CHAPTER VII

William, Prince of Orange; his Appearance--His early Life and

Education--His Theological Opinions--His Military Qualifications--His

Love of Danger; his bad Health--Coldness of his Manners and Strength

of his Emotions; his Friendship for Bentinck--Mary, Princess of

Orange--Gilbert Burnet--He brings about a good Understanding between the

Prince and Princess--Relations between William and English Parties--His

Feelings towards England--His Feelings towards Holland and France--His

Policy consistent throughout--Treaty of Augsburg--William becomes the

Head of the English Opposition--Mordaunt proposes to William a Descent

on England--William rejects the Advice--Discontent in England after

the Fall of the Hydes--Conversions to Popery; Peterborough;

Salisbury--Wycherley; Tindal; Haines--Dryden--The Hind and

Panther--Change in the Policy of the Court towards the Puritans--Partial

Toleration granted in Scotland--Closeting--It is unsuccessful--Admiral

Herbert--Declaration of Indulgence--Feeling of the Protestant

Dissenters--Feeling of the Church of England--The Court and the

Church--Letter to a Dissenter; Conduct of the Dissenters--Some of the

Dissenters side with the Court; Care; Alsop--Rosewell; Lobb--Venn--The

Majority of the Puritans are against the Court; Baxter;

Howe,--Banyan--Kiffin--The Prince and Princess of Orange hostile to

the Declaration of Indulgence--Their Views respecting the English Roman

Catholics vindicated--Enmity of James to Burnet--Mission of Dykvelt

to England; Negotiations of Dykvelt with English

Statesmen--Danby--Nottingham--Halifax--Devonshire--Edward Russell;

Compton; Herbert--Churchill--Lady Churchill and the Princess

Anne--Dykvelt returns to the Hague with Letters from many eminent

Englishmen--Zulestein's Mission--Growing Enmity between James and

William--Influence of the Dutch Press--Correspondence of Stewart and

Fagel--Castelmaine's embassy to Rome

THE place which William Henry, Prince of Orange Nassau, occupies in the

history of England and of mankind is so great that it may be desirable

to portray with some minuteness the strong lineaments of his character.

[208]

He was now in his thirty-seventh year. But both in body and in mind he

was older than other men of the same age. Indeed it might be said that

he had never been young. His external appearance is almost as well known

to us as to his own captains and counsellors. Sculptors, painters, and

medallists exerted their utmost skill in the work of transmitting his

features to posterity; and his features were such as no artist could

fail to seize, and such as, once seen, could never be forgotten. His

name at once calls up before us a slender and feeble frame, a lofty

and ample forehead, a nose curved like the beak of an eagle, an eye

rivalling that of an eagle in brightness and keenness, a thoughtful and

somewhat sullen brow, a firm and somewhat peevish mouth, a cheek pale,

thin, and deeply furrowed by sickness and by care. That pensive,

severe, and solemn aspect could scarcely have belonged to a happy or

a goodhumoured man. But it indicates in a manner not to be mistaken

capacity equal to the most arduous enterprises, and fortitude not to be

shaken by reverses or dangers.

Nature had largely endowed William with the qualities of a great ruler;

and education had developed those qualities in no common degree. With

strong natural sense, and rare force of will, he found himself, when

first his mind began to open, a fatherless and motherless child, the

chief of a great but depressed and disheartened party, and the heir to

vast and indefinite pretensions, which excited the dread and aversion of

the oligarchy then supreme in the United Provinces. The common people,

fondly attached during a century to his house, indicated, whenever they

saw him, in a manner not to be mistaken, that they regarded him as

their rightful head. The able and experienced ministers of the republic,

mortal enemies of his name, came every day to pay their feigned

civilities to him, and to observe the progress of his mind. The first

movements of his ambition were carefully watched: every unguarded word

uttered by him was noted down; nor had he near him any adviser on whose

judgment reliance could be placed. He was scarcely fifteen years old

when all the domestics who were attached to his interest, or who enjoyed

any share of his confidence, were removed from under his roof by the

jealous government. He remonstrated with energy beyond his years, but in

vain. Vigilant observers saw the tears more than once rise in the eyes

of the young state prisoner. His health, naturally delicate, sank for a

time under the emotions which his desolate situation had produced.

Such situations bewilder and unnerve the weak, but call forth all the

strength of the strong. Surrounded by snares in which an ordinary youth

would have perished, William learned to tread at once warily and firmly.

Long before he reached manhood he knew how to keep secrets, how to

baffle curiosity by dry and guarded answers, how to conceal all passions

under the same show of grave tranquillity. Meanwhile he made little

proficiency in fashionable or literary accomplishments. The manners of

the Dutch nobility of that age wanted the grace which was found in

the highest perfection among the gentlemen of France, and which, in an

inferior degree, embellished the Court of England; and his manners were

altogether Dutch. Even his countrymen thought him blunt. To foreigners

he often seemed churlish. In his intercourse with the world in general

he appeared ignorant or negligent of those arts which double the

value of a favour and take away the sting of a refusal. He was little

interested in letters or science. The discoveries of Newton and

Leibnitz, the poems of Dryden and Boileau, were unknown to him. Dramatic

performances tired him; and he was glad to turn away from the stage

and to talk about public affairs, while Orestes was raving, or while

Tartuffe was pressing Elmira's hand. He had indeed some talent for

sarcasm, and not seldom employed, quite unconsciously, a natural

rhetoric, quaint, indeed, but vigorous and original. He did not,

however, in the least affect the character of a wit or of an orator. His

attention had been confined to those studies which form strenuous and

sagacious men of business. From a child he listened with interest when

high questions of alliance, finance, and war were discussed. Of geometry

he learned as much as was necessary for the construction of a ravelin or

a hornwork. Of languages, by the help of a memory singularly powerful,

he learned as much as was necessary to enable him to comprehend and

answer without assistance everything that was said to him, and every

letter which he received. The Dutch was his own tongue. He understood

Latin, Italian, and Spanish. He spoke and wrote French, English,

and German, inelegantly, it is true, and inexactly, but fluently and

intelligibly. No qualification could be more important to a man whose

life was to be passed in organizing great alliances, and in commanding

armies assembled from different countries.

One class of philosophical questions had been forced on his attention

by circumstances, and seems to have interested him more than might have

been expected from his general character. Among the Protestants of the

United Provinces, as among the Protestants of our island, there were two

great religious parties which almost exactly coincided with two great

political parties. The chiefs of the municipal oligarchy were Arminians,

and were commonly regarded by the multitude as little better than

Papists. The princes of Orange had generally been the patrons of the

Calvinistic divinity, and owed no small part of their popularity to

their zeal for the doctrines of election and final perseverance, a zeal

not always enlightened by knowledge or tempered by humanity. William

had been carefully instructed from a child in the theological system to

which his family was attached, and regarded that system with even more

than the partiality which men generally feel for a hereditary faith. He

had ruminated on the great enigmas which had been discussed in the

Synod of Dort, and had found in the austere and inflexible logic of the

Genevese school something which suited his intellect and his temper.

That example of intolerance indeed which some of his predecessors had

set he never imitated. For all persecution he felt a fixed aversion,

which he avowed, not only where the avowal was obviously politic, but on

occasions where it seemed that his interest would have been promoted

by dissimulation or by silence. His theological opinions, however,

were even more decided than those of his ancestors. The tenet of

predestination was the keystone of his religion. He often declared that,

if he were to abandon that tenet, he must abandon with it all belief in

a superintending Providence, and must become a mere Epicurean. Except in

this single instance, all the sap of his vigorous mind was early drawn

away from the speculative to the practical. The faculties which are

necessary for the conduct of important business ripened in him at a time

of life when they have scarcely begun to blossom in ordinary men.

Since Octavius the world had seen no such instance of precocious

statesmanship. Skilful diplomatists were surprised to hear the weighty

observations which at seventeen the Prince made on public affairs, and

still more surprised to see a lad, in situations in which he might

have been expected to betray strong passion, preserve a composure as

imperturbable as their own. At eighteen he sate among the fathers of the

commonwealth, grave, discreet, and judicious as the oldest among them.

At twenty-one, in a day of gloom and terror, he was placed at the head

of the administration. At twenty-three he was renowned throughout Europe

as a soldier and a politician. He had put domestic factions under his

feet: he was the soul of a mighty coalition; and he had contended with

honour in the field against some of the greatest generals of the age.

His personal tastes were those rather of a warrior than of a statesman:

but he, like his greatgrandfather, the silent prince who founded the

Batavian commonwealth, occupies a far higher place among statesmen than

among warriors. The event of battles, indeed, is not an unfailing test

of the abilities of a commander; and it would be peculiarly unjust to

apply this test to William: for it was his fortune to be almost always

opposed to captains who were consummate masters of their art, and to

troops far superior in discipline to his own. Yet there is reason to

believe that he was by no means equal, as a general in the field, to

some who ranked far below him in intellectual powers. To those whom he

trusted he spoke on this subject with the magnanimous frankness of a man

who had done great things, and who could well afford to acknowledge some

deficiencies. He had never, he said, served an apprenticeship to the

military profession. He had been placed, while still a boy, at the head

of an army. Among his officers there had been none competent to instruct

him. His own blunders and their consequences had been his only lessons.

"I would give," he once exclaimed, "a good part of my estates to have

served a few campaigns under the Prince of Conde before I had to command

against him." It is not improbable that the circumstance which prevented

William from attaining any eminent dexterity in strategy may have been

favourable to the general vigour of his intellect. If his battles were

not those of a great tactician, they entitled him to be called a great

man. No disaster could for one moment deprive him of his firmness or of

the entire possession of all his faculties. His defeats were repaired

with such marvellous celerity that, before his enemies had sung the Te

Deum, he was again ready for conflict; nor did his adverse fortune ever

deprive him of the respect and confidence of his soldiers. That respect

and confidence he owed in no small measure to his personal courage.

