House of Commons having obtained the position of both legislature and
executive, the administration is placed in the hands of a Committee of
that party which is predominant in the Commons; the Crown, in fact,
having but little choice in the matter. This theory of government, which
is a necessary consequence of the Parliamentary triumph at the
Revolution, was in the years immediately succeeding that event not
understood. The notion of a king whose duties are rather ornamental than
real had scarcely entered men's minds. The King was still expected to
have the direction of the executive, to be, in fact, his own Prime
Minister, and to nominate as heads of departments such statesmen as he
thought best fitted for the employment, without exact regard to their
political views. The effect of this was to make the King responsible for
the Government; and though the right of impeachment, as exercised in the
case of Danby, rested upon the supposition that ministers were
responsible to Parliament, the fact was not yet fully recognized. It was
this responsibility of the king which had produced the disasters of the
Great Rebellion and the late Revolution. The gradual substitution of
Parliamentary ministry, which should serve as an intermediate body
between the Commons and the Crown, and save the Crown from direct
responsibility, is the great constitutional change which was completed
on the accession of the Hanoverian house. Such a change becomes
absolutely necessary when Parliament has once secured a complete control
of the executive; otherwise it is plain that the acts or proposals of
the executive, constantly met by a hostile majority in Parliament,
could never be brought to a completion. It also of necessity implies a
mutual responsibility among the ministers, who upon essential points
must all agree with the Parliamentary majority. These necessary
consequences of the triumph of the Whig theory of the sovereignty of the
people were little understood even by the best English politicians; and
William, able as he was as a foreign statesman, had never a clear
insight into the working of the English Constitution. Nor was his
character such as to fit him to occupy the place of an ornamental king.
Thus he both himself intended and was expected by the nation to exercise
a supreme influence in the Government, at the same time that the newly
won powers of the Parliament were liable constantly to thwart his
schemes. Besides the difficulty which this general ignorance of
constitutional principles caused, peculiar difficulties, arising from
the manner in which he had obtained the Crown, beset William. He had
been brought to the throne by the Whigs. By the Whigs he was expected to
become a party leader. They looked forward, under his guidance, to a
triumphant revenge on the party at whose hands they had suffered so
much. On the other hand, William's own wish was to hush the storm of
faction, to become King of the whole English nation, not of one party,
and to be able to use the resources of England for his great European
measures; he therefore had no intention of becoming a mere party leader.
Again, his view of the duties and responsibilities of a king was a high
one, whereas the Whigs, on whom he might be expected to rely, were
pledged to give greater prominence to the influence of Parliament.
William's natural tendencies, therefore, when once safeguards for a just
Government and personal liberty were secured, inclined him rather to the
Tories, whose view of the prerogative was higher.
[Sidenote: William's ministry.]
It was in the midst of these difficulties that William had to select his
ministry. He attempted to conciliate all parties, with the exception of
the extreme Jacobites, and his ministry was a mixed one. Danby had been
mainly instrumental in bringing William to England. He had indeed in the
Convention thrown some obstacles in the way of the Parliamentary change
of dynasty, but might fairly look for a high reward. He was displeased
at being appointed President of the Council, a post of high honour, but
not of great political activity. Halifax was appointed Privy Seal. His
intellect, which always saw two sides of a question, was not such as to
fit him for decided statesmanship. The places of real importance, the
Secretaryships, were shared between the Tories and the Whigs;
Nottingham, the leader of that class who expressed with perfect honesty
their willingness to acknowledge any King _de facto_, and Shrewsbury, a
young man of great ability and as yet a consistent Whig, were appointed
to those places. Neither Treasury nor Admiralty were intrusted to any
single individual, but were placed in Commission, both Whigs and Tories
sitting at the Boards. At the Treasury, though only third on the
Commission, Godolphin, by his superior skill and knowledge, soon became
pre-eminent. The purity of the judgment-seat was secured by a careful
selection of the ablest lawyers from a list supplied by the Privy
Council, while the great places of the Household, where personal rather
than political influence was wanted, were chiefly given to William's
personal friends from Holland, the most prominent being Overkirk, Master
of the Horse, and Bentinck, subsequently Earl of Portland.
[Sidenote: Settlement of the revenue.]
[Sidenote: Settlement of the Church.]
