1701-1702
English indifference on the Spanish question--Death of James
II. and Louis's recognition of the Pretender--Reaction in
England--Dissolution of Parliament--Support of William's
policy by its successor--The Treaties--Accident to William
--His illness and death--Character--The Whig legend examined
--His great qualities as man and ruler--Our debt to him.
The insensibility of Englishmen to a danger which weighed heavily on the
mind of William was exactly matched by his own indifference to one which
appeared extremely serious to them. William dreaded the idea of a
Bourbon reigning at Madrid, but he saw no very grave objection, as the
two treaties showed, to Naples and Sicily passing into French hands.
With his English subjects the exact converse was the case. They strongly
deprecated the assignment of the Mediterranean possessions of the
Spaniard to the Dauphin; but they were undisturbed by the sight of the
Duke of Anjou seating himself on the Spanish throne. It has been said
that on their own principles they ought to have disliked the will even
more than the Partition Treaties, because the former document, in
devising _all_ the possessions of Spain to the Duke of Anjou, "gave
precisely the same advantages to France on the Mediterranean" as she
would have obtained under the Treaties. But this argument obviously
begs the whole question against the English view by assigning to the
word "France" a meaning which it was of the essence of that view to
repudiate. The very gist of the English case was that "France" and "the
second son of the French Dauphin barred from the succession to the
French Crown" were not convertible terms. Had Englishmen in general so
regarded them, they would perhaps have been as jealous of the Duke of
Anjou's succession to the Spanish throne as was William himself. They
held, however,--whether rightly or wrongly, and I have already stated my
reason for thinking that at the time and in the circumstances they were
wrong--that the elevation of Louis's grandson to the Spanish throne did
not mean the "solidarity" of France and Spain.[23] But while the Duke of
Anjou, considered as the owner of the two Sicilies, did not in their
opinion stand for "France," the Dauphin, who was to have had them under
the Partition Treaties, undeniably did. The heir to the Crown of France
of course is France, not as a matter of opinion, but as a matter of
fact. The English view therefore, however mistaken on the point of
policy, was unassailable on the ground of logic; and its inherent
plausibility, in addition to the national dissatisfaction with the
manner in which the Treaties had been negotiated, would, in all
probability, have made it impossible for William to carry the country
with him in a war policy directed against France.
But just as, under a discharge from an electric battery, two repugnant
chemical compounds will sometimes rush into sudden combination, so at
this juncture the King and the nation were instantaneously united by the
shock of a gross affront. The hand that liberated the uniting fluid was
that of the Christian king. On the 16th of September 1701 James II.
breathed his last at St. Germains, and, obedient to one of those
impulses, half-chivalrous, half-arrogant, which so often determined his
policy, Louis XIV. declared his recognition of the Prince of Wales as
_de jure_ King of England. No more timely and effective assistance to
the policy of its _de facto_ king could possibly have been rendered. Its
effect upon English public opinion was instantaneous; and when William
returned from Holland on the 4th of November, he found the country in
the temper in which he could most have wished it to be. Still he
hesitated for a while as to whether or not he should dissolve
Parliament. Sunderland, for whose astuteness and profound knowledge of
English politics William entertained a respect unqualified, as was usual
with that cool and cynical observer of men, by any repugnance he might
have felt for the ex-Minister's political profligacy, had been consulted
by him on this point through Somers both before and since the death of
James; and this sagacious counsellor had urgently recommended a
dissolution, predicting that it would result in a signal triumph of the
Whigs. On the 7th of November William laid the question before his Privy
Council, who were divided in opinion, and, acting on his own judgment,
he then determined to dissolve. On the 11th of the month the royal
proclamation to that effect was issued, and the new Parliament summoned
to meet on the 31st of December. The result did not, indeed, completely
bear out Sunderland's prediction, but it proved that a marked change had
taken place in the opinion of the country; for, though the Tories
managed still to hold their own in the smaller boroughs, the Whigs
carried most of the counties and great towns. Their opponents, however,
were strong enough to re-elect Harley to the Speakership, his nomination
being seconded by his afterwards yet more famous political ally, Henry
St. John, the future Lord Bolingbroke. William addressed the Houses in a
speech of unusual length and earnestness, in which he recalled the "high
indignity" offered to himself and the nation by Louis's recognition of
the pretended Prince of Wales as King of England, and the dangers with
which England and Europe were threatened by the elevation of his
grandson to the Spanish throne. To obviate these dangers he had, he told
them, concluded several alliances, and treaties for the conclusion of
others were still pending. He went on to remind them that the eyes of
all Europe were upon this Parliament, and "all matters at a standstill
until their resolution was known. Therefore," said he, "no time ought to
be lost; you have an opportunity, by God's blessing, to secure to you
and your posterity the quiet enjoyment of your religion and liberties,
if you are not wanting to yourselves, but will exert the ancient vigour
of the English nation; but I tell you plainly my opinion is, if you do
not lay hold on this occasion you have no reason to hope for another."
