Another question, which excited scarcely less angry feeling in

Parliament and in the country, was, about the same time, under

consideration. On the sixth of December, a Whig member of the House

of Commons obtained leave to bring in a bill for the Naturalisation of

Foreign Protestants. Plausible arguments in favour of such a bill

were not wanting. Great numbers of people, eminently industrious and

intelligent, firmly attached to our faith, and deadly enemies of our

deadly enemies, were at that time without a country. Among the Huguenots

who had fled from the tyranny of the French King were many persons of

great fame in war, in letters, in arts and in sciences; and even the

humblest refugees were intellectually and morally above the average of

the common people of any kingdom in Europe. With French Protestants

who had been driven into exile by the edicts of Lewis were now mingled

German Protestants who had been driven into exile by his arms. Vienna,

Berlin, Basle, Hamburg, Amsterdam, London, swarmed with honest laborious

men who had once been thriving burghers of Heidelberg or Mannheim,

or who had cultivated vineyards along the banks of the Neckar and the

Rhine. A statesman might well think that it would be at once generous

and politic to invite to the English shores and to incorporate with

the English people emigrants so unfortunate and so respectable. Their

ingenuity and their diligence could not fail to enrich any land which

should afford them an asylum; nor could it be doubted that they would

manfully defend the country of their adoption against him whose cruelty

had driven them from the country of their birth.

The first two readings passed without a division. But, on the motion

that the bill should be committed, there was a debate in which the

right of free speech was most liberally used by the opponents of the

government. It was idle, they said, to talk about the poor Huguenots or

the poor Palatines. The bill was evidently meant for the benefit, not of

French Protestants or German Protestants, but of Dutchmen, who would be

Protestants, Papists or Pagans for a guilder a head, and who would, no

doubt, be as ready to sign the Declaration against Transubstantiation

in England as to trample on the Cross in Japan. They would come over in

multitudes. They would swarm in every public office. They would collect

the customs, and gauge the beer barrels. Our Navigation Laws would be

virtually repealed. Every merchant ship that cleared out from the

Thames or the Severn would be manned by Zealanders and Hollanders and

Frieslanders. To our own sailors would be left the hard and perilous

service of the royal navy. For Hans, after filling the pockets of his

huge trunk hose with our money by assuming the character of a native,

would, as soon as a pressgang appeared, lay claim to the privileges of

an alien. The intruders would soon rule every corporation. They would

elbow our own Aldermen off the Royal Exchange. They would buy the

hereditary woods and halls of our country gentlemen. Already one of the

most noisome of the plagues of Egypt was among us. Frogs had made their

appearance even in the royal chambers. Nobody could go to Saint James's

without being disgusted by hearing the reptiles of the Batavian marshes

croaking all round him; and if this bill should pass, the whole country

would be as much infested by the loathsome brood as the palace already

was.

The orator who indulged himself most freely in this sort of rhetoric

was Sir John Knight, member for Bristol, a coarseminded and spiteful

Jacobite, who, if he had been an honest man, would have been a nonjuror.

Two years before, when Mayor of Bristol, he had acquired a discreditable

notoriety by treating with gross disrespect a commission sealed with the

great seal of the Sovereigns to whom he had repeatedly sworn allegiance,

and by setting on the rabble of his city to hoot and pelt the Judges.

[503] He now concluded a savage invective by desiring that the

Serjeant at Arms would open the doors, in order that the odious roll of

parchment, which was nothing less than a surrender of the birthright

of the English people, might be treated with proper contumely. "Let us

first," he said, "kick the bill out of the House; and then let us kick

the foreigners out of the kingdom."

On a division the motion for committing the bill was carried by a

hundred and sixty-three votes to a hundred and twenty-eight. [504] But

the minority was zealous and pertinacious; and the majority speedily

began to waver. Knight's speech, retouched and made more offensive, soon

appeared in print without a license. Tens of thousands of copies were

circulated by the post, or dropped in the streets; and such was the

strength of national prejudice that too many persons read this ribaldry

with assent and admiration. But, when a copy was produced in the House,

there was such an outbreak of indignation and disgust, as cowed even the

impudent and savage nature of the orator. Finding himself in imminent

danger of being expelled and sent to prison, he apologized, and

disclaimed all knowledge of the paper which purported to be a report

of what he had said. He escaped with impunity; but his speech was voted

false, scandalous and seditious, and was burned by the hangman in Palace

Yard. The bill which had caused all this ferment was prudently suffered

to drop. [505]

Meanwhile the Commons were busied with financial questions of grave

importance. The estimates for the year 1694 were enormous. The King

proposed to add to the regular army, already the greatest regular army

that England had ever supported, four regiments of dragoons, eight of

horse, and twenty-five of infantry. The whole number of men, officers

included, would thus be increased to about ninety-four thousand. [506]

Cromwell, while holding down three reluctant kingdoms, and making

vigorous war on Spain in Europe and America, had never had two thirds of

the military force which William now thought necessary. The great body

of the Tories, headed by three Whig chiefs, Harley, Foley and Howe,

opposed any augmentation. The great body of the Whigs, headed by

Montague and Wharton, would have granted all that was asked. After many

long discussions, and probably many close divisions, in the Committee

of Supply, the King obtained the greater part of what he demanded. The

House allowed him four new regiments of dragoons, six of horse, and

fifteen of infantry. The whole number of troops voted for the year

amounted to eighty-three thousand, the charge to more than two millions

and a half, including about two hundred thousand pounds for the

ordnance. [507]

The naval estimates passed much more rapidly; for Whigs and Tories

agreed in thinking that the maritime ascendency of England ought to

be maintained at any cost. Five hundred thousand pounds were voted for

paying the arrears due to seamen, and two millions for the expenses of

the year 1694. [508]

The Commons then proceeded to consider the Ways and Means. The land

tax was renewed at four shillings in the pound; and by this simple but

powerful machinery about two millions were raised with certainty and

despatch. [509] A poll tax was imposed. [510] Stamp duties had long been

among the fiscal resources of Holland and France, and had existed here

during part of the reign of Charles the Second, but had been suffered

to expire. They were now revived; and they have ever since formed an

important part of the revenue of the State. [511] The hackney coaches

of the capital were taxed, and were placed under the government of

commissioners, in spite of the resistance of the wives of the coachmen,

who assembled round Westminster Hall and mobbed the members. [512]

But, notwithstanding all these expedients, there was still a large

deficiency; and it was again necessary to borrow. A new duty on salt and

some other imposts of less importance were set apart to form a fund for

a loan. On the security of this fund a million was to be raised by a

lottery, but a lottery which had scarcely any thing but the name in

common with the lotteries of a later period. The sum to be contributed

was divided into a hundred thousand shares of ten pounds each. The

interest on each share was to be twenty shillings annually, or, in

other words, ten per cent., during sixteen years. But ten per cent. for

sixteen years was not a bait which was likely to attract lenders. An

additional lure was therefore held out to capitalists. On one fortieth

of the shares much higher interest was to be paid than on the other

thirty-nine fortieths. Which of the shares should be prizes was to be

determined by lot. The arrangements for the drawing of the tickets were

made by an adventurer of the name of Neale, who, after squandering away

two fortunes, had been glad to become groom porter at the palace. His

duties were to call the odds when the Court played at hazard, to provide

cards and dice, and to decide any dispute which might arise on the

bowling green or at the gaming table. He was eminently skilled in

the business of this not very exalted post, and had made such sums by

raffles that he was able to engage in very costly speculations, and was

then covering the ground round the Seven Dials with buildings. He was

probably the best adviser that could have been consulted about the

details of a lottery. Yet there were not wanting persons who thought

it hardly decent in the Treasury to call in the aid of a gambler by

profession. [513]

By the lottery loan, as it was called, one million was obtained. But

another million was wanted to bring the estimated revenue for the year

1694 up to a level with the estimated expenditure. The ingenious and

enterprising Montague had a plan ready, a plan to which, except under

the pressure of extreme pecuniary difficulties, he might not easily

have induced the Commons to assent, but which, to his large and vigorous

mind, appeared to have advantages, both commercial and political, more

important than the immediate relief to the finances. He succeeded,

not only in supplying the wants of the State for twelve months, but

in creating a great institution, which, after the lapse of more than a

century and a half, continues to flourish, and which he lived to see

the stronghold, through all vicissitudes, of the Whig party, and the

bulwark, in dangerous times, of the Protestant succession.

In the reign of William old men were still living who could remember the

days when there was not a single banking house in the city of London. So

late as the time of the Restoration every trader had his own strong box

in his own house, and, when an acceptance was presented to him, told

down the crowns and Caroluses on his own counter. But the increase

of wealth had produced its natural effect, the subdivision of labour.

Before the end of the reign of Charles the Second, a new mode of paying

and receiving money had come into fashion among the merchants of the

capital. A class of agents arose, whose office was to keep the cash of

the commercial houses. This new branch of business naturally fell into

the hands of the goldsmiths, who were accustomed to traffic largely in

the precious metals, and who had vaults in which great masses of bullion

could lie secure from fire and from robbers. It was at the shops of the

goldsmiths of Lombard Street that all the payments in coin were made.

Other traders gave and received nothing but paper.

