Trial of Spencer Cowper--Duels--Discontent of the Nation--Captain
Kidd--Meeting of Parliament--Attacks on Burnet--Renewed Attack
on Somers--Question of the Irish Forfeitures: Dispute between the
Houses--Somers again attacked--Prorogation of Parliament--Death of
James the Second--The Pretender recognised as King--Return of the
King--General Election--Death of William
THE passions which had agitated the Parliament during the late session
continued to ferment in the minds of men during the recess, and, having
no longer a vent in the senate, broke forth in every part of the empire,
destroyed the peace of towns, brought into peril the honour and the
lives of innocent men, and impelled magistrates to leave the bench
of justice and attack one another sword in hand. Private calamities,
private brawls, which had nothing to do with the disputes between court
and country, were turned by the political animosities of that unhappy
summer into grave political events.
One mournful tale, which called forth the strongest feelings of the
contending factions, is still remembered as a curious part of the
history of our jurisprudence, and especially of the history of our
medical jurisprudence. No Whig member of the lower House, with the
single exception of Montague, filled a larger space in the public eye
than William Cowper. In the art of conciliating an audience, Cowper was
preeminent. His graceful and engaging eloquence cast a spell on juries;
and the Commons, even in those stormy moments when no other defender of
the administration could obtain a hearing, would always listen to him.
He represented Hertford, a borough in which his family had considerable
influence; but there was a strong Tory minority among the electors, and
he had not won his seat without a hard fight, which had left behind it
many bitter recollections. His younger brother Spencer, a man of parts
and learning, was fast rising into practice as a barrister on the Home
Circuit.
At Hertford resided an opulent Quaker family named Stout. A pretty young
woman of this family had lately sunk into a melancholy of a kind not
very unusual in girls of strong sensibility and lively imagination who
are subject to the restraints of austere religious societies. Her dress,
her looks, her gestures, indicated the disturbance of her mind. She
sometimes hinted her dislike of the sect to which she belonged. She
complained that a canting waterman who was one of the brotherhood had
held forth against her at a meeting. She threatened to go beyond sea,
to throw herself out of window, to drown herself. To two or three of
her associates she owned that she was in love; and on one occasion she
plainly said that the man whom she loved was one whom she never could
marry. In fact, the object of her fondness was Spencer Cowper, who was
already married. She at length wrote to him in language which she never
would have used if her intellect had not been disordered. He, like an
honest man, took no advantage of her unhappy state of mind, and did his
best to avoid her. His prudence mortified her to such a degree that
on one occasion she went into fits. It was necessary, however, that he
should see her, when he came to Hertford at the spring assizes of
1699. For he had been entrusted with some money which was due to her
on mortgage. He called on her for this purpose late one evening, and
delivered a bag of gold to her. She pressed him to be the guest of her
family; but he excused himself and retired. The next morning she was
found dead among the stakes of a mill dam on the stream called
the Priory River. That she had destroyed herself there could be no
reasonable doubt. The coroner's inquest found that she had drowned
herself while in a state of mental derangement. But her family was
unwilling to admit that she had shortened her own life, and looked about
for somebody who might be accused of murdering her. The last person
who could be proved to have been in her company was Spencer Cowper. It
chanced that two attorneys and a scrivener, who had come down from town
to the Hertford assizes, had been overheard, on that unhappy night,
talking over their wine about the charms and flirtations of the handsome
Quaker girl, in the light way in which such subjects are sometimes
discussed even at the circuit tables and mess tables of our more refined
generation. Some wild words, susceptible of a double meaning, were used
about the way in which she had jilted one lover, and the way in which
another lover would punish her for her coquetry. On no better grounds
than these her relations imagined that Spencer Cowper had, with the
assistance of these three retainers of the law, strangled her, and
thrown her corpse into the water. There was absolutely no evidence of
the crime. There was no evidence that any one of the accused had any
motive to commit such a crime; there was no evidence that Spencer Cowper
had any connection with the persons who were said to be his accomplices.
One of those persons, indeed, he had never seen. But no story is
too absurd to be imposed on minds blinded by religious and political
fanaticism. The Quakers and the Tories joined to raise a formidable
clamour. The Quakers had, in those days, no scruples about capital
punishments. They would, indeed, as Spencer Cowper said bitterly, but
too truly, rather send four innocent men to the gallows than let it be
believed that one who had their light within her had committed suicide.
The Tories exulted in the prospect of winning two seats from the Whigs.
The whole kingdom was divided between Stouts and Cowpers. At the summer
assizes Hertford was crowded with anxious faces from London and from
parts of England more distant than London. The prosecution was conducted
with a malignity and unfairness which to us seem almost incredible; and,
unfortunately, the dullest and most ignorant judge of the twelve was
on the bench. Cowper defended himself and those who were said to be his
accomplices with admirable ability and self possession. His brother,
much more distressed than himself, sate near him through the long agony
of that day. The case against the prisoners rested chiefly on the vulgar
error that a human body, found, as this poor girl's body had been found,
floating in water, must have been thrown into the water while still
alive. To prove this doctrine the counsel for the Crown called medical
practitioners, of whom nothing is now known except that some of them
had been active against the Whigs at Hertford elections. To confirm
the evidence of these gentlemen two or three sailors were put into the
witness box. On the other side appeared an array of men of science whose
names are still remembered. Among them was William Cowper, not a kinsman
of the defendant, but the most celebrated anatomist that England had
then produced. He was, indeed, the founder of a dynasty illustrious in
the history of science; for he was the teacher of William Cheselden,
and William Cheselden was the teacher of John Hunter. On the same side
appeared Samuel Garth, who, among the physicians of the capital, had no
rival except Radcliffe, and Hans Sloane, the founder of the magnificent
museum which is one of the glories of our country. The attempt of the
prosecutors to make the superstitions of the forecastle evidence for
the purpose of taking away the lives of men was treated by these
philosophers with just disdain. The stupid judge asked Garth what he
could say in answer to the testimony of the seamen. "My Lord," replied
Garth, "I say that they are mistaken. I will find seamen in abundance to
swear that they have known whistling raise the wind."
The jury found the prisoners Not guilty; and the report carried back to
London by persons who had been present at the trial was that everybody
applauded the verdict, and that even the Stouts seemed to be convinced
of their error. It is certain, however, that the malevolence of the
defeated party soon revived in all its energy. The lives of the four
men who had just been absolved were again attacked by means of the most
absurd and odious proceeding known to our old law, the appeal of
murder. This attack too failed. Every artifice of chicane was at
length exhausted; and nothing was left to the disappointed sect and the
disappointed faction except to calumniate those whom it had been found
impossible to murder. In a succession of libels Spencer Cowper was held
up to the execration of the public. But the public did him justice. He
rose to high eminence in his profession; he at length took his seat,
with general applause, on the judicial bench, and there distinguished
himself by the humanity which he never failed to show to unhappy men
who stood, as he had once stood, at the bar. Many who seldom trouble
themselves about pedigrees may be interested by learning that he was
the grandfather of that excellent man and excellent poet William Cowper,
whose writings have long been peculiarly loved and prized by the members
of the religious community which, under a strong delusion, sought to
slay his innocent progenitor. [19]
Though Spencer Cowper had escaped with life and honour, the Tories had
carried their point. They had secured against the next election the
support of the Quakers of Hertford; and the consequence was that
the borough was lost to the family and to the party which had lately
predominated there.
