CASSELL'S
History of England

FROM THE GREAT REBELLION TO
THE FALL OF MARLBOROUGH

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS,
INCLUDING COLOURED
AND REMBRANDT PLATES

VOL. III

THE KING'S EDITION

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE

MCMIX

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

THE GREAT REBELLION. PAGE

Condition of Ireland—Roger Moore's Pilgrimage—Negotiations of the Anglo-Irish with Charles—Hugh M'Mahon betrays the Plot—Rising of the Native Irish—Massacre of Protestants—Measures taken by the English Parliament—Return of Charles to London—The Grand Remonstrance—The King's Answer—His Lieutenant of the Tower—Riots in London—Blunder of the Bishops—Attempted Arrest of the Five Members—Charles leaves London—The Queen goes to Holland—Charles at York—His Repulse from Hull—Preparations for War—The Royal Standard Raised—Prince Rupert's Headstrong Folly—Battle of Edge Hill—Charles marches on London—He returns to Oxford—Cromwell in the East—The Queen in Yorkshire—Death of Hampden—Parliamentary Disasters—Battle of Newbury—Death of Lord Falkland—Negotiations with the Scots and Irish—Death of Pym—Royal Parliament at Oxford—Battle of Marston Moor—Disastrous Failure of Essex in Cornwall—Second Battle of Newbury—The Self-denying Ordinance—The New-modelled Army 1

CHAPTER II.

THE GREAT REBELLION (concluded).

The Assembly at Westminster—Trial and Death of Laud—Negotiations at Uxbridge—Meeting of the Commissioners—Impossibility of a Settlement—Prospect of Help to the King from the Continent—Charles agrees to the demands of the Irish Catholics—Discipline and Spirit of the Parliamentary Army—Campaign of the New-modelled Army—Hunting the King—Battle of Naseby—Fairfax in the West—Exploits of Montrose—Efforts of Charles to join Him—Battle of Kilsyth—Fall of Bristol—Battle of Philiphaugh—Last Efforts of the Royalists—Charles Offers to Treat—Discovery of his Correspondence with Glamorgan—Charles Intrigues with the Scots—Flight from Oxford—Surrender to the Scots at Newark—Consequent Negotiations—Proposals for Peace—Surrender of Charles to Parliament 34

CHAPTER III.

END OF THE REIGN OF CHARLES I.

Differences between the Presbyterians and Independents—The King at Holmby—Attempt to Disband the Army—Consequent Petitions to Parliament—The Adjutators—Meeting at Newmarket—Seizure of the King—Advance of the Army on London—Stubbornness of the Presbyterians—The Army Marches through London—Its Proposals to Charles—Their Rejection—The King throws away his best Chances—The Levellers—Cromwell's Efforts on behalf of Charles—Renewed Intrigues of Charles—Flight to Carisbrooke—Attempts to Rescue the King—Charles Treats with the Scots—Consequent Reaction in his Favour—Battle of Preston and Suppression of the Insurrection—Cromwell at Edinburgh—The Prince of Wales in Command of the Fleet—Negotiations at Newport—Growing Impatience of the Army—Petitions for the King's Trial—Charles's Blindness and Duplicity—He is Removed to Hurst Castle—Pride's Purge—Supremacy of the Independents—The Whiggamores—Hugh Peters' Sermon in St. Margaret's, Westminster—Ordinance for the King's Trial—Trial and Execution of Charles I. 59

CHAPTER IV.

THE COMMONWEALTH.

Proclamation of the Prince of Wales Forbidden—Decline of the Peerage—Ultimus Regum—Establishment of a Republican Government—Abolition of the House of Lords and the Monarchy—Council of State—The Oath Difficulty—The Engagement—Religious Toleration—Trials of Royalists—Discontent among the People—The Levellers—Activity of John Lilburne—Quelling the Mutiny in Whalley's Regiment—Lockyer's Funeral—Arrest of Lilburne—Spread of the Disaffection to other Regiments—Suppression of the Insurrection—Cromwell appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland—Royalist Movement in Scotland—Charles's Son proclaimed King—The Scottish Deputation at the Hague—Charles's[vi] Court—Assassination of Dr. Dorislaus—Affairs in Ireland—Cromwell's Campaign—Defeat and Death of Montrose—Cromwell in Scotland—Battle of Dunbar—Movements of Charles—His March into England—Battle of Worcester—Charles Escapes to France—Vigorous Government—Foreign Difficulties—Navigation Act—War with Holland—Contest between Parliament and the Army—Expulsion of the Rump—The Little Parliament—Cromwell made Protector 90

CHAPTER V.

THE COMMONWEALTH (concluded).

Naval Victory over the Dutch—Death of Van Tromp—Quasi-Royal State of the Lord-Protector—Disaffection against Cromwell—His Vigorous Rule—Charles II. offers a Reward for his Assassination—Rebellions in Scotland—Cromwell's Dealings with the Portuguese Ambassador—Reform of the Court of Chancery—Commission for Purgation of the Church—The Reformed Parliament—Exclusion of the Ultras—Dissolution of Parliament—Danger from Plots—Accident to the Protector—Death of Cromwell's Mother—Royalist Outbreaks—Cromwell's Major-Generals—Foreign Policy—War with Spain—Massacre of the Piedmontese—Capture of Jamaica—The Jews Appeal for Toleration—Cromwell's Third Parliament—Plots against his Life—The Petition and Advice—Cromwell refuses the Royal Title—Blake's Brilliant Victory at Santa Cruz—Death of Blake—Successes against Spain—Failure of the Reconstructed Parliament—Punishment of Conspirators—Victory in the Netherlands—Absolutism of Cromwell—His Anxieties, Illness, and Death—Proclamation of Richard Cromwell—He calls a Parliament—It is Dissolved—Reappearance of the Rump—Richard Retires—Royalist Risings—Quarrels of the Army and the Rump—General Monk—He Marches upon London—Demands a Free Parliament—Royalist Reaction—Declaration of Breda—Joyful Reception of Charles 123

CHAPTER VI.

THE PROGRESS OF THE NATION UNDER JAMES I., CHARLES I., AND THE COMMONWEALTH.

Manufactures and Commerce—Trade under the Stuarts—English Commerce and Dutch Competition—The East India Company—Vicissitudes of its Early History—Rival Companies—The American Colonies and West Indies—Growth of London—National Revenue—Extravagance of the Stuarts—Invention of the Title of Baronet—Illegal Monopolies—Cost of Government—Money and Coinage—Agriculture and Gardening—Dramatists of the Period—Shakespeare and his Contemporaries—Poets of the Occult School—Herbert, Herrick, Quarles—A Wealth of Poetry—Prose-Writers—Bacon's "Novum Organum"—Milton's Prose Works—Hales, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Fuller, and other Theological Writers—Harrington's "Oceana"—Sir Thomas Browne—Historians and Chroniclers—First Newspapers—Harvey's Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood—Napier's Invention of Logarithms—Music—Painting, Engraving, and Sculpture—Architecture—Manners and Customs—Sports and Pastimes—Furniture and Domestic Embellishment—Costumes—Arms and Armour—Condition of the People 165

CHAPTER VII.

CHARLES II.

Character of Charles II.—The King's First Privy Council—The Convention Parliament—Submission of the Presbyterian Leaders—The Plight of those who took Part in the late King's Trial—Complaisance of the Commoners—Charles's Income—The Bill of Sales—The Ministers Bill—Settlement of the Church—Trial of the Regicides—Their Execution—Marriage of the Duke of York—Mutilation of the Remains of Cromwell—The Presbyterians Duped—The Revenue—Fifth-Monarchy Riot—Settlements of Ireland and Scotland—Execution of Argyll—Re-establishment of Episcopacy—The new Parliament violently Royalist—The King's Marriage—His Brutal Behaviour to the Queen—State of the Court—Trial of Vane and Lambert—Execution of Vane—Assassination of Regicides—Sale of Dunkirk—The Uniformity Act—Religious Persecution—Strange Case of the Marquis of Bristol—Repeal of the Triennial Act—The Conventicle and Five Mile Acts—War with Holland—Appearance of the Plague—Gross Licentiousness of the Court—Demoralisation of the Navy—Monk's Fight with the Dutch—The Great Fire 193

CHAPTER VIII.

REIGN OF CHARLES II. (continued).

Demands of Parliament—A Bogus Commission—Crushing the Covenanters in Scotland—The Dutch in the Thames—Panic in London and at Court—Humiliation of England—Peace is Signed—Fall of Clarendon—The Cabal—Sir [vii]William Temple at the Hague—The Triple Alliance—Scandals at Court—Profligacy of the King and the Duke of Buckingham—Attempt to Deprive the Duke of York of the Succession—Persecution of Nonconformists—Trial of Penn and Mead—The Rights of Juries—Secret Treaty with France—Suspicious Death of Charles's Sister—"Madam Carwell"—Attack on Sir John Coventry—National Bankruptcy—War with Holland—Battle of Southwold Bay—Declaration of Indulgence—Fall of the Cabal—Affairs in Scotland and Ireland—Progress of the Continental War—Mary Marries William of Orange—Louis Intrigues with the Opposition—Peace of Nimeguen—The Popish Plot—Impeachment of Danby—Temple's Scheme of Government—The Exclusion Bill—Murder of Archbishop Sharp—Bothwell Bridge—Anti-Catholic Fury—Charges against James—Execution of Lord Stafford 221

CHAPTER IX.

REIGN OF CHARLES II. (concluded).

Charles's Embarrassments—Exclusion Intrigues—Parliament Dissolved—The King again Pensioned by Louis—New Parliament at Oxford—Violence of the Whigs—Charles Dissolves the Oxford Parliament—Execution of Archbishop Plunket—Arrest of Shaftesbury—Dismay of the Gang of Perjurers—Oates turned out of Whitehall—Shaftesbury's Lists—Visit of William of Orange—James in Scotland—Defeat of the Cameronians—Cargill's Manifesto—The Duke of York's Tyranny—Flight of Argyll—The Torture in Edinburgh—Arrogance of Monmouth—Contest between the Court and the City—Death of Shaftesbury—Rye House Plot—Suicide of the Earl of Essex—Trial of Lord William Russell—Extraordinary Declaration of the University of Oxford—Trial of Algernon Sidney—The Duke of Monmouth Pardoned—Base Conduct of Monmouth—Trial of Hampden—Trials in Scotland—Absolutism of Charles—Forfeiture of Charters by the Corporations—Influence of the Duke of York—Opposition of Halifax—Sickness and Death of the King 267

CHAPTER X.

REIGN OF JAMES II.

James's Speech to the Council—Rochester supersedes Halifax—Other Changes in the Ministry—James Collects the Customs without Parliament—French Pension continued—Scottish Parliament—Oates and Dangerfield—Meeting of Parliament—It grants Revenue for Life—Monmouth and Argyll—Argyll's Expedition—His Capture and Execution—Monmouth's Expedition—He enters Taunton—Failure of his Hopes—Battle of Sedgemoor—Execution of Monmouth—Cruelties of Kirke and Jeffreys—The Bloody Assize—The Case of Lady Alice Lisle—Decline of James's Power—He Breaks the Test Act—Revocation of the Edict of Nantes—Prorogation of Parliament—Acquittal of Delamere—Alienation of the Church—Parties at Court—The Dispensing Power Asserted—Livings granted to Catholics—Court of High Commission Revived—Army on Hounslow Heath—Trial of "Julian" Johnson—James's Lawlessness in Scotland and Ireland—Declaration of Indulgence—The Party of the Prince of Orange and the Princess Mary—Expulsion of the Fellows of Magdalen College—New Declaration of Indulgence—Protest of the Seven Bishops—Birth of the Prince of Wales—Trial and Acquittal of the Bishops—Invitation to William of Orange—Folly of James—William's Preparations—Blindness of James, and Treachery of his Ministers—William's Declaration—James convinced, makes Concessions—William lands at Torbay—His Advance to Exeter—Churchill's Treason—Flight of the Princess Anne and her Husband—James sends Commissioners to Treat with William—Flight of James—Riots in London—Return of James—His Final Flight to France—The Convention—The Succession Question—Declaration of Rights—William and Mary joint Sovereigns 289

CHAPTER XI.

PROGRESS OF THE NATION FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO THE GREAT REVOLUTION.

Religion: Nonconformist Sects—Imprisonment of Bunyan—Fox and the Society of Friends—The Punishment of James Naylor—Expulsion of Roger Williams—Other Religious Sects—Literature: Milton—His Works—Cowley—Butler—Dryden—Minor Poets—Dramatists of the Restoration—Prose Writers: Milton and Dryden—Hobbes—Clarendon—Baxter—Bunyan—Waiton—Evelyn and Pepys—Founding of the Royal Society—Physical Science—Discoveries of Napier, Newton and Flamsteed—Mathematicians and Chemists—Harvey and Worcester—Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving—Coinage—Music—Furniture—Costume—Manners and Customs—State of London—Sports and Amusements—Country Life—Travelling—The Clergy—Yeomen—Village Sports—Growth of the Revenue and Commerce—Growing prosperity of the North of England—The Navigation Act—Norwich and Bristol—Postal Arrangements—Advantages Derived from the Industries of the Foreign Refugees—The East India Company—Condition of the People: Wages—The Poor Law—Efforts of Philanthropists 352

[viii]

CHAPTER XII.

REIGN OF WILLIAM AND MARY.

Accession of William and Mary—Discontent of the Church and the Army—William's First Ministry—His Dutch Followers—The Convention becomes a Parliament—Oath of Allegiance—Settlement of the Revenue—Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act—The Mutiny Bill—Settlement of Religion—The Coronation—Declaration of War with France—Violence of the Revolution in Scotland—Parties in the Scottish Parliament—Letter from James—Secession of Dundee—Edinburgh in Arms—Settlement of the Government—Dundee in the Highlands—Battle of Killiecrankie—Mackay Concludes the War—Revolution in Ireland—Panic among the Englishry—Londonderry and Enniskillen Garrisoned—Negotiations of Tyrconnel—His Temporary Success—Landing of James—He Enters Dublin—His Journey into Ulster—The Siege of Londonderry—It is Saved—Legislation of the Irish Parliament—Arrival of Schomberg—Factiousness of the English Whigs—State of the English Army in Ireland—Renewed Violence of the Whigs—The Corporation Act Thrown Out—William Threatens to Leave England—Dissolution of Parliament—Tory Reaction—Venality of the New Parliament—Settlement of the Revenue—Whig Propositions—The Act of Grace—Preparations for War—A Jacobite Plot—William goes to Ireland—Progress of the War under Schomberg—Gradual Improvement of his Position and Ruin of the Jacobite Army—The Battle of the Boyne—Flight of James—William Enters the Irish Capital—News from England—Siege of Limerick—Battle of Beachy Head—Landing of the French in Torbay—Courage of the English People—Settlement of Scotland—Marlborough's Successes in Ireland—Parliament Grants Liberal Supplies—Preston's Plot Thwarted—William Sets Out for Holland—Vigour of Louis—Fall of Mons—Trial of Jacobite Conspirators—Treason in High Places—Punishment of the Non-Jurors—The Continental Campaign—Condition of Ireland—Arrival of St. Ruth—Siege of Athlone—Battle of Aghrim—Second Siege and Capitulation of Limerick 396

CHAPTER XIII.

REIGN OF WILLIAM AND MARY.

Proceedings in Parliament—Complaints against Admiral Russell—Treason in the Navy—Legislation against the Roman Catholics—The East India Company—Treasons Bill—The Poll Tax—Changes in the Ministry—Marlborough is deprived of his Offices—His Treachery—The Queen's Quarrel with the Princess Anne—William goes Abroad—Fall of Namur—Battle of Steinkirk—Results of the Campaign—The Massacre of Glencoe—Proposed Invasion of England—James's Declaration—Russell's Hesitation overcome by the Queen—Battle of La Hogue—Gallant Conduct of Rooke—Young's Sham Plot—Founding of Greenwich Hospital—Ill Success of the Fleet—Discontent of the People—Complaints in the Lords and Commons—The Land Tax—Origin of the National Debt—Liberty of the Press—The Continental Campaign—Battle of Landen—Loss of the Smyrna Fleet—Attack on the Navy—New Legislation—Banking Schemes of Chamberlayne and Paterson—The Bank of England Established—Ministerial Changes—Negotiations for Peace—Marlborough's Treason and the Death of Talmash—Illness and Death of Queen Mary 448

CHAPTER XIV.

Reign of WILLIAM III. (continued).

Rising Hopes of the Jacobites—Expulsion of Trevor for Venality—Examination of the Books of the East India Company—Impeachment of Leeds—The Glencoe Inquiry—The Darien Scheme—Marlborough's Reconciliation with William—Campaign of 1695—Surrender of Namur—William's Triumphant Return—General Election and Victory of the Whigs—New Parliament—Re-establishment of the Currency—Treasons Bill passed—A Double Jacobite Plot—Barclay's Preparations—Failure of Berwick's Insurrection Scheme—William Avoids the Snare—Warnings and Arrests—Sensation in the House of Commons—Trial and Execution of the Conspirators—The Association Bill becomes Law—Land Bank Established—Commercial Crisis—Failure of the Land Bank—The Bank of England supplies William with Money—Arrest of Sir John Fenwick—His Confession—William ignores it—Good Temper of the Commons—They take up Fenwick's Confession—His Silence—A Bill of Attainder passes both Houses—Execution of Fenwick—Ministerial Changes—Louis desires Peace—Opposition of the Allies—French Successes—Terms of Peace—Treaty of Ryswick—Enthusiasm in England 476

CHAPTER XV.

REIGN OF WILLIAM III. (concluded).

William Meets his Parliament—Reduction of the Standing Army—Visit of Peter the Great—Schemes of Louis—The East India Company—Spanish Partition Scheme—Its Inception and Progress—Somers's Hesitation—The Treaty is [ix]Signed—New Parliament—Tory Reaction—Dismissal of the Dutch Guards—William forms an Intention of Quitting England—Attack on the late Ministry—Jobbery in the Admiralty—Paterson's Darien Scheme—Douglas's Reasons against It—Enthusiasm of the Scots—Departure of the First Expedition and its Miserable Failure—The Untimely End of the Second Expedition—Second Partition Scheme—Double-dealing of the French—New Parliament—Attack on Somers—Report on the Irish Grants—Resumption Bill passed—William's Unpopularity—Death of the Duke of Gloucester—Conclusion of the New Partition Treaty and its Results—Charles makes over his Dominions to the French Candidate—His Death—Disgust of William at Louis's Duplicity—Tory Temper of the House—The Succession Question—Debates on Foreign Policy—The Succession Act passed—New Negotiations with France—Attack on the Whig Ministers—Acknowledgment of the Spanish King—Impeachment of the Whigs—The Kentish Petition—Its Reception by the House—The Legion Memorial—Panic in the House—Violent Struggle between the two Houses—The Impeachments dropped—William goes Abroad—The Grand Alliance and its Objects—Beginning of the War—Death of James II.—Louis acknowledges the Pretender—Reaction in England—New Parliament and Ministry—The King's Speech—British Patriotism is Roused—Voting of Supplies—The Bills of Attainder and Abjuration—Illness and Death of William—His Character 502

CHAPTER XVI.

THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE.

Accession of the Queen—Meeting of the Houses of Parliament—Scotland and Ireland—Power of Marlborough—The Revenue—Tory Colour of the Ministry—The Coronation—Declaration of War—Marlborough goes to the Seat of War—General Aspect of Affairs—Marlborough's Difficulties—His Campaign—Operations by Sea—Meeting of Parliament—Supply—Marlborough's Dukedom—The Occasional Conformity Bill—Dismissal of Rochester—Opening of the Campaign of 1703—Fall of Bonn—Failure to take Antwerp—Savoy and Portugal join the Allies—Visit of the Archduke Charles to England—The Storm—Jacobite Conspiracy—Ashby versus White—Queen Anne's Bounty—Marlborough's Great Plans—The States-General hoodwinked—His March—Dismay of the French—Junction with Eugene—Advance on the Danube—Assault of the Schellenberg—The Prince of Baden's Conceit—Approach of Tallard—The Eve of Blenheim—The Battle—Conclusion of the Campaign—Marlborough's Diplomacy—Capture of Gibraltar—Battle of Malaga—Proceedings in Parliament—The Campaign of 1705—Attempt to recover Gibraltar—Peterborough's Exploits in Spain—Proposal to Invite the Electress Sophia to England—Consequent Legislation—Battle of Ramillies—Eugene relieves Turin—Disasters in Spain—Meeting of the Commissioners for the Union—Condition of the Treaty—Opposition in Scotland—Riots in Edinburgh—Conduct of the Opposition—The Measure carried by Bribery—Its Discussion in the English Parliament—The Royal Assent given 535

CHAPTER XVII.

THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE (continued).

Negotiations for Peace—The Ministry becomes Whig—Harley—Marlborough and Charles of Sweden—The Allies in Spain—Battle of Almanza—The French Triumphant in Spain—Attack on Toulon—Destruction of Shovel's Fleet—Jacobitism in Scotland—First Parliament of Great Britain—Abigail Hill—The Gregg Affair—Retirement of Harley and St. John from the Ministry—Attempted Invasion of Scotland—Campaign of 1708—Battle of Oudenarde—Capture of Lille—Leake takes Sardinia and Minorca—Death of Prince George of Denmark—The Junto—Terrible Plight of France—Marlborough's Plans for 1709—Louis Negotiates with Holland—Torcy's Terms—Ultimatum of the Allies—Rejection of the Terms—Patriotism of the French Nation—Fall of Tournay—Battle of Malplaquet—Meeting of Parliament—Dr. Sacheverell's Sermons—His Impeachment resolved upon—Attitude of the Court—The Trial and Sacheverell's Defence—The Riots—Dispersal of the Rabble—The Sentence—Bias of the Queen—The Tories in Power—Renewed Overtures for Peace—Their Failure—The Campaigns in the Netherlands and in Spain—Brihuega and its Consequence—Marlborough's Reign at an End—Unpopularity of Marlborough—Dismissal of the Duchess—Triumph of the Tories—Guiscard's Attack on Harley—Popularity of Harley—Marlborough's Last Campaign—Failure of the Attack on Quebec—The Ministry determine to make Peace—Overtures to the Pretender—He refuses to Change his Religion—Gualtier's Mission to Versailles—Indignation of the Dutch—The Basis of Negotiations—Signing of the Preliminaries—Excitement Abroad and at Home—Prorogation of Parliament—Strengthening of the Ministry—Debates in the two Houses—The Whigs adopt the Occasional Conformity Bill—Creation of Peers—Dismissal of Marlborough from his Employments—Walpole expelled the House 574

[x]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[xii]

LIST OF PLATES

Charles I. on his Way to Execution, 1649. (By Ernest Crofts, R.A.) Frontispiece

Map of England during the Civil War, 1642-1649. To face p. 50

The Children of Charles I. (By Miss Margaret I. Dicksee) " 71

Death of the Princess Elizabeth, Carisbrooke Castle, Sept. 8th, 1650. (By C. W. Cope, R.A.) " 102

Cromwell Refusing the Crown. (By J. Schex) " 145

Rescued from the Plague, London, 1665. (By F. W. W. Topham, R.I.) " 209

Charles II. and Nell Gwynn. (By E. M. Ward, R.A.) " 210

The Great Fire of London, 1666. (By Stanhope A. Forbes, A.R.A.) " 225

The Disgrace of Lord Clarendon after his Last Interview with the King in Whitehall Palace, 1667. (By E. M. Ward, R.A.) " 233

The Ante-Chamber of Whitehall during the Last Moments of Charles II., 1685. (By E. M. Ward, R.A.) " 289

"After Sedgemoor." (By W. Rainey, R.I.) " 302

Covenanters Preaching. (By Sir George Harvey, R.S.A.) " 402

William III. at the Battle of the Boyne. (By Jan Wyck) " 430

A Lost Cause: Flight of James II. after the Battle of the Boyne, 1690. (By Andrew C. Gow, R.A.) " 433

The Founding of the Bank of England, 1694. (By George Harcourt) " 471

Peter the Great at Deptford Dockyard. (By Daniel Maclise, R.A.) " 503

H.R.H. Princess Anne of Denmark, afterwards Queen of England. (By W. Wissing and J. Vandervaart) " 545

[xiii]

By permission of Messrs. S. Hildesheimer & Co., Ld.

CHARLES I. ON HIS WAY TO EXECUTION, 1649.

From the Picture by ERNEST CROFTS, R.A.

[1]

CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD, FROM ST. ALDATE'S (LOOKING WEST.)

CASSELL'S
Illustrated History of England.

CHAPTER I.

THE GREAT REBELLION.

Condition of Ireland—Roger Moore's Pilgrimage—Negotiations of the Anglo-Irish with Charles—Hugh M'Mahon betrays the Plot—Rising of the Native Irish—Massacre of Protestants—Measures taken by the English Parliament—Return of Charles to London—The Grand Remonstrance—The King's Answer—His Lieutenant of the Tower—Riots in London—Blunder of the Bishops—Attempted Arrest of the Five Members—Charles leaves London—The Queen goes to Holland—Charles at York—His Repulse from Hull—Preparations for War—The Royal Standard Raised—Prince Rupert's Headstrong Folly—Battle of Edge Hill—Charles marches on London—He returns to Oxford—Cromwell in the East—The Queen in Yorkshire—Death of Hampden—Parliamentary Disasters—Battle of Newbury—Death of Lord Falkland—Negotiations with the Scots and Irish—Death of Pym—Royal Parliament at Oxford—Battle of Marston Moor—Disastrous Failure of Essex in Cornwall—Second Battle of Newbury—The Self-denying Ordinance—The New-modelled Army.

The causes which drove the Irish to rebellion were for the most part of long standing. Their religion had been ruthlessly persecuted; their property had been confiscated by whole provinces at a time; their ancient chiefs had been driven from their lands, and many of them exterminated. Elizabeth, James, and Charles, had proffered them new titles on condition of making large sacrifices, but had never kept their word, and at this moment, the graces promised[2] by Charles to tolerate their religion and confirm the titles of their estates, were unfulfilled. The example of the Scots had aroused them to the hope of achieving a like triumph. Their great enemy the Earl of Strafford had fallen, but, on the other hand, they were menaced by Parliament with a still more fierce persecution, and even an avowed extermination of their religion. They believed that the Scottish Presbyterians would join with avidity in the attempt to subdue them, and come in for a share of the plunder of their estates; and they now seized on the idea of rising and reclaiming their ancient power and property. True, they were not one united people like the Scots: there were the ancient Irish, and the Anglo-Irish of the pale, that is, English settled in Ireland holding the estates of the expelled native chiefs, but keeping themselves aloof from the Irish. Yet many of the pale were Catholics, and the Catholic religion was the unanimous object of attachment on the part of the natives. The Parliament and the Scottish settlers in the north were banded against this religion, and this produced a counter-bond between the Catholic natives and the Catholics of the pale. From the British Parliament neither of these parties had anything to hope for on the score of religion; but the king was in need of aid against this Parliament, and it occurred to them that they might make common cause with him.

Roger Moore, a gentleman of Kildare, entered into this scheme with all the impetuosity of his nation. He saw the lands of his ancestors for the most part in the hands of English and Scottish settlers, and he made a pilgrimage into almost every quarter of Ireland to incite his countrymen to grasp this opportunity, when the king and Parliament of England were engrossed by their disputes, to recover their rights. Everywhere he was listened to with enthusiasm, and the natives held themselves ready to rise, and take a terrible vengeance on the usurpers of their lands at the first signal. The great chiefs of Ulster, Cornelius Maguire, Baron of Enniskillen, and Sir Phelim O'Neil, who had become the chieftain of the sept of Tyrone after the death of the son of the late persecuted Tyrone, fell into his views with all their followers. The Catholic members of the pale were more disposed to negotiate with Charles than to rush into insurrection against his authority. They knew that it was greatly to his interest at this moment to conciliate his Irish subjects, and they despatched to him a deputation previous to his journey to Scotland, demanding the ratification of those graces for which he had received the purchase money thirteen years before, and offering in return their warmest support to his authority in Ireland. Charles received them very graciously, promised them the full satisfaction of all their demands, and by Lord Gormanstown, who headed the deputation, and on whom he lavished the most marked attentions, he sent word to the Earls of Ormond and Antrim to secure in his interest the eight thousand troops which had been raised by Strafford, to keep them in efficient discipline, to augment rather than decrease their number, and to surprise the castle of Dublin, where they would find twelve thousand stand of arms.

But the English Parliament were by no means unaware of the danger from the army in Ireland, which consisted almost entirely of Catholics. They insisted on its being disbanded, as promised by the king on the Scottish pacification. He was not able to prevent this, and signed the order; but at the same time sent secret instructions by Gormanstown to Ormond and Antrim, to frustrate this by enlisting the whole body as volunteers to serve the King of Spain in Flanders.

At this juncture Sir William Parsons and Sir John Borlase were at the head of the English Government in Ireland; they were in the interest of the Parliament, and were detested by almost all classes of Irish. Sir John Clotworthy, in the House of Commons, had openly declared that "the conversion of the Papists in Ireland was only to be effected by the Bible in one hand, and the sword in the other." Pym was reported to have said that they would not leave a priest in Ireland; and at a public entertainment Parsons had echoed those sentiments by declaring that "in a twelvemonth not a Catholic would be left in that country." The Irish were, therefore, delighted with their success with the king, and Gormanstown and his associates hastened home again, with two Bills signed by the king, granting the possession of lands which had been held sixty years, and setting aside all the sequestrations made by Strafford. But Parsons and Borlase, aware that the passing of these Bills would attach Ireland to the interests of the king, defeated the object by proroguing Parliament a few days before the arrival of the deputies.

It was now resolved by Ormond and Antrim to defer any movement till the reassembling of the Irish Parliament in November, when they could at the same moment secure Dublin castle and the persons of Parsons and Borlase, and issue[3] in the name of the two Houses his Majesty's concession to the people of Ireland. But the native Irish, stimulated by the addresses of Moore, could not wait so long. They determined to rise, without waiting for the combined force, on the 23rd of October. Two hundred and twenty men were to surprise the castle, but at the time appointed only eighty appeared. They concluded to wait till the next day for the arrival of the rest, but that night one Hugh M'Mahon, in a drunken fit, betrayed the secret to Owen O'Connelly, a servant of Sir John Clotworthy, and a Protestant. He instantly carried the news to Sir William Parsons; the city gates were closed, and a quick search was made for the conspirators. All but M'Mahon and Lord Maguire escaped, but the castle was saved.

Ignorant of the failure of the plot, the people of Ulster rose on the appointed day. Charlemont and Dungannon were surprised by Sir Phelim O'Neil, Mountjoy by O'Quin, Tanderagee by O'Hanlan, and Newry by Macginnis. In little more than a week all the open country in Tyrone, Monaghan, Longford, Leitrim, Fermanagh, Cavan, Donegal, Derry, and part of Down, were in their hands. The other colonies in which there were English or Scottish plantations followed their example, and the greater part of Ireland was in a dreadful state of anarchy and terror. The Protestant people on the plantations fell beneath the butchering revenge of the insurgents, or fled wildly into the fortified towns. The horrors of the Irish massacre of 1641 have assumed a fearful place in history; the cruelties, expulsions, and oppressions of long years were repaid by the most infuriated cruelty. Men, women, and children, fell indiscriminately in the onslaught, and they who escaped, says Clarendon, "were robbed of all they had, to their very shirts, and so turned naked to endure the sharpness of the season, and by that means, and for want of relief, many thousands of them perished by hunger and cold."

Great care has been taken by Catholic writers to contradict these accounts, and to represent the atrocities committed as of no extraordinary extent. They remind us that no accounts of these barbarous slaughters were transmitted in the reports to the English Parliament, which would have been only too glad to spread, and even exaggerate bloody deeds of the Catholics. They reduce the number of people slain during the whole insurrection to about ten thousand, instead of the grossly exaggerated statements of Milton in his "Iconoclastes," that there were one hundred and fifty-four thousand in Ulster alone, or of Sir John Temple, that three hundred thousand were slain or expelled altogether. But nothing less than a most frightful massacre could have left the awful impression which still lives in tradition, and the calculations of moderate historians do not make the number massacred less than from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand. The Earl of Castlehaven, a Catholic, says that all the water in the sea could not wash from the Irish the taint of that rebellion. Whilst remembering the vengeance, however, we must never forget the long and maddening incentives to it. Much blame was attached to the Deputy-Governors, Borlase and Parsons, who, shut up in security in Dublin, took no measures for suppressing the insurgents. They were charged with purposely allowing the rebellion to spread, in order that there might be more confiscations, in which they would find their own benefit; but it must not be forgotten that they had few soldiers on whom they could rely, for these were nearly all Catholics; nor did the insurgents escape without severe chastisement in many places, for wherever there was a trusty garrison, the soldiers easily repelled the disorderly mob of plunderers; and Sir Phelim O'Neil suffered during the month of November severe losses.

Before Charles reached England, O'Connelly, the discoverer of the plot, arrived in London, with letters from the lords justices, and was called before the House of Lords to relate all that he knew. They immediately invited the House of Commons to a conference on the state of Ireland, and on the better providing for the security of England. They presented O'Connelly with five hundred pounds in money, and settled on him an annuity of two hundred pounds a year. It was resolved to look well after the Catholics in England, and to put the ports into a state of defence. The Commons voted that two hundred thousand pounds should be set apart for the requirements of Ireland; that six thousand foot and two thousand horse should be raised for service there; and that the fleet should carefully guard its coast. The Earl of Leicester, the Lord-Lieutenant, was desired to furnish a list of the most suitable officers for the service, and arms and ammunition were prepared in haste, to be despatched to Dublin. A pardon was offered to all rebels who laid down their arms by a certain day, at the same time that a reward was set on the heads of the leaders. But the Commons did not stop there; they passed a resolution never to tolerate the Catholic worship either in Ireland or in any part of his Majesty's dominions. Commissioners were[4] appointed to disarm the recusants in every part of the kingdom; pursuivants were sent out in every direction to seize priests and Jesuits; orders were given for the trial of all such persons; and the king was advised not to pardon or reprieve them. The queen's chapel was closed, her priests were dismissed, her confessor was sent to the Tower, and no less than seventy Catholic lords and gentlemen were denounced by the Commons to the Lords, as persons who ought to be secured to prevent them from doing injury to the State.

Such was the condition of things when Charles arrived in London. He was well received by the Lord Mayor and aldermen of the city, and in return gave them an entertainment at Hampton Court; but he was greatly chagrined at the proceedings of the Commons, telling them that they were converting the war in Ireland, which was a civil war, into a war of religion. He took umbrage also at Parliament sitting with a guard round their House. The Earl of Essex, on the king's arrival, surrendered his command of the forces south of the Trent to the king, and announced to the Lords that having resigned his commission, he could no longer furnish the guard. A message was sent from the Houses, requesting the king to restore them the guard, but he refused, saying he saw no occasion for it; but the Commons let him know that many dangerous persons, Irish and others, were lurking about, and that the "Incident" in Scotland, and the late attempt to surprise the castle in Dublin, warned them of their danger; and that not only must they have a guard, but they must nominate the commander of it themselves.

Whilst Charles was pondering on the answer which he should return to this unwelcome message, Sir Ralph Hopton appeared at Hampton Court with another address from the Commons yet more ominous. This bore the alarming title of a "Remonstrance on the state of the kingdom." It had been drawn up and passed by the Commons before the king came back from Scotland, that is, on the 22nd of November; and it was resolved to present it to him on his return. It was the act of the Commons alone, and had not been carried even there without a violent debate, which lasted till two o'clock in the morning, the House having sat that day eighteen hours. The heat to which the proposal gave rise was such, that Sir Philip Warwick says, "We had sheathed our swords in each others' bowels, had not the sagacity and calmness of Mr. Hampden, by a soft speech, prevented it." Cromwell is reported by Clarendon to have said to Lord Falkland as they came out, that had it not been carried, he would have sold all and gone to America. "So near," adds the Royalist historian, "was the poor kingdom at that time to its deliverance."

And yet this famous Remonstrance was only carried by a majority of nine, according to Clarendon; according to others, by eleven. It was, as Clarendon describes it, "a very bitter representation of all the illegal things that had been done from the first hour of the king's coming to the crown, to that minute." It consisted of two hundred and six clauses, and dealt among other matters with the war against the French Protestants; the innovations in the Church; the illegal imposition of ship-money; forced loans; the cruelties of the Star Chamber and High Commission; the forcing of episcopacy on Scotland; the forcing of it on the Irish by Strafford, and all the other illegal proceedings there; the opposition of the king and his ministers to necessary reforms; and the plotting of the queen with the Papists at home and abroad. It went on to remind the king of what they had done in pulling down his evil counsellors, and informed him that other good things were in preparation.

THE CLOCK TOWER, DUBLIN CASTLE.

The king the next day delivered his answer in the House of Lords, protesting, as usual, his good intentions, telling the Commons, before he removed evil counsellors, they must point out who they were and bring real facts against them; at the same time he significantly reminded them that he had left Scotland in perfect amity with him, so that they might infer that they were not to look for support against him there, and calling on them to stir themselves in aiding him to put down the rebellion in Ireland. Matters continued getting worse every day between the king and Parliament. From the 8th to the 20th of December there was a sullen humour between them. So far from granting the Parliament the usual guard, Charles had posted a guard of his own near the Commons. They summoned the commander of the guard before them, pronounced its being placed there a breach of their privileges, and demanded that it should be removed. On the 14th of December Charles objected to their ordering the impressment of soldiers from Ireland, that being his prerogative, but that he would permit it for the time on the understanding that his right was not thereby affected. The next day the Commons passed an order for the printing and publishing of their Remonstrance, which measure they had failed to carry at the same time as the Remonstrance itself. This had a[5] great effect with the public, and the king, in a restless, angry humour, prevailing in nothing against the House, sought to strengthen himself by getting into the Tower a lieutenant of his own party. But in this movement he was equally injudicious and equally unfortunate. Charles dismissed Sir William Balfour, who had honestly resisted his warrant and refused a bribe of Strafford to permit his escape; but to have deprived the Commons of any plea for interfering in what was unquestionably his own prerogative, he should have replaced him by a man of character. Instead of that, he gave the post to Colonel Lunsford, a man of desperate fortunes and the most unprincipled reputation; outlawed for his violent attacks on different individuals, and known to be capable of executing the most lawless designs. The City immediately petitioned the Commons against the Tower being in the hands of such a man; the Commons called for a conference with the Lords on the subject, but the Lords refused to meddle in what so clearly was the royal prerogative. The Commons then called on them to enter the protest they had made on their books; but the Lords took time to consider it. On Thursday, December 23rd, a petition was addressed to the Commons, purporting to be from the apprentices of London, against Papists and prelates, who, they contended, caused the destruction of trade by their plots, and the fears which thence unsettled men of capital; whereby they, the apprentices, "were nipped in the bud," on[6] entering the world. The Corporation waited on his Majesty on Sunday, the 26th, to assure him that the apprentices were contemplating a rising, and meant to carry the Tower by storm, unless Lunsford were removed; and that the merchants had already taken away their bullion from the Mint for fear of him, and the owners of ships coming in with new would not carry it there. That evening Charles took the keys from his new lieutenant, and appointed Sir John Byron in his place.

And now, notwithstanding their reluctance, the Lords were compelled to entertain this question, for they found Lord Newport, the Constable of the Tower, also brought into controversy by the king. It appeared that during Charles's absence in Scotland, at a meeting of a number of the peers and members of the Commons at Kensington, regarding some rumour of plots against Parliament, Lord Newport was reported to have said, "Never mind, we have his wife and children." Newport stated in the House that he had waited on the queen at the time, and assured her that no such words had been spoken; yet on Friday last the king had reminded him of it, and intimated his belief of it. It was now the turn of the Lords to call for a conference with the Commons. This was granted on Monday, and whilst it was sitting, the House of Parliament was surrounded by tumultuous mobs, crying, "Beware of plots! No bishops! no bishops!"

Poor Williams, made Archbishop of York on the 4th of this month, was surrounded by this mob and much frightened; but he got away unhurt, any further than in his feelings, from the execrations heaped on the bishops. One David Hide, however, a ruffian officer, who had been in the army in the north, and was now appointed to the service in Ireland, drew his sword, and swore that "he would cut the throats of those roundheaded dogs that bawled against bishops," and by that expression, says Clarendon, gave the first utterance to the name "roundheads," which was at once universally applied to the Parliamentary party; the term "cavaliers" soon being introduced to designate the Royalists. The same day Lunsford had the insolence to go through Westminster Hall with thirty or forty of his partisans at his back. The mob fell on them, and they drew their swords and cut right and left among the crowd. Presently there came pouring down to Westminster hundreds of fresh apprentices, with swords, cudgels, and other weapons, crying, "Slash us now! Slash us now!" And this was renewed by thousands the next day, December 28th, with the same "Slash us now, whilst we wait on the honourable House to request an answer to our petition." Some of the youths were shut into the abbey and brought before Williams, whilst those without cried that if they were not released, they would break in and pull down the organs. This, however, they were prevented from doing, by numbers of the bishop's men coming out on the abbey leads, and flinging down stones upon them, by which many were injured; and Sir Richard Wiseman, who happened to be passing, was so much hurt that he died of his injuries.

Williams, the archbishop, was so incensed at the cry against the bishops, that he forgot his usual cunning, and got eleven other bishops to join him in an address to the king, declaring that the bishops could not get to their places for the riotous crowds, and from fear of their lives from them; and therefore, as bishops had at all times formed part and parcel of the Upper House, that House, so long as they were detained from it, was no longer a competent House, and that all its acts, of whatever kind, would be utterly invalid. This was supposed to be a manœuvre of the king's to get rid of the authority of Parliament for the present, and thus of his unfortunate surrender of the powers of adjournment; but the Lords, taking no notice of the protest of the bishops, desired a conference with the Commons, and then denounced the protest of the bishops as subversive of the fundamental rights of Parliament. The Commons, on their part, instead of contenting themselves with passing a resolution condemnatory of the folly of the bishops, at once declared them guilty of high treason, and called on the Lords to apprehend them, which was at once done, and ten of the bishops were committed to the Tower, and two, on account of their age, to the custody of the Usher of the Black Rod.

On the last day of this eventful year, Denzil Holles waited on his Majesty, by order of the Commons, to represent to him, that whilst his faithful Parliament was ready to shed the last drop of its blood in defence of his Majesty, it was itself daily exposed to the danger of plots and ruffians who had dared to shed the blood of the people coming to petition at the very doors of the House. They demanded, therefore, a guard. Charles had taken care to surround his own palace day and night since the commotions. Such a guard was reluctantly granted three days after.

But if 1641 had been an astonishing year, 1642 was destined to cast even it into the shade, and[7] its very opening was with nothing short of the first trumpet note of civil war. On the 3rd of January Charles sent his answer to the Commons respecting the guard, acceding to the request, but immediately followed it up by a demand that electrified the Houses, and was soon to electrify the nation. Whilst the Commons were debating on the royal message, the king's new Attorney-General, Herbert, appeared at the bar of the House of Lords, and presented articles of high treason against six leading Members of Parliament, one peer and five commoners. These members were, Lord Kimbolton in the Peers, and Holles, Hazelrig, Pym, Hampden, and Strode, in the Commons. There were seven articles exhibited against them of high treason and other misdemeanour. These were stated in the following words:—"1st. That they have traitorously endeavoured to subvert the fundamental laws and government of the kingdom of England, to deprive the king of his royal power, and to place in subjects an arbitrary and tyrannical power over the lives, liberties, and estates of his Majesty's liege people. 2nd. That they have traitorously endeavoured, by many foul aspersions upon his Majesty and his Government, to alienate the affections of his people, and to make his Majesty odious unto them. 3rd. That they have endeavoured to draw his Majesty's late army to disobedience to his Majesty's commands, and to side with them in their traitorous designs. 4th. That they have traitorously invited and encouraged a foreign power to invade his Majesty's kingdom of England. 5th. That they have traitorously endeavoured to subvert the rights and the very being of Parliaments. 6th. That for the completing of their traitorous designs, they have endeavoured, so far as in them lay, by force and terror, to compel the Parliament to join with them in their traitorous designs, and to that end have actually raised and countenanced tumults against the king and Parliament. 7th. And that they have traitorously conspired to levy, and actually have levied war against the king."

"The House of Peers," says Clarendon, "was somewhat startled by this alarm, but took time to consider it till the next day, that they might see how their masters, the Commons, would behave themselves." Lord Kimbolton declared his readiness to meet the charge: the Lords sent a message upon the matter to the Commons; and at the same time came the news that officers of the Crown were sealing up the doors, trunks, and papers of Pym, Hampden and the other impeached members. The House immediately ordered the seals put upon the doors and papers of their Members to be broken, and they who had presumed to do such an act to be seized and brought before them. At this moment the serjeant-at-arms arrived at the door of the House; they ordered him to be admitted, but without his mace, and having heard his demand for the delivery of the five Members, they bade him withdraw, and sent Lord Falkland and three other Members to inform the king that they held the Members ready to answer any legal charge against them. But the next day the Commons were informed by Captain Languish, that the king, at the head of his gentlemen pensioners, and followed by some hundreds of courtiers and officers, armed with swords and pistols, was advancing towards the House. The House was well supplied with halberds, which they had previously ordered into it when the king withdrew their guard; but they saw the advantage of preventing an armed collision, and ordered the accused Members to withdraw.

Charles entered the House, his attendants remaining at Westminster Hall, and at the door of the Commons. As he advanced towards the Speaker's chair, he glanced towards the place where Pym usually sat, and then approaching the chair, said, "By your leave, Mr. Speaker, I must borrow your chair a little." The House, at his entrance, arose and stood uncovered; Lenthall, the Speaker, dropped upon his knees, and Charles, much excited, said, "Gentlemen, I am sorry for this occasion of coming unto you. Yesterday I sent a serjeant-at-arms to apprehend some that at my command were accused of high treason, wherewith I did expect obedience, and not a message; and I must declare unto you here, that albeit no king that ever was in England shall be more careful of your privileges, to maintain them to the utmost of his power, than I shall be; yet you must know that in cases of treason no person hath a privilege, and therefore I am come to know if any of those persons that I have accused, for no slight crime, but for treason, are here. I cannot expect that this House can be in the right way that I do heartily wish it, therefore I am come to tell you that I must have them, wheresoever I find them." He looked earnestly round the House, but seeing none of them, demanded of the Speaker where they were. Lenthall, still on his knees, declared that he had neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, but as the House directed. "Well," said the king, "since I see all the birds are[8] flown, I do expect that as soon as they return hither, you do send them to me." And with mingled assurances that he meant no force, yet not without a threat, he withdrew. As he walked out, there were raised loud cries of "Privilege! Privilege!" and the House instantly adjourned.

The Commons, to testify that they no longer felt themselves safe in their own House, betook themselves to the City where, establishing a permanent committee to sit at the Grocers' Hall, they adjourned till the 11th of January. The next day Charles, taking his usual attendants, went into the City, and at Guildhall demanded of the Lord Mayor and aldermen that they should hunt out and deliver to him the accused Members who had taken refuge amongst them. His demand was coldly received, and after dining with one of the sheriffs he returned. His passage through the city was attended by continued cries of "Privilege! Privilege of Parliament!" And one Henry Walker, an ironmonger and political pamphleteer, threw into his Majesty's carriage a paper bearing the words, "To your tents, O Israel!" Scarcely had Charles reached Whitehall, when a deputation from the Corporation waited on him, complaining of the Tower being put into unsafe hands, of the fortifying of Whitehall, the wounding of citizens on their way to petition Parliament, of the dangerous example of the king entering the House of Commons attended by armed men, and praying him to cease from the prosecution of the five Members of Parliament, and to remove from Whitehall and the Tower all suspicious personages.

