CHAPTER III

THE FALL OF THE STUARTS

1683-1714

[Sidenote: The King's Triumph.]

In 1683 the Constitutional opposition which had held Charles so long in

check lay crushed at his feet. A weaker man might easily have been led

to play the mere tyrant by the mad outburst of loyalty which greeted his

triumph. On the very day when the crowd around Russell's scaffold were

dipping their handkerchiefs in his blood as in the blood of a martyr the

University of Oxford solemnly declared that the doctrine of passive

obedience even to the worst of rulers was a part of religion. But

Charles saw that immense obstacles still lay in the road of a mere

tyranny. Ormond and the great Tory party which had rallied to his

succour against the Exclusionists were still steady for parliamentary

and legal government. The Church was as powerful as ever, and the

mention of a renewal of the Indulgence to Nonconformists had to be

withdrawn before the opposition of the bishops. He was careful therefore

during the few years which remained to him to avoid the appearance of

any open violation of public law. He suspended no statute. He imposed no

tax by Royal authority. Galling to the Crown as the freedom of the press

and the Habeas Corpus Act were soon found to be, Charles made no attempt

to curtail the one or to infringe the other. But while cautious to avoid

rousing popular resistance, he moved coolly and resolutely forward on

the path of despotism. It was in vain that Halifax pressed for energetic

resistance to the aggressions of France, for the recall of Monmouth, or

for the calling of a fresh Parliament. Like every other English

statesman he found he had been duped. Now that his work was done he was

suffered to remain in office but left without any influence in the

government. Hyde, who was created Earl of Rochester, still remained at

the head of the Treasury; but Charles soon gave more of his confidence

to the supple and acute Sunderland, who atoned for his desertion of the

king's cause in the heat of the Exclusion Bill by an acknowledgement of

his error and a pledge of entire accordance with the king's will.

[Sidenote: New Town Charters.]

The protests both of Halifax and of Danby, who was now released from the

Tower, in favour of a return to Parliaments were treated with

indifference, the provisions of the Triennial Act were disregarded, and

the Houses remained unassembled during the remainder of the king's

reign. His secret alliance with France furnished Charles with the funds

he immediately required, and the rapid growth of the customs through the

increase of English commerce promised to give him a revenue which, if

peace were preserved, would save him from any further need of fresh

appeals to the Commons. Charles was too wise however to look upon

Parliaments as utterly at an end: and he used this respite to secure a

House of Commons which should really be at his disposal. The strength of

the Country party had been broken by its own dissensions over the

Exclusion Bill and by the flight or death of its more prominent leaders.

Whatever strength it retained lay chiefly in the towns, whose

representation was for the most part virtually or directly in the hands

of their corporations, and whose corporations, like the merchant class

generally, were in sympathy Whig. The towns were now attacked by writs

of "quo warranto," which called on them to show cause why their charters

should not be declared forfeited on the ground of abuse of their

privileges. A few verdicts on the side of the Crown brought about a

general surrender of municipal liberties; and the grant of fresh

charters, in which all but ultra-loyalists were carefully excluded from

their corporations, placed the representation of the boroughs in the

hands of the Crown. Against active discontent Charles had long been

quietly providing by the gradual increase of his Guards. The withdrawal

of its garrison from Tangier enabled him to raise their force to nine

thousand well-equipped soldiers, and to supplement this force, the

nucleus of our present standing army, by a reserve of six regiments

which were maintained till they should be needed at home in the service

of the United Provinces.

[Sidenote: Death of Charles.]

But great as the danger really was it lay not so much in isolated acts

of tyranny as in the character and purpose of Charles himself, and his

death at the very moment of his triumph saved English freedom. He had

regained his old popularity; and at the news of his sickness in the

spring of 1685 crowds thronged the churches, praying that God would

raise him up again to be a father to his people. But while his subjects

were praying the one anxiety of the king was to die reconciled to the

Catholic Church. His chamber was cleared, and a priest named Huddleston,

who had saved his life after the battle of Worcester, received his

confession and administered the last sacraments. Not a word of this

ceremony was whispered when the nobles and bishops were recalled into

the royal presence, and Charles though steadily refusing the communion

which Bishop Ken offered him accepted the bishop's absolution. All the

children of his mistresses save Monmouth were gathered round the bed,

and Charles commended them to his brother's protection by name. The

scene which followed is described by a chaplain to one of the prelates

who stood round the dying king. Charles "blessed all his children one by

one, pulling them on to his bed; and then the bishops moved him, as he

was the Lord's anointed and the father of his country, to bless them

also and all that were there present, and in them the general body of

his subjects. Whereupon, the room being full, all fell down upon their

knees, and he raised himself in his bed and very solemnly blessed them

all." The strange comedy was at last over. Charles died as he had lived:

brave, witty, cynical, even in the presence of death. Tortured as he was

with pain, he begged the bystanders to forgive him for being so

unconscionable a time in dying. One mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth,

hung weeping over his bed. His last thought was of another mistress,

Nell Gwynn. "Do not," he whispered to his successor ere he sank into a

fatal stupor, "do not let poor Nelly starve!"

[Sidenote: James the Second.]

The death of Charles in February 1685 placed his brother James, the Duke

of York, upon the throne. His character and policy were already well

known. Of all the Stuart rulers James is the only one whose intellect

was below mediocrity. His mind was dull and narrow though orderly and

methodical; his temper dogged and arbitrary but sincere. His religious

and political tendencies had always been the same. He had always

cherished an entire belief in the royal authority and a hatred of

Parliaments. His main desire was for the establishment of Catholicism as

the only means of ensuring the obedience of his people; and his old love

of France was quickened by the firm reliance which he placed on the aid

of Lewis in bringing about that establishment. But the secrecy in which

his political action had as yet been shrouded and his long absence from

England had hindered any general knowledge of his designs. His first

words on his accession, his promise to "preserve this Government both in

Church and State as it is now by law established," were welcomed by the

whole country with enthusiasm. All the suspicions of a Catholic

sovereign seemed to have disappeared. "We have the word of a King!" ran

the general cry, "and of a King who was never worse than his word." The

conviction of his brother's faithlessness in fact stood James in good

stead. He was looked upon as narrow, impetuous, stubborn, and despotic

in heart, but even his enemies did not accuse him of being false. Above

all, incredible as such a belief may seem now, he was believed to be

keenly alive to the honour of his country and resolute to free it from

foreign dependence.

[Sidenote: James and Parliament.]

From the first indeed there were indications that James understood his

declaration in a different sense from the nation. He was resolved to

make no disguise of his own religion; the chapel in which he had

hitherto worshipped with closed doors was now thrown open and the king

seen at Mass. He regarded attacks on his faith as attacks on himself,

and at once called on the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of

London to hinder all preaching against Catholicism as a part of their

"duty" to their king. He made no secret of his resolve to procure

freedom of worship for his co-religionists while still refusing it to

the rest of the Nonconformists, whom he hated as republicans and

Exclusionists. All was passed over however in the general confidence. It

was necessary to summon a Parliament, for the royal revenue ceased with

the death of Charles; but the elections, swayed at once by the tide of

loyalty and by the command of the boroughs which the surrender of their

charters had given to the Crown, sent up in May a House of Commons in

which James found few members who were not to his mind. His appointment

indeed of Catholic officers in the army was already exciting murmurs;

but these were hushed as James repeated his pledge of maintaining the

established order both in Church and State. The question of religious

security was waived at a hint of the royal displeasure, and a revenue of

nearly two millions was granted to the king for life.

[Sidenote: Argyle's Rising.]

All that was wanted to rouse the loyalty of the country into fanaticism

was supplied by a rebellion in the North, and by another under Monmouth

in the West. The hopes of Scotch freedom had clung ever since the

Restoration to the house of Argyle. The great Marquis indeed had been

brought to the block at the king's return. His son, the Earl of Argyle,

had been unable to save himself even by a life of singular caution and

obedience from the ill-will of the vile politicians who governed

Scotland. He was at last convicted of treason in 1682 on grounds at

which every English statesman stood aghast. "We should not hang a dog

here," Halifax protested, "on the grounds on which my Lord Argyle has

been sentenced to death." The Earl escaped however to Holland, and lived

peaceably there during the last six years of the reign of Charles.

Monmouth had found the same refuge at the Hague, where a belief in the

king's love and purpose to recall him secured him a kindly reception

from William of Orange. But the accession of James was a death-blow to

the hopes of the Duke, while it stirred the fanaticism of Argyle to a

resolve of wresting Scotland from the rule of a Catholic king. The two

leaders determined to appear in arms in England and the North, and the

two expeditions sailed within a few days of each other. Argyle's attempt

was soon over. His clan of the Campbells rose on the Earl's landing in

Cantyre, but the country had been occupied for the king, and quarrels

among the exiles who accompanied him robbed his effort of every chance

of success. His force scattered without a fight; and Argyle, arrested

in an attempt to escape, was hurried on the 30th of June to a traitor's

death.

[Sidenote: Monmouth's Rising.]

Monmouth for a time found brighter fortune. His popularity in the West

was great, and though the gentry held aloof when he landed at Lyme and

demanded an effective parliamentary government as well as freedom of

worship for Protestant Nonconformists, the farmers and traders of

Devonshire and Dorset flocked to his standard. The clothier-towns of

Somerset were true to the Whig cause, as they had been true to the cause

of the Long Parliament; and on the entrance of the Duke into Taunton the

popular enthusiasm showed itself in the flowers which wreathed every

door, as well as in a train of young girls who presented Monmouth with a

Bible and a flag. His forces now amounted to six thousand men, but

whatever chance of success he might have had was lost by his assumption

of the title of king, his right to which he had pledged himself hitherto

to leave for decision to a free Parliament. The two Houses offered to

support James with their lives and fortunes, and passed a bill of

attainder against the Duke. The gentry, still true to the cause of Mary

and of William, held stubbornly aloof; while the Guards and the

regiments from Tangier hurried to the scene of the revolt and the

militia gathered to the royal standard. Foiled in an attempt on Bristol

and Bath, Monmouth fell back on Bridgewater, and flung himself in the

night of the 6th of July on the king's forces as they lay encamped hard

by on Sedgemoor. The surprise failed; and the brave peasants and miners

who followed the Duke, checked in their advance by a deep drain which

crossed the moor, were broken after a short but desperate resistance by

the royal horse. Their leader fled from the field, and after a vain

effort to escape from the realm was captured and sent pitilessly to the

block.

[Sidenote: The Bloody Circuit.]