Courage, in the degree which is necessary to carry a soldier without

disgrace through a campaign, is possessed, or might, under proper

training, be acquired, by the great majority of men. But courage like

that of William is rare indeed. He was proved by every test; by war,

by wounds, by painful and depressing maladies, by raging seas, by the

imminent and constant risk of assassination, a risk which has shaken

very strong nerves, a risk which severely tried even the adamantine

fortitude of Cromwell. Yet none could ever discover what that thing was

which the Prince of Orange feared. His advisers could with difficulty

induce him to take any precaution against the pistols and daggers of

conspirators. [209] Old sailors were amazed at the composure which he

preserved amidst roaring breakers on a perilous coast. In battle his

bravery made him conspicuous even among tens of thousands of brave

warriors, drew forth the generous applause of hostile armies, and was

never questioned even by the injustice of hostile factions. During his

first campaigns he exposed himself like a man who sought for death, was

always foremost in the charge and last in the retreat, fought, sword in

hand, in the thickest press, and, with a musket ball in his arm and the

blood streaming over his cuirass, still stood his ground and waved his

hat under the hottest fire. His friends adjured him to take more care of

a life invaluable to his country; and his most illustrious antagonist,

the great Conde, remarked, after the bloody day of Seneff that the

Prince of Orange had in all things borne himself like an old general,

except in exposing himself like a young soldier. William denied that he

was guilty of temerity. It was, he said, from a sense of duty and on a

cool calculation of what the public interest required that he was always

at the post of danger. The troops which he commanded had been little

used to war, and shrank from a close encounter with the veteran soldiery

of France. It was necessary that their leader should show them how

battles were to be won. And in truth more than one day which had seemed

hopelessly lost was retrieved by the hardihood with which he rallied his

broken battalions and cut down with his own hand the cowards who set the

example of flight. Sometimes, however, it seemed that he had a strange

pleasure in venturing his person. It was remarked that his spirits were

never so high and his manners never so gracious and easy as amidst

the tumult and carnage of a battle. Even in his pastimes he liked the

excitement of danger. Cards, chess, and billiards gave him no pleasure.

The chase was his favourite recreation; and he loved it most when it

was most hazardous. His leaps were sometimes such that his boldest

companions did not like to follow him. He seems even to have thought the

most hardy field sports of England effeminate, and to have pined in the

Great Park of Windsor for the game which he had been used to drive to

bay in the forests of Guelders, wolves, and wild boars, and huge stags

with sixteen antlers. [210]

The audacity of his spirit was the more remarkable because his physical

organization was unusually delicate. From a child he had been weak and

sickly. In the prime of manhood his complaints had been aggravated by

a severe attack of small pox. He was asthmatic and consumptive. His

slender frame was shaken by a constant hoarse cough. He could not sleep

unless his head was propped by several pillows, and could scarcely

draw his breath in any but the purest air. Cruel headaches frequently

tortured him. Exertion soon fatigued him. The physicians constantly kept

up the hopes of his enemies by fixing some date beyond which, if there

were anything certain in medical science, it was impossible that his

broken constitution could hold out. Yet, through a life which was one

long disease, the force of his mind never failed, on any great occasion,

to bear up his suffering and languid body.

He was born with violent passions and quick sensibilities: but the

strength of his emotions was not suspected by the world. From the

multitude his joy and his grief, his affection and his resentment,

were hidden by a phlegmatic serenity, which made him pass for the most

coldblooded of mankind. Those who brought him good news could seldom

detect any sign of pleasure. Those who saw him after a defeat looked in

vain for any trace of vexation. He praised and reprimanded, rewarded and

punished, with the stern tranquillity of a Mohawk chief: but those who

knew him well and saw him near were aware that under all this ice a

fierce fire was constantly burning. It was seldom that anger deprived

him of power over himself. But when he was really enraged the first

outbreak of his passion was terrible. It was indeed scarcely safe to

approach him. On these rare occasions, however, as soon as he regained

his self command, he made such ample reparation to those whom he had

wronged as tempted them to wish that he would go into a fury again. His

affection was as impetuous as his wrath. Where he loved, he loved with

the whole energy of his strong mind. When death separated him from what

he loved, the few who witnessed his agonies trembled for his reason and

his life. To a very small circle of intimate friends, on whose fidelity

and secrecy he could absolutely depend, he was a different man from the

reserved and stoical William whom the multitude supposed to be destitute

of human feelings. He was kind, cordial, open, even convivial and

jocose, would sit at table many hours, and would bear his full share

in festive conversation. Highest in his favour stood a gentleman of

his household named Bentinck, sprung from a noble Batavian race, and

destined to be the founder of one of the great patrician houses of

England. The fidelity of Bentinck had been tried by no common test. It

was while the United Provinces were struggling for existence against the

French power that the young Prince on whom all their hopes were fixed

was seized by the small pox. That disease had been fatal to many members

of his family, and at first wore, in his case, a peculiarly malignant

aspect. The public consternation was great. The streets of the Hague

were crowded from daybreak to sunset by persons anxiously asking how his

Highness was. At length his complaint took a favourable turn. His escape

was attributed partly to his own singular equanimity, and partly to the

intrepid and indefatigable friendship of Bentinck. From the hands of

Bentinck alone William took food and medicine. By Bentinck alone William

was lifted from his bed and laid down in it. "Whether Bentinck slept or

not while I was ill," said William to Temple, with great tenderness,

"I know not. But this I know, that, through sixteen days and nights,

I never once called for anything but that Bentinck was instantly at my

side." Before the faithful servant had entirely performed his task, he

had himself caught the contagion. Still, however, he bore up against

drowsiness and fever till his master was pronounced convalescent. Then,

at length, Bentinck asked leave to go home. It was time: for his limbs

would no longer support him. He was in great danger, but recovered, and,

as soon as he left his bed, hastened to the army, where, during many

sharp campaigns, he was ever found, as he had been in peril of a

different kind, close to William's side.

Such was the origin of a friendship as warm and pure as any that ancient

or modern history records. The descendants of Bentinck still preserve

many letters written by William to their ancestor: and it is not too

much to say that no person who has not studied those letters can form

a correct notion of the Prince's character. He whom even his admirers

generally accounted the most distant and frigid of men here forgets

all distinctions of rank, and pours out all his thoughts with the

ingenuousness of a schoolboy. He imparts without reserve secrets of

the highest moment. He explains with perfect simplicity vast designs

affecting all the governments of Europe. Mingled with his communications

on such subjects are other communications of a very different, but

perhaps not of a less interesting kind. All his adventures, all his

personal feelings, his long runs after enormous stags, his carousals

on St. Hubert's day, the growth of his plantations, the failure of his

melons, the state of his stud, his wish to procure an easy pad nag for

his wife, his vexation at learning that one of his household, after

ruining a girl of good family, refused to marry her, his fits of sea

sickness, his coughs, his headaches, his devotional moods, his gratitude

for the divine protection after a great escape, his struggles to submit

himself to the divine will after a disaster, are described with an

amiable garrulity hardly to have been expected from the most discreet

and sedate statesman of the age. Still more remarkable is the careless

effusion of his tenderness, and the brotherly interest which he takes

in his friend's domestic felicity. When an heir is born to Bentinck, "he

will live, I hope," says William, "to be as good a fellow as you are;

and, if I should have a son, our children will love each other, I hope,

as we have done." [211] Through life he continues to regard the

little Bentincks with paternal kindness. He calls them by endearing

diminutives: he takes charge of them in their father's absence, and,

though vexed at being forced to refuse them any pleasure, will not

suffer them to go on a hunting party, where there would be risk of a

push from a stag's horn, or to sit up late at a riotous supper. [212]

When their mother is taken ill during her husband's absence, William,

in the midst of business of the highest moment, finds time to send off

several expresses in one day with short notes containing intelligence of

her state. [213] On one occasion, when she is pronounced out of danger

after a severe attack, the Prince breaks forth into fervent expressions

of gratitude to God. "I write," he says, "with tears of joy in my

eyes." [214] There is a singular charm in such letters, penned by a man

whose irresistible energy and inflexible firmness extorted the respect

of his enemies, whose cold and ungracious demeanour repelled the

attachment of almost all his partisans, and whose mind was occupied by

gigantic schemes which have changed the face of the world.

His kindness was not misplaced. Bentinck was early pronounced by Temple

to be the best and truest servant that ever prince had the good

fortune to possess, and continued through life to merit that honourable

character. The friends were indeed made for each other. William wanted

neither a guide nor a flatterer. Having a firm and just reliance on

his own judgment, he was not partial to counsellors who dealt much

in suggestions and objections. At the same time he had too much

discernment, and too much elevation of mind, to be gratified by

sycophancy. The confidant of such a prince ought to be a man, not of

inventive genius or commanding spirit, but brave and faithful, capable

of executing orders punctually, of keeping secrets inviolably, of

observing facts vigilantly, and of reporting them truly; and such a man

was Bentinck.

William was not less fortunate in marriage than in friendship. Yet his

marriage had not at first promised much domestic happiness. His choice

had been determined chiefly by political considerations: nor did it seem

likely that any strong affection would grow up between a handsome

girl of sixteen, well disposed indeed, and naturally intelligent, but

ignorant and simple, and a bridegroom who, though he had not completed

his twenty-eighth year, was in constitution older than her father, whose

manner was chilling, and whose head was constantly occupied by public

business or by field sports. For a time William was a negligent husband.

He was indeed drawn away from his wife by other women, particularly by

one of her ladies, Elizabeth Villiers, who, though destitute of personal

attractions, and disfigured by a hideous squint, possessed talents which

well fitted her to partake his cares. [215] He was indeed ashamed of his

errors, and spared no pains to conceal them: but, in spite of all his

precautions, Mary well knew that he was not strictly faithful to her.

