wear the surplice or not as he thoughtfit, that the sign of the cross might be omitted in baptism, thatchildren might be christened, if such were the wish of their parents, without godfathers or godmothers, and that persons who had a scrupleabout receiving the Eucharist kneeling might receive it sitting. 

The concluding clause was drawn in the form of a petition. It wasproposed that the two Houses should request the King and Queen to issuea commission empowering thirty divines of the Established Churchto revise the liturgy, the canons, and the constitution of theecclesiastical courts, and to recommend such alterations as might oninquiry appear to be desirable. 

The bill went smoothly through the first stages. Compton, who, sinceSancroft had shut himself up at Lambeth, was virtually Primate, supported Nottingham with ardour. [87] In the committee, however, itappeared that there was a strong body of churchmen, who were determinednot to give up a single word or form; to whom it seemed that the prayerswere no prayers without the surplice, the babe no Christian if notmarked with the cross, the bread and wine no memorials of redemptionor vehicles of grace if not received on bended knee. Why, these personsasked, was the docile and affectionate son of the Church to be disgustedby seeing the irreverent practices of a conventicle introduced into hermajestic choirs? Why should his feelings, his prejudices, if prejudicesthey were, be less considered than the whims of schismatics? If, asBurnet and men like Burnet were never weary of repeating, indulgencewas due to a weak brother, was it less due to the brother whoseweakness consisted in the excess of his love for an ancient, a decent, abeautiful ritual, associated in his imagination from childhood withall that is most sublime and endearing, than to him whose morose andlitigious mind was always devising frivolous objections to innocent andsalutary usages? But, in truth, the scrupulosity of the Puritan was notthat sort of scrupulosity which the Apostle had commanded believers torespect. It sprang, not from morbid tenderness of conscience, but fromcensoriousness and spiritual pride; and none who had studied the NewTestament could have failed to observe that, while we are chargedcarefully to avoid whatever may give scandal to the feeble, we aretaught by divine precept and example to make no concession to thesupercilious and uncharitable Pharisee. Was every thing which was not ofthe essence of religion to be given up as soon as it became unpleasingto a knot of zealots whose heads had been turned by conceit and the loveof novelty? Painted glass, music, holidays, fast days, were not of theessence of religion. Were the windows of King's College Chapel to bebroken at the demand of one set of fanatics? Was the organ of Exeterto be silenced to please another? Were all the village bells to be mutebecause Tribulation Wholesome and Deacon Ananias thought them profane?Was Christmas no longer to be a day of rejoicing? Was Passion week nolonger to be a season of humiliation? These changes, it is true, werenot yet proposed. Put if, --so the High Churchmen reasoned, --we onceadmit that what is harmless and edifying is to be given up because itoffends some narrow understandings and some gloomy tempers, where arewe to stop? And is it not probable that, by thus attempting to heal oneschism, we may cause another? All those things which the Puritans regardas the blemishes of the Church are by a large part of the populationreckoned among her attractions. May she not, in ceasing to give scandalto a few sour precisians, cease also to influence the hearts of manywho now delight in her ordinances? Is it not to be apprehended that, forevery proselyte whom she allures from the meeting house, ten of her olddisciples may turn away from her maimed rites and dismantled temples, and that these new separatists may either form themselves into asect far more formidable than the sect which we are now seeking toconciliate, or may, in the violence of their disgust at a cold andignoble worship, be tempted to join in the solemn and gorgeous idolatryof Rome?

It is remarkable that those who held this language were by no meansdisposed to contend for the doctrinal Articles of the Church. The truthis that, from the time of James the First, that great party which hasbeen peculiarly zealous for the Anglican polity and the Anglican ritualhas always leaned strongly towards Arminianism, and has therefore neverbeen much attached to a confession of faith framed by reformers who, onquestions of metaphysical divinity, generally agreed with Calvin. One ofthe characteristic marks of that party is the disposition which it hasalways shown to appeal, on points of dogmatic theology, rather to theLiturgy, which was derived from Rome, than to the Articles and Homilies, which were derived from Geneva. The Calvinistic members of the Church, on the other hand, have always maintained that her deliberate judgmenton such points is much more likely to be found in an Article or a Homilythan in an ejaculation of penitence or a hymn of thanksgiving. It doesnot appear that, in the debates on the Comprehension Bill, a single HighChurchman raised his voice against the clause which relieved the clergyfrom the necessity of subscribing the Articles, and of declaring thedoctrine contained in the Homilies to be sound. Nay, the Declarationwhich, in the original draught, was substituted for the Articles, wasmuch softened down on the report. As the clause finally stood, theministers of the Church were required to declare, not that they approvedof her constitution, but merely that they submitted to it. Had the billbecome law, the only people in the kingdom who would have been underthe necessity of signing the Articles would have been the dissentingpreachers. [88]

The easy manner in which the zealous friends of the Church gave up herconfession of faith presents a striking contrast to the spirit withwhich they struggled for her polity and her ritual. The clause whichadmitted Presbyterian ministers to hold benefices without episcopalordination was rejected. The clause which permitted scrupulous personsto communicate sitting very narrowly escaped the same fate. In theCommittee it was struck out, and, on the report, was with greatdifficulty restored. The majority of peers in the House was against theproposed indulgence, and the scale was but just turned by the proxies. 

But by this time it began to appear that the bill which the HighChurchmen were so keenly assailing was menaced by dangers from a verydifferent quarter. The same considerations which had induced Nottinghamto support a comprehension made comprehension an object of dread andaversion to a large body of dissenters. The truth is that the timefor such a scheme had gone by. If, a hundred years earlier, when thedivision in the Protestant body was recent, Elizabeth had been so wiseas to abstain from requiring the observance of a few forms which alarge part of her subjects considered as Popish, she might perhaps haveaverted those fearful calamities which, forty years after her death, afflicted the Church. But the general tendency of schism is to widen. Had Leo the Tenth, when the exactions and impostures of the Pardonersfirst roused the indignation of Saxony, corrected those evil practiceswith a vigorous hand, it is not improbable that Luther would have diedin the bosom of the Church of Rome. But the opportunity was sufferedto escape; and, when, a few years later, the Vatican would gladlyhave purchased peace by yielding the original subject of quarrel, theoriginal subject of quarrel was almost forgotten. The inquiring spiritwhich had been roused by a single abuse had discovered or imagined athousand: controversies engendered controversies: every attempt thatwas made to accommodate one dispute ended by producing another; andat length a General Council, which, during the earlier stages of thedistemper, had been supposed to be an infallible remedy, made the caseutterly hopeless. In this respect, as in many others, the historyof Puritanism in England bears a close analogy to the history ofProtestantism in Europe. The Parliament of 1689 could no more put an endto nonconformity by tolerating a garb or a posture than the Doctorsof Trent could have reconciled the Teutonic nations to the Papacy byregulating the sale of indulgences. In the sixteenth century Quakerismwas unknown; and there was not in the whole realm a single congregationof Independents or Baptists. At the time of the Revolution, theIndependents, Baptists, and Quakers were a majority of the dissentingbody; and these sects could not be gained over on any terms whichthe lowest of Low Churchmen would have been willing to offer. TheIndependent held that a national Church, governed by any centralauthority whatever, Pope, Patriarch, King, Bishop, or Synod, was anunscriptural institution, and that every congregation of believerswas, under Christ, a sovereign society. The Baptist was evenmore irreclaimable than the Independent, and the Quaker even moreirreclaimable than the Baptist. Concessions, therefore, which would oncehave extinguished nonconformity would not now satisfy even one halfof the nonconformists; and it was the obvious interest of everynonconformist whom no concession would satisfy that none of his brethrenshould be satisfied. The more liberal the terms of comprehension, thegreater was the alarm of every separatist who knew that he could, in nocase, be comprehended. There was but slender hope that the dissenters, unbroken and acting as one man, would be able to obtain from thelegislature full admission to civil privileges; and all hope ofobtaining such admission must be relinquished if Nottingham should, by the help of some wellmeaning but shortsighted friends of religiousliberty, be enabled to accomplish his design. If his bill passed, therewould doubtless be a considerable defection from the dissentingbody; and every defection must be severely felt by a class alreadyoutnumbered, depressed, and struggling against powerful enemies. Everyproselyte too must be reckoned twice over, as a loss to the party whichwas even now too weak, and as a gain to the party which was even now toostrong. The Church was but too well able to hold her own against all thesects in the kingdom; and, if those sects were to be thinned by a largedesertion, and the Church strengthened by a large reinforcement, it wasplain that all chance of obtaining any relaxation of the Test Act wouldbe at an end; and it was but too probable that the Toleration Act mightnot long remain unrepealed. 

Even those Presbyterian ministers whose scruples the Comprehension Billwas expressly intended to remove were by no means unanimous in wishingit to pass. The ablest and most eloquent preachers among them had, sincethe Declaration of Indulgence had appeared, been very agreeably settledin the capital and in other large towns, and were now about to enjoy, under the sure guarantee of an Act of Parliament, that toleration which, under the Declaration of Indulgence, had been illicit and precarious. The situation of these men was such as the great majority of the divinesof the Established Church might well envy. Few indeed of the parochialclergy were so abundantly supplied with comforts as the favouriteorator of a great assembly of nonconformists in the City. The voluntarycontributions of his wealthy hearers, Aldermen and Deputies, West Indiamerchants and Turkey merchants, Wardens of the Company of Fishmongersand Wardens of the Company of Goldsmiths, enabled him to become alandowner or a mortgagee. The best broadcloth from Blackwell Hall, andthe best poultry from Leadenhall Market, were frequently left at hisdoor. His influence over his flock was immense. Scarcely any member ofa congregation of separatists entered into a partnership, married adaughter, put a son out as apprentice, or gave his vote at an election, without consulting his spiritual guide. On all political and literaryquestions the minister was the oracle of his own circle. It waspopularly remarked, during many years, that an eminent dissentingminister had only to make his son an attorney or a physician; that theattorney was sure to have clients, and the physician to have patients. While a waiting woman was generally considered as a help meet fora chaplain in holy orders of the Established Church, the widows anddaughters of opulent citizens were supposed to belong in a peculiarmanner to nonconformist pastors. One of the great Presbyterian Rabbies, therefore, might well doubt whether, in a worldly view, he shouldbe benefited by a comprehension. He might indeed hold a rectory ora vicarage, when he could get one. But in the meantime he would bedestitute: his meeting house would be closed: his congregation would bedispersed among the parish churches: if a benefice were bestowed on him, it would probably be a very slender compensation for the income whichhe had lost. Nor could he hope to have, as a minister of the AnglicanChurch, the authority and dignity which he had hitherto enjoyed. Hewould always, by a large portion of the members of that Church, beregarded as a deserter. He might therefore, on the whole, very naturallywish to be left where he was. [89]

There was consequently a division in the Whig party. One section of thatparty was for relieving the dissenters from the Test Act, and givingup the Comprehension Bill. Another section was for pushing forwardthe Comprehension Bill, and postponing to a more convenient time theconsideration of the Test Act. The effect of this division among thefriends of religious liberty was that the High Churchmen, though aminority in the House of Commons, and not a majority in the House ofLords, were able to oppose with success both the reforms which theydreaded. The Comprehension Bill was not passed; and the Test Act was notrepealed. 

Just at the moment when the question of the Test and the question of theComprehension became complicated together in a manner which might wellperplex an enlightened and honest politician, both questions becamecomplicated with a third question of grave importance. 

The ancient oaths of allegiance and supremacy contained some expressionswhich had always been disliked by the Whigs, and other expressions whichTories, honestly attached to the new settlement, thought inapplicable toprinces who had not the hereditary right. The Convention had therefore, while the throne was still vacant, framed those oaths of allegiance andsupremacy by which we still testify our loyalty to our Sovereign. By theAct which turned the Convention into a Parliament, the members of bothHouses were required to take the new oaths. As to other persons inpublic trust, it was hard to say how the law stood. One form of wordswas enjoined by statutes, regularly passed, and not yet regularlyabrogated. A different form was enjoined by the Declaration of Right, aninstrument which was indeed revolutionary and irregular, but which mightwell be thought equal in authority to any statute. The practice was inas much confusion as the law. It was therefore felt to be necessary thatthe legislature should, without delay, pass an Act abolishing the oldoaths, and determining when and by whom the new oaths should be taken. 

The bill which settled this important question originated in the UpperHouse. As to most of the provisions there was little room for dispute. It was unanimously agreed that no person should, at any future time, beadmitted to any office, civil, military, ecclesiastical, or academical, without taking the oaths to William and Mary. It was also unanimouslyagreed that every person who already held any civil or military officeshould be ejected from it, unless he took the oaths on or before thefirst of August 1689. But the strongest passions of both partieswere excited by the question whether persons who already possessedecclesiastical or academical offices should be required to swear fealtyto the King and Queen on pain of deprivation. None could say what mightbe the effect of a law enjoining all the members of a great, a powerful, a sacred profession to make, under the most solemn sanction ofreligion, a declaration which might be plausibly represented as a formalrecantation of all that they had been writing and preaching during manyyears. The Primate and some of the most eminent Bishops had alreadyabsented themselves from Parliament, and would doubtless relinquishtheir palaces and revenues, rather than acknowledge the new Sovereigns. The example of these great prelates might perhaps be followed bya multitude of divines of humbler rank, by hundreds of canons, prebendaries, and fellows of colleges, by thousands of parish priests. To such an event no Tory, however clear his own conviction that he mightlawfully swear allegiance to the King who was in possession, couldlook forward without the most painful emotions of compassion for thesufferers and of anxiety for the Church. 

There were some persons who went so far as to deny that the Parliamentwas competent to pass a law requiring a Bishop to swear on pain ofdeprivation. No earthly power, they said, could break the tie whichbound the successor of the apostles to his diocese. What God had joinedno man could sunder. Dings and senates might scrawl words on parchmentor impress figures on wax; but those words and figures could no morechange the course of the spiritual than the course of the physicalworld. As the Author of the universe had appointed a certain order, according to which it was His pleasure to send winter and summer, seedtime and harvest, so He had appointed a certain order, according towhich He communicated His grace to His Catholic Church; and the latterorder was, like the former, independent of the powers and principalitiesof the world. A legislature might alter the flames of the months, mightcall June December, and December June; but, in spite of the legislature, the snow would fall when the sun was in Capricorn, and the flowers wouldbloom when he was in Cancer. And so the legislature might enact thatFerguson or Muggleton should live in the palace at Lambeth, should siton the throne of Augustin, should be called Your Grace, and shouldwalk in processions before the Premier Duke; but, in spite of thelegislature, Sancroft would, while Sancroft lived, be the only trueArchbishop of Canterbury; and the person who should presume to usurp thearchiepiscopal functions would be a schismatic. This doctrine was provedby reasons drawn from the budding of Aaron's rod, and from a certainplate which Saint James the Less, according to a legend of the fourthcentury, used to wear on his forehead. A Greek manuscript, relatingto the deprivation of bishops, was discovered, about this time, in theBodleian Library, and became the subject of a furious controversy. Oneparty held that God had wonderfully brought this precious volume tolight, for the guidance of His Church at a most critical moment. Theother party wondered that any importance could be attached to thenonsense of a nameless scribbler of the thirteenth century. Much waswritten about the deprivations of Chrysostom and Photius, of NicolausMysticus and Cosmas Atticus. But the case of Abiathar, whom Solomon putout of the sacerdotal office for treason, was discussed with peculiareagerness. No small quantity of learning and ingenuity was expendedin the attempt to prove that Abiathar, though he wore the ephod andanswered by Urim, was not really High Priest, that he ministeredonly when his superior Zadoc was incapacitated by sickness or by someceremonial pollution, and that therefore the act of Solomon was not aprecedent which would warrant King William in deposing a real Bishop. [90]

But such reasoning as this, though backed by copious citations from theMisna and Maimonides, was not generally satisfactory even to zealouschurchmen. For it admitted of one answer, short, but perfectlyintelligible to a plain man who knew nothing about Greek fathers orLevitical genealogies. There might be some doubt whether King Solomonhad ejected a high priest; but there could be no doubt at all that QueenElizabeth had ejected the Bishops of more than half the sees in England. It was notorious that fourteen prelates had, without any proceeding inany spiritual court, been deprived by Act of Parliament for refusing toacknowledge her supremacy. Had that deprivation been null? Had Bonnercontinued to be, to the end of his life, the only true Bishop ofLondon? Had his successor been an usurper? Had Parker and Jewel beenschismatics? Had the Convocation of 1562, that Convocation which hadfinally settled the doctrine of the Church of England, been itself outof the pale of the Church of Christ? Nothing could be more ludicrousthan the distress of those controversialists who had to invent a pleafor Elizabeth which should not be also a plea for William. Some zealots, indeed, gave up the vain attempt to distingush between two cases whichevery man of common sense perceived to be undistinguishable, and franklyowned that the deprivations of 1559 could not be justified. But noperson, it was said, ought to be troubled in mind on that account; for, though the Church of England might once have been schismatical, she hadbecome Catholic when the Bishops deprived by Elizabeth had ceased tolive. [91] The Tories, however, were not generally disposed to admitthat the religious society to which they were fondly attached hadoriginated in an unlawful breach of unity. They therefore took groundlower and more tenable. They argued the question as a question ofhumanity and of expediency. They spoke much of the debt of gratitudewhich the nation owed to the priesthood; of the courage and fidelitywith which the order, from the primate down to the youngest deacon, had recently defended the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of therealm; of the memorable Sunday when, in all the hundred churches of thecapital, scarcely one slave could be found to read the Declaration ofIndulgence; of the Black Friday when, amidst the blessings and the loudweeping of a mighty population, the barge of the seven prelates passedthrough the watergate of the Tower. The firmness with which the clergyhad lately, in defiance of menace and of seduction, done what theyconscientiously believed to be right, had saved the liberty and religionof England. Was no indulgence to be granted to them if they now refusedto do what they conscientiously apprehended to be wrong? And where, itwas said, is the danger of treating them with tenderness? Nobody is soabsurd as to propose that they shall be permitted to plot againstthe Government, or to stir up the multitude to insurrection. They areamenable to the law, like other men. If they are guilty of treason, letthem be hanged. If they are guilty of sedition, let them be fined andimprisoned. If they omit, in their public ministrations, to pray forKing William, for Queen Mary, and for the Parliament assembled underthose most religious sovereigns, let the penal clauses of the Act ofUniformity be put in force. If this be not enough, let his Majesty beempowered to tender the oaths to any clergyman; and, if the oaths sotendered are refused, let deprivation follow. In this way any nonjuringbishop or rector who may be suspected, though he cannot be legallyconvicted, of intriguing, of writing, of talking, against the presentsettlement, may be at once removed from his office. But why insist onejecting a pious and laborious minister of religion, who never lifts afinger or utters a word against the government, and who, as often ashe performs morning and evening service, prays from his heart for ablessing on the rulers set over him by Providence, but who will not takean oath which seems to him to imply a right in the people to depose asovereign? Surely we do all that is necessary if we leave men of thissort to the mercy of the very prince to whom they refuse to swearfidelity. If he is willing to bear with their scrupulosity, if heconsiders them, notwithstanding their prejudices, as innocent and usefulmembers of society, who else can be entitled to complain?

The Whigs were vehement on the other side. They scrutinised, withingenuity sharpened by hatred, the claims of the clergy to the publicgratitude, and sometimes went so far as altogether to deny that theorder had in the preceding year deserved well of the nation. It was truethat bishops and priests had stood up against the tyranny of the lateKing: but it was equally true that, but for the obstinacy with whichthey had opposed the Exclusion Bill, he never would have been King, andthat, but for their adulation and their doctrine of passive obedience, he would never have ventured to be guilty of such tyranny. Their chiefbusiness, during a quarter of a century, had been to teach the peopleto cringe and the prince to domineer. They were guilty of the blood ofRussell, of Sidney, of every brave and honest Englishman who had beenput to death for attempting to save the realm from Popery and despotism. Never had they breathed a whisper against arbitrary power till arbitrarypower began to menace their own property and dignity. Then, no doubt, forgetting all their old commonplaces about submitting to Nero, they hadmade haste to save themselves. Grant, --such was the cry of theseeager disputants, --grant that, in saving themselves, they saved theconstitution. Are we therefore to forget that they had previouslyendangered it? And are we to reward them by now permitting them todestroy it? Here is a class of men closely connected with the state. A large part of the produce of the soil has been assigned to them fortheir maintenance. Their chiefs have seats in the legislature, widedomains, stately palaces. By this privileged body the great mass of thepopulation is lectured every week from the chair of authority. To thisprivileged body has been committed the supreme direction of liberaleducation. Oxford and Cambridge, Westminster, Winchester, and Eton, areunder priestly government. By the priesthood will to a great extent beformed the character of the nobility and gentry of the next generation. Of the higher clergy some have in their gift numerous and valuablebenefices; others have the privilege of appointing judges who decidegrave questions affecting the liberty, the property, the reputation oftheir Majesties' subjects. And is an order thus favoured by the stateto give no guarantee to the state? On what principle can it be contendedthat it is unnecessary to ask from an Archbishop of Canterbury or froma Bishop of Durham that promise of fidelity to the government which allallow that it is necessary to demand from every layman who serves theCrown in the humblest office. Every exciseman, every collector of thecustoms, who refuses to swear, is to be deprived of his bread. For thesehumble martyrs of passive obedience and hereditary right nobody has aword to say. Yet an ecclesiastical magnate who refuses to swear is tobe suffered to retain emoluments, patronage, power, equal to those of agreat minister of state. It is said that it is superfluous to impose theoaths on a clergyman, because he may be punished if he breaks the laws. Why is not the same argument urged in favour of the layman? And why, ifthe clergyman really means to observe the laws, does he scruple to takethe oaths? The law commands him to designate William and Mary as Kingand Queen, to do this in the most sacred place, to do this in theadministration of the most solemn of all the rites of religion. Thelaw commands him to pray that the illustrious pair may be defended bya special providence, that they may be victorious over every enemy, and that their Parliament may by divine guidance be led to take such acourse as may promote their safety, honour, and welfare. Can we believethat his conscience will suffer him to do all this, and yet will notsuffer him to promise that he will be a faithful subject to them?

To the proposition that the nonjuring clergy should be left to the mercyof the King, the Whigs, with some justice, replied that no scheme couldbe devised more unjust to his Majesty. The matter, they said, is one ofpublic concern, one in which every Englishman who is unwilling to be theslave of France and of Rome has a deep interest. In such a case itwould be unworthy of the Estates of the Realm to shrink from theresponsibility of providing for the common safety, to try to obtain forthemselves the praise of tenderness and liberality, and to leave to theSovereign the odious task of proscription. A law requiring all publicfunctionaries, civil, military, ecclesiastical, without distinction ofpersons, to take the oaths is at least equal. It excludes all suspicionof partiality, of personal malignity, of secret shying and talebearing. But, if an arbitrary discretion is left to the Government, if onenonjuring priest is suffered to keep a lucrative benefice while anotheris turned with his wife and children into the street, every ejectionwill be considered as an act of cruelty, and will be imputed as a crimeto the sovereign and his ministers. [92]

Thus the Parliament had to decide, at the same moment, what quantityof relief should be granted to the consciences of dissenters, and whatquantity of pressure should be applied to the consciences of the clergyof the Established Church. The King conceived a hope that it might be inhis power to effect a compromise agreeable to all parties. He flatteredhimself that the Tories might be induced to make some concession tothe dissenters, on condition that the Whigs would be lenient to theJacobites. He determined to try what his personal intervention wouldeffect. It chanced that, a few hours after the Lords had read theComprehension Bill a second time and the Bill touching the Oaths a firsttime, he had occasion to go down to Parliament for the purpose of givinghis assent to a law. From the throne he addressed both Houses, andexpressed an earnest wish that they would consent to modify the existinglaws in such a manner that all Protestants might be admitted to publicemployment. [93] It was well understood that he was willing, if thelegislature would comply with his request, to let clergymen who werealready beneficed continue to hold their benefices without swearingallegiance to him. His conduct on this occasion deserves undoubtedly thepraise of disinterestedness. It is honourable to him that he attemptedto purchase liberty of conscience for his subjects by giving up asafeguard of his own crown. But it must be acknowledged that he showedless wisdom than virtue. The only Englishman in his Privy Councilwhom he had consulted, if Burnet was correctly informed, was RichardHampden; [94] and Richard Hampden, though a highly respectable man, wasso far from being able to answer for the Whig party that he could notanswer even for his own son John, whose temper, naturally vindictive, had been exasperated into ferocity by the stings of remorse and shame. The King soon found that there was in the hatred of the two greatfactions an energy which was wanting to their love. The Whigs, thoughthey were almost unanimous in thinking that the Sacramental Test oughtto be abolished, were by no means unanimous in thinking that moment wellchosen for the abolition; and even those Whigs who were most desirousto see the nonconformists relieved without delay from civil disabilitieswere fully determined not to forego the opportunity of humbling andpunishing the class to whose instrumentality chiefly was to be ascribedthat tremendous reflux of public feeling which had followed thedissolution of the Oxford Parliament. To put the Janes, the Souths, theSherlocks into such a situation that they must either starve, or recant, publicly, and with the Gospel at their lips, all the ostentatiousprofessions of many years, was a revenge too delicious to berelinquished. The Tory, on the other hand, sincerely respected andpitied those clergymen who felt scruples about the oaths. But the Testwas, in his view, essential to the safety of the established religion, and must not be surrendered for the purpose of saving any man howevereminent from any hardship however serious. It would be a sad daydoubtless for the Church when the episcopal bench, the chapter housesof cathedrals, the halls of colleges, would miss some men renowned forpiety and learning. But it would be a still sadder day for the Churchwhen an Independent should bear the white staff or a Baptist sit on thewoolsack. Each party tried to serve those for whom it was interested:but neither party would consent to grant favourable terms to itsenemies. The result was that the nonconformists remained excluded fromoffice in the State, and the nonjurors were ejected from office in theChurch. 

In the House of Commons, no member thought it expedient to propose therepeal of the Test Act. But leave was given to bring in a bill repealingthe Corporation Act, which had been passed by the Cavalier Parliamentsoon after the Restoration, and which contained a clause requiring allmunicipal magistrates to receive the sacrament according to the forms ofthe Church of England. When this bill was about to be committed, it wasmoved by the Tories that the committee should be instructed to makeno alteration in the law touching the sacrament. Those Whigs who werezealous for the Comprehension must have been placed by this motion inan embarrassing position. To vote for the instruction would have beeninconsistent with their principles. To vote against it would have beento break with Nottingham. A middle course was found. The adjournmentof the debate was moved and carried by a hundred and sixteen votes to ahundred and fourteen; and the subject was not revived. [95] In the Houseof Lords a motion was made for the abolition of the sacramental test, but was rejected by a large majority. Many of those who thought themotion right in principle thought it ill timed. A protest was entered;but it was signed only by a few peers of no great authority. It is aremarkable fact that two great chiefs of the Whig party, who were ingeneral very attentive to their parliamentary duty, Devonshire andShrewsbury, absented themselves on this occasion. [96]

The debate on the Test in the Upper House was speedily followed by adebate on the last clause of the Comprehension Bill. By that clause itwas provided that thirty Bishops and priests should be commissionedto revise the liturgy and canons, and to suggest amendments. On thissubject the Whig peers were almost all of one mind. They musteredstrong, and spoke warmly. Why, they asked, were none but members of thesacerdotal order to be intrusted with this duty? Were the laity nopart of the Church of England? When the Commission should have made itsreport, laymen would have to decide on the recommendations contained inthat report. Not a line of the Book of Common Prayer could be alteredbut by the authority of King, Lords, and Commons. The King was a layman. Five sixths of the Lords were laymen. All the members of the Houseof Commons were laymen. Was it not absurd to say that laymen wereincompetent to examine into a matter which it was acknowledged thatlaymen must in the last resort determine? And could any thing be moreopposite to the whole spirit of Protestantism than the notion that acertain preternatural power of judging in spiritual cases was vouchsafedto a particular caste, and to that caste alone; that such men as Selden, as Hale, as Boyle, were less competent to give an opinion on a collector a creed than the youngest and silliest chaplain who, in a remotemanor house, passed his life in drinking ale and playing at shovelboard?What God had instituted no earthly power, lay or clerical, couldalter: and of things instituted by human beings a layman was surely ascompetent as a clergyman to judge. That the Anglican liturgy andcanons were of purely human institution the Parliament acknowledged byreferring them to a Commission for revision and correction. How couldit then be maintained that in such a Commission the laity, so vast amajority of the population, the laity, whose edification was the mainend of all ecclesiastical regulations, and whose innocent tastes oughtto be carefully consulted in the framing of the public services ofreligion, ought not to have a single representative? Precedent wasdirectly opposed to this odious distinction. Repeatedly since the lightof reformation had dawned on England Commissioners had been empoweredby law to revise the canons; and on every one of those occasions someof the Commissioners had been laymen. In the present case the proposedarrangement was peculiarly objectionable. For the object of issuing thecommission was the conciliating of dissenters; and it was therefore mostdesirable that the Commissioners should be men in whose fairness andmoderation dissenters could confide. Would thirty such men be easilyfound in the higher ranks of the clerical profession? The duty ofthe legislature was to arbitrate between two contending parties, theNonconformist divines and the Anglican divines, and it would be thegrossest injustice to commit to one of those parties the office ofumpire. 

On these grounds the Whigs proposed an amendment to the effect thatlaymen should be joined with clergymen in the Commission. The contestwas sharp. Burnet, who had just taken his seat among the peers, and whoseems to have been bent on winning at almost any price the good will ofhis brethren, argued with all his constitutional warmth for the clauseas it stood. The numbers on the division proved to be exactly equal. Theconsequence was that, according to the rules of the House, the amendmentwas lost. [97]

At length the Comprehension Bill was sent down to the Commons. There itwould easily have been carried by two to one, if it had been supportedby all the friends of religious liberty. But on this subject the HighChurchmen could count on the support of a large body of Low Churchmen. Those members who wished well to Nottingham's plan saw that they wereoutnumbered, and, despairing of a victory, began to meditate aretreat. Just at this time a suggestion was thrown out which united allsuffrages. The ancient usage was that a Convocation should be summonedtogether with a Parliament; and it might well be argued that, if everthe advice of a Convocation could be needed, it must be when changes inthe ritual and discipline of the Church were under consideration. But, in consequence of the irregular manner in which the Estates of the Realmhad been brought together during the vacancy of the throne, there wasno Convocation. It was proposed that the House should advise the Kingto take measures for supplying this defect, and that the fate of theComprehension Bill should not be decided till the clergy had hadan opportunity of declaring their opinion through the ancient andlegitimate organ. 

This proposition was received with general acclamation. The Tories werewell pleased to see such honour done to the priesthood. Those Whigs whowere against the Comprehension Bill were well pleased to see it laidaside, certainly for a year, probably for ever. Those Whigs who werefor the Comprehension Bill were well pleased to escape without adefeat. Many of them indeed were not without hopes that mild andliberal counsels might prevail in the ecclesiastical senate. An addressrequesting William to summon the Convocation was voted without adivision: the concurrence of the Lords was asked: the Lords concurred, the address was carried up to the throne by both Houses: the Kingpromised that he would, at a convenient season, do what his Parliamentdesired; and Nottingham's Bill was not again mentioned. 

Many writers, imperfectly acquainted with the history of that age, have inferred from these proceedings that the House of Commons was anassembly of High Churchmen: but nothing is more certain than that twothirds of the members were either Low Churchmen or not Churchmen atall. A very few days before this time an occurrence had taken place, unimportant in itself, but highly significant as an indication of thetemper of the majority. It had been suggested that the House ought, inconformity with ancient usage, to adjourn over the Easter holidays. ThePuritans and Latitudinarians objected: there was a sharp debate: theHigh Churchmen did not venture to divide; and, to the great scandal ofmany grave persons, the Speaker took the chair at nine o'clock on EasterMonday; and there was a long and busy sitting. [98]

This however was by no means the strongest proof which the Commons gavethat they were far indeed from feeling extreme reverence or tendernessfor the Anglican hierarchy. The bill for settling the oaths had justcome down from the Lords framed in a manner favourable to the clergy. All lay functionaries were required to swear fealty to the King andQueen on pain of expulsion from office. But it was provided that everydivine who already held a benefice might continue to hold it withoutswearing, unless the Government should see reason to call on himspecially for an assurance of his loyalty. Burnett had, partly, no doubt, from the goodnature and generosity which belonged to hischaracter, and partly from a desire to conciliate his brethren, supported this arrangement in the Upper House with great energy. Butin the Lower House the feeling against the Jacobite priests wasirresistibly strong. On the very day on which that House voted, withouta division, the address requesting the King to summon the Convocation, aclause was proposed and carried which required every person who held anyecclesiastical or academical preferment to take the oaths by the firstof August 1689, on pain of suspension. Six months, to be reckoned fromthat day, were allowed to the nonjuror for reconsideration. If, onthe first of February 1690, he still continued obstinate, he was to befinally deprived. 

The bill, thus amended, was sent back to the Lords. The Lords adheredto their original resolution. Conference after conference was held. Compromise after compromise was suggested. From the imperfect reportswhich have come down to us it appears that every argument in favour oflenity was forcibly urged by Burnet. But the Commons were firm: timepressed: the unsettled state of the law caused inconvenience in everydepartment of the public service; and the peers very reluctantly gaveway. They at the same time added a clause empowering the King to bestowpecuniary allowances out of the forfeited benefices on a few nonjuringclergymen. The number of clergymen thus favoured was not to exceedtwelve. The allowance was not to exceed one third of the incomeforfeited. Some zealous Whigs were unwilling to grant even thisindulgence: but the Commons were content with the victory which they hadwon, and justly thought that it would be ungracious to refuse so slighta concession. [99]

These debates were interrupted, during a short time, by the festivitiesand solemnities of the Coronation. When the day fixed for that greatceremony drew near, the House of Commons resolved itself into acommittee for the purpose of settling the form of words in which ourSovereigns were thenceforward to enter into covenant with the nation. All parties were agreed as to the propriety of requiring the King toswear that, in temporal matters, he would govern according to law, andwould execute justice in mercy. But about the terms of the oath whichrelated to the spiritual institutions of the realm there was muchdebate. Should the chief magistrate promise simply to maintain theProtestant religion established by law, or should he promise to maintainthat religion as it should be hereafter established by law? The majoritypreferred the former phrase. The latter phrase was preferred by thoseWhigs who were for a Comprehension. But it was universally admitted thatthe two phrases really meant the same thing, and that the oath, howeverit might be worded, would bind the Sovereign in his executive capacityonly. This was indeed evident from the very nature of the transaction. Any compact may be annulled by the free consent of the party who aloneis entitled to claim the performance. It was never doubted by the mostrigid casuist that a debtor, who has bound himself under the mostawful imprecations to pay a debt, may lawfully withhold payment if thecreditor is willing to cancel the obligation. And it is equally clearthat no assurance, exacted from a King by the Estates of his kingdom, can bind him to refuse compliance with what may at a future time be thewish of those Estates. 

A bill was drawn up in conformity with the resolutions of the Committee, and was rapidly passed through every stage. After the third reading, afoolish man stood up to propose a rider, declaring that the oath wasnot meant to restrain the Sovereign from consenting to any change in theceremonial of the Church, provided always that episcopacy and a writtenform of prayer were retained. The gross absurdity of this motion wasexposed by several eminent members. Such a clause, they justly remarked, would bind the King under pretence of setting him free. The coronationoath, they said, was never intended to trammel him in his legislativecapacity. Leave that oath as it is now drawn, and no prince canmisunderstand it. No prince can seriously imagine that the two Housesmean to exact from him a promise that he will put a Veto on laws whichthey may hereafter think necessary to the wellbeing of the country. Or if any prince should so strangely misapprehend the nature of thecontract between him and his subjects, any divine, any lawyer, to whoseadvice he may have recourse, will set his mind at ease. But if thisrider should pass, it will be impossible to deny that the coronationoath is meant to prevent the King from giving his assent to bills whichmay be presented to him by the Lords and Commons; and the most seriousinconvenience may follow. These arguments were felt to be unanswerable, and the proviso was rejected without a division, [100]

Every person who has read these debates must be fully convinced that thestatesmen who framed the coronation oath did not mean to bind the Kingin his legislative capacity, [101] Unhappily, more than a hundredyears later, a scruple, which those statesmen thought too absurd to beseriously entertained by any human being, found its way into a mind, honest, indeed, and religious, but narrow and obstinate by nature, andat once debilitated and excited by disease. Seldom, indeed, have theambition and perfidy of tyrants produced evils greater than thosewhich were brought on our country by that fatal conscientiousness. Aconjuncture singularly auspicious, a conjuncture at which wisdom andjustice might perhaps have reconciled races and sects long hostile, and might have made the British islands one truly United Kingdom, wassuffered to pass away. The opportunity, once lost, returned no more. Twogenerations of public men have since laboured with imperfect successto repair the error which was then committed; nor is it improbable thatsome of the penalties of that error may continue to afflict a remoteposterity. 

The Bill by which the oath was settled passed the Upper House withoutamendment. All the preparations were complete; and, on the eleventhof April, the coronation took place. In some things it differed fromordinary coronations. The representatives of the people attended theceremony in a body, and were sumptuously feasted in the ExchequerChamber. Mary, being not merely Queen Consort, but also Queen Regnant, was inaugurated in all things like a King, was girt with the sword, lifted up into the throne, and presented with the Bible, the spurs, andthe orb. Of the temporal grandees of the realm, and of their wives anddaughters, the muster was great and splendid. None could be surprisedthat the Whig aristocracy should swell the triumph of Whig principles. But the Jacobites saw, with concern, that many Lords who had voted for aRegency bore a conspicuous part in the ceremonial. The King's crownwas carried by Grafton, the Queen's by Somerset. The pointed sword, emblematical of temporal justice, was borne by Pembroke. Ormond was LordHigh Constable for the day, and rode up the Hall on the right handof the hereditary champion, who thrice flung down his glove on thepavement, and thrice defied to mortal combat the false traitor whoshould gainsay the title of William and Mary. Among the noble damselswho supported the gorgeous train of the Queen was her beautiful andgentle cousin, the Lady Henrietta Hyde, whose father, Rochester, hadto the last contended against the resolution which declared the thronevacant, [102] The show of Bishops, indeed, was scanty. The Primate didnot make his appearance; and his place was supplied by Compton. On oneside of Compton, the paten was carried by Lloyd, Bishop of Saint Asaph, eminent among the seven confessors of the preceding year. On theother side, Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, lately a member of the HighCommission, had charge of the chalice. Burnet, the junior prelate, preached with all his wonted ability, and more than his wonted tasteand judgment. His grave and eloquent discourse was polluted neither byadulation nor by malignity. He is said to have been greatly applauded;and it may well be believed that the animated peroration in which heimplored heaven to bless the royal pair with long life and mutual love, with obedient subjects, wise counsellors, and faithful allies, withgallant fleets and armies, with victory, with peace, and finally withcrowns more glorious and more durable than those which then glitteredon the altar of the Abbey, drew forth the loudest hums of the Commons, [103]

On the whole the ceremony went off well, and produced something likea revival, faint, indeed, and transient, of the enthusiasm of thepreceding December. The day was, in London and in many other places, aday of general rejoicing. The churches were filled in the morning: theafternoon was spent in sport and carousing; and at night bonfires werelighted, rockets discharged, and windows lighted up. The Jacobiteshowever contrived to discover or to invent abundant matter forscurrility and sarcasm. They complained bitterly, that the way from thehall to the western door of the Abbey had been lined by Dutch soldiers. Was it seemly that an English king should enter into the most solemnof engagements with the English nation behind a triple hedge of foreignswords and bayonets? Little affrays, such as, at every great pageant, almost inevitably take place between those who are eager to see the showand those whose business it is to keep the communications clear, were exaggerated with all the artifices of rhetoric. One of the alienmercenaries had backed his horse against an honest citizen who pressedforward to catch a glimpse of the royal canopy. Another had rudelypushed back a woman with the but end of his musket. On such grounds asthese the strangers were compared to those Lord Danes whose insolence, in the old time, had provoked the Anglo-saxon population to insurrectionand massacre. But there was no more fertile theme for censure thanthe coronation medal, which really was absurd in design and mean inexecution. A chariot appeared conspicuous on the reverse; and plainpeople were at a loss to understand what this emblem had to do withWilliam and Mary. The disaffected wits solved the difficulty bysuggesting that the artist meant to allude to that chariot which aRoman princess, lost to all filial affection, and blindly devoted to theinterests of an ambitious husband, drove over the still warm remains ofher father, [104]

Honours were, as usual, liberally bestowed at this festive season. Threegarters which happened to be at the disposal of the Crown were givento Devonshire, Ormond, and Schomberg. Prince George was created Duke ofCumberland. Several eminent men took new appellations by which theymust henceforth be designated. Danby became Marquess of Caermarthen, Churchill Earl of Marlborough, and Bentinck Earl of Portland. Mordauntwas made Earl of Monmouth, not without some murmuring on the part of oldExclusionists, who still remembered with fondness their Protestant Duke, and who had hoped that his attainder would be reversed, and that histitle would be borne by his descendants. It was remarked that the nameof Halifax did not appear in the list of promotions. None could doubtthat he might easily have obtained either a blue riband or a ducalcoronet; and, though he was honourably distinguished from most of hiscontemporaries by his scorn of illicit gain, it was well known that hedesired honorary distinctions with a greediness of which he was himselfashamed, and which was unworthy of his fine understanding. The truth isthat his ambition was at this time chilled by his fears. To those whomhe trusted he hinted his apprehensions that evil times were at hand. The King's life was not worth a year's purchase: the government wasdisjointed, the clergy and the army disaffected, the parliament tornby factions: civil war was already raging in one part of the empire:foreign war was impending. At such a moment a minister, whether Whigor Tory, might well be uneasy; but neither Whig nor Tory had so much tofear as the Trimmer, who might not improbably find himself the commonmark at which both parties would take aim. For these reasons Halifaxdetermined to avoid all ostentation of power and influence, to disarmenvy by a studied show of moderation, and to attach to himself bycivilities and benefits persons whose gratitude might be useful in theevent of a counterrevolution. The next three months, he said, wouldbe the time of trial. If the government got safe through the summer itwould probably stand, [105]

Meanwhile questions of external policy were every day becoming moreand more important. The work at which William had toiled indefatigablyduring many gloomy and anxious years was at length accomplished. Thegreat coalition was formed. It was plain that a desperate conflict wasat hand. The oppressor of Europe would have to defend himself againstEngland allied with Charles the Second King of Spain, with the EmperorLeopold, and with the Germanic and Batavian federations, and was likelyto have no ally except the Sultan, who was waging war against the Houseof Austria on the Danube. 

Lewis had, towards the close of the preceding year, taken his enemies ata disadvantage, and had struck the first blow before they were preparedto parry it. But that blow, though heavy, was not aimed at the partwhere it might have been mortal. Had hostilities been commenced onthe Batavian frontier, William and his army would probably have beendetained on the continent, and James might have continued to governEngland. Happily, Lewis, under an infatuation which many piousProtestants confidently ascribed to the righteous judgment of God, had neglected the point on which the fate of the whole civilised worlddepended, and had made a great display of power, promptitude, andenergy, in a quarter where the most splendid achievements could producenothing more than an illumination and a Te Deum. A French army underthe command of Marshal Duras had invaded the Palatinate and some of theneighbouring principalities. But this expedition, though it had beencompletely successful, and though the skill and vigour with which ithad been conducted had excited general admiration, could not perceptiblyaffect the event of the tremendous struggle which was approaching. France would soon be attacked on every side. It would be impossible forDuras long to retain possession of the provinces which he had surprisedand overrun. An atrocious thought rose in the mind of Louvois, who, in military affairs, had the chief sway at Versailles. He was a mandistinguished by zeal for what he thought the public interests, bycapacity, and by knowledge of all that related to the administrationof war, but of a savage and obdurate nature. If the cities of thePalatinate could not be retained, they might be destroyed. If the soilof the Palatinate was not to furnish supplies to the French, it might beso wasted that it would at least furnish no supplies to the Germans. Theironhearted statesman submitted his plan, probably with much managementand with some disguise, to Lewis; and Lewis, in an evil hour for hisfame, assented. Duras received orders to turn one of the fairest regionsof Europe into a wilderness. Fifteen years earlier Turenne had ravagedpart of that fine country. But the ravages committed by Turenne, thoughthey have left a deep stain on his glory, were mere sport in comparisonwith the horrors of this second devastation. The French commanderannounced to near half a million of human beings that he granted themthree days of grace, and that, within that time, they must shift forthemselves. Soon the roads and fields, which then lay deep in snow, wereblackened by innumerable multitudes of men, women, and children flyingfrom their homes. Many died of cold and hunger: but enough survivedto fill the streets of all the cities of Europe with lean and squalidbeggars, who had once been thriving farmers and shopkeepers. Meanwhile the work of destruction began. The flames went up from everymarketplace, every hamlet, every parish church, every country seat, within the devoted provinces. The fields where the corn had been sownwere ploughed up. The orchards were hewn down. No promise of a harvestwas left on the fertile plains near what had once been Frankenthal. Nota vine, not an almond tree, was to be seen on the slopes of the sunnyhills round what had once been Heidelberg. No respect was shown topalaces, to temples, to monasteries, to infirmaries, to beautiful worksof art, to monuments of the illustrious dead. The farfamed castle of theElector Palatine was turned into a heap of ruins. The adjoining hospitalwas sacked. The provisions, the medicines, the pallets on which the sicklay were destroyed. The very stones of which Mannheim had been builtwere flung into the Rhine. The magnificent Cathedral of Spires perished, and with it the marble sepulchres of eight Caesars. The coffins werebroken open. The ashes were scattered to the winds, [106] Treves, with its fair bridge, its Roman amphitheatre, its venerable churches, convents, and colleges, was doomed to the same fate. But, before thislast crime had been perpetrated, Lewis was recalled to a better mindby the execrations of all the neighbouring nations, by the silence andconfusion of his flatterers, and by the expostulations of his wife. Hehad been more than two years secretly married to Frances de Maintenon, the governess of his natural children. It would be hard to name anywoman who, with so little romance in her temper, has had so much inher life. Her early years had been passed in poverty and obscurity. Her first husband had supported himself by writing burlesque farcesand poems. When she attracted the notice of her sovereign, she could nolonger boast of youth or beauty: but she possessed in an extraordinarydegree those more lasting charms, which men of sense, whose passionsage has tamed, and whose life is a life of business and care, prize mosthighly in a female companion. Her character was such as has been wellcompared to that soft green on which the eye, wearied by warm tintsand glaring lights, reposes with pleasure. A just understanding;an inexhaustible yet never redundant flow of rational, gentle, andsprightly conversation; a temper of which the serenity was never for amoment ruffled, a tact which surpassed the tact of her sex as much asthe tact of her sex surpasses the tact of ours; such were the qualitieswhich made the widow of a buffoon first the confidential friend, andthen the spouse, of the proudest and most powerful of European kings. Itwas said that Lewis had been with difficulty prevented by the argumentsand vehement entreaties of Louvois from declaring her Queen of France. It is certain that she regarded Louvois as her enemy. Her hatred of him, cooperating perhaps with better feelings, induced her to plead the causeof the unhappy people of the Rhine. She appealed to those sentiments ofcompassion which, though weakened by many corrupting influences, werenot altogether extinct in her husband's mind, and to those sentiments ofreligion which had too often impelled him to cruelty, but which, on thepresent occasion, were on the side of humanity. He relented: and Treveswas spared, [107] In truth he could hardly fail to perceive that he hadcommitted a great error. The devastation of the Palatinate, while ithad not in any sensible degree lessened the power of his enemies, hadinflamed their animosity, and had furnished them with inexhaustiblematter for invective. The cry of vengeance rose on every side. Whateverscruple either branch of the House of Austria might have felt aboutcoalescing with Protestants was completely removed. Lewis accusedthe Emperor and the Catholic King of having betrayed the cause of theChurch; of having allied themselves with an usurper who was the avowedchampion of the great schism; of having been accessary to the foul wrongdone to a lawful sovereign who was guilty of no crime but zeal for thetrue religion. James sent to Vienna and Madrid piteous letters, in whichhe recounted his misfortunes, and implored the assistance of his brotherkings, his brothers also in the faith, against the unnatural childrenand the rebellious subjects who had driven him into exile. But there waslittle difficulty in framing a plausible answer both to the reproachesof Lewis and to the supplications of James. Leopold and Charles declaredthat they had not, even for purposes of just selfdefence, leaguedthemselves with heretics, till their enemy had, for purposes of unjustaggression, leagued himself with Mahometans. Nor was this the worst. The French King, not content with assisting the Moslem against theChristians, was himself treating Christians with a barbarity which wouldhave shocked the very Moslem. His infidel allies, to do them justice, had not perpetrated on the Danube such outrages against the edificesand the members of the Holy Catholic Church as he who called himselfthe eldest son of that Church was perpetrating on the Rhine. On thesegrounds, the princes to whom James had appealed replied by appealing, with many professions of good will and compassion, to himself. He wassurely too just to blame them for thinking that it was their firstduty to defend their own people against such outrages as had turnedthe Palatinate into a desert, or for calling in the aid of Protestantsagainst an enemy who had not scrupled to call in the aid of the Turks, [108]

During the winter and the earlier part of the spring, the powers hostileto France were gathering their strength for a great effort, and werein constant communication with one another. As the season for militaryoperations approached, the solemn appeals of injured nations to the Godof battles came forth in rapid succession. The manifesto of the Germanicbody appeared in February; that of the States General in March; that ofthe House of Brandenburg in April; and that of Spain in May, [109]

Here, as soon as the ceremony of the coronation was over, the House ofCommons determined to take into consideration the late proceedingsof the French king, [110] In the debate, that hatred of the powerful, unscrupulous and imperious Lewis, which had, during twenty years ofvassalage, festered in the hearts of Englishmen, broke violently forth. He was called the most Christian Turk, the most Christian ravagerof Christendom, the most Christian barbarian who had perpetrated onChristians outrages of which his infidel allies would have been ashamed, [111] A committee, consisting chiefly of ardent Whigs, was appointed toprepare an address. John Hampden, the most ardent Whig among them, was put into the chair; and he produced a composition too long, toorhetorical, and too vituperative to suit the lips of the Speaker or theears of the King. Invectives against Lewis might perhaps, in the temperin which the House then was, have passed without censure, if theyhad not been accompanied by severe reflections on the character andadministration of Charles the Second, whose memory, in spite of all hisfaults, was affectionately cherished by the Tories. There were somevery intelligible allusions to Charles's dealings with the Court ofVersailles, and to the foreign woman whom that Court had sent to lielike a snake in his bosom. The House was with good reason dissatisfied. The address was recommitted, and, having been made more concise, andless declamatory and acrimonious, was approved and presented, [112]William's attention was called to the wrongs which France had done tohim and to his kingdom; and he was assured that, whenever he shouldresort to arms for the redress of those wrongs, he should be heartilysupported by his people. He thanked the Commons warmly. Ambition, hesaid, should never induce him to draw the sword: but he had no choice:France had already attacked England; and it was necessary to exercisethe right of selfdefence. A few days later war was proclaimed, [113]

Of the grounds of quarrel alleged by the Commons in their address, andby the King in his manifesto, the most serious was the interferenceof Lewis in the affairs of Ireland. In that country great events had, during several months, followed one another in rapid succession. Ofthose events it is now time to relate the history, a history dark withcrime and sorrow, yet full of interest and instruction. 

CHAPTER XII

 State of Ireland at the Time of the Revolution; the Civil Power in the Hands of the Roman Catholics--The Military Power in the Hands of the Roman Catholics--Mutual Enmity between the Englishry and Irishry--Panic among the Englishry--History of the Town of Kenmare--Enniskillen--Londonderry--Closing of the Gates of Londonderry--Mountjoy sent to pacify Ulster--William opens a Negotiation with Tyrconnel--The Temples consulted--Richard Hamilton sent to Ireland on his Parole--Tyrconnel sends Mountjoy and Rice to France--Tyrconnel calls the Irish People to Arms--Devastation of the Country--The Protestants in the South unable to resist--Enniskillen and Londonderry hold out; Richard Hamilton marches into Ulster with an Army--James determines to go to Ireland--Assistance furnished by Lewis to James--Choice of a French Ambassador to accompany James--The Count of Avaux--James lands at Kinsale--James enters Cork--Journey of James from Cork to Dublin--Discontent in England--Factions at Dublin Castle--James determines to go to Ulster--Journey of James to Ulster--The Fall of Londonderry expected--Succours arrive from England--Treachery of Lundy; the Inhabitants of Londonderry resolve to defend themselves--Their Character--Londonderry besieged--The Siege turned into a Blockade--Naval Skirmish in Bantry Bay--A Parliament summoned by James sits at Dublin--A Toleration Act passed; Acts passed for the Confiscation of the Property of Protestants--Issue of base Money--The great Act of Attainder--James prorogues his Parliament; Persecution of the Protestants in Ireland--Effect produced in England by the News from Ireland--Actions of the Enniskilleners--Distress of Londonderry--Expedition under Kirke arrives in Loch Foyle--Cruelty of Rosen--The Famine in Londonderry extreme--Attack on the Boom--The Siege of Londonderry raised--Operations against the Enniskilleners--Battle of Newton Butler--Consternation of the Irish

WILLIAM had assumed, together with the title of King of England, thetitle of King of Ireland. For all our jurists then regarded Ireland asa mere colony, more important indeed than Massachusetts, Virginia, orJamaica, but, like Massachusetts, Virginia, and Jamaica, dependent onthe mother country, and bound to pay allegiance to the Sovereign whomthe mother country had called to the throne, [114]

In fact, however, the Revolution found Ireland emancipated from thedominion of the English colony. As early as the year 1686, James haddetermined to make that island a place of arms which might overawe GreatBritain, and a place of refuge where, if any disaster happened in GreatBritain, the members of his Church might find refuge. With this viewhe had exerted all his power for the purpose of inverting the relationbetween the conquerors and the aboriginal population. The executionof his design he had intrusted, in spite of the remonstrances of hisEnglish counsellors, to the Lord Deputy Tyrconnel. In the autumn of1688, the process was complete. The highest offices in the state, in thearmy, and in the Courts of justice, were, with scarcely an exception, filled by Papists. A pettifogger named Alexander Fitton, who had beendetected in forgery, who had been fined for misconduct by the House ofLords at Westminster, who had been many years in prison, and who wasequally deficient in legal knowledge and in the natural good senseand acuteness by which the want of legal knowledge has sometimesbeen supplied, was Lord Chancellor. His single merit was that he hadapostatized from the Protestant religion; and this merit was thoughtsufficient to wash out even the stain of his Saxon extraction. He soonproved himself worthy of the confidence of his patrons. On the bench ofjustice he declared that there was not one heretic in forty thousandwho was not a villain. He often, after hearing a cause in which theinterests of his Church were concerned, postponed his decision, for thepurpose, as he avowed, of consulting his spiritual director, a Spanishpriest, well read doubtless in Escobar, [115] Thomas Nugent, a RomanCatholic who had never distinguished himself at the bar except by hisbrogue and his blunders, was Chief Justice of the King's Bench, [116]Stephen Rice, a Roman Catholic, whose abilities and learning were notdisputed even by the enemies of his nation and religion, but whoseknown hostility to the Act of Settlement excited the most painfulapprehensions in the minds of all who held property under that Act, wasChief Baron of the Exchequer, [117] Richard Nagle, an acute and wellread lawyer, who had been educated in a Jesuit college, and whoseprejudices were such as might have been expected from his education, wasAttorney General, [118]

Keating, a highly respectable Protestant, was still Chief Justice of theCommon Pleas: but two Roman Catholic judges sate with him. It ought tobe added that one of those judges, Daly, was a man of sense, moderationand integrity. The matters however which came before the Court of CommonPleas were not of great moment. Even the King's Bench was at this timealmost deserted. The Court of Exchequer overflowed with business; for itwas the only court at Dublin from which no writ of error lay to England, and consequently the only court in which the English could be oppressedand pillaged without hope of redress. Rice, it was said, had declaredthat they should have from him exactly what the law, construed with theutmost strictness, gave them, and nothing more. What, in his opinion, the law, strictly construed, gave them, they could easily infer from asaying which, before he became a judge, was often in his mouth. "I willdrive, " he used to say, "a coach and six through the Act of Settlement. "He now carried his threat daily into execution. The cry of allProtestants was that it mattered not what evidence they producedbefore him; that, when their titles were to be set aside, therankest forgeries, the most infamous witnesses, were sure to have hiscountenance. To his court his countrymen came in multitudes with writsof ejectment and writs of trespass. In his court the government attackedat once the charters of all the cities and boroughs in Ireland; and heeasily found pretexts for pronouncing all those charters forfeited. Themunicipal corporations, about a hundred in number, had been institutedto be the strongholds of the reformed religion and of the Englishinterest, and had consequently been regarded by the Irish RomanCatholics with an aversion which cannot be thought unnatural orunreasonable. Had those bodies been remodelled in a judicious andimpartial manner, the irregularity of the proceedings by which sodesirable a result had been attained might have been pardoned. But itsoon appeared that one exclusive system had been swept away only to makeroom for another. The boroughs were subjected to the absolute authorityof the Crown. Towns in which almost every householder was an EnglishProtestant were placed under the government of Irish Roman Catholics. Many of the new Aldermen had never even seen the places over which theywere appointed to bear rule. At the same time the Sheriffs, to whombelonged the execution of writs and the nomination of juries, wereselected in almost every instance from the caste which had till veryrecently been excluded from all public trust. It was affirmed that someof these important functionaries had been burned in the hand for theft. Others had been servants to Protestants; and the Protestants added, withbitter scorn, that it was fortunate for the country when this was thecase; for that a menial who had cleaned the plate and rubbed down thehorse of an English gentleman might pass for a civilised being, whencompared with many of the native aristocracy whose lives had been spentin coshering or marauding. To such Sheriffs no colonist, even if he hadbeen so strangely fortunate as to obtain a judgment, dared to intrust anexecution, [119]

Thus the civil power had, in the space of a few months, been transferredfrom the Saxon to the Celtic population. The transfer of the militarypower had been not less complete. The army, which, under the commandof Ormond, had been the chief safeguard of the English ascendency, hadceased to exist. Whole regiments had been dissolved and reconstructed. Six thousand Protestant veterans, deprived of their bread, were broodingin retirement over their wrongs, or had crossed the sea and joinedthe standard of William. Their place was supplied by men who had longsuffered oppression, and who, finding themselves suddenly transformedfrom slaves into masters, were impatient to pay back, with accumulatedusury, the heavy debt of injuries and insults. The new soldiers, it wassaid, never passed an Englishman without cursing him and calling him bysome foul name. They were the terror of every Protestant innkeeper; for, from the moment when they came under his roof, they ate and drank everything: they paid for nothing; and by their rude swaggering they scaredmore respectable guests from his door, [120]

Such was the state of Ireland when the Prince of Orange landed atTorbay. From that time every packet which arrived at Dublin broughttidings, such as could not but increase the mutual fear and loathing ofthe hostile races. The colonist, who, after long enjoying and abusingpower, had now tasted for a moment the bitterness of servitude, thenative, who, having drunk to the dregs all the bitterness of servitude, had at length for a moment enjoyed and abused power, were alike sensiblethat a great crisis, a crisis like that of 1641, was at hand. Themajority impatiently expected Phelim O'Neil to revive in Tyrconnel. Theminority saw in William a second Over. 

On which side the first blow was struck was a question which Williamitesand Jacobites afterwards debated with much asperity. But no questioncould be more idle. History must do to both parties the justice whichneither has ever done to the other, and must admit that both had fairpleas and cruel provocations. Both had been placed, by a fate for whichneither was answerable, in such a situation that, human nature beingwhat it is, they could not but regard each other with enmity. Duringthree years the government which might have reconciled them hadsystematically employed its whole power for the purpose of inflamingtheir enmity to madness. It was now impossible to establish in Irelanda just and beneficent government, a government which should know nodistinction of race or of sect, a government which, while strictlyrespecting the rights guaranteed by law to the new landowners, shouldalleviate by a judicious liberality the misfortunes of the ancientgentry. Such a government James might have established in the day ofhis power. But the opportunity had passed away: compromise had becomeimpossible: the two infuriated castes were alike convinced that it wasnecessary to oppress or to be oppressed, and that there could be nosafety but in victory, vengeance, and dominion. They agreed only inspurning out of the way every mediator who sought to reconcile them. 

During some weeks there were outrages, insults, evil reports, violentpanics, the natural preludes of the terrible conflict which was at hand. A rumour spread over the whole island that, on the ninth of December, there would be a general massacre of the Englishry. Tyrconnel sentfor the chief Protestants of Dublin to the Castle, and, with his usualenergy of diction, invoked on himself all the vengeance of heaven if thereport was not a cursed, a blasted, a confounded lie. It was said that, in his rage at finding his oaths ineffectual, he pulled off his hat andwig, and flung them into the fire, [121] But lying Dick Talbot was sowell known that his imprecations and gesticulations only strengthenedthe apprehension which they were meant to allay. Ever since the recallof Clarendon there had been a large emigration of timid and quiet peoplefrom the Irish ports to England. That emigration now went on faster thanever. It was not easy to obtain a passage on board of a well built orcommodious vessel. But many persons, made bold by the excess of fear, and choosing rather to trust the winds and waves than the exasperatedIrishry, ventured to encounter all the dangers of Saint George's Channeland of the Welsh coast in open boats and in the depth of winter. TheEnglish who remained began, in almost every county, to draw closetogether. Every large country house became a fortress. Every visitorwho arrived after nightfall was challenged from a loophole or from abarricaded window; and, if he attempted to enter without pass words andexplanations, a blunderbuss was presented to him. On the dreaded nightof the ninth of December, there was scarcely one Protestant mansion fromthe Giant's Causeway to Bantry Bay in which armed men were not watchingand lights burning from the early sunset to the late sunrise, [122]

A minute account of what passed in one district at this time has comedown to us, and well illustrates the general state of the kingdom. Thesouth-western part of Kerry is now well known as the most beautifultract in the British isles. The mountains, the glens, the capesstretching far into the Atlantic, the crags on which the eagles build, the rivulets brawling down rocky passes, the lakes overhung by grovesin which the wild deer find covert, attract every summer crowds ofwanderers sated with the business and the pleasures of great cities. The beauties of that country are indeed too often hidden in the mist andrain which the west wind brings up from a boundless ocean. But, on therare days when the sun shines out in all his glory, the landscape hasa freshness and a warmth of colouring seldom found in our latitude. Themyrtle loves the soil. The arbutus thrives better than even on the sunnyshore of Calabria, [123] The turf is of livelier hue than elsewhere:the hills glow with a richer purple: the varnish of the holly and ivyis more glossy; and berries of a brighter red peep through foliage of abrighter green. But during the greater part of the seventeenth century, this paradise was as little known to the civilised world as Spitzbergenor Greenland. If ever it was mentioned, it was mentioned as a horribledesert, a chaos of bogs, thickets, and precipices, where the she wolfstill littered, and where some half naked savages, who could not speak aword of English, made themselves burrows in the mud, and lived on rootsand sour milk, [124]

At length, in the year 1670, the benevolent and enlightened Sir WilliamPetty determined to form an English settlement in this wild district. He possessed a large domain there, which has descended to a posterityworthy of such an ancestor. On the improvement of that domain heexpended, it was said, not less than ten thousand pounds. The littletown which he founded, named from the bay of Kenmare, stood at the headof that bay, under a mountain ridge, on the summit of which travellersnow stop to gaze upon the loveliest of the three lakes of Killarney. Scarcely any village, built by an enterprising band of New Englanders, far from the dwellings of their countrymen, in the midst of the huntinggrounds of the Red Indians, was more completely out of the pale ofcivilisation than Kenmare. Between Petty's settlement and the nearestEnglish habitation the journey by land was of two days through a wildand dangerous country. Yet the place prospered. Forty-two houses wereerected. The population amounted to a hundred and eighty. The land roundthe town was well cultivated. The cattle were numerous. Two small barkswere employed in fishing and trading along the coast. The supply ofherrings, pilchards, mackerel, and salmon was plentiful, and would havebeen still more plentiful, had not the beach been, in the finest partof the year, covered by multitudes of seals, which preyed on the fishof the bay. Yet the seal was not an unwelcome visitor: his fur wasvaluable, ; and his oil supplied light through the long nights of winter. An attempt was made with great success to set up iron works. It was notyet the practice to employ coal for the purpose of smelting; and themanufacturers of Kent and Sussex had much difficulty in procuring timberat a reasonable price. The neighbourhood of Kenmare was then richlywooded; and Petty found it a gainful speculation to send ore thither. The lovers of the picturesque still regret the woods of oak and arbutuswhich were cut down to feed his furnaces. Another scheme had occurredto his active and intelligent mind. Some of the neighbouring islandsabounded with variegated marble, red and white, purple and green. Pettywell knew at what cost the ancient Romans had decorated their bathsand temples with many coloured columns hewn from Laconian and Africanquarries; and he seems to have indulged the hope that the rocks of hiswild domain in Kerry might furnish embellishments to the mansions ofSaint James's Square, and to the choir of Saint Paul's Cathedral, [125]

From the first, the settlers had found that they must be prepared toexercise the right of selfdefence to an extent which would have beenunnecessary and unjustifiable in a well governed country. The law wasaltogether without force in the highlands which lie on the south ofthe vale of Tralee. No officer of justice willingly ventured into thoseparts. One pursuivant who in 1680 attempted to execute a warrantthere was murdered. The people of Kenmare seem however to have beensufficiently secured by their union, their intelligence and theirspirit, till the close of the year 1688. Then at length the effects ofthe policy of Tyrconnel began to be felt ever, in that remote cornerof Ireland. In the eyes of the peasantry of Munster the colonistswere aliens and heretics. The buildings, the boats, the machines, thegranaries, the dairies, the furnaces, were doubtless contemplated by thenative race with that mingled envy and contempt with which the ignorantnaturally regard the triumphs of knowledge. Nor is it at all improbablethat the emigrants had been guilty of those faults from which civilisedmen who settle among an uncivilised people are rarely free. The powerderived from superior intelligence had, we may easily believe, been sometimes displayed with insolence, and sometimes exerted withinjustice. Now therefore, when the news spread from altar to altar, andfrom cabin to cabin, that the strangers were to be driven out, and thattheir houses and lands were to be given as a booty to the children ofthe soil, a predatory war commenced. Plunderers, thirty, forty, seventyin a troop, prowled round the town, some with firearms, some with pikes. The barns were robbed. The horses were stolen. In one foray a hundredand forty cattle were swept away and driven off through the ravines ofGlengariff. In one night six dwellings were broken open and pillaged. Atlast the colonists, driven to extremity, resolved to die like men ratherthan be murdered in their beds. The house built by Petty for his agentwas the largest in the place. It stood on a rocky peninsula roundwhich the waves of the bay broke. Here the whole population assembled, seventy-five fighting men, with about a hundred women and children. Theyhad among them sixty firelocks, and as many pikes and swords. Round theagent's house they threw up with great speed a wall of turf fourteenfeet in height and twelve in thickness. The space enclosed was abouthalf an acre. Within this rampart all the arms, the ammunition and theprovisions of the settlement were collected, and several huts of thinplank were built. When these preparations were completed, the men ofKenmare began to make vigorous reprisals on their Irish neighbours, seized robbers, recovered stolen property, and continued duringsome weeks to act in all things as an independent commonwealth. Thegovernment was carried on by elective officers, to whom every member ofthe society swore fidelity on the Holy Gospels, [126]

While the people of the small town of Kenmare were thus bestirringthemselves, similar preparations for defence were made by largercommunities on a larger scale. Great numbers of gentlemen and yeomenquitted the open country, and repaired to those towns which hadbeen founded and incorporated for the purpose of bridling the nativepopulation, and which, though recently placed under the government ofRoman Catholic magistrates, were still inhabited chiefly by Protestants. A considerable body of armed colonists mustered at Sligo, anotherat Charleville, a third at Marlow, a fourth still more formidable atBandon, [127] But the principal strongholds of the Englishry during thisevil time were Enniskillen and Londonderry. 

Enniskillen, though the capital of the county of Fermanagh, was thenmerely a village. It was built on an island surrounded by the riverwhich joins the two beautiful sheets of water known by the common nameof Lough Erne. The stream and both the lakes were overhung on everyside by natural forests. Enniskillen consisted of about eighty dwellingsclustering round an ancient castle. The inhabitants were, with scarcelyan exception, Protestants, and boasted that their town had been true tothe Protestant cause through the terrible rebellion which broke out in1641. Early in December they received from Dublin an intimation that twocompanies of Popish infantry were to be immediately quartered on them. The alarm of the little community was great, and the greater because itwas known that a preaching friar had been exerting himself to inflamethe Irish population of the neighbourhood against the heretics. Adaring resolution was taken. Come what might, the troops should notbe admitted. Yet the means of defence were slender. Not ten pounds ofpowder, not twenty firelocks fit for use, could be collected withinthe walls. Messengers were sent with pressing letters to summon theProtestant gentry of the vicinage to the rescue; and the summons wasgallantly obeyed. In a few hours two hundred foot and a hundred andfifty horse had assembled. Tyrconnel's soldiers were already at hand. They brought with them a considerable supply of arms to be distributedamong the peasantry. The peasantry greeted the royal standard withdelight, and accompanied the march in great numbers. The townsmen andtheir allies, instead of waiting to be attacked, came boldly forthto encounter the intruders. The officers of James had expected noresistance. They were confounded when they saw confronting them a columnof foot, flanked by a large body of mounted gentlemen and yeomen. Thecrowd of camp followers ran away in terror. The soldiers made a retreatso precipitate that it might be called a flight, and scarcely haltedtill they were thirty miles off at Cavan, [128]

The Protestants, elated by this easy victory, proceeded to makearrangements for the government and defence of Enniskillen and of thesurrounding country. Gustavus Hamilton, a gentleman who had servedin the army, but who had recently been deprived of his commission byTyrconnel, and had since been living on an estate in Fermanagh, wasappointed Governor, and took up his residence in the castle. Trusty menwere enlisted, and armed with great expedition. As there was a scarcityof swords and pikes, smiths were employed to make weapons by fasteningscythes on poles. All the country houses round Lough Erne were turnedinto garrisons. No Papist was suffered to be at large in the town;and the friar who was accused of exerting his eloquence against theEnglishry was thrown into prison, [129]

The other great fastness of Protestantism was a place of moreimportance. Eighty years before, during the troubles caused by the laststruggle of the houses of O'Neil and O'Donnel against the authority ofJames the First, the ancient city of Derry had been surprised by one ofthe native chiefs: the inhabitants had been slaughtered, and the housesreduced to ashes. The insurgents were speedily put down and punished:the government resolved to restore the ruined town: the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of London were invited to assist in thework; and King James the First made over to them in their corporatecapacity the ground covered by the ruins of the old Derry, and about sixthousand English acres in the neighbourhood, [130]

This country, then uncultivated and uninhabited, is now enriched byindustry, embellished by taste, and pleasing even to eyes accustomed tothe well tilled fields and stately manor houses of England. A new citysoon arose which, on account of its connection with the capital of theempire, was called Londonderry. The buildings covered the summit andslope of a hill which overlooked the broad stream of the Foyle, thenwhitened by vast flocks of wild swans, [131] On the highest ground stoodthe Cathedral, a church which, though erected when the secret of Gothicarchitecture was lost, and though ill qualified to sustain a comparisonwith the awful temples of the middle ages, is not without grace anddignity. Near the Cathedral rose the palace of the Bishop, whose seewas one of the most valuable in Ireland. The city was in form nearly anellipse; and the principal streets formed a cross, the arms of whichmet in a square called the Diamond. The original houses have been eitherrebuilt or so much repaired that their ancient character can no longerbe traced; but many of them were standing within living memory. Theywere in general two stories in height; and some of them had stonestaircases on the outside. The dwellings were encompassed by a wallof which the whole circumference was little less than a mile. On thebastions were planted culverins and sakers presented by the wealthyguilds of London to the colony. On some of these ancient guns, whichhave done memorable service to a great cause, the devices of theFishmongers' Company, of the Vintners' Company, and of the MerchantTailors' Company are still discernible, [132]

The inhabitants were Protestants of Anglosaxon blood. They were indeednot all of one country or of one church but Englishmen and Scotchmen, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, seem to have generally lived togetherin friendship, a friendship which is sufficiently explained by theircommon antipathy to the Irish race and to the Popish religion. Duringthe rebellion of 1641, Londonderry had resolutely held out against thenative chieftains, and had been repeatedly besieged in vain, [133] Sincethe Restoration the city had prospered. The Foyle, when the tide washigh, brought up ships of large burden to the quay. The fisheries throvegreatly. The nets, it was said, were sometimes so full that it wasnecessary to fling back multitudes of fish into the waves. The quantityof salmon caught annually was estimated at eleven hundred thousandpounds' weight, [134]

The people of Londonderry shared in the alarm which, towards the closeof the year 1688, was general among the Protestants settled in Ireland. It was known that the aboriginal peasantry of the neighbourhood werelaying in pikes and knives. Priests had been haranguing in a style ofwhich, it must be owned, the Puritan part of the Anglosaxon colony hadlittle right to complain, about the slaughter of the Amalekites, andthe judgments which Saul had brought on himself by sparing one of theproscribed race. Rumours from various quarters and anonymous letters invarious hands agreed in naming the ninth of December as the day fixedfor the extirpation of the strangers. While the minds of the citizenswere agitated by these reports, news came that a regiment of twelvehundred Papists, commanded by a Papist, Alexander Macdonnell, Earl ofAntrim, had received orders from the Lord Deputy to occupy Londonderry, and was already on the march from Coleraine. The consternation wasextreme. Some were for closing the gates and resisting; some forsubmitting; some for temporising. The corporation had, like the othercorporations of Ireland, been remodelled. The magistrates were men oflow station and character. Among them was only one person of Anglosaxonextraction; and he had turned Papist. In such rulers the inhabitantscould place no confidence, [135] The Bishop, Ezekiel Hopkins, resolutelyadhered to the doctrine of nonresistance, which he had preached duringmany years, and exhorted his flock to go patiently to the slaughterrather than incur the guilt of disobeying the Lord's Anointed, [136]Antrim was meanwhile drawing nearer and nearer. At length the citizenssaw from the walls his troops arrayed on the opposite shore of theFoyle. There was then no bridge: but there was a ferry which kept up aconstant communication between the two banks of the river; and bythis ferry a detachment from Antrim's regiment crossed. The officerspresented themselves at the gate, produced a warrant directed tothe Mayor and Sheriffs, and demanded admittance and quarters for hisMajesty's soldiers. 

Just at this moment thirteen young apprentices, most of whom appear, from their names, to have been of Scottish birth or descent, flew to theguard room, armed themselves, seized the keys of the city, rushed to theFerry Gate, closed it in the face of the King's officers, and letdown the portcullis. James Morison, a citizen more advanced in years, addressed the intruders from the top of the wall and advised them tobe gone. They stood in consultation before the gate till they heardhim cry, "Bring a great gun this way. " They then thought it time to getbeyond the range of shot. They retreated, reembarked, and rejoined theircomrades on the other side of the river. The flame had already spread. The whole city was up. The other gates were secured. Sentinels paced theramparts everywhere. The magazines were opened. Muskets and gunpowderwere distributed. Messengers were sent, under cover of the followingnight, to the Protestant gentlemen of the neighbouring counties. Thebishop expostulated in vain. It is indeed probable that the vehementand daring young Scotchmen who had taken the lead on this occasion hadlittle respect for his office. One of them broke in on a discourse withwhich he interrupted the military preparations by exclaiming, "A goodsermon, my lord; a very good sermon; but we have not time to hear itjust now. " [137]

The Protestants of the neighbourhood promptly obeyed the summons ofLondonderry. Within forty-eight hours hundreds of horse and foot came byvarious roads to the city. Antrim, not thinking himself strong enough torisk an attack, or not disposed to take on himself the responsibility ofcommencing a civil war without further orders, retired with his troopsto Coleraine. 

It might have been expected that the resistance of Enniskillen andLondonderry would have irritated Tyrconnel into taking some desperatestep. And in truth his savage and imperious temper was at first inflamedby the news almost to madness. But, after wreaking his rage, as usual, on his wig, he became somewhat calmer. Tidings of a very sobering naturehad just reached him. The Prince of Orange was marching unopposed toLondon. Almost every county and every great town in England had declaredfor him. James, deserted by his ablest captains and by his nearestrelatives, had sent commissioners to treat with the invaders, andhad issued writs convoking a Parliament. While the result of thenegotiations which were pending in England was uncertain, the Viceroycould not venture to take a bloody revenge on the refractory Protestantsof Ireland. He therefore thought it expedient to affect for a timea clemency and moderation which were by no means congenial to hisdisposition. The task of quieting the Englishry of Ulster was intrustedto William Stewart, Viscount Mountjoy. Mountjoy, a brave soldier, anaccomplished scholar, a zealous Protestant, and yet a zealous Tory, wasone of the very few members of the Established Church who still heldoffice in Ireland. He was Master of the Ordnance in that kingdom, andwas colonel of a regiment in which an uncommonly large proportion of theEnglishry had been suffered to remain. At Dublin he was the centre of asmall circle of learned and ingenious men who had, under his presidency, formed themselves into a Royal Society, the image, on a small scale, of the Royal Society of London. In Ulster, with which he was peculiarlyconnected, his name was held in high honour by the colonists, [138] Hehastened with his regiment to Londonderry, and was well received there. For it was known that, though he was firmly attached to hereditarymonarchy, he was not less firmly attached to the reformed religion. The citizens readily permitted him to leave within their walls a smallgarrison exclusively composed of Protestants, under the command of hislieutenant colonel, Robert Lundy, who took the title of Governor, [139]

The news of Mountjoy's visit to Ulster was highly gratifying to thedefenders of Enniskillen. Some gentlemen deputed by that town waited onhim to request his good offices, but were disappointed by the receptionwhich they found. "My advice to you is, " he said, "to submit to theKing's authority. " "What, my Lord?" said one of the deputies; "Are weto sit still and let ourselves be butchered?" "The King, " said Mountjoy, "will protect you. " "If all that we hear be true, " said the deputy, "hisMajesty will find it hard enough to protect himself. " The conferenceended in this unsatisfactory manner. Enniskillen still kept its attitudeof defiance; and Mountjoy returned to Dublin, [140]

By this time it had indeed become evident that James could not protecthimself. It was known in Ireland that he had fled; that he had beenstopped; that he had fled again; that the Prince of Orange had arrivedat Westminster in triumph, had taken on himself the administration ofthe realm, and had issued letters summoning a Convention. 

Those lords and gentlemen at whose request the Prince had assumed thegovernment, had earnestly intreated him to take the state of Irelandinto his immediate consideration; and he had in reply assured them thathe would do his best to maintain the Protestant religion and the Englishinterest in that kingdom. His enemies afterwards accused him of utterlydisregarding this promise: nay, they alleged that he purposely sufferedIreland to sink deeper and deeper in calamity. Halifax, they said, had, with cruel and perfidious ingenuity, devised this mode of placing theConvention under a species of duress; and the trick had succeeded buttoo well. The vote which called William to the throne would not havepassed so easily but for the extreme dangers which threatened the state;and it was in consequence of his own dishonest inactivity that thosedangers had become extreme, [141] As this accusation rests on no proof, those who repeat it are at least bound to show that some course clearlybetter than the course which William took was open to him; and this theywill find a difficult task. If indeed he could, within a few weeks afterhis arrival in London, have sent a great expedition to Ireland, thatkingdom might perhaps, after a short struggle, or without a struggle, have submitted to his authority; and a long series of crimes andcalamities might have been averted. But the factious orators andpamphleteers, who, much at their ease, reproached him for not sendingsuch an expedition, would have been perplexed if they had been requiredto find the men, the ships, and the funds. The English army had latelybeen arrayed against him: part of it was still ill disposed towards him;and the whole was utterly disorganized. Of the army which he had broughtfrom Holland not a regiment could be spared. He had found the treasuryempty and the pay of the navy in arrear. He had no power to hypothecateany part of the public revenue. Those who lent him money lent it on nosecurity but his bare word. It was only by the patriotic liberalityof the merchants of London that he was enabled to defray the ordinarycharges of government till the meeting of the Convention. It issurely unjust to blame him for not instantly fitting out, in suchcircumstances, an armament sufficient to conquer a kingdom. 

Perceiving that, till the government of England was settled, it wouldnot be in his power to interfere effectually by arms in the affairs ofIreland, he determined to try what effect negotiation would produce. Those who judged after the event pronounced that he had not, on thisoccasion, shown his usual sagacity. He ought, they said, to have knownthat it was absurd to expect submission from Tyrconnel. Such howeverwas not at the time the opinion of men who had the best means ofinformation, and whose interest was a sufficient pledge for theirsincerity. A great meeting of noblemen and gentlemen who had propertyin Ireland was held, during the interregnum, at the house of the Duke ofOrmond in Saint James's Square. They advised the Prince to try whetherthe Lord Deputy might not be induced to capitulate on honourable andadvantageous terms, [142] In truth there is strong reason to believethat Tyrconnel really wavered. For, fierce as were his passions, theynever made him forgetful of his interest; and he might well doubtwhether it were not for his interest, in declining years and health, to retire from business with full indemnity for all past offences, withhigh rank and with an ample fortune, rather than to stake his life andproperty on the event of a war against the whole power of England. Itis certain that he professed himself willing to yield. He opened acommunication with the Prince of Orange, and affected to take counselwith Mountjoy, and with others who, though they had not thrown off theirallegiance to James, were yet firmly attached to the Established Churchand to the English connection. 

In one quarter, a quarter from which William was justified in expectingthe most judicious counsel, there was a strong conviction that theprofessions of Tyrconnel were sincere. No British statesman had thenso high a reputation throughout Europe as Sir William Temple. Hisdiplomatic skill had, twenty years before, arrested the progress of theFrench power. He had been a steady and an useful friend to the UnitedProvinces and to the House of Nassau. He had long been on terms offriendly confidence with the Prince of Orange, and had negotiated thatmarriage to which England owed her recent deliverance. With the affairsof Ireland Temple was supposed to be peculiarly well acquainted. Hisfamily had considerable property there: he had himself resided thereduring several years: he had represented the county of Carlow inparliament; and a large part of his income was derived from a lucrativeIrish office. There was no height of power, of rank, or of opulence, towhich he might not have risen, if he would have consented to quit hisretreat, and to lend his assistance and the weight of his name to thenew government. But power, rank, and opulence had less attractionfor his Epicurean temper than ease and security. He rejected the mosttempting invitations, and continued to amuse himself with his books, histulips, and his pineapples, in rural seclusion. With some hesitation, however, he consented to let his eldest son John enter into the serviceof William. During the vacancy of the throne, John Temple was employedin business of high importance; and, on subjects connected with Ireland, his opinion, which might reasonably be supposed to agree with hisfather's, had great weight. The young politician flattered himself thathe had secured the services of an agent eminently qualified to bring thenegotiation with Tyrconnel to a prosperous issue. 

This agent was one of a remarkable family which had sprung from a nobleScottish stock, but which had long been settled in Ireland, and whichprofessed the Roman Catholic religion. In the gay crowd which throngedWhitehall, during those scandalous years of jubilee which immediatelyfollowed the Restoration, the Hamiltons were preeminently conspicuous. The long fair ringlets, the radiant bloom, and the languishing blue eyesof the lovely Elizabeth still charm us on the canvass of Lely. Shehad the glory of achieving no vulgar conquest. It was reserved for hervoluptuous beauty and for her flippant wit to overcome the aversionwhich the coldhearted and scoffing Grammont felt for the indissolubletie. One of her brothers, Anthony, became the chronicler of thatbrilliant and dissolute society of which he had been one of the mostbrilliant and most dissolute members. He deserves the high praise ofhaving, though not a Frenchman, written the book which is, of all books, the most exquisitely French, both in spirit and in manner. Anotherbrother, named Richard, had, in foreign service, gained some militaryexperience. His wit and politeness had distinguished him even in thesplendid circle of Versailles. It was whispered that he had dared tolift his eyes to an exalted lady, the natural daughter of the GreatKing, the wife of a legitimate prince of the House of Bourbon, andthat she had not seemed to be displeased by the attentions of herpresumptuous admirer, [143] The adventurer had subsequently returned tohis native country, had been appointed Brigadier General in the Irisharmy, and had been sworn of the Irish Privy Council. When the Dutchinvasion was expected, he came across Saint George's Channel with thetroops which Tyrconnel sent to reinforce the royal army. After theflight of James, those troops submitted to the Prince of Orange. RichardHamilton not only made his own peace with what was now the ruling power, but declared himself confident that, if he were sent to Dublin, he couldconduct the negotiation which had been opened there to a happy close. Ifhe failed, he pledged his word to return to London in three weeks. Hisinfluence in Ireland was known to be great: his honour had never beenquestioned; and he was highly esteemed by the Temple family. John Templedeclared that he would answer for Richard Hamilton as for himself. Thisguarantee was thought sufficient; and Hamilton set out for Ireland, assuring his English friends that he should soon bring Tyrconnelto reason. The offers which he was authorised to make to the RomanCatholics and to the Lord Deputy personally were most liberal, [144]

It is not impossible that Hamilton may have really meant to perform hispromise. But when he arrived at Dublin he found that he had undertakena task which was beyond his power. The hesitation of Tyrconnel, whethergenuine or feigned, was at an end. He had found that he had no longera choice. He had with little difficulty stimulated the ignorant andsusceptible Irish to fury. To calm them was beyond his skill. Rumourswere abroad that the Viceroy was corresponding with the English; andthese rumours had set the nation on fire. The cry of the common peoplewas that, if he dared to sell them for wealth and honours, they wouldburn the Castle and him in it, and would put themselves under theprotection of France, [145] It was necessary for him to protest, trulyor falsely, that he had never harboured any thought of submission, andthat he had pretended to negotiate only for the purpose of gaining time. Yet, before he openly declared against the English settlers, and againstEngland herself, what must be a war to the death, he wished to ridhimself of Mountjoy, who had hitherto been true to the cause of James, but who, it was well known, would never consent to be a party to thespoliation and oppression of the colonists. Hypocritical professions offriendship and of pacific intentions were not spared. It was a sacredduty, Tyrconnel said, to avert the calamities which seemed to beimpending. King James himself, if he understood the whole case, wouldnot wish his Irish friends to engage at that moment in an enterprisewhich must be fatal to them and useless to him. He would permit them, he would command them, to submit to necessity, and to reserve themselvesfor better times. If any man of weight, loyal, able, and well informed, would repair to Saint Germains and explain the state of things, hisMajesty would easily be convinced. Would Mountjoy undertake this mosthonourable and important mission? Mountjoy hesitated, and suggestedthat some person more likely to be acceptable to the King should be themessenger. Tyrconnel swore, ranted, declared that, unless King Jameswere well advised, Ireland would sink to the pit of hell, and insistedthat Mountjoy should go as the representative of the loyal members ofthe Established Church, and should be accompanied by Chief Baron Rice, a Roman Catholic high in the royal favour. Mountjoy yielded. The twoambassadors departed together, but with very different commissions. Ricewas charged to tell James that Mountjoy was a traitor at heart, andhad been sent to France only that the Protestants of Ireland might bedeprived of a favourite leader. The King was to be assured that he wasimpatiently expected in Ireland, and that, if he would show himselfthere with a French force, he might speedily retrieve his fallenfortunes, [146] The Chief Baron carried with him other instructionswhich were probably kept secret even from the Court of Saint Germains. If James should be unwilling to put himself at the head of the nativepopulation of Ireland, Rice was directed to request a private audienceof Lewis, and to offer to make the island a province of France, [147]

As soon as the two envoys had departed, Tyrconnel set himself to preparefor the conflict which had become inevitable; and he was strenuouslyassisted by the faithless Hamilton. The Irish nation was called to arms;and the call was obeyed with strange promptitude and enthusiasm. Theflag on the Castle of Dublin was embroidered with the words, "Now ornever: now and for ever:" and those words resounded through the wholeisland, [148] Never in modern Europe has there been such a rising up ofa whole people. The habits of the Celtic peasant were such that hemade no sacrifice in quitting his potatoe ground for the camp. He lovedexcitement and adventure. He feared work far more than danger. His national and religious feelings had, during three years, beenexasperated by the constant application of stimulants. At every fair andmarket he had heard that a good time was at hand, that the tyrants whospoke Saxon and lived in slated houses were about to be swept away, andthat the land would again belong to its own children. By the peat firesof a hundred thousand cabins had nightly been sung rude ballads whichpredicted the deliverance of the oppressed race. The priests, most ofwhom belonged to those old families which the Act of Settlement hadruined, but which were still revered by the native population, had, froma thousand altars, charged every Catholic to show his zeal for the trueChurch by providing weapons against the day when it might be necessaryto try the chances of battle in her cause. The army, which, underOrmond, had consisted of only eight regiments, was now increasedto forty-eight: and the ranks were soon full to overflowing. It wasimpossible to find at short notice one tenth of the number of goodofficers which was required. Commissions were scattered profusely amongidle cosherers who claimed to be descended from good Irish families. Yet even thus the supply of captains and lieutenants fell short ofthe demand; and many companies were commanded by cobblers, tailors andfootmen, [149]

The pay of the soldiers was very small. The private had only threepencea day. One half only of this pittance was ever given him in money; andthat half was often in arrear. But a far more seductive bait thanhis miserable stipend was the prospect of boundless license. If thegovernment allowed him less than sufficed for his wants, it was notextreme to mark the means by which he supplied the deficiency. Thoughfour fifths of the population of Ireland were Celtic and Roman Catholic, more than four fifths of the property of Ireland belonged to theProtestant Englishry. The garners, the cellars, above all the flocksand herds of the minority, were abandoned to the majority. Whatever theregular troops spared was devoured by bands of marauders who overranalmost every barony in the island. For the arming was now universal. Noman dared to present himself at mass without some weapon, a pike, along knife called a skean, or, at the very least, a strong ashen stake, pointed and hardened in the fire. The very women were exhorted by theirspiritual directors to carry skeans. Every smith, every carpenter, every cutler, was at constant work on guns and blades. It was scarcelypossible to get a horse shod. If any Protestant artisan refused toassist in the manufacture of implements which were to be used againsthis nation and his religion, he was flung into prison. It seems probablethat, at the end of February, at least a hundred thousand Irishmenwere in arms. Near fifty thousand of them were soldiers. The rest werebanditti, whose violence and licentiousness the Government affected todisapprove, but did not really exert itself to suppress. The Protestantsnot only were not protected, but were not suffered to protectthemselves. It was determined that they should be left unarmed in themidst of an armed and hostile population. A day was fixed on which theywere to bring all their swords and firelocks to the parish churches; andit was notified that every Protestant house in which, after that day, aweapon should be found should be given up to be sacked by the soldiers. Bitter complaints were made that any knave might, by hiding a spear heador an old gun barrel in a corner of a mansion, bring utter ruin on theowner, [150]

Chief Justice Keating, himself a Protestant, and almost the onlyProtestant who still held a great place in Ireland, struggledcourageously in the cause of justice and order against the unitedstrength of the government and the populace. At the Wicklow assizesof that spring, he, from the seat of judgment, set forth with greatstrength of language the miserable state of the country. Whole counties, he said, were devastated by a rabble resembling the vultures and ravenswhich follow the march of an army. Most of these wretches were notsoldiers. They acted under no authority known to the law. Yet it was, he owned, but too evident that they were encouraged and screened by somewho were in high command. How else could it be that a market overtfor plunder should be held within a short distance of the capital? Thestories which travellers told of the savage Hottentots near the Cape ofGood Hope were realised in Leinster. Nothing was more common than for anhonest man to lie down rich in flocks and herds acquired by the industryof a long life, and to wake a beggar. It was however to small purposethat Keating attempted, in the midst of that fearful anarchy, to upholdthe supremacy of the law. Priests and military chiefs appeared on thebench for the purpose of overawing the judge and countenancing therobbers. One ruffian escaped because no prosecutor dared to appear. Another declared that he had armed himself in conformity to the ordersof his spiritual guide, and to the example of many persons of higherstation than himself, whom he saw at that moment in Court. Two only ofthe Merry Boys, as they were called, were convicted: the worst criminalsescaped; and the Chief justice indignantly told the jurymen that theguilt of the public ruin lay at their door, [151]

When such disorder prevailed in Wicklow, it is easy to imagine what musthave been the state of districts more barbarous and more remote from theseat of government. Keating appears to have been the only magistrate whostrenuously exerted himself to put the law in force. Indeed Nugent, theChief justice of the highest criminal court of the realm, declared onthe bench at Cork that, without violence and spoliation, the intentionsof the Government could not be carried into effect, and that robberymust at that conjuncture be tolerated as a necessary evil, [152]

The destruction of property which took place within a few weeks would beincredible, if it were not attested by witnesses unconnected with eachother and attached to very different interests. There is a close, andsometimes almost a verbal, agreement between the description given byProtestants, who, during that reign of terror, escaped, at the hazardof their lives, to England, and the descriptions given by the envoys, commissaries, and captains of Lewis. All agreed in declaring that itwould take many years to repair the waste which had been wrought in afew weeks by the armed peasantry, [153] Some of the Saxon aristocracyhad mansions richly furnished, and sideboards gorgeous with silver bowlsand chargers. All this wealth disappeared. One house, in which there hadbeen three thousand pounds' worth of plate, was left without a spoon, [154] But the chief riches of Ireland consisted in cattle. Innumerableflocks and herds covered that vast expanse of emerald meadow, saturatedwith the moisture of the Atlantic. More than one gentleman possessedtwenty thousand sheep and four thousand oxen. The freebooters who nowoverspread the country belonged to a class which was accustomed tolive on potatoes and sour whey, and which had always regarded meat asa luxury reserved for the rich. These men at first revelled in beef andmutton, as the savage invaders, who of old poured down from the forestsof the north on Italy, revelled in Massic and Falernian wines. TheProtestants described with contemptuous disgust the strange gluttony oftheir newly liberated slaves. The carcasses, half raw and half burnedto cinders, sometimes still bleeding, sometimes in a state of loathsomedecay, were torn to pieces and swallowed without salt, bread, or herbs. Those marauders who preferred boiled meat, being often in want ofkettles, contrived to boil the steer in his own skin. An absurdtragicomedy is still extant, which was acted in this and the followingyear at some low theatre for the amusement of the English populace. Acrowd of half naked savages appeared on the stage, howling a Celtic songand dancing round an ox. They then proceeded to cut steaks out of theanimal while still alive and to fling the bleeding flesh on the coals. In truth the barbarity and filthiness of the banquets of the Rappareeswas such as the dramatists of Grub Street could scarcely caricature. When Lent began, the plunderers generally ceased to devour, butcontinued to destroy. A peasant would kill a cow merely in order to geta pair of brogues. Often a whole flock of sheep, often a herd of fiftyor sixty kine, was slaughtered: the beasts were flayed; the fleeces andhides were carried away; and the bodies were left to poison the air. The French ambassador reported to his master that, in six weeks, fiftythousand horned cattle had been slain in this manner, and were rottingon the ground all over the country. The number of sheep that werebutchered during the same time was popularly said to have been three orfour hundred thousand, [155]

Any estimate which can now be framed of the value of the propertydestroyed during this fearful conflict of races must necessarily be veryinexact. We are not however absolutely without materials for such anestimate. The Quakers were neither a very numerous nor a very opulentclass. We can hardly suppose that they were more than a fiftieth part ofthe Protestant population of Ireland, or that they possessed more than afiftieth part of the Protestant wealth of Ireland. They were undoubtedlybetter treated than any other Protestant sect. James had always beenpartial to them: they own that Tyrconnel did his best to protect them;and they seem to have found favour even in the sight of the Rapparees, [156] Yet the Quakers computed their pecuniary losses at a hundredthousand pounds, [157]

In Leinster, Munster and Connaught, it was utterly impossible for theEnglish settlers, few as they were and dispersed, to offer any effectualresistance to this terrible outbreak of the aboriginal population. Charleville, Mallow, Sligo, fell into the hands of the natives. Bandon, where the Protestants had mustered in considerable force, was reduced byLieutenant General Macarthy, an Irish officer who was descended from oneof the most illustrious Celtic houses, and who had long served, under afeigned name, in the French Army, [158] The people of Kenmare heldout in their little fastness till they were attacked by three thousandregular soldiers, and till it was known that several pieces of ordnancewere coming to batter down the turf wall which surrounded the agent'shouse. Then at length a capitulation was concluded. The colonists weresuffered to embark in a small vessel scantily supplied with food andwater. They had no experienced navigator on board: but after a voyageof a fortnight, during which they were crowded together like slaves ina Guinea ship, and suffered the extremity of thirst and hunger, theyreached Bristol in safety, [159] When such was the fate of the towns, itwas evident that the country seats which the Protestant landowners hadrecently fortified in the three southern provinces could no longer bedefended. Many families submitted, delivered up their arms, andthought themselves happy in escaping with life. But many resolute andhighspirited gentlemen and yeomen were determined to perish rather thanyield. They packed up such valuable property as could easily be carriedaway, burned whatever they could not remove, and, well armed andmounted, set out for those spots in Ulster which were the strongholds oftheir race and of their faith. The flower of the Protestant populationof Munster and Connaught found shelter at Enniskillen. Whatever wasbravest and most truehearted in Leinster took the road to Londonderry, [160]

The spirit of Enniskillen and Londonderry rose higher and higher tomeet the danger. At both places the tidings of what had been done by theConvention at Westminster were received with transports of joy. Williamand Mary were proclaimed at Enniskillen with unanimous enthusiasm, and with such pomp as the little town could furnish, [161] Lundy, whocommanded at Londonderry, could not venture to oppose himself to thegeneral sentiment of the citizens and of his own soldiers. He thereforegave in his adhesion to the new government, and signed a declarationby which he bound himself to stand by that government, on pain of beingconsidered a coward and a traitor. A vessel from England soon broughta commission from William and Mary which confirmed him in his office, [162]

To reduce the Protestants of Ulster to submission before aid couldarrive from England was now the chief object of Tyrconnel. A great forcewas ordered to move northward, under the command of Richard Hamilton. This man had violated all the obligations which are held most sacred bygentlemen and soldiers, had broken faith with his friends the Temples, had forfeited his military parole, and was now not ashamed to takethe field as a general against the government to which he was boundto render himself up as a prisoner. His march left on the face of thecountry traces which the most careless eye could not during many yearsfail to discern. His army was accompanied by a rabble, such as Keatinghad well compared to the unclean birds of prey which swarm wherever thescent of carrion is strong. The general professed himself anxious tosave from ruin and outrage all Protestants who remained quietly at theirhomes; and he most readily gave them protections tinder his hand. Butthese protections proved of no avail; and he was forced to own that, whatever power he might be able to exercise over his soldiers, he couldnot keep order among the mob of campfollowers. The country behindhim was a wilderness; and soon the country before him became equallydesolate. For at the fame of his approach the colonists burned theirfurniture, pulled down their houses, and retreated northward. Someof them attempted to make a stand at Dromore, but were broken andscattered. Then the flight became wild and tumultuous. The fugitivesbroke down the bridges and burned the ferryboats. Whole towns, the seatsof the Protestant population, were left in ruins without one inhabitant. The people of Omagh destroyed their own dwellings so utterly that noroof was left to shelter the enemy from the rain and wind. The people ofCavan migrated in one body to Enniskillen. The day was wet and stormy. The road was deep in mire. It was a piteous sight to see, mingled withthe armed men, the women and children weeping, famished, and toilingthrough the mud up to their knees. All Lisburn fled to Antrim; and, asthe foes drew nearer, all Lisburn and Antrim together came pouring intoLondonderry. Thirty thousand Protestants, of both sexes and of everyage, were crowded behind the bulwarks of the City of Refuge. There, atlength, on the verge of the ocean, hunted to the last asylum, andbaited into a mood in which men may be destroyed, but will not easily besubjugated, the imperial race turned desperately to bay, [163]

Meanwhile Mountjoy and Rice had arrived in France. Mountjoy wasinstantly put under arrest and thrown into the Bastile. James determinedto comply with the invitation which Rice had brought, and applied toLewis for the help of a French army. But Lewis, though he showed, as toall things which concerned the personal dignity and comfort of hisroyal guests, a delicacy even romantic, and a liberality approaching toprofusion, was unwilling to send a large body of troops to Ireland. He saw that France would have to maintain a long war on the Continentagainst a formidable coalition: her expenditure must be immense; and, great as were her resources, he felt it to be important that nothingshould be wasted. He doubtless regarded with sincere commiseration andgood will the unfortunate exiles to whom he had given so princely awelcome. Yet neither commiseration nor good will could prevent him fromspeedily discovering that his brother of England was the dullest andmost perverse of human beings. The folly of James, his incapacity toread the characters of men and the signs of the times, his obstinacy, always most offensively displayed when wisdom enjoined concession, his vacillation, always exhibited most pitiably in emergencies whichrequired firmness, had made him an outcast from England, and might, ifhis counsels were blindly followed, bring great calamities on France. As a legitimate sovereign expelled by rebels, as a confessor of the truefaith persecuted by heretics, as a near kinsman of the House of Bourbon, who had seated himself on the hearth of that House, he was entitled tohospitality, to tenderness, to respect. It was fit that he should havea stately palace and a spacious forest, that the household troops shouldsalute him with the highest military honours, that he should have at hiscommand all the hounds of the Grand Huntsman and all the hawks of theGrand Falconer. But, when a prince, who, at the head of a great fleetand army, had lost an empire without striking a blow, undertook tofurnish plans for naval and military expeditions; when a prince, whohad been undone by his profound ignorance of the temper of his owncountrymen, of his own soldiers, of his own domestics, of his ownchildren, undertook to answer for the zeal and fidelity of the Irishpeople, whose language he could not speak, and on whose land he hadnever set his foot; it was necessary to receive his suggestions withcaution. Such were the sentiments of Lewis; and in these sentiments hewas confirmed by his Minister of War Louvois, who, on private as well ason public grounds, was unwilling that James should be accompanied bya large military force. Louvois hated Lauzun. Lauzun was favourite atSaint Germains. He wore the garter, a badge of honour which has veryseldom been conferred on aliens who were not sovereign princes. It wasbelieved indeed at the French Court that, in order to distinguish himfrom the other knights of the most illustrious of European orders, hehad been decorated with that very George which Charles the First had, on the scaffold, put into the hands of Juxon, [164] Lauzun had beenencouraged to hope that, if French forces were sent to Ireland, heshould command them; and this ambitious hope Louvois was bent ondisappointing, [165]

An army was therefore for the present refused; but every thing else wasgranted. The Brest fleet was ordered to be in readiness to sail. Armsfor ten thousand men and great quantities of ammunition were put onboard. About four hundred captains, lieutenants, cadets and gunners wereselected for the important service of organizing and disciplining theIrish levies. The chief command was held by a veteran warrior, theCount of Rosen. Under him were Maumont, who held the rank of lieutenantgeneral, and a brigadier named Pusignan. Five hundred thousand crowns ingold, equivalent to about a hundred and twelve thousand pounds sterling, were sent to Brest, [166] For James's personal comforts provision wasmade with anxiety resembling that of a tender mother equipping herson for a first campaign. The cabin furniture, the camp furniture, thetents, the bedding, the plate, were luxurious and superb. Nothing, which could be agreeable or useful to the exile was too costly for themunificence, or too trifling for the attention, of his gracious andsplendid host. On the fifteenth of February, James paid a farewell visitto Versailles. He was conducted round the buildings and plantations withevery mark of respect and kindness. The fountains played in his honour. It was the season of the Carnival; and never had the vast palace andthe sumptuous gardens presented a gayer aspect. In the evening thetwo kings, after a long and earnest conference in private, made theirappearance before a splendid circle of lords and ladies. "I hope, " saidLewis, in his noblest and most winning manner, "that we are about topart, never to meet again in this world. That is the best wish that Ican form for you. But, if any evil chance should force you to return, be assured that you will find me to the last such as you have found mehitherto. " On the seventeenth Lewis paid in return a farewell visit toSaint Germains. At the moment of the parting embrace he said, withhis most amiable smile: "We have forgotten one thing, a cuirass foryourself. You shall have mine. " The cuirass was brought, and suggestedto the wits of the Court ingenious allusions to the Vulcanian panoplywhich Achilles lent to his feebler friend. James set out for Brest; andhis wife, overcome with sickness and sorrow, shut herself up with herchild to weep and pray, [167]

James was accompanied or speedily followed by several of his ownsubjects, among whom the most distinguished were his son Berwick, Cartwright Bishop of Chester, Powis, Dover, and Melfort. Of all theretinue, none was so odious to the people of Great Britain as Melfort. He was an apostate: he was believed by many to be an insincere apostate;and the insolent, arbitrary and menacing language of his state papersdisgusted even the Jacobites. He was therefore a favourite with hismaster: for to James unpopularity, obstinacy, and implacability were thegreatest recommendations that a statesman could have. 

What Frenchman should attend the King of England in the character ofambassador had been the subject of grave deliberation at Versailles. Barillon could not be passed over without a marked slight. But hisselfindulgent habits, his want of energy, and, above all, the credulitywith which he had listened to the professions of Sunderland, had madean unfavourable impression on the mind of Lewis. What was to be donein Ireland was not work for a trifler or a dupe. The agent of France inthat kingdom must be equal to much more than the ordinary functions ofan envoy. It would be his right and his duty to offer advice touchingevery part of the political and military administration of the countryin which he would represent the most powerful and the most beneficentof allies. Barillon was therefore passed over. He affected to bear hisdisgrace with composure. His political career, though it had broughtgreat calamities both on the House of Stuart and on the House ofBourbon, had been by no means unprofitable to himself. He was old, hesaid: he was fat: he did not envy younger men the honour of livingon potatoes and whiskey among the Irish bogs; he would try to consolehimself with partridges, with champagne, and with the society of thewittiest men and prettiest women of Paris. It was rumoured, however thathe was tortured by painful emotions which he was studious to conceal:his health and spirits failed; and he tried to find consolation inreligious duties. Some people were much edified by the piety of the oldvoluptuary: but others attributed his death, which took place not longafter his retreat from public life, to shame and vexation, [168]

The Count of Avaux, whose sagacity had detected all the plans ofWilliam, and who had vainly recommended a policy which would probablyhave frustrated them, was the man on whom the choice of Lewis fell. Inabilities Avaux had no superior among the numerous able diplomatistswhom his country then possessed. His demeanour was singularly pleasing, his person handsome, his temper bland. His manners and conversationwere those of a gentleman who had been bred in the most polite andmagnificent of all Courts, who had represented that Court both inRoman Catholic and Protestant countries, and who had acquired in hiswanderings the art of catching the tone of any society into whichchance might throw him. He was eminently vigilant and adroit, fertile inresources, and skilful in discovering the weak parts of a character. His own character, however, was not without its weak parts. Theconsciousness that he was of plebeian origin was the torment ofhis life. He pined for nobility with a pining at once pitiable andludicrous. Able, experienced and accomplished as he was, he sometimes, under the influence of this mental disease, descended to the level ofMoliere's Jourdain, and entertained malicious observers with scenesalmost as laughable as that in which the honest draper was made aMamamouchi, [169] It would have been well if this had been the worst. But it is not too much to say that of the difference between right andwrong Avaux had no more notion than a brute. One sentiment was to himin the place of religion and morality, a superstitious and intolerantdevotion to the Crown which he served. This sentiment pervades all hisdespatches, and gives a colour to all his thoughts and words. Nothingthat tended to promote the interest of the French monarchy seemed to hima crime. Indeed he appears to have taken it for granted that not onlyFrenchmen, but all human beings, owed a natural allegiance to the Houseof Bourbon, and that whoever hesitated to sacrifice the happiness andfreedom of his own native country to the glory of that House was atraitor. While he resided at the Hague, he always designated thoseDutchmen who had sold themselves to France as the well intentionedparty. In the letters which he wrote from Ireland, the same feelingappears still more strongly. He would have been a more sagaciouspolitician if he had sympathized more with those feelings of moralapprobation and disapprobation which prevail among the vulgar. For hisown indifference to all considerations of justice and mercy was suchthat, in his schemes, he made no allowance for the consciences andsensibilities of his neighbours. More than once he deliberatelyrecommended wickedness so horrible that wicked men recoiled from it withindignation. But they could not succeed even in making their scruplesintelligible to him. To every remonstrance he listened with a cynicalsneer, wondering within himself whether those who lectured him were suchfools as they professed to be, or were only shamming. 

Such was the man whom Lewis selected to be the companion and monitor ofJames. Avaux was charged to open, if possible, a communication with themalecontents in the English Parliament; and he was authorised to expend, if necessary, a hundred thousand crowns among them. 

James arrived at Brest on the fifth of March, embarked there on boardof a man of war called the Saint Michael, and sailed within forty-eighthours. He had ample time, however, before his departure, to exhibit someof the faults by which he had lost England and Scotland, and by which hewas about to lose Ireland. Avaux wrote from the harbour of Brest that itwould not be easy to conduct any important business in concert with theKing of England. His Majesty could not keep any secret from any body. The very foremast men of the Saint Michael had already heard himsay things which ought to have been reserved for the ears of hisconfidential advisers, [170]

The voyage was safely and quietly performed; and, on the afternoon ofthe twelfth of March, James landed in the harbour of Kinsale. By theRoman Catholic population he was received with shouts of unfeignedtransport. The few Protestants who remained in that part of the countryjoined in greeting him, and perhaps not insincerely. For, though anenemy of their religion, he was not an enemy of their nation; and theymight reasonably hope that the worst king would show somewhat morerespect for law and property than had been shown by the Merry Boys andRapparees. The Vicar of Kinsale was among those who went to paytheir duty: he was presented by the Bishop of Chester, and was notungraciously received, [171]

James learned that his cause was prospering. In the three southernprovinces of Ireland the Protestants were disarmed, and were soeffectually bowed down by terror that he had nothing to apprehend fromthem. In the North there was some show of resistance: but Hamilton wasmarching against the malecontents; and there was little doubt that theywould easily be crushed. A day was spent at Kinsale in putting the armsand ammunition out of reach of danger. Horses sufficient to carry a fewtravellers were with some difficulty procured; and, on the fourteenth ofMarch, James proceeded to Cork, [172]

We should greatly err if we imagined that the road by which he enteredthat city bore any resemblance to the stately approach which strikes thetraveller of the nineteenth century with admiration. At present Cork, though deformed by many miserable relics of a former age, holds no meanplace among the ports of the empire. The shipping is more than half whatthe shipping of London was at the time of the Revolution. The customsexceed the whole revenue which the whole kingdom of Ireland, in themost peaceful and prosperous times, yielded to the Stuarts. The townis adorned by broad and well built streets, by fair gardens, by aCorinthian portico which would do honour to Palladio, and by a Gothiccollege worthy to stand in the High Street of Oxford. In 1689, the cityextended over about one tenth part of the space which it now covers, and was intersected by muddy streams, which have long been concealedby arches and buildings. A desolate marsh, in which the sportsman whopursued the waterfowl sank deep in water and mire at every step, covered the area now occupied by stately buildings, the palaces ofgreat commercial societies. There was only a single street in which twowheeled carriages could pass each other. From this street diverged toright and left alleys squalid and noisome beyond the belief of thosewho have formed their notions of misery from the most miserable partsof Saint Giles's and Whitechapel. One of these alleys, called, and, bycomparison, justly called, Broad Lane, is about ten feet wide. Fromsuch places, now seats of hunger and pestilence, abandoned to the mostwretched of mankind, the citizens poured forth to welcome James. He wasreceived with military honours by Macarthy, who held the chief commandin Munster. 

It was impossible for the King to proceed immediately to Dublin; for thesouthern counties had been so completely laid waste by the banditti whomthe priests had called to arms, that the means of locomotion were noteasily to be procured. Horses had become rarities: in a large districtthere were only two carts; and those Avaux pronounced good for nothing. Some days elapsed before the money which had been brought from France, though no very formidable mass, could be dragged over the few mileswhich separated Cork from Kinsale, [173]

While the King and his Council were employed in trying to procurecarriages and beasts, Tyrconnel arrived from Dublin. He held encouraginglanguage. The opposition of Enniskillen he seems to have thoughtdeserving of little consideration. Londonderry, he said, was the onlyimportant post held by the Protestants; and even Londonderry would not, in his judgment, hold out many days. 

At length James was able to leave Cork for the capital. On the road, the shrewd and observant Avaux made many remarks. The first part of thejourney was through wild highlands, where it was not strange that thereshould be few traces of art and industry. But, from Kilkenny to thegates of Dublin, the path of the travellers lay over gently undulatingground rich with natural verdure. That fertile district should have beencovered with flocks and herds, orchards and cornfields: but it was anunfilled and unpeopled desert. Even in the towns the artisans were veryfew. Manufactured articles were hardly to be found, and if found couldbe procured only at immense prices, [174] The truth was that most of theEnglish inhabitants had fled, and that art, industry, and capital hadfled with them. 

James received on his progress numerous marks of the goodwill of thepeasantry; but marks such as, to men bred in the courts of Franceand England, had an uncouth and ominous appearance. Though very fewlabourers were seen at work in the fields, the road was lined byRapparees armed with skeans, stakes, and half pikes, who crowded to lookupon the deliverer of their race. The highway along which he travelledpresented the aspect of a street in which a fair is held. Pipers cameforth to play before him in a style which was not exactly that of theFrench opera; and the villagers danced wildly to the music. Long friezemantles, resembling those which Spenser had, a century before, describedas meet beds for rebels, and apt cloaks for thieves, were spread alongthe path which the cavalcade was to tread; and garlands, in whichcabbage stalks supplied the place of laurels, were offered to the royalhand. The women insisted on kissing his Majesty; but it should seem thatthey bore little resemblance to their posterity; for this complimentwas so distasteful to him that he ordered his retinue to keep them at adistance, [175]

On the twenty-fourth of March he entered Dublin. That city was then, in extent and population, the second in the British isles. It containedbetween six and seven thousand houses, and probably above thirtythousand inhabitants, [176] In wealth and beauty, however, Dublin wasinferior to many English towns. Of the graceful and stately publicbuildings which now adorn both sides of the Liffey scarcely one had beeneven projected. The College, a very different edifice from that whichnow stands on the same site, lay quite out of the city, [177] The groundwhich is at present occupied by Leinster House and Charlemont House, by Sackville Street and Merrion Square, was open meadow. Most of thedwellings were built of timber, and have long given place to moresubstantial edifices. The Castle had in 1686 been almost uninhabitable. Clarendon had complained that he knew of no gentleman in Pall Mall whowas not more conveniently and handsomely lodged than the Lord Lieutenantof Ireland. No public ceremony could be performed in a becoming mannerunder the Viceregal roof. Nay, in spite of constant glazing and tiling, the rain perpetually drenched the apartments, [178] Tyrconnel, since hebecame Lord Deputy, had erected a new building somewhat more commodious. To this building the King was conducted in state through the southernpart of the city. Every exertion had been made to give an air offestivity and splendour to the district which he was to traverse. Thestreets, which were generally deep in mud, were strewn with gravel. Boughs and flowers were scattered over the path. 

Tapestry and arras hung from the windows of those who could afford toexhibit such finery. The poor supplied the place of rich stuffs withblankets and coverlids. In one place was stationed a troop of friarswith a cross; in another a company of forty girls dressed in white andcarrying nosegays. Pipers and harpers played "The King shall enjoyhis own again. " The Lord Deputy carried the sword of state before hismaster. The Judges, the Heralds, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, appearedin all the pomp of office. Soldiers were drawn up on the right and leftto keep the passages clear. A procession of twenty coaches belonging topublic functionaries was mustered. Before the Castle gate, the King wasmet by the host under a canopy borne by four bishops of his church. Atthe sight he fell on his knees, and passed some time in devotion. Hethen rose and was conducted to the chapel of his palace, once--such arethe vicissitudes of human things--the riding house of Henry Cromwell. A Te Deum was performed in honour of his Majesty's arrival. The nextmorning he held a Privy Council, discharged Chief Justice Keating fromany further attendance at the board, ordered Avaux and Bishop Cartwrightto be sworn in, and issued a proclamation convoking a Parliament to meetat Dublin on the seventh of May, [179]

When the news that James had arrived in Ireland reached London, thesorrow and alarm were general, and were mingled with serious discontent. The multitude, not making sufficient allowance for the difficulties bywhich William was encompassed on every side, loudly blamed his neglect. To all the invectives of the ignorant and malicious he opposed, as washis wont, nothing but immutable gravity and the silence of profounddisdain. But few minds had received from nature a temper so firm as his;and still fewer had undergone so long and so rigorous a discipline. The reproaches which had no power to shake his fortitude, tried fromchildhood upwards by both extremes of fortune, inflicted a deadly woundon a less resolute heart. 

While all the coffeehouses were unanimously resolving that a fleet andarmy ought to have been long before sent to Dublin, and wondering how sorenowned a politician as his Majesty could have been duped by Hamiltonand Tyrconnel, a gentleman went down to the Temple Stairs, called aboat, and desired to be pulled to Greenwich. He took the cover of aletter from his pocket, scratched a few lines with a pencil, and laidthe paper on the seat with some silver for his fare. As the boat passedunder the dark central arch of London Bridge, he sprang into the waterand disappeared. It was found that he had written these words: "Myfolly in undertaking what I could not execute hath done the King greatprejudice which cannot be stopped--No easier way for me than this--Mayhis undertakings prosper--May he have a blessing. " There was nosignature; but the body was soon found, and proved to be that ofJohn Temple. He was young and highly accomplished: he was heir to anhonourable name; he was united to an amiable woman: he was possessedof an ample fortune; and he had in prospect the greatest honours of thestate. It does not appear that the public had been at all aware to whatan extent he was answerable for the policy which had brought so muchobloquy on the government. The King, stern as he was, had far toogreat a heart to treat an error as a crime. He had just appointed theunfortunate young man Secretary at War; and the commission was actuallypreparing. It is not improbable that the cold magnanimity of the masterwas the very thing which made the remorse of the servant insupportable, [180]

But, great as were the vexations which William had to undergo, thoseby which the temper of his father-in-law was at this time tried weregreater still. No court in Europe was distracted by more quarrels andintrigues than were to be found within the walls of Dublin Castle. Thenumerous petty cabals which sprang from the cupidity, the jealousy, andthe malevolence of individuals scarcely deserve mention. But there wasone cause of discord which has been too little noticed, and which isthe key to much that has been thought mysterious in the history of thosetimes. 

Between English Jacobitism and Irish Jacobitism there was nothing incommon. The English Jacobite was animated by a strong enthusiasm for thefamily of Stuart; and in his zeal for the interests of that family hetoo often forgot the interests of the state. Victory, peace, prosperity, seemed evils to the stanch nonjuror of our island if they tended to makeusurpation popular and permanent. Defeat, bankruptcy, famine, invasion, were, in his view, public blessings, if they increased the chance ofa restoration. He would rather have seen his country the last of thenations under James the Second or James the Third, than the mistress ofthe sea, the umpire between contending potentates, the seat of arts, thehive of industry, under a prince of the House of Nassau or of Brunswick. 

The sentiments of the Irish Jacobite were very different, and, it mustin candour be acknowledged, were of a nobler character. The fallendynasty was nothing to him. He had not, like a Cheshire or Shropshirecavalier, been taught from his cradle to consider loyalty to thatdynasty as the first duty of a Christian and a gentleman. All his familytraditions, all the lessons taught him by his foster mother and by hispriests, had been of a very different tendency. He had been brought upto regard the foreign sovereigns of his native land with the feelingwith which the Jew regarded Caesar, with which the Scot regarded Edwardthe First, with which the Castilian regarded Joseph Buonaparte, withwhich the Pole regards the Autocrat of the Russias. It was the boast ofthe highborn Milesian that, from the twelfth century to the seventeenth, every generation of his family had been in arms against the Englishcrown. His remote ancestors had contended with Fitzstephen and De Burgh. His greatgrandfather had cloven down the soldiers of Elizabeth in thebattle of the Blackwater. His grandfather had conspired with O'Donnelagainst James the First. His father had fought under Sir Phelim O'Neillagainst Charles the First. The confiscation of the family estate hadbeen ratified by an Act of Charles the Second. No Puritan, who had beencited before the High Commission by Laud, who had charged under Cromwellat Naseby, who had been prosecuted under the Conventicle Act, and whohad been in hiding on account of the Rye House Plot, bore less affectionto the House of Stuart than the O'Haras and Macmahons, on whose supportthe fortunes of that House now seemed to depend. 

The fixed purpose of these men was to break the foreign yoke, toexterminate the Saxon colony, to sweep away the Protestant Church, andto restore the soil to its ancient proprietors. To obtain these endsthey would without the smallest scruple have risen up against James;and to obtain these ends they rose up for him. The Irish Jacobites, therefore, were not at all desirous that he should again reign atWhitehall: for they could not but be aware that a Sovereign of Ireland, who was also Sovereign of England, would not, and, even if he would, could not, long administer the government of the smaller and poorerkingdom in direct opposition to the feeling of the larger and richer. Their real wish was that the Crowns might be completely separated, andthat their island might, whether under James or without James they caredlittle, form a distinct state under the powerful protection of France. 

While one party in the Council at Dublin regarded James merely as a toolto be employed for achieving the deliverance of Ireland, another partyregarded Ireland merely as a tool to be employed for effecting therestoration of James. To the English and Scotch lords and gentlemen whohad accompanied him from Brest, the island in which they sojourned wasmerely a stepping stone by which they were to reach Great Britain. They were still as much exiles as when they were at Saint Germains; andindeed they thought Saint Germains a far more pleasant place of exilethan Dublin Castle. They had no sympathy with the native population ofthe remote and half barbarous region to which a strange chance had ledthem. Nay, they were bound by common extraction and by common languageto that colony which it was the chief object of the native populationto root out. They had indeed, like the great body of their countrymen, always regarded the aboriginal Irish with very unjust contempt, asinferior to other European nations, not only in acquired knowledge, butin natural intelligence and courage; as born Gibeonites who had beenliberally treated, in being permitted to hew wood and to draw water fora wiser and mightier people. These politicians also thought, --and herethey were undoubtedly in the right, --that, if their master's object wasto recover the throne of England, it would be madness in him to givehimself up to the guidance of the O's and the Macs who regarded Englandwith mortal enmity. A law declaring the crown of Ireland independent, alaw transferring mitres, glebes, and tithes from the Protestant to theRoman Catholic Church, a law transferring ten millions of acres fromSaxons to Celts, would doubtless be loudly applauded in Clare andTipperary. But what would be the effect of such laws at Westminster?What at Oxford? It would be poor policy to alienate such men asClarendon and Beaufort, Ken and Sherlock, in order to obtain theapplause of the Rapparees of the Bog of Allen, [181]

Thus the English and Irish factions in the Council at Dublin wereengaged in a dispute which admitted of no compromise. Avaux meanwhilelooked on that dispute from a point of view entirely his own. His objectwas neither the emancipation of Ireland nor the restoration of James, but the greatness of the French monarchy. In what way that object mightbe best attained was a very complicated problem. Undoubtedly a Frenchstatesman could not but wish for a counterrevolution in England. Theeffect of such a counterrevolution would be that the power which wasthe most formidable enemy of France would become her firmest ally, thatWilliam would sink into insignificance, and that the European coalitionof which he was the chief would be dissolved. But what chance wasthere of such a counterrevolution? The English exiles indeed, afterthe fashion of exiles, confidently anticipated a speedy return to theircountry. James himself loudly boasted that his subjects on the otherside of the water, though they had been misled for a moment by thespecious names of religion, liberty, and property, were warmly attachedto him, and would rally round him as soon as he appeared among them. Butthe wary envoy tried in vain to discover any foundation for these hopes. He was certain that they were not warranted by any intelligence whichhad arrived from any part of Great Britain; and he considered them asthe mere daydreams of a feeble mind. He thought it unlikely that theusurper, whose ability and resolution he had, during an unintermittedconflict of ten years, learned to appreciate, would easily part with thegreat prize which had been won by such strenuous exertions and profoundcombinations. It was therefore necessary to consider what arrangementswould be most beneficial to France, on the supposition that it provedimpossible to dislodge William from England. And it was evident that, if William could not be dislodged from England, the arrangement mostbeneficial to France would be that which had been contemplated eighteenmonths before when James had no prospect of a male heir. Ireland mustbe severed from the English crown, purged of the English colonists, reunited to the Church of Rome, placed under the protection of the Houseof Bourbon, and made, in every thing but name, a French province. In war, her resources would be absolutely at the command of her LordParamount. She would furnish his army with recruits. She would furnishhis navy with fine harbours commanding all the great western outletsof the English trade. The strong national and religious antipathywith which her aboriginal population regarded the inhabitants of theneighbouring island would be a sufficient guarantee for their fidelityto that government which could alone protect her against the Saxon. 

On the whole, therefore, it appeared to Avaux that, of the two partiesinto which the Council at Dublin was divided, the Irish party was thatwhich it was for the interest of France to support. He accordinglyconnected himself closely with the chiefs of that party, obtained fromthem the fullest avowals of all that they designed, and was soon able toreport to his government that neither the gentry nor the common peoplewere at all unwilling to become French, [182]

The views of Louvois, incomparably the greatest statesman that Francehad produced since Richelieu, seem to have entirely agreed with those ofAvaux. The best thing, Louvois wrote, that King James could do wouldbe to forget that he had reigned in Great Britain, and to think onlyof putting Ireland into a good condition, and of establishing himselffirmly there. Whether this were the true interest of the House of Stuartmay be doubted. But it was undoubtedly the true interest of the House ofBourbon, [183]

About the Scotch and English exiles, and especially about Melfort, Avaux constantly expressed himself with an asperity hardly to have beenexpected from a man of so much sense and experience. Melfort was ina singularly unfortunate position. He was a renegade: he was a mortalenemy of the liberties of his country: he was of a bad and tyrannicalnature; and yet he was, in some sense, a patriot. The consequence wasthat he was more universally detested than any man of his time. For, while his apostasy and his arbitrary maxims of government made him theabhorrence of England and Scotland, his anxiety for the dignity andintegrity of the empire made him the abhorrence of the Irish and of theFrench. 

The first question to be decided was whether James should remain atDublin, or should put himself at the head of his army in Ulster. On thisquestion the Irish and British factions joined battle. Reasons of nogreat weight were adduced on both sides; for neither party ventured tospeak out. The point really in issue was whether the King should bein Irish or in British hands. If he remained at Dublin, it would bescarcely possible for him to withhold his assent from any bill presentedto him by the Parliament which he had summoned to meet there. He wouldbe forced to plunder, perhaps to attaint, innocent Protestant gentlemenand clergymen by hundreds; and he would thus do irreparable mischief tohis cause on the other side of Saint George's Channel. If he repaired toUlster, he would be within a few hours' sail of Great Britain. As soonas Londonderry had fallen, and it was universally supposed that the fallof Londonderry could not be long delayed, he might cross the seawith part of his forces, and land in Scotland, where his friends weresupposed to be numerous. When he was once on British ground, and in themidst of British adherents, it would no longer be in the power of theIrish to extort his consent to their schemes of spoliation and revenge. 

The discussions in the Council were long and warm. Tyrconnel, who hadjust been created a Duke, advised his master to stay in Dublin. Melfortexhorted his Majesty to set out for Ulster. Avaux exerted allhis influence in support of Tyrconnel; but James, whose personalinclinations were naturally on the British side of the question, determined to follow the advice of Melfort, [184] Avaux was deeplymortified. In his official letters he expressed with great acrimony hiscontempt for the King's character and understanding. On Tyrconnel, whohad said that he despaired of the fortunes of James, and that the realquestion was between the King of France and the Prince of Orange, the ambassador pronounced what was meant to be a warm eulogy, butmay perhaps be more properly called an invective. "If he were a bornFrenchman he could not be more zealous for the interests of France. "[185] The conduct of Melfort, on the other hand, was the subject of aninvective which much resembles eulogy: "He is neither a good Irishmannor a good Frenchman. All his affections are set on his own country. "[186]

Since the King was determined to go northward, Avaux did not choose tobe left behind. The royal party set out, leaving Tyrconnel in chargeat Dublin, and arrived at Charlemont on the thirteenth of April. Thejourney was a strange one. The country all along the road had beencompletely deserted by the industrious population, and laid waste bybands of robbers. "This, " said one of the French officers, "is liketravelling through the deserts of Arabia. " [187] Whatever effects thecolonists had been able to remove were at Londonderry or Enniskillen. The rest had been stolen or destroyed. Avaux informed his court that hehad not been able to get one truss of hay for his horses without sendingfive or six miles. No labourer dared bring any thing for sale lest somemarauder should lay hands on it by the way. The ambassador was put onenight into a miserable taproom full of soldiers smoking, another nightinto a dismantled house without windows or shutters to keep out therain. At Charlemont a bag of oatmeal was with great difficulty, and as amatter of favour, procured for the French legation. There was no wheatenbread, except at the table of the King, who had brought a little flourfrom Dublin, and to whom Avaux had lent a servant who knew how to bake. Those who were honoured with an invitation to the royal table had theirbread and wine measured out to them. Every body else, however high inrank, ate horsecorn, and drank water or detestable beer, made with oatsinstead of barley, and flavoured with some nameless herb as a substitutefor hops, [188] Yet report said that the country between Charlemontand Strabane was even more desolate than the country between Dublin andCharlemont. It was impossible to carry a large stock of provisions. Theroads were so bad and the horses so weak, that the baggage waggonshad all been left far behind. The chief officers of the army wereconsequently in want of necessaries; and the ill-humour which was thenatural effect of these privations was increased by the insensibilityof James, who seemed not to be aware that every body about him was notperfectly comfortable, [189]

On the fourteenth of April the King and his train proceeded to Omagh. The rain fell: the wind blew: the horses could scarcely make theirway through the mud, and in the face of the storm; and the road wasfrequently intersected by torrents which might almost be called rivers. The travellers had to pass several fords where the water was breasthigh. Some of the party fainted from fatigue and hunger. All around laya frightful wilderness. In a journey of forty miles Avaux counted onlythree miserable cabins. Every thing else was rock, bog, and moor. Whenat length the travellers reached Omagh, they found it in ruins. TheProtestants, who were the majority of the inhabitants, had abandoned it, leaving not a wisp of straw nor a cask of liquor. The windows had beenbroken: the chimneys had been beaten in: the very locks and bolts of thedoors had been carried away, [190]

Avaux had never ceased to press the King to return to Dublin; but theseexpostulations had hitherto produced no effect. The obstinacy ofJames, however, was an obstinacy which had nothing in common with manlyresolution, and which, though proof to argument, was easily shaken bycaprice. He received at Omagh, early on the sixteenth of April, letterswhich alarmed him. He learned that a strong body of Protestants was inarms at Strabane, and that English ships of war had been seen near themouth of Lough Foyle. In one minute three messages were sent to summonAvaux to the ruinous chamber in which the royal bed had been prepared. There James, half dressed, and with the air of a man bewildered bysome great shock, announced his resolution to hasten back instantlyto Dublin. Avaux listened, wondered, and approved. Melfort seemedprostrated by despair. The travellers retraced their steps, and, late inthe evening, reached Charlemont. There the King received despatches verydifferent from those which had terrified him a few hours before. The Protestants who had assembled near Strabane had been attacked byHamilton. Under a truehearted leader they would doubtless have stoodtheir ground. But Lundy, who commanded them, had told them that all waslost, had ordered them to shift for themselves, and had set them theexample of flight, [191] They had accordingly retired in confusion toLondonderry. The King's correspondents pronounced it to be impossiblethat Londonderry should hold out. His Majesty had only to appear beforethe gates; and they would instantly fly open. James now changed hismind again, blamed himself for having been persuaded to turn his facesouthward, and, though it was late in the evening, called for hishorses. The horses were in a miserable plight; but, weary and halfstarved as they were, they were saddled. Melfort, completely victorious, carried off his master to the camp. Avaux, after remonstrating to nopurpose, declared that he was resolved to return to Dublin. It maybe suspected that the extreme discomfort which he had undergone hadsomething to do with this resolution. For complaints of that discomfortmake up a large part of his letters; and, in truth, a life passed in thepalaces of Italy, in the neat parlours and gardens of Holland, and inthe luxurious pavilions which adorned the suburbs of Paris, was a badpreparation for the ruined hovels of Ulster. He gave, however, to hismaster a more weighty reason for refusing to proceed northward. Thejourney of James had been undertaken in opposition to the unanimoussense of the Irish, and had excited great alarm among them. Theyapprehended that he meant to quit them, and to make a descent onScotland. They knew that, once landed in Great Britain, he would haveneither the will nor the power to do those things which they mostdesired. Avaux, by refusing to proceed further, gave them an assurancethat, whoever might betray them, France would be their constant friend, [192]

While Avaux was on his way to Dublin, James hastened towardsLondonderry. He found his army concentrated a few miles south of thecity. The French generals who had sailed with him from Brest were in histrain; and two of them, Rosen and Maumont, were placed over the head ofRichard Hamilton, [193] Rosen was a native of Livonia, who had inearly youth become a soldier of fortune, who had fought his way todistinction, and who, though utterly destitute of the graces andaccomplishments characteristic of the Court of Versailles, wasnevertheless high in favour there. His temper was savage: his mannerswere coarse: his language was a strange jargon compounded of variousdialects of French and German. Even those who thought best of him, andwho maintained that his rough exterior covered some good qualities, owned that his looks were against him, and that it would be unpleasantto meet such a figure in the dusk at the corner of a wood, [194] Thelittle that is known of Maumont is to his honour. 