Never had England shown a firmer loyalty; but its loyalty was changed

into horror by the terrible measures of repression which followed on the

victory of Sedgemoor. Even North, the Lord Keeper, a servile tool of the

Crown, protested against the license and bloodshed in which the troops

were suffered to indulge after the battle. His protest however was

disregarded, and he withdrew broken-hearted from the Court to die. James

was in fact resolved on a far more terrible vengeance; and the

Chief-Justice Jeffreys, a man of great natural powers but of violent

temper, was sent to earn the Seals by a series of judicial murders which

have left his name a byword for cruelty. Three hundred and fifty rebels

were hanged in what has ever since, been known as the "Bloody Circuit,"

while Jeffreys made his way through Dorset and Somerset. More than eight

hundred were sold into slavery beyond sea. A yet larger number were

whipped and imprisoned. The Queen, the maids of honour, the courtiers,

even the Judge himself, made shameless profit from the sale of pardons.

What roused pity above all were the cruelties wreaked upon women. Some

were scourged from market-town to market-town. Mrs. Lisle, the wife of

one of the Regicides, was sent to the block at Winchester for harbouring

a rebel. Elizabeth Gaunt for the same act of womanly charity was burned

at Tyburn. Pity turned into horror when it was found that cruelty such

as this was avowed and sanctioned by the king. Even the cold heart of

General Churchill, to whose energy the victory at Sedgemoor had mainly

been owing, revolted at the ruthlessness with which James turned away

from all appeals for mercy. "This marble," he cried as he struck the

chimney-piece on which he leant, "is not harder than the king's heart."

[Sidenote: James and France.]

But it was soon plain that the terror which this butchery was meant to

strike into the people was part of a larger purpose. The revolt was made

a pretext for a vast increase of the standing army. Charles, as we have

seen, had silently and cautiously raised it to nearly ten thousand men;

James raised it at one swoop to twenty thousand. The employment of this

force was to be at home, not abroad, for the hope of an English policy

in foreign affairs had already faded away. In the designs which James

had at heart he could look for no consent from Parliament; and however

his pride revolted against a dependence on France, it was only by

French gold and French soldiers that he could hope to hold the

Parliament permanently at bay. A week therefore after his accession he

assured Lewis that his gratitude and devotion to him equalled that of

Charles himself. "Tell your master," he said to the French ambassador,

"that without his protection I can do nothing. He has a right to be

consulted, and it is my wish to consult him, about everything." The

pledge of subservience was rewarded with the promise of a subsidy, and

the promise was received with the strongest expressions of delight and

servility. The hopes which the Prince of Orange had conceived from his

father-in-law's more warlike temper were nipped by a refusal to allow

him to visit England. All the caution and reserve of Charles the Second

in his dealings with France was set aside. Sunderland, the favourite

Minister of the new king as he had been of the old, not only promised

during the session to avoid the connection with Spain and Holland which

the Parliament was known to desire, but "to throw aside the mask and

openly break with them as soon as the royal revenue is secured." The

support indeed which James needed was a far closer and firmer support

than his brother had sought for. Lewis on the other hand trusted him as

he could never trust Charles. His own bigotry understood the bigotry of

the new sovereign. "The confirmation of the King's authority and the

establishment of religion," he wrote, "are our common interest"; and he

promised that James should "find in his friendship all the resources

which he can expect."

[Sidenote: Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.]

Never had the secret league with France seemed so full of danger to

English religion. Europe had long been trembling at the ambition of

Lewis; it was trembling now at his bigotry. He had proclaimed warfare

against civil liberty in his attack upon Holland; he declared war at

this moment upon religious freedom by revoking the Edict of Nantes, the

measure by which Henry the Fourth after his abandonment of Protestantism

secured toleration and the free exercise of their worship for his

Protestant subjects. It had been respected by Richelieu even in his

victory over the Huguenots, and only lightly tampered with by Mazarin.

But from the beginning of his reign Lewis had resolved to set aside its

provisions, and his revocation of it at the end of 1685 was only the

natural close of a progressive system of persecution. The revocation was

followed by outrages more cruel than even the bloodshed of Alva.

Dragoons were quartered on Protestant families, women were flung from

their sick-beds into the streets, children were torn from their mothers'

arms to be brought up in Catholicism, ministers were sent to the

galleys. In spite of the royal edicts which forbade even flight to the

victims of these horrible atrocities a hundred thousand Protestants

fled over the borders, and Holland, Switzerland, the Palatinate, were

filled with French exiles. Thousands found refuge in England, and their

industry established in the fields east of London the silk trade of

Spitalfields.

[Sidenote: James and the Parliament.]

But while Englishmen were looking with horror on these events in France

James was taking advantage of the position in which as he believed they

placed him. The news of the revocation drew from James expressions of

delight. The rapid increase of the conversions to Catholicism which

followed on the "dragonnades" raised in him hopes of as general an

apostasy in his own dominions. His tone took a new haughtiness and

decision. He admitted more Catholic officers into his fresh regiments.

He dismissed Halifax from the Privy Council on his refusal to consent to

a plan for repealing the Test Act. He met the Parliament on its

reassembling in November with a haughty declaration that whether legal

or no his grant of commissions to Catholics must not be questioned, and

with a demand of supplies for his new troops. Loyal as was the temper of

the Houses, their alarm for the Church, their dread of a standing army,

was yet stronger than their loyalty. The Commons by the majority of a

single vote deferred the grant of supplies till grievances were

redressed, and demanded in their address the recall of the illegal

commissions on the ground that the continuance of the Catholic officers

in their posts "may be taken to be a dispensing with that law without

Act of Parliament." The Lords took a bolder tone; and the protest of the

bishops against any infringement of the Test Act expressed by Bishop

Compton of London was backed by the eloquence of Halifax. Their desire

for conciliation indeed was shown in an offer to confirm the existing

officers in their posts by Act of Parliament, and even to allow fresh

nominations of Catholics by the king under the same security. But James

had no wish for such a compromise, and the Houses were at once

prorogued.

[Sidenote: The Test set aside.]

The king resolved to obtain from the judges what he could not obtain

from Parliament. He remodelled the bench by dismissing four judges who

refused to lend themselves to his plans; and in the June of 1686 their

successors decided in the case of Sir Edward Hales, a Catholic officer

in the army, that a royal dispensation could be pleaded in bar of the

Test Act. The principle laid down by the judges "that it is a privilege

inseparably connected with the sovereignty of the King to dispense with

penal laws, and that according to his own judgment," was applied by

James with a reckless impatience of all decency and self-restraint.

Catholics were admitted into civil and military offices without stint,

and four Catholic peers were sworn as members of the Privy Council. The

laws which forbade the presence of Catholic priests in the realm or the

open exercise of Catholic worship were set at nought. A gorgeous chapel

was opened in the palace of St. James for the use of the king.

Carmelites, Benedictines, Franciscans, appeared in their religious garb

in the streets of London, and the Jesuits set up a crowded school in the

Savoy. The quick growth of discontent at these acts would have startled

a wiser man into prudence, but James prided himself on an obstinacy

which never gave way; and a riot which took place on the opening of a

Catholic chapel in the City was followed by the establishment of a camp

of thirteen thousand men at Hounslow to overawe the capital.

[Sidenote: Scotland and Ireland.]

The course which James intended to follow in England was shown indeed by

the course he was following in the sister kingdoms. In Scotland he acted

as a pure despot. At the close of Charles's reign the extreme

Covenanters or "wild Whigs" of the Western shires had formally renounced

their allegiance to a "prelatical" king. A smouldering revolt spread

over the country that was only held in check by the merciless cruelties

with which the royal troops avenged the "rabbling of priests" and the

outrages committed by the Whigs on the more prominent persecutors. Such

a revolt threw strength into the hands of the government by rallying to

its side all who were bent on public order, and this strength was

doubled by the landing and failure of Argyle. The Scotch Parliament

granted excise and customs not to the king only but to his successors,

while it confirmed the Acts which established religious conformity. But

James was far from being satisfied with a loyalty which made no

concession to the "king's religion." He placed the government of

Scotland in the hands of two lords, Melfort and Perth, who had embraced

his own faith, and put a Catholic in command of the Castle of Edinburgh.

The drift of these measures was soon seen. The Scotch Parliament had as

yet been the mere creature of the Crown, but servile as were its members

there was a point at which their servility stopped. When James boldly

required them to legalize the toleration of Catholics they refused to

pass such an Act. It was in vain that the king tempted them to consent

by the offer of a free trade with England. "Shall we sell our God?" was

the indignant reply. James at once ordered the Scotch judges to treat

all laws against Catholics as null and void, and his orders were obeyed.

In Ireland his policy threw off even the disguise of law. Catholics were

admitted by the king's command to the council and to civil offices. A

Catholic, Lord Tyrconnell, was put at the head of the army, and set

instantly about its re-organization by cashiering Protestant officers

and by admitting two thousand Catholic natives into its ranks.

[Sidenote: The High Commission.]

Meanwhile in England James was passing from the mere attempt to secure

freedom for his fellow-religionists to a bold and systematic attack

upon the Church. He had at the outset of his reign forbidden the clergy

to preach against "the king's religion"; and ordered the bishops to act

upon this prohibition. But no steps were taken by them to carry out this

order; and the pulpits of the capital soon rang with controversial

sermons. For such a sermon James now called on Compton, the Bishop of

London, to suspend Dr. Sharp, the rector of St. Giles'-in-the-Fields.

Compton answered that as judge he was ready to examine into the case if

brought before him according to law. To James the matter was not one of

law but of prerogative. He regarded his ecclesiastical supremacy as a

weapon providentially left to him for undoing the work which it had

enabled his predecessors to do. Under Henry and Elizabeth it had been

used to turn the Church of England from Catholic to Protestant. Under

James it might be used to turn the Church back again from Protestant to

Catholic. The High Commission indeed which had enforced this supremacy

had been declared illegal by an Act of the Long Parliament, and this Act

had been confirmed by the Parliament of the Restoration. But it was

thought possible to evade this Act by omitting from the instructions on

which the Commission acted the extraordinary powers and jurisdictions by

which its predecessor had given offence. With this reserve, seven

commissioners were appointed in the summer of 1686 for the government

of the Church with the Chancellor, Lord Jeffreys, at their head. The

first blow of the Commission was at the Bishop of London whose refusal

to suspend Sharp was punished by his own suspension. But the pressure of

the Commission only drove the clergy to a bolder defiance of the royal

will. The legality of the Commission and of its proceedings was denied.

