1678-1688
An interval of repose--Revival of continental troubles--Death
of Charles II.--Expedition of Monmouth--Mission of Dykvelt
--James's growing unpopularity--Invitation to William--
Attempted intervention by France--William's declaration--He
sets sail, and is driven back by storm--Second expedition
and landing.
For the next six or seven years the life of the Prince of Orange was to
be unmarked by any striking external incidents. He was occupied with all
his wonted patience in the reparation of the mischiefs of the Treaty of
Nimeguen, and in the laborious construction of that great European
league by means of which he was afterwards destined to arrest the course
of French aggression. In this undertaking, and in watching and
retaliating upon the encroachments which Louis XIV., almost on the
morrow of the treaty, began making upon its provisions, William was
sufficiently employed. In 1684 these encroachments became intolerable.
Louis having vainly demanded of the Spaniards certain towns in Flanders,
on the pretext of their being rightful dependencies on places ceded to
him by the Treaty of Nimeguen, seized Strasbourg and besieged Luxembourg
in physical enforcement of his claim. Spain declared war, and William,
though thwarted by the States (mainly through the instrumentality of
the city of Amsterdam, which was always ill-disposed towards him), and
denied the levy of 16,000 men which he had asked for, took the field
notwithstanding in support of his Spanish ally. The united forces,
however, were too weak to effect much. Luxembourg speedily surrendered,
and as the result a twenty years' truce, on terms not very favourable
for William, was concluded with France.
During this period, as always, affairs in England no doubt demanded
general vigilance; but it was not till 1685 that they showed signs of
becoming critical. The death of Charles, and the known designs of
Monmouth, placed William in a very delicate position. During Charles's
life-time he had extended his protection to the exiled Duke, and had
even insisted so punctiliously on proper respect being shown to him,
that a difference had arisen between William and the English Court with
reference to the Duke's receiving salutes from the English troops, and
was actually unadjusted at Charles's death. Upon James's accession,
however, either to clear himself of all suspicion of abetting a
pretender to the throne, or, as some have asserted, to thwart the new
king's design of having his nephew seized and sent a prisoner to
England, William procured his departure from Dutch territory. Monmouth
retired to Brussels, but at the instance of James, who wrote a letter to
the Governor of the Spanish Netherlands charging him with high treason,
he was ordered by that functionary to quit the King of Spain's
dominions, and returned to Holland. Then followed his ill-fated
enterprise, throughout the brief course of which William maintained an
attitude of strict loyalty towards his father-in-law. He not only
despatched the six English and Scotch regiments in the Dutch service to
assist in suppressing the insurrection, but he offered, if James wished,
to take command of the royal troops in person. The offer was declined,
very likely from motives of suspicion by the King, but it is impossible
to suggest any plausible reason for questioning its _bona fides_. The
idle story that it was prompted by William's disgust at Monmouth's
proclaiming himself king, in breach of a promise to raise William
himself to the throne, bears absurdity on its face. The Princess stood
next in succession to the throne as it was; and if the Prince had
conceived a project of anticipating his wife's inheritance, he certainly
would not have entrusted the execution of that project to the feeble
hands and flighty brain of Monmouth.
But two years had scarcely passed before it really became necessary for
him to look after the interests of her reversion. As early as the spring
of 1687 it was beginning to be suspected by men of foresight, both in
England and in Holland, that James II.'s position was precarious. No
one, indeed, who was capable of forming a correct estimate of his
character and capacities could find in them any guarantees of prolonged
rule. He was as obstinate and insincere as his father, as selfish and
unscrupulous as his brother, while he was destitute alike of the
former's power of enlisting the devotion of individuals, and of the
latter's easy popularity with the common people. It would be unjust to
him not to admit that many of his gravest difficulties were prepared for
him in his brother's time, if not by his brother's means; but it cannot
be denied that he had made astonishing haste to convert these grave
difficulties into the most formidable dangers. In little more than two
years from his accession in February 1685, his nephew found it expedient
to send over an emissary to England for the purpose of sounding English
political leaders, not as yet, indeed, with any definitely-formed design
of intervening by force in English affairs, but rather probably that, in
the event of the King rendering himself "impossible," the people might
know where to look for a substitute, and might understand that the
heiress-presumptive and her consort were not only the most natural, but,
as a matter of fact, the most eligible choice for the people to make in
the circumstances. Dykvelt, a judicious diplomatist, made the best use
of his time, and while continuing to give no just ground of remonstrance
to James, to whom he was of course nominally accredited, he managed to
bring back information and assurances of much value from many English
politicians of eminence.
