THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND
FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES II,

VOLUME 3 (of 5)

(Chapters XI-XVI)

by Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Philadelphia
Porter & Coates

Contents

DETAILED CONTENTS

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XI

THE Revolution had been accomplished. The decrees of the Convention were
everywhere received with submission. London, true during fifty eventful
years to the cause of civil freedom and of the reformed religion, was
foremost in professing loyalty to the new Sovereigns. Garter King at arms,
after making proclamation under the windows of Whitehall, rode in state
along the Strand to Temple Bar. He was followed by the maces of the two
Houses, by the two Speakers, Halifax and Powle, and by a long train of
coaches filled with noblemen and gentlemen. The magistrates of the City
threw open their gates and joined the procession. Four regiments of
militia lined the way up Ludgate Hill, round Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and
along Cheapside. The streets, the balconies, and the very housetops were
crowded with gazers. All the steeples from the Abbey to the Tower sent
forth a joyous din. The proclamation was repeated, with sound of trumpet,
in front of the Royal Exchange, amidst the shouts of the citizens.

In the evening every window from Whitechapel to Piccadilly was lighted up.
The state rooms of the palace were thrown open, and were filled by a
gorgeous company of courtiers desirous to kiss the hands of the King and
Queen. The Whigs assembled there, flushed with victory and prosperity.
There were among them some who might be pardoned if a vindictive feeling
mingled with their joy. The most deeply injured of all who had survived
the evil times was absent. Lady Russell, while her friends were crowding
the galleries of Whitehall, remained in her retreat, thinking of one who,
if he had been still living, would have held no undistinguished place in
the ceremonies of that great day. But her daughter, who had a few months
before become the wife of Lord Cavendish, was presented to the royal pair
by his mother the Countess of Devonshire. A letter is still extant in
which the young lady described with great vivacity the roar of the
populace, the blaze in the streets, the throng in the presence chamber,
the beauty of Mary, and the expression which ennobled and softened the
harsh features of William. But the most interesting passage is that in
which the orphan girl avowed the stern delight with which she had
witnessed the tardy punishment of her father’s murderer. 1

The example of London was followed by the provincial towns. During three
weeks the Gazettes were filled with accounts of the solemnities by which
the public joy manifested itself, cavalcades of gentlemen and yeomen,
processions of Sheriffs and Bailiffs in scarlet gowns, musters of zealous
Protestants with orange flags and ribands, salutes, bonfires,
illuminations, music, balls, dinners, gutters running with ale and
conduits spouting claret. 2

Still more cordial was the rejoicing among the Dutch, when they learned
that the first minister of their Commonwealth had been raised to a throne.
On the very day of his accession he had written to assure the States
General that the change in his situation had made no change in the
affection which he bore to his native land, and that his new dignity
would, he hoped, enable him to discharge his old duties more efficiently
than ever. That oligarchical party, which had always been hostile to the
doctrines of Calvin and to the House of Orange, muttered faintly that His
Majesty ought to resign the Stadtholdership. But all such mutterings were
drowned by the acclamations of a people proud of the genius and success of
their great countryman. A day of thanksgiving was appointed. In all the
cities of the Seven Provinces the public joy manifested itself by
festivities of which the expense was chiefly defrayed by voluntary gifts.
Every class assisted. The poorest labourer could help to set up an arch of
triumph, or to bring sedge to a bonfire. Even the ruined Huguenots of
France could contribute the aid of their ingenuity. One art which they had
carried with them into banishment was the art of making fireworks; and
they now, in honour of the victorious champion of their faith, lighted up
the canals of Amsterdam with showers of splendid constellations. 3

To superficial observers it might well seem that William was, at this
time, one of the most enviable of human beings. He was in truth one of the
most anxious and unhappy. He well knew that the difficulties of his task
were only beginning. Already that dawn which had lately been so bright was
overcast; and many signs portended a dark and stormy day.

It was observed that two important classes took little or no part in the
festivities by which, all over England, the inauguration of the new
government was celebrated. Very seldom could either a priest or a soldier
be seen in the assemblages which gathered round the market crosses where
the King and Queen were proclaimed. The professional pride both of the
clergy and of the army had been deeply wounded. The doctrine of
nonresistance had been dear to the Anglican divines. It was their
distinguishing badge. It was their favourite theme. If we are to judge by
that portion of their oratory which has come down to us, they had preached
about the duty of passive obedience at least as often and as zealously as
about the Trinity or the Atonement. 4 Their
attachment to their political creed had indeed been severely tried, and
had, during a short time, wavered. But with the tyranny of James the
bitter feeling which that tyranny had excited among them had passed away.
The parson of a parish was naturally unwilling to join in what was really
a triumph over those principles which, during twenty-eight years, his
flock had heard him proclaim on every anniversary of the Martyrdom and on
every anniversary of the Restoration.

The soldiers, too, were discontented. They hated Popery indeed; and they
had not loved the banished King. But they keenly felt that, in the short
campaign which had decided the fate of their country, theirs had been an
inglorious part. Forty fine regiments, a regular army such as had never
before marched to battle under the royal standard of England, had
retreated precipitately before an invader, and had then, without a
struggle, submitted to him. That great force had been absolutely of no
account in the late change, had done nothing towards keeping William out,
and had done nothing towards bringing him in. The clowns, who, armed with
pitchforks and mounted on carthorses, had straggled in the train of
Lovelace or Delamere, had borne a greater part in the Revolution than
those splendid household troops, whose plumed hats, embroidered coats, and
curvetting chargers the Londoners had so often seen with admiration in
Hyde Park. The mortification of the army was increased by the taunts of
the foreigners, taunts which neither orders nor punishments could entirely
restrain. 5
At several places the anger which a brave and highspirited body of men
might, in such circumstances, be expected to feel, showed itself in an
alarming manner. A battalion which lay at Cirencester put out the
bonfires, huzzaed for King James, and drank confusion to his daughter and
his nephew. The garrison of Plymouth disturbed the rejoicings of the
County of Cornwall: blows were exchanged, and a man was killed in the
fray. 6

The ill humour of the clergy and of the army could not but be noticed by
the most heedless; for the clergy and the army were distinguished from
other classes by obvious peculiarities of garb. “Black coats and red
coats,” said a vehement Whig in the House of Commons, “are the curses of
the nation.” 7
But the discontent was not confined to the black coats and the red coats.
The enthusiasm with which men of all classes had welcomed William to
London at Christmas had greatly abated before the close of February. The
new king had, at the very moment at which his fame and fortune reached the
highest point, predicted the coming reaction. That reaction might, indeed,
have been predicted by a less sagacious observer of human affairs. For it
is to be chiefly ascribed to a law as certain as the laws which regulate
the succession of the seasons and the course of the trade winds. It is the
nature of man to overrate present evil, and to underrate present good; to
long for what he has not, and to be dissatisfied with what he has. This
propensity, as it appears in individuals, has often been noticed both by
laughing and by weeping philosophers. It was a favourite theme of Horace
and of Pascal, of Voltaire and of Johnson. To its influence on the fate of
great communities may be ascribed most of the revolutions and
counterrevolutions recorded in history. A hundred generations have elapsed
since the first great national emancipation, of which an account has come
down to us. We read in the most ancient of books that a people bowed to
the dust under a cruel yoke, scourged to toil by hard taskmasters, not
supplied with straw, yet compelled to furnish the daily tale of bricks,
became sick of life, and raised such a cry of misery as pierced the
heavens. The slaves were wonderfully set free: at the moment of their
liberation they raised a song of gratitude and triumph: but, in a few
hours, they began to regret their slavery, and to murmur against the
leader who had decoyed them away from the savoury fare of the house of
bondage to the dreary waste which still separated them from the land
flowing with milk and honey. Since that time the history of every great
deliverer has been the history of Moses retold. Down to the present hour
rejoicings like those on the shore of the Red Sea have ever been speedily
followed by murmurings like those at the Waters of Strife. 8
The most just and salutary revolution must produce much suffering. The
most just and salutary revolution cannot produce all the good that had
been expected from it by men of uninstructed minds and sanguine tempers.
Even the wisest cannot, while it is still recent, weigh quite fairly the
evils which it has caused against the evils which it has removed. For the
evils which it has caused are felt; and the evils which it has removed are
felt no longer.

Thus it was now in England. The public was, as it always is during the
cold fits which follow its hot fits, sullen, hard to please, dissatisfied
with itself, dissatisfied with those who had lately been its favourites.
The truce between the two great parties was at an end. Separated by the
memory of all that had been done and suffered during a conflict of half a
century, they had been, during a few months, united by a common danger.
But the danger was over: the union was dissolved; and the old animosity
broke forth again in all its strength.

James had during the last year of his reign, been even more hated by the
Tories than by the Whigs; and not without cause for the Whigs he was only
an enemy; and to the Tories he had been a faithless and thankless friend.
But the old royalist feeling, which had seemed to be extinct in the time
of his lawless domination, had been partially revived by his misfortunes.
Many lords and gentlemen, who had, in December, taken arms for the Prince
of Orange and a Free Parliament, muttered, two months later, that they had
been drawn in; that they had trusted too much to His Highness’s
Declaration; that they had given him credit for a disinterestedness which,
it now appeared, was not in his nature. They had meant to put on King
James, for his own good, some gentle force, to punish the Jesuits and
renegades who had misled him, to obtain from him some guarantee for the
safety of the civil and ecclesiastical institutions of the realm, but not
to uncrown and banish him. For his maladministration, gross as it had
been, excuses were found. Was it strange that, driven from his native
land, while still a boy, by rebels who were a disgrace to the Protestant
name, and forced to pass his youth in countries where the Roman Catholic
religion was established, he should have been captivated by that most
attractive of all superstitions? Was it strange that, persecuted and
calumniated as he had been by an implacable faction, his disposition
should have become sterner and more severe than it had once been thought,
and that, when those who had tried to blast his honour and to rob him of
his birthright were at length in his power, he should not have
sufficiently tempered justice with mercy? As to the worst charge which had
been brought against him, the charge of trying to cheat his daughters out
of their inheritance by fathering a supposititious child, on what grounds
did it rest? Merely on slight circumstances, such as might well be imputed
to accident, or to that imprudence which was but too much in harmony with
his character. Did ever the most stupid country justice put a boy in the
stocks without requiring stronger evidence than that on which the English
people had pronounced their King guilty of the basest and most odious of
all frauds? Some great faults he had doubtless committed, nothing could be
more just or constitutional than that for those faults his advisers and
tools should be called to a severe reckoning; nor did any of those
advisers and tools more richly deserve punishment than the Roundhead
sectaries whose adulation had encouraged him to persist in the fatal
exercise of the dispensing power. It was a fundamental law of the land
that the King could do no wrong, and that, if wrong were done by his
authority, his counsellors and agents were responsible. That great rule,
essential to our polity, was now inverted. The sycophants, who were
legally punishable, enjoyed impunity: the King, who was not legally
punishable, was punished with merciless severity. Was it possible for the
Cavaliers of England, the sons of the warriors who had fought under
Rupert, not to feel bitter sorrow and indignation when they reflected on
the fate of their rightful liege lord, the heir of a long line of princes,
lately enthroned in splendour at Whitehall, now an exile, a suppliant, a
mendicant? His calamities had been greater than even those of the Blessed
Martyr from whom he sprang. The father had been slain by avowed and mortal
foes: the ruin of the son had been the work of his own children. Surely
the punishment, even if deserved, should have been inflicted by other
hands. And was it altogether deserved? Had not the unhappy man been rather
weak and rash than wicked? Had he not some of the qualities of an
excellent prince? His abilities were certainly not of a high order: but he
was diligent: he was thrifty: he had fought bravely: he had been his own
minister for maritime affairs, and had, in that capacity, acquitted
himself respectably: he had, till his spiritual guides obtained a fatal
ascendency over his mind, been regarded as a man of strict justice; and,
to the last, when he was not misled by them, he generally spoke truth and
dealt fairly. With so many virtues he might, if he had been a Protestant,
nay, if he had been a moderate Roman Catholic, have had a prosperous and
glorious reign. Perhaps it might not be too late for him to retrieve his
errors. It was difficult to believe that he could be so dull and perverse
as not to have profited by the terrible discipline which he had recently
undergone; and, if that discipline had produced the effects which might
reasonably be expected from it, England might still enjoy, under her
legitimate ruler, a larger measure of happiness and tranquillity than she
could expect from the administration of the best and ablest usurper.

We should do great injustice to those who held this language, if we
supposed that they had, as a body, ceased to regard Popery and despotism
with abhorrence. Some zealots might indeed be found who could not bear the
thought of imposing conditions on their King, and who were ready to recall
him without the smallest assurance that the Declaration of Indulgence
should not be instantly republished, that the High Commission should not
be instantly revived, that Petre should not be again seated at the Council
Board, and that the fellows of Magdalene should not again be ejected. But
the number of these men was small. On the other hand, the number of those
Royalists, who, if James would have acknowledged his mistakes and promised
to observe the laws, were ready to rally round him, was very large. It is
a remarkable fact that two able and experienced statesmen, who had borne a
chief part in the Revolution, frankly acknowledged, a few days after the
Revolution had been accomplished, their apprehension that a Restoration
was close at hand. “If King James were a Protestant,” said Halifax to
Reresby, “we could not keep him out four months.” “If King James,” said
Danby to the same person about the same time, “would but give the country
some satisfaction about religion, which he might easily do, it would be
very hard to make head against him.” 9 Happily for
England, James was, as usual, his own worst enemy. No word indicating that
he took blame to himself on account of the past, or that he intended to
govern constitutionally for the future, could be extracted from him. Every
letter, every rumour, that found its way from Saint Germains to England
made men of sense fear that, if, in his present temper, he should be
restored to power, the second tyranny would be worse than the first. Thus
the Tories, as a body, were forced to admit, very unwillingly, that there
was, at that moment, no choice but between William and public ruin. They
therefore, without altogether relinquishing the hope that he who was King
by right might at some future time be disposed to listen to reason, and
without feeling any thing like loyalty towards him who was King in
possession, discontentedly endured the new government.

It may be doubted whether that government was not, during the first months
of its existence, in more danger from the affection of the Whigs than from
the disaffection of the Tories. Enmity can hardly be more annoying than
querulous, jealous, exacting fondness; and such was the fondness which the
Whigs felt for the Sovereign of their choice. They were loud in his
praise. They were ready to support him with purse and sword against
foreign and domestic foes. But their attachment to him was of a peculiar
kind. Loyalty such as had animated the gallant gentlemen who fought for
Charles the First, loyalty such as had rescued Charles the Second from the
fearful dangers and difficulties caused by twenty years of
maladministration, was not a sentiment to which the doctrines of Milton
and Sidney were favourable; nor was it a sentiment which a prince, just
raised to power by a rebellion, could hope to inspire. The Whig theory of
government is that kings exist for the people, and not the people for the
kings; that the right of a king is divine in no other sense than that in
which the right of a member of parliament, of a judge, of a juryman, of a
mayor, of a headborough, is divine; that, while the chief magistrate
governs according to law, he ought to be obeyed and reverenced; that, when
he violates the law, he ought to be withstood; and that, when he violates
the law grossly, systematically and pertinaciously, he ought to be
deposed. On the truth of these principles depended the justice of
William’s title to the throne. It is obvious that the relation between
subjects who held these principles, and a ruler whose accession had been
the triumph of these principles, must have been altogether different from
the relation which had subsisted between the Stuarts and the Cavaliers.
The Whigs loved William indeed: but they loved him not as a King, but as a
party leader; and it was not difficult to foresee that their enthusiasm
would cool fast if he should refuse to be the mere leader of their party,
and should attempt to be King of the whole nation. What they expected from
him in return for their devotion to his cause was that he should be one of
themselves, a stanch and ardent Whig; that he should show favour to none
but Whigs; that he should make all the old grudges of the Whigs his own;
and there was but too much reason to apprehend that, if he disappointed
this expectation, the only section of the community which was zealous in
his cause would be estranged from him. 10

Such were the difficulties by which, at the moment of his elevation, he
found himself beset. Where there was a good path he had seldom failed to
choose it. But now he had only a choice among paths every one of which
seemed likely to lead to destruction. From one faction he could hope for
no cordial support. The cordial support of the other faction he could
retain only by becoming himself the most factious man in his kingdom, a
Shaftesbury on the throne. If he persecuted the Tories, their sulkiness
would infallibly be turned into fury. If he showed favour to the Tories,
it was by no means certain that he would gain their goodwill; and it was
but too probable that he might lose his hold on the hearts of the Whigs.
Something however he must do: something he must risk: a Privy Council must
be sworn in: all the great offices, political and judicial, must be
filled. It was impossible to make an arrangement that would please every
body, and difficult to make an arrangement that would please any body; but
an arrangement must be made.

What is now called a ministry he did not think of forming. Indeed what is
now called a ministry was never known in England till he had been some
years on the throne. Under the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts,
there had been ministers; but there had been no ministry. The servants of
the Crown were not, as now, bound in frankpledge for each other. They were
not expected to be of the same opinion even on questions of the gravest
importance. Often they were politically and personally hostile to each
other, and made no secret of their hostility. It was not yet felt to be
inconvenient or unseemly that they should accuse each other of high
crimes, and demand each other’s heads. No man had been more active in the
impeachment of the Lord Chancellor Clarendon than Coventry, who was a
Commissioner of the Treasury. No man had been more active in the
impeachment of the Lord Treasurer Danby than Winnington, who was Solicitor
General. Among the members of the Government there was only one point of
union, their common head, the Sovereign. The nation considered him as the
proper chief of the administration, and blamed him severely if he
delegated his high functions to any subject. Clarendon has told us that
nothing was so hateful to the Englishmen of his time as a Prime Minister.
They would rather, he said, be subject to an usurper like Oliver, who was
first magistrate in fact as well as in name, than to a legitimate King who
referred them to a Grand Vizier. One of the chief accusations which the
country party had brought against Charles the Second was that he was too
indolent and too fond of pleasure to examine with care the balance sheets
of public accountants and the inventories of military stores. James, when
he came to the crown, had determined to appoint no Lord High Admiral or
Board of Admiralty, and to keep the entire direction of maritime affairs
in his own hands; and this arrangement, which would now be thought by men
of all parties unconstitutional and pernicious in the highest degree, was
then generally applauded even by people who were not inclined to see his
conduct in a favourable light. How completely the relation in which the
King stood to his Parliament and to his ministers had been altered by the
Revolution was not at first understood even by the most enlightened
statesmen. It was universally supposed that the government would, as in
time past, be conducted by functionaries independent of each other, and
that William would exercise a general superintendence over them all. It
was also fully expected that a prince of William’s capacity and experience
would transact much important business without having recourse to any
adviser.

There were therefore no complaints when it was understood that he had
reserved to himself the direction of foreign affairs. This was indeed
scarcely matter of choice: for, with the single exception of Sir William
Temple, whom nothing would induce to quit his retreat for public life,
there was no Englishman who had proved himself capable of conducting an
important negotiation with foreign powers to a successful and honourable
issue. Many years had elapsed since England had interfered with weight and
dignity in the affairs of the great commonwealth of nations. The attention
of the ablest English politicians had long been almost exclusively
occupied by disputes concerning the civil and ecclesiastical constitution
of their own country. The contests about the Popish Plot and the Exclusion
Bill, the Habeas Corpus Act and the Test Act, had produced an abundance,
it might almost be said a glut, of those talents which raise men to
eminence in societies torn by internal factions. All the Continent could
not show such skilful and wary leaders of parties, such dexterous
parliamentary tacticians, such ready and eloquent debaters, as were
assembled at Westminister. But a very different training was necessary to
form a great minister for foreign affairs; and the Revolution had on a
sudden placed England in a situation in which the services of a great
minister for foreign affairs were indispensable to her.

William was admirably qualified to supply that in which the most
accomplished statesmen of his kingdom were deficient. He had long been
preeminently distinguished as a negotiator. He was the author and the soul
of the European coalition against the French ascendency. The clue, without
which it was perilous to enter the vast and intricate maze of Continental
politics, was in his hands. His English counsellors, therefore, however
able and active, seldom, during his reign, ventured to meddle with that
part of the public business which he had taken as his peculiar province.
11

The internal government of England could be carried on only by the advice
and agency of English ministers. Those ministers William selected in such
a manner as showed that he was determined not to proscribe any set of men
who were willing to support his throne. On the day after the crown had
been presented to him in the Banqueting House, the Privy Council was sworn
in. Most of the Councillors were Whigs; but the names of several eminent
Tories appeared in the list. 12 The four highest offices in the
state were assigned to four noblemen, the representatives of four classes
of politicians.

In practical ability and official experience Danby had no superior among
his contemporaries. To the gratitude of the new Sovereigns he had a strong
claim; for it was by his dexterity that their marriage had been brought
about in spite of difficulties which had seemed insuperable. The enmity
which he had always borne to France was a scarcely less powerful
recommendation. He had signed the invitation of the thirtieth of June, had
excited and directed the northern insurrection, and had, in the
Convention, exerted all his influence and eloquence in opposition to the
scheme of Regency. Yet the Whigs regarded him with unconquerable distrust
and aversion. They could not forget that he had, in evil days, been the
first minister of the state, the head of the Cavaliers, the champion of
prerogative, the persecutor of dissenters. Even in becoming a rebel, he
had not ceased to be a Tory. If he had drawn the sword against the Crown,
he had drawn it only in defence of the Church. If he had, in the
Convention, done good by opposing the scheme of Regency, he had done harm
by obstinately maintaining that the throne was not vacant, and that the
Estates had no right to determine who should fill it. The Whigs were
therefore of opinion that he ought to think himself amply rewarded for his
recent merits by being suffered to escape the punishment of those offences
for which he had been impeached ten years before. He, on the other hand,
estimated his own abilities and services, which were doubtless
considerable, at their full value, and thought himself entitled to the
great place of Lord High Treasurer, which he had formerly held. But he was
disappointed. William, on principle, thought it desirable to divide the
power and patronage of the Treasury among several Commissioners. He was
the first English King who never, from the beginning to the end of his
reign, trusted the white staff in the hands of a single subject. Danby was
offered his choice between the Presidency of the Council and a
Secretaryship of State. He sullenly accepted the Presidency, and, while
the Whigs murmured at seeing him placed so high, hardly attempted to
conceal his anger at not having been placed higher. 13

Halifax, the most illustrious man of that small party which boasted that
it kept the balance even between Whigs and Tories, took charge of the
Privy Seal, and continued to be Speaker of the House of Lords. 14
He had been foremost in strictly legal opposition to the late Government,
and had spoken and written with great ability against the dispensing
power: but he had refused to know any thing about the design of invasion:
he had laboured, even when the Dutch were in full march towards London, to
effect a reconciliation; and he had never deserted James till James had
deserted the throne. But, from the moment of that shameful flight, the
sagacious Trimmer, convinced that compromise was thenceforth impossible,
had taken a decided part. He had distinguished himself preeminently in the
Convention: nor was it without a peculiar propriety that he had been
appointed to the honourable office of tendering the crown, in the name of
all the Estates of England, to the Prince and Princess of Orange; for our
Revolution, as far as it can be said to bear the character of any single
mind, assuredly bears the character of the large yet cautious mind of
Halifax. The Whigs, however, were not in a temper to accept a recent
service as an atonement for an old offence; and the offence of Halifax had
been grave indeed. He had long before been conspicuous in their front rank
during a hard fight for liberty. When they were at length victorious, when
it seemed that Whitehall was at their mercy, when they had a near prospect
of dominion and revenge, he had changed sides; and fortune had changed
sides with him. In the great debate on the Exclusion Bill, his eloquence
had struck them dumb, and had put new life into the inert and desponding
party of the Court. It was true that, though he had left them in the day
of their insolent prosperity, he had returned to them in the day of their
distress. But, now that their distress was over, they forgot that he had
returned to them, and remembered only that he had left them. 15

The vexation with which they saw Danby presiding in the Council, and
Halifax bearing the Privy Seal, was not diminished by the news that
Nottingham was appointed Secretary of State. Some of those zealous
churchmen who had never ceased to profess the doctrine of nonresistance,
who thought the Revolution unjustifiable, who had voted for a Regency, and
who had to the last maintained that the English throne could never be one
moment vacant, yet conceived it to be their duty to submit to the decision
of the Convention. They had not, they said, rebelled against James. They
had not selected William. But, now that they saw on the throne a Sovereign
whom they never would have placed there, they were of opinion that no law,
divine or human, bound them to carry the contest further. They thought
that they found, both in the Bible and in the Statute Book, directions
which could not be misunderstood. The Bible enjoins obedience to the
powers that be. The Statute Book contains an act providing that no subject
shall be deemed a wrongdoer for adhering to the King in possession. On
these grounds many, who had not concurred in setting up the new
government, believed that they might give it their support without offence
to God or man. One of the most eminent politicians of this school was
Nottingham. At his instance the Convention had, before the throne was
filled, made such changes in the oath of allegiance as enabled him and
those who agreed with him to take that oath without scruple. “My
principles,” he said, “do not permit me to bear any part in making a King.
But when a King has been made, my principles bind me to pay him an
obedience more strict than he can expect from those who have made him.” He
now, to the surprise of some of those who most esteemed him, consented to
sit in the council, and to accept the seals of Secretary. William
doubtless hoped that this appointment would be considered by the clergy
and the Tory country gentlemen as a sufficient guarantee that no evil was
meditated against the Church. Even Burnet, who at a later period felt a
strong antipathy to Nottingham, owned, in some memoirs written soon after
the Revolution, that the King had judged well, and that the influence of
the Tory Secretary, honestly exerted in support of the new Sovereigns, had
saved England from great calamities. 16

The other Secretary was Shrewsbury. 17 No man so
young had within living memory occupied so high a post in the government.
He had but just completed his twenty-eighth year. Nobody, however, except
the solemn formalists at the Spanish embassy, thought his youth an
objection to his promotion. 18 He had already secured for
himself a place in history by the conspicuous part which he had taken in
the deliverance of his country. His talents, his accomplishments, his
graceful manners, his bland temper, made him generally popular. By the
Whigs especially he was almost adored. None suspected that, with many
great and many amiable qualities, he had such faults both of head and of
heart as would make the rest of a life which had opened under the fairest
auspices burdensome to himself and almost useless to his country.

The naval administration and the financial administration were confided to
Boards. Herbert was First Commissioner of the Admiralty. He had in the
late reign given up wealth and dignities when he found that he could not
retain them with honour and with a good conscience. He had carried the
memorable invitation to the Hague. He had commanded the Dutch fleet during
the voyage from Helvoetsluys to Torbay. His character for courage and
professional skill stood high. That he had had his follies and vices was
well known. But his recent conduct in the time of severe trial had atoned
for all, and seemed to warrant the hope that his future career would be
glorious. Among the commissioners who sate with him at the Admiralty were
two distinguished members of the House of Commons, William Sacheverell, a
veteran Whig, who had great authority in his party, and Sir John Lowther,
an honest and very moderate Tory, who in fortune and parliamentary
interest was among the first of the English gentry. 19

Mordaunt, one of the most vehement of the Whigs, was placed at the head of
the Treasury; why, it is difficult to say. His romantic courage, his
flighty wit, his eccentric invention, his love of desperate risks and
startling effects, were not qualities likely to be of much use to him in
financial calculations and negotiations. Delamere, a more vehement Whig,
if possible, than Mordaunt, sate second at the board, and was Chancellor
of the Exchequer. Two Whig members of the House of Commons were in the
Commission, Sir Henry Capel, brother of that Earl of Essex who died by his
own hand in the Tower, and Richard Hampden, son of the great leader of the
Long Parliament. But the Commissioner on whom the chief weight of business
lay was Godolphin. This man, taciturn, clearminded, laborious,
inoffensive, zealous for no government and useful to every government, had
gradually become an almost indispensable part of the machinery of the
state. Though a churchman, he had prospered in a Court governed by
Jesuits. Though he had voted for a Regency, he was the real head of a
treasury filled with Whigs. His abilities and knowledge, which had in the
late reign supplied the deficiencies of Bellasyse and Dover, were now
needed to supply the deficiencies of Mordaunt and Delamere. 20

There were some difficulties in disposing of the Great Seal. The King at
first wished to confide it to Nottingham, whose father had borne it during
several years with high reputation. 21
Nottingham, however, declined the trust; and it was offered to Halifax,
but was again declined. Both these Lords doubtless felt that it was a
trust which they could not discharge with honour to themselves or with
advantage to the public. In old times, indeed, the Seal had been generally
held by persons who were not lawyers. Even in the seventeenth century it
had been confided to two eminent men, who had never studied at any Inn of
Court. Dean Williams had been Lord Keeper to James the First. Shaftesbury
had been Lord Chancellor to Charles the Second. But such appointments
could no longer be made without serious inconvenience. Equity had been
gradually shaping itself into a refined science, which no human faculties
could master without long and intense application. Even Shaftesbury,
vigorous as was his intellect, had painfully felt his want of technical
knowledge; 22
and, during the fifteen years which had elapsed since Shaftesbury had
resigned the Seal, technical knowledge had constantly been becoming more
and more necessary to his successors. Neither Nottingham therefore, though
he had a stock of legal learning such as is rarely found in any person who
has not received a legal education, nor Halifax, though, in the judicial
sittings of the House of Lords, the quickness of his apprehension and the
subtlety of his reasoning had often astonished the bar, ventured to accept
the highest office which an English layman can fill. After some delay the
Seal was confided to a commission of eminent lawyers, with Maynard at
their head. 23

The choice of judges did honour to the new government. Every Privy
Councillor was directed to bring a list. The lists were compared; and
twelve men of conspicuous merit were selected. 24 The
professional attainments and Whig principles of Pollexfen gave him
pretensions to the highest place. But it was remembered that he had held
briefs for the Crown, in the Western counties, at the assizes which
followed the battle of Sedgemoor. It seems indeed from the reports of the
trials that he did as little as he could do if he held the briefs at all,
and that he left to the Judges the business of browbeating witnesses and
prisoners. Nevertheless his name was inseparably associated in the public
mind with the Bloody Circuit. He, therefore, could not with propriety be
put at the head of the first criminal court in the realm. 25
After acting during a few weeks as Attorney General, he was made Chief
Justice of the Common Pleas. Sir John Holt, a young man, but distinguished
by learning, integrity, and courage, became Chief Justice of the King’s
Bench. Sir Robert Atkyns, an eminent lawyer, who had passed some years in
rural retirement, but whose reputation was still great in Westminster
Hall, was appointed Chief Baron. Powell, who had been disgraced on account
of his honest declaration in favour of the Bishops, again took his seat
among the judges. Treby succeeded Pollexfen as Attorney General; and
Somers was made Solicitor. 26

Two of the chief places in the Royal household were filled by two English
noblemen eminently qualified to adorn a court. The high spirited and
accomplished Devonshire was named Lord Steward. No man had done more or
risked more for England during the crisis of her fate. In retrieving her
liberties he had retrieved also the fortunes of his own house. His bond
for thirty thousand pounds was found among the papers which James had left
at Whitehall, and was cancelled by William. 27

Dorset became Lord Chamberlain, and employed the influence and patronage
annexed to his functions, as he had long employed his private means, in
encouraging genius and in alleviating misfortune. One of the first acts
which he was under the necessity of performing must have been painful to a
man of so generous a nature, and of so keen a relish for whatever was
excellent in arts and letters. Dryden could no longer remain Poet
Laureate. The public would not have borne to see any Papist among the
servants of their Majesties; and Dryden was not only a Papist, but an
apostate. He had moreover aggravated the guilt of his apostasy by
calumniating and ridiculing the Church which he had deserted. He had, it
was facetiously said, treated her as the Pagan persecutors of old treated
her children. He had dressed her up in the skin of a wild beast, and then
baited her for the public amusement. 28 He was
removed; but he received from the private bounty of the magnificent
Chamberlain a pension equal to the salary which had been withdrawn. The
deposed Laureate, however, as poor of spirit as rich in intellectual
gifts, continued to complain piteously, year after year, of the losses
which he had not suffered, till at length his wailings drew forth
expressions of well merited contempt from brave and honest Jacobites, who
had sacrificed every thing to their principles without deigning to utter
one word of deprecation or lamentation. 29

In the Royal household were placed some of those Dutch nobles who stood
highest in the favour of the King. Bentinck had the great office of Groom
of the Stole, with a salary of five thousand pounds a year. Zulestein took
charge of the robes. The Master of the Horse was Auverquerque, a gallant
soldier, who united the blood of Nassau to the blood of Horn, and who wore
with just pride a costly sword presented to him by the States General in
acknowledgment of the courage with which he had, on the bloody day of
Saint Dennis, saved the life of William.

The place of Vice Chamberlain to the Queen was given to a man who had just
become conspicuous in public life, and whose name will frequently recur in
the history of this reign. John Howe, or, as he was more commonly called,
Jack Howe, had been sent up to the Convention by the borough of
Cirencester. His appearance was that of a man whose body was worn by the
constant workings of a restless and acrid mind. He was tall, lean, pale,
with a haggard eager look, expressive at once of flightiness and of
shrewdness. He had been known, during several years, as a small poet; and
some of the most savage lampoons which were handed about the coffeehouses
were imputed to him. But it was in the House of Commons that both his
parts and his illnature were most signally displayed. Before he had been a
member three weeks, his volubility, his asperity, and his pertinacity had
made him conspicuous. Quickness, energy, and audacity, united, soon raised
him to the rank of a privileged man. His enemies, and he had many enemies,
said that he consulted his personal safety even in his most petulant
moods, and that he treated soldiers with a civility which he never showed
to ladies or to Bishops. But no man had in larger measure that evil
courage which braves and even courts disgust and hatred. No decencies
restrained him: his spite was implacable: his skill in finding out the
vulnerable parts of strong minds was consummate. All his great
contemporaries felt his sting in their turns. Once it inflicted a wound
which deranged even the stern composure of William, and constrained him to
utter a wish that he were a private gentleman, and could invite Mr. Howe
to a short interview behind Montague House. As yet, however, Howe was
reckoned among the most strenuous supporters of the new government, and
directed all his sarcasms and invectives against the malcontents. 30

The subordinate places in every public office were divided between the two
parties: but the Whigs had the larger share. Some persons, indeed, who did
little honour to the Whig name, were largely recompensed for services
which no good man would have performed. Wildman was made Postmaster
General. A lucrative sinecure in the Excise was bestowed on Ferguson. The
duties of the Solicitor of the Treasury were both very important and very
invidious. It was the business of that officer to conduct political
prosecutions, to collect the evidence, to instruct the counsel for the
Crown, to see that the prisoners were not liberated on insufficient bail,
to see that the juries were not composed of persons hostile to the
government. In the days of Charles and James, the Solicitors of the
Treasury had been with too much reason accused of employing all the vilest
artifices of chicanery against men obnoxious to the Court. The new
government ought to have made a choice which was above all suspicion.
Unfortunately Mordaunt and Delamere pitched upon Aaron Smith, an
acrimonious and unprincipled politician, who had been the legal adviser of
Titus Oates in the days of the Popish Plot, and who had been deeply
implicated in the Rye House Plot. Richard Hampden, a man of decided
opinions but of moderate temper, objected to this appointment. His
objections however were overruled. The Jacobites, who hated Smith and had
reason to hate him, affirmed that he had obtained his place by bullying
the Lords of the Treasury, and particularly by threatening that, if his
just claims were disregarded, he would be the death of Hampden. 31

Some weeks elapsed before all the arrangements which have been mentioned
were publicly announced: and meanwhile many important events had taken
place. As soon as the new Privy Councillors had been sworn in, it was
necessary to submit to them a grave and pressing question. Could the
Convention now assembled be turned into a Parliament? The Whigs, who had a
decided majority in the Lower House, were all for the affirmative. The
Tories, who knew that, within the last month, the public feeling had
undergone a considerable change, and who hoped that a general election
would add to their strength, were for the negative. They maintained that
to the existence of a Parliament royal writs were indispensably necessary.
The Convention had not been summoned by such writs: the original defect
could not now be supplied: the Houses were therefore mere clubs of private
men, and ought instantly to disperse.

It was answered that the royal writ was mere matter of form, and that to
expose the substance of our laws and liberties to serious hazard for the
sake of a form would be the most senseless superstition. Wherever the
Sovereign, the Peers spiritual and temporal, and the Representatives
freely chosen by the constituent bodies of the realm were met together,
there was the essence of a Parliament. Such a Parliament was now in being;
and what could be more absurd than to dissolve it at a conjuncture when
every hour was precious, when numerous important subjects required
immediate legislation, and when dangers, only to be averted by the
combined efforts of King, Lords, and Commons, menaced the State? A
Jacobite indeed might consistently refuse to recognise the Convention as a
Parliament. For he held that it had from the beginning been an unlawful
assembly, that all its resolutions were nullities, and that the Sovereigns
whom it had set up were usurpers. But with what consistency could any man,
who maintained that a new Parliament ought to be immediately called by
writs under the great seal of William and Mary, question the authority
which had placed William and Mary on the throne? Those who held that
William was rightful King must necessarily hold that the body from which
he derived his right was itself a rightful Great Council of the Realm.
Those who, though not holding him to be rightful King, conceived that they
might lawfully swear allegiance to him as King in fact, might surely, on
the same principle, acknowledge the Convention as a Parliament in fact. It
was plain that the Convention was the fountainhead from which the
authority of all future Parliaments must be derived, and that on the
validity of the votes of the Convention must depend the validity of every
future statute. And how could the stream rise higher than the source? Was
it not absurd to say that the Convention was supreme in the state, and yet
a nullity; a legislature for the highest of all purposes, and yet no
legislature for the humblest purposes; competent to declare the throne
vacant, to change the succession, to fix the landmarks of the
constitution, and yet not competent to pass the most trivial Act for the
repairing of a pier or the building of a parish church?

These arguments would have had considerable weight, even if every
precedent had been on the other side. But in truth our history afforded
only one precedent which was at all in point; and that precedent was
decisive in favour of the doctrine that royal writs are not indispensably
necessary to the existence of a Parliament. No royal writ had summoned the
Convention which recalled Charles the Second. Yet that Convention had,
after his Restoration, continued to sit and to legislate, had settled the
revenue, had passed an Act of amnesty, had abolished the feudal tenures.
These proceedings had been sanctioned by authority of which no party in
the state could speak without reverence. Hale had borne a considerable
share in them, and had always maintained that they were strictly legal.
Clarendon, little as he was inclined to favour any doctrine derogatory to
the rights of the Crown, or to the dignity of that seal of which he was
keeper, had declared that, since God had, at a most critical conjuncture,
given the nation a good Parliament, it would be the height of folly to
look for technical flaws in the instrument by which that Parliament was
called together. Would it be pretended by any Tory that the Convention of
1660 had a more respectable origin than the Convention of 1689? Was not a
letter written by the first Prince of the Blood, at the request of the
whole peerage, and of hundreds of gentlemen who had represented counties
and towns, at least as good a warrant as a vote of the Rump?

Weaker reasons than these would have satisfied the Whigs who formed the
majority of the Privy Council. The King therefore, on the fifth day after
he had been proclaimed, went with royal state to the House of Lords, and
took his seat on the throne. The Commons were called in; and he, with many
gracious expressions, reminded his hearers of the perilous situation of
the country, and exhorted them to take such steps as might prevent
unnecessary delay in the transaction of public business. His speech was
received by the gentlemen who crowded the bar with the deep hum by which
our ancestors were wont to indicate approbation, and which was often heard
in places more sacred than the Chamber of the Peers. 32 As soon as
he had retired, a Bill declaring the Convention a Parliament was laid on
the table of the Lords, and rapidly passed by them. In the Commons the
debates were warm. The House resolved itself into a Committee; and so
great was the excitement that, when the authority of the Speaker was
withdrawn, it was hardly possible to preserve order. Sharp personalities
were exchanged. The phrase, “hear him,” a phrase which had originally been
used only to silence irregular noises, and to remind members of the duty
of attending to the discussion, had, during some years, been gradually
becoming what it now is; that is to say, a cry indicative, according to
the tone, of admiration, acquiescence, indignation, or derision. On this
occasion, the Whigs vociferated “Hear, hear,” so tumultuously that the
Tories complained of unfair usage. Seymour, the leader of the minority,
declared that there could be no freedom of debate while such clamour was
tolerated. Some old Whig members were provoked into reminding him that the
same clamour had occasionally been heard when he presided, and had not
then been repressed. Yet, eager and angry as both sides were, the speeches
on both sides indicated that profound reverence for law and prescription
which has long been characteristic of Englishmen, and which, though it
runs sometimes into pedantry and sometimes into superstition, is not
without its advantages. Even at that momentous crisis, when the nation was
still in the ferment of a revolution, our public men talked long and
seriously about all the circumstances of the deposition of Edward the
Second and of the deposition of Richard the Second, and anxiously inquired
whether the assembly which, with Archbishop Lanfranc at its head, set
aside Robert of Normandy, and put William Rufus on the throne, did or did
not afterwards continue to act as the legislature of the realm. Much was
said about the history of writs; much about the etymology of the word
Parliament. It is remarkable, that the orator who took the most
statesmanlike view of the subject was old Maynard. In the civil conflicts
of fifty eventful years he had learned that questions affecting the
highest interests of the commonwealth were not to be decided by verbal
cavils and by scraps of Law French and Law Latin; and, being by universal
acknowledgment the most subtle and the most learned of English jurists, he
could express what he felt without the risk of being accused of ignorance
and presumption. He scornfully thrust aside as frivolous and out of place
all that blackletter learning, which some men, far less versed in such
matters than himself, had introduced into the discussion. “We are,” he
said, “at this moment out of the beaten path. If therefore we are
determined to move only in that path, we cannot move at all. A man in a
revolution resolving to do nothing which is not strictly according to
established form resembles a man who has lost himself in the wilderness,
and who stands crying ‘Where is the king’s highway? I will walk nowhere
but on the king’s highway.’ In a wilderness a man should take the track
which will carry him home. In a revolution we must have recourse to the
highest law, the safety of the state.” Another veteran Roundhead, Colonel
Birch, took the same side, and argued with great force and keenness from
the precedent of 1660. Seymour and his supporters were beaten in the
Committee, and did not venture to divide the House on the Report. The Bill
passed rapidly, and received the royal assent on the tenth day after the
accession of William and Mary. 33

The law which turned the Convention into a Parliament contained a clause
providing that no person should, after the first of March, sit or vote in
either House without taking the oaths to the new King and Queen. This
enactment produced great agitation throughout society. The adherents of
the exiled dynasty hoped and confidently predicted that the recusants
would be numerous. The minority in both Houses, it was said, would be true
to the cause of hereditary monarchy. There might be here and there a
traitor; but the great body of those who had voted for a Regency would be
firm. Only two Bishops at most would recognise the usurpers. Seymour would
retire from public life rather than abjure his principles. Grafton had
determined to fly to France and to throw himself at the feet of his uncle.
With such rumours as these all the coffeehouses of London were filled
during the latter part of February. So intense was the public anxiety
that, if any man of rank was missed, two days running, at his usual
haunts, it was immediately whispered that he had stolen away to Saint
Germains. 34

The second of March arrived; and the event quieted the fears of one party,
and confounded the hopes of the other. The Primate indeed and several of
his suffragans stood obstinately aloof: but three Bishops and
seventy-three temporal peers took the oaths. At the next meeting of the
Upper House several more prelates came in. Within a week about a hundred
Lords had qualified themselves to sit. Others, who were prevented by
illness from appearing, sent excuses and professions of attachment to
their Majesties. Grafton refuted all the stories which had been circulated
about him by coming to be sworn on the first day. Two members of the
Ecclesiastical Commission, Mulgrave and Sprat, hastened to make atonement
for their fault by plighting their faith to William. Beaufort, who had
long been considered as the type of a royalist of the old school,
submitted after a very short hesitation. Aylesbury and Dartmouth, though
vehement Jacobites, had as little scruple about taking the oath of
allegiance as they afterwards had about breaking it. 35 The Hydes
took different paths. Rochester complied with the law; but Clarendon
proved refractory. Many thought it strange that the brother who had
adhered to James till James absconded should be less sturdy than the
brother who had been in the Dutch camp. The explanation perhaps is that
Rochester would have sacrificed much more than Clarendon by refusing to
take the oaths. Clarendon’s income did not depend on the pleasure of the
Government but Rochester had a pension of four thousand a year, which he
could not hope to retain if he refused to acknowledge the new Sovereigns.
Indeed, he had so many enemies that, during some months, it seemed
doubtful whether he would, on any terms, be suffered to retain the
splendid reward which he had earned by persecuting the Whigs and by
sitting in the High Commission. He was saved from what would have been a
fatal blow to his fortunes by the intercession of Burnet, who had been
deeply injured by him, and who revenged himself as became a Christian
divine. 36

In the Lower House four hundred members were sworn in on the second of
March; and among them was Seymour. The spirit of the Jacobites was broken
by his defection; and the minority with very few exceptions followed his
example. 37

Before the day fixed for the taking of the oaths, the Commons had begun to
discuss a momentous question which admitted of no delay. During the
interregnum, William had, as provisional chief of the administration,
collected the taxes and applied them to the public service; nor could the
propriety of this course be questioned by any person who approved of the
Revolution. But the Revolution was now over: the vacancy of the throne had
been supplied: the Houses were sitting: the law was in full force; and it
became necessary immediately to decide to what revenue the Government was
entitled.

Nobody denied that all the lands and hereditaments of the Crown had passed
with the Crown to the new Sovereigns. Nobody denied that all duties which
had been granted to the Crown for a fixed term of years might be
constitutionally exacted till that term should expire. But large revenues
had been settled by Parliament on James for life; and whether what had
been settled on James for life could, while he lived, be claimed by
William and Mary, was a question about which opinions were divided.

