Johnson was the very man for Speke's purposes, zealous and intrepid, a

scholar and a practised controversialist, yet as simple as a child. A

close intimacy sprang up between the two fellow prisoners. Johnson wrote

a succession of bitter and vehement treatises which Speke conveyed to

the printer. When the camp was formed at Hounslow, Speke urged Johnson

to compose an address which might excite the troops to mutiny. The paper

was instantly drawn up. Many thousands of copies were struck off and

brought to Speke's room, whence they were distributed over the whole

country, and especially among the soldiers. A milder government than

that which then ruled England would have been moved to high resentment

by such a provocation. Strict search was made. A subordinate agent who

had been employed to circulate the address saved himself by giving up

Johnson; and Johnson was not the man to save himself by giving up Speke.

An information was filed, and a conviction obtained without difficulty.

Julian Johnson, as he was popularly called, was sentenced to stand

thrice in the pillory, and to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. The

Judge, Sir Francis Withins, told the criminal to be thankful for the

great lenity of the Attorney General, who might have treated the case

as one of high treason. "I owe him no thanks," answered Johnson,

dauntlessly. "Am I, whose only crime is that I have defended the Church

and the laws, to be grateful for being scourged like a dog, while Popish

scribblers are suffered daily to insult the Church and to violate the

laws with impunity?" The energy with which he spoke was such that both

the Judges and the crown lawyers thought it necessary to vindicate

themselves, and protested that they knew of no Popish publications

such as those to which the prisoner alluded. He instantly drew from his

pocket some Roman Catholic books and trinkets which were then freely

exposed for sale under the royal patronage, read aloud the titles of the

books, and threw a rosary across the table to the King's counsel. "And

now," he cried with a loud voice, "I lay this information before God,

before this court, and before the English people. We shall soon see

whether Mr. Attorney will do his duty."

It was resolved that, before the punishment was inflicted, Johnson

should be degraded from the priesthood. The prelates who had been

charged by the Ecclesiastical Commission with the care of the diocese

of London cited him before them in the chapter house of Saint Paul's

Cathedral. The manner in which he went through the ceremony made a deep

impression on many minds. When he was stripped of his sacred robe he

exclaimed, "You are taking away my gown because I have tried to keep

your gowns on your backs." The only part of the formalities which seemed

to distress him was the plucking of the Bible out of his hand. He made

a faint struggle to retain the sacred book, kissed it, and burst into

tears. "You cannot," he said, "deprive me of the hopes which I owe to

it." Some attempts were made to obtain a remission of the flogging. A

Roman Catholic priest offered to intercede in consideration of a bribe

of two hundred pounds. The money was raised; and the priest did his

best, but in vain.

"Mr. Johnson," said the King, "has the spirit of a martyr; and it is fit

that he should be one." William the Third said, a few years later, of

one of the most acrimonious and intrepid Jacobites, "He has set his

heart on being a martyr, and I have set mine on disappointing him."

These two speeches would alone suffice to explain the widely different

fates of the two princes.

The day appointed for the flogging came. A whip of nine lashes was used.

Three hundred and seventeen stripes were inflicted; but the sufferer

never winced. He afterwards said that the pain was cruel, but that, as

he was dragged at the tail of the cart, he remembered how patiently the

cross had been borne up Mount Calvary, and was so much supported by the

thought that, but for the fear of incurring the suspicion of vain glory,

he would have sung a psalm with as firm and cheerful a voice as if he

had been worshipping God in the congregation. It is impossible not to

wish that so much heroism had been less alloyed by intemperance and

intolerance. [116]

Among the clergy of the Church of England Johnson found no sympathy. He

had attempted to justify rebellion; he had even hinted approbation of

regicide; and they still, in spite of much provocation, clung to the

doctrine of nonresistance. But they saw with alarm and concern the

progress of what they considered as a noxious superstition, and, while

they abjured all thought of defending their religion by the sword,

betook themselves manfully to weapons of a different kind. To preach

against the errors of Popery was now regarded by them as a point of duty

and a point of honour. The London clergy, who were then in abilities

and influence decidedly at the head of their profession, set an example

which was bravely followed by their ruder brethren all over the country.

Had only a few bold men taken this freedom, they would probably have

been at once cited before the Ecclesiastical Commission; but it was

hardly possible to punish an offence which was committed every Sunday

by thousands of divines, from Berwick to Penzance. The presses of

the capital, of Oxford, and of Cambridge, never rested. The act which

subjected literature to a censorship did not seriously impede the

exertions of Protestant controversialists; for it contained a proviso

in favour of the two Universities, and authorised the publication of

theological works licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was

therefore out of the power of the government to silence the defenders of

the established religion. They were a numerous, an intrepid, and a

well appointed band of combatants. Among them were eloquent declaimers,

expert dialecticians, scholars deeply read in the writings of the

fathers and in all parts of ecclesiastical history. Some of them, at a

later period, turned against one another the formidable arms which they

had wielded against the common enemy, and by their fierce contentions

and insolent triumphs brought reproach on the Church which they had

saved. But at present they formed an united phalanx. In the van appeared

a rank of steady and skilful veterans, Tillotson, Stillingfleet,

Sherlock, Prideaux, Whitby, Patrick, Tenison, Wake. The rear was brought

up by the most distinguished bachelors of arts who were studying for

deacon's orders. Conspicuous amongst the recruits whom Cambridge sent to

the field was a distinguished pupil of the great Newton, Henry Wharton,

who had, a few months before, been senior wrangler of his year, and

whose early death was soon after deplored by men of all parties as an

irreparable loss to letters. [117] Oxford was not less proud of a youth,

whose great powers, first essayed in this conflict, afterwards troubled

the Church and the State during forty eventful years, Francis Atterbury.

By such men as these every question in issue between the Papists and

the Protestants was debated, sometimes in a popular style which boys and

women could comprehend, sometimes with the utmost subtlety of logic, and

sometimes with an immense display of learning. The pretensions of the

Holy See, the authority of tradition, purgatory, transubstantiation, the

sacrifice of the mass, the adoration of the host, the denial of the cup

to the laity, confession, penance, indulgences, extreme unction, the

invocation of saints, the adoration of images, the celibacy of the

clergy, the monastic vows, the practice of celebrating public worship in

a tongue unknown to the multitude, the corruptions of the court of Rome,

the history of the Reformation, the characters of the chief reformers,

were copiously discussed. Great numbers of absurd legends about miracles

wrought by saints and relics were translated from the Italian and

published as specimens of the priestcraft by which the greater part of

Christendom had been fooled. Of the tracts put forth on these subjects

by Anglican divines during the short reign of James the Second many have

probably perished. Those which may still be found in our great libraries

make up a mass of near twenty thousand pages. [118]

The Roman Catholics did not yield the victory without a struggle. One

of them, named Henry Hills, had been appointed printer to the royal

household and chapel, and had been placed by the King at the head of

a great office in London from which theological tracts came forth by

hundreds. Obadiah Walker's press was not less active at Oxford. But,

with the exception of some bad translations of Bossuet's admirable

works, these establishments put forth nothing of the smallest value. It

was indeed impossible for any intelligent and candid Roman Catholic

to deny that the champions of his Church were, in every talent and

acquirement, completely over-matched. The ablest of them would not, on

the other side, have been considered as of the third rate. Many of them,

even when they had something to say, knew not how to say it. They had

been excluded by their religion from English schools and universities;

nor had they ever, till the accession of James, found England an

agreeable, or even a safe, residence. They had therefore passed the

greater part of their lives on the Continent, and had almost unlearned

their mother tongue. When they preached, their outlandish accent moved

the derision of the audience. They spelt like washerwomen. Their diction

was disfigured by foreign idioms; and, when they meant to be eloquent,

they imitated, as well as they could, what was considered as fine

writing in those Italian academies where rhetoric had then reached the

last stage of corruption. Disputants labouring under these disadvantages

would scarcely, even with truth on their side, have been able to make

head against men whose style is eminently distinguished by simple purity

and grace. [119]

The situation of England in the year 1686 cannot be better described

than in the words of the French Ambassador. "The discontent," he wrote,

"is great and general: but the fear of incurring still worse evils

restrains all who have anything to lose. The King openly expresses his

joy at finding himself in a situation to strike bold strokes. He likes

to be complimented on this subject. He has talked to me about it, and

has assured me that he will not flinch." [120]

Meanwhile in other parts of the empire events of grave importance had

taken place. The situation of the episcopalian Protestants of Scotland

differed widely from that in which their English brethren stood. In the

south of the island the religion of the state was the religion of

the people, and had a strength altogether independent of the strength

derived from the support of the government. The sincere conformists were

far more numerous than the Papists and the Protestant Dissenters taken

together. The Established Church of Scotland was the Church of a small

minority. The majority of the lowland population was firmly attached to

the Presbyterian discipline. Prelacy was abhorred by the great body

of Scottish Protestants, both as an unscriptural and as a foreign

institution. It was regarded by the disciples of Knox as a relic of the

abominations of Babylon the Great. It painfully reminded a people proud

of the memory of Wallace and Bruce that Scotland, since her sovereigns

had succeeded to a fairer inheritance, had been independent in name

only. The episcopal polity was also closely associated in the public

mind with all the evils produced by twenty-five years of corrupt and

cruel maladministration. Nevertheless this polity stood, though on a

narrow basis and amidst fearful storms, tottering indeed, yet upheld by

the civil magistrate, and leaning for support, whenever danger became

serious, on the power of England. The records of the Scottish Parliament

were thick set with laws denouncing vengeance on those who in any

direction strayed from the prescribed pale. By an Act passed in the time

of Knox, and breathing his spirit, it was a high crime to hear mass,

and the third offence was capital. [121] An Act recently passed, at

the instance of James, made it death to preach in any Presbyterian

conventicle whatever, and even to attend such a conventicle in the open

air. [122] The Eucharist was not, as in England, degraded into a civil

test; but no person could hold any office, could sit in Parliament, or

could even vote for a member of Parliament, without subscribing, under

the sanction of an oath, a declaration which condemned in the strongest

terms the principles both of the Papists and of the Covenanters. [123]

In the Privy Council of Scotland there were two parties corresponding to

the two parties which were contending against each other at Whitehall.