This great change did not take place without much opposition and

clamour. Oldfashioned merchants complained bitterly that a class of

men who, thirty years before, had confined themselves to their proper

functions, and had made a fair profit by embossing silver bowls and

chargers, by setting jewels for fine ladies, and by selling pistoles

and dollars to gentlemen setting out for the Continent, had become the

treasurers, and were fast becoming the masters, of the whole City. These

usurers, it was said, played at hazard with what had been earned by the

industry and hoarded by the thrift of other men. If the dice turned up

well, the knave who kept the cash became an alderman; if they turned

up ill, the dupe who furnished the cash became a bankrupt. On the other

side the conveniences of the modern practice were set forth in animated

language. The new system, it was said, saved both labour and money. Two

clerks, seated in one counting house, did what, under the old system,

must have been done by twenty clerks in twenty different establishments.

A goldsmith's note might be transferred ten times in a morning; and thus

a hundred guineas, locked in his safe close to the Exchange, did what

would formerly have required a thousand guineas, dispersed through many

tills, some on Ludgate Hill, some in Austin Friars, and some in Tower

Street. [514]

Gradually even those who had been loudest in murmuring against the

innovation gave way and conformed to the prevailing usage. The last

person who held out, strange to say, was Sir Dudley North. When, in

1680, after residing many years abroad, he returned to London, nothing

astonished or displeased him more than the practice of making payments

by drawing bills on bankers. He found that he could not go on Change

without being followed round the piazza by goldsmiths, who, with low

bows, begged to have the honour of serving him. He lost his temper when

his friends asked where he kept his cash. "Where should I keep it," he

asked, "but in my own house?" With difficulty he was induced to put

his money into the hands of one of the Lombard Street men, as they

were called. Unhappily, the Lombard Street man broke, and some of his

customers suffered severely. Dudley North lost only fifty pounds; but

this loss confirmed him in his dislike of the whole mystery of banking.

It was in vain, however, that he exhorted his fellow citizens to return

to the good old practice, and not to expose themselves to utter ruin in

order to spare themselves a little trouble. He stood alone against the

whole community. The advantages of the modern system were felt every

hour of every day in every part of London; and people were no more

disposed to relinquish those advantages for fear of calamities which

occurred at long intervals than to refrain from building houses for fear

of fires, or from building ships for fear of hurricanes. It is a curious

circumstance that a man who, as a theorist, was distinguished from

all the merchants of his time by the largeness of his views and by

his superiority to vulgar prejudices, should, in practice, have been

distinguished from all the merchants of his time by the obstinacy with

which he adhered to an ancient mode of doing business, long after the

dullest and most ignorant plodders had abandoned that mode for one

better suited to a great commercial society. [515]

No sooner had banking become a separate and important trade, than men

began to discuss with earnestness the question whether it would be

expedient to erect a national bank. The general opinion seems to have

been decidedly in favour of a national bank; nor can we wonder at this;

for few were then aware that trade is in general carried on to much more

advantage by individuals than by great societies; and banking really is

one of those few trades which can be carried on to as much advantage

by a great society as by an individual. Two public banks had long been

renowned throughout Europe, the Bank of Saint George at Genoa, and the

Bank of Amsterdam. The immense wealth which was in the keeping of those

establishments, the confidence which they inspired, the prosperity

which they had created, their stability, tried by panics, by wars, by

revolutions, and found proof against all, were favourite topics. The

bank of Saint George had nearly completed its third century. It had

begun to receive deposits and to make loans before Columbus had crossed

the Atlantic, before Gama had turned the Cape, when a Christian Emperor

was reigning at Constantinople, when a Mahomedan Sultan was reigning at

Granada, when Florence was a Republic, when Holland obeyed a hereditary

Prince. All these things had been changed. New continents and new oceans

had been discovered. The Turk was at Constantinople; the Castilian was

at Granada; Florence had its hereditary Prince; Holland was a Republic;

but the Bank of Saint George was still receiving deposits and making

loans. The Bank of Amsterdam was little more than eighty years old;

but its solvency had stood severe tests. Even in the terrible crisis

of 1672, when the whole Delta of the Rhine was overrun by the French

armies, when the white flags were seen from the top of the Stadthouse,

there was one place where, amidst the general consternation and

confusion, tranquillity and order were still to be found; and that

place was the Bank. Why should not the Bank of London be as great and

as durable as the Banks of Genoa and of Amsterdam? Before the end of

the reign of Charles the Second several plans were proposed, examined,

attacked and defended. Some pamphleteers maintained that a national bank

ought to be under the direction of the King. Others thought that the

management ought to be entrusted to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Common

Council of the capital. [516] After the Revolution the subject was

discussed with an animation before unknown. For, under the influence

of liberty, the breed of political projectors multiplied exceedingly.

A crowd of plans, some of which resemble the fancies of a child or the

dreams of a man in a fever, were pressed on the government. Preeminently

conspicuous among the political mountebanks, whose busy faces were seen

every day in the lobby of the House of Commons, were John Briscoe and

Hugh Chamberlayne, two projectors worthy to have been members of that

Academy which Gulliver found at Lagado. These men affirmed that the one

cure for every distemper of the State was a Land Bank. A Land Bank would

work for England miracles such as had never been wrought for Israel,

miracles exceeding the heaps of quails and the daily shower of manna.

There would be no taxes; and yet the Exchequer would be full to

overflowing. There would be no poor rates; for there would be no poor.

The income of every landowner would be doubled. The profits of every

merchant would be increased. In short, the island would, to use

Briscoe's words, be the paradise of the world. The only losers would be

the moneyed men, those worst enemies of the nation, who had done more

injury to the gentry and yeomanry than an invading army from France

would have had the heart to do. [517]

These blessed effects the Land Bank was to produce simply by issuing

enormous quantities of notes on landed security. The doctrine of the

projectors was that every person who had real property ought to have,

besides that property, paper money to the full value of that property.

Thus, if his estate was worth two thousand pounds, he ought to have his

estate and two thousand pounds in paper money. [518] Both Briscoe and

Chamberlayne treated with the greatest contempt the notion that there

could be an overissue of paper as long as there was, for every ten pound

note, a piece of land in the country worth ten pounds. Nobody, they

said, would accuse a goldsmith of overissuing as long as his vaults

contained guineas and crowns to the full value of all the notes which

bore his signature. Indeed no goldsmith had in his vaults guineas and

crowns to the full value of all his paper. And was not a square mile of

rich land in Taunton Dean at least as well entitled to be called wealth

as a bag of gold or silver? The projectors could not deny that many

people had a prejudice in favour of the precious metals, and that

therefore, if the Land Bank were bound to cash its notes, it would very

soon stop payment. This difficulty they got over by proposing that the

notes should be inconvertible, and that every body should be forced to

take them.

The speculations of Chamberlayne on the subject of the currency may

possibly find admirers even in our own time. But to his other errors

he added an error which began and ended with him. He was fool enough to

take it for granted, in all his reasonings, that the value of an estate

varied directly as the duration. He maintained that if the annual income

derived from a manor were a thousand pounds, a grant of that manor for

twenty years must be worth twenty thousand pounds, and a grant for a

hundred years worth a hundred thousand pounds. If, therefore, the lord

of such a manor would pledge it for a hundred years to the Land Bank,

the Land Bank might, on that security, instantly issue notes for a

hundred thousand pounds. On this subject Chamberlayne was proof to

ridicule, to argument, even to arithmetical demonstration. He was

reminded that the fee simple of land would not sell for more than twenty

years' purchase. To say, therefore, that a term of a hundred years was

worth five times as much as a term of twenty years, was to say that a

term of a hundred years was worth five times the fee simple; in other

words, that a hundred was five times infinity. Those who reasoned thus

were refuted by being told that they were usurers; and it should

seem that a large number of country gentlemen thought the refutation

complete. [519]

In December 1693 Chamberlayne laid his plan, in all its naked absurdity,

before the Commons, and petitioned to be heard. He confidently undertook

to raise eight thousand pounds on every freehold estate of a hundred and

fifty pounds a year which should be brought, as he expressed it, into

his Land Bank, and this without dispossessing the freeholder. [520] All

the squires in the House must have known that the fee simple of such an

estate would hardly fetch three thousand pounds in the market. That less

than the fee simple of such an estate could, by any device, be made to

produce eight thousand pounds, would, it might have been thought, have

seemed incredible to the most illiterate foxhunter that could be found

on the benches. Distress, however, and animosity had made the landed

gentlemen credulous. They insisted on referring Chamberlayne's plan to a

committee; and the committee reported that the plan was practicable,

and would tend to the benefit of the nation. [521] But by this time

the united force of demonstration and derision had begun to produce an

effect even on the most ignorant rustics in the House. The report

lay unnoticed on the table; and the country was saved from a calamity

compared with which the defeat of Landen and the loss of the Smyrna

fleet would have been blessings.

All the projectors of this busy time, however, were not so absurd as

Chamberlayne. One among them, William Paterson, was an ingenious, though

not always a judicious, speculator. Of his early life little is known

except that he was a native of Scotland, and that he had been in the

West Indies. In what character he had visited the West Indies was a

matter about which his contemporaries differed. His friends said that

he had been a missionary; his enemies that he had been a buccaneer. He

seems to have been gifted by nature with fertile invention, an ardent

temperament and great powers of persuasion, and to have acquired

somewhere in the course of his vagrant life a perfect knowledge of

accounts.

This man submitted to the government, in 1691, a plan of a national

bank; and his plan was favourably received both by statesmen and by

merchants. But years passed away; and nothing was done, till, in the

spring of 1694, it became absolutely necessary to find some new mode of

defraying the charges of the war. Then at length the scheme devised

by the poor and obscure Scottish adventurer was taken up in earnest by

Montague. With Montague was closely allied Michael Godfrey, the brother

of that Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey whose sad and mysterious death had,

fifteen years before, produced a terrible outbreak of popular feeling.

