THE death of King Charles the Second took the nation by surprise. His
frame was naturally strong, and did not appear to have suffered from
excess. He had always been mindful of his health even in his pleasures;
and his habits were such as promise a long life and a robust old age.
Indolent as he was on all occasions which required tension of the mind,
he was active and persevering in bodily exercise. He had, when young,
been renowned as a tennis player, [208] and was, even in the decline of
life, an indefatigable walker. His ordinary pace was such that those who
were admitted to the honour of his society found it difficult to keep up
with him. He rose early, and generally passed three or four hours a day
in the open air. He might be seen, before the dew was off the grass in
St. James's Park, striding among the trees, playing with his spaniels,
and flinging corn to his ducks; and these exhibitions endeared him to
the common people, who always love to See the great unbend. [209]
At length, towards the close of the year 1684, he was prevented, by a
slight attack of what was supposed to be gout, from rambling as usual.
He now spent his mornings in his laboratory, where he amused himself
with experiments on the properties of mercury. His temper seemed to have
suffered from confinement. He had no apparent cause for disquiet. His
kingdom was tranquil: he was not in pressing want of money: his power
was greater than it had ever been: the party which had long thwarted
him had been beaten down; but the cheerfulness which had supported him
against adverse fortune had vanished in this season of prosperity. A
trifle now sufficed to depress those elastic spirits which had borne
up against defeat, exile, and penury. His irritation frequently showed
itself by looks and words such as could hardly have been expected from a
man so eminently distinguished by good humour and good breeding. It was
not supposed however that his constitution was seriously impaired. [210]
His palace had seldom presented a gayer or a more scandalous appearance
than on the evening of Sunday the first of February 1685. [211] Some
grave persons who had gone thither, after the fashion of that age, to
pay their duty to their sovereign, and who had expected that, on such a
day, his court would wear a decent aspect, were struck with astonishment
and horror. The great gallery of Whitehall, an admirable relic of the
magnificence of the Tudors, was crowded with revellers and gamblers. The
king sate there chatting and toying with three women, whose charms were
the boast, and whose vices were the disgrace, of three nations. Barbara
Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland, was there, no longer young, but still
retaining some traces of that superb and voluptuous loveliness which
twenty years before overcame the hearts of all men. There too was the
Duchess of Portsmouth, whose soft and infantine features were lighted up
with the vivacity of France. Hortensia Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin, and
niece of the great Cardinal, completed the group. She had been early
removed from her native Italy to the court where her uncle was supreme.
His power and her own attractions had drawn a crowd of illustrious
suitors round her. Charles himself, during his exile, had sought her
hand in vain. No gift of nature or of fortune seemed to be wanting
to her. Her face was beautiful with the rich beauty of the South,
her understanding quick, her manners graceful, her rank exalted, her
possessions immense; but her ungovernable passions had turned all these
blessings into curses. She had found the misery of an ill assorted
marriage intolerable, had fled from her husband, had abandoned her
vast wealth, and, after having astonished Rome and Piedmont by her
adventures, had fixed her abode in England. Her house was the favourite
resort of men of wit and pleasure, who, for the sake of her smiles
and her table, endured her frequent fits of insolence and ill humour.
Rochester and Godolphin sometimes forgot the cares of state in
her company. Barillon and Saint Evremond found in her drawing room
consolation for their long banishment from Paris. The learning of
Vossius, the wit of Waller, were daily employed to flatter and amuse
her. But her diseased mind required stronger stimulants, and sought them
in gallantry, in basset, and in usquebaugh. [212] While Charles. flirted
with his three sultanas, Hortensia's French page, a handsome boy, whose
vocal performances were the delight of Whitehall, and were rewarded by
numerous presents of rich clothes, ponies, and guineas, warbled some
amorous verses. [213] A party of twenty courtiers was seated at cards
round a large table on which gold was heaped in mountains. [214] Even
then the King had complained that he did not feel quite well. He had
no appetite for his supper: his rest that night was broken; but on the
following morning he rose, as usual, early.
To that morning the contending factions in his council had, during some
days, looked forward with anxiety. The struggle between Halifax and
Rochester seemed to be approaching a decisive crisis. Halifax, not
content with having already driven his rival from the Board of Treasury,
had undertaken to prove him guilty of such dishonesty or neglect in the
conduct of the finances as ought to be punished by dismission from the
public service. It was even whispered that the Lord President would
probably be sent to the Tower. The King had promised to enquire into the
matter. The second of February had been fixed for the investigation; and
several officers of the revenue had been ordered to attend with their
books on that day. [215] But a great turn of fortune was at hand.
Scarcely had Charles risen from his bed when his attendants perceived
that his utterance was indistinct, and that his thoughts seemed to be
wandering. Several men of rank had, as usual, assembled to see their
sovereign shaved and dressed. He made an effort to converse with them
in his usual gay style; but his ghastly look surprised and alarmed them.
Soon his face grew black; his eyes turned in his head; he uttered a cry,
staggered, and fell into the arms of one of his lords. A physician who
had charge of the royal retorts and crucibles happened to be present.
He had no lances; but he opened a vein with a penknife. The blood flowed
freely; but the King was still insensible.
He was laid on his bed, where, during a short time, the Duchess of
Portsmouth hung over him with the familiarity of a wife. But the alarm
had been given. The Queen and the Duchess of York were hastening to
the room. The favourite concubine was forced to retire to her own
apartments. Those apartments had been thrice pulled down and thrice
rebuilt by her lover to gratify her caprice. The very furniture of
the chimney was massy silver. Several fine paintings, which properly
belonged to the Queen, had been transferred to the dwelling of the
mistress. The sideboards were piled with richly wrought plate. In
the niches stood cabinets, the masterpieces of Japanese art. On the
hangings, fresh from the looms of Paris, were depicted, in tints which
no English tapestry could rival, birds of gorgeous plumage, landscapes,
hunting matches, the lordly terrace of Saint Germains, the statues and
fountains of Versailles. [216] In the midst of this splendour, purchased
by guilt and shame, the unhappy woman gave herself up to an agony of
grief, which, to do her justice, was not wholly selfish.
And now the gates of Whitehall, which ordinarily stood open to all
comers, were closed. But persons whose faces were known were still
permitted to enter. The antechambers and galleries were soon filled
to overflowing; and even the sick room was crowded with peers, privy
councillors, and foreign ministers. All the medical men of note in
London were summoned. So high did political animosities run that the
presence of some Whig physicians was regarded as an extraordinary
circumstance. [217] One Roman Catholic, whose skill was then widely
renowned, Doctor Thomas Short, was in attendance. Several of the
prescriptions have been preserved. One of them is signed by fourteen
Doctors. The patient was bled largely. Hot iron was applied to his head.
A loathsome volatile salt, extracted from human skulls, was forced into
his mouth. He recovered his senses; but he was evidently in a situation
of extreme danger.
The Queen was for a time assiduous in her attendance. The Duke of York
scarcely left his brother's bedside. The Primate and four other bishops
were then in London. They remained at Whitehall all day, and took it
by turns to sit up at night in the King's room. The news of his illness
filled the capital with sorrow and dismay. For his easy temper and
affable manners had won the affection of a large part of the nation;
and those who most disliked him preferred his unprincipled levity to the
stern and earnest bigotry of his brother.
On the morning of Thursday the fifth of February, the London Gazette
announced that His Majesty was going on well, and was thought by the
physicians to be out of danger. The bells of all the churches rang
merrily; and preparations for bonfires were made in the streets. But in
the evening it was known that a relapse had taken place, and that the
medical attendants had given up all hope. The public mind was greatly
disturbed; but there was no disposition to tumult. The Duke of York, who
had already taken on himself to give orders, ascertained that the City
was perfectly quiet, and that he might without difficulty be proclaimed
as soon as his brother should expire.
The King was in great pain, and complained that he felt as if a fire
was burning within him. Yet he bore up against his sufferings with a
fortitude which did not seem to belong to his soft and luxurious nature.
The sight of his misery affected his wife so much that she fainted, and
was carried senseless to her chamber. The prelates who were in waiting
had from the first exhorted him to prepare for his end. They now thought
it their duty to address him in a still more urgent manner. William
Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, an honest and pious, though
narrowminded, man, used great freedom. "It is time," he said, "to
speak out; for, Sir, you are about to appear before a Judge who is no
respecter of persons." The King answered not a word.
Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, then tried his powers of
persuasion. He was a man of parts and learning, of quick sensibility and
stainless virtue. His elaborate works have long been forgotten; but
his morning and evening hymns are still repeated daily in thousands of
dwellings. Though, like most of his order, zealous for monarchy, he was
no sycophant. Before he became a Bishop, he had maintained the honour of
his gown by refusing, when the court was at Winchester, to let Eleanor
Gwynn lodge in the house which he occupied there as a prebendary. [218]
The King had sense enough to respect so manly a spirit. Of all the
prelates he liked Ken the best. It was to no purpose, however, that the
good Bishop now put forth all his eloquence. His solemn and pathetic
exhortation awed and melted the bystanders to such a degree that some
among them believed him to be filled with the same spirit which, in the
old time, had, by the mouths of Nathan and Elias, called sinful princes
to repentance. Charles however was unmoved. He made no objection indeed
when the service for the visitation of the sick was read. In reply to
the pressing questions of the divines, he said that he was sorry for
what he had done amiss; and he suffered the absolution to be pronounced
over him according to the forms of the Church of England: but, when he
was urged to declare that he died in the communion of that Church, he
seemed not to hear what was said; and nothing could induce him to take
the Eucharist from the hands of the Bishops. A table with bread and wine
was brought to his bedside, but in vain. Sometimes he said that there
was no hurry, and sometimes that he was too weak.
Many attributed this apathy to contempt for divine things, and many to
the stupor which often precedes death. But there were in the palace a
few persons who knew better. Charles had never been a sincere member of
the Established Church. His mind had long oscillated between Hobbism and
Popery. When his health was good and his spirits high he was a scoffer.
In his few serious moments he was a Roman Catholic. The Duke of York
was aware of this, but was entirely occupied with the care of his own
interests. He had ordered the outports to be closed. He had posted
detachments of the Guards in different parts of the city. He had also
procured the feeble signature of the dying King to an instrument by
which some duties, granted only till the demise of the Crown, were let
to farm for a term of three years. These things occupied the attention
of James to such a degree that, though, on ordinary occasions, he was
indiscreetly and unseasonably eager to bring over proselytes to his
Church, he never reflected that his brother was in danger of dying
without the last sacraments. This neglect was the more extraordinary
because the Duchess of York had, at the request of the Queen, suggested,
on the morning on which the King was taken ill, the propriety of
procuring spiritual assistance. For such assistance Charles was at last
indebted to an agency very different from that of his pious wife and
sister-in-law. A life of frivolty and vice had not extinguished in the
Duchess of Portsmouth all sentiments of religion, or all that kindness
which is the glory of her sex. The French ambassador Barillon, who had
come to the palace to enquire after the King, paid her a visit. He found
her in an agony of sorrow. She took him into a secret room, and poured
out her whole heart to him. "I have," she said, "a thing of great moment
to tell you. If it were known, my head would be in danger. The King is
really and truly a Catholic; but he will die without being reconciled
to the Church. His bedchamber is full of Protestant clergymen. I cannot
enter it without giving scandal. The Duke is thinking only of himself.
Speak to him. Remind him that there is a soul at stake. He is master
now. He can clear the room. Go this instant, or it will be too late."
Barillon hastened to the bedchamber, took the Duke aside, and delivered
the message of the mistress. The conscience of James smote him. He
started as if roused from sleep, and declared that nothing should
prevent him from discharging the sacred duty which had been too long
delayed. Several schemes were discussed and rejected. At last the Duke
commanded the crowd to stand aloof, went to the bed, stooped down, and
whispered something which none of the spectators could hear, but which
they supposed to be some question about affairs of state. Charles
answered in an audible voice, "Yes, yes, with all my heart." None of
the bystanders, except the French Ambassador, guessed that the King was
declaring his wish to be admitted into the bosom of the Church of Rome.
"Shall I bring a priest?" said the Duke. "Do, brother," replied the Sick
man. "For God's sake do, and lose no time. But no; you will get into
trouble." "If it costs me my life," said the Duke, "I will fetch a
priest."
To find a priest, however, for such a purpose, at a moment's notice,
was not easy. For, as the law then stood, the person who admitted a
proselyte into the Roman Catholic Church was guilty of a capital crime.
The Count of Castel Melhor, a Portuguese nobleman, who, driven by
political troubles from his native land, had been hospitably received at
the English court, undertook to procure a confessor. He had recourse to
his countrymen who belonged to the Queen's household; but he found that
none of her chaplains knew English or French enough to shrive the King.
The Duke and Barillon were about to send to the Venetian Minister for
a clergyman when they heard that a Benedictine monk, named John
Huddleston, happened to be at Whitehall. This man had, with great risk
to himself, saved the King's life after the battle of Worcester, and
had, on that account, been, ever since the Restoration, a privileged
person. In the sharpest proclamations which had been put forth against
Popish priests, when false witnesses had inflamed the nation to fury,
Huddleston had been excepted by name. [219] He readily consented to put
his life a second time in peril for his prince; but there was still a
difficulty. The honest monk was so illiterate that he did not know what
he ought to say on an occasion of such importance. He however obtained
some hints, through the intervention of Castel Melhor, from a Portuguese
ecclesiastic, and, thus instructed, was brought up the back stairs by
Chiffinch, a confidential servant, who, if the satires of that age
are to be credited, had often introduced visitors of a very different
description by the same entrance. The Duke then, in the King's name,
commanded all who were present to quit the room, except Lewis Duras,
Earl of Feversham, and John Granville, Earl of Bath. Both these Lords
professed the Protestant religion; but James conceived that he could
count on their fidelity. Feversham, a Frenchman of noble birth, and
nephew of the great Turenne, held high rank in the English army, and was
Chamberlain to the Queen. Bath was Groom of the Stole.
The Duke's orders were obeyed; and even the physicians withdrew. The
back door was then opened; and Father Huddleston entered. A cloak
had been thrown over his sacred vestments; and his shaven crown was
concealed by a flowing wig. "Sir," said the Duke, "this good man once
saved your life. He now comes to save your soul." Charles faintly
answered, "He is welcome." Huddleston went through his part better than
had been expected. He knelt by the bed, listened to the confession,
pronounced the absolution, and administered extreme unction. He asked
if the King wished to receive the Lord's supper. "Surely," said Charles,
"if I am not unworthy." The host was brought in. Charles feebly strove
to rise and kneel before it. The priest made him lie still, and assured
him that God would accept the humiliation of the soul, and would not
require the humiliation of the body. The King found so much difficulty
in swallowing the bread that it was necessary to open the door and
procure a glass of water. This rite ended, the monk held up a crucifix
before the penitent, charged him to fix his last thoughts on the
sufferings of the Redeemer, and withdrew. The whole ceremony had
occupied about three quarters of an hour; and, during that time, the
courtiers who filled the outer room had communicated their suspicions to
each other by whispers and significant glances. The door was at length
thrown open, and the crowd again filled the chamber of death.
It was now late in the evening. The King seemed much relieved by what
had passed. His natural children were brought to his bedside, the Dukes
of Grafton, Southampton, and Northumberland, sons of the Duchess of
Cleveland, the Duke of Saint Albans, son of Eleanor Gwynn, and the Duke
of Richmond, son of the Duchess of Portsmouth. Charles blessed them all,
but spoke with peculiar tenderness to Richmond. One face which should
have been there was wanting. The eldest and best loved child was an
exile and a wanderer. His name was not once mentioned by his father.
During the night Charles earnestly recommended the Duchess of Portsmouth
and her boy to the care of James; "And do not," he good-naturedly added,
"let poor Nelly starve." The Queen sent excuses for her absence by
Halifax. She said that she was too much disordered to resume her post
by the couch, and implored pardon for any offence which she might
unwittingly have given. "She ask my pardon, poor woman!" cried Charles;
"I ask hers with all my heart."
The morning light began to peep through the windows of Whitehall; and
Charles desired the attendants to pull aside the curtains, that he might
have one more look at the day. He remarked that it was time to wind up
a clock which stood near his bed. These little circumstances were long
remembered because they proved beyond dispute that, when he declared
himself a Roman Catholic, he was in full possession of his faculties.
