CHAPTER XXI

Effect of Mary's Death on the Continent--Death of Luxemburg--Distress of

William--Parliamentary Proceedings; Emancipation of the Press--Death

of Halifax--Parliamentary Inquiries into the Corruption of the Public

Offices--Vote of Censure on the Speaker--Foley elected Speaker; Inquiry

into the Accounts of the East India Company--Suspicious Dealings of

Seymour--Bill against Sir Thomas Cook--Inquiry by a joint Committee

of Lords and Commons--Impeachment of Leeds--Disgrace of Leeds--Lords

Justices appointed; Reconciliation between William and the

Princess Anne--Jacobite Plots against William's Person--Charnock;

Porter--Goodman; Parkyns--Fenwick--Session of the Scottish Parliament;

Inquiry into the Slaughter of Glencoe--War in the Netherlands; Marshal

Villeroy--The Duke of Maine--Jacobite Plots against the Government

during William's Absence--Siege of Namur--Surrender of the Town of

Namur--Surrender of the Castle of Namur--Arrest of Boufflers--Effect

of the Emancipation of the English Press--Return of William to England;

Dissolution of the Parliament--William makes a Progress through the

Country--The Elections--Alarming State of the Currency--Meeting of the

Parliament; Loyalty of the House of Commons--Controversy touching the

Currency--Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Currency--Passing

of the Act regulating Trials in Cases of High Treason--Parliamentary

Proceedings touching the Grant of Crown Lands in Wales to Portland--Two

Jacobite Plots formed--Berwick's Plot; the Assassination Plot;

Sir George Barclay--Failure of Berwick's Plot--Detection of the

Assassination Plot--Parliamentary Proceedings touching the

Assassination Plot--State of Public Feeling--Trial of Charnock, King and

Keyes--Execution of Charnock, King and Keyes--Trial of Friend--Trial of

Parkyns--Execution of Friend and Parkyns--Trials of Rookwood, Cranburne

and Lowick--The Association--Bill for the Regulation of Elections--Act

establishing a Land Bank

ON the Continent the news of Mary's death excited various emotions. The

Huguenots, in every part of Europe to which they had wandered, bewailed

the Elect Lady, who had retrenched from her own royal state in order to

furnish bread and shelter to the persecuted people of God. [557] In the

United Provinces, where she was well known and had always been

popular, she was tenderly lamented. Matthew Prior, whose parts and

accomplishments had obtained for him the patronage of the magnificent

Dorset, and who was now attached to the Embassy at the Hague, wrote

that the coldest and most passionless of nations was touched. The very

marble, he said, wept. [558] The lamentations of Cambridge and Oxford

were echoed by Leyden and Utrecht. The States General put on mourning.

The bells of all the steeples of Holland tolled dolefully day after

day. [559] James, meanwhile, strictly prohibited all mourning at Saint

Germains, and prevailed on Lewis to issue a similar prohibition at

Versailles. Some of the most illustrious nobles of France, and among

them the Dukes of Bouillon and of Duras, were related to the House of

Nassau, and had always, when death visited that House, punctiliously

observed the decent ceremonial of sorrow. They were now forbidden to

wear black; and they submitted; but it was beyond the power of the great

King to prevent his highbred and sharpwitted courtiers from whispering

to each other that there was something pitiful in this revenge taken by

the living on the dead, by a parent on a child. [560]

The hopes of James and of his companions in exile were now higher than

they had been since the day of La Hogue. Indeed the general opinion of

politicians, both here and on the Continent was that William would find

it impossible to sustain himself much longer on the throne. He would

not, it was said, have sustained himself so long but for the help of his

wife. Her affability had conciliated many who had been repelled by his

freezing looks and short answers. Her English tones, sentiments and

tastes had charmed many who were disgusted by his Dutch accent and Dutch

habits. Though she did not belong to the High Church party, she loved

that ritual to which she had been accustomed from infancy, and complied

willingly and reverently with some ceremonies which he considered, not

indeed as sinful, but as childish, and in which he could hardly bring

himself to take part. While the war lasted, it would be necessary that

he should pass nearly half the year out of England. Hitherto she had,

when he was absent, supplied his place, and had supplied it well.

Who was to supply it now? In what vicegerent could he place equal

confidence? To what vicegerent would the nation look up with equal

respect? All the statesmen of Europe therefore agreed in thinking that

his position, difficult and dangerous at best, had been made far more

difficult and more dangerous by the death of the Queen. But all the

statesmen of Europe were deceived; and, strange to say, his reign was

decidedly more prosperous and more tranquil after the decease of Mary

than during her life.

A few hours after he had lost the most tender and beloved of all his

friends, he was delivered from the most formidable of all his enemies.

Death had been busy at Paris as well as in London. While Tenison was

praying by the bed of Mary, Bourdaloue was administering the last

unction to Luxemburg. The great French general had never been a

favourite at the French Court; but when it was known that his feeble

frame, exhausted by war and pleasure, was sinking under a dangerous

disease, the value of his services was, for the first time, fully

appreciated; the royal physicians were sent to prescribe for him; the

sisters of Saint Cyr were ordered to pray for him; but prayers and

prescriptions were vain. "How glad the Prince of Orange will be," said

Lewis, "when the news of our loss reaches him." He was mistaken. That

news found William unable to think of any loss but his own. [561]

During the month which followed the death of Mary the King was incapable

of exertion. Even to the addresses of the two Houses of Parliament he

replied only by a few inarticulate sounds. The answers which appear in

the journals were not uttered by him, but were delivered in writing.

Such business as could not be deferred was transacted by the

intervention of Portland, who was himself oppressed with sorrow. During

some weeks the important and confidential correspondence between the

King and Heinsius was suspended. At length William forced himself to

resume that correspondence: but his first letter was the letter of a

heartbroken man. Even his martial ardour had been tamed by misery. "I

tell you in confidence," he wrote, "that I feel myself to be no longer

fit for military command. Yet I will try to do my duty; and I hope that

God will strengthen me." So despondingly did he look forward to the most

brilliant and successful of his many campaigns. [562]

There was no interruption of parliamentary business. While the Abbey was

hanging with black for the funeral of the Queen, the Commons came to a

vote, which at the time attracted little attention, which produced no

excitement, which has been left unnoticed by voluminous annalists, and

of which the history can be but imperfectly traced in the archives of

Parliament, but which has done more for liberty and for civilisation

than the Great Charter or the Bill of Rights. Early in the session a

select committee had been appointed to ascertain what temporary statutes

were about to expire, and to consider which of those statutes it

might be expedient to continue. The report was made; and all the

recommendations contained in that report were adopted, with one

exception. Among the laws which the committee advised the House to renew

was the law which subjected the press to a censorship. The question was

put, "that the House do agree with the committee in the resolution that

the Act entitled an Act for preventing Abuses in printing seditious,

treasonable and unlicensed Pamphlets, and for regulating of Printing and

Printing Presses, be continued." The Speaker pronounced that the Noes

had it; and the Ayes did not think fit to divide.

A bill for continuing all the other temporary Acts, which, in the

opinion of the Committee, could not properly be suffered to expire, was

brought in, passed and sent to the Lords. In a short time this bill came

back with an important amendment. The Lords had inserted in the list of

Acts to be continued the Act which placed the press under the control of

licensers. The Commons resolved not to agree to the amendment, demanded

a conference, and appointed a committee of managers. The leading

manager was Edward Clarke, a stanch Whig, who represented Taunton, the

stronghold, during fifty troubled years, of civil and religious freedom.

Clarke delivered to the Lords in the Painted Chamber a paper containing

the reasons which had determined the Lower House not to renew the

Licensing Act. This paper completely vindicates the resolution to which

the Commons had come. But it proves at the same time that they knew not

what they were doing, what a revolution they were making, what a power

they were calling into existence. They pointed out concisely, clearly,

forcibly, and sometimes with a grave irony which is not unbecoming, the

absurdities and iniquities of the statute which was about to expire. But

all their objections will be found to relate to matters of detail. On

the great question of principle, on the question whether the liberty of

unlicensed printing be, on the whole, a blessing or a curse to society,

not a word is said. The Licensing Act is condemned, not as a thing

essentially evil, but on account of the petty grievances, the exactions,

the jobs, the commercial restrictions, the domiciliary visits which were

incidental to it. It is pronounced mischievous because it enables

the Company of Stationers to extort money from publishers, because

it empowers the agents of the government to search houses under the

authority of general warrants, because it confines the foreign book

trade to the port of London; because it detains valuable packages of

books at the Custom House till the pages are mildewed. The Commons

complain that the amount of the fee which the licenser may demand is not

fixed. They complain that it is made penal in an officer of the Customs

to open a box of books from abroad, except in the presence of one of the

censors of the press. How, it is very sensibly asked, is the officer to

know that there are books in the box till he has opened it? Such were

the arguments which did what Milton's Areopagitica had failed to do.

The Lords yielded without a contest. They probably expected that some

less objectionable bill for the regulation of the press would soon be

sent up to them; and in fact such a bill was brought into the House of

Commons, read twice, and referred to a select committee. But the session

closed before the committee had reported; and English literature

was emancipated, and emancipated for ever, from the control of the

government. [563] This great event passed almost unnoticed. Evelyn and

Luttrell did not think it worth mentioning in their diaries. The

Dutch minister did not think it worth mentioning in his despatches.