Not even the Pope, it was said, had claimed such rights over the conduct

and jurisdiction of English bishops as were claimed by the king. The

prohibition of attacks on the "king's religion" was set at nought.

Sermons against superstition were preached from every pulpit; and the

two most famous divines of the day, Tillotson and Stillingfleet, put

themselves at the head of a host of controversialists who scattered

pamphlets and tracts from every printing press.

[Sidenote: James and the Tories.]

It was in vain that the bulk of the Catholic gentry stood aloof and

predicted the inevitable reaction which the king's course must bring

about, or that Rome itself counselled greater moderation. James was

infatuated with what seemed to be the success of his enterprises. He

looked on the opposition he experienced as due to the influence of the

High Church Tories who had remained in power since the reaction of 1681,

and these he determined "to chastise." The Duke of Queensberry, the

leader of this party in Scotland, was driven from office. Tyrconnell, as

we have seen, was placed as a check on Ormond in Ireland. In England

James resolved to show the world that even the closest ties of blood

were as nothing to him if they conflicted with the demands of his faith.

His earlier marriage with Anne Hyde, the daughter of Clarendon, bound

both the Chancellor's sons to his fortunes; and on his accession he had

sent his elder brother-in-law, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, as

Lord-Lieutenant to Ireland, and raised the younger, Laurence, Earl of

Rochester, who had long been a minister under Charles the Second, to the

post of Lord Treasurer. But the sons of Hyde were as staunch to the old

Cavalier doctrines of Church and State as Hyde himself. Rochester

therefore was told in the opening of 1687 that the king could not safely

entrust so great a charge to any one who did not share his sentiments on

religion, and on his refusal to abandon his faith he was deprived of the

White Staff. His brother Clarendon shared his fall. A Catholic, Lord

Bellasys, became First Lord of the Treasury, which was again put into

commission after Rochester's removal; and another Catholic, Lord

Arundell, became Lord Privy Seal; while Father Petre, a Jesuit, was

called to the Privy Council.

[Sidenote: The Tory Nobles.]

The dismissal of Rochester sprang mainly from a belief that with such a

minister James would fail to procure from the Parliament that freedom

for Catholics which he was bent on establishing. It was in fact a

declaration that on this matter none in the king's service must oppose

the king's will, and it was followed up by the dismissal of one official

after another who refused to aid in the repeal of the Test Act. But acts

like these were of no avail against the steady growth of resistance. If

the great Tory nobles were staunch for the Crown, they were as resolute

Englishmen in their hatred of mere tyranny as the Whigs themselves.

James gave the Duke of Norfolk the sword of State to carry before him as

he went to Mass. The Duke stopped at the Chapel door. "Your father would

have gone further," said the king. "Your Majesty's father was the better

man," replied the Duke, "and he would not have gone so far." The young

Duke of Somerset was ordered to introduce into the Presence Chamber the

Papal Nuncio, who was now received in State at Windsor in the teeth of a

statute which forbade diplomatic relations with Rome. "I am advised,"

Somerset answered, "that I cannot obey your Majesty without breaking the

law." "Do you not know that I am above the law?" James asked angrily.

"Your Majesty may be, but I am not," retorted the Duke. He was dismissed

from his post, but the spirit of resistance spread fast. In spite of the

king's letters the governors of the Charterhouse, who numbered among

them some of the greatest English nobles, refused to admit a Catholic to

the benefits of the foundation. The most devoted loyalists began to

murmur when James demanded apostasy as a proof of their loyalty.

[Sidenote: James and the Nonconformists.]

He had in fact to abandon at last all hope of bringing the Church or the

Tories over to his will, and in the spring of 1687 he turned, as Charles

had turned, to the Nonconformists. He published in April a Declaration

of Indulgence which suspended the operation of the penal laws against

Nonconformists and Catholics alike, and of every Act which imposed a

test as a qualification for office in Church or State. A hope was

expressed that this measure would be sanctioned by Parliament when it

was suffered to reassemble. The temptation to accept the Indulgence was

great, for since the fall of Shaftesbury persecution had fallen heavily

on the Protestant dissidents, and we can hardly wonder that the

Nonconformists wavered for a time or that numerous addresses of thanks

were presented to James. But the great body of them, and all the more

venerable names among them, remained true to the cause of freedom.

Baxter, Howe, and Bunyan all refused an Indulgence which could only be

purchased by the violent overthrow of the law. It was plain that the

only mode of actually securing the end which James had in view was to

procure a repeal of the Test Act from Parliament itself. It was to this

that the king's dismissal of Rochester and other ministerial changes had

been directed; but James found that the temper of the existing Houses,

so far as he could test it, remained absolutely opposed to his project.

In July therefore he dissolved the Parliament, and summoned a new one.

In spite of the support he might expect from the Nonconformists in the

elections, he knew that no free Parliament could be brought to consent

to the repeal. The Lords indeed could be swamped by lavish creations of

new peers. "Your troop of horse," Lord Sunderland told Churchill, "shall

be called up into the House of Lords." But it was a harder matter to

secure a compliant House of Commons. No effort however was spared. The

Lord-Lieutenants were directed to bring about such a "regulation" of the

governing body in boroughs as would ensure the return of candidates

pledged to the repeal of the Test, and to question every magistrate in

their county as to his vote. Half of them at once refused to comply, and

a string of great nobles--the Lords of Oxford, Shrewsbury, Dorset,

Derby, Pembroke, Rutland, Abergavenny, Thanet, Northampton, and

Abingdon--were dismissed from their Lord-Lieutenancies. The justices

when questioned simply replied that they would vote according to their

consciences, and send members to Parliament who would protect the

Protestant religion. After repeated "regulations" it was found

impossible to form a corporate body which would return representatives

willing to comply with the royal will. All thought of a Parliament had

to be abandoned; and even the most bigoted courtiers counselled

moderation at this proof of the stubborn opposition which James must

prepare to encounter from the peers, the gentry, and the trading

classes.

[Sidenote: The Attack on the Universities.]

Estranged as he was from the whole body of the nobles and gentry it

remained for James to force the clergy also into an attitude of

resistance. Even the tyranny of the Commission had failed to drive into

open opposition men who had been preaching Sunday after Sunday the

doctrine of passive obedience to the worst of kings. But James who had

now finally abandoned all hope of winning the aid of the Church in his

project cared little for passive obedience. He looked on the refusal of

the clergy to support his plans as freeing him from the pledge he had

given to maintain the Church as established by law; and he resolved to

attack it in the great institutions which had till now been its

strongholds. To secure the Universities for Catholicism was to seize the

only training schools which the English clergy possessed as well as the

only centres of higher education which existed for the English gentry.

It was on such a seizure however that James's mind was set. Little

indeed was done with Cambridge. A Benedictine monk, who presented

himself with royal letters recommending him for the degree of a Master

of Arts, was rejected on his refusal to sign the Articles; and the

Vice-Chancellor was summoned before the Privy Council and punished for

his rejection by deprivation from office. But a violent and obstinate

attack was directed against Oxford. The Master of University College,

Obadiah Walker, who declared himself a Catholic convert, was authorized

to retain his post in defiance of the law. A Roman Catholic named Massey

was presented by the Crown to the Deanery of Christ Church. Magdalen was

the wealthiest College in the University; and James in 1687 recommended

one Farmer, a Catholic of infamous life and not even qualified by

statute for the office, to its vacant headship. The Fellows

remonstrated, and on the rejection of their remonstrance chose Hough,

one of their own number, as their President. The Ecclesiastical

Commission declared the election void; and James, shamed out of his

first candidate, recommended a second, Parker, Bishop of Oxford, a

Catholic in heart and the meanest of his courtiers. The Fellows however

pleaded that Hough was already chosen, and they held stubbornly to their

legal head. It was in vain that the king visited Oxford, summoned them

to his presence, and rated them as they knelt before him like

schoolboys. "I am King," he said; "I will be obeyed! Go to your chapel

this instant, and elect the Bishop! Let those who refuse look to it, for

they shall feel the whole weight of my hand!" It was seen that to give

Magdalen as well as Christ Church into Catholic hands was to turn

Oxford into a Catholic seminary, and the king's threats were

disregarded. But they were soon carried out. A special Commission

visited the University, pronounced Hough an intruder, set aside his

appeal to the law, burst open the door of his president's house to

install Parker in his place, and on their refusal to submit deprived the

Fellows of their fellowships. The expulsion of the Fellows was followed

on a like refusal by that of the Demies. Parker, who died immediately

after his installation, was succeeded by a Roman Catholic bishop _in

partibus_, named Bonaventure Gifford, and twelve Roman Catholics were

admitted to fellowships in a single day.

[Sidenote: James and William.]

With peers, gentry, and clergy in dogged opposition the scheme of

wresting a repeal of the Test Act from a new Parliament became

impracticable, and without this--as James well knew--his system of

Indulgence, even if he was able to maintain it so long, must end with

his death and the accession of a Protestant sovereign. It was to provide

against such a defeat of his designs that he stooped to ask the aid of

William of Orange. Ever since his accession William had followed his

father-in-law's course with a growing anxiety. For while England was

seething with the madness of the Popish Plot and of the royalist

reaction the great European struggle which occupied the whole mind of

the Prince had been drawing nearer and nearer. The patience of Germany

indeed was worn out by the ceaseless aggressions of Lewis, and in 1686

its princes had bound themselves at Augsburg to resist all further

encroachments on the part of France. From that moment war became

inevitable, and in such a war William had always held that the aid of

England was essential to success. But his efforts to ensure English aid

had utterly failed. James, as William soon came to know, had renewed his

brother's secret treaty with France; and even had this been otherwise

his quarrel with his people would of itself have prevented him from

giving any aid in a struggle abroad. The Prince could only silently look

on with a desperate hope that James might yet be brought to a nobler

policy. He refused all encouragement to the leading malcontents who were

already calling on him to interfere in arms. On the other hand he

declined to support the king in his schemes for the abolition of the

Test. If he still cherished hopes of bringing about a peace between the

king and people which might enable him to enlist England in the Grand

Alliance, they vanished in 1687 before the Declaration of Indulgence. It

was at this moment, at the end of May, that James called on him and Mary

to declare themselves in favour of the abolition of the penal laws and

of the Test. "Conscience, honour, and good policy," wrote James, "bind

me to procure safety for the Catholics. I cannot leave those who have

remained faithful to the old and true religion subject to the oppression

under which the laws place them."

[Sidenote: The King's hopes.]