Holt, Treby, Pollexfen, indeed all the eminent Whig lawyers, Somers
excepted, held that these revenues had been granted to the late King, in
his political capacity, but for his natural life, and ought therefore, as
long as he continued to drag on his existence in a strange land, to be
paid to William and Mary. It appears from a very concise and unconnected
report of the debate that Somers dissented from this doctrine. His opinion
was that, if the Act of Parliament which had imposed the duties in
question was to be construed according to the spirit, the word life must
be understood to mean reign, and that therefore the term for which the
grant had been made had expired. This was surely the sound opinion: for it
was plainly irrational to treat the interest of James in this grant as at
once a thing annexed to his person and a thing annexed to his office; to
say in one breath that the merchants of London and Bristol must pay money
because he was naturally alive, and that his successors must receive that
money because he was politically defunct. The House was decidedly with
Somers. The members generally were bent on effecting a great reform,
without which it was felt that the Declaration of Rights would be but an
imperfect guarantee for public liberty. During the conflict which fifteen
successive Parliaments had maintained against four successive Kings, the
chief weapon of the Commons had been the power of the purse; and never had
the representatives of the people been induced to surrender that weapon
without having speedy cause to repent of their too credulous loyalty. In
that season of tumultuous joy which followed the Restoration, a large
revenue for life had been almost by acclamation granted to Charles the
Second. A few months later there was scarcely a respectable Cavalier in
the kingdom who did not own that the stewards of the nation would have
acted more wisely if they had kept in their hands the means of checking
the abuses which disgraced every department of the government. James the
Second had obtained from his submissive Parliament, without a dissentient
voice, an income sufficient to defray the ordinary expenses of the state
during his life; and, before he had enjoyed that income half a year, the
great majority of those who had dealt thus liberally with him blamed
themselves severely for their liberality. If experience was to be trusted,
a long and painful experience, there could be no effectual security
against maladministration, unless the Sovereign were under the necessity
of recurring frequently to his Great Council for pecuniary aid. Almost all
honest and enlightened men were therefore agreed in thinking that a part
at least of the supplies ought to be granted only for short terms. And
what time could be fitter for the introduction of this new practice than
the year 1689, the commencement of a new reign, of a new dynasty, of a new
era of constitutional government? The feeling on this subject was so
strong and general that the dissentient minority gave way. No formal
resolution was passed; but the House proceeded to act on the supposition
that the grants which had been made to James for life had been annulled by
his abdication. 38

It was impossible to make a new settlement of the revenue without inquiry
and deliberation. The Exchequer was ordered to furnish such returns as
might enable the House to form estimates of the public expenditure and
income. In the meantime, liberal provision was made for the immediate
exigencies of the state. An extraordinary aid, to be raised by direct
monthly assessment, was voted to the King. An Act was passed indemnifying
all who had, since his landing, collected by his authority the duties
settled on James; and those duties which had expired were continued for
some months.

Along William’s whole line of march, from Torbay to London, he had been
importuned by the common people to relieve them from the intolerable
burden of the hearth money. In truth, that tax seems to have united all
the worst evils which can be imputed to any tax. It was unequal, and
unequal in the most pernicious way: for it pressed heavily on the poor,
and lightly on the rich. A peasant, all whose property was not worth
twenty pounds, was charged ten shillings. The Duke of Ormond, or the Duke
of Newcastle, whose estates were worth half a million, paid only four or
five pounds. The collectors were empowered to examine the interior of
every house in the realm, to disturb families at meals, to force the doors
of bedrooms, and, if the sum demanded were not punctually paid, to sell
the trencher on which the barley loaf was divided among the poor children,
and the pillow from under the head of the lying-in woman. Nor could the
Treasury effectually restrain the chimneyman from using his powers with
harshness: for the tax was farmed; and the government was consequently
forced to connive at outrages and exactions such as have, in every age
made the name of publican a proverb for all that is most hateful.

William had been so much moved by what he had heard of these grievances
that, at one of the earliest sittings of the Privy Council, he introduced
the subject. He sent a message requesting the House of Commons to consider
whether better regulations would effectually prevent the abuses which had
excited so much discontent. He added that he would willingly consent to
the entire abolition of the tax if it should appear that the tax and the
abuses were inseparable. 39 This communication was received
with loud applause. There were indeed some financiers of the old school
who muttered that tenderness for the poor was a fine thing; but that no
part of the revenue of the state came in so exactly to the day as the
hearth money; that the goldsmiths of the City could not always be induced
to lend on the security of the next quarter’s customs or excise, but that
on an assignment of hearth money there was no difficulty in obtaining
advances. In the House of Commons, those who thought thus did not venture
to raise their voices in opposition to the general feeling. But in the
Lords there was a conflict of which the event for a time seemed doubtful.
At length the influence of the Court, strenuously exerted, carried an Act
by which the chimney tax was declared a badge of slavery, and was, with
many expressions of gratitude to the King, abolished for ever. 40

The Commons granted, with little dispute, and without a division, six
hundred thousand pounds for the purpose of repaying to the United
Provinces the charges of the expedition which had delivered England. The
facility with which this large sum was voted to a shrewd, diligent and
thrifty people, our allies, indeed, politically, but commercially our most
formidable rivals, excited some murmurs out of doors, and was, during many
years, a favourite subject of sarcasm with Tory pamphleteers. 41
The liberality of the House admits however of an easy explanation. On the
very day on which the subject was under consideration, alarming news
arrived at Westminster, and convinced many, who would at another time have
been disposed to scrutinise severely any account sent in by the Dutch,
that our country could not yet dispense with the services of the foreign
troops.

France had declared war against the States General; and the States General
had consequently demanded from the King of England those succours which he
was bound by the treaty of Nimeguen to furnish. 42 He had
ordered some battalions to march to Harwich, that they might be in
readiness to cross to the Continent. The old soldiers of James were
generally in a very bad temper; and this order did not produce a soothing
effect. The discontent was greatest in the regiment which now ranks as
first of the line. Though borne on the English establishment, that
regiment, from the time when it first fought under the great Gustavus, had
been almost exclusively composed of Scotchmen; and Scotchmen have never,
in any region to which their adventurous and aspiring temper has led them,
failed to note and to resent every slight offered to Scotland. Officers
and men muttered that a vote of a foreign assembly was nothing to them. If
they could be absolved from their allegiance to King James the Seventh, it
must be by the Estates at Edinburgh, and not by the Convention at
Westminster. Their ill humour increased when they heard that Schomberg had
been appointed their colonel. They ought perhaps to have thought it an
honour to be called by the name of the greatest soldier in Europe. But,
brave and skilful as he was, he was not their countryman: and their
regiment, during the fifty-six years which had elapsed since it gained its
first honourable distinctions in Germany, had never been commanded but by
a Hepburn or a Douglas. While they were in this angry and punctilious
mood, they were ordered to join the forces which were assembling at
Harwich. There was much murmuring; but there was no outbreak till the
regiment arrived at Ipswich. There the signal of revolt was given by two
captains who were zealous for the exiled King. The market place was soon
filled with pikemen and musketeers running to and fro. Gunshots were
wildly fired in all directions. Those officers who attempted to restrain
the rioters were overpowered and disarmed. At length the chiefs of the
insurrection established some order, and marched out of Ipswich at the
head of their adherents. The little army consisted of about eight hundred
men. They had seized four pieces of cannon, and had taken possession of
the military chest, which contained a considerable sum of money. At the
distance of half a mile from the town a halt was called: a general
consultation was held; and the mutineers resolved that they would hasten
back to their native country, and would live and die with their rightful
King. They instantly proceeded northward by forced marches. 43

When the news reached London the dismay was great. It was rumoured that
alarming symptoms had appeared in other regiments, and particularly that a
body of fusileers which lay at Harwich was likely to imitate the example
set at Ipswich. “If these Scots,” said Halifax to Reresby, “are
unsupported, they are lost. But if they have acted in concert with others,
the danger is serious indeed.” 44 The truth seems to be that there
was a conspiracy which had ramifications in many parts of the army, but
that the conspirators were awed by the firmness of the government and of
the Parliament. A committee of the Privy Council was sitting when the
tidings of the mutiny arrived in London. William Harbord, who represented
the borough of Launceston, was at the board. His colleagues entreated him
to go down instantly to the House of Commons, and to relate what had
happened. He went, rose in his place, and told his story. The spirit of
the assembly rose to the occasion. Howe was the first to call for vigorous
action. “Address the King,” he said, “to send his Dutch troops after these
men. I know not who else can be trusted.” “This is no jesting matter,”
said old Birch, who had been a colonel in the service of the Parliament,
and had seen the most powerful and renowned House of Commons that ever
sate twice purged and twice expelled by its own soldiers; “if you let this
evil spread, you will have an army upon you in a few days. Address the
King to send horse and foot instantly, his own men, men whom he can trust,
and to put these people down at once.” The men of the long robe caught the
flame. “It is not the learning of my profession that is needed here,” said
Treby. “What is now to be done is to meet force with force, and to
maintain in the field what we have done in the senate.” “Write to the
Sheriffs,” said Colonel Mildmay, member for Essex. “Raise the militia.
There are a hundred and fifty thousand of them: they are good Englishmen:
they will not fail you.” It was resolved that all members of the House who
held commissions in the army should be dispensed from parliamentary
attendance, in order that they might repair instantly to their military
posts. An address was unanimously voted requesting the King to take
effectual steps for the suppression of the rebellion, and to put forth a
proclamation denouncing public vengeance on the rebels. One gentleman
hinted that it might be well to advise his Majesty to offer a pardon to
those who should peaceably submit: but the House wisely rejected the
suggestion. “This is no time,” it was well said, “for any thing that looks
like fear.” The address was instantly sent up to the Lords. The Lords
concurred in it. Two peers, two knights of shires, and two burgesses were
sent with it to Court. William received them graciously, and informed them
that he had already given the necessary orders. In fact, several regiments
of horse and dragoons had been sent northward under the command of
Ginkell, one of the bravest and ablest officers of the Dutch army. 45

Meanwhile the mutineers were hastening across the country which lies
between Cambridge and the Wash. Their road lay through a vast and desolate
fen, saturated with all the moisture of thirteen counties, and overhung
during the greater part of the year by a low grey mist, high above which
rose, visible many miles, the magnificent tower of Ely. In that dreary
region, covered by vast flights of wild fowl, a half savage population,
known by the name of the Breedlings, then led an amphibious life,
sometimes wading, and sometimes rowing, from one islet of firm ground to
another. 46
The roads were amongst the worst in the island, and, as soon as rumour
announced the approach of the rebels, were studiously made worse by the
country people. Bridges were broken down. Trees were laid across the
highways to obstruct the progress of the cannon. Nevertheless the Scotch
veterans not only pushed forward with great speed, but succeeded in
carrying their artillery with them. They entered Lincolnshire, and were
not far from Sleaford, when they learned that Ginkell with an irresistible
force was close on their track. Victory and escape were equally out of the
question. The bravest warriors could not contend against fourfold odds.
The most active infantry could not outrun horsemen. Yet the leaders,
probably despairing of pardon, urged the men to try the chance of battle.
In that region, a spot almost surrounded by swamps and pools was without
difficulty found. Here the insurgents were drawn up; and the cannon were
planted at the only point which was thought not to be sufficiently
protected by natural defences. Ginkell ordered the attack to be made at a
place which was out of the range of the guns; and his dragoons dashed
gallantly into the water, though it was so deep that their horses were
forced to swim. Then the mutineers lost heart. They beat a parley,
surrendered at discretion, and were brought up to London under a strong
guard. Their lives were forfeit: for they had been guilty, not merely of
mutiny, which was then not a legal crime, but of levying war against the
King. William, however, with politic clemency, abstained from shedding the
blood even of the most culpable. A few of the ringleaders were brought to
trial at the next Bury assizes, and were convicted of high treason; but
their lives were spared. The rest were merely ordered to return to their
duty. The regiment, lately so refractory, went submissively to the
Continent, and there, through many hard campaigns, distinguished itself by
fidelity, by discipline, and by valour. 47

This event facilitated an important change in our polity, a change which,
it is true, could not have been long delayed, but which would not have
been easily accomplished except at a moment of extreme danger. The time
had at length arrived at which it was necessary to make a legal
distinction between the soldier and the citizen. Under the Plantagenets
and the Tudors there had been no standing army. The standing army which
had existed under the last kings of the House of Stuart had been regarded
by every party in the state with strong and not unreasonable aversion. The
common law gave the Sovereign no power to control his troops. The
Parliament, regarding them as mere tools of tyranny, had not been disposed
to give such power by statute. James indeed had induced his corrupt and
servile judges to put on some obsolete laws a construction which enabled
him to punish desertion capitally. But this construction was considered by
all respectable jurists as unsound, and, had it been sound, would have
been far from effecting all that was necessary for the purpose of
maintaining military discipline. Even James did not venture to inflict
death by sentence of a court martial. The deserter was treated as an
ordinary felon, was tried at the assizes by a petty jury on a bill found
by a grand jury, and was at liberty to avail himself of any technical flaw
which might be discovered in the indictment.

The Revolution, by altering the relative position of the prince and the
parliament, had altered also the relative position of the army and the
nation. The King and the Commons were now at unity; and both were alike
menaced by the greatest military power which had existed in Europe since
the downfall of the Roman empire. In a few weeks thirty thousand veterans,
accustomed to conquer, and led by able and experienced captains, might
cross from the ports of Normandy and Brittany to our shores. That such a
force would with little difficulty scatter three times that number of
militia, no man well acquainted with war could doubt. There must then be
regular soldiers; and, if there were to be regular soldiers, it must be
indispensable, both to their efficiency, and to the security of every
other class, that they should be kept under a strict discipline. An ill
disciplined army has ever been a more costly and a more licentious
militia, impotent against a foreign enemy, and formidable only to the
country which it is paid to defend. A strong line of demarcation must
therefore be drawn between the soldiers and the rest of the community. For
the sake of public freedom, they must, in the midst of freedom, be placed
under a despotic rule. They must be subject to a sharper penal code, and
to a more stringent code of procedure, than are administered by the
ordinary tribunals. Some acts which in the citizen are innocent must in
the soldier be crimes. Some acts which in the citizen are punished with
fine or imprisonment must in the soldier be punished with death. The
machinery by which courts of law ascertain the guilt or innocence of an
accused citizen is too slow and too intricate to be applied to an accused
soldier. For, of all the maladies incident to the body politic, military
insubordination is that which requires the most prompt and drastic
remedies. If the evil be not stopped as soon as it appears, it is certain
to spread; and it cannot spread far without danger to the very vitals of
the commonwealth. For the general safety, therefore, a summary
jurisdiction of terrible extent must, in camps, be entrusted to rude
tribunals composed of men of the sword.

But, though it was certain that the country could not at that moment be
secure without professional soldiers, and equally certain that
professional soldiers must be worse than useless unless they were placed
under a rule more arbitrary and severe than that to which other men were
subject, it was not without great misgivings that a House of Commons could
venture to recognise the existence and to make provision for the
government of a standing army. There was scarcely a public man of note who
had not often avowed his conviction that our polity and a standing army
could not exist together. The Whigs had been in the constant habit of
repeating that standing armies had destroyed the free institutions of the
neighbouring nations. The Tories had repeated as constantly that, in our
own island, a standing army had subverted the Church, oppressed the
gentry, and murdered the King. No leader of either party could, without
laying himself open to the charge of gross inconsistency, propose that
such an army should henceforth be one of the permanent establishments of
the realm. The mutiny at Ipswich, and the panic which that mutiny
produced, made it easy to effect what would otherwise have been in the
highest degree difficult. A short bill was brought in which began by
declaring, in explicit terms, that standing armies and courts martial were
unknown to the law of England. It was then enacted that, on account of the
extreme perils impending at that moment over the state, no man mustered on
pay in the service of the crown should, on pain of death, or of such
lighter punishment as a court martial should deem sufficient, desert his
colours or mutiny against his commanding officers. This statute was to be
in force only six months; and many of those who voted for it probably
believed that it would, at the close of that period, be suffered to
expire. The bill passed rapidly and easily. Not a single division was
taken upon it in the House of Commons. A mitigating clause indeed, which
illustrates somewhat curiously the manners of that age, was added by way
of rider after the third reading. This clause provided that no court
martial should pass sentence of death except between the hours of six in
the morning and one in the afternoon. The dinner hour was then early; and
it was but too probable that a gentleman who had dined would be in a state
in which he could not safely be trusted with the lives of his fellow
creatures. With this amendment, the first and most concise of our many
Mutiny Bills was sent up to the Lords, and was, in a few hours, hurried by
them through all its stages and passed by the King. 48

Thus was made, without one dissentient voice in Parliament, without one
murmur in the nation, the first step towards a change which had become
necessary to the safety of the state, yet which every party in the state
then regarded with extreme dread and aversion. Six months passed; and
still the public danger continued. The power necessary to the maintenance
of military discipline was a second time entrusted to the crown for a
short term. The trust again expired, and was again renewed. By slow
degrees familiarity reconciled the public mind to the names, once so
odious, of standing army and court martial. It was proved by experience
that, in a well constituted society, professional soldiers may be terrible
to a foreign enemy, and yet submissive to the civil power. What had been
at first tolerated as the exception began to be considered as the rule.
Not a session passed without a Mutiny Bill. When at length it became
evident that a political change of the highest importance was taking place
in such a manner as almost to escape notice, a clamour was raised by some
factious men desirous to weaken the hands of the government, and by some
respectable men who felt an honest but injudicious reverence for every old
constitutional tradition, and who were unable to understand that what at
one stage in the progress of society is pernicious may at another stage be
indispensable. This clamour however, as years rolled on, became fainter
and fainter. The debate which recurred every spring on the Mutiny Bill
came to be regarded merely as an occasion on which hopeful young orators
fresh from Christchurch were to deliver maiden speeches, setting forth how
the guards of Pisistratus seized the citadel of Athens, and how the
Praetorian cohorts sold the Roman empire to Didius. At length these
declamations became too ridiculous to be repeated. The most oldfashioned,
the most eccentric, politician could hardly, in the reign of George the
Third, contend that there ought to be no regular soldiers, or that the
ordinary law, administered by the ordinary courts, would effectually
maintain discipline among such soldiers. All parties being agreed as to
the general principle, a long succession of Mutiny Bills passed without
any discussion, except when some particular article of the military code
appeared to require amendment. It is perhaps because the army became thus
gradually, and almost imperceptibly, one of the institutions of England,
that it has acted in such perfect harmony with all her other institutions,
has never once, during a hundred and sixty years, been untrue to the
throne or disobedient to the law, has never once defied the tribunals or
overawed the constituent bodies. To this day, however, the Estates of the
Realm continue to set up periodically, with laudable jealousy, a landmark
on the frontier which was traced at the time of the Revolution. They
solemnly reassert every year the doctrine laid down in the Declaration of
Rights; and they then grant to the Sovereign an extraordinary power to
govern a certain number of soldiers according to certain rules during
twelve months more.

In the same week in which the first Mutiny Bill was laid on the table of
the Commons, another temporary law, made necessary by the unsettled state
of the kingdom, was passed. Since the flight of James many persons who
were believed to have been deeply implicated in his unlawful acts, or to
be engaged in plots for his restoration, had been arrested and confined.
During the vacancy of the throne, these men could derive no benefit from
the Habeas Corpus Act. For the machinery by which alone that Act could be
carried into execution had ceased to exist; and, through the whole of
Hilary term, all the courts in Westminster Hall had remained closed. Now
that the ordinary tribunals were about to resume their functions, it was
apprehended that all those prisoners whom it was not convenient to bring
instantly to trial would demand and obtain their liberty. A bill was
therefore brought in which empowered the King to detain in custody during
a few weeks such persons as he should suspect of evil designs against his
government. This bill passed the two Houses with little or no opposition.
49
But the malecontents out of doors did not fail to remark that, in the late
reign, the Habeas Corpus Act had not been one day suspended. It was the
fashion to call James a tyrant, and William a deliverer. Yet, before the
deliverer had been a month on the throne, he had deprived Englishmen of a
precious right which the tyrant had respected. 50 This is a
kind of reproach which a government sprung from a popular revolution
almost inevitably incurs. From such a government men naturally think
themselves entitled to demand a more gentle and liberal administration
than is expected from old and deeply rooted power. Yet such a government,
having, as it always has, many active enemies, and not having the strength
derived from legitimacy and prescription, can at first maintain itself
only by a vigilance and a severity of which old and deeply rooted power
stands in no need. Extraordinary and irregular vindications of public
liberty are sometimes necessary: yet, however necessary, they are almost
always followed by some temporary abridgments of that very liberty; and
every such abridgment is a fertile and plausible theme for sarcasm and
invective.

Unhappily sarcasm and invective directed against William were but too
likely to find favourable audience. Each of the two great parties had its
own reasons for being dissatisfied with him; and there were some
complaints in which both parties joined. His manners gave almost universal
offence. He was in truth far better qualified to save a nation than to
adorn a court. In the highest parts of statesmanship, he had no equal
among his contemporaries. He had formed plans not inferior in grandeur and
boldness to those of Richelieu, and had carried them into effect with a
tact and wariness worthy of Mazarin. Two countries, the seats of civil
liberty and of the Reformed Faith, had been preserved by his wisdom and
courage from extreme perils. Holland he had delivered from foreign, and
England from domestic foes. Obstacles apparently insurmountable had been
interposed between him and the ends on which he was intent; and those
obstacles his genius had turned into stepping stones. Under his dexterous
management the hereditary enemies of his house had helped him to mount a
throne; and the persecutors of his religion had helped him to rescue his
religion from persecution. Fleets and armies, collected to withstand him,
had, without a struggle, submitted to his orders. Factions and sects,
divided by mortal antipathies, had recognised him as their common head.
Without carnage, without devastation, he had won a victory compared with
which all the victories of Gustavus and Turenne were insignificant. In a
few weeks he had changed the relative position of all the states in
Europe, and had restored the equilibrium which the preponderance of one
power had destroyed. Foreign nations did ample justice to his great
qualities. In every Continental country where Protestant congregations
met, fervent thanks were offered to God, who, from among the progeny of
His servants, Maurice, the deliverer of Germany, and William, the
deliverer of Holland, had raised up a third deliverer, the wisest and
mightiest of all. At Vienna, at Madrid, nay, at Rome, the valiant and
sagacious heretic was held in honour as the chief of the great confederacy
against the House of Bourbon; and even at Versailles the hatred which he
inspired was largely mingled with admiration.

Here he was less favourably judged. In truth, our ancestors saw him in the
worst of all lights. By the French, the Germans, and the Italians, he was
contemplated at such a distance that only what was great could be
discerned, and that small blemishes were invisible. To the Dutch he was
brought close: but he was himself a Dutchman. In his intercourse with them
he was seen to the best advantage, he was perfectly at his ease with them;
and from among them he had chosen his earliest and dearest friends. But to
the English he appeared in a most unfortunate point of view. He was at
once too near to them and too far from them. He lived among them, so that
the smallest peculiarity of temper or manner could not escape their
notice. Yet he lived apart from them, and was to the last a foreigner in
speech, tastes, and habits.

One of the chief functions of our Sovereigns had long been to preside over
the society of the capital. That function Charles the Second had performed
with immense success. His easy bow, his good stories, his style of dancing
and playing tennis, the sound of his cordial laugh, were familiar to all
London. One day he was seen among the elms of Saint James’s Park chatting
with Dryden about poetry. 51 Another day his arm was on Tom
Durfey’s shoulder; and his Majesty was taking a second, while his
companion sang “Phillida, Phillida,” or “To horse, brave boys, to
Newmarket, to horse.” 52 James, with much less vivacity
and good nature, was accessible, and, to people who did not cross him,
civil. But of this sociableness William was entirely destitute. He seldom
came forth from his closet; and, when he appeared in the public rooms, he
stood among the crowd of courtiers and ladies, stern and abstracted,
making no jest and smiling at none. His freezing look, his silence, the
dry and concise answers which he uttered when he could keep silence no
longer, disgusted noblemen and gentlemen who had been accustomed to be
slapped on the back by their royal masters, called Jack or Harry,
congratulated about race cups or rallied about actresses. The women missed
the homage due to their sex. They observed that the King spoke in a
somewhat imperious tone even to the wife to whom he owed so much, and whom
he sincerely loved and esteemed. 53 They were
amused and shocked to see him, when the Princess Anne dined with him, and
when the first green peas of the year were put on the table, devour the
whole dish without offering a spoonful to her Royal Highness; and they
pronounced that this great soldier and politician was no better than a Low
Dutch bear. 54

One misfortune, which was imputed to him as a crime, was his bad English.
He spoke our language, but not well. His accent was foreign: his diction
was inelegant; and his vocabulary seems to have been no larger than was
necessary for the transaction of business. To the difficulty which he felt
in expressing himself, and to his consciousness that his pronunciation was
bad, must be partly ascribed the taciturnity and the short answers which
gave so much offence. Our literature he was incapable of enjoying or of
understanding. He never once, during his whole reign, showed himself at
the theatre. 55 The poets who wrote Pindaric
verses in his praise complained that their flights of sublimity were
beyond his comprehension. 56 Those who are acquainted with
the panegyrical odes of that age will perhaps be of opinion that he did
not lose much by his ignorance.

It is true that his wife did her best to supply what was wanting, and that
she was excellently qualified to be the head of the Court. She was English
by birth, and English also in her tastes and feelings. Her face was
handsome, her port majestic, her temper sweet and lively, her manners
affable and graceful. Her understanding, though very imperfectly
cultivated, was quick. There was no want of feminine wit and shrewdness in
her conversation; and her letters were so well expressed that they
deserved to be well spelt. She took much pleasure in the lighter kinds of
literature, and did something towards bringing books into fashion among
ladies of quality. The stainless purity of her private life and the strict
attention which she paid to her religious duties were the more
respectable, because she was singularly free from censoriousness, and
discouraged scandal as much as vice. In dislike of backbiting indeed she
and her husband cordially agreed; but they showed their dislike in
different and in very characteristic ways. William preserved profound
silence, and gave the talebearer a look which, as was said by a person who
had once encountered it, and who took good care never to encounter it
again, made your story go back down your throat. 57 Mary had a
way of interrupting tattle about elopements, duels, and playdebts by
asking the tattlers, very quietly yet significantly, whether they had ever
read her favourite sermon, Doctor Tillotson’s on Evil Speaking. Her
charities were munificent and judicious; and, though she made no
ostentatious display of them, it was known that she retrenched from her
own state in order to relieve Protestants whom persecution had driven from
France and Ireland, and who were starving in the garrets of London. So
amiable was her conduct, that she was generally spoken of with esteem and
tenderness by the most respectable of those who disapproved of the manner
in which she had been raised to the throne, and even of those who refused
to acknowledge her as Queen. In the Jacobite lampoons of that time,
lampoons which, in virulence and malignity, far exceed any thing that our
age has produced, she was not often mentioned with severity. Indeed she
sometimes expressed her surprise at finding that libellers who respected
nothing else respected her name. God, she said, knew where her weakness
lay. She was too sensitive to abuse and calumny; He had mercifully spared
her a trial which was beyond her strength; and the best return which she
could make to Him was to discountenance all malicious reflections on the
characters of others. Assured that she possessed her husband’s entire
confidence and affection, she turned the edge of his sharp speeches
sometimes by soft and sometimes by playful answers, and employed all the
influence which she derived from her many pleasing qualities to gain the
hearts of the people for him. 58

If she had long continued to assemble round her the best society of
London, it is probable that her kindness and courtesy would have done much
to efface the unfavourable impression made by his stern and frigid
demeanour. Unhappily his physical infirmities made it impossible for him
to reside at Whitehall. The air of Westminster, mingled with the fog of
the river which in spring tides overflowed the courts of his palace, with
the smoke of seacoal from two hundred thousand chimneys, and with the
fumes of all the filth which was then suffered to accumulate in the
streets, was insupportable to him; for his lungs were weak, and his sense
of smell exquisitely keen. His constitutional asthma made rapid progress.
His physicians pronounced it impossible that he could live to the end of
the year. His face was so ghastly that he could hardly be recognised.
Those who had to transact business with him were shocked to hear him
gasping for breath, and coughing till the tears ran down his cheeks. 59
His mind, strong as it was, sympathized with his body. His judgment was
indeed as clear as ever. But there was, during some months, a perceptible
relaxation of that energy by which he had been distinguished. Even his
Dutch friends whispered that he was not the man that he had been at the
Hague. 60
It was absolutely necessary that he should quit London. He accordingly
took up his residence in the purer air of Hampton Court. That mansion,
begun by the magnificent Wolsey, was a fine specimen of the architecture
which flourished in England under the first Tudors; but the apartments
were not, according to the notions of the seventeenth century, well fitted
for purposes of state. Our princes therefore had, since the Restoration,
repaired thither seldom, and only when they wished to live for a time in
retirement. As William purposed to make the deserted edifice his chief
palace, it was necessary for him to build and to plant; nor was the
necessity disagreeable to him. For he had, like most of his countrymen, a
pleasure in decorating a country house; and next to hunting, though at a
great interval, his favourite amusements were architecture and gardening.
He had already created on a sandy heath in Guelders a paradise, which
attracted multitudes of the curious from Holland and Westphalia. Mary had
laid the first stone of the house. Bentinck had superintended the digging
of the fishponds. There were cascades and grottoes, a spacious orangery,
and an aviary which furnished Hondekoeter with numerous specimens of
manycoloured plumage. 61 The King, in his splendid
banishment, pined for this favourite seat, and found some consolation in
creating another Loo on the banks of the Thames. Soon a wide extent of
ground was laid out in formal walks and parterres. Much idle ingenuity was
employed in forming that intricate labyrinth of verdure which has puzzled
and amused five generations of holiday visitors from London. Limes thirty
years old were transplanted from neighbouring woods to shade the alleys.
Artificial fountains spouted among the flower beds. A new court, not
designed with the purest taste, but stately, spacious, and commodious,
rose under the direction of Wren. The wainscots were adorned with the rich
and delicate carvings of Gibbons. The staircases were in a blaze with the
glaring frescoes of Verrio. In every corner of the mansion appeared a
profusion of gewgaws, not yet familiar to English eyes. Mary had acquired
at the Hague a taste for the porcelain of China, and amused herself by
forming at Hampton a vast collection of hideous images, and of vases on
which houses, trees, bridges, and mandarins were depicted in outrageous
defiance of all the laws of perspective. The fashion, a frivolous and
inelegant fashion it must be owned, which was thus set by the amiable
Queen, spread fast and wide. In a few years almost every great house in
the kingdom contained a museum of these grotesque baubles. Even statesmen
and generals were not ashamed to be renowned as judges of teapots and
dragons; and satirists long continued to repeat that a fine lady valued
her mottled green pottery quite as much as she valued her monkey, and much
more than she valued her husband. 62 But the
new palace was embellished with works of art of a very different kind. A
gallery was erected for the cartoons of Raphael. Those great pictures,
then and still the finest on our side of the Alps, had been preserved by
Cromwell from the fate which befell most of the other masterpieces in the
collection of Charles the First, but had been suffered to lie during many
years nailed up in deal boxes. They were now brought forth from obscurity
to be contemplated by artists with admiration and despair. The expense of
the works at Hampton was a subject of bitter complaint to many Tories, who
had very gently blamed the boundless profusion with which Charles the
Second had built and rebuilt, furnished and refurnished, the dwelling of
the Duchess of Portsmouth. 63 The expense, however, was not
the chief cause of the discontent which William’s change of residence
excited. There was no longer a Court at Westminster. Whitehall, once the
daily resort of the noble and the powerful, the beautiful and the gay, the
place to which fops came to show their new peruques, men of gallantry to
exchange glances with fine ladies, politicians to push their fortunes,
loungers to hear the news, country gentlemen to see the royal family, was
now, in the busiest season of the year, when London was full, when
Parliament was sitting, left desolate. A solitary sentinel paced the
grassgrown pavement before that door which had once been too narrow for
the opposite streams of entering and departing courtiers. The services
which the metropolis had rendered to the King were great and recent; and
it was thought that he might have requited those services better than by
treating it as Lewis had treated Paris. Halifax ventured to hint this, but
was silenced by a few words which admitted of no reply. “Do you wish,”
said William peevishly, “to see me dead?” 64

In a short time it was found that Hampton Court was too far from the
Houses of Lords and Commons, and from the public offices, to be the
ordinary abode of the Sovereign. Instead, however, of returning to
Whitehall, William determined to have another dwelling, near enough to his
capital for the transaction of business, but not near enough to be within
that atmosphere in which he could not pass a night without risk of
suffocation. At one time he thought of Holland House, the villa of the
noble family of Rich; and he actually resided there some weeks. 65
But he at length fixed his choice on Kensington House, the suburban
residence of the Earl of Nottingham. The purchase was made for eighteen
thousand guineas, and was followed by more building, more planting, more
expense, and more discontent. 66 At present Kensington House is
considered as a part of London. It was then a rural mansion, and could
not, in those days of highwaymen and scourers, of roads deep in mire and
nights without lamps, be the rallying point of fashionable society.

It was well known that the King, who treated the English nobility and
gentry so ungraciously, could, in a small circle of his own countrymen, be
easy, friendly, even jovial, could pour out his feelings garrulously,
could fill his glass, perhaps too often; and this was, in the view of our
forefathers, an aggravation of his offences. Yet our forefathers should
have had the sense and the justice to acknowledge that the patriotism
which they considered as a virtue in themselves, could not be a fault in
him. It was unjust to blame him for not at once transferring to our island
the love which he bore to the country of his birth. If, in essentials, he
did his duty towards England, he might well be suffered to feel at heart
an affectionate preference for Holland. Nor is it a reproach to him that
he did not, in this season of his greatness, discard companions who had
played with him in his childhood, who had stood by him firmly through all
the vicissitudes of his youth and manhood, who had, in defiance of the
most loathsome and deadly forms of infection, kept watch by his sick-bed,
who had, in the thickest of the battle, thrust themselves between him and
the French swords, and whose attachment was, not to the Stadtholder or to
the King, but to plain William of Nassau. It may be added that his old
friends could not but rise in his estimation by comparison with his new
courtiers. To the end of his life all his Dutch comrades, without
exception, continued to deserve his confidence. They could be out of
humour with him, it is true; and, when out of humour, they could be sullen
and rude; but never did they, even when most angry and unreasonable, fail
to keep his secrets and to watch over his interests with gentlemanlike and
soldierlike fidelity. Among his English councillors such fidelity was
rare. 67
It is painful, but it is no more than just, to acknowledge that he had but
too good reason for thinking meanly of our national character. That
character was indeed, in essentials, what it has always been. Veracity,
uprightness, and manly boldness were then, as now, qualities eminently
English. But those qualities, though widely diffused among the great body
of the people, were seldom to be found in the class with which William was
best acquainted. The standard of honour and virtue among our public men
was, during his reign, at the very lowest point. His predecessors had
bequeathed to him a court foul with all the vices of the Restoration, a
court swarming with sycophants, who were ready, on the first turn of
fortune, to abandon him as they had abandoned his uncle. Here and there,
lost in that ignoble crowd, was to be found a man of true integrity and
public spirit. Yet even such a man could not long live in such society
without much risk that the strictness of his principles would be relaxed,
and the delicacy of his sense of right and wrong impaired. It was unjust
to blame a prince surrounded by flatterers and traitors for wishing to
keep near him four or five servants whom he knew by proof to be faithful
even to death.

Nor was this the only instance in which our ancestors were unjust to him.
They had expected that, as soon as so distinguished a soldier and
statesman was placed at the head of affairs, he would give some signal
proof, they scarcely knew what, of genius and vigour. Unhappily, during
the first months of his reign, almost every thing went wrong. His
subjects, bitterly disappointed, threw the blame on him, and began to
doubt whether he merited that reputation which he had won at his first
entrance into public life, and which the splendid success of his last
great enterprise had raised to the highest point. Had they been in a
temper to judge fairly, they would have perceived that for the
maladministration of which they with good reason complained he was not
responsible. He could as yet work only with the machinery which he had
found; and the machinery which he had found was all rust and rottenness.
From the time of the Restoration to the time of the Revolution, neglect
and fraud had been almost constantly impairing the efficiency of every
department of the government. Honours and public trusts, peerages,
baronetcies, regiments, frigates, embassies, governments,
commissionerships, leases of crown lands, contracts for clothing, for
provisions, for ammunition, pardons for murder, for robbery, for arson,
were sold at Whitehall scarcely less openly than asparagus at Covent
Garden or herrings at Billingsgate. Brokers had been incessantly plying
for custom in the purlieus of the court; and of these brokers the most
successful had been, in the days of Charles, the harlots, and in the days
of James, the priests. From the palace which was the chief seat of this
pestilence the taint had diffused itself through every office and through
every rank in every office, and had every where produced feebleness and
disorganization. So rapid was the progress of the decay that, within eight
years after the time when Oliver had been the umpire of Europe, the roar
of the guns of De Ruyter was heard in the Tower of London. The vices which
had brought that great humiliation on the country had ever since been
rooting themselves deeper and spreading themselves wider. James had, to do
him justice, corrected a few of the gross abuses which disgraced the naval
administration. Yet the naval administration, in spite of his attempts to
reform it, moved the contempt of men who were acquainted with the
dockyards of France and Holland. The military administration was still
worse. The courtiers took bribes from the colonels; the colonels cheated
the soldiers: the commissaries sent in long bills for what had never been
furnished: the keepers of the arsenals sold the public stores and pocketed
the price. But these evils, though they had sprung into existence and
grown to maturity under the government of Charles and James, first made
themselves severely felt under the government of William. For Charles and
James were content to be the vassals and pensioners of a powerful and
ambitious neighbour: they submitted to his ascendency: they shunned with
pusillanimous caution whatever could give him offence; and thus, at the
cost of the independence and dignity of that ancient and glorious crown
which they unworthily wore, they avoided a conflict which would instantly
have shown how helpless, under their misrule, their once formidable
kingdom had become. Their ignominious policy it was neither in William’s
power nor in his nature to follow. It was only by arms that the liberty
and religion of England could be protected against the most formidable
enemy that had threatened our island since the Hebrides were strown with
the wrecks of the Armada. The body politic, which, while it remained in
repose, had presented a superficial appearance of health and vigour, was
now under the necessity of straining every nerve in a wrestle for life or
death, and was immediately found to be unequal to the exertion. The first
efforts showed an utter relaxation of fibre, an utter want of training.
Those efforts were, with scarcely an exception, failures; and every
failure was popularly imputed, not to the rulers whose mismanagement had
produced the infirmities of the state, but to the ruler in whose time the
infirmities of the state became visible.

William might indeed, if he had been as absolute as Lewis, have used such
sharp remedies as would speedily have restored to the English
administration that firm tone which had been wanting since the death of
Oliver. But the instantaneous reform of inveterate abuses was a task far
beyond the powers of a prince strictly restrained by law, and restrained
still more strictly by the difficulties of his situation. 68

Some of the most serious difficulties of his situation were caused by the
conduct of the ministers on whom, new as he was to the details of English
affairs, he was forced to rely for information about men and things. There
was indeed no want of ability among his chief counsellors: but one half of
their ability was employed in counteracting the other half. Between the
Lord President and the Lord Privy Seal there was an inveterate enmity. 69
It had begun twelve years before when Danby was Lord High Treasurer, a
persecutor of nonconformists, an uncompromising defender of prerogative,
and when Halifax was rising to distinction as one of the most eloquent
leaders of the country party. In the reign of James, the two statesmen had
found themselves in opposition together; and their common hostility to
France and to Rome, to the High Commission and to the dispensing power,
had produced an apparent reconciliation; but as soon as they were in
office together the old antipathy revived. The hatred which the Whig party
felt towards them both ought, it should seem, to have produced a close
alliance between them: but in fact each of them saw with complacency the
danger which threatened the other. Danby exerted himself to rally round
him a strong phalanx of Tories. Under the plea of ill health, he withdrew
from court, seldom came to the Council over which it was his duty to
preside, passed much time in the country, and took scarcely any part in
public affairs except by grumbling and sneering at all the acts of the
government, and by doing jobs and getting places for his personal
retainers. 70
In consequence of this defection, Halifax became prime minister, as far
any minister could, in that reign, be called prime minister. An immense
load of business fell on him; and that load he was unable to sustain. In
wit and eloquence, in amplitude of comprehension and subtlety of
disquisition, he had no equal among the statesmen of his time. But that
very fertility, that very acuteness, which gave a singular charm to his
conversation, to his oratory and to his writings, unfitted him for the
work of promptly deciding practical questions. He was slow from very
quickness. For he saw so many arguments for and against every possible
course that he was longer in making up his mind than a dull man would have
been. Instead of acquiescing in his first thoughts, he replied on himself,
rejoined on himself, and surrejoined on himself. Those who heard him talk
owned that he talked like an angel: but too often, when he had exhausted
all that could be said, and came to act, the time for action was over.

Meanwhile the two Secretaries of State were constantly labouring to draw
their master in diametrically opposite directions. Every scheme, every
person, recommended by one of them was reprobated by the other. Nottingham
was never weary of repeating that the old Roundhead party, the party which
had taken the life of Charles the First and had plotted against the life
of Charles the Second, was in principle republican, and that the Tories
were the only true friends of monarchy. Shrewsbury replied that the Tories
might be friends of monarchy, but that they regarded James as their
monarch. Nottingham was always bringing to the closet intelligence of the
wild daydreams in which a few old eaters of calf’s head, the remains of
the once formidable party of Bradshaw and Ireton, still indulged at
taverns in the city. Shrewsbury produced ferocious lampoons which the
Jacobites dropped every day in the coffeehouses. “Every Whig,” said the
Tory Secretary, “is an enemy of your Majesty’s prerogative.” “Every Tory,”
said the Whig Secretary, “is an enemy of your Majesty’s title.” 71

At the treasury there was a complication of jealousies and quarrels. 72
Both the First Commissioner, Mordaunt, and the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Delamere, were zealous Whigs but, though they held the same
political creed, their tempers differed widely. Mordaunt was volatile,
dissipated, and generous. The wits of that time laughed at the way in
which he flew about from Hampton Court to the Royal Exchange, and from the
Royal Exchange back to Hampton Court. How he found time for dress,
politics, lovemaking and balladmaking was a wonder. 73 Delamere
was gloomy and acrimonious, austere in his private morals, and punctual in
his devotions, but greedy of ignoble gain. The two principal ministers of
finance, therefore, became enemies, and agreed only in hating their
colleague Godolphin. What business had he at Whitehall in these days of
Protestant ascendency, he who had sate at the same board with Papists, he
who had never scrupled to attend Mary of Modena to the idolatrous worship
of the Mass? The most provoking circumstance was that Godolphin, though
his name stood only third in the commission, was really first Lord. For in
financial knowledge and in habits of business Mordaunt and Delamere were
mere children when compared with him; and this William soon discovered. 74

Similar feuds raged at the other great boards and through all the
subordinate ranks of public functionaries. In every customhouse, in every
arsenal, were a Shrewsbury and a Nottingham, a Delamere and a Godolphin.
The Whigs complained that there was no department in which creatures of
the fallen tyranny were not to be found. It was idle to allege that these
men were versed in the details of business, that they were the
depositaries of official traditions, and that the friends of liberty,
having been, during many years, excluded from public employment, must
necessarily be incompetent to take on themselves at once the whole
management of affairs. Experience doubtless had its value: but surely the
first of all the qualifications of a servant was fidelity; and no Tory
could be a really faithful servant of the new government. If King William
were wise, he would rather trust novices zealous for his interest and
honour than veterans who might indeed possess ability and knowledge, but
who would use that ability and that knowledge to effect his ruin.

The Tories, on the other hand, complained that their share of power bore
no proportion to their number and their weight in the country, and that
every where old and useful public servants were, for the crime of being
friends to monarchy and to the Church, turned out of their posts to make
way for Rye House plotters and haunters of conventicles. These upstarts,
adepts in the art of factious agitation, but ignorant of all that belonged
to their new calling, would be just beginning to learn their business when
they had undone the nation by their blunders. To be a rebel and a
schismatic was surely not all that ought to be required of a man in high
employment. What would become of the finances, what of the marine, if
Whigs who could not understand the plainest balance sheet were to manage
the revenue, and Whigs who had never walked over a dockyard to fit out the
fleet. 75

The truth is that the charges which the two parties brought against each
other were, to a great extent, well founded, but that the blame which both
threw on William was unjust. Official experience was to be found almost
exclusively among the Tories, hearty attachment to the new settlement
almost exclusively among the Whigs. It was not the fault of the King that
the knowledge and the zeal, which, combined, make a valuable servant of
the state must at that time be had separately or not at all. If he
employed men of one party, there was great risk of mistakes. If he
employed men of the other party, there was great risk of treachery. If he
employed men of both parties, there was still some risk of mistakes; there
was still some risk of treachery; and to these risks was added the
certainty of dissension. He might join Whigs and Tories; but it was beyond
his power to mix them. In the same office, at the same desk, they were
still enemies, and agreed only in murmuring at the Prince who tried to
mediate between them. It was inevitable that, in such circumstances, the
administration, fiscal, military, naval, should be feeble and unsteady;
that nothing should be done in quite the right way or at quite the right
time; that the distractions from which scarcely any public office was
exempt should produce disasters, and that every disaster should increase
the distractions from which it had sprung.

There was indeed one department of which the business was well conducted;
and that was the department of Foreign Affairs. There William directed
every thing, and, on important occasions, neither asked the advice nor
employed the agency of any English politician. One invaluable assistant he
had, Anthony Heinsius, who, a few weeks after the Revolution had been
accomplished, became Pensionary of Holland. Heinsius had entered public
life as a member of that party which was jealous of the power of the House
of Orange, and desirous to be on friendly terms with France. But he had
been sent in 1681 on a diplomatic mission to Versailles; and a short
residence there had produced a complete change in his views. On a near
acquaintance, he was alarmed by the power and provoked by the insolence of
that Court of which, while he contemplated it only at a distance, he had
formed a favourable opinion. He found that his country was despised. He
saw his religion persecuted. His official character did not save him from
some personal affronts which, to the latest day of his long career, he
never forgot. He went home a devoted adherent of William and a mortal
enemy of Lewis. 76

The office of Pensionary, always important, was peculiarly important when
the Stadtholder was absent from the Hague. Had the politics of Heinsius
been still what they once were, all the great designs of William might
have been frustrated. But happily there was between these two eminent men
a perfect friendship which, till death dissolved it, appears never to have
been interrupted for one moment by suspicion or ill humour. On all large
questions of European policy they cordially agreed. They corresponded
assiduously and most unreservedly. For though William was slow to give his
confidence, yet, when he gave it, he gave it entire. The correspondence is
still extant, and is most honourable to both. The King’s letters would
alone suffice to prove that he was one of the greatest statesmen whom
Europe has produced. While he lived, the Pensionary was content to be the
most obedient, the most trusty, and the most discreet of servants. But,
after the death of the master, the servant proved himself capable of
supplying with eminent ability the master’s place, and was renowned
throughout Europe as one of the great Triumvirate which humbled the pride
of Lewis the Fourteenth. 77

The foreign policy of England, directed immediately by William in close
concert with Heinsius, was, at this time, eminently skilful and
successful. But in every other part of the administration the evils
arising from the mutual animosity of factions were but too plainly
discernible. Nor was this all. To the evils arising from the mutual
animosity of factions were added other evils arising from the mutual
animosity of sects.

