William's Voyage to Holland
William's Entrance into the Hague
Congress at the Hague
William his own Minister for Foreign Affairs
William obtains a Toleration for the Waldenses; Vices inherent in the Nature of Coalitions
Siege and Fall of Mons
William returns to England; Trials of Preston and Ashton
Execution of Ashton
Preston's Irresolution and Confessions
Lenity shown to the Conspirators
Dartmouth
Turner; Penn
Death of George Fox; his Character
Interview between Penn and Sidney
Preston pardoned
Joy of the Jacobites at the Fall of Mons
The vacant Sees filled
Tillotson Archbishop of Canterbury
Conduct of Sancroft
Difference between Sancroft and Ken
Hatred of Sancroft to the Established Church; he provides for the episcopal Succession among the Nonjurors
The new Bishops
Sherlock Dean of Saint Paul's
Treachery of some of William's Servants
Russell
Godolphin
Marlborough
William returns to the Continent
The Campaign of 1691 in Flanders
The War in Ireland; State of the English Part of Ireland
State of the Part of Ireland which was subject to James
Dissensions among the Irish at Limerick
Return of Tyrconnel to Ireland
Arrival of a French Fleet at Limerick; Saint Ruth
The English take the Field
Fall of Ballymore; Siege and Fall of Athlone
Retreat of the Irish Army
Saint Ruth determines to fight
Battle of Aghrim
Fall of Galway
Death of Tyrconnel
Second Siege of Limerick
The Irish desirous to capitulate
Negotiations between the Irish Chiefs and the Besiegers
The Capitulation of Limerick
The Irish Troops required to make their Election between their Country and France
Most of the Irish Troops volunteer for France
Many of the Irish who had volunteered for France desert
The last Division of the Irish Army sails from Cork for France
State of Ireland after the War
CHAPTER XVIII
Opening of the Parliament
Debates on the Salaries and Fees of Official Men
Act excluding Papists from Public Trust in Ireland
Debates on the East India Trade
Debates on the Bill for regulating Trials in Cases of High Treason
Plot formed by Marlborough against the Government of William
Marlborough's Plot disclosed by the Jacobites
Disgrace of Marlborough; Various Reports touching the Cause of Marlborough's Disgrace.
Rupture between Mary and Anne
Fuller's Plot
Close of the Session; Bill for ascertaining the Salaries of the Judges rejected
Misterial Changes in England
Ministerial Changes in Scotland
State of the Highlands
Breadalbane employed to negotiate with the Rebel Clans
Glencoe
William goes to the Continent; Death of Louvois
The French Government determines to send an Expedition against England
James believes that the English Fleet is friendly to him
Conduct of Russell
A Daughter born to James
Preparations made in England to repel Invasion
James goes down to his Army at La Hogue
James's Declaration
Effect produced by James's Declaration
The English and Dutch Fleets join; Temper of the English Fleet
Battle of La Hogue
Rejoicings in England
Young's Plot
CHAPTER XIX
Foreign Policy of William
The Northern Powers
The Pope
Conduct of the Allies
The Emperor
Spain
William succeeds in preventing the Dissolution of the Coalition
New Arrangements for the Government of the Spanish Netherlands
Lewis takes the Field
Siege of Namur
Lewis returns to Versailles
Luxemburg
Battle of Steinkirk
Conspiracy of Grandval
Return of William to England
Naval Maladministration
Earthquake at Port Royal
Distress in England; Increase of Crime
Meeting of Parliament; State of Parties
The King's Speech; Question of Privilege raised by the Lords
Debates on the State of the Nation
Bill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of Treason
Case of Lord Mohun
Debates on the India Trade
Supply
Ways and Means; Land Tax
Origin of the National Debt
Parliamentary Reform
The Place Bill
The Triennial Bill
The First Parliamentary Discussion on the Liberty of the Press
State of Ireland
The King refuses to pass the Triennial Bill
Ministerial Arrangements
The King goes to Holland; a Session of Parliament in Scotland
CHAPTER XX
State of the Court of Saint Germains
Feeling of the Jacobites; Compounders and Noncompounders
Change of Ministry at Saint Germains; Middleton
New Declaration put forth by James
Effect of the new Declaration
French Preparations for the Campaign; Institution of the Order of Saint Lewis
Middleton's Account of Versailles
William's Preparations for the Campaign
Lewis takes the Field
Lewis returns to Versailles
Manoeuvres of Luxemburg
Battle of Landen
Miscarriage of the Smyrna Fleet
Excitement in London
Jacobite Libels; William Anderton
Writings and Artifices of the Jacobites
Conduct of Caermarthen
Now Charter granted to the East India Company
Return of William to England; Military Successes of France
Distress of France
A Ministry necessary to Parliamentary Government
The First Ministry gradually formed
Sunderland
Sunderland advises the King to give the Preference to the Whigs
Reasons for preferring the Whigs
Chiefs of the Whig Party; Russell
Somers
Montague
Wharton
Chiefs of the Tory Party; Harley
Foley
Howe
Meeting of Parliament
Debates about the Naval Miscarriages
Russell First Lord of the Admiralty; Retirement of Nottingham
Shrewsbury refuses Office
Debates about the Trade with India
Bill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of Treason
Triennial Bill
Place Bill
Bill for the Naturalisation of Foreign Protestants
Supply
Ways and Means; Lottery Loan
The Bank of England
Prorogation of Parliament; Ministerial Arrangements; Shrewsbury Secretary of State
New Titles bestowed
French Plan of War; English Plan of War
Expedition against Brest
Naval Operations in the Mediterranean
War by Land
Complaints of Trenchard's Administration
The Lancashire Prosecutions
Meeting of the Parliament; Death of Tillotson
Tenison Archbishop of Canterbury; Debates on the Lancashire Prosecutions
Place Bill
Bill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of Treason; the Triennial Bill passed
Death of Mary
Funeral of Mary
Greenwich Hospital founded
CHAPTER XXI
Effect of Mary's Death on the Continent
Death of Luxemburg
Distress of William
Parliamentary Proceedings; Emancipation of the Press
Death of Halifax
Parliamentary Inquiries into the Corruption of the Public Offices
Vote of Censure on the Speaker
Foley elected Speaker; Inquiry into the Accounts of the East India Company
Suspicious Dealings of Seymour
Bill against Sir Thomas Cook
Inquiry by a joint Committee of Lords and Commons
Impeachment of Leeds
Disgrace of Leeds
Lords Justices appointed; Reconciliation between William and the Princess Anne
Jacobite Plots against William's Person
Charnock; Porter
Goodman; Parkyns
Fenwick
Session of the Scottish Parliament; Inquiry into the Slaughter of Glencoe
War in the Netherlands; Marshal Villeroy
The Duke of Maine
Jacobite Plots against the Government during William's Absence
Siege of Namur
Surrender of the Town of Namur
Surrender of the Castle of Namur
Arrest of Boufflers
Effect of the Emancipation of the English Press
Return of William to England; Dissolution of the Parliament
William makes a Progress through the Country
The Elections
Alarming State of the Currency
Meeting of the Parliament; Loyalty of the House of Commons
Controversy touching the Currency
Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Currency
Passing of the Act regulating Trials in Cases of High Treason
Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Grant of Crown Lands in Wales to Portland
Two Jacobite Plots formed
Berwick's Plot; the Assassination Plot; Sir George Barclay
Failure of Berwick's Plot
Detection of the Assassination Plot
Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Assassination Plot
State of Public Feeling
Trial of Charnock, King and Keyes
Execution of Charnock, King and Keyes
Trial of Friend
Trial of Parkyns
Execution of Friend and Parkyns
Trials of Rookwood, Cranburne and Lowick
The Association
Bill for the Regulation of Elections
Act establishing a Land Bank
CHAPTER XXII
Military Operations in the Netherlands
Commercial Crisis in England
Financial Crisis
Efforts to restore the Currency
Distress of the People; their Temper and Conduct
Negotiations with France; the Duke of Savoy deserts the Coalition
Search for Jacobite Conspirators in England; Sir John Fenwick
Capture of Fenwick
Fenwick's Confession
Return of William to England
Meeting of Parliament; State of the Country; Speech of William at the Commencement of the Session
Resolutions of the House of Commons
Return of Prosperity
Effect of the Proceedings of the House of Commons on Foreign Governments
Restoration of the Finances
Effects of Fenwick's Confession
Resignation of Godolphin
Feeling of the Whigs about Fenwick
William examines Fenwick
Disappearance of Goodman
Parliamentary Proceedings touching Fenwick's Confession
Bill for attainting Fenwick
Debates of the Commons on the Bill of Attainder
The Bill of Attainder carried up to the Lords
Artifices of Monmouth
Debates of the Lords on the Bill of Attainder
Proceedings against Monmouth
Position and Feelings of Shrewsbury
The Bill of Attainder passed; Attempts to save Fenwick
Fenwick's Execution; Bill for the Regulating of Elections
Bill for the Regulation of the Press
Bill abolishing the Privileges of Whitefriars and the Savoy
Close of the Session; Promotions and Appointments
State of Ireland
State of Scotland
A Session of Parliament at Edinburgh; Act for the Settling of Schools
Case of Thomas Aikenhead
Military Operations in the Netherlands
Terms of Peace offered by France
Conduct of Spain; Conduct of the Emperor
Congress of Ryswick
William opens a distinct Negotiation
Meetings of Portland and Boufflers
Terms of Peace between France and England settled
Difficulties caused by Spain and the Emperor
Attempts of James to prevent a general Pacification
The Treaty of Ryswick signed; Anxiety in England
News of the Peace arrives in England
Dismay of the Jacobites
General Rejoicing
The King's Entry into London
The Thanksgiving Day
CHAPTER XVII
William's Voyage to Holland--William's Entrance into the Hague--Congress
at the Hague--William his own Minister for Foreign Affairs--William
obtains a Toleration for the Waldenses; Vices inherent in the Nature of
Coalitions--Siege and Fall of Mons--William returns to England; Trials
of Preston and Ashton--Execution of Ashton--Preston's Irresolution
and Confessions--Lenity shown to the Conspirators--Dartmouth--Turner;
Penn--Death of George Fox; his Character--Interview between Penn and
Sidney--Preston pardoned--Joy of the Jacobites at the Fall of Mons--The
vacant Sees filled--Tillotson Archbishop of Canterbury--Conduct of
Sancroft--Difference between Sancroft and Ken--Hatred of Sancroft to the
Established Church; he provides for the episcopal Succession among the
Nonjurors--The new Bishops--Sherlock Dean of Saint Paul's--Treachery
of some of William's Servants--Russell--Godolphin--Marlborough--William
returns to the Continent--The Campaign of 1691 in Flanders--The War
in Ireland; State of the English Part of Ireland--State of the Part
of Ireland which was subject to James--Dissensions among the Irish at
Limerick--Return of Tyrconnel to Ireland--Arrival of a French Fleet at
Limerick; Saint Ruth--The English take the Field--Fall of Ballymore;
Siege and Fall of Athlone--Retreat of the Irish Army--Saint Ruth
determines to fight--Battle of Aghrim--Fall of Galway--Death
of Tyrconnel--Second Siege of Limerick--The Irish desirous to
capitulate--Negotiations between the Irish Chiefs and the Besiegers--The
Capitulation of Limerick--The Irish Troops required to make their
Election between their Country and France--Most of the Irish Troops
volunteer for France--Many of the Irish who had volunteered for
France desert--The last Division of the Irish Army sails from Cork for
France--State of Ireland after the War
ON the eighteenth of January 1691, the King, having been detained some
days by adverse winds, went on board at Gravesend. Four yachts had
been fitted up for him and for his retinue. Among his attendants were
Norfolk, Ormond, Devonshire, Dorset, Portland, Monmouth, Zulestein, and
the Bishop of London. Two distinguished admirals, Cloudesley Shovel
and George Rooke, commanded the men of war which formed the convoy. The
passage was tedious and disagreeable. During many hours the fleet was
becalmed off the Godwin Sands; and it was not till the fifth day that
the soundings proved the coast of Holland to be near. The sea fog was
so thick that no land could be seen; and it was not thought safe for
the ships to proceed further in the darkness. William, tired out by the
voyage, and impatient to be once more in his beloved country, determined
to land in an open boat. The noblemen who were in his train tried to
dissuade him from risking so valuable a life; but, when they found that
his mind was made up, they insisted on sharing the danger. That danger
proved more serious than they had expected. It had been supposed that
in an hour the party would be on shore. But great masses of floating
ice impeded the progress of the skiff; the night came on; the fog grew
thicker; the waves broke over the King and the courtiers. Once the
keel struck on a sand bank, and was with great difficulty got off. The
hardiest mariners showed some signs of uneasiness. But William, through
the whole night, was as composed as if he had been in the drawingroom at
Kensington. "For shame," he said to one of the dismayed sailors "are
you afraid to die in my company?" A bold Dutch seaman ventured to spring
out, and, with great difficulty, swam and scrambled through breakers,
ice and mud, to firm ground. Here he discharged a musket and lighted
a fire as a signal that he was safe. None of his fellow passengers,
however, thought it prudent to follow his example. They lay tossing in
sight of the flame which he had kindled, till the first pale light of a
January morning showed them that they were close to the island of Goree.