But simultaneously with the king's appeal letters of great import

reached the Prince from the leading nobles. Some, like the Hydes, simply

assured him of their friendship. The Bishop of London added assurances

of support. Others, like Devonshire, Nottingham, and Shrewsbury,

cautiously or openly warned the Prince against compliance with the

king's demand. Lord Churchill announced the resolve of Mary's sister

Anne to stand in any case by the cause of Protestantism. Danby, the

leading representative of the great Tory party, told the Dutch

ambassador plainly to warn William that if James was suffered to pursue

his present course, and above all to gain control over the Parliament,

he would leave the Catholic party strong enough at his death to threaten

Mary's succession. The letters dictated William's answer. No one, he

truly protested, loathed religious persecution more than he himself did,

but in relaxing political disabilities James called on him to

countenance an attack on his own religion. "I cannot," he ended, "concur

in what your Majesty desires of me." William's refusal was justified, as

we have seen, by the result of the efforts to assemble a Parliament

favourable to the repeal of the Test. The wholesale dismissal of

justices and Lord-Lieutenants through the summer of 1687 failed to

shake the resolve of the counties. The "regulation" of their

corporations by the displacing of their older members and the

substitution of Nonconformists did little to gain the towns. The year

1688 indeed had hardly opened when it was found necessary to adjourn the

elections which had been fixed for February, and to make a fresh attempt

to win a warmer support from the dissidents and from the country. For

James clung with a desperate tenacity to the hope of finding a compliant

Parliament. He knew, what was as yet unknown to the world, the fact that

his Queen was with child. The birth of an heir would meet the danger

which he looked for from the succession of William and Mary. But James

was past middle life, and his death would leave his boy at the mercy of

a Regency which could hardly fail to be composed of men who would undo

the king's work and even bring up the young sovereign as a Protestant.

His own security, as he thought, against such a course lay in the

building up a strong Catholic party, in placing Catholics in the high

offices of State, and in providing against their expulsion from these at

his death by a repeal of the Test. But such a repeal could only be won

from Parliament, and hopeless as the effort seemed James pressed

doggedly on in his attempt to secure Houses who would carry out his

will.

[Sidenote: The Trial of the Bishops.]

The renewed Declaration of Indulgence which he issued in 1688 was not

only intended to win the Nonconformists by fresh assurances of the

king's sincerity, it was an appeal to the nation at large. At its close

he promised to summon a Parliament in November, and he called on the

electors to choose such members as would bring to a successful end the

policy he had begun. His resolve, he said, was to make merit the one

qualification for office and to establish universal liberty of

conscience for all future time. It was in this character of a royal

appeal that he ordered every clergyman to read the Declaration during

divine service on two successive Sundays. Little time was given for

deliberation; but little time was needed. The clergy refused almost to a

man to be the instruments of their own humiliation. The Declaration was

read in only four of the London churches, and in these the congregation

flocked out of church at the first words of it. Nearly all the country

parsons refused to obey the royal orders, and the Bishops went with the

rest of the clergy. A few days before the appointed Sunday Archbishop

Sancroft called his suffragans together, and the six who were able to

appear at Lambeth signed a temperate protest to the king in which they

declined to publish an illegal Declaration. "It is a standard of

rebellion," James exclaimed, as the Primate presented the paper; and the

resistance of the clergy was no sooner announced to him than he

determined to wreak his vengeance on the prelates who had signed the

protest. He ordered the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to deprive them of

their sees; but in this matter even the Commissioners shrank from

obeying him. The Chancellor, Lord Jeffreys, advised a prosecution for

libel as an easier mode of punishment; and the Bishops, who refused to

give bail, were committed on this charge to the Tower. They passed to

their prison amidst the shouts of a great multitude; the sentinels knelt

for their blessing as they entered its gates, and the soldiers of the

garrison drank their healths. So threatening was the temper of the

nation that his ministers pressed James to give way. But his obstinacy

grew with the danger. "Indulgence," he said, "ruined my father"; and on

the 29th of June the Bishops appeared as criminals at the bar of the

King's Bench. The jury had been packed, the judges were mere tools of

the Crown, but judges and jury were alike overawed by the indignation of

the people at large. No sooner had the foreman of the jury uttered the

words "Not guilty" than a roar of applause burst from the crowd, and

horsemen spurred along every road to carry over the country the news of

the acquittal.

[Sidenote: The National discontent.]

James was at Hounslow when the news of the verdict reached him, and as

he rode from the camp he heard a great shout behind him. "What is that?"

he asked. "It is nothing," was the reply; "only the soldiers are glad

that the Bishops are acquitted!" "Do you call that nothing?" grumbled

the king. The shout told him that he stood utterly alone in his realm.

The peerage, the gentry, the bishops, the clergy, the universities,

every lawyer, every trader, every farmer, stood aloof from him. And now

his very soldiers forsook him. The most devoted Catholics pressed him to

give way. But to give way was to reverse every act he had done since his

accession and to change the whole nature of his government. All show of

legal rule had disappeared. Sheriffs, mayors, magistrates, appointed by

the Crown in defiance of a parliamentary statute, were no real officers

in the eye of the law. Even if the Houses were summoned members returned

by officers such as these could form no legal Parliament. Hardly a

Minister of the Crown or a Privy Councillor exercised any lawful

authority. James had brought things to such a pass that the restoration

of legal government meant the absolute reversal of every act he had

done. But he was in no mood to reverse his acts. His temper was only

spurred to a more dogged obstinacy by danger and remonstrance. "I will

lose all," he said to the Spanish ambassador who counselled moderation;

"I will lose all or win all." He broke up the camp at Hounslow and

dispersed its troops in distant cantonments. He dismissed the two judges

who had favoured the acquittal of the Bishops. He ordered the

chancellor of each diocese to report the names of the clergy who had not

read the Declaration of Indulgence. But his will broke fruitlessly

against a sullen resistance which met him on every side. Not a

chancellor made a return to the Commissioners, and the Commissioners

were cowed into inaction by the temper of the nation. When the judges

who had displayed their servility to the Crown went on circuit the

gentry refused to meet them. A yet fiercer irritation was kindled by the

king's resolve to supply the place of the English troops whose temper

proved unserviceable for his purposes by drafts from the Catholic army

which Tyrconnell had raised in Ireland. Even the Roman Catholic peers at

the Council-table protested against this measure; and six officers in a

single regiment laid down their commissions rather than enrol the Irish

recruits among their men. The ballad of "Lillibullero," a scurrilous

attack on the Irish recruits, was sung from one end of England to the

other.

[Sidenote: The Invitation.]

Wide however as the disaffection undoubtedly was the position of James

seemed fairly secure. He counted on the aid of France. His army,

whatever signs of discontent it might show, was still a formidable force

of twenty thousand men. Scotland, disheartened by the failure of

Argyle's rising, could give no such help as it gave to the Long

Parliament. Ireland on the other hand was ready to throw a Catholic

army in the king's support on the western coast. It was doubtful too if

in England itself disaffection would turn into actual revolt. The Bloody

Assize had left its terror on the Whigs. The Tories and Churchmen,

angered as they were, were still hampered by their horror of rebellion

and their doctrine of non-resistance. Above all the eyes of the nation

rested on William and Mary. James was past middle age, and a few years

must bring a Protestant successor and restore the reign of law. But in

the midst of the struggle with the Church it was announced that the

Queen was again with child. The news was received with general unbelief,

for five years had passed since the last pregnancy of Mary of Modena,

and the unbelief passed into a general expectation of some imposture as

men watched the joy of the Catholics and their confident prophecies that

the child would be a boy. But, truth or imposture, it was plain that the

appearance of a Prince of Wales must bring on a crisis. If the child

turned out a boy, and as was certain was brought up a Catholic, the

highest Tory had to resolve at last whether the tyranny under which

England lay should go on for ever. The hesitation of the country was at

an end. Danby, loyal above all to the Church and firm in his hatred of

subservience to France, answered for the Tories. Compton answered for

the High Churchmen, goaded at last into rebellion by the Declaration of

Indulgence. The Earl of Devonshire, the Lord Cavendish of the Exclusion

struggle, answered for the Nonconformists, who were satisfied with

William's promise to procure them toleration, as well as for the general

body of the Whigs. The announcement of the boy's birth on the 10th of

June was followed ten days after by a formal invitation to William to

intervene in arms for the restoration of English liberty and the

protection of the Protestant religion. The invitation was signed by

Danby, Devonshire, and Compton, the representatives of the great parties

whose long fight was hushed at last by a common danger, by two recent

converts from the Catholic faith, the Earl of Shrewsbury and Lord

Lumley, by Edward the cousin of Lord Russell, and by Henry the brother

of Algernon Sidney. It was carried to the Hague by Herbert, the most

popular of English seamen, who had been deprived of his command for a

refusal to vote against the Test.

[Sidenote: James and France.]

The Invitation called on the Prince of Orange to land with an army

strong enough to justify those who signed it in rising in arms. An

outbreak of revolt was in fact inevitable, and either its success or

defeat must be equally fatal to William should he refuse to put himself

at its head. If the rebels were victorious, their resentment at his

desertion of their cause in the hour of need would make Mary's

succession impossible and probably bring about the establishment of a

Commonwealth. On the other hand the victory of the king would not only

ruin English freedom and English Protestantism, but fling the whole

weight of England in the contest for the liberties of Europe which was

now about to open into the scale of France. From the opening of 1688 the

signs of a mutual understanding between the English Court and the French

had been unmistakeable. James had declared himself on the side of Lewis

in the negotiations with the Empire which followed on the Treaty of

Augsburg. He had backed Sweden in its threats of war against the Dutch.

At the instigation of France he had recalled the English and Scotch

troops in the service of the States. He had received supplies from Lewis

to send an English fleet to the coast of Holland; and was at this moment

supporting at Rome the French side in the quarrel over the Electorate of

Cologne, a quarrel which rendered war inevitable. It was certain

therefore that success at home would secure James's aid to France in the

struggle abroad.

[Sidenote: William's Acceptance.]