He concluded with an exhortation, almost passionate for him, to lay
aside "the unhappy fatal animosities" which divided and weakened them.
"Let me conjure you to disappoint the only hopes of our enemies by your
unanimity. I have shown, and will always show, how desirous I am to be
the common father of my people; do you in like manner lay aside parties
and divisions; let there be no other distinction heard of among us in
future but of those who are for the Protestant religion and the present
Establishment, and of those who mean a Popish prince and a French
Government."
This stirring speech produced its due effect. Opposition in
Parliament--in the country it was already inaudible--was completely
silenced. The two Houses sent up addresses assuring the King of their
firm resolve to defend the succession against the pretended Prince of
Wales and all other pretenders whatsoever. The Commons declared
independently--in those days addresses from the two Houses were not as
now identical in terms--that they would to the utmost of their power
enable his Majesty to make good all such alliances as he had made--an
omission from the address of the Upper House which their Lordships
subsequently supplied. Nor did the goodwill of Parliament expend itself
in words. The Commons accepted without a word of protest the four
treaties constituting the new Grand Alliance, though the inequality of
some of their conditions as regarded England, and the self-seeking
motives which actuated one at least of their continental signatories,
were apparent on the face of them. The votes of supply were passed
unanimously, and ere the Parliament had well completed the first
fortnight of its existence a Bill of Attainder against the Prince of
Wales--in which the Lords endeavoured, but in vain, to include Mary of
Modena--had passed both Houses. But the King's assent to this, as also
to an Abjuration Bill directed to the same object, had to be given by
commission; for William was now already sickening to his death. His
always feeble health had become feebler during the winter; his constant
asthma had told heavily upon the condition of his lungs; his legs had
swollen to an extent which led his doctors, though erroneously it would
seem, to suspect dropsy; he had, in fact, arrived at that state of body
in which any accident might be fatal. On Saturday, the 21st of February,
he set out from Kensington on horseback to hunt, according to his weekly
custom, at Hampton Court. On the road his horse stumbled over a
molehill,[24] and fell with his rider, who fractured his right
collar-bone. William was taken to Hampton Court, where the bone was set,
and the surgeon, finding him feverish, recommended bleeding. This he
declined, and, contrary to advice, insisted on returning that evening to
Kensington, where it appeared that the setting of the bone had been
displaced by the motion of the carriage, and the operation had to be
repeated. William slept well, and for a few days no signs of mischief
appeared. But, as was afterwards shown by the autopsy, the fall from his
horse had violently detached a diseased portion of his lungs from its
adhesion to the walls of the thoracic cavity, and this had set up
pulmonary inflammation. On the 28th of February he found himself unable
to attend Parliament in person, and accordingly conveyed to the Houses
by way of message his last recommendation of a project which, ever
since the beginning of his reign, he had had much at heart--that,
namely, of effecting a legislative union between England and Scotland.
On the next day alarming symptoms appeared. The assent to the Prince of
Wales's Attainder Bill was given by commission, and a week later, on the
7th of March, when it became necessary to issue another commission for a
similar purpose, William was past the power of subscribing the
sign-manual, which had to be affixed by a stamp. "_Je tire vers ma
fin_," he murmured to Albemarle, who had arrived from Holland the same
night; and, as the perversity of fate had willed it, he who had from
boyhood sought death everywhere, had not for years perhaps been so
little prepared to meet it. "Sometimes he would have been glad, he told
Portland, to have been delivered out of all his troubles, but he
confessed now he saw another scene, and could wish to live a little
longer." It was another scene indeed--the whole web of his Spanish
policy unravelled, his great enemy once more powerful for mischief, the
whole work of his life to do again!