As Charles still persisted by proclamation in endeavouring to get possession of the five Members, and as a hundred stand of arms, with gunpowder and shot, had been removed from the Tower to Whitehall, a thousand marines and boatmen signed a memorial to the committee of the Commons sitting at Guildhall, offering to guard them on the appointed day to their House in Westminster. The committee accepted the offer, which was immediately followed by one from the apprentices. Seeing that the City, the seamen, and everybody were of one mind in condemning his violent invasion of the national sanctuary of the House of Commons, Charles on the 10th of January, the day previous to the meeting again of Parliament, quietly withdrew with his family to Hampton Court, and the next day removed thence to Windsor. Little did he imagine, deplorable as was his retreat, that he would never enter his capital again till he came as a prisoner in the hands of this insulted Parliament. Yet his feelings at this moment must have been melancholy in the extreme. "In this sad condition," says Clarendon, "was the king at Windsor; fallen in ten days from a height and greatness that his enemies feared, to a lowness, that his own servants durst hardly avow the waiting on him."

Charles had now decided on war. But money was necessary, and to obtain it he determined to send the queen abroad. A pretext was easily found. The Princess Mary, who had been some time betrothed to the Prince of Orange, though she was yet a mere child, only about ten years of age, was to be delivered to the Dutch Court, and nothing was more natural than that her mother should accompany her. Even the stern reformers, who had forbidden her twice before leaving the kingdom, could find no excuse for forbidding this maternal office. On the 9th of February Charles and the Court returned from Windsor to Hampton Court, and the next day the royal party set out for Dover, where, on the 23rd, the queen and her daughter embarked for Holland. The Prince of Orange received her majesty with all kindness, which he indeed owed her, for she had always taken the part of him and his country against Richelieu; but the civic authorities were not so glad to see her, fearing that she might embroil them with the all-powerful Parliament of England. They entered her presence with their hats on, seated themselves in her presence, and took their leave without a bow or a word. But Henrietta restrained her disgust better than her husband would have done, for she had great interests at stake, and succeeded by her flattering courtesies in so melting the Dutch phlegm, that she eventually succeeded in borrowing of the authorities of Amsterdam eight hundred and forty-five thousand guilders, at Rotterdam sixty-five thousand, of the merchants at the Hague one hundred and sixty-six thousand, besides pawning her pearls for two hundred and thirteen thousand, and six rubies for forty thousand, thus raising for her husband two million pounds sterling.

CHARLES DEMANDING THE SURRENDER OF THE FIVE MEMBERS. (See p. 7.)

Whilst the king was at Canterbury waiting for the queen's departure, the Commons urged him to sign the two Bills for the removal of the bishops from Parliament, and of them and the clergy from all temporal offices, and for power to press soldiers for the service of Ireland. He passed them, the second Bill to be in force only till the 1st of November. The Commons expressed their satisfaction, but still urged the removal of all Privy Councillors and officers of State, except such as held posts hereditarily, and the appointment[10] of others having the confidence of Parliament. They then returned to the subject of the Militia Bill, which would put the whole force of the army into the hands of Parliament; but there Charles made a stand. He sent orders that the Prince of Wales should meet him at Greenwich. The Parliament—which watched his every movement and no doubt was informed of his intentions—sent a message to the king, praying him to allow the prince to remain at Hampton Court; but Charles, complaining of these suspicions, ordered the prince's governor, the Marquis of Hertford, to bring him to Greenwich. On Sunday, the 27th of February, some of the Lords went to Greenwich, to endeavour to bring the prince back; but Charles would not suffer it, declaring that the prince should accompany him wherever he went. He removed to Theobalds, and there again a deputation followed him, urging him to grant the matter of the militia, or that the Parliament would feel compelled to assume it for the safety of the kingdom. They also renewed their request for the return of the prince. Charles expressed much surprise at these importunities, and refused them both.

On receiving this answer, the two Houses issued an order to fit out the fleet, and put it into the command of the Earl of Northumberland, as Lord High Admiral. The Lords, who had hesitated to join the Commons in the demand of the control of the militia, now passed the ordinance for it with very few dissentients. Fifty-five Lords and Commons were named as lord-lieutenants of counties, many of them Royalists, but still not such as the Commons feared joining the king in an open rupture. The Commons then proceeded to issue a declaration, expressing their apprehensions of the favour shown to the Irish rebels by the Court; of the intention of evil advisers of the king to break the neck of Parliament, and of the rumours of aid from abroad for these objects from the Pope, and the Kings of France and Spain. The Lords, with only sixteen dissentient voices, joined in this declaration, and the Earls of Pembroke and Holland waited on the king with it at Royston. On hearing this outspoken paper read, Charles testified much indignation, pronouncing some assertions in it, in plain terms, lies; and when the earls entreated him to consent to the granting of the militia for a time, he exclaimed:—"No, by God, not for an hour. You have asked that of me which was never asked of any king, and with which I should not trust my wife and children." This was true, but he had formerly said he would sooner lose his life than consent to the Bill against the bishops, and yet he gave them up. That he would on the first opportunity break his word, was certain; that at this very moment his wife was moving heaven and earth abroad, and pawning her jewels for money to put down Parliament and people, was equally well known. In vain, therefore, were the solemn asseverations which he made, that he desired nothing so much as to satisfy his subjects.

At this moment he was stealing away towards the north. He got away to Newmarket, thence to Huntingdon, next to Stamford, and from that place wrote to the two Houses, informing them that he proposed to take up his residence for a time in York. The deputies had strongly importuned him to return to the neighbourhood of his Parliament; this was his answer, accompanied by a positive refusal to put the militia into their hands. The Houses were at once roused to action. War was inevitable; the king was intending to take them by surprise. They therefore voted that the king's absence was most detrimental to the affairs of Ireland; that the king was easily advised, and that it was necessary for Parliament that the power of commanding the militia must be exercised by the sole authority of Parliament, and orders for that purpose were issued to the lieutenants and deputy-lieutenants of the counties.

Charles had meanwhile proceeded by Doncaster to York, where he arrived on the 19th of March. On the 26th the Lords Willoughby and Dungarvan, with Sir Anthony Ereby, arrived from Parliament with a justification of their proceedings. They admitted that he had passed many satisfactory Bills at their instance, but that always at the same time some attempts had been set on foot to render them abortive. They informed him that they had certain information of preparations making abroad, and of a design to enter Hull with foreign forces. Charles denied the truth of these allegations, and assured them that he would return and reside near his Parliament as soon as he was sure of the safety of his person. He did not forget, however, the words dropped about Hull. It was of immense consequence to obtain possession of that place; but it was in the keeping of the stout Sir John Hotham and his son, who had declared in Parliament "fall back, fall edge, he would carry out the wishes of Parliament." As Charles could not hope to obtain it by force, he conceived the idea of winning it by stratagem.[11] He sent the Earl of Newcastle to request that the town and arsenals might be put into his hands. Newcastle assumed the name of Sir John Savage to obtain admission to the town, but was discovered, and this clumsy trick only increased the suspicions of the people. Parliament then sent an order for the removal of the arms and ammunition to the Tower of London; but Charles told them that he claimed them as purchased with money borrowed on his own account, and begged they would leave him to look after his own property. He also sent them word that it was his intention to pass over to Ireland, to suppress the rebellion; that he should require all the arms and ammunition for that purpose, and that they would be necessary for the use of his guard of two thousand foot and two hundred horse, which he meant to embark there for Ireland.

On the 22nd of April he sent the Duke of York, the Prince Palatine, his nephew, the Lords Newport, Willoughby, and some other persons of distinction, but without any armed force, to see the town of Hull. Sir John Hotham and the mayor received them with all honour, and entertained them as became their rank. They were shown the place, and were to dine with the governor on the morrow, being St. George's Day. Just before dinner-time, however, Hotham was startled by the sudden appearance of Sir Lewis Dives, brother-in-law of the outlawed Lord Digby, who informed him that his Majesty intended to do him the honour to dine with him, and was already within a mile of the town, accompanied by three hundred horse. Sir John, who saw the trick, instantly ordered the drawbridges to be raised, and shut the gates in the king's face, for by this time he had arrived at the Beverley gate.

Charles commanded Sir John to open the gate and admit him and his guard, but Sir John replied that, though a loyal subject of his Majesty, he could not do so without consent of Parliament, which had put the town into his keeping. If his Majesty would be pleased to enter with the prince and twelve attendants he should be welcome; but Charles refused to enter without the whole of his guard. He staid before the gate from one o'clock till four, continuing the parley, trusting to the people being affected by the sight of their sovereign, and compelling the governor to admit him. But he was disappointed, and at four, going away for an hour, he gave Hotham that time to consider of it. On his return at five Hotham still refused entrance to more than before, when Charles proclaimed him a traitor, and rode off with the prince and his guard to Beverley. The next day he sent a herald to offer Hotham pardon and promotion on surrender of the town, but in vain; and he then returned to York.

Each party now hastened to raise forces and prepare for the struggle. On the 5th of May the Parliament issued a declaration that as the king refused his consent to the Militia Bill, they called on all men to obey their own ordinance for the raising of forces and the defence of the king. In this ordinance they nominated the lieutenants of counties, who nominated their deputy-lieutenants, subject to the approbation of Parliament. Amongst these deputies appeared Hampden, Whitelock, St. John, Selden, Maynard, Grimstone, and other leaders of Parliament, who now became equally zealous enrollers and drillers of soldiers. The king, on his side, denounced the order as traitorous and illegal, forbade all men obeying it, and summoned a county meeting at York for promoting the levy of troops for his service. At that meeting we find Sir Thomas Fairfax stepping forward as a Parliamentary leader, and laying on the pommel of the king's saddle a strong remonstrance from the freeholders and farmers of Yorkshire, who advised the king to come to an agreement with his Parliament.

The country was now come to that crisis when every man must make up his mind, and show to which side of the dispute he leaned. It was a day of wonderful searching of characters and interests, and many strange revolutions took place. Towns, villages, families, now appeared in convulsion and strife, and some fell one way, some another, not without much heart-ache and many tears, old friends and kindred parting asunder, to meet again only to shed each others' blood. Then was there a strange proclaiming and contradiction of proclamations, one party denouncing and denying the proceedings of the other. The king raised only a troop of horse and a regiment of foot; the Parliament soon found themselves at the head of eight thousand men, consisting of six regiments, commanded by zealous officers, and the month of May saw the fields of Finsbury white with tents, and Major-General Skippon manœuvring his train-bands.

The next shift was for the fleet. The Earl of Northumberland being ill, or more probably indisposed, the Commons ordered him to surrender his command to the Earl of Warwick for the time. The Lords hesitated, on account of the king's sanction being wanted for such an appointment; but the Commons settled it alone.[12] Clarendon says that the king remained passive, confiding in the attachment of the sailors, whose pay he had advanced; but we hear from other sources that Charles had contrived to alienate the mariners as much as the rest of his subjects, by calling them "water-rats." His popularity with them was soon tested, for he ordered the removal of Warwick, and that Pennington should take his place; but the sailors would not receive him. Without ammunition or arms, Charles's forces were of little use, and the Commons proclaimed that any one who should bring in such material without consent of Parliament, or should bring in money raised on the Crown jewels, would be considered an enemy to the country.

The coasts being diligently watched by the fleet, Charles now turned to the Scots, the leaders of whom he hoped to win over by the honours and favours he had distributed on his last visit; and, in truth, the members of the Council seemed quite inclined to fall in with his wishes; but the English Commons being made aware of it, soon turned the scale, letting both Council and people know that it was their interest, as much as that of England, that the king should come to an understanding with his Parliament, which, they asserted, sought only the good of both king and people. The Parliament had now, however, to witness considerable defections from its own body, for many thought that they were driving matters too far; that the king had conceded more than was reasonable, and that the Commons were themselves aiming at inordinate power. Amongst those who had gone off to the king were the Lord Falkland, Sir John Colepepper, and Mr. Hyde (afterwards Lord Clarendon and historian of the Rebellion). Falkland and Colepepper, Charles had, before leaving, made his ministers, and Hyde had long been secretly seeing the king, conveying all the news to him at night, and writing his declarations. The Commons had perceived well enough who composed those papers by the style, yet they could not directly prove it; but he was found by the Earls of Essex and Holland shut up with the king at Greenwich, and by the Marquis of Hamilton at Windsor. In April the king summoned Hyde to attend him at York; but even then, as if afraid of the Parliament, he had gone in a very private way, pretending that he sought the country for his health; and even after reaching the neighbourhood of York, instead of openly avowing his adhesion to the royal cause, he kept himself concealed in the neighbourhood, and attended to the king's correspondence. He arrived in Yorkshire at the end of May; but, before leaving London, he had contrived that the Lord Keeper Lyttelton should run off with the Great Seal to the king, a matter of no little importance, as regarded the authenticity of all public documents.

Numbers of both Lords and Commons continued to steal away to the king, especially, says May, lawyers and clergy, "whose callings made them capable of easier and greater gratifications from the king than other men, and therefore apt to lean that way where preferment lies." The Commons summoned nine peers, who had gone away to York, to appear in their places in Westminster, and, on their refusing, impeached them of high treason. These were Spencer, Earl of Northampton, the Earls of Devonshire, Dover, Monmouth, and the Lords Howard of Charlton, Rich, Grey of Ruthven, Coventry, and Capel.

On the 2nd of June the Lords and Commons sent proposals to the king for an amicable arrangement of the national affairs on a permanent basis; but matters had so far changed with Charles, that he was in no mood to listen. On that very day, one of the ships, freighted by the queen in Holland with arms and ammunition, managed to elude the fleet and land supplies on the Yorkshire coast. With these, and the prospect of more, with a number of lords and courtiers around him, Charles at once dropped the humble and conciliatory tone, called the Parliament a nest of caballers and traitors, who had no right to dictate to him, the descendant of a hundred kings, and protested that he would never agree to their terms if he were bound and at their mercy.

From this moment all hope of accommodation was at an end, and king and Parliament went on preparing with all diligence for trying their strength at arms. The question to be decided was, whether England should be an abject despotism or a free nation. If the Parliament were worsted, then must England sink to the level of the rest of the king-ridden nations. On the part of the king, his adherents joined him in his solemn engagement to maintain the Protestant religion, and to claim nothing but his rightful prerogative; on the part of the Parliament, an avowal as solemn was, that they fought not against the king, but for him and his crown, as well as for the liberties and privileges of the people, which were endangered by the evil counsellors of the king.

LORD FALKLAND. (After the Portrait by Vandyke.)

On the 10th of June the Commons issued an address, in which they intimated that they would receive money and plate for maintaining the struggle, engaging to pay eight per cent.[13] interest, and appointing Sir John Wollaston and three other aldermen of London treasurers. In a very short time an immense treasure was accumulated in Guildhall, the poor contributing as freely as the rich. Charles wrote to the Corporation of London, forbidding this collection, but without effect. He made an attempt also to secure the fleet, inducing the Earl of Warwick to surrender the command to Admiral Pennington, but only five captains consented, and these were speedily secured and superseded. On the 12th of July Parliament appointed the Earl of Essex commander of the army, and many members of the Parliament, both Lords and Commons, took commissions under him. Amongst these were Sir John Merrick, Lord Grey of Groby, Denzil Holles, Sir William Waller, Hampden, and Cromwell. Hampden's regiment was clad in a green uniform, and carried a banner, having on one side his motto, "Vestigia nulla retrorsum;" on the other, "God is with us." Cromwell, who was also appointed a colonel, was extremely active in the eastern counties. The whole country was thrown into the most wonderful state of confusion by the exertions of the noblemen and gentlemen endeavouring to seize strong places, and engage the people, some for this side, some for that. Never had there been such a state of anarchy, opposition, and rending asunder of old ties. For the most part, the southern counties and mercantile places were for the Parliament—the more purely agricultural and remote districts for the king. In many, however, there was a pretty equal division of interests, and fierce contests for superiority. In Lincolnshire Lord Willoughby of Parham was very successful for Parliament. In Essex the[14] Earl of Warwick was equally so, and Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, and the sea-coast of Sussex, were strongly Parliamentary. Cromwell did wonders in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridge. In Berkshire Hampden and the Earl of Holland were opposed by the Earl of Berkshire, Lord Lovelace, and others; but the Earl of Berkshire was seized by Hampden, and sent up to the Parliament. In Buckinghamshire Hampden had it nearly all his own way. Colonel Goring, who was Governor of Portsmouth, after receiving a large sum from Parliament to put that place in full condition of defence, betrayed it, as he had before done the royal party; but the Parliament seized the Earl of Portland, Goring's ally, and put the Isle of Wight into the keeping of the Earl of Pembroke. Warwickshire was divided between Lord Brooke for the Parliament, and the Earl of Northampton for the king; Leicestershire between the Earl of Huntingdon for the king, and the Earl of Stamford for the Parliament. Derbyshire was almost wholly for the king, and so on northward; yet in Yorkshire Lord Fairfax was zealous for Parliament, and so were Sir Thomas Stanley and the Egertons in Lancashire. The Earl of Derby and his son, Lord Strange, embraced the side of royalty; and the first blood in this war was shed by Lord Strange endeavouring to secure Manchester, where he was repulsed and driven out. Great expectations were entertained by the Royalists of the assistance of the numerous Catholics in Lancashire and Cheshire, but they were either indifferent or overawed. In the west of England the king had a strong party. Charles, in his commission of array, had appointed the Marquis of Hertford Lieutenant-general of the West, including seven counties in Wales, and the second skirmish took place in Somersetshire, between him and the deputy-lieutenant of the county, where ten men were killed and many wounded.

No exertions were spared by the Parliament at the same time to induce the king to come to an arrangement; but he showed that he was at heart totally unchanged, for he replied to their overtures by still insisting that the Lord Kimbolton and the five Members of the Commons should be given up to him, as well as Alderman Pennington, the Lord Mayor of London, and Captain Venn, commander of the train-bands. He demanded indictments of high treason against the Earls of Essex, Warwick, and Stamford, Sir John Hotham, Major-General Skippon, and all who had dared to put in force the ordinance of Parliament for the raising of the militia. Yet at the same time he was in secret negotiation with Hotham for the betrayal of Hull; and Hotham sullied that reputation for patriotic bravery which he had acquired by listening to him. He was, however, stoutly resisted by the inhabitants, the garrison, and his own son. The king then invested Hull, and intrigued with some traitors within to set fire to the town, so that he might assault it in the confusion. But the plot was discovered, and the incensed inhabitants made a sortie under Sir John Meldrum, and put the king's forces to a precipitate flight.

Charles then marched away to Nottingham, where he raised his standard on the 25th of August, according to Clarendon; on the 22nd, according to Rushworth. It was a most tempestuous time; the standard, which was raised on the castle-hill, an elevated and exposed place, was blown down in the night, an ominous occurrence in the opinion of both soldiers and people, and it was three days before it could be erected again, owing to the fierceness of the wind. Besides the prostration of the standard, the condition of the king's affairs was equally discouraging. The people showed no enthusiasm in flocking to the royal banner, the arms and ammunition did not arrive from York, and the royal arms had received a severe repulse at Coventry. News came that the Earl of Essex was at the head of fifteen thousand men at Northampton, and the Earl of Southampton and his other officers entreated the king to make overtures of peace to the Parliament, telling him that if they refused them, it would turn the tide of popular favour against them. At first Charles listened to such counsels with anger, but at length despatched Sir John Colepepper to London to treat. But the Parliament would not hear of any accommodation till the king had pulled down his standard, and withdrawn his proclamations of high treason against the Earl of Essex, the accused Members of Parliament, and all who had supported them. In fact, all attempts at agreement were become useless, and were rendered more so by the conduct of Charles's nephew, Prince Rupert, who, with his younger brother Maurice, sons of Charles's sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia, had arrived in England, and were placed at the head of the royal cavalry. Whilst Colepepper was trying to effect a peace in London, Rupert, with that rashness which afterwards grew so notorious, and so fatal to Charles's army, was making war through the midland counties, insulting all who advocated peace, ordering rather than inviting men to the king's standard, and[15] plundering towns and villages at will for the supply of his troopers.

About the middle of September Charles marched from Nottingham, intending to reach the west of England and unite his forces with those of the Marquis of Hertford. He conducted himself in a very different manner to the fiery Rupert, or Robber, as the people named him. He everywhere issued the most positive assurances of his love for his people, and his resolve to maintain their liberties; but these assurances were not well maintained by his actions betraying the fact that he was playing a part. He in one place invited the train-bands to attend his march as his bodyguard, but when they arrived, he expressed his doubts of their loyalty, forcibly seized their arms, and sent them away. In spite of his professions to respect his subjects' rights, he still levied money and supplies in the old arbitrary manner. On the 20th of September he was at Shrewsbury, where he assured the inhabitants that he would never suffer an army of Papists, and on the 23rd he wrote to the Earl of Newcastle, telling him that the rebellion had reached that height, that he must raise all the soldiers he could, without any regard to their religion. He received five thousand pounds in cash from the Catholics in Shropshire, sold a title of baron for six thousand pounds more, and began minting money from plate with great alacrity. And to put the finish to his insincerity, he despatched orders to Ireland to send him as many troops thence as they could, who were almost wholly Catholic.

But the Earl of Essex was carefully watching the king's progress; he had sent him the Parliamentary proposals of accommodation, which he refused to receive from what he called a set of traitors. Essex reached Worcester, in his march to cut off the king's movement towards London, just as Prince Rupert and Colonel Sandys had had a skirmish in that town, from which Rupert was forced to fly. There Essex lay still for three weeks, till at length Charles, encouraged by his inaction, ventured to quit Shrewsbury on the 20th of October, and by a bold march by Wolverhampton, Birmingham, and Kenilworth, actually shot past Essex's position on the road to London. The Parliamentary general, however, gave quick pursuit, and on the 22nd reached Kineton, in Warwickshire, just as the king encamped on Edge Hill, close above him.

Charles had the way open, but a council of war advised the attack of Essex, who had marched at such a rate, that a great part of his forces was left behind. On the following morning, the 23rd of October—it was Sunday—Essex accordingly found the royal army drawn up in order of battle on the heights of Edge Hill. It was a serious disadvantage to the Parliamentary army to have to charge up hill, and both parties were loth to strike the first blow. They remained, therefore, looking at each other till about two o'clock in the afternoon. Charles was on the field in complete armour, and encouraging the soldiers by a cheerful speech. He held the title of generalissimo of his own forces; the Earl of Lindsay was his general, an experienced soldier, who had fought side by side in the foreign wars with Essex, to whom he was now opposed. So much, however, was he disgusted with the youthful insolence of Prince Rupert, that he gave himself no further trouble than to command his own regiment. Sir Jacob Astley was major-general of the horse, under Lindsay, Prince Rupert commanding the right wing of the horse, and Lord Wilmot the left, two reserves of horse being also under the command of Lord Digby and Sir John Byron. In numbers, both of horse and foot, the royal army exceeded that which Essex had on the field; but Essex had a better train of artillery.

Essex had drawn out his army at the foot of the hill in the broad Vale of the Red Horse. Sir John Meldrum, who had so lately chased the king's forces from Hull, led the van. Three regiments of horse were posted on the right, commanded by Sir Philip Stapleton and Sir William Balfour. On the left were the twenty troops of horse under Sir James Ramsay. In the centre, behind the cavalry, were posted the infantry, Essex's own regiment occupying the main position, flanked by two reserves of horse under Lord Brooke and Denzil Holles.

At two o'clock, according to one historian, Essex commanded his artillery to fire on the enemy. According to another, the cavaliers grew impatient of inaction, and demanded to be led against the foe; and the king firing a cannon with his own hand as a signal for the assault, the Royalists began to descend the hill. When they came within musket shot, their spirits were greatly raised by seeing Sir Faithful Fortescue fire his pistol into the ground, and range himself with two troops of horse on their side. The Parliamentary cavalry made a charge on the king's centre, and endeavoured to seize the standard, but could not resist the pikes of the Royalists. Prince Rupert made a furious charge on the left wing of the Parliamentarians, broke it, and[16] pursued it in headlong chase into the village of Kineton, where finding the baggage of the enemy, he allowed his men an hour to plunder it. This uncalculating conduct on the part of Rupert continued through the whole war, and no amount of experience of the disastrous results of it ever cured him of it in the least. Put him at the head of a body of horse, and such was his valour and impetuosity that he would carry all before him, but he was rarely seen again in the field till the battle was over, when he returned from the headlong chase, often to find his friends totally defeated.

To-day, during Rupert's absence, the main bodies of infantry were led into action by Essex and Lindsay, each marching on foot at the head of his men. The steady valour of the Roundheads astonished the Cavaliers. The left wing of Charles's army, under Lord Wilmot, sought refuge behind a body of pikemen, but Balfour, one of the commanders of the Parliamentary right wing, wheeled his regiment round on the flank of the king's infantry, broke through two divisions, and seized a battery of cannon. In another part of the field the king's guards displayed extraordinary valour, and forced back all that were opposed to them. Essex perceiving it, ordered two regiments of infantry and a squadron of horse to charge them in front and flank, and at the same time Balfour, abandoning the guns he had captured, attacked them in the rear. They were now overpowered and broke. Sir Edward Varney, the standard-bearer, was killed, and the standard taken; but this being entrusted by Essex to his secretary, Chambers, was, by treachery or mistake, given up to a Captain Smith, one of the king's officers, whom Charles, for this service, made a baronet on the field. Charles beheld with dismay his guards being cut to pieces by overwhelming numbers, and advanced at the head of the reserve to their rescue. At this moment Rupert returned from his chase, and the remnant of the guards was saved. Lord Lindsay had received a mortal wound, his son, Lord Willoughby, and Colonel Vavasour, were taken prisoners in endeavouring to rescue him, and Colonel Monroe and other officers had fallen. Had Rupert returned on having put to the rout the Parliamentary right wing, all this might have been prevented. As it was, a check was given to the vehemence of the Roundheads, the firing ceased, and both armies having stood looking at each other till the darkness fell, each drew off, the Royalists back to their hill, the Parliamentarians to Kineton.

Both parties claimed the victory, but if remaining on the field of battle, and being the last to march away, are any criterions of success, these were on the side of Essex. His men lay in the field all night, a keenly frosty one, without covering, but supplied with meat and beer; and the next morning Charles marched away to Banbury. It was said that gunpowder failed in Essex's army, or that he would have pursued the royal army up the hill. As it was, though strengthened by the arrival of most of his forces left behind under Hampden, he did not think fit to follow Charles the next day, but allowed him to continue his route, himself retreating to Warwick. This was not the part of a victor, so that neither could be said to have won. The number of slain has been variously estimated; most writers state it at about five thousand, but the clergyman of Kineton, who buried the dead, reports them only twelve hundred.

Charles marched from Banbury to Oxford, where a number of gentlemen, well mounted, having heard his engagement at Edge Hill represented as a victory, came in, and thus recruited the wasted body of his cavalry. Rupert, during the king's stay, kept up that species of warfare which he had been taught to admire in Count Mansfeld, in Germany. He made rapid rides round the country, to Abingdon, Henley, and other towns, where he levied contributions without scruple from the Roundhead partisans. The Londoners were in the greatest alarm at the tidings of the king's growing army at Oxford, and sent pressing orders to Essex to hasten to the defence of the capital. The train-bands were kept constantly under arms, trenches were thrown up round the city, forces were despatched to hold Windsor Castle, seamen and boatmen were sent up the Thames to prevent any approach in that direction, and the apprentices were encouraged to enrol themselves by the promise of the time they served being reckoned in the term of their apprenticeship. At length Essex reached London, posted his men about Acton on the 7th of November, and rode to Westminster, to give an account of his campaign. It could not be said that he had shown much generalship, but it was not a time to be too critical with commanders: the brilliant military genius of Cromwell had not yet revealed itself, therefore the Parliament gave him hearty thanks, voted him five thousand pounds, and recommended the capital to his care.

ST. MARY'S CHURCH, NOTTINGHAM. (From a Photograph by Frith & Co.)

Essex was scarcely arrived when news came that Charles had quitted Oxford, and was[17] directing his march on London. Henry Martin, a member of the Commons, who commanded at Reading, considering that town untenable, fell back on London. The panic in the capital was great. A deputation was sent, consisting of the Earl of Northumberland and three members of the Commons, to meet the king and present a petition for an accommodation. They encountered him at Colnbrook: he received the petition very graciously, and called God to witness that he desired nothing so much as peace, and the sparing of his bleeding country. This being reported to Parliament, they ordered Essex to suspend hostilities, and sent Sir Peter Killigrew to request the same on the part of the king, supposing that after this gracious message, in which he promised to reside near London till the differences were settled, he would have ceased all offensive operations. But scarcely was Killigrew gone, when Parliament was startled by the sound of artillery, and Essex rushed from the House and rode in the direction of the sound. He found Prince Rupert closely followed by the king in the full attack of Brentford, which was defended by a small force of Holles's horse. The king had taken advantage of a thick November fog to endeavour to steal a march on London; but Holles's horse though few were stout, and withstood the whole weight of the attack till reinforced by the regiments of Hampden and Brooke. Thus the king's object was defeated, and the next day, the 13th of November, being Sunday, there was such an outpouring from London of the train-bands, and of zealous citizens, that Essex found himself at the head of twenty-four thousand men, drawn up on Turnham Green. Hampden, Holles, and all the members of Parliament advised sending a body of soldiers to make a detour and get into the king's rear, and then to fall vigorously on in front, and Hampden with his regiment was despatched on this service. But Essex speedily recalled him, saying he would not divide his forces; and thus not only was the retreat left open to the king, but three thousand troops, which had been posted at Kingston Bridge, were called away to add to the force in London. Charles therefore finding a very formidable body in front and the way open behind, drew off his forces and retreated to[18] Reading, and then again to his old quarters at Oxford. Again Essex had displayed miserably defective tactics, or he might have readily surrounded and cut up the royal force. It was in vain that the Parliamentary leaders urged Essex to give instant pursuit of the retreating army; other officers also thought it better to let the king take himself away. The Parliament, in great indignation at the king's conduct, passed a resolution never to enter into any negotiations with him again; and Charles, pretending equal surprise and resentment, declared that the Parliament had thrown three regiments into Brentford after sending to treat with him. But it must be remembered that they proposed this accommodation at Colnbrook, and what business, then, had he at Brentford? The march, and the hour of it, were sufficiently decisive of the king being the aggressor.

Charles lay with his army at Oxford during the winter, and Prince Rupert exercised his marauding talents in the country round. Of the Parliamentary proceedings or preparations we have little account, except that the Parliamentarians were generally discontented with Essex, who was slow, by no means sagacious, and, many believed, not hearty in the cause. Sir William Waller, however, drove Goring out of Portsmouth and took possession of it, so that he was dubbed by the people William the Conqueror, and it was agitated to put him at the head of the army in the place of Essex. But another man was now being heard of. This was Oliver Cromwell, who had quitted his farm and raised a regiment of his own. He was Colonel Cromwell now. He had told Hampden at the battle of Edge Hill, where they both were, that it would never do to trust to a set of poor tapsters and town apprentices for fighting against men of honour. They must have men, too, imbued with a principle still higher, and that must be religion. Hampden said it was a good notion if it could be carried out; and from that time Cromwell kept it in view, and so collected and trained that regiment of serious religious men, known as his invincible Ironsides. Cromwell was active all this winter along the eastern coast, in Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Essex, and elsewhere, raising supplies, stopping those of the enemy, and forming Associations of counties for mutual defence. Four or six were formed, but all soon went to pieces except that of the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Hertfordshire, of which Lord Grey of Wark was the commander, and Oliver, his lieutenant, the soul. This Association maintained its district during the whole war. In February we find Cromwell at Cambridge, the castle of which, with its magazines, he had taken by storm, and had now collected there great forces from Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk.

The queen's arrival in Yorkshire early in February created immense enthusiasm amongst the Cavaliers. Her spirit, her manners, her condescension fascinated all who came near her. She was in every sense now a heroine, and the fact of the Parliament having impeached her of high treason, and her head being forfeited if she fell into their hands, only raised her own resolution and the devotion of all around her. She was conducted to York by a guard of two thousand Cavaliers, headed by the Marquis of Montrose himself, and attended by six pieces of cannon, two mortars, and two hundred and fifty waggons of ammunition. The Lord Fairfax, who was the only Parliamentary general with any force in the north besides the Governor of Hull, was gallant enough to offer to escort her himself with his Roundheads; but she knew she was outlawed, and declined the honour. She rode on horseback on the march, calling herself the "she-majesty-generalissima," ate her meals in the sight of the army, in the open air, and delighted the soldiers by talking familiarly to them. She remained nearly four months at York, doing wonderful service to the king's cause, and, as we shall find, succeeding through the Earl of Newcastle even in corrupting the faith of the Hothams at Hull. Her arrival gave new spirit to the royal cause, but was undoubtedly, at the same time, the most fatal thing which could have happened to it, as it strengthened the king in his obstinate determination to refuse all accommodation with the Parliament.

And although the Parliament, in its resentment at the king's treachery at Brentford, had vowed never to treat with him again, in March, 1643, it made fresh overtures to him. The deputation sent to him consisted of the Earls of Northumberland, Pembroke, Salisbury, and Holland, Viscounts Wenman and Dungarvan, John Holland and William Litton, knights, and William Pierpoint, Bulstrode Whitelock, Edmund Waller, and Richard Winwood, esquires. They were received by the king in the garden of Christ Church, and permitted to kiss his hands. On Waller performing that ceremony, Charles said graciously, "You are the last, but not the worst, nor the least in my favour." In fact, Waller at that moment was engaged in a plot for the king, whence the[19] significant remark. As the two parties insisted on their particular demands, the interview came to nothing. Courteous as the king was to Waller, he was otherwise by no means so to the deputation. The queen was in the country with abundant supplies of arms and ammunition, and he was elated with the fact. He interrupted the Earl of Northumberland so rudely and so frequently, whilst reading the Parliamentary proposals, that the earl stopped, and demanded proudly whether his majesty would allow him to proceed. To which Charles replied curtly, "Ay! ay!" The negotiations continued for several weeks, but during their abortive proceedings military movement was going on. Essex took Reading after a siege of ten days, and Hampden proposed to invest Oxford and finish the war at once, which Clarendon confesses would have done it, for the town was ill fortified, was so crowded with people that it could not long hold out, and Charles had not then received his ammunition from the queen. The dilatory spirit of Essex, however, and his officers prevailed, and this opportunity was lost. In May the ammunition arrived, and whilst Charles was preparing to act, the Parliament was busy in unravelling different plots against them. One was that in which Waller was engaged. This was a most daring one. Waller had been one of the most determined declaimers in Parliament against the king; but now he had been won over by Lord Falkland, and had entered into a scheme for betraying London to the Royalists, and seizing the leaders of the opposition. Mixed up with this scheme, besides himself, were Tomkins, his brother-in-law, Challoner, Blinkhorne, and others. A commission of array was smuggled into the City through Lady Aubigny, whose husband fell at Edge Hill, by which all inclined to the king's service might receive due authority. But the servant of Tomkins overheard the conspirators, carried the news to Pym, and they were speedily in custody. Tomkins and Challoner were hanged within sight of their own houses; Blinkhorne, White, Hasell, and Waller were, by the intercession of Essex, reprieved, but Waller was fined ten thousand pounds and confined in the Tower for a year.

About the same time a similar plot for betraying Bristol was detected by Colonel Fiennes, the governor, son of Lord Say and Sele. The chief conspirators were Robert and William Yeomans, who were condemned to be executed; but one of them was saved by the king declaring that he would hang as many of his prisoners. The prospect which was opened of terror and barbarity by such retaliation put an end to it, and saved at this time Colonel Lilburne, who had been taken at Brentford. Lilburne was an ultra-republican, and at the same time a declaimer from the Bible on the mischief of kings. He had been whipped in Westminster, but had only been made more outrageous, and was so pugnaciously inclined, that it was said that if he were left alone in the world, John would be against Lilburne, and Lilburne against John. Charles ordered his execution, but the threats of the Parliament of sweeping retaliation saved the democratic orator and soldier.

The Parliament now made a new Great Seal, and passed under it no less than five hundred writs in one day. All other events, however, sank into comparative insignificance before one which now occurred. Prince Rupert had extended his flying excursions of cavalry, and committed great depredations in Gloucestershire, Wilts, Hants, and even as far as Bath; and though the Earl of Essex had his forces lying about Thame and Brickhill, in Buckinghamshire, yet he was so inert that Rupert burst into both Bucks and Berkshire in his very face. Colonel Hurry, who had gone over from Essex to the king, now informed Rupert that two Parliamentary regiments were lying at Wycombe, apart from the rest of the army and easy to be cut off. The fiery prince at once determined to make a night attack upon them. He trotted away from Oxford on the 17th of June with two thousand horsemen, rode past Thame, where Essex was lying, without any opposition, and reached the hamlet of Postcombe at three o'clock in the morning. Here, to their surprise, they found a body of horse posted to stop them. Hampden, in fact, who ought to have been at the head of the army, had been uneasy about the unprotected condition of the two regiments at Wycombe, and had in vain urged Essex to call in the outposts from Wycombe, Postcombe, and Chinnor. Not being able to rouse him to this prudent measure, he continued on the alert, and hearing of the march of Rupert in that direction, despatched a trooper in all haste to Essex, to advise him to move a body of horse and foot instantly to Chiselhampton Bridge, the only place where Rupert could cross the Cherwell. Not satisfied with this, he himself rode with some cavalry in that direction, and found Rupert on the field of Chalgrove, in the midst of the standing corn. On being checked at Postcombe, Rupert had diverged to Chinnor, surprised the outpost there, killed fifty men, and captured sixty others. On descrying Hampden's[20] detachment coming down Beacon Hill, he posted himself in the wide field of Chalgrove, where he was attacked by the troops of Captains Gunter and Sheffield, with whom Hampden had ridden. They boldly charged Rupert, but Gunter was soon slain, and Hampden, who was looking impatiently but in vain for Essex's reinforcements, rode up to lead on Gunter's troopers to the charge, and received a mortal wound. He did not fall, but, feeling his death blow, wheeled round his horse, and rode away towards the house of his father-in-law at Pyrton, whence he married his first wife, whose early death had made such a change in him. The soldiers of Rupert barred the way in that direction, and he made for Thame, and reached the house of Ezekiel Browne. He still continued to live for a week, and spent the time with what strength he had in urging on Parliament a correction of the palpable military errors of the campaign, and especially of the dilatory motions of Essex, which in fact had cost him his life. He expired on the 24th of June, and was buried in his own parish church at Hampden, followed to the grave by his regiment of green-coats with reversed arms and muffled drums.

The news of this national disaster spread dismay through London and over the whole country. The prudence, the zeal, and activity united in Hampden, had made him one of the most efficient men in the House and in the field. The suavity of his manners, the generosity of his disposition, the soundness of his judgment, had won him universal confidence. It was clearly seen that nothing but the deepest and most patriotic concern for the real welfare of the country animated him. Though he was conscientiously convinced of the mischief of political bishops, he was attached to the doctrines of the Church of England; and though he was, like Pym, firmly persuaded that nothing but the strongest obligations, the most imperative necessity, would ever tie down Charles to an observance of the limits of the Constitution, he was far from dreaming of his death, or of sweeping away the monarchy to make way for a republic. A little more time must have placed him at the head of the army, and, with such a right-hand man as Cromwell, must have soon terminated the campaign. His death seemed like a general defeat, and struck the deepest and most lasting sorrow into the public mind. Time has only increased the veneration for the name of John Hampden, which has become the watchword of liberty, and the object of popular appeal in every great crisis of his country's history.

Other discouragements fell on the Parliament at the same period. The Earl of Newcastle had established so strong a power in the North, that he had reduced the resistance of the Fairfaxes to almost nothing. His army abounded with Papists, and was officered by many renegade Scots, amongst them, conspicuous, Sir John Henderson. He had possession of Newark Castle, and even repulsed Cromwell in Lincolnshire. But his greatest triumph was in seducing the Hothams, father and son, and nearly succeeding in obtaining possession of Hull from their treason. Newcastle had defeated the Fairfaxes at Atherton Moor, and if Hull was lost, all was lost in the North. It was therefore proposed to put Hull into the hands of Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas, which probably hastened the defection of the Hothams. The plot, however, was discovered in time; the Hothams were seized, their papers secured, their letters intercepted, the whole treason made open to the daylight, and the delinquents shipped off to London. Great as had been their services in Hull, their apostasy wiped away all past merits, and they were condemned and executed on Tower Hill.

These melancholy events were considerably softened by the growing successes of Cromwell, who seemed to be almost everywhere at once, always fighting, mostly successful. On the 13th of March he dashed into St. Albans and seized the sheriff, who was enrolling soldiers by the king's writ, and sent him off to London. On the 17th he marched from Norwich and took Lowestoft, with a number of prisoners, amongst them Sir Thomas Barker, Sir John Pettus, and Sir John Wentworth, who were glad to compromise with good fines, Wentworth paying one thousand pounds. He next made an attempt to wrest Newark Castle from the Earl of Newcastle, but in vain (it stood out to the end of the war); but he raised the siege of Croyland, made his appearance at Nottingham and Lynn, and in July he defeated Newcastle's troops near Grantham, took Burghleigh House and Stamford, and, before the month closed, fought a stout battle under the walls of Gainsborough to relieve Lord Willoughby, who was sorely pressed in that town by Newcastle's forces, and but for Cromwell's timely march to his aid, would have been cut to pieces. Cromwell attacked the besiegers on some sandhills near the town, dispersed them, and killed General Cavendish, a cousin of Newcastle's. After this exploit, however, Newcastle's main army came down upon them, and they were compelled to retreat to Lincoln, and even beyond it.

[21]

HAMPDEN MORTALLY WOUNDED AT CHALGROVE. (See p. 20.)

[22]

Meanwhile, the Parliamentary affairs went greatly wrong in the West. Waller, who had gained the name of Conqueror by his rapid reduction of Portsmouth, Winchester, Malmesbury, and Hereford, was now defeated with an army eight thousand strong by Prince Maurice, near Bath, and by Lord Wilmot, near Devizes. His whole army was dispersed, and he hastened to London to complain of the inaction of Essex as the cause of his failure. Indeed, the army of Essex distinguished itself this summer so far only by inaction, whilst Rupert in the west laid siege to Bristol, and in three days made himself master of it, through the incapacity of Fiennes, the governor, who was tried by a council of war and sentenced to death, but pardoned by Essex with loss of his commission.

It was imagined that Charles, being now reinforced by a number of French and Walloons who came with the queen, and strengthened by victory, would make a grand attempt on the capital. There was no little alarm there. Essex, who had done nothing through the summer but watch his men melt away from his standard, recommended Parliament to come to terms with the king, and the Lords were of his opinion. Many of them were ready to run off to Charles on the first opportunity. Bedford, Holland, Northumberland, and Clare, father of Denzil Holles, were strongly suspected, and soon after proved that these suspicions were not unjust. Four nobles had been appointed to raise new forces, but seeing how things were going, all declined their commissions except Lord Kimbolton, now by the death of his father become Earl of Manchester. He accepted the command of the Eastern Association, having Cromwell and three other colonels under him, and soon had a fine force in those counties.

Parliament, listening to neither Essex nor the faint-hearted fears of the peers, refused to open fresh negotiations with the king. They called on the Londoners to invigorate their train-bands, and to put the City into a state of defence; and their call was zealously responded to. Ladies as well as gentlemen turned out and handled spades and pickaxes in casting up an entrenchment all round the City. Pym and St. John were sent to the army and seemed to infuse a new spirit into Essex, pronouncing him sound in the cause. Charles, if he ever thought of attacking London, seeing the spirit there, turned his attention to the West and invested Gloucester. Essex was despatched to relieve that city, and made a march much more active and efficient than was his wont. He set out on the 26th of August, and on the night of the tenth day—though he had been harassed on his way by the flying troopers of Rupert and Lord Wilmot—that is, on the 5th of September, the people of Gloucester saw his signal fires on the top of Prestbury Hill, amid the rain and darkness. The king also saw them, fired his tents in the morning, and marched away. From that hour the prospects of Charles grew gloomier.

Essex having relieved Gloucester, and left a good garrison there under the brave governor, Colonel Massey, made the best of his way back again, lest the king should outstrip him and take up a position before London. Charles had not neglected the attempt to cut off his return. At Auborne Chase Essex was attacked by the flying squadrons of Rupert, and after beating them off he found the king posted across his path at Newbury on the 20th of September. The royal army occupied the bank of the river which runs through the place, to prevent his passage. Every part where there was a chance of the Parliamentary forces attempting to cross was strongly defended by breastworks, and musketeers lined the houses facing the river. It was supposed that Charles could easily keep the Roundheads at bay, and force them to retreat or starve. Essex drew up his forces, however, with great skill upon an eminence called Bigg's Hill, about half a mile from the town, and Charles was prepared to wait for a chance of taking him at a disadvantage. But the rashness of the young Cavaliers under Digby, Carnarvon, and Jermyn, led to skirmishes with the Parliamentarians, and Charles soon found himself so far involved, that he was obliged to give orders for a general engagement. The royal horse charged that of Essex with a recklessness amounting almost to contempt; but though they threw them into disorder, they found it a different matter with the infantry, consisting of the train-bands and apprentices of London. These received the Cavaliers on their pikes, and stood as immovable as a rock, and showed such resolute and steady spirit, that they soon allowed the horse to recover itself, and the whole army fought with desperation till dark. The effect was such, that Charles would not risk another day of it. Waller was lying at Windsor with two thousand horse and as many foot, and should he come up as he ought, the king would be hemmed in and placed in imminent peril. But Waller lay perfectly still—purposely, as many thought—leaving Essex to take care[23] of himself, as the earl had formerly left him at Roundaway Hill. In the morning, therefore, Essex found the king's forces withdrawn and the way open. Charles had retreated again towards Oxford, having deposited his guns and ammunition at Donnington Castle, Chaucer's old residence, which lay within sight, and ordered Rupert to harass the Parliament army on its march. Essex made his way to Reading, whence he hurried up to town to complain of the neglect of Waller, and to offer the surrender of his commission. This was not accepted, but the only alternative was adopted, that of withdrawing the command from Waller, which, after much reluctance, was done on the 9th of October.

The Parliamentarians lost five hundred men in the battle, the king three times that number and many officers; but the greatest loss of all was that of the amiable and conscientious Lord Falkland, a man on the Royalist side as much respected as Hampden was on the Parliament side. He had gone with the Parliament till he thought they had obtained all that they were justly entitled to, and pressed too hard on the king, when he felt it his duty to support the Crown, and had accepted office as Secretary of State. He was a man of a most cheerful, cordial, courteous disposition; but from the moment the war broke out, his cheerfulness fled. He seemed to feel in himself the wounds and miseries of his bleeding country. He was constantly an advocate of peace, and was often observed sitting in a state of abstraction, uttering aloud and unconsciously the words, "Peace! peace!" As the war went on his melancholy increased; he neglected his dress, and became short and hasty in his temper. He declared that "the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and desolation which the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would break his heart." Whitelock says that "on the morning of the fight he called for a clean shirt, and being asked the reason of it, answered that if he were slain in the battle, they would not find his body in foul linen. Being dissuaded by his friends against going into the fight, as having no call to it, being no military officer, he said he was weary of the times, and foresaw much misery to his country, and did believe he should be out of it ere night, and could not be persuaded to the contrary, but would enter into the battle, and was there slain." His death was deeply lamented by all parties. Besides him fell the Earls of Sunderland and Carnarvon.

