JAMES II.
1685-1688.
No greater testimony to the caution and cleverness of Charles II. can
be given than the fact that, after a reign of twenty-five stormy years,
he died in possession of a very considerable measure of absolute power,
having lived down his troubles, secured the devotion of the larger half
of the nation, strengthened himself with a standing army, and dispensed
for three years with any summons of Parliament.
His successor was to prove that a man without tact and pliability,
pursuing the same schemes for the restoration of arbitrary government
and Romanism, might wreck himself in three years and die an exile.
[Sidenote: =Character of James.=]
Yet James of York was in many ways a stronger and a better man than
Charles II. He possessed conscience and courage in a far greater
measure than his brother. His life was not an open scandal; his
word could be relied upon; his attachment to his faith was devoted
and sincere. But he had three ruinous faults: he was obstinate
to blindness; long after a fact had become patent to all men, he
would refuse to recognize its existence. He was full of a bigoted
self-sufficiency that arose from an overweening belief in his own
good intentions and wisdom. Lastly, he was a man unable to forgive
or forget; there was no drop of mercy in his composition; he could
understand nothing but the letter of the law. Blind, conceited,
pitiless, he was bound to win the hatred of all who differed from him,
and it was soon to be discovered that nine-tenths of the English nation
were numbered in that class.
James was a man of business and method, as well as a man of action.
He had commanded a fleet with credit in the Dutch war; he had presided
with success at the Admiralty till he was compelled to resign that
office by the Test Act. He had ruled Scotland for a time with a very
firm, if a rigid, hand. But no amount of mere administrative ability
could make up for his entire want of judgment, foresight, and geniality.
[Sidenote: =The Tory party.=]
Yet on his accession, the new king had everything in his favour. The
Tory party was still in the ascendency which it had enjoyed ever since
the Whigs had been discredited by the Rye-House Plot. It was resolved
to trust and support James as long as he behaved in a constitutional
manner, and had a strong confidence in his honesty. Accordingly, the
king's first Parliament granted him the liberal income of £1,900,000
a year, and protested its complete reliance on his wisdom and good
intentions. Nor was any objection made when James sought out and
punished the informers who had fabricated the Popish Plot, though their
chastisement was very barbarous. Oates, their chief, received 1700
lashes twice within forty-eight hours, yet survived, in spite of a
sentence which had obviously been intended to kill him.
[Sidenote: =Rebellion of Monmouth and Argyle.=]
The first real shock to the confidence of the nation in the king was
caused by the cruelty with which he put down an insurrection which
broke out against him in the summer that followed his accession.
The late king's bastard son, James, Duke of Monmouth, the tool of
Shaftesbury in 1680, was living in exile in Holland, along with many
violent Whigs, who were charged, truly or falsely, with participation
in the Rye-House Plot. Monmouth, a vain and presumptuous young man,
could not read the signs of the times, and thought that all England
would rise to overturn a Romanist king, if only a Protestant leader
presented himself to lead the people. Without securing any tangible
promises of support from the chiefs of the Whig party in England, he
resolved to attempt an invasion. He was to be aided by Archibald, Earl
of Argyle, the exiled chief of the Scottish Covenanters, who undertook
to stir up a rising among his clansmen in the Highlands.
[Sidenote: =Argyle taken and executed.=]
Argyle landed in Scotland in May, 1685; Monmouth came ashore at Lyme,
in Dorsetshire, in June. Each had brought a very small force with him,
and relied wholly on the support he hoped to find at home. Argyle
raised the Campbells, but found none else to join him; after a few days
his men dispersed, and he was taken and beheaded.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Sedgemoor.--Monmouth executed.=]
Monmouth was at first more fortunate. He was well known and popular in
Dorset and Somerset, and some thousands of countrymen came flocking to
his banner, though none of the gentry would adhere to such a reckless
adventurer. The duke appealed to all Protestants to aid him against
a Papist king, declared that his mother had been the lawful wife of
Charles II., and claimed the crown of England. But his proclamation
did him no good, and his army of ploughmen and miners was but a
half-armed rabble. Nevertheless, they fought bravely enough against
James's regulars at Sedgemoor (July 5, 1685), and only dispersed when
their leader fled in craven fear from the field. Monmouth was caught
in disguise, and taken to London. He grovelled at the feet of James,
and offered to submit to any indignity if his life might be spared. But
the pitiless king, after chiding him for half an hour, sent him to the
scaffold.