Meantime, and while James was still industriously undermining his
throne, his relations with his destined successor were becoming more
strained. A dispute arose between them with reference to the six English
regiments lent to the States under treaty. The King made a demand that
these regiments should be officered by Catholics--a claim put forward
either with the object of insuring their fidelity to him in case of
future rupture with Holland, or else merely to invite refusal and create
a pretext for insisting on their recall. At any rate the refusal came,
and on James's demanding the return of the troops, the States refused
this also, appealing to the terms of the treaty as only authorising the
King of England to require restitution of these forces in the event of
his being actually engaged in warfare with a foreign foe. An acrimonious
correspondence ensued between the two governments; but James failed to
move the States from their firm attitude. Equally unsuccessful was he in
an attempt to inveigle the Prince into an approval of that policy of
pretended toleration by which he was seeking to further the interests of
the Catholic at the expense of those of the Protestant religion in
England. A Scots lawyer named Stuart, who had taken refuge in Holland
from the religious persecution during the late reign, having made, or
been bribed to make, his submission to the royal authority, was procured
to open a correspondence with the Grand Pensionary Fagel, in which he
pressed the latter to advise the Prince of Orange to support his uncle's
policy, declaring that James would not repeal the penal laws unless the
tests were repealed also. Fagel for some time returned no answer, but at
last, finding the rumour in circulation that the Prince had associated
himself with the King's measures, he wrote a reply, which had no doubt
been drafted by William, to the refugee's request. In this remarkably
politic document the Prince contrived to hold the balance equally
between the English Protestants, with whom he was particularly anxious
to stand well, and the Catholic continental sovereigns, whom in his
struggle with France he could not afford to offend. While maintaining
his former attitude with regard to the tests, William declared that he
would gladly see all other grievances on the part of the English
Catholics removed. He would have no man subjected to punishment for his
opinions, but--and on this point he instanced the practice of the
States-General themselves with respect to Roman Catholics--he was not
prepared to remove all official disabilities founded on religious
opinion. This letter was forwarded by Stuart to the King, and was by him
considered in council. Burnet declares that all the lay papists of
England who were not engaged in the intrigues of the priests earnestly
pressed him to accept the Prince's terms as being what would render them
safe and easy for the future; but the King as usual was obstinate, and
no resolution was taken on the matter.
During most of the remainder of this year the King was filling up the
measure of his political offences. From March till October the dispute
with Magdalen College had raged, and the breach between James and the
once devoted Church of England proportionately widened. But at the end
of the year 1687 a momentous announcement was made to the Court. The
Queen was pronounced to be pregnant, and in July of the following year
she was delivered of a male child. That an infant brought into the world
at so opportune a moment should have been loudly alleged to be
supposititious by the inflamed political partisans of the time was
naturally to be expected. A word or two more will be said on that point
hereafter; it is here only necessary to remark that whether William
shared the suspicions of his partisans or not his outward behaviour on
the occasion was irreproachable. He congratulated his father-in-law on
the auspicious event; and the infant prince was duly prayed for in his
private chapel at the Hague, until the protest hereafter to be referred
to was made against the ceremony by his English partisans. Meanwhile the
events of the eventful year 1688 had been ripening fast to their
destined issue. The end of April had witnessed the second promulgation
of the Declaration of Indulgence, and the ferment occasioned by that new
assertion of the dispensing power. In July, in almost exact coincidence
of time with the Queen's accouchement, came the memorable trial of the
Seven Bishops, which gave the first demonstration of the full force of
that popular animosity which James's rule had provoked. Some months
before,[1] however, Edward Russell, nephew of the Earl of Bedford and
cousin of Algernon Sidney's fellow-victim, had sought the Hague with
proposals to William to make an armed descent upon England, as
vindication of English liberties and the Protestant religion.[2] William
had cautiously required a signed invitation from at least a few
representative statesmen before committing himself to such an
enterprise, and on the day of the acquittal of the Seven Bishops a
paper, signed in cipher by Lords Shrewsbury, Devonshire, Danby, and