When the king's affairs were in the ascendant by the successes in the West, the taking of Bristol, and the defeat of Waller at Roundaway Hill, near Devizes, the Earls of Bedford, Northumberland, Holland, and Clare deserted the Parliament cause. Northumberland, being cautious, retired to Petworth, to see how the other lords who meant to go over to Charles should be received. Bedford, Clare, and Holland offered their services to the king, and went to Wallingford, where they were suffered to wait a great while, much to their chagrin. They then went to Oxford, whilst Charles was in the West, and were ordered to await his return. The queen and the courtiers, meanwhile, treated them not as valuable and influential allies, whose good reception would certainly bring over many more, but, with consummate folly, as renegades, who had forfeited all respect by taking part with the king's enemies. They followed the king to Gloucester, where they were coolly enough received, and afterwards fought on his side at Newbury; but nothing winning them that estimation which good policy would have granted them at once, they made their peace with Parliament and went back to London, where, however, they found they had sunk greatly in public opinion, and were not permitted to take their seats in the House of Peers or hold office. Their flight had lowered the public estimation of the Lords, and their reception at Oxford had seriously injured the king's cause. Whilst the king and queen retained their impolitic resentments, there was no hope of winning over friends from the ranks of their opponents. It was clear that neither time nor trouble had really taught them anything. Moreover we also learn from the pages of Clarendon that there existed great discord and division in the camp at Oxford. Every one was jealous of the slightest promotion or favour shown to another; and the Cavaliers, he says, had grown disorderly, and devoted to the plundering of the people, just as the Parliamentary army was growing orderly, zealous, and efficient. To such an extent was this the case that one side seemed to fight for monarchy with weapons of confusion, and the other to destroy the king and Government with all the principles and regularity of monarchy.

This was seen in nothing more than in the management with regard to Scotland. To both parties it was of the highest consequence to have the alliance of the Scots. Charles, on his last visit, had flattered the people, given in to the notions of the Covenanters, and conferred honours on their leaders. But Montrose, who knew the[24] Covenanters well, assured the king that he would never get them to fight on his side. They were too much united in interest and opinion with the Puritan Parliament not to adhere to it. He proposed, therefore, to raise another power in Scotland—that of the nobility and the Highlanders, who should at least divide the country, delay if not prevent the army of the Covenanters from leaving the country, and thus save the king from the danger of an invasion in that quarter, the first result of which would be the loss of his ascendency in the northern counties of England. When the queen came to York, Montrose waited on her, and did all in his power to awaken a sense of peril in Scotland, and offered to raise ten thousand men there, and paralyse the designs of the Covenanters. But when these representations were made to Charles, the Marquis of Hamilton, now made duke, strongly opposed the advice of Montrose, declared that it was monstrous to set Scots against Scots, and that he would undertake to keep them quiet. He prevailed, and Montrose, disappointed, retired again to Scotland to watch the progress of events. Hamilton went to Scotland, with authority from the king to take the lead in all movements of the Royalists.

As was foreseen, the English Parliament made overtures to the Scots for assistance, and the Scots were by no means loth to grant it, provided they could make advantageous terms. A Commission was sent to Edinburgh to treat, and the Scots on their part resolved to call a Parliament to receive their offers. The time fixed for the reassembling of the Scottish Parliament was not come by a full year, and the Duke of Hamilton had most particularly pledged himself to the king to prevent it from meeting. Yet on the 22nd of June, notwithstanding his remonstrance, it came together, and on the 20th of July the Commissioners from the English Parliament arrived, and were received by both Parliament and General Assembly with exultation, and their letters from the Parliament of England were read with shouts of triumph—by many, with tears of joy. Their arrival was regarded as a national victory.

The conduct of Hamilton was now suspicious. If he was honest he had misled the king, for he found he had no power to resist the popular feeling in Scotland; but the general opinion coincided with that of Montrose, that he was a traitor. The Royalists called upon him to summon them to his aid, to assemble them in a large body, mounted and armed, and, supported by them, to forbid the meeting of Parliament as illegal. But that, Hamilton assured them, would frighten the people, and lead to disturbance. He proposed that the meeting should take place, that all the Royalist members should appear in their places, and then he would declare the meeting illegal, and dismiss it. To their astonishment, however, Hamilton did not dismiss it, but allowed it to sit. On this Montrose posted away to England, followed the king to Gloucester, and represented to him the conduct of Hamilton as confirming all former declarations of his perfidy. After the battle of Newbury, Charles listened more at leisure to these representations. He was so far convinced that he thought of ordering the Earl of Newcastle to send for Hamilton and his brother Lord Lanark, and to confine them at York. But at that moment the two brothers, probably aware of the proceedings of Montrose, appeared themselves at Oxford, where Charles ordered the Council to examine into the charges against them. Lanark managed to escape from custody, and hastened direct to London and to the Parliament, which received him most cordially, a pretty strong proof of mutual understanding. This satisfied Charles of Hamilton's complicity, and he sent him in custody to the castle of Bristol, thence to Exeter, and thence to Pendennis in Cornwall.

The Commissioners sent to Scotland were Henry Vane the younger, Armyn, Hatcher, Darley, and Marshall, with Nye, an independent. The Scots proposed to invade England on condition that the Parliament adopted the Covenant, and engaged to establish uniformity of religion in both countries, "according to the pattern of the most reformed Church," which, of course, meant Presbyterianism. But the Commissioners knew that this was impossible, for though a considerable number of the people were Presbyterian in doctrine, many more were Independent, and just as sturdy in their faith, to say nothing of the large section of the population which held conscientiously to both Episcopacy and Catholicism. Vane himself was a staunch Independent, and he was at the same time one of the most adroit of diplomatists. He consented that the Kirk should be preserved in its purity and freedom, and that the Church of England should be reformed "according to the Word of God." As the Scots could not object to reformation according to the Word of God, and "the example of the first Reformed churches," which they applied especially to their own, they were obliged to be content with that vague[25] language. Vane also obtained the introduction of the word League, giving the alliance a political as well as a religious character. It was concluded to send a deputation with the Commissioners to London, to see the solemn "League and Covenant" signed by the two Houses of Parliament, at the head of which went Alexander Henderson, the well-known Moderator of the Assembly. Whilst they were on their journey, the ministers in Scotland readily proclaimed from their pulpits that now the Lord Jesus had taken the field against antichrist, that Judah would soon be enslaved if Israel was led away captive, and that the curse of Meroz would fall on all who did not come to the help of the Lord against the mighty.

ARCHBISHOP LAUD'S LIBRARY, EAST QUADRANGLE, JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD.

On the 25th of September, the very day that Essex arrived in London after the battle of Newbury, and received the thanks of Parliament, the two Houses met with the Westminster divines in the church of St. Margaret, where, after various sermons, addresses, and blessings, the two Houses signed the League and Covenant, and their example was followed by the Scottish Commissioners and the divines. It was then ordered to be subscribed in every parish by all persons throughout the country.

It was agreed that the Estates of Scotland should send an army of twenty-one thousand men into England, headed by the old Earl of Leven. They were to receive thirty-one thousand pounds a month,—one hundred thousand pounds of it in advance, and another sum at the conclusion of peace. Sixty thousand pounds were soon remitted, the levies began, and in a few months Leslie mustered his army at Harlaw.

The union of the Scots with the Parliament was an alarming blow to the Royalists. If they had found it difficult to cope with Parliament alone, how were they to withstand them and the Scots? To strengthen himself against this formidable coalition, Charles turned his attention to Ireland. There the army had actually grown to fifty thousand men. As the restorers of the English influence, these were to be paid out of the estates of the revolted Irish, and numbers of both English and Scots had flocked over. A large body of Scots had landed under the command of General[26] Monro, eager to avenge the massacre of their Presbyterian brothers in Ulster. The natives had been driven back, and the invaders were busy parcelling out the evacuated lands. Two million and a half of acres had been promised by the English Parliament as the reward of the victors.

To resist the tempest which threatened to exterminate them, the Irish Catholics formed themselves into a confederation, and created a kind of Parliament at Kilkenny. They imitated in everything the measures by which the Scots had succeeded in enfranchising their religion. They professed the most profound loyalty to the sovereign, and asserted that they were in arms only for the protection of their religion and their lives. They established a synod which assumed the same religious authority as the Scottish Assembly, and ordered a covenant to be taken, by which every one bound himself to maintain the Catholic faith and the rights of the sovereign and the subject. They appointed generals in each province, and all necessary officers for the command of their force. Charles, who suspected the allegiance of the Earl of Warwick, had contrived to remove him, and appointed the Marquis of Ormond in his place. To him the confederate Catholics transmitted their petition, avowing the most unshaken loyalty, declaring that they had only taken up arms to defend their lives and properties from men who were equally the enemies of the king and their own,—from the same puritanic people, so they said, who were seeking to deprive the king of his crown. These petitions, forwarded to Charles, suggested to him the idea of deriving use from these forces. As they prayed him to assemble a new Parliament in Ireland, to grant them the freedom of their religion and the rights of subjects, he instructed Ormond to come to terms with them, so that in their pacification they might be able to spare a considerable body of troops for his assistance in England. This was effected in September, 1643, and the confederates contributed directly thirty thousand pounds for the support of the royal army, fifteen thousand pounds in money, and fifteen thousand pounds in pensions.

This was not accomplished without exciting the notice of the English Parliament, who sent over Commissioners to endeavour to win over the Protestants in Ormond's army, but in vain. In November Ormond shipped five regiments to the king. These were sent to Chester to garrison that town under Lord Byron; but they were rather marauders than soldiers; they had been raised by the Parliament, yet fought against it for the king; and they were as loose in discipline as in principles. In about six weeks after their arrival, they were visited by Sir Thomas Fairfax at Nantwich, when fifteen thousand of them threw down their arms, amongst them the afterwards notorious General Monk. Nor was this the only mischief occasioned to the royal cause by these Irish troops. Their arrival disgusted the royal forces under Newcastle in the North, who declared they would not fight with Catholics and Irish rebels.

Whilst the Scots were mustering to enter England, the Marquis of Newcastle was bearing hard on the Parliament forces in Yorkshire. He had cleared the country of them except Hull, which he was besieging; and Lincolnshire was also so overrun with his forces, that Lord Fairfax, governor of Hull, was obliged to send his son, Sir Thomas, across the Humber, to the help of the Earl of Manchester. Fairfax united with Cromwell near Boston, and at Winceby-on-the-Wolds, about five miles from Horncastle, the united army under Manchester came to a battle with the troops of Newcastle, and completely routed them, thus clearing nearly all Lincolnshire of them. Cromwell had a horse killed under him, and Sir Ingram Hopton, of Newcastle's army, was killed. The battle was won by Cromwell and Fairfax's cavalry.

The close of 1643 was saddened to the Parliament by the death of Pym (December 8). It was, indeed, a serious loss, following that of Hampden. No man had done so much to give firmness to the Commons, and clearness to the objects at which they aimed. His mind was formed on the old classic model of patriotic devotion. He had no desire to pull down the Crown or the Church, but he would have the one restrained within the limits of real service to the country, and the other confined to those of its communion. Therefore he recommended, sternly, resistance to the royal power—preferring civil war to perpetual slavery—and the exemption of bishops and clergymen from all civil offices. Seeing from the first the ends that he would attain, guided by the most solemn and perspicuous principles, he never swerved from them under pressure of flattery or difficulty, nor would he let the State swerve. His eloquence and address, but far more his unselfish zeal, enabled him to prevail with the Commons and intimidate the Lords. He boldly told the Peers that they must join in the salvation of the country, or see it saved without them, and take the consequences in the esteem or the contempt of[27] the people. They would have fared better had they profited by his warning. Pym was the Aristides of the time: he sought no advantage to himself, he gained nothing from his exertions or his prominent position, but the satisfaction of seeing his country saved by his labours. He derived no influence from his wealth or rank, for he had none of either. His whole prestige was intellectual and moral. He wore himself out for the public good, and died as poor as he commenced, the only grant which he received from the State being an honourable burial in Westminster Abbey.

At the opening of 1644 Charles had devised a scheme for undermining the authority of the Parliament, namely, by issuing a proclamation for its extinction. Clarendon, who was now the Lord Chancellor, very wisely assured him that the members of Parliament sitting at Westminster would pay no heed to his proclamation, and that a better measure would be to summon Parliament to meet at Oxford. That would give every member of both Houses, who was at all inclined to again recognise the royal authority, the opportunity to join him; and, on the other hand, a Parliament assembling by call and authority of the king at his court, would stamp the other as illegal and rebellious. The advice was adopted, and at the summons forty-three Peers and one hundred and eighteen Commoners assembled at Oxford. These, however, consisted of such as had already seceded from the Parliamentary party, and the king claimed as the full number of his Parliament at Oxford, eighty-three Lords, and one hundred and seventy-five Commons. According to Whitelock, there met at Westminster twenty-two Lords only, and eleven more were excused on different accounts, making thirty-three; of the Commons there were more than two hundred and eighty. The king, in his Parliament, promised all those privileges which he had so pertinaciously denied to all his past Parliaments, and a letter, subscribed by all the members of both Houses, was addressed to the Earl of Essex, requesting him to inform "those by whom he was trusted," that they were desirous to receive commissioners, to endeavour to come to a peaceable accommodation on all matters in dispute. Essex returned the letter, refusing to forward a paper which did not acknowledge the authority of the body addressed. The point was conceded, and Charles himself then forwarded him a letter addressed to the Lords and Commons of Parliament assembled at Westminster in his own name, soliciting, by advice of the Lords and Commons of Parliament assembled at Oxford, the appointment of such commissioners "for settling the rights of the Crown and Parliament, the laws of the land, and the liberties and property of the subject." But there was no probability of agreement, and so the Oxford Parliament proceeded to proclaim the Scots, who had entered England contrary to the pacification, and all who countenanced them guilty of high treason.

The Scots passed the Tweed on the 16th of January, 1644. The winter was very severe, and the march of the army was dreadful. They made their way, however, to Newcastle, where the Marquis of Newcastle had just forestalled them in getting possession of it. They then went on to Sunderland. Newcastle offered them battle, but the Scots, though suffering from the weather and want of provisions, having posted themselves in a strong position, determined to wait for the arrival of Parliamentary forces to their aid. The defeat of Lord Byron at Nantwich permitted Sir Thomas Fairfax and Lord Fairfax, his father, to draw towards them, and these generals having also defeated at Leeds the Royalists under Lord Bellasis, the son of Lord Falconberg, Newcastle betook himself to York, where he was followed by both the Fairfaxes and the Scots.

Charles was lying at Oxford with a force of ten thousand men; Waller and Essex, with the Parliamentary army, endeavoured to invest him in that city, but as they were marching down upon him from two different quarters, he issued from it with seven thousand men and made his way to Worcester. As these two generals detested each other and could not act in concert, Essex turned his march towards the West of England, where Prince Maurice lay, and Waller gave chase to the king. Charles, by feint of marching on Shrewsbury, induced Waller to proceed in that direction, and then suddenly altering his course at Bewdley regained Oxford. After beating up the Parliamentary quarters in Buckinghamshire, he encountered and worsted Waller at Cropredy Bridge, and then marched westward after Essex.

PRINCE RUPERT. (After the Portrait by Vandyke.)

While these manœuvres were in progress, the Earl of Manchester, having as his lieutenant-general Oliver Cromwell, marched northward to co-operate with Leslie and the Fairfaxes at York against Newcastle. Charles, who saw the imminent danger of Newcastle, and the loss of all the North if he were defeated, sent word to Prince Rupert to hasten to his assistance. Rupert had been gallantly fighting in Nottinghamshire, Cheshire, and Lancashire, and everywhere victorious. He had compelled the Parliamentary[28] army to raise the siege of Newark, had taken Stockport, Bolton, and Liverpool, and raised the siege of Lathom House, which had been nobly defended for eighteen weeks by the Countess of Derby. On receiving the king's command, he mustered what forces he could, and reached York on the 1st of July. The Parliamentary generals, at his approach, raised the siege, and withdrew to Marston Moor, about four miles from the city. Rupert had about twenty thousand men, with whom he had committed dreadful ravages on the Lancashire hills; he had now relieved the marquis, and might have defended the city with success, but he was always ready to fight, and Newcastle having six thousand men, making, with his own forces, twenty-six thousand, Rupert persuaded him to turn out and chastise the Roundheads. The English and Scots had about the same number. So little did the Parliamentarians expect a battle, that they were in the act of drawing off their forces to a greater distance, when Rupert attacked their rear with his cavalry. On this they turned, and arranged themselves in front of a large ditch or drain, and the Royalists posted themselves opposite. The Scots and English occupied a large rye field bounded by this ditch, and they placed their troops in alternate divisions, so that there should be no jealousy between them. It was not till five o'clock in the afternoon of the 2nd of July that the two armies had arranged themselves for the fight, and then they stood gazing on each other for two hours, each loth to risk the disadvantage of crossing the ditch first. Newcastle, who did not want to fight, had retired to his carriage in ill-humour, and all began to think that there would be no battle till the morrow, when Rupert, who was[29] posted on the right wing with his cavalry, another body of cavalry covering the flank of the infantry on the left, made one of his sudden and desperate charges. Like all these exploits of his, it was so impetuous, that it bore the Parliamentary cavalry on their left wing clear away before it, and the officers and their horse were speedily in full flight, pursued by the fiery Rupert, who, as was his wont, forgot all but the fugitives before him, and with three thousand cavalry galloped after them for some miles. The Royalist infantry followed up the effect by attacking that of the Parliament with such fury, that the latter was thrown into confusion, and the three generals, Manchester, Lord Fairfax, and Leslie, believing all lost, fled with the rest, in the direction of Tadcaster and Cawood Castle. Cromwell, who commanded the right wing of the Parliamentary army, was thus left to fight or flee, as might happen, but nothing daunted, he attacked the Royalist cavalry with such vigour that he completely routed them, and then turned again to oppose the horse of Rupert, who were just returning from the chase, to find their side in flight. These and a body of pikemen,—Newcastle's "white coats"—fought desperately. The cavalry, on exhausting their charges, flung their pistols at the enemies' heads, and then fell to with their swords. At length the victory remained with Cromwell, Rupert drew off, and Cromwell remained all night on the field. He sent messages after the fugitive generals to recall them, but Leslie was already in bed at Leeds when the news reached him, when he exclaimed, "Would to God I had died on the place!" Cromwell won great renown by this action. He kept the field all night with his troopers, who were worn out by the tremendous exertions of the day, and were in expectation every moment of a fresh attack from Rupert, who might have collected a large body of troops together to overwhelm him. But he had lost the battle by his incurable rashness, after having induced the unwilling Newcastle to risk the engagement, and he made his retreat into Lancashire, and thence into the western counties.

SIEGE-PIECE OF CHARLES I.—NEWARK (HALF-CROWN).

SIEGE-PIECE OF CHARLES I.—PONTEFRACT (SHILLING).

SIEGE-PIECE OF CHARLES I.—BEESTON (TWO SHILLINGS).

SIEGE-PIECE OF CHARLES I.—COLCHESTER (TEN SHILLINGS, GOLD).

Four thousand one hundred and fifty bodies of the slain were buried on the moor; the greater part of the arms, ammunition, and baggage of the Royalists fell into the hands of Cromwell, with about a hundred colours and standards, including that of Rupert himself, and the arms of the Palatinate. Newcastle evacuated York and retired to the Continent, accompanied by the Lords Falconberg and Widderington, and about eighty gentlemen, who believed the royal cause was totally ruined. This the bloodiest battle of the war was fought on the 2nd of July, and on the morning of the 4th the Parliamentary forces were again in muster, and sat down before the walls of York. On the 7th, being Sunday, they held a public thanksgiving for their victory, and on the 11th being[30] ready to take the city by escalade, Glenham, the governor, came to terms, on condition that the garrison should be allowed to march out with all the honours of war, and retire to Skipton. On the 16th they evacuated the city, and the Parliamentarians entered, and marched directly to the cathedral, to return thanks for their victory. The battle of Marston Moor had indeed utterly destroyed the king's power in the North. Newcastle alone stood out; but this the Scots invested, and readily reduced, taking up their quarters there for the present.

In the West, matters for awhile wore a better aspect for the king. Essex, on the escape of the king from Oxford, directed his course west. The Royalists were strong in Devon, Cornwall, and Somersetshire; but to effectually compete with them, Waller should have united his forces with the commander-in-chief. He was too much in rivalry with him to do that. The king set off after Essex, to support his forces in the western counties, and Essex, as if unaware of the royal army following him, continued to march on. The queen, who had been confined of a daughter at Exeter, on the approach of Essex requested of him a safe conduct to Bath, on pretence of drinking the waters, whence she proposed to get to Falmouth, and thence back to France. Essex ironically replied that he would grant her an escort to London, where she could consult her own physicians, but where he knew that she was proclaimed guilty of high treason. Henrietta Maria, however, made her way to Falmouth without his courtesy, and thence in a Dutch vessel, accompanied by ten other ships, she reached France, though closely pursued by the English admiral, who came near enough to discharge several shots at the vessel.

Essex advanced to Lyme Regis, where he relieved Robert Blake, afterwards the celebrated admiral, who was there closely besieged by Prince Maurice; and still proceeding, took Taunton, Tiverton, Weymouth, and Bridport. This was something like victory; but meanwhile, all men were wondering at his apparent unconsciousness that the Royalist forces were enclosing him, and that with the exception of about two thousand horse under Middleton, which kept at a distance and never united with him, he was wholly unsupported by Waller's troops. In this manner he advanced into Cornwall, where Prince Maurice joined his forces with those of the king to cut off his return. At this crisis many began to suspect that he meant to go over to the king's party, but in this they misjudged him, for at this time Charles made overtures to him, but in vain. He received a letter from the king, promising him if he would join him in endeavouring to bring the Parliament to terms, he would guarantee both the liberties and religion of the people; and another from eighty-four of the king's principal officers, protesting that if the king should attempt to depart from his engagements they would take up arms against him. Essex sent the letter to the Parliament, proving his faith to them; but it would have been still better if he could have proved to them also his military ability. But near Liskeard, he suffered himself to be hemmed in by different divisions of the royal army, and his supplies to be cut off by allowing the little port of Fowey to fall into the hands of the king's generals, Sir Jacob Astley and Sir Richard Grenville. He was now attacked by Charles on the one hand, and Colonel Goring on the other. Essex sent pressing demands to Parliament for succour and provisions, but none came; and one night in September his horse, under Sir William Balfour, by a successful manœuvre, passed the enemy, and made their way back to London. Essex, with Lord Roberts and many of his officers, escaped in a boat to Plymouth, and Major-General Skippon, with the fort, capitulated, leaving to the king their arms and artillery.

Essex had no right to expect anything but the most severe censure for his failure; he retired to his house, and demanded an investigation, charging his disasters to the neglect of Waller. The Parliament, however, instead of reproaching him, thanked him for the fidelity which he had shown when tempted by the king, and for his many past services.

To Cromwell the general aspect of things had become well nigh intolerable. But it was in vain that he endeavoured to move the heavy spirit of his superior, the Earl of Manchester, and hence they came more and more to disputes. Cromwell was insubordinate because it was impossible that fire could be subordinate to earth. In vain he pointed out what ought to be done, and he grew impatient and irritated at what was not done. That irritation and impatience became the greater as he turned his eyes on what Essex, Waller, and the rest of the Parliamentary generals were doing. It seemed to him that they were asleep, paralysed, when a few bold strokes would bring the war to a close.

Charles having broken up Essex's army in Cornwall, and put Essex himself to flight, made a hasty march back again to Oxford to avoid being[31] himself in turn cooped up in the narrow West. Already the Parliament was mustering its forces for that purpose. Essex and Waller were again set at the head of troops, and the victorious forces of Marston Moor, under Manchester and Cromwell, were summoned to join them. They endeavoured to stop the king in his attempt to reach Oxford, and encountered him again near the old ground of battle at Newbury. Charles was attacked in two places at once—Shaw on the eastern, and at Speen on the western side of the town. The Earl of Essex was ill, or, as many believed, pretended to be so; at all events, the command fell to Manchester. On the 26th of October, the first brush took place, and the next morning being Sunday, the attack was renewed more vigorously. The soldiers of Manchester, or rather of Cromwell, went into the fight singing psalms, as was their wont. The battle was fiercely contested, and it was not till ten o'clock at night that Charles retreated towards Wallingford. It was full moonlight, and Cromwell prepared to pursue him, but was withheld by Manchester. Again and again did Cromwell insist on the necessity of following and completing the rout of the royal army. "The next morning," says Ludlow, "we drew together and followed the enemy with our horse, which was the greatest body that I saw together during the war, amounting at least to seven thousand horse and dragoons; but they had got so much ground, that we could never recover sight of them, and did not expect to see any more in a body that year; neither had we, as I suppose, if encouragement had not been given privately by some of our party."

In other words, there were strong suspicions that the aristocratic generals did not want to press the king too closely. This became apparent ten days after. Charles, on retreating, had done exactly as he did before at this same Newbury; he had thrown all his artillery into the Castle of Donnington, and now he came back again to fetch it, nobody attempting to hinder him, as nobody had attempted to reduce Donnington and secure the artillery. So extraordinary was the conduct of the Parliamentary generals, that though Charles passed through their lines both in going and returning from Donnington, and even offered them battle, no one stirred. The generals dispersed their army into winter quarters, and both Parliament and people complained of the affair of Newbury. The Parliament set on foot an inquiry into the causes of the strange neglect of public duty, and they soon found one powerful cause in the jealousies and contentions of the generals. It was time a new organisation was introduced, and Cromwell saw that besides the incapacity of the commanders, there were aristocratic prejudices that stood in the way of any effectual termination of the war.

Cromwell was at the head of the Independents, and these were as adverse to the dominance and intolerance of the Presbyterians, as Cromwell was to the slow-going generals. He knew that he should have their support, and he determined to come to a point on the vital question of the arrangement of the war. He had declared plumply, in his vexation, "That there never would be a good time in England till we had done with lords;" and he had horrified the milk-and-water aristocrats, by protesting that "if he met the king in battle, he would fire his pistol at him as he would at another." He was now resolved to have lords out of the army at least, and therefore, on the 25th of November, 1644, he exhibited a charge in the House of Commons against the Earl of Manchester, asserting that he had shown himself indisposed to finish the war; that since the taking of York he had studiously obstructed the progress of the Parliamentary army, as if he thought the king already too low, and the Parliament too high, especially at Donnington; and that since the junction of the armies he had shown this disposition still more strongly, and had persuaded the Council not to fight at all.

Manchester, eight days after, replied at great length, accusing Cromwell of insubordination, and was supported by Major-General Crawford, whom the Scottish Presbyterians had got into the army of Manchester, to counteract the influence of Cromwell and the Independents. Crawford even dared to charge Cromwell with leaving the field of Newbury from a slight wound. Cromwell, on the 9th of December, leaving such charges to be answered by Marston Moor and his share of Newbury, proposed a measure which at once swept the army of all its deadweights. In the Grand Committee there was a general silence for a good space of time, one looking on the other, to see who would venture to propose the only real remedy for getting rid of the Essexes and Manchesters out of the army, when Cromwell arose and proposed the celebrated Self-denying Ordinance. It is now time to speak, he said, or for ever hold the tongue. They must save the dying nation by casting off all lingering proceedings, like those of the soldiers of fortune beyond the sea, who so pursued war because it was their trade. "What," he asked, "did the[32] nation say?" That members of both Houses had got good places and commands, and by influence in Parliament or in the army, meant to keep them by lingering on the war. What he told them to their faces, he assured them was simply what all the world was saying behind their backs. But there was a sure remedy for all that, and for himself, he cared to go no farther into the inquiry, but to apply that remedy. It was for every one to deny themselves and their own private interests, and for the public good to do what Parliament should command. He told them that he would answer for his own soldiers, not that they idolised him, but because they looked to Parliament, and would obey any commands the Parliament should lay upon them for the Cause.

Accordingly, the same day, Mr. Tate, of Northampton, formally moved the Self-denying Ordinance—that is, that no member of either House should hold a command in the army or a civil office. This was so surprising a measure, that even Whitelock observed that "our noble generals, the Earls of Denbigh, Warwick, Manchester, the Lords Roberts, Willoughby, and other lords in your armies, besides those in civil offices, and your members the Lord Grey, Lord Fairfax, Sir William Waller, Lieutenant-General Cromwell, Mr. Hollis, Sir Philip Stapleton, Sir William Brereton, Sir John Meyrick, and many others must be laid aside if you pass this ordinance." The proposition seen in these dimensions was daring and drastic. Manchester, Essex, Denzil Holles, Meyrick, Stapleton, and others, who had so long gone on side by side with Cromwell, Whitelock, and others, were now not only indignant at Cromwell's bold and aspiring tone, but bitterly opposed to him on the ground of faith and Church government. They were for preserving Church and State, and they were linked with the Scots, who were vehement for the general acceptation of the Presbyterian doctrine, if they could not carry its formula. They met at Essex House, and concerted how they were to put down not only this troublesome man, but the troublesome party of which he was the representative, the Independents, who were for liberty in the Church and the State, and would hear nothing of the domination of synods and presbyteries any more than of bishops. They sent to Whitelock and Maynard, to consult them as lawyers, on nothing less than impeaching Cromwell as an incendiary. The Lord Chancellor of Scotland addressed them thus:—"Ye ken varra weel that, Lieutenant-General Cromwell is no friend of ours, and since the advance of our army into England, he hath used all underhand and cunning means to take off from our honour and merit with this kingdom—an evil requital of all our hazards and services; but so it is, and we are nevertheless fully satisfied of the affections and gratitude of the gude people of this nation in general. It is thought requisite for us, and for the carrying on of the cause of the twa kingdoms, that this obstacle or remora may be moved out of the way, who, we foresee, will otherwise be no small impediment to us, and the gude design that we have undertaken. He not only is no friend to us, and to the government of our Church, but he is also no well-willer to his excellency, whom you and us all have cause to love and honour; and if he be permitted to go on in his ways, it may, I fear, endanger the whole business. Ye ken varra weel the accord atwixt the twa kingdoms, and the union by the Solemn League and Covenant, and if any be an incendiary betwin the twa nations, how he is to be proceeded against."

Whitelock replied that the word "incendiary" meant just the same thing in English as it did in Scottish, but that whether Cromwell was an incendiary, was a thing that could only be established by proofs, and that, he thought, would be a tough matter. Maynard agreed with Whitelock, and though Holles and others of the Presbyterian party urged an immediate impeachment, the Scots cautiously paused.

The question of the Self-denying Ordinance was vigorously debated for ten days in the Commons. Vane seconded the motion of Tate, and another member observed that two summers had passed over, and they were not saved. A fast was appointed for imploring a blessing on the new project. The people of London, on the 12th of December, petitioned the House, thanking them for their proceedings, and, after serious debate and opposition, the Bill was passed on the 19th. On the 21st it was sent up to the Peers, where it was vigorously attacked by Essex, Manchester, and the rest of the Lords affected. On the 13th of January, 1646, the Lords threw it out. But the Commons went on remodelling the army, fixed its numbers at twenty-one thousand effective men, namely, fourteen thousand foot, six thousand horse, and one thousand dragoons. They then nominated Sir Thomas Fairfax commander-in-chief instead of Essex; Skippon, the old train-band major, was made major-general; the lieutenant-general was left unnamed, the Commons, in spite of their own ordinance, resolving that Cromwell should hold that post, but avoiding[33] to increase the opposition to the general measure by not mentioning him.

ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER. (1888.)

On the 28th of January, the Commons, having completed the organisation of the army and the appointment of the officers, again sent the Ordinance up to the Peers who, seeing that they should be obliged to swallow it, moulded it into a more digestible shape, by insisting that all officers should be nominated by both Houses, and that no one should be capable of serving who did not take the Solemn League and Covenant within twenty days. But the Lords were struck with an apprehension that the Commons meant to do without them in the end, and they therefore exercised their rights in opposing the acts of the Lower House. They refused to sanction one-half of the officers appointed by Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had been introduced to the Commons on the 18th of February, thanked for his past services, and complimented on his appointment. To remove the suspicion of the Lords, the Commons assured them by message that they had bound themselves to be as tender of the honours and rights of the Peers as they were of their own. This pacified the Lords, and yielding to a necessity too strong for them, Essex, Manchester, Denbigh, and the rest resigned their commands, and on the 3rd of April the Self-denying Ordinance was passed by the Peers. Sir Thomas Fairfax proceeded to Windsor to remodel the army according to this Act. He did not find it an easy task; many, who were dismissed by the Act or for their past conduct, were unwilling to be cashiered; others would not serve under the new officers; and Dalbier, who had been one of the worst counsellors of Essex, lay apart with eight troops of horse, as if he contemplated going over to the king. At length, however, he came in, and the work was completed.

[34]

CHAPTER II.

THE GREAT REBELLION (concluded).

The Assembly at Westminster—Trial and Death of Laud—Negotiations at Uxbridge—Meeting of the Commissioners—Impossibility of a Settlement—Prospect of Help to the King from the Continent—Charles agrees to the demands of the Irish Catholics—Discipline and Spirit of the Parliamentary Army—Campaign of the New-modelled Army—Hunting the King—Battle of Naseby—Fairfax in the West—Exploits of Montrose—Efforts of Charles to join Him—Battle of Kilsyth—Fall of Bristol—Battle of Philiphaugh—Last Efforts of the Royalists—Charles Offers to Treat—Discovery of his Correspondence with Glamorgan—Charles Intrigues with the Scots—Flight from Oxford—Surrender to the Scots at Newark—Consequent Negotiations—Proposals for Peace—Surrender of Charles to Parliament.

Whilst these events were happening in the field and the Parliament, other events were occurring also both in England and Scotland, the account of which, not to interrupt the narrative of the higher transactions, has been deferred. From the month of June, 1643, the Synod of divines at Westminster had been at work endeavouring to establish a national system of faith and worship. This Westminster Assembly consisted of one hundred and twenty individuals appointed by the Lords and Commons. They included not only what were called pious, godly, and judicious divines, but thirty laymen, ten lords, and twenty commoners, and with them sat the Scottish commissioners. The Scottish and English Presbyterians had a large majority, and endeavoured to fix on the nation their gloomy, ascetic, and persecuting notions; but they found a small but resolute party of a more liberal faith, the Independents, including Vane, Selden, and others, whose bearing and spirit, backed by Cromwell, Whitelock, St. John, and others in Parliament, were more than a match for this overbearing intolerance. On the subject of Church government, therefore, there could be no agreement. Cromwell demanded from the House of Commons an act of toleration, and that a Committee should be formed of deputies from both Houses and from the Assembly to consider it. The subject was long and fiercely debated, the Lords Say and Wharton, Sir Henry Vane, and St. John contending for the independence of the Church from all bishops, synods, and ruling powers. The only thing agreed on was, that the English Common Prayer-book should be disused, and a Directory of worship introduced which should regulate the order of the service, the administration of the Sacrament, the ceremonies of marriage and burial—but left much liberty to the minister in the matter of his sermons. This Directory was, by an ordinance of both Houses, ordered to be observed both in England and Scotland.

Poor old Archbishop Laud, who was still in prison, was in the turmoil of civil war almost totally forgotten. But the Puritans of England and the people of Scotland needed only a slight reminder to demand the punishment of the man who, with so high a hand, had trodden down their liberties and their religion. This was given them by the Lords, who, insisting on appointing ministers to livings in his gift, called on Laud to collate the vacant benefices to such persons as they should nominate. The king forbade him to obey. At length, in February, 1643, the rectory of Chartham, in Kent, became vacant by the death of the incumbent, the Lords nominated one person, the king another, and Laud, placed in a dilemma dangerous to his life under his circumstances, endeavoured to excuse himself by remaining passive. But the Lords, in the month of April, sent him a peremptory order, and on his still delaying, sent a request to the Commons to proceed with his trial. There were fourteen articles of impeachment already hanging over his head, and the Commons appointed Prynne, still smarting under the ear-lopping, branding, and cruelties of the archbishop, to collect evidence and co-operate with a Committee on the subject.

What an apparition must that earless man, with those livid brand marks on his cheeks, have been as he entered the cell of Laud, and told him that the day of retribution was come! Prynne collected all his papers, even the diary which he had been so long employed in writing, as the defence of his past life, and sought everywhere for remaining victims and witnesses of the archbishop's persecutions and cruelties, to bring them up against him. In six months the Committee had obtained evidence enough to furnish ten new articles of impeachment against him, and on the 4th of March, 1644, more than three years after his commitment, Laud was called upon to take his trial. He demanded time to consult his papers, and to have them for[35] that purpose restored, to have counsel, and money out of the proceeds of his estate to pay his fees and other expenses. He was not likely to find much more tenderness from his enemies than he had showed to them; the Scots demanded stern justice upon him, as the greatest enemy which their country had known for ages. Time was given him till the 12th of March, when he was brought to the bar of the House of Lords. There, after the once haughty but now humbled priest had been made to kneel a little, Mr. Serjeant Wild opened the case against him, and went over, at great length, the whole story of his endeavours to introduce absolutism in Church and State in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dreadful cruelties and oppressions which he had inflicted on the king's subjects in the Star Chamber and High Commission Courts.

When he had done, Laud defended himself from a written paper, contending that though he had leaned towards the law, he had never intended to overthrow the laws, and that he had in the Church laboured only for the support of the external form of worship, which had been neglected. But the hearers had not forgotten the "Thorough," nor the utter suppression of all forms of religion but his own, the sweeping away utterly of the faith of Scotland, and the substitution of Arminianism and the liturgy.

It was not till the 2nd of September that Laud was called to the bar of the Lords to deliver his recapitulation of the arguments in answer to his charges. Mr. Samuel Brown, a member of the Commons, and a Manager of the trial, replied to them. Laud was then allowed counsel to speak to the parts of law, who took the same course of defence as had been taken in the case of Strafford, declaring that the prisoner's offence did not amount to high treason, and the Commons then adopted their plan in Strafford's case, of proceeding by attainder. He was, therefore, on the 2nd of November, brought to the bar of their own House, where Mr. Brown repeated the sum of the evidence produced in the Lords, and Laud was called on to reply himself to the charges. He demanded time to prepare his answer, and obtained eight days. On the 11th of November he was heard, and Brown in reply; and the Commons the same day passed their Bill of Attainder, finding him fully convicted of the offences charged against him. On the 16th they sent up this Bill to the Lords; but it was not till the 4th of January, 1645, that the Lords also passed the Bill, and soon after fixed the day of his execution for the 10th. The last effort to save the old man's life was by the production of a pardon which had been prepared at Oxford, as soon as the danger of his conviction was seen, and was signed and sealed by the king. This pardon was read in both Houses, but was declared of no effect, the king having no power to pardon a crime adjudged by Parliament. On the appointed day, the archbishop was beheaded on Tower Hill. Meanwhile some useless negotiations had been set on foot by the Presbyterian party at Uxbridge.

Charles had, during the last summer, after every temporary success, proposed negotiations, thus showing his readiness to listen to accommodation, and throwing on the Parliament the odium of continued warfare. At the same time it must be confessed that he was by no means inclined to accept terms which would surrender altogether his prerogative, or sacrifice the interests of those who had ventured everything for him. He was constantly exhorted by the queen from France to make no peace inconsistent with his honour, or the interests of his followers. She contended that he must stipulate for a bodyguard, without which he could enjoy no safety, and should keep all treaty regarding religion to the last, seeing plainly the almost insuperable difficulty on that head; for since nothing would satisfy the Puritans but the close binding down of the Catholics, that would effectually cut off all hope of his support from Ireland, or from the Catholics of England. Charles, in fact, was in a cleft stick, and the contentions of his courtiers added so much to his embarrassments, that he got rid of the most troublesome by sending them to attend the queen in France. He then assembled his Parliament for the second time, but it was so thinly attended, and the miserable distractions which rent his Court were so completely imported into its debates, that he was the more disposed to accept the offer of negotiation with the Parliament. His third proposal, happening to be favoured by the recommendation of the Scots, was at length acceded to by Parliament, but the terms recommended by the Scots—the recognition of Presbytery as the national religion, and the demands of the Parliament of the supreme control not only of the revenue but of the army—rendered negotiations from the first hopeless.

In November, 1644, the propositions of the Scots, drawn up by Johnston of Wariston, were[36] sent to the king by a Commission consisting of the Earl of Denbigh, the Lords Maynard and Wenman, and Mr. Pierpoint, Denzil Holles, and Whitelock, accompanied by the Scottish Commissioners—Lord Maitland, Sir Charles Erskine, and Mr. Barclay.

INTERVIEW BETWEEN CHARLES AND THE EARL OF DENBIGH. (See p. 36.)

Charles probably received a private copy of the propositions, for he received the Commissioners most ungraciously. They were suffered to remain outside the gates of Oxford in a cold and wet day for several hours, and then conducted by a guard, more like prisoners than ambassadors, to a very mean inn. On the propositions being read by the Earl of Denbigh, Charles asked him if they had power to treat, to which the earl replied in the negative, saying that they were commissioned to receive his majesty's answer. "Then," said Charles, rudely, "a letter-carrier might have done as much as you." The earl, resenting this, said, "I suppose your majesty looks upon us as persons of another condition than letter-carriers." "I know your condition," retorted the king, "but I repeat it, that your condition gives you no more power than a letter-carrier." Whilst Denbigh had read over the list of persons who were to be excepted from the conditions of the treaty, Rupert and Maurice, who were of the excepted, and were present, laughed in the earl's face. This insolence displeased even the king, and he bade them be quiet. The interview terminated, however, as unfavourably as it began. The king gave them a reply but sealed up, and not addressed to the Parliament or anybody. The commissioners refused to carry an answer of which they did not know the particulars, on which Charles insolently remarked, "What is that to you, who are but to carry what I send; and if I choose to send the song of Robin Hood or Little John, you must carry it?" As they could get nothing else, not even an address upon it to Parliament, the commissioners, wisely leaving it to Parliament to treat the insult as they deemed best, took their leave with it.

When this document was presented to both Houses on the 29th of November, 1644, assembled for the purpose, it was strongly urged by many to refuse it; but this was overruled by those[37] who wisely would throw no obstacle in the way of negotiation; and the king thought well immediately to send the Duke of Richmond and the Earl of Southampton with a fuller answer. They, on their part, found a safe-conduct refused them by Essex, then the commander, unless he were acknowledged by the king as general of the army of the Parliament of England, and the Commons informed them that they would receive no further Commission which was not addressed to the Parliament of England assembled at Westminster, and the Commissioners of the Parliament of Scotland. With this the king was compelled to comply; but at the same time he wrote to the queen—"As to my calling those at London a Parliament, if there had been two besides myself of my opinion, I had not done it; and the argument that prevailed with me was that the calling did no wise acknowledge them to be a Parliament, upon which construction and condition I did it, and no otherwise."

ROUNDHEAD SOLDIERS.

Under these unpromising circumstances, Commissioners on both sides were at length appointed, who met on the 29th of January, in the little town of Uxbridge. Uxbridge was within the Parliamentary lines, and the time granted for the sitting was twenty days. The Commissioners on the part of the king were the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls of Southampton, Chichester, and Kingston, the Lords Capel, Seymour, Hatton, and Colepepper, Secretary Nicholas, Sir Edward Hyde, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Edward Lane, Sir Orlando Bridgeman, Sir Thomas Gardener, Mr. Ashburnham, Mr. Palmer, and Dr. Stewart. On that of the Parliament appeared the Earls of Northumberland, Pembroke, Salisbury, and Denbigh, Lord Wenman, Sir Henry Vane the younger, Denzil Holles, Pierpont, St. John, Whitelock, Crew, and Prideaux. The Scottish Commissioners were the Earl of Loudon, the Marquis of Argyll, the Lords Maitland and Balmerino, Sir Archibald Johnston, Sir Charles Erskine, Sir John Smith, Dundas, Kennedy, Robert Barclay, and Alexander Henderson. John Thurloe, afterwards Oliver Cromwell's secretary, and the friend of Milton, was secretary for the English Parliament, assisted by[38] Mr. Earle, and Mr. Cheesly was secretary for the Scottish Commissioners.

The four propositions submitted to the king by the Parliament concerning religion were, that the Common Prayer Book should be withdrawn, the Directory of the Westminster divines substituted, that he should confirm the assemblies and synods of the Church, and take the Solemn League and Covenant. These, contrary to the warning of Queen Henrietta, were brought on first, and argued with much learning and pertinacity, and as little concession on either side, for four days. Then there arose other equally formidable subjects, the command of the army and navy, the cessation of the war in Ireland; and the twenty days being expired, it was proposed to prolong the term, but this was refused by the two Houses of Parliament, and the Commissioners, separated, mutually satisfied that nothing but the sword would settle these questions. The Royalists had not been long in discovering that Vane, St. John, and Prideaux had come to the conference, not so much to treat, as to watch the proceedings of the Presbyterian deputies, and to take care that no concessions should be made inimical to the independence of the Church.

Gloomy as to the general eye must have appeared the prospects of the king at this period, he was still buoyed up by various hopes. He had been using every exertion to obtain aid from the Continent, and at length was promised an army of ten thousand men by the Duke of Lorraine, and Goffe was sent into Holland to prepare for their being shipped over. On the other hand, he had made up his mind to concede most of their demands to the Irish Catholics, on condition of receiving speedily an army thence. He wrote to Ormond, telling him that he had clearly discovered, by the treaty of Uxbridge, that the rebels were aiming at nothing less than the total subversion of the Crown and the Church; that they had made the Earl of Leven commander of all the English as well as Scottish forces in Ireland, and therefore he could no longer delay the settlement of Ireland in his favour, through scruples that at another time would have clung to him. He therefore authorised him to grant the suspension of Poynings' Act, and to remove all the penal acts against the Catholics on condition that they at once gave him substantial aid against the rebels of Scotland and Ireland. At this moment, too, the news of the successes of Montrose in Scotland added to his confidence.

The two armies in England now prepared to try their strength. Charles, lying at Oxford, had a considerable number of troops: the west of England was almost entirely in his interest, north and south Wales were wholly his, excepting the castles of Pembroke and Montgomery. He had still Scarborough, Carlisle, and Pontefract; but his army, though experienced in the field, was not well disciplined. The Parliamentary army, now new-modelled, presented a very different spectacle to that of the king. The strictest discipline was introduced, and the men were called upon to observe the duties of religion. The officers had been selected from those who had served under Essex, Manchester, and the other lords; but having cleared the command of the aristocratic element, a new spirit of activity and zeal was infused into it. The king's officers ridiculed the new force, which had no leaders of great name except Sir Thomas Fairfax, and was brought together in so new a shape, that it appeared a congregation of raw soldiers. The ridicule of the Cavaliers even infected the adherents of the Commonwealth, and there was great scepticism as to the result of such a change. May, the Parliamentary historian, says, never did an army go forth who had less the confidence of their friends, or more the contempt of their enemies. But both parties were extremely deceived. Cromwell was now the real soul of the movement, and the religious enthusiasm which glowed in him was diffused through the whole army. The whole system seemed a revival of that of the pious Gustavus Adolphus—no man suffered a day to go over without religious service, and never commenced a battle without prayer. The soldiers now employed their time in zealous military exercises and in equally zealous prayer and singing of psalms. They sang in their march, they advanced into battle with a psalm. The letters of Cromwell to the Parliament, giving an account of the proceedings of the army, are full of this religious spirit, which it has been the custom to treat as cant, but which was the genuine expression of his feelings, and was shown by effects such as cant and sham never produce. Victory, which he and his soldiers ascribed only to God, success the most rapid and wonderful, attended him.