The year 1689 is a not less important epoch in the ecclesiastical than in
the civil history of England. In that year was granted the first legal
indulgence to Dissenters. In that year was made the last serious attempt
to bring the Presbyterians within the pale of the Church of England. From
that year dates a new schism, made, in defiance of ancient precedents, by
men who had always professed to regard schism with peculiar abhorrence,
and ancient precedents with peculiar veneration. In that year began the
long struggle between two great parties of conformists. Those parties
indeed had, under various forms, existed within the Anglican communion
ever since the Reformation; but till after the Revolution they did not
appear marshalled in regular and permanent order of battle against each
other, and were therefore not known by established names. Some time after
the accession of William they began to be called the High Church party and
the Low Church party; and, long before the end of his reign, these
appellations were in common use. 78

In the summer of 1688 the breaches which had long divided the great body
of English Protestants had seemed to be almost closed. Disputes about
Bishops and Synods, written prayers and extemporaneous prayers, white
gowns and black gowns, sprinkling and dipping, kneeling and sitting, had
been for a short space intermitted. The serried array which was then drawn
up against Popery measured the whole of the vast interval which separated
Sancroft from Bunyan. Prelates recently conspicuous as persecutors now
declared themselves friends of religious liberty, and exhorted their
clergy to live in a constant interchange of hospitality and of kind
offices with the separatists. Separatists, on the other hand, who had
recently considered mitres and lawn sleeves as the livery of Antichrist,
were putting candles in windows and throwing faggots on bonfires in honour
of the prelates.

These feelings continued to grow till they attained their greatest height
on the memorable day on which the common oppressor finally quitted
Whitehall, and on which an innumerable multitude, tricked out in orange
ribands, welcomed the common deliverer to Saint James’s. When the clergy
of London came, headed by Compton, to express their gratitude to him by
whose instrumentality God had wrought salvation for the Church and the
State, the procession was swollen by some eminent nonconformist divines.
It was delightful to many good men to learn that pious and learned
Presbyterian ministers had walked in the train of a Bishop, had been
greeted by him with fraternal kindness, and had been announced by him in
the presence chamber as his dear and respected friends, separated from him
indeed by some differences of opinion on minor points, but united to him
by Christian charity and by common zeal for the essentials of the reformed
faith. There had never before been such a day in England; and there has
never since been such a day. The tide of feeling was already on the turn;
and the ebb was even more rapid than the flow had been. In a very few
hours the High Churchman began to feel tenderness for the enemy whose
tyranny was now no longer feared, and dislike of the allies whose services
were now no longer needed. It was easy to gratify both feelings by
imputing to the dissenters the misgovernment of the exiled King. His
Majesty-such was now the language of too many Anglican divines-would have
been an excellent sovereign had he not been too confiding, too forgiving.
He had put his trust in a class of men who hated his office, his family,
his person, with implacable hatred. He had ruined himself in the vain
attempt to conciliate them. He had relieved them, in defiance of law and
of the unanimous sense of the old royalist party, from the pressure of the
penal code; had allowed them to worship God publicly after their own mean
and tasteless fashion; had admitted them to the bench of justice and to
the Privy Council; had gratified them with fur robes, gold chains,
salaries, and pensions. In return for his liberality, these people, once
so uncouth in demeanour, once so savage in opposition even to legitimate
authority, had become the most abject of flatterers. They had continued to
applaud and encourage him when the most devoted friends of his family had
retired in shame and sorrow from his palace. Who had more foully sold the
religion and liberty of his country than Titus? Who had been more zealous
for the dispensing power than Alsop? Who had urged on the persecution of
the seven Bishops more fiercely than Lobb? What chaplain impatient for a
deanery had ever, even when preaching in the royal presence on the
thirtieth of January or the twenty-ninth of May, uttered adulation more
gross than might easily be found in those addresses by which dissenting
congregations had testified their gratitude for the illegal Declaration of
Indulgence? Was it strange that a prince who had never studied law books
should have believed that he was only exercising his rightful prerogative,
when he was thus encouraged by a faction which had always ostentatiously
professed hatred of arbitrary power? Misled by such guidance, he had gone
further and further in the wrong path: he had at length estranged from him
hearts which would once have poured forth their best blood in his defence:
he had left himself no supporters except his old foes; and, when the day
of peril came, he had found that the feeling of his old foes towards him
was still what it had been when they had attempted to rob him of his
inheritance, and when they had plotted against his life. Every man of
sense had long known that the sectaries bore no love to monarchy. It had
now been found that they bore as little love to freedom. To trust them
with power would be an error not less fatal to the nation than to the
throne. If, in order to redeem pledges somewhat rashly given, it should be
thought necessary to grant them relief, every concession ought to be
accompanied by limitations and precautions. Above all, no man who was an
enemy to the ecclesiastical constitution of the realm ought to be
permitted to bear any part in the civil government.

Between the nonconformists and the rigid conformists stood the Low Church
party. That party contained, as it still contains, two very different
elements, a Puritan element and a Latitudinarian element. On almost every
question, however, relating either to ecclesiastical polity or to the
ceremonial of public worship, the Puritan Low Churchman and the
Latitudinarian Low Churchman were perfectly agreed. They saw in the
existing polity and in the existing ceremonial no defect, no blemish,
which could make it their duty to become dissenters. Nevertheless they
held that both the polity and the ceremonial were means and not ends, and
that the essential spirit of Christianity might exist without episcopal
orders and without a Book of Common Prayer. They had, while James was on
the throne, been mainly instrumental in forming the great Protestant
coalition against Popery and tyranny; and they continued in 1689 to hold
the same conciliatory language which they had held in 1688. They gently
blamed the scruples of the nonconformists. It was undoubtedly a great
weakness to imagine that there could be any sin in wearing a white robe,
in tracing a cross, in kneeling at the rails of an altar. But the highest
authority had given the plainest directions as to the manner in which such
weakness was to be treated. The weak brother was not to be judged: he was
not to be despised: believers who had stronger minds were commanded to
soothe him by large compliances, and carefully to remove out of his path
every stumbling block which could cause him to offend. An apostle had
declared that, though he had himself no misgivings about the use of animal
food or of wine, he would eat herbs and drink water rather than give
scandal to the feeblest of his flock. What would he have thought of
ecclesiastical rulers who, for the sake of a vestment, a gesture, a
posture, had not only torn the Church asunder, but had filled all the
gaols of England with men of orthodox faith and saintly life? The
reflections thrown by the High Churchmen on the recent conduct of the
dissenting body the Low Churchmen pronounced to be grossly unjust. The
wonder was, not that a few nonconformists should have accepted with thanks
an indulgence which, illegal as it was, had opened the doors of their
prisons and given security to their hearths, but that the nonconformists
generally should have been true to the cause of a constitution from the
benefits of which they had been long excluded. It was most unfair to
impute to a great party the faults of a few individuals. Even among the
Bishops of the Established Church James had found tools and sycophants.
The conduct of Cartwright and Parker had been much more inexcusable than
that of Alsop and Lobb. Yet those who held the dissenters answerable for
the errors of Alsop and Lobb would doubtless think it most unreasonable to
hold the Church answerable for the far deeper guilt of Cartwright and
Parker.

The Low Church clergymen were a minority, and not a large minority, of
their profession: but their weight was much more than proportioned to
their numbers: for they mustered strong in the capital: they had great
influence there; and the average of intellect and knowledge was higher
among them than among their order generally. We should probably overrate
their numerical strength, if we were to estimate them at a tenth part of
the priesthood. Yet it will scarcely be denied that there were among them
as many men of distinguished eloquence and learning as could be found in
the other nine tenths. Among the laity who conformed to the established
religion the parties were not unevenly balanced. Indeed the line which
separated them deviated very little from the line which separated the
Whigs and the Tories. In the House of Commons, which had been elected when
the Whigs were triumphant, the Low Church party greatly preponderated. In
the Lords there was an almost exact equipoise; and very slight
circumstances sufficed to turn the scale.

The head of the Low Church party was the King. He had been bred a
Presbyterian: he was, from rational conviction, a Latitudinarian; and
personal ambition, as well as higher motives, prompted him to act as
mediator among Protestant sects. He was bent on effecting three great
reforms in the laws touching ecclesiastical matters. His first object was
to obtain for dissenters permission to celebrate their worship in freedom
and security. His second object was to make such changes in the Anglican
ritual and polity as, without offending those to whom that ritual and
polity were dear, might conciliate the moderate nonconformists. His third
object was to throw open civil offices to Protestants without distinction
of sect. All his three objects were good; but the first only was at that
time attainable. He came too late for the second, and too early for the
third.

A few days after his accession, he took a step which indicated, in a
manner not to be mistaken, his sentiments touching ecclesiastical polity
and public worship. He found only one see unprovided with a Bishop. Seth
Ward, who had during many years had charge of the diocese of Salisbury,
and who had been honourably distinguished as one of the founders of the
Royal Society, having long survived his faculties, died while the country
was agitated by the elections for the Convention, without knowing that
great events, of which not the least important had passed under his own
roof, had saved his Church and his country from ruin. The choice of a
successor was no light matter. That choice would inevitably be considered
by the country as a prognostic of the highest import. The King too might
well be perplexed by the number of divines whose erudition, eloquence,
courage, and uprightness had been conspicuously displayed during the
contentions of the last three years. The preference was given to Burnet.
His claims were doubtless great. Yet William might have had a more
tranquil reign if he had postponed for a time the well earned promotion of
his chaplain, and had bestowed the first great spiritual preferment,
which, after the Revolution, fell to the disposal of the Crown, on some
eminent theologian, attached to the new settlement, yet not generally
hated by the clergy. Unhappily the name of Burnet was odious to the great
majority of the Anglican priesthood. Though, as respected doctrine, he by
no means belonged to the extreme section of the Latitudinarian party, he
was popularly regarded as the personification of the Latitudinarian
spirit. This distinction he owed to the prominent place which he held in
literature and politics, to the readiness of his tongue and of his pert,
and above all to the frankness and boldness of his nature, frankness which
could keep no secret, and boldness which flinched from no danger. He had
formed but a low estimate of the character of his clerical brethren
considered as a body; and, with his usual indiscretion, he frequently
suffered his opinion to escape him. They hated him in return with a hatred
which has descended to their successors, and which, after the lapse of a
century and a half, does not appear to languish.

As soon as the King’s decision was known, the question was every where
asked, What will the Archbishop do? Sancroft had absented himself from the
Convention: he had refused to sit in the Privy Council: he had ceased to
confirm, to ordain, and to institute; and he was seldom seen out of the
walls of his palace at Lambeth. He, on all occasions, professed to think
himself still bound by his old oath of allegiance. Burnet he regarded as a
scandal to the priesthood, a Presbyterian in a surplice. The prelate who
should lay hands on that unworthy head would commit more than one great
sin. He would, in a sacred place, and before a great congregation of the
faithful, at once acknowledge an usurper as a King, and confer on a
schismatic the character of a Bishop. During some time Sancroft positively
declared that he would not obey the precept of William. Lloyd of Saint
Asaph, who was the common friend of the Archbishop and of the Bishop
elect, intreated and expostulated in vain. Nottingham, who, of all the
laymen connected with the new government, stood best with the clergy,
tried his influence, but to no better purpose. The Jacobites said every
where that they were sure of the good old Primate; that he had the spirit
of a martyr; that he was determined to brave, in the cause of the Monarchy
and of the Church, the utmost rigour of those laws with which the
obsequious parliaments of the sixteenth century had fenced the Royal
Supremacy. He did in truth hold out long. But at the last moment his heart
failed him, and he looked round him for some mode of escape. Fortunately,
as childish scruples often disturbed his conscience, childish expedients
often quieted it. A more childish expedient than that to which he now
resorted is not to be found in all the tones of the casuists. He would not
himself bear a part in the service. He would not publicly pray for the
Prince and Princess as King and Queen. He would not call for their
mandate, order it to be read, and then proceed to obey it. But he issued a
commission empowering any three of his suffragans to commit, in his name,
and as his delegates, the sins which he did not choose to commit in
person. The reproaches of all parties soon made him ashamed of himself. He
then tried to suppress the evidence of his fault by means more
discreditable than the fault itself. He abstracted from among the public
records of which he was the guardian the instrument by which he had
authorised his brethren to act for him, and was with difficulty induced to
give it up. 79

Burnet however had, under the authority of this instrument, been
consecrated. When he next waited on Mary, she reminded him of the
conversations which they had held at the Hague about the high duties and
grave responsibility of Bishops. “I hope,” she said, “that you will put
your notions in practice.” Her hope was not disappointed. Whatever may be
thought of Burnet’s opinions touching civil and ecclesiastical polity, or
of the temper and judgment which he showed in defending those opinions,
the utmost malevolence of faction could not venture to deny that he tended
his flock with a zeal, diligence, and disinterestedness worthy of the
purest ages of the Church. His jurisdiction extended over Wiltshire and
Berkshire. These counties he divided into districts which he sedulously
visited. About two months of every summer he passed in preaching,
catechizing, and confirming daily from church to church. When he died
there was no corner of his diocese in which the people had not had seven
or eight opportunities of receiving his instructions and of asking his
advice. The worst weather, the worst roads, did not prevent him from
discharging these duties. On one occasion, when the floods were out, he
exposed his life to imminent risk rather than disappoint a rural
congregation which was in expectation of a discourse from the Bishop. The
poverty of the inferior clergy was a constant cause of uneasiness to his
kind and generous heart. He was indefatigable and at length successful in
his attempts to obtain for them from the Crown that grant which is known
by the name of Queen Anne’s Bounty. 80 He was
especially careful, when he travelled through his diocese, to lay no
burden on them. Instead of requiring them to entertain him, he entertained
them. He always fixed his headquarters at a market town, kept a table
there, and, by his decent hospitality and munificent charities, tried to
conciliate those who were prejudiced against his doctrines. When he
bestowed a poor benefice, and he had many such to bestow, his practice was
to add out of his own purse twenty pounds a year to the income. Ten
promising young men, to each of whom he allowed thirty pounds a year,
studied divinity under his own eye in the close of Salisbury. He had
several children but he did not think himself justified in hoarding for
them. Their mother had brought him a good fortune. With that fortune, he
always said, they must be content: He would not, for their sakes, be
guilty of the crime of raising an estate out of revenues sacred to piety
and charity. Such merits as these will, in the judgment of wise and candid
men, appear fully to atone for every offence which can be justly imputed
to him. 81

When he took his seat in the House of Lords, he found that assembly busied
in ecclesiastical legislation. A statesman who was well known to be
devoted to the Church had undertaken to plead the cause of the Dissenters.
No subject in the realm occupied so important and commanding a position
with reference to religious parties as Nottingham. To the influence
derived from rank, from wealth, and from office, he added the higher
influence which belongs to knowledge, to eloquence, and to integrity. The
orthodoxy of his creed, the regularity of his devotions, and the purity of
his morals gave a peculiar weight to his opinions on questions in which
the interests of Christianity were concerned. Of all the ministers of the
new Sovereigns, he had the largest share of the confidence of the clergy.
Shrewsbury was certainly a Whig, and probably a freethinker: he had lost
one religion; and it did not very clearly appear that he had found
another. Halifax had been during many years accused of scepticism, deism,
atheism. Danby’s attachment to episcopacy and the liturgy was rather
political than religious. But Nottingham was such a son as the Church was
proud to own. Propositions, therefore, which, if made by his colleagues,
would infallibly produce a violent panic among the clergy, might, if made
by him, find a favourable reception even in universities and chapter
houses. The friends of religious liberty were with good reason desirous to
obtain his cooperation; and, up to a certain point, he was not unwilling
to cooperate with them. He was decidedly for a toleration. He was even for
what was then called a comprehension: that is to say, he was desirous to
make some alterations in the Anglican discipline and ritual for the
purpose of removing the scruples of the moderate Presbyterians. But he was
not prepared to give up the Test Act. The only fault which he found with
that Act was that it was not sufficiently stringent, and that it left
loopholes through which schismatics sometimes crept into civil
employments. In truth it was because he was not disposed to part with the
Test that he was willing to consent to some changes in the Liturgy. He
conceived that, if the entrance of the Church were but a very little
widened, great numbers who had hitherto lingered near the threshold would
press in. Those who still remained without would then not be sufficiently
numerous or powerful to extort any further concession, and would be glad
to compound for a bare toleration. 82

The opinion of the Low Churchmen concerning the Test Act differed widely
from his. But many of them thought that it was of the highest importance
to have his support on the great questions of Toleration and
Comprehension. From the scattered fragments of information which have come
down to us, it appears that a compromise was made. It is quite certain
that Nottingham undertook to bring in a Toleration Bill and a
Comprehension Bill, and to use his best endeavours to carry both bills
through the House of Lords. It is highly probable that, in return for this
great service, some of the leading Whigs consented to let the Test Act
remain for the present unaltered.

There was no difficulty in framing either the Toleration Bill or the
Comprehension Bill. The situation of the dissenters had been much
discussed nine or ten years before, when the kingdom was distracted by the
fear of a Popish plot, and when there was among Protestants a general
disposition to unite against the common enemy. The government had then
been willing to make large concessions to the Whig party, on condition
that the crown should be suffered to descend according to the regular
course. A draught of a law authorising the public worship of the
nonconformists, and a draught of a law making some alterations in the
public worship of the Established Church, had been prepared, and would
probably have been passed by both Houses without difficulty, had not
Shaftesbury and his coadjutors refused to listen to any terms, and, by
grasping at what was beyond their reach, missed advantages which might
easily have been secured. In the framing of these draughts, Nottingham,
then an active member of the House of Commons, had borne a considerable
part. He now brought them forth from the obscurity in which they had
remained since the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, and laid them,
with some slight alterations, on the table of the Lords. 83

The Toleration Bill passed both Houses with little debate. This celebrated
statute, long considered as the Great Charter of religious liberty, has
since been extensively modified, and is hardly known to the present
generation except by name. The name, however, is still pronounced with
respect by many who will perhaps learn with surprise and disappointment
the real nature of the law which they have been accustomed to hold in
honour.

Several statutes which had been passed between the accession of Queen
Elizabeth and the Revolution required all people under severe penalties to
attend the services of the Church of England, and to abstain from
attending conventicles. The Toleration Act did not repeal any of these
statutes, but merely provided that they should not be construed to extend
to any person who should testify his loyalty by taking the Oaths of
Allegiance and Supremacy, and his Protestantism by subscribing the
Declaration against Transubstantiation.

The relief thus granted was common between the dissenting laity and the
dissenting clergy. But the dissenting clergy had some peculiar grievances.
The Act of Uniformity had laid a mulct of a hundred pounds on every person
who, not having received episcopal ordination, should presume to
administer the Eucharist. The Five Mile Act had driven many pious and
learned ministers from their houses and their friends, to live among
rustics in obscure villages of which the name was not to be seen on the
map. The Conventicle Act had imposed heavy fines on divines who should
preach in any meeting of separatists; and, in direct opposition to the
humane spirit of our common law, the Courts were enjoined to construe this
Act largely and beneficially for the suppressing of dissent and for the
encouraging of informers. These severe statutes were not repealed, but
were, with many conditions and precautions, relaxed. It was provided that
every dissenting minister should, before he exercised his function,
profess under his hand his belief in the articles of the Church of
England, with a few exceptions. The propositions to which he was not
required to assent were these; that the Church has power to regulate
ceremonies; that the doctrines set forth in the Book of Homilies are
sound; and that there is nothing superstitious and idolatrous in the
ordination service. If he declared himself a Baptist, he was also excused
from affirming that the baptism of infants is a laudable practice. But,
unless his conscience suffered him to subscribe thirty-four of the
thirty-nine articles, and the greater part of two other articles, he could
not preach without incurring all the punishments which the Cavaliers, in
the day of their power and their vengeance, had devised for the tormenting
and ruining of schismatical teachers.

The situation of the Quaker differed from that of other dissenters, and
differed for the worse. The Presbyterian, the Independent, and the Baptist
had no scruple about the Oath of Supremacy. But the Quaker refused to take
it, not because he objected to the proposition that foreign sovereigns and
prelates have no jurisdiction in England, but because his conscience would
not suffer him to swear to any proposition whatever. He was therefore
exposed to the severity of part of that penal code which, long before
Quakerism existed, had been enacted against Roman Catholics by the
Parliaments of Elizabeth. Soon after the Restoration, a severe law,
distinct from the general law which applied to all conventicles, had been
passed against meetings of Quakers. The Toleration Act permitted the
members of this harmless sect to hold their assemblies in peace, on
condition of signing three documents, a declaration against
Transubstantiation, a promise of fidelity to the government, and a
confession of Christian belief. The objections which the Quaker had to the
Athanasian phraseology had brought on him the imputation of Socinianism;
and the strong language in which he sometimes asserted that he derived his
knowledge of spiritual things directly from above had raised a suspicion
that he thought lightly of the authority of Scripture. He was therefore
required to profess his faith in the divinity of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost, and in the inspiration of the Old and New Testaments.

Such were the terms on which the Protestant dissenters of England were,
for the first time, permitted by law to worship God according to their own
conscience. They were very properly forbidden to assemble with barred
doors, but were protected against hostile intrusion by a clause which made
it penal to enter a meeting house for the purpose of molesting the
congregation.

As if the numerous limitations and precautions which have been mentioned
were insufficient, it was emphatically declared that the legislature did
not intend to grant the smallest indulgence to any Papist, or to any
person who denied the doctrine of the Trinity as that doctrine is set
forth in the formularies of the Church of England.

Of all the Acts that have ever been passed by Parliament, the Toleration
Act is perhaps that which most strikingly illustrates the peculiar vices
and the peculiar excellences of English legislation. The science of
Politics bears in one respect a close analogy to the science of Mechanics.
The mathematician can easily demonstrate that a certain power, applied by
means of a certain lever or of a certain system of pulleys, will suffice
to raise a certain weight. But his demonstration proceeds on the
supposition that the machinery is such as no load will bend or break. If
the engineer, who has to lift a great mass of real granite by the
instrumentality of real timber and real hemp, should absolutely rely on
the propositions which he finds in treatises on Dynamics, and should make
no allowance for the imperfection of his materials, his whole apparatus of
beams, wheels, and ropes would soon come down in ruin, and, with all his
geometrical skill, he would be found a far inferior builder to those
painted barbarians who, though they never heard of the parallelogram of
forces, managed to pile up Stonehenge. What the engineer is to the
mathematician, the active statesman is to the contemplative statesman. It
is indeed most important that legislators and administrators should be
versed in the philosophy of government, as it is most important that the
architect, who has to fix an obelisk on its pedestal, or to hang a tubular
bridge over an estuary, should be versed in the philosophy of equilibrium
and motion. But, as he who has actually to build must bear in mind many
things never noticed by D’Alembert and Euler, so must he who has actually
to govern be perpetually guided by considerations to which no allusion can
be found in the writings of Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham. The perfect
lawgiver is a just temper between the mere man of theory, who can see
nothing but general principles, and the mere man of business, who can see
nothing but particular circumstances. Of lawgivers in whom the speculative
element has prevailed to the exclusion of the practical, the world has
during the last eighty years been singularly fruitful. To their wisdom
Europe and America have owed scores of abortive constitutions, scores of
constitutions which have lived just long enough to make a miserable noise,
and have then gone off in convulsions. But in the English legislature the
practical element has always predominated, and not seldom unduly
predominated, over the speculative. To think nothing of symmetry and much
of convenience; never to remove an anomaly merely because it is an
anomaly; never to innovate except when some grievance is felt; never to
innovate except so far as to get rid of the grievance; never to lay down
any proposition of wider extent than the particular case for which it is
necessary to provide; these are the rules which have, from the age of John
to the age of Victoria, generally guided the deliberations of our two
hundred and fifty Parliaments. Our national distaste for whatever is
abstract in political science amounts undoubtedly to a fault. But it is,
perhaps, a fault on the right side. That we have been far too slow to
improve our laws must be admitted. But, though in other countries there
may have occasionally been more rapid progress, it would not be easy to
name any other country in which there has been so little retrogression.

The Toleration Act approaches very near to the idea of a great English
law. To a jurist, versed in the theory of legislation, but not intimately
acquainted with the temper of the sects and parties into which the nation
was divided at the time of the Revolution, that Act would seem to be a
mere chaos of absurdities and contradictions. It will not bear to be tried
by sound general principles. Nay, it will not bear to be tried by any
principle, sound or unsound. The sound principle undoubtedly is, that mere
theological error ought not to be punished by the civil magistrate. This
principle the Toleration Act not only does not recognise, but positively
disclaims. Not a single one of the cruel laws enacted against
nonconformists by the Tudors or the Stuarts is repealed. Persecution
continues to be the general rule. Toleration is the exception. Nor is this
all. The freedom which is given to conscience is given in the most
capricious manner. A Quaker, by making a declaration of faith in general
terms, obtains the full benefit of the Act without signing one of the
thirty-nine Articles. An Independent minister, who is perfectly willing to
make the declaration required from the Quaker, but who has doubts about
six or seven of the Articles, remains still subject to the penal laws.
Howe is liable to punishment if he preaches before he has solemnly
declared his assent to the Anglican doctrine touching the Eucharist. Penn,
who altogether rejects the Eucharist, is at perfect liberty to preach
without making any declaration whatever on the subject.

These are some of the obvious faults which must strike every person who
examines the Toleration Act by that standard of just reason which is the
same in all countries and in all ages. But these very faults may perhaps
appear to be merits, when we take into consideration the passions and
prejudices of those for whom the Toleration Act was framed. This law,
abounding with contradictions which every smatterer in political
philosophy can detect, did what a law framed by the utmost skill of the
greatest masters of political philosophy might have failed to do. That the
provisions which have been recapitulated are cumbrous, puerile,
inconsistent with each other, inconsistent with the true theory of
religious liberty, must be acknowledged. All that can be said in their
defence is this; that they removed a vast mass of evil without shocking a
vast mass of prejudice; that they put an end, at once and for ever,
without one division in either House of Parliament, without one riot in
the streets, with scarcely one audible murmur even from the classes most
deeply tainted with bigotry, to a persecution which had raged during four
generations, which had broken innumerable hearts, which had made
innumerable firesides desolate, which had filled the prisons with men of
whom the world was not worthy, which had driven thousands of those honest,
diligent and godfearing yeomen and artisans, who are the true strength of
a nation, to seek a refuge beyond the ocean among the wigwams of red
Indians and the lairs of panthers. Such a defence, however weak it may
appear to some shallow speculators, will probably be thought complete by
statesmen.

The English, in 1689, were by no means disposed to admit the doctrine that
religious error ought to be left unpunished. That doctrine was just then
more unpopular than it had ever been. For it had, only a few months
before, been hypocritically put forward as a pretext for persecuting the
Established Church, for trampling on the fundamental laws of the realm,
for confiscating freeholds, for treating as a crime the modest exercise of
the right of petition. If a bill had then been drawn up granting entire
freedom of conscience to all Protestants, it may be confidently affirmed
that Nottingham would never have introduced such a bill; that all the
bishops, Burnet included, would have voted against it; that it would have
been denounced, Sunday after Sunday, from ten thousand pulpits, as an
insult to God and to all Christian men, and as a license to the worst
heretics and blasphemers; that it would have been condemned almost as
vehemently by Bates and Baxter as by Ken and Sherlock; that it would have
been burned by the mob in half the market places of England; that it would
never have become the law of the land, and that it would have made the
very name of toleration odious during many years to the majority of the
people. And yet, if such a bill had been passed, what would it have
effected beyond what was effected by the Toleration Act?

It is true that the Toleration Act recognised persecution as the rule, and
granted liberty of conscience only as the exception. But it is equally
true that the rule remained in force only against a few hundreds of
Protestant dissenters, and that the benefit of the exceptions extended to
hundreds of thousands.

It is true that it was in theory absurd to make Howe sign thirty-four or
thirty-five of the Anglican articles before he could preach, and to let
Penn preach without signing one of those articles. But it is equally true
that, under this arrangement, both Howe and Penn got as entire liberty to
preach as they could have had under the most philosophical code that
Beccaria or Jefferson could have framed.

The progress of the bill was easy. Only one amendment of grave importance
was proposed. Some zealous churchmen in the Commons suggested that it
might be desirable to grant the toleration only for a term of seven years,
and thus to bind over the nonconformists to good behaviour. But this
suggestion was so unfavourably received that those who made it did not
venture to divide the House. 84

The King gave his consent with hearty satisfaction: the bill became law;
and the Puritan divines thronged to the Quarter Sessions of every county
to swear and sign. Many of them probably professed their assent to the
Articles with some tacit reservations. But the tender conscience of Baxter
would not suffer him to qualify, till he had put on record an explanation
of the sense in which he understood every proposition which seemed to him
to admit of misconstruction. The instrument delivered by him to the Court
before which he took the oaths is still extant, and contains two passages
of peculiar interest. He declared that his approbation of the Athanasian
Creed was confined to that part which was properly a Creed, and that he
did not mean to express any assent to the damnatory clauses. He also
declared that he did not, by signing the article which anathematizes all
who maintain that there is any other salvation than through Christ, mean
to condemn those who entertain a hope that sincere and virtuous
unbelievers may be admitted to partake in the benefits of Redemption. Many
of the dissenting clergy of London expressed their concurrence in these
charitable sentiments. 85

The history of the Comprehension Bill presents a remarkable contrast to
the history of the Toleration Bill. The two bills had a common origin,
and, to a great extent, a common object. They were framed at the same
time, and laid aside at the same time: they sank together into oblivion;
and they were, after the lapse of several years, again brought together
before the world. Both were laid by the same peer on the table of the
Upper House; and both were referred to the same select committee. But it
soon began to appear that they would have widely different fates. The
Comprehension Bill was indeed a neater specimen of legislative workmanship
than the Toleration Bill, but was not, like the Toleration Bill, adapted
to the wants, the feelings, and the prejudices of the existing generation.
Accordingly, while the Toleration Bill found support in all quarters, the
Comprehension Bill was attacked from all quarters, and was at last coldly
and languidly defended even by those who had introduced it. About the same
time at which the Toleration bill became law with the general concurrence
of public men, the Comprehension Bill was, with a concurrence not less
general, suffered to drop. The Toleration Bill still ranks among those
great statutes which are epochs in our constitutional history. The
Comprehension Bill is forgotten. No collector of antiquities has thought
it worth preserving. A single copy, the same which Nottingham presented to
the peers, is still among our parliamentary records, but has been seen by
only two or three persons now living. It is a fortunate circumstance that,
in this copy, almost the whole history of the Bill can be read. In spite
of cancellations and interlineations, the original words can easily be
distinguished from those which were inserted in the committee or on the
report. 86

The first clause, as it stood when the bill was introduced, dispensed all
the ministers of the Established Church from the necessity of subscribing
the Thirty-nine Articles. For the Articles was substituted a Declaration
which ran thus; “I do approve of the doctrine and worship and government
of the Church of England by law established, as containing all things
necessary to salvation; and I promise, in the exercise of my ministry, to
preach and practice according thereunto.” Another clause granted similar
indulgence to the members of the two universities.

Then it was provided that any minister who had been ordained after the
Presbyterian fashion might, without reordination, acquire all the
privileges of a priest of the Established Church. He must, however, be
admitted to his new functions by the imposition of the hands of a bishop,
who was to pronounce the following form of words; “Take thou authority to
preach the word of God, and administer the sacraments, and to perform all
other ministerial offices in the Church of England.” The person thus
admitted was to be capable of holding any rectory or vicarage in the
kingdom.

Then followed clauses providing that a clergyman might, except in a few
churches of peculiar dignity, wear the surplice or not as he thought fit,
that the sign of the cross might be omitted in baptism, that children
might be christened, if such were the wish of their parents, without
godfathers or godmothers, and that persons who had a scruple about
receiving the Eucharist kneeling might receive it sitting.

The concluding clause was drawn in the form of a petition. It was proposed
that the two Houses should request the King and Queen to issue a
commission empowering thirty divines of the Established Church to revise
the liturgy, the canons, and the constitution of the ecclesiastical
courts, and to recommend such alterations as might on inquiry appear to be
desirable.

The bill went smoothly through the first stages. Compton, who, since
Sancroft had shut himself up at Lambeth, was virtually Primate, supported
Nottingham with ardour. 87 In the committee, however, it
appeared that there was a strong body of churchmen, who were determined
not to give up a single word or form; to whom it seemed that the prayers
were no prayers without the surplice, the babe no Christian if not marked
with the cross, the bread and wine no memorials of redemption or vehicles
of grace if not received on bended knee. Why, these persons asked, was the
docile and affectionate son of the Church to be disgusted by seeing the
irreverent practices of a conventicle introduced into her majestic choirs?
Why should his feelings, his prejudices, if prejudices they were, be less
considered than the whims of schismatics? If, as Burnet and men like
Burnet were never weary of repeating, indulgence was due to a weak
brother, was it less due to the brother whose weakness consisted in the
excess of his love for an ancient, a decent, a beautiful ritual,
associated in his imagination from childhood with all that is most sublime
and endearing, than to him whose morose and litigious mind was always
devising frivolous objections to innocent and salutary usages? But, in
truth, the scrupulosity of the Puritan was not that sort of scrupulosity
which the Apostle had commanded believers to respect. It sprang, not from
morbid tenderness of conscience, but from censoriousness and spiritual
pride; and none who had studied the New Testament could have failed to
observe that, while we are charged carefully to avoid whatever may give
scandal to the feeble, we are taught by divine precept and example to make
no concession to the supercilious and uncharitable Pharisee. Was every
thing which was not of the essence of religion to be given up as soon as
it became unpleasing to a knot of zealots whose heads had been turned by
conceit and the love of novelty? Painted glass, music, holidays, fast
days, were not of the essence of religion. Were the windows of King’s
College Chapel to be broken at the demand of one set of fanatics? Was the
organ of Exeter to be silenced to please another? Were all the village
bells to be mute because Tribulation Wholesome and Deacon Ananias thought
them profane? Was Christmas no longer to be a day of rejoicing? Was
Passion week no longer to be a season of humiliation? These changes, it is
true, were not yet proposed. Put if,—so the High Churchmen reasoned,—we
once admit that what is harmless and edifying is to be given up because it
offends some narrow understandings and some gloomy tempers, where are we
to stop? And is it not probable that, by thus attempting to heal one
schism, we may cause another? All those things which the Puritans regard
as the blemishes of the Church are by a large part of the population
reckoned among her attractions. May she not, in ceasing to give scandal to
a few sour precisians, cease also to influence the hearts of many who now
delight in her ordinances? Is it not to be apprehended that, for every
proselyte whom she allures from the meeting house, ten of her old
disciples may turn away from her maimed rites and dismantled temples, and
that these new separatists may either form themselves into a sect far more
formidable than the sect which we are now seeking to conciliate, or may,
in the violence of their disgust at a cold and ignoble worship, be tempted
to join in the solemn and gorgeous idolatry of Rome?

It is remarkable that those who held this language were by no means
disposed to contend for the doctrinal Articles of the Church. The truth is
that, from the time of James the First, that great party which has been
peculiarly zealous for the Anglican polity and the Anglican ritual has
always leaned strongly towards Arminianism, and has therefore never been
much attached to a confession of faith framed by reformers who, on
questions of metaphysical divinity, generally agreed with Calvin. One of
the characteristic marks of that party is the disposition which it has
always shown to appeal, on points of dogmatic theology, rather to the
Liturgy, which was derived from Rome, than to the Articles and Homilies,
which were derived from Geneva. The Calvinistic members of the Church, on
the other hand, have always maintained that her deliberate judgment on
such points is much more likely to be found in an Article or a Homily than
in an ejaculation of penitence or a hymn of thanksgiving. It does not
appear that, in the debates on the Comprehension Bill, a single High
Churchman raised his voice against the clause which relieved the clergy
from the necessity of subscribing the Articles, and of declaring the
doctrine contained in the Homilies to be sound. Nay, the Declaration
which, in the original draught, was substituted for the Articles, was much
softened down on the report. As the clause finally stood, the ministers of
the Church were required to declare, not that they approved of her
constitution, but merely that they submitted to it. Had the bill become
law, the only people in the kingdom who would have been under the
necessity of signing the Articles would have been the dissenting
preachers. 88

The easy manner in which the zealous friends of the Church gave up her
confession of faith presents a striking contrast to the spirit with which
they struggled for her polity and her ritual. The clause which admitted
Presbyterian ministers to hold benefices without episcopal ordination was
rejected. The clause which permitted scrupulous persons to communicate
sitting very narrowly escaped the same fate. In the Committee it was
struck out, and, on the report, was with great difficulty restored. The
majority of peers in the House was against the proposed indulgence, and
the scale was but just turned by the proxies.

But by this time it began to appear that the bill which the High Churchmen
were so keenly assailing was menaced by dangers from a very different
quarter. The same considerations which had induced Nottingham to support a
comprehension made comprehension an object of dread and aversion to a
large body of dissenters. The truth is that the time for such a scheme had
gone by. If, a hundred years earlier, when the division in the Protestant
body was recent, Elizabeth had been so wise as to abstain from requiring
the observance of a few forms which a large part of her subjects
considered as Popish, she might perhaps have averted those fearful
calamities which, forty years after her death, afflicted the Church. But
the general tendency of schism is to widen. Had Leo the Tenth, when the
exactions and impostures of the Pardoners first roused the indignation of
Saxony, corrected those evil practices with a vigorous hand, it is not
improbable that Luther would have died in the bosom of the Church of Rome.
But the opportunity was suffered to escape; and, when, a few years later,
the Vatican would gladly have purchased peace by yielding the original
subject of quarrel, the original subject of quarrel was almost forgotten.
The inquiring spirit which had been roused by a single abuse had
discovered or imagined a thousand: controversies engendered controversies:
every attempt that was made to accommodate one dispute ended by producing
another; and at length a General Council, which, during the earlier stages
of the distemper, had been supposed to be an infallible remedy, made the
case utterly hopeless. In this respect, as in many others, the history of
Puritanism in England bears a close analogy to the history of
Protestantism in Europe. The Parliament of 1689 could no more put an end
to nonconformity by tolerating a garb or a posture than the Doctors of
Trent could have reconciled the Teutonic nations to the Papacy by
regulating the sale of indulgences. In the sixteenth century Quakerism was
unknown; and there was not in the whole realm a single congregation of
Independents or Baptists. At the time of the Revolution, the Independents,
Baptists, and Quakers were a majority of the dissenting body; and these
sects could not be gained over on any terms which the lowest of Low
Churchmen would have been willing to offer. The Independent held that a
national Church, governed by any central authority whatever, Pope,
Patriarch, King, Bishop, or Synod, was an unscriptural institution, and
that every congregation of believers was, under Christ, a sovereign
society. The Baptist was even more irreclaimable than the Independent, and
the Quaker even more irreclaimable than the Baptist. Concessions,
therefore, which would once have extinguished nonconformity would not now
satisfy even one half of the nonconformists; and it was the obvious
interest of every nonconformist whom no concession would satisfy that none
of his brethren should be satisfied. The more liberal the terms of
comprehension, the greater was the alarm of every separatist who knew that
he could, in no case, be comprehended. There was but slender hope that the
dissenters, unbroken and acting as one man, would be able to obtain from
the legislature full admission to civil privileges; and all hope of
obtaining such admission must be relinquished if Nottingham should, by the
help of some wellmeaning but shortsighted friends of religious liberty, be
enabled to accomplish his design. If his bill passed, there would
doubtless be a considerable defection from the dissenting body; and every
defection must be severely felt by a class already outnumbered, depressed,
and struggling against powerful enemies. Every proselyte too must be
reckoned twice over, as a loss to the party which was even now too weak,
and as a gain to the party which was even now too strong. The Church was
but too well able to hold her own against all the sects in the kingdom;
and, if those sects were to be thinned by a large desertion, and the
Church strengthened by a large reinforcement, it was plain that all chance
of obtaining any relaxation of the Test Act would be at an end; and it was
but too probable that the Toleration Act might not long remain unrepealed.

Even those Presbyterian ministers whose scruples the Comprehension Bill
was expressly intended to remove were by no means unanimous in wishing it
to pass. The ablest and most eloquent preachers among them had, since the
Declaration of Indulgence had appeared, been very agreeably settled in the
capital and in other large towns, and were now about to enjoy, under the
sure guarantee of an Act of Parliament, that toleration which, under the
Declaration of Indulgence, had been illicit and precarious. The situation
of these men was such as the great majority of the divines of the
Established Church might well envy. Few indeed of the parochial clergy
were so abundantly supplied with comforts as the favourite orator of a
great assembly of nonconformists in the City. The voluntary contributions
of his wealthy hearers, Aldermen and Deputies, West India merchants and
Turkey merchants, Wardens of the Company of Fishmongers and Wardens of the
Company of Goldsmiths, enabled him to become a landowner or a mortgagee.
The best broadcloth from Blackwell Hall, and the best poultry from
Leadenhall Market, were frequently left at his door. His influence over
his flock was immense. Scarcely any member of a congregation of
separatists entered into a partnership, married a daughter, put a son out
as apprentice, or gave his vote at an election, without consulting his
spiritual guide. On all political and literary questions the minister was
the oracle of his own circle. It was popularly remarked, during many
years, that an eminent dissenting minister had only to make his son an
attorney or a physician; that the attorney was sure to have clients, and
the physician to have patients. While a waiting woman was generally
considered as a help meet for a chaplain in holy orders of the Established
Church, the widows and daughters of opulent citizens were supposed to
belong in a peculiar manner to nonconformist pastors. One of the great
Presbyterian Rabbies, therefore, might well doubt whether, in a worldly
view, he should be benefited by a comprehension. He might indeed hold a
rectory or a vicarage, when he could get one. But in the meantime he would
be destitute: his meeting house would be closed: his congregation would be
dispersed among the parish churches: if a benefice were bestowed on him,
it would probably be a very slender compensation for the income which he
had lost. Nor could he hope to have, as a minister of the Anglican Church,
the authority and dignity which he had hitherto enjoyed. He would always,
by a large portion of the members of that Church, be regarded as a
deserter. He might therefore, on the whole, very naturally wish to be left
where he was. 89

There was consequently a division in the Whig party. One section of that
party was for relieving the dissenters from the Test Act, and giving up
the Comprehension Bill. Another section was for pushing forward the
Comprehension Bill, and postponing to a more convenient time the
consideration of the Test Act. The effect of this division among the
friends of religious liberty was that the High Churchmen, though a
minority in the House of Commons, and not a majority in the House of
Lords, were able to oppose with success both the reforms which they
dreaded. The Comprehension Bill was not passed; and the Test Act was not
repealed.

Just at the moment when the question of the Test and the question of the
Comprehension became complicated together in a manner which might well
perplex an enlightened and honest politician, both questions became
complicated with a third question of grave importance.

The ancient oaths of allegiance and supremacy contained some expressions
which had always been disliked by the Whigs, and other expressions which
Tories, honestly attached to the new settlement, thought inapplicable to
princes who had not the hereditary right. The Convention had therefore,
while the throne was still vacant, framed those oaths of allegiance and
supremacy by which we still testify our loyalty to our Sovereign. By the
Act which turned the Convention into a Parliament, the members of both
Houses were required to take the new oaths. As to other persons in public
trust, it was hard to say how the law stood. One form of words was
enjoined by statutes, regularly passed, and not yet regularly abrogated. A
different form was enjoined by the Declaration of Right, an instrument
which was indeed revolutionary and irregular, but which might well be
thought equal in authority to any statute. The practice was in as much
confusion as the law. It was therefore felt to be necessary that the
legislature should, without delay, pass an Act abolishing the old oaths,
and determining when and by whom the new oaths should be taken.

The bill which settled this important question originated in the Upper
House. As to most of the provisions there was little room for dispute. It
was unanimously agreed that no person should, at any future time, be
admitted to any office, civil, military, ecclesiastical, or academical,
without taking the oaths to William and Mary. It was also unanimously
agreed that every person who already held any civil or military office
should be ejected from it, unless he took the oaths on or before the first
of August 1689. But the strongest passions of both parties were excited by
the question whether persons who already possessed ecclesiastical or
academical offices should be required to swear fealty to the King and
Queen on pain of deprivation. None could say what might be the effect of a
law enjoining all the members of a great, a powerful, a sacred profession
to make, under the most solemn sanction of religion, a declaration which
might be plausibly represented as a formal recantation of all that they
had been writing and preaching during many years. The Primate and some of
the most eminent Bishops had already absented themselves from Parliament,
and would doubtless relinquish their palaces and revenues, rather than
acknowledge the new Sovereigns. The example of these great prelates might
perhaps be followed by a multitude of divines of humbler rank, by hundreds
of canons, prebendaries, and fellows of colleges, by thousands of parish
priests. To such an event no Tory, however clear his own conviction that
he might lawfully swear allegiance to the King who was in possession,
could look forward without the most painful emotions of compassion for the
sufferers and of anxiety for the Church.