In the very week in which the great trial took place at Hertford, a
feud arising out of the late election for Buckinghamshire very nearly
produced fatal effects. Wharton, the chief of the Buckinghamshire Whigs,
had with difficulty succeeded in bringing in his brother as one of
the knights of the shire. Graham Viscount Cheyney, of the kingdom of
Scotland, had been returned at the head of the poll by the Tories. The
two noblemen met at the quarter sessions. In England Cheyney was before
the Union merely an Esquire. Wharton was undoubtedly entitled to take
place of him, and had repeatedly taken place of him without any dispute.
But angry passions now ran so high that a decent pretext for indulging
them was hardly thought necessary. Cheyney fastened a quarrel on
Wharton. They drew. Wharton, whose cool good humoured courage and skill
in fence were the envy of all the swordsmen of that age, closed with his
quarrelsome neighbour, disarmed him, and gave him his life.
A more tragical duel had just taken place at Westminster. Conway
Seymour, the eldest son of Sir Edward Seymour, had lately come of age.
He was in possession of an independent fortune of seven thousand pounds
a year, which he lavished in costly fopperies. The town had nicknamed
him Beau Seymour. He was displaying his curls and his embroidery in
Saint James's Park on a midsummer evening, after indulging too freely in
wine, when a young officer of the Blues named Kirke, who was as tipsy as
himself, passed near him. "There goes Beau Seymour," said Kirke. Seymour
flew into a rage. Angry words were exchanged between the foolish boys.
They immediately went beyond the precincts of the Court, drew, and
exchanged some pushes. Seymour was wounded in the neck. The wound
was not very serious; but, when his cure was only half completed, he
revelled in fruit, ice and Burgundy till he threw himself into a violent
fever. Though a coxcomb and a voluptuary, he seems to have had some
fine qualities. On the last day of his life he saw Kirke. Kirke implored
forgiveness; and the dying man declared that he forgave as he hoped to
be forgiven. There can be no doubt that a person who kills another in a
duel is, according to law, guilty of murder. But the law had never been
strictly enforced against gentlemen in such cases; and in this case
there was no peculiar atrocity, no deep seated malice, no suspicion of
foul play. Sir Edward, however, vehemently declared that he would
have life for life. Much indulgence is due to the resentment of an
affectionate father maddened by the loss of a son. But there is but
too much reason to believe that the implacability of Seymour was the
implacability, not of an affectionate father, but of a factious and
malignant agitator. He tried to make what is, in the jargon of our time,
called political capital out of the desolation of his house and the
blood of his first born. A brawl between two dissolute youths, a brawl
distinguished by nothing but its unhappy result from the hundred brawls
which took place every month in theatres and taverns, he magnified into
an attack on the liberties of the nation, an attempt to introduce a
military tyranny. The question was whether a soldier was to be permitted
to insult English gentlemen, and, if they murmured, to cut their
throats? It was moved in the Court of King's Bench that Kirke should
either be brought to immediate trial or admitted to bail. Shower, as
counsel for Seymour, opposed the motion. But Seymour was not content to
leave the case in Shower's hands. In defiance of all decency, he went to
Westminster Hall, demanded a hearing, and pronounced a harangue against
standing armies. "Here," he said, "is a man who lives on money taken out
of our pockets. The plea set up for taxing us in order to support him
is that his sword protects us, and enables us to live in peace and
security. And is he to be suffered to use that sword to destroy us?"
Kirke was tried and found guilty of manslaughter. In his case, as in the
case of Spencer Cowper, an attempt was made to obtain a writ of appeal.
The attempt failed; and Seymour was disappointed of his revenge; but he
was not left without consolation. If he had lost a son, he had found,
what he seems to have prized quite as much, a fertile theme for
invective.
The King, on his return from the Continent, found his subjects in
no bland humour. All Scotland, exasperated by the fate of the first
expedition to Darien, and anxiously waiting for news of the second,
called loudly for a Parliament. Several of the Scottish peers carried to
Kensington an address which was subscribed by thirty-six of their body,
and which earnestly pressed William to convoke the Estates at Edinburgh,
and to redress the wrongs which had been done to the colony of New
Caledonia. A petition to the same effect was widely circulated among
the commonalty of his Northern kingdom, and received, if report could
be trusted, not less than thirty thousand signatures. Discontent was far
from being as violent in England as in Scotland. Yet in England there
was discontent enough to make even a resolute prince uneasy. The time
drew near at which the Houses must reassemble; and how were the Commons
to be managed? Montague, enraged, mortified, and intimidated by the
baiting of the last session, was fully determined not again to appear
in the character of chief minister of finance. The secure and luxurious
retreat which he had, some months ago, prepared for himself was awaiting
him. He took the Auditorship, and resigned his other places. Smith
became Chancellor of the Exchequer. A new commission of Treasury issued;
and the first name was that of Tankerville. He had entered on his
career, more than twenty years before, with the fairest hopes, young,
noble, nobly allied, of distinguished abilities, of graceful manners.
There was no more brilliant man of fashion in the theatre and in the
ring. There was no more popular tribune in Guildhall. Such was the
commencement of a life so miserable that all the indignation excited by
great faults is overpowered by pity. A guilty passion, amounting to a
madness, left on the moral character of the unhappy man a stain at which
even libertines looked grave. He tried to make the errors of his private
life forgotten by splendid and perilous services to a public cause; and,
having endured in that cause penury and exile, the gloom of a dungeon,
the prospect of a scaffold, the ruin of a noble estate, he was so
unfortunate as to be regarded by the party for which he had sacrificed
every thing as a coward, if not a traitor. Yet, even against such
accumulated disasters and disgraces, his vigorous and aspiring mind
bore up. His parts and eloquence gained for him the ear of the House
of Lords; and at length, though not till his constitution was so broken
that he was fitter for flannel and cushions than for a laborious office
at Whitehall, he was put at the head of one of the most important
departments of the administration. It might have been expected that this
appointment would call forth clamours from widely different quarters;
that the Tories would be offended by the elevation of a rebel; that
the Whigs would set up a cry against the captain to whose treachery
or faintheartedness they had been in the habit of imputing the rout of
Sedgemoor; and that the whole of that great body of Englishmen which
cannot be said to be steadily Whig or Tory, but which is zealous for
decency and the domestic virtues, would see with indignation a
signal mark of royal favour bestowed on one who had been convicted of
debauching a noble damsel, the sister of his own wife. But so capricious
is public feeling that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to find,
in any of the letters, essays, dialogues, and poems which bear the date
of 1699 or of 1700, a single allusion to the vices or misfortunes of the
new First Lord of the Treasury. It is probable that his infirm health
and his isolated position were his protection. The chiefs of the
opposition did not fear him enough to hate him. The Whig junto was still
their terror and their abhorrence. They continued to assail Montague and
Orford, though with somewhat less ferocity than while Montague had the
direction of the finances, and Orford of the marine. But the utmost
spite of all the leading malecontents were concentrated on one object,
the great magistrate who still held the highest civil post in the realm,
and who was evidently determined to hold it in defiance of them. It was
not so easy to get rid of him as it had been to drive his colleagues
from office. His abilities the most intolerant Tories were forced
grudgingly to acknowledge. His integrity might be questioned in nameless
libels and in coffeehouse tattle, but was certain to come forth bright
and pure from the most severe Parliamentary investigation. Nor was he
guilty of those faults of temper and of manner to which, more than
to any grave delinquency, the unpopularity of his associates is to be
ascribed. He had as little of the insolence and perverseness of Orford
as of the petulance and vaingloriousness of Montague. One of the most
severe trials to which the head and heart of man can be put is great and
rapid elevation. To that trial both Montague and Somers were put. It was
too much for Montague. But Somers was found equal to it. He was the son
of a country attorney. At thirty-seven he had been sitting in a stuff
gown on a back bench in the Court of King's Bench. At forty-two he
was the first lay dignitary of the realm, and took precedence of the
Archbishop of York, and of the Duke of Norfolk. He had risen from a
lower point than Montague, had risen as fast as Montague, had risen as
high as Montague, and yet had not excited envy such as dogged Montague
through a long career. Garreteers, who were never weary of calling the
cousin of the Earls of Manchester and Sandwich an upstart, could not,
without an unwonted sense of shame, apply those words to the Chancellor,
who, without one drop of patrician blood in his veins, had taken his
place at the head of the patrician order with the quiet dignity of a man
ennobled by nature. His serenity, his modesty, his selfcommand, proof
even against the most sudden surprises of passion, his selfrespect,
which forced the proudest grandees of the kingdom to respect him, his
urbanity, which won the hearts of the youngest lawyers of the Chancery
Bar, gained for him many private friends and admirers among the most
respectable members of the opposition. But such men as Howe and Seymour
hated him implacably; they hated his commanding genius much; they hated
the mild majesty of his virtue still more. They sought occasion against
him everywhere; and they at length flattered themselves that they had
found it.