No allusion to it is to be found in the Monthly Mercuries. The public

attention was occupied by other and far more exciting subjects.

One of those subjects was the death of the most accomplished, the most

enlightened, and, in spite of great faults, the most estimable of the

statesmen who were formed in the corrupt and licentious Whitehall of

the Restoration. About a month after the splendid obsequies of Mary, a

funeral procession of almost ostentatious simplicity passed round the

shrine of Edward the Confessor to the Chapel of Henry the Seventh.

There, at the distance of a few feet from her coffin, lies the coffin of

George Savile, Marquess of Halifax.

Halifax and Nottingham had long been friends; and Lord Eland, now

Halifax's only son, had been affianced to the Lady Mary Finch,

Nottingham's daughter. The day of the nuptials was fixed; a joyous

company assembled at Burley on the Hill, the mansion of the bride's

father, which, from one of the noblest terraces in the island, looks

down on magnificent woods of beech and oak, on the rich valley of

Catmos, and on the spire of Oakham. The father of the bridegroom was

detained to London by indisposition, which was not supposed to be

dangerous. On a sudden his malady took an alarming form. He was told

that he had but a few hours to live. He received the intimation with

tranquil fortitude. It was proposed to send off an express to summon his

son to town. But Halifax, good natured to the last, would not disturb

the felicity of the wedding day. He gave strict orders that his

interment should be private, prepared himself for the great change by

devotions which astonished those who had called him an atheist, and died

with the serenity of a philosopher and of a Christian, while his friends

and kindred, not suspecting his danger, were tasting the sack posset and

drawing the curtain. [564] His legitimate male posterity and his titles

soon became extinct. No small portion, however, of his wit and eloquence

descended to his daughter's son, Philip Stanhope, fourth Earl

of Chesterfield. But it is perhaps not generally known that some

adventurers, who, without advantages of fortune or position, made

themselves conspicuous by the mere force of ability, inherited the blood

of Halifax. He left a natural son, Henry Carey, whose dramas once drew

crowded audiences to the theatres, and some of whose gay and spirited

verses still live in the memory of hundreds of thousands. From Henry

Carey descended that Edmund Kean, who, in our time, transformed himself

so marvellously into Shylock, Iago and Othello.

More than one historian has been charged with partiality to Halifax. The

truth is that the memory of Halifax is entitled in an especial manner

to the protection of history. For what distinguishes him from all other

English statesmen is this, that, through a long public life, and through

frequent and violent revolutions of public feeling, he almost invariably

took that view of the great questions of his time which history has

finally adopted. He was called inconstant, because the relative position

in which he stood to the contending factions was perpetually varying. As

well might the pole star be called inconstant because it is sometimes to

the east and sometimes to the west of the pointers. To have defended the

ancient and legal constitution of the realm against a seditious populace

at one conjuncture and against a tyrannical government at another; to

have been the foremost defender of order in the turbulent Parliament of

1680 and the foremost defender of liberty in the servile Parliament of

1685; to have been just and merciful to Roman Catholics in the days of

the Popish plot and to Exclusionists in the days of the Rye House Plot;

to have done all in his power to save both the head of Stafford and

the head of Russell; this was a course which contemporaries, heated

by passion and deluded by names and badges, might not unnaturally call

fickle, but which deserves a very different name from the late justice

of posterity.

There is one and only one deep stain on the memory of this eminent man.

It is melancholy to think that he, who had acted so great a part in the

Convention, could have afterwards stooped to hold communication with

Saint Germains. The fact cannot be disputed; yet for him there are

excuses which cannot be pleaded for others who were guilty of the same

crime. He did not, like Marlborough, Russell, Godolphin and Shrewsbury,

betray a master by whom he was trusted, and with whose benefits he was

loaded. It was by the ingratitude and malice of the Whigs that he was

driven to take shelter for a moment among the Jacobites. It may be added

that he soon repented of the error into which he had been hurried by

passion, that, though never reconciled to the Court, he distinguished

himself by his zeal for the vigorous prosecution of the war, and

that his last work was a tract in which he exhorted his countrymen to

remember that the public burdens, heavy as they might seem, were light

when compared with the yoke of France and of Rome. [565]

About a fortnight after the death of Halifax, a fate far more cruel than

death befell his old rival and enemy, the Lord President. That able,

ambitious and daring statesman was again hurled down from power. In his

first fall, terrible as it was, there had been something of dignity; and

he had, by availing himself with rare skill of an extraordinary crisis

in public affairs, risen once more to the most elevated position among

English subjects. The second ruin was indeed less violent than the

first; but it was ignominious and irretrievable.

The peculation and venality by which the official men of that age were

in the habit of enriching themselves had excited in the public mind

a feeling such as could not but vent itself, sooner or later, in

some formidable explosion. But the gains were immediate; the day of

retribution was uncertain; and the plunderers of the public were as

greedy and as audacious as ever, when the vengeance, long threatened

and long delayed, suddenly overtook the proudest and most powerful among

them.

The first mutterings of the coming storm did not at all indicate the

direction which it would take, or the fury with which it would burst.

An infantry regiment, which was quartered at Royston, had levied

contributions on the people of that town and of the neighbourhood. The

sum exacted was not large. In France or Brabant the moderation of the

demand would have been thought wonderful. But to English shopkeepers

and farmers military extortion was happily quite new and quite

insupportable. A petition was sent up to the Commons. The Commons

summoned the accusers and the accused to the bar. It soon appeared that

a grave offence had been committed, but that the offenders were not

altogether without excuse. The public money which had been issued

from the Exchequer for their pay and subsistence had been fraudulently

detained by their colonel and by his agent. It was not strange that

men who had arms and who had not necessaries should trouble themselves

little about the Petition of Right and the Declaration of Right. But it

was monstrous that, while the citizen was heavily taxed for the purpose

of paying to the soldier the largest military stipend known in Europe,

the soldier should be driven by absolute want to plunder the citizen.

This was strongly set forth in a representation which the Commons laid

before William. William, who had been long struggling against abuses

which grievously impaired the efficiency of his army, was glad to have

his hands thus strengthened. He promised ample redress, cashiered the

offending colonel, gave strict orders that the troops should receive

their due regularly, and established a military board for the purpose of

detecting and punishing such malpractices as had taken place at Royston.

[566]

But the whole administration was in such a state that it was hardly

possible to track one offender without discovering ten others. In the

course of the inquiry into the conduct of the troops at Royston, it

was discovered that a bribe of two hundred guineas had been received

by Henry Guy, member of Parliament for Heydon and Secretary of the

Treasury. Guy was instantly sent to the Tower, not without much

exultation on the part of the Whigs; for he was one of those tools who

had passed, together with the buildings and furniture of the public

offices, from James to William; he affected the character of a High

Churchman; and he was known to be closely connected with some of the

heads of the Tory party, and especially with Trevor. [567]

Another name, which was afterwards but too widely celebrated, first

became known to the public at this time. James Craggs had begun life as

a barber. He had then been a footman of the Duchess of Cleveland. His

abilities, eminently vigorous though not improved by education, had

raised him in the world; and he was now entering on a career which

was destined to end, after a quarter of a century of prosperity, in

unutterable misery and despair. He had become an army clothier. He was

examined as to his dealings with the colonels of regiments; and, as

he obstinately refused to produce his books, he was sent to keep Guy

company in the Tower. [568]

A few hours after Craggs had been thrown into prison, a committee, which

had been appointed to inquire into the truth of a petition signed by

some of the hackney coachmen of London, laid on the table of the House a

report which excited universal disgust and indignation. It appeared that

these poor hardworking men had been cruelly wronged by the board under

the authority of which an Act of the preceding session had placed them.

They had been pillaged and insulted, not only by the commissioners, but

by one commissioner's lacquey and by another commissioner's harlot. The

Commons addressed the King; and the King turned the delinquents out of

their places. [569]

But by this time delinquents far higher in power and rank were beginning

to be uneasy. At every new detection, the excitement, both within and

without the walls of Parliament, became more intense. The frightful

prevalence of bribery, corruption and extortion was every where the

subject of conversation. A contemporary pamphleteer compares the state

of the political world at this conjuncture to the state of a city in

which the plague has just been discovered, and in which the terrible

words, "Lord have mercy on us," are already seen on some doors. [570]

Whispers, which at another time would have speedily died away and been

forgotten, now swelled, first into murmurs, and then into clamours. A

rumour rose and spread that the funds of the two wealthiest corporations

in the kingdom, the City of London and the East India Company, had been

largely employed for the purpose of corrupting great men; and the names

of Trevor, Seymour and Leeds were mentioned.

The mention of these names produced a stir in the Whig ranks. Trevor,

Seymour and Leeds were all three Tories, and had, in different ways,

greater influence than perhaps any other three Tories in the kingdom.

If they could all be driven at once from public life with blasted

characters, the Whigs would be completely predominant both in the

Parliament and in the Cabinet.