He apologised to those who had stood round him all night for the trouble
which he had caused. He had been, he said, a most unconscionable time
dying; but he hoped that they would excuse it. This was the last glimpse
of the exquisite urbanity, so often found potent to charm away the
resentment of a justly incensed nation. Soon after dawn the speech of
the dying man failed. Before ten his senses were gone. Great numbers had
repaired to the churches at the hour of morning service. When the prayer
for the King was read, loud groans and sobs showed how deeply his people
felt for him. At noon on Friday, the sixth of February, he passed away
without a struggle. [220]
At that time the common people throughout Europe, and nowhere more
than in England, were in the habit of attributing the death of princes,
especially when the prince was popular and the death unexpected, to the
foulest and darkest kind of assassination. Thus James the First had
been accused of poisoning Prince Henry. Thus Charles the First had been
accused of poisoning James the First. Thus when, in the time of the
Commonwealth, the Princess Elizabeth died at Carisbrook, it was loudly
asserted that Cromwell had stooped to the senseless and dastardly
wickedness of mixing noxious drugs with the food of a young girl whom he
had no conceivable motive to injure. [221] A few years later, the rapid
decomposition of Cromwell's own corpse was ascribed by many to a deadly
potion administered in his medicine. The death of Charles the Second
could scarcely fail to occasion similar rumours. The public ear had been
repeatedly abused by stories of Popish plots against his life. There
was, therefore, in many minds, a strong predisposition to suspicion; and
there were some unlucky circumstances which, to minds so predisposed,
might seem to indicate that a crime had been perpetrated. The fourteen
Doctors who deliberated on the King's case contradicted each other and
themselves. Some of them thought that his fit was epileptic, and that
he should be suffered to have his doze out. The majority pronounced
him apoplectic, and tortured him during some hours like an Indian at
a stake. Then it was determined to call his complaint a fever, and to
administer doses of bark. One physician, however, protested against
this course, and assured the Queen that his brethren would kill the
King among them. Nothing better than dissension and vacillation could be
expected from such a multitude of advisers. But many of the vulgar not
unnaturally concluded, from the perplexity of the great masters of the
healing art, that the malady had some extraordinary origin. There is
reason to believe that a horrible suspicion did actually cross the mind
of Short, who, though skilful in his profession, seems to have been a
nervous and fanciful man, and whose perceptions were probably confused
by dread of the odious imputations to which he, as a Roman Catholic,
was peculiarly exposed. We cannot, therefore, wonder that wild stories
without number were repeated and believed by the common people. His
Majesty's tongue had swelled to the size of a neat's tongue. A cake of
deleterious powder had been found in his brain. There were blue spots on
his breast, There were black spots on his shoulder. Something had been,
put in his snuff-box. Something had been put into his broth. Something
had been put into his favourite dish of eggs and ambergrease. The
Duchess of Portsmouth had poisoned him in a cup of chocolate. The
Queen had poisoned him in a jar of dried pears. Such tales ought to be
preserved; for they furnish us with a measure of the intelligence and
virtue of the generation which eagerly devoured them. That no rumour of
the same kind has ever, in the present age, found credit among us, even
when lives on which great interest depended have been terminated
by unforeseen attacks of disease, is to be attributed partly to the
progress of medical and chemical science, but partly also, it may be
hoped, to the progress which the nation has made in good sense, justice,
and humanity. [222]
When all was over, James retired from the bedside to his closet, where,
during a quarter of an hour, he remained alone. Meanwhile the Privy
Councillors who were in the palace assembled. The new King came
forth, and took his place at the head of the board. He commenced his
administration, according to usage, by a speech to the Council. He
expressed his regret for the loss which he had just sustained, and he
promised to imitate the singular lenity which had distinguished the late
reign. He was aware, he said, that he had been accused of a fondness for
arbitrary power. But that was not the only falsehood which had been told
of him. He was resolved to maintain the established government both in
Church and State. The Church of England he knew to be eminently loyal.
It should therefore always be his care to support and defend her. The
laws of England, he also knew, were sufficient to make him as great a
King as he could wish to be. He would not relinquish his own rights; but
he would respect the rights of others. He had formerly risked his life
in defense of his country; and he would still go as far as any man in
support of her just liberties.
This speech was not, like modern speeches on similar occasions,
carefully prepared by the advisers of the sovereign. It was the
extemporaneous expression of the new King's feelings at a moment of
great excitement. The members of the Council broke forth into clamours
of delight and gratitude. The Lord President, Rochester, in the name
of his brethren, expressed a hope that His Majesty's most welcome
declaration would be made public. The Solicitor General, Heneage Finch,
offered to act as clerk. He was a zealous churchman, and, as such, was
naturally desirous that there should be some permanent record of the
gracious promises which had just been uttered. "Those promises," he
said, "have made so deep an impression on me that I can repeat them word
for word." He soon produced his report. James read it, approved of it,
and ordered it to be published. At a later period he said that he had
taken this step without due consideration, that his unpremeditated
expressions touching the Church of England were too strong, and that
Finch had, with a dexterity which at the time escaped notice, made them
still stronger. [223]
The King had been exhausted by long watching and by many violent
emotions. He now retired to rest. The Privy Councillors, having
respectfully accompanied him to his bedchamber, returned to their seats,
and issued orders for the ceremony of proclamation. The Guards were
under arms; the heralds appeared in their gorgeous coats; and the
pageant proceeded without any obstruction. Casks of wine were broken up
in the streets, and all who passed were invited to drink to the health
of the new sovereign. But, though an occasional shout was raised, the
people were not in a joyous mood. Tears were seen in many eyes; and it
was remarked that there was scarcely a housemaid in London who had not
contrived to procure some fragment of black crepe in honour of King
Charles. [224]
The funeral called forth much censure. It would, indeed, hardly have
been accounted worthy of a noble and opulent subject. The Tories gently
blamed the new King's parsimony: the Whigs sneered at his want of
natural affection; and the fiery Covenanters of Scotland exultingly
proclaimed that the curse denounced of old against wicked princes had
been signally fulfilled, and that the departed tyrant had been buried
with the burial of an ass. [225] Yet James commenced his administration
with a large measure of public good will. His speech to the Council
appeared in print, and the impression which it produced was highly
favourable to him. This, then, was the prince whom a faction had driven
into exile and had tried to rob of his birthright, on the ground that
he was a deadly enemy to the religion and laws of England. He had
triumphed: he was on the throne; and his first act was to declare that
he would defend the Church, and would strictly respect the rights of
his people. The estimate which all parties had formed of his character,
added weight to every word that fell from him. The Whigs called him
haughty, implacable, obstinate, regardless of public opinion. The
Tories, while they extolled his princely virtues, had often lamented his
neglect of the arts which conciliate popularity. Satire itself had never
represented him as a man likely to court public favour by professing
what he did not feel, and by promising what he had no intention of
performing. On the Sunday which followed his accession, his speech was
quoted in many pulpits. "We have now for our Church," cried one loyal
preacher, "the word of a King, and of a King who was never worse than
his word." This pointed sentence was fast circulated through town and
country, and was soon the watchword of the whole Tory party. [226]
The great offices of state had become vacant by the demise of the crown
and it was necessary for James to determine how they should be filled.
Few of the members of the late cabinet had any reason to expect his
favour. Sunderland, who was Secretary of State, and Godolphin, who was
First Lord of the Treasury, had supported the Exclusion Bill. Halifax,
who held the Privy Seal, had opposed that bill with unrivalled powers
of argument and eloquence. But Halifax was the mortal enemy of despotism
and of Popery. He saw with dread the progress of the French arms on the
Continent and the influence of French gold in the counsels of England.
Had his advice been followed, the laws would have been strictly
observed: clemency would have been extended to the vanquished Whigs: the
Parliament would have been convoked in due season: an attempt would have
been made to reconcile our domestic factions; and the principles of
the Triple Alliance would again have guided our foreign policy. He
had therefore incurred the bitter animosity of James. The Lord Keeper
Guildford could hardly be said to belong to either of the parties into
which the court was divided. He could by no means be called a friend of
liberty; and yet he had so great a reverence for the letter of the
law that he was not a serviceable tool of arbitrary power. He was
accordingly designated by the vehement Tories as a Trimmer, and was to
James an object of aversion with which contempt was largely mingled.