Spies and talebearers, encouraged by her father, did their best to

inflame her resentment. A man of a very different character, the

excellent Ken, who was her chaplain at the Hague during some months, was

so much incensed by her wrongs that he, with more zeal than discretion,

threatened to reprimand her husband severely. [216] She, however, bore

her injuries with a meekness and patience which deserved, and gradually

obtained, William's esteem and gratitude. Yet there still remained one

cause of estrangement. A time would probably come when the Princess, who

had been educated only to work embroidery, to play on the spinet, and to

read the Bible and the Whole Duty of Man, would be the chief of a

great monarchy, and would hold the balance of Europe, while her lord,

ambitious, versed in affairs, and bent on great enterprises, would find

in the British government no place marked out for him, and would hold

power only from her bounty and during her pleasure. It is not strange

that a man so fond of authority as William, and so conscious of a genius

for command, should have strongly felt that jealousy which, during a few

hours of royalty, put dissension between Guildford Dudley and the Lady

Jane, and which produced a rupture still more tragical between Darnley

and the Queen of Scots. The Princess of Orange had not the faintest

suspicion of her husband's feelings. Her preceptor, Bishop Compton, had

instructed her carefully in religion, and had especially guarded her

mind against the arts of Roman Catholic divines, but had left her

profoundly ignorant of the English constitution and of her own position.

She knew that her marriage vow bound her to obey her husband; and it

had never occurred to her that the relation in which they stood to each

other might one day be inverted. She had been nine years married before

she discovered the cause of William's discontent; nor would she ever

have learned it from himself. In general his temper inclined him rather

to brood over his griefs than to give utterance to them; and in this

particular case his lips were sealed by a very natural delicacy. At

length a complete explanation and reconciliation were brought about by

the agency of Gilbert Burnet.

The fame of Burnet has been attacked with singular malice and

pertinacity. The attack began early in his life, and is still carried on

with undiminished vigour, though he has now been more than a century

and a quarter in his grave. He is indeed as fair a mark as factious

animosity and petulant wit could desire. The faults of his understanding

and temper lie on the surface, and cannot be missed. They were not the

faults which are ordinarily considered as belonging to his country.

Alone among the many Scotchmen who have raised themselves to distinction

and prosperity in England, he had that character which satirists,

novelists, and dramatists have agreed to ascribe to Irish adventurers.

His high animal spirits, his boastfulness, his undissembled vanity,

his propensity to blunder, his provoking indiscretion, his unabashed

audacity, afforded inexhaustible subjects of ridicule to the Tories. Nor

did his enemies omit to compliment him, sometimes with more pleasantry

than delicacy, on the breadth of his shoulders, the thickness of his

calves, and his success in matrimonial projects on amorous and opulent

widows. Yet Burnet, though open in many respects to ridicule, and even

to serious censure, was no contemptible man. His parts were quick, his

industry unwearied, his reading various and most extensive. He was at

once a historian, an antiquary, a theologian, a preacher, a pamphleteer,

a debater, and an active political leader; and in every one of these

characters made himself conspicuous among able competitors. The many

spirited tracts which he wrote on passing events are now known only

to the curious: but his History of his own Times, his History of the

Reformation, his Exposition of the Articles, his Discourse of Pastoral

Care, his Life of Hale, his Life of Wilmot, are still reprinted, nor is

any good private library without them. Against such a fact as this all

the efforts of detractors are vain. A writer, whose voluminous works,

in several branches of literature, find numerous readers a hundred and

thirty years after his death, may have had great faults, but must

also have had great merits: and Burnet had great merits, a fertile and

vigorous mind, and a style, far indeed removed from faultless purity,

but always clear, often lively, and sometimes rising to solemn and

fervid eloquence. In the pulpit the effect of his discourses, which

were delivered without any note, was heightened by a noble figure and

by pathetic action. He was often interrupted by the deep hum of his

audience; and when, after preaching out the hour glass, which in those

days was part of the furniture of the pulpit, he held it up in his hand,

the congregation clamorously encouraged him to go on till the sand had

run off once more. [217] In his moral character, as in his intellect,

great blemishes were more than compensated by great excellence. Though

often misled by prejudice and passion, he was emphatically an honest

man. Though he was not secure from the seductions of vanity, his spirit

was raised high above the influence either of cupidity or of fear. His

nature was kind, generous, grateful, forgiving. [218] His religious

zeal, though steady and ardent, was in general restrained by humanity,

and by a respect for the rights of conscience. Strongly attached to what

he regarded as the spirit of Christianity, he looked with indifference

on rites, names, and forms of ecclesiastical polity, and was by no means

disposed to be severe even on infidels and heretics whose lives

were pure, and whose errors appeared to be the effect rather of some

perversion of the understanding than of the depravity of the heart. But,

like many other good men of that age, he regarded the case of the Church

of Rome as an exception to all ordinary rules.

Burnet had during some years had an European reputation. His History of

the Reformation had been received with loud applause by all Protestants,

and had been felt by the Roman Catholics as a severe blow. The greatest

Doctor that the Church of Rome has produced since the schism of the

sixteenth century, Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, was engaged in framing an

elaborate reply. Burnet had been honoured by a vote of thanks from one

of the zealous Parliaments which had sate during the excitement of

the Popish plot, and had been exhorted, in the name of the Commons of

England, to continue his historical researches. He had been admitted to

familiar conversation both with Charles and James, had lived on terms of

close intimacy with several distinguished statesmen, particularly with

Halifax, and had been the spiritual guide of some persons of the highest

note. He had reclaimed from atheism and from licentiousness one of the

most brilliant libertines of the age, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.

Lord Stafford, the victim of Oates, had, though a Roman Catholic, been

edified in his last hours by Burnet's exhortations touching those points

on which all Christians agree. A few years later a more illustrious

sufferer, Lord Russell, had been accompanied by Burnet from the Tower to

the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The court had neglected no means

of gaining so active and able a divine. Neither royal blandishments

nor promises of valuable preferment had been spared. But Burnet, though

infected in early youth by those servile doctrines which were commonly

held by the clergy of that age, had become on conviction a Whig; and

he firmly adhered through all vicissitudes to his principles. He had,

however, no part in that conspiracy which brought so much disgrace and

calamity on the Whig party, and not only abhorred the murderous designs

of Goodenough and Ferguson, but was of opinion that even his beloved and

honoured friend Russell, had gone to unjustifiable lengths against the

government. A time at length arrived when innocence was not a sufficient

protection. Burnet, though not guilty of any legal offence, was pursued

by the vengeance of the court. He retired to the Continent, and, after

passing about a year in those wanderings through Switzerland, Italy,

and Germany, of which he has left us an agreeable narrative, reached the

Hague in the summer of 1686, and was received there with kindness and

respect. He had many free conversations with the Princess on politics

and religion, and soon became her spiritual director and confidential

adviser. William proved a much more gracious host than could have been

expected. For of all faults officiousness and indiscretion were the most

offensive to him: and Burnet was allowed even by friends and admirers

to be the most officious and indiscreet of mankind. But the sagacious

Prince perceived that this pushing, talkative divine, who was always

blabbing secrets, asking impertinent questions, obtruding unasked

advice, was nevertheless an upright, courageous and able man, well

acquainted with the temper and the views of British sects and factions.

The fame of Burnet's eloquence and erudition was also widely spread.

William was not himself a reading man. But he had now been many years at

the head of the Dutch administration, in an age when the Dutch press was

one of the most formidable engines by which the public mind of Europe

was moved, and, though he had no taste for literary pleasures, was

far too wise and too observant to be ignorant of the value of literary

assistance. He was aware that a popular pamphlet might sometimes be of

as much service as a victory in the field. He also felt the importance

of having always near him some person well informed as to the civil and

ecclesiastical polity of our island: and Burnet was eminently qualified

to be of use as a living dictionary of British affairs. For his

knowledge, though not always accurate, was of immense extent and

there were in England and Scotland few eminent men of any political

or religious party with whom he had not conversed. He was therefore

admitted to as large a share of favour and confidence as was granted to

any but those who composed the very small inmost knot of the Prince's

private friends. When the Doctor took liberties, which was not seldom

the case, his patron became more than usually cold and sullen, and

sometimes uttered a short dry sarcasm which would have struck dumb any

person of ordinary assurance. In spite of such occurrences, however,

the amity between this singular pair continued, with some temporary

interruptions, till it was dissolved by death. Indeed, it was not easy

to wound Burnet's feelings. His selfcomplacency, his animal spirits, and

his want of tact, were such that, though he frequently gave offence, he

never took it.

All the peculiarities of his character fitted him to be the peacemaker

between William and Mary. When persons who ought to esteem and love

each other are kept asunder, as often happens, by some cause which three

words of frank explanation would remove, they are fortunate if they

possess an indiscreet friend who blurts out the whole truth. Burnet

plainly told the Princess what the feeling was which preyed upon

her husband's mind. She learned for the first time, with no small

astonishment, that, when she became Queen of England, William would

not share her throne. She warmly declared that there was no proof of

conjugal submission and affection which she was not ready to give.

Burnet, with many apologies and with solemn protestations that no human

being had put words into his mouth, informed her that the remedy was in

her own hands. She might easily, when the crown devolved on her, induce

her Parliament not only to give the regal title to her husband, but

even to transfer to him by a legislative act the administration of the

government. "But," he added, "your Royal Highness ought to consider well

before you announce any such resolution. For it is a resolution which,

having once been announced, cannot safely or easily be retracted." "I

want no time for consideration," answered Mary. "It is enough that I

have an opportunity of showing my regard for the Prince. Tell him what

I say; and bring him to me that he may hear it from my own lips." Burnet

went in quest of William; but William was many miles off after a stag.

It was not till the next day that the decisive interview took place.

"I did not know till yesterday," said Mary, "that there was such a

difference between the laws of England and the laws of God. But I now

promise you that you shall always bear rule: and, in return, I ask only

this, that, as I shall observe the precept which enjoins wives to obey

their husbands, you will observe that which enjoins husbands to love

their wives." Her generous affection completely gained the heart of

William. From that time till the sad day when he was carried away in

fits from her dying bed, there was entire friendship and confidence

between them. Many of her letters to him are extant; and they contain

abundant evidence that this man, unamiable as he was in the eyes of the

multitude, had succeeded in inspiring a beautiful and virtuous woman,

born his superior, with a passion fond even to idolatry.