Wharton was not the man to let such an opportunity escape him. At

White's, no doubt, among those lads of quality who were his pupils in

politics and in debauchery, he would have laughed heartily at the fury

with which the nation had on a sudden begun to persecute men for doing

what every body had always done and was always trying to do. But if

people would be fools, it was the business of a politician to make use

of their folly. The cant of political purity was not so familiar to the

lips of Wharton as blasphemy and ribaldry; but his abilities were so

versatile, and his impudence so consummate, that he ventured to appear

before the world as an austere patriot mourning over the venality and

perfidy of a degenerate age. While he, animated by that fierce party

spirit which in honest men would be thought a vice, but which in him

was almost a virtue, was eagerly stirring up his friends to demand an

inquiry into the truth of the evil reports which were in circulation,

the subject was suddenly and strangely forced forward. It chanced that,

while a bill of little interest was under discussion in the Commons,

the postman arrived with numerous letters directed to members; and the

distribution took place at the bar with a buzz of conversation which

drowned the voices of the orators. Seymour, whose imperious temper

always prompted him to dictate and to chide, lectured the talkers on the

scandalous irregularity of their conduct, and called on the Speaker to

reprimand them. An angry discussion followed; and one of the offenders

was provoked into making an allusion to the stories which were current

about both Seymour and the Speaker. "It is undoubtedly improper to talk

while a bill is under discussion; but it is much worse to take money

for getting a bill passed. If we are extreme to mark a slight breach of

form, how severely ought we to deal with that corruption which is eating

away the very substance of our institutions!" That was enough; the

spark had fallen; the train was ready; the explosion was immediate and

terrible. After a tumultuous debate in which the cry of "the Tower" was

repeatedly heard, Wharton managed to carry his point. Before the House

rose a committee was appointed to examine the books of the City of

London and of the East India Company. [571]

Foley was placed in the chair of the committee. Within a week he

reported that the Speaker, Sir John Trevor, had in the preceding session

received from the City a thousand guineas for expediting a local bill.

This discovery gave great satisfaction to the Whigs, who had always

hated Trevor, and was not unpleasing to many of the Tories. During six

busy sessions his sordid rapacity had made him an object of general

aversion. The legitimate emoluments of his post amounted to about four

thousand a year; but it was believed that he had made at least ten

thousand a year. [572] His profligacy and insolence united had been

too much even for the angelic temper of Tillotson. It was said that the

gentle Archbishop had been heard to mutter something about a knave as

the Speaker passed by him. [573] Yet, great as were the offences of this

bad man, his punishment was fully proportioned to them. As soon as the

report of the committee had been read, it was moved that he had been

guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour. He had to stand up and to put

the question. There was a loud cry of Aye. He called on the Noes; and

scarcely a voice was heard. He was forced to declare that the Ayes

had it. A man of spirit would have given up the ghost with remorse and

shame; and the unutterable ignominy of that moment left its mark even on

the callous heart and brazen forehead of Trevor. Had he returned to the

House on the following day, he would have had to put the question on

a motion for his own expulsion. He therefore pleaded illness, and shut

himself up in his bedroom. Wharton soon brought down a royal message

authorising the Commons to elect another Speaker.

The Whig chiefs wished to place Littleton in the chair; but they were

unable to accomplish their object. Foley was chosen, presented and

approved. Though he had of late generally voted with the Tories, he

still called himself a Whig, and was not unacceptable to many of the

Whigs. He had both the abilities and the knowledge which were necessary

to enable him to preside over the debates with dignity; but what, in the

peculiar circumstances in which the House then found itself placed, was

not unnaturally considered as his principal recommendation, was

that implacable hatred of jobbery and corruption which he somewhat

ostentatiously professed, and doubtless sincerely felt. On the day after

he entered on his functions, his predecessor was expelled. [574]

The indiscretion of Trevor had been equal to his baseness; and his guilt

had been apparent on the first inspection of the accounts of the City.

The accounts of the East India Company were more obscure. The committee

reported that they had sate in Leadenhall Street, had examined

documents, had interrogated directors and clerks, but had been unable

to arrive at the bottom of the mystery of iniquity. Some most suspicious

entries had been discovered, under the head of special service. The

expenditure on this account had, in the year 1693, exceeded eighty

thousand pounds. It was proved that, as to the outlay of this money,

the directors had placed implicit confidence in the governor, Sir Thomas

Cook. He had merely told them in general terms that he had been at a

charge of twenty-three thousand, of twenty-five thousand, of thirty

thousand pounds, in the matter of the Charter; and the Court had,

without calling on him for any detailed explanation, thanked him for

his care, and ordered warrants for these great sums to be instantly

made out. It appeared that a few mutinous directors had murmured at this

immense outlay, and had called for a detailed statement. But the only

answer which they had been able to extract from Cook was that there were

some great persons whom it was necessary to gratify.

The committee also reported that they had lighted on an agreement by

which the Company had covenanted to furnish a person named Colston with

two hundred tons of saltpetre. At the first glance, this transaction

seemed merchantlike and fair. But it was soon discovered that Colston

was merely an agent for Seymour. Suspicion was excited. The complicated

terms of the bargain were severely examined, and were found to be framed

in such a manner that, in every possible event, Seymour must be a gainer

and the Company a loser to the extent of ten or twelve thousand pounds.

The opinion of all who understood the matter was that the compact was

merely a disguise intended to cover a bribe. But the disguise was so

skilfully managed that the country gentlemen were perplexed, and that

the lawyers doubted whether there were such evidence of corruption as

would be held sufficient by a court of justice. Seymour escaped without

even a vote of censure, and still continued to take a leading part in

the debates of the Commons. [575] But the authority which he had long

exercised in the House and in the western counties of England, though

not destroyed, was visibly diminished; and, to the end of his life,

his traffic in saltpetre was a favourite theme of Whig pamphleteers and

poets. [576]

The escape of Seymour only inflamed the ardour of Wharton and of

Wharton's confederates. They were determined to discover what had been

done with the eighty or ninety thousand pounds of secret service money

which had been entrusted to Cook by the East India Company. Cook, who

was member for Colchester, was questioned in his place; he refused to

answer; he was sent to the Tower; and a bill was brought in providing

that if, before a certain day, he should not acknowledge the whole

truth, he should be incapable of ever holding any office, should refund

to the Company the whole of the immense sum which had been confided to

him, and should pay a fine of twenty thousand pounds to the Crown. Rich

as he was, these penalties would have reduced him to penury. The

Commons were in such a temper that they passed the bill without a single

division. [577] Seymour, indeed, though his saltpetre contract was the

talk of the whole town, came forward with unabashed forehead to plead

for his accomplice; but his effrontery only injured the cause which

he defended. [578] In the Upper House the bill was condemned in the

strongest terms by the Duke of Leeds. Pressing his hand on his heart, he

declared, on his faith, on his honour, that he had no personal interest

in the question, and that he was actuated by no motive but a pure love

of justice. His eloquence was powerfully seconded by the tears and

lamentations of Cook, who, from the bar, implored the Peers not to

subject him to a species of torture unknown to the mild laws of England.

"Instead of this cruel bill," he said, "pass a bill of indemnity; and

I will tell you all." The Lords thought his request not altogether

unreasonable. After some communication with the Commons, it was

determined that a joint committee of the two Houses should be appointed

to inquire into the manner in which the secret service money of the East

India Company had been expended; and an Act was rapidly passed providing

that, if Cook would make to this committee a true and full discovery, he

should be indemnified for the crimes which he might confess; and that,

till he made such a discovery, he should remain in the Tower. To this

arrangement Leeds gave in public all the opposition that he could with

decency give. In private those who were conscious of guilt employed

numerous artifices for the purpose of averting inquiry. It was whispered

that things might come out which every good Englishman would wish to

hide, and that the greater part of the enormous sums which had passed

through Cook's hands had been paid to Portland for His Majesty's use.

But the Parliament and the nation were determined to know the truth,

whoever might suffer by the disclosure. [579]

As soon as the Bill of Indemnity had received the royal assent, the

joint committee, consisting of twelve lords and twenty-four members of

the House of Commons, met in the Exchequer Chamber. Wharton was placed

in the chair; and in a few hours great discoveries were made.

The King and Portland came out of the inquiry with unblemished honour.