By the appointment of his ministers, and by the conversion of the
Convention into a Parliament, the apparatus of Government was complete.
The Whigs were for a time triumphant. The revenue was settled on a peace
footing at £1,200,000 a year; the hereditary taxes being given to
William for the support of his Crown (a grant which forms the origin of
the Civil List), while the Parliamentary taxes intended for the support
of Government were granted only for limited periods. The hearth tax, the
most obnoxious and unjust of taxes, as it is at once inquisitorial in
its action and presses with undue severity upon the poor in comparison
with the rich, was abolished. The settlement of the Church, and of the
oaths to be taken by the holders of places, at once rendered obvious the
strength of faction which still existed, and the difficulties which must
beset all attempt at impartial government. Three Bills were produced, a
Toleration Bill, a Comprehension Bill, for the purpose of so changing
the construction of the Church and its Liturgy as to admit numerous
Protestant Dissenters, and a Bill for the removal of the Test Act, for
the purpose of enabling the King to employ, as he was most desirous of
doing, all Protestants in his service. Of these three, one only, the
Toleration Act, was carried. In fact the Comprehension Bill, which was
introduced by Nottingham, was no doubt intended, after admitting a
certain number of Dissenters, to render the exclusion of the rest more
absolute. Fear of this rendered the Dissenters themselves hostile to it,
and William's personal efforts to produce at once comprehension and
relaxation of the Test Act were in vain; both Bills were thrown out.
[Sidenote: Oaths of allegiance and supremacy.]
There yet remained the question of the oaths of allegiance and
supremacy. It was acknowledged on all hands that all lay place-holders
and all newly-appointed holders of ecclesiastical preferments should be
obliged to take these oaths, slightly altered to suit existing
circumstances. The case of the clergy already holding benefices was not
so clear. Many were willing to accept the new Government peaceably, and
it seemed hard that they should be required to take oaths which gave the
lie to all their former political views. With regard to the Bishops too,
the High Church Party advanced the doctrine that the Episcopal
ordination was indelible, and that it was impossible for any Act either
of King or Parliament to prevent a man who had once been a Bishop from
being so always. Against the King's wish the party who were for the most
stringent application of the oaths carried the day. All the clergy were
required to take them by August 1689; if they had not been taken by
February 1690, those clergy and Bishops who refused them were to be
deprived. Between 300 and 400 refused the oath, and there thus sprang up
that section of the clergy known as Nonjurors. The settlement of the
country was completed by the Coronation Oath, which declared that the
King would uphold the Protestant religion as settled by law. It was a
foolish miscomprehension of these words, which obviously did not prevent
a Parliamentary change in the arrangements of religion, which
subsequently led George III. into his obstinate opposition to Catholic
emancipation. When the oath had been arranged, the coronation took place
(April 11), and some new titles were given; thus Danby became Lord
Caermarthen, Churchill Earl of Marlborough, Bentinck Earl of Portland,
and Mordaunt, First Lord of the Treasury, Earl of Monmouth.
[Sidenote: The European war breaks out.]
[Sidenote: Devastation of the Palatinate.]
When the Government of the country was fairly settled it was time for
William to receive his reward. Parliament gratified him by a strong
declaration against the policy of Louis abroad, and assurance of hearty
support should he find it necessary to have recourse to arms. On the
13th of May war with France was therefore declared. William stated that
he had no choice in the matter as France had already begun war upon
England. This was an allusion to the action of France in Ireland; for
Louis, though unable to trust James and his English and Irish friends in
that implicit manner which would have rendered his assistance
irresistible, was yet so far convinced that the real key to success
against the coalition was the neutralization of England, that he had
allowed James some assistance in troops. The other great countries of
the coalition had already declared war with France. Louis found himself
with one ally only, who did him, if possible, more harm than
good,--this was the Porte. He succeeded in inducing that power to
continue its attacks upon Hungary, which was a constant source of
weakness to Austria; but the unnatural alliance between the most
Christian King and the great enemies of Christendom gave an opening for
the invective of his enemies, which received still further point from
his subsequent behaviour. Unable to sustain the forward position which
his armies had assumed in Germany the preceding year, especially when
some of his forces were required in Ireland, he ordered a retreat. What
he could not keep he determined to destroy, and the Palatinate was laid
waste with a reckless, unsparing fury, which enabled each country, as it
declared war with him, to point out that his conduct was more cruel than
even that of his Turkish ally. It had such an effect on the Continent,
that war was declared at intervals of about a month by Austria, the
Empire, Spain, Brandenburg and Holland. William's primary object was
attained; Europe was combined against France. The resources of England
were placed in his hands to support that coalition, but there was yet
much to be done before he was free to act.
