Parliament. A great blow was falling on him, which unhinged him more
than any difficulties or defeats had yet done. This was the death of his
wife, who had sickened of the smallpox, and, after a short illness, died
on the 20th of December 1694. Her death caused universal sorrow in
England and among the Protestant interest on the Continent, while it
raised the hopes of James and his friends, who believed, not without a
show of reason, that William succeeded in holding his place chiefly by
means of the popularity of his Queen. Their hopes proved ill founded,
for though at first the King seemed so broken-hearted that he declared
he could never again lead an army, when once he had conquered his first
grief, he resumed his old energy, and success such as he had never yet
met with attended his efforts both at home and abroad.
[Sidenote: Expulsion of Trevor for venality, March 1695,]
Meanwhile in England there was no cessation in the strife of parties.
The Whigs pursued their triumphant course, and combined to remove the
last of their opponents from the Government. Trevor, a Tory, had in the
early part of the reign been made Speaker of the House, chiefly for the
purpose of carrying out Caermarthen's plans of corruption. Employed in
corrupting others, it was not likely that he should be himself above
corruption. Suspicions of his venality having arisen, the Whigs
proceeded to examine the accounts of the City of London and of the East
India Company, which, after much contest, had obtained a renewal of its
charter. The Committee found that the City had paid Sir John Trevor in
the preceding session 1000 guineas for forwarding a local Bill. The
proof was too clear to be questioned. Trevor from the chair had to put
the question whether he was guilty or not of high crime and
misdemeanour, and to declare before all men that "the Ayes had it." He
saved himself from the unutterable ignominy of announcing his own
expulsion by feigning illness. A new Speaker, Foley, who did not belong
clearly to either party, was elected in his place.
[Sidenote: and of Caermarthen. May.]
The accounts of the East India Company afforded the Whigs even greater
triumph. Sir Thomas Cook, who was the head of the Company, confessed to
having disbursed very large sums to secure the charter, but would give
no particular accounts. The Commons, determined not to be thwarted,
passed a Bill condemning him to refund all the money thus spent, in
addition to a heavy fine, unless he made a full confession. In the Upper
House the Bill was strongly opposed by Lord Caermarthen, now Duke of
Leeds, who, laying his hand upon his heart, solemnly averred that he had
no personal interest in the matter, and was moved by public
considerations only. It was finally arranged that a joint Committee of
the two Houses should inquire into the expenditure of the money that had
been secretly spent, and that if Cook confessed he should be held
guiltless. The joint Committee met; the King and the Duke of Portland,
whose guilt in the matter had been suggested by the Tories, were proved
perfectly innocent. But £5000 were traced, if not to the Duke of Leeds
himself, at all events to his confidential man of business. Articles of
impeachment were made out against him. They could not, however, be
brought forward, because the man of business, who would have supplied
necessary evidence, had made his escape to Holland. The Duke of Leeds
continued to assert his innocence, but confessed that he had allowed
money to be paid to his steward, considering this a very different thing
from taking it himself. It also appeared that the money had been
refunded the very morning of the first sitting of the joint Committee.
Though foiled of their impeachment, the Whigs and the Commons had done
their work. Leeds was obliged to retire from active life, and was never
afterwards employed in the administration. The sole discordant member of
the Government was thus got rid of.
[Sidenote: Success abroad. June 1694.]
Abroad likewise affairs took a turn more favourable to England and the
Whigs. Just before the death of Mary the war had entered into a somewhat
new phase. The navies of the two great powers had transferred the scene
of operations to the Mediterranean. Thither Tourville had gone from
Brest, and thither Russell, with the English fleet, had followed him. He
had found means to keep the French fleet in harbour, and to do good
service to the general cause by the relief of Barcelona, which was on
the point of falling into the hands of the French.
[Sidenote: Treachery of Marlborough.]
The absence of the French fleet from Brest, which led to the supposition
that the harbour must be unguarded, seemed to afford an opportunity for
an attack in that quarter. An expedition was planned; the forces were
intrusted to Talmash, while the Duke of Leeds' son Caermarthen commanded
the fleet. It gave occasion for a new act of villany on the part of
Marlborough; though the plan was kept a profound secret, he contrived to
worm it out, and as had happened once or twice before in his career, he
used his knowledge only to lay the details of the plan before James, and
to secure the destruction of the English expedition. Vauban, the great
French engineer, was sent down to re-fortify the place. Every
vantage-ground was crowned with batteries, and into the trap thus laid
for him Talmash had rushed headlong to meet his death, in company with
700 English soldiers (June 7, 1694). Marlborough's treachery in this
instance was rather personal than political. Talmash alone of the
English generals could in any way compete with him, and he knew that at
his death or failure William, who it must be recollected did not know
the full extent of his treachery, would be obliged to restore him to his
command. His treacherous plan succeeded. He was again employed, though
so thoroughly mistrusted, that William refused when he went abroad to
give the regency to Anne, which he well knew would be but to give it to
Marlborough. But the death of Mary, which occurred at the close of the
year, while it excited the other Jacobites to action, for a time
rendered Marlborough true to William; for it was followed by a
reconciliation between the King and the Princess Anne, and Marlborough
was now content to wait till the King's death for the completion of his
designs. The more earnest Jacobites followed a different course, and it
was in the midst of a conspiracy aimed against his life by Fenwick,
Charnock, and Porter, that William set out for Flanders (May 1695).