The service which Burnet had rendered to his country was of high moment.

A time had arrived at which it was important to the public safety that

there should be entire concord between the Prince and Princess.

Till after the suppression of the Western insurrection grave causes of

dissension had separated William both from Whigs and Tories. He had

seen with displeasure the attempts of the Whigs to strip the executive

government of some powers which he thought necessary to its efficiency

and dignity. He had seen with still deeper displeasure the countenance

given by a large section of that party to the pretensions of Monmouth.

The opposition, it seemed, wished first to make the crown of England

not worth the wearing, and then to place it on the head of a bastard and

impostor. At the same time the Prince's religious system differed widely

from that which was the badge of the Tories. They were Arminians

and Prelatists. They looked down on the Protestant Churches of the

Continent, and regarded every line of their own liturgy and rubric

as scarcely less sacred than the gospels. His opinions touching the

metaphysics of theology were Calvinistic. His opinions respecting

ecclesiastical polity and modes of worship were latitudinarian. He owned

that episcopacy was a lawful and convenient form of church government;

but he spoke with sharpness and scorn of the bigotry of those who

thought episcopal ordination essential to a Christian society. He had

no scruple about the vestments and gestures prescribed by the Book of

Common Prayer. But he avowed that he should like the rites of the Church

of England better if they reminded him less of the rites of the Church

of Rome. He had been heard to utter an ominous growl when first he

saw, in his wife's private chapel, an altar decked after the Anglican

fashion, and had not seemed well pleased at finding her with Hooker's

Ecclesiastical Polity in her hands. [219]

He therefore long observed the contest between the English factions

attentively, but without feeling a strong predilection for either side.

Nor in truth did he ever, to the end of his life, become either a

Whig or a Tory. He wanted that which is the common groundwork of both

characters; for he never became an Englishman. He saved England, it is

true; but he never loved her, and he never obtained her love. To him

she was always a land of exile, visited with reluctance and quitted with

delight. Even when he rendered to her those services of which, at this

day, we feel the happy effects, her welfare was not his chief object.

Whatever patriotic feeling he had was for Holland. There was the stately

tomb where slept the great politician whose blood, whose name, whose

temperament, and whose genius he had inherited. There the very sound of

his title was a spell which had, through three generations, called forth

the affectionate enthusiasm of boors and artisans. The Dutch language

was the language of his nursery. Among the Dutch gentry he had chosen

his early friends. The amusements, the architecture, the landscape of

his native country, had taken hold on his heart. To her he turned with

constant fondness from a prouder and fairer rival. In the gallery of

Whitehall he pined for the familiar House in the Wood at the Hague, and

never was so happy as when he could quit the magnificence of Windsor for

his far humbler seat at Loo. During his splendid banishment it was his

consolation to create round him, by building, planting, and digging, a

scene which might remind him of the formal piles of red brick, of the

long canals, and of the symmetrical flower beds amidst which his early

life had been passed. Yet even his affection for the land of his birth

was subordinate to another feeling which early became supreme in his

soul, which mixed itself with all his passions, which impelled him

to marvellous enterprises, which supported him when sinking under

mortification, pain, sickness, and sorrow, which, towards the close of

his career, seemed during a short time to languish, but which soon broke

forth again fiercer than ever, and continued to animate him even while

the prayer for the departing was read at his bedside. That feeling was

enmity to France, and to the magnificent King who, in more than one

sense, represented France, and who to virtues and accomplishments

eminently French joined in large measure that unquiet, unscrupulous,

and vainglorious ambition which has repeatedly drawn on France the

resentment of Europe.

It is not difficult to trace the progress of the sentiment which

gradually possessed itself of William's whole soul. When he was little

more than a boy his country had been attacked by Lewis in ostentatious

defiance of justice and public law, had been overrun, had

been desolated, had been given up to every excess of rapacity,

licentiousness, and cruelty. The Dutch had in dismay humbled themselves

before the conqueror, and had implored mercy. They had been told in

reply that, if they desired peace, they must resign their independence

and do annual homage to the House of Bourbon. The injured nation, driven

to despair, had opened its dykes and had called in the sea as an ally

against the French tyranny. It was in the agony of that conflict, when

peasants were flying in terror before the invaders, when hundreds of

fair gardens and pleasure houses were buried beneath the waves, when

the deliberations of the States were interrupted by the fainting and

the loud weeping of ancient senators who could not bear the thought of

surviving the freedom and glory of their native land, that William had

been called to the head of affairs. For a time it seemed to him that

resistance was hopeless. He looked round for succour, and looked in

vain. Spain was unnerved, Germany distracted, England corrupted. Nothing

seemed left to the young Stadtholder but to perish sword in hand, or to

be the Aeneas of a great emigration, and to create another Holland in

countries beyond the reach of the tyranny of France. No obstacle would

then remain to check the progress of the House of Bourbon. A few years,

and that House might add to its dominions Loraine and Flanders, Castile

and Aragon, Naples and Milan, Mexico and Peru. Lewis might wear the

imperial crown, might place a prince of his family on the throne of

Poland, might be sole master of Europe from the Scythian deserts to

the Atlantic Ocean, and of America from regions north of the Tropic

of Cancer to regions south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Such was the

prospect which lay before William when first he entered on public life,

and which never ceased to haunt him till his latest day. The French

monarchy was to him what the Roman republic was to Hannibal, what the

Ottoman power was to Scanderbeg, what the southern domination was to

Wallace. Religion gave her sanction to that intense and unquenchable

animosity. Hundreds of Calvinistic preachers proclaimed that the same

power which had set apart Samson from the womb to be the scourge of

the Philistine, and which had called Gideon from the threshing floor to

smite the Midianite, had raised up William of Orange to be the champion

of all free nations and of all pure Churches; nor was this notion

without influence on his own mind. To the confidence which the heroic

fatalist placed in his high destiny and in his sacred cause is to be

partly attributed his singular indifference to danger. He had a great

work to do; and till it was done nothing could harm him. Therefore it

was that, in spite of the prognostications of physicians, he recovered

from maladies which seemed hopeless, that bands of assassins conspired

in vain against his life, that the open skiff to which he trusted

himself on a starless night, on a raging ocean, and near a treacherous

shore, brought him safe to land, and that, on twenty fields of battle,

the cannon balls passed him by to right and left. The ardour and

perseverance with which he devoted himself to his mission have scarcely

any parallel in history. In comparison with his great object he held the

lives of other men as cheap as his own. It was but too much the habit,

even of the most humane and generous soldiers of that age, to think very

lightly of the bloodshed and devastation inseparable from great martial

exploits; and the heart of William was steeled, not only by professional

insensibility, but by that sterner insensibility which is the effect of

a sense of duty. Three great coalitions, three long and bloody wars in

which all Europe from the Vistula to the Western Ocean was in arms,

are to be ascribed to his unconquerable energy. When in 1678 the States

General, exhausted and disheartened, were desirious of repose, his voice

was still against sheathing the sword. If peace was made, it was made

only because he could not breathe into other men a spirit as fierce and

determined as his own. At the very last moment, in the hope of breaking

off the negotiation which he knew to be all but concluded, he fought one

of the most bloody and obstinate battles of that age. From the day on

which the treaty of Nimeguen was signed, he began to meditate a second

coalition. His contest with Lewis, transferred from the field to the

cabinet, was soon exasperated by a private feud. In talents, temper,

manners and opinions, the rivals were diametrically opposed to each

other. Lewis, polite and dignified, profuse and voluptuous, fond of

display and averse from danger, a munificent patron of arts and letters,

and a cruel persecutor of Calvinists, presented a remarkable contrast

to William, simple in tastes, ungracious in demeanour, indefatigable and

intrepid in war, regardless of all the ornamental branches of knowledge,

and firmly attached to the theology of Geneva. The enemies did not long

observe those courtesies which men of their rank, even when opposed to

each other at the head of armies, seldom neglect. William, indeed,

went through the form of tendering his best services to Lewis. But this

civility was rated at its true value, and requited with a dry reprimand.

The great King affected contempt for the petty Prince who was the

servant of a confederacy of trading towns; and to every mark of contempt

the dauntless Stadtholder replied by a fresh defiance. William took his

title, a title which the events of the preceding century had made one of

the most illustrious in Europe, from a city which lies on the banks of

the Rhone not far from Avignon, and which, like Avignon, though inclosed

on every side by the French territory, was properly a fief not of the

French but of the Imperial Crown. Lewis, with that ostentatious

contempt of public law which was characteristic of him, occupied Orange,

dismantled the fortifications, and confiscated the revenues. William

declared aloud at his table before many persons that he would make the

most Christian King repent the outrage, and, when questioned about these

words by the Count of Avaux, positively refused either to retract them

or to explain them away. The quarrel was carried so far that the French

minister could not venture to present himself at the drawing room of the

Princess for fear of receiving some affront. [220]

The feeling with which William regarded France explains the whole of his

policy towards England. His public spirit was an European public spirit.

The chief object of his care was not our island, not even his native

Holland, but the great community of nations threatened with subjugation

by one too powerful member. Those who commit the error of considering

him as an English statesman must necessarily see his whole life in a

false light, and will be unable to discover any principle, good or bad,

Whig or Tory, to which his most important acts can be referred. But,

when we consider him as a man whose especial task was to join a crowd

of feeble, divided and dispirited states in firm and energetic union

against a common enemy, when we consider him as a man in whose eyes

England was important chiefly because, without her, the great coalition

which he projected must be incomplete, we shall be forced to admit

that no long career recorded in history has been more uniform from the

beginning to the close than that of this great Prince. [221]

The clue of which we are now possessed will enable us to track without

difficulty the course, in reality consistent, though in appearance

sometimes tortuous, which he pursued towards our domestic factions.