There were some persons who went so far as to deny that the Parliament was
competent to pass a law requiring a Bishop to swear on pain of
deprivation. No earthly power, they said, could break the tie which bound
the successor of the apostles to his diocese. What God had joined no man
could sunder. Dings and senates might scrawl words on parchment or impress
figures on wax; but those words and figures could no more change the
course of the spiritual than the course of the physical world. As the
Author of the universe had appointed a certain order, according to which
it was His pleasure to send winter and summer, seedtime and harvest, so He
had appointed a certain order, according to which He communicated His
grace to His Catholic Church; and the latter order was, like the former,
independent of the powers and principalities of the world. A legislature
might alter the flames of the months, might call June December, and
December June; but, in spite of the legislature, the snow would fall when
the sun was in Capricorn, and the flowers would bloom when he was in
Cancer. And so the legislature might enact that Ferguson or Muggleton
should live in the palace at Lambeth, should sit on the throne of
Augustin, should be called Your Grace, and should walk in processions
before the Premier Duke; but, in spite of the legislature, Sancroft would,
while Sancroft lived, be the only true Archbishop of Canterbury; and the
person who should presume to usurp the archiepiscopal functions would be a
schismatic. This doctrine was proved by reasons drawn from the budding of
Aaron’s rod, and from a certain plate which Saint James the Less,
according to a legend of the fourth century, used to wear on his forehead.
A Greek manuscript, relating to the deprivation of bishops, was
discovered, about this time, in the Bodleian Library, and became the
subject of a furious controversy. One party held that God had wonderfully
brought this precious volume to light, for the guidance of His Church at a
most critical moment. The other party wondered that any importance could
be attached to the nonsense of a nameless scribbler of the thirteenth
century. Much was written about the deprivations of Chrysostom and
Photius, of Nicolaus Mysticus and Cosmas Atticus. But the case of
Abiathar, whom Solomon put out of the sacerdotal office for treason, was
discussed with peculiar eagerness. No small quantity of learning and
ingenuity was expended in the attempt to prove that Abiathar, though he
wore the ephod and answered by Urim, was not really High Priest, that he
ministered only when his superior Zadoc was incapacitated by sickness or
by some ceremonial pollution, and that therefore the act of Solomon was
not a precedent which would warrant King William in deposing a real
Bishop. 90

But such reasoning as this, though backed by copious citations from the
Misna and Maimonides, was not generally satisfactory even to zealous
churchmen. For it admitted of one answer, short, but perfectly
intelligible to a plain man who knew nothing about Greek fathers or
Levitical genealogies. There might be some doubt whether King Solomon had
ejected a high priest; but there could be no doubt at all that Queen
Elizabeth had ejected the Bishops of more than half the sees in England.
It was notorious that fourteen prelates had, without any proceeding in any
spiritual court, been deprived by Act of Parliament for refusing to
acknowledge her supremacy. Had that deprivation been null? Had Bonner
continued to be, to the end of his life, the only true Bishop of London?
Had his successor been an usurper? Had Parker and Jewel been schismatics?
Had the Convocation of 1562, that Convocation which had finally settled
the doctrine of the Church of England, been itself out of the pale of the
Church of Christ? Nothing could be more ludicrous than the distress of
those controversialists who had to invent a plea for Elizabeth which
should not be also a plea for William. Some zealots, indeed, gave up the
vain attempt to distingush between two cases which every man of common
sense perceived to be undistinguishable, and frankly owned that the
deprivations of 1559 could not be justified. But no person, it was said,
ought to be troubled in mind on that account; for, though the Church of
England might once have been schismatical, she had become Catholic when
the Bishops deprived by Elizabeth had ceased to live. 91
The Tories, however, were not generally disposed to admit that the
religious society to which they were fondly attached had originated in an
unlawful breach of unity. They therefore took ground lower and more
tenable. They argued the question as a question of humanity and of
expediency. They spoke much of the debt of gratitude which the nation owed
to the priesthood; of the courage and fidelity with which the order, from
the primate down to the youngest deacon, had recently defended the civil
and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm; of the memorable Sunday
when, in all the hundred churches of the capital, scarcely one slave could
be found to read the Declaration of Indulgence; of the Black Friday when,
amidst the blessings and the loud weeping of a mighty population, the
barge of the seven prelates passed through the watergate of the Tower. The
firmness with which the clergy had lately, in defiance of menace and of
seduction, done what they conscientiously believed to be right, had saved
the liberty and religion of England. Was no indulgence to be granted to
them if they now refused to do what they conscientiously apprehended to be
wrong? And where, it was said, is the danger of treating them with
tenderness? Nobody is so absurd as to propose that they shall be permitted
to plot against the Government, or to stir up the multitude to
insurrection. They are amenable to the law, like other men. If they are
guilty of treason, let them be hanged. If they are guilty of sedition, let
them be fined and imprisoned. If they omit, in their public ministrations,
to pray for King William, for Queen Mary, and for the Parliament assembled
under those most religious sovereigns, let the penal clauses of the Act of
Uniformity be put in force. If this be not enough, let his Majesty be
empowered to tender the oaths to any clergyman; and, if the oaths so
tendered are refused, let deprivation follow. In this way any nonjuring
bishop or rector who may be suspected, though he cannot be legally
convicted, of intriguing, of writing, of talking, against the present
settlement, may be at once removed from his office. But why insist on
ejecting a pious and laborious minister of religion, who never lifts a
finger or utters a word against the government, and who, as often as he
performs morning and evening service, prays from his heart for a blessing
on the rulers set over him by Providence, but who will not take an oath
which seems to him to imply a right in the people to depose a sovereign?
Surely we do all that is necessary if we leave men of this sort to the
mercy of the very prince to whom they refuse to swear fidelity. If he is
willing to bear with their scrupulosity, if he considers them,
notwithstanding their prejudices, as innocent and useful members of
society, who else can be entitled to complain?

The Whigs were vehement on the other side. They scrutinised, with
ingenuity sharpened by hatred, the claims of the clergy to the public
gratitude, and sometimes went so far as altogether to deny that the order
had in the preceding year deserved well of the nation. It was true that
bishops and priests had stood up against the tyranny of the late King: but
it was equally true that, but for the obstinacy with which they had
opposed the Exclusion Bill, he never would have been King, and that, but
for their adulation and their doctrine of passive obedience, he would
never have ventured to be guilty of such tyranny. Their chief business,
during a quarter of a century, had been to teach the people to cringe and
the prince to domineer. They were guilty of the blood of Russell, of
Sidney, of every brave and honest Englishman who had been put to death for
attempting to save the realm from Popery and despotism. Never had they
breathed a whisper against arbitrary power till arbitrary power began to
menace their own property and dignity. Then, no doubt, forgetting all
their old commonplaces about submitting to Nero, they had made haste to
save themselves. Grant,—such was the cry of these eager disputants,—grant
that, in saving themselves, they saved the constitution. Are we therefore
to forget that they had previously endangered it? And are we to reward
them by now permitting them to destroy it? Here is a class of men closely
connected with the state. A large part of the produce of the soil has been
assigned to them for their maintenance. Their chiefs have seats in the
legislature, wide domains, stately palaces. By this privileged body the
great mass of the population is lectured every week from the chair of
authority. To this privileged body has been committed the supreme
direction of liberal education. Oxford and Cambridge, Westminster,
Winchester, and Eton, are under priestly government. By the priesthood
will to a great extent be formed the character of the nobility and gentry
of the next generation. Of the higher clergy some have in their gift
numerous and valuable benefices; others have the privilege of appointing
judges who decide grave questions affecting the liberty, the property, the
reputation of their Majesties’ subjects. And is an order thus favoured by
the state to give no guarantee to the state? On what principle can it be
contended that it is unnecessary to ask from an Archbishop of Canterbury
or from a Bishop of Durham that promise of fidelity to the government
which all allow that it is necessary to demand from every layman who
serves the Crown in the humblest office. Every exciseman, every collector
of the customs, who refuses to swear, is to be deprived of his bread. For
these humble martyrs of passive obedience and hereditary right nobody has
a word to say. Yet an ecclesiastical magnate who refuses to swear is to be
suffered to retain emoluments, patronage, power, equal to those of a great
minister of state. It is said that it is superfluous to impose the oaths
on a clergyman, because he may be punished if he breaks the laws. Why is
not the same argument urged in favour of the layman? And why, if the
clergyman really means to observe the laws, does he scruple to take the
oaths? The law commands him to designate William and Mary as King and
Queen, to do this in the most sacred place, to do this in the
administration of the most solemn of all the rites of religion. The law
commands him to pray that the illustrious pair may be defended by a
special providence, that they may be victorious over every enemy, and that
their Parliament may by divine guidance be led to take such a course as
may promote their safety, honour, and welfare. Can we believe that his
conscience will suffer him to do all this, and yet will not suffer him to
promise that he will be a faithful subject to them?

To the proposition that the nonjuring clergy should be left to the mercy
of the King, the Whigs, with some justice, replied that no scheme could be
devised more unjust to his Majesty. The matter, they said, is one of
public concern, one in which every Englishman who is unwilling to be the
slave of France and of Rome has a deep interest. In such a case it would
be unworthy of the Estates of the Realm to shrink from the responsibility
of providing for the common safety, to try to obtain for themselves the
praise of tenderness and liberality, and to leave to the Sovereign the
odious task of proscription. A law requiring all public functionaries,
civil, military, ecclesiastical, without distinction of persons, to take
the oaths is at least equal. It excludes all suspicion of partiality, of
personal malignity, of secret shying and talebearing. But, if an arbitrary
discretion is left to the Government, if one nonjuring priest is suffered
to keep a lucrative benefice while another is turned with his wife and
children into the street, every ejection will be considered as an act of
cruelty, and will be imputed as a crime to the sovereign and his
ministers. 92

Thus the Parliament had to decide, at the same moment, what quantity of
relief should be granted to the consciences of dissenters, and what
quantity of pressure should be applied to the consciences of the clergy of
the Established Church. The King conceived a hope that it might be in his
power to effect a compromise agreeable to all parties. He flattered
himself that the Tories might be induced to make some concession to the
dissenters, on condition that the Whigs would be lenient to the Jacobites.
He determined to try what his personal intervention would effect. It
chanced that, a few hours after the Lords had read the Comprehension Bill
a second time and the Bill touching the Oaths a first time, he had
occasion to go down to Parliament for the purpose of giving his assent to
a law. From the throne he addressed both Houses, and expressed an earnest
wish that they would consent to modify the existing laws in such a manner
that all Protestants might be admitted to public employment. 93
It was well understood that he was willing, if the legislature would
comply with his request, to let clergymen who were already beneficed
continue to hold their benefices without swearing allegiance to him. His
conduct on this occasion deserves undoubtedly the praise of
disinterestedness. It is honourable to him that he attempted to purchase
liberty of conscience for his subjects by giving up a safeguard of his own
crown. But it must be acknowledged that he showed less wisdom than virtue.
The only Englishman in his Privy Council whom he had consulted, if Burnet
was correctly informed, was Richard Hampden; 94 and
Richard Hampden, though a highly respectable man, was so far from being
able to answer for the Whig party that he could not answer even for his
own son John, whose temper, naturally vindictive, had been exasperated
into ferocity by the stings of remorse and shame. The King soon found that
there was in the hatred of the two great factions an energy which was
wanting to their love. The Whigs, though they were almost unanimous in
thinking that the Sacramental Test ought to be abolished, were by no means
unanimous in thinking that moment well chosen for the abolition; and even
those Whigs who were most desirous to see the nonconformists relieved
without delay from civil disabilities were fully determined not to forego
the opportunity of humbling and punishing the class to whose
instrumentality chiefly was to be ascribed that tremendous reflux of
public feeling which had followed the dissolution of the Oxford
Parliament. To put the Janes, the Souths, the Sherlocks into such a
situation that they must either starve, or recant, publicly, and with the
Gospel at their lips, all the ostentatious professions of many years, was
a revenge too delicious to be relinquished. The Tory, on the other hand,
sincerely respected and pitied those clergymen who felt scruples about the
oaths. But the Test was, in his view, essential to the safety of the
established religion, and must not be surrendered for the purpose of
saving any man however eminent from any hardship however serious. It would
be a sad day doubtless for the Church when the episcopal bench, the
chapter houses of cathedrals, the halls of colleges, would miss some men
renowned for piety and learning. But it would be a still sadder day for
the Church when an Independent should bear the white staff or a Baptist
sit on the woolsack. Each party tried to serve those for whom it was
interested: but neither party would consent to grant favourable terms to
its enemies. The result was that the nonconformists remained excluded from
office in the State, and the nonjurors were ejected from office in the
Church.

In the House of Commons, no member thought it expedient to propose the
repeal of the Test Act. But leave was given to bring in a bill repealing
the Corporation Act, which had been passed by the Cavalier Parliament soon
after the Restoration, and which contained a clause requiring all
municipal magistrates to receive the sacrament according to the forms of
the Church of England. When this bill was about to be committed, it was
moved by the Tories that the committee should be instructed to make no
alteration in the law touching the sacrament. Those Whigs who were zealous
for the Comprehension must have been placed by this motion in an
embarrassing position. To vote for the instruction would have been
inconsistent with their principles. To vote against it would have been to
break with Nottingham. A middle course was found. The adjournment of the
debate was moved and carried by a hundred and sixteen votes to a hundred
and fourteen; and the subject was not revived. 95 In the
House of Lords a motion was made for the abolition of the sacramental
test, but was rejected by a large majority. Many of those who thought the
motion right in principle thought it ill timed. A protest was entered; but
it was signed only by a few peers of no great authority. It is a
remarkable fact that two great chiefs of the Whig party, who were in
general very attentive to their parliamentary duty, Devonshire and
Shrewsbury, absented themselves on this occasion. 96

The debate on the Test in the Upper House was speedily followed by a
debate on the last clause of the Comprehension Bill. By that clause it was
provided that thirty Bishops and priests should be commissioned to revise
the liturgy and canons, and to suggest amendments. On this subject the
Whig peers were almost all of one mind. They mustered strong, and spoke
warmly. Why, they asked, were none but members of the sacerdotal order to
be intrusted with this duty? Were the laity no part of the Church of
England? When the Commission should have made its report, laymen would
have to decide on the recommendations contained in that report. Not a line
of the Book of Common Prayer could be altered but by the authority of
King, Lords, and Commons. The King was a layman. Five sixths of the Lords
were laymen. All the members of the House of Commons were laymen. Was it
not absurd to say that laymen were incompetent to examine into a matter
which it was acknowledged that laymen must in the last resort determine?
And could any thing be more opposite to the whole spirit of Protestantism
than the notion that a certain preternatural power of judging in spiritual
cases was vouchsafed to a particular caste, and to that caste alone; that
such men as Selden, as Hale, as Boyle, were less competent to give an
opinion on a collect or a creed than the youngest and silliest chaplain
who, in a remote manor house, passed his life in drinking ale and playing
at shovelboard? What God had instituted no earthly power, lay or clerical,
could alter: and of things instituted by human beings a layman was surely
as competent as a clergyman to judge. That the Anglican liturgy and canons
were of purely human institution the Parliament acknowledged by referring
them to a Commission for revision and correction. How could it then be
maintained that in such a Commission the laity, so vast a majority of the
population, the laity, whose edification was the main end of all
ecclesiastical regulations, and whose innocent tastes ought to be
carefully consulted in the framing of the public services of religion,
ought not to have a single representative? Precedent was directly opposed
to this odious distinction. Repeatedly since the light of reformation had
dawned on England Commissioners had been empowered by law to revise the
canons; and on every one of those occasions some of the Commissioners had
been laymen. In the present case the proposed arrangement was peculiarly
objectionable. For the object of issuing the commission was the
conciliating of dissenters; and it was therefore most desirable that the
Commissioners should be men in whose fairness and moderation dissenters
could confide. Would thirty such men be easily found in the higher ranks
of the clerical profession? The duty of the legislature was to arbitrate
between two contending parties, the Nonconformist divines and the Anglican
divines, and it would be the grossest injustice to commit to one of those
parties the office of umpire.

On these grounds the Whigs proposed an amendment to the effect that laymen
should be joined with clergymen in the Commission. The contest was sharp.
Burnet, who had just taken his seat among the peers, and who seems to have
been bent on winning at almost any price the good will of his brethren,
argued with all his constitutional warmth for the clause as it stood. The
numbers on the division proved to be exactly equal. The consequence was
that, according to the rules of the House, the amendment was lost. 97

At length the Comprehension Bill was sent down to the Commons. There it
would easily have been carried by two to one, if it had been supported by
all the friends of religious liberty. But on this subject the High
Churchmen could count on the support of a large body of Low Churchmen.
Those members who wished well to Nottingham’s plan saw that they were
outnumbered, and, despairing of a victory, began to meditate a retreat.
Just at this time a suggestion was thrown out which united all suffrages.
The ancient usage was that a Convocation should be summoned together with
a Parliament; and it might well be argued that, if ever the advice of a
Convocation could be needed, it must be when changes in the ritual and
discipline of the Church were under consideration. But, in consequence of
the irregular manner in which the Estates of the Realm had been brought
together during the vacancy of the throne, there was no Convocation. It
was proposed that the House should advise the King to take measures for
supplying this defect, and that the fate of the Comprehension Bill should
not be decided till the clergy had had an opportunity of declaring their
opinion through the ancient and legitimate organ.

This proposition was received with general acclamation. The Tories were
well pleased to see such honour done to the priesthood. Those Whigs who
were against the Comprehension Bill were well pleased to see it laid
aside, certainly for a year, probably for ever. Those Whigs who were for
the Comprehension Bill were well pleased to escape without a defeat. Many
of them indeed were not without hopes that mild and liberal counsels might
prevail in the ecclesiastical senate. An address requesting William to
summon the Convocation was voted without a division: the concurrence of
the Lords was asked: the Lords concurred, the address was carried up to
the throne by both Houses: the King promised that he would, at a
convenient season, do what his Parliament desired; and Nottingham’s Bill
was not again mentioned.

Many writers, imperfectly acquainted with the history of that age, have
inferred from these proceedings that the House of Commons was an assembly
of High Churchmen: but nothing is more certain than that two thirds of the
members were either Low Churchmen or not Churchmen at all. A very few days
before this time an occurrence had taken place, unimportant in itself, but
highly significant as an indication of the temper of the majority. It had
been suggested that the House ought, in conformity with ancient usage, to
adjourn over the Easter holidays. The Puritans and Latitudinarians
objected: there was a sharp debate: the High Churchmen did not venture to
divide; and, to the great scandal of many grave persons, the Speaker took
the chair at nine o’clock on Easter Monday; and there was a long and busy
sitting. 98

This however was by no means the strongest proof which the Commons gave
that they were far indeed from feeling extreme reverence or tenderness for
the Anglican hierarchy. The bill for settling the oaths had just come down
from the Lords framed in a manner favourable to the clergy. All lay
functionaries were required to swear fealty to the King and Queen on pain
of expulsion from office. But it was provided that every divine who
already held a benefice might continue to hold it without swearing, unless
the Government should see reason to call on him specially for an assurance
of his loyalty. Burnett had, partly, no doubt, from the goodnature and
generosity which belonged to his character, and partly from a desire to
conciliate his brethren, supported this arrangement in the Upper House
with great energy. But in the Lower House the feeling against the Jacobite
priests was irresistibly strong. On the very day on which that House
voted, without a division, the address requesting the King to summon the
Convocation, a clause was proposed and carried which required every person
who held any ecclesiastical or academical preferment to take the oaths by
the first of August 1689, on pain of suspension. Six months, to be
reckoned from that day, were allowed to the nonjuror for reconsideration.
If, on the first of February 1690, he still continued obstinate, he was to
be finally deprived.

The bill, thus amended, was sent back to the Lords. The Lords adhered to
their original resolution. Conference after conference was held.
Compromise after compromise was suggested. From the imperfect reports
which have come down to us it appears that every argument in favour of
lenity was forcibly urged by Burnet. But the Commons were firm: time
pressed: the unsettled state of the law caused inconvenience in every
department of the public service; and the peers very reluctantly gave way.
They at the same time added a clause empowering the King to bestow
pecuniary allowances out of the forfeited benefices on a few nonjuring
clergymen. The number of clergymen thus favoured was not to exceed twelve.
The allowance was not to exceed one third of the income forfeited. Some
zealous Whigs were unwilling to grant even this indulgence: but the
Commons were content with the victory which they had won, and justly
thought that it would be ungracious to refuse so slight a concession. 99

These debates were interrupted, during a short time, by the festivities
and solemnities of the Coronation. When the day fixed for that great
ceremony drew near, the House of Commons resolved itself into a committee
for the purpose of settling the form of words in which our Sovereigns were
thenceforward to enter into covenant with the nation. All parties were
agreed as to the propriety of requiring the King to swear that, in
temporal matters, he would govern according to law, and would execute
justice in mercy. But about the terms of the oath which related to the
spiritual institutions of the realm there was much debate. Should the
chief magistrate promise simply to maintain the Protestant religion
established by law, or should he promise to maintain that religion as it
should be hereafter established by law? The majority preferred the former
phrase. The latter phrase was preferred by those Whigs who were for a
Comprehension. But it was universally admitted that the two phrases really
meant the same thing, and that the oath, however it might be worded, would
bind the Sovereign in his executive capacity only. This was indeed evident
from the very nature of the transaction. Any compact may be annulled by
the free consent of the party who alone is entitled to claim the
performance. It was never doubted by the most rigid casuist that a debtor,
who has bound himself under the most awful imprecations to pay a debt, may
lawfully withhold payment if the creditor is willing to cancel the
obligation. And it is equally clear that no assurance, exacted from a King
by the Estates of his kingdom, can bind him to refuse compliance with what
may at a future time be the wish of those Estates.

A bill was drawn up in conformity with the resolutions of the Committee,
and was rapidly passed through every stage. After the third reading, a
foolish man stood up to propose a rider, declaring that the oath was not
meant to restrain the Sovereign from consenting to any change in the
ceremonial of the Church, provided always that episcopacy and a written
form of prayer were retained. The gross absurdity of this motion was
exposed by several eminent members. Such a clause, they justly remarked,
would bind the King under pretence of setting him free. The coronation
oath, they said, was never intended to trammel him in his legislative
capacity. Leave that oath as it is now drawn, and no prince can
misunderstand it. No prince can seriously imagine that the two Houses mean
to exact from him a promise that he will put a Veto on laws which they may
hereafter think necessary to the wellbeing of the country. Or if any
prince should so strangely misapprehend the nature of the contract between
him and his subjects, any divine, any lawyer, to whose advice he may have
recourse, will set his mind at ease. But if this rider should pass, it
will be impossible to deny that the coronation oath is meant to prevent
the King from giving his assent to bills which may be presented to him by
the Lords and Commons; and the most serious inconvenience may follow.
These arguments were felt to be unanswerable, and the proviso was rejected
without a division, 100

Every person who has read these debates must be fully convinced that the
statesmen who framed the coronation oath did not mean to bind the King in
his legislative capacity, 101 Unhappily, more than a hundred
years later, a scruple, which those statesmen thought too absurd to be
seriously entertained by any human being, found its way into a mind,
honest, indeed, and religious, but narrow and obstinate by nature, and at
once debilitated and excited by disease. Seldom, indeed, have the ambition
and perfidy of tyrants produced evils greater than those which were
brought on our country by that fatal conscientiousness. A conjuncture
singularly auspicious, a conjuncture at which wisdom and justice might
perhaps have reconciled races and sects long hostile, and might have made
the British islands one truly United Kingdom, was suffered to pass away.
The opportunity, once lost, returned no more. Two generations of public
men have since laboured with imperfect success to repair the error which
was then committed; nor is it improbable that some of the penalties of
that error may continue to afflict a remote posterity.

The Bill by which the oath was settled passed the Upper House without
amendment. All the preparations were complete; and, on the eleventh of
April, the coronation took place. In some things it differed from ordinary
coronations. The representatives of the people attended the ceremony in a
body, and were sumptuously feasted in the Exchequer Chamber. Mary, being
not merely Queen Consort, but also Queen Regnant, was inaugurated in all
things like a King, was girt with the sword, lifted up into the throne,
and presented with the Bible, the spurs, and the orb. Of the temporal
grandees of the realm, and of their wives and daughters, the muster was
great and splendid. None could be surprised that the Whig aristocracy
should swell the triumph of Whig principles. But the Jacobites saw, with
concern, that many Lords who had voted for a Regency bore a conspicuous
part in the ceremonial. The King’s crown was carried by Grafton, the
Queen’s by Somerset. The pointed sword, emblematical of temporal justice,
was borne by Pembroke. Ormond was Lord High Constable for the day, and
rode up the Hall on the right hand of the hereditary champion, who thrice
flung down his glove on the pavement, and thrice defied to mortal combat
the false traitor who should gainsay the title of William and Mary. Among
the noble damsels who supported the gorgeous train of the Queen was her
beautiful and gentle cousin, the Lady Henrietta Hyde, whose father,
Rochester, had to the last contended against the resolution which declared
the throne vacant, 102 The show of Bishops, indeed,
was scanty. The Primate did not make his appearance; and his place was
supplied by Compton. On one side of Compton, the paten was carried by
Lloyd, Bishop of Saint Asaph, eminent among the seven confessors of the
preceding year. On the other side, Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, lately a
member of the High Commission, had charge of the chalice. Burnet, the
junior prelate, preached with all his wonted ability, and more than his
wonted taste and judgment. His grave and eloquent discourse was polluted
neither by adulation nor by malignity. He is said to have been greatly
applauded; and it may well be believed that the animated peroration in
which he implored heaven to bless the royal pair with long life and mutual
love, with obedient subjects, wise counsellors, and faithful allies, with
gallant fleets and armies, with victory, with peace, and finally with
crowns more glorious and more durable than those which then glittered on
the altar of the Abbey, drew forth the loudest hums of the Commons, 103

On the whole the ceremony went off well, and produced something like a
revival, faint, indeed, and transient, of the enthusiasm of the preceding
December. The day was, in London and in many other places, a day of
general rejoicing. The churches were filled in the morning: the afternoon
was spent in sport and carousing; and at night bonfires were lighted,
rockets discharged, and windows lighted up. The Jacobites however
contrived to discover or to invent abundant matter for scurrility and
sarcasm. They complained bitterly, that the way from the hall to the
western door of the Abbey had been lined by Dutch soldiers. Was it seemly
that an English king should enter into the most solemn of engagements with
the English nation behind a triple hedge of foreign swords and bayonets?
Little affrays, such as, at every great pageant, almost inevitably take
place between those who are eager to see the show and those whose business
it is to keep the communications clear, were exaggerated with all the
artifices of rhetoric. One of the alien mercenaries had backed his horse
against an honest citizen who pressed forward to catch a glimpse of the
royal canopy. Another had rudely pushed back a woman with the but end of
his musket. On such grounds as these the strangers were compared to those
Lord Danes whose insolence, in the old time, had provoked the Anglo-saxon
population to insurrection and massacre. But there was no more fertile
theme for censure than the coronation medal, which really was absurd in
design and mean in execution. A chariot appeared conspicuous on the
reverse; and plain people were at a loss to understand what this emblem
had to do with William and Mary. The disaffected wits solved the
difficulty by suggesting that the artist meant to allude to that chariot
which a Roman princess, lost to all filial affection, and blindly devoted
to the interests of an ambitious husband, drove over the still warm
remains of her father, 104

Honours were, as usual, liberally bestowed at this festive season. Three
garters which happened to be at the disposal of the Crown were given to
Devonshire, Ormond, and Schomberg. Prince George was created Duke of
Cumberland. Several eminent men took new appellations by which they must
henceforth be designated. Danby became Marquess of Caermarthen, Churchill
Earl of Marlborough, and Bentinck Earl of Portland. Mordaunt was made Earl
of Monmouth, not without some murmuring on the part of old Exclusionists,
who still remembered with fondness their Protestant Duke, and who had
hoped that his attainder would be reversed, and that his title would be
borne by his descendants. It was remarked that the name of Halifax did not
appear in the list of promotions. None could doubt that he might easily
have obtained either a blue riband or a ducal coronet; and, though he was
honourably distinguished from most of his contemporaries by his scorn of
illicit gain, it was well known that he desired honorary distinctions with
a greediness of which he was himself ashamed, and which was unworthy of
his fine understanding. The truth is that his ambition was at this time
chilled by his fears. To those whom he trusted he hinted his apprehensions
that evil times were at hand. The King’s life was not worth a year’s
purchase: the government was disjointed, the clergy and the army
disaffected, the parliament torn by factions: civil war was already raging
in one part of the empire: foreign war was impending. At such a moment a
minister, whether Whig or Tory, might well be uneasy; but neither Whig nor
Tory had so much to fear as the Trimmer, who might not improbably find
himself the common mark at which both parties would take aim. For these
reasons Halifax determined to avoid all ostentation of power and
influence, to disarm envy by a studied show of moderation, and to attach
to himself by civilities and benefits persons whose gratitude might be
useful in the event of a counterrevolution. The next three months, he
said, would be the time of trial. If the government got safe through the
summer it would probably stand, 105

Meanwhile questions of external policy were every day becoming more and
more important. The work at which William had toiled indefatigably during
many gloomy and anxious years was at length accomplished. The great
coalition was formed. It was plain that a desperate conflict was at hand.
The oppressor of Europe would have to defend himself against England
allied with Charles the Second King of Spain, with the Emperor Leopold,
and with the Germanic and Batavian federations, and was likely to have no
ally except the Sultan, who was waging war against the House of Austria on
the Danube.

Lewis had, towards the close of the preceding year, taken his enemies at a
disadvantage, and had struck the first blow before they were prepared to
parry it. But that blow, though heavy, was not aimed at the part where it
might have been mortal. Had hostilities been commenced on the Batavian
frontier, William and his army would probably have been detained on the
continent, and James might have continued to govern England. Happily,
Lewis, under an infatuation which many pious Protestants confidently
ascribed to the righteous judgment of God, had neglected the point on
which the fate of the whole civilised world depended, and had made a great
display of power, promptitude, and energy, in a quarter where the most
splendid achievements could produce nothing more than an illumination and
a Te Deum. A French army under the command of Marshal Duras had invaded
the Palatinate and some of the neighbouring principalities. But this
expedition, though it had been completely successful, and though the skill
and vigour with which it had been conducted had excited general
admiration, could not perceptibly affect the event of the tremendous
struggle which was approaching. France would soon be attacked on every
side. It would be impossible for Duras long to retain possession of the
provinces which he had surprised and overrun. An atrocious thought rose in
the mind of Louvois, who, in military affairs, had the chief sway at
Versailles. He was a man distinguished by zeal for what he thought the
public interests, by capacity, and by knowledge of all that related to the
administration of war, but of a savage and obdurate nature. If the cities
of the Palatinate could not be retained, they might be destroyed. If the
soil of the Palatinate was not to furnish supplies to the French, it might
be so wasted that it would at least furnish no supplies to the Germans.
The ironhearted statesman submitted his plan, probably with much
management and with some disguise, to Lewis; and Lewis, in an evil hour
for his fame, assented. Duras received orders to turn one of the fairest
regions of Europe into a wilderness. Fifteen years earlier Turenne had
ravaged part of that fine country. But the ravages committed by Turenne,
though they have left a deep stain on his glory, were mere sport in
comparison with the horrors of this second devastation. The French
commander announced to near half a million of human beings that he granted
them three days of grace, and that, within that time, they must shift for
themselves. Soon the roads and fields, which then lay deep in snow, were
blackened by innumerable multitudes of men, women, and children flying
from their homes. Many died of cold and hunger: but enough survived to
fill the streets of all the cities of Europe with lean and squalid
beggars, who had once been thriving farmers and shopkeepers. Meanwhile the
work of destruction began. The flames went up from every marketplace,
every hamlet, every parish church, every country seat, within the devoted
provinces. The fields where the corn had been sown were ploughed up. The
orchards were hewn down. No promise of a harvest was left on the fertile
plains near what had once been Frankenthal. Not a vine, not an almond
tree, was to be seen on the slopes of the sunny hills round what had once
been Heidelberg. No respect was shown to palaces, to temples, to
monasteries, to infirmaries, to beautiful works of art, to monuments of
the illustrious dead. The farfamed castle of the Elector Palatine was
turned into a heap of ruins. The adjoining hospital was sacked. The
provisions, the medicines, the pallets on which the sick lay were
destroyed. The very stones of which Mannheim had been built were flung
into the Rhine. The magnificent Cathedral of Spires perished, and with it
the marble sepulchres of eight Caesars. The coffins were broken open. The
ashes were scattered to the winds, 106 Treves,
with its fair bridge, its Roman amphitheatre, its venerable churches,
convents, and colleges, was doomed to the same fate. But, before this last
crime had been perpetrated, Lewis was recalled to a better mind by the
execrations of all the neighbouring nations, by the silence and confusion
of his flatterers, and by the expostulations of his wife. He had been more
than two years secretly married to Frances de Maintenon, the governess of
his natural children. It would be hard to name any woman who, with so
little romance in her temper, has had so much in her life. Her early years
had been passed in poverty and obscurity. Her first husband had supported
himself by writing burlesque farces and poems. When she attracted the
notice of her sovereign, she could no longer boast of youth or beauty: but
she possessed in an extraordinary degree those more lasting charms, which
men of sense, whose passions age has tamed, and whose life is a life of
business and care, prize most highly in a female companion. Her character
was such as has been well compared to that soft green on which the eye,
wearied by warm tints and glaring lights, reposes with pleasure. A just
understanding; an inexhaustible yet never redundant flow of rational,
gentle, and sprightly conversation; a temper of which the serenity was
never for a moment ruffled, a tact which surpassed the tact of her sex as
much as the tact of her sex surpasses the tact of ours; such were the
qualities which made the widow of a buffoon first the confidential friend,
and then the spouse, of the proudest and most powerful of European kings.
It was said that Lewis had been with difficulty prevented by the arguments
and vehement entreaties of Louvois from declaring her Queen of France. It
is certain that she regarded Louvois as her enemy. Her hatred of him,
cooperating perhaps with better feelings, induced her to plead the cause
of the unhappy people of the Rhine. She appealed to those sentiments of
compassion which, though weakened by many corrupting influences, were not
altogether extinct in her husband’s mind, and to those sentiments of
religion which had too often impelled him to cruelty, but which, on the
present occasion, were on the side of humanity. He relented: and Treves
was spared, 107 In truth he could hardly fail
to perceive that he had committed a great error. The devastation of the
Palatinate, while it had not in any sensible degree lessened the power of
his enemies, had inflamed their animosity, and had furnished them with
inexhaustible matter for invective. The cry of vengeance rose on every
side. Whatever scruple either branch of the House of Austria might have
felt about coalescing with Protestants was completely removed. Lewis
accused the Emperor and the Catholic King of having betrayed the cause of
the Church; of having allied themselves with an usurper who was the avowed
champion of the great schism; of having been accessary to the foul wrong
done to a lawful sovereign who was guilty of no crime but zeal for the
true religion. James sent to Vienna and Madrid piteous letters, in which
he recounted his misfortunes, and implored the assistance of his brother
kings, his brothers also in the faith, against the unnatural children and
the rebellious subjects who had driven him into exile. But there was
little difficulty in framing a plausible answer both to the reproaches of
Lewis and to the supplications of James. Leopold and Charles declared that
they had not, even for purposes of just selfdefence, leagued themselves
with heretics, till their enemy had, for purposes of unjust aggression,
leagued himself with Mahometans. Nor was this the worst. The French King,
not content with assisting the Moslem against the Christians, was himself
treating Christians with a barbarity which would have shocked the very
Moslem. His infidel allies, to do them justice, had not perpetrated on the
Danube such outrages against the edifices and the members of the Holy
Catholic Church as he who called himself the eldest son of that Church was
perpetrating on the Rhine. On these grounds, the princes to whom James had
appealed replied by appealing, with many professions of good will and
compassion, to himself. He was surely too just to blame them for thinking
that it was their first duty to defend their own people against such
outrages as had turned the Palatinate into a desert, or for calling in the
aid of Protestants against an enemy who had not scrupled to call in the
aid of the Turks, 108

During the winter and the earlier part of the spring, the powers hostile
to France were gathering their strength for a great effort, and were in
constant communication with one another. As the season for military
operations approached, the solemn appeals of injured nations to the God of
battles came forth in rapid succession. The manifesto of the Germanic body
appeared in February; that of the States General in March; that of the
House of Brandenburg in April; and that of Spain in May, 109

Here, as soon as the ceremony of the coronation was over, the House of
Commons determined to take into consideration the late proceedings of the
French king, 110 In the debate, that hatred of
the powerful, unscrupulous and imperious Lewis, which had, during twenty
years of vassalage, festered in the hearts of Englishmen, broke violently
forth. He was called the most Christian Turk, the most Christian ravager
of Christendom, the most Christian barbarian who had perpetrated on
Christians outrages of which his infidel allies would have been ashamed,
111
A committee, consisting chiefly of ardent Whigs, was appointed to prepare
an address. John Hampden, the most ardent Whig among them, was put into
the chair; and he produced a composition too long, too rhetorical, and too
vituperative to suit the lips of the Speaker or the ears of the King.
Invectives against Lewis might perhaps, in the temper in which the House
then was, have passed without censure, if they had not been accompanied by
severe reflections on the character and administration of Charles the
Second, whose memory, in spite of all his faults, was affectionately
cherished by the Tories. There were some very intelligible allusions to
Charles’s dealings with the Court of Versailles, and to the foreign woman
whom that Court had sent to lie like a snake in his bosom. The House was
with good reason dissatisfied. The address was recommitted, and, having
been made more concise, and less declamatory and acrimonious, was approved
and presented, 112 William’s attention was called
to the wrongs which France had done to him and to his kingdom; and he was
assured that, whenever he should resort to arms for the redress of those
wrongs, he should be heartily supported by his people. He thanked the
Commons warmly. Ambition, he said, should never induce him to draw the
sword: but he had no choice: France had already attacked England; and it
was necessary to exercise the right of selfdefence. A few days later war
was proclaimed, 113

Of the grounds of quarrel alleged by the Commons in their address, and by
the King in his manifesto, the most serious was the interference of Lewis
in the affairs of Ireland. In that country great events had, during
several months, followed one another in rapid succession. Of those events
it is now time to relate the history, a history dark with crime and
sorrow, yet full of interest and instruction.

CHAPTER XII

WILLIAM had assumed, together with the title of King of England, the title
of King of Ireland. For all our jurists then regarded Ireland as a mere
colony, more important indeed than Massachusetts, Virginia, or Jamaica,
but, like Massachusetts, Virginia, and Jamaica, dependent on the mother
country, and bound to pay allegiance to the Sovereign whom the mother
country had called to the throne, 114

In fact, however, the Revolution found Ireland emancipated from the
dominion of the English colony. As early as the year 1686, James had
determined to make that island a place of arms which might overawe Great
Britain, and a place of refuge where, if any disaster happened in Great
Britain, the members of his Church might find refuge. With this view he
had exerted all his power for the purpose of inverting the relation
between the conquerors and the aboriginal population. The execution of his
design he had intrusted, in spite of the remonstrances of his English
counsellors, to the Lord Deputy Tyrconnel. In the autumn of 1688, the
process was complete. The highest offices in the state, in the army, and
in the Courts of justice, were, with scarcely an exception, filled by
Papists. A pettifogger named Alexander Fitton, who had been detected in
forgery, who had been fined for misconduct by the House of Lords at
Westminster, who had been many years in prison, and who was equally
deficient in legal knowledge and in the natural good sense and acuteness
by which the want of legal knowledge has sometimes been supplied, was Lord
Chancellor. His single merit was that he had apostatized from the
Protestant religion; and this merit was thought sufficient to wash out
even the stain of his Saxon extraction. He soon proved himself worthy of
the confidence of his patrons. On the bench of justice he declared that
there was not one heretic in forty thousand who was not a villain. He
often, after hearing a cause in which the interests of his Church were
concerned, postponed his decision, for the purpose, as he avowed, of
consulting his spiritual director, a Spanish priest, well read doubtless
in Escobar, 115 Thomas Nugent, a Roman
Catholic who had never distinguished himself at the bar except by his
brogue and his blunders, was Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, 116
Stephen Rice, a Roman Catholic, whose abilities and learning were not
disputed even by the enemies of his nation and religion, but whose known
hostility to the Act of Settlement excited the most painful apprehensions
in the minds of all who held property under that Act, was Chief Baron of
the Exchequer, 117 Richard Nagle, an acute and
well read lawyer, who had been educated in a Jesuit college, and whose
prejudices were such as might have been expected from his education, was
Attorney General, 118

Keating, a highly respectable Protestant, was still Chief Justice of the
Common Pleas: but two Roman Catholic judges sate with him. It ought to be
added that one of those judges, Daly, was a man of sense, moderation and
integrity. The matters however which came before the Court of Common Pleas
were not of great moment. Even the King’s Bench was at this time almost
deserted. The Court of Exchequer overflowed with business; for it was the
only court at Dublin from which no writ of error lay to England, and
consequently the only court in which the English could be oppressed and
pillaged without hope of redress. Rice, it was said, had declared that
they should have from him exactly what the law, construed with the utmost
strictness, gave them, and nothing more. What, in his opinion, the law,
strictly construed, gave them, they could easily infer from a saying
which, before he became a judge, was often in his mouth. “I will drive,”
he used to say, “a coach and six through the Act of Settlement.” He now
carried his threat daily into execution. The cry of all Protestants was
that it mattered not what evidence they produced before him; that, when
their titles were to be set aside, the rankest forgeries, the most
infamous witnesses, were sure to have his countenance. To his court his
countrymen came in multitudes with writs of ejectment and writs of
trespass. In his court the government attacked at once the charters of all
the cities and boroughs in Ireland; and he easily found pretexts for
pronouncing all those charters forfeited. The municipal corporations,
about a hundred in number, had been instituted to be the strongholds of
the reformed religion and of the English interest, and had consequently
been regarded by the Irish Roman Catholics with an aversion which cannot
be thought unnatural or unreasonable. Had those bodies been remodelled in
a judicious and impartial manner, the irregularity of the proceedings by
which so desirable a result had been attained might have been pardoned.
But it soon appeared that one exclusive system had been swept away only to
make room for another. The boroughs were subjected to the absolute
authority of the Crown. Towns in which almost every householder was an
English Protestant were placed under the government of Irish Roman
Catholics. Many of the new Aldermen had never even seen the places over
which they were appointed to bear rule. At the same time the Sheriffs, to
whom belonged the execution of writs and the nomination of juries, were
selected in almost every instance from the caste which had till very
recently been excluded from all public trust. It was affirmed that some of
these important functionaries had been burned in the hand for theft.
Others had been servants to Protestants; and the Protestants added, with
bitter scorn, that it was fortunate for the country when this was the
case; for that a menial who had cleaned the plate and rubbed down the
horse of an English gentleman might pass for a civilised being, when
compared with many of the native aristocracy whose lives had been spent in
coshering or marauding. To such Sheriffs no colonist, even if he had been
so strangely fortunate as to obtain a judgment, dared to intrust an
execution, 119

Thus the civil power had, in the space of a few months, been transferred
from the Saxon to the Celtic population. The transfer of the military
power had been not less complete. The army, which, under the command of
Ormond, had been the chief safeguard of the English ascendency, had ceased
to exist. Whole regiments had been dissolved and reconstructed. Six
thousand Protestant veterans, deprived of their bread, were brooding in
retirement over their wrongs, or had crossed the sea and joined the
standard of William. Their place was supplied by men who had long suffered
oppression, and who, finding themselves suddenly transformed from slaves
into masters, were impatient to pay back, with accumulated usury, the
heavy debt of injuries and insults. The new soldiers, it was said, never
passed an Englishman without cursing him and calling him by some foul
name. They were the terror of every Protestant innkeeper; for, from the
moment when they came under his roof, they ate and drank every thing: they
paid for nothing; and by their rude swaggering they scared more
respectable guests from his door, 120

Such was the state of Ireland when the Prince of Orange landed at Torbay.
From that time every packet which arrived at Dublin brought tidings, such
as could not but increase the mutual fear and loathing of the hostile
races. The colonist, who, after long enjoying and abusing power, had now
tasted for a moment the bitterness of servitude, the native, who, having
drunk to the dregs all the bitterness of servitude, had at length for a
moment enjoyed and abused power, were alike sensible that a great crisis,
a crisis like that of 1641, was at hand. The majority impatiently expected
Phelim O’Neil to revive in Tyrconnel. The minority saw in William a second
Over.

On which side the first blow was struck was a question which Williamites
and Jacobites afterwards debated with much asperity. But no question could
be more idle. History must do to both parties the justice which neither
has ever done to the other, and must admit that both had fair pleas and
cruel provocations. Both had been placed, by a fate for which neither was
answerable, in such a situation that, human nature being what it is, they
could not but regard each other with enmity. During three years the
government which might have reconciled them had systematically employed
its whole power for the purpose of inflaming their enmity to madness. It
was now impossible to establish in Ireland a just and beneficent
government, a government which should know no distinction of race or of
sect, a government which, while strictly respecting the rights guaranteed
by law to the new landowners, should alleviate by a judicious liberality
the misfortunes of the ancient gentry. Such a government James might have
established in the day of his power. But the opportunity had passed away:
compromise had become impossible: the two infuriated castes were alike
convinced that it was necessary to oppress or to be oppressed, and that
there could be no safety but in victory, vengeance, and dominion. They
agreed only in spurning out of the way every mediator who sought to
reconcile them.

During some weeks there were outrages, insults, evil reports, violent
panics, the natural preludes of the terrible conflict which was at hand. A
rumour spread over the whole island that, on the ninth of December, there
would be a general massacre of the Englishry. Tyrconnel sent for the chief
Protestants of Dublin to the Castle, and, with his usual energy of
diction, invoked on himself all the vengeance of heaven if the report was
not a cursed, a blasted, a confounded lie. It was said that, in his rage
at finding his oaths ineffectual, he pulled off his hat and wig, and flung
them into the fire, 121 But lying Dick Talbot was so
well known that his imprecations and gesticulations only strengthened the
apprehension which they were meant to allay. Ever since the recall of
Clarendon there had been a large emigration of timid and quiet people from
the Irish ports to England. That emigration now went on faster than ever.
It was not easy to obtain a passage on board of a well built or commodious
vessel. But many persons, made bold by the excess of fear, and choosing
rather to trust the winds and waves than the exasperated Irishry, ventured
to encounter all the dangers of Saint George’s Channel and of the Welsh
coast in open boats and in the depth of winter. The English who remained
began, in almost every county, to draw close together. Every large country
house became a fortress. Every visitor who arrived after nightfall was
challenged from a loophole or from a barricaded window; and, if he
attempted to enter without pass words and explanations, a blunderbuss was
presented to him. On the dreaded night of the ninth of December, there was
scarcely one Protestant mansion from the Giant’s Causeway to Bantry Bay in
which armed men were not watching and lights burning from the early sunset
to the late sunrise, 122

A minute account of what passed in one district at this time has come down
to us, and well illustrates the general state of the kingdom. The
south-western part of Kerry is now well known as the most beautiful tract
in the British isles. The mountains, the glens, the capes stretching far
into the Atlantic, the crags on which the eagles build, the rivulets
brawling down rocky passes, the lakes overhung by groves in which the wild
deer find covert, attract every summer crowds of wanderers sated with the
business and the pleasures of great cities. The beauties of that country
are indeed too often hidden in the mist and rain which the west wind
brings up from a boundless ocean. But, on the rare days when the sun
shines out in all his glory, the landscape has a freshness and a warmth of
colouring seldom found in our latitude. The myrtle loves the soil. The
arbutus thrives better than even on the sunny shore of Calabria, 123
The turf is of livelier hue than elsewhere: the hills glow with a richer
purple: the varnish of the holly and ivy is more glossy; and berries of a
brighter red peep through foliage of a brighter green. But during the
greater part of the seventeenth century, this paradise was as little known
to the civilised world as Spitzbergen or Greenland. If ever it was
mentioned, it was mentioned as a horrible desert, a chaos of bogs,
thickets, and precipices, where the she wolf still littered, and where
some half naked savages, who could not speak a word of English, made
themselves burrows in the mud, and lived on roots and sour milk, 124

At length, in the year 1670, the benevolent and enlightened Sir William
Petty determined to form an English settlement in this wild district. He
possessed a large domain there, which has descended to a posterity worthy
of such an ancestor. On the improvement of that domain he expended, it was
said, not less than ten thousand pounds. The little town which he founded,
named from the bay of Kenmare, stood at the head of that bay, under a
mountain ridge, on the summit of which travellers now stop to gaze upon
the loveliest of the three lakes of Killarney. Scarcely any village, built
by an enterprising band of New Englanders, far from the dwellings of their
countrymen, in the midst of the hunting grounds of the Red Indians, was
more completely out of the pale of civilisation than Kenmare. Between
Petty’s settlement and the nearest English habitation the journey by land
was of two days through a wild and dangerous country. Yet the place
prospered. Forty-two houses were erected. The population amounted to a
hundred and eighty. The land round the town was well cultivated. The
cattle were numerous. Two small barks were employed in fishing and trading
along the coast. The supply of herrings, pilchards, mackerel, and salmon
was plentiful, and would have been still more plentiful, had not the beach
been, in the finest part of the year, covered by multitudes of seals,
which preyed on the fish of the bay. Yet the seal was not an unwelcome
visitor: his fur was valuable,; and his oil supplied light through the
long nights of winter. An attempt was made with great success to set up
iron works. It was not yet the practice to employ coal for the purpose of
smelting; and the manufacturers of Kent and Sussex had much difficulty in
procuring timber at a reasonable price. The neighbourhood of Kenmare was
then richly wooded; and Petty found it a gainful speculation to send ore
thither. The lovers of the picturesque still regret the woods of oak and
arbutus which were cut down to feed his furnaces. Another scheme had
occurred to his active and intelligent mind. Some of the neighbouring
islands abounded with variegated marble, red and white, purple and green.
Petty well knew at what cost the ancient Romans had decorated their baths
and temples with many coloured columns hewn from Laconian and African
quarries; and he seems to have indulged the hope that the rocks of his
wild domain in Kerry might furnish embellishments to the mansions of Saint
James’s Square, and to the choir of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, 125

From the first, the settlers had found that they must be prepared to
exercise the right of selfdefence to an extent which would have been
unnecessary and unjustifiable in a well governed country. The law was
altogether without force in the highlands which lie on the south of the
vale of Tralee. No officer of justice willingly ventured into those parts.
One pursuivant who in 1680 attempted to execute a warrant there was
murdered. The people of Kenmare seem however to have been sufficiently
secured by their union, their intelligence and their spirit, till the
close of the year 1688. Then at length the effects of the policy of
Tyrconnel began to be felt ever, in that remote corner of Ireland. In the
eyes of the peasantry of Munster the colonists were aliens and heretics.
The buildings, the boats, the machines, the granaries, the dairies, the
furnaces, were doubtless contemplated by the native race with that mingled
envy and contempt with which the ignorant naturally regard the triumphs of
knowledge. Nor is it at all improbable that the emigrants had been guilty
of those faults from which civilised men who settle among an uncivilised
people are rarely free. The power derived from superior intelligence had,
we may easily believe, been sometimes displayed with insolence, and
sometimes exerted with injustice. Now therefore, when the news spread from
altar to altar, and from cabin to cabin, that the strangers were to be
driven out, and that their houses and lands were to be given as a booty to
the children of the soil, a predatory war commenced. Plunderers, thirty,
forty, seventy in a troop, prowled round the town, some with firearms,
some with pikes. The barns were robbed. The horses were stolen. In one
foray a hundred and forty cattle were swept away and driven off through
the ravines of Glengariff. In one night six dwellings were broken open and
pillaged. At last the colonists, driven to extremity, resolved to die like
men rather than be murdered in their beds. The house built by Petty for
his agent was the largest in the place. It stood on a rocky peninsula
round which the waves of the bay broke. Here the whole population
assembled, seventy-five fighting men, with about a hundred women and
children. They had among them sixty firelocks, and as many pikes and
swords. Round the agent’s house they threw up with great speed a wall of
turf fourteen feet in height and twelve in thickness. The space enclosed
was about half an acre. Within this rampart all the arms, the ammunition
and the provisions of the settlement were collected, and several huts of
thin plank were built. When these preparations were completed, the men of
Kenmare began to make vigorous reprisals on their Irish neighbours, seized
robbers, recovered stolen property, and continued during some weeks to act
in all things as an independent commonwealth. The government was carried
on by elective officers, to whom every member of the society swore
fidelity on the Holy Gospels, 126

While the people of the small town of Kenmare were thus bestirring
themselves, similar preparations for defence were made by larger
communities on a larger scale. Great numbers of gentlemen and yeomen
quitted the open country, and repaired to those towns which had been
founded and incorporated for the purpose of bridling the native
population, and which, though recently placed under the government of
Roman Catholic magistrates, were still inhabited chiefly by Protestants. A
considerable body of armed colonists mustered at Sligo, another at
Charleville, a third at Marlow, a fourth still more formidable at Bandon,
127
But the principal strongholds of the Englishry during this evil time were
Enniskillen and Londonderry.