Ormond, who was Lord Steward of the Household and Viceroy of Ireland,
then resided at Dublin. His claims on the royal gratitude were superior
to those of any other subject. He had fought bravely for Charles the
First: he had shared the exile of Charles the Second; and, since the
Restoration, he had, in spite of many provocations, kept his loyalty
unstained. Though he had been disgraced during the predominance of the
Cabal, he had never gone into factious opposition, and had, in the
days of the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Bill, been foremost among the
supporters of the throne. He was now old, and had been recently tried by
the most cruel of all calamities. He had followed to the grave a son who
should have been his own chief mourner, the gallant Ossory. The eminent
services, the venerable age, and the domestic misfortunes of Ormond made
him an object of general interest to the nation. The Cavaliers regarded
him as, both by right of seniority and by right of merit, their head;
and the Whigs knew that, faithful as he had always been to the cause of
monarchy, he was no friend either to Popery or to arbitrary power. But,
high as he stood in the public estimation, he had little favor to expect
from his new master. James, indeed, while still a subject, had urged his
brother to make a complete change in the Irish administration. Charles
had assented; and it had been arranged that, in a few months, there
should be a new Lord Lieutenant. [227]
Rochester was the only member of the cabinet who stood high in the
favour of the King. The general expectation was that he would be
immediately placed at the head of affairs, and that all the other great
officers of the state would be changed. This expectation proved to be
well founded in part only. Rochester was declared Lord Treasurer, and
thus became prime minister. Neither a Lord High Admiral nor a Board of
Admiralty was appointed. The new King, who loved the details of naval
business, and would have made a respectable clerk in a dockyard at
Chatham, determined to be his own minister of marine. Under him the
management of that important department was confided to Samuel Pepys,
whose library and diary have kept his name fresh to our time. No servant
of the late sovereign was publicly disgraced. Sunderland exerted so much
art and address, employed so many intercessors, and was in possession of
so many secrets, that he was suffered to retain his seals. Godolphin's
obsequiousness, industry, experience and taciturnity, could ill
be spared. As he was no longer wanted at the Treasury, he was made
Chamberlain to the Queen. With these three Lords the King took counsel
on all important questions. As to Halifax, Ormond, and Guildford, he
determined not yet to dismiss them, but merely to humble and annoy them.
Halifax was told that he must give up the Privy seal and accept the
Presidency of the Council. He submitted with extreme reluctance. For,
though the President of the Council had always taken precedence of
the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord Privy Seal was, in that age a much more
important officer than the Lord President. Rochester had not forgotten
the jest which had been made a few months before on his own removal from
the Treasury, and enjoyed in his turn the pleasure of kicking his rival
up stairs. The Privy Seal was delivered to Rochester's elder brother,
Henry Earl of Clarendon.
To Barillon James expressed the strongest dislike of Halifax. "I
know him well, I never can trust him. He shall have no share in the
management of public business. As to the place which I have given him,
it will just serve to show how little influence he has." But to Halifax
it was thought convenient to hold a very different language. "All the
past is forgotten," said the King, "except the service which you did me
in the debate on the Exclusion Bill." This speech has often been cited
to prove that James was not so vindictive as he had been called by
his enemies. It seems rather to prove that he by no means deserved the
praises which have been bestowed on his sincerity by his friends. [228]
Ormond was politely informed that his services were no longer needed
in Ireland, and was invited to repair to Whitehall, and to perform the
functions of Lord Steward. He dutifully submitted, but did not affect to
deny that the new arrangement wounded his feelings deeply. On the eve of
his departure he gave a magnificent banquet at Kilmainham Hospital, then
just completed, to the officers of the garrison of Dublin. After dinner
he rose, filled a goblet to the brim with wine, and, holding it up,
asked whether he had spilt one drop. "No, gentlemen; whatever the
courtiers may say, I am not yet sunk into dotage. My hand does not fail
me yet: and my hand is not steadier than my heart. To the health of King
James!" Such was the last farewell of Ormond to Ireland. He left the
administration in the hands of Lords Justices, and repaired to London,
where he was received with unusual marks of public respect. Many persons
of rank went forth to meet him on the road. A long train of eguipages
followed him into Saint James's Square, where his mansion stood; and
the Square was thronged by a multitude which greeted him with loud
acclamations. [229]
The Great Seal was left in Guildford's custody; but a marked indignity
was at the same time offered to him. It was determined that another
lawyer of more vigour and audacity should be called to assist in the
administration. The person selected was Sir George Jeffreys, Chief
Justice of the Court of King's Bench. The depravity of this man has
passed into a proverb. Both the great English parties have attacked his
memory with emulous violence: for the Whigs considered him as their most
barbarous enemy; and the Tories found it convenient to throw on him the
blame of all the crimes which had sullied their triumph. A diligent and
candid enquiry will show that some frightful stories which have been
told concerning him are false or exaggerated. Yet the dispassionate
historian will be able to make very little deduction from the vast mass
of infamy with which the memory of the wicked judge has been loaded.
He was a man of quick and vigorous parts, but constitutionally prone to
insolence and to the angry passions. When just emerging from boyhood
he had risen into practice at the Old Bailey bar, a bar where advocates
have always used a license of tongue unknown in Westminster Hall. Here,
during many years his chief business was to examine and crossexamine
the most hardened miscreants of a great capital. Daily conflicts
with prostitutes and thieves called out and exercised his powers so
effectually that he became the most consummate bully ever known in his
profession. Tenderness for others and respect for himself were feelings
alike unknown to him. He acquired a boundless command of the rhetoric
in which the vulgar express hatred and contempt. The profusion of
maledictions and vituperative epithets which composed his vocabulary
could hardly have been rivalled in the fishmarket or the beargarden.
His countenance and his voice must always have been unamiable. But these
natural advantages,--for such he seems to have thought them,--he had
improved to such a degree that there were few who, in his paroxysms of
rage, could see or hear him without emotion. Impudence and ferocity sate
upon his brow. The glare of his eyes had a fascination for the unhappy
victim on whom they were fixed. Yet his brow and his eye were less
terrible than the savage lines of his mouth. His yell of fury, as was
said by one who had often heard it, sounded like the thunder of the
judgment day. These qualifications he carried, while still a young man,
from the bar to the bench. He early became Common Serjeant, and then
Recorder of London. As a judge at the City sessions he exhibited the
same propensities which afterwards, in a higher post, gained for him an
unenviable immortality. Already might be remarked in him the most odious
vice which is incident to human nature, a delight in misery merely
as misery. There was a fiendish exultation in the way in which he
pronounced sentence on offenders. Their weeping and imploring seemed
to titillate him voluptuously; and he loved to scare them into fits by
dilating with luxuriant amplification on all the details of what they
were to suffer. Thus, when he had an opportunity of ordering an unlucky
adventuress to be whipped at the cart's tail, "Hangman," he would
exclaim, "I charge you to pay particular attention to this lady! Scourge
her soundly man! Scourge her till the blood runs down! It is Christmas,
a cold time for Madam to strip in! See that you warm her shoulders
thoroughly!" [230] He was hardly less facetious when he passed judgment
on poor Lodowick Muggleton, the drunken tailor who fancied himself a
prophet. "Impudent rogue!" roared Jeffreys, "thou shalt have an easy,
easy, easy punishment!" One part of this easy punishment was the
pillory, in which the wretched fanatic was almost killed with brickbats.