William Douglas, Duke of Queensberry, was Lord Treasurer, and had,

during some years, been considered as first minister. He was nearly

connected by affinity, by similarity of opinions, and by similarity of

temper, with the Treasurer of England. Both were Tories: both were men

of hot temper and strong prejudices; both were ready to support their

master in any attack on the civil liberties of his people; but both

were sincerely attached to the Established Church. Queensberry had early

notified to the court that, if any innovation affecting that Church were

contemplated, to such innovation he could be no party. But among his

colleagues were several men not less unprincipled than Sunderland. In

truth the Council chamber at Edinburgh had been, during a quarter of

a century, a seminary of all public and private vices; and some of

the politicians whose character had been formed there had a peculiar

hardness of heart and forehead to which Westminster, even in that bad

age, could hardly show anything quite equal. The Chancellor, James

Drummond, Earl of Perth, and his brother, the Secretary of State, John

Lord Melfort, were bent on supplanting Queensberry. The Chancellor had

already an unquestionable title to the royal favour. He had brought into

use a little steel thumbscrew which gave such exquisite torment that it

had wrung confessions even out of men on whom His Majesty's favourite

boot had been tried in vain. [124] But it was well known that even

barbarity was not so sure a way to the heart of James as apostasy. To

apostasy, therefore, Perth and Melfort resorted with a certain audacious

baseness which no English statesman could hope to emulate. They declared

that the papers found in the strong box of Charles the Second had

converted them both to the true faith; and they began to confess and to

hear mass. [125] How little conscience had to do with Perth's change of

religion he amply proved by taking to wife, a few weeks later, in direct

defiance of the laws of the Church which he had just joined, a lady who

was his cousin german, without waiting for a dispensation. When the good

Pope learned this, he said, with scorn and indignation which well became

him, that this was a strange sort of conversion. [126] But James was

more easily satisfied. The apostates presented themselves at Whitehall,

and there received such assurances of his favour, that they ventured to

bring direct charges against the Treasurer. Those charges, however,

were so evidently frivolous that James was forced to acquit the accused

minister; and many thought that the Chancellor had ruined himself by his

malignant eagerness to ruin his rival. There were a few, however,

who judged more correctly. Halifax, to whom Perth expressed some

apprehensions, answered with a sneer that there was no danger. "Be of

good cheer, my Lord; thy faith hath made thee whole." The prediction was

correct. Perth and Melfort went back to Edinburgh, the real heads of the

government of their country. [127] Another member of the Scottish Privy

Council, Alexander Stuart, Earl of Murray, the descendant and heir of

the Regent, abjured the religion of which his illustrious ancestor had

been the foremost champion, and declared himself a member of the

Church of Rome. Devoted as Queensberry had always been to the cause of

prerogative, he could not stand his ground against competitors who

were willing to pay such a price for the favour of the court. He had to

endure a succession of mortifications and humiliations similar to those

which, about the same time, began to embitter the life of his friend

Rochester. Royal letters came down authorising Papists to hold offices

without taking the test. The clergy were strictly charged not to reflect

on the Roman Catholic religion in their discourses. The Chancellor took

on himself to send the macers of the Privy Council round to the few

printers and booksellers who could then be found in Edinburgh, charging

them not to publish any work without his license. It was well understood

that this order was intended to prevent the circulation of Protestant

treatises. One honest stationer told the messengers that he had in his

shop a book which reflected in very coarse terms on Popery, and begged

to know whether he might sell it. They asked to see it; and he showed

them a copy of the Bible. [128] A cargo of images, beads, crosses and

censers arrived at Leith directed to Lord Perth. The importation of such

articles had long been considered as illegal; but now the officers of

the customs allowed the superstitious garments and trinkets to pass.

[129] In a short time it was known that a Popish chapel had been fitted

up in the Chancellor's house, and that mass was regularly said there.

The mob rose. The mansion where the idolatrous rites were celebrated

was fiercely attacked. The iron bars which protected the windows were

wrenched off. Lady Perth and some of her female friends were pelted

with mud. One rioter was seized, and ordered by the Privy Council to be

whipped. His fellows rescued him and beat the hangman. The city was

all night in confusion. The students of the University mingled with the

crowd and animated the tumult. Zealous burghers drank the health of the

college lads and confusion to Papists, and encouraged each other to face

the troops. The troops were already under arms. They were received with

a shower of stones, which wounded an officer. Orders were given to fire;

and several citizens were killed. The disturbance was serious; but

the Drummonds, inflamed by resentment and ambition, exaggerated it

strangely. Queensberry observed that their reports would lead any

person, who had not been a witness of the tumult, to believe that

a sedition as formidable as that of Masaniello had been raging at

Edinburgh. They in return accused the Treasurer, not only of extenuating

the crime of the insurgents, but of having himself prompted it, and

did all in their power to obtain evidence of his guilt. One of the

ringleaders, who had been taken, was offered a pardon if he would own

that Queensberry had set him on; but the same religious enthusiasm,

which had impelled the unhappy prisoner to criminal violence, prevented

him from purchasing his life by a calumny. He and several of his

accomplices were hanged. A soldier, who was accused of exclaiming,

during the affray, that he should like to run his sword through a

Papist, was shot; and Edinburgh was again quiet: but the sufferers

were regarded as martyrs; and the Popish Chancellor became an object of

mortal hatred, which in no long time was largely gratified. [130]

The King was much incensed. The news of the tumult reached him when the

Queen, assisted by the Jesuits, had just triumphed over Lady Dorchester

and her Protestant allies. The malecontents should find, he declared,

that the only effect of the resistance offered to his will was to make

him more and more resolute. [131] He sent orders to the Scottish Council

to punish the guilty with the utmost severity, and to make unsparing use

of the boot. [132] He pretended to be fully convinced of the Treasurer's

innocence, and wrote to that minister in gracious words; but the

gracious words were accompanied by ungracious acts. The Scottish

Treasury was put into commission in spite of the earnest remonstrances

of Rochester, who probably saw his own fate prefigured in that of his

kinsman. [133] Queensberry was, indeed, named First Commissioner, and

was made President of the Privy Council: but his fall, though thus

broken, was still a fall. He was also removed from the government of the

castle of Edinburgh, and was succeeded in that confidential post by the

Duke of Gordon, a Roman Catholic. [134]

And now a letter arrived from London, fully explaining to the Scottish

Privy Council the intentions of the King. What he wanted was that the

Roman Catholics should be exempted from all laws imposing penalties and

disabilities on account of nonconformity, but that the persecution

of the Covenanters should go on without mitigation. [135] This scheme

encountered strenuous opposition in the Council. Some members were

unwilling to see the existing laws relaxed. Others, who were by no means

averse to some relaxation, yet felt that it would be monstrous to admit

Roman Catholics to the highest honours of the state, and yet to

leave unrepealed the Act which made it death to attend a Presbyterian

conventicle. The answer of the board was, therefore, less obsequious

than usual. The King in reply sharply reprimanded his undutiful

Councillors, and ordered three of them, the Duke of Hamilton, Sir George

Lockhart, and General Drummond, to attend him at Westminster. Hamilton's

abilities and knowledge, though by no means such as would have sufficed

to raise an obscure man to eminence, appeared highly respectable in one

who was premier peer of Scotland. Lockhart had long been regarded as

one of the first jurists, logicians, and orators that his country had

produced, and enjoyed also that sort of consideration which is derived

from large possessions; for his estate was such as at that time very few

Scottish nobles possessed. [136] He had been lately appointed President

of the Court of Session. Drummond, a younger brother of Perth and

Melfort, was commander of the forces in Scotland. He was a loose

and profane man: but a sense of honour which his two kinsmen wanted

restrained him from a public apostasy. He lived and died, in the

significant phrase of one of his countrymen, a bad Christian, but a good

Protestant. [137]

James was pleased by the dutiful language which the three Councillors

used when first they appeared before him. He spoke highly of them to

Barillon, and particularly extolled Lockhart as the ablest and most

eloquent Scotchman living. They soon proved, however, less tractable

than had been expected; and it was rumoured at court that they had been

perverted by the company which they had kept in London. Hamilton lived

much with zealous churchmen; and it might be feared that Lockhart, who

was related to the Wharton family, had fallen into still worse society.

In truth it was natural that statesmen fresh from a country where

opposition in any other form than that of insurrection and assassination

had long been almost unknown, and where all that was not lawless fury

was abject submission, should have been struck by the earnest and

stubborn, yet sober, discontent which pervaded England, and should have

been emboldened to try the experiment of constitutional resistance to

the royal will. They indeed declared themselves willing to grant large

relief to the Roman Catholics; but on two conditions; first, that

similar indulgence should be extended to the Calvinistic sectaries; and,

secondly, that the King should bind himself by a solemn promise not to

attempt anything to the prejudice of the Protestant religion.

Both conditions were highly distasteful to James. He reluctantly agreed,

however, after a dispute which lasted several days, that some indulgence

should be granted to the Presbyterians but he would by no means consent

to allow them the full liberty which he demanded for members of his own

communion. [138] To the second condition proposed by the three Scottish

Councillors he positively refused to listen. The Protestant religion,

he said, was false and he would not give any guarantee that he would not

use his power to the prejudice of a false religion. The altercation was

long, and was not brought to a conclusion satisfactory to either party.