Enniskillen, though the capital of the county of Fermanagh, was then
merely a village. It was built on an island surrounded by the river which
joins the two beautiful sheets of water known by the common name of Lough
Erne. The stream and both the lakes were overhung on every side by natural
forests. Enniskillen consisted of about eighty dwellings clustering round
an ancient castle. The inhabitants were, with scarcely an exception,
Protestants, and boasted that their town had been true to the Protestant
cause through the terrible rebellion which broke out in 1641. Early in
December they received from Dublin an intimation that two companies of
Popish infantry were to be immediately quartered on them. The alarm of the
little community was great, and the greater because it was known that a
preaching friar had been exerting himself to inflame the Irish population
of the neighbourhood against the heretics. A daring resolution was taken.
Come what might, the troops should not be admitted. Yet the means of
defence were slender. Not ten pounds of powder, not twenty firelocks fit
for use, could be collected within the walls. Messengers were sent with
pressing letters to summon the Protestant gentry of the vicinage to the
rescue; and the summons was gallantly obeyed. In a few hours two hundred
foot and a hundred and fifty horse had assembled. Tyrconnel’s soldiers
were already at hand. They brought with them a considerable supply of arms
to be distributed among the peasantry. The peasantry greeted the royal
standard with delight, and accompanied the march in great numbers. The
townsmen and their allies, instead of waiting to be attacked, came boldly
forth to encounter the intruders. The officers of James had expected no
resistance. They were confounded when they saw confronting them a column
of foot, flanked by a large body of mounted gentlemen and yeomen. The
crowd of camp followers ran away in terror. The soldiers made a retreat so
precipitate that it might be called a flight, and scarcely halted till
they were thirty miles off at Cavan, 128

The Protestants, elated by this easy victory, proceeded to make
arrangements for the government and defence of Enniskillen and of the
surrounding country. Gustavus Hamilton, a gentleman who had served in the
army, but who had recently been deprived of his commission by Tyrconnel,
and had since been living on an estate in Fermanagh, was appointed
Governor, and took up his residence in the castle. Trusty men were
enlisted, and armed with great expedition. As there was a scarcity of
swords and pikes, smiths were employed to make weapons by fastening
scythes on poles. All the country houses round Lough Erne were turned into
garrisons. No Papist was suffered to be at large in the town; and the
friar who was accused of exerting his eloquence against the Englishry was
thrown into prison, 129

The other great fastness of Protestantism was a place of more importance.
Eighty years before, during the troubles caused by the last struggle of
the houses of O’Neil and O’Donnel against the authority of James the
First, the ancient city of Derry had been surprised by one of the native
chiefs: the inhabitants had been slaughtered, and the houses reduced to
ashes. The insurgents were speedily put down and punished: the government
resolved to restore the ruined town: the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common
Council of London were invited to assist in the work; and King James the
First made over to them in their corporate capacity the ground covered by
the ruins of the old Derry, and about six thousand English acres in the
neighbourhood, 130

This country, then uncultivated and uninhabited, is now enriched by
industry, embellished by taste, and pleasing even to eyes accustomed to
the well tilled fields and stately manor houses of England. A new city
soon arose which, on account of its connection with the capital of the
empire, was called Londonderry. The buildings covered the summit and slope
of a hill which overlooked the broad stream of the Foyle, then whitened by
vast flocks of wild swans, 131 On the highest ground stood
the Cathedral, a church which, though erected when the secret of Gothic
architecture was lost, and though ill qualified to sustain a comparison
with the awful temples of the middle ages, is not without grace and
dignity. Near the Cathedral rose the palace of the Bishop, whose see was
one of the most valuable in Ireland. The city was in form nearly an
ellipse; and the principal streets formed a cross, the arms of which met
in a square called the Diamond. The original houses have been either
rebuilt or so much repaired that their ancient character can no longer be
traced; but many of them were standing within living memory. They were in
general two stories in height; and some of them had stone staircases on
the outside. The dwellings were encompassed by a wall of which the whole
circumference was little less than a mile. On the bastions were planted
culverins and sakers presented by the wealthy guilds of London to the
colony. On some of these ancient guns, which have done memorable service
to a great cause, the devices of the Fishmongers’ Company, of the
Vintners’ Company, and of the Merchant Tailors’ Company are still
discernible, 132

The inhabitants were Protestants of Anglosaxon blood. They were indeed not
all of one country or of one church but Englishmen and Scotchmen,
Episcopalians and Presbyterians, seem to have generally lived together in
friendship, a friendship which is sufficiently explained by their common
antipathy to the Irish race and to the Popish religion. During the
rebellion of 1641, Londonderry had resolutely held out against the native
chieftains, and had been repeatedly besieged in vain, 133
Since the Restoration the city had prospered. The Foyle, when the tide was
high, brought up ships of large burden to the quay. The fisheries throve
greatly. The nets, it was said, were sometimes so full that it was
necessary to fling back multitudes of fish into the waves. The quantity of
salmon caught annually was estimated at eleven hundred thousand pounds’
weight, 134

The people of Londonderry shared in the alarm which, towards the close of
the year 1688, was general among the Protestants settled in Ireland. It
was known that the aboriginal peasantry of the neighbourhood were laying
in pikes and knives. Priests had been haranguing in a style of which, it
must be owned, the Puritan part of the Anglosaxon colony had little right
to complain, about the slaughter of the Amalekites, and the judgments
which Saul had brought on himself by sparing one of the proscribed race.
Rumours from various quarters and anonymous letters in various hands
agreed in naming the ninth of December as the day fixed for the
extirpation of the strangers. While the minds of the citizens were
agitated by these reports, news came that a regiment of twelve hundred
Papists, commanded by a Papist, Alexander Macdonnell, Earl of Antrim, had
received orders from the Lord Deputy to occupy Londonderry, and was
already on the march from Coleraine. The consternation was extreme. Some
were for closing the gates and resisting; some for submitting; some for
temporising. The corporation had, like the other corporations of Ireland,
been remodelled. The magistrates were men of low station and character.
Among them was only one person of Anglosaxon extraction; and he had turned
Papist. In such rulers the inhabitants could place no confidence, 135
The Bishop, Ezekiel Hopkins, resolutely adhered to the doctrine of
nonresistance, which he had preached during many years, and exhorted his
flock to go patiently to the slaughter rather than incur the guilt of
disobeying the Lord’s Anointed, 136 Antrim
was meanwhile drawing nearer and nearer. At length the citizens saw from
the walls his troops arrayed on the opposite shore of the Foyle. There was
then no bridge: but there was a ferry which kept up a constant
communication between the two banks of the river; and by this ferry a
detachment from Antrim’s regiment crossed. The officers presented
themselves at the gate, produced a warrant directed to the Mayor and
Sheriffs, and demanded admittance and quarters for his Majesty’s soldiers.

Just at this moment thirteen young apprentices, most of whom appear, from
their names, to have been of Scottish birth or descent, flew to the guard
room, armed themselves, seized the keys of the city, rushed to the Ferry
Gate, closed it in the face of the King’s officers, and let down the
portcullis. James Morison, a citizen more advanced in years, addressed the
intruders from the top of the wall and advised them to be gone. They stood
in consultation before the gate till they heard him cry, “Bring a great
gun this way.” They then thought it time to get beyond the range of shot.
They retreated, reembarked, and rejoined their comrades on the other side
of the river. The flame had already spread. The whole city was up. The
other gates were secured. Sentinels paced the ramparts everywhere. The
magazines were opened. Muskets and gunpowder were distributed. Messengers
were sent, under cover of the following night, to the Protestant gentlemen
of the neighbouring counties. The bishop expostulated in vain. It is
indeed probable that the vehement and daring young Scotchmen who had taken
the lead on this occasion had little respect for his office. One of them
broke in on a discourse with which he interrupted the military
preparations by exclaiming, “A good sermon, my lord; a very good sermon;
but we have not time to hear it just now.” 137

The Protestants of the neighbourhood promptly obeyed the summons of
Londonderry. Within forty-eight hours hundreds of horse and foot came by
various roads to the city. Antrim, not thinking himself strong enough to
risk an attack, or not disposed to take on himself the responsibility of
commencing a civil war without further orders, retired with his troops to
Coleraine.

It might have been expected that the resistance of Enniskillen and
Londonderry would have irritated Tyrconnel into taking some desperate
step. And in truth his savage and imperious temper was at first inflamed
by the news almost to madness. But, after wreaking his rage, as usual, on
his wig, he became somewhat calmer. Tidings of a very sobering nature had
just reached him. The Prince of Orange was marching unopposed to London.
Almost every county and every great town in England had declared for him.
James, deserted by his ablest captains and by his nearest relatives, had
sent commissioners to treat with the invaders, and had issued writs
convoking a Parliament. While the result of the negotiations which were
pending in England was uncertain, the Viceroy could not venture to take a
bloody revenge on the refractory Protestants of Ireland. He therefore
thought it expedient to affect for a time a clemency and moderation which
were by no means congenial to his disposition. The task of quieting the
Englishry of Ulster was intrusted to William Stewart, Viscount Mountjoy.
Mountjoy, a brave soldier, an accomplished scholar, a zealous Protestant,
and yet a zealous Tory, was one of the very few members of the Established
Church who still held office in Ireland. He was Master of the Ordnance in
that kingdom, and was colonel of a regiment in which an uncommonly large
proportion of the Englishry had been suffered to remain. At Dublin he was
the centre of a small circle of learned and ingenious men who had, under
his presidency, formed themselves into a Royal Society, the image, on a
small scale, of the Royal Society of London. In Ulster, with which he was
peculiarly connected, his name was held in high honour by the colonists,
138
He hastened with his regiment to Londonderry, and was well received there.
For it was known that, though he was firmly attached to hereditary
monarchy, he was not less firmly attached to the reformed religion. The
citizens readily permitted him to leave within their walls a small
garrison exclusively composed of Protestants, under the command of his
lieutenant colonel, Robert Lundy, who took the title of Governor, 139

The news of Mountjoy’s visit to Ulster was highly gratifying to the
defenders of Enniskillen. Some gentlemen deputed by that town waited on
him to request his good offices, but were disappointed by the reception
which they found. “My advice to you is,” he said, “to submit to the King’s
authority.” “What, my Lord?” said one of the deputies; “Are we to sit
still and let ourselves be butchered?” “The King,” said Mountjoy, “will
protect you.” “If all that we hear be true,” said the deputy, “his Majesty
will find it hard enough to protect himself.” The conference ended in this
unsatisfactory manner. Enniskillen still kept its attitude of defiance;
and Mountjoy returned to Dublin, 140

By this time it had indeed become evident that James could not protect
himself. It was known in Ireland that he had fled; that he had been
stopped; that he had fled again; that the Prince of Orange had arrived at
Westminster in triumph, had taken on himself the administration of the
realm, and had issued letters summoning a Convention.

Those lords and gentlemen at whose request the Prince had assumed the
government, had earnestly intreated him to take the state of Ireland into
his immediate consideration; and he had in reply assured them that he
would do his best to maintain the Protestant religion and the English
interest in that kingdom. His enemies afterwards accused him of utterly
disregarding this promise: nay, they alleged that he purposely suffered
Ireland to sink deeper and deeper in calamity. Halifax, they said, had,
with cruel and perfidious ingenuity, devised this mode of placing the
Convention under a species of duress; and the trick had succeeded but too
well. The vote which called William to the throne would not have passed so
easily but for the extreme dangers which threatened the state; and it was
in consequence of his own dishonest inactivity that those dangers had
become extreme, 141 As this accusation rests on no
proof, those who repeat it are at least bound to show that some course
clearly better than the course which William took was open to him; and
this they will find a difficult task. If indeed he could, within a few
weeks after his arrival in London, have sent a great expedition to
Ireland, that kingdom might perhaps, after a short struggle, or without a
struggle, have submitted to his authority; and a long series of crimes and
calamities might have been averted. But the factious orators and
pamphleteers, who, much at their ease, reproached him for not sending such
an expedition, would have been perplexed if they had been required to find
the men, the ships, and the funds. The English army had lately been
arrayed against him: part of it was still ill disposed towards him; and
the whole was utterly disorganized. Of the army which he had brought from
Holland not a regiment could be spared. He had found the treasury empty
and the pay of the navy in arrear. He had no power to hypothecate any part
of the public revenue. Those who lent him money lent it on no security but
his bare word. It was only by the patriotic liberality of the merchants of
London that he was enabled to defray the ordinary charges of government
till the meeting of the Convention. It is surely unjust to blame him for
not instantly fitting out, in such circumstances, an armament sufficient
to conquer a kingdom.

Perceiving that, till the government of England was settled, it would not
be in his power to interfere effectually by arms in the affairs of
Ireland, he determined to try what effect negotiation would produce. Those
who judged after the event pronounced that he had not, on this occasion,
shown his usual sagacity. He ought, they said, to have known that it was
absurd to expect submission from Tyrconnel. Such however was not at the
time the opinion of men who had the best means of information, and whose
interest was a sufficient pledge for their sincerity. A great meeting of
noblemen and gentlemen who had property in Ireland was held, during the
interregnum, at the house of the Duke of Ormond in Saint James’s Square.
They advised the Prince to try whether the Lord Deputy might not be
induced to capitulate on honourable and advantageous terms, 142
In truth there is strong reason to believe that Tyrconnel really wavered.
For, fierce as were his passions, they never made him forgetful of his
interest; and he might well doubt whether it were not for his interest, in
declining years and health, to retire from business with full indemnity
for all past offences, with high rank and with an ample fortune, rather
than to stake his life and property on the event of a war against the
whole power of England. It is certain that he professed himself willing to
yield. He opened a communication with the Prince of Orange, and affected
to take counsel with Mountjoy, and with others who, though they had not
thrown off their allegiance to James, were yet firmly attached to the
Established Church and to the English connection.

In one quarter, a quarter from which William was justified in expecting
the most judicious counsel, there was a strong conviction that the
professions of Tyrconnel were sincere. No British statesman had then so
high a reputation throughout Europe as Sir William Temple. His diplomatic
skill had, twenty years before, arrested the progress of the French power.
He had been a steady and an useful friend to the United Provinces and to
the House of Nassau. He had long been on terms of friendly confidence with
the Prince of Orange, and had negotiated that marriage to which England
owed her recent deliverance. With the affairs of Ireland Temple was
supposed to be peculiarly well acquainted. His family had considerable
property there: he had himself resided there during several years: he had
represented the county of Carlow in parliament; and a large part of his
income was derived from a lucrative Irish office. There was no height of
power, of rank, or of opulence, to which he might not have risen, if he
would have consented to quit his retreat, and to lend his assistance and
the weight of his name to the new government. But power, rank, and
opulence had less attraction for his Epicurean temper than ease and
security. He rejected the most tempting invitations, and continued to
amuse himself with his books, his tulips, and his pineapples, in rural
seclusion. With some hesitation, however, he consented to let his eldest
son John enter into the service of William. During the vacancy of the
throne, John Temple was employed in business of high importance; and, on
subjects connected with Ireland, his opinion, which might reasonably be
supposed to agree with his father’s, had great weight. The young
politician flattered himself that he had secured the services of an agent
eminently qualified to bring the negotiation with Tyrconnel to a
prosperous issue.

This agent was one of a remarkable family which had sprung from a noble
Scottish stock, but which had long been settled in Ireland, and which
professed the Roman Catholic religion. In the gay crowd which thronged
Whitehall, during those scandalous years of jubilee which immediately
followed the Restoration, the Hamiltons were preeminently conspicuous. The
long fair ringlets, the radiant bloom, and the languishing blue eyes of
the lovely Elizabeth still charm us on the canvass of Lely. She had the
glory of achieving no vulgar conquest. It was reserved for her voluptuous
beauty and for her flippant wit to overcome the aversion which the
coldhearted and scoffing Grammont felt for the indissoluble tie. One of
her brothers, Anthony, became the chronicler of that brilliant and
dissolute society of which he had been one of the most brilliant and most
dissolute members. He deserves the high praise of having, though not a
Frenchman, written the book which is, of all books, the most exquisitely
French, both in spirit and in manner. Another brother, named Richard, had,
in foreign service, gained some military experience. His wit and
politeness had distinguished him even in the splendid circle of
Versailles. It was whispered that he had dared to lift his eyes to an
exalted lady, the natural daughter of the Great King, the wife of a
legitimate prince of the House of Bourbon, and that she had not seemed to
be displeased by the attentions of her presumptuous admirer, 143
The adventurer had subsequently returned to his native country, had been
appointed Brigadier General in the Irish army, and had been sworn of the
Irish Privy Council. When the Dutch invasion was expected, he came across
Saint George’s Channel with the troops which Tyrconnel sent to reinforce
the royal army. After the flight of James, those troops submitted to the
Prince of Orange. Richard Hamilton not only made his own peace with what
was now the ruling power, but declared himself confident that, if he were
sent to Dublin, he could conduct the negotiation which had been opened
there to a happy close. If he failed, he pledged his word to return to
London in three weeks. His influence in Ireland was known to be great: his
honour had never been questioned; and he was highly esteemed by the Temple
family. John Temple declared that he would answer for Richard Hamilton as
for himself. This guarantee was thought sufficient; and Hamilton set out
for Ireland, assuring his English friends that he should soon bring
Tyrconnel to reason. The offers which he was authorised to make to the
Roman Catholics and to the Lord Deputy personally were most liberal, 144

It is not impossible that Hamilton may have really meant to perform his
promise. But when he arrived at Dublin he found that he had undertaken a
task which was beyond his power. The hesitation of Tyrconnel, whether
genuine or feigned, was at an end. He had found that he had no longer a
choice. He had with little difficulty stimulated the ignorant and
susceptible Irish to fury. To calm them was beyond his skill. Rumours were
abroad that the Viceroy was corresponding with the English; and these
rumours had set the nation on fire. The cry of the common people was that,
if he dared to sell them for wealth and honours, they would burn the
Castle and him in it, and would put themselves under the protection of
France, 145
It was necessary for him to protest, truly or falsely, that he had never
harboured any thought of submission, and that he had pretended to
negotiate only for the purpose of gaining time. Yet, before he openly
declared against the English settlers, and against England herself, what
must be a war to the death, he wished to rid himself of Mountjoy, who had
hitherto been true to the cause of James, but who, it was well known,
would never consent to be a party to the spoliation and oppression of the
colonists. Hypocritical professions of friendship and of pacific
intentions were not spared. It was a sacred duty, Tyrconnel said, to avert
the calamities which seemed to be impending. King James himself, if he
understood the whole case, would not wish his Irish friends to engage at
that moment in an enterprise which must be fatal to them and useless to
him. He would permit them, he would command them, to submit to necessity,
and to reserve themselves for better times. If any man of weight, loyal,
able, and well informed, would repair to Saint Germains and explain the
state of things, his Majesty would easily be convinced. Would Mountjoy
undertake this most honourable and important mission? Mountjoy hesitated,
and suggested that some person more likely to be acceptable to the King
should be the messenger. Tyrconnel swore, ranted, declared that, unless
King James were well advised, Ireland would sink to the pit of hell, and
insisted that Mountjoy should go as the representative of the loyal
members of the Established Church, and should be accompanied by Chief
Baron Rice, a Roman Catholic high in the royal favour. Mountjoy yielded.
The two ambassadors departed together, but with very different
commissions. Rice was charged to tell James that Mountjoy was a traitor at
heart, and had been sent to France only that the Protestants of Ireland
might be deprived of a favourite leader. The King was to be assured that
he was impatiently expected in Ireland, and that, if he would show himself
there with a French force, he might speedily retrieve his fallen fortunes,
146
The Chief Baron carried with him other instructions which were probably
kept secret even from the Court of Saint Germains. If James should be
unwilling to put himself at the head of the native population of Ireland,
Rice was directed to request a private audience of Lewis, and to offer to
make the island a province of France, 147

As soon as the two envoys had departed, Tyrconnel set himself to prepare
for the conflict which had become inevitable; and he was strenuously
assisted by the faithless Hamilton. The Irish nation was called to arms;
and the call was obeyed with strange promptitude and enthusiasm. The flag
on the Castle of Dublin was embroidered with the words, “Now or never: now
and for ever:” and those words resounded through the whole island, 148
Never in modern Europe has there been such a rising up of a whole people.
The habits of the Celtic peasant were such that he made no sacrifice in
quitting his potatoe ground for the camp. He loved excitement and
adventure. He feared work far more than danger. His national and religious
feelings had, during three years, been exasperated by the constant
application of stimulants. At every fair and market he had heard that a
good time was at hand, that the tyrants who spoke Saxon and lived in
slated houses were about to be swept away, and that the land would again
belong to its own children. By the peat fires of a hundred thousand cabins
had nightly been sung rude ballads which predicted the deliverance of the
oppressed race. The priests, most of whom belonged to those old families
which the Act of Settlement had ruined, but which were still revered by
the native population, had, from a thousand altars, charged every Catholic
to show his zeal for the true Church by providing weapons against the day
when it might be necessary to try the chances of battle in her cause. The
army, which, under Ormond, had consisted of only eight regiments, was now
increased to forty-eight: and the ranks were soon full to overflowing. It
was impossible to find at short notice one tenth of the number of good
officers which was required. Commissions were scattered profusely among
idle cosherers who claimed to be descended from good Irish families. Yet
even thus the supply of captains and lieutenants fell short of the demand;
and many companies were commanded by cobblers, tailors and footmen, 149

The pay of the soldiers was very small. The private had only threepence a
day. One half only of this pittance was ever given him in money; and that
half was often in arrear. But a far more seductive bait than his miserable
stipend was the prospect of boundless license. If the government allowed
him less than sufficed for his wants, it was not extreme to mark the means
by which he supplied the deficiency. Though four fifths of the population
of Ireland were Celtic and Roman Catholic, more than four fifths of the
property of Ireland belonged to the Protestant Englishry. The garners, the
cellars, above all the flocks and herds of the minority, were abandoned to
the majority. Whatever the regular troops spared was devoured by bands of
marauders who overran almost every barony in the island. For the arming
was now universal. No man dared to present himself at mass without some
weapon, a pike, a long knife called a skean, or, at the very least, a
strong ashen stake, pointed and hardened in the fire. The very women were
exhorted by their spiritual directors to carry skeans. Every smith, every
carpenter, every cutler, was at constant work on guns and blades. It was
scarcely possible to get a horse shod. If any Protestant artisan refused
to assist in the manufacture of implements which were to be used against
his nation and his religion, he was flung into prison. It seems probable
that, at the end of February, at least a hundred thousand Irishmen were in
arms. Near fifty thousand of them were soldiers. The rest were banditti,
whose violence and licentiousness the Government affected to disapprove,
but did not really exert itself to suppress. The Protestants not only were
not protected, but were not suffered to protect themselves. It was
determined that they should be left unarmed in the midst of an armed and
hostile population. A day was fixed on which they were to bring all their
swords and firelocks to the parish churches; and it was notified that
every Protestant house in which, after that day, a weapon should be found
should be given up to be sacked by the soldiers. Bitter complaints were
made that any knave might, by hiding a spear head or an old gun barrel in
a corner of a mansion, bring utter ruin on the owner, 150

Chief Justice Keating, himself a Protestant, and almost the only
Protestant who still held a great place in Ireland, struggled courageously
in the cause of justice and order against the united strength of the
government and the populace. At the Wicklow assizes of that spring, he,
from the seat of judgment, set forth with great strength of language the
miserable state of the country. Whole counties, he said, were devastated
by a rabble resembling the vultures and ravens which follow the march of
an army. Most of these wretches were not soldiers. They acted under no
authority known to the law. Yet it was, he owned, but too evident that
they were encouraged and screened by some who were in high command. How
else could it be that a market overt for plunder should be held within a
short distance of the capital? The stories which travellers told of the
savage Hottentots near the Cape of Good Hope were realised in Leinster.
Nothing was more common than for an honest man to lie down rich in flocks
and herds acquired by the industry of a long life, and to wake a beggar.
It was however to small purpose that Keating attempted, in the midst of
that fearful anarchy, to uphold the supremacy of the law. Priests and
military chiefs appeared on the bench for the purpose of overawing the
judge and countenancing the robbers. One ruffian escaped because no
prosecutor dared to appear. Another declared that he had armed himself in
conformity to the orders of his spiritual guide, and to the example of
many persons of higher station than himself, whom he saw at that moment in
Court. Two only of the Merry Boys, as they were called, were convicted:
the worst criminals escaped; and the Chief justice indignantly told the
jurymen that the guilt of the public ruin lay at their door, 151

When such disorder prevailed in Wicklow, it is easy to imagine what must
have been the state of districts more barbarous and more remote from the
seat of government. Keating appears to have been the only magistrate who
strenuously exerted himself to put the law in force. Indeed Nugent, the
Chief justice of the highest criminal court of the realm, declared on the
bench at Cork that, without violence and spoliation, the intentions of the
Government could not be carried into effect, and that robbery must at that
conjuncture be tolerated as a necessary evil, 152

The destruction of property which took place within a few weeks would be
incredible, if it were not attested by witnesses unconnected with each
other and attached to very different interests. There is a close, and
sometimes almost a verbal, agreement between the description given by
Protestants, who, during that reign of terror, escaped, at the hazard of
their lives, to England, and the descriptions given by the envoys,
commissaries, and captains of Lewis. All agreed in declaring that it would
take many years to repair the waste which had been wrought in a few weeks
by the armed peasantry, 153 Some of the Saxon aristocracy
had mansions richly furnished, and sideboards gorgeous with silver bowls
and chargers. All this wealth disappeared. One house, in which there had
been three thousand pounds’ worth of plate, was left without a spoon, 154
But the chief riches of Ireland consisted in cattle. Innumerable flocks
and herds covered that vast expanse of emerald meadow, saturated with the
moisture of the Atlantic. More than one gentleman possessed twenty
thousand sheep and four thousand oxen. The freebooters who now overspread
the country belonged to a class which was accustomed to live on potatoes
and sour whey, and which had always regarded meat as a luxury reserved for
the rich. These men at first revelled in beef and mutton, as the savage
invaders, who of old poured down from the forests of the north on Italy,
revelled in Massic and Falernian wines. The Protestants described with
contemptuous disgust the strange gluttony of their newly liberated slaves.
The carcasses, half raw and half burned to cinders, sometimes still
bleeding, sometimes in a state of loathsome decay, were torn to pieces and
swallowed without salt, bread, or herbs. Those marauders who preferred
boiled meat, being often in want of kettles, contrived to boil the steer
in his own skin. An absurd tragicomedy is still extant, which was acted in
this and the following year at some low theatre for the amusement of the
English populace. A crowd of half naked savages appeared on the stage,
howling a Celtic song and dancing round an ox. They then proceeded to cut
steaks out of the animal while still alive and to fling the bleeding flesh
on the coals. In truth the barbarity and filthiness of the banquets of the
Rapparees was such as the dramatists of Grub Street could scarcely
caricature. When Lent began, the plunderers generally ceased to devour,
but continued to destroy. A peasant would kill a cow merely in order to
get a pair of brogues. Often a whole flock of sheep, often a herd of fifty
or sixty kine, was slaughtered: the beasts were flayed; the fleeces and
hides were carried away; and the bodies were left to poison the air. The
French ambassador reported to his master that, in six weeks, fifty
thousand horned cattle had been slain in this manner, and were rotting on
the ground all over the country. The number of sheep that were butchered
during the same time was popularly said to have been three or four hundred
thousand, 155

Any estimate which can now be framed of the value of the property
destroyed during this fearful conflict of races must necessarily be very
inexact. We are not however absolutely without materials for such an
estimate. The Quakers were neither a very numerous nor a very opulent
class. We can hardly suppose that they were more than a fiftieth part of
the Protestant population of Ireland, or that they possessed more than a
fiftieth part of the Protestant wealth of Ireland. They were undoubtedly
better treated than any other Protestant sect. James had always been
partial to them: they own that Tyrconnel did his best to protect them; and
they seem to have found favour even in the sight of the Rapparees, 156
Yet the Quakers computed their pecuniary losses at a hundred thousand
pounds, 157

In Leinster, Munster and Connaught, it was utterly impossible for the
English settlers, few as they were and dispersed, to offer any effectual
resistance to this terrible outbreak of the aboriginal population.
Charleville, Mallow, Sligo, fell into the hands of the natives. Bandon,
where the Protestants had mustered in considerable force, was reduced by
Lieutenant General Macarthy, an Irish officer who was descended from one
of the most illustrious Celtic houses, and who had long served, under a
feigned name, in the French Army, 158 The
people of Kenmare held out in their little fastness till they were
attacked by three thousand regular soldiers, and till it was known that
several pieces of ordnance were coming to batter down the turf wall which
surrounded the agent’s house. Then at length a capitulation was concluded.
The colonists were suffered to embark in a small vessel scantily supplied
with food and water. They had no experienced navigator on board: but after
a voyage of a fortnight, during which they were crowded together like
slaves in a Guinea ship, and suffered the extremity of thirst and hunger,
they reached Bristol in safety, 159 When
such was the fate of the towns, it was evident that the country seats
which the Protestant landowners had recently fortified in the three
southern provinces could no longer be defended. Many families submitted,
delivered up their arms, and thought themselves happy in escaping with
life. But many resolute and highspirited gentlemen and yeomen were
determined to perish rather than yield. They packed up such valuable
property as could easily be carried away, burned whatever they could not
remove, and, well armed and mounted, set out for those spots in Ulster
which were the strongholds of their race and of their faith. The flower of
the Protestant population of Munster and Connaught found shelter at
Enniskillen. Whatever was bravest and most truehearted in Leinster took
the road to Londonderry, 160

The spirit of Enniskillen and Londonderry rose higher and higher to meet
the danger. At both places the tidings of what had been done by the
Convention at Westminster were received with transports of joy. William
and Mary were proclaimed at Enniskillen with unanimous enthusiasm, and
with such pomp as the little town could furnish, 161 Lundy,
who commanded at Londonderry, could not venture to oppose himself to the
general sentiment of the citizens and of his own soldiers. He therefore
gave in his adhesion to the new government, and signed a declaration by
which he bound himself to stand by that government, on pain of being
considered a coward and a traitor. A vessel from England soon brought a
commission from William and Mary which confirmed him in his office, 162

To reduce the Protestants of Ulster to submission before aid could arrive
from England was now the chief object of Tyrconnel. A great force was
ordered to move northward, under the command of Richard Hamilton. This man
had violated all the obligations which are held most sacred by gentlemen
and soldiers, had broken faith with his friends the Temples, had forfeited
his military parole, and was now not ashamed to take the field as a
general against the government to which he was bound to render himself up
as a prisoner. His march left on the face of the country traces which the
most careless eye could not during many years fail to discern. His army
was accompanied by a rabble, such as Keating had well compared to the
unclean birds of prey which swarm wherever the scent of carrion is strong.
The general professed himself anxious to save from ruin and outrage all
Protestants who remained quietly at their homes; and he most readily gave
them protections tinder his hand. But these protections proved of no
avail; and he was forced to own that, whatever power he might be able to
exercise over his soldiers, he could not keep order among the mob of
campfollowers. The country behind him was a wilderness; and soon the
country before him became equally desolate. For at the fame of his
approach the colonists burned their furniture, pulled down their houses,
and retreated northward. Some of them attempted to make a stand at
Dromore, but were broken and scattered. Then the flight became wild and
tumultuous. The fugitives broke down the bridges and burned the
ferryboats. Whole towns, the seats of the Protestant population, were left
in ruins without one inhabitant. The people of Omagh destroyed their own
dwellings so utterly that no roof was left to shelter the enemy from the
rain and wind. The people of Cavan migrated in one body to Enniskillen.
The day was wet and stormy. The road was deep in mire. It was a piteous
sight to see, mingled with the armed men, the women and children weeping,
famished, and toiling through the mud up to their knees. All Lisburn fled
to Antrim; and, as the foes drew nearer, all Lisburn and Antrim together
came pouring into Londonderry. Thirty thousand Protestants, of both sexes
and of every age, were crowded behind the bulwarks of the City of Refuge.
There, at length, on the verge of the ocean, hunted to the last asylum,
and baited into a mood in which men may be destroyed, but will not easily
be subjugated, the imperial race turned desperately to bay, 163

Meanwhile Mountjoy and Rice had arrived in France. Mountjoy was instantly
put under arrest and thrown into the Bastile. James determined to comply
with the invitation which Rice had brought, and applied to Lewis for the
help of a French army. But Lewis, though he showed, as to all things which
concerned the personal dignity and comfort of his royal guests, a delicacy
even romantic, and a liberality approaching to profusion, was unwilling to
send a large body of troops to Ireland. He saw that France would have to
maintain a long war on the Continent against a formidable coalition: her
expenditure must be immense; and, great as were her resources, he felt it
to be important that nothing should be wasted. He doubtless regarded with
sincere commiseration and good will the unfortunate exiles to whom he had
given so princely a welcome. Yet neither commiseration nor good will could
prevent him from speedily discovering that his brother of England was the
dullest and most perverse of human beings. The folly of James, his
incapacity to read the characters of men and the signs of the times, his
obstinacy, always most offensively displayed when wisdom enjoined
concession, his vacillation, always exhibited most pitiably in emergencies
which required firmness, had made him an outcast from England, and might,
if his counsels were blindly followed, bring great calamities on France.
As a legitimate sovereign expelled by rebels, as a confessor of the true
faith persecuted by heretics, as a near kinsman of the House of Bourbon,
who had seated himself on the hearth of that House, he was entitled to
hospitality, to tenderness, to respect. It was fit that he should have a
stately palace and a spacious forest, that the household troops should
salute him with the highest military honours, that he should have at his
command all the hounds of the Grand Huntsman and all the hawks of the
Grand Falconer. But, when a prince, who, at the head of a great fleet and
army, had lost an empire without striking a blow, undertook to furnish
plans for naval and military expeditions; when a prince, who had been
undone by his profound ignorance of the temper of his own countrymen, of
his own soldiers, of his own domestics, of his own children, undertook to
answer for the zeal and fidelity of the Irish people, whose language he
could not speak, and on whose land he had never set his foot; it was
necessary to receive his suggestions with caution. Such were the
sentiments of Lewis; and in these sentiments he was confirmed by his
Minister of War Louvois, who, on private as well as on public grounds, was
unwilling that James should be accompanied by a large military force.
Louvois hated Lauzun. Lauzun was favourite at Saint Germains. He wore the
garter, a badge of honour which has very seldom been conferred on aliens
who were not sovereign princes. It was believed indeed at the French Court
that, in order to distinguish him from the other knights of the most
illustrious of European orders, he had been decorated with that very
George which Charles the First had, on the scaffold, put into the hands of
Juxon, 164
Lauzun had been encouraged to hope that, if French forces were sent to
Ireland, he should command them; and this ambitious hope Louvois was bent
on disappointing, 165

An army was therefore for the present refused; but every thing else was
granted. The Brest fleet was ordered to be in readiness to sail. Arms for
ten thousand men and great quantities of ammunition were put on board.
About four hundred captains, lieutenants, cadets and gunners were selected
for the important service of organizing and disciplining the Irish levies.
The chief command was held by a veteran warrior, the Count of Rosen. Under
him were Maumont, who held the rank of lieutenant general, and a brigadier
named Pusignan. Five hundred thousand crowns in gold, equivalent to about
a hundred and twelve thousand pounds sterling, were sent to Brest, 166
For James’s personal comforts provision was made with anxiety resembling
that of a tender mother equipping her son for a first campaign. The cabin
furniture, the camp furniture, the tents, the bedding, the plate, were
luxurious and superb. Nothing, which could be agreeable or useful to the
exile was too costly for the munificence, or too trifling for the
attention, of his gracious and splendid host. On the fifteenth of
February, James paid a farewell visit to Versailles. He was conducted
round the buildings and plantations with every mark of respect and
kindness. The fountains played in his honour. It was the season of the
Carnival; and never had the vast palace and the sumptuous gardens
presented a gayer aspect. In the evening the two kings, after a long and
earnest conference in private, made their appearance before a splendid
circle of lords and ladies. “I hope,” said Lewis, in his noblest and most
winning manner, “that we are about to part, never to meet again in this
world. That is the best wish that I can form for you. But, if any evil
chance should force you to return, be assured that you will find me to the
last such as you have found me hitherto.” On the seventeenth Lewis paid in
return a farewell visit to Saint Germains. At the moment of the parting
embrace he said, with his most amiable smile: “We have forgotten one
thing, a cuirass for yourself. You shall have mine.” The cuirass was
brought, and suggested to the wits of the Court ingenious allusions to the
Vulcanian panoply which Achilles lent to his feebler friend. James set out
for Brest; and his wife, overcome with sickness and sorrow, shut herself
up with her child to weep and pray, 167

James was accompanied or speedily followed by several of his own subjects,
among whom the most distinguished were his son Berwick, Cartwright Bishop
of Chester, Powis, Dover, and Melfort. Of all the retinue, none was so
odious to the people of Great Britain as Melfort. He was an apostate: he
was believed by many to be an insincere apostate; and the insolent,
arbitrary and menacing language of his state papers disgusted even the
Jacobites. He was therefore a favourite with his master: for to James
unpopularity, obstinacy, and implacability were the greatest
recommendations that a statesman could have.

What Frenchman should attend the King of England in the character of
ambassador had been the subject of grave deliberation at Versailles.
Barillon could not be passed over without a marked slight. But his
selfindulgent habits, his want of energy, and, above all, the credulity
with which he had listened to the professions of Sunderland, had made an
unfavourable impression on the mind of Lewis. What was to be done in
Ireland was not work for a trifler or a dupe. The agent of France in that
kingdom must be equal to much more than the ordinary functions of an
envoy. It would be his right and his duty to offer advice touching every
part of the political and military administration of the country in which
he would represent the most powerful and the most beneficent of allies.
Barillon was therefore passed over. He affected to bear his disgrace with
composure. His political career, though it had brought great calamities
both on the House of Stuart and on the House of Bourbon, had been by no
means unprofitable to himself. He was old, he said: he was fat: he did not
envy younger men the honour of living on potatoes and whiskey among the
Irish bogs; he would try to console himself with partridges, with
champagne, and with the society of the wittiest men and prettiest women of
Paris. It was rumoured, however that he was tortured by painful emotions
which he was studious to conceal: his health and spirits failed; and he
tried to find consolation in religious duties. Some people were much
edified by the piety of the old voluptuary: but others attributed his
death, which took place not long after his retreat from public life, to
shame and vexation, 168

The Count of Avaux, whose sagacity had detected all the plans of William,
and who had vainly recommended a policy which would probably have
frustrated them, was the man on whom the choice of Lewis fell. In
abilities Avaux had no superior among the numerous able diplomatists whom
his country then possessed. His demeanour was singularly pleasing, his
person handsome, his temper bland. His manners and conversation were those
of a gentleman who had been bred in the most polite and magnificent of all
Courts, who had represented that Court both in Roman Catholic and
Protestant countries, and who had acquired in his wanderings the art of
catching the tone of any society into which chance might throw him. He was
eminently vigilant and adroit, fertile in resources, and skilful in
discovering the weak parts of a character. His own character, however, was
not without its weak parts. The consciousness that he was of plebeian
origin was the torment of his life. He pined for nobility with a pining at
once pitiable and ludicrous. Able, experienced and accomplished as he was,
he sometimes, under the influence of this mental disease, descended to the
level of Moliere’s Jourdain, and entertained malicious observers with
scenes almost as laughable as that in which the honest draper was made a
Mamamouchi, 169 It would have been well if
this had been the worst. But it is not too much to say that of the
difference between right and wrong Avaux had no more notion than a brute.
One sentiment was to him in the place of religion and morality, a
superstitious and intolerant devotion to the Crown which he served. This
sentiment pervades all his despatches, and gives a colour to all his
thoughts and words. Nothing that tended to promote the interest of the
French monarchy seemed to him a crime. Indeed he appears to have taken it
for granted that not only Frenchmen, but all human beings, owed a natural
allegiance to the House of Bourbon, and that whoever hesitated to
sacrifice the happiness and freedom of his own native country to the glory
of that House was a traitor. While he resided at the Hague, he always
designated those Dutchmen who had sold themselves to France as the well
intentioned party. In the letters which he wrote from Ireland, the same
feeling appears still more strongly. He would have been a more sagacious
politician if he had sympathized more with those feelings of moral
approbation and disapprobation which prevail among the vulgar. For his own
indifference to all considerations of justice and mercy was such that, in
his schemes, he made no allowance for the consciences and sensibilities of
his neighbours. More than once he deliberately recommended wickedness so
horrible that wicked men recoiled from it with indignation. But they could
not succeed even in making their scruples intelligible to him. To every
remonstrance he listened with a cynical sneer, wondering within himself
whether those who lectured him were such fools as they professed to be, or
were only shamming.

Such was the man whom Lewis selected to be the companion and monitor of
James. Avaux was charged to open, if possible, a communication with the
malecontents in the English Parliament; and he was authorised to expend,
if necessary, a hundred thousand crowns among them.

James arrived at Brest on the fifth of March, embarked there on board of a
man of war called the Saint Michael, and sailed within forty-eight hours.
He had ample time, however, before his departure, to exhibit some of the
faults by which he had lost England and Scotland, and by which he was
about to lose Ireland. Avaux wrote from the harbour of Brest that it would
not be easy to conduct any important business in concert with the King of
England. His Majesty could not keep any secret from any body. The very
foremast men of the Saint Michael had already heard him say things which
ought to have been reserved for the ears of his confidential advisers, 170

The voyage was safely and quietly performed; and, on the afternoon of the
twelfth of March, James landed in the harbour of Kinsale. By the Roman
Catholic population he was received with shouts of unfeigned transport.
The few Protestants who remained in that part of the country joined in
greeting him, and perhaps not insincerely. For, though an enemy of their
religion, he was not an enemy of their nation; and they might reasonably
hope that the worst king would show somewhat more respect for law and
property than had been shown by the Merry Boys and Rapparees. The Vicar of
Kinsale was among those who went to pay their duty: he was presented by
the Bishop of Chester, and was not ungraciously received, 171

James learned that his cause was prospering. In the three southern
provinces of Ireland the Protestants were disarmed, and were so
effectually bowed down by terror that he had nothing to apprehend from
them. In the North there was some show of resistance: but Hamilton was
marching against the malecontents; and there was little doubt that they
would easily be crushed. A day was spent at Kinsale in putting the arms
and ammunition out of reach of danger. Horses sufficient to carry a few
travellers were with some difficulty procured; and, on the fourteenth of
March, James proceeded to Cork, 172

We should greatly err if we imagined that the road by which he entered
that city bore any resemblance to the stately approach which strikes the
traveller of the nineteenth century with admiration. At present Cork,
though deformed by many miserable relics of a former age, holds no mean
place among the ports of the empire. The shipping is more than half what
the shipping of London was at the time of the Revolution. The customs
exceed the whole revenue which the whole kingdom of Ireland, in the most
peaceful and prosperous times, yielded to the Stuarts. The town is adorned
by broad and well built streets, by fair gardens, by a Corinthian portico
which would do honour to Palladio, and by a Gothic college worthy to stand
in the High Street of Oxford. In 1689, the city extended over about one
tenth part of the space which it now covers, and was intersected by muddy
streams, which have long been concealed by arches and buildings. A
desolate marsh, in which the sportsman who pursued the waterfowl sank deep
in water and mire at every step, covered the area now occupied by stately
buildings, the palaces of great commercial societies. There was only a
single street in which two wheeled carriages could pass each other. From
this street diverged to right and left alleys squalid and noisome beyond
the belief of those who have formed their notions of misery from the most
miserable parts of Saint Giles’s and Whitechapel. One of these alleys,
called, and, by comparison, justly called, Broad Lane, is about ten feet
wide. From such places, now seats of hunger and pestilence, abandoned to
the most wretched of mankind, the citizens poured forth to welcome James.
He was received with military honours by Macarthy, who held the chief
command in Munster.