In the camp it was generally expected that Londonderry would fallwithout a blow. Rosen confidently predicted that the mere sight ofthe Irish army would terrify the garrison into submission. But RichardHamilton, who knew the temper of the colonists better, had misgivings. The assailants were sure of one important ally within the walls. Lundy, the Governor, professed the Protestant religion, and had joined inproclaiming William and Mary; but he was in secret communication withthe enemies of his Church and of the Sovereigns to whom he had swornlealty. Some have suspected that he was a concealed Jacobite, and thathe had affected to acquiesce in the Revolution only in order that hemight be better able to assist in bringing about a Restoration: butit is probable that his conduct is rather to be attributed tofaintheartedness and poverty of spirit than to zeal for any publiccause. He seems to have thought resistance hopeless; and in truth, toa military eye, the defences of Londonderry appeared contemptible. The fortifications consisted of a simple wall overgrown with grass andweeds: there was no ditch even before the gates: the drawbridges hadlong been neglected: the chains were rusty and could scarcely be used:the parapets and towers were built after a fashion which might wellmove disciples of Vauban to laughter; and these feeble defences were onalmost every side commanded by heights. Indeed those who laid out thecity had never meant that it should be able to stand a regular siege, and had contented themselves with throwing up works sufficient toprotect the inhabitants against a tumultuary attack of the Celticpeasantry. Avaux assured Louvois that a single French battalion wouldeasily storm such defences. Even if the place should, notwithstandingall disadvantages, be able to repel a large army directed by the scienceand experience of generals who had served under Conde and Turenne, hunger must soon bring the contest to an end. The stock of provisionswas small; and the population had been swollen to seven or eight timesthe ordinary number by a multitude of colonists flying from the rage ofthe natives, [195]

Lundy, therefore, from the time when the Irish army entered Ulster, seems to have given up all thought of serious resistance, He talked sodespondingly that the citizens and his own soldiers murmured againsthim. He seemed, they said, to be bent on discouraging them. Meanwhilethe enemy drew daily nearer and nearer; and it was known that Jameshimself was coming to take the command of his forces. 

Just at this moment a glimpse of hope appeared. On the fourteenth ofApril ships from England anchored in the bay. They had on board tworegiments which had been sent, under the command of a Colonel namedCunningham, to reinforce the garrison. Cunningham and several of hisofficers went on shore and conferred with Lundy. Lundy dissuaded themfrom landing their men. The place, he said, could not hold out. To throwmore troops into it would therefore be worse than useless: for the morenumerous the garrison, the more prisoners would fall into the hands ofthe enemy. The best thing that the two regiments could do would be tosail back to England. He meant, he said, to withdraw himself privately:and the inhabitants must then try to make good terms for themselves. 

He went through the form of holding a council of war; but from thiscouncil he excluded all those officers of the garrison whose sentimentshe knew to be different from his own. Some, who had ordinarily beensummoned on such occasions, and who now came uninvited, were thrust outof the room. Whatever the Governor said was echoed by his creatures. Cunningham and Cunningham's companions could scarcely venture to opposetheir opinion to that of a person whose local knowledge was necessarilyfar superior to theirs, and whom they were by their instructionsdirected to obey. One brave soldier murmured. "Understand this, " hesaid, "to give up Londonderry is to give up Ireland. " But his objectionswere contemptuously overruled, [196] The meeting broke up. Cunninghamand his officers returned to the ships, and made preparations fordeparting. Meanwhile Lundy privately sent a messenger to the headquarters of the enemy, with assurances that the city should be peaceablysurrendered on the first summons. 

But as soon as what had passed in the council of war was whispered aboutthe streets, the spirit of the soldiers and citizens swelled up high andfierce against the dastardly and perfidious chief who had betrayed them. Many of his own officers declared that they no longer thought themselvesbound to obey him. Voices were heard threatening, some that his brainsshould be blown out, some that he should be hanged on the walls. Adeputation was sent to Cunningham imploring him to assume the command. He excused himself on the plausible ground that his orders were totake directions in all things from the Governor, [197] Meanwhile it wasrumoured that the persons most in Lundy's confidence were stealingout of the town one by one. Long after dusk on the evening of theseventeenth it was found that the gates were open and that the keys haddisappeared. The officers who made the discovery took on themselvesto change the passwords and to double the guards. The night, however, passed over without any assault, [198]

After some anxious hours the day broke. The Irish, with James at theirhead, were now within four miles of the city. A tumultuous council ofthe chief inhabitants was called. Some of them vehemently reproached theGovernor to his face with his treachery. He had sold them, they cried, to their deadliest enemy: he had refused admission to the force whichgood King William had sent to defend them. While the altercation wasat the height, the sentinels who paced the ramparts announced that thevanguard of the hostile army was in sight. Lundy had given orders thatthere should be no firing; but his authority was at an end. Two gallantsoldiers, Major Henry Baker and Captain Adam Murray, called the peopleto arms. They were assisted by the eloquence of an aged clergyman, George Walker, rector of the parish of Donaghmore, who had, with manyof his neighbours, taken refuge in Londonderry. The whole of the crowdedcity was moved by one impulse. Soldiers, gentlemen, yeomen, artisans, rushed to the walls and manned the guns. James, who, confident ofsuccess, had approached within a hundred yards of the southern gate, was received with a shout of "No surrender, " and with a fire from thenearest bastion. An officer of his staff fell dead by his side. TheKing and his attendants made all haste to get out of reach of the cannonballs. Lundy, who was now in imminent danger of being torn limb fromlimb by those whom he had betrayed, hid himself in an inner chamber. There he lay during the day, and at night, with the generous and politicconnivance of Murray and Walker, made his escape in the disguise of aporter, [199] The part of the wall from which he let himself down isstill pointed out; and people still living talk of having tasted thefruit of a pear tree which assisted him in his descent. His name is, tothis day, held in execration by the Protestants of the North of Ireland;and his effigy was long, and perhaps still is, annually hung and burnedby them with marks of abhorrence similar to those which in England areappropriated to Guy Faux. 

And now Londonderry was left destitute of all military and of all civilgovernment. No man in the town had a right to command any other: thedefences were weak: the provisions were scanty: an incensed tyrant anda great army were at the gates. But within was that which has often, in desperate extremities, retrieved the fallen fortunes of nations. Betrayed, deserted, disorganized, unprovided with resources, begirt withenemies, the noble city was still no easy conquest. Whatever anengineer might think of the strength of the ramparts, all that was mostintelligent, most courageous, most highspirited among the Englishry ofLeinster and of Northern Ulster was crowded behind them. The number ofmen capable of bearing arms within the walls was seven thousand; and thewhole world could not have furnished seven thousand men better qualifiedto meet a terrible emergency with clear judgment, dauntless valour, and stubborn patience. They were all zealous Protestants; and theProtestantism of the majority was tinged with Puritanism. They had muchin common with that sober, resolute, and Godfearing class out of whichCromwell had formed his unconquerable army. But the peculiar situationin which they had been placed had developed in them some qualitieswhich, in the mother country, might possibly have remained latent. TheEnglish inhabitants of Ireland were an aristocratic caste, which hadbeen enabled, by superior civilisation, by close union, by sleeplessvigilance, by cool intrepidity, to keep in subjection a numerous andhostile population. Almost every one of them had been in some measuretrained both to military and to political functions. Almost every onewas familiar with the use of arms, and was accustomed to bear a part inthe administration of justice. It was remarked by contemporary writersthat the colonists had something of the Castilian haughtiness of manner, though none of the Castilian indolence, that they spoke Englishwith remarkable purity and correctness, and that they were, both asmilitiamen and as jurymen, superior to their kindred in the mothercountry, [200] In all ages, men situated as the Anglosaxons in Irelandwere situated have had peculiar vices and peculiar virtues, the vicesand virtues of masters, as opposed to the vices and virtues of slaves. The member of a dominant race is, in his dealings with the subject race, seldom indeed fraudulent, --for fraud is the resource of the weak, --butimperious, insolent, and cruel. Towards his brethren, on the other hand, his conduct is generally just, kind, and even noble. His selfrespectleads him to respect all who belong to his own order. His interestimpels him to cultivate a good understanding with those whose prompt, strenuous, and courageous assistance may at any moment be necessary topreserve his property and life. It is a truth ever present to his mindthat his own wellbeing depends on the ascendency of the class to whichhe belongs. His very selfishness therefore is sublimed into publicspirit: and this public spirit is stimulated to fierce enthusiasm bysympathy, by the desire of applause, and by the dread of infamy. For theonly opinion which he values is the opinion of his fellows; and in theiropinion devotion to the common cause is the most sacred of duties. Thecharacter, thus formed, has two aspects. Seen on one side, it must beregarded by every well constituted mind with disapprobation. Seen onthe other, it irresistibly extorts applause. The Spartan, smiting andspurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what hewell knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to becontemplated without admiration. To a superficial observer it may seemstrange that so much evil and so much good should be found together. But in truth the good and the evil, which at first sight appear almostincompatible, are closely connected, and have a common origin. It wasbecause the Spartan had been taught to revere himself as one of a raceof sovereigns, and to look down on all that was not Spartan as of aninferior species, that he had no fellow feeling for the miserable serfswho crouched before him, and that the thought of submitting to a foreignmaster, or of turning his back before an enemy, never, even in the lastextremity, crossed his mind. Something of the same character, compoundedof tyrant and hero, has been found in all nations which have domineeredover more numerous nations. But it has nowhere in modern Europe shownitself so conspicuously as in Ireland. With what contempt, with whatantipathy, the ruling minority in that country long regarded the subjectmajority may be best learned from the hateful laws which, within thememory of men still living, disgraced the Irish statute book. Those lawswere at length annulled: but the spirit which had dictated them survivedthem, and even at this day sometimes breaks out in excesses perniciousto the commonwealth and dishonourable to the Protestant religion. Nevertheless it is impossible to deny that the English colonists havehad, with too many of the faults, all the noblest virtues of a sovereigncaste. The faults have, as was natural, been most offensively exhibitedin times of prosperity and security: the virtues have been mostresplendent in times of distress and peril; and never were those virtuesmore signally displayed than by the defenders of Londonderry, when theirGovernor had abandoned them, and when the camp of their mortal enemy waspitched before their walls. 

No sooner had the first burst of the rage excited by the perfidy ofLundy spent itself than those whom he had betrayed proceeded, with agravity and prudence worthy of the most renowned senates, to provide forthe order and defence of the city. Two governors were elected, Bakerand Walker. Baker took the chief military command. Walker's especialbusiness was to preserve internal tranquillity, and to dole out suppliesfrom the magazines, [201] The inhabitants capable of bearing arms weredistributed into eight regiments. Colonels, captains, and subordinateofficers were appointed. In a few hours every man knew his post, and wasready to repair to it as soon as the beat of the drum was heard. Thatmachinery, by which Oliver had, in the preceding generation, kept upamong his soldiers so stern and so pertinacious an enthusiasm, was againemployed with not less complete success. Preaching and praying occupieda large part of every day. Eighteen clergymen of the Established Churchand seven or eight nonconformist ministers were within the walls. Theyall exerted themselves indefatigably to rouse and sustain the spirit ofthe people. Among themselves there was for the time entire harmony. Alldisputes about church government, postures, ceremonies, were forgotten. The Bishop, having found that his lectures on passive obedience werederided even by the Episcopalians, had withdrawn himself, first toRaphoe, and then to England, and was preaching in a chapel in London, [202] On the other hand, a Scotch fanatic named Hewson, who had exhortedthe Presbyterians not to ally themselves with such as refused tosubscribe the Covenant, had sunk under the well merited disgust andscorn of the whole Protestant community, [203] The aspect of theCathedral was remarkable. Cannon were planted on the summit of the broadtower which has since given place to a tower of different proportions. Ammunition was stored in the vaults. In the choir the liturgy of theAnglican Church was read every morning. Every afternoon the Dissenterscrowded to a simpler worship, [204]

James had waited twenty-four hours, expecting, as it should seem, the performance of Lundy's promises; and in twenty-four hours thearrangements for the defence of Londonderry were complete. On theevening of the nineteenth of April, a trumpeter came to the southerngate, and asked whether the engagements into which the Governor hadentered would be fulfilled. The answer was that the men who guardedthese walls had nothing to do with the Governor's engagements, and weredetermined to resist to the last. 

On the following day a messenger of higher rank was sent, ClaudeHamilton, Lord Strabane, one of the few Roman Catholic peers of Ireland. Murray, who had been appointed to the command of one of the eightregiments into which the garrison was distributed, advanced fromthe gate to meet the flag of truce; and a short conference was held. Strabane had been authorised to make large promises. The citizens shouldhave a free pardon for all that was past if they would submit to theirlawful Sovereign. Murray himself should have a colonel's commission, anda thousand pounds in money. "The men of Londonderry, " answered Murray, "have done nothing that requires a pardon, and own no Sovereign but KingWilliam and Queen Mary. It will not be safe for your Lordship to staylonger, or to return on the same errand. Let me have the honour ofseeing you through the lines. " [205]

James had been assured, and had fully expected, that the city wouldyield as soon as it was known that he was before the walls. Findinghimself mistaken, he broke loose from the control of Melfort, anddetermined to return instantly to Dublin. Rosen accompanied the King. The direction of the siege was intrusted to Maumont. Richard Hamiltonwas second, and Pusignan third, in command. 

The operations now commenced in earnest. The besiegers began bybattering the town. It was soon on fire in several places. Roofs andupper stories of houses fell in, and crushed the inmates. During a shorttime the garrison, many of whom had never before seen the effect of acannonade, seemed to be discomposed by the crash of chimneys, and bythe heaps of ruin mingled with disfigured corpses. But familiarity withdanger and horror produced in a few hours the natural effect. The spiritof the people rose so high that their chiefs thought it safe to act onthe offensive. On the twenty-first of April a sally was made underthe command of Murray. The Irish stood their ground resolutely; and afurious and bloody contest took place. Maumont, at the head of a body ofcavalry, flew to the place where the fight was raging. He was struck inthe head by a musket ball, and fell a corpse. The besiegers lost severalother officers, and about two hundred men, before the colonists couldbe driven in. Murray escaped with difficulty. His horse was killed underhim; and he was beset by enemies: but he was able to defend himself tillsome of his friends made a rush from the gate to his rescue, with oldWalker at their head, [206]

In consequence of the death of Maumont, Hamilton was once morecommander of the Irish army. His exploits in that post did not raise hisreputation. He was a fine gentleman and a brave soldier; but he had nopretensions to the character of a great general, and had never, in hislife, seen a siege, [207] Pusignan had more science and energy. ButPusignan survived Maumont little more than a fortnight. At four inthe morning of the sixth of May, the garrison made another sally, tookseveral flags, and killed many of the besiegers. Pusignan, fightinggallantly, was shot through the body. The wound was one which a skilfulsurgeon might have cured: but there was no such surgeon in the Irishcamp; and the communication with Dublin was slow and irregular. Thepoor Frenchman died, complaining bitterly of the barbarous ignoranceand negligence which had shortened his days. A medical man, who had beensent down express from the capital, arrived after the funeral. James, in consequence, as it should seem, of this disaster, established a dailypost between Dublin Castle and Hamilton's head quarters. Even by thisconveyance letters did not travel very expeditiously: for the courierswent on foot; and, from fear probably of the Enniskilleners, took acircuitous route from military post to military post, [208]

May passed away: June arrived; and still Londonderry held out. Therehad been many sallies and skirmishes with various success: but, on thewhole, the advantage had been with the garrison. Several officers ofnote had been carried prisoners into the city; and two French banners, torn after hard fighting from the besiegers, had been hung as trophiesin the chancel of the Cathedral. It seemed that the siege must be turnedinto a blockade. But before the hope of reducing the town by main forcewas relinquished, it was determined to make a great effort. The pointselected for assault was an outwork called Windmill Hill, which wasnot far from the southern gate. Religious stimulants were employedto animate the courage of the forlorn hope. Many volunteers boundthemselves by oath to make their way into the works or to perish in theattempt. Captain Butler, son of the Lord Mountgarret, undertook to leadthe sworn men to the attack. On the walls the colonists were drawn up inthree ranks. The office of those who were behind was to load the musketsof those who were in front. The Irish came on boldly and with a fearfuluproar, but after long and hard fighting were driven back. The womenof Londonderry were seen amidst the thickest fire serving out water andammunition to their husbands and brothers. In one place, where the wallwas only seven feet high, Butler and some of his sworn men succeeded inreaching the top; but they were all killed or made prisoners. At length, after four hundred of the Irish had fallen, their chiefs ordered aretreat to be sounded, [209]

Nothing was left but to try the effect of hunger. It was known that thestock of food in the city was but slender. Indeed it was thought strangethat the supplies should have held out so long. Every precaution was nowtaken against the introduction of provisions. All the avenues leading tothe city by land were closely guarded. On the south were encamped, alongthe left bank of the Foyle, the horsemen who had followed Lord Galmoyfrom the valley of the Barrow. Their chief was of all the Irish captainsthe most dreaded and the most abhorred by the Protestants. For he haddisciplined his men with rare skill and care; and many frightful storieswere told of his barbarity and perfidy. Long lines of tents, occupied bythe infantry of Butler and O'Neil, of Lord Slane and Lord Gormanstown, by Nugent's Westmeath men, by Eustace's Kildare men, and by Cavanagh'sKerry men, extended northward till they again approached the water side, [210] The river was fringed with forts and batteries which no vesselcould pass without great peril. After some time it was determined tomake the security still more complete by throwing a barricade across thestream, about a mile and a half below the city. Several boats full ofstones were sunk. A row of stakes was driven into the bottom of theriver. Large pieces of fir wood, strongly bound together, formed a boomwhich was more than a quarter of a mile in length, and which was firmlyfastened to both shores, by cables a foot thick, [211] A huge stone, towhich the cable on the left bank was attached, was removed many yearslater, for the purpose of being polished and shaped into a column. Butthe intention was abandoned, and the rugged mass still lies, notmany yards from its original site, amidst the shades which surround apleasant country house named Boom Hall. Hard by is the well from whichthe besiegers drank. A little further off is the burial ground wherethey laid their slain, and where even in our own time the spade of thegardener has struck upon many sculls and thighbones at a short distancebeneath the turf and flowers. 

While these things were passing in the North, James was holding hiscourt at Dublin. On his return thither from Londonderry he receivedintelligence that the French fleet, commanded by the Count of ChateauRenaud, had anchored in Bantry Bay, and had put on shore a largequantity of military stores and a supply of money. Herbert, who hadjust been sent to those seas with an English squadron for the purposeof intercepting the communications between Britanny and Ireland, learnedwhere the enemy lay, and sailed into the bay with the intention ofgiving battle. But the wind was unfavourable to him: his force wasgreatly inferior to that which was opposed to him; and after somefiring, which caused no serious loss to either side, he thought itprudent to stand out to sea, while the French retired into the recessesof the harbour. He steered for Scilly, where he expected to findreinforcements; and Chateau Renaud, content with the credit which he hadacquired, and afraid of losing it if he staid, hastened back to Brest, though earnestly intreated by James to come round to Dublin. 

Both sides claimed the victory. The Commons at Westminster absurdlypassed a vote of thanks to Herbert. James, not less absurdly, orderedbonfires to be lighted, and a Te Deum to be sung. But these marks of joyby no means satisfied Avaux, whose national vanity was too strong evenfor his characteristic prudence and politeness. He complained that Jameswas so unjust and ungrateful as to attribute the result of the lateaction to the reluctance with which the English seamen fought againsttheir rightful King and their old commander, and that his Majesty didnot seem to be well pleased by being told that they were flying over theocean pursued by the triumphant French. Dover, too, was a bad Frenchman. He seemed to take no pleasure in the defeat of his countrymen, and hadbeen heard to say that the affair in Bantry Bay did not deserve to becalled a battle, [212]

On the day after the Te Deum had been sung at Dublin for this indecisiveskirmish, the Parliament convoked by James assembled. The number oftemporal peers of Ireland, when he arrived in that kingdom, was about ahundred. Of these only fourteen obeyed his summons. Of the fourteen, ten were Roman Catholics. By the reversing of old attainders, and by newcreations, seventeen more Lords, all Roman Catholics, were introducedinto the Upper House. The Protestant Bishops of Meath, Ossory, Cork, andLimerick, whether from a sincere conviction that they could not lawfullywithhold their obedience even from a tyrant, or from a vain hope thatthe heart even of a tyrant might be softened by their patience, madetheir appearance in the midst of their mortal enemies. 

The House of Commons consisted almost exclusively of Irishmen andPapists. With the writs the returning officers had received fromTyrconnel letters naming the persons whom he wished to see elected. Thelargest constituent bodies in the kingdom were at this time very small. For scarcely any but Roman Catholics dared to show their faces; and theRoman Catholic freeholders were then very few, not more, it is said, in some counties, than ten or twelve. Even in cities so considerableas Cork, Limerick, and Galway, the number of persons who, under the newCharters, were entitled to vote did not exceed twenty-four. About twohundred and fifty members took their seats. Of these only six wereProtestants, [213] The list of the names sufficiently indicates thereligious and political temper of the assembly. Alone among the Irishparliaments of that age, this parliament was filled with Dermotsand Geohagans, O'Neils and O'Donovans, Macmahons, Macnamaras, andMacgillicuddies. The lead was taken by a few men whose abilities hadbeen improved by the study of the law, or by experience acquiredin foreign countries. The Attorney General, Sir Richard Nagle, whorepresented the county of Cork, was allowed, even by Protestants, tobe an acute and learned jurist. Francis Plowden, the Commissioner ofRevenue, who sate for Bannow, and acted as chief minister of finance, was an Englishman, and, as he had been a principal agent of the Order ofJesuits in money matters, must be supposed to have been an excellentman of business, [214] Colonel Henry Luttrell, member for the county ofCarlow, had served long in France, and had brought back to his nativeIreland a sharpened intellect and polished manners, a flattering tongue, some skill in war, and much more skill in intrigue. His elder brother, Colonel Simon Luttrell, who was member for the county of Dublin, andmilitary governor of the capital, had also resided in France, and, though inferior to Henry in parts and activity, made a highlydistinguished figure among the adherents of James. The other member forthe county of Dublin was Colonel Patrick Sarsfield. This gallant officerwas regarded by the natives as one of themselves: for his ancestors onthe paternal side, though originally English, were among those earlycolonists who were proverbially said to have become more Irish thanIrishmen. His mother was of noble Celtic blood; and he was firmlyattached to the old religion. He had inherited an estate of about twothousand a year, and was therefore one of the wealthiest Roman Catholicsin the kingdom. His knowledge of courts and camps was such as few of hiscountrymen possessed. He had long borne a commission in the English LifeGuards, had lived much about Whitehall, and had fought bravely underMonmouth on the Continent, and against Monmouth at Sedgemoor. He had, Avaux wrote, more personal influence than any man in Ireland, and wasindeed a gentleman of eminent merit, brave, upright, honourable, carefulof his men in quarters, and certain to be always found at their head inthe day of battle. His intrepidity, his frankness, his boundless goodnature, his stature, which far exceeded that of ordinary men, and thestrength which he exerted in personal conflict, gained for him theaffectionate admiration of the populace. It is remarkable that theEnglishry generally respected him as a valiant, skilful, and generousenemy, and that, even in the most ribald farces which were performed bymountebanks in Smithfield, he was always excepted from the disgracefulimputations which it was then the fashion to throw on the Irish nation, [215]

But men like these were rare in the House of Commons which had met atDublin. It is no reproach to the Irish nation, a nation which has sincefurnished its full proportion of eloquent and accomplished senators, tosay that, of all the parliaments which have met in the British islands, Barebone's parliament not excepted, the assembly convoked by Jameswas the most deficient in all the qualities which a legislature shouldpossess. The stern domination of a hostile caste had blighted thefaculties of the Irish gentleman. If he was so fortunate as to havelands, he had generally passed his life on them, shooting, fishing, carousing, and making love among his vassals. If his estate had beenconfiscated, he had wandered about from bawn to bawn and from cabin tocabin, levying small contributions, and living at the expense of othermen. He had never sate in the House of Commons: he had never even takenan active part at an election: he had never been a magistrate: scarcelyever had he been on a grand jury. He had therefore absolutely noexperience of public affairs. The English squire of that age, thoughassuredly not a very profound or enlightened politician, was a statesmanand a philosopher when compared with the Roman Catholic squire ofMunster or Connaught. 

The Parliaments of Ireland had then no fixed place of assembling. Indeedthey met so seldom and broke up so speedily that it would hardly havebeen worth while to build and furnish a palace for their special use. Itwas not till the Hanoverian dynasty had been long on the throne, that asenate house which sustains a comparison with the finest compositionsof Inigo Jones arose in College Green. On the spot where the porticoand dome of the Four Courts now overlook the Liffey, stood, in theseventeenth century, an ancient building which had once been a conventof Dominican friars, but had since the Reformation been appropriated tothe use of the legal profession, and bore the name of the King's Inns. There accommodation had been provided for the parliament. On the seventhof May, James, dressed in royal robes and wearing a crown, took hisseat on the throne in the House of Lords, and ordered the Commons to besummoned to the bar, [216]

He then expressed his gratitude to the natives of Ireland for havingadhered to his cause when the people of his other kingdoms had desertedhim. His resolution to abolish all religious disabilities in all hisdominions he declared to be unalterable. He invited the houses to takethe Act of Settlement into consideration, and to redress the injuriesof which the old proprietors of the soil had reason to complain. Heconcluded by acknowledging in warm terms his obligations to the King ofFrance, [217]

When the royal speech had been pronounced, the Chancellor directed theCommons to repair to their chamber and to elect a Speaker. They chosethe Attorney General Nagle; and the choice was approved by the King, [218]

The Commons next passed resolutions expressing warm gratitude both toJames and to Lewis. Indeed it was proposed to send a deputation with anaddress to Avaux; but the Speaker pointed out the gross impropriety ofsuch a step; and, on this occasion, his interference was successful, [219] It was seldom however that the House was disposed to listento reason. The debates were all rant and tumult. Judge Daly, a RomanCatholic, but an honest and able man, could not refrain from lamentingthe indecency and folly with which the members of his Church carriedon the work of legislation. Those gentlemen, he said, were not aParliament: they were a mere rabble: they resembled nothing so much asthe mob of fishermen and market gardeners, who, at Naples, yelled andthrew up their caps in honour of Massaniello. It was painful to hearmember after member talking wild nonsense about his own losses, andclamouring for an estate, when the lives of all and the independence oftheir common country were in peril. These words were spoken in private;but some talebearer repeated them to the Commons. A violent storm brokeforth. Daly was ordered to attend at the bar; and there was little doubtthat he would be severely dealt with. But, just when he was at thedoor, one of the members rushed in, shouting, "Good news: Londonderryis taken. " The whole House rose. All the hats were flung into the air. Three loud huzzas were raised. Every heart was softened by the happytidings. Nobody would hear of punishment at such a moment. The orderfor Daly's attendance was discharged amidst cries of "No submission; nosubmission; we pardon him. " In a few hours it was known thatLondonderry held out as obstinately as ever. This transaction, in itselfunimportant, deserves to be recorded, as showing how destitute thatHouse of Commons was of the qualities which ought to be found in thegreat council of a kingdom. And this assembly, without experience, without gravity, and without temper, was now to legislate on questionswhich would have tasked to the utmost the capacity of the greateststatesmen, [220]

One Act James induced them to pass which would have been most honourableto him and to them, if there were not abundant proofs that it was meantto be a dead letter. It was an Act purporting to grant entire liberty ofconscience to all Christian sects. On this occasion a proclamation wasput forth announcing in boastful language to the English people thattheir rightful King had now signally refuted those slanderers who hadaccused him of affecting zeal for religious liberty merely in order toserve a turn. If he were at heart inclined to persecution, would he nothave persecuted the Irish Protestants? He did not want power. He did notwant provocation. Yet at Dublin, where the members of his Church werethe majority, as at Westminister, where they were a minority, hehad firmly adhered to the principles laid down in his much malignedDeclaration of Indulgence, [221] Unfortunately for him, the same windwhich carried his fair professions to England carried thither alsoevidence that his professions were insincere. A single law, worthy ofTurgot or of Franklin, seemed ludicrously out of place in the midst of acrowd of laws which would have disgraced Gardiner or Alva. 

A necessary preliminary to the vast work of spoliation and slaughteron which the legislators of Dublin were bent, was an Act annulling theauthority which the English Parliament, both as the supreme legislatureand as the supreme Court of Appeal, had hitherto exercised overIreland, [222] This Act was rapidly passed; and then followed, in quicksuccession, confiscations and proscriptions on a gigantic scale. Thepersonal estates of absentees above the age of seventeen years weretransferred to the King. When lay property was thus invaded, it was notlikely that the endowments which had been, in contravention of everysound principle, lavished on the Church of the minority would be spared. To reduce those endowments, without prejudice to existing interests, would have been a reform worthy of a good prince and of a goodparliament. But no such reform would satisfy the vindictive bigots whosate at the King's Inns. By one sweeping Act, the greater part of thetithe was transferred from the Protestant to the Roman Catholicclergy; and the existing incumbents were left, without one farthingof compensation, to die of hunger, [223] A Bill repealing the Act ofSettlement and transferring many thousands of square miles from Saxon toCeltic landlords was brought in and carried by acclamation, [224]

Of legislation such as this it is impossible to speak too severely:but for the legislators there are excuses which it is the duty of thehistorian to notice. They acted unmercifully, unjustly, unwisely. But itwould be absurd to expect mercy, justice, or wisdom from a class of menfirst abased by many years of oppression, and then maddened by thejoy of a sudden deliverance, and armed with irresistible power. Therepresentatives of the Irish nation were, with few exceptions, rudeand ignorant. They had lived in a state of constant irritation. Witharistocratical sentiments they had been in a servile position. With thehighest pride of blood, they had been exposed to daily affronts, such asmight well have roused the choler of the humblest plebeian. In sight ofthe fields and castles which they regarded as their own, they had beenglad to be invited by a peasant to partake of his whey and his potatoes. Those violent emotions of hatred and cupidity which the situation of thenative gentleman could scarcely fail to call forth appeared to him underthe specious guise of patriotism and piety. For his enemies were theenemies of his nation; and the same tyranny which had robbed him of hispatrimony had robbed his Church of vast wealth bestowed on her bythe devotion of an earlier age. How was power likely to be used byan uneducated and inexperienced man, agitated by strong desires andresentments which he mistook for sacred duties? And, when two or threehundred such men were brought together in one assembly, what was to beexpected but that the passions which each had long nursed in silencewould be at once matured into fearful vigour by the influence ofsympathy?

Between James and his parliament there was little in common, excepthatred of the Protestant religion. He was an Englishman. Superstitionhad not utterly extinguished all national feeling in his mind; and hecould not but be displeased by the malevolence with which his Celticsupporters regarded the race from which he sprang. The range of hisintellectual vision was small. Yet it was impossible that, havingreigned in England, and looking constantly forward to the day when heshould reign in England once more, he should not take a wider view ofpolitics than was taken by men who had no objects out of Ireland. Thefew Irish Protestants who still adhered to him, and the British nobles, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, who had followed him into exile, implored him to restrain the violence of the rapacious and vindictivesenate which he had convoked. They with peculiar earnestness imploredhim not to consent to the repeal of the Act of Settlement. On whatsecurity, they asked, could any man invest his money or give a portionto his children, if he could not rely on positive laws and on theuninterrupted possession of many years? The military adventurers amongwhom Cromwell portioned out the soil might perhaps be regarded aswrongdoers. But how large a part of their estates had passed, by fairpurchase, into other hands! How much money had proprietors borrowed onmortgage, on statute merchant, on statute staple! How many capitalistshad, trusting to legislative acts and to royal promises, come overfrom England, and bought land in Ulster and Leinster, without the leastmisgiving as to the title! What a sum had those capitalists expended, during a quarter of a century, in building; draining, inclosing, planting! The terms of the compromise which Charles the Second hadsanctioned might not be in all respects just. But was one injustice tobe redressed by committing another injustice more monstrous still? Andwhat effect was likely to be produced in England by the cry of thousandsof innocent English families whom an English king had doomed to ruin?The complaints of such a body of sufferers might delay, might prevent, the Restoration to which all loyal subjects were eagerly lookingforward; and, even if his Majesty should, in spite of those complaints, be happily restored, he would to the end of his life feel the perniciouseffects of the injustice which evil advisers were now urging him tocommit. He would find that, in trying to quiet one set of malecontents, he had created another. As surely as he yielded to the clamour raised atDublin for a repeal of the Act of Settlement, he would, from the dayon which he returned to Westminster, be assailed by as loud andpertinacious a clamour for a repeal of that repeal. He could not but beaware that no English Parliament, however loyal, would permit such lawsas were now passing through the Irish Parliament to stand. Had he madeup his mind to take the part of Ireland against the universal sense ofEngland? If so, to what could he look forward but another banishmentand another deposition? Or would he, when he had recovered the greaterkingdom, revoke the boors by which, in his distress, he had purchasedthe help of the smaller? It might seem an insult to him even to suggestthat he could harbour the thought of such unprincely, of such unmanly, perfidy. Yet what other course would be left to him? And was it notbetter for him to refuse unreasonable concessions now than to retractthose concessions hereafter in a manner which must bring on himreproaches insupportable to a noble mind? His situation was doubtlessembarrassing. Yet in this case, as in other cases, it would be foundthat the path of justice was the path of wisdom, [225]

Though James had, in his speech at the opening of the session, declaredagainst the Act of Settlement, he felt that these arguments wereunanswerable. He held several conferences with the leading members ofthe House of Commons, and earnestly recommended moderation. But hisexhortations irritated the passions which he wished to allay. Many ofthe native gentry held high and violent language. It was impudent, theysaid, to talk about the rights of purchasers. How could right spring outof wrong? People who chose to buy property acquired by injustice musttake the consequences of their folly and cupidity. It was clear that theLower House was altogether impracticable. James had, four yearsbefore, refused to make the smallest concession to the most obsequiousparliament that has ever sat in England; and it might have been expectedthat the obstinacy, which he had never wanted when it was a vice, wouldnot have failed him now when it would have been a virtue. During a shorttime he seemed determined to act justly. He even talked of dissolvingthe parliament. The chiefs of the old Celtic families, on theother hand, said publicly that, if he did not give them back theirinheritance, they would not fight for his. His very soldiers railed onhim in the streets of Dublin. At length he determined to go down himselfto the House of Peers, not in his robes and crown, but in the garb inwhich he had been used to attend debates at Westminster, and personallyto solicit the Lords to put some check on the violence of the Commons. But just as he was getting into his coach for this purpose he wasstopped by Avaux. Avaux was as zealous as any Irishman for the billswhich the Commons were urging forward. It was enough for him that thosebills seemed likely to make the enmity between England and Irelandirreconcileable. His remonstrances induced James to abstain from openlyopposing the repeal of the Act of Settlement. Still the unfortunateprince continued to cherish some faint hope that the law for which theCommons were so zealous would be rejected, or at least modified, by thePeers. Lord Granard, one of the few Protestant noblemen who sate in thatparliament, exerted himself strenuously on the side of public faith andsound policy. The King sent him a message of thanks. "We Protestants, "said Granard to Powis who brought the message, "are few in number. We can do little. His Majesty should try his influence with the RomanCatholics. " "His Majesty, " answered Powis with an oath, "dares not saywhat he thinks. " A few days later James met Granard riding towards theparliament house. "Where are you going, my Lord?" said the King. "Toenter my protest, Sir, " answered Granard, "against the repeal of the Actof Settlement. " "You are right, " said the King: "but I am fallen intothe hands of people who will ram that and much more down my throat. "[226]

James yielded to the will of the Commons; but the unfavourableimpression which his short and feeble resistance had made upon them wasnot to be removed by his submission. They regarded him with profounddistrust; they considered him as at heart an Englishman; and not a daypassed without some indication of this feeling. They were in no haste togrant him a supply. One party among them planned an address urging himto dismiss Melfort as an enemy of their nation. Another party drew upa bill for deposing all the Protestant Bishops, even the four who werethen actually sitting in Parliament. It was not without difficulty thatAvaux and Tyrconnel, whose influence in the Lower House far exceeded theKing's, could restrain the zeal of the majority, [227]

It is remarkable that, while the King was losing the confidence andgood will of the Irish Commons by faintly defending against them, inone quarter, the institution of property, he was himself, in anotherquarter, attacking that institution with a violence, if possible, more reckless than theirs. He soon found that no money came into hisExchequer. The cause was sufficiently obvious. Trade was at an end. Floating capital had been withdrawn in great masses from the island. Ofthe fixed capital much had been destroyed, and the rest was lyingidle. Thousands of those Protestants who were the most industrious andintelligent part of the population had emigrated to England. Thousandshad taken refuge in the places which still held out for William andMary. Of the Roman Catholic peasantry who were in the vigour of life themajority had enlisted in the army or had joined gangs of plunderers. Thepoverty of the treasury was the necessary effect of the poverty of thecountry: public prosperity could be restored only by the restorationof private prosperity; and private prosperity could be restored onlyby years of peace and security. James was absurd enough to imagine thatthere was a more speedy and efficacious remedy. He could, he conceived, at once extricate himself from his financial difficulties by the simpleprocess of calling a farthing a shilling. The right of coining wasundoubtedly a flower of the prerogative; and, in his view, the right ofcoining included the right of debasing the coin. Pots, pans, knockers ofdoors, pieces of ordnance which had long been past use, were carried tothe mint. In a short time lumps of base metal, nominally worth near amillion sterling, intrinsically worth about a sixtieth part of that sum, were in circulation. A royal edict declared these pieces to be legaltender in all cases whatever. A mortgage for a thousand pounds wascleared off by a bag of counters made out of old kettles. The creditorswho complained to the Court of Chancery were told by Fitton to taketheir money and be gone. But of all classes the tradesmen of Dublin, who were generally Protestants, were the greatest losers. At first, ofcourse, they raised their demands: but the magistrates of the city tookon themselves to meet this heretical machination by putting forth atariff regulating prices. Any man who belonged to the caste nowdominant might walk into a shop, lay on the counter a bit of brass worththreepence, and carry off goods to the value of half a guinea. Legalredress was out of the question. Indeed the sufferers thought themselveshappy if, by the sacrifice of their stock in trade, they could redeemtheir limbs and their lives. There was not a baker's shop in the cityround which twenty or thirty soldiers were not constantly prowling. Somepersons who refused the base money were arrested by troopers and carriedbefore the Provost Marshal, who cursed them, swore at them, locked themup in dark cells, and, by threatening to hang them at their own doors, soon overcame their resistance. Of all the plagues of that timenone made a deeper or a more lasting impression on the minds of theProtestants of Dublin than the plague of the brass money, [228] To therecollection of the confusion and misery which had been produced byJames's coin must be in part ascribed the strenuous opposition which, thirty-five years later, large classes, firmly attached to the House ofHanover, offered to the government of George the First in the affair ofWood's patent. 

There can be no question that James, in thus altering, by his ownauthority, the terms of all the contracts in the kingdom, assumed apower which belonged only to the whole legislature. Yet the Commons didnot remonstrate. There was no power, however unconstitutional, whichthey were not willing to concede to him, as long as he used it to crushand plunder the English population. On the other hand, they respected noprerogative, however ancient, however legitimate, however salutary, ifthey apprehended that he might use it to protect the race which theyabhorred. They were not satisfied till they had extorted his reluctantconsent to a portentous law, a law without a parallel in the history ofcivilised countries, the great Act of Attainder. 

A list was framed containing between two and three thousand names. Atthe top was half the peerage of Ireland. Then came baronets, knights, clergymen, squires, merchants, yeomen, artisans, women, children. No investigation was made. Any member who wished to rid himself of acreditor, a rival, a private enemy, gave in the name to the clerk at thetable, and it was generally inserted without discussion. The onlydebate of which any account has come down to us related to the Earl ofStrafford. He had friends in the House who ventured to offer somethingin his favour. But a few words from Simon Luttrell settled the question. "I have, " he said, "heard the King say some hard things of that lord. "This was thought sufficient, and the name of Strafford stands fifth inthe long table of the proscribed, [229]

Days were fixed before which those whose names were on the listwere required to surrender themselves to such justice as was thenadministered to English Protestants in Dublin. If a proscribed personwas in Ireland, he must surrender himself by the tenth of August. Ifhe had left Ireland since the fifth of November 1688, he must surrenderhimself by the first of September. If he had left Ireland before thefifth of November 1688, he must surrender himself by the first ofOctober. If he failed to appear by the appointed day, he was to behanged, drawn, and quartered without a trial, and his property was tobe confiscated. It might be physically impossible for him to deliverhimself up within the time fixed by the Act. He might be bedridden. He might be in the West Indies. He might be in prison. Indeed therenotoriously were such cases. Among the attainted Lords was Mountjoy. Hehad been induced by the villany of Tyrconnel to trust himself at SaintGermains: he had been thrown into the Bastile: he was still lying there;and the Irish parliament was not ashamed to enact that, unless he could, within a few weeks, make his escape from his cell, and present himselfat Dublin, he should be put to death, [230]

As it was not even pretended that there had been any inquiry into theguilt of those who were thus proscribed, as not a single one among themhad been heard in his own defence, and as it was certain that it wouldbe physically impossible for many of them to surrender themselvesin time, it was clear that nothing but a large exercise of the royalprerogative of mercy could prevent the perpetration of iniquitiesso horrible that no precedent could be found for them even in thelamentable history of the troubles of Ireland. The Commons thereforedetermined that the royal prerogative of mercy should be limited. Several regulations were devised for the purpose of making the passingof pardons difficult and costly: and finally it was enacted that everypardon granted by his Majesty, after the end of November 1689, to any ofthe many hundreds of persons who had been sentenced to death without atrial, should be absolutely void and of none effect. Sir Richard Naglecame in state to the bar of the Lords and presented the bill with aspeech worthy of the occasion. "Many of the persons here attainted, "said he, "have been proved traitors by such evidence as satisfies us. Asto the rest we have followed common fame. " [231]

With such reckless barbarity was the list framed that fanaticalroyalists, who were, at that very time, hazarding their property, their liberty, their lives, in the cause of James, were not secure fromproscription. The most learned man of whom the Jacobite party couldboast was Henry Dodwell, Camdenian Professor in the University ofOxford. In the cause of hereditary monarchy he shrank from no sacrificeand from no danger. It was about him that William uttered thosememorable words: "He has set his heart on being a martyr; and I have setmy mind on disappointing him. " But James was more cruel to friendsthan William to foes. Dodwell was a Protestant: he had some property inConnaught: these crimes were sufficient; and he was set down in the longroll of those who were doomed to the gallows and the quartering block, [232]

That James would give his assent to a bill which took from him the powerof pardoning, seemed to many persons impossible. He had, four yearsbefore, quarrelled with the most loyal of parliaments rather than cedea prerogative which did not belong to him. It might, therefore, wellbe expected that he would now have struggled hard to retain a preciousprerogative which had been enjoyed by his predecessors ever since theorigin of the monarchy, and which had never been questioned by theWhigs. The stern look and raised voice with which he had reprimanded theTory gentlemen, who, in the language of profound reverence and ferventaffection, implored him not to dispense with the laws, would now havebeen in place. He might also have seen that the right course was thewise course. Had he, on this great occasion, had the spirit to declarethat he would not shed the blood of the innocent, and that, even asrespected the guilty, he would not divest himself of the power oftempering judgment with mercy, he would have regained more hearts inEngland than he would have lost in Ireland. But it was ever his fate toresist where he should have yielded, and to yield where he should haveresisted. The most wicked of all laws received his sanction; and it isbut a very small extenuation of his guilt that his sanction was somewhatreluctantly given. 

That nothing might be wanting to the completeness of this great crime, extreme care was taken to prevent the persons who were attainted fromknowing that they were attainted, till the day of grace fixed in theAct was passed. The roll of names was not published, but kept carefullylocked up in Fitton's closet. Some Protestants, who still adhered tothe cause of James, but who were anxious to know whether any of theirfriends or relations had been proscribed, tried hard to obtain a sightof the list; but solicitation, remonstrance, even bribery, provedvain. Not a single copy got abroad till it was too late for any of thethousands who had been condemned without a trial to obtain a pardon, [233]

Towards the close of July James prorogued the Houses. They had sate morethan ten weeks; and in that space of time they had proved most fullythat, great as have been the evils which Protestant ascendency hasproduced in Ireland, the evils produced by Popish ascendancy would havebeen greater still. That the colonists, when they had won the victory, grossly abused it, that their legislation was, during many years, unjustand tyrannical, is most true. But it is not less true that they neverquite came up to the atrocious example set by their vanquished enemyduring his short tenure of power. 

Indeed, while James was loudly boasting that he had passed an Actgranting entire liberty of conscience to all sects, a persecution ascruel as that of Languedoc was raging through all the provinces whichowned his authority. It was said by those who wished to find an excusefor him that almost all the Protestants who still remained in Munster, Connaught, and Leinster were his enemies, and that it was not asschismatics, but as rebels in heart, who wanted only opportunityto become rebels in act, that he gave them up to be oppressed anddespoiled; and to this excuse some weight might have been allowed ifhe had strenuously exerted himself to protect those few colonists, who, though firmly attached to the reformed religion, were still true to thedoctrines of nonresistance and of indefeasible hereditary right. Buteven these devoted royalists found that their heresy was in his viewa crime for which no services or sacrifices would atone. Three orfour noblemen, members of the Anglican Church, who had welcomed him toIreland, and had sate in his Parliament, represented to him that, if therule which forbade any Protestant to possess any weapon were strictlyenforced, their country houses would be at the mercy of the Rapparees, and obtained from him permission to keep arms sufficient for a fewservants. But Avaux remonstrated. The indulgence, he said, was grosslyabused: these Protestant lords were not to be trusted: they were turningtheir houses into fortresses: his Majesty would soon have reason torepent his goodness. These representations prevailed; and Roman Catholictroops were quartered in the suspected dwellings, [234]

Still harder was the lot of those Protestant clergymen who continued tocling, with desperate fidelity, to the cause of the Lord's Anointed. Ofall the Anglican divines the one who had the largest share of James'sgood graces seems to have been Cartwright. Whether Cartwright couldlong have continued to be a favourite without being an apostate maybe doubted. He died a few weeks after his arrival in Ireland; andthenceforward his church had no one to plead her cause. Nevertheless afew of her prelates and priests continued for a time to teach what theyhad taught in the days of the Exclusion Bill. But it was at the perilof life or limb that they exercised their functions. Every wearer ofa cassock was a mark for the insults and outrages of soldiers andRapparees. In the country his house was robbed, and he was fortunate ifit was not burned over his head. He was hunted through the streets ofDublin with cries of "There goes the devil of a heretic. " Sometimes hewas knocked down: sometimes he was cudgelled, [235] The rulers ofthe University of Dublin, trained in the Anglican doctrine of passiveobedience, had greeted James on his first arrival at the Castle, and hadbeen assured by him that he would protect them in the enjoyment of theirproperty and their privileges. They were now, without any trial, withoutany accusation, thrust out of their house. The communion plate ofthe chapel, the books in the library, the very chairs and beds of thecollegians were seized. Part of the building was turned into a magazine, part into a barrack, part into a prison. Simon Luttrell, who wasGovernor of the capital, was, with great difficulty and by powerfulintercession, induced to let the ejected fellows and scholars departin safety. He at length permitted them to remain at large, withthis condition, that, on pain of death, no three of them should meettogether, [236] No Protestant divine suffered more hardships than DoctorWilliam King, Dean of Saint Patrick's. He had been long distinguished bythe fervour with which he had inculcated the duty of passively obeyingeven the worst rulers. At a later period, when he had published adefence of the Revolution, and had accepted a mitre from the newgovernment, he was reminded that he had invoked the divine vengeance onthe usurpers, and had declared himself willing to die a hundred deathsrather than desert the cause of hereditary right. He had said that thetrue religion had often been strengthened by persecution, but couldnever be strengthened by rebellion; that it would be a glorious day forthe Church of England when a whole cartload of her ministers should goto the gallows for the doctrine of nonresistance; and that his highestambition was to be one of such a company, [237] It is not improbablethat, when he spoke thus, he felt as he spoke. But his principles, though they might perhaps have held out against the severities and thepromises of William, were not proof against the ingratitude of James. Human nature at last asserted its rights. After King had been repeatedlyimprisoned by the government to which he was devotedly attached, afterhe had been insulted and threatened in his own choir by the soldiers, after he had been interdicted from burying in his own churchyard, andfrom preaching in his own pulpit, after he had narrowly escaped withlife from a musketshot fired at him in the street, he began to think theWhig theory of government less unreasonable and unchristian than it hadonce appeared to him, and persuaded himself that the oppressed Churchmight lawfully accept deliverance, if God should be pleased, by whatevermeans, to send it to her. 

In no long time it appeared that James would have done well to hearkento those counsellors who had told him that the acts by which he wastrying to make himself popular in one of his three kingdoms, would makehim odious in the others. It was in some sense fortunate for Englandthat, after he had ceased to reign here, he continued during more than ayear to reign in Ireland. The Revolution had been followed by a reactionof public feeling in his favour. That reaction, if it had been sufferedto proceed uninterrupted, might perhaps not have ceased till he wasagain King: but it was violently interrupted by himself. He would notsuffer his people to forget: he would not suffer them to hope: whilethey were trying to find excuses for his past errors, and to persuadethemselves that he would not repeat these errors, he forced upon them, in their own despite, the conviction that he was incorrigible, that thesharpest discipline of adversity had taught him nothing, and that, ifthey were weak enough to recall him, they would soon have to depose himagain. It was in vain that the Jacobites put forth pamphlets about thecruelty with which he had been treated by those who were nearest to himin blood, about the imperious temper and uncourteous manners of William, about the favour shown to the Dutch, about the heavy taxes, about thesuspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, about the dangers which threatenedthe Church from the enmity of Puritans and Latitudinarians. Jamesrefuted these pamphlets far more effectually than all the ablest andmost eloquent Whig writers united could have done. Every week camethe news that he had passed some new Act for robbing or murderingProtestants. Every colonist who succeeded in stealing across the seafrom Leinster to Holyhead or Bristol, brought fearful reports of thetyranny under which his brethren groaned. What impression these reportsmade on the Protestants of our island may be easily inferred from thefact that they moved the indignation of Ronquillo, a Spaniard and abigoted member of the Church of Rome. He informed his Court that, thoughthe English laws against Popery might seem severe, they were so muchmitigated by the prudence and humanity of the Government, that theycaused no annoyance to quiet people; and he took upon himself to assurethe Holy See that what a Roman Catholic suffered in London was nothingwhen compared with what a Protestant suffered in Ireland, [238]

The fugitive Englishry found in England warm sympathy and munificentrelief. Many were received into the houses of friends and kinsmen. Many were indebted for the means of subsistence to the liberality ofstrangers. Among those who bore a part in this work of mercy, nonecontributed more largely or less ostentatiously than the Queen. TheHouse of Commons placed at the King's disposal fifteen thousand poundsfor the relief of those refugees whose wants were most pressing, and requested him to give commissions in the army to those who werequalified for military employment, [239] An Act was also passed enablingbeneficed clergymen who had fled from Ireland to hold prefermentin England, [240] Yet the interest which the nation felt in theseunfortunate guests was languid when compared with the interest excitedby that portion of the Saxon colony which still maintained in Ulster adesperate conflict against overwhelming odds. On this subject scarcelyone dissentient voice was to be heard in our island. Whigs, Tories, nay even those Jacobites in whom Jacobitism had not extinguishedevery patriotic sentiment, gloried in the glory of Enniskillen andLondonderry. The House of Commons was all of one mind. "This is no timeto be counting cost, " said honest Birch, who well remembered the wayin which Oliver had made war on the Irish. "Are those brave fellows inLondonderry to be deserted? If we lose them will not all the world cryshame upon us? A boom across the river! Why have we not cut the boom inpieces? Are our brethren to perish almost in sight of England, within afew hours' voyage of our shores?" [241] Howe, the most vehement man ofone party, declared that the hearts of the people were set on Ireland. Seymour, the leader of the other party, declared that, though he had nottaken part in setting up the new government, he should cordially supportit in all that might be necessary for the preservation of Ireland, [242] The Commons appointed a committee to enquire into the cause of thedelays and miscarriages which had been all but fatal to the Englishry ofUlster. The officers to whose treachery or cowardice the public ascribedthe calamities of Londonderry were put under arrest. Lundy was sent tothe Tower, Cunningham to the Gate House. The agitation of the publicmind was in some degree calmed by the announcement that, before theend of the summer, an army powerful enough to reestablish the Englishascendency in Ireland would be sent across Saint George's Channel, andthat Schomberg would be the General. In the meantime an expeditionwhich was thought to be sufficient for the relief of Londonderrywas despatched from Liverpool under the command of Kirke. The doggedobstinacy with which this man had, in spite of royal solicitations, adhered to his religion, and the part which he had taken in theRevolution, had perhaps entitled him to an amnesty for past crimes. Butit is difficult to understand why the Government should have selectedfor a post of the highest importance an officer who was generally andjustly hated, who had never shown eminent talents for war, and who, bothin Africa and in England, had notoriously tolerated among his soldiersa licentiousness, not only shocking to humanity, but also incompatiblewith discipline. 

On the sixteenth of May, Kirke's troops embarked: on the twenty-secondthey sailed: but contrary winds made the passage slow, and forced thearmament to stop long at the Isle of Man. Meanwhile the Protestants ofUlster were defending themselves with stubborn courage against a greatsuperiority of force. The Enniskilleners had never ceased to wage avigorous partisan war against the native population. Early in May theymarched to encounter a large body of troops from Connaught, who hadmade an inroad into Donegal. The Irish were speedily routed, and fled toSligo with the loss of a hundred and twenty men killed and sixty taken. Two small pieces of artillery and several horses fell into the hands ofthe conquerors. Elated by this success, the Enniskilleners soon invadedthe county of Cavan, drove before them fifteen hundred of James'stroops, took and destroyed the castle of Ballincarrig, reputed thestrongest in that part of the kingdom, and carried off the pikes andmuskets of the garrison. The next incursion was into Meath. Threethousand oxen and two thousand sheep were swept away and brought safeto the little island in Lough Erne. These daring exploits spread terroreven to the gates of Dublin. Colonel Hugh Sutherland was ordered tomarch against Enniskillen with a regiment of dragoons and two regimentsof foot. He carried with him arms for the native peasantry; and manyrepaired to his standard. The Enniskilleners did not wait till he cameinto their neighbourhood, but advanced to encounter him. He declined anaction, and retreated, leaving his stores at Belturbet under the careof a detachment of three hundred soldiers. The Protestants attackedBelturbet with vigour, made their way into a lofty house whichoverlooked the town, and thence opened such a fire that in two hours thegarrison surrendered. Seven hundred muskets, a great quantity of powder, many horses, many sacks of biscuits, many barrels of meal, were taken, and were sent to Enniskillen. The boats which brought these preciousspoils were joyfully welcomed. The fear of hunger was removed. While theaboriginal population had, in many counties, altogether neglected thecultivation of the earth, in the expectation, it should seem, thatmarauding would prove an inexhaustible resource, the colonists, true tothe provident and industrious character of their race, had, in the midstof war, not omitted carefully to till the soil in the neighbourhood oftheir strongholds. The harvest was now not far remote; and, till theharvest, the food taken from the enemy would be amply sufficient, [243]

Yet, in the midst of success and plenty, the Enniskilleners weretortured by a cruel anxiety for Londonderry. They were bound to thedefenders of that city, not only by religious and national sympathy, but by common interest. For there could be no doubt that, if Londonderryfell, the whole Irish army would instantly march in irresistible forceupon Lough Erne. Yet what could be done? Some brave men were for makinga desperate attempt to relieve the besieged city; but the odds weretoo great. Detachments however were sent which infested the rear of theblockading army, cut off supplies, and, on one occasion, carried awaythe horses of three entire troops of cavalry, [244] Still the line ofposts which surrounded Londonderry by land remained unbroken. The riverwas still strictly closed and guarded. Within the walls the distress hadbecome extreme. So early as the eighth of June horseflesh was almostthe only meat which could be purchased; and of horseflesh the supply wasscanty. It was necessary to make up the deficiency with tallow; and eventallow was doled out with a parsimonious hand. 

On the fifteenth of June a gleam of hope appeared. The sentinels on thetop of the Cathedral saw sails nine miles off in the bay of Lough Foyle. Thirty vessels of different sizes were counted. Signals were made fromthe steeples and returned from the mast heads, but were imperfectlyunderstood on both sides. At last a messenger from the fleet eluded theIrish sentinels, dived under the boom, and informed the garrison thatKirke had arrived from England with troops, arms, ammunition, andprovisions, to relieve the city, [245]

In Londonderry expectation was at the height: but a few hours offeverish joy were followed by weeks of misery. Kirke thought it unsafeto make any attempt, either by land or by water, on the lines of thebesiegers, and retired to the entrance of Lough Foyle, where, duringseveral weeks, he lay inactive. 

And now the pressure of famine became every day more severe. A strictsearch was made in all the recesses of all the houses of the city; andsome provisions, which had been concealed in cellars by people who hadsince died or made their escape, were discovered and carried to themagazines. The stock of cannon balls was almost exhausted; and theirplace was supplied by brickbats coated with lead. Pestilence began, asusual, to make its appearance in the train of hunger. Fifteen officersdied of fever in one day. The Governor Baker was among those who sankunder the disease. His place was supplied by Colonel John Mitchelburne, [246]

Meanwhile it was known at Dublin that Kirke and his squadron were onthe coast of Ulster. The alarm was great at the Castle. Even before thisnews arrived, Avaux had given it as his opinion that Richard Hamiltonwas unequal to the difficulties of the situation. It had therefore beenresolved that Rosen should take the chief command. He was now sent downwith all speed, [247]

On the nineteenth of June he arrived at the head quarter of thebesieging army. At first he attempted to undermine the walls; but hisplan was discovered; and he was compelled to abandon it after a sharpfight, in which more than a hundred of his men were slain. Then hisfury rose to a strange pitch. He, an old soldier, a Marshal of France inexpectancy, trained in the school of the greatest generals, accustomed, during many years, to scientific war, to be baffled by a mob of countrygentlemen, farmers, shopkeepers, who were protected only by a wall whichany good engineer would at once have pronounced untenable! He raved, heblasphemed, in a language of his own, made up of all the dialects spokenfrom the Baltic to the Atlantic. He would raze the city to the ground:he would spare no living thing; no, not the young girls; not the babiesat the breast. As to the leaders, death was too light a punishment forthem: he would rack them: he would roast them alive. In his rage heordered a shell to be flung into the town with a letter containinga horrible menace. He would, he said, gather into one body all theProtestants who had remained at their homes between Charlemont and thesea, old men, women, children, many of them near in blood and affectionto the defenders of Londonderry. No protection, whatever might be theauthority by which it had been given, should be respected. The multitudethus brought together should be driven under the walls of Londonderry, and should there be starved to death in the sight of their countrymen, their friends, their kinsmen. This was no idle threat. Parties wereinstantly sent out in all directions to collect victims. At dawn, on themorning of the second of July, hundreds of Protestants, who were chargedwith no crime, who were incapable of bearing arms, and many of whom hadprotections granted by James, were dragged to the gates of the city. It was imagined that the piteous sight would quell the spirit of thecolonists. But the only effect was to rouse that spirit to still greaterenergy. An order was immediately put forth that no man should utter theword Surrender on pain of death; and no man uttered that word. Severalprisoners of high rank were in the town. Hitherto they had been welltreated, and had received as good rations as were measured out to thegarrison. They were now, closely confined. A gallows was erected on oneof the bastion; and a message was conveyed to Rosen, requesting himto send a confessor instantly to prepare his friends for death. Theprisoners in great dismay wrote to the savage Livonian, but receivedno answer. They then addressed themselves to their countryman, RichardHamilton. They were willing, they said, to shed their blood for theirKing; but they thought it hard to die the ignominious death of thievesin consequence of the barbarity of their own companions in arms. Hamilton, though a man of lax principles, was not cruel. He had beendisgusted by the inhumanity of Rosen, but, being only second in command, could not venture to express publicly all that he thought. He howeverremonstrated strongly. Some Irish officers felt on this occasion as itwas natural that brave men should feel, and declared, weeping with pityand indignation, that they should never cease to have in their ears thecries of the poor women and children who had been driven at the point ofthe pike to die of famine between the camp and the city. Rosen persistedduring forty-eight hours. In that time many unhappy creatures perished:but Londonderry held out as resolutely as ever; and he saw that hiscrime was likely to produce nothing but hatred and obloquy. He at lengthgave way, and suffered the survivors to withdraw. The garrison then tookdown the gallows which had been erected on the bastion, [248]

When the tidings of these events reached Dublin, James, though by nomeans prone to compassion, was startled by an atrocity of which thecivil wars of England had furnished no example, and was displeased bylearning that protections, given by his authority, and guaranteed by hishonour, had been publicly declared to be nullities. He complained tothe French ambassador, and said, with a warmth which the occasion fullyjustified, that Rosen was a barbarous Muscovite. Melfort could notrefrain from adding that, if Rosen had been an Englishman, he wouldhave been hanged. Avaux was utterly unable to understand this effeminatesensibility. In his opinion, nothing had been done that was at allreprehensible; and he had some difficulty in commanding himself when heheard the King and the secretary blame, in strong language, an act ofwholesome severity, [249] In truth the French ambassador and the Frenchgeneral were well paired. There was a great difference doubtless, inappearance and manner, between the handsome, graceful, and refineddiplomatist, whose dexterity and suavity had been renowned at the mostpolite courts of Europe, and the military adventurer, whose look andvoice reminded all who came near him that he had been born in a halfsavage country, that he had risen from the ranks, and that he had oncebeen sentenced to death for marauding. But the heart of the courtier wasreally even more callous than that of the soldier. 

Rosen was recalled to Dublin; and Richard Hamilton was again left in thechief command. He tried gentler means than those which had brought somuch reproach on his predecessor. No trick, no lie, which was thoughtlikely to discourage the starving garrison was spared. One day a greatshout was raised by the whole Irish camp. The defenders of Londonderrywere soon informed that the army of James was rejoicing on account ofthe fall of Enniskillen. They were told that they had now no chance ofbeing relieved, and were exhorted to save their lives by capitulating. They consented to negotiate. But what they asked was, that they shouldbe permitted to depart armed and in military array, by land or by waterat their choice. They demanded hostages for the exact fulfilment ofthese conditions, and insisted that the hostages should be sent on boardof the fleet which lay in Lough Foyle. Such terms Hamilton durst notgrant: the Governors would abate nothing: the treaty was broken off; andthe conflict recommenced, [250]

By this time July was far advanced; and the state of the city was, hourby hour, becoming more frightful. The number of the inhabitants had beenthinned more by famine and disease than by the fire of the enemy. Yetthat fire was sharper and more constant than ever. One of the gates wasbeaten in: one of the bastions was laid in ruins; but the breaches madeby day were repaired by night with indefatigable activity. Every attackwas still repelled. But the fighting men of the garrison were so muchexhausted that they could scarcely keep their legs. Several of them, inthe act of striking at the enemy, fell down from mere weakness. A verysmall quantity of grain remained, and was doled out by mouthfuls. Thestock of salted hides was considerable, and by gnawing them the garrisonappeased the rage of hunger. Dogs, fattened on the blood of the slainwho lay unburied round the town, were luxuries which few could affordto purchase. The price of a whelp's paw was five shillings and sixpence. Nine horses were still alive, and but barely alive. They were so leanthat little meat was likely to be found upon them. It was, however, determined to slaughter them for food. The people perished so fast thatit was impossible for the survivors to perform the rites of sepulture. There was scarcely a cellar in which some corpse was not decaying. Suchwas the extremity of distress, that the rats who came to feast in thosehideous dens were eagerly hunted and greedily devoured. A small fish, caught in the river, was not to be purchased with money. The onlyprice for which such a treasure could be obtained was some handfuls ofoatmeal. Leprosies, such as strange and unwholesome diet engenders, madeexistence a constant torment. The whole city was poisoned by the stenchexhaled from the bodies of the dead and of the half dead. That thereshould be fits of discontent and insubordination among men enduring suchmisery was inevitable. At one moment it was suspected that Walker hadlaid up somewhere a secret store of food, and was revelling in private, while he exhorted others to suffer resolutely for the good cause. Hishouse was strictly examined: his innocence was fully proved: he regainedhis popularity; and the garrison, with death in near prospect, throngedto the cathedral to hear him preach, drank in his earnest eloquence withdelight, and went forth from the house of God with haggard faces andtottering steps, but with spirit still unsubdued. There were, indeed, some secret plottings. A very few obscure traitors opened communicationswith the enemy. But it was necessary that all such dealings should becarefully concealed. None dared to utter publicly any words save wordsof defiance and stubborn resolution. Even in that extremity the generalcry was "No surrender. " And there were not wanting voices which, in lowtones, added, "First the horses and hides; and then the prisoners;and then each other. " It was afterwards related, half in jest, yet notwithout a horrible mixture of earnest, that a corpulent citizen, whosebulk presented a strange contrast to the skeletons which surrounded him, thought it expedient to conceal himself from the numerous eyes whichfollowed him with cannibal looks whenever he appeared in the streets, [251]

It was no slight aggravation of the sufferings of the garrison thatall this time the English ships were seen far off in Lough Foyle. Communication between the fleet and the city was almost impossible. One diver who had attempted to pass the boom was drowned. Anotherwas hanged. The language of signals was hardly intelligible. On thethirteenth of July, however, a piece of paper sewed up in a clothbutton came to Walker's hands. It was a letter from Kirke, and containedassurances of speedy relief. But more than a fortnight of intense miseryhad since elapsed; and the hearts of the most sanguine were sick withdeferred hope. By no art could the provisions which were left be made tohold out two days more, [252]

Just at this time Kirke received a despatch from England, whichcontained positive orders that Londonderry should be relieved. Heaccordingly determined to make an attempt which, as far as appears, hemight have made, with at least an equally fair prospect of success, sixweeks earlier, [253]

Among the merchant ships which had come to Lough Foyle under his convoywas one called the Mountjoy. The master, Micaiah Browning, a native ofLondonderry, had brought from England a large cargo of provisions. Hehad, it is said, repeatedly remonstrated against the inaction ofthe armament. He now eagerly volunteered to take the first risk ofsuccouring his fellow citizens; and his offer was accepted. AndrewDouglas, master of the Phoenix, who had on board a great quantity ofmeal from Scotland, was willing to share the danger and the honour. The two merchantmen were to be escorted by the Dartmouth frigate ofthirty-six guns, commanded by Captain John Leake, afterwards an admiralof great fame. 

It was the thirtieth of July. The sun had just set: the eveningsermon in the cathedral was over; and the heartbroken congregationhad separated, when the sentinels on the tower saw the sails of threevessels coming up the Foyle. Soon there was a stir in the Irish camp. The besiegers were on the alert for miles along both shores. The shipswere in extreme peril: for the river was low; and the only navigablechannel Tan very near to the left bank, where the head quarters of theenemy had been fixed, and where the batteries were most numerous. Leake performed his duty with a skill and spirit worthy of his nobleprofession, exposed his frigate to cover the merchantmen, and used hisguns with great effect. At length the little squadron came to the placeof peril. Then the Mountjoy took the lead, and went right at the bottom. The huge barricade cracked and gave way: but the shock was such that theMountjoy rebounded, and stuck in the mud. A yell of triumph rose fromthe banks: the Irish rushed to their boats, and were preparing to board;but the Dartmouth poured on them a well directed broadside, which threwthem into disorder. Just then the Phoenix dashed at the breach which theMountjoy had made, and was in a moment within the fence. Meantime thetide was rising fast. The Mountjoy began to move, and soon passed safethrough the broken stakes and floating spars. But her brave master wasno more. A shot from one of the batteries had struck him; and he diedby the most enviable of all deaths, in sight of the city which was hisbirthplace, which was his home, and which had just been saved by hiscourage and self-devotion from the most frightful form of destruction. The night had closed in before the conflict at the boom began; but theflash of the guns was seen, and the noise heard, by the lean andghastly multitude which covered the walls of the city. When the Mountjoygrounded, and when the shout of triumph rose from the Irish on bothsides of the river, the hearts of the besieged died within them. One whoendured the unutterable anguish of that moment has told that they lookedfearfully livid in each other's eyes. Even after the barricade had beenpassed, there was a terrible half hour of suspense. It was ten o'clockbefore the ships arrived at the quay. The whole population was thereto welcome them. A screen made of casks filled with earth was hastilythrown up to protect the landing place from the batteries on the otherside of the river; and then the work of unloading began. First wererolled on shore barrels containing six thousand bushels of meal. Thencame great cheeses, casks of beef, flitches of bacon, kegs of butter, sacks of Pease and biscuit, ankers of brandy. Not many hours before, half a pound of tallow and three quarters of a pound of salted hide hadbeen weighed out with niggardly care to every fighting man. The rationwhich each now received was three pounds of flour, two pounds of beef, and a pint of Pease. It is easy to imagine with what tears grace wassaid over the suppers of that evening. There was little sleep on eitherside of the wall. The bonfires shone bright along the whole circuit ofthe ramparts. The Irish guns continued to roar all night; and all nightthe bells of the rescued city made answer to the Irish guns with a pealof joyous defiance. Through the whole of the thirty-first of July thebatteries of the enemy continued to play. But, soon after the sun hadagain gone down, flames were seen arising from the camp; and, when thefirst of August dawned, a line of smoking ruins marked the site latelyoccupied by the huts of the besiegers; and the citizens saw far off thelong column of pikes and standards retreating up the left bank of theFoyle towards Strabane, [254]

So ended this great siege, the most memorable in the annals of theBritish isles. It had lasted a hundred and five days. The garrison hadbeen reduced from about seven thousand effective men to about threethousand. The loss of the besiegers cannot be precisely ascertained. Walker estimated it at eight thousand men. It is certain from thedespatches of Avaux that the regiments which returned from the blockadehad been so much thinned that many of them were not more than twohundred strong. Of thirty-six French gunners who had superintended thecannonading, thirty-one had been killed or disabled, [255] The meansboth of attack and of defence had undoubtedly been such as would havemoved the great warriors of the Continent to laughter; and this is thevery circumstance which gives so peculiar an interest to the historyof the contest. It was a contest, not between engineers, but betweennations; and the victory remained with the nation which, though inferiorin number, was superior in civilisation, in capacity for selfgovernment, and in stubbornness of resolution, [256]

As soon as it was known that the Irish army had retired, a deputationfrom the city hastened to Lough Foyle, and invited Kirk to take thecommand. He came accompanied by a long train of officers, and wasreceived in state by the two Governors, who delivered up to him theauthority which, under the pressure of necessity, they had assumed. He remained only a few days; but he had time to show enough of theincurable vices of his character to disgust a population distinguishedby austere morals and ardent public spirit. There was, however, nooutbreak. The city was in the highest good humour. Such quantities ofprovisions had been landed from the fleet, that there was in every housea plenty never before known. A few days earlier a man had been glad toobtain for twenty pence a mouthful of carrion scraped from the bones ofa starved horse. A pound of good beef was now sold for three halfpence. Meanwhile all hands were busied in removing corpses which had beenthinly covered with earth, in filling up the holes which the shellshad ploughed in the ground, and in repairing the battered roofs ofthe houses. The recollection of past dangers and privations, and theconsciousness of having deserved well of the English nation and of allProtestant Churches, swelled the hearts of the townspeople with honestpride. That pride grew stronger when they received from William a letteracknowledging, in the most affectionate language, the debt which he owedto the brave and trusty citizens of his good city. The whole populationcrowded to the Diamond to hear the royal epistle read. At the close allthe guns on the ramparts sent forth a voice of joy: all the ships inthe river made answer: barrels of ale were broken up; and the health oftheir Majesties was drunk with shouts and volleys of musketry. 

Five generations have since passed away; and still the wall ofLondonderry is to the Protestants of Ulster what the trophy of Marathonwas to the Athenians. A lofty pillar, rising from a bastion which boreduring many weeks the heaviest fire of the enemy, is seen far up and fardown the Foyle. On the summit is the statue of Walker, such as when, inthe last and most terrible emergency, his eloquence roused the faintingcourage of his brethren. In one hand he grasps a Bible. The other, pointing down the river, seems to direct the eyes of his famishedaudience to the English topmasts in the distant bay. Such a monument waswell deserved: yet it was scarcely needed: for in truth the wholecity is to this day a monument of the great deliverance. The wall iscarefully preserved; nor would any plea of health or convenience be heldby the inhabitants sufficient to justify the demolition of that sacredenclosure which, in the evil time, gave shelter to their race and theirreligion, [257] The summit of the ramparts forms a pleasant walk. Thebastions have been turned into little gardens. Here and there, amongthe shrubs and flowers, may be seen the old culverins which scatteredbricks, cased with lead, among the Irish ranks. One antique gun, thegift of the Fishmongers of London, was distinguished, during the hundredand five memorable days, by the loudness of its report, and stillbears the name of Roaring Meg. The cathedral is filled with relics andtrophies. In the vestibule is a huge shell, one of many hundreds ofshells which were thrown into the city. Over the altar are still seenthe French flagstaves, taken by the garrison in a desperate sally. Thewhite ensigns of the House of Bourbon have long been dust: but theirplace has been supplied by new banners, the work of the fairest hands ofUlster. The anniversary of the day on which the gates were closed, andthe anniversary of the day on which the siege was raised, have beendown to our own time celebrated by salutes, processions, banquets, and sermons: Lundy has been executed in effigy; and the sword, said bytradition to be that of Maumont, has, on great occasions, been carriedin triumph. There is still a Walker Club and a Murray Club. The humbletombs of the Protestant captains have been carefully sought out, repaired, and embellished. It is impossible not to respect the sentimentwhich indicates itself by these tokens. It is a sentiment which belongsto the higher and purer part of human nature, and which adds not alittle to the strength of states. A people which takes no pride in thenoble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve any thingworthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants. Yet it isimpossible for the moralist or the statesman to look with unmixedcomplacency on the solemnities with which Londonderry commemorates herdeliverance, and on the honours which she pays to those who saved her. Unhappily the animosities of her brave champions have descended withtheir glory. The faults which are ordinarily found in dominant castesand dominant sects have not seldom shown themselves without disguise ather festivities; and even with the expressions of pious gratitude whichhave resounded from her pulpits have too often been mingled words ofwrath and defiance. 

The Irish army which had retreated to Strabane remained there but a veryshort time. The spirit of the troops had been depressed by their recentfailure, and was soon completely cowed by the news of a great disasterin another quarter. 

Three weeks before this time the Duke of Berwick had gained anadvantage over a detachment of the Enniskilleners, and had, by their ownconfession, killed or taken more than fifty of them. They were inhopes of obtaining some assistance from Kirke, to whom they had sent adeputation; and they still persisted in rejecting all terms offered bythe enemy. It was therefore determined at Dublin that an attack shouldbe made upon them from several quarters at once. Macarthy, who hadbeen rewarded for his services in Munster with the title of ViscountMountcashel, marched towards Lough Erne from the east with threeregiments of foot, two regiments of dragoons, and some troops ofcavalry. A considerable force, which lay encamped near the mouth of theriver Drowes, was at the same time to advance from the west. The Dukeof Berwick was to come from the north, with such horse and dragoonsas could be spared from the army which was besieging Londonderry. TheEnniskilleners were not fully apprised of the whole plan which had beenlaid for their destruction; but they knew that Macarthy was on the roadwith a force exceeding any which they could bring into the field. Theiranxiety was in some degree relieved by the return of the deputationwhich they had sent to Kirke. Kirke could spare no soldiers; but he hadsent some arms, some ammunition, and some experienced officers, of whomthe chief were Colonel Wolseley and Lieutenant Colonel Berry. Theseofficers had come by sea round the coast of Donegal, and had run up theLine. On Sunday, the twenty-ninth of July, it was known that their boatwas approaching the island of Enniskillen. The whole population, maleand female, came to the shore to greet them. It was with difficulty, that they made their way to the Castle through the crowds which hungon them, blessing God that dear old England had not quite forgottenthe Englishmen who upheld her cause against great odds in the heart ofIreland. 

Wolseley seems to have been in every respect well qualified for hispost. He was a stanch Protestant, had distinguished himself among theYorkshiremen who rose up for the Prince of Orange and a free Parliament, and had, if he is not belied, proved his zeal for liberty and purereligion, by causing the Mayor of Scarborough, who had made a speechin favour of King James, to be brought into the market place and welltossed there in a blanket, [258] This vehement hatred of Popery was, in the estimation of the men of Enniskillen, the first of allqualifications for command: and Wolseley had other and more importantqualifications. Though himself regularly bred to war, he seems to havehad a peculiar aptitude for the management of irregular troops. He hadscarcely taken on himself the chief command when he received notice thatMountcashel had laid siege to the Castle of Crum. Crum was thefrontier garrison of the Protestants of Fermanagh. The ruins of theold fortifications are now among the attractions of a beautifulpleasureground, situated on a woody promontory which overlooks LoughErne. Wolseley determined to raise the siege. He sent Berry forward withsuch troops as could be instantly put in motion, and promised to followspeedily with a larger force. 

Berry, after marching some miles, encountered thirteen companiesof Macarthy's dragoons commanded by Anthony, the most brilliant andaccomplished of all who bore the name of Hamilton, but much lesssuccessful as a soldier than as a courtier, a lover, and a writer. Hamilton's dragoons ran at the first fire: he was severely wounded; andhis second in command was shot dead. Macarthy soon came up to supportHamilton; and at the same time Wolseley came up to support Berry. Thehostile armies were now in presence of each other. Macarthy had abovefive thousand men and several pieces of artillery. The Enniskillenerswere under three thousand; and they had marched in such haste thatthey had brought only one day's provisions. It was therefore absolutelynecessary for them either to fight instantly or to retreat. Wolseleydetermined to consult the men; and this determination, which, inordinary circumstances, would have been most unworthy of a general, wasfully justified by the peculiar composition and temper of the littlearmy, an army made up of gentlemen and yeomen fighting, not for pay, butfor their lands, their wives, their children, and their God. Theranks were drawn up under arms; and the question was put, "Advance orRetreat?" The answer was an universal shout of "Advance. " Wolseleygave out the word, "No Popery. " It was received with loud applause. Heinstantly made his dispositions for an attack. As he approached, theenemy, to his great surprise, began to retire. The Enniskilleners wereeager to pursue with all speed: but their commander, suspecting a snare, restrained their ardour, and positively forbade them to break theirranks. Thus one army retreated and the other followed, in good order, through the little town of Newton Butler. About a mile from that townthe Irish faced about, and made a stand. Their position was well chosen. They were drawn up on a hill at the foot of which lay a deep bog. Anarrow paved causeway which ran across the bog was the only road bywhich the cavalry of the Enniskilleners could advance; for on the rightand left were pools, turf pits, and quagmires, which afforded no footingto horses. Macarthy placed his cannon in such a manner as to sweep thiscauseway. 

Wolseley ordered his infantry to the attack. They struggled through thebog, made their way to firm ground, and rushed on the guns. There wasthen a short and desperate fight. The Irish cannoneers stood gallantlyto their pieces till they were cut down to a man. The Enniskillen horse, no longer in danger of being mowed down by the fire of the artillery, came fast up the causeway. The Irish dragoons who had run away in themorning were smitten with another panic, and, without striking a blow, galloped from the field. The horse followed the example. Such was theterror of the fugitives that many of them spurred hard till their beastsfell down, and then continued to fly on foot, throwing away carbines, swords, and even coats as incumbrances. The infantry, seeing themselvesdeserted, flung down their pikes and muskets and ran for their lives. The conquerors now gave loose to that ferocity which has seldom failedto disgrace the civil wars of Ireland. The butchery was terrible. Nearfifteen hundred of the vanquished were put to the sword. About fivehundred more, in ignorance of the country, took a road which led toLough Erne. The lake was before them: the enemy behind: they plungedinto the waters and perished there. Macarthy, abandoned by his troops, rushed into the midst of the pursuers and very nearly found the deathwhich he sought. He was wounded in several places: he was struck to theground; and in another moment his brains would have been knocked outwith the butt end of a musket, when he was recognised and saved. Thecolonists lost only twenty men killed and fifty wounded. They took fourhundred prisoners, seven pieces of cannon, fourteen barrels of powder, all the drums and all the colours of the vanquished enemy, [259]

The battle of Newton Butler was won on the same afternoon on which theboom thrown over the Foyle was broken. At Strabane the news met theCeltic army which was retreating from Londonderry. All was terror andconfusion: the tents were struck: the military stores were flung bywaggon loads into the waters of the Mourne; and the dismayedIrish, leaving many sick and wounded to the mercy of the victoriousProtestants, fled to Omagh, and thence to Charlemont. Sarsfield, whocommanded at Sligo, found it necessary to abandon that town, which wasinstantly occupied by a detachment of Kirke's troops, [260] Dublin wasin consternation. James dropped words which indicated an intention offlying to the Continent. Evil tidings indeed came fast upon him. Almostat the same time at which he learned that one of his armies had raisedthe siege of Londonderry, and that another had been routed at NewtonButler, he received intelligence scarcely less disheartening fromScotland. 

It is now necessary to trace the progress of those events to whichScotland owes her political and her religious liberty, her prosperityand her civilisation. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

 The Revolution more violent in Scotland than in England--Elections for the Convention; Rabbling of the Episcopal Clergy--State of Edinburgh--Question of an Union between England and Scotland raised--Wish of the English Low Churchmen to preserve Episcopacy in Scotland--Opinions of William about Church Government in Scotland--Comparative Strength of Religious Parties in Scotland--Letter from William to the Scotch Convention--William's Instructions to his Agents in Scotland; the Dalrymples--Melville--James's Agents in Scotland: Dundee; Balcarras--Meeting of the Convention--Hamilton elected President--Committee of Elections; Edinburgh Castle summoned--Dundee threatened by the Covenanters--Letter from James to the Convention--Effect of James's Letter--Flight of Dundee--Tumultuous Sitting of the Convention--A Committee appointed to frame a Plan of Government--Resolutions proposed by the Committee--William and Mary proclaimed; the Claim of Right; Abolition of Episcopacy--Torture--William and Mary accept the Crown of Scotland--Discontent of the Covenanters--Ministerial Arrangements in Scotland--Hamilton; Crawford--The Dalrymples; Lockhart; Montgomery--Melville; Carstairs--The Club formed: Annandale; Ross--Hume; Fletcher of Saltoun--War breaks out in the Highlands; State of the Highlands--Peculiar Nature of Jacobitism in the Highlands--Jealousy of the Ascendency of the Campbells--The Stewarts and Macnaghtens--The Macleans; the Camerons: Lochiel--The Macdonalds; Feud between the Macdonalds and Mackintoshes; Inverness--Inverness threatened by Macdonald of Keppoch--Dundee appears in Keppoch's Camp--Insurrection of the Clans hostile to the Campbells--Tarbet's Advice to the Government--Indecisive Campaign in the Highlands--Military Character of the Highlanders--Quarrels in the Highland Army--Dundee applies to James for Assistance; the War in the Highlands suspended--Scruples of the Covenanters about taking Arms for King William--The Cameronian Regiment raised--Edinburgh Castle surrenders--Session of Parliament at Edinburgh--Ascendancy of the Club--Troubles in Athol--The War breaks out again in the Highlands--Death of Dundee--Retreat of Mackay--Effect of the Battle of Killiecrankie; the Scottish Parliament adjourned--The Highland Army reinforced--Skirmish at Saint Johnston's--Disorders in the Highland Army--Mackay's Advice disregarded by the Scotch Ministers--The Cameronians stationed at Dunkeld--The Highlanders attack the Cameronians and are repulsed--Dissolution of the Highland Army; Intrigues of the Club; State of the Lowlands

THE violence of revolutions is generally proportioned to the degreeof the maladministration which has produced them. It is therefore notstrange that the government of Scotland, having been during many yearsfar more oppressive and corrupt than the government of England, shouldhave fallen with a far heavier ruin. The movement against the lastking of the House of Stuart was in England conservative, in Scotlanddestructive. The English complained, not of the law, but of theviolation of the law. They rose up against the first magistrate merelyin order to assert the supremacy of the law. They were for the most partstrongly attached to the Church established by law. Even in applyingthat extraordinary remedy to which an extraordinary emergency compelledthem to have recourse, they deviated as little as possible from theordinary methods prescribed by the law. The Convention which met atWestminster, though summoned by irregular writs, was constituted on theexact model of a regular Parliament. No man was invited to the UpperHouse whose right to sit there was not clear. The knights and burgesseswere chosen by those electors who would have been entitled to choosethe members of a House of Commons called under the great seal. Thefranchises of the forty shilling freeholder, of the householder payingscot and lot, of the burgage tenant, of the liveryman of London, of theMaster of Arts of Oxford, were respected. The sense of the constituentbodies was taken with as little violence on the part of mobs, with aslittle trickery on the part of returning officers, as at anygeneral election of that age. When at length the Estates met, theirdeliberations were carried on with perfect freedom and in strictaccordance with ancient forms. There was indeed, after the firstflight of James, an alarming anarchy in London and in some parts of thecountry. But that anarchy nowhere lasted longer than forty-eight hours. From the day on which William reached Saint James's, not even the mostunpopular agents of the fallen government, not even the ministers ofthe Roman Catholic Church, had any thing to fear from the fury of thepopulace. 

In Scotland the course of events was very different. There the lawitself was a grievance; and James had perhaps incurred more unpopularityby enforcing it than by violating it. The Church established by law wasthe most odious institution in the realm. The tribunals had pronouncedsome sentences so flagitious, the Parliament had passed some acts sooppressive, that, unless those sentences and those Acts were treatedas nullities, it would be impossible to bring together a Conventioncommanding the public respect and expressing the public opinion. It washardly to be expected, for example, that the Whigs, in this day of theirpower, would endure to see their hereditary leader, the son of a martyr, the grandson of a martyr, excluded from the Parliament House in whichnine of his ancestors had sate as Earls of Argyle, and excluded by ajudgment on which the whole kingdom cried shame. Still less was it to beexpected that they would suffer the election of members for counties andtowns to be conducted according to the provisions of the existing law. For under the existing law no elector could vote without swearing thathe renounced the Covenant, and that he acknowledged the Royal supremacyin matters ecclesiastical, [261] Such an oath no rigid Presbyteriancould take. If such an oath had been exacted, the constituent bodieswould have been merely small knots of prelatists: the business ofdevising securities against oppression would have been left to theoppressors; and the great party which had been most active in effectingthe Revolution would, in an assembly sprung from the Revolution, havehad not a single representative, [262]

William saw that he must not think of paying to the laws of Scotlandthat scrupulous respect which he had wisely and righteously paid to thelaws of England. It was absolutely necessary that he should determineby his own authority how that Convention which was to meet at Edinburghshould be chosen, and that he should assume the power of annulling somejudgments and some statutes. He accordingly summoned to the parliamenthouse several Lords who had been deprived of their honours by sentenceswhich the general voice loudly condemned as unjust; and he took onhimself to dispense with the Act which deprived Presbyterians of theelective franchise. 

The consequence was that the choice of almost all the shires and burghsfell on Whig candidates. The defeated party complained loudly of foulplay, of the rudeness of the populace, and of the partiality of thepresiding magistrates; and these complaints were in many cases wellfounded. It is not under such rulers as Lauderdale and Dundee thatnations learn justice and moderation, [263]

Nor was it only at the elections that the popular feeling, so long andso severely compressed, exploded with violence. The heads and the handsof the martyred Whigs were taken down from the gates of Edinburgh, carried in procession by great multitudes to the cemeteries, and laidin the earth with solemn respect, [264] It would have been well if thepublic enthusiasm had manifested itself in no less praiseworthyform. Unhappily throughout a large part of Scotland the clergy of theEstablished Church were, to use the phrase then common, rabbled. The morning of Christmas day was fixed for the commencement of theseoutrages. For nothing disgusted the rigid Covenanter more than thereverence paid by the prelatist to the ancient holidays of the Church. That such reverence may be carried to an absurd extreme is true. But aphilosopher may perhaps be inclined to think the opposite extremenot less absurd, and may ask why religion should reject the aid ofassociations which exist in every nation sufficiently civilised to havea calendar, and which are found by experience to have a powerful andoften a salutary effect. The Puritan, who was, in general, but tooready to follow precedents and analogies drawn from the history andjurisprudence of the Jews, might have found in the Old Testament quiteas clear warrant for keeping festivals in honour of great events as forassassinating bishops and refusing quarter to captives. He certainly didnot learn from his master, Calvin, to hold such festivals in abhorrence;for it was in consequence of the strenuous exertions of Calvin thatChristmas was, after an interval of some years, again observed by thecitizens of Geneva, [265] But there had arisen in Scotland Calvinistswho were to Calvin what Calvin was to Laud. To these austere fanaticsa holiday was an object of positive disgust and hatred. They longcontinued in their solemn manifestoes to reckon it among the sins whichwould one day bring down some fearful judgment on the land that theCourt of Session took a vacation in the last week of December, [266]

On Christmas day, therefore, the Covenanters held armed musters byconcert in many parts of the western shires. Each band marched to thenearest manse, and sacked the cellar and larder of the minister, whichat that season were probably better stocked than usual. The priest ofBaal was reviled and insulted, sometimes beaten, sometimes ducked. Hisfurniture was thrown out of the windows; his wife and children turnedout of doors in the snow. He was then carried to the market place, andexposed during some time as a malefactor. His gown was torn to shredsover his head: if he had a prayer book in his pocket it was burned;and he was dismissed with a charge, never, as he valued his life, toofficiate in the parish again. The work of reformation having been thuscompleted, the reformers locked up the church and departed with thekeys. In justice to these men it must be owned that they had sufferedsuch oppression as may excuse, though it cannot justify, their violence;and that, though they were rude even to brutality, they do not appear tohave been guilty of any intentional injury to life or limb, [267]

The disorder spread fast. In Ayrshire, Clydesdale, Nithisdale, Annandale, every parish was visited by these turbulent zealots. Abouttwo hundred curates--so the episcopal parish priests were called--wereexpelled. The graver Covenanters, while they applauded the fervour oftheir riotous brethren, were apprehensive that proceedings so irregularmight give scandal, and learned, with especial concern, that here andthere an Achan had disgraced the good cause by stooping to plunder theCanaanites whom he ought only to have smitten. A general meeting ofministers and elders was called for the purpose of preventing suchdiscreditable excesses. In this meeting it was determined that, for thefuture, the ejection of the established clergy should be performed ina more ceremonious manner. A form of notice was drawn up and served onevery curate in the Western Lowlands who had not yet been rabbled. This notice was simply a threatening letter, commanding him to quit hisparish peaceably, on pain of being turned out by force, [268]

The Scottish Bishops, in great dismay, sent the Dean of Glasgow toplead the cause of their persecuted Church at Westminster. The outragescommitted by the Covenanters were in the highest degree offensiveto William, who had, in the south of the island, protected evenBenedictines and Franciscans from insult and spoliation. But, though hehad, at the request of a large number of the noblemen and gentlemen ofScotland, taken on himself provisionally the executive administrationof that kingdom, the means of maintaining order there were not at hiscommand. He had not a single regiment north of the Tweed, or indeedwithin many miles of that river. It was vain to hope that mere wordswould quiet a nation which had not, in any age, been very amenable tocontrol, and which was now agitated by hopes and resentments, such asgreat revolutions, following great oppressions, naturally engender. Aproclamation was however put forth, directing that all people should laydown their arms, and that, till the Convention should have settled thegovernment, the clergy of the Established Church should be suffered toreside on their cures without molestation. But this proclamation, notbeing supported by troops, was very little regarded. On the very dayafter it was published at Glasgow, the venerable Cathedral of that city, almost the only fine church of the middle ages which stands uninjuredin Scotland, was attacked by a crowd of Presbyterians from the meetinghouses, with whom were mingled many of their fiercer brethren from thehills. It was a Sunday; but to rabble a congregation of prelatistswas held to be a work of necessity and mercy. The worshippers weredispersed, beaten, and pelted with snowballs. It was indeed assertedthat some wounds were inflicted with much more formidable weapons, [269]

Edinburgh, the seat of government, was in a state of anarchy. TheCastle, which commanded the whole city, was still held for James by theDuke of Gordon. The common people were generally Whigs. The College ofjustice, a great forensic society composed of judges, advocates, writersto the signet, and solicitors, was the stronghold of Toryism: for arigid test had during some years excluded Presbyterians from all thedepartments of the legal profession. The lawyers, some hundreds innumber, formed themselves into a battalion of infantry, and for a timeeffectually kept down the multitude. They paid, however, so much respectto William's authority as to disband themselves when his proclamationwas published. But the example of obedience which they had set was notimitated. Scarcely had they laid down their weapons, when Covenantersfrom the west, who had done all that was to be done in the way ofpelting and hustling the curates of their own neighbourhood, camedropping into Edinburgh, by tens and twenties, for the purpose ofprotecting, or, if need should be, of overawing the Convention. Glasgowalone sent four hundred of these men. It could hardly be doubtedthat they were directed by some leader of great weight. They showedthemselves little in any public place: but it was known that everycellar was filled with them; and it might well be apprehended that, atthe first signal, they would pour forth from their caverns, and appeararmed round the Parliament house, [270]

It might have been expected that every patriotic and enlightenedScotchman would have earnestly desired to see the agitation appeased, and some government established which might be able to protect propertyand to enforce the law. An imperfect settlement which could be speedilymade might well appear to such a man preferable to a perfect settlementwhich must be the work of time. Just at this moment, however, a party, strong both in numbers and in abilities, raised a new and most importantquestion, which seemed not unlikely to prolong the interregnum till theautumn. This party maintained that the Estates ought not immediatelyto declare William and Mary King and Queen, but to propose to England atreaty of union, and to keep the throne vacant till such a treaty shouldbe concluded on terms advantageous to Scotland, [271]

It may seem strange that a large portion of a people, whose patriotism, exhibited, often in a heroic, and sometimes in a comic form, has longbeen proverbial, should have been willing, nay impatient, to surrenderan independence which had been, through many ages, dearly prized andmanfully defended. The truth is that the stubborn spirit which the armsof the Plantagenets and Tudors had been unable to subdue had begun toyield to a very different kind of force. Customhouses and tariffs wererapidly doing what the carnage of Falkirk and Halidon, of Flodden and ofPinkie, had failed to do. Scotland had some experience of the effectsof an union. She had, near forty years before, been united to Englandon such terms as England, flushed with conquest, chose to dictate. Thatunion was inseparably associated in the minds of the vanquished peoplewith defeat and humiliation. And yet even that union, cruelly as it hadwounded the pride of the Scots, had promoted their prosperity. Cromwell, with wisdom and liberality rare in his age, had established the mostcomplete freedom of trade between the dominant and the subject country. While he governed, no prohibition, no duty, impeded the transit ofcommodities from any part of the island to any other. His navigationlaws imposed no restraint on the trade of Scotland. A Scotch vessel wasat liberty to carry a Scotch cargo to Barbadoes, and to bring the sugarsof Barbadoes into the port of London, [272] The rule of the Protectortherefore had been propitious to the industry and to the physicalwellbeing of the Scottish people. Hating him and cursing him, they couldnot help thriving under him, and often, during the administration oftheir legitimate princes, looked back with regret to the golden days ofthe usurper, [273]

The Restoration came, and changed every thing. The Scots regainedtheir independence, and soon began to find that independence had itsdiscomfort as well as its dignity. The English parliament treated themas aliens and as rivals. A new Navigation Act put them on almost thesame footing with the Dutch. High duties, and in some cases prohibitoryduties, were imposed on the products of Scottish industry. It is notwonderful that a nation eminently industrious, shrewd, and enterprising, a nation which, having been long kept back by a sterile soil anda severe climate, was just beginning to prosper in spite of thesedisadvantages, and which found its progress suddenly stopped, shouldthink itself cruelly treated. Yet there was no help. Complaint was vain. Retaliation was impossible. The Sovereign, even if he had the wish, hadnot the power, to bear himself evenly between his large and his smallkingdom, between the kingdom from which he drew an annual revenue of amillion and a half and the kingdom from which he drew an annual revenueof little more than sixty thousand pounds. He dared neither to refusehis assent to any English law injurious to the trade of Scotland, nor togive his assent to any Scotch law injurious to the trade of England. 

The complaints of the Scotch, however, were so loud that Charles, in1667, appointed Commissioners to arrange the terms of a commercialtreaty between the two British kingdoms. The conferences were soonbroken off; and all that passed while they continued proved thatthere was only one way in which Scotland could obtain a share of thecommercial prosperity which England at that time enjoyed, [274] TheScotch must become one people with the English. The Parliament whichhad hitherto sate at Edinburgh must be incorporated with the Parliamentwhich sate at Westminster. The sacrifice could not but be painfullyfelt by a brave and haughty people, who had, during twelve generations, regarded the southern domination with deadly aversion, and whose heartsstill swelled at the thought of the death of Wallace and of the triumphsof Bruce. There were doubtless many punctilious patriots who would havestrenuously opposed an union even if they could have foreseen thatthe effect of an union would be to make Glasgow a greater city thanAmsterdam, and to cover the dreary Lothians with harvests and woods, neat farmhouses and stately mansions. But there was also a large classwhich was not disposed to throw away great and substantial advantages inorder to preserve mere names and ceremonies; and the influence of thisclass was such that, in the year 1670, the Scotch Parliament made directovertures to England, [275] The King undertook the office of mediator;and negotiators were named on both sides; but nothing was concluded. 

The question, having slept during eighteen years, was suddenly revivedby the Revolution. Different classes, impelled by different motives, concurred on this point. With merchants, eager to share in theadvantages of the West Indian Trade, were joined active and aspiringpoliticians who wished to exhibit their abilities in a more conspicuoustheatre than the Scottish Parliament House, and to collect riches froma more copious source than the Scottish treasury. The cry for union wasswelled by the voices of some artful Jacobites, who merely wished tocause discord and delay, and who hoped to attain this end by mixing upwith the difficult question which it was the especial business ofthe Convention to settle another question more difficult still. It isprobable that some who disliked the ascetic habits and rigid disciplineof the Presbyterians wished for an union as the only mode of maintainingprelacy in the northern part of the island. In an united Parliament theEnglish members must greatly preponderate; and in England the bishopswere held in high honour by the great majority of the population. TheEpiscopal Church of Scotland, it was plain, rested on a narrow basis, and would fall before the first attack. The Episcopal Church of GreatBritain might have a foundation broad and solid enough to withstand allassaults. 

Whether, in 1689, it would have been possible to effect a civil unionwithout a religious union may well be doubted. But there can be no doubtthat a religious union would have been one of the greatest calamitiesthat could have befallen either kingdom. The union accomplished in 1707has indeed been a great blessing both to England and to Scotland. Butit has been a blessing because, in constituting one State, it left twoChurches. The political interest of the contracting parties was thesame: but the ecclesiastical dispute between them was one which admittedof no compromise. They could therefore preserve harmony only by agreeingto differ. Had there been an amalgamation of the hierarchies, therenever would have been an amalgamation of the nations. SuccessiveMitchells would have fired at successive Sharpes. Five generations ofClaverhouses would have butchered five generations of Camerons. Thosemarvellous improvements which have changed the face of Scotland wouldnever have been effected. Plains now rich with harvests would haveremained barren moors. Waterfalls which now turn the wheels of immensefactories would have resounded in a wilderness. New Lanark would stillhave been a sheepwalk, and Greenock a fishing hamlet. What littlestrength Scotland could under such a system have possessed must, in anestimate of the resources of Great Britain, have been, not added, butdeducted. So encumbered, our country never could have held, eitherin peace or in war, a place in the first rank of nations. We areunfortunately not without the means of judging of the effect which maybe produced on the moral and physical state of a people by establishing, in the exclusive enjoyment of riches and dignity a Church loved andreverenced only by the few, and regarded by the many with religiousand national aversion. One such Church is quite burden enough for theenergies of one empire. 

But these things, which to us, who have been taught by a bitterexperience, seem clear, were by no means clear in 1689, even to verytolerant and enlightened politicians. In truth the English Low Churchmenwere, if possible, more anxious than the English High Churchmen topreserve Episcopacy in Scotland. It is a remarkable fact that Burnet, who was always accused of wishing to establish the Calvinisticdiscipline in the south of the island, incurred great unpopularity amonghis own countrymen by his efforts to uphold prelacy in the north. He wasdoubtless in error: but his error is to be attributed to a cause whichdoes him no discredit. His favourite object, an object unattainableindeed, yet such as might well fascinate a large intellect and abenevolent heart, had long been an honourable treaty between theAnglican Church and the Nonconformists. He thought it most unfortunatethat one opportunity of concluding such a treaty should have beenlost at the time of the Restoration. It seemed to him that anotheropportunity was afforded by the Revolution. He and his friends wereeagerly pushing forward Nottingham's Comprehension Bill, and wereflattering themselves with vain hopes of success. But they feltthat there could hardly be a Comprehension in one of the two Britishkingdoms, unless there were also a Comprehension in the other. Concession must be purchased by concession. If the Presbyterianpertinaciously refused to listen to any terms of compromise where he wasstrong, it would be almost impossible to obtain for him liberal terms ofcompromise where he was weak. Bishops must therefore be allowed to keeptheir sees in Scotland, in order that divines not ordained by Bishopsmight be allowed to hold rectories and canonries in England. 

Thus the cause of the Episcopalians in the north and the cause of thePresbyterians in the south were bound up together in a manner whichmight well perplex even a skilful statesman. It was happy for ourcountry that the momentous question which excited so many strongpassions, and which presented itself in so many different pointsof view, was to be decided by such a man as William. He listened toEpiscopalians, to Latitudinarians, to Presbyterians, to the Dean ofGlasgow who pleaded for the apostolical succession, to Burnet whorepresented the danger of alienating the Anglican clergy, to Carstairswho hated prelacy with the hatred of a man whose thumbs were deeplymarked by the screws of prelatists. Surrounded by these eager advocates, William remained calm and impartial. He was indeed eminently qualifiedby his situation as well as by his personal qualities to be the umpirein that great contention. He was the King of a prelatical kingdom. Hewas the Prime Minister of a presbyterian republic. His unwillingnessto offend the Anglican Church of which he was the head, and hisunwillingness to offend the reformed Churches of the Continent whichregarded him as a champion divinely sent to protect them against theFrench tyranny, balanced each other, and kept him from leaning undulyto either side. His conscience was perfectly neutral. For it was hisdeliberate opinion that no form of ecclesiastical polity was of divineinstitution. He dissented equally from the school of Laud and fromthe school of Cameron, from the men who held that there could not be aChristian Church without Bishops, and from the men who held that therecould not be a Christian Church without synods. Which form of governmentshould be adopted was in his judgment a question of mere expediency. Hewould probably have preferred a temper between the two rival systems, a hierarchy in which the chief spiritual functionaries should have beensomething more than moderators and something less than prelates. But hewas far too wise a man to think of settling such a matter according tohis own personal tastes. He determined therefore that, if there was onboth sides a disposition to compromise, he would act as mediator. But, if it should prove that the public mind of England and the public mindof Scotland had taken the ply strongly in opposite directions, he wouldnot attempt to force either nation into conformity with the opinionof the other. He would suffer each to have its own church, and wouldcontent himself with restraining both churches from persecutingnonconformists, and from encroaching on the functions of the civilmagistrate. 

The language which he held to those Scottish Episcopalians whocomplained to him of their sufferings and implored his protection waswell weighed and well guarded, but clear and ingenuous. He wished, hesaid, to preserve, if possible, the institution to which they wereso much attached, and to grant at the same time entire liberty ofconscience to that party which could not be reconciled to any deviationfrom the Presbyterian model. But the Bishops must take care that theydid not, by their own rashness and obstinacy, put it out of his power tobe of any use to them. They must also distinctly understand that he wasresolved not to force on Scotland by the sword a form of ecclesiasticalgovernment which she detested. If, therefore; it should be found thatprelacy could be maintained only by arms, he should yield to the generalsentiment, and should merely do his best to obtain for the Episcopalianminority permission to worship God in freedom and safety, [276]

It is not likely that, even if the Scottish Bishops had, as Williamrecommended, done all that meekness and prudence could do to conciliatetheir countrymen, episcopacy could, under any modification, have beenmaintained. It was indeed asserted by writers of that generation, andhas been repeated by writers of our generation, that the Presbyterianswere not, before the Revolution, the majority of the people of Scotland, [277] But in this assertion there is an obvious fallacy. The effectivestrength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads. Anestablished church, a dominant church, a church which has the exclusivepossession of civil honours and emoluments, will always rank among itsnominal members multitudes who have no religion at all; multitudes who, though not destitute of religion, attend little to theological disputes, and have no scruple about conforming to the mode of worship whichhappens to be established; and multitudes who have scruples aboutconforming, but whose scruples have yielded to worldly motives. On theother hand, every member of an oppressed church is a man who has avery decided preference for that church. A person who, in the timeof Diocletian, joined in celebrating the Christian mysteries mightreasonably be supposed to be a firm believer in Christ. But it would bea very great mistake to imagine that one single Pontiff or Augur in theRoman Senate was a firm believer in Jupiter. In Mary's reign, everybody who attended the secret meetings of the Protestants was a realProtestant: but hundreds of thousands went to mass who, as appearedbefore she had been dead a month, were not real Roman Catholics. If, under the Kings of the House of Stuart, when a Presbyterian was excludedfrom political power and from the learned professions, was daily annoyedby informers, by tyrannical magistrates, by licentious dragoons, andwas in danger of being hanged if he heard a sermon in the open air, the population of Scotland was not very unequally divided betweenEpiscopalians and Presbyterians, the rational inference is that morethan nineteen twentieths of those Scotchmen whose conscience wasinterested in the matter were Presbyterians, and that not one Scotchmanin twenty was decidedly and on conviction an Episcopalian. Against suchodds the Bishops had but little chance; and whatever chance they hadthey made haste to throw away; some of them because they sincerelybelieved that their allegiance was still due to James; others probablybecause they apprehended that William would not have the power, even ifhe had the will, to serve them, and that nothing but a counterrevolutionin the State could avert a revolution in the Church. 

As the new King of England could not be at Edinburgh during the sittingof the Scottish Convention, a letter from him to the Estates wasprepared with great skill. In this document he professed warm attachmentto the Protestant religion, but gave no opinion touching those questionsabout which Protestants were divided. He had observed, he said, withgreat satisfaction that many of the Scottish nobility and gentry withwhom he had conferred in London were inclined to an union of the twoBritish kingdoms. He was sensible how much such an union would conduceto the happiness of both; and he would do all in his power towards theaccomplishing of so good a work. 

It was necessary that he should allow a large discretion to hisconfidential agents at Edinburgh. The private instructions with which hefurnished those persons could not be minute, but were highly judicious. He charged them to ascertain to the best of their power the real senseof the Convention, and to be guided by it. They must remember that thefirst object was to settle the government. To that object everyother object, even the union, must be postponed. A treaty between twoindependent legislatures, distant from each other several days' journey, must necessarily be a work of time; and the throne could not safelyremain vacant while the negotiations were pending. It was thereforeimportant that His Majesty's agents should be on their guard against thearts of persons who, under pretence of promoting the union, might reallybe contriving only to prolong the interregnum. If the Convention shouldbe bent on establishing the Presbyterian form of church government, William desired that his friends would do all in their power to preventthe triumphant sect from retaliating what it had suffered, [278]

The person by whose advice William appears to have been at this timechiefly guided as to Scotch politics was a Scotchman of great abilitiesand attainments, Sir James Dalrymple of Stair, the founder of a familyeminently distinguished at the bar, on the bench, in the senate, in diplomacy, in arms, and in letters, but distinguished also bymisfortunes and misdeeds which have furnished poets and novelists withmaterials for the darkest and most heartrending tales. Already Sir Jameshad been in mourning for more than one strange and terrible death. Oneof his sons had died by poison. One of his daughters had poniarded herbridegroom on the wedding night. One of his grandsons had in boyishsport been slain by another. Savage libellers asserted, and some of thesuperstitious vulgar believed, that calamities so portentous were theconsequences of some connection between the unhappy race and the powersof darkness. Sir James had a wry neck; and he was reproached with thismisfortune as if it had been a crime, and was told that it marked himout as a man doomed to the gallows. His wife, a woman of great ability, art, and spirit, was popularly nicknamed the Witch of Endor. It wasgravely said that she had cast fearful spells on those whom she hated, and that she had been seen in the likeness of a cat seated on the clothof state by the side of the Lord High Commissioner. The man, however, over whose roof so many curses appeared to hang did not, as far as wecan now judge, fall short of that very low standard of morality whichwas generally attained by politicians of his age and nation. In force ofmind and extent of knowledge he was superior to them all. In his youthhe had borne arms: he had then been a professor of philosophy: hehad then studied law, and had become, by general acknowledgment, thegreatest jurist that his country had produced. In the days of theProtectorate, he had been a judge. After the Restoration, he had madehis peace with the royal family, had sate in the Privy Council, andhad presided with unrivalled ability in the Court of Session. He haddoubtless borne a share in many unjustifiable acts; but there werelimits which he never passed. He had a wonderful power of giving toany proposition which it suited him to maintain a plausible aspect oflegality and even of justice; and this power he frequently abused. But he was not, like many of those among whom he lived, impudently andunscrupulously servile. Shame or conscience generally restrained himfrom committing any bad action for which his rare ingenuity could notframe a specious defence; and he was seldom in his place at the councilboard when any thing outrageously unjust or cruel was to be done. Hismoderation at length gave offence to the Court. He was deprived of hishigh office, and found himself in so disagreeable a situation that heretired to Holland. There he employed himself in correcting the greatwork on jurisprudence which has preserved his memory fresh down to ourown time. In his banishment he tried to gain the favour of his fellowexiles, who naturally regarded him with suspicion. He protested, andperhaps with truth, that his hands were pure from the blood of thepersecuted Covenanters. He made a high profession of religion, prayedmuch, and observed weekly days of fasting and humiliation. He evenconsented, after much hesitation, to assist with his advice and hiscredit the unfortunate enterprise of Argyle. When that enterprise hadfailed, a prosecution was instituted at Edinburgh against Dalrymple;and his estates would doubtless have been confiscated had they notbeen saved by an artifice which subsequently became common among thepoliticians of Scotland. His eldest son and heir apparent, John, tookthe side of the government, supported the dispensing power, declaredagainst the Test, and accepted the place of Lord Advocate, when SirGeorge Mackenzie, after holding out through ten years of foul drudgery, at length showed signs of flagging. The services of the youngerDalrymple were rewarded by a remission of the forfeiture which theoffences of the elder had incurred. Those services indeed were not tobe despised. For Sir John, though inferior to his father in depth andextent of legal learning, was no common man. His knowledge was great andvarious: his parts were quick; and his eloquence was singularly readyand graceful. To sanctity he made no pretensions. Indeed Episcopaliansand Presbyterians agreed in regarding him as little better than anatheist. During some months Sir John at Edinburgh affected to condemnthe disloyalty of his unhappy parent Sir James; and Sir James at Leydentold his Puritan friends how deeply he lamented the wicked compliancesof his unhappy child Sir John. 

The Revolution came, and brought a large increase of wealth and honoursto the House of Stair. The son promptly changed sides, and cooperatedably and zealously with the father. Sir James established himself inLondon for the purpose of giving advice to William on Scotch affairs. Sir John's post was in the Parliament House at Edinburgh. He was notlikely to find any equal among the debaters there, and was prepared toexert all his powers against the dynasty which he had lately served, [279]

By the large party which was zealous for the Calvinistic churchgovernment John Dalrymple was regarded with incurable distrust anddislike. It was therefore necessary that another agent should beemployed to manage that party. Such an agent was George Melville, Lord Melville, a nobleman connected by affinity with the unfortunateMonmouth, and with that Leslie who had unsuccessfully commanded theScotch army against Cromwell at Dunbar. Melville had always beenaccounted a Whig and a Presbyterian. Those who speak of him mostfavourably have not ventured to ascribe to him eminent intellectualendowments or exalted public spirit. But he appears from his lettersto have been by no means deficient in that homely prudence the wantof which has often been fatal to men of brighter genius and of purervirtue. That prudence had restrained him from going very far inopposition to the tyranny of the Stuarts: but he had listened while hisfriends talked about resistance, and therefore, when the Rye House plotwas discovered, thought it expedient to retire to the Continent. In hisabsence he was accused of treason, and was convicted on evidence whichwould not have satisfied any impartial tribunal. He was condemned todeath: his honours and lands were declared forfeit: his arms were tornwith contumely out of the Heralds' book; and his domains swelled theestate of the cruel and rapacious Perth. The fugitive meanwhile, with characteristic wariness, lived quietly on the Continent, anddiscountenanced the unhappy projects of his kinsman Monmouth, butcordially approved of the enterprise of the Prince of Orange. 

Illness had prevented Melville from sailing with the Dutch expedition:but he arrived in London a few hours after the new Sovereigns had beenproclaimed there. William instantly sent him down to Edinburgh, in thehope, as it should seem, that the Presbyterians would be disposed tolisten to moderate counsels proceeding from a man who was attached totheir cause, and who had suffered for it. Melville's second son, David, who had inherited, through his mother, the title of Earl of Leven, andwho had acquired some military experience in the service of the Electorof Brandenburg, had the honour of being the bearer of a letter from thenew King of England to the Scottish Convention, [280]

James had intrusted the conduct of his affairs in Scotland to JohnGraham, Viscount Dundee, and Colin Lindsay, Earl of Balcarras. Dundeehad commanded a body of Scottish troops which had marched into Englandto oppose the Dutch: but he had found, in the inglorious campaign whichhad been fatal to the dynasty of Stuart, no opportunity of displayingthe courage and military skill which those who most detest his mercilessnature allow him to have possessed. He lay with his forces not far fromWatford, when he was informed that James had fled from Whitehall, andthat Feversham had ordered all the royal army to disband. The Scottishregiments were thus left, without pay or provisions, in the midst of aforeign and indeed a hostile nation. Dundee, it is said, wept with griefand rage. Soon, however, more cheering intelligence arrived from variousquarters. William wrote a few lines to say that, if the Scots wouldremain quiet, he would pledge his honour for their safety; and, somehours later, it was known that James had returned to his capital. Dundeerepaired instantly to London, [281] There he met his friend Balcarras, who had just arrived from Edinburgh. Balcarras, a man distinguishedby his handsome person and by his accomplishments, had, in his youth, affected the character of a patriot, but had deserted the popular cause, had accepted a seat in the Privy Council, had become a tool of Perthand Melfort, and bad been one of the Commissioners who were appointedto execute the office of Treasurer when Queensberry was disgraced forrefusing to betray the interests of the Protestant religion, [282]

Dundee and Balcarras went together to Whitehall, and had the honour ofaccompanying James in his last walk, up and down the Mall. He told themthat he intended to put his affairs in Scotland under their management. "You, my Lord Balcarras, must undertake the civil business: and you, myLord Dundee, shall have a commission from me to command the troops. "The two noblemen vowed that they would prove themselves deserving of hisconfidence, and disclaimed all thought of making their peace with thePrince of Orange, [283]

On the following day James left Whitehall for ever; and the Prince ofOrange arrived at Saint James's. Both Dundee and Balcarras swelled thecrowd which thronged to greet the deliverer, and were not ungraciouslyreceived. Both were well known to him. Dundee had served under him onthe Continent; [284] and the first wife of Balcarras had been a lady ofthe House of Orange, and had worn, on her wedding day, a superb pair ofemerald earrings, the gift of her cousin the Prince. [285]

The Scottish Whigs, then assembled in great numbers at Westminster, earnestly pressed William to proscribe by name four or five men who had, during the evil times, borne a conspicuous part in the proceedings ofthe Privy Council at Edinburgh. Dundee and Balcarras were particularlymentioned. But the Prince had determined that, as far as his powerextended, all the past should be covered with a general amnesty, andabsolutely refused to make any declaration which could drive to despaireven the most guilty of his uncle's servants. 

Balcarras went repeatedly to Saint James's, had several audiences ofWilliam, professed deep respect for his Highness, and owned that KingJames had committed great errors, but would not promise to concur ina vote of deposition. William gave no sign of displeasure, but said atparting: "Take care, my Lord, that you keep within the law; for, if youbreak it, you must expect to be left to it. " [286]

Dundee seems to have been less ingenuous. He employed the mediationof Burnet, opened a negotiation with Saint James's, declared himselfwilling to acquiesce in the new order of things, obtained from Williama promise of protection, and promised in return to live peaceably. Suchcredit was given to his professions that he was suffered to travel downto Scotland under the escort of a troop of cavalry. Without such anescort the man of blood, whose name was never mentioned but witha shudder at the hearth of any Presbyterian family, would, at thatconjuncture, have had but a perilous journey through Berwickshire andthe Lothians, [287]

February was drawing to a close when Dundee and Balcarras reachedEdinburgh. They had some hope that they might be at the head of amajority in the Convention. They therefore exerted themselves vigorouslyto consolidate and animate their party. They assured the rigidroyalists, who had a scruple about sitting in an assembly convoked byan usurper, that the rightful King particularly wished no friend ofhereditary monarchy to be absent. More than one waverer was kept steadyby being assured in confident terms that a speedy restoration wasinevitable. Gordon had determined to surrender the castle, and had begunto remove his furniture: but Dundee and Balcarras prevailed on him tohold out some time longer. They informed him that they had received fromSaint Germains full powers to adjourn the Convention to Stirling, andthat, if things went ill at Edinburgh, those powers would be used, [288]

At length the fourteenth of March, the day fixed for the meeting of theEstates, arrived, and the Parliament House was crowded. Nine prelateswere in their places. When Argyle presented himself, a single lordprotested against the admission of a person whom a legal sentence, passed in due form, and still unreversed, had deprived of the honoursof the peerage. But this objection was overruled by the general senseof the assembly. When Melville appeared, no voice was raised against hisadmission. The Bishop of Edinburgh officiated as chaplain, and made itone of his petitions that God would help and restore King James, [289]It soon appeared that the general feeling of the Convention was by nomeans in harmony with this prayer. The first matter to be decided wasthe choice of a President. The Duke of Hamilton was supported bythe Whigs, the Marquess of Athol by the Jacobites. Neither candidatepossessed, and neither deserved, the entire confidence of hissupporters. Hamilton had been a Privy Councillor of James, had borne apart in many unjustifiable acts, and had offered but a very cautious andlanguid opposition to the most daring attacks on the laws and religionof Scotland. Not till the Dutch guards were at Whitehall had he venturedto speak out. Then he had joined the victorious party, and had assuredthe Whigs that he had pretended to be their enemy, only in order that hemight, without incurring suspicion, act as their friend. Athol wasstill less to be trusted. His abilities were mean, his temperfalse, pusillanimous, and cruel. In the late reign he had gained adishonourable notoriety by the barbarous actions of which he had beenguilty in Argyleshire. He had turned with the turn of fortune, andhad paid servile court to the Prince of Orange, but had been coldlyreceived, and had now, from mere mortification, come back to the partywhich he had deserted, [290] Neither of the rival noblemen had chosento stake the dignities and lands of his house on the issue of thecontention between the rival Kings. The eldest son of Hamilton haddeclared for James, and the eldest son of Athol for William, so that, inany event, both coronets and both estates were safe. 

But in Scotland the fashionable notions touching political moralitywere lax; and the aristocratical sentiment was strong. The Whigs weretherefore willing to forget that Hamilton had lately sate in the councilof James. The Jacobites were equally willing to forget that Athol hadlately fawned on William. In political inconsistency those two greatlords were far indeed from standing by themselves; but in dignity andpower they had scarcely an equal in the assembly. Their descent waseminently illustrious: their influence was immense: one of them couldraise the Western Lowlands: the other could bring into the field anarmy of northern mountaineers. Round these chiefs therefore the hostilefactions gathered. 

The votes were counted; and it appeared that Hamilton had a majorityof forty. The consequence was that about twenty of the defeated partyinstantly passed over to the victors, [291] At Westminster such adefection would have been thought strange; but it seems to have causedlittle surprise at Edinburgh. It is a remarkable circumstance that thesame country should have produced in the same age the most wonderfulspecimens of both extremes of human nature. No class of men mentioned inhistory has ever adhered to a principle with more inflexible pertinacitythan was found among the Scotch Puritans. Fine and imprisonment, thesheers and the branding iron, the boot, the thumbscrew, and the gallowscould not extort from the stubborn Covenanter one evasive word on whichit was possible to put a sense inconsistent with his theological system. Even in things indifferent he would hear of no compromise; and he wasbut too ready to consider all who recommended prudence and charity astraitors to the cause of truth. On the other hand, the Scotchmen of thatgeneration who made a figure in the Parliament House and in the CouncilChamber were the most dishonest and unblushing timeservers that theworld has ever seen. The English marvelled alike at both classes. Therewere indeed many stouthearted nonconformists in the South; but scarcelyany who in obstinacy, pugnacity, and hardihood could bear a comparisonwith the men of the school of Cameron. There were many knavishpoliticians in the South; but few so utterly destitute of morality, andstill fewer so utterly destitute of shame, as the men of the school ofLauderdale. Perhaps it is natural that the most callous and impudentvice should be found in the near neighbourhood of unreasonable andimpracticable virtue. Where enthusiasts are ready to destroy or tobe destroyed for trifles magnified into importance by a squeamishconscience, it is not strange that the very name of conscience shouldbecome a byword of contempt to cool and shrewd men of business. 

The majority, reinforced by the crowd of deserters from the minority, proceeded to name a Committee of Elections. Fifteen persons were chosen, and it soon appeared that twelve of these were not disposed to examineseverely into the regularity of any proceeding of which the result hadbeen to send up a Whig to the Parliament House. The Duke of Hamiltonis said to have been disgusted by the gross partiality of his ownfollowers, and to have exerted himself, with but little success, torestrain their violence, [292]

Before the Estates proceeded to deliberate on the business for whichthey had met, they thought it necessary to provide for their ownsecurity. They could not be perfectly at ease while the roof under whichthey sate was commanded by the batteries of the Castle. A deputationwas therefore sent to inform Gordon that the Convention required himto evacuate the fortress within twenty-four hours, and that, if hecomplied, his past conduct should not be remembered against him. Heasked a night for consideration. During that night his wavering mind wasconfirmed by the exhortations of Dundee and Balcarras. On the morrow hesent an answer drawn in respectful but evasive terms. He was very far, he declared, from meditating harm to the City of Edinburgh. Least of allcould he harbour any thought of molesting an august assembly which heregarded with profound reverence. He would willingly give bond for hisgood behaviour to the amount of twenty thousand pounds sterling. But hewas in communication with the government now established in England. Hewas in hourly expectation of important despatches from that government;and, till they arrived, he should not feel himself justified inresigning his command. These excuses were not admitted. Heralds andtrumpeters were sent to summon the Castle in form, and to denounce thepenalties of high treason against those who should continue to occupythat fortress in defiance of the authority of the Estates. Guards wereat the same time posted to intercept all communication between thegarrison and the city, [293]

Two days had been spent in these preludes; and it was expected thaton the third morning the great contest would begin. Meanwhile thepopulation of Edinburgh was in an excited state. It had been discoveredthat Dundee had paid visits to the Castle; and it was believed that hisexhortations had induced the garrison to hold out. His old soldiers wereknown to be gathering round him; and it might well be apprehended thathe would make some desperate attempt. He, on the other hand, had beeninformed that the Western Covenanters who filled the cellars of the cityhad vowed vengeance on him: and, in truth, when we consider that theirtemper was singularly savage and implacable; that they had been taughtto regard the slaying of a persecutor as a duty; that no examplesfurnished by Holy Writ had been more frequently held up to theiradmiration than Ehud stabbing Eglon, and Samuel hewing Agag limb fromlimb; that they had never heard any achievement in the history of theirown country more warmly praised by their favourite teachers than thebutchery of Cardinal Beatoun and of Archbishop Sharpe; we may wellwonder that a man who had shed the blood of the saints like water shouldhave been able to walk the High Street in safety during a singleday. The enemy whom Dundee had most reason to fear was a youth ofdistinguished courage and abilities named William Cleland. Cleland had, when little more than sixteen years old, borne arms in that insurrectionwhich had been put down at Bothwell Bridge. He had since disgusted somevirulent fanatics by his humanity and moderation. But with the greatbody of Presbyterians his name stood high. For with the strict moralityand ardent zeal of a Puritan he united some accomplishments of which fewPuritans could boast. His manners were polished, and his literary andscientific attainments respectable. He was a linguist, mathematician, and a poet. It is true that his hymns, odes, ballads, and Hudibrasticsatires are of very little intrinsic value; but, when it is consideredthat he was a mere boy when most of them were written, it must beadmitted that they show considerable vigour of mind. He was now atEdinburgh: his influence among the West Country Whigs assembled therewas great: he hated Dundee with deadly hatred, and was believed to bemeditating some act of violence, [294]

On the fifteenth of March Dundee received information that some of theCovenanters had bound themselves together to slay him and Sir GeorgeMackenzie, whose eloquence and learning, long prostituted to the serviceof tyranny, had made him more odious to the Presbyterians than anyother man of the gown. Dundee applied to Hamilton for protection, andHamilton advised him to bring the matter under the consideration of theConvention at the next sitting, [295]

Before that sitting, a person named Crane arrived from France, with aletter addressed by the fugitive King to the Estates. The letter wassealed: the bearer, strange to say, was not furnished with a copy forthe information of the heads of the Jacobite party; nor did he bring anymessage, written or verbal, to either of James's agents. Balcarras andDundee were mortified by finding that so little confidence was reposedin them, and were harassed by painful doubts touching the contents ofthe document on which so much depended. They were willing, however, tohope for the best. King James could not, situated as he was, be so illadvised as to act in direct opposition to the counsel and entreatiesof his friends. His letter, when opened, must be found to contain suchgracious assurances as would animate the royalists and conciliate themoderate Whigs. His adherents, therefore, determined that it should beproduced. 

When the Convention reassembled on the morning of Saturday the sixteenthof March, it was proposed that measures should be taken for the personalsecurity of the members. It was alleged that the life of Dundee had beenthreatened; that two men of sinister appearance had been watching thehouse where he lodged, and had been heard to say that they would use thedog as he had used them. Mackenzie complained that he too was in danger, and, with his usual copiousness and force of language, demanded theprotection of the Estates. But the matter was lightly treated by themajority: and the Convention passed on to other business, [296]

It was then announced that Crane was at the door of the ParliamentHouse. He was admitted. The paper of which he was in charge was laid onthe table. Hamilton remarked that there was, in the hands of the Earlof Leven, a communication from the Prince by whose authority theEstates had been convoked. That communication seemed to be entitled toprecedence. The Convention was of the same opinion; and the well weighedand prudent letter of William was read. 

It was then moved that the letter of James should be opened. TheWhigs objected that it might possibly contain a mandate dissolving theConvention. They therefore proposed that, before the seal was broken, the Estates should resolve to continue sitting, notwithstanding any suchmandate. The Jacobites, who knew no more than the Whigs what was in theletter, and were impatient to have it read, eagerly assented. A vote waspassed by which the members bound themselves to consider any order whichshould command them to separate as a nullity, and to remain assembledtill they should have accomplished the work of securing the liberty andreligion of Scotland. This vote was signed by almost all the lords andgentlemen who were present. Seven out of nine bishops subscribed it. Thenames of Dundee and Balcarras, written by their own hands, may stillbe seen on the original roll. Balcarras afterwards excused what, onhis principles, was, beyond all dispute, a flagrant act of treason, by saying that he and his friends had, from zeal for their master'sinterest, concurred in a declaration of rebellion against their master'sauthority; that they had anticipated the most salutary effects from theletter; and that, if they had not made some concession to the majority, the letter would not have been opened. 

In a few minutes the hopes of Balcarras were grievously disappointed. The letter from which so much had been hoped and feared was read withall the honours which Scottish Parliaments were in the habit of payingto royal communications: but every word carried despair to the heartsof the Jacobites. It was plain that adversity had taught James neitherwisdom nor mercy. All was obstinacy, cruelty, insolence. A pardon waspromised to those traitors who should return to their allegiance withina fortnight. Against all others unsparing vengeance was denounced. Not only was no sorrow expressed for past offences: but the letterwas itself a new offence: for it was written and countersigned by theapostate Melfort, who was, by the statutes of the realm, incapable ofholding the office of Secretary, and who was not less abhorred by theProtestant Tories than by the Whigs. The hall was in a tumult. Theenemies of James were loud and vehement. His friends, angry with him, and ashamed of him, saw that it was vain to think of continuing thestruggle in the Convention. Every vote which had been doubtful when hisletter was unsealed was now irrecoverably lost. The sitting closed ingreat agitation, [297]

It was Saturday afternoon. There was to be no other meeting till Mondaymorning. The Jacobite leaders held a consultation, and came to theconclusion that it was necessary to take a decided step. Dundee andBalcarras must use the powers with which they had been intrusted. Theminority must forthwith leave Edinburgh and assemble at Stirling. Atholassented, and undertook to bring a great body of his clansmen from theHighlands to protect the deliberations of the Royalist Convention. Everything was arranged for the secession; but, in a few hours, the tardinessof one man and the haste of another ruined the whole plan. 

The Monday came. The Jacobite lords and gentlemen were actually takinghorse for Stirling, when Athol asked for a delay of twenty-four hours. He had no personal reason to be in haste. By staying he ran no riskof being assassinated. By going he incurred the risks inseparable fromcivil war. The members of his party, unwilling to separate from him, consented to the postponement which he requested, and repaired once moreto the Parliament House. Dundee alone refused to stay a moment longer. His life was in danger. The Convention had refused to protect him. Hewould not remain to be a mark for the pistols and daggers of murderers. Balcarras expostulated to no purpose. "By departing alone, " he said, "you will give the alarm and break up the whole scheme. " But Dundee wasobstinate. Brave as he undoubtedly was, he seems, like many other bravemen, to have been less proof against the danger of assassinationthan against any other form of danger. He knew what the hatred of theCovenanters was: he knew how well he had earned their hatred; and he washaunted by that consciousness of inexpiable guilt, and by that dread ofa terrible retribution, which the ancient polytheists personifiedunder the awful name of the Furies. His old troopers, the Satans andBeelzebubs who had shared his crimes, and who now shared his perils, were ready to be the companions of his flight. 

Meanwhile the Convention had assembled. Mackenzie was on his legs, andwas pathetically lamenting the hard condition of the Estates, at oncecommanded by the guns of a fortress and menaced by a fanatical rabble, when he was interrupted by some sentinels who came running from theposts near the Castle. They had seen Dundee at the head of fifty horseon the Stirling road. That road ran close under the huge rock on whichthe citadel is built. Gordon had appeared on the ramparts, and had madea sign that he had something to say. Dundee had climbed high enough tohear and to be heard, and was then actually conferring with the Duke. Up to that moment the hatred with which the Presbyterian members ofthe assembly regarded the merciless persecutor of their brethren inthe faith had been restrained by the decorous forms of parliamentarydeliberation. But now the explosion was terrible. Hamilton himself, who, by the acknowledgment of his opponents, had hitherto performed theduties of President with gravity and impartiality, was the loudest andfiercest man in the hall. "It is high time, " he cried, "that we [shouldfind] the enemies of our religion and of our civil freedom are musteringall around us; and we may well suspect that they have accomplices evenhere. Lock the doors. Lay the keys on the table. Let nobody go out butthose lords and gentlemen whom we shall appoint to call the citizens toarms. There are some good men from the West in Edinburgh, men for whom Ican answer. " The assembly raised a general cry of assent. Severalmembers of the majority boasted that they too had brought with themtrusty retainers who would turn out at a moment's notice againstClaverhouse and his dragoons. All that Hamilton proposed was instantlydone. The Jacobites, silent and unresisting, became prisoners. Levenwent forth and ordered the drums to beat. The Covenanters of Lanarkshireand Ayrshire promptly obeyed the signal. The force thus assembled hadindeed no very military appearance, but was amply sufficient to overawethe adherents of the House of Stuart. From Dundee nothing was to behoped or feared. He had already scrambled down the Castle hill, rejoinedhis troopers, and galloped westward. Hamilton now ordered the doors tobe opened. The suspected members were at liberty to depart. Humbled andbrokenspirited, yet glad that they had come off so well, they stoleforth through the crowd of stern fanatics which filled the High Street. All thought of secession was at an end, [298]

On the following day it was resolved that the kingdom should be put intoa posture of defence. The preamble of this resolution contained a severereflection on the perfidy of the traitor who, within a few hours afterhe had, by an engagement subscribed with his own hand, bound himself notto quit his post in the Convention, had set the example of desertion, and given the signal of civil war. All Protestants, from sixteen tosixty, were ordered to hold themselves in readiness to assemble in armsat the first summons; and, that none might pretend ignorance, it wasdirected that the edict should be proclaimed at all the market crossesthroughout the realm, [299]

The Estates then proceeded to send a letter of thanks to William. Tothis letter were attached the signatures of many noblemen and gentlemenwho were in the interest of the banished King. The Bishops howeverunanimously refused to subscribe their names. 