[139]

The time fixed for the meeting of the Scottish Estates drew near; and it

was necessary that the three Councillors should leave London to attend

their parliamentary duty at Edinburgh. On this occasion another affront

was offered to Queensberry. In the late session he had held the office

of Lord High Commissioner, and had in that capacity represented the

majesty of the absent King. This dignity, the greatest to which a

Scottish noble could aspire, was now transferred to the renegade Murray.

On the twenty-ninth of April the Parliament met at Edinburgh. A letter

from the King was read. He exhorted the Estates to give relief to his

Roman Catholic subjects, and offered in return a free trade with England

and an amnesty for political offences. A committee was appointed to draw

up an answer. That committee, though named by Murray, and composed of

Privy Councillors and courtiers, framed a reply, full indeed of dutiful

and respectful expressions, yet clearly indicating a determination to

refuse what the King demanded. The Estates, it was said, would go as far

as their consciences would allow to meet His Majesty's wishes respecting

his subjects of the Roman Catholic religion. These expressions were far

from satisfying the Chancellor; yet, such as they were, he was forced

to content himself with them, and even had some difficulty in persuading

the Parliament to adopt them. Objection was taken by some zealous

Protestants to the mention made of the Roman Catholic religion. There

was no such religion. There was an idolatrous apostasy, which the laws

punished with the halter, and to which it did not become Christian men

to give flattering titles. To call such a superstition Catholic was

to give up the whole question which was at issue between Rome and the

reformed Churches. The offer of a free trade with England was treated as

an insult. "Our fathers," said one orator, "sold their King for southern

gold; and we still lie under the reproach of that foul bargain. Let

it not be said of us that we have sold our God!" Sir John Lauder of

Fountainhall, one of the Senators of the College of Justice, suggested

the words, "the persons commonly called Roman Catholics." "Would you

nickname His Majesty?" exclaimed the Chancellor. The answer drawn by

the committee was carried; but a large and respectable minority voted

against the proposed words as too courtly. [140] It was remarked that

the representatives of the towns were, almost to a man, against the

government. Hitherto those members had been of small account in the

Parliament, and had generally, been considered as the retainers of

powerful noblemen. They now showed, for the first time, an independence,

a resolution, and a spirit of combination which alarmed the court. [141]

The answer was so unpleasing to James that he did not suffer it to be

printed in the Gazette. Soon he learned that a law, such as he wished to

see passed, would not even be brought in. The Lords of Articles, whose

business was to draw up the acts on which the Estates were afterwards to

deliberate, were virtually nominated by himself. Yet even the Lords of

Articles proved refractory. When they met, the three Privy Councillors

who had lately returned from London took the lead in opposition to the

royal will. Hamilton declared plainly that he could not do what was

asked. He was a faithful and loyal subject; but there was a limit

imposed by conscience. "Conscience!" said the Chancellor: "conscience is

a vague word, which signifies any thing or nothing." Lockhart, who sate

in Parliament as representative of the great county of Lanark, struck

in. "If conscience," he said, "be a word without meaning, we will change

it for another phrase which, I hope, means something. For conscience let

us put the fundamental laws of Scotland." These words raised a fierce

debate. General Drummond, who represented Perthshire, declared that he

agreed with Hamilton and Lockhart. Most of the Bishops present took the

same side. [142]

It was plain that, even in the Committee of Articles, James could not

command a majority. He was mortified and irritated by the tidings.

He held warm and menacing language, and punished some of his mutinous

servants, in the hope that the rest would take warning. Several

persons were dismissed from the Council board. Several were deprived

of pensions, which formed an important part of their income. Sir George

Mackenzie of Rosehaugh was the most distinguished victim. He had long

held the office of Lord Advocate, and had taken such a part in the

persecution of the Covenanters that to this day he holds, in the

estimation of the austere and godly peasantry of Scotland, a place not

far removed from the unenviable eminence occupied by Claverhouse. The

legal attainments of Mackenzie were not of the highest order: but, as

a scholar, a wit, and an orator, he stood high in the opinion of his

countrymen; and his renown had spread even to the coffeehouses of London

and the cloisters of Oxford. The remains of his forensic speeches prove

him to have been a man of parts, but are somewhat disfigured by what he

doubtless considered as Ciceronian graces, interjections which show more

art than passion, and elaborate amplifications, in which epithet rises

above epithet in wearisome climax. He had now, for the first time, been

found scrupulous. He was, therefore, in spite of all his claims on the

gratitude of the government, deprived of his office. He retired into the

country, and soon after went up to London for the purpose of clearing

himself, but was refused admission to the royal presence. [143]

While the King was thus trying to terrify the Lords of Articles into

submission, the popular voice encouraged them to persist. The utmost

exertions of the Chancellor could not prevent the national sentiment

from expressing itself through the pulpit and the press. One tract,

written with such boldness and acrimony that no printer dared to put it

in type, was widely circulated in manuscript. The papers which appeared

on the other side of the question had much less effect, though they were

disseminated at the public charge, and though the Scottish defenders

of the government were assisted by an English auxiliary of great note,

Lestrange, who had been sent down to Edinburgh, and had apartments in

Holyrood House. [144]

At length, after three weeks of debate, the Lords of Articles came to a

decision. They proposed merely that Roman Catholics should be permitted

to worship God in private houses without incurring any penalty; and it

soon appeared that, far as this measure was from coming up to the King's

demands and expectations, the Estates either would not pass it at all,

or would pass it with great restrictions and modifications.

While the contest lasted the anxiety in London was intense. Every

report, every line, from Edinburgh was eagerly devoured. One day the

story ran that Hamilton had given way and that the government would

carry every point. Then came intelligence that the opposition had

rallied and was more obstinate than ever. At the most critical moment

orders were sent to the post-office that the bags from Scotland should

be transmitted to Whitehall. During a whole week not a single private

letter from beyond the Tweed was delivered in London. In our age such

an interruption of communication would throw the whole island into

confusion: but there was then so little trade and correspondence between

England and Scotland that the inconvenience was probably much smaller

than has been often occasioned in our own time by a short delay in the

arrival of the Indian mail. While the ordinary channels of information

were thus closed, the crowd in the galleries of Whitehall observed

with attention the countenances of the King and his ministers. It was

noticed, with great satisfaction, that, after every express from the

North, the enemies of the Protestant religion looked more and more

gloomy. At length, to the general joy, it was announced that the

struggle was over, that the government had been unable to carry

its measures, and that the Lord High Commissioner had adjourned the

Parliament. [145]

If James had not been proof to all warning, these events would have

sufficed to warn him. A few months before this time the most obsequious

of English Parliaments had refused to submit to his pleasure. But

the most obsequious of English Parliaments might be regarded as an

independent and high spirited assembly when compared with any Parliament

that had ever sate in Scotland; and the servile spirit of Scottish

Parliaments was always to be found in the highest perfection, extracted

and condensed, among the Lords of Articles. Yet even the Lords of

Articles had been refractory. It was plain that all those classes, all

those institutions, which, up to this year, had been considered as the

strongest supports of monarchical power, must, if the King persisted

in his insane policy, be reckoned as parts of the strength of the

opposition. All these signs, however, were lost upon him. To every

expostulation he had one answer: he would never give way; for concession

had ruined his father; and his unconquerable firmness was loudly

applauded by the French embassy and by the Jesuitical cabal.

He now proclaimed that he had been only too gracious when he had

condescended to ask the assent of the Scottish Estates to his wishes.

His prerogative would enable him not only to protect those whom he

favoured, but to punish those who had crossed him. He was confident

that, in Scotland, his dispensing power would not be questioned by any

court of law. There was a Scottish Act of Supremacy which gave to the

sovereign such a control over the Church as might have satisfied Henry

the Eighth. Accordingly Papists were admitted in crowds to offices

and honours. The Bishop of Dunkeld, who, as a Lord of Parliament, had

opposed the government, was arbitrarily ejected from his see, and

a successor was appointed. Queensberry was stripped of all his

employments, and was ordered to remain at Edinburgh till the accounts of

the Treasury during his administration had been examined and approved.

[146] As the representatives of the towns had been found the most

unmanageable part of the Parliament, it was determined to make a

revolution in every burgh throughout the kingdom. A similar change had

recently been effected in England by judicial sentences: but in Scotland

a simple mandate of the prince was thought sufficient. All elections of

magistrates and of town councils were prohibited; and the King assumed

to himself the right of filling up the chief municipal offices. [147] In

a formal letter to the Privy Council he announced his intention to fit

up a Roman Catholic chapel in his palace of Holyrood; and he gave orders

that the Judges should be directed to treat all the laws against Papists

as null, on pain of his high displeasure. He however comforted the

Protestant Episcopalians by assuring them that, though he was determined

to protect the Roman Catholic Church against them, he was equally

determined to protect them against any encroachment on the part of the

fanatics. To this communication Perth proposed an answer couched in

the most servile terms. The Council now contained many Papists; the

Protestant members who still had seats had been cowed by the King's

obstinacy and severity; and only a few faint murmurs were heard.