[231]
By this time the heart of Jeffreys had been hardened to that temper
which tyrants require in their worst implements. He had hitherto looked
for professional advancement to the corporation of London. He had
therefore professed himself a Roundhead, and had always appeared to be
in a higher state of exhilaration when he explained to Popish priests
that they were to be cut down alive, and were to see their own bowels
burned, than when he passed ordinary sentences of death. But, as soon
as he had got all that the city could give, he made haste to sell his
forehead of brass and his tongue of venom to the Court. Chiffinch, who
was accustomed to act as broker in infamous contracts of more than one
kind, lent his aid. He had conducted many amorous and many political
intrigues; but he assuredly never rendered a more scandalous service to
his masters than when he introduced Jeffreys to Whitehall. The renegade
soon found a patron in the obdurate and revengeful James, but was always
regarded with scorn and disgust by Charles, whose faults, great as they
were, had no affinity with insolence and cruelty. "That man," said the
King, "has no learning, no sense, no manners, and more impudence than
ten carted street-walkers." [232] Work was to be done, however, which
could be trusted to no man who reverenced law or was sensible of
shame; and thus Jeffreys, at an age at which a barrister thinks himself
fortunate if he is employed to conduct an important cause, was made
Chief Justice of the King's Bench.
His enemies could not deny that he possessed some of the qualities of
a great judge. His legal knowledge, indeed, was merely such as he had
picked up in practice of no very high kind. But he had one of those
happily constituted intellects which, across labyrinths of sophistry,
and through masses of immaterial facts, go straight to the true point.
Of his intellect, however, he seldom had the full use. Even in civil
causes his malevolent and despotic temper perpetually disordered his
judgment. To enter his court was to enter the den of a wild beast,
which none could tame, and which was as likely to be roused to rage by
caresses as by attacks. He frequently poured forth on plaintiffs and
defendants, barristers and attorneys, witnesses and jurymen, torrents of
frantic abuse, intermixed with oaths and curses. His looks and tones
had inspired terror when he was merely a young advocate struggling into
practice. Now that he was at the head of the most formidable tribunal
in the realm, there were few indeed who did not tremble before him.
Even when he was sober, his violence was sufficiently frightful. But in
general his reason was overclouded and his evil passions stimulated
by the fumes of intoxication. His evenings were ordinarily given to
revelry. People who saw him only over his bottle would have supposed him
to be a man gross indeed, sottish, and addicted to low company and low
merriment, but social and goodhumoured. He was constantly surrounded on
such occasions by buffoons selected, for the most part, from among the
vilest pettifoggers who practiced before him. These men bantered and
abused each other for his entertainment. He joined in their ribald talk,
sang catches with them, and, when his head grew hot, hugged and kissed
them in an ecstasy of drunken fondness. But though wine at first seemed
to soften his heart, the effect a few hours later was very different. He
often came to the judgment seat, having kept the court waiting long, and
yet having but half slept off his debauch, his cheeks on fire, his eyes
staring like those of a maniac. When he was in this state, his boon
companions of the preceding night, if they were wise, kept out of his
way: for the recollection of the familiarity to which he had admitted
them inflamed his malignity; and he was sure to take every opportunity
of overwhelming them with execration and invective. Not the least odious
of his many odious peculiarities was the pleasure which he took in
publicly browbeating and mortifying those whom, in his fits of maudlin
tenderness, he had encouraged to presume on his favour.
The services which the government had expected from him were performed,
not merely without flinching, but eagerly and triumphantly. His first
exploit was the judicial murder of Algernon Sidney. What followed was
in perfect harmony with this beginning. Respectable Tories lamented the
disgrace which the barbarity and indecency of so great a functionary
brought upon the administration of justice. But the excesses which
filled such men with horror were titles to the esteem of James.
Jeffreys, therefore, very soon after the death of Charles, obtained a
seat in the cabinet and a peerage. This last honour was a signal mark of
royal approbation. For, since the judicial system of the realm had been
remodelled in the thirteenth century, no Chief Justice had been a Lord
of Parliament. [233]
Guildford now found himself superseded in all his political functions,
and restricted to his business as a judge in equity. At Council he was
treated by Jeffreys with marked incivility. The whole legal patronage
was in the hands of the Chief Justice; and it was well known by the bar
that the surest way to propitiate the Chief Justice was to treat the
Lord Keeper with disrespect.
James had not been many hours King when a dispute arose between the two
heads of the law. The customs had been settled on Charles for life only,
and could not therefore be legally exacted by the new sovereign. Some
weeks must elapse before a House of Commons could be chosen. If, in
the meantime, the duties were suspended, the revenue would suffer; the
regular course of trade would be interrupted; the consumer would derive
no benefit, and the only gainers would be those fortunate speculators
whose cargoes might happen to arrive during the interval between the
demise of the crown and the meeting of the Parliament. The Treasury was
besieged by merchants whose warehouses were filled with goods on which
duty had been paid, and who were in grievous apprehension of being
undersold and ruined. Impartial men must admit that this was one of
those cases in which a government may be justified in deviating from the
strictly constitutional course. But when it is necessary to deviate from
the strictly constitutional course, the deviation clearly ought to be
no greater than the necessity requires. Guildford felt this, and gave
advice which did him honour. He proposed that the duties should be
levied, but should be kept in the Exchequer apart from other sums till
the Parliament should meet. In this way the King, while violating
the letter of the laws, would show that he wished to conform to their
spirit, Jeffreys gave very different counsel. He advised James to put
forth an edict declaring it to be His Majesty's will and pleasure that
the customs should continue to be paid. This advice was well suited
to the King's temper. The judicious proposition of the Lord Keeper
was rejected as worthy only of a Whig, or of what was still worse,
a Trimmer. A proclamation, such as the Chief Justice had suggested,
appeared. Some people had expected that a violent outbreak of public
indignation would be the consequence; but they were deceived. The spirit
of opposition had not yet revived; and the court might safely venture to
take steps which, five years before, would have produced a rebellion.
In the City of London, lately so turbulent, scarcely a murmur was heard.
[234]
The proclamation, which announced that the customs would still be
levied, announced also that a Parliament would shortly meet. It was not
without many misgivings that James had determined to call the Estates of
his realm together. The moment was, indeed most auspicious for a general
election. Never since the accession of the House of Stuart had the
constituent bodies been so favourably disposed towards the Court.
But the new sovereign's mind was haunted by an apprehension not to be
mentioned even at this distance of time, without shame and indignation.
He was afraid that by summoning his Parliament he might incur the
displeasure of the King of France.
To the King of France it mattered little which of the two English
factions triumphed at the elections: for all the Parliaments which had
met since the Restoration, whatever might have been their temper as to
domestic politics, had been jealous of the growing power of the House of
Bourbon. On this subject there was little difference between the Whigs
and the sturdy country gentlemen who formed the main strength of the
Tory party. Lewis had therefore spared neither bribes nor menaces to
prevent Charles from convoking the Houses; and James, who had from the
first been in the secret of his brother's foreign politics, had, in
becoming King of England, become also a hireling and vassal of France.
Rochester, Godolphin, and Sunderland, who now formed the interior
cabinet, were perfectly aware that their late master had been in
the habit of receiving money from the court of Versailles. They were
consulted by James as to the expediency of convoking the legislature.
They acknowledged the importance of keeping Lewis in good humour: but
it seemed to them that the calling of a Parliament was not a matter of
choice. Patient as the nation appeared to be, there were limits to its
patience. The principle, that the money of the subject could not be
lawfully taken by the King without the assent of the Commons, was firmly
rooted in the public mind; and though, on all extraordinary emergency
even Whigs might be willing to pay, during a few weeks, duties not
imposed by statute, it was certain that even Tories would become
refractory if such irregular taxation should continue longer than the
special circumstances which alone justified it. The Houses then must
meet; and since it was so, the sooner they were summoned the better.
Even the short delay which would be occasioned by a reference to
Versailles might produce irreparable mischief. Discontent and suspicion
would spread fast through society. Halifax would complain that the
fundamental principles of the constitution were violated. The Lord
Keeper, like a cowardly pedantic special pleader as he was, would take
the same side. What might have been done with a good grace would at last
be done with a bad grace. Those very ministers whom His Majesty most
wished to lower in the public estimation would gain popularity at his
expense. The ill temper of the nation might seriously affect the result
of the elections. These arguments were unanswerable. The King therefore
notified to the country his intention of holding a Parliament. But he
was painfully anxious to exculpate himself from the guilt of having
acted undutifully and disrespectfully towards France. He led Barillon
into a private room, and there apologised for having dared to take so
important a step without the previous sanction of Lewis. "Assure your
master," said James, "of my gratitude and attachment. I know that
without his protection I can do nothing. I know what troubles my brother
brought on himself by not adhering steadily to France. I will take good
care not to let the Houses meddle with foreign affairs. If I see in them
any disposition to make mischief, I will send them about their business.