Some years before, while the war was still raging, there had been loud
complaints in the city that even privateers of St. Malo's and Dunkirk
caused less molestation to trade than another class of marauders. The
English navy was fully employed in the Channel, in the Atlantic, and in
the Mediterranean. The Indian Ocean, meanwhile, swarmed with pirates of
whose rapacity and cruelty frightful stories were told. Many of these
men, it was said, came from our North American colonies, and carried
back to those colonies the spoils gained by crime. Adventurers who
durst not show themselves in the Thames found a ready market for their
illgotten spices and stuffs at New York. Even the Puritans of New
England, who in sanctimonious austerity surpassed even their brethren of
Scotland, were accused of conniving at the wickedness which enabled them
to enjoy abundantly and cheaply the produce of Indian looms and Chinese
tea plantations.
In 1695 Richard Coote, Earl of Bellamont, an Irish peer who sate in
the English House of Commons, was appointed Governor of New York
and Massachusets. He was a man of eminently fair character, upright,
courageous and independent. Though a decided Whig, he had distinguished
himself by bringing before the Parliament at Westminster some tyrannical
acts done by Whigs at Dublin, and particularly the execution, if it is
not rather to be called the murder, of Gafney. Before Bellamont sailed
for America, William spoke strongly to him about the freebooting which
was the disgrace of the colonies. "I send you, my Lord, to New York," he
said, "because an honest and intrepid man is wanted to put these abuses
down, and because I believe you to be such a man." Bellamont exerted
himself to justify the high opinion which the King had formed of him. It
was soon known at New York that the Governor who had just arrived from
England was bent on the suppression of piracy; and some colonists in
whom he placed great confidence suggested to him what they may perhaps
have thought the best mode of attaining that object. There was then in
the settlement a veteran mariner named William Kidd. He had passed most
of his life on the waves, had distinguished himself by his seamanship,
had had opportunities of showing his valour in action with the French,
and had retired on a competence. No man knew the Eastern seas better. He
was perfectly acquainted with all the haunts of the pirates who prowled
between the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Malacca; and he would
undertake, if he were entrusted with a single ship of thirty or forty
guns, to clear the Indian Ocean of the whole race. The brigantines of
the rovers were numerous, no doubt; but none of them was large; one
man of war, which in the royal navy would hardly rank as a fourth rate,
would easily deal with them all in succession; and the lawful spoils of
the enemies of mankind would much more than defray the charges of the
expedition. Bellamont was charmed with this plan, and recommended it to
the King. The King referred it to the Admiralty. The Admiralty raised
difficulties, such as are perpetually raised by public boards when any
deviation, whether for the better or for the worse, from the established
course of proceeding is proposed. It then occurred to Bellamont that his
favourite scheme might be carried into effect without any cost to the
state. A few public spirited men might easily fit out a privateer which
would soon make the Arabian Gulph and the Bay of Bengal secure highways
for trade. He wrote to his friends in England imploring, remonstrating,
complaining of their lamentable want of public spirit. Six thousand
pounds would be enough. That sum would be repaid, and repaid with large
interest, from the sale of prizes; and an inestimable benefit would
be conferred on the kingdom and on the world. His urgency succeeded.
Shrewsbury and Romney contributed. Orford, though, as first Lord of the
Admiralty, he had been unwilling to send Kidd to the Indian ocean with a
king's ship, consented to subscribe a thousand pounds. Somers subscribed
another thousand. A ship called the Adventure Galley was equipped in the
port of London; and Kidd took the command. He carried with him, besides
the ordinary letters of marque, a commission under the Great Seal
empowering him to seize pirates, and to take them to some place where
they might be dealt with according to law. Whatever right the King
might have to the goods found in the possession of these malefactors he
granted, by letters patent, to the persons who had been at the expense
of fitting out the expedition, reserving to himself only one tenth part
of the gains of the adventure, which was to be paid into the treasury.
With the claim of merchants to have back the property of which they had
been robbed His Majesty of course did not interfere. He granted away,
and could grant away, no rights but his own.
The press for sailors to man the royal navy was at that time so hot that
Kidd could not obtain his full complement of hands in the Thames. He
crossed the Atlantic, visited New York, and there found volunteers in
abundance. At length, in February 1697, he sailed from the Hudson with a
crew of more than a hundred and fifty men, and in July reached the coast
of Madagascar.
It is possible that Kidd may at first have meant to act in accordance
with his instructions. But, on the subject of piracy, he held the
notions which were then common in the North American colonies; and most
of his crew were of the same mind. He found himself in a sea which was
constantly traversed by rich and defenceless merchant ships; and he had
to determine whether he would plunder those ships or protect them. The
gain which might be made by plundering them was immense, and might be
snatched without the dangers of a battle or the delays of a trial. The
rewards of protecting the lawful trade were likely to be comparatively
small. Such as they were, they would be got only by first fighting with
desperate ruffians who would rather be killed than taken, and by
then instituting a proceeding and obtaining a judgment in a Court of
Admiralty. The risk of being called to a severe reckoning might not
unnaturally seem small to one who had seen many old buccaneers living
in comfort and credit at New York and Boston. Kidd soon threw off the
character of a privateer, and became a pirate. He established friendly
communications, and exchanged arms and ammunition, with the most
notorious of those rovers whom his commission authorised him to destroy,
and made war on those peaceful traders whom he was sent to defend. He
began by robbing Mussulmans, and speedily proceeded from Mussulmans to
Armenians, and from Armenians to Portuguese. The Adventure Galley took
such quantities of cotton and silk, sugar and coffee, cinnamon and
pepper, that the very foremast men received from a hundred to two
hundred pounds each, and that the captain's share of the spoil would
have enabled him to live at home as an opulent gentleman. With the
rapacity Kidd had the cruelty of his odious calling. He burned houses;
he massacred peasantry. His prisoners were tied up and beaten with naked
cutlasses in order to extort information about their concealed hoards.
One of his crew, whom he had called a dog, was provoked into exclaiming,
in an agony of remorse, "Yes, I am a dog; but it is you that have made
me so." Kidd, in a fury, struck the man dead.