It was this above all which decided the action of the Prince, for the

ruling passion in William's heart was the longing to free Europe from

the supremacy of France. It was this too which made his enterprise

possible, for nothing but a sense of their own danger would have forced

his opponents in Holland itself to assent to his expedition. Their

assent however once gained, William strained all his resources as

Admiral and Captain-General to gather a fleet and a sufficient force

under pretext of defence against the English fleet which now appeared in

the Channel, while Brandenburg promised to supply the place of the Dutch

forces during their absence in England by lending the States nine

thousand men. As soon as the news of these preparations reached England

noble after noble made his way to the Hague. The Earl of Shrewsbury

brought L2000 towards the expenses of the expedition. Edward Russell,

the representative of the Whig Earl of Bedford, was followed by the

representatives of great Tory houses, by the sons of the Marquis of

Winchester, of Lord Danby, of Lord Peterborough, and by Lord

Macclesfield, a well-known High Churchman. At home the Earls of Danby

and Devonshire prepared silently with Lord Lumley for a rising in the

North. In spite of the profound secrecy with which all was conducted,

the keen instinct of Sunderland, who had stooped to purchase continuance

in office at the price of a secret apostasy to Catholicism, detected the

preparations of William; and the sense that his master's ruin was at

hand encouraged him to tell every secret of James on the promise of a

pardon for the crimes to which he had lent himself. James alone remained

stubborn and insensate as of old. He had no fear of a revolt unaided by

the Prince of Orange, and he believed that the threat of a French

attack on Holland itself would render William's departure impossible. At

the opening of September indeed Lewis declared himself aware of the

meaning of the Dutch armaments and warned the States that he should look

on an attack upon James as a war upon himself.

[Sidenote: James gives way.]

Fortunately for William so open an announcement of the union between

England and France suited ill with the plans of James. He still looked

forward to the coming Parliament, and the knowledge of a league with

France was certain to make any Parliament reluctant to admit Catholics

to a share in political life. James therefore roughly disavowed the act

of Lewis, and William was able to continue his preparations. But even

had no such disavowal come the threat of Lewis would have remained an

empty one. In spite of the counsel of Louvois he looked on an invasion

of Holland as likely to serve English interests rather than French and

resolved to open the war by a campaign on the Rhine. In September his

troops marched eastward, and the Dutch at once felt themselves secure.

The States-General gave their public sanction to William's project, and

the armament he had prepared gathered rapidly in the Scheldt. The news

of war and of the diversion of the French forces to Germany no sooner

reached England than the king passed from obstinacy to panic. By drafts

from Scotland and Ireland he had mustered forty thousand men, but the

temper of the troops robbed him of all trust in them. Help from France

was now out of the question. There was nothing for it but to fall back,

as Sunderland had for some time been advising him to fall back, on the

older policy of a union with the Tory party and the party of the Church;

and to win assent for his plans from the coming Parliament by an

abandonment of his recent acts. But the haste and completeness with

which James reversed his whole course forbade any belief in his

sincerity. He personally appealed for support to the Bishops. He

dissolved the Ecclesiastical Commission. He replaced the magistrates he

had driven from office. He restored their franchises to the towns. The

Chancellor carried back the Charter of London in state into the City.

The Bishop of Winchester was sent to replace the expelled Fellows of

Magdalen. Catholic chapels and Jesuit schools were ordered to be closed.

[Sidenote: William's Landing.]

Sunderland pressed for the instant calling of a Parliament. But it was

still plain that any Parliament would as yet be eager for war with

France and would probably call on the king to put the Prince of Orange

at the head of his army in such a war. To James therefore Sunderland's

counsel seemed treachery, the issue of a secret design with William to

place him helpless in the Prince's hands and above all to imperil the

succession of his boy, whose birth William had now been brought by

advice from the English lords to regard as an imposture. He again

therefore fell back on France which made new advances to him in the hope

of meeting this fresh danger of an attack from England; and in the end

of October he dismissed Sunderland from office. But Sunderland had

hardly left Whitehall when the Declaration of the Prince of Orange

reached England. It demanded the removal of grievances and the calling

of a free Parliament which should establish English freedom and religion

on a secure basis. It promised toleration to Protestant Nonconformists

and freedom of conscience to Catholics. It left the question of the

legitimacy of the Prince of Wales and the settlement of the succession

to Parliament. James was wounded above all by the doubts thrown on the

birth of a Prince; and he produced proofs of the birth before the peers

who were in London. But the proofs came too late. Detained by ill winds,

beaten back on its first venture by a violent storm, William's fleet of

six hundred transports, escorted by fifty men-of-war, anchored on the

5th of November in Torbay; and his army, thirteen thousand strong,

entered Exeter amid the shouts of its citizens. Great pains had been

taken to strip from William's army the appearance of a foreign force,

which might have stirred English feeling to resistance. The core of it

consisted of the English and Scottish regiments which had remained in

the service of the States in spite of their recall by the king. Its

foreign divisions were representatives of the whole Protestant world.

With the Dutchmen were Brandenburgers and Swedes, and the most brilliant

corps in the whole army was composed of French refugees.

[Sidenote: The National Rising.]

The landing seemed at first a failure. The country remained quiet.

William's coming had been unexpected in the West, and no great landowner

joined his forces. Though the king's fleet had failed to intercept the

expedition it closed in from the Channel to prevent William's escape as

soon as he had landed, while the king's army moved rapidly to encounter

him in the field. But the pause was one of momentary surprise. Before a

week had passed the nobles and squires of the west flocked to William's

camp and the adhesion of Plymouth secured his rear. The call of the

king's forces to face the Prince in the south no sooner freed the

northern parts of England from their presence than the insurrection

broke out. Scotland threw off the royal rule. Danby, dashing at the head

of a hundred horsemen into York, gave the signal for a rising. The York

militia met his appeal with shouts of "A free Parliament and the

Protestant religion"; peers and gentry flocked to his standard; and a

march on Nottingham united his forces to those under Devonshire who had

mustered at Derby the great lords of the midland and eastern counties.

Everywhere the revolt was triumphant. The garrison of Hull declared for

a free Parliament. The Duke of Norfolk appeared at the head of three

hundred gentlemen in the market-place at Norwich. At Oxford townsmen and

gownsmen greeted Lord Lovelace and the forces he led with uproarious

welcome. Bristol threw open its gates to the Prince of Orange, who

advanced steadily on Salisbury where James had assembled his forces.

[Sidenote: Flight of James.]

But the king's army, broken by dissensions and mutual suspicions among

its leaders, shrank from an engagement and fell back in disorder at his

approach. Its retreat was the signal for a general abandonment of the

royal cause. The desertion of Lord Churchill, who had from the first

made his support conditional on the calling of a Parliament, a step

which the king still hesitated to take, was followed by that of so many

other officers that James abandoned the struggle in despair. He fled to

London to hear that his daughter Anne had left St. James's to join Danby

at Nottingham. "God help me," cried the wretched father, "for my own

children have forsaken me!" His spirit was utterly broken by the sudden

crash; and though he had promised to call the Houses together and

despatched commissioners to Hungerford to treat with William on the

terms of a free Parliament, in his heart he had resolved on flight.

Parliament, he said to the few who still clung to him, would force on

him concessions he could not endure; while flight would enable him to

return and regain his throne with the assistance of French forces. He

only waited therefore for news of the escape of his wife and child on

the 10th of December to make his way to the Isle of Sheppey, where a hoy

lay ready to carry him to France. Some rough fishermen however who took

him for a Jesuit prevented his escape, and a troop of Life Guards

brought him back in safety to London. His return revived the hopes of

the Tories, who with Clarendon and Rochester at their head looked on the

work of the Prince of Orange as done in the overthrow of the king's

design of establishing a Catholic despotism, and who trusted that their

system would be restored by a reconciliation of James with the Tory

Parliament they expected to be returned. Halifax however, though he had

long acted with the Tories, was too clear-sighted for hopes such as

these. He had taken no part in the invitation or revolt, but now that

the revolution was successful he pressed upon William the impossibility

of carrying out a new system of government with such a sovereign as

James. The Whigs, who had gone beyond hope of forgiveness, backed

powerfully these arguments; and in spite of the pledges with which he

had landed the Prince was soon as convinced of their wisdom as the

Whigs. From this moment it was the policy of William and his advisers to

further a flight which removed their chief difficulty out of the way. It

would have been hard to depose James had he remained, and perilous to

keep him prisoner; but the entry of the Dutch troops into London, the

silence of the Prince, and an order to leave St. James's filled the king

with fresh terrors, and taking advantage of the means of escape which

were almost openly placed at his disposal James a second time quitted

London and embarked on the 23rd of December unhindered for France.

[Sidenote: The Convention.]

Before flying James had burnt most of the writs convoking a new

Parliament, had disbanded his army, and destroyed so far as he could all

means of government. For a few days there was a wild burst of panic and

outrage in London, but the orderly instinct of the people soon

reasserted itself. The Lords who were at the moment in the capital

provided on their own authority as Privy Councillors for the more

pressing needs of administration, and quietly resigned their authority

into William's hands on his arrival. The difficulty which arose from the

absence of any person legally authorized to call Parliament together was

got over by convoking the House of Peers, and forming a second body of

all members who had sat in the Commons in the reign of Charles the

Second together with the Aldermen and Common Councillors of London. Both

bodies requested William to take on himself the provisional government

of the kingdom, and to issue circular letters inviting the electors of

every town and county to send up representatives to a Convention which

met on the 22nd of January 1689. In the new Convention both Houses were

found equally resolved against any recall of or negotiation with the

fallen king. They were united in entrusting a provisional authority to

the Prince of Orange. But with this step their unanimity ended. The

Whigs, who formed a majority in the Commons, voted a resolution which,

illogical and inconsistent as it seemed, was well adapted to unite in

its favour every element of the opposition to James, the Churchman who

was simply scared by his bigotry, the Tory who doubted the right of a

nation to depose its king, the Whig who held the theory of a contract

between King and People. They voted that King James, "having endeavoured

to subvert the constitution of this kingdom by breaking the original

contract between King and People, and by the advice of Jesuits and other

wicked persons having violated the fundamental laws, and having

withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, has abdicated the Government, and

that the throne is thereby vacant." But in the Lords where the Tories

were still in the ascendant the resolution was fiercely debated.

Archbishop Sancroft with the high Tories held that no crime could bring

about a forfeiture of the crown and that James still remained king, but

that his tyranny had given the nation a right to withdraw from him the

actual exercise of government and to entrust his functions to a Regency.

The moderate Tories under Danby's guidance admitted that James had

ceased to be king but denied that the throne could be vacant, and

contended that from the moment of his abdication the sovereignty vested

in his daughter Mary. It was in vain that the eloquence of Halifax

backed the Whig peers in struggling for the resolution of the Commons as

it stood. The plan of a Regency was lost by a single vote, and Danby's

scheme was adopted by a large majority.