The King and his Lords, stiff with cold and covered with icicles, gladly
landed to warm and rest themselves. [1]
After reposing some hours in the hut of a peasant, William proceeded to
the Hague. He was impatiently expected there for, though the fleet which
brought him was not visible from the shore, the royal salutes had been
heard through the mist, and had apprised the whole coast of his arrival.
Thousands had assembled at Honslaerdyk to welcome him with applause
which came from their hearts and which went to his heart. That was one
of the few white days of a life, beneficent indeed and glorious, but
far from happy. After more than two years passed in a strange land, the
exile had again set foot on his native soil. He heard again the language
of his nursery. He saw again the scenery and the architecture which were
inseparably associated in his mind with the recollections of childhood
and the sacred feeling of home; the dreary mounds of sand, shells and
weeds, on which the waves of the German Ocean broke; the interminable
meadows intersected by trenches; the straight canals; the villas bright
with paint and adorned with quaint images and inscriptions. He had lived
during many weary months among a people who did not love him, who did
not understand him, who could never forget that he was a foreigner.
Those Englishmen who served him most faithfully served him without
enthusiasm, without personal attachment, and merely from a sense of
public duty. In their hearts they were sorry that they had no choice but
between an English tyrant and a Dutch deliverer. All was now changed.
William was among a population by which he was adored, as Elizabeth had
been adored when she rode through her army at Tilbury, as Charles the
Second had been adored when he landed at Dover. It is true that the old
enemies of the House of Orange had not been inactive during the absence
of the Stadtholder. There had been, not indeed clamours, but mutterings
against him. He had, it was said, neglected his native land for his
new kingdom. Whenever the dignity of the English flag, whenever the
prosperity of the English trade was concerned, he forgot that he was a
Hollander. But, as soon as his well remembered face was again seen,
all jealousy, all coldness, was at an end. There was not a boor, not
a fisherman, not an artisan, in the crowds which lined the road from
Honslaerdyk to the Hague, whose heart did not swell with pride at the
thought that the first minister of Holland had become a great King,
had freed the English, and had conquered the Irish. It would have been
madness in William to travel from Hampton Court to Westminster without
a guard; but in his own land he needed no swords or carbines to defend
him. "Do not keep the people off;" he cried: "let them come close to
me; they are all my good friends." He soon learned that sumptuous
preparations were making for his entrance into the Hague. At first he
murmured and objected. He detested, he said, noise and display. The
necessary cost of the war was quite heavy enough. He hoped that his kind
fellow townsmen would consider him as a neighbour, born and bred
among them, and would not pay him so bad a compliment as to treat him
ceremoniously. But all his expostulations were vain. The Hollanders,
simple and parsimonious as their ordinary habits were, had set their
hearts on giving their illustrious countryman a reception suited to his
dignity and to his merit; and he found it necessary to yield. On the day
of his triumph the concourse was immense. All the wheeled carriages
and horses of the province were too few for the multitude of those who
flocked to the show. Many thousands came sliding or skating along the
frozen canals from Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leyden, Haarlem, Delft. At ten
in the morning of the twenty-sixth of January, the great bell of the
Town House gave the signal. Sixteen hundred substantial burghers, well
armed, and clad in the finest dresses which were to be found in
the recesses of their wardrobes, kept order in the crowded streets.
Balconies and scaffolds, embowered in evergreens and hung with tapestry,
hid the windows. The royal coach, escorted by an army of halberdiers
and running footmen, and followed by a long train of splendid equipages,
passed under numerous arches rich with carving and painting, amidst
incessant shouts of "Long live the King our Stadtholder." The front of
the Town House and the whole circuit of the marketplace were in a blaze
with brilliant colours. Civic crowns, trophies, emblems of arts, of
sciences, of commerce and of agriculture, appeared every where. In one
place William saw portrayed the glorious actions of his ancestors. There
was the silent prince, the founder of the Batavian commonwealth, passing
the Meuse with his warriors. There was the more impetuous Maurice
leading the charge at Nieuport. A little further on, the hero might
retrace the eventful story of his own life. He was a child at his
widowed mother's knee. He was at the altar with Diary's hand in his. He
was landing at Torbay. He was swimming through the Boyne. There, too,
was a boat amidst the ice and the breakers; and above it was most
appropriately inscribed, in the majestic language of Rome, the saying of
the great Roman, "What dost thou fear? Thou hast Caesar on board." The
task of furnishing the Latin mottoes had been intrusted to two men,
who, till Bentley appeared, held the highest place among the classical
scholars of that age. Spanheim, whose knowledge of the Roman medals was
unrivalled, imitated, not unsuccessfully, the noble conciseness of those
ancient legends which he had assiduously studied; and he was assisted by
Graevius, who then filled a chair at Utrecht, and whose just reputation
had drawn to that University multitudes of students from every part of
Protestant Europe. [2] When the night came, fireworks were exhibited on
the great tank which washes the walls of the Palace of the Federation.
That tank was now as hard as marble; and the Dutch boasted that nothing
had ever been seen, even on the terrace of Versailles, more brilliant
than the effect produced by the innumerable cascades of flame which
were reflected in the smooth mirror of ice. [3] The English Lords
congratulated their master on his immense popularity. "Yes," said he;
"but I am not the favourite. The shouting was nothing to what it would
have been if Mary had been with me."
A few hours after the triumphal entry, the King attended a sitting of
the States General. His last appearance among them had been on the day
on which he embarked for England. He had then, amidst the broken words
and loud weeping of those grave Senators, thanked them for the kindness
with which they had watched over his childhood, trained his young mind,
and supported his authority in his riper years; and he had solemnly
commended his beloved wife to their care. He now came back among them
the King of three kingdoms, the head of the greatest coalition that
Europe had seen during a hundred and eighty years; and nothing was heard
in the hall but applause and congratulations. [4]
But this time the streets of the Hague were overflowing with the
equipages and retinues of princes and ambassadors who came flocking
to the great Congress. First appeared the ambitious and ostentatious
Frederic, Elector of Brandenburg, who, a few years later, took the
title of King of Prussia. Then arrived the young Elector of Bavaria,
the Regent of Wirtemberg, the Landgraves of Hesse Cassel and Hesse
Darmstadt, and a long train of sovereign princes, sprung from the
illustrious houses of Brunswick, of Saxony, of Holstein, and of Nassau.
The Marquess of Gastanaga, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, repaired
to the assembly from the viceregal Court of Brussels. Extraordinary
ministers had been sent by the Emperor, by the Kings of Spain, Poland,
Denmark, and Sweden, and by the Duke of Savoy. There was scarcely room
in the town and the neighbourhood for the English Lords and gentlemen
and the German Counts and Barons whom curiosity or official duty had
brought to the place of meeting. The grave capital of the most thrifty
and industrious of nations was as gay as Venice in the Carnival. The
walks cut among those noble limes and elms in which the villa of the
Princes of Orange is embosomed were gay with the plumes, the stars,
the flowing wigs, the embroidered coats and the gold hilted swords of
gallants from London, Berlin and Vienna. With the nobles were mingled
sharpers not less gorgeously attired than they. At night the hazard
tables were thronged; and the theatre was filled to the roof. Princely
banquets followed one another in rapid succession. The meats were
served in gold; and, according to that old Teutonic fashion with which
Shakspeare had made his countrymen familiar, as often as any of the
great princes proposed a health, the kettle drums and trumpets sounded.
Some English lords, particularly Devonshire, gave entertainments
which vied with those of Sovereigns. It was remarked that the German
potentates, though generally disposed to be litigious and punctilious
about etiquette, associated, on this occasion, in an unceremonious
manner, and seemed to have forgotten their passion for genealogical and
heraldic controversy. The taste for wine, which was then characteristic
of their nation, they had not forgotten. At the table of the Elector
of Brandenburg much mirth was caused by the gravity of the statesmen of
Holland, who, sober themselves, confuted out of Grotius and Puffendorf
the nonsense stuttered by the tipsy nobles of the Empire. One of those
nobles swallowed so many bumpers that he tumbled into the turf fire, and
was not pulled out till his fine velvet suit had been burned. [5]
In the midst of all this revelry, business was not neglected. A formal
meeting of the Congress was held at which William presided. In a short
and dignified speech, which was speedily circulated throughout Europe,
he set forth the necessity of firm union and strenuous exertion. The
profound respect with which he was heard by that splendid assembly
caused bitter mortification to his enemies both in England and in
France. The German potentates were bitterly reviled for yielding
precedence to an upstart. Indeed the most illustrious among them paid to
him such marks of deference as they would scarcely have deigned to pay
to the Imperial Majesty, mingled with the crowd in his antechamber, and
at his table behaved as respectfully as any English lord in waiting.
In one caricature the allied princes were represented as muzzled bears,
some with crowns, some with caps of state. William had them all in
a chain, and was teaching them to dance. In another caricature, he
appeared taking his ease in an arm chair, with his feet on a cushion,
and his hat on his head, while the Electors of Brandenburg and Bavaria,
uncovered, occupied small stools on the right and left; the crowd of
Landgraves and Sovereign dukes stood at humble distance; and Gastanaga,
the unworthy successor of Alva, awaited the orders of the heretic tyrant
on bended knee. [6]
It was soon announced by authority that, before the beginning of summer,
two hundred and twenty thousand men would be in the field against
France. [7] The contingent which each of the allied powers was
to furnish was made known. Matters about which it would have been
inexpedient to put forth any declaration were privately discussed by
the King of England with his allies. On this occasion, as on every other
important occasion during his reign, he was his own minister for
foreign affairs. It was necessary for the sake of form that he should be
attended by a Secretary of State; and Nottingham had therefore followed
him to Holland. But Nottingham, though, in matters concerning the
internal government of England, he enjoyed a large share of his master's
confidence, knew little more about the business of the Congress than
what he saw in the Gazettes.