Not only had not the King taken any part of the secret service money

dispensed by Cook; but he had not, during some years, received even the

ordinary present which the Company had, in former reigns, laid annually

at the foot of the throne. It appeared that not less than fifty thousand

pounds had been offered to Portland, and rejected. The money lay during

a whole year ready to be paid to him if he should change his mind. He

at length told those who pressed this immense bribe on him, that if

they persisted in insulting him by such an offer, they would make him

an enemy of their Company. Many people wondered at the probity which

he showed on this occasion, for he was generally thought interested and

grasping. The truth seems to be that he loved money, but that he was a

man of strict integrity and honour. He took, without scruple, whatever

he thought that he could honestly take, but was incapable of stooping

to an act of baseness. Indeed, he resented as affronts the compliments

which were paid him on this occasion. [580] The integrity of Nottingham

could excite no surprise. Ten thousand pounds had been offered to him,

and had been refused. The number of cases in which bribery was fully

made out was small. A large part of the sum which Cook had drawn from

the Company's treasury had probably been embezzled by the brokers whom

he had employed in the work of corruption; and what had become of the

rest it was not easy to learn from the reluctant witnesses who were

brought before the committee. One glimpse of light however was caught;

it was followed; and it led to a discovery of the highest moment. A

large sum was traced from Cook to an agent named Firebrace, and from

Firebrace to another agent named Bates, who was well known to be closely

connected with the High Church party and especially with Leeds. Bates

was summoned, but absconded; messengers were sent in pursuit of him;

he was caught, brought into the Exchequer Chamber and sworn. The story

which he told showed that he was distracted between the fear of losing

his ears and the fear of injuring his patron. He owned that he had

undertaken to bribe Leeds, had been for that purpose furnished with five

thousand five hundred guineas, had offered those guineas to His Grace,

and had, by His Grace's permission, left them at His Grace's house in

the care of a Swiss named Robart, who was His Grace's confidential

man of business. It should seem that these facts admitted of only one

interpretation. Bates however swore that the Duke had refused to

accept a farthing. "Why then," it was asked, "was the gold left, by

his consent, at his house and in the hands of his servant?" "Because,"

answered Bates, "I am bad at telling coin. I therefore begged His Grace

to let me leave the pieces, in order that Robart might count them for

me; and His Grace was so good as to give leave." It was evident that,

if this strange story had been true, the guineas would, in a few hours,

have been taken-away. But Bates was forced to confess that they had

remained half a year where he had left them. The money had indeed at

last,--and this was one of the most suspicious circumstances in the

case,--been paid back by Robart on the very morning on which the

committee first met in the Exchequer Chamber. Who could believe that, if

the transaction had been free from all taint of corruption, the guineas

would have been detained as long as Cook was able to remain silent, and

would have been refunded on the very first day on which he was under the

necessity of speaking out? [581]

A few hours after the examination of Bates, Wharton reported to the

Commons what had passed in the Exchequer Chamber. The indignation

was general and vehement. "You now understand," said Wharton, "why

obstructions have been thrown in our way at every step, why we have

had to wring out truth drop by drop, why His Majesty's name has been

artfully used to prevent us from going into an inquiry which has brought

nothing to light but what is to His Majesty's honour. Can we think it

strange that our difficulties should have been great, when we consider

the power, the dexterity, the experience of him who was secretly

thwarting us? It is time for us to prove signally to the world that it

is impossible for any criminal to double so cunningly that we cannot

track him, or to climb so high that we cannot reach him. Never was there

a more flagitious instance of corruption. Never was there an offender

who had less claim to indulgence. The obligations which the Duke of

Leeds has to his country are of no common kind. One great debt we

generously cancelled; but the manner in which our generosity has been

requited forces us to remember that he was long ago impeached for

receiving money from France. How can we be safe while a man proved to be

venal has access to the royal ear? Our best laid enterprises have been

defeated. Our inmost counsels have been betrayed. And what wonder is

it? Can we doubt that, together with this home trade in charters, a

profitable foreign trade in secrets is carried on? Can we doubt that he

who sells us to one another will, for a good price, sell us all to

the common enemy?" Wharton concluded by moving that Leeds should be

impeached of high crimes and misdemeanours. [582]

Leeds had many friends and dependents in the House of Commons; but they

could say little. Wharton's motion was carried without a division; and

he was ordered to go to the bar of the Lords, and there, in the name

of the Commons of England, to impeach the Duke. But, before this order

could be obeyed, it was announced that His Grace was at the door and

requested an audience.

While Wharton had been making his report to the Commons, Leeds had been

haranguing the Lords. He denied with the most solemn asseverations that

he had taken any money for himself. But he acknowledged, and indeed

almost boasted, that he had abetted Bates in getting money from the

Company, and seemed to think that this was a service which any man

in power might be reasonably expected to render to a friend. Too

many persons, indeed, in that age made a most absurd and pernicious

distinction between a minister who used his influence to obtain presents

for himself and a minister who used his influence to obtain presents

for his dependents. The former was corrupt; the latter was merely

goodnatured. Leeds proceeded to tell with great complacency a story

about himself, which would, in our days, drive a public man, not

only out of office, but out of the society of gentlemen. "When I was

Treasurer, in King Charles's time, my Lords, the excise was to be

farmed. There were several bidders. Harry Savile, for whom I had a great

value, informed me that they had asked for his interest with me, and

begged me to tell them that he had done his best for them. 'What!' said

I; 'tell them all so, when only one can have the farm?' 'No matter;'

said Harry: 'tell them all so; and the one who gets the farm will think

that he owes it to me.' The gentlemen came. I said to every one of them

separately, 'Sir, you are much obliged to Mr. Savile;' 'Sir, Mr. Savile

has been much your friend.' In the end Harry got a handsome present; and

I wished him good luck with it. I was his shadow then. I am Mr. Bates's

shadow now."

The Duke had hardly related this anecdote, so strikingly illustrative

of the state of political morality in that generation, when it was

whispered to him that a motion to impeach him had been made in the House

of Commons. He hastened thither; but, before he arrived, the question

had been put and carried. Nevertheless he pressed for admittance; and

he was admitted. A chair, according to ancient usage, was placed for

him within the bar; and he was informed that the House was ready to hear

him.

He spoke, but with less tact and judgment than usual. He magnified his

own public services. But for him, he said, there would have been

no House of Commons to impeach him; a boast so extravagant that it

naturally made his hearers unwilling to allow him the praise which his

conduct at the time of the Revolution really deserved. As to the charge

against him he said little more than that he was innocent, that there

had long been a malicious design to ruin him, that he would not go

into particulars, that the facts which had been proved would bear two

constructions, and that of the two constructions the most favourable

ought in candour to be adopted. He withdrew, after praying the House to

reconsider the vote which had just been passed, or, if that could not

be, to let him have speedy justice.

His friends felt that his speech was no defence, and did not attempt to

rescind the resolution which had been carried just before he was heard.

Wharton, with a large following, went up to the Lords, and informed

them that the Commons had resolved to impeach the Duke. A committee

of managers was appointed to draw up the articles and to prepare the

evidence. [583]

The articles were speedily drawn; but to the chain of evidence one

link appeared to be wanting. That link Robart, if he had been severely

examined and confronted with other witnesses, would in all probability

have been forced to supply. He was summoned to the bar of the Commons.

A messenger went with the summons to the house of the Duke of Leeds, and

was there informed that the Swiss was not within, that he had been three

days absent, and that where he was the porter could not tell. The Lords

immediately presented an address to the King, requesting him to give

orders that the ports might be stopped and the fugitive arrested. But

Robart was already in Holland on his way to his native mountains.

The flight of this man made it impossible for the Commons to proceed.

They vehemently accused Leeds of having sent away the witness who alone

could furnish legal proof of that which was already established by

moral proof. Leeds, now at ease as to the event of the impeachment, gave

himself the airs of an injured man. "My Lords," he said, "the conduct of

the Commons is without precedent. They impeach me of a high crime; they

promise to prove it; then they find that they have not the means of

proving it; and they revile me for not supplying them with the means.

Surely they ought not to have brought a charge like this, without well

considering whether they had or had not evidence sufficient to support

it. If Robart's testimony be, as they now say, indispensable, why did

they not send for him and hear his story before they made up their

minds? They may thank their own intemperance, their own precipitancy,

for his disappearance. He is a foreigner; he is timid; he hears that a

transaction in which he has been concerned has been pronounced by the

House of Commons to be highly criminal, that his master is impeached,

that his friend Bates is in prison, that his own turn is coming. He

naturally takes fright; he escapes to his own country; and, from what

I know of him, I will venture to predict that it will be long before he

trusts himself again within reach of the Speaker's warrant. But what is

that to me? Am I to lie all my life under the stigma of an accusation

like this, merely because the violence of my accusers has scared their

own witness out of England? I demand an immediate trial. I move your

Lordships to resolve that, unless the Commons shall proceed before the

end of the session, the impeachment shall be dismissed." A few friendly

voices cried out "Well moved." But the Peers were generally unwilling to

take a step which would have been in the highest degree offensive to the

Lower House, and to the great body of those whom that House represented.

The Duke's motion fell to the ground; and a few hours later the

Parliament was prorogued. [584]

The impeachment was never revived. The evidence which would warrant a

formal verdict of guilty was not forthcoming; and a formal verdict of

guilty would hardly have answered Wharton's purpose better than

the informal verdict of guilty which the whole nation had already

pronounced. The work was done. The Whigs were dominant. Leeds was no

longer chief minister, was indeed no longer a minister at all. William,

from respect probably for the memory of the beloved wife whom he had

lately lost, and to whom Leeds had shown peculiar attachment, avoided

every thing that could look like harshness. The fallen statesman

was suffered to retain during a considerable time the title of Lord

President, and to walk on public occasions between the Great Seal

and the Privy Seal. But he was told that he would do well not to

show himself at Council; the business and the patronage even of the

department of which he was the nominal head passed into other hands; and

the place which he ostensibly filled was considered in political circles

as really vacant. [585]

He hastened into the country, and hid himself there, during some months,

from the public eye. When the Parliament met again, however, he emerged

from his retreat. Though he was well stricken in years and cruelly

tortured by disease, his ambition was still as ardent as ever. With

indefatigable energy he began a third time to climb, as he flattered

himself, towards that dizzy pinnacle which he had twice reached, and

from which he had twice fallen. He took a prominent part in debate; but,

though his eloquence and knowledge always secured to him the attention

of his hearers, he was never again, even when the Tory party was in

power, admitted to the smallest share in the direction of affairs.