It was impossible for the King to proceed immediately to Dublin; for the
southern counties had been so completely laid waste by the banditti whom
the priests had called to arms, that the means of locomotion were not
easily to be procured. Horses had become rarities: in a large district
there were only two carts; and those Avaux pronounced good for nothing.
Some days elapsed before the money which had been brought from France,
though no very formidable mass, could be dragged over the few miles which
separated Cork from Kinsale, 173

While the King and his Council were employed in trying to procure
carriages and beasts, Tyrconnel arrived from Dublin. He held encouraging
language. The opposition of Enniskillen he seems to have thought deserving
of little consideration. Londonderry, he said, was the only important post
held by the Protestants; and even Londonderry would not, in his judgment,
hold out many days.

At length James was able to leave Cork for the capital. On the road, the
shrewd and observant Avaux made many remarks. The first part of the
journey was through wild highlands, where it was not strange that there
should be few traces of art and industry. But, from Kilkenny to the gates
of Dublin, the path of the travellers lay over gently undulating ground
rich with natural verdure. That fertile district should have been covered
with flocks and herds, orchards and cornfields: but it was an unfilled and
unpeopled desert. Even in the towns the artisans were very few.
Manufactured articles were hardly to be found, and if found could be
procured only at immense prices, 174 The
truth was that most of the English inhabitants had fled, and that art,
industry, and capital had fled with them.

James received on his progress numerous marks of the goodwill of the
peasantry; but marks such as, to men bred in the courts of France and
England, had an uncouth and ominous appearance. Though very few labourers
were seen at work in the fields, the road was lined by Rapparees armed
with skeans, stakes, and half pikes, who crowded to look upon the
deliverer of their race. The highway along which he travelled presented
the aspect of a street in which a fair is held. Pipers came forth to play
before him in a style which was not exactly that of the French opera; and
the villagers danced wildly to the music. Long frieze mantles, resembling
those which Spenser had, a century before, described as meet beds for
rebels, and apt cloaks for thieves, were spread along the path which the
cavalcade was to tread; and garlands, in which cabbage stalks supplied the
place of laurels, were offered to the royal hand. The women insisted on
kissing his Majesty; but it should seem that they bore little resemblance
to their posterity; for this compliment was so distasteful to him that he
ordered his retinue to keep them at a distance, 175

On the twenty-fourth of March he entered Dublin. That city was then, in
extent and population, the second in the British isles. It contained
between six and seven thousand houses, and probably above thirty thousand
inhabitants, 176 In wealth and beauty, however,
Dublin was inferior to many English towns. Of the graceful and stately
public buildings which now adorn both sides of the Liffey scarcely one had
been even projected. The College, a very different edifice from that which
now stands on the same site, lay quite out of the city, 177
The ground which is at present occupied by Leinster House and Charlemont
House, by Sackville Street and Merrion Square, was open meadow. Most of
the dwellings were built of timber, and have long given place to more
substantial edifices. The Castle had in 1686 been almost uninhabitable.
Clarendon had complained that he knew of no gentleman in Pall Mall who was
not more conveniently and handsomely lodged than the Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland. No public ceremony could be performed in a becoming manner under
the Viceregal roof. Nay, in spite of constant glazing and tiling, the rain
perpetually drenched the apartments, 178
Tyrconnel, since he became Lord Deputy, had erected a new building
somewhat more commodious. To this building the King was conducted in state
through the southern part of the city. Every exertion had been made to
give an air of festivity and splendour to the district which he was to
traverse. The streets, which were generally deep in mud, were strewn with
gravel. Boughs and flowers were scattered over the path.

Tapestry and arras hung from the windows of those who could afford to
exhibit such finery. The poor supplied the place of rich stuffs with
blankets and coverlids. In one place was stationed a troop of friars with
a cross; in another a company of forty girls dressed in white and carrying
nosegays. Pipers and harpers played “The King shall enjoy his own again.”
The Lord Deputy carried the sword of state before his master. The Judges,
the Heralds, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, appeared in all the pomp of
office. Soldiers were drawn up on the right and left to keep the passages
clear. A procession of twenty coaches belonging to public functionaries
was mustered. Before the Castle gate, the King was met by the host under a
canopy borne by four bishops of his church. At the sight he fell on his
knees, and passed some time in devotion. He then rose and was conducted to
the chapel of his palace, once—such are the vicissitudes of human
things—the riding house of Henry Cromwell. A Te Deum was performed
in honour of his Majesty’s arrival. The next morning he held a Privy
Council, discharged Chief Justice Keating from any further attendance at
the board, ordered Avaux and Bishop Cartwright to be sworn in, and issued
a proclamation convoking a Parliament to meet at Dublin on the seventh of
May, 179

When the news that James had arrived in Ireland reached London, the sorrow
and alarm were general, and were mingled with serious discontent. The
multitude, not making sufficient allowance for the difficulties by which
William was encompassed on every side, loudly blamed his neglect. To all
the invectives of the ignorant and malicious he opposed, as was his wont,
nothing but immutable gravity and the silence of profound disdain. But few
minds had received from nature a temper so firm as his; and still fewer
had undergone so long and so rigorous a discipline. The reproaches which
had no power to shake his fortitude, tried from childhood upwards by both
extremes of fortune, inflicted a deadly wound on a less resolute heart.

While all the coffeehouses were unanimously resolving that a fleet and
army ought to have been long before sent to Dublin, and wondering how so
renowned a politician as his Majesty could have been duped by Hamilton and
Tyrconnel, a gentleman went down to the Temple Stairs, called a boat, and
desired to be pulled to Greenwich. He took the cover of a letter from his
pocket, scratched a few lines with a pencil, and laid the paper on the
seat with some silver for his fare. As the boat passed under the dark
central arch of London Bridge, he sprang into the water and disappeared.
It was found that he had written these words: “My folly in undertaking
what I could not execute hath done the King great prejudice which cannot
be stopped—No easier way for me than this—May his undertakings
prosper—May he have a blessing.” There was no signature; but the
body was soon found, and proved to be that of John Temple. He was young
and highly accomplished: he was heir to an honourable name; he was united
to an amiable woman: he was possessed of an ample fortune; and he had in
prospect the greatest honours of the state. It does not appear that the
public had been at all aware to what an extent he was answerable for the
policy which had brought so much obloquy on the government. The King,
stern as he was, had far too great a heart to treat an error as a crime.
He had just appointed the unfortunate young man Secretary at War; and the
commission was actually preparing. It is not improbable that the cold
magnanimity of the master was the very thing which made the remorse of the
servant insupportable, 180

But, great as were the vexations which William had to undergo, those by
which the temper of his father-in-law was at this time tried were greater
still. No court in Europe was distracted by more quarrels and intrigues
than were to be found within the walls of Dublin Castle. The numerous
petty cabals which sprang from the cupidity, the jealousy, and the
malevolence of individuals scarcely deserve mention. But there was one
cause of discord which has been too little noticed, and which is the key
to much that has been thought mysterious in the history of those times.

Between English Jacobitism and Irish Jacobitism there was nothing in
common. The English Jacobite was animated by a strong enthusiasm for the
family of Stuart; and in his zeal for the interests of that family he too
often forgot the interests of the state. Victory, peace, prosperity,
seemed evils to the stanch nonjuror of our island if they tended to make
usurpation popular and permanent. Defeat, bankruptcy, famine, invasion,
were, in his view, public blessings, if they increased the chance of a
restoration. He would rather have seen his country the last of the nations
under James the Second or James the Third, than the mistress of the sea,
the umpire between contending potentates, the seat of arts, the hive of
industry, under a prince of the House of Nassau or of Brunswick.

The sentiments of the Irish Jacobite were very different, and, it must in
candour be acknowledged, were of a nobler character. The fallen dynasty
was nothing to him. He had not, like a Cheshire or Shropshire cavalier,
been taught from his cradle to consider loyalty to that dynasty as the
first duty of a Christian and a gentleman. All his family traditions, all
the lessons taught him by his foster mother and by his priests, had been
of a very different tendency. He had been brought up to regard the foreign
sovereigns of his native land with the feeling with which the Jew regarded
Caesar, with which the Scot regarded Edward the First, with which the
Castilian regarded Joseph Buonaparte, with which the Pole regards the
Autocrat of the Russias. It was the boast of the highborn Milesian that,
from the twelfth century to the seventeenth, every generation of his
family had been in arms against the English crown. His remote ancestors
had contended with Fitzstephen and De Burgh. His greatgrandfather had
cloven down the soldiers of Elizabeth in the battle of the Blackwater. His
grandfather had conspired with O’Donnel against James the First. His
father had fought under Sir Phelim O’Neill against Charles the First. The
confiscation of the family estate had been ratified by an Act of Charles
the Second. No Puritan, who had been cited before the High Commission by
Laud, who had charged under Cromwell at Naseby, who had been prosecuted
under the Conventicle Act, and who had been in hiding on account of the
Rye House Plot, bore less affection to the House of Stuart than the
O’Haras and Macmahons, on whose support the fortunes of that House now
seemed to depend.

The fixed purpose of these men was to break the foreign yoke, to
exterminate the Saxon colony, to sweep away the Protestant Church, and to
restore the soil to its ancient proprietors. To obtain these ends they
would without the smallest scruple have risen up against James; and to
obtain these ends they rose up for him. The Irish Jacobites, therefore,
were not at all desirous that he should again reign at Whitehall: for they
could not but be aware that a Sovereign of Ireland, who was also Sovereign
of England, would not, and, even if he would, could not, long administer
the government of the smaller and poorer kingdom in direct opposition to
the feeling of the larger and richer. Their real wish was that the Crowns
might be completely separated, and that their island might, whether under
James or without James they cared little, form a distinct state under the
powerful protection of France.

While one party in the Council at Dublin regarded James merely as a tool
to be employed for achieving the deliverance of Ireland, another party
regarded Ireland merely as a tool to be employed for effecting the
restoration of James. To the English and Scotch lords and gentlemen who
had accompanied him from Brest, the island in which they sojourned was
merely a stepping stone by which they were to reach Great Britain. They
were still as much exiles as when they were at Saint Germains; and indeed
they thought Saint Germains a far more pleasant place of exile than Dublin
Castle. They had no sympathy with the native population of the remote and
half barbarous region to which a strange chance had led them. Nay, they
were bound by common extraction and by common language to that colony
which it was the chief object of the native population to root out. They
had indeed, like the great body of their countrymen, always regarded the
aboriginal Irish with very unjust contempt, as inferior to other European
nations, not only in acquired knowledge, but in natural intelligence and
courage; as born Gibeonites who had been liberally treated, in being
permitted to hew wood and to draw water for a wiser and mightier people.
These politicians also thought,—and here they were undoubtedly in
the right,—that, if their master’s object was to recover the throne
of England, it would be madness in him to give himself up to the guidance
of the O’s and the Macs who regarded England with mortal enmity. A law
declaring the crown of Ireland independent, a law transferring mitres,
glebes, and tithes from the Protestant to the Roman Catholic Church, a law
transferring ten millions of acres from Saxons to Celts, would doubtless
be loudly applauded in Clare and Tipperary. But what would be the effect
of such laws at Westminster? What at Oxford? It would be poor policy to
alienate such men as Clarendon and Beaufort, Ken and Sherlock, in order to
obtain the applause of the Rapparees of the Bog of Allen, 181

Thus the English and Irish factions in the Council at Dublin were engaged
in a dispute which admitted of no compromise. Avaux meanwhile looked on
that dispute from a point of view entirely his own. His object was neither
the emancipation of Ireland nor the restoration of James, but the
greatness of the French monarchy. In what way that object might be best
attained was a very complicated problem. Undoubtedly a French statesman
could not but wish for a counterrevolution in England. The effect of such
a counterrevolution would be that the power which was the most formidable
enemy of France would become her firmest ally, that William would sink
into insignificance, and that the European coalition of which he was the
chief would be dissolved. But what chance was there of such a
counterrevolution? The English exiles indeed, after the fashion of exiles,
confidently anticipated a speedy return to their country. James himself
loudly boasted that his subjects on the other side of the water, though
they had been misled for a moment by the specious names of religion,
liberty, and property, were warmly attached to him, and would rally round
him as soon as he appeared among them. But the wary envoy tried in vain to
discover any foundation for these hopes. He was certain that they were not
warranted by any intelligence which had arrived from any part of Great
Britain; and he considered them as the mere daydreams of a feeble mind. He
thought it unlikely that the usurper, whose ability and resolution he had,
during an unintermitted conflict of ten years, learned to appreciate,
would easily part with the great prize which had been won by such
strenuous exertions and profound combinations. It was therefore necessary
to consider what arrangements would be most beneficial to France, on the
supposition that it proved impossible to dislodge William from England.
And it was evident that, if William could not be dislodged from England,
the arrangement most beneficial to France would be that which had been
contemplated eighteen months before when James had no prospect of a male
heir. Ireland must be severed from the English crown, purged of the
English colonists, reunited to the Church of Rome, placed under the
protection of the House of Bourbon, and made, in every thing but name, a
French province. In war, her resources would be absolutely at the command
of her Lord Paramount. She would furnish his army with recruits. She would
furnish his navy with fine harbours commanding all the great western
outlets of the English trade. The strong national and religious antipathy
with which her aboriginal population regarded the inhabitants of the
neighbouring island would be a sufficient guarantee for their fidelity to
that government which could alone protect her against the Saxon.

On the whole, therefore, it appeared to Avaux that, of the two parties
into which the Council at Dublin was divided, the Irish party was that
which it was for the interest of France to support. He accordingly
connected himself closely with the chiefs of that party, obtained from
them the fullest avowals of all that they designed, and was soon able to
report to his government that neither the gentry nor the common people
were at all unwilling to become French, 182

The views of Louvois, incomparably the greatest statesman that France had
produced since Richelieu, seem to have entirely agreed with those of
Avaux. The best thing, Louvois wrote, that King James could do would be to
forget that he had reigned in Great Britain, and to think only of putting
Ireland into a good condition, and of establishing himself firmly there.
Whether this were the true interest of the House of Stuart may be doubted.
But it was undoubtedly the true interest of the House of Bourbon, 183

About the Scotch and English exiles, and especially about Melfort, Avaux
constantly expressed himself with an asperity hardly to have been expected
from a man of so much sense and experience. Melfort was in a singularly
unfortunate position. He was a renegade: he was a mortal enemy of the
liberties of his country: he was of a bad and tyrannical nature; and yet
he was, in some sense, a patriot. The consequence was that he was more
universally detested than any man of his time. For, while his apostasy and
his arbitrary maxims of government made him the abhorrence of England and
Scotland, his anxiety for the dignity and integrity of the empire made him
the abhorrence of the Irish and of the French.

The first question to be decided was whether James should remain at
Dublin, or should put himself at the head of his army in Ulster. On this
question the Irish and British factions joined battle. Reasons of no great
weight were adduced on both sides; for neither party ventured to speak
out. The point really in issue was whether the King should be in Irish or
in British hands. If he remained at Dublin, it would be scarcely possible
for him to withhold his assent from any bill presented to him by the
Parliament which he had summoned to meet there. He would be forced to
plunder, perhaps to attaint, innocent Protestant gentlemen and clergymen
by hundreds; and he would thus do irreparable mischief to his cause on the
other side of Saint George’s Channel. If he repaired to Ulster, he would
be within a few hours’ sail of Great Britain. As soon as Londonderry had
fallen, and it was universally supposed that the fall of Londonderry could
not be long delayed, he might cross the sea with part of his forces, and
land in Scotland, where his friends were supposed to be numerous. When he
was once on British ground, and in the midst of British adherents, it
would no longer be in the power of the Irish to extort his consent to
their schemes of spoliation and revenge.

The discussions in the Council were long and warm. Tyrconnel, who had just
been created a Duke, advised his master to stay in Dublin. Melfort
exhorted his Majesty to set out for Ulster. Avaux exerted all his
influence in support of Tyrconnel; but James, whose personal inclinations
were naturally on the British side of the question, determined to follow
the advice of Melfort, 184 Avaux was deeply mortified. In
his official letters he expressed with great acrimony his contempt for the
King’s character and understanding. On Tyrconnel, who had said that he
despaired of the fortunes of James, and that the real question was between
the King of France and the Prince of Orange, the ambassador pronounced
what was meant to be a warm eulogy, but may perhaps be more properly
called an invective. “If he were a born Frenchman he could not be more
zealous for the interests of France.” 185 The
conduct of Melfort, on the other hand, was the subject of an invective
which much resembles eulogy: “He is neither a good Irishman nor a good
Frenchman. All his affections are set on his own country.” 186

Since the King was determined to go northward, Avaux did not choose to be
left behind. The royal party set out, leaving Tyrconnel in charge at
Dublin, and arrived at Charlemont on the thirteenth of April. The journey
was a strange one. The country all along the road had been completely
deserted by the industrious population, and laid waste by bands of
robbers. “This,” said one of the French officers, “is like travelling
through the deserts of Arabia.” 187
Whatever effects the colonists had been able to remove were at Londonderry
or Enniskillen. The rest had been stolen or destroyed. Avaux informed his
court that he had not been able to get one truss of hay for his horses
without sending five or six miles. No labourer dared bring any thing for
sale lest some marauder should lay hands on it by the way. The ambassador
was put one night into a miserable taproom full of soldiers smoking,
another night into a dismantled house without windows or shutters to keep
out the rain. At Charlemont a bag of oatmeal was with great difficulty,
and as a matter of favour, procured for the French legation. There was no
wheaten bread, except at the table of the King, who had brought a little
flour from Dublin, and to whom Avaux had lent a servant who knew how to
bake. Those who were honoured with an invitation to the royal table had
their bread and wine measured out to them. Every body else, however high
in rank, ate horsecorn, and drank water or detestable beer, made with oats
instead of barley, and flavoured with some nameless herb as a substitute
for hops, 188 Yet report said that the
country between Charlemont and Strabane was even more desolate than the
country between Dublin and Charlemont. It was impossible to carry a large
stock of provisions. The roads were so bad and the horses so weak, that
the baggage waggons had all been left far behind. The chief officers of
the army were consequently in want of necessaries; and the ill-humour
which was the natural effect of these privations was increased by the
insensibility of James, who seemed not to be aware that every body about
him was not perfectly comfortable, 189

On the fourteenth of April the King and his train proceeded to Omagh. The
rain fell: the wind blew: the horses could scarcely make their way through
the mud, and in the face of the storm; and the road was frequently
intersected by torrents which might almost be called rivers. The
travellers had to pass several fords where the water was breast high. Some
of the party fainted from fatigue and hunger. All around lay a frightful
wilderness. In a journey of forty miles Avaux counted only three miserable
cabins. Every thing else was rock, bog, and moor. When at length the
travellers reached Omagh, they found it in ruins. The Protestants, who
were the majority of the inhabitants, had abandoned it, leaving not a wisp
of straw nor a cask of liquor. The windows had been broken: the chimneys
had been beaten in: the very locks and bolts of the doors had been carried
away, 190

Avaux had never ceased to press the King to return to Dublin; but these
expostulations had hitherto produced no effect. The obstinacy of James,
however, was an obstinacy which had nothing in common with manly
resolution, and which, though proof to argument, was easily shaken by
caprice. He received at Omagh, early on the sixteenth of April, letters
which alarmed him. He learned that a strong body of Protestants was in
arms at Strabane, and that English ships of war had been seen near the
mouth of Lough Foyle. In one minute three messages were sent to summon
Avaux to the ruinous chamber in which the royal bed had been prepared.
There James, half dressed, and with the air of a man bewildered by some
great shock, announced his resolution to hasten back instantly to Dublin.
Avaux listened, wondered, and approved. Melfort seemed prostrated by
despair. The travellers retraced their steps, and, late in the evening,
reached Charlemont. There the King received despatches very different from
those which had terrified him a few hours before. The Protestants who had
assembled near Strabane had been attacked by Hamilton. Under a truehearted
leader they would doubtless have stood their ground. But Lundy, who
commanded them, had told them that all was lost, had ordered them to shift
for themselves, and had set them the example of flight, 191
They had accordingly retired in confusion to Londonderry. The King’s
correspondents pronounced it to be impossible that Londonderry should hold
out. His Majesty had only to appear before the gates; and they would
instantly fly open. James now changed his mind again, blamed himself for
having been persuaded to turn his face southward, and, though it was late
in the evening, called for his horses. The horses were in a miserable
plight; but, weary and half starved as they were, they were saddled.
Melfort, completely victorious, carried off his master to the camp. Avaux,
after remonstrating to no purpose, declared that he was resolved to return
to Dublin. It may be suspected that the extreme discomfort which he had
undergone had something to do with this resolution. For complaints of that
discomfort make up a large part of his letters; and, in truth, a life
passed in the palaces of Italy, in the neat parlours and gardens of
Holland, and in the luxurious pavilions which adorned the suburbs of
Paris, was a bad preparation for the ruined hovels of Ulster. He gave,
however, to his master a more weighty reason for refusing to proceed
northward. The journey of James had been undertaken in opposition to the
unanimous sense of the Irish, and had excited great alarm among them. They
apprehended that he meant to quit them, and to make a descent on Scotland.
They knew that, once landed in Great Britain, he would have neither the
will nor the power to do those things which they most desired. Avaux, by
refusing to proceed further, gave them an assurance that, whoever might
betray them, France would be their constant friend, 192

While Avaux was on his way to Dublin, James hastened towards Londonderry.
He found his army concentrated a few miles south of the city. The French
generals who had sailed with him from Brest were in his train; and two of
them, Rosen and Maumont, were placed over the head of Richard Hamilton, 193
Rosen was a native of Livonia, who had in early youth become a soldier of
fortune, who had fought his way to distinction, and who, though utterly
destitute of the graces and accomplishments characteristic of the Court of
Versailles, was nevertheless high in favour there. His temper was savage:
his manners were coarse: his language was a strange jargon compounded of
various dialects of French and German. Even those who thought best of him,
and who maintained that his rough exterior covered some good qualities,
owned that his looks were against him, and that it would be unpleasant to
meet such a figure in the dusk at the corner of a wood, 194
The little that is known of Maumont is to his honour.

In the camp it was generally expected that Londonderry would fall without
a blow. Rosen confidently predicted that the mere sight of the Irish army
would terrify the garrison into submission. But Richard Hamilton, who knew
the temper of the colonists better, had misgivings. The assailants were
sure of one important ally within the walls. Lundy, the Governor,
professed the Protestant religion, and had joined in proclaiming William
and Mary; but he was in secret communication with the enemies of his
Church and of the Sovereigns to whom he had sworn lealty. Some have
suspected that he was a concealed Jacobite, and that he had affected to
acquiesce in the Revolution only in order that he might be better able to
assist in bringing about a Restoration: but it is probable that his
conduct is rather to be attributed to faintheartedness and poverty of
spirit than to zeal for any public cause. He seems to have thought
resistance hopeless; and in truth, to a military eye, the defences of
Londonderry appeared contemptible. The fortifications consisted of a
simple wall overgrown with grass and weeds: there was no ditch even before
the gates: the drawbridges had long been neglected: the chains were rusty
and could scarcely be used: the parapets and towers were built after a
fashion which might well move disciples of Vauban to laughter; and these
feeble defences were on almost every side commanded by heights. Indeed
those who laid out the city had never meant that it should be able to
stand a regular siege, and had contented themselves with throwing up works
sufficient to protect the inhabitants against a tumultuary attack of the
Celtic peasantry. Avaux assured Louvois that a single French battalion
would easily storm such defences. Even if the place should,
notwithstanding all disadvantages, be able to repel a large army directed
by the science and experience of generals who had served under Conde and
Turenne, hunger must soon bring the contest to an end. The stock of
provisions was small; and the population had been swollen to seven or
eight times the ordinary number by a multitude of colonists flying from
the rage of the natives, 195

Lundy, therefore, from the time when the Irish army entered Ulster, seems
to have given up all thought of serious resistance, He talked so
despondingly that the citizens and his own soldiers murmured against him.
He seemed, they said, to be bent on discouraging them. Meanwhile the enemy
drew daily nearer and nearer; and it was known that James himself was
coming to take the command of his forces.

Just at this moment a glimpse of hope appeared. On the fourteenth of April
ships from England anchored in the bay. They had on board two regiments
which had been sent, under the command of a Colonel named Cunningham, to
reinforce the garrison. Cunningham and several of his officers went on
shore and conferred with Lundy. Lundy dissuaded them from landing their
men. The place, he said, could not hold out. To throw more troops into it
would therefore be worse than useless: for the more numerous the garrison,
the more prisoners would fall into the hands of the enemy. The best thing
that the two regiments could do would be to sail back to England. He
meant, he said, to withdraw himself privately: and the inhabitants must
then try to make good terms for themselves.

He went through the form of holding a council of war; but from this
council he excluded all those officers of the garrison whose sentiments he
knew to be different from his own. Some, who had ordinarily been summoned
on such occasions, and who now came uninvited, were thrust out of the
room. Whatever the Governor said was echoed by his creatures. Cunningham
and Cunningham’s companions could scarcely venture to oppose their opinion
to that of a person whose local knowledge was necessarily far superior to
theirs, and whom they were by their instructions directed to obey. One
brave soldier murmured. “Understand this,” he said, “to give up
Londonderry is to give up Ireland.” But his objections were contemptuously
overruled, 196 The meeting broke up.
Cunningham and his officers returned to the ships, and made preparations
for departing. Meanwhile Lundy privately sent a messenger to the head
quarters of the enemy, with assurances that the city should be peaceably
surrendered on the first summons.

But as soon as what had passed in the council of war was whispered about
the streets, the spirit of the soldiers and citizens swelled up high and
fierce against the dastardly and perfidious chief who had betrayed them.
Many of his own officers declared that they no longer thought themselves
bound to obey him. Voices were heard threatening, some that his brains
should be blown out, some that he should be hanged on the walls. A
deputation was sent to Cunningham imploring him to assume the command. He
excused himself on the plausible ground that his orders were to take
directions in all things from the Governor, 197
Meanwhile it was rumoured that the persons most in Lundy’s confidence were
stealing out of the town one by one. Long after dusk on the evening of the
seventeenth it was found that the gates were open and that the keys had
disappeared. The officers who made the discovery took on themselves to
change the passwords and to double the guards. The night, however, passed
over without any assault, 198

After some anxious hours the day broke. The Irish, with James at their
head, were now within four miles of the city. A tumultuous council of the
chief inhabitants was called. Some of them vehemently reproached the
Governor to his face with his treachery. He had sold them, they cried, to
their deadliest enemy: he had refused admission to the force which good
King William had sent to defend them. While the altercation was at the
height, the sentinels who paced the ramparts announced that the vanguard
of the hostile army was in sight. Lundy had given orders that there should
be no firing; but his authority was at an end. Two gallant soldiers, Major
Henry Baker and Captain Adam Murray, called the people to arms. They were
assisted by the eloquence of an aged clergyman, George Walker, rector of
the parish of Donaghmore, who had, with many of his neighbours, taken
refuge in Londonderry. The whole of the crowded city was moved by one
impulse. Soldiers, gentlemen, yeomen, artisans, rushed to the walls and
manned the guns. James, who, confident of success, had approached within a
hundred yards of the southern gate, was received with a shout of “No
surrender,” and with a fire from the nearest bastion. An officer of his
staff fell dead by his side. The King and his attendants made all haste to
get out of reach of the cannon balls. Lundy, who was now in imminent
danger of being torn limb from limb by those whom he had betrayed, hid
himself in an inner chamber. There he lay during the day, and at night,
with the generous and politic connivance of Murray and Walker, made his
escape in the disguise of a porter, 199 The
part of the wall from which he let himself down is still pointed out; and
people still living talk of having tasted the fruit of a pear tree which
assisted him in his descent. His name is, to this day, held in execration
by the Protestants of the North of Ireland; and his effigy was long, and
perhaps still is, annually hung and burned by them with marks of
abhorrence similar to those which in England are appropriated to Guy Faux.

And now Londonderry was left destitute of all military and of all civil
government. No man in the town had a right to command any other: the
defences were weak: the provisions were scanty: an incensed tyrant and a
great army were at the gates. But within was that which has often, in
desperate extremities, retrieved the fallen fortunes of nations. Betrayed,
deserted, disorganized, unprovided with resources, begirt with enemies,
the noble city was still no easy conquest. Whatever an engineer might
think of the strength of the ramparts, all that was most intelligent, most
courageous, most highspirited among the Englishry of Leinster and of
Northern Ulster was crowded behind them. The number of men capable of
bearing arms within the walls was seven thousand; and the whole world
could not have furnished seven thousand men better qualified to meet a
terrible emergency with clear judgment, dauntless valour, and stubborn
patience. They were all zealous Protestants; and the Protestantism of the
majority was tinged with Puritanism. They had much in common with that
sober, resolute, and Godfearing class out of which Cromwell had formed his
unconquerable army. But the peculiar situation in which they had been
placed had developed in them some qualities which, in the mother country,
might possibly have remained latent. The English inhabitants of Ireland
were an aristocratic caste, which had been enabled, by superior
civilisation, by close union, by sleepless vigilance, by cool intrepidity,
to keep in subjection a numerous and hostile population. Almost every one
of them had been in some measure trained both to military and to political
functions. Almost every one was familiar with the use of arms, and was
accustomed to bear a part in the administration of justice. It was
remarked by contemporary writers that the colonists had something of the
Castilian haughtiness of manner, though none of the Castilian indolence,
that they spoke English with remarkable purity and correctness, and that
they were, both as militiamen and as jurymen, superior to their kindred in
the mother country, 200 In all ages, men situated as
the Anglosaxons in Ireland were situated have had peculiar vices and
peculiar virtues, the vices and virtues of masters, as opposed to the
vices and virtues of slaves. The member of a dominant race is, in his
dealings with the subject race, seldom indeed fraudulent,—for fraud
is the resource of the weak,—but imperious, insolent, and cruel.
Towards his brethren, on the other hand, his conduct is generally just,
kind, and even noble. His selfrespect leads him to respect all who belong
to his own order. His interest impels him to cultivate a good
understanding with those whose prompt, strenuous, and courageous
assistance may at any moment be necessary to preserve his property and
life. It is a truth ever present to his mind that his own wellbeing
depends on the ascendency of the class to which he belongs. His very
selfishness therefore is sublimed into public spirit: and this public
spirit is stimulated to fierce enthusiasm by sympathy, by the desire of
applause, and by the dread of infamy. For the only opinion which he values
is the opinion of his fellows; and in their opinion devotion to the common
cause is the most sacred of duties. The character, thus formed, has two
aspects. Seen on one side, it must be regarded by every well constituted
mind with disapprobation. Seen on the other, it irresistibly extorts
applause. The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our
disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his
concise jests, on what he well knows to be his last day, in the pass of
Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration. To a
superficial observer it may seem strange that so much evil and so much
good should be found together. But in truth the good and the evil, which
at first sight appear almost incompatible, are closely connected, and have
a common origin. It was because the Spartan had been taught to revere
himself as one of a race of sovereigns, and to look down on all that was
not Spartan as of an inferior species, that he had no fellow feeling for
the miserable serfs who crouched before him, and that the thought of
submitting to a foreign master, or of turning his back before an enemy,
never, even in the last extremity, crossed his mind. Something of the same
character, compounded of tyrant and hero, has been found in all nations
which have domineered over more numerous nations. But it has nowhere in
modern Europe shown itself so conspicuously as in Ireland. With what
contempt, with what antipathy, the ruling minority in that country long
regarded the subject majority may be best learned from the hateful laws
which, within the memory of men still living, disgraced the Irish statute
book. Those laws were at length annulled: but the spirit which had
dictated them survived them, and even at this day sometimes breaks out in
excesses pernicious to the commonwealth and dishonourable to the
Protestant religion. Nevertheless it is impossible to deny that the
English colonists have had, with too many of the faults, all the noblest
virtues of a sovereign caste. The faults have, as was natural, been most
offensively exhibited in times of prosperity and security: the virtues
have been most resplendent in times of distress and peril; and never were
those virtues more signally displayed than by the defenders of
Londonderry, when their Governor had abandoned them, and when the camp of
their mortal enemy was pitched before their walls.

No sooner had the first burst of the rage excited by the perfidy of Lundy
spent itself than those whom he had betrayed proceeded, with a gravity and
prudence worthy of the most renowned senates, to provide for the order and
defence of the city. Two governors were elected, Baker and Walker. Baker
took the chief military command. Walker’s especial business was to
preserve internal tranquillity, and to dole out supplies from the
magazines, 201 The inhabitants capable of
bearing arms were distributed into eight regiments. Colonels, captains,
and subordinate officers were appointed. In a few hours every man knew his
post, and was ready to repair to it as soon as the beat of the drum was
heard. That machinery, by which Oliver had, in the preceding generation,
kept up among his soldiers so stern and so pertinacious an enthusiasm, was
again employed with not less complete success. Preaching and praying
occupied a large part of every day. Eighteen clergymen of the Established
Church and seven or eight nonconformist ministers were within the walls.
They all exerted themselves indefatigably to rouse and sustain the spirit
of the people. Among themselves there was for the time entire harmony. All
disputes about church government, postures, ceremonies, were forgotten.
The Bishop, having found that his lectures on passive obedience were
derided even by the Episcopalians, had withdrawn himself, first to Raphoe,
and then to England, and was preaching in a chapel in London, 202
On the other hand, a Scotch fanatic named Hewson, who had exhorted the
Presbyterians not to ally themselves with such as refused to subscribe the
Covenant, had sunk under the well merited disgust and scorn of the whole
Protestant community, 203 The aspect of the Cathedral
was remarkable. Cannon were planted on the summit of the broad tower which
has since given place to a tower of different proportions. Ammunition was
stored in the vaults. In the choir the liturgy of the Anglican Church was
read every morning. Every afternoon the Dissenters crowded to a simpler
worship, 204

James had waited twenty-four hours, expecting, as it should seem, the
performance of Lundy’s promises; and in twenty-four hours the arrangements
for the defence of Londonderry were complete. On the evening of the
nineteenth of April, a trumpeter came to the southern gate, and asked
whether the engagements into which the Governor had entered would be
fulfilled. The answer was that the men who guarded these walls had nothing
to do with the Governor’s engagements, and were determined to resist to
the last.

On the following day a messenger of higher rank was sent, Claude Hamilton,
Lord Strabane, one of the few Roman Catholic peers of Ireland. Murray, who
had been appointed to the command of one of the eight regiments into which
the garrison was distributed, advanced from the gate to meet the flag of
truce; and a short conference was held. Strabane had been authorised to
make large promises. The citizens should have a free pardon for all that
was past if they would submit to their lawful Sovereign. Murray himself
should have a colonel’s commission, and a thousand pounds in money. “The
men of Londonderry,” answered Murray, “have done nothing that requires a
pardon, and own no Sovereign but King William and Queen Mary. It will not
be safe for your Lordship to stay longer, or to return on the same errand.
Let me have the honour of seeing you through the lines.” 205

James had been assured, and had fully expected, that the city would yield
as soon as it was known that he was before the walls. Finding himself
mistaken, he broke loose from the control of Melfort, and determined to
return instantly to Dublin. Rosen accompanied the King. The direction of
the siege was intrusted to Maumont. Richard Hamilton was second, and
Pusignan third, in command.

The operations now commenced in earnest. The besiegers began by battering
the town. It was soon on fire in several places. Roofs and upper stories
of houses fell in, and crushed the inmates. During a short time the
garrison, many of whom had never before seen the effect of a cannonade,
seemed to be discomposed by the crash of chimneys, and by the heaps of
ruin mingled with disfigured corpses. But familiarity with danger and
horror produced in a few hours the natural effect. The spirit of the
people rose so high that their chiefs thought it safe to act on the
offensive. On the twenty-first of April a sally was made under the command
of Murray. The Irish stood their ground resolutely; and a furious and
bloody contest took place. Maumont, at the head of a body of cavalry, flew
to the place where the fight was raging. He was struck in the head by a
musket ball, and fell a corpse. The besiegers lost several other officers,
and about two hundred men, before the colonists could be driven in. Murray
escaped with difficulty. His horse was killed under him; and he was beset
by enemies: but he was able to defend himself till some of his friends
made a rush from the gate to his rescue, with old Walker at their head, 206

In consequence of the death of Maumont, Hamilton was once more commander
of the Irish army. His exploits in that post did not raise his reputation.
He was a fine gentleman and a brave soldier; but he had no pretensions to
the character of a great general, and had never, in his life, seen a
siege, 207
Pusignan had more science and energy. But Pusignan survived Maumont little
more than a fortnight. At four in the morning of the sixth of May, the
garrison made another sally, took several flags, and killed many of the
besiegers. Pusignan, fighting gallantly, was shot through the body. The
wound was one which a skilful surgeon might have cured: but there was no
such surgeon in the Irish camp; and the communication with Dublin was slow
and irregular. The poor Frenchman died, complaining bitterly of the
barbarous ignorance and negligence which had shortened his days. A medical
man, who had been sent down express from the capital, arrived after the
funeral. James, in consequence, as it should seem, of this disaster,
established a daily post between Dublin Castle and Hamilton’s head
quarters. Even by this conveyance letters did not travel very
expeditiously: for the couriers went on foot; and, from fear probably of
the Enniskilleners, took a circuitous route from military post to military
post, 208

May passed away: June arrived; and still Londonderry held out. There had
been many sallies and skirmishes with various success: but, on the whole,
the advantage had been with the garrison. Several officers of note had
been carried prisoners into the city; and two French banners, torn after
hard fighting from the besiegers, had been hung as trophies in the chancel
of the Cathedral. It seemed that the siege must be turned into a blockade.
But before the hope of reducing the town by main force was relinquished,
it was determined to make a great effort. The point selected for assault
was an outwork called Windmill Hill, which was not far from the southern
gate. Religious stimulants were employed to animate the courage of the
forlorn hope. Many volunteers bound themselves by oath to make their way
into the works or to perish in the attempt. Captain Butler, son of the
Lord Mountgarret, undertook to lead the sworn men to the attack. On the
walls the colonists were drawn up in three ranks. The office of those who
were behind was to load the muskets of those who were in front. The Irish
came on boldly and with a fearful uproar, but after long and hard fighting
were driven back. The women of Londonderry were seen amidst the thickest
fire serving out water and ammunition to their husbands and brothers. In
one place, where the wall was only seven feet high, Butler and some of his
sworn men succeeded in reaching the top; but they were all killed or made
prisoners. At length, after four hundred of the Irish had fallen, their
chiefs ordered a retreat to be sounded, 209

Nothing was left but to try the effect of hunger. It was known that the
stock of food in the city was but slender. Indeed it was thought strange
that the supplies should have held out so long. Every precaution was now
taken against the introduction of provisions. All the avenues leading to
the city by land were closely guarded. On the south were encamped, along
the left bank of the Foyle, the horsemen who had followed Lord Galmoy from
the valley of the Barrow. Their chief was of all the Irish captains the
most dreaded and the most abhorred by the Protestants. For he had
disciplined his men with rare skill and care; and many frightful stories
were told of his barbarity and perfidy. Long lines of tents, occupied by
the infantry of Butler and O’Neil, of Lord Slane and Lord Gormanstown, by
Nugent’s Westmeath men, by Eustace’s Kildare men, and by Cavanagh’s Kerry
men, extended northward till they again approached the water side, 210
The river was fringed with forts and batteries which no vessel could pass
without great peril. After some time it was determined to make the
security still more complete by throwing a barricade across the stream,
about a mile and a half below the city. Several boats full of stones were
sunk. A row of stakes was driven into the bottom of the river. Large
pieces of fir wood, strongly bound together, formed a boom which was more
than a quarter of a mile in length, and which was firmly fastened to both
shores, by cables a foot thick, 211 A huge
stone, to which the cable on the left bank was attached, was removed many
years later, for the purpose of being polished and shaped into a column.
But the intention was abandoned, and the rugged mass still lies, not many
yards from its original site, amidst the shades which surround a pleasant
country house named Boom Hall. Hard by is the well from which the
besiegers drank. A little further off is the burial ground where they laid
their slain, and where even in our own time the spade of the gardener has
struck upon many sculls and thighbones at a short distance beneath the
turf and flowers.

While these things were passing in the North, James was holding his court
at Dublin. On his return thither from Londonderry he received intelligence
that the French fleet, commanded by the Count of Chateau Renaud, had
anchored in Bantry Bay, and had put on shore a large quantity of military
stores and a supply of money. Herbert, who had just been sent to those
seas with an English squadron for the purpose of intercepting the
communications between Britanny and Ireland, learned where the enemy lay,
and sailed into the bay with the intention of giving battle. But the wind
was unfavourable to him: his force was greatly inferior to that which was
opposed to him; and after some firing, which caused no serious loss to
either side, he thought it prudent to stand out to sea, while the French
retired into the recesses of the harbour. He steered for Scilly, where he
expected to find reinforcements; and Chateau Renaud, content with the
credit which he had acquired, and afraid of losing it if he staid,
hastened back to Brest, though earnestly intreated by James to come round
to Dublin.

Both sides claimed the victory. The Commons at Westminster absurdly passed
a vote of thanks to Herbert. James, not less absurdly, ordered bonfires to
be lighted, and a Te Deum to be sung. But these marks of joy by no means
satisfied Avaux, whose national vanity was too strong even for his
characteristic prudence and politeness. He complained that James was so
unjust and ungrateful as to attribute the result of the late action to the
reluctance with which the English seamen fought against their rightful
King and their old commander, and that his Majesty did not seem to be well
pleased by being told that they were flying over the ocean pursued by the
triumphant French. Dover, too, was a bad Frenchman. He seemed to take no
pleasure in the defeat of his countrymen, and had been heard to say that
the affair in Bantry Bay did not deserve to be called a battle, 212

On the day after the Te Deum had been sung at Dublin for this indecisive
skirmish, the Parliament convoked by James assembled. The number of
temporal peers of Ireland, when he arrived in that kingdom, was about a
hundred. Of these only fourteen obeyed his summons. Of the fourteen, ten
were Roman Catholics. By the reversing of old attainders, and by new
creations, seventeen more Lords, all Roman Catholics, were introduced into
the Upper House. The Protestant Bishops of Meath, Ossory, Cork, and
Limerick, whether from a sincere conviction that they could not lawfully
withhold their obedience even from a tyrant, or from a vain hope that the
heart even of a tyrant might be softened by their patience, made their
appearance in the midst of their mortal enemies.

The House of Commons consisted almost exclusively of Irishmen and Papists.
With the writs the returning officers had received from Tyrconnel letters
naming the persons whom he wished to see elected. The largest constituent
bodies in the kingdom were at this time very small. For scarcely any but
Roman Catholics dared to show their faces; and the Roman Catholic
freeholders were then very few, not more, it is said, in some counties,
than ten or twelve. Even in cities so considerable as Cork, Limerick, and
Galway, the number of persons who, under the new Charters, were entitled
to vote did not exceed twenty-four. About two hundred and fifty members
took their seats. Of these only six were Protestants, 213
The list of the names sufficiently indicates the religious and political
temper of the assembly. Alone among the Irish parliaments of that age,
this parliament was filled with Dermots and Geohagans, O’Neils and
O’Donovans, Macmahons, Macnamaras, and Macgillicuddies. The lead was taken
by a few men whose abilities had been improved by the study of the law, or
by experience acquired in foreign countries. The Attorney General, Sir
Richard Nagle, who represented the county of Cork, was allowed, even by
Protestants, to be an acute and learned jurist. Francis Plowden, the
Commissioner of Revenue, who sate for Bannow, and acted as chief minister
of finance, was an Englishman, and, as he had been a principal agent of
the Order of Jesuits in money matters, must be supposed to have been an
excellent man of business, 214 Colonel Henry Luttrell, member
for the county of Carlow, had served long in France, and had brought back
to his native Ireland a sharpened intellect and polished manners, a
flattering tongue, some skill in war, and much more skill in intrigue. His
elder brother, Colonel Simon Luttrell, who was member for the county of
Dublin, and military governor of the capital, had also resided in France,
and, though inferior to Henry in parts and activity, made a highly
distinguished figure among the adherents of James. The other member for
the county of Dublin was Colonel Patrick Sarsfield. This gallant officer
was regarded by the natives as one of themselves: for his ancestors on the
paternal side, though originally English, were among those early colonists
who were proverbially said to have become more Irish than Irishmen. His
mother was of noble Celtic blood; and he was firmly attached to the old
religion. He had inherited an estate of about two thousand a year, and was
therefore one of the wealthiest Roman Catholics in the kingdom. His
knowledge of courts and camps was such as few of his countrymen possessed.
He had long borne a commission in the English Life Guards, had lived much
about Whitehall, and had fought bravely under Monmouth on the Continent,
and against Monmouth at Sedgemoor. He had, Avaux wrote, more personal
influence than any man in Ireland, and was indeed a gentleman of eminent
merit, brave, upright, honourable, careful of his men in quarters, and
certain to be always found at their head in the day of battle. His
intrepidity, his frankness, his boundless good nature, his stature, which
far exceeded that of ordinary men, and the strength which he exerted in
personal conflict, gained for him the affectionate admiration of the
populace. It is remarkable that the Englishry generally respected him as a
valiant, skilful, and generous enemy, and that, even in the most ribald
farces which were performed by mountebanks in Smithfield, he was always
excepted from the disgraceful imputations which it was then the fashion to
throw on the Irish nation, 215

But men like these were rare in the House of Commons which had met at
Dublin. It is no reproach to the Irish nation, a nation which has since
furnished its full proportion of eloquent and accomplished senators, to
say that, of all the parliaments which have met in the British islands,
Barebone’s parliament not excepted, the assembly convoked by James was the
most deficient in all the qualities which a legislature should possess.
The stern domination of a hostile caste had blighted the faculties of the
Irish gentleman. If he was so fortunate as to have lands, he had generally
passed his life on them, shooting, fishing, carousing, and making love
among his vassals. If his estate had been confiscated, he had wandered
about from bawn to bawn and from cabin to cabin, levying small
contributions, and living at the expense of other men. He had never sate
in the House of Commons: he had never even taken an active part at an
election: he had never been a magistrate: scarcely ever had he been on a
grand jury. He had therefore absolutely no experience of public affairs.
The English squire of that age, though assuredly not a very profound or
enlightened politician, was a statesman and a philosopher when compared
with the Roman Catholic squire of Munster or Connaught.