[Sidenote: State of Ireland.]
It has been already related that, on his flight, James stated his
intention of finding if possible a new centre of action in Ireland. The
view was a natural one, for he had throughout his reign been preparing
that island as a refuge in case of danger. He had there acted with more
freedom than was possible in England, and gone far to carry out his
plans for re-establishing Catholicism. Talbot, Lord Tyrconnel, a
perfectly unscrupulous man, was at the head of the Government. Almost
all the other important offices were in Romanist hands. Rice, chief
Baron of the Exchequer, made the law courts subserve the same policy; he
openly asserted his intention of assaulting the Act of Settlement; all
who had or thought they had claims against the actual possessors of
land, brought their claims into his court, and no proof was held too
weak, no witness too untrustworthy, for the purpose of re-establishing
the old Catholics in their possession of the soil. From private acts he
proceeded to public. Charter after charter was forfeited; municipal
corporations re-established, with reckless indifference to all forms of
right, on a Roman Catholic basis. While aldermen in the boroughs thus
became Roman Catholic, sheriffs of the same religion were appointed, and
in their hands lay the choice of juries, so that the whole legal
apparatus was directed against Protestantism. The army meanwhile had
been similarly reorganized; 6000 Protestant veterans had been disbanded
and their places occupied by vehement and disorderly Catholics, who
lived, we are told, constantly at free quarters on the Protestant
inhabitants.
[Sidenote: Panic among the Englishry.]
[Sidenote: Londonderry and Enniskillen garrisoned.]
The arrival of William in England had brought matters to a crisis. The
Papists thought their time was at length come. The whole country was
full of panic and rumours of a coming massacre. Many of the English
fled. The gentry and yeomen gathered themselves together to the towns
and strong houses, to attempt if possible to make good for themselves
that security which the Government would not give them. The two most
important of these centres were Enniskillen and Londonderry. At the
former, early in 1689, the Protestant population refused admittance to
two companies of Popish infantry which had been ordered to be quartered
on them. The gentry collected, drove the soldiers away, appointed
Gustavus Hamilton governor, garrisoned the houses round Lough Erne, and
held the district for King William. At Londonderry the same process took
place. A regiment of 1200 Papists, under the Earl of Antrim, was sent to
the city, and the mayor and sheriffs, who by the new charters were
Papists, were proceeding to admit them, when thirteen young apprentices
of Scotch birth took upon themselves to close the gates, and the
Protestant gentry were summoned from the neighbouring country to defend
the city. In two days it was strongly garrisoned, and the troops
withdrew. It was in vain that Lord Mountjoy, a Protestant, who still
remained faithful to James, attempted a compromise. Some few troops
under Lundy were indeed admitted, but the country was still held for the
Protestants, and Lundy was obliged, in appearance at all events, to
accept the new Government.
[Sidenote: William's negotiation with Tyrconnel.]
[Sidenote: Tyrconnel's object Irish independence.]
[Sidenote: His temporary success.]
Meanwhile William had attempted to enter into negotiations with
Tyrconnel. For this purpose he had employed as his agent Richard
Hamilton, who had once held a commission in James's army, but who now
professed to have changed his allegiance. Hamilton pledged his word
that, if he failed in his commission, he would come back in three weeks;
but, forfeiting his promise, he returned to his old allegiance, and
became a chief leader on the side of James. But the character of the
quarrel was already changing, the real object of Tyrconnel, in common
with the greater part of the Irish Catholics, was to uphold neither
James nor William, but to destroy for ever the English supremacy. For
this purpose he was willing to use the name of James, trusting in fact
to the assistance of Louis, to whom he opened his real design. He
succeeded in ridding himself of Mountjoy, whose loyal influence was
likely to thwart his plans, by sending him on a mission to St. Germains,
where James now held his Court, and where he was at once apprehended. He
then summoned the Irish to arms. An army of 50,000 Papists was
collected, and many thousands more took arms on their own behalf, and
ravaged the Protestant settlements around them. To complete the Irish
supremacy, Tyrconnel ordered the Protestants to be disarmed. The
destruction wrought is inconceivable. Property which has been estimated
at £5,000,000 was destroyed. Whole herds of cattle were killed and left
to rot in the fields; 50,000 are said to have been thus killed in six
weeks, while about 400,000 sheep were similarly slain. Unable to
withstand this general movement, the Protestants in the south and west
were overpowered, or retreated if possible to the strongholds of
Londonderry and Enniskillen. In those two places the flower of the
English settlers stood at bay, surrounded on all sides by hordes of
liberated serfs now in mutiny against their former masters. An army was
ordered to march northwards under the traitor Richard Hamilton. The
Protestants fled before it; 30,000 of them collected as a last asylum
behind the walls of Londonderry.