Michael was one of the ablest, most upright and most opulent of the

merchant princes of London. He was, as might have been expected from his

near connection with the martyr of the Protestant faith, a zealous

Whig. Some of his writings are still extant, and prove him to have had a

strong and clear mind.

By these two distinguished men Paterson's scheme was fathered. Montague

undertook to manage the House of Commons, Godfrey to manage the City. An

approving vote was obtained from the Committee of Ways and Means; and a

bill, the title of which gave occasion to many sarcasms, was laid on the

table. It was indeed not easy to guess that a bill, which purported

only to impose a new duty on tonnage for the benefit of such persons

as should advance money towards carrying on the war, was really a bill

creating the greatest commercial institution that the world had ever

seen.

The plan was that twelve hundred thousand pounds should be borrowed by

the government on what was then considered as the moderate interest

of eight per cent. In order to induce capitalists to advance the money

promptly on terms so favourable to the public, the subscribers were to

be incorporated by the name of the Governor and Company of the Bank of

England. The corporation was to have no exclusive privilege, and was to

be restricted from trading in any thing but bills of exchange, bullion

and forfeited pledges.

As soon as the plan became generally known, a paper war broke out as

furious as that between the swearers and the nonswearers, or as that

between the Old East India Company and the New East India Company. The

projectors who had failed to gain the ear of the government fell

like madmen on their more fortunate brother. All the goldsmiths and

pawnbrokers set up a howl of rage. Some discontented Tories predicted

ruin to the monarchy. It was remarkable, they said, that Banks and Kings

had never existed together. Banks were republican institutions. There

were flourishing banks at Venice, at Genoa, at Amsterdam and at Hamburg.

But who had ever heard of a Bank of France or a Bank of Spain? [522]

Some discontented Whigs, on the other hand, predicted ruin to our

liberties. Here, they said, is an instrument of tyranny more formidable

than the High Commission, than the Star Chamber, than even the fifty

thousand soldiers of Oliver. The whole wealth of the nation will be in

the hands of the Tonnage Bank,--such was the nickname then in use;--and

the Tonnage Bank will be in the hands of the Sovereign. The power of the

purse, the one great security for all the rights of Englishmen, will be

transferred from the House of Commons to the Governor and Directors of

the new Company. This last consideration was really of some weight, and

was allowed to be so by the authors of the bill. A clause was therefore

most properly inserted which inhibited the Bank from advancing money to

the Crown without authority from Parliament. Every infraction of this

salutary rule was to be punished by forfeiture of three times the sum

advanced; and it was provided that the King should not have power to

remit any part of the penalty.

The plan, thus amended, received the sanction of the Commons more easily

than might have been expected from the violence of the adverse clamour.

In truth, the Parliament was under duress. Money must be had, and could

in no other way be had so easily. What took place when the House had

resolved itself into a committee cannot be discovered; but, while the

Speaker was in the chair, no division took place. The bill, however, was

not safe when it had reached the Upper House. Some Lords suspected that

the plan of a national bank had been devised for the purpose of exalting

the moneyed interest at the expense of the landed interest. Others

thought that this plan, whether good or bad, ought not to have been

submitted to them in such a form. Whether it would be safe to call into

existence a body which might one day rule the whole commercial world,

and how such a body should be constituted, were questions which ought

not to be decided by one branch of the Legislature. The Peers ought to

be at perfect liberty to examine all the details of the proposed scheme,

to suggest amendments, to ask for conferences. It was therefore most

unfair that the law establishing the Bank should be sent up as part of a

law granting supplies to the Crown. The Jacobites entertained some hope

that the session would end with a quarrel between the Houses, that the

Tonnage Bill would be lost, and that William would enter on the campaign

without money. It was already May, according to the New Style. The

London season was over; and many noble families had left Covent Garden

and Soho Square for their woods and hayfields. But summonses were sent

out. There was a violent rush back to town. The benches which had lately

been deserted were crowded. The sittings began at an hour unusually

early, and were prolonged to an hour unusually late. On the day on which

the bill was committed the contest lasted without intermission from

nine in the morning till six in the evening. Godolphin was in the chair.

Nottingham and Rochester proposed to strike out all the clauses which

related to the Bank. Something was said about the danger of setting up a

gigantic corporation which might soon give law to the King and the

three Estates of the Realm. But the Peers seemed to be most moved by

the appeal which was made to them as landlords. The whole scheme, it was

asserted, was intended to enrich usurers at the expense of the nobility

and gentry. Persons who had laid by money would rather put it into the

Bank than lend it on mortgage at moderate interest. Caermarthen said

little or nothing in defence of what was, in truth, the work of his

rivals and enemies. He owned that there were grave objections to the

mode in which the Commons had provided for the public service of the

year. But would their Lordships amend a money bill? Would they engage in

a contest of which the end must be that they must either yield, or incur

the grave responsibility of leaving the Channel without a fleet during

the summer? This argument prevailed; and, on a division, the amendment

was rejected by forty-three votes to thirty-one. A few hours later the

bill received the royal assent, and the Parliament was prorogued. [523]

In the City the success of Montague's plan was complete. It was then at

least as difficult to raise a million at eight per cent. as it would now

be to raise thirty millions at four per cent. It had been supposed that

contributions would drop in very slowly; and a considerable time had

therefore been allowed by the Act. This indulgence was not needed. So

popular was the new investment that on the day on which the books were

opened three hundred thousand pounds were subscribed; three hundred

thousand more were subscribed during the next forty-eight hours; and,

in ten days, to the delight of all the friends of the government, it was

announced that the list was full. The whole sum which the Corporation

was bound to lend to the State was paid into the Exchequer before the

first instalment was due. [524] Somers gladly put the Great Seal to a

charter framed in conformity with the terms prescribed by Parliament;

and the Bank of England commenced its operations in the house of the

Company of Grocers. There, during many years, directors, secretaries and

clerks might be seen labouring in different parts of one spacious hall.

The persons employed by the bank were originally only fifty-four. They

are now nine hundred. The sum paid yearly in salaries amounted at first

to only four thousand three hundred and fifty pounds. It now exceeds two

hundred and ten thousand pounds. We may therefore fairly infer that the

incomes of commercial clerks are, on an average, about three times as

large in the reign of Victoria as they were in the reign of William the

Third. [525]

It soon appeared that Montague had, by skilfully availing himself of the

financial difficulties of the country, rendered an inestimable service

to his party. During several generations the Bank of England

was emphatically a Whig body. It was Whig, not accidentally, but

necessarily. It must have instantly stopped payment if it had ceased to

receive the interest on the sum which it had advanced to the government;

and of that interest James would not have paid one farthing. Seventeen

years after the passing of the Tonnage Bill, Addison, in one of his most

ingenious and graceful little allegories, described the situation of the

great Company through which the immense wealth of London was constantly

circulating. He saw Public Credit on her throne in Grocers' Hall, the

Great Charter over her head, the Act of Settlement full in her view. Her

touch turned every thing to gold. Behind her seat, bags filled with coin

were piled up to the ceiling. On her right and on her left the floor

was hidden by pyramids of guineas. On a sudden the door flies open. The

Pretender rushes in, a sponge in one hand, in the other a sword which

he shakes at the Act of Settlement. The beautiful Queen sinks down

fainting. The spell by which she has turned all things around her into

treasure is broken. The money bags shrink like pricked bladders. The

piles of gold pieces are turned into bundles of rags or faggots of

wooden tallies. [526] The truth which this parable was meant to convey

was constantly present to the minds of the rulers of the Bank. So

closely was their interest bound up with the interest of the government

that the greater the public danger the more ready were they to come to

the rescue. In old times, when the Treasury was empty, when the taxes

came in slowly, and when the pay of the soldiers and sailors was in

arrear, it had been necessary for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to go,

hat in hand, up and down Cheapside and Cornhill, attended by the Lord

Mayor and by the Aldermen, and to make up a sum by borrowing a hundred

pounds from this hosier, and two hundred pounds from that ironmonger.

[527] Those times were over. The government, instead of laboriously

scooping up supplies from numerous petty sources, could now draw

whatever it required from an immense reservoir, which all those petty

sources kept constantly replenished. It is hardly too much to say that,

during many years, the weight of the Bank, which was constantly in the

scale of the Whigs, almost counterbalanced the weight of the Church,

which was as constantly in the scale of the Tories.

A few minutes after the bill which established the Bank of England had

received the royal assent, the Parliament was prorogued by the King with

a speech in which he warmly thanked the Commons for their liberality.

Montague was immediately rewarded for his services with the place of

Chancellor of the Exchequer. [528]

Shrewsbury had a few weeks before consented to accept the seals. He had

held out resolutely from November to March. While he was trying to find

excuses which might satisfy his political friends, Sir James Montgomery

visited him. Montgomery was now the most miserable of human beings.