It is remarkable that the very man who had introduced the Self-denying Ordinance was the[39] only man who was never debarred by it from pursuing his military career. This has, therefore, been treated as an artifice on his part; but, on the contrary, it was the mere result of circumstances. Cromwell was the great military genius of the age. Every day the success of his plans and actions was bursting more and more on the public notice, and no one was more impressed by the value of his services than the new Commander-in-Chief, Sir Thomas Fairfax. He had sent Cromwell, Massey, and Waller into the West, before laying down their commissions, to attack Colonel Goring, who was threatening the Parliamentary lines. They had driven him back towards Wells and Glastonbury, and not deeming it safe to push farther with their small force into a quarter where the Royal interest was so strong, and Cromwell advising Parliament to send more troops to Salisbury to defend that point against Rupert, who was reported at Trowbridge, he had returned to Windsor to resign his command according to the Ordinance. There, however, he found the Parliament had suspended the Ordinance in his instance for forty days, in order that he might execute a service of especial consequence, and which it particularly wished him to undertake. This was to attack a body of two thousand men conveying the king's artillery from Oxford to Worcester, to which place Rupert had marched, having defeated Colonel Massey at Ledbury.

This was on the 22nd of April, and Cromwell took horse the next morning, dashed rapidly into Oxfordshire and at Islip Bridge routed the enemy, consisting of four regiments of cavalry, took many of their officers, and especially those of the queen's regiment, seizing the standard which she had presented to it with her own hands. Many of the fugitives got into Bletchington House, which Cromwell immediately assaulted and took. The king was so enraged at the surrender of Bletchington, that he ordered the commander, Colonel Windebank, to be shot, and no prayers or entreaties could save him. Cromwell next sent off his cannon and stores to Abingdon, and pushed on to Radcot Bridge, or Bampton-in-the-Bush, where others of the enemy had fled: here he defeated them, and took their leaders Vaughan and Littleton. Cromwell next summoned Colonel Burgess, the governor of the garrison at Faringdon, to surrender; but he was called away to join the main army, the king being on the move.

Charles, in fact, issued from Oxford, and, joined by both Rupert and Maurice, advanced to relieve Chester, then besieged by Sir William Brereton. Fairfax, instead of pursuing him, thought it a good opportunity to take Oxford and prevent his returning there; but the king's movements alarmed him for the safety of the eastern counties, to which he had despatched Cromwell to raise fresh forces and strengthen their defences. Cromwell was recalled, and Fairfax set out in pursuit of the king. Charles relieved Chester by the very news of his march. Brereton retired from before it, and the Scottish army, which was advancing southward, fell back into Westmoreland and Cumberland, to prevent a rumoured junction of the king and the army of Montrose. Whatever had been Charles's intentions in this movement, he wheeled aside and directed his way through Staffordshire into Leicestershire, and took Leicester by assault. From Leicester he extended his course eastward, and took up his headquarters at Daventry, where he amused himself with hunting, and Rupert and his horse with foraging and plundering the whole country round.

Fairfax, now apprehensive of the royal intentions being directed to the eastern counties, which had hitherto been protected from the visitations of his army, pushed forward to prevent this, and came in contact with the king's outposts on the 13th of June, near Borough Hill. Charles fired his huts, and began his march towards Harborough, intending, perhaps, to proceed to the relief of Pontefract and Scarborough; but Fairfax did not allow him to get far ahead. A council of war was called, and in the midst of it Cromwell rode into the lines at the head of six hundred horse. It was now determined to bring the king to action. Harrison and Ireton, officers of Cromwell—soon to be well known—led the way after the royal army, and Fairfax, with his whole body, was at once in full chase. The king was in Harborough, and a council being called, it was considered safer to turn and fight than to pursue their way to Leicester like an army flying from the foe. It was therefore resolved to wheel about and meet the enemy.

At five o'clock the next morning, the 14th of June, the advanced guards of each army approached each other on the low hills a little more than a mile from the village of Naseby, in Northamptonshire, nearly midway between Market Harborough and Daventry. The Parliament army ranged itself on a hill yet called the Mill Hill, and the king's on a parallel hill, with its back to[40] Harborough. The right wing was led by Cromwell, consisting of six regiments of horse, and the left, consisting of nearly as many, was, at his request, committed to his friend, Colonel Ireton, a Nottinghamshire man. Fairfax and Skippon took charge of the main body, and Colonels Pride, Rainsborough, and Hammond brought up the reserves. Rupert and his brother Maurice led on the right wing of Charles's army, Sir Marmaduke Langdale the left, Charles himself the main body, and Sir Jacob Astley, the Earl of Lindsay, the Lord Baird, and Sir George Lisle the reserves. The word for the day of the Royalists was, "God and Queen Mary!" that of the Parliamentarians, "God our strength!" A wide moorland, called Broad Moor, lay between them. The Cavaliers made themselves very merry at the new-modelled army of Roundheads, for which they had the utmost contempt, having nothing aristocratic about it, and its head being farmer Cromwell, or the brewer of Huntingdon, as they pleased to call him. They expected to sweep them away like dust, and Rupert, making one of his headlong charges, seemed to realise their anticipations, for he drove the left wing of the Roundheads into instant confusion and flight, took Ireton prisoner, his horse being killed under him, and himself wounded severely in two places; and, in his regular way, Rupert galloped after the fugitives, thinking no more of the main battle. But the scattered horse, who had been diligently taught to rally, collected behind him, returned to the defence of their guns, and were soon again ready for action. On the other hand, Cromwell had driven the left wing of the king's army off the field, but took care not to pursue them too far. He sent a few companies of horse to drive them beyond the battle, and with his main body he fell on the king's flank, where at first the royal foot was gaining the advantage. This unexpected assault threw them into confusion, and the soldiers of Fairfax's front, which had given way, rallying and falling in again with the reserves as they came to the rear, were brought up by their officers, and completed the rout. Rupert, who was now returning from the chase, rode up to the waggon-train of the Parliamentary army, and, ignorant of the state of affairs, offered quarter to the troops guarding the stores. The reply was a smart volley of musketry, and falling back and riding forward to the field, he found an overwhelming defeat. His followers stood stupefied at the sight, when Charles, riding up to them in despair, cried frantically, "One charge more, and the victory is ours yet!" But it was in vain, the main body was broken, that of Fairfax was complete; the artillery was seized, and the Roundheads were taking prisoners as fast as they could promise them quarter. Fairfax and Cromwell the next moment charged the dumfoundered horse, and the whole fled at full gallop on the road towards Leicester, pursued almost to the gates of the town by Cromwell's troopers.

The slaughter at this battle was not so great as might have been expected. But though the loss on the Parliamentarian side was small, amounting to about two hundred men, the Royalists had one thousand killed. Five thousand prisoners were taken, including a great number of officers, and a considerable number of ladies in carriages. All the king's baggage and artillery, with nine thousand stand of arms, were taken, and amongst the carriages that of the king containing his private papers: a fatal loss, for it contained the most damning evidences of the king's double-dealing and mental reservations, which the Parliament took care to publish, to Charles's irreparable damage. Clarendon accuses the Roundheads of killing above a hundred women, many of them of quality, but other evidence proves that this was false, the only women who were rudely treated being a number of wild Irish ones, who were armed with skeans—knives a foot long—and who used them like so many maniacs.

The next day Fairfax sent Colonel Fiennes and his regiment to London with the prisoners and the colours taken, above a hundred of them, and he prayed that a day of thanksgiving might be appointed for the victory. But the most essential fruit of the victory was the reading in Parliament of the king's letters. In these the affair of the Duke of Lorraine came to light—the attempt to bring in the Lorrainers, the French, the Danes, and the Irish to put down the Parliament, whilst Charles had been making the most sacred protestations to that body that he abhorred bringing in foreign soldiers. There appeared his promise to give the Catholics full liberty of conscience, whilst he had been vowing constantly that he would never abrogate the laws against Popery; and his letter to his wife, showing that at the treaty of Uxbridge he was merely conceding the name of a Parliament, with a full determination, on the first opportunity, to declare it no Parliament at all. These exposures were so dreadful, and gave such an assurance that the king was restrained by no moral principle, that the Royalists would not believe the documents genuine till they had examined them for themselves; and for this examination
[42] the Parliament wisely gave the amplest facilities. There were copies of his letters to the queen, in which he complained of the quarrels and harassing jealousies of his own courtiers and supporters, and of his getting rid of as many as he could by sending them on one pretence or another to her. The sight of these things struck his own party dumb with a sense of his hollowness and ingratitude; and the battle of Naseby itself was declared far less fatal to his interests than the contents of his cabinet. From this moment his ruin was certain, and the remainder of the campaign was only the last feeble struggles of the expiring Cause. His adherents stood out rather for their own chance of making terms than from any possible hope of success.

CHARLES AT THE BATTLE OF NASEBY. (See p. 40.)

The defeated and dishonoured king did not stop to pass a single night at Leicester, but rode on to Ashby that evening, and after a few hours' rest pursued his course towards Hereford. At Hereford Rupert, fearful of the Parliamentary army attacking their only remaining strong quarter, the West, left the king and hastened to Bristol to put it into a state of defence. Charles himself continued his march into Wales, and took up his headquarters at Raglan Castle, the seat of the Marquis of Worcester. There, pretty sure that Fairfax was intending to go westward, he spent the time as though nothing had been amiss, hunting like his father, when he should have been studying the retrieval of his affairs, and passing the evenings in entertainments and giving of audiences. The most probable cause of Charles thus spending his time there and at Cardiff, to which he next retired, is that he had been urging the despatch of an Irish army, and was expecting it there. At the same time he could there more easily communicate with Rupert regarding the defence of the west of England.

The Parliament forces under Cromwell marched on Bristol where Rupert lay, whilst Fairfax met and defeated Goring at Langport, and then besieged and took Bridgewater on the 23rd of July. Matters now appeared so threatening that Rupert proposed to Charles to sue for peace; but the king rejected the advice with warmth, declaring that, though as soldier and statesman he saw nothing but ruin before him, yet as a Christian he was sure God would not prosper rebels, and that nothing should induce him to give up the Cause. He avowed that whoever stayed by him must do so at the cost of his life, or of being made as miserable as the violence of insulting rebels could make him. But by the grace of God he would not alter, and bade Rupert not on any consideration "to hearken after treaties." He would take no less than he had asked for at Uxbridge.

Charles, blind to the last, was still hoping for assistance from Ireland, and was elated by the news of successes from Montrose.

It will be recollected that the Earls of Antrim and Montrose had been engaged by Charles to exert themselves in Ireland and Scotland on his behalf. Their first attempt was to take vengeance on the Covenanting Earl of Argyll, who had so much contributed to defeat the king's attempts on the Scottish Church and Government. Montrose, therefore, unfurled the royal standard as the king's lieutenant-general at Dumfries; but having before been a strong Covenanter, he did not all at once win the confidence of the Royalists. His success was so poor that he returned to England. At Carlisle he was more effective in serving the king, and was made a marquis in consequence. After the battle of Marston Moor he again returned into the Highlands, and there learned the success of Antrim's labours in Ireland. He had sent over a body of fifteen hundred men under the command of his kinsman Alaster Macdonald, surnamed MacColl Keitache, or Colkitto. They landed at Knoidart, but a fleet of the Duke of Argyll's burnt their ships, and hung in their rear waiting a fitting chance to destroy them. To their surprise they received no welcome from the Scottish Royalists. However, they continued their march to Badenoch, ravaging the houses and farms of the Covenanters, but every day menaced by the gathering hosts of their foes, and learning nothing of their ally Montrose. At last Montrose obtained tidings of them: they met at Blair Athol, in the beginning of August, 1644. Montrose assumed the command, and published the royal commission. At the sight of a native chief the Highlanders flocked to his standard, and the Covenanters saw to their astonishment an army of between three and four thousand men spring at once, as it were, out of the ground. Montrose wrote to Charles that if he could receive five hundred horse on his way, he would soon be in England with twenty thousand men.

The movements and exploits of Montrose now became rather a story of romance than of sober modern warfare. Argyll and Lord Elcho dogged his steps, but he advanced or disappeared, with his half-clad Irish and wild mountaineers, amongst the hills in a manner that defied arrest. At Tippermuir, in Perthshire, he defeated Elcho, took his guns and ammunition, and surprised and plundered[43] the town of Perth. As was constantly the case, the Highlanders, once loaded with booty, slipped off to their homes; and, left alone with his Irish band, who were faithful because their way home was cut off, he retreated northward, in hope of joining the clan Gordon. Montrose found himself stopped at the Bridge of Dee by two thousand seven hundred Covenanters under Lord Balfour of Burleigh, but he managed to cross at a ford higher up, and, falling on their rear, threw them into a panic. They fled to Aberdeen, pursued by the Irish and Highlanders, and the whole mass of pursuers and pursued rushed wildly into the city together. The place was given up to plunder, and for three days Aberdeen became a scene of horror and revolting licence, as it had been from an attack of Montrose four years before, when fighting on the other side. The approach of Argyll compelled the pillagers to fly into Banffshire, and, following the banks of the Spey, he crossed the hills of Badenoch, and, after a series of wild adventures in Athol, Angus, and Forfar, he was met by the Covenanters at Fyvie Castle, and compelled to retreat into the mountains. His followers then took their leave of him, worn out with their rapid flights and incessant skirmishes, and he announced his intention of withdrawing for the winter into Badenoch.

The Earl of Argyll, on his part, retired to Inverary and sent his followers home. He felt secure in the mighty barrier of mountains around, which in summer offered a terrible route to an army, but which, now blockaded with snow, he deemed impregnable. But he was deceived; the retirement of Montrose was a feint. He was busily employed in rousing the northern clans to a sweeping vengeance on Argyll, and the prospect of a rich booty. In the middle of December he burst through all obstacles, threaded the snow-laden defiles of the mountains, and descended with fire and sword into the plains of Argyleshire. The earl was suddenly roused by the people from the hills, whose dwellings were in flames behind them, and only effected his escape by pushing across Loch Fyne in an open boat. Montrose divided his host into three columns, which spread themselves over the whole of Argyleshire, burning and laying everything waste. Argyll had set a price upon Montrose's head; and Montrose now reduced his splendid heritage to a black and frightful desert. The villages and cottages were burnt down, the cattle destroyed or driven off, and the people slain wherever found with arms in their hands. This miserable and melancholy state of things lasted from the 13th of December to the end of January, 1645.

Argyll by that time had mustered the Clan Campbell, and Lord Seaforth the mountaineers of Moray, Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, to bear down on the invaders. Montrose, therefore, led forth his Highlanders and Irish to encounter them, and came first on Argyll and his army at Inverlochy Castle, in Lochaber. There he totally defeated Argyll, and slew nearly fifteen hundred of his people. This success brought to his standard the clan Gordon and others. The whole north was in their power, and they marched from Inverlochy to Elgin and Aberdeen. At Brechin they were met by Baillie with a strong force, which protected Perth; but Montrose marched to Dunkeld, and thence to Dundee, which he entered, and began plundering, when Baillie arrived with his Covenanters and caused him to retire. Once more he escaped to the mountains, but this time not without severe losses, for his indignant foes pursued him for threescore miles, cutting off many of his soldiers, besides those that had perished in the storming of Dundee. When he appeared again it was at Auldearn, a village near Nairn, where, on the 9th of May, he defeated the Covenanters (under John Urry or Hurry) after a bloody battle, two thousand men being said to be left upon the field.

The General Assembly addressed a sharp remonstrance to the king, which was delivered to him soon after the battle of Naseby, but it produced no effect. In fact, it was more calculated to inflame a man of Charles's obstinate temper, for it recapitulated all his crimes against Scotland, from his first forcing the Common Prayer upon them till then, and called on him to fall down at the footstool of the Almighty and acknowledge his sins, and no longer steep his kingdom in blood. They did not merely remonstrate; the Covenanters continued to fight. But, unfortunately, their commanders having divided their forces, as Urry was defeated at Auldearn, so Baillie was soon afterwards routed at Alford, in Aberdeenshire, with such effect that scarcely any but his principal officers and the cavalry escaped. Again the Covenanters raised a fresh army of ten thousand men, and sent them against Montrose; and the Scottish army, which lay on the borders of England under the Earl of Leven, commenced their march southward, to attack the king himself. On the 2nd of July, the very day on which Montrose won the battle of Alford, they were at Melton Mowbray, whence they marched through Tamworth and Birmingham[44] into Worcestershire and Herefordshire. On the 22nd they stormed Canon-Frome, a garrison of the king's between Worcester and Hereford; and, as they were pressing on, Charles sent Sir William Fleming to endeavour to seduce the old Earl of Leven and the Earl of Callender from their faith to Parliament by magnificent promises, but they sent his letters to the Parliament and marched on and laid siege to Hereford.

Charles, thus pressed by the Scottish army, quitted Cardiff and made a grand effort to reach the borders of Scotland to effect a junction with Montrose. He flattered himself that could he unite his forces with those of Montrose, by the genius of that brilliant leader his losses would be retrieved, and that he should bear down all before him. But he was not destined to accomplish this object. He at first approached Hereford, as if he designed the attempt of raising the siege; but this was too hazardous, and, dismissing his foot, he dashed forward with his cavalry to cut his way to the North. But the Earl of Leven sent after him Sir David Leslie, with nearly the whole body of the Scottish cavalry; and from the North, the Parliamentarian commanders, Poyntz and Rossiter, put themselves in motion to meet him. He had made a rapid march through Warwickshire and Northamptonshire to Doncaster, when these counter-movements of the enemy convinced him that to reach the Border was hopeless; and he made a sudden divergence south-east, to inflict a flying chastisement on those counties of the Eastern Association, which had so long kept him at bay, and sent out against him the invincible Cromwell and his Ironsides. These were now engaged in the West, and he swept through Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, ravaging and plundering without stint or remorse. On the 24th of August he took Huntingdon itself by assault; he did not delay, however, but continued his marauding course through Woburn and Dunstable, thence into Buckinghamshire, and so to Oxford, where he arrived on the 28th. In this flying expedition, Charles and his soldiers had collected much booty from his subjects, and especially from the town of Huntingdon, no doubt with much satisfaction, from its being Cromwell's place of residence.

At Oxford Charles received the cheering news that Montrose had achieved another brilliant victory over the Covenanters. He had, on again issuing from the mountains, menaced Perth, where the Scottish Parliament was sitting, and then descended into the Lowlands. It was evident that he was acting in concert with the king, who at that very time was making his hurried march for the Border. Montrose crossed the Forth near Stirling, where at Kilsyth he was met by Baillie and his new army. The Committee of Estates insisted on Baillie giving battle. Fasting and prayer for four days had been held, and they were confident of success. But at the first charge the cavalry of the Covenanters were scattered, the infantry fled almost without a blow, and such was the fury of the pursuit, that five thousand of them were slain (August 15, 1645). This victory opened all the Lowlands to the Royalists. Argyll and the principal nobles escaped by sea to England. Glasgow opened its gates to the conqueror, and the magistrates of Edinburgh hastened to implore his clemency towards the city, and to propitiate him by liberating all the Royalist prisoners, promising obedience to the king. Most of these liberated prisoners, and many of the nobility, joined the standard of Montrose.

Had the king been able to effect a junction with him at this moment, the result must have been important, but it could only have occasioned more bloodshed, without insuring any decided victory, for all England was by this time in the hands of the Parliament. Sir David Leslie, instead of following the king with his cavalry southward again, had continued his march northward, to prevent any inroad on the part of Montrose, and the Earl of Leven, quitting Hereford, advanced northward to support him. Charles immediately left Oxford, and advanced to Hereford, where he was received in triumph. Thence he set out to relieve Rupert, who was besieged by Fairfax and Cromwell in Bristol; but on reaching Raglan Castle, he heard the appalling news that it had surrendered. The prince had promised to hold it for four months, yet he surrendered it in the third week of the siege. Fairfax having decided to storm it on the 10th of September, 1645, this was done accordingly. It was assaulted by the troops under Colonel Welden, Commissary-general Ireton, Cromwell, Fairfax, General Skippon, Colonels Montague, Hammond, Rich, and Rainsborough, from different sides at the same time. The town was set on fire in three places by the Royalists themselves, and Rupert, foreseeing the total destruction of the city, capitulated. He was allowed to march out, and was furnished with a convoy of cavalry, and the loan of one thousand muskets to protect them from the people on the way to Oxford, for he had made himself so detested by his continual ravagings of the inhabitants that they would have knocked him and[45] his men on the head. Even as he passed out of the city the people crowded round with fierce looks, and muttered, "Why not hang him?"

CAVALIER SOLDIERS.

We have Cromwell's account of the taking of the place. He says that the royal fort was victualled for three hundred and twenty days, and the castle for nearly half as long, and that there were abundant stores of ammunition, with one hundred and forty cannon mounted, between two and three thousand muskets, and a force of nearly six thousand men in foot, horse, train-bands, and auxiliaries. Well might Charles feel confounded at the surrender. He was so exasperated that he overwhelmed Rupert with reproaches: he even accused him of cowardice or treason, revoked his commission, and bade him quit the kingdom. He ordered the Council to take him into custody if he showed any contumacy. He arrested Rupert's friend, Colonel Legge, and gave the prince's office of Governor of Oxford to Sir Thomas Glenham. And yet Rupert appears to have only yielded to necessity. He was more famous at the head of a charge of horse than for defending cities. Bristol was carried by storm by a combination of the best troops and the most able commanders of the Parliament army, and was already burning in three places. Further resistance could only have led to indiscriminate massacre. But allowance must be made for the irritation of Charles. The fall of Bristol was a most disheartening event, and it was followed by news still more prostrating.

The success of Montrose had proved the ruin of his army. A Highland force is like a Highland torrent; under its clan chiefs it is impetuous and overwhelming; but it is soon exhausted. The soldiers, gathered only for the campaign, no sooner collected a good booty than they walked off back to their mountains, and thus no Highland force, under the old clan system, ever effected any lasting advantage, especially in the Lowlands. So it was here; Montrose's descent from the hills resembled the torrent, and disappeared without any traces but those of ravage. He had secured no fortified places, nor obtained any permanent possession. He executed a few incendiaries, as they were called, at Glasgow, and then advanced towards the Border, still in hope of meeting the royal forces. But the Gordon clan had disappeared;[46] Colkitto had led back the other Highlanders to their mountains, and Montrose found himself at the head of only about six hundred men, chiefly the remains of the Irish. Meanwhile, Sir David Leslie, with his four thousand cavalry, was steadily advancing towards the Forth, to put himself between Montrose and the Highlands, and then suddenly wheeling westward, he returned on the unwary marquis, and surprised the commander who had before been accustomed to surprise every one else.

Montrose was in Selkirk busy writing despatches to the king, and his little army was posted at Philiphaugh. Leslie had approached cautiously, and, favoured by the unvigilant carelessness of the Royalists, came one night into their close vicinity. Early in the morning, under cover of a thick fog, he crossed the Ettrick, and appeared to their astonishment in the encampment on the Haugh. Notwithstanding their surprise, the soldiers formed hastily into a compact body; and Montrose, being informed of the danger, flew to the rescue at the head of a body of horse; but the odds were too great, the troops were surrounded and cut to pieces. In vain they begged quarter. Sir David consented, but the ministers raised a fierce shout of indignation, denounced the sparing of a single "malignant" as a sin, and the whole body was massacred (September 13, 1645).

Before receiving this disastrous news, Charles resolved to make another effort to form a junction with Montrose. He retraced his steps through Wales, and advanced to the relief of Chester, which was invested by the Parliamentarians. He reached that place on the 22nd of September, and posted the bulk of his cavalry on Rowton Heath, near the city, under Sir Marmaduke Langdale, himself being able to get into the city with a small body of troopers. But the next morning his cavalry at Rowton Heath was attacked by Poyntz, the Parliamentary general, who had been carefully following on the king's heels, and now, having his little army penned between his troops and those of the Parliamentary besiegers, a simultaneous attack was made on the Royalists from both sides. More than six hundred of Charles's troopers were cut to pieces, one thousand more obtained quarter, and the rest were dispersed on all sides. The king escaped out of the city and fled to Denbigh with the remnant of his cavalry. By this blow the only port which had been left open for his expected succours from Ireland was closed. Still the news of Montrose's defeat at Philiphaugh had not reached him, and Lord Digby advised the king to allow him to make the attempt to reach him with the seventeen hundred cavalry still remaining. Charles accepted the offer, but before Digby left, it was agreed that the king should get into his castle of Newark, as the securest place for him to abide the result. Having seen his majesty safely there, Digby set out northward. At Doncaster he defeated a Parliamentary force, but was a few days after defeated himself by another at Sherburn. Notwithstanding this, with the remainder of his horse he pushed forward, entered Scotland, and reached Dumfries, but finding Montrose already defeated, he returned to the Border, and at Carlisle disbanded the troop. Sir Marmaduke Langdale and the officers retired to the Isle of Man, the men got home as they could, and Digby passed over to Ireland, to the Marquis of Ormond. But the greatest loss which Digby had made during this expedition was that of his portfolio with his baggage, at Sherburn. In this, as in the king's at Naseby, the most unfortunate discoveries were made of his own proceedings, and of his master's affairs. There was a revelation of plottings and agents in sundry counties for bringing foreign forces to put down the Parliament. Goffe was in Holland promoting a scheme for the marriage of the Prince of Wales to the daughter of the Prince of Orange, and for forces to be furnished in consequence. There were letters of the queen to Ireland, arranging to bring over ten thousand men, and of Lord Jermyn—who was living in Paris with the queen in such intimacy as to occasion much scandal—to Digby himself, regarding probable assistance from the King of Denmark, the Duke of Lorraine, and the Prince of Courland, and of money from the Pope. But perhaps the most mischievous was a letter from Digby, written a few days before, letting out how much the Marquis of Ormond was secretly in the king's interest, though appearing to act otherwise. These disclosures were precisely such as must wonderfully strengthen the Parliament with the public, and sink the king still lower.

The king's ruin was virtually complete. The enemy was pressing close on his quarters, and at midnight, on the 3rd of November, he quitted Newark with five hundred horse, and reached Belvoir, where the governor, Sir Gervas Lucas, attended him with his troop till break of day. Thence the king made a harassing and dangerous journey to Oxford, pursued by detachments of the enemy as he passed Burleigh-on-the-Hill, the garrison sallying and killing some of his[47] attendants. In the evening Charles was obliged to rest for five hours at Northampton, and then push forward by Banbury, and so reached Oxford the next evening, "finishing," says Clarendon, "the most tedious and grievous march that our king was exercised in." In truth, never was king reduced to such a melancholy and pitiable condition—a condition which cannot be contemplated without commiseration, blind and incorrigible believer as he was in the divine right of despotism.

Whilst Charles had been making these unhappy tours and detours, Fairfax and Cromwell had been clearing away his garrisons, and driving back his troops into the farthest West. Cromwell first addressed himself by command of Parliament to reduce Winchester, Basing House, Langford House, and Donnington Castle. On Sunday, September 28th, he appeared before Winchester, which surrendered after a breach had been made; and, on the 16th of October he also carried Basing by storm. Basing House and Donnington had long annoyed Parliament and the country with their royal garrisons, so that there was no travelling the Western road for them. Basing House belonged to the Marquis of Winchester, and was one of the most remarkable places in the country. Hugh Peters, who was sent up by Cromwell to give an account of the taking of it to Parliament, declaring that its circumvallation was above a mile in circumference. It had stood many a siege, one of four years, without any one being able to take it. Cromwell, however, now bombarded and stormed it, taking prisoners the marquis, Sir Robert Peak, and other distinguished officers. Eight or nine gentlewomen of rank ran out as the soldiers burst in, and were treated with some unceremonious freedoms, but, says Peters, "not uncivilly, considering the action in hand."

Having demolished Basing, Cromwell next summoned Langford House, near Salisbury, and thence he was called in haste down into the West, where Fairfax and he drove back Goring, Hopton, Astley, and others, beating them at Langport, Torrington, and other places, storming Bridgewater, and forcing them into Cornwall, where they never left them till they had reduced them altogether in the spring of 1646.

Charles lying now at Oxford, his council, seeing that his army was destroyed, except the portion that was cooped up by the victorious generals in the West, and which every day was forced into less compass, advised him strongly to treat with the Parliament, as his only chance. They represented that they had no funds even for subsistence, except what they seized from the country around, which exasperated the people, and made them ready to rise against them. There were some circumstances yet in his favour, and these were the jealousies and divisions of his enemies. The Parliament and country were broken up into two great factions of Presbyterians and Independents. The Presbyterians were by far the most numerous, and were zealously supported by the Scots, who were nearly all of that persuasion, and desired to see their form of religion prevail over the whole country. They were as fiercely intolerant as the Catholics, and would listen to nothing but the entire predominance of their faith and customs. But the Independents, who claimed and offered liberty of conscience, and protested against any ruling church, possessed almost all the men of intellect in Parliament, and the chiefs at the head of the army. Cromwell, in his letter from the field of Naseby, called for toleration of conscience, and Fairfax urged the same doctrine in all his despatches from the West. There was, moreover, a jealousy growing as to the armies of the Scots, who had got most of the garrisons in the North of England and Ireland into their hands. These divisions opened to Charles a chance of treating with one party at the expense of the other, and in his usual way he made overtures to all. To the Scots he offered full concession of all their desires, and great advantages from the influence which their alliance with him would give. To the Independents he offered the utmost toleration of religious opinion, and all the rewards of pre-eminence in the State and the army. To the Presbyterians he was particularly urged by the queen to promise the predominance of their Church and the like advantages. With the Catholics of Ireland he was equally in treaty; but whilst his secret negotiations were going on in Ireland, the Scots endeavoured to bring theirs to a close, by applying to the queen in Paris. Three great changes had taken place, all favourable to Charles. Both the king, Louis XIII., and Richelieu, were dead. Richelieu had never forgiven Charles's attempts on La Rochelle, and his effort to raise the Huguenots into an independent power in France, nor his movements in Flanders against his designs. Mazarin, who now succeeded as the minister of Louis XIV., had no particular resentment against Charles, and though cautious in taking direct measures against the English Parliament, did not oppose any of the attempts at pacification between the[48] king and his subjects. The Scots had always found Richelieu their ally, and they now applied to his successor to assist them in bringing matters to bear with Charles. In consequence of this, Montreuil was sent over to London, who conferred with the Scottish Commissioners, and then conveyed to Charles their proposals. But the king, who had promised them all concessions consistent with his honour, found the very first proposition to be that Episcopacy should be for ever abolished not only in Scotland, but in England, and Presbytery made the Established Church. He had conceived that they would be satisfied with the supremacy of their faith in their own country, and he at once refused this demand. It was in vain that Montreuil pointed out to him that the Scots and the Presbyterians of England were agreed upon this point, and that consequently any arrangement with the latter party must inevitably be upon the same basis. Charles declared that rather than consent to any such terms, he would agree with the Independents. Montreuil replied that the Scots sought only to make him king, first having their own wishes as to religion gratified; but the Independents, he was confident, contemplated nothing less than the subversion of his throne. He informed him that the queen had given to Sir Robert Murray a written promise that the king would accede to the demand of the Scots, which promise was now in the hands of the Scottish Commissioners; moreover, that this was the earnest desire of the queen, the queen-regent of France, and of Mazarin.

Nothing, however, could shake Charles's resolution on this head, and he therefore made a direct application to Parliament to treat for an accommodation. They received his offer coolly, almost contemptuously. He desired passports for his Commissioners, or a safe-conduct for himself, that they might treat personally; but it was bluntly refused, on the ground that he was not to be trusted, having, on all similar occasions, employed the opportunities afforded to endeavour to corrupt the fidelity of the Commissioners. Not to appear, however, to reject the treaty, they sent fresh proposals to him, but so much more stringent than those at Uxbridge, that it was plain that they were rather bent on delaying than treating. The king was now in a very different position since the battle of Naseby and the fall of Bristol; and it was obviously the interest of Parliament to allow Fairfax and Cromwell to put down his last remains of an army in the West, when they would have nothing to do but to shut up the king in Oxford, and compel him to submit at discretion. Montreuil, seeing this, again urged him to come to terms with the Scots, and that not a moment was to be lost. But nothing could move him to consent to their demand of a universal Presbyterianism, and he again, on the 26th of January, 1646, demanded a personal interview with the Parliament at Westminster. His demand, however, arrived at a most unfortunate crisis, for the discovery of his negotiations with the Irish Catholics had just been made: the entire correspondence was in the hands of the Commons, and the whole House was in the most violent ferment of indignation. The king's letter was thrown aside and left without notice.

On October 17th, 1645, the titular Archbishop of Tuam was killed in a skirmish between two parties of Scots and Irish near Sligo, and in his carriage were discovered copies of a most extraordinary negotiation, which had been going on for a long time in Ireland between Charles and the Catholics, for the restoration of popish predominance in that country, on condition of their sending an army to put down the Parliament in England.

We have already spoken of the confederate Irish Catholics, who maintained an army for their own defence, and had a council at Kilkenny. Charles had instructed the Marquis of Ormond, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, to make a peace with these Confederates: he had some time ago obtained a cessation of hostilities, but they would not consent to a permanent peace, nor to furnish the king troops until they obtained a legal guarantee for the establishment of their own religion. Lord Ormond, in his endeavours, did not satisfy the king, or rather his position disabled him from consenting publicly to such a treaty, as it would have roused all the Protestants, and the Scottish and English Parliaments against him. Charles, therefore, who was always ready with some underhand intrigue to gain his ends, and break his bargain when it became convenient, sent over Lord Herbert, the son of the Marquis of Worcester, and whom he now created Earl of Glamorgan, to effect this difficult matter.

RAGLAN CASTLE.

Glamorgan was as zealous in his loyalty as in his speculative pursuits. He and his father had spent two hundred thousand pounds in the king's cause, and he was now engaged in an enterprise where he risked everything for Charles—name,[49] honour, and life. He was furnished with a warrant which authorised him to concede the demands of the Catholics regarding their religion, and to engage them to send over ten thousand men. After many difficulties he reached Dublin, communicated to Ormond the plan, saw with him the Catholic deputies in Dublin, and then hastened to Kilkenny, to arrange with the council there. But at this time occurred the revelation of the scheme by the seizure of the Archbishop of Tuam's papers. The Parliament was thrown into a fury; the Marquis of Ormond, to make his loyalty appear, seized Glamorgan, and put him into prison, and the king sent a letter to the two Houses of Parliament, utterly disavowing the commission of Glamorgan, and denouncing the warrant in his name as a forgery. All this had been agreed upon before between the king and Glamorgan, should any discovery take place; and on searching for Glamorgan's papers a warrant was found, not sealed in the usual manner, and the papers altogether informal, so that the king might by this means be able to disavow them. But that Ormond and the council of Kilkenny had seen a real and formal warrant, there can be no question. The king, by a second letter to the two Houses, reiterated his disavowal of the whole affair, and assured them that he had ordered the privy council in Dublin to proceed against Glamorgan for his presumption. The proceedings were conducted by Lord Digby, who assumed a well-feigned indignation against Glamorgan, accusing him of high treason. The animus with which this accusation appeared to be made has induced many to believe that Digby was really incensed,[50] because he had not been let wholly into the secret of Glamorgan's commission; and his letter to the king on the subject, noticed by Clarendon as rude and unmanly, would seem to confirm this. However, Glamorgan, on his part, took the whole matter very cheerfully, allowed the king's disclaimers without a remonstrance or evidence of vexation, and produced a copy of his secret treaty with the Catholics, in which he had inserted an article called a defeasance, by which the king was bound by the treaty no further than he pleased till he had seen what the Catholics did for him, and by which the Catholics were to keep this clause secret till the king had done all in his power to secure their claims.

Surely such a system of royal and political hocus-pocus had never been concerted before. Ormond, on seeing the defeasance, declared that it was quite satisfactory, binding the king to nothing; in fact, he had to avoid the danger of alarming the Catholics and losing their army for the king; and the Protestants having seen the affected zeal to prosecute Glamorgan had become greatly appeased. Glamorgan was, therefore, liberated, and hastened again to Kilkenny to urge on the sending of the forces. But the late disclosures had not been without their effect. One part of the council insisted on the full execution of the king's warrant, the open acknowledgment of Catholicism as the established religion, and the pope's nuncio, Runcini, who had lately arrived, strongly urged them to stand by that demand. But another part of the council were more compliant, and by their aid Glamorgan obtained five thousand men, with whom he marched to Waterford, to hasten their passage for the relief of Chester, where Lord Byron was driven to extremities by the Parliamentarians. There, however, he received the news that Chester had fallen, and there was not a single port left where Glamorgan could land his troops; he therefore disbanded them.

Despite the failure of his efforts, the unfortunate monarch still endeavoured to negotiate some terms for himself, first with one party and then with another, or with all together. The Parliament had treated with contempt two offers of negotiation from him. They did not even deign him an answer. But his circumstances were now such that he submitted to insults that a short time before would have been deemed incredible. On the 29th of January, 1646, he made his second offer; he repeated it on the 23rd of March. He offered to disband his forces, dismantle his garrisons—he had only five, Pendennis in Cornwall, Worcester, Newark, Raglan, and Oxford—and to take up his residence at Westminster, near the Parliament, on a guarantee that he and his followers should be suffered to live in honour and safety, and his adherents should retain their property. But the Parliament were now wholly in the ascendant, and they made the wretched king feel it. Instead of a reply, they issued an order that if he should come within their lines, he should be conducted to St. James's, his followers imprisoned, and none be allowed to have access to him. At the same time they ordered all Catholics, and all who had borne arms for the king, to depart within six days, or expect to be treated as spies, and dealt with by martial law.

But whilst thus ignominiously repelled by Parliament, Montreuil was still pursuing negotiations on his behalf with the Scots. He obtained for the purpose the post of agent from the French Court to Scotland, and with some difficulty obtained from the Parliament leave to visit the king at Oxford with letters from the King of France and the Queen Regent, before proceeding northwards. He employed his time there in urging Charles to agree with the Scots by conceding the point of religion; and at length it was concluded that Charles should force his way through the Parliamentary army investing Oxford, and that the Scots at Newark should send three hundred horse to receive him, and escort him to their army. Montreuil delivered to Charles an engagement from the Scottish commissioners for the king's personal safety, his conscience, and his honour, as well as for the security and religious freedom of his followers. This was also guaranteed by the King and Queen Regent of France on behalf of the Scots who had applied to them for their good offices. Charles wrote to Ormond in Ireland, informing him that he had received this security, and on the 3rd of April, 1646, Montreuil set forward northwards.

ENGLAND During the CIVIL WAR 1642-1649.

Artiste Illustrators. Ltd. 84

Montreuil carried with him an order from the king to Lord Bellasis, to surrender Newark into the hands of the Scots, but on arriving at Southwell, in the camp of the Scots, he was astonished to find that the leaders of the army professed ignorance of the conditions made with the Scottish Commissioners in London. They would not, therefore, undertake the responsibility of meeting and escorting the king—which they declared would be a breach of the solemn league and covenant between the two nations—till they had conferred with their Commissioners, and made all clear.[51] The security mentioned by Charles to Ormond would, if this were true, have been from the Commissioners only; and there must have been gross neglect in not apprising the officers of it. Montreuil was greatly disconcerted by this discovery, burnt the order for the surrender of Newark, and wrote to Charles to inform him of the unsatisfactory interview with the Scots. It is doubtful whether Charles ever received this letter. At all events, impatient of some results, for the Parliamentary army was fast closing round Oxford, he snatched at another chance. Captain Fawcett, Governor of Woodstock, sent to tell him that that garrison was reduced to extremities, and to inquire whether he might expect relief, or whether he should surrender it on the best terms he could obtain. Charles immediately applied to Colonel Rainsborough, the chief officer conducting the siege of Oxford, for passports for the Earl of Southampton and Lindsay, Sir William Fleetwood, and Mr. Ashburnham, to treat with him about the surrender of Woodstock; but the main thing was to propose the coming of the king to them on certain conditions. Rainsborough and the other officers appeared much pleased, but said they could not decide so important an affair without reference to their superior officers, but if the offer were entertained, they would the next day send a pass for them to come and complete the negotiation. If the pass did not come, it must be understood that the offer was not accepted. No pass came, and the king was reduced to great straits, for the Parliamentarian armies were coming closer and closer. He applied then to Ireton who was posted at Woodstock, but he returned him no answer; to Vane, but he referred him to Parliament; and thus was the humiliated king treated with the most insulting contempt. It was believed that it was the intention of Parliament to keep Charles there till Fairfax and Cromwell, who were now marching up from the west, should arrive, when they would capture him and have him at their mercy.

At length Montreuil informed Charles that deputies from the army had met the Commissioners at Royston, and that it was settled to receive the king. There are conflicting accounts of the proceedings at this period. Clarendon and Ashburnham, who have both left narratives, vary considerably. Ashburnham, the king's groom of the chambers, says that word was sent that David Leslie would meet his majesty at Gainsborough with two thousand horse, but Montreuil's message was that the Scots would send a strong party to Burton-on-Trent, beyond which they could not go with that force, but would send a few straggling horse to Harborough, and if the king informed them of the day he would be there, they would not fail him. As to a proposal that Charles was impolitic enough to make to these Scottish Covenanters, to form a junction with Montrose, a man whom they hated with a deadly hatred for his ravages and slaughters of their party, they treated it with scorn; and, says Montreuil, "with regard to the Presbyterian government, they desire his majesty to agree with them as soon as he can. Such is the account they make here of the engagement of the king, my master, and of the promises I had from their party in London." He adds that if any better conditions could be had from any other quarter, these ought not to be thought of. Montreuil wrote twice more, the last time on the 20th of April, expressing no better opinion of the Scots, and saying that they would admit none of his majesty's followers save his two nephews, Rupert and Maurice, and such servants as were not excepted from the pardon; and that they could not then refuse to give them up to the Parliament, but would find means to let them escape.

A gloomier prospect for the king than the one in that quarter could scarcely present itself. It appears that he had not yet agreed to the ultimatum of the Scots—the concession of the supremacy of the Presbyterian Church—and therefore there was no actual treaty between them. But all other prospects were closed; Charles must choose between the Scots and the Parliament, the latter body pursuing a contemptuous and ominous silence. Fairfax and Cromwell were now within a day's march of the city, and Charles made his choice of the Scots. Yet so undecided even at the moment of escaping from the city was he, that he would not commit himself irrevocably to the Scots, by announcing to them his departure and the direction of his journey. It is remarkable, indeed, that he had not before, or even now, thought of endeavouring to escape to Ireland, and making a second stand there with the confederates, or of getting to the Continent and awaiting a turn of fortune. But he seemed altogether like a doomed mortal who could not fly his fate.

About two o'clock on the morning of the 27th of April, Charles set out from Oxford, disguised as the servant of Ashburnham. He had his hair cut short by Ashburnham, and rode after that gentleman and Hudson the chaplain, who knew the country well and was their guide. They rode[52] out unsuspected over Magdalen Bridge, Charles having, groom-like, a cloak strapped round his waist. To prevent particular attention or pursuit, several others of them rode out at the same time in different directions. Charles and his pretended masters got without suspicion through the lines of the Parliamentary army, and reached Henley-on-Thames. But now that he was in temporary safety, he appeared more undecided than ever. He did not attempt to send word to the Scots to meet him; but, says Clarendon, he was uncertain whether to go to the Scottish army, or to get privately into London, and lie concealed there till he might choose what was best. Clarendon declares that he still thought so well of the City of London, as not to have been unwilling to have found himself there. But certainly the City had never shown itself more favourable to him than the Parliament; and now with the Parliament in the ascendant, it was not likely that it would undertake to contend with it for the protection or rights of the king. Charles still trusted that he might hear of Montrose making a fresh movement on his behalf, in which case he would endeavour to get to him; and he never for long after abandoned the hope of still hearing something from Ireland in his favour. From Henley, he therefore directed his way to Slough, thence to Uxbridge, Hillingdon, Brentford, so near did he reach London, and then again off to Harrow. His uncertainty increased more and more. He proceeded towards St. Albans, and near that town was alarmed by the sound of horses' feet behind them. It was only a drunken man; but to avoid danger they kept out of St. Albans, and continued through the bye-ways to Harborough, where he was on the 28th. Two days afterwards he reached Downham in Norfolk, and spent some time in inquiring after a vessel that might carry him to Newcastle or Scotland. He seems to have expected at Harborough some message from the Scots or from Montreuil, but as none was there, he had despatched Hudson to Montreuil at Southwell. No prospect of escape by sea offering—for the coasts were strictly guarded by the Parliamentary vessels—Charles determined to go over to the Scots on Hudson returning with a message from Montreuil that they still declared that they would receive the king on his personal honour; that they would press him to do nothing contrary to his conscience; that Ashburnham and Hudson should be protected; that if the Parliament refused, on a message from the king, to restore him to his rights and prerogatives, they would declare for him, and take all his friends under their protection; and that if the Parliament did agree to restore the king, not more than four of his friends should be punished, and that only by banishment. All this Montreuil, according to Hudson's own account afterwards to Parliament, assured Charles by note, but added that the Scots would only give it by word of mouth and not by writing.

At the best this was suspicious; but where was the king to turn? He was treated with the most contemptuous silence by the Parliament, which was at this very moment hoping to make him unconditionally their prisoner. Fairfax had drawn his lines of circumvallation round Oxford five days after the king's departure, ignorant that he had escaped, and in the full hope of taking him. For nine days Charles was wandering about, nobody knowing where he was, and during that time Clarendon says he had been in different gentlemen's houses, where "he was not unknown, but untaken notice of."

On the 5th of May he resolved, on the report of Hudson, to go to the Scots, and accordingly, early on that morning he rode into Southwell, to Montreuil's lodgings, and announced his intention. The manner in which he was received there is related in very contradictory terms by Ashburnham and Clarendon. Ashburnham says that some of the Scottish Commissioners came to Montreuil's lodgings to receive him, and accompanied him with a troop of horse to the headquarters of the Scottish army at Kelham, where they went after dinner, and were well received, many lords coming instantly to wait on him with professions of joy that his majesty had so far honoured their army as to think it worthy of his presence after so long an opposition. Clarendon, on the other hand, declares that "very early in the morning he went to the general's lodgings, and discovered himself to him, who either was, or seemed to be, exceedingly surprised and confounded at his majesty's presence, and knew not what to say, but presently gave notice to the committee, who were no less perplexed."

