THREE-QUARTERS of a century of struggling and experiment, from the
fall of Bacon to the death of Charles II, had ended in failure, and
the government of England had been brought into line with continental
monarchy when James ascended the throne.
The House of Commons refused to listen to Seymour s warning speech,
and voted, nemine discrepante, a revenue which, by the growth of
trade, soon rose to near two millions. It was in the king's power to
retain that loyal and submissive parliament as long as he chose, and
he was not obliged to meet it annually. He had the control of the
constituencies. The press was not free, and the proceedings of the
legislature were withdrawn from public knowledge. Judges could be
dismissed at will, until the bench was filled with prerogative
lawyers. There was an army kept in foreign pay that could be recalled
when it was wanted. Passive obedience was taught as a precept by the
universities, and as a religious dogma by the Church.
It was no secret that James was resolved to be master, and to abolish
the restraints and safeguards of the constitution. Penn, reporting his
intentions to William of Orange, declared that he would have all or
nothing. He had repeatedly avowed that he meant to do it by a standing
army and by claiming the right to dispense with laws. Monmouth's
rebellion gave him the standing army. Although it was unsupported
either by the exclusionists or the limitationists, and although it was
contemptibly managed, there had been a moment of serious danger. It
was the general opinion that the night attack at Sedgemoor would have
succeeded, and that the royal army would have been destroyed, if the
rebels, instead of betraying their approach with musketry, had come to
close quarters with axe and scythe. The king took advantage of what
had happened, and he had the means of paying a force which amounted to
14,000 men.
Charles had been in perpetual want of money through the expensive
scandals of his court. There were half a dozen ducal titles needing
to be provided with ducal incomes, and obliging the king to become a
dependent pensionary of the liberal paymaster in France. At his death
all this was changed, and Catharine Sedley disappeared from Whitehall.
It is true that her absence was not prolonged, and that she had
obscurer rivals. But a decorous economy was observed in a branch of
expenditure which had been profuse. Nevertheless Lewis XIV hastened
to make offers of pecuniary aid to the frugal James as to the
extravagant Charles. He sent over a sum of L60,000 or L70,000,
consisting partly of arrears already due. This was to be paid only if
James found himself in difficulties after having proclaimed liberty of
conscience. If there was no disturbance, there was to be no payment.
And when the session ended without any measure of the kind, Lewis gave
orders that the money should be returned to him. In the autumn of
1685 James proceeded to adopt his advice. He had been victorious.
His birthday, in October, was celebrated more heartily than his
brother's had ever been, and the atrocities of the Western Assize did
not affect opinion to his disadvantage.
He made known his plans. Besides the standing army and the recall of
the Habeas Corpus, he demanded the dispensing power. Nobody supposed
that the head of the executive was to persecute his own religion. To
admit his right of succession was to admit that the Elizabethan Code
was to be practically dormant. The Catholic desired no more. It was
enough that they ceased to suffer oppression. Halifax, the ablest
though not the strongest of James's ministers, agreed to that, and did
not object to a moderate number of Catholic officers. The Prince of
Orange was of the same opinion. Toleration was therefore assured, and
the era of persecution had passed away. That was of no use to Lewis
XIV, who in that month of October suppressed the Protestant religion
in France. And it was of little use to James himself, as it added
nothing to his power. He insisted on introducing toleration by
dispensing with the laws, by right of his prerogative, and on
abolishing the Test Act. But the Test Act was a security against
arbitrary power, by depriving him of the assistance of Catholics in
office. His desire for arbitrary power was notorious, and the country
did not believe that his zeal for the liberty of conscience was
sincere. They believed, and they believed rightly, that he demanded
more than that which would satisfy the just and obvious necessities of
his Church in order to strengthen his prerogative, and that he was
tolerant in order that he might be absolute. He professed openly the
maxim that toleration was the necessary condition of absolutism. He
urged Lewis, secretly, to pursue the work of the revocation, and was
reluctant to allow collections to be made for the Huguenot fugitives.
Later, when he was himself an exile, and nothing could be more
inopportune than the profession of tolerant sympathies at the French
court, he seriously and consistently proclaimed them. And it is very
possible that he was then sincere, and that a change had taken
place. Another change took place when he became acquainted with the
famous Rance, who had made the abbey of La Trappe the most edifying
seat of religion in France, and a favourite retreat for men like
Bossuet and St. Simon. James also visited him and corresponded with
him, and sixty of their letters are extant. At Versailles people did
not understand how so much devotion could be combined with so much
tolerance in religion. The letters to Rance show that the religion of
James, when he was on the throne, was very near the surface. Whether
it was different afterwards, as they believed in France, is not quite
certain. And in this connection it will be convenient to mention the
assassination plot.