This mode of transacting business would now be thought most
unconstitutional; and many writers, applying the standard of their own
age to the transactions of a former age, have severely blamed William
for acting without the advice of his ministers, and his ministers
for submitting to be kept in ignorance of transactions which deeply
concerned the honour of the Crown and the welfare of the nation. Yet
surely the presumption is that what the most honest and honourable men
of both parties, Nottingham, for example, among the Tories, and Somers
among the Whigs, not only did, but avowed, cannot have been altogether
inexcusable; and a very sufficient excuse will without difficulty be
found.
The doctrine that the Sovereign is not responsible is doubtless as old
as any part of our constitution. The doctrine that his ministers are
responsible is also of immemorial antiquity. That where there is
no responsibility there can be no trustworthy security against
maladministration, is a doctrine which, in our age and country, few
people will be inclined to dispute. From these three propositions it
plainly follows that the administration is likely to be best conducted
when the Sovereign performs no public act without the concurrence and
instrumentality of a minister. This argument is perfectly sound. But we
must remember that arguments are constructed in one way, and governments
in another. In logic, none but an idiot admits the premises and denies
the legitimate conclusion. But in practice, we see that great and
enlightened communities often persist, generation after generation, in
asserting principles, and refusing to act upon those principles. It
may be doubted whether any real polity that ever existed has exactly
corresponded to the pure idea of that polity. According to the pure idea
of constitutional royalty, the prince reigns and does not govern; and
constitutional royalty, as it now exists in England, comes nearer than
in any other country to the pure idea. Yet it would be a great error
to imagine that our princes merely reign and never govern. In the
seventeenth century, both Whigs and Tories thought it, not only the
right, but the duty, of the first magistrate to govern. All parties
agreed in blaming Charles the Second for not being his own Prime
Minister; all parties agreed in praising James for being his own Lord
High Admiral; and all parties thought it natural and reasonable that
William should be his own Foreign Secretary.
It may be observed that the ablest and best informed of those who
have censured the manner in which the negotiations of that time were
conducted are scarcely consistent with themselves. For, while they blame
William for being his own Ambassador Plenipotentiary at the Hague, they
praise him for being his own Commander in Chief in Ireland. Yet where is
the distinction in principle between the two cases? Surely every reason
which can be brought to prove that he violated the constitution, when,
by his own sole authority, he made compacts with the Emperor and
the Elector of Brandenburg, will equally prove that he violated the
constitution, when, by his own sole authority, he ordered one column to
plunge into the water at Oldbridge and another to cross the bridge of
Slane. If the constitution gave him the command of the forces of the
State, the constitution gave him also the direction of the foreign
relations of the State. On what principle then can it be maintained that
he was at liberty to exercise the former power without consulting any
body, but that he was bound to exercise the latter power in conformity
with the advice of a minister? Will it be said that an error in
diplomacy is likely to be more injurious to the country than an error
in strategy? Surely not. It is hardly conceivable that any blunder which
William might have made at the Hague could have been more injurious to
the public interests than a defeat at the Boyne. Or will it be said that
there was greater reason for placing confidence in his military than in
his diplomatic skill? Surely not. In war he showed some great moral and
intellectual qualities; but, as a tactician, he did not rank high; and
of his many campaigns only two were decidedly successful. In the talents
of a negotiator, on the other hand, he has never been surpassed. Of the
interests and the tempers of the continental courts he knew more than
all his Privy Council together. Some of his ministers were doubtless men
of great ability, excellent orators in the House of Lords, and versed
in our insular politics. But, in the deliberations of the Congress,
Caermarthen and Nottingham would have been found as far inferior to him
as he would have been found inferior to them in a parliamentary debate
on a question purely English. The coalition against France was his work.
He alone had joined together the parts of that great whole; and he alone
could keep them together. If he had trusted that vast and complicated
machine in the hands of any of his subjects, it would instantly have
fallen to pieces.
Some things indeed were to be done which none of his subjects would have
ventured to do. Pope Alexander was really, though not in name, one of
the allies; it was of the highest importance to have him for a friend;
and yet such was the temper of the English nation that an English
minister might well shrink from having any dealings, direct or indirect,
with the Vatican. The Secretaries of State were glad to leave a matter
so delicate and so full of risk to their master, and to be able
to protest with truth that not a line to which the most intolerant
Protestant could object had ever gone out of their offices.
It must not be supposed however that William ever forgot that his
especial, his hereditary, mission was to protect the Reformed Faith.
His influence with Roman Catholic princes was constantly and strenuously
exerted for the benefit of their Protestant subjects. In the spring of
1691, the Waldensian shepherds, long and cruelly persecuted, and weary
of their lives, were surprised by glad tidings. Those who had been in
prison for heresy returned to their homes. Children, who had been
taken from their parents to be educated by priests, were sent back.
Congregations, which had hitherto met only by stealth and with extreme
peril, now worshipped God without molestation in the face of day. Those
simple mountaineers probably never knew that their fate had been a
subject of discussion at the Hague, and that they owed the happiness
of their firesides, and the security of their humble temples to the
ascendency which William exercised over the Duke of Savoy. [8]
No coalition of which history has preserved the memory has had an abler
chief than William. But even William often contended in vain against
those vices which are inherent in the nature of all coalitions. No
undertaking which requires the hearty and long continued cooperation
of many independent states is likely to prosper. Jealousies inevitably
spring up. Disputes engender disputes. Every confederate is tempted to
throw on others some part of the burden which he ought himself to bear.
Scarcely one honestly furnishes the promised contingent. Scarcely one
exactly observes the appointed day. But perhaps no coalition that ever
existed was in such constant danger of dissolution as the coalition
which William had with infinite difficulty formed. The long list of
potentates, who met in person or by their representatives at the Hague,
looked well in the Gazettes. The crowd of princely equipages, attended
by manycoloured guards and lacqueys, looked well among the lime trees
of the Voorhout. But the very circumstances which made the Congress
more splendid than other congresses made the league weaker than other
leagues. The more numerous the allies, the more numerous were the
dangers which threatened the alliance. It was impossible that twenty
governments, divided by quarrels about precedence, quarrels about
territory, quarrels about trade, quarrels about religion, could long
act together in perfect harmony. That they acted together during several
years in imperfect harmony is to be ascribed to the wisdom, patience and
firmness of William.
The situation of his great enemy was very different. The resources of
the French monarchy, though certainly not equal to those of England,
Holland, the House of Austria, and the Empire of Germany united, were
yet very formidable; they were all collected in a central position; they
were all under the absolute direction of a single mind. Lewis could do
with two words what William could hardly bring about by two months of
negotiation at Berlin, Munich, Brussels, Turin and Vienna. Thus France
was found equal in effective strength to all the states which were
combined against her. For in the political, as in the natural world,
there may be an equality of momentum between unequal bodies, when the
body which is inferior in weight is superior in velocity.
This was soon signally proved. In March the princes and ambassadors
who had been assembled at the Hague separated and scarcely had they
separated when all their plans were disconcerted by a bold and skilful
move of the enemy.
Lewis was sensible that the meeting of the Congress was likely to
produce a great effect on the public mind of Europe. That effect he
determined to counteract by striking a sudden and terrible blow. While
his enemies were settling how many troops each of them should furnish,
he ordered numerous divisions of his army to march from widely distant
points towards Mons, one of the most important, if not the most
important, of the fortresses which protected the Spanish Netherlands.
His purpose was discovered only when it was all but accomplished.
William, who had retired for a few days to Loo, learned, with surprise
and extreme vexation, that cavalry, infantry, artillery, bridges of
boats, were fast approaching the fated city by many converging routes.
A hundred thousand men had been brought together. All the implements
of war had been largely provided by Louvois, the first of living
administrators. The command was entrusted to Luxemburg, the first of
living generals. The scientific operations were directed by Vauban, the
first of living engineers. That nothing might be wanting which could
kindle emulation through all the ranks of a gallant and loyal army, the
magnificent King himself had set out from Versailles for the camp. Yet
William had still some faint hope that it might be possible to raise the
siege. He flew to the Hague, put all the forces of the States General in
motion, and sent pressing messages to the German Princes. Within three
weeks after he had received the first hint of the danger, he was in the
neighbourhood of the besieged city, at the head of near fifty thousand
troops of different nations. To attack a superior force commanded by
such a captain as Luxemburg was a bold, almost a desperate, enterprise.
Yet William was so sensible that the loss of Mons would be an almost
irreparable disaster and disgrace that he made up his mind to run the
hazard. He was convinced that the event of the siege would determine
the policy of the Courts of Stockholm and Copenhagen. Those Courts had
lately seemed inclined to join the coalition. If Mons fell, they would
certainly remain neutral; they might possibly become hostile. "The
risk," he wrote to Heinsius, "is great; yet I am not without hope. I
will do what can be done. The issue is in the hands of God." On the
very day on which this letter was written Mons fell. The siege had been
vigorously pressed. Lewis himself, though suffering from the gout, had
set the example of strenuous exertion. His household troops, the finest
body of soldiers in Europe, had, under his eye, surpassed themselves.
The young nobles of his court had tried to attract his notice by
exposing themselves to the hottest fire with the same gay alacrity with
which they were wont to exhibit their graceful figures at his balls. His
wounded soldiers were charmed by the benignant courtesy with which he
walked among their pallets, assisted while wounds were dressed by the
hospital surgeons, and breakfasted on a porringer of the hospital broth.
While all was obedience and enthusiasm among the besiegers, all was
disunion and dismay among the besieged. The duty of the French lines was
so well performed that no messenger sent by William was able to cross
them. The garrison did not know that relief was close at hand. The
burghers were appalled by the prospect of those horrible calamities
which befall cities taken by storm. Showers of shells and redhot bullets
were falling in the streets. The town was on fire in ten places at once.
The peaceful inhabitants derived an unwonted courage from the excess
of their fear, and rose on the soldiers. Thenceforth resistance was
impossible; and a capitulation was concluded. The armies then retired
into quarters. Military operations were suspended during some weeks;
Lewis returned in triumph to Versailles; and William paid a short visit
to England, where his presence was much needed. [9]
He found the ministers still employed in tracing out the ramifications
of the plot which had been discovered just before his departure. Early
in January, Preston, Ashton and Elliot had been arraigned at the Old
Bailey. They claimed the right of severing in their challenges. It was
therefore necessary to try them separately. The audience was numerous
and splendid. Many peers were present. The Lord President and the two
Secretaries of State attended in order to prove that the papers
produced in Court were the same which Billop had brought to Whitehall. A
considerable number of judges appeared on the bench; and Holt presided.