[Sidenote: =Kirke and Jeffreys.--"The Bloody Assize."=]
His fate provoked little sympathy, for he had clearly brought his
trouble on his own head. But the cruel punishment that was dealt out
to the poor ignorant peasants who had followed him shocked the whole
nation. Hundreds of rebels taken in arms were hung, or shot after a
summary court-martial by the brutal Colonel Kirke, a veteran who had
learnt ferocity by serving against the Moors in Africa. After the
summary executions were over, Judge Jeffreys, a clever but worthless
lawyer, whom the king made the chief instrument of his cruelties,
descended on the south-western counties. In the "Bloody Assize," as his
circuit was called, he put to death more than 300 persons, after the
barest mockery of a trial, and sent 1000 more to work as slaves on the
plantations of Jamaica and Barbados. Of all Jeffreys' judicial murders,
the worst was that of the aged Lady Lisle. For having sheltered a
fugitive from Sedgemoor, she was sentenced by this barbarian to be
burnt, and he thought it an act of clemency when he commuted the
penalty to beheading (September, 1685).
[Sidenote: =The king's Romanist schemes.=]
The ease with which he had crushed the rising of Monmouth and Argyle
emboldened James to take seriously in hand the great project of his
life, the restoration of Romanism. His plan was to fill all offices
in Church and State with open or secret Papists, and to overawe
discontent by the muskets of a large standing army. That such a plan
was dangerous, and even impossible, when nine-tenths of the nation was
devotedly attached to Protestantism, he does not seem to have realized.
He relied on his observations of the men about his own person, for many
of the demoralized courtiers of Charles II. were quite ready to become
Romanists if only it brought them preferment. They would probably have
become Jews or Moslems if it had been made worth their while. The
basest of these degraded opportunists was James's chief minister, Lord
Sunderland, the tool of all his worst acts of tyranny and folly. With
such a man as his chief adviser, and the infamous Jeffreys--now made
Lord Chancellor--as his chief executioner, the king was likely to go to
any lengths. Of his other councillors the chief were Richard Talbot,
Earl of Tyrconnel, a bigoted Irish Romanist of very depraved manners,
and Father Petre, a Jesuit priest.
[Sidenote: =The Test Act and the dispensing power.=]
James commenced his campaign against Protestantism in 1686. The chief
bar to the admission of Papists to office in the public service and
the army was the Test Act of 1673, which excluded all save English
Churchmen from any post in the state. Knowing that no Parliament would
repeal this act, James resolved to annul it on his own authority. One
of the oldest weapons of the Stuarts was the claim to a "dispensing
power," a right of the king to grant immunity on his own authority for
offences against the law of the land. This was the tool which he had
now resolved to employ against the Test Act. He appointed a Romanist
named Sir Edward Hales colonel of one of the new regiments which he
was busily employed in raising. Hales was prosecuted for illegally
accepting the commission, and pleaded in defence that the king had
dispensed him from taking the test. The case was brought before a bench
of judges carefully packed by the orders of James, and they gave the
wholly unconstitutional decision that the king's dispensation covered
Hales from all penalties. Armed with this opinion of the judges, James
began to give place and office to Romanists right and left; they were
made judges, officers, sheriffs, lord-lieutenants, mayors, all by
virtue of the king's dispensing power. None but Catholics could for the
future hope for any preferment.
[Sidenote: =Attack on the Church and Oxford University.=]
The king next proceeded to attack the Church of England; once more
pleading his dispensing power, he began to give Papists office in the
Church. Not only did he make over crown livings to them, but he filled
two vacant headships of Oxford colleges with notorious Romanists,
showing thereby his intention to put the control of education into
the hands of his own co-religionists. Somewhat later, he expelled the
whole body of Fellows and Scholars of Magdalen College, for refusing
to receive the President whom he had chosen for them [1687], herein
following the example of Charles, who had deprived the philosopher John
Locke of his studentship at Christ Church, for holding Whig opinions.