News then travelled very slowly from the eastern seas to England. But,
in August 1698, it was known in London that the Adventure Galley from
which so much had been hoped was the terror of the merchants of Surat,
and of the villagers of the coast of Malabar. It was thought probable
that Kidd would carry his booty to some colony. Orders were therefore
sent from Whitehall to the governors of the transmarine possessions
of the Crown, directing them to be on the watch for him. He meanwhile,
having burned his ship and dismissed most of his men, who easily found
berths in the sloops of other pirates, returned to New York with the
means, as he flattered himself, of making his peace and of living
in splendour. He had fabricated a long romance to which Bellamont,
naturally unwilling to believe that he had been duped and had been the
means of duping others, was at first disposed to listen with favour. But
the truth soon came out. The governor did his duty firmly; and Kidd was
placed in close confinement till orders arrived from the Admiralty that
he should be sent to England.
To an intelligent and candid judge of human actions it will not appear
that any of the persons at whose expense the Adventure Galley was fitted
out deserved serious blame. The worst that could be imputed even to
Bellamont, who had drawn in all the rest, was that he had been led into
a fault by his ardent zeal for the public service, and by the generosity
of a nature as little prone to suspect as to devise villanies. His
friends in England might surely be pardoned for giving credit to his
recommendation. It is highly probable that the motive which induced some
of them to aid his design was genuine public spirit. But, if we suppose
them to have had a view to gain, it was to legitimate gain. Their
conduct was the very opposite of corrupt. Not only had they taken no
money. They had disbursed money largely, and had disbursed it with the
certainty that they should never be reimbursed unless the outlay proved
beneficial to the public. That they meant well they proved by staking
thousands on the success of their plan; and, if they erred in judgment,
the loss of those thousands was surely a sufficient punishment for such
an error. On this subject there would probably have been no difference
of opinion had not Somers been one of the contributors. About the other
patrons of Kidd the chiefs of the opposition cared little. Bellamont was
far removed from the political scene. Romney could not, and Shrewsbury
would not, play a first part. Orford had resigned his employments. But
Somers still held the Great Seal, still presided in the House of Lords,
still had constant access to the closet. The retreat of his friends had
left him the sole and undisputed head of that party which had, in
the late Parliament, been a majority, and which was, in the present
Parliament, outnumbered indeed, disorganised and disheartened, but still
numerous and respectable. His placid courage rose higher and higher
to meet the dangers which threatened him. He provided for himself
no refuge. He made no move towards flight; and, without uttering one
boastful word, gave his enemies to understand, by the mild firmness of
his demeanour, that he dared them to do their worst.
In their eagerness to displace and destroy him they overreached
themselves. Had they been content to accuse him of lending his
countenance, with a rashness unbecoming his high place, to an
illconcerted scheme, that large part of mankind which judges of a plan
simply by the event would probably have thought the accusation well
founded. But the malice which they bore to him was not to be so
satisfied. They affected to believe that he had from the first been
aware of Kidd's character and designs. The Great Seal had been employed
to sanction a piratical expedition. The head of the law had laid down
a thousand pounds in the hope of receiving tens of thousands when his
accomplices should return, laden with the spoils of ruined merchants. It
was fortunate for the Chancellor that the calumnies of which he was the
object were too atrocious to be mischievous.
And now the time had come at which the hoarded illhumour of six months
was at liberty to explode. On the sixteenth of November the Houses
met. The King, in his speech, assured them in gracious and affectionate
language that he was determined to do his best to merit their love by
constant care to preserve their liberty and their religion, by a pure
administration of justice, by countenancing virtue, by discouraging
vice, by shrinking from no difficulty or danger when the welfare of the
nation was at stake. "These," he said, "are my resolutions; and I am
persuaded that you are come together with purposes on your part suitable
to these on mine. Since then our aims are only for the general good,
let us act with confidence in one another, which will not fail, by
God's blessing, to make me a happy king, and you a great and flourishing
people."
It might have been thought that no words less likely to give offence had
ever been uttered from the English throne. But even in those words the
malevolence of faction sought and found matter for a quarrel. The gentle
exhortation, "Let us act with confidence in one another," must mean
that such confidence did not now exist, that the King distrusted the
Parliament, or that the Parliament had shown an unwarrantable distrust
of the King. Such an exhortation was nothing less than a reproach;
and such a reproach was a bad return for the gold and the blood which
England had lavished in order to make and to keep him a great
sovereign. There was a sharp debate, in which Seymour took part. With
characteristic indelicacy and want of feeling he harangued the Commons
as he had harangued the Court of King's Bench, about his son's death,
and about the necessity of curbing the insolence of military men. There
were loud complaints that the events of the preceding session had been
misrepresented to the public, that emissaries of the Court, in every
part of the kingdom, declaimed against the absurd jealousies or still
more absurd parsimony which had refused to His Majesty the means of
keeping up such an army as might secure the country against invasion.
Even justices of the peace, it was said, even deputy-lieutenants, had
used King James and King Lewis as bugbears, for the purpose of stirring
up the people against honest and thrifty representatives. Angry
resolutions were passed, declaring it to be the opinion of the House
that the best way to establish entire confidence between the King and
the Estates of the Realm would be to put a brand on those evil advisers
who had dared to breathe in the royal ear calumnies against a faithful
Parliament. An address founded on these resolutions was voted; many
thought that a violent rupture was inevitable. But William returned an
answer so prudent and gentle that malice itself could not prolong the
dispute. By this time, indeed, a new dispute had begun. The address
had scarcely been moved when the House called for copies of the papers
relating to Kidd's expedition. Somers, conscious of innocence, knew that
it was wise as well as right to be perfectly ingenuous, and resolved
that there should be no concealment. His friends stood manfully by him,
and his enemies struck at him with such blind fury that their blows
injured only themselves. Howe raved like a maniac. "What is to become of
the country, plundered by land, plundered by sea? Our rulers have laid
hold on our lands, our woods, our mines, our money. And all this is not
enough. We cannot send a cargo to the farthest ends of the earth, but
they must send a gang of thieves after it." Harley and Seymour tried
to carry a vote of censure without giving the House time to read the
papers. But the general feeling was strongly for a short delay. At
length, on the sixth of December, the subject was considered in a
committee of the whole House. Shower undertook to prove that the letters
patent to which Somers had put the Great Seal were illegal. Cowper
replied to him with immense applause, and seems to have completely
refuted him. Some of the Tory orators had employed what was then a
favourite claptrap. Very great men, no doubt, were concerned in this
business. But were the Commons of England to stand in awe of great men?
Would not they have the spirit to censure corruption and oppression
in the highest places? Cowper answered finely that assuredly the House
ought not to be deterred from the discharge of any duty by the fear of
great men, but that fear was not the only base and evil passion of which
great men were the objects, and that the flatterer who courted their
favour was not a worse citizen than the envious calumniator who took
pleasure in bringing whatever was eminent down to his own level. At
length, after a debate which lasted from midday till nine at night, and
in which all the leading members took part, the committee divided on
the question that the letters patent were dishonourable to the King,
inconsistent with the law of nations, contrary to the statutes of the
realm, and destructive of property and trade. The Chancellor's enemies
had felt confident of victory, and had made the resolution so strong in
order that it might be impossible for him to retain the Great Seal. They
soon found that it would have been wise to propose a gentler censure.
Great numbers of their adherents, convinced by Cowper's arguments,
or unwilling to put a cruel stigma on a man of whose genius and
accomplishments the nation was proud, stole away before the door was
closed. To the general astonishment there were only one hundred and
thirty-three Ayes to one hundred and eighty-nine Noes. That the City of
London did not consider Somers as the destroyer, and his enemies as the
protectors, of trade, was proved on the following morning by the most
unequivocal of signs. As soon as the news of his triumph reached the
Royal Exchange, the price of stocks went up.