Hamilton threw out against the dispensing power some hints which he made

haste to explain away. Lockhart said that he would lose his head rather

than sign such a letter as the Chancellor had drawn, but took care to

say this in a whisper which was heard only by friends. Perth's words

were adopted with inconsiderable modifications; and the royal commands

were obeyed; but a sullen discontent spread through that minority of the

Scottish nation by the aid of which the government had hitherto held the

majority down. [148]

When the historian of this troubled reign turns to Ireland, his task

becomes peculiarly difficult and delicate. His steps,--to borrow the

fine image used on a similar occasion by a Roman poet,--are on the thin

crust of ashes, beneath which the lava is still glowing. The seventeenth

century has, in that unhappy country, left to the nineteenth a fatal

heritage of malignant passions. No amnesty for the mutual wrongs

inflicted by the Saxon defenders of Londonderry, and by the Celtic

defenders of Limerick, has ever been granted from the heart by either

race. To this day a more than Spartan haughtiness alloys the many noble

qualities which characterize the children of the victors, while a Helot

feeling, compounded of awe and hatred, is but too often discernible in

the children of the vanquished. Neither of the hostile castes can justly

be absolved from blame; but the chief blame is due to that shortsighted

and headstrong prince who, placed in a situation in which he might have

reconciled them, employed all his power to inflame their animosity, and

at length forced them to close in a grapple for life and death.

The grievances under which the members of his Church laboured in Ireland

differed widely from those which he was attempting to remove in England

and Scotland. The Irish Statute Book, afterwards polluted by intolerance

as barbarous as that of the dark ages, then contained scarce a single

enactment, and not a single stringent enactment, imposing any penalty on

Papists as such. On our side of Saint George's Channel every priest who

received a neophyte into the bosom of the Church of Rome was liable to

be hanged, drawn, and quartered. On the other side he incurred no such

danger. A Jesuit who landed at Dover took his life in his hand; but he

walked the streets of Dublin in security. Here no man could hold office,

or even earn his livelihood as a barrister or a schoolmaster, without

previously taking the oath of supremacy, but in Ireland a public

functionary was not held to be under the necessity of taking that oath

unless it were formally tendered to him. [149] It therefore did not

exclude from employment any person whom the government wished

to promote. The sacramental test and the declaration against

transubstantiation were unknown nor was either House of Parliament

closed against any religious sect.

It might seem, therefore, that the Irish Roman Catholic was in a

situation which his English and Scottish brethren in the faith might

well envy. In fact, however, his condition was more pitiable and

irritating than theirs. For, though not persecuted as a Roman Catholic,

he was oppressed as an Irishman. In his country the same line of

demarcation which separated religions separated races; and he was of the

conquered, the subjugated, the degraded race. On the same soil dwelt two

populations, locally intermixed, morally and politically sundered. The

difference of religion was by no means the only difference, and was

perhaps not even the chief difference, which existed between them. They

sprang from different stocks. They spoke different languages. They had

different national characters as strongly opposed as any two national

characters in Europe. They were in widely different stages of

civilisation. Between two such populations there could be little

sympathy; and centuries of calamities and wrongs had generated a strong

antipathy. The relation in which the minority stood to the majority

resembled the relation in which the followers of William the Conqueror

stood to the Saxon churls, or the relation in which the followers of

Cortes stood to the Indians of Mexico.

The appellation of Irish was then given exclusively to the Celts and to

those families which, though not of Celtic origin, had in the course of

ages degenerated into Celtic manners. These people, probably somewhat

under a million in number, had, with few exceptions, adhered to the

Church of Rome. Among them resided about two hundred thousand colonists,

proud of their Saxon blood and of their Protestant faith. [150]

The great preponderance of numbers on one side was more than compensated

by a great superiority of intelligence, vigour, and organization on the

other. The English settlers seem to have been, in knowledge, energy,

and perseverance, rather above than below the average level of the

population of the mother country. The aboriginal peasantry, on the

contrary, were in an almost savage state. They never worked till they

felt the sting of hunger. They were content with accommodation inferior

to that which, in happier countries, was provided for domestic cattle.

Already the potato, a root which can be cultivated with scarcely any

art, industry, or capital, and which cannot be long stored, had become

the food of the common people. [151] From a people so fed diligence and

forethought were not to be expected. Even within a few miles of Dublin,

the traveller, on a soil the richest and most verdant in the world, saw

with disgust the miserable burrows out of which squalid and half naked

barbarians stared wildly at him as he passed. [152]

The aboriginal aristocracy retained in no common measure the pride

of birth, but had lost the influence which is derived from wealth and

power. Their lands had been divided by Cromwell among his followers.

A portion, indeed, of the vast territory which he had confiscated had,

after the restoration of the House of Stuart, been given back to the

ancient proprietors. But much the greater part was still held by English

emigrants under the guarantee of an Act of Parliament. This act had been

in force a quarter of a century; and under it mortgages, settlements,

sales, and leases without number had been made. The old Irish gentry

were scattered over the whole world. Descendants of Milesian chieftains

swarmed in all the courts and camps of the Continent. Those despoiled

proprietors who still remained in their native land, brooded gloomily

over their losses, pined for the opulence and dignity of which they had

been deprived, and cherished wild hopes of another revolution. A person

of this class was described by his countrymen as a gentleman who would

be rich if justice were done, as a gentleman who had a fine estate if

he could only get it. [153] He seldom betook himself to any peaceful

calling. Trade, indeed, he thought a far more disgraceful resource than

marauding. Sometimes he turned freebooter. Sometimes he contrived, in

defiance of the law, to live by coshering, that is to say, by quartering

himself on the old tenants of his family, who, wretched as was their own

condition, could not refuse a portion of their pittance to one whom they

still regarded as their rightful lord. [154] The native gentleman who

had been so fortunate as to keep or to regain some of his land too often

lived like the petty prince of a savage tribe, and indemnified himself

for the humiliations which the dominant race made him suffer by

governing his vassals despotically, by keeping a rude haram, and

by maddening or stupefying himself daily with strong drink. [155]

Politically he was insignificant. No statute, indeed, excluded him from

the House of Commons: but he had almost as little chance of obtaining

a seat there as a man of colour has of being chosen a Senator of the

United States. In fact only one Papist had been returned to the Irish

Parliament since the Restoration. The whole legislative and executive

power was in the hands of the colonists; and the ascendency of the

ruling caste was upheld by a standing army of seven thousand men, on

whose zeal for what was called the English interest full reliance could

be placed. [156]

On a close scrutiny it would have been found that neither the Irishry

nor the Englishry formed a perfectly homogeneous body. The distinction

between those Irish who were of Celtic blood, and those Irish who

sprang from the followers of Strong-bow and De Burgh, was not altogether

effaced. The Fitzes sometimes permitted themselves to speak with scorn

of the Os and Macs; and the Os and Macs sometimes repaid that scorn with

aversion. In the preceding generation one of the most powerful of

the O'Neills refused to pay any mark of respect to a Roman Catholic

gentleman of old Norman descent. "They say that the family has been

here four hundred years. No matter. I hate the clown as if he had come

yesterday." [157] It seems, however, that such feelings were rare, and

that the feud which had long raged between the aboriginal Celts and

the degenerate English had nearly given place to the fiercer feud which

separated both races from the modern and Protestant colony.

The colony had its own internal disputes, both national and religious.

The majority was English; but a large minority came from the south of

Scotland. One half of the settlers belonged to the Established Church;

the other half were Dissenters. But in Ireland Scot and Southron were

strongly bound together by their common Saxon origin. Churchman and

Presbyterian were strongly bound together by their common Protestantism.

All the colonists had a common language and a common pecuniary interest.

They were surrounded by common enemies, and could be safe only by means

of common precautions and exertions. The few penal laws, therefore,

which had been made in Ireland against Protestant Nonconformists, were

a dead letter. [158] The bigotry of the most sturdy churchman would not

bear exportation across St. George's Channel. As soon as the Cavalier

arrived in Ireland, and found that, without the hearty and courageous

assistance of his Puritan neighbours, he and all his family would run

imminent risk of being murdered by Popish marauders, his hatred of

Puritanism, in spite of himself, began to languish and die away. It

was remarked by eminent men of both parties that a Protestant who, in

Ireland, was called a high Tory would in England have been considered as

a moderate Whig. [159]

The Protestant Nonconformists, on their side, endured, with more

patience than could have been expected, the sight of the most absurd

ecclesiastical establishment that the world has ever seen. Four

Archbishops and eighteen Bishops were employed in looking after about a

fifth part of the number of churchmen who inhabited the single diocese

of London. Of the parochial clergy a large proportion were pluralists

and resided at a distance from their cures. There were some who drew

from their benefices incomes of little less than a thousand a year,

without ever performing any spiritual function. Yet this monstrous

institution was much less disliked by the Puritans settled in Ireland

than the Church of England by the English sectaries. For in Ireland

religious divisions were subordinate to national divisions; and the

Presbyterian, while, as a theologian, he could not but condemn the

established hierarchy, yet looked on that hierarchy with a sort of

complacency when he considered it as a sumptuous and ostentatious trophy

of the victory achieved by the great race from which he sprang. [160]

Thus the grievances of the Irish Roman Catholic had hardly anything

in common with the grievances of the English Roman Catholic. The Roman

Catholic of Lancashire or Staffordshire had only to turn Protestant; and

he was at once, in all respects, on a level with his neighbours: but,

if the Roman Catholics of Munster and Connaught had turned Protestants,

they would still have continued to be a subject people. Whatever

evils the Roman Catholic suffered in England were the effects of harsh

legislation, and might have been remedied by a more liberal legislation.

But between the two populations which inhabited Ireland there was an

inequality which legislation had not caused and could not remove. The

dominion which one of those populations exercised over the other was

the dominion of wealth over poverty, of knowledge over ignorance, of

civilised over uncivilised man.

James himself seemed, at the commencement of his reign, to be perfectly

aware of these truths. The distractions of Ireland, he said, arose, not

from the differences between the Catholics and the Protestants, but

from the differences between the Irish and the English. [161] The

consequences which he should have drawn from this just proposition

were sufficiently obvious; but unhappily for himself and for Ireland he

failed to perceive them.