Having borne a great part in a great Revolution, having been charged

with the august office of presenting the Crown of Scotland to the

Sovereigns whom the Estates had chosen, having domineered without a

rival, during several months, in the Parliament at Edinburgh, having

seen before him in near prospect the seals of Secretary, the coronet

of an Earl, ample wealth, supreme power, he had on a sudden sunk into

obscurity and abject penury. His fine parts still remained; and he was

therefore used by the Jacobites; but, though used, he was despised,

distrusted and starved. He passed his life in wandering from England to

France and from France back to England, without finding a resting place

in either country. Sometimes he waited in the antechamber at Saint

Germains, where the priests scowled at him as a Calvinist, and where

even the Protestant Jacobites cautioned one another in whispers against

the old Republican. Sometimes he lay hid in the garrets of London,

imagining that every footstep which he heard on the stairs was that of

a bailiff with a writ, or that of a King's messenger with a warrant. He

now obtained access to Shrewsbury, and ventured to talk as a Jacobite to

a brother Jacobite. Shrewsbury, who was not at all inclined to put his

estate and his neck in the power of a man whom he knew to be both rash

and perfidious, returned very guarded answers. Through some channel

which is not known to us, William obtained full intelligence of what

had passed on this occasion. He sent for Shrewsbury, and again spoke

earnestly about the secretaryship. Shrewsbury again excused himself.

His health, he said, was bad. "That," said William, "is not your only

reason." "No, Sir," said Shrewsbury, "it is not." And he began to speak

of public grievances, and alluded to the fate of the Triennial Bill,

which he had himself introduced. But William cut him short. "There is

another reason behind. When did you see Montgomery last?" Shrewsbury was

thunderstruck. The King proceeded to repeat some things which Montgomery

had said. By this time Shrewsbury had recovered from his dismay, and

had recollected that, in the conversation which had been so accurately

reported to the government, he had fortunately uttered no treason,

though he had heard much. "Sir," said he, "since Your Majesty has been

so correctly informed, you must be aware that I gave no encouragement

to that man's attempts to seduce me from my allegiance." William did not

deny this, but intimated that such secret dealings with noted Jacobites

raised suspicions which Shrewsbury could remove only by accepting the

seals. "That," he said, "will put me quite at ease. I know that you are

a man of honour, and that, if you undertake to serve me, you will serve

me faithfully." So pressed, Shrewsbury complied, to the great joy of

his whole party; and was immediately rewarded for his compliance with a

dukedom and a garter. [529]

Thus a Whig ministry was gradually forming. There were now two Whig

Secretaries of State, a Whig Keeper of the Great Seal, a Whig First Lord

of the Admiralty, a Whig Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Lord Privy

Seal, Pembroke, might also be called a Whig; for his mind was one which

readily took the impress of any stronger mind with which it was brought

into contact. Seymour, having been long enough a Commissioner of the

Treasury to lose much of his influence with the Tory country gentlemen

who had once listened to him as to an oracle, was dismissed, and his

place was filled by John Smith, a zealous and able Whig, who had taken

an active part in the debates of the late session. [530] The only Tories

who still held great offices in the executive government were the Lord

President, Caermarthen, who, though he began to feel that power was

slipping from his grasp, still clutched it desperately, and the first

Lord of the Treasury, Godolphin, who meddled little out of his own

department, and performed the duties of that department with skill and

assiduity.

William, however, still tried to divide his favours between the two

parties. Though the Whigs were fast drawing to themselves the substance

of power, the Tories obtained their share of honorary distinctions.

Mulgrave, who had, during the late session, exerted his great

parliamentary talents in favour of the King's policy, was created

Marquess of Normanby, and named a Cabinet Councillor, but was never

consulted. He obtained at the same time a pension of three thousand

pounds a year. Caermarthen, whom the late changes had deeply mortified,

was in some degree consoled by a signal mark of royal approbation. He

became Duke of Leeds. It had taken him little more than twenty years to

climb from the station of a Yorkshire country gentleman to the highest

rank in the peerage. Two great Whig Earls were at the same time created

Dukes, Bedford and Devonshire. It ought to be mentioned that Bedford

had repeatedly refused the dignity which he now somewhat reluctantly

accepted. He declared that he preferred his Earldom to a Dukedom,

and gave a very sensible reason for the preference. An Earl who had

a numerous family might send one son to the Temple and another to a

counting house in the city. But the sons of a Duke were all lords; and

a lord could not make his bread either at the bar or on Change. The old

man's objections, however, were overcome; and the two great houses

of Russell and Cavendish, which had long been closely connected by

friendship and by marriage, by common opinions, common sufferings and

common triumphs, received on the same day the greatest honour which it

is in the power of the Crown to confer. [531]

The Gazette which announced these creations announced also that the King

had set out for the Continent. He had, before his departure, consulted

with his ministers about the means of counteracting a plan of naval

operations which had been formed by the French government. Hitherto

the maritime war had been carried on chiefly in the Channel and the

Atlantic. But Lewis had now determined to concentrate his maritime

forces in the Mediterranean. He hoped that, with their help, the army of

Marshal Noailles would be able to take Barcelona, to subdue the whole

of Catalonia, and to compel Spain to sue for peace. Accordingly,

Tourville's squadron, consisting of fifty three men of war, set sail

from Brest on the twenty-fifth of April and passed the Straits of

Gibraltar on the fourth of May.

William, in order to cross the designs of the enemy, determined to send

Russell to the Mediterranean with the greater part of the combined fleet

of England and Holland. A squadron was to remain in the British seas

under the command of the Earl of Berkeley. Talmash was to embark on

board of this squadron with a large body of troops, and was to attack

Brest, which would, it was supposed, in the absence of Tourville and his

fifty-three vessels, be an easy conquest.

That preparations were making at Portsmouth for an expedition, in which

the land forces were to bear a part, could not be kept a secret.

There was much speculation at the Rose and at Garraway's touching the

destination of the armament. Some talked of Rhe, some of Oleron, some of

Rochelle, some of Rochefort. Many, till the fleet actually began to

move westward, believed that it was bound for Dunkirk. Many guessed that

Brest would be the point of attack; but they only guessed this; for the

secret was much better kept than most of the secrets of that age. [532]

Russell, till he was ready to weigh anchor, persisted in assuring his

Jacobite friends that he knew nothing. His discretion was proof even

against all the arts of Marlborough. Marlborough, however, had other

sources of intelligence. To those sources he applied himself; and he

at length succeeded in discovering the whole plan of the government. He

instantly wrote to James. He had, he said, but that moment ascertained

that twelve regiments of infantry and two regiments of marines were

about to embark, under the command of Talmash, for the purpose of

destroying the harbour of Brest and the shipping which lay there.

"This," he added, "would be a great advantage to England. But no

consideration can, or ever shall, hinder me from letting you know what

I think may be for your service." He then proceeded to caution James

against Russell. "I endeavoured to learn this some time ago from him;

but he always denied it to me, though I am very sure that he knew the

design for more than six weeks. This gives me a bad sign of this man's

intentions."

The intelligence sent by Marlborough to James was communicated by

James to the French government. That government took its measures with

characteristic promptitude. Promptitude was indeed necessary; for, when

Marlborough's letter was written, the preparations at Portsmouth were

all but complete; and, if the wind had been favourable to the English,

the objects of the expedition might have been attained without a

struggle. But adverse gales detained our fleet in the Channel during

another month. Meanwhile a large body of troops was collected at Brest.

Vauban was charged with the duty of putting the defences in order; and,

under his skilful direction, batteries were planted which commanded

every spot where it seemed likely that an invader would attempt to

land. Eight large rafts, each carrying many mortars, were moored in the

harbour, and, some days before the English arrived, all was ready for

their reception.

On the sixth of June the whole allied fleet was on the Atlantic about

fifteen leagues west of Cape Finisterre. There Russell and Berkeley

parted company. Russell proceeded towards the Mediterranean. Berkeley's

squadron, with the troops on board, steered for the coast of Brittany,

and anchored just without Camaret Bay, close to the mouth of the harbour

of Brest. Talmash proposed to land in Camaret Bay. It was therefore

desirable to ascertain with accuracy the state of the coast. The eldest

son of the Duke of Leeds, now called Marquess of Caermarthen, undertook

to enter the basin and to obtain the necessary information. The passion

of this brave and eccentric young man for maritime adventure was

unconquerable. He had solicited and obtained the rank of Rear Admiral,

and had accompanied the expedition in his own yacht, the Peregrine,

renowned as the masterpiece of shipbuilding, and more than once already

mentioned in this history. Cutts, who had distinguished himself by

his intrepidity in the Irish war, and had been rewarded with an Irish

peerage, offered to accompany Caermarthen, Lord Mohun, who, desirous,

it may be hoped, to efface by honourable exploits the stain which a

shameful and disastrous brawl had left on his name, was serving with

the troops as a volunteer, insisted on being of the party. The Peregrine

went into the bay with its gallant crew, and came out safe, but not

without having run great risks. Caermarthen reported that the defences,

of which however he had seen only a small part, were formidable. But

Berkeley and Talmash suspected that he overrated the danger. They were

not aware that their design had long been known at Versailles, that an

army had been collected to oppose them, and that the greatest engineer

in the world had been employed to fortify the coast against them. They

therefore did not doubt that their troops might easily be put on shore

under the protection of a fire from the ships. On the following morning

Caermarthen was ordered to enter the bay with eight vessels and to

batter the French works. Talmash was to follow with about a hundred

boats full of soldiers. It soon appeared that the enterprise was even

more perilous than it had on the preceding day appeared to be. Batteries

which had then escaped notice opened on the ships a fire so murderous

that several decks were soon cleared. Great bodies of foot and horse

were discernible; and, by their uniforms, they appeared to be regular

troops. The young Rear Admiral sent an officer in all haste to warn

Talmash. But Talmash was so completely possessed by the notion that

the French were not prepared to repel an attack that he disregarded all

cautions and would not even trust his own eyes. He felt sure that the

force which he saw assembled on the shore was a mere rabble of peasants,

who had been brought together in haste from the surrounding country.