There was an Irish divine, Martin of Connemara, who suggested that, in
time of war, it would be well that a chosen band should devote
themselves to the task of falling upon the Prince of Orange and
putting him to death. It would, he said, be a legitimate act of
warfare. Lewis XIV required no such arguments, and sent a miscreant
named Grandval to rid him of the obnoxious prince. Berwick preferred
the advice of the theologian, and, at the battle of Landen, he led a
troop of 200 horsemen to the place where his kinsman stood, crying out
to them to kill him. Three years later, in 1696, he was in London,
communicating with the managers of the plot, who thought that it would
be no murder to shoot the king on the road to Hampton Court, when
surrounded by his guards. A beacon fire on Shakespeare's Cliff was to
send the news across the sea, and at that signal James was to come
over, in French ships. When the plot thickened, Berwick made his
escape, and met his father changing horses at Clermont. Having learnt
how matters stood, James pursued his way to Calais, and there, while
he watched the northern horizon for the desired signal, he wrote
edifying letters to the Abbe de Rance. When the plot was betrayed he
showed the deepest sympathy with the assassins, and never lamented
their crime.
The series of measures by which he lost the crown form a drama in
three acts. First, he tried to obtain the co-operation of the
Established Church. When that failed, he turned against the Church
and worked through the Dissenters. And then he brought on that
quarrel with the clergy which proved fatal to him. James did not
believe in the reality of Protestant religion. Sunderland assured him
that in two years not a Protestant would be left in England, if
compulsion ceased, and his mind was bewildered by two very remarkable
facts. One of these was the theology of recent Caroline divines.
Archbishop Bramhall could hardly be distinguished from a Gallican.
Archbishop Leighton was in close touch with Jansenists. One Roman
doctrine was adopted by Montagu, another by Thomdike, a third by Isaac
Barrow. Bull received the thanks of the French clergy for his
vindication of the early fathers against the most learned of the
Jesuits. To an ignorant and narrow-minded man all these things
pointed to one conclusion, the instability and want of solidity in the
Anglican system. Then there was the astounding collapse of the French
Huguenots. Lewis boasted that, in a few months, without real
violence, he had effected 800,000 conversions. And James was eager to
believe it. He asked himself, says Barillon, why he could not do as
much in England. He desired the Roman congregations to examine the
question, whether the English bishops might retain their sees. Some
said they would be better than the Catholic clergy, who were accused
of Jansenism. One thing he considered absolutely certain. The Church
would never resist his authority. The Bishop of Winchester entreated
him not to rely on the passive obedience of Churchmen. James replied
that the bishop had lost his nerve.
Having decided to risk a quarrel with loyal Anglicans, he assumed the
dispensing power. The judges approved. There was a precedent in his
favour. He had support not only in the past but in the future, for
William III followed his example. He could claim that he was acting
for the reason of State against shameful prejudice and sordid passion.
The greatest historic figure of the age, William Penn, was on his
side, and went over to explain the principle of his policy to the
Prince of Orange. Lewis XIV urged him on. And although the body of
English Catholics were much opposed, his immediate advisers, who were
men in the French interest, or survivors of the Dover Treaty, Arundel,
Bellasis, Dover, Tyrconnel, encouraged his fixed design. A few men in
high office, he said, would do more for Catholicism than many hearing
mass without impediment.
We must imagine not a sinister tyrant brooding schemes of oppression,
but an unintelligent absolutist, in the hands of men, some of whom
were able and some sincere, plying him with plausible arguments.
Therefore, when the primate and six bishops protested against the
Declaration of Indulgence, James sent them to the Tower. Sunderland
advised caution. The time for extreme measures, he said, had not
come. The violent members of the council thought that they had their
enemies at their mercy and they prevailed.
James thought that he was triumphing, for just then the Prince of
Wales was born. The future of his policy was assured. The crown was
not to pass to the head of the Protestant interest in Europe. James's
enemies, says the imperial envoy, gave up their cause for lost. In
their despair they at once invented the lie about the warming pan.
James's opportunity had come. He could declare an amnesty for the
event which had so profoundly changed his fortunes. The seven bishops
could be released without a trial, and the impending catastrophe could
be averted. The king, disagreeing with his advisers, with Sunderland,
with the nuncio, even with Jeffreys, determined to go on. He intended
that the bishops should be tried, condemned, and pardoned. With that,
his victory would be complete. Instead of which, the bishops were
acquitted, and the king's attack on the Church ended in defeat.