[Sidenote: Campaign in Flanders. 1695.]
[Sidenote: Surrender of Namur. Aug. 26.]
In that country he had no longer the same formidable enemy with whom to
contend. Luxemburg was dead, and his place was ill supplied by Villeroy
and Louis' illegitimate son, the Duke of Maine, who was sent to learn
the art of war under him. As Flanders was expected to be the great seat
of war, the bulk of the French army was placed under Villeroy in that
country. Boufflers, with 12,000 men, guarded the Sambre. William,
however, had set his heart upon regaining Namur. Judicious feints
deceived Villeroy as to his intentions, and suddenly his own army, that
of the Brandenburgers and that of the Elector of Bavaria, marched
straight against the city. Boufflers had just time to throw himself with
his troops into the town. A body of troops under the Prince of Vaudemont
had been left to watch Villeroy in Flanders. When that general advanced,
the Prince could not hold his isolated position, and only succeeded in
making good his retreat through the cowardice of the Duke of Maine.
Villeroy advanced almost unopposed. He took the towns of Dixmuyde and
Deynse, the garrisons of which, contrary to the terms of capitulation,
were sent prisoners to France; and hoping by threatening the capital to
draw William from Namur, he approached and ruthlessly and uselessly
bombarded Brussels. But, undisturbed by Villeroy's manœuvres, William
energetically pursued the siege. He was assisted by Cohorn, who had
originally fortified the town, and had seen it taken by the skill of his
great rival Vauban. Vauban had since much increased the fortifications,
and Cohorn was eager to regain his honour by capturing it. At length,
after some fierce assaults, in which the English under Lord Cutts, who
for his bravery under fire got the nickname of "the Salamander," had
greatly distinguished themselves, the town surrendered, but the castle
still held out. It became evident to Villeroy that the actual presence
of his army could alone raise the siege. Drawing troops from all the
neighbouring garrisons, he approached with 80,000 men. But William now
felt himself strong enough to give him battle without withdrawing from
his operations. For three days the armies remained in presence, and
William lay expecting the attack, but Villeroy judged his position too
strong to be taken, and withdrew. The fate of the fortress was now
sealed, but Boufflers thought that his honour demanded that he should
stand an assault; nor was it till the English had succeeded at the cost
of 2000 men in making a lodgment in the place that he consented to
treat, and for the first time in history a French marshal surrendered a
fortress to a victorious enemy. Having gone through the ceremony of
surrender, Boufflers was much surprised and enraged at being arrested on
his road to France. His angry exclamations against the breach of the
terms of capitulation were met by the reply, that William was only
following the example of Louis with regard to the garrisons of Dixmuyde
and Deynse. He was kept in honourable imprisonment till those garrisons
were restored.
[Sidenote: William's triumphant return. Oct. 10.]
[Sidenote: New Whig Parliament. Nov. 22.]
It was thus no longer as a beaten and unfortunate, though skilful
general, that William returned to England. The Triennial Bill having
come into operation, the present Parliament would have come to a natural
conclusion the following year. It had on the whole acted so much in
favour of William and the Whigs, that William, could he have prolonged
it, would probably have been willing to do so. But he wisely judged that
it would be better to call his new Parliament while still popular from
his successes, than to wait the chances of the future year. The event
proved that he was right. A brilliant triumphant progress through
England was followed by the return of a Parliament with an immense
majority favourable to the war and to the Whig interests. Four Whigs
were returned for London. Westminster followed the example of the
neighbouring city, and so great was the enthusiasm that even the great
Tory leader Seymour, whose interest in Devonshire was believed to render
his return for Exeter sure, was defeated in that town. The Parliament
thus assembled had very important work before it, and, acting in unison
with the King, his ministry, and the whole country, carried it through
to a noble conclusion.
[Sidenote: Re-establishment of the currency.]
This important work was the re-establishment of the currency. The
English coin had originally been of hammered metal, it was constantly
liable to inequality in weight, and being left with raw edges, easily
clipped. In Charles II.'s reign this defect had been partially cured by
the use of machinery, and words had been printed round the edges of the
coin; but as the bad hammered coinage was allowed to be current side by
side with the new milled coinage, the better coinage had either been
hoarded or had left the country, as invariably happens, when some part
of the coinage of the country is of less intrinsic value than the rest.