He lived through the night, but that was all. Burnet and Tillotson had
gone to him that morning and did not quit him till he died. The
Archbishop prayed with him some time, but he was then so weak that he
could scarcely articulate. "About five o'clock on Saturday morning he
desired the Sacrament, and went through the office with great appearance
of seriousness, but could not express himself; when this was done he
called for the Earl of Albemarle and gave him a charge to take care of
his papers. He thanked M. Auverquerque for his long and faithful
services. He took leave of the Duke of Ormond, and called for the Earl
of Portland, but before he came his voice quite failed; so he took him
by the hand and carried it to his heart with great tenderness. Between
seven and eight o'clock the rattle began; the commendatory prayer was
said for him, and as it ended he died."
More than one hundred and eighty years have passed since that morning;
but though the fierce political controversies which raged around the
person and character of the dead man, leaving, perhaps, no quality but
his courage unassailed, have long since subsided, some into utter
silence, others into moderation, it is impossible to say that their
disturbing force is altogether spent. A faint echo from those furious
clamours may still be heard mingling with the voice of History; a ripple
from those distant billows still breaks the mirror of her judgment. It
could hardly be otherwise. The principles of which William was in part
the voluntary and in part the unchoosing champion have triumphed so
completely that they find nowadays no avowed opponent, and scarcely even
any secret enemy; but it was William's destiny to have been identified
in the promotion and defence of them with an English political party
whose many excellent qualities as statesmen and citizens have been
always associated with a moral and intellectual temper which, for a
century and a half, has offered a standing provocation to men of every
other political school. Fate made William of Orange a Whig hero, and in
arranging his preliminary condition ordained also by inevitable sequence
his exposure to some measure of the polemical resentments which his
votaries have never failed to concentrate upon themselves. That the
Whigs of his own day should have behaved as they did, on many occasions
exceedingly ill to him, is no more unnatural than that they should have
unduly exaggerated his virtues after his death. Both their ill-treatment
and their excessive eulogy of him were, in different ways, the
expression of the same modest confidence in their own civil deserts. The
Whigs believed themselves entitled not only to an exclusive interest in
a living Whig-made king, but also to as much capital as could be made
out of his posthumous renown. If they behaved ill to him at times during
his life, it was to assert the just claims of the Whig party; if they
over-praised him when dead, it was by way of just tribute to the Whig
virtues.
Far be it from me to suggest that William of Orange needs any such
artificial additions to his legitimate glory. They are mentioned merely
to account for and excuse the fact that an impartial review of his
career and character needs to be commenced with what might otherwise
seem words of captious disparagement. It is absolutely necessary to
strip off the draperies of partisanship in order to see the real man
beneath; but that truly heroic figure can well afford it.