On that day Admiral Herbert, disguised as a blue-jacket, left with the
invitation to the Prince of Orange to come over. It was written by
Algernon Sidney's brother, and bore the signatures of seven
considerable men, who were prepared to risk their lives. Several
others acquiesced, and it was not the act of one party. The thing had
become inevitable when the prince was born. It was delayed until the
issue was decided between the crown and the Church. The associates
assured William that the Prince of Wales was an imposture, and that he
must come, in order to secure his own birthright, as well as the
liberties of England. William of Orange had not intrigued that the
crown should pass to his wife before the time, and had given his uncle
much good advice. For him it was everything that England should not
be against him in the struggle with Lewis XIV. For that, he had the
Habsburgs on his side, and it was essential that they should still be
with him if he obeyed the call of his friends. He had been preparing
for it ever since he sent Dykvelt over in 1687, and had asked the
States of Holland to hold twenty-five men-of-war and 9000 sailors in
readiness, to meet the danger which threatened from France.
James took alarm, and warned William that the succession was not
absolutely safe. Lewis, who much dreaded the prospect of having his
ablest and most formidable enemy at Whitehall, wished the Princess
Anne to precede her elder sister. To strengthen her claim with her
father he proposed that she should become a Catholic, and sent over
books of controversy for that purpose. James, on the other hand, told
William that there would be no crown to inherit, but a commonwealth in
England, if he did not succeed in his endeavour to make himself
master. Dykvelt had conducted the secret negotiation which ended in
the invitation of 30th June.
A still more delicate negotiation was pursued on the Continent.
William could not allow it to appear that his expedition implied a war
of religion. He would forfeit the alliance of the Emperor, which was
the very pivot of his policy. Leopold was a devout and scrupulous
man, and it was uncertain how he would regard an enterprise which was
to substitute a Protestant dynasty for a Catholic dynasty in England.
There was only one way of ensuring his assistance. In order to have
the support of the Empire it was requisite to obtain the support of
the Papacy. In a religious question Leopold would follow the pope.
William sent one of his generals, the Prince de Vaudemont, to Rome;
and, through Count Dohna, he opened a correspondence with the Vatican.
He represented that the Catholics would obtain from him the toleration
which they could never be sure of under James. There would be not
only a serious political advantage gained by the detachment of England
from the French interest, but also a positive and measurable benefit
for the Church of Rome. The pope understood and assented, and took
the Habsburgs with him into the camp of the Great Deliverer. This is
the touch of mystery in the Revolution of 1688. James, the champion
of the Church, had alienated Rome.
The pope, Innocent XI, Odescalchi, is a rare and original figure, and
James said truly that no man like him had sat on the see of Rome for
centuries. He began the reform of the court, which consisted in the
abolition of nepotism. All through the century his predecessors had
founded great princely families--Borghese, Ludovisi, Barberini,
Pamphili, Chigi, Rospigliosi, Altieri. These great houses grew wealthy
out of the spoils of the Church, and, as their founders died without
making restitution, opponents of nepotism affirmed that they died
unrepentant, and might be found in those regions of the other world
where Dante delighted to exhibit the pontiffs of his time. In his zeal
for a strict morality Innocent tried to rectify the teaching of the
Casuists, and was involved in trouble with the Jesuits. In France he
was spoken of as a Jansenist, and in England Oldmixon called him a
Protestant pope. He endeavoured, as nobody had done since the
Reformation, to find a remedy for the divisions of Western
Christendom. The movement had not ceased since Richelieu was minister
and Grotius ambassador at Paris, and it became active on both
sides. Innocent sanctioned a scheme of concessions which was deemed
satisfactory in the universities of Protestant Germany.
When Lewis revoked the Edict of Toleration the pope did not conceal
his displeasure. He was compelled at last to allow Te Deums and
illuminations; but he made no secret of his disbelief in the armed
apostolate of missionaries in jackboots. He was bitterly opposed to
the Gallican system, out of which the persecution proceeded. James II
was odious to him for many reasons. First as a promoter of French
tendencies, both in politics and in religion. For James, like Lewis,
was a Gallican in Church questions. When an Englishman defended
ultramontane propositions in a disputation at Louvain, he expressed
his indignation that such an attack should have been permitted in his
presence on the plenary authority of kings. He offended the pope by
sending as his ambassador Lord Castlemaine, who was ridiculous not
only as the Duchess of Cleveland's husband, but as the author of a
book in which he pleaded for toleration on the ground that Catholics
should be as well treated in England as Protestants in France. With
great reluctance the pope consented that his agent, D'Adda, should be
appointed a nuncio; but when James made the Jesuit Petre a privy
councillor, giving him his own apartment at Whitehall, and represented
that he would be fitter for such a position if he was made a bishop or
a cardinal, Innocent refused.