A full report of the proceedings has come down to us, and well deserves
to be attentively studied, and to be compared with the reports of other
trials which had not long before taken place under the same roof. The
whole spirit of the tribunal had undergone in a few months a change so
complete that it might seem to have been the work of ages. Twelve years
earlier, unhappy Roman Catholics, accused of wickedness which had never
entered into their thoughts, had stood in that dock. The witnesses for
the Crown had repeated their hideous fictions amidst the applauding hums
of the audience. The judges had shared, or had pretended to share, the
stupid credulity and the savage passions of the populace, had exchanged
smiles and compliments with the perjured informers, had roared down
the arguments feebly stammered forth by the prisoners, and had not
been ashamed, in passing the sentence of death, to make ribald jests on
purgatory and the mass. As soon as the butchery of Papists was over, the
butchery of Whigs had commenced; and the judges had applied themselves
to their new work with even more than their old barbarity. To these
scandals the Revolution had put an end. Whoever, after perusing the
trials of Ireland and Pickering, of Grove and Berry, of Sidney, Cornish
and Alice Lisle, turns to the trials of Preston and Ashton, will be
astonished by the contrast. The Solicitor General, Somers, conducted the
prosecutions with a moderation and humanity of which his predecessors
had left him no example. "I did never think," he said, "that it was the
part of any who were of counsel for the King in cases of this nature
to aggravate the crime of the prisoners, or to put false colours on the
evidence." [10] Holt's conduct was faultless. Pollexfen, an older man
than Holt or Somers, retained a little,--and a little was too much,--of
the tone of that bad school in which he had been bred. But, though he
once or twice forgot the austere decorum of his place, he cannot
be accused of any violation of substantial justice. The prisoners
themselves seem to have been surprised by the fairness and gentleness
with which they were treated. "I would not mislead the jury, I'll assure
you," said Holt to Preston, "nor do Your Lordship any manner of injury
in the world." "No, my Lord;" said Preston; "I see it well enough that
Your Lordship would not." "Whatever my fate may be," said Ashton, "I
cannot but own that I have had a fair trial for my life."
The culprits gained nothing by the moderation of the Solicitor General
or by the impartiality of the Court; for the evidence was irresistible.
The meaning of the papers seized by Billop was so plain that the dullest
juryman could not misunderstand it. Of those papers part was fully
proved to be in Preston's handwriting. Part was in Ashton's handwriting
but this the counsel for the prosecution had not the means of proving.
They therefore rested the case against Ashton on the indisputable facts
that the treasonable packet had been found in his bosom, and that he had
used language which was quite unintelligible except on the supposition
that he had a guilty knowledge of the contents. [11]
Both Preston and Ashton were convicted and sentenced to death.
Ashton was speedily executed. He might have saved his life by making
disclosures. But though he declared that, if he were spared, he would
always be a faithful subject of Their Majesties, he was fully resolved
not to give up the names of his accomplices. In this resolution he was
encouraged by the nonjuring divines who attended him in his cell. It
was probably by their influence that he was induced to deliver to the
Sheriffs on the scaffold a declaration which he had transcribed
and signed, but had not, it is to be hoped, composed or attentively
considered. In this paper he was made to complain of the unfairness of a
trial which he had himself in public acknowledged to have been eminently
fair. He was also made to aver, on the word of a dying man, that he knew
nothing of the papers which had been found upon him. Unfortunately his
declaration, when inspected, proved to be in the same handwriting with
one of the most important of those papers. He died with manly fortitude.
[12]
Elliot was not brought to trial. The evidence against him was not quite
so clear as that on which his associates had been convicted; and he was
not worth the anger of the government. The fate of Preston was long in
suspense. The Jacobites affected to be confident that the government
would not dare to shed his blood. He was, they said, a favourite at
Versailles, and his death would be followed by a terrible retaliation.
They scattered about the streets of London papers in which it was
asserted that, if any harm befell him, Mountjoy, and all the other
Englishmen of quality who were prisoners in France, would be broken
on the wheel. [13] These absurd threats would not have deferred the
execution one day. But those who had Preston in their power were not
unwilling to spare him on certain conditions. He was privy to all the
counsels of the disaffected party, and could furnish information of the
highest value. He was informed that his fate depended on himself. The
struggle was long and severe. Pride, conscience, party spirit, were on
one side; the intense love of life on the other. He went during a time
irresolutely to and fro. He listened to his brother Jacobites; and his
courage rose. He listened to the agents of the government; and his heart
sank within him. In an evening when he had dined and drunk his claret,
he feared nothing. He would die like a man, rather than save his neck by
an act of baseness. But his temper was very different when he woke the
next morning, when the courage which he had drawn from wine and company
had evaporated, when he was alone with the iron grates and stone walls,
and when the thought of the block, the axe and the sawdust rose in his
mind. During some time he regularly wrote a confession every forenoon
when he was sober, and burned it every night when he was merry. [14]
His nonjuring friends formed a plan for bringing Sancroft to visit
the Tower, in the hope, doubtless, that the exhortations of so great a
prelate and so great a saint would confirm the wavering virtue of the
prisoner. [15] Whether this plan would have been successful may be
doubted; it was not carried into effect; the fatal hour drew near; and
the fortitude of Preston gave way. He confessed his guilt, and named
Clarendon, Dartmouth, the Bishop of Ely and William Penn, as his
accomplices. He added a long list of persons against whom he could not
himself give evidence, but who, if he could trust to Penn's assurances,
were friendly to King James. Among these persons were Devonshire and
Dorset. [16] There is not the slightest reason to believe that either
of these great noblemen ever had any dealings, direct or indirect,
with Saint Germains. It is not, however, necessary to accuse Penn of
deliberate falsehood. He was credulous and garrulous. The Lord Steward
and the Lord Chamberlain had shared in the vexation with which their
party had observed the leaning of William towards the Tories; and they
had probably expressed that vexation unguardedly. So weak a man as Penn,
wishing to find Jacobites every where, and prone to believe whatever he
wished, might easily put an erroneous construction on invectives such as
the haughty and irritable Devonshire was but too ready to utter, and on
sarcasms such as, in moments of spleen, dropped but too easily from the
lips of the keenwitted Dorset. Caermarthen, a Tory, and a Tory who had
been mercilessly persecuted by the Whigs, was disposed to make the most
of this idle hearsay. But he received no encouragement from his master,
who, of all the great politicians mentioned in history, was the least
prone to suspicion. When William returned to England, Preston was
brought before him, and was commanded to repeat the confession which
had already been made to the ministers. The King stood behind the Lord
President's chair and listened gravely while Clarendon, Dartmouth,
Turner and Penn were named. But as soon as the prisoner, passing from
what he could himself testify, began to repeat the stories which Penn
had told him, William touched Caermarthen on the shoulder and said, "My
Lord, we have had too much of this." [17] This judicious magnanimity
had its proper reward. Devonshire and Dorset became from that day more
zealous than ever in the cause of the master who, in spite of calumny
for which their own indiscretion had perhaps furnished some ground, had
continued to repose confidence in their loyalty. [18]
Even those who were undoubtedly criminal were generally treated with
great lenity. Clarendon lay in the Tower about six months. His guilt
was fully established; and a party among the Whigs called loudly and
importunately for his head. But he was saved by the pathetic entreaties
of his brother Rochester, by the good offices of the humane and
generous Burnet, and by Mary's respect for the memory of her mother. The
prisoner's confinement was not strict. He was allowed to entertain
his friends at dinner. When at length his health began to suffer from
restraint, he was permitted to go into the country under the care of a
warder; the warder was soon removed; and Clarendon was informed that,
while he led a quiet rural life, he should not be molested. [19]
The treason of Dartmouth was of no common dye. He was an English seaman;
and he had laid a plan for betraying Portsmouth to the French, and had
offered to take the command of a French squadron against his country. It
was a serious aggravation of his guilt that he had been one of the very
first persons who took the oaths to William and Mary. He was arrested
and brought to the Council Chamber. A narrative of what passed there,
written by himself, has been preserved. In that narrative he admits that
he was treated with great courtesy and delicacy. He vehemently asserted
his innocence. He declared that he had never corresponded with Saint
Germains, that he was no favourite there, and that Mary of Modena in
particular owed him a grudge. "My Lords," he said, "I am an Englishman.
I always, when the interest of the House of Bourbon was strongest here,
shunned the French, both men and women. I would lose the last drop of
my blood rather than see Portsmouth in the power of foreigners. I am not
such a fool as to think that King Lewis will conquer us merely for the
benefit of King James. I am certain that nothing can be truly imputed
to me beyond some foolish talk over a bottle." His protestations seem
to have produced some effect; for he was at first permitted to remain in
the gentle custody of the Black Rod. On further inquiry, however, it was
determined to send him to the Tower. After a confinement of a few weeks
he died of apoplexy; but he lived long enough to complete his disgrace
by offering his sword to the new government, and by expressing in
fervent language his hope that he might, by the goodness of God and of
Their Majesties, have an opportunity of showing how much he hated the
French. [20]
Turner ran no serious risk; for the government was most unwilling to
send to the scaffold one of the Seven who had signed the memorable
petition. A warrant was however issued for his apprehension; and his
friends had little hope that he would escape; for his nose was such as
none who had seen it could forget; and it was to little purpose that he
put on a flowing wig and that he suffered his beard to grow. The pursuit
was probably not very hot; for, after skulking a few weeks in England,
he succeeded in crossing the Channel, and remained some time in France.
[21]
A warrant was issued against Penn; and he narrowly escaped the
messengers. It chanced that, on the day on which they were sent in
search of him, he was attending a remarkable ceremony at some distance
from his home. An event had taken place which a historian, whose object
is to record the real life of a nation, ought not to pass unnoticed.
While London was agitated by the news that a plot had been discovered,
George Fox, the founder of the sect of Quakers, died.
More than forty years had elapsed since Fox had begun to see visions and
to cast out devils. [22] He was then a youth of pure morals and grave
deportment, with a perverse temper, with the education of a labouring
man, and with an intellect in the most unhappy of all states, that is
to say, too much disordered for liberty, and not sufficiently disordered
for Bedlam. The circumstances in which he was placed were such as could
scarcely fail to bring out in the strongest form the constitutional
diseases of his mind. At the time when his faculties were ripening,
Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, were striving for
mastery, and were, in every corner of the realm, refuting and reviling
each other. He wandered from congregation to congregation; he heard
priests harangue against Puritans; he heard Puritans harangue against
priests; and he in vain applied for spiritual direction and consolation
to doctors of both parties. One jolly old clergyman of the Anglican
communion told him to smoke tobacco and sing psalms; another advised
him to go and lose some blood. [23] The young inquirer turned in disgust
from these advisers to the Dissenters, and found them also blind guides.