Lumley, by Compton, Bishop of Northampton, by Edward Russell, and by
Henry Sidney, brother of Algernon, was conveyed by Admiral Herbert to
the Hague. William was now furnished with the required security for
English assistance in the projected undertaking, but the task before him
was still one of extreme difficulty. He had to allay the natural
disquietudes of the Catholic supporters of his continental policy
without alarming his Protestant friends in England; to win over the
States-General, not by any means universally favourable either to his
designs against James or to his attitude towards Louis (Amsterdam, for
instance, had sided with the former monarch in his dispute with William
about the return of the English regiments); and, above all, he had to
make his naval and military preparations for a descent upon England
without exciting suspicions, or provoking an anticipatory attack. That
he managed matters with much address is evident from the result, but it
is no less clear that luck was on his side. A quarrel of the French king
with the Pope, on a question of diplomatic extra-territorial rights in
the papal city, and his arrogant interference in the election of the
Elector of Cologne, had arrayed against Louis the spiritual and temporal
forces of Catholicism, represented respectively by the Papacy and the
Empire; his ill-timed persecutions of Protestants, and certain
prohibitive measures adopted by him against Dutch trade, had the effect
of alienating his partisans in the States-General. In the meanwhile the
combined blindness and obstinacy of James permitted William to prosecute
his military preparations unmolested, if not unsuspected. These
preparations were very extensive and conspicuous, and seem to have had
their commencement at an earlier date than is consistent with Burnet's
theory referred to in the note on a previous page. It was not, however,
till the summer was beginning to give place to autumn that they began to
excite any very distinct suspicions as to their object. The Cologne
quarrel formed a plausible excuse enough for them; for if Louis, as
events seemed to threaten, were to occupy the Rhine provinces with an
army, it would be obviously necessary for Holland to stand on guard. By
the middle of August the French king had become uneasy, and despatched a
special envoy in the person of M. Bonrepos to awaken James to a sense of
his danger. He had authority, according to Burnet (whom, however,
Macaulay, who mostly follows him, on this point contradicts[3]), to
offer James not only naval but military assistance to repel the invasion
with which he believed him to be threatened. Bonrepos was directed by
his master to promise the King of England that ten or fifteen thousand
(others, according to Ralph, say thirty thousand) men should be landed
at Portsmouth if required, and asked that that place should be put into
his hands to keep the communication between the two kingdoms.
Sunderland, acting perhaps _bona fide_, but more probably not, most
earnestly counselled James to reject the offer, and it was rejected
accordingly, the King's characteristic imbecility of judgment being
never more characteristically shown than in his unwillingness to offend
the patriotic prejudices of his subjects by accepting an offer which,
had he been aware of their true feelings towards him, he would have
recognised as his last chance of saving his crown and kingdom. At this
juncture Ronquillo, the Spanish ambassador, went out of his way to
assure James of what he probably knew to be false, and certainly had no
reason to believe true--namely, that no descent upon England was in
contemplation on the part of William. On an early day in September,
however, Albeville was despatched to the Hague with instructions to
present a memorandum of complaint on the subject of the Dutch
preparations; and the day following d'Avaux delivered, on the part of
Louis, a threatening note to the States, in which he warned them to
desist from their designs upon a monarch to whom he was bound by "such
ties of friendship and alliance" as would oblige him, if James were
attacked, to come to his assistance. That Louis's motive in taking this
step was to commit his brother of England to the alliance which he
pretended to exist it is almost impossible to doubt; but James, more and
more bent upon repudiating the assistance of France the more necessary
it became to him, did his utmost to assure the States that there was
nothing in the nature of an alliance between himself and Louis. William,
however, and his partisans in the States-General, asked nothing better
than this excuse for continuing their preparations, and the Dutch
armament was actively pushed forward. In October the final alienation of
the Dutch friends of France was brought about by Louis's despatching an
army under the Dauphin to besiege Philipsburg, and simultaneously
issuing manifestos against the Emperor and the Pope. Avignon had been
seized by him the day before the siege of Philipsburg was opened; and
the attack on the latter place was followed by the rapid seizure of most
of the important towns of the Palatinate.