Consequently the evil became worse. Coin was more constantly clipped,
and as it wore out was more easily counterfeited. Its defects at length
became so obvious that shopkeepers refused to take it except by weight;
thus causing heavy suffering to the lower orders, who generally received
their wages by tale, and had to pay by weight, and every little
transaction became the occasion of a dispute. So far had the evil gone,
that when trials were made in different parts of the country, the
coinage had proved on an average to be little more than half its proper
weight. A re-issue of coin became absolutely necessary. The arrangements
fell into the hands of Somers and Montague, of John Locke the
philosopher, and Isaac Newton the mathematician. In devising their plan
two great questions met them. By whom should the expense be borne? How
could the inconvenience of the short supply of coin which must
inevitably follow when the present coinage was called in be best
alleviated? A very large minority wished to avoid the difficulty by
keeping the present money in circulation, but lowering its nominal
value. This plan, which was in fact to perpetrate a fraud upon all
creditors, was not likely to find favour with the four sagacious men
with whom the question rested. Two schemes recommended themselves
chiefly to their attention. Locke proposed that, after a certain fixed
date, the coin should be valued by weight only. This prevented any
deficiency in the circulating medium, as the present money would not be
withdrawn from circulation, but it threw the whole expense of bringing
the nominal and real value of the coin into harmony, not on the
Government, but on the individual possessors of the coin. It was
evidently fairer that, where the evil was a national one, the nation
should bear the expense. Somers suggested that, with extreme secresy, a
proclamation should be prepared, saying that in three days the hammered
coin should pass by weight only, but that those who held it might bring
it in parcels to the mint, where it should be counted and weighed, and
immediately restored, with a written promise of a future payment of the
difference between the nominal and real value of the coin. Thus the
money would be withdrawn from circulation only for the short time
necessary to count it, while the nation would subsequently pay the
difference. But for this plan secresy and suddenness were necessary, or
the intervening period would have given opportunity and temptation for
unlimited mutilation of the coinage. Secresy would have rendered it
impossible to consult Parliament, and Montague, in the existing state of
party feeling, shrank from the responsibility this implied. It was
therefore determined to act in a perfectly honest, simple and
straightforward manner; and immediately on the opening of Parliament, a
Bill was framed in accordance with certain resolutions previously taken.
By these it was declared that the old standard should be kept up, that
milled coin should alone be used, that the loss should fall on the
nation, not on individuals, and that the 4th of May following should be
the last day on which hammered coin should be allowed to be used. The
advantage of the good understanding between the Government and the Bank
now became evident. To meet the expense of the new coinage, £1,200,000
was wanted. The Bank advanced it without difficulty on the security of a
window tax, which took the place of the much hated hearth tax, and which
lasted on almost to our own time. At last the critical day, the 4th of
May, drew near. Fortunately the country was in an enthusiastic mood. Two
great Jacobite plots, closely connected, which had been concocted during
the previous summer, had been discovered. These were Berwick's plot for
a general insurrection of the Jacobites and for an invasion from France;
and a plot concocted at St. Germains, intrusted to Barclay, for the
assassination of William on his road from Kensington to Richmond.
Invasion and assassination are the two forms of conspiracy which the
English people cannot bear; and the full discovery of these schemes,
with the proved certainty that both Louis and James were fully conscious
of all their atrocious details, roused the nation for an instant to an
unusual unanimity of enthusiasm, and enabled Parliament to set on foot a
great association, signed by hundreds of thousands, who pledged
themselves to stand by the King, to support the war, and to pursue with
vengeance any attempt upon his life. Good tempered and loyal though the
people were the crisis was a fearful one. The operations of the mint
were very slow. £4,000,000 of the old coinage lay melted in the treasury
vaults. As yet scarcely any new silver had appeared. Money was not to be
had either for trade or for private payments. Large employers somehow
contrived, with a certain quantity of the old coinage which had not been
clipped, to pay the wages. But the greater part of England lived on
credit; and it is probable that even thus the crisis would scarcely
have been got over, had it not been for an expedient of Montague's, who
issued Government securities, bearing interest at threepence a day on
£100. These are what are known now as Exchequer bills, and form a
floating debt due by Government. They were eagerly used, and with the
paper issues of the Bank and the free use of cheques and credit by all,
the dangerous time was tided over.
[Sidenote: William's want of money.]