[Sidenote: He gets James over.]
The country was in this condition when James, in answer to the messages
which Tyrconnel had sent him, determined, with the assent of Louis, and
with considerable assistance in officers and arms, himself to visit
Ireland. He landed at Cork, and soon appeared in the capital, while
William, unable to act with energy on account of the difficulties which
surrounded him, was assailed by unthinking men with violent abuse for
not taking stronger measures to prevent those disasters which he was
really watching with the greatest dismay.
[Sidenote: Character of Irish Jacobites.]
On his arrival in Dublin it was gradually brought home to James that it
was no feeling of passionate loyalty which was exciting the Irish
population. Among those who attended his Court there were two distinct
factions. Some Englishmen, with the loyal feelings which animated
English Jacobites, were anxious to re-establish James and to retain the
English influence in Ireland. Another party, which included Tyrconnel
and almost all the Irish Papists, were fighting to destroy the English
supremacy, they cared not how, and intriguing to secure the assistance
of France. James would naturally have inclined to the former party, but
soon learnt that the power of his partisans was entirely gone.
[Sidenote: Siege of Londonderry.]
He made a feeble struggle, and, contrary to the wish of the French and
Irish, proceeded himself to the siege of Londonderry. On his march he
found that the Protestants, as they retired, had destroyed all the crops
and houses behind them. He journeyed through a desert, and when he found
that the inhabitants of the city had got rid of their treacherous
governor Lundy, had taken matters into their own hands, and appointed
Walker, a clergyman, and Major Henry Baker, joint governors, he
determined to return instantly to Dublin, there to hold a Parliament.
The prosecution of the siege was intrusted to a French general, Maumont,
and Richard Hamilton. The defence was so vigorous that the siege was
soon turned into a blockade; and while the gallant city was holding out
to the last extremity, the Parliament at Dublin met.
[Sidenote: Wild legislation of the Irish Parliament.]
As a matter of course, considering the circumstances under which it was
collected, it consisted entirely of Catholics. It proceeded to act with
a recklessness which might be expected from an enslaved nation suddenly
called to power, and from men who for years had been unused to public
life. The great Act of Settlement, that compromise which in Charles
II.'s reign had settled the share of land to be held by the Protestant
emigrants who had followed Cromwell's victorious arms, was repealed.
Many thousands of square miles were at a single blow transferred from
English to Celtic landlords. The Act itself may have been unjust, but
for years it had been the basis of society, and men had acted as though
their titles were secure. Its repeal was therefore a violent act of
unjust confiscation. Moreover, as far as James was concerned, nothing
could be more disastrous, nothing could more surely destroy any
influence he might yet keep in England, where it seemed to foreshadow
the justice Protestants might expect from his hands were his reign
re-established. Such slight opposition as James offered (for he had the
wisdom to see some of the disastrous consequences of the measure) had no
effect but to cause profound distrust of himself. Other legislation even
more disastrous met with no opposition at his hands. In his want of
money he issued false coinage of copper and brass, intrinsically worth
perhaps a sixtieth of its nominal value. Thus of course all creditors
and mortgagees, who were pretty certain to be Protestants, were ruined.