Both of them, however, agree that the Scots soon convinced Charles that they considered that he had surrendered himself unconditionally into their hands; that he had not complied with their terms, and that there was no treaty actually between them; and from all that appears, this was the case. Charles had trusted to the assurances of Montreuil, and had really no written evidence[53] of any engagement on the part of the Scots, nor was any ever produced. Some of the lords, says Ashburnham, desiring to know how they might best testify their gratitude to his majesty for the confidence he had reposed in them, he replied that the only way was to apply themselves to the performance of the conditions on which he had come to them. At the word "conditions," Lord Lothian expressed much surprise, and declared he knew of no conditions concluded, nor did he believe any of the Commissioners residing with the army knew of such. On this Charles desired Montreuil to present a summary of the conditions concluded with the Commissioners in London, sanctioned by the King of France. It should, however, be borne in mind that since then the army Commissioners had met with the commissioners from London at Royston, and had agreed to the terms to be offered to the king. When Ashburnham, therefore, affirms that many of the Commissioners of the army still protested their ignorance of these conditions, it can only mean that such conditions were not concluded with the king, either there or anywhere, for Charles had never consented to accept them. When Charles, therefore, asked them what they meant, then, by inviting him to come to them, and why they had sent word that all differences were reconciled, and that David Leslie should meet him with an escort of horse, they replied that this was on the understanding that his majesty meant to accept their terms, from which they had never receded, and that they now thought that by his coming to them he had meant to accept the cardinal condition—the taking of the Covenant.

FLIGHT OF CHARLES FROM OXFORD. (See p. 51.)

Charles must have been well aware of the truth of all this, but he was a man who played fast and loose so constantly, that it was impossible to make any treaty with him. At the very time that he was preparing to leave Oxford, so alive were all these quibbles and evasions in his mind, that he wrote to Lord Digby, expressing his intention to get to London if he could, "not," he says, "without hope that I shall be able so to draw either the Presbyterians or the Independents to side with me, for extirpating one another, that I shall really be king again." This proves that on setting[54] out from Oxford, he had held himself loose from any compact with the Scots, and did not mean to go to them at all if he could manage to cozen the Presbyterians or Independents to take his part, and "extirpate one another."

Such a man was as slippery as an eel. He now insisted solemnly on the existence of the very conditions that he had purposely kept clear of. The Scots stood by their offered terms, and exhorted him to accept the Covenant, entreating him with tears and on their knees to take it, or to sanction the Presbyterian worship if he could not adopt it, and pledging themselves on that condition to fight for him to the last man. But this Charles would not do. He was still—though beaten and voluntarily surrendered to his enemies—as full of the persuasion of the divinity of kingship as ever. He therefore undertook to give the word to the guard, in virtue of his being the chief person in the army; but old Leven quickly undeceived him, by saying, "I am the older soldier; your majesty had better leave that office to me."

It was now necessary to apprise the Parliament of the king having entered their camp—a piece of intelligence which produced a wonderful sensation. Fairfax had already announced to the Parliament that the king had escaped out of Oxford, and was believed to have gone towards London, whereupon the two Houses had issued a proclamation forbidding any one to harbour or conceal his person on pain of high treason, and of forfeiting the whole of their estate, and being put to death without mercy. All Papists and other disaffected persons were ordered, on the supposition that the king might be in London, to remove before the 12th of May to twenty-five miles' distance from the metropolis, leaving, before they went, a notice at Goldsmiths' Hall of the places to which they intended to retire. When the letter arrived from the Scottish Commissioners, the Parliament was filled with jealousy and alarm. There had long been a feeling of the design of the Scots, supported by the Presbyterians, assuming an undue power; and now to hear that they had the king in their hands was most embarrassing. They instantly sent word to the Scots that his majesty must be disposed of according to the will of the two Houses of Parliament, and that for the present he must be sent to Warwick Castle; that Ashburnham and Hudson, the king's attendants, should be sent for by the sergeant-at-arms or his deputy, to be dealt with as delinquents; and that a narrative must be prepared of the manner in which the king came to the Scottish camp, and forthwith sent to the two Houses. To enforce these orders, they commanded Poyntz to watch the Scottish army with five thousand men, and Sir Thomas Fairfax to prepare to follow him.

The Scots were not prepared to enter into a civil war with England for the restoration of the king, who would not comply even with their propositions; but they knew too well the power they possessed in the possession of his person, to let the Parliament frighten them out of their advantage till they had secured their own terms with them. They therefore immediately addressed a letter to the Parliament, expressing their astonishment at finding the king coming among them, for which they solemnly but untruly protested there had been no treaty nor capitulation. Perhaps they saved their word by meaning no treaty concluded. They assured the two Houses that they would do everything possible to maintain a right understanding between the two kingdoms, and therefore solicited their advice, as they had also sent to solicit that of the Committee of Estates in Scotland, as to the best measures to be adopted for the satisfactory settlement of the affairs of the kingdom. Charles also sent to Parliament, repeating his offers of accommodation and requesting the two Houses to forward to him the propositions for peace. To show his sincerity, he ordered his officers to surrender the fortresses still in their hands to the Committee of both kingdoms for the English Parliament. He had offered to surrender them to the Scots, but they refused to accept them, knowing that it must embroil them with the Parliament. This surrender on the part of the king, on the 10th of June, closed the war. The last to pull down the royal standard was the old Marquis of Worcester, the father of Glamorgan, who held Raglan Castle, and who, though he was eighty years of age, was compelled by Parliament to travel from Raglan to London, where he immediately died. Worcester had refused to give up Raglan, as it was his own house. He did not surrender it till the 19th of August. Oxford was given up on the 24th of June. Rupert and Maurice were suffered to withdraw to the Continent. The Duke of York, Charles's second son, was sent up to London to the custody of Parliament, and put under the care of the Earl of Northumberland.

Things being in this position, and both Charles and the Scots being anxious to keep at a distance from Fairfax and his army till the terms were settled, the Scots rapidly retreated to Newcastle, carrying the king with them.

[55]

The treaty between the Scots and the English Parliament was now carried on with much diplomacy on both sides, and was not finally settled till the 16th of January, 1647. The Scots, soon after leaving Newark, proposed a meeting with the Parliamentary Commissioners, to explain the reasons of their retreat northwards, and also for not surrendering Ashburnham and Hudson; but the meeting did not take place, and soon after Ashburnham contrived to escape and get into France, to the queen. Charles said that he could have escaped, too, had he been so disposed; but Hudson attempting it, was stopped.

Charles did not neglect to try the effect of brilliant promises on David Leslie and others of the Scottish officers, if they would side with him and make a junction with Montrose for his restoration. He offered to make David Earl of Orkney, but the Committee of Estates sent the Earls of Argyll and Loudon, and Lord Lanark, to Newcastle, to see that all was kept in order in the camp; and they told Charles plainly that he must take the Covenant, and order Montrose to disband his forces in the Highlands, if he expected them to do anything important for him. Charles consented to order the disbanding of Montrose's followers and his retirement to France, but he could not bring himself to accept the Covenant. In fact, on the same day that he gave the order to surrender his remaining fortresses, he sent a letter to the English Parliament, informing them that he was in full freedom, and in a capacity to settle with them a peace, and offering to leave the question of religion to the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, to place the militia in their hands as proposed at Uxbridge, for seven years, and, in short, to do all in his power to settle the kingdom without further effusion of blood. The Parliament, however, knew that he was in no condition to make war on them, and were too sensible of their power to notice such overtures, further than that they thought his terms now too high.

At this very time Charles was in active secret endeavour to obtain an army from Ireland and France. Glamorgan and the Pope's nuncio were busy in Ireland; the queen was equally busy in France; Mazarin again promised her ten thousand men, and incited Lord Jermyn to seize Jersey and Guernsey; and the king, though he had ordered Montrose to disband his forces and quit Scotland, desired him to be ready to raise the royal standard once more in the Highlands in conjunction with the French and Irish. All these wild schemes, however, were knocked on the head by the Earl of Ormond making peace with the Parliament on condition that he should recover his estates. He surrendered the Castle of Dublin and the fortresses to Parliament, went over to England, and all hope of aid from Ireland was at an end.

Whilst these political designs were in agitation, Charles was deeply engaged with the religious difficulty of giving up Episcopacy and consenting to the dominance of Presbyterianism. He consulted Juxon, the ex-Bishop of London, and gave him leave to advise with Dr. Sheldon and the late Bishop of Salisbury, whether he might not accept Presbyterianism as a man under compulsion, and therefore not really bound by it; and he was at the same time engaged with Alexander Henderson on the Scriptural authority of Episcopacy or Presbyterianism. During this dispute, in which each champion supported his opinion with Scriptural passages, and yet came no nearer than such disputants ever do, the Scottish divine was taken ill and died, and the Royalists declared that the king had so completely worsted him that he died of chagrin.

On the 23rd of July the English Parliament at length made proposals of peace, sending the Earls of Pembroke, Denbigh, and Montague, and six members of the Commons, to Newcastle, to treat with him. The conditions were not so favourable as those offered at Uxbridge, things, indeed, being now very different; the great point, however, being the abandonment of Episcopacy. They were to receive an answer or return in ten days; but the king would not yield the question of the Church. The Scottish Commissioners were present, and urged the king warmly to consent to the conditions, and thus to restore peace. The Earls of Loudon and Argyll implored it on their knees. Then Loudon, Chancellor of Scotland, told him "that the consequences of his answer to the propositions were so great, that on it depended the ruin of his crown and kingdoms; that the Parliament, after many bloody battles, had got the strongholds and forts of the kingdom into their hands; that they had his revenue, excise, assessments, sequestrations, and power to raise all the men and money in the kingdom; that they had gained victory over all, and that they had a strong army to maintain it, so that they might do what they would with Church or State; that they desired neither him nor any of his race longer to reign over them, and had sent these propositions to his majesty, without the granting[56] whereof the kingdom and his people would not be in safety; that if he refused to assent, he would lose all his friends in Parliament, lose the city, and lose the country; and that all England would join against him as one man to process and depose him, and to set up another Government; and that both kingdoms for safety would be compelled to agree to settle religion and peace without him, to the ruin of his majesty and posterity;" and he concluded by saying, "that if he left England, he would not be allowed to go and reign in Scotland." This, it must be confessed, was plain and honest, and therefore loyal and patriotic speaking. The General Assembly of the Kirk had already come to this conclusion; but all was lost on the king.

Parliament now having proved that all negotiation was useless, their Commissioners returned, and reported that they could obtain no answer from the king, except that he was ready to come up to London and treat in person. A Presbyterian member, on hearing this report, exclaimed—"What will become of us, now the king has rejected our propositions?" "Nay," replied an Independent member, "what would have become of us had he accepted them?" And really it is difficult to see what could have been the condition of the kingdom had a man of Charles's incorrigible character been again admitted to power. The Parliament returned thanks to the Scottish Commissioners for their zealous co-operation in the endeavour to arrange matters with the king—a severe blow to Charles, who had till now clung to the hope of seizing some advantage from the jealousies which for many months had prevailed between the Parliament and the Scottish army.

On the 12th of August the Scottish Commissioners presented a paper to the House of Lords, stating that the kingdom of Scotland had, on the invitation of both Houses, carefully undertaken and faithfully managed their assistance in the kingdom towards obtaining the ends expressed in the covenant; and as the forces of the common enemy were now broken and destroyed, through the blessing of God, they were willing to surrender up the fortresses in their hands, and retire into their own country, on a reasonable compensation being made for their sufferings and expenses. They stated truly that many base calumnies and execrable aspersions had been cast upon them by printed pamphlets and otherwise, which they had not suffered to turn them from that brotherly affection which was requisite for the great end in view, and which they trusted would yet be effected, notwithstanding the lamentable refusal of their propositions by the king. They claimed, moreover, still to be consulted on the measure for accomplishing the common object of peace for the kingdom. The Commons appointed a committee to settle the accounts between them. The Scots demanded six hundred thousand pounds as the balance due, but agreed to receive four hundred thousand pounds, one half of which was to be paid before quitting the kingdom.

Scarcely had this amicable arrangement been made, when the two English Houses of Parliament passed a resolution that the disposal of the king's person belonged to them. This alarmed the Scots, who instantly remonstrated, saying that as Charles was king of Scotland as well as of England, both nations had an equal right to be consulted regarding the disposal of his person. This is a sufficient answer to the calumny so zealously propagated by the Royalists that the Scots had sold the king to the Parliament. On the contrary, they had claimed a sum of money as a just payment of their expenses and services, and the person or liberty of the king had not entered at all into the bargain. This bargain, in fact, was made five months—that is, on the 5th of September—before they delivered up the king, that is, on the 30th of January, 1647, and during these five months they were zealously engaged in contending for the personal security of the monarch to the very verge of a civil war. All this time they strove equally to induce Charles to accept the terms, which would have removed all difficulties. From September 21st, when the English Parliament voted this resolution, to October 13th, a fierce contest was carried on on this subject, and various conferences were held. The Scots published their speeches on these occasions; the English seized them, and imprisoned the printers; there was imminent danger of civil war, and on the 13th of October the Commons voted payment for the army for the next six months, giving an unmistakable proof of their resolve on the question.

All this was beheld with delight by Charles; and he wrote to his wife that he believed yet that they would have to restore him with honour. He believed one party or the other would, to settle the question, concede all to him, and with his sanction put the other down. For some time the public spirit in Scotland favoured his hopes. The question was discussed there with as much vehemence as in England. His friends exerted themselves, the national feeling was raised in his favour, and the Scottish Parliament passed a vote[57] on the 10th of December, under the management of the Hamiltons, that they would exert all their power and influence to maintain the monarchical system of government, and the king's title to the English crown, which it was now notorious that the Independents sought to subvert. This gave wonderful spirit to the royal party; but the Commission of the Kirk instantly reminded Parliament that Charles had steadily refused to take the Covenant, and that even if he were deposed in England, he could not be allowed to come into Scotland; or if he did enter it, his royal functions must be suspended till he had embraced the Covenant, and given freedom to their religion. This brought the Parliament to reflection, and the next day it rescinded the resolution.

QUEEN HENRIETTA'S DRAWING-ROOM AND BEDROOM, MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD.

This dashed the last hopes of the king, and, now that it was too late, he began seriously to[58] contemplate escape to the Continent. Montreuil wrote to the French Court on the 21st of January, 1647—the very day that the money was paid to the Scots, and a receipt given previous to their departure—that Charles still continued to dream of escaping, though to himself it appeared impossible, unless the Scots had rather see him do so than fall into the hands of the Independents. The king had arranged with Sir Robert and William Murray his scheme of escape in disguise, but it was found impossible. Once more, therefore, he wrote to the Parliament of England for permission to go to London and open a free debate with both Houses for the settlement of all differences. The message received no notice whatever; but the two Houses went on debating as to the disposal of the king's person. The Lords voted that he should be allowed to come to Newmarket; the Commons that he should go to Holmby, in Northampton, one of his houses, to which he was considerably attached. After further debate this was agreed to by the Lords.

The Scots, seeing that they must yield up the person of Charles to the English Parliament or prepare to fight for it, asked themselves what they were to gain by a civil war for a king who would not move one jot towards complying with their wishes? They made one more effort to persuade him to take the Covenant, but in vain. In reply to their solicitation, he made this ominous reply:—"It is a received opinion by many, that engagements, acts, or promises of a restrained person, are neither valid nor obligating; how true or false this is I will not now dispute, but I am sure if I be not free, I am not fit to answer your or any propositions." And he demanded if he went to Scotland whether he should be free, with honour and safety. It was clear what was in his mind—that if he did take the Covenant he would be at liberty to break it when he had the power; and as the Scots had determined that they would not receive him into Scotland at the certain cost of civil war, when they could with such a person have no possible guarantee of his keeping his engagements even were he brought to make them, they replied that he must at once accept their propositions, or they must leave him to the resolution of Parliament. Two days afterwards (the 16th of January, 1647), the Parliament of Scotland acceded to the demand of the English Parliament that the king should be given up, a promise being exacted that respect should be had to the safety of his person in the defence of the true religion, and the liberties of the two kingdoms, according to the Solemn League and Covenant. More was demanded by the Scots, namely, that no obstacle should be opposed to the legitimate succession of his children, and no alteration made in the existing government of the kingdom. To this the Lords fully assented, but the Commons took no notice of it.

On the 5th of January the two hundred thousand pounds, engaged to be paid to the Scots before leaving England, arrived at Newcastle, in thirty-six carts, under a strong escort, and having been duly counted, a receipt was signed on the 21st at Northallerton, and on the 30th Charles was committed to the care of the English Commissioners, consisting of three lords and six commoners, the Earl of Pembroke being at their head. He professed to be pleased with the change, as it would bring him nearer to his Parliament. The Scots, having finished their business in England, evacuated Newcastle, and marched away into their own country.

In all these transactions we have endeavoured in vain to discover any ground for the common calumny against the Scots, that they bought and sold the king. On the contrary, we have shown that all contract regarding their reimbursements and remunerations was completed five months before the delivery of the king; and that they did all in their power to induce him to accept their Covenant, and with that their pledge to defend him to the last drop of their blood. Montreuil says, that even at the last moment the Earls of Lauderdale and Traquair again pressed the king to consent to accept the Covenant and establish Presbyterianism, and they would convey him to Berwick and compel the English to be satisfied with what he had thus offered them. He stated that the Scots offered him (Montreuil) twenty thousand Jacobuses to persuade the king to comply, but that he could not prevail. It must be remembered, too, that when they did surrender him, it was only on promise of safety to his person, and that they delivered him not to the Independents, who made no secret of their designs against the monarchy, but to their fellow believers, the Parliament, which entertained no such intentions, and had already offered Charles the same terms on the same conditions.

Before the close of this year, that is in September, the Earl of Essex died; Ireton married Bridget Cromwell, second daughter of Oliver Cromwell; and a great number of officers in the army were again in Parliament—the Self-denying Ordinance, having served its turn, being no more heard of.

[59]

CHAPTER III.

END OF THE REIGN OF CHARLES I.

Differences between the Presbyterians and Independents—The King at Holmby—Attempt to Disband the Army—Consequent Petitions to Parliament—The Adjutators—Meeting at Newmarket—Seizure of the King—Advance of the Army on London—Stubbornness of the Presbyterians—The Army Marches through London—Its Proposals to Charles—Their Rejection—The King throws away his Best Chances—The Levellers—Cromwell's Efforts on behalf of Charles—Renewed Intrigues of Charles—Flight to Carisbrooke—Attempts to Rescue the King—Charles Treats with the Scots—Consequent Reaction in his Favour—Battle of Preston and Suppression of the Insurrection—Cromwell at Edinburgh—The Prince of Wales in Command of the Fleet—Negotiations at Newport—Growing Impatience of the Army—Petitions for the King's Trial—Charles's Blindness and Duplicity—He is Removed to Hurst Castle—Pride's Purge—Supremacy of the Independents—The Whiggamores—Hugh Peters' Sermon in St. Margaret's, Westminster—Ordinance for the King's Trial—Trial and Execution of Charles I.

For a long time the difference of opinion between the Presbyterians and the Independents had been growing more marked and determined. The latter, from a small knot of Dissenters, had grown into a considerable one, and the more influential, because the most able and active, leaders of both Parliament and army were of that sect. Under the head of Independents, however, ranged themselves, so far as politics were concerned, a variety of other Dissenters—Arminians, Millenaries, Baptists and Anabaptists, Familists, Enthusiasts, Seekers, Perfectists, Socinians, Arians, and others—all of whom claimed freedom of worship, according to their peculiar faiths. On the other hand, the Presbyterians, backed by the Scots, were bent on establishing a religious despotism. Their tenets and form of government were alone to be tolerated. They were as resolute sticklers for conformity as the Catholics, or Charles and Laud themselves. They set up the same claims to be superior to the State, and allowed of no appeal from their tribunals to those of the civil magistrate. Having established the Directory for the form of worship, they erected an assembly, with its synods, and divided the whole kingdom into provinces, the provinces into classes, the classes into presbyteries or elderships. They declared that "the keys of the kingdom of heaven were committed to the officers of the Church, by virtue whereof they had power to retain and remit sins, to shut the kingdom of heaven against the impenitent by censures, and to open it to the penitent by absolution." They claimed a right to inquire into the private lives of persons, and of suspending the unworthy from the Sacrament.

All these assumptions the Independents denied, and would not admit any authority over the free action of individual congregations. The Commons, through the influence of Selden and Whitelock, proposed to the Assembly of Divines nine questions respecting the nature and object of the divine right to which they aspired, and before they could answer these, the army and the Independents, its leaders, had effected still more embarrassing changes. The king being conquered, and the Scots having withdrawn, the contest lay no longer between the king and Parliament, but between the Presbyterians and Independents, or, what was nearly synonymous, the Parliament and the Army.

The king was conducted to Holmby by easy journeys, and treated by his attendants with courtesy. The people flocked to see him, and showed that the traditions of royalty were yet strong in them. They received him with acclamations, uttered prayers for his preservation, and not a few of them pressed forward to be touched for the "evil." On his arrival at Holmby, he found a great number of ladies and gentlemen assembled to welcome him, with every demonstration of pleasure, and his house and table well appointed and supplied. He passed his time in reading, in riding about the country, and in different amusements—as chess and bowls, riding to Althorpe, or even to Harrowden, because there was no good bowling-green at Holmby. One thing only he complained of, and requested to have altered. The Parliament sent him clergymen of their own persuasion to attend him; he begged that any two out of his twelve chaplains might be substituted, but was refused. The Presbyterian ministers allotted him were Thomas Herbert, and Harrington, the author of "Oceana," with whose conversation Charles was much pleased on all subjects but religion and form of government. But though Charles passed the bulk of his time in relaxation, he was not insensible to his situation; and when he had been left there for three months without[60] notice, he addressed to Parliament a letter in which he proposed to allow Presbyterian Church government for three years, his own liberty of worship being granted, and twenty clergymen of the Church of England admitted to the Westminster Assembly; the question of religion at the end of that period was to be finally settled by himself and the two Houses in the usual way, and the command of the army was also to be left to Parliament for ten years, and then to revert to him. The Lords gladly assented to this offer, but the Commons did not entertain it, and other matters soon claimed their attention.

The Presbyterians had, during the active engagements of the army, and the consequent absence of the leading Independents, strengthened their ranks by many new members of Parliament, and they now set about to reduce the power of their opponents by disbanding the greater part of the army. They decreed in February that three thousand horse, twelve hundred dragoons, and eight thousand four hundred foot, should be withdrawn from Fairfax's army and sent to Ireland, and that besides one thousand dragoons and five thousand four hundred horse, all the rest of the army should be disbanded, except as many soldiers as were necessary to man the forty-five castles and fortresses which remained. This would have completely prostrated the power of the Independents; and Cromwell, on whose shrewd character and military success they now looked with terror, would have been first sacrificed, as well as Ireton, Ludlow, Blake, Skippon, Harrison, Algernon Sidney, and others, who had fought the real battle of the late contest. The heads of the Presbyterians in Parliament consisted of unsuccessful commanders—Holles, Waller, Harley, Stapleton, and others—who hated the successful ones, both on account of their brilliant success and of their religion. Fairfax, though a Presbyterian, went along with his officers in all the love of toleration.

It was voted in the Commons, not only that no officer under Fairfax should have higher rank than that of colonel, but that no one should hold a commission who did not take the Covenant and conform to the government of the Church as fixed by Parliament. This would have been a sweeping measure, had the Parliament not had a very obvious party motive in it, and had it paid its soldiers, and been in a condition to discharge them. But at this moment they were immensely in arrears with the pay of the army, and that body, feeling its strength, at once broke up its cantonments round Nottingham, and marched towards London, halting only at Saffron Walden. This movement created a terrible alarm in the City, Parliament regarded it as a menace, but Fairfax excused it on the plea of the exhausted state of the country round their old quarters. The Commons hastened to vote sixty thousand pounds towards the payment of arrears, which amounted to forty-three weeks for the horse and eighteen for the infantry. In the City, the Council and the Presbyterians got up a petition to both Houses, praying that the army might be removed farther from London; but at the same moment a more startling one was in progress from the Independents, addressed to "the supreme authority of the nation, the Commons in Parliament assembled." It not only gave this significant hint of its opinion where the real power of the State lay, but denounced the House of Lords as assuming undue authority, and complained of the persecution and exclusion from all places of trust of those who could not conform to the Church government imposed. The House of Commons condemned this Republican petition, and ordered the army not to approach nearer than twenty-five miles of London. A deputation was sent down to Saffron Walden, where Fairfax summoned a convention of officers to answer them. These gentlemen, on the mention of being sent to Ireland, said they must know, before they could decide, what regiments, what commanders were to go, and whether they were sure of getting their arrears and their future daily pay. They demanded their arrears and some recompense for past services. The Commissioners, not being able to answer these demands, returned and reported to the Commons, mentioning also a petition in progress in the army. Alarmed at this, the Commons summoned to their bar some of the principal officers—Lieutenant-General Hammond, Colonel Robert Hammond, his brother, Colonel Robert Lilburn, Lieutenant-Colonel Grimes, and Colonel Ireton, Cromwell's son-in-law, a member of the House; and they voted that three regiments, commanded by the staunch Presbyterian officers Poyntz, Copley, and Bethell should remain at home. But what roused the army more than all besides, was a motion made by Denzil Holles, and carried, that the army's petition, which was not yet presented, was an improper petition, and that all who were concerned in it should be proceeded against as enemies to the State and disturbers of the public peace.

This declaration of the 30th of March was little short of an act of madness. It could only excite[61] the indignation of a power against which the Parliament, grown unpopular, and divided against itself, was but as a reed in a whirlwind. The officers pronounced it "a blot of infamy" upon them, and the Parliament was glad to attempt to lay the storm by voting, on the 8th of April, that the regiments of Fairfax, Cromwell, Rossiter, Whalley, and Graves, should remain in England. A week afterwards the Commons sent down another deputation, accompanied by the Earl of Warwick, who harangued the officers earnestly to engage for Ireland, promising that Major-General Skippon should command them. Many were pleased with them, but more cried out, "Fairfax and Cromwell! Give us Fairfax and Cromwell, and then we all go!"

LORD FAIRFAX. (After the Portrait by Cooper.)

On the return of the deputation without success, the Commons debated whether they should not disband the whole army. Holles strongly recommended it, and that they should give the soldiers six weeks' pay on disbanding. He thought it would be easy then to engage the men to go to Ireland under other officers, and that four of those officers who were regarded as most hostile in this movement should be summoned to the bar of the House. How miserably he was mistaken was immediately shown, for a petition was presented that very day (the 27th of April), signed by Lieutenant-General Hammond, fourteen colonels and lieutenant-colonels, six majors, and one hundred and thirty captains, lieutenants, and other commissioned officers. It was drawn up in energetic language, complaining of the calumnies spread abroad regarding the army, and enumerating the[62] services they had done, the sacrifices they had made for the Commonwealth, and praying for the payment of the soldiers' arrears. It declared, indeed, that this movement of petitioning had commenced amongst the soldiers, and that the officers had been induced to take it up to prevent anything unacceptable to the House from being put forward.

But the petition of the officers did not prevent the petition of the men. When they saw the Commons did not immediately comply with the petition of the officers, smarting under the vote of disbandment, coupled with the withholding of their pay, horse dragoons and infantry went on their own way. They had lately entered into an association to make their complaints known. The officers had established a military council to consult on and take care of the interests of the army, and the men established a council too. Two commissioned officers, but not exceeding in rank ensigns, and two private soldiers from each regiment, met from time to time to discuss the wants of the army. They were called Adjutators or assistants in the cause, and the word soon became corrupted into Agitators. Thus there was a sort of army Parliament—the officers representing the Peers, the soldiers the Commons. The whole scheme has been, and it is probable very justly, ascribed to the genius of Cromwell. What confirms the supposition is, that an old friend of his, Berry, a captain, became its president, and that Ayres and Desborough, his two particular friends, the latter of whom had married his sister, were in close communication with the leading officers amongst the Agitators.

These movements on the part of the army, and the zealous manner in which Cromwell rose and vindicated the conduct of the soldiers on this occasion, warning the House not to drive so loyal and meritorious a body as the army to desperation, caused them to order him, Skippon, and Fleetwood to go down to the army and quiet its discontent by assuring the soldiers of pay and indemnification. These three, on the 7th of May, met the officers, who demanded time to prepare an answer after consulting their regiments. There appeared to have been doubts and dissension sown by the Presbyterians, and as the different regiments came to opposite conclusions, the Parliament thought it might venture to disband them. On the 25th it was settled that such regiments as did not volunteer for Ireland should be disbanded at fixed times and places. Fairfax, pleading indisposition, left the House and hastened down to the army, and immediately marched it from Saffron Walden to Bury St. Edmunds. The soldiers declared that they would not disband till they were paid, and demanded a rendezvous, declaring that if the officers did not grant it they would hold it themselves. Fairfax announced this to the Parliament, praying it to adopt soothing measures; and that, though he was compelled to comply with a measure out of order, he would do what he could to preserve it. The House, on the 28th, sent down the Earl of Warwick, the Lord Delaware, Sir Gilbert Gerrard, and three other members of the Commons, to promise eight weeks' pay, and to see the disbanding effected. On hearing the terms from the Commissioners, the soldiers exclaimed:—"Eight weeks' pay! We want nearer eight times eight!" There was universal confusion; the men refused to disband without full payment. They hastened to their rendezvous at Bury St. Edmunds, each man paying fourpence towards the expenses; and they ordered that the army should draw together, and a general rendezvous be held on the 4th of June. At Oxford the soldiers seized the disbanding money as part payment, and demanded the rest, or no disbanding.

On the 4th and 5th of June, accordingly, the grand rendezvous was held on Kentford Heath, near Newmarket. They entered into a covenant to see justice done to one and all, and not till then to listen to any other orders or terms. Meanwhile, a still more extraordinary scene had taken place, of which the direct springs may be guessed, but which springs were so closely concealed that no clever historian could ever lay them bare. Scarcely was the honourable House of Commons in possession of the news of the Kentford Heath rendezvous, when it was paralysed by this still more amazing announcement.

The House of Lords, not liking the proceedings of the army, had ordered the king for greater safety to be removed from Holmby to Oatlands, nearer the capital. The army anticipated that move; and by whose orders no man knows, nor ever will know, Cornet Joyce, of Whalley's regiment, followed by a strong party of horse, presented himself on the 2nd of June, a little after midnight, at Holmby House. After surrounding the house with his troop, said to be one thousand strong, he knocked and demanded admittance, telling Major-General Brown and Colonel Graves that he was come to speak to the king. "From whom?" demanded these officers, awoke from their sleep. "From myself," said Joyce; whereat they laughed. But Joyce told them it was no laughing[63] matter. They then advised him to draw off his troops, and in the morning he should see the Commissioners. Joyce replied that he was not come there to be advised by them, or to talk to the Commissioners, but to speak to the king; and speak to him he would, and that soon. At this threat Brown and Graves bade their soldiers stand to their arms and defend the place; but the soldiers, instead, threw open the doors, and bade their old comrades welcome. Joyce then went direct to the chamber of the Commissioners, and informed them that there was a design to seize the king, and place him at the head of an army to put down that under General Fairfax; and that, to prevent another war, he was come to secure the person of the king, and see that he was not led into further mischief; for, added the cornet, "there be some who endeavour to pull down king and people, and set up themselves."

The Commissioners desired him not to disturb the king's sleep, but to wait till morning, and they would tell his majesty of his arrival and business. In the morning Joyce found that Brown had contrived to send off Graves to fetch up the king's guard; and "some of his damning blades did say and swear they would fetch a party." But Joyce—a stout fellow for a tailor, which he had been—did not trouble himself about that, for he knew the guard would not move, and at length insisted on being admitted to the king himself.

According to Joyce's own account, it was ten o'clock in the evening again when he was ushered, with two or three of his followers, into the royal presence. The soldiers took off their hats, and displayed no rudeness, but a blunt proceeding to business. According to Clarendon, the cornet told the king that he was sorry to have disturbed his sleep, but that he must go with him. Charles asked whither. He said to the army. But where was the army, replied the king. The cornet said they would show him. His majesty asked by what authority they came. Joyce said "By this!" and showed him his pistol, and desired his majesty to cause himself to be dressed, because it was necessary they should make haste. The king sent for the Commissioners, who asked Joyce whether he had any order from Parliament. He said no. From the general? No. What, then, was his authority? He gave the same reply as to the king, by holding up his pistol. They said they would write to the Parliament to learn its pleasure, to which Joyce replied, they could do so, but the king meanwhile must go with him.

Finding that the soldiers sent for would not come, and that the officers of the guard said that Joyce's troop were not soldiers of one regiment, but drawn from several regiments, and that Joyce was not their proper officer, it was clear that there was a general design in the affair, and the king said he would go with them at six in the morning. At the hour appointed the king appeared on horseback, and found the troop all mounted and ready. The king had overnight demanded of Joyce whether he should be forced to do anything against his conscience, and whether he should have his servants with him; and Joyce replied that there was no intention to lay any constraint on his majesty, only to prevent his being made use of to break up the army before justice had been done to it. Before starting, Charles again demanded from Joyce, in the presence of the troop, where was his commission, enjoining him to deal ingenuously with him, and repeating, "Where, I ask you again, is your commission?" "Here," said Joyce, "behind me," pointing to the soldiers. Charles smiled, and said, "It is a fair commission, and as well written as I have ever seen a commission written in my life; a company of handsome, proper gentlemen, as I have seen a great while. But what if I should refuse to go with you? I hope you would not force me. I am your king; you ought not to lay violent hands on your king. I acknowledge none to be above me here but God." He then demanded again whither they proposed to conduct him. Oxford and Cambridge were named, to both of which places Charles objected. Newmarket was next named, and to that he consented. So the first day they rode to Hinchinbrook, and the next to Childersley, near Newmarket.

The news of these proceedings of the army carried consternation into the two Houses of Parliament, and into the City, where the Presbyterian party was in full strength. They ordered the immediate arrest of Cromwell, which they had been intending some time, but they were informed that he left town the very same morning that Joyce appeared at Holmby—a significant fact—and was seen riding away with only one attendant. He reached the headquarters of the army with his horse all in foam. The House voted to sit all the next day, though it was Sunday, and have Mr. Marshall to pray for them. Rumour declared that the army was on its march, and would be there the next day at noon. The House ordered the Committee of Safety to sit up all night, taking measures for the protection of the City; the[64] train-bands to be called out, and all the lines of communication guarded. The next day the shops were shut, the town was in indescribable confusion, and terror in every face, as though the army was already there. The Parliament wrote to Fairfax, commanding that the army should not infringe the order of the two Houses, by coming within twenty-five miles of London, that the king should be returned to the care of the Commissioners who attended him at Holmby, and that Colonel Rossiter's regiment should guard his person. Fairfax replied that the army had reached St. Albans before he received their command, but it should proceed no farther; that he had sent Colonel Whalley with his regiment to meet his majesty on his way from Holmby, and offered to return him thither, but that he preferred the air of Newmarket, and that all care should be taken of his person.

CORNET JOYCE'S INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES. (See p. 63.)

In fact, Charles was delighted with the change. He had escaped from the harsh keeping and the strict regimen of the Presbyterians, whom he detested, and felt himself, as it were, a king again at the head of an army: the dissensions now rushing on so hotly between his enemies wonderfully encouraging his hopes of making friends of the more liberal party. He was in a condition of greater freedom and respect in the army than he had been at Holmby: there was a larger number of troops and the officers were superior. He was relieved from the presence of Cornet Joyce. All restraint being taken off from persons resorting to him, he saw every day the faces of many that were grateful to him. No sooner did he ask for the attendance of his own chaplains than those he named (Drs. Sheldon, Morley, Sanderson, and Hammond) were sent for, and performed the service regularly, no one being forbidden to attend. The king was left to his leisure and his friends, only removing with the army as it moved, and in all places he was as well provided for and accommodated as he had been in any progress. The best gentlemen, Clarendon admits, of the several counties through which he passed, daily resorted to him without distinction. He was attended by some of his old trusty servants in the places nearest his person. On hearing of his present condition, the queen sent Sir John Berkeley from[65] Paris, and his old groom of the chambers, who had been living at Rouen, to be with him again, and they were freely admitted by Cromwell and Ireton. "Many good officers," says Clarendon, "who had served his majesty faithfully, were civilly received by the officers of the army, and lived quietly in their quarters, which they could not do anywhere else, which raised a great reputation to the army throughout England, and as much reproach upon Parliament." This was raised still more by the army's address to Parliament, desiring that "care might be taken for settling the king's rights, according to the several professions they had made in their declarations; and that the royal party might be treated with more candour and less rigour." Even the most devoted of Royalists, Sir Philip Warwick, says, "The deep and bloody-hearted Independents all this while used the king very civilly, admitting several of his servants and some of his chaplains to attend him, and officiate by the service-book."

FAIRFAX HOUSE, PUTNEY. (From a Photograph by W. Field & Co., Putney.)

The Commons ordered all officers to attend their regiments, and sent down Commissioners to inform the army of the votes of the two Houses. The army gave the Commissioners such a reception as no Commissioners had ever witnessed before. Twenty-one thousand men had assembled to a rendezvous on Triploe Heath, near Royston; and the General and the Commissioners rode to each regiment, to acquaint them with the Parliamentary votes as to their instalment of pay, their disbanding, and their not approaching within twenty-five miles of London. The answer was sent up in shouts of "Justice! justice!" A petition also from the well-affected people of Essex was delivered on the field to the General in presence of the Commissioners, against the disbanding, declaring "that the Commonwealth had many enemies, who watched for such an opportunity to destroy the good people." A memorial was, moreover, drawn up and signed by the General and all the chief officers, to the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London, warning them against false representations of the intentions of the army, for that the war being at an end, all that they desired and prayed for was that the peace of the kingdom should be settled according to the declarations of Parliament before the army was called out, and that[66] being done, the army should be paid before it was disbanded.

So far from pacifying the Parliament, these proceedings alarmed it infinitely more, and it issued an order that the army should not come within forty-five miles of the capital. On its part, the army collected addresses from Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and the surrounding counties, praying the purgation of the House from all such members as were disqualified from sitting there by corruption, delinquency, abuse of the State, or undue election; and on the 16th of June, from its headquarters at St. Albans, the army formally impeached of high treason eleven of the most active Presbyterian members. This impeachment was presented to the House by twelve officers of the army—colonels, lieutenant-colonels, majors, and captains. Within a few days the General and officers sent a letter to the House, informing it that they would appoint proper persons to conduct the impeachment, and make good their charges; and desired the House to suspend the accused forthwith, as it was not fitting that those persons who had done their best to prejudice the army should sit as judges of their own actions.

This, says Clarendon, was an arrow out of their own quiver, which the Commons did not expect; and though it was a legitimate consequence of the impeachments of Strafford, Laud, and others, they endeavoured to set it at defiance. The Parliament and its army were, in fact, come to the pass which the brave old Royalist, Sir Jacob Astley, had foreseen when he surrendered his regiment at Stowe, in 1646:—"You have done your work, my masters, and may go and play, unless you will fall out amongst yourselves."

The army, to settle the matter, marched from St. Albans to Uxbridge, and at that sight the eleven members withdrew from the House of Commons, and the Commons assumed a modest and complying behaviour, voting the army under Fairfax to be the real army of England and worthy of all respect. They sent certain proposals to Fairfax, which induced him to remove his headquarters from Uxbridge to Wycombe. The eleven members, looking on this as a degree of submission to Parliament, immediately plucked up courage, and Holles and the rest appeared in their places, preferring charges in return against the officers, and demanding a fair trial. But they soon perceived their mistake, and, soliciting the Speaker's leave of absence and his passport to go out of the kingdom, disappeared.

The struggle between the army and Parliament—that is, between the Presbyterian and Independent interests—was all this time raging. For six weeks the army was advancing or retiring, according as the Parliament acted; the Parliament only giving way through intimidation. According as affairs stood, the City was either peaceful or in alarm, now shutting its shops, now carrying on much negotiation; the army lying still near, and paid more regularly, out of terror, by the Parliament. At length the army had so far succeeded as to have the insulting declaration of Holles—"the blot of ignominy"—erased from the journals of the House, and the ordinance of the 4th of May—procured by Holles—for the placing of the militia of the City in more exclusively Presbyterian hands—revoked. But towards the end of July the strong Presbyterian element in London was again in such ferment that it forgot its terrors of the army, and proceeded to daring extremities. The Presbyterian faction demanded that conventicles—that is, the meeting-houses of all classes, except Presbyterians—should be closed, and called on the citizens to meet in Guildhall to hear the Covenant read, and sign an engagement—soldiers, sailors, citizens, and apprentices—to drive away the army and bring the king to Westminster, and make a treaty with him. A hundred thousand signatures were put to this paper, and had the courage been half as great as the bluster the army had been swept to destruction. On the 26th of July, a few days afterwards, a vast rabble surrounded the Houses of Parliament, calling on both Lords and Commons to restore the order regarding the City militia; they crowded into the Houses with their hats on, crying, "Vote! vote!" and their numbers keeping the doors open. Under this intimidation both Lords and Commons voted the restoration of the Presbyterian ordinance for the change of the militia, and adjourned to Friday.

On Friday the two Houses met, but were astonished to find that their Speakers had fled, accompanied by several members of both Houses, and were gone to the army. It was found that Sir Henry Vane, the Earl of Northumberland, the Earl of Warwick, and other Lords and Commoners were gone. Had it been only Sir Henry Vane and the Independents who had gone, it would have astonished nobody; but neither Lenthall, the Speaker of the Commons, nor the Earl of Manchester, the Speaker of the Lords, was suspected of any great leaning to the army, whilst Warwick was a staunch Presbyterian, and Northumberland so much in the favour of that party as to have the care of the royal children. This circumstance[67] showed the violence of the mob which had forced Parliament, and rendered moderate men resolved to escape rather than submit to be its puppets. There were no less than fifteen Lords and a hundred Commoners who had thus resented mob intimidation.

On making this lamentable discovery, the two Houses elected temporary Speakers, and issued orders forbidding the army to advance, recalling the eleven fugitive members, and ordered Massey, Waller, and Poyntz to call out the militia and defend the City.

No sooner had Fairfax heard the news of these proceedings than he instantly sent the king to Hampton Court, and marched from Bedford to Hounslow Heath, where he ordered a general rendezvous of the whole army. On Hounslow Heath, at the appointed rendezvous, the Speakers of the two Houses, with their maces, and attended by the fugitive Lords and Commons, stated to the general that they had not freedom in Westminster, but were in danger of their lives from tumult, and claimed the protection of the army. The general and the officers received the Speakers and members with profound respect, and assured them they would reinstate them in their proper places, or perish in the attempt. Nothing, in fact, could have been such a godsend to the army; for, besides their own grievances, they had the grievances of the coerced members to redress, and the sanctity of Parliament to defend. They ordered the most careful accommodation for the comfort of the members, and a guard to attend them, consulting them on all their measures. Fairfax quartered his army about Hounslow, Brentford, Twickenham, and the adjacent villages, at the same time ordering Colonel Rainsborough to cross the Thames at Hampton Court with a brigade of horse and foot and cannon, and to secure Southwark and the works which covered the end of London Bridge.

Meanwhile, never was London in more terrible confusion. The Commons, having no mace of their own, sent for the City mace. The colonels were in all haste calling out the militia. On Saturday and Monday, August 1 and 2, the shops were all shut, nothing going on but enlisting and mustering. St. James's Fields were in a stir with drilling; news constantly coming of the approach of the army. "Massey," says Whitelock, "sent out scouts to Brentford; but ten men of the army beat thirty of his, and took a flag from them. The City militia and Common Council sat late, and a great number of people attended at Guildhall. When a scout came in and brought news that the army made a halt, or other good intelligence, they cried, 'One and all!' But if the scouts brought word that the army was advancing, then they would cry as loud, 'Treat! treat! treat!' and thus they spent the night."

Tuesday, August the 3rd, was a fearful day. The people of Southwark declared that they would not fight against the army, and went in crowds to Guildhall, demanding peace, at which Poyntz lost all patience, drew his sword, and slashed many of them, some mortally.

The Southwarkers kept their word, for they received Rainsborough and his troops; the militia openly fraternised with the soldiers, shaking hands with them through the gates, and abandoned to them the works which protected the City. Rainsborough took possession, without opposition, of all the forts and works on that side of the river from Southwark to Gravesend. In the morning the authorities of the City, finding that Southwark was in possession of the army, and the City gate on that side in their hands, were completely prostrated and hastened to make their submission. Poyntz, accustomed to conquest in the field, and the hardihood of the Presbyterian soldiers, was filled with contempt for these cringing, cowering citizens. What! had they not ten thousand men in arms, a loan of ten thousand pounds arranged and orders to raise auxiliary troops to the amount of eighteen regiments? Had they not plenty of ammunition and arms in the Tower, whence they had drawn four hundred barrels of gunpowder and other material for present defence? But all availed not; the citizens hastened to lay themselves and the City at the feet of Fairfax. He had fixed his headquarters at Hammersmith, but he met the civic authorities at Holland House, Kensington, where he dictated the following conditions:—That they should abandon the Parliament now sitting and the eleven impeached members; should restore the militia to the Independents; surrender all their forts, including the Tower; recall their declarations, and conduct themselves peaceably.

On Friday, the 6th of August, Fairfax entered the City, preceded by a regiment of infantry and another of cavalry. He was on horseback, attended by his body-guards and a crowd of gentlemen. A long train of carriages, containing the fugitive Speakers and members (Lords and Commons), followed, and then another regiment of cavalry. The soldiers marched three abreast, with boughs of laurel in their hats. The late[68] turbulent multitudes completed their shame by raising forced acclamations as they passed. Fairfax thus proceeded through Hyde Park, where the Corporation met him, and offered him a great gold cup, which he curtly declined, and so rode on to the Houses of Parliament, where he replaced the Speakers in their respective chairs, and the members in their old places. Not one of the Lords who had remained, except the Earl of Pembroke, ventured to appear, and he declared that he considered the proceedings since the departure of the Speakers as null. No sooner were the Speakers in their places than Parliament voted thanks to the general and the army; made Fairfax commander of all the forces in England and Wales, and Constable of the Tower. It ordered a gratuity of a month's pay for the army, and that the City militia should be divided, and Southwark, Westminster, and the Tower Hamlets should command their own. The Lords voted all Acts of Parliament from the departure of the Speakers, on the 26th of June, to their return on the 6th of August, void; but the resolution did not pass the Commons, where there was a large body of Presbyterians, without much opposition.

The eleven impeached members fled, and were allowed to escape into France, whereupon they were voted guilty of high treason, as well as the Lord Mayor and four aldermen of London, two officers of the train-band, and the Earls of Suffolk, Lincoln, and Middleton, the Lords Willoughby, Hunsdon, Berkeley, and Maynard. The civic officers were sent to the Tower. The City was ordered to find the one hundred thousand pounds voted for the army. Fairfax distributed different regiments about Whitehall and the Houses of Parliament for their protection, and others in the Strand, Holborn, and Southwark, to keep the City quiet. His headquarters were moved to Putney, with forces at Chelsea and Fulham. On Sunday he and the officers attended the preaching of Hugh Peters, the army chaplain, at Putney Church, and thus the Independents were in full power, and the Presbyterians signally humbled.