Confident that these mock soldiers would run like sheep before real

soldiers, he ordered his men to pull for the beach. He was soon

undeceived. A terrible fire mowed down his troops faster than they

could get on shore. He had himself scarcely sprung on dry ground when he

received a wound in the thigh from a cannon ball, and was carried back

to his skiff. His men reembarked in confusion. Ships and boats made

haste to get out of the bay, but did not succeed till four hundred

seamen and seven hundred soldiers had fallen. During many days the waves

continued to throw up pierced and shattered corpses on the beach of

Brittany. The battery from which Talmash received his wound is called,

to this day, the Englishman's Death.

The unhappy general was laid on his couch; and a council of war was held

in his cabin. He was for going straight into the harbour of Brest

and bombarding the town. But this suggestion, which indicated but too

clearly that his judgment had been affected by the irritation of a

wounded body and a wounded mind, was wisely rejected by the naval

officers. The armament returned to Portsmouth. There Talmash died,

exclaiming with his last breath that he had been lured into a snare by

treachery. The public grief and indignation were loudly expressed. The

nation remembered the services of the unfortunate general, forgave his

rashness, pitied his sufferings, and execrated the unknown traitors

whose machinations had been fatal to him. There were many conjectures

and many rumours. Some sturdy Englishmen, misled by national prejudice,

swore that none of our plans would ever be kept a secret from the enemy

while French refugees were in high military command. Some zealous Whigs,

misled by party sprit, muttered that the Court of Saint Germains would

never want good intelligence while a single Tory remained in the Cabinet

Council. The real criminal was not named; nor, till the archives of the

House of Stuart were explored, was it known to the world that Talmash

had perished by the basest of all the hundred villanies of Marlborough.

[533]

Yet never had Marlborough been less a Jacobite than at the moment when

he rendered this wicked and shameful service to the Jacobite cause. It

may be confidently affirmed that to serve the banished family was not

his object, and that to ingratiate himself with the banished family was

only his secondary object. His primary object was to force himself into

the service of the existing government, and to regain possession of

those important and lucrative places from which he had been dismissed

more than two years before. He knew that the country and the Parliament

would not patiently bear to see the English army commanded by foreign

generals. Two Englishmen only had shown themselves fit for high military

posts, himself and Talmash. If Talmash were defeated and disgraced,

William would scarcely have a choice. In fact, as soon as it was known

that the expedition had failed, and that Talmash was no more, the

general cry was that the King ought to receive into his favour the

accomplished Captain who had done such good service at Walcourt, at Cork

and at Kinsale. Nor can we blame the multitude for raising this cry.

For every body knew that Marlborough was an eminently brave, skilful

and successful officer; but very few persons knew that he had, while

commanding William's troops, while sitting in William's council, while

waiting in William's bedchamber, formed a most artful and dangerous plot

for the subversion of William's throne; and still fewer suspected the

real author of the recent calamity, of the slaughter in the Bay of

Camaret, of the melancholy fate of Talmash. The effect therefore of the

foulest of all treasons was to raise the traitor in public estimation.

Nor was he wanting to himself at this conjuncture. While the Royal

Exchange was in consternation at this disaster of which he was the

cause, while many families were clothing themselves in mourning for the

brave men of whom he was the murderer, he repaired to Whitehall; and

there, doubtless with all that grace, that nobleness, that suavity,

under which lay, hidden from all common observers, a seared conscience

and a remorseless heart, he professed himself the most devoted, the most

loyal, of all the subjects of William and Mary, and expressed a hope

that he might, in this emergency, be permitted to offer his sword to

their Majesties. Shrewsbury was very desirous that the offer should be

accepted; but a short and dry answer from William, who was then in

the Netherlands, put an end for the present to all negotiation. About

Talmash the King expressed himself with generous tenderness. "The poor

fellow's fate," he wrote, "has affected me much. I do not indeed think

that he managed well; but it was his ardent desire to distinguish

himself that impelled him to attempt impossibilities." [534]

The armament which had returned to Portsmouth soon sailed again for the

coast of France, but achieved only exploits worse than inglorious. An

attempt was made to blow up the pier at Dunkirk. Some towns inhabited by

quiet tradesmen and fishermen were bombarded. In Dieppe scarcely a house

was left standing; a third part of Havre was laid in ashes; and shells

were thrown into Calais which destroyed thirty private dwellings. The

French and the Jacobites loudly exclaimed against the cowardice

and barbarity of making war on an unwarlike population. The English

government vindicated itself by reminding the world of the sufferings of

the thrice wasted Palatinate; and, as against Lewis and the flatterers

of Lewis, the vindication was complete. But whether it were consistent

with humanity and with sound policy to visit the crimes which an

absolute Prince and a ferocious soldiery had committed in the Palatinate

on shopkeepers and labourers, on women and children, who did not know

that the Palatinate existed, may perhaps be doubted.

Meanwhile Russell's fleet was rendering good service to the common

cause. Adverse winds had impeded his progress through the Straits so

long that he did not reach Carthagena till the middle of July. By that

time the progress of the French arms had spread terror even to the

Escurial. Noailles had, on the banks of the Tar, routed an army

commanded by the Viceroy of Catalonia; and, on the day on which this

victory was won, the Brest squadron had joined the Toulon squadron in

the Bay of Rosas. Palamos, attacked at once by land and sea, was taken

by storm. Gerona capitulated after a faint show of resistance. Ostalric

surrendered at the first summons. Barcelona would in all probability

have fallen, had not the French Admirals learned that the conquerors of

La Hogue was approaching. They instantly quitted the coast of Catalonia,

and never thought themselves safe till they had taken shelter under the

batteries of Toulon.

The Spanish government expressed warm gratitude for this seasonable

assistance, and presented to the English Admiral a jewel which was

popularly said to be worth near twenty thousand pounds sterling. There

was no difficulty in finding such a jewel among the hoards of gorgeous

trinkets which had been left by Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second

to a degenerate race. But, in all that constitutes the true wealth of

states, Spain was poor indeed. Her treasury was empty; her arsenals were

unfurnished; her ships were so rotten that they seemed likely to fly

asunder at the discharge of their own guns. Her ragged and starving

soldiers often mingled with the crowd of beggars at the doors of

convents, and battled there for a mess of pottage and a crust of bread.

Russell underwent those trials which no English commander whose hard

fate it has been to cooperate with Spaniards has escaped. The Viceroy

of Catalonia promised much, did nothing, and expected every thing. He

declared that three hundred and fifty thousand rations were ready to be

served out to the fleet at Carthagena. It turned out that there were not

in all the stores of that port provisions sufficient to victual a single

frigate for a single week. Yet His Excellency thought himself entitled

to complain because England had not sent an army as well as a fleet, and

because the heretic Admiral did not choose to expose the fleet to utter

destruction by attacking the French under the guns of Toulon. Russell

implored the Spanish authorities to look well to their dockyards, and to

try to have, by the next spring, a small squadron which might at least

be able to float; but he could not prevail on them to careen a single

ship. He could with difficulty obtain, on hard conditions, permission to

send a few of his sick men to marine hospitals on shore. Yet, in spite

of all the trouble given him by the imbecility and ingratitude of a

government which has generally caused more annoyance to its allies than

to its enemies, he acquitted himself well. It is but just to him to

say that, from the time at which he became First Lord of the Admiralty,

there was a decided improvement in the naval administration. Though

he lay with his fleet many months near an inhospitable shore, and at a

great distance from England, there were no complaints about the quality

or the quantity of provisions. The crews had better food and drink

than they had ever had before; comforts which Spain did not afford were

supplied from home; and yet the charge was not greater than when, in

Torrington's time, the sailor was poisoned with mouldy biscuit and

nauseous beer.

As almost the whole maritime force of France was in the Mediterranean,

and as it seemed likely that an attempt would be made on Barcelona

in the following year, Russell received orders to winter at Cadiz.

In October he sailed to that port; and there he employed himself in

refitting his ships with an activity unintelligible to the Spanish

functionaries, who calmly suffered the miserable remains of what had

once been the greatest navy in the world to rot under their eyes. [535]

Along the eastern frontier of France the war during this year seemed to

languish. In Piedmont and on the Rhine the most important events of the

campaign were petty skirmishes and predatory incursions. Lewis remained

at Versailles, and sent his son, the Dauphin, to represent him in the

Netherlands; but the Dauphin was placed under the tutelage of Luxemburg,

and proved a most submissive pupil. During several months the hostile

armies observed each other. The allies made one bold push with the

intention of carrying the war into the French territory; but Luxemburg,

by a forced march, which excited the admiration of persons versed in the

military art, frustrated the design. William on the other hand succeeded

in taking Huy, then a fortress of the third rank. No battle was fought;

no important town was besieged; but the confederates were satisfied with

their campaign. Of the four previous years every one had been marked by

some great disaster. In 1690 Waldeck had been defeated at Fleurus.

In 1691 Mons had fallen. In 1692 Namur had been taken in sight of the

allied army; and this calamity had been speedily followed by the defeat

of Steinkirk. In 1693 the battle of Landen had been lost; and Charleroy

had submitted to the conqueror. At length in 1694 the tide had begun to

turn. The French arms had made no progress. What had been gained by the

allies was indeed not much; but the smallest gain was welcome to those

whom a long run of evil fortune had discouraged.