He clearly saw what had not escaped persons far inferior to him in

sagacity, that the enterprise on which his whole soul was intent

would probably be successful if England were on his side, would be

of uncertain issue if England were neutral, and would be hopeless if

England acted as she had acted in the days of the Cabal. He saw not less

clearly that between the foreign policy and the domestic policy of the

English government there was a close connection; that the sovereign of

this country, acting in harmony with the legislature, must always have a

great sway in the affairs of Christendom, and must also have an obvious

interest in opposing the undue aggrandisement of any continental

potentate; that, on the other hand, the sovereign, distrusted and

thwarted by the legislature, could be of little weight in European

politics, and that the whole of that little weight would be thrown into

the wrong scale. The Prince's first wish therefore was that there should

be concord between the throne and the Parliament. How that concord

should be established, and on which side concessions should be made,

were, in his view, questions of secondary importance. He would have

been best pleased, no doubt, to see a complete reconciliation effected

without the sacrifice of one tittle of the prerogative. For in the

integrity of that prerogative he had a reversionary interest; and

he was, by nature, at least as covetous of power and as impatient of

restraint as any of the Stuarts. But there was no flower of the crown

which he was not prepared to sacrifice, even after the crown had been

placed on his own head, if he could only be convinced that such a

sacrifice was indispensably necessary to his great design. In the days

of the Popish plot, therefore, though he disapproved of the violence

with which the opposition attacked the royal authority, he exhorted

the government to give way. The conduct of the Commons, he said, as

respected domestic affairs, was most unreasonable but while the Commons

were discontented the liberties of Europe could never be safe; and to

that paramount consideration every other consideration ought to yield.

On these principles he acted when the Exclusion Bill had thrown

the nation into convulsions. There is no reason to believe that he

encouraged the opposition to bring forward that bill or to reject the

offers of compromise which were repeatedly made from the throne. But

when it became clear that, unless that bill were carried, there would

be a serious breach between the Commons and the court, he indicated

very intelligibly, though with decorous reserve, his opinion that the

representatives of the people ought to be conciliated at any price. When

a violent and rapid reflux of public feeling had left the Whig party for

a time utterly helpless, he attempted to attain his grand object by a

new road perhaps more agreeable to his temper than that which he had

previously tried. In the altered temper of the nation there was little

chance that any Parliament disposed to cross the wishes of the sovereign

would be elected. Charles was for a time master. To gain Charles,

therefore, was the Prince's first wish. In the summer of 1683, almost

at the moment at which the detection of the Rye House Plot made the

discomfiture of the Whigs and the triumph of the King complete, events

took place elsewhere which William could not behold without extreme

anxiety and alarm. The Turkish armies advanced to the suburbs of Vienna.

The great Austrian monarchy, on the support of which the Prince had

reckoned, seemed to be on the point of destruction. Bentinck was

therefore sent in haste from the Hague to London, was charged to omit

nothing which might be necessary to conciliate the English court, and

was particularly instructed to express in the strongest terms the horror

with which his master regarded the Whig conspiracy.

During the eighteen months which followed, there was some hope that

the influence of Halifax would prevail, and that the court of Whitehall

would return to the policy of the Triple Alliance. To that hope William

fondly clung. He spared no effort to propitiate Charles. The hospitality

which Monmouth found at the Hague is chiefly to be ascribed to the

Prince's anxiety to gratify the real wishes of Monmouth's father.

As soon as Charles died, William, still adhering unchangeably to his

object, again changed his course. He had sheltered Monmouth to please

the late King. That the present King might have no reason to complain

Monmouth was dismissed. We have seen that, when the Western insurrection

broke out, the British regiments in the Dutch service were, by the

active exertions of the Prince, sent over to their own country on the

first requisition. Indeed William even offered to command in person

against the rebels; and that the offer was made in perfect sincerity

cannot be doubted by those who have perused his confidential letters to

Bentinck. [222]

The Prince was evidently at this time inclined to hope that the great

plan to which in his mind everything else was subordinate might obtain

the approbation and support of his father in law. The high tone which

James was then holding towards France, the readiness with which he

consented to a defensive alliance with the United Provinces, the

inclination which he showed to connect himself with the House of

Austria, encouraged this expectation. But in a short time the prospect

was darkened. The disgrace of Halifax, the breach between James and the

Parliament, the prorogation: the announcement distinctly made by the

King to the foreign ministers that continental politics should no longer

divert his attention from internal measures tending to strengthen his

prerogative and to promote the interest of his Church, put an end to

the delusion. It was plain that, when the European crisis came, England

would, if James were her master, either remain inactive or act in

conjunction with France. And the European crisis was drawing near. The

House of Austria had, by a succession of victories, been secured from

danger on the side of Turkey, and was no longer under the necessity

of submitting patiently to the encroachments and insults of Lewis.

Accordingly, in July 1686, a treaty was signed at Augsburg by which the

Princes of the Empire bound themselves closely together for the purpose

of mutual defence. The Kings of Spain and Sweden were parties to this

compact, the King of Spain as sovereign of the provinces contained in

the circle of Burgundy, and the King of Sweden as Duke of Pomerania. The

confederates declared that they had no intention to attack and no

wish to offend any power, but that they were determined to tolerate

no infraction of those rights which the Germanic body held under the

sanction of public law and public faith. They pledged themselves to

stand by each other in case of need, and fixed the amount of force which

each member of the league was to furnish if it should be necessary

to repel aggression. [223] The name of William did not appear in this

instrument: but all men knew that it was his work, and foresaw that

he would in no long time be again the captain of a coalition against

France. Between him and the vassal of France there could, in such

circumstances, be no cordial good will. There was no open rupture, no

interchange of menaces or reproaches. But the father in law and the son

in law were separated completely and for ever.

At the very time at which the Prince was thus estranged from the English

court, the causes which had hitherto produced a coolness between him

and the two great sections of the English people disappeared. A large

portion, perhaps a numerical majority, of the Whigs had favoured the

pretensions of Monmouth: but Monmouth was now no more. The Tories, on

the other hand, had entertained apprehensions that the interests of the

Anglican Church might not be safe under the rule of a man bred among

Dutch Presbyterians, and well known to hold latitudinarian opinions

about robes, ceremonies, and Bishops: but, since that beloved Church

had been threatened by far more formidable dangers from a very different

quarter, these apprehensions had lost almost all their power. Thus, at

the same moment, both the great parties began to fix their hopes and

their affections on the same leader. Old republicans could not refuse

their confidence to one who had worthily filled, during many years,

the highest magistracy of a republic. Old royalists conceived that they

acted according to their principles in paying profound respect to a

prince so near to the throne. At this conjuncture it was of the highest

moment that there should be entire union between William and Mary. A

misunderstanding between the presumptive heiress of the crown and her

husband must have produced a schism in that vast mass which was from all

quarters gathering round one common rallying point. Happily all risk

of such misunderstanding was averted in the critical instant by the

interposition of Burnet; and the Prince became the unquestioned chief

of the whole of that party which was opposed to the government, a party

almost coextensive with the nation.

There is not the least reason to believe that he at this time meditated

the great enterprise to which a stern necessity afterwards drove him. He

was aware that the public mind of England, though heated by grievances,

was by no means ripe for revolution. He would doubtless gladly have

avoided the scandal which must be the effect of a mortal quarrel

between persons bound together by the closest ties of consanguinity and

affinity. Even his ambition made him unwilling to owe to violence that

greatness which might be his in the ordinary course of nature and

of law. For he well knew that, if the crown descended to his wife

regularly, all its prerogatives would descend unimpaired with it, and

that, if it were obtained by election, it must be taken subject to

such conditions as the electors might think fit to impose. He meant,

therefore, as it appears, to wait with patience for the day when he

might govern by an undisputed title, and to content himself in the

meantime with exercising a great influence on English affairs, as

first Prince of the blood, and as head of the party which was decidedly

preponderant in the nation, and which was certain whenever a Parliament

should meet, to be decidedly preponderant in both Houses.

Already, it is true, he had been urged by an adviser, less sagacious and

more impetuous than himself, to try a bolder course. This adviser was

the young Lord Mordaunt. That age had produced no more inventive genius,

and no more daring spirit. But, if a design was splendid, Mordaunt

seldom inquired whether it were practicable. His life was a wild romance

made up of mysterious intrigues, both political and amorous, of violent

and rapid changes of scene and fortune, and of victories resembling

those of Amadis and Launcelot rather than those of Luxemburg and Eugene.

The episodes interspersed in this strange story were of a piece with the

main plot. Among them were midnight encounters with generous robbers,

and rescues of noble and beautiful ladies from ravishers. Mordaunt,

having distinguished himself by the eloquence and audacity with which,

in the House of Lords, he had opposed the court, repaired, soon after

the prorogation, to the Hague, and strongly recommended an immediate

descent on England. He had persuaded himself that it would be as easy to

surprise three great kingdoms as he long afterwards found it to surprise

Barcelona. William listened, meditated, and replied, in general terms,

that he took a great interest in English affairs, and would keep his

attention fixed on them. [224] Whatever his purpose had been, it is not

likely that he would have chosen a rash and vainglorious knight errant

for his confidant. Between the two men there was nothing in common

except personal courage, which rose in both to the height of fabulous

heroism. Mordaunt wanted merely to enjoy the excitement of conflict, and

to make men stare. William had one great end ever before him. Towards

that end he was impelled by a strong passion which appeared to him under

the guise of a sacred duty. Towards that end he toiled with a patience

resembling, as he once said, the patience with which he had seen a

boatman on a canal, strain against an adverse eddy, often swept back,

but never ceasing to pull, and content if, by the labour of hours, a few

yards could be gained. [225] Exploits which brought the Prince no nearer

to his object, however glorious they might be in the estimation of the

vulgar, were in his judgment boyish vanities, and no part of the real

business of life.