[24] After some time he came to the conclusion that no human being was
competent to instruct him in divine things, and that the truth had been
communicated to him by direct inspiration from heaven. He argued that,
as the division of languages began at Babel, and as the persecutors of
Christ put on the cross an inscription in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, the
knowledge of languages, and more especially of Latin, Greek and Hebrew,
must be useless to a Christian minister. [25] Indeed, he was so far
from knowing many languages, that he knew none; nor can the most corrupt
passage in Hebrew be more unintelligible to the unlearned than his
English often is to the most acute and attentive reader. [26] One of the
precious truths which were divinely revealed to this new apostle was,
that it was falsehood and adulation to use the second person plural
instead of the second person singular. Another was, that to talk of the
month of March was to worship the bloodthirsty god Mars, and that to
talk of Monday was to pay idolatrous homage to the moon. To say Good
morning or Good evening was highly reprehensible, for those phrases
evidently imported that God had made bad days and bad nights. [27] A
Christian was bound to face death itself rather than touch his hat
to the greatest of mankind. When Fox was challenged to produce any
Scriptural authority for this dogma, he cited the passage in which it is
written that Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego were thrown into the fiery
furnace with their hats on; and, if his own narrative may be trusted,
the Chief Justice of England was altogether unable to answer this
argument except by crying out, "Take him away, gaoler." [28] Fox
insisted much on the not less weighty argument that the Turks never show
their bare heads to their superiors; and he asked, with great animation,
whether those who bore the noble name of Christians ought not to surpass
Turks in virtue. [29] Bowing he strictly prohibited, and, indeed,
seemed to consider it as the effect of Satanical influence; for, as he
observed, the woman in the Gospel, while she had a spirit of infirmity,
was bowed together, and ceased to bow as soon as Divine power had
liberated her from the tyranny of the Evil One. [30] His expositions of
the sacred writings were of a very peculiar kind. Passages, which had
been, in the apprehension of all the readers of the Gospels during
sixteen centuries, figurative, he construed literally. Passages, which
no human being before him had ever understood in any other than a
literal sense, he construed figuratively. Thus, from those rhetorical
expressions in which the duty of patience under injuries is enjoined he
deduced the doctrine that selfdefence against pirates and assassins is
unlawful. On the other hand, the plain commands to baptize with water,
and to partake of bread and wine in commemoration of the redemption of
mankind, he pronounced to be allegorical. He long wandered from place to
place, teaching this strange theology, shaking like an aspen leaf in his
paroxysms of fanatical excitement, forcing his way into churches,
which he nicknamed steeple houses interrupting prayers and sermons with
clamour and scurrility, [31] and pestering rectors and justices with
epistles much resembling burlesques of those sublime odes in which the
Hebrew prophets foretold the calamities of Babylon and Tyre. [32] He
soon acquired great notoriety by these feats. His strange face, his
strange chant, his immovable hat and his leather breeches were known all
over the country; and he boasts that, as soon as the rumour was heard,
"The Man in Leather Breeches is coming," terror seized hypocritical
professors, and hireling priests made haste to get out of his way. [33]
He was repeatedly imprisoned and set in the stocks, sometimes justly,
for disturbing the public worship of congregations, and sometimes
unjustly, for merely talking nonsense. He soon gathered round him a body
of disciples, some of whom went beyond himself in absurdity. He has told
us that one of his friends walked naked through Skipton declaring the
truth. [34] and that another was divinely moved to go naked during
several years to marketplaces, and to the houses of gentlemen and
clergymen. [35] Fox complains bitterly that these pious acts, prompted
by the Holy Spirit, were requited by an untoward generation with
hooting, pelting, coachwhipping and horsewhipping. But, though he
applauded the zeal of the sufferers, he did not go quite to their
lengths. He sometimes, indeed, was impelled to strip himself partially.
Thus he pulled off his shoes and walked barefoot through Lichfield,
crying, "Woe to the bloody city." [36] But it does not appear that he
ever thought it his duty to appear before the public without that decent
garment from which his popular appellation was derived.
If we form our judgment of George Fox simply by looking at his own
actions and writings, we shall see no reason for placing him, morally
or intellectually, above Ludowick Muggleton or Joanna Southcote. But it
would be most unjust to rank the sect which regards him as its founder
with the Muggletonians or the Southcotians. It chanced that among
the thousands whom his enthusiasm infected were a few persons whose
abilities and attainments were of a very different order from his own.
Robert Barclay was a man of considerable parts and learning. William
Penn, though inferior to Barclay in both natural and acquired abilities,
was a gentleman and a scholar. That such men should have become the
followers of George Fox ought not to astonish any person who remembers
what quick, vigorous and highly cultivated intellects were in our own
times duped by the unknown tongues. The truth is that no powers of mind
constitute a security against errors of this description. Touching God
and His ways with man, the highest human faculties can discover little
more than the meanest. In theology the interval is small indeed between
Aristotle and a child, between Archimedes and a naked savage. It is not
strange, therefore, that wise men, weary of investigation, tormented by
uncertainty, longing to believe something, and yet seeing objections to
every thing, should submit themselves absolutely to teachers who, with
firm and undoubting faith, lay claim to a supernatural commission. Thus
we frequently see inquisitive and restless spirits take refuge from
their own scepticism in the bosom of a church which pretends to
infallibility, and, after questioning the existence of a Deity, bring
themselves to worship a wafer. And thus it was that Fox made some
converts to whom he was immeasurably inferior in every thing except the
energy of his convictions. By these converts his rude doctrines were
polished into a form somewhat less shocking to good sense and good
taste. No proposition which he had laid down was retracted. No indecent
or ridiculous act which he had done or approved was condemned; but what
was most grossly absurd in his theories and practices was softened down,
or at least not obtruded on the public; whatever could be made to appear
specious was set in the fairest light; his gibberish was translated into
English; meanings which he would have been quite unable to comprehend
were put on his phrases; and his system, so much improved that he would
not have known it again, was defended by numerous citations from Pagan
philosophers and Christian fathers whose names he had never heard.
[37] Still, however, those who had remodelled his theology continued
to profess, and doubtless to feel, profound reverence for him; and his
crazy epistles were to the last received and read with respect in Quaker
meetings all over the country. His death produced a sensation which was
not confined to his own disciples. On the morning of the funeral a
great multitude assembled round the meeting house in Gracechurch Street.
Thence the corpse was borne to the burial ground of the sect near
Bunhill Fields. Several orators addressed the crowd which filled the
cemetery. Penn was conspicuous among those disciples who committed the
venerable corpse to the earth. The ceremony had scarcely been finished
when he learned that warrants were out against him. He instantly took
flight, and remained many months concealed from the public eye. [38]
A short time after his disappearance, Sidney received from him a strange
communication. Penn begged for an interview, but insisted on a promise
that he should be suffered to return unmolested to his hiding place.
Sidney obtained the royal permission to make an appointment on these
terms. Penn came to the rendezvous, and spoke at length in his own
defence. He declared that he was a faithful subject of King William and
Queen Mary, and that, if he knew of any design against them, he would
discover it. Departing from his Yea and Nay, he protested, as in the
presence of God, that he knew of no plot, and that he did not believe
that there was any plot, unless the ambitious projects of the French
government might be called plots. Sidney, amazed probably by hearing
a person, who had such an abhorrence of lies that he would not use the
common forms of civility, and such an abhorrence of oaths that he would
not kiss the book in a court of justice, tell something very like a lie,
and confirm it by something very like an oath, asked how, if there were
really no plot, the letters and minutes which had been found on Ashton
were to be explained. This question Penn evaded. "If," he said, "I could
only see the King, I would confess every thing to him freely. I would
tell him much that it would be important for him to know. It is only
in that way that I can be of service to him. A witness for the Crown I
cannot be for my conscience will not suffer me to be sworn." He assured
Sidney that the most formidable enemies of the government were the
discontented Whigs. "The Jacobites are not dangerous. There is not a man
among them who has common understanding. Some persons who came over from
Holland with the King are much more to be dreaded." It does not appear
that Penn mentioned any names. He was suffered to depart in safety. No
active search was made for him. He lay hid in London during some months,
and then stole down to the coast of Sussex and made his escape to
France. After about three years of wandering and lurking he, by the
mediation of some eminent men, who overlooked his faults for the sake
of his good qualities, made his peace with the government, and again
ventured to resume his ministrations. The return which he made for the
lenity with which he had been treated does not much raise his character.
Scarcely had he again begun to harangue in public about the unlawfulness
of war, when he sent a message earnestly exhorting James to make an
immediate descent on England with thirty thousand men. [39]
Some months passed before the fate of Preston was decided. After several
respites, the government, convinced that, though he had told much, he
could tell more, fixed a day for his execution, and ordered the sheriffs
to have the machinery of death in readiness. [40] But he was again
respited, and, after a delay of some weeks, obtained a pardon, which,
however, extended only to his life, and left his property subject to all
the consequences of his attainder. As soon as he was set at liberty
he gave new cause of offence and suspicion, and was again arrested,
examined and sent to prison. [41] At length he was permitted to retire,
pursued by the hisses and curses of both parties, to a lonely manor
house in the North Riding of Yorkshire. There, at least, he had not to
endure the scornful looks of old associates who had once thought him
a man of dauntless courage and spotless honour, but who now pronounced
that he was at best a meanspirited coward, and hinted their suspicions
that he had been from the beginning a spy and a trepan. [42] He employed
the short and sad remains of his life in turning the Consolation
of Boethius into English. The translation was published after the
translator's death. It is remarkable chiefly on account of some very
unsuccessful attempts to enrich our versification with new metres, and
on account of the allusions with which the preface is filled. Under
a thin veil of figurative language, Preston exhibited to the public
compassion or contempt his own blighted fame and broken heart. He
complained that the tribunal which had sentenced him to death had dealt
with him more leniently than his former friends, and that many, who
had never been tried by temptations like his, had very cheaply earned
a reputation for courage by sneering at his poltroonery, and by bidding
defiance at a distance to horrors which, when brought near, subdue even
a constant spirit.
The spirit of the Jacobites, which had been quelled for a time by the
detection of Preston's plot, was revived by the fall of Mons. The joy of
the whole party was boundless. The nonjuring priests ran backwards and
forwards between Sam's Coffee House and Westminster Hall, spreading
the praises of Lewis, and laughing at the miserable issue of the
deliberations of the great Congress. In the Park the malecontents wore
their biggest looks, and talked sedition in their loudest tones. The
most conspicuous among these swaggerers was Sir John Fenwick, who had,
in the late reign, been high in favour and in military command, and
was now an indefatigable agitator and conspirator. In his exultation he
forgot the courtesy which man owes to woman. He had more than once
made himself conspicuous by his impertinence to the Queen. He now
ostentatiously put himself in her way when she took her airing; and,
while all around him uncovered and bowed low, gave her a rude stare
and cocked his hat in her face. The affront was not only brutal, but
cowardly. For the law had provided no punishment for mere impertinence,
however gross; and the King was the only gentleman and soldier in the
kingdom who could not protect his wife from contumely with his sword.