It had long been the custom of the Parliaments of Scotland to entrustthe preparation of Acts to a select number of members who weredesignated as the Lords of the Articles. In conformity with this usage, the business of framing a plan for the settling of the government wasnow confided to a Committee of twenty-four. Of the twenty-four eightwere peers, eight representatives of counties, and eight representativesof towns. The majority of the Committee were Whigs; and not a singleprelate had a seat. 

The spirit of the Jacobites, broken by a succession of disasters, was, about this time, for a moment revived by the arrival of the Duke ofQueensberry from London. His rank was high and his influence was great:his character, by comparison with the characters of those who surroundedhim, was fair. When Popery was in the ascendent, he had been true tothe cause of the Protestant Church; and, since Whiggism had been in theascendent, he had been true to the cause of hereditary monarchy. Somethought that, if he had been earlier in his place, he might have beenable to render important service to the House of Stuart, [300] Even nowthe stimulants which he applied to his torpid and feeble party producedsome faint symptoms of returning animation. Means were found ofcommunicating with Gordon; and he was earnestly solicited to fire on thecity. The Jacobites hoped that, as soon as the cannon balls had beatendown a few chimneys, the Estates would adjourn to Glasgow. Time wouldthus be gained; and the royalists might be able to execute their oldproject of meeting in a separate convention. Gordon however positivelyrefused to take on himself so grave a responsibility on no betterwarrant than the request of a small cabal, [301]

By this time the Estates had a guard on which they could rely morefirmly than on the undisciplined and turbulent Covenanters of the West. A squadron of English men of war from the Thames had arrived in theFrith of Forth. On board were the three Scottish regiments which hadaccompanied William from Holland. He had, with great judgment, selectedthem to protect the assembly which was to settle the government oftheir country; and, that no cause of jealousy might be given to a peopleexquisitely sensitive on points of national honour, he had purged theranks of all Dutch soldiers, and had thus reduced the number of men toabout eleven hundred. This little force was commanded by Andrew Mackay, a Highlander of noble descent, who had served long on the Continent, andwho was distinguished by courage of the truest temper, and by a pietysuch as is seldom found in soldiers of fortune. The Convention passed aresolution appointing Mackay general of their forces. When the questionwas put on this resolution, the Archbishop of Glasgow, unwillingdoubtless to be a party to such an usurpation of powers which belongedto the King alone, begged that the prelates might be excused fromvoting. Divines, he said, had nothing to do with military arrangements. "The Fathers of the Church, " answered a member very keenly, "have beenlately favoured with a new light. I have myself seen militaryorders signed by the Most Reverend person who has suddenly become soscrupulous. There was indeed one difference: those orders were fordragooning Protestants, and the resolution before us is meant to protectus from Papists. " [302]

The arrival of Mackay's troops, and the determination of Gordon toremain inactive, quelled the spirit of the Jacobites. They had indeedone chance left. They might possibly, by joining with those Whigs whowere bent on an union with England, have postponed during a considerabletime the settlement of the government. A negotiation was actually openedwith this view, but was speedily broken off. For it soon appeared thatthe party which was for James was really hostile to the union, and thatthe party which was for the union was really hostile to James. As thesetwo parties had no object in common, the only effect of a coalitionbetween them must have been that one of them would have become the toolof the other. The question of the union therefore was not raised, [303]Some Jacobites retired to their country seats: others, though theyremained at Edinburgh, ceased to show themselves in the ParliamentHouse: many passed over to the winning side; and, when at lengththe resolutions prepared by the Twenty Four were submitted to theConvention, it appeared that the party which on the first day of thesession had rallied round Athol had dwindled away to nothing. 

The resolutions had been framed, as far as possible, in conformitywith the example recently set at Westminster. In one important point, however, it was absolutely necessary that the copy should deviate fromthe original. The Estates of England had brought two charges againstJames, his misgovernment and his flight, and had, by using the softword "Abdication, " evaded, with some sacrifice of verbal precision, the question whether subjects may lawfully depose a bad prince. Thatquestion the Estates of Scotland could not evade. They could not pretendthat James had deserted his post. For he had never, since he came tothe throne, resided in Scotland. During many years that kingdom had beenruled by sovereigns who dwelt in another land. The whole machinery ofthe administration had been constructed on the supposition that theKing would be absent, and was therefore not necessarily deranged by thatflight which had, in the south of the island, dissolved all government, and suspended the ordinary course of justice. It was only by letter thatthe King could, when he was at Whitehall, communicate with the Counciland the Parliament at Edinburgh; and by letter he could communicate withthem when he was at Saint Germains or at Dublin. The Twenty Four weretherefore forced to propose to the Estates a resolution distinctlydeclaring that James the Seventh had by his misconduct forfeited thecrown. Many writers have inferred from the language of this resolutionthat sound political principles had made a greater progress in Scotlandthan in England. But the whole history of the two countries from theRestoration to the Union proves this inference to be erroneous. TheScottish Estates used plain language, simply because it was impossiblefor them, situated as they were, to use evasive language. 

The person who bore the chief part in framing the resolution, and indefending it, was Sir John Dalrymple, who had recently held the highoffice of Lord Advocate, and had been an accomplice in some of themisdeeds which he now arraigned with great force of reasoning andeloquence. He was strenuously supported by Sir James Montgomery, memberfor Ayrshire, a man of considerable abilities, but of loose principles, turbulent temper, insatiable cupidity, and implacable malevolence. TheArchbishop of Glasgow and Sir George Mackenzie spoke on the other side:but the only effect of their oratory was to deprive their party of theadvantage of being able to allege that the Estates were under duress, and that liberty of speech had been denied to the defenders ofhereditary monarchy. 

When the question was put, Athol, Queensberry, and some of theirfriends withdrew. Only five members voted against the resolution whichpronounced that James had forfeited his right to the allegiance of hissubjects. When it was moved that the Crown of Scotland should besettled as the Crown of England had been settled, Athol and Queensberryreappeared in the hall. They had doubted, they said, whether they couldjustifiably declare the throne vacant. But, since it had been declaredvacant, they felt no doubt that William and Mary were the persons whoought to fill it. 

The Convention then went forth in procession to the High Street. Severalgreat nobles, attended by the Lord Provost of the capital and by theheralds, ascended the octagon tower from which rose the city crosssurmounted by the unicorn of Scotland, [304] Hamilton read the vote ofthe Convention; and a King at Arms proclaimed the new Sovereigns withsound of trumpet. On the same day the Estates issued an order that theparochial clergy should, on pain of deprivation, publish from theirpulpits the proclamation which had just been read at the city cross, andshould pray for King William and Queen Mary. 

Still the interregnum was not at an end. Though the new Sovereigns hadbeen proclaimed, they had not yet been put into possession of the royalauthority by a formal tender and a formal acceptance. At Edinburgh, as at Westminster, it was thought necessary that the instrument whichsettled the government should clearly define and solemnly assert thoseprivileges of the people which the Stuarts had illegally infringed. AClaim of Right was therefore drawn up by the Twenty Four, and adopted bythe Convention. To this Claim, which purported to be merely declaratoryof the law as it stood, was added a supplementary paper containing alist of grievances which could be remedied only by new laws. One mostimportant article which we should naturally expect to find at the headof such a list, the Convention, with great practical prudence, but indefiance of notorious facts and of unanswerable arguments, placed in theClaim of Right. Nobody could deny that prelacy was established by Actof Parliament. The power exercised by the Bishops might be pernicious, unscriptural, antichristian but illegal it certainly was not; and topronounce it illegal was to outrage common sense. The Whig leadershowever were much more desirous to get rid of episcopacy than toprove themselves consummate publicists and logicians. If they made theabolition of episcopacy an article of the contract by which William wasto hold the crown, they attained their end, though doubtless in a manneropen to much criticism. If, on the other hand, they contented themselveswith resolving that episcopacy was a noxious institution which at somefuture time the legislature would do well to abolish, they might findthat their resolution, though unobjectionable in form, was barren ofconsequences. They knew that William by no means sympathized with theirdislike of Bishops, and that, even had he been much more zealous forthe Calvinistic model than he was, the relation in which he stood to theAnglican Church would make it difficult and dangerous for him to declarehimself hostile to a fundamental part of the constitution of thatChurch. If he should become King of Scotland without being fettered byany pledge on this subject, it might well be apprehended that he wouldhesitate about passing an Act which would be regarded with abhorrenceby a large body of his subjects in the south of the island. It wastherefore most desirable that the question should be settled while thethrone was still vacant. In this opinion many politicians concurred, whohad no dislike to rochets and mitres, but who wished that William mighthave a quiet and prosperous reign. The Scottish people, --so these menreasoned, --hated episcopacy. The English loved it. To leave Williamany voice in the matter was to put him under the necessity of deeplywounding the strongest feelings of one of the nations which he governed. It was therefore plainly for his own interest that the question, whichhe could not settle in any manner without incurring a fearful amount ofobloquy, should be settled for him by others who were exposed to nosuch danger. He was not yet Sovereign of Scotland. While the interregnumlasted, the supreme power belonged to the Estates; and for what theEstates might do the prelatists of his southern kingdom could not holdhim responsible. The elder Dalrymple wrote strongly from London to thiseffect, and there can be little doubt that he expressed the sentimentsof his master. William would have sincerely rejoiced if the Scots couldhave been reconciled to a modified episcopacy. But, since that could notbe, it was manifestly desirable that they should themselves, whilethere was yet no King over them, pronounce the irrevocable doom of theinstitution which they abhorred, [305]

The Convention, therefore, with little debate as it should seem, inserted in the Claim of Right a clause declaring that prelacy was aninsupportable burden to the kingdom, that it had been long odious to thebody of the people, and that it ought to be abolished. 

Nothing in the proceedings at Edinburgh astonishes an Englishman morethan the manner in which the Estates dealt with the practice of torture. In England torture had always been illegal. In the most servile timesthe judges had unanimously pronounced it so. Those rulers who hadoccasionally resorted to it had, as far as was possible, used it insecret, had never pretended that they had acted in conformity witheither statute law or common law, and had excused themselves by sayingthat the extraordinary peril to which the state was exposed hadforced them to take on themselves the responsibility of employingextraordinarily means of defence. It had therefore never been thoughtnecessary by any English Parliament to pass any Act or resolutiontouching this matter. The torture was not mentioned in the Petitionof Right, or in any of the statutes framed by the Long Parliament. No member of the Convention of 1689 dreamed of proposing that theinstrument which called the Prince and Princess of Orange to the throneshould contain a declaration against the using of racks and thumbscrewsfor the purpose of forcing prisoners to accuse themselves. Such adeclaration would have been justly regarded as weakening rather thanstrengthening a rule which, as far back as the days of the Plantagenets, had been proudly declared by the most illustrious sages of WestminsterHall to be a distinguishing feature of the English jurisprudence, [306]In the Scottish Claim of Right, the use of torture, without evidence, or in ordinary cases, was declared to be contrary to law. The use oftorture, therefore, where there was strong evidence, and where the crimewas extraordinary, was, by the plainest implication, declared to beaccording to law; nor did the Estates mention the use of torture amongthe grievances which required a legislative remedy. In truth, they couldnot condemn the use of torture without condemning themselves. It hadchanced that, while they were employed in settling the government, theeloquent and learned Lord President Lockhart had been foully murdered ina public street through which he was returning from church on a Sunday. The murderer was seized, and proved to be a wretch who, having treatedhis wife barbarously and turned her out of doors, had been compelled bya decree of the Court of Session to provide for her. A savage hatred ofthe judges by whom she had been protected had taken possession of hismind, and had goaded him to a horrible crime and a horrible fate. Itwas natural that an assassination attended by so many circumstancesof aggravation should move the indignation of the members of theConvention. Yet they should have considered the gravity of theconjuncture and the importance of their own mission. They unfortunately, in the heat of passion, directed the magistrates of Edinburgh to strikethe prisoner in the boots, and named a Committee to superintend theoperation. But for this unhappy event, it is probable that the law ofScotland concerning torture would have been immediately assimilated tothe law of England, [307]

Having settled the Claim of Right, the Convention proceeded to revisethe Coronation oath. When this had been done, three members wereappointed to carry the Instrument of Government to London. Argyle, though not, in strictness of law, a Peer, was chosen to represent thePeers: Sir James Montgomery represented the Commissioners of Shires, andSir John Dalrymple the Commissioners of Towns. 

The Estates then adjourned for a few weeks, having first passed a votewhich empowered Hamilton to take such measures as might be necessary forthe preservation of the public peace till the end of the interregnum. 

The ceremony of the inauguration was distinguished from ordinarypageants by some highly interesting circumstances. On the eleventh ofMay the three Commissioners came to the Council Chamber at Whitehall, and thence, attended by almost all the Scotchmen of note who were thenin London, proceeded to the Banqueting House. There William and Maryappeared seated under a canopy. A splendid circle of English nobles, andstatesmen stood round the throne: but the sword of state as committed toa Scotch lord; and the oath of office was administered after the Scotchfashion. Argyle recited the words slowly. The royal pair, holding uptheir hands towards heaven, repeated after him till they came to thelast clause. There William paused. That clause contained a promise thathe would root out all heretics and all enemies of the true worship ofGod; and it was notorious that, in the opinion of many Scotchmen, not only all Roman Catholics, but all Protestant Episcopalians, allIndependents, Baptists and Quakers, all Lutherans, nay all BritishPresbyterians who did not hold themselves bound by the Solemn League andCovenant, were enemies of the true worship of God, [308] The King hadapprised the Commissioners that he could not take this part of the oathwithout a distinct and public explanation; and they had been authorisedby the Convention to give such an explanation as would satisfy him. "I will not, " he now said, "lay myself under any obligation to bea persecutor. " "Neither the words of this oath, " said one of theCommissioners, "nor the laws of Scotland, lay any such obligation onyour Majesty. " "In that sense, then, I swear, " said William; "and Idesire you all, my lords and gentlemen, to witness that I do so. " Evenhis detractors have generally admitted that on this great occasion heacted with uprightness, dignity, and wisdom, [309]

As King of Scotland, he soon found himself embarrassed at every step byall the difficulties which had embarrassed him as King of England, andby other difficulties which in England were happily unknown. In thenorth of the island, no class was more dissatisfied with the Revolutionthan the class which owed most to the Revolution. The manner in whichthe Convention had decided the question of ecclesiastical polity hadnot been more offensive to the Bishops themselves than to those fieryCovenanters who had long, in defiance of sword and carbine, boot andgibbet, worshipped their Maker after their own fashion in caverns and onmountain tops. Was there ever, these zealots exclaimed, such a haltingbetween two opinions, such a compromise between the Lord and Baal? TheEstates ought to have said that episcopacy was an abomination inGod's sight, and that, in obedience to his word, and from fear ofhis righteous judgment, they were determined to deal with this greatnational sin and scandal after the fashion of those saintly rulers whoof old cut down the groves and demolished the altars of Chemosh andAstarte. Unhappily, Scotland was ruled, not by pious Josiahs, but bycareless Gallios. The antichristian hierarchy was to be abolished, notbecause it was an insult to heaven, but because it was felt as a burdenon earth; not because it was hateful to the great Head of the Church, but because it was hateful to the people. Was public opinion, then, thetest of right and wrong in religion? Was not the order which Christ hadestablished in his own house to be held equally sacred in all countriesand through all ages? And was there no reason for following that orderin Scotland except a reason which might be urged with equal force formaintaining Prelacy in England, Popery in Spain, and Mahometanism inTurkey? Why, too, was nothing said of those Covenants which the nationhad so generally subscribed and so generally violated? Why was it notdistinctly affirmed that the promises set down in those rolls were stillbinding, and would to the end of time be binding, on the kingdom? Werethese truths to be suppressed from regard for the feelings and interestsof a prince who was all things to all men, an ally of the idolatrousSpaniard and of the Lutheran bane, a presbyterian at the Hague and aprelatist at Whiteball? He, like Jelin in ancient times, had doubtlessso far done well that he had been the scourge of the idolatrous House ofAhab. But he, like Jelin, had not taken heed to walk in the divinelaw with his whole heart, but had tolerated and practised impietiesdiffering only in degree from those of which he had declared himself theenemy. It would have better become godly senators to remonstrate withhim on the sin which he was committing by conforming to the Anglicanritual, and by maintaining the Anglican Church government, than toflatter him by using a phraseology which seemed to indicate that theywere as deeply tainted with Erastianism as himself. Many of those whoheld this language refused to do any act which could be construed into arecognition of the new Sovereigns, and would rather have been fired uponby files of musketeers or tied to stakes within low water mark than haveuttered a prayer that God would bless William and Mary. 

Yet the King had less to fear from the pertinacious adherence of thesemen to their absurd principles, than from the ambition and avarice ofanother set of men who had no principles at all. It was necessarythat he should immediately name ministers to conduct the government ofScotland: and, name whom he might, he could not fail to disappointand irritate a multitude of expectants. Scotland was one of the leastwealthy countries in Europe: yet no country in Europe contained agreater number of clever and selfish politicians. The places in thegift of the Crown were not enough to satisfy one twentieth part of theplacehunters, every one of whom thought that his own services hadbeen preeminent, and that, whoever might be passed by, he ought tobe remembered. William did his best to satisfy these innumerable andinsatiable claimants by putting many offices into commission. There werehowever a few great posts which it was impossible to divide. Hamiltonwas declared Lord High Commissioner, in the hope that immense pecuniaryallowances, a residence in Holyrood Palace, and a pomp and dignitylittle less than regal, would content him. The Earl of Crawford wasappointed President of the Parliament; and it was supposed that thisappointment would conciliate the rigid Presbyterians, for Crawford waswhat they called a professor. His letters and speeches are, to use hisown phraseology, exceeding savoury. Alone, or almost alone, among theprominent politicians of that time, he retained the style which hadbeen fashionable in the preceding generation. He had a text of theOld Testament ready for every occasion. He filled his despatches withallusions to Ishmael and Hagar, Hannah and Eli, Elijah, Nehemiah, and Zerubbabel, and adorned his oratory with quotations from Ezra andHaggai. It is a circumstance strikingly characteristic of the man, andof the school in which he had been trained, that, in all the mass of hiswriting which has come down to us, there is not a single word indicatingthat he had ever in his life heard of the New Testament. Even in our owntime some persons of a peculiar taste have been so much delighted by therich unction of his eloquence, that they have confidently pronouncedhim a saint. To those whose habit it is to judge of a man rather by hisactions than by his words, Crawford will appear to have been a selfish, cruel politician, who was not at all the dupe of his own cant, and whosezeal against episcopal government was not a little whetted by his desireto obtain a grant of episcopal domains. In excuse for his greediness, itought to be said that he was the poorest noble of a poor nobility, andthat before the Revolution he was sometimes at a loss for a meal and asuit of clothes, [310]

The ablest of Scottish politicians and debaters, Sir John Dalrymple, wasappointed Lord Advocate. His father, Sir James, the greatest of Scottishjurists, was placed at the head of the Court of Session. Sir WilliamLockhart, a man whose letters prove him to have possessed considerableability, became Solicitor General. 

Sir James Montgomery had flattered himself that he should be the chiefminister. He had distinguished himself highly in the Convention. Hehad been one of the Commissioners who had tendered the Crown andadministered the oath to the new Sovereigns. In parliamentary abilityand eloquence he had no superior among his countrymen, except the newLord Advocate. The Secretaryship was, not indeed in dignity, but in realpower, the highest office in the Scottish government; and this officewas the reward to which Montgomery thought himself entitled. But theEpiscopalians and the moderate Presbyterians dreaded him as a manof extreme opinions and of bitter spirit. He had been a chief ofthe Covenanters: he had been prosecuted at one time for holdingconventicles, and at another time for harbouring rebels: he had beenfined: he had been imprisoned: he had been almost driven to take refugefrom his enemies beyond the Atlantic in the infant settlement of NewJersey. It was apprehended that, if he were now armed with the wholepower of the Crown, he would exact a terrible retribution for what hehad suffered, [311] William therefore preferred Melville, who, thoughnot a man of eminent talents, was regarded by the Presbyterians as athoroughgoing friend, and yet not regarded by the Episcopalians as animplacable enemy. Melville fixed his residence at the English Court, and became the regular organ of communication between Kensington and theauthorities at Edinburgh. 

William had, however, one Scottish adviser who deserved and possessedmore influence than any of the ostensible ministers. This was Carstairs, one of the most remarkable men of that age. He united great scholasticattainments with great aptitude for civil business, and the firm faithand ardent zeal of a martyr with the shrewdness and suppleness of aconsummate politician. In courage and fidelity he resembled Burnet; buthe had, what Burnet wanted, judgment, selfcommand, and a singular powerof keeping secrets. There was no post to which he might not have aspiredif he had been a layman, or a priest of the Church of England. But aPresbyterian clergyman could not hope to attain any high dignity eitherin the north or in the south of the island. Carstairs was forced tocontent himself with the substance of power, and to leave the semblanceto others. He was named Chaplain to their Majesties for Scotland, butwherever the King was, in England, in Ireland, in the Netherlands, therewas this most trusty and most prudent of courtiers. He obtained fromthe royal bounty a modest competence; and he desired no more. But itwas well known that he could be as useful a friend and as formidable anenemy as any member of the cabinet; and he was designated at thepublic offices and in the antechambers of the palace by the significantnickname of the Cardinal, [312]

To Montgomery was offered the place of Lord Justice Clerk. But thatplace, though high and honourable, he thought below his merits and hiscapacity; and he returned from London to Scotland with a heart ulceratedby hatred of his ungrateful master and of his successful rivals. AtEdinburgh a knot of Whigs, as severely disappointed as himself by thenew arrangements, readily submitted to the guidance of so bold andable a leader. Under his direction these men, among whom the Earl ofAnnandale and Lord Ross were the most conspicuous, formed themselvesinto a society called the Club, appointed a clerk, and met daily at atavern to concert plans of opposition. Round this nucleus soon gathereda great body of greedy and angry politicians, [313] With these dishonestmalecontents, whose object was merely to annoy the government and to getplaces, were leagued other malecontents, who, in the course of a longresistance to tyranny, had become so perverse and irritable thatthey were unable to live contentedly even under the mildest and mostconstitutional government. Such a man was Sir Patrick Hume. He hadreturned from exile, as litigious, as impracticable; as morbidly jealousof all superior authority, and as fond of haranguing, as he had beenfour years before, and was as much bent on making a merely nominalsovereign of William as he had formerly been bent on making a merelynominal general of Argyle, [314] A man far superior morally andintellectually to Hume, Fletcher of Saltoun, belonged to the same party. Though not a member of the Convention, he was a most active member ofthe Club, [315] He hated monarchy: he hated democracy: his favouriteproject was to make Scotland an oligarchical republic. The King, ifthere must be a King, was to be a mere pageant. The lowest class of thepeople were to be bondsmen. The whole power, legislative and executive, was to be in the hands of the Parliament. In other words, the countrywas to be absolutely governed by a hereditary aristocracy, the mostneedy, the most haughty, and the most quarrelsome in Europe. Under sucha polity there could have been neither freedom nor tranquillity. Trade, industry, science, would have languished; and Scotland would have beena smaller Poland, with a puppet sovereign, a turbulent diet, and anenslaved people. With unsuccessful candidates for office, and withhonest but wrongheaded republicans, were mingled politicians whosecourse was determined merely by fear. Many sycophants, who wereconscious that they had, in the evil time, done what deservedpunishment, were desirous to make their peace with the powerful andvindictive Club, and were glad to be permitted to atone for theirservility to James by their opposition to William. [316] The great bodyof Jacobites meanwhile stood aloof, saw with delight the enemies of theHouse of Stuart divided against one another, and indulged the hope thatthe confusion would end in the restoration of the banished king, [317]

While Montgomery was labouring to form out of various materials a partywhich might, when the Convention should reassemble, be powerful enoughto dictate to the throne, an enemy still more formidable than Montgomeryhad set up the standard of civil war in a region about which thepoliticians of Westminster, and indeed most of the politicians ofEdinburgh, knew no more than about Abyssinia or Japan. 

It is not easy for a modern Englishman, who can pass in a day from hisclub in St. James's Street to his shooting box among the Grampians, andwho finds in his shooting box all the comforts and luxuries of hisclub, to believe that, in the time of his greatgrandfathers, St. James'sStreet had as little connection with the Grampians as with the Andes. Yet so it was. In the south of our island scarcely any thing was knownabout the Celtic part of Scotland; and what was known excited no feelingbut contempt and loathing. The crags and the glens, the woods and thewaters, were indeed the same that now swarm every autumn with admiringgazers and stretchers. The Trosachs wound as now between gigantic wallsof rock tapestried with broom and wild roses: Foyers came headlong downthrough the birchwood with the same leap and the same roar with whichhe still rushes to Loch Ness; and, in defiance of the sun of June, thesnowy scalp of Ben Cruachan rose, as it still rises, over the willowyislets of Loch Awe. Yet none of these sights had power, till a recentperiod, to attract a single poet or painter from more opulent and moretranquil regions. Indeed, law and police, trade and industry, have donefar more than people of romantic dispositions will readily admit, to develope in our minds a sense of the wilder beauties of nature. A traveller must be freed from all apprehension of being murdered orstarved before he can be charmed by the bold outlines and rich tintsof the hills. He is not likely to be thrown into ecstasies by theabruptness of a precipice from which he is in imminent danger of fallingtwo thousand feet perpendicular; by the boiling waves of a torrent whichsuddenly whirls away his baggage and forces him to run for his life; bythe gloomy grandeur of a pass where he finds a corpse which maraudershave just stripped and mangled; or by the screams of those eagles whosenext meal may probably be on his own eyes. About the year 1730, CaptainBurt, one of the first Englishmen who caught a glimpse of the spotswhich now allure tourists from every part of the civilised world, wrotean account of his wanderings. He was evidently a man of a quick, anobservant, and a cultivated mind, and would doubtless, had he lived inour age, have looked with mingled awe and delight on the mountains ofInvernessshire. But, writing with the feeling which was universal inhis own age, he pronounced those mountains monstrous excrescences. Theirdeformity, he said, was such that the most sterile plains seemed lovelyby comparison. Fine weather, he complained, only made bad worse; for, the clearer the day, the more disagreeably did those misshapen massesof gloomy brown and dirty purple affect the eye. What a contrast, heexclaimed, between these horrible prospects and the beauties of RichmondHill! [318] Some persons may think that Burt was a man of vulgar andprosaical mind: but they will scarcely venture to pass a similarjudgment on Oliver Goldsmith. Goldsmith was one of the very few Saxonswho, more than a century ago, ventured to explore the Highlands. Hewas disgusted by the hideous wilderness, and declared that he greatlypreferred the charming country round Leyden, the vast expanse of verdantmeadow, and the villas with their statues and grottoes, trim flowerbeds, and rectilinear avenues. Yet it is difficult to believe thatthe author of the Traveller and of the Deserted Village was naturallyinferior in taste and sensibility to the thousands of clerks andmilliners who are now thrown into raptures by the sight of Loch Katrineand Loch Lomond, [319] His feelings may easily be explained. It was nottill roads had been cut out of the rocks, till bridges had been flungover the courses of the rivulets, till inns had succeeded to dens ofrobbers, till there was as little danger of being slain or plunderedin the wildest defile of Badenoch or Lochaber as in Cornhill, thatstrangers could be enchanted by the blue dimples of the lakes and bythe rainbows which overhung the waterfalls, and could derive a solemnpleasure even from the clouds and tempests which lowered on the mountaintops. 

The change in the feeling with which the Lowlanders regarded thehighland scenery was closely connected with a change not less remarkablein the feeling with which they regarded the Highland race. It is notstrange that the Wild Scotch, as they were sometimes called, should, in the seventeenth century, have been considered by the Saxons as meresavages. But it is surely strange that, considered as savages, theyshould not have been objects of interest and curiosity. The English werethen abundantly inquisitive about the manners of rude nations separatedfrom our island by great continents and oceans. Numerous books wereprinted describing the laws, the superstitions, the cabins, the repasts, the dresses, the marriages, the funerals of Laplanders and Hottentots, Mohawks and Malays. The plays and poems of that age are full ofallusions to the usages of the black men of Africa and of the red menof America. The only barbarian about whom there was no wish to have anyinformation was the Highlander. Five or six years after the Revolution, an indefatigable angler published an account of Scotland. He boastedthat, in the course of his rambles from lake to lake, and from brook tobrook, he had left scarcely a nook of the kingdom unexplored. But, whenwe examine his narrative, we find that he had never ventured beyondthe extreme skirts of the Celtic region. He tells us that even from thepeople who lived close to the passes he could learn little or nothingabout the Gaelic population. Few Englishmen, he says, had ever seenInverary. All beyond Inverary was chaos, [320] In the reign of Georgethe First, a work was published which professed to give a most exactaccount of Scotland; and in this work, consisting of more than threehundred pages, two contemptuous paragraphs were thought sufficient forthe Highlands and the Highlanders, [321] We may well doubt whether, in1689, one in twenty of the well read gentlemen who assembled at Will'scoffeehouse knew that, within the four seas, and at the distance of lessthan five hundred miles from London, were many miniature courts, ineach of which a petty prince, attended by guards, by armour bearers, bymusicians, by a hereditary orator, by a hereditary poet laureate, kepta rude state, dispensed a rude justice, waged wars, and concludedtreaties. While the old Gaelic institutions were in full vigour, noaccount of them was given by any observer, qualified to judge of themfairly. Had such an observer studied the character of the Highlanders, he would doubtless have found in it closely intermingled the good andthe bad qualities of an uncivilised nation. He would have found that thepeople had no love for their country or for their king; that they hadno attachment to any commonwealth larger than the clan, or to anymagistrate superior to the chief. He would have found that life wasgoverned by a code of morality and honour widely different from thatwhich is established in peaceful and prosperous societies. He would havelearned that a stab in the back, or a shot from behind a fragment ofrock, were approved modes of taking satisfaction for insults. He wouldhave heard men relate boastfully how they or their fathers had wreakedon hereditary enemies in a neighbouring valley such vengeance as wouldhave made old soldiers of the Thirty Years' War shudder. He would havefound that robbery was held to be a calling, not merely innocent, buthonourable. He would have seen, wherever he turned, that dislike ofsteady industry, and that disposition to throw on the weaker sex theheaviest part of manual labour, which are characteristic of savages. Hewould have been struck by the spectacle of athletic men basking inthe sun, angling for salmon, or taking aim at grouse, while their agedmothers, their pregnant wives, their tender daughters, were reaping thescanty harvest of oats. Nor did the women repine at their hard lot. Intheir view it was quite fit that a man, especially if he assumed thearistocratic title of Duinhe Wassel and adorned his bonnet with theeagle's feather, should take his ease, except when he was fighting, hunting, or marauding. To mention the name of such a man in connectionwith commerce or with any mechanical art was an insult. Agriculture wasindeed less despised. Yet a highborn warrior was much more becominglyemployed in plundering the land of others than in tilling his own. Thereligion of the greater part of the Highlands was a rude mixture ofPopery and Paganism. The symbol of redemption was associated withheathen sacrifices and incantations. Baptized men poured libations ofale to one Daemon, and set out drink offerings of milk for another. Seers wrapped themselves up in bulls' hides, and awaited, in thatvesture, the inspiration which was to reveal the future. Even amongthose minstrels and genealogists whose hereditary vocation was topreserve the memory of past events, an enquirer would have found veryfew who could read. In truth, he might easily have journeyed from sea tosea without discovering a page of Gaelic printed or written. The pricewhich he would have had to pay for his knowledge of the country wouldhave been heavy. He would have had to endure hardships as great as ifhe had sojourned among the Esquimaux or the Samoyeds. Here andthere, indeed, at the castle of some great lord who had a seat in theParliament and Privy Council, and who was accustomed to pass a largepart of his life in the cities of the South, might have been found wigsand embroidered coats, plate and fine linen, lace and jewels, Frenchdishes and French wines. But, in general, the traveller would havebeen forced to content himself with very different quarters. In manydwellings the furniture, the food, the clothing, nay the very hairand skin of his hosts, would have put his philosophy to the proof. Hislodging would sometimes have been in a but of which every nook wouldhave swarmed with vermin. He would have inhaled an atmosphere thick withpeat smoke, and foul with a hundred noisome exhalations. At supper grainfit only for horses would have been set before him, accompanied by acake of blood drawn from living cows. Some of the company with which hewould have feasted would have been covered with cutaneous eruptions, andothers would have been smeared with tar like sheep. His couch would havebeen the bare earth, dry or wet as the weather might be; and from thatcouch he would have risen half poisoned with stench, half blind with thereek of turf, and half mad with the itch, [322]

This is not an attractive picture. And yet an enlightened anddispassionate observer would have found in the character and manners ofthis rude people something which might well excite admiration and a goodhope. Their courage was what great exploits achieved in all thefour quarters of the globe have since proved it to be. Their intenseattachment to their own tribe and to their own patriarch, thoughpolitically a great evil, partook of the nature of virtue. The sentimentwas misdirected and ill regulated; but still it was heroic. There mustbe some elevation of soul in a man who loves the society of which he isa member and the leader whom he follows with a love stronger than thelove of life. It was true that the Highlander had few scruples aboutshedding the blood of an enemy: but it was not less true that he hadhigh notions of the duty of observing faith to allies and hospitalityto guests. It was true that his predatory habits were most pernicious tothe commonwealth. Yet those erred greatly who imagined that he bore anyresemblance to villains who, in rich and well governed communities, liveby stealing. When he drove before him the herds of Lowland farmers upthe pass which led to his native glen, he no more considered himself asa thief than the Raleighs and Drakes considered themselves as thieveswhen they divided the cargoes of Spanish galleons. He was a warriorseizing lawful prize of war, of war never once intermitted duringthe thirty-five generations which had passed away since the Teutonicinvaders had driven the children of the soil to the mountains. That, ifhe was caught robbing on such principles, he should, for the protectionof peaceful industry, be punished with the utmost rigour of the lawwas perfectly just. But it was not just to class him morally with thepickpockets who infested Drury Lane Theatre, or the highwaymen whostopped coaches on Blackheath. His inordinate pride of birth and hiscontempt for labour and trade were indeed great weaknesses, and had donefar more than the inclemency of the air and the sterility of the soilto keep his country poor and rude. Yet even here there was somecompensation. It must in fairness be acknowledged that the patricianvirtues were not less widely diffused among the population of theHighlands than the patrician vices. As there was no other part of theisland where men, sordidly clothed, lodged, and fed, indulged themselvesto such a degree in the idle sauntering habits of an aristocracy, sothere was no other part of the island where such men had in such adegree the better qualities of an aristocracy, grace and dignity ofmanner, selfrespect, and that noble sensibility which makes dishonourmore terrible than death. A gentleman of this sort, whose clothes werebegrimed with the accumulated filth of years, and whose hovel smeltworse than an English hogstye, would often do the honours of that hovelwith a lofty courtesy worthy of the splendid circle of Versailles. Though he had as little booklearning as the most stupid ploughboysof England, it would have been a great error to put him in the sameintellectual rank with such ploughboys. It is indeed only by readingthat men can become profoundly acquainted with any science. But the artsof poetry and rhetoric may be carried near to absolute perfection, andmay exercise a mighty influence on the public mind, in an age in whichbooks are wholly or almost wholly unknown. The first great painterof life and manners has described, with a vivacity which makes itimpossible to doubt that he was copying from nature, the effect producedby eloquence and song on audiences ignorant of the alphabet. It isprobable that, in the Highland councils, men who would not have beenqualified for the duty of parish clerks sometimes argued questions ofpeace and war, of tribute and homage, with ability worthy of Halifax andCaermarthen, and that, at the Highland banquets, minstrels who didnot know their letters sometimes poured forth rhapsodies in which adiscerning critic might have found passages which would have remindedhim of the tenderness of Otway or of the vigour of Dryden. 

There was therefore even then evidence sufficient to justify the beliefthat no natural inferiority had kept the Celt far behind the Saxon. It might safely have been predicted that, if ever an efficient policeshould make it impossible for the Highlander to avenge his wrongs byviolence and to supply his wants by rapine, if ever his faculties shouldbe developed by the civilising influence of the Protestant religion andof the English language, if ever he should transfer to his country andto her lawful magistrates the affection and respect with which he hadbeen taught to regard his own petty community and his own petty prince, the kingdom would obtain an immense accession of strength for all thepurposes both of peace and of war. 

Such would doubtless have been the decision of a well informed andimpartial judge. But no such judge was then to be found. The Saxonswho dwelt far from the Gaelic provinces could not be well informed. TheSaxons who dwelt near those provinces could not be impartial. Nationalenmities have always been fiercest among borderers; and the enmitybetween the Highland borderer and the Lowland borderer along thewhole frontier was the growth of ages, and was kept fresh by constantinjuries. One day many square miles of pasture land were swept bare byarmed plunderers from the hills. Another day a score of plaids dangledin a row on the gallows of Crieff or Stirling. Fairs were indeed held onthe debatable land for the necessary interchange of commodities. Butto those fairs both parties came prepared for battle; and the day oftenended in bloodshed. Thus the Highlander was an object of hatred to hisSaxon neighbours; and from his Saxon neighbours those Saxons who dweltfar from him learned the very little that they cared to know about hishabits. When the English condescended to think of him at all, --and itwas seldom that they did so, --they considered him as a filthy abjectsavage, a slave, a Papist, a cutthroat, and a thief, [323]

This contemptuous loathing lasted till the year 1745, and was then for amoment succeeded by intense fear and rage. England, thoroughly alarmed, put forth her whole strength. The Highlands were subjugated rapidly, completely, and for ever. During a short time the English nation, stillheated by the recent conflict, breathed nothing but vengeance. Theslaughter on the field of battle and on the scaffold was not sufficientto slake the public thirst for blood. The sight of the tartan inflamedthe populace of London with hatred, which showed itself by unmanlyoutrages to defenceless captives. A political and social revolutiontook place through the whole Celtic region. The power of the chiefs wasdestroyed: the people were disarmed: the use of the old national garbwas interdicted: the old predatory habits were effectually broken; andscarcely had this change been accomplished when a strange reflux ofpublic feeling began. Pity succeeded to aversion. The nation execratedthe cruelties which had been committed on the Highlanders, and forgotthat for those cruelties it was itself answerable. Those very Londoners, who, while the memory of the march to Derby was still fresh, hadthronged to hoot and pelt the rebel prisoners, now fastened on theprince who had put down the rebellion the nickname of Butcher. Thosebarbarous institutions and usages, which, while they were in full force, no Saxon had thought worthy of serious examination, or had mentionedexcept with contempt, had no sooner ceased to exist than they becameobjects of curiosity, of interest, even of admiration. Scarcely had thechiefs been turned into mere landlords, when it became the fashion todraw invidious comparisons between the rapacity of the landlord and theindulgence of the chief. Men seemed to have forgotten that the ancientGaelic polity had been found to be incompatible with the authority oflaw, had obstructed the progress of civilisation, had more than oncebrought on the empire the curse of civil war. As they had formerlyseen only the odious side of that polity, they could now see only thepleasing side. The old tie, they said, had been parental: the new tiewas purely commercial. What could be more lamentable than that the headof a tribe should eject, for a paltry arrear of rent, tenants who werehis own flesh and blood, tenants whose forefathers had often with theirbodies covered his forefathers on the field of battle? As long as therewere Gaelic marauders, they had been regarded by the Saxon populationas hateful vermin who ought to be exterminated without mercy. As soon asthe extermination had been accomplished, as soon as cattle were as safein the Perthshire passes as in Smithfield market, the freebooter wasexalted into a hero of romance. As long as the Gaelic dress was worn, the Saxons had pronounced it hideous, ridiculous, nay, grossly indecent. Soon after it had been prohibited, they discovered that it was the mostgraceful drapery in Europe. The Gaelic monuments, the Gaelic usages, theGaelic superstitions, the Gaelic verses, disdainfully neglected duringmany ages, began to attract the attention of the learned from the momentat which the peculiarities of the Gaelic race began to disappear. Sostrong was this impulse that, where the Highlands were concerned, men ofsense gave ready credence to stories without evidence, and men of tastegave rapturous applause to compositions without merit. Epic poems, whichany skilful and dispassionate critic would at a glance have perceivedto be almost entirely modern, and which, if they had been published asmodern, would have instantly found their proper place in company withBlackmore's Alfred and Wilkie's Epigoniad, were pronounced to be fifteenhundred years old, and were gravely classed with the Iliad. Writers ofa very different order from the impostor who fabricated these forgeriessaw how striking an effect might be produced by skilful pictures of theold Highland life. Whatever was repulsive was softened down: whateverwas graceful and noble was brought prominently forward. Some of theseworks were executed with such admirable art that, like the historicalplays of Shakspeare, they superseded history. The visions of the poetwere realities to his readers. The places which he described becameholy ground, and were visited by thousands of pilgrims. Soon thevulgar imagination was so completely occupied by plaids, targets, andclaymores, that, by most Englishmen, Scotchman and Highlander wereregarded as synonymous words. Few people seemed to be aware that, at noremote period, a Macdonald or a Macgregor in his tartan was to a citizenof Edinburgh or Glasgow what an Indian hunter in his war paint is toan inhabitant of Philadelphia or Boston. Artists and actors representedBruce and Douglas in striped petticoats. They might as well haverepresented Washington brandishing a tomahawk, and girt with a string ofscalps. At length this fashion reached a point beyond which it was noteasy to proceed. The last British King who held a court in Holyroodthought that he could not give a more striking proof of his respect forthe usages which had prevailed in Scotland before the Union, than bydisguising himself in what, before the Union, was considered by nineScotchmen out of ten as the dress of a thief. 

Thus it has chanced that the old Gaelic institutions and manners havenever been exhibited in the simple light of truth. Up to the middle ofthe last century, they were seen through one false medium: they havesince been seen through another. Once they loomed dimly through anobscuring and distorting haze of prejudice; and no sooner had thatfog dispersed than they appeared bright with all the richest tints ofpoetry. The time when a perfectly fair picture could have been paintedhas now passed away. The original has long disappeared: no authenticeffigy exists; and all that is possible is to produce an imperfectlikeness by the help of two portraits, of which one is a coarsecaricature and the other a masterpiece of flattery. 

Among the erroneous notions which have been commonly received concerningthe history and character of the Highlanders is one which it isespecially necessary to correct. During the century which commenced withthe campaign of Montrose, and terminated with the campaign of the youngPretender, every great military exploit which was achieved on Britishground in the cause of the House of Stuart was achieved by the valourof Gaelic tribes. The English have therefore very naturally ascribed tothose tribes the feelings of English cavaliers, profound reverence forthe royal office, and enthusiastic attachment to the royal family. Aclose inquiry however will show that the strength of these feelingsamong the Celtic clans has been greatly exaggerated. 

In studying the history of our civil contentions, we must never forgetthat the same names, badges, and warcries had very different meaningsin different parts of the British isles. We have already seen how littlethere was in common between the Jacobitism of Ireland and the Jacobitismof England. The Jacobitism of the Scotch Highlander was, at least in theseventeenth century, a third variety, quite distinct from the othertwo. The Gaelic population was far indeed from holding the doctrines ofpassive obedience and nonresistance. In fact disobedience and resistancemade up the ordinary life of that population. Some of those very clanswhich it has been the fashion to describe as so enthusiastically loyalthat they were prepared to stand by James to the death, even when he wasin the wrong, had never, while he was on the throne, paid the smallestrespect to his authority, even when he was clearly in the right. Theirpractice, their calling, had been to disobey and to defy him. Some ofthem had actually been proscribed by sound of horn for the crime ofwithstanding his lawful commands, and would have torn to pieces withoutscruple any of his officers who had dared to venture beyond the passesfor the purpose of executing his warrant. The English Whigs were accusedby their opponents of holding doctrines dangerously lax touching theobedience due to the chief magistrate. Yet no respectable English Whigever defended rebellion, except as a rare and extreme remedy for rareand extreme evils. But among those Celtic chiefs whose loyalty has beenthe theme of so much warm eulogy were some whose whole existence fromboyhood upwards had been one long rebellion. Such men, it is evident, were not likely to see the Revolution in the light in which it appearedto an Oxonian nonjuror. On the other hand they were not, like theaboriginal Irish, urged to take arms by impatience of Saxon domination. To such domination the Scottish Celt had never been subjected. Heoccupied his own wild and sterile region, and followed his own nationalusages. In his dealings with the Saxons, he was rather the oppressorthan the oppressed. He exacted black mail from them: he drove away theirflocks and herds; and they seldom dared to pursue him to his nativewilderness. They had never portioned out among themselves his drearyregion of moor and shingle. He had never seen the tower of hishereditary chieftains occupied by an usurper who could not speak Gaelic, and who looked on all who spoke it as brutes and slaves; nor had hisnational and religious feelings ever been outraged by the powerand splendour of a church which he regarded as at once foreign andheretical. 

The real explanation of the readiness with which a large part of thepopulation of the Highlands, twice in the seventeenth century, drewthe sword for the Stuarts is to be found in the internal quarrels whichdivided the commonwealth of clans. For there was a commonwealth ofclans, the image, on a reduced scale, of the great commonwealth ofEuropean nations. In the smaller of these two commonwealths, as in thelarger, there were wars, treaties, alliances, disputes about territoryand precedence, a system of public law, a balance of power. There wasone inexhaustible source of discontents and disputes. The feudal systemhad, some centuries before, been introduced into the hill country, buthad neither destroyed the patriarchal system nor amalgamated completelywith it. In general he who was lord in the Norman polity was alsochief in the Celtic polity; and, when this was the case, there was noconflict. But, when the two characters were separated, all the willingand loyal obedience was reserved for the chief. The lord had only whathe could get and hold by force. If he was able, by the help of his owntribe, to keep in subjection tenants who were not of his own tribe, there was a tyranny of clan over clan, the most galling, perhaps, ofall forms of tyranny. At different times different races had risen to anauthority which had produced general fear and envy. The Macdonalds hadonce possessed, in the Hebrides and throughout the mountain country ofArgyleshire and Invernessshire, an ascendancy similar to that which theHouse of Austria had once possessed in Christendom. But the ascendancyof the Macdonalds had, like the ascendancy of the House of Austria, passed away; and the Campbells, the children of Diarmid, had become inthe Highlands what the Bourbons had become in Europe. The parallel mightbe carried far. Imputations similar to those which it was the fashion tothrow on the French government were thrown on the Campbells. A peculiardexterity, a peculiar plausibility of address, a peculiar contemptfor all the obligations of good faith, were ascribed, with or withoutreason, to the dreaded race. "Fair and false like a Campbell" becamea proverb. It was said that Mac Callum More after Mac Callum More had, with unwearied, unscrupulous, and unrelenting ambition, annexed mountainafter mountain and island after island to the original domains ofhis House. Some tribes had been expelled from their territory, somecompelled to pay tribute, some incorporated with the conquerors. Atlength the number of fighting men who bore the name of Campbell wassufficient to meet in the field of battle the combined forces of allthe other western clans, [324] It was during those civil troubles whichcommenced in 1638 that the power of this aspiring family reached thezenith. The Marquess of Argyle was the head of a party as well as thehead of a tribe. Possessed of two different kinds of authority, heused each of them in such a way as to extend and fortify the other. The knowledge that he could bring into the field the claymores of fivethousand half heathen mountaineers added to his influence among theaustere Presbyterians who filled the Privy Council and the GeneralAssembly at Edinburgh. His influence at Edinburgh added to the terrorwhich he inspired among the mountains. Of all the Highland princes whosehistory is well known to us he was the greatest and most dreaded. It waswhile his neighbours were watching the increase of his power with hatredwhich fear could scarcely keep down that Montrose called them to arms. The call was promptly obeyed. A powerful coalition of clans waged war, nominally for King Charles, but really against Mac Callum More. It isnot easy for any person who has studied the history of that contestto doubt that, if Argyle had supported the cause of monarchy, hisneighbours would have declared against it. Grave writers tell of thevictory gained at Inverlochy by the royalists over the rebels. But thepeasants who dwell near the spot speak more accurately. They talk of thegreat battle won there by the Macdonalds over the Campbells. 

The feelings which had produced the coalition against the Marquessof Argyle retained their force long after his death. His son, EarlArchibald, though a man of many eminent virtues, inherited, with theascendancy of his ancestors, the unpopularity which such ascendancycould scarcely fail to produce. In 1675, several warlike tribes formeda confederacy against him, but were compelled to submit to the superiorforce which was at his command. There was therefore great joy from seato sea when, in 1681, he was arraigned on a futile charge, condemned todeath, driven into exile, and deprived of his dignities. There was greatalarm when, in 1685, he returned from banishment, and sent forth thefiery cross to summon his kinsmen to his standard; and there was againgreat joy when his enterprise had failed, when his army had melted away, when his head had been fixed on the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and whenthose chiefs who had regarded him as an oppressor had obtained from theCrown, on easy terms, remissions of old debts and grants of new titles. While England and Scotland generally were execrating the tyranny ofJames, he was honoured as a deliverer in Appin and Lochaber, in Glenroyand Glenmore, [325] The hatred excited by the power and ambition of theHouse of Argyle was not satisfied even when the head of that House hadperished, when his children were fugitives, when strangers garrisonedthe Castle of Inverary, and when the whole shore of Loch Fyne was laidwaste by fire and sword. It was said that the terrible precedent whichhad been set in the case of the Macgregors ought to be followed, andthat it ought to be made a crime to bear the odious name of Campbell. 

On a sudden all was changed. The Revolution came. The heir of Argylereturned in triumph. He was, as his predecessors had been, the head, notonly of a tribe, but of a party. The sentence which had deprived himof his estate and of his honours was treated by the majority of theConvention as a nullity. The doors of the Parliament House were thrownopen to him: he was selected from the whole body of Scottish noblesto administer the oath of office to the new Sovereigns; and he wasauthorised to raise an army on his domains for the service of the Crown. He would now, doubtless, be as powerful as the most powerful of hisancestors. Backed by the strength of the Government, he would demandall the long and heavy arrears of rent and tribute which were due to himfrom his neighbours, and would exact revenge for all the injuries andinsults which his family had suffered. There was terror and agitationin the castles of twenty petty kings. The uneasiness was great among theStewarts of Appin, whose territory was close pressed by the sea on oneside, and by the race of Diarmid on the other. The Macnaghtens werestill more alarmed. Once they had been the masters of those beautifulvalleys through which the Ara and the Shira flow into Loch Fyne. But theCampbells had prevailed. The Macnaghtens had been reduced to subjection, and had, generation after generation, looked up with awe and detestationto the neighbouring Castle of Inverary. They had recently been promiseda complete emancipation. A grant, by virtue of which their chief wouldhave held his estate immediately from the Crown, had been prepared, andwas about to pass the seals, when the Revolution suddenly extinguished ahope which amounted almost to certainty, [326]

The Macleans remembered that, only fourteen years before, their landshad been invaded and the seat of their chief taken and garrisoned bythe Campbells, [327] Even before William and Mary had been proclaimedat Edinburgh, a Maclean, deputed doubtless by the head of his tribe, hadcrossed the sea to Dublin, and had assured James that, if two or threebattalions from Ireland were landed in Argyleshire, they would beimmediately joined by four thousand four hundred claymores, [328]

A similar spirit animated the Camerons. Their ruler, Sir Ewan Cameron, of Lochiel, surnamed the Black, was in personal qualities unrivalledamong the Celtic princes. He was a gracious master, a trusty ally, aterrible enemy. His countenance and bearing were singularly noble. Some persons who had been at Versailles, and among them the shrewd andobservant Simon Lord Lovat, said that there was, in person and manner, amost striking resemblance between Lewis the Fourteenth and Lochiel;and whoever compares the portraits of the two will perceive that therereally was some likeness. In stature the difference was great. Lewis, inspite of highheeled shoes and a towering wig, hardly reached the middlesize. Lochiel was tall and strongly built. In agility and skill at hisweapons he had few equals among the inhabitants of the hills. He hadrepeatedly been victorious in single combat. He was a hunter of greatfame. He made vigorous war on the wolves which, down to his time, preyedon the red deer of the Grampians; and by his hand perished the lastof the ferocious breed which is known to have wandered at large inour island. Nor was Lochiel less distinguished by intellectual thanby bodily vigour. He might indeed have seemed ignorant to educatedand travelled Englishmen, who had studied the classics under Busby atWestminster and under Aldrich at Oxford, who had learned something aboutthe sciences among Fellows of the Royal Society, and something about thefine arts in the galleries of Florence and Rome. But though Lochielhad very little knowledge of books, he was eminently wise in council, eloquent in debate, ready in devising expedients, and skilful inmanaging the minds of men. His understanding preserved him from thosefollies into which pride and anger frequently hurried his brotherchieftains. Many, therefore, who regarded his brother chieftains as merebarbarians, mentioned him with respect. Even at the Dutch Embassy in St. James's Square he was spoken of as a man of such capacity and couragethat it would not be easy to find his equal. As a patron of literaturehe ranks with the magnificent Dorset. If Dorset out of his own purseallowed Dryden a pension equal to the profits of the Laureateship, Lochiel is said to have bestowed on a celebrated bard, who had beenplundered by marauders, and who implored alms in a pathetic Gaelic ode, three cows and the almost incredible sum of fifteen pounds sterling. Intruth, the character of this great chief was depicted two thousand fivehundred years before his birth, and depicted, --such is the power ofgenius, --in colours which will be fresh as many years after his death. He was the Ulysses of the Highlands, [329]

He held a large territory peopled by a race which reverenced no lord, no king but himself. For that territory, however, he owed homage to theHouse of Argyle. He was bound to assist his feudal superiors in war, and was deeply in debt to them for rent. This vassalage he had doubtlessbeen early taught to consider as degrading and unjust. In his minorityhe had been the ward in chivalry of the politic Marquess, and had beeneducated at the Castle of Inverary. But at eighteen the boy broke loosefrom the authority of his guardian, and fought bravely both for Charlesthe First and for Charles the Second. He was therefore considered bythe English as a Cavalier, was well received at Whitehall after theRestoration, and was knighted by the hand of James. The compliment, however, which was paid to him, on one of his appearances at the EnglishCourt, would not have seemed very flattering to a Saxon. "Take care ofyour pockets, my lords, " cried his Majesty; "here comes the king of thethieves. " The loyalty of Lochiel is almost proverbial: but it wasvery unlike what was called loyalty in England. In the Records of theScottish Parliament he was, in the days of Charles the Second, describedas a lawless and rebellious man, who held lands masterfully and in highcontempt of the royal authority, [330] On one occasion the Sheriff ofInvernessshire was directed by King James to hold a court in Lochaber. Lochiel, jealous of this interference with his own patriarchaldespotism, came to the tribunal at the head of four hundred armedCamerons. He affected great reverence for the royal commission, but hedropped three or four words which were perfectly understood by the pagesand armourbearers, who watched every turn of his eye. "Is none of mylads so clever as to send this judge packing? I have seen them get up aquarrel when there was less need of one. " In a moment a brawl beganin the crowd, none could say how or where. Hundreds of dirks were out:cries of "Help" and "Murder" were raised on all sides: many wounds wereinflicted: two men were killed: the sitting broke up in tumult; and theterrified Sheriff was forced to put himself under the protection of thechief, who, with a plausible bow of respect and concern, escorted himsafe home. It is amusing to think that the man who performed this featis constantly extolled as the most faithful and dutiful of subjectsby writers who blame Somers and Burnet as contemners of the legitimateauthority of Sovereigns. Lochiel would undoubtedly have laughedthe doctrine of nonresistance to scorn. But scarcely any chief inInvernessshire had gained more than he by the downfall of the Houseof Argyle, or had more reason than he to dread the restoration of thatHouse. Scarcely any chief in Invernessshire, therefore, was more alarmedand disgusted by the proceedings of the Convention. 

But of all those Highlanders who looked on the recent turn of fortunewith painful apprehension the fiercest and the most powerful were theMacdonalds. More than one of the magnates who bore that widespread namelaid claim to the honour of being the rightful successor of thoseLords of the Isles, who, as late as the fifteenth century, disputed thepreeminence of the Kings of Scotland. This genealogical controversy, which has lasted down to our own time, caused much bickering among thecompetitors. But they all agreed in regretting the past splendour oftheir dynasty, and in detesting the upstart race of Campbell. The oldfeud had never slumbered. It was still constantly repeated, in verse andprose, that the finest part of the domain belonging to the ancientheads of the Gaelic nation, Islay, where they had lived with the pomp ofroyalty, Iona, where they had been interred with the pomp of religion, the paps of Jura, the rich peninsula of Kintyre, had been transferredfrom the legitimate possessors to the insatiable Mac Callum More. Sincethe downfall of the House of Argyle, the Macdonalds, if they had notregained their ancient superiority, might at least boast that they hadnow no superior. Relieved from the fear of their mighty enemy in theWest, they had turned their arms against weaker enemies in the East, against the clan of Mackintosh and against the town of Inverness. 

The clan of Mackintosh, a branch of an ancient and renowned tribe whichtook its name and badge from the wild cat of the forests, had a disputewith the Macdonalds, which originated, if tradition may be believed, inthose dark times when the Danish pirates wasted the coasts of Scotland. Inverness was a Saxon colony among the Celts, a hive of traders andartisans in the midst of a population of loungers and plunderers, asolitary outpost of civilisation in a region of barbarians. Though thebuildings covered but a small part of the space over which they nowextend; though the arrival of a brig in the port was a rare event;though the Exchange was the middle of a miry street, in which stood amarket cross much resembling a broken milestone; though the sittings ofthe municipal council were held in a filthy den with a roughcast wall;though the best houses were such as would now be called hovels; thoughthe best roofs were of thatch; though the best ceilings were of barerafters; though the best windows were, in bad weather, closed withshutters for want of glass; though the humbler dwellings were mereheaps of turf, in which barrels with the bottoms knocked out served thepurpose of chimneys; yet to the mountaineer of the Grampians this citywas as Babylon or as Tyre. Nowhere else had he seen four or five hundredhouses, two churches, twelve maltkilns, crowded close together. Nowhereelse had he been dazzled by the splendour of rows of booths, whereknives, horn spoons, tin kettles, and gaudy ribands were exposed tosale. Nowhere else had he been on board of one of those huge ships whichbrought sugar and wine over the sea from countries far beyond the limitsof his geography, [331] It is not strange that the haughty and warlikeMacdonalds, despising peaceful industry, yet envying the fruits of thatindustry, should have fastened a succession of quarrels on the people ofInverness. In the reign of Charles the Second, it had been apprehendedthat the town would be stormed and plundered by those rude neighbours. The terms of peace which they offered showed how little they regardedthe authority of the prince and of the law. Their demand was that aheavy tribute should be paid to them, that the municipal magistratesshould bind themselves by an oath to deliver tip to the vengeance of theclan every burgher who should shed the blood of a Macdonald, and thatevery burgher who should anywhere meet a person wearing the Macdonaldtartan should ground arms in token of submission. Never did Lewis theFourteenth, not even when he was encamped between Utrecht and Amsterdam, treat the States General with such despotic insolence, [332] By theintervention of the Privy Council of Scotland a compromise was effected:but the old animosity was undiminished. 

Common enmities and common apprehensions produced a good understandingbetween the town and the clan of Mackintosh. The foe most hated anddreaded by both was Colin Macdonald of Keppoch, an excellent specimen ofthe genuine Highland Jacobite. Keppoch's whole life had been passedin insulting and resisting the authority of the Crown. He had beenrepeatedly charged on his allegiance to desist from his lawlesspractices, but had treated every admonition with contempt. Thegovernment, however, was not willing to resort to extremities againsthim; and he long continued to rule undisturbed the stormy peaks ofCoryarrick, and the gigantic terraces which still mark the limits ofwhat was once the Lake of Glenroy. He was famed for his knowledge of allthe ravines and caverns of that dreary region; and such was theskill with which he could track a herd of cattle to the most secrethidingplace that he was known by the nickname of Coll of the Cows, [333] At length his outrageous violations of all law compelled the PrivyCouncil to take decided steps. He was proclaimed a rebel: letters offire and sword were issued against him under the seal of James; and, afew weeks before the Revolution, a body of royal troops, supportedby the whole strength of the Mackintoshes, marched into Keppoch'sterritories. He gave battle to the invaders, and was victorious. TheKing's forces were put to flight; the King's captain was slain; and thisby a hero whose loyalty to the King many writers have very complacentlycontrasted with the factious turbulence of the Whigs, [334]

If Keppoch had ever stood in any awe of the government, he wascompletely relieved from that feeling by the general anarchy whichfollowed the Revolution. He wasted the lands of the Mackintoshes, advanced to Inverness, and threatened the town with destruction. Thedanger was extreme. The houses were surrounded only by a wall whichtime and weather had so loosened that it shook in every storm. Yet theinhabitants showed a bold front; and their courage was stimulated bytheir preachers. Sunday the twenty-eighth of April was a day of alarmand confusion. The savages went round and round the small colony ofSaxons like a troop of famished wolves round a sheepfold. Keppochthreatened and blustered. He would come in with all his men. He wouldsack the place. The burghers meanwhile mustered in arms round themarket cross to listen to the oratory of their ministers. The day closedwithout an assault; the Monday and the Tuesday passed away in intenseanxiety; and then an unexpected mediator made his appearance. 

Dundee, after his flight from Edinburgh, had retired to his country seatin that valley through which the Glamis descends to the ancient castleof Macbeth. Here he remained quiet during some time. He protested thathe had no intention of opposing the new government. He declared himselfready to return to Edinburgh, if only he could be assured that he shouldbe protected against lawless violence; and he offered to give his wordof honour, or, if that were not sufficient, to give bail, that he wouldkeep the peace. Some of his old soldiers had accompanied him, and formeda garrison sufficient to protect his house against the Presbyteriansof the neighbourhood. Here he might possibly have remained unharmedand harmless, had not an event for which he was not answerable made hisenemies implacable, and made him desperate, [335]

An emissary of James had crossed from Ireland to Scotland with lettersaddressed to Dundee and Balcarras. Suspicion was excited. The messengerwas arrested, interrogated, and searched; and the letters were found. Some of them proved to be from Melfort, and were worthy of him. Everyline indicated those qualities which had made him the abhorrence of hiscountry and the favourite of his master. He announced with delight thenear approach of the day of vengeance and rapine, of the day when theestates of the seditious would be divided among the loyal, and when manywho had been great and prosperous would be exiles and beggars. The King, Melfort said, was determined to be severe. Experience had at lengthconvinced his Majesty that mercy would be weakness. Even the Jacobiteswere disgusted by learning that a Restoration would be immediatelyfollowed by a confiscation and a proscription. Some of them did nothesitate to say that Melfort was a villain, that he hated Dundee andBalcarras, that he wished to ruin them, and that, for that end, he hadwritten these odious despatches, and had employed a messenger who hadvery dexterously managed to be caught. It is however quite certain thatMelfort, after the publication of these papers, continued to stand ashigh as ever in the favour of James. It can therefore hardly be doubtedthat, in those passages which shocked even the zealous supporters ofhereditary right, the Secretary merely expressed with fidelity thefeelings and intentions of his master, [336] Hamilton, by virtue of thepowers which the Estates had, before their adjournment, confided to him, ordered Balcarras and Dundee to be arrested. Balcarras was taken andconfined, first in his own house, and then in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh. But to seize Dundee was not so easy an enterprise. As soon as heheard that warrants were out against him, he crossed the Dee with hisfollowers, and remained a short time in the wild domains of the Houseof Gordon. There he held some communications with the Macdonalds andCamerons about a rising. But he seems at this time to have known littleand cared little about the Highlanders. For their national character heprobably felt the dislike of a Saxon, for their military character thecontempt of a professional soldier. He soon returned to the Lowlands, and stayed there till he learned that a considerable body of troops hadbeen sent to apprehend him, [337] He then betook himself to the hillcountry as his last refuge, pushed northward through Strathdon andStrathbogie, crossed the Spey, and, on the morning of the first of May, arrived with a small band of horsemen at the camp of Keppoch beforeInverness. 

The new situation in which Dundee was now placed, the new view ofsociety which was presented to him, naturally suggested new projects tohis inventive and enterprising spirit. The hundreds of athletic Celtswhom he saw in their national order of battle were evidently not alliesto be despised. If he could form a great coalition of clans, if he couldmuster under one banner ten or twelve thousand of those hardy warriors, if he could induce them to submit to the restraints of discipline, whata career might be before him!

A commission from King James, even when King James was securely seatedon the throne, had never been regarded with much respect by Coll of theCows. That chief, however, hated the Campbells with all the hatred of aMacdonald, and promptly gave in his adhesion to the cause of the Houseof Stuart. Dundee undertook to settle the dispute between Keppoch andInverness. The town agreed to pay two thousand dollars, a sum which, small as it might be in the estimation of the goldsmiths of LombardStreet, probably exceeded any treasure that had ever been carriedinto the wilds of Coryarrick. Half the sum was raised, not withoutdifficulty, by the inhabitants; and Dundee is said to have passed hisword for the remainder, [338]

He next tried to reconcile the Macdonalds with the Mackintoshes, andflattered himself that the two warlike tribes, lately arrayed againsteach other, might be willing to fight side by side under his command. But he soon found that it was no light matter to take up a Highlandfeud. About the rights of the contending Kings neither clan knew anything or cared any thing. The conduct of both is to be ascribed to localpassions and interests. What Argyle was to Keppoch, Keppoch was to theMackintoshes. The Mackintoshes therefore remained neutral; and theirexample was followed by the Macphersons, another branch of the race ofthe wild cat. This was not Dundee's only disappointment. The Mackenzies, the Frasers, the Grants, the Munros, the Mackays, the Macleods, dweltat a great distance from the territory of Mac Callum More. They had nodispute with him; they owed no debt to him: and they had no reason todread the increase of his power. They therefore did not sympathize withhis alarmed and exasperated neighbours, and could not be induced to jointhe confederacy against him, [339] Those chiefs, on the other hand, wholived nearer to Inverary, and to whom the name of Campbell had long beenterrible and hateful, greeted Dundee eagerly, and promised to meet himat the head of their followers on the eighteenth of May. During thefortnight which preceded that day, he traversed Badenoch and Athol, andexhorted the inhabitants of those districts to rise in arms. He dashedinto the Lowlands with his horsemen, surprised Perth, and carried offsome Whig gentlemen prisoners to the mountains. Meanwhile the fierycrosses had been wandering from hamlet to hamlet over all the heaths andmountains thirty miles round Ben Nevis; and when he reached the trystingplace in Lochaber he found that the gathering had begun. The headquarters were fixed close to Lochiel's house, a large pile builtentirely of fir wood, and considered in the Highlands as a superbpalace. Lochiel, surrounded by more than six hundred broadswords, wasthere to receive his guests. Macnaghten of Macnaghten and Stewart ofAppin were at the muster with their little clans. Macdonald of Keppochled the warriors who had, a few months before, under his command, putto flight the musketeers of King James. Macdonald of Clanronald was oftender years: but he was brought to the camp by his uncle, who actedat Regent during the minority. The youth was attended by a picked bodyguard composed of his own cousins, all comely in appearance, and goodmen of their hands. Macdonald of Glengarry, conspicuous by his darkbrow and his lofty stature, came from that great valley where a chain oflakes, then unknown to fame, and scarcely set down in maps, is nowthe daily highway of steam vessels passing and reprising between theAtlantic and the German Ocean. None of the rulers of the mountains had ahigher sense of his personal dignity, or was more frequently engaged indisputes with other chiefs. He generally affected in his manners andin his housekeeping a rudeness beyond that of his rude neighbours, andprofessed to regard the very few luxuries which had then found their wayfrom the civilised parts of the world into the Highlands as signs of theeffeminacy and degeneracy of the Gaelic race. But on this occasion hechose to imitate the splendour of Saxon warriors, and rode on horsebackbefore his four hundred plaided clansmen in a steel cuirass and a coatembroidered with gold lace. Another Macdonald, destined to a lamentableand horrible end, led a band of hardy freebooters from the drearypass of Glencoe. Somewhat later came the great Hebridean potentates. Macdonald of Sleat, the most opulent and powerful of all the grandeeswho laid claim to the lofty title of Lord of the Isles, arrived atthe head of seven hundred fighting men from Sky. A fleet of long boatsbrought five hundred Macleans from Mull under the command of theirchief, Sir John of Duart. A far more formidable array had in old timesfollowed his forefathers to battle. But the power, though not thespirit, of the clan had been broken by the arts and arms of theCampbells. Another band of Macleans arrived under a valiant leader, whotook his title from Lochbuy, which is, being interpreted, the YellowLake, [340]

It does not appear that a single chief who had not some special cause todread and detest the House of Argyle obeyed Dundee's summons. Thereis indeed strong reason to believe that the chiefs who came would haveremained quietly at home if the government had understood the politicsof the Highlands. Those politics were thoroughly understood by one ableand experienced statesman, sprung from the great Highland family ofMackenzie, the Viscount Tarbet. He at this conjuncture pointed out toMelville by letter, and to Mackay in conversation, both the cause andthe remedy of the distempers which seemed likely to bring on Scotlandthe calamities of civil war. There was, Tarbet said, no generaldisposition to insurrection among the Gael. Little was to be apprehendedeven from those popish clans which were under no apprehension of beingsubjected to the yoke of the Campbells. It was notorious that the ablestand most active of the discontented chiefs troubled themselves not atall about the questions which were in dispute between the Whigs and theTories. Lochiel in particular, whose eminent personal qualities made himthe most important man among the mountaineers, cared no more for Jamesthan for William. If the Camerons, the Macdonalds, and the Macleanscould be convinced that, under the new government, their estates andtheir dignities would be safe, if Mac Callum More would make someconcessions, if their Majesties would take on themselves the payment ofsome arrears of rent, Dundee might call the clans to arms; but he wouldcall to little purpose. Five thousand pounds, Tarbet thought, would besufficient to quiet all the Celtic magnates; and in truth, though thatsum might seem ludicrously small to the politicians of Westminster, though it was not larger than the annual gains of the Groom of the Stoleor of the Paymaster of the Forces, it might well be thought immense bya barbarous potentate who, while he ruled hundreds of square miles, andcould bring hundreds of warriors into the field, had perhaps never hadfifty guineas at once in his coffers, [341]

Though Tarbet was considered by the Scottish ministers of the newSovereigns as a very doubtful friend, his advice was not altogetherneglected. It was resolved that overtures such as he recommended shouldbe made to the malecontents. Much depended on the choice of an agent;and unfortunately the choice showed how little the prejudices of thewild tribes of the hills were understood at Edinburgh. A Campbell wasselected for the office of gaining over to the cause of King Williammen whose only quarrel to King William was that he countenanced theCampbells. Offers made through such a channel were naturally regarded asat once snares and insults. After this it was to no purpose that Tarbetwrote to Lochiel and Mackay to Glengarry. Lochiel returned no answer toTarbet; and Glengarry returned to Mackay a coldly civil answer, in whichthe general was advised to imitate the example of Monk, [342]

Mackay, meanwhile, wasted some weeks in marching, in countermarching, and in indecisive skirmishing. He afterwards honestly admitted that theknowledge which he had acquired, during thirty years of military serviceon the Continent, was, in the new situation in which he was placed, useless to him. It was difficult in such a country to track the enemy. It was impossible to drive him to bay. Food for an invading army was notto be found in the wilderness of heath and shingle; nor could suppliesfor many days be transported far over quaking bogs and up precipitousascents. The general found that he had tired his men and their horsesalmost to death, and yet had effected nothing. Highland auxiliariesmight have been of the greatest use to him: but he had few suchauxiliaries. The chief of the Grants, indeed, who had been persecutedby the late government, and had been accused of conspiring with theunfortunate Earl of Argyle, was zealous on the side of the Revolution. Two hundred Mackays, animated probably by family feeling, came from thenorthern extremity of our island, where at midsummer there is no night, to fight under a commander of their own name: but in general the clanswhich took no part in the insurrection awaited the event with coldindifference, and pleased themselves with the hope that they shouldeasily make their peace with the conquerors, and be permitted to assistin plundering the conquered. 

An experience of little more than a month satisfied Mackay that therewas only one way in which the Highlands could be subdued. It was idleto run after the mountaineers up and down their mountains. A chain offortresses must be built in the most important situations, and must bewell garrisoned. The place with which the general proposed to begin wasInverlochy, where the huge remains of an ancient castle stood and stillstand. This post was close to an arm of the sea, and was in the heart ofthe country occupied by the discontented clans. A strong force stationedthere, and supported, if necessary, by ships of war, would effectuallyoverawe at once the Macdonalds, the Camerons, and the Macleans, [343]

While Mackay was representing in his letters to the council at Edinburghthe necessity of adopting this plan, Dundee was contending withdifficulties which all his energy and dexterity could not completelyovercome. 

The Highlanders, while they continued to be a nation living under apeculiar polity, were in one sense better and in another sense worsefitted for military purposes than any other nation in Europe. Theindividual Celt was morally and physically well qualified for war, andespecially for war in so wild and rugged a country as his own. He wasintrepid, strong, fleet, patient of cold, of hunger, and of fatigue. Upsteep crags, and over treacherous morasses, he moved as easily as theFrench household troops paced along the great road from Versaillesto Marli. He was accustomed to the use of weapons and to the sight ofblood: he was a fencer; he was a marksman; and, before he had ever stoodin the ranks, he was already more than half a soldier. 

As the individual Celt was easily turned into a soldier, so a tribeof Celts was easily turned into a battalion of soldiers. All that wasnecessary was that the military organization should be conformed to thepatriarchal organization. The Chief must be Colonel: his uncle or hisbrother must be Major: the tacksmen, who formed what may be called thepeerage of the little community, must be the Captains: the company ofeach Captain must consist of those peasants who lived on his land, andwhose names, faces, connections, and characters, were perfectly known tohim: the subaltern officers must be selected among the Duinhe Wassels, proud of the eagle's feather: the henchman was an excellent orderly: thehereditary piper and his sons formed the band: and the clan became atonce a regiment. In such a regiment was found from the first moment thatexact order and prompt obedience in which the strength of regular armiesconsists. Every man, from highest to lowest, was in his proper place, and knew that place perfectly. It was not necessary to impress bythreats or by punishment on the newly enlisted troops the duty ofregarding as their head him whom they had regarded as their head eversince they could remember any thing. Every private had, from infancy, respected his corporal much and his Captain more, and had almost adoredhis Colonel. There was therefore no danger of mutiny. There wasas little danger of desertion. Indeed the very feelings which mostpowerfully impel other soldiers to desert kept the Highlander to hisstandard. If he left it, whither was he to go? All his kinsmen, allhis friends, were arrayed round it. To separate himself from it was toseparate himself for ever from his family, and to incur all the miseryof that very homesickness which, in regular armies, drives so manyrecruits to abscond at the risk of stripes and of death. When thesethings are fairly considered, it will not be thought strange that theHighland clans should have occasionally achieved great martial exploits. 

But those very institutions which made a tribe of highlanders, allbearing the same name, and all subject to the same ruler, so formidablein battle, disqualified the nation for war on a large scale. Nothing waseasier than to turn clans into efficient regiments; but nothing was moredifficult than to combine these regiments in such a manner as to form anefficient army. From the shepherds and herdsmen who fought in the ranksup to the chiefs, all was harmony and order. Every man looked up to hisimmediate superior, and all looked up to the common head. But with thechief this chain of subordination ended. He knew only how to govern, andhad never learned to obey. Even to royal proclamations, even to Acts ofParliament, he was accustomed to yield obedience only when they were inperfect accordance with his own inclinations. It was not to be expectedthat he would pay to any delegated authority a respect which he wasin the habit of refusing to the supreme authority. He thought himselfentitled to judge of the propriety of every order which he received. Ofhis brother chiefs, some were his enemies and some his rivals. It washardly possible to keep him from affronting them, or to convince himthat they were not affronting him. All his followers sympathized withall his animosities, considered his honour as their own, and wereready at his whistle to array themselves round him in arms against thecommander in chief. There was therefore very little chance that by anycontrivance any five clans could be induced to cooperate heartily withone another during a long campaign. The best chance, however, waswhen they were led by a Saxon. It is remarkable that none of the greatactions performed by the Highlanders during our civil wars was performedunder the command of a Highlander. Some writers have mentioned it asa proof of the extraordinary genius of Montrose and Dundee that thosecaptains, though not themselves of Gaelic race or speech, should havebeen able to form and direct confederacies of Gaelic tribes. But intruth it was precisely because Montrose and Dundee were not Highlanders, that they were able to lead armies composed of Highland clans. HadMontrose been chief of the Camerons, the Macdonalds would never havesubmitted to his authority. Had Dundee been chief of Clanronald, hewould never have been obeyed by Glengarry. Haughty and punctilious men, who scarcely acknowledged the king to be their superior, would not haveendured the superiority of a neighbour, an equal, a competitor. Theycould far more easily bear the preeminence of a distinguished stranger, yet even to such a stranger they would allow only a very limited and avery precarious authority. To bring a chief before a court martial, toshoot him, to cashier him, to degrade him, to reprimand him publicly, was impossible. Macdonald of Keppoch or Maclean of Duart would havestruck dead any officer who had demanded his sword, and told him toconsider himself as under arrest; and hundreds of claymores wouldinstantly have been drawn to protect the murderer. All that was left tothe commander under whom these potentates condescended to serve was toargue with them, to supplicate them, to flatter them, to bribe them;and it was only during a short time that any human skill could preserveharmony by these means. For every chief thought himself entitled topeculiar observance; and it was therefore impossible to pay markedcourt to any one without disobliging the rest. The general found himselfmerely the president of a congress of petty kings. He was perpetuallycalled upon to hear and to compose disputes about pedigrees, aboutprecedence, about the division of spoil. His decision, be it what itmight, must offend somebody. At any moment he might hear that his rightwing had fired on his centre in pursuance of some quarrel two hundredyears old, or that a whole battalion had marched back to its nativeglen, because another battalion had been put in the post of honour. AHighland bard might easily have found in the history of the year 1689subjects very similar to those with which the war of Troy furnished thegreat poets of antiquity. One day Achilles is sullen, keeps his tent, and announces his intention to depart with all his men. The next dayAjax is storming about the camp, and threatening to cut the throat ofUlysses. 

Hence it was that, though the Highlanders achieved some great exploitsin the civil wars of the seventeenth century, those exploits left notrace which could be discerned after the lapse of a few weeks. Victoriesof strange and almost portentous splendour produced all the consequencesof defeat. Veteran soldiers and statesmen were bewildered by thosesudden turns of fortune. It was incredible that undisciplined men shouldhave performed such feats of arms. It was incredible that such featsof arms, having been performed, should be immediately followed by thetriumph of the conquered and the submission of the conquerors. Montrose, having passed rapidly from victory to victory, was, in the full careerof success, suddenly abandoned by his followers. Local jealousies andlocal interests had brought his army together. Local jealousies andlocal interests dissolved it. The Gordons left him because they fanciedthat he neglected them for the Macdonalds. The Macdonalds left himbecause they wanted to plunder the Campbells. The force which had onceseemed sufficient to decide the fate of a kingdom melted away in a fewdays; and the victories of Tippermuir and Kilsyth were followed by thedisaster of Philiphaugh. Dundee did not live long enough to experiencea similar reverse of fortune; but there is every reason to believe that, had his life been prolonged one fortnight, his history would have beenthe history of Montrose retold. 

Dundee made one attempt, soon after the gathering of the clans inLochaber, to induce them to submit to the discipline of a regular army. He called a council of war to consider this question. His opinion wassupported by all the officers who had joined him from the low country. Distinguished among them were James Seton, Earl of Dunfermline, andJames Galloway, Lord Dunkeld. The Celtic chiefs took the other side. Lochiel, the ablest among them, was their spokesman, and argued thepoint with much ingenuity and natural eloquence. "Our system, "--such wasthe substance of his reasoning, "may not be the best: but we were bredto it from childhood: we understand it perfectly: it is suited to ourpeculiar institutions, feelings, and manners. Making war after our ownfashion, we have the expertness and coolness of veterans. Making warin any other way, we shall be raw and awkward recruits. To turn us intosoldiers like those of Cromwell and Turenne would be the business ofyears: and we have not even weeks to spare. We have time enough tounlearn our own discipline, but not time enough to learn yours. " Dundee, with high compliments to Lochiel, declared himself convinced, andperhaps was convinced: for the reasonings of the wise old chief were byno means without weight, [344]

Yet some Celtic usages of war were such as Dundee could not tolerate. Cruel as he was, his cruelty always had a method and a purpose. He stillhoped that he might be able to win some chiefs who remained neutral;and he carefully avoided every act which could goad them into openhostility. This was undoubtedly a policy likely to promote the interestof James; but the interest of James was nothing to the wild marauderswho used his name and rallied round his banner merely for the purpose ofmaking profitable forays and wreaking old grudges. Keppoch especially, who hated the Mackintoshes much more than he loved the Stuarts, not onlyplundered the territory of his enemies, but burned whatever he could notcarry away. Dundee was moved to great wrath by the sight of the blazingdwellings. "I would rather, " he said, "carry a musket in a respectableregiment than be captain of such a gang of thieves. " Punishment was ofcourse out of the question. Indeed it may be considered as a remarkableproof of the general's influence that Coll of the Cows deigned toapologize for conduct for which in a well governed army he would havebeen shot, [345]

As the Grants were in arms for King William, their property wasconsidered as fair prize. Their territory was invaded by a party ofCamerons: a skirmish took place: some blood was shed; and many cattlewere carried off to Dundee's camp, where provisions were greatly needed. This raid produced a quarrel, the history of which illustrates in themost striking manner the character of a Highland army. Among those whowere slain in resisting the Camerons was a Macdonald of the Glengarrybranch, who had long resided among the Grants, had become in feelingsand opinions a Grant, and had absented himself from the muster of histribe. Though he had been guilty of a high offence against the Gaeliccode of honour and morality, his kinsmen remembered the sacred tie whichhe had forgotten. Good or bad, he was bone of their bone: he was fleshof their flesh; and he should have been reserved for their justice. Thename which he bore, the blood of the Lords of the Isles, should havebeen his protection. Glengarry in a rage went to Dundee and demandedvengeance on Lochiel and the whole race of Cameron. Dundee replied thatthe unfortunate gentleman who had fallen was a traitor to the clan aswell as to the King. Was it ever heard of in war that the person of anenemy, a combatant in arms, was to be held inviolable on account of hisname and descent? And, even if wrong had been done, how was it to beredressed? Half the army must slaughter the other half before a fingercould be laid on Lochiel. Glengarry went away raging like a madman. Since his complaints were disregarded by those who ought to right him, he would right himself: he would draw out his men, and fall sword inhand on the murderers of his cousin. During some time he would listen tono expostulation. When he was reminded that Lochiel's followers were innumber nearly double of the Glengarry men, "No matter, " he cried, "oneMacdonald is worth two Camerons. " Had Lochiel been equally irritable andboastful, it is probable that the Highland insurrection would have givenlittle more trouble to the government, and that the rebels would haveperished obscurely in the wilderness by one another's claymores. But nature had bestowed on him in large measure the qualities of astatesman, though fortune had hidden those qualities in an obscurecorner of the world. He saw that this was not a time for brawling: hisown character for courage had long been established; and his temper wasunder strict government. The fury of Glengarry, not being inflamedby any fresh provocation, rapidly abated. Indeed there were some whosuspected that he had never been quite so pugnacious as he had affectedto be, and that his bluster was meant only to keep up his own dignityin the eyes of his retainers. However this might be, the quarrel wascomposed; and the two chiefs met, with the outward show of civility, atthe general's table, [346]

What Dundee saw of his Celtic allies must have made him desirous tohave in his army some troops on whose obedience he could depend, and whowould not, at a signal from their colonel, turn their arms against theirgeneral and their king. He accordingly, during the months of Mayand June, sent to Dublin a succession of letters earnestly imploringassistance. If six thousand, four thousand, three thousand, regularsoldiers were now sent to Lochaber, he trusted that his Majesty wouldsoon hold a court in Holyrood. That such a force might be sparedhardly admitted of a doubt. The authority of James was at that timeacknowledged in every part of Ireland, except on the shores of LoughErne and behind the ramparts of Londonderry. He had in that kingdoman army of forty thousand men. An eighth part of such an army wouldscarcely be missed there, and might, united with the clans which were ininsurrection, effect great things in Scotland. 

Dundee received such answers to his applications as encouraged himto hope that a large and well appointed force would soon be sent fromUlster to join him. He did not wish to try the chance of battle beforethese succours arrived, [347] Mackay, on the other hand, was wearyof marching to and fro in a desert. His men were exhausted and out ofheart. He thought it desirable that they should withdraw from the hillcountry; and William was of the same opinion. 

In June therefore the civil war was, as if by concert between thegenerals, completely suspended. Dundee remained in Lochaber, impatientlyawaiting the arrival of troops and supplies from Ireland. It wasimpossible for him to keep his Highlanders together in a state ofinactivity. A vast extent of moor and mountain was required to furnishfood for so many mouths. The clans therefore went back to their ownglens, having promised to reassemble on the first summons. 

Meanwhile Mackay's soldiers, exhausted by severe exertions andprivations, were taking their ease in quarters scattered over the lowcountry from Aberdeen to Stirling. Mackay himself was at Edinburgh, and was urging the ministers there to furnish him with the meansof constructing a chain of fortifications among the Grampians. Theministers had, it should seem, miscalculated their military resources. It had been expected that the Campbells would take the field in suchforce as would balance the whole strength of the clans which marchedunder Dundee. It had also been expected that the Covenanters of theWest would hasten to swell the ranks of the army of King William. Both expectations were disappointed. Argyle had found his principalitydevastated, and his tribe disarmed and disorganized. A considerable timemust elapse before his standard would be surrounded by an array such ashis forefathers had led to battle. The Covenanters of the West were ingeneral unwilling to enlist. They were assuredly not wanting in courage;and they hated Dundee with deadly hatred. In their part of the countrythe memory of his cruelty was still fresh. Every village had its owntale of blood. The greyheaded father was missed in one dwelling, thehopeful stripling in another. It was remembered but too well how thedragoons had stalked into the peasant's cottage, cursing and damninghim, themselves, and each other at every second word, pushing from theingle nook his grandmother of eighty, and thrusting their hands into thebosom of his daughter of sixteen; how the abjuration had been tenderedto him; how he had folded his arms and said "God's will be done"; howthe Colonel had called for a file with loaded muskets; and how in threeminutes the goodman of the house had been wallowing in a pool ofblood at his own door. The seat of the martyr was still vacant at thefireside; and every child could point out his grave still green amidstthe heath. When the people of this region called their oppressor aservant of the devil, they were not speaking figuratively. They believedthat between the bad man and the bad angel there was a close alliance ondefinite terms; that Dundee had bound himself to do the work of hell onearth, and that, for high purposes, hell was permitted to protect itsslave till the measure of his guilt should be full. But, intensely asthese men abhorred Dundee, most of them had a scruple about drawingthe sword for William. A great meeting was held in the parish church ofDouglas; and the question was propounded, whether, at a time when warwas in the land, and when an Irish invasion was expected, it were not aduty to take arms. The debate was sharp and tumultuous. The orators onone side adjured their brethren not to incur the curse denounced againstthe inhabitants of Meroz, who came not to the help of the Lord againstthe mighty. The orators on the other side thundered against sinfulassociations. There were malignants in William's Army: Mackay'sown orthodoxy was problematical: to take military service with suchcomrades, and under such a general, would be a sinful association. Atlength, after much wrangling, and amidst great confusion, a vote wastaken; and the majority pronounced that to take military service wouldbe a sinful association. There was however a large minority; and, fromamong the members of this minority, the Earl of Angus was able to raisea body of infantry, which is still, after the lapse of more than ahundred and sixty years, known by the name of the Cameronian Regiment. The first Lieutenant Colonel was Cleland, that implacable avenger ofblood who had driven Dundee from the Convention. There was no smalldifficulty in filling the ranks: for many West country Whigs, who didnot think it absolutely sinful to enlist, stood out for terms subversiveof all military discipline. Some would not serve under any colonel, major, captain, serjeant, or corporal, who was not ready to signthe Covenant. Others insisted that, if it should be found absolutelynecessary to appoint any officer who had taken the tests imposed in thelate reign, he should at least qualify himself for command by publiclyconfessing his sin at the head of the regiment. Most of the enthusiastswho had proposed these conditions were induced by dexterous managementto abate much of their demands. Yet the new regiment had a very peculiarcharacter. The soldiers were all rigid Puritans. One of their first actswas to petition the Parliament that all drunkenness, licentiousness, andprofaneness might be severely punished. Their own conduct must have beenexemplary: for the worst crime which the most extravagant bigotry couldimpute to them was that of huzzaing on the King's birthday. It wasoriginally intended that with the military organization of the corpsshould he interwoven the organization of a Presbyterian congregation. Each company was to furnish an elder; and the elders were, with thechaplain, to form an ecclesiastical court for the suppression ofimmorality and heresy. Elders, however, were not appointed: but a notedhill preacher, Alexander Shields, was called to the office of chaplain. It is not easy to conceive that fanaticism can be heated to a highertemperature than that which is indicated by the writings of Shields. According to him, it should seem to be the first duty of a Christianruler to persecute to the death every heterodox subject, and the firstduty of every Christian subject to poniard a heterodox ruler. Yet therewas then in Scotland an enthusiasm compared with which the enthusiasmeven of this man was lukewarm. The extreme Covenanters protested againsthis defection as vehemently as he had protested against the BlackIndulgence and the oath of supremacy, and pronounced every man whoentered Angus's regiment guilty of a wicked confederacy with malignants, [348]

Meanwhile Edinburgh Castle had fallen, after holding out more than twomonths. Both the defence and the attack had been languidly conducted. The Duke of Gordon, unwilling to incur the mortal hatred of those atwhose mercy his lands and life might soon be, did not choose to batterthe city. The assailants, on the other hand, carried on theiroperations with so little energy and so little vigilance that a constantcommunication was kept up between the Jacobites within the citadeland the Jacobites without. Strange stories were told of the polite andfacetious messages which passed between the besieged and the besiegers. On one occasion Gordon sent to inform the magistrates that he was goingto fire a salute on account of some news which he had received fromIreland, but that the good town need not be alarmed, for that his gunswould not be loaded with ball. On another occasion, his drums beat aparley: the white flag was hung out: a conference took place; andhe gravely informed the enemy that all his cards had been thumbed topieces, and begged them to let him have a few more packs. His friendsestablished a telegraph by means of which they conversed with him acrossthe lines of sentinels. From a window in the top story of one of theloftiest of those gigantic houses, a few of which still darken the HighStreet, a white cloth was hung out when all was well, and a blackcloth when things went ill. If it was necessary to give more detailedinformation, a board was held up inscribed with capital letters so largethat they could, by the help of a telescope, be read on the ramparts ofthe castle. Agents laden with letters and fresh provisions managed, invarious disguises and by various shifts, to cross the sheet of waterwhich then lay on the north of the fortress and to clamber up theprecipitous ascent. The peal of a musket from a particular half moon wasthe signal which announced to the friends of the House of Stuart thatanother of their emissaries had got safe up the rock. But at length thesupplies were exhausted; and it was necessary to capitulate. Favourableterms were readily granted: the garrison marched out; and the keys weredelivered up amidst the acclamations of a great multitude of burghers, [349]

But the government had far more acrimonious and more pertinaciousenemies in the Parliament House than in the Castle. When the Estatesreassembled after their adjournment, the crown and sceptre of Scotlandwere displayed with the wonted pomp in the hall as types of the absentsovereign. Hamilton rode in state from Holyrood up the High Street asLord High Commissioner; and Crawford took his seat as President. Two Acts, one turning the Convention into a Parliament, the otherrecognising William and Mary as King and Queen, were rapidly passed andtouched with the sceptre; and then the conflict of factions began, [350]

It speedily appeared that the opposition which Montgomery had organizedwas irresistibly strong. Though made up of many conflicting elements, Republicans, Whigs, Tories, zealous Presbyterians, bigoted Prelatists, it acted for a time as one man, and drew to itself a multitude of thosemean and timid politicians who naturally gravitate towards the strongerparty. The friends of the government were few and disunited. Hamiltonbrought but half a heart to the discharge of his duties. He had alwaysbeen unstable; and he was now discontented. He held indeed the highestplace to which a subject could aspire. But he imagined that he had onlythe show of power while others enjoyed the substance, and was not sorryto see those of whom he was jealous thwarted and annoyed. He did notabsolutely betray the prince whom he represented: but he sometimestampered with the chiefs of the Club, and sometimes did sly in turns tothose who were joined with him in the service of the Crown. 

His instructions directed him to give the royal assent to laws for themitigating or removing of numerous grievances, and particularly to a lawrestricting the power and reforming the constitution of the Committee ofArticles, and to a law establishing the Presbyterian Church Government, [351] But it mattered not what his instructions were. The chiefs of theClub were bent on finding a cause of quarrel. The propositions ofthe Government touching the Lords of the Articles were contemptuouslyrejected. Hamilton wrote to London for fresh directions; and soon asecond plan, which left little more than the name of the once despoticCommittee, was sent back. But the second plan, though such as wouldhave contented judicious and temperate reformers, shared the fate of thefirst. Meanwhile the chiefs of the Club laid on the table a law whichinterdicted the King from ever employing in any public office any personwho had ever borne any part in any proceeding inconsistent with theClaim of Right, or who had ever obstructed or retarded any good designof the Estates. This law, uniting, within a very short compass, almostall the faults which a law can have, was well known to be aimed at thenew Lord President of the Court of Session, and at his son the new LordAdvocate. Their prosperity and power made them objects of envy to everydisappointed candidate for office. That they were new men, the first oftheir race who had risen to distinction, and that nevertheless they had, by the mere force of ability, become as important in the state as theDuke of Hamilton or the Earl of Argyle, was a thought which galled thehearts of many needy and haughty patricians. To the Whigs of Scotlandthe Dalrymples were what Halifax and Caermarthen were to the Whigs ofEngland. Neither the exile of Sir James, nor the zeal with which SirJohn had promoted the Revolution, was received as an atonement for olddelinquency. They had both served the bloody and idolatrous House. They had both oppressed the people of God. Their late repentance mightperhaps give them a fair claim to pardon, but surely gave them no rightto honours and rewards. 

The friends of the government in vain attempted to divert the attentionof the Parliament from the business of persecuting the Dalrymple familyto the important and pressing question of Church Government. They saidthat the old system had been abolished; that no other system had beensubstituted; that it was impossible to say what was the establishedreligion of the kingdom; and that the first duty of the legislaturewas to put an end to an anarchy which was daily producing disasters andcrimes. The leaders of the Club were not to be so drawn away fromtheir object. It was moved and resolved that the consideration ofecclesiastical affairs should be postponed till secular affairs hadbeen settled. The unjust and absurd Act of Incapacitation was carriedby seventy-four voices to twenty-four. Another vote still more obviouslyaimed at the House of Stair speedily followed. The Parliament laid claimto a Veto on the nomination of the judges, and assumed the powerof stopping the signet, in other words, of suspending the wholeadministration of justice, till this claim should be allowed. It wasplain from what passed in debate that, though the chiefs of the Clubhad begun with the Court of Session, they did not mean to end there. The arguments used by Sir Patrick Hume and others led directly to theconclusion that the King ought not to have the appointment of any greatpublic functionary. Sir Patrick indeed avowed, both in speech and inwriting, his opinion that the whole patronage of the realm ought to betransferred from the Crown to the Estates. When the place of Treasurer, of Chancellor, of Secretary, was vacant, the Parliament ought to submittwo or three names to his Majesty; and one of those names his Majestyought to be bound to select, [352]

All this time the Estates obstinately refused to grant any supply tilltheir Acts should have been touched with the sceptre. The Lord HighCommissioner was at length so much provoked by their perverseness that, after long temporising, he refused to touch even Acts which were inthemselves unobjectionable, and to which his instructions empoweredhim to consent. This state of things would have ended in some greatconvulsion, if the King of Scotland had not been also King of a muchgreater and more opulent kingdom. Charles the First had never found anyparliament at Westminster more unmanageable than William, during thissession, found the parliament at Edinburgh. But it was not in the powerof the parliament at Edinburgh to put on William such a pressure as theparliament at Westminster had put on Charles. A refusal of supplies atWestminster was a serious thing, and left the Sovereign no choice exceptto yield, or to raise money by unconstitutional means, But a refusal ofsupplies at Edinburgh reduced him to no such dilemma. The largest sumthat he could hope to receive from Scotland in a year was less thanwhat he received from England every fortnight. He had therefore onlyto entrench himself within the limits of his undoubted prerogative, and there to remain on the defensive, till some favourable conjunctureshould arrive, [353]

While these things were passing in the Parliament House, the civil warin the Highlands, having been during a few weeks suspended, broke forthagain more violently than before. Since the splendour of the House ofArgyle had been eclipsed, no Gaelic chief could vie in power with theMarquess of Athol. The district from which he took his title, and ofwhich he might almost be called the sovereign, was in extent larger thanan ordinary county, and was more fertile, more diligently cultivated, and more thickly peopled than the greater part of the Highlands. The menwho followed his banner were supposed to be not less numerous than allthe Macdonalds and Macleans united, and were, in strength and courage, inferior to no tribe in the mountains. But the clan had been madeinsignificant by the insignificance of the chief. The Marquess was thefalsest, the most fickle, the most pusillanimous, of mankind. Already, in the short space of six months, he had been several times a Jacobite, and several times a Williamite. Both Jacobites and Williamites regardedhim with contempt and distrust, which respect for his immense powerprevented them from fully expressing. After repeatedly vowing fidelityto both parties, and repeatedly betraying both, he began to think thathe should best provide for his safety by abdicating the functionsboth of a peer and of a chieftain, by absenting himself both from theParliament House at Edinburgh and from his castle in the mountains, andby quitting the country to which he was bound by every tie of duty andhonour at the very crisis of her fate. While all Scotland was waitingwith impatience and anxiety to see in which army his numerous retainerswould be arrayed, he stole away to England, settled himself at Bath, andpretended to drink the waters, [354] His principality, left without ahead, was divided against itself. The general leaning of the Athol menwas towards King James. For they had been employed by him, only fouryears before, as the ministers of his vengeance against the House ofArgyle. They had garrisoned Inverary: they had ravaged Lorn: they haddemolished houses, cut down fruit trees, burned fishing boats, brokenmillstones, hanged Campbells, and were therefore not likely to bepleased by the prospect of Mac Callum Mores restoration. One word fromthe Marquess would have sent two thousand claymores to the Jacobiteside. But that word he would not speak; and the consequence was, thatthe conduct of his followers was as irresolute and inconsistent as hisown. 

While they were waiting for some indication of his wishes, they werecalled to arms at once by two leaders, either of whom might, with someshow of reason, claim to be considered as the representative of theabsent chief. Lord Murray, the Marquess's eldest son, who was married toa daughter of the Duke of Hamilton, declared for King William. Stewartof Ballenach, the Marquess's confidential agent, declared for KingJames. The people knew not which summons to obey. He whose authoritywould have been held in profound reverence, had plighted faith to bothsides, and had then run away for fear of being under the necessity ofjoining either; nor was it very easy to say whether the place which hehad left vacant belonged to his steward or to his heir apparent. 

The most important military post in Athol was Blair Castle. Thehouse which now bears that name is not distinguished by any strikingpeculiarity from other country seats of the aristocracy. The oldbuilding was a lofty tower of rude architecture which commanded avale watered by the Garry. The walls would have offered very littleresistance to a battering train, but were quite strong enough to keepthe herdsmen of the Grampians in awe. About five miles south of thisstronghold, the valley of the Garry contracts itself into the celebratedglen of Killiecrankie. At present a highway as smooth as any road inMiddlesex ascends gently from the low country to the summit of thedefile. White villas peep from the birch forest; and, on a fine summerday, there is scarcely a turn of the pass at which may not be seen someangler casting his fly on the foam of the river, some artist sketchinga pinnacle of rock, or some party of pleasure banqueting on the turfin the fretwork of shade and sunshine. But, in the days of Williamthe Third, Killiecrankie was mentioned with horror by the peaceful andindustrious inhabitants of the Perthshire lowlands. It was deemed themost perilous of all those dark ravines through which the maraudersof the hills were wont to sally forth. The sound, so musical to modernears, of the river brawling round the mossy rocks and among the smoothpebbles, the dark masses of crag and verdure worthy of the pencil ofWilson, the fantastic peaks bathed, at sunrise and sunset, with lightrich as that which glows on the canvass of Claude, suggested to ourancestors thoughts of murderous ambuscades and of bodies stripped, gashed, and abandoned to the birds of prey. The only path was narrow andrugged: a horse could with difficulty be led up: two men could hardlywalk abreast; and, in some places, the way ran so close by the precipicethat the traveller had great need of a steady eye and foot. Many yearslater, the first Duke of Athol constructed a road up which it was justpossible to drag his coach. But even that road was so steep and sostrait that a handful of resolute men might have defended it againstan army; [355] nor did any Saxon consider a visit to Killiecrankie as apleasure, till experience had taught the English Government that theweapons by which the Highlanders could be most effectually subdued werethe pickaxe and the spade. 

The country which lay just above this pass was now the theatre of awar such as the Highlands had not often witnessed. Men wearing the sametartan, and attached to the same lord, were arrayed against each other. The name of the absent chief was used, with some show of reason, on bothsides. Ballenach, at the head of a body of vassals who considered him asthe representative of the Marquess, occupied Blair Castle. Murray, withtwelve hundred followers, appeared before the walls and demanded to beadmitted into the mansion of his family, the mansion which would one daybe his own. The garrison refused to open the gates. Messages were sentoff by the besiegers to Edinburgh, and by the besieged to Lochaber, [356] In both places the tidings produced great agitation. Mackay andDundee agreed in thinking that the crisis required prompt and strenuousexertion. On the fate of Blair Castle probably depended the fate of allAthol. On the fate of Athol might depend the fate of Scotland. Mackayhastened northward, and ordered his troops to assemble in the lowcountry of Perthshire. Some of them were quartered at such a distancethat they did not arrive in time. He soon, however, had with him thethree Scotch regiments which had served in Holland, and which bore thenames of their Colonels, Mackay himself, Balfour, and Ramsay. Therewas also a gallant regiment of infantry from England, then calledHastings's, but now known as the thirteenth of the line. With these oldtroops were joined two regiments newly levied in the Lowlands. One ofthem was commanded by Lord Kenmore; the other, which had been raised onthe Border, and which is still styled the King's own Borderers, byLord Leven. Two troops of horse, Lord Annandale's and Lord Belhaven's, probably made up the army to the number of above three thousand men. Belhaven rode at the head of his troop: but Annandale, the most factiousof all Montgomery's followers, preferred the Club and the ParliamentHouse to the field, [357]

Dundee, meanwhile, had summoned all the clans which acknowledged hiscommission to assemble for an expedition into Athol. His exertions werestrenuously seconded by Lochiel. The fiery crosses were sent again inall haste through Appin and Ardnamurchan, up Glenmore, and along LochLeven. But the call was so unexpected, and the time allowed was soshort, that the muster was not a very full one. The whole number ofbroadswords seems to have been under three thousand. With this force, such as it was, Dundee set forth. On his march he was joined by succourswhich had just arrived from Ulster. They consisted of little more thanthree hundred Irish foot, ill armed, ill clothed, and ill disciplined. Their commander was an officer named Cannon, who had seen service inthe Netherlands, and who might perhaps have acquitted himself well in asubordinate post and in a regular army, but who was altogether unequalto the part now assigned to him, [358] He had already loitered among theHebrides so long that some ships which had been sent with him, and whichwere laden with stores, had been taken by English cruisers. He and hissoldiers had with difficulty escaped the same fate. Incompetent as hewas, he bore a commission which gave him military rank in Scotland nextto Dundee. 

The disappointment was severe. In truth James would have done betterto withhold all assistance from the Highlanders than to mock them bysending them, instead of the well appointed army which they had askedand expected, a rabble contemptible in numbers and appearance. It wasnow evident that whatever was done for his cause in Scotland must bedone by Scottish hands, [359]

While Mackay from one side, and Dundee from the other, were advancingtowards Blair Castle, important events had taken place there. Murray'sadherents soon began to waver in their fidelity to him. They had an oldantipathy to Whigs; for they considered the name of Whig as synonymouswith the name of Campbell. They saw arrayed against them a large numberof their kinsmen, commanded by a gentleman who was supposed to possessthe confidence of the Marquess. The besieging army thereforemelted rapidly away. Many returned home on the plea that, as theirneighbourhood was about to be the seat of war, they must place theirfamilies and cattle in security. Others more ingenuously declared thatthey would not fight in such a quarrel. One large body went to a brook, filled their bonnets with water, drank a health to King James, and thendispersed, [360] Their zeal for King James, however, did not induce themto join the standard of his general. They lurked among the rocks andthickets which overhang the Garry, in the hope that there would soonbe a battle, and that, whatever might be the event, there would befugitives and corpses to plunder. 

Murray was in a strait. His force had dwindled to three or four hundredmen: even in those men he could put little trust; and the Macdonaldsand Camerons were advancing fast. He therefore raised the siege ofBlair Castle, and retired with a few followers into the defile ofKilliecrankie. There he was soon joined by a detachment of two hundredfusileers whom Mackay had sent forward to secure the pass. The main bodyof the Lowland army speedily followed, [361]

Early in the morning of Saturday the twenty-seventh of July, Dundeearrived at Blair Castle. There he learned that Mackay's troops werealready in the ravine of Killiecrankie. It was necessary to come toa prompt decision. A council of war was held. The Saxon officers weregenerally against hazarding a battle. The Celtic chiefs were o£ adifferent opinion. Glengarry and Lochiel were now both of a mind. "Fight, my Lord" said Lochiel with his usual energy; "fight immediately:fight, if you have only one to three. Our men are in heart. Theironly fear is that the enemy should escape. Give them their way; and beassured that they will either perish or gain a complete victory. Butif you restrain them, if you force them to remain on the defensive, I answer for nothing. If we do not fight, we had better break up andretire to our mountains. " [362]

Dundee's countenance brightened. "You hear, gentlemen, " he said to hisLowland officers; "you hear the opinion of one who understands Highlandwar better than any of us. " No voice was raised on the other side. Itwas determined to fight; and the confederated clans in high spirits setforward to encounter the enemy. 

The enemy meanwhile had made his way up the pass. The ascent had beenlong and toilsome: for even the foot had to climb by twos and threes;and the baggage horses, twelve hundred in number, could mount only oneat a time. No wheeled carriage had ever been tugged up that arduouspath. The head of the column had emerged and was on the table land, while the rearguard was still in the plain below. At length the passagewas effected; and the troops found themselves in a valley of no greatextent. Their right was flanked by a rising ground, their left by theGarry. Wearied with the morning's work, they threw themselves on thegrass to take some rest and refreshment. 

Early in the afternoon, they were roused by an alarm that theHighlanders were approaching. Regiment after regiment started up and gotinto order. In a little while the summit of an ascent which was about amusket shot before them was covered with bonnets and plaids. Dundeerode forward for the purpose of surveying the force with which he wasto contend, and then drew up his own men with as much skill as theirpeculiar character permitted him to exert. It was desirable to keep theclans distinct. Each tribe, large or small, formed a column separatedfrom the next column by a wide interval. One of these battalions mightcontain seven hundred men, while another consisted of only a hundredand twenty. Lochiel had represented that it was impossible to mix menof different tribes without destroying all that constituted the peculiarstrength of a Highland army, [363]

On the right, close to the Garry, were the Macleans. Next to them wereCannon and his Irish foot. Then came the Macdonalds of Clanronald, commanded by the guardian of their young prince. On the left were otherbands of Macdonalds. At the head of one large battalion towered thestately form of Glengarry, who bore in his hand the royal standardof King James the Seventh, [364] Still further to the left were thecavalry, a small squadron consisting of some Jacobite gentlemen who hadfled from the Lowlands to the mountains and of about forty of Dundee'sold troopers. The horses had been ill fed and ill tended among theGrampians, and looked miserably lean and feeble. Beyond them was Lochielwith his Camerons. On the extreme left, the men of Sky were marshalledby Macdonald of Sleat, [365]

In the Highlands, as in all countries where war has not become ascience, men thought it the most important duty of a commander to setan example of personal courage and of bodily exertion. Lochiel wasespecially renowned for his physical prowess. His clansmen looked bigwith pride when they related how he had himself broken hostile ranks andhewn down tall warriors. He probably owed quite as much of his influenceto these achievements as to the high qualities which, if fortune hadplaced him in the English Parliament or at the French court, would havemade him one of the foremost men of his age. He had the sense however toperceive how erroneous was the notion which his countrymen had formed. He knew that to give and to take blows was not the business of ageneral. He knew with how much difficulty Dundee had been able to keeptogether, during a few days, an army composed of several clans; and heknew that what Dundee had effected with difficulty Cannon would not beable to effect at all. The life on which so much depended must not besacrificed to a barbarous prejudice. Lochiel therefore adjured Dundeenot to run into any unnecessary danger. "Your Lordship's business, "he said, "is to overlook every thing, and to issue your commands. Ourbusiness is to execute those commands bravely and promptly. " Dundeeanswered with calm magnanimity that there was much weight in what hisfriend Sir Ewan had urged, but that no general could effect any thinggreat without possessing the confidence of his men. "I must establishmy character for courage. Your people expect to see their leaders in thethickest of the battle; and to day they shall see me there. I promiseyou, on my honour, that in future fights I will take more care ofmyself. "

Meanwhile a fire of musketry was kept up on both sides, but moreskilfully and more steadily by the regular soldiers than by themountaineers. The space between the armies was one cloud of smoke. Nota few Highlanders dropped; and the clans grew impatient. The sun howeverwas low in the west before Dundee gave the order to prepare for action. His men raised a great shout. The enemy, probably exhausted by the toilof the day, returned a feeble and wavering cheer. "We shall do it now, "said Lochiel: "that is not the cry of men who are going to win. " Hehad walked through all his ranks, had addressed a few words to everyCameron, and had taken from every Cameron a promise to conquer or die, [366]

It was past seven o'clock. Dundee gave the word. The Highlanders droppedtheir plaids. The few who were so luxurious as to wear rude socks ofuntanned hide spurned them away. It was long remembered in Lochaber thatLochiel took off what probably was the only pair of shoes in his clan, and charged barefoot at the head of his men. The whole line advancedfiring. The enemy returned the fire and did much execution. When only asmall space was left between the armies, the Highlanders suddenly flungaway their firelocks, drew their broadswords, and rushed forward with afearful yell. The Lowlanders prepared to receive the shock; but this wasthen a long and awkward process; and the soldiers were still fumblingwith the muzzles of their guns and the handles of their bayonets whenthe whole flood of Macleans, Macdonalds, and Camerons came down. In twominutes the battle was lost and won. The ranks of Balfour's regimentbroke. He was cloven down while struggling in the press. Ramsay's menturned their backs and dropped their arms. Mackay's own foot wereswept away by the furious onset of the Camerons. His brother and nephewexerted themselves in vain to rally the men. The former was laid dead onthe ground by a stroke from a claymore. The latter, with eight woundson his body, made his way through the tumult and carnage to his uncle'sside. Even in that extremity Mackay retained all his selfpossession. He had still one hope. A charge of horse might recover the day; forof horse the bravest Highlanders were supposed to stand in awe. But hecalled on the horse in vain. 

Belhaven indeed behaved like a gallant gentleman: but his troopers, appalled by the rout of the infantry, galloped off in disorder:Annandale's men followed: all was over; and the mingled torrent ofredcoats and tartans went raving down the valley to the gorge ofKilliecrankie. 

Mackay, accompanied by one trusty servant, spurred bravely through thethickest of the claymores and targets, and reached a point from whichhe had a view of the field. His whole army had disappeared, withthe exception of some Borderers whom Leven had kept together, and ofHastings's regiment, which had poured a murderous fire into the Celticranks, and which still kept unbroken order. All the men that could becollected were only a few hundreds. The general made haste to lead themacross the Carry, and, having put that river between them and the enemy, paused for a moment to meditate on his situation. 

He could hardly understand how the conquerors could be so unwise as toallow him even that moment for deliberation. They might with ease havekilled or taken all who were with him before the night closed in. Butthe energy of the Celtic warriors had spent itself in one furious rushand one short struggle. The pass was choked by the twelve hundred beastsof burden which carried the provisions and baggage of the vanquishedarmy. Such a booty was irresistibly tempting to men who were impelled towar quite as much by the desire of rapine as by the desire of glory. Itis probable that few even of the chiefs were disposed to leave so richa price for the sake of King James. Dundee himself might at that momenthave been unable to persuade his followers to quit the heaps of spoil, and to complete the great work of the day; and Dundee was no more. 

At the beginning of the action he had taken his place in front of hislittle band of cavalry. He bade them follow him, and rode forward. Butit seemed to be decreed that, on that day, the Lowland Scotch should inboth armies appear to disadvantage. The horse hesitated. Dundee turnedround, and stood up in his stirrups, and, waving his hat, invited themto come on. As he lifted his arm, his cuirass rose, and exposed thelower part of his left side. A musket ball struck him; his horse sprangforward and plunged into a cloud of smoke and dust, which hid from botharmies the fall of the victorious general. A person named Johnstone wasnear him and caught him as he sank down from the saddle. "How goes theday?" said Dundee. "Well for King James;" answered Johnstone: "but I amsorry for Your Lordship. " "If it is well for him, " answered the dyingman, "it matters the less for me. " He never spoke again; but when, halfan hour later, Lord Dunfermline and some other friends came to the spot, they thought that they could still discern some faint remains of life. The body, wrapped in two plaids, was carried to the Castle of Blair, [367]

Mackay, who was ignorant of Dundee's fate, and well acquainted withDundee's skill and activity, expected to be instantly and hotly pursued, and had very little expectation of being able to save even the scantyremains of the vanquished army. He could not retreat by the pass: forthe Highlanders were already there. He therefore resolved to push acrossthe mountains towards the valley of the Tay. He soon overtook two orthree hundred of his runaways who had taken the same road. Most of thembelonged to Ramsay's regiment, and must have seen service. But they wereunarmed: they were utterly bewildered by the recent disaster; and thegeneral could find among them no remains either of martial discipline orof martial spirit. His situation was one which must have severely triedthe firmest nerves. Night had set in: he was in a desert: he had noguide: a victorious enemy was, in all human probability, on his track;and he had to provide for the safety of a crowd of men who had lost bothhead and heart. He had just suffered a defeat of all defeats themost painful and humiliating. His domestic feelings had been not lessseverely wounded than his professional feelings. One dear kinsman hadjust been struck dead before his eyes. Another, bleeding from manywounds, moved feebly at his side. But the unfortunate general's couragewas sustained by a firm faith in God, and a high sense of duty to thestate. In the midst of misery and disgrace, he still held his head noblyerect, and found fortitude, not only for himself; but for all aroundhim. His first care was to be sure of his road. A solitary light whichtwinkled through the darkness guided him to a small hovel. The inmatesspoke no tongue but the Gaelic, and were at first scared by theappearance of uniforms and arms. But Mackay's gentle manner removedtheir apprehension: their language had been familiar to him inchildhood; and he retained enough of it to communicate with them. Bytheir directions, and by the help of a pocket map, in which the routesthrough that wild country were roughly laid down, he was able tofind his way. He marched all night. When day broke his task was moredifficult than ever. Light increased the terror of his companions. Hastings's men and Leven's men indeed still behaved themselves likesoldiers. But the fugitives from Ramsay's were a mere rabble. They hadflung away their muskets. The broadswords from which they had fled wereever in their eyes. Every fresh object caused a fresh panic. A companyof herdsmen in plaids driving cattle was magnified by imagination intoa host of Celtic warriors. Some of the runaways left the main body andfled to the hills, where their cowardice met with a proper punishment. They were killed for their coats and shoes; and their naked carcasseswere left for a prey to the eagles of Ben Lawers. The desertion wouldhave been much greater, had not Mackay and his officers, pistol in hand, threatened to blow out the brains of any man whom they caught attemptingto steal off. 

At length the weary fugitives came in sight of Weems Castle. Theproprietor of the mansion was a friend to the new government, andextended to them such hospitality as was in his power. His stores ofoatmeal were brought out, kine were slaughtered; and a rude and hastymeal was set before the numerous guests. Thus refreshed, they againset forth, and marched all day over bog, moor, and mountain. Thinlyinhabited as the country was, they could plainly see that the report oftheir disaster had already spread far, and that the population was everywhere in a state of great excitement. Late at night they reached CastleDrummond, which was held for King William by a small garrison; and, on the following day, they proceeded with less difficulty to Stirling, [368]

The tidings of their defeat had outrun them. All Scotland was in aferment. The disaster had indeed been great: but it was exaggerated bythe wild hopes of one party and by the wild fears of the other. It wasat first believed that the whole army of King William had perished; thatMackay himself had fallen; that Dundee, at the head of a great host ofbarbarians, flushed with victory and impatient for spoil, had alreadydescended from the hills; that he was master of the whole country beyondthe Forth; that Fife was up to join him; that in three days he wouldbe at Stirling; that in a week he would be at Holyrood. Messengers weresent to urge a regiment which lay in Northumberland to hasten acrossthe border. Others carried to London earnest entreaties that His Majestywould instantly send every soldier that could be spared, nay, that hewould come himself to save his northern kingdom. The factions of theParliament House, awestruck by the common danger, forgot to wrangle. Courtiers and malecontents with one voice implored the Lord HighCommissioner to close the session, and to dismiss them from a placewhere their deliberations might soon be interrupted by the mountaineers. It was seriously considered whether it might not be expedient to abandonEdinburgh, to send the numerous state prisoners who were in the Castleand the Tolbooth on board of a man of war which lay off Leith, and totransfer the seat of government to Glasgow. 

The news of Dundee's victory was every where speedily followed by thenews of his death; and it is a strong proof of the extent and vigour ofhis faculties, that his death seems every where to have been regardedas a complete set off against his victory. Hamilton, before he adjournedthe Estates, informed them that he had good tidings for them; thatDundee was certainly dead; and that therefore the rebels had on thewhole sustained a defeat. In several letters written at that conjunctureby able and experienced politicians a similar opinion is expressed. Themessenger who rode with the news of the battle to the English Court wasfast followed by another who carried a despatch for the King, and, notfinding His Majesty at Saint James's, galloped to Hampton Court. Nobodyin the capital ventured to break the seal; but fortunately, after theletter had been closed, some friendly hand had hastily written on theoutside a few words of comfort: "Dundee is killed. Mackay has got toStirling:" and these words quieted the minds of the Londoners, [369]

From the pass of Killiecrankie the Highlanders had retired, proudof their victory, and laden with spoil, to the Castle of Blair. Theyboasted that the field of battle was covered with heaps of the Saxonsoldiers, and that the appearance of the corpses bore ample testimony tothe power of a good Gaelic broadsword in a good Gaelic right hand. Headswere found cloven down to the throat, and sculls struck clean off justabove the ears. The conquerors however had bought their victory dear. While they were advancing, they had been much galled by the musketry ofthe enemy; and, even after the decisive charge, Hastings's Englishmenand some of Leven's borderers had continued to keep up a steady fire. Ahundred and twenty Camerons had been slain: the loss of the Macdonaldshad been still greater; and several gentlemen of birth and note hadfallen, [370]

Dundee was buried in the church of Blair Athol: but no monument waserected over his grave; and the church itself has long disappeared. A rude stone on the field of battle marks, if local tradition can betrusted, the place where he fell, [371] During the last three months ofhis life he had approved himself a great warrior and politician; and hisname is therefore mentioned with respect by that large class of personswho think that there is no excess of wickedness for which courage andability do not atone. 

It is curious that the two most remarkable battles that perhaps wereever gained by irregular over regular troops should have been foughtin the same week; the battle of Killiecrankie, and the battle ofNewton Butler. In both battles the success of the irregular troops wassingularly rapid and complete. In both battles the panic of the regulartroops, in spite of the conspicuous example of courage set by theirgenerals, was singularly disgraceful. It ought also to be noted that, ofthese extraordinary victories, one was gained by Celts over Saxons, andthe other by Saxons over Celts. The victory of Killiecrankie indeed, though neither more splendid nor more important than the victory ofNewton Butler, is far more widely renowned; and the reason is evident. The Anglosaxon and the Celt have been reconciled in Scotland, and havenever been reconciled in Ireland. In Scotland all the great actions ofboth races are thrown into a common stock, and are considered as makingup the glory which belongs to the whole country. So completely has theold antipathy been extinguished that nothing is more usual than tohear a Lowlander talk with complacency and even with pride of themost humiliating defeat that his ancestors ever underwent. It would bedifficult to name any eminent man in whom national feeling and clannishfeeling were stronger than in Sir Walter Scott. Yet when Sir WalterScott mentioned Killiecrankie he seemed utterly to forget that he wasa Saxon, that he was of the same blood and of the same speech withRamsay's foot and Annandale's horse. His heart swelled with triumphwhen he related how his own kindred had fled like hares before a smallernumber of warriors of a different breed and of a different tongue. 

In Ireland the feud remains unhealed. The name of Newton Butler, insultingly repeated by a minority, is hateful to the great majorityof the population. If a monument were set up on the field of battle, itwould probably be defaced: if a festival were held in Cork or Waterfordon the anniversary of the battle, it would probably be interrupted byviolence. The most illustrious Irish poet of our time would have thoughtit treason to his country to sing the praises of the conquerors. Oneof the most learned and diligent Irish archeologists of our time haslaboured, not indeed very successfully, to prove that the event of theday was decided by a mere accident from which the Englishry could deriveno glory. We cannot wonder that the victory of the Highlanders should bemore celebrated than the victory of the Enniskilleners, when we considerthat the victory of the Highlanders is matter of boast to all Scotland, and that the victory of the Enniskilleners is matter of shame to threefourths of Ireland. 

As far as the great interests of the State were concerned, it matterednot at all whether the battle of Killiecrankie were lost or won. It isvery improbable that even Dundee, if he had survived the most gloriousday of his life, could have surmounted those difficulties which sprangfrom the peculiar nature of his army, and which would have increasedtenfold as soon as the war was transferred to the Lowlands. It iscertain that his successor was altogether unequal to the task. During aday or two, indeed, the new general might flatter himself that allwould go well. His army was rapidly swollen to near double the number ofclaymores that Dundee had commanded. The Stewarts of Appin, who, thoughfull of zeal, had not been able to come up in time for the battle, wereamong the first who arrived. Several clans, which had hitherto waitedto see which side was the stronger, were now eager to descend on theLowlands under the standard of King James the Seventh. The Grantsindeed continued to bear true allegiance to William and Mary; and theMackintoshes were kept neutral by unconquerable aversion to Keppoch. But Macphersons, Farquharsons, and Frasers came in crowds to the camp atBlair. The hesitation of the Athol men was at an end. Many of themhad lurked, during the fight, among the crags and birch trees ofKilliecrankie, and, as soon as the event of the day was decided, hademerged from those hiding places to strip and butcher the fugitiveswho tried to escape by the pass. The Robertsons, a Gaelic race, thoughbearing a Saxon name, gave in at this conjuncture their adhesion tothe cause of the exiled king. Their chief Alexander, who took hisappellation from his lordship of Struan, was a very young man and astudent at the University of Saint Andrew's. He had there acquired asmattering of letters, and had been initiated much more deeply into Torypolitics. He now joined the Highland army, and continued, through a longlife to be constant to the Jacobite cause. His part, however, in publicaffairs was so insignificant that his name would not now be remembered, if he had not left a volume of poems, always very stupid and often veryprofligate. Had this book been manufactured in Grub Street, it wouldscarcely have been honoured with a quarter of a line in the Dunciad. Butit attracted some notice on account of the situation of the writer. For, a hundred and twenty years ago, an eclogue or a lampoon written by aHighland chief was a literary portent, [372]

But, though the numerical strength of Cannon's forces was increasing, their efficiency was diminishing. Every new tribe which joined the campbrought with it some new cause of dissension. In the hour of peril, themost arrogant and mutinous spirits will often submit to the guidance ofsuperior genius. Yet, even in the hour of peril, and even to the geniusof Dundee, the Celtic chiefs had gelded but a precarious and imperfectobedience. To restrain them, when intoxicated with success and confidentof their strength, would probably have been too hard a task even forhim, as it had been, in the preceding generation, too hard a task forMontrose. The new general did nothing but hesitate and blunder. One ofhis first acts was to send a large body of men, chiefly Robertsons, downinto the low country for the purpose of collecting provisions. He seemsto have supposed that this detachment would without difficulty occupyPerth. But Mackay had already restored order among the remains of hisarmy: he had assembled round him some troops which had not shared in thedisgrace of the late defeat; and he was again ready for action. Cruel ashis sufferings had been, he had wisely and magnanimously resolved notto punish what was past. To distinguish between degrees of guilt wasnot easy. To decimate the guilty would have been to commit a frightfulmassacre. His habitual piety too led him to consider the unexampledpanic which had seized his soldiers as a proof rather of the divinedispleasure than of their cowardice. He acknowledged with heroichumility that the singular firmness which he had himself displayed inthe midst of the confusion and havoc was not his own, and that hemight well, but for the support of a higher power, have behaved aspusillanimously as any of the wretched runaways who had thrown awaytheir weapons and implored quarter in vain from the barbarous maraudersof Athol. His dependence on heaven did not, however, prevent him fromapplying himself vigorously to the work of providing, as far as humanprudence could provide, against the recurrence of such a calamity asthat which he had just experienced. The immediate cause of his defeatwas the difficulty of fixing bayonets. The firelock of the Highlanderwas quite distinct from the weapon which he used in close fight. Hedischarged his shot, threw away his gun, and fell on with his sword. This was the work of a moment. It took the regular musketeer two orthree minutes to alter his missile weapon into a weapon with which hecould encounter an enemy hand to hand; and during these two or threeminutes the event of the battle of Killiecrankie had been decided. Mackay therefore ordered all his bayonets to be so formed that theymight be screwed upon the barrel without stopping it up, and that hismen might be able to receive a charge the very instant after firing, [373]

As soon as he learned that a detachment of the Gaelic army was advancingtowards Perth, he hastened to meet them at the head of a body ofdragoons who had not been in the battle, and whose spirit was thereforeunbroken. On Wednesday the thirty-first of July, only four days afterhis defeat, he fell in with the Robertsons near Saint Johnston's, attacked them, routed them, killed a hundred and twenty of them, andtook thirty prisoners, with the loss of only a single soldier, [374]This skirmish produced an effect quite out of proportion to the numberof the combatants or of the slain. The reputation of the Celtic armswent down almost as fast as it had risen. During two or three days ithad been every where imagined that those arms were invincible. There wasnow a reaction. It was perceived that what had happened at Killiecrankiewas an exception to ordinary rules, and that the Highlanders werenot, except in very peculiar circumstances, a match for good regularsoldiers. 

Meanwhile the disorders of Cannon's camp went on increasing. He calleda council of war to consider what course it would be advisable to take. But as soon as the council had met, a preliminary question was raised. Who were entitled to be consulted? The army was almost exclusively aHighland army. The recent victory had been won exclusively by Highlandwarriors. Great chiefs, who had brought six or seven hundred fightingmen into the field, did not think it fair that they should be outvotedby gentlemen from Ireland and from the low country, who bore indeed KingJames's commission, and were called Colonels and Captains, but who wereColonels without regiments and Captains without companies. Lochiel spokestrongly in behalf of the class to which he belonged: but Cannon decidedthat the votes of the Saxon officers should be reckoned, [375]

It was next considered what was to be the plan of the campaign. Lochielwas for advancing, for marching towards Mackay wherever Mackay might be, and for giving battle again. It can hardly be supposed that successhad so turned the head of the wise chief of the Camerons as to makehim insensible of the danger of the course which he recommended. But heprobably conceived that nothing but a choice between dangers was left tohim. His notion was that vigorous action was necessary to the very beingof a Highland army, and that the coalition of clans would last onlywhile they were impatiently pushing forward from battlefield tobattlefield. He was again overruled. All his hopes of success werenow at an end. His pride was severely wounded. He had submitted to theascendancy of a great captain: but he cared as little as any Whig fora royal commission. He had been willing to be the right hand of Dundee:but he would not be ordered about by Cannon. He quitted the camp, andretired to Lochaber. He indeed directed his clan to remain. But theclan, deprived of the leader whom it adored, and aware that he hadwithdrawn himself in ill humour, was no longer the same terriblecolumn which had a few days before kept so well the vow to perish or toconquer. Macdonald of Sleat, whose forces exceeded in number those ofany other of the confederate chiefs, followed Lochiel's example andreturned to Sky, [376]

Mackay's arrangements were by this time complete; and he had littledoubt that, if the rebels came down to attack him, the regular armywould retrieve the honour which had been lost at Killiecrankie. Hischief difficulties arose from the unwise interference of the ministersof the Crown at Edinburgh with matters which ought to have been leftto his direction. The truth seems to be that they, after the ordinaryfashion of men who, having no military experience, sit in judgment onmilitary operations, considered success as the only test of the abilityof a commander. Whoever wins a battle is, in the estimation of suchpersons, a great general: whoever is beaten is a lead general; and nogeneral had ever been more completely beaten than Mackay. William, onthe other hand, continued to place entire confidence in his unfortunatelieutenant. To the disparaging remarks of critics who had never seena skirmish, Portland replied, by his master's orders, that Mackay wasperfectly trustworthy, that he was brave, that he understood war betterthan any other officer in Scotland, and that it was much to be regrettedthat any prejudice should exist against so good a man and so good asoldier, [377]

The unjust contempt with which the Scotch Privy Councillors regardedMackay led them into a great error which might well have caused a greatdisaster. The Cameronian regiment was sent to garrison Dunkeld. Of thisarrangement Mackay altogether disapproved. He knew that at Dunkeldthese troops would be near the enemy; that they would be far from allassistance; that they would be in an open town; that they would besurrounded by a hostile population; that they were very imperfectlydisciplined, though doubtless brave and zealous; that they wereregarded by the whole Jacobite party throughout Scotland with peculiarmalevolence; and that in all probability some great effort would be madeto disgrace and destroy them, [378]

The General's opinion was disregarded; and the Cameronians occupied thepost assigned to them. It soon appeared that his forebodings were just. The inhabitants of the country round Dunkeld furnished Cannon withintelligence, and urged him to make a bold push. The peasantry ofAthol, impatient for spoil, came in great numbers to swell his army. The regiment hourly expected to be attacked, and became discontented andturbulent. The men, intrepid, indeed, both from constitution andfrom enthusiasm, but not yet broken to habits of military submission, expostulated with Cleland, who commanded them. They had, they imagined, been recklessly, if not perfidiously, sent to certain destruction. They were protected by no ramparts: they had a very scanty stock ofammunition: they were hemmed in by enemies. An officer might mount andgallop beyond reach of danger in an hour; but the private soldiermust stay and be butchered. "Neither I, " said Cleland, "nor any of myofficers will, in any extremity, abandon you. Bring out my horse, allour horses; they shall be shot dead. " These words produced a completechange of feeling. The men answered that the horses should not be shot, that they wanted no pledge from their brave Colonel except his word, andthat they would run the last hazard with him. They kept their promisewell. The Puritan blood was now thoroughly up; and what that blood waswhen it was up had been proved on many fields of battle. 

That night the regiment passed under arms. On the morning of thefollowing day, the twenty-first of August, all the hills round Dunkeldwere alive with bonnets and plaids. Cannon's army was much larger thanthat which Dundee had commanded. More than a thousand horses laden withbaggage accompanied his march. Both the horses and baggage were probablypart of the booty of Killiecrankie. The whole number of Highlanders wasestimated by those who saw them at from four to five thousand men. Theycame furiously on. The outposts of the Cameronians were speedily drivenin. The assailants came pouring on every side into the streets. Thechurch, however, held out obstinately. But the greater part of theregiment made its stand behind a wall which surrounded a house belongingto the Marquess of Athol. This wall, which had two or three daysbefore been hastily repaired with timber and loose stones, the soldiersdefended desperately with musket, pike, and halbert. Their bullets weresoon spent; but some of the men were employed in cutting lead from theroof of the Marquess's house and shaping it into slugs. Meanwhileall the neighbouring houses were crowded from top to bottom withHighlanders, who kept up a galling fire from the windows. Cleland, while encouraging his men, was shot dead. The command devolved on MajorHenderson. 