Some weeks elapsed before the Tories ventured again to attack him. In
the meantime they amused themselves by trying to worry another person
whom they hated even more bitterly. When, in a financial debate,
the arrangements of the household of the Duke of Gloucester were
incidentally mentioned, one or two members took the opportunity of
throwing reflections on Burnet. Burnet's very name sufficed to raise
among the High Churchmen a storm of mingled merriment and anger. The
Speaker in vain reminded the orators that they were wandering from the
question. The majority was determined to have some fun with the Right
Reverend Whig, and encouraged them to proceed. Nothing appears to have
been said on the other side. The chiefs of the opposition inferred from
the laughing and cheering of the Bishop's enemies, and from the silence
of his friends, that there would be no difficulty in driving from Court,
with contumely, the prelate whom of all prelates they most detested, as
the personification of the latitudinarian spirit, a Jack Presbyter in
lawn sleeves. They, therefore, after the lapse of a few hours, moved
quite unexpectedly an address requesting the King to remove the Bishop
of Salisbury from the place of preceptor to the young heir apparent.
But it soon appeared that many who could not help smiling at Burnet's
weaknesses did justice to his abilities and virtues. The debate was hot.
The unlucky Pastoral Letter was of course not forgotten. It was asked
whether a man who had proclaimed that England was a conquered country, a
man whose servile pages the English Commons had ordered to be burned
by the hangman, could be a fit instructor for an English Prince. Some
reviled the Bishop for being a Socinian, which he was not, and some
for being a Scotchman, which he was. His defenders fought his battle
gallantly. "Grant," they said, "that it is possible to find, amidst an
immense mass of eloquent and learned matter published in defence of the
Protestant religion and of the English Constitution, a paragraph which,
though well intended, was not well considered, is that error of an
unguarded minute to outweigh the services of more than twenty years? If
one House of Commons, by a very small majority, censured a little tract
of which his Lordship was the author, let it be remembered that another
House of Commons unanimously voted thanks to him for a work of very
different magnitude and importance, the History of the Reformation. And,
as to what is said about his birthplace, is there not already ill humour
enough in Scotland? Has not the failure of that unhappy expedition to
Darien raised a sufficiently bitter feeling against us throughout that
kingdom? Every wise and honest man is desirous to soothe the angry
passions of our neighbours. And shall we, just at this moment,
exasperate those passions by proclaiming that to be born on the north
of the Tweed is a disqualification for all honourable trust?" The
ministerial members would gladly have permitted the motion to be
withdrawn. But the opposition, elated with hope, insisted on dividing,
and were confounded by finding that, with all the advantage of a
surprise, they were only one hundred and thirty-three to one hundred and
seventy-three. Their defeat would probably have been less complete, had
not all those members who were especially attached to the Princess of
Denmark voted in the majority or absented themselves. Marlborough used
all his influence against the motion; and he had strong reasons for
doing so. He was by no means well pleased to see the Commons engaged in
discussing the characters and past lives of the persons who were placed
about the Duke of Gloucester. If the High Churchmen, by reviving old
stories, succeeded in carrying a vote against the Preceptor, it was
by no means unlikely that some malicious Whig might retaliate on
the Governor. The Governor must have been conscious that he was not
invulnerable; nor could he absolutely rely on the support of the
whole body of Tories; for it was believed that their favourite leader,
Rochester, thought himself the fittest person to superintend the
education of his grand nephew.
From Burnet the opposition went back to Somers. Some Crown property
near Reigate had been granted to Somers by the King. In this transaction
there was nothing that deserved blame. The Great Seal ought always to
be held by a lawyer of the highest distinction; nor can such a lawyer
discharge his duties in a perfectly efficient manner unless, with the
Great Seal, he accepts a peerage. But he may not have accumulated a
fortune such as will alone suffice to support a peerage; his peerage
is permanent; and his tenure of the Great Seal is precarious. In a few
weeks he may be dismissed from office, and may find that he has lost a
lucrative profession, that he has got nothing but a costly dignity, that
he has been transformed from a prosperous barrister into a mendicant
lord. Such a risk no wise man will run. If, therefore, the state is to
be well served in the highest civil post, it is absolutely necessary
that a provision should be made for retired Chancellors. The Sovereign
is now empowered by Act of Parliament to make such a provision out of
the public revenue. In old times such a provision was ordinarily made
out of the hereditary domain of the Crown. What had been bestowed on
Somers appears to have amounted, after all deductions, to a net income
of about sixteen hundred a year, a sum which will hardly shock us who
have seen at one time five retired Chancellors enjoying pensions of five
thousand a year each. For the crime, however, of accepting this grant
the leaders of the opposition hoped that they should be able to punish
Somers with disgrace and ruin. One difficulty stood in the way. All that
he had received was but a pittance when compared with the wealth with
which some of his persecutors had been loaded by the last two kings of
the House of Stuart. It was not easy to pass any censure on him which
should not imply a still more severe censure on two generations of
Granvilles, on two generations of Hydes, and on two generations of
Finches. At last some ingenious Tory thought of a device by which it
might be possible to strike the enemy without wounding friends.
The grants of Charles and James had been made in time of peace; and
William's grant to Somers had been made in time of war. Malice eagerly
caught at this childish distinction. It was moved that any minister
who had been concerned in passing a grant for his own benefit while the
nation was under the heavy taxes of the late war had violated his trust;
as if the expenditure which is necessary to secure to the country a good
administration of justice ought to be suspended by war; or as if it were
not criminal in a government to squander the resources of the state in
time of peace. The motion was made by James Brydges, eldest son of the
Lord Chandos, the James Brydges who afterwards became Duke of Chandos,
who raised a gigantic fortune out of war taxes, to squander it in
comfortless and tasteless ostentation, and who is still remembered
as the Timon of Pope's keen and brilliant satire. It was remarked as
extraordinary that Brydges brought forward and defended his motion
merely as the assertion of an abstract truth, and avoided all mention
of the Chancellor. It seemed still more extraordinary that Howe, whose
whole eloquence consisted in cutting personalities, named nobody on this
occasion, and contented himself with declaiming in general terms against
corruption and profusion. It was plain that the enemies of Somers were
at once urged forward by hatred and kept back by fear. They knew
that they could not carry a resolution directly condemning him. They,
therefore, cunningly brought forward a mere speculative proposition
which many members might be willing to affirm without scrutinising it
severely. But, as soon as the major premise had been admitted, the minor
would be without difficulty established; and it would be impossible to
avoid coming to the conclusion that Somers had violated his trust. Such
tactics, however, have very seldom succeeded in English parliaments;
for a little good sense and a little straightforwardness are quite
sufficient to confound them. A sturdy Whig member, Sir Rowland Gwyn,
disconcerted the whole scheme of operations. "Why this reserve?" he
said, "Everybody knows your meaning. Everybody sees that you have not
the courage to name the great man whom you are trying to destroy." "That
is false," cried Brydges; and a stormy altercation followed. It soon
appeared that innocence would again triumph. The two parties seemed to
have exchanged characters for one day. The friends of the government,
who in the Parliament were generally humble and timorous, took a high
tone, and spoke as it becomes men to speak who are defending persecuted
genius and virtue. The malecontents, generally so insolent and
turbulent, seemed to be completely cowed. They abased themselves so
low as to protest, what no human being could believe, that they had no
intention of attacking the Chancellor, and had framed their resolution
without any view to him. Howe, from whose lips scarcely any thing ever
dropped but gall and poison, went so far as to say: "My Lord Somers is
a man of eminent merit, of merit so eminent that, if he had made a slip,
we might well overlook it." At a late hour the question was put; and the
motion was rejected by a majority of fifty in a house of four hundred
and nineteen members. It was long since there had been so large an
attendance at a division.