All that the Queen could do was to order the parkkeepers not to admit
Sir John again within the gates. But, long after her death, a day came
when he had reason to wish that he had restrained his insolence. He
found, by terrible proof, that of all the Jacobites, the most desperate
assassins not excepted, he was the only one for whom William felt an
intense personal aversion. [43]
A few days after this event the rage of the malecontents began to
flame more fiercely than ever. The detection of the conspiracy of which
Preston was the chief had brought on a crisis in ecclesiastical
affairs. The nonjuring bishops had, during the year which followed their
deprivation, continued to reside in the official mansions which had
once been their own. Burnet had, at Mary's request, laboured to effect
a compromise. His direct interference would probably have done more harm
than good. He therefore judiciously employed the agency of Rochester,
who stood higher in the estimation of the nonjurors than any statesman
who was not a nonjuror, and of Trevor, who, worthless as he was, had
considerable influence with the High Church party. Sancroft and his
brethren were informed that, if they would consent to perform their
spiritual duty, to ordain, to institute, to confirm, and to watch over
the faith and the morality of the priesthood, a bill should be brought
into Parliament to excuse them from taking the oaths. [44] This offer
was imprudently liberal; but those to whom it was made could not
consistently accept it. For in the ordination service, and indeed in
almost every service of the Church, William and Mary were designated
as King and Queen. The only promise that could be obtained from the
deprived prelates was that they would live quietly; and even this
promise they had not all kept. One of them at least had been guilty of
treason aggravated by impiety. He had, under the strong fear of being
butchered by the populace, declared that he abhorred the thought
of calling in the aid of France, and had invoked God to attest the
sincerity of this declaration. Yet, a short time after, he had been
detected in plotting to bring a French army into England; and he had
written to assure the Court of Saint Germains that he was acting in
concert with his brethren, and especially with Sancroft. The Whigs
called loudly for severity. Even the Tory counsellors of William owned
that indulgence had been carried to the extreme point. They made,
however, a last attempt to mediate. "Will you and your brethren," said
Trevor to Lloyd, the nonjuring Bishop of Norwich, "disown all connection
with Doctor Turner, and declare that what he has in his letters imputed
to you is false?" Lloyd evaded the question. It was now evident that
William's forbearance had only emboldened the adversaries whom he had
hoped to conciliate. Even Caermarthen, even Nottingham, declared that it
was high time to fill the vacant sees. [45]
Tillotson was nominated to the Archbishopric, and was consecrated
on Whitsunday, in the church of St. Mary Le Bow. Compton, cruelly
mortified, refused to bear any part in the ceremony. His place was
supplied by Mew, Bishop of Winchester, who was assisted by Burnet,
Stillingfleet and Hough. The congregation was the most splendid that
had been seen in any place of worship since the coronation. The Queen's
drawingroom was, on that day, deserted. Most of the peers who were in
town met in the morning at Bedford House, and went thence in procession
to Cheapside. Norfolk, Caermarthen and Dorset were conspicuous in the
throng. Devonshire, who was impatient to see his woods at Chatsworth
in their summer beauty, had deferred his departure in order to mark his
respect for Tillotson. The crowd which lined the streets greeted the new
Primate warmly. For he had, during many years, preached in the City; and
his eloquence, his probity and the singular gentleness of his temper
and manners, had made him the favourite of the Londoners. [46] But the
congratulations and applauses of his friends could not drown the roar of
execration which the Jacobites set up. According to them, he was a thief
who had not entered by the door, but had climbed over the fences. He was
a hireling whose own the sheep were not, who had usurped the crook of
the good shepherd, and who might well be expected to leave the flock
at the mercy of every wolf. He was an Arian, a Socinian, a Deist, an
Atheist. He had cozened the world by fine phrases, and by a show of
moral goodness: but he was in truth a far more dangerous enemy of the
Church than he could have been if he had openly proclaimed himself a
disciple of Hobbes, and had lived as loosely as Wilmot. He had taught
the fine gentlemen and ladies who admired his style, and who were
constantly seen round his pulpit, that they might be very good
Christians, and yet might believe the account of the Fall in the book
of Genesis to be allegorical. Indeed they might easily be as good
Christians as he; for he had never been christened; his parents were
Anabaptists; he had lost their religion when he was a boy; and he had
never found another. In ribald lampoons he was nicknamed Undipped John.
The parish register of his baptism was produced in vain. His enemies
still continued to complain that they had lived to see fathers of the
Church who never were her children. They made up a story that the Queen
had felt bitter remorse for the great crime by which she had obtained a
throne, that in her agony she had applied to Tillotson, and that he had
comforted her by assuring her that the punishment of the wicked in
a future state would not be eternal. [47] The Archbishop's mind was
naturally of almost feminine delicacy, and had been rather softened than
braced by the habits of a long life, during which contending sects and
factions had agreed in speaking of his abilities with admiration and of
his character with esteem. The storm of obloquy which he had to face for
the first time at more than sixty years of age was too much for him. His
spirits declined; his health gave way; yet he neither flinched from his
duty nor attempted to revenge himself on his persecutors. A few days
after his consecration, some persons were seized while dispersing libels
in which he was reviled. The law officers of the Crown proposed to
institute prosecutions; but he insisted that nobody should be punished
on his account. [48] Once, when he had company with him, a sealed packet
was put into his hands; he opened it; and out fell a mask. His friends
were shocked and incensed by this cowardly insult; but the Archbishop,
trying to conceal his anguish by a smile, pointed to the pamphlets which
covered his table, and said that the reproach which the emblem of the
mask was intended to convey might be called gentle when compared with
other reproaches which he daily had to endure. After his death a bundle
of the savage lampoons which the nonjurors had circulated against him
was found among his papers with this indorsement: "I pray God forgive
them; I do." [49]
The temper of the deposed primate was very different. He seems to have
been under a complete delusion as to his own importance. The immense
popularity which he had enjoyed three years before, the prayers and
tears of the multitudes who had plunged into the Thames to implore his
blessing, the enthusiasm with which the sentinels of the Tower had drunk
his health under the windows of his prison, the mighty roar of joy
which had risen from Palace Yard on the morning of his acquittal,
the triumphant night when every window from Hyde Park to Mile End had
exhibited seven candles, the midmost and tallest emblematical of him,
were still fresh in his recollection; nor had he the wisdom to perceive
that all this homage had been paid, not to his person, but to that
religion and to those liberties of which he was, for a moment, the
representative. The extreme tenderness with which the new government had
long persisted in treating him seems to have confirmed him in his
error. That a succession of conciliatory messages was sent to him from
Kensington, that he was offered terms so liberal as to be scarcely
consistent with the dignity of the Crown and the welfare of the State,
that his cold and uncourteous answers could not tire out the royal
indulgence, that, in spite of the loud clamours of the Whigs, and of
the provocations daily given by the Jacobites, he was residing, fifteen
months after deprivation, in the metropolitan palace, these things
seemed to him to indicate not the lenity but the timidity of the ruling
powers. He appears to have flattered himself that they would not dare to
eject him. The news, therefore, that his see had been filled threw him
into a passion which lasted as long as his life, and which hurried him
into many foolish and unseemly actions. Tillotson, as soon as he
was appointed, went to Lambeth in the hope that he might be able, by
courtesy and kindness, to soothe the irritation of which he was the
innocent cause. He stayed long in the antechamber, and sent in his name
by several servants; but Sancroft would not even return an answer.
[50] Three weeks passed; and still the deprived Archbishop showed no
disposition to move. At length he received an order intimating to him
the royal pleasure that he should quit the dwelling which had long
ceased to be his own, and in which he was only a guest. He resented this
order bitterly, and declared that he would not obey it. He would stay
till he was pulled out by the Sheriff's officers. He would defend
himself at law as long as he could do so without putting in any plea
acknowledging the authority of the usurpers. [51] The case was so clear
that he could not, by any artifice of chicanery, obtain more than a
short delay. When judgment had been given against him, he left the
palace, but directed his steward to retain possession. The consequence
was that the steward was taken into custody and heavily fined. Tillotson
sent a kind message to assure his predecessor that the fine should not
be exacted. But Sancroft was determined to have a grievance, and would
pay the money. [52]
From that time the great object of the narrowminded and peevish old
man was to tear in pieces the Church of which he had been the chief
minister. It was in vain that some of those nonjurors, whose virtue,
ability and learning were the glory of their party, remonstrated against
his design. "Our deprivation,"--such was the reasoning of Ken,--"is,
in the sight of God, a nullity. We are, and shall be, till we die or
resign, the true Bishops of our sees. Those who assume our titles and
functions will incur the guilt of schism. But with us, if we act as
becomes us, the schism will die; and in the next generation the unity of
the Church will be restored. On the other hand, if we consecrate Bishops
to succeed us, the breach may last through ages, and we shall be justly
held accountable, not indeed for its origin, but for its continuance."
These considerations ought, on Sancroft's own principles, to have had
decisive weight with him; but his angry passions prevailed. Ken quietly
retired from the venerable palace of Wells. He had done, he said, with
strife, and should henceforth vent his feelings not in disputes but in
hymns. His charities to the unhappy of all persuasions, especially to
the followers of Monmouth and to the persecuted Huguenots, had been so
large that his whole private fortune consisted of seven hundred pounds,
and of a library which he could not bear to sell. But Thomas Thynne,
Viscount Weymouth, though not a nonjuror, did himself honour by offering
to the most virtuous of the nonjurors a tranquil and dignified asylum in
the princely mansion of Longleat. There Ken passed a happy and honoured
old age, during which he never regretted the sacrifice which he had made
to what he thought his duty, and yet constantly became more and more
indulgent to those whose views of duty differed from his. [53]
Sancroft was of a very different temper. He had, indeed, as little to
complain of as any man whom a revolution has ever hurled down from an
exalted station. He had at Fressingfield, in Suffolk, a patrimonial
estate, which, together with what he had saved during a primacy of
twelve years, enabled him to live, not indeed as he had lived when he
was the first peer of Parliament, but in the style of an opulent country
gentleman. He retired to his hereditary abode; and there he passed
the rest of his life in brooding over his wrongs. Aversion to the
Established Church became as strong a feeling in him as it had been in
Martin Marprelate. He considered all who remained in communion with her
as heathens and publicans. He nicknamed Tillotson the Mufti. In the room
which was used as a chapel at Fressingfield no person who had taken
the oaths, or who attended the ministry of any divine who had taken
the oaths, was suffered to partake of the sacred bread and wine. A
distinction, however, was made between two classes of offenders. A
layman who remained in communion with the Church was permitted to be
present while prayers were read, and was excluded only from the highest
of Christian mysteries. But with clergymen who had sworn allegiance to
the Sovereigns in possession Sancroft would not even pray. He took care
that the rule which he had laid down should be widely known, and, both
by precept and by example, taught his followers to look on the most
orthodox, the most devout, the most virtuous of those who acknowledged
William's authority with a feeling similar to that with which the
Jew regarded the Samaritan. [54] Such intolerance would have been
reprehensible, even in a man contending for a great principle. But
Sancroft was contending merely for a name. He was the author of the
scheme of Regency. He was perfectly willing to transfer the whole kingly
power from James to William. The question which, to this smallest and
sourest of minds, seemed important enough to justify the excommunicating
of ten thousand priests and of five millions of laymen was, whether the
magistrate to whom the whole kingly power was transferred should assume
the kingly title. Nor could Sancroft bear to think that the animosity
which he had excited would die with himself. Having done all that he
could to make the feud bitter, he determined to make it eternal. A list
of the divines who had been ejected from their benefices was sent by him
to Saint Germains with a request that James would nominate two who might
keep up the episcopal succession. James, well pleased, doubtless, to see
another sect added to that multitude of sects which he had been taught
to consider as the reproach of Protestantism, named two fierce and
uncompromising nonjurors, Hickes and Wagstaffe, the former recommended
by Sancroft, the latter recommended by Lloyd, the ejected Bishop of
Norwich. [55] Such was the origin of a schismatical hierarchy, which,
having, during a short time, excited alarm, soon sank into obscurity and
contempt, but which, in obscurity and contempt, continued to drag on a
languid existence during several generations. The little Church, without
temples, revenues or dignities, was even more distracted by internal
disputes than the great Church, which retained possession of cathedrals,
tithes and peerages. Some nonjurors leaned towards the ceremonial of
Rome; others would not tolerate the slightest departure from the Book
of Common Prayer. Altar was set up against altar. One phantom prelate
pronounced the consecration of another phantom prelate uncanonical. At
length the pastors were left absolutely without flocks. One of these
Lords spiritual very wisely turned surgeon; another left what he had
called his see, and settled in Ireland; and at length, in 1805, the last
Bishop of that society which had proudly claimed to be the only true
Church of England dropped unnoticed into the grave. [56]
The places of the bishops who had been ejected with Sancroft were filled
in a manner creditable to the government. Patrick succeeded the traitor
Turner. Fowler went to Gloucester. Richard Cumberland, an aged divine,
who had no interest at Court, and whose only recommendations were his
piety and erudition, was astonished by learning from a newsletter which
he found on the table of a coffeehouse that he had been nominated to
the See of Peterborough. [57] Beveridge was selected to succeed Ken;
he consented; and the appointment was actually announced in the London
Gazette. But Beveridge, though an honest, was not a strongminded man.