In another minute Henderson fell pierced with three mortal wounds. His place was supplied by Captain Munro, and the contest went on withundiminished fury. A party of the Cameronians sallied forth, set fire tothe houses from which the fatal shots had come, and turned the keys inthe doors. In one single dwelling sixteen of the enemy were burnt alive. Those who were in the fight described it as a terrible initiation forrecruits. Half the town was blazing; and with the incessant roar ofthe guns were mingled the piercing shrieks of wretches perishing in theflames. The struggle lasted four hours. By that time the Cameronianswere reduced nearly to their last flask of powder; but their spiritnever flagged. "The enemy will soon carry the wall. Be it so. We willretreat into the house: we will defend it to the last; and, if theyforce their way into it, we will burn it over their heads and our own. "But, while they were revolving these desperate projects, they observedthat the fury of the assault slackened. Soon the highlanders began tofall back: disorder visibly spread among them; and whole bands began tomarch off to the hills. It was in vain that their general ordered themto return to the attack. Perseverance was not one of their militaryvirtues. The Cameronians meanwhile, with shouts of defiance, invitedAmalek and Moab to come back and to try another chance with the chosenpeople. But these exhortations had as little effect as those of Cannon. In a short time the whole Gaelic army was in full retreat towards Blair. Then the drums struck up: the victorious Puritans threw their caps intothe air, raised, with one voice, a psalm of triumph and thanksgiving, and waved their colours, colours which were on that day unfurled for thefirst time in the face of an enemy, but which have since been proudlyborne in every quarter of the world, and which are now embellished withthe Sphinx and the Dragon, emblems of brave actions achieved in Egyptand in China, [379]

The Cameronians had good reason to be joyful and thankful; for they hadfinished the rear. In the rebel camp all was discord and dejection. TheHighlanders blamed Cannon: Cannon blamed the Highlanders; and the hostwhich had been the terror of Scotland melted fast away. The confederatechiefs signed an association by which they declared themselves faithfulsubjects of King James, and bound themselves to meet again at afuture time. Having gone through this form, --for it was no more, --theydeparted, each to his home. Cannon and his Irishmen retired to the Isleof Mull. The Lowlanders who had followed Dundee to the mountains shiftedfor themselves as they best could. On the twenty-fourth of August, exactly four weeks after the Gaelic army had won the battle ofKilliecrankie, that army ceased to exist. It ceased to exist, as thearmy of Montrose had, more than forty years earlier, ceased to exist, not in consequence of any great blow from without, but by a naturaldissolution, the effect of internal malformation. All the fruits ofvictory were gathered by the vanquished. The Castle of Blair, which hadbeen the immediate object of the contest, opened its gates to Mackay;and a chain of military posts, extending northward as far as Inverness, protected the cultivators of the plains against the predatory inroads ofthe mountaineers. 

During the autumn the government was much more annoyed by the Whigs ofthe low country, than by the Jacobites of the hills. The Club, whichhad, in the late session of Parliament, attempted to turn the kingdominto an oligarchical republic, and which had induced the Estates torefuse supplies and to stop the administration of justice, continuedto sit during the recess, and harassed the ministers of the Crown bysystematic agitation. The organization of this body, contemptible asit may appear to the generation which has seen the Roman CatholicAssociation and the League against the Corn Laws, was then thoughtmarvellous and formidable. The leaders of the confederacy boasted thatthey would force the King to do them right. They got up petitions andaddresses, tried to inflame the populace by means of the press and thepulpit, employed emissaries among the soldiers, and talked of bringingup a large body of Covenanters from the west to overawe the PrivyCouncil. In spite of every artifice, however, the ferment of the publicmind gradually subsided. The Government, after some hesitation, venturedto open the Courts of justice which the Estates had closed. The Lords ofSession appointed by the King took their seats; and Sir James Dalrymplepresided. The Club attempted to induce the advocates to absentthemselves from the bar, and entertained some hope that the mob wouldpull the judges from the bench. But it speedily became clear that therewas much more likely to be a scarcity of fees than of lawyers to takethem: the common people of Edinburgh were well pleased to see again atribunal associated in their imagination with the dignity and prosperityof their city; and by many signs it appeared that the false and greedyfaction which had commanded a majority of the legislature did notcommand a majority of the nation, [380]

CHAPTER XIV

 Disputes in the English Parliament--The Attainder of Russell reversed--Other Attainders reversed; Case of Samuel Johnson--Case of Devonshire--Case of Oates--Bill of Rights--Disputes about a Bill of Indemnity--Last Days of Jeffreys--The Whigs dissatisfied with the King--Intemperance of Howe--Attack on Caermarthen--Attack on Halifax--Preparations for a Campaign in Ireland--Schomberg--Recess of the Parliament--State of Ireland; Advice of Avaux--Dismission of Melfort; Schomberg lands in Ulster--Carrickfergus taken--Schomberg advances into Leinster; the English and Irish Armies encamp near each other--Schomberg declines a Battle--Frauds of the English Commissariat--Conspiracy among the French Troops in the English Service--Pestilence in the English Army--The English and Irish Armies go into Winter Quarters--Various Opinions about Schomberg's Conduct--Maritime Affairs--Maladministration of Torrington--Continental Affairs--Skirmish at Walcourt--Imputations thrown on Marlborough--Pope Innocent XI. Succeeded by Alexander VIII. --The High Church Clergy divided on the Subject of the Oaths--Arguments for taking the Oaths--Arguments against taking the Oaths--A great Majority of the Clergy take the Oaths--The Nonjurors; Ken--Leslie--Sherlock--Hickes--Collier--Dodwell--Kettlewell; Fitzwilliam--General Character of the Nonjuring Clergy--The Plan of Comprehension; Tillotson--An Ecclesiastical Commission issued. --Proceedings of the Commission--The Convocation of the Province of Canterbury summoned; Temper of the Clergy--The Clergy ill affected towards the King--The Clergy exasperated against the Dissenters by the Proceedings of the Scotch Presbyterians--Constitution of the Convocation--Election of Members of Convocation; Ecclesiastical Preferments bestowed, --Compton discontented--The Convocation meets--The High Churchmen a Majority of the Lower House of Convocation--Difference between the two Houses of Convocation--The Lower House of Convocation proves unmanageable. --The Convocation prorogued

TWENTY-four hours before the war in Scotland was brought to a close bythe discomfiture of the Celtic army at Dunkeld, the Parliament broke upat Westminster. The Houses had sate ever since January without a recess. The Commons, who were cooped up in a narrow space, had suffered severelyfrom heat and discomfort; and the health of many members had given way. The fruit however had not been proportioned to the toil. The last threemonths of the session had been almost entirely wasted in disputes, whichhave left no trace in the Statute Book. The progress of salutary lawshad been impeded, sometimes by bickerings between the Whigs and theTories, and sometimes by bickerings between the Lords and the Commons. 

The Revolution had scarcely been accomplished when it appeared thatthe supporters of the Exclusion Bill had not forgotten what they hadsuffered during the ascendancy of their enemies, and were bent onobtaining both reparation and revenge. Even before the throne wasfilled, the Lords appointed a committee to examine into the truth ofthe frightful stories which had been circulated concerning the death ofEssex. The committee, which consisted of zealous Whigs, continued itsinquiries till all reasonable men were convinced that he had fallenby his own hand, and till his wife, his brother, and his most intimatefriends were desirous that the investigation should be carried nofurther, [381] Atonement was made, without any opposition on the partof the Tories, to the memory and the families of some other victims, who were themselves beyond the reach of human power. Soon after theConvention had been turned into a Parliament, a bill for reversingthe attainder of Lord Russell was presented to the peers, was speedilypassed by them, was sent down to the Lower House, and was welcomed therewith no common signs of emotion. Many of the members had sate in thatvery chamber with Russell. He had long exercised there an influenceresembling the influence which, within the memory of this generation, belonged to the upright and benevolent Althorpe; an influence derived, not from superior skill in debate or in declamation, but from spotlessintegrity, from plain good sense, and from that frankness, thatsimplicity, that good nature, which are singularly graceful and winningin a man raised by birth and fortune high above his fellows. Bythe Whigs Russell had been honoured as a chief; and his politicaladversaries had admitted that, when he was not misled by associatesless respectable and more artful than himself, he was as honest andkindhearted a gentleman as any in England. The manly firmness andChristian meekness with which he had met death, the desolation of hisnoble house, the misery of the bereaved father, the blighted prospectsof the orphan children, [382] above all, the union of womanly tendernessand angelic patience in her who had been dearest to the brave sufferer, who had sate, with the pen in her hand, by his side at the bar, who hadcheered the gloom of his cell, and who, on his last day, had shared withhim the memorials of the great sacrifice, had softened the hearts ofmany who were little in the habit of pitying an opponent. That Russellhad many good qualities, that he had meant well, that he had been hardlyused, was now admitted even by courtly lawyers who had assisted inshedding his blood, and by courtly divines who had done their worst toblacken his reputation. When, therefore, the parchment which annulledhis sentence was laid on the table of that assembly in which, eightyears before, his face and his voice had been so well known, theexcitement was great. One old Whig member tried to speak, but wasovercome by his feelings. "I cannot, " he said, "name my Lord Russellwithout disorder. It is enough to name him. I am not able to say more. "Many eyes were directed towards that part of the house where Finch sate. The highly honourable manner in which he had quitted a lucrative office, as soon as he had found that he could not keep it without supportingthe dispensing power, and the conspicuous part which he had borne in thedefence of the Bishops, had done much to atone for his faults. Yet, on this day, it could not be forgotten that he had strenuously exertedhimself, as counsel for the Crown, to obtain that judgment which was nowto be solemnly revoked. He rose, and attempted to defend his conduct:but neither his legal acuteness, nor that fluent and sonorous elocutionwhich was in his family a hereditary gift, and of which none of hisfamily had a larger share than himself, availed him on this occasion. The House was in no humour to hear him, and repeatedly interruptedhim by cries of "Order. " He had been treated, he was told, with greatindulgence. No accusation had been brought against him. Why thenshould he, under pretence of vindicating himself, attempt to throwdishonourable imputations on an illustrious name, and to apologise fora judicial murder? He was forced to sit dorm, after declaring thathe meant only to clear himself from the charge of having exceeded thelimits of his professional duty; that he disclaimed all intention ofattacking the memory of Lord Russell; and that he should sincerelyrejoice at the reversing of the attainder. Before the House rose thebill was read a second time, and would have been instantly read a thirdtime and passed, had not some additions and omissions been proposed, which would, it was thought, make the reparation more complete. Theamendments were prepared with great expedition: the Lords agreed tothem; and the King gladly gave his assent, [383]

This bill was soon followed by three other bills which annulled threewicked and infamous judgments, the judgment against Sidney, the judgmentagainst Cornish, and the judgment against Alice Lisle, [384]

Some living Whigs obtained without difficulty redress for injuries whichthey had suffered in the late reign. The sentence of Samuel Johnson wastaken into consideration by the House of Commons. It was resolved thatthe scourging which he had undergone was cruel, and that his degradationwas of no legal effect. The latter proposition admitted of no dispute:for he had been degraded by the prelates who had been appointed togovern the diocese of London during Compton's suspension. Compton hadbeen suspended by a decree of the High Commission, and the decreesof the High Commission were universally acknowledged to be nullities. Johnson had therefore been stripped of his robe by persons who had nojurisdiction over him. The Commons requested the king to compensatethe sufferer by some ecclesiastical preferment, [385] William, however, found that he could not, without great inconvenience, grant thisrequest. For Johnson, though brave, honest and religious, had alwaysbeen rash, mutinous and quarrelsome; and, since he had endured for hisopinions a martyrdom more terrible than death, the infirmities of histemper and understanding had increased to such a degree that he was asdisagreeable to Low Churchmen as to High Churchmen. Like too many othermen, who are not to be turned from the path of right by pleasure, bylucre or by danger, he mistook the impulses of his pride and resentmentfor the monitions of conscience, and deceived himself into a beliefthat, in treating friends and foes with indiscriminate insolence andasperity, he was merely showing his Christian faithfulness and courage. Burnet, by exhorting him to patience and forgiveness of injuries, madehim a mortal enemy. "Tell His Lordship, " said the inflexible priest, "to mind his own business, and to let me look after mine. " [386] It soonbegan to be whispered that Johnson was mad. He accused Burnet of beingthe author of the report, and avenged himself by writing libels soviolent that they strongly confirmed the imputation which they weremeant to refute. The King, therefore, thought it better to give out ofhis own revenue a liberal compensation for the wrongs which the Commonshad brought to his notice than to place an eccentric and irritable manin a situation of dignity and public trust. Johnson was gratified with apresent of a thousand pounds, and a pension of three hundred a year fortwo lives. His son was also provided for in the public service, [387]

While the Commons were considering the case of Johnson, the Lords werescrutinising with severity the proceedings which had, in the late reign, been instituted against one of their own order, the Earl of Devonshire. The judges who had passed sentence on him were strictly interrogated;and a resolution was passed declaring that in his case the privileges ofthe peerage had been infringed, and that the Court of King's Bench, inpunishing a hasty blow by a fine of thirty thousand pounds, had violatedcommon justice and the Great Charter, [388]

In the cases which have been mentioned, all parties seem to have agreedin thinking that some public reparation was due. But the fiercestpassions both of Whigs and Tories were soon roused by the noisy claimsof a wretch whose sufferings, great as they might seem, had beentrifling when compared with his crimes. Gates had come back, like aghost from the place of punishment, to haunt the spots which had beenpolluted by his guilt. The three years and a half which followed hisscourging he had passed in one of the cells of Newgate, except when oncertain days, the anniversaries of his perjuries, he had been broughtforth and set on the pillory. He was still, however, regarded by manyfanatics as a martyr; and it was said that they were able so farto corrupt his keepers that, in spite of positive orders from thegovernment, his sufferings were mitigated by many indulgences. Whileoffenders, who, compared with him, were innocent, grew lean on theprison allowance, his cheer was mended by turkeys and chines, capons andsucking pigs, venison pasties and hampers of claret, the offerings ofzealous Protestants, [389] When James had fled from Whitehall, and whenLondon was in confusion, it was moved, in the council of Lords which hadprovisionally assumed the direction of affairs, that Gates should beset at liberty. The motion was rejected: [390] but the gaolers, not knowingwhom to obey in that time of anarchy, and desiring to conciliate a manwho had once been, and might perhaps again be, a terrible enemy, allowedtheir prisoner to go freely about the town, [391] His uneven legs andhis hideous face, made more hideous by the shearing which his ears hadundergone, were now again seen every day in Westminster Hall and theCourt of Requests, [392] He fastened himself on his old patrons, and, in that drawl which he affected as a mark of gentility, gave them thehistory of his wrongs and of his hopes. It was impossible, he said, that now, when the good cause was triumphant, the discoverer of the plotcould be overlooked. "Charles gave me nine hundred pounds a year. SureWilliam will give me more. " [393]

In a few weeks he brought his sentence before the House of Lords by awrit of error. This is a species of appeal which raises no question offact. The Lords, while sitting judicially on the writ of error, were notcompetent to examine whether the verdict which pronounced Gates guiltywas or was not according to the evidence. All that they had to considerwas whether, the verdict being supposed to be according to the evidence, the judgment was legal. But it would have been difficult even for atribunal composed of veteran magistrates, and was almost impossible foran assembly of noblemen who were all strongly biassed on one side oron the other, and among whom there was at that time not a single personwhose mind had been disciplined by the study of jurisprudence, tolook steadily at the mere point of law, abstracted from the specialcircumstances of the case. In the view of one party, a party which evenamong the Whig peers was probably a minority, the appellant was aman who had rendered inestimable services to the cause of liberty andreligion, and who had been requited by long confinement, by degradingexposure, and by torture not to be thought of without a shudder. Themajority of the House more justly regarded him as the falsest, the mostmalignant and the most impudent being that had ever disgraced the humanform. The sight of that brazen forehead, the accents of that lyingtongue, deprived them of all mastery over themselves. Many of themdoubtless remembered with shame and remorse that they had been hisdupes, and that, on the very last occasion on which he had stood beforethem, he had by perjury induced them to shed the blood of one oftheir own illustrious order. It was not to be expected that a crowd ofgentlemen under the influence of feelings like these would act withthe cold impartiality of a court of justice. Before they came to anydecision on the legal question which Titus had brought before them, they picked a succession of quarrels with him. He had published a papermagnifying his merits and his sufferings. The Lords found out somepretence for calling this publication a breach of privilege, and senthim to the Marshalsea. He petitioned to be released; but an objectionwas raised to his petition. He had described himself as a Doctor ofDivinity; and their lordships refused to acknowledge him as such. He wasbrought to their bar, and asked where he had graduated. He answered, "Atthe university of Salamanca. " This was no new instance of his mendacityand effrontery. His Salamanca degree had been, during many years, afavourite theme of all the Tory satirists from Dryden downwards; andeven on the Continent the Salamanca Doctor was a nickname in ordinaryuse, [394] The Lords, in their hatred of Oates, so far forgot their owndignity as to treat this ridiculous matter seriously. They ordered himto efface from his petition the words, "Doctor of Divinity. " He repliedthat he could not in conscience do it; and he was accordingly sent backto gaol, [395]

These preliminary proceedings indicated not obscurely what the fate ofthe writ of error would be. The counsel for Oates had been heard. Nocounsel appeared against him. The judges were required to give theiropinions. Nine of them were in attendance; and among the nine were theChiefs of the three Courts of Common Law. The unanimous answer of thesegrave, learned and upright magistrates was that the Court of King'sBench was not competent to degrade a priest from his sacred office, orto pass a sentence of perpetual imprisonment; and that therefore thejudgment against Oates was contrary to law, and ought to be reversed. The Lords should undoubtedly have considered themselves as bound by thisopinion. That they knew Oates to be the worst of men was nothing to thepurpose. To them, sitting as a court of justice, he ought to have beenmerely a John of Styles or a John of Nokes. But their indignation wasviolently excited. Their habits were not those which fit men for thedischarge of judicial duties. The debate turned almost entirely onmatters to which no allusion ought to have been made. Not a single peerventured to affirm that the judgment was legal: but much was said aboutthe odious character of the appellant, about the impudent accusationwhich he had brought against Catherine of Braganza, and about the evilconsequences which might follow if so bad a man were capable of being awitness. "There is only one way, " said the Lord President, "in which Ican consent to reverse the fellow's sentence. He has been whipped fromAldgate to Tyburn. He ought to be whipped from Tyburn back to Aldgate. "The question was put. Twenty-three peers voted for reversing thejudgment; thirty-five for affirming it, [396]

This decision produced a great sensation, and not without reason. Aquestion was now raised which might justly excite the anxiety of everyman in the kingdom. That question was whether the highest tribunal, the tribunal on which, in the last resort, depended the most preciousinterests of every English subject, was at liberty to decide judicialquestions on other than judicial grounds, and to withhold from a suitorwhat was admitted to be his legal right, on account of the depravity ofhis moral character. That the supreme Court of Appeal ought not tobe suffered to exercise arbitrary power, under the forms of ordinaryjustice, was strongly felt by the ablest men in the House of Commons, and by none more strongly than by Somers. With him, and with thosewho reasoned like him, were, on this occasion, allied many weak andhot-headed zealots who still regarded Oates as a public benefactor, andwho imagined that to question the existence of the Popish plot was toquestion the truth of the Protestant religion. On the very morning afterthe decision of the Peers had been pronounced, keen reflections werethrown, in the House of Commons, on the justice of their lordships. Three days later, the subject was brought forward by a Whig PrivyCouncillor, Sir Robert Howard, member for Castle Rising. He was one ofthe Berkshire branch of his noble family, a branch which enjoyed, inthat age, the unenviable distinction of being wonderfully fertile ofbad rhymers. The poetry of the Berkshire Howards was the jest of threegenerations of satirists. The mirth began with the first representationof the Rehearsal, and continued down to the last edition of the Dunciad, [397] But Sir Robert, in spite of his bad verses, and of some foiblesand vanities which had caused him to be brought on the stage under thename of Sir Positive Atall, had in parliament the weight which a stanchparty man, of ample fortune, of illustrious name, of ready utterance, and of resolute spirit, can scarcely fail to possess, [398] When he roseto call the attention of the Commons to the case of Oates, some Tories, animated by the same passions which had prevailed in the other House, received him with loud hisses. In spite of this most unparliamentaryinsult, he persevered; and it soon appeared that the majority was withhim. Some orators extolled the patriotism and courage of Oates: othersdwelt much on a prevailing rumour, that the solicitors who were employedagainst him on behalf of the Crown had distributed large sums of moneyamong the jurymen. These were topics on which there was much differenceof opinion. But that the sentence was illegal was a proposition whichadmitted of no dispute. The most eminent lawyers in the House of Commonsdeclared that, on this point, they entirely concurred in the opiniongiven by the judges in the House of Lords. Those who had hissed whenthe subject was introduced, were so effectually cowed that they didnot venture to demand a division; and a bill annulling the sentence wasbrought in, without any opposition, [399]

The Lords were in an embarrassing situation. To retract was notpleasant. To engage in a contest with the Lower House, on a question onwhich that House was clearly in the right, and was backed at once by theopinions of the sages of the law, and by the passions of the populace, might be dangerous. It was thought expedient to take a middle course. Anaddress was presented to the King, requesting him to pardon Oates, [400]But this concession only made bad worse. Titus had, like every otherhuman being, a right to justice: but he was not a proper object ofmercy. If the judgment against him was illegal, it ought to have beenreversed. If it was legal, there was no ground for remitting any part ofit. The Commons, very properly, persisted, passed their bill, and sentit up to the Peers. Of this bill the only objectionable part was thepreamble, which asserted, not only that the judgment was illegal, aproposition which appeared on the face of the record to be true, butalso that the verdict was corrupt, a proposition which, whether true orfalse, was not proved by any evidence at all. 

The Lords were in a great strait. They knew that they were in the wrong. Yet they were determined not to proclaim, in their legislative capacity, that they had, in their judicial capacity, been guilty of injustice. They again tried a middle course. The preamble was softened down: aclause was added which provided that Oates should still remain incapableof being a witness; and the bill thus altered was returned to theCommons. 

The Commons were not satisfied. They rejected the amendments, and demanded a free conference. Two eminent Tories, Rochester andNottingham, took their seats in the Painted Chamber as managers for theLords. With them was joined Burnet, whose well known hatred of Poperywas likely to give weight to what he might say on such an occasion. Somers was the chief orator on the other side; and to his pen we owe asingularly lucid and interesting abstract of the debate. 

The Lords frankly owned that the judgment of the Court of King's Benchcould not be defended. They knew it to be illegal, and had known it tobe so even when they affirmed it. But they had acted for the best. Theyaccused Oates of bringing an impudently false accusation against QueenCatherine: they mentioned other instances of his villany; and they askedwhether such a man ought still to be capable of giving testimony in acourt of justice. The only excuse which, in their opinion, could be madefor him was, that he was insane; and in truth, the incredible insolenceand absurdity of his behaviour when he was last before them seemed towarrant the belief that his brain had been turned, and that he was notto be trusted with the lives of other men. The Lords could not thereforedegrade themselves by expressly rescinding what they had done; nor couldthey consent to pronounce the verdict corrupt on no better evidence thancommon report. 

The reply was complete and triumphant. "Oates is now the smallest partof the question. He has, Your Lordships say, falsely accused the QueenDowager and other innocent persons. Be it so. This bill gives him noindemnity. We are quite willing that, if he is guilty, he shall bepunished. But for him, and for all Englishmen, we demand that punishmentshall be regulated by law, and not by the arbitrary discretion of anytribunal. We demand that, when a writ of error is before Your Lordships, you shall give judgment on it according to the known customs andstatutes of the realm. We deny that you have any right, on suchoccasions, to take into consideration the moral character of a plaintiffor the political effect of a decision. It is acknowledged by yourselvesthat you have, merely because you thought ill of this man, affirmeda judgment which you knew to be illegal. Against this assumption ofarbitrary power the Commons protest; and they hope that you will nowredeem what you must feel to be an error. Your Lordships intimate asuspicion that Oates is mad. That a man is mad may be a very good reasonfor not punishing him at all. But how it can be a reason for inflictingon him a punishment which would be illegal even if he were sane, theCommons do not comprehend. Your Lordships think that you should not bejustified in calling a verdict corrupt which has not been legally provedto be so. Suffer us to remind you that you have two distinct functionsto perform. You are judges; and you are legislators. When you judge, your duty is strictly to follow the law. When you legislate, you mayproperly take facts from common fame. You invert this rule. You are laxin the wrong place, and scrupulous in the wrong place. As judges, you break through the law for the sake of a supposed convenience. Aslegislators, you will not admit any fact without such technical proof asit is rarely possible for legislators to obtain. " [401]

This reasoning was not and could not be answered. The Commons wereevidently flushed with their victory in the argument, and proud ofthe appearance which Somers had made in the Painted Chamber. Theyparticularly charged him to see that the report which he had made of theconference was accurately entered in the journals. The Lords very wiselyabstained from inserting in their records an account of a debate inwhich they had been so signally discomfited. But, though conscious oftheir fault and ashamed of it, they could not be brought to do publicpenance by owning, in the preamble of the Act, that they had been guiltyof injustice. The minority was, however, strong. The resolution toadhere was carried by only twelve votes, of which ten were proxies, [402]

Twenty-one Peers protested. The bill dropped. Two Masters in Chancerywere sent to announce to the Commons the final resolution of the Peers. The Commons thought this proceeding unjustifiable in substance anduncourteous in form. They determined to remonstrate; and Somers drewup an excellent manifesto, in which the vile name of Oates was scarcelymentioned, and in which the Upper House was with great earnestness andgravity exhorted to treat judicial questions judicially, and not, underpretence of administering law, to make law, [403] The wretched man, who had now a second time thrown the political world into confusion, received a pardon, and was set at liberty. His friends in the LowerHouse moved an address to the Throne, requesting that a pensionsufficient for his support might be granted to him, [404] He wasconsequently allowed about three hundred a year, a sum which he thoughtunworthy of his acceptance, and which he took with the savage snarl ofdisappointed greediness. 

From the dispute about Oates sprang another dispute, which might haveproduced very serious consequences. The instrument which had declaredWilliam and Mary King and Queen was a revolutionary instrument. It hadbeen drawn up by an assembly unknown to the ordinary law, and had neverreceived the royal sanction. It was evidently desirable that this greatcontract between the governors and the governed, this titledeed by whichthe King held his throne and the people their liberties, should be putinto a strictly regular form. The Declaration of Rights was thereforeturned into a Bill of Rights; and the Bill of Rights speedily passed theCommons; but in the Lords difficulties arose. 

The Declaration had settled the crown, first on William and Maryjointly, then on the survivor of the two, then on Mary's posterity, thenon Anne and her posterity, and, lastly, on the posterity of William byany other wife than Mary. The Bill had been drawn in exact conformitywith the Declaration. Who was to succeed if Mary, Anne, and Williamshould all die without posterity, was left in uncertainty. Yet theevent for which no provision was made was far from improbable. Indeed itreally came to pass. William had never had a child. Anne had repeatedlybeen a mother, but had no child living. It would not be very strange if, in a few months, disease, war, or treason should remove all those whostood in the entail. In what state would the country then be left? Towhom would allegiance be due? The bill indeed contained a clause whichexcluded Papists from the throne. But would such a clause supply theplace of a clause designating the successor by name? What if the nextheir should be a prince of the House of Savoy not three months old?It would be absurd to call such an infant a Papist. Was he then to beproclaimed King? Or was the crown to be in abeyance till he came to anage at which he might be capable of choosing a religion? Might not themost honest and the most intelligent men be in doubt whether they oughtto regard him as their Sovereign? And to whom could they look fora solution of this doubt? Parliament there would be none: for theParliament would expire with the prince who had convoked it. Therewould be mere anarchy, anarchy which might end in the destruction ofthe monarchy, or in the destruction of public liberty. For these weightyreasons, Barnet, at William's suggestion, proposed it the House of Lordsthat the crown should, failing heirs of His Majesty's body, be entailedon an undoubted Protestant, Sophia, Duchess of Brunswick Lunenburg, granddaughter of James the First, and daughter of Elizabeth, Queen ofBohemia. 

The Lords unanimously assented to this amendment: but the Commonsunanimously rejected it. The cause of the rejection no contemporarywriter has satisfactorily explained. One Whig historian talks of themachinations of the republicans, another of the machinations ofthe Jacobites. But it is quite certain that four fifths of therepresentatives of the people were neither Jacobites nor republicans. Yet not a single voice was raised in the Lower House in favour of theclause which in the Upper House had been carried by acclamation, [405]The most probable explanation seems to be that the gross injustice whichhad been committed in the case of Oates had irritated the Commons tosuch a degree that they were glad of an opportunity to quarrel with thePeers. A conference was held. Neither assembly would give way. Whilethe dispute was hottest, an event took place which, it might have beenthought, would have restored harmony. Anne gave birth to a son. Thechild was baptized at Hampton Court with great pomp, and with manysigns of public joy. William was one of the sponsors. The other was theaccomplished Dorset, whose roof had given shelter to the Princess in herdistress. The King bestowed his own name on his godson, and announcedto the splendid circle assembled around the font that the little Williamwas henceforth to be called Duke of Gloucester, [406] The birth ofthis child had greatly diminished the risk against which the Lords hadthought it necessary to guard. They might therefore have retracted witha good grace. But their pride had been wounded by the severity withwhich their decision on Oates's writ of error had been censured in thePainted Chamber. They had been plainly told across the table that theywere unjust judges; and the imputation was not the less irritatingbecause they were conscious that it was deserved. They refused to makeany concession; and the Bill of Rights was suffered to drop, [407]

But the most exciting question of this long and stormy session was, whatpunishment should be inflicted on those men who had, during the intervalbetween the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament and the Revolution, been the advisers or the tools of Charles and James. It was happy forEngland that, at this crisis, a prince who belonged to neither ofher factions, who loved neither, who hated neither, and who, for theaccomplishment of a great design, wished to make use of both, was themoderator between them. 

The two parties were now in a position closely resembling that in whichthey had been twenty-eight years before. The party indeed which had thenbeen undermost was now uppermost: but the analogy between the situationsis one of the most perfect that can be found in history. Both theRestoration and the Revolution was accomplished by coalitions. At theRestoration, those politicians who were peculiarly zealous for libertyassisted to reestablish monarchy: at the Revolution those politicianswho were peculiarly zealous for monarchy assisted to vindicate liberty. The Cavalier would, at the former conjuncture, have been able to effectnothing without the help of Puritans who had fought for the Covenant;nor would the Whig, at the latter conjuncture, have offered a successfulresistance to arbitrary power, had he not been backed by men who hada very short time before condemned resistance to arbitrary power as adeadly sin. Conspicuous among those by whom, in 1660, the royal familywas brought back, were Hopis, who had in the days of the tyranny ofCharles the First held down the Speaker in the chair by main force, while Black Rod knocked for admission in vain; Ingoldsby, whose name wassubscribed to the memorable death warrant; and Prynne, whose ears Laudhad cut off, and who, in return, had borne the chief part in cuttingoff Laud's head. Among the seven who, in 1688, signed the invitation toWilliam, were Compton, who had long enforced the duty of obeying Nero;Danby, who had been impeached for endeavouring to establish militarydespotism; and Lumley, whose bloodhounds had tracked Monmouth to thatsad last hiding place among the fern. Both in 1660 and in 1688, whilethe fate of the nation still hung in the balance, forgivenesswas exchanged between the hostile factions. On both occasions thereconciliation, which had seemed to be cordial in the hour of danger, proved false and hollow in the hour of triumph. As soon as Charles theSecond was at Whitehall, the Cavalier forgot the good service recentlydone by the Presbyterians, and remembered only their old offences. As soon as William was King, too many of the Whigs began to demandvengeance for all that they had, in the days of the Rye House Plot, suffered at the hands of the Tories. On both occasions the Sovereignfound it difficult to save the vanquished party from the fury ofhis triumphant supporters; and on both occasions those whom he haddisappointed of their revenge murmured bitterly against the governmentwhich had been so weak and ungrateful as to protect its foes against itsfriends. 

So early as the twenty-fifth of March, William called the attention ofthe Commons to the expediency of quieting the public mind by an amnesty. He expressed his hope that a bill of general pardon and oblivion wouldbe as speedily as possible presented for his sanction, and that noexceptions would be made, except such as were absolutely necessary forthe vindication of public justice and for the safety of the state. The Commons unanimously agreed to thank him for this instance of hispaternal kindness: but they suffered many weeks to pass without takingany step towards the accomplishment of his wish. When at length thesubject was resumed, it was resumed in such a manner as plainly showedthat the majority had no real intention of putting an end to thesuspense which embittered the lives of all those Tories who wereconscious that, in their zeal for prerogative, they had some timesoverstepped the exact line traced by law. Twelve categories were framed, some of which were so extensive as to include tens of thousands ofdelinquents; and the House resolved that, under every one of thesecategories, some exceptions should be made. Then came the examinationinto the cases of individuals. Numerous culprits and witnesses weresummoned to the bar. The debates were long and sharp; and it soon becameevident that the work was interminable. The summer glided away: theautumn was approaching: the session could not last much longer; andof the twelve distinct inquisitions, which the Commons had resolved toinstitute, only three had been brought to a close. It was necessary tolet the bill drop for that year, [408]

Among the many offenders whose names were mentioned in the course ofthese inquiries, was one who stood alone and unapproached in guilt andinfamy, and whom Whigs and Tories were equally willing to leave to theextreme rigour of the law. On that terrible day which was succeeded bythe Irish Night, the roar of a great city disappointed of its revengehad followed Jeffreys to the drawbridge of the Tower. His imprisonmentwas not strictly legal: but he at first accepted with thanks andblessings the protection which those dark walls, made famous by so manycrimes and sorrows, afforded him against the fury of the multitude, [409] Soon, however, he became sensible that his life was still inimminent peril. For a time he flattered himself with the hope that awrit of Habeas Corpus would liberate him from his confinement, and thathe should be able to steal away to some foreign country, and to hidehimself with part of his ill gotten wealth from the detestation ofmankind: but, till the government was settled, there was no Courtcompetent to grant a writ of Habeas Corpus; and, as soon as thegovernment had been settled, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, [410]Whether the legal guilt of murder could be brought home to Jeffreys maybe doubted. But he was morally guilty of so many murders that, if therehad been no other way of reaching his life, a retrospective Act ofAttainder would have been clamorously demanded by the whole nation. A disposition to triumph over the fallen has never been one of thebesetting sins of Englishmen: but the hatred of which Jeffreys wasthe object was without a parallel in our history, and partook but toolargely of the savageness of his own nature. The people, where he wasconcerned, were as cruel as himself, and exulted in his misery as hehad been accustomed to exult in the misery of convicts listening tothe sentence of death, and of families clad in mourning. The rabblecongregated before his deserted mansion in Duke Street, and read on thedoor, with shouts of laughter, the bills which announced the sale ofhis property. Even delicate women, who had tears for highwaymen andhousebreakers, breathed nothing but vengeance against him. The lampoonson him which were hawked about the town were distinguished by anatrocity rare even in those days. Hanging would be too mild a death forhim: a grave under the gibbet too respectable a resting place: he oughtto be whipped to death at the cart's tail: he ought to be tortured likean Indian: he ought to be devoured alive. The street poets portioned outall his joints with cannibal ferocity, and computed how many pounds ofsteaks might be cut from his well fattened carcass. Nay, the rage ofhis enemies was such that, in language seldom heard in England, theyproclaimed their wish that he might go to the place of wailing andgnashing of teeth, to the worm that never dies, to the fire that isnever quenched. They exhorted him to hang himself in his garters, andto cut his throat with his razor. They put up horrible prayers that hemight not be able to repent, that he might die the same hardhearted, wicked Jeffreys that he had lived, [411] His spirit, as mean inadversity as insolent and inhuman in prosperity, sank down under theload of public abhorrence. His constitution, originally bad, and muchimpaired by intemperance, was completely broken by distress and anxiety. He was tormented by a cruel internal disease, which the most skilfulsurgeons of that age were seldom able to relieve. One solace was left tohim, brandy. Even when he had causes to try and councils to attend, hehad seldom gone to bed sober. Now, when he had nothing to occupy hismind save terrible recollections and terrible forebodings, he abandonedhimself without reserve to his favourite vice. Many believed him to bebent on shortening his life by excess. He thought it better, they said, to go off in a drunken fit than to be hacked by Ketch, or torn limb fromlimb by the populace. 

Once he was roused from a state of abject despondency by an agreeablesensation, speedily followed by a mortifying disappointment. A parcelhad been left for him at the Tower. It appeared to be a barrel ofColchester oysters, his favourite dainties. He was greatly moved: forthere are moments when those who least deserve affection are pleasedto think that they inspire it. "Thank God, " he exclaimed, "I have stillsome friends left. " He opened the barrel; and from among a heap ofshells out tumbled a stout halter, [412]

It does not appear that one of the flatterers or buffoons whom he hadenriched out of the plunder of his victims came to comfort him in theday of trouble. But he was not left in utter solitude. John Tutchin, whom he had sentenced to be flogged every fortnight for seven years, made his way into the Tower, and presented himself before the fallenoppressor. Poor Jeffreys, humbled to the dust, behaved with abjectcivility, and called for wine. "I am glad, sir, " he said, "to see you. ""And I am glad, " answered the resentful Whig, "to see Your Lordshipin this place. " "I served my master, " said Jeffreys: "I was bound inconscience to do so. " "Where was your conscience, " said Tutchin, "whenyou passed that sentence on me at Dorchester?" "It was set down in myinstructions, " answered Jeffreys, fawningly, "that I was to show nomercy to men like you, men of parts and courage. When I went back tocourt I was reprimanded for my lenity. " [413] Even Tutchin, acrimoniousas was his nature, and great as were his wrongs, seems to have beena little mollified by the pitiable spectacle which he had at firstcontemplated with vindictive pleasure. He always denied the truth ofthe report that he was the person who sent the Colchester barrel to theTower. 

A more benevolent man, John Sharp, the excellent Dean of Norwich, forcedhimself to visit the prisoner. It was a painful task: but Sharp had beentreated by Jeffreys, in old times, as kindly as it was in the natureof Jeffreys to treat any body, and had once or twice been able, bypatiently waiting till the storm of curses and invectives had spentitself, and by dexterously seizing the moment of good humour, to obtainfor unhappy families some mitigation of their sufferings. The prisonerwas surprised and pleased. "What, " he said, "dare you own me now?" It wasin vain, however, that the amiable divine tried to give salutary painto that seared conscience. Jeffreys, instead of acknowledging his guilt, exclaimed vehemently against the injustice of mankind. "People call mea murderer for doing what at the time was applauded by some who are nowhigh in public favour. They call me a drunkard because I take punch torelieve me in my agony. " He would not admit that, as President of theHigh Commission, he had done any thing that deserved reproach. Hiscolleagues, he said, were the real criminals; and now they threw allthe blame on him. He spoke with peculiar asperity of Sprat, who hadundoubtedly been the most humane and moderate member of the board. 

It soon became clear that the wicked judge was fast sinking under theweight of bodily and mental suffering. Doctor John Scott, prebendary ofSaint Paul's, a clergyman of great sanctity, and author of the ChristianLife, a treatise once widely renowned, was summoned, probably on therecommendation of his intimate friend Sharp, to the bedside of the dyingman. It was in vain, however, that Scott spoke, as Sharp had alreadyspoken, of the hideous butcheries of Dorchester and Taunton. To the lastJeffreys continued to repeat that those who thought him cruel did notknow what his orders were, that he deserved praise instead of blame, and that his clemency had drawn on him the extreme displeasure of hismaster, [414]

Disease, assisted by strong drink and by misery, did its work fast. Thepatient's stomach rejected all nourishment. He dwindled in a few weeksfrom a portly and even corpulent man to a skeleton. On the eighteenthof April he died, in the forty-first year of his age. He had been ChiefJustice of the King's Bench at thirty-five, and Lord Chancellor atthirty-seven. In the whole history of the English bar there is noother instance of so rapid an elevation, or of so terrible a fall. The emaciated corpse was laid, with all privacy, next to the corpse ofMonmouth in the chapel of the Tower, [415]

The fall of this man, once so great and so much dreaded, the horror withwhich he was regarded by all the respectable members of his ownparty, the manner in which the least respectable members of that partyrenounced fellowship with him in his distress, and threw on him thewhole blame of crimes which they had encouraged him to commit, oughtto have been a lesson to those intemperate friends of liberty who wereclamouring for a new proscription. But it was a lesson which too many ofthem disregarded. The King had, at the very commencement of his reign, displeased them by appointing a few Tories and Trimmers to high offices;and the discontent excited by these appointments had been inflamed byhis attempt to obtain a general amnesty for the vanquished. He wasin truth not a man to be popular with the vindictive zealots of anyfaction. For among his peculiarities was a certain ungracious humanitywhich rarely conciliated his foes, which often provoked his adherents, but in which he doggedly persisted, without troubling himself eitherabout the thanklessness of those whom he had saved from destruction, orabout the rage of those whom he had disappointed of their revenge. Someof the Whigs now spoke of him as bitterly as they had ever spoken ofeither of his uncles. He was a Stuart after all, and was not a Stuartfor nothing. Like the rest of the race, he loved arbitrary power. In Holland, he had succeeded in making himself, under the forms of arepublican polity, scarcely less absolute than the old hereditary Countshad been. In consequence of a strange combination of circumstances, hisinterest had, during a short time, coincided with the interest of theEnglish people: but though he had been a deliverer by accident, he wasa despot by nature. He had no sympathy with the just resentments of theWhigs. He had objects in view which the Whigs would not willingly sufferany Sovereign to attain. He knew that the Tories were the only tools forhis purpose. He had therefore, from the moment at which he took his seaton the throne, favoured them unduly. He was now trying to procure anindemnity for those very delinquents whom he had, a few months before, described in his Declaration as deserving of exemplary punishment. InNovember he had told the world that the crimes in which these men hadborne a part had made it the duty of subjects to violate their oath ofallegiance, of soldiers to desert their standards, of children to makewar on their parents. With what consistency then could he recommend thatsuch crimes should be covered by a general oblivion? And was there nottoo much reason to fear that he wished to save the agents of tyrannyfrom the fate which they merited, in the hope that, at some future time, they might serve him as unscrupulously as they had served his father inlaw? [416]

Of the members of the House of Commons who were animated by thesefeelings, the fiercest and most audacious was Howe. He went so far onone occasion as to move that an inquiry should be instituted into theproceedings of the Parliament of 1685, and that some note of infamyshould be put on all who, in that Parliament, had voted with the Court. This absurd and mischievous motion was discountenanced by all the mostrespectable Whigs, and strongly opposed by Birch and Maynard, [417] Howewas forced to give way: but he was a man whom no check could abash;and he was encouraged by the applause of many hotheaded members of hisparty, who were far from foreseeing that he would, after having been themost rancorous and unprincipled of Whigs, become, at no distant time, the most rancorous and unprincipled of Tories. 

This quickwitted, restless and malignant politician, though himselfoccupying a lucrative place in the royal household, declaimed, day afterday, against the manner in which the great offices of state were filled;and his declamations were echoed, in tones somewhat less sharp andvehement, by other orators. No man, they said, who had been a ministerof Charles or of James ought to be a minister of William. The firstattack was directed against the Lord President Caermarthen. Howe movedthat an address should be presented to the King, requesting that allpersons who had ever been impeached by the Commons might be dismissedfrom His Majesty's counsels and presence. The debate on this motion wasrepeatedly adjourned. While the event was doubtful, William sent Dykveltto expostulate with Howe. Howe was obdurate. He was what is vulgarlycalled a disinterested man; that is to say, he valued money less thanthe pleasure of venting his spleen and of making a sensation. "I amdoing the King a service, " he said: "I am rescuing him from falsefriends: and, as to my place, that shall never be a gag to prevent mefrom speaking my mind. " The motion was made, but completely failed. In truth the proposition, that mere accusation, never prosecuted toconviction, ought to be considered as a decisive proof of guilt, wasshocking to natural justice. The faults of Caermarthen had doubtlessbeen great; but they had been exaggerated by party spirit, had beenexpiated by severe suffering, and had been redeemed by recent andeminent services. At the time when he raised the great county of York inarms against Popery and tyranny, he had been assured by some of themost eminent Whigs that all old quarrels were forgotten. Howe indeedmaintained that the civilities which had passed in the moment of perilsignified nothing. "When a viper is on my hand, " he said, "I am verytender of him; but, as soon as I have him on the ground, I set my footon him and crush him. " The Lord President, however, was so stronglysupported that, after a discussion which lasted three days, his enemiesdid not venture to take the sense of the House on the motion againsthim. In the course of the debate a grave constitutional question wasincidentally raised. This question was whether a pardon could be pleadedin bar of a parliamentary impeachment. The Commons resolved, without adivision, that a pardon could not be so pleaded, [418]

The next attack was made on Halifax. He was in a much more invidiousposition than Caermarthen, who had, under pretence of ill health, withdrawn himself almost entirely from business. Halifax was generallyregarded as the chief adviser of the Crown, and was in an especialmanner held responsible for all the faults which had been committed withrespect to Ireland. The evils which had brought that kingdom to ruinmight, it was said, have been averted by timely precaution, or remediedby vigorous exertion. But the government had foreseen nothing: it haddone little; and that little had been done neither at the right time norin the right way. Negotiation had been employed instead of troops, whena few troops might have sufficed. A few troops had been sent when manywere needed. The troops that had been sent had been ill equipped and illcommanded. Such, the vehement Whigs exclaimed, were the natural fruitsof that great error which King William had committed on the first day ofhis reign. He had placed in Tories and Trimmers a confidence which theydid not deserve. He had, in a peculiar manner, entrusted the directionof Irish affairs to the Trimmer of Trimmers, to a man whose abilitynobody disputed, but who was not firmly attached to the new government, who, indeed, was incapable of being firmly attached to any government, who had always halted between two opinions, and who, till the moment ofthe flight of James, had not given up the hope that the discontents ofthe nation might be quieted without a change of dynasty. Howe, on twentyoccasions, designated Halifax as the cause of all the calamities of thecountry. Monmouth held similar language in the House of Lords. ThoughFirst Lord of the Treasury, he paid no attention to financial business, for which he was altogether unfit, and of which he had very soon becomeweary. His whole heart was in the work of persecuting the Tories. He plainly told the King that nobody who was not a Whig ought tobe employed in the public service. William's answer was cool anddetermined. "I have done as much for your friends as I can do withoutdanger to the state; and I will do no more, " [419] The only effect ofthis reprimand was to make Monmouth more factious than ever. AgainstHalifax especially he intrigued and harangued with indefatigableanimosity. The other Whig Lords of the Treasury, Delamere and Capel, were scarcely less eager to drive the Lord Privy Seal from office; andpersonal jealousy and antipathy impelled the Lord President to conspirewith his own accusers against his rival. 

What foundation there may have been for the imputations thrown at thistime on Halifax cannot now be fully ascertained. His enemies, thoughthey interrogated numerous witnesses, and though they obtained William'sreluctant permission to inspect the minutes of the Privy Council, couldfind no evidence which would support a definite charge, [420] But it wasundeniable that the Lord Privy Seal had acted as minister for Ireland, and that Ireland was all but lost. It is unnecessary, and indeedabsurd, to suppose, as many Whigs supposed, that his administrationwas unsuccessful because he did not wish it to be successful. The truthseems to be that the difficulties of the situation were great, and thathe, with all his ingenuity and eloquence, was ill qualified to cope withthose difficulties. The whole machinery of government was out of joint;and he was not the man to set it right. What was wanted was not what hehad in large measure, wit, taste, amplitude of comprehension, subtletyin drawing distinctions; but what he had not, prompt decision, indefatigable energy, and stubborn resolution. His mind was at bestof too soft a temper for such work as he had now to do, and had beenrecently made softer by severe affliction. He had lost two sons in lessthan twelve months. A letter is still extant, in which he at this timecomplained to his honoured friend Lady Russell of the desolation of hishearth and of the cruel ingratitude of the Whigs. We possess, also, theanswer, in which she gently exhorted him to seek for consolation whereshe had found it under trials not less severe than his, [421]

The first attack on him was made in the Upper House. Some Whig Lords, among whom the wayward and petulant First Lord of the Treasury wasconspicuous, proposed that the King should be requested to appoint a newSpeaker. The friends of Halifax moved and carried the previous question, [422] About three weeks later his persecutors moved, in a Committeeof the whole House of Commons, a resolution which imputed to himno particular crime either of omission or of commission, but simplydeclared it to be advisable that he should be dismissed from the serviceof the Crown. The debate was warm. Moderate politicians of both partieswere unwilling to put a stigma on a man, not indeed faultless, butdistinguished both by his abilities and by his amiable qualities. Hisaccusers saw that they could not carry their point, and tried to escapefrom a decision which was certain to be adverse to them, by proposingthat the Chairman should report progress. But their tactics weredisconcerted by the judicious and spirited conduct of Lord Eland, nowthe Marquess's only son. "My father has not deserved, " said the youngnobleman, "to be thus trifled with. If you think him culpable, say so. He will at once submit to your verdict. Dismission from Court hasno terrors for him. He is raised, by the goodness of God, above thenecessity of looking to office for the means of supporting his rank. "The Committee divided, and Halifax was absolved by a majority offourteen, [423]

Had the division been postponed a few hours, the majority would probablyhave been much greater. The Commons voted under the impression thatLondonderry had fallen, and that all Ireland was lost. Scarcely had theHouse risen when a courier arrived with news that the boom on the Foylehad been broken. He was speedily followed by a second, who announcedthe raising of the siege, and by a third who brought the tidings of thebattle of Newton Butler. Hope and exultation succeeded to discontentand dismay, [424] Ulster was safe; and it was confidently expected thatSchomberg would speedily reconquer Leinster, Connaught, and Munster. Hewas now ready to set out. The port of Chester was the place from whichhe was to take his departure. The army which he was to command hadassembled there; and the Dee was crowded with men of war and transports. Unfortunately almost all those English soldiers who had seen war hadbeen sent to Flanders. The bulk of the force destined for Irelandconsisted of men just taken from the plough and the threshing floor. There was, however, an excellent brigade of Dutch troops under thecommand of an experienced officer, the Count of Solmes. Four regiments, one of cavalry and three of infantry, had been formed out of the Frenchrefugees, many of whom had borne arms with credit. No person did more topromote the raising of these regiments than the Marquess of Ruvigny. Hehad been during many years an eminently faithful and useful servant ofthe French government. So highly was his merit appreciated at Versaillesthat he had been solicited to accept indulgences which scarcely anyother heretic could by any solicitation obtain. Had he chosen to remainin his native country, he and his household would have been permitted toworship God privately according to their own forms. But Ruvigny rejectedall offers, cast in his lot with his brethren, and, at upwards of eightyyears of age, quitted Versailles, where he might still have been afavourite, for a modest dwelling at Greenwich. That dwelling was, during the last months of his life, the resort of all that was mostdistinguished among his fellow exiles. His abilities, his experience andhis munificent kindness, made him the undisputed chief of the refugees. He was at the same time half an Englishman: for his sister had beenCountess of Southampton, and he was uncle of Lady Russell. He was longpast the time of action. But his two sons, both men of eminent courage, devoted their swords to the service of William. The younger son, who bore the name of Caillemote, was appointed colonel of one ofthe Huguenot regiments of foot. The two other regiments of foot werecommanded by La Melloniere and Cambon, officers of high reputation. Theregiment of horse was raised by Schomberg himself, and bore his name. Ruvigny lived just long enough to see these arrangements complete, [425]

The general to whom the direction of the expedition against Ireland wasconfided had wonderfully succeeded in obtaining the affection and esteemof the English nation. He had been made a Duke, a Knight of the Garter, and Master of the Ordnance: he was now placed at the head of an army:and yet his elevation excited none of that jealousy which showed itselfas often as any mark of royal favour was bestowed on Bentinck, on Zulestein, or on Auverquerque. Schomberg's military skill wasuniversally acknowledged. He was regarded by all Protestants as aconfessor who had endured every thing short of martyrdom for the truth. For his religion he had resigned a splendid income, had laid down thetruncheon of a Marshal of France, and had, at near eighty years ofage, begun the world again as a needy soldier of fortune. As he hadno connection with the United Provinces, and had never belonged to thelittle Court of the Hague, the preference given to him over Englishcaptains was justly ascribed, not to national or personal partiality, but to his virtues and his abilities. His deportment differed widelyfrom that of the other foreigners who had just been created Englishpeers. They, with many respectable qualities, were, in tastes, manners, and predilections, Dutchmen, and could not catch the tone of the societyto which they had been transferred. He was a citizen of the world, hadtravelled over all Europe, had commanded armies on the Meuse, on theEbro, and on the Tagus, had shone in the splendid circle of Versailles, and had been in high favour at the court of Berlin. He had often beentaken by French noblemen for a French nobleman. He had passed some timein England, spoke English remarkably well, accommodated himself easilyto English manners, and was often seen walking in the park with Englishcompanions. In youth his habits had been temperate; and his temperancehad its proper reward, a singularly green and vigorous old age. Atfourscore he retained a strong relish for innocent pleasures: heconversed with great courtesy and sprightliness: nothing could be inbetter taste than his equipages and his table; and every cornet ofcavalry envied the grace and dignity with which the veteran appeared inHyde Park on his charger at the head of his regiment, [426] The Houseof Commons had, with general approbation, compensated his losses andrewarded his services by a grant of a hundred thousand pounds. Beforehe set out for Ireland, he requested permission to express his gratitudefor this magnificent present. A chair was set for him within the bar. Hetook his seat there with the mace at his right hand, rose, and in afew graceful words returned his thanks and took his leave. The Speakerreplied that the Commons could never forget the obligation under whichthey already lay to His Grace, that they saw him with pleasure at thehead of an English army, that they felt entire confidence in his zealand ability, and that, at whatever distance he might be, he would alwaysbe in a peculiar manner an object of their care. The precedent set onthis interesting occasion was followed with the utmost minuteness, ahundred and twenty-five years later, on an occasion more interestingstill. Exactly on the same spot on which, in July 1689, Schomberg hadacknowledged the liberality of the nation, a chair was set, in July1814, for a still more illustrious warrior, who came to returnthanks for a still more splendid mark of public gratitude. Few thingsillustrate more strikingly the peculiar character of the Englishgovernment and people than the circumstance that the House of Commons, a popular assembly, should, even in a moment of joyous enthusiasm, haveadhered to ancient forms with the punctilious accuracy of a College ofHeralds; that the sitting and rising, the covering and the uncovering, should have been regulated by exactly the same etiquette in thenineteenth century as in the seventeenth; and that the same mace whichhad been held at the right hand of Schomberg should have been held inthe same position at the right hand of Wellington, [427]

On the twentieth of August the Parliament, having been constantlyengaged in business during seven months, broke up, by the royal command, for a short recess. The same Gazette which announced that the Houses hadceased to sit announced that Schomberg had landed in Ireland, [428]

During the three weeks which preceded his landing, the dismay andconfusion at Dublin Castle had been extreme. Disaster had followeddisaster so fast that the mind of James, never very firm, had beencompletely prostrated. He had learned first that Londonderry hadbeen relieved; then that one of his armies had been beaten by theEnniskilleners; then that another of his armies was retreating, orrather flying, from Ulster, reduced in numbers and broken in spirit;then that Sligo, the key of Connaught, had been abandoned to theEnglishry. He had found it impossible to subdue the colonists, even whenthey were left almost unaided. He might therefore well doubt whether itwould be possible for him to contend against them when they were backedby an English army, under the command of the greatest general living. The unhappy prince seemed, during some days, to be sunk in despondency. On Avaux the danger produced a very different effect. Now, he thought, was the time to turn the war between the English and the Irish into awar of extirpation, and to make it impossible that the two nations couldever be united under one government. With this view, he coolly submittedto the King a proposition of almost incredible atrocity. There must bea Saint Bartholomew. A pretext would easily be found. No doubt, whenSchomberg was known to be in Ireland, there would be some excitement inthose southern towns of which the population was chiefly English. Anydisturbance, wherever it might take place, would furnish an excuse for ageneral massacre of the Protestants of Leinster, Munster, andConnaught, [429] As the King did not at first express any horror at thissuggestion, [430] the Envoy, a few days later, renewed the subject, andpressed His Majesty to give the necessary orders. Then James, with awarmth which did him honour, declared that nothing should induce him tocommit such a crime. "These people are my subjects; and I cannot beso cruel as to cut their throats while they live peaceably under mygovernment. " "There is nothing cruel, " answered the callous diplomatist, "in what I recommend. Your Majesty ought to consider that mercy toProtestants is cruelty to Catholics. " James, however, was not to bemoved; and Avaux retired in very bad humour. His belief was that theKing's professions of humanity were hypocritical, and that, if theorders for the butchery were not given, they were not given only becauseHis Majesty was confident that the Catholics all over the country wouldfall on the Protestants without waiting for orders, [431] But Avauxwas entirely mistaken. That he should have supposed James to be asprofoundly immoral as himself is not strange. But it is strange thatso able a man should have forgotten that James and himself had quitedifferent objects in view. The object of the Ambassador's politics wasto make the separation between England and Ireland eternal. The objectof the King's politics was to unite England and Ireland under hisown sceptre; and he could not but be aware that, if there should be ageneral massacre of the Protestants of three provinces, and he shouldbe suspected of having authorised it or of having connived at it, therewould in a fortnight be not a Jacobite left even at Oxford, [432]

Just at this time the prospects of James, which had seemed hopelesslydark, began to brighten. The danger which had unnerved him had rousedthe Irish people. They had, six months before, risen up as one managainst the Saxons. The army which Tyrconnel had formed was, inproportion to the population from which it was taken, the largest thatEurope had ever seen. But that army had sustained a long succession ofdefeats and disgraces, unredeemed by a single brilliant achievement. Itwas the fashion, both in England and on the Continent, to ascribe thosedefeats and disgraces to the pusillanimity of the Irish race, [433] Thatthis was a great error is sufficiently proved by the history of everywar which has been carried on in any part of Christendom during fivegenerations. The raw material out of which a good army may be formedexisted in great abundance among the Irish. Avaux informed hisgovernment that they were a remarkably handsome, tall, and well maderace; that they were personally brave; that they were sincerely attachedto the cause for which they were in arms; that they were violentlyexasperated against the colonists. After extolling their strength andspirit, he proceeded to explain why it was that, with all their strengthand spirit, they were constantly beaten. It was vain, he said, toimagine that bodily prowess, animal courage, or patriotic enthusiasmwould, in the day of battle, supply the place of discipline. Theinfantry were ill armed and ill trained. They were suffered to pillagewherever they went. They had contracted all the habits of banditti. There was among them scarcely one officer capable of showing them theirduty. Their colonels were generally men of good family, but men who hadnever seen service. The captains were butchers, tailors, shoemakers. Hardly one of them troubled himself about the comforts, theaccoutrements, or the drilling of those over whom he was placed. Thedragoons were little better than the infantry. But the horse were, withsome exceptions, excellent. Almost all the Irish gentlemen who hadany military experience held commissions in the cavalry; and, bythe exertions of these officers, some regiments had been raised anddisciplined which Avaux pronounced equal to any that he had ever seen. It was therefore evident that the inefficiency of the foot and of thedragoons was to be ascribed to the vices, not of the Irish character, but of the Irish administration, [434]

The events which took place in the autumn of 1689 sufficiently provedthat the ill fated race, which enemies and allies generally agreedin regarding with unjust contempt, had, together with the faultsinseparable from poverty, ignorance, and superstition, some finequalities which have not always been found in more prosperous and moreenlightened communities. The evil tidings which terrified and bewilderedJames stirred the whole population of the southern provinces like thepeal of a trumpet sounding to battle. That Ulster was lost, that theEnglish were coming, that the death grapple between the two hostilenations was at hand, was proclaimed from all the altars of three andtwenty counties. One last chance was left; and, if that chance failed, nothing remained but the despotic, the merciless, rule of the Saxoncolony and of the heretical church. The Roman Catholic priest who hadjust taken possession of the glebe house and the chancel, the RomanCatholic squire who had just been carried back on the shoulders of theshouting tenantry into the hall of his fathers, would be driven forth tolive on such alms as peasants, themselves oppressed and miserable, could spare. A new confiscation would complete the work of the Actof Settlement; and the followers of William would seize whatever thefollowers of Cromwell had spared. These apprehensions produced such anoutbreak of patriotic and religious enthusiasm as deferred for a timethe inevitable day of subjugation. Avaux was amazed by the energy which, in circumstances so trying, the Irish displayed. It was indeed the wildand unsteady energy of a half barbarous people: it was transient: itwas often misdirected: but, though transient and misdirected, it didwonders. The French Ambassador was forced to own that those officersof whose incompetency and inactivity he had so often complained hadsuddenly shaken off their lethargy. Recruits came in by thousands. Theranks which had been thinned under the walls of Londonderry were soonagain full to overflowing. Great efforts were made to arm and clothe thetroops; and, in the short space of a fortnight, every thing presented anew and cheering aspect, [435]

The Irish required of the King, in return for their strenuous exertionsin his cause, one concession which was by no means agreeable to him. Theunpopularity of Melfort had become such, that his person was scarcelysafe. He had no friend to speak a word in his favour. The French hatedhim. In every letter which arrived at Dublin from England or fromScotland, he was described as the evil genius of the House of Stuart. Itwas necessary for his own sake to dismiss him. An honourable pretext wasfound. He was ordered to repair to Versailles, to represent there thestate of affairs in Ireland, and to implore the French government tosend over without delay six or seven thousand veteran infantry. He laiddown the seals; and they were, to the great delight of the Irish, putinto the hands of an Irishman, Sir Richard Nagle, who had made himselfconspicuous as Attorney General and Speaker of the House of Commons. Melfort took his departure under cover of the night: for the rage ofthe populace against him was such that he could not without danger showhimself in the streets of Dublin by day. On the following morning Jamesleft his capital in the opposite direction to encounter Schomberg, [436]

Schomberg had landed in Antrim. The force which he had brought with himdid not exceed ten thousand men. But he expected to be joined by thearmed colonists and by the regiments which were under Kirke's command. The coffeehouse politicians of London fully expected that such a generalwith such an army would speedily reconquer the island. Unhappily it soonappeared that the means which had been furnished to him were altogetherinadequate to the work which he had to perform: of the greater partof these means he was speedily deprived by a succession of unforeseencalamities; and the whole campaign was merely a long struggle maintainedby his prudence and resolution against the utmost spite of fortune. 

He marched first to Carrickfergus. That town was held for James by tworegiments of infantry. Schomberg battered the walls; and the Irish, after holding out a week, capitulated. He promised that they shoulddepart unharmed; but he found it no easy matter to keep his word. Thepeople of the town and neighbourhood were generally Protestants ofScottish extraction. They had suffered much during the short ascendencyof the native race; and what they had suffered they were now eagerto retaliate. They assembled in great multitudes, exclaiming that thecapitulation was nothing to them, and that they would be revenged. Theysoon proceeded from words to blows. The Irish, disarmed, stripped, andhustled, clung for protection to the English officers and soldiers. Schomberg with difficulty prevented a massacre by spurring, pistol inhand, through the throng of the enraged colonists, [437]

From Carrickfergus Schomberg proceeded to Lisburn, and thence, throughtowns left without an inhabitant, and over plains on which not a cow, nor a sheep, nor a stack of corn was to be seen, to Loughbrickland. Herehe was joined by three regiments of Enniskilleners, whose dress, horses, and arms locked strange to eyes accustomed to the pomp of reviews, butwho in natural courage were inferior to no troops in the world, and whohad, during months of constant watching and skirmishing, acquired manyof the essential qualities of soldiers. [438]

Schomberg continued to advance towards Dublin through a desert. The fewIrish troops which remained in the south of Ulster retreated beforehim, destroying as they retreated. Newry, once a well built and thrivingProtestant borough, he found a heap of smoking ashes. Carlingford toohad perished. The spot where the town had once stood was marked only bythe massy remains of the old Norman castle. Those who ventured to wanderfrom the camp reported that the country, as far as they could exploreit, was a wilderness. There were cabins, but no inmates: there was richpasture, but neither flock nor herd: there were cornfields; but theharvest lay on the ground soaked with rain, [439]

While Schomberg was advancing through a vast solitude, the Irish forceswere rapidly assembling from every quarter. On the tenth of Septemberthe royal standard of James was unfurled on the tower of Drogheda;and beneath it were soon collected twenty thousand fighting men, theinfantry generally bad, the cavalry generally good, but both infantryand cavalry full of zeal for their country and their religion, [440] Thetroops were attended as usual by a great multitude of camp followers, armed with scythes, half pikes, and skeans. By this time Schomberg hadreached Dundalk. The distance between the two armies was not more thana long day's march. It was therefore generally expected that the fate ofthe island would speedily be decided by a pitched battle. 

In both camps, all who did not understand war were eager to fight; and, in both camps; the few who head a high reputation for military sciencewere against fighting. Neither Rosen nor Schomberg wished to put everything on a cast. Each of them knew intimately the defects of his ownarmy, and neither of them was fully aware of the defects of the other'sarmy. Rosen was certain that the Irish infantry were "worse equipped, worse officered, and worse drilled, " than any infantry that he had everseen from the Gulf of Bothnia to the Atlantic; and he supposed that theEnglish troops were well trained, and were, as they doubtless oughtto have been, amply provided with every thing necessary to theirefficiency. Numbers, he rightly judged, would avail little against agreat superiority of arms and discipline. He therefore advised James tofall back, and even to abandon Dublin to the enemy, rather than hazard abattle the loss of which would be the loss of all. Athlone was the bestplace in the kingdom for a determined stand. The passage of the Shannonmight be defended till the succours which Melfort had been charged tosolicit came from France; and those succours would change the wholecharacter of the war. But the Irish, with Tyrconnel at their head, wereunanimous against retreating. The blood of the whole nation was up. James was pleased with the enthusiasm of his subjects, and positivelydeclared that he would not disgrace himself by leaving his capital tothe invaders without a blow, [441]

In a few days it became clear that Schomberg had determined not tofight. His reasons were weighty. He had some good Dutch and Frenchtroops. The Enniskilleners who had joined him had served a militaryapprenticeship, though not in a very regular manner. But the bulk of hisarmy consisted of English peasants who had just left their cottages. Hismusketeers had still to learn how to load their pieces: his dragoonshad still to learn how to manage their horses; and these inexperiencedrecruits were for the most part commanded by officers as inexperiencedas themselves. His troops were therefore not generally superior indiscipline to the Irish, and were in number far inferior. Nay, he foundthat his men were almost as ill armed, as ill lodged, as ill clad, asthe Celts to whom they were opposed. The wealth of the English nationand the liberal votes of the English parliament had entitled him toexpect that he should be abundantly supplied with all the munitions ofwar. But he was cruelly disappointed. The administration had, ever sincethe death of Oliver, been constantly becoming more and more imbecile, more and more corrupt; and now the Revolution reaped what theRestoration had sown. A crowd of negligent or ravenous functionaries, formed under Charles and James, plundered, starved, and poisoned thearmies and fleets of William. Of these men the most important was HenryShales, who, in the late reign, had been Commissary General to the campat Hounslow. It is difficult to blame the new government for continuingto employ him: for, in his own department, his experience far surpassedthat of any other Englishman. Unfortunately, in the same school inwhich he had acquired his experience, he had learned the whole art ofpeculation. The beef and brandy which he furnished were so bad thatthe soldiers turned from them with loathing: the tents were rotten: theclothing was scanty: the muskets broke in the handling. Great numbersof shoes were set down to the account of the government: but, two monthsafter the Treasury had paid the bill, the shoes had not arrived inIreland. The means of transporting baggage and artillery were almostentirely wanting. An ample number of horses had been purchased inEngland with the public money, and had been sent to the banks of theDee. But Shales had let them out for harvest work to the farmers ofCheshire, had pocketed the hire, and had left the troops in Ulster toget on as they best might, [442] Schomberg thought that, if he should, with an ill trained and ill appointed army, risk a battle against asuperior force, he might not improbably be defeated; and he knew that adefeat might be followed by the loss of one kingdom, perhaps by theloss of three kingdoms. He therefore made up his mind to stand on thedefensive till his men had been disciplined, and till reinforcements andsupplies should arrive. 

He entrenched himself near Dundalk in such a manner that he could notbe forced to fight against his will. James, emboldened by the caution ofhis adversary, and disregarding the advice of Rosen, advanced to Ardee, appeared at the head of the whole Irish army before the English lines, drew up horse, foot and artillery, in order of battle, and displayedhis banner. The English were impatient to fall on. But their general hadmade up his mind, and was not to be moved by the bravadoes of the enemyor by the murmurs of his own soldiers. During some weeks he remainedsecure within his defences, while the Irish lay a few miles off. He sethimself assiduously to drill those new levies which formed the greaterpart of his army. He ordered the musketeers to be constantly exercisedin firing, sometimes at marks and sometimes by platoons; and, from theway in which they at first acquitted themselves, it plainly appearedthat he had judged wisely in not leading them out to battle. It wasfound that not one in four of the English soldiers could manage hispiece at all; and whoever succeeded in discharging it, no matter in whatdirection, thought that he had performed a great feat. 

While the Duke was thus employed, the Irish eyed his camp without daringto attack it. But within that camp soon appeared two evils more terriblethan the foe, treason and pestilence. Among the best troops under hiscommand were the French exiles. And now a grave doubt arose touchingtheir fidelity. The real Huguenot refugee indeed might safely betrusted. The dislike with which the most zealous English Protestantregarded the House of Bourbon and the Church of Rome was a lukewarmfeeling when compared with that inextinguishable hatred which glowedin the bosom of the persecuted, dragooned, expatriated Calvinist ofLanguedoc. The Irish had already remarked that the French hereticneither gave nor took quarter, [443] Now, however, it was found thatwith those emigrants who had sacrificed every thing for the reformedreligion were intermingled emigrants of a very different sort, deserterswho had run away from their standards in the Low Countries, and hadcoloured their crime by pretending that they were Protestants, and thattheir conscience would not suffer them to fight for the persecutor oftheir Church. Some of these men, hoping that by a second treason theymight obtain both pardon and reward, opened a correspondence with Avaux. The letters were intercepted; and a formidable plot was brought tolight. It appeared that, if Schomberg had been weak enough to yield tothe importunity of those who wished him to give battle, several Frenchcompanies would, in the heat of the action, have fired on the English, and gone over to the enemy. Such a defection might well have produceda general panic in a better army than that which was encamped underDundalk. It was necessary to be severe. Six of the conspirators werehanged. Two hundred of their accomplices were sent in irons to England. Even after this winnowing, the refugees were long regarded by the restof the army with unjust but not unnatural suspicion. During somedays indeed there was great reason to fear that the enemy would beentertained with a bloody fight between the English soldiers and theirFrench allies, [444]

A few hours before the execution of the chief conspirators, a generalmuster of the army was held; and it was observed that the ranks of theEnglish battalions looked thin. From the first day of the campaign, there had been much sickness among the recruits: but it was not tillthe time of the equinox that the mortality became alarming. The autumnalrains of Ireland are usually heavy; and this year they were heavierthan usual. The whole country was deluged; and the Duke's camp became amarsh. The Enniskillen men were seasoned to the climate. The Dutch wereaccustomed to live in a country which, as a wit of that age said, drawsfifty feet of water. They kept their huts dry and clean; and they hadexperienced and careful officers who did not suffer them to omit anyprecaution. But the peasants of Yorkshire and Derbyshire had neitherconstitutions prepared to resist the pernicious influence, nor skillto protect themselves against it. The bad provisions furnished by theCommissariat aggravated the maladies generated by the air. Remedieswere almost entirely wanting. The surgeons were few. The medicine chestscontained little more than lint and plaisters for wounds. The Englishsickened and died by hundreds. Even those who were not smitten by thepestilence were unnerved and dejected, and, instead of putting forth theenergy which is the heritage of our race, awaited their fate with thehelpless apathy of Asiatics. It was in vain that Schomberg tried toteach them to improve their habitations, and to cover the wet earth onwhich they lay with a thick carpet of fern. Exertion had become moredreadful to them than death. It was not to be expected that men whowould not help themselves should help each other. Nobody asked andnobody showed compassion. Familiarity with ghastly spectacles produceda hardheartedness and a desperate impiety, of which an example will noteasily be found even in the history of infectious diseases. The moans ofthe sick were drowned by the blasphemy and ribaldry of their comrades. Sometimes, seated on the body of a wretch who had died in the morning, might be seen a wretch destined to die before night, cursing, singingloose songs, and swallowing usquebaugh to the health of the devil. Whenthe corpses were taken away to be buried the survivors grumbled. A deadman, they said, was a good screen and a good stool. Why, when there wasso abundant a supply of such useful articles of furniture, werepeople to be exposed to the cold air and forced to crouch on the moistground? [445]

Many of the sick were sent by the English vessels which lay off thecoast to Belfast, where a great hospital had been prepared. But scarcehalf of them lived to the end of the voyage. More than one ship laylong in the bay of Carrickfergus heaped with carcasses, and exhaling thestench of death, without a living man on board, [446]

The Irish army suffered much less. The kerne of Munster or Connaughtwas dune as well off in the camp as if he had been in his own mud cabininhaling the vapours of his own quagmire. He naturally exulted in thedistress of the Saxon heretics, and flattered himself that they would bedestroyed without a blow. He heard with delight the guns pealing allday over the graves of the English officers, till at length the funeralsbecame too numerous to be celebrated with military pomp, and themournful sounds were succeeded by a silence more mournful still. 

The superiority of force was now so decidedly on the side of James thathe could safely venture to detach five regiments from his army, and tosend them into Connaught. Sarsfield commanded them. He did not, indeed, stand so high as he deserved in the royal estimation. The King, withan air of intellectual superiority which must have made Avaux andRosen bite their lips, pronounced him a brave fellow, but very scantilysupplied with brains. It was not without great difficulty that theAmbassador prevailed on His Majesty to raise the best officer in theIrish army to the rank of Brigadier. Sarsfield now fully vindicatedthe favourable opinion which his French patrons had formed of him. Hedislodged the English from Sligo; and he effectually secured Galway, which had been in considerable danger, [447]

No attack, however, was made on the English entrenchments beforeDundalk. In the midst of difficulties and disasters hourly multiplying, the great qualities of Schomberg appeared hourly more and moreconspicuous. Not in the full tide of success, not on the field of MontesClaros, not under the walls of Maestricht, had he so well deserved theadmiration of mankind. His resolution never gave way. His prudence neverslept. His temper, in spite of manifold vexations and provocations, wasalways cheerful and serene. The effective men under his command, evenif all were reckoned as effective who were not stretched on the earthby fever, did not now exceed five thousand. These were hardly equal totheir ordinary duty; and yet it was necessary to harass them with doubleduty. Nevertheless so masterly were the old man's dispositions that withthis small force he faced during several weeks twenty thousand troopswho were accompanied by a multitude of armed banditti. At length earlyin November the Irish dispersed, and went to winter quarters. The Dukethen broke up his camp and retired into Ulster. Just as the remainsof his army were about to move, a rumour spread that the enemy wasapproaching in great force. Had this rumour been true, the danger wouldhave been extreme. But the English regiments, though they had beenreduced to a third part of their complement, and though the men who werein best health were hardly able to shoulder arms, showed a strangejoy and alacrity at the prospect of battle, and swore that the Papistsshould pay for all the misery of the last month. "We English, " Schombergsaid, identifying himself good humouredly with the people of the countrywhich had adopted him, "we English have stomach enough for fighting. It is a pity that we are not as fond of some other parts of a soldier'sbusiness. "

The alarm proved false: the Duke's army departed unmolested: butthe highway along which he retired presented a piteous and hideousspectacle. A long train of waggons laden with the sick jolted over therugged pavement. At every jolt some wretched man gave up the ghost. Thecorpse was flung out and left unburied to the foxes and crows. The wholenumber of those who died, in the camp at Dundalk, in the hospital atBelfast, on the road, and on the sea, amounted to above six thousand. The survivors were quartered for the winter in the towns and villages ofUlster. The general fixed his head quarters at Lisburn, [448]

His conduct was variously judged. Wise and candid men said that he hadsurpassed himself, and that there was no other captain in Europe who, with raw troops, with ignorant officers, with scanty stores, havingto contend at once against a hostile army of greatly superior force, against a villanous commissariat, against a nest of traitors in his owncamp, and against a disease more murderous than the sword, would havebrought the campaign to a close without the loss of a flag or a gun. Onthe other hand, many of those newly commissioned majors and captains, whose helplessness had increased all his perplexities, and who had notone qualification for their posts except personal courage, grumbledat the skill and patience which had saved them from destruction. Theircomplaints were echoed on the other side of Saint George's Channel. Someof the murmuring, though unjust, was excusable. The parents, who hadsent a gallant lad, in his first uniform, to fight his way to glory, might be pardoned if, when they learned that he had died on a wisp ofstraw without medical attendance, and had been buried in a swamp withoutany Christian or military ceremony, their affliction made them hasty andunreasonable. But with the cry of bereaved families was mingled anothercry much less respectable. All the hearers and tellers of news abusedthe general who furnished them with so little news to hear and to tell. For men of that sort are so greedy after excitement that they far morereadily forgive a commander who loses a battle than a commander whodeclines one. The politicians, who delivered their oracles from thethickest cloud of tobacco smoke at Garroway's, confidently asked, without knowing any thing, either of war in general, or of Irish war inparticular, why Schomberg did not fight. They could not venture tosay that he did not understand his calling. No doubt he had been anexcellent officer: but he was very old. He seemed to bear his yearswell: but his faculties were not what they had been: his memory wasfailing; and it was well known that he sometimes forgot in the afternoonwhat he had done in the morning. It may be doubted whether there everexisted a human being whose mind was quite as firmly toned at eightyas at forty. But that Schomberg's intellectual powers had been littleimpaired by years is sufficiently proved by his despatches, whichare still extant, and which are models of official writing, terse, perspicuous, full of important facts and weighty reasons, compressedinto the smallest possible number of words. In those despatches hesometimes alluded, not angrily, but with calm disdain, to the censuresthrown upon his conduct by shallow babblers, who, never having seen anymilitary operation more important than the relieving of the guard atWhitehall, imagined that the easiest thing in the world was to gaingreat victories in any situation and against any odds, and by sturdypatriots who were convinced that one English tarter or thresher, who hadnot yet learned how to load a gun or port a pike, was a match for anyfive musketeers of King Lewis's household, [449]

Unsatisfactory as had been the results of the campaign in Ireland, theresults of the maritime operations of the year were more unsatisfactorystill. It had been confidently expected that, on the sea, England, allied with Holland, would have been far more than a match for the powerof Lewis: but everything went wrong. Herbert had, after the unimportantskirmish of Bantry Bay, returned with his squadron to Portsmouth. Therehe found that he had not lost the good opinion either of the public orof the government. The House of Commons thanked him for his services;and he received signal marks of the favour of the Crown. He had not beenat the coronation, and had therefore missed his share of the rewardswhich, at the time of that solemnity, had been distributed among thechief agents in the Revolution. The omission was now repaired; and hewas created Earl of Torrington. The King went down to Portsmouth, dinedon board of the Admiral's flag ship, expressed the fullest confidencein the valour and loyalty of the navy, knighted two gallant captains, Cloudesley Shovel and John Ashby, and ordered a donative to be dividedamong the seamen, [450]

We cannot justly blame William for having a high opinion of Torrington. For Torrington was generally regarded as one of the bravest and mostskilful officers in the navy. He had been promoted to the rank of RearAdmiral of England by James, who, if he understood any thing, understoodmaritime affairs. That place and other lucrative places Torrington hadrelinquished when he found that he could retain them only by submittingto be a tool of the Jesuitical cabal. No man had taken a more active, a more hazardous, or a more useful part in effecting the Revolution. Itseemed, therefore, that no man had fairer pretensions to be put at thehead of the naval administration. Yet no man could be more unfit forsuch a post. His morals had always been loose, so loose indeed that thefirmness with which in the late reign he had adhered to his religionhad excited much surprise. His glorious disgrace indeed seemed to haveproduced a salutary effect on his character. In poverty and exile herose from a voluptuary into a hero. But, as soon as prosperity returned, the hero sank again into a voluptuary; and the lapse was deep andhopeless. The nerves of his mind, which had been during a short timebraced to a firm tone, were now so much relaxed by vice that he wasutterly incapable of selfdenial or of strenuous exertion. The vulgarcourage of a foremast man he still retained. But both as Admiral andas First Lord of the Admiralty he was utterly inefficient. Month aftermonth the fleet which should have been the terror of the seas lay inharbour while he was diverting himself in London. The sailors, punningupon his new title, gave him the name of Lord Tarry-in-town. When hecame on shipboard he was accompanied by a bevy of courtesans. There wasscarcely an hour of the day or of the night when he was not under theinfluence of claret. Being insatiable of pleasure, he necessarily becameinsatiable of wealth. Yet he loved flattery almost as much as eitherwealth or pleasure. He had long been in the habit of exacting the mostabject homage from those who were under his command. His flagship was alittle Versailles. He expected his captains to attend him to his cabinwhen he went to bed, and to assemble every morning at his levee. He evensuffered them to dress him. One of them combed his flowing wig; anotherstood ready with the embroidered coat. Under such a chief there could beno discipline. His tars passed their time in rioting among the rabble ofPortsmouth. Those officers who won his favour by servility and adulationeasily obtained leave of absence, and spent weeks in London, revellingin taverns, scouring the streets, or making love to the masked ladiesin the pit of the theatre. The victuallers soon found out with whom theyhad to deal, and sent down to the fleet casks of meat which dogs wouldnot touch, and barrels of beer which smelt worse than bilge water. Meanwhile the British Channel seemed to be abandoned to French rovers. Our merchantmen were boarded in sight of the ramparts of Plymouth. Thesugar fleet from the West Indies lost seven ships. The whole valueof the prizes taken by the cruisers of the enemy in the immediateneighbourhood of our island, while Torrington was engaged with hisbottle and his harem, was estimated at six hundred thousand pounds. Sodifficult was it to obtain the convoy of a man of war, except by givingimmense bribes, that our traders were forced to hire the services ofDutch privateers, and found these foreign mercenaries much more usefuland much less greedy than the officers of our own royal navy, [451]

The only department with which no fault could be found was thedepartment of Foreign Affairs. There William was his own minister; and, where he was his own minister, there were no delays, no blunders, nojobs, no treasons. The difficulties with which he had to contend wereindeed great. Even at the Hague he had to encounter an oppositionwhich all his wisdom and firmness could, with the strenuous support ofHeinsius, scarcely overcome. The English were not aware that, whilethey were murmuring at their Sovereign's partiality for the land of hisbirth, a strong party in Holland was murmuring at his partiality for theland of his adoption. The Dutch ambassadors at Westminster complainedthat the terms of alliance which he proposed were derogatory to thedignity and prejudicial to the interests of the republic; that whereverthe honour of the English flag was concerned, he was punctilious andobstinate; that he peremptorily insisted on an article which interdictedall trade with France, and which could not but be grievously felt onthe Exchange of Amsterdam; that, when they expressed a hope that theNavigation Act would be repealed, he burst out a laughing, and told themthat the thing was not to be thought of. He carried all his points; anda solemn contract was made by which England and the Batavian federationbound themselves to stand firmly by each other against France, andnot to make peace except by mutual consent. But one of the Dutchplenipotentiaries declared that he was afraid of being one day heldup to obloquy as a traitor for conceding so much; and the signatureof another plainly appeared to have been traced by a hand shaking withemotion, [452]

Meanwhile under William's skilful management a treaty of alliance hadbeen concluded between the States General and the Emperor. To thattreaty Spain and England gave in their adhesion; and thus the four greatpowers which had long been bound together by a friendly understandingwere bound together by a formal contract, [453]

But before that formal contract had been signed and sealed, all thecontracting parties were in arms. Early in the year 1689 war was ragingall over the Continent from the Humus to the Pyrenees. France, attackedat once on every side, made on every side a vigorous defence; and herTurkish allies kept a great German force fully employed in Servia andBulgaria. On the whole, the results of the military operations of thesummer were not unfavourable to the confederates. Beyond the Danube, the Christians, under Prince Lewis of Baden, gained a succession ofvictories over the Mussulmans. In the passes of Roussillon, the Frenchtroops contended without any decisive advantage against the martialpeasantry of Catalonia. One German army, led by the Elector of Bavaria, occupied the Archbishopric of Cologne. Another was commanded by Charles, Duke of Lorraine, a sovereign who, driven from his own dominions bythe arms of France, had turned soldier of fortune, and had, assuch, obtained both distinction and revenge. He marched against thedevastators of the Palatinate, forced them to retire behind the Rhine, and, after a long siege, took the important and strongly fortified cityof Mentz. 

Between the Sambre and the Meuse the French, commanded by MarshalHumieres, were opposed to the Dutch, commanded by the Prince of Waldeck, an officer who had long served the States General with fidelity andability, though not always with good fortune, and who stood high in theestimation of William. Under Waldeck's orders was Marlborough, to whomWilliam had confided an English brigade consisting of the best regimentsof the old army of James. Second to Marlborough in command, and secondalso in professional skill, was Thomas Talmash, a brave soldier, destined to a fate never to be mentioned without shame and indignation. Between the army of Waldeck and the army of Humieres no general actiontook place: but in a succession of combats the advantage was on the sideof the confederates. Of these combats the most important took place atWalcourt on the fifth of August. The French attacked an outpost defendedby the English brigade, were vigorously repulsed, and were forced toretreat in confusion, abandoning a few field pieces to the conquerorsand leaving more than six hundred corpses on the ground. Marlborough, onthis as on every similar occasion, acquitted himself like a valiant andskilful captain. The Coldstream Guards commanded by Talmash, and theregiment which is now called the sixteenth of the line, commandedby Colonel Robert Hodges, distinguished themselves highly. The Royalregiment too, which had a few months before set up the standard ofrebellion at Ipswich, proved on this day that William, in freelypardoning that great fault, had acted not less wisely than generously. The testimony which Waldeck in his despatch bore to the gallant conductof the islanders was read with delight by their countrymen. The fightindeed was no more than a skirmish: but it was a sharp and bloodyskirmish. There had within living memory been no equally seriousencounter between the English and French; and our ancestors werenaturally elated by finding that many years of inaction and vassalagedid not appear to have enervated the courage of the nation, [454]

The Jacobites however discovered in the events of the campaign abundantmatter for invective. Marlborough was, not without reason, the objectof their bitterest hatred. In his behaviour on a field of battle maliceitself could find little to censure: but there were other parts of hisconduct which presented a fair mark for obloquy. Avarice is rarelythe vice of a young man: it is rarely the vice of a great man: butMarlborough was one of the few who have, in the bloom of youth, lovedlucre more than wine or women, and who have, at the height of greatness, loved lucre more than power or fame. All the precious gifts which naturehad lavished on him he valued chiefly for what they would fetch. Attwenty he made money of his beauty and his vigour. At sixty he mademoney of his genius and his glory. The applauses which were justly dueto his conduct at Walcourt could not altogether drown the voices ofthose who muttered that, wherever a broad piece was to be saved or got, this hero was a mere Euclio, a mere Harpagon; that, though he drew alarge allowance under pretence of keeping a public table, he never askedan officer to dinner; that his muster rolls were fraudulently made up;that he pocketed pay in the names of men who had long been dead, of menwho had been killed in his own sight four years before at Sedgemoor;that there were twenty such names in one troop; that there werethirty-six in another. Nothing but the union of dauntless courage andcommanding powers of mind with a bland temper and winning mannerscould have enabled him to gain and keep, in spite of faults eminentlyunsoldierlike, the good will of his soldiers, [455]

About the time at which the contending armies in every part of Europewere going into winter quarters, a new Pontiff ascended the chairof Saint Peter. Innocent the Eleventh was no more. His fate had beenstrange indeed. His conscientious and fervent attachment to the Churchof which he was the head had induced him, at one of the most criticalconjunctures in her history, to ally herself with her mortal enemies. The news of his decease was received with concern and alarm byProtestant princes and commonwealths, and with joy and hope atVersailles and Dublin. An extraordinary ambassador of high rank wasinstantly despatched by Lewis to Rome. The French garrison which hadbeen placed in Avignon was withdrawn. When the votes of the Conclavehad been united in favour of Peter Ottobuoni, an ancient Cardinal whoassumed the appellation of Alexander the Eighth, the representativeof France assisted at the installation, bore up the cope of the newPontiff, and put into the hands of His Holiness a letter in which themost Christian King declared that he renounced the odious privilege ofprotecting robbers and assassins. Alexander pressed the letter to hislips, embraced the bearer, and talked with rapture of the near prospectof reconciliation. Lewis began to entertain a hope that the influence ofthe Vatican might be exerted to dissolve the alliance between the Houseof Austria and the heretical usurper of the English throne. James waseven more sanguine. He was foolish enough to expect that the new Popewould give him money, and ordered Melfort, who had now acquitted himselfof his mission at Versailles, to hasten to Rome, and beg His Holiness tocontribute something towards the good work of upholding pure religionin the British islands. But it soon appeared that Alexander, thoughhe might hold language different from that of his predecessor, wasdetermined to follow in essentials his predecessor's policy. Theoriginal cause of the quarrel between the Holy See and Lewis was notremoved. The King continued to appoint prelates: the Pope continued torefuse their institution: and the consequence was that a fourth part ofthe dioceses of France had bishops who were incapable of performing anyepiscopal function, [456]

The Anglican Church was, at this time, not less distracted than theGallican Church. The first of August had been fixed by Act of Parliamentas the day before the close of which all beneficed clergymen and allpersons holding academical offices must, on pain of suspension, swearallegiance to William and Mary. During the earlier part of thesummer, the Jacobites hoped that the number of nonjurors would be soconsiderable as seriously to alarm and embarrass the Government. Butthis hope was disappointed. Few indeed of the clergy were Whigs. Fewwere Tories of that moderate school which acknowledged, reluctantly andwith reserve, that extreme abuses might sometimes justify a nation inresorting to extreme remedies. The great majority of the professionstill held the doctrine of passive obedience: but that majority was nowdivided into two sections. A question, which, before the Revolution, had been mere matter of speculation, and had therefore, thoughsometimes incidentally raised, been, by most persons, very superficiallyconsidered, had now become practically most important. The doctrine ofpassive obedience being taken for granted, to whom was that obediencedue? While the hereditary right and the possession were conjoined, therewas no room for doubt: but the hereditary right and the possession werenow separated. One prince, raised by the Revolution, was reigning atWestminster, passing laws, appointing magistrates and prelates, sendingforth armies and fleets. His judges decided causes. His Sheriffsarrested debtors and executed criminals. Justice, order, property, wouldcease to exist, and society would be resolved into chaos, but forhis Great Seal. Another prince, deposed by the Revolution, was livingabroad. He could exercise none of the powers and perform none of theduties of a ruler, and could, as it seemed, be restored only by means asviolent as those by which he had been displaced, to which of these twoprinces did Christian men owe allegiance?

To a large part of the clergy it appeared that the plain letterof Scripture required them to submit to the Sovereign who was inpossession, without troubling themselves about his title. The powerswhich the Apostle, in the text most familiar to the Anglican divines ofthat age, pronounces to be ordained of God, are not the powers thatcan be traced back to a legitimate origin, but the powers that be. WhenJesus was asked whether the chosen people might lawfully give tribute toCaesar, he replied by asking the questioners, not whether Caesar couldmake out a pedigree derived from the old royal house of Judah, butwhether the coin which they scrupled to pay into Caesar's treasury camefrom Caesar's mint, in other words, whether Caesar actually possessedthe authority and performed the functions of a ruler. 

It is generally held, with much appearance of reason, that the mosttrustworthy comment on the text of the Gospels and Epistles is to befound in the practice of the primitive Christians, when that practicecan be satisfactorily ascertained; and it so happened that the timesduring which the Church is universally acknowledged to have been in thehighest state of purity were times of frequent and violent politicalchange. One at least of the Apostles appears to have lived to see fourEmperors pulled down in little more than a year. Of the martyrs of thethird century a great proportion must have been able to remember tenor twelve revolutions. Those martyrs must have had occasion often toconsider what was their duty towards a prince just raised to power bya successful insurrection. That they were, one and all, deterred by thefear of punishment from doing what they thought right, is an imputationwhich no candid infidel would throw on them. Yet, if there be anyproposition which can with perfect confidence be affirmed touching theearly Christians, it is this, that they never once refused obedienceto any actual ruler on account of the illegitimacy of his title. Atone time, indeed, the supreme power was claimed by twenty or thirtycompetitors. Every province from Britain to Egypt had its own Augustus. All these pretenders could not be rightful Emperors. Yet it does notappear that, in any place, the faithful had any scruple about submittingto the person who, in that place, exercised the imperial functions. While the Christian of Rome obeyed Aurelian, the Christian of Lyonsobeyed Tetricus, and the Christian of Palmyra obeyed Zenobia. "Day andnight, " such were the words which the great Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, addressed to the representative of Valerian and Gallienus, --"day andnight do we Christians pray to the one true God for the safety of ourEmperors. " Yet those Emperors had a few months before pulled down theirpredecessor Aemilianus, who had pulled down his predecessor Gallus, who had climbed to power on the ruins of the house of his predecessorDecius, who had slain his predecessor Philip, who had slain hispredecessor Gordian. Was it possible to believe that a saint, who had, in the short space of thirteen or fourteen years, borne true allegianceto this series of rebels and regicides, would have made a schism in theChristian body rather than acknowledge King William and Queen Mary? Ahundred times those Anglican divines who had taken the oaths challengedtheir more scrupulous brethren to cite a single instance in which theprimitive Church had refused obedience to a successful usurper; and ahundred times the challenge was evaded. The nonjurors had little to sayon this head, except that precedents were of no force when opposed toprinciples, a proposition which came with but a bad grace from a schoolwhich had always professed an almost superstitious reverence for theauthority of the Fathers, [457]

To precedents drawn from later and more corrupt times little respectwas due. But, even in the history of later and more corrupt times, thenonjurors could not easily find any precedent that would serve theirpurpose. In our own country many Kings, who had not the hereditaryright, had filled the throne but it had never been thought inconsistentwith the duty of a Christian to be a true liegeman to such Kings. Theusurpation of Henry the Fourth, the more odious usurpation of Richardthe Third, had produced no schism in the Church. As soon as the usurperwas firm in his seat, Bishops had done homage to him for their domains:Convocations had presented addresses to him, and granted him supplies;nor had any casuist ever pronounced that such submission to a prince inpossession was deadly sin, [458]

With the practice of the whole Christian world the authoritativeteaching of the Church of England appeared to be in strict harmony. TheHomily on Wilful Rebellion, a discourse which inculcates, in unmeasuredterms, the duty of obeying rulers, speaks of none but actual rulers. Nay, the people are distinctly told in that Homily that they are boundto obey, not only their legitimate prince, but any usurper whom Godshall in anger set over them for their sins. And surely it would bethe height of absurdity to say that we must accept submissively suchusurpers as God sends in anger, but must pertinaciously withhold ourobedience from usurpers whom He sends in mercy. Grant that it was acrime to invite the Prince of Orange over, a crime to join him, a crimeto make him King; yet what was the whole history of the Jewish nationand of the Christian Church but a record of cases in which Providencehad brought good out of evil? And what theologian would assert that, insuch cases, we ought, from abhorrence of the evil, to reject the good?

On these grounds a large body of divines, still asserting the doctrinethat to resist the Sovereign must always be sinful, conceived thatWilliam was now the Sovereign whom it would be sinful to resist. 

To these arguments the nonjurors replied that Saint Paul must have meantby the powers that be the rightful powers that be; and that to put anyother interpretation on his words would be to outrage common sense, to dishonour religion, to give scandal to weak believers, to give anoccasion of triumph to scoffers. The feelings of all mankind must beshocked by the proposition that, as soon as a King, however clearhis title, however wise and good his administration, is expelled bytraitors, all his servants are bound to abandon him, and to rangethemselves on the side of his enemies. In all ages and nations, fidelityto a good cause in adversity had been regarded as a virtue. In all agesand nations, the politician whose practice was always to be on the sidewhich was uppermost had been despised. This new Toryism was worse thanWhiggism. To break through the ties of allegiance because the Sovereignwas a tyrant was doubtless a very great sin: but it was a sin for whichspecious names and pretexts might be found, and into which a braveand generous man, not instructed in divine truth and guarded by divinegrace, might easily fall. But to break through the ties of allegiance, merely because the Sovereign was unfortunate, was not only wicked, butdirty. Could any unbeliever offer a greater insult to the Scripturesthan by asserting that the Scriptures had enjoined on Christians as asacred duty what the light of nature had taught heathens to regardas the last excess of baseness? In the Scriptures was to be found thehistory of a King of Israel, driven from his palace by an unnatural son, and compelled to fly beyond Jordan. David, like James, had the right:Absalom, like William, had the possession. Would any student of thesacred writings dare to affirm that the conduct of Shimei on thatoccasion was proposed as a pattern to be imitated, and that Barzillai, who loyally adhered to his fugitive master, was resisting the ordinanceof God, and receiving to himself damnation? Would any true son ofthe Church of England seriously affirm that a man who was a strenuousroyalist till after the battle of Naseby, who then went over to theParliament, who, as soon as the Parliament had been purged, became anobsequious servant of the Rump, and who, as soon as the Rump had beenejected, professed himself a faithful subject of the Protector, was moredeserving of the respect of Christian men than the stout old Cavalierwho bore true fealty to Charles the First in prison and to Charlesthe Second in exile, and who was ready to put lands, liberty, life, inperil, rather than acknowledge, by word or act, the authority of anyof the upstart governments which, during that evil time, obtainedpossession of a power not legitimately theirs? And what distinction wasthere between that case and the case which had now arisen? That Cromwellhad actually enjoyed as much power as William, nay much more power thanWilliam, was quite certain. That the power of William, as well as thepower of Cromwell, had an illegitimate origin, no divine who held thedoctrine of nonresistance would dispute. How then was it possible forsuch a divine to deny that obedience had been due to Cromwell, and yetto affirm that it was due to William? To suppose that there could besuch inconsistency without dishonesty would be not charity but weakness. Those who were determined to comply with the Act of Parliament woulddo better to speak out, and to say, what every body knew, that theycomplied simply to save their benefices. The motive was no doubt strong. That a clergyman who was a husband and a father should look forward withdread to the first of August and the first of February was natural. Buthe would do well to remember that, however terrible might be the day ofsuspension and the day of deprivation, there would assuredly cometwo other days more terrible still, the day of death and the day ofjudgment, [459]

The swearing clergy, as they were called, were not a little perplexed bythis reasoning. Nothing embarrassed them more than the analogy whichthe nonjurors were never weary of pointing out between the usurpationof Cromwell and the usurpation of William. For there was in that ageno High Churchman who would not have thought himself reduced to anabsurdity if he had been reduced to the necessity of saying thatthe Church had commanded her sons to obey Cromwell. And yet it wasimpossible to prove that William was more fully in possession of supremepower than Cromwell had been. The swearers therefore avoided comingto close quarters with the nonjurors on this point as carefully as thenonjurors avoided coming to close quarters with the swearers on thequestion touching the practice of the primitive Church. 

The truth is that the theory of government which had long been taughtby the clergy was so absurd that it could lead to nothing but absurdity. Whether the priest who adhered to that theory swore or refused to swear, he was alike unable to give a rational explanation of his conduct. If heswore, he could vindicate his swearing only by laying down propositionsagainst which every honest heart instinctively revolts, only byproclaiming that Christ had commanded the Church to desert the righteouscause as soon as that cause ceased to prosper, and to strengthen thehands of successful villany against afflicted virtue. And yet, strong aswere the objections to this doctrine, the objections to the doctrineof the nonjuror were, if possible, stronger still. According to him, aChristian nation ought always to be in a state of slavery or in a stateof anarchy. Something is to be said for the man who sacrifices libertyto preserve order. Something is to be said for the man who sacrificesorder to preserve liberty. For liberty and order are two of the greatestblessings which a society can enjoy: and, when unfortunately they appearto be incompatible, much indulgence is due to those who take eitherside. But the nonjuror sacrificed, not liberty to order, not order toliberty, but both liberty and order to a superstition as stupid anddegrading as the Egyptian worship of cats and onions. While a particularperson, differing from other persons by the mere accident of birth, was on the throne, though he might be a Nero, there was to be noinsubordination. When any other person was on the throne, though hemight be an Alfred, there was to be no obedience. It mattered not howfrantic and wicked might be the administration of the dynasty whichhad the hereditary title, or how wise and virtuous might be theadministration of a government sprung from a revolution. Nor could anytime of limitation be pleaded against the claim of the expelled family. The lapse of years, the lapse of ages, made no change. To the end ofthe world, Christians were to regulate their political conduct simplyaccording to the genealogy of their ruler. The year 1800, the year1900, might find princes who derived their title from the votes of theConvention reigning in peace and prosperity. No matter: they would stillbe usurpers; and, if, in the twentieth or twenty-first century, anyperson who could make out a better right by blood to the crown shouldcall on a late posterity to acknowledge him as King, the call must beobeyed on peril of eternal perdition. 

A Whig might well enjoy the thought that the controversies which hadarisen among his adversaries had established the soundness of his ownpolitical creed. The disputants who had long agreed in accusing him ofan impious error had now effectually vindicated him, and refuted oneanother. The High Churchman who took the oaths had shown by irrefragablearguments from the Gospels and the Epistles, from the uniform practiceof the primitive Church, and from the explicit declarations of theAnglican Church, that Christians were not in all cases bound to payobedience to the prince who had the hereditary title. The High Churchmanwho would not take the oaths had shown as satisfactorily that Christianswere not in all cases bound to pay obedience to the prince who wasactually reigning. It followed that, to entitle a government to theallegiance of subjects, something was necessary different from merelegitimacy, and different also from mere possession. What that somethingwas the Whigs had no difficulty in pronouncing. In their view, theend for which all governments had been instituted was the happiness ofsociety. While the magistrate was, on the whole, notwithstanding somefaults, a minister for good, Reason taught mankind to obey him;and Religion, giving her solemn sanction to the teaching of Reason, commanded mankind to revere him as divinely commissioned. But ifhe proved to be a minister for evil, on what grounds was he to beconsidered as divinely commissioned? The Tories who swore had provedthat he ought not to be so considered on account of the origin of hispower: the Tories who would not swear had proved as clearly that heought not to be so considered on account of the existence of his power. 

Some violent and acrimonious Whigs triumphed ostentatiously and withmerciless insolence over the perplexed and divided priesthood. Thenonjuror they generally affected to regard with contemptuous pity asa dull and perverse, but sincere, bigot, whose absurd practice was inharmony with his absurd theory, and who might plead, in excuse forthe infatuation which impelled him to ruin his country, that the sameinfatuation had impelled him to ruin himself. They reserved theirsharpest taunts for those divines who, having, in the days of theExclusion Bill and the Rye House Plot, been distinguished by zeal forthe divine and indefeasible right of the hereditary Sovereign, were nowready to swear fealty to an usurper. Was this then the real sense of allthose sublime phrases which had resounded during twenty-nine years frominnumerable pulpits? Had the thousands of clergymen, who had so loudlyboasted of the unchangeable loyalty of their order, really meant onlythat their loyalty would remain unchangeable till the next change offortune? It was idle, it was impudent in them to pretend that theirpresent conduct was consistent with their former language. If anyReverend Doctor had at length been convinced that he had been in thewrong, he surely ought, by an open recantation, to make all the amendsnow possible to the persecuted, the calumniated, the murdered defendersof liberty. If he was still convinced that his old opinions were sound, he ought manfully to cast in his lot with the nonjurors. Respect, it wassaid, is due to him who ingenuously confesses an error; respect is dueto him who courageously suffers for an error; but it is difficultto respect a minister of religion who, while asserting that he stilladheres to the principles of the Tories, saves his benefice by taking anoath which can be honestly taken only on the principles of the Whigs. 

These reproaches, though perhaps not altogether unjust, wereunseasonable. The wiser and more moderate Whigs, sensible that thethrone of William could not stand firm if it had not a wider basisthan their own party, abstained at this conjuncture from sneers andinvectives, and exerted themselves to remove the scruples and to soothethe irritated feelings of the clergy. The collective power of therectors and vicars of England was immense: and it was much better thatthey should swear for the most flimsy reason that could be devised by asophist than they should not swear at all. 

It soon became clear that the arguments for swearing, backed as theywere by some of the strongest motives which can influence the humanmind, had prevailed. Above twenty-nine thirtieths of the professionsubmitted to the law. Most of the divines of the capital, who thenformed a separate class, and who were as much distinguished from therural clergy by liberality of sentiment as by eloquence and learning, gave in their adhesion to the government early, and with every sign ofcordial attachment. Eighty of them repaired together, in full term, toWestminster Hall, and were there sworn. The ceremony occupied so longa time that little else was done that day in the Courts of Chancery andKing's Bench, [460] But in general the compliance was tardy, sad andsullen. Many, no doubt, deliberately sacrificed principle to interest. Conscience told them that they were committing a sin. But they had notfortitude to resign the parsonage, the garden, the glebe, and to goforth without knowing where to find a meal or a roof for themselves andtheir little ones. Many swore with doubts and misgivings, [461] Somedeclared, at the moment of taking the oath, that they did not mean topromise that they would not submit to James, if he should ever be in acondition to demand their allegiance, [462] Some clergymen in the northwere, on the first of August, going in a company to swear, when theywere met on the road by the news of the battle which had been fought, four days before, in the pass of Killiecrankie. They immediately turnedback, and did not again leave their homes on the same errand till it wasclear that Dundee's victory had made no change in the state of publicaffairs, [463] Even of those whose understandings were fully convincedthat obedience was due to the existing government, very few kissed thebook with the heartiness with which they had formerly plighted theirfaith to Charles and James. Still the thing was done. Ten thousandclergymen had solemnly called heaven to attest their promise that theywould be true liegemen to William; and this promise, though it by nomeans warranted him in expecting that they would strenuously supporthim, had at least deprived them of a great part of their power to injurehim. They could not, without entirely forfeiting that public respecton which their influence depended, attack, except in an indirectand timidly cautious manner, the throne of one whom they had, in thepresence of God, vowed to obey as their King. Some of them, it is true, affected to read the prayers for the new Sovereigns in a peculiar tonewhich could not be misunderstood, [464] Others were guilty of stillgrosser indecency. Thus, one wretch, just after praying for William andMary in the most solemn office of religion, took off a glass to theirdamnation. Another, after performing divine service on a fast dayappointed by their authority, dined on a pigeon pie, and while he cut itup, uttered a wish that it was the usurper's heart. But such audaciouswickedness was doubtless rare and was rather injurious to the Churchthan to the government, [465]

Those clergymen and members of the Universities who incurred thepenalties of the law were about four hundred in number. Foremost in rankstood the Primate and six of his suffragans, Turner of Ely, Lloydof Norwich, Frampton of Gloucester, Lake of Chichester, White ofPeterborough, and Ken of Bath and Wells. Thomas of Worcester would havemade a seventh: but he died three weeks before the day of suspension. Onhis deathbed he adjured his clergy to be true to the cause of hereditaryright, and declared that those divines who tried to make out that theoaths might be taken without any departure from the loyal doctrines ofthe Church of England seemed to him to reason more jesuitically than theJesuits themselves, [466]

Ken, who, both in intellectual and in moral qualities, ranked highestamong the nonjuring prelates, hesitated long. There were few clergymenwho could have submitted to the new government with a better grace. For, in the times when nonresistance and passive obedience were the favouritethemes of his brethren, he had scarcely ever alluded to politics inthe pulpit. He owned that the arguments in favour of swearing werevery strong. He went indeed so far as to say that his scruples would becompletely removed if he could be convinced that James had enteredinto engagements for ceding Ireland to the French King. It is evidenttherefore that the difference between Ken and the Whigs was not adifference of principle. He thought, with them, that misgovernment, carried to a certain point, justified a transfer of allegiance, anddoubted only whether the misgovernment of James had been carried quiteto that point. Nay, the good Bishop actually began to prepare a pastoralletter explaining his reasons for taking the oaths. But, before it wasfinished, he received information which convinced him that Ireland hadnot been made over to France: doubts came thick upon him: he threwhis unfinished letter into the fire, and implored his less scrupulousfriends not to urge him further. He was sure, he said, that they hadacted uprightly: he was glad that they could do with a clear consciencewhat he shrank from doing: he felt the force of their reasoning: he wasall but persuaded; and he was afraid to listen longer lest he shouldbe quite persuaded: for, if he should comply, and his misgivings shouldafterwards return, he should be the most miserable of men. Not forwealth, not for a palace, not for a peerage, would he run the smallestrisk of ever feeling the torments of remorse. It is a curious fact that, of the seven nonjuring prelates, the only one whose name carries with itmuch weight was on the point of swearing, and was prevented from doingso, as he himself acknowledged, not by the force of reason, but by amorbid scrupulosity which he did not advise others to imitate, [467]

Among the priests who refused the oaths were some men eminent inthe learned world, as grammarians, chronologists, canonists, andantiquaries, and a very few who were distinguished by wit and eloquence:but scarcely one can be named who was qualified to discuss any largequestion of morals or politics, scarcely one whose writings do notindicate either extreme feebleness or extreme flightiness of mind. Thosewho distrust the judgment of a Whig on this point will probably allowsome weight to the opinion which was expressed, many years after theRevolution, by a philosopher of whom the Tories are justly proud. Johnson, after passing in review the celebrated divines who had thoughtit sinful to swear allegiance to William the Third and George the First, pronounced that, in the whole body of nonjurors, there was one, and oneonly, who could reason, [468]

The nonjuror in whose favour Johnson made this exception was CharlesLeslie. Leslie had, before the Revolution, been Chancellor of thediocese of Connor in Ireland. He had been forward in opposition toTyrconnel; had, as a justice of the peace for Monaghan, refusedto acknowledge a papist as Sheriff of that county; and had been socourageous as to send some officers of the Irish army to prison formarauding. But the doctrine of nonresistance, such as it had been taughtby Anglican divines in the days of the Rye House Plot, was immovablyfixed in his mind. When the state of Ulster became such that aProtestant who remained there could hardly avoid being either a rebel ora martyr, Leslie fled to London. His abilities and his connections weresuch that he might easily have obtained high preferment in the Church ofEngland. But he took his place in the front rank of the Jacobite body, and remained there stedfastly, through all the dangers and vicissitudesof three and thirty troubled years. Though constantly engaged intheological controversy with Deists, Jews, Socinians, Presbyterians, Papists, and Quakers, he found time to be one of the most voluminouspolitical writers of his age. Of all the nonjuring clergy he was thebest qualified to discuss constitutional questions. For, before he hadtaken orders, he had resided long in the Temple, and had been studyingEnglish history and law, while most of the other chiefs of the schismhad been poring over the Acts of Chalcedon, or seeking for wisdom in theTargurn of Onkelos, [469] In 1689, however, Leslie was almost unknownin England. Among the divines who incurred suspension on the firstof August in that year, the highest in popular estimation was withoutdispute Doctor William Sherlock. Perhaps no simple presbyter of theChurch of England has ever possessed a greater authority over hisbrethren than belonged to Sherlock at the time of the Revolution. Hewas not of the first rank among his contemporaries as a scholar, as apreacher, as a writer on theology, or as a writer on politics: but inall the four characters he had distinguished himself. The perspicuityand liveliness of his style have been praised by Prior and Addison. Thefacility and assiduity with which he wrote are sufficiently proved bythe bulk and the dates of his works. There were indeed among the clergymen of brighter genius and men of wider attainments: but during a longperiod there was none who more completely represented the order, nonewho, on all subjects, spoke more precisely the sense of the Anglicanpriesthood, without any taint of Latitudinarianism, of Puritanism, or ofPopery. He had, in the days of the Exclusion Bill, when the power ofthe dissenters was very great in Parliament and in the country, writtenstrongly against the sin of nonconformity. When the Rye House Plot wasdetected, he had zealously defended by tongue and pen the doctrine ofnonresistance. His services to the cause of episcopacy and monarchy wereso highly valued that he was made master of the Temple. A pension wasalso bestowed on him by Charles: but that pension James soon took away;for Sherlock, though he held himself bound to pay passive obedience tothe civil power, held himself equally bound to combat religious errors, and was the keenest and most laborious of that host of controversialistswho, in the day of peril, manfully defended the Protestant faith. Inlittle more than two years he published sixteen treatises, some of themlarge books, against the high pretensions of Rome. Not content with theeasy victories which he gained over such feeble antagonists as thosewho were quartered at Clerkenwell and the Savoy, he had the courage tomeasure his strength with no less a champion than Bossuet, and came outof the conflict without discredit. Nevertheless Sherlock still continuedto maintain that no oppression could justify Christians in resistingthe kingly authority. When the Convention was about to meet, he stronglyrecommended, in a tract which was considered as the manifesto of alarge part of the clergy, that James should be invited to return on suchconditions as might secure the laws and religion of the nation, [470]The vote which placed William and Mary on the throne filled Sherlockwith sorrow and anger. He is said to have exclaimed that if theConvention was determined on a revolution, the clergy would find fortythousand good Churchmen to effect a restoration, [471] Against the newoaths he gave his opinion plainly and warmly. He declared himself at aloss to understand how any honest man could doubt that, by the powersthat be, Saint Paul meant legitimate powers and no others. No namewas in 1689 cited by the Jacobites so proudly and fondly as that ofSherlock. Before the end of 1690 that name excited very differentfeelings. 

A few other nonjurors ought to be particularly noticed. High among themin rank was George Hickes, Dean of Worcester. Of all the Englishmen ofhis time he was the most versed in the old Teutonic languages; and hisknowledge of the early Christian literature was extensive. As to hiscapacity for political discussions, it may be sufficient to say that hisfavourite argument for passive obedience was drawn from the story ofthe Theban legion. He was the younger brother of that unfortunate JohnHickes who had been found hidden in the malthouse of Alice Lisle. Jameshad, in spite of all solicitation, put both John Hickes and Alice Lisleto death. Persons who did not know the strength of the Dean's principlesthought that he might possibly feel some resentment on this account: forhe was of no gentle or forgiving temper, and could retain during manyyears a bitter remembrance of small injuries. But he was strong in hisreligious and political faith: he reflected that the sufferers weredissenters; and he submitted to the will of the Lord's Anointed notonly with patience but with complacency. He became indeed a more lovingsubject than ever from the time when his brother was hanged and hisbrother's benefactress beheaded. While almost all other clergymen, appalled by the Declaration of Indulgence and by the proceedings ofthe High Commission, were beginning to think that they had pushed thedoctrine of nonresistance a little too far, he was writing a vindicationof his darling legend, and trying to convince the troops at Hounslowthat, if James should be pleased to massacre them all, as Maximian hadmassacred the Theban legion, for refusing to commit idolatry, it wouldbe their duty to pile their arms, and meekly to receive the crown ofmartyrdom. To do Hickes justice, his whole conduct after the Revolutionproved that his servility had sprung neither from fear nor fromcupidity, but from mere bigotry, [472]

Jeremy Collier, who was turned out of the preachership of the Rolls, was a man of a much higher order. He is well entitled to grateful andrespectful mention: for to his eloquence and courage is to be chieflyascribed the purification of our lighter literature from that foul taintwhich had been contracted during the Antipuritan reaction. He was, inthe full force of the words, a good man. He was also a man of eminentabilities, a great master of sarcasm, a great master of rhetoric, [473]His reading, too, though undigested, was of immense extent. But his mindwas narrow: his reasoning, even when he was so fortunate as to have agood cause to defend, was singularly futile and inconclusive; and hisbrain was almost turned by pride, not personal, but professional. Inhis view, a priest was the highest of human beings, except a bishop. Reverence and submission were due from the best and greatest of thelaity to the least respectable of the clergy. However ridiculous a manin holy orders might make himself, it was impiety to laugh at him. Sonervously sensitive indeed was Collier on this point that he thoughtit profane to throw any reflection even on the ministers of falsereligions. He laid it down as a rule that Muftis and Augurs ought alwaysto be mentioned with respect. He blamed Dryden for sneering at theHierophants of Apis. He praised Racine for giving dignity to thecharacter of a priest of Baal. He praised Corneille for not bringingthat learned and reverend divine Tiresias on the stage in the tragedy ofOedipus. The omission, Collier owned, spoiled the dramatic effect of thepiece: but the holy function was much too solemn to be played with. Nay, incredible as it may seem, he thought it improper in the laity to sneerat Presbyterian preachers. Indeed his Jacobitism was little more thanone of the forms in which his zeal for the dignity of his professionmanifested itself. He abhorred the Revolution less as a rising up ofsubjects against their King than as a rising up of the laity againstthe sacerdotal caste. The doctrines which had been proclaimed fromthe pulpit during thirty years had been treated with contempt by theConvention. A new government had been set up in opposition to the wishesof the spiritual peers in the House of Lords and of the priesthoodthroughout the country. A secular assembly had taken upon itself to passa law requiring archbishops and bishops, rectors and vicars, to abjure;on pain of deprivation, what they had been teaching all their lives. Whatever meaner spirits might do, Collier was determined not to be ledin triumph by the victorious enemies of his order. To the last he wouldconfront, with the authoritative port of an ambassador of heaven, theanger of the powers and principalities of the earth. 

In parts Collier was the first man among the nonjurors. In erudition thefirst place must be assigned to Henry Dodwell, who, for the unpardonablecrime of having a small estate in Mayo, had been attainted by the PopishParliament at Dublin. He was Camdenian Professor of Ancient Historyin the University of Oxford, and had already acquired considerablecelebrity by chronological and geographical researches: but, thoughhe never could be persuaded to take orders, theology was his favouritestudy. He was doubtless a pious and sincere man. He had perusedinnumerable volumes in various languages, and had indeed acquiredmore learning than his slender faculties were able to bear. The smallintellectual spark which he possessed was put out by the fuel. Some ofhis books seem to have been written in a madhouse, and, though filledwith proofs of his immense reading, degrade him to the level of JamesNaylor and Ludowick Muggleton. He began a dissertation intended to provethat the law of nations was a divine revelation made to the family whichwas preserved in the ark. He published a treatise in which he maintainedthat a marriage between a member of the Church of England and adissenter was a nullity, and that the couple were, in the sight ofheaven, guilty of adultery. He defended the use of instrumental music inpublic worship on the ground that the notes of the organ had a power tocounteract the influence of devils on the spinal marrow of humanbeings. In his treatise on this subject, he remarked that there washigh authority for the opinion that the spinal marrow, when decomposed, became a serpent. Whether this opinion were or were not correct, hethought it unnecessary to decide. Perhaps, he said, the eminent menin whose works it was found had meant only to express figuratively thegreat truth, that the Old Serpent operates on us chiefly through thespinal marrow, [474] Dodwell's speculations on the state of human beingsafter death are, if possible, more extraordinary still. He tells us thatour souls are naturally mortal. Annihilation is the fate of the greaterpart of mankind, of heathens, of Mahometans, of unchristened babes. Thegift of immortality is conveyed in the sacrament of baptism: but to theefficacy of the sacrament it is absolutely necessary that the water bepoured and the words pronounced by a priest who has been ordained by abishop. In the natural course of things, therefore, all Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and Quakers would, like the inferior animals, cease to exist. But Dodwell was far too good a churchman to letoff dissenters so easily. He informs them that, as they have had anopportunity of hearing the gospel preached, and might, but for theirown perverseness, have received episcopalian baptism, God will, by anextraordinary act of power, bestow immortality on them in order thatthey may be tormented for ever and ever, [475]

No man abhorred the growing latitudinarianism of those times morethan Dodwell. Yet no man had more reason to rejoice in it. For, in theearlier part of the seventeenth century, a speculator who had dared toaffirm that the human soul is by its nature mortal, and does, in thegreat majority of cases, actually die with the body, would have beenburned alive in Smithfield. Even in days which Dodwell could wellremember, such heretics as himself would have been thought fortunate ifthey escaped with life, their backs flayed, their ears clipped, theirnoses slit, their tongues bored through with red hot iron, and theireyes knocked out with brickbats. With the nonjurors, however, the authorof this theory was still the great Mr. Dodwell; and some, who thoughtit culpable lenity to tolerate a Presbyterian meeting, thought it at thesame time gross illiberality to blame a learned and pious Jacobite fordenying a doctrine so utterly unimportant in a religious point of viewas that of the immortality of the soul, [476]

Two other nonjurors deserve special mention, less on account of theirabilities and learning, than on account of their rare integrity, andof their not less rare candour. These were John Kettlewell, Rector ofColeshill, and John Fitzwilliam, Canon of Windsor. It is remarkablethat both these men had seen much of Lord Russell, and that both, thoughdiffering from him in political opinions, and strongly disapprovingthe part which he had taken in the Whig plot, had thought highly of hischaracter, and had been sincere mourners for his death. He had sent toKettlewell an affectionate message from the scaffold in Lincoln's InnFields. Lady Russell, to her latest day, loved, trusted, and reveredFitzwilliam, who, when she was a girl, had been the friend of herfather, the virtuous Southampton. The two clergymen agreed in refusingto swear: but they, from that moment, took different paths. Kettlewellwas one of the most active members of his party: he declined no drudgeryin the common cause, provided only that it were such drudgery as did notmisbecome an honest man; and he defended his opinions in several tracts, which give a much higher notion of his sincerity than of his judgment oracuteness, [477] Fitzwilliam thought that he had done enough in quittinghis pleasant dwelling and garden under the shadow of Saint George'sChapel, and in betaking himself with his books to a small lodging in anattic. He could not with a safe conscience acknowledge William andMary: but he did not conceive that he was bound to be always stirring upsedition against them; and he passed the last years of his life, under the powerful protection of the House of Bedford, in innocent andstudious repose, [478]

Among the less distinguished divines who forfeited their benefices, weredoubtless many good men: but it is certain that the moral character ofthe nonjurors, as a class, did not stand high. It seems hard to imputelaxity of principle to persons who undoubtedly made a great sacrificeto principle. And yet experience abundantly proves that many who arecapable of making a great sacrifice, when their blood is heated byconflict, and when the public eye is fixed upon them, are not capable ofpersevering long in the daily practice of obscure virtues. It is by nomeans improbable that zealots may have given their lives for a religionwhich had never effectually restrained their vindictive or theirlicentious passions. We learn indeed from fathers of the highestauthority that, even in the purest ages of the Church, some confessors, who had manfully refused to save themselves from torments and deathby throwing frankincense on the altar of Jupiter, afterwards broughtscandal on the Christian name by gross fraud and debauchery, [479] Forthe nonjuring divines great allowance must in fairness be made. Theywere doubtless in a most trying situation. In general, a schism, whichdivides a religious community, divides the laity as well as the clergy. The seceding pastors therefore carry with them a large part of theirflocks, and are consequently assured of a maintenance. But the schism of1689 scarcely extended beyond the clergy. The law required the rector totake the oaths, or to quit his living: but no oath, no acknowledgment ofthe title of the new King and Queen, was required from the parishioneras a qualification for attending divine service, or for receiving theEucharist. Not one in fifty, therefore, of those laymen who disapprovedof the Revolution thought himself bound to quit his pew in the oldchurch, where the old liturgy was still read, and where the oldvestments were still worn, and to follow the ejected priest to aconventicle, a conventicle, too, which was not protected by theToleration Act. Thus the new sect was a sect of preachers withouthearers; and such preachers could not make a livelihood by preaching. InLondon, indeed, and in some other large towns, those vehement Jacobites, whom nothing would satisfy but to hear King James and the Prince ofWales prayed for by name, were sufficiently numerous to make up a fewsmall congregations, which met secretly, and under constant fear ofthe constables, in rooms so mean that the meeting houses of the Puritandissenters might by comparison be called palaces. Even Collier, who hadall the qualities which attract large audiences, was reduced to be theminister of a little knot of malecontents, whose oratory was on a secondfloor in the city. But the nonjuring clergymen who were able to obtaineven a pittance by officiating at such places were very few. Of therest some had independent means: some lived by literature: one or twopractised physic. Thomas Wagstaffe, for example, who had been Chancellorof Lichfield, had many patients, and made himself conspicuous by alwaysvisiting them in full canonicals, [480] But these were exceptions. Industrious poverty is a state by no means unfavourable to virtue: butit is dangerous to be at once poor and idle; and most of the clergymenwho had refused to swear found themselves thrown on the world withnothing to eat and with nothing to do. They naturally became beggars andloungers. Considering themselves as martyrs suffering in a public cause, they were not ashamed to ask any good churchman for a guinea. Most ofthem passed their lives in running about from one Tory coffeehouse toanother, abusing the Dutch, hearing and spreading reports that withina month His Majesty would certainly be on English ground, and wonderingwho would have Salisbury when Burnet was hanged. During the sessionof Parliament the lobbies and the Court of Requests were crowded withdeprived parsons, asking who was up, and what the numbers were on thelast division. Many of the ejected divines became domesticated, aschaplains, tutors and spiritual directors, in the houses of opulentJacobites. In a situation of this kind, a man of pure and exaltedcharacter, such a man as Ken was among the nonjurors, and Watts amongthe nonconformists, may preserve his dignity, and may much morethan repay by his example and his instructions the benefits which hereceives. But to a person whose virtue is not high toned this way oflife is full of peril. If he is of a quiet disposition, he is in dangerof sinking into a servile, sensual, drowsy parasite. If he is of anactive and aspiring nature, it may be feared that he will become expertin those bad arts by which, more easily than by faithful service, retainers make themselves agreeable or formidable. To discover the weakside of every character, to flatter every passion and prejudice, to sowdiscord and jealousy where love and confidence ought to exist, to watchthe moment of indiscreet openness for the purpose of extracting secretsimportant to the prosperity and honour of families, such are thepractices by which keen and restless spirits have too often avengedthemselves for the humiliation of dependence. The public voice loudlyaccused many nonjurors of requiting the hospitality of their benefactorswith villany as black as that of the hypocrite depicted in themasterpiece of Moliere. Indeed, when Cibber undertook to adapt thatnoble comedy to the English stage, he made his Tartuffe a nonjuror:and Johnson, who cannot be supposed to have been prejudiced against thenonjurors, frankly owned that Cibber had done them no wrong, [481]

There can be no doubt that the schism caused by the oaths would havebeen far more formidable, if, at this crisis, any extensive change hadbeen made in the government or in the ceremonial of the EstablishedChurch. It is a highly instructive fact that those enlightened andtolerant divines who most ardently desired such a change afterwards sawreason to be thankful that their favourite project had failed. 

Whigs and Tories had in the late Session combined to get rid ofNottingham's Comprehension Bill by voting an address which requested theKing to refer the whole subject to the Convocation. Burnet foresaw theeffect of this vote. The whole scheme, he said, was utterly ruined, [482] Many of his friends, however, thought differently; and among thesewas Tillotson. Of all the members of the Low Church party Tillotsonstood highest in general estimation. As a preacher, he was thoughtby his contemporaries to have surpassed all rivals living or dead. Posterity has reversed this judgment. Yet Tillotson still keeps hisplace as a legitimate English classic. His highest flights were indeedfar below those of Taylor, of Barrow, and of South; but his oratory wasmore correct and equable than theirs. No quaint conceits, no pedanticquotations from Talmudists and scholiasts, no mean images, buffoonstories, scurrilous invectives, ever marred the effect of his grave andtemperate discourses. His reasoning was just sufficiently profound andsufficiently refined to be followed by a popular audience with thatslight degree of intellectual exertion which is a pleasure. His styleis not brilliant; but it is pure, transparently clear, and equally freefrom the levity and from the stiffness which disfigure the sermons ofsome eminent divines of the seventeenth century. He is always serious:yet there is about his manner a certain graceful ease which marks himas a man who knows the world, who has lived in populous cities and insplendid courts, and who has conversed, not only with books, but withlawyers and merchants, wits and beauties, statesmen and princes. The greatest charm of his compositions, however, is deriven from thebenignity and candour which appear in every line, and which shone forthnot less conspicuously in his life than in his writings. 

As a theologian, Tillotson was certainly not less latitudinarian thanBurnet. Yet many of those clergymen to whom Burnet was an object ofimplacable aversion spoke of Tillotson with tenderness and respect. It is therefore not strange that the two friends should have formeddifferent estimates of the temper of the priesthood, and shouldhave expected different results from the meeting of the Convocation. Tillotson was not displeased with the vote of the Commons. He conceivedthat changes made in religious institutions by mere secular authoritymight disgust many churchmen, who would yet be perfectly willing tovote, in an ecclesiastical synod, for changes more extensive still; andhis opinion had great weight with the King, [483] It was resolved thatthe Convocation should meet at the beginning of the next sessionof Parliament, and that in the meantime a commission should issueempowering some eminent divines to examine the Liturgy, the canons, andthe whole system of jurisprudence administered by the Courts Christian, and to report on the alterations which it might be desirable to make, [484]

Most of the Bishops who had taken the oaths were in this commission;and with them were joined twenty priests of great note. Of the twentyTillotson was the most important: for he was known to speak the senseboth of the King and of the Queen. Among those Commissioners who lookedup to Tillotson as their chief were Stillingfleet, Dean of Saint Paul's, Sharp, Dean of Norwich, Patrick, Dean of Peterborough, Tenison, Rectorof Saint Martin's, and Fowler, to whose judicious firmness was chieflyto be ascribed the determination of the London clergy not to read theDeclaration of Indulgence. 

With such men as those who have been named were mingled some divines whobelonged to the High Church party. Conspicuous among these were twoof the rulers of Oxford, Aldrich and Jane. Aldrich had recently beenappointed Dean of Christchurch, in the room of the Papist Massey, whomJames had, in direct violation of the laws, placed at the head ofthat great college. The new Dean was a polite, though not a profound, scholar, and a jovial, hospitable gentleman. He was the author of sometheological tracts which have long been forgotten, and of a compendiumof logic which is still used: but the best works which he has bequeathedto posterity are his catches. Jane, the King's Professor of Divinity, was a graver but a less estimable man. He had borne the chief part inframing that decree by which his University ordered the works of Miltonand Buchanan to be publicly burned in the Schools. A few years later, irritated and alarmed by the persecution of the Bishops and by theconfiscation of the revenues of Magdalene College, he had renouncedthe doctrine of nonresistance, had repaired to the headquarters ofthe Prince of Orange, and had assured His Highness that Oxford wouldwillingly coin her plate for the support of the war against heroppressor. During a short time Jane was generally considered as aWhig, and was sharply lampooned by some of his old allies. He wasso unfortunate as to have a name which was an excellent mark for thelearned punsters of his university. Several epigrams were written on thedoublefaced Janus, who, having got a professorship by looking one way, now hoped to get a bishopric by looking another. That he hoped to get abishopric was perfectly true. He demanded the see of Exeter as a rewarddue to his services. He was refused. The refusal convinced him that theChurch had as much to apprehend from Latitudinarianism as from Popery;and he speedily became a Tory again, [485]

Early in October the Commissioners assembled in the Jerusalem Chamber. At their first meeting they determined to propose that, in the publicservices of the Church, lessons taken from the canonical booksof Scripture should be substituted for the lessons taken from theApocrypha, [486] At the second meeting a strange question was raisedby the very last person who ought to have raised it. Sprat, Bishop ofRochester, had, without any scruple, sate, during two years, in theunconstitutional tribunal which had, in the late reign, oppressed andpillaged the Church of which he was a ruler. But he had now becomescrupulous, and expressed a doubt whether the commission were legal. To a plain understanding his objections seem to be mere quibbles. Thecommission gave power neither to make laws nor to administer laws, but simply to inquire and to report. Even without a royal commissionTillotson, Patrick, and Stillingfleet might, with perfect propriety, have met to discuss the state and prospects of the Church, and toconsider whether it would or would not be desirable to make someconcession to the dissenters. And how could it be a crime for subjectsto do at the request of their Sovereign that which it would have beeninnocent and laudable for them to do without any such request? Sprathowever was seconded by Jane. There was a sharp altercation; and Lloyd, Bishop of Saint Asaph, who, with many good qualities, had an irritabletemper, was provoked into saying something about spies. Sprat withdrewand came no more. His example was soon followed by Jane and Aldrich, [487] The commissioners proceeded to take into consideration thequestion of the posture at the Eucharist. It was determined to recommendthat a communicant, who, after conference with his minister, shoulddeclare that he could not conscientiously receive the bread and winekneeling, might receive them sitting. Mew, Bishop of Winchester, anhonest man, but illiterate, weak even in his best days, and now fastsinking into dotage, protested against this concession, and withdrewfrom the assembly. The other members continued to apply themselvesvigorously to their task: and no more secessions took place, thoughthere were great differences of opinion, and though the debates weresometimes warm. The highest churchmen who still remained were DoctorWilliam Beveridge, Archdeacon of Colchester, who many years later becameBishop of Saint Asaph, and Doctor John Scott, the same who had prayedby the deathbed of Jeffreys. The most active among the Latitudinariansappear to have been Burnet, Fowler, and Tenison. 