The ignominious failure of the attacks on Somers and Burnet seemed to
prove that the assembly was coming round to a better temper. But the
temper of a House of Commons left without the guidance of a ministry
is never to be trusted. "Nobody can tell today," said an experienced
politician of that time, "what the majority may take it into their heads
to do tomorrow." Already a storm was gathering in which the Constitution
itself was in danger of perishing, and from which none of the three
branches of the legislature escaped without serious damage.
The question of the Irish forfeitures had been raised; and about
that question the minds of men, both within and without the walls of
Parliament, were in a strangely excitable state. Candid and intelligent
men, whatever veneration they may feel for the memory of William,
must find it impossible to deny that, in his eagerness to enrich and
aggrandise his personal friends, he too often forgot what was due to
his own reputation and to the public interest. It is true that in giving
away the old domains of the Crown he did only what he had a right to
do, and what all his predecessors had done; nor could the most factious
opposition insist on resuming his grants of those domains without
resuming at the same time the grants of his uncles. But between those
domains and the estates recently forfeited in Ireland there was a
distinction, which would not indeed have been recognised by the
judges, but which to a popular assembly might well seem to be of grave
importance. In the year 1690 a Bill had been brought in for applying the
Irish forfeitures to the public service. That Bill passed the Commons,
and would probably, with large amendments, have passed the Lords, had
not the King, who was under the necessity of attending the Congress at
the Hague, put an end to the session. In bidding the Houses farewell
on that occasion, he assured them that he should not dispose of the
property about which they had been deliberating, till they should have
had another opportunity of settling that matter. He had, as he thought,
strictly kept his word; for he had not disposed of this property till
the Houses had repeatedly met and separated without presenting to him
any bill on the subject. They had had the opportunity which he had
assured them that they should have. They had had more than one such
opportunity. The pledge which he had given had therefore been amply
redeemed; and he did not conceive that he was bound to abstain longer
from exercising his undoubted prerogative. But, though it could hardly
be denied that he had literally fulfilled his promise, the general
opinion was that such a promise ought to have been more than literally
fulfilled. If his Parliament, overwhelmed with business which could not
be postponed without danger to his throne and to his person, had been
forced to defer, year after year, the consideration of so large and
complex a question as that of the Irish forfeitures, it ill became
him to take advantage of such a laches with the eagerness of a shrewd
attorney. Many persons, therefore, who were sincerely attached to his
government, and who on principle disapproved of resumptions, thought the
case of these forfeitures an exception to the general rule.
The Commons had at the close of the last session tacked to the Land Tax
Bill a clause impowering seven Commissioners, who were designated by
name, to take account of the Irish forfeitures; and the Lords and the
King, afraid of losing the Land Tax Bill, had reluctantly consented to
this clause. During the recess, the commissioners had visited Ireland.
They had since returned to England. Their report was soon laid before
both Houses. By the Tories, and by their allies the republicans, it was
eagerly hailed. It had, indeed, been framed for the express purpose
of flattering and of inflaming them. Three of the commissioners had
strongly objected to some passages as indecorous, and even calumnious;
but the other four had overruled every objection. Of the four the chief
was Trenchard. He was by calling a pamphleteer, and seems not to have
been aware that the sharpness of style and of temper which may be
tolerated in a pamphlet is inexcusable in a state paper. He was certain
that he should be protected and rewarded by the party to which he owed
his appointment, and was delighted to have it in his power to publish,
with perfect security and with a semblance of official authority, bitter
reflections on King and ministry, Dutch favourites, French refugees, and
Irish Papists. The consequence was that only four names were subscribed
to the report. The three dissentients presented a separate memorial. As
to the main facts, however, there was little or no dispute. It appeared
that more than a million of Irish acres, or about seventeen
hundred thousand English acres, an area equal to that of Middlesex,
Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire
together, had been forfeited during the late troubles. But of the
value of this large territory very different estimates were formed.
The commissioners acknowledged that they could obtain no certain
information. In the absence of such information they conjectured the
annual rent to be about two hundred thousand pounds, and the fee simple
to be worth thirteen years' purchase, that is to say, about two millions
six hundred thousand pounds. They seem not to have been aware that much
of the land had been let very low on perpetual leases, and that much was
burdened with mortgages. A contemporary writer, who was evidently well
acquainted with Ireland, asserted that the authors of the report had
valued the forfeited property in Carlow at six times the real market
price, and that the two million six hundred thousand pounds, of which
they talked, would be found to shrink to about half a million, which, as
the exchanges then stood between Dublin and London, would have dwindled
to four hundred thousand pounds by the time that it reached the English
Exchequer. It was subsequently proved, beyond all dispute, that this
estimate was very much nearer the truth than that which had been formed
by Trenchard and Trenchard's colleagues.
Of the seventeen hundred thousand acres which had been forfeited, above
a fourth part had been restored to the ancient proprietors in conformity
with the civil articles of the treaty of Limerick. About one seventh
of the remaining three fourths had been given back to unhappy families,
which, though they could not plead the letter of the treaty, had been
thought fit objects of clemency. The rest had been bestowed, partly on
persons whose seances merited all and more than all that they obtained,
but chiefly on the King's personal friends. Romney had obtained a
considerable share of the royal bounty. But of all the grants the
largest was to Woodstock, the eldest son of Portland; the next was to
Albemarle. An admirer of William cannot relate without pain that he
divided between these two foreigners an extent of country larger than
Hertfordshire.
This fact, simply reported, would have sufficed to excite a strong
feeling of indignation in a House of Commons less irritable and
querulous than that which then sate at Westminster. But Trenchard and
his confederates were not content with simply reporting the fact. They
employed all their skill to inflame the passions of the majority. They
at once applied goads to its anger and held out baits to its cupidity.
They censured that part of William's conduct which deserved high
praise even more severely than that part of his conduct for which it is
impossible to set up any defence. They told the Parliament that the old
proprietors of the soil had been treated with pernicious indulgence;
that the capitulation of Limerick had been construed in a manner far
too favourable to the conquered race; and that the King had suffered his
compassion to lead him into the error of showing indulgence to many who
could not pretend that they were within the terms of the capitulation.
Even now, after the lapse of eight years, it might be possible, by
instituting a severe inquisition, and by giving proper encouragement to
informers, to prove that many Papists, who were still permitted to enjoy
their estates, had taken the side of James during the civil war. There
would thus be a new and plentiful harvest of confiscations. The four
bitterly complained that their task had been made more difficult by
the hostility of persons who held office in Ireland, and by the secret
influence of great men who were interested in concealing the truth.
These grave charges were made in general terms. No name was mentioned;
no fact was specified; no evidence was tendered.
Had the report stopped here, those who drew it up might justly have
been blamed for the unfair and ill natured manner in which they had
discharged their functions; but they could not have been accused of
usurping functions which did not belong to them for the purpose of
insulting the Sovereign and exasperating the nation. But these men
well knew in what way and for what purpose they might safely venture to
exceed their commission. The Act of Parliament from which they derived
their powers authorised them to report on estates forfeited during the
late troubles. It contained not a word which could be construed into an
authority to report on the old hereditary domain of the Crown. With that
domain they had as little to do as with the seignorage levied on tin
in the Duchy of Cornwall, or with the church patronage of the Duchy of
Lancaster. But they had discovered that a part of that domain had been
alienated by a grant which they could not deny themselves the pleasure
of publishing to the world. It was indeed an unfortunate grant, a grant
which could not be brought to light without much mischief and much
scandal. It was long since William had ceased to be the lover of
Elisabeth Villiers, long since he had asked her counsel or listened to
her fascinating conversation except in the presence of other persons.