Some Jacobites expostulated with him; some reviled him; his heart
failed him; and he retracted. While the nonjurors were rejoicing in
this victory, he changed his mind again; but too late. He had by his
irresolution forfeited the favour of William, and never obtained a mitre
till Anne was on the throne. [58] The bishopric of Bath and Wells
was bestowed on Richard Kidder, a man of considerable attainments and
blameless character, but suspected of a leaning towards Presbyterianism.
About the same time Sharp, the highest churchman that had been zealous
for the Comprehension, and the lowest churchman that felt a scruple
about succeeding a deprived prelate, accepted the Archbishopric of York,
vacant by the death of Lamplugh. [59]
In consequence of the elevation of Tillotson to the See of Canterbury,
the Deanery of Saint Paul's became vacant. As soon as the name of
the new Dean was known, a clamour broke forth such as perhaps no
ecclesiastical appointment has ever produced, a clamour made up of yells
of hatred, of hisses of contempt, and of shouts of triumphant and half
insulting welcome; for the new Dean was William Sherlock.
The story of his conversion deserves to be fully told; for it throws
great light on the character of the parties which then divided the
Church and the State. Sherlock was, in influence and reputation, though
not in rank, the foremost man among the nonjurors. His authority and
example had induced some of his brethren, who had at first wavered,
to resign their benefices. The day of suspension came; the day of
deprivation came; and still he was firm. He seemed to have found, in the
consciousness of rectitude, and in meditation on the invisible world,
ample compensation for all his losses. While excluded from the pulpit
where his eloquence had once delighted the learned and polite inmates
of the Temple, he wrote that celebrated Treatise on Death which, during
many years, stood next to the Whole Duty of Man in the bookcases of
serious Arminians. Soon, however, it began to be suspected that his
resolution was giving way. He declared that he would be no party to
a schism; he advised those who sought his counsel not to leave their
parish churches; nay, finding that the law which had ejected him from
his cure did not interdict him from performing divine service, he
officiated at Saint Dunstan's, and there prayed for King William and
Queen Mary. The apostolical injunction, he said, was that prayers should
be made for all in authority, and William and Mary were visibly in
authority. His Jacobite friends loudly blamed his inconsistency. How,
they asked, if you admit that the Apostle speaks in this passage of
actual authority, can you maintain that, in other passages of a similar
kind, he speaks only of legitimate authority? Or how can you, without
sin, designate as King, in a solemn address to God, one whom you
cannot, without sin, promise to obey as King? These reasonings were
unanswerable; and Sherlock soon began to think them so; but the
conclusion to which they led him was diametrically opposed to the
conclusion to which they were meant to lead him. He hesitated, however,
till a new light flashed on his mind from a quarter from which there was
little reason to expect any thing but tenfold darkness. In the reign of
James the First, Doctor John Overall, Bishop of Exeter, had written an
elaborate treatise on the rights of civil and ecclesiastical governors.
This treatise had been solemnly approved by the Convocations
of Canterbury and York, and might therefore be considered as an
authoritative exposition of the doctrine of the Church of England. A
copy of the manuscript was in Sancroft's possession; and he, soon after
the Revolution, sent it to the press. He hoped, doubtless, that the
publication would injure the new government; but he was lamentably
disappointed. The book indeed condemned all resistance in terms as
strong as he could himself have used; but one passage which had escaped
his notice was decisive against himself and his fellow schismatics.
Overall, and the two Convocations which had given their sanction to
Overall's teaching, pronounced that a government, which had originated
in rebellion, ought, when thoroughly settled, to be considered as
ordained by God and to be obeyed by Christian men. [60] Sherlock read,
and was convinced. His venerable mother the Church had spoken; and he,
with the docility of a child, accepted her decree. The government which
had sprung from the Revolution might, at least since the battle of the
Boyne and the flight of James from Ireland, be fairly called a settled
government, and ought therefore to be passively obeyed till it should
be subverted by another revolution and succeeded by another settled
government.
Sherlock took the oaths, and speedily published, in justification of his
conduct, a pamphlet entitled The Case of Allegiance to Sovereign Powers
stated. The sensation produced by this work was immense. Dryden's Hind
and Panther had not raised so great an uproar. Halifax's Letter to
a Dissenter had not called forth so many answers. The replies to the
Doctor, the vindications of the Doctor, the pasquinades on the Doctor,
would fill a library. The clamour redoubled when it was known that the
convert had not only been reappointed Master of the Temple, but had
accepted the Deanery of Saint Paul's, which had become vacant in
consequence of the deprivation of Sancroft and the promotion of
Tillotson. The rage of the nonjurors amounted almost to frenzy. Was it
not enough, they asked, to desert the true and pure Church, in this her
hour of sorrow and peril, without also slandering her? It was easy to
understand why a greedy, cowardly hypocrite should refuse to take the
oaths to the usurper as long as it seemed probable that the rightful
King would be restored, and should make haste to swear after the battle
of the Boyne. Such tergiversation in times of civil discord was nothing
new. What was new was that the turncoat should try to throw his own
guilt and shame on the Church of England, and should proclaim that she
had taught him to turn against the weak who were in the right, and to
cringe to the powerful who were in the wrong. Had such indeed been
her doctrine or her practice in evil days? Had she abandoned her Royal
Martyr in the prison or on the scaffold? Had she enjoined her children
to pay obedience to the Rump or to the Protector? Yet was the government
of the Rump or of the Protector less entitled to be called a settled
government than the government of William and Mary? Had not the battle
of Worcester been as great a blow to the hopes of the House of Stuart as
the battle of the Boyne? Had not the chances of a Restoration seemed as
small in 1657 as they could seem to any judicious man in 1691? In spite
of invectives and sarcasms, however, there was Overall's treatise; there
were the approving votes of the two Convocations; and it was much easier
to rail at Sherlock than to explain away either the treatise or the
votes. One writer maintained that by a thoroughly settled government
must have been meant a government of which the title was uncontested.
Thus, he said, the government of the United Provinces became a
settled government when it was recognised by Spain, and, but for that
recognition, would never have been a settled government to the end
of time. Another casuist, somewhat less austere, pronounced that a
government, wrongful in its origin, might become a settled government
after the lapse of a century. On the thirteenth of February 1789,
therefore, and not a day earlier, Englishmen would be at liberty to
swear allegiance to a government sprung from the Revolution. The history
of the chosen people was ransacked for precedents. Was Eglon's a settled
government when Ehud stabbed him? Was Joram's a settled government when
Jehe shot him? But the leading case was that of Athaliah. It was indeed
a case which furnished the malecontents with many happy and pungent
allusions; a kingdom treacherously seized by an usurper near in blood
to the throne; the rightful prince long dispossessed; a part of the
sacerdotal order true, through many disastrous years, to the Royal
House; a counterrevolution at length effected by the High Priest at the
head of the Levites. Who, it was asked, would dare to blame the heroic
pontiff who had restored the heir of David? Yet was not the government
of Athaliah as firmly settled as that of the Prince of Orange?
Hundreds of pages written at this time about the rights of Joash and the
bold enterprise of Jehoiada are mouldering in the ancient bookcases of
Oxford and Cambridge. While Sherlock was thus fiercely attacked by
his old friends, he was not left unmolested by his old enemies. Some
vehement Whigs, among whom Julian Johnson was conspicuous, declared that
Jacobitism itself was respectable when compared with the vile doctrine
which had been discovered in the Convocation Book. That passive
obedience was due to Kings was doubtless an absurd and pernicious
notion. Yet it was impossible not to respect the consistency and
fortitude of men who thought themselves bound to bear true allegiance,
at all hazards, to an unfortunate, a deposed, an exiled oppressor. But
the theory which Sherlock had learned from Overall was unmixed baseness
and wickedness. A cause was to be abandoned, not because it was unjust,
but because it was unprosperous. Whether James had been a tyrant or had
been the father of his people was quite immaterial. If he had won the
battle of the Boyne we should have been bound as Christians to be his
slaves. He had lost it; and we were bound as Christians to be his foes.
Other Whigs congratulated the proselyte on having come, by whatever
road, to a right practical conclusion, but could not refrain from
sneering at the history which he gave of his conversion. He was, they
said, a man of eminent learning and abilities. He had studied the
question of allegiance long and deeply. He had written much about it.
Several months had been allowed him for reading, prayer and reflection
before he incurred suspension, several months more before he incurred
deprivation. He had formed an opinion for which he had declared himself
ready to suffer martyrdom; he had taught that opinion to others; and he
had then changed that opinion solely because he had discovered that it
had been, not refuted, but dogmatically pronounced erroneous by the two
Convocations more than eighty years before. Surely, this was to renounce
all liberty of private judgment, and to ascribe to the Synods of
Canterbury and York an infallibility which the Church of England had
declared that even Oecumenical Councils could not justly claim. If, it
was sarcastically said, all our notions of right and wrong, in matters
of vital importance to the well being of society, are to be suddenly
altered by a few lines of manuscript found in a corner of the library at
Lambeth, it is surely much to be wished, for the peace of mind of humble
Christians, that all the documents to which this sort of authority
belongs should be rummaged out and sent to the press as soon as
possible; for, unless this be done, we may all, like the Doctor when he
refused the oaths last year, be committing sins in the full persuasion
that we are discharging duties. In truth, it is not easy to believe
that the Convocation Book furnished Sherlock with any thing more than a
pretext for doing what he had made up his mind to do. The united force
of reason and interest had doubtless convinced him that his passions and
prejudices had led him into a great error. That error he determined to
recant; and it cost him less to say that his opinion had been changed by
newly discovered evidence, than that he had formed a wrong judgment with
all the materials for the forming of a right judgment before him. The
popular belief was that his retractation was the effect of the tears,
expostulations and reproaches of his wife. The lady's spirit was high;
her authority in the family was great; and she cared much more about her
house and her carriage, the plenty of her table and the prospects of her
children, than about the patriarchal origin of government or the meaning
of the word Abdication. She had, it was asserted, given her husband no
peace by day or by night till he had got over his scruples. In letters,
fables, songs, dialogues without number, her powers of seduction and
intimidation were malignantly extolled. She was Xanthippe pouring water
on the head of Socrates. She was Dalilah shearing Samson. She was Eve
forcing the forbidden fruit into Adam's mouth. She was Job's wife,
imploring her ruined lord, who sate scraping himself among the ashes,
not to curse and die, but to swear and live. While the ballad makers
celebrated the victory of Mrs. Sherlock, another class of assailants
fell on the theological reputation of her spouse. Till he took the
oaths, he had always been considered as the most orthodox of divines.