In England, the general opinion was that, notwithstanding the disaster

in Camaret Bay, the war was on the whole proceeding satisfactorily

both by land and by sea. But some parts of the internal administration

excited, during this autumn, much discontent.

Since Trenchard had been appointed Secretary of State, the Jacobite

agitators had found their situation much more unpleasant than before.

Sidney had been too indulgent and too fond of pleasure to give them much

trouble. Nottingham was a diligent and honest minister; but he was as

high a Tory as a faithful subject of William and Mary could be; he loved

and esteemed many of the nonjurors; and, though he might force himself

to be severe when nothing but severity could save the State, he was

not extreme to mark the transgressions of his old friends; nor did he

encourage talebearers to come to Whitehall with reports of conspiracies.

But Trenchard was both an active public servant and an earnest Whig.

Even if he had himself been inclined to lenity, he would have been urged

to severity by those who surrounded him. He had constantly at his side

Hugh Speke and Aaron Smith, men to whom a hunt after a Jacobite was

the most exciting of all sports. The cry of the malecontents was that

Nottingham had kept his bloodhounds in the leash, but that Trenchard had

let them slip. Every honest gentleman who loved the Church and hated

the Dutch went in danger of his life. There was a constant bustle at

the Secretary's Office, a constant stream of informers coming in, and of

messengers with warrants going out. It was said too, that the warrants

were often irregularly drawn, that they did not specify the person, that

they did not specify the crime, and yet that, under the authority of

such instruments as these, houses were entered, desks and cabinets

searched, valuable papers carried away, and men of good birth and

breeding flung into gaol among felons. [536] The minister and his agents

answered that Westminster Hall was open; that, if any man had been

illegally imprisoned, he had only to bring his action; that juries were

quite sufficiently disposed to listen to any person who pretended to

have been oppressed by cruel and griping men in power, and that, as

none of the prisoners whose wrongs were so pathetically described had

ventured to resort to this obvious and easy mode of obtaining redress,

it might fairly be inferred that nothing had been done which could

not be justified. The clamour of the malecontents however made a

considerable impression on the public mind; and at length, a transaction

in which Trenchard was more unlucky than culpable, brought on him and on

the government with which he was connected much temporary obloquy.

Among the informers who haunted his office was an Irish vagabond who had

borne more than one name and had professed more than one religion. He

now called himself Taaffe. He had been a priest of the Roman Catholic

Church, and secretary to Adda the Papal Nuncio, but had since the

Revolution turned Protestant, had taken a wife, and had distinguished

himself by his activity in discovering the concealed property of those

Jesuits and Benedictines who, during the late reign, had been quartered

in London. The ministers despised him; but they trusted him. They

thought that he had, by his apostasy, and by the part which he had borne

in the spoliation of the religious orders, cut himself off from all

retreat, and that, having nothing but a halter to expect from King

James, he must be true to King William. [537]

This man fell in with a Jacobite agent named Lunt, who had, since the

Revolution, been repeatedly employed among the discontented gentry

of Cheshire and Lancashire, and who had been privy to those plans of

insurrection which had been disconcerted by the battle of the Boyne in

1690, and by the battle of La Hogue in 1692. Lunt had once been arrested

on suspicion of treason, but had been discharged for want of legal proof

of his guilt. He was a mere hireling, and was, without much difficulty,

induced by Taaffe to turn approver. The pair went to Trenchard. Lunt

told his story, mentioned the names of some Cheshire and Lancashire

squires to whom he had, as he affirmed, carried commissions from Saint

Germains, and of others, who had, to his knowledge, formed secret hoards

of arms and ammunition. His simple oath would not have been sufficient

to support a charge of high treason; but he produced another witness

whose evidence seemed to make the case complete. The narrative was

plausible and coherent; and indeed, though it may have been embellished

by fictions, there can be little doubt that it was in substance true.

[538] Messengers and search warrants were sent down to Lancashire. Aaron

Smith himself went thither; and Taaffe went with him. The alarm had been

given by some of the numerous traitors who ate the bread of William.

Some of the accused persons had fled; and others had buried their sabres

and muskets and burned their papers. Nevertheless, discoveries were

made which confirmed Lunt's depositions. Behind the wainscot of the old

mansion of one Roman Catholic family was discovered a commission signed

by James. Another house, of which the master had absconded, was strictly

searched, in spite of the solemn asseverations of his wife and his

servants that no arms were concealed there. While the lady, with her

hand on her heart, was protesting on her honour that her husband was

falsely accused, the messengers observed that the back of the chimney

did not seem to be firmly fixed. It was removed, and a heap of blades

such as were used by horse soldiers tumbled out. In one of the garrets

were found, carefully bricked up, thirty saddles for troopers, as

many breastplates, and sixty cavalry swords. Trenchard and Aaron Smith

thought the case complete; and it was determined that those culprits who

had been apprehended should be tried by a special commission. [539]

Taaffe now confidently expected to be recompensed for his services;

but he found a cold reception at the Treasury. He had gone down to

Lancashire chiefly in order that he might, under the protection of a

search warrant, pilfer trinkets and broad pieces from secret drawers.

His sleight of hand however had not altogether escaped the observation

of his companions. They discovered that he had made free with the

communion plate of the Popish families, whose private hoards he had

assisted in ransacking. When therefore he applied for reward, he was

dismissed, not merely with a refusal, but with a stern reprimand. He

went away mad with greediness and spite. There was yet one way in which

he might obtain both money and revenge; and that way he took. He made

overtures to the friends of the prisoners. He and he alone could undo

what he had done, could save the accused from the gallows, could cover

the accusers with infamy, could drive from office the Secretary and the

Solicitor who were the dread of all the friends of King James. Loathsome

as Taaffe was to the Jacobites, his offer was not to be slighted. He

received a sum in hand; he was assured that a comfortable annuity for

life should be settled on him when the business was done; and he was

sent down into the country, and kept in strict seclusion against the day

of trial. [540]

Meanwhile unlicensed pamphlets, in which the Lancashire plot was classed

with Oates's plot, with Dangerfield's plot, with Fuller's plot, with

Young's plot, with Whitney's plot, were circulated all over the kingdom,

and especially in the county which was to furnish the jury. Of these

pamphlets the longest, the ablest, and the bitterest, entitled a Letter

to Secretary Trenchard, was commonly ascribed to Ferguson. It is not

improbable that Ferguson may have furnished some of the materials, and

may have conveyed the manuscript to the press. But many passages are

written with an art and a vigour which assuredly did not belong to him.

Those who judge by internal evidence may perhaps think that, in some

parts of this remarkable tract, they can discern the last gleam of the

malignant genius of Montgomery. A few weeks after the appearance of the

Letter he sank, unhonoured and unlamented, into the grave. [541]

There were then no printed newspapers except the London Gazette.

But since the Revolution the newsletter had become a more important

political engine than it had previously been. The newsletters of one

writer named Dyer were widely circulated in manuscript. He affected to

be a Tory and a High Churchman, and was consequently regarded by the

foxhunting lords of manors, all over the kingdom, as an oracle. He had

already been twice in prison; but his gains had more than compensated

for his sufferings, and he still persisted in seasoning his intelligence

to suit the taste of the country gentlemen. He now turned the Lancashire

plot into ridicule, declared that the guns which had been found were old

fowling pieces, that the saddles were meant only for hunting, and that

the swords were rusty reliques of Edge Hill and Marston Moor. [542] The

effect produced by all this invective and sarcasm on the public mind

seems to have been great. Even at the Dutch Embassy, where assuredly

there was no leaning towards Jacobitism, there was a strong impression

that it would be unwise to bring the prisoners to trial. In Lancashire

and Cheshire the prevailing sentiments were pity for the accused and

hatred of the prosecutors. The government however persevered. In October

four Judges went down to Manchester. At present the population of that

town is made up of persons born in every part of the British Isles, and

consequently has no especial sympathy with the landowners, the farmers

and the agricultural labourers of the neighbouring districts. But in

the seventeenth century the Manchester man was a Lancashire man. His

politics were those of his county. For the old Cavalier families of his

county he felt a great respect; and he was furious when he thought that

some of the best blood of his county was about to be shed by a knot

of Roundhead pettifoggers from London. Multitudes of people from the

neighbouring villages filled the streets of the town, and saw with grief

and indignation the array of drawn swords and loaded carbines which

surrounded the culprits. Aaron Smith's arrangements do not seem to have

been skilful. The chief counsel for the Crown was Sir William Williams,

who, though now well stricken in years and possessed of a great estate,

still continued to practise. One fault had thrown a dark shade over the

latter part of his life. The recollection of that day on which he had

stood up in Westminster Hall, amidst laughter and hooting, to defend the

dispensing power and to attack the right of petition, had, ever

since the Revolution, kept him back from honour. He was an angry and

disappointed man, and was by no means disposed to incur unpopularity in

the cause of a government to which he owed nothing, and from which he

hoped nothing.

Of the trial no detailed report has come down to us; but we have both

a Whig narrative and a Jacobite narrative. [543] It seems that the

prisoners who were first arraigned did not sever in their challenges,

and were consequently tried together. Williams examined or rather

crossexamined his own witnesses with a severity which confused them. The

crowd which filled the court laughed and clamoured. Lunt in particular

became completely bewildered, mistook one person for another, and did

not recover himself till the judges took him out of the hands of the

counsel for the Crown. For some of the prisoners an alibi was set up.

