1688
Advance to Exeter--Measures of James--Council of the Lords--
Their proposals--The King goes to Salisbury--Defection of
Churchill--James returns to London--Negotiation--Attempted
flight of James--His arrest--Advance of William--Entry of
Dutch troops into London--Actual flight of James.
The spot was in one respect well, in another ill chosen for a descent.
Nowhere, indeed, was James's tyranny more detested than in that quarter
of England in which William now found himself, but nowhere also was it
more feared. It was the country of the men who had risen for Monmouth
and fought at Sedgemoor, but it was the country too of the men who had
trembled before Jeffreys, and whose blood had given its name to his
terrible Assize. The reception which William met with was in fact
determined by a balance of these considerations. He was welcomed with
abundance of popular sympathy, but with little overt popular support.
The gentry and peasantry rejoiced at the sight of his standard, but were
slow in gathering to it. His march to Exeter was something like a
triumph, but it seemed at first, and indeed for some days after he had
fixed his quarters there, that he was to get nothing from the people but
their good wishes. That this delay in supporting him gave much
disappointment and even some anxiety to William is certain. He was too
politic to make any public manifestation of feelings, the disclosure of
which might only have served to aggravate their cause; but in private he
complained indignantly of the slackness of his promised adherents, and
even talked--though here we may permit ourselves to doubt his
seriousness--of abandoning his enterprise and returning to Holland. At
the end of a week, however, important partisans of his cause began to
make their appearance. Lord Colchester, a friend of Monmouth's, was the
first to join him; Edward Russell, a son of the Earl of Bedford,
followed; Lord Abingdon, a recruit from the other side of politics, was
the next to give his adhesion to William; and almost at the same moment
the cause of James sustained the most significant repudiation it had yet
undergone in the desertion of Lord Cornbury, the eldest son of Lord
Clarendon, who, after an unsuccessful attempt to bring over with him the
three regiments of which he was the commander, deserted them with a few
followers and made his way to William's quarters.
In London, ever since the news of the Prince's landing, considerable
agitation had prevailed, and some actual rioting taken place. But the
royal authority was still upheld, and it was evident that the action of
the capital, reversing the order of revolutionary proceedings to which
France has now accustomed us, would await the course of events in the
provinces. As for the King, he was, characteristically enough, as much
reassured by a week's respite from bad news as he had been disturbed by
the tidings of his nephew's landing; but the intelligence of Cornbury's
defection threw him into a state of genuine alarm. Having convoked and
addressed the principal officers then in London, from whom he received
the most earnest professions of loyalty, he prepared to set out to meet
the invader at Salisbury, when he was waited upon by a deputation of the
Lords, praying him to call a Parliament and to open a negotiation with
the Prince of Orange. James, however, to whom no measure ever presented
itself as advisable at the proper moment for adopting it, rejected their
advice. His reason was an excellent one--for any king in a totally
different position from his. He said, and with much truth, that no
Parliament could be freely chosen for a country with an invading army
encamped on its soil; but the question which a clearer-sighted sovereign
would have asked himself was not whether the parliamentary elector would
be a free agent, but whether he himself was. It was eminently probable
that the convocation of a Parliament would not save his throne, but it
was quite certain that nothing else would. Nor had James the excuse of
pride for rejecting the Peers' advice; he was to show in a very short
time that no such account of his conduct could be sustained. Some
monarchs might have preferred to lose a crown rather than be forced into
political concession under coercion of an invading army. James was quite
willing to pay that or any other price to save his crown, only he was
impenetrable to the proof that it was necessary at that moment. He set
out for his destined headquarters, and reached them on the 19th of
November; but by the time he established himself at Salisbury the real
royal court had collected itself at Exeter. William was haranguing the
"friends and fellow Protestants" who had gathered to his banner, and
continually receiving fresh adhesions, among which that of Lord Bath,
the commander of the royal forces at Plymouth, was the most important.