The money was rendered current by threats of punishment against those
who refused it. Prices were kept down by law; and to complete this wild
legislation, the great Act of Attainder was passed, containing between
2000 or 3000 names. No inquiry was instituted as to the grounds of
accusation against those who were attainted, and opportunities were
thus afforded for any man who had a personal enemy to introduce his name
in the Bill. A limit of time was set within which all those named were
bound to surrender themselves to justice or be liable to execution
without trial; while, to prevent the King's mercy from interfering with
their vengeance, the Commons passed a law that after November the right
of pardon should cease.
[Sidenote: Its effect on English Jacobites.]
[Sidenote: Londonderry saved.]
Such legislation, sanctioned by James, while it failed to give him real
popularity in Ireland, checked the reaction which was beginning in
England. The feeling there grew constantly stronger against the inaction
of the Government. The fate of Londonderry and Enniskillen were watched
with absorbing interest. A fleet, with some troops under command of
Kirke, was at length despatched, but Kirke refused to risk the passage
of the river which led from Lough Foyle, and which was now guarded by
forts and a boom, and the starving population of Londonderry had the
misery of watching the ships as they lay idly in the Lough. But they
still held out with astonishing constancy. Their friends in Enniskillen
fared somewhat better. They did not confine themselves to defence; but,
issuing from the little island in Lough Erne which surrounded their
city, they collected from their enemies a considerable quantity of
cattle and ammunition, and lived in comparative comfort and security. At
length, in July, the fate of Londonderry seemed sealed. Nearly
everything eatable had been devoured,--horse-flesh, rats, salt hides,
all that could possibly be converted even into the most objectionable
food. It seemed impossible to feed the population in any way for two
days longer. At last a peremptory order reached Kirke to relieve the
city at all hazards. On the 30th of July, three vessels, two transports
and a frigate, sailed up the river, and, after a few minutes of
difficulty, broke the boom, and in the evening, at ten o'clock, were
anchored at the quay. The city was saved after 105 days of siege and
blockade.
[Sidenote: Battle of Newton Butler.]
The Irish army immediately broke up from its camp and retreated. As it
reached Strabane, on its backward course, it received the news of
another disaster. A great effort had been determined on against
Enniskillen, but Colonel Wolseley had been sent to take the command by
Kirke, and was successful in defeating at Newton Butler the approaching
Irish, of whom nearly 2000 were put to the sword or drowned in a
neighbouring lough. The news of this defeat hastened the steps of the
retreating army as it returned from Londonderry, and it fled in
confusion to Charlemont.
[Sidenote: Violent character of the Revolution in Scotland.]
[Sidenote: Opposition to a union.]
The same week which saw the relief of Londonderry and the battle of
Newton Butler was remarkable also for the great defeat of William's army
at Killiecrankie. In accordance with the character of the Scotch people,
and in some proportion to the cruelty which had been exercised upon
them, the Revolution in Scotland took a more violent form than it had
assumed in England, for in the North James had been able to carry out
more completely those plans which had produced his fall in the southern
kingdom. A Church repugnant to the majority of the people had been
forced upon them by law; in defiance of the opposition of a subservient
Parliament, all the high places had been filled with Papists;
nonconformity had been punished with an arbitrary severity and a
ferocious cruelty of which England showed no counterpart; the electoral
laws also, by requiring from all electors abjuration of the Covenant and
an assertion of the King's ecclesiastical supremacy, excluded all but
Prelatists from the right of election. Before collecting a national
Convention, to consider the state of the nation under the present
circumstances, it was necessary to dispense with the Act which excluded
Presbyterians from the franchise. The Convention consequently consisted
almost exclusively of Whigs, and the change of Government was marked by
grave disorders in many parts of the country; nor, though William
disliked these excesses, was he able to repress them, and the Episcopal
clergy were in many instances most roughly used. There was at first some
talk of a union with England, for the national feeling of the Scotch was
beginning to yield to the increasing belief that in most points,
especially of a financial and commercial character, such a union was
very desirable; while many even of the Whigs in England wished for a
union of the Churches and the establishment of Episcopacy on some broad
and general basis. But the religious feeling of the country was quite
averse to such a course, and William was too tolerant a man to wish to
apply any coercion to men's consciences. He therefore wrote a letter, in
which he did little else than profess his attachment to Protestantism,
and his wish if possible to establish the Union. The arrangements he
left in their own hands.
[Sidenote: Letters from James and William.]
[Sidenote: Dundee tries to secede.]
[Sidenote: Edinburgh arms.]