To deal with things religious, James revived the Court of High
Commission, one of the old despotic courts which the Long Parliament
had abolished forty years before; he placed Jeffreys at its head, and
used it for the oppression of all clergy who showed signs of opposing
him. Meanwhile a large army, including several Irish regiments, was
concentrated at Hounslow to overawe London.
The nation, though sorely tried by these exhibitions of James's
high-handed bigotry, required still further provocation before it rose
against him. The Tory party were so deeply committed to the doctrine
of divine right and passive obedience, that it required an even more
desperate attack on the Church of England to set them in arms against
the king. The Whigs were so crushed and depressed, that they had not
the heart to rebel. It may be added that the fact that the king was an
elderly man, while his heiress Mary, Princess of Orange, was a firm
Protestant, kept many men quiet. They held that the king must die ere
long, and that his wild schemes would die with him.
[Sidenote: =The Declaration of Indulgence.=]
James began to embark on his last fatal measures of arbitrary power
in the spring of 1688. Without calling or consulting a Parliament, he
determined to issue on his own authority a "Declaration of Indulgence,"
which was to suspend all laws that were directed against Romanists. To
partly cloak his plan, he added that the Declaration was also to free
the Protestant Dissenters from the penal code of 1664-5. Toleration in
itself is good, but toleration imposed by an autocratic and illegal
mandate is a suspicious boon. The Dissenters themselves repudiated
the gift, when given from such doubtful hands. To show his complete
mastery over the Church of England, James ordered that the Declaration
should be publicly read from the pulpit by every beneficed minister in
the land.
[Sidenote: =The trial of the seven bishops.=]
This command provoked even the loyal Tories to resistance. When the
appointed day came round, the clergy, almost without exception, refused
to read the Declaration. The archbishop, William Sancroft, and six
of his suffragans,[45] addressed a petition to the king begging that
they might be excused from having to issue such a document. James was
furious, and in his rage declared his intention of putting the bishops
on trial for publishing a seditious libel--a most absurd description of
their modestly worded plea. The seven prelates were arrested and sent
as prisoners to the Tower. A month later they were brought before the
Court of King's Bench. The whole nation was in agony as to their fate,
but the preposterous nature of the prosecution abashed even the king's
subservient judges. The charge was pressed in a half-hearted way, and
the jury returned a verdict of "Not guilty." James's vexation at this
acquittal was only surpassed by his outburst of wrath when he saw the
universal demonstration of joy with which the news was received. Even
his own soldiery in the camp at Hounslow lighted bonfires to celebrate
the event.
[Sidenote: =Birth of "the Old Pretender."=]
In the very month of the acquittal of the seven bishops, an event
happened which profoundly affected the king's prospects. His young
second wife, Mary of Modena, bore him a son, the prince afterwards
known as "the Old Pretender" (June 10, 1688). The birth of this child
gave the king a Romanist heir, and cut the Princess of Orange out of
the succession to the throne. This unexpected news filled England
with dismay; it was evident that the king's schemes were no longer
to be terminated with his own life; a dynasty of Romanists loomed
on the horizon. In their wrath many men asserted that the child was
supposititious, a changeling foisted on the nation by the king's
malice. This groundless tale received much credit, for anything was
believed possible in such a bigot as James.
[Sidenote: =Invitation to William of Orange.=]
The birth of the Prince of Wales was immediately followed by the
formation of a serious conspiracy to overthrow the king. The Tories
forgot their loyalty and joined the Whigs. The first sketch of the
plot was drawn up by the old Tory minister, Danby, in conjunction with
the Earl of Devonshire, the chief of the Whigs, and Henry Sydney and
Edward Russell, the kinsmen of the two Whig leaders of those names who
had been beheaded by Charles II. in 1683. Their plan was to call over
to England the Princess Mary and her husband the Prince of Orange,
and set them up against the king. William of Orange, the champion of
Protestantism on the continent, and the deadly foe of James's ally,
the King of France, was known to be ready to strike any blow that
would bring England over to his side. He had long been in secret
communication with many leading men among the Whigs, and welcomed the
appearance of a definite invitation with joy. On receiving satisfactory
assurances of support, he consented to raise every man that he could
put into the field, and to cross to England.