[Sidenote: Declaration of Rights.]

But both the Tory courses found a sudden obstacle in William. He

declined to be Regent. He had no mind, he said to Danby, to be his

wife's gentleman-usher. Mary on the other hand refused to accept the

crown save in conjunction with her husband. The two declarations put an

end to the question, and it was settled that William and Mary should be

acknowledged as joint sovereigns but that the actual administration

should rest with William alone. It had been agreed throughout however

that before the throne was filled up the constitutional liberties of the

subject must be secured. A Parliamentary Committee in which the most

active member was John Somers, a young lawyer who had distinguished

himself in the trial of the Bishops and who was destined to play a great

part in later history, drew up a Declaration of Rights which after some

alterations was adopted by the two Houses. The Declaration recited the

misgovernment of James, his abdication, and the resolve of the Lords

and Commons to assert the ancient rights and liberties of English

subjects. It condemned as illegal his establishment of an ecclesiastical

commission, and his raising of an army without Parliamentary sanction.

It denied the right of any king to suspend or dispense with laws, as

they had been suspended or dispensed with of late, or to exact money

save by consent of Parliament. It asserted for the subject a right to

petition, to a free choice of representatives in Parliament, and to a

pure and merciful administration of justice. It declared the right of

both Houses to liberty of debate. It demanded securities for the free

exercise of their religion by all Protestants, and bound the new

sovereign to maintain the Protestant religion as well as the laws and

liberties of the nation. "We do claim and insist on the premises," ran

the Declaration, "as our undoubted rights and liberties; encouraged by

the Declaration of his Highness the Prince, we have confidence that he

will perfect the deliverance he has begun and will preserve our rights

against all further injury." It ended by declaring the Prince and

Princess of Orange King and Queen of England. The Declaration was

presented to William and Mary on the 13th of February by the two Houses

in the Banqueting Room at Whitehall, and at the close of its recital

Halifax, in the name of the Estates of the Realm, prayed them to receive

the crown. William accepted the offer in his own name and in that of

his wife and declared in a few words the resolve of both to maintain the

laws and to govern by advice of Parliament.

[Sidenote: Lewis and the Revolution.]

But William's eyes were fixed less on England than on Europe. His

expedition had had in his own eyes a European rather than an English

aim, and in his acceptance of the crown he had been moved not so much by

personal ambition as by the prospect which offered itself of firmly

knitting together England and Holland, the two great Protestant powers

whose fleets held the mastery of the sea. But the advance from such a

union to the formation of the European alliance against France on which

he was bent was a step that still had to be made. Already indeed his

action in England had told decisively on the contest. The blunder of

Lewis in choosing Germany instead of Holland for his point of attack had

been all but atoned for by the brilliant successes with which he opened

the war. The whole country west of the Rhine fell at once into his

hands; his armies made themselves masters of the Palatinate, and

penetrated even to Wuertemberg. The hopes of the French king indeed had

never been higher than at the moment when the arrival of James at St.

Germain dashed all hope to the ground. Lewis was at once thrown back on

a war of defence, and the brutal ravages which marked the retreat of his

armies from the Rhine revealed the bitterness with which his pride

stooped to the necessity.

[Sidenote: The Grand Alliance.]

But his reception of James at St. Germain as still king of England gave

fresh force to William's efforts. It was yet doubtful whether William

would be able to bring England to a hearty co-operation in the struggle

against French ambition. But whatever reluctance there might have been

to follow him in an attack on France with the view of saving the

liberties of Europe, the stoutest Tory had none in following him in such

an attack when it meant simply self-defence against a French restoration

of the Stuart king at the cost of English freedom. It was with universal

approval that the English Government declared war against Lewis. It was

soon followed in this step by Holland, and the two countries at once

agreed to stand by one another in their struggle against France. But it

was more difficult to secure the co-operation of the two branches of the

House of Austria in Germany and Spain, reluctant as they were to join

the Protestant powers in league against a Catholic king. Spain however

was forced by Lewis into war, for he aimed at the Netherlands as his

especial prey; and the court of Vienna at last yielded to the bait held

out by Holland of a recognition of its claims to the Spanish succession.

[Sidenote: Scotland and the Revolution.]

The adhesion of these powers in the spring of 1689 completed the Grand

Alliance of the European powers which William had designed; and the

union of Savoy with the allies girt France in on every side save that of

Switzerland with a ring of foes. Lewis was left without a single ally

save the Turk; for though the Scandinavian kingdoms stood aloof from the

confederacy of Europe their neutrality was unfriendly to him. But the

energy and quickness of movement which sprang from the concentration of

the power of France in a single hand still left the contest an equal

one. The empire was slow to move; the court of Vienna was distracted

with a war against the Turks; Spain was all but powerless; Holland and

England were alone earnest in the struggle, and England could as yet

give little aid in it. One English brigade indeed, formed from the

regiments raised by James, joined the Dutch army on the Sambre, and

distinguished itself under Churchill, who had been rewarded for his

treason with the title of Earl of Marlborough, in a brisk skirmish with

the enemy at Walcourt. But for the bulk of his forces William had as yet

grave work to do at home. In England not a sword had been drawn for

James. In Scotland his tyranny had been yet greater than in England, and

so far as the Lowlands went the fall of his tyranny was as rapid and

complete. No sooner had he called his troops southward to meet William's

invasion than Edinburgh rose in revolt. The western peasants were at

once up in arms; and the Episcopalian clergy, who had been the

instruments of the Stuart misgovernment ever since the Restoration, were

rabbled and driven from their parsonages in every parish. The news of

these disorders forced William to act, though he was without a show of

legal authority over Scotland. On the advice of the Scotch Lords present

in London he ventured to summon a Convention similar to that which had

been summoned in England, and on his own responsibility to set aside the

laws passed by the "Drunken Parliament" of the Restoration which

excluded Presbyterians from the Scotch Parliament. This Convention

resolved that James had forfeited the crown by misgovernment, and

offered it to William and Mary. The offer was accompanied by a Claim of

Right framed on the model of the Declaration of Rights to which the two

sovereigns had consented in England, but closing with a demand for the

abolition of Prelacy. Both crown and claim were accepted, and the

arrival of the Scotch regiments which William had brought from Holland

gave strength to the new Government.

[Sidenote: Killiecrankie.]

Its strength was to be roughly tested. On the revolt of the capital John

Graham of Claverhouse, whose cruelties in the persecution of the Western

Covenanters had been rewarded with high command in the Scotch army and

with the title of Viscount Dundee, withdrew with a few troopers from

Edinburgh to the Highlands and appealed to the clans. In the Highlands

nothing was known of English government or misgovernment: all that the

Revolution meant to a Highlander was the restoration of the House of

Argyle. To many of the clans it meant the restoration of lands which had

been granted them on the Earl's attainder; and the zeal of the

Macdonalds, the Macleans, the Camerons, who were as ready to join Dundee

in fighting the Campbells and the Government which upheld them as they

had been ready to join Montrose in the same cause forty years before,

was quickened by a reluctance to disgorge their spoil. They were soon in

arms. William's Scotch regiments under General Mackay were sent to

suppress the rising; but as they climbed the pass of Killiecrankie on

the 27th of July 1689 Dundee charged them at the head of three thousand

clansmen and swept them in headlong rout down the glen. His death in the

moment of victory broke however the only bond which held the Highlanders

together, and in a few weeks the host which had spread terror through

the Lowlands melted helplessly away. In the next summer Mackay was able

to build the strong post of Fort William in the very heart of the

disaffected country, and his offers of money and pardon brought about

the submission of the clans.

[Sidenote: Massacre of Glencoe.]

The work of peace was sullied by an act of cruel treachery the memory of

which still lingers in the minds of men. Sir John Dalrymple, the Master

of Stair, in whose hands the government of Scotland at this time mainly

rested, had hoped that a refusal of the oath of allegiance would give

grounds for a war of extermination and free Scotland for ever from its

dread of the Highlanders. He had provided for the expected refusal by

orders of a ruthless severity. "Your troops," he wrote to the officer in

command, "will destroy entirely the country of Lochaber, Locheil's

lands, Keppoch's, Glengarry's, and Glencoe's. Your powers shall be large

enough. I hope the soldiers will not trouble the Government with

prisoners." But his hopes were disappointed by the readiness with which

the clans accepted the offers of the Government. All submitted in good

time save Macdonald of Glencoe, whose pride delayed his taking of the

oath till six days after the latest date fixed by the proclamation.

Foiled in his larger hopes of destruction Dalrymple seized eagerly on

the pretext given by Macdonald, and an order "for the extirpation of

that sect of robbers" was laid before William and received the royal

signature. "The work," wrote the Master of Stair to Colonel Hamilton who

undertook it, "must be secret and sudden." The troops were chosen from

among the Campbells, the deadly foes of the clansmen of Glencoe, and

quartered peacefully among the Macdonalds for twelve days till all

suspicion of their errand disappeared. At daybreak on the 13th of

February 1692 they fell on their hosts, and in a few moments thirty of

the clansfolk lay dead on the snow. The rest, sheltered by a storm,

escaped to the mountains to perish for the most part of cold and hunger.

"The only thing I regret," said the Master of Stair, when the news

reached him, "is that any got away."

But whatever horror the Massacre of Glencoe has roused in later days few

save Dalrymple knew of it at the time. The peace of the Highlands

enabled the work of reorganization to go on quietly at Edinburgh. In

accepting the Claim of Right with its repudiation of Prelacy William had

in effect restored the Presbyterian Church to which nine-tenths of the

Lowland Scotchmen clung, and its restoration was accompanied by the

revival of the Westminster Confession as a standard of faith and by the

passing of an Act which abolished lay patronage. Against the Toleration

Act which the king proposed the Scotch Parliament stood firm. But though

the measure failed the king was as firm in his purpose as the

Parliament. So long as he reigned, William declared in memorable words,

there should be no persecution for conscience' sake. "We never could be

of that mind that violence was suited to the advancing of true religion,

nor do we intend that our authority shall ever be a tool to the

irregular passions of any party."

[Sidenote: The Irish Rising.]