But the most alarming feature was not the difficulty in the commercial
world, but the difficulty felt by Government and by the King himself in
provisioning the troops and carrying on the war. In the midst of the
commercial crisis the Bank of England had met with great difficulties;
the goldsmiths, who had always hated their great rival, took the
opportunity of attempting to destroy it by villanous means, they bought
up all the Bank paper on which they could lay hands, and suddenly
bringing it forward, demanded immediate payment. The Bank directors with
great courage gained time by refusing to pay the nefarious claim, and
referring their enemies to the courts of law. By means of calls on their
subscribers they continued to pay by far the greater part of the private
and just claims upon them, but they did not appear to be in a position
to assist the King when he suddenly wrote home to say that £200,000 were
absolutely necessary.
[Sidenote: The Land Bank a failure.]
William had hoped that his wants would have been met by the
establishment, in accordance with a favourite plan of the Tories, of a
Land Bank, as a rival to the Bank of England. This somewhat absurd
scheme had been invented by a projector of the name of Chamberlain, who
supposed that every proprietor of land possessing that security ought to
have the disposal of at least as much money as his land was worth, and
therefore suggested a bank which should lend money entirely upon landed
security, overlooking the difficulty that land is not always at hand and
payable on demand as money is. Harley, the representative of the Tories,
now offered to advance the Government £2,500,000 at 7 per cent. The
payment of his interest was to be secured by a tax upon salt. If half
that sum should be subscribed before August, and half of that half paid
up, the subscribers were to be incorporated as the Land Bank. This Bank
was expressly intended to suit the wants of the country gentry, and to
injure the moneyed interest. The company was therefore bound to lend no
money but on mortgage, and to lend on mortgage at least half a million a
year. It was not allowed to receive more than 3½ per cent. interest on
these mortgages. Now, as the ordinary rate of interest on mortgages was
nearly 7 per cent. it was plain that no capitalist would lend his money
at half of the ordinary profits. It might have been plain also that the
landed gentry whose chief object was to borrow were not likely to lend.
It was not therefore very obvious where the capital was to come from.
The King, however, hoping to obtain money on easy terms, headed the list
of subscribers with £5000. When the Land Bank was called upon to advance
its promised loan, it was found that the whole subscriptions consisted
of no more than £6200. So eager was the Government for money, that it
offered to give the Bank its charter in exchange for a loan of £40,000
only, but the subscriptions never rose beyond £7500, and the scheme
proved completely abortive.
[Sidenote: The Bank of England supplies the money. Aug. 15.]
The King was compelled therefore to apply to the Bank of England, which
by his patronage of the Land Bank he had done his best to injure. True
to their political creed, a full court of subscribers consented to
advance the necessary £200,000, without one dissentient voice. The
Government was saved, and the connection between the Bank of England and
the Whig party sealed for ever. Meanwhile, Newton's efforts as Master of
the Mint had been ultimately successful. Provincial mints had been
established, and from them and from the mint in London £120,000 of coin
was turned out every day. By August the crisis was over, and a period of
unbroken commercial prosperity began.
[Sidenote: Credit of England restored.]
But although marks of commercial prosperity were already visible, the
financial difficulty was not entirely over. When William, who had been
abroad during the worst of the difficulty, opened Parliament upon his
return (Oct. 20), he had to confess that, although the crisis had passed
without disturbance in England or great disaster abroad, there was still
need for some exhibition of continued firmness on the part of
Parliament. In fact, the plan of reducing the standard of the coin was
so plausible, and had impressed itself so deeply on the ignorance of the
masses, that a very large party both in and out of Parliament were still
anxious to have recourse to that step, and till all chance of such a
measure was gone no speculators were willing to put the new money in
circulation, and it was constantly hoarded. Consequently a scarcity of
money still prevailed; and not only in England, but throughout Europe,
there was a very general feeling that England was ruined, that the
source of wealth which had hitherto supplied the European coalition with
the means of war was dried up, and that peace was inevitable. But in the
midst of these difficulties the triumph of the Whigs was complete. The
Parliament stood firm, and carried by a triumphant majority three
resolutions, which destroyed all the hopes of the enemies of England.
First, that the Commons would assist the King to prosecute the war with
vigour; secondly, that under no circumstances should the standard of
money be changed; thirdly, the Parliament pledged itself to make good
the deficiencies in Parliamentary funds established since the King's
accession. The first promise was at once abundantly fulfilled by
munificent grants for the war; the second caused the immediate
production of the hoarded coin; while upon the third was framed
Montague's plan known by the name of the General Mortgage. Taxes set
apart to meet the interest of various loans had proved insufficient. The
deficit was no less than £5,160,000. It was now ordered that, should the
proceeds of the old funds and new taxes now set aside for the purpose
prove insufficient, the general funds of the country should be charged
with the liquidation of the debts. By such means as these the credit of
the country was finally re-established.
[Sidenote: The Assassination plot.]