The baptismal service was repeatedly discussed. As to matter of form theCommissioners were disposed to be indulgent. They were generally willingto admit infants into the Church without sponsors and without the signof the cross. But the majority, after much debate, steadily refusedto soften down or explain away those words which, to all mindsnot sophisticated, appear to assert the regenerating virtue of thesacrament, [488]

As to the surplice, the Commissioners determined to recommend that alarge discretion should be left to the Bishops. Expedients were devisedby which a person who had received Presbyterian ordination might, without admitting, either expressly or by implication, the invalidity ofthat ordination, become a minister of the Church of England, [489]

The ecclesiastical calendar was carefully revised. The great festivalswere retained. But it was not thought desirable that Saint Valentine, Saint Chad, Saint Swithin, Saint Edward King of the West Saxons, SaintDunstan, and Saint Alphage, should share the honours of Saint John andSaint Paul; or that the Church should appear to class the ridiculousfable of the discovery of the cross with facts so awfully important asthe Nativity, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of herLord, [490]

The Athanasian Creed caused much perplexity. Most of the Commissionerswere equally unwilling to give up the doctrinal clauses and to retainthe damnatory clauses. Burnet, Fowler, and Tillotson were desirous tostrike this famous symbol out of the liturgy altogether. Burnet broughtforward one argument, which to himself probably did not appear tohave much weight, but which was admirably calculated to perplex hisopponents, Beveridge and Scott. The Council of Ephesus had always beenreverenced by Anglican divines as a synod which had truly representedthe whole body of the faithful, and which had been divinely guided inthe way of truth. The voice of that Council was the voice of the HolyCatholic and Apostolic Church, not yet corrupted by superstition, orrent asunder by schism. During more than twelve centuries the worldhad not seen an ecclesiastical assembly which had an equal claim to therespect of believers. The Council of Ephesus had, in the plainest terms, and under the most terrible penalties, forbidden Christians to frame orto impose on their brethren any creed other than the creed settled bythe Nicene Fathers. It should seem therefore that, if the Council ofEphesus was really under the direction of the Holy Spirit, whoeveruses the Athanasian Creed must, in the very act of uttering an anathemaagainst his neighbours, bring down an anathema on his own head, [491]In spite of the authority of the Ephesian Fathers, the majority of theCommissioners determined to leave the Athanasian Creed in the PrayerBook; but they proposed to add a rubric drawn up by Stillingfleet, whichdeclared that the damnatory clauses were to be understood to apply onlyto such as obstinately denied the substance of the Christian Faith. Orthodox believers were therefore permitted to hope that the hereticwho had honestly and humbly sought for truth would not be everlastinglypunished for having failed to find it, [492]

Tenison was intrusted with the business of examining the Liturgy andof collecting all those expressions to which objections had been made, either by theological or by literary critics. It was determined toremove some obvious blemishes. And it would have been wise in theCommissioners to stop here. Unfortunately they determined to rewrite agreat part of the Prayer Book. It was a bold undertaking; for in generalthe style of that volume is such as cannot be improved. The EnglishLiturgy indeed gains by being compared even with those fine ancientLiturgies from which it is to a great extent taken. The essentialqualities of devotional eloquence, conciseness, majestic simplicity, pathetic earnestness of supplication, sobered by a profound reverence, are common between the translations and the originals. But in thesubordinate graces of diction the originals must be allowed to be farinferior to the translations. And the reason is obvious. The technicalphraseology of Christianity did not become a part of the Latin languagetill that language had passed the age of maturity and was sinking intobarbarism. But the technical phraseology of Christianity was found inthe Anglosaxon and in the Norman French, long before the union of thosetwo dialects had, produced a third dialect superior to either. The Latinof the Roman Catholic services, therefore, is Latin in the last stageof decay. The English of our services is English in all the vigour andsuppleness of early youth. To the great Latin writers, to Terence andLucretius, to Cicero and Caesar, to Tacitus and Quintilian, the noblestcompositions of Ambrose and Gregory would have seemed to be, not merelybad writing, but senseless gibberish, [493] The diction of our Book ofCommon Prayer, on the other hand, has directly or indirectly contributedto form the diction of almost every great English writer, and hasextorted the admiration of the most accomplished infidels and of themost accomplished nonconformists, of such men as David Hume and RobertHall. 

The style of the Liturgy, however, did not satisfy the Doctors of theJerusalem Chamber. They voted the Collects too short and too dry: andPatrick was intrusted with the duty of expanding and ornamenting them. In one respect, at least, the choice seems to have been unexceptionable;for, if we judge by the way in which Patrick paraphrased the mostsublime Hebrew poetry, we shall probably be of opinion that, whether hewas or was not qualified to make the collects better, no man that everlived was more competent to make them longer, [494]

It mattered little, however, whether the recommendations of theCommission were good or bad. They were all doomed before they wereknown. The writs summoning the Convocation of the province of Canterburyhad been issued; and the clergy were every where in a state of violentexcitement. They had just taken the oaths, and were smarting from theearnest reproofs of nonjurors, from the insolent taunts of Whigs, andoften undoubtedly from the stings of remorse. The announcement thata Convocation was to sit for the purpose of deliberating on a plan ofcomprehension roused all the strongest passions of the priest who hadjust complied with the law, and was ill satisfied or half satisfied withhimself for complying. He had an opportunity of contributing to defeata favourite scheme of that government which had exacted from him, under severe penalties, a submission not easily to be reconciled to hisconscience or his pride. He had an opportunity of signalising his zealfor that Church whose characteristic doctrines he had been accused ofdeserting for lucre. She was now, he conceived, threatened by a dangeras great as that of the preceding year. The Latitudinarians of 1689 werenot less eager to humble and to ruin her than the Jesuits of 1688. The Toleration Act had done for the Dissenters quite as much as wascompatible with her dignity and security; and nothing more ought to beconceded, not the hem of one of her vestments, not an epithet from thebeginning to the end of her Liturgy. All the reproaches which had beenthrown on the ecclesiastical commission of James were transferred tothe ecclesiastical commission of William. The two commissions indeedhad nothing but the name in common. Put the name was associated withillegality and oppression, with the violation of dwellings and theconfiscation of freeholds, and was therefore assiduously sounded with nosmall effect by the tongues of the spiteful in the ears of the ignorant. 

The King too, it was said, was not sound. He conformed indeed to theestablished worship; but his was a local and occasional conformity. Forsome ceremonies to which High Churchmen were attached he had a distastewhich he was at no pains to conceal. One of his first acts had beento give orders that in his private chapel the service should be saidinstead of being sung; and this arrangement, though warranted by therubric, caused much murmuring, [495] It was known that he was soprofane as to sneer at a practice which had been sanctioned by highecclesiastical authority, the practice of touching for the scrofula. This ceremony had come down almost unaltered from the darkest of thedark ages to the time of Newton and Locke. The Stuarts frequentlydispensed the healing influences in the Banqueting House. The days onwhich this miracle was to be wrought were fixed at sittings of the PrivyCouncil, and were solemnly notified by the clergy in all the parishchurches of the realm, [496] When the appointed time came, severaldivines in full canonicals stood round the canopy of state. The surgeonof the royal household introduced the sick. A passage from the sixteenthchapter of the Gospel of Saint Mark was read. When the words, "Theyshall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover, " had beenpronounced, there was a pause, and one of the sick was brought up to theKing. His Majesty stroked the ulcers and swellings, and hung round thepatient's neck a white riband to which was fastened a gold coin. The other sufferers were then led up in succession; and, as each wastouched, the chaplain repeated the incantation, "they shall lay theirhands on the sick, and they shall recover. " Then came the epistle, prayers, antiphonies and a benediction. The service may still be foundin the prayer books of the reign of Anne. Indeed it was not till sometime after the accession of George the First that the Universityof Oxford ceased to reprint the Office of Healing together with theLiturgy. Theologians of eminent learning, ability, and virtue gave thesanction of their authority to this mummery; [497] and, what is strangerstill, medical men of high note believed, or affected to believe, in thebalsamic virtues of the royal hand. We must suppose that every surgeonwho attended Charles the Second was a man of high repute for skill; andmore than one of the surgeons who attended Charles the Second has leftus a solemn profession of faith in the King's miraculous power. One ofthem is not ashamed to tell us that the gift was communicated by theunction administered at the coronation; that the cures were so numerousand sometimes so rapid that they could not be attributed to any naturalcause; that the failures were to be ascribed to want of faith on thepart of the patients; that Charles once handled a scrofulous Quaker andmade him a healthy man and a sound Churchman in a moment; that, if thosewho had been healed lost or sold the piece of gold which had been hunground their necks, the ulcers broke forth again, and could be removedonly by a second touch and a second talisman. We cannot wonder that, when men of science gravely repeated such nonsense, the vulgar shouldbelieve it. Still less can we wonder that wretches tortured by a diseaseover which natural remedies had no power should eagerly drink in talesof preternatural cures: for nothing is so credulous as misery. Thecrowds which repaired to the palace on the days of healing were immense. Charles the Second, in the course of his reign, touched near a hundredthousand persons. The number seems to have increased or diminished asthe king's popularity rose or fell. During that Tory reaction whichfollowed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, the press to get nearhim was terrific. In 1682, he performed the rite eight thousand fivehundred times. In 1684, the throng was such that six or seven of thesick were trampled to death. James, in one of his progresses, touchedeight hundred persons in the choir of the Cathedral of Chester. Theexpense of the ceremony was little less than ten thousand pounds a year, and would have been much greater but for the vigilance of the royalsurgeons, whose business it was to examine the applicants, and todistinguish those who came for the cure from those who came for thegold, [498]

William had too much sense to be duped, and too much honesty to bear apart in what he knew to be an imposture. "It is a silly superstition, "he exclaimed, when he heard that, at the close of Lent, his palace wasbesieged by a crowd of the sick: "Give the poor creatures some money, and send them away. " [499] On one single occasion he was importuned intolaying his hand on a patient. "God give you better health, " he said, "and more sense. " The parents of scrofulous children cried out againsthis cruelty: bigots lifted up their hands and eyes in horror at hisimpiety: Jacobites sarcastically praised him for not presumingto arrogate to himself a power which belonged only to legitimatesovereigns; and even some Whigs thought that he acted unwisely intreating with such marked contempt a superstition which had a stronghold on the vulgar mind: but William was not to be moved, and wasaccordingly set down by many High Churchmen as either an infidel or apuritan, [500]

The chief cause, however, which at this time made even the most moderateplan of comprehension hateful to the priesthood still remains to bementioned. What Burnet had foreseen and foretold had come to pass. Therewas throughout the clerical profession a strong disposition to retaliateon the Presbyterians of England the wrongs of the Episcopalians ofScotland. It could not be denied that even the highest churchmen had, in the summer of 1688, generally declared themselves willing to giveup many things for the sake of union. But it was said, and not withoutplausibility, that what was passing on the other side of the Borderproved union on any reasonable terms to be impossible. With what face, it was asked, can those who will make no concession to us where we areweak, blame us for refusing to make any concession to them where we arestrong? We cannot judge correctly of the principles and feelings of asect from the professions which it makes in a time of feebleness andsuffering. If we would know what the Puritan spirit really is, we mustobserve the Puritan when he is dominant. He was dominant here in thelast generation; and his little finger was thicker than the loins of theprelates. He drove hundreds of quiet students from their cloisters, andthousands of respectable divines from their parsonages, for the crime ofrefusing to sign his Covenant. No tenderness was shown to learning, togenius or to sanctity. Such men as Hall and Sanderson, Chillingworth andHammond, were not only plundered, but flung into prisons, and exposedto all the rudeness of brutal gaolers. It was made a crime to read finepsalms and prayers bequeathed to the faithful by Ambrose and Chrysostom. At length the nation became weary of the reign of the saints. The fallendynasty and the fallen hierarchy were restored. The Puritan was in histurn subjected to disabilities and penalties; and he immediately foundout that it was barbarous to punish men for entertaining conscientiousscruples about a garb, about a ceremony, about the functions ofecclesiastical officers. His piteous complaints and his arguments infavour of toleration had at length imposed on many well meaning persons. Even zealous churchmen had begun to entertain a hope that the severediscipline which he had undergone had made him candid, moderate, charitable. Had this been really so, it would doubtless have been ourduty to treat his scruples with extreme tenderness. But, while we wereconsidering what we could do to meet his wishes in England, he hadobtained ascendency in Scotland; and, in an instant, he was all himselfagain, bigoted, insolent, and cruel. Manses had been sacked; churchesshut up; prayer books burned; sacred garments torn; congregationsdispersed by violence; priests hustled, pelted, pilloried, driven forth, with their wives and babes, to beg or die of hunger. That these outrageswere to be imputed, not to a few lawless marauders, but to the greatbody of the Presbyterians of Scotland, was evident from the factthat the government had not dared either to inflict punishment on theoffenders or to grant relief to the sufferers. Was it not fit then thatthe Church of England should take warning? Was it reasonable to askher to mutilate her apostolical polity and her beautiful ritual for thepurpose of conciliating those who wanted nothing but power to rabble heras they had rabbled her sister? Already these men had obtained a boonwhich they ill deserved, and which they never would have granted. They worshipped God in perfect security. Their meeting houses wereas effectually protected as the choirs of our cathedrals. Whileno episcopal minister could, without putting his life in jeopardy, officiate in Ayrshire or Renfrewshire, a hundred Presbyterian ministerspreached unmolested every Sunday in Middlesex. The legislature had, with a generosity perhaps imprudent, granted toleration to the mostintolerant of men; and with toleration it behoved them to be content. 

Thus several causes conspired to inflame the parochial clergy againstthe scheme of comprehension. Their temper was such that, if the planframed in the Jerusalem Chamber had been directly submitted to them, it would have been rejected by a majority of twenty to one. But inthe Convocation their weight bore no proportion to their number. The Convocation has, happily for our country, been so long utterlyinsignificant that, till a recent period, none but curious studentscared to inquire how it was constituted; and even now many persons, notgenerally ill informed, imagine it to have been a council representingthe Church of England. In truth the Convocation so often mentionedin our ecclesiastical history is merely the synod of the Province ofCanterbury, and never had a right to speak in the name of the wholeclerical body. The Province of York had also its convocation: but, till the eighteenth century was far advanced, the Province of York wasgenerally so poor, so rude, and so thinly peopled, that, in politicalimportance, it could hardly be considered as more than a tenth part ofthe kingdom. The sense of the Southern clergy was therefore popularlyconsidered as the sense of the whole profession. When the formalconcurrence of the Northern clergy was required, it seems to have beengiven as a matter of course. Indeed the canons passed by the Convocationof Canterbury in 1604 were ratified by James the First, and were orderedto be strictly observed in every part of the kingdom, two years beforethe Convocation of York went through the form of approving them. Sincethese ecclesiastical councils became mere names, a great change hastaken place in the relative position of the two Archbishoprics. In allthe elements of power, the region beyond Trent is now at least a thirdpart of England. When in our own time the representative system wasadjusted to the altered state of the country, almost all the smallboroughs which it was necessary to disfranchise were in the south. Twothirds of the new members given to great provincial towns were givento the north. If therefore any English government should suffer theConvocations, as now constituted, to meet for the despatch of business, two independent synods would be legislating at the same time for oneChurch. It is by no means impossible that one assembly might adoptcanons which the other might reject, that one assembly might condemn asheretical propositions which the other might hold to be orthodox, [501]In the seventeenth century no such danger was apprehended. So littleindeed was the Convocation of York then considered, that the two Housesof Parliament had, in their address to William, spoken only of oneConvocation, which they called the Convocation of the Clergy of theKingdom. 

The body which they thus not very accurately designated is divided intotwo Houses. The Upper House is composed of the Bishops of the Provinceof Canterbury. The Lower House consisted, in 1689, of a hundred andforty-four members. Twenty-two Deans and fifty-four Archdeacons satethere in virtue of their offices. Twenty-four divines sate as proctorsfor twenty-four chapters. Only forty-four proctors were elected bythe eight thousand parish priests of the twenty-two dioceses. Theseforty-four proctors, however, were almost all of one mind. The electionshad in former times been conducted in the most quiet and decorousmanner. But on this occasion the canvassing was eager: the contests weresharp: Rochester, the leader of the party which in the House of Lordshad opposed the Comprehension-Bill, and his brother Clarendon, who hadrefused to take the oaths, had gone to Oxford, the head quarters of thatparty, for the purpose of animating and organizing the opposition, [502]The representatives of the parochial clergy must have been men whosechief distinction was their zeal: for in the whole list can be found nota single illustrious name, and very few names which are now known evento curious students, [503] The official members of the Lower House, among whom were many distinguished scholars and preachers, seem to havebeen not very unequally divided. 

During the summer of 1689 several high ecclesiastical dignities becamevacant, and were bestowed on divines who were sitting in the JerusalemChamber. It has already been mentioned that Thomas, Bishop of Worcester, died just before the day fixed for taking the oaths. Lake, Bishop ofChichester, lived just long enough to refuse them, and with his lastbreath declared that he would maintain even at the stake the doctrineof indefeasible hereditary right. The see of Chichester was filled byPatrick, that of Worcester by Stillingfleet; and the deanery ofSaint Paul's which Stillingfleet quitted was given to Tillotson. ThatTillotson was not raised to the episcopal bench excited some surprise. But in truth it was because the government held his services in thehighest estimation that he was suffered to remain a little longer asimple presbyter. The most important office in the Convocation was thatof Prolocutor of the Lower House. The Prolocutor was to be chosen by themembers: and the only moderate man who had a chance of being chosen wasTillotson. It had in fact been already determined that he should be thenext Archbishop of Canterbury. When he went to kiss hands for his newdeanery he warmly thanked the King. "Your Majesty has now set me at easefor the remainder of my life. " "No such thing, Doctor, I assure you, "said William. He then plainly intimated that, whenever Sancroft shouldcease to fill the highest ecclesiastical station, Tillotson wouldsucceed to it. Tillotson stood aghast; for his nature was quiet andunambitious: he was beginning to feel the infirmities of old age: hecared little for money: of worldly advantages those which he mostvalued were an honest fame and the general good will of mankind: thoseadvantages he already possessed; and he could not but be aware that, ifhe became primate, he should incur the bitterest hatred of a powerfulparty, and should become a mark for obloquy, from which his gentleand sensitive nature shrank as from the rack or the wheel. William wasearnest and resolute. "It is necessary, " he said, "for my service; andI must lay on your conscience the responsibility of refusing me yourhelp. " Here the conversation ended. It was, indeed, not necessary thatthe point should be immediately decided; for several months were stillto elapse before the Archbishopric would be vacant. 

Tillotson bemoaned himself with unfeigned anxiety and sorrow to LadyRussell, whom, of all human beings, he most honoured and trusted, [504]He hoped, he said, that he was not inclined to shrink from the serviceof the Church; but he was convinced that his present line of service wasthat in which he could be most useful. If he should be forced to acceptso high and so invidious a post as the primacy, he should soon sinkunder the load of duties and anxieties too heavy for his strength. Hisspirits, and with his spirits his abilities, would fail him. He gentlycomplained of Burnet, who loved and admired him with a truly generousheartiness, and who had laboured to persuade both the King andQueen that there was in England only one man fit for the highestecclesiastical dignity. "The Bishop of Salisbury, " said Tillotson, "isone of the best and worst friends that I know. "

Nothing that was not a secret to Burnet was likely to be long a secretto any body. It soon began to be whispered about that the King hadfixed on Tillotson to fill the place of Sancroft. The news caused cruelmortification to Compton, who, not unnaturally, conceived that his ownclaims were unrivalled. He had educated the Queen and her sister; andto the instruction which they had received from him might fairly beascribed, at least in part, the firmness with which, in spite of theinfluence of their father, they had adhered to the established religion. Compton was, moreover, the only prelate who, during the late reign, hadraised his voice in Parliament against the dispensing power, the onlyprelate who had been suspended by the High Commission, the only prelatewho had signed the invitation to the Prince of Orange, the only prelatewho had actually taken arms against Popery and arbitrary power, theonly prelate, save one, who had voted against a Regency. Among theecclesiastics of the Province of Canterbury who had taken the oaths, he was highest in rank. He had therefore held, during some months, avicarious primacy: he had crowned the new Sovereigns: he had consecratedthe new Bishops: he was about to preside in the Convocation. It may beadded, that he was the son of an Earl; and that no person of equallyhigh birth then sate, or had ever sate, since the Reformation, on theepiscopal bench. That the government should put over his head a priestof his own diocese, who was the son of a Yorkshire clothier, and who wasdistinguished only by abilities and virtues, was provoking; and Compton, though by no means a badhearted man, was much provoked. Perhaps hisvexation was increased by the reflection that he had, for the sake ofthose by whom he was thus slighted, done some things which had strainedhis conscience and sullied his reputation, that he had at one timepractised the disingenuous arts of a diplomatist, and at another timegiven scandal to his brethren by wearing the buff coat and jackboots ofa trooper. He could not accuse Tillotson of inordinate ambition. But, though Tillotson was most unwilling to accept the Archbishopric himself, he did not use his influence in favour of Compton, but earnestlyrecommended Stillingfleet as the man fittest to preside over the Churchof England. The consequence was that, on the eve of the meeting ofConvocation, the Bishop who was to be at the head of the Upper Housebecame the personal enemy of the presbyter whom the government wished tosee at the head of the Lower House. This quarrel added new difficultiesto difficulties which little needed any addition, [505]

It was not till the twentieth of November that the Convocation met forthe despatch of business. The place of meeting had generally been SaintPaul's Cathedral. But Saint Paul's Cathedral was slowly rising fromits ruins; and, though the dome already towered high above the hundredsteeples of the City, the choir had not yet been opened for publicworship. The assembly therefore sate at Westminster, [506] A table wasplaced in the beautiful chapel of Henry the Seventh. Compton was inthe chair. On his right and left those suffragans of Canterbury whohad taken the oaths were ranged in gorgeous vestments of scarletand miniver. Below the table was assembled the crowd of presbyters. Beveridge preached a Latin sermon, in which he warmly eulogized theexisting system, and yet declared himself favourable to a moderatereform. Ecclesiastical laws were, he said, of two kinds. Some laws werefundamental and eternal: they derived their authority from God; norcould any religious community repeal them without ceasing to form a partof the universal Church. Other laws were local and temporary. They hadbeen framed by human wisdom, and might be altered by human wisdom. Theyought not indeed to be altered without grave reasons. But surely, atthat moment, such reasons were not wanting. To unite a scattered flockin one fold under one shepherd, to remove stumbling blocks from the pathof the weak, to reconcile hearts long estranged, to restore spiritualdiscipline to its primitive vigour, to place the best and purest ofChristian societies on a base broad enough to stand against all theattacks of earth and hell, these were objects which might well justifysome modification, not of Catholic institutions, but of national orprovincial usages, [507]

The Lower House, having heard this discourse, proceeded to appointa Prolocutor. Sharp, who was probably put forward by the membersfavourable to a comprehension as one of the highest churchmen amongthem, proposed Tillotson. Jane, who had refused to act under theRoyal Commission, was proposed on the other side. After some animateddiscussion, Jane was elected by fifty-five votes to twenty-eight, [508]

The Prolocutor was formally presented to the Bishop of London, andmade, according to ancient usage, a Latin oration. In this oration theAnglican Church was extolled as the most perfect of all institutions. There was a very intelligible intimation that no change whatever in herdoctrine, her discipline, or her ritual was required; and the discourseconcluded with a most significant sentence. Compton, when a few monthsbefore he exhibited himself in the somewhat unclerical character ofa colonel of horse, had ordered the colours of his regiment to beembroidered with the well known words "Nolumus leges Angliae mutari";and with these words Jane closed his peroration, [509]

Still the Low Churchmen did not relinquish all hope. They very wiselydetermined to begin by proposing to substitute lessons taken from thecanonical books for the lessons taken from the Apocrypha. It should seemthat this was a suggestion which, even if there had not been a singledissenter in the kingdom, might well have been received with favour. Forthe Church had, in her sixth Article, declared that the canonical bookswere, and that the Apocryphal books were not, entitled to be called HolyScriptures, and to be regarded as the rule of faith. Even this reform, however, the High Churchmen were determined to oppose. They asked, in pamphlets which covered the counters of Paternoster Row and LittleBritain, why country congregations should be deprived of the pleasure ofhearing about the ball of pitch with which Daniel choked the dragon, and about the fish whose liver gave forth such a fume as sent the devilflying from Ecbatana to Egypt. And were there not chapters of theWisdom of the Son of Sirach far more interesting and edifying thanthe genealogies and muster rolls which made up a large part of theChronicles of the Jewish Kings and of the narrative of Nehemiah?No grave divine however would have liked to maintain, in Henry theSeventh's Chapel, that it was impossible to find, in many hundreds ofpages dictated by the Holy Spirit, fifty or sixty chapters more edifyingthan any thing which could be extracted from the works of the mostrespectable uninspired moralist or historian. The leaders of themajority therefore determined to shun a debate in which they must havebeen reduced to a disagreeable dilemma. Their plan was, not toreject the recommendations of the Commissioners, but to prevent thoserecommendations from being discussed; and with this view a system oftactics was adopted which proved successful. 

The law, as it had been interpreted during a long course of years, prohibited the Convocation from even deliberating on any ecclesiasticalordinance without a previous warrant from the Crown. Such a warrant, sealed with the great seal, was brought in form to Henry the Seventh'sChapel by Nottingham. He at the same time delivered a message from theKing. His Majesty exhorted the assembly to consider calmly and withoutprejudice the recommendations of the Commission, and declared thathe had nothing in view but the honour and advantage of the Protestantreligion in general, and of the Church of England in particular, [510]

The Bishops speedily agreed on an address of thanks for the royalmessage, and requested the concurrence of the Lower House. Jane andhis adherents raised objection after objection. First they claimed theprivilege of presenting a separate address. When they were forced towaive this claim, they refused to agree to any expression which importedthat the Church of England had any fellowship with any other Protestantcommunity. Amendments and reasons were sent backward and forward. Conferences were held at which Burnet on one side and Jane on the otherwere the chief speakers. At last, with great difficulty, a compromisewas made; and an address, cold and ungracious compared with that whichthe Bishops had framed, was presented to the King in the BanquetingHouse. He dissembled his vexation, returned a kind answer, and intimateda hope that the assembly would now at length proceed to consider thegreat question of Comprehension, [511]

Such however was not the intention of the leaders of the Lower House. As soon as they were again in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, one of themraised a debate about the nonjuring bishops. In spite of the unfortunatescruple which those prelates entertained, they were learned and holymen. Their advice might, at this conjuncture, be of the greatest serviceto the Church. The Upper House was hardly an Upper House in the absenceof the Primate and of many of his most respectable suffragans. Couldnothing be done to remedy this evil? [512] Another member complained ofsome pamphlets which had lately appeared, and in which the Convocationwas not treated with proper deference. The assembly took fire. Was itnot monstrous that this heretical and schismatical trash should be criedby the hawkers about the streets, and should be exposed to sale in thebooths of Westminster Hall, within a hundred yards of the Prolocutor'schair? The work of mutilating the Liturgy and of turning cathedrals intoconventicles might surely be postponed till the Synod had taken measuresto protect its own freedom and dignity. It was then debated how theprinting of such scandalous books should be prevented. Some werefor indictments, some for ecclesiastical censures, [513] In suchdeliberations as these week after week passed away. Not a singleproposition tending to a Comprehension had been even discussed. Christmas was approaching. At Christmas there was to be a recess. TheBishops were desirous that, during the recess, a committee should sit toprepare business. The Lower House refused to consent, [514] That House, it was now evident, was fully determined not even to enter on theconsideration of any part of the plan which had been framed by the RoyalCommissioners. The proctors of the dioceses were in a worse humour thanwhen they first came up to Westminster. Many of them had probably neverbefore passed a week in the capital, and had not been aware how greatthe difference was between a town divine and a country divine. The sightof the luxuries and comforts enjoyed by the popular preachers of thecity raised, not unnaturally, some sore feeling in a Lincolnshire orCaernarvonshire vicar who was accustomed to live as hardly as smallfarmer. The very circumstance that the London clergy were generally fora comprehension made the representatives of the rural clergy obstinateon the other side, [515] The prelates were, as a body, sincerelydesirous that some concession might be made to the nonconformists. Butthe prelates were utterly unable to curb the mutinous democracy. Theywere few in number. Some of them were objects of extreme dislike to theparochial clergy. The President had not the full authority of a primate;nor was he sorry to see those who had, as he concerned, used him ill, thwarted and mortified. It was necessary to yield. The Convocationwas prorogued for six weeks. When those six weeks had expired, it wasprorogued again; and many years elapsed before it was permitted totransact business. 

So ended, and for ever, the hope that the Church of England might beinduced to make some concession to the scruples of the nonconformists. Alearned and respectable minority of the clerical order relinquishedthat hope with deep regret. Yet in a very short time even Barnet andTillotson found reason to believe that their defeat was really anescape, and that victory would have been a disaster. A reform, such as, in the days of Elizabeth, would have united the great body of EnglishProtestants, would, in the days of William, have alienated more heartsthan it would have conciliated. The schism which the oaths had producedwas, as yet, insignificant. Innovations such as those proposed by theRoyal Commissioners would have given it a terrible importance. As yeta layman, though he might think the proceedings of the Conventionunjustifiable, and though he might applaud the virtue of the nonjuringclergy, still continued to sit under the accustomed pulpit, and to kneelat the accustomed altar. But if, just at this conjuncture, while hismind was irritated by what he thought the wrong done to his favouritedivines, and while he was perhaps doubting whether he ought not tofollow them, his ears and eyes had been shocked by changes in theworship to which he was fondly attached, if the compositions ofthe doctors of the Jerusalem Chamber had taken the place of the oldcollects, if he had seen clergymen without surplices carrying thechalice and the paten up and down the aisle to seated communicants, thetie which bound him to the Established Church would have been dissolved. He would have repaired to some nonjuring assembly, where the servicewhich he loved was performed without mutilation. The new sect, whichas yet consisted almost exclusively of priests, would soon have beenswelled by numerous and large congregations; and in those congregationswould have been found a much greater proportion of the opulent, of thehighly descended, and of the highly educated, than any other body ofdissenters could show. The Episcopal schismatics, thus reinforced, wouldprobably have been as formidable to the new King and his successors asever the Puritan schismatics had been to the princes of the House ofStuart. It is an indisputable and a most instructive fact, that we are, in a great measure, indebted for the civil and religious liberty whichwe enjoy to the pertinacity with which the High Church party, inthe Convocation of 1689, refused even to deliberate on any plan ofComprehension, [516]

CHAPTER XV

 The Parliament meets; Retirement of Halifax--Supplies voted--The Bill of Rights passed--Inquiry into Naval Abuses--Inquiry into the Conduct of the Irish War--Reception of Walker in England--Edmund Ludlow--Violence of the Whigs--Impeachments--Committee of Murder--Malevolence of John Hampden--The Corporation Bill--Debates on the Indemnity Bill--Case of Sir Robert Sawyer--The King purposes to retire to Holland--He is induced to change his Intention; the Whigs oppose his going to Ireland--He prorogues the Parliament--Joy of the Tories--Dissolution and General Election--Changes in the Executive Departments--Caermarthen Chief Minister--Sir John Lowther--Rise and Progress of Parliamentary Corruption in England--Sir John Trevor--Godolphin retires; Changes at the Admiralty--Changes in the Commissions of Lieutenancy--Temper of the Whigs; Dealings of some Whigs with Saint Germains; Shrewsbury; Ferguson--Hopes of the Jacobites--Meeting of the new Parliament; Settlement of the Revenue--Provision for the Princess of Denmark--Bill declaring the Acts of the preceding Parliament valid--Debate on the Changes in the Lieutenancy of London--Abjuration Bill--Act of Grace--The Parliament prorogued; Preparations for the first War--Administration of James at Dublin--An auxiliary Force sent from France to Ireland--Plan of the English Jacobites; Clarendon, Aylesbury, Dartmouth--Penn--Preston--The Jacobites betrayed by Fuller--Crone arrested--Difficulties of William--Conduct of Shrewsbury--The Council of Nine--Conduct of Clarendon--Penn held to Bail--Interview between William and Burnet; William sets out for Ireland--Trial of Crone--Danger of Invasion and Insurrection; Tourville's Fleet in the--Channel--Arrests of suspected Persons--Torrington ordered to give Battle to Tourville--Battle of Beachy Head--Alarm in London; Battle of Fleurus--Spirit of the Nation--Conduct of Shrewsbury

WHILE the Convocation was wrangling on one side of Old Palace Yard, theParliament was wrangling even more fiercely on the other. The Houses, which had separated on the twentieth of August, had met again on thenineteenth of October. On the day of meeting an important change struckevery eye. Halifax was no longer on the woolsack. He had reason toexpect that the persecution, from which in the preceding session he hadnarrowly escaped, would be renewed. The events which had taken placeduring the recess, and especially the disasters of the campaign inIreland, had furnished his persecutors with fresh means of annoyance. His administration had not been successful; and, though his failure waspartly to be ascribed to causes against which no human wisdom could havecontended, it was also partly to be ascribed to the peculiarities of histemper and of his intellect. It was certain that a large party in theCommons would attempt to remove him; and he could no longer dependon the protection of his master. It was natural that a prince who wasemphatically a man of action should become weary of a minister who was aman of speculation. Charles, who went to Council as he went to the play, solely to be amused, was delighted with an adviser who had a hundredpleasant and ingenious things to say on both sides of every question. But William had no taste for disquisitions and disputations, howeverlively and subtle, which occupied much time and led to no conclusion. Itwas reported, and is not improbable, that on one occasion he couldnot refrain from expressing in sharp terms at the council board hisimpatience at what seemed to him a morbid habit of indecision, [517]Halifax, mortified by his mischances in public life, dejected bydomestic calamities, disturbed by apprehensions of an impeachment, andno longer supported by royal favour, became sick of public life, and began to pine for the silence and solitude of his seat inNottinghamshire, an old Cistercian Abbey buried deep among woods. Earlyin October it was known that he would no longer preside in the UpperHouse. It was at the same time whispered as a great secret that he meantto retire altogether from business, and that he retained the Privy Sealonly till a successor should be named. Chief Baron Atkyns was appointedSpeaker of the Lords, [518]

On some important points there appeared to be no difference of opinionin the legislature. The Commons unanimously resolved that they wouldstand by the King in the work of reconquering Ireland, and that theywould enable him to prosecute with vigour the war against France, [519]With equal unanimity they voted an extraordinary supply of two millions, [520] It was determined that the greater part of this sum should belevied by an assessment on real property. The rest was to be raisedpartly by a poll tax, and partly by new duties on tea, coffee andchocolate. It was proposed that a hundred thousand pounds should beexacted from the Jews; and this proposition was at first favourablyreceived by the House: but difficulties arose. The Jews presented apetition in which they declared that they could not afford to pay such asum, and that they would rather leave the kingdom than stay there tobe ruined. Enlightened politicians could not but perceive that specialtaxation, laid on a small class which happens to be rich, unpopular anddefenceless, is really confiscation, and must ultimately improverishrather than enrich the State. After some discussion, the Jew tax wasabandoned, [521]

The Bill of Rights, which, in the last Session, had, after causingmuch altercation between the Houses, been suffered to drop, was againintroduced, and was speedily passed. The peers no longer insisted thatany person should be designated by name as successor to the crown, ifMary, Anne and William should all die without posterity. During elevenyears nothing more was heard of the claims of the House of Brunswick. 

The Bill of Rights contained some provisions which deserve specialmention. The Convention had resolved that it was contrary to theinterest of the kingdom to be governed by a Papist, but had prescribedno test which could ascertain whether a prince was or was not a Papist. The defect was now supplied. It was enacted that every English sovereignshould, in full Parliament, and at the coronation, repeat and subscribethe Declaration against Transubstantiation. 

It was also enacted that no person who should marry a Papist should becapable of reigning in England, and that, if the Sovereign should marrya Papist, the subject should be absolved from allegiance. Burnet boaststhat this part of the Bill of Rights was his work. He had little reasonto boast: for a more wretched specimen of legislative workmanship willnot easily be found. In the first place, no test is prescribed. Whetherthe consort of a Sovereign has taken the oath of supremacy, has signedthe declaration against transubstantiation, has communicated accordingto the ritual of the Church of England, are very simple issues offact. But whether the consort of a Sovereign is or is not a Papist isa question about which people may argue for ever. What is a Papist?The word is not a word of definite signification either in law or intheology. It is merely a popular nickname, and means very differentthings in different mouths. Is every person a Papist who is willing toconcede to the Bishop of Rome a primacy among Christian prelates? If so, James the First, Charles the First, Laud, Heylyn, were Papists, [522] Oris the appellation to be confined to persons who hold the ultramontanedoctrines touching the authority of the Holy See? If so, neither Bossuetnor Pascal was a Papist. 

What again is the legal effect of the words which absolve the subjectfrom his allegiance? Is it meant that a person arraigned for hightreason may tender evidence to prove that the Sovereign has marrieda Papist? Would Whistlewood, for example, have been entitled to anacquittal, if he could have proved that King George the Fourth hadmarried Mrs. Fitzherbert, and that Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Papist? Itis not easy to believe that any tribunal would have gone into such aquestion. Yet to what purpose is it to enact that, in a certain case, the subject shall be absolved from his allegiance, if the tribunalbefore which he is tried for a violation of his allegiance is not to gointo the question whether that case has arisen?

The question of the dispensing power was treated in a very differentmanner, was fully considered, and was finally settled in the only way inwhich it could be settled. The Declaration of Right had gone no furtherthan to pronounce that the dispensing power, as of late exercised, wasillegal. That a certain dispensing power belonged to the Crown was aproposition sanctioned by authorities and precedents of which even Whiglawyers could not speak without respect; but as to the precise extentof this power hardly any two jurists were agreed; and every attemptto frame a definition had failed. At length by the Bill of Rights theanomalous prerogative which had caused so many fierce disputes wasabsolutely and for ever taken away, [523]

In the House of Commons there was, as might have been expected, a seriesof sharp debates on the misfortunes of the autumn. The negligenceor corruption of the Navy Board, the frauds of the contractors, therapacity of the captains of the King's ships, the losses of the Londonmerchants, were themes for many keen speeches. There was indeed reasonfor anger. A severe inquiry, conducted by William in person at theTreasury, had just elicited the fact that much of the salt with whichthe meat furnished to the fleet had been cured had been by accidentmixed with galls such as are used for the purpose of making ink. The victuallers threw the blame on the rats, and maintained that theprovisions thus seasoned, though certainly disagreeable to the palate, were not injurious to health, [524] The Commons were in no temperto listen to such excuses. Several persons who had been concernedin cheating the government and poisoning the sailors were taken intocustody by the Serjeant, [525] But no censure was passed on the chiefoffender, Torrington, nor does it appear that a single voice was raisedagainst him. He had personal friends in both parties. He had manypopular qualities. Even his vices were not those which excite publichatred. The people readily forgave a courageous openhanded sailor forbeing too fond of his bottle, his boon companions and his mistresses anddid not sufficiently consider how great must be the perils of a countryof which the safety depends on a man sunk in indolence, stupified bywine, enervated by licentiousness, ruined by prodigality, and enslavedby sycophants and harlots. 

The sufferings of the army in Ireland called forth strong expressionsof sympathy and indignation. The Commons did justice to the firmnessand wisdom with which Schomberg had conducted the most arduous of allcampaigns. That he had not achieved more was attributed chiefly to thevillany of the Commissariat. The pestilence itself it was said, wouldhave been no serious calamity if it had not been aggravated by thewickedness of man. The disease had generally spared those who had warmgarments and bedding, and had swept away by thousands those who werethinly clad and who slept on the wet ground. Immense sums had been drawnout of the Treasury: yet the pay of the troops was in arrear. Hundredsof horses, tens of thousands of shoes, had been paid for by the public:yet the baggage was left behind for want of beasts to draw it; and thesoldiers were marching barefoot through the mire. Seventeen hundredpounds had been charged to the government for medicines: yet the commondrugs with which every apothecary in the smallest market town wasprovided were not to be found in the plaguestricken camp. The cryagainst Shales was loud. An address was carried to the throne, requesting that he might be sent for to England, and that his accountsand papers might be secured. With this request the King readilycomplied; but the Whig majority was not satisfied. By whom had Shalesbeen recommended for so important a place as that of Commissary General?He had been a favourite at Whitehall in the worst times. He had beenzealous for the Declaration of Indulgence. Why had this creature ofJames been entrusted with the business of catering for the army ofWilliam? It was proposed by some of those who were bent on driving allTories and Trimmers from office to ask His Majesty by whose advice aman so undeserving of the royal confidence had been employed. The mostmoderate and judicious Whigs pointed out the indecency and impolicyof interrogating the King, and of forcing him either to accuse hisministers or to quarrel with the representatives of his people. "AdviseHis Majesty, if you will, " said Somers, "to withdraw his confidencefrom the counsellors who recommended this unfortunate appointment. Suchadvice, given, as we should probably give it, unanimously, must havegreat weight with him. But do not put to him a question such as noprivate gentleman would willingly answer. Do not force him, in defenceof his own personal dignity, to protect the very men whom you wish himto discard. " After a hard fight of two days, and several divisions, theaddress was carried by a hundred and ninety five votes to a hundred andforty six, [526] The King, as might have been foreseen, coldly refusedto turn informer; and the House did not press him further, [527] Toanother address, which requested that a Commission might be sent toexamine into the state of things in Ireland, William returned a verygracious answer, and desired the Commons to name the Commissioners. TheCommons, not to be outdone in courtesy, excused themselves, and left itto His Majesty's wisdom to select the fittest persons, [528]

In the midst of the angry debates on the Irish war a pleasing incidentproduced for a moment goodhumour and unanimity. Walker had arrived inLondon, and had been received there with boundless enthusiasm. Hisface was in every print shop. Newsletters describing his person and hisdemeanour were sent to every corner of the kingdom. Broadsides ofprose and verse written in his praise were cried in every street. TheCompanies of London feasted him splendidly in their halls. The commonpeople crowded to gaze on him wherever he moved, and almost stifled himwith rough caresses. Both the Universities offered him the degree ofDoctor of Divinity. Some of his admirers advised him to present himselfat the palace in that military garb in which he had repeatedly headedthe sallies of his fellow townsmen. But, with a better judgment thanhe sometimes showed, he made his appearance at Hampton Court in thepeaceful robe of his profession, was most graciously received, and waspresented with an order for five thousand pounds. "And do not think, Doctor, " William said, with great benignity, "that I offer you this sumas payment for your services. I assure you that I consider your claimson me as not at all diminished. " [529]

It is true that amidst the general applause the voice of detraction madeitself heard. The defenders of Londonderry were men of two nationsand of two religions. During the siege, hatred of the Irishry hadheld together all Saxons; and hatred of Popery had held together allProtestants. But, when the danger was over, the Englishman and theScotchman, the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian, began to wrangle aboutthe distribution of praises and rewards. The dissenting preachers, whohad zealously assisted Walker in the hour of peril, complained that, in the account which he published of the siege, he had, thoughacknowledging that they had done good service, omitted to mentiontheir names. The complaint was just; and, had it been made in languagebecoming Christians and gentlemen, would probably have produced aconsiderable effect on the public mind. But Walker's accusers in theirresentment disregarded truth and decency, used scurrilous language, brought calumnious accusations which were triumphantly refuted, andthus threw away the advantage which they had possessed. Walker defendedhimself with moderation and candour. His friends fought his battle withvigour, and retaliated keenly on his assailants. At Edinburgh perhapsthe public opinion might have been against him. But in London thecontroversy seems only to have raised his character. He was regardedas an Anglican divine of eminent merit, who, after having heroicallydefended his religion against an army of Popish Rapparees, was rabbledby a mob of Scotch Covenanters, [530]

He presented to the Commons a petition setting forth the destitutecondition to which the widows and orphans of some brave men who hadfallen during the siege were now reduced. The Commons instantly passeda vote of thanks to him, and resolved to present to the King an addressrequesting that ten thousand pounds might be distributed among thefamilies whose sufferings had been so touchingly described. The next dayit was rumoured about the benches that Walker was in the lobby. He wascalled in. The Speaker, with great dignity and grace, informed him thatthe House had made haste to comply with his request, commended himin high terms for having taken on himself to govern and defend a citybetrayed by its proper governors and defenders, and charged him to tellthose who had fought under him that their fidelity and valour wouldalways be held in grateful remembrance by the Commons of England, [531]

About the same time the course of parliamentary business was diversifiedby another curious and interesting episode, which, like the former, sprang out of the events of the Irish war. In the preceding spring, when every messenger from Ireland brought evil tidings, and when theauthority of James was acknowledged in every part of that kingdom, except behind the ramparts of Londonderry and on the banks of LoughErne, it was natural that Englishmen should remember with how terriblean energy the great Puritan warriors of the preceding generation hadcrushed the insurrection of the Celtic race. The names of Cromwell, ofIreton, and of the other chiefs of the conquering army, were in manymouths. One of those chiefs, Edmund Ludlow, was still living. Attwenty-two he had served as a volunteer in the parliamentary army; atthirty he had risen to the rank of Lieutenant General. He was now old;but the vigour of his mind was unimpaired. His courage was of thetruest temper; his understanding strong, but narrow. What he saw hesaw clearly: but he saw not much at a glance. In an age of perfidy andlevity, he had, amidst manifold temptations and dangers, adhered firmlyto the principles of his youth. His enemies could not deny that his lifehad been consistent, and that with the same spirit with which he hadstood up against the Stuarts he had stood up against the Cromwells. There was but a single blemish on his fame: but that blemish, in theopinion of the great majority of his countrymen, was one for which nomerit could compensate and which no time could efface. His name and sealwere on the death warrant of Charles the First. 

After the Restoration, Ludlow found a refuge on the shores of the Lakeof Geneva. He was accompanied thither by another member of the HighCourt of Justice, John Lisle, the husband of that Alice Lisle whosedeath has left a lasting stain on the memory of James the Second. Buteven in Switzerland the regicides were not safe. A large price wasset on their heads; and a succession of Irish adventurers, inflamed bynational and religious animosity, attempted to earn the bribe. Lislefell by the hand of one of these assassins. But Ludlow escaped unhurtfrom all the machinations of his enemies. A small knot of vehement anddetermined Whigs regarded him with a veneration, which increased asyears rolled away, and left him almost the only survivor, certainly themost illustrious survivor, of a mighty race of men, the conquerors ina terrible civil war, the judges of a king, the founders of a republic. More than once he had been invited by the enemies of the House of Stuartto leave his asylum, to become their captain, and to give the signal forrebellion: but he had wisely refused to take any part in the desperateenterprises which the Wildmans and Fergusons were never weary ofplanning, [532]

The Revolution opened a new prospect to him. The right of the people toresist oppression, a right which, during many years, no man couldassert without exposing himself to ecclesiastical anathemas and to civilpenalties, had been solemnly recognised by the Estates of the realm, andhad been proclaimed by Garter King at Arms on the very spot where thememorable scaffold had been set up forty years before. James had not, indeed, like Charles, died the death of a traitor. Yet the punishment ofthe son might seem to differ from the punishment of the father rather indegree than in principle. Those who had recently waged war on a tyrant, who had turned him out of his palace, who had frightened him out of hiscountry, who had deprived him of his crown, might perhaps think that thecrime of going one step further had been sufficiently expiated by thirtyyears of banishment. Ludlow's admirers, some of whom appear to havebeen in high public situations, assured him that he might safely ventureover, nay, that he might expect to be sent in high command to Ireland, where his name was still cherished by his old soldiers and by theirchildren, [533] He came and early in September it was known that hewas in London, [534] But it soon appeared that he and his friends hadmisunderstood the temper of the English people. By all, except a smallextreme section of the Whig party, the act, in which he had borne a partnever to be forgotten, was regarded, not merely with the disapprobationdue to a great violation of law and justice, but with horror such aseven the Gunpowder Plot had not excited. The absurd and almost impiousservice which is still read in our churches on the thirtieth of Januaryhad produced in the minds of the vulgar a strange association of ideas. The sufferings of Charles were confounded with the sufferings of theRedeemer of mankind; and every regicide was a Judas, a Caiaphas or aHerod. It was true that, when Ludlow sate on the tribunal in WestminsterHall, he was an ardent enthusiast of twenty eight, and that he nowreturned from exile a greyheaded and wrinkled man in his seventiethyear. Perhaps, therefore, if he had been content to live in closeretirement, and to shun places of public resort, even zealous Royalistsmight not have grudged the old Republican a grave in his native soil. But he had no thought of hiding himself. It was soon rumoured that oneof those murderers, who had brought on England guilt, for which sheannually, in sackcloth and ashes, implored God not to enter intojudgment with her, was strutting about the streets of her capital, andboasting that he should ere long command her armies. His lodgings, itwas said, were the head quarters of the most noted enemies of monarchyand episcopacy, [535] The subject was brought before the House ofCommons. The Tory members called loudly for justice on the traitor. Noneof the Whigs ventured to say a word in his defence. One or two faintlyexpressed a doubt whether the fact of his return had been proved byevidence such as would warrant a parliamentary proceeding. The objectionwas disregarded. It was resolved, without a division, that the Kingshould be requested to issue a proclamation for the apprehending ofLudlow. Seymour presented the address; and the King promised to do whatwas asked. Some days however elapsed before the proclamation appeared, [536] Ludlow had time to make his escape, and again hid himself in hisAlpine retreat, never again to emerge. English travellers are stilltaken to see his house close to the lake, and his tomb in a church amongthe vineyards which overlook the little town of Vevay. On the house wasformerly legible an inscription purporting that to him to whom God is afather every land is a fatherland; [537] and the epitaph on the tombstill attests the feelings with which the stern old Puritan to the lastregarded the people of Ireland and the House of Stuart. 

Tories and Whigs had concurred, or had affected to concur, in payinghonour to Walker and in putting a brand on Ludlow. But the feud betweenthe two parties was more bitter than ever. The King had entertained ahope that, during the recess, the animosities which had in the precedingsession prevented an Act of Indemnity from passing would have beenmitigated. On the day on which the Houses reassembled, he had pressedthem earnestly to put an end to the fear and discord which could nevercease to exist, while great numbers held their property and theirliberty, and not a few even their lives, by an uncertain tenure. Hisexhortation proved of no effect. October, November, December passedaway; and nothing was done. An Indemnity Bill indeed had been broughtin, and read once; but it had ever since lain neglected on the table ofthe House, [538] Vindictive as had been the mood in which the Whigs hadleft Westminster, the mood in which they returned was more vindictivestill. Smarting from old sufferings, drunk with recent prosperity, burning with implacable resentment, confident of irresistible strength, they were not less rash and headstrong than in the days of the ExclusionBill. Sixteen hundred and eighty was come again. Again all compromisewas rejected. Again the voices of the wisest and most upright friendsof liberty were drowned by the clamour of hotheaded and designingagitators. Again moderation was despised as cowardice, or execrated astreachery. All the lessons taught by a cruel experience were forgotten. The very same men who had expiated, by years of humiliation, ofimprisonment, of penury, of exile, the folly with which they had misusedthe advantage given them by the Popish plot, now misused with equalfolly the advantage given them by the Revolution. The second madnesswould, in all probability, like the first, have ended in theirproscription, dispersion, decimation, but for the magnanimity andwisdom of that great prince, who, bent on fulfilling his mission, andinsensible alike to flattery and to outrage, coldly and inflexibly savedthem in their own despite. 

It seemed that nothing but blood would satisfy them. The aspect andthe temper of the House of Commons reminded men of the time ofthe ascendency of Oates; and, that nothing might be wanting to theresemblance, Oates himself was there. As a witness, indeed, he could nowrender no service: but he had caught the scent of carnage, and came togloat on the butchery in which he could no longer take an active part. His loathsome features were again daily seen, and his well known "AhLaard, ah Laard!" was again daily heard in the lobbies and in thegallery, [539] The House fell first on the renegades of the late reign. Of those renegades the Earls of Peterborough and Salisbury were thehighest in rank, but were also the lowest in intellect: for Salisburyhad always been an idiot; and Peterborough had long been a dotard. Itwas however resolved by the Commons that both had, by joining the Churchof Rome, committed high treason, and that both should be impeached, [540] A message to that effect was sent to the Lords. Poor oldPeterborough was instantly taken into custody, and was sent, totteringon a crutch, and wrapped up in woollen stuffs, to the Tower. The nextday Salisbury was brought to the bar of his peers. He muttered somethingabout his youth and his foreign education, and was then sent to bearPeterborough company, [541] The Commons had meanwhile passed on tooffenders of humbler station and better understanding. Sir Edward Haleswas brought before them. He had doubtless, by holding office in defianceof the Test Act, incurred heavy penalties. But these penalties fell farshort of what the revengeful spirit of the victorious party demanded;and he was committed as a traitor, [542] Then Obadiah Walker was led in. He behaved with a pusillanimity and disingenuousness which deprived himof all claim to respect or pity. He protested that he had never changedhis religion, that his opinions had always been and still were those ofsome highly respectable divines of the Church of England, and that therewere points on which he differed from the Papists. In spite of thisquibbling, he was pronounced guilty of high treason, and sent to prison, [543] Castlemaine was put next to the bar, interrogated, and committedunder a warrant which charged him with the capital crime of trying toreconcile the kingdom to the Church of Rome, [544]

In the meantime the Lords had appointed a Committee to Inquire whowere answerable for the deaths of Russell, of Sidney, and of some othereminent Whigs. Of this Committee, which was popularly called the MurderCommittee, the Earl of Stamford, a Whig who had been deeply concerned inthe plots formed by his party against the Stuarts, was chairman, [545]The books of the Council were inspected: the clerks of the Council wereexamined: some facts disgraceful to the Judges, to the Solicitors ofthe Treasury, to the witnesses for the Crown, and to the keepers of thestate prisons, were elicited: but about the packing of the juries noevidence could be obtained. The Sheriffs kept their own counsel. SirDudley North, in particular, underwent a most severe cross examinationwith characteristic clearness of head and firmness of temper, andsteadily asserted that he had never troubled himself about the politicalopinions of the persons whom he put on any panel, but had merelyinquired whether they were substantial citizens. He was undoubtedlylying; and so some of the Whig peers told him in very plain words andin very loud tones: but, though they were morally certain of his guilt, they could find no proofs which would support a criminal charge againsthim. The indelible stain however remains on his memory, and is still asubject of lamentation to those who, while loathing his dishonesty andcruelty, cannot forget that he was one of the most original, profoundand accurate thinkers of his age, [546]

Halifax, more fortunate than Dudley North, was completely cleared, notonly from legal, but also from moral guilt. He was the chief object ofattack; and yet a severe examination brought nothing to light that wasnot to his honour. Tillotson was called as a witness. He swore that hehad been the channel of communication between Halifax and Russell whenRussell was a prisoner in the Tower. "My Lord Halifax, " said the Doctor, "showed a very compassionate concern for my Lord Russell; and my LordRussell charged me with his last thanks for my Lord Halifax's humanityand kindness. " It was proved that the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth hadborne similar testimony to Halifax's good nature. One hostile witnessindeed was produced, John Hampden, whose mean supplications and enormousbribes had saved his neck from the halter. He was now a powerful andprosperous man: he was a leader of the dominant party in the House ofCommons; and yet he was one of the most unhappy beings on the face ofthe earth. The recollection of the pitiable figure which he had madeat the bar of the Old Bailey embittered his temper, and impelled himto avenge himself without mercy on those who had directly or indirectlycontributed to his humiliation. Of all the Whigs he was the mostintolerant and the most obstinately hostile to all plans of amnesty. The consciousness that he had disgraced himself made him jealous of hisdignity and quick to take offence. He constantly paraded his servicesand his sufferings, as if he hoped that this ostentatious display wouldhide from others the stain which nothing could hide from himself. Havingduring many months harangued vehemently against Halifax in the Houseof Commons, he now came to swear against Halifax before the Lords. Thescene was curious. The witness represented himself as having savedhis country, as having planned the Revolution, as having placed theirMajesties on the throne. He then gave evidence intended to show that hislife had been endangered by the machinations of the Lord Privy Seal: butthat evidence missed the mark at which it was aimed, and recoiled on himfrom whom it proceeded. Hampden was forced to acknowledge that he hadsent his wife to implore the intercession of the man whom he was nowpersecuting. "Is it not strange, " asked Halifax, "that you should haverequested the good offices of one whose arts had brought your head intoperil?" "Not at all, " said Hampden; "to whom was I to apply except tothe men who were in power? I applied to Lord Jeffreys: I applied toFather Petre; and I paid them six thousand pounds for their services. ""But did Lord Halifax take any money?" "No, I cannot say that he did. ""And, Mr. Hampden, did not you afterwards send your wife to thank himfor his kindness?" "Yes, I believe I did, " answered Hampden; "but I knowof no solid effects of that kindness. If there were any, I should beobliged to my Lord to tell me what they were. " Disgraceful as had beenthe appearance which this degenerate heir of an illustrious namehad made at the Old Bailey, the appearance which he made before theCommittee of Murder was more disgraceful still, [547] It is pleasing toknow that a person who had been far more cruelly wronged than he, butwhose nature differed widely from his, the nobleminded Lady Russell, remonstrated against the injustice with which the extreme Whigs treatedHalifax, [548]

The malice of John Hampden, however, was unwearied and unabashed. A fewdays later, in a committee of the whole House of Commons on the stateof the nation, he made a bitter speech, in which he ascribed all thedisasters of the year to the influence of the men who had, in the daysof the Exclusion Bill, been censured by Parliaments, of the men who hadattempted to mediate between James and William. The King, he said, oughtto dismiss from his counsels and presence all the three noblemen who hadbeen sent to negotiate with him at Hungerford. He went on to speakof the danger of employing men of republican principles. He doubtlessalluded to the chief object of his implacable malignity. For Halifax, though from temper averse to violent changes, was well known to be inspeculation a republican, and often talked, with much ingenuity andpleasantry, against hereditary monarchy. The only effect, however, ofthe reflection now thrown on him was to call forth a roar of derision. That a Hampden, that the grandson of the great leader of the LongParliament, that a man who boasted of having conspired with AlgernonSidney against the royal House, should use the word republican as a termof reproach! When the storm of laughter had subsided, several membersstood up to vindicate the accused statesmen. Seymour declared that, muchas he disapproved of the manner in which the administration had latelybeen conducted, he could not concur in the vote which John Hampden hadproposed. "Look where you will, " he said, "to Ireland, to Scotland, tothe navy, to the army, you will find abundant proofs of mismanagement. If the war is still to be conducted by the same hands, we can expectnothing but a recurrence of the same disasters. But I am not prepared toproscribe men for the best thing that they ever did in their lives, toproscribe men for attempting to avert a revolution by timely mediation. "It was justly said by another speaker that Halifax and Nottingham hadbeen sent to the Dutch camp because they possessed the confidence ofthe nation, because they were universally known to be hostile to thedispensing power, to the Popish religion, and to the French ascendency. It was at length resolved that the King should be requested in generalterms to find out and to remove the authors of the late miscarriages, [549] A committee was appointed to prepare an Address. John Hampden waschairman, and drew up a representation in terms so bitter that, when itwas reported to the House, his own father expressed disapprobation, andone member exclaimed: "This an address! It is a libel. " After a sharpdebate, the Address was recommitted, and was not again mentioned, [550]

Indeed, the animosity which a large part of the House had felt againstHalifax was beginning to abate. It was known that, though he had not yetformally delivered up the Privy Seal, he had ceased to be a confidentialadviser of the Crown. The power which he had enjoyed during the firstmonths of the reign of William and Mary had passed to the more daring, more unscrupulous and more practical Caermarthen, against whoseinfluence Shrewsbury contended in vain. Personally Shrewsbury stood highin the royal favour: but he was a leader of the Whigs, and, like allleaders of parties, was frequently pushed forward against his will bythose who seemed to follow him. He was himself inclined to a mild andmoderate policy: but he had not sufficient firmness to withstand theclamorous importunity with which such politicians as John Howe and JohnHampden demanded vengeance on their enemies. His advice had therefore, at this time, little weight with his master, who neither loved theTories nor trusted them, but who was fully determined not to proscribethem. 

Meanwhile the Whigs, conscious that they had lately sunk in the opinionboth of the King and of the nation, resolved on making a bold and craftyattempt to become independent of both. A perfect account of that attemptcannot be constructed out of the scanty and widely dispersed materialswhich have come down to us. Yet the story, as it has come down to us, isboth interesting and instructive. 

A bill for restoring the rights of those corporations which hadsurrendered their charters to the Crown during the last two reigns hadbeen brought into the House of Commons, had been received with generalapplause by men of all parties, had been read twice, and had beenreferred to a select committee, of which Somers was chairman. On thesecond of January Somers brought up the report. The attendance of Torieswas scanty: for, as no important discussion was expected, many countrygentlemen had left town, and were keeping a merry Christmas by thechimney fires of their manor houses. The muster of zealous Whigs wasstrong. As soon as the bill had been reported, Sacheverell, renowned inthe stormy parliaments of the reign of Charles the Second as one of theablest and keenest of the Exclusionists, stood up and moved to add aclause providing that every municipal functionary who had in any mannerbeen a party to the surrendering of the franchises of a borough shouldbe incapable for seven years of holding any office in that borough. The constitution of almost every corporate town in England had beenremodelled during that hot fit of loyalty which followed the detectionof the Rye House Plot; and, in almost every corporate town, the voiceof the Tories had been for delivering up the charter, and for trustingevery thing to the paternal care of the Sovereign. The effect ofSacheverell's clause, therefore, was to make some thousands of the mostopulent and highly considered men in the kingdom incapable, during sevenyears, of bearing any part in the government of the places in whichthey resided, and to secure to the Whig party, during seven years, anoverwhelming influence in borough elections. 

The minority exclaimed against the gross injustice of passing, rapidlyand by surprise, at a season when London was empty, a law of the highestimportance, a law which retrospectively inflicted a severe penalty onmany hundreds of respectable gentlemen, a law which would call forth thestrongest passions in every town from Berwick to St. Ives, a law whichmust have a serious effect on the composition of the House itself. Common decency required at least an adjournment. An adjournment wasmoved: but the motion was rejected by a hundred and twenty-seven votesto eighty-nine. The question was then put that Sacheverell's clauseshould stand part of the bill, and was carried by a hundred andthirty-three to sixty-eight. Sir Robert Howard immediately moved thatevery person who, being under Sacheverell's clause disqualified formunicipal office, should presume to take any such office, should forfeitfive hundred pounds, and should be for life incapable of holding anypublic employment whatever. The Tories did not venture to divide, [551]The rules of the House put it in the power of a minority to obstructthe progress of a bill; and this was assuredly one of the very rareoccasions on which that power would have been with great proprietyexerted. It does not appear, however, that the parliamentary tacticiansof that age were aware of the extent to which a small number of memberscan, without violating any form, retard the course of business. 

It was immediately resolved that the bill, enlarged by Sacheverell's andHoward's clauses, should be ingrossed. The most vehement Whigs were benton finally passing it within forty-eight hours. The Lords, indeed, werenot likely to regard it very favourably. But it should seem that somedesperate men were prepared to withhold the supplies till it shouldpass, nay, even to tack it to the bill of supply, and thus to placethe Upper House under the necessity of either consenting to a vastproscription of the Tories or refusing to the government the means ofcarrying on the war, [552] There were Whigs, however, honest enough towish that fair play should be given to the hostile party, and prudentenough to know that an advantage obtained by violence and cunning couldnot be permanent. These men insisted that at least a week should besuffered to elapse before the third reading, and carried their point. Their less scrupulous associates complained bitterly that the goodcause was betrayed. What new laws of war were these? Why was chivalrouscourtesy to be shown to foes who thought no stratagem immoral, and whohad never given quarter? And what had been done that was not in strictaccordance with the law of Parliament? That law knew nothing of shortnotices and long notices, of thin houses and full houses. It was thebusiness of a representative of the people to be in his place. If hechose to shoot and guzzle at his country seat when important businesswas under consideration at Westminster, what right had he to murmurbecause more upright and laborious servants of the public passed, in hisabsence, a bill which appeared to them necessary to the public safety?As however a postponement of a few days appeared to be inevitable, thosewho had intended to gain the victory by stealing a march now disclaimedthat intention. They solemnly assured the King, who could not helpshowing some displeasure at their conduct, and who felt much moredispleasure than he showed, that they had owed nothing to surprise, and that they were quite certain of a majority in the fullest house. Sacheverell is said to have declared with great warmth that he wouldstake his seat on the issue, and that if he found himself mistakenhe would never show his face in Parliament again. Indeed, the generalopinion at first was that the Whigs would win the day. But it soonbecame clear that the fight would be a hard one. The mails had carriedout along all the high roads the tidings that, on the second of January, the Commons had agreed to a retrospective penal law against the wholeTory party, and that, on the tenth, that law would be considered for thelast time. The whole kingdom was moved from Northumberland to Cornwall. A hundred knights and squires left their halls hung with mistletoe andholly, and their boards groaning with brawn and plum porridge, and rodeup post to town, cursing the short days, the cold weather, themiry roads and the villanous Whigs. The Whigs, too, brought upreinforcements, but not to the same extent; for the clauses weregenerally unpopular, and not without good cause. Assuredly no reasonableman of any party will deny that the Tories, in surrendering to the Crownall the municipal franchises of the realm, and, with those franchises, the power of altering the constitution of the House of Commons, committed a great fault. But in that fault the nation itself had beenan accomplice. If the Mayors and Aldermen whom it was now proposed topunish had, when the tide of loyal enthusiasm ran high, sturdily refusedto comply with the wish of their Sovereign, they would have beenpointed at in the street as Roundhead knaves, preached at by the Rector, lampooned in ballads, and probably burned in effigy before their owndoors. That a community should be hurried into errors alternately byfear of tyranny and by fear of anarchy is doubtless a great evil. Butthe remedy for that evil is not to punish for such errors some personswho have merely erred with the rest, and who have since repented withthe rest. Nor ought it to have been forgotten that the offendersagainst whom Sacheverell's clause was directed had, in 1688, made largeatonement for the misconduct of which they had been guilty in 1683. Theyhad, as a class, stood up firmly against the dispensing power; and mostof them had actually been turned out of their municipal offices by Jamesfor refusing to support his policy. It is not strange therefore thatthe attempt to inflict on all these men without exception a degradingpunishment should have raised such a storm of public indignation as manyWhig members of parliament were unwilling to face. 

As the decisive conflict drew near, and as the muster of the Toriesbecame hourly stronger and stronger, the uneasiness of Sacheverell andof his confederates increased. They found that they could hardly hopefor a complete victory. They must make some concession. They mustpropose to recommit the bill. They must declare themselves willingto consider whether any distinction could be made between the chiefoffenders and the multitudes who had been misled by evil example. But asthe spirit of one party fell the spirit of the other rose. The Tories, glowing with resentment which was but too just, were resolved to listento no terms of compromise. 

The tenth of January came; and, before the late daybreak of that season, the House was crowded. More than a hundred and sixty members had comeup to town within a week. From dawn till the candles had burned down totheir sockets the ranks kept unbroken order; and few members left theirseats except for a minute to take a crust of bread or a glass of claret. Messengers were in waiting to carry the result to Kensington, whereWilliam, though shaken by a violent cough, sate up till midnight, anxiously expecting the news, and writing to Portland, whom he had senton an important mission to the Hague. 

The only remaining account of the debate is defective and confused. Butfrom that account it appears that the excitement was great. Sharp thingswere said. One young Whig member used language so hot that he was indanger of being called to the bar. Some reflections were thrown on theSpeaker for allowing too much licence to his own friends. But in truthit mattered little whether he called transgressors to order or not. TheHouse had long been quite unmanageable; and veteran members bitterlyregretted the old gravity of debate and the old authority of the chair, [553] That Somers disapproved of the violence of the party to which hebelonged may be inferred, both from the whole course of his public life, and from the very significant fact that, though he had charge of theCorporation Bill, he did not move the penal clauses, but left thatungracious office to men more impetuous and less sagacious than himself. He did not however abandon his allies in this emergency, but spoke forthem, and tried to make the best of a very bad case. The House dividedseveral times. On the first division a hundred and seventy-four votedwith Sacheverell, a hundred and seventy-nine against him. Still thebattle was stubbornly kept up; but the majority increased from five toten, from ten to twelve, and from twelve to eighteen. Then at length, after a stormy sitting of fourteen hours, the Whigs yielded. It was nearmidnight when, to the unspeakable joy and triumph of the Tories, theclerk tore away from the parchment on which the bill had been engrossedthe odious clauses of Sacheverell and Howard, [554]

Emboldened by this great victory, the Tories made an attempt to pushforward the Indemnity Bill which had lain many weeks neglected on thetable, [555] But the Whigs, notwithstanding their recent defeat, werestill the majority of the House; and many members, who had shrunkfrom the unpopularity which they would have incurred by supporting theSacheverell clause and the Howard clause, were perfectly willing toassist in retarding the general pardon. They still propounded theirfavourite dilemma. How, they asked, was it possible to defend thisproject of amnesty without condemning the Revolution? Could it becontended that crimes which had been grave enough to justify resistancehad not been grave enough to deserve punishment? And, if those crimeswere of such magnitude that they could justly be visited on theSovereign whom the Constitution had exempted from responsibility, onwhat principle was immunity to be granted to his advisers and tools, who were beyond all doubt responsible? One facetious member put thisargument in a singular form. He contrived to place in the Speaker'schair a paper which, when examined, appeared to be a Bill of Indemnityfor King James, with a sneering preamble about the mercy which had, since the Revolution, been extended to more heinous offenders, and aboutthe indulgence due to a King, who, in oppressing his people, had onlyacted after the fashion of all Kings, [556]

On the same day on which this mock Bill of Indemnity disturbed thegravity of the Commons, it was moved that the House should go intoCommittee on the real Bill. The Whigs threw the motion out by a hundredand ninety-three votes to a hundred and fifty-six. They then proceededto resolve that a bill of pains and penalties against delinquents shouldbe forthwith brought in, and engrafted on the Bill of Indemnity, [557]

A few hours later a vote passed that showed more clearly than any thingthat had yet taken place how little chance there was that the publicmind would be speedily quieted by an amnesty. Few persons stood higherin the estimation of the Tory party than Sir Robert Sawyer. He was a manof ample fortune and aristocratical connections, of orthodox opinionsand regular life, an able and experienced lawyer, a well read scholar, and, in spite of a little pomposity, a good speaker. He had beenAttorney General at the time of the detection of the Rye House Plot; hehad been employed for the Crown in the prosecutions which followed; andhe had conducted those prosecutions with an eagerness which would, inour time, be called cruelty by all parties, but which, in his own time, and to his own party, seemed to be merely laudable zeal. His friendsindeed asserted that he was conscientious even to scrupulosity inmatters of life and death; [558] but this is an eulogy which persons whobring the feelings of the nineteenth century to the study of theState Trials of the seventeenth century will have some difficulty inunderstanding. The best excuse which can be made for this part of hislife is that the stain of innocent blood was common to him with almostall the eminent public men of those evil days. When we blame him forprosecuting Russell, we must not forget that Russell had prosecutedStafford. 

Great as Sawyer's offences were, he had made great atonement for them. He had stood up manfully against Popery and despotism; he had, inthe very presence chamber, positively refused to draw warrants incontravention of Acts of Parliament; he had resigned his lucrativeoffice rather than appear in Westminster Hall as the champion of thedispensing power; he had been the leading counsel for the seven Bishops;and he had, on the day of their trial, done his duty ably, honestly, andfearlessly. He was therefore a favourite with High Churchmen, and mightbe thought to have fairly earned his pardon from the Whigs. But theWhigs were not in a pardoning mood; and Sawyer was now called to accountfor his conduct in the case of Sir Thomas Armstrong. 

If Armstrong was not belied, he was deep in the worst secrets of theRye House Plot, and was one of those who undertook to slay the two royalbrothers. When the conspiracy was discovered, he fled to the Continentand was outlawed. The magistrates of Leyden were induced by a bribe todeliver him up. He was hurried on board of an English ship, carried toLondon, and brought before the King's Bench. Sawyer moved the Court toaward execution on the outlawry. Armstrong represented that a year hadnot yet elapsed since he had been outlawed, and that, by an Act passedin the reign of Edward the Sixth, an outlaw who yielded himself withinthe year was entitled to plead Not Guilty, and to put himself on hiscountry. To this it was answered that Armstrong had not yielded himself, that he had been dragged to the bar a prisoner, and that he had noright to claim a privilege which was evidently meant to be given onlyto persons who voluntarily rendered themselves up to public justice. Jeffreys and the other judges unanimously overruled Armstrong'sobjection, and granted the award of execution. Then followed one ofthe most terrible of the many terrible scenes which, in those times, disgraced our Courts. The daughter of the unhappy man was at his side. "My Lord, " she cried out, "you will not murder my father. This ismurdering a man. " "How now?" roared the Chief Justice. "Who is thiswoman? Take her, Marshal. Take her away. " She was forced out, cryingas she went, "God Almighty's judgments light on you!" "God Almighty'sjudgment, " said Jeffreys, "will light on traitors. Thank God, I amclamour proof. " When she was gone, her father again insisted on whathe conceived to be his right. "I ask" he said, "only the benefit of thelaw. " "And, by the grace of God, you shall have it, " said the judge. "Mr. Sheriff, see that execution be done on Friday next. There is thebenefit of the law for you. " On the following Friday, Armstrong washanged, drawn and quartered; and his head was placed over WestminsterHall, [559]

The insolence and cruelty of Jeffreys excite, even at the distance of somany years, an indignation which makes it difficult to be just to him. Yet a perfectly dispassionate inquirer may perhaps think it by no meansclear that the award of execution was illegal. There was no precedent;and the words of the Act of Edward the Sixth may, without any straining, be construed as the Court construed them. Indeed, had the penaltybeen only fine or imprisonment, nobody would have seen any thingreprehensible in the proceeding. But to send a man to the gallows as atraitor, without confronting him with his accusers, without hearing hisdefence, solely because a timidity which is perfectly compatible withinnocence has impelled him to hide himself, is surely a violation, ifnot of any written law, yet of those great principles to which all lawsought to conform. The case was brought before the House of Commons. Theorphan daughter of Armstrong came to the bar to demand vengeance; anda warm debate followed. Sawyer was fiercely attacked and strenuouslydefended. The Tories declared that he appeared to them to have doneonly what, as counsel for the Crown, he was bound to do, and to havedischarged his duty to God, to the King, and to the prisoner. If theaward was legal, nobody was to blame; and, if the award was illegal, the blame lay, not with the Attorney General, but with the Judges. Therewould be an end of all liberty of speech at the bar, if an advocate wasto be punished for making a strictly regular application to a Court, andfor arguing that certain words in a statute were to be understood in acertain sense. The Whigs called Sawyer murderer, bloodhound, hangman. If the liberty of speech claimed by advocates meant the liberty ofharanguing men to death, it was high time that the nation should riseup and exterminate the whole race of lawyers. "Things will never be welldone, " said one orator, "till some of that profession be made examples. ""No crime to demand execution!" exclaimed John Hampden. "We shall betold next that it was no crime in the Jews to cry out 'Crucify him. '" Awise and just man would probably have been of opinion that this wasnot a case for severity. Sawyer's conduct might have been, to a certainextent, culpable: but, if an Act of Indemnity was to be passed at all, it was to be passed for the benefit of persons whose conduct had beenculpable. The question was not whether he was guiltless, but whether hisguilt was of so peculiarly black a dye that he ought, notwithstandingall his sacrifices and services, to be excluded by name from the mercywhich was to be granted to many thousands of offenders. This questioncalm and impartial judges would probably have decided in his favour. Itwas, however, resolved that he should be excepted from the Indemnity, and expelled from the House, [560]

On the morrow the Bill of Indemnity, now transformed into a Bill ofPains and Penalties, was again discussed. The Whigs consented to referit to a Committee of the whole House, but proposed to instruct theCommittee to begin its labours by making out a list of the offenders whowere to be proscribed. The Tories moved the previous question. The Housedivided; and the Whigs carried their point by a hundred and ninety votesto a hundred and seventy-three, [561]

The King watched these events with painful anxiety. He was weary of hiscrown. He had tried to do justice to both the contending parties; butjustice would satisfy neither. The Tories hated him for protecting theDissenters. The Whigs hated him for protecting the Tories. The amnestyseemed to be more remote than when, ten months before, he firstrecommended it from the throne. The last campaign in Ireland had beendisastrous. It might well be that the next campaign would be moredisastrous still. The malpractices, which had done more than theexhalations of the marshes of Dundalk to destroy the efficiency of theEnglish troops, were likely to be as monstrous as ever. Every part ofthe administration was thoroughly disorganized; and the people weresurprised and angry because a foreigner, newly come among them, imperfectly acquainted with them, and constantly thwarted by them, hadnot, in a year, put the whole machine of government to rights. Most ofhis ministers, instead of assisting him, were trying to get up addressesand impeachments against each other. Yet if he employed his owncountrymen, on whose fidelity and attachment he could rely, a generalcry of rage was set up by all the English factions. The knavery ofthe English Commissariat had destroyed an army: yet a rumour that heintended to employ an able, experienced, and trusty Commissary fromHolland had excited general discontent. The King felt that he could not, while thus situated, render any service to that great cause to which hiswhole soul was devoted. Already the glory which he had won by conductingto a successful issue the most important enterprise of that age wasbecoming dim. Even his friends had begun to doubt whether he reallypossessed all that sagacity and energy which had a few months beforeextorted the unwilling admiration of his enemies. But he would endurehis splendid slavery no longer. He would return to his native country. He would content himself with being the first citizen of a commonwealthto which the name of Orange was dear. As such, he might still beforemost among those who were banded together in defence of theliberties of Europe. As for the turbulent and ungrateful islanders, whodetested him because he would not let them tear each other in pieces, Mary must try what she could do with them. She was born on their soil. She spoke their language. She did not dislike some parts of theirLiturgy, which they fancied to be essential, and which to him seemed atbest harmless. If she had little knowledge of politics and war, she hadwhat might be more useful, feminine grace and tact, a sweet temper, asmile and a kind word for every body. She might be able to compose thedisputes which distracted the State and the Church. Holland, under hisgovernment, and England under hers, might act cordially together againstthe common enemy. 

He secretly ordered preparations to be made for his voyage. Having donethis, he called together a few of his chief counsellors, and toldthem his purpose. A squadron, he said, was ready to convey him to hiscountry. He had done with them. He hoped that the Queen would be moresuccessful. The ministers were thunderstruck. For once all quarrels weresuspended. The Tory Caermarthen on one side, the Whig Shrewsbury on theother, expostulated and implored with a pathetic vehemence rare in theconferences of statesmen. Many tears were shed. At length the King wasinduced to give up, at least for the present, his design of abdicatingthe government. But he announced another design which he was fullydetermined not to give up. Since he was still to remain at the head ofthe English administration, he would go himself to Ireland. He would trywhether the whole royal authority strenuously exerted on the spot wherethe fate of the empire was to be decided, would suffice to preventpeculation and to maintain discipline, [562]

That he had seriously meditated a retreat to Holland long continued tobe a secret, not only to the multitude, but even to the Queen, [563]That he had resolved to take the command of his army in Ireland wassoon rumoured all over London. It was known that his camp furniture wasmaking, and that Sir Christopher Wren was busied in constructing a houseof wood which was to travel about, packed in two waggons, and to be setup wherever His Majesty might fix his quarters, [564] The Whigs raiseda violent outcry against the whole scheme. Not knowing, or affecting notto know, that it had been formed by William and by William alone, andthat none of his ministers had dared to advise him to encounter theIrish swords and the Irish atmosphere, the whole party confidentlyaffirmed that it had been suggested by some traitor in the cabinet, by some Tory who hated the Revolution and all that had sprung from theRevolution. Would any true friend have advised His Majesty, infirm inhealth as he was, to expose himself, not only to the dangers of war, butto the malignity of a climate which had recently been fatal to thousandsof men much stronger than himself? In private the King sneered bitterlyat this anxiety for his safety. It was merely, in his judgment, theanxiety which a hard master feels lest his slaves should become unfitfor their drudgery. The Whigs, he wrote to Portland, were afraid to losetheir tool before they had done their work. "As to their friendship, " headded, "you know what it is worth. " His resolution, he told his friend, was unalterably fixed. Every thing was at stake; and go he must, eventhough the Parliament should present an address imploring him to stay, [565]

He soon learned that such an address would be immediately moved inboth Houses and supported by the whole strength of the Whig party. Thisintelligence satisfied him that it was time to take a decisive step. He would not discard the Whigs but he would give them a lesson of whichthey stood much in need. He would break the chain in which they imaginedthat they had him fast. He would not let them have the exclusivepossession of power. He would not let them persecute the vanquishedparty. In their despite, he would grant an amnesty to his people. Intheir despite, he would take the command of his army in Ireland. Hearranged his plan with characteristic prudence, firmness, and secrecy. A single Englishman it was necessary to trust: for William was notsufficiently master of our language to address the Houses from thethrone in his own words; and, on very important occasions, his practicewas to write his speech in French, and to employ a translator. It iscertain that to one person, and to one only, the King confided themomentous resolution which he had taken; and it can hardly be doubtedthat this person was Caermarthen. 

On the twenty-seventh of January, Black Rod knocked at the door of theCommons. The Speaker and the members repaired to the House of Lords. TheKing was on the throne. He gave his assent to the Supply Bill, thankedthe Houses for it, announced his intention of going to Ireland, andprorogued the Parliament. None could doubt that a dissolution wouldspeedily follow. As the concluding words, "I have thought it convenientnow to put an end to this session, " were uttered, the Tories, both aboveand below the bar, broke forth into a shout of joy. The King meanwhilesurveyed his audience from the throne with that bright eagle eye whichnothing escaped. He might be pardoned if he felt some little vindictivepleasure in annoying those who had cruelly annoyed him. "I saw, " hewrote to Portland the next day, "faces an ell long. I saw some of thosemen change colour with vexation twenty times while I was speaking. "[566]

A few hours after the prorogation, a hundred and fifty Tory members ofParliament had a parting dinner together at the Apollo Tavern in FleetStreet, before they set out for their counties. They were in bettertemper with William than they had been since his father in law had beenturned out of Whitehall. They had scarcely recovered from the joyfulsurprise with which they had heard it announced from the throne that thesession was at an end. The recollection of their danger and the sense oftheir deliverance were still fresh. They talked of repairing to Court ina body to testify their gratitude: but they were induced to forego theirintention; and not without cause: for a great crowd of squires after arevel, at which doubtless neither October nor claret had been spared, might have caused some inconvenience in the presence chamber. SirJohn Lowther, who in wealth and influence was inferior to no countrygentleman of that age, was deputed to carry the thanks of the assemblyto the palace. He spoke, he told the King, the sense of a great body ofhonest gentlemen. They begged His Majesty to be assured that they wouldin their counties do their best to serve him; and they cordially wishedhim a safe voyage to Ireland, a complete victory, a speedy return, anda long and happy reign. During the following week, many, who had nevershown their faces in the circle at Saint James's since the Revolution, went to kiss the King's hand. So warmly indeed did those who hadhitherto been regarded as half Jacobites express their approbation ofthe policy of the government that the thoroughgoing Jacobites were muchdisgusted, and complained bitterly of the strange blindness which seemedto have come on the sons of the Church of England, [567]

All the acts of William, at this time, indicated his determination torestrain, steadily though gently, the violence of the Whigs, and toconciliate, if possible, the good will of the Tories. Several personswhom the Commons had thrown into prison for treason were set at libertyon bail, [568] The prelates who held that their allegiance was stilldue to James were treated with a tenderness rare in the history ofrevolutions. Within a week after the prorogation, the first of Februarycame, the day on which those ecclesiastics who refused to take the oathwere to be finally deprived. Several of the suspended clergy, afterholding out till the last moment, swore just in time to save themselvesfrom beggary. But the Primate and five of his suffragans were stillinflexible. They consequently forfeited their bishoprics; but Sancroftwas informed that the King had not yet relinquished the hope of beingable to make some arrangement which might avert the necessity ofappointing successors, and that the nonjuring prelates might continuefor the present to reside in their palaces. Their receivers wereappointed receivers for the Crown, and continued to collect the revenuesof the vacant sees, [569] Similar indulgence was shown to somedivines of lower rank. Sherlock, in particular, continued, after hisdeprivation, to live unmolested in his official mansion close to theTemple Church. 

And now appeared a proclamation dissolving the Parliament. The writs fora general election went out; and soon every part of the kingdom was ina ferment. Van Citters, who had resided in England during many eventfulyears, declared that he had never seen London more violently agitated, [570] The excitement was kept up by compositions of all sorts, fromsermons with sixteen heads down to jingling street ballads. Lists ofdivisions were, for the first time in our history, printed and dispersedfor the information of constituent bodies. Two of these lists may stillbe seen in old libraries. One of the two, circulated by the Whigs, contained the names of those Tories who had voted against declaring thethrone vacant. The other, circulated by the Tories, contained the namesof those Whigs who had supported the Sacheverell clause. 

It soon became clear that public feeling had undergone a great changeduring the year which had elapsed since the Convention had met; andit is impossible to deny that this change was, at least in part, thenatural consequence and the just punishment of the intemperate andvindictive conduct of the Whigs. Of the city of London they thoughtthemselves sure. The Livery had in the preceding year returned fourzealous Whigs without a contest. But all the four had voted for theSacheverell clause; and by that clause many of the merchant princes ofLombard Street and Cornhill, men powerful in the twelve great companies, men whom the goldsmiths followed humbly, hat in hand, up and down thearcades of the Royal Exchange, would have been turned with all indignityout of the Court of Aldermen and out of the Common Council. The strugglewas for life or death. No exertions, no artifices, were spared. Williamwrote to Portland that the Whigs of the City, in their despair, stuckat nothing, and that, as they went on, they would soon stand as muchin need of an Act of Indemnity as the Tories. Four Tories however werereturned, and that by so decisive a majority, that the Tory who stoodlowest polled four hundred votes more than the Whig who stood highest, [571] The Sheriffs, desiring to defer as long as possible the triumphof their enemies, granted a scrutiny. But, though the majority wasdiminished, the result was not affected, [572] At Westminster, twoopponents of the Sacheverell clause were elected without a contest, [573] But nothing indicated more strongly the disgust excited bythe proceedings of the late House of Commons than what passed in theUniversity of Cambridge. Newton retired to his quiet observatory overthe gate of Trinity College. Two Tories were returned by an overwhelmingmajority. At the head of the poll was Sawyer, who had, but a few daysbefore, been excepted from the Indemnity Bill and expelled from theHouse of Commons. The records of the University contain curious proofsthat the unwise severity with which he had been treated had raised anenthusiastic feeling in his favour. Newton voted for Sawyer; and thisremarkable fact justifies us in believing that the great philosopher, in whose genius and virtue the Whig party justly glories, had seenthe headstrong and revengeful conduct of that party with concern anddisapprobation, [574]

It was soon plain that the Tories would have a majority in the new Houseof Commons, [575] All the leading Whigs however obtained seats, with oneexception. John Hampden was excluded, and was regretted only by the mostintolerant and unreasonable members of his party, [576]

The King meanwhile was making, in almost every department of theexecutive government, a change corresponding to the change which thegeneral election was making in the composition of the legislature. Still, however, he did not think of forming what is now called aministry. He still reserved to himself more especially the directionof foreign affairs; and he superintended with minute attention allthe preparations for the approaching campaign in Ireland. In hisconfidential letters he complained that he had to perform, with littleor no assistance, the task of organizing the disorganized militaryestablishments of the kingdom. The work, he said, was heavy; but it mustbe done; for everything depended on it, [577] In general, the governmentwas still a government by independent departments; and in almost everydepartment Whigs and Tories were still mingled, though not exactly inthe old proportions. The Whig element had decidedly predominated, in1689. The Tory element predominated, though not very decidedly, in 1690. 

Halifax had laid down the Privy Seal. It was offered to Chesterfield, a Tory who had voted in the Convention for a Regency. But Chesterfieldrefused to quit his country house and gardens in Derbyshire forthe Court and the Council Chamber; and the Privy Seal was put intoCommission, [578] Caermarthen was now the chief adviser of the Crownon all matters relating to the internal administration and to themanagement of the two Houses of Parliament. The white staff, and theimmense power which accompanied the white staff, William was stilldetermined never to entrust to any subject. Caermarthen therefore, continued to be Lord President; but he took possession of a suite ofapartments in Saint James's Palace which was considered as peculiarlybelonging to the Prime Minister, [579] He had, during the precedingyear, pleaded ill health as an excuse for seldom appearing at theCouncil Board; and the plea was not without foundation, for hisdigestive organs had some morbid peculiarities which puzzled the wholeCollege of Physicians; his complexion was livid; his frame was meagre;and his face, handsome and intellectual as it was, had a haggard lookwhich indicated the restlessness of pain as well as the restlessnessof ambition, [580] As soon, however, as he was once more minister, heapplied himself strenuously to business, and toiled every day, and allday long, with an energy which amazed every body who saw his ghastlycountenance and tottering gait. 

Though he could not obtain for himself the office of Lord Treasurer, hisinfluence at the Treasury was great. Monmouth, the First Commissioner, and Delamere, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, two of the most violentWhigs in England, quitted their seats. On this, as on many otheroccasions, it appeared that they had nothing but their Whiggismin common. The volatile Monmouth, sensible that he had none of thequalities of a financier, seems to have taken no personal offence atbeing removed from a place which he never ought to have occupied. Hethankfully accepted a pension, which his profuse habits made necessaryto him, and still continued to attend councils, to frequent the Court, and to discharge the duties of a Lord of the Bedchamber, [581] He alsotried to make himself useful in military business, which he understood, if not well, yet better than most of his brother nobles; and heprofessed, during a few months, a great regard for Caermarthen. Delamerewas in a very different mood. It was in vain that his services wereoverpaid with honours and riches. He was created Earl of Warrington. Heobtained a grant of all the lands that could be discovered belongingto Jesuits in five or six counties. A demand made by him on accountof expenses incurred at the time of the Revolution was allowed; andhe carried with him into retirement as the reward of his patrioticexertions a large sum, which the State could ill spare. But his angerwas not to be so appeased; and to the end of his life he continued tocomplain bitterly of the ingratitude with which he and his party hadbeen treated, [582]

Sir John Lowther became First Lord of the Treasury, and was the personon whom Caermarthen chiefly relied for the conduct of the ostensiblebusiness of the House of Commons. Lowther was a man of ancient descent, ample estate, and great parliamentary interest. Though not an old man, he was an old senator: for he had, before he was of age, succeededhis father as knight of the shire for Westmoreland. In truththe representation of Westmoreland was almost as much one of thehereditaments of the Lowther family as Lowther Hall. Sir John'sabilities were respectable; his manners, though sarcastically noticedin contemporary lampoons as too formal, were eminently courteous;his personal courage he was but too ready to prove; his morals wereirreproachable; his time was divided between respectable labours andrespectable pleasures; his chief business was to attend the House ofCommons and to preside on the Bench of justice; his favourite amusementswere reading and gardening. In opinions he was a very moderate Tory. Hewas attached to hereditary monarchy and to the Established Church; buthe had concurred in the Revolution; he had no misgivings touching thetitle of William and Mary; he had sworn allegiance to them withoutany mental reservation; and he appears to have strictly kept his oath. Between him and Caermarthen there was a close connection. They had actedtogether cordially in the Northern insurrection; and they agreed intheir political views, as nearly as a very cunning statesman and avery honest country gentleman could be expected to agree, [583] ByCaermarthen's influence Lowther was now raised to one of the mostimportant places in the kingdom. Unfortunately it was a place requiringqualities very different from those which suffice to make a valuablecounty member and chairman of quarter sessions. The tongue of the newFirst Lord of the Treasury was not sufficiently ready, nor was histemper sufficiently callous for his post. He had neither adroitness toparry, nor fortitude to endure, the gibes and reproaches to which, inhis new character of courtier and placeman, he was exposed. There wasalso something to be done which he was too scrupulous to do; somethingwhich had never been done by Wolsey or Burleigh; something which hasnever been done by any English statesman of our generation; but which, from the time of Charles the Second to the time of George the Third, wasone of the most important parts of the business of a minister. 

The history of the rise, progress, and decline of parliamentarycorruption in England still remains to be written. No subject has calledforth a greater quantity of eloquent vituperation and stinging sarcasm. Three generations of serious and of sportive writers wept and laughedover the venality of the senate. That venality was denounced on thehustings, anathematized from the pulpit, and burlesqued on the stage;was attacked by Pope in brilliant verse, and by Bolingbroke in statelyprose, by Swift with savage hatred, and by Gay with festive malice. Thevoices of Tories and Whigs, of Johnson and Akenside, of Smollett andFielding, contributed to swell the cry. But none of those who railedor of those who jested took the trouble to verify the phaenomena, or totrace them to the real causes. 

Sometimes the evil was imputed to the depravity of a particularminister: but, when he had been driven from power, and when those whohad most loudly accused him governed in his stead, it was found that thechange of men had produced no change of system. Sometimes the evilwas imputed to the degeneracy of the national character. Luxury andcupidity, it was said, had produced in our country the same effect whichthey had produced of old in the Roman republic. The modern Englishmanwas to the Englishman of the sixteenth century what Verres and Curiowere to Dentatus and Fabricius. Those who held this language were asignorant and shallow as people generally are who extol the past at theexpense of the present. A man of sense would have perceived that, if theEnglish of the time of George the Second had really been more sordid anddishonest than their forefathers, the deterioration would not have shownitself in one place alone. The progress of judicial venality andof official venality would have kept pace with the progress ofparliamentary venality. But nothing is more certain than that, while thelegislature was becoming more and more venal, the courts of law and thepublic offices were becoming purer and purer. The representatives ofthe people were undoubtedly more mercenary in the days of Hardwicke andPelham than in the days of the Tudors. But the Chancellors of theTudors took plate and jewels from suitors without scruple or shame; andHardwicke would have committed for contempt any suitor who had daredto bring him a present. The Treasurers of the Tudors raised princelyfortunes by the sale of places, titles, and pardons; and Pelham wouldhave ordered his servants to turn out of his house any man who hadoffered him money for a peerage or a commissionership of customs. It isevident, therefore, that the prevalence of corruption in the Parliamentcannot be ascribed to a general depravation of morals. The taint waslocal; we must look for some local cause; and such a cause will withoutdifficulty be found. 

Under our ancient sovereigns the House of Commons rarely interfered withthe executive administration. The Speaker was charged not to letthe members meddle with matters of State. If any gentleman was verytroublesome he was cited before the Privy Council, interrogated, reprimanded, and sent to meditate on his undutiful conduct in theTower. The Commons did their best to protect themselves by keeping theirdeliberations secret, by excluding strangers, by making it a crime torepeat out of doors what had passed within doors. But these precautionswere of small avail. In so large an assembly there were alwaystalebearers ready to carry the evil report of their brethren to thepalace. To oppose the Court was therefore a service of serious danger. In those days of course, there was little or no buying of votes. For anhonest man was not to be bought; and it was much cheaper to intimidateor to coerce a knave than to buy him. 

For a very different reason there has been no direct buying of voteswithin the memory of the present generation. The House of Commons isnow supreme in the State, but is accountable to the nation. Even thosemembers who are not chosen by large constituent bodies are kept in aweby public opinion. Every thing is printed; every thing is discussed;every material word uttered in debate is read by a million of people onthe morrow. Within a few hours after an important division, the listsof the majority and the minority are scanned and analysed in every townfrom Plymouth to Inverness. If a name be found where it ought not to be, the apostate is certain to be reminded in sharp language of the promiseswhich he has broken and of the professions which he has belied. Atpresent, therefore, the best way in which a government can secure thesupport of a majority of the representative body is by gaining theconfidence of the nation. 

But between the time when our Parliaments ceased to be controlled byroyal prerogative and the time when they began to be constantly andeffectually controlled by public opinion there was a long interval. After the Restoration, no government ventured to return to those methodsby which, before the civil war, the freedom of deliberation has beenrestrained. A member could no longer be called to account for hisharangues or his votes. He might obstruct the passing of bills ofsupply; he might arraign the whole foreign policy of the country; hemight lay on the table articles of impeachment against all the chiefministers; and he ran not the smallest risk of being treated as Morricehad been treated by Elizabeth, or Eliot by Charles the First. Thesenator now stood in no awe of the Court. Nevertheless all the defencesbehind which the feeble Parliaments of the sixteenth century hadentrenched themselves against the attacks of prerogative were not onlystill kept up, but were extended and strengthened. No politician seemsto have been aware that these defences were no longer needed for theiroriginal purpose, and had begun to serve a purpose very different. The rules which had been originally designed to secure faithfulrepresentatives against the displeasure of the Sovereign, now operatedto secure unfaithful representatives against the displeasure of thepeople, and proved much more effectual for the latter end than they hadever been for the former. It was natural, it was inevitable, that, ina legislative body emancipated from the restraints of the sixteenthcentury, and not yet subjected to the restraints of the nineteenthcentury, in a legislative body which feared neither the King nor thepublic, there should be corruption. 

The plague spot began to be visible and palpable in the days of theCabal. Clifford, the boldest and fiercest of the wicked Five, hadthe merit of discovering that a noisy patriot, whom it was no longerpossible to send to prison, might be turned into a courtier by agoldsmith's note. Clifford's example was followed by his successors. It soon became a proverb that a Parliament resembled a pump. Often, thewits said, when a pump appears to be dry, if a very small quantity ofwater is poured in, a great quantity of water gushes out: and so, whena Parliament appears to be niggardly, ten thousand pounds judiciouslygiven in bribes will often produce a million in supplies. The evil wasnot diminished, nay, it was aggravated, by that Revolution which freedour country from so many other evils. The House of Commons was now morepowerful than ever as against the Crown, and yet was not more strictlyresponsible than formerly to the nation. The government had a new motivefor buying the members; and the members had no new motive for refusingto sell themselves. William, indeed, had an aversion to bribery; heresolved to abstain from it; and, during the first year of his reign, hekept his resolution. Unhappily the events of that year did not encouragehim to persevere in his good intentions. As soon as Caermarthen wasplaced at the head of the internal administration of the realm, acomplete change took place. He was in truth no novice in the art ofpurchasing votes. He had, sixteen years before, succeeded Clifford atthe Treasury, had inherited Clifford's tactics, had improved upon them, and had employed them to an extent which would have amazed the inventor. From the day on which Caermarthen was called a second time to thechief direction of affairs, parliamentary corruption continued to bepractised, with scarcely any intermission, by a long succession ofstatesmen, till the close of the American war. Neither of the greatEnglish parties can justly charge the other with any peculiar guilt onthis account. The Tories were the first who introduced the system andthe last who clung to it; but it attained its greatest vigour in thetime of Whig ascendency. The extent to which parliamentary support wasbartered for money cannot be with any precision ascertained. But itseems probable that the number of hirelings was greatly exaggerated byvulgar report, and was never large, though often sufficient to turn thescale on important divisions. An unprincipled minister eagerly acceptedthe services of these mercenaries. An honest minister reluctantlysubmitted, for the sake of the commonwealth, to what he considered asa shameful and odious extortion. But during many years every minister, whatever his personal character might be, consented, willingly orunwillingly, to manage the Parliament in the only way in which theParliament could then be managed. It at length became as notorious thatthere was a market for votes at the Treasury as that there was a marketfor cattle in Smithfield. Numerous demagogues out of power declaimedagainst this vile traffic; but every one of those demagogues, as soon ashe was in power, found himself driven by a kind of fatality to engage inthat traffic, or at least to connive at it. Now and then perhaps a manwho had romantic notions of public virtue refused to be himself thepaymaster of the corrupt crew, and averted his eyes while his lessscrupulous colleagues did that which he knew to be indispensable, andyet felt to be degrading. But the instances of this prudery wererare indeed. The doctrine generally received, even among upright andhonourable politicians, was that it was shameful to receive bribes, butthat it was necessary to distribute them. It is a remarkable fact thatthe evil reached the greatest height during the administration of HenryPelham, a statesman of good intentions, of spotless morals in privatelife, and of exemplary disinterestedness. It is not difficult to guessby what arguments he and other well meaning men, who, like him, followedthe fashion of their age, quieted their consciences. No casuist, howeversevere, has denied that it may be a duty to give what it is a crime totake. It was infamous in Jeffreys to demand money for the lives of theunhappy prisoners whom he tried at Dorchester and Taunton. But it wasnot infamous, nay, it was laudable, in the kinsmen and friends of aprisoner to contribute of their substance in order to make up a pursefor Jeffreys. The Sallee rover, who threatened to bastinado a Christiancaptive to death unless a ransom was forthcoming, was an odious ruffian. But to ransom a Christian captive from a Sallee rover was, not merelyan innocent, but a highly meritorious act. It would be improper in suchcases to use the word corruption. Those who receive the filthy lucre arecorrupt already. He who bribes them does not make them wicked: he findsthem so; and he merely prevents their evil propensities from producingevil effects. And might not the same plea be urged in defence of aminister who, when no other expedient would avail, paid greedy andlowminded men not to ruin their country?

It was by some such reasoning as this that the scruples of William wereovercome. Honest Burnet, with the uncourtly courage which distinguishedhim, ventured to remonstrate with the King. "Nobody, " William answered, "hates bribery more, than I. But I have to do with a set of men who mustbe managed in this vile way or not at all. I must strain a point or thecountry is lost. " [584]

It was necessary for the Lord President to have in the House of Commonsan agent for the purchase of members; and Lowther was both too awkwardand too scrupulous to be such an agent. But a man in whom craft andprofligacy were united in a high degree was without difficulty found. This was the Master of the Rolls, Sir John Trevor, who had been Speakerin the single Parliament held by James. High as Trevor had risen in theworld, there were people who could still remember him a strange lookinglawyer's clerk in the Inner Temple. Indeed, nobody who had ever seenhim was likely to forget him. For his grotesque features and his hideoussquint were far beyond the reach of caricature. His parts, which werequick and vigorous, had enabled him early to master the science ofchicane. Gambling and betting were his amusements; and out of theseamusements he contrived to extract much business in the way of hisprofession. For his opinion on a question arising out of a wager ora game at chance had as much authority as a judgment of any court inWestminster Hall. He soon rose to be one of the boon companions whomJeffreys hugged in fits of maudlin friendship over the bottle at night, and cursed and reviled in court on the morrow. Under such a teacher, Trevor rapidly became a proficient in that peculiar kind of rhetoricwhich had enlivened the trials of Baxter and of Alice Lisle. Reportindeed spoke of some scolding matches between the Chancellor and hisfriend, in which the disciple had been not less voluble and scurrilousthan the master. These contests, however, did not take place till theyounger adventurer had attained riches and dignities such that he nolonger stood in need of the patronage which had raised him, [585] AmongHigh Churchmen Trevor, in spite of his notorious want of principle, hadat this time a certain popularity, which he seems to have owed chieflyto their conviction that, however insincere he might be in general, hishatred of the dissenters was genuine and hearty. There was little doubtthat, in a House of Commons in which the Tories had a majority, hemight easily, with the support of the Court, be chosen Speaker. He wasimpatient to be again in his old post, which he well knew how to makeone of the most lucrative in the kingdom; and he willingly undertookthat secret and shameful office for which Lowther was altogetherunqualified. 

Richard Hampden was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. Thisappointment was probably intended as a mark of royal gratitude for themoderation of his conduct, and for the attempts which he had made tocurb the violence of his Whig friends, and especially of his son. 

Godolphin voluntarily left the Treasury; why, we are not informed. Wecan scarcely doubt that the dissolution and the result of the generalelection must have given him pleasure. For his political opinions leanedtowards Toryism; and he had, in the late reign, done some things which, though not very heinous, stood in need of an indemnity. It is probablethat he did not think it compatible with his personal dignity to sit atthe board below Lowther, who was in rank his inferior, [586]

A new Commission of Admiralty was issued. At the head of the navaladministration was placed Thomas Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, a high bornand high bred man, who had ranked among the Tories, who had voted fora Regency, and who had married the daughter of Sawyer. That Pembroke'sToryism, however, was not of a narrow and illiberal kind is sufficientlyproved by the fact that, immediately after the Revolution, the Essay onthe Human Understanding was dedicated to him by John Locke, in token ofgratitude for kind offices done in evil times, [587]

Nothing was omitted which could reconcile Torrington to this change. For, though he had been found an incapable administrator, he stillstood so high in general estimation as a seaman that the governmentwas unwilling to lose his services. He was assured that no slight wasintended to him. He could not serve his country at once on the oceanand at Westminster; and it had been thought less difficult to supply hisplace in his office than on the deck of his flagship. He was at firstvery angry, and actually laid down his commission: but some concessionswere made to his pride: a pension of three thousand pounds a year and agrant of ten thousand acres of crown land in the Peterborough level wereirresistible baits to his cupidity; and, in an evil hour for England, heconsented to remain at the head of the naval force, on which the safetyof her coasts depended, [588]

While these changes were making in the offices round Whitehall, theCommissions of Lieutenancy all over the kingdom were revised. The Torieshad, during twelve months, been complaining that their share in thegovernment of the districts in which they lived bore no proportionto their number, to their wealth, and to the consideration which theyenjoyed in society. They now regained with great delight their formerposition in their shires. The Whigs raised a cry that the King wasfoully betrayed, and that he had been induced by evil counsellors to putthe sword into the hands of men who, as soon as a favourable opportunityoffered, would turn the edge against himself. In a dialogue which wasbelieved to have been written by the newly created Earl of Warrington, and which had a wide circulation at the time, but has long beenforgotten, the Lord Lieutenant of a county was introduced expressing hisapprehensions that the majority of his deputies were traitors at heart, [589] But nowhere was the excitement produced by the new distribution ofpower so great as in the capital. By a Commission of Lieutenancy whichhad been issued immediately after the Revolution, the train bands of theCity had been put under the command of staunch Whigs. Those powerful andopulent citizens whose names were omitted complained that the list wasfilled with elders of Puritan congregations, with Shaftesbury's briskboys, with Rye House plotters, and that it was scarcely possible tofind, mingled with that multitude of fanatics and levellers, a singleman sincerely attached to monarchy and to the Church. A new Commissionnow appeared framed by Caermarthen and Nottingham. They had takencounsel with Compton, the Bishop of the diocese; and Compton was nota very discreet adviser. He had originally been a High Churchman and aTory. The severity with which he had been treated in the late reign hadtransformed him into a Latitudinarian and a rebel; and he had now, fromjealousy of Tillotson, turned High Churchman and Tory again. The Whigscomplained that they were ungratefully proscribed by a governmentwhich owed its existence to them; that some of the best friends of KingWilliam had been dismissed with contumely to make room for some ofhis worst enemies, for men who were as unworthy of trust as any IrishRapparee, for men who had delivered up to a tyrant the charter andthe immemorial privileges of the City, for men who had made themselvesnotorious by the cruelty with which they had enforced the penal lawsagainst Protestant dissenters, nay, for men who had sate on those jurieswhich had found Russell and Cornish guilty, [590] The discontent wasso great that it seemed, during a short time, likely to cause pecuniaryembarrassment to the State. The supplies voted by the late Parliamentcame in slowly. The wants of the public service were pressing. In suchcircumstances it was to the citizens of London that the governmentalways looked for help; and the government of William had hithertolooked especially to those citizens who professed Whig opinions. Thingswere now changed. A few eminent Whigs, in their first anger, sullenlyrefused to advance money. Nay, one or two unexpectedly withdrewconsiderable sums from the Exchequer, [591] The financial difficultiesmight have been serious, had not some wealthy Tories, who, ifSacheverell's clause had become law, would have been excluded from allmunicipal honours, offered the Treasury a hundred thousand pounds down, and promised to raise a still larger sum, [592]

While the City was thus agitated, came a day appointed by royalproclamation for a general fast. The reasons assigned for this solemnact of devotion were the lamentable state of Ireland and the approachingdeparture of the King. Prayers were offered up for the safety of HisMajesty's person and for the success of his arms. The churches of Londonwere crowded. The most eminent preachers of the capital, who were, withscarcely an exception, either moderate Tories or moderate Whigs, exertedthemselves to calm the public mind, and earnestly exhorted their flocksnot to withhold, at this great conjuncture, a hearty support from theprince, with whose fate was bound up the fate of the whole nation. Burnet told a large congregation from the pulpit how the Greeks, whenthe Great Turk was preparing to besiege Constantinople, could not bepersuaded to contribute any part of their wealth for the common defence, and how bitterly they repented of their avarice when they were compelledto deliver up to the victorious infidels the treasures which had beenrefused to the supplications of the last Christian emperor, [593]

The Whigs, however, as a party, did not stand in need of such anadmonition. Grieved and angry as they were, they were perfectly sensiblethat on the stability of the throne of William depended all that theymost highly prized. What some of them might, at this conjuncture, havebeen tempted to do if they could have found another leader, if, forexample, their Protestant Duke, their King Monmouth, had still beenliving, may be doubted. But their only choice was between the Sovereignwhom they had set up and the Sovereign whom they had pulled down. Itwould have been strange indeed if they had taken part with James inorder to punish William, when the worst fault which they imputed toWilliam was that he did not participate in the vindictive feeling withwhich they remembered the tyranny of James. Much as they disliked theBill of Indemnity, they had not forgotten the Bloody Circuit. Theytherefore, even in their ill humour, continued true to their own King, and, while grumbling at him, were ready to stand by him against hisadversary with their lives and fortunes, [594]

There were indeed exceptions; but they were very few; and they wereto be found almost exclusively in two classes, which, though widelydiffering from each other in social position, closely resembled eachother in laxity of principle. All the Whigs who are known to havetrafficked with Saint Germains belonged, not to the main body ofthe party, but either to the head or to the tail. They were eitherpatricians high in rank and office, or caitiffs who had long beenemployed in the foulest drudgery of faction. To the former classbelonged Shrewsbury. Of the latter class the most remarkable specimenwas Robert Ferguson. From the day on which the Convention Parliament wasdissolved, Shrewsbury began to waver in his allegiance: but that he hadever wavered was not, till long after, suspected by the public. ThatFerguson had, a few months after the Revolution, become a furiousJacobite, was no secret to any body, and ought not to have been matterof surprise to any body. For his apostasy he could not plead even themiserable excuse that he had been neglected. The ignominious serviceswhich he had formerly rendered to his party as a spy, a raiser ofriots, a dispenser of bribes, a writer of libels, a prompter of falsewitnesses, had been rewarded only too prodigally for the honour ofthe new government. That he should hold any high office was of courseimpossible. But a sinecure place of five hundred a year had been createdfor him in the department of the Excise. He now had what to him wasopulence: but opulence did not satisfy him. For money indeed he hadnever scrupled to be guilty of fraud aggravated by hypocrisy; yet thelove of money was not his strongest passion. Long habits had developedin him a moral disease from, which people who make political agitationtheir calling are seldom wholly free. He could not be quiet. Sedition, from being his business, had become his pleasure. It was as impossiblefor him to live without doing mischief as for an old dram drinker oran old opium eater to live without the daily dose of poison. The verydiscomforts and hazards of a lawless life had a strange attraction forhim. He could no more be turned into a peaceable and loyal subject thanthe fox can be turned into a shepherd's dog, or than the kite can betaught the habits of the barn door fowl. The Red Indian prefers hishunting ground to cultivated fields and stately cities: the gipsy, sheltered by a commodious roof, and provided with meat in due season, still pines for the ragged tent on the moor and the meal of carrion, andeven so Ferguson became weary of plenty and security, of his salary, hishouse, his table and his coach, and longed to be again the presidentof societies where none could enter without a password, the director ofsecret presses, the distributor of inflammatory pamphlets; to see thewalls placarded with descriptions of his Person and offers of reward forhis apprehension; to have six or seven names, with a different wig andcloak for each, and to change his lodgings thrice a week at deadof night. His hostility was not to Popery or to Protestantism, tomonarchical government or to republican government, to the House ofStuart or to the House of Nassau, but to whatever was at the timeestablished. 

By the Jacobites this new ally was eagerly welcomed. They were at thatmoment busied with schemes in which the help of a veteran plotter wasmuch needed. There had been a great stir among them from the day onwhich it had been announced that William had determined to take thecommand in Ireland; and they were all looking forward with impatienthope to his departure. --He was not a prince against whom men lightlyventure to set up a standard of rebellion. His courage, his sagacity, the secrecy of his counsels, the success which had generally crownedhis enterprises, overawed the vulgar. Even his most acrimoniousenemies feared him at least as much as they hated him. While he was atKensington, ready to take horse at a moment's notice, malecontents whoprized their heads and their estates were generally content to venttheir hatred by drinking confusion to his hooked nose, and by squeezingwith significant energy the orange which was his emblem. But theircourage rose when they reflected that the sea would soon roll betweenhim and our island. In the military and political calculations of thatage, thirty leagues of water were as important as three hundred leaguesnow are. The winds and waves frequently interrupted all communicationbetween England and Ireland. It sometimes happened that, during afortnight or three weeks, not a word of intelligence from London reachedDublin. Twenty English counties might be up in arms long before anyrumour that an insurrection was even apprehended could reach Ulster. Early in the spring, therefore, the leading malecontents assembled inLondon for the purpose of concerting an extensive plan of action, andcorresponded assiduously both with France and with Ireland. 

Such was the temper of the English factions when, on the twentieth ofMarch, the new Parliament met. The first duty which the Commons had toperform was that of choosing a Speaker. Trevor was proposed by Lowther, was elected without opposition, and was presented and approved with theordinary ceremonial. The King then made a speech in which he especiallyrecommended to the consideration of the Houses two important subjects, the settling of the revenue and the granting of an amnesty. Herepresented strongly the necessity of despatch. Every day was precious, the season for action was approaching. "Let not us, " he said, "beengaged in debates while our enemies are in the field. " [595]

The first subject which the Commons took into consideration was thestate of the revenue. A great part of the taxes had, since the accessionof William and Mary, been collected under the authority of Acts passedfor short terms, and it was now time to determine on a permanentarrangement. A list of the salaries and pensions for which provision wasto be made was laid before the House; and the amount of the sums thusexpended called forth very just complaints from the independent members, among whom Sir Charles Sedley distinguished himself by his sarcasticpleasantry. A clever speech which he made against the placemenstole into print and was widely circulated: it has since been oftenrepublished; and it proves, what his poems and plays might make usdoubt, that his contemporaries were not mistaken in considering him as aman of parts and vivacity. Unfortunately the ill humour which the sightof the Civil List caused evaporated in jests and invectives withoutproducing any reform. 

The ordinary revenue by which the government had been supported beforethe Revolution had been partly hereditary, and had been partly drawnfrom taxes granted to each sovereign for life. The hereditary revenuehad passed, with the crown, to William and Mary. It was derived from therents of the royal domains, from fees, from fines, from wine licenses, from the first fruits and tenths of benefices, from the receipts of thePost Office, and from that part of the excise which had, immediatelyafter the Restoration, been granted to Charles the Second and to hissuccessors for ever in lieu of the feudal services due to our ancientkings. The income from all these sources was estimated at between fourand five hundred thousand pounds, [596]

Those duties of excise and customs which had been granted to James forlife had, at the close of his reign, yielded about nine hundred thousandpounds annually. William naturally wished to have this income on thesame terms on which his uncle had enjoyed it; and his ministers didtheir best to gratify his wishes. Lowther moved that the grant shouldbe to the King and Queen for their joint and separate lives, andspoke repeatedly and earnestly in defence of this motion. He set forthWilliam's claims to public gratitude and confidence; the nation rescuedfrom Popery and arbitrary power; the Church delivered from persecution;the constitution established on a firm basis. Would the Commons dealgrudgingly with a prince who had done more for England than had everbeen done for her by any of his predecessors in so short a time, witha prince who was now about to expose himself to hostile weapons andpestilential air in order to preserve the English colony in Ireland, with a prince who was prayed for in every corner of the world where acongregation of Protestants could meet for the worship of God? [597] Buton this subject Lowther harangued in vain. Whigs and Tories were equallyfixed in the opinion that the liberality of Parliaments had been thechief cause of the disasters of the last thirty years; that tothe liberality of the Parliament of 1660 was to be ascribed themisgovernment of the Cabal; that to the liberality of the Parliamentof 1685 was to be ascribed the Declaration of Indulgence, and that theParliament of 1690 would be inexcusable if it did not profit by a long, a painful, an unvarying experience. After much dispute a compromisewas made. That portion of the excise which had been settled for life onJames, and which was estimated at three hundred thousand pounds a year, was settled on William and Mary for their joint and separate lives. Itwas supposed that, with the hereditary revenue, and with three hundredthousand a year more from the excise, their Majesties would have, independent of parliamentary control, between seven and eight hundredthousand a year. Out of this income was to be defrayed the charge bothof the royal household and of those civil offices of which a list hadbeen laid before the House. This income was therefore called the CivilList. The expenses of the royal household are now entirely separatedfrom the expenses of the civil government; but, by a whimsicalperversion, the name of Civil List has remained attached to that portionof the revenue which is appropriated to the expenses of the royalhousehold. It is still more strange that several neighbouring nationsshould have thought this most unmeaning of all names worth borrowing. Those duties of customs which had been settled for life on Charles andJames successively, and which, in the year before the Revolution, hadyielded six hundred thousand pounds, were granted to the Crown for aterm of only four years, [598]

William was by no means well pleased with this arrangement. He thoughtit unjust and ungrateful in a people whose liberties he had saved tobind him over to his good behaviour. "The gentlemen of England, " he saidto Burnet, "trusted King James who was an enemy of their religion and oftheir laws; and they will not trust me by whom their religion and theirlaws have been preserved. " Burnet answered very properly that there wasno mark of personal confidence which His Majesty was not entitledto demand, but that this question was not a question of personalconfidence. The Estates of the Realm wished to establish a generalprinciple. They wished to set a precedent which might secure a remoteposterity against evils such as the indiscreet liberality of formerParliaments had produced. "From those evils Your Majesty has deliveredthis generation. By accepting the gift of the Commons on the terms onwhich it is offered Your Majesty will be also a deliverer of futuregenerations. " William was not convinced; but he had too much wisdom andselfcommand to give way to his ill humour; and he accepted graciouslywhat he could not but consider as ungraciously given, [599]

The Civil List was charged with an annuity of twenty thousand pounds tothe Princess of Denmark, in addition to an annuity of thirty thousandpounds which had been settled on her at the time of her marriage. Thisarrangement was the result of a compromise which had been effected withmuch difficulty and after many irritating disputes. The King and Queenhad never, since the commencement of their reign, been on very goodterms with their sister. That William should have been disliked by awoman who had just sense enough to perceive that his temper was sour andhis manners repulsive, and who was utterly incapable of appreciating hishigher qualities, is not extraordinary. But Mary was made to be loved. So lively and intelligent a woman could not indeed derive much pleasurefrom the society of Anne, who, when in good humour, was meekly stupid, and, when in bad humour, was sulkily stupid. Yet the Queen, whosekindness had endeared her to her humblest attendants, would hardly havemade an enemy of one whom it was her duty and her interest to make afriend, had not an influence strangely potent and strangely malignantbeen incessantly at work to divide the Royal House against itself. The fondness of the Princess for Lady Marlborough was such as, in asuperstitious age, would have been ascribed to some talisman or potion. Not only had the friends, in their confidential intercourse with eachother, dropped all ceremony and all titles, and become plain Mrs. Morleyand plain Mrs. Freeman; but even Prince George, who cared as much forthe dignity of his birth as he was capable of caring for any thing butclaret and calvered salmon, submitted to be Mr. Morley. The Countessboasted that she had selected the name of Freeman because it waspeculiarly suited to the frankness and boldness of her character; and, to do her justice, it was not by the ordinary arts of courtiers that sheestablished and long maintained her despotic empire over the feeblest ofminds, She had little of that tact which is the characteristic talent ofher sex; she was far too violent to flatter or to dissemble: but, bya rare chance, she had fallen in with a nature on which dictation andcontradiction acted as philtres. In this grotesque friendship allthe loyalty, the patience, the selfdevotion, was on the side of themistress. The whims, the haughty airs, the fits of ill temper, were onthe side of the waiting woman. 

Nothing is more curious than the relation in which the two ladies stoodto Mr. Freeman, as they called Marlborough. In foreign countries peopleknew in general that Anne was governed by the Churchills. They knew alsothat the man who appeared to enjoy so large a share of her favour wasnot only a great soldier and politician, but also one of the finestgentlemen of his time, that his face and figure were eminently handsome, his temper at once bland and resolute, his manners at once engagingand noble. Nothing could be more natural than that graces andaccomplishments like his should win a female heart. On the Continenttherefore many persons imagined that he was Anne's favoured lover; andhe was so described in contemporary French libels which have long beenforgotten. In England this calumny never found credit even with thevulgar, and is nowhere to be found even in the most ribald doggrel thatwas sung about our streets. In truth the Princess seems never to havebeen guilty of a thought inconsistent with her conjugal vows. To herMarlborough, with all his genius and his valour, his beauty and hisgrace, was nothing but the husband of her friend. Direct power overHer Royal Highness he had none. He could influence her only by theinstrumentality of his wife; and his wife was no passive instrument. Though it is impossible to discover, in any thing that she ever did, said or wrote, any indication of superior understanding, her fiercepassions and strong will enabled her often to rule a husband who wasborn to rule grave senates and mighty armies. His courage, that couragewhich the most perilous emergencies of war only made cooler and moresteady, failed him when he had to encounter his Sarah's ready tearsand voluble reproaches, the poutings of her lip and the tossings of herhead. History exhibits to us few spectacles more remarkable than thatof a great and wise man, who, when he had combined vast and profoundschemes of policy, could carry them into effect only by inducing onefoolish woman, who was often unmanageable, to manage another woman whowas more foolish still. 

In one point the Earl and the Countess were perfectly agreed. They wereequally bent on getting money; though, when it was got, he loved tohoard it, and she was not unwilling to spend it, [600] The favour of thePrincess they both regarded as a valuable estate. In her father's reign, they had begun to grow rich by means of her bounty. She was naturallyinclined to parsimony; and, even when she was on the throne, herequipages and tables were by no means sumptuous, [601] It might havebeen thought, therefore, that, while she was a subject, thirty thousanda year, with a residence in the palace, would have been more thansufficient for all her wants. There were probably not in the kingdom twonoblemen possessed of such an income. But no income would satisfy thegreediness of those who governed her. She repeatedly contracted debtswhich James repeatedly discharged, not without expressing much surpriseand displeasure. 

The Revolution opened to the Churchills a new and boundless prospect ofgain. The whole conduct of their mistress at the great crisis had provedthat she had no will, no judgment, no conscience, but theirs. Tothem she had sacrificed affections, prejudices, habits, interests. Inobedience to them, she had joined in the conspiracy against her father;she had fled from Whitehall in the depth of winter, through ice andmire, to a hackney coach; she had taken refuge in the rebel camp; shehad consented to yield her place in the order of succession to thePrince of Orange. They saw with pleasure that she, over whom theypossessed such boundless influence, possessed no common influence overothers. Scarcely had the Revolution been accomplished when many Tories, disliking both the King who had been driven out and the King who hadcome in, and doubting whether their religion had more to fear fromJesuits or from Latitudinarians, showed a strong disposition to rallyround Anne. Nature had made her a bigot. Such was the constitution ofher mind that to the religion of her nursery she could not but adhere, without examination and without doubt, till she was laid in her coffin. In the court of her father she had been deaf to all that could be urgedin favour of transubstantiation and auricular confession. In the courtof her brother in law she was equally deaf to all that could be urged infavour of a general union among Protestants. This slowness and obstinacymade her important. It was a great thing to be the only member of theRoyal Family who regarded Papists and Presbyterians with an impartialaversion. While a large party was disposed to make her an idol, she wasregarded by her two artful servants merely as a puppet. They knew thatshe had it in her power to give serious annoyance to the government; andthey determined to use this power in order to extort money, nominallyfor her, but really for themselves. While Marlborough was commandingthe English forces in the Low Countries, the execution of the plan wasnecessarily left to his wife; and she acted, not as he would doubtlesshave acted, with prudence and temper, but, as is plain even from her ownnarrative, with odious violence and insolence. Indeed she had passionsto gratify from which he was altogether free. He, though one of the mostcovetous, was one of the least acrimonious of mankind; but malignitywas in her a stronger passion than avarice. She hated easily; she hatedheartily; and she hated implacably. Among the objects of her hatred wereall who were related to her mistress either on the paternal or on thematernal side. No person who had a natural interest in the Princesscould observe without uneasiness the strange infatuation which made herthe slave of an imperious and reckless termagant. This the Countess wellknew. In her view the Royal Family and the family of Hyde, however theymight differ as to other matters, were leagued against her; and shedetested them all, James, William and Mary, Clarendon and Rochester. Nowwas the time to wreak the accumulated spite of years. It was not enoughto obtain a great, a regal, revenue for Anne. That revenue must beobtained by means which would wound and humble those whom the favouriteabhorred. It must not be asked, it must not be accepted, as a mark offraternal kindness, but demanded in hostile tones, and wrung by forcefrom reluctant hands. No application was made to the King and Queen. Butthey learned with astonishment that Lady Marlborough was indefatigablein canvassing the Tory members of Parliament, that a Princess's partywas forming, that the House of Commons would be moved to settle on HerRoyal Highness a vast income independent of the Crown. Mary asked hersister what these proceedings meant. "I hear, " said Anne, "that myfriends have a mind to make me some settlement. " It is said that theQueen, greatly hurt by an expression which seemed to imply that she andher husband were not among her sister's friends, replied with unwontedsharpness, "Of what friends do you speak? What friends have you exceptthe King and me?" [602] The subject was never again mentioned betweenthe sisters. Mary was probably sensible that she had made a mistake inaddressing herself to one who was merely a passive instrument in thehands of others. An attempt was made to open a negotiation with theCountess. After some inferior agents had expostulated with her invain, Shrewsbury waited on her. It might have been expected thathis intervention would have been successful; for, if the scandalouschronicle of those times could be trusted, he had stood high, too high, in her favour, [603] He was authorised by the King to promise that, ifthe Princess would desist from soliciting the members of the House ofCommons to support her cause, the income of Her Royal Highness shouldbe increased from thirty thousand pounds to fifty thousand. The Countessflatly rejected this offer. The King's word, she had the insolence tohint, was not a sufficient security. "I am confident, " said Shrewsbury, "that His Majesty will strictly fulfil his engagements. If he breaksthem I will not serve him an hour longer. " "That may be very honourablein you, " answered the pertinacious vixen, "but it will be very poorcomfort to the Princess. " Shrewsbury, after vainly attempting to movethe servant, was at length admitted to an audience of the mistress. Anne, in language doubtless dictated by her friend Sarah, told him thatthe business had gone too far to be stopped, and must be left to thedecision of the Commons, [604]

The truth was that the Princess's prompters hoped to obtain fromParliament a much larger sum than was offered by the King. Nothing lessthan seventy thousand a year would content them. But their cupidityoverreached itself. The House of Commons showed a great disposition togratify Her Royal Highness. But, when at length her too eager adherentsventured to name the sum which they wished to grant, the murmurs wereloud. Seventy thousand a year at a time when the necessary expenses ofthe State were daily increasing, when the receipt of the customs wasdaily diminishing, when trade was low, when every gentleman, everyfarmer, was retrenching something from the charge of his table andhis cellar! The general opinion was that the sum which the King wasunderstood to be willing to give would be amply sufficient, [605] Atlast something was conceded on both sides. The Princess was forced tocontent herself with fifty thousand a year; and William agreed thatthis sum should be settled on her by Act of Parliament. She rewarded theservices of Lady Marlborough with a pension of a thousand a year; [606]but this was in all probability a very small part of what the Churchillsgained by the arrangement. 

After these transactions the two royal sisters continued during manymonths to live on terms of civility and even of apparent friendship. ButMary, though she seems to have borne no malice to Anne, undoubtedly feltagainst Lady Marlborough as much resentment as a very gentle heart iscapable of feeling. Marlborough had been out of England during a greatpart of the time which his wife had spent in canvassing among theTories, and, though he had undoubtedly acted in concert with her, hadacted, as usual, with temper and decorum. He therefore continued toreceive from William many marks of favour which were unaccompanied byany indication of displeasure. 

In the debates on the settling of the revenue, the distinction betweenWhigs and Tories does not appear to have been very clearly marked. Intruth, if there was any thing about which the two parties were agreed, it was the expediency of granting the customs to the Crown for a timenot exceeding four years. But there were other questions which calledforth the old animosity in all its strength. The Whigs were now in aminority, but a minority formidable in numbers, and more formidable inability. They carried on the parliamentary war, not less acrimoniouslythan when they were a majority, but somewhat more artfully. They broughtforward several motions, such as no High Churchman could well support, yet such as no servant of William and Mary could well oppose. The Torywho voted for these motions would run a great risk of being pointed atas a turncoat by the sturdy Cavaliers of his county. The Tory who votedagainst those motions would run a great risk of being frowned upon atKensington. 

It was apparently in pursuance of this policy that the Whigs laid on thetable of the House of Lords a bill declaring all the laws passed by thelate Parliament to be valid laws. No sooner had this bill been read thanthe controversy of the preceeding spring was renewed. The Whigs werejoined on this occasion by almost all those noblemen who were connectedwith the government. The rigid Tories, with Nottingham at their head, professed themselves willing to enact that every statute passed in 1689should have the same force that it would have had if it had been passedby a parliament convoked in a regular manner; but nothing would inducethem to acknowledge that an assembly of lords and gentlemen, whohad come together without authority from the Great Seal, wasconstitutionally a Parliament. Few questions seem to have excitedstronger passions than the question, practically altogether unimportant, whether the bill should or should not be declaratory. Nottingham, alwaysupright and honourable, but a bigot and a formalist, was on this subjectsingularly obstinate and unreasonable. In one debate he lost his temper, forgot the decorum which in general he strictly observed, and narrowlyescaped being committed to the custody of the Black Rod, [607] Aftermuch wrangling, the Whigs carried their point by a majority of seven, [608] Many peers signed a strong protest written by Nottingham. Inthis protest the bill, which was indeed open to verbal criticism, wasimpolitely described as being neither good English nor good sense. Themajority passed a resolution that the protest should be expunged; andagainst this resolution Nottingham and his followers again protested, [609] The King was displeased by the pertinacity of his Secretary ofState; so much displeased indeed that Nottingham declared his intentionof resigning the Seals; but the dispute was soon accommodated. Williamwas too wise not to know the value of an honest man in a dishonest age. The very scrupulosity which made Nottingham a mutineer was a securitythat he would never be a traitor, [610]

The bill went down to the Lower House; and it was full expected that thecontest there would be long and fierce; but a single speech settled thequestion. Somers, with a force and eloquence which surprised even anaudience accustomed to hear him with pleasure, exposed the absurdity ofthe doctrine held by the high Tories. "If the Convention, "--it was thusthat he argued, --"was not a Parliament, how can we be a Parliament? AnAct of Elizabeth provides that no person shall sit or vote in this Housetill he has taken the old oath of supremacy. Not one of us has takenthat oath. Instead of it, we have all taken the new oath of supremacywhich the late Parliament substituted for the old oath. It is thereforea contradiction to say that the Acts of the late Parliament are not nowvalid, and yet to ask us to enact that they shall henceforth be valid. For either they already are so, or we never can make them so. " Thisreasoning, which was in truth as unanswerable as that of Euclid, brought the debate to a speedy close. The bill passed the Commons withinforty-eight hours after it had been read the first time, [611]

This was the only victory won by the Whigs during the whole session. They complained loudly in the Lower House of the change which had beenmade in the military government of the city of London. The Tories, conscious of their strength, and heated by resentment, not only refusedto censure what had been done, but determined to express publicly andformally their gratitude to the King for having brought in so manychurchmen and turned out so many schismatics. An address of thanks wasmoved by Clarges, member for Westminster, who was known to be attachedto Caermarthen. "The alterations which have been made in the City, " saidClarges, "show that His Majesty has a tender care of us. I hope thathe will make similar alterations in every county of the realm. " Theminority struggled hard. "Will you thank the King, " they said, "forputting the sword into the hands of his most dangerous enemies? Some ofthose whom he has been advised to entrust with military command have notyet been able to bring themselves to take the oath of allegiance to him. Others were well known, in the evil days, as stanch jurymen, who weresure to find an Exclusionist guilty on any evidence or no evidence. "Nor did the Whig orators refrain from using those topics on which allfactions are eloquent in the hour of distress, and which all factionsare but too ready to treat lightly in the hour of prosperity. "Let usnot, " they said, "pass a vote which conveys a reflection on a large bodyof our countrymen, good subjects, good Protestants. The King ought to bethe head of his whole people. Let us not make him the head of a party. "This was excellent doctrine; but it scarcely became the lips of men who, a few weeks before, had opposed the Indemnity Bill and voted for theSacheverell Clause. The address was carried by a hundred and eighty-fivevotes to a hundred and thirty-six, [612]

As soon as the numbers had been announced, the minority, smartingfrom their defeat, brought forward a motion which caused no littleembarrassment to the Tory placemen. The oath of allegiance, the Whigssaid, was drawn in terms far too lax. It might exclude from publicemployment a few honest Jacobites who were generally too dull to bemischievous; but it was altogether inefficient as a means of binding thesupple and slippery consciences of cunning priests, who, while affectingto hold the Jesuits in abhorrence, were proficients in that immoralcasuistry which was the worst part of Jesuitism. Some grave divines hadopenly said, others had even dared to write, that they had sworn fealtyto William in a sense altogether different from that in which they hadsworn fealty to James. To James they had plighted the entire faith whicha loyal subject owes to a rightful sovereign; but, when they promisedto bear true allegiance to William, they meant only that they would not, whilst he was able to hang them for rebelling or conspiring against him, run any risk of being hanged. None could wonder that the precepts andexample of the malecontent clergy should have corrupted the malecontentlaity. When Prebendaries and Rectors were not ashamed to avow that theyhad equivocated, in the very act of kissing the New Testament, it washardly to be expected that attorneys and taxgatherers would be morescrupulous. The consequence was that every department swarmed withtraitors; that men who ate the King's bread, men who were entrusted withthe duty of collecting and disbursing his revenues, of victualling hisships, of clothing his soldiers, of making his artillery ready for thefield, were in the habit of calling him an usurper, and of drinking tohis speedy downfall. Could any government be safe which was hated andbetrayed by its own servants? And was not the English government exposedto the dangers which, even if all its servants were true, might wellexcite serious apprehensions? A disputed succession, war with France, war in Scotland, war in Ireland, was not all this enough withouttreachery in every arsenal and in every custom house? There must be anoath drawn in language too precise to be explained away, in languagewhich no Jacobite could repeat without the consciousness that he wasperjuring himself. Though the zealots of indefeasible hereditary righthad in general no objection to swear allegiance to William, they wouldprobably not choose to abjure James. On such grounds as these, anAbjuration Bill of extreme severity was brought into the House ofCommons. It was proposed to enact that every person who held any office, civil, military, or spiritual, should, on pain of deprivation, solemnlyabjure the exiled King; that the oath of abjuration might be tendered byany justice of the peace to any subject of their Majesties; and that, ifit were refused, the recusant should be sent to prison, and should liethere as long as he continued obstinate. 