The Parliaments of Ireland had then no fixed place of assembling. Indeed
they met so seldom and broke up so speedily that it would hardly have been
worth while to build and furnish a palace for their special use. It was
not till the Hanoverian dynasty had been long on the throne, that a senate
house which sustains a comparison with the finest compositions of Inigo
Jones arose in College Green. On the spot where the portico and dome of
the Four Courts now overlook the Liffey, stood, in the seventeenth
century, an ancient building which had once been a convent of Dominican
friars, but had since the Reformation been appropriated to the use of the
legal profession, and bore the name of the King’s Inns. There
accommodation had been provided for the parliament. On the seventh of May,
James, dressed in royal robes and wearing a crown, took his seat on the
throne in the House of Lords, and ordered the Commons to be summoned to
the bar, 216

He then expressed his gratitude to the natives of Ireland for having
adhered to his cause when the people of his other kingdoms had deserted
him. His resolution to abolish all religious disabilities in all his
dominions he declared to be unalterable. He invited the houses to take the
Act of Settlement into consideration, and to redress the injuries of which
the old proprietors of the soil had reason to complain. He concluded by
acknowledging in warm terms his obligations to the King of France, 217

When the royal speech had been pronounced, the Chancellor directed the
Commons to repair to their chamber and to elect a Speaker. They chose the
Attorney General Nagle; and the choice was approved by the King, 218

The Commons next passed resolutions expressing warm gratitude both to
James and to Lewis. Indeed it was proposed to send a deputation with an
address to Avaux; but the Speaker pointed out the gross impropriety of
such a step; and, on this occasion, his interference was successful, 219
It was seldom however that the House was disposed to listen to reason. The
debates were all rant and tumult. Judge Daly, a Roman Catholic, but an
honest and able man, could not refrain from lamenting the indecency and
folly with which the members of his Church carried on the work of
legislation. Those gentlemen, he said, were not a Parliament: they were a
mere rabble: they resembled nothing so much as the mob of fishermen and
market gardeners, who, at Naples, yelled and threw up their caps in honour
of Massaniello. It was painful to hear member after member talking wild
nonsense about his own losses, and clamouring for an estate, when the
lives of all and the independence of their common country were in peril.
These words were spoken in private; but some talebearer repeated them to
the Commons. A violent storm broke forth. Daly was ordered to attend at
the bar; and there was little doubt that he would be severely dealt with.
But, just when he was at the door, one of the members rushed in, shouting,
“Good news: Londonderry is taken.” The whole House rose. All the hats were
flung into the air. Three loud huzzas were raised. Every heart was
softened by the happy tidings. Nobody would hear of punishment at such a
moment. The order for Daly’s attendance was discharged amidst cries of “No
submission; no submission; we pardon him.” In a few hours it was known
that Londonderry held out as obstinately as ever. This transaction, in
itself unimportant, deserves to be recorded, as showing how destitute that
House of Commons was of the qualities which ought to be found in the great
council of a kingdom. And this assembly, without experience, without
gravity, and without temper, was now to legislate on questions which would
have tasked to the utmost the capacity of the greatest statesmen, 220

One Act James induced them to pass which would have been most honourable
to him and to them, if there were not abundant proofs that it was meant to
be a dead letter. It was an Act purporting to grant entire liberty of
conscience to all Christian sects. On this occasion a proclamation was put
forth announcing in boastful language to the English people that their
rightful King had now signally refuted those slanderers who had accused
him of affecting zeal for religious liberty merely in order to serve a
turn. If he were at heart inclined to persecution, would he not have
persecuted the Irish Protestants? He did not want power. He did not want
provocation. Yet at Dublin, where the members of his Church were the
majority, as at Westminister, where they were a minority, he had firmly
adhered to the principles laid down in his much maligned Declaration of
Indulgence, 221 Unfortunately for him, the
same wind which carried his fair professions to England carried thither
also evidence that his professions were insincere. A single law, worthy of
Turgot or of Franklin, seemed ludicrously out of place in the midst of a
crowd of laws which would have disgraced Gardiner or Alva.

A necessary preliminary to the vast work of spoliation and slaughter on
which the legislators of Dublin were bent, was an Act annulling the
authority which the English Parliament, both as the supreme legislature
and as the supreme Court of Appeal, had hitherto exercised over Ireland,
222
This Act was rapidly passed; and then followed, in quick succession,
confiscations and proscriptions on a gigantic scale. The personal estates
of absentees above the age of seventeen years were transferred to the
King. When lay property was thus invaded, it was not likely that the
endowments which had been, in contravention of every sound principle,
lavished on the Church of the minority would be spared. To reduce those
endowments, without prejudice to existing interests, would have been a
reform worthy of a good prince and of a good parliament. But no such
reform would satisfy the vindictive bigots who sate at the King’s Inns. By
one sweeping Act, the greater part of the tithe was transferred from the
Protestant to the Roman Catholic clergy; and the existing incumbents were
left, without one farthing of compensation, to die of hunger, 223
A Bill repealing the Act of Settlement and transferring many thousands of
square miles from Saxon to Celtic landlords was brought in and carried by
acclamation, 224

Of legislation such as this it is impossible to speak too severely: but
for the legislators there are excuses which it is the duty of the
historian to notice. They acted unmercifully, unjustly, unwisely. But it
would be absurd to expect mercy, justice, or wisdom from a class of men
first abased by many years of oppression, and then maddened by the joy of
a sudden deliverance, and armed with irresistible power. The
representatives of the Irish nation were, with few exceptions, rude and
ignorant. They had lived in a state of constant irritation. With
aristocratical sentiments they had been in a servile position. With the
highest pride of blood, they had been exposed to daily affronts, such as
might well have roused the choler of the humblest plebeian. In sight of
the fields and castles which they regarded as their own, they had been
glad to be invited by a peasant to partake of his whey and his potatoes.
Those violent emotions of hatred and cupidity which the situation of the
native gentleman could scarcely fail to call forth appeared to him under
the specious guise of patriotism and piety. For his enemies were the
enemies of his nation; and the same tyranny which had robbed him of his
patrimony had robbed his Church of vast wealth bestowed on her by the
devotion of an earlier age. How was power likely to be used by an
uneducated and inexperienced man, agitated by strong desires and
resentments which he mistook for sacred duties? And, when two or three
hundred such men were brought together in one assembly, what was to be
expected but that the passions which each had long nursed in silence would
be at once matured into fearful vigour by the influence of sympathy?

Between James and his parliament there was little in common, except hatred
of the Protestant religion. He was an Englishman. Superstition had not
utterly extinguished all national feeling in his mind; and he could not
but be displeased by the malevolence with which his Celtic supporters
regarded the race from which he sprang. The range of his intellectual
vision was small. Yet it was impossible that, having reigned in England,
and looking constantly forward to the day when he should reign in England
once more, he should not take a wider view of politics than was taken by
men who had no objects out of Ireland. The few Irish Protestants who still
adhered to him, and the British nobles, both Protestant and Roman
Catholic, who had followed him into exile, implored him to restrain the
violence of the rapacious and vindictive senate which he had convoked.
They with peculiar earnestness implored him not to consent to the repeal
of the Act of Settlement. On what security, they asked, could any man
invest his money or give a portion to his children, if he could not rely
on positive laws and on the uninterrupted possession of many years? The
military adventurers among whom Cromwell portioned out the soil might
perhaps be regarded as wrongdoers. But how large a part of their estates
had passed, by fair purchase, into other hands! How much money had
proprietors borrowed on mortgage, on statute merchant, on statute staple!
How many capitalists had, trusting to legislative acts and to royal
promises, come over from England, and bought land in Ulster and Leinster,
without the least misgiving as to the title! What a sum had those
capitalists expended, during a quarter of a century, in building;
draining, inclosing, planting! The terms of the compromise which Charles
the Second had sanctioned might not be in all respects just. But was one
injustice to be redressed by committing another injustice more monstrous
still? And what effect was likely to be produced in England by the cry of
thousands of innocent English families whom an English king had doomed to
ruin? The complaints of such a body of sufferers might delay, might
prevent, the Restoration to which all loyal subjects were eagerly looking
forward; and, even if his Majesty should, in spite of those complaints, be
happily restored, he would to the end of his life feel the pernicious
effects of the injustice which evil advisers were now urging him to
commit. He would find that, in trying to quiet one set of malecontents, he
had created another. As surely as he yielded to the clamour raised at
Dublin for a repeal of the Act of Settlement, he would, from the day on
which he returned to Westminster, be assailed by as loud and pertinacious
a clamour for a repeal of that repeal. He could not but be aware that no
English Parliament, however loyal, would permit such laws as were now
passing through the Irish Parliament to stand. Had he made up his mind to
take the part of Ireland against the universal sense of England? If so, to
what could he look forward but another banishment and another deposition?
Or would he, when he had recovered the greater kingdom, revoke the boors
by which, in his distress, he had purchased the help of the smaller? It
might seem an insult to him even to suggest that he could harbour the
thought of such unprincely, of such unmanly, perfidy. Yet what other
course would be left to him? And was it not better for him to refuse
unreasonable concessions now than to retract those concessions hereafter
in a manner which must bring on him reproaches insupportable to a noble
mind? His situation was doubtless embarrassing. Yet in this case, as in
other cases, it would be found that the path of justice was the path of
wisdom, 225

Though James had, in his speech at the opening of the session, declared
against the Act of Settlement, he felt that these arguments were
unanswerable. He held several conferences with the leading members of the
House of Commons, and earnestly recommended moderation. But his
exhortations irritated the passions which he wished to allay. Many of the
native gentry held high and violent language. It was impudent, they said,
to talk about the rights of purchasers. How could right spring out of
wrong? People who chose to buy property acquired by injustice must take
the consequences of their folly and cupidity. It was clear that the Lower
House was altogether impracticable. James had, four years before, refused
to make the smallest concession to the most obsequious parliament that has
ever sat in England; and it might have been expected that the obstinacy,
which he had never wanted when it was a vice, would not have failed him
now when it would have been a virtue. During a short time he seemed
determined to act justly. He even talked of dissolving the parliament. The
chiefs of the old Celtic families, on the other hand, said publicly that,
if he did not give them back their inheritance, they would not fight for
his. His very soldiers railed on him in the streets of Dublin. At length
he determined to go down himself to the House of Peers, not in his robes
and crown, but in the garb in which he had been used to attend debates at
Westminster, and personally to solicit the Lords to put some check on the
violence of the Commons. But just as he was getting into his coach for
this purpose he was stopped by Avaux. Avaux was as zealous as any Irishman
for the bills which the Commons were urging forward. It was enough for him
that those bills seemed likely to make the enmity between England and
Ireland irreconcileable. His remonstrances induced James to abstain from
openly opposing the repeal of the Act of Settlement. Still the unfortunate
prince continued to cherish some faint hope that the law for which the
Commons were so zealous would be rejected, or at least modified, by the
Peers. Lord Granard, one of the few Protestant noblemen who sate in that
parliament, exerted himself strenuously on the side of public faith and
sound policy. The King sent him a message of thanks. “We Protestants,”
said Granard to Powis who brought the message, “are few in number. We can
do little. His Majesty should try his influence with the Roman Catholics.”
“His Majesty,” answered Powis with an oath, “dares not say what he
thinks.” A few days later James met Granard riding towards the parliament
house. “Where are you going, my Lord?” said the King. “To enter my
protest, Sir,” answered Granard, “against the repeal of the Act of
Settlement.” “You are right,” said the King: “but I am fallen into the
hands of people who will ram that and much more down my throat.” 226

James yielded to the will of the Commons; but the unfavourable impression
which his short and feeble resistance had made upon them was not to be
removed by his submission. They regarded him with profound distrust; they
considered him as at heart an Englishman; and not a day passed without
some indication of this feeling. They were in no haste to grant him a
supply. One party among them planned an address urging him to dismiss
Melfort as an enemy of their nation. Another party drew up a bill for
deposing all the Protestant Bishops, even the four who were then actually
sitting in Parliament. It was not without difficulty that Avaux and
Tyrconnel, whose influence in the Lower House far exceeded the King’s,
could restrain the zeal of the majority, 227

It is remarkable that, while the King was losing the confidence and good
will of the Irish Commons by faintly defending against them, in one
quarter, the institution of property, he was himself, in another quarter,
attacking that institution with a violence, if possible, more reckless
than theirs. He soon found that no money came into his Exchequer. The
cause was sufficiently obvious. Trade was at an end. Floating capital had
been withdrawn in great masses from the island. Of the fixed capital much
had been destroyed, and the rest was lying idle. Thousands of those
Protestants who were the most industrious and intelligent part of the
population had emigrated to England. Thousands had taken refuge in the
places which still held out for William and Mary. Of the Roman Catholic
peasantry who were in the vigour of life the majority had enlisted in the
army or had joined gangs of plunderers. The poverty of the treasury was
the necessary effect of the poverty of the country: public prosperity
could be restored only by the restoration of private prosperity; and
private prosperity could be restored only by years of peace and security.
James was absurd enough to imagine that there was a more speedy and
efficacious remedy. He could, he conceived, at once extricate himself from
his financial difficulties by the simple process of calling a farthing a
shilling. The right of coining was undoubtedly a flower of the
prerogative; and, in his view, the right of coining included the right of
debasing the coin. Pots, pans, knockers of doors, pieces of ordnance which
had long been past use, were carried to the mint. In a short time lumps of
base metal, nominally worth near a million sterling, intrinsically worth
about a sixtieth part of that sum, were in circulation. A royal edict
declared these pieces to be legal tender in all cases whatever. A mortgage
for a thousand pounds was cleared off by a bag of counters made out of old
kettles. The creditors who complained to the Court of Chancery were told
by Fitton to take their money and be gone. But of all classes the
tradesmen of Dublin, who were generally Protestants, were the greatest
losers. At first, of course, they raised their demands: but the
magistrates of the city took on themselves to meet this heretical
machination by putting forth a tariff regulating prices. Any man who
belonged to the caste now dominant might walk into a shop, lay on the
counter a bit of brass worth threepence, and carry off goods to the value
of half a guinea. Legal redress was out of the question. Indeed the
sufferers thought themselves happy if, by the sacrifice of their stock in
trade, they could redeem their limbs and their lives. There was not a
baker’s shop in the city round which twenty or thirty soldiers were not
constantly prowling. Some persons who refused the base money were arrested
by troopers and carried before the Provost Marshal, who cursed them, swore
at them, locked them up in dark cells, and, by threatening to hang them at
their own doors, soon overcame their resistance. Of all the plagues of
that time none made a deeper or a more lasting impression on the minds of
the Protestants of Dublin than the plague of the brass money, 228
To the recollection of the confusion and misery which had been produced by
James’s coin must be in part ascribed the strenuous opposition which,
thirty-five years later, large classes, firmly attached to the House of
Hanover, offered to the government of George the First in the affair of
Wood’s patent.

There can be no question that James, in thus altering, by his own
authority, the terms of all the contracts in the kingdom, assumed a power
which belonged only to the whole legislature. Yet the Commons did not
remonstrate. There was no power, however unconstitutional, which they were
not willing to concede to him, as long as he used it to crush and plunder
the English population. On the other hand, they respected no prerogative,
however ancient, however legitimate, however salutary, if they apprehended
that he might use it to protect the race which they abhorred. They were
not satisfied till they had extorted his reluctant consent to a portentous
law, a law without a parallel in the history of civilised countries, the
great Act of Attainder.

A list was framed containing between two and three thousand names. At the
top was half the peerage of Ireland. Then came baronets, knights,
clergymen, squires, merchants, yeomen, artisans, women, children. No
investigation was made. Any member who wished to rid himself of a
creditor, a rival, a private enemy, gave in the name to the clerk at the
table, and it was generally inserted without discussion. The only debate
of which any account has come down to us related to the Earl of Strafford.
He had friends in the House who ventured to offer something in his favour.
But a few words from Simon Luttrell settled the question. “I have,” he
said, “heard the King say some hard things of that lord.” This was thought
sufficient, and the name of Strafford stands fifth in the long table of
the proscribed, 229

Days were fixed before which those whose names were on the list were
required to surrender themselves to such justice as was then administered
to English Protestants in Dublin. If a proscribed person was in Ireland,
he must surrender himself by the tenth of August. If he had left Ireland
since the fifth of November 1688, he must surrender himself by the first
of September. If he had left Ireland before the fifth of November 1688, he
must surrender himself by the first of October. If he failed to appear by
the appointed day, he was to be hanged, drawn, and quartered without a
trial, and his property was to be confiscated. It might be physically
impossible for him to deliver himself up within the time fixed by the Act.
He might be bedridden. He might be in the West Indies. He might be in
prison. Indeed there notoriously were such cases. Among the attainted
Lords was Mountjoy. He had been induced by the villany of Tyrconnel to
trust himself at Saint Germains: he had been thrown into the Bastile: he
was still lying there; and the Irish parliament was not ashamed to enact
that, unless he could, within a few weeks, make his escape from his cell,
and present himself at Dublin, he should be put to death, 230

As it was not even pretended that there had been any inquiry into the
guilt of those who were thus proscribed, as not a single one among them
had been heard in his own defence, and as it was certain that it would be
physically impossible for many of them to surrender themselves in time, it
was clear that nothing but a large exercise of the royal prerogative of
mercy could prevent the perpetration of iniquities so horrible that no
precedent could be found for them even in the lamentable history of the
troubles of Ireland. The Commons therefore determined that the royal
prerogative of mercy should be limited. Several regulations were devised
for the purpose of making the passing of pardons difficult and costly: and
finally it was enacted that every pardon granted by his Majesty, after the
end of November 1689, to any of the many hundreds of persons who had been
sentenced to death without a trial, should be absolutely void and of none
effect. Sir Richard Nagle came in state to the bar of the Lords and
presented the bill with a speech worthy of the occasion. “Many of the
persons here attainted,” said he, “have been proved traitors by such
evidence as satisfies us. As to the rest we have followed common fame.” 231

With such reckless barbarity was the list framed that fanatical royalists,
who were, at that very time, hazarding their property, their liberty,
their lives, in the cause of James, were not secure from proscription. The
most learned man of whom the Jacobite party could boast was Henry Dodwell,
Camdenian Professor in the University of Oxford. In the cause of
hereditary monarchy he shrank from no sacrifice and from no danger. It was
about him that William uttered those memorable words: “He has set his
heart on being a martyr; and I have set my mind on disappointing him.” But
James was more cruel to friends than William to foes. Dodwell was a
Protestant: he had some property in Connaught: these crimes were
sufficient; and he was set down in the long roll of those who were doomed
to the gallows and the quartering block, 232

That James would give his assent to a bill which took from him the power
of pardoning, seemed to many persons impossible. He had, four years
before, quarrelled with the most loyal of parliaments rather than cede a
prerogative which did not belong to him. It might, therefore, well be
expected that he would now have struggled hard to retain a precious
prerogative which had been enjoyed by his predecessors ever since the
origin of the monarchy, and which had never been questioned by the Whigs.
The stern look and raised voice with which he had reprimanded the Tory
gentlemen, who, in the language of profound reverence and fervent
affection, implored him not to dispense with the laws, would now have been
in place. He might also have seen that the right course was the wise
course. Had he, on this great occasion, had the spirit to declare that he
would not shed the blood of the innocent, and that, even as respected the
guilty, he would not divest himself of the power of tempering judgment
with mercy, he would have regained more hearts in England than he would
have lost in Ireland. But it was ever his fate to resist where he should
have yielded, and to yield where he should have resisted. The most wicked
of all laws received his sanction; and it is but a very small extenuation
of his guilt that his sanction was somewhat reluctantly given.

That nothing might be wanting to the completeness of this great crime,
extreme care was taken to prevent the persons who were attainted from
knowing that they were attainted, till the day of grace fixed in the Act
was passed. The roll of names was not published, but kept carefully locked
up in Fitton’s closet. Some Protestants, who still adhered to the cause of
James, but who were anxious to know whether any of their friends or
relations had been proscribed, tried hard to obtain a sight of the list;
but solicitation, remonstrance, even bribery, proved vain. Not a single
copy got abroad till it was too late for any of the thousands who had been
condemned without a trial to obtain a pardon, 233

Towards the close of July James prorogued the Houses. They had sate more
than ten weeks; and in that space of time they had proved most fully that,
great as have been the evils which Protestant ascendency has produced in
Ireland, the evils produced by Popish ascendancy would have been greater
still. That the colonists, when they had won the victory, grossly abused
it, that their legislation was, during many years, unjust and tyrannical,
is most true. But it is not less true that they never quite came up to the
atrocious example set by their vanquished enemy during his short tenure of
power.

Indeed, while James was loudly boasting that he had passed an Act granting
entire liberty of conscience to all sects, a persecution as cruel as that
of Languedoc was raging through all the provinces which owned his
authority. It was said by those who wished to find an excuse for him that
almost all the Protestants who still remained in Munster, Connaught, and
Leinster were his enemies, and that it was not as schismatics, but as
rebels in heart, who wanted only opportunity to become rebels in act, that
he gave them up to be oppressed and despoiled; and to this excuse some
weight might have been allowed if he had strenuously exerted himself to
protect those few colonists, who, though firmly attached to the reformed
religion, were still true to the doctrines of nonresistance and of
indefeasible hereditary right. But even these devoted royalists found that
their heresy was in his view a crime for which no services or sacrifices
would atone. Three or four noblemen, members of the Anglican Church, who
had welcomed him to Ireland, and had sate in his Parliament, represented
to him that, if the rule which forbade any Protestant to possess any
weapon were strictly enforced, their country houses would be at the mercy
of the Rapparees, and obtained from him permission to keep arms sufficient
for a few servants. But Avaux remonstrated. The indulgence, he said, was
grossly abused: these Protestant lords were not to be trusted: they were
turning their houses into fortresses: his Majesty would soon have reason
to repent his goodness. These representations prevailed; and Roman
Catholic troops were quartered in the suspected dwellings, 234

Still harder was the lot of those Protestant clergymen who continued to
cling, with desperate fidelity, to the cause of the Lord’s Anointed. Of
all the Anglican divines the one who had the largest share of James’s good
graces seems to have been Cartwright. Whether Cartwright could long have
continued to be a favourite without being an apostate may be doubted. He
died a few weeks after his arrival in Ireland; and thenceforward his
church had no one to plead her cause. Nevertheless a few of her prelates
and priests continued for a time to teach what they had taught in the days
of the Exclusion Bill. But it was at the peril of life or limb that they
exercised their functions. Every wearer of a cassock was a mark for the
insults and outrages of soldiers and Rapparees. In the country his house
was robbed, and he was fortunate if it was not burned over his head. He
was hunted through the streets of Dublin with cries of “There goes the
devil of a heretic.” Sometimes he was knocked down: sometimes he was
cudgelled, 235 The rulers of the University
of Dublin, trained in the Anglican doctrine of passive obedience, had
greeted James on his first arrival at the Castle, and had been assured by
him that he would protect them in the enjoyment of their property and
their privileges. They were now, without any trial, without any
accusation, thrust out of their house. The communion plate of the chapel,
the books in the library, the very chairs and beds of the collegians were
seized. Part of the building was turned into a magazine, part into a
barrack, part into a prison. Simon Luttrell, who was Governor of the
capital, was, with great difficulty and by powerful intercession, induced
to let the ejected fellows and scholars depart in safety. He at length
permitted them to remain at large, with this condition, that, on pain of
death, no three of them should meet together, 236 No
Protestant divine suffered more hardships than Doctor William King, Dean
of Saint Patrick’s. He had been long distinguished by the fervour with
which he had inculcated the duty of passively obeying even the worst
rulers. At a later period, when he had published a defence of the
Revolution, and had accepted a mitre from the new government, he was
reminded that he had invoked the divine vengeance on the usurpers, and had
declared himself willing to die a hundred deaths rather than desert the
cause of hereditary right. He had said that the true religion had often
been strengthened by persecution, but could never be strengthened by
rebellion; that it would be a glorious day for the Church of England when
a whole cartload of her ministers should go to the gallows for the
doctrine of nonresistance; and that his highest ambition was to be one of
such a company, 237 It is not improbable that,
when he spoke thus, he felt as he spoke. But his principles, though they
might perhaps have held out against the severities and the promises of
William, were not proof against the ingratitude of James. Human nature at
last asserted its rights. After King had been repeatedly imprisoned by the
government to which he was devotedly attached, after he had been insulted
and threatened in his own choir by the soldiers, after he had been
interdicted from burying in his own churchyard, and from preaching in his
own pulpit, after he had narrowly escaped with life from a musketshot
fired at him in the street, he began to think the Whig theory of
government less unreasonable and unchristian than it had once appeared to
him, and persuaded himself that the oppressed Church might lawfully accept
deliverance, if God should be pleased, by whatever means, to send it to
her.

In no long time it appeared that James would have done well to hearken to
those counsellors who had told him that the acts by which he was trying to
make himself popular in one of his three kingdoms, would make him odious
in the others. It was in some sense fortunate for England that, after he
had ceased to reign here, he continued during more than a year to reign in
Ireland. The Revolution had been followed by a reaction of public feeling
in his favour. That reaction, if it had been suffered to proceed
uninterrupted, might perhaps not have ceased till he was again King: but
it was violently interrupted by himself. He would not suffer his people to
forget: he would not suffer them to hope: while they were trying to find
excuses for his past errors, and to persuade themselves that he would not
repeat these errors, he forced upon them, in their own despite, the
conviction that he was incorrigible, that the sharpest discipline of
adversity had taught him nothing, and that, if they were weak enough to
recall him, they would soon have to depose him again. It was in vain that
the Jacobites put forth pamphlets about the cruelty with which he had been
treated by those who were nearest to him in blood, about the imperious
temper and uncourteous manners of William, about the favour shown to the
Dutch, about the heavy taxes, about the suspension of the Habeas Corpus
Act, about the dangers which threatened the Church from the enmity of
Puritans and Latitudinarians. James refuted these pamphlets far more
effectually than all the ablest and most eloquent Whig writers united
could have done. Every week came the news that he had passed some new Act
for robbing or murdering Protestants. Every colonist who succeeded in
stealing across the sea from Leinster to Holyhead or Bristol, brought
fearful reports of the tyranny under which his brethren groaned. What
impression these reports made on the Protestants of our island may be
easily inferred from the fact that they moved the indignation of
Ronquillo, a Spaniard and a bigoted member of the Church of Rome. He
informed his Court that, though the English laws against Popery might seem
severe, they were so much mitigated by the prudence and humanity of the
Government, that they caused no annoyance to quiet people; and he took
upon himself to assure the Holy See that what a Roman Catholic suffered in
London was nothing when compared with what a Protestant suffered in
Ireland, 238

The fugitive Englishry found in England warm sympathy and munificent
relief. Many were received into the houses of friends and kinsmen. Many
were indebted for the means of subsistence to the liberality of strangers.
Among those who bore a part in this work of mercy, none contributed more
largely or less ostentatiously than the Queen. The House of Commons placed
at the King’s disposal fifteen thousand pounds for the relief of those
refugees whose wants were most pressing, and requested him to give
commissions in the army to those who were qualified for military
employment, 239 An Act was also passed
enabling beneficed clergymen who had fled from Ireland to hold preferment
in England, 240 Yet the interest which the
nation felt in these unfortunate guests was languid when compared with the
interest excited by that portion of the Saxon colony which still
maintained in Ulster a desperate conflict against overwhelming odds. On
this subject scarcely one dissentient voice was to be heard in our island.
Whigs, Tories, nay even those Jacobites in whom Jacobitism had not
extinguished every patriotic sentiment, gloried in the glory of
Enniskillen and Londonderry. The House of Commons was all of one mind.
“This is no time to be counting cost,” said honest Birch, who well
remembered the way in which Oliver had made war on the Irish. “Are those
brave fellows in Londonderry to be deserted? If we lose them will not all
the world cry shame upon us? A boom across the river! Why have we not cut
the boom in pieces? Are our brethren to perish almost in sight of England,
within a few hours’ voyage of our shores?” 241 Howe,
the most vehement man of one party, declared that the hearts of the people
were set on Ireland. Seymour, the leader of the other party, declared
that, though he had not taken part in setting up the new government, he
should cordially support it in all that might be necessary for the
preservation of Ireland, 242 The Commons appointed a
committee to enquire into the cause of the delays and miscarriages which
had been all but fatal to the Englishry of Ulster. The officers to whose
treachery or cowardice the public ascribed the calamities of Londonderry
were put under arrest. Lundy was sent to the Tower, Cunningham to the Gate
House. The agitation of the public mind was in some degree calmed by the
announcement that, before the end of the summer, an army powerful enough
to reestablish the English ascendency in Ireland would be sent across
Saint George’s Channel, and that Schomberg would be the General. In the
meantime an expedition which was thought to be sufficient for the relief
of Londonderry was despatched from Liverpool under the command of Kirke.
The dogged obstinacy with which this man had, in spite of royal
solicitations, adhered to his religion, and the part which he had taken in
the Revolution, had perhaps entitled him to an amnesty for past crimes.
But it is difficult to understand why the Government should have selected
for a post of the highest importance an officer who was generally and
justly hated, who had never shown eminent talents for war, and who, both
in Africa and in England, had notoriously tolerated among his soldiers a
licentiousness, not only shocking to humanity, but also incompatible with
discipline.

On the sixteenth of May, Kirke’s troops embarked: on the twenty-second
they sailed: but contrary winds made the passage slow, and forced the
armament to stop long at the Isle of Man. Meanwhile the Protestants of
Ulster were defending themselves with stubborn courage against a great
superiority of force. The Enniskilleners had never ceased to wage a
vigorous partisan war against the native population. Early in May they
marched to encounter a large body of troops from Connaught, who had made
an inroad into Donegal. The Irish were speedily routed, and fled to Sligo
with the loss of a hundred and twenty men killed and sixty taken. Two
small pieces of artillery and several horses fell into the hands of the
conquerors. Elated by this success, the Enniskilleners soon invaded the
county of Cavan, drove before them fifteen hundred of James’s troops, took
and destroyed the castle of Ballincarrig, reputed the strongest in that
part of the kingdom, and carried off the pikes and muskets of the
garrison. The next incursion was into Meath. Three thousand oxen and two
thousand sheep were swept away and brought safe to the little island in
Lough Erne. These daring exploits spread terror even to the gates of
Dublin. Colonel Hugh Sutherland was ordered to march against Enniskillen
with a regiment of dragoons and two regiments of foot. He carried with him
arms for the native peasantry; and many repaired to his standard. The
Enniskilleners did not wait till he came into their neighbourhood, but
advanced to encounter him. He declined an action, and retreated, leaving
his stores at Belturbet under the care of a detachment of three hundred
soldiers. The Protestants attacked Belturbet with vigour, made their way
into a lofty house which overlooked the town, and thence opened such a
fire that in two hours the garrison surrendered. Seven hundred muskets, a
great quantity of powder, many horses, many sacks of biscuits, many
barrels of meal, were taken, and were sent to Enniskillen. The boats which
brought these precious spoils were joyfully welcomed. The fear of hunger
was removed. While the aboriginal population had, in many counties,
altogether neglected the cultivation of the earth, in the expectation, it
should seem, that marauding would prove an inexhaustible resource, the
colonists, true to the provident and industrious character of their race,
had, in the midst of war, not omitted carefully to till the soil in the
neighbourhood of their strongholds. The harvest was now not far remote;
and, till the harvest, the food taken from the enemy would be amply
sufficient, 243

Yet, in the midst of success and plenty, the Enniskilleners were tortured
by a cruel anxiety for Londonderry. They were bound to the defenders of
that city, not only by religious and national sympathy, but by common
interest. For there could be no doubt that, if Londonderry fell, the whole
Irish army would instantly march in irresistible force upon Lough Erne.
Yet what could be done? Some brave men were for making a desperate attempt
to relieve the besieged city; but the odds were too great. Detachments
however were sent which infested the rear of the blockading army, cut off
supplies, and, on one occasion, carried away the horses of three entire
troops of cavalry, 244 Still the line of posts which
surrounded Londonderry by land remained unbroken. The river was still
strictly closed and guarded. Within the walls the distress had become
extreme. So early as the eighth of June horseflesh was almost the only
meat which could be purchased; and of horseflesh the supply was scanty. It
was necessary to make up the deficiency with tallow; and even tallow was
doled out with a parsimonious hand.

On the fifteenth of June a gleam of hope appeared. The sentinels on the
top of the Cathedral saw sails nine miles off in the bay of Lough Foyle.
Thirty vessels of different sizes were counted. Signals were made from the
steeples and returned from the mast heads, but were imperfectly understood
on both sides. At last a messenger from the fleet eluded the Irish
sentinels, dived under the boom, and informed the garrison that Kirke had
arrived from England with troops, arms, ammunition, and provisions, to
relieve the city, 245

In Londonderry expectation was at the height: but a few hours of feverish
joy were followed by weeks of misery. Kirke thought it unsafe to make any
attempt, either by land or by water, on the lines of the besiegers, and
retired to the entrance of Lough Foyle, where, during several weeks, he
lay inactive.

And now the pressure of famine became every day more severe. A strict
search was made in all the recesses of all the houses of the city; and
some provisions, which had been concealed in cellars by people who had
since died or made their escape, were discovered and carried to the
magazines. The stock of cannon balls was almost exhausted; and their place
was supplied by brickbats coated with lead. Pestilence began, as usual, to
make its appearance in the train of hunger. Fifteen officers died of fever
in one day. The Governor Baker was among those who sank under the disease.
His place was supplied by Colonel John Mitchelburne, 246

Meanwhile it was known at Dublin that Kirke and his squadron were on the
coast of Ulster. The alarm was great at the Castle. Even before this news
arrived, Avaux had given it as his opinion that Richard Hamilton was
unequal to the difficulties of the situation. It had therefore been
resolved that Rosen should take the chief command. He was now sent down
with all speed, 247

On the nineteenth of June he arrived at the head quarter of the besieging
army. At first he attempted to undermine the walls; but his plan was
discovered; and he was compelled to abandon it after a sharp fight, in
which more than a hundred of his men were slain. Then his fury rose to a
strange pitch. He, an old soldier, a Marshal of France in expectancy,
trained in the school of the greatest generals, accustomed, during many
years, to scientific war, to be baffled by a mob of country gentlemen,
farmers, shopkeepers, who were protected only by a wall which any good
engineer would at once have pronounced untenable! He raved, he blasphemed,
in a language of his own, made up of all the dialects spoken from the
Baltic to the Atlantic. He would raze the city to the ground: he would
spare no living thing; no, not the young girls; not the babies at the
breast. As to the leaders, death was too light a punishment for them: he
would rack them: he would roast them alive. In his rage he ordered a shell
to be flung into the town with a letter containing a horrible menace. He
would, he said, gather into one body all the Protestants who had remained
at their homes between Charlemont and the sea, old men, women, children,
many of them near in blood and affection to the defenders of Londonderry.
No protection, whatever might be the authority by which it had been given,
should be respected. The multitude thus brought together should be driven
under the walls of Londonderry, and should there be starved to death in
the sight of their countrymen, their friends, their kinsmen. This was no
idle threat. Parties were instantly sent out in all directions to collect
victims. At dawn, on the morning of the second of July, hundreds of
Protestants, who were charged with no crime, who were incapable of bearing
arms, and many of whom had protections granted by James, were dragged to
the gates of the city. It was imagined that the piteous sight would quell
the spirit of the colonists. But the only effect was to rouse that spirit
to still greater energy. An order was immediately put forth that no man
should utter the word Surrender on pain of death; and no man uttered that
word. Several prisoners of high rank were in the town. Hitherto they had
been well treated, and had received as good rations as were measured out
to the garrison. They were now, closely confined. A gallows was erected on
one of the bastion; and a message was conveyed to Rosen, requesting him to
send a confessor instantly to prepare his friends for death. The prisoners
in great dismay wrote to the savage Livonian, but received no answer. They
then addressed themselves to their countryman, Richard Hamilton. They were
willing, they said, to shed their blood for their King; but they thought
it hard to die the ignominious death of thieves in consequence of the
barbarity of their own companions in arms. Hamilton, though a man of lax
principles, was not cruel. He had been disgusted by the inhumanity of
Rosen, but, being only second in command, could not venture to express
publicly all that he thought. He however remonstrated strongly. Some Irish
officers felt on this occasion as it was natural that brave men should
feel, and declared, weeping with pity and indignation, that they should
never cease to have in their ears the cries of the poor women and children
who had been driven at the point of the pike to die of famine between the
camp and the city. Rosen persisted during forty-eight hours. In that time
many unhappy creatures perished: but Londonderry held out as resolutely as
ever; and he saw that his crime was likely to produce nothing but hatred
and obloquy. He at length gave way, and suffered the survivors to
withdraw. The garrison then took down the gallows which had been erected
on the bastion, 248

When the tidings of these events reached Dublin, James, though by no means
prone to compassion, was startled by an atrocity of which the civil wars
of England had furnished no example, and was displeased by learning that
protections, given by his authority, and guaranteed by his honour, had
been publicly declared to be nullities. He complained to the French
ambassador, and said, with a warmth which the occasion fully justified,
that Rosen was a barbarous Muscovite. Melfort could not refrain from
adding that, if Rosen had been an Englishman, he would have been hanged.
Avaux was utterly unable to understand this effeminate sensibility. In his
opinion, nothing had been done that was at all reprehensible; and he had
some difficulty in commanding himself when he heard the King and the
secretary blame, in strong language, an act of wholesome severity, 249
In truth the French ambassador and the French general were well paired.
There was a great difference doubtless, in appearance and manner, between
the handsome, graceful, and refined diplomatist, whose dexterity and
suavity had been renowned at the most polite courts of Europe, and the
military adventurer, whose look and voice reminded all who came near him
that he had been born in a half savage country, that he had risen from the
ranks, and that he had once been sentenced to death for marauding. But the
heart of the courtier was really even more callous than that of the
soldier.

Rosen was recalled to Dublin; and Richard Hamilton was again left in the
chief command. He tried gentler means than those which had brought so much
reproach on his predecessor. No trick, no lie, which was thought likely to
discourage the starving garrison was spared. One day a great shout was
raised by the whole Irish camp. The defenders of Londonderry were soon
informed that the army of James was rejoicing on account of the fall of
Enniskillen. They were told that they had now no chance of being relieved,
and were exhorted to save their lives by capitulating. They consented to
negotiate. But what they asked was, that they should be permitted to
depart armed and in military array, by land or by water at their choice.
They demanded hostages for the exact fulfilment of these conditions, and
insisted that the hostages should be sent on board of the fleet which lay
in Lough Foyle. Such terms Hamilton durst not grant: the Governors would
abate nothing: the treaty was broken off; and the conflict recommenced, 250

By this time July was far advanced; and the state of the city was, hour by
hour, becoming more frightful. The number of the inhabitants had been
thinned more by famine and disease than by the fire of the enemy. Yet that
fire was sharper and more constant than ever. One of the gates was beaten
in: one of the bastions was laid in ruins; but the breaches made by day
were repaired by night with indefatigable activity. Every attack was still
repelled. But the fighting men of the garrison were so much exhausted that
they could scarcely keep their legs. Several of them, in the act of
striking at the enemy, fell down from mere weakness. A very small quantity
of grain remained, and was doled out by mouthfuls. The stock of salted
hides was considerable, and by gnawing them the garrison appeased the rage
of hunger. Dogs, fattened on the blood of the slain who lay unburied round
the town, were luxuries which few could afford to purchase. The price of a
whelp’s paw was five shillings and sixpence. Nine horses were still alive,
and but barely alive. They were so lean that little meat was likely to be
found upon them. It was, however, determined to slaughter them for food.
The people perished so fast that it was impossible for the survivors to
perform the rites of sepulture. There was scarcely a cellar in which some
corpse was not decaying. Such was the extremity of distress, that the rats
who came to feast in those hideous dens were eagerly hunted and greedily
devoured. A small fish, caught in the river, was not to be purchased with
money. The only price for which such a treasure could be obtained was some
handfuls of oatmeal. Leprosies, such as strange and unwholesome diet
engenders, made existence a constant torment. The whole city was poisoned
by the stench exhaled from the bodies of the dead and of the half dead.
That there should be fits of discontent and insubordination among men
enduring such misery was inevitable. At one moment it was suspected that
Walker had laid up somewhere a secret store of food, and was revelling in
private, while he exhorted others to suffer resolutely for the good cause.
His house was strictly examined: his innocence was fully proved: he
regained his popularity; and the garrison, with death in near prospect,
thronged to the cathedral to hear him preach, drank in his earnest
eloquence with delight, and went forth from the house of God with haggard
faces and tottering steps, but with spirit still unsubdued. There were,
indeed, some secret plottings. A very few obscure traitors opened
communications with the enemy. But it was necessary that all such dealings
should be carefully concealed. None dared to utter publicly any words save
words of defiance and stubborn resolution. Even in that extremity the
general cry was “No surrender.” And there were not wanting voices which,
in low tones, added, “First the horses and hides; and then the prisoners;
and then each other.” It was afterwards related, half in jest, yet not
without a horrible mixture of earnest, that a corpulent citizen, whose
bulk presented a strange contrast to the skeletons which surrounded him,
thought it expedient to conceal himself from the numerous eyes which
followed him with cannibal looks whenever he appeared in the streets, 251

It was no slight aggravation of the sufferings of the garrison that all
this time the English ships were seen far off in Lough Foyle.
Communication between the fleet and the city was almost impossible. One
diver who had attempted to pass the boom was drowned. Another was hanged.
The language of signals was hardly intelligible. On the thirteenth of
July, however, a piece of paper sewed up in a cloth button came to
Walker’s hands. It was a letter from Kirke, and contained assurances of
speedy relief. But more than a fortnight of intense misery had since
elapsed; and the hearts of the most sanguine were sick with deferred hope.
By no art could the provisions which were left be made to hold out two
days more, 252

Just at this time Kirke received a despatch from England, which contained
positive orders that Londonderry should be relieved. He accordingly
determined to make an attempt which, as far as appears, he might have
made, with at least an equally fair prospect of success, six weeks
earlier, 253

Among the merchant ships which had come to Lough Foyle under his convoy
was one called the Mountjoy. The master, Micaiah Browning, a native of
Londonderry, had brought from England a large cargo of provisions. He had,
it is said, repeatedly remonstrated against the inaction of the armament.
He now eagerly volunteered to take the first risk of succouring his fellow
citizens; and his offer was accepted. Andrew Douglas, master of the
Phoenix, who had on board a great quantity of meal from Scotland, was
willing to share the danger and the honour. The two merchantmen were to be
escorted by the Dartmouth frigate of thirty-six guns, commanded by Captain
John Leake, afterwards an admiral of great fame.

It was the thirtieth of July. The sun had just set: the evening sermon in
the cathedral was over; and the heartbroken congregation had separated,
when the sentinels on the tower saw the sails of three vessels coming up
the Foyle. Soon there was a stir in the Irish camp. The besiegers were on
the alert for miles along both shores. The ships were in extreme peril:
for the river was low; and the only navigable channel Tan very near to the
left bank, where the head quarters of the enemy had been fixed, and where
the batteries were most numerous. Leake performed his duty with a skill
and spirit worthy of his noble profession, exposed his frigate to cover
the merchantmen, and used his guns with great effect. At length the little
squadron came to the place of peril. Then the Mountjoy took the lead, and
went right at the bottom. The huge barricade cracked and gave way: but the
shock was such that the Mountjoy rebounded, and stuck in the mud. A yell
of triumph rose from the banks: the Irish rushed to their boats, and were
preparing to board; but the Dartmouth poured on them a well directed
broadside, which threw them into disorder. Just then the Phoenix dashed at
the breach which the Mountjoy had made, and was in a moment within the
fence. Meantime the tide was rising fast. The Mountjoy began to move, and
soon passed safe through the broken stakes and floating spars. But her
brave master was no more. A shot from one of the batteries had struck him;
and he died by the most enviable of all deaths, in sight of the city which
was his birthplace, which was his home, and which had just been saved by
his courage and self-devotion from the most frightful form of destruction.
The night had closed in before the conflict at the boom began; but the
flash of the guns was seen, and the noise heard, by the lean and ghastly
multitude which covered the walls of the city. When the Mountjoy grounded,
and when the shout of triumph rose from the Irish on both sides of the
river, the hearts of the besieged died within them. One who endured the
unutterable anguish of that moment has told that they looked fearfully
livid in each other’s eyes. Even after the barricade had been passed,
there was a terrible half hour of suspense. It was ten o’clock before the
ships arrived at the quay. The whole population was there to welcome them.
A screen made of casks filled with earth was hastily thrown up to protect
the landing place from the batteries on the other side of the river; and
then the work of unloading began. First were rolled on shore barrels
containing six thousand bushels of meal. Then came great cheeses, casks of
beef, flitches of bacon, kegs of butter, sacks of Pease and biscuit,
ankers of brandy. Not many hours before, half a pound of tallow and three
quarters of a pound of salted hide had been weighed out with niggardly
care to every fighting man. The ration which each now received was three
pounds of flour, two pounds of beef, and a pint of Pease. It is easy to
imagine with what tears grace was said over the suppers of that evening.
There was little sleep on either side of the wall. The bonfires shone
bright along the whole circuit of the ramparts. The Irish guns continued
to roar all night; and all night the bells of the rescued city made answer
to the Irish guns with a peal of joyous defiance. Through the whole of the
thirty-first of July the batteries of the enemy continued to play. But,
soon after the sun had again gone down, flames were seen arising from the
camp; and, when the first of August dawned, a line of smoking ruins marked
the site lately occupied by the huts of the besiegers; and the citizens
saw far off the long column of pikes and standards retreating up the left
bank of the Foyle towards Strabane, 254

So ended this great siege, the most memorable in the annals of the British
isles. It had lasted a hundred and five days. The garrison had been
reduced from about seven thousand effective men to about three thousand.
The loss of the besiegers cannot be precisely ascertained. Walker
estimated it at eight thousand men. It is certain from the despatches of
Avaux that the regiments which returned from the blockade had been so much
thinned that many of them were not more than two hundred strong. Of
thirty-six French gunners who had superintended the cannonading,
thirty-one had been killed or disabled, 255 The
means both of attack and of defence had undoubtedly been such as would
have moved the great warriors of the Continent to laughter; and this is
the very circumstance which gives so peculiar an interest to the history
of the contest. It was a contest, not between engineers, but between
nations; and the victory remained with the nation which, though inferior
in number, was superior in civilisation, in capacity for selfgovernment,
and in stubbornness of resolution, 256

As soon as it was known that the Irish army had retired, a deputation from
the city hastened to Lough Foyle, and invited Kirk to take the command. He
came accompanied by a long train of officers, and was received in state by
the two Governors, who delivered up to him the authority which, under the
pressure of necessity, they had assumed. He remained only a few days; but
he had time to show enough of the incurable vices of his character to
disgust a population distinguished by austere morals and ardent public
spirit. There was, however, no outbreak. The city was in the highest good
humour. Such quantities of provisions had been landed from the fleet, that
there was in every house a plenty never before known. A few days earlier a
man had been glad to obtain for twenty pence a mouthful of carrion scraped
from the bones of a starved horse. A pound of good beef was now sold for
three halfpence. Meanwhile all hands were busied in removing corpses which
had been thinly covered with earth, in filling up the holes which the
shells had ploughed in the ground, and in repairing the battered roofs of
the houses. The recollection of past dangers and privations, and the
consciousness of having deserved well of the English nation and of all
Protestant Churches, swelled the hearts of the townspeople with honest
pride. That pride grew stronger when they received from William a letter
acknowledging, in the most affectionate language, the debt which he owed
to the brave and trusty citizens of his good city. The whole population
crowded to the Diamond to hear the royal epistle read. At the close all
the guns on the ramparts sent forth a voice of joy: all the ships in the
river made answer: barrels of ale were broken up; and the health of their
Majesties was drunk with shouts and volleys of musketry.