Explain this to my good brother. I hope that he will not take it
amiss that I have acted without consulting him. He has a right to be
consulted; and it is my wish to consult him about everything. But
in this case the delay even of a week might have produced serious
consequences."
These ignominious excuses were, on the following morning, repeated by
Rochester. Barillon received them civilly. Rochester, grown bolder,
proceeded to ask for money. "It will be well laid out," he said: "your
master cannot employ his revenues better. Represent to him strongly how
important it is that the King of England should be dependent, not on his
own people, but on the friendship of France alone." [235]
Barillon hastened to communicate to Lewis the wishes of the English
government; but Lewis had already anticipated them. His first act,
after he was apprised of the death of Charles, was to collect bills of
exchange on England to the amount of five hundred thousand livres, a sum
equivalent to about thirty-seven thousand five hundred pounds sterling
Such bills were not then to be easily procured in Paris at day's notice.
In a few hours, however, the purchase was effected, and a courier
started for London. [236] As soon as Barillon received the remittance,
he flew to Whitehall, and communicated the welcome news. James was not
ashamed to shed, or pretend to shed, tears of delight and gratitude.
"Nobody but your King," he said, "does such kind, such noble things. I
never can be grateful enough. Assure him that my attachment will last
to the end of my days." Rochester, Sunderland, and Godolphin came, one
after another, to embrace the ambassador, and to whisper to him that he
had given new life to their royal master. [237]
But though James and his three advisers were pleased with the
promptitude which Lewis had shown, they were by no means satisfied with
the amount of the donation. As they were afraid, however, that they
might give offence by importunate mendicancy, they merely hinted their
wishes. They declared that they had no intention of haggling with so
generous a benefactor as the French King, and that they were willing to
trust entirely to his munificence. They, at the same time, attempted
to propitiate him by a large sacrifice of national honour. It was
well known that one chief end of his politics was to add the Belgian
provinces to his dominions. England was bound by a treaty which had
been concluded with Spain when Danby was Lord Treasurer, to resist any
attempt which France might make on those provinces. The three ministers
informed Barillon that their master considered that treaty as no longer
obligatory. It had been made, they said, by Charles: it might, perhaps,
have been binding on him; but his brother did not think himself bound
by it. The most Christian King might, therefore, without any fear of
opposition from England, proceed to annex Brabant and Hainault to his
empire. [238]
It was at the same time resolved that an extraordinary embassy should be
sent to assure Lewis of the gratitude and affection of James. For this
mission was selected a man who did not as yet occupy a very eminent
position, but whose renown, strangely made up of infamy and glory,
filled at a later period the whole civilized world.
Soon after the Restoration, in the gay and dissolute times which have
been celebrated by the lively pen of Hamilton, James, young and ardent
in the pursuit of pleasure, had been attracted to Arabella Churchill,
one of the maids of honour who waited on his first wife. The young
lady was plain: but the taste of James was not nice: and she became
his avowed mistress. She was the daughter of a poor Cavalier knight who
haunted Whitehall, and made himself ridiculous by publishing a dull and
affected folio, long forgotten, in praise of monarchy and monarchs. The
necessities of the Churchills were pressing: their loyalty was ardent:
and their only feeling about Arabella's seduction seems to have been
joyful surprise that so homely a girl should have attained such high
preferment.
Her interest was indeed of great use to her relations: but none of them
was so fortunate as her eldest brother John, a fine youth, who carried a
pair of colours in the foot guards. He rose fast in the court and in the
army, and was early distinguished as a man of fashion and of pleasure.
His stature was commanding, his face handsome, his address singularly
winning, yet of such dignity that the most impertinent fops never
ventured to take any liberty with him; his temper, even in the most
vexatious and irritating circumstances, always under perfect command.
His education had been so much neglected that he could not spell the
most common words of his own language: but his acute and vigorous
understanding amply supplied the place of book learning. He was not
talkative: but when he was forced to speak in public, his natural
eloquence moved the envy of practiced rhetoricians. [239] His courage
was singularly cool and imperturbable. During many years of anxiety and
peril, he never, in any emergency, lost even for a moment, the perfect
use of his admirable judgment.
In his twenty-third year he was sent with his regiment to join the
French forces, then engaged in operations against Holland. His serene
intrepidity distinguished him among thousands of brave soldiers. His
professional skill commanded the respect of veteran officers. He was
publicly thanked at the head of the army, and received many marks
of esteem and confidence from Turenne, who was then at the height of
military glory.
Unhappily the splendid qualities of John Churchill were mingled with
alloy of the most sordid kind. Some propensities, which in youth are
singularly ungraceful, began very early to show themselves in him. He
was thrifty in his very vices, and levied ample contributions on ladies
enriched by the spoils of more liberal lovers. He was, during a short
time, the object of the violent but fickle fondness of the Duchess of
Cleveland. On one occasion he was caught with her by the King, and was
forced to leap out of the window. She rewarded this hazardous feat of
gallantry with a present of five thousand pounds. With this sum the
prudent young hero instantly bought an annuity of five hundred a year,
well secured on landed property. [240] Already his private drawer
contained a hoard of broad pieces which, fifty years later, when he
was a Duke, a Prince of the Empire, and the richest subject in Europe,
remained untouched. [241]
After the close of the war he was attached to the household of the Duke
of York, accompanied his patron to the Low Countries and to Edinburgh,
and was rewarded for his services with a Scotch peerage and with the
command of the only regiment of dragoons which was then on the English
establishment. [242] His wife had a post in the family of James's
younger daughter, the Princess of Denmark.
Lord Churchill was now sent as ambassador extraordinary to Versailles.
He had it in charge to express the warm gratitude of the English
government for the money which had been so generously bestowed. It had
been originally intended that he should at the same time ask Lewis for
a much larger sum; but, on full consideration, it was apprehended
that such indelicate greediness might disgust the benefactor whose
spontaneous liberality had been so signally displayed. Churchill was
therefore directed to confine himself to thanks for what was past, and
to say nothing about the future. [243]
But James and his ministers, even while protesting that they did not
mean to be importunate, contrived to hint, very intelligibly, what they
wished and expected. In the French ambassador they had a dexterous, a
zealous, and perhaps, not a disinterested intercessor. Lewis made some
difficulties, probably with the design of enhancing the value of his
gifts. In a very few weeks, however, Barillon received from Versailles
fifteen hundred thousand livres more. This sum, equivalent to about a
hundred and twelve thousand pounds sterling, he was instructed to dole
out cautiously. He was authorised to furnish the English government with
thirty thousand pounds, for the purpose of corrupting members of the New
House of Commons. The rest he was directed to keep in reserve for some
extraordinary emergency, such as a dissolution or an insurrection. [244]
The turpitude of these transactions is universally acknowledged: but
their real nature seems to be often misunderstood: for though the
foreign policy of the last two Kings of the House of Stuart has never,
since the correspondence of Barillon was exposed to the public eye,
found an apologist among us, there is still a party which labours to
excuse their domestic policy. Yet it is certain that between their
domestic policy and their foreign policy there was a necessary and
indissoluble connection. If they had upheld, during a single year, the
honour of the country abroad, they would have been compelled to change
the whole system of their administration at home. To praise them for
refusing to govern in conformity with the sense of Parliament, and yet
to blame them for submitting to the dictation of Lewis, is inconsistent.
For they had only one choice, to be dependent on Lewis, or to be
dependent on Parliament.
James, to do him justice, would gladly have found out a third way: but
there was none. He became the slave of France: but it would be incorrect
to represent him as a contented slave. He had spirit enough to be at
times angry with himself for submitting to such thraldom, and impatient
to break loose from it; and this disposition was studiously encouraged
by the agents of many foreign powers.
His accession had excited hopes and fears in every continental court:
and the commencement of his administration was watched by strangers
with interest scarcely less deep than that which was felt by his own
subjects. One government alone wished that the troubles which had,
during three generations, distracted England, might be eternal. All
other governments, whether republican or monarchical, whether Protestant
or Roman Catholic, wished to see those troubles happily terminated.