William of Orange, I maintain then, is not to be regarded as altogether
that "patriot king," that "sovereign of the people," which it has
pleased his Whig devotees to discover in him, still less as that sort of
anticipatory and prophetic political philosopher for which he passes in
the legend of some Whig constitutionalists. No doubt he had a distinct
popular fibre in his nature. The great-grandson of his great-grandfather
can hardly have been wanting in sympathy with popular aspirations, or in
belief in the might and virtue of popular forces. But such sentiments
have been the birthright of many a man whose instincts were the very
reverse of democratic; and there is no reason to think that William
either foresaw or would have relished that growth of the democratic
element in English government to which he inevitably contributed so
powerful a stimulus. He was not, it must be remembered, a democrat even
in his own country; on the contrary, his strongest impulses were
essentially of aristocratic origin. It was not his Protestant
enthusiasm, though this was ardent enough, nor his love of his country
and his hatred of foreign dictation, though these passions were strong
and sincere enough, which were the dominant influences in moulding his
youthful character. It was pride of ancestry, the memory of William the
Silent, resentment at the fallen fortunes of his house, and resolution
to restore them. These it was which first inspired him with an ambition
essentially personal in its character, and it was not till this ambition
had been gratified by his elevation to higher dignities even than his
forefathers, that the other impulses of birth or training can be said to
have begun to sway him at all. And until that ambition was gratified he
was not only capable of all the virtues of the ambitious, but an adept
in their vices also. He was but sixteen when he taught his mother the
wisdom of disarming the suspicion of the Pensionary De Witt by pretended
cordiality, and earned the criticism of the shrewd French envoy
d'Estrades that he was "a great dissembler, and omitted nothing to gain
his ends." So, too, one can hardly doubt that it was ambition rather
than zeal for liberty and Protestantism that first inspired him with
that design of intervention in England, which must have just taken shape
in his mind shortly after the return of Dykvelt from his mission of
1687. His succession, or rather his wife's succession, was safe enough
if Mary of Modena bore no male issue to James. But she might and did
bear such issue, in a child whose claims could only be set aside by a
revolution; and even had no heir apparent been born to the throne, the
position of William accepting the English crown conjointly with his wife
in his capacity as liberator of the English people would be something
very different from that of a king-consort, which was all he could
otherwise have hoped to be. It is surely not unjust to a man of
William's antecedents to believe that from the hour that he learned the
strength of his party in England, down to the hour when he was presented
with the crown in the banqueting chamber at Whitehall, he had eyes for
little else than the great European future which would open before him
as King of England; and that any hesitations he may have shown in
accepting the sovereignty were as purely politic as those of Cæsar at
the Lupercal.
As regards his attitude towards English political institutions in
general, and the _voluntary_ element in his share in developing them,
the Whig legend appears to me more purely mythical still. At no time in
his life did William show the slightest personal predilection for or
even faith in parliamentary institutions, still less in party
government. He looked upon the English Parliament as a clumsy and
irritating instrument, blunt at one part, dangerously double-edged at
another, which he was nevertheless bound to work with and make the best
of. That he was the first to try the system of a party ministry and
party government is, as I have essayed to show, a fact of little
significance. He tried it as he tried other means of managing the
apparently otherwise unmanageable, as he had at first tried dividing
offices of State among the leading men of both parties, and as he had
tried and continued to try the method of corruption for the rank and
file. As to any preference of one English party to another there is no
trace of such a feeling in his mind. From the moral point of view, I
imagine, he regarded most of the leaders of both parties with an equal,
and, it may be, with an equally just, contempt; but with his
intellectual appreciations he never allowed his moral judgment to
interfere. He used the unscrupulous Tory Marlborough and the
unscrupulous Whig Sunderland with an impartial indifference to their
political profligacy. He made trial, in fact, of all English public men
and of all political expedients to serve his European ends, which were
sometimes but not always English ends also; and thus it was that though
he experimentalised with the strict party system in order to secure a
Parliament which would support the war energetically in 1695, yet in the
next Parliament, his immediate object being gained, he showed no
disposition to prosecute that experiment on abstract political grounds.
It is impossible to represent a ruler of this kind, however wise and
moderate, as _consciously_ training our parliamentary institutions upon
the peculiar lines of growth which they subsequently followed.
Yet after all these deductions there remains to William, both as a
European statesman and as a benefactor to our country, an ample margin
of renown. Of his moral and mental stature as a man it is scarcely
necessary to speak. It must be patent to all but the dullest prejudices
of our day as it was to all but the fiercest passions of his own. It is
the highest praise of his high qualities to say that our impression of
them easily survives the reaction from idolatry, and that after we have
thrown aside the magnifying-glass of Whiggism the objects which it was
used to exaggerate still fill the eye. If William had not all the
virtues which belong to the patriot and philosopher, he had all that go
to the making of the hero. Even Macaulay, who has over painted both his
king-craft and his statesmanship, has not laid on the colours of his
heroism with too bold a hand. Sagacious as he undoubtedly was in
counsel, dexterous as he was in the management of men, keen as was his
outlook on European politics, and resourceful as he was in meeting its
exigencies, it is possible to contend that his Whig eulogist has
credited him with far more than the keenness and sagacity, the dexterity
and resource, which he possessed. But such eulogy does not, for it could
not, materially exaggerate his great features as a man--his patience of
delay and disappointment, his fortitude under disaster, his
imperturbable composure in moments of crisis, his lofty magnanimity,
which from its high place seemed literally to overlook rather than to
forgive injuries, his haughty courage, which thought it equal shame to
glance aside at the lurking assassin and to turn away from the open foe.