Before, and also whilst, these events had been taking place, the army had made overtures to the king for peace and a solid settlement of the kingdom. As we have seen, from the moment that the king came into their hands, they had treated him in a far different style to the Presbyterians. He seemed, in his freedom of action, in the admission of his children and friends to his society, in the respect and even friendliness shown him to feel himself a king again. There were many reasons why the Independents should desire to close with the king. Though they had the army with them, they knew that the Presbyterians were far more numerous. London was vehemently Presbyterian, and the Scots were ready to back that party, because essentially the same in religion as themselves. The Independents and all the Dissenters who ranged themselves under their banners were anxious for religious liberty; the Scottish and English Presbyterians had no more idea of such a thing as belonging to Christianity than had the Catholics or the Church of England as represented by Charles and Laud.

From the moment that the king was received by the army, he seems to have won on the goodwill of the officers. Fairfax, on meeting him on his way from Holmby, kissed his hand, and treated him with all the deference due to the sovereign. Cromwell and Ireton, though they did not so far condescend, and kept a degree of distant reserve, as remembering that they had to treat Charles as an enemy, were soon softened, and Cromwell sent him assurances of his attachment, and of his desire to see his affairs set right. Many of the officers openly expressed commiseration of his misfortunes, and admiration of his real piety, and his amiable domestic character. It was not long before such relations were established with him, and with his confidential friends Berkeley, Ashburnham, and Legge, that secret negotiations were commenced for a settlement of all the difficulties between him and his people. The officers made him several public addresses expressive of their sincere desire to see a pacification effected; and Fairfax, to prepare the way, addressed a letter to the two Houses, repelling the aspersion cast upon the army of its being hostile to the monarchy, and avowing that "tender, equitable, and moderate dealings towards him, his family, and his former adherents," should be adopted to heal the feuds of the nation.

LORD CLARENDON. (After the Portrait by Sir Peter Lely.)

It has been the fashion to consider Cromwell as a consummate hypocrite, and to regard all that he did as a part acted for the ultimate attainment of his own ends. This is the view which Clarendon has taken of him; but, whatever he might do at a later period, everything shows that at this time both he and his brother officers were most really in earnest, and, could Charles have been brought to subscribe to any terms except such as gave up the nation to his uncontrolled will, at this moment his troubles would have been at an end, and he would have found himself on a constitutional[69] throne, with every means of honour and happiness in his power. Nothing more convincingly demonstrates this than the conditions which the Parliament submitted to him. They, in fact, greatly resembled the celebrated conditions of peace offered at Uxbridge, with several propositions regarding Parliament and taxation, which mark a wonderfully improved political knowledge and liberality in the officers. They did not even insist on the abolition of the hierarchy, but merely stipulated for the toleration of other opinions, taking away all penalties for not attending church, and for attending what were called conventicles. The command of the army by Parliament was to be restricted to ten years; only five of the Royalist adherents were to be excluded from pardon, and some less objectionable mode of protecting the State against Catholic designs than the present oppressive laws against recusants was to be devised. Parliaments were to continue two years, unless dissolved earlier by their own consent; and were to sit every year for a prescribed term, or a shorter one, if business permitted. Rotten boroughs, or such as were insignificant, were to be disfranchised, and a greater number of members returned from the counties in proportion to the amount of rates; and all that regarded election of members or reforms of the Commons should belong exclusively to the Commons. There were very judicious regulations for the nomination of sheriffs and of magistrates; the excise was to be taken from all articles of life at once, and from all other articles very shortly: the land-tax was to be fairly and equally apportioned; the irritating maintenance of the clergy by tithes was to be done away with; suits[70] at law were to be made less expensive; all men to be made liable for their debts; and insolvent debtors who had surrendered all their property to their creditors were to be discharged.

The whole project was decidedly creditable to the officers of the army. Charles's own friends and advisers were charmed with it, and flattered themselves that at length they saw a prospect of ending all troubles; but they were quickly undeceived, and struck down in dumb astonishment by Charles rejecting them.

Charles was still the same man; he was at the same moment secretly listening to the overtures of the Scottish Commissioners, who were jealous of the army, and instead of seizing the opportunity to be once more a powerful and beloved king, he was flattering himself with the old idea that he would bring the two great factions "to extirpate each other." Sir John Berkeley, his earnest adviser, says:—"What with having so concurring a second as Mr. Ashburnham, and what with the encouraging messages of Lord Lauderdale and others from the Presbyterian party and the city of London, who pretended to despise the army, and to oppose them to death, his Majesty seemed very much elated; inasmuch that when the proposals were solemnly sent to him, and his concurrence most humbly and earnestly desired, his Majesty, not only to the astonishment of Ireton and the rest, but even to mine, entertained them with very tart and bitter discourses, saying sometimes that he would have no man suffer for his sake, and that he repented of nothing so much as the Bill against the Lord Strafford, which, though most true, was unpleasant for them to hear; that he would have the Church established according to law, by the proposals. They replied it was none of their work to do it; that it was enough for them to waive the point, and, they hoped, enough for his Majesty, since he had waived the government of the Church in Scotland. His Majesty said that he hoped God had forgiven him that sin, and repeated often, 'You cannot be without me; you will fall to ruin if I do not sustain you!'"

It was still the old man; the old intolerable, incorrigible talk. He could not give up a single proposition to save all the rest—his life, his family, his crown, and kingdom. The officers looked at one another in amazement; the king's friends in consternation. Sir John Berkeley whispered in his ear that his Majesty seemed to have some secret strength that they did not know of, on which Charles seemed to recollect himself, and spoke more softly; but it was too late, for Colonel Rainsborough, who was least inclined for the pacification, rode to the army and made known the king's obstinacy. The agitators rushed together in crowds, and, excessively chagrined at the rejection of such terms, burst into the bedchamber of Lord Lauderdale, whom they suspected of having thus perverted the king's mind, and compelled him, in spite of his standing in his position as Commissioner from the Estates of Scotland, to rise, and get off back again to Edinburgh.

At this crisis the alarm at the proceedings in London, and the march upon it just related, took place. Still the officers did not cease their exertions to persuade the king to adopt the proposals; but he was waiting to see what turn affairs would take, and listening at the same time to the Scots and the Irish Catholics. This idea was so little concealed that, talking with Ireton, he let slip the observation, "I shall play my game as well as I can." On which Ireton replied, "If your Majesty has a game to play, you must give us leave also to play ours." As the bluster of the City seemed to subside before the approaching army, Charles sent Berkeley to ask the officers, "If he should accept the proposals, what would ensue?" They said, "We will offer them to the Parliament." "And if they should reject them, what then?" The rest of the officers hesitating to answer such a question, Rainsborough said bluntly, "If they won't agree, we will make them!" to which all the rest instantly assented. Berkeley carried this decisive answer to Charles, but there, he says, he had very different work; he was just as unyielding as ever. Cromwell and Ireton then begged that though the king would not sign the proposals, he would at least write a kind letter to the army, which should show the country that they were doing nothing contrary to his Majesty's mind. With the co-operation of Berkeley, Ashburnham, and others of the king's friends, they met at Windsor, and drew up such a letter, but they could not prevail on him to sign it till the City had yielded, and it was too late. Still the officers, to prove that their triumph had not altered in the least their desire for agreement with the king, again voted the proposals as their terms of settlement. Charles renewed his discussion with them, and was every day sending messages by Ashburnham to Cromwell and Ireton, yet never coming nearer; but, on the other hand, bringing those officers into suspicion with a new and fanatic party which had arisen, which originally[71] called themselves Rationalists, but soon after Levellers.

THE CHILDREN OF CHARLES I.

From the Picture by Miss Margaret I. Dicksee, in the Oldham Art Gallery

The Levellers were, in fact, a set of men amongst whom Lilburne, now Colonel John Lilburne, was a leading character. They had imbibed from the Old Testament, which was their favourite study, a spirit of Republicanism combined with a wild fanatic style of language. They found in the remarks on monarchs in the Scriptures, on the election of Saul by Israel, a clear denunciation of all kings, and they declared they would no longer seek after kings, who aimed only at absolute power; nor after lords, who sought only honours and places; but they would have a free government by a Parliament, and a free religion. They drew up a paper called "The Case of the Army," and another called "The Agreement of the People," which were presented to the general and the Agitators of the eleven regiments. Religious Republicanism was abroad in the army, and they drew up a new constitution, at which a biennial Parliament, with six monthly sessions, a widely-extended franchise, and a more equally-distributed representation, was at the head. There were to be neither king nor lords in their system. Colonels Pride and Rainsborough supported their views: Cromwell and Ireton strenuously opposed them. They were, therefore, immediately the objects of attack, and represented as being in a close and secret compact with the king, the Ahab of the nation, to betray the people. Lilburne was busily employed in writing and printing violent denunciations in flaming style, and strongly garnished with Bible terms. Parliament denounced the doctrines of the Levellers as destructive of all government, and ordered the authors to be prosecuted.

Whilst this fanatic effervescence had broken out in the army, the Presbyterians in Parliament and the Scottish Commissioners made one effort more for the recovery of their ascendency. Regarding the religious toleration proposed in the army conditions as something horrible and monstrously wicked, they drew up fresh proposals of their own, and presented them to the king. If Charles could not endure the army proposals, he was not likely to accept those of the Presbyterians, who gave no place to his own Church at all; and he told them that he liked those of the army better. This answer Berkeley showed to the officers of the army before it was sent; they highly approved of it, and promised to do all they could in the House to get an order voted for a personal treaty, "and," Berkeley adds, "to my understanding, performed it, for both Cromwell and Ireton, with Vane and all their friends, seconded with great resolution this desire of his Majesty." Cromwell, indeed, he says, spoke so zealously in its favour that it only increased, both in the House and out of it, the suspicion of his having made a compact with the king to restore him. The more the officers argued for a personal treaty, the more the Presbyterians in the House opposed it; but at length a resolution was carried for it. It was thought that it would occupy twenty days, but it went on for two months, and came to nothing—other and strange events occurring.

The Levellers, after this display of zeal on the part of Cromwell, vowed that they would kill both him and the king, whom they not only styled an Ahab, a man of blood, and the everlasting obstacle to peace and liberty, but demanded his head as the cause of the murder of thousands of free-born Englishmen. Cromwell declared that his life was not safe in his own quarters, and we are assured that Lilburne and another Agitator named Wildman had agreed to assassinate him as a renegade and traitor to liberty. To check this wild and dangerous spirit in the army, Cromwell and Ireton recommended that it should be drawn closer together, and thus more under the immediate discipline of its chief officers. This was agreed upon, and a general rendezvous was appointed to take place at Ware on the 16th of November.

During the interval Charles was royally lodged at Hampton Court, and was freely permitted to have his children with him, but all the time he was at his usual work of plotting. The Marquis of Ormond, having surrendered his command in Ireland to the Parliament, was come hither; and Lord Capel, who had been one of Charles's most distinguished commanders, being also permitted by Parliament to return from abroad, a scheme was laid, whilst Charles was amusing the army and Parliament with the discussion of the "Proposals," that the next spring, through the Scottish Commissioners, who were also in the plot, a Scottish army should enter England forty thousand strong, and calling on the Presbyterians to join them should march forward. At the same time Ormond should lead an army from Ireland, whilst Capel summoned the rest of the king's friends in England to join the converging forces, and plant the king on the throne. But this wholesale conspiracy could not escape the secret agents of Cromwell; the whole was revealed to him, and he bitterly upbraided Ashburnham with the incurable duplicity of his master, who, whilst he[72] was negotiating with the army, was planning its destruction.

From this moment, whatever was the cause, and the preceding incidents appear both certain and sufficient, Cromwell, Ireton, and the army in general, came to the conclusion that all attempts to bring so double-faced and intriguing a person to honourable and enduring terms were vain; that if he were restored to power, he would use it to destroy every one who had been compelled to oppose his despotic plans; if he were not restored, they would be in a perpetual state of plottings, alarms, and disquietudes, destructive of all comfort or prosperity to the nation. As the officers drew back from further intercourse with the king, the menaces of the Levellers became louder; and there were not wanting persons to carry these threats to the king. He saw the Levellers growing in violence, and in numbers; in fact, Leveller and Agitator were synonymous terms; the infection had spread through the greater part of the army. The fact of the officers having been friendly with him, had made them suspicious to the men; they had driven Ireton from the council, and there were loud threats of impeaching Cromwell. Several regiments were in a state of insubordination, and it was doubtful whether, at the approaching rendezvous, Fairfax could maintain the discipline of the army. The reports of the proceedings of the Levellers (who really threatened to seize his person to prevent the Parliament or officers agreeing with him) and their truculent manifestoes, were all diligently carried to Charles by the Scottish Commissioners, who, according to Berkeley, "were the first that presented his dangers to him." He was assured by Mr. Ackworth that Colonel Rainsborough, the favourite of the Levellers, meant to kill him; and Clarendon says that "every day he received little billets or letters, secretly conveyed to him without any name, which advertised him of wicked designs upon his life;" many, he adds, who repaired to him brought the same advice from men of unquestionable sincerity.

Charles resolved to escape, and, as he was in some cases as religiously scrupulous of his word as he was in others reckless of it, he withdrew his promise not to attempt to escape, on the plea that he found himself quite as rigorously watched as if he were not on honour. Colonel Whalley, who commanded his guard, at once ordered it to be doubled, and dismissed all the king's servants except Legge, refusing further admittance to him. Notwithstanding this, he found means of communicating with Ashburnham and Berkeley, and consulted with them on the means of escape, and the place to escape to. He suggested the City, and Ashburnham advised him to go to the house of the Lord Mayor, in London, there to meet the Scottish Commissioners, agree with them on their last propositions, and then send for the Lords. Berkeley disapproved of this, believing they would not bring over the Commons; and then Ashburnham recommended the king to flee to the Isle of Wight, and throw himself on the generosity of Colonel Hammond, the governor there. This, he says, he did, because Colonel Hammond had a few days before told him he was going down to his government, "because he found the army was resolved to break all promises with the king, and that he would have nothing to do with such perfidious actions."

This seems to have inspired a belief in these men that Hammond was secretly in favour of the king, strengthened, no doubt, by the fact that Dr. Hammond, the king's chaplain, was his uncle, and had lately introduced him to his Majesty as an ingenuous and repentant youth, and, notwithstanding his post, of real loyalty. They forgot that Hammond had another uncle, Lieutenant-General Hammond, who was as democratic as the chaplain was loyal, and was a great patron of the Adjutators. They seem to have reckoned as little on the honour of the young man, who was a gentleman and officer, and had married a daughter of John Hampden.

There were other schemes, one to seek refuge in Sir John Oglander's House, in the Isle of Wight; and there was a talk of a ship being ordered to be somewhere ready for him; but when the escape was made, it appeared to have been just as ill contrived as all the rest of Charles's escapes. Ashburnham and Berkeley had contrived to meet the king in the evening in the gallery of Hampton Court, and settled the mode of escape. It was the king's custom, on the Mondays and Thursdays, to write letters for the foreign post, and in the evenings he left his bedchamber between five and six o'clock and went to prayers, and thence to supper. On one of these evenings, Thursday, the 11th of November, Whalley, finding the king much later than usual in leaving his chamber, became uneasy, went thither, and found him gone. On the table he had left some letters, one to the Parliament, another to the Commissioners, and a third to Colonel Whalley. In the letter to the Parliament he said liberty was as necessary to kings as others; that he had endured a long[73] captivity in the hope that it might lead to a good peace, but that, as it did not, he had withdrawn himself; that, wherever he might be, he should earnestly desire a satisfactory agreement without further bloodshed, and was ready to break through his cloud of retirement and show himself the father of his country whenever he could be heard with honour, freedom, and safety.

CARISBROOKE CASTLE, ISLE OF WIGHT. (From a photograph by F. G. O. Stuart, Southampton.)

It appeared that he had escaped by way of Paradise, a place so called in the gardens; his cloak was found lying in the gallery, and there were tramplings about a back gate leading to the waterside. Legge accompanied him down the backstairs, and Ashburnham and Berkeley joined them at the gate. The night was dark and stormy, which favoured their escape. They crossed the river at Thames Ditton, and made for Sutton, in Hampshire, where they had horses in readiness. Why they had not provided horses at a nearer point does not appear. In the night they lost their way in the forest, and reaching Sutton only at daybreak, and hearing that a county committee on Parliamentary business was sitting there, they got out their horses, and rode away towards Southampton.

That night Cromwell was aroused from his bed at Putney with a startling express that the king had escaped. He at once despatched a letter to the Speaker, Lenthall, dated twelve o'clock, with the tidings for Parliament, and the news was announced next morning to both Houses. The confusion may be imagined; orders were issued to close all ports; and those who concealed the place of the king's retreat, or harboured his person, were declared guilty of high treason, and menaced with loss of all their estate, and with death without mercy. On the 13th of November Whalley gave a narrative to the Lords of the particulars of his escape as far as known. It appeared that the repeated howling of a greyhound in the king's chamber first assured them that he could not be there. However, on Monday, the 15th, a letter from Colonel Hammond, from the Isle of Wight, much to the relief of Parliament and army, announced that the absconded king was safe in his hands at Carisbrooke Castle.

[74]

Charles was at first treated by Colonel Hammond with great leniency, and again employed the time on his hands in negotiation. As the army had restored unity to itself, he sought to obtain its concurrence to a personal treaty, and sent Berkeley to Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton, at Windsor. On his way there he fell in with Cornet Joyce, who carried off the king from Holmby, who informed him of an ominous proposition discussed by the Agitators, namely, to bring the king to trial; not, he said, with any design of putting him to death, but to prove on evidence who really bore the blame of the war. This prelude too truly prefigured the interview itself. Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton received Berkeley with severe aspects and distant coldness, and told him that they were but the servants of the Parliament, and referred him to it. He was not prevented by this, however, from sending a secret message to Cromwell, reminding him of his promises, and letting him know that he had secret instructions from the king to him. But Cromwell had now had convincing proofs of the king's duplicity; he refused to receive the letters, informed Berkeley that he would do all in his power towards effecting a real peace, but was not disposed to risk his head for the king's sake. Repulsed here, Charles applied to Parliament, which sent him four propositions as the basis of agreement, namely, that his Majesty should concur in the Bill for settling the militia; should recall all the proclamations, oaths, etc., against Parliament; should disqualify all peers made since the renewal of the Great Seal from sitting in the House of Peers; and should pass a Bill for the adjournment of Parliament being placed in the power of the Houses themselves. These Bills were sent by Commissioners to Carisbrooke; but the Scottish Commissioners, who dreaded the acceptance of them as rendering the English Parliament independent of the League and Covenant, hastened there, too, with a modified treaty of their own. Charles, thus encouraged, refused the four Bills; the Commissioners kissed hands and returned, and Charles signed the proposals of the Scots, which guaranteed the independence of their own religion, on condition of finding an army of forty thousand men for the restoration of the king.

Charles was not left long in ignorance of the effect of his refusal of the Parliamentary proposals, and of the discovery of his secret treaty with the Scots. Colonel Hammond received orders to take every measure for the safe keeping of the king, and for preventing the lurking of suspicious vessels in Southampton Water, as it was known that a ship had been engaged by the queen to carry off Charles and land him at Berwick, in readiness to co-operate with the Scottish movement. Hammond dismissed Ashburnham, Legge, and Berkeley, with all other Royalists, from the island; sent away a vessel, supposed to be the very one engaged by the queen; and put the king under strict surveillance and a double guard. He was no longer an apparently free guest, but a close prisoner.

This treatment only doubled his determination to escape. Ashburnham, Berkeley, and Legge, though banished from the island, kept saddle-horses on the coast ready, in case of the king's escaping from Carisbrooke; and his friends from all quarters corresponded with him, and their letters were conveyed to him by Henry Firebrace, who was in some employment in the castle, and was occasionally engaged by one of the warders to take his place before the king's chamber-door, when he put the correspondence entrusted to him through a crevice of the door. The whole island resented the incarceration of the king, and there were loud threats of rising and liberating him by force. One Captain Burley was mad enough to make the attempt. At midnight a drum was beaten. Burley put himself at the head of a rabble in Newport, without, as reported, having a single musket among them, and was speedily taken and executed.

On the 3rd of January, 1648, the two Houses discussed the relations with the king, and in the Commons the plainest Republican sentiments were avowed. The refusal of the four Bills by the king was deemed convincing proof that no possibility was left of ever coming to agreement with him. Sir Thomas Wroth declared that kings of late had conducted themselves more like inmates of Bedlam than anything else, and that he did not care what government was set up if it were not by kings or devils. Ireton contended that the relation of king and subjects implied mutual bonds and duties; the king was to protect the people, and the people to maintain the king in his duty, but that Charles had abandoned his duty, had ceased to protect his people, nay, had made war on them, and therefore had annulled the compact; that, seeing this, the army was resolved to stand by the Parliament for the establishment of national right. Cromwell, after many had proceeded in a like strain, asserted that it was time to fulfil the wearied expectation of the people, and to show that they could govern and defend the kingdom by their own power, and to decide that there was[75] nothing to be hoped from a man whose heart God had hardened in obstinacy. In fact, in Parliament, almost as much as in the army, a large party had come to the conclusion that it was odious in the sight of God to be governed by a king.

The result was a vote that Parliament would make no further applications or addresses to the king, nor receive any message from him, except by full consent of both Houses, under penalty of high treason. The Lords concurred in the vote, and a public declaration was circulated to that effect; and it was also agreed that the Committee of Public Safety should again sit and act alone, without the aid of any foreign coadjutors. This was a plain hint to the Scots that Parliament knew of their late treaty. Hitherto they had formed part of the Committee of both kingdoms, so that they had shared the government of England. This was withdrawn; the Scots therefore demanded the payment of the last one hundred thousand pounds due to them by the treaty of evacuation, and announced their intention to retire on receiving it.

This decided step of Parliament, and the rigour with which Charles was guarded, put the Scots, the Presbyterians, the Royalists all on the alert. They stirred up everywhere a feeling of commiseration for him, as harshly and arbitrarily used; it was represented that the vote of non-address amounted to a declaration that all attempts at reconciliation were at an end, and that the Independents meant to give effect to the doctrines of the army and put the king to death. These efforts were productive of a rapidly and widely spreading sentiment in the king's favour, and soon formidable insurrections were on foot. The king himself omitted no means of attempting his escape. By his plans his second son, the Duke of York, had made his escape from the care of the Earl of Northumberland in female attire, and got to Holland. Towards the end of March Charles tried to escape out of the window of his chamber. A silken cord was prepared to let him down; and, to prove the safety of the descent, Firebrace forced himself between the iron stanchions of the window and let himself down; but the king, in essaying to follow, stuck fast, and, after violent efforts, found it impossible to get through. Cromwell announced to Hammond, in a letter still extant, that Parliament was informed that aquafortis had been sent down to corrode this obstructing bar; that the attempt was to be renewed during the coming dark nights, and that Captain Titus and some others about the king were not to be trusted. At the same time he informed him that the Commons, in reward of his vigilance and services in securing and keeping the king, had raised his pay from ten to twenty pounds a week, had voted him one thousand pounds, and settled upon him and his heirs five hundred pounds per annum.

The reaction in favour of the king now began to discover itself on all sides. Charles published an appeal to the nation against the proceedings of Parliament, which seemed to cut off all further hope of accommodation. Parliament issued a counter-statement, and numerous rejoinders were the consequence—the most able from the pen of Hyde, the Chancellor, and Dr. Bates, the king's physician. Whilst these elements of strife were brewing in England, the Duke of Hamilton, released from Pendennis Castle and restored to the favour of the king, returned to Scotland, and the Marquis of Ormond to Ireland, to muster forces to operate with a simultaneous rising in England. The Scottish muster proceeded with vigour, though stoutly opposed by the Duke of Argyll, and the work of revolt commenced in March, in Wales. Poyer, the Mayor of Pembroke, and governor of the castle, declared for the king, and at the summons of Fairfax refused to yield up his command. Powell and Langherne, two officers of disbanded regiments, joined him, and many of their old soldiers followed them. The Royalists ran to arms, eight thousand men were soon afoot in the Principality, Chepstow and Carnarvon were surprised, and Colonel Fleming was killed. Cromwell was despatched to reduce these forces at the head of five regiments. He quickly recovered Carnarvon and Chepstow, defeated Langherne, and summoned Poyer to surrender. But Pembroke stood out, and was not reduced till July, though Colonel Horton encountered Langherne at St. Fagan's, near Cardiff, and completely routed him.

Meanwhile, in other quarters insurrections broke out. On the 9th of April a mob of apprentices and other young fellows attacked the train-bands in Moorfields, struck the captain, took his colours, and marched with them to Westminster, crying, "King Charles! King Charles!" There they were attacked and dispersed, but they rallied again in the City, broke open houses to obtain arms, and frightened the mayor so that he took refuge in the Tower. The next day Fairfax dispersed them, but not without bloodshed. Soon after three hundred men from Surrey surrounded the Parliament houses, cursing the Parliament, insulting the soldiers, and demanding the restoration of the king. They were not repulsed without some of[76] them being killed. Similar outbreaks took place in Norwich, Thetford, Canterbury, and other places. Pontefract Castle was surprised by eighty cavaliers, each with a soldier mounted behind him.

RISING OF THE LONDON APPRENTICES ON BEHALF OF CHARLES. (See p. 75.)

Parliament, at the same time, was besieged with petitions for disbanding the army and restoring the king. To allay the ferment in the capital, whilst the army was engaged in the provinces, Parliament passed a resolution that no change should be made in the government by kings, Lords, and Commons. Fairfax withdrew his troops from the Mews and Whitehall, and Major-General Skippon was made commander of the City militia, to act in concert with the Lord Mayor and Corporation. The men of Kent and Essex rose in great numbers for the king. At Deal, off which Colonel Rainsborough, now acting as admiral, was lying, the people rose. The fleet, consisting of six men-of-war, revolted, hoisted the royal colours, and sailed to Helvoetsluys, where they called for the Duke of York to take the command. The effect of this event was neutralised, however, by a victory, which Fairfax obtained on the 1st of June over the Royalists at Maidstone, where, after a hard fight of six hours, he slew two hundred in the streets, and took four hundred prisoners. This defeat prevented the junction of this body with another under Colonel Goring, now Earl of Newport, who marched to Blackheath, and demanded entrance into the City. The Independent party were in a perilous position there. There was, as we have seen, a numerous body in London in favour of the king, who had no reliance on the militia. To conciliate public opinion, the Parliament ordered the release of the aldermen imprisoned at the desire of the army, and revoked the impeachment against the six Lords and eleven Commoners. Holles and his associates resumed their seats and their old measures, voted for a renewed negotiation with Charles on condition that he should restore Presbyterianism, and give the command of the army to Parliament for ten years. Luckily for the Independents, the Lords rejected these propositions, and voted a treaty without any conditions. At the same time the Common Council, showing a decided leaning towards the[77] king, offered to protect him from danger and insult if he would come to the capital. The danger to the Independent interest was only repelled by the obstinacy of their old enemy Holles, who would consent to nothing which did not establish Presbyterianism.

EXECUTION OF SIR CHARLES LUCAS AND SIR GEORGE LISLE. (See p. 78.)

Whilst these discussions agitated the City, Fairfax marched on Goring, who quitted Blackheath, crossed the Thames into Essex with five thousand horse, where he was joined by Lord Capel, with Royalists from Hertfordshire, and Sir Charles Lucas, with a body of horse from Chelmsford. They concentrated their united force at Colchester, where they determined to hold out till the advance of the Scots, and thus detain the commander-in-chief in the south. The Scots were now in reality on the march. The Duke of Hamilton had not been able to muster more than a fourth of his promised forty thousand. Though he proclaimed everywhere that Charles had promised to take the Covenant and uphold the Presbyterian religion, Argyll and the old covenanting body wholly distrusted these assurances; the Assembly of the Kirk demanded proofs of the king's engagement; the ministers from the pulpits denounced the curse of Meroz on all who engaged in this unholy war, and the women cursed the duke as he passed, and pelted him with stones from their windows.

The English Royalists under Langdale, about four thousand brave Cavaliers, had surprised Berwick and Carlisle, and awaited with impatience Hamilton's arrival. Lambert, the Parliamentary general, advanced and besieged Carlisle, and Hamilton was urged to advance and relieve it. He sent forward a detachment, and on the 8th of July arrived himself, being already supported by three thousand veterans from the Scottish army in Ireland, and, now uniting with Sir Marmaduke Langdale, he presented a formidable force. Lambert retired at his approach, and had Hamilton been a man of any military talent, he might have struck an effective blow. But from the moment that he crossed the Border, he appeared to have lost all energy. His army was paralysed by internal dissensions. The Scottish Presbyterian soldiers were scandalised at having to fight side[78] by side with Langdale's Prelatists and Papists, whom they had been accustomed to see ranged against them as the enemies of the Covenant. In forty days he had advanced only eighty miles, and when he reached the left bank of the Ribble, near Preston, Cromwell had reduced Pembroke, marched rapidly northward through Gloucester, Warwick, Leicester, to Nottingham, where he left his prisoners with Colonel Hutchinson, governor of the castle, and soon joined Lambert at Otley Park, and forced back Langdale from Clitheroe on the main body at Preston. Hamilton at the last moment was all unprepared. Monroe, with his veterans, lay still at Kirkby Lonsdale. Yet Hamilton, with his fourteen thousand, should have been a match for Cromwell, Lambert, and Lilburne's nine thousand. But Cromwell attacked them with such vigour that, after a hard battle of six hours, he routed the whole force. The Cavaliers fought like lions, and only retreated from hedge to hedge before the foe; they called repeatedly on the Scots for reinforcements and ammunition, but not being able to get either, retreated into the town. There they discovered that their allies were engaged in a fierce contest with the enemy for possession of the bridge. Cromwell won the bridge, and the Scots fled in the night towards Wigan. Hamilton retreated with some of the English towards Warrington. Lieutenant-general Baillie, with a great party of the Scottish army, surrendered on quarter in that town. Monroe, who was lying at Kirkby, ignorant of the battle or of the coming up of the fugitives, retreated to Scotland—the only body of Scots who regained their country. Hamilton, on the 20th of August, three days after the battle, was overtaken by Lambert and Lord Grey of Groby, and surrendered at Uttoxeter. Langdale's Cavaliers dispersed in Derbyshire, and he himself, in woman's apparel, was discovered at Widmerpool, in Nottinghamshire; but by the contrivance of Lady Saville, escaped dressed as a clergyman to London, where he remained with Dr. Barwick in the character of an Irish minister driven from his parish by the Papists. So ended Hamilton's boasted invasion. This blow totally annihilated his party in Scotland; Argyll and the Covenanters rose into the ascendant. Argyll soon after this seized a ship containing ten thousand stand of arms, which had been sent from Denmark for Hamilton's expedition. He invited Cromwell to Edinburgh, where he was received with great distinction, and was honoured by the thanks of the Scottish ministers as the preserver of Scotland under God. The members of the faction of Hamilton were declared enemies to religion and the kingdom, and incapable of serving in Parliament or the Assembly of the Kirk. On the 16th of August Cromwell left Edinburgh, Argyll and the nobles of that party accompanying him some miles on his way, and taking leave of him with many demonstrations of respect.

At the same time that the Scots began their march, a rising which had been made in concert with Hamilton, took place in London. The Earl of Holland, who had become contemptible to all parties by twice going over to the Parliament and twice returning to the king, entered London with five hundred horse, and called on the citizens to join him for Charles. The inhabitants had been too recently punished for their apprentice rising to make a second experiment. Holland fell back, therefore, on Kingston-on-Thames, where he was attacked and defeated by Sir Michael Levesey, and Lord Francis Villiers, brother to the young Duke of Buckingham, was slain. Holland himself had induced the brother of Buckingham to follow him; the latter escaped to the Continent, and returned at the Restoration, like most of his party, no better for his experience. Holland and Colonel Dalbier retreated to St. Neot's, where a party of soldiers sent by Fairfax from Colchester met them, and took Holland and killed Dalbier, who was cut to pieces by the soldiers on account of his having been a renegade from the Parliamentary army.

The fate of the Scottish army decided that of Goring at Colchester. There was nothing further to stand out for; he surrendered at discretion, and was sent to prison to await the award of Parliament, with Lord Capel, and Hastings, the brother of the Earl of Huntingdon. But two of his officers, Sir George Lisle and Sir Charles Lucas—the brother of Lord Lucas, and heir to his title and estates—were shot. All sides were growing savage. These two officers fell bravely and deserved a better fate. Lucas, tearing open his doublet, cried, "Fire, rebels!" and instantly fell. Lisle ran to him, kissed his dead body, and then turning to the soldiers, told them to come nearer. One of them said, "I'll warrant you we shall hit you." He replied, "Friends, I have been nearer, when you have missed me." The death of these noble fellows sullied the fair reputation of Fairfax, who afterwards deeply regretted it.

On the revolt of the ships at Deal, under the command of Rainsborough, whom they left ashore, the Parliament appointed the Earl of Warwick,[79] the brother of the Earl of Holland, but more in the confidence of the Reformers, Lord Admiral of the Fleet, and sent him to oppose the insurgent fleet. No sooner was it heard in Paris that the English ships had sailed for Holland, and called on the Duke of York to command them, than it was thought highly expedient that the Prince of Wales should hasten thither himself and take the command. Accordingly, he travelled in all haste to the Hague, accompanied by Prince Rupert, and the Lords Hopton and Colepepper. The prince was received with acclamations by the fleet at Helvoetsluys, and with other vessels, making altogether nineteen, he sailed to the coast of England. It was thought by that party that it was best to sail along the English coast, showing their strength for some time, and then to proceed to the mouth of the Thames. At that time the insurrection in Kent was proceeding under Hales, L'Estrange, and the Earl of Norwich, which Fairfax soon dealt with at Maidstone; but whilst it was in force the prince might have made a safe descent on the Isle of Wight, and attempted the rescue of his father. The castle of Carisbrooke was not strong, and there were few forces besides its garrison in the island; but though Charles anxiously expected the fleet, and sent repeated messages, no attention was paid to them. For nearly a month the prince had the full command of the coast. Fairfax was engaged with the insurgents at Colchester, and the rest of the army was occupied in Wales, and in waiting for the approach of the invasion from Scotland; yet the heir-apparent made no movement for the rescue of his father, which everyone would have thought would have been the first thing with him.

Warwick posted himself at the mouth of the Thames, to prevent any advance towards London, or any relief to Colchester; but he did not deem himself strong enough till he should be joined by another fleet under Sir George Ayscough, from Portsmouth. With this arrival Warwick was in a condition to attack the prince's fleet, but he lay still, nor did the prince appear more inclined to assail him. He was satisfied to intercept merchantmen coming into port, and then demand their ransom from the City. This occasioned a brisk correspondence between London and the prince, under cover of which proposals were made by the prince and his counsellors for the City opening its gates and declaring for the king. But the demand of the prince for ten thousand pounds as ransom of the merchant ships disgusted the City, and presently after came the news of the total defeat of the Scottish army at Preston. On this the prince sailed away again to Helvoetsluys, without attempting anything more. His fleet, according to Clarendon, like the Court and army of his father, was rusted with factions, and so incapable of any decided course of action. But the Earl of Warwick did not present a more flattering aspect. Though it is confessed that he was amply strong enough after Ayscough's junction to have beaten the prince, he satisfied himself with watching him off, and followed him at a respectful distance to the Dutch coast. He is said there to have persuaded the disappointed sailors to return to the service of the Parliament, and thus recovered most of the ships. But the public was greatly dissatisfied with his conduct, and the Independents did not hesitate to declare that they were always betrayed by the cowardice or disaffection of noble commanders. The whole war bore striking evidences of this fact; and Clarendon asserts that Warwick had an understanding with his brother Holland, and would almost certainly have gone over had the Scottish invasion succeeded. Clarendon declares that the Parliament of Scotland had sent Lord Lauderdale to the Hague, to invite Prince Charles to go to Scotland and put himself at the head of affairs there for his father, in order to encourage the endeavour to put down the Independents, who were at once hostile to the king and the Solemn League and Covenant; but that the news of the defeat of Hamilton defeated that object. By the end of August all the attempts of the Royalists were crushed.

The Presbyterians took the opportunity while Fairfax, Cromwell, and the leading Independents were absent with the army, to propose a fresh treaty with Charles. On hearing of this movement, Cromwell wrote to the Parliament, to remind it of its vote of non-addresses, and that to break it and make fresh overtures to the king, who would still adhere to his inadmissible demands, would be an eternal disgrace to them. But the immediate defeat of Hamilton so much raised the terror of the Presbyterians at the overwhelming weight which this would give to the army and the Independent party, that they hastened the business. Charles readily acceded to it, and would fain have obtained his wish of carrying on the negotiation in London, especially as a large party there were urgent for accommodation with him. But the Parliament dare not thus far run counter to the victorious army, and a compromise was effected. Charles was permitted to[80] choose any place in the Isle of Wight where the conference should take place, and he decided on the town of Newport. From the Parliament five Lords, including Northumberland and Pembroke, and ten Commoners, including Vane the younger, Grimstone, Holles, and Pierpoint, were appointed Commissioners, and on Charles's part appeared the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls of Southampton and Lindsay, with other gentlemen, and a number of his chaplains and lawyers. These were not admitted to sit with the Parliamentary Commissioners and the king, and were not to interpose opinions or arguments during the discussion, which were to be direct from Charles; but they were suffered to be in the room behind a curtain, where they could hear all, and to whom Charles was at liberty to retire to consult them. The conditions were the same as were submitted at Hampton Court, and the king again consented to the surrender of the command of the army for ten years; but he would not accede to the abolition of Episcopacy, but merely to its suspension for three years; moreover, the episcopal lands were not to be forfeited, but granted on long leases, and he would not bind himself to accept the Covenant. In fact, he stood just as rooted to his own notions as if he had as great a chance as ever of obtaining them. In vain the Presbyterians prayed him with tears to yield, to prevent the utter ruin of himself and them. The Commission met on the 18th of September, and it was limited to the 4th of November; but that time arrived and nothing further was concluded. The Commissioners took their leave and proceeded to Cowes, but they were met by a resolution of the Commons to prolong the Conference to the 21st, which was afterwards extended to the 25th of November.

There were signs and circumstances enough abroad to have brought any other man to make the best terms he could. On the 11th of September, before the meeting of the Commission, a petition of many thousands of well-affected men in the cities of London and Westminster, in the borough of Southwark, and the neighbouring villages, "had been presented, praying that justice might be done on the chief author of the great bloodshed which had been perpetrated in the war." They called for the execution of Holland, Hamilton, Capel, Goring, and the rest of the Royalist officers now confined at Windsor. Clarendon says that Capel, at the execution of Lisle and Lucas at Colchester, had spoken so fiercely about it, saying they had better shoot all the rest of the prisoners, and had so upbraided Ireton in particular, to whose vindictive disposition he attributed the bloody deed, that the army was vehement for the death of these men. Numbers of other petitions to the same effect came up from the country and from the regiments, declaring that after so many miraculous deliverances from their treacherous and implacable enemies by the Almighty, it was sinful to delay any longer the punishment of these instruments of cruelty, and especially of the king, the chief offender, the raiser of the war, and the stubborn rejecter of all offers. The army was the more vehement, because one of their most gallant and long-tried leaders, Colonel Rainsborough, had been foully murdered by a number of Royalists.

No wonder that the army was become impatient of further tolerance of such an enemy. Colonel Ludlow, who was also a member of Parliament, protested that it was time that the country laid to heart the blood spilt, and the rapine perpetrated by commission from the king, and to consider whether the justice of God could be satisfied, or His wrath appeased, if they granted an act of oblivion as the king demanded. No; the blood of murdered thousands cried from the ground; as the Book of Numbers declared, "blood defiled the land, and the land could not be cleansed except by the blood of him who shed it." He failed in converting Fairfax to his creed on this head; but Ireton was a more willing listener, and he joined his regiment in petitioning, on the 18th of October, that crime might be impartially punished, without any distinction of high or low, and that whoever should speak or act in favour of the king, before he had been tried and acquitted of shedding innocent blood, should be adjudged guilty of high treason. The example was followed by several other regiments; on the 21st Ingoldsby's regiment petitioned in direct terms for the trial of the king, and declared the treaty at Newport a trap; and on the 16th of November a long and stern remonstrance was addressed by the assembled officers of the army to the House of Commons, demanding that "the capital and grand author of all the troubles and woes which the nation had endured should be speedily brought to justice for the treason, blood, and mischief of which he had been guilty; that the Lords should be abolished, and the supreme power vested in the Commons; that if the country desired any more kings, they should be elected by the Commons; that a period should be fixed for the close of this Parliament; and that any future king should be sworn to[81] govern by the aid of Parliament alone." This startling remonstrance was signed by Rushworth, the historian, secretary to Fairfax, the general himself accompanying the remonstrance by a letter. A violent debate upon this remonstrance took place in the House; but Cromwell was now fast advancing to the capital, and the House adjourned.

ARRIVAL OF CHARLES UNDER GUARD AT HURST CASTLE. (see p. 82.)

All these ominous proceedings were lost on Charles; whilst he was negotiating, he was, in his usual manner, secretly corresponding with his party in various quarters, apologising for the smallest concessions, on the principle that he did not mean to abide by them. On the 24th of October, after conceding the command of the army, he wrote to Sir William Hopkins, "To deal freely with you, the great concession I made to-day was merely in order to my escape, of which if I had not hope, I would not have done it." He had written on the 10th of October to Ormond in Ireland, with which country he had agreed to have no further intercourse, telling him that the treaty would come to nothing, and encouraging him privately to prosecute the scheme for a rising there with all his vigour, and to let his friends know that it was by his command, but not openly, or this would, of course, knock the treaty on the head. But a letter of Ormond's fell into the hands of the Independents, by which they discovered for what he had been sent over from France to Ireland, and the Commissioners would not proceed till Charles had publicly written to deny any authority from him to Ormond. All the while that the negotiations were proceeding, he was expecting the execution of a plan for his escape; and he told Sir Philip Warwick that if his friends could not rescue him by the time he had requested relief, yet he would still hold on, till he had made some stone in that building his tombstone.

With such a man all treaty had long been hopeless; he would never consent to the demands upon him, and without his consent the whole war had been in vain; nay, did he consent, it was equally certain that, once at liberty, he would break every engagement. What was to be done? The Independents and the army had come to a solemn conviction that there was but one way out of it. The king must be tried for his treason to the[82] nation, and dealt with as any other incorrigible malefactor.

Cromwell, on his way back from Scotland, had called at Pontefract, to take vengeance on the assassins of Colonel Rainsborough, but finding affairs pressing in London, left Lambert to reduce the place and secure the murderers, and hastened towards the capital. He had relied much on Colonel Hammond to keep the king safe, and not to give him up into the hands of Parliament, till full justice had been obtained. But no result accruing from the treaty, the Commissioners prepared to take their leave of the king on the 28th of November. On the 25th Hammond had received an order from Fairfax to proceed to headquarters at Windsor, and on the 26th Colonel Ewer, a zealous Republican, arrived at Newport to take charge of the king, and confine him in Carisbrooke Castle, or elsewhere.

Hammond, who knew well what was the meaning of this, refused to give up his charge, declaring that in all military matters he would obey his general, but that this charge was committed to him by the Parliament, and that he would yield it to no order but theirs. Ewer returned, but the next day was the last day of the Commissioners. Charles, seeing the desperate pass at which matters had arrived, suddenly gave way, and agreed that the seven individuals excepted from pardon should take their trials—namely, the Marquis of Newcastle, Sir Marmaduke Langdale, who had been confined in Nottingham Castle, but had escaped, Lord Digby, Sir Richard Grenville, Sir Francis Doddrington, Lord Byron, and Mr. Justice Jenkins; that the bishops should be abolished, and their lands vested in the Crown till a final settlement of religion.

When the Commissioners took their leave, Charles warned the lords of the party that in his ruin they saw their own. Though he had given up everything at the last moment, he could not flatter himself that this would be accepted, because he knew that the army, which held the real power, had protested against this treaty altogether, as a violation of the vote of non-addresses, and had no faith in his observance of any conditions whatever. With the Commissioners Hammond also departed, and Charles was left in the hands of Major Rolfe, a man who had been charged with a design to take away the king's life six months before. But Charles was not intended to remain in this man's custody; a body of troops under Lieutenant-colonel Cobbet was already on its way to receive the charge. The friends of the king, on learning this, once more implored him to endeavour to escape. The Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Lindsay, and Colonel Coke, urged him to instant flight; they acquainted him with the watchword, and Coke told him he had a boat and horses ready. But all their persuasions were vain; Charles would not move. He pleaded that he had given his parole to the Parliament for twenty days after the treaty. And this was the same man who had been writing North and South during the whole treaty, to assure his friends that he meant to break his word on every point of the treaty, the first moment that he was at liberty. The real reason, we may believe, why Charles did not attempt to escape, was, that he had no hope of it. In all his attempts he never had escaped, and must have had a full conviction that he never could. At five in the morning Cobbet and his troop arrived, and the king was informed that he must arise and accompany it.

The king, greatly agitated, demanded to see the order for his removal, and to know whither they designed to convey him. Cobbet told him they should take him out of the island, but would not show his order. His nobles, bishops, and officers of his household crowded round in alarm and confusion, but there was no alternative; the king was obliged to take his leave of them, with much sorrow, and was conducted to Hurst Castle, on the opposite coast of Hampshire. "The place," says Warwick, "stood in the sea, for every tide the water surrounded it, and it contained only a few dog-lodgings for soldiers, being chiefly designed for a platform to command the ships." The sight of this dreary place struck a serious terror of assassination into his heart, for he never would believe that, though the Levellers talked of it, they would ever dare to bring an anointed king to public trial. Unfortunately, his own officers had lately been rendering assassination familiar to the public mind, for besides the gallant Colonel Rainsborough, they had murdered several other officers of less note, and there was a rumour that they had made a compact to get rid of the king's enemies in this manner. Charles, however, was to learn that the officers of the Parliamentary army disdained murder, and dared arraign a king.

The same day that Charles was transferred to Hurst Castle, the Parliament negatived the motion that the Parliamentary remonstrance should be taken into consideration, and it voted a letter of Fairfax's, demanding pay for the army, or threatening to take it where it could be found, a high and unbeseeming letter. The same day,[83] too, the council of officers addressed a declaration to Parliament, assuring it that, seeing that their remonstrance was rejected, they were come to the conclusion that the Parliament had betrayed its trust to the people, and that the army would, therefore, appeal from their authority "to the extraordinary judgment of God, and all good people." They called on all faithful members to put their confidence in the army, and protest with them against the conduct of their colleagues. Parliament, on its part, sent to Fairfax an order that the army should not advance any nearer to the capital. But the army was advancing—several regiments from the neighbourhood of York—with the avowal that they were following the directions of Providence.

On the 1st of December the Commons met, and as if indifferent to the advance of the army, voted thanks to Holles, Pierpoint, and Lord Wenman, for their care and pains in the good treaty at Newport, and proceeded to read twice the report of the Commissioners. Holles, who, with his accused colleagues, was again in the House, moved that the king's answer should be voted satisfactory; but that question was postponed till the next day, when the House adjourned again till the 4th of December—Fairfax, in defiance of their prohibition, having that day marched into the City, and quartered his troops around Whitehall, York House, St. James's, the Mews, and other places. On the 4th they went into the question of the treaty again, having debated all Friday and Saturday; and on Monday they continued the debate all day until five o'clock the next morning, Tuesday. Such a debate of three days and a night had not hitherto been known, for no subject of such supreme importance had ever yet come before Parliament. Oliver Cromwell arrived in the midst of this memorable debate.