Meanwhile, the northern population of the kingdom, among whom William
had been expected to present himself first, were up in arms. York and
Nottingham were the chief centres of insurrection, and to one or the
other of them many of the great peers and landowners of the north were
already making their way. Placed thus between two fires, it was evident
that immediate action was necessary on James's part to prevent their
meeting and engulfing him. As it was no less evidently to William's
interest to defer a conflict as long as possible, he succeeded in
avoiding anything save mere skirmishes between outposts, until the
occurrence of an event for which he was probably prepared, and which he
had good reason to hope would insure the triumph of his cause without
any serious fighting at all. This was no less an event than the
desertion of Churchill, who, if, as is likely enough, he had been up to
this point doubting to which side his interests pointed--the only form
of indecision he was liable to--had by this time satisfied himself that
James's cause was lost. Alarmed by rumours of disaffection in his army,
James's eagerness for an encounter with William had now entirely
disappeared. He talked of retreating, but Churchill strongly urged an
advance. Whether, if his counsels had prevailed, he would have taken
over the troops under his command to William, or whether he would have
awaited the issue of battle in order to obtain still clearer light on
the only question that interested him, must for ever remain uncertain.
James resolved to fall back, and Churchill resolved not to accompany
him. He quitted the royal camp that night, leaving behind him a letter,
in which he declared it impossible for him to fight against the cause of
the Protestant religion, and presented himself next day at the quarters
of the Prince of Orange. His flight threw James into extreme
consternation. A precipitate retreat was ordered, and the royal
standard, now losing more and more followers every day, was soon being
hurried back to London. Prince George of Denmark, who lives in history
as _Est-il possible?_ abandoned his father-in-law at Andover, and James
returned to Whitehall to find that his younger daughter had followed her
husband's example. "God help me!" the wretched King exclaimed; "my own
children have forsaken me." A man so accustomed to subordinate all the
kindlier instincts of human nature to the precepts of his religion might
have recollected that Anne had only to identify the interests of
Anglican Protestantism with the cause of Christ in order to find
excellent Scriptural authority for turning her back upon her father.
It being now too late to hope for an accommodation with his people and
their invited champion, James began to think of arranging one. He
summoned a council of the Lords spiritual and temporal then in London,
and signified his willingness to "agree with his adversary" slowly,
and when no longer "in the way with him." He was ready now to
take the advice which had been tendered him before he started for
Salisbury--namely, to summon a Parliament and open negotiations with
William. It was now, however, pointed out to him that, his position
having become worse by delay, he must make an advance on his original
offers by dismissing all Catholics from office, breaking off his
relations with France, and promising an amnesty to all political
opponents; but as this or some similar enlargement of the original terms
of concession submitted to him unmistakably recommended itself to common
sense, the King would not hear of it. He would summon a Parliament, and
at once did so by directing Jeffreys to issue writs convoking that body
for the 13th of January. He would negotiate with William, and he named
Nottingham, Halifax, and Godolphin as his commissioners for that
purpose. But more than this he at first declined to do. On further
reflection, however, it occurred to him that the pang of giving these
distasteful pledges might be much mitigated by a secret resolve to break
them. He therefore issued a proclamation granting a free pardon to all
who were in rebellion against him, and declaring them eligible as
members of the forthcoming Parliament. At the same time he gave an
earnest of his willingness to conform to the law excluding papists from
office by removing the Catholic Lieutenant of the Tower. Again, at the
same time, and as the reverse of an "earnest" of anything, he informed
the French Ambassador that the negotiation with William was "a mere
feint," and that all he wanted was to gain time "to ship off his wife
and the Prince of Wales." There was undoubtedly a good deal of his royal
and unfortunate father about James II. He seems, indeed, to have
inherited almost all Charles's moral qualities except his courage. These
he "threw back" to his grandfather--not a fortunate illustration of the
biological principle of atavism.
Infected with the duplicity and unredeemed by the bravery of Charles I.,
the close of his reign is naturally less romantic than his father's.