It was not in Scotland however but in Ireland that James and Lewis hoped

to arrest William's progress. Ireland had long been the object of

special attention on the part of James. In the middle of his reign, when

his chief aim was to provide against the renewed depression of his

fellow-religionists at his death by any Protestant successor, he had

resolved (if we may trust the statement of the French ambassador) to

place Ireland in such a position of independence that she might serve as

a refuge for his Catholic subjects. It was with a view to the success of

this design that Lord Clarendon was dismissed from the Lord-Lieutenancy

and succeeded in the charge of the island by the Catholic Earl of

Tyrconnell. The new governor, who was raised to a dukedom, went roughly

to work. Every Englishman was turned out of office. Every Judge, every

Privy Councillor, every Mayor and Alderman of a borough, was required to

be a Catholic and an Irishman. The Irish army, raised to the number of

fifty thousand men and purged of its Protestant soldiers, was entrusted

to Catholic officers. In a few months the English ascendency was

overthrown, and the life and fortune of the English settlers were at the

mercy of the natives on whom they had trampled since Cromwell's day. The

king's flight and the agitation among the native Irish at the news

spread panic therefore through the island. Another massacre was believed

to be at hand; and fifteen hundred Protestant families, chiefly from the

south, fled in terror over sea. The Protestants of the north on the

other hand drew together at Enniskillen and Londonderry, and prepared

for self-defence. The outbreak however was still delayed, and for two

months Tyrconnell intrigued with William's Government. But his aim was

simply to gain time. He was at this very moment indeed inviting James to

return to Ireland, and assuring him of his fidelity. To James this call

promised the aid of an army which would enable him to help the Scotch

rising and to effect a landing in England, while Lewis saw in it the

means of diverting William from giving effectual aid to the Grand

Alliance. A staff of French officers with arms, ammunition, and a supply

of money was placed therefore at the service of the exiled king, and the

news of his coming no sooner reached Dublin at the opening of 1689 than

Tyrconnell threw off the mask. A flag was hoisted over Dublin Castle

with the words embroidered on its folds "Now or Never." The signal

called every Catholic to arms. The maddened Irishmen flung themselves on

the plunder which their masters had left and in a few weeks havoc was

done, the French envoy told Lewis, which it would take years to repair.

[Sidenote: Siege of Londonderry.]

It was in this condition that James found Ireland when he landed at

Kinsale. The rising of the natives had already baffled his plans. To him

as to Lewis Ireland was simply a basis of operations against William,

and whatever were their hopes of a future restoration of the soil to its

older possessors both kings were equally anxious that no strife of races

should at this moment interrupt their plans of an invasion of England

with the fifty thousand soldiers that Tyrconnell was said to have at his

disposal. But long ere James landed the war of races had already begun.

To Tyrconnell indeed and the Irish leaders the king's plans were utterly

distasteful. They had no wish for an invasion and conquest of England

which would replace Ireland again in its position of dependence. Their

policy was simply that of Ireland for the Irish, and the first step in

such a policy was to drive out the Englishmen who still stood at bay in

Ulster. Half of Tyrconnell's army therefore had already been sent

against Londonderry, where the bulk of the fugitives found shelter

behind a weak wall, manned by a few old guns and destitute even of a

ditch. But the seven thousand desperate Englishmen behind the wall made

up for its weakness. They rejected with firmness the offers of James,

who was still anxious to free his hands from a strife which broke his

plans. They kept up their fire even when the neighbouring Protestants

with their women and children were brutally driven under their walls and

placed in the way of their guns. So fierce were their sallies, so

crushing the repulse of his attack, that the king's general, Hamilton,

at last turned the siege into a blockade. The Protestants died of hunger

in the streets and of the fever which comes of hunger, but the cry of

the town was still "No Surrender." The siege had lasted a hundred and

five days, and only two days' food remained in Londonderry when on the

28th of July an English ship broke the boom across the river, and the

besiegers sullenly withdrew.

[Sidenote: James and Ireland.]

Their defeat was turned into a rout by the men of Enniskillen who

struggled through a bog to charge an Irish force of double their number

at Newtown Butler, and drove horse and foot before them in a panic which

soon spread through Hamilton's whole army. The routed soldiers fell back

on Dublin where James lay helpless in the hands of the frenzied

Parliament which he had summoned. Every member returned was an Irishman

and a Catholic, and their one aim was to undo the successive

confiscations which had given the soil to English settlers and to get

back Ireland for the Irish. The Act of Settlement, on which all title to

property rested, was at once repealed in spite of the king's reluctance.

He was told indeed bluntly that if he did not do Ireland justice not an

Irishman would fight for him. It was to strengthen this work by ensuring

the legal forfeiture of their lands that three thousand Protestants of

name and fortune were massed together in the hugest Bill of Attainder

which the world has seen. To the bitter memory of past wrongs was added

the fury of religious bigotry. In spite of the king's promise of

religious freedom the Protestant clergy were everywhere driven from

their parsonages, Fellows and scholars were turned out of Trinity

College, and the French envoy, the Count of Avaux, dared even to propose

that if any Protestant rising took place on the English descent, as was

expected, it should be met by a general massacre of the Protestants who

still lingered in the districts which had submitted to James. To his

credit the king shrank horror-struck from the proposal. "I cannot be so

cruel," he said, "as to cut their throats while they live peaceably

under my government." "Mercy to Protestants," was the cold reply, "is

cruelty to Catholics."

[Sidenote: The Revolution and the Monarchy.]

The long agony of Londonderry was invaluable to England: it foiled the

king's hopes of an invasion which would have roused a fresh civil war,

and gave the new Government time to breathe. Time was indeed sorely

needed. Through the proscription and bloodshed of the new Irish rule

William was forced to look helplessly on. The best troops in the army

which had been mustered at Hounslow had been sent with Marlborough to

the Sambre, and the political embarrassments which grew up around the

new Government made it impossible to spare a man of those who remained

at home. The great ends of the Revolution were indeed secured, even

amidst the confusion and intrigue which we shall have to describe, by

the common consent of all. On the great questions of civil liberty Whig

and Tory were now at one. The Declaration of Rights was turned into the

Bill of Rights by the Convention which had now become a Parliament, and

the passing of this measure in 1689 restored to the monarchy the

character which it had lost under the Tudors and the Stuarts. The right

of the people through its representatives to depose the king, to change

the order of succession, and to set on the throne whom they would, was

now established. All claim of Divine Right or hereditary right

independent of the law was formally put an end to by the election of

William and Mary. Since their day no English sovereign has been able to

advance any claim to the crown save a claim which rested on a particular

clause in a particular Act of Parliament. William, Mary, and Anne, were

sovereigns simply by virtue of the Bill of Rights. George the First and

his successors have been sovereigns solely by virtue of the Act of

Settlement. An English monarch is now as much the creature of an Act of

Parliament as the pettiest tax-gatherer in his realm.

[Sidenote: Taxation and the Army.]

Nor was the older character of the kingship alone restored. The older

constitution returned with it. Bitter experience had taught England the

need of restoring to the Parliament its absolute power over taxation.

The grant of revenue for life to the last two kings had been the secret

of their anti-national policy, and the first act of the new legislature

was to restrict the grant of the royal revenue to a term of four years.

William was bitterly galled by the provision. "The gentlemen of England

trusted King James," he said, "who was an enemy of their religion and

their laws, and they will not trust me, by whom their religion and their

laws have been preserved." But the only change brought about in the

Parliament by this burst of royal anger was a resolve henceforth to make

the vote of supplies an annual one, a resolve which, in spite of the

slight changes introduced by the next Tory Parliament, soon became an

invariable rule. A change of almost as great importance established the

control of Parliament over the army. The hatred to a standing army which

had begun under Cromwell had only deepened under James; but with the

Continental war the existence of an army was a necessity. As yet however

it was a force which had no legal existence. The soldier was simply an

ordinary subject; there were no legal means of punishing strictly

military offences or of providing for military discipline: and the

assumed power of billeting soldiers in private houses had been taken

away by the law. The difficulty both of Parliament and the army was met

by a Mutiny Act. The powers requisite for discipline in the army were

conferred by Parliament on its officers, and provision was made for the

pay of the force, but both pay and disciplinary powers were granted only

for a single year.

[Sidenote: Parliament and the Revolution.]

The Mutiny Act, like the grant of supplies, has remained annual ever

since the Revolution; and as it is impossible for the State to exist

without supplies or for the army to exist without discipline and pay the

annual assembly of Parliament has become a matter of absolute necessity.

The greatest constitutional change which our history has witnessed was

thus brought about in an indirect but perfectly efficient way. The

dangers which experience had lately shown lay in the Parliament itself

were met with far less skill. Under Charles the Second England had seen

a Parliament, which had been returned in a moment of reaction,

maintained without fresh election for eighteen years. A Triennial Bill

which limited the duration of a Parliament to three was passed with

little opposition, but fell before the dislike and veto of William. To

counteract the influence which a king might obtain by crowding the

Commons with officials proved a yet harder task. A Place Bill, which

excluded all persons in the employment of the State from a seat in

Parliament, was defeated, and wisely defeated, in the Lords. The modern

course of providing against a pressure from the Court or the

administration by excluding all minor officials, but of preserving the

hold of Parliament over the great officers of State by admitting them

into its body, seems as yet to have occurred to nobody. It is equally

strange that while vindicating its right of Parliamentary control over

the public revenue and the army the Bill of Rights should have left by

its silence the control of trade to the Crown. It was only a few years

later, in the discussions on the charter granted to the East India

Company, that the Houses silently claimed and obtained the right of

regulating English commerce.

[Sidenote: The Toleration Act.]

The religious results of the Revolution were hardly less weighty than

the political. In the common struggle against Catholicism Churchman and

Nonconformist had found themselves, as we have seen, strangely at one;

and schemes of Comprehension became suddenly popular. But with the fall

of James the union of the two bodies abruptly ceased; and the

establishment of a Presbyterian Church in Scotland, together with the

"rabbling" of the Episcopalian clergy in its western shires, revived the

old bitterness of the clergy towards the dissidents. The Convocation

rejected the scheme of the Latitudinarians for such modifications of the

Prayer-Book as would render possible a return of the Nonconformists, and

a Comprehension Bill, which was introduced into Parliament, failed to

pass in spite of the king's strenuous support. William's attempt to

partially admit Dissenters to civil equality by a repeal of the

Corporation Act proved equally fruitless. Active persecution however

had now become distasteful to all; the pledge of religious liberty given

to the Nonconformists to ensure their aid in the Revolution had to be

redeemed; and the passing of a Toleration Act in 1689 practically

established freedom of worship. Whatever the religious effect of this

failure of the Latitudinarian schemes may have been its political effect

has been of the highest value. At no time had the Church been so strong

or so popular as at the Revolution, and the reconciliation of the

Nonconformists would have doubled its strength. It is doubtful whether

the disinclination to all political change which has characterised it

during the last two hundred years would have been affected by such a

change; but it is certain that the power of opposition which it has

wielded would have been enormously increased. As it was, the Toleration

Act established a group of religious bodies whose religious opposition

to the Church forced them to support the measures of progress which the

Church opposed. With religious forces on the one side and on the other

England has escaped the great stumbling-block in the way of nations

where the cause of religion has become identified with that of political

reaction.