Evidence was also produced to show, what was undoubtedly quite true,

that Lunt was a man of abandoned character. The result however seemed

doubtful till, to the dismay of the prosecutors, Taaffe entered the box.

He swore with unblushing forehead that the whole story of the plot was a

circumstantial lie devised by himself and Lunt. Williams threw down his

brief; and, in truth, a more honest advocate might well have done the

same. The prisoners who were at the bar were instantly acquitted; those

who had not yet been tried were set at liberty; the witnesses for

the prosecution were pelted out of Manchester; the Clerk of the Crown

narrowly escaped with life; and the judges took their departure amidst

hisses and execrations.

A few days after the close of the trials at Manchester William returned

to England. On the twelfth of November, only forty-eight hours after

his arrival at Kensington, the Houses met. He congratulated them on the

improved aspect of affairs. Both by land and by sea the events of the

year which was about to close had been, on the whole, favourable to the

allies; the French armies had made no progress; the French fleets had

not ventured to show themselves; nevertheless, a safe and honourable

peace could be obtained only by a vigorous prosecution of the war;

and the war could not be vigorously prosecuted without large supplies.

William then reminded the Commons that the Act by which they had settled

the tonnage and poundage on the Crown for four years was about to

expire, and expressed his hope that it would be renewed.

After the King had spoken, the Commons, for some reason which no writer

has explained, adjourned for a week. Before they met again, an event

took place which caused great sorrow at the palace, and through all the

ranks of the Low Church party. Tillotson was taken suddenly ill while

attending public worship in the chapel of Whitehall. Prompt remedies

might perhaps have saved him; but he would not interrupt the prayers;

and, before the service was over, his malady was beyond the reach of

medicine. He was almost speechless; but his friends long remembered with

pleasure a few broken ejaculations which showed that he enjoyed peace of

mind to the last. He was buried in the church of Saint Lawrence Jewry,

near Guildhall. It was there that he had won his immense oratorical

reputation. He had preached there during the thirty years which preceded

his elevation to the throne of Canterbury. His eloquence had attracted

to the heart of the City crowds of the learned and polite, from the

Inns of Court and from the lordly mansions of Saint James's and Soho. A

considerable part of his congregation had generally consisted of young

clergymen, who came to learn the art of preaching at the feet of him who

was universally considered as the first of preachers. To this church his

remains were now carried through a mourning population. The hearse was

followed by an endless train of splendid equipages from Lambeth through

Southwark and over London Bridge. Burnet preached the funeral sermon.

His kind and honest heart was overcome by so many tender recollections

that, in the midst of his discourse, he paused and burst into tears,

while a loud moan of sorrow rose from the whole auditory. The Queen

could not speak of her favourite instructor without weeping. Even

William was visibly moved. "I have lost," he said, "the best friend that

I ever had, and the best man that I ever knew." The only Englishman who

is mentioned with tenderness in any part of the great mass of letters

which the King wrote to Heinsius is Tillotson. The Archbishop had left a

widow. To her William granted a pension of four hundred a year, which he

afterwards increased to six hundred. His anxiety that she should receive

her income regularly and without stoppages was honourable to him. Every

quarterday he ordered the money, without any deduction, to be brought to

himself, and immediately sent it to her. Tillotson had bequeathed to her

no property, except a great number of manuscript sermons. Such was his

fame among his contemporaries that those sermons were purchased by the

booksellers for the almost incredible sum of two thousand five hundred

guineas, equivalent, in the wretched state in which the silver coin then

was, to at least three thousand six hundred pounds. Such a price had

never before been given in England for any copyright. About the same

time Dryden, whose reputation was then in the zenith, received thirteen

hundred pounds for his translation of all the works of Virgil, and was

thought to have been splendidly remunerated. [544]

It was not easy to fill satisfactorily the high place which Tillotson

had left vacant. Mary gave her voice for Stillingfleet, and pressed

his claims as earnestly as she ever ventured to press any thing. In

abilities and attainments he had few superiors among the clergy. But,

though he would probably have been considered as a Low Churchman by

Jane and South, he was too high a Churchman for William; and Tenison was

appointed. The new primate was not eminently distinguished by eloquence

or learning: but he was honest, prudent, laborious and benevolent; he

had been a good rector of a large parish and a good bishop of a large

diocese; detraction had not yet been busy with his name; and it might

well be thought that a man of plain sense, moderation and integrity, was

more likely than a man of brilliant genius and lofty spirit to succeed

in the arduous task of quieting a discontented and distracted Church.

Meanwhile the Commons had entered upon business. They cheerfully voted

about two million four hundred thousand pounds for the army, and as

much for the navy. The land tax for the year was again fixed at four

shillings in the pound; the Tonnage Act was renewed for a term of five

years; and a fund was established on which the government was authorised

to borrow two millions and a half.

Some time was spent by both Houses in discussing the Manchester trials.

If the malecontents had been wise, they would have been satisfied with

the advantage which they had already gained. Their friends had been set

free. The prosecutors had with difficulty escaped from the hands of an

enraged multitude. The character of the government had been seriously

damaged. The ministers were accused, in prose and in verse, sometimes

in earnest and sometimes in jest, of having hired a gang of ruffians to

swear away the lives of honest gentlemen. Even moderate politicians, who

gave no credit to these foul imputations, owned that Trenchard ought to

have remembered the villanies of Fuller and Young, and to have been

on his guard against such wretches as Taaffe and Lunt. The unfortunate

Secretary's health and spirits had given way. It was said that he was

dying; and it was certain that he would not long continue to hold the

seals. The Tories had won a great victory; but, in their eagerness to

improve it, they turned it into a defeat.

Early in the session Howe complained, with his usual vehemence and

asperity, of the indignities to which innocent and honourable men,

highly descended and highly esteemed, had been subjected by Aaron Smith

and the wretches who were in his pay. The leading Whigs, with great

judgment, demanded an inquiry. Then the Tories began to flinch. They

well knew that an inquiry could not strengthen their case, and might

weaken it. The issue, they said, had been tried; a jury had pronounced;

the verdict was definitive; and it would be monstrous to give the

false witnesses who had been stoned out of Manchester an opportunity

of repeating their lesson. To this argument the answer was obvious. The

verdict was definitive as respected the defendants, but not as respected

the prosecutors. The prosecutors were now in their turn defendants, and

were entitled to all the privileges of defendants. It did not follow,

because the Lancashire gentlemen had been found, and very properly

found, not guilty of treason, that the Secretary of State or the

Solicitor of the Treasury had been guilty of unfairness or even of

rashness. The House, by one hundred and nineteen votes to one hundred

and two resolved that Aaron Smith and the witnesses on both sides

should be ordered to attend. Several days were passed in examination

and crossexamination; and sometimes the sittings extended far into the

night. It soon became clear that the prosecution had not been lightly

instituted, and that some of the persons who had been acquitted had been

concerned in treasonable schemes. The Tories would now have been content

with a drawn battle; but the Whigs were not disposed to forego their

advantage. It was moved that there had been a sufficient ground for the

proceedings before the Special Commission; and this motion was carried

without a division. The opposition proposed to add some words implying

that the witnesses for the Crown had forsworn themselves; but these

words were rejected by one hundred and thirty-six votes to one hundred

and nine, and it was resolved by one hundred and thirty-three votes to

ninety-seven that there had been a dangerous conspiracy. The Lords had

meanwhile been deliberating on the same subject, and had come to the

same conclusion. They sent Taaffe to prison for prevarication; and they

passed resolutions acquitting both the government and the judges of all

blame. The public however continued to think that the gentlemen who

had been tried at Manchester had been unjustifiably persecuted, till

a Jacobite plot of singular atrocity, brought home to the plotters by

decisive evidence, produced a violent revulsion of feeling. [545]

Meanwhile three bills, which had been repeatedly discussed in preceding

years, and two of which had been carried in vain to the foot of the

throne, had been again brought in; the Place Bill, the Bill for the

Regulation of Trials in cases of Treason, and the Triennial Bill.

The Place Bill did not reach the Lords. It was thrice read in the Lower

House, but was not passed. At the very last moment it was rejected by

a hundred and seventy-five votes to a hundred and forty-two. Howe and

Barley were the tellers for the minority. [546]

The Bill for the Regulation of Trials in cases of Treason went up again

to the Peers. Their Lordships again added to it the clause which had

formerly been fatal to it. The Commons again refused to grant any new

privilege to the hereditary aristocracy. Conferences were again held;

reasons were again exchanged; both Houses were again obstinate; and the

bill was again lost. [547]

The Triennial Bill was more fortunate. It was brought in on the first

day of the session, and went easily and rapidly through both Houses. The

only question about which there was any serious contention was, how long

the existing Parliament should be suffered to continue. After several

sharp debates November in the year 1696 was fixed as the extreme term.

The Tonnage Bill and the Triennial Bill proceeded almost side by side.

Both were, on the twenty-second of December, ready for the royal assent.

William came in state on that day to Westminster. The attendance of

members of both Houses was large. When the Clerk of the Crown read the

words, "A Bill for the frequent Calling and Meeting of Parliaments," the

anxiety was great. When the Clerk of the Parliament made answer, "Le roy

et la royne le veulent," a loud and long hum of delight and exultation

rose from the benches and the bar. [548] William had resolved many

months before not to refuse his assent a second time to so popular a

law. [549] There was some however who thought that he would not have

made so great a concession if he had on that day been quite himself.