James at first received the news of suspicious warlike preparations
in Holland with indifference. He relied on the fact that William was
at war with France, and reasoned that while the Low Countries were
threatened by French troops, his son-in-law would never dare to leave
his own country unprotected and invade England. But the French king was
more set on an invasion of Germany than on the conquest of Holland,
and when Lewis sent his armies across the Upper Rhine, William was
left unwatched, and was able to make his preparations at leisure. Many
Englishmen of mark, Tories as well as Whigs, slipped over to join him,
and bade him strike as quickly as possible. Though the storms of autumn
were already raging, the Prince set sail from Helvoetsluys on the 2nd
of November, and steered down the Channel, with fifty men-of-war, and
transports carrying some 13,000 men.
James had a much larger force garrisoning the south of England.
Combining his regular army with a number of newly raised regiments
of Irish Romanists, he had quite 40,000 men under arms. But he soon
discovered that the temper of the greater part of them was very bad;
except the numerous Catholic officers to whom he had given commissions,
there was hardly a man who could be trusted.
[Sidenote: =James reverses his policy.=]
When the news of William's final preparations reached England,
James was suddenly struck by a panic as irrational as his previous
over-confidence. He fell from blind arrogance into extreme depression,
when he at last realized the universal discontent which his acts had
created. With a craven and useless haste he suddenly began to endeavour
to undo his policy of the last three years. He abolished the Court of
High Commission, cancelled the appointments of many Romanist officials,
recalled the Fellows whom he had banished from Oxford, and made the
most profuse promises to respect all the rights and privileges of the
Church of England for the future. But such conduct could not restore
confidence; he could not make men forget the cruelties of the Bloody
Assize, or the indignities which he had heaped on the seven bishops.
Such a repentance at the eleventh hour deceived nobody.
[Sidenote: =Landing of William of Orange.--James deserted.=]
On the 5th of November, 1688, William of Orange landed at Torbay,
and three days later he seized Exeter. James, who had looked for an
invasion on the Eastern coast, at once began to march his numerous
army towards Devonshire. There was a moment's pause ere the opponents
met. For some days no one of note joined the Prince of Orange, and it
seemed doubtful if those who had pledged themselves to his cause were
about to keep their promise. But the hesitation was not for long. Ere
a shot had been fired in the west, insurrections began to break out in
all the parts of England where the king had no armed force in garrison.
Lord Danby seized York and the Earl of Devonshire Nottingham. But this
was not the worst; as James advanced westward, first single officers,
then whole companies and regiments, began to slink away from his host
and join the enemy. Even those whom he most trusted left him; his
own son-in-law, Prince George of Denmark, the husband of his younger
daughter Anne, was one of those who absconded. Another was one of his
most trusted officers, John Churchill, afterwards the famous Duke of
Marlborough. With abominable treachery, Churchill tried to kidnap his
master before deserting, and almost succeeded in the attempt.
[Sidenote: =James flies to France.=]
Seeing his whole army melting away, James hastily returned to London,
strove in vain to gain time by negotiating with the Prince of Orange,
and then sent off his wife and son to France, and endeavoured to follow
them himself. He was stopped by a mob at Faversham, in Kent, and forced
back to the capital. But no one wished to keep him a prisoner, and,
with the secret connivance of William of Orange, he was allowed to
escape a second time, and to get clear away to France (December 18,
1688).
Thus ended in ignominious flight the preposterous attempt of a blind
and arrogant king to coerce England into surrendering its constitution
and its religion. The edifice which James had so laboriously reared,
crumbled to pieces at the first touch of force from without.
FOOTNOTE:
[45] Their names were Ken of Bath and Wells, White of Peterborough,
Lloyd of St. Asaph, Trelawney of Bristol, Lake of Chichester, and
Turner of Ely.