Sir Harry Vane the younger said that the treaty had been carried on for months, and that although the king had appeared to concede much at the last moment, yet they had his own declaration that he did not hold himself bound by promises which he might make, and that it was the conviction of himself, and thousands of others, that the king was not to be trusted; that he, therefore, moved that the House should return at once to its vote of non-addresses, which it ought never to have violated, should cease all negotiations, and settle the commonwealth on another model. Sir Henry Mildmay said the king was no more to be trusted than a caged lion set at liberty. This was the conviction of the whole body of the Independents, and no doubt a solid and rational conviction. But the king did not lack defenders: Fiennes, to the astonishment of his party, advocated the adoption of the report, and even Prynne, who had suffered so severely under it, became a pleader for royalty, that he might chastise Independency and the army. On a division it was found that a majority of thirty-six, being one hundred and forty against one hundred and four, had voted the concessions of Charles at Newport satisfactory, and offering sufficient grounds for settling the peace of the kingdom. But the army—or, in other words, the Independent and Republican cause—was not going thus to be defeated.

On the morning of the 6th of December, Major-general Skippon discharged the train-bands which had guarded the two Houses of Parliament, and Colonel Rich's cavalry and Colonel Pride's regiment of foot took their places. Colonel Pride took the lead in the proceeding, which has thence acquired the name of Pride's Purge. The army determined to purge the Parliament of all those who were weak enough or mischievous enough to consent to the return of the king on his own promises, which had long ceased to mean anything but deceit. Fairfax was engaged in conversation with some of the members, and Colonel Pride, placing some of his soldiers in the Court of Requests, and others in the lobby of the Commons, stood in the latter place with a list of its members in his hand, and as they approached—Lord Grey of Groby, who stood by him as one of the doorkeepers, informing him who the members were—he stopped such as were on his list, and sent them to the Queen's Court, the Court of Wards, and other places appointed for their detention by the general and council of the army. Fifty-two of the leading Presbyterians were thus secured, and the next day, others who had passed the first ordeal were also removed, so that Pride's Purge had left only about fifty members for a House, who were Independents, for others had fled into the country, or hidden themselves in the City to escape arrest. On the whole, forty-seven members were imprisoned, and ninety-six excluded. The purged remainder acquired the well-known name of the Rump.

The Independents were now uncontrolled; the royal party in Scotland, weakened by the defeat of Hamilton's army, were opposed by the Covenanters, who again denounced the curse of Meroz from the pulpit against all who did not rise in defence of the Solemn League and Covenant. Loudon and Eglinton were appointed commanders,[84] and the Earl of Argyll, with his Highlanders, joining them, they, with the forces of Cassilis from Carrick and Galloway, marched to Edinburgh. This wild army advancing from the west were called the "Whiggamores," either from whiggam, a phrase used in driving their horses, or whig (whey), a beverage of sour milk, which was one of their articles of food. Whichever it was, the term was soon used to designate an enemy of the king, and in the next reign was adopted as a nickname for the opponents of the Court, whence the political term "Whig." Lord Lanark and Monroe were glad to treat with the Whiggamores, and disbanded their troops, so that Argyll being a great partisan of Cromwell's, nothing more was to be feared in the North. On Cromwell's visit Berwick and Carlisle had been surrendered to him.

On the sitting of the purged Parliament on the 6th, the first day of Pride's weeding out the suspected members, Cromwell appeared in his place, and was received with acclamations for his services in the North. The 8th was kept as a solemn fast, and a collection was made for the wives and widows of the poor soldiers. They then adjourned to the 11th, and on Sunday, Hugh Peters, the great enthusiast of Republicanism, preached a sermon in St. Margaret's, Westminster, from the text, "Bind your king with chains, and your nobles with fetters of iron;" and he did not hesitate in the sermon to characterise the king as Barabbas, the great murderer, tyrant, and traitor. It was remarkable that not only four earls and twenty commoners of note sat out this sermon, but the Prince Palatine himself, Charles's nephew. The king's own family, whatever their pretences, had clearly given him up to his fate, or the prince, with his powerful fleet, would never have scoured the coasts of the south of England for several weeks without a single attempt to save his father, the impetuous Prince Rupert being on board, and one of his chief counsellors.

Instead of the House of Commons sitting according to adjournment, on the 11th, the Military Councils, the Select Committee, and the General sat, and framed a new scheme of government. It was called "A new Representative, or an Agreement of the People." The composition was said to be Ireton's, but had probably been framed by Cromwell, Ireton, Peters, Vane, Pride, and the leading Republicans. It was but an amplification of the late remonstrance; it proposed that the present Parliament, which had now sat eight years, should be finally dissolved in April next, and a new one elected according to this formula. It declared that officers and malignants should be incapable of electing or being elected; that the House of Commons should consist of three hundred members, and the representation of the country should be more equal. These propositions, having been sanctioned by the general council of soldiers and inferior officers, were carried to Parliament. The Commons the next day readily voted these measures, as well as that both the Commons and Lords, by violating the vote of non-addresses, had committed an act most unparliamentary and detrimental to the kingdom, and that the treaty at Newport was a monstrous error, disgrace, and peril to the country. They again restored the order expelling the eleven Presbyterian members from the House.

On the 16th a strong party of horse was despatched under Colonel Harrison to remove the king to Windsor Castle. On the very day that he reached Windsor, the House of Commons, or the Rump fragment of it, appointed a committee of thirty-eight "to consider of drawing up a charge against the king, and all other delinquents that may be thought fit to bring to condign punishment." On the 1st of January, 1649, the committee made the following report:—"That the said Charles Stuart, being admitted King of England, and therein trusted with a limited power to govern by and according to the laws of the land, and not otherwise; and by his trust, oath, and office, being obliged to use the power committed to him for the good and benefit of the people, and for the preservation of their rights and liberties; yet, nevertheless, out of a wicked design to erect and uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power, to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people; yea, to take away and make void the foundations thereof, and of all redress and remedy of misgovernment, which by the fundamental constitutions of this kingdom were reserved on the people's behalf, in the right and power of frequent and successive Parliaments, or national meetings in council; he, the said Charles Stuart, for accomplishing of such his designs, and for the protecting of himself and his adherents in his and their wicked practices, to the same ends hath traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present Parliament, and the people therein represented." The report, therefore, declared that he should be brought to judgment for his treason to the nation.

[85]

TRIAL OF CHARLES I. (See p. 86.)

The next day the ordinance of the Commons[86] confirming the report was sent up to the Lords, or at least to the few of them remaining, only amounting to about a dozen, who rejected it without a dissenting voice, and then adjourned. The Commons immediately closed their doors, and passed a resolution that the Commons of England in Parliament assembled were, under God, the origin of all just power as the representatives of the people; that whatsoever they decreed was law, and did not require any concurrence from the Lords.

On the 6th of January the Commons passed the ordinance for the trial of the king. By it they erected a High Court of Justice for trying him, and proceeding to judgment against him. It consisted of no less than a hundred and thirty-five Commissioners, of whom twenty were to form a quorum. Of these Commissioners no more than eighty assembled. On the 8th, fifty assembled in the Painted Chamber, Fairfax at their head, and ordered that on the morrow the herald should proclaim the approaching trial, and invite all people to bring in what matters of fact they had against Charles Stuart. Accordingly that was done both at Westminster and in the City the same day, the 9th. The Commons ordered the Great Seal in use to be broken up, and a new seal introduced, bearing the inscription, "The Great Seal of England," and on the reverse, "In the first year of Freedom, by God's blessing restored, 1648" (i.e., 1649, new style). The Commissioners then appointed John Bradshaw, a native of Cheshire, and a barrister of Gray's Inn, who had practised much in Guildhall, and had lately been made a serjeant, Lord President of the High Court; Mr. Steel, Attorney-General; Mr. Coke, Solicitor-General; Mr. Dorislaus and Mr. Aske, as Counsel for the Commonwealth; and, appointing the old Courts of Chancery and King's Bench, at the upper end of Westminster Hall, as the place of trial, they fixed the day for the 19th of January. On the 20th of January the Commissioners assembled in the Painted Chamber to the number of sixty-six, and proceeded in state to Westminster Hall.

It may be imagined that such a spectacle drew immense throngs. Every avenue to the hall was guarded by soldiers, and others stood armed within it. The open space below the bar was densely crowded, and equally packed throngs of nobles, gentlemen, and ladies, looked down from the galleries right and left. A chair of crimson velvet for the President stood elevated on three steps towards the upper end of the hall, and behind and in a line with him right and left the Commissioners took the seats placed for them, which were covered with scarlet. Before the President stood a long table on which lay the mace and sword, and just below him, at its head, sat two clerks. At the bottom of the table, directly opposite to the President, was placed a chair for the king.

After the commission had been read, Bradshaw ordered the prisoner to be brought to the bar. He had been brought from Whitehall, to which he had been removed from St. James's, in a sedan chair, and the serjeant-at-arms conducted him to the bar. His step was firm, and his countenance, though serious, unmoved. He seated himself covered, according to the wont, not of a prisoner, but of a king; then rose and surveyed the court and crowds around him. The Commissioners all sat with their hats on, and Charles eyed them sternly. He then glanced round on the people in the galleries and those around him with an air of superiority, and reseated himself. Bradshaw then addressed him to this effect:—"Charles Stuart, King of England,—The Commons of England, being deeply sensible of the calamities that have been brought upon this nation, which are fixed upon you as the principal author of them, have resolved to make inquisition for blood; and, according to that debt and due they owe to justice, to God, the kingdom, and themselves, they have resolved to bring you to trial and judgment, and for that purpose have constituted this High Court of Justice before which you are brought." Coke, the Solicitor-General, then rose to make the charge against him, but Charles, rising and crying, "Hold! hold!" tapped him on the shoulder with his cane. In doing this the gold head dropped from his cane, and though he took it up with an air of indifference, it was an incident that made a deep impression both on him and the spectators. He mentioned the circumstance to the Bishop of London, who attended him in private, with much concern, and those who saw it regarded it as an especial omen.

Coke, however, went on, and desired the clerk to read the charge, and whilst it was reading, Charles again cried, "Hold!" but as the clerk continued, he sat down, looking very stern; but when the words of the charge declaring him to be a tyrant and a traitor were read, he is said to have laughed outright. When the charge was finished, Bradshaw demanded what he had to say in reply to it; but he in his turn demanded by what authority he had been brought there? And he asserted very forcibly that he was king; acknowledged no authority superior to his own, and[87] would not by any act of his diminish or yield up that authority, but leave it to his posterity as he had derived it from his ancestors. He reminded them that he had lately, in the Isle of Wight, treated with a number of lords and gentlemen; that they were upon the conclusion of that treaty, and he wanted to know by what authority he had, under such circumstances, been brought thence.

This was very true, and would have been unanswerable, had he, as he asserted, treated with them honestly and uprightly; but we know that at the very time that he was carrying on that treaty, and to the very last, he was also carrying on a secret correspondence with Ormond in Ireland, his wife in France, and with other parties, informing them that he was only doing this because there was no help for it; but that he had games to play which would still defeat the whole affair. He was meaning nothing less, and privately declaring nothing less, than that he would, on the first opportunity, be as despotic as ever. He continued, however, to demand, "By what authority am I here? I mean lawful authority, for there are many unlawful authorities in the world—thieves and robbers by the highways. Remember, I am your lawful king: let me know by what lawful authority I am seated here; resolve me that, and you shall hear more from me." Bradshaw told him that he might have observed that he was there by the authority of the people of England, whose elected king he was. That afforded Charles another answer. "England," he said, "never was an elective but an hereditary kingdom for nearly these thousand years. I stand more for the liberty of my people than any here that are come to be my pretended judges." Bradshaw might have told him that the people thought it time to put an end to the hereditary form, and adopt a new one; but he replied, "Sir, how well you have managed your trust is known. If you do not acknowledge the authority of the court I must proceed." Charles, however, turned to another weak place in his adversary's answer, and exclaimed, "I see no House of Lords that may constitute a Parliament, and the king, too, must be in and part of a Parliament." It was unquestionable that Charles could not be answered on the constitutional ground, but only on the revolutionary one, on that principle of the power and right of the people to revolutionise, and shape anew their constitution (which in 1688 was acknowledged and established as a great fact of the rights of nations), and Bradshaw brought forward that plea—"If you are not satisfied with our authority, we are satisfied with it, which we have from God and the people." He informed Charles that he would be expected to answer, and adjourned the court till Monday.

The two following days were spent in receiving evidence of the king's having not only commenced the war on his subjects, but of his having commanded personally in it, and in settling the form of judgment to be pronounced. On the third day, when Charles was again brought forward, the same painful scene was renewed of the king's denying the court, refusing to plead, and yet insisting on being heard. Bradshaw told him in vain that if he pleaded, admitting the authority of the court, he would be at liberty to make any observation in his defence that he pleased; but that in no court could it be otherwise. He then demanded a hearing before a committee of both Houses, but he was reminded that the authority of the Lords was no longer admitted. He assured him that though he contended that he had no superior in the State, the law was his superior, and that there was a power superior to the law—the people, the parent or author of the law—which was not of yesterday, but the law of old; that there were such things as parliaments, which the people had constructed for their protection, and these Parliaments he had endeavoured to put down and destroy; and that what his endeavours had been all along for the crushing of Parliament, had been notorious to the whole kingdom. "And truly, sir," he continued, "in that you did strike at all, for the great bulwark of the liberties of the people is the Parliament of England. Could you but have confounded that, you had at one blow cut off the neck of England. But God hath been pleased to confound your design, to break your forces, to bring your person into custody, that you might be responsible to justice."

He then combated Charles's argument, that there was no law or example of people deposing or destroying their kings. He quoted many instances from foreign nations, in which they had resisted, fought against, and destroyed their kings. Charles's own country of Scotland, before all others, abounded with instances of the deposition and putting to death of their sovereigns. His grandmother had been so set aside, and his own father, a mere infant, put in her place. The Lord President then referred to the depositions of Edward II. and Richard II., which he contended were effected by Parliament, and said that their crimes were not a tenth part so capital against the nation as those in this charge. As Charles again continued to[88] reply and argue without submitting to plead, Bradshaw told him the court had given him too much liberty already, and ordered the sentence to be read. But here John Downes, one of the Commissioners, a citizen of London, said to those near him, "Have we hearts of stone? Are we men?" and then rising and trembling violently, exclaimed, "My lord, I am not satisfied to give my consent to the sentence. I desire the court may adjourn to hear me." They therefore adjourned, but in half an hour returned with a unanimous verdict of guilty.

Bradshaw then proceeded to pronounce the sentence. When the names of the Commissioners were read that morning, on that of Fairfax being called, a female voice from one of the galleries cried out, "He has more wit than be here." When the name of Cromwell was read, the same voice exclaimed, "A rogue and a traitor." As Bradshaw now went on to say, the king had been called to answer by the people, before the Commons of England assembled in Parliament, the same female voice shouted, "It is false! not one half-quarter of them!" There was a great excitement; all turned towards the gallery whence the voice came, from amid a group of masked ladies. Axtell, the officer commanding the soldiers, brutally ordered them to fire into the group; but the soldiers hesitated, and a lady rose and walked out of the gallery. It was seen to be Lady Fairfax, the wife of the commander-in-chief, a woman of very ancient and noble family, the Veres of Tilbury, who had come to object most decidedly to the extreme measures of the army, and had prevailed on her husband to keep away from the court.

After order had been restored, Bradshaw ordered the charge to be read, the king still interfering; and then Bradshaw passed the sentence, "That the court being satisfied in conscience that he, Charles Stuart, was guilty of the crimes of which he had been accused, did adjudge him as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of the nation, to be put to death by severing his head from his body."

After the sentence was pronounced, Charles again requested to be heard; but Bradshaw told him that after the sentence it could not be allowed, and ordered the guards to take him away. The Royalist writers state that during the trial the people had cried, "Justice! justice!" whilst others cried, "God save the king!" but that after the king was condemned, the soldiers, as he passed, insulted him in the grossest manner, spitting on him, blowing their tobacco in his face, throwing their pipes at him, and yelling in his ears, "Justice! justice! execution! execution!" But the popular party utterly denied the truth of these assertions; declaring that they were got up to make the case of Charles resemble that of the Saviour, to render his judges odious, and himself a sacred martyr. One soldier, Herbert says, as the king was proceeding to his sedan chair, said, "God help and save your majesty!" and that Axtell struck him down with his cane, on which the king said, "Poor fellow! it is a heavy blow for a small offence." To the hired hootings of the military, Herbert says that he merely remarked, "Poor souls! they would say the same to their generals for sixpence."

Charles went back to St. James's Palace, where he spent the remainder of the day, Sunday, the 28th of January, and Monday, the 29th, the execution being fixed for Tuesday, the 30th. He had the attendance of Juxon, the late Bishop of London, and the next morning he received the last visit of his only two remaining children in England, the Duke of Gloucester and the Princess Elizabeth. The princess was not twelve, and the king, setting her on his knee, began speaking to her—"But, sweetheart," he said, "thou wilt forget what I tell thee." The little girl, bursting into tears, promised to write down all that passed, and she did so. In her account, preserved in the "Reliquiæ Sacræ," she says, amongst other things, that he commanded her to tell her mother that his thoughts had never strayed from her, that his love would be the same for her to the last; and that he died a glorious death for the laws and religion of the land. To the Duke of Gloucester he said, "Sweetheart, now they will cut off thy father's head. Heed what I say, they will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee a king. But mark what I say; you must not be a king as long as your brothers Charles and James live; therefore, I charge you, do not be made a king by them." At which the child, sighing deeply, replied, "I will be torn in pieces first." "And these words coming unexpectedly from so young a child," says the princess, "rejoiced my father exceedingly." The whole interview was extremely affecting.

Charles slept well, but woke early, and bade his man Herbert rise and dress him with care, for it was his second marriage day, and he would be as trim as possible. Whilst Herbert dressed him, he told him he had dreamt of Archbishop Laud, who, on the king speaking seriously to him, had sighed and fallen prostrate. Charles said, had he not[89] been dead, he might possibly have said something to Laud to cause him to sigh; so that it is possible he felt that Laud's proceedings and advice had brought things to this pass. He desired to have two shirts on, as the weather was very cold; for if he shook, the rogues would think it was through fear. He observed that he was glad he had slept at St. James's, as the walk through the park would warm him. At ten o'clock the summons came—Colonel Hacker knocked at the door to say they were ready. Hacker turned pale on seeing the king come out, and was much affected. Ten companies of infantry formed a double line on each side of his path, and a detachment preceded him with banners flying and drums beating.

CHARLES'S FAREWELL INTERVIEW WITH THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER AND THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH. (See p. 88.)

On the king's right walked Juxon, on his left the Parliamentary Colonel Tomlinson, bareheaded. The king walked through the park at a brisk rate, and said to the guard, "Come, my good fellows, step on apace." He pointed out a tree planted by his brother Henry, and on arriving at Whitehall, he ascended the stairs with a light step, passed through the long gallery, and went to his chamber, where he remained with Juxon in religious exercise. It was past one o'clock before he was summoned to the scaffold, where the executioner, Brandon, and Hulet, a sergeant appointed to assist him, disguised in black masks, awaited him. The scaffold was raised in the street, in front of the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and he passed through a window which had been taken out, upon it. All was hung with black cloth, and in the middle of the scaffold stood the block, with the axe enveloped in black crape lying on it.

Charles made a speech, in which he denied making war on the Parliament, but the Parliament on him, by claiming the militia. Church, Lords, and Commons had, he said, been subverted with the sovereign power; if he would have consented to reign by the mere despotism of the sword, he asserted that he might have lived and remained king. He declared that he forgave all his enemies; and yet when the executioner knelt and begged his forgiveness, he said, "No, I forgive no subject of mine, who comes deliberately to shed my blood." He said that the nation would never prosper till they placed his son on the throne; and[90] to the last moment, rooted in his theory of divine right, he denied that the people ought to have any share in the government—that being a thing "nothing pertaining to them"—and yet that "he died the martyr of the people."

Whilst he spoke some one disturbed the axe, on which he turned and said, "Have a care of the axe; if the edge be spoiled, it will be the worse for me." After concluding his speech, he put up his hair under a cap, and the bishop observed, "There is but one stage more, which, though turbulent and troublesome, is yet a very short one. Consider it will carry you a great way—even from earth to heaven." "I go," said the king, "from a corruptible crown to an incorruptible, where no disturbance can take place." "You are exchanged from a temporal to an eternal crown—a good exchange," replied the bishop. The king then took off his cloak, and gave his George to Juxon, saying impressively, "Remember!" The warning is supposed, as the medallion of the George concealed a portrait of Henrietta, to have regarded a message to his wife. Having laid his head on the block, the executioner severed it at a single stroke, and Hulet, the sergeant, holding it up, cried, "Here is the head of a traitor." At that sight a universal groan seemed to go through the crowd.

The body lay at Whitehall, to be embalmed, till the 7th of February, when it was conveyed to Windsor, and laid in the vault of St. George's Chapel, near the coffins of Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour. The day was very snowy, and the coffin being deposited without any service, was left without any inscription except the words, "Carolus Rex, 1648," the letters of which were cut out of a band of lead by the gentlemen present, with their penknives, and the lead folded round the coffin. In this condition it was discovered in 1813, when George IV., attended by Sir Henry Halford, had it opened, and found proof that the head had been separated from the body.

CHAPTER IV.

THE COMMONWEALTH.

Proclamation of the Prince of Wales Forbidden—Decline of the Peerage—Ultimus Regum—Establishment of a Republican Government—Abolition of the House of Lords and the Monarchy—Council of State—The Oath Difficulty—The Engagement—Religious Toleration—Trials of Royalists—Discontent among the People—The Levellers—Activity of John Lilburne—Quelling the Mutiny in Whalley's Regiment—Lockyer's Funeral—Arrest of Lilburne—Spread of the Disaffection to other Regiments—Suppression of the Insurrection—Cromwell appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland—Royalist Movement in Scotland—Charles's Son proclaimed King—The Scottish Deputation at the Hague—Charles's Court—Assassination of Dr. Dorislaus—Affairs in Ireland—Cromwell's Campaign—Defeat and Death of Montrose—Cromwell in Scotland—Battle of Dunbar—Movements of Charles—His March into England—Battle of Worcester—Charles Escapes to France—Vigorous Government—Foreign Difficulties—Navigation Act—War with Holland—Contest between Parliament and the Army—Expulsion of the Rump—The Little Parliament—Cromwell made Protector.

The king being put to death, it was necessary that the Parliament should immediately determine what sort of government should succeed. Had they been disposed to continue the monarchy, and receive the eldest son of Charles, it was still necessary to take efficient means for obtaining from him, before admitting him to the throne, a recognition of all the rights for which they had striven with his father. The very day, therefore, of the king's execution, the House of Commons passed an Act, making it high treason for any one to proclaim the Prince of Wales, or any other person, king or chief magistrate of England or Ireland, without consent of Parliament; and copies of this were immediately despatched to all the sheriffs, to be proclaimed in the counties. That done, they proceeded gradually, but promptly, to develop and complete their design of adopting a Republican form of government.

The first step was to deal with the Lords. That body, or the miserable remnant thereof, still sat in the Upper House, and sent repeated messages to the Commons, to which they deigned no reply. The Lords, in fact, had become contemptible in the eyes of the whole community. They had sunk and trembled before the genius of the Commons. Though strongly inclined to stand by royalty, and though all their interests were bound up with it, though they had been created by royal fiat, and made all that they were by it,[91] in honour, power, and estate, and though it required no great sagacity to perceive that they must fall with it, the king himself having repeatedly assured them that such would be the case, they had neither the policy nor the gratitude to hold together and maintain the fountain of their honour, nor the prescience to perceive their case when the Crown must fall, and make a merit of going over bodily to the conquering power. They had gone to pieces, some holding with one side, some with the other, some vacillating between both, changing and rechanging as the balance turned one way or the other. What was still worse, they had discovered no talent whatever on either side, with most rare exceptions, and these not remarkable, even where they had adopted a side and become partisans. Essex, Warwick, Holland, Hamilton, Newcastle, Northumberland, Ormond, and the rest, what had they done? Fairfax and Montrose, out of the whole body—and Montrose had personally been raised to it—had alone won great names. Fairfax, indeed, independent of Cromwell's hand and head, was respectable, but nothing more. The whole peerage had sunk into contemptible eclipse before the bold and vigorous genius of the Commoners. Without, therefore, deigning to answer their messages, on the 5th of February they began to discuss the question as to their retention or abolition, and the next day they voted, by a majority of forty-four to twenty-nine, that "the House of Peers in Parliament was useless and dangerous, and ought to be abolished; that the privilege of peers, of being freed from arrest, should be declared null and void, but that they might be elected knights or burgesses for the Commons." Henry Marten moved that the word "dangerous" should be omitted, and the word "useless" only be retained; or if the word "dangerous" were retained, it should be only with "not" before it, for the peers were certainly not dangerous, but pitiably useless, and they had now come to see verified what Holles had told them, that if they would not heartily join in saving the nation, it would be saved without them. An Act to this effect was soon after brought in and passed.

On the day following (the 7th), the Commons proceeded to a more important question, and voted that it had been found by experience that the office of a king in this nation, and that to have the power thereof in any single person, was unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to the liberty, safety, and public interest of the nation, and therefore that it should be utterly abolished; and to that purpose an Act should be forthwith prepared. This was speedily followed by a vote, on the motion of Henry Marten, that the king's statues at the Royal Exchange and other places should be taken down, and on the places where they stood should be inscribed, "Exit Tyrannus, Regum ultimus, Anno Libertatis Angliæ restitutæ primo, A.D. 1648, January 30" (old style). There was, moreover, an elaborate declaration drawn up, to justify the changing of England into a Republic, translated into Latin, French, and Dutch, and addressed to foreign States. The custody of the new Great Seal was entrusted to three lawyers—namely, Whitelock, Keble, and Lisle; they were to hold it during good behaviour, and to be called Keepers of the Liberties of England, by authority of Parliament. The King's Bench was henceforth named the Upper Bench, and came to be called the Commons Bench, and Oliver St. John, who had done so much to bring about this revolution, was made Chief Justice.

The next great measure was to dissolve the Executive Council, which had sat at Derby House, and revive it in a more extended form as the Executive Council of State, to consist of forty-one members. Three-fourths of these had seats in the House, and several of the late peers—Mulgrave, Pembroke, Denbigh, Fairfax, Lisle, Grey of Groby, Salisbury, and Grey of Werke. The chief heads of the law and officers of the army were included. The principal names were, the late peers already mentioned, and Whitelock, St. John, Cromwell, Skippon, Hazelrig, Midmay, Vane, Marten, Bradshaw, Ludlow, and Colonel Hutchinson, Governor of Nottingham. Milton, the great national poet, was appointed its secretary, and henceforth prepared its public acts, and employed his mighty talents in the defence of the measures of the Republican Government.

It was necessary to have an oath, and one was constructed which approved of the king's trial, of the vote against the Scots and their English associates, and of the abolition of monarchy and the House of Lords. But as this would not only exclude all conscientious Presbyterians, but called on the Lords to pass an act of censure on themselves, as well as on all to approve of Acts of Parliament in which they had no concern, Fairfax and some others refused to take it, and it had to be reduced to the undertaking "to be true and faithful to the Government established without king or House of Peers, and never to consent to their re-admission." This was called the[92] "Engagement," and still was effective in excluding all Royalists, and such of the Presbyterian party as would not consent to violate their favourite Covenant. Of the twelve judges, ten had been appointed by the revolutionary party, and the whole of them had quietly continued their functions through the war against the king; yet six of these now resigned, probably having hoped to the last for an accommodation with the king, and not going in their minds the length of a commonwealth. The other six consented to hold their offices only on the condition that an Act of the Commons should guarantee the non-abolition of the fundamental laws of the kingdom.

With regard to the Church, as the present Government was decidedly in favour of ample toleration, it satisfied itself with making a slight modification of the existing Presbyterian power, and allowing it to remain, at the same time that it deprived its intolerant clergy of all temporal power whatever. No holders of religious opinions were to be molested, provided that they did not attack the fundamental principles of Christianity, and thus the Roman Catholics acquired more civil as well as religious liberty than they had enjoyed since the days of Queen Mary.

The army remained in the same able hands which had made it the finest army in Europe, and had won with it such wonderful victories. Fairfax still continued commander-in-chief, though he had held aloof from the king's trial, and the navy was put on a more efficient footing by removing the Earl of Warwick and appointing Blake, who had shown remarkable skill and courage on land, with Popham and Dean as admirals. These great changes were chiefly effected by the influence of Cromwell, Ireton, Marten, and Bradshaw, assisted by the talents of Vane, and the legal ability of St. John and Whitelock. They also introduced a Parliamentary measure, which essentially modified the character of the House. On the 1st of February they carried a vote that those who, on the 5th of December, assented to the vote that "the king's concessions were a sufficient ground to proceed to a settlement," should be incapable of sitting, but all others who should previously enter on the journal their dissent from that motion should be admissible. By this means they found the number of members raised to one hundred and fifty, and at the same time they were protected from a wearying opposition from the Presbyterian section.

They now proceeded to bring to trial such of the Royalist prisoners as had engaged in the last insurrection, whom they regarded as disturbers of the kingdom after it had once conquered the king, and might have proceeded to a settlement. They looked on them, in fact, as a species of rebels to the party in power. And yet that party was not constituted, even by its own formal enactments, as a fully recognised Government, till these trials were over. They terminated on the 6th of March, and the Republic was not formally passed till the 19th of that month, in these words: "Be it declared and enacted by this present Parliament, and by the authority of the same, that the people of England, and of all the dominions and territories thereunto belonging, are and shall be, and are hereby constituted, made, established, and confirmed to be, a Commonwealth or Free State; and shall from henceforth be governed as a commonwealth and free state, by the supreme authority of this nation, the representatives of the people in Parliament, and by such as they shall appoint and constitute officers and ministers under them for the good of the people, and without any king or House of Lords."

Whilst this Act was preparing, the trials were going on: the votes for the sitting of the Council and the Commons were considered sufficient authority. The trials were probably hastened by the news that Charles II. had been proclaimed in Scotland, and that the Scots were raising an army to avenge the king's death, and "to punish the sectaries of England for the breach of the Covenant." The persons whom it was resolved to try, were the Duke of Hamilton, the Earl of Holland, Lord Goring, lately created Earl of Norwich, Lord Capel, and Sir John Owen. The High Court appointed to try these prisoners consisted of fifty persons of both ex-Peers and Commons. The Duke of Hamilton pleaded that he was not within the jurisdiction of an English court, that he was a subject of Scotland, and a prisoner of war; but it was replied that he was also an English peer, as Earl of Cambridge, and it was proved that not only was his father naturalised as an English peer, but he himself had been called to sit as such, and had sat. The Earl of Holland was ill, and therefore made little defence, except pleading that he had free quarter given him when he was taken at St. Neots; but this was fully disproved. Lord Goring, or, as now called, the Earl of Norwich, had been a steady partisan of the king's, and had shown little lenity to the Parliamentarians; but he now conducted himself with great respect to the court, and seemed to leave himself in their hands. Lord Capel was one of[93] the bravest and proudest of the Royalist generals. During his imprisonment he escaped from the Tower, but was betrayed by the boatmen with whom he crossed the Thames. He had expressed great indignation at the deaths of Lisle and Lucas, and had excited the resentment of Ireton by it. He now demanded to be tried by court martial, and declared that when Lisle and Lucas were adjudged to die, Fairfax had declared that all other lives should be spared, and had evidence to prove it, if he were allowed. Ireton, who really seems to have felt a stern resentment against the free-speaking general, denied that Fairfax had given any such promise, and that if he had, he had no right to supersede the authority of Parliament. He demanded that Fairfax should be sent for; but the court satisfied itself with sending to the general, who returned by letter a rather equivocating answer, saying that his promise only applied to a court martial, and not to any such court as Parliament might see fit to appoint. Bradshaw told Capel, who was not satisfied with this, that he was tried by such judges as Parliament thought proper to give him, and who had judged a better man than himself.

OLIVER CROMWELL.

Sir John Owen, who was a gentleman of Wales, in the late outbreak had killed a sheriff. He pleaded quarter, and that he had only done what he thought his duty, in support of the king. As to killing the sheriff, the sheriff had risen against him with force, and was killed in the accident of war, which he might have avoided if he had stayed quietly at home. All five were condemned to lose their heads, the Earl of Holland as a double turncoat, and his conduct had certainly been anything but consistent and noble. Sir John Owen, on hearing the sentence, made a low bow and thanked the judges; and being asked why, he[94] replied, that it was a very great honour for a poor gentleman of Wales to die like a lord, and he had not expected anything better than hanging. No sooner was the sentence passed, than the friends of Hamilton, Holland, and Capel, made great exertions to save their lives. The wives of Holland and Capel appeared at the bar, attended by long trains of females in mourning, to beg for their lives. Two days' respite was granted, and every effort, persuasion, and bribery was put in force. Hamilton had fewer friends than the rest, but it was urged that his death might occasion trouble with Scotland; but Cromwell knew that they had the interest of Argyll, and that Hamilton's being out of the way would strengthen that interest. The case of Holland occasioned a great debate. The Earl of Warwick, his brother, on one side urged his services to the Parliament for a long period—his enemies, his revolt from it on the other. Cromwell and Ireton were firmly against them, and the sentences of these three were confirmed. The votes regarding Goring were equal, and Lenthall, the Speaker, gave the casting vote in his favour, alleging that he formerly had done him an essential service. Sir John Owen, to the satisfaction of those who admired his frank and quaint humour, was also reprieved, and ultimately liberated. He had softened even the heart of Ireton, and greatly moved the good Colonel Hutchinson, and both spoke in his favour. Hamilton, Capel, and Holland, were beheaded in the Palace Yard on the 9th of March.

The Parliament was soon called on to defend itself against more dangerous enemies. The country was groaning under the exhaustion of the civil war. For seven years it had been bleeding at every pore; and now that the war had ceased, the people began to utter aloud their complaints, which, if uttered before, had been drowned in the din of conflict. There was everywhere a terrible outcry against the burden of taxation; and famine and pestilence—the sure successors of carnage and spoliation—were decimating the people. In Lancashire and Westmoreland numbers were daily perishing, and the magistrates of Cumberland deposed that thirty thousand families in that county had neither seed- nor bread-corn, nor the means of procuring either. What rendered this state of things the more dangerous, was the turbulence of the Levellers. The principles of Republicanism which had borne on the heads of the army, threatened in turn to overwhelm them in their progress amongst the soldiers. It is easier to set in motion revolutionary ideas, than to say to them, "Thus far shall ye go and no farther." In all revolutions, the class which initiates them wishes to stop at the point that is most convenient to itself; but other classes beyond this line are equally anxious, and have an equal claim to the benefit of levelling principles. It is only power which limits their diffusion. The power now had passed from the king and the lords, and had centred in the leaders of the army. It was not convenient or desirable for them that it should go farther. But the soldiers and the lower officers, with John Lilburne at their head, claimed a Republic in its more popular sense. They read in the Bible, and preached from it in the field, that God was no respecter of persons; that human rights were as universal as the human race. They saw that Cromwell, Ireton, Harrison, and a few others were the men who ruled in the Parliament, the Council, and the Army; and they conceived that they were no longer seeking the common rights of the community, but the aggrandisement of themselves. Colonel John Lilburne was pouring out pamphlet upon pamphlet, and disseminating them through the ranks and through the people—"England's New Chains Discovered," "The Hunting of the Foxes from Triploe Heath to Whitehall by Five Small Beagles." These foxes were Cromwell, Ireton, Fairfax, etc., who had suppressed the mutiny at Triploe Heath—and the five beagles those who had been made to ride the wooden horse for their insubordination, that is, set upon a sharp three-cornered wooden machine, with weights or muskets tied to their feet. News came to Parliament that one Everard, a soldier passing for a prophet, and Winstanley, another, with thirty more, were assembled on St. George's Hill, near Cobham, in Surrey, and were digging the ground and planting it with roots and beans. They said they should shortly be four thousand, and invited all to come and help them, promising them meat, drink, and clothes. Two troops of horse were sent to disperse them, of which they loudly complained, and Everard and Winstanley went to the general, and declared "that the liberties of the people were lost by the coming in of William the Conqueror, and that ever since, the people of God had lived under tyranny and oppression worse than our forefathers under the Egyptians. But now the time of deliverance was at hand, and God would bring His people out of this slavery, and restore them to their freedom in enjoying the fruits and benefits of the earth. There had lately appeared to him [Everard] a vision, which bade him arise and dig[95] and plough the earth, and receive the fruits thereof. He said that their intent was to restore the earth to its former condition; that, as God had promised to make the barren fruitful, so now what they did was to restore the ancient community of enjoying the fruits of the earth, to distribute them to the poor and needy; that they did not intend to break down pales and destroy enclosures, as was reported, but only to till the waste land, and make it fruitful for man; and that the time was coming when all men would willingly come in and give up their lands and estates, and submit to this community of goods."

Lilburne had been engaged in the county of Durham, and to win him over, three thousand pounds were voted to him; but this did not move him for a moment. On his return, he appeared at the bar of the House with a petition against the form of the newly adopted constitution, which the officers had named, "The Agreement of the People," but which the people did not accept as their agreement. Lilburne protested against the provision that Parliament should only sit six months every two years, and that the Council should rule the other eighteen. This example was extensively followed, and the table of the House was quickly loaded with petitions demanding a new Parliament every year; a committee of the House to govern during the recess; no member of one Parliament to be a member of the next; the Self-denying Ordinance to be enforced; the term of every officer's commission in the army to be limited; the High Court of Justice and Council of State to be abolished as instruments of tyranny; all proceedings in the courts of law to be in English; lawyers reduced, and their fees too. Excise and customs they required to be abolished, and the lands of delinquents sold to remunerate the well affected. Religion was to be "reformed according to the mind of God;" tithes were to be abolished, conscience made free, and the incomes of ministers of the Gospel were to be fixed at one hundred and fifty pounds each, and raised by a rate on the parishioners.

There was much sound sense and gospel truth in these demands, but the day of their adoption was much nearer to the millennium than to 1649. It was resolved to send Cromwell to settle the disturbances in Ireland, but it was necessary to quash this communist insurrection first. Money was borrowed of the City, and after "a solemn seeking of God by prayer," lots were cast to see what regiments should go to Ireland. Fourteen of foot and fourteen of horse were selected by this mode. The officers expressed much readiness to go; the men refused. On the 26th of April there broke out a terrible mutiny in Whalley's regiment, at the Bull, in Bishopsgate. The men seized their colours from the cornet, and refused to march without many of the communist concessions. Fairfax and Cromwell hastened thither, seized fifteen of the mutineers, tried them on the spot by court martial, condemned five, and shot one in St. Paul's churchyard on the morrow. This was Lockyer, a trooper, a brave young fellow, who had served throughout the whole war, and was only yet three-and-twenty.

The death of this young man who was greatly beloved, roused all the soldiers and the working men and women of the City to a fearful degree. He was shot on Friday, amid the tears and execrations of thousands. On Monday his troop proceeded to bury him with military honours. Whitelock says, "About a hundred went before the corpse, five or six in a file, the corpse was then brought, with six trumpets sounding a soldier's knell. Then the trooper's horse came, clothed all over in mourning, and led by a footman. The corpse was adorned with bundles of rosemary, one half-stained in blood, and the sword of the deceased along with them. Some thousands followed in rank and file; all had sea-green and black ribbon tied on their hats and to their breasts, and the women brought up the rear. At the new church in Westminster, some thousands more, of the better sort, met them, who thought not fit to march through the City."

This was not a promising beginning for the generals, but they were not men to be put down. They arrested Lilburne and his five small beagles, who published, on the 1st of May, their "Agreement of the People," and clapped them in the Tower, and hastened down to Salisbury to quell the insurrection which had broken out in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, and Wilts in the army. The regiments of Scrope, Ireton, Harrison, Ingoldsby, Skippon, Reynolds, and Horton, all declared for the Lilburne "Agreement," and swore to stand by each other. At Banbury, a Captain Thompson, at the head of two hundred men, issued a manifesto called "England's Standard Advanced," demanding the completion of public freedom, vowing justice on the murderers of Lockyer, and threatening, if a hair of Lilburne's was touched, they would avenge it seventy-and-seven fold. Reynolds, the colonel of the regiment, attacked Thompson, put him to flight, and prevailed on the soldiers to lay down their arms; but another party[96] of ten troops of horse, a thousand strong, under cornet Thompson, brother of the captain, marched out of Salisbury for Burford, increasing their numbers as they went. But Fairfax and Cromwell were marching rapidly after them. They came upon them in the night at Burford, took them all prisoners, and the next day, Thursday, the 17th of May, shot Cornet Thompson and two corporals in Burford churchyard. The rest were pardoned, and agreed to go to Ireland. A few days afterwards Captain Thompson was overtaken in a wood in Northamptonshire, and killed. The mutiny was at an end, if we except some local disturbances in Devon, Hants, and Somersetshire. Fairfax and Cromwell were received at Oxford in triumph, and feasted and complimented, being made doctors; and on the 7th of June a day of thanksgiving was held in London, with a great dinner at Grocers' Hall, given to the officers of the army and the leaders of Parliament, and another appointed for the whole kingdom on the 21st.

Cromwell had already been made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and on the 10th of July he set forth at five in the evening from London, by way of Windsor to Bristol. He set out in state approaching to royalty. He rode in a coach drawn by six Flanders mares, whitish greys, a number of carriages containing other officers following, attended by a life-guard of eighty men, the meanest of whom was a commander or esquire; many of them were colonels in rich uniforms, and the whole procession was attended by a resounding flourish of trumpets. But before following the farmer of Huntingdon, now risen to all but royal grandeur, we must notice the affairs of Scotland.

Though Argyll held the chief power in Scotland, and was on friendly terms with Cromwell, he could not prevent a strong public feeling showing itself on the approaching trial of the king. The Scots reproached themselves for giving up Charles to the English army, and considered that heavy disgrace would fall upon the country if the king should be put to death. They demanded, therefore, that a strong remonstrance should be sent to the Parliament of England, and Argyll was too timid or too cautious to oppose this. The Commissioners in London received and presented the remonstrance, but obtained no answer till after the execution of the king, and that which they did then receive was in most unceremonious terms. Forthwith the authorities in Edinburgh proclaimed Charles as king, and the Scottish Commissioners in London, protesting against the alteration of the Government into a Republic, and declaring themselves guiltless of the blood of the king, hastened to Gravesend, to quit the kingdom. But the Parliament, resenting this language as grossly libellous, and calculated to excite sedition, sent an officer to conduct them under guard to the frontiers of the kingdom.

Passing over this insult, the Scots in March despatched the Earl of Cassilis to the Hague, attended by four commissioners, to wait on Charles and invite him to Scotland. They found there the Earl of Lanark, now Duke of Hamilton by the execution of his brother, the Earls of Lauderdale, Callander, Montrose, Kinnoul, and Seaforth. Some of these were old Royalists, some of whom were called "Engagers," or of the party of Hamilton. The Court of Charles, small as it was, was rent by dissensions, and both the Engagers and the Commissioners under Cassilis joined in protesting against any junction with Montrose, whose cruelties to the Covenanters, they said, had been so great, that to unite with him would turn all Scotland against the king. They insisted on Charles taking the Covenant, but this Montrose and the old Royalists vehemently opposed, declaring that to do that would alienate both Catholics and Episcopalians, and exasperate the Independents to tenfold bitterness.

Whilst matters were in this unsatisfactory state, Dr. Dorislaus arrived as Ambassador from the English Parliament to the States of Holland. He was a native of that country, but had lived some time in England, had been a professor of Gresham College, and drew up the charge for Parliament against the king. That very evening, six gentlemen with drawn swords entered the inn where he was at supper, and desiring those present not to alarm themselves, as they had no intention of hurting any one but the agent of the English rebels who had lately murdered their king, they dragged Dorislaus from the table, and one of them stabbed him with a dagger. Seeing him dead, they sheathed their swords, and walked quietly out of the house. They were known to be all Scotsmen and followers of Montrose; and Charles, seeing the mischief this base assassination would do his cause, and especially in Holland, prepared to quit the country. It was first proposed that he should go to Ireland, where Ormond was labouring in his favour, and where Rupert was off the coast with a fleet; but he changed his mind and went to Paris, to the queen, his mother. Before doing that, he sent Chancellor Hyde and Lord Cottington as envoys to Spain, to endeavour to move the king in his favour, and he returned[97] an answer to the Scottish Commissioners, that though he was and always had been ready to grant them the freedom of their religion, he could not consent to bind himself to the Covenant. They admitted that he was their king, and therefore they ought to obey him, and not he them, and this obedience he must expect from the Committee of Estates, the Assembly of the Kirk, and the whole nation of Scotland. With this resolute reply they departed in no very satisfied mood.

ASSASSINATION OF DR. DORISLAUS. (See p. 96.)

The war in Ireland being now undertaken by Cromwell, we must give a brief retrospective glance at what had been passing there. Perhaps no country was ever so torn to pieces by different factions. The Catholics were divided amongst themselves: there were the Catholics of the Pale, and the Old Irish Catholics, part of whom followed the faction of Rinuccini, the Pope's Nuncio, who was at the head of the Council of Kilkenny, while others followed General Preston and Viscount Taaffe. The Irish Royalists—who consisted chiefly of Episcopalians—ranged themselves under the banner of Ormond. The approach of Cromwell warned them to suppress their various feuds and unite against the Parliament. To strengthen the Parliament force, Jones, the Governor of Dublin, and Monk, who commanded in Ulster, made overtures to Owen Roe O'Neil, the head of the Old Irish in Ulster. Ormond had arrived in Ireland, and Inchiquin and Preston, the leaders of the forces of the Irish Council, which had now repudiated the Pope's Nuncio, joined him; but O'Neil held back, not trusting Ormond, and he sent a messenger to Charles in France, offering to treat directly with him. But Ormond ordered the Earl of Castlehaven to attack O'Neil, which he did, and speedily reduced his garrisons of Maryborough and Athy. Enraged at this whilst he was offering his services to the king, O'Neil listened to the proposals of Monk, who was himself hard pressed by the Scottish Royalists, and had been compelled to retire from Belfast to Dundalk. Monk supplied O'Neil with ammunition, and O'Neil undertook to cut off the communication between the Royalists in the north and Ormond in the south. Monk sent word of this arrangement,[98] and the "grandees," as they were called, or members of the Great Council, entertained the plan in secret—publicly they dared not, for the followers of O'Neil were those Ulster Irish who had committed the horrible massacres of 1641. No sooner, however, did the rumour of this coalition become known, than the greatest excitement prevailed. The army and the people were filled with horror and indignation. They appealed to the solemn engagement of the army to avenge the blood of their fellow Protestants slaughtered by these savages; they reminded the Council and the Parliament of the invectives heaped by them on the late king for making peace with these blood-stained natives; and now they were expected to become the allies and associates of these very men. The Parliament saw how vain it was to strive against the feeling, and annulled the agreement. Hugh Peters harangued the public from the pulpit, excusing the Council on account of the real facts of the case having been concealed from them, and the whole weight of the transaction fell on Monk, who was just then in London, and who was assured that nothing but his past services saved him from the punishment of his indiscretion.