He determined to reject Mordaunt's advice; and there can be no doubt

that the determination was wise. Had William, in 1686, or even in 1687,

attempted to do what he did with such signal success in 1688, it is

probable that many Whigs would have risen in arms at his call. But he

would have found that the nation was not yet prepared to welcome an

armed deliverer from a foreign country, and that the Church had not yet

been provoked and insulted into forgetfulness of the tenet which had

long been her peculiar boast. The old Cavaliers would have flocked to

the royal standard. There would probably have been in all the three

kingdoms a civil war as long and fierce as that of the preceding

generation. While that war was raging in the British Isles, what might

not Lewis attempt on the Continent? And what hope would there be for

Holland, drained of her troops and abandoned by her Stadtholder?

William therefore contented himself for the present with taking measures

to unite and animate that mighty opposition of which he had become

the head. This was not difficult. The fall of the Hydes had excited

throughout England strange alarm and indignation: Men felt that the

question now was, not whether Protestantism should be dominant, but

whether it should be tolerated. The Treasurer had been succeeded by a

board, of which a Papist was the head. The Privy Seal had been entrusted

to a Papist. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had been succeeded by a man

who had absolutely no claim to high place except that he was a Papist.

The last person whom a government having in view the general interests

of the empire would have sent to Dublin as Deputy was Tyrconnel. His

brutal manners made him unfit to represent the majesty of the crown. The

feebleness of his understanding and the violence of his temper made him

unfit to conduct grave business of state. The deadly animosity which he

felt towards the possessors of the greater part of the soil of Ireland

made him especially unfit to rule that kingdom. But the intemperance of

his bigotry was thought amply to atone for the intemperance of all his

other passions; and, in consideration of the hatred which he bore to the

reformed faith, he was suffered to indulge without restraint his hatred

of the English name. This, then, was the real meaning of his Majesty's

respect for the rights of conscience. He wished his Parliament to remove

all the disabilities which had been imposed on Papists, merely in

order that he might himself impose disabilities equally galling on

Protestants. It was plain that, under such a prince, apostasy was the

only road to greatness. It was a road, however, which few ventured to

take. For the spirit of the nation was thoroughly roused; and every

renegade had to endure such an amount of public scorn and detestation,

as cannot be altogether unfelt even by the most callous natures.

It is true that several remarkable conversions had recently taken place;

but they were such as did little credit to the Church of Rome. Two

men of high rank had joined her communion; Henry Mordaunt, Earl of

Peterborough, and James Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. But Peterborough, who

had been an active soldier, courtier, and negotiator, was now broken

down by years and infirmities; and those who saw him totter about the

galleries of Whitehall, leaning on a stick and swathed up in flannels

and plasters, comforted themselves for his defection by remarking that

he had not changed his religion till he had outlived his faculties.

[226] Salisbury was foolish to a proverb. His figure was so bloated

by sensual indulgence as to be almost incapable of moving, and this

sluggish body was the abode of an equally sluggish mind. He was

represented in popular lampoons as a man made to be duped, as a man who

had hitherto been the prey of gamesters, and who might as well be the

prey of friars. A pasquinade, which, about the time of Rochester's

retirement, was fixed on the door of Salisbury House in the Strand,

described in coarse terms the horror with which the wise Robert Cecil,

if he could rise from his grave, would see to what a creature his

honours had descended. [227]

These were the highest in station among the proselytes of James. There

were other renegades of a very different kind, needy men of parts who

were destitute of principle and of all sense of personal dignity. There

is reason to believe that among these was William Wycherley, the

most licentious and hardhearted writer of a singularly licentious and

hardhearted school. [228] It is certain that Matthew Tindal, who, at a

later period, acquired great notoriety by writing against Christianity,

was at this time received into the bosom of the infallible Church, a

fact which, as may easily be supposed, the divines with whom he

was subsequently engaged in controversy did not suffer to sink into

oblivion. [229] A still more infamous apostate was Joseph Haines, whose

name is now almost forgotten, but who was well known in his own time as

an adventurer of versatile parts, sharper, coiner, false witness, sham

bail, dancing master, buffoon, poet, comedian. Some of his prologues and

epilogues were much admired by his contemporaries; and his merit as an

actor was universally acknowledged. This man professed himself a Roman

Catholic, and went to Italy in the retinue of Castelmaine, but was soon

dismissed for misconduct. If any credit is due to a tradition which was

long preserved in the green room, Haines had the impudence to affirm

that the Virgin Mary had appeared to him and called him to repentance.

After the Revolution, he attempted to make his peace with the town by a

penance more scandalous than his offence. One night, before he acted in

a farce, he appeared on the stage in a white sheet with a torch in his

hand, and recited some profane and indecent doggerel, which he called

his recantation. [230]

With the name of Haines was joined, in many libels the name of a more

illustrious renegade, John Dryden. Dryden was now approaching the

decline of life. After many successes and many failures, he had at

length attained, by general consent, the first place among living

English poets. His claims on the gratitude of James were superior to

those of any man of letters in the kingdom. But James cared little for

verses and much for money. From the day of his accession he set himself

to make small economical reforms, such as bring on a government the

reproach of meanness without producing any perceptible relief to the

finances. One of the victims of his injudicious parsimony was the Poet

Laureate. Orders were given that, in the new patent which the demise of

the crown made necessary, the annual butt of sack, originally granted to

Jonson, and continued to Jonson's successors, should be omitted. [231]

This was the only notice which the King, during the first year of his

reign, deigned to bestow on the mighty satirist who, in the very crisis

of the great struggle of the Exclusion Bill, had spread terror through

the Whig ranks. Dryden was poor and impatient of poverty. He knew little

and cared little about religion. If any sentiment was deeply fixed

in him, that sentiment was an aversion to priests of all persuasions,

Levites, Augurs, Muftis, Roman Catholic divines, Presbyterian divines,

divines of the Church of England. He was not naturally a man of high

spirit; and his pursuits had been by no means such as were likely to

give elevation or delicacy to his mind. He had, during many years,

earned his daily bread by pandaring to the vicious taste of the pit,

and by grossly flattering rich and noble patrons. Selfrespect and a fine

sense of the becoming were not to be expected from one who had led a

life of mendicancy and adulation. Finding that, if he continued to call

himself a Protestant, his services would be overlooked, he declared

himself a Papist. The King's parsimony instantly relaxed. Dryden was

gratified with a pension of a hundred pounds a year, and was employed to

defend his new religion both in prose and verse.

Two eminent men, Samuel Johnson and Walter Scott, have done their best

to persuade themselves and others that this memorable conversion

was sincere. It was natural that they should be desirous to remove

a disgraceful stain from the memory of one whose genius they justly

admired, and with whose political feelings they strongly sympathized;

but the impartial historian must with regret pronounce a very different

judgment. There will always be a strong presumption against the

sincerity of a conversion by which the convert is directly a gainer. In

the case of Dryden there is nothing to countervail this presumption.

His theological writings abundantly prove that he had never sought with

diligence and anxiety to learn the truth, and that his knowledge both

of the Church which he quitted and of the Church which he entered was of

the most superficial kind. Nor was his subsequent conduct that of a

man whom a strong sense of duty had constrained to take a step of awful

importance. Had he been such a man, the same conviction which had led

him to join the Church of Rome would surely have prevented him from

violating grossly and habitually rules which that Church, in common with

every other Christian society, recognises as binding. There would

have been a marked distinction between his earlier and his later

compositions. He would have looked back with remorse on a literary

life of near thirty years, during which his rare powers of diction

and versification had been systematically employed in spreading moral

corruption. Not a line tending to make virtue contemptible, or to

inflame licentious desire, would thenceforward have proceeded from his

pen. The truth unhappily is that the dramas which he wrote after his

pretended conversion are in no respect less impure or profane than those

of his youth. Even when he professed to translate he constantly wandered

from his originals in search of images which, if he had found them in

his originals, he ought to have shunned. What was bad became worse in

his versions. What was innocent contracted a taint from passing

through his mind. He made the grossest satires of Juvenal more gross,

interpolated loose descriptions in the tales of Boccaccio, and polluted

the sweet and limpid poetry of the Georgics with filth which would have

moved the loathing of Virgil.

The help of Dryden was welcome to those Roman Catholic divines who were

painfully sustaining a conflict against all that was most illustrious in

the Established Church. They could not disguise from themselves the fact

that their style, disfigured with foreign idioms which had been picked

up at Rome and Douay, appeared to little advantage when compared with

the eloquence of Tillotson and Sherlock. It seemed that it was no light

thing to have secured the cooperation of the greatest living master of

the English language. The first service which he was required to perform

in return for his pension was to defend his Church in prose against

Stillingfleet. But the art of saying things well is useless to a man who

has nothing to say; and this was Dryden's case. He soon found himself

unequally paired with an antagonist whose whole life had been one long

training for controversy. The veteran gladiator disarmed the novice,

inflicted a few contemptuous scratches, and turned away to encounter

more formidable combatants. Dryden then betook himself to a weapon at

which he was not likely to find his match. He retired for a time

from the bustle of coffeehouses and theatres to a quiet retreat in

Huntingdonshire, and there composed, with unwonted care and labour, his

celebrated poem on the points in dispute between the Churches of Rome

and England. The Church of Rome he represented under the similitude of a

milkwhite hind, ever in peril of death, yet fated not to die. The beasts

of the field were bent on her destruction. The quaking hare, indeed,

observed a timorous neutrality: but the Socinian fox, the Presbyterian

wolf, the Independent bear, the Anabaptist boar, glared fiercely at

the spotless creature. Yet she could venture to drink with them at the

common watering place under the protection of her friend, the kingly

lion. The Church of England was typified by the panther, spotted indeed,

but beautiful, too beautiful for a beast of prey. The hind and the

panther, equally hated by the ferocious population of the forest,

conferred apart on their common danger. They then proceeded to discuss

the points on which they differed, and, while wagging their tails and

licking their jaws, held a long dialogue touching the real presence, the

authority of Popes and Councils, the penal laws, the Test Act,

Oates's perjuries, Butler's unrequited services to the Cavalier party,

Stillingfleet's pamphlets, and Burnet's broad shoulders and fortunate

matrimonial speculations.