There was one great humiliation which he could not be spared. William

was about to take the command of the army in the Netherlands; and it

was necessary that, before he sailed, he should determine by whom the

government should be administered during his absence. Hitherto Mary had

acted as his vicegerent when he was out of England; but she was gone.

He therefore delegated his authority to seven Lords Justices, Tenison,

Archbishop of Canterbury, Somers, Keeper of the Great Seal, Pembroke,

Keeper of the Privy Seal, Devonshire, Lord Steward, Dorset, Lord

Chamberlain, Shrewsbury, Secretary of State, and Godolphin, First

Commissioner of the Treasury. It is easy to judge from this list of

names which way the balance of power was now leaning. Godolphin alone

of the seven was a Tory. The Lord President, still second in rank, and

a few days before first in power, of the great lay dignitaries of the

realm, was passed over; and the omission was universally regarded as an

official announcement of his disgrace. [586]

There were some who wondered that the Princess of Denmark was not

appointed Regent. The reconciliation, which had been begun while

Mary was dying, had since her death been, in external show at least,

completed. This was one of those occasions on which Sunderland was

peculiarly qualified to be useful. He was admirably fitted to manage a

personal negotiation, to soften resentment, to soothe wounded pride, to

select, among all the objects of human desire, the very bait which

was most likely to allure the mind with which he was dealing. On this

occasion his task was not difficult. He had two excellent assistants,

Marlborough in the household of Anne, and Somers in the cabinet of

William.

Marlborough was now as desirous to support the government as he had once

been to subvert it. The death of Mary had produced a complete change in

all his schemes. There was one event to which he looked forward with

the most intense longing, the accession of the Princess to the English

throne. It was certain that, on the day on which she began to reign, he

would be in her Court all that Buckingham had been in the Court of James

the First. Marlborough too must have been conscious of powers of a very

different order from those which Buckingham had possessed, of a genius

for politics not inferior to that of Richelieu, of a genius for war not

inferior to that of Turenne. Perhaps the disgraced General, in obscurity

and inaction, anticipated the day when his power to help and hurt in

Europe would be equal to that of her mightiest princes, when he would be

servilely flattered and courted by Caesar on one side and by Lewis

the Great on the other, and when every year would add another hundred

thousand pounds to the largest fortune that had ever been accumulated

by any English subject. All this might be if Mrs. Morley were Queen. But

that Mr. Freeman should ever see Mrs. Morley Queen had till lately been

not very probable. Mary's life was a much better life than his, and

quite as good a life as her sister's. That William would have issue

seemed unlikely. But it was generally expected that he would soon die.

His widow might marry again, and might leave children who would succeed

her. In these circumstances Marlborough might well think that he had

very little interest in maintaining that settlement of the Crown which

had been made by the Convention. Nothing was so likely to serve his

purpose as confusion, civil war, another revolution, another abdication,

another vacancy of the throne. Perhaps the nation, incensed against

William, yet not reconciled to James, and distracted between hatred of

foreigners and hatred of Jesuits, might prefer both to the Dutch King

and to the Popish King one who was at once a native of our country and

a member of our Church. That this was the real explanation of

Marlborough's dark and complicated plots was, as we have seen, firmly

believed by some of the most zealous Jacobites, and is in the highest

degree probable. It is certain that during several years he had spared

no efforts to inflame the army and the nation against the government.

But all was now changed. Mary was gone. By the Bill of Rights the Crown

was entailed on Anne after the death of William. The death of William

could not be far distant. Indeed all the physicians who attended him

wondered that he was still alive; and, when the risks of war were added

to the risks of disease, the probability seemed to be that in a few

months he would be in his grave. Marlborough saw that it would now be

madness to throw every thing into disorder and to put every thing

to hazard. He had done his best to shake the throne while it seemed

unlikely that Anne would ever mount it except by violent means. But he

did his best to fix it firmly, as soon as it became highly probably that

she would soon be called to fill it in the regular course of nature and

of law.

The Princess was easily induced by the Churchills to write to the King

a submissive and affectionate letter of condolence. The King, who was

never much inclined to engage in a commerce of insincere compliments,

and who was still in the first agonies of his grief, showed little

disposition to meet her advances. But Somers, who felt that every

thing was at stake, went to Kensington, and made his way into the royal

closet.

William was sitting there, so deeply sunk in melancholy that he did not

seem to perceive that any person had entered the room. The Lord Keeper,

after a respectful pause, broke silence, and, doubtless with all that

cautious delicacy which was characteristic of him, and which eminently

qualified him to touch the sore places of the mind without hurting them,

implored His Majesty to be reconciled to the Princess. "Do what you

will," said William; "I can think of no business." Thus authorised, the

mediators speedily concluded a treaty. [587] Anne came to Kensington,

and was graciously received; she was lodged in Saint James's Palace; a

guard of honour was again placed at her door; and the Gazettes again,

after a long interval, announced that foreign ministers had had the

honour of being presented to her. [588] The Churchills were again

permitted to dwell under the royal roof. But William did not at first

include them in the peace which he had made with their mistress.

Marlborough remained excluded from military and political employment;

and it was not without much difficulty that he was admitted into the

circle at Kensington, and permitted to kiss the royal hand. [589] The

feeling with which he was regarded by the King explains why Anne was

not appointed Regent. The Regency of Anne would have been the Regency

of Marlborough; and it is not strange that a man whom it was not thought

safe to entrust with any office in the State or the army should not have

been entrusted with the whole government of the kingdom.

Had Marlborough been of a proud and vindictive nature he might have

been provoked into raising another quarrel in the royal family, and into

forming new cabals in the army. But all his passions, except ambition

and avarice, were under strict regulation. He was destitute alike of the

sentiment of gratitude and of the sentiment of revenge. He had conspired

against the government while it was loading him with favours. He

now supported it, though it requited his support with contumely. He

perfectly understood his own interest; he had perfect command of his

temper; he endured decorously the hardships of his present situation,

and contented himself by looking forward to a reversion which would

amply repay him for a few years of patience. He did not indeed cease

to correspond with the Court of Saint Germains; but the correspondence

gradually became more and more slack, and seems, on his part, to have

been made up of vague professions and trifling excuses.

The event which had changed all Marlborough's views had filled the

minds of fiercer and more pertinacious politicians with wild hopes and

atrocious projects.

During the two years and a half which followed the execution of

Grandval, no serious design had been formed against the life of William.

Some hotheaded malecontents had indeed laid schemes for kidnapping

or murdering him; but those schemes were not, while his wife lived,

countenanced by her father. James did not feel, and, to do him justice,

was not such a hypocrite as to pretend to feel, any scruple about

removing his enemies by those means which he had justly thought base and

wicked when employed by his enemies against himself. If any such scruple

had arisen in his mind, there was no want, under his roof, of casuists

willing and competent to soothe his conscience with sophisms such as had

corrupted the far nobler natures of Anthony Babington and Everard

Digby. To question the lawfulness of assassination, in cases where

assassination might promote the interests of the Church, was to question

the authority of the most illustrious Jesuits, of Bellarmine and Suarez,

of Molina and Mariana; nay, it was to rebel against the Chair of Saint

Peter. One Pope had walked in procession at the head of his cardinals,

had proclaimed a jubilee, had ordered the guns of Saint Angelo to

be fired, in honour of the perfidious butchery in which Coligni had

perished. Another Pope had in a solemn allocution hymned the murder of

Henry the Third of France in rapturous language borrowed from the ode of

the prophet Habakkuk, and had extolled the murderer above Phinehas

and Judith. [590] William was regarded at Saint Germains as a monster

compared with whom Coligni and Henry the Third were saints. Nevertheless

James, during some years, refused to sanction any attempt on his

nephew's person. The reasons which he assigned for his refusal have come

down to us, as he wrote them with his own hand. He did not affect to

think that assassination was a sin which ought to be held in horror by a

Christian, or a villany unworthy of a gentleman; he merely said that

the difficulties were great, and that he would not push his friends

on extreme danger when it would not be in his power to second them

effectually. [591] In truth, while Mary lived, it might well be doubted

whether the murder of her husband would really be a service to the

Jacobite cause. By his death the government would lose indeed the

strength derived from his eminent personal qualities, but would at the

same time be relieved from the load of his personal unpopularity. His

whole power would at once devolve on his widow; and the nation would

probably rally round her with enthusiasm. If her political abilities

were not equal to his, she had not his repulsive manners, his foreign

pronunciation, his partiality for every thing Dutch and for every thing

Calvinistic. Many, who had thought her culpably wanting in filial piety,

would be of opinion that now at least she was absolved from all duty to

a father stained with the blood of her husband. The whole machinery

of the administration would continue to work without that interruption

which ordinarily followed a demise of the Crown. There would be no

dissolution of the Parliament, no suspension of the customs and excise;

commissions would retain their force; and all that James would have

gained by the fall of his enemy would have been a barren revenge.

The death of the Queen changed every thing. If a dagger or a bullet

should now reach the heart of William, it was probable that there would

instantly be general anarchy. The Parliament and the Privy Council would

cease to exist. The authority of ministers and judges would expire with

him from whom it was derived. It might seem not improbable that at such

a moment a restoration might be effected without a blow.