The nature of the long contest between the Stuarts and their Parliaments
was indeed very imperfectly apprehended by foreign statesmen: but no
statesman could fail to perceive the effect which that contest had
produced on the balance of power in Europe. In ordinary circumstances,
the sympathies of the courts of Vienna and Madrid would doubtless have
been with a prince struggling against subjects, and especially with a
Roman Catholic prince struggling against heretical subjects: but all
such sympathies were now overpowered by a stronger feeling. The fear and
hatred inspired by the greatness, the injustice, and the arrogance of
the French King were at the height. His neighbours might well doubt
whether it were more dangerous to be at war or at peace with him. For
in peace he continued to plunder and to outrage them; and they had tried
the chances of war against him in vain. In this perplexity they looked
with intense anxiety towards England. Would she act on the principles of
the Triple Alliance or on the principles of the treaty of Dover? On that
issue depended the fate of all her neighbours. With her help Lewis might
yet be withstood: but no help could be expected from her till she was
at unity with herself. Before the strife between the throne and the
Parliament began, she had been a power of the first rank: on the day on
which that strife terminated she became a power of the first rank again:
but while the dispute remained undecided, she was condemned to inaction
and to vassalage. She had been great under the Plantagenets and Tudors:
she was again great under the princes who reigned after the Revolution:
but, under the Kings of the House of Stuart, she was a blank in the map
of Europe. She had lost one class of energies, and had not yet acquired
another. That species of force, which, in the fourteenth century had
enabled her to humble France and Spain, had ceased to exist. That
species of force, which, in the eighteenth century, humbled France and
Spain once more, had not yet been called into action. The government was
no longer a limited monarchy after the fashion of the middle ages. It
had not yet become a limited monarchy after the modern fashion. With
the vices of two different systems it had the strength of neither. The
elements of our polity, instead of combining in harmony, counteracted
and neutralised each other All was transition, conflict, and disorder.
The chief business of the sovereign was to infringe the privileges of
the legislature. The chief business of the legislature was to encroach
on the prerogatives of the sovereign. The King readily accepted foreign
aid, which relieved him from the misery of being dependent on a mutinous
Parliament. The Parliament refused to the King the means of supporting
the national honor abroad, from an apprehension, too well founded, that
those means might be employed in order to establish despotism at home.
The effect of these jealousies was that our country, with all her vast
resources, was of as little weight in Christendom as the duchy of Savoy
or the duchy of Lorraine, and certainly of far less weight than the
small province of Holland.
France was deeply interested in prolonging this state of things. [245]
All other powers were deeply interested in bringing it to a close. The
general wish of Europe was that James would govern in conformity with
law and with public opinion. From the Escurial itself came letters,
expressing an earnest hope that the new King of England would be on good
terms with his Parliament and his people. [246] From the Vatican itself
came cautions against immoderate zeal for the Roman Catholic faith.
Benedict Odescalchi, who filled the papal chair under the name of
Innocent the Eleventh, felt, in his character of temporal sovereign, all
those apprehensions with which other princes watched the progress of the
French power. He had also grounds of uneasiness which were peculiar to
himself. It was a happy circumstance for the Protestant religion that,
at the moment when the last Roman Catholic King of England mounted the
throne, the Roman Catholic Church was torn by dissension, and threatened
with a new schism. A quarrel similar to that which had raged in the
eleventh century between the Emperors and the Supreme Pontiffs had
arisen between Lewis and Innocent. Lewis, zealous even to bigotry
for the doctrines of the Church of Rome, but tenacious of his regal
authority, accused the Pope of encroaching on the secular rights of the
French Crown, and was in turn accused by the Pope of encroaching on the
spiritual power of the keys. The King, haughty as he was, encountered a
spirit even more determined than his own. Innocent was, in all private
relations, the meekest and gentlest of men: but when he spoke officially
from the chair of St. Peter, he spoke in the tones of Gregory the
Seventh and of Sixtus the Fifth. The dispute became serious. Agents of
the King were excommunicated. Adherents of the Pope were banished. The
King made the champions of his authority Bishops. The Pope refused them
institution. They took possession of the Episcopal palaces and revenues:
but they were incompetent to perform the Episcopal functions. Before the
struggle terminated, there were in France thirty prelates who could not
confirm or ordain. [247]
Had any prince then living, except Lewis, been engaged in such a dispute
with the Vatican, he would have had all Protestant governments on his
side. But the fear and resentment which the ambition and insolence of
the French King had inspired were such that whoever had the courage
manfully to oppose him was sure of public sympathy. Even Lutherans and
Calvinists, who had always detested the Pope, could not refrain from
wishing him success against a tyrant who aimed at universal monarchy.
It was thus that, in the present century, many who regarded Pius the
Seventh as Antichrist were well pleased to see Antichrist confront the
gigantic power of Napoleon.
The resentment which Innocent felt towards France disposed him to take
a mild and liberal view of the affairs of England. The return of
the English people to the fold of which he was the shepherd would
undoubtedly have rejoiced his soul. But he was too wise a man to believe
that a nation so bold and stubborn, could be brought back to the Church
of Rome by the violent and unconstitutional exercise of royal authority.
It was not difficult to foresee that, if James attempted to promote the
interests of his religion by illegal and unpopular means, the attempt
would fail; the hatred with which the heretical islanders regarded
the true faith would become fiercer and stronger than ever; and an
indissoluble association would be created in their minds between
Protestantism and civil freedom, between Popery and arbitrary power. In
the meantime the King would be an object of aversion and suspicion to
his people. England would still be, as she had been under James the
First, under Charles the First, and under Charles the Second, a power of
the third rank; and France would domineer unchecked beyond the Alps and
the Rhine. On the other hand, it was probable that James, by acting with
prudence and moderation, by strictly observing the laws and by exerting
himself to win the confidence of his Parliament, might be able to
obtain, for the professors of his religion, a large measure of relief.
Penal statutes would go first. Statutes imposing civil incapacities
would soon follow. In the meantime, the English King and the English
nation united might head the European coalition, and might oppose an
insuperable barrier to the cupidity of Lewis.
Innocent was confirmed in his judgment by the principal Englishmen who
resided at his court. Of these the most illustrious was Philip Howard,
sprung from the noblest houses of Britain, grandson, on one side, of an
Earl of Arundel, on the other, of a Duke of Lennox. Philip had long
been a member of the sacred college: he was commonly designated as the
Cardinal of England; and he was the chief counsellor of the Holy See in
matters relating to his country. He had been driven into exile by the
outcry of Protestant bigots; and a member of his family, the unfortunate
Stafford, had fallen a victim to their rage. But neither the Cardinal's
own wrongs, nor those of his house, had so heated his mind as to make
him a rash adviser. Every letter, therefore, which went from the Vatican
to Whitehall, recommended patience, moderation, and respect for the
prejudices of the English people. [248]
In the mind of James there was a great conflict. We should do him
injustice if we supposed that a state of vassalage was agreeable to his
temper. He loved authority and business. He had a high sense of his own
personal dignity. Nay, he was not altogether destitute of a sentiment
which bore some affinity to patriotism. It galled his soul to think that
the kingdom which he ruled was of far less account in the world than
many states which possessed smaller natural advantages; and he listened
eagerly to foreign ministers when they urged him to assert the dignity
of his rank, to place himself at the head of a great confederacy, to
become the protector of injured nations, and to tame the pride of that
power which held the Continent in awe. Such exhortations made his heart
swell with emotions unknown to his careless and effeminate brother.
But those emotions were soon subdued by a stronger feeling. A vigorous
foreign policy necessarily implied a conciliatory domestic policy. It
was impossible at once to confront the might of France and to trample
on the liberties of England. The executive government could undertake
nothing great without the support of the Commons, and could obtain their
support only by acting in conformity with their opinion. Thus James
found that the two things which he most desired could not be enjoyed
together. His second wish was to be feared and respected abroad. But his
first wish was to be absolute master at home. Between the incompatible
objects on which his heart was set he, for a time, went irresolutely
to and fro. The conflict in his own breast gave to his public acts a
strange appearance of indecision and insincerity. Those who, without
the clue, attempted to explore the maze of his politics were unable to
understand how the same man could be, in the same week, so haughty and
so mean. Even Lewis was perplexed by the vagaries of an ally who passed,
in a few hours, from homage to defiance, and from defiance to
homage. Yet, now that the whole conduct of James is before us, this
inconsistency seems to admit of a simple explanation.