The absurdity of this plan is obvious. In truth the allegory could not

be preserved unbroken through ten lines together. No art of execution

could redeem the faults of such a design. Yet the Fable of the Hind

and Panther is undoubtedly the most valuable addition which was made

to English literature during the short and troubled reign of James the

Second. In none of Dryden's works can be found passages more pathetic

and magnificent, greater ductility and energy of language, or a more

pleasing and various music.

The poem appeared with every advantage which royal patronage could give.

A superb edition was printed for Scotland at the Roman Catholic press

established in Holyrood House. But men were in no humour to be charmed

by the transparent style and melodious numbers of the apostate. The

disgust excited by his venality, the alarm excited by the policy of

which he was the eulogist, were not to be sung to sleep. The just

indignation of the public was inflamed by many who were smarting from

his ridicule, and by many who were envious of his renown. In spite of

all the restraints under which the press lay, attacks on his life and

writings appeared daily. Sometimes he was Bayes, sometimes Poet Squab.

He was reminded that in his youth he had paid to the House of Cromwell

the same servile court which he was now paying to the House of Stuart.

One set of his assailants maliciously reprinted the sarcastic verses

which he had written against Popery in days when he could have got

nothing by being a Papist. Of the many satirical pieces which appeared

on this occasion, the most successful was the joint work of two young

men who had lately completed their studies at Cambridge, and had been

welcomed as promising novices in the literary coffee-houses of London,

Charles Montague and Matthew Prior. Montague was of noble descent: the

origin of Prior was so obscure that no biographer has been able to trace

it: but both the adventurers were poor and aspiring; both had keen

and vigorous minds; both afterwards climbed high; both united in a

remarkable degree the love of letters with skill in those departments of

business for which men of letters generally have a strong distaste. Of

the fifty poets whose lives Johnson has written, Montague and Prior were

the only two who were distinguished by an intimate knowledge of trade

and finance. Soon their paths diverged widely. Their early friendship

was dissolved. One of them became the chief of the Whig party, and was

impeached by the Tories. The other was entrusted with all the mysteries

of Tory diplomacy, and was long kept close prisoner by the Whigs. At

length, after many eventful years, the associates, so long parted, were

reunited in Westminster Abbey.

Whoever has read the tale of the Hind and Panther with attention must

have perceived that, while that work was in progress, a great alteration

took place in the views of those who used Dryden as their interpreter.

At first the Church of England is mentioned with tenderness and respect,

and is exhorted to ally herself with the Roman Catholics against the

Puritan sects: but at the close of the poem, and in the preface, which

was written after the poem had been finished, the Protestant Dissenters

are invited to make common cause with the Roman Catholics against the

Church of England.

This change in the language of the court poet was indicative of a great

change in the policy of the court. The original purpose of James

had been to obtain for the Church of which he was a member, not only

complete immunity from all penalties and from all civil disabilities,

but also an ample share of ecclesiastical and academical endowments,

and at the same time to enforce with rigour the laws against the Puritan

sects. All the special dispensations which he had granted had been

granted to Roman Catholics. All the laws which bore hardest on the

Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, had been for a time severely

executed by him. While Hales commanded a regiment, while Powis sate at

the Council board, while Massey held a deanery, while breviaries and

mass books were printed at Oxford under a royal license, while the host

was publicly exposed in London under the protection of the pikes and

muskets of the footguards, while friars and monks walked the streets of

London in their robes, Baxter was in gaol; Howe was in exile; the Five

Mile Act and the Conventicle Act were in full vigour; Puritan writers

were compelled to resort to foreign or to secret presses; Puritan

congregations could meet only by night or in waste places, and Puritan

ministers were forced to preach in the garb of colliers or of sailors.

In Scotland the King, while he spared no exertion to extort from the

Estates full relief for Roman Catholics, had demanded and obtained

new statutes of unprecedented severity against the Presbyterians. His

conduct to the exiled Huguenots had not less clearly indicated his

feelings. We have seen that, when the public munificence had placed

in his hands a large sum for the relief of those unhappy men, he, in

violation of every law of hospitality and good faith, required them to

renounce the Calvinistic ritual to which they were strongly attached,

and to conform to the Church of England, before he would dole out to

them any portion of the alms which had been entrusted to his care.

Such had been his policy as long as he could cherish, any hope that the

Church of England would consent to share ascendency with the Church of

Rome. That hope at one time amounted to confidence. The enthusiasm with

which the Tories had hailed his accession, the elections, the dutiful

language and ample grants of his Parliament, the suppression of the

Western insurrection, the complete prostration of the party which had

attempted to exclude him from the crown, elated him beyond the bounds of

reason. He felt an assurance that every obstacle would give way before

his power and his resolution. His Parliament withstood him. He tried the

effects of frowns and menaces. Frowns and menaces failed. He tried the

effect of prorogation. From the day of the prorogation the opposition

to his designs had been growing stronger and stronger. It seemed clear

that, if he effected his purpose, he must effect it in defiance of

that great party which had given such signal proofs of fidelity to his

office, to his family, and to his person. The whole Anglican priesthood,

the whole Cavalier gentry, were against him. In vain had he, by virtue

of his ecclesiastical supremacy, enjoined the clergy to abstain from

discussing controverted points. Every parish in the nation was warned

every Sunday against the errors of Rome; and these warnings were only

the more effective, because they were accompanied by professions of

reverence for the Sovereign, and of a determination to endure with

patience whatever it might be his pleasure to inflict. The royalist

knights and esquires who, through forty-five years of war and faction,

had stood so manfully by the throne, now expressed, in no measured

phrase, their resolution to stand as manfully by the Church. Dull as was

the intellect of James, despotic as was his temper, he felt that he

must change his course. He could not safely venture to outrage all

his Protestant subjects at once. If he could bring himself to make

concessions to the party which predominated in both Houses, if he could

bring himself to leave to the established religion all its dignities,

emoluments, and privileges unimpaired, he might still break up

Presbyterian meetings, and fill the gaols with Baptist preachers. But if

he was determined to plunder the hierarchy, he must make up his mind to

forego the luxury of persecuting the Dissenters. If he was henceforward

to be at feud with his old friends, he must make a truce with his old

enemies. He could overpower the Anglican Church only by forming against

her an extensive coalition, including sects which, though they differed

in doctrine and government far more widely from each other than from

her, might yet be induced, by their common jealousy of her greatness,

and by their common dread of her intolerance, to suspend their

animosities till she was no longer able to oppress them.

This plan seemed to him to have one strong recommendation. If he could

only succeed in conciliating the Protestant Nonconformists he might

flatter himself that he was secure against all chance of rebellion.

According to the Anglican divines, no subject could by any provocation

be justified in withstanding the Lord's anointed by force. The theory of

the Puritan sectaries was very different. Those sectaries had no scruple

about smiting tyrants with the sword of Gideon. Many of them did not

shrink from using the dagger of Ehud. They were probably even now

meditating another Western insurrection, or another Rye House Plot.

James, therefore, conceived that he might safely persecute the Church if

he could only gain the Dissenters. The party whose principles afforded

him no guarantee would be attached to him by interest. The party

whose interests he attacked would be restrained from insurrection by

principle.

Influenced by such considerations as these, James, from the time at

which he parted in anger with his Parliament, began to meditate a

general league of all Nonconformists, Catholic and Protestant, against

the established religion. So early as Christmas 1685, the agents of the

United Provinces informed the States General that the plan of a general

toleration had been arranged and would soon be disclosed. [232] The

reports which had reached the Dutch embassy proved to be premature.

The separatists appear, however, to have been treated with more lenity

during the year 1686 than during the year 1685. But it was only by slow

degrees and after many struggles that the King could prevail on himself

to form an alliance with all that he most abhorred. He had to overcome

an animosity, not slight or capricious, not of recent origin or hasty

growth, but hereditary in his line, strengthened by great wrongs

inflicted and suffered through a hundred and twenty eventful years, and

intertwined with all his feelings, religious, political, domestic, and

personal. Four generations of Stuarts had waged a war to the death with

four generations of Puritans; and, through that long war, there had been

no Stuart who had hated the Puritans so much, or who had been so much

hated by them, as himself. They had tried to blast his honour and

to exclude him from his birthright; they had called him incendiary,

cutthroat, poisoner; they had driven him from the Admiralty and the

Privy Council; they had repeatedly chased him into banishment; they

had plotted his assassination; they had risen against him in arms by

thousands. He had avenged himself on them by havoc such as England had

never before seen. Their heads and quarters were still rotting on poles

in all the market places of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire. Aged women

held in high honour among the sectaries for piety and charity had, for

offences which no good prince would have thought deserving even of a

severe reprimand, been beheaded and burned alive. Such had been, even

in England, the relations between the King and the Puritans; and in

Scotland the tyranny of the King and the fury of the Puritans had been

such as Englishmen could hardly conceive. To forget an enmity so long

and so deadly was no light task for a nature singularly harsh and

implacable.