The severity of this last provision was generally and most justlyblamed. To turn every ignorant meddling magistrate into a stateinquisitor, to insist that a plain man, who lived peaceably, who obeyedthe laws, who paid his taxes, who had never held and who did not expectever to hold any office, and who had never troubled his head aboutproblems of political philosophy, should declare, under the sanctionof an oath, a decided opinion on a point about which the most learnedDoctors of the age had written whole libraries of controversial books, and to send him to rot in a gaol if he could not bring himself to swear, would surely have been the height of tyranny. The clause which requiredpublic functionaries to abjure the deposed King was not open to the sameobjections. Yet even against this clause some weighty argumentswere urged. A man, it was said, who has an honest heart and a soundunderstanding is sufficiently bound by the present oath. Every suchman, when he swears to be faithful and to bear true allegiance to KingWilliam, does, by necessary implication, abjure King James. Theremay doubtless be among the servants of the State, and even among theministers of the Church, some persons who have no sense of honour orreligion, and who are ready to forswear themselves for lucre. There maybe others who have contracted the pernicious habit of quibbling away themost sacred obligations of morality, and who have convinced themselvesthat they can innocently make, with a mental reservation, a promisewhich it would be sinful to make without such a reservation. Againstthese two classes of Jacobites it is true that the present test affordsno security. But will the new test, will any test, be more efficacious?Will a person who has no conscience, or a person whose conscience can beset at rest by immoral sophistry, hesitate to repeat any phrase that youcan dictate? The former will kiss the book without any scruple at all. The scruples of the latter will be very easily removed. He now swearsallegiance to one King with a mental reservation. He will then abjurethe other King with a mental reservation. Do not flatter yourselves thatthe ingenuity of lawgivers will ever devise an oath which the ingenuityof casuists will not evade. What indeed is the value of any oath insuch a matter? Among the many lessons which the troubles of the lastgeneration have left us none is more plain than this, that no form ofwords, however precise, no imprecation, however awful, ever saved, orever will save, a government from destruction, Was not the Solemn Leagueand Covenant burned by the common hangman amidst the huzzas of tensof thousands who had themselves subscribed it? Among the statesmen andwarriors who bore the chief part in restoring Charles the Second, howmany were there who had not repeatedly abjured him? Nay, is it not wellknown that some of those persons boastfully affirmed that, if they hadnot abjured him, they never could have restored him?

The debates were sharp; and the issue during a short time seemeddoubtful; for some of the Tories who were in office were unwilling togive a vote which might be thought to indicate that they were lukewarmin the cause of the King whom they served. William, however, took careto let it be understood that he had no wish to impose a new test on hissubjects. A few words from him decided the event of the conflict. Thebill was rejected thirty-six hours after it had been brought in by ahundred and ninety-two votes to a hundred and sixty-five, [613]

Even after this defeat the Whigs pertinaciously returned to the attack. Having failed in one House they renewed the battle in the other. Fivedays after the Abjuration Bill had been thrown out in the Commons, another Abjuration Bill, somewhat milder, but still very severe, waslaid on the table of the Lords, [614] What was now proposed was thatno person should sit in either House of Parliament or hold any office, civil, military, or judicial, without making a declaration that he wouldstand by William and Mary against James and James's adherents. Everymale in the kingdom who had attained the age of sixteen was to make thesame declaration before a certain day. If he failed to do so he wasto pay double taxes and to be incapable of exercising the electivefranchise. 

On the day fixed for the second reading, the King came down to the Houseof Peers. He gave his assent in form to several laws, unrobed, took hisseat on a chair of state which had been placed for him, and listenedwith much interest to the debate. To the general surprise, two noblemenwho had been eminently zealous for the Revolution spoke against theproposed test. Lord Wharton, a Puritan who had fought for the LongParliament, said, with amusing simplicity, that he was a very old man, that he had lived through troubled times, that he had taken a great manyoaths in his day, and that he was afraid that he had not kept them all. He prayed that the sin might not be laid to his charge; and he declaredthat he could not consent to lay any more snares for his own soul andfor the souls of his neighbours. The Earl of Macclesfield, the captainof the English volunteers who had accompanied William from Helvoetsluysto Torbay, declared that he was much in the same case with Lord Wharton. Marlborough supported the bill. He wondered, he said, that it shouldbe opposed by Macclesfield, who had borne so preeminent a part in theRevolution. Macclesfield, irritated by the charge of inconsistency, retorted with terrible severity: "The noble Earl, " he said, "exaggeratesthe share which I had in the deliverance of our country. I was ready, indeed, and always shall be ready, to venture my life in defence of herlaws and liberties. But there are lengths to which, even for the sake ofher laws and liberties, I could never go. I only rebelled against a badKing; there were those who did much more. "

Marlborough, though not easily discomposed, could not but feel the edgeof this sarcasm; William looked displeased; and the aspect of the wholeHouse was troubled and gloomy. It was resolved by fifty-one votes toforty that the bill should be committed; and it was committed, butnever reported. After many hard struggles between the Whigs headedby Shrewsbury and the Tories headed by Caermarthen, it was so muchmutilated that it retained little more than its name, and did not seemto those who had introduced it to be worth any further contest, [615]

The discomfiture of the Whigs was completed by a communication from theKing. Caermarthen appeared in the House of Lords bearing in his handa parchment signed by William. It was an Act of Grace for politicaloffences. 

Between an Act of Grace originating with the Sovereign and an Act ofIndemnity originating with the Estates of the Realm there are someremarkable distinctions. An Act of Indemnity passes through all thestages through which other laws pass, and may, during its progress, beamended by either House. An Act of Grace is received with peculiar marksof respect, is read only once by the Lords and once by the Commons, and must be either rejected altogether or accepted as it stands, [616] William had not ventured to submit such an Act to the precedingParliament. But in the new Parliament he was certain of a majority. The minority gave no trouble. The stubborn spirit which had, during twosessions, obstructed the progress of the Bill of Indemnity had beenat length broken by defeats and humiliations. Both Houses stood upuncovered while the Act of Grace was read, and gave their sanction to itwithout one dissentient voice. 

There would not have been this unanimity had not a few great criminalsbeen excluded from the benefits of the amnesty. Foremost among themstood the surviving members of the High Court of Justice which hadsate on Charles the First. With these ancient men were joined the twonameless executioners who had done their office, with masked faces, onthe scaffold before the Banqueting House. None knew who they were, orof what rank. It was probable that they had been long dead. Yet itwas thought necessary to declare that, if even now, after the lapse offorty-one years, they should be discovered, they would still be liableto the punishment of their great crime. Perhaps it would hardly havebeen thought necessary to mention these men, if the animosities of thepreceding generation had not been rekindled by the recent appearance ofLudlow in England. About thirty of the agents of the tyranny of Jameswere left to the law. With these exceptions, all political offences, committed before the day on which the royal signature was affixed to theAct, were covered with a general oblivion, [617] Even the criminals whowere by name excluded had little to fear. Many of them were in foreigncountries; and those who were in England were well assured that, unlessthey committed some new fault, they would not be molested. 

The Act of Grace the nation owed to William alone; and it is one of hisnoblest and purest titles to renown. From the commencement of thecivil troubles of the seventeenth century down to the Revolution, every victory gained by either party had been followed by a sanguinaryproscription. When the Roundheads triumphed over the Cavaliers, when theCavaliers triumphed over the Roundheads, when the fable of the Popishplot gave the ascendency to the Whigs, when the detection of the RyeHouse Plot transferred the ascendency to the Tories, blood, and moreblood, and still more blood had flowed. Every great explosion and everygreat recoil of public feeling had been accompanied by severities which, at the time, the predominant faction loudly applauded, but which, on acalm review, history and posterity have condemned. No wise and humaneman, whatever may be his political opinions, now mentions withoutreprehension the death either of Laud or of Vane, either of Stafford orof Russell. Of the alternate butcheries the last and the worst is thatwhich is inseparably associated with the names of James and Jeffreys. But it assuredly would not have been the last, perhaps it might nothave been the worst, if William had not had the virtue and the firmnessresolutely to withstand the importunity of his most zealous adherents. These men were bent on exacting a terrible retribution for all they hadundergone during seven disastrous years. The scaffold of Sidney, thegibbet of Cornish, the stake at which Elizabeth Gaunt had perished inthe flames for the crime of harbouring a fugitive, the porches of theSomersetshire churches surmounted by the skulls and quarters of murderedpeasants, the holds of those Jamaica ships from which every day thecarcass of some prisoner dead of thirst and foul air had been flung tothe sharks, all these things were fresh in the memory of the party whichthe Revolution had made, for a time, dominant in the State. Some chiefsof that party had redeemed their necks by paying heavy ransom. Othershad languished long in Newgate. Others had starved and shivered, winterafter winter, in the garrets of Amsterdam. It was natural that in theday of their power and prosperity they should wish to inflict some partof what they had suffered. During a whole year they pursued their schemeof revenge. They succeeded in defeating Indemnity Bill after IndemnityBill. Nothing stood between them and their victims, but William'simmutable resolution that the glory of the great deliverance which hehad wrought should not be sullied by cruelty. His clemency was peculiarto himself. It was not the clemency of an ostentatious man, or ofa sentimental man, or of an easy tempered man. It was cold, unconciliating, inflexible. It produced no fine stage effects. It drewon him the savage invectives of those whose malevolent passions herefused to satisfy. It won for him no gratitude from those who owed tohim fortune, liberty and life. While the violent Whigs railed at hislenity, the agents of the fallen government, as soon as they foundthemselves safe, instead of acknowledging their obligations to him, reproached him in insulting language with the mercy which he hadextended to them. His Act of Grace, they said, had completely refutedhis Declaration. Was it possible to believe that, if there had been anytruth in the charges which he had brought against the late government, he would have granted impunity to the guilty? It was now acknowledgedby himself, under his own hand, that the stories by which he and hisfriends had deluded the nation and driven away the royal family weremere calumnies devised to serve a turn. The turn had been served; andthe accusations by which he had inflamed the public mind to madness werecoolly withdrawn, [618] But none of these things moved him. He had donewell. He had risked his popularity with men who had been his warmestadmirers, in order to give repose and security to men by whom his namewas never mentioned without a curse. Nor had he conferred a less benefiton those whom he had disappointed of their revenge than on those whom hehad protected. If he had saved one faction from a proscription, hehad saved the other from the reaction which such a proscription wouldinevitably have produced. If his people did not justly appreciate hispolicy, so much the worse for them. He had discharged his duty by them. He feared no obloquy; and he wanted no thanks. 

On the twentieth of May the Act of Grace was passed. The King theninformed the Houses that his visit to Ireland could no longer bedelayed, that he had therefore determined to prorogue them, and that, unless some unexpected emergency made their advice and assistancenecessary to him, he should not call them again from their homes tillthe next winter. "Then, " he said, "I hope, by the blessing of God, weshall have a happy meeting. "

The Parliament had passed an Act providing that, whenever he shouldgo out of England, it should be lawful for Mary to administer thegovernment of the kingdom in his name and her own. It was added that heshould nevertheless, during his absence, retain all his authority. Someobjections were made to this arrangement. Here, it was said, weretwo supreme Powers in one State. A public functionary might receivediametrically opposite orders from the King and the Queen, and might notknow which to obey. The objection was, beyond all doubt, speculativelyjust; but there was such perfect confidence and affection, between theroyal pair that no practical inconvenience was to be apprehended, [619]

As far as Ireland was concerned, the prospects of William were muchmore cheering than they had been a few months earlier. The activitywith which he had personally urged forward the preparations for thenext campaign had produced an extraordinary effect. The nerves ofthe government were new strung. In every department of the militaryadministration the influence of a vigorous mind was perceptible. Abundant supplies of food, clothing and medicine, very different inquality from those which Shales had furnished, were sent across SaintGeorge's Channel. A thousand baggage waggons had been made or collectedwith great expedition; and, during some weeks, the road between Londonand Chester was covered with them. Great numbers of recruits were sentto fill the chasms which pestilence had made in the English ranks. Freshregiments from Scotland, Cheshire, Lancashire, and Cumberland had landedin the Bay of Belfast. The uniforms and arms of the new corners clearlyindicated the potent influence of the master's eye. With the Britishbattalions were interspersed several hardy bands of German andScandinavian mercenaries. Before the end of May. The English force inUlster amounted to thirty thousand fighting men. A few more troops andan immense quantity of military stores were on board of a fleet whichlay in the estuary of the Dee, and which was ready to weigh anchor assoon as the King was on board, [620]

James ought to have made an equally good use of the time during whichhis army had been in winter quarters. Strict discipline and regulardrilling might, in the interval between November and May, have turnedthe athletic and enthusiastic peasants who were assembled under hisstandard into good soldiers. But the opportunity was lost. The Court ofDublin was, during that season of inaction, busied with dice and claret, love letters and challenges. The aspect of the capital was indeed notvery brilliant. The whole number of coaches which could be musteredthere, those of the King and of the French Legation included, did notamount to forty, [621] But though there was little splendour there wasmuch dissoluteness. Grave Roman Catholics shook their heads and saidthat the Castle did not look like the palace of a King who gloried inbeing the champion of the Church, [622] The military administration wasas deplorable as ever. The cavalry indeed was, by the exertions of somegallant officers, kept in a high state of efficiency. But a regiment ofinfantry differed in nothing but name from a large gang of Rapparees. Indeed a gang of Rapparees gave less annoyance to peaceable citizens, and more annoyance to the enemy, than a regiment of infantry. Avauxstrongly represented, in a memorial which he delivered to James, theabuses which made the Irish foot a curse and a scandal to Ireland. Wholecompanies, said the ambassador, quit their colours on the line of marchand wander to right and left pillaging and destroying; the soldier takesno care of his arms; the officer never troubles himself to ascertainwhether the arms are in good order; the consequence is that one man inevery three has lost his musket, and that another man in every threehas a musket that will not go off. Avaux adjured the King to prohibitmarauding, to give orders that the troops should be regularly exercised, and to punish every officer who suffered his men to neglect theirweapons and accoutrements. If these things were done, His Majesty mighthope to have, in the approaching spring, an army with which the enemywould be unable to contend. This was good advice; but James was so farfrom taking it that he would hardly listen to it with patience. Beforehe had heard eight lines read he flew into a passion and accused theambassador of exaggeration. "This paper, Sir, " said Avaux, "isnot written to be published. It is meant solely for Your Majesty'sinformation; and, in a paper meant solely for Your Majesty'sinformation, flattery and disguise would be out of place; but I will notpersist in reading what is so disagreeable. " "Go on, " said James veryangrily; "I will hear the whole. " He gradually became calmer, tookthe memorial, and promised to adopt some of the suggestions which itcontained. But his promise was soon forgotten, [623]

His financial administration was of a piece with his militaryadministration. His one fiscal resource was robbery, direct or indirect. Every Protestant who had remained in any part of the three southernprovinces of Ireland was robbed directly, by the simple process oftaking money out of his strong box, drink out of his cellars, fuel fromhis turf stack, and clothes from his wardrobe. He was robbed indirectlyby a new issue of counters, smaller in size and baser in material thanany which had yet borne the image and superscription of James. Evenbrass had begun to be scarce at Dublin; and it was necessary to askassistance from Lewis, who charitably bestowed on his ally an oldcracked piece of cannon to be coined into crowns and shillings, [624]

But the French king had determined to send over succours of a verydifferent kind. He proposed to take into his own service, and to form bythe best discipline then known in the world, four Irish regiments. Theywere to be commanded by Macarthy, who had been severely wounded andtaken prisoner at Newton Butler. His wounds had been healed; and he hadregained his liberty by violating his parole. This disgraceful breachof faith he had made more disgraceful by paltry tricks and sophisticalexcuses which would have become a Jesuit better than a gentleman and asoldier. Lewis was willing that the Irish regiments should be sent tohim in rags and unarmed, and insisted only that the men should be stout, and that the officers should not be bankrupt traders and discardedlacqueys, but, if possible, men of good family who had seen service. Inreturn for these troops, who were in number not quite four thousand, heundertook to send to Ireland between seven and eight thousand excellentFrench infantry, who were likely in a day of battle to be of more usethan all the kernes of Leinster, Munster and Connaught together, [625]

One great error he committed. The army which he was sending to assistJames, though small indeed when compared with the army of Flanders orwith the army of the Rhine, was destined for a service on which the fateof Europe might depend, and ought therefore to have been commanded by ageneral of eminent abilities. There was no want of such generals inthe French service. But James and his Queen begged hard for Lauzun, andcarried this point against the strong representations of Avaux, againstthe advice of Louvois, and against the judgment of Lewis himself. 

When Lauzun went to the cabinet of Louvois to receive instructions, thewise minister held language which showed how little confidence he feltin the vain and eccentric knight errant. "Do not, for God's sake, sufferyourself to be hurried away by your desire of fighting. Put all yourglory in tiring the English out; and, above all things, maintain strictdiscipline. " [626]

Not only was the appointment of Lauzun in itself a bad appointment: but, in order that one man might fill a post for which he was unfit, it wasnecessary to remove two men from posts for which they were eminentlyfit. Immoral and hardhearted as Rosen and Avaux were, Rosen was askilful captain, and Avaux was a skilful politician. Though it is notprobable that they would have been able to avert the doom of Ireland, itis probable that they might have been able to protract the contest; andit was evidently for the interest of France that the contest should beprotracted. But it would have been an affront to the old general to puthim under the orders of Lauzun; and between the ambassador and Lauzunthere was such an enmity that they could not be expected to actcordially together. Both Rosen and Avaux, therefore, were, with manysoothing assurances of royal approbation and favour, recalled toFrance. They sailed from Cork early in the spring by the fleet which hadconveyed Lauzun thither, [627] Lauzun had no sooner landed than he foundthat, though he had been long expected, nothing had been prepared forhis reception. No lodgings had been provided for his men, no place ofsecurity for his stores, no horses, no carriages, [628] His troops hadto undergo the hardships of a long march through a desert beforethey arrived at Dublin. At Dublin, indeed, they found tolerableaccommodation. They were billeted on Protestants, lived at freequarter, had plenty of bread, and threepence a day. Lauzun was appointedCommander in Chief of the Irish army, and took up his residence in theCastle, [629] His salary was the same with that of the Lord Lieutenant, eight thousand Jacobuses, equivalent to ten thousand pounds sterling, ayear. This sum James offered to pay, not in the brass which bore his owneffigy, but in French gold. But Lauzun, among whose faults avarice hadno place, refused to fill his own coffers from an almost empty treasury, [630]

On him and on the Frenchmen who accompanied him the misery of the Irishpeople and the imbecility of the Irish government produced an effectwhich they found it difficult to describe. Lauzun wrote to Louvois thatthe Court and the whole kingdom were in a state not to be imagined by aperson who had always lived in well governed countries. It was, hesaid, a chaos, such as he had read of in the book of Genesis. The wholebusiness of all the public functionaries was to quarrel with each other, and to plunder the government and the people. After he had been abouta month at the Castle, he declared that he would not go through suchanother month for all the world. His ablest officers confirmed histestimony, [631] One of them, indeed, was so unjust as to represent thepeople of Ireland not merely as ignorant and idle, which they were, butas hopelessly stupid and unfeeling, which they assuredly were not. TheEnglish policy, he said, had so completely brutalised them, that theycould hardly be called human beings. They were insensible to praise andblame, to promises and threats. And yet it was pity of them; for theywere physically the finest race of men in the world, [632]

By this time Schomberg had opened the campaign auspiciously. He had withlittle difficulty taken Charlemont, the last important fastness whichthe Irish occupied in Ulster. But the great work of reconquering thethree southern provinces of the island he deferred till William shouldarrive. William meanwhile was busied in making arrangements for thegovernment and defence of England during his absence. He well knew thatthe Jacobites were on the alert. They had not till very lately been anunited and organized faction. There had been, to use Melfort's phrase, numerous gangs, which were all in communication with James at DublinCastle, or with Mary of Modena at Saint Germains, but which had noconnection with each other and were unwilling to trust each other, [633]But since it had been known that the usurper was about to cross the sea, and that his sceptre would be left in a female hand, these gangshad been drawing close together, and had begun to form one extensiveconfederacy. Clarendon, who had refused the oaths, and, Aylesbury, whohad dishonestly taken them, were among the chief traitors. Dartmouth, though he had sworn allegiance to the sovereigns who were in possession, was one of their most active enemies, and undertook what may be calledthe maritime department of the plot. His mind was constantly occupiedby schemes, disgraceful to an English seaman, for the destruction ofthe English fleets and arsenals. He was in close communication with somenaval officers, who, though they served the new government, servedit sullenly and with half a heart; and he flattered himself that bypromising these men ample rewards, and by artfully inflaming the jealousanimosity with which they regarded the Dutch flag, he should prevail onthem to desert and to carry their ships into some French or Irish port, [634]

The conduct of Penn was scarcely less scandalous. He was a zealous andbusy Jacobite; and his new way of life was even more unfavourable thanhis late way of life had been to moral purity. It was hardly possibleto be at once a consistent Quaker and a courtier: but it was utterlyimpossible to be at once a consistent Quaker and a conspirator. Itis melancholy to relate that Penn, while professing to consider evendefensive war as sinful, did every thing in his power to bring a foreignarmy into the heart of his own country. He wrote to inform James thatthe adherents of the Prince of Orange dreaded nothing so much as anappeal to the sword, and that, if England were now invaded from Franceor from Ireland, the number of Royalists would appear to be greater thanever. Avaux thought this letter so important, that he sent a translationof it to Lewis, [635] A good effect, the shrewd ambassador wrote, hadbeen produced, by this and similar communications, on the mind of KingJames. His Majesty was at last convinced that he could recover hisdominions only sword in hand. It is a curious fact that it should havebeen reserved for the great preacher of peace to produce this convictionin the mind of the old tyrant, [636] Penn's proceedings had not escapedthe observation of the government. Warrants had been out against him;and he had been taken into custody; but the evidence against him had notbeen such as would support a charge of high treason: he had, as withall his faults he deserved to have, many friends in every party; hetherefore soon regained his liberty, and returned to his plots, [637]

But the chief conspirator was Richard Graham, Viscount Preston, who had, in the late reign, been Secretary of State. Though a peer in Scotland, he was only a baronet in England. He had, indeed, received from SaintGermains an English patent of nobility; but the patent bore a dateposterior to that flight which the Convention had pronounced anabdication. The Lords had, therefore, not only refused to admit him toa share of their privileges, but had sent him to prison for presuming tocall himself one of their order. He had, however, by humbling himself, and by withdrawing his claim, obtained his liberty, [638] Though thesubmissive language which he had condescended to use on this occasiondid not indicate a spirit prepared for martyrdom, he was regarded by hisparty, and by the world in general, as a man of courage and honour. Hestill retained the seals of his office, and was still considered bythe adherents of indefeasible hereditary right as the real Secretary ofState. He was in high favour with Lewis, at whose court he had formerlyresided, and had, since the Revolution, been intrusted by the Frenchgovernment with considerable sums of money for political purposes, [639]

While Preston was consulting in the capital with the other heads of thefaction, the rustic Jacobites were laying in arms, holding musters, andforming themselves into companies, troops, and regiments. There werealarming symptoms in Worcestershire. In Lancashire many gentlemen hadreceived commissions signed by James, called themselves colonels andcaptains, and made out long lists of noncommissioned officers andprivates. Letters from Yorkshire brought news that large bodies of men, who seemed to have met for no good purpose, had been seen on the moorsnear Knaresborough. Letters from Newcastle gave an account of a greatmatch at football which had been played in Northumberland, and wassuspected to have been a pretext for a gathering of the disaffected. Inthe crowd, it was said, were a hundred and fifty horsemen well mountedand armed, of whom many were Papists, [640]

Meantime packets of letters full of treason were constantly passing andrepassing between Kent and Picardy, and between Wales and Ireland. Some of the messengers were honest fanatics; but others were meremercenaries, and trafficked in the secrets of which they were thebearers. 

Of these double traitors the most remarkable was William Fuller. Thisman has himself told us that, when he was very young, he fell in with apamphlet which contained an account of the flagitious life and horribledeath of Dangerfield. The boy's imagination was set on fire; he devouredthe book; he almost got it by heart; and he was soon seized, and everafter haunted, by a strange presentiment that his fate would resemblethat of the wretched adventurer whose history he had so eagerly read, [641] It might have been supposed that the prospect of dying in Newgate, with a back flayed and an eye knocked out, would not have seemed veryattractive. But experience proves that there are some distempered mindsfor which notoriety, even when accompanied with pain and shame, has anirresistible fascination. Animated by this loathsome ambition, Fullerequalled, and perhaps surpassed, his model. He was bred a RomanCatholic, and was page to Lady Melfort, when Lady Melfort shone atWhitehall as one of the loveliest women in the train of Mary of Modena. After the Revolution, he followed his mistress to France, was repeatedlyemployed in delicate and perilous commissions, and was thought at SaintGermains to be a devoted servant of the House of Stuart. In truth, however, he had, in one of his journeys to London, sold himself to thenew government, and had abjured the faith in which he had been broughtup. The honour, if it is to be so called, of turning him from aworthless Papist into a worthless Protestant he ascribed, withcharacteristic impudence, to the lucid reasoning and blameless life ofTillotson. 

In the spring of 1690, Mary of Modena wished to send to hercorrespondents in London some highly important despatches. As thesedespatches were too bulky to be concealed in the clothes of a singlemessenger, it was necessary to employ two confidential persons. Fullerwas one. The other was a zealous young Jacobite called Crone. Beforethey set out, they received full instructions from the Queen herself. Not a scrap of paper was to be detected about them by an ordinarysearch: but their buttons contained letters written in invisible ink. 

The pair proceeded to Calais. The governor of that town furnished themwith a boat, which, under cover of the night, set them on the lowmarshy coast of Kent, near the lighthouse of Dungeness. They walked toa farmhouse, procured horses, and took different roads to London. Fullerhastened to the palace at Kensington, and delivered the documentswith which he was charged into the King's hand. The first letter whichWilliam unrolled seemed to contain only florid compliments: but a panof charcoal was lighted: a liquor well known to the diplomatists of thatage was applied to the paper: an unsavoury steam filled the closet; andlines full of grave meaning began to appear. 

The first thing to be done was to secure Crone. He had unfortunately hadtime to deliver his letters before he was caught: but a snare was laidfor him into which he easily fell. In truth the sincere Jacobites weregenerally wretched plotters. There was among them an unusually largeproportion of sots, braggarts, and babblers; and Crone was one of these. Had he been wise, he would have shunned places of public resort, keptstrict guard over his lips, and stinted himself to one bottle at a meal. He was found by the messengers of the government at a tavern table inGracechurch Street, swallowing bumpers to the health of King James, and ranting about the coming restoration, the French fleet, and thethousands of honest Englishmen who were awaiting the signal to rise inarms for their rightful Sovereign. He was carried to the Secretary'soffice at Whitehall. He at first seemed to be confident and at hisease: but when Fuller appeared among the bystanders at liberty, and in afashionable garb, with a sword, the prisoner's courage fell; and he wasscarcely able to articulate, [642]

The news that Fuller had turned king's evidence, that Crone had beenarrested, and that important letters from Saint Germains were in thehands of William, flew fast through London, and spread dismay among allwho were conscious of guilt, [643] It was true that the testimony of onewitness, even if that witness had been more respectable than Fuller, wasnot legally sufficient to convict any person of high treason. But Fullerhad so managed matters that several witnesses could be produced tocorroborate his evidence against Crone; and, if Crone, under the strongterror of death, should imitate Fuller's example, the heads of all thechiefs of the conspiracy would be at the mercy of the government. Thespirits of the Jacobites rose, however, when it was known that Crone, though repeatedly interrogated by those who had him in their power, andthough assured that nothing but a frank confession could save his life, had resolutely continued silent. What effect a verdict of Guilty and thenear prospect of the gallows might produce on him remained to be seen. His accomplices were by no means willing that his fortitude should betried by so severe a test. They therefore employed numerous artifices, legal and illegal, to avert a conviction. A woman named Clifford, withwhom he had lodged, and who was one of the most active and cunningagents of the Jacobite faction, was entrusted with the duty of keepinghim steady to the cause, and of rendering to him services from whichscrupulous or timid agents might have shrunk. When the dreaded daycame, Fuller was too ill to appear in the witness box, and the trialwas consequently postponed. He asserted that his malady was not natural, that a noxious drug had been administered to him in a dish of porridge, that his nails were discoloured, that his hair came off, and that ablephysicians pronounced him poisoned. But such stories, even when theyrest on authority much better than that of Fuller, ought to be receivedwith great distrust. 

While Crone was awaiting his trial, another agent of the Court ofSaint Germains, named Tempest, was seized on the road between Dover andLondon, and was found to be the bearer of numerous letters addressed tomalecontents in England, [644]

Every day it became more plain that the State was surrounded by dangers:and yet it was absolutely necessary that, at this conjuncture, the ableand resolute Chief of the State should quit his post. 

William, with painful anxiety, such as he alone was able to concealunder an appearance of stoical serenity, prepared to take his departure. Mary was in agonies of grief; and her distress affected him more thanwas imagined by those who judged of his heart by his demeanour, [645] Heknew too that he was about to leave her surrounded by difficultieswith which her habits had not qualified her to contend. She would be inconstant need of wise and upright counsel; and where was such counsel tobe found? There were indeed among his servants many able men and afew virtuous men. But, even when he was present, their political andpersonal animosities had too often made both their abilities and theirvirtues useless to him. What chance was there that the gentle Mary wouldbe able to restrain that party spirit and that emulation which had beenbut very imperfectly kept in order by her resolute and politic lord?If the interior cabinet which was to assist the Queen were composedexclusively either of Whigs or of Tories, half the nation would bedisgusted. Yet, if Whigs and Tories were mixed, it was certain thatthere would be constant dissension. Such was William's situation that hehad only a choice of evils. 

All these difficulties were increased by the conduct of Shrewsbury. Thecharacter of this man is a curious study. He seemed to be the pettedfavourite both of nature and of fortune. Illustrious birth, exaltedrank, ample possessions, fine parts, extensive acquirements, anagreeable person, manners singularly graceful and engaging, combinedto make him an object of admiration and envy. But, with all theseadvantages, he had some moral and intellectual peculiarities which madehim a torment to himself and to all connected with him. His conductat the time of the Revolution had given the world a high opinion, notmerely of his patriotism, but of his courage, energy and decision. Itshould seem, however, that youthful enthusiasm and the exhilarationproduced by public sympathy and applause had, on that occasion, raisedhim above himself. Scarcely any other part of his life was of a piecewith that splendid commencement. He had hardly become Secretary of Statewhen it appeared that his nerves were too weak for such a post. Thedaily toil, the heavy responsibility, the failures, the mortifications, the obloquy, which are inseparable from power, broke his spirit, soured his temper, and impaired his health. To such natures as his thesustaining power of high religious principle seems to be peculiarlynecessary; and unfortunately Shrewsbury had, in the act of shaking offthe yoke of that superstition in which he had been brought up, liberatedhimself also from more salutary bands which might perhaps have bracedhis too delicately constituted mind into stedfastness and uprightness. Destitute of such support, he was, with great abilities, a weak man, and, though endowed with many amiable and attractive qualities, couldnot be called an honest man. For his own happiness, he should eitherhave been much better or much worse. As it was, he never knew eitherthat noble peace of mind which is the reward of rectitude, or thatabject peace of mind which springs from impudence and insensibility. Fewpeople who have had so little power to resist temptation have sufferedso cruelly from remorse and shame. 

To a man of this temper the situation of a minister of state during theyear which followed the Revolution must have been constant torture. The difficulties by which the government was beset on all sides, themalignity of its enemies, the unreasonableness of its friends, thevirulence with which the hostile factions fell on each other and onevery mediator who attempted to part them, might indeed have discourageda more resolute spirit. Before Shrewsbury had been six months in office, he had completely lost heart and head. He began to address to Williamletters which it is difficult to imagine that a prince so strongmindedcan have read without mingled compassion and contempt. "I amsensible, "--such was the constant burden of these epistles, --"that I amunfit for my place. I cannot exert myself. I am not the same man that Iwas half a year ago. My health is giving way. My mind is on the rack. My memory is failing. Nothing but quiet and retirement can restore me. "William returned friendly and soothing answers; and, for a time, theseanswers calmed the troubled mind of his minister, [646] But at lengththe dissolution, the general election, the change in the Commissionsof Peace and Lieutenancy, and finally the debates on the two AbjurationBills, threw Shrewsbury into a state bordering on distraction. He wasangry with the Whigs for using the King ill, and yet was still moreangry with the King for showing favour to the Tories. At what moment andby what influence, the unhappy man was induced to commit a treason, theconsciousness of which threw a dark shade over all his remaining years, is not accurately known. But it is highly probable that his mother, who, though the most abandoned of women, had great power over him, took afatal advantage of some unguarded hour when he was irritated by findinghis advice slighted, and that of Danby and Nottingham preferred. She wasstill a member of that Church which her son had quitted, and may havethought that, by reclaiming him from rebellion, she might make someatonement for the violation of her marriage vow and the murder of herlord, [647] What is certain is that, before the end of the spring of1690, Shrewsbury had offered his services to James, and that James hadaccepted them. One proof of the sincerity of the convert was demanded. He must resign the seals which he had taken from the hand of theusurper, [648] It is probable that Shrewsbury had scarcely committed hisfault when he began to repent of it. But he had not strength of mind tostop short in the path of evil. Loathing his own baseness, dreadinga detection which must be fatal to his honour, afraid to go forward, afraid to go back, he underwent tortures of which it is impossible tothink without commiseration. The true cause of his distress was as yeta profound secret; but his mental struggles and changes of purpose weregenerally known, and furnished the town, during some weeks, with topicsof conversation. One night, when he was actually setting out in a stateof great excitement for the palace, with the seals in his hand, he wasinduced by Burnet to defer his resignation for a few hours. Some dayslater, the eloquence of Tillotson was employed for the same purpose, [649] Three or four times the Earl laid the ensigns of his office on thetable of the royal closet, and was three or four times induced, bythe kind expostulations of the master whom he was conscious of havingwronged, to take them up and carry them away. Thus the resignation wasdeferred till the eve of the King's departure. By that time agitationhad thrown Shrewsbury into a low fever. Bentinck, who made a last effortto persuade him to retain office, found him in bed and too ill forconversation, [650] The resignation so often tendered was at lengthaccepted; and during some months Nottingham was the only Secretary ofState. 

It was no small addition to William's troubles that, at such a moment, his government should be weakened by this defection. He tried, however, to do his best with the materials which remained to him, and finallyselected nine privy councillors, by whose advice he enjoined Mary to beguided. Four of these, Devonshire, Dorset, Monmouth, and EdwardRussell, were Whigs. The other five, Caermarthen, Pembroke, Nottingham, Marlborough, and Lowther, were Tories, [651]

William ordered the Nine to attend him at the office of the Secretary ofState. When they were assembled, he came leading in the Queen, desiredthem to be seated, and addressed to them a few earnest and weightywords. "She wants experience, " he said; "but I hope that, by choosingyou to be her counsellors, I have supplied that defect. I put my kingdominto your hands. Nothing foreign or domestic shall be kept secret fromyou. I implore you to be diligent and to be united. " [652] In privatehe told his wife what he thought of the characters of the Nine; and itshould seem, from her letters to him, that there were few of the numberfor whom he expressed any high esteem. Marlborough was to be her guidein military affairs, and was to command the troops in England. Russell, who was Admiral of the Blue, and had been rewarded for the service whichhe had done at the time of the Revolution with the lucrative placeof Treasurer of the Navy, was well fitted to be her adviser on allquestions relating to the fleet. But Caermarthen was designated as theperson on whom, in case of any difference of opinion in the council, she ought chiefly to rely. Caermarthen's sagacity and experience wereunquestionable; his principles, indeed, were lax; but, if there was anyperson in existence to whom he was likely to be true, that person wasMary. He had long been in a peculiar manner her friend and servant: hehad gained a high place in her favour by bringing about her marriage;and he had, in the Convention, carried his zeal for her interests to alength which she had herself blamed as excessive. There was, therefore, every reason to hope that he would serve her at this criticalconjuncture with sincere good will, [653]

One of her nearest kinsmen, on the other hand, was one of her bitterestenemies. The evidence which was in the possession of the governmentproved beyond dispute that Clarendon was deeply concerned in theJacobite schemes of insurrection. But the Queen was most unwilling thather kindred should be harshly treated; and William, remembering throughwhat ties she had broken, and what reproaches she had incurred, for hissake, readily gave her uncle's life and liberty to her intercession. But, before the King set out for Ireland, he spoke seriously toRochester. "Your brother has been plotting against me. I am sure of it. I have the proofs under his own hand. I was urged to leave him out ofthe Act of Grace; but I would not do what would have given so much painto the Queen. For her sake I forgive the past; but my Lord Clarendonwill do well to be cautious for the future. If not, he will find thatthese are no jesting matters. " Rochester communicated the admonition toClarendon. Clarendon, who was in constant correspondence with Dublin andSaint Germains, protested that his only wish was to be quiet, and that, though he had a scruple about the oaths, the existing government had nota more obedient subject than he purposed to be, [654]

Among the letters which the government had intercepted was one fromJames to Penn. That letter, indeed, was not legal evidence to prove thatthe person to whom it was addressed had been guilty of high treason; butit raised suspicions which are now known to have been well founded. Pennwas brought before the Privy Council, and interrogated. He said verytruly that he could not prevent people from writing to him, and that hewas not accountable for what they might write to him. He acknowledgedthat he was bound to the late King by ties of gratitude and affectionwhich no change of fortune could dissolve. "I should be glad to dohim any service in his private affairs: but I owe a sacred duty tomy country; and therefore I was never so wicked as even to think ofendeavouring to bring him back. " This was a falsehood; and William wasprobably aware that it was so. He was unwilling however to deal harshlywith a man who had many titles to respect, and who was not likely to bea very formidable plotter. He therefore declared himself satisfied, and proposed to discharge the prisoner. Some of the Privy Councillors, however, remonstrated; and Penn was required to give bail, [655]

On the day before William's departure, he called Burnet into his closet, and, in firm but mournful language, spoke of the dangers which on everyside menaced the realm, of the fury or the contending factions, and ofthe evil spirit which seemed to possess too many of the clergy. "But mytrust is in God. I will go through with my work or perish in it. OnlyI cannot help feeling for the poor Queen;" and twice he repeated withunwonted tenderness, "the poor Queen. " "If you love me, " he added, "waiton her often, and give her what help you can. As for me, but for onething, I should enjoy the prospect of being on horseback and undercanvass again. For I am sure I am fitter to direct a campaign than tomanage your House of Lords and Commons. But, though I know that I am inthe path of duty, it is hard on my wife that her father and I must beopposed to each other in the field. God send that no harm may happen tohim. Let me have your prayers, Doctor. " Burnet retired greatly moved, and doubtless put up, with no common fervour, those prayers for whichhis master had asked, [656]

On the following day, the fourth of June, the King set out for Ireland. Prince George had offered his services, had equipped himself at greatcharge, and fully expected to be complimented with a seat in the royalcoach. But William, who promised himself little pleasure or advantagefrom His Royal Highness's conversation, and who seldom stood onceremony, took Portland for a travelling companion, and never once, during the whole of that eventful campaign, seemed to be aware of thePrince's existence, [657] George, if left to himself, would hardly havenoticed the affront. But, though he was too dull to feel, his wife feltfor him; and her resentment was studiously kept alive by mischiefmakersof no common dexterity. On this, as on many other occasions, theinfirmities of William's temper proved seriously detrimental to thegreat interests of which he was the guardian. His reign would have beenfar more prosperous if, with his own courage, capacity and elevation ofmind, he had had a little of the easy good humour and politeness of hisuncle Charles. 

In four days the King arrived at Chester, where a fleet of transportswas awaiting the signal for sailing. He embarked on the eleventh ofJune, and was convoyed across Saint George's Channel by a squadron ofmen of war under the command of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, [658]

The month which followed William's departure from London was one of themost eventful and anxious months in the whole history of England. Afew hours after he had set out, Crone was brought to the bar of the OldBailey. A great array of judges was on the Bench. Fuller had recoveredsufficiently to make his appearance in court; and the trial proceeded. The Jacobites had been indefatigable in their efforts to ascertain thepolitical opinions of the persons whose names were on the jury list. So many were challenged that there was some difficulty in making up thenumber of twelve; and among the twelve was one on whom the malecontentsthought that they could depend. Nor were they altogether mistaken; forthis man held out against his eleven companions all night and half thenext day; and he would probably have starved them into submission hadnot Mrs. Clifford, who was in league with him, been caught throwingsweetmeats to him through the window. His supplies having been cut off, he yielded; and a verdict of Guilty, which, it was said, cost two of thejurymen their lives, was returned. A motion in arrest of judgment wasinstantly made, on the ground that a Latin word indorsed on the backof the indictment was incorrectly spelt. The objection was undoubtedlyfrivolous. Jeffreys would have at once overruled it with a torrent ofcurses, and would have proceeded to the most agreeable part of his duty, that of describing to the prisoner the whole process of half hanging, disembowelling, mutilating, and quartering. But Holt and his brethrenremembered that they were now for the first time since the Revolutiontrying a culprit on a charge of high treason. It was therefore desirableto show, in a manner not to be misunderstood, that a new era hadcommenced, and that the tribunals would in future rather err on the sideof humanity than imitate the cruel haste and levity with which Cornishhad, when pleading for his life, been silenced by servile judges. Thepassing of the sentence was therefore deferred: a day was appointedfor considering the point raised by Crone; and counsel were assigned toargue in his behalf. "This would not have been done, Mr. Crone, "said the Lord Chief Justice significantly, "in either of the last tworeigns. " After a full hearing, the Bench unanimously pronounced theerror to be immaterial; and the prisoner was condemned to death. He owned that his trial had been fair, thanked the judges for theirpatience, and besought them to intercede for him with the Queen, [659]

He was soon informed that his fate was in his own hands. The governmentwas willing to spare him if he would earn his pardon by a fullconfession. The struggle in his mind was terrible and doubtful. At onetime Mrs. Clifford, who had access to his cell, reported to the Jacobitechiefs that he was in a great agony. He could not die, he said; he wastoo young to be a martyr, [660] The next morning she found him cheerfuland resolute, [661] He held out till the eve of the day fixed for hisexecution. Then he sent to ask for an interview with the Secretary ofState. Nottingham went to Newgate; but, before he arrived, Cronehad changed his mind and was determined to say nothing. "Then, " saidNottingham, "I shall see you no more--for tomorrow will assuredly beyour last day. " But, after Nottingham had departed, Monmouth repairedto the gaol, and flattered himself that he had shaken the prisoner'sresolution. At a very late hour that night came a respite for a week, [662] The week however passed away without any disclosure; the gallowsand quartering block were ready at Tyburn; the sledge and axe were atthe door of Newgate; the crowd was thick all up Holborn Hill and alongthe Oxford Road; when a messenger brought another respite, and Crone, instead of being dragged to the place of execution, was conducted to theCouncil chamber at Whitehall. His fortitude had been at last overcomeby the near prospect of death; and on this occasion he gave importantinformation, [663]

Such information as he had it in his power to give was indeed at thatmoment much needed. Both an invasion and an insurrection were hourlyexpected, [664] Scarcely had William set out from London when a greatFrench fleet commanded by the Count of Tourville left the port of Brestand entered the British Channel. Tourville was the ablest maritimecommander that his country then possessed. He had studied every partof his profession. It was said of him that he was competent to fill anyplace on shipboard from that of carpenter up to that of admiral. It wassaid of him, also, that to the dauntless courage of a seaman he unitedthe suavity and urbanity of an accomplished gentleman, [665] He nowstood over to the English shore, and approached it so near that hisships could be plainly descried from the ramparts of Plymouth. From Plymouth he proceeded slowly along the coast of Devonshire andDorsetshire. There was great reason to apprehend that his movements hadbeen concerted with the English malecontents, [666]

The Queen and her Council hastened to take measures for the defence ofthe country against both foreign and domestic enemies. Torrington tookthe command of the English fleet which lay in the Downs, and sailed toSaint Helen's. He was there joined by a Dutch squadron under the commandof Evertsen. It seemed that the cliffs of the Isle of Wight wouldwitness one of the greatest naval conflicts recorded in history. Ahundred and fifty ships of the line could be counted at once from thewatchtower of Saint Catharine's. On the cast of the huge precipice ofBlack Gang Chine, and in full view of the richly wooded rocks of SaintLawrence and Ventnor, were mustered the maritime forces of England andHolland. On the west, stretching to that white cape where the waves roaramong the Needles, lay the armament of France. 

It was on the twenty-sixth of June, less than a fortnight after Williamhad sailed for Ireland, that the hostile fleets took up these positions. A few hours earlier, there had been an important and anxious sitting ofthe Privy Council at Whitehall. The malecontents who were leagued withFrance were alert and full of hope. Mary had remarked, while taking herairing, that Hyde Park was swarming with them. The whole board was ofopinion that it was necessary to arrest some persons of whose guilt thegovernment had proofs. When Clarendon was named, something was saidin his behalf by his friend and relation, Sir Henry Capel. The othercouncillors stared, but remained silent. It was no pleasant task toaccuse the Queen's kinsman in the Queen's presence. Mary had scarcelyever opened her lips at Council; but now, being possessed of clearproofs of her uncle's treason in his own handwriting, and knowing thatrespect for her prevented her advisers from proposing what the publicsafety required, she broke silence. "Sir Henry, " she said, "I know, andevery body here knows as well as I, that there is too much against myLord Clarendon to leave him out. " The warrant was drawn up; and Capelsigned it with the rest. "I am more sorry for Lord Clarendon, " Marywrote to her husband, "than, may be, will be believed. " That eveningClarendon and several other noted Jacobites were lodged in the Tower, [667]

When the Privy Council had risen, the Queen and the interior Council ofNine had to consider a question of the gravest importance. What orderswere to be sent to Torrington? The safety of the State might dependon his judgment and presence of mind; and some of Mary's advisersapprehended that he would not be found equal to the occasion. Theiranxiety increased when news came that he had abandoned the coast of theIsle of Wight to the French, and was retreating before them towardsthe Straits of Dover. The sagacious Caermarthen and the enterprisingMonmouth agreed in blaming these cautious tactics. It was true thatTorrington had not so many vessels as Tourville; but Caermarthen thoughtthat, at such a time, it was advisable to fight, although against odds;and Monmouth was, through life, for fighting at all times and againstall odds. Russell, who was indisputably one of the best seamen of theage, held that the disparity of numbers was not such as ought to causeany uneasiness to an officer who commanded English and Dutch sailors. Hetherefore proposed to send to the Admiral a reprimand couched in termsso severe that the Queen did not like to sign it. The language was muchsoftened; but, in the main, Russell's advice was followed. Torringtonwas positively ordered to retreat no further, and to give battleimmediately. Devonshire, however, was still unsatisfied. "It is my duty, Madam, " he said, "to tell Your Majesty exactly what I think on a matterof this importance; and I think that my Lord Torrington is not a man tobe trusted with the fate of three kingdoms. " Devonshire was right; buthis colleagues were unanimously of opinion that to supersede a commanderin sight of the enemy, and on the eve of a general action, would be acourse full of danger, and it is difficult to say that they were wrong. "You must either, " said Russell, "leave him where he is, or send for himas a prisoner. " Several expedients were suggested. Caermarthen proposedthat Russell should be sent to assist Torrington. Monmouth passionatelyimplored permission to join the fleet in any capacity, as a captain, oras a volunteer. "Only let me be once on board; and I pledge my life thatthere shall be a battle. " After much discussion and hesitation, it wasresolved that both Russell and Monmouth should go down to the coast, [668] They set out, but too late. The despatch which ordered Torringtonto fight had preceded them. It reached him when he was off Beachy Head. He read it, and was in a great strait. Not to give battle was to beguilty of direct disobedience. To give battle was, in his judgment, toincur serious risk of defeat. He probably suspected, --for he was of acaptious and jealous temper, --that the instructions which placed him inso painful a dilemma had been framed by enemies and rivals with adesign unfriendly to his fortune and his fame. He was exasperated by thethought that he was ordered about and overruled by Russell, who, thoughhis inferior in professional rank, exercised, as one of the Council ofNine, a supreme control over all the departments of the public service. There seems to be no ground for charging Torrington with disaffection. Still less can it be suspected that an officer, whose whole life hadbeen passed in confronting danger, and who had always borne himselfbravely, wanted the personal courage which hundreds of sailors on boardof every ship under his command possessed. But there is a highercourage of which Torrington was wholly destitute. He shrank from allresponsibility, from the responsibility of fighting, and from theresponsibility of not fighting; and he succeeded in finding out a middleway which united all the inconveniences which he wished to avoid. Hewould conform to the letter of his instructions; yet he would not putevery thing to hazard. Some of his ships should skirmish with the enemy;but the great body of his fleet should not be risked. It was evidentthat the vessels which engaged the French would be placed in a mostdangerous situation, and would suffer much loss; and there is but toogood reason to believe that Torrington was base enough to lay his plansin such a manner that the danger and loss might fall almost exclusivelyto the share of the Dutch. He bore them no love; and in England theywere so unpopular that the destruction of their whole squadron waslikely to cause fewer murmurs than the capture of one of our ownfrigates. 

It was on the twenty-ninth of June that the Admiral received the orderto fight. The next day, at four in the morning, he bore down on theFrench fleet, and formed his vessels in order of battle. He had notsixty sail of the line, and the French had at least eighty; but hisships were more strongly manned than those of the enemy. He placed theDutch in the van and gave them the signal to engage. That signal waspromptly obeyed. Evertsen and his countrymen fought with a courage towhich both their English allies and their French enemies, in spite ofnational prejudices, did full justice. In none of Van Tromp's or DeRuyter's battles had the honour of the Batavian flag been more gallantlyupheld. During many hours the van maintained the unequal contest withvery little assistance from any other part of the fleet. At length theDutch Admiral drew off, leaving one shattered and dismasted hull tothe enemy. His second in command and several officers of high rank hadfallen. To keep the sea against the French after this disastrous andignominious action was impossible. The Dutch ships which had come out ofthe fight were in lamentable condition. Torrington ordered some of themto be destroyed: the rest he took in tow: he then fled along the coastof Kent, and sought a refuge in the Thames. As soon as he was in theriver, he ordered all the buoys to be pulled up, and thus made thenavigation so dangerous, that the pursuers could not venture to followhim, [669]

It was, however, thought by many, and especially by the Frenchministers, that, if Tourville had been more enterprising, the alliedfleet might have been destroyed. He seems to have borne, in one respect, too much resemblance to his vanquished opponent. Though a brave man, hewas a timid commander. His life he exposed with careless gaiety; but itwas said that he was nervously anxious and pusillanimously cautious whenhis professional reputation was in danger. He was so much annoyed bythese censures that he soon became, unfortunately for his country, boldeven to temerity, [670]

There has scarcely ever been so sad a day in London as that on which thenews of the Battle of Beachy Head arrived. The shame was insupportable;the peril was imminent. What if the victorious enemy should do whatDe Ruyter had done? What if the dockyards of Chatham should again bedestroyed? What if the Tower itself should be bombarded? What if thevast wood of masts and yardarms below London Bridge should be in ablaze?Nor was this all. Evil tidings had just arrived from the Low Countries. The allied forces under Waldeck had, in the neighbourhood of Fleurus, encountered the French commanded by the Duke of Luxemburg. The dayhad been long and fiercely disputed. At length the skill of the Frenchgeneral and the impetuous valour of the French cavalry had prevailed, [671] Thus at the same moment the army of Lewis was victorious inFlanders, and his navy was in undisputed possession of the Channel. Marshal Humieres with a considerable force lay not far from the Straitsof Dover. It had been given out that he was about to join Luxemburg. Butthe information which the English government received from able militarymen in the Netherlands and from spies who mixed with the Jacobites, andwhich to so great a master of the art of war as Marlborough seemedto deserve serious attention, was, that the army of Humieres wouldinstantly march to Dunkirk and would there be taken on board of thefleet of Tourville, [672] Between the coast of Artois and the Nore not asingle ship bearing the red cross of Saint George could venture to showherself. The embarkation would be the business of a few hours. A fewhours more might suffice for the voyage. At any moment London might beappalled by the news that thirty thousand French veterans were in Kent, and that the Jacobites of half the counties of the kingdom were in arms. All the regular troops who could be assembled for the defence of theisland did not amount to more than ten thousand men. It may be doubtedwhether our country has ever passed through a more alarming crisis thanthat of the first week of July 1690. 

But the evil brought with it its own remedy. Those little knew Englandwho imagined that she could be in danger at once of rebellion andinvasion; for in truth the danger of invasion was the best securityagainst the danger of rebellion. The cause of James was the cause ofFrance; and, though to superficial observers the French alliance seemedto be his chief support, it really was the obstacle which made hisrestoration impossible. In the patriotism, the too often unamiableand unsocial patriotism of our forefathers, lay the secret at once ofWilliam's weakness and of his strength. They were jealous of his lovefor Holland; but they cordially sympathized with his hatred of Lewis. To their strong sentiment of nationality are to be ascribed almost allthose petty annoyances which made the throne of the Deliverer, from hisaccession to his death, so uneasy a seat. But to the same sentiment itis to be ascribed that his throne, constantly menaced and frequentlyshaken, was never subverted. For, much as his people detested hisforeign favourites, they detested his foreign adversaries still more. The Dutch were Protestants; the French were Papists. The Dutch wereregarded as selfseeking, grasping overreaching allies; the French weremortal enemies. The worst that could be apprehended from the Dutch wasthat they might obtain too large a share of the patronage of the Crown, that they might throw on us too large a part of the burdens of the war, that they might obtain commercial advantages at our expense. But theFrench would conquer us; the French would enslave us; the French wouldinflict on us calamities such as those which had turned the fair fieldsand cities of the Palatinate into a desert. The hopgrounds of Kent wouldbe as the vineyards of the Neckar. The High Street of Oxford and theclose of Salisbury would be piled with ruins such as those which coveredthe spots where the palaces and churches of Heidelberg and Mannheim hadonce stood. The parsonage overshadowed by the old steeple, the farmhousepeeping from among beehives and appleblossoms, the manorial hallembosomed in elms, would be given up to a soldiery which knew not whatit was to pity old men or delicate women or sticking children. Thewords, "The French are coming, " like a spell, quelled at once allmurmur about taxes and abuses, about William's ungracious mannersand Portland's lucrative places, and raised a spirit as high andunconquerable as had pervaded, a hundred years before, the ranks whichElizabeth reviewed at Tilbury. Had the army of Humieres landed, it wouldassuredly have been withstood by almost every male capable of bearingarms. Not only the muskets and pikes but the scythes and pitchforkswould have been too few for the hundreds of thousands who, forgettingall distinction of sect or faction, would have risen up like one man todefend the English soil. 

The immediate effect therefore of the disasters in the Channel and inFlanders was to unite for a moment the great body of the people. Thenational antipathy to the Dutch seemed to be suspended. Their gallantconduct in the fight off Beachy Head was loudly applauded. The inactionof Torrington was loudly condemned. London set the example of concertand of exertion. The irritation produced by the late election at oncesubsided. All distinctions of party disappeared. The Lord Mayor wassummoned to attend the Queen. She requested him to ascertain as soonas possible what the capital would undertake to do if the enemy shouldventure to make a descent. He called together the representatives ofthe wards, conferred with them, and returned to Whitehall to report thatthey had unanimously bound themselves to stand by the government withlife and fortune; that a hundred thousand pounds were ready to bepaid into the Exchequer; that ten thousand Londoners, well armed andappointed, were prepared to march at an hour's notice; and that anadditional force, consisting of six regiments of foot, a strong regimentof horse, and a thousand dragoons, should be instantly raised withoutcosting the Crown a farthing. Of Her Majesty the City had nothing toask, but that she would be pleased to set over these troops officers inwhom she could confide. The same spirit was shown in every part of thecountry. Though in the southern counties the harvest was at hand, the rustics repaired with unusual cheerfulness to the musters of themilitia. The Jacobite country gentlemen, who had, during several months, been making preparations for the general rising which was to take placeas soon as William was gone and as help arrived from France, now thatWilliam was gone, now that a French invasion was hourly expected, burnedtheir commissions signed by James, and hid their arms behind wainscotsor in haystacks. The Jacobites in the towns were insulted wherever theyappeared, and were forced to shut themselves up in their houses from theexasperated populace, [673]

Nothing is more interesting to those who love to study the intricaciesof the human heart than the effect which the public danger producedon Shrewsbury. For a moment he was again the Shrewsbury of 1688. Hisnature, lamentably unstable, was not ignoble; and the thought, that, bystanding foremost in the defence of his country at so perilous a crisis, he might repair his great fault and regain his own esteem, gave newenergy to his body and his mind. He had retired to Epsom, in the hopethat quiet and pure air would produce a salutary effect on his shatteredframe and wounded spirit. But a few hours after the news of the Battleof Beachy Head had arrived, he was at Whitehall, and had offered hispurse and sword to the Queen. It had been in contemplation to put thefleet under the command of some great nobleman with two experiencednaval officers to advise him. Shrewsbury begged that, if such anarrangement were made, he might be appointed. It concerned, he said, theinterest and the honour of every man in the kingdom not to let the enemyride victorious in the Channel; and he would gladly risk his life toretrieve the lost fame of the English flag, [674]

His offer was not accepted. Indeed, the plan of dividing the navalcommand between a man of quality who did not know the points of thecompass, and two weatherbeaten old seamen who had risen from being cabinboys to be Admirals, was very wisely laid aside. Active exertions weremade to prepare the allied squadrons for service. Nothing was omittedwhich could assuage the natural resentment of the Dutch. The Queensent a Privy Councillor, charged with a special mission to the StatesGeneral. He was the bearer of a letter to them in which she extolled thevalour of Evertsen's gallant squadron. She assured them that theirships should be repaired in the English dockyards, and that the woundedDutchmen should be as carefully tended as wounded Englishmen. It wasannounced that a strict inquiry would be instituted into the causes ofthe late disaster; and Torrington, who indeed could not at that momenthave appeared in public without risk of being torn in pieces, was sentto the Tower, [675]

During the three days which followed the arrival of the disastroustidings from Beachy Head the aspect of London was gloomy and agitated. But on the fourth day all was changed. Bells were pealing: flags wereflying: candles were arranged in the windows for an illumination; menwere eagerly shaking hands with each other in the streets. A courier hadthat morning arrived at Whitehall with great news from Ireland. 

CHAPTER XVI

 William lands at Carrickfergus, and proceeds to Belfast--State of Dublin; William's military Arrangements--William marches southward--The Irish Army retreats--The Irish make a Stand at the Boyne--The Army of James--The Army of William--Walker, now Bishop of Derry, accompanies the Army--William reconnoitres the Irish Position; William is wounded--Battle of the Boyne--Flight of James--Loss of the two Armies--Fall of Drogheda; State of Dublin--James flies to France; Dublin evacuated by the French and Irish Troops--Entry of William into Dublin--Effect produced in France by the News from Ireland--Effect produced at Rome by the News from Ireland--Effect produced in London by the News from Ireland--James arrives in France; his Reception there--Tourville attempts a Descent on England--Teignmouth destroyed--Excitement of the English Nation against the French--The Jacobite Press--The Jacobite Form of Prayer and Humiliation--Clamour against the nonjuring Bishops--Military Operations in Ireland; Waterford taken--The Irish Army collected at Limerick; Lauzun pronounces that the Place cannot be defended--The Irish insist on defending Limerick--Tyrconnel is against defending Limerick; Limerick defended by the Irish alone--Sarsfield surprises the English Artillery--Arrival of Baldearg O'Donnel at Limerick--The Besiegers suffer from the Rains--Unsuccessful Assault on Limerick; The Siege raised--Tyrconnel and Lauzun go to France; William returns to England; Reception of William in England--Expedition to the South of Ireland--Marlborough takes Cork--Marlborough takes Kinsale--Affairs of Scotland; Intrigues of Montgomery with the Jacobites--War in the Highlands--Fort William built; Meeting of the Scottish Parliament--Melville Lord High Commissioner; the Government obtains a Majority--Ecclesiastical Legislation--The Coalition between the Club and the Jacobites dissolved--The Chiefs of the Club betray each other--General Acquiescence in the new Ecclesiastical Polity--Complaints of the Episcopalians--The Presbyterian Conjurors--William dissatisfied with the Ecclesiastical Arrangements in Scotland--Meeting of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland--State of Affairs on the Continent--The Duke of Savoy joins the Coalition--Supplies voted; Ways and Means--Proceedings against Torrington--Torrington's Trial and Acquittal--Animosity of the Whigs against Caermarthen--Jacobite Plot--Meeting of the leading Conspirators--The Conspirators determine to send Preston to Saint Germains--Papers entrusted to Preston--Information of the Plot given to Caermarthen--Arrest of Preston and his Companions

WILLIAM had been, during the whole spring, impatiently expected inUlster. The Protestant settlements along the coast of that province had, in the course of the month of May, been repeatedly agitated by falsereports of his arrival. It was not, however, till the afternoon of thefourteenth of June that he landed at Carrickfergus. The inhabitants ofthe town crowded the main street and greeted him with loud acclamations:but they caught only a glimpse of him. As soon as he was on dry groundhe mounted and set off for Belfast. On the road he was met by Schomberg. The meeting took place close to a white house, the only human dwellingthen visible, in the space of many miles, on the dreary strand of theestuary of the Laggan. A village and a cotton mill now rise where thewhite house then stood alone; and all the shore is adorned by a gaysuccession of country houses, shrubberies and flower beds. Belfast hasbecome one of the greatest and most flourishing seats of industry in theBritish isles. A busy population of eighty thousand souls is collectedthere. The duties annually paid at the Custom House exceed the dutiesannually paid at the Custom House of London in the most prosperous yearsof the reign of Charles the Second. Other Irish towns may present morepicturesque forms to the eye. But Belfast is the only large Irish townin which the traveller is not disgusted by the loathsome aspectand odour of long lines of human dens far inferior in comfort andcleanliness to the dwellings which, in happier countries, are providedfor cattle. No other large Irish town is so well cleaned, so well paved, so brilliantly lighted. The place of domes and spires is suppliedby edifices, less pleasing to the taste, but not less indicative ofprosperity, huge factories, towering many stories above the chimneys ofthe houses, and resounding with the roar of machinery. The Belfast whichWilliam entered was a small English settlement of about three hundredhouses, commanded by a stately castle which has long disappeared, theseat of the noble family of Chichester. In this mansion, which is saidto have borne some resemblance to the palace of Whitehall, and which wascelebrated for its terraces and orchards stretching down to the riverside, preparations had been made for the King's reception. He waswelcomed at the Northern Gate by the magistrates and burgesses in theirrobes of office. The multitude pressed on his carriage with shouts of"God save the Protestant King. " For the town was one of the strongholdsof the Reformed Faith, and, when, two generations later, the inhabitantswere, for the first time, numbered, it was found that the RomanCatholics were not more than one in fifteen, [676]

The night came; but the Protestant counties were awake and up. A royalsalute had been fired from the castle of Belfast. It had been echoed andreechoed by guns which Schomberg had placed at wide intervals for thepurpose of conveying signals from post to post. Wherever the peal washeard, it was known that King William was come. Before midnight all theheights of Antrim and Down were blazing with bonfires. The light wasseen across the bays of Carlingford and Dundalk, and gave notice tothe outposts of the enemy that the decisive hour was at hand. Withinforty-eight hours after William had landed, James set out from Dublinfor the Irish camp, which was pitched near the northern frontier ofLeinster, [677]

In Dublin the agitation was fearful. None could doubt that the decisivecrisis was approaching; and the agony of suspense stimulated to thehighest point the passions of both the hostile castes. The majoritycould easily detect, in the looks and tones of the oppressed minority, signs which indicated the hope of a speedy deliverance and of a terriblerevenge. Simon Luttrell, to whom the care of the capital was entrusted, hastened to take such precautions as fear and hatred dictated. Aproclamation appeared, enjoining all Protestants to remain in theirhouses from nightfall to dawn, and prohibiting them, on pain of death, from assembling in any place or for any purpose to the number of morethan five. No indulgence was granted even to those divines of theEstablished Church who had never ceased to teach the doctrine of nonresistance. Doctor William King, who had, after long holding out, latelybegun to waver in his political creed, was committed to custody. Therewas no gaol large enough to hold one half of those whom the governorsuspected of evil designs. The College and several parish churches wereused as prisons; and into those buildings men accused of no crime buttheir religion were crowded in such numbers that they could hardlybreathe, [678]

The two rival princes meanwhile were busied in collecting their forces. Loughbrickland was the place appointed by William for the rendezvous ofthe scattered divisions of his army. While his troops were assembling, he exerted himself indefatigably to improve their discipline and toprovide for their subsistence. He had brought from England two hundredthousand pounds in money and a great quantity of ammunition andprovisions. Pillaging was prohibited under severe penalties. At thesame time supplies were liberally dispensed; and all the paymastersof regiments were directed to send in their accounts without delay, inorder that there might be no arrears, [679] Thomas Coningsby, Member ofParliament for Leominster, a busy and unscrupulous Whig, accompanied theKing, and acted as Paymaster General. It deserves to be mentioned thatWilliam, at this time, authorised the Collector of Customs at Belfastto pay every year twelve hundred pounds into the hands of some ofthe principal dissenting ministers of Down and Antrim, who were to betrustees for their brethren. The King declared that he bestowed thissum on the nonconformist divines, partly as a reward for their eminentloyalty to him, and partly as a compensation for their recent losses. Such was the origin of that donation which is still annually bestowed bythe government on the Presbyterian clergy of Ulster, [680]

William was all himself again. His spirits, depressed by eighteen monthspassed in dull state, amidst factions and intrigues which he buthalf understood, rose high as soon as he was surrounded by tentsand standards, [681] It was strange to see how rapidly this man, sounpopular at Westminster, obtained a complete mastery over the hearts ofhis brethren in arms. They observed with delight that, infirm as hewas, he took his share of every hardship which they underwent; thathe thought more of their comfort than of his own, that he sharplyreprimanded some officers, who were so anxious to procure luxuries forhis table as to forget the wants of the common soldiers; that he neveronce, from the day on which he took the field, lodged in a house, but, even in the neighbourhood of cities and palaces, slept in his smallmoveable hut of wood; that no solicitations could induce him, on a hotday and in a high wind, to move out of the choking cloud of dust, whichoverhung the line of march, and which severely tried lungs less delicatethan his. Every man under his command became familiar with his looks andwith his voice; for there was not a regiment which he did not inspectwith minute attention. His pleasant looks and sayings were longremembered. One brave soldier has recorded in his journal the kind andcourteous manner in which a basket of the first cherries of the yearwas accepted from him by the King, and the sprightliness with which HisMajesty conversed at supper with those who stood round the table, [682]

On the twenty-fourth of June, the tenth day after William's landing, hemarched southward from Loughbrickland with all his forces. He was fullydetermined to take the first opportunity of fighting. Schomberg and someother officers recommended caution and delay. But the King answered thathe had not come to Ireland to let the grass grow under his feet. Theevent seems to prove that he judged rightly as a general. That he judgedrightly as a statesman cannot be doubted. He knew that the Englishnation was discontented with the way in which the war had hitherto beenconducted; that nothing but rapid and splendid success could revive theenthusiasm of his friends and quell the spirit of his enemies; andthat a defeat could scarcely be more injurious to his fame and to hisinterests than a languid and indecisive campaign. 

The country through which he advanced had, during eighteen months, beenfearfully wasted both by soldiers and by Rapparees. The cattle had beenslaughtered: the plantations had been cut down: the fences and houseswere in ruins. Not a human being was to be found near the road, except afew naked and meagre wretches who had no food but the husks of oats, andwho were seen picking those husks, like chickens, from amidst dust andcinders, [683] Yet, even under such disadvantages, the natural fertilityof the country, the rich green of the earth, the bays and rivers soadmirably fitted for trade, could not but strike the King's observanteye. Perhaps he thought how different an aspect that unhappy regionwould have presented if it had been blessed with such a government andsuch a religion as had made his native Holland the wonder of the world;how endless a succession of pleasure houses, tulip gardens and dairyfarms would have lined the road from Lisburn to Belfast; how manyhundreds of barges would have been constantly passing up and down theLaggan; what a forest of masts would have bristled in the desolateport of Newry; and what vast warehouses and stately mansions wouldhave covered the space occupied by the noisome alleys of Dundalk. "Thecountry, " he was heard to say, "is worth fighting for. "

The original intention of James seems to have been to try the chancesof a pitched field on the border between Leinster and Ulster. But thisdesign was abandoned, in consequence, apparently, of the representationsof Lauzun, who, though very little disposed and very little qualified toconduct a campaign on the Fabian system, had the admonitions of Louvoisstill in his ears, [684] James, though resolved not to give up Dublinwithout a battle, consented to retreat till he should reach some spotwhere he might have the vantage of ground. When therefore William'sadvanced guard reached Dundalk, nothing was to be seen of the IrishArmy, except a great cloud of dust which was slowly rolling southwardstowards Ardee. The English halted one night near the ground on whichSchomberg's camp had been pitched in the preceding year; and many sadrecollections were awakened by the sight of that dreary marsh, thesepulchre of thousands of brave men, [685]

Still William continued to push forward, and still the Irish recededbefore him, till, on the morning of Monday the thirtieth of June, hisarmy, marching in three columns, reached the summit of a rising groundnear the southern frontier of the county of Louth. Beneath lay a valley, now so rich and so cheerful that the Englishman who gazes on it mayimagine himself to be in one of the most highly favoured parts of hisown highly favoured country. Fields of wheat, woodlands, meadows brightwith daisies and clover, slope gently down to the edge of the Boyne. That bright and tranquil stream, the boundary of Louth and Meath, havingflowed many miles between verdant banks crowned by modern palaces, andby the ruined keeps of old Norman barons of the pale, is here aboutto mingle with the sea. Five miles to the west of the place from whichWilliam looked down on the river, now stands, on a verdant bank, amidstnoble woods, Slane Castle, the mansion of the Marquess of Conyngham. Two miles to the east, a cloud of smoke from factories and steam vesselsoverhangs the busy town and port of Drogheda. On the Meath side of theBoyne, the ground, still all corn, grass, flowers, and foliage, riseswith a gentle swell to an eminence surmounted by a conspicuous tuft ofash trees which overshades the ruined church and desolate graveyard ofDonore, [686]

In the seventeenth century the landscape presented a very differentaspect. The traces of art and industry were few. Scarcely a vessel wason the river except those rude coracles of wickerwork covered with theskins of horses, in which the Celtic peasantry fished for troutand salmon. Drogheda, now peopled by twenty thousand industriousinhabitants, was a small knot of narrow, crooked and filthy lanes, encircled by a ditch and a mound. The houses were built of wood withhigh gables and projecting upper stories. Without the walls of the town, scarcely a dwelling was to be seen except at a place called Oldbridge. At Oldbridge the river was fordable; and on the south of the ford were afew mud cabins, and a single house built of more solid materials. 

When William caught sight of the valley of the Boyne, he couldnot suppress an exclamation and a gesture of delight. He had beenapprehensive that the enemy would avoid a decisive action, and wouldprotract the war till the autumnal rains should return with pestilencein their train. He was now at ease. It was plain that the contest wouldbe sharp and short. The pavilion of James was pitched on the eminenceof Donore. The flags of the House of Stuart and of the House of Bourbonwaved together in defiance on the walls of Drogheda. All the southernbank of the river was lined by the camp and batteries of the hostilearmy. Thousands of armed men were moving about among the tents; andevery one, horse soldier or foot soldier, French or Irish, had a whitebadge in his hat. That colour had been chosen in compliment to the Houseof Bourbon. "I am glad to see you, gentlemen, " said the King, as hiskeen eye surveyed the Irish lines. "If you escape me now, the fault willbe mine. " [687]

Each of the contending princes had some advantages over his rival. James, standing on the defensive, behind entrenchments, with a riverbefore him, had the stronger position; [688] but his troops were inferiorboth in number and in quality to those which were opposed to him. Heprobably had thirty thousand men. About a third part of this forceconsisted of excellent French infantry and excellent Irish cavalry. Butthe rest of his army was the scoff of all Europe. The Irish dragoonswere bad; the Irish infantry worse. It was said that their ordinary wayof fighting was to discharge their pieces once, and then to run awaybawling "Quarter" and "Murder. " Their inefficiency was, in that age, commonly imputed, both by their enemies and by their allies, to naturalpoltroonery. How little ground there was for such an imputation hassince been signally proved by many heroic achievements in every part ofthe globe. It ought, indeed, even in the seventeenth century, to haveoccurred to reasonable men, that a race which furnished some of the besthorse soldiers in the world would certainly, with judicious training, furnish good foot soldiers. But the Irish foot soldiers had not merelynot been well trained; they had been elaborately ill trained. Thegreatest of our generals repeatedly and emphatically declared that eventhe admirable army which fought its way, under his command, from TorresVedras to Toulouse, would, if he had suffered it to contract habits ofpillage, have become, in a few weeks, unfit for all military purposes. What then was likely to be the character of troops who, from the day onwhich they enlisted, were not merely permitted, but invited, to supplythe deficiencies of pay by marauding? They were, as might have beenexpected, a mere mob, furious indeed and clamorous in their zeal forthe cause which they had espoused, but incapable of opposing a stedfastresistance to a well ordered force. In truth, all that the discipline, if it is to be so called, of James's army had done for the Celtic kernehad been to debase and enervate him. After eighteen months of nominalsoldiership, he was positively farther from being a soldier than on theday on which he quilted his hovel for the camp. 

William had under his command near thirty-six thousand men, born inmany lands, and speaking many tongues. Scarcely one Protestant Church, scarcely one Protestant nation, was unrepresented in the army whicha strange series of events had brought to fight for the Protestantreligion in the remotest island of the west. About half the troops werenatives of England. Ormond was there with the Life Guards, and Oxfordwith the Blues. Sir John Lanier, an officer who had acquired militaryexperience on the Continent, and whose prudence was held in high esteem, was at the head of the Queen's regiment of horse, now the First DragoonGuards. There were Beaumont's foot, who had, in defiance of the mandateof James, refused to admit Irish papists among them, and Hastings'sfoot, who had, on the disastrous day of Killiecrankie, maintainedthe military reputation of the Saxon race. There were the two Tangierbattalions, hitherto known only by deeds of violence and rapine, butdestined to begin on the following morning a long career of glory. The Scotch Guards marched under the command of their countryman JamesDouglas. Two fine British regiments, which had been in the serviceof the States General, and had often looked death in the face underWilliam's leading, followed him in this campaign, not only as theirgeneral, but as their native King. They now rank as the fifth and sixthof the line. The former was led by an officer who had no skill in thehigher parts of military science, but whom the whole army allowed to bethe bravest of all the brave, John Cutts. Conspicuous among the Dutchtroops were Portland's and Ginkell's Horse, and Solmes's Blue regiment, consisting of two thousand of the finest infantry in Europe. Germany hadsent to the field some warriors, sprung from her noblest houses. Prince George of Hesse Darmstadt, a gallant youth who was serving hisapprenticeship in the military art, rode near the King. A strongbrigade of Danish mercenaries was commanded by Duke Charles Frederic ofWirtemberg, a near kinsman of the head of his illustrious family. It wasreported that of all the soldiers of William these were most dreadedby the Irish. For centuries of Saxon domination had not effaced therecollection of the violence and cruelty of the Scandinavian seakings; and an ancient prophecy that the Danes would one day destroy thechildren of the soil was still repeated with superstitious horror, [689]Among the foreign auxiliaries were a Brandenburg regiment and a Finlandregiment. But in that great array, so variously composed, were twobodies of men animated by a spirit peculiarly fierce and implacable, the Huguenots of France thirsting for the blood of the French, and theEnglishry of Ireland impatient to trample down the Irish. The ranks ofthe refugees had been effectually purged of spies and traitors, and weremade up of men such as had contended in the preceding century againstthe power of the House of Valois and the genius of the House ofLorraine. All the boldest spirits of the unconquerable colony hadrepaired to William's camp. Mitchelburne was there with the stubborndefenders of Londonderry, and Wolseley with the warriors who had raisedthe unanimous shout of "Advance" on the day of Newton Butler. Sir AlbertConyngham, the ancestor of the noble family whose seat now overlooksthe Boyne, had brought from the neighbourhood of Lough Erne a gallantregiment of dragoons which still glories in the name of Enniskillen, andwhich has proved on the shores of the Euxine that it has not degeneratedsince the day of the Boyne, [690]

Walker, notwithstanding his advanced age and his peaceful profession, accompanied the men of Londonderry, and tried to animate their zeal byexhortation and by example. He was now a great prelate. Ezekiel Hopkinshad taken refuge from Popish persecutors and Presbyterian rebels inthe city of London, had brought himself to swear allegiance to thegovernment, had obtained a cure, and had died in the performance of thehumble duties of a parish priest, [691] William, on his march throughLouth, learned that the rich see of Derry was at his disposal. Heinstantly made choice of Walker to be the new Bishop. The brave old man, during the few hours of life which remained to him, was overwhelmed withsalutations and congratulations. Unhappily he had, during the siege inwhich he had so highly distinguished himself, contracted a passion forwar; and he easily persuaded himself that, in indulging this passion, hewas discharging a duty to his country and his religion. He ought to haveremembered that the peculiar circumstances which had justified him inbecoming a combatant had ceased to exist, and that, in a disciplinedarmy led by generals of long experience and great fame a fightingdivine was likely to give less help than scandal. The Bishop elect wasdetermined to be wherever danger was; and the way in which he exposedhimself excited the extreme disgust of his royal patron, who hated ameddler almost as much as a coward. A soldier who ran away from a battleand a gownsman who pushed himself into a battle were the two objectswhich most strongly excited William's spleen. 

It was still early in the day. The King rode slowly along the northernbank of the river, and closely examined the position of the Irish, fromwhom he was sometimes separated by an interval of little more than twohundred feet. He was accompanied by Schomberg, Ormond, Sidney, Solmes, Prince George of Hesse, Coningsby, and others. "Their army is butsmall;" said one of the Dutch officers. Indeed it did not appear toconsist of more than sixteen thousand men. But it was well known, fromthe reports brought by deserters, that many regiments were concealedfrom view by the undulations of the ground. "They may be stronger thanthey look, " said William; "but, weak or strong, I will soon know allabout them. " [692]

At length he alighted at a spot nearly opposite to Oldbridge, satedown on the turf to rest himself, and called for breakfast. The sumpterhorses were unloaded: the canteens were opened; and a tablecloth wasspread on the grass. The place is marked by an obelisk, built whilemany veterans who could well remember the events of that day were stillliving. 

While William was at his repast, a group of horsemen appeared close tothe water on the opposite shore. Among them his attendants could discernsome who had once been conspicuous at reviews in Hyde Park and at ballsin the gallery of Whitehall, the youthful Berwick, the small, fairhairedLauzun, Tyrconnel, once admired by maids of honour as the model of manlyvigour and beauty, but now bent down by years and crippled by gout, and, overtopping all, the stately head of Sarsfield. 

The chiefs of the Irish army soon discovered that the person who, surrounded by a splendid circle, was breakfasting on the opposite bank, was the Prince of Orange. They sent for artillery. Two field pieces, screened from view by a troop of cavalry, were brought down almost tothe brink of the river, and placed behind a hedge. William, who had justrisen from his meal, and was again in the saddle, was the mark of bothguns. The first shot struck one of the holsters of Prince George ofHesse, and brought his horse to the ground. "Ah!" cried the King; "thepoor Prince is killed. " As the words passed his lips, he was himselfhit by a second ball, a sixpounder. It merely tore his coat, grazed hisshoulder, and drew two or three ounces of blood. Both armies saw thatthe shot had taken effect; for the King sank down for a moment on hishorse's neck. A yell of exultation rose from the Irish camp. The Englishand their allies were in dismay. Solmes flung himself prostrate on theearth, and burst into tears. But William's deportment soon reassured hisfriends. "There is no harm done, " he said: "but the bullet came quitenear enough. " Coningsby put his handkerchief to the wound: a surgeon wassent for: a plaster was applied; and the King, as soon as the dressingwas finished, rode round all the posts of his army amidst loudacclamations. Such was the energy of his spirit that, in spite of hisfeeble health, in spite of his recent hurt, he was that day nineteenhours on horseback, [693]

A cannonade was kept up on both sides till the evening. William observedwith especial attention the effect produced by the Irish shots on theEnglish regiments which had never been in action, and declared himselfsatisfied with the result. "All is right, " he said; "they stand firewell. " Long after sunset he made a final inspection of his forces bytorchlight, and gave orders that every thing should be ready for forcinga passage across the river on the morrow. Every soldier was to put agreen bough in his hat. The baggage and great coats were to be leftunder a guard. The word was Westminster. 

The King's resolution to attack the Irish was not approved by all hislieutenants. Schomberg, in particular, pronounced the experiment toohazardous, and, when his opinion was overruled, retired to his tent inno very good humour. When the order of battle was delivered to him, hemuttered that he had been more used to give such orders than to receivethem. For this little fit of sullenness, very pardonable in a generalwho had won great victories when his master was still a child, the braveveteran made, on the following morning, a noble atonement. 

The first of July dawned, a day which has never since returned withoutexciting strong emotions of very different kinds in the two populationswhich divide Ireland. The sun rose bright and cloudless. Soon after fourboth armies were in motion. William ordered his right wing, under thecommand of Meinhart Schomberg, one of the Duke's sons, to march to thebridge of Slane, some miles up the river, to cross there, and to turnthe left flank of the Irish army. Meinhart Schomberg was assisted byPortland and Douglas. James, anticipating some such design, had alreadysent to the bridge a regiment of dragoons, commanded by Sir Neil O'Neil. O'Neil behaved himself like a brave gentleman: but he soon received amortal wound; his men fled; and the English right wing passed the river. 

This move made Lauzun uneasy. What if the English right wing should getinto the rear of the army of James? About four miles south of the Boynewas a place called Duleek, where the road to Dublin was so narrow, thattwo cars could not pass each other, and where on both sides of theroad lay a morass which afforded no firm footing. If Meinhart Schombergshould occupy this spot, it would be impossible for the Irish toretreat. They must either conquer, or be cut off to a man. Disturbed bythis apprehension, the French general marched with his countrymen andwith Sarsfield's horse in the direction of Slane Bridge. Thus the fordsnear Oldbridge were left to be defended by the Irish alone. 

It was now near ten o'clock. William put himself at the head of his leftwing, which was composed exclusively of cavalry, and prepared topass the river not far above Drogheda. The centre of his army, whichconsisted almost exclusively of foot, was entrusted to the command ofSchomberg, and was marshalled opposite to Oldbridge. At Oldbridge thewhole Irish infantry had been collected. The Meath bank bristled withpikes and bayonets. A fortification had been made by French engineersout of the hedges and buildings; and a breastwork had been thrown upclose to the water side, [694] Tyrconnel was there; and under him wereRichard Hamilton and Antrim. 

Schomberg gave the word. Solmes's Blues were the first to move. Theymarched gallantly, with drums beating, to the brink of the Boyne. Thenthe drums stopped; and the men, ten abreast, descended into the water. Next plunged Londonderry and Enniskillen. A little to the left ofLondonderry and Enniskillen, Caillemot crossed, at the head of a longcolumn of French refugees. A little to the left of Caillemot and hisrefugees, the main body of the English infantry struggled through theriver, up to their armpits in water. Still further down the stream theDanes found another ford. In a few minutes the Boyne, for a quarter of amile, was alive with muskets and green boughs. 

It was not till the assailants had reached the middle of the channelthat they became aware of the whole difficulty and danger of the servicein which they were engaged. They had as yet seen little more than halfthe hostile army. Now whole regiments of foot and horse seemed to startout of the earth. A wild shout of defiance rose from the whole shore:during one moment the event seemed doubtful: but the Protestants pressedresolutely forward; and in another moment the whole Irish line gaveway. Tyrconnel looked on in helpless despair. He did not want personalcourage; but his military skill was so small that he hardly everreviewed his regiment in the Phoenix Park without committing someblunder; and to rally the ranks which were breaking all round him wasno task for a general who had survived the energy of his body and ofhis mind, and yet had still the rudiments of his profession to learn. Several of his best officers fell while vainly endeavouring to prevailon their soldiers to look the Dutch Blues in the face. Richard Hamiltonordered a body of foot to fall on the French refugees, who were stilldeep in water. He led the way, and, accompanied by several courageousgentlemen, advanced, sword in hand, into the river. But neitherhis commands nor his example could infuse courage into that mob ofcowstealers. He was left almost alone, and retired from the bank indespair. Further down the river Antrim's division ran like sheep at theapproach of the English column. Whole regiments flung away arms, coloursand cloaks, and scampered off to the hills without striking a blow orfiring a shot, [695]

It required many years and many heroic exploits to take away thereproach which that ignominious rout left on the Irish name. Yet, evenbefore the day closed, it was abundantly proved that the reproach wasunjust. Richard Hamilton put himself at the head of the cavalry, and, under his command, they made a gallant, though an unsuccessful attemptto retrieve the day. They maintained a desperate fight in the bed of theriver with Sulmes's Blues. They drove the Danish brigade back into thestream. They fell impetuously on the Huguenot regiments, which, notbeing provided with pikes, then ordinarily used by foot to repel horse, began to give ground. Caillemot, while encouraging his fellow exiles, received a mortal wound in the thigh. Four of his men carried him backacross the ford to his tent. As he passed, he continued to urge forwardthe rear ranks which were still up to the breast in the water. "On;on; my lads: to glory; to glory. " Schomberg, who had remained on thenorthern bank, and who had thence watched the progress of his troopswith the eye of a general, now thought that the emergency requiredfrom him the personal exertion of a soldier. Those who stood about himbesought him in vain to put on his cuirass. Without defensive armourhe rode through the river, and rallied the refugees whom the fall ofCaillemot had dismayed. "Come on, " he cried in French, pointing to thePopish squadrons; "come on, gentlemen; there are your persecutors. "Those were his last words. As he spoke, a band of Irish horsemen rushedupon him and encircled him for a moment. When they retired, he was onthe ground. His friends raised him; but he was already a corpse. Twosabre wounds were on his head; and a bullet from a carbine was lodgedin his neck. Almost at the same moment Walker, while exhorting thecolonists of Ulster to play the men, was shot dead. During near half anhour the battle continued to rage along the southern shore of the river. All was smoke, dust and din. Old soldiers were heard to say that theyhad seldom seen sharper work in the Low Countries. But, just at thisconjuncture, William came up with the left wing. He had found muchdifficulty in crossing. The tide was running fast. His charger had beenforced to swim, and had been almost lost in the mud. As soon as the Kingwas on firm ground he took his sword in his left hand, --for his rightarm was stiff with his wound and his bandage, --and led his men to theplace where the fight was the hottest. His arrival decided the fate ofthe day. Yet the Irish horse retired fighting obstinately. It was longremembered among the Protestants of Ulster that, in the midst of thetumult, William rode to the head of the Enniskilleners. "What willyou do for me?" he cried. He was not immediately recognised; and onetrooper, taking him for an enemy, was about to fire. William gently putaside the carbine. "What, " said he, "do you not know your friends?" "Itis His Majesty;" said the Colonel. The ranks of sturdy Protestant yeomenset up a shout of joy. "Gentlemen, " said William, "you shall be myguards to day. I have heard much of you. Let me see something of you. "One of the most remarkable peculiarities of this man, ordinarily sosaturnine and reserved, was that danger acted on him like wine, opened his heart, loosened his tongue, and took away all appearance ofconstraint from his manner. On this memorable day he was seen whereverthe peril was greatest. One ball struck the cap of his pistol: anothercarried off the heel of his jackboot: but his lieutenants in vainimplored him to retire to some station from which he could give hisorders without exposing a life so valuable to Europe. His troops, animated by his example, gained ground fast. The Irish cavalry madetheir last stand at a house called Plottin Castle, about a mile and ahalf south of Oldbridge. There the Enniskilleners were repelled with theloss of fifty men, and were hotly pursued, till William rallied them andturned the chase back. In this encounter Richard Hamilton, who had doneall that could be done by valour to retrieve a reputation forfeited byperfidy, [696] was severely wounded, taken prisoner, and instantly brought, through the smoke and over the carnage, before the prince whom he hadfoully wronged. On no occasion did the character of William show itselfin a more striking manner. "Is this business over?" he said; "or willyour horse make more fight?" "On my honour, Sir, " answered Hamilton, "Ibelieve that they will. " "Your honour!" muttered William; "your honour!"That half suppressed exclamation was the only revenge which hecondescended to take for an injury for which many sovereigns, far moreaffable and gracious in their ordinary deportment, would have exacteda terrible retribution. Then, restraining himself, he ordered his ownsurgeon to look to the hurts of the captive, [697]

And now the battle was over. Hamilton was mistaken in thinking that hishorse would continue to fight. Whole troops had been cut to pieces. Onefine regiment had only thirty unwounded men left. It was enough thatthese gallant soldiers had disputed the field till they were leftwithout support, or hope, or guidance, till their bravest leader was acaptive, and till their King had fled. 

Whether James had owed his early reputation for valour to accident andflattery, or whether, as he advanced in life, his character underwenta change, may be doubted. But it is certain that, in his youth, hewas generally believed to possess, not merely that average measure offortitude which qualifies a soldier to go through a campaign withoutdisgrace, but that high and serene intrepidity which is the virtue ofgreat commanders, [698] It is equally certain that, in his later years, he repeatedly, at conjunctures such as have often inspired timorous anddelicate women with heroic courage, showed a pusillanimous anxiety abouthis personal safety. Of the most powerful motives which can induce humanbeings to encounter peril none was wanting to him on the day of theBoyne. The eyes of his contemporaries and of posterity, of friendsdevoted to his cause and of enemies eager to witness his humiliation, were fixed upon him. He had, in his own opinion, sacred rights tomaintain and cruel wrongs to revenge. He was a King come to fight forthree kingdoms. He was a father come to fight for the birthright of hischild. He was a zealous Roman Catholic, come to fight in the holiest ofcrusades. If all this was not enough, he saw, from the secure positionwhich he occupied on the height of Donore, a sight which, it might havebeen thought, would have roused the most torpid of mankind to emulation. He saw his rival, weak, sickly, wounded, swimming the river, strugglingthrough the mud, leading the charge, stopping the flight, grasping thesword with the left hand, managing the bridle with a bandaged arm. Butnone of these things moved that sluggish and ignoble nature. He watched, from a safe distance, the beginning of the battle on which his fate andthe fate of his race depended. When it became clear that the day wasgoing against Ireland, he was seized with an apprehension that hisflight might be intercepted, and galloped towards Dublin. He wasescorted by a bodyguard under the command of Sarsfield, who had, on thatday, had no opportunity of displaying the skill and courage which hisenemies allowed that he possessed, [699] The French auxiliaries, whohad been employed the whole morning in keeping William's right wing incheck, covered the flight of the beaten army. They were indeed in somedanger of being broken and swept away by the torrent of runaways, allpressing to get first to the pass of Duleek, and were forced to firerepeatedly on these despicable allies, [700] The retreat was, however, effected with less loss than might have been expected. For even theadmirers of William owned that he did not show in the pursuit the energywhich even his detractors acknowledged that he had shown in the battle. Perhaps his physical infirmities, his hurt, and the fatigue which he hadundergone, had made him incapable of bodily or mental exertion. Of thelast forty hours he had passed thirty-five on horseback. Schomberg, whomight have supplied his place, was no more. It was said in the camp thatthe King could not do every thing, and that what was not done by him wasnot done at all. 

The slaughter had been less than on any battle field of equal importanceand celebrity. Of the Irish only about fifteen hundred had fallen; butthey were almost all cavalry, the flower of the army, brave and welldisciplined men, whose place could not easily be supplied. Williamgave strict orders that there should be no unnecessary bloodshed, and enforced those orders by an act of laudable severity. One of hissoldiers, after the fight was over, butchered three defenceless Irishmenwho asked for quarter. The King ordered the murderer to be hanged on thespot, [701]

The loss of the conquerors did not exceed five hundred men but amongthem was the first captain in Europe. To his corpse every honour waspaid. The only cemetery in which so illustrious a warrior, slain in armsfor the liberties and religion of England, could properly be laidwas that venerable Abbey, hallowed by the dust of many generationsof princes, heroes and poets. It was announced that the brave veteranshould have a public funeral at Westminster. In the mean time his corpsewas embalmed with such skill as could be found in the camp, and wasdeposited in a leaden coffin, [702]

Walker was treated less respectfully. William thought him a busybody whohad been properly punished for running into danger without any call ofduty, and expressed that feeling, with characteristic bluntness, on thefield of battle. "Sir, " said an attendant, "the Bishop of Derry has beenkilled by a shot at the ford. " "What took him there?" growled the King. 

The victorious army advanced that day to Duleek, and passed the warmsummer night there under the open sky. The tents and the baggage waggonswere still on the north of the river. William's coach had been broughtover; and he slept in it surrounded by his soldiers. On the followingday, Drogheda surrendered without a blow, and the garrison, thirteenhundred strong, marched out unarmed, [703]

Meanwhile Dublin had been in violent commotion. On the thirtieth of Juneit was known that the armies were face to face with the Boyne betweenthem, and that a battle was almost inevitable. The news that William hadbeen wounded came that evening. The first report was that the wound wasmortal. It was believed, and confidently repeated, that the usurper wasno more; and couriers started bearing the glad tidings of his death tothe French ships which lay in the ports of Munster. From daybreak onthe first of July the streets of Dublin were filled with persons eagerlyasking and telling news. A thousand wild rumours wandered to and froamong the crowd. A fleet of men of war under the white flag had beenseen from the hill of Howth. An army commanded by a Marshal of Francehad landed in Kent. There had been hard fighting at the Boyne; butthe Irish had won the day; the English right wing had been routed; thePrince of Orange was a prisoner. While the Roman Catholics heard andrepeated these stories in all the places of public resort, the fewProtestants who were still out of prison, afraid of being torn topieces, shut themselves up in their inner chambers. But, towards fivein the afternoon, a few runaways on tired horses came straggling in withevil tidings. By six it was known that all was lost. Soon after sunset, James, escorted by two hundred cavalry, rode into the Castle. Atthe threshold he was met by the wife of Tyrconnel, once the gay andbeautiful Fanny Jennings, the loveliest coquette in the brilliantWhitehall of the Restoration. To her the vanquished King had to announcethe ruin of her fortunes and of his own. And now the tide of fugitivescame in fast. Till midnight all the northern avenues of the capital werechoked by trains of cars and by bands of dragoons, spent with runningand riding, and begrimed with dust. Some had lost their fire arms, andsome their swords. Some were disfigured by recent wounds. At two in themorning Dublin was still: but, before the early dawn of midsummer, thesleepers were roused by the peal of trumpets; and the horse, who had, onthe preceding day, so well supported the honour of their country, came pouring through the streets, with ranks fearfully thinned, yetpreserving, even in that extremity, some show of military order. Twohours later Lauzun's drums were heard; and the French regiments, inunbroken array, marched into the city, [704] Many thought that, withsuch a force, a stand might still be made. But, before six o'clock, the Lord Mayor and some of the principal Roman Catholic citizens weresummoned in haste to the Castle. James took leave of them with a speechwhich did him little honour. He had often, he said, been warned thatIrishmen, however well they might look, would never acquit themselveswell on a field of battle; and he had now found that the warning was buttoo true. He had been so unfortunate as to see himself in less thantwo years abandoned by two armies. His English troops had not wantedcourage; but they had wanted loyalty. His Irish troops were, no doubt, attached to his cause, which was their own. But as soon as they werebrought front to front with an enemy, they ran away. The loss indeed hadbeen little. More shame for those who had fled with so little loss. "Iwill never command an Irish army again. I must shift for myself; and somust you. " After thus reviling his soldiers for being the rabble whichhis own mismanagement had made them, and for following the example ofcowardice which he had himself set them, he uttered a few words moreworthy of a King. He knew, he said, that some of his adherents haddeclared that they would burn Dublin down rather than suffer it to fallinto the hands of the English. Such an act would disgrace him in theeyes of all mankind: for nobody would believe that his friends wouldventure so far without his sanction. Such an act would also draw onthose who committed it severities which otherwise they had no cause toapprehend: for inhumanity to vanquished enemies was not among the faultsof the Prince of Orange. For these reasons James charged his hearers ontheir allegiance neither to sack nor to destroy the city, [705] He thentook his departure, crossed the Wicklow hills with all speed, and neverstopped till he was fifty miles from Dublin. Scarcely had he alightedto take some refreshment when he was scared by an absurd report that thepursuers were close upon him. He started again, rode hard all night, and gave orders that the bridges should be pulled down behind him. Atsunrise on the third of July he reached the harbour of Waterford. Thence he went by sea to Kinsale, where he embarked on board of a Frenchfrigate, and sailed for Brest, [706]

After his departure the confusion in Dublin increased hourly. During thewhole of the day which followed the battle, flying foot soldiers, weary and soiled with travel, were constantly coming in. Roman Catholiccitizens, with their wives, their families and their household stuff, were constantly going out. In some parts of the capital there was stillan appearance of martial order and preparedness. Guards were posted atthe gates: the Castle was occupied by a strong body of troops; and itwas generally supposed that the enemy would not be admitted without astruggle. Indeed some swaggerers, who had, a few hours before, run fromthe breastwork at Oldbridge without drawing a trigger, now swore thatthey would lay the town in ashes rather than leave it to the Prince ofOrange. But towards the evening Tyrconnel and Lauzun collected all theirforces, and marched out of the city by the road leading to that vastsheepwalk which extends over the table land of Kildare. Instantly theface of things in Dublin was changed. The Protestants every where cameforth from their hiding places. Some of them entered the houses of theirpersecutors and demanded arms. The doors of the prisons were opened. The Bishops of Meath and Limerick, Doctor King, and others, who hadlong held the doctrine of passive obedience, but who had at length beenconverted by oppression into moderate Whigs, formed themselves into aprovisional government, and sent a messenger to William's camp, with thenews that Dublin was prepared to welcome him. At eight that evening atroop of English dragoons arrived. They were met by the whole Protestantpopulation on College Green, where the statue of the deliverer nowstands. Hundreds embraced the soldiers, hung fondly about the necks ofthe horses, and ran wildly about, shaking hands with each other. On themorrow a large body of cavalry arrived; and soon from every side camenews of the effects which the victory of the Boyne had produced. James had quitted the island. Wexford had declared for William. Withintwenty-five miles of the capital there was not a Papist in arms. Almostall the baggage and stores of the defeated army had been seized by theconquerors. The Enniskilleners had taken not less than three hundredcars, and had found among the booty ten thousand pounds in money, much plate, many valuable trinkets, and all the rich camp equipage ofTyrconnel and Lauzun, [707]

William fixed his head quarters at Ferns, about two miles from Dublin. Thence, on the morning of Sunday, the sixth of July, he rode in greatstate to the cathedral, and there, with the crown on his head, returnedpublic thanks to God in the choir which is now hung with the banners ofthe Knights of Saint Patrick. King preached, with all the fervour of aneophyte, on the great deliverance which God had wrought for the Church. The Protestant magistrates of the city appeared again, after a longinterval, in the pomp of office. William could not be persuaded torepose himself at the Castle, but in the evening returned to his camp, and slept there in his wooden cabin, [708]

The fame of these great events flew fast, and excited strong emotionsall over Europe. The news of William's wound every where preceded by afew hours the news of his victory. Paris was roused at dead of night bythe arrival of a courier who brought the joyful intelligence that theheretic, the parricide, the mortal enemy of the greatness of France, hadbeen struck dead by a cannon ball in the sight of the two armies. Thecommissaries of police ran about the city, knocked at the doors, andcalled the people up to illuminate. In an hour streets, quays andbridges were in a blaze: drums were beating and trumpets sounding: thebells of Notre Dame were ringing; peals of cannon were resounding fromthe batteries of the Bastile. Tables were set out in the streets; andwine was served to all who passed. A Prince of Orange, made of straw, was trailed through the mud, and at last committed to the flames. He wasattended by a hideous effigy of the devil, carrying a scroll, on whichwas written, "I have been waiting for thee these two years. " The shopsof several Huguenots who had been dragooned into calling themselvesCatholics, but were suspected of being still heretics at heart, weresacked by the rabble. It was hardly safe to question the truth ofthe report which had been so eagerly welcomed by the multitude. Soon, however, some coolheaded people ventured to remark that the fact of thetyrant's death was not quite so certain as might be wished. Then arosea vehement controversy about the effect of such wounds; for the vulgarnotion was that no person struck by a cannon ball on the shoulder couldrecover. The disputants appealed to medical authority; and the doors ofthe great surgeons and physicians were thronged, it was jocosely said, as if there had been a pestilence in Paris. The question was soonsettled by a letter from James, which announced his defeat and hisarrival at Brest, [709]

At Rome the news from Ireland produced a sensation of a very differentkind. There too the report of William's death was, during a shorttime, credited. At the French embassy all was joy and triumph: but theAmbassadors of the House of Austria were in despair; and the aspect ofthe Pontifical Court by no means indicated exultation, [710] Melfort, in a transport of joy, sate down to write a letter of congratulation toMary of Modena. That letter is still extant, and would alone sufficeto explain why he was the favourite of James. Herod, --so William wasdesignated, was gone. There must be a restoration; and that restorationought to be followed by a terrible revenge and by the establishment ofdespotism. The power of the purse must be taken away from the Commons. Political offenders must be tried, not by juries, but by judges on whomthe Crown could depend. The Habeas Corpus Act must be rescinded. Theauthors of the Revolution must be punished with merciless severity. "If, " the cruel apostate wrote, "if the King is forced to pardon, letit be as few rogues as he can. " [711] After the lapse of some anxioushours, a messenger bearing later and more authentic intelligencealighted at the palace occupied by the representative of the CatholicKing. In a moment all was changed. The enemies of France, --and all thepopulation, except Frenchmen and British Jacobites, were her enemies, eagerly felicitated one another. All the clerks of the Spanish legationwere too few to make transcripts of the despatches for the Cardinals andBishops who were impatient to know the details of the victory. The firstcopy was sent to the Pope, and was doubtless welcome to him, [712]

The good news from Ireland reached London at a moment when good newswas needed. The English flag had been disgraced in the English seas. A foreign enemy threatened the coast. Traitors were at work within therealm. Mary had exerted herself beyond her strength. Her gentle naturewas unequal to the cruel anxieties of her position; and she complainedthat she could scarcely snatch a moment from business to calm herself byprayer. Her distress rose to the highest point when she learned that thecamps of her father and her husband were pitched near to each other, andthat tidings of a battle might be hourly expected. She stole time for avisit to Kensington, and had three hours of quiet in the garden, then arural solitude, [713] But the recollection of days passed there with himwhom she might never see again overpowered her. "The place, " she wroteto him, "made me think how happy I was there when I had your dearcompany. But now I will say no more; for I shall hurt my own eyes, whichI want now more than ever. Adieu. Think of me, and love me as much as Ishall you, whom I love more than my life. " [714]

Early on the morning after these tender lines had been despatched, Whitehall was roused by the arrival of a post from Ireland. Nottinghamwas called out of bed. The Queen, who was just going to the chapel whereshe daily attended divine service, was informed that William had beenwounded. She had wept much; but till that moment she had wept alone, andhad constrained herself to show a cheerful countenance to her Court andCouncil. But when Nottingham put her husband's letter into her hands, she burst into tears. She was still trembling with the violence of heremotions, and had scarcely finished a letter to William in which shepoured out her love, her fears and her thankfulness, with the sweetnatural eloquence of her sex, when another messenger arrived with thenews that the English army had forced a passage across the Boyne, thatthe Irish were flying in confusion, and that the King was well. Yet shewas visibly uneasy till Nottingham had assured her that James was safe. The grave Secretary, who seems to have really esteemed and loved her, afterwards described with much feeling that struggle of filial duty withconjugal affection. On the same day she wrote to adjure her husband tosee that no harm befell her father. "I know, " she said, "I need not begyou to let him be taken care of; for I am confident you will for yourown sake; yet add that to all your kindness; and, for my sake, letpeople know you would have no hurt happen to his person. " [715] Thissolicitude, though amiable, was superfluous. Her father was perfectlycompetent to take care of himself. He had never, during the battle, runthe smallest risk of hurt; and, while his daughter was shuddering at thedangers to which she fancied that he was exposed in Ireland, he was halfway on his voyage to France. 

It chanced that the glad tidings arrived at Whitehall on the day towhich the Parliament stood prorogued. The Speaker and several members ofthe House of Commons who were in London met, according to form, at tenin the morning, and were summoned by Black Rod to the bar of the Peers. The Parliament was then again prorogued by commission. As soon as thisceremony had been performed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer put intothe hands of the Clerk the despatch which had just arrived from Ireland, and the Clerk read it with a loud voice to the lords and gentlemenpresent, [716] The good news spread rapidly from Westminster Hall toall the coffeehouses, and was received with transports of joy. Forthose Englishmen who wished to see an English army beaten and an Englishcolony extirpated by the French and Irish were a minority even of theJacobite party. 

On the ninth day after the battle of the Boyne James landed at Brest, with an excellent appetite, in high spirits, and in a talkative humour. He told the history of his defeat to everybody who would listen to him. But French officers who understood war, and who compared his story withother accounts, pronounced that, though His Majesty had witnessed thebattle, he knew nothing about it, except that his army had been routed, [717] From Brest he proceeded to Saint Germains, where, a few hoursafter his arrival, he was visited by Lewis. The French King had too muchdelicacy and generosity to utter a word which could sound like reproach. Nothing, he declared, that could conduce to the comfort of the royalfamily of England should be wanting, as far as his power extended. Buthe was by no means disposed to listen to the political and militaryprojects of his unlucky guest. James recommended an immediate descenton England. That kingdom, he said, had been drained of troops by thedemands of Ireland. The seven or eight thousand regular soldiers whowere left would be unable to withstand a great French army. The peoplewere ashamed of their error and impatient to repair it. As soon as theirrightful King showed himself, they would rally round him in multitudes, [718] Lewis was too polite and goodnatured to express what he musthave felt. He contented himself with answering coldly that he could notdecide upon any plan about the British islands till he had heard fromhis generals in Ireland. James was importunate, and seemed to thinkhimself ill used, because, a fortnight after he had run away from onearmy, he was not entrusted with another. Lewis was not to be provokedinto uttering an unkind or uncourteous word: but he was resolute and, in order to avoid solicitation which gave him pain, he pretended tobe unwell. During some time, whenever James came to Versailles, he wasrespectfully informed that His Most Christian Majesty was not equal tothe transaction of business. The highspirited and quickwitted nobles whodaily crowded the antechambers could not help sneering while they bowedlow to the royal visitor, whose poltroonery and stupidity had a secondtime made him an exile and a mendicant. They even whispered theirsarcasms loud enough to call up the haughty blood of the Guelphs inthe cheeks of Mary of Modena. But the insensibility of James was of nocommon kind. It had long been found proof against reason and againstpity. It now sustained a still harder trial, and was found proof evenagainst contempt, [719]

While he was enduring with ignominious fortitude the polite scorn ofthe French aristocracy, and doing his best to weary out his benefactor'spatience and good breeding by repeating that this was the very momentfor an invasion of England, and that the whole island was impatientlyexpecting its foreign deliverers, events were passing which signallyproved how little the banished oppressor understood the character of hiscountrymen. 

Tourville had, since the battle of Beachy Head, ranged the Channelunopposed. On the twenty-first of July his masts were seen from therocks of Portland. On the twenty-second he anchored in the harbourof Torbay, under the same heights which had, not many months before, sheltered the armament of William. The French fleet, which now hada considerable number of troops on board, consisted of a hundred andeleven sail. The galleys, which formed a large part of this force, resembled rather those ships with which Alcibiades and Lysander disputedthe sovereignty of the Aegean than those which contended at the Nileand at Trafalgar. The galley was very long and very narrow, the decknot more than two feet from the water edge. Each galley was propelled byfifty or sixty huge oars, and each oar was tugged by five or sixslaves. The full complement of slaves to a vessel was three hundred andthirty-six; the full complement of officers and soldiers a hundred andfifty. Of the unhappy rowers some were criminals who had been justlycondemned to a life of hardship and danger; a few had been guilty onlyof adhering obstinately to the Huguenot worship; the great majoritywere purchased bondsmen, generally Turks and Moors. They were of coursealways forming plans for massacring their tyrants and escaping fromservitude, and could be kept in order only by constant stripes and bythe frequent infliction of death in horrible forms. An Englishman, whohappened to fall in with about twelve hundred of these most miserableand most desperate of human beings on their road from Marseilles to joinTourville's squadron, heard them vowing that, if they came near a manof war bearing the cross of Saint George, they would never again see aFrench dockyard, [720]

In the Mediterranean galleys were in ordinary use: but none had everbefore been seen on the stormy ocean which roars round our island. Theflatterers of Lewis said that the appearance of such a squadron on theAtlantic was one of those wonders which were reserved for his reign;and a medal was struck at Paris to commemorate this bold experiment inmaritime war, [721] English sailors, with more reason, predicted thatthe first gale would send the whole of this fairweather armament tothe bottom of the Channel. Indeed the galley, like the ancient trireme, generally kept close to the shore, and ventured out of sight of landonly when the water was unruffled and the sky serene. But the qualitieswhich made this sort of ship unfit to brave tempests and billows made itpeculiarly fit for the purpose of landing soldiers. Tourville determinedto try what effect would be produced by a disembarkation. The EnglishJacobites who had taken refuge in France were all confident that thewhole population of the island was ready to rally round an invadingarmy; and he probably gave them credit for understanding the temper oftheir countrymen. 

Never was there a greater error. Indeed the French admiral is said bytradition to have received, while he was still out at sea, a lessonwhich might have taught him not to rely on the assurances of exiles. He picked up a fishing boat, and interrogated the owner, a plain Sussexman, about the sentiments of the nation. "Are you, " he said, "for KingJames?" "I do not know much about such matters, " answered the fisherman. "I have nothing to say against King James. He is a very worthygentleman, I believe. God bless him!" "A good fellow!" said Tourville:"then I am sure you will have no objection to take service with us. ""What!" cried the prisoner; "I go with the French to fight against theEnglish! Your honour must excuse me; I could not do it to save my life. "[722] This poor fisherman, whether he was a real or an imaginary person, spoke the sense of the nation. The beacon on the ridge overlookingTeignmouth was kindled; the High Tor and Causland made answer; and soonall the hill tops of the West were on re, Messengers were riding hardall night from Deputy Lieutenant to Deputy Lieutenant. Early the nextmorning, without chief, without summons, five hundred gentlemen andyeomen, armed and mounted, had assembled on the summit of Haldon Hill. In twenty-four hours all Devonshire was up. Every road in the countyfrom sea to sea was covered by multitudes of fighting men, all withtheir faces set towards Torbay. The lords of a hundred manors, proud oftheir long pedigrees and old coats of arms, took the field at the headof their tenantry, Drakes, Prideauxes and Rolles, Fowell of Fowelscombeand Fulford of Fulford, Sir Bourchier Wray of Tawstock Park and SirWilliam Courtenay of Powderham Castle. Letters written by several ofthe Deputy Lieutenants who were most active during this anxious week arestill preserved. All these letters agree in extolling the courage andenthusiasm of the people. But all agree also in expressing the mostpainful solicitude as to the result of an encounter between a rawmilitia and veterans who had served under Turenne and Luxemburg; and allcall for the help of regular troops, in language very unlike that which, when the pressure of danger was not felt, country gentlemen were then inthe habit of using about standing armies. 

Tourville, finding that the whole population was united as one managainst him, contented himself with sending his galleys to ravageTeignmouth, now a gay watering place consisting of twelve hundredhouses, then an obscure village of about forty cottages. The inhabitantshad fled. Their dwellings were burned; the venerable parish church wassacked, the pulpit and the communion table demolished, the Bibles andPrayer Books torn and scattered about the roads; the cattle and pigswere slaughtered; and a few small vessels which were employed in fishingor in the coasting trade, were destroyed. By this time sixteen orseventeen thousand Devonshire men had encamped close to the shore; andall the neighbouring counties had risen. The tin mines of Cornwall hadsent forth a great multitude of rude and hardy men mortally hostile toPopery. Ten thousand of them had just signed an address to the Queen, in which they had promised to stand by her against every enemy; and theynow kept their word, [723] In truth, the whole nation was stirred. Twoand twenty troops of cavalry, furnished by Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshireand Buckinghamshire, were reviewed by Mary at Hounslow, and werecomplimented by Marlborough on their martial appearance. The militia ofKent and Surrey encamped on Blackheath, [724] Van Citters informed theStates General that all England was up in arms, on foot or on horseback, that the disastrous event of the battle of Beachy Head had not cowed, but exasperated the people, and that every company of soldiers which hepassed on the road was shouting with one voice, "God bless King Williamand Queen Mary. " [725]

Charles Granville, Lord Lansdowne, eldest son of the Earl of Bath, camewith some troops from the garrison of Plymouth to take the commandof the tumultuary army which had assembled round the basin of Torbay. Lansdowne was no novice. He had served several hard campaigns againstthe common enemy of Christendom, and had been created a Count of theRoman Empire in reward of the valour which he had displayed on thatmemorable day, sung by Filicaja and by Waller, when the infidels retiredfrom the walls of Vienna. He made preparations for action; but theFrench did not choose to attack him, and were indeed impatient todepart. They found some difficulty in getting away. One day the wind wasadverse to the sailing vessels. Another day the water was too rough forthe galleys. At length the fleet stood out to sea. As the line of shipsturned the lofty cape which overlooks Torquay, an incident happenedwhich, though slight in itself, greatly interested the thousands wholined the coast. Two wretched slaves disengaged themselves from an oar, and sprang overboard. One of them perished. The other, after strugglingmore than an hour in the water, came safe to English ground, and wascordially welcomed by a population to which the discipline of thegalleys was a thing strange and shocking. He proved to be a Turk, andwas humanely sent back to his own country. 

A pompous description of the expedition appeared in the Paris Gazette. But in truth Tourville's exploits had been inglorious, and yet lessinglorious than impolitic. The injury which he had done bore noproportion to the resentment which he had roused. Hitherto the Jacobiteshad tried to persuade the nation that the French would come as friendsand deliverers, would observe strict discipline, would respect thetemples and the ceremonies of the established religion, and woulddepart as soon as the Dutch oppressors had been expelled and the ancientconstitution of the realm restored. The short visit of Tourville to ourcoast had shown how little reason there was to expect such moderationfrom the soldiers of Lewis. They had been in our island only a fewhours, and had occupied only a few acres. But within a few hours anda few acres had been exhibited in miniature the devastation of thePalatinate. What had happened was communicated to the whole kingdom farmore rapidly than by gazettes or news letters. A brief for the reliefof the people of Teignmouth was read in all the ten thousand parishchurches of the land. No congregation could hear without emotion thatthe Popish marauders had made desolate the habitations of quiet andhumble peasants, had outraged the altars of God, had torn to piecesthe Gospels and the Communion service. A street, built out of thecontributions of the charitable, on the site of the dwellings which theinvaders had destroyed, still retains the name of French Street, [726]

The outcry against those who were, with good reason, suspected of havinginvited the enemy to make a descent on our shores was vehement andgeneral, and was swollen by many voices which had recently been loud inclamour against the government of William. The question had ceased tobe a question between two dynasties, and had become a question betweenEngland and France. So strong was the national sentiment that nonjurorsand Papists shared or affected to share it. Dryden, not long afterthe burning of Teignmouth, laid a play at the feet of Halifax, witha dedication eminently ingenious, artful, and eloquent. The dramatistcongratulated his patron on having taken shelter in a calm haven fromthe storms of public life, and, with great force and beauty of diction, magnified the felicity of the statesman who exchanges the bustle ofoffice and the fame of oratory for philosophic studies and domesticendearments. England could not complain that she was defrauded of theservice to which she had a right. Even the severe discipline of ancientRome permitted a soldier, after many campaigns, to claim his dismission;and Halifax had surely done enough for his country to be entitled to thesame privilege. But the poet added that there was one case in whichthe Roman veteran, even after his discharge, was required to resume hisshield and his pilum; and that one case was an invasion of the Gauls. That a writer who had purchased the smiles of James by apostasy, who hadbeen driven in disgrace from the court of William, and who had a deeperinterest in the restoration of the exiled House than any man who madeletters his calling, should have used, whether sincerely or insincerely, such language as this, is a fact which may convince us that thedetermination never to be subjugated by foreigners was fixed in thehearts of the people, [727]

There was indeed a Jacobite literature in which no trace of thispatriotic spirit can be detected, a literature the remains of whichprove that there were Englishmen perfectly willing to see the Englishflag dishonoured, the English soil invaded, the English capital sacked, the English crown worn by a vassal of Lewis, if only they might avengethemselves on their enemies, and especially on William, whom they hatedwith a hatred half frightful half ludicrous. But this literature wasaltogether a work of darkness. The law by which the Parliament of Jameshad subjected the press to the control of censors was still in force;and, though the officers whose business it was to prevent the infractionof that law were not extreme to mark every irregularity committed by abookseller who understood the art of conveying a guinea in a squeezeof the hand, they could not wink at the open vending of unlicensedpamphlets filled with ribald insults to the Sovereign, and with directinstigations to rebellion. But there had long lurked in the garrets ofLondon a class of printers who worked steadily at their calling withprecautions resembling those employed by coiners and forgers. Women wereon the watch to give the alarm by their screams if an officer appearednear the workshop. The press was immediately pushed into a closetbehind the bed; the types were flung into the coalhole, and covered withcinders: the compositor disappeared through a trapdoor in the roof, andmade off over the tiles of the neighbouring houses. In these dens weremanufactured treasonable works of all classes and sizes, from halfpennybroadsides of doggrel verse up to massy quartos filled with Hebrewquotations. It was not safe to exhibit such publications openly on acounter. They were sold only by trusty agents, and in secret places. Some tracts which were thought likely to produce a great effect weregiven away in immense numbers at the expense of wealthy Jacobites. Sometimes a paper was thrust under a door, sometimes dropped on thetable of a coffeehouse. One day a thousand copies of a scurrilouspamphlet went out by the postbags. On another day, when the shopkeepersrose early to take down their shutters, they found the whole of FleetStreet and the Strand white with seditious handbills, [728]

Of the numerous performances which were ushered into the world by suchshifts as these, none produced a greater sensation than a little bookwhich purported to be a form of prayer and humiliation for the use ofthe persecuted Church. It was impossible to doubt that a considerablesum had been expended on this work. Ten thousand copies were, by variousmeans, scattered over the kingdom. No more mendacious, more malignant ormore impious lampoon was ever penned. Though the government had as yettreated its enemies with a lenity unprecedented in the history of ourcountry, though not a single person had, since the Revolution, suffereddeath for any political offence, the authors of this liturgy were notashamed to pray that God would assuage their enemy's insatiable thirstfor blood, or would, if any more of them were to be brought through theRed Sea to the Land of Promise, prepare them for the passage, [729] Theycomplained that the Church of England, once the perfection of beauty, had become a scorn and derision, a heap of ruins, a vineyard of wildgrapes; that her services had ceased to deserve the name of publicworship; that the bread and wine which she dispensed had no longer anysacramental virtue; that her priests, in the act of swearing fealty tothe usurper, had lost the sacred character which had been conferred onthem by their ordination, [730] James was profanely described as thestone which foolish builders had rejected; and a fervent petition wasput up that Providence would again make him the head of the corner. The blessings which were called down on our country were of a singulardescription. There was something very like a prayer for another BloodyCircuit; "Give the King the necks of his enemies;" there was somethingvery like a prayer for a French invasion; "Raise him up friends abroad;"and there was a more mysterious prayer, the best comment on which wasafterwards furnished by the Assassination Plot; "Do some great thing forhim; which we in particular know not how to pray for. " [731]

This liturgy was composed, circulated, and read, it is said, in somecongregations of Jacobite schismatics, before William set out forIreland, but did not attract general notice till the appearance of aforeign armament on our coast had roused the national spirit. Then rosea roar of indignation against the Englishmen who had dared, under thehypocritical pretence of devotion, to imprecate curses on England. Thedeprived Prelates were suspected, and not without some show of reason. For the nonjurors were, to a man, zealous Episcopalians. Their doctrinewas that, in ecclesiastical matters of grave moment, nothing could bewell done without the sanction of the Bishop. And could it be believedthat any who held this doctrine would compose a service, print it, circulate it, and actually use it in public worship, without theapprobation of Sancroft, whom the whole party revered, not only as thetrue Primate of all England, but also as a Saint and a Confessor? Itwas known that the Prelates who had refused the oaths had lately heldseveral consultations at Lambeth. The subject of those consultations, itwas now said, might easily be guessed. The holy fathers had been engagedin framing prayers for the destruction of the Protestant colony inIreland, for the defeat of the English fleet in the Channel, and for thespeedy arrival of a French army in Kent. The extreme section of the Whigparty pressed this accusation with vindictive eagerness. This then, saidthose implacable politicians, was the fruit of King William's mercifulpolicy. Never had he committed a greater error than when he hadconceived the hope that the hearts of the clergy were to be won byclemency and moderation. He had not chosen to give credit to men who hadlearned by a long and bitter experience that no kindness will tame thesullen ferocity of a priesthood. He had stroked and pampered when heshould have tried the effect of chains and hunger. He had hazarded thegood will of his best friends by protecting his worst enemies. ThoseBishops who had publicly refused to acknowledge him as their Sovereign, and who, by that refusal, had forfeited their dignities and revenues, still continued to live unmolested in palaces which ought to be occupiedby better men: and for this indulgence, an indulgence unexampled in thehistory of revolutions, what return had been made to him? Even this, that the men whom he had, with so much tenderness, screened from justpunishment, had the insolence to describe him in their prayers as apersecutor defiled with the blood of the righteous; they asked for graceto endure with fortitude his sanguinary tyranny; they cried to heavenfor a foreign fleet and army to deliver them from his yoke; nay, theyhinted at a wish so odious that even they had not the front to speakit plainly. One writer, in a pamphlet which produced a great sensation, expressed his wonder that the people had not, when Tourville was ridingvictorious in the Channel, bewitted the nonjuring Prelates. Excited asthe public mind then was, there was some danger that this suggestionmight bring a furious mob to Lambeth. At Norwich indeed the peopleactually rose, attacked the palace which the Bishop was still sufferedto occupy, and would have pulled it down but for the timely arrival ofthe trainbands, [732] The government very properly instituted criminalproceedings against the publisher of the work which had produced thisalarming breach of the peace, [733] The deprived Prelates meanwhile putforth a defence of their conduct. In this document they declared, withall solemnity, and as in the presence of God, that they had no hand inthe new liturgy, that they knew not who had framed it, that they hadnever used it, that they had never held any correspondence directlyor indirectly with the French court, that they were engaged in no plotagainst the existing government, and that they would willingly shedtheir blood rather than see England subjugated by a foreign prince, whohad, in his own kingdom, cruelly persecuted their Protestant brethren. As to the write who had marked them out to the public vengeance by afearful word, but too well understood, they commended him to the Divinemercy, and heartily prayed that his great sin might be forgiven him. Most of those who signed this paper did so doubtless with perfectsincerity: but it soon appeared that one at least of the subscribers hadadded to the crime of betraying his country the crime of calling God towitness a falsehood, [734]

The events which were passing in the Channel and on the Continentcompelled William to make repeated changes in his plans. During the weekwhich followed his triumphal entry into Dublin, messengers charged withevil tidings arrived from England in rapid succession. First came theaccount of Waldeck's defeat at Fleurus. The King was much disturbed. All the pleasure, he said, which his own victory had given him was atan end. Yet, with that generosity which was hidden under his austereaspect, he sate down, even in the moment of his first vexation, to writea kind and encouraging letter to the unfortunate general, [735] Threedays later came intelligence more alarming still. The allied fleet hadbeen ignominiously beaten. The sea from the Downs to the Land's End wasin possession of the enemy. The next post might bring news that Kent wasinvaded. A French squadron might appear in Saint George's Channel, andmight without difficulty burn all the transports which were anchoredin the Bay of Dublin. William determined to return to England; but hewished to obtain, before he went, the command of a safe haven on theeastern coast of Ireland. Waterford was the place best suited to hispurpose; and towards Waterford he immediately proceeded. Clonmel andKilkenny were abandoned by the Irish troops as soon as it was known thathe was approaching. At Kilkenny he was entertained, on the nineteenth ofJuly, by the Duke of Ormond in the ancient castle of the Butlers, whichhad not long before been occupied by Lauzun, and which therefore, in themidst of the general devastation, still had tables and chairs, hangingson the walls, and claret in the cellars. On the twenty-first tworegiments which garrisoned Waterford consented to march out after afaint show of resistance; a few hours later, the fort of Duncannon, which, towering on a rocky promontory, commanded the entrance of theharbour, was surrendered; and William was master of the whole of thatsecure and spacious basin which is formed by the united waters ofthe Suir, the Nore and the Barrow. He then announced his intentionof instantly returning to England, and, having declared Count SolmesCommander in Chief of the army of Ireland, set out for Dublin, [736]

But good news met him on the road. Tourville had appeared on the coastof Devonshire, had put some troops on shore, and had sacked Teignmouth;but the only effect of this insult had been to raise the wholepopulation of the western counties in arms against the invaders. Theenemy had departed, after doing just mischief enough to make the causeof James as odious for a time to Tories as to Whigs. William thereforeagain changed his plans, and hastened back to his army, which, during his absence, had moved westward, and which he rejoined in theneighbourhood of Cashel, [737]

About this time he received from Mary a letter requesting him todecide an important question on which the Council of Nine was divided. Marlborough was of opinion that all danger of invasion was over for thatyear. The sea, he said, was open; for the French ships had returned intoport, and were refitting. Now was the time to send an English fleet, with five thousand troops on board, to the southern extremity ofIreland. Such a force might easily reduce Cork and Kinsale, two ofthe most important strongholds still occupied by the forces of James. Marlborough was strenuously supported by Nottingham, and as strenuouslyopposed by the other members of the interior council with Caermarthenat their head. The Queen referred the matter to her husband. He highlyapproved of the plan, and gave orders that it should be executed bythe General who had formed it. Caermarthen submitted, though with abad grace, and with some murmurs at the extraordinary partiality of HisMajesty for Marlborough, [738]

William meanwhile was advancing towards Limerick. In that city the armywhich he had put to rout at the Boyne had taken refuge, discomfited, indeed, and disgraced, but very little diminished. He would not havehad the trouble of besieging the place, if the advice of Lauzun and ofLauzun's countrymen had been followed. They laughed at the thought ofdefending such fortifications, and indeed would not admit that thename of fortifications could properly be given to heaps of dirt, whichcertainly bore little resemblance to the works of Valenciennes andPhilipsburg. "It is unnecessary, " said Lauzun, with an oath, "for theEnglish to bring cannon against such a place as this. What you call yourramparts might be battered down with roasted apples. " He therefore gavehis voice for evacuating Limerick, and declared that, at all events, hewas determined not to throw away in a hopeless resistance the lives ofthe brave men who had been entrusted to his care by his master, [739]The truth is, that the judgment of the brilliant and adventurousFrenchman was biassed by his inclinations. He and his companions weresick of Ireland. They were ready to face death with courage, nay, withgaiety, on a field of battle. But the dull, squalid, barbarous life, which they had now been leading during several months, was more thanthey could bear. They were as much out of the pale of the civilisedworld as if they had been banished to Dahomey or Spitzbergen. Theclimate affected their health and spirits. In that unhappy country, wasted by years of predatory war, hospitality could offer little morethan a couch of straw, a trencher of meat half raw and half burned, anda draught of sour milk. A crust of bread, a pint of wine, could hardlybe purchased for money. A year of such hardships seemed a century tomen who had always been accustomed to carry with them to the camp theluxuries of Paris, soft bedding, rich tapestry, sideboards of plate, hampers of Champagne, opera dancers, cooks and musicians. Better to bea prisoner in the Bastille, better to be a recluse at La Trappe, thanto be generalissimo of the half naked savages who burrowed in the drearyswamps of Munster. Any plea was welcome which would serve as an excusefor returning from that miserable exile to the land of cornfieldsand vineyards, of gilded coaches and laced cravats, of ballrooms andtheatres, [740]

Very different was the feeling of the children of the soil. The island, which to French courtiers was a disconsolate place of banishment, wasthe Irishman's home. There were collected all the objects of his loveand of his ambition; and there he hoped that his dust would one daymingle with the dust of his fathers. To him even the heaven dark withthe vapours of the ocean, the wildernesses of black rushes and stagnantwater, the mud cabins where the peasants and the swine shared their mealof roots, had a charm which was wanting to the sunny skies, the culturedfields and the stately mansions of the Seine. He could imagine no fairerspot than his country, if only his country could be freed from thetyranny of the Saxons; and all hope that his country would be freedfrom the tyranny of the Saxons must be abandoned if Limerick weresurrendered. 

The conduct of the Irish during the last two months had sunk theirmilitary reputation to the lowest point. They had, with the exception ofsome gallant regiments of cavalry, fled disgracefully at the Boyne, andhad thus incurred the bitter contempt both of their enemies and of theirallies. The English who were at Saint Germains never spoke of the Irishbut as a people of dastards and traitors, [741] The French were so muchexasperated against the unfortunate nation, that Irish merchants, whohad been many years settled at Paris, durst not walk the streetsfor fear of being insulted by the populace, [742] So strong was theprejudice, that absurd stories were invented to explain the intrepiditywith which the horse had fought. It was said that the troopers were notmen of Celtic blood, but descendants of the old English of the pale, [743] It was also said that they had been intoxicated with brandy justbefore the battle, [744] Yet nothing can be more certain than that theymust have been generally of Irish race; nor did the steady valour whichthey displayed in a long and almost hopeless conflict against great oddsbear any resemblance to the fury of a coward maddened by strong drinkinto momentary hardihood. Even in the infantry, undisciplined anddisorganized as it was, there was much spirit, though little firmness. Fits of enthusiasm and fits of faintheartedness succeeded each other. The same battalion, which at one time threw away its arms in a panic andshrieked for quarter, would on another occasion fight valiantly. On theday of the Boyne the courage of the ill trained and ill commanded kerneshad ebbed to the lowest point. When they had rallied at Limerick, theirblood was up. Patriotism, fanaticism, shame, revenge, despair, hadraised them above themselves. With one voice officers and men insistedthat the city should be defended to the last. At the head of thosewho were for resisting was the brave Sarsfield; and his exhortationsdiffused through all ranks a spirit resembling his own. To save hiscountry was beyond his power. All that he could do was to prolong herlast agony through one bloody and disastrous year, [745]

Tyrconnel was altogether incompetent to decide the question on which theFrench and the Irish differed. The only military qualities that he hadever possessed were personal bravery and skill in the use of the sword. These qualities had once enabled him to frighten away rivals from thedoors of his mistresses, and to play the Hector at cockpits and hazardtables. But more was necessary to enable him to form an opinion as tothe possibility of defending Limerick. He would probably, had his temperbeen as hot as in the days when he diced with Grammont and threatenedto cut the old Duke of Ormond's throat, have voted for running any riskhowever desperate. But age, pain and sickness had left little of thecanting, bullying, fighting Dick Talbot of the Restoration. He hadsunk into deep despondency. He was incapable of strenuous exertion. TheFrench officers pronounced him utterly ignorant of the art of war. Theyhad observed that at the Boyne he had seemed to be stupified, unableto give directions himself, unable even to make up his mind about thesuggestions which were offered by others, [746] The disasters whichhad since followed one another in rapid succession were not likely torestore the tone of a mind so pitiably unnerved. His wife was already inFrance with the little which remained of his once ample fortune: hisown wish was to follow her thither: his voice was therefore given forabandoning the city. 