She had been some years married to George Hamilton, a soldier who had
distinguished himself by his courage in Ireland and Flanders, and who
probably held the courtier like doctrine that a lady is not dishonoured
by having been the paramour of a king. William was well pleased with the
marriage, bestowed on the wife a portion of the old Crown property in
Ireland, and created the husband a peer of Scotland by the title of
Earl of Orkney. Assuredly William would not have raised his character by
abandoning to poverty a woman whom he had loved, though with a criminal
love. He was undoubtedly bound, as a man of humanity and honour, to
provide liberally for her; but he should have provided for her rather
by saving from his civil list than by alienating his hereditary revenue.
The four malecontent commissioners rejoiced with spiteful joy over this
discovery. It was in vain that the other three represented that the
grant to Lady Orkney was one with which they had nothing to do, and
that, if they went out of their way to hold it up to obloquy, they might
be justly said to fly in the King's face. "To fly in the King's face!"
said one of the majority; "our business is to fly in the King's face. We
were sent here to fly in the King's face." With this patriotic object a
paragraph about Lady Orkney's grant was added to the report, a paragraph
too in which the value of that grant was so monstrously exaggerated that
William appeared to have surpassed the profligate extravagance of
his uncle Charles. The estate bestowed on the countess was valued at
twenty-four thousand pounds a year. The truth seems to be that the
income which she derived from the royal bounty, after making allowance
for incumbrances and for the rate of exchange, was about four thousand
pounds.
The success of the report was complete. The nation and its
representatives hated taxes, hated foreign favourites, and hated Irish
Papists; and here was a document which held out the hope that England
might, at the expense of foreign courtiers and of popish Celts, be
relieved from a great load of taxes. Many, both within and without
the walls of Parliament, gave entire faith to the estimate which the
commissioners had formed by a wild guess, in the absence of trustworthy
information. They gave entire faith also to the prediction that a strict
inquiry would detect many traitors who had hitherto been permitted to
escape with impunity, and that a large addition would thus be made
to the extensive territory which had already been confiscated. It was
popularly said that, if vigorous measures were taken, the gain to the
kingdom would be not less than three hundred thousand pounds a year; and
almost the whole of this sum, a sum more than sufficient to defray the
whole charge of such an army as the Commons were disposed to keep up
in time of peace, would be raised by simply taking away what had been
unjustifiably given to Dutchmen, who would still retain immense wealth
taken out of English pockets, or unjustifiably left to Irishmen,
who thought it at once the most pleasant and the most pious of all
employments to cut English throats. The Lower House went to work with
the double eagerness of rapacity and of animosity. As soon as the report
of the four and the protest of the three had been laid on the table
and read by the clerk, it was resolved that a Resumption Bill should
be brought in. It was then resolved, in opposition to the plainest
principles of justice, that no petition from any person who might think
himself aggrieved by this bill should ever be received. It was necessary
to consider how the commissioners should be remunerated for their
services; and this question was decided with impudent injustice. It
was determined that the commissioners who had signed the report should
receive a thousand pounds each. But a large party thought that the
dissentient three deserved no recompense; and two of them were merely
allowed what was thought sufficient to cover the expense of their
journey to Ireland. This was nothing less than to give notice to every
man who should ever be employed in any similar inquiry that, if he
wished to be paid, he must report what would please the assembly which
held the purse of the state. In truth the House was despotic, and was
fast contracting the vices of a despot. It was proud of its antipathy to
courtiers; and it was calling into existence a new set of courtiers who
would study all its humours, who would flatter all its weaknesses, who
would prophesy to it smooth things, and who would assuredly be, in no
respect, less greedy, less faithless, or less abject than the sycophants
who bow in the antechambers of kings.
Indeed the dissentient commissioners had worse evils to apprehend than
that of being left unremunerated. One of them, Sir Richard Levinz, had
mentioned in private to his friends some disrespectful expressions
which had been used by one of his colleagues about the King. What he
had mentioned in private was, not perhaps very discreetly, repeated
by Montague in the House. The predominant party eagerly seized the
opportunity of worrying both Montague and Levinz. A resolution implying
a severe censure on Montague was carried. Levinz was brought to the bar
and examined. The four were also in attendance. They protested that he
had misrepresented them. Trenchard declared that he had always spoken of
His Majesty as a subject ought to speak of an excellent sovereign, who
had been deceived by evil counsellors, and who would be grateful to
those who should bring the truth to his knowledge. He vehemently denied
that he had called the grant to Lady Orkney villainous. It was a
word that he never used, a word that never came out of the mouth of a
gentleman. These assertions will be estimated at the proper value by
those who are acquainted with Trenchard's pamphlets, pamphlets in which
the shocking word villainous will without difficulty be found, and which
are full of malignant reflections on William. [20] But the House was
determined not to believe Levinz. He was voted a calumniator, and sent
to the Tower, as an example to all who should be tempted to speak truth
which the Commons might not like to hear.
Meanwhile the bill had been brought in, and was proceeding easily. It
provided that all the property which had belonged to the Crown at the
time of the accession of James the Second, or which had been forfeited
to the Crown since that time, should be vested in trustees. These
trustees were named in the bill; and among them were the four
commissioners who had signed the report. All the Irish grants of William
were annulled. The legal rights of persons other than the grantees were
saved. But of those rights the trustees were to be judges, and judges
without appeal. A claimant who gave them the trouble of attending to
him, and could not make out his case, was to be heavily fined. Rewards
were offered to informers who should discover any property which was
liable to confiscation, and which had not yet been confiscated. Though
eight years had elapsed since an arm had been lifted up in the conquered
island against the domination of the Englishry, the unhappy children
of the soil, who had been suffered to live, submissive and obscure,
on their hereditary fields, were threatened with a new and severe
inquisition into old offences.
Objectionable as many parts of the bill undoubtedly were, nobody who
knew the House of Commons believed it to be possible to carry any
amendment. The King flattered himself that a motion for leaving at his
disposal a third part of the forfeitures would be favourably received.
There can be little doubt that a compromise would have been willingly
accepted twelve months earlier. But the report had made all compromise
impossible. William, however, was bent on trying the experiment; and
Vernon consented to go on what he considered as a forlorn hope. He made
his speech and his motion; but the reception which he met with was such
that he did not venture to demand a division. This feeble attempt
at obstruction only made the impetuous current chafe the more. Howe
immediately moved two resolutions; one attributing the load of debts and
taxes which lay on the nation to the Irish grants; the other censuring
all who had been concerned in advising or passing those grants. Nobody
was named; not because the majority was inclined to show any tenderness
to the Whig ministers, but because some of the most objectionable grants
had been sanctioned by the Board of Treasury when Godolphin and Seymour,
who had great influence with the country party, sate at that board.
Howe's two resolutions were laid before the King by the Speaker, in
whose train all the leaders of the opposition appeared at Kensington.