The conflict in the royal mind did not escape the eye of Barillon. At

the end of January, 1687, he sent a remarkable letter to Versailles. The

King,--such was the substance of this document,--had almost convinced

himself that he could not obtain entire liberty for Roman Catholics

and yet maintain the laws against Protestant Dissenters. He leaned,

therefore, to the plan of a general indulgence; but at heart he would

be far better pleased if he could, even now, divide his protection and

favour between the Church of Rome and the Church of England, to the

exclusion of all other religious persuasions. [233]

A very few days after this despatch had been written, James made his

first hesitating and ungracious advances towards the Puritans. He had

determined to begin with Scotland, where his power to dispense with

acts of parliament had been admitted by the obsequious Estates. On

the twelfth of February, accordingly, was published at Edinburgh a

proclamation granting relief to scrupulous consciences. [234] This

proclamation fully proves the correctness of Barillon's judgment. Even

in the very act of making concessions to the Presbyterians, James could

not conceal the loathing with which he regarded them. The toleration

given to the Catholics was complete. The Quakers had little reason

to complain. But the indulgence vouchsafed to the Presbyterians, who

constituted the great body of the Scottish people, was clogged by

conditions which made it almost worthless. For the old test, which

excluded Catholics and Presbyterians alike from office, was substituted

a new test, which admitted the Catholics, but excluded most of the

Presbyterians. The Catholics were allowed to build chapels, and even

to carry the host in procession anywhere except in the high streets of

royal burghs: the Quakers were suffered to assemble in public edifices:

but the Presbyterians were interdicted from worshipping God anywhere but

in private dwellings: they were not to presume to build meeting houses:

they were not even to use a barn or an outhouse for religious exercises:

and it was distinctly notified to them that, if they dared to hold

conventicles in the open air, the law, which denounced death against

both preachers and hearers, should be enforced without mercy. Any

Catholic priest might say mass: any Quaker might harangue his brethren:

but the Privy Council was directed to see that no Presbyterian minister

presumed to preach without a special license from the government. Every

line of this instrument, and of the letters by which it was accompanied,

shows how much it cost the King to relax in the smallest degree the

rigour with which he had ever treated the old enemies of his house.

[235]

There is reason, indeed, to believe that, when he published this

proclamation, he had by no means fully made up his mind to a coalition

with the Puritans, and that his object was to grant just so much favour

to them as might suffice to frighten the Churchmen into submission.

He therefore waited a month, in order to see what effect the edict put

forth at Edinburgh would produce in England. That month he employed

assiduously, by Petre's advice, in what was called closeting. London was

very full. It was expected that the Parliament would shortly meet for

the dispatch of business; and many members were in town. The King set

himself to canvass them man by man. He flattered himself that zealous

Tories,--and of such, with few exceptions, the House of Commons

consisted,--would find it difficult to resist his earnest request,

addressed to them, not collectively, but separately, not from the

throne, but in the familiarity of conversation. The members, therefore,

who came to pay their duty at Whitehall were taken aside, and honoured

with long private interviews. The King pressed them, as they were loyal

gentlemen, to gratify him in the one thing on which his heart was fixed.

The question, he said, touched his personal honour. The laws enacted in

the late reign by factious Parliaments against the Roman Catholics had

really been aimed at himself. Those laws had put a stigma on him, had

driven him from the Admiralty, had driven him from the Council Board. He

had a right to expect that in the repeal of those laws all who loved

and reverenced him would concur. When he found his hearers obdurate

to exhortation, he resorted to intimidation and corruption. Those who

refused to pleasure him in this matter were plainly told that they must

not expect any mark of his favour. Penurious as he was, he opened and

distributed his hoards. Several of those who had been invited to confer

with him left his bedchamber carrying with them money received from the

royal hand. The Judges, who were at this time on their spring circuits,

were directed by the King to see those members who remained in the

country, and to ascertain the intentions of each. The result of this

investigation was, that a great majority of the House of Commons seemed

fully determined to oppose the measures of the court. [236] Among those

whose firmness excited general admiration was Arthur Herbert, brother

of the Chief Justice, member for Dover, Master of the Robes, and Rear

Admiral of England. Arthur Herbert was much loved by the sailors,

and was reputed one of the best of the aristocratical class of naval

officers. It had been generally supposed that he would readily comply

with the royal wishes: for he was heedless of religion; he was fond of

pleasure and expense; he had no private estate; his places brought him

in four thousand pounds a year; and he had long been reckoned among

the most devoted personal adherents of James. When, however, the Rear

Admiral was closeted, and required to promise that he would vote for the

repeal of the Test Act, his answer was, that his honour and conscience

would not permit him to give any such pledge. "Nobody doubts your

honour," said the King; "but a man who lives as you do ought not to talk

about his conscience." To this reproach, a reproach which came with a

bad grace from the lover of Catharine Sedley, Herbert manfully replied,

"I have my faults, sir: but I could name people who talk much more about

conscience than I am in the habit of doing, and yet lead lives as loose

as mine." He was dismissed from all his places; and the account of what

he had disbursed and received as Master of the Robes was scrutinised

with great and, as he complained, with unjust severity. [237]

It was now evident that all hope of an alliance between the Churches of

England and of Rome, for the purpose of sharing offices and emoluments,

and of crushing the Puritan sects, must be abandoned. Nothing remained

but to try a coalition between the Church of Rome and the Puritan sects

against the Church of England.

On the eighteenth of March the King informed the Privy Council that he

had determined to prorogue the Parliament till the end of November, and

to grant, by his own authority, entire liberty of conscience to all

his subjects. [238] On the fourth of April appeared the memorable

Declaration of Indulgence.

In this Declaration the King avowed that it was his earnest wish to see

his people members of that Church to which he himself belonged. But,

since that could not be, he announced his intention to protect them

in the free exercise of their religion. He repeated all those phrases

which, eight years before, when he was himself an oppressed man, had

been familiar to his lips, but which he had ceased to use from the day

on which a turn of fortune had put it into his power to be an oppressor.

He had long been convinced, he said, that conscience was not to be

forced, that persecution was unfavourable to population and to trade,

and that it never attained the ends which persecutors had in view. He

repeated his promise, already often repeated and often violated, that

he would protect the Established Church in the enjoyment of her legal

rights. He then proceeded to annul, by his own sole authority, a long

series of statutes. He suspended all penal laws against all classes

of Nonconformists. He authorised both Roman Catholics and Protestant

Dissenters to perform their worship publicly. He forbade his subjects,

on pain of his highest displeasure, to molest any religious assembly.

He also abrogated all those acts which imposed any religious test as a

qualification for any civil or military office. [239]

That the Declaration of Indulgence was unconstitutional is a point on

which both the great English parties have always been entirely agreed.

Every person capable of reasoning on a political question must perceive

that a monarch who is competent to issue such a declaration is nothing

less than an absolute monarch. Nor is it possible to urge in defence

of this act of James those pleas by which many arbitrary acts of the

Stuarts have been vindicated or excused. It cannot be said that

he mistook the bounds of his prerogative because they had not been

accurately ascertained. For the truth is that he trespassed with a

recent landmark full in his view. Fifteen years before that time, a

Declaration of Indulgence had been put forth by his brother with

the advice of the Cabal. That Declaration, when compared with the

Declaration of James, might be called modest and cautious. The

Declaration of Charles dispensed only with penal laws. The Declaration

of James dispensed also with all religious tests. The Declaration of

Charles permitted the Roman Catholics to celebrate their worship in

private dwellings only. Under the Declaration of James they might build

and decorate temples, and even walk in procession along Fleet Street

with crosses, images, and censers. Yet the Declaration of Charles had

been pronounced illegal in the most formal manner. The Commons had

resolved that the King had no power to dispense with statutes in matters

ecclesiastical. Charles had ordered the obnoxious instrument to be

cancelled in his presence, had torn off the seal with his own hand, and

had, both by message under his sign manual, and with his own lips from

his throne in full Parliament, distinctly promised the two Houses that

the step which had given so much offence should never be drawn into

precedent. The two Houses had then, without one dissentient voice,

joined in thanking him for this compliance with their wishes. No

constitutional question had ever been decided more deliberately, more

clearly, or with more harmonious consent.

The defenders of James have frequently pleaded in his excuse the

judgment of the Court of King's Bench, on the information collusively

laid against Sir Edward Hales: but the plea is of no value. That

judgment James had notoriously obtained by solicitation, by threats,

by dismissing scrupulous magistrates, and by placing on the bench

other magistrates more courtly. And yet that judgment, though generally

regarded by the bar and by the nation as unconstitutional, went only

to this extent, that the Sovereign might, for special reasons of state,

grant to individuals by name exemptions from disabling statutes. That he

could by one sweeping edict authorise all his subjects to disobey whole

volumes of laws, no tribunal had ventured, in the face of the solemn

parliamentary decision of 1673, to affirm.

Such, however, was the position of parties that James's Declaration of

Indulgence, though the most audacious of all the attacks made by the

Stuarts on public freedom, was well calculated to please that very

portion of the community by which all the other attacks of the Stuarts

on public freedom had been most strenuously resisted. It could

scarcely be hoped that the Protestant Nonconformist, separated from

his countrymen by a harsh code harshly enforced, would be inclined to

dispute the validity of a decree which relieved him from intolerable

grievances. A cool and philosophical observer would undoubtedly have

pronounced that all the evil arising from all the intolerant laws which

Parliaments had framed was not to be compared to the evil which would be

produced by a transfer of the legislative power from the Parliament to

the Sovereign. But such coolness and philosophy are not to be expected

from men who are smarting under present pain, and who are tempted by the

offer of immediate ease. A Puritan divine, could not indeed deny that

the dispensing power now claimed by the crown was inconsistent with

the fundamental principles of the constitution. But he might perhaps

be excused if he asked, What was the constitution to him? The Act of

Uniformity had ejected him, in spite of royal promises, from a benefice

which was his freehold, and had reduced him to beggary and dependence.

The Five Mile Act had banished him from his dwelling, from his

relations, from his friends, from almost all places of public resort.

Under the Conventicle Act his goods had been distrained; and he had

been flung into one noisome gaol after another among highwaymen and

housebreakers. Out of prison he had constantly had the officers of

justice on his track; he had been forced to pay hushmoney to informers;

he had stolen, in ignominious disguises, through windows and trapdoors,

to meet his flock, and had, while pouring the baptismal water, or

distributing the eucharistic bread, been anxiously listening for the

signal that the tipstaves were approaching. Was it not mockery to

call on a man thus plundered and oppressed to suffer martyrdom for the

property and liberty of his plunderers and oppressors? The Declaration,

despotic as it might seem to his prosperous neighbours, brought

deliverance to him. He was called upon to make his choice, not between

freedom and slavery, but between two yokes; and he might not unnaturally

think the yoke of the King lighter than that of the Church.