If only national animosity could be allayed, there could be little doubt

that religious animosity, not being kept alive, as in England, by cruel

penal acts and stringent test acts, would of itself fade away. To allay

a national animosity such as that which the two races inhabiting Ireland

felt for each other could not be the work of a few years. Yet it was a

work to which a wise and good prince might have contributed much; and

James would have undertaken that work with advantages such as none of

his predecessors or successors possessed. At once an Englishman and a

Roman Catholic, he belonged half to the ruling and half to the subject

caste, and was therefore peculiarly qualified to be a mediator between

them. Nor is it difficult to trace the course which he ought to have

pursued. He ought to have determined that the existing settlement of

landed property should be inviolable; and he ought to have announced

that determination in such a manner as effectually to quiet the anxiety

of the new proprietors, and to extinguish any wild hopes which the old

proprietors might entertain. Whether, in the great transfer of estates,

injustice had or had not been committed, was immaterial. That transfer,

just or unjust, had taken place so long ago, that to reverse it would be

to unfix the foundations of society. There must be a time of limitation

to all rights. After thirty-five years of actual possession, after

twenty-five years of possession solemnly guaranteed by statute, after

innumerable leases and releases, mortgages and devises, it was too late

to search for flaws in titles. Nevertheless something might have been

done to heal the lacerated feelings and to raise the fallen fortunes of

the Irish gentry. The colonists were in a thriving condition. They had

greatly improved their property by building, planting, and fencing. The

rents had almost doubled within a few years; trade was brisk; and the

revenue, amounting to about three hundred thousand pounds a year, more

than defrayed all the charges of the local government, and afforded a

surplus which was remitted to England. There was no doubt that the

next Parliament which should meet at Dublin, though representing almost

exclusively the English interest, would, in return for the King's

promise to maintain that interest in all its legal rights, willingly

grant to him a very considerable sum for the purpose of indemnifying, at

least in part, such native families as had been wrongfully despoiled.

It was thus that in our own time the French government put an end to the

disputes engendered by the most extensive confiscation that ever took

place in Europe. And thus, if James had been guided by the advice of

his most loyal Protestant counsellors, he would have at least greatly

mitigated one of the chief evils which afflicted Ireland. [162]

Having done this, he should have laboured to reconcile the hostile races

to each other by impartially protecting the rights and restraining the

excesses of both. He should have punished with equal severity the native

who indulged in the license of barbarism, and the colonist who abused

the strength of civilisation. As far as the legitimate authority of

the crown extended,--and in Ireland it extended far,--no man who

was qualified for office by integrity and ability should have been

considered as disqualified by extraction or by creed for any public

trust. It is probable that a Roman Catholic King, with an ample revenue

absolutely at his disposal, would, without much difficulty, have secured

the cooperation of the Roman Catholic prelates and priests in the great

work of reconciliation. Much, however, must still have been left to the

healing influence of time. The native race would still have had to learn

from the colonists industry and forethought, the arts of life, and the

language of England. There could not be equality between men who lived

in houses and men who lived in sties, between men who were fed on bread

and men who were fed on potatoes, between men who spoke the noble tongue

of great philosophers and poets and men who, with a perverted pride,

boasted that they could not writhe their mouths into chattering such

a jargon as that in which the Advancement of Learning and the Paradise

Lost were written. [163] Yet it is not unreasonable to believe that, if

the gentle policy which has been described had been steadily followed by

the government, all distinctions would gradually have been effaced, and

that there would now have been no more trace of the hostility which has

been the curse of Ireland than there is of the equally deadly hostility

which once raged between the Saxons and the Normans in England.

Unhappily James, instead of becoming a mediator became the fiercest and

most reckless of partisans. Instead of allaying the animosity of the two

populations, he inflamed it to a height before unknown. He determined

to reverse their relative position, and to put the Protestant colonists

under the feet of the Popish Celts. To be of the established religion,

to be of the English blood, was, in his view, a disqualification

for civil and military employment. He meditated the design of again

confiscating and again portioning out the soil of half the island, and

showed his inclination so clearly that one class was soon agitated by

terrors which he afterwards vainly wished to soothe, and the other by

hopes which he afterwards vainly wished to restrain. But this was the

smallest part of his guilt and madness. He deliberately resolved, not

merely to give to the aboriginal inhabitants of Ireland the entire

possession of their own country, but also to use them as his instruments

for setting up arbitrary government in England. The event was such as

might have been foreseen. The colonists turned to bay with the stubborn

hardihood of their race. The mother country justly regarded their cause

as her own. Then came a desperate struggle for a tremendous stake.

Everything dear to nations was wagered on both sides: nor can we

justly blame either the Irishman or the Englishman for obeying, in that

extremity, the law of self-preservation. The contest was terrible, but

short. The weaker went down. His fate was cruel; and yet for the cruelty

with which he was treated there was, not indeed a defence, but an

excuse: for, though he suffered all that tyranny could inflict, he

suffered nothing that he would not himself have inflicted. The effect of

the insane attempt to subjugate England by means of Ireland was that the

Irish became hewers of wood and drawers of water to the English. The

old proprietors, by their effort to recover what they had lost, lost

the greater part of what they had retained. The momentary ascendency of

Popery produced such a series of barbarous laws against Popery as made

the statute book of Ireland a proverb of infamy throughout Christendom.

Such were the bitter fruits of the policy of James.

We have seen that one of his first acts, after he became King, was to

recall Ormond from Ireland. Ormond was the head of the English interest

in that kingdom: he was firmly attached to the Protestant religion;

and his power far exceeded that of an ordinary Lord Lieutenant, first,

because he was in rank and wealth the greatest of the colonists, and,

secondly, because he was not only the chief of the civil administration,

but also commander of the forces. The King was not at that time disposed

to commit the government wholly to Irish hands. He had indeed been heard

to say that a native viceroy would soon become an independent sovereign.

[164] For the present, therefore, he determined to divide the power

which Ormond had possessed, to entrust the civil administration to an

English and Protestant Lord Lieutenant, and to give the command of the

army to an Irish and Roman Catholic General. The Lord Lieutenant was

Clarendon; the General was Tyrconnel.

Tyrconnel sprang, as has already been said, from one of those degenerate

families of the Pale which were popularly classed with the aboriginal

population of Ireland. He sometimes, indeed, in his rants, talked with

Norman haughtiness of the Celtic barbarians: [165] but all his sympathies

were really with the natives. The Protestant colonists he hated; and

they returned his hatred. Clarendon's inclinations were very different:

but he was, from temper, interest, and principle, an obsequious

courtier. His spirit was mean; his circumstances were embarrassed; and

his mind had been deeply imbued with the political doctrines which the

Church of England had in that age too assiduously taught. His abilities,

however, were not contemptible; and, under a good King, he would

probably have been a respectable viceroy.

About three quarters of a year elapsed between the recall of Ormond and

the arrival of Clarendon at Dublin. During that interval the King

was represented by a board of Lords Justices: but the military

administration was in Tyrconnel's hands. Already the designs of the

court began gradually to unfold themselves. A royal order came from

Whitehall for disarming the population. This order Tyrconnel strictly

executed as respected the English. Though the country was infested by

predatory bands, a Protestant gentleman could scarcely obtain permission

to keep a brace of pistols. The native peasantry, on the other hand,

were suffered to retain their weapons. [166] The joy of the colonists

was therefore great, when at length, in December 1685, Tyrconnel

was summoned to London and Clarendon set out for Dublin. But it soon

appeared that the government was really directed, not at Dublin, but in

London. Every mail that crossed St. George's Channel brought tidings of

the boundless influence which Tyrconnel exercised on Irish affairs. It

was said that he was to be a Marquess, that he was to be a Duke, that he

was to have the command of the forces, that he was to be entrusted

with the task of remodelling the army and the courts of justice. [167]

Clarendon was bitterly mortified at finding himself a subordinate in

ember of that administration of which he had expected to be the head.

He complained that whatever he did was misrepresented by his detractors,

and that the gravest resolutions touching the country which he governed

were adopted at Westminster, made known to the public, discussed at

coffee houses, communicated in hundreds of private letters, some weeks

before one hint had been given to the Lord Lieutenant. His own personal

dignity, he said, mattered little: but it was no light thing that the

representative of the majesty of the throne should be made an object of

contempt to the people. [168] Panic spread fast among the English

when they found that the viceroy, their fellow countryman and fellow

Protestant, was unable to extend to them the protection which they had

expected from him. They began to know by bitter experience what it is to

be a subject caste. They were harassed by the natives with accusations

of treason and sedition. This Protestant had corresponded with Monmouth:

that Protestant had said something disrespectful of the King four or

five years ago, when the Exclusion Bill was under discussion; and the

evidence of the most infamous of mankind was ready to substantiate every

charge. The Lord Lieutenant expressed his apprehension that, if these

practices were not stopped, there would soon be at Dublin a reign of

terror similar to that which he had seen in London, when every man held

his life and honour at the mercy of Oates and Bedloe. [169]

Clarendon was soon informed, by a concise despatch from Sunderland, that

it had been resolved to make without delay a complete change in both

the civil and the military government of Ireland, and to bring a large

number of Roman Catholics instantly into office. His Majesty, it was

most ungraciously added, had taken counsel on these matters with persons

more competent to advise him than his inexperienced Lord Lieutenant

could possibly be. [170]

Before this letter reached the viceroy the intelligence which it

contained had, through many channels, arrived in Ireland. The terror

of the colonists was extreme. Outnumbered as they were by the native

population, their condition would be pitiable indeed if the native

population were to be armed against them with the whole power of

the state; and nothing less than this was threatened. The English

inhabitants of Dublin passed each other in the streets with dejected

looks. On the Exchange business was suspended. Landowners hastened to

sell their estates for whatever could be got, and to remit the purchase

money to England. Traders began to call in their debts and to make

preparations for retiring from business. The alarm soon affected the

revenue. [171] Clarendon attempted to inspire the dismayed settlers with

a confidence which he was himself far from feeling. He assured them that

their property would be held sacred, and that, to his certain knowledge,

the King was fully determined to maintain the act of settlement which

guaranteed their right to the soil. But his letters to England were in

a very different strain. He ventured even to expostulate with the

King, and, without blaming His Majesty's intention of employing Roman

Catholics, expressed a strong opinion that the Roman Catholics who might

be employed should be Englishmen. [172]

The reply of James was dry and cold. He declared that he had no

intention of depriving the English colonists of their land, but that

he regarded a large portion of them as his enemies, and that, since he

consented to leave so much property in the hands of his enemies, it was

the more necessary that the civil and military administration should be

in the hands of his friends. [173]

Accordingly several Roman Catholics were sworn of the Privy Council; and

orders were sent to corporations to admit Roman Catholics to municipal

advantages. [174] Many officers of the army were arbitrarily deprived of

their commissions and of their bread. It was to no purpose that the Lord

Lieutenant pleaded the cause of some whom he knew to be good soldiers

and loyal subjects. Among them were old Cavaliers, who had fought

bravely for monarchy, and who bore the marks of honourable wounds.