At the moment of his accession he was in doubt whether the kingdom
would peaceably submit to his authority. The Exclusionists, lately so
powerful, might rise in arms against him. He might be in great need
of French money and French troops. He was therefore, during some days,
content to be a sycophant and a mendicant. He humbly apologised for
daring to call his Parliament together without the consent of the French
government. He begged hard for a French subsidy. He wept with joy over
the French bills of exchange. He sent to Versailles a special embassy
charged with assurances of his gratitude, attachment, and submission.
But scarcely had the embassy departed when his feelings underwent a
change. He had been everywhere proclaimed without one riot, without
one seditions outcry. From all corners of the island he received
intelligence that his subjects were tranquil and obedient. His spirit
rose. The degrading relation in which he stood to a foreign power seemed
intolerable. He became proud, punctilious, boastful, quarrelsome. He
held such high language about the dignity of his crown and the balance
of power that his whole court fully expected a complete revolution in
the foreign politics of the realm. He commanded Churchill to send home a
minute report of the ceremonial of Versailles, in order that the honours
with which the English embassy was received there might be repaid, and
not more than repaid, to the representative of France at Whitehall. The
news of this change was received with delight at Madrid, Vienna, and
the Hague. [249] Lewis was at first merely diverted. "My good ally talks
big," he said; "but he is as fond of my pistoles as ever his brother
was." Soon, however, the altered demeanour of James, and the hopes with
which that demeanour inspired both the branches of the House of Austria,
began to call for more serious notice. A remarkable letter is still
extant, in which the French King intimated a strong suspicion that he
had been duped, and that the very money which he had sent to Westminster
would be employed against him. [250]
By this time England had recovered from the sadness and anxiety caused
by the death of the goodnatured Charles. The Tories were loud in
professions of attachment to their new master. The hatred of the Whigs
was kept down by fear. That great mass which is not steadily Whig or
Tory, but which inclines alternately to Whiggism and to Toryism, was
still on the Tory side. The reaction which had followed the dissolution
of the Oxford parliament had not yet spent its force.
The King early put the loyalty of his Protestant friends to the proof.
While he was a subject, he had been in the habit of hearing mass with
closed doors in a small oratory which had been fitted up for his wife.
He now ordered the doors to be thrown open, in order that all who came
to pay their duty to him might see the ceremony. When the host was
elevated there was a strange confusion in the antechamber. The Roman
Catholics fell on their knees: the Protestants hurried out of the room.
Soon a new pulpit was erected in the palace; and, during Lent, a
series of sermons was preached there by Popish divines, to the great
discomposure of zealous churchmen. [251]
A more serious innovation followed. Passion week came; and the King
determined to hear mass with the same pomp with which his predecessors
had been surrounded when they repaired to the temples of the established
religion. He announced his intention to the three members of the
interior cabinet, and requested them to attend him. Sunderland, to
whom all religions were the same, readily consented. Godolphin, as
Chamberlain of the Queen, had already been in the habit of giving her
his hand when she repaired to her oratory, and felt no scruple about
bowing himself officially in the house of Rimmon. But Rochester was
greatly disturbed. His influence in the country arose chiefly from the
opinion entertained by the clergy and by the Tory gentry, that he was a
zealous and uncompromising friend of the Church. His orthodoxy had been
considered as fully atoning for faults which would otherwise have made
him the most unpopular man in the kingdom, for boundless arrogance,
for extreme violence of temper, and for manners almost brutal. [252] He
feared that, by complying with the royal wishes, he should greatly
lower himself in the estimation of his party. After some altercation
he obtained permission to pass the holidays out of town. All the other
great civil dignitaries were ordered to be at their posts on Easter
Sunday. The rites of the Church of Rome were once more, after an
interval of a hundred and twenty-seven years, performed at Westminster
with regal splendour. The Guards were drawn out. The Knights of the
Garter wore their collars. The Duke of Somerset, second in rank among
the temporal nobles of the realm, carried the sword of state. A long
train of great lords accompanied the King to his seat. But it was
remarked that Ormond and Halifax remained in the antechamber. A few
years before they had gallantly defended the cause of James against some
of those who now pressed past them. Ormond had borne no share in the
slaughter of Roman Catholics. Halifax had courageously pronounced
Stafford not guilty. As the timeservers who had pretended to shudder at
the thought of a Popish king, and who had shed without pity the innocent
blood of a Popish peer, now elbowed each other to get near a Popish
altar, the accomplished Trimmer might, with some justice, indulge his
solitary pride in that unpopular nickname. [253]
Within a week after this ceremony James made a far greater sacrifice
of his own religious prejudices than he had yet called on any of his
Protestant subjects to make. He was crowned on the twenty-third of
April, the feast of the patron saint of the realm. The Abbey and the
Hall were splendidly decorated. The presence of the Queen and of the
peeresses gave to the solemnity a charm which had been wanting to the
magnificent inauguration of the late King. Yet those who remembered that
inauguration pronounced that there was a great falling off. The ancient
usage was that, before a coronation, the sovereign, with all his
heralds, judges, councillors, lords, and great dignitaries, should ride
in state from the Tower of Westminster. Of these cavalcades the last and
the most glorious was that which passed through the capital while the
feelings excited by the Restoration were still in full vigour. Arches of
triumph overhung the road. All Cornhill, Cheapside, Saint Paul's Church
Yard, Fleet Street, and the Strand, were lined with scaffolding.
The whole city had thus been admitted to gaze on royalty in the most
splendid and solemn form that royalty could wear. James ordered an
estimate to be made of the cost of such a procession, and found that it
would amount to about half as much as he proposed to expend in covering
his wife with trinkets. He accordingly determined to be profuse where he
ought to have been frugal, and niggardly where he might pardonably
have been profuse. More than a hundred thousand pounds were laid out in
dressing the Queen, and the procession from the Tower was omitted. The
folly of this course is obvious. If pageantry be of any use in politics,
it is of use as a means of striking the imagination of the multitude. It
is surely the height of absurdity to shut out the populace from a show
of which the main object is to make an impression on the populace.
James would have shown a more judicious munificence and a more judicious
parsimony, if he had traversed London from east to west with the
accustomed pomp, and had ordered the robes of his wife to be somewhat
less thickly set with pearls and diamonds. His example was, however,
long followed by his successors; and sums, which, well employed, would
have afforded exquisite gratification to a large part of the nation,
were squandered on an exhibition to which only three or four thousand
privileged persons were admitted. At length the old practice was
partially revived. On the day of the coronation of Queen Victoria there
was a procession in which many deficiencies might be noted, but which
was seen with interest and delight by half a million of her subjects,
and which undoubtedly gave far greater pleasure, and called forth far
greater enthusiasm, than the more costly display which was witnessed by
a select circle within the Abbey.
James had ordered Sancroft to abridge the ritual. The reason publicly
assigned was that the day was too short for all that was to be done.
But whoever examines the changes which were made will see that the
real object was to remove some things highly offensive to the religious
feelings of a zealous Roman Catholic. The Communion Service was not
read. The ceremony of presenting the sovereign with a richly bound copy
of the English Bible, and of exhorting him to prize above all earthly
treasures a volume which he had been taught to regard as adulterated
with false doctrine, was omitted. What remained, however, after all this
curtailment, might well have raised scruples in the mind of a man who
sincerely believed the Church of England to be a heretical society,
within the pale of which salvation was not to be found. The King made
an oblation on the altar. He appeared to join in the petitions of the
Litany which was chaunted by the Bishops. He received from those false
prophets the unction typical of a divine influence, and knelt with the
semblance of devotion, while they called down upon him that Holy Spirit
of which they were, in his estimation, the malignant and obdurate foes.
Such are the inconsistencies of human nature that this man, who, from a
fanatical zeal for his religion, threw away three kingdoms, yet chose to
commit what was little short of an act of apostasy, rather than forego
the childish pleasure of being invested with the gewgaws symbolical of
kingly power. [254]