Scarcely therefore had Mary been laid in the grave when restless and

unprincipled men began to plot in earnest against the life of William.

Foremost among these men in parts, in courage and in energy was Robert

Charnock. He had been liberally educated, and had, in the late reign,

been a fellow of Magdalene College, Oxford. Alone in that great society

he had betrayed the common cause, had consented to be the tool of the

High Commission, had publicly apostatized from the Church of England,

and, while his college was a Popish seminary, had held the office of

Vice President. The Revolution came, and altered at once the whole

course of his life. Driven from the quiet cloister and the old grove of

oaks on the bank of the Cherwell, he sought haunts of a very different

kind. During several years he led the perilous and agitated life of a

conspirator, passed and repassed on secret errands between England and

France, changed his lodgings in London often, and was known at different

coffeehouses by different names. His services had been requited with a

captain's commission signed by the banished King.

With Charnock was closely connected George Porter, an adventurer who

called himself a Roman Catholic and a Royalist, but who was in truth

destitute of all religious and of all political principle. Porter's

friends could not deny that he was a rake and a coxcomb, that he drank,

that he swore, that he told extravagant lies about his amours, and that

he had been convicted of manslaughter for a stab given in a brawl at

the playhouse. His enemies affirmed that he was addicted to nauseous

and horrible kinds of debauchery, and that he procured the means of

indulging his infamous tastes by cheating and marauding; that he was one

of a gang of clippers; that he sometimes got on horseback late in the

evening and stole out in disguise, and that, when he returned from these

mysterious excursions, his appearance justified the suspicion that he

had been doing business on Hounslow Heath or Finchley Common. [592]

Cardell Goodman, popularly called Scum Goodman, a knave more abandoned,

if possible, than Porter, was in the plot. Goodman had been on the

stage, had been kept, like some much greater men, by the Duchess of

Cleveland, had been taken into her house, had been loaded by her with

gifts, and had requited her by bribing an Italian quack to poison two of

her children. As the poison had not been administered, Goodman could

be prosecuted only for a misdemeanour. He was tried, convicted and

sentenced to a ruinous fine. He had since distinguished himself as one

of the first forgers of bank notes. [593]

Sir William Parkyns, a wealthy knight bred to the law, who had been

conspicuous among the Tories in the days of the Exclusion Bill, was one

of the most important members of the confederacy. He bore a much fairer

character than most of his accomplices; but in one respect he was more

culpable than any of them. For he had, in order to retain a lucrative

office which he held in the Court of Chancery, sworn allegiance to the

Prince against whose life he now conspired.

The design was imparted to Sir John Fenwick, celebrated on account of

the cowardly insult which he had offered to the deceased Queen. Fenwick,

if his own assertion is to be trusted, was willing to join in an

insurrection, but recoiled from the thought of assassination, and showed

so much of what was in his mind as sufficed to make him an object of

suspicion to his less scrupulous associates. He kept their secret,

however, as strictly as if he had wished them success.

It should seem that, at first, a natural feeling restrained the

conspirators from calling their design by the proper name. Even in their

private consultations they did not as yet talk of killing the Prince of

Orange. They would try to seize him and to carry him alive into France.

If there were any resistance they might be forced to use their swords

and pistols, and nobody could be answerable for what a thrust or a

shot might do. In the spring of 1695, the scheme of assassination, thus

thinly veiled, was communicated to James, and his sanction was earnestly

requested. But week followed week; and no answer arrived from him. He

doubtless remained silent in the hope that his adherents would, after

a short delay, venture to act on their own responsibility, and that he

might thus have the advantage without the scandal of their crime. They

seem indeed to have so understood him. He had not, they said, authorised

the attempt; but he had not prohibited it; and, apprised as he was of

their plan, the absence of prohibition was a sufficient warrant. They

therefore determined to strike; but before they could make the necessary

arrangements William set out for Flanders; and the plot against his life

was necessarily suspended till his return.

It was on the twelfth of May that the King left Kensington for

Gravesend, where he proposed to embark for the Continent. Three days

before his departure the Parliament of Scotland had, after a recess

of about two years, met again at Edinburgh. Hamilton, who had, in the

preceding session, sate on the throne and held the sceptre, was dead;

and it was necessary to find a new Lord High Commissioner. The person

selected was John Hay, Marquess of Tweedale, Chancellor of the Realm, a

man grown old in business, well informed, prudent, humane, blameless in

private life, and, on the whole, as respectable as any Scottish lord

who had been long and deeply concerned in the politics of those troubled

times.

His task was not without difficulty. It was indeed well known that the

Estates were generally inclined to support the government. But it was

also well known that there was one subject which would require the most

dexterous and delicate management. The cry of the blood shed more than

three years before in Glencoe had at length made itself heard. Towards

the close of the year 1693, the reports, which had at first been

contemptuously derided as factious calumnies, began to be generally

thought deserving of serious attention. Many people little disposed to

place confidence in any thing that came forth from the secret presses of

the Jacobites owned that, for the honour of the government, some inquiry

ought to be instituted. The amiable Mary had been much shocked by what

she heard. William had, at her request, empowered the Duke of Hamilton

and several other Scotchmen of note to investigate the whole matter.

But the Duke died; his colleagues were slack in the performance of their

duty; and the King, who knew little and cared little about Scotland,

forgot to urge them. [594]

It now appeared that the government would have done wisely as well as

rightly by anticipating the wishes of the country. The horrible story

repeated by the nonjurors pertinaciously, confidently, and with so

many circumstances as almost enforced belief, had at length roused all

Scotland. The sensibility of a people eminently patriotic was galled by

the taunts of southern pamphleteers, who asked whether there was on the

north of the Tweed, no law, no justice, no humanity, no spirit to demand

redress even for the foulest wrongs. Each of the two extreme parties,

which were diametrically opposed to each other in general politics, was

impelled by a peculiar feeling to call for inquiry. The Jacobites were

delighted by the prospect of being able to make out a case which would

bring discredit on the usurper, and which might be set off against the

many offences imputed by the Whigs to Claverhouse and Mackenzie. The

zealous Presbyterians were not less delighted at the prospect of being

able to ruin the Master of Stair. They had never forgotten or forgiven

the service which he had rendered to the House of Stuart in the time of

the persecution. They knew that, though he had cordially concurred in

the political revolution which had freed them from the hated dynasty, he

had seen with displeasure that ecclesiastical revolution which was, in

their view, even more important. They knew that church government was

with him merely an affair of State, and that, looking at it as an affair

of State, he preferred the episcopal to the synodical model. They could

not without uneasiness see so adroit and eloquent an enemy of pure

religion constantly attending the royal steps and constantly breathing

counsel in the royal ear. They were therefore impatient for an

investigation, which, if one half of what was rumoured were true, must

produce revelations fatal to the power and fame of the minister whom

they distrusted. Nor could that minister rely on the cordial support

of all who held office under the Crown. His genius and influence had

excited the jealousy of many less successful courtiers, and especially

of his fellow secretary, Johnstone.

Thus, on the eve of the meeting of the Scottish Parliament, Glencoe

was in the mouths of all Scotchmen of all factions and of all sects.

William, who was just about to start for the Continent, learned that, on

this subject, the Estates must have their way, and that the best thing

that he could do would be to put himself at the head of a movement which

it was impossible for him to resist. A Commission authorising Tweedale

and several other privy councillors to examine fully into the matter

about which the public mind was so strongly excited was signed by the

King at Kensington, was sent down to Edinburgh, and was there sealed

with the Great Seal of the realm. This was accomplished just in time.

[595] The Parliament had scarcely entered on business when a member

rose to move for an inquiry into the circumstances of the slaughter

of Glencoe. Tweedale was able to inform the Estates that His Majesty's

goodness had prevented their desires, that a Commission of Precognition

had, a few hours before, passed in all the forms, and that the lords and

gentlemen named in that instrument would hold their first meeting before

night. [596] The Parliament unanimously voted thanks to the King for

this instance of his paternal care; but some of those who joined in the

vote of thanks expressed a very natural apprehension that the second

investigation might end as unsatisfactorily as the first investigation

had ended. The honour of the country, they said, was at stake; and the

Commissioners were bound to proceed with such diligence that the result

of the inquest might be known before the end of the session. Tweedale

gave assurances which, for a time, silenced the murmurers. [597] But,

when three weeks had passed away, many members became mutinous

and suspicious. On the fourteenth of June it was moved that the

Commissioners should be ordered to report. The motion was not carried;

but it was renewed day after day. In three successive sittings Tweedale

was able to restrain the eagerness of the assembly. But, when he at

length announced that the report had been completed; and added that it

would not be laid before the Estates till it had been submitted to the

King, there was a violent outcry. The public curiosity was intense;

for the examination had been conducted with closed doors; and both

Commissioners and clerks had been sworn to secrecy. The King was in the

Netherlands. Weeks must elapse before his pleasure could be taken; and

the session could not last much longer. In a fourth debate there were

signs which convinced the Lord High Commissioner that it was expedient

to yield; and the report was produced. [598]

It is a paper highly creditable to those who framed it, an excellent

digest of evidence, clear, passionless, and austerely just. No source

from which valuable information was likely to be derived had been

neglected. Glengarry and Keppoch, though notoriously disaffected to the

government, had been permitted to conduct the case on behalf of their

unhappy kinsmen. Several of the Macdonalds who had escaped from the

havoc of that night had been examined, and among them the reigning Mac

Ian, the eldest son of the murdered Chief. The correspondence of the

Master of Stair with the military men who commanded in the Highlands had

been subjected to a strict but not unfair scrutiny. The conclusion to

which the Commissioners came, and in which every intelligent and candid

inquirer will concur, was that the slaughter of Glencoe was a barbarous

murder, and that of this barbarous murder the letters of the Master of

Stair were the sole warrant and cause.