At last a compromise was made. Lauzun and Tyrconnel, with the Frenchtroops, retired to Galway. The great body of the native army, abouttwenty thousand strong, remained at Limerick. The chief command therewas entrusted to Boisseleau, who understood the character of the Irishbetter, and consequently, judged them more favourably, than any of hiscountrymen. In general, the French captains spoke of their unfortunateallies with boundless contempt and abhorrence, and thus made themselvesas hateful as the English, [747]

Lauzun and Tyrconnel had scarcely departed when the advanced guard ofWilliam's army came in sight. Soon the King himself, accompanied byAuverquerque and Ginkell, and escorted by three hundred horse, rodeforward to examine the fortifications. The city, then the second inIreland, though less altered since that time than most large cities inthe British isles, has undergone a great change. The new town did notthen exist. The ground now covered by those smooth and broad pavements, those neat gardens, those stately shops flaming with red brick, and gaywith shawls and china, was then an open meadow lying without the walls. The city consisted of two parts, which had been designated duringseveral centuries as the English and the Irish town. The English townstands on an island surrounded by the Shannon, and consists of a knotof antique houses with gable ends, crowding thick round a venerablecathedral. The aspect of the streets is such that a traveller whowanders through them may easily fancy himself in Normandy or Flanders. Not far from the cathedral, an ancient castle overgrown with weeds andivy looks down on the river. A narrow and rapid stream, over which, in1690, there was only a single bridge, divides the English town from thequarter anciently occupied by the hovels of the native population. Theview from the top of the cathedral now extends many miles over a levelexpanse of rich mould, through which the greatest of Irish rivers windsbetween artificial banks. But in the seventeenth century those banks hadnot been constructed; and that wide plain, of which the grass, verdanteven beyond the verdure of Munster, now feeds some of the finest cattlein Europe, was then almost always a marsh and often a lake, [748]

When it was known that the French troops had quitted Limerick, and thatthe Irish only remained, the general expectation in the English camp wasthat the city would be an easy conquest, [749] Nor was that expectationunreasonable; for even Sarsfield desponded. One chance, in his opinion, there still was. William had brought with him none but small guns. Several large pieces of ordnance, a great quantity of provisions andammunition, and a bridge of tin boats, which in the watery plain of theShannon was frequently needed, were slowly following from Cashel. If theguns and gunpowder could be intercepted and destroyed, there might besome hope. If not, all was lost; and the best thing that a brave andhigh spirited Irish gentleman could do was to forget the country whichhe had in vain tried to defend, and to seek in some foreign land a homeor a grave. 

A few hours, therefore, after the English tents had been pitched beforeLimerick, Sarsfield set forth, under cover of the night, with a strongbody of horse and dragoons. He took the road to Killaloe, and crossedthe Shannon there. During the day he lurked with his band in a wildmountain tract named from the silver mines which it contains. Thosemines had many years before been worked by English proprietors, with thehelp of engineers and labourers imported from the Continent. But, in therebellion of 1641, the aboriginal population had destroyed the works andmassacred the workmen; nor had the devastation then committed been sincerepaired. In this desolate region Sarsfield found no lack of scouts orof guides; for all the peasantry of Munster were zealous on his side. He learned in the evening that the detachment which guarded the Englishartillery had halted for the night about seven miles from William'scamp, on a pleasant carpet of green turf under the ruined walls of anold castle that officers and men seemed to think themselves perfectlysecure; that the beasts had been turned loose to graze, and that eventhe sentinels were dozing. When it was dark the Irish horsemen quittedtheir hiding place, and were conducted by the people of the country tothe place where the escort lay sleeping round the guns. The surprise wascomplete. Some of the English sprang to their arms and made an attemptto resist, but in vain. About sixty fell. One only was taken alive. Therest fled. The victorious Irish made a huge pile of waggons and piecesof cannon. Every gun was stuffed with powder, and fixed with its mouthin the ground; and the whole mass was blown up. The solitary prisoner, a lieutenant, was treated with great civility by Sarsfield. "If I hadfailed in this attempt, " said the gallant Irishman, "I should have beenoff to France. " [750]

Intelligence had been carried to William's head quarters that Sarsfieldhad stolen out of Limerick and was ranging the country. The King guessedthe design of his brave enemy, and sent five hundred horse to protectthe guns. Unhappily there was some delay, which the English, alwaysdisposed to believe the worst of the Dutch courtiers, attributed tothe negligence or perverseness of Portland. At one in the morning thedetachment set out, but had scarcely left the camp when a blaze likelightning and a crash like thunder announced to the wide plain of theShannon that all was over, [751]

Sarsfield had long been the favourite of his countrymen; and this mostseasonable exploit, judiciously planned and vigorously executed, raisedhim still higher in their estimation. Their spirits rose; and thebesiegers began to lose heart. William did his best to repair hisloss. Two of the guns which had been blown up were found to be stillserviceable. Two more were sent for from Waterford. Batteries wereconstructed of small field pieces, which, though they might have beenuseless against one of the fortresses of Hainault or Brabant, made someimpression on the feeble defences of Limerick. Several outworks werecarried by storm; and a breach in the rampart of the city began toappear. 

During these operations, the English army was astonished and amused byan incident, which produced indeed no very important consequences, butwhich illustrates in the most striking manner the real nature of IrishJacobitism. In the first rank of those great Celtic houses, which, downto the close of the reign of Elizabeth, bore rule in Ulster, were theO'Donnels. The head of that house had yielded to the skill and energy ofMountjoy, had kissed the hand of James the First, and had consentedto exchange the rude independence of a petty prince for an eminentlyhonourable place among British subjects. During a short time thevanquished chief held the rank of an Earl, and was the landlord of animmense domain of which he had once been the sovereign. But soon hebegan to suspect the government of plotting against him, and, in revengeor in selfdefence, plotted against the government. His schemes failed;he fled to the continent; his title and his estates were forfeited; andan Anglosaxon colony was planted in the territory which he had governed. He meanwhile took refuge at the court of Spain. Between that court andthe aboriginal Irish there had, during the long contest between Philipand Elizabeth, been a close connection. The exiled chieftain waswelcomed at Madrid as a good Catholic flying from heretical persecutors. His illustrious descent and princely dignity, which to the Englishwere subjects of ridicule, secured to him the respect of the Castiliangrandees. His honours were inherited by a succession of banished men wholived and died far from the land where the memory of their family wasfondly cherished by a rude peasantry, and was kept fresh by the songsof minstrels and the tales of begging friars. At length, in theeighty-third year of the exile of this ancient dynasty, it wasknown over all Europe that the Irish were again in arms for theirindependence. Baldearg O'Donnel, who called himself the O'Donnel, atitle far prouder, in the estimation of his race, than any marquisate ordukedom, had been bred in Spain, and was in the service of the Spanishgovernment. He requested the permission of that government to repair toIreland. But the House of Austria was now closely leagued with England;and the permission was refused. The O'Donnel made his escape, and by acircuitous route, in the course of which he visited Turkey, arrived atKinsale a few days after James had sailed thence for France. The effectproduced on the native population by the arrival of this solitarywanderer was marvellous. Since Ulster had been reconquered by theEnglishry, great multitudes of the Irish inhabitants of that provincehad migrated southward, and were now leading a vagrant life in Connaughtand Munster. These men, accustomed from their infancy to hear of thegood old times, when the O'Donnel, solemnly inaugurated on the rock ofKilmacrenan by the successor of Saint Columb, governed the mountainsof Donegal in defiance of the strangers of the pale, flocked to thestandard of the restored exile. He was soon at the head of seven oreight thousand Rapparees, or, to use the name peculiar to Ulster, Creaghts; and his followers adhered to him with a loyalty very differentfrom the languid sentiment which the Saxon James had been able toinspire. Priests and even Bishops swelled the train of the adventurer. He was so much elated by his reception that he sent agents to France, who assured the ministers of Lewis that the O'Donnel would, if furnishedwith arms and ammunition, bring into the field thirty thousand Celtsfrom Ulster, and that the Celts of Ulster would be found far superior inevery military quality to those of Leinster, Munster and Connaught. Noexpression used by Baldearg indicated that he considered himself asa subject. His notion evidently was that the House of O'Donnel was astruly and as indefeasibly royal as the House of Stuart; and not a fewof his countrymen were of the same mind. He made a pompous entrance intoLimerick; and his appearance there raised the hopes of the garrison toa strange pitch. Numerous prophecies were recollected or invented. AnO'Donnel with a red mark was to be the deliverer of his country; andBaldearg meant a red mark. An O'Donnel was to gain a great battle overthe English near Limerick; and at Limerick the O'Donnel and the Englishwere now brought face to face, [752]

While these predictions were eagerly repeated by the defenders of thecity, evil presages, grounded not on barbarous oracles, but on gravemilitary reasons, began to disturb William and his most experiencedofficers. The blow struck by Sarsfield had told; the artillery had beenlong in doing its work; that work was even now very imperfectly done;the stock of powder had begun to run low; the autumnal rain had begunto fall. The soldiers in the trenches were up to their knees in mire. Noprecaution was neglected; but, though drains were dug to carry off thewater, and though pewter basins of usquebaugh and brandy blazed allnight in the tents, cases of fever had already occurred, and it mightwell be apprehended that, if the army remained but a few days longer onthat swampy soil, there would be a pestilence more terrible than thatwhich had raged twelve months before under the walls of Dundalk, [753]A council of war was held. It was determined to make one great effort, and, if that effort failed, to raise the seige. 

On the twenty-seventh of August, at three in the afternoon, the signalwas given. Five hundred grenadiers rushed from the English trenchesto the counterscarp, fired their pieces, and threw their grenades. TheIrish fled into the town, and were followed by the assailants, who, in the excitement of victory, did not wait for orders. Then began aterrible street fight. The Irish, as soon as they had recoveredfrom their surprise, stood resolutely to their arms; and the Englishgrenadiers, overwhelmed by numbers, were, with great loss, driven backto the counterscarp. There the struggle was long and desperate. Whenindeed was the Roman Catholic Celt to fight if he did not fight on thatday? The very women of Limerick mingled, in the combat, stood firmlyunder the hottest fire, and flung stones and broken bottles at theenemy. In the moment when the conflict was fiercest a mine exploded, and hurled a fine German battalion into the air. During four hours thecarnage and uproar continued. The thick cloud which rose from the breachstreamed out on the wind for many miles, and disappeared behind thehills of Clare. Late in the evening the besiegers retired slowly andsullenly to their camp. Their hope was that a second attack would bemade on the morrow; and the soldiers vowed to have the town or die. But the powder was now almost exhausted; the rain fell in torrents; thegloomy masses of cloud which came up from the south west threatened ahavoc more terrible than that of the sword; and there was reason to fearthat the roads, which were already deep in mud, would soon be in such astate that no wheeled carriage could be dragged through them. The Kingdetermined to raise the siege, and to move his troops to a healthierregion. He had in truth staid long enough; for it was with greatdifficulty that his guns and waggons were tugged away by long teams ofoxen, [754]

The history of the first siege of Limerick bears, in some respects, a remarkable analogy to the history of the siege of Londonderry. Thesouthern city was, like the northern city, the last asylum of a Churchand of a nation. Both places were crowded by fugitives from all parts ofIreland. Both places appeared to men who had made a regular study of theart of war incapable of resisting an enemy. Both were, in the moment ofextreme danger, abandoned by those commanders who should have defendedthem. Lauzun and Tyrconnel deserted Limerick as Cunningham and Lundy haddeserted Londonderry. In both cases, religious and patriotic enthusiasmstruggled unassisted against great odds; and, in both cases, religiousand patriotic enthusiasm did what veteran warriors had pronounced itabsurd to attempt. 

It was with no pleasurable emotions that Lauzun and Tyrconnel learned atGalway the fortunate issue of the conflict in which they had refusedto take a part. They were weary of Ireland; they were apprehensivethat their conduct might be unfavourably represented in France; theytherefore determined to be beforehand with their accusers, and took shiptogether for the Continent. 

Tyrconnel, before he departed, delegated his civil authority to onecouncil, and his military authority to another. The young Duke ofBerwick was declared Commander in Chief; but this dignity was merelynominal. Sarsfield, undoubtedly the first of Irish soldiers, was placedlast in the list of the councillors to whom the conduct of the war wasentrusted; and some believed that he would not have been in the list atall, had not the Viceroy feared that the omission of so popular a namemight produce a mutiny. 

William meanwhile had reached Waterford, and had sailed thence forEngland. Before he embarked, he entrusted the government of Ireland tothree Lords Justices. Henry Sydney, now Viscount Sydney, stood firstin the commission; and with him were joined Coningsby and Sir CharlesPorter. Porter had formerly held the Great Seal of the kingdom, had, merely because he was a Protestant, been deprived of it by James, andhad now received it again from the hand of William. 

On the sixth of September the King, after a voyage of twenty-four hours, landed at Bristol. Thence he travelled to London, stopping by the roadat the mansions of some great lords, and it was remarked that allthose who were thus honoured were Tories. He was entertained one dayat Badminton by the Duke of Beaufort, who was supposed to have broughthimself with great difficulty to take the oaths, and on a subsequentday at a large house near Marlborough which, in our own time, before thegreat revolution produced by railways, was renowned as one of the bestinns in England, but which, in the seventeenth century, was a seat ofthe Duke of Somerset. William was every where received with marks ofrespect and joy. His campaign indeed had not ended quite so prosperouslyas it had begun; but on the whole his success had been great beyondexpectation, and had fully vindicated the wisdom of his resolution tocommand his army in person. The sack of Teignmouth too was fresh inthe minds of Englishmen, and had for a time reconciled all but the mostfanatical Jacobites to each other and to the throne. The magistracyand clergy of the capital repaired to Kensington with thanks andcongratulations. The people rang bells and kindled bonfires. For thePope, whom good Protestants had been accustomed to immolate, the FrenchKing was on this occasion substituted, probably by way of retaliationfor the insults which had been offered to the effigy of William bythe Parisian populace. A waxen figure, which was doubtless a hideouscaricature of the most graceful and majestic of princes, was draggedabout Westminster in a chariot. Above was inscribed, in large letters, "Lewis the greatest tyrant of fourteen. " After the procession, the imagewas committed to the flames, amidst loud huzzas, in the middle of CoventGarden, [755]

When William arrived in London, the expedition destined for Cork, wasready to sail from Portsmouth, and Marlborough had been some time onboard waiting for a fair wind. He was accompanied by Grafton. This youngman had been, immediately after the departure of James, and while thethrone was still vacant, named by William Colonel of the First Regimentof Foot Guards. The Revolution had scarcely been consummated, when signsof disaffection began to appear in that regiment, the most important, both because of its peculiar duties and because of its numericalstrength, of all the regiments in the army. It was thought that theColonel had not put this bad spirit down with a sufficiently firm hand. He was known not to be perfectly satisfied with the new arrangement; hehad voted for a Regency; and it was rumoured, perhaps without reason, that he had dealings with Saint Germains. The honourable and lucrativecommand to which he had just been appointed was taken from him, [756]Though severely mortified, he behaved like a man of sense and spirit. Bent on proving that he had been wrongfully suspected, and animatedby an honourable ambition to distinguish himself in his profession, he obtained permission to serve as a volunteer under Marlborough inIreland. 

At length, on the eighteenth of September, the wind changed. The fleetstood out to sea, and on the twenty-first appeared before the harbourof Cork. The troops landed, and were speedily joined by the Duke ofWirtemberg, with several regiments, Dutch, Danish, and French, detachedfrom the army which had lately besieged Limerick. The Duke immediatelyput forward a claim which, if the English general had not been a man ofexcellent judgment and temper, might have been fatal to the expedition. His Highness contended that, as a prince of a sovereign house, he wasentitled to command in chief. Marlborough calmly and politely showedthat the pretence was unreasonable. A dispute followed, in which it issaid that the German behaved with rudeness, and the Englishman with thatgentle firmness to which, more perhaps than even to his great abilities, he owed his success in life. At length a Huguenot officer suggested acompromise. Marlborough consented to waive part of his rights, and toallow precedence to the Duke on the alternate days. The first morningon which Marlborough had the command, he gave the word "Wirtemberg. " TheDuke's heart was won by this compliment and on the next day he gave theword "Marlborough. "

But, whoever might give the word, genius asserted its indefeasiblesuperiority. Marlborough was on every day the real general. Cork wasvigorously attacked. Outwork after outwork was rapidly carried. Inforty-eight hours all was over. The traces of the short struggle maystill be seen. The old fort, where the Irish made the hardest fight, lies in ruins. The Daria Cathedral, so ungracefully joined to theancient tower, stands on the site of a Gothic edifice which wasshattered by the English cannon. In the neighbouring churchyard is stillshown the spot where stood, during many ages, one of those round towerswhich have perplexed antiquaries. This venerable monument shared thefate of the neighbouring church. On another spot, which is now calledthe Mall, and is lined by the stately houses of banking companies, railway companies, and insurance companies, but which was then a bogknown by the name of the Rape Marsh, four English regiments, up to theshoulders in water, advanced gallantly to the assault. Grafton, everforemost in danger, while struggling through the quagmire, was struck bya shot from the ramparts, and was carried back dying. The place where hefell, then about a hundred yards without the city, but now situatedin the very centre of business and population, is still called GraftonStreet. The assailants had made their way through the swamp, and theclose fighting was just about to begin, when a parley was beaten. Articles of capitulation were speedily adjusted. The garrison, betweenfour and five thousand fighting men, became prisoners. Marlboroughpromised to intercede with the King both for them and for theinhabitants, and to prevent outrage and spoliation. His troops hesucceeded in restraining; but crowds of sailors and camp followers cameinto the city through the breach; and the houses of many Roman Catholicswere sacked before order was restored. 

No commander has ever understood better than Marlborough how to improvea victory. A few hours after Cork had fallen, his cavalry were on theroad to Kinsale. A trumpeter was sent to summon the place. The Irishthreatened to hang him for bringing such a message, set fire to thetown, and retired into two forts called the Old and the New. TheEnglish horse arrived just in time to extinguish the flames. Marlboroughspeedily followed with his infantry. The Old Fort was scaled; and fourhundred and fifty men who defended it were all killed or taken. The NewFort it was necessary to attack in a more methodical way. Batterieswere planted; trenches were opened; mines were sprung; in a few daysthe besiegers were masters of the counterscarp; and all was ready forstorming, when the governor offered to capitulate. The garrison, twelvehundred strong, was suffered to retire to Limerick; but the conquerorstook possession of the stores, which were of considerable value. Ofall the Irish ports Kinsale was the best situated for intercourse withFrance. Here, therefore, was a plenty unknown in any other part ofMunster. At Limerick bread and wine were luxuries which generals andprivy councillors were not always able to procure. But in the New Fortof Kinsale Marlborough found a thousand barrels of wheat and eightypipes of claret. 

His success had been complete and rapid; and indeed, had it not beenrapid, it would not have been complete. His campaign, short as it was, had been long enough to allow time for the deadly work which, in thatage, the moist earth and air of Ireland seldom failed, in the autumnalseason, to perform on English soldiers. The malady which had thinned theranks of Schomberg's army at Dundalk, and which had compelled Williamto make a hasty retreat from the estuary of the Shannon, had begun toappear at Kinsale. Quick and vigorous as Marlborough's operations were, he lost a much greater number of men by disease than by the fire of theenemy. He presented himself at Kensington only five weeks after he hadsailed from Portsmouth, and was most graciously received. "No officerliving, " said William, "who has seen so little service as my LordMarlborough, is so fit for great commands. " [757]

In Scotland, as in Ireland, the aspect of things had, during thismemorable summer, changed greatly for the better. That club ofdiscontented Whigs which had, in the preceding year, ruled theParliament, browbeaten the ministers, refused the supplies and stoppedthe signet, had sunk under general contempt, and had at length ceased toexist. There was harmony between the Sovereign and the Estates; and thelong contest between two forms of ecclesiastical government had beenterminated in the only way compatible with the peace and prosperity ofthe country. 

This happy turn in affairs is to be chiefly ascribed to the errors ofthe perfidious, turbulent and revengeful Montgomery. Some weeks afterthe close of that session during which he had exercised a boundlessauthority over the Scottish Parliament, he went to London with his twoprincipal confederates, the Earl of Annandale and the Lord Ross. Thethree had an audience of William, and presented to him a manifestosetting forth what they demanded for the public. They would very soonhave changed their tone if he would have granted what they demanded forthemselves. But he resented their conduct deeply, and was determined notto pay them for annoying him. The reception which he gave them convincedthem that they had no favour to expect. Montgomery's passions werefierce; his wants were pressing; he was miserably poor; and, if hecould not speedily force himself into a lucrative office, he would bein danger of rotting in a gaol. Since his services were not likely tobe bought by William, they must be offered to James. A broker was easilyfound. Montgomery was an old acquaintance of Ferguson. The two traitorssoon understood each other. They were kindred spirits, differing widelyin intellectual power, but equally vain, restless, false and malevolent. Montgomery was introduced to Neville Payne, one of the most adroit andresolute agents of the exiled family, Payne had been long well knownabout town as a dabbler in poetry and politics. He had been an intimatefriend of the indiscreet and unfortunate Coleman, and had been committedto Newgate as an accomplice in the Popish plot. His moral characterhad not stood high; but he soon had an opportunity of proving that hepossessed courage and fidelity worthy of a better cause than that ofJames and of a better associate than Montgomery. 

The negotiation speedily ended in a treaty of alliance, Payneconfidently promised Montgomery, not merely pardon, but riches, power and dignity. Montgomery as confidently undertook to induce theParliament of Scotland to recall the rightful King. Ross and Annandalereadily agreed to whatever their able and active colleague proposed. Anadventurer, who was sometimes called Simpson and sometimes Jones, whowas perfectly willing to serve or to betray any government for hire, and who received wages at once from Portland and from Neville Payne, undertook to carry the offers of the Club to James. Montgomery and histwo noble accomplices returned to Edinburgh, and there proceeded toform a coalition with their old enemies, the defenders of prelacy and ofarbitrary power, [758]

The Scottish opposition, strangely made up of two factions, one zealousfor bishops, the other zealous for synods, one hostile to all liberty, the other impatient of all government, flattered itself during a shorttime with hopes that the civil war would break out in the Highlands withredoubled fury. But those hopes were disappointed. In the spring of1690 an officer named Buchan arrived in Lochaber from Ireland. He bore acommission which appointed him general in chief of all the forces whichwere in arms for King James throughout the kingdom of Scotland. Cannon, who had, since the death of Dundee, held the first post and had provedhimself unfit for it, became second in command. Little however wasgained by the change. It was no easy matter to induce the Gaelicprinces to renew the war. Indeed, but for the influence and eloquence ofLochiel, not a sword would have been drawn for the House of Stuart. He, with some difficulty, persuaded the chieftains, who had, in thepreceding year, fought at Killiecrankie, to come to a resolution that, before the end of the summer, they would muster all their followers andmarch into the Lowlands. In the mean time twelve hundred mountaineers ofdifferent tribes were placed under the orders of Buchan, who undertook, with this force, to keep the English garrisons in constant alarm byfeints and incursions, till the season for more important operationsshould arrive. He accordingly marched into Strathspey. But all his planswere speedily disconcerted by the boldness and dexterity of Sir ThomasLivingstone, who held Inverness for King William. Livingstone, guidedand assisted by the Grants, who were firmly attached to the newgovernment, came, with a strong body of cavalry and dragoons, by forcedmarches and through arduous defiles, to the place where the Jacobiteshad taken up their quarters. He reached the camp fires at dead of night. The first alarm was given by the rush of the horses over the terrifiedsentinels into the midst Of the crowd of Celts who lay sleeping in theirplaids. Buchan escaped bareheaded and without his sword. Cannon ran awayin his shirt. The conquerors lost not a man. Four hundred Highlanderswere killed or taken. The rest fled to their hills and mists, [759]

This event put an end to all thoughts of civil war. The gathering whichhad been planned for the summer never took place. Lochiel, even if hehad been willing, was not able to sustain any longer the falling cause. He had been laid on his bed by a mishap which would alone suffice toshow how little could be effected by a confederacy of the petty kingsof the mountains. At a consultation of the Jacobite leaders, a gentlemanfrom the Lowlands spoke with severity of those sycophants who hadchanged their religion to curry favour with King James. Glengarry wasone of those people who think it dignified to suppose that every bodyis always insulting them. He took it into his head that some allusionto himself was meant. "I am as good a Protestant as you. " he cried, andadded a word not to be patiently borne by a man of spirit. In a momentboth swords were out. Lochiel thrust himself between the combatants, and, while forcing them asunder, received a wound which was at firstbelieved to be mortal, [760]

So effectually had the spirit of the disaffected clans been cowed thatMackay marched unresisted from Perth into Lochaber, fixed his headquarters at Inverlochy, and proceeded to execute his favourite designof erecting at that place a fortress which might overawe the mutinousCamerons and Macdonalds. In a few days the walls were raised; theditches were sunk; the pallisades were fixed; demiculverins from a shipof war were ranged along the parapets, and the general departed, leavingan officer named Hill in command of a sufficient garrison. Within thedefences there was no want of oatmeal, red herrings, and beef; andthere was rather a superabundance of brandy. The new stronghold, which, hastily and rudely as it had been constructed, seemed doubtless to thepeople of the neighbourhood the most stupendous work that power andscience united had ever produced, was named Fort William in honour ofthe King, [761]

By this time the Scottish Parliament had reassembled at Edinburgh. William had found it no easy matter to decide what course should betaken with that capricious and unruly body. The English Commons hadsometimes put him out of temper. Yet they had granted him millions, and had never asked from him such concessions as had been imperiouslydemanded by the Scottish legislature, which could give him little andhad given him nothing. The English statesmen with whom he had to dealdid not generally stand or serve to stand high in his esteem. Yet fewof them were so utterly false and shameless as the leading Scottishpoliticians. Hamilton was, in morality and honour, rather above thanbelow his fellows; and even Hamilton was fickle, false and greedy. "I wish to heaven, " William was once provoked into exclaiming, "thatScotland were a thousand miles off, and that the Duke of Hamilton wereKing of it. Then I should be rid of them both. "

After much deliberation William determined to send Melville down toEdinburgh as Lord High Commissioner. Melville was not a greatstatesman; he was not a great orator; he did not look or move like therepresentative of royalty; his character was not of more than standardpurity; and the standard of purity among Scottish senators was nothigh; but he was by no means deficient in prudence or temper; and hesucceeded, on the whole, better than a man of much higher qualitiesmight have done. 

During the first days of the Session, the friends of the governmentdesponded, and the chiefs of the opposition were sanguine. Montgomery'shead, though by no means a weak one, had been turned by the triumphs ofthe preceding year. He believed that his intrigues and his rhetoric hadcompletely subjugated the Estates. It seemed to him impossible that, having exercised a boundless empire in the Parliament House when theJacobites were absent, he should be defeated when they were present, andready to support whatever he proposed. He had not indeed found iteasy to prevail on them to attend: for they could not take their seatswithout taking the oaths. A few of them had some slight scruple ofconscience about foreswearing themselves; and many, who did not knowwhat a scruple of conscience meant, were apprehensive that they mightoffend the rightful King by vowing fealty to the actual King. SomeLords, however, who were supposed to be in the confidence of James, asserted that, to their knowledge, he wished his friends to perjurethemselves; and this assertion induced most of the Jacobites, withBalcarras at their head, to be guilty of perfidy aggravated by impiety, [762]

It soon appeared, however, that Montgomery's faction, even with thisreinforcement, was no longer a majority of the legislature. For everysupporter that he had gained he had lost two. He had committed anerror which has more than once, in British history, been fatal to greatparliamentary leaders. He had imagined that, as soon as he chose tocoalesce with those to whom he had recently been opposed, all hisfollowers would imitate his example. He soon found that it was mucheasier to inflame animosities than to appease them. The great body OfWhigs and Presbyterians shrank from the fellowship of the Jacobites. Some waverers were purchased by the government; nor was the purchaseexpensive, for a sum which would hardly be missed in the EnglishTreasury was immense in the estimation of the needy barons of the North, [763] Thus the scale was turned; and, in the Scottish Parliamentsof that age, the turn of the scale was every thing; the tendencyof majorities was always to increase, the tendency of minorities todiminish. 

The first question on which a vote was taken related to the election fora borough. The ministers carried their point by six voices, [764] In aninstant every thing was changed; the spell was broken; the Club, frombeing a bugbear, became a laughingstock; the timid and the venal passedover in crowds from the weaker to the stronger side. It was in vain thatthe opposition attempted to revive the disputes of the preceding year. The King had wisely authorised Melville to give up the Committee ofArticles. The Estates, on the other hand, showed no disposition to passanother Act of Incapacitation, to censure the government for opening theCourts of justice, or to question the right of the Sovereign to namethe judges. An extraordinary supply was voted, small, according to thenotions of English financiers, but large for the means of Scotland. Thesum granted was a hundred and sixty-two thousand pounds sterling, to beraised in the course of four years, [765]

The Jacobites, who found that they had forsworn themselves to nopurpose, sate, bowed down by shame and writhing with vexation, whileMontgomery, who had deceived himself and them, and who, in his rage, hadutterly lost, not indeed his parts and his fluency, but all decorum andselfcommand, scolded like a waterman on the Thames, and was answeredwith equal asperity and even more than equal ability by Sir JohnDalrymple, [766]

The most important acts of this Session were those which fixed theecclesiastical constitution of Scotland. By the Claim of Right ithad been declared that the authority of Bishops was an insupportablegrievance; and William, by accepting the Crown, had bound himself notto uphold an institution condemned by the very instrument on which histitle to the Crown depended. But the Claim of Right had not defined theform of Church government which was to be substituted for episcopacy;and, during the stormy Session held in the summer of 1689, the violenceof the Club had made legislation impossible. During many monthstherefore every thing had been in confusion. One polity had been pulleddown; and no other polity had been set up. In the Western Lowlands, thebeneficed clergy had been so effectually rabbled, that scarcely one ofthem had remained at his post. In Berwickshire, the three Lothians andStirlingshire, most of the curates had been removed by the Privy Councilfor not obeying that vote of the Convention which had directed allministers of parishes, on pain of deprivation, to proclaim William andMary King and Queen of Scotland. Thus, throughout a great part ofthe realm, there was no public worship except what was performed byPresbyterian divines, who sometimes officiated in tents, and sometimes, without any legal right, took possession of the churches. But there werelarge districts, especially on the north of the Tay, where the peoplehad no strong feeling against episcopacy; and there were many priestswho were not disposed to lose their manses, and stipends for the sake ofKing James. Hundreds of the old curates, therefore, having been neitherhunted by the populace nor deposed by the Council, still performed theirspiritual functions. Every minister was, during this time of transition, free to conduct the service and to administer the sacraments as hethought fit. There was no controlling authority. The legislature hadtaken away the jurisdiction of Bishops, and had not established thejurisdiction of Synods, [767]

To put an end to this anarchy was one of the first duties of theParliament. Melville had, with the powerful assistance of Carstairs, obtained, in spite of the remonstrances of English Tories, authority toassent to such ecclesiastical arrangements as might satisfy the Scottishnation. One of the first laws which the Lord Commissioner touched withthe sceptre repealed the Act of Supremacy. He next gave the royal assentto a law enacting that those Presbyterian divines who had been pastorsof parishes in the days of the Covenant, and had, after the Restoration, been ejected for refusing to acknowledge episcopal authority, should berestored. The number of those Pastors had originally been about threehundred and fifty: but not more than sixty were still living, [768]

The Estates then proceeded to fix the national creed. The Confession ofFaith drawn up by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, the Longerand Shorter Catechism, and the Directory, were considered by every goodPresbyterian as the standards of orthodoxy; and it was hoped that thelegislature would recognise them as such, [769] This hope, however, wasin part disappointed. The Confession was read at length, amidst muchyawning, and adopted without alteration. But, when it was proposed thatthe Catechisms and the Directory should be taken into consideration, theill humour of the audience broke forth into murmurs. For that love oflong sermons which was strong in the Scottish commonalty was not sharedby the Scottish aristocracy. The Parliament had already been listeningduring three hours to dry theology, and was not inclined to hear anything more about original sin and election. The Duke of Hamilton saidthat the Estates had already done all that was essential. They had giventheir sanction to a digest of the great principles of Christianity. The rest might well be left to the Church. The weary majority eagerlyassented, in spite of the muttering of some zealous Presbyterianministers who had been admitted to hear the debate, and who couldsometimes hardly restrain themselves from taking part in it, [770]

The memorable law which fixed the ecclesiastical constitution ofScotland was brought in by the Earl of Sutherland. By this law thesynodical polity was reestablished. The rule of the Church was entrustedto the sixty ejected ministers who had just been restored, and to suchother persons, whether ministers or elders, as the Sixty should thinkfit to admit to a participation of power. The Sixty and their nomineeswere authorised to visit all the parishes in the kingdom, and to turnout all ministers who were deficient in abilities, scandalous in morals, or unsound in faith. Those parishes which had, during the interregnum, been deserted by their pastors, or, in plain words, those parishes ofwhich the pastors had been rabbled, were declared vacant, [771]

To the clause which reestablished synodical government no seriousopposition appears to have been made. But three days were spent indiscussing the question whether the Sovereign should have power toconvoke and to dissolve ecclesiastical assemblies; and the point wasat last left in dangerous ambiguity. Some other clauses were long andvehemently debated. It was said that the immense power given to theSixty was incompatible with the fundamental principle of the politywhich the Estates were about to set up. That principle was that allpresbyters were equal, and that there ought to be no order of ministersof religion superior to the order of presbyters. What did it matterwhether the Sixty were called prelates or not, if they were to lord itwith more than prelatical authority over God's heritage? To the argumentthat the proposed arrangement was, in the very peculiar circumstancesof the Church, the most convenient that could be made, the objectorsreplied that such reasoning might suit the mouth of an Erastian, butthat all orthodox Presbyterians held the parity of ministers to beordained by Christ, and that, where Christ had spoken, Christians werenot at liberty to consider what was convenient, [772]

With much greater warmth and much stronger reason the minority attackedthe clause which sanctioned the lawless acts of the Western fanatics. Surely, it was said, a rabbled curate might well be left to the severescrutiny of the sixty Inquisitors. If he was deficient in parts orlearning, if he was loose in life, if he was heterodox in doctrine, those stern judges would not fail to detect and to depose him. Theywould probably think a game at bowls, a prayer borrowed from the EnglishLiturgy, or a sermon in which the slightest taint of Arminianism couldbe discovered, a sufficient reason for pronouncing his benefice vacant. Was it not monstrous, after constituting a tribunal from which he couldscarcely hope for bare justice, to condemn him without allowing him toappear even before that tribunal, to condemn him without a trial, tocondemn him without an accusation? Did ever any grave senate, since thebeginning of the world, treat a man as a criminal merely because hehad been robbed, pelted, hustled, dragged through snow and mire, andthreatened with death if he returned to the house which was his by law?The Duke of Hamilton, glad to have so good an Opportunity of attackingthe new Lord Commissioner, spoke with great vehemence against thisodious clause. We are told that no attempt was made to answer him; and, though those who tell us so were zealous Episcopalians, we may easilybelieve their report; for what answer was it possible to return?Melville, on whom the chief responsibility lay, sate on the throne inprofound silence through the whole of this tempestuous debate. Itis probable that his conduct was determined by considerations whichprudence and shame prevented him from explaining. The state of thesouthwestern shires was such that it would have been impossible toput the rabbled minister in possession of their dwellings and churcheswithout employing a military force, without garrisoning every manse, without placing guards round every pulpit, and without handing over someferocious enthusiasts to the Provost Marshal; and it would be no easytask for the government to keep down by the sword at once the Jacobitesof the Highlands and the Covenanters of the Lowlands. The majority, having made up their minds for reasons which could not well be produced, became clamorous for the question. "No more debate, " was the cry: "Wehave heard enough: a vote! a vote!" The question was put accordingto the Scottish form, "Approve or not approve the article?" Hamiltoninsisted that the question, should be, "Approve or not approve therabbling?" After much altercation, he was overruled, and the clausepassed. Only fifteen or sixteen members voted with him. He warmly andloudly exclaimed, amidst much angry interruption, that he was sorry tosee a Scottish Parliament disgrace itself by such iniquity. He thenleft the house with several of his friends. It is impossible not tosympathize with the indignation which he expressed. Yet we ought toremember that it is the nature of injustice to generate injustice. Thereare wrongs which it is almost impossible to repair without committingother wrongs; and such a wrong had been done to the people of Scotlandin the preceding generation. It was because the Parliament of theRestoration had legislated in insolent defiance of the sense of thenation that the Parliament of the Revolution had to abase itself beforethe mob. 

When Hamilton and his adherents had retired, one of the preachers whohad been admitted to the hall called out to the members who were nearhim; "Fie! Fie! Do not lose time. Make haste, and get all over before hecomes back. " This advice was taken. Four or five sturdy Prelatists staidto give a last vote against Presbytery. Four or five equally sturdyCovenanters staid to mark their dislike of what seemed to them acompromise between the Lord and Baal. But the Act was passed by anoverwhelming majority, [773]

Two supplementary Acts speedily followed. One of them, now happilyrepealed, required every officebearer in every University of Scotland tosign the Confession of Faith and to give in his adhesion to the new formof Church government, [774] The other settled the important and delicatequestion of patronage. Knox had, in the First Book of Discipline, asserted the right of every Christian congregation to choose its ownpastor. Melville had not, in the Second Book of Discipline, gone quiteso far; but he had declared that no pastor could lawfully be forced onan unwilling congregation. Patronage had been abolished by a CovenantedParliament in 1649, and restored by a Royalist Parliament in 1661. Whatought to be done in 1690 it was no easy matter to decide. Scarcely anyquestion seems to have caused so much anxiety to William. He had, in hisprivate instructions, given the Lord Commissioner authority to assent tothe abolition of patronage, if nothing else would satisfy the Estates. But this authority was most unwillingly given; and the King hoped thatit would not be used. "It is, " he said, "the taking of men's property. "Melville succeeded in effecting a compromise. Patronage was abolished;but it was enacted that every patron should receive six hundredmarks Scots, equivalent to about thirty-five pounds sterling, as acompensation for his rights. The sum seems ludicrously small. Yet, when the nature of the property and the poverty of the country areconsidered, it may be doubted whether a patron would have made much moreby going into the market. The largest sum that any member ventured topropose was nine hundred marks, little more than fifty pounds sterling. The right of proposing a minister was given to a parochial councilconsisting of the Protestant landowners and the elders. The congregationmight object to the person proposed; and the Presbytery was to judgeof the objections. This arrangement did not give to the people all thepower to which even the Second Book of Discipline had declared that theywere entitled. But the odious name of patronage was taken away; it wasprobably thought that the elders and landowners of a parish would seldompersist in nominating a person to whom the majority of the congregationhad strong objections; and indeed it does not appear that, while the Actof 1690 continued in force, the peace of the Church was ever broken bydisputes such as produced the schisms of 1732, of 1756, and of 1843, [775]

Montgomery had done all in his power to prevent the Estates fromsettling the ecclesiastical polity of the realm. He had incited thezealous Covenanters to demand what he knew that the government wouldnever grant. He had protested against all Erastianism, against allcompromise. Dutch Presbyterianism, he said, would not do for Scotland. She must have again the system of 1649. That system was deduced from theWord of God: it was the most powerful check that had ever been devisedon the tyranny of wicked kings; and it ought to be restored withoutaddition or diminution. His Jacobite allies could not conceal theirdisgust and mortification at hearing him hold such language, and were byno means satisfied with the explanations which he gave them in private. While they were wrangling with him on this subject, a messenger arrivedat Edinburgh with important despatches from James and from Mary ofModena. These despatches had been written in the confident expectationthat the large promises of Montgomery would be fulfilled, and that theScottish Estates would, under his dexterous management, declare for therightful Sovereign against the Usurper. James was so grateful for theunexpected support of his old enemies, that he entirely forgot theservices and disregarded the feelings of his old friends. The threechiefs of the Club, rebels and Puritans as they were, had become hisfavourites. Annandale was to be a Marquess, Governor of EdinburghCastle, and Lord High Commissioner. Montgomery was to be Earl of Ayr andSecretary of State. Ross was to be an Earl and to command the guards. Anunprincipled lawyer named James Stewart, who had been deeply concernedin Argyle's insurrection, who had changed sides and supported thedispensing power, who had then changed sides a second time and concurredin the Revolution, and who had now changed sides a third time and wasscheming to bring about a Restoration, was to be Lord Advocate. ThePrivy Council, the Court of Session, the army, were to be filled withWhigs. A Council of Five was appointed, which all loyal subjects wereto obey; and in this Council Annandale, Ross and Montgomery formed themajority. Mary of Modena informed Montgomery that five thousand poundssterling had been remitted to his order, and that five thousand morewould soon follow. It was impossible that Balcarras and those who hadacted with him should not bitterly resent the manner in which they weretreated. Their names were not even mentioned. All that they had done andsuffered seemed to have faded from their master's mind. He had now giventhem fair notice that, if they should, at the hazard of their lands andlives, succeed in restoring him, all that he had to give would be givento those who had deposed him. They too, when they read his letters, knew, what he did not know when the letters were written, that he hadbeen duped by the confident boasts and promises of the apostate Whigs. He imagined that the Club was omnipotent at Edinburgh; and, in truth, the Club had become a mere byword of contempt. The Tory Jacobites easilyfound pretexts for refusing to obey the Presbyterian Jacobites to whomthe banished King had delegated his authority. They complained thatMontgomery had not shown them all the despatches which he had received. They affected to suspect that he had tampered with the seals. He calledGod Almighty to witness that the suspicion was unfounded. But oaths werevery naturally regarded as insufficient guarantees by men who had justbeen swearing allegiance to a King against whom they were conspiring. There was a violent outbreak of passion on both sides; the coalition wasdissolved; the papers were flung into the fire; and, in a few days, theinfamous triumvirs who had been, in the short space of a year, violentWilliamites and violent Jacobites, became Williamites again, andattempted to make their peace with the government by accusing eachother, [776]

Ross was the first who turned informer. After the fashion of the schoolin which he had been bred, he committed this base action with all theforms of sanctity. He pretended to be greatly troubled in mind, sent fora celebrated Presbyterian minister named Dunlop, and bemoaned himselfpiteously: "There is a load on my conscience; there is a secret whichI know that I ought to disclose; but I cannot bring myself to do it. "Dunlop prayed long and fervently; Ross groaned and wept; at last itseemed that heaven had been stormed by the violence of supplication; thetruth came out, and many lies with it. The divine and the penitent thenreturned thanks together. Dunlop went with the news to Melville. Rossset off for England to make his peace at court, and performed hisjourney in safety, though some of his accomplices, who had heard ofhis repentance, but had been little edified by it, had laid plans forcutting his throat by the way. At London he protested, on his honourand on the word of a gentleman, that he had been drawn in, that he hadalways disliked the plot, and that Montgomery and Ferguson were the realcriminals, [777]

Dunlop was, in the mean time, magnifying, wherever he went, the divinegoodness which had, by so humble an instrument as himself, brought anoble person back to the right path. Montgomery no sooner heard of thiswonderful work of grace than he too began to experience compunction. Hewent to Melville, made a confession not exactly coinciding with Ross's, and obtained a pass for England. William was then in Ireland; and Marywas governing in his stead. At her feet Montgomery threw himself. He tried to move her pity by speaking of his broken fortunes, and toingratiate himself with her by praising her sweet and affable manners. He gave up to her the names of his fellow plotters. He vowed to dedicatehis whole life to her service, if she would obtain for him some placewhich might enable him to subsist with decency. She was so much touchedby his supplications and flatteries that she recommended him to herhusband's favour; but the just distrust and abhorrence with whichWilliam regarded Montgomery were not to be overcome, [778]

Before the traitor had been admitted to Mary's presence, he had obtaineda promise that he should be allowed to depart in safety. The promise waskept. During some months, he lay hid in London, and contrived to carryon a negotiation with the government. He offered to be a witness againsthis accomplices on condition of having a good place. William would bidno higher than a pardon. At length the communications were broken off. Montgomery retired for a time to France. He soon returned to London, andpassed the miserable remnant of his life in forming plots which came tonothing, and in writing libels which are distinguished by the graceand vigour of their style from most of the productions of the Jacobitepress, [779]

Annandale, when he learned that his two accomplices had turnedapprovers, retired to Bath, and pretended to drink the waters. Thence hewas soon brought up to London by a warrant. He acknowledged that he hadbeen seduced into treason; but he declared that he had only said Amen tothe plans of others, and that his childlike simplicity had been imposedon by Montgomery, that worst, that falsest, that most unquiet of humanbeings. The noble penitent then proceeded to make atonement for his owncrime by criminating other people, English and Scotch, Whig and Tory, guilty and innocent. Some he accused on his own knowledge, and someon mere hearsay. Among those whom he accused on his own knowledge wasNeville Payne, who had not, it should seem, been mentioned either byRoss or by Montgomery, [780]

Payne, pursued by messengers and warrants, was so ill advised as to takerefuge in Scotland. Had he remained in England he would have been safe;for, though the moral proofs of his guilt were complete, there was notsuch legal evidence as would have satisfied a jury that he had committedhigh treason; he could not be subjected to torture in order to forcehim to furnish evidence against himself; nor could he be long confinedwithout being brought to trial. But the moment that he passed the borderhe was at the mercy of the government of which he was the deadly foe. The Claim of Right had recognised torture as, in cases like his, alegitimate mode of obtaining information; and no Habeas Corpus Actsecured him against a long detention. The unhappy man was arrested, carried to Edinburgh, and brought before the Privy Council. The generalnotion was that he was a knave and a coward, and that the first sightof the boots and thumbscrews would bring out all the guilty secretswith which he had been entrusted. But Payne had a far braver spirit thanthose highborn plotters with whom it was his misfortune to have beenconnected. Twice he was subjected to frightful torments; but not a wordinculpating himself or any other person could be wrung out of him. Somecouncillors left the board in horror. But the pious Crawford presided. He was not much troubled with the weakness of compassion where anAmalekite was concerned, and forced the executioner to hammer in wedgeafter wedge between the knees of the prisoner till the pain was asgreat as the human frame can sustain without dissolution. Payne wasthen carried to the Castle of Edinburgh, where he long remained, utterlyforgotten, as he touchingly complained, by those for whose sake he hadendured more than the bitterness of death. Yet no ingratitude could dampthe ardour of his fanatical loyalty; and he continued, year after year, in his cell, to plan insurrections and invasions, [781]

Before Payne's arrest the Estates had been adjourned after a Sessionas important as any that had ever been held in Scotland. The nationgenerally acquiesced in the new ecclesiastical constitution. Theindifferent, a large portion of every society, were glad that theanarchy was over, and conformed to the Presbyterian Church as they hadconformed to the Episcopal Church. To the moderate Presbyterians thesettlement which had been made was on the whole satisfactory. Most ofthe strict Presbyterians brought themselves to accept it under protest, as a large instalment of what was due. They missed indeed what theyconsidered as the perfect beauty and symmetry of that Church which had, forty years before, been the glory of Scotland. But, though the secondtemple was not equal to the first, the chosen people might well rejoiceto think that they were, after a long captivity in Babylon, suffered torebuild, though imperfectly, the House of God on the old foundations;nor could it misbecome them to feel for the latitudinarian William agrateful affection such as the restored Jews had felt for the heathenCyrus. 

There were however two parties which regarded the settlement of 1690with implacable detestation. Those Scotchmen who were Episcopalians onconviction and with fervour appear to have been few; but among them weresome persons superior, not perhaps in natural parts, but in learning, in taste, and in the art of composition, to the theologians of thesect which had now become dominant. It might not have been safe for theejected Curates and Professors to give vent in their own country to theanger which they felt. But the English press was open to them; and theywere sure of the approbation of a large part of the English people. During several years they continued to torment their enemies and toamuse the public with a succession of ingenious and spirited pamphlets. In some of these works the hardships suffered by the rabbled priests ofthe western shires are set forth with a skill which irresistibly movespity and indignation. In others, the cruelty with which the Covenantershad been treated during the reigns of the last two kings of the Houseof Stuart is extenuated by every artifice of sophistry. There is muchjoking on the bad Latin which some Presbyterian teachers had utteredwhile seated in academic chairs lately occupied by great scholars. Muchwas said about the ignorant contempt which the victorious barbariansprofessed for science and literature. They were accused ofanathematizing the modern systems of natural philosophy as damnableheresies, of condemning geometry as a souldestroying pursuit, ofdiscouraging even the study of those tongues in which the sacred bookswere written. Learning, it was said, would soon be extinct in Scotland. The Universities, under their new rulers, were languishing and must soonperish. The booksellers had been half ruined: they found that the wholeprofit of their business would not pay the rent of their shops, and werepreparing to emigrate to some country where letters were held in esteemby those whose office was to instruct the public. Among the ministersof religion no purchaser of books was left. The Episcopalian divine wasglad to sell for a morsel of bread whatever part of his library hadnot been torn to pieces or burned by the Christmas mobs; and the onlylibrary of a Presbyterian divine consisted of an explanation of theApocalypse and a commentary on the Song of Songs, [782] The pulpitoratory of the triumphant party was an inexhaustible subject of mirth. One little volume, entitled The Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed, had an immense success in the South among both High Churchmen andscoffers, and is not yet quite forgotten. It was indeed a book wellfitted to lie on the hall table of a Squire whose religion consisted inhating extemporaneous prayer and nasal psalmody. On a rainy day, whenit was impossible to hunt or shoot, neither the card table nor thebackgammon board would have been, in the intervals of the flagon and thepasty, so agreeable a resource. Nowhere else, perhaps, can be found, inso small a compass, so large a collection of ludicrous quotations andanecdotes. Some grave men, however, who bore no love to the Calvinisticdoctrine or discipline, shook their heads over this lively jest book, and hinted their opinion that the writer, while holding up to derisionthe absurd rhetoric by which coarseminded and ignorant men tried toillustrate dark questions of theology and to excite devotional feelingamong the populace, had sometimes forgotten the reverence due to sacredthings. The effect which tracts of this sort produced on the public mindof England could not be fully discerned, while England and Scotland wereindependent of each other, but manifested itself, very soon after theunion of the kingdoms, in a way which we still have reason, and whichour posterity will probably long have reason to lament. 

The extreme Presbyterians were as much out of humour as the extremePrelatists, and were as little inclined as the extreme Prelatists totake the oath of allegiance to William and Mary. Indeed, though theJacobite nonjuror and the Cameronian nonjuror were diametrically opposedto each other in opinion, though they regarded each other with mortalaversion, though neither of them would have had any scruple aboutpersecuting the other, they had much in common. They were perhaps thetwo most remarkable specimens that the world could show of perverseabsurdity. Each of them considered his darling form of ecclesiasticalpolity, not as a means but as an end, as the one thing needful, as thequintessence of the Christian religion. Each of them childishly fanciedthat he had found a theory of civil government in his Bible. Neithershrank from the frightful consequences to which his theory led. To allobjections both had one answer, --Thus saith the Lord. Both agreed inboasting that the arguments which to atheistical politicians seemedunanswerable presented no difficulty to the Saint. It might be perfectlytrue that, by relaxing the rigour of his principles, he might save hiscountry from slavery, anarchy, universal ruin. But his business was notto save his country, but to save his soul. He obeyed the commands ofGod, and left the event to God. One of the two fanatical sects heldthat, to the end of time, the nation would be bound to obey the heir ofthe Stuarts; the other held that, to the end of time, the nation wouldbe bound by the Solemn League and Covenant; and thus both agreed inregarding the new Sovereigns as usurpers. 

The Presbyterian nonjurors have scarcely been heard of out of Scotland;and perhaps it may not now be generally known, even in Scotland, howlong they continued to form a distinct class. They held that theircountry was under a precontract to the Most High, and could never, while the world lasted, enter into any engagement inconsistent with thatprecontract. An Erastian, a latitudinarian, a man who knelt to receivethe bread and wine from the hands of bishops, and who bore, thoughnot very patiently, to hear anthems chaunted by choristers in whitevestments, could not be King of a covenanted kingdom. William hadmoreover forfeited all claim to the crown by committing that sin forwhich, in the old time, a dynasty preternaturally appointed had beenpreternaturally deposed. He had connived at the escape of his father inlaw, that idolater, that murderer, that man of Belial, who ought tohave been hewn in pieces before the Lord, like Agag. Nay, the crime ofWilliam had exceeded that of Saul. Saul had spared only one Amalekite, and had smitten the rest. What Amalekite had William smitten? The pureChurch had been twenty-eight years under persecution. Her children hadbeen imprisoned, transported, branded, shot, hanged, drowned, tortured. And yet he who called himself her deliverer had not suffered her tosee her desire upon her enemies, [783] The bloody Claverhouse had beengraciously received at Saint James's. The bloody Mackenzie had found asecure and luxurious retreat among the malignants of Oxford. The youngerDalrymple who had prosecuted the Saints, the elder Dalrymple who hadsate in judgment on the Saints, were great and powerful. It was saidby careless Gallios, that there was no choice but between William andJames, and that it was wisdom to choose the less of two evils. Such wasindeed the wisdom of this world. But the wisdom which was from abovetaught us that of two things, both of which were evil in the sight ofGod, we should choose neither. As soon as James was restored, it wouldbe a duty to disown and withstand him. The present duty was to disownand withstand his son in law. Nothing must be said, nothing must be donethat could be construed into a recognition of the authority of the manfrom Holland. The godly must pay no duties to him, must hold no officesunder him, must receive no wages from him, must sign no instrumentsin which he was styled King. Anne succeeded William; and Anne wasdesignated, by those who called themselves the remnant of the trueChurch, as the pretended Queen, the wicked woman, the Jezebel. Georgethe First succeeded Anne; and George the First was the pretended King, the German Beast, [784] George the Second succeeded George the First;George the Second too was a pretended King, and was accused of havingoutdone the wickedness of his wicked predecessors by passing a lawin defiance of that divine law which ordains that no witch shall besuffered to live, [785] George the Third succeeded George the Second;and still these men continued, with unabated stedfastness, though inlanguage less ferocious than before, to disclaim all allegiance to anuncovenanted Sovereign, [786] So late as the year 1806, they were stillbearing their public testimony against the sin of owning his governmentby paying taxes, by taking out excise licenses, by joining thevolunteers, or by labouring on public works, [787] The number of thesezealots went on diminishing till at length they were so thinly scatteredover Scotland that they were nowhere numerous enough to have a meetinghouse, and were known by the name of the Nonhearers. They, however, still assembled and prayed in private dwellings, and still persisted inconsidering themselves as the chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the peculiar people, which, amidst the commondegeneracy, alone preserved the faith of a better age. It is by no meansimprobable that this superstition, the most irrational and the mostunsocial into which Protestant Christianity has ever been corruptedby human prejudices and passions, may still linger in a few obscurefarmhouses. 

The King was but half satisfied with the manner in which theecclesiastical polity of Scotland had been settled. He thought that theEpiscopalians had been hardly used; and he apprehended that they mightbe still more hardly used when the new system was fully organized. Hehad been very desirous that the Act which established the PresbyterianChurch should be accompanied by an Act allowing persons who were notmembers of that Church to hold their own religious assemblies freely;and he had particularly directed Melville to look to this, [788] Butsome popular preachers harangued so vehemently at Edinburgh againstliberty of conscience, which they called the mystery of iniquity, thatMelville did not venture to obey his master's instructions. A draught ofa Toleration Act was offered to the Parliament by a private member, butwas coldly received and suffered to drop, [789]

William, however, was fully determined to prevent the dominant sect fromindulging in the luxury of persecution; and he took an early opportunityof announcing his determination. The first General Assembly of thenewly established Church met soon after his return from Ireland. It wasnecessary that he should appoint a Commissioner and send a letter. Somezealous Presbyterians hoped that Crawford would be the Commissioner;and the ministers of Edinburgh drew up a paper in which they veryintelligibly hinted that this was their wish. William, however, selectedLord Carmichael, a nobleman distinguished by good sense, humanity andmoderation, [790] The royal letter to the Assembly was eminently wise insubstance and impressive in language. "We expect, " the King wrote, "thatyour management shall be such that we may have no reason to repentof what we have done. We never could be of the mind that violence wassuited to the advancing of true religion; nor do we intend that ourauthority shall ever be a tool to the irregular passions of any party. Moderation is what religion enjoins, what neighbouring Churches expectfrom you, and what we recommend to you. " The Sixty and their associateswould probably have been glad to reply in language resembling thatwhich, as some of them could well remember, had been held by the clergyto Charles the Second during his residence in Scotland. But they hadjust been informed that there was in England a strong feeling in favourof the rabbled curates, and that it would, at such a conjuncture, bemadness in the body which represented the Presbyterian Church to quarrelwith the King, [791] The Assembly therefore returned a grateful andrespectful answer to the royal letter, and assured His Majesty that theyhad suffered too much from oppression ever to be oppressors, [792]

Meanwhile the troops all over the Continent were going into winterquarters. The campaign had everywhere been indecisive. The victorygained by Luxemburg at Fleurus had produced no important effect. On theUpper Rhine great armies had eyed each other, month after month, withoutexchanging a blow. In Catalonia a few small forts had been taken. Inthe cast of Europe the Turks had been successful on some points, theChristians on other points; and the termination of the contest seemed tobe as remote as ever. The coalition had in the course of the year lostone valuable member and gained another. The Duke of Lorraine, the ablestcaptain in the Imperial service, was no more. He had died, as he hadlived, an exile and a wanderer, and had bequeathed to his childrennothing but his name and his rights. It was popularly said that theconfederacy could better have spared thirty thousand soldiers than sucha general. But scarcely had the allied Courts gone into mourning for himwhen they were consoled by learning that another prince, superior to himin power, and not inferior to him in capacity or courage, had joined theleague against France. 

This was Victor Amadeus Duke of Savoy. He was a young man; but he wasalready versed in those arts for which the statesmen of Italy had, ever since the thirteenth century, been celebrated, those arts by whichCastruccio Castracani and Francis Sforza rose to greatness, and whichMachiavel reduced to a system. No sovereign in modern Europe has, withso small a principality, exercised so great an influence during so longa period. He had for a time submitted, with a show of cheerfulness, butwith secret reluctance and resentment, to the French ascendency. Whenthe war broke out, he professed neutrality, but entered into privatenegotiations with the House of Austria. He would probably have continuedto dissemble till he found some opportunity of striking an unexpectedblow, had not his crafty schemes been disconcerted by the decision andvigour of Lewis. A French army commanded by Catinat, an officer of greatskill and valour, marched into Piedmont. The Duke was informed that hisconduct had excited suspicions which he could remove only by admittingforeign garrisons into Turin and Vercelli. He found that he mustbe either the slave or the open enemy of his powerful and imperiousneighbour. His choice was soon made; and a war began which, during sevenyears, found employment for some of the best generals and best troopsof Lewis. An Envoy Extraordinary from Savoy went to the Hague, proceededthence to London, presented his credentials in the Banqueting House, andaddressed to William a speech which was speedily translated into manylanguages and read in every part of Europe. The orator congratulated theKing on the success of that great enterprise which had restored Englandto her ancient place among the nations, and had broken the chains ofEurope. "That my master, " he said, "can now at length venture to expressfeelings which have been long concealed in the recesses of his heart, is part of the debt which he owes to Your Majesty. You have inspired himwith the hope of freedom after so many years of bondage. " [793]

It had been determined that, during the approaching winter a Congressof all the powers hostile to France should be held at the Hague. Williamwas impatient to proceed thither. But it was necessary that he shouldfirst hold a Session of Parliament. Early in October the Housesreassembled at Westminster. The members had generally come up ingood humour. Those Tories whom it was possible to conciliate had beenconciliated by the Act of Grace, and by the large share which they hadobtained of the favours of the Crown. Those Whigs who were capable oflearning had learned much from the lesson which William had given them, and had ceased to expect that he would descend from the rank of aKing to that of a party leader. Both Whigs and Tories had, with fewexceptions, been alarmed by the prospect of a French invasion andcheered by the news of the victory of the Boyne. The Sovereign who hadshed his blood for their nation and their religion stood at this momenthigher in public estimation than at any time since his accession. Hisspeech from the throne called forth the loud acclamations of Lords andCommons, [794] Thanks were unanimously voted by both Houses to the Kingfor his achievements in Ireland, and to the Queen for the prudencewith which she had, during his absence, governed England, [795] Thuscommenced a Session distinguished among the Sessions of that reign byharmony and tranquillity. No report of the debates has been preserved, unless a long forgotten lampoon, in which some of the speeches made onthe first day are burlesqued in doggrel rhymes, may be called a report, [796] The time of the Commons appears to have been chiefly occupiedin discussing questions arising out of the elections of the precedingspring. The supplies necessary for the war, though large, were grantedwith alacrity. The number of regular troops for the next year wasfixed at seventy thousand, of whom twelve thousand were to be horse ordragoons. The charge of this army, the greatest that England had evermaintained, amounted to about two million three hundred thousand pounds;the charge of the navy to about eighteen hundred thousand pounds. Thecharge of the ordnance was included in these sums, and was roughlyestimated at one eighth of the naval and one fifth of the militaryexpenditure, [797] The whole of the extraordinary aid granted to theKing exceeded four millions. 

The Commons justly thought that the extraordinary liberality withwhich they had provided for the public service entitled them to demandextraordinary securities against waste and peculation. A bill wasbrought in empowering nine Commissioners to examine and state the publicaccounts. The nine were named in the bill, and were all members of theLower House. The Lords agreed to the bill without amendments; and theKing gave his assent, [798]

The debates on the Ways and Means occupied a considerable part of theSession. It was resolved that sixteen hundred and fifty thousand poundsshould be raised by a direct monthly assessment on land. The exciseduties on ale and beer were doubled; and the import duties on raw silk, linen, timber, glass, and some other articles, were increased, [799]Thus far there was little difference of opinion. But soon the smoothcourse of business was disturbed by a proposition which was much morepopular than just or humane. Taxes of unprecedented severity had beenimposed; and yet it might well be doubted whether these taxes would besufficient. Why, it was asked, should not the cost of the Irish war beborne by the Irish insurgents? How those insurgents had acted in theirmock Parliament all the world knew; and nothing could be more reasonablethan to mete to them from their own measure. They ought to be treatedas they had treated the Saxon colony. Every acre which the Act ofSettlement had left them ought to be seized by the state for the purposeof defraying that expense which their turbulence and perverseness hadmade necessary. It is not strange that a plan which at once gratifiednational animosity, and held out the hope of pecuniary relief, shouldhave been welcomed with eager delight. A bill was brought in which borebut too much resemblance to some of the laws passed by the Jacobitelegislators of Dublin. By this bill it was provided that the property ofevery person who had been in rebellion against the King and Queen sincethe day on which they were proclaimed should be confiscated, and thatthe proceeds should be applied to the support of the war. An exceptionwas made in favour of such Protestants as had merely submitted tosuperior force; but to Papists no indulgence was shown. The royalprerogative of clemency was limited. The King might indeed, if such werehis pleasure, spare the lives of his vanquished enemies; but he was notto be permitted to save any part of their estates from the general doom. He was not to have it in his power to grant a capitulation which shouldsecure to Irish Roman Catholics the enjoyment of their hereditary lands. Nay, he was not to be allowed to keep faith with persons whom he hadalready received to mercy, who had kissed his hand, and had heard fromhis lips the promise of protection. An attempt was made to insert aproviso in favour of Lord Dover. Dover, who, with all his faults, wasnot without some English feelings, had, by defending the interests ofhis native country at Dublin, made himself odious to both the Irish andthe French. After the battle of the Boyne his situation was deplorable. Neither at Limerick nor at Saint Germains could he hope to be welcomed. In his despair, he threw himself at William's feet, promised to livepeaceably, and was graciously assured that he had nothing to fear. Though the royal word seemed to be pledged to this unfortunate man, the Commons resolved, by a hundred and nineteen votes to a hundredand twelve, that his property should not be exempted from the generalconfiscation. 

The bill went up to the Peers, but the Peers were not inclined to passit without considerable amendments; and such amendments there wasnot time to make. Numerous heirs at law, reversioners, and creditorsimplored the Upper House to introduce such provisoes as might secure theinnocent against all danger of being involved in the punishment of theguilty. Some petitioners asked to be heard by counsel. The King had madeall his arrangements for a voyage to the Hague; and the day beyond whichhe could not postpone his departure drew near. The bill was therefore, happily for the honour of English legislation, consigned to that darkrepository in which the abortive statutes of many generations sleep asleep rarely disturbed by the historian or the antiquary, [800]

Another question, which slightly and but slightly discomposed thetranquillity of this short session, arose out of the disastrous anddisgraceful battle of Beachy Head. Torrington had, immediately afterthat battle, been sent to the Tower, and had ever since remained there. A technical difficulty had arisen about the mode of bringing him totrial. There was no Lord High Admiral; and whether the Commissioners ofthe Admiralty were competent to execute martial law was a point whichto some jurists appeared not perfectly clear. The majority of the judgesheld that the Commissioners were competent; but, for the purpose ofremoving all doubt, a bill was brought into the Upper House; and to thisbill several Lords offered an opposition which seems to have been mostunreasonable. The proposed law, they said, was a retrospective penallaw, and therefore objectionable. If they used this argument in goodfaith, they were ignorant of the very rudiments of the science oflegislation. To make a law for punishing that which, at the time when itwas done, was not punishable, is contrary to all sound principle. Buta law which merely alters the criminal procedure may with perfectpropriety be made applicable to past as well as to future offences. Itwould have been the grossest injustice to give a retrospective operationto the law which made slavetrading felony. But there was not thesmallest injustice in enacting that the Central Criminal Courtshould try felonies committed long before that Court was in being. InTorrington's case the substantive law continued to be what it had alwaysbeen. The definition of the crime, the amount of the penalty, remainedunaltered. The only change was in the form of procedure; and that changethe legislature was perfectly justified in making retrospectively. 

It is indeed hardly possible to believe that some of those who opposedthe bill were duped by the fallacy of which they condescended to makeuse. The feeling of caste was strong among the Lords. That one ofthemselves should be tried for his life by a court composed of plebeiansseemed to them a degradation of their whole order. If their noblebrother had offended, articles of impeachment ought to be exhibitedagainst him: Westminster Hall ought to be fitted up: his peers oughtto meet in their robes, and to give in their verdict on their honour;a Lord High Steward ought to pronounce the sentence and to break thestaff. There was an end of privilege if an Earl was to be doomed todeath by tarpaulins seated round a table in the cabin of a ship. Thesefeelings had so much influence that the bill passed the Upper House by amajority of only two, [801] In the Lower House, where the dignities andimmunities of the nobility were regarded with no friendly feeling, therewas little difference of opinion. Torrington requested to be heard atthe bar, and spoke there at great length, but weakly and confusedly. Heboasted of his services, of his sacrifices, and of his wounds. He abusedthe Dutch, the Board of Admiralty, and the Secretary of State. The bill, however, went through all its stages without a division, [802]

Early in December Torrington was sent under a guard down the river toSheerness. There the Court Martial met on board of a frigate named theKent. The investigation lasted three days; and during those days theferment was great in London. Nothing was heard of on the exchange, inthe coffeehouses, nay even at the church doors, but Torrington. Partiesran high; wagers to an immense amount were depending; rumours werehourly arriving by land and water, and every rumour was exaggerated anddistorted by the way. From the day on which the news of the ignominiousbattle arrived, down to the very eve of the trial, public opinionhad been very unfavourable to the prisoner. His name, we are told bycontemporary pamphleteers, was hardly ever mentioned without a curse. But, when the crisis of his fate drew nigh, there was, as in our countrythere often is, a reaction. All his merits, his courage, his goodnature, his firm adherence to the Protestant religion in the evil times, were remembered. It was impossible to deny that he was sunk in sloth andluxury, that he neglected the most important business for his pleasures, and that he could not say No to a boon companion or to a mistress; butfor these faults excuses and soft names were found. His friends usedwithout scruple all the arts which could raise a national feeling in hisfavour; and these arts were powerfully assisted by the intelligence thatthe hatred which was felt towards him in Holland bad vented itself inindignities to some of his countrymen. The cry was that a bold, jolly, freehanded English gentleman, of whom the worst that could be said wasthat he liked wine and women, was to be shot in order to gratify thespite of the Dutch. What passed at the trial tended to confirm thepopulace in this notion. Most of the witnesses against the prisoner wereDutch officers. The Dutch real admiral, who took on himself the part ofprosecutor, forgot himself so far as to accuse the judges of partiality. When at length, on the evening of the third day, Torrington waspronounced not guilty, many who had recently clamoured for his bloodseemed to be well pleased with his acquittal. He returned to Londonfree, and with his sword by his side. As his yacht went up the Thames, every ship which he passed saluted him. He took his seat in the Houseof Lords, and even ventured to present himself at court. But most of thepeers looked coldly on him; William would not see him, and ordered himto be dismissed from the service, [803]

There was another subject about which no vote was passed by eitherof the Houses, but about which there is reason to believe that someacrimonious discussion took place in both. The Whigs, though much lessviolent than in the preceding year, could not patiently see Caermarthenas nearly prime minister as any English subject could be under a princeof William's character. Though no man had taken a more prominent part inthe Revolution than the Lord President, though no man had more to fearfrom a counterrevolution, his old enemies would not believe that he hadfrom his heart renounced those arbitrary doctrines for which he hadonce been zealous, or that he could bear true allegiance to a governmentsprung from resistance. Through the last six months of 1690 he wasmercilessly lampooned. Sometimes he was King Thomas and sometimes Tomthe Tyrant, [804] William was adjured not to go to the Continent leavinghis worst enemy close to the ear of the Queen. Halifax, who had, in thepreceding year, been ungenerously and ungratefully persecuted by theWhigs, was now mentioned by them with respect and regret; for he was theenemy of their enemy, [805] The face, the figure, the bodily infirmitiesof Caermarthen, were ridiculed, [806] Those dealings with the FrenchCourt in which, twelve years before, he had, rather by his misfortunethan by his fault, been implicated, were represented in the most odiouscolours. He was reproached with his impeachment and his imprisonment. Once, it was said, he had escaped; but vengeance might still overtakehim, and London might enjoy the long deferred pleasure of seeing the oldtraitor flung off the ladder in the blue riband which he disgraced. All the members of his family, wife, son, daughters, were assailed withsavage invective and contemptuous sarcasm, [807] All who were supposedto be closely connected with him by political ties came in for a portionof this abuse; and none had so large a portion as Lowther. The feelingindicated by these satires was strong among the Whigs in Parliament. Several of them deliberated on a plan of attack, and were in hopes thatthey should be able to raise such a storm as would make it impossiblefor him to remain at the head of affairs. It should seem that, at thistime, his influence in the royal closet was not quite what it hadbeen. Godolphin, whom he did not love, and could not control, but whosefinancial skill had been greatly missed during the summer, was broughtback to the Treasury, and made First Commissioner. Lowther, who wasthe Lord President's own man, still sate at the board, but no longerpresided there. It is true that there was not then such a difference asthere now is between the First Lord and his colleagues. Still the changewas important and significant. Marlborough, whom Caermarthen disliked, was, in military affairs, not less trusted than Godolphin in financialaffairs. The seals which Shrewsbury had resigned in the summer had eversince been lying in William's secret drawer. The Lord President probablyexpected that he should be consulted before they were given away; but hewas disappointed. Sidney was sent for from Ireland; and the seals weredelivered to him. The first intimation which the Lord President receivedof this important appointment was not made in a manner likely to soothehis feelings. "Did you meet the new Secretary of State going out?" saidWilliam. "No, Sir, " answered the Lord President; "I met nobody but myLord Sidney. " "He is the new Secretary, " said William. "He will do tillI find a fit man; and he will be quite willing to resign as soon as Ifind a fit man. Any other person that I could put in would think himselfill used if I were to put him out. " If William had said all that was inhis mind, he would probably have added that Sidney, though not a greatorator or statesman, was one of the very few English politicians whocould be as entirely trusted as Bentinck or Zulestein. Caermarthenlistened with a bitter smile. It was new, he afterwards said, to see anobleman placed in the Secretary's office, as a footman was placed ina box at the theatre, merely in order to keep a seat till his betterscame. But this jest was a cover for serious mortification and alarm. Thesituation of the prime minister was unpleasant and even perilous;and the duration of his power would probably have been short, hadnot fortune, just at this moment, put it in his power to confound hisadversaries by rendering a great service to the state, [808]

The Jacobites had seemed in August to be completely crushed. The victoryof the Boyne, and the irresistible explosion of patriotic feelingproduced by the appearance of Tourville's fleet on the coast ofDevonshire, had cowed the boldest champions of hereditary right. Most ofthe chief plotters passed some weeks in confinement or in concealment. But, widely as the ramifications of the conspiracy had extended, onlyone traitor suffered the punishment of his crime. This was a man namedGodfrey Cross, who kept an inn on the beach near Rye, and who, whenthe French fleet was on the coast of Sussex, had given informationto Tourville. When it appeared that this solitary example was thoughtsufficient, when the danger of invasion was over, when the popularenthusiasm excited by that danger had subsided, when the lenity of thegovernment had permitted some conspirators to leave their prisons andhad encouraged others to venture out of their hidingplaces, the factionwhich had been prostrated and stunned began to give signs of returninganimation. The old traitors again mustered at the old haunts, exchangedsignificant looks and eager whispers, and drew from their pockets libelson the Court of Kensington, and letters in milk and lemon juice from theCourt of Saint Germains. Preston, Dartmouth, Clarendon, Penn, were amongthe most busy. With them, was leagued the nonjuring Bishop of Ely, whowas still permitted by the government to reside in the palace, now nolonger his own, and who had, but a short time before, called heaven towitness that he detested the thought of inviting foreigners to invadeEngland. One good opportunity had been lost; but another was at hand, and must not be suffered to escape. The usurper would soon be again outof England. The administration would soon be again confided to a weakwoman and a divided council. The year which was closing had certainlybeen unlucky; but that which was about to commence might be moreauspicious. 

In December a meeting of the leading Jacobites was held, [809] The senseof the assembly, which consisted exclusively of Protestants, was thatsomething ought to be attempted, but that the difficulties were great. None ventured to recommend that James should come over unaccompaniedby regular troops. Yet all, taught by the experience of the precedingsummer, dreaded the effect which might be produced by the sight ofFrench uniforms and standards on English ground. A paper was drawnup which would, it was hoped, convince both James and Lewis that arestoration could not be effected without the cordial concurrence ofthe nation. France, --such was the substance of this remarkabledocument, --might possibly make the island a heap of ruins, but never asubject province. It was hardly possible for any person, who had not hadan opportunity of observing the temper of the public mind, to imaginethe savage and dogged determination with which men of all classes, sectsand factions were prepared to resist any foreign potentate who shouldattempt to conquer the kingdom by force of arms. Nor could Englandbe governed as a Roman Catholic country. There were five millions ofProtestants in the realm: there were not a hundred thousand Papists:that such a minority should keep down such a majority was physicallyimpossible; and to physical impossibility all other considerationsmust give way. James would therefore do well to take without delay suchmeasures as might indicate his resolution to protect the establishedreligion. Unhappily every letter which arrived from France containedsomething tending to irritate feelings which it was most desirable tosoothe. Stories were every where current of slights offered at SaintGermains to Protestants who had given the highest proof of loyalty byfollowing into banishment a master zealous for a faith which was nottheir own. The edicts which had been issued against the Huguenots mightperhaps have been justified by the anarchical opinions and practices ofthose sectaries; but it was the height of injustice and of inhospitalityto put those edicts in force against men who had been driven from theircountry solely on account of their attachment to a Roman CatholicKing. Surely sons of the Anglican Church, who had, in obedience to herteaching, sacrificed all that they most prized on earth to the royalcause, ought not to be any longer interdicted from assembling in somemodest edifice to celebrate her rites and to receive her consolations. An announcement that Lewis had, at the request of James, permitted theEnglish exiles to worship God according to their national forms wouldbe the best prelude to the great attempt. That attempt ought to bemade early in the spring. A French force must undoubtedly accompany HisMajesty. But he must declare that he brought that force only for thedefence of his person and for the protection of his loving subjects, andthat, as soon as the foreign oppressors had been expelled, the foreigndeliverers should be dismissed. He must also promise to govern accordingto law, and must refer all the points which had been in dispute betweenhim and his people to the decision of a Parliament. 

It was determined that Preston should carry to Saint Germains theresolutions and suggestions of the conspirators, John Ashton, a personwho had been clerk of the closet to Mary of Modena when she was on thethrone, and who was entirely devoted to the interests of the exiledfamily, undertook to procure the means of conveyance, and for thispurpose engaged the cooperation of a hotheaded young Jacobite namedElliot, who only knew in general that a service of some hazard was to berendered to the good cause. 

It was easy to find in the port of London a vessel the owner of whichwas not scrupulous about the use for which it might be wanted. Ashtonand Elliot were introduced to the master of a smack named the James andElizabeth. The Jacobite agents pretended to be smugglers, and talkedof the thousands of pounds which might be got by a single lucky trip toFrance and back again. A bargain was struck: a sixpence was broken; andall the arrangements were made for the voyage. 

Preston was charged by his friends with a packet containing severalimportant papers. Among these was a list of the English fleet furnishedby Dartmouth, who was in communication with some of his old companionsin arms, a minute of the resolutions which had been adopted at themeeting of the conspirators, and the Heads of a Declaration which itwas thought desirable that James should publish at the moment of hislanding. There were also six or seven letters from persons of note inthe Jacobite party. Most of these letters were parables, but parableswhich it was not difficult to unriddle. One plotter used the cant of thelaw. There was hope that Mr. Jackson would soon recover his estate. Thenew landlord was a hard man, and had set the freeholders against him. Alittle matter would redeem the whole property. The opinions of the bestcounsel were in Mr. Jackson's favour. All that was necessary was that heshould himself appear in Westminster Hall. The final hearing ought to bebefore the close of Easter Term. Other writers affected the style of theRoyal Exchange. There was a great demand for a cargo of the right sort. There was reason to hope that the old firm would soon form profitableconnections with houses with which it had hitherto had no dealings. Thiswas evidently an allusion to the discontented Whigs. But, it was added, the shipments must not be delayed. Nothing was so dangerous as tooverstay the market. If the expected goods did not arrive by the tenthof March, the whole profit of the year would be lost. As to details, entire reliance might be placed on the excellent factor who was goingover. Clarendon assumed the character of a matchmaker. There was greathope that the business which he had been negotiating would be broughtto bear, and that the marriage portion would be well secured. "Yourrelations, " he wrote, in allusion to his recent confinement, "have beenvery hard on me this last summer. Yet, as soon as I could go safelyabroad, I pursued the business. " Catharine Sedley entrusted Preston witha letter in which, without allegory or circumlocution, she complainedthat her lover had left her a daughter to support, and begged veryhard for money. But the two most important despatches were from BishopTurner. They were directed to Mr. And Mrs. Redding: but the language wassuch as it would be thought abject in any gentleman to hold except toroyalty. The Bishop assured their Majesties that he was devoted to theircause, that he earnestly wished for a great occasion to prove his zeal, and that he would no more swerve from his duty to them than renouncehis hope of heaven. He added, in phraseology metaphorical indeed, butperfectly intelligible, that he was the mouthpiece of several of thenonjuring prelates, and especially of Sancroft. "Sir, I speak in theplural, "--these are the words of the letter to James, --"because I writemy elder brother's sentiments as well as my own, and the rest of ourfamily. " The letter to Mary of Modena is to the same effect. "I say thisin behalf of my elder brother, and the rest of my nearest relations, aswell as from myself. " [810]

All the letters with which Preston was charged referred the Courtof Saint Germains to him for fuller information. He carried with himminutes in his own handwriting of the subjects on which he was toconverse with his master and with the ministers of Lewis. These minutes, though concise and desultory, can for the most part be interpretedwithout difficulty. The vulnerable points of the coast are mentioned. Gosport is defended only by palisades. The garrison of Portsmouth issmall. The French fleet ought to be out in April, and to fight beforethe Dutch are in the Channel. There are a few broken words clearlyimporting that some at least of the nonjuring bishops, when theydeclared, before God, that they abhorred the thought of inviting theFrench over, were dissembling, [811]

Every thing was now ready for Preston's departure. But the owner of theJames and Elizabeth had conceived a suspicion that the expedition forwhich his smack had been hired was rather of a political than ofa commercial nature. It occurred to him that more might be madeby informing against his passengers than by conveying them safely. Intelligence of what was passing was conveyed to the Lord President. Nointelligence could be more welcome to him. He was delighted to findthat it was in his power to give a signal proof of his attachment to thegovernment which his enemies had accused him of betraying. He took hismeasures with his usual energy and dexterity. His eldest son, the Earlof Danby, a bold, volatile, and somewhat eccentric young man, was fondof the sea, lived much among sailors, and was the proprietor of a smallyacht of marvellous speed. This vessel, well manned, was placed underthe command of a trusty officer named Billop, and was sent down theriver, as if for the purpose of pressing mariners. 

At dead of night, the last night of the year 1690, Preston, Ashton andElliot went on board of their smack near the Tower. They were in greatdread lest they should be stopped and searched, either by a frigatewhich lay off Woolwich, or by the guard posted at the blockhouse ofGravesend. But, when they had passed both frigate and blockhouse withoutbeing challenged, their spirits rose: their appetite became keen; theyunpacked a hamper well stored with roast beef, mince pies, and bottlesof wine, and were just sitting down to their Christmas cheer, when thealarm was given that a vessel from Tilbury was flying through the waterafter them. They had scarcely time to hide themselves in a dark holeamong the gravel which was the ballast of their smack, when the chasewas over, and Billop, at the head of an armed party, came on board. Thehatches were taken up: the conspirators were arrested; and their clotheswere strictly examined. Preston, in his agitation, had dropped on thegravel his official seal and the packet of which he was the bearer. Theseal was discovered where it had fallen. Ashton, aware of the importanceof the papers, snatched them up and tried to conceal them; but they weresoon found in his bosom. 

The prisoners then tried to cajole or to corrupt Billop. They called forwine, pledged him, praised his gentlemanlike demeanour, and assured himthat, if he would accompany them, nay, if he would only let that littleroll of paper fall overboard into the Thames, his fortune would be made. The tide of affairs, they said, was on the turn, things could not go onfor ever as they had gone on of late and it was in the captain's powerto be as great and as rich as he could desire. Billop, though courteous, was inflexible. The conspirators became sensible that their neckswere in imminent danger. The emergency brought out strongly thetrue characters of all the three, characters which, but for such anemergency, might have remained for ever unknown. Preston had always beenreputed a highspirited and gallant gentleman; but the near prospect ofa dungeon and a gallows altogether unmanned him. Elliot stormed andblasphemed, vowed that, if he ever got free, he would be revenged, and, with horrible imprecations, called on the thunder to strike the yacht, and on London Bridge to fall in and crush her. Ashton alone behaved withmanly firmness. 

Late in the evening the yacht reached Whitehall Stairs; and theprisoners, strongly guarded, were conducted to the Secretary's office. The papers which had been found in Ashton's bosom were inspected thatnight by Nottingham and Caermarthen, and were, on the following morning, put by Caermarthen into the hands of the King. 

Soon it was known all over London that a plot had been detected, thatthe messengers whom the adherents of James had sent to solicit the helpof an invading army from France had been arrested by the agents of thevigilant and energetic Lord President, and that documentary evidence, which might affect the lives of some great men, was in the possessionof the government. The Jacobites were terrorstricken; the clamour of theWhigs against Caermarthen was suddenly hushed; and the Session ended inperfect harmony. On the fifth of January the King thanked the Housesfor their support, and assured them that he would not grant away anyforfeited property in Ireland till they should reassemble. He alluded tothe plot which had just been discovered, and expressed a hope that thefriends of England would not, at such a moment, be less active or lessfirmly united than her enemies. He then signified his pleasure that theParliament should adjourn. On the following day he set out, attended bya splendid train of nobles, for the Congress at the Hague, [812]

*****

[Footnote 1: Letter from Lady Cavendish to Sylvia. Lady Cavendish, likemost of the clever girls of that generation, had Scudery's romancesalways in her head. She is Dorinda: her correspondent, supposed to beher cousin Jane Allington, is Sylvia: William is Ormanzor, and MaryPhenixana. London Gazette, Feb. 14 1688/9; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. Luttrell's Diary, which I shall very often quote, is in the library ofAll Souls' College. I am greatly obliged to the Warden for the kindnesswith which he allowed me access to this valuable manuscript. ]

[Footnote 2: See the London Gazettes of February and March 1688/9, andNarcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 3: Wagenaar, lxi. He quotes the proceedings of the States ofthe 2nd of March, 1689. London Gazette, April 11, 1689; Monthly Mercuryfor April, 1689. ]

[Footnote 4: "I may be positive, " says a writer who had been educated atWestminster School, "where I heard one sermon of repentance, faith, andthe renewing of the Holy Ghost, I heard three of the other; and 'tishard to say whether Jesus Christ or King Charles the First were oftenermentioned and magnified. " Bisset's Modern Fanatick, 1710. ]

[Footnote 5: Paris Gazette, Jan 26/Feb 5 1689. Orange Gazette, London, Jan. 10. 1688/9]

[Footnote 6: Grey's Debates; Howe's speech; Feb. 26. 1688/9; Boscawen'sspeech, March 1; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Feb. 23-27. ]

[Footnote 7: Grey's Debates; Feb. 26. 1688/9]

[Footnote 8: This illustration is repeated to satiety in sermons andpamphlets of the time of William the Third. There is a poor imitation ofAbsalom and Ahitophel entitled the Murmurers. William is Moses; Corah, Dathan and Abiram, nonjuring Bishops; Balaam, I think, Dryden; andPhinchas Shrewsbury, ]

[Footnote 9: Reresby's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 10: Here, and in many other places, I abstain from citingauthorities, because my authorities are too numerous to cite. My notionsof the temper and relative position of political and religious partiesin the reign of William the Third, have been derived, not from anysingle work, but from thousands of forgotten tracts, sermons, andsatires; in fact, from a whole literature which is mouldering in oldlibraries. ]

[Footnote 11: The following passage in a tract of that time expressesthe general opinion. "He has better knowledge of foreign affairs than wehave; but in English business it is no dishonour to him to be told hisrelation to us, the nature of it, and what is fit for him to do. "--AnHonest Commoner's Speech. ]

[Footnote 12: London Gazette, Feb. 18. 1688/9]

[Footnote 13: London Gazette, Feb. 18. 1688/9; Sir J. Reresby'sMemoirs. ]

[Footnote 14: London Gazette, Feb. 18. 1688/9; Lords' Journals. ]

[Footnote 15: Burnet, ii. 4. ]

[Footnote 16: These memoirs will be found in a manuscript volume, whichis part of the Harleian Collection, and is numbered 6584. They are infact, the first outlines of a great part of Burnet's History of His OwnTimes. The dates at which the different portions of this most curiousand interesting book were composed are marked. Almost the whole waswritten before the death of Mary. Burnet did not begin to prepare hisHistory of William's reign for the press till ten years later. Bythat time his opinions both of men and of things, had undergone greatchanges. The value of the rough draught is therefore very great: forit contains some facts which he afterwards thought it advisable tosuppress, and some judgments which he afterwards saw cause to alter. I must own that I generally like his first thoughts best. Wheneverhis History is reprinted, it ought to be carefully collated with thisvolume. 

When I refer to the Burnet MS. Harl. 6584, I wish the reader tounderstand that the MS. Contains something which is not to be found inthe History. 

As to Nottingham's appointment, see Burnet, ii. 8; the London Gazette ofMarch 7. 1688/9; and Clarendon's Diary of Feb. 15. ]

[Footnote 17: London Gazette, Feb. 18. 1688/9]

[Footnote 18: Don Pedro de Ronquillo makes this objection. ]

[Footnote 19: London Gazette, March 11 1688/9. ]

[Footnote 20: Ibid. ]

[Footnote 21: I have followed what seems to me the most probable story. But it has been doubted whether Nottingham was invited to be Chancellor, or only to be First Commissioner of the Great Seal. Compare Burnet ii. 3. , and Boyer's History of William, 1702. Narcissus Luttrell repeatedly, and even as late as the close of 1692, speaks of Nottingham as likely tobe Chancellor. ]

[Footnote 22: Roger North relates an amusing story about Shaftesbury'sembarrassments. ]

[Footnote 23: London Gazette March 4. 1688/9]

[Footnote 24: Burnet ii. 5. ]

[Footnote 25: The Protestant Mask taken off from the JesuitedEnglishman, 1692. ]

[Footnote 26: These appointments were not announced in the Gazette tillthe 6th of May; but some of them were made earlier. ]

[Footnote 27: Kennet's Funeral Sermon on the first Duke of Devonshire, and Memoirs of the Family of Cavendish, 1708. ]

[Footnote 28: See a poem entitled, A Votive Tablet to the King andQueen. ]

[Footnote 29: See Prior's Dedication of his Poems to Dorset's son andsuccessor, and Dryden's Essay on Satire prefixed to the Translationsfrom Juvenal. There is a bitter sneer on Dryden's effeminatequerulousness in Collier's Short View of the Stage. In Blackmore'sPrince Arthur, a poem which, worthless as it is, contains some curiousallusions to contemporary men and events, are the following lines:

 "The poets' nation did obsequious wait For the kind dole divided at his gate. Laurus among the meagre crowd appeared, An old, revolted, unbelieving bard, Who thronged, and shoved, and pressed, and would be heard. Sakil's high roof, the Muses' palace, rung With endless cries, and endless sons he sung. To bless good Sakil Laurus would be first; But Sakil's prince and Sakil's God he curst. Sakil without distinction threw his bread, Despised the flatterer, but the poet fed. " I need not say that Sakil is Sackville, or that Laurus is a translation of the famous nickname Bayes. ]

[Footnote 30: Scarcely any man of that age is more frequently mentionedin pamphlets and satires than Howe. In the famous petition of Legion, he is designated as "that impudent scandal of Parliaments. " Mackay'saccount of him is curious. In a poem written in 1690, which I have neverseen except in manuscript, are the following lines:

 "First for Jack Howe with his terrible talent, Happy the female that scopes his lampoon; Against the ladies excessively valiant, But very respectful to a Dragoon. "]

[Footnote 31: Sprat's True Account; North's Examen; Letter to ChiefJustice Holt, 1694; Letter to Secretary Trenchard, 1694. ]

[Footnote 32: Van Citters, Feb 19/March 1 1688/9]

[Footnote 33: Stat. I W. &M. Sess. I. C. I. See the Journals of the twoHouses, and Grey's Debates. The argument in favour of the bill is wellstated in the Paris Gazettes of March 5. And 12. 1689. ]

[Footnote 34: Both Van Citters and Ronquillo mention the anxiety whichwas felt in London till the result was known. ]

[Footnote 35: Lords' Journals, March 1688/9]

[Footnote 36: See the letters of Rochester and of Lady Ranelagh toBurnet on this occasion. ]

[Footnote 37: Journals of the Commons, March 2. 1688/9 Ronquillowrote as follows: "Es de gran consideracion que Seimor haya tomado eljuramento; porque es el arrengador y el director principal, en la casade los Comunes, de los Anglicanos. " March 8/18 1688/9]

[Footnote 38: Grey's Debates, Feb. 25, 26, and 27. 1688/9]

[Footnote 39: Commons' Journals, and Grey's Debates, March 1. 1688/9]

[Footnote 40: I W. & M. Sess. I c. [10]; Burnet, ii. 13. ]

[Footnote 41: Commons' Journals, March 15. 1688/9 So late as 1713, Arbuthnot, in the fifth part of John Bull, alluded to this transactionwith much pleasantry. "As to your Venire Facias, " says John to NickFrog, "I have paid you for one already. "]

[Footnote 42: Wagenaar, lxi. ]

[Footnote 43: Commons' Journals, March 15. 1688/9. ]

[Footnote 44: Reresby's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 45: Commons' Journals, and Grey's Debates, March 15. 1688/9;London Gazette, March 18. ]

[Footnote 46: As to the state of this region in the latter part of theseventeenth and the earlier part of the eighteenth century, see Pepys'sDiary, Sept. 18. 1663, and the Tour through the whole Island of GreatBritain, 1724. ]

[Footnote 47: London Gazette, March 25. 1689; Van Citters to the StatesGeneral, March 22/April 1 Letters of Nottingham in the State PaperOffice, dated July 23 and August 9. 1689; Historical Record of the FirstRegiment of Foot, printed by authority. See also a curious digression inthe Compleat History of the Life and Military Actions of Richard, Earlof Tyrconnel, 1689. ]

[Footnote 48: Stat. I W. &M. Sess. I. C. 5. ; Commons' Journals, March 28. 1689. ]

[Footnote 49: Stat. I W. & M. Sess. I. C. 2. ]

[Footnote 50: Ronquillo, March 8/18. 1689. ]

[Footnote 51: See the account given in Spence's Anecdotes of the Originof Dryden's Medal. ]

[Footnote 52: Guardian, No. 67. ]

[Footnote 53: There is abundant proof that William, though a veryaffectionate, was not always a polite husband. But no credit is due tothe story contained in the letter which Dalrymple was foolish enough topublish as Nottingham's in 1773, and wise enough to omit in the editionof 1790. How any person who knew any thing of the history of thosetimes could be so strangely deceived, it is not easy to understandparticularly as the handwriting bears no resemblance to Nottingham's, with which Dalrymple was familiar. The letter is evidently a commonnewsletter, written by a scribbler, who had never seen the King andQueen except at some public place, and whose anecdotes of their privatelife rested on no better authority than coffeehouse gossip. ]

[Footnote 54: Ronquillo; Burnet, ii. 2. ; Duchess of Marlborough'sVindication. In a pastoral dialogue between Philander and Palaemon, published in 1691, the dislike with which women of fashion regardedWilliam is mentioned. Philander says

 "But man methinks his reason should recall, Nor let frail woman work his second fall. "]

[Footnote 55: Tutchin's Observator of November 16. 1706. ]

[Footnote 56: Prior, who was treated by William with much kindness, and who was very grateful for it, informs us that the King didnot understand poetical eulogy. The passage is in a highly curiousmanuscript, the property of Lord Lansdowne. ]

[Footnote 57: Memoires originaux sur le regne et la cour de Frederic I, Roi de Prusse, ecrits par Christophe Comte de Dohna. Berlin, 1833. Itis strange that this interesting volume should be almost unknown inEngland. The only copy that I have ever seen of it was kindly given tome by Sir Robert Adair. "Le Roi, " Dohna says, "avoit une autre qualitetres estimable, qui est celle de n'aimer point qu'on rendit de mauvaisoffices a personne par des railleries. " The Marquis de La Fork triedto entertain His Majesty at the expense of an English nobleman. "Ceprince, " says Dohna "prit son air severe, et, le regardant sans motdire, lui fit rentrer les paroles dans le ventre. Le Marquis m'en fitses plaintes quelques heures apres. 'J'ai mal pris ma bisque, ' dit-il;'j'ai cru faire l'agreable sur le chapitre de Milord. . Mais j'ai trouvaa qui parler, et j'ai attrape un regard du roi qui m'a fait passerl'envie de tire. '" Dohna supposed that William might be less sensitiveabout the character of a Frenchman, and tried the experiment. But, sayshe, "j'eus a pert pres le meme sort que M. De la Foret. "]

[Footnote 58: Compare the account of Mary by the Whig Burnet with themention of her by the Tory Evelyn in his Diary, March 8. 1694/5, and with what is said of her by the Nonjuror who wrote the Letter toArchbishop Tennison on her death in 1695. The impression which thebluntness and reserve of William and the grace and gentleness of Maryhad made on the populace may be traced in the remains of the streetpoetry of that time. The following conjugal dialogue may still be seenon the original broadside. 

 "Then bespoke Mary, our most royal Queen, 'My gracious king William, where are you going?' He answered her quickly, 'I count him no man That telleth his secret unto a woman. ' The Queen with a modest behaviour replied, 'I wish that kind Providence may be thy guide, To keep thee from danger, my sovereign Lord, He which will the greatest of comfort afford. '"

These lines are in an excellent collection formed by Mr. Richard Heber, and now the property of Mr. Broderip, by whom it was kindly lent tome; in one of the most savage Jacobite pasquinades of 1689, William isdescribed as

 "A churle to his wife, which she makes but a jest. "]

[Footnote 59: Burnet, ii. 2. ; Burnet, MS. Harl. 6484. But Ronquillo'saccount is much more circumstantial. "Nada se ha visto mas desfigurado;y, quantas veces he estado con el, le he visto toser tanto que se lesaltaban las lagrimas, y se ponia moxado y arrancando; y confiesan losmedicos que es una asma incurable, " Mar. 8/18 1689. Avaux wrote to thesame effect from Ireland. "La sante de l'usurpateur est fort mauvaise. L'on ne croit pas qu'il vive un an. " April 8/18. ]

[Footnote 60: "Hasta decir los mismos Hollandeses que lo desconozcan, "says Ronquillo. "Il est absolument mal propre pour le role qu'il a ajouer a l'heure qu'il est, " says Avaux. "Slothful and sickly, " saysEvelyn. March 29. 1689. ]

[Footnote 61: See Harris's description of Loo, 1699. ]

[Footnote 62: Every person who is well acquainted with Pope and Addisonwill remember their sarcasms on this taste. Lady Mary Wortley Montaguetook the other side. "Old China, " she says, "is below nobody's taste, since it has been the Duke of Argyle's, whose understanding has neverbeen doubted either by his friends or enemies. "]

[Footnote 63: As to the works at Hampton Court, see Evelyn's Diary, July16. 1689; the Tour through Great Britain, 1724; the British Apelles;Horace Walpole on Modern Gardening; Burnet, ii. 2, 3. 

When Evelyn was at Hampton Court, in 1662, the cartoons were not tobe seen. The Triumphs of Andrea Mantegna were then supposed to be thefinest pictures in the palace. ]

[Footnote 64: Burnet, ii. 2. ; Reresby's Memoirs. Ronquillo wroterepeatedly to the same effect. For example, "Bien quisiera que el Reyfuese mas comunicable, y se acomodase un poco mas al humor sociablede los Ingleses, y que estubiera en Londres: pero es cierto que susachaques no se lo permiten. " July 8/18 1689. Avaux, about the same time, wrote thus to Croissy from Ireland: "Le Prince d'Orange est toujours aHampton Court, et jamais a la ville: et le peuple est fort mal satisfaitde cette maniere bizarre et retiree. "]

[Footnote 65: Several of his letters to Heinsius are dated from HollandHouse. ]

[Footnote 66: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 251689/1690]

[Footnote 67: De Foe makes this excuse for William

 "We blame the King that he relies too much On strangers, Germans, Huguenots, and Dutch, And seldom does his great affairs of state To English counsellors communicate. The fact might very well be answered thus, He has too often been betrayed by us. He must have been a madman to rely On English gentlemen's fidelity. The foreigners have faithfully obeyed him, And none but Englishmen have e'er betrayed him. "] --The True Born Englishman, Part ii. ]

[Footnote 68: Ronquillo had the good sense and justice to makeallowances which the English did not make. After describing, in adespatch dated March 1/11. 1689, the lamentable state of the militaryand naval establishments, he says, "De esto no tiene culpa el Principede Oranges; porque pensar que se han de poder volver en dos meses tresReynos de abaxo arriba es una extravagancia. " Lord President Stair, in aletter written from London about a month later, says that the delays ofthe English administration had lowered the King's reputation, "thoughwithout his fault. "]

[Footnote 69: Burnet, ii. 4. ; Reresby. ]

[Footnote 70: Reresby's Memoirs; Burnet MS. Hart. 6584. ]

[Footnote 71: Burnet, ii. 3, 4. 15. ]

[Footnote 72: ibid. Ii. 5. ]

[Footnote 73:

 "How does he do to distribute his hours, Some to the Court, and some to the City, Some to the State, and some to Love's powers, Some to be vain, and some to be witty?"] --The Modern Lampooners, a poem of 1690]

[Footnote 74: Burnet ii. 4]

[Footnote 75: Ronquillo calls the Whig functionaries "Gente que notienen practica ni experiencia. " He adds, "Y de esto procede el pasarseun mes y un otro, sin executarse nada. " June 24. 1689. In one of theinnumerable Dialogues which appeared at that time, the Tory interlocutorputs the question, "Do you think the government would be better servedby strangers to business?" The Whig answers, "Better ignorant friendsthan understanding enemies. "]

[Footnote 76: Negotiations de M. Le Comte d'Avaux, 4 Mars 1683; Torcy'sMemoirs. ]

[Footnote 77: The original correspondence of William and Heinsius isin Dutch. A French translation of all William's letters, and an Englishtranslation of a few of Heinsius's Letters, are among the MackintoshMSS. The Baron Sirtema de Grovestins, who has had access to theoriginals, frequently quotes passages in his "Histoire des luttes etrivalites entre les puissances maritimes et la France. " There is verylittle difference in substance, though much in phraseology, between hisversion and that which I have used. ]

[Footnote 78: Though these very convenient names are not, as far asI know, to be found in any book printed during the earlier years ofWilliam's reign, I shall use them without scruple, as others have done, in writing about the transactions of those years. ]

[Footnote 79: Burnet, ii. 8. ; Birch's Life of Tillotson; Life ofKettlewell, part iii. Section 62. ]

[Footnote 80: Swift, writing under the name of Gregory Misosarum, mostmalignantly and dishonestly represents Burnet as grudging this grant tothe Church. Swift cannot have been ignorant that the Church was indebtedfor the grant chiefly to Burnet's persevering exertions. ]

[Footnote 81: See the Life of Burnet at the end of the second volume ofhis history, his manuscript memoirs, Harl. 6584, his memorials touchingthe First Fruits and Tenths, and Somers's letter to him on that subject. See also what Dr. King, Jacobite as he was, had the justice to say inhis Anecdotes. A most honourable testimony to Burnet's virtues, given byanother Jacobite who had attacked him fiercely, and whom he had treatedgenerously, the learned and upright Thomas Baker, will be found in theGentleman's Magazine for August and September, 1791. ]

[Footnote 82: Oldmixon would have us believe that Nottingham was not, atthis time, unwilling to give up the Test Act. But Oldmixon's assertion, unsupported by evidence, is of no weight whatever; and all the evidencewhich he produces makes against his assertion. ]

[Footnote 83: Burnet, ii. 6. ; Van Citters to the States General, March1/11 1689; King William's Toleration, being an explanation of thatliberty of conscience which may be expected from His Majesty'sDeclaration, with a Bill for Comprehension and Indulgence, drawn up inorder to an Act of Parliament, licensed March 25. 1689. ]

[Footnote 84: Commons' Journals, May 17. 1689. ]

[Footnote 85: Sense of the subscribed articles by the Ministers ofLondon, 1690; Calamy's Historical Additions to Baxter's Life. ]

[Footnote 86: The bill will be found among the Archives of the House ofLords. It is strange that this vast collection of important documentsshould have been altogether neglected, even by our most exact anddiligent historians. It was opened to me by one of the most valued ofmy friends, Mr. John Lefevre; and my researches were greatly assisted bythe kindness of Mr. Thoms. ]

[Footnote 87: Among the Tanner MSS. In the Bodleian Library is a verycurious letter from Compton to Sancroft, about the Toleration Bill andthe Comprehension Bill, "These, " says Compton, "are two great works inwhich the being of our Church is concerned: and I hope you will send tothe House for copies. For, though we are under a conquest, God has givenus favour in the eyes of our rulers; and they may keep our Church if wewill. " Sancroft seems to have returned no answer. ]

[Footnote 88: The distaste of the High Churchman for the Articles is thesubject of a curious pamphlet published in 1689, and entitled a Dialoguebetween Timothy and Titus. ]

[Footnote 89: Tom Brown says, in his scurrilous way, of the Presbyteriandivines of that time, that their preaching "brings in money, and moneybuys land; and land is an amusement they all desire, in spite of theirhypocritical cant. If it were not for the quarterly contributions, therewould be no longer schism or separation. " He asks how it can be imaginedthat, while "they are maintained like gentlemen by the breach they willever preach up healing doctrines?"--Brown's Amusements, Serious andComical. Some curious instances of the influence exercised by the chiefdissenting ministers may be found in Hawkins's Life of Johnson. In theJournal of the retired citizen (Spectator, 317. ) Addison has indulged insome exquisite pleasantry on this subject. The Mr. Nisby whose opinionsabout the peace, the Grand Vizier, and laced coffee, are quoted with somuch respect, and who is so well regaled with marrow bones, ox cheek, and a bottle of Brooks and Hellier, was John Nesbit, a highly popularpreacher, who about the time of the Revolution, became pastor of adissenting congregation in flare Court Aldersgate Street. In Wilson'sHistory and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses inLondon, Westminster, and Southwark, will be found several instances ofnonconformist preachers who, about this time, made handsome fortunes, generally, it should seem, by marriage. ]

[Footnote 90: See, among many other tracts, Dodwell's CautionaryDiscourse, his Vindication of the Deprived Bishops, his Defence ofthe Vindication, and his Paraenesis; and Bisby's Unity of Priesthood, printed in 1692. See also Hody's tracts on the other side, theBaroccian MS. , and Solomon and Abiathar, a Dialogue between Eucheres andDyscheres. ]

[Footnote 91: Burnet, ii. 135. Of all attempts to distinguish betweenthe deprivations of 1559 and the deprivations of 1689, the mostabsurd was made by Dodwell. See his Doctrine of the Church of Englandconcerning the independency of the Clergy on the lay Power, 1697. ]

[Footnote 92: As to this controversy, see Burnet, ii. 7, 8, 9. ; Grey'sDebates, April 19. And 22. 1689; Commons' Journals of April 20. And 22. ;Lords' Journals, April 21. ]

[Footnote 93: Lords' Journals, March 16. 1689. ]

[Footnote 94: Burnet, ii. 7, 8. ]

[Footnote 95: Burnet says (ii. 8. ) that the proposition to abolish thesacramental test was rejected by a great majority in both Houses. Buthis memory deceived him; for the only division on the subject in theHouse of Commons was that mentioned in the text. It is remarkablethat Gwyn and Rowe, who were tellers for the majority, were two of thestrongest Whigs in the House. ]

[Footnote 96: Lords' Journals, March 21. 1689. ]

[Footnote 97: Lords' Journals, April 5. 1689; Burnet, ii. 10. ]

[Footnote 98: Commons' Journals, March 28. April 1. 1689; Paris Gazette, April 23. Part of the passage in the Paris Gazette is worth quoting. "Ily eut, ce jour le (March 28), une grande contestation dans la ChambreBasse, sur la proposition qui fut faite de remettre les séences apresles fetes de Pasques observees toujours par l'Eglise Anglicane. LesProtestans conformistes furent de cet avis; et les Presbyteriansemporterent a la pluralite des voix que les seances recommenceroientle Lundy, seconde feste de Pasques. " The Low Churchmen are frequentlydesignated as Presbyterians by the French and Dutch writers of that age. There were not twenty Presbyterians, properly so called, in the House ofCommons. See A. Smith and Cutler's plain Dialogue about Whig and Tory, 1690. ]

[Footnote 99: Accounts of what passed at the Conferences will be foundin the Journals of the Houses, and deserve to be read. ]

[Footnote 100: Journals, March 28. 1689; Grey's Debates. ]

[Footnote 101: I will quote some expressions which have been preservedin the concise reports of these debates. Those expressions are quitedecisive as to the sense in which the oath was understood by thelegislators who framed it. Musgrave said, "There is no occasion forthis proviso. It cannot be imagined that any bill from hence will everdestroy the legislative power. " Pinch said, "The words establishedby law, hinder not the King from passing any bill for the relief ofDissenters. The proviso makes the scruple, and gives the occasion forit. " Sawyer said, "This is the first proviso of this nature that everwas in any bill. It seems to strike at the legislative power. " SirRobert Cotton said, "Though the proviso looks well and Healing, yet itseems to imply a defect. Not able to alter laws as occasion requires!This, instead of one scruple, raises more, as if you were so bound up tothe ecclesiastical government that you cannot make any new laws withoutsuch a proviso. " Sir Thomas Lee said, "It will, I fear, creep in thatother laws cannot be made without such a proviso therefore I would layit aside. "]

[Footnote 102: Lady Henrietta whom her uncle Clarendon calls "prettylittle Lady Henrietta, " and "the best child in the world" (Diary, Jan. 168-I), was soon after married to the Earl of Dalkeith, eldest son ofthe unfortunate Duke of Monmouth. ]

[Footnote 103: The sermon deserves to be read. See the London Gazetteof April 14. 1689; Evelyn's Diary; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; and thedespatch of the Dutch Ambassadors to the States General. ]

[Footnote 104: A specimen of the prose which the Jacobites wrote on thissubject will be found in the Somers Tracts. The Jacobite verses weregenerally too loathsome to be quoted. I select some of the most decentlines from a very rare lampoon:

 "The eleventh of April has come about, To Westminster went the rabble rout, In order to crown a bundle of clouts, a dainty fine King indeed. 

 "Descended he is from the Orange tree; But, if I can read his destiny, He'll once more descend from another tree, a dainty fine King indeed. 

 "He has gotten part of the shape of a man, But more of a monkey, deny it who can; He has the head of a goose, but the legs of a crane, A dainty fine King indeed. "

A Frenchman named Le Noble, who had been banished from his own countryfor his crimes, but, by the connivance of the police, lurked in Paris, and earned a precarious livelihood as a bookseller's hack published onthis occasion two pasquinades, now extremely scarce, "Le Couronnementde Guillemot et de Guillemette, avec le Sermon du grand Docteur Burnet, "and "Le Festin de Guillemot. " In wit, taste and good sense, Le Noble'swritings are not inferior to the English poem which I have quoted. Hetells us that the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London had aboxing match in the Abbey; that the champion rode up the Hall on an ass, which turned restive and kicked over the royal table with all the plate;and that the banquet ended in a fight between the peers armed withstools and benches, and the cooks armed with spits. This sort ofpleasantry, strange to say, found readers; and the writer's portrait waspompously engraved with the motto "Latrantes ride: to tua fama manet. "]

[Footnote 105: Reresby's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 106: For the history of the devastation of the Palatinate, see the Memoirs of La Fare, Dangeau, Madame de la Fayette, Villars, andSaint Simon, and the Monthly Mercuries for March and April, 1689. Thepamphlets and broadsides are too numerous to quote. One broadside, entitled "A true Account of the barbarous Cruelties committed by theFrench in the Palatinate in January and February last, " is perhaps themost remarkable. ]

[Footnote 107: Memoirs of Saint Simon. ]

[Footnote 108: I will quote a few lines from Leopold's letter to James:"Nunc autem quo loco res nostrae sint, ut Serenitati vestrae auxiliumpraestari possit a nobis, qui non Turcico tantum bello impliciti, sedinsuper etiam crudelissimo et iniquissimo a Gallis, rerun suarum, utputabant, in Anglia securis, contra datam fidem impediti sumus, ipsimetSerenitati vestrae judicandum relinquimus. .. . Galli non tantum innostrum et totius Christianae orbis perniciem foedifraga arma cumjuratis Sanctae Crucis hostibus sociare fas sibi ducunt; sed etiam inimperio, perfidiam perfidia cumulando, urbes deditione occupatas contradatam fidem immensis tributis exhaurire exhaustas diripere, direptasfunditus exscindere aut flammis delere Palatia Principum ab omniantiquitate inter saevissima bellorum incendia intacta servata exurere, templa spoliare, dedititios in servitutem more apud barbaros usitatoabducere, denique passim, imprimis vero etiam in Catholicorumditionibus, alia horrenda, et ipsam Turcorum tyrannidem superantiaimmanitatis et saevitiae exempla edere pro ludo habent. "]

[Footnote 109: See the London Gazettes of Feb. 25. March 11. April 22. May 2. And the Monthly Mercuries. Some of the Declarations will be foundin Dumont's Corps Universel Diplomatique. ]

[Footnote 110: Commons Journals, April 15. 16. 1689. ]

[Footnote 111: Oldmixon. ]

[Footnote 112: Commons' Journals, April 19. 24. 26. 1689. ]

[Footnote 113: The Declaration is dated on the 7th of May, but was notpublished in the London Gazette till the 13th. ]

[Footnote 114: The general opinion of the English on this subject isclearly expressed in a little tract entitled "Aphorisms relating to theKingdom of Ireland, " which appeared during the vacancy of the throne. ]

[Footnote 115: King's State of the Protestants of Ireland, ii. 6. Andiii. 3. ]

[Footnote 116: King, iii. 3. Clarendon, in a letter to Rochester (June1. 1686), calls Nugent "a very troublesome, impertinent creature. "]

[Footnote 117: King, iii. 3. ]

[Footnote 118: King, ii. 6. , iii. 3. Clarendon, in a letter to Ormond(Sep. 28. 1686), speaks highly of Nagle's knowledge and ability, but inthe Diary (Jan. 31. 1686/7) calls him "a covetous, ambitious man. "]

[Footnote 119: King, ii. 5. 1, iii. 3. 5. ; A Short View of the Methodsmade use of in Ireland for the Subversion and Destruction of theProtestant Religion and Interests, by a Clergyman lately escaped fromthence, licensed Oct. 17. 1689. ]

[Footnote 120: King, iii. 2. I cannot find that Charles Leslie, who waszealous on the other side, has, in his Answer to King, contradicted anyof these facts. Indeed Leslie gives up Tyrconnel's administration. "Idesire to obviate one objection which I know will be made, as if I wereabout wholly to vindicate all that the Lord Tyrconnel and other ofKing James's ministers have done in Ireland, especially before thisrevolution began, and which most of any thing brought it on. No; I amfar from it. I am sensible that their carriage in many particularsgave greater occasion to King James's enemies than all the other inmaladministrations which were charged upon his government. " Leslie'sAnswer to King, 1692. ]

[Footnote 121: A True and Impartial Account of the most materialPassages in Ireland since December 1688, by a Gentleman who was anEyewitness; licensed July 22. 1689. ]

[Footnote 122: True and Impartial Account, 1689; Leslie's Answer toKing, 1692. ]

[Footnote 123: There have been in the neighbourhood of Killarneyspecimens of the arbutus thirty feet high and four feet and a halfround. See the Philosophical Transactions, 227. ]

[Footnote 124: In a very full account of the British isles published atNuremberg in 1690 Kerry is described as "an vielen Orten unwegsamund voller Wilder and Geburge. " Wolves still infested Ireland. "Keinschadlich Thier ist da, ausserhalb Wolff and Fuchse. " So late as theyear 1710 money was levied on presentments of the Grand Jury of Kerryfor the destruction of wolves in that county. See Smith's Ancient andModern State of the County of Kerry, 1756. I do not know that I haveever met with a better book of the kind and of the size. In a poempublished as late as 1719, and entitled Macdermot, or the Irish FortuneHunter, in six cantos, wolfhunting and wolfspearing are representedas common sports in Munster. In William's reign Ireland was sometimescalled by the nickname of Wolfland. Thus in a poem on the battle of LaVogue, called Advice to a Painter, the terror of the Irish army is thusdescribed

 "A chilling damp And Wolfland howl runs thro' the rising camp. "]

[Footnote 125: Smith's Ancient and Modern State of Kerry. ]

[Footnote 126: Exact Relation of the Persecutions, Robberies, andLosses, sustained by the Protestants of Killmare in Ireland, 1689;Smith's Ancient and Modern State of Kerry, 1756. ]

[Footnote 127: Ireland's Lamentation, licensed May 18. 1689. ]

[Footnote 128: A True Relation of the Actions of the Inniskilling men, by Andrew Hamilton, Rector of Kilskerrie, and one of the Prebends of theDiocese of Clogher, an Eyewitness thereof and Actor therein, licensedJan. 15. 1689/90; A Further Impartial Account of the Actions of theInniskilling men, by Captain William Mac Cormick, one of the first thattook up Arms, 1691. ]

[Footnote 129: Hamilton's True Relation; Mac Cormick's Further ImpartialAccount. ]

[Footnote 130: Concise View of the Irish Society, 1822; Mr. Heath'sinteresting Account of the Worshipful Company of Grocers, Appendix 17. ]

[Footnote 131: The Interest of England in the preservation of Ireland, licensed July 17. 1689. ]

[Footnote 132: These things I observed or learned on the spot. ]

[Footnote 133: The best account that I have seen of what passed atLondonderry during the war which began in 1641 is in Dr. Reid's Historyof the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. ]

[Footnote 134: The Interest of England in the Preservation of Ireland;1689. ]

[Footnote 135: My authority for this unfavourable account of thecorporation is an epic poem entitled the Londeriad. This extraordinarywork must have been written very soon after the events to which itrelates; for it is dedicated to Robert Rochfort, Speaker of the Houseof Commons; and Rochfort was Speaker from 1695 to 1699. The poet hadno invention; he had evidently a minute knowledge of the city whichhe celebrated; and his doggerel is consequently not without historicalvalue. He says

 "For burgesses and freemen they had chose Broguemakers, butchers, raps, and such as those In all the corporation not a man Of British parents, except Buchanan. "

This Buchanan is afterwards described as

 "A knave all o'er For he had learned to tell his beads before. "]

[Footnote 136: See a sermon preached by him at Dublin on Jan. 31. 1669. The text is "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord'ssake. "]

[Footnote 137: Walker's Account of the Siege of Derry, 1689; Mackenzie'sNarrative of the Siege of Londonderry, 1689; An Apology for the failurescharged on the Reverend Mr. Walker's Account of the late Siege ofDerry, 1689; A Light to the Blind. This last work, a manuscript in thepossession of Lord Fingal, is the work of a zealous Roman Catholic and amortal enemy of England. Large extracts from it are among the MackintoshMSS. The date in the titlepage is 1711. ]

[Footnote 138: As to Mountjoy's character and position, see Clarendon'sletters from Ireland, particularly that to Lord Dartmouth of Feb. 8. , and that to Evelyn of Feb. 14 1685/6. "Bon officier, et homme d'esprit, "says Avaux. ]

[Footnote 139: Walker's Account; Light to the Blind. ]

[Footnote 140: Mac Cormick's Further Impartial Account. ]

[Footnote 141: Burnet, i. 807; and the notes by Swift and Dartmouth. Tutchin, in the Observator, repeats this idle calumny. ]

[Footnote 142: The Orange Gazette, Jan. 10 1688/9. ]

[Footnote 143: Memoires de Madame de la Fayette. ]

[Footnote 144: Burnet, i. 808; Life of James, ii. 320. ; Commons'Journals, July 29. 1689. ]

[Footnote 145: Avaux to Lewis, Mar 25/April 4 1659. ]

[Footnote 146: Clarke's Life of James, ii. 321. ; Mountjoy's CircularLetter, dated Jan. 10 1688/9;; King, iv. 8. In "Light to the Blind"Tyrconnel's "wise dissimulation" is commended. ]

[Footnote 147: Avaux to Lewis April, 11. 1689. ]

[Footnote 148: Printed Letter from Dublin, Feb. 25. 1689; Mephiboshethand Ziba, 1689. ]

[Footnote 149: The connection of the priests with the old Irish familiesis mentioned in Petty's Political Anatomy of Ireland. See the ShortView by a Clergyman lately escaped, 1689; Ireland's Lamentation, by anEnglish Protestant that lately narrowly escaped with life from thence, 1689; A True Account of the State of Ireland, by a person who with greatdifficulty left Dublin, 1689; King, ii. 7. Avaux confirms all that thesewriters say about the Irish officers. ]

[Footnote 150: At the French War Office is a report on the State ofIreland in February 1689. In that report it is said that the Irish whohad enlisted as soldiers were forty-five thousand, and that the numberwould have been a hundred thousand if all who volunteered had beenadmitted. See the Sad and Lamentable Condition of the Protestants inIreland, 1689; Hamilton's True Relation, 1690; The State of Papistand Protestant Properties in the Kingdom of Ireland, 1689; A trueRepresentation to the King and People of England how Matters werecarried on all along in Ireland, licensed Aug. 16. 1689; Letter fromDublin, 1689; Ireland's Lamentation, 1689; Compleat History of the Lifeand Military Actions of Richard, Earl of Tyrconnel, Generalissimo of allthe Irish forces now in arms, 1689. ]

[Footnote 151: See the proceedings in the State Trials. ]

[Footnote 152: King, iii. 10. ]

[Footnote 153: Ten years, says the French ambassador; twenty years, saysa Protestant fugitive. ]

[Footnote 154: Animadversions on the proposal for sending back thenobility and gentry of Ireland; 1689/90. ]

[Footnote 155: King, iii. 10; The Sad Estate and Condition of Ireland, as represented in a Letter from a Worthy Person who was in Dublin onFriday last March. 1689; Short View by a Clergyman, 1689; Lamentation ofIreland 1689; Compleat History of the Life and Actions of Richard, Earl of Tyrconnel, 1689; The Royal Voyage, acted in 1689 and 1690. Thisdrama, which, I believe, was performed at Bartholomew Fair, is one ofthe most curious of a curious class of compositions, utterly destituteof literary merit, but valuable as showing what were then the mostsuccessful claptraps for an audience composed of the common people. "Theend of this play, " says the author in his preface, "is chiefly to exposethe perfidious base, cowardly, and bloody nature of the Irish. " Theaccount which the fugitive Protestants give of the wanton destructionof cattle is confirmed by Avaux in a letter to Lewis, dated April 13/231689, and by Desgrigny in a letter to Louvois, dated May 17/27. 1690. Most of the despatches written by Avaux during his mission to Irelandare contained in a volume of which a very few copies were printed someyears ago at the English Foreign Office. Of many I have also copies madeat the French Foreign Office. The letters of Desgrigny, who was employedin the Commissariat, I found in the Library of the French War Office. Icannot too strongly express my sense of the liberality and courtesywith which the immense and admirably arranged storehouses of curiousinformation at Paris were thrown open to me. ]

[Footnote 156: "A remarkable thing never to be forgotten was that theythat were in government then"--at the end of 1688--"seemed to favour usand endeavour to preserve Friends. " history of the Rise and Progress ofthe People called Quakers in Ireland, by Wight and Rutty, Dublin, 1751. King indeed (iii. 17) reproaches the Quakers as allies and tools of thePapists. ]

[Footnote 157: Wight and Rutty. ]

[Footnote 158: Life of James, ii. 327. Orig. Mem. Macarthy and hisfeigned name are repeatedly mentioned by Dangeau. ]

[Footnote 159: Exact Relation of the Persecutions, Robberies and Lossessustained by the Protestants of Killmare in Ireland, 1689. ]

[Footnote 160: A true Representation to the King and People of Englandhow Matters were carried on all along in Ireland by the late King James, licensed Aug. 16. 1689; A true Account of the Present State of Irelandby a Person that with Great Difficulty left Dublin, licensed June 8. 1689. ]

[Footnote 161: Hamilton's Actions of the Inniskilling Men, 1689. ]

[Footnote 162: Walker's Account, 1689. ]

[Footnote 163: Mackenzie's Narrative; Mac Cormack's Further ImpartialAccount; Story's Impartial History of the Affairs of Ireland, 1691;Apology for the Protestants of Ireland; Letter from Dublin of Feb. 25. 1689; Avaux to Lewis, April 15/25. 1689. ]

[Footnote 164: Memoires de Madame de la Fayette; Madame de Sevigne toMadame de Grignan, Feb. 28. 1689. ]

[Footnote 165: Burnet, ii. 17; Clarke's Life of James II. , 320, 321, 322, ]

[Footnote 166: Maumont's Instructions. ]

[Footnote 167: Dangeau, Feb. 15/25 17/27 1689; Madame de Sevigne, 18/28Feb. 20/March; Memoires de Madame de la Fayette. ]

[Footnote 168: Memoirs of La Fare and Saint Simon; Note of Renaudot onEnglish affairs 1697, in the French Archives; Madame de Sevigne, Feb20/March 2, March 11/21, 1689; Letter of Madame de Coulanges to M. DeCoulanges, July 23. 1691. ]

[Footnote 169: See Saint Simon's account of the trick by which Avauxtried to pass himself off at Stockholm as a Knight of the Order of theHoly Ghost. ]

[Footnote 170: This letter, written to Lewis from the harbour of Brest, is in the Archives of the French Foreign Office, but is wanting in thevery rare volume printed in Downing Street. ]

[Footnote 171: A full and true Account of the Landing and Reception ofthe late King James at Kinsale, in a letter from Bristol, licensed April4. 1689; Leslie's Answer to King; Ireland's Lamentation; Avaux, March13/23]

[Footnote 172: Avaux, March. 13/23 1689; Life of James, ii. 327. Orig. Mem. ]

[Footnote 173: Avaux, March 15/25. 1689. ]

[Footnote 174: Ibid. March 25/April 4 1689]

[Footnote 175: A full and true Account of the Landing and Reception ofthe late King James; Ireland's Lamentation; Light to the Blind. ]

[Footnote 176: See the calculations of Petty, King, and Davenant. If theaverage number of inhabitants to a house was the same in Dublin asin London, the population of Dublin would have been about thirty-fourthousand. ]

[Footnote 177: John Damon speaks of College Green near Dublin. I haveseen letters of that age directed to the College, by Dublin. There aresome interesting old maps of Dublin in the British Museum. ]

[Footnote 178: Clarendon to Rochester, Feb. 8. 1685/6, April 20. Aug. 12. Nov. 30. 1686. ]

[Footnote 179: Clarke's Life of James II, ii. 330. ; Full and trueAccount of the Landing and Reception, &c. ; Ireland's Lamentation. ]

[Footnote 180: Clarendon's Diary; Reresby's Memoirs; NarcissusLuttrell's Diary. I have followed Luttrell's version of Temple's lastwords. It agrees in substance with Clarendon's, but has more of theabruptness natural on such an occasion. If anything could make sotragical an event ridiculous, it would be the lamentation of the authorof the Londeriad]

"The wretched youth against his friend exclaims, And in despair drownshimself in the Thames. "]

[Footnote 181: Much light is thrown on the dispute between the Englishand Irish parties in James's Council, by a remarkable letter of BishopMaloney to Bishop Tyrrel, which will be found in the Appendix to KingsState of the Protestants. ]

[Footnote 182: Avaux, March 25/April 4 1689, April. But it is lessfrom any single letter, than from the whole tendency and spirit of thecorrespondence of Avaux, that I have formed my notion of his objects. ]

[Footnote 183: "Il faut donc, oubliant qu'il a este Roy d'Angleterreet d'Escosse, ne penser qu'a ce qui peut bonifier l'Irlande, et luyfaciliter les moyens d'y subsister. " Louvois to Avaux, June 3/13. 1689. ]

[Footnote 184: See the despatches written by Avaux during April 1689;Light to the Blind. ]

[Footnote 185: Avaux, April 6/16 1689. ]

[Footnote 186: Avaux, May 8/18 1689. ]

[Footnote 187: Pusignan to Avaux March 30/April 9 1689. ]

[Footnote 188: This lamentable account of the Irish beer is taken from adespatch which Desgrigny wrote from Cork to Louvois, and which is in thearchives of the French War Office. ]

[Footnote 189: Avaux, April 13/23. 1689; April 20/30, ]

[Footnote 190: Avaux to Lewis, April 15/25 1689, and to Louvois, of thesame date. ]

[Footnote 191: Commons' Journals, August 12. 1689; Mackenzie'sNarrative. ]

[Footnote 192: Avaux, April 17/27. 1689. The story of these strangechanges of purpose is told very disingenuously in the Life of James, ii. 330, 331, 332. Orig. Mem. ]

[Footnote 193: Life of James, ii. 334, 335. Orig. Mem. ]

[Footnote 194: Memoirs of Saint Simon. Some English writers ignorantlyspeak of Rosen as having been, at this time, a Marshal of France. He didnot become so till 1703. He had long been a Marechal de Camp, which isa very different thing, and had been recently promoted to the rank ofLieutenant General. ]

[Footnote 195: Avaux, April 4/14 1689, Among the MSS. In the BritishMuseum is a curious report on the defences of Londonderry, drawn up in1705 for the Duke of Ormond by a French engineer named Thomas. ]

[Footnote 196: Commons' Journals, August 12. 1689. ]

[Footnote 197: The best history of these transactions will be foundin the journals of the House of Commons, August 12. 1689. See also thenarratives of Walker and Mackenzie. ]

[Footnote 198: Mackenzie's Narrative, ]

[Footnote 199: Walker and Mackenzie. ]

[Footnote 200: See the Character of the Protestants of Ireland 1689, andthe Interest of England in the Preservation of Ireland, 1689. The formerpamphlet is the work of an enemy, the latter of a zealous friend. ]

[Footnote 201: There was afterwards some idle dispute about the questionwhether Walker was properly Governor or not. To me it seems quite clearthat he was so. ]

[Footnote 202: Mackenzie's Narrative; Funeral Sermon on Bishop Hopkins, 1690. ]

[Footnote 203: Walker's True Account, 1689. See also The Apology for theTrue Account, and the Vindication of the True Account, published in thesame year. I have called this man by the name by which he was known inIreland. But his real name was Houstoun. He is frequently mentioned inthe strange volume entitled Faithful Contendings Displayed. ]

[Footnote 204: A View of the Danger and Folly of being publicspirited, by William Hamill, 1721]

[Footnote 205: See Walker's True Account and Mackenzie's Narrative. ]

[Footnote 206: Walker; Mackenzie; Avaux, April 26/May 6 1689. There is atradition among the Protestants of Ulster that Maumont fell by the swordof Murray: but on this point the report made by the French ambassadorto his master is decisive. The truth is that there are almost as manymythical stories about the siege of Londonderry as about the siege ofTroy. The legend about Murray and Maumont dates from 1689. In the RoyalVoyage which was acted in that year, the combat between the heroes isdescribed in these sonorous lines]

"They met; and Monsieur at the first encounter Fell dead, blaspheming, on the dusty plain, And dying, bit the ground. "]

[Footnote 207: "Si c'est celuy qui est sorti de France le dernier, quis'appelloit Richard, il n'a jamais veu de siege, ayant toujours servi enRousillon. "--Louvois to Avaux, June 8/18. 1689. ]

[Footnote 208: Walker; Mackenzie; Avaux to Louvois, May 2/12. 4/141689; James to Hamilton, May 28/June 8 in the library of the RoyalIrish Academy. Louvois wrote to Avaux in great indignation. "La mauvaiseconduite que l'on a tenue devant Londondery a couste la vie a M. DeMaumont et a M. De Pusignan. Il ne faut pas que sa Majesté Britanniquecroye qu'en faisant tuer des officiers generaux comme des soldats, onpuisse ne l'en point laisser manquer. Ces sortes de gens sont rates entout pays, et doivent estre menagez. "]

[Footnote 209: Walker; Mackenzie; Avaux, June 16/26 1689. ]

[Footnote 210: As to the discipline of Galmoy's Horse, see the letterof Avaux to Louvois, dated Sept. 10/30. Horrible stories of the cruelty, both of the colonel and of his men, are told in the Short View, by aClergyman, printed in 1689, and in several other pamphlets of that year. For the distribution of the Irish forces, see the contemporary maps ofthe siege. A catalogue of the regiments, meant, I suppose to rivalthe catalogue in the Second Book of the Iliad, will be found in theLonderiad. ]

[Footnote 211: Life of Admiral Sir John Leake, by Stephen M. Leake, Clarencieux King at Arms, 1750. Of this book only fifty copies wereprinted. ]

[Footnote 212: Avaux, May 8/18 May 26/June 5 1689; London Gazette, May9. ; Life of James, ii. 370. ; Burchett's Naval Transactions; Commons'Journals, May 18, 21. From the Memoirs of Madame de la Fayetteit appears that this paltry affair was correctly appreciated atVersailles. ]

[Footnote 213: King, iii. 12; Memoirs of Ireland from the Restoration, 1716. Lists of both Houses will be found in King's Appendix. ]

[Footnote 214: I found proof of Plowden's connection with the Jesuits ina Treasury Letterbook, June 12, 1689. ]

[Footnote 215: "Sarsfield, " Avaux wrote to Louvois, Oct. 11/21. 1689, "n'est pas un homme de la naissance de mylord Galloway" (Galmoy, Isuppose) "ny de Makarty: mais c'est un gentilhomme distingue par sonmerite, qui a plus de credit dans ce royaume qu'aucun homme que jeconnoisse. Il a de la valeur, mais surtout de l'honneur et de la probitea toute epreuve. .. Homme qui sera toujours a la tete de ses troupes, etqui en aura grand soin. " Leslie, in his Answer to King, says that theIrish Protestants did justice to Sarsfield's integrity and honour. Indeed justice is done to Sarsfield even in such scurrilous pieces asthe Royal Flight. ]

[Footnote 216: Journal of the Parliament in Ireland, 1689. The readermust not imagine that this journal has an official character. It ismerely a compilation made by a Protestant pamphleteer and printed inLondon. ]

[Footnote 217: Life of James, ii. 355. ]

[Footnote 218: Journal of the Parliament in Ireland. ]

[Footnote 219: Avaux May 26/June 5 1689. ]

[Footnote 220: A True Account of the Present State of Ireland, by aPerson that with Great Difficulty left Dublin, 1689; Letter from Dublin, dated June 12. 1689; Journal of the Parliament in Ireland. ]

[Footnote 221: Life of James, ii. 361, 362, 363. In the Life it is saidthat the proclamation was put forth without the privity of James, but that he subsequently approved of it. See Welwood's Answer to theDeclaration, 1689. ]