His character was stern, forbidding, unamiable, contemptuously generous,
as little fitted to attract love as it was assured of commanding
respect; but it bears in every lineament the unmistakable stamp of
greatness. And his achievements were as great as his character. His
record as a ruler pure and simple, as a mere expert in the art of
governing, has never been surpassed, perhaps never equalled, in history.
The showy administrative exploits of a Napoleon with vast armies at his
back, and the pen of a despotism in his hand, appear to me to sink into
insignificance when compared with those of this ruler of four nations--a
constitutional sovereign in England and Scotland, the chief of a
republic in Holland, and a military autocrat, governing by the sword
alone, in Ireland,--who for eleven years successfully directed the
affairs of these alien and often mutually hostile communities, and who
throughout all that time held in one hand the threads of a vast network
of European diplomacy, and in the other the sword which kept the most
formidable of European monarchs at bay. Nor should we omit from the
comparison that he did all this under moral restraints and physical
disadvantages to which Napoleon was a total stranger, impeded by
obligations to law, municipal and international, which Napoleon set
cynically at defiance, and distressed throughout his life by bodily
ailments which never troubled the Corsican's iron frame.
Nor in what has been written in criticism of the Whig legend would I for
a moment be suspected of undervaluing the debt which Englishmen owe to
William of Orange. It is not necessary to exalt him into a divinely
inspired progenitor of the British Constitution in order to recognise
fully the greatness of the services which he rendered to it. He was not
"Father of the Constitution" in the sense in which the poet is the
father of his poem, or the philosopher of his theory; but assuredly he
was so in the sense in which we say that a child has found a "second
father" in an upright guardian, who, while not, it may be, comprehending
his character, or in sympathy with his spirit, or foreseeing his future,
has yet been his vigilant protector through the perils of childhood, and
has accounted for his patrimony to the uttermost farthing. That William
stood in this relation to our modern English polity throughout his too
short reign, and that he loyally discharged its obligations, is
indisputable. The virtues which enabled him to do so were mainly three,
which are essential to all good and faithful guardianship, whether of
children or constitutions--the virtues of good sense, self-restraint,
and honesty. And the greatest of these three is honesty. William's
practical wisdom always told him the moment when to yield in a struggle
with his Parliament; and when that moment arrived his naturally
passionate temper never failed to answer to the rein. But even at those
moments there would often have been an evil alternative open to him,
from which the fundamental integrity of his nature always turned aside.
He scrupled not to use all the arts of political "management" which were
sanctioned by the lax morality of his day; he exerted his prerogative
freely to gain his ends; but he knew that the compact between him and
his people was that in the last resort the will of the people should
prevail, and this compact he never attempted either to violate or to
evade. Here he was as emphatically a _Rè Galantuomo_, a "King
Honest-man," as was Victor Emmanuel himself.
"Hos ante effigies majorum pone tuorum,
Præcedant ipsas illi, te consule, virgas."
Rulers who have earned this name may justly rank it, if only for its
rarity, above every other title of honour--even though, themselves the
creators or regenerators of nations, they can look back upon the
splendid achievements of the Counts of Nassau, or the long ancestral
glories of the House of Savoy.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] That Louis intended it to mean this is pretty obvious from his
remark about the effacement of the Pyrenees.
[24] The nature of the impediment lives for history in the Jacobite
toast which so grimly reflects the brutal passions of the time--"To the
little gentleman in black velvet that works underground."
THE END
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Twelve English Statesmen
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=WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.= By EDWARD A. FREEMAN, D.C.L.,
LL.D., late Regius Professor of Modern History in the
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=HENRY II.= By Mrs. J. R. GREEN.
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=WILLIAM III.= By H. D. TRAILL.
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