Petre laid the blame on the nuncio, and the Jesuits asked that he
should be sent out of the country. He would be forced, said the king,
to do without the Court of Rome. D'Adda gave the same advice as the
Prince of Orange, that the Penal Laws should not be executed, but the
Test Acts retained; and he was one of those who, when the crisis came,
maintained that there was nothing to fear from William. After
Innocent's death in 1689 there was a change, but Rome declared in
favour of taking the oath to William III. Perth wrote from Rome in
1695: "The Prince of Orange has more friends here than either in
England or Holland, and the king is universally hated. It's scandalous
to hear what is said every day, publicly, when they make comparisons
betwixt an heretical, unnatural, usurping tyrant and His Majesty."
On this state of feeling, far stronger in 1688 than in 1695, William
built his plan. It was in the power of Lewis at any moment to prevent
the expedition. He had an army ready for war, and could have held
William fast by sending it against the Netherlands. He preferred to
attack the empire on the Upper Rhine. For twenty years it had been
his desire to neutralise England by internal broils, and he was glad
to have the Dutch out of the way while he dealt a blow at Leopold. It
was impossible that the conflict between James and William should not
yield him an opportunity. For the beginning he stood carefully aside,
letting things take their course. There was no resistance, by land or
sea, and it proved almost as easy to dethrone the Stuarts as it had
been to restore them. The balance of parties, the lack of energetic
conviction in England, had allowed things to settle down, when the
real struggle began, in Ireland, in Scotland, and in the Channel. The
Scots rising did not postpone the issue, but it is valuable to us for
the sake of one transaction.
The deed that was done in Glencoe is familiar to us all, by a patch
of Tyrian purple in the most splendid of our histories. It affords
a basis for judging the character of William and of his government.
They desired that some of the Highlanders should stand out, that an
example might be made; and they hoped that it might be the one
Catholic clan, as they were likely to be the most dangerous
Jacobites. "Who knows," wrote Stair, "but, by God's providence, they
are permitted to fall into this delusion that they may only be
extirpat." Four days later another writes: "The king does not care
that some do it, that he may make examples of them." Accordingly, by
his orders, one branch of the Macdonalds was destroyed by Campbell of
Glenlyon. There is no doubt about the order. But it is not certain
that William knew that the chieftain had taken the oath. The people
concerned were rewarded in due proportion. One became a colonel,
another a knight, a third a peer, and a fourth an earl. It was a way
King William had. When the murder of De Witt made him supreme, he
kept away from The Hague, but then saw that the murderers were
recompensed. Eighty years later a deserter from one of our regiments
was under sentence to be shot. The officer commanding the firing
party, another Captain Campbell of Glenlyon, had received a reprieve,
with secret orders not to produce it until the culprit stood facing
the levelled muskets. At that moment, as he drew the reprieve from
his pocket, his handkerchief, coming with it, fell to the ground. The
soldiers took it for their signal and fired. Glenlyon exclaimed, "It
is the curse of Glencoe!" and at once left the service.
When James escaped to France, he at once went over to Ireland, with a
French army, while a French fleet covered the expedition and swept the
Channel. James had long intended to make Ireland independent of
England, that, under his Protestant successors, it might be an
impregnable refuge for persecuted Catholics. He estimated that it
would take five years of preparation. Tyrconnel also contemplated
separation, and arranged for a French invasion, if James died. When
James came over Tyrconnel thought him hopelessly incompetent, and
offered his country to Lewis XIV. Sarsfield detested his treachery,
and invited Berwick to undertake the government. Of James's French
counsellors, one was Lauzun, who commanded the auxiliary army, and
proposed to burn Dublin to the ground and ravage the open country.
The other was the ambassador D'Avaux, who wished him to make short
work of all the Protestants in the island.
James rejected the advice with indignation. Lewis also rejected it,
but without the indignation you would expect in a most Christian king,
and without thinking the adviser unworthy of his service. D'Avaux
relates it all, without reserve, in his despatches, which are among
the curiosities of History. They were printed at the Foreign Office,
and never published. The only copy I ever saw was uncut when it came
into my hands.