[Footnote 222: Light to the Blind; An Act declaring that the Parliamentof England cannot bind Ireland against Writs of Error and Appeals, printed in London, 1690. ]

[Footnote 223: An Act concerning Appropriate Tythes and other Dutiespayable to Ecclesiastical Dignitaries. London 1690. ]

[Footnote 224: An Act for repealing the Acts of Settlement andExplanation and all Grants, Patents, and Certificates pursuant to themor any of them. London, 1690. ]

[Footnote 225: See the paper delivered to James by Chief JusticeKeating, and the speech of the Bishop of Meath. Both are in King'sAppendix. Life of James, ii. 357-361. ]

[Footnote 226: Leslie's Answer to King; Avaux, May 26/June 5 1689; Lifeof James, ii. 358. ]

[Footnote 227: Avaux May 28/June 7 1689, and June 20/July 1. The authorof Light to the Blind strongly condemns the indulgence shown to theProtestant Bishops who adhered to James. ]

[Footnote 228: King, iii. 11. ; Brief Memoirs by Haynes, Assay Masterof the Mint, among the Lansdowne MSS. At the British Museum, No. 801. Ihave seen several specimens of this coin. The execution is surprisinglygood, all circumstances considered. ]

[Footnote 229: King, iii. 12. ]

[Footnote 230: An Act for the Attainder of divers Rebels and forpreserving the Interest of loyal Subjects, London, 1690. ]

[Footnote 231: King, iii. 13. ]

[Footnote 232: His name is in the first column of page 30. In thatedition of the List which was licensed March 26, 1690. I should havethought that the proscribed person must have been some other HenryDodwell. But Bishop Kennet's second letter to the Bishop of Carlisle, 1716, leaves no doubt about the matter. ]

[Footnote 233: A list of most of the Names of the Nobility, Gentry, andCommonalty of England and Ireland (amongst whom are several Women andChildren) who are all, by an Act of a Pretended parliament assembled inDublin, attainted of High Treason, 1690; An Account of the Transactionsof the late King James in Ireland, 1690; King, iii. 13. ; Memoirs ofIreland, 1716. ]

[Footnote 234: Avaux July 27/Aug 6. 1689. ]

[Footnote 235: King's State of the Protestants in Ireland, iii. 19. ]

[Footnote 236: Ibid. Iii. 15. ]

[Footnote 237: Leslie's Answer to King. ]

[Footnote 238: "En comparazion de lo que se hace in Irlanda con losProtestantes, es nada. " April 29/May 6 1689; "Para que vea Su Santitadque aqui estan los Catolicos mas benignamente tratados que losProtestantes in Irlanda. " June 19/29]

[Footnote 239: Commons' Journals, June 15. 1689. ]

[Footnote 240: Stat. 1 W. &M. Sess. 1. C. 29. ]

[Footnote 241: Grey's Debates, June 19. 1689. ]

[Footnote 242: Ibid. June 22. 1689. ]

[Footnote 243: Hamilton's True Relation; Mac Cormick's Further Account. Of the island generally, Avaux says, "On n'attend rien de cette recoltecy, les paysans ayant presque tous pris les armes. "--Letters to Louvois, March 19/29 1689. ]

[Footnote 244: Hamilton's True Relation. ]

[Footnote 245: Walker. ]

[Footnote 246: Walker; Mackenzie. ]

[Footnote 247: Avaux, June 16/26 1689. ]

[Footnote 248: Walker; Mackenzie; Light to the Blind; King, iii. 13;Leslie's Answer to King; Life of James, ii, 364. I ought to say that onthis occasion King is unjust to James. ]

[Footnote 249: Leslie's Answer to King; Avaux, July 5/15. 1689. "Jetrouvay l'expression bien forte: mais je ne voulois rien repondre, carle Roy s'estoit, desja fort emporte. "]

[Footnote 250: Mackenzie. ]

[Footnote 251: Walker's Account. "The fat man in Londonderry" became aproverbial expression for a person whose prosperity excited the envy andcupidity of his less fortunate neighbours. ]

[Footnote 252: This, according to Narcissus Luttrell was the report madeby Captain Withers, afterwards a highly distinguished officer, on whomPope wrote an epitaph. ]

[Footnote 253: The despatch which positively commanded Kirke to attackthe boom, was signed by Schomberg, who had already been appointedcommander in chief of all the English forces in Ireland. A copy of itis among the Nairne MSS. In the Bodleian Library. Wodrow, on no betterauthority than the gossip of a country parish in Dumbartonshire, attributes the relief of Londonderry to the exhortations of a heroicScotch preacher named Gordon. I am inclined to think that Kirke was morelikely to be influenced by a peremptory order from Schomberg, than bythe united eloquence of a whole synod of presbyterian divines. ]

[Footnote 254: Walker; Mackenzie; Histoire de la Revolution d'Irlande, Amsterdarn, 1691; London Gazette, Aug. 5/15; 1689; Letter of Buchanamong the Nairne MSS. ; Life of Sir John Leake; The Londeriad;Observations on Mr. Walker's Account of the Siege of Londonderry, licensed Oct, 4. 1689. ]

[Footnote 255: Avaux to Seignelay, July 18/28 to Lewis, Aug. 9/19]

[Footnote 256: "You will see here, as you have all along, that thetradesmen of Londonderry had more skill in their defence than the greatofficers of the Irish army in their attacks. " Light to the Blind. Theauthor of this work is furious against the Irish gunners. The boom hethinks, would never have been broken if they had done their duty. Werethey drunk? Were they traitors? He does not determine the point. "Lord, "he exclaims, "who seest the hearts of people, we leave the judgment ofthis affair to thy mercy. In the interim those gunners lost Ireland. "]

[Footnote 257: In a collection entitled "Derriana, " which was publishedmore than sixty years ago, is a curious letter on this subject. ]

[Footnote 258: Bernardi's Life of Himself, 1737. ]

[Footnote 259: Hamilton's True Relation; Mac Cormick's Further Account;London Gazette, Aug. 22. 1689; Life of James, ii. 368, 369. ; Avauxto Lewis, Aug. 30. , and to Louvois of the same date. Story mentions areport that the panic among the Irish was caused by the mistake ofan officer who called out "Right about face" instead of "Right face. "Neither Avaux nor James had heard any thing about this mistake. Indeedthe dragoons who set the example of flight were not in the habit ofwaiting for orders to turn their backs on an enemy. They had run awayonce before on that very day. Avaux gives a very simple account of thedefeat: "Ces mesmes dragons qui avoient fuy le matin lascherent le piedavec tout le reste de la cavalerie, sans tirer un coup de pistolet;et ils s'enfuidrent tous avec une telle epouvante qu'ils jetterentmousquetons, pistolets, et espees; et la plupart d'eux, ayant creveleurs chevaux, se deshabillerent pour aller plus viste a pied. "]

[Footnote 260: Hamilton's True Relation. ]

[Footnote 261: Act. Parl. Scot. , Aug. 31. 1681. ]

[Footnote 262: Balcarras's Memoirs; Short History of the Revolution inScotland in a letter from a Scotch gentleman in Amsterdam to his friendin London, 1712. ]

[Footnote 263: Balcarras's Memoirs; Life of James ii. 341. ]

[Footnote 264: A Memorial for His Highness the Prince of Orange inrelation to the Affairs of Scotland, by two Persons of Quality, 1689. ]

[Footnote 265: See Calvin's letter to Haller, iv. Non. Jan. 1551:"Priusquam urbem unquam ingrederer, nullae prorsus erant feriae praeterdiem Dominicum. Ex quo sum revocatus hoc temperamentum quaesivi, utChristi natalis celebraretur. "]

[Footnote 266: In the Act Declaration, and Testimony of the Seceders, dated in December, 1736 it is said that "countenance is given byauthority of Parliament to the observation of holidays in Scotland, bythe vacation of our most considerable Courts of justice in the latterend of December. " This is declared to be a national sin, and a ground ofthe Lord's indignation. In March 1758, the Associate Synod addressed aSolemn Warning to the Nation, in which the same complaint was repeated. A poor crazy creature, whose nonsense has been thought worthy of beingreprinted even in our own time, says: "I leave my testimony against theabominable Act of the pretended Queen Anne and her pretended British, really Brutish Parliament, for enacting the observance of that whichis called the Yule Vacancy. "--The Dying Testimony of William Wilsonsometime Schoolmaster in Park, in the Parish of Douglas, aged 68, whodied in 1757. ]

[Footnote 267: An Account of the Present Persecution of the Church inScotland, in several Letters, 1690; The Case of the afflicted Clergyin Scotland truly represented, 1690; Faithful Contendings Displayed;Burnet, i. 805]

[Footnote 268: The form of notice will be found in the book entitledFaithful Contendings Displayed. ]

[Footnote 269: Account of the Present Persecution, 1690; Case of theafflicted Clergy, 1690; A true Account of that Interruption that wasmade of the Service of God on Sunday last, being the 17th of February, 1689, signed by James Gibson, acting for the Lord Provost of Glasgow. ]

[Footnote 270: Balcarras's Memoirs; Mackay's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 271: Burnet, ii. 21. ]

[Footnote 272: Scobell, 1654, cap. 9. , and Oliver's Ordinance in Councilof the 12th of April in the same year. ]

[Footnote 273: Burnet and Fletcher of Saltoun mention the prosperity ofScotland under the Protector, but ascribe it to a cause quite inadequateto the production of such an effect. "There was, " says Burnet, "aconsiderable force of about seven or eight thousand men kept inScotland. The pay of the army brought so much money into the kingdomthat it continued all that while in a very flourishing state. .. .. . Wealways reckon those eight years of usurpation a time of great peace andprosperity. " "During the time of the usurper Cromwell, " says Fletcher, "we imagined ourselves to be in a tolerable condition with respect tothe last particular (trade and money) by reason of that expense whichwas made in the realm by those forces that kept us in subjection. "The true explanation of the phenomenon about which Burnet and Fletcherblundered so grossly will be found in a pamphlet entitled "Someseasonable and modest Thoughts partly occasioned by and partlyconcerning the Scotch East India Company, " Edinburgh, 1696. See theProceedings of the Wednesday Club in Friday Street, upon the subject ofan Union with Scotland, December 1705. See also the Seventh Chapter ofMr. Burton's valuable History of Scotland. ]

[Footnote 274: See the paper in which the demands of the ScotchCommissioners are set forth. It will be found in the Appendix to DeFoe's History of the Union, No. 13. ]

[Footnote 275: Act. Parl. Scot. , July 30. 1670. ]

[Footnote 276: Burnet, ii. 23. ]

[Footnote 277: See, for example, a pamphlet entitled "Some questionsresolved concerning episcopal and presbyterian government in Scotland, 1690. " One of the questions is, whether Scottish presbytery be agreeableto the general inclinations of that people. The author answers thequestion in the negative, on the ground that the upper and middleclasses had generally conformed to the episcopal Church before theRevolution. ]

[Footnote 278: The instructions are in the Leven and Melville Papers. They bear date March 7, 1688/9. On the first occasion on which I quotethis most valuable collection, I cannot refrain from acknowledging theobligations under which I, and all who take an interest in the historyof our island, lie to the gentleman who has performed so well the dutyof an editor. ]

[Footnote 279: As to the Dalrymples; see the Lord President's ownwritings, and among them his Vindication of the Divine Perfections;Wodrow's Analecta; Douglas's Peerage; Lockhart's Memoirs; the Satyre onthe Familie of Stairs; the Satyric Lines upon the long wished for andtimely Death of the Right Honourable Lady Stairs; Law's Memorials; andthe Hyndford Papers, written in 1704/5 and printed with the Lettersof Carstairs. Lockhart, though a mortal enemy of John Dalrymple, says, "There was none in the parliament capable to take up the cudgels withhim. "]

[Footnote 280: As to Melville, see the Leven and Melville Papers, passim, and the preface; the Act. Parl. Scot. June 16. 1685; and theAppendix, June 13. ; Burnet, ii. 24; and the Burnet MS. Had. 6584. ]

[Footnote 281: Creichton's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 282: Mackay's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 283: Memoirs of the Lindsays. ]

[Footnote 284: About the early relation between William and Dundee, someJacobite, many years after they were both dead, invented a story whichby successive embellishments was at last improved into a romance whichit seems strange that even a child should believe to be true. The lastedition runs thus. William's horse was killed under him at Seneff, andhis life was in imminent danger. Dundee, then Captain Graham, mountedHis Highness again. William promised to reward this service withpromotion but broke his word and gave to another the commission whichGraham had been led to expect. The injured hero went to Loo. Therehe met his successful competitor, and gave him a box on the ear. Thepunishment for striking in the palace was the loss of the offendingright hand; but this punishment the Prince of Orange ungraciouslyremitted. "You, " he said, "saved my life; I spare your right hand: andnow we are quits. "]

Those who down to our own time, have repeated this nonsense seem tohave thought, first, that the Act of Henry the Eighth "for punishmentof murder and malicious bloodshed within the King's Court" (Stat 33 Hen. VIII. C. 2. ) was law in Guelders; and, secondly, that, in 1674, Williamwas a King, and his house a King's Court. They were also not aware thathe did not purchase Loo till long after Dundee had left the Netherlands. See Harris's Description of Loo, 1699. ]

This legend, of which I have not been able to discover the slightesttrace in the voluminous Jacobite literature of William's reign, seems tohave originated about a quarter of a century after Dundee's death, andto have attained its full absurdity in another quarter of a century. ]

[Footnote 285: Memoirs of the Lindsays. ]

[Footnote 286: Ibid. ]

[Footnote 287: Burnet, ii. 22. ; Memoirs of the Lindsays. ]

[Footnote 288: Balcarras's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 289: Act. Parl. Scot. , Mar. 14. 1689; History of the lateRevolution in Scotland, 1690; An Account of the Proceedings of theEstates of Scotland, fol. Lond. 1689. ]

[Footnote 290: Balcarras's narrative exhibits both Hamilton and Athol ina most unfavourable light. See also the Life of James, ii. 338, 339. ]

[Footnote 291: Act. Parl. Scot. , March 14. 1688/9; Balcarras's Memoirs;History of the late Revolution in Scotland; Life of James, ii. 342. ]

[Footnote 292: Balcarras's Memoirs; History of the late Revolution inScotland, 1690. ]

[Footnote 293: Act. Parl. Scot. , March 14. And 15. 1689; Balcarras'sMemoirs; London Gazette, March 25. ; History of the late Revolution inScotland, 1690; Account of the Proceedings of the Estates of Scotland, 1689. ]

[Footnote 294: See Cleland's Poems, and the commendatory poems containedin the same volume, Edinburgh, 1697. It has been repeatedly assertedthat this William Cleland was the father of William Cleland, theCommissioner of Taxes, who was well known twenty year later in theliterary society of London, who rendered some not very reputableservices to Pope, and whose son John was the author of an infamous bookbut too widely celebrated. This is an entire mistake. William Cleland, who fought at Bothwell Bridge, was not twenty-eight when he was killedin August, 1689; and William Cleland, the Commissioner of Taxes, diedat sixty-seven in September, 1741. The former therefore cannot havebeen the father of the latter. See the Exact Narrative of the Battle ofDunkeld; the Gentleman's Magazine for 1740; and Warburton's note on theLetter to the Publisher of the Dunciad, a letter signed W. Cleland, butreally written by Pope. In a paper drawn up by Sir Robert Hamilton, theoracle of the extreme Covenanters, and a bloodthirsty ruffian, Clelandis mentioned as having been once leagued with those fanatics, butafterwards a great opposer of their testimony. Cleland probably did notagree with Hamilton in thinking it a sacred duty to cut the throats ofprisoners of war who had been received to quarter. See Hamilton's Letterto the Societies, Dec 7. 1685. ]

[Footnote 295: Balcarras's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 296: Balcarras's Memoirs. But the fullest account of theseproceedings is furnished by some manuscript notes which are in thelibrary of the Faculty of Advocates. Balcarras's dates are not quiteexact. He probably trusted to his memory for them. I have corrected themfrom the Parliamentary Records. ]

[Footnote 297: Act. Parl. Scot. , Mar. 16. 1688/9; Balcarras's Memoirs;History of the late Revolution in Scotland, 1690; Account of theProceedings of the Estates of Scotland, 1689; London Gaz. , Mar. 25. 1689; Life of James, ii. 342. Burnet blunders strangely about thesetransactions. ]

[Footnote 298: Balcarras's Memoirs; MS. In the Library of the Faculty ofAdvocates. ]

[Footnote 299: Act. Parl. Scot. , Mar. 19. 1688/9; History of the lateRevolution in Scotland, 1690. ]

[Footnote 300: Balcarras. ]

[Footnote 301: Ibid. ]

[Footnote 302: Act. Parl. Scot. ; History of the late Revolution, 1690;Memoirs of North Britain, 1715. ]

[Footnote 303: Balcarras. ]

[Footnote 304: Every reader will remember the malediction which SirWalter Scott, in the Fifth Canto of Marmion, pronounced on the dunceswho removed this interesting monument. ]

[Footnote 305: "It will be neither secuir nor kynd to the King to expectit be (by) Act of Parliament after the settlement, which will lay itat his door. "--Dalrymple to Melville, 5 April, 1689; Leven and MelvillePapers. ]

[Footnote 306: There is a striking passage on this subject inFortescue. ]

[Footnote 307: Act. Parl. Scot. , April 1 1689; Orders of Committee ofEstates, May 16. 1689; London Gazette, April 11]

[Footnote 308: As it has lately been denied that the extremePresbyterians entertained an unfavourable opinion of the Lutherans, Iwill give two decisive proof of the truth of what I have asserted in thetext. In the book entitled Faithful Contendings Displayed is a reportof what passed at the General Meeting of the United Societies ofCovenanters on the 24th of October 1688. The question was propoundedwhether there should be an association with the Dutch. "It was concludedunanimously, " says the Clerk of the Societies, "that we could not havean association with the Dutch in one body, nor come formally undertheir conduct, being such a promiscuous conjunction of reformed Lutheranmalignants and sectaries, to loin with whom were repugnant to thetestimony of the Church of Scotland. " In the Protestation and Testimonydrawn up on the 2nd of October 1707, the United Societies complain thatthe crown has been settled on "the Prince of Hanover, who has been bredand brought up in the Lutheran religion which is not only differentfrom, but even in many things contrary unto that purity in doctrine, reformation, and religion, we in these nations had attained unto, as isvery well known. " They add "The admitting such a person to reign over usis not only contrary to our solemn League and Covenant, but to the veryword of God itself, Deut. Xvii. "]

[Footnote 309: History of the late Revolution in Scotland; LondonGazette, May 16, 1689. The official account of what passed was evidentlydrawn up with great care. See also the Royal Diary, 1702. The writer ofthis work professes to have derived his information from a divine whowas present. ]

[Footnote 310: See Crawford's Letters and Speeches, passim. His style ofbegging for a place was peculiar. After owning, not without reason, thathis heart was deceitful and desperately wicked, he proceeded thus: "Thesame Omnipotent Being who hath said, when the poor and needy seek waterand there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, he will notforsake them; notwithstanding of my present low condition, can build mea house if He think fit. "--Letter to Melville, of May 28. 1689. As toCrawford's poverty and his passion for Bishops' lands, see his letter toMelville of the 4th of December 1690. As to his humanity, see his letterto Melville, Dec 11 1690. All these letters are among the Leven andMelville Papers, The author of An Account of the Late Establishment ofPresbyterian Government says of a person who had taken a bribe of ten ortwelve pounds, "Had he been as poor as my Lord Crawford, perhaps hehad been the more excusable. " See also the dedication of the celebratedtract entitled Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed. ]

[Footnote 311: Burnet, ii. 23. 24. ; Fountainhall Papers, 73, Aug, 1684;14. And 15. Oct. 1684; 3. May, 1685; Montgomery to Melville, June 22. 1689, in the Leven and Melville Papers; Pretences of the French InvasionExamined; licensed May 25. 1692. ]

[Footnote 312: See the Life and Correspondence of Carstairs, and theinteresting memorials of him in the Caldwell Papers, printed 1854. Seealso Mackay's character of him, and Swift's note. Swift's word is notto be taken against a Scotchman and a Presbyterian. I believe, however, that Carstairs, though an honest and pious man in essentials, had hisfull share of the wisdom of the serpent. ]

[Footnote 313: Sir John Dalrymple to Lord Melville, June 18. 20 25. 1689; Leven and Melville Papers. ]

[Footnote 314: There is an amusing description of Sir Patrick in theHyndford MS. , written about 1704, and printed among the CarstairsPapers. "He is a lover of set speeches, and can hardly give audience toprivate friends without them. "]

[Footnote 315: "No man, though not a member, busier thanSaltoun. "--Lockhart to Melville, July 11 1689; Leven and MelvillePapers. See Fletcher's own works, and the descriptions of him inLockhart's and Mackay's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 316: Dalrymple says, in a letter of the 5th of June, "All themalignant, for fear, are come into the Club; and they all vote alike. "]

[Footnote 317: Balcarras. ]

[Footnote 318: Captain Burt's Letters from Scotland. ]

[Footnote 319: "Shall I tire you with a description of this unfruitfulcountry, where I must lead you over their hills all brown with heath, ortheir valleys scarce able to feed a rabbit. .. , Every part of the countrypresents the same dismal landscape. No grove or brook lend their musicto cheer the stranger, "--Goldsmith to Bryanton, Edinburgh, Sept. 26. 1753. In a letter written soon after from Leyden to the Reverend ThomasContarine, Goldsmith says, "I was wholly taken up in observing the faceof the country, Nothing can equal its beauty. Wherever I turned myeye, fine houses, elegant gardens, statues, grottos, vistas presentedthemselves, Scotland and this country bear the highest contrast: there, hills and rocks intercept every prospect; here it is all a continuedplain. " See Appendix C, to the First Volume of Mr. Forster's Life ofGoldsmith, ]

[Footnote 320: Northern Memoirs, by R. Franck Philanthropus, 1690. Theauthor had caught a few glimpses of Highland scenery, and speaks of itmuch as Burt spoke in the following generation: "It is a part of thecreation left undressed; rubbish thrown aside when the magnificentfabric of the world was created; as void of form as the natives areindigent of morals and good manners. "]

[Footnote 321: Journey through Scotland, by the author of the Journeythrough England, 1723. ]

[Footnote 322: Almost all these circumstances are taken from Burt'sLetters. For the tar, I am indebted to Cleland's poetry. In his verseson the "Highland Host" he says

 "The reason is, they're smeared with tar, Which doth defend their head and neck, Just as it doth their sheep protect. "]

[Footnote 323: A striking illustration of the opinion which wasentertained of the Highlander by his Lowland neighbours, and whichwas by them communicated to the English, will be found in a volume ofMiscellanies published by Afra Behn in 1685. One of the most curiouspieces in the collection is a coarse and profane Scotch poem entitled, "How the first Hielandman was made. " How and of what materials he wasmade I shall not venture to relate. The dialogue which immediatelyfollows his creation may be quoted, I hope, without much offence. 

 "Says God to the Hielandman, 'Quhair wilt thou now?' 'I will down to the Lowlands, Lord, and there steal a cow. ' 'Ffy, ' quod St. Peter, 'thou wilt never do weel, 'An thou, but new made, so sane gaffs to steal. ' 'Umff, ' quod the Hielandman, and swore by yon kirk, 'So long as I may geir get to steal, will I nevir work. "'

Another Lowland Scot, the brave Colonel Cleland, about the same time, describes the Highlander in the same manner

 "For a misobliging word She'll dirk her neighbour o'er the board. If any ask her of her drift, Forsooth, her nainself lives by theft. "

Much to the same effect are the very few words which FranckPhilanthropus (1694) spares to the Highlanders: "They live like laudsand die like loons, hating to work and no credit to borrow: they makedepredations and rob their neighbours. " In the History of the Revolutionin Scotland, printed at Edinburgh in 1690, is the following passage:"The Highlanders of Scotland are a sort of wretches that have no otherconsideration of honour, friendship, obedience, or government, than as, by any alteration of affairs or revolution in the government, they canimprove to themselves an opportunity of robbing or plundering theirbordering neighbours. "]

[Footnote 324: Since this passage was written I was much pleased byfinding that Lord Fountainhall used, in July 1676, exactly the sameillustration which had occurred to me. He says that "Argyle's ambitiousgrasping at the mastery of the Highlands and Western Islands of Mull, Ila, &c. Stirred up other clans to enter into a combination for hearinghim dowse, like the confederat forces of Germanic, Spain, Holland, &c. , against the growth of the French. "]

[Footnote 325: In the introduction to the Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameronis a very sensible remark: "It may appear paradoxical: but the editorcannot help hazarding the conjecture that the motives which prompted theHighlanders to support King James were substantially the same as thoseby which the promoters of the Revolution were actuated. " The wholeintroduction, indeed, well deserves to be read. ]

[Footnote 326: Skene's Highlanders of Scotland; Douglas's Baronage ofScotland. ]

[Footnote 327: See the Memoirs of the Life of Sir Ewan Cameron, and theHistorical and Genealogical Account of the Clan Maclean, by a Senachie. Though this last work was published so late as 1838, the writer seemsto have been inflamed by animosity as fierce as that with which theMacleans of the seventeenth century regarded the Campbells. In theshort compass of one page the Marquess of Argyle is designated as "thediabolical Scotch Cromwell, " "the vile vindictive persecutor, " "thebase traitor, " and "the Argyle impostor. " In another page he is "theinsidious Campbell, fertile in villany, " "the avaricious slave, " "thecoward of Argyle" and "the Scotch traitor. " In the next page he is "thebase and vindictive enemy of the House of Maclean" "the hypocriticalCovenanter, " "the incorrigible traitor, " "the cowardly and malignantenemy. " It is a happy thing that passions so violent can now ventthemselves only in scolding. ]

[Footnote 328: Letter of Avaux to Louvois, April 6/16 1689, enclosing apaper entitled Memoire du Chevalier Macklean. ]

[Footnote 329: See the singularly interesting Memoirs of Sir EwanCameron of Lochiel, printed at Edinburgh for the Abbotsford Club in1842. The MS. Must have been at least a century older. See also in thesame volume the account of Sir Ewan's death, copied from the Balhadiepapers. I ought to say that the author of the Memoirs of Sir Ewan, though evidently well informed about the affairs of the Highlands andthe characters of the most distinguished chiefs, was grossly ignorant ofEnglish politics and history. I will quote what Van Litters wrote to theStates General about Lochiel, Nov 26/Dec 6 1689: "Sir Evan Cameron, Lord Locheale, een man, --soo ik hoor van die hem lange gekent en dagelykhebben mede omgegaan, --van so groot verstant, courage, en beleyt, alsweyniges syns gelycke syn. "]

[Footnote 330: Act. Parl. , July 5. 1661. ]

[Footnote 331: See Burt's Third and Fourth Letters. In the earlyeditions is an engraving of the market cross of Inverness, and of thatpart of the street where the merchants congregated. I ought hereto acknowledge my obligations to Mr. Robert Carruthers, who kindlyfurnished me with much curious information about Inverness and with someextracts from the municipal records. ]

[Footnote 332: I am indebted to Mr. Carruthers for a copy of the demandsof the Macdonalds and of the answer of the Town Council. ]

[Footnote 333: Colt's Deposition, Appendix to the Act. Parl of July 14. 1690. ]

[Footnote 334: See the Life of Sir Ewan Cameron. ]

[Footnote 335: Balcarras's Memoirs; History of the late Revolution inScotland. ]

[Footnote 336: There is among the Nairne Papers in the Bodleian Librarya curious MS. Entitled "Journal de ce qui s'est passe en Irlandedepuis l'arrivee de sa Majeste. " In this journal there are notes andcorrections in English and French; the English in the handwriting ofJames, the French in the handwriting of Melfort. The letters interceptedby Hamilton are mentioned, and mentioned in a way which plainlyshows that they were genuine; nor is there the least sign that Jamesdisapproved of them. ]

[Footnote 337: "Nor did ever, " says Balcarras, addressing James, "theViscount of Dundee think of going to the Highlands without furtherorders from you, till a party was sent to apprehend him. "]

[Footnote 338: See the narrative sent to James in Ireland and receivedby him July 7, 1689. It is among the Nairne Papers. See also the Memoirsof Dundee, 1714; Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron; Balcarras's Memoirs;Mackay's Memoirs. These narratives do not perfectly agree with eachother or with the information which I obtained from Inverness. ]

[Footnote 339: Memoirs of Dundee; Tarbet to Melville, 1st June 7688, inthe Levers and Melville Papers. ]

[Footnote 340: Narrative in the Nairne Papers; Depositions of Colt, Osburne, Malcolm, and Stewart of Ballachan in the Appendix to the Act. Parl. Of July 14. 1690; Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. A few touches Ihave taken from an English translation of some passages in a lost epicpoem written in Latin, and called the Grameis. The writer was a zealousJacobite named Phillipps. I have seldom made use of the Memoirs ofDundee, printed in 1714, and never without some misgiving. The writerwas certainly not, as he pretends, one of Dundee's officers, but astupid and ignorant Grub Street garreteer. He is utterly wrong both asto the place and as to the time of the battle of Killiecrankie. He saysthat it was fought on the banks of the Tummell, and on the 13th of June. It was fought on the banks of the Garry, and on the 27th of July. Aftergiving such a specimen of inaccuracy as this, it would be idle to pointout minor blunders. ]

[Footnote 341: From a letter of Archibald Karl of Argyle to Lauderdale, which bears date the 25th of June, 1664, it appears that a hundredthousand marks Scots, little more than five thousand pounds sterling, would, at that time, have very nearly satisfied all the claims of MacCallum More on his neighbours. ]

[Footnote 342: Mackay's Memoirs; Tarbet to Melville, June 1, 1689, inthe Leven and Melville Papers; Dundee to Melfort, June 27, in the NairnePapers, ]

[Footnote 343: See Mackay's Memoirs, and his letter to Hamilton of the14th of June, 1689. ]

[Footnote 344: Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. ]

[Footnote 345: Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. ]

[Footnote 346: Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. ]

[Footnote 347: Dundee to Melfort, June 27. 1689. ]

[Footnote 348: See Faithful Contendings Displayed, particularly theproceedings of April 29. And 30. And of May 13. And 14. , 1689; thepetition to Parliament drawn up by the regiment, on July 18. 1689;the protestation of Sir Robert Hamilton of November 6. 1689; and theadmonitory Epistle to the Regiment, dated March 27. 1690. The Societypeople, as they called themselves, seem to have been especially shockedby the way in which the King's birthday had been kept. "We hope, " theywrote, "ye are against observing anniversary days as well as we, andthat ye will mourn for what ye have done. " As to the opinions and temperof Alexander Shields, see his Hind Let Loose. ]

[Footnote 349: Siege of the Castle of Edinburgh, printed for theBannatyne Club; Lond. Gaz, June 10/20. 1689. ]

[Footnote 350: Act. Parl. Scot. , June 5. June 17. 1689. ]

[Footnote 351: The instructions will be found among the Somers Tracts. ]

[Footnote 352: As to Sir Patrick's views, see his letter of the 7thof June, and Lockhart's letter of the 11th of July, in the Leven andMelville Papers. ]

[Footnote 353: My chief materials for the history of this session havebeen the Acts, the Minutes, and the Leven and Melville Papers. ]

[Footnote 354: "Athol, " says Dundee contemptuously, "is gone to England, who did not know what to do. "--Dundee to Melfort, June 27. 1689. SeeAthol's letters to Melville of the 21st of May and the 8th of June, inthe Leven and Melville Papers. ]

[Footnote 355: Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. ]

[Footnote 356: Mackay's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 357: Ibid. ]

[Footnote 358: Van Odyck to the Greffier of the States General, Aug. 2/12 1689. ]

[Footnote 359: Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. ]

[Footnote 360: Balcarras's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 361: Mackay's Short Relation, dated Aug. 17. 1689. ]

[Footnote 362: Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. ]

[Footnote 363: Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron; Mackay's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 364: Douglas's Baronage of Scotland. ]

[Footnote 365: Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. ]

[Footnote 366: Memoirs of Sir Swan Cameron. ]

[Footnote 367: As to the battle, see Mackay's Memoirs Letters, and ShortRelation the Memoirs of Dundee; Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron; Nisbet'sand Osburne's depositions in the Appendix to the Act. Parl. Of July14. 1690. See also the account of the battle in one of Burt's Letters. Macpherson printed a letter from Dundee to James, dated the day afterthe battle. I need not say that it is as impudent a forgery as Fingal. The author of the Memoirs of Dundee says that Lord Leven was scared bythe sight of the highland weapons, and set the example of flight. Thisis a spiteful falsehood. That Leven behaved remarkably well is proved byMackay's Letters, Memoirs, and Short Relation. ]

[Footnote 368: Mackay's Memoirs. Life of General Hugh Mackay by J. Mackay of Rockfield. ]

[Footnote 369: Letter of the Extraordinary Ambassadors to the Greffierof the States General, August 2/12. 1689; and a letter of the same datefrom Van Odyck, who was at Hampton Court. ]

[Footnote 370: Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron; Memoirs of Dundee. ]

[Footnote 371: The tradition is certainly much more than a hundred andtwenty years old. The stone was pointed out to Burt. ]

[Footnote 372: See the History prefixed to the poems of AlexanderRobertson. In this history he is represented as having joined before thebattle of Killiecrankie. But it appears from the evidence which is inthe Appendix to the Act. Parl. Scot. Of July 14. 1690, that he came inon the following day. ]

[Footnote 373: Mackay's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 374: Mackay's Memoirs; Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. ]

[Footnote 375: Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. ]

[Footnote 376: Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. ]

[Footnote 377: See Portland's Letters to Melville of April 22 and May15. 1690, in the Leven and Melville Papers. ]

[Footnote 378: Mackay's Memoirs; Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. ]

[Footnote 379: Exact Narrative of the Conflict at Dunkeld between theEarl of Angus's Regiment and the Rebels, collected from several Officersof that Regiment who were Actors in or Eyewitnesses of all that's herenarrated in Reference to those Actions; Letter of Lieutenant Blackaderto his brother, dated Dunkeld, Aug. 21. 1689; Faithful ContendingsDisplayed; Minute of the Scotch Privy Council of Aug. 28. , quoted by Mr. Burton. ]

[Footnote 380: The history of Scotland during this autumn will be beststudied in the Leven and Melville Papers. ]

[Footnote 381: See the Lords' Journals of Feb. 5. 1688 and of manysubsequent days; Braddon's pamphlet, entitled the Earl of Essex's Memoryand Honour Vindicated, 1690; and the London Gazettes of July 31. And August 4. And 7. 1690, in which Lady Essex and Burnet publiclycontradicted Braddon. ]

[Footnote 382: Whether the attainder of Lord Russell would, ifunreversed, have prevented his son from succeeding to the earldom ofBedford is a difficult question. The old Earl collected the opinionsof the greatest lawyers of the age, which may still be seen among thearchives at Woburn. It is remarkable that one of these opinions issigned by Pemberton, who had presided at the trial. This circumstanceseems to prove that the family did not impute to him any injustice orcruelty; and in truth he had behaved as well as any judge, before theRevolution, ever behaved on a similar occasion. ]

[Footnote 383: Grey's Debates, March 1688/9. ]

[Footnote 384: The Acts which reversed the attainders of Russell Sidney, Cornish, and Alice Lisle were private Acts. Only the titles thereforeare printed in the Statute Book; but the Acts will be found in Howell'sCollection of State Trials. ]

[Footnote 385: Commons' Journals, June 24. 1689. ]

[Footnote 386: Johnson tells this story himself in his strange pamphletentitled, Notes upon the Phoenix Edition of the Pastoral Letter, 1694. ]

[Footnote 387: Some Memorials of the Reverend Samuel Johnson, prefixedto the folio edition of his works, 1710. ]

[Footnote 388: Lords' Journals, May 15. 1689. ]

[Footnote 389: North's Examen, 224. North's evidence is confirmed byseveral contemporary squibs in prose and verse. See also the eikonBrotoloigon, 1697. ]

[Footnote 390: Halifax MS. In the British Museum. ]

[Footnote 391: Epistle Dedicatory to Oates's eikon Basiliki]

[Footnote 392: In a ballad of the time are the following lines]

"Come listen, ye Whigs, to my pitiful moan, All you that have ears, whenthe Doctor has none. "]

These lines must have been in Mason's head when he wrote the couplet]

"Witness, ye Hills, ye Johnsons, Scots, Shebbeares; Hark to my call: forsome of you have ears. "]

[Footnote 393: North's Examen, 224. 254. North says "six hundred ayear. " But I have taken the larger sum from the impudent petition whichGates addressed to the Commons, July 25. 1689. See the Journals. ]

[Footnote 394: Van Citters, in his despatches to the States General, uses this nickname quite gravely. ]

[Footnote 395: Lords' Journals, May 30. 1689. ]

[Footnote 396: Lords' Journals, May 31. 1689; Commons' Journals, Aug. 2. ; North's Examen, 224; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 397: Sir Robert was the original hero of the Rehearsal, andwas called Bilboa. In the remodelled Dunciad, Pope inserted the lines]

"And highborn Howard, more majestic sire, With Fool of Quality completesthe quire. "]

Pope's highborn Howard was Edward Howard, the author of the BritishPrinces. ]

[Footnote 398: Key to the Rehearsal; Shadwell's Sullen Lovers; Pepys, May 5. 8. 1668; Evelyn, Feb. 16. 1684/5. ]

[Footnote 399: Grey's Debates and Commons' Journals, June 4. And 111689. ]

[Footnote 400: Lords' Journals, June 6. 1689. ]

[Footnote 401: Commons' Journals, Aug. 2. 1689; Dutch AmbassadorsExtraordinary to the States General, July 30/Aug 9]

[Footnote 402: Lords' Journals, July 30. 1689; Narcissus Luttrell'sDiary; Clarendon's Diary, July 31. 1689. ]

[Footnote 403: See the Commons' Journals of July 31. And August 131689. ]

[Footnote 404: Commons' Journals, Aug. 20]

[Footnote 405: Oldmixon accuses the Jacobites, Barnet the republicans. Though Barnet took a prominent part in the discussion of this question, his account of what passed is grossly inaccurate. He says that theclause was warmly debated in the Commons, and that Hampden spokestrongly for it. But we learn from the journals (June 19 1689) that itwas rejected nemine contradicente. The Dutch Ambassadors describe it as"een propositie 'twelck geen ingressie schynt te sullen vinden. "]

[Footnote 406: London Gazette, Aug. 1. 1689; Narcissus Luttrell'sDiary. ]

[Footnote 407: The history of this Bill may be traced in the journals ofthe two Houses, and in Grey's Debates. ]

[Footnote 408: See Grey's Debates, and the Commons' Journals from Marchto July. The twelve categories will be found in the journals of the 23dand 29th of May and of the 8th of June. ]

[Footnote 409: Halifax MS. In the British Museum. ]

[Footnote 410: The Life and Death of George Lord Jeffreys; Finch'sspeech in Grey's Debates, March 1. 1688/9. ]

[Footnote 411: See, among many other pieces, Jeffreys's Elegy, theLetter to the Lord Chancellor exposing to him the sentiments of thepeople, the Elegy on Dangerfield, Dangerfield's Ghost to Jeffreys, TheHumble Petition of Widows and fatherless Children in the West, the LordChancellor's Discovery and Confession made in the lime of his sicknessin the Tower; Hickeringill's Ceremonymonger; a broadside entitled "Orare show! O rare sight! O strange monster! The like not in Europe! Tobe seen near Tower Hill, a few doors beyond the Lion's den. "]

[Footnote 412: Life and Death of George Lord Jeffreys, ]

[Footnote 413: Tutchin himself gives this narrative in the BloodyAssizes. ]

[Footnote 414: See the Life of Archbishop Sharp by his son. What passedbetween Scott and Jeffreys was related by Scott to Sir Joseph Jekyl. See Tindal's History; Echard, iii. 932. Echard's informant, who isnot named, but who seems to have had good opportunities of knowing thetruth, said that Jeffreys died, not, as the vulgar believed, of drink, but of the stone. The distinction seems to be of little importance. Itis certain that Jeffreys was grossly intemperate; and his malady was onewhich intemperance notoriously tends to aggravate. ]

[Footnote 415: See a Full and True Account of the Death of George LordJeffreys, licensed on the day of his death. The wretched Le Noble wasnever weary of repeating that Jeffreys was poisoned by the usurper. I will give a short passage as a specimen of the calumnies of whichWilliam was the object. "Il envoya, " says Pasquin "ce fin ragout dechampignons au Chancelier Jeffreys, prisonnier dans la Tour, qui lestrouva du meme goust, et du mmee assaisonnement que furent les derniersdont Agrippine regala le bon-homme Claudius son epoux, et que Neronappella depuis la viande des Dieux. " Marforio asks: "Le Chancelier estdonc mort dans la Tour?" Pasquin answers: "Il estoit trop fidele a sonRoi legitime, et trop habile dans les loix du royaume, pour echapper al'Usurpateur qu'il ne vouloit point reconnoistre. Guillemot prit soin defaire publier que ce malheureux prisonnier estoit attaque du'ne fievremaligne; mais, a parler franchement, i1 vivroit peutestre encore s'iln'avoit rien mange que de la main de ses anciens cuisiniers. "--Le Festinde Guillemot, 1689. Dangeau (May q. ) mentions a report that Jeffreys hadpoisoned himself. ]

[Footnote 416: Among the numerous pieces in which the malecontent Whigsvented their anger, none is more curious than the poem entitled theGhost of Charles the Second. Charles addresses William thus:

 "Hail my blest nephew, whom the fates ordain To fill the measure of the Stuart's reign, That all the ills by our whole race designed In thee their full accomplishment might find 'Tis thou that art decreed this point to clear, Which we have laboured for these fourscore year. "]

[Footnote 417: Grey's Debates, June 12 1689. ]

[Footnote 418: See Commons' Journals, and Grey's Debates, June 1. 3. And4. 1689; Life of William, 1704. ]

[Footnote 419: Barnet MS. Harl. 6584. ; Avaux to De Croissy, June 16/261689. ]

[Footnote 420: As to the minutes of the Privy Council, see the Commons'Journals of June 22. And 28. , and of July 3. 5. 13. And 16. ]

[Footnote 421: The letter of Halifax to Lady Russell is dated on the 23dof July 1689, about a fortnight after the attack on him in the Lords, and about a week before the attack on him in the Commons. ]

[Footnote 422: See the Lords' Journals of July 10. 1689, and a letterfrom London dated July 11/21, and transmitted by Croissy to Avaux. DonPedro de Ronquillo mentions this attack of the Whig Lords on Halifax ina despatch of which I cannot make out the date. ]

[Footnote 423: This was on Saturday the 3d of August. As the divisionwas in Committee, the numbers do not appear in the journals. Clarendon, in his Diary, says that the majority was eleven. But Narcissus Luttrell, Oldmixon, and Tindal agree in putting it at fourteen. Most of the littleinformation which I have been able to find about the debate is containedin a despatch of Don Pedro de Ronquillo. "Se resolvio" he says, "que elsabado, en comity de toda la casa, se tratasse del estado de la nationpara representarle al Rey. Emperose por acusar al Marques de Olifax;y reconociendo sus emulos que no tenian partido bastante, quisieronremitir para otro dia esta motion: pero el Conde de Elan, primogenitodel Marques de Olifax, miembro de la casa, les dijo que su padre no erahombre para andar peloteando con el, y que se tubiesse culpa lo acabasende castigar, que el no havia menester estar en la corte para portarseconforme a su estado, pues Dios le havia dado abundamente para poderlohazer; conque por pluralidad de votes vencio su partido. " I suspectthat Lord Eland meant to sneer at the poverty of some of his father'spersecutors, and at the greediness of others. ]

[Footnote 424: This change of feeling, immediately following the debateon the motion for removing Halifax, is noticed by Ronquillo, ]

[Footnote 425: As to Ruvigny, see Saint Simon's Memoirs of the year1697: Burnet, i. 366. There is some interesting information aboutRuvigny and about the Huguenot regiments in a narrative written bya French refugee of the name of Dumont. This narrative, which is inmanuscript, and which I shall occasionally quote as the Dumont MS. , waskindly lent to me by the Dean of Ossory. ]

[Footnote 426: See the Abrege de la Vie de Frederic Duc de Schomberg byLunancy, 1690, the Memoirs of Count Dohna, and the note of Saint Simonon Dangeau's Journal, July 30, 1690. ]

[Footnote 427: See the Commons' Journals of July 16. 1689, and of July1. 1814. ]

[Footnote 428: Journals of the Lords and Commons, Aug. 20. 1689; LondonGazette, Aug, 22. ]

[Footnote 429: "J'estois d'avis qu', apres que la descente seroit faite, si on apprenoit que des Protestans se fassent soulevez en quelquesendroits du royaume, on fit main basse sur tous generalement. "--Avaux, July 31/Aug 10 1689. ]

[Footnote 430: "Le Roy d'Angleterre m'avoit ecoute assez paisiblement lapremière fois que je luy avois propose ce qu'il y avoit a faire contreles Protestans. "--Avaux, Aug. 4/14]

[Footnote 431: Avaux, Aug. 4/14. He says, "Je m'imagine qu'il estpersuade que, quoiqu'il ne donne point d'ordre sur cela, la plupart desCatholiques de la campagne se jetteront sur les Protestans. "]

[Footnote 432: Lewis, Aug 27/Sept 6, reprimanded Avaux, though muchtoo gently, for proposing to butcher the whole Protestant populationof Leinster, Connaught, and Munster. "Je n'approuve pas cependant laproposition que vous faites de faire main basse sur tous les Protestansdu royaume, du moment qu', en quelque endroit que ce soit, ils se serontsoulevez: et, outre que la punition du'ne infinite d'innocens pour peude coupables ne seroit pas juste, d'ailleurs les represailles contreles Catholiques seroient d'autant plus dangereuses, que les premiers setrouveront mieux armez et soutenus de toutes les forces d'Angleterre. "]

[Footnote 433: Ronquillo, Aug. 9/19 speaking of the siege ofLondonderry, expresses his astonishment "que una plaza sin fortificationy sin genies de guerra aya hecho una defensa tan gloriosa, y que lossitiadores al contrario ayan sido tan poltrones. "]

[Footnote 434: This account of the Irish army is compiled from numerousletters written by Avaux to Lewis and to Lewis's ministers. I will quotea few of the most remarkable passages. "Les plus beaux hommes, " Avauxsays of the Irish, "qu'on peut voir. Il n'y en a presque point audessous de cinq pieds cinq a six pouces. " It will be remembered that theFrench foot is longer than ours. "Ils sont tres bien faits: mais; il nesont ny disciplinez ny armez, et de surplus sont de grands voleurs. ""La plupart de ces regimens sont levez par des gentilshommes quin'ont jamais este á l'armee. Ce sont des tailleurs, des bouchers, des cordonniers, qui ont forme les compagnies et qui en sont lesCapitaines. " "Jamais troupes n'ont marche comme font celles-cy. Ilsvent comme des bandits, et pillent tout ce qu'ils trouvent en chemin. ""Quoiqu'il soit vrai que les soldats paroissent fort resolus a bienfaire, et qu'ils soient fort animez contre les rebelles, neantmoins ilne suffit pas de cela pour combattre. .. .. Les officiers subalternes sontmauvais, et, a la reserve d'un tres peut nombre, il n'y en a point quiayt soin des soldats, des armes, et de la discipline. " "On a beaucoupplus de confiance en la cavalerie, dont la plus grande partie estassez bonne. " Avaux mentions several regiments of horse with particularpraise. Of two of these he says, "On ne peut voir de meilleur regiment. "The correctness of the opinion which he had formed both of the infantryand of the cavalry was, after his departure from Ireland, signallyproved at the Boyne. ]

[Footnote 435: I will quote a passage or two from the despatches writtenat this time by Avaux. On September 7/17. He says: "De quelque costequ'on se tournat, on ne pouvoir rien prevoir que de desagreable. Maisdans cette extremite chacun s'est evertue. Les officiers ont fait leursrecrues avec beaucoup de diligence. " Three days later he says: "Il y aquinze jours que nous n'esperions guare de pouvoir mettre les choses ensi bon estat mais my Lord Tyrconnel et tous les Irlandais ont travailleavec tant d'empressement qu'on s'est mis en estat de deffense. "]

[Footnote 436: Avaux, Aug 25/Sep 4 Aug 26/Sep 5; Life of James, ii. 373. ; Melfort's vindication of himself among the Nairne Papers. Avauxsays: "Il pourra partir ce soir a la nuit: car je vois bien qu'ilapprehende qu'il ne sera pas sur pour luy de partir en plein jour. "]

[Footnote 437: Story's Impartial History of the Wars of Ireland, 1693;Life of James, ii. 374; Avaux, Sept. 7/17 1689; Nihell's journal, printed in 1689, and reprinted by Macpherson. ]

[Footnote 438: Story's Impartial History. ]

[Footnote 439: Ibid. ]

[Footnote 440: Avaux, Sep. 10/20. 1689; Story's Impartial History; Lifeof James, ii. 377, 378 Orig. Mem. Story and James agree in estimatingthe Irish army at about twenty thousand men. See also Dangeau, Oct. 28. 1689. ]

[Footnote 441: Life of James, ii. 377, 378. Orig. Mem. ]

[Footnote 442: See Grey's Debates, Nov. 26, 27, 28. 1689, and theDialogue between a Lord Lieutenant and one of his deputies, 1692. ]

[Footnote 443: Nihell's Journal. A French officer, in a letter to Avaux, written soon after Schomberg's landing, says, "Les Huguenots font plusde mal que les Anglois, et tuent force Catholiques pour avoir faitresistance. "]

[Footnote 444: Story; Narrative transmitted by Avaux to Seignelay, Nov26/Dec 6 1689 London Gazette, Oct. 14. 1689. It is curious that, thoughDumont was in the camp before Dundalk, there is in his MS. No mention ofthe conspiracy among the French. ]

[Footnote 445: Story's Impartial History; Dumont MS. The profanenessand dissoluteness of the camp during the sickness are mentioned inmany contemporary pamphlets both in verse and prose. See particularly aSatire entitled Reformation of Manners, part ii. ]

[Footnote 446: Story's Impartial History. ]

[Footnote 447: Avaux, Oct. 11/21. Nov. 14/24 1689; Story's ImpartialHistory; Life of James, ii. 382, 383. Orig. Mem. ; Nihell's Journal. ]

[Footnote 448: Story's Impartial History; Schomberg's Despatches;Nihell's Journal, and James's Life; Burnet, ii. 20. ; Dangeau's journalduring this autumn; the Narrative sent by Avaux to Seignelay, and theDumont MS. The lying of the London Gazette is monstrous. Through thewhole autumn the troops are constantly said to be in good condition. In the absurd drama entitled the Royal Voyage, which was acted for theamusement of the rabble of London in 1689, the Irish are represented asattacking some of the sick English. The English put the assailants tothe rout, and then drop down dead. ]

[Footnote 449: See his despatches in the appendix to Dalrymple'sMemoirs. ]

[Footnote 450: London Gazette; May 20 1689. ]

[Footnote 451: Commons' Journals, Nov. 13, 23. 1689; Grey's Debates, Nov. 13. 14. 18. 23. 1689. See, among numerous pasquinades, the Parableof the Bearbaiting, Reformation of Manners, a Satire, the Mock Mourners, a Satire. See also Pepys's Diary kept at Tangier, Oct. 15. 1683. ]

[Footnote 452: The best account of these negotiations will be found inWagenaar, lxi. He had access to Witsen's papers, and has quoted largelyfrom them. It was Witsen who signed in violent agitation, "zo als" hesays, "myne beevende hand getuigen kan. " The treaties will be found inDumont's Corps Diplomatique. They were signed in August 1689. ]

[Footnote 453: The treaty between the Emperor and the States General isdated May 12. 1689. It will be found in Dumont's Corps Diplomatique. ]

[Footnote 454: See the despatch of Waldeck in the London Gazette, Aug. 26, 1689; historical Records of the First Regiment of Foot; Dangeau, Aug. 28. ; Monthly Mercury, September 1689. ]

[Footnote 455: See the Dear Bargain, a Jacobite pamphlet clandestinelyprinted in 1690. "I have not patience, " says the writer, "afterthis wretch (Marlborough) to mention any other. All are innocentcomparatively, even Kirke himself. "]

[Footnote 456: See the Mercuries for September 1689, and the fourfollowing months. See also Welwood's Mercurius Reformatus of Sept. 18. Sept. 25. And Oct. 8. 1689. Melfort's Instructions, and his memorials tothe Pope and the Cardinal of Este, are among the Nairne Papers; and someextracts have been printed by Macpherson. ]

[Footnote 457: See the Answer of a Nonjuror to the Bishop of Sarum'schallenge in the Appendix to the Life of Kettlewell. Among the TannerMSS. In the Bodleian Library is a paper which, as Sancroft thought itworth preserving, I venture to quote. The writer, a strong nonjuror, after trying to evade, by many pitiable shifts the argument drawn bya more compliant divine from the practice of the primitive Church, proceeds thus: "Suppose the primitive Christians all along, from thetime of the very Apostles, had been as regardless of their oaths byformer princes as he suggests will he therefore say that their practiceis to be a rule? Ill things have been done, and very generally abetted, by men of otherwise very orthodox principles. " The argument from thepractice of the primitive Christians is remarkably well put in a tractentitled The Doctrine of Nonresistance or Passive Obedience No Wayconcerned in the Controversies now depending between the Williamitesand the Jacobites, by a Lay Gentleman, of the Communion of the Church ofEngland, as by Law establish'd, 1689. ]

[Footnote 458: One of the most adulatory addresses ever voted by aConvocation was to Richard the Third. It will be found in Wilkins'sConcilia. Dryden, in his fine rifacimento of one of the finest passagesin the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, represents the Good Parsonas choosing to resign his benefice rather than acknowledge the Duke ofLancaster to be King of England. For this representation no warrant canbe found in Chaucer's Poem, or any where else. Dryden wished to writesomething that would gall the clergy who had taken the oaths, andtherefore attributed to a Roman Catholic priest of the fourteenthcentury a superstition which originated among the Anglican priests ofthe seventeenth century. ]

[Footnote 459: See the defence of the profession which the RightReverend Father in God John Lake, Lord Bishop of Chichester, made uponhis deathbed concerning passive obedience and the new oaths. 1690. ]

[Footnote 460: London Gazette, June 30. 1689; Narcissus Luttrell'sDiary. "The eminentest men, " says Luttrell. ]

[Footnote 461: See in Kettlewell's Life, iii. 72. , the retractationdrawn by him for a clergyman who had taken the oaths, and who afterwardsrepented of having done so. ]

[Footnote 462: See the account of Dr. Dove's conduct in Clarendon'sDiary, and the account of Dr. Marsh's conduct in the Life ofKettlewell. ]

[Footnote 463: The Anatomy of a Jacobite Tory, 1690. ]

[Footnote 464: Dialogue between a Whig and a Tory. ]

[Footnote 465: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Nov. 1697, Feb. 1692. ]

[Footnote 466: Life of Kettlewell, iii. 4. ]

[Footnote 467: See Turner's Letter to Sancroft, dated on Ascension Day, 1689. The original is among the Tanner MSS. In the Bodleian Library. Butthe letter will be found with much other curious matter in the Life ofKen by a Layman, lately published. See also the Life of Kettlewell, iii. 95. ; and Ken's letter to Burnet, dated Oct. 5. 1689, in Hawkins's Lifeof Ken. "I am sure, " Lady Russell wrote to Dr. Fitzwilliam, "the Bishopof Bath and Wells excited others to comply, when he could not bringhimself to do so, but rejoiced when others did. " Ken declared that hehad advised nobody to take the oaths, and that his practice had been toremit those who asked his advice to their own studies and prayers. LadyRussell's assertion and Ken's denial will be found to come nearly tothe same thing, when we make those allowances which ought to be madefor situation and feeling, even in weighing the testimony of the mostveracious witnesses. Ken, having at last determined to cast in his lotwith the nonjurors, naturally tried to vindicate his consistency as faras he honestly could. Lady Russell, wishing to induce her friend to takethe oaths, naturally made as munch of Ken's disposition to compliance asshe honestly could. She went too far in using the word "excited. " On theother hand it is clear that Ken, by remitting those who consulted himto their own studies and prayers, gave them to understand that, in hisopinion, the oath was lawful to those who, after a serious inquiry, thought it lawful. If people had asked him whether they might lawfullycommit perjury or adultery, he would assuredly have told them, not toconsider the point maturely and to implore the divine direction, but toabstain on peril of their souls. ]

[Footnote 468: See the conversation of June 9. 1784, in Boswell's Lifeof Johnson, and the note. Boswell, with his usual absurdity, is surethat Johnson could not have recollected "that the seven bishops, sojustly celebrated for their magnanimous resistance to arbitrary power, were yet nonjurors. " Only five of the seven were nonjurors; and anybodybut Boswell would have known that a man may resist arbitrary power, andyet not be a good reasoner. Nay, the resistance which Sancroft and theother nonjuring bishops offered to arbitrary power, while they continuedto hold the doctrine of nonresistance, is the most decisive proof thatthey were incapable of reasoning. It must be remembered that they wereprepared to take the whole kingly power from James and to bestow it onWilliam, with the title of Regent. Their scruple was merely about theword King. 

I am surprised that Johnson should have pronounced William Law noreasoner. Law did indeed fall into great errors; but they were errorsagainst which logic affords no security. In mere dialectical skillhe had very few superiors. That he was more than once victoriousover Hoadley no candid Whig will deny. But Law did not belong to thegeneration with which I have now to do. ]

[Footnote 469: Ware's History of the Writers of Ireland, continued byHarris. ]

[Footnote 470: Letter to a member of the Convention, 1689]

[Footnote 471: Johnson's Notes on the Phoenix Edition of Burnet'sPastoral Letter, 1692. ]

[Footnote 472: The best notion of Hickes's character will be formed fromhis numerous controversial writings, particularly his Jovian, writtenin 1684, his Thebaean Legion no Fable, written in 1687, though notpublished till 1714, and his discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, 1695. His literary fame rests on works of a very differentkind. ]

[Footnote 473: Collier's Tracts on the Stage are, on the whole his bestpieces. But there is much that is striking in his political pamphlets. His "Persuasive to Consider anon, tendered to the Royalists, particularly those of the Church of England, " seems to me one of thebest productions of the Jacobite press. ]

[Footnote 474: See Brokesby's Life of Dodwell. The Discourse againstMarriages in different Communions is known to me, I ought to say, onlyfrom Brokesby's copious abstract. That Discourse is very rare. It wasoriginally printed as a preface to a sermon preached by Leslie. WhenLeslie collected his works he omitted the discourse, probably because hewas ashamed of it. The Treatise on the Lawfulness of Instrumental MusicI have read; and incredibly absurd it is. ]

[Footnote 475: Dodwell tells us that the title of the work in which hefirst promulgated this theory was framed with great care and precision. I will therefore transcribe the title-page. "An Epistolary Discourseproving from Scripture and the First Fathers that the Soul is naturallyMortal, but Immortalized actually by the Pleasure of God to Punishmentor to Reward, by its Union with the Divine Baptismal Spirit, whereinis proved that none have the Power of giving this Divine ImmortalizingSpirit since the Apostles but only the Bishops. By H. Dodwell. " Dr. Clarke, in a Letter to Dodwell (1706), says that this EpistolaryDiscourse is "a book at which all good men are sorry, and all profanemen rejoice. "]

[Footnote 476: See Leslie's Rehearsals, No. 286, 287. ]

[Footnote 477: See his works, and the highly curious life of him whichwas compiled from the papers of his friends Hickes and Nelson. ]

[Footnote 478: See Fitzwilliam's correspondence with Lady Russell, andhis evidence on the trial of Ashton, in the State Trials. The onlywork which Fitzwilliam, as far as I have been able to discover, everpublished was a sermon on the Rye House Plot, preached a few weeks afterRussell's execution. There are some sentences in this sermon which I alittle wonder that the widow and the family forgave. ]

[Footnote 479: Cyprian, in one of his Epistles, addresses the confessorsthus: "Quosdam audio inficere numerum vestrum, et laudem praecipuinominis prava sua conversatione destruere. .. Cum quanto nominis vestripudore delinquitur quando alius aliquis temulentus et lasciviensdemoratur; alius in eam patriam unde extorris est regreditur, utdeprehensus non eam quasi Christianus, sed quasi nocens pereat. " He usesstill stronger language in the book de Unitate Ecclesiae: "Neque enimconfessio immunem facet ab insidiis diaboli, aut contra tentationes etpericula et incursus atque impetus saeculares adhuc in saeculo positumperpetua securitate defendit; caeterum nunquam in confessoribus fraudeset stupra et adulteria postmodum videremus, quae nunc in quibusdamvidentes ingemiscimus et dolemus. "]

[Footnote 480: Much curious information about the nonjurors will befound in the Biographical Memoirs of William Bowyer, printer, whichforms the first volume of Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the eighteenthcentury. A specimen of Wagstaffe's prescriptions is in the BodleianLibrary. ]

[Footnote 481: Cibber's play, as Cibber wrote it, ceased to be popularwhen the Jacobites ceased to be formidable, and is now known only tothe curious. In 1768 Bickerstaffe altered it into the Hypocrite, andsubstituted Dr. Cantwell, the Methodist, for Dr. Wolfe, the Nonjuror. "I do not think, " said Johnson, "the character of the Hypocritejustly applicable to the Methodists; but it was very applicable tothe nonjurors. " Boswell asked him if it were true that the nonjuringclergymen intrigued with the wives of their patrons. "I am afraid, " saidJohnson, "many of them did. " This conversation took place on the 27th ofMarch 1775. It was not merely in careless tally that Johnson expressedan unfavourable opinion of the nonjurors. In his Life of Fenton, who wasa nonjuror, are these remarkable words: "It must be remembered that hekept his name unsullied, and never suffered himself to be reduced, liketoo many of the same sect to mean arts and dishonourable shifts. " Seethe Character of a Jacobite, 1690. Even in Kettlewell's Life compiledfrom the papers of his friends Hickes and Nelson, will be foundadmissions which show that, very soon after the schism, some ofthe nonjuring clergy fell into habits of idleness, dependence, andmendicancy, which lowered the character of the whole party. "Severalundeserving persons, who are always the most confident, by their goingup and down, did much prejudice to the truly deserving, whose modestywould not suffer them to solicit for themselves. .. .. . Mr. Kettlewellwas also very sensible that some of his brethren spent too much of theirtime in places of concourse and news, by depending for their subsistenceupon those whom they there got acquainted with. "]

[Footnote 482: Reresby's Memoirs, 344]

[Footnote 483: Birch's Life of Tillotson. ]

[Footnote 484: See the Discourse concerning the EcclesiasticalCommission, 1689. ]

[Footnote 485: Birch's Life of Tillotson; Life of Prideaux; Gentleman'sMagazine for June and July, 1745. ]

[Footnote 486: Diary of the Proceedings of the Commissioners, taken byDr. Williams afterwards Bishop of Chichester, one of the Commissioners, every night after he went home from the several meetings. This mostcurious Diary was printed by order of the House of Commons in 1854. ]

[Footnote 487: Williams's Diary. ]

[Footnote 488: Williams's Diary. ]

[Footnote 489: Ibid. ]

[Footnote 490: See the alterations in the Book of Common Prayer preparedby the Royal Commissioners for the revision of the Liturgy in 1689, andprinted by order of the House of Commons in 1854. ]

[Footnote 491: It is difficult to conceive stronger or clearer languagethan that used by the Council. Touton toinun anagnosthenton orisane agia sunodos, eteran pistin medeni ekseinai prospherein, egounsuggraphein, e suntithenia, para ten oristheisan para ton agion pateronton en te Nikaeon sunegthonton sun agio pneumati tous de tolmontase suntithenai pistin eteran, egoun prokomizein, e prospherein toisethegousin epistrephein eis epignosin tes agetheias e eks Ellinismoue eks Ioudaismon, i eks aireseos oiasdepotoun, toutous, ei men eienepiskopoi i klerikoi, allotrious einai tous episkopon, tesepiskopes, kai tous klerikous ton kliron ei de laikoi eien, agathematizesthai--Concil. Ephes. Actio VI. ]

[Footnote 492: Williams's Diary; Alterations in the Book of CommonPrayer. ]

[Footnote 493: It is curious to consider how those great masters of theLatin tongue who used to sup with Maecenas and Pollio would have beenperplexed by "Tibi Cherubim et Seraphim incessabili voce proclamant, Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth;" or by "Ideo cumangelis et archangelis, cum thronis et dominationibus. "]

[Footnote 494: I will give two specimens of Patrick's workmanship. "Hemaketh me, " says David, "to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth mebeside the still waters. " Patrick's version is as follows: "For as agood shepherd leads his sheep in the violent heat to shady places, where they may lie down and feed (not in parched but) in fresh andgreen pastures, and in the evening leads them (not to muddy and troubledwaters, but) to pure and quiet streams; so hath he already made a fairand plentiful provision for me, which I enjoy in peace without anydisturbance. "

In the Song of Solomon is an exquisitely beautiful verse. "I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him thatI am sick of love. " Patrick's version runs thus: "So I turned myself tothose of my neighbours and familiar acquaintance who were awakened bymy cries to come and see what the matter was; and conjured them, as theywould answer it to God, that, if they met with my beloved, they wouldlet him know--What shall I say?--What shall I desire you to tell him butthat I do not enjoy myself now that I want his company, nor can be welltill I recover his love again. "]

[Footnote 495: William's dislike of the Cathedral service issarcastically noticed by Leslie in the Rehearsal, No. 7. See alsoa Letter from a Member of the House of Commons to his Friend in theCountry, 1689, and Bisset's Modern Fanatic, 1710. ]

[Footnote 496: See the Order in Council of Jan. 9. 1683. ]

[Footnote 497: See Collier's Desertion discussed, 1689. Thomas Carte, who was a disciple, and, at one time, an assistant of Collier, inserted, so late as the year 1747, in a bulky History of England, an exquisitelyabsurd note in which he assured the world that, to his certainknowledge, the Pretender had cured the scrofula, and very gravelyinferred that the healing virtue was transmitted by inheritance, and wasquite independent of any unction. See Carte's History of England, vol, i. Page 297. ]

[Footnote 498: See the Preface to a Treatise on Wounds, by RichardWiseman, Sergeant Chirurgeon to His Majesty, 1676. But the fullestinformation on this curious subject will be found in the CharismaBasilicon, by John Browne, Chirurgeon in ordinary to His Majesty, 1684. See also The Ceremonies used in the Time of King Henry VII. For theHealing of them that be Diseased with the King's Evil, published byHis Majesty's Command, 1686; Evelyn's Diary, March 18. 1684; and BishopCartwright's Diary, August 28, 29, and 30. 1687. It is incrediblethat so large a proportion of the population should have been reallyscrofulous. No doubt many persons who had slight and transient maladieswere brought to the king, and the recovery of these persons kept up thevulgar belief in the efficacy of his touch. ]

[Footnote 499: Paris Gazette, April 23. 1689. ]

[Footnote 500: See Whiston's Life of himself. Poor Whiston, who believedin every thing but the Trinity, tells us gravely that the single personwhom William touched was cured, notwithstanding His Majesty's want offaith. See also the Athenian Mercury of January 16. 1691. ]

[Footnote 501: In several recent publications the apprehension thatdifferences might arise between the Convocation of York and theConvocation of Canterbury has been contemptuously pronounced chimerical. But it is not easy to understand why two independent Convocations shouldbe less likely to differ than two Houses of the same Convocation; andit is matter of notoriety that, in the reigns of William the Third andAnne, the two Houses of the Convocation of Canterbury scarcely everagreed. ]

[Footnote 502: Birch's Life of Tillotson; Life of Prideaux. FromClarendon's Diary, it appears that he and Rochester were at Oxford onthe 23rd of September. ]

[Footnote 503: See the Roll in the Historical Account of the presentConvocation, appended to the second edition of Vox Cleri, 1690. The mostconsiderable name that I perceive in the list of proctors chosen bythe parochial clergy is that of Dr. John Mill, the editor of the GreekTestament. ]

[Footnote 504: Tillotson to Lady Russell, April 19. 1690. ]

[Footnote 505: Birch's Life of Tillotson. The account there given of thecoldness between Compton and Tillotson was taken by Birch from the MSS. Of Henry Wharton, and is confirmed by many circumstances which are knownfrom other sources of intelligence. ]

[Footnote 506: Chamberlayne's State of England, 18th edition. ]

[Footnote 507: Condo ad Synodum per Gulielmum Beveregium, 1689. ]

[Footnote 508: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Historical Account of thePresent Convocation. ]

[Footnote 509: Kennet's History, iii. 552. ]

[Footnote 510: Historical Account of the Present Convocation, 1689. ]

[Footnote 511: Historical Account of the Present Convocation; Burnet, ii. 58. ; Kennet's History of the Reign of William and Mary. ]

[Footnote 512: Historical Account of the Present Convocation; Kennet'sHistory. ]

[Footnote 513: Historical Account of the Present Convocation; Kennet. ]

[Footnote 514: Historical Account of the Present Convocation. ]

[Footnote 515: That there was such a jealousy as I have described isadmitted in the pamphlet entitled Vox Cleri. "Some country ministers nowof the Convocation, do now see in what great ease and plenty the Cityministers live, who have their readers and lecturers, and frequentsupplies, and sometimes tarry in the vestry till prayers be ended, andhave great dignities in the Church, besides their rich parishes in theCity. " The author of this tract, once widely celebrated, was ThomasLong, proctor for the clergy of the diocese of Exeter. In anotherpamphlet, published at this time, the rural clergymen are said to haveseen with an evil eye their London brethren refreshing themselves withsack after preaching. Several satirical allusions to the fable of theTown Mouse and the Country Mouse will be found in the pamphlets of thatwinter. ]

[Footnote 516: Barnet, ii, 33, 34. The best narratives of what passedin this Convocation are the Historical Account appended to the secondedition of Vox Cleri, and the passage in Kennet's History to which Ihave already referred the reader. The former narrative is by a very highchurchman, the latter by a very low churchman. Those who are desirousof obtaining fuller information must consult the contemporary pamphlets. Among them are Vox Populi; Vox Laici; Vox Regis et Regni; the HealingAttempt; the Letter to a Friend, by Dean Prideaux the Letter from aMinister in the Country to a Member of the Convocation; the Answer tothe Merry Answer to Vox Cleri; the Remarks from the Country upon twoLetters relating to the Convocation; the Vindication of the Letters inanswer to Vox Cleri; the Answer to the Country Minister's Letter. Allthese tracts appeared late in 1689 or early in 1690. ]

[Footnote 517: "Halifax a eu une reprimande severe publiquement dans leconseil par le Prince d'Orange pour avoir trop balance. "--Avaux to DeCroissy, Dublin, June 1689. "his mercurial Wit, " says Burnet, ii. 4. , "was not well suited with the King's phlegm. "]

[Footnote 518: Clarendon's Diary, Oct. 10 1689; Lords' Journals, Oct. 19. 1689. ]

[Footnote 519: Commons' Journals, Oct. 24. 1689. ]

[Footnote 520: Ibid. , Nov. 2. 1689. ]

[Footnote 521: Commons' Journals, Nov. 7. 19. , Dec. 30 1689. The ruleof the House then was that no petition could be received against theimposition of a tax. This rule was, after a very hard fight, rescindedin 1842. The petition of the Jews was not received, and is not mentionedin the Journals. But something may be learned about it from NarcissusLuttrell's Diary and from Grey's Debates, Nov. 19. 1689, ]

[Footnote 522: James, in the very treatise in which he tried to provethe Pope to be Antichrist, says "For myself, if that were yet thequestion, I would with all my heart give my consent that the Bishop ofRome should have the first seat. " There is a remarkable letter on thissubject written by James to Charles and Buckingham, when they were inSpain. Heylyn, speaking of Laud's negotiation with Rome, says: "So thatupon the point the Pope was to content himself among us in Englandwith a priority instead of a superiority over other Bishops, and witha primacy instead of a supremacy in those parts of Christendom, whichI conceive no man of learning and sobriety would have grudged to granthim, "]

[Footnote 523: Stat. 1 W & M. Sess. 2. C 2. ]

[Footnote 524: Treasury Minute Book, Nov. 3. 1689. ]

[Footnote 525: Commons' Journals and Grey's Debates, Nov. 13, 14. 18. 19. 23. 28. 1689. ]

[Footnote 526: Commons' Journals and Grey's Debates, November 26. And27. 1689. ]

[Footnote 527: Commons' Journals, November 28. , December 2. 1689. ]

[Footnote 528: Commons' Journals and Grey's Debates, November 30. , December 2 1689. ]

[Footnote 529: London Gazette, September 2 1689; Observations upon Mr. Walker's Account of the Siege of Londonderry, licensed October 4. 1689;Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Mr. J. Mackenzie's Narrative a False Libel, a Defence of Mr. G. Walker written by his Friend in his Absence, 1690. ]

[Footnote 530: Walker's True Account, 1689; An Apology for the Failurescharged on the True Account, 1689; Reflections on the Apology, 1689; AVindication of the True Account by Walker, 1689; Mackenzie's Narrative, 1690; Mr. Mackenzie's Narrative a False Libel, 1690; Dr. Walker'sInvisible Champion foyled by Mackenzie, 1690; Weiwood's MercuriusReformatus, Dec. 4. And 11 1689. The Oxford editor of Burnet's Historyexpresses his surprise at the silence which the Bishop observes aboutWalker. In the Burnet MS. Harl. 6584. There is an animated panegyricon Walker. Why that panegyric does not appear in the History, I am at aloss to explain. ]

[Footnote 531: Commons' Journals, November 18 and 19. 1689; and Grey'sDebates. ]

[Footnote 532: Wade's Confession, Harl. MS. 6845. ]

[Footnote 533: See the Preface to the First Edition of his Memoirs, Vevay, 1698. ]

[Footnote 534: "Colonel Ludlow, an old Oliverian, and one of KingCharles the First his Judges, is arrived lately in this kingdom fromSwitzerland. "-Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, September 1689. ]

[Footnote 535: Third Caveat against the Whigs, 1712. ]

[Footnote 536: Commons' Journals, November 6. And 8. 1689; Grey'sDebates; London Gazette, November 18. ]

[Footnote 537: "Omme solum forti patria, quia patris. " See Addison'sTravels. It is a remarkable circumstance that Addison, though a Whig, speaks of Ludlow in language which would better have become a Tory, andsneers at the inscription as cant. ]

[Footnote 538: Commons' Journals, Nov. 1. 7. 1689. ]

[Footnote 539: Roger North's Life of Dudley North. ]

[Footnote 540: Commons' Journals, Oct. 26. 1689. ]

[Footnote 541: Lords' Journals, October 26. And 27. 1689. ]

[Footnote 542: Commons' Journals, Oct. 26. 1689. ]

[Footnote 543: Commons' Journals, Oct. 26. 1689; Wood's AthenaeOxonienses; Dod's Church History, VIII. Ii. 3. ]

[Footnote 544: Commons' Journals, October 28. 5689. The proceedings willbe found in the collection of State Trials. ]

[Footnote 545: Lords' Journals, Nov. 2. And 6. 1689. ]

[Footnote 546: Lords' Journals, Dec. 20. 1689; Life of Dudley North. ]

[Footnote 547: The report is in the Lords' Journals, Dec. 20. 1689. Hampden's examination was on the 18th of November. ]

[Footnote 548: This, I think, is clear from a letter of Lady Montagueto Lady Russell, dated Dec. 23. 1689, three days after the Committee ofMurder had reported. ]

[Footnote 549: Commons' Journals, Dec. 14. 1689; Grey's Debates; Boyer'sLife of William. ]

[Footnote 550: Commons' Journals, Dec. 21. ; Grey's Debates; Oldmixon. ]

[Footnote 551: Commons' Journals, Jan. 2. 1689/90]

[Footnote 552: Thus, I think, must be understood some remarkablewords in a letter written by William to Portland, on the day afterSacheverell's bold and unexpected move. William calculates the amount ofthe supplies, and then says: "S'ils n'y mettent des conditions que voussavez, c'est une bonne affaire: mais les Wigges sont si glorieux d'avoirvaincu qu'ils entreprendront tout. "]

[Footnote 553: "The authority of the chair, the awe and reverence toorder, and the due method of debates being irrecoverably lost by thedisorder and tumultuousness of the House. "--Sir J. Trevor to the King, Appendix to Dalrymple's Memoirs, Part ii. Book 4. ]

[Footnote 554: Commons' Journals, Jan. 10. 1689/90 I have done my bestto frame an account of this contest out of very defective materials. Burnet's narrative contains more blunders than lines. He evidentlytrusted to his memory, and was completely deceived by it. My chiefauthorities are the Journals; Grey's Debates; William's Letters toPortland; the Despatches of Van Citters; a Letter concerning theDisabling Clauses, lately offered to the House of Commons, forregulating Corporations, 1690; The True Friends to Corporationsvindicated, in an answer to a letter concerning the Disabling Clauses, 1690; and Some Queries concerning the Election of Members for theensuing Parliament, 1690. To this last pamphlet is appended a list ofthose who voted for the Sacheverell Clause. See also Clarendon's Diary, Jan. 10. 1689/90, and the Third Part of the Caveat against the Whigs, 1712. William's Letter of the 10th of January ends thus. The news of thefirst division only had reached Kensington. "Il est a present onze euresde nuit, et dix eures la Chambre Basse estoit encore ensemble. Ainsije ne vous puis escrire par cette ordinaire l'issue de l'affaire. Lesprevios questions les Tories l'ont emporte de cinq vois. Ainsi vouspouvez voir que la chose est bien disputee. J'ay si grand somiel, etmon toux m'incomode que je ne vous en saurez dire davantage. Josques amourir a vous. "

On the same night Van Citters wrote to the States General. The debatehe said, had been very sharp. The design of the Whigs, whom he callsthe Presbyterians, had been nothing less than to exclude their opponentsfrom all offices, and to obtain for themselves the exclusive possessionof power. ]

[Footnote 555: Commons' Journals, Jan. 11 1689/90. ]

[Footnote 556: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Jan. 16. 1690; Van Citters tothe States General, Jan. 21/31]

[Footnote 557: Commons' Journals, Jan. 16. 1689/90]

[Footnote 558: Roger North's Life of Guildford. ]

[Footnote 559: See the account of the proceedings in the collection ofState Trials. ]

[Footnote 560: Commons' Journals, Jan. 20. 1689/90; Grey's Debates, Jan. 18. And 20. ]

[Footnote 561: Commons' Journals, Jan. 21. 1689/90 On the same dayWilliam wrote thus from Kensington to Portland: "C'est aujourd'hui legrand jour l'eguard du Bill of Indemnite. Selon tout ce que is puisaprendre, il y aura beaucoup de chaleur, et rien determiner; et de lamaniere que la chose est entourre, il n'y a point d'aparence que cetteaffaire viene a aucune conclusion. Et ainsi il se pouroit que lacession fust fort courts; n'ayant plus dargent a esperer; et les espritss'aigrissent ton contre l'autre de plus en plus. " Three days later VanCitters informed the States General that the excitement about the Billof Indemnity was extreme. ]

[Footnote 562: Burnet, ii. 39. ; MS. Memoir written by the first LordLonsdale in the Mackintosh Papers. ]

[Footnote 563: Burnet, ii. 40. ]

[Footnote 564: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, January and February. ]

[Footnote 565: William to Portland, Jan. 10/20 1690. "Les Wiges ont peurde me perdre trop tost, avant qu'ils n'ayent fait avec moy ce qu'ilsveulent: car, pour leur amitie, vous savez ce qu'il y a a compterladessus en ce pays icy. " Jan. 14/24 "Me voila le plus embarasse dumonde, ne sachant quel parti prendre, estant toujours persuade que, sansque j'aille en Irlande, l'on n'y faira rien qui vaille. Pour avoir duconseil en cette affaire, je n'en ay point a attendre, personne n'ausantdire ses sentimens. Et l'on commence deja a dire ouvertement que cesont des traitres qui m'ont conseille de preudre cette resolution. " Jan. 21/31 "Je nay encore rien dit, "--he means to the Parliament, --"de monvoyage pour l'Irlande. Et je ne suis point encore determine si j'enparlerez: mais je crains que nonobstant j'aurez une adresse pour n'ypoint aller ce qui m'embarassera beaucoup, puis que c'est une necssiteabsolue que j'y aille. "]

[Footnote 566: William to Portland, Jan 28/Feb 7 1690; Van Citters tothe States General, same date; Evelyn's Diary; Lords' Journals, Jan. 27. I will quote William's own words. "Vous voirez mon harangue imprimee:ainsi je ne vous en direz rien. Et pour les raisone qui m'y ont oblige, je les reserverez a vous les dire jusques a vostre retour. Il sembleque les Toris en sont bien aise, male point les Wiggs. Ils estoient tousfort surpris quand je leur parlois, n'ayant communique mon dessin qu'aune seule personne. Je vie des visages long comme un aune, change decouleur vingt fois pendant que je parlois. Tous ces particularitesjusques a vostre heureux retour. "]

[Footnote 567: Evelyn's Diary; Clarendon's Diary, Feb. 9. 1690; VanCitters to the States General, Jan 31/Feb 10. ; Lonsdale MS. Quoted byDalrymple. ]

[Footnote 568: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary]

[Footnote 569: Clarendon's Diary, Feb. 11. 1690. ]

[Footnote 570: Van Citters to the States General, February 14/24. 1690;Evelyn's Diary. ]

[Footnote 571: William to Portland, Feb 28/March 10 29. 1690; VanCitters to the States General, March 4/14; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 572: Van Citters, March 11/21 1689/90; Narcissus Luttrell'sDiary. ]

[Footnote 573: Van Citters to the States General, March 11/21 1690. ]

[Footnote 574: The votes were for Sawyer 165, for Finch 141, for Bennet, whom I suppose to have been a Whig, 87. At the University every voterdelivers his vote in writing. One of the votes given on this occasionis in the following words, "Henricus Jenkes, ex amore justitiae, eligitvirum consultissimum Robertum Sawyer. "]

[Footnote 575: Van Citters to the States General, March 18/28 1690. ]

[Footnote 576: It is amusing to see how absurdly foreign pamphleteers, ignorant of the real state of things in England, exaggerated theimportance of John Hampden, whose name they could not spell. In a FrenchDialogue between William and the Ghost of Monmouth, William says, "Entreces membres de la Chambre Basse etoit un certain homme hardy, opiniatre, et zele a l'exces pour sa creance; on l'appelle Embden, egalementdangereux par son esprit et par son credit. .. . Je ne trouvay point dechemin plus court pour me delivrer de cette traverse que de casser leparlement, en convoquer un autre, et empescher que cet homme, qui mefaisoit tant d'ombrages, ne fust nomme pour un des deputez au nouvelparlement. " "Ainsi, " says the Ghost, "cette cassation de parlement quia fait tant de bruit, et a produit tant de raisonnemens et despeculations, n'estoit que pour exclure Embden. Mais s'il estoit siadroit et si zele, comment as-tu pu trouver le moyen de le faire excluredu nombre des deputez?" To this very sensible question the Kinganswers, "Il m'a fallu faire d'etranges manoeuvres pour en venir about. "--L'Ombre de Monmouth, 1690. ]

[Footnote 577: "A present tout dependra d'un bon succes en Irlande; eta quoy il faut que je m'aplique entierement pour regler le mieux que jepuis toutte chose. .. . Je vous asseure que je n'ay pas peu sur les bras, estant aussi mal assiste que je suis. "-William to Portland, Jan 28/Feb 71690. ]

[Footnote 578: Van Citters, Feb. 14/24 1689/90; Memoir of the Earl ofChesterfield by himself; Halifax to Chesterfield, Feb. 6. ; Chesterfieldto Halifax, Feb 8. The editor of the letters of the second Earl ofChesterfield, not allowing for the change of style, has misplaced thiscorrespondence by a year. ]

[Footnote 579: Van Citters to the States General, Feb. 11/21 1690. ]

[Footnote 580: A strange peculiarity of his constitution is mentioned inan account of him which was published a few months after his death. See the volume entitled "Lives and Characters of the most IllustriousPersons, British and Foreign, who died in the year 1712. "]

[Footnote 581: Monmouth's pension and the good understanding betweenhim and the Court are mentioned in a letter from a Jacobite agent inEngland, which is in the Archives of the French War Office. The date isApril 8/18 1690. ]

[Footnote 582: The grants of land obtained by Delamere are mentionedby Narcissus Luttrell. It appears from the Treasury Letter Book of1690 that Delamere continued to dim the government for money after hisretirement. As to his general character it would not be safe totrust the representations of satirists. But his own writings, and theadmissions of the divine who preached his funeral sermon, show that histemper was not the most gentle. Clarendon remarks (Dec. 17. 1688) thata little thing sufficed to put Lord Delamere into a passion. In the poementitled the King of Hearts, Delamere is described as--

 "A restless malecontent even when preferred. "

His countenance furnished a subject for satire:

 "His boding looks a mind distracted show; And envy sits engraved upon his brow. "]

[Footnote 583: My notion of Lowther's character has been chiefly formedfrom two papers written by himself, one of which has been printed, though I believe not published. A copy of the other is among theMackintosh MSS. Something I have taken from contemporary satires. That Lowther was too ready to expose his life in private encountersis sufficiently proved by the fact that, when he was First Lord of theTreasury, he accepted a challenge from a custom house officer whom hehad dismissed. There was a duel; and Lowther was severely wounded. Thisevent is mentioned in Luttrell's Diary, April 1690. ]

[Footnote 584: Burnet, ii. 76]

[Footnote 585: Roger North's Life of Guildford. ]

[Footnote 586: Till some years after this time the First Lord of theTreasury was always the man of highest rank at the Board. Thus Monmouth, Delamere and Godolphin took their places according to the order ofprecedence in which they stood as peers. ]

[Footnote 587: The dedication, however, was thought too laudatory. "The only thing, " Mr. Pope used to say, "he could never forgive hisphilosophic master was the dedication to the Essay. "--Ruffhead's Life ofPope. ]

[Footnote 588: Van Citters to the States General April 25/May 5, 1690. Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Treasury Letter Book, Feb. 4. 1689/90]

[Footnote 589: The Dialogue between a Lord Lieutenant and one of hisDeputies will not be found in the collection of Warrington's writingswhich was published in 1694, under the sanction, as it should seem, ofhis family. ]

[Footnote 590: Van Citters, to the States General, March 18/28 April4/14 1690; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Burnet, ii. 72. ; The TriennialMayor, or the Rapparees, a Poem, 1691. The poet says of one of the newcivic functionaries:

 "Soon his pretence to conscience we can rout, And in a bloody jury find him out, Where noble Publius worried was with rogues. "]

[Footnote 591: Treasury Minute Book, Feb. 5. 1689/90]

[Footnote 592: Van Citters, Feb. 11/21 Mar. 14/24 Mar. 18/28 1690. ]

[Footnote 593: Van Citters, March 14/24 1690. The sermon is extant. Itwas preached at Bow Church before the Court of Aldermen. ]

[Footnote 594: Welwood's Mercurius Reformatus, Feb. 12. 1690. ]

[Footnote 595: Commons' Journals, March 20, 21, 22. 1689/89]

[Footnote 596: Commons Journals, March 28. 1690, and March 1. And March20. 1688/9]

[Footnote 597: Grey's Debates, March 27. And 28 1690. ]

[Footnote 598: Commons' Journals, Mar. 28. 1690. A very clear and exactaccount of the way in which the revenue was settled was sent by VanCitters to the States General, April 7/17 1690. ]

[Footnote 599: Burnet, ii. 43. ]

[Footnote 600: In a contemporary lampoon are these lines:

 "Oh, happy couple! In their life There does appear no sign of strife. They do agree so in the main, To sacrifice their souls for gain. " --The Female Nine, 1690. ]

[Footnote 601: Swift mentions the deficiency of hospitality andmagnificence in her household. Journal to Stella, August 8. 1711. ]

[Footnote 602: Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication. But the Duchess wasso abandoned a liar, that it is impossible to believe a word that shesays, except when she accuses herself. ]

[Footnote 603: See the Female Nine. ]

[Footnote 604: The Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication. With thathabitual inaccuracy, which, even when she has no motive for lying, makes it necessary to read every word written by her with suspicion, shecreates Shrewsbury a Duke, and represents herself as calling him "YourGrace. " He was not made a Duke till 1694. ]

[Footnote 605: Commons' Journals, December 17 and 18 1689. ]

[Footnote 606: Vindication of the Duchess of Marlborough. ]

[Footnote 607: Van Citters, April 8/18 1690. ]

[Footnote 608: Van Citters, April 8/18 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 609: Lords' Journals, April 8. And 10 1690; Burnet, ii. 41. ]

[Footnote 610: Van Citters, April 25/May 5 1690. ]

[Footnote 611: Commons' Journals, April 8. And 9. 1690; Grey's Debates;Burnet, ii. 42. Van Citters, writing on the 8th, mentions that a greatstruggle in the Lower House was expected. ]

[Footnote 612: Commons' Journals, April 24. 1690; Grey's Debates. ]

[Footnote 613: Commons' Journals, April 24, 25, and 26; Grey's Debates;Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. Narcissus is unusually angry. He calls thebill "a perfect trick of the fanatics to turn out the Bishops and mostof the Church of England Clergy. " In a Whig pasquinade entitled "Aspeech intended to have been spoken on the Triennial Bill, " on Jan. 28. 1692/3 the King is said to have "browbeaten the Abjuration Bill. "]

[Footnote 614: Lords' Journals, May 1. 1690. This bill is among theArchives of the House of Lords. Burnet confounds it with the bill whichthe Commons had rejected in the preceding week. Ralph, who saw thatBurnet had committed a blunder, but did not see what the blunder was, has, in trying to correct it, added several blunders of his own; and theOxford editor of Burnet has been misled by Ralph. ]

[Footnote 615: Lords' Journals, May 2. And 3. 1690; Van Citters, May 2. ;Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Burnet, ii. 44. ; and Lord Dartmouth'snote. The changes made by the Committee may be seen on the bill in theArchives of the House of Lords. ]

[Footnote 616: These distinctions were much discussed at the time. VanCitters, May 20/30 1690. ]

[Footnote 617: Stat. 2 W. &M. Sess. 1. C. 10. ]

[Footnote 618: Roger North was one of the many malecontents who werenever tired of harping on this string. ]

[Footnote 619: Stat. 2 W. &M. Sess. 1. C. 6. ; Grey's Debates, April 29. , May 1. 5, 6, 7. 1690. ]

[Footnote 620: Story's Impartial History; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 621: Avaux, Jan. 15/25 1690. ]

[Footnote 622: Macariae Excidium. This most curious work has beenrecently edited with great care and diligence by Mr. O'Callaghan. Iowe so much to his learning and industry that I most readily excuse thenational partiality which sometimes, I cannot but think, perverts hisjudgment. When I quote the Macariae Excidium, I always quote the Latintext. The English version is, I am convinced, merely a translation fromthe Latin, and a very careless and imperfect translation. ]

[Footnote 623: Avaux, Nov. 14/24 1689. ]

[Footnote 624: Louvois writes to Avaux, Dec 26/Jan 5 1689/90. "Comme leRoy a veu par vos lettres que le Roy d'Angleterre craignoit de manquerde cuivre pour faire de la monnoye, Sa Majeste a donne ordre, que l'onmist sur le bastiment qui portera cette lettre une piece de canon ducalibre de deux qui est eventee, de laquelle ceux qui travaillent a lamonnoye du Roy d'Angleterre pourront se servir pour continuer a faire dela monnoye. "]

[Footnote 625: Louvois to Avaux, Nov. 1/11. 1689. The force sent byLewis to Ireland appears by the lists at the French War Office to haveamounted to seven thousand two hundred and ninety-one men of all ranks. At the French War Office is a letter from Marshal d'Estrees who saw thefour Irish regiments soon after they had landed at Brest. He describesthem as "mal chausses, mal vetus, et n'ayant point d'uniforme dans leurshabits, si ce n'est qu'ils sont tous fort mauvais. " A very exact accountof Macarthy's breach of parole will be found in Mr. O'Callaghan'sHistory of the Irish Brigades. I am sorry that a writer to whom I owe somuch should try to vindicate conduct which, as described by himself, wasin the highest degree dishonourable. ]

[Footnote 626: Lauzun to Louvois. May 28/June 7 and June 1 1690, at theFrench War Office. ]

[Footnote 627: See the later letters of Avaux. ]

[Footnote 628: Avaux to Louvois, March 14/24 1690; Lauzun to LouvoisMarch 23/April 3]

[Footnote 629: Story's Impartial History; Lauzun to Louvois, May 20/30. 1690. ]

[Footnote 630: Lauzun to Louvois, May 28/June 7 1690. ]

[Footnote 631: Lauzun to Louvois, April 2/12 May 10/20. 1690. LaHoguette, who held the rank of Marechal de Camp, wrote to Louvois to thesame effect about the same time. ]

[Footnote 632: "La Politique des Anglois a ete de tenir ces peuplescy comme des esclaves, et si bas qu'il ne leur estoit pas permisd'apprendre a lire et a écrire. Cela les a rendu si bestes qu'ils n'ontpresque point d'humanite. Rien de les esmeut. Ils sont peu sensibles al'honneur; et les menaces ne les estonnent point. L'interest meme ne lespeut engager au travail. Ce sont pourtant les gens du monde les mieuxfaits, "--Desgrigny to Louvois, May 27/June 6 1690. ]

[Footnote 633: See Melfort's Letters to James, written in October 1689. They are among the Nairne Papers, and were printed by Macpherson. ]

[Footnote 634: Life of James, ii. 443. 450. ;and Trials of Ashton andPreston. ]

[Footnote 635: Avaux wrote thus to Lewis on the 5th of June 1689:"Il nous est venu des nouvelles assez considerables d'Angleterre etd'Escosse. Je me donne l'honneur d'en envoyer des memoires a vostreMajeste, tels que je les ay receus du Roy de la Grande Bretagne. Lecommencement des nouvelles dattees d'Angleterre est la copie d'unelettre de M. Pen, que j'ay veue en original. " The Memoire des Nouvellesd'Angleterre et d'Escosse, which was sent with this despatch, beginswith the following sentences, which must have been part of Penn'sletter: "Le Prince d'Orange commence d'estre fort dégoutte de l'humeurdes Anglois et la face des choses change bien viste, selon la nature desinsulaires et sa sante est fort mauvaise. Il y a un nuage qui commence ase former au nord des deux royaumes, ou le Roy a beaucoup d'amis, ce quidonne beaucoup d'inquietude aux principaux amis du Prince d'Orange, qui, estant riches, commencent a estre persuadez que ce sera l'espéequi decidera de leur sort, ce qu'ils ont tant taché d'eviter. Ilsapprehendent une invasion d'Irlande et de France; et en ce cas le Royaura plus d'amis que jamais. "]

[Footnote 636: "Le bon effet, Sire, que ces lettres d'Escosse etd'Angleterre ont produit, est qu'elles ont enfin persuade le Royd'Angleterre qu'il ne recouvrera ses estats que les armes a la main; etce n'est pas peu de l'en avoir convaincu. "]

[Footnote 637: Van Citters to the States General, March 1/11 1689. VanCitters calls Penn "den bekenden Archquaker. "]

[Footnote 638: See his trial in the Collection of State Trials, and theLords' Journals of Nov. 11, 12. And 27. 1689. ]

[Footnote 639: One remittance of two thousand pistoles is mentioned ina letter of Croissy to Avaux, Feb. 16/26 1689. James, in a letter datedJan. 26. 1689, directs Preston to consider himself as still Secretary, notwithstanding Melfort's appointment. ]

[Footnote 640: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Commons' Journals, May 14. 15. 20. 1690; Kingston's True History, 1697. ]

[Footnote 641: The Whole Life of Mr. William Fuller, being an ImpartialAccount of his Birth, Education, Relations and Introduction into theService of the late King James and his Queen, together with a TrueDiscovery of the Intrigues for which he lies now confined; as also ofthe Persons that employed and assisted him therein, with his HeartyRepentance for the Misdemeanours he did in the late Reign, and allothers whom he hath injured; impartially writ by Himself during hisConfinement in the Queen's Bench, 1703. Of course I shall use thisnarrative with caution. ]

[Footnote 642: Fuller's Life of himself, ]

[Footnote 643: Clarendon's Diary, March 6. 1690; Narcissus Luttrell'sDiary. ]

[Footnote 644: Clarendon's Diary, May 10. 1690. ]

[Footnote 645: He wrote to Portland, "Je plains la povre reine, qui esten des terribles afflictions. "]

[Footnote 646: See the Letters of Shrewsbury in Coxe's Correspondence, Part I, chap. I, ]

[Footnote 647: That Lady Shrewsbury was a Jacobite, and did her bestto make her son so, is certain from Lloyd's Paper of May 1694, which isamong the Nairne MSS. , and was printed by Macpherson. ]

[Footnote 648: This is proved by a few words in a paper which James, inNovember 1692, laid before the French government. "Il y a" says he, "leComte de Shrusbery, qui, etant Secretaire d'Etat du Prince d'Orange, s'est defait de sa charge par mon ordre. " One copy of this most valuablepaper is in the Archives of the French Foreign Office. Another is amongthe Nairne MSS. In the Bodleian Library. A translation into English willbe found in Macpherson's collection. ]

[Footnote 649: Burnet, ii. 45. ]

[Footnote 650: Shrewsbury to Somers, Sept. 22. 1697. ]

[Footnote 651: Among the State Poems (vol. Ii. P. 211. ) will be found apiece which some ignorant editor has entitled, "A Satyr written whenthe K---- went to Flanders and left nine Lords justices. " I have amanuscript copy of this satire, evidently contemporary, and bearingthe date 1690. It is indeed evident at a glance that the nine personssatirised are the nine members of the interior council which Williamappointed to assist Mary when he went to Ireland. Some of them neverwere Lords Justices. ]

[Footnote 652: From a narrative written by Lowther, which is among theMackintosh MSS, ]

[Footnote 653: See Mary's Letters to William, published by Dalrymple. ]

[Footnote 654: Clarendon's Diary, May 30. 1690. ]

[Footnote 655: Gerard Croese. ]

[Footnote 656: Burnet, ii. 46. ]

[Footnote 657: The Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication. ]

[Footnote 658: London Gazettes, June 5. 12. 16. 1690; Hop to the StatesGeneral from Chester, June 9/19. Hop attended William to Ireland asenvoy from the States. ]

[Footnote 659: Clarendon's Diary, June 7. And 12. 1690; NarcissusLuttrell's Diary; Baden, the Dutch Secretary of Legation, to VanCitters, June 10/20; Fuller's Life of himself; Welwood's MercuriusReformatus, June 11 1690. ]

[Footnote 660: Clarendon's Diary, June 8. 1690. ]

[Footnote 661: Ibid. , June 10. ]

[Footnote 662: Baden to Van Citters, June 20/30 1690. ; Clarendon'sDiary, June 19. Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 663: Clarendon's Diary, June 25. ]

[Footnote 664: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 665: Memoirs of Saint Simon. ]

[Footnote 666: London Gazette, June 26. 1690; Baden to Van Citters, June24/July 4. ]

[Footnote 667: Mary to William, June 26. 1690; Clarendon's Diary of thesame date; Narcissus Luttrell's. Diary. ]

[Footnote 668: Mary to William, June 28. And July 2. 1690. ]

[Footnote 669: Report of the Commissioners of the Admiralty to theQueen, dated Sheerness, July 18. 1690; Evidence of Captains Cornwall, Jones, Martin and Hubbard, and of Vice Admiral Delaval; Burnet, ii. 52. , and Speaker Onslow's Note; Memoires du Marechal de Tourville; Memoirsof Transactions at Sea by Josiah Burchett, Esq. , Secretary to theAdmiralty, 1703; London Gazette, July 3. ; Historical and PoliticalMercury for July 1690; Mary to William, July 2. ; Torrington toCaermarthen, July I. The account of the battle in the Paris Gazetteof July 15. 1690 is not to be read without shame: "On a sceu que lesHollandois s'estoient tres bien battus, et qu'ils s'estoient comportezen cette occasion en braves gens, mais que les Anglois n'en avoientpas agi de meme. " In the French official relation of le battle off CapeBevezier, --an odd corruption of Pevensey, --are some passages to thesame effect: "Les Hollandois combattirent avec beaucoup de courage etde fermete; mais ils ne furent pas bien secondez par les Anglois. " "LesAnglois se distinguerent des vaisseax de Hollande par le peu de valeurqu'ils montrerent dans le combat. "]

[Footnote 670: Life of James, ii. 409. ; Burnet, ii. 5. ]

[Footnote 671: London Gazette, June 30. 1690; Historical and PoliticalMercury for July 1690. ]

[Footnote 672: Nottingham to William, July 15. 1690. ]

[Footnote 673: Burnet, ii. 53, 54. ; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, July 7. 11. 1690 London Gazette, July 14. 1690. ]

[Footnote 674: Mary to William, July 3. 10. 1690; Shrewsbury toCaermarthen, July 15. ]

[Footnote 675: Mary to the States General, July 12. ; Burchett's Memoirs;An important Account of some remarkable Passages in the Life of Arthur, Earl of Torrington, 1691. ]

[Footnote 676: London Gazette, June 19 1690; History of the Wars inIreland by an Officer in the Royal Army, 1690, ; Villare Hibernicum, 1690;. Story's Impartial History, 1691; Historical Collections relatingto the town of Belfast, 1817. This work contains curious extracts fromMSS. Of the seventeenth century. In the British Museum is a map ofBelfast made in 1685 so exact that the houses may be counted. ]

[Footnote 677: Lauzun to Louvois, June 16/26. The messenger who broughtthe news to Lauzun had heard the guns and seen the bonfires. Historyof the Wars in Ireland by an Officer of the Royal Army, 1690; Lireof James, ii. 392. , Orig. Mem. ; Burnet, ii. 47. Burnet is strangelymistaken when he says that William had been six days in Ireland beforehis arrival was known to James. ]

[Footnote 678: A True and Perfect Journal of the Affairs of Ireland by aPerson of Quality, 1690; King, iii. 18. Luttrell's proclamation will befound in King's Appendix. ]

[Footnote 679: Villare Hibernicum, 1690. ]

[Footnote 680: The order addressed to the Collector of Customs will befound in Dr. Reid's History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. ]

[Footnote 681: "La gayete peinte sur son visage, " says Dumont, who sawhim at Belfast, "nous fit tout esperer pour les heureux succes de lacampagne. "]

[Footnote 682: Story's Impartial Account; MS. Journal of ColonelBellingham; The Royal Diary. ]

[Footnote 683: Story's Impartial Account. ]

[Footnote 684: Lauzun to Louvois, June 23/July 3 1690; Life of James, ii. 393, Orig. Mem. ]

[Footnote 685: Story's Impartial Account; Dumont MS. ]

[Footnote 686: Much interesting information respecting the field ofbattle and the surrounding country will be found in Mr. Wilde's pleasingvolume entitled "The Beauties of the Boyne and Blackwater. "]

[Footnote 687: Memorandum in the handwriting of Alexander, Earl ofMarchmont. He derived his information from Lord Selkirk, who was inWilliam's army. ]

[Footnote 688: James says (Life, ii 393. Orig. Mem. ) that the countryafforded no better position. King, in a thanksgiving sermon which hepreached at Dublin after the close of the campaign, told his hearersthat "the advantage of the post of the Irish was, by all intelligentmen, reckoned above three to one. " See King's Thanksgiving Sermon, preached on Nov 16. 1690, before Lords Justices. This is, no doubt, anabsurd exaggeration. But M. De la Hoguette, one of the principal Frenchofficers who was present at the battle of the Boyne, informed Louvoisthat the Irish army occupied a good defensive position, Letter of LaHoguette from Limerick, July 31/Aug 1690. ]

[Footnote 689: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, March, 1690. ]

[Footnote 690: See the Historical records of the Regiments of theBritish army, and Story's list of the army of William as it passed inreview at Finglass, a week after the battle. ]

[Footnote 691: See his Funeral Sermon preached at the church of SaintMary Aldermary on the 24th of June 1690. ]

[Footnote 692: Story's Impartial History; History of the Wars in Irelandby an Officer of the Royal Army; Hop to the States General, June 30/July10. 1690. ]

[Footnote 693: London Gazette, July 7. 1690; Story's Impartial History;History of the Wars in Ireland by an Officer of the Royal Army;Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Lord Marchmont's Memorandum; Burnet, ii. 50. And Thanksgiving Sermon; Dumont MS. ]

[Footnote 694: La Hoguette to Louvois, July 31/Aug 10 1690. ]

[Footnote 695: That I have done no injustice to the Irish infantry willappear from the accounts which the French officers who were at theBoyne sent to their government and their families. La Hoguette, writing hastily to Louvois on the 4/14th of July, says: "je vous dirayseulement, Monseigneur, que nous n'avons pas este battus, mais queles ennemys ont chasses devant eux les trouppes Irlandoises comme desmoutons, sans avoir essaye un seul coup de mousquet. "

Writing some weeks later more fully from Limerick, he says, "J'en meursde honte. " He admits that it would have been no easy matter to win thebattle, at best. "Mais il est vray aussi, " he adds, "que les Irlandoisne firent pas la moindre resistance, et plierent sans tirer un seulcoup. " Zurlauben, Colonel of one of the finest regiments in the Frenchservice, wrote to the same effect, but did justice to the courage of theIrish horse, whom La Hoguette does not mention. 

There is at the French War Office a letter hastily scrawled byBoisseleau, Lauzun's second in command, to his wife after the battle. Hewrote thus: "Je me porte bien, ma chere feme. Ne t'inquieste pas de moy. Nos Irlandois n'ont rien fait qui vaille. Ils ont tous lache le pie. "

Desgrigny writing on the 10/20th of July, assigns several reasons forthe defeat. "La première et la plus forte est la fuite des Irlandois quisont en verite des gens sur lesquels il ne faut pas compter du tout. " Inthe same letter he says: "Il n'est pas naturel de croire qu'une armee devingt cinq mille hommes qui paroissoit de la meilleure volonte dumonde, et qui a la veue des ennemis faisoit des cris de joye, dut etreentierement defaite sans avoir tire l'epee et un seul coup de mousquet. Il y a en tel regiment tout entier qui a laisse ses habits, ses armes, et ses drapeaux sur le champ de bataille, et a gagne les montagnes avecses officiers. "

I looked in vain for the despatch in which Lauzun must have givenLouvois a detailed account of the battle. ]

[Footnote 696: Lauzun wrote to Seignelay, July 16/26 1690, "RichardAmilton a ete fait prisonnier, faisant fort bien son devoir. "]

[Footnote 697: My chief materials for the history of this battle areStory's Impartial Account and Continuation; the History of the War inIreland by an Officer of the Royal Army; the despatches in the FrenchWar Office; The Life of James, Orig. Mem. Burnet, ii. 50. 60; NarcissusLuttrell's Diary; the London Gazette of July 10. 1690; the Despatches ofHop and Baden; a narrative probably drawn up by Portland, which Williamsent to the States General; Portland's private letter to Melville;Captain Richardson's Narrative and map of the battle; the Dumont MS. , and the Bellingham MS. I have also seen an account of the battle in aDiary kept in bad Latin and in an almost undecipherable hand by oneof the beaten army who seems to have been a hedge schoolmaster turnedCaptain. This Diary was kindly lent to me by Mr. Walker, to whom itbelongs. The writer relates the misfortunes of his country in a styleof which a short specimen may suffice: 1 July, 1690. "O diemillum infandum, cum inimici potiti sunt pass apud Oldbridge et noscircumdederunt et fregerunt prope Plottin. Hinc omnes fugimus Dublinversus. Ego mecum tuli Cap Moore et Georgium Ogle, et venimus hac nocteDub. "]

[Footnote 698: See Pepys's Diary, June 4. 1664. "He tells me above allof the Duke of York, that he is more himself, and more of judgment is athand in him, in the middle of a desperate service than at other times. "Clarendon repeatedly says the same. Swift wrote on the margin of hiscopy of Clarendon, in one place, "How old was he (James) when he turnedPapist and a coward?"--in another, "He proved a cowardly Popish king. "]

[Footnote 699: Pere Orleans mentions that Sarsfield accompanied James. The battle of the Boyne had scarcely been fought when it was made thesubject of a drama, the Royal Flight, or the Conquest of Ireland, aFarce, 1690. Nothing more execrable was ever written. But it deserves tobe remarked that, in this wretched piece, though the Irish generally arerepresented as poltroons, an exception is made in favour of Sarsfield. "This fellow, " says James, aside, "I will make me valiant, I think, in spite of my teeth. " "Curse of my stars!" says Sarsfield, after thebattle. "That I must be detached! I would have wrested victory out ofheretic Fortune's hands. "]

[Footnote 700: Both La Hoguette and Zurlauben informed their governmentthat it had been necessary to fire on the Irish fugitives, who wouldotherwise have thrown the French ranks into confusion. ]

[Footnote 701: Baden to Van Citters, July 8. 1690. ]

[Footnote 702: New and Perfect Journal, 1690; Narcissus Luttrell'sDiary. ]

[Footnote 703: Story; London Gazette, July 10. 1690. ]

[Footnote 704: True and Perfect journal; Villare Hibernicum; Story'sImpartial History. ]

[Footnote 705: Story; True and Perfect journal; London Gazette, July 101690 Burnet, ii. 51. ; Leslie's Answer to King. ]

[Footnote 706: Life of James, ii. 404. , Orig. Mem. ; Monthly Mercury forAugust, 1690. ]

[Footnote 707: True and Perfect journal. London Gazette, July 10 and14. 1690; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. In the Life of James Bonnell, Accountant General of Ireland, (1703) is a remarkable religiousmeditation, from which I will quote a short passage. "How did we see theProtestants on the great day of our Revolution, Thursday the third ofJuly, a day ever to be remembered by us with the greatest thankfulness, congratulate and embrace one another as they met, like persons alivefrom the dead, like brothers and sisters meeting after a long absence, and going about from house to house to give each other joy of God'sgreat mercy, enquiring of one another how they past the late days ofdistress and terror, what apprehensions they had, what fears or dangersthey were under; those that were prisoners, how they got their liberty, how they were treated, and what, from time to time, they thought ofthings. "]

[Footnote 708: London Gazette, July 14. 1690; Story; True and PerfectJournal; Dumont MS. Dumont is the only person who mentions the crown. As he was present, he could not be mistaken. It was probably the crownwhich James had been in the habit of wearing when he appeared on thethrone at the King's Inns. ]

[Footnote 709: Monthly Mercury for August 1690; Burnet, ii. 50; Dangeau, Aug. 2. 1690, and Saint Simon's note; The Follies of France, or a trueRelation of the extravagant Rejoicings, &c. , dated Paris, Aug. 8. 1690. ]

[Footnote 710: "Me tiene, " the Marquis of Cogolludo, Spanish ministerat Rome, says of this report, "en sumo cuidado y desconsuelo, pues estaseria la ultima ruina de la causa comun. "--Cogolludo to Ronquillo, Rome, Aug. 2. 1690, ]

[Footnote 711: Original Letters, published by Sir Henry Ellis. ]

[Footnote 712: "Del sucesso de Irlanda doy a v. Exca la enorabuena, yle aseguro no ha bastado casi la gente que tengo en la Secretaria pararepartir copias dello, pues le he enbiado a todo el lugar, y la primeraal Papa. "--Cogolludo to Ronquillo, postscript to the letter of Aug. 2. Cogolludo, of course, uses the new style. The tidings of the battle, therefore, had been three weeks in getting to Rome. ]

[Footnote 713: Evelyn (Feb. 25. 1689/90) calls it "a sweet villa. "]

[Footnote 714: Mary to William, July 5. 1690. ]

[Footnote 715: Mary to William, July 6. And 7. 1690; Burnet, ii. 55. ]

[Footnote 716: Baden to Van Citters, July 8/18 1690. ]

[Footnote 717: See two letters annexed to the Memoirs of the IntendantFoucault, and printed in the work of M. De Sirtema des Grovestins in thearchives of the War Office at Paris is a letter written from Brestby the Count of Bouridal on July 11/21 1690. The Count says: "Par larelation du combat que j'ay entendu faire au Roy d'Angleterre et aplusieurs de sa suite en particulier, il ne me paroit pas qu'il soitbien informe de tout ce qui s'est passe dans cette action, et qu'il nescait que la deroute de ses troupes. "]

[Footnote 718: It was not only on this occasion that James held thislanguage. From one of the letters quoted in the last note it appearsthat on his road front Brest to Paris he told every body that theEnglish were impatiently expecting him. "Ce pauvre prince croit que sessujets l'aiment encore. "]

[Footnote 719: Life of James, ii. 411, 412. ; Burnet, ii. 57; andDartmouth's note. ]

[Footnote 720: See the articles Galere and Galerien, in theEncyclopedie, with the plates; A True Relation of the Cruelties andBarbarities of the French upon the English Prisoners of War, by R. Hutton, licensed June 27. 1690. ]

[Footnote 721: See the Collection of Medals of Lewis the Fourteenth. ]

[Footnote 722: This anecdote, true or false, was current at the time, or soon after. In 1745 it was mentioned as a story which old people hadheard in their youth. It is quoted in the Gentleman's Magazine of thatyear from another periodical work. ]

[Footnote 723: London Gazette, July 7. 1690. ]

[Footnote 724: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 725: I give this interesting passage in Van Citters's ownwords. "Door geheel het ryk alles te voet en te paarde in de wapenen opwas; en' t gene een seer groote gerustheyt gaf was dat alle en eenyder even seer tegen de Franse door de laatste voorgevallen batailleverbittert en geanimeert waren. Gelyk door de troupes, dewelke ik opde weg alomme gepasseert ben, niet anders heb konnen hooren als eeneenpaarig en gener al geluydt van God bless King William en Queen Mary. "July 25/Aug 4 1690. ]

[Footnote 726: As to this expedition I have consulted the LondonGazettes of July 24. 28. 31. Aug. 4. 1690 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary;Welwood's Mercurius Reformatus, Sept. 5. The Gazette de Paris; a letterfrom My. Duke, a Deputy Lieutenant of Devonshire, to Hampden, dated July25. A letter from Mr. Fulford of Fulford to Lord Nottingham, dated July26. A letter of the same date from the Deputy Lieutenants of Devonshireto the Earl of Bath; a letter of the same date from Lord Lansdowne tothe Earl of Bath. These four letters are among the MSS. Of the RoyalIrish Academy. Extracts from the brief are given in Lyson's Britannia. Dangeau inserted in his journal, August 16. , a series of extravagantlies. Tourville had routed the militia, taken their cannon and coloursburned men of war, captured richly laden merchantships, and was goingto destroy Plymouth. This is a fair specimen of Dangeau's Englishnews. Indeed he complains that it was hardly possible to get at trueinformation about England. ]

[Footnote 727: Dedication of Arthur. ]

[Footnote 728: See the accounts of Anderton's Trial, 1693; the Postmanof March 12. 1695/6; the Flying Post of March 7. 1700; Some Discoursesupon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, by Hickes, 1695. The appendix tothese Discourses contains a curious account of the inquisition intoprinting offices tinder the Licensing Act. ]

[Footnote 729: This was the ordinary cant of the Jacobites. A Whigwriter had justly said in the preceding year, "They scurrilously callour David a man of blood, though, to this day, he has not suffered adrop to be spilt. "--Alephibosheth and Ziba, licensed Aug. 30. 1689. ]

[Footnote 730: "Restore unto us again the publick worship of thy name, the reverent administration of thy sacraments. Raise up the formergovernment both in church and state, that we may be no longer withoutKing, without priest, without God in the world. "]

[Footnote 731: A Form of Prayer and Humiliation for God's Blessing uponHis Majesty and his Dominions, and for Removing and Averting of God'sjudgments from this Church and State, 1690. ]

[Footnote 732: Letter of Lloyd, Bishop of Norwich, to Sancroft, in theTanner MSS. ]

[Footnote 733: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 734: A Modest Inquiry into the Causes of the present Disastersin England, and who they are that brought the French into the EnglishChannel described, 1690; Reflections upon a Form of Prayer lately setout for the Jacobites, 1690; A Midnight Touch at an UnlicensedPamphlet, 1690. The paper signed by the nonjuring Bishops has often beenreprinted. ]

[Footnote 735: William to Heinsius, July 4/14. 1690. ]

[Footnote 736: Story; London Gazette, Aug 4. 1690; Dumont MS. ]

[Footnote 737: Story; William to Heinsius, July 31/Aug 10 1690; Lond. Gaz. , Aug, 11. ]

[Footnote 738: Mary to William, Aug. 7/15 Aug 22/Sept, Aug. 26/Sept 51690]

[Footnote 739: Macariae Excidium; Mac Geoghegan; Life of James, ii. 420. ; London Gazette, Aug. 14. 1690. ]

[Footnote 740: The impatience of Lauzun and his countrymen to get awayfrom Ireland is mentioned in a letter of Oct. 21. 1690, quoted in theMemoirs of James, ii. 421. "Asimo, " says Colonel Kelly, the author ofthe Macariae Excidium, "diuturnam absentiam tam aegre molesteque ferebatut bellum in Cypro protrahi continuarique ipso ei auditu acerbissimumesset. Nec incredibile est ducum in illius exercitu nonnullos, potissimum qui patrii coeli dulcedinem impatientius suspirabant, sibipersuasisse desperatas Cypri res nulla humana ope defendi sustentariqueposse. " Asimo is Lauzun, and Cyprus Ireland. ]

[Footnote 741: "Pauci illi ex Cilicibus aulicis, qui cum regina inSyria commorante remanserant, . .. . Non cessabant universam nationem foedetraducere, et ingestis insuper convitiis lacerare, pavidos et malefidosproditores ac Ortalium consceleratissimos publice appellando. "--MacariaeExcidium. The Cilicians are the English. Syria is France. ]

[Footnote 742: "Tanta infamia tam operoso artificio et subtili commentoin vulgus sparsa, tam constantibus de Cypriorum perfidia atque opprobriorumoribus, totam, qua lata est, Syriam ita pervasit, ut mercatoresCyprii, . . Propter inustum genti dedecus, intra domorum septa clausinunquam prodire auderent; tanto eorum odio populus in universumexarserat. "--Macariae Excidium. ]

[Footnote 743: I have seen this assertion in a contemporary pamphlet ofwhich I cannot recollect the title. ]

[Footnote 744: Story; Dumont MS, ]

[Footnote 745: Macariae Excidium. Boisseleau remarked the ebb and flowof courage among the Irish. I have quoted one of his letters to hiswife. It is but just to quote another. "Nos Irlandois n'avoient jamaisvu le feu; et cela les a surpris. Presentement, ils sont si faches den'avoir pas fait leur devoir que je suis bien persuadé qu'ils ferontmieux pour l'avenir. "]

[Footnote 746: La Hoguette, writing to Louvois from Limerick, July31/Aug 10 1690, says of Tyrconnel: "Il a d'ailleurs trop peu deconnoissance e des choses de notre metier. Il a perdu absolumentla confiance des officiers du pays, surtout depuis le jour de notrederoute; et, en effet, Monseigneur, je me crois oblige de vous direque des le moment ou les ennemis parurent sur le bord de la riviere lepremier jour, et dans toute la journee du lendemain, il parut a toutle monde dans une si grande lethargie qu'il etoit incapable de prendreaucun parti, quelque chose qu'on lui proposat. "]

[Footnote 747: Desgrigny says of the Irish: "Ils sont toujours prets denous egorger par l'antipathie qu'ils ont pour nous. C'est la nation dumonde la plus brutale, et qui a le moins d'humanite. " Aug. 1690. ]

[Footnote 748: Story; Account of the Cities in Ireland that are stillpossessed by the Forces of King James, 1690. There are some curious oldmaps of Limerick in the British Museum. ]

[Footnote 749: Story; Dumont MS. ]

[Footnote 750: Story; James, ii. 416. ; Burnet, ii. 58. ; Dumont MS. ]

[Footnote 751: Story; Dumont MS. ]

[Footnote 752: See the account of the O'Donnels in Sir William Betham'sIrish Antiquarian Researches. It is strange that he makes no mention ofBaldearg, whose appearance in Ireland is the most extraordinary eventin the whole history of the race. See also Story's impartial History;Macariae Excidium, and Mr. O'Callaghan's note; Life of James, ii. 434. ;the Letter of O'Donnel to Avaux, and the Memorial entitled, "Memoiredonnee par un homme du Comte O'Donnel a M. D'Avaux. "]

[Footnote 753: The reader will remember Corporal Trim's explanationof radical heat and radical moisture. Sterne is an authority not to bedespised on these subjects. His boyhood was passed in barracks; he wasconstantly listening to the talk of old soldiers who had served underKing William used their stories like a man of true genius. ]

[Footnote 754: Story; William to Waldeck, Sept. 22. 1690; LondonGazette, Sept. 4, Berwick asserts that when the siege was raised nota drop of rain had fallen during a month, that none fell during thefollowing three weeks, and that William pretended that the weather waswet merely to hide the shame of his defeat. Story, who was on the spotsay, "It was cloudy all about, and rained very fast, so that every bodybegan to dread the consequences of it;" and again "The rain which hadalready falled had soften the ways. .. This was one reason for raisingthe siege; for, if we had not, granting the weather to continue bad, wemust either have taken the town, or of necessity have lost our cannon. "Dumont, another eyewitness, says that before the siege was raised therains had been most violent; that the Shannon was swollen; that theearth was soaked; that the horses could not keep their feet. ]

[Footnote 755: London Gazette, September 11 1690; Narcissus Luttrell'sDiary. I have seen a contemporary engraving of Covent Garden as itappeared on this night. ]

[Footnote 756: Van Citters to the States General, March 19/29. 1689. ]

[Footnote 757: As to Marlborough's expedition, see Story's ImpartialHistory; the Life of James, ii. 419, 420. ; London Gazette, Oct. 6. 13. 16. 27. 30. 1690; Monthly Mercury for Nov. 1690; History of King, William, 1702; Burnet, ii. 60. ; the Life of Joseph Pike, a Quaker ofCork]

[Footnote 758: Balcarras; Annandale's Confession in the Leven andMelville Papers; Burnet, ii. 35. As to Payne, see the Second ModestInquiry into the Cause of the present Disasters, 1690. ]

[Footnote 759: Balcarras; Mackay's Memoirs; History of the lateRevolution in Scotland, 1690; Livingstone's Report, dated May 1; LondonGazette, May 12. 1690. ]

[Footnote 760: History of the late Revolution in Scotland, 1690. ]

[Footnote 761: Mackay's Memoirs and Letters to Hamilton of June 20. And24. 1690 Colonel Hill to Melville, July 10 26. ; London Gazette, July17. 21. As to Inverlochy, see among the Culloden papers, a plan forpreserving the peace of the Highlands, drawn up, at this time, by thefather of President Forbes. ]

[Footnote 762: Balcarras. ]

[Footnote 763: See the instructions to the Lord High Commissioner in theLeven and Melville Papers. ]

[Footnote 764: Balcarras. ]

[Footnote 765: Act. Parl. June 7. 1690. ]

[Footnote 766: Balcarras. ]

[Footnote 767: Faithful Contendings Displayed; Case of the presentAfflicted Episcopal Clergy in Scotland, 1690. ]

[Footnote 768: Act. Parl. April 25. 1690. ]

[Footnote 769: See the Humble Address of the Presbyterian Ministers andProfessors of the Church of Scotland to His Grace His Majesty's HighCommissioner and to the Right Honourable the Estates of Parliament. ]

[Footnote 770: See the Account of the late Establishment of PresbyterianGovernment by the Parliament of Scotland, Anno 1690. This is anEpiscopalian narrative. Act. Parl. May 26. 1690. ]

[Footnote 771: Act. Parl. June 7. 1690. ]

[Footnote 772: An Historical Relation of the late Presbyterian GeneralAssembly in a Letter from a Person in Edinburgh to his Friend in Londonlicensed April 20. 1691. ]

[Footnote 773: Account of the late Establishment of the PresbyterianGovernment by the Parliament of Scotland, 1690. ]

[Footnote 774: Act. Parl. July 4. 1690. ]

[Footnote 775: Act. Parl. July 19 1690; Lockhart to Melville, April 29. 1690. ]

[Footnote 776: Balcarras; Confession of Annandale in the Leven andMelville Papers. ]

[Footnote 777: Balcarras; Notes of Ross's Confession in the Leven andMelville Papers. ]

[Footnote 778: Balcarras; Mary's account of her interview withMontgomery, printed among the Leven and Melville Papers. ]

[Footnote 779: Compare Balcarras with Burnett, ii. 62. The pamphletentitled Great Britain's Just Complaint is a good specimen ofMontgomery's manner. ]

[Footnote 780: Balcarras; Annandale's Confession. ]

[Footnote 781: Burnett, ii. 62, Lockhart to Melville, Aug. 30. 1690 andCrawford to Melville, Dec. 11. 1690 in the Leven and Melville Papers;Neville Payne's letter of Dec 3 1692, printed in 1693. ]

[Footnote 782: Historical Relation of the late Presbyterian GeneralAssembly, 1691; The Presbyterian Inquisition as it was lately practisedagainst the Professors of the College of Edinburgh, 1691. ]

[Footnote 783: One of the most curious of the many curious paperswritten by the Covenanters of that generation is entitled, "Nathaniel, or the Dying Testimony of John Matthieson in Closeburn. " Matthieson didnot die till 1709, but his Testimony was written some years earlier, when he was in expectation of death. "And now, " he says, "I as a dyingman, would in a few words tell you that are to live behind my thoughtsas to the times. When I saw, or rather heard, the Prince and Princess ofOrange being set up as they were, and his pardoning all the murderersof the saints and receiving all the bloody beasts, soldiers, andothers, all these officers of their state and army, and all the bloodycounsellors, civil and ecclesiastic; and his letting slip that son ofBelial, his father in law, who, both by all the laws of God and man, ought to have died, I knew he would do no good to the cause and work ofGod. "]

[Footnote 784: See the Dying Testimony of Mr. Robert Smith, Student ofDivinity, who lived in Douglas Town, in the Shire of Clydesdale, whodied about two o'clock in the Sabbath morning, Dec. 13. 1724, aged 58years; and the Dying Testimony of William Wilson, sometime Schoolmasterof Park in the Parish of Douglas, aged 68, who died May 7. 1757. ]

[Footnote 785: See the Dying Testimony of William Wilson, mentionedin the last note. It ought to be remarked that, on the subject ofwitchcraft, the Divines of the Associate Presbytery were as absurd asthis poor crazy Dominie. See their Act, Declaration, and Testimony, published in 1773 by Adam Gib. ]

[Footnote 786: In the year 1791, Thomas Henderson of Paisley wrote, in defence of some separatists who called themselves the ReformedPresbytery, against a writer who had charged them with "disowning thepresent excellent sovereign as the lawful King of Great Britain. " "TheReformed Presbytery and their connections, " says Mr. Henderson, "havenot been much accustomed to give flattering titles to princes. ". .. .. "However, they entertain no resentment against the person of thepresent occupant, nor any of the good qualities which he possesses. Theysincerely wish that he were more excellent than external royalty canmake him, that he were adorned with the image of Christ, " &c. , &c. , &c. "But they can by no means acknowledge him, nor any of the episcopalpersuasion, to be a lawful king over these covenanted lands. "]

[Footnote 787: An enthusiast, named George Calderwood, in his preface toa Collection of Dying Testimonies, published in 1806, accuses even theReformed Presbytery of scandalous compliances. "As for the ReformedPresbytery, " he says, "though they profess to own the martyr's testimonyin hairs and hoofs, yet they have now adopted so many new distinctions, and given up their old ones, that they have made it so evident that itis neither the martyr's testimony nor yet the one that that Presbyteryadopted at first that they are now maintaining. When the ReformedPresbytery was in its infancy, and had some appearance of honesty andfaithfulness among them, they were blamed by all the other parties forusing of distinctions that no man could justify, i. E. They would notadmit into their communion those that paid the land tax or subscribedtacks to do so; but now they can admit into their communions both rulersand members who voluntarily pay all taxes and subscribe tacks. ". .. . "Itshall be only referred to government's books, since the commencement ofthe French war, how many of their own members have accepted of places oftrust, to be at government's call, such as bearers of arms, driving ofcattle, stopping of ways, &c. ; and what is all their license for tradingby sea or land but a serving under government?"]

[Footnote 788: The King to Melville, May 22. 1690, in the Leven andMelville Papers. ]

[Footnote 789: Account of the Establishment of Presbyterian Government. ]

[Footnote 790: Carmichael's good qualities are fully admitted by theEpiscopalians. See the Historical Relation of the late PresbyterianGeneral Assembly and the Presbyterian Inquisition. ]

[Footnote 791: See, in the Leven and Melville Papers, Melville's Letterswritten from London at this time to Crawford, Rule, Williamson, andother vehement Presbyterians. He says: "The clergy that were put out, and come up, make a great clamour: many here encourage and rejoyce atit. .. . There is nothing now but the greatest sobrietie and moderationimaginable to be used, unless we will hazard the overturning of all; andtake this as earnest, and not as imaginations and fears only. "]

[Footnote 792: Principal Acts of the General Assembly of the Church ofScotland held in and begun at Edinburgh the 16th day of October, 1690;Edinburgh, 1691. ]

[Footnote 793: Monthly Mercuries; London Gazettes of November 3. And 6. 1690. ]

[Footnote 794: Van Citters to the States General, Oct. 3/13 1690. ]

[Footnote 795: Lords' Journals, Oct. 6. 1690; Commons' Journals, Oct. 8. ]

[Footnote 796: I am not aware that this lampoon has ever been printed. I have seen it only in two contemporary manuscripts. It is entitled TheOpening of the Session, 1690. ]

[Footnote 797: Commons' Journals, Oct. 9, 10 13, 14. 1690. ]

[Footnote 798: Commons' Journals of December, 1690, particularly of Dec. 26. Stat. 2 W. & M. Sess 2. C. 11. ]

[Footnote 799: Stat. 2 W. And M. Sess. 2. C. I. 3, 4. ]

[Footnote 800: Burnet, ii. 67. See the journals of both Houses, particularly the Commons' Journals of the 10th of December and theLords' Journals of the 30th of December and the 1st of January. The billitself will be found in the archives of the House of Lords. ]

[Footnote 801: Lords' Journals, Oct. 30. 1690. The numbers are nevergiven in the Lords' Journals. That the majority was only two is assertedby Ralph, who had, I suppose, some authority which I have not been ableto find. ]

[Footnote 802: Van Citters to the States General, Nov. 14/24 1690. TheEarl of Torrington's speech to the House of Commons, 1710. ]

[Footnote 803: Burnet, ii. 67, 68. ; Van Citters to the States General, Nov. 22/Dec 1 1690; An impartial Account of some remarkable Passagesin the Life of Arthur, Earl of Torrington, together with some modestRemarks on the Trial and Acquitment, 1691; Reasons for the Trial of theEarl of Torrington by Impeachment, 1690; The Parable of the Bearbaiting, 1690; The Earl of Torrington's Speech to the House of Commons, 1710. That Torrington was coldly received by the peers I learned from anarticle in the Noticias Ordinarias of February 6 1691, Madrid. ]

[Footnote 804: In one Whig lampoon of this year are these lines, "David, we thought, succeeded Saul, When William rose on James's fall; But now King Thomas governs all. "

In another are these lines:

 "When Charles did seem to fill the throne, This tyrant Tom made England groan. "

A third says:

 "Yorkshire Tom was rais'd to honour, For what cause no creature knew; He was false to the royal donor And will be the same to you. "]

[Footnote 805: A Whig poet compares the two Marquesses, as they wereoften called, and gives George the preference over Thomas. ]

 "If a Marquess needs must steer us, Take a better in his stead, Who will in your absence cheer us, And has far a wiser head. "]

[Footnote 806: "A thin, illnatured ghost that haunts the King. "]

[Footnote 807:

 "Let him with his blue riband be Tied close up to the gallows tree For my lady a cart; and I'd contrive it, Her dancing son and heir should drive it. "]

[Footnote 808: As to the designs of the Whigs against Caermarthen, see Burnet, ii. 68, 69, and a very significant protest in the Lords'journals, October 30. 1690. As to the relations between Caermarthen andGodolphin, see Godolphin's letter to William, dated March 20. 1691, inDalrymple. ]

[Footnote 809: My account of this conspiracy is chiefly taken from theevidence, oral and documentary, which was produced on the trial of theconspirators. See also Burnet, ii. 69, 70. , and the Life of James, ii. 441. Narcissus Luttrell remarks that no Roman Catholic appeared to havebeen admitted to the consultations of the conspirators. ]

[Footnote 810: The genuineness of these letters was once contested onvery frivolous grounds. But the letter of Turner to Sancroft, which isamong the Tanner papers in the Bodleian Library, and which will be foundin the Life of Ken by a Layman, must convince the most incredulous. ]

[Footnote 811: The words are these: "The Modest inquiry--The Bishops'Answer--Not the chilling of them--But the satisfying of friends. " TheModest Inquiry was the pamphlet which hinted at Dewitting. ]

[Footnote 812: Lords' and Commons' Journals Jan 5 1690/1; LondonGazette, Jan 8]