[Sidenote: The Revolution and the Church.]

A secession from within its own ranks weakened the Church still more.

The doctrine of Divine Right had a strong hold on the body of the clergy

though they had been driven from their other favourite doctrine of

passive obedience, and the requirement of an oath of allegiance to the

new sovereigns from all persons exercising public functions was resented

as an intolerable wrong by almost every parson. The whole bench of

bishops resolved, though to no purpose, that Parliament had no right to

impose such an oath on the clergy. Sancroft, the Archbishop of

Canterbury, with a few prelates and a large number of the higher clergy

absolutely refused the oath when it was imposed, treated all who took it

as schismatics, and on their deprivation by Act of Parliament regarded

themselves and their adherents, who were known as Nonjurors, as the only

members of the true Church of England. The bulk of the clergy bowed to

necessity, but their bitterness against the new Government was fanned

into a flame by the religious policy announced in this assertion of the

supremacy of Parliament over the Church, and the deposition of bishops

by an act of the legislature. It was fanned into yet fiercer flame by

the choice of successors to the nonjuring prelates. The new bishops were

men of learning and piety, but they were for the most part

Latitudinarians and some of them Whigs. Tillotson, the new Archbishop of

Canterbury, was the foremost theologian of the school of Chillingworth

and Hales. Burnet, the new bishop of Salisbury, was as liberal as

Tillotson in religion and more liberal in politics. It was indeed only

among Whigs and Latitudinarians that William and William's successors

could find friends in the ranks of the clergy; and it was to these that

they were driven with a few breaks here and there to entrust all the

higher offices of the Church. The result was a severance between the

higher dignitaries and the mass of the clergy which broke the strength

of the Church. From the time of William to the time of George the Third

its fiercest strife was waged within its own ranks. But the resentment

at the measure which brought this strife about already added to the

difficulties which William had to encounter.

[Sidenote: William and the Parliament.]

Yet greater difficulties arose from the temper of his Parliament. In the

Commons, chosen as they had been in the first moment of revolutionary

enthusiasm, the bulk of the members were Whigs, and their first aim was

to redress the wrongs which the Whig party had suffered during the last

two reigns. The attainder of Lord Russell was reversed. The judgments

against Sidney, Cornish, and Alice Lisle were annulled. In spite of the

opinion of the judges that the sentence on Titus Oates had been against

law the Lords refused to reverse it, but even Oates received a pardon

and a pension. The Whigs however wanted not merely the redress of wrongs

but the punishment of the wrong-doers. Whig and Tory had been united

indeed by the tyranny of James; both parties had shared in the

Revolution, and William had striven to prolong their union by joining

the leaders of both in his first Ministry. He named the Tory Earl of

Danby Lord President, made the Whig Earl of Shrewsbury Secretary of

State, and gave the Privy Seal to Lord Halifax, a trimmer between the

one party and the other. But save in a moment of common oppression or

common danger union was impossible. The Whigs clamoured for the

punishment of Tories who had joined in the illegal acts of Charles and

of James, and refused to pass the Bill of General Indemnity which

William laid before them. William on the other hand was resolved that no

bloodshed or proscription should follow the revolution which had placed

him on the throne. His temper was averse from persecution; he had no

great love for either of the battling parties; and above all he saw that

internal strife would be fatal to the effective prosecution of the war.

[Sidenote: The Jacobites.]

While the cares of his new throne were chaining him to England the

confederacy of which he was the guiding spirit was proving too slow and

too loosely compacted to cope with the swift and resolute movements of

France. The armies of Lewis had fallen back within their own borders,

but only to turn fiercely at bay. Even the junction of the English and

Dutch fleets failed to assure them the mastery of the seas. The English

navy was paralysed by the corruption which prevailed in the public

service, as well as by the sloth and incapacity of its commander. The

services of Admiral Herbert at the Revolution had been rewarded with the

earldom of Torrington and the command of the fleet; but his indolence

suffered the seas to be swept by French privateers, and his want of

seamanship was shown in an indecisive engagement with a French squadron

in Bantry Bay. Meanwhile Lewis was straining every nerve to win the

command of the Channel; the French dockyards were turning out ship after

ship, and the galleys of the Mediterranean fleet were brought round to

reinforce the fleet at Brest. A French victory off the English coast

would have brought serious political danger; for the reaction of popular

feeling which had begun in favour of James had been increased by the

pressure of the war, by the taxation, by the expulsion of the Nonjurors

and the discontent of the clergy, by the panic of the Tories at the

spirit of vengeance which broke out among the triumphant Whigs, and

above all by the presence of James in Ireland. A new party, that of the

Jacobites or adherents of King James, was forming around the Nonjurors;

and it was feared that a Jacobite rising would follow the appearance of

a French fleet on the coast.

[Sidenote: Schomberg in Ireland.]

In such a state of affairs William judged rightly that to yield to the

Whig thirst for vengeance would have been to ruin his cause. He

dissolved the Parliament, which had refused to pass a Bill of Indemnity

for all political offences, and called a new one to meet in March. The

result of the elections proved that William had only expressed the

general temper of the nation. In the new Parliament the bulk of the

members proved Tories. The boroughs had been alienated from the Whigs by

their refusal to pass the Indemnity, and their desire to secure the

Corporations for their own party by driving from them all who had taken

part in the Tory misgovernment under Charles or James. In the counties

the discontent of the clergy told as heavily against the Whigs; and

parson after parson led his flock in a body to the poll. The change of

temper in the Parliament necessarily brought about a change among the

king's advisers. William accepted the resignation of the more violent

Whigs among his counsellors and placed Danby at the head of affairs; and

in May the Houses gave their assent to the Act of Grace. The king's aim

in his sudden change of front was not only to meet the change in the

national spirit, but to secure a momentary lull in English faction which

would suffer him to strike at the rebellion in Ireland. While James was

king in Dublin the attempt to crush treason at home was a hopeless one;

and so urgent was the danger, so precious every moment in the present

juncture of affairs, that William could trust no one to bring the work

as sharply to an end as was needful save himself. In the autumn of the

year 1689 the Duke of Schomberg, an exiled Huguenot who had followed

William in his expedition to England and was held to be one of the most

skilful captains of the time, had been sent with a small force to Ulster

to take advantage of the panic which had followed the relief of

Londonderry. James indeed was already talking of flight, and looked upon

the game as hopeless. But the spirit of the Irish people rose quickly

from their despair, and the duke's landing roused the whole nation to a

fresh enthusiasm. The ranks of the Irish army were filled up at once,

and James was able to face the duke at Drogheda with a force double that

of his opponent. Schomberg, whose men were all raw recruits whom it was

hardly possible to trust at such odds in the field, did all that was

possible when he entrenched himself at Dundalk and held his ground in a

camp where pestilence swept off half his numbers.

[Sidenote: Battle of the Boyne.]

Winter at last parted the two armies, and during the next six months

James, whose treasury was utterly exhausted, strove to fill it by a

coinage of brass money while his soldiers subsisted by sheer plunder.

William meanwhile was toiling hard on the other side of the Channel to

bring the Irish war to an end. Schomberg was strengthened during the

winter with men and stores, and when the spring came his force reached

thirty thousand men. Lewis too felt the importance of the coming

struggle. Seven thousand picked Frenchmen under the Count of Lauzun were

despatched to reinforce the army of James, but they had hardly arrived

when William himself landed at Carrickfergus and pushed rapidly with his

whole army to the south. His columns soon caught sight of the Irish

forces, hardly exceeding twenty thousand men in number but posted

strongly behind the Boyne. Lauzun had hoped by falling back on Dublin to

prolong a defensive war, but retreat was now impossible. "I am glad to

see you, gentlemen," William cried with a burst of delight; "and if you

escape me now the fault will be mine." Early next morning, the first of

July 1690, the whole English army plunged into the river. The Irish

foot, who at first fought well, broke in a sudden panic as soon as the

passage of the river was effected, but the horse made so gallant a stand

that Schomberg fell in repulsing its charge and for a time the English

centre was held in check. With the arrival of William however at the

head of his left wing all was over. James, who had throughout been

striving to secure the withdrawal of his troops to the nearest defile

rather than frankly to meet William's onset, abandoned his troops as

they fell back in retreat upon Dublin, and took ship at Kinsale for

France.

[Sidenote: Irish War.]

But though James had fled in despair, and though the beaten army was

forced by William's pursuit to abandon the capital, it was still

resolute to fight. The incapacity of the Stuart sovereign moved the

scorn even of his followers. "Change kings with us," an Irish officer

replied to an Englishman who taunted him with the panic of the Boyne,

"change kings with us and we will fight you again." They did better in

fighting without a king. The French indeed withdrew scornfully from the

routed army as it turned at bay beneath the walls of Limerick. "Do you

call these ramparts?" sneered Lauzun: "the English will need no cannon;

they may batter them down with roasted apples." But twenty thousand

Irish soldiers remained with Sarsfield, a brave and skilful officer who

had seen service in England and abroad; and his daring surprise of the

English ammunition train, his repulse of a desperate attempt to storm

the town, and the approach of winter forced William to raise the siege.

The course of the war abroad recalled him to England, but he was hardly

gone when a new turn was given to the struggle by one who was quietly

proving himself a master in the art of war. Churchill, rewarded for his

opportune desertion of James with the earldom of Marlborough, had been

recalled from Flanders to command a division which landed in the south

of Ireland. Only a few days remained before the operations were

interrupted by the coming of winter, but the few days were turned to

good account. The two ports by which alone Ireland could receive

supplies from France fell into English hands. Cork, with five thousand

men behind its walls, was taken in forty-eight hours. Kinsale a few days

later shared the fate of Cork. Winter indeed left Connaught and the

greater part of Munster in Irish hands, the French force remained

untouched, and the coming of a new French general, St. Ruth, with arms

and supplies encouraged the insurgents. But the summer of 1691 had

hardly begun when Ginkell, the new English general, by his seizure of

Athlone forced on a battle with the combined French and Irish forces at

Aughrim, in which St. Ruth fell on the field and his army was utterly

broken.

[Sidenote: Ireland conquered.]