In spite of these discordant counsels, the Jacobite prospects in
Ireland brightened when a fleet of seventy-eight ships sailed from
Brest. "If they were only commanded by De Ruyter," said Louvois,
whose control stopped with the shore, "there would be something to
hope for." Instead of De Ruyter, Tourville defeated the combined
Dutch and English at Beachy Head. The allies lost sixteen ships out
of fifty-eight; the French not one. Tourville was master of the
Channel. Torrington left the Dutch to do the fighting, and kept as
far as he could from the scene of danger. He had to lament the death
of his favourite dog. They said that the dog died the death of an
admiral, and the admiral lived the life of a dog. That 30th of June
is the most disgraceful date in our naval annals.
On the following day the battle of the Boyne was won not in the
legendary manner, by William, with his sword in his left hand, or
Schomberg, plunging into the river to meet a soldiers death, but by
the younger Schomberg, who crossed higher up and outflanked the
French. Tourville's victory, after that, was entirely useless.
William offered an amnesty, which was frustrated by the English hunger
for Irish estates; and the capitulation of Limerick, rejected by the
Irish parliament, gave it the name of the City of the Broken Treaty.
The reign of James came to an end when he fled from the Boyne to St.
Germains. He became the king of the Nonjurors. In 1693, when the
French had been victorious at Steenkerk and Landen, he issued a
Declaration, with the doubting approval of French divines, which the
nonjuring bishops repudiated. Such concessions, they affirmed, would
ruin the monarchy. Kerr was of the same opinion; but he went on to
say that when the Declaration had served its purpose and restored the
king, he would not be bound to observe it. The war was unprofitable
to the allies on land; but after the victory of La Hogue the three
kingdoms were safe from invasion. This is the war to which we owe the
National Debt, the Bank of England, the growth of the moneyed
interest.
But the agrarian interest still largely predominated, and the
landlords, as the ruling class, required a reward for their share in
the elevation of William. Nineteen years earlier the Corn Laws had
been invented for their benefit. Protection against foreign
importation did much; but in 1689 a premium on the exportation of
English-grown corn was added, and it is this which caused the immense
prosperity of English agriculture in the eighteenth century, enriching
the landlord with capital at the expense of the yeoman without it.
Two of our greatest writers, to speak truly, our two greatest writers,
Burke and Macaulay, have taken pains to show that the Revolution of
1688 was not revolutionary but conservative, that it was little more
than a rectification of recent error, and a return to ancient
principles. It was essentially monarchical. The king was
acknowledged to be a necessity in the then state of England. The idea
of a Commonwealth did not appear. The Revolution was mainly the work
of Conservatives, that is, of Churchmen who, where Church interests
were not threatened, strictly upheld authority, and reverted to their
original doctrine when the crisis was over. No change took place in
the governing class. The gentry who managed the affairs of the county
managed the affairs of the country after 1688 as they had done before.
There was no transfer of force from the aristocratic element of
society to the democratic. The essentials of free government,
religious liberty, national education, emancipation of slaves, freedom
of trade, relief of poverty, freedom of the press, solidarity of
ministers, publicity of debates, were not mentioned in the resolutions
of the Convention or in the Bill of Rights. Nothing was done to
determine whether the future belonged to the Tory or the Whig.
And yet it is the greatest thing done by the English nation. It
established the State upon a contract, and set up the doctrine that a
breach of contract forfeited the crown--the former, in the English
convention; the latter, in the Scottish. Parliament gave the crown,
and gave it under conditions. Parliament became supreme in
administration as well as in legislation. The king became its servant
on good behaviour, liable to dismissal for himself or his
ministers. All this was not restitution, but inversion. Passive
obedience had been the law of England. Conditional obedience and the
right of resistance became the law. Authority was limited and
regulated and controlled. The Whig theory of government was
substituted for the Tory theory on the fundamental points of political
science. The great achievement is that this was done without
bloodshed, without vengeance, without exclusion of entire parties,
with so little definiteness in point of doctrine that it could be
accepted, and the consequences could be left to work themselves
out. The Act itself was narrow, spiritless, confused, tame, and
unsatisfactory. It was perfectly compatible with the oppression of
class by class, and of the country by the State, as the agent of a
class. It was strangely imperfect.
The consequences ripened slowly, and a time came, under George III,
when it seemed that they were exhausted. It was then that another and
a more glorious Revolution, infinitely more definite and clear-cut,
with a stronger grasp of principle, and depending less on conciliation
and compromise, began to influence England and Europe.