But the captious and malignant criticism to which his writings were now
subjected would have found heresy in the Sermon on the Mount; and he,
unfortunately, was rash enough to publish, at the very moment when the
outcry against his political tergiversation was loudest, his thoughts
on the mystery of the Trinity. It is probable that, at another time, his
work would have been hailed by good Churchmen as a triumphant answer
to the Socinians and Sabellians. But, unhappily, in his zeal against
Socinians and Sabellians, he used expressions which might be construed
into Tritheism. Candid judges would have remembered that the true path
was closely pressed on the right and on the left by error, and that it
was scarcely possible to keep far enough from danger on one side without
going very close to danger on the other. But candid judges Sherlock was
not likely to find among the Jacobites. His old allies affirmed that he
had incurred all the fearful penalties denounced in the Athanasian Creed
against those who divide the substance. Bulky quartos were written to
prove that he held the existence of three distinct Deities; and some
facetious malecontents, who troubled themselves very little about the
Catholic verity, amused the town by lampoons in English and Latin on his
heterodoxy. "We," said one of these jesters, "plight our faith to one
King, and call one God to attest our promise. We cannot think it strange
that there should be more than one King to whom the Doctor has sworn
allegiance, when we consider that the Doctor has more Gods than one to
swear by." [61]
Sherlock would, perhaps, have doubted whether the government to which he
had submitted was entitled to be called a settled government, if he had
known all the dangers by which it was threatened. Scarcely had Preston's
plot been detected; when a new plot of a very different kind was formed
in the camp, in the navy, in the treasury, in the very bedchamber of
the King. This mystery of iniquity has, through five generations, been
gradually unveiling, but is not yet entirely unveiled. Some parts which
are still obscure may possibly, by the discovery of letters or diaries
now reposing under the dust of a century and a half, be made clear to
our posterity. The materials, however, which are at present accessible,
are sufficient for the construction of a narrative not to be read
without shame and loathing. [62]
We have seen that, in the spring of 1690, Shrewsbury, irritated by
finding his counsels rejected, and those of his Tory rivals followed,
suffered himself, in a fatal hour, to be drawn into a correspondence
with the banished family. We have seen also by what cruel sufferings of
body and mind he expiated his fault. Tortured by remorse, and by disease
the effect of remorse, he had quitted the Court; but he had left behind
him men whose principles were not less lax than his, and whose hearts
were far harder and colder.
Early in 1691, some of these men began to hold secret communication with
Saint Germains. Wicked and base as their conduct was, there was in it
nothing surprising. They did after their kind. The times were troubled.
A thick cloud was upon the future. The most sagacious and experienced
politician could not see with any clearness three months before him.
To a man of virtue and honour, indeed, this mattered little. His
uncertainty as to what the morrow might bring forth might make him
anxious, but could not make him perfidious. Though left in utter
darkness as to what concerned his interests, he had the sure guidance
of his principles. But, unhappily, men of virtue and honour were not
numerous among the courtiers of that age. Whitehall had been, during
thirty years, a seminary of every public and private vice, and
swarmed with lowminded, doubledealing, selfseeking politicians. These
politicians now acted as it was natural that men profoundly immoral
should act at a crisis of which none could predict the issue. Some
of them might have a slight predilection for William; others a slight
predilection for James; but it was not by any such predilection that the
conduct of any of the breed was guided. If it had seemed certain that
William would stand, they would all have been for William. If it had
seemed certain that James would be restored, they would all have been
for James. But what was to be done when the chances appeared to be
almost exactly balanced? There were honest men of one party who would
have answered, To stand by the true King and the true Church, and, if
necessary, to die for them like Laud. There were honest men of the other
party who would have answered, To stand by the liberties of England and
the Protestant religion, and, if necessary, to die for them like Sidney.
But such consistency was unintelligible to many of the noble and the
powerful. Their object was to be safe in every event. They therefore
openly took the oath of allegiance to one King, and secretly plighted
their word to the other. They were indefatigable in obtaining
commissions, patents of peerage, pensions, grants of crown land, under
the great seal of William; and they had in their secret drawers promises
of pardon in the handwriting of James.
Among those who were guilty of this wickedness three men stand
preeminent, Russell, Godolphin and Marlborough. No three men could
be, in head and heart, more unlike to one another; and the peculiar
qualities of each gave a peculiar character to his villany. The treason
of Russell is to be attributed partly to fractiousness; the treason of
Godolphin is to be attributed altogether to timidity; the treason of
Marlborough was the treason of a man of great genius and boundless
ambition.
It may be thought strange that Russell should have been out of humour.
He had just accepted the command of the united naval forces of England
and Holland with the rank of Admiral of the Fleet. He was Treasurer
of the Navy. He had a pension of three thousand pounds a year. Crown
property near Charing Cross, to the value of eighteen thousand pounds,
had been bestowed on him. His indirect gains must have been immense.
But he was still dissatisfed. In truth, with undaunted courage, with
considerable talents both for war and for administration, and with a
certain public spirit, which showed itself by glimpses even in the
very worst parts of his life, he was emphatically a bad man, insolent,
malignant, greedy, faithless. He conceived that the great services which
he had performed at the time of the Revolution had not been adequately
rewarded. Every thing that was given to others seemed to him to be
pillaged from himself. A letter is still extant which he wrote to
William about this time. It is made up of boasts, reproaches and sneers.
The Admiral, with ironical professions of humility and loyalty, begins
by asking permission to put his wrongs on paper, because his bashfulness
would not suffer him to explain himself by word of mouth. His grievances
were intolerable. Other people got grants of royal domains; but he could
get scarcely any thing. Other people could provide for their dependants;
but his recommendations were uniformly disregarded. The income which
he derived from the royal favour might seem large; but he had poor
relations; and the government, instead of doing its duty by them, had
most unhandsomely left them to his care. He had a sister who ought to
have a pension; for, without one, she could not give portions to her
daughters. He had a brother who, for want of a place, had been reduced
to the melancholy necessity of marrying an old woman for her money.
Russell proceeded to complain bitterly that the Whigs were neglected,
that the Revolution had aggrandised and enriched men who had made the
greatest efforts to avert it. And there is reason to believe that this
complaint came from his heart. For, next to his own interests, those
of his party were dear to him; and, even when he was most inclined to
become a Jacobite, he never had the smallest disposition to become a
Tory. In the temper which this letter indicates, he readily listened
to the suggestions of David Lloyd, one of the ablest and most active
emissaries who at this time were constantly plying between France and
England. Lloyd conveyed to James assurances that Russell would, when a
favourable opportunity should present itself, try to effect by means of
the fleet what Monk had effected in the preceding generation by means
of the army. [63] To what extent these assurances were sincere was a
question about which men who knew Russell well, and who were minutely
informed as to his conduct, were in doubt. It seems probable that,
during many months, he did not know his own mind. His interest was to
stand well, as long as possible, with both Kings. His irritable and
imperious nature was constantly impelling him to quarrel with both. His
spleen was excited one week by a dry answer from William, and the
next week by an absurd proclamation from James. Fortunately the most
important day of his life, the day from which all his subsequent years
took their colour, found him out of temper with the banished King.
Godolphin had not, and did not pretend to have, any cause of complaint
against the government which he served. He was First Commissioner of the
Treasury. He had been protected, trusted, caressed. Indeed the favour
shown to him had excited many murmurs. Was it fitting, the Whigs had
indignantly asked, that a man who had been high in office through the
whole of the late reign, who had promised to vote for the Indulgence,
who had sate in the Privy Council with a Jesuit, who had sate at the
Board of Treasury with two Papists, who had attended an idolatress to
her altar, should be among the chief ministers of a Prince whose title
to the throne was derived from the Declaration of Rights? But on William
this clamour had produced no effect; and none of his English servants
seems to have had at this time a larger share of his confidence than
Godolphin.
Nevertheless, the Jacobites did not despair. One of the most zealous
among them, a gentleman named Bulkeley, who had formerly been on terms
of intimacy with Godolphin, undertook to see what could be done. He
called at the Treasury, and tried to draw the First Lord into political
talk. This was no easy matter; for Godolphin was not a man to put
himself lightly into the power of others. His reserve was proverbial;
and he was especially renowned for the dexterity with which he, through
life, turned conversation away from matters of state to a main of cocks
or the pedigree of a racehorse. The visit ended without his uttering a
word indicating that he remembered the existence of King James.
Bulkeley, however, was not to be so repulsed. He came again, and
introduced the subject which was nearest his heart. Godolphin then asked
after his old master and mistress in the mournful tone of a man who
despaired of ever being reconciled to them. Bulkeley assured him that
King James was ready to forgive all the past. "May I tell His Majesty
that you will try to deserve his favour?" At this Godolphin rose, said
something about the trammels of office and his wish to be released from
them, and put an end to the interview.
Bulkeley soon made a third attempt. By this time Godolphin had
learned some things which shook his confidence in the stability of the
government which he served. He began to think, as he would himself have
expressed it, that he had betted too deep on the Revolution, and that
it was time to hedge. Evasions would no longer serve his turn. It was
necessary to speak out. He spoke out, and declared himself a devoted
servant of King James. "I shall take an early opportunity of resigning
my place. But, till then, I am under a tie. I must not betray my trust."
To enhance the value of the sacrifice which he proposed to make, he
produced a most friendly and confidential letter which he had lately
received from William. "You see how entirely the Prince of Orange trusts
me. He tells me that he cannot do without me, and that there is no
Englishman for whom he has so great a kindness; but all this weighs
nothing with me in comparison of my duty to my lawful King."
If the First Lord of the Treasury really had scruples about betraying
his trust, those scruples were soon so effectually removed that he
very complacently continued, during six years, to eat the bread of one
master, while secretly sending professions of attachment and promises of
service to another.
The truth is that Godolphin was under the influence of a mind far more
powerful and far more depraved than his own. His perplexities had
been imparted to Marlborough, to whom he had long been bound by such
friendship as two very unprincipled men are capable of feeling for each
other, and to whom he was afterwards bound by close domestic ties.
Marlborough was in a very different situation from that of William's
other servants. Lloyd might make overtures to Russell, and Bulkeley to
Godolphin. But all the agents of the banished Court stood aloof from
the traitor of Salisbury. That shameful night seemed to have for ever
separated the perjured deserter from the Prince whom he had ruined.
James had, even in the last extremity, when his army was in full
retreat, when his whole kingdom had risen against him, declared that
he would never pardon Churchill, never, never. By all the Jacobites the
name of Churchill was held in peculiar abhorrence; and, in the prose and
verse which came forth daily from their secret presses, a precedence in
infamy, among all the many traitors of the age, was assigned to him. In
the order of things which had sprung from the Revolution, he was one of
the great men of England, high in the state, high in the army. He
had been created an Earl. He had a large share in the military
administration. The emoluments, direct and indirect, of the places
and commands which he held under the Crown were believed at the Dutch
Embassy to amount to twelve thousand pounds a year. In the event of a
counterrevolution it seemed that he had nothing in prospect but a garret
in Holland, or a scaffold on Tower Hill. It might therefore have been
expected that he would serve his new master with fidelity, not
indeed with the fidelity of Nottingham, which was the fidelity of
conscientiousness, not with the fidelity of Portland, which was the
fidelity of affection, but with the not less stubborn fidelity of
despair.
Those who thought thus knew but little of Marlborough. Confident in his
own powers of deception, he resolved, since the Jacobite agents would
not seek him, to seek them. He therefore sent to beg an interview with
Colonel Edward Sackville.