Even Seymour, with characteristic effrontery, showed himself there as
one of the chief authors of a vote which pronounced him guilty of a
breach of duty. William's answer was that he had thought himself bound
to reward out of the forfeited property those who had served him well,
and especially those who had borne a principal part in the reduction of
Ireland. The war, he said, had undoubtedly left behind it a heavy debt;
and he should be glad to see that debt reduced by just and effectual
means. This answer was but a bad one; and, in truth, it was
hardly possible for him to return a good one. He had done what was
indefensible; and, by attempting to defend himself, he made his case
worse. It was not true that the Irish forfeitures, or one fifth part of
them, had been granted to men who had distinguished themselves in the
Irish war; and it was not judicious to hint that those forfeitures could
not justly be applied to the discharge of the public debts. The Commons
murmured, and not altogether without reason. "His Majesty tells us,"
they said, "that the debts fall to us and the forfeitures to him. We
are to make good out of the purses of Englishmen what was spent upon the
war; and he is to put into the purses of Dutchmen what was got by the
war." When the House met again, Howe moved that whoever had advised
the King to return such an answer was an enemy to His Majesty and the
kingdom; and this resolution was carried with some slight modification.
To whatever criticism William's answer might be open, he had said one
thing which well deserved the attention of the House. A small part of
the forfeited property had been bestowed on men whose services to the
state well deserved a much larger recompense; and that part could not
be resumed without gross injustice and ingratitude. An estate of very
moderate value had been given, with the title of Earl of Athlone, to
Ginkell, whose skill and valour had brought the war in Ireland to a
triumphant close. Another estate had been given, with the title of Earl
of Galway, to Rouvigny, who, in the crisis of the decisive battle, at
the very moment when Saint Ruth was waving his hat, and exclaiming
that the English should be beaten back to Dublin, had, at the head of
a gallant body of horse, struggled through the morass, turned the left
wing of the Celtic army, and retrieved the day. But the predominant
faction, drunk with insolence and animosity, made no distinction between
courtiers who had been enriched by injudicious partiality and warriors
who had been sparingly rewarded for great exploits achieved in defence
of the liberties and the religion of our country. Athlone was a
Dutchman; Galway was a Frenchman; and it did not become a good
Englishman to say a word in favour of either.
Yet this was not the most flagrant injustice of which the Commons were
guilty. According to the plainest principles of common law and of common
sense, no man can forfeit any rights except those which he has. All the
donations which William had made he had made subject to this limitation.
But by this limitation the Commons were too angry and too rapacious to
be bound. They determined to vest in the trustees of the forfeited lands
an estate greater than had ever belonged to the forfeiting landholders.
Thus innocent persons were violently deprived of property which was
theirs by descent or by purchase, of property which had been strictly
respected by the King and by his grantees. No immunity was granted even
to men who had fought on the English side, even to men who had lined the
walls of Londonderry and rushed on the Irish guns at Newton Butler.
In some cases the Commons showed indulgence; but their indulgence was
not less unjustifiable, nor of less pernicious example, than their
severity. The ancient rule, a rule which is still strictly maintained,
and which cannot be relaxed without danger of boundless profusion and
shameless jobbery, is that whatever the Parliament grants shall be
granted to the Sovereign, and that no public bounty shall be bestowed on
any private person except by the Sovereign.
The Lower House now, contemptuously disregarding both principles and
precedents, took on itself to carve estates out of the forfeitures
for persons whom it was inclined to favour. To the Duke of Ormond
especially, who ranked among the Tories and was distinguished by his
dislike of the foreigners, marked partiality was shown. Some of his
friends, indeed, hoped that they should be able to insert in the bill
a clause bestowing on him all the confiscated estates in the county of
Tipperary. But they found that it would be prudent in them to content
themselves with conferring on him a boon smaller in amount, but equally
objectionable in principle. He had owed very large debts to persons who
had forfeited to the Crown all that belonged to them. Those debts were
therefore now due from him to the Crown. The House determined to make
him a present of the whole, that very House which would not consent
to leave a single acre to the general who had stormed Athlone, who had
gained the battle of Aghrim, who had entered Galway in triumph, and who
had received the submission of Limerick.
That a bill so violent, so unjust, and so unconstitutional would pass
the Lords without considerable alteration was hardly to be expected. The
ruling demagogues, therefore, resolved to join it with the bill which
granted to the Crown a land tax of two shillings in the pound for the
service of the next year, and thus to place the Upper House under the
necessity of either passing both bills together without the change of a
word, or rejecting both together, and leaving the public creditor unpaid
and the nation defenceless.
There was great indignation among the Peers. They were not indeed more
disposed than the Commons to approve of the manner in which the Irish
forfeitures had been granted away; for the antipathy to the foreigners,
strong as it was in the nation generally, was strongest in the highest
ranks. Old barons were angry at seeing themselves preceded by new
earls from Holland and Guelders. Garters, gold keys, white staves,
rangerships, which had been considered as peculiarly belonging to the
hereditary grandees of the realm, were now intercepted by aliens.
Every English nobleman felt that his chance of obtaining a share of
the favours of the Crown was seriously diminished by the competition
of Bentincks and Keppels, Auverquerques and Zulesteins. But, though the
riches and dignities heaped on the little knot of Dutch courtiers might
disgust him, the recent proceedings of the Commons could not but disgust
him still more. The authority, the respectability, the existence of his
order were threatened with destruction. Not only,--such were the
just complaints of the Peers,--not only are we to be deprived of that
coordinate legislative power to which we are, by the constitution of the
realm, entitled. We are not to be allowed even a suspensive veto. We are
not to dare to remonstrate, to suggest an amendment, to offer a reason,
to ask for an explanation. Whenever the other House has passed a bill
to which it is known that we have strong objections, that bill is to
be tacked to a bill of supply. If we alter it, we are told that we
are attacking the most sacred privilege of the representatives of the
people, and that we must either take the whole or reject the whole. If
we reject the whole, public credit is shaken; the Royal Exchange is in
confusion; the Bank stops payment; the army is disbanded; the fleet
is in mutiny; the island is left, without one regiment, without one
frigate, at the mercy of every enemy. The danger of throwing out a bill
of supply is doubtless great. Yet it may on the whole be better that we
should face that danger, once for all, than that we should consent to
be, what we are fast becoming, a body of no more importance than the
Convocation.
Animated by such feelings as these, a party in the Upper House was eager
to take the earliest opportunity of making a stand. On the fourth of
April, the second reading was moved. Near a hundred lords were present.
Somers, whose serene wisdom and persuasive eloquence had seldom been
more needed, was confined to his room by illness; and his place on the
woolsack was supplied by the Earl of Bridgewater. Several orators, both
Whig and Tory, objected to proceeding farther. But the chiefs of both
parties thought it better to try the almost hopeless experiment of
committing the bill and sending it back amended to the Commons. The
second reading was carried by seventy votes to twenty-three. It was
remarked that both Portland and Albemarle voted in the majority.
In the Committee and on the third reading several amendments were
proposed and carried. Wharton, the boldest and most active of the Whig
peers, and the Lord Privy Seal Lonsdale, one of the most moderate and
reasonable of the Tories, took the lead, and were strenuously supported
by the Lord President Pembroke, and by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who
seems on this occasion to have a little forgotten his habitual sobriety
and caution. Two natural sons of Charles the Second, Richmond and
Southampton, who had strong personal reasons for disliking resumption
bills, were zealous on the same side. No peer, however, as far as can
now be discovered, ventured to defend the way in which William had
disposed of his Irish domains. The provisions which annulled the grants
of those domains were left untouched. But the words of which the effect
was to vest in the parliamentary trustees property which had never
been forfeited to the King, and had never been given away by him, were
altered; and the clauses by which estates and sums of money were,
in defiance of constitutional principle and of immemorial practice,
bestowed on persons who were favourites of the Commons, were so far
modified as to be, in form, somewhat less exceptionable. The bill,
improved by these changes, was sent down by two judges to the Lower
House.