Their places were supplied by men who had no recommendation but their

religion. Of the new Captains and Lieutenants, it was said, some had

been cow-herds, some footmen, some noted marauders; some had been so

used to wear brogues that they stumbled and shuffled about strangely in

their military jack boots. Not a few of the officers who were discarded

took refuge in the Dutch service, and enjoyed, four years later, the

pleasure of driving their successors before them in ignominious rout

through the waters of the Boyne. [175]

The distress and alarm of Clarendon were increased by news which reached

him through private channels. Without his approbation, without his

knowledge, preparations were making for arming and drilling the whole

Celtic population of the country of which he was the nominal governor.

Tyrconnel from London directed the design; and the prelates of his

Church were his agents. Every priest had been instructed to prepare an

exact list of all his male parishioners capable of bearing arms, and to

forward it to his Bishop. [176]

It had already been rumoured that Tyrconnel would soon return to Dublin

armed with extraordinary and independent powers; and the rumour gathered

strength daily. The Lord Lieutenant, whom no insult could drive to

resign the pomp and emoluments of his place, declared that he should

submit cheerfully to the royal pleasure, and approve himself in all

things a faithful and obedient subject. He had never, he said, in

his life, had any difference with Tyrconnel, and he trusted that

no difference would now arise. [177] Clarendon appears not to have

recollected that there had once been a plot to ruin the fame of his

innocent sister, and that in that plot Tyrconnel had borne a chief part.

This is not exactly one of the injuries which high spirited men most

readily pardon. But, in the wicked court where the Hydes had long

been pushing their fortunes, such injuries were easily forgiven and

forgotten, not from magnanimity or Christian charity, but from mere

baseness and want of moral sensibility. In June 1686, Tyrconnel came.

His commission authorised him only to command the troops, but he brought

with him royal instructions touching all parts of the administration,

and at once took the real government of the island into his own hands.

On the day after his arrival he explicitly said that commissions must be

largely given to Roman Catholic officers, and that room must be made for

them by dismissing more Protestants. He pushed on the remodelling of

the army eagerly and indefatigably. It was indeed the only part of the

functions of a Commander in Chief which he was competent to perform;

for, though courageous in brawls and duels, he knew nothing of military

duty. At the very first review which he held, it was evident to all who

were near to him that he did not know how to draw up a regiment. [178]

To turn Englishmen out and to put Irishmen in was, in his view, the

beginning and the end of the administration of war. He had the insolence

to cashier the Captain of the Lord Lieutenant's own Body Guard: nor was

Clarendon aware of what had happened till he saw a Roman Catholic, whose

face was quite unknown to him, escorting the state coach. [179] The

change was not confined to the officers alone. The ranks were completely

broken up and recomposed. Four or five hundred soldiers were turned

out of a single regiment chiefly on the ground that they were below the

proper stature. Yet the most unpractised eye at once perceived that they

were taller and better made men than their successors, whose wild and

squalid appearance disgusted the beholders. [180] Orders were given

to the new officers that no man of the Protestant religion was to be

suffered to enlist. The recruiting parties, instead of beating their

drums for volunteers at fairs and markets, as had been the old practice,

repaired to places to which the Roman Catholics were in the habit of

making pilgrimages for purposes of devotion. In a few weeks the General

had introduced more than two thousand natives into the ranks; and the

people about him confidently affirmed that by Christmas day not a man of

English race would be left in the whole army. [181]

On all questions which arose in the Privy Council, Tyrconnel showed

similar violence and partiality. John Keating, Chief Justice of the

Common Pleas, a man distinguished by ability, integrity, and loyalty,

represented with great mildness that perfect equality was all that the

General could reasonably ask for his own Church. The King, he said,

evidently meant that no man fit for public trust should be excluded

because he was a Roman Catholic, and that no man unfit for public trust

should be admitted because he was a Protestant. Tyrconnel immediately

began to curse and swear. "I do not know what to say to that; I would

have all Catholics in." [182] The most judicious Irishmen of his own

religious persuasion were dismayed at his rashness, and ventured to

remonstrate with him; but he drove them from him with imprecations.

[183] His brutality was such that many thought him mad. Yet it was less

strange than the shameless volubility with which he uttered falsehoods.

He had long before earned the nickname of Lying Dick Talbot; and, at

Whitehall, any wild fiction was commonly designated as one of Dick

Talbot's truths. He now daily proved that he was well entitled to this

unenviable reputation. Indeed in him mendacity was almost a disease. He

would, after giving orders for the dismission of English officers, take

them into his closet, assure them of his confidence and friendship, and

implore heaven to confound him, sink him, blast him, if he did not

take good care of their interests. Sometimes those to whom he had thus

perjured himself learned, before the day closed, that he had cashiered

them. [184]

On his arrival, though he swore savagely at the Act of Settlement, and

called the English interest a foul thing, a roguish thing, and a damned

thing, he yet intended to be convinced that the distribution of property

could not, after the lapse of so many years, be altered. [185] But, when

he had been a few weeks at Dublin, his language changed. He began to

harangue vehemently at the Council board on the necessity of giving back

the land to the old owners. He had not, however, as yet, obtained

his master's sanction to this fatal project. National feeling still

struggled feebly against superstition in the mind of James. He was

an Englishman: he was an English King; and he could not, without some

misgivings, consent to the destruction of the greatest colony that

England had ever planted. The English Roman Catholics with whom he was

in the habit of taking counsel were almost unanimous in favour of the

Act of Settlement. Not only the honest and moderate Powis, but the

dissolute and headstrong Dover, gave judicious and patriotic advice.

Tyrconnel could hardly hope to counteract at a distance the effect which

such advice must produce on the royal mind. He determined to plead the

cause of his caste in person; and accordingly he set out, at the end of

August, for England.

His presence and his absence were equally dreaded by the Lord

Lieutenant. It was, indeed, painful to be daily browbeaten by an enemy:

but it was not less painful to know that an enemy was daily breathing

calumny and evil counsel in the royal ear. Clarendon was overwhelmed by

manifold vexations. He made a progress through the country, and found

that he was everywhere treated by the Irish population with contempt.

The Roman Catholic priests exhorted their congregations to withhold from

him all marks of honour. The native gentry, instead of coming to pay

their respects to him, remained at their houses. The native peasantry

everywhere sang Erse songs in praise of Tyrconnel, who would, they

doubted not, soon reappear to complete the humiliation of their

oppressors. [186] The viceroy had scarcely returned to Dublin, from his

unsatisfactory tour, when he received letters which informed him that

he had incurred the King's serious displeasure. His Majesty--so these

letters ran--expected his servants not only to do what he commanded,

but to do it from the heart, and with a cheerful countenance. The Lord

Lieutenant had not, indeed, refused to cooperate in the reform of the

army and of the civil administration; but his cooperation had been

reluctant and perfunctory: his looks had betrayed his feelings; and

everybody saw that he disapproved of the policy which he was employed

to carry into effect. [187] In great anguish of mind he wrote to defend

himself; but he was sternly told that his defence was not satisfactory.

He then, in the most abject terms, declared that he would not attempt to

justify himself, that he acquiesced in the royal judgment, be it what it

might, that he prostrated himself in the dust, that he implored pardon,

that of all penitents he was the most sincere, that he should think it

glorious to die in his Sovereign's cause, but found it impossible to

live under his Sovereign's displeasure. Nor was this mere interested

hypocrisy, but, at least in part, unaffected slavishness and poverty

of spirit; for in confidential letters, not meant for the royal eye, he

bemoaned himself to his family in the same strain. He was miserable;

he was crushed; the wrath of the King was insupportable; if that wrath

could not be mitigated, life would not be worth having. [188] The poor

man's terror increased when he learned that it had been determined at

Whitehall to recall him, and to appoint, as his successor, his rival

and calumniator, Tyrconnel. [189] Then for a time the prospect seemed

to clear; the King was in better humour; and during a few days Clarendon

flattered himself that his brother's intercession had prevailed, and

that the crisis was passed. [190]