Kings who fail in business undoubtedly owe it to their historical
reputation to perish on the scaffold or the battlefield. A royal martyr
is a much more impressive object than a royal levanter. It is better to
"ascend to Heaven" as "the son of St. Louis" than to take ship for Dover
as "Mr. Smith." The last three weeks of James's reign are weeks of
painful ignominy. His plan of spiriting away the infant Prince of Wales
was defeated by Dartmouth, the admiral on whom he had relied to execute
it, but who steadfastly refused to lend a hand to the project. William's
army advanced from Exeter to Salisbury, and from Salisbury to
Hungerford, where it had been arranged that the royal commissioners
should meet the Prince. The result of the negotiation was favourable
beyond anything James had a right to expect. The Prince accepted his
father-in-law's offer to refer all questions in dispute to the
Parliament about to be assembled, stipulating only that the capital
should be relieved from military pressure on either side; that James
should, as a security against his inviting French aid, place Portsmouth
under the command of an officer in whom both sides had confidence; and
that, while London was denuded of troops, the Tower--as also Tilbury
Fort--should be garrisoned by the city of London. It is by no means
impossible that James might have saved a crown, however shorn of its
prerogatives, had he accepted these terms. But he was bent on attempting
to regain by foreign arms that full despotic authority which he could
not retain by his own. He contrived, with the assistance of the
chivalrous and eccentric Frenchman Lauzun, to get the Queen and Prince
of Wales conveyed safely to France; and twenty-four hours afterwards,
on the night of the 11th of December, he endeavoured to follow them, but
he was recognised at the Isle of Sheppey, whence he was about to embark,
and his flight arrested. In London, where the royal forces had, in
obedience to James's parting orders, been disbanded by their
commander-in-chief, some forty-eight hours of very dangerous panic
ensued upon the King's departure; but a provisional government was
hastily formed by a committee of temporal and spiritual peers, and
measures promptly taken by them for the maintenance of order. On hearing
of the capture of James, they immediately despatched Feversham with a
troop of Life Guards to escort him back to London. Here he was received
with some marks of popular commiseration, which he mistook for reviving
popular favour, and, regaining confidence, he sent Feversham to Windsor
as the bearer of a letter to the Prince of Orange, expressing a desire
for a personal conference with him at St. James's Palace, which he
offered to fit up for the Prince's accommodation. William, however, as
one may now see plainly, was bent on creating a vacancy of the throne.
He no doubt keenly regretted the officiousness of the sailors who had
defeated James's first attempt at flight, and resolved to do all in his
power short of downright physical coercion to induce him to repeat the
attempt. He arrested Feversham for want of a military safe conduct, and
replied to James's letter by declining the conference, and desiring him
to remain at Rochester. The King had by this time reached Whitehall;
but, disquieted by the sternness of William's message, and by the arrest
of his officer, his nerve began once more to fail him. On the night of
the 18th three or four battalions of William's infantry and a squadron
of horse marched down to Whitehall, and, the English Guards being
withdrawn by the King's orders and to the great regret of their stout
old commander, Lord Craven, took practical possession of the palace. In
the small hours of the morning Halifax and two other lords arrived from
Windsor with a recommendation to James to retire to Ham. Ostensibly
delivered in the name of his own Peers, James felt satisfied that it was
really a hint from William. He proposed to substitute Rochester for Ham,
and the substitution was accepted by William with a readiness which
significantly showed his desire to facilitate his uncle's flight. Early
the next morning James, accompanied by Lords Aylesbury, Lichfield,
Arran, and Dumbarton--peers whose names deserve if only as a matter of
curiosity to be recorded,[5]--set out for Rochester; and four days
afterwards, with motives which have been variously estimated, but in
which fear for his life or liberty and hopes of foreign assistance
towards the recovery of his kingdom played perhaps about an equal part,
he again resolved to quit the kingdom. A letter from his
Queen--intercepted indeed, but which William took care to have conveyed
to him--confirmed his resolution. Between two and three o'clock on the
morning of the 23d he embarked on board a frigate on the Medway, and,
finding the wind favourable, landed after a speedy voyage at Ambleteuse,
whence he proceeded to St. Germains.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] It is true that a large number of courtiers quitted Whitehall at the
same time, making the palace, as Ralph says, "like a Desart." But the
large majority of them got no further than St. James's.