Five generations have since passed away; and still the wall of Londonderry
is to the Protestants of Ulster what the trophy of Marathon was to the
Athenians. A lofty pillar, rising from a bastion which bore during many
weeks the heaviest fire of the enemy, is seen far up and far down the
Foyle. On the summit is the statue of Walker, such as when, in the last
and most terrible emergency, his eloquence roused the fainting courage of
his brethren. In one hand he grasps a Bible. The other, pointing down the
river, seems to direct the eyes of his famished audience to the English
topmasts in the distant bay. Such a monument was well deserved: yet it was
scarcely needed: for in truth the whole city is to this day a monument of
the great deliverance. The wall is carefully preserved; nor would any plea
of health or convenience be held by the inhabitants sufficient to justify
the demolition of that sacred enclosure which, in the evil time, gave
shelter to their race and their religion, 257 The
summit of the ramparts forms a pleasant walk. The bastions have been
turned into little gardens. Here and there, among the shrubs and flowers,
may be seen the old culverins which scattered bricks, cased with lead,
among the Irish ranks. One antique gun, the gift of the Fishmongers of
London, was distinguished, during the hundred and five memorable days, by
the loudness of its report, and still bears the name of Roaring Meg. The
cathedral is filled with relics and trophies. In the vestibule is a huge
shell, one of many hundreds of shells which were thrown into the city.
Over the altar are still seen the French flagstaves, taken by the garrison
in a desperate sally. The white ensigns of the House of Bourbon have long
been dust: but their place has been supplied by new banners, the work of
the fairest hands of Ulster. The anniversary of the day on which the gates
were closed, and the anniversary of the day on which the siege was raised,
have been down to our own time celebrated by salutes, processions,
banquets, and sermons: Lundy has been executed in effigy; and the sword,
said by tradition to be that of Maumont, has, on great occasions, been
carried in triumph. There is still a Walker Club and a Murray Club. The
humble tombs of the Protestant captains have been carefully sought out,
repaired, and embellished. It is impossible not to respect the sentiment
which indicates itself by these tokens. It is a sentiment which belongs to
the higher and purer part of human nature, and which adds not a little to
the strength of states. A people which takes no pride in the noble
achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve any thing worthy to be
remembered with pride by remote descendants. Yet it is impossible for the
moralist or the statesman to look with unmixed complacency on the
solemnities with which Londonderry commemorates her deliverance, and on
the honours which she pays to those who saved her. Unhappily the
animosities of her brave champions have descended with their glory. The
faults which are ordinarily found in dominant castes and dominant sects
have not seldom shown themselves without disguise at her festivities; and
even with the expressions of pious gratitude which have resounded from her
pulpits have too often been mingled words of wrath and defiance.

The Irish army which had retreated to Strabane remained there but a very
short time. The spirit of the troops had been depressed by their recent
failure, and was soon completely cowed by the news of a great disaster in
another quarter.

Three weeks before this time the Duke of Berwick had gained an advantage
over a detachment of the Enniskilleners, and had, by their own confession,
killed or taken more than fifty of them. They were in hopes of obtaining
some assistance from Kirke, to whom they had sent a deputation; and they
still persisted in rejecting all terms offered by the enemy. It was
therefore determined at Dublin that an attack should be made upon them
from several quarters at once. Macarthy, who had been rewarded for his
services in Munster with the title of Viscount Mountcashel, marched
towards Lough Erne from the east with three regiments of foot, two
regiments of dragoons, and some troops of cavalry. A considerable force,
which lay encamped near the mouth of the river Drowes, was at the same
time to advance from the west. The Duke of Berwick was to come from the
north, with such horse and dragoons as could be spared from the army which
was besieging Londonderry. The Enniskilleners were not fully apprised of
the whole plan which had been laid for their destruction; but they knew
that Macarthy was on the road with a force exceeding any which they could
bring into the field. Their anxiety was in some degree relieved by the
return of the deputation which they had sent to Kirke. Kirke could spare
no soldiers; but he had sent some arms, some ammunition, and some
experienced officers, of whom the chief were Colonel Wolseley and
Lieutenant Colonel Berry. These officers had come by sea round the coast
of Donegal, and had run up the Line. On Sunday, the twenty-ninth of July,
it was known that their boat was approaching the island of Enniskillen.
The whole population, male and female, came to the shore to greet them. It
was with difficulty, that they made their way to the Castle through the
crowds which hung on them, blessing God that dear old England had not
quite forgotten the Englishmen who upheld her cause against great odds in
the heart of Ireland.

Wolseley seems to have been in every respect well qualified for his post.
He was a stanch Protestant, had distinguished himself among the
Yorkshiremen who rose up for the Prince of Orange and a free Parliament,
and had, if he is not belied, proved his zeal for liberty and pure
religion, by causing the Mayor of Scarborough, who had made a speech in
favour of King James, to be brought into the market place and well tossed
there in a blanket, 258 This vehement hatred of Popery
was, in the estimation of the men of Enniskillen, the first of all
qualifications for command: and Wolseley had other and more important
qualifications. Though himself regularly bred to war, he seems to have had
a peculiar aptitude for the management of irregular troops. He had
scarcely taken on himself the chief command when he received notice that
Mountcashel had laid siege to the Castle of Crum. Crum was the frontier
garrison of the Protestants of Fermanagh. The ruins of the old
fortifications are now among the attractions of a beautiful
pleasureground, situated on a woody promontory which overlooks Lough Erne.
Wolseley determined to raise the siege. He sent Berry forward with such
troops as could be instantly put in motion, and promised to follow
speedily with a larger force.

Berry, after marching some miles, encountered thirteen companies of
Macarthy’s dragoons commanded by Anthony, the most brilliant and
accomplished of all who bore the name of Hamilton, but much less
successful as a soldier than as a courtier, a lover, and a writer.
Hamilton’s dragoons ran at the first fire: he was severely wounded; and
his second in command was shot dead. Macarthy soon came up to support
Hamilton; and at the same time Wolseley came up to support Berry. The
hostile armies were now in presence of each other. Macarthy had above five
thousand men and several pieces of artillery. The Enniskilleners were
under three thousand; and they had marched in such haste that they had
brought only one day’s provisions. It was therefore absolutely necessary
for them either to fight instantly or to retreat. Wolseley determined to
consult the men; and this determination, which, in ordinary circumstances,
would have been most unworthy of a general, was fully justified by the
peculiar composition and temper of the little army, an army made up of
gentlemen and yeomen fighting, not for pay, but for their lands, their
wives, their children, and their God. The ranks were drawn up under arms;
and the question was put, “Advance or Retreat?” The answer was an
universal shout of “Advance.” Wolseley gave out the word, “No Popery.” It
was received with loud applause. He instantly made his dispositions for an
attack. As he approached, the enemy, to his great surprise, began to
retire. The Enniskilleners were eager to pursue with all speed: but their
commander, suspecting a snare, restrained their ardour, and positively
forbade them to break their ranks. Thus one army retreated and the other
followed, in good order, through the little town of Newton Butler. About a
mile from that town the Irish faced about, and made a stand. Their
position was well chosen. They were drawn up on a hill at the foot of
which lay a deep bog. A narrow paved causeway which ran across the bog was
the only road by which the cavalry of the Enniskilleners could advance;
for on the right and left were pools, turf pits, and quagmires, which
afforded no footing to horses. Macarthy placed his cannon in such a manner
as to sweep this causeway.

Wolseley ordered his infantry to the attack. They struggled through the
bog, made their way to firm ground, and rushed on the guns. There was then
a short and desperate fight. The Irish cannoneers stood gallantly to their
pieces till they were cut down to a man. The Enniskillen horse, no longer
in danger of being mowed down by the fire of the artillery, came fast up
the causeway. The Irish dragoons who had run away in the morning were
smitten with another panic, and, without striking a blow, galloped from
the field. The horse followed the example. Such was the terror of the
fugitives that many of them spurred hard till their beasts fell down, and
then continued to fly on foot, throwing away carbines, swords, and even
coats as incumbrances. The infantry, seeing themselves deserted, flung
down their pikes and muskets and ran for their lives. The conquerors now
gave loose to that ferocity which has seldom failed to disgrace the civil
wars of Ireland. The butchery was terrible. Near fifteen hundred of the
vanquished were put to the sword. About five hundred more, in ignorance of
the country, took a road which led to Lough Erne. The lake was before
them: the enemy behind: they plunged into the waters and perished there.
Macarthy, abandoned by his troops, rushed into the midst of the pursuers
and very nearly found the death which he sought. He was wounded in several
places: he was struck to the ground; and in another moment his brains
would have been knocked out with the butt end of a musket, when he was
recognised and saved. The colonists lost only twenty men killed and fifty
wounded. They took four hundred prisoners, seven pieces of cannon,
fourteen barrels of powder, all the drums and all the colours of the
vanquished enemy, 259

The battle of Newton Butler was won on the same afternoon on which the
boom thrown over the Foyle was broken. At Strabane the news met the Celtic
army which was retreating from Londonderry. All was terror and confusion:
the tents were struck: the military stores were flung by waggon loads into
the waters of the Mourne; and the dismayed Irish, leaving many sick and
wounded to the mercy of the victorious Protestants, fled to Omagh, and
thence to Charlemont. Sarsfield, who commanded at Sligo, found it
necessary to abandon that town, which was instantly occupied by a
detachment of Kirke’s troops, 260 Dublin
was in consternation. James dropped words which indicated an intention of
flying to the Continent. Evil tidings indeed came fast upon him. Almost at
the same time at which he learned that one of his armies had raised the
siege of Londonderry, and that another had been routed at Newton Butler,
he received intelligence scarcely less disheartening from Scotland.

It is now necessary to trace the progress of those events to which
Scotland owes her political and her religious liberty, her prosperity and
her civilisation.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE violence of revolutions is generally proportioned to the degree of the
maladministration which has produced them. It is therefore not strange
that the government of Scotland, having been during many years far more
oppressive and corrupt than the government of England, should have fallen
with a far heavier ruin. The movement against the last king of the House
of Stuart was in England conservative, in Scotland destructive. The
English complained, not of the law, but of the violation of the law. They
rose up against the first magistrate merely in order to assert the
supremacy of the law. They were for the most part strongly attached to the
Church established by law. Even in applying that extraordinary remedy to
which an extraordinary emergency compelled them to have recourse, they
deviated as little as possible from the ordinary methods prescribed by the
law. The Convention which met at Westminster, though summoned by irregular
writs, was constituted on the exact model of a regular Parliament. No man
was invited to the Upper House whose right to sit there was not clear. The
knights and burgesses were chosen by those electors who would have been
entitled to choose the members of a House of Commons called under the
great seal. The franchises of the forty shilling freeholder, of the
householder paying scot and lot, of the burgage tenant, of the liveryman
of London, of the Master of Arts of Oxford, were respected. The sense of
the constituent bodies was taken with as little violence on the part of
mobs, with as little trickery on the part of returning officers, as at any
general election of that age. When at length the Estates met, their
deliberations were carried on with perfect freedom and in strict
accordance with ancient forms. There was indeed, after the first flight of
James, an alarming anarchy in London and in some parts of the country. But
that anarchy nowhere lasted longer than forty-eight hours. From the day on
which William reached Saint James’s, not even the most unpopular agents of
the fallen government, not even the ministers of the Roman Catholic
Church, had any thing to fear from the fury of the populace.

In Scotland the course of events was very different. There the law itself
was a grievance; and James had perhaps incurred more unpopularity by
enforcing it than by violating it. The Church established by law was the
most odious institution in the realm. The tribunals had pronounced some
sentences so flagitious, the Parliament had passed some acts so
oppressive, that, unless those sentences and those Acts were treated as
nullities, it would be impossible to bring together a Convention
commanding the public respect and expressing the public opinion. It was
hardly to be expected, for example, that the Whigs, in this day of their
power, would endure to see their hereditary leader, the son of a martyr,
the grandson of a martyr, excluded from the Parliament House in which nine
of his ancestors had sate as Earls of Argyle, and excluded by a judgment
on which the whole kingdom cried shame. Still less was it to be expected
that they would suffer the election of members for counties and towns to
be conducted according to the provisions of the existing law. For under
the existing law no elector could vote without swearing that he renounced
the Covenant, and that he acknowledged the Royal supremacy in matters
ecclesiastical, 261 Such an oath no rigid
Presbyterian could take. If such an oath had been exacted, the constituent
bodies would have been merely small knots of prelatists: the business of
devising securities against oppression would have been left to the
oppressors; and the great party which had been most active in effecting
the Revolution would, in an assembly sprung from the Revolution, have had
not a single representative, 262

William saw that he must not think of paying to the laws of Scotland that
scrupulous respect which he had wisely and righteously paid to the laws of
England. It was absolutely necessary that he should determine by his own
authority how that Convention which was to meet at Edinburgh should be
chosen, and that he should assume the power of annulling some judgments
and some statutes. He accordingly summoned to the parliament house several
Lords who had been deprived of their honours by sentences which the
general voice loudly condemned as unjust; and he took on himself to
dispense with the Act which deprived Presbyterians of the elective
franchise.

The consequence was that the choice of almost all the shires and burghs
fell on Whig candidates. The defeated party complained loudly of foul
play, of the rudeness of the populace, and of the partiality of the
presiding magistrates; and these complaints were in many cases well
founded. It is not under such rulers as Lauderdale and Dundee that nations
learn justice and moderation, 263

Nor was it only at the elections that the popular feeling, so long and so
severely compressed, exploded with violence. The heads and the hands of
the martyred Whigs were taken down from the gates of Edinburgh, carried in
procession by great multitudes to the cemeteries, and laid in the earth
with solemn respect, 264 It would have been well if the
public enthusiasm had manifested itself in no less praiseworthy form.
Unhappily throughout a large part of Scotland the clergy of the
Established Church were, to use the phrase then common, rabbled. The
morning of Christmas day was fixed for the commencement of these outrages.
For nothing disgusted the rigid Covenanter more than the reverence paid by
the prelatist to the ancient holidays of the Church. That such reverence
may be carried to an absurd extreme is true. But a philosopher may perhaps
be inclined to think the opposite extreme not less absurd, and may ask why
religion should reject the aid of associations which exist in every nation
sufficiently civilised to have a calendar, and which are found by
experience to have a powerful and often a salutary effect. The Puritan,
who was, in general, but too ready to follow precedents and analogies
drawn from the history and jurisprudence of the Jews, might have found in
the Old Testament quite as clear warrant for keeping festivals in honour
of great events as for assassinating bishops and refusing quarter to
captives. He certainly did not learn from his master, Calvin, to hold such
festivals in abhorrence; for it was in consequence of the strenuous
exertions of Calvin that Christmas was, after an interval of some years,
again observed by the citizens of Geneva, 265 But
there had arisen in Scotland Calvinists who were to Calvin what Calvin was
to Laud. To these austere fanatics a holiday was an object of positive
disgust and hatred. They long continued in their solemn manifestoes to
reckon it among the sins which would one day bring down some fearful
judgment on the land that the Court of Session took a vacation in the last
week of December, 266

On Christmas day, therefore, the Covenanters held armed musters by concert
in many parts of the western shires. Each band marched to the nearest
manse, and sacked the cellar and larder of the minister, which at that
season were probably better stocked than usual. The priest of Baal was
reviled and insulted, sometimes beaten, sometimes ducked. His furniture
was thrown out of the windows; his wife and children turned out of doors
in the snow. He was then carried to the market place, and exposed during
some time as a malefactor. His gown was torn to shreds over his head: if
he had a prayer book in his pocket it was burned; and he was dismissed
with a charge, never, as he valued his life, to officiate in the parish
again. The work of reformation having been thus completed, the reformers
locked up the church and departed with the keys. In justice to these men
it must be owned that they had suffered such oppression as may excuse,
though it cannot justify, their violence; and that, though they were rude
even to brutality, they do not appear to have been guilty of any
intentional injury to life or limb, 267

The disorder spread fast. In Ayrshire, Clydesdale, Nithisdale, Annandale,
every parish was visited by these turbulent zealots. About two hundred
curates—so the episcopal parish priests were called—were
expelled. The graver Covenanters, while they applauded the fervour of
their riotous brethren, were apprehensive that proceedings so irregular
might give scandal, and learned, with especial concern, that here and
there an Achan had disgraced the good cause by stooping to plunder the
Canaanites whom he ought only to have smitten. A general meeting of
ministers and elders was called for the purpose of preventing such
discreditable excesses. In this meeting it was determined that, for the
future, the ejection of the established clergy should be performed in a
more ceremonious manner. A form of notice was drawn up and served on every
curate in the Western Lowlands who had not yet been rabbled. This notice
was simply a threatening letter, commanding him to quit his parish
peaceably, on pain of being turned out by force, 268

The Scottish Bishops, in great dismay, sent the Dean of Glasgow to plead
the cause of their persecuted Church at Westminster. The outrages
committed by the Covenanters were in the highest degree offensive to
William, who had, in the south of the island, protected even Benedictines
and Franciscans from insult and spoliation. But, though he had, at the
request of a large number of the noblemen and gentlemen of Scotland, taken
on himself provisionally the executive administration of that kingdom, the
means of maintaining order there were not at his command. He had not a
single regiment north of the Tweed, or indeed within many miles of that
river. It was vain to hope that mere words would quiet a nation which had
not, in any age, been very amenable to control, and which was now agitated
by hopes and resentments, such as great revolutions, following great
oppressions, naturally engender. A proclamation was however put forth,
directing that all people should lay down their arms, and that, till the
Convention should have settled the government, the clergy of the
Established Church should be suffered to reside on their cures without
molestation. But this proclamation, not being supported by troops, was
very little regarded. On the very day after it was published at Glasgow,
the venerable Cathedral of that city, almost the only fine church of the
middle ages which stands uninjured in Scotland, was attacked by a crowd of
Presbyterians from the meeting houses, with whom were mingled many of
their fiercer brethren from the hills. It was a Sunday; but to rabble a
congregation of prelatists was held to be a work of necessity and mercy.
The worshippers were dispersed, beaten, and pelted with snowballs. It was
indeed asserted that some wounds were inflicted with much more formidable
weapons, 269

Edinburgh, the seat of government, was in a state of anarchy. The Castle,
which commanded the whole city, was still held for James by the Duke of
Gordon. The common people were generally Whigs. The College of justice, a
great forensic society composed of judges, advocates, writers to the
signet, and solicitors, was the stronghold of Toryism: for a rigid test
had during some years excluded Presbyterians from all the departments of
the legal profession. The lawyers, some hundreds in number, formed
themselves into a battalion of infantry, and for a time effectually kept
down the multitude. They paid, however, so much respect to William’s
authority as to disband themselves when his proclamation was published.
But the example of obedience which they had set was not imitated. Scarcely
had they laid down their weapons, when Covenanters from the west, who had
done all that was to be done in the way of pelting and hustling the
curates of their own neighbourhood, came dropping into Edinburgh, by tens
and twenties, for the purpose of protecting, or, if need should be, of
overawing the Convention. Glasgow alone sent four hundred of these men. It
could hardly be doubted that they were directed by some leader of great
weight. They showed themselves little in any public place: but it was
known that every cellar was filled with them; and it might well be
apprehended that, at the first signal, they would pour forth from their
caverns, and appear armed round the Parliament house, 270

It might have been expected that every patriotic and enlightened Scotchman
would have earnestly desired to see the agitation appeased, and some
government established which might be able to protect property and to
enforce the law. An imperfect settlement which could be speedily made
might well appear to such a man preferable to a perfect settlement which
must be the work of time. Just at this moment, however, a party, strong
both in numbers and in abilities, raised a new and most important
question, which seemed not unlikely to prolong the interregnum till the
autumn. This party maintained that the Estates ought not immediately to
declare William and Mary King and Queen, but to propose to England a
treaty of union, and to keep the throne vacant till such a treaty should
be concluded on terms advantageous to Scotland, 271

It may seem strange that a large portion of a people, whose patriotism,
exhibited, often in a heroic, and sometimes in a comic form, has long been
proverbial, should have been willing, nay impatient, to surrender an
independence which had been, through many ages, dearly prized and manfully
defended. The truth is that the stubborn spirit which the arms of the
Plantagenets and Tudors had been unable to subdue had begun to yield to a
very different kind of force. Customhouses and tariffs were rapidly doing
what the carnage of Falkirk and Halidon, of Flodden and of Pinkie, had
failed to do. Scotland had some experience of the effects of an union. She
had, near forty years before, been united to England on such terms as
England, flushed with conquest, chose to dictate. That union was
inseparably associated in the minds of the vanquished people with defeat
and humiliation. And yet even that union, cruelly as it had wounded the
pride of the Scots, had promoted their prosperity. Cromwell, with wisdom
and liberality rare in his age, had established the most complete freedom
of trade between the dominant and the subject country. While he governed,
no prohibition, no duty, impeded the transit of commodities from any part
of the island to any other. His navigation laws imposed no restraint on
the trade of Scotland. A Scotch vessel was at liberty to carry a Scotch
cargo to Barbadoes, and to bring the sugars of Barbadoes into the port of
London, 272
The rule of the Protector therefore had been propitious to the industry
and to the physical wellbeing of the Scottish people. Hating him and
cursing him, they could not help thriving under him, and often, during the
administration of their legitimate princes, looked back with regret to the
golden days of the usurper, 273

The Restoration came, and changed every thing. The Scots regained their
independence, and soon began to find that independence had its discomfort
as well as its dignity. The English parliament treated them as aliens and
as rivals. A new Navigation Act put them on almost the same footing with
the Dutch. High duties, and in some cases prohibitory duties, were imposed
on the products of Scottish industry. It is not wonderful that a nation
eminently industrious, shrewd, and enterprising, a nation which, having
been long kept back by a sterile soil and a severe climate, was just
beginning to prosper in spite of these disadvantages, and which found its
progress suddenly stopped, should think itself cruelly treated. Yet there
was no help. Complaint was vain. Retaliation was impossible. The
Sovereign, even if he had the wish, had not the power, to bear himself
evenly between his large and his small kingdom, between the kingdom from
which he drew an annual revenue of a million and a half and the kingdom
from which he drew an annual revenue of little more than sixty thousand
pounds. He dared neither to refuse his assent to any English law injurious
to the trade of Scotland, nor to give his assent to any Scotch law
injurious to the trade of England.

The complaints of the Scotch, however, were so loud that Charles, in 1667,
appointed Commissioners to arrange the terms of a commercial treaty
between the two British kingdoms. The conferences were soon broken off;
and all that passed while they continued proved that there was only one
way in which Scotland could obtain a share of the commercial prosperity
which England at that time enjoyed, 274 The
Scotch must become one people with the English. The Parliament which had
hitherto sate at Edinburgh must be incorporated with the Parliament which
sate at Westminster. The sacrifice could not but be painfully felt by a
brave and haughty people, who had, during twelve generations, regarded the
southern domination with deadly aversion, and whose hearts still swelled
at the thought of the death of Wallace and of the triumphs of Bruce. There
were doubtless many punctilious patriots who would have strenuously
opposed an union even if they could have foreseen that the effect of an
union would be to make Glasgow a greater city than Amsterdam, and to cover
the dreary Lothians with harvests and woods, neat farmhouses and stately
mansions. But there was also a large class which was not disposed to throw
away great and substantial advantages in order to preserve mere names and
ceremonies; and the influence of this class was such that, in the year
1670, the Scotch Parliament made direct overtures to England, 275
The King undertook the office of mediator; and negotiators were named on
both sides; but nothing was concluded.

The question, having slept during eighteen years, was suddenly revived by
the Revolution. Different classes, impelled by different motives,
concurred on this point. With merchants, eager to share in the advantages
of the West Indian Trade, were joined active and aspiring politicians who
wished to exhibit their abilities in a more conspicuous theatre than the
Scottish Parliament House, and to collect riches from a more copious
source than the Scottish treasury. The cry for union was swelled by the
voices of some artful Jacobites, who merely wished to cause discord and
delay, and who hoped to attain this end by mixing up with the difficult
question which it was the especial business of the Convention to settle
another question more difficult still. It is probable that some who
disliked the ascetic habits and rigid discipline of the Presbyterians
wished for an union as the only mode of maintaining prelacy in the
northern part of the island. In an united Parliament the English members
must greatly preponderate; and in England the bishops were held in high
honour by the great majority of the population. The Episcopal Church of
Scotland, it was plain, rested on a narrow basis, and would fall before
the first attack. The Episcopal Church of Great Britain might have a
foundation broad and solid enough to withstand all assaults.

Whether, in 1689, it would have been possible to effect a civil union
without a religious union may well be doubted. But there can be no doubt
that a religious union would have been one of the greatest calamities that
could have befallen either kingdom. The union accomplished in 1707 has
indeed been a great blessing both to England and to Scotland. But it has
been a blessing because, in constituting one State, it left two Churches.
The political interest of the contracting parties was the same: but the
ecclesiastical dispute between them was one which admitted of no
compromise. They could therefore preserve harmony only by agreeing to
differ. Had there been an amalgamation of the hierarchies, there never
would have been an amalgamation of the nations. Successive Mitchells would
have fired at successive Sharpes. Five generations of Claverhouses would
have butchered five generations of Camerons. Those marvellous improvements
which have changed the face of Scotland would never have been effected.
Plains now rich with harvests would have remained barren moors. Waterfalls
which now turn the wheels of immense factories would have resounded in a
wilderness. New Lanark would still have been a sheepwalk, and Greenock a
fishing hamlet. What little strength Scotland could under such a system
have possessed must, in an estimate of the resources of Great Britain,
have been, not added, but deducted. So encumbered, our country never could
have held, either in peace or in war, a place in the first rank of
nations. We are unfortunately not without the means of judging of the
effect which may be produced on the moral and physical state of a people
by establishing, in the exclusive enjoyment of riches and dignity a Church
loved and reverenced only by the few, and regarded by the many with
religious and national aversion. One such Church is quite burden enough
for the energies of one empire.

But these things, which to us, who have been taught by a bitter
experience, seem clear, were by no means clear in 1689, even to very
tolerant and enlightened politicians. In truth the English Low Churchmen
were, if possible, more anxious than the English High Churchmen to
preserve Episcopacy in Scotland. It is a remarkable fact that Burnet, who
was always accused of wishing to establish the Calvinistic discipline in
the south of the island, incurred great unpopularity among his own
countrymen by his efforts to uphold prelacy in the north. He was doubtless
in error: but his error is to be attributed to a cause which does him no
discredit. His favourite object, an object unattainable indeed, yet such
as might well fascinate a large intellect and a benevolent heart, had long
been an honourable treaty between the Anglican Church and the
Nonconformists. He thought it most unfortunate that one opportunity of
concluding such a treaty should have been lost at the time of the
Restoration. It seemed to him that another opportunity was afforded by the
Revolution. He and his friends were eagerly pushing forward Nottingham’s
Comprehension Bill, and were flattering themselves with vain hopes of
success. But they felt that there could hardly be a Comprehension in one
of the two British kingdoms, unless there were also a Comprehension in the
other. Concession must be purchased by concession. If the Presbyterian
pertinaciously refused to listen to any terms of compromise where he was
strong, it would be almost impossible to obtain for him liberal terms of
compromise where he was weak. Bishops must therefore be allowed to keep
their sees in Scotland, in order that divines not ordained by Bishops
might be allowed to hold rectories and canonries in England.

Thus the cause of the Episcopalians in the north and the cause of the
Presbyterians in the south were bound up together in a manner which might
well perplex even a skilful statesman. It was happy for our country that
the momentous question which excited so many strong passions, and which
presented itself in so many different points of view, was to be decided by
such a man as William. He listened to Episcopalians, to Latitudinarians,
to Presbyterians, to the Dean of Glasgow who pleaded for the apostolical
succession, to Burnet who represented the danger of alienating the
Anglican clergy, to Carstairs who hated prelacy with the hatred of a man
whose thumbs were deeply marked by the screws of prelatists. Surrounded by
these eager advocates, William remained calm and impartial. He was indeed
eminently qualified by his situation as well as by his personal qualities
to be the umpire in that great contention. He was the King of a prelatical
kingdom. He was the Prime Minister of a presbyterian republic. His
unwillingness to offend the Anglican Church of which he was the head, and
his unwillingness to offend the reformed Churches of the Continent which
regarded him as a champion divinely sent to protect them against the
French tyranny, balanced each other, and kept him from leaning unduly to
either side. His conscience was perfectly neutral. For it was his
deliberate opinion that no form of ecclesiastical polity was of divine
institution. He dissented equally from the school of Laud and from the
school of Cameron, from the men who held that there could not be a
Christian Church without Bishops, and from the men who held that there
could not be a Christian Church without synods. Which form of government
should be adopted was in his judgment a question of mere expediency. He
would probably have preferred a temper between the two rival systems, a
hierarchy in which the chief spiritual functionaries should have been
something more than moderators and something less than prelates. But he
was far too wise a man to think of settling such a matter according to his
own personal tastes. He determined therefore that, if there was on both
sides a disposition to compromise, he would act as mediator. But, if it
should prove that the public mind of England and the public mind of
Scotland had taken the ply strongly in opposite directions, he would not
attempt to force either nation into conformity with the opinion of the
other. He would suffer each to have its own church, and would content
himself with restraining both churches from persecuting nonconformists,
and from encroaching on the functions of the civil magistrate.

The language which he held to those Scottish Episcopalians who complained
to him of their sufferings and implored his protection was well weighed
and well guarded, but clear and ingenuous. He wished, he said, to
preserve, if possible, the institution to which they were so much
attached, and to grant at the same time entire liberty of conscience to
that party which could not be reconciled to any deviation from the
Presbyterian model. But the Bishops must take care that they did not, by
their own rashness and obstinacy, put it out of his power to be of any use
to them. They must also distinctly understand that he was resolved not to
force on Scotland by the sword a form of ecclesiastical government which
she detested. If, therefore; it should be found that prelacy could be
maintained only by arms, he should yield to the general sentiment, and
should merely do his best to obtain for the Episcopalian minority
permission to worship God in freedom and safety, 276

It is not likely that, even if the Scottish Bishops had, as William
recommended, done all that meekness and prudence could do to conciliate
their countrymen, episcopacy could, under any modification, have been
maintained. It was indeed asserted by writers of that generation, and has
been repeated by writers of our generation, that the Presbyterians were
not, before the Revolution, the majority of the people of Scotland, 277
But in this assertion there is an obvious fallacy. The effective strength
of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads. An established
church, a dominant church, a church which has the exclusive possession of
civil honours and emoluments, will always rank among its nominal members
multitudes who have no religion at all; multitudes who, though not
destitute of religion, attend little to theological disputes, and have no
scruple about conforming to the mode of worship which happens to be
established; and multitudes who have scruples about conforming, but whose
scruples have yielded to worldly motives. On the other hand, every member
of an oppressed church is a man who has a very decided preference for that
church. A person who, in the time of Diocletian, joined in celebrating the
Christian mysteries might reasonably be supposed to be a firm believer in
Christ. But it would be a very great mistake to imagine that one single
Pontiff or Augur in the Roman Senate was a firm believer in Jupiter. In
Mary’s reign, every body who attended the secret meetings of the
Protestants was a real Protestant: but hundreds of thousands went to mass
who, as appeared before she had been dead a month, were not real Roman
Catholics. If, under the Kings of the House of Stuart, when a Presbyterian
was excluded from political power and from the learned professions, was
daily annoyed by informers, by tyrannical magistrates, by licentious
dragoons, and was in danger of being hanged if he heard a sermon in the
open air, the population of Scotland was not very unequally divided
between Episcopalians and Presbyterians, the rational inference is that
more than nineteen twentieths of those Scotchmen whose conscience was
interested in the matter were Presbyterians, and that not one Scotchman in
twenty was decidedly and on conviction an Episcopalian. Against such odds
the Bishops had but little chance; and whatever chance they had they made
haste to throw away; some of them because they sincerely believed that
their allegiance was still due to James; others probably because they
apprehended that William would not have the power, even if he had the
will, to serve them, and that nothing but a counterrevolution in the State
could avert a revolution in the Church.

As the new King of England could not be at Edinburgh during the sitting of
the Scottish Convention, a letter from him to the Estates was prepared
with great skill. In this document he professed warm attachment to the
Protestant religion, but gave no opinion touching those questions about
which Protestants were divided. He had observed, he said, with great
satisfaction that many of the Scottish nobility and gentry with whom he
had conferred in London were inclined to an union of the two British
kingdoms. He was sensible how much such an union would conduce to the
happiness of both; and he would do all in his power towards the
accomplishing of so good a work.

It was necessary that he should allow a large discretion to his
confidential agents at Edinburgh. The private instructions with which he
furnished those persons could not be minute, but were highly judicious. He
charged them to ascertain to the best of their power the real sense of the
Convention, and to be guided by it. They must remember that the first
object was to settle the government. To that object every other object,
even the union, must be postponed. A treaty between two independent
legislatures, distant from each other several days’ journey, must
necessarily be a work of time; and the throne could not safely remain
vacant while the negotiations were pending. It was therefore important
that His Majesty’s agents should be on their guard against the arts of
persons who, under pretence of promoting the union, might really be
contriving only to prolong the interregnum. If the Convention should be
bent on establishing the Presbyterian form of church government, William
desired that his friends would do all in their power to prevent the
triumphant sect from retaliating what it had suffered, 278

The person by whose advice William appears to have been at this time
chiefly guided as to Scotch politics was a Scotchman of great abilities
and attainments, Sir James Dalrymple of Stair, the founder of a family
eminently distinguished at the bar, on the bench, in the senate, in
diplomacy, in arms, and in letters, but distinguished also by misfortunes
and misdeeds which have furnished poets and novelists with materials for
the darkest and most heartrending tales. Already Sir James had been in
mourning for more than one strange and terrible death. One of his sons had
died by poison. One of his daughters had poniarded her bridegroom on the
wedding night. One of his grandsons had in boyish sport been slain by
another. Savage libellers asserted, and some of the superstitious vulgar
believed, that calamities so portentous were the consequences of some
connection between the unhappy race and the powers of darkness. Sir James
had a wry neck; and he was reproached with this misfortune as if it had
been a crime, and was told that it marked him out as a man doomed to the
gallows. His wife, a woman of great ability, art, and spirit, was
popularly nicknamed the Witch of Endor. It was gravely said that she had
cast fearful spells on those whom she hated, and that she had been seen in
the likeness of a cat seated on the cloth of state by the side of the Lord
High Commissioner. The man, however, over whose roof so many curses
appeared to hang did not, as far as we can now judge, fall short of that
very low standard of morality which was generally attained by politicians
of his age and nation. In force of mind and extent of knowledge he was
superior to them all. In his youth he had borne arms: he had then been a
professor of philosophy: he had then studied law, and had become, by
general acknowledgment, the greatest jurist that his country had produced.
In the days of the Protectorate, he had been a judge. After the
Restoration, he had made his peace with the royal family, had sate in the
Privy Council, and had presided with unrivalled ability in the Court of
Session. He had doubtless borne a share in many unjustifiable acts; but
there were limits which he never passed. He had a wonderful power of
giving to any proposition which it suited him to maintain a plausible
aspect of legality and even of justice; and this power he frequently
abused. But he was not, like many of those among whom he lived, impudently
and unscrupulously servile. Shame or conscience generally restrained him
from committing any bad action for which his rare ingenuity could not
frame a specious defence; and he was seldom in his place at the council
board when any thing outrageously unjust or cruel was to be done. His
moderation at length gave offence to the Court. He was deprived of his
high office, and found himself in so disagreeable a situation that he
retired to Holland. There he employed himself in correcting the great work
on jurisprudence which has preserved his memory fresh down to our own
time. In his banishment he tried to gain the favour of his fellow exiles,
who naturally regarded him with suspicion. He protested, and perhaps with
truth, that his hands were pure from the blood of the persecuted
Covenanters. He made a high profession of religion, prayed much, and
observed weekly days of fasting and humiliation. He even consented, after
much hesitation, to assist with his advice and his credit the unfortunate
enterprise of Argyle. When that enterprise had failed, a prosecution was
instituted at Edinburgh against Dalrymple; and his estates would doubtless
have been confiscated had they not been saved by an artifice which
subsequently became common among the politicians of Scotland. His eldest
son and heir apparent, John, took the side of the government, supported
the dispensing power, declared against the Test, and accepted the place of
Lord Advocate, when Sir George Mackenzie, after holding out through ten
years of foul drudgery, at length showed signs of flagging. The services
of the younger Dalrymple were rewarded by a remission of the forfeiture
which the offences of the elder had incurred. Those services indeed were
not to be despised. For Sir John, though inferior to his father in depth
and extent of legal learning, was no common man. His knowledge was great
and various: his parts were quick; and his eloquence was singularly ready
and graceful. To sanctity he made no pretensions. Indeed Episcopalians and
Presbyterians agreed in regarding him as little better than an atheist.
During some months Sir John at Edinburgh affected to condemn the
disloyalty of his unhappy parent Sir James; and Sir James at Leyden told
his Puritan friends how deeply he lamented the wicked compliances of his
unhappy child Sir John.

The Revolution came, and brought a large increase of wealth and honours to
the House of Stair. The son promptly changed sides, and cooperated ably
and zealously with the father. Sir James established himself in London for
the purpose of giving advice to William on Scotch affairs. Sir John’s post
was in the Parliament House at Edinburgh. He was not likely to find any
equal among the debaters there, and was prepared to exert all his powers
against the dynasty which he had lately served, 279

By the large party which was zealous for the Calvinistic church government
John Dalrymple was regarded with incurable distrust and dislike. It was
therefore necessary that another agent should be employed to manage that
party. Such an agent was George Melville, Lord Melville, a nobleman
connected by affinity with the unfortunate Monmouth, and with that Leslie
who had unsuccessfully commanded the Scotch army against Cromwell at
Dunbar. Melville had always been accounted a Whig and a Presbyterian.
Those who speak of him most favourably have not ventured to ascribe to him
eminent intellectual endowments or exalted public spirit. But he appears
from his letters to have been by no means deficient in that homely
prudence the want of which has often been fatal to men of brighter genius
and of purer virtue. That prudence had restrained him from going very far
in opposition to the tyranny of the Stuarts: but he had listened while his
friends talked about resistance, and therefore, when the Rye House plot
was discovered, thought it expedient to retire to the Continent. In his
absence he was accused of treason, and was convicted on evidence which
would not have satisfied any impartial tribunal. He was condemned to
death: his honours and lands were declared forfeit: his arms were torn
with contumely out of the Heralds’ book; and his domains swelled the
estate of the cruel and rapacious Perth. The fugitive meanwhile, with
characteristic wariness, lived quietly on the Continent, and
discountenanced the unhappy projects of his kinsman Monmouth, but
cordially approved of the enterprise of the Prince of Orange.

Illness had prevented Melville from sailing with the Dutch expedition: but
he arrived in London a few hours after the new Sovereigns had been
proclaimed there. William instantly sent him down to Edinburgh, in the
hope, as it should seem, that the Presbyterians would be disposed to
listen to moderate counsels proceeding from a man who was attached to
their cause, and who had suffered for it. Melville’s second son, David,
who had inherited, through his mother, the title of Earl of Leven, and who
had acquired some military experience in the service of the Elector of
Brandenburg, had the honour of being the bearer of a letter from the new
King of England to the Scottish Convention, 280

James had intrusted the conduct of his affairs in Scotland to John Graham,
Viscount Dundee, and Colin Lindsay, Earl of Balcarras. Dundee had
commanded a body of Scottish troops which had marched into England to
oppose the Dutch: but he had found, in the inglorious campaign which had
been fatal to the dynasty of Stuart, no opportunity of displaying the
courage and military skill which those who most detest his merciless
nature allow him to have possessed. He lay with his forces not far from
Watford, when he was informed that James had fled from Whitehall, and that
Feversham had ordered all the royal army to disband. The Scottish
regiments were thus left, without pay or provisions, in the midst of a
foreign and indeed a hostile nation. Dundee, it is said, wept with grief
and rage. Soon, however, more cheering intelligence arrived from various
quarters. William wrote a few lines to say that, if the Scots would remain
quiet, he would pledge his honour for their safety; and, some hours later,
it was known that James had returned to his capital. Dundee repaired
instantly to London, 281 There he met his friend
Balcarras, who had just arrived from Edinburgh. Balcarras, a man
distinguished by his handsome person and by his accomplishments, had, in
his youth, affected the character of a patriot, but had deserted the
popular cause, had accepted a seat in the Privy Council, had become a tool
of Perth and Melfort, and bad been one of the Commissioners who were
appointed to execute the office of Treasurer when Queensberry was
disgraced for refusing to betray the interests of the Protestant religion,
282

Dundee and Balcarras went together to Whitehall, and had the honour of
accompanying James in his last walk, up and down the Mall. He told them
that he intended to put his affairs in Scotland under their management.
“You, my Lord Balcarras, must undertake the civil business: and you, my
Lord Dundee, shall have a commission from me to command the troops.” The
two noblemen vowed that they would prove themselves deserving of his
confidence, and disclaimed all thought of making their peace with the
Prince of Orange, 283

On the following day James left Whitehall for ever; and the Prince of
Orange arrived at Saint James’s. Both Dundee and Balcarras swelled the
crowd which thronged to greet the deliverer, and were not ungraciously
received. Both were well known to him. Dundee had served under him on the
Continent; 284 and the first wife of
Balcarras had been a lady of the House of Orange, and had worn, on her
wedding day, a superb pair of emerald earrings, the gift of her cousin the
Prince. 285

The Scottish Whigs, then assembled in great numbers at Westminster,
earnestly pressed William to proscribe by name four or five men who had,
during the evil times, borne a conspicuous part in the proceedings of the
Privy Council at Edinburgh. Dundee and Balcarras were particularly
mentioned. But the Prince had determined that, as far as his power
extended, all the past should be covered with a general amnesty, and
absolutely refused to make any declaration which could drive to despair
even the most guilty of his uncle’s servants.

Balcarras went repeatedly to Saint James’s, had several audiences of
William, professed deep respect for his Highness, and owned that King
James had committed great errors, but would not promise to concur in a
vote of deposition. William gave no sign of displeasure, but said at
parting: “Take care, my Lord, that you keep within the law; for, if you
break it, you must expect to be left to it.” 286

Dundee seems to have been less ingenuous. He employed the mediation of
Burnet, opened a negotiation with Saint James’s, declared himself willing
to acquiesce in the new order of things, obtained from William a promise
of protection, and promised in return to live peaceably. Such credit was
given to his professions that he was suffered to travel down to Scotland
under the escort of a troop of cavalry. Without such an escort the man of
blood, whose name was never mentioned but with a shudder at the hearth of
any Presbyterian family, would, at that conjuncture, have had but a
perilous journey through Berwickshire and the Lothians, 287

February was drawing to a close when Dundee and Balcarras reached
Edinburgh. They had some hope that they might be at the head of a majority
in the Convention. They therefore exerted themselves vigorously to
consolidate and animate their party. They assured the rigid royalists, who
had a scruple about sitting in an assembly convoked by an usurper, that
the rightful King particularly wished no friend of hereditary monarchy to
be absent. More than one waverer was kept steady by being assured in
confident terms that a speedy restoration was inevitable. Gordon had
determined to surrender the castle, and had begun to remove his furniture:
but Dundee and Balcarras prevailed on him to hold out some time longer.
They informed him that they had received from Saint Germains full powers
to adjourn the Convention to Stirling, and that, if things went ill at
Edinburgh, those powers would be used, 288

At length the fourteenth of March, the day fixed for the meeting of the
Estates, arrived, and the Parliament House was crowded. Nine prelates were
in their places. When Argyle presented himself, a single lord protested
against the admission of a person whom a legal sentence, passed in due
form, and still unreversed, had deprived of the honours of the peerage.
But this objection was overruled by the general sense of the assembly.
When Melville appeared, no voice was raised against his admission. The
Bishop of Edinburgh officiated as chaplain, and made it one of his
petitions that God would help and restore King James, 289
It soon appeared that the general feeling of the Convention was by no
means in harmony with this prayer. The first matter to be decided was the
choice of a President. The Duke of Hamilton was supported by the Whigs,
the Marquess of Athol by the Jacobites. Neither candidate possessed, and
neither deserved, the entire confidence of his supporters. Hamilton had
been a Privy Councillor of James, had borne a part in many unjustifiable
acts, and had offered but a very cautious and languid opposition to the
most daring attacks on the laws and religion of Scotland. Not till the
Dutch guards were at Whitehall had he ventured to speak out. Then he had
joined the victorious party, and had assured the Whigs that he had
pretended to be their enemy, only in order that he might, without
incurring suspicion, act as their friend. Athol was still less to be
trusted. His abilities were mean, his temper false, pusillanimous, and
cruel. In the late reign he had gained a dishonourable notoriety by the
barbarous actions of which he had been guilty in Argyleshire. He had
turned with the turn of fortune, and had paid servile court to the Prince
of Orange, but had been coldly received, and had now, from mere
mortification, come back to the party which he had deserted, 290
Neither of the rival noblemen had chosen to stake the dignities and lands
of his house on the issue of the contention between the rival Kings. The
eldest son of Hamilton had declared for James, and the eldest son of Athol
for William, so that, in any event, both coronets and both estates were
safe.

But in Scotland the fashionable notions touching political morality were
lax; and the aristocratical sentiment was strong. The Whigs were therefore
willing to forget that Hamilton had lately sate in the council of James.
The Jacobites were equally willing to forget that Athol had lately fawned
on William. In political inconsistency those two great lords were far
indeed from standing by themselves; but in dignity and power they had
scarcely an equal in the assembly. Their descent was eminently
illustrious: their influence was immense: one of them could raise the
Western Lowlands: the other could bring into the field an army of northern
mountaineers. Round these chiefs therefore the hostile factions gathered.