In truth the crisis was only beginning. While Clarendon was trying to

lean on Rochester, Rochester was unable longer to support himself. As

in Ireland the elder brother, though retaining the guard of honour, the

sword of state, and the title of Excellency, had really been superseded

by the Commander of the Forces, so in England, the younger brother,

though holding the white staff, and walking, by virtue of his high

office, before the greatest hereditary nobles, was fast sinking into a

mere financial clerk. The Parliament was again prorogued to a distant

day, in opposition to the Treasurer's known wishes. He was not even told

that there was to be another prorogation, but was left to learn the news

from the Gazette. The real direction of affairs had passed to the cabal

which dined with Sunderland on Fridays. The cabinet met only to hear the

despatches from foreign courts read: nor did those despatches contain

anything which was not known on the Royal Exchange; for all the English

Envoys had received orders to put into the official letters only the

common talk of antechambers, and to reserve important secrets for

private communications which were addressed to James himself, to

Sunderland, or to Petre. [191] Yet the victorious faction was not

content. The King was assured by those whom he most trusted that the

obstinacy with which the nation opposed his designs was really to be

imputed to Rochester. How could the people believe that their Sovereign

was unalterably resolved to persevere in the course on which he had

entered, when they saw at his right hand, ostensibly first in power and

trust among his counsellors, a man who notoriously regarded that course

with strong disapprobation? Every step which had been taken with the

object of humbling the Church of England, and of elevating the Church of

Rome, had been opposed by the Treasurer. True it was that, when he

had found opposition vain, he had gloomily submitted, nay, that he had

sometimes even assisted in carrying into effect the very plans against

which he had most earnestly contended. True it was that, though he

disliked the Ecclesiastical Commission, he had consented to be a

Commissioner. True it was that he had, while declaring that he could see

nothing blamable in the conduct of the Bishop of London, voted sullenly

and reluctantly for the sentence of deprivation. But this was not

enough. A prince, engaged in an enterprise so important and arduous

as that on which James was bent, had a right to expect from his first

minister, not unwilling and ungracious acquiescence, but zealous and

strenuous cooperation. While such advice was daily given to James by

those in whom he reposed confidence, he received, by the penny post,

many anonymous letters filled with calumnies against the Lord Treasurer.

This mode of attack had been contrived by Tyrconnel, and was in perfect

harmony with every part of his infamous life. [192]

The King hesitated. He seems, indeed, to have really regarded his

brother in law with personal kindness, the effect of near affinity,

of long and familiar intercourse, and of many mutual good offices. It

seemed probable that, as long as Rochester continued to submit himself,

though tardily and with murmurs, to the royal pleasure, he would

continue to be in name prime minister. Sunderland, therefore, with

exquisite cunning, suggested to his master the propriety of asking the

only proof of obedience which it was quite certain that Rochester

never would give. At present,--such was the language of the artful

Secretary,--it was impossible to consult with the first of the King's

servants respecting the object nearest to the King's heart. It was

lamentable to think that religious prejudices should, at such a

conjuncture, deprive the government of such valuable assistance. Perhaps

those prejudices might not prove insurmountable. Then the deceiver

whispered that, to his knowledge, Rochester had of late had some

misgivings about the points in dispute between the Protestants and

Catholics. [193] This was enough. The King eagerly caught at the hint.

He began to flatter himself that he might at once escape from the

disagreeable necessity of removing a friend, and secure an able

coadjutor for the great work which was in progress. He was also elated

by the hope that he might have the merit and the glory of saving a

fellow creature from perdition. He seems, indeed, about this time, to

have been seized with an unusually violent fit of zeal for his religion;

and this is the more remarkable, because he had just relapsed, after

a short interval of selfrestraint, into debauchery which all Christian

divines condemn as sinful, and which, in an elderly man married to

an agreeable young wife, is regarded even by people of the world as

disreputable. Lady Dorchester had returned from Dublin, and was again

the King's mistress. Her return was politically of no importance. She

had learned by experience the folly of attempting to save her lover from

the destruction to which he was running headlong. She therefore suffered

the Jesuits to guide his political conduct and they, in return, suffered

her to wheedle him out of money; She was, however, only one of several

abandoned women who at this time shared, with his beloved Church, the

dominion over his mind. [194] He seems to have determined to make some

amends for neglecting the welfare of his own soul by taking care of the

souls of others. He set himself, therefore, to labour, with real good

will, but with the good will of a coarse, stern, and arbitrary mind,

for the conversion of his kinsman. Every audience which the Treasurer

obtained was spent in arguments about the authority of the Church and

the worship of images. Rochester was firmly resolved not to abjure his

religion; but he had no scruple about employing in selfdefence artifices

as discreditable as those which had been used against him. He affected

to speak like a man whose mind was not made up, professed himself

desirous to be enlightened if he was in error, borrowed Popish books,

and listened with civility to Popish divines. He had several interviews

with Leyburn, the Vicar Apostolic, with Godden, the chaplain and almoner

of the Queen Dowager, and with Bonaventure Giffard, a theologian trained

to polemics in the schools of Douay. It was agreed that there should

be a formal disputation between these doctors and some Protestant

clergymen. The King told Rochester to choose any ministers of the

Established Church, with two exceptions. The proscribed persons were

Tillotson and Stillingfleet. Tillotson, the most popular preacher of

that age, and in manners the most inoffensive of men, had been much

connected with some leading Whigs; and Stillingfleet, who was renowned

as a consummate master of all the weapons of controversy, had given

still deeper offence by publishing an answer to the papers which had

been found in the strong box of Charles the Second. Rochester took the

two royal chaplains who happened to be in waiting. One of them was

Simon Patrick, whose commentaries on the Bible still form a part of

theological libraries; the other was Jane, a vehement Tory, who had

assisted in drawing up that decree by which the University of Oxford had

solemnly adopted the worst follies of Filmer. The conference took place

at Whitehall on the thirtieth of November. Rochester, who did not wish

it to be known that he had even consented to hear the arguments of

Popish priests, stipulated for secrecy. No auditor was suffered to be

present except the King. The subject discussed was the real presence.

The Roman Catholic divines took on themselves the burden of the proof.

Patrick and Jane said little; nor was it necessary that they should

say much; for the Earl himself undertook to defend the doctrine of

his Church, and, as was his habit, soon warmed with conflict, lost his

temper, and asked with great vehemence whether it was expected that he

should change his religion on such frivolous grounds. Then he remembered

how much he was risking, began again to dissemble, complimented the

disputants on their skill and learning, and asked time to consider what

had been said. [195]

Slow as James was, he could not but see that this was mere trifling. He

told Barillon that Rochester's language was not that of a man honestly

desirous of arriving at the truth. Still the King did not like to

propose directly to his brother in law the simple choice, apostasy or

dismissal: but, three days after the conference, Barillon waited on

the Treasurer, and, with much circumlocution and many expressions

of friendly concern, broke the unpleasant truth. "Do you mean," said

Rochester, bewildered by the involved and ceremonious phrases in

which the intimation was made, "that, if I do not turn Catholic, the

consequence will be that I shall lose my place?" "I say nothing about

consequences," answered the wary diplomatist. "I only come as a friend

to express a hope that you will take care to keep your place." "But

surely," said Rochester, "the plain meaning of all this is that I must

turn Catholic or go out." He put many questions for the purpose of

ascertaining whether the communication was made by authority, but

could extort only vague and mysterious replies. At last, affecting a

confidence which he was far from feeling, he declared that Barillon must

have been imposed upon by idle or malicious reports. "I tell you," he

said, "that the King will not dismiss me, and I will not resign. I know

him: he knows me; and I fear nobody." The Frenchman answered that he was

charmed, that he was ravished to hear it, and that his only motive for

interfering was a sincere anxiety for the prosperity and dignity of his

excellent friend the Treasurer. And thus the two statesmen parted, each

flattering himself that he had duped the other. [196]

Meanwhile, in spite of all injunctions of secrecy, the news that the

Lord Treasurer had consented to be instructed in the doctrines of Popery

had spread fast through London. Patrick and Jane had been seen going in

at that mysterious door which led to Chiffinch's apartments. Some Roman

Catholics about the court had, indiscreetly or artfully, told all, and

more than all, that they knew. The Tory churchmen waited anxiously

for fuller information. They were mortified to think that their leader

should even have pretended to waver in his opinion; but they could not

believe that he would stoop to be a renegade. The unfortunate minister,

tortured at once by his fierce passions and his low desires, annoyed by

the censures of the public, annoyed by the hints which he had received

from Barillon, afraid of losing character, afraid of losing office,

repaired to the royal closet. He was determined to keep his place, if it

could be kept by any villany but one. He would pretend to be shaken in

his religious opinions, and to be half a convert: he would promise to

give strenuous support to that policy which he had hitherto opposed:

but, if he were driven to extremity, he would refuse to change his

religion. He began, therefore, by telling the King that the business in

which His Majesty took so much interest was not sleeping, that Jane

and Giffard were engaged in consulting books on the points in dispute

between the Churches, and that, when these researches were over, it

would be desirable to have another conference. Then he complained

bitterly that all the town was apprised of what ought to have been

carefully concealed, and that some persons, who, from their station,

might be supposed to be well informed, reported strange things as to the

royal intentions. "It is whispered," he said, "that, if I do not do as

your Majesty would have me, I shall not be suffered to continue in

my present station." The King said, with some general expressions of

kindness, that it was difficult to prevent people from talking, and

that loose reports were not to be regarded. These vague phrases were not

likely to quiet the perturbed mind of the minister. His agitation became

violent, and he began to plead for his place as if he had been pleading

for his life. "Your Majesty sees that I do all in my power to obey you.