That Breadalbane was an accomplice in the crime was not proved; but he

did not come off quite clear. In the course of the investigation it was

incidentally discovered that he had, while distributing the money of

William among the Highland Chiefs, professed to them the warmest zeal

for the interest of James, and advised them to take what they could get

from the usurper, but to be constantly on the watch for a favourable

opportunity of bringing back the rightful King. Breadalbane's defence

was that he was a greater villain than his accusers imagined, and that

he had pretended to be a Jacobite only in order to get at the bottom

of the Jacobite plans. In truth the depths of this man's knavery were

unfathomable. It was impossible to say which of his treasons were, to

borrow the Italian classification, single treasons, and which double

treasons. On this occasion the Parliament supposed him to have

been guilty only of a single treason, and sent him to the Castle of

Edinburgh. The government, on full consideration, gave credit to his

assertion that he had been guilty of a double treason, and let him out

again. [599]

The Report of the Commission was taken into immediate consideration

by the Estates. They resolved, without one dissentient voice, that the

order signed by William did not authorise the slaughter of Glencoe. They

next resolved, but, it should seem, not unanimously, that the slaughter

was a murder. [600] They proceeded to pass several votes, the sense of

which was finally summed up in an address to the King. How that part of

the address which related to the Master of Stair should be framed was a

question about which there was much debate. Several of his letters were

called for and read; and several amendments were put to the vote. It

should seem that the Jacobites and the extreme Presbyterians were, with

but too good cause, on the side of severity. The majority, under the

skilful management of the Lord High Commissioner, acquiesced in words

which made it impossible for the guilty minister to retain his office,

but which did not impute to him such criminality as would have affected

his life or his estate. They censured him, but censured him in terms far

too soft. They blamed his immoderate zeal against the unfortunate clan,

and his warm directions about performing the execution by surprise. His

excess in his letters they pronounced to have been the original cause

of the massacre; but, instead of demanding that he should be brought to

trial as a murderer, they declared that, in consideration of his absence

and of his great place, they left it to the royal wisdom to deal with

him in such a manner as might vindicate the honour of the government.

The indulgence which was shown to the principal offender was not

extended to his subordinates. Hamilton, who had fled and had been vainly

cited by proclamation at the City Cross to appear before the Estates,

was pronounced not to be clear of the blood of the Glencoe men.

Glenlyon, Captain Drummond, Lieutenant Lindsey, Ensign Lundie, and

Serjeant Barbour, were still more distinctly designated as murderers;

and the King was requested to command the Lord Advocate to prosecute

them.

The Parliament of Scotland was undoubtedly, on this occasion, severe in

the wrong place and lenient in the wrong place. The cruelty and baseness

of Glenlyon and his comrades excite, even after the lapse of a hundred

and sixty years, emotions which make it difficult to reason calmly.

Yet whoever can bring himself to look at the conduct of these men with

judicial impartiality will probably be of opinion that they could

not, without great detriment to the commonwealth, have been treated

as assassins. They had slain nobody whom they had not been positively

directed by their commanding officer to slay. That subordination without

which an army is the worst of all rabbles would be at an end, if every

soldier were to be held answerable for the justice of every order

in obedience to which he pulls his trigger. The case of Glencoe was,

doubtless, an extreme case; but it cannot easily be distinguished in

principle from cases which, in war, are of ordinary occurrence. Very

terrible military executions are sometimes indispensable. Humanity

itself may require them. Who then is to decide whether there be an

emergency such as makes severity the truest mercy? Who is to determine

whether it be or be not necessary to lay a thriving town in ashes, to

decimate a large body of mutineers, to shoot a whole gang of banditti?

Is the responsibility with the commanding officer, or with the rank and

file whom he orders to make ready, present and fire? And if the general

rule be that the responsibility is with the commanding officer, and

not with those who obey him, is it possible to find any reason for

pronouncing the case of Glencoe an exception to that rule? It is

remarkable that no member of the Scottish Parliament proposed that any

of the private men of Argyle's regiment should be prosecuted for murder.

Absolute impunity was granted to everybody below the rank of Serjeant.

Yet on what principle? Surely, if military obedience was not a valid

plea, every man who shot a Macdonald on that horrible night was a

murderer. And, if military obedience was a valid plea for the musketeer

who acted by order of Serjeant Barbour, why not for Barbour who acted

by order of Glenlyon? And why not for Glenlyon who acted by order of

Hamilton? It can scarcely be maintained that more deference is due

from a private to a noncommissioned officer than from a noncommissioned

officer to his captain, or from a captain to his colonel.

It may be said that the orders given to Glenlyon were of so peculiar a

nature that, if he had been a man of virtue, he would have thrown up his

commission, would have braved the displeasure of colonel, general, and

Secretary of State, would have incurred the heaviest penalty which

a Court Martial could inflict, rather than have performed the part

assigned to him; and this is perfectly true; but the question is not

whether he acted like a virtuous man, but whether he did that for which

he could, without infringing a rule essential to the discipline of camps

and to the security of nations, be hanged as a murderer. In this case,

disobedience was assuredly a moral duty; but it does not follow that

obedience was a legal crime.

It seems therefore that the guilt of Glenlyon and his fellows was not

within the scope of the penal law. The only punishment which could

properly be inflicted on them was that which made Cain cry out that

it was greater than he could bear; to be vagabonds on the face of the

earth, and to carry wherever they went a mark from which even bad men

should turn away sick with horror.

It was not so with the Master of Stair. He had been solemnly pronounced,

both by the Commission of Precognition and by the Estates of the Realm

in full Parliament, to be the original author of the massacre. That it

was not advisable to make examples of his tools was the strongest reason

for making an example of him. Every argument which can be urged against

punishing the soldier who executes the unjust and inhuman orders of his

superior is an argument for punishing with the utmost rigour of the law

the superior who gives unjust and inhuman orders. Where there can be no

responsibility below, there should be double responsibility above. What

the Parliament of Scotland ought with one voice to have demanded was,

not that a poor illiterate serjeant, who was hardly more accountable

than his own halbert for the bloody work which he had done, should be

hanged in the Grassmarket, but that the real murderer, the most politic,

the most eloquent, the most powerful, of Scottish statesmen, should be

brought to a public trial, and should, if found guilty, die the death of

a felon. Nothing less than such a sacrifice could expiate such a crime.

Unhappily the Estates, by extenuating the guilt of the chief offender,

and, at the same time, demanding that his humble agents should be

treated with a severity beyond the law, made the stain which the

massacre had left on the honour of the nation broader and deeper than

before.

Nor is it possible to acquit the King of a great breach of duty. It

is, indeed, highly probable that, till he received the report of

his Commissioners, he had been very imperfectly informed as to the

circumstances of the slaughter. We can hardly suppose that he was much

in the habit of reading Jacobite pamphlets; and, if he did read them,

he would have found in them such a quantity of absurd and rancorous

invective against himself that he would have been very little inclined

to credit any imputation which they might throw on his servants. He

would have seen himself accused, in one tract, of being a concealed

Papist, in another of having poisoned Jeffreys in the Tower, in a third

of having contrived to have Talmash taken off at Brest. He would have

seen it asserted that, in Ireland, he once ordered fifty of his wounded

English soldiers to be burned alive. He would have seen that the

unalterable affection which he felt from his boyhood to his death for

three or four of the bravest and most trusty friends that ever prince

had the happiness to possess was made a ground for imputing to him

abominations as foul as those which are buried under the waters of the

Dead Sea. He might therefore naturally be slow to believe frightful

imputations thrown by writers whom he knew to be habitual liars on a

statesman whose abilities he valued highly, and to whose exertions he

had, on some great occasions, owed much. But he could not, after he

had read the documents transmitted to him from Edinburgh by Tweedale,

entertain the slightest doubt of the guilt of the Master of Stair. To

visit that guilt with exemplary punishment was the sacred duty of a

Sovereign who had sworn, with his hand lifted up towards heaven, that he

would, in his kingdom of Scotland, repress, in all estates and degrees,

all oppression, and would do justice, without acceptance of persons,

as he hoped for mercy from the Father of all mercies. William contented

himself with dismissing the Master from office. For this great fault, a

fault amounting to a crime, Burnet tried to frame, not a defence, but an

excuse. He would have us believe that the King, alarmed by finding how

many persons had borne a part in the slaughter of Glencoe, thought

it better to grant a general amnesty than to punish one massacre by

another. But this representation is the very reverse of the truth.

Numerous instruments had doubtless been employed in the work of death;

but they had all received their impulse, directly or indirectly, from

a single mind. High above the crowd of offenders towered one offender,

preeminent in parts, knowledge, rank and power. In return for many

victims immolated by treachery, only one victim was demanded by justice;

and it must ever be considered as a blemish on the fame of William that

the demand was refused.