It was plain indeed that he was strangely agitated and unnerved. It

had been announced that he would dine in public at Whitehall. But he

disappointed the curiosity of the multitude which on such occasions

flocked to the Court, and hurried back to Kensington. [550]

He had but too good reason to be uneasy. His wife had, during two or

three days, been poorly; and on the preceding evening grave symptoms had

appeared. Sir Thomas Millington, who was physician in ordinary to the

King, thought that she had the measles. But Radcliffe, who, with coarse

manners and little book learning, had raised himself to the first

practice in London chiefly by his rare skill in diagnostics, uttered

the more alarming words, small pox. That disease, over which science has

since achieved a succession of glorious and beneficient victories, was

then the most terrible of all the ministers of death. The havoc of the

plague had been far more rapid; but the plague had visited our shores

only once or twice within living memory; and the small pox was always

present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant

fears all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives

it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a

changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks

of the betrothed maiden objects of horror to the lover. Towards the

end of the year 1694, this pestilence was more than usually severe. At

length the infection spread to the palace, and reached the young and

blooming Queen. She received the intimation of her danger with true

greatness of soul. She gave orders that every lady of her bedchamber,

every maid of honour, nay, every menial servant, who had not had the

small pox, should instantly leave Kensington House. She locked herself

up during a short time in her closet, burned some papers, arranged

others, and then calmly awaited her fate.

During two or three days there were many alternations of hope and fear.

The physicians contradicted each other and themselves in a way which

sufficiently indicates the state of medical science in that age. The

disease was measles; it was scarlet fever; it was spotted fever; it was

erysipelas. At one moment some symptoms, which in truth showed that

the case was almost hopeless, were hailed as indications of returning

health. At length all doubt was over. Radcliffe's opinion proved to be

right. It was plain that the Queen was sinking under small pox of the

most malignant type.

All this time William remained night and day near her bedside. The

little couch on which he slept when he was in camp was spread for him

in the antechamber; but he scarcely lay down on it. The sight of his

misery, the Dutch Envoy wrote, was enough to melt the hardest heart.

Nothing seemed to be left of the man whose serene fortitude had been

the wonder of old soldiers on the disastrous day of Landen, and of old

sailors on that fearful night among the sheets of ice and banks of

sand on the coast of Goree. The very domestics saw the tears running

unchecked down that face, of which the stern composure had seldom been

disturbed by any triumph or by any defeat. Several of the prelates were

in attendance. The King drew Burnet aside, and gave way to an agony of

grief. "There is no hope," he cried. "I was the happiest man on earth;

and I am the most miserable. She had no fault; none; you knew her well;

but you could not know, nobody but myself could know, her goodness."

Tenison undertook to tell her that she was dying. He was afraid that

such a communication, abruptly made, might agitate her violently, and

began with much management. But she soon caught his meaning, and, with

that gentle womanly courage which so often puts our bravery to shame,

submitted herself to the will of God. She called for a small cabinet

in which her most important papers were locked up, gave orders that, as

soon as she was no more, it should be delivered to the King, and then

dismissed worldly cares from her mind. She received the Eucharist, and

repeated her part of the office with unimpaired memory and intelligence,

though in a feeble voice. She observed that Tenison had been long

standing at her bedside, and, with that sweet courtesy which was

habitual to her, faltered out her commands that he would sit down, and

repeated them till he obeyed. After she had received the sacrament she

sank rapidly, and uttered only a few broken words. Twice she tried to

take a last farewell of him whom she had loved so truly and entirely;

but she was unable to speak. He had a succession of fits so alarming

that his Privy Councillors, who were assembled in a neighbouring room,

were apprehensive for his reason and his life. The Duke of Leeds, at the

request of his colleagues, ventured to assume the friendly guardianship

of which minds deranged by sorrow stand in need. A few minutes before

the Queen expired, William was removed, almost insensible, from the sick

room.

Mary died in peace with Anne. Before the physicians had pronounced the

case hopeless, the Princess, who was then in very delicate health, had

sent a kind message; and Mary had returned a kind answer. The Princess

had then proposed to come herself; but William had, in very gracious

terms, declined the offer. The excitement of an interview, he said,

would be too much for both sisters. If a favourable turn took place, Her

Royal Highness should be most welcome to Kensington. A few hours later

all was over. [551]

The public sorrow was great and general. For Mary's blameless life, her

large charities and her winning manners had conquered the hearts of

her people. When the Commons next met they sate for a time in profound

silence. At length it was moved and resolved that an Address of

Condolence should be presented to the King; and then the House broke

up without proceeding to other business. The Dutch envoy informed the

States General that many of the members had handkerchiefs at their

eyes. The number of sad faces in the street struck every observer. The

mourning was more general than even the mourning for Charles the Second

had been. On the Sunday which followed the Queen's death her virtues

were celebrated in almost every parish church of the Capital, and in

almost every great meeting of nonconformists. [552]

The most estimable Jacobites respected the sorrow of William and the

memory of Mary. But to the fiercer zealots of the party neither the

house of mourning nor the grave was sacred. At Bristol the adherents of

Sir John Knight rang the bells as if for a victory. [553] It has often

been repeated, and is not at all improbable, that a nonjuring divine, in

the midst of the general lamentation, preached on the text, "Go; see

now this cursed woman and bury her; for she is a King's daughter." It is

certain that some of the ejected priests pursued her to the grave with

invectives. Her death, they said, was evidently a judgment for her

crime. God had, from the top of Sinai, in thunder and lightning,

promised length of days to children who should honour their parents; and

in this promise was plainly implied a menace. What father had ever been

worse treated by his daughters than James by Mary and Anne? Mary was

gone, cut off in the prime of life, in the glow of beauty, in the

height of prosperity; and Anne would do well to profit by the warning.

Wagstaffe went further, and dwelt much on certain wonderful coincidences

of time. James had been driven from his palace and country in Christmas

week. Mary had died in Christmas week. There could be no doubt that, if

the secrets of Providence were disclosed to us, we should find that the

turns of the daughter's complaint in December 1694 bore an exact

analogy to the turns of the father's fortune in December 1688. It was

at midnight that the father ran away from Rochester; it was at midnight

that the daughter expired. Such was the profundity and such the

ingenuity of a writer whom the Jacobite schismatics justly regarded as

one of their ablest chiefs. [554]

The Whigs soon had an opportunity of retaliating. They triumphantly

related that a scrivener in the Borough, a stanch friend of hereditary

right, while exulting in the judgment which had overtaken the Queen, had

himself fallen down dead in a fit. [555]

The funeral was long remembered as the saddest and most august that

Westminster had ever seen. While the Queen's remains lay in state at

Whitehall, the neighbouring streets were filled every day, from sunrise

to sunset, by crowds which made all traffic impossible. The two Houses

with their maces followed the hearse, the Lords robed in scarlet and

ermine, the Commons in long black mantles. No preceding Sovereign had

ever been attended to the grave by a Parliament; for, till then, the

Parliament had always expired with the Sovereign. A paper had indeed

been circulated, in which the logic of a small sharp pettifogger was

employed to prove that writs, issued in the joint names of William and

Mary, ceased to be of force as soon as William reigned alone. But this

paltry cavil had completely failed. It had not even been mentioned

in the Lower House, and had been mentioned in the Upper only to be

contemptuously overruled. The whole Magistracy of the City swelled the

procession. The banners of England and France, Scotland and Ireland,

were carried by great nobles before the corpse. The pall was borne

by the chiefs of the illustrious houses of Howard, Seymour, Grey, and

Stanley. On the gorgeous coffin of purple and gold were laid the crown

and sceptre of the realm. The day was well suited to such a ceremony.

The sky was dark and troubled; and a few ghastly flakes of snow fell on

the black plumes of the funeral car. Within the Abbey, nave, choir

and transept were in a blaze with innumerable waxlights. The body was

deposited under a magnificent canopy in the centre of the church while

the Primate preached. The earlier part of his discourse was deformed by

pedantic divisions and subdivisions; but towards the close he told what

he had himself seen and heard with a simplicity and earnestness more

affecting than the most skilful rhetoric. Through the whole ceremony the

distant booming of cannon was heard every minute from the batteries of

the Tower. The gentle Queen sleeps among her illustrious kindred in the

southern aisle of the Chapel of Henry the Seventh. [556]

The affection with which her husband cherished her memory was soon

attested by a monument the most superb that was ever erected to any

sovereign. No scheme had been so much her own, none had been so near her

heart, as that of converting the palace at Greenwich into a retreat

for seamen. It had occurred to her when she had found it difficult to

provide good shelter and good attendance for the thousands of brave men

who had come back to England wounded after the battle of La Hogue. While

she lived scarcely any step was taken towards the accomplishing of her

favourite design. But it should seem that, as soon as her husband had

lost her, he began to reproach himself for having neglected her wishes.

No time was lost. A plan was furnished by Wren; and soon an edifice,

surpassing that asylum which the magnificent Lewis had provided for

his soldiers, rose on the margin of the Thames. Whoever reads the

inscription which runs round the frieze of the hall will observe that

William claims no part of the merit of the design, and that the praise

is ascribed to Mary alone. Had the King's life been prolonged till the

works were completed, a statue of her who was the real foundress of

the institution would have had a conspicuous place in that court which

presents two lofty domes and two graceful colonnades to the multitudes

who are perpetually passing up and down the imperial river. But that

part of the plan was never carried into effect; and few of those who

now gaze on the noblest of European hospitals are aware that it is a

memorial of the virtues of the good Queen Mary, of the love and sorrow

of William, and of the great victory of La Hogue.