Indeed I will do all that I can to obey you in every thing. I will serve

you in your own way. Nay," he cried, in an agony of baseness, "I will do

what I can to believe as you would have me. But do not let me be

told, while I am trying to bring my mind to this, that, if I find

it impossible to comply, I must lose all. For I must needs tell your

Majesty that there are other considerations." "Oh, you must needs,"

exclaimed the King, with an oath. For a single word of honest and

manly sound, escaping in the midst of all this abject supplication, was

sufficient to move his anger. "I hope, sir," said poor Rochester, "that

I do not offend you. Surely your Majesty could not think well of me if I

did not say so." The King recollected himself protested that he was not

offended, and advised the Treasurer to disregard idle rumours, and to

confer again with Jane and Giffard. [197]

After this conversation, a fortnight elapsed before the decisive blow

fell. That fortnight Rochester passed in intriguing and imploring. He

attempted to interest in his favour those Roman Catholics who had the

greatest influence at court. He could not, he said, renounce his own

religion: but, with that single reservation, he would do all that they

could desire. Indeed, if he might only keep his place, they should find

that he could be more useful to them as a Protestant than as one of

their own communion. [198] His wife, who was on a sick bed, had already,

it was said, solicited the honour of a visit from the much injured

Queen, and had attempted to work on Her Majesty's feelings of

compassion. [199] But the Hydes abased themselves in vain. Petre

regarded them with peculiar malevolence, and was bent on their ruin.

[200] On the evening of the seventeenth of December the Earl was called

into the royal closet. James was unusually discomposed, and even shed

tears. The occasion, indeed, could not but call up some recollections

which might well soften even a hard heart. He expressed his regret that

his duty made it impossible for him to indulge his private partialities.

It was absolutely necessary, he said, that those who had the chief

direction of his affairs should partake his opinions and feelings. He

owned that he had very great personal obligations to Rochester, and that

no fault could be found with the way in which the financial business

had lately been done: but the office of Lord Treasurer was of such high

importance that, in general, it ought not to be entrusted to a single

person, and could not safely be entrusted by a Roman Catholic King to a

person zealous for the Church of England. "Think better of it, my Lord,"

he continued. "Read again the papers from my brother's box. I will give

you a little more time for consideration, if you desire it." Rochester

saw that all was over, and that the wisest course left to him was to

make his retreat with as much money and as much credit as possible. He

succeeded in both objects. He obtained a pension of four thousand pounds

a year for two lives on the post office. He had made great sums out of

the estates of traitors, and carried with him in particular Grey's bond

for forty thousand pounds, and a grant of all the estate which the

crown had in Grey's extensive property. [201] No person had ever quitted

office on terms so advantageous. To the applause of the sincere friends

of the Established Church Rochester had, indeed, very slender claims.

To save his place he had sate in that tribunal which had been illegally

created for the purpose of persecuting her. To save his place he had

given a dishonest vote for degrading one of her most eminent ministers,

had affected to doubt her orthodoxy, had listened with the outward show

of docility to teachers who called her schismatical and heretical, and

had offered to cooperate strenuously with her deadliest enemies in their

designs against her. The highest praise to which he was entitled was

this, that he had shrunk from the exceeding wickedness and baseness of

publicly abjuring, for lucre, the religion in which he had been brought

up, which he believed to be true, and of which he had long made an

ostentatious profession. Yet he was extolled by the great body of

Churchmen as if he had been the bravest and purest of martyrs. The

Old and New Testaments, the Martyrologies of Eusebius and of Fox, were

ransacked to find parallels for his heroic piety. He was Daniel in the

den of lions, Shadrach in the fiery furnace, Peter in the dungeon of

Herod, Paul at the bar of Nero, Ignatius in the amphitheatre, Latimer at

the stake. Among the many facts which prove that the standard of honour

and virtue among the public men of that age was low, the admiration

excited by Rochester's constancy is, perhaps, the most decisive.

In his fall he dragged down Clarendon. On the seventh of January 1687,

the Gazette announced to the people of London that the Treasury was put

into commission. On the eighth arrived at Dublin a despatch formally

signifying that in a month Tyrconnel would assume the government

of Ireland. It was not without great difficulty that this man had

surmounted the numerous impediments which stood in the way of his

ambition. It was well known that the extermination of the English colony

in Ireland was the object on which his heart was set. He had, therefore,

to overcome some scruples in the royal mind. He had to surmount the

opposition, not merely of all the Protestant members of the government,

not merely of the moderate and respectable heads of the Roman Catholic

body, but even of several members of the jesuitical cabal. [202]

Sunderland shrank from the thought of an Irish revolution, religious,

political, and social. To the Queen Tyrconnel was personally an object

of aversion. Powis was therefore suggested as the man best qualified

for the viceroyalty. He was of illustrious birth: he was a sincere Roman

Catholic: and yet he was generally allowed by candid Protestants to be

an honest man and a good Englishman. All opposition, however, yielded

to Tyrconnel's energy and cunning. He fawned, bullied, and bribed

indefatigably. Petre's help was secured by flattery. Sunderland was

plied at once with promises and menaces. An immense price was offered

for his support, no less than an annuity of five thousand pounds a year

from Ireland, redeemable by payment of fifty thousand pounds down. If

this proposal were rejected, Tyrconnel threatened to let the King

know that the Lord President had, at the Friday dinners, described His

Majesty as a fool who must be governed either by a woman or by a priest.

Sunderland, pale and trembling, offered to procure for Tyrconnel supreme

military command, enormous appointments, anything but the viceroyalty:

but all compromise was rejected; and it was necessary to yield. Mary of

Modena herself was not free from suspicion of corruption. There was

in London a renowned chain of pearls which was valued at ten thousand

pounds. It had belonged to Prince Rupert; and by him it had been left

to Margaret Hughes, a courtesan who, towards the close of his life, had

exercised a boundless empire over him. Tyrconnel loudly boasted that

with this chain he had purchased the support of the Queen. There were

those, however, who suspected that this story was one of Dick Talbot's

truths, and that it had no more foundation than the calumnies which,

twenty-six years before, he had invented to blacken the fame of

Anne Hyde. To the Roman Catholic courtiers generally he spoke of the

uncertain tenure by which they held offices, honours, and emoluments.

The King might die tomorrow, and might leave them at the mercy of a

hostile government and a hostile rabble. But, if the old faith could

be made dominant in Ireland, if the Protestant interest in that country

could be destroyed, there would still be, in the worst event, an

asylum at hand to which they might retreat, and where they might either

negotiate or defend themselves with advantage. A Popish priest was hired

with the promise of the mitre of Waterford to preach at Saint James's

against the Act of Settlement; and his sermon, though heard with deep

disgust by the English part of the auditory, was not without its effect.

The struggle which patriotism had for a time maintained against bigotry

in the royal mind was at an end. "There is work to be done in Ireland,"

said James, "which no Englishman will do." [203]

All obstacles were at length removed; and in February 1687, Tyrconnel

began to rule his native country with the power and appointments of Lord

Lieutenant, but with the humbler title of Lord Deputy.

His arrival spread dismay through the whole English population.

Clarendon was accompanied, or speedily followed, across St. George's

Channel, by a large proportion of the most respectable inhabitants of

Dublin, gentlemen, tradesmen, and artificers. It was said that

fifteen hundred families emigrated in a few days. The panic was not

unreasonable. The work of putting the colonists down under the feet

of the natives went rapidly on. In a short time almost every Privy

Councillor, Judge, Sheriff, Mayor, Alderman, and Justice of the Peace

was a Celt and a Roman Catholic. It seemed that things would soon

be ripe for a general election, and that a House of Commons bent on

abrogating the Act of Settlement would easily be assembled. [204]

Those who had lately been the lords of the island now cried out, in

the bitterness of their souls, that they had become a prey and a

laughingstock to their own serfs and menials; that houses were burnt and

cattle stolen with impunity; that the new soldiers roamed the country,

pillaging, insulting, ravishing, maiming, tossing one Protestant in a

blanket, tying up another by the hair and scourging him; that to appeal

to the law was vain; that Irish Judges, Sheriffs, juries, and witnesses

were all in a league to save Irish criminals; and that, even without an

Act of Parliament, the whole soil would soon change hands; for that, in

every action of ejectment tried under the administration of Tyrconnel,

judgment had been given for the native against the Englishman. [205]

While Clarendon was at Dublin the Privy Seal had been in the hands of

Commissioners. His friends hoped that it would, on his return to London,

be again delivered to him. But the King and the Jesuitical cabal had

determined that the disgrace of the Hydes should be complete. Lord

Arundell of Wardour, a Roman Catholic, received the Privy Seal.

Bellasyse, a Roman Catholic, was made First Lord of the Treasury; and

Dover, another Roman Catholic, had a seat at the board. The appointment

of a ruined gambler to such a trust would alone have sufficed to disgust

the public. The dissolute Etherege, who then resided at Ratisbon as

English envoy, could not refrain from expressing, with a sneer, his hope

that his old boon companion, Dover, would keep the King's money

better than his own. In order that the finances might not be ruined by

incapable and inexperienced Papists, the obsequious, diligent and silent

Godolphin was named a Commissioner of the Treasury, but continued to be

Chamberlain to the Queen. [206]

The dismission of the two brothers is a great epoch in the reign of

James. From that time it was clear that what he really wanted was not

liberty of conscience for the members of his own church, but liberty to

persecute the members of other churches. Pretending to abhor tests, he

had himself imposed a test. He thought it hard, he thought it monstrous,

that able and loyal men should be excluded from the public service

solely for being Roman Catholics. Yet he had himself turned out of

office a Treasurer, whom he admitted to be both loyal and able, solely

for being a Protestant. The cry was that a general proscription was at

hand, and that every public functionary must make up his mind to lose

his soul or to lose his place. [207] Who indeed could hope to stand

where the Hydes had fallen? They were the brothers in law of the King,

the uncles and natural guardians of his children, his friends from

early youth, his steady adherents in adversity and peril, his obsequious

servants since he had been on the throne. Their sole crime was

their religion; and for this crime they had been discarded. In great

perturbation men began to look round for help; and soon all eyes were

fixed on one whom a rare concurrence both of personal qualities and of

fortuitous circumstances pointed out as the deliverer.