On the seventeenth of July the session of the Parliament of Scotland

closed. The Estates had liberally voted such a supply as the poor

country which they represented could afford. They had indeed been put

into high good humour by the notion that they had found out a way of

speedily making that poor country rich. Their attention had been divided

between the inquiry into the slaughter of Glencoe and some specious

commercial projects of which the nature will be explained and the fate

related in a future chapter.

Meanwhile all Europe was looking anxiously towards the Low Countries.

The great warrior who had been victorious at Fleurus, at Steinkirk and

at Landen had not left his equal behind him. But France still possessed

Marshals well qualified for high command. Already Catinat and Boufflers

had given proofs of skill, of resolution, and of zeal for the interests

of the state. Either of those distinguished officers would have been a

successor worthy of Luxemburg and an antagonist worthy of William; but

their master, unfortunately for himself, preferred to both the Duke of

Villeroy. The new general had been Lewis's playmate when they were both

children, had then become a favourite, and had never ceased to be so.

In those superficial graces for which the French aristocracy was then

renowned throughout Europe, Villeroy was preeminent among the French

aristocracy. His stature was tall, his countenance handsome, his manners

nobly and somewhat haughtily polite, his dress, his furniture, his

equipages, his table, magnificent. No man told a story with more

vivacity; no man sate his horse better in a hunting party; no man made

love with more success; no man staked and lost heaps of gold with more

agreeable unconcern; no man was more intimately acquainted with the

adventures, the attachments, the enmities of the lords and ladies

who daily filled the halls of Versailles. There were two characters

especially which this fine gentleman had studied during many years, and

of which he knew all the plaits and windings, the character of the King,

and the character of her who was Queen in every thing but name. But

there ended Villeroy's acquirements. He was profoundly ignorant both of

books and of business. At the Council Board he never opened his mouth

without exposing himself. For war he had not a single qualification

except that personal courage which was common to him with the whole

class of which he was a member. At every great crisis of his political

and of his military life he was alternately drunk with arrogance

and sunk in dejection. Just before he took a momentous step his

selfconfidence was boundless; he would listen to no suggestion; he would

not admit into his mind the thought that failure was possible. On

the first check he gave up every thing for lost, became incapable of

directing, and ran up and down in helpless despair. Lewis however loved

him; and he, to do him justice, loved Lewis. The kindness of the master

was proof against all the disasters which were brought on his kingdom

by the rashness and weakness of the servant; and the gratitude of the

servant was honourably, though not judiciously, manifested on more than

one occasion after the death of the master. [601]

Such was the general to whom the direction of the campaign in the

Netherlands was confided. The Duke of Maine was sent to learn the art of

war under this preceptor. Maine, the natural son of Lewis by the Duchess

of Montespan, had been brought up from childhood by Madame de Maintenon,

and was loved by Lewis with the love of a father, by Madame de Maintenon

with the not less tender love of a foster mother.

Grave men were scandalized by the ostentatious manner in which the King,

while making a high profession of piety, exhibited his partiality for

this offspring of a double adultery. Kindness, they said, was doubtless

due from a parent to a child; but decency was also due from a Sovereign

to his people. In spite of these murmurs the youth had been publicly

acknowledged, loaded with wealth and dignities, created a Duke and Peer,

placed, by an extraordinary act of royal power, above Dukes and Peers of

older creation, married to a Princess of the blood royal, and appointed

Grand Master of the Artillery of the Realm. With abilities and courage

he might have played a great part in the world. But his intellect was

small; his nerves were weak; and the women and priests who had educated

him had effectually assisted nature. He was orthodox in belief, correct

in morals, insinuating in address, a hypocrite, a mischiefmaker and a

coward.

It was expected at Versailles that Flanders would, during this year, be

the chief theatre of war. Here, therefore, a great army was collected.

Strong lines were formed from the Lys to the Scheld, and Villeroy fixed

his headquarters near Tournay. Boufflers, with about twelve thousand

men, guarded the banks of the Sambre.

On the other side the British and Dutch troops, who were under

`-William's immediate command, mustered in the neighbourhood of Ghent.

The Elector of Bavaria, at the head of a great force, lay near Brussels.

A smaller army, consisting chiefly of Brandenburghers was encamped not

far from Huy.

Early in June military operations commenced. The first movements of

William were mere feints intended to prevent the French generals from

suspecting his real purpose. He had set his heart on retaking Namur.

The loss of Namur had been the most mortifying of all the disasters of a

disastrous war. The importance of Namur in a military point of view had

always been great, and had become greater than ever during the

three years which had elapsed since the last siege. New works, the

masterpieces of Vauban, had been added to the old defences which had

been constructed with the utmost skill of Cohorn. So ably had the two

illustrious engineers vied with each other and cooperated with nature

that the fortress was esteemed the strongest in Europe. Over one gate

had been placed a vaunting inscription which defied the allies to wrench

the prize from the grasp of France.

William kept his own counsel so well that not a hint of his intention

got abroad. Some thought that Dunkirk, some that Ypres was his object.

The marches and skirmishes by which he disguised his design were

compared by Saint Simon to the moves of a skilful chess player.

Feuquieres, much more deeply versed in military science than Saint

Simon, informs us that some of these moves were hazardous, and that such

a game could not have been safely played against Luxemburg; and this is

probably true, but Luxemburg was gone; and what Luxemburg had been to

William, William now was to Villeroy.

While the King was thus employed, the Jacobites at home, being unable,

in his absence, to prosecute their design against his person, contented

themselves with plotting against his government. They were somewhat less

closely watched than during the preceding year; for the event of

the trials at Manchester had discouraged Aaron Smith and his agents.

Trenchard, whose vigilance and severity had made him an object of terror

and hatred, was no more, and had been succeeded, in what may be called

the subordinate Secretaryship of State, by Sir William Trumball, a

learned civilian and an experienced diplomatist, of moderate opinions,

and of temper cautious to timidity. [602] The malecontents were

emboldened by the lenity of the administration. William had scarcely

sailed for the Continent when they held a great meeting at one of their

favourite haunts, the Old King's Head in Leadenhall Street. Charnock,

Porter, Goodman, Parkyns and Fenwick were present. The Earl of Aylesbury

was there, a man whose attachment to the exiled house was notorious, but

who always denied that he had ever thought of effecting a restoration

by immoral means. His denial would be entitled to more credit if he

had not, by taking the oaths to the government against which he was

constantly intriguing, forfeited the right to be considered as a man of

conscience and honour. In the assembly was Sir John Friend, a nonjuror

who had indeed a very slender wit, but who had made a very large fortune

by brewing, and who spent it freely in sedition. After dinner,--for the

plans of the Jacobites were generally laid over wine, and generally bore

some trace of the conviviality in which they had originated,--it

was resolved that the time was come for an insurrection and a French

invasion, and that a special messenger should carry the sense of the

meeting to Saint Germains. Charnock was selected. He undertook the

commission, crossed the Channel, saw James, and had interviews with the

ministers of Lewis, but could arrange nothing. The English malecontents

would not stir till ten thousand French troops were in the island; and

ten thousand French troops could not, without great risk, be withdrawn

from the army which was contending against William in the Low Countries.

When Charnock returned to report that his embassy had been unsuccessful,

he found some of his confederates in gaol. They had during his absence

amused themselves, after their fashion, by trying to raise a riot in

London on the tenth of June, the birthday of the unfortunate Prince

of Wales. They met at a tavern in Drury Lane, and, when hot with

wine, sallied forth sword in hand, headed by Porter and Goodman, beat

kettledrums, unfurled banners, and began to light bonfires. But the

watch, supported by the populace, was too strong for the revellers. They

were put to rout; the tavern where they had feasted was sacked by the

mob; the ringleaders were apprehended, tried, fined and imprisoned, but

regained their liberty in time to bear a part in a far more criminal

design. [603]

By this time all was ready for the execution of the plan which William

had formed. That plan had been communicated to the other chiefs of

the allied forces, and had been warmly approved. Vaudemont was left in

Flanders with a considerable force to watch Villeroy. The King, with

the rest of his army, marched straight on Namur. At the same moment the

Elector of Bavaria advanced towards the same point on one side, and the

Brandenburghers on another. So well had these movements been concerted,

and so rapidly were they performed, that the skilful and energetic

Boufflers had but just time to throw himself into the fortress. He was

accompanied by seven regiments of dragoons, by a strong body of gunners,

sappers and miners, and by an officer named Megrigny, who was esteemed

the best engineer in the French service with the exception of Vauban.

A few hours after Boufflers had entered the place the besieging forces

closed round it on every side; and the lines of circumvallation were

rapidly formed.

The news excited no alarm at the French Court. There it was not doubted

that William would soon be compelled to abandon his enterprise with

grievous loss and ignominy. The town was strong; the castle was believed

to be impregnable; the magazines were filled with provisions and

ammunition sufficient to last till the time at which the armies of that

age were expected to retire into winter quarters; the garrison consisted

of sixteen thousand of the best troops in the world; they were commanded

by an excellent general; he was assisted by an excellent engineer; nor

was it doubted that Villeroy would march with his great army to the

assistance of Boufflers, and that the besiegers would then be in much

more danger than the besieged.