On the 10th of October, matters now being ripe for such a step, William,
in conjunction with some of his English advisers, put forth his famous
declaration. Starting with a preamble to the effect that the observance
of laws is necessary to the happiness of states, the instrument proceeds
to enumerate fifteen particulars in which the laws of England had been
set at naught. The most important of these were--(1) the exercise of the
dispensing power; (2) the corruption, coercion, and packing of the
judicial bench; (3) the violation of the test laws by the appointment of
papists to offices (particularly judicial and military offices, and the
administration of Ireland), and generally the arbitrary and illegal
measures resorted to by James for the propagation of the Catholic
religion; (4) the establishment and action of the Court of High
Commission; (5) the infringement of some municipal charters, and the
procuring of the surrender of others; (6) interference with elections by
turning out of all employment such as refused to vote as they were
required; and (7) the grave suspicion which had arisen that the Prince
of Wales was not born of the Queen, which as yet nothing had been done
to remove. Having set forth these grievances, the Prince's manifesto
went on to recite the close interest which he and his consort had in
this matter as next in succession to the crown, and the earnest
solicitations which had been made to him by many lords spiritual and
temporal, and other English subjects of all ranks, to interpose, and
concluded by affirming in a very distinct and solemn manner that the
sole object of the expedition then preparing was to obtain the
assembling of a free and lawful Parliament, to which the Prince pledged
himself to refer all questions concerning the due execution of the laws,
and the maintenance of the Protestant religion, and the conclusion of an
agreement between the Church of England and the Dissenters, as also the
inquiry into the birth of the "pretended Prince of Wales"; and that this
object being attained, the Prince would, as soon as the state of the
nation should permit of it, send home his foreign forces.
About a week after, on the 16th of October, all things being now in
readiness, the Prince took solemn leave of the States-General, thanked
them for their past kindness to him, called them to witness that the
motives of his enterprise were solely those set forth in his
declaration, namely, the vindication of the liberties of England, and
the defence of the Protestant religion, and commended his wife to their
care. The scene was an affecting one, and many among the assembly were
melted to tears; only the Prince himself, says Burnet, "continued firm
in his usual gravity and phlegm." Two days later the States came to a
formal resolution to assist the Prince of Orange with ships and forces
on his expedition to England, having heard his explanations thereof and
found them satisfactory; and authorised their ministers at the various
European Courts to make use of this resolution in whatever way they
might find most convenient.
On the 19th William and his armament set sail from Helvoetsluys, but was
met on the following day by a violent storm which forced him to put back
on the 21st.[4] On the 1st of November the fleet put to sea a second
time, and for the first twelve hours held its course towards the
north-west. It was calculated that thus the scouting vessels sent out by
Dartmouth would carry back word that the landing might be expected to
take place on the Yorkshire coast; and, this ruse successfully effected,
the fleet tacked and sailed southward for the Channel. William was
naturally most desirous to avoid a conflict with the English fleet, and
the heavy weather which prevented Dartmouth from leaving the Thames
enabled him to attain his object. His fleet passed the Straits of Dover
at midday of the 3d of November, and made for Torbay, where it had been
determined to land. In the haze, however, of the morning of the 5th of
November the pilot overshot the mark, and took the fleet some miles to
the west. Its situation became critical. Plymouth was the next port, and
of Lord Bath, who there commanded the King's forces, William was by no
means sure. From the east the royal fleet under Dartmouth was believed
to be approaching. Russell, who had told Burnet that "all was over," and
that he might "go to prayers," was just upon taking boat for the
Prince's ship when the "Protestant wind," as the long prayed-for
easterly gale had hitherto been called, having now by force of
circumstances become a breeze of a distinctly Catholic tendency, was, as
all good Protestants of that day believed, providentially lulled. A wind
of the right direction and denomination sprang up shortly after, and in
four hours' time, by noon of the 5th of November, the Prince's fleet was
wafted safely into Torbay.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In April or May. Macaulay (after Burnet) says May; and the point is
of some importance, because if, as Ralph maintains and proves by
reference to the date of the Elector of Brandenburg's death (an event
referred to by Burnet as still prospective at the date of the conference
with Russell), this interview really took place in April, it does prove,
as Ralph says, that "measures were forming in England against the King
and embraced in Holland before the second Declaration of Indulgence was
published, or the Order in Council which was founded thereon, or the
Prosecution of the Bishops was thought of; which his lordship (Burnet)
holds of such weight for the justification of those measures." Ralph i.
998.
[2] One of Russell's arguments for immediate action was that James's
soldiers, "though _bad Englishmen_ and _worse Christians_, were as yet
such _good Protestants_ that neither were they attached to His Majesty,
nor could His Majesty depend upon them."--Burnet _ap._ Ralph, _Hist._ i.
997.
[3] It is difficult to see why. Sunderland, in his _Apology_, distinctly
says, "I opposed to death the acceptance of them (the ships) as well as
any assistance of men, and I can most truly say that I was the principal
means of hindering both." Sunderland, no doubt, was not the most
veracious of men; but one does not see his precise motive for lying on
this matter.
[4] To make some capital out of the mischance the Haarlem and Amsterdam
Gazettes were ordered (Ralph declares) "to set forth a lamentable
relation of the losses occasioned by it," losses which, it seems,
included "nine men of war, a thousand horses, and Dr. Burnet."