Whilst matters were in this position, and the Parliament was compelled to reject a very useful ally, Ormond marched to besiege Jones in Dublin. He advanced on both sides of the Liffey, and cast up works at Bogotrath, to cut off the pasturage of the horses of the Parliamentary force in Dublin. Jones, however, made a sally an hour before sunrise, and threw the enemy into such confusion that the whole army on the right bank of the river fled in headlong panic, leaving their artillery, ammunition, tents, and baggage. In vain did Ormond hasten to check the rout; his men followed the example. Two thousand prisoners were taken by Jones, of whom three hundred are said to have been slaughtered in cold blood. Such was the defeat, and such the inequality of the forces, that it cast great disgrace on the generalship of Ormond, and the Royalists made much talk about treason; but Charles himself would not listen to any such surmises: he hastened to send Ormond the Order of the Garter, and to assure him of his unshaken favour. The most exaggerated assertions were made of the forces of Ormond, and of the number of his men killed and taken. Ormond says that he had only eight thousand men; but Cromwell, no doubt from the assertions of Jones, states that the number was nineteen thousand against five thousand two hundred of Jones's, and that Jones killed four thousand on the spot, and took two thousand five hundred and seventeen prisoners, of whom three hundred were officers. The battle was fought at Rathmines on the 2nd of August, 1649, and contributed to quicken the movements of Cromwell, who was collecting forces for the passage at Milford Haven.

Cromwell, with twelve thousand veterans, sailed on the 13th of August, and arrived in Dublin with the first division on the 15th, Ireton following with the main body. He was received with acclamations by the people of Dublin, and made them a speech in the streets, which greatly pleased them. He then allowed his army a fortnight to refresh themselves after the voyage, before leading them to action. At this period, the only places left to the Parliament in Ireland were Dublin and Derry. On the 9th of September he bombarded Drogheda, and summoned it to surrender. The governor of the place was Sir Arthur Aston, who had about three thousand troops, foot and horse, commanded by Sir Edmund Varney, whose father was killed at Edge Hill. Aston, who had acquired the reputation of a brave and experienced officer, refused to surrender, and the storm commenced, and on the second day a breach was made. A thousand men entered by the breach, but were driven back by the garrison. On this Cromwell placed himself at the head of his men, and made a second assault. This time, after some hard fighting, they succeeded in getting possession of the entrenchments and of a church. According to Ormond, Carte, and others, Cromwell's officers then promised quarter to all who would surrender. "All his officers and soldiers," says Carte, "promising quarter to such as would lay down their arms, and performing it as long as any place held out, which encouraged others to yield. But when they had done all in their power, and feared no hurt that could be done them, then the word 'No quarter' went round, and the soldiers were, many of them, forced against their wills to kill their prisoners."

This has always been regarded as a great reproach to Cromwell. He himself, of course, does not confess that he broke his word, or forced his officers to break theirs; but he does something very like it. He asserts plainly, in his letter to Lenthall, the Speaker, that "our men, getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to the sword. And indeed, being in the heat of the action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town; and I think that night they put to the sword about two thousand men." Some of them escaping to the church, he had it set[99] fire to, and so burnt them in it; and he records the exclamations of one of them in the fire. The rest of the fugitives, as they were compelled to surrender, were either slaughtered, or, to use his own words, "their officers were knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the rest shipped for Barbadoes." He says that one thousand people were destroyed in the church that he fired. He adds that they "put to the sword the whole of the defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives; those that did are in safe custody for Barbadoes." This is, perhaps, the most awful confession that ever was made in cool blood, for these letters were written about a week after the assault, and by a man of such a thoroughly religious mind that he attributes the whole "to the Spirit of God;" says "this hath been a marvellous great mercy;" and prays that "all honest hearts may give the glory to God alone, to Whom, indeed, the praise of this mercy belongs." Cromwell endeavoured to justify this horrible massacre by the plea "that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future."

The butchery of Cromwell had not frightened men into surrendering their towns at his summons, and thereby preventing shedding of blood. In fact, great as were the merits of Cromwell, his barbarous mode of warfare in Ireland cannot be defended on any principles of reason, much less of Christianity or humanity. In England he had been noted for his merciful conduct in war, but in Ireland a deplorable fanaticism carried away both him and his army. They were now fighting against a Papist population, and deemed it a merit to destroy them. They confounded all Irishmen with the wild savages of Ulster, who had massacred the Protestants in 1641; and Cromwell, in his letters from Drogheda, plainly expresses this idea, calling the wholesale slaughter "a righteous judgment of God upon those barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood."

From Drogheda Cromwell returned to Dublin, and then marched on Wexford, taking and burning minor places by the way. On the 1st of October he summoned Wexford to surrender, and though the governor refused, the officer who commanded the castle traitorously yielded it. The soldiers then perceiving the enemy quit the walls of the town, scaled them with their ladders, and encountering the forces in the market-place, they made a stout resistance; but Cromwell informs the Parliament that they were eventually all put to the sword, "not many less than two thousand, and I believe not twenty of yours from first to last of the siege. The soldiers got a very good booty; and the inhabitants," he says, "were either so completely killed, or had run away, that it was a fine opportunity for honest people to go and plant themselves there." According to various historians, no distinction was made between the soldiers and the innocent inhabitants; three hundred women, who had crowded around the great cross, and were shrieking for protection to Heaven, were put to death with the same ruthless ferocity. Some authors do not restrict the numbers of the slain like Cromwell to two thousand, but reckon them at five thousand.

Ormond now calculated greatly on the aid of O'Neil to create a diversion in the north, and divide the attention and the forces of Cromwell, for that chieftain had begun to justify the treaty made with him through Monk, by compelling Montgomery to raise the siege of Londonderry, and rescuing Coote and his small army, the only force which the Parliament had in Ulster. But the cry in London against this alliance with the Irish Papist had done its work, and, after the victory of Rathmines, the Parliament refused to ratify the treaty made with O'Neil. Indignant at this breach of faith, he had listened to the offers of Ormond, and was on his march to join him at Kilkenny. O'Neil died at Clonacter, in Cavan, but his son took the command. By his assistance, the operations of Cromwell's generals were greatly retarded at that place, and at Duncannon and Waterford.

On the 17th of October, Cromwell sat down before Ross, and sent in a trumpeter, calling on the commander to surrender, with this extraordinary statement, "Since my coming into Ireland, I have this witness for myself, that I have endeavoured to avoid effusion of blood;" which must have been read with wonder, after the recent news from Drogheda and Wexford. General Taaffe refused. There were one thousand soldiers in the place, and Ormond, Ardes, and Castlehaven, who were on the other side of the river, sent in fifteen hundred more. Yet on the 19th the town surrendered, the soldiers being allowed to march away. O'Neil had now joined Ormond at Kilkenny with two thousand horse and foot, and Inchiquin was in Munster. Soon after Cork and Youghal opened their gates, Admiral Blake co-operating by water. In the north, Sir Charles Coote, Lord President of Connaught, took Coleraine by storm, and forming a junction with Colonel Venables, marched on Carrickfergus,[100] which they soon after reduced. Cromwell marched from Ross to Waterford, his army having taken Inistioge, Thomastown, and Carrick. He appeared before Waterford on the 24th of November. Here, too, he received the news of the surrender of Kinsale and Bandon Bridge, but Waterford refused to surrender, and Cromwell was compelled to march away to Cork for winter quarters. His troops, however, took the fort of Passage near Waterford; but they lost Lieutenant-General Jones, the conqueror of Rathmines, by sickness at Dungarvan.

Cromwell did not rest long in winter quarters. By the 29th of January, 1650, he was in the field again, at the head of thirty thousand men. Whilst Major-General Ireton and Colonel Reynolds marched by Carrick into Kilkenny, Cromwell proceeded from Youghal over the Blackwater into Tipperary, various castles being taken by the way; they quartered themselves in Fethard and Cashel. On March 28th Cromwell succeeded in taking Kilkenny, whence he proceeded to Clonmel. In this campaign the Royalist generals accuse him of still perpetrating unnecessary cruelties, though they endeavoured to set him a different example. "I took," says Lord Castlehaven, "Athy by storm, with all the garrison (seven hundred) prisoners. I made a present of them to Cromwell, desiring him by letter that he would do the same to me, if any of mine should fall into his power. But he little valued my civility, for in a few days after he besieged Gouvan, and the soldiers mutinying and giving up the place with their officers, he caused the Governor Hammond and some other officers to be put to death." Cromwell avows this in one of his letters. "The next day the colonel, the major, and the rest of the commissioned officers were shot to death; all but one, who, being very earnest to have the castle delivered, was pardoned." And this, he admits, was because they refused to surrender at his first summons. He seemed to consider a refusal to surrender at once and unconditionally, a deadly crime, and avenged it bloodily. On the other hand, Ormond, in one of his letters, says, "Rathfarnham was taken by our troops by storm, and all that were in it made prisoners; and though five hundred soldiers entered the castle before any officer of note, yet not one creature was killed; which I tell you by the way, to observe the difference betwixt our and the rebels' making use of a victory."

The Parliament, seeing the necessity of having their best general for the impending Scottish war, sent towards the end of April the President Bradshaw frigate, to bring over Cromwell from Ireland, and to leave Ireton, Lord Broghill, and the other generals to finish the war by the reduction of Clonmel, Waterford, Limerick, and a few lesser places. But Cromwell would not go till he had witnessed the fall of Clonmel. There Hugh O'Neil, the son of old Owen Roe O'Neil of Ulster, defended the place gallantly with twelve hundred men. The siege lasted from the 28th of March to the 8th of May. Whitelock says, "They found in Clonmel the stoutest enemy this army had met in Ireland, and there never was seen so hot a storm, of so long a continuance, and so gallantly defended, either in Ireland or England." The English troops had made a breach, and endeavoured to carry the town by storm in vain. On the 9th they stormed the breach a second time. "The fierce death-wrestle," says a letter from one of the besiegers, "lasted four hours," and Cromwell's men were driven back with great loss. But the ammunition of the besieged was exhausted, and they stole away in the night. The inhabitants, before this was discovered, sent out and made terms of surrender. On discovering the retreat of the enemy, pursuit was made, and two hundred men killed on the road. Oliver, however, kept his agreement with the inhabitants.

The siege of Clonmel finished, Cromwell set sail in the President Bradshaw, and landed at Bristol towards the end of May, where he was received with firing of guns and great acclamations for his exploits in Ireland. On the 31st of the month he approached Hounslow Heath, where he was met by the Lord-General Fairfax, and numbers of other officers and members of Parliament, besides crowds of other people. They conducted him to London, and on reaching Hyde Park Corner he was received by the discharge of artillery from Colonel Barkstead's regiment, there drawn up; and thus, with increasing crowds and acclamations, he was attended to the Cockpit near St. James's, a house which had been assigned to him, and where his family had been residing for some time. There the Lord Mayor and aldermen waited on him, to thank him for his services in Ireland. Thence, after rest and refreshment, he appeared in his place in Parliament, where he also received the thanks of the House. Some one remarking what crowds went out to see his triumph, Cromwell replied, "But if they had gone to see me hanged, how many more there would have been!"

[101]

Prince Charles, though invited to assume the crown of Scotland, was invited on such terms as would have afforded little hope to a man of much foresight. Those who were to support him were divided into two factions, which could no more mix than fire and water. The Covenanters, and the Royalists under Montrose, hated each other with an inextinguishable hatred. So far from mixing, they were sure to come to strife and bloodshed amongst themselves. If the Covenanters got the upper hand, as was pretty certain, he must abandon his most devoted followers, the Old Royalists and Engagers, and take the Covenant himself, thus giving up every party and principle that his father had fought for. He must take upon him a harsh and gloomy yoke, which must keep him not only apart from his Royalist and Episcopalian followers, but from his far more valuable kingdom of England, where the Independents and sectaries reigned, and which the Scottish Covenanters could not hope to conquer. But Charles was but a poor outcast and wanderer in a world the princes of which were tired of both him and his cause, and he was, therefore, compelled to make an effort, however hopeless, to recover his dominions by such means as offered. He therefore sent off Montrose to raise troops and material amongst the Northern Courts, and then to pass over and raise the Highlands, whilst he went to treat with the Covenanters at Breda.

GREAT SEAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH.

Montrose was strongly suspected of having headed the party who assassinated Dorislaus, a very bad beginning, assassination being the fitting business of thieves, and not of heroes. The fame of Montrose, nevertheless, gave him a good reception in Denmark and other Courts, and he is said to have raised an army of twelve thousand men, and embarked these, and much ammunition and artillery, at Gottenburg, under Lord Kinnoul, in the autumn. The equinoctial gales appeared to have scattered this force in all directions, dashing several of the ships on the rocks, so that Kinnoul landed in October at Kirkwall, in the Orkneys, with only eighty officers, and about one hundred common men. Montrose followed with five hundred more, and having received the Order of the Garter from Charles as a token of his favour, he once more raised his banner in the Highlands, bearing on it a painting of the late king decapitated, and the words, "Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord!" But the Highlanders had been taught caution by the repeated failures of the Royalists, and the chastisements they had received from the stern Covenanters; they stood aloof, and in vain did Montrose march through Caithness and Sutherland, calling on the natives to rise and defend the king before the Covenanters could sell him to the English, as they had done his father. This was a fatal proclamation, for whilst it failed to raise the Highlands, it added to the already deep detestation of him in the Lowlands, where his proclamation was burnt by the common hangman.

The Covenanters did not merely burn his proclamation, they despatched a force of four thousand men against him. Colonel Strachan came[102] almost upon him in Corbiesdale, in Ross-shire, and calling his men around him under the shelter of the high moorland broom, he informed them that God had given "the rebel and apostate Montrose, and the viperous brood of Satan, the accursed of God and the Kirk," into their hands. He gave out a psalm, which they sang, and then he dispersed them in successive companies, the whole not amounting to four hundred men, the main army being with David Leslie at Brechin. As soon as Strachan's handful of men came in sight of Montrose's levies, they were attacked by his cavalry, but scarcely were they engaged, when a second, and then a third detachment appeared. On perceiving this, Montrose believed the whole army of Leslie was marching up, and he ordered his infantry to fall back and screen themselves amongst the brushwood. But first his horse and then the whole of his men were thrown into confusion. His standard-bearer and several of his officers were slain. The foreign mercenaries demanded quarter and received it, the rest made their escape as well as they could. Montrose had his horse killed under him, and though he got another horse, and swam across a rapid river, he was compelled to fly in such haste, that he left behind him the Star and Garter with which he had been so newly invested, his sword, and his cloak. He again made for the mountains of Sutherland with Kinnoul, both disguised as peasants. Kinnoul soon sank with fatigue, and was left behind and perished. Montrose at length reached the house of Macleod of Assynt, who had formerly served under him; but this base man sold him to the Covenanters for four hundred bolls of meal. This treason was soon avenged by the neighbouring Highlanders, who ravaged the lands of Assynt; but the Scottish Parliament recompensed the traitor with twenty thousand pounds Scots, to be raised on the Royalists of Caithness and Orkney. The Orkneys, as well as the Isles of Man, Scilly, Jersey, the colony of Virginia, and the islands of the Caribbean Sea, long held out for the royal cause.

Montrose was at once conveyed to Edinburgh, where he arrived on the 18th of May; and having been carried bareheaded through the city in an open cart, and exposed to the insults and execrations of the mob, he was condemned as a traitor, and hanged on the 21st of May on a gibbet thirty feet high, his head being fixed on a spike in the capital, and his limbs sent for exposure in different towns. Such was the ignominious end of the gallant but sanguinary Montrose. But if the conduct of his enemies was ungenerous, what was that of his prince? No sooner did Charles hear of his defeat, than fearing that his rising might injure him with the Covenanters, he sent to the Parliament, protesting that he had never authorised him to draw the sword; nay, that he had done it contrary to the royal commands. Thus early did this worthless man display the meanness of his character, and practise the wretched maxims of the Stuart doctrine of kingcraft.

Charles had now complied with the demands of the Scottish Parliament, agreeing to take the Covenant, never to tolerate the Catholic religion in any part of his dominions, not even in Ireland, where the Catholics were a majority; to govern entirely by the authority of Parliament, and in religious matters by that of the Kirk. Thus did this man, for the sake of regaining the throne of one of his kingdoms, bind himself to destroy the religion of which he was at heart a believer, and to maintain a creed that he abhorred and despised. He landed in June in the Frith of Cromarty, and a court was established for him at Falkland, and nine thousand pounds sterling were allowed for its expenditure monthly.

But the pious Scots were speedily scandalised at the debauched habits of their royal puppet. He had delayed the expedition for some weeks, because he could not tear himself from his mistress, Mrs. Barlow, and now he came surrounded by a very dissipated crew—Buckingham, Wilmot, and others, whom nothing could induce him to part with, though many others were forbidden the Court.

Whilst these things were taking place in Scotland, in London as active measures were on foot for putting to flight this Covenanting king. On the 14th of June the Commons again appointed Fairfax Commander-in-Chief, and Cromwell Lieutenant-General. Fairfax, so far from favouring the invasion of Scotland, strongly argued against it, as a breach of the Solemn League and Covenant. Fairfax's wife is said to have been resolute against his taking up arms against the second Charles. She had sufficiently shown her spirit—that of a Vere, of the martial house of Vere—on his father's trial; and now Fairfax, not only strongly influenced by his wife, but belonging to the Presbyterian party, resigned his command, and retired to his estates in Yorkshire. It was in vain that a deputation, consisting of Cromwell, Lambert, Harrison, Whitelock, and St. John, waited on him at Whitehall, opening their meeting with prayer. Fairfax stood firm, and on the 26th, two days afterwards, the Parliament appointed Cromwell[103] Commander-in-Chief, in his place. On the 29th, only three days subsequently, Cromwell set out for the north. He had Lambert as Major-General, Whalley as Commissary-General, Pride, Overton, Monk, and Hodgson, as colonels of regiments. The Scottish Parliament had appointed the Earl of Leven generalissimo, but only nominally so out of honour, for he was now old and infirm. David Leslie was the real commander. The Scottish army was ordered to amount to sixty thousand men, and it was to lay waste all the country between Berwick and Edinburgh, to prevent the English from obtaining supplies. To frighten the country people away from the English army, it was rumoured that every male between sixteen and sixty would have their right hands cut off, and the women's breasts be bored through with red-hot irons.

DEATH OF THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH.

Carisbrooke Castle, Sept. 8th, 1650.

After the Painting by C. W. Cope, R.A.

Cromwell passed the Tweed at Berwick on the 22nd of July, with a force of sixteen thousand men. They found the country desolate and deserted, except by a number of women, who on their knees implored mercy, and were set by the officers to bake and brew for the soldiers. That night the beacon fires of Scotland were lighted, and the English army encamped at Mordington, where they lay three days, and then marched to Dunbar, and thence to Musselburgh. They found the Scottish army under Leslie posted between Edinburgh and Leith, and well defended by batteries and entrenchments. Nothing could induce the wary Scottish commander to quit his vantage ground, and the country afforded no supplies to the English army; but their fleet followed them along the coast, and furnished them with provisions.

For a month Cromwell found it impossible to draw the Scottish general out of his strong position. He sometimes marched up close to his lines to tempt him to come to action, but it was in vain, and he did not think it prudent to attack him in his formidable position, which must have cost him an awful number of men even if he carried it.

The weather being very wet he fell back upon Musselburgh, the enemy then making a sally, and harassing his rear, and wounding General Lambert. Cromwell and the Scottish Assembly, as well as Cromwell and General Leslie, who lay in the ground now occupied by the New Town of Edinburgh, had a voluminous correspondence, in which they quoted much Scripture, and each declared himself the favoured or justified of heaven. The Scots reproached Cromwell and his party with breaking the League and Covenant, and Cromwell retorted on them, that though they pretended to covenant and fight against Malignants, they had entered into agreement with the head and centre of the Malignants himself, which he said he could not understand. Cromwell, leaving a force to invest Dunbar, which was said to suffer extreme famine, being cooped by the English both on land and sea, about the 13th of August shifted his camp to the Pentland Hills to the west of Edinburgh, in order to cut off Leslie's supplies.

Whilst lying there the young king himself made a visit to the army at Leith, where he was received by the soldiers with acclamations; but the Assembly of the Kirk was soon scandalised by the drunkenness and profanity which his presence brought into the camp, and set on foot an inquiry, the result of which was that eighty officers, with many of their men, were dismissed that they might not contaminate the rest of the army. They also required Charles to sign a declaration to his subjects in his three kingdoms, informing them that he lamented the troubles which had been brought on the realm by the resistance of his father to the Solemn League and Covenant, and by the idolatry of his mother; that for himself he had subscribed the Covenant with all his heart, and would have no friends or enemies but the friends or enemies of the Covenant; that he repented making a peace with the Papists of Ireland, and now declared it null and void; that he detested all popery, prelacy, idolatry, and heresy; and finally, that he would accord to a free Parliament of England the propositions agreed upon by the Commissioners of the two kingdoms, and would settle the English Church according to the plan organised by the Westminster Assembly of divines.

Never was so flagrant a set of falsehoods forced on a reluctant soul! Charles read the declaration with indignation, and declared that he would sacrifice everything rather than thus cast reproach on his parents and their supporters, who had suffered so much on their behalf, or belie his own sentiments. But he was soon convinced that he must see his cause totally abandoned if he did not comply, and at the end of three days he signed with tears and shame the humiliating document. The exulting Kirk then proclaimed a certain victory from heaven over "a blaspheming general and a sectarian army."

And truly, affairs appeared very likely to come to such a conclusion. Cromwell found it difficult[104] to feed his army; the weather continued stormy and wet, and his soldiers suffered extremely from fevers and other illness from exposure to the weather. Cromwell made a sudden march in the direction of Stirling, as though he intended to cut off that town from communication with the capital. This set Leslie in motion; he hastily sent forward his forces, and the vanguards came to skirmishing, but could not engage in complete battle on account of the boggy ground between them. Cromwell as suddenly retreated, and firing his huts on the Pentlands, withdrew towards Dunbar. This effectually roused the Scots; they knew his distress from sickness and lack of supplies, and they thought he meant now to escape into England. To prevent that, and to make themselves masters of the whole English army, as they now confidently expected, they marched rapidly along the feet of the Lammermuir Hills, and Leslie managed to outstrip him, and hem him in between Dunbar and Doon Hill. A deep ravine called Cockburnspath, or, as Oliver pronounced it, Copper's Path, about forty feet deep and as many wide, with a rivulet running through it, lay between Oliver and the Scottish army, which was posted on Doon Hill. On Oliver's right lay Belhaven Bay, on his left Broxmouth House, at the mouth of a brook, and where there is a path southward. Leslie had secured the passes of Cockburnspath, and imagined that he had Cromwell and his army secure from Sunday night to Tuesday morning, the 3rd of September. But on Monday afternoon, Cromwell observed Leslie moving his right wing down into the plain towards Broxmouth House, evidently intending to secure that pass also; but Cromwell at once espied his advantage. He could attack and cut off this right wing, whilst the main body of Leslie's army, penned between the brook and the hills, could not manœuvre to help it. On observing this, Cromwell exclaimed to Lambert, "The Lord hath delivered us!" and arrangements were made to attack the right wing of Leslie at three o'clock in the morning. Leslie had twenty-three thousand men—Cromwell about half as many; but by a vigorous, unexpected attack on this right wing, after three hours of hard fighting, the Scots were thrown into confusion, and Cromwell exclaimed, "They run! I profess they run!" In fact, the horse of the Scots dashed frantically away over and through their own foot, and there was a wild flight in all directions. Three thousand slain lay on the spot, the Scots army was in wild rout, and as the sun just then rose over St. Abb's Head and the sea, Oliver exclaimed to his soldiers, "Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered!" "The Lord-General," says Hodgson, "made a halt till the horse could gather for the chase, and sang the 117th Psalm." Then the pursuit was made as far as Haddington. Ten thousand prisoners were taken, with all the baggage, artillery, and ammunition of the enemy. A thousand men were slain in the pursuit. By nine o'clock in the morning, David Leslie, the general, was in Edinburgh, old Lord Leven reached it by two, and what a city! The general complained that the preachers had occasioned the disaster; they would not let him rest till he descended from his height to attack the enemy on a disadvantageous ground. The ministers, though all their prophecies of victory were falsified, had yet plenty of other reasons for it. They published a "Short Declaration and Warning," in which they enumerated no less than thirteen causes for this terrible overthrow—the general wickedness of the country, the especial wickedness of the king's house, and the number of Malignants amongst the king's followers, and so forth. Cromwell told them plainly in letters addressed to them, that they had been punished for taking up a family that the Lord had so eminently lifted up His hand against, and for pretending to cry down Malignants, and yet receiving and setting up the head of them all. He advanced to Edinburgh, where he closely blockaded the castle, which was soon compelled to surrender.

As for Charles II., he was rather delighted than otherwise with the defeat of his fanatic friends at Dunbar. He was grown most thoroughly tired of imperious dictation and morose religion, and he took the opportunity to steal away to join Murray, Huntly, Atholl, and the Royalists in the Highlands. On the afternoon of the 4th of October, on pretence of hawking, he rode out of Perth, and dashed away for the braes of Angus. After galloping forty miles he came to a wretched hovel at a place called Clova, where he had nothing but a turf pillow to sleep on. There he was overtaken by Colonel Montgomery—for Argyll had been speedily apprised of his flight—and finding that two regiments of horse were at hand, Charles knew that escape was hopeless, and so he returned. But "the Start," which Charles's elopement was called, had opened the eyes of the Covenanters to the danger of pressing him too far. They now considerably relaxed their vigour towards him, admitted him to their deliberations in Council, and they thus induced him to prevail on Atholl, Middleton, and the Highland forces to disband.

[105]

DUNBAR.

Cromwell's attention was soon attracted towards the West, where an army of five thousand men was raised, by order of the Committee of Estates, by Colonels Kerr and Strachan, in the associated counties of Renfrew, Ayr, Galloway, Wigtown, and Dumfries. These people were of strict whiggamore notions, and were directly in correspondence with John Warriston, the Clerk Register of Parliament, and Gillespie and Guthrie, two ministers of the Kirk, who protested against having anything to do with the son of the beheaded Charles Stuart, who was an enemy to the Kirk, and whose son himself was a thorough Malignant. They drew up a Remonstrance of the Western army, in which they termed the king an incarnate solecism, and refused to fight under either him or Leslie. Cromwell, who saw little to prevent a union with this party, professing his old veneration for the Covenant, opened a communication with them, arguing that Charles ought to be banished, and thus remove the need of an English interference. In order to effect a coalition with these commanders, Cromwell marched to Glasgow, where he arrived on Friday, October 18th; and on Sunday, in the cathedral, listened to a violent sermon against him and his army from the Reverend Zachary Boyd. Coming to no agreement with Kerr and Strachan, he returned on Monday towards Edinburgh, and found many men advising that they shall give up the "hypocrite," meaning Charles, and make peace with England; but Kerr and Strachan, though their Remonstrance was voted a scandalous libel by Parliament, could not agree to this. They, in fact, differed in opinion. Strachan resigned his commission, and soon after came over with eighty troopers to Cromwell. Kerr showed a hostile aspect, agreeing with neither one party nor another, and soon came to nothing. Cromwell sent Lambert to look after him with three thousand horse, and Lambert, whilst lying at Hamilton, found himself suddenly attacked by Kerr. He, however, repulsed him, took him prisoner, killed a hundred of his men, losing himself only six, and took two hundred prisoners, horse and foot. The Western army was wholly dispersed. The condition of the Covenanting Scots was now deplorable; the Remonstrants, though they had lost their army, still continued to quarrel with the official or Argyll's party, and the country was thus torn by the two factions, under[106] the name of Remonstrants and Resolutionists, when it should have been united against the enemy. Cromwell was now master of all the Lowlands, casting longing glances towards Stirling and Perth, which were in the hands of the royal party, and thus ended the year 1650.

On the first day of the new year, 1651, Charles rode, or rather was led, in procession, by his partisans to the church at Scone, and there solemnly crowned. There, on his knees, he swore to maintain the Covenant, to establish Presbyterianism, and embrace it himself, to establish it in his other dominions as soon as he recovered them. Argyll then placed the crown on his head, and Douglas, the minister, read him a severe lecture on the calamities which had followed the apostacy of his grandfather and father, and on his being a king only by compact with his people. But the fall of the Western army had weakened the rigid Presbyterian party. Argyll saw his influence decline, that of the Hamiltons in the ascendant, and numbers of the old Royalists pouring in to join the army. Charles's force soon displayed the singular spectacle of Leslie and Middleton in united command, and the army, swelled by the Royalists, was increased to twenty thousand men. Having fortified the passes of the Forth, the king thus awaited the movements of Cromwell. But the lord-general, during the spring, was suffering so much from the ague, that he contemplated returning home. In May, however, he grew better, and advanced towards Stirling. Whilst he occupied the attention of Charles and his army by his manœuvres in that quarter, he directed Lambert to make an attempt upon Fife, which succeeded, and Cromwell, crossing the Forth, advanced to support him. The royal army quickly evacuated Perth, after a sharp action, in which about eight hundred men on each side fell, and the Parliament colours were hoisted on the walls of that city.

If Cromwell's movement had been rapid and successful, he was now in his turn astonished by one as extraordinary on the part of the Prince. Charles saw that all the south of Scotland and a great part of England was clear of the enemy, and he at once announced his determination to march towards London. On the 31st of July his army was actually in motion, and Argyll, denouncing the enterprise as inevitably ruinous, resigned his commission and retired to Inverary.

On discovering Charles's object, Cromwell put the forces to remain in Scotland under the command of General Monk, sent Lambert from Fife to follow the royal army with three thousand cavalry, and wrote to Harrison in Newcastle to advance and harass the flank of Charles's army. He himself, on the 7th of August, commenced his march after it with ten thousand men.

Charles advanced at a rapid rate, and he had crossed the Mersey before Lambert and Harrison had formed a junction near Warrington, and attempted to draw him into a battle on Knutsford Heath. But Charles continued his hasty march till he reached Worcester, where he was received with loud acclamations by the mayor and corporation, and by a number of county gentlemen, who had been confined there on suspicion of their disaffection, but were now liberated. But such had been the sudden appearance of Charles, that no expectation of it, and therefore no preparation for it, had been made by the Royalists; and the bigoted ministers attending his army sternly refused all who offered to join them, whether Presbyterians, Episcopalians, or Catholics, because they had not taken the Covenant. It was in vain that Charles gave orders to the contrary, and sent forward General Massey to receive and bring into order these volunteers; the Committee of the Kirk rejected them, whilst Cromwell's forces on their march were growing by continual reinforcements, especially of the county militias. Colonel Robert Lilburne met with a party of Charles's forces under the Earl of Derby, between Chorley and Wigan, and defeated them, killing the Lord Widdrington, Sir Thomas Tildesley, and Colonels Boynton, Trollope, and Throgmorton. Derby himself was wounded, but escaped.

Charles issued a proclamation for all his male subjects between the ages of sixteen and sixty to join his standard on the 26th of August; but on that day he found that the whole of his forces amounted to only twelve thousand men, whilst Cromwell, who arrived two days after, was at the head of at least thirty thousand. On the 3rd of September, the anniversary of the battle of Dunbar, Cromwell determined to attack the royal army. Lambert, overnight, crossed the Severn at Upton, with ten thousand men, and the next morning Cromwell and Fleetwood, with the two other divisions of the army, crossed, Cromwell the Severn, and Fleetwood the Teme. Charles, who had been watching their progress from the tower of the cathedral, descended and attacked Fleetwood before he had effected his passage; but Cromwell was soon up to the assistance of his general, and after a stout battle, first in the meadows, and then in the streets of the city, the[107] forces of Charles were completely beaten. Charles fought with undaunted bravery, and endeavoured to rally his soldiers for a last effort, but they flung down their weapons and surrendered. It was with difficulty that he was prevailed upon to fly, and save his life. Three thousand of the Royalists were slain, and six or seven thousand made prisoners, including a considerable number of noblemen—the Duke of Hamilton, but mortally wounded, the Earls of Rothes, Derby, Cleveland, Kelly, and Lauderdale, Lords Sinclair, Kenmure, and Grandison, and the Generals Leslie, Massey, Middleton, and Montgomery. The Duke of Buckingham, Lord Talbot, and others, escaped with many adventures.

It was an overthrow complete, and most astonishing to both conquered and conquerors. Cromwell, in his letter to the Parliament, styled it "a crowning mercy." The Earl of Derby and seven others of the prisoners suffered death as traitors and rebels to the Commonwealth. Derby offered the Isle of Man for his ransom, but his letter was read by Lenthall to the House too late, and he was executed at Bolton, in Lancashire.

As for Charles himself, the romance of his escape has been celebrated in many narratives. After being concealed for some days at White-ladies and Boscobel, two solitary houses in Shropshire, and passing a day in the boughs of an oak, he made his way in various disguises, and by the assistance of different loyal friends, to Brighton, whence he passed in a collier over to Fécamp in Normandy, but this was not till the 17th of October, forty-four days after the battle of Worcester.

On the 12th of September Cromwell arrived in town; Bulstrode, Whitelock, and three other gentlemen had been sent down to meet him and conduct him to London. They met him near Aylesbury, and they all joined a hawking party by the way. At Aylesbury they passed the night. Oliver was very affable, and presented to each of the commissioners a horse taken in the battle and a couple of Scottish prisoners. At Acton, the Speaker of the Commons, the Lord President, and many other members of Parliament and of the Council, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Sheriffs, and crowds of other people, met him, and congratulated him on his splendid victory and his successes in Scotland. The Recorder, in his address, said he was destined to "bind kings in chains and their nobles in fetters of iron." In London he was received with immense shoutings and acclamations. Parliament voted that the 3rd of September should be kept ever after as a holiday, in memory of his victory; and, in addition to twenty-five thousand pounds a year already granted in land, they settled on him another forty thousand pounds a year in land.

Thus the royal party was for a time broken and put down. In Ireland Cromwell had left his son-in-law Ireton as his deputy, who went on with a strong hand crushing all opposition. The Roman Catholic party growing weary of Ormond, he had resigned his lord-deputyship, and Clanricarde had succeeded him. Still the Catholic party was divided in itself, and Ormond, and after him Clanricarde, entered into a treaty with the Duke of Lorraine, who agreed to send an army to Ireland to put down the Parliament, on condition that he should be declared Protector-royal of Ireland, with all the rights pertaining to the office; an office, in fact, never before heard of. The Irish Royalists obtained, however, at different times, twenty thousand pounds from Lorraine, and his agents were still negotiating for his protectorship, when the defeat of Charles at Worcester showed Lorraine the folly of his hopes. Disappointed in this expectation of assistance from abroad, the Irish Royalists found themselves vigorously attacked by Ireton. In June he invested Limerick, and on the 27th of October it surrendered. Ireton tried and put to death seven of the leaders of the party. The court-martial refused to condemn the brave O'Neil, though Ireton urged his death for his stubborn defence of Clonmel. When Terence O'Brien, Bishop of Emly, was condemned, he exclaimed to Ireton, "I appeal to the tribunal of God, and summon thee to meet me at that bar." These words were deemed prophetic, and were remembered with wonder when, about a month afterwards, Ireton fell ill of fever and died (Nov. 15, 1651).

Cromwell appointed General Lambert his deputy in Ireland. The appointment was cancelled before Lambert could pass over to that country, as it is said, through the management of Ireton's widow, Cromwell's daughter Bridget. The handsome wife of Lambert had refused—her husband being now Lord-Deputy—to give precedence to Mrs. Ireton in St. James's Park, where they met one day. Mrs. Ireton took offence, and prevailed on her father to revoke the appointment, and give it to Fleetwood, whom she soon after married, and so Lambert returned to Ireland in his former position. It is believed that Lambert never forgave the affront, though Cromwell endeavoured to soothe him, and made him compensation in money; for he was found to be[108] one of the first to oppose Richard Cromwell after his father's death, and depose him from the protectorate. Ludlow and three others were joined with Fleetwood, so far as the civil administration of Ireland was concerned, and they were ordered to levy sufficient money for the payment of the forces, not exceeding forty thousand pounds a month; and to exclude Papists from all places of trust, from practising as barristers, or teaching in any kind of school. Thus the bulk of the natives were deprived of all participation in the affairs of their own country, and, what was worse, might be imprisoned or removed from one part of the country at the will of these dictators.

CROMWELL ON HIS WAY TO LONDON AFTER THE BATTLE OF WORCESTER. (See p. 107.)

In Scotland Monk carried matters with the same high hand. On the 14th of August he compelled Stirling to surrender, and sent off the royal robes, part of the regalia, and the National Records to London. He then commenced the siege of Dundee, and whilst it was progressing he sent Colonels Alured and Morgan to Alyth in Angus, where he surprised the two Committees of the Estates and the Kirk, with many other noblemen and gentlemen, to the number of three hundred, amongst them poor old Leslie, Earl of Leven, met on Royalist affairs, and sent them after the regalia to England. On the 1st of September Monk stormed Dundee, and gave up the town to the plunder and violence of the soldiery. There were said to be eight hundred soldiers and inhabitants killed, of whom three hundred were women and children. The place had been considered so safe that many people had sent their property there for security, and this and the ships in the harbour all fell into the hands of the conquerors. They are said to have got two hundred thousand pounds in booty, and perpetrated the most unheard-of atrocities. The fate of Dundee induced Montrose, Aberdeen, and St. Andrews to open their gates. The Earl of Huntly and Lord Balcarres submitted, and scarcely any noblemen of note, except Argyll, held out; and he did so merely for the purpose of making good terms with the Parliament.

The most vigorous means were adopted to keep the country in check. Military stations were appointed throughout the Highlands, and sites fixed upon for the erection of strong forts at Ayr, Leith[109], Perth, and Inverness. The property and estates of the Crown were declared forfeited to Parliament, as well as the lands of all who had taken arms under the Duke of Hamilton or the king against England. English judges were sent to go the circuits, assisted by Scottish ones, and one hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year were voted for the maintenance of the army in Scotland, which was raised to twenty thousand men. These were galling measures for the Scots, who had hoped to subject England again to the king, but they were far from the most humiliating. Vane, St. John, and six other commissioners were appointed to settle a plan for the incorporation of Scotland with England. They met at Dalkeith, and summoned the representatives of the counties and the burghs to assemble and consult with them on the matter. The ministers thundered from their pulpits against a union, and especially against putting the Kirk under the power of the State; but twenty-eight out of thirty shires, and forty-four out of fifty-eight burghs complied, and sent up twenty-one deputies to sit with the Parliamentary commissioners at Westminster, to settle the terms of the union. The power of the English Parliament, or rather of the army, was now so supreme, that both in Scotland and Ireland resistance was vain.

HENRY IRETON. (After the Portrait by Cooper.)

The all-absorbing interest of the events of the last several unexampled years within the kingdom, has prevented our noticing the transactions of the Commonwealth with the other kingdoms of Europe. We must now recount these. Prince Rupert, by his cruising on the coasts of England and Ireland, had not only kept the nation in alarm, but had inflicted great injury on the coasts[110] and commerce of the realm. In the spring of 1649 he lay in the harbour of Kinsale, keeping the way open for the landing of the foreign troops expected to accompany Charles II. to Ireland. But Vane, to whom was entrusted the naval affairs, commissioned Blake, Dean, and Monk, three army officers, who showed themselves as able at sea as on land, to look after him, and the victories of Cromwell in Ireland warned him in the autumn to remove. He found himself blockaded by the English fleet, but in his impetuous way he burst through the enclosing squadron with the loss of only three ships, and took refuge in the Tagus. In the following March Blake presented himself at that river, and demanded of the King of Portugal permission to attack the pirate, as he termed him, at his anchorage. The king refused; Blake attempted, notwithstanding, to force his way up the river to Rupert's fleet, but he was assailed by the batteries from both shores, and was compelled to retire. This was deemed a declaration of war by the Republic, and Blake was ordered to seize any Portuguese ships that fell in his way. Don John thereupon seized the English merchants in his dominions, and confiscated their goods. But the ravages committed by Blake on his subjects soon induced him to order Rupert to retire from the Tagus, who sailed thence into the Mediterranean, where he continued to practise open piracy, capturing ships of almost all nations. He afterwards sailed to the West Indies to escape the English admirals, and inflicted there great injuries both on the English and Spanish. His brother Maurice was there lost in a storm, and in 1652 Rupert, beset by the English captains, made his way again to Europe, and sold his two men-of-war to Cardinal Mazarin. The Portuguese, freed from the presence of Rupert, soon sent Don Guimaraes to London to treat for a pacification, but the treaty was not finally concluded till after Cromwell had attained to supreme power.

The King of Spain, who never forgave Charles I. the insult put upon his sister and the whole kingdom, acknowledged the Republic from the first moment of its establishment by continuing the presence of Cardenas, his ambassador. The King of Spain made use of his ambassador in London to excite the Commonwealth against Portugal and the United Provinces, but an unlucky accident threatened to disturb even this alliance, the only one between the Commonwealth and the Courts of the Continent. As Spain kept an ambassador in London, the Parliament resolved to send one to Madrid, and for this purpose they selected a gentleman of the name of Ascham. He did not understand Spanish, and therefore he employed three friars, who accompanied him and informed him of all that he wanted to know regarding Spain. But he was no sooner arrived than half a dozen Royalist English officers, who had served in the Spanish army against Portugal, and in Calabria, went to his inn, and finding him at dinner, exclaimed, "Welcome, gallants, welcome!" and ran him and Riba, one of the friars, through with their swords. This was precisely what some Royalists had done to Dorislaus, the Parliamentary ambassador to the Hague, in 1649; for these Cavaliers, with all their talk of honour, had no objection to an occasional piece of assassination. One of the servants of Charles II.'s ambassadors, Hyde and Cottington, was one of the assassins, which brought the ambassadors into suspicion; but they protested firmly against any participation in so base a business. The assassins fled to a church for sanctuary, except one who got to the Venetian ambassador's, and so escaped. The other five were brought from their asylum, tried, and condemned to die, but the courtiers sympathised so much with the Royalists, that they were returned again to their asylum, except a Protestant of the name of Sparkes, who, being taken a few miles from the city, was put to death. This matter blowing over, the peace with Spain continued. With Holland the case was different.

Holland, being itself a Republic, might have been expected to sympathise and fraternise with the English Commonwealth, but the circumstances of the Court prevented the spread of this feeling. The Stadtholder, William II., had married the Princess Royal of England, the daughter of Charles I., and sister of Charles II. From the first of the contest, therefore, Holland had supported the claims of both the Charleses. The second Charles had spent much of his exile at the Hague, not being at all cordially received in France, where his mother resided. His brother, the Duke of York, had long resided there, as Rupert and Maurice had done before. There was thus a great league between the family of the Stadtholder and the Stuart faction, and the Stadtholders themselves were gradually making themselves as despotic as any princes of Europe. All the money which enabled the Stuarts in England to make head and invade it from Scotland came from the Hague. On the other hand, the large Republican party in Holland, which was at strife with the Stadtholder on account of his[111] regal and despotic doctrines, looked with favour on the proceedings of the English Parliament, and thus awoke a deep jealousy in the Stadtholder's Court of the English Parliament, which entertained ideas of coalescing with Holland into one great Republic.

From these causes no satisfaction could ever be obtained from the Stadtholder for the murder of Dr. Dorislaus, nor would he admit Strickland, the ambassador of the Parliament, to an audience. But on the 6th of November, 1650, William died of small-pox, and on the 14th of that month his widow gave birth to William III., who afterwards became King of England. The infancy of the Stadtholder now encouraged the Republican party to abolish that office, and to restore the more democratic form of government. On this, the Parliament of England, in the commencement of 1651, determined to send ambassadors to the States, and in addition to Strickland sent St. John, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. But no good was done. There were numbers of English Royalists still hanging about at the Hague, and the Dutch, through the internal wars of England, France, and Spain, had grown so prosperous that they were become proud and insolent, and had come to regard the English Parliament, through the misrepresentation of their enemies, as a power that they might treat with contempt. St. John found insurmountable difficulties in negotiating with the rude, haughty States-General. He was openly insulted in the streets of the Hague; the ignorant populace hooted and hissed him and his colleague, and the Royalists were suffered to annoy them with impunity.

The Parliament of England had in good faith proposed their scheme of confederacy against their common enemies both by sea and land, but the States-General made so many objections and delays that the term fixed for the negotiation expired, and the English ambassadors took their leave in disgust. The battle of Worcester awoke the Dutch to their mistake, and they then sent in haste to propose terms of alliance on their part, but it was too late. St. John, strong in his feelings as he was deep in his intellect, had represented their conduct in such terms that the English Parliament received them with a cool haughtiness the counterpart of their own in the late attempt at treaty. St. John had also employed himself in a measure of revenge on the Dutch which was in its effects most disastrous to them. Owing to the embarrassments of the other European States, the Dutch had grown not only to be the chief merchants of the nations, but the great carriers of all mercantile goods. Parliament passed a Navigation Act, by which it was forbidden to introduce any of the products of Asia, Africa, or America into England, except in English vessels, or any of the manufactures of Europe, except in English ships or the ships of the countries which produced them. This at one blow lopped off the greater part of the commerce of Holland, and the demands of the ambassador that this terrible Act should be repealed, or at least suspended till the conclusion of a treaty, were totally disregarded. But this was not the only offensive weapon which St. John's resentment had found. Letters of marque had been issued against French vessels, and they were permitted to be used against Dutch ones, on pretence that they had French property on board. Still more, the massacre of the English at Amboyna, which had been lightly passed over, owing to the desire of the English Court to maintain the alliance of Holland against Spain, had never been forgotten by the English people, and there were now loud demands, especially from the sailors, that all survivors of the Dutch concerned in that murder should be given up. In fact, a determined spirit of hostility had sprung up between the two maritime nations. The Dutch, at the call of their merchants for protection, prepared a fleet, and placed at the head of it the three greatest admirals that their nation ever produced—Van Tromp, De Ruyter, and De Witt. The English Parliament, on their part, ordered their admirals to insist on the same homage being paid to their flag in the narrow seas as had been paid to that of the king. They also demanded indemnification for the losses sustained in the East Indies from the Dutch, and insisted on the stipulated contribution of the tenth herring from the Dutch fishermen in the British seas.

It was impossible, under such circumstances, that hostilities should be long deferred. Commodore Young was the first to call on the convoy of a fleet of Dutch merchantmen to salute the British flag. They refused, and Young attacked them so smartly that in the end they complied. In a few days Van Tromp, who was a zealous partisan of Orange, and therefore of the house of Stuart, appeared in the Downs with two-and-forty sail. To Commodore Bourne, whom he found there, he disclaimed any hostile intentions, but pleaded the loss of several anchors and cables for putting in; but the next day, being the 19th of[112] May, he encountered Blake off Dover, and that commander, though he had only twenty ships, demanded that Van Tromp should do homage to his flag. Van Tromp refused, and sailed right on till he came nearly opposite Blake, when the English admiral fired a gun three successive times at the Dutch admiral's flag. Van Tromp returned the compliment by firing a broadside into Blake's ship; and the two fleets were instantly engaged, and a desperate battle was fought from three in the afternoon till darkness separated them. The English had taken two ships, one of which, on account of the damage done it, was allowed to sink.

There was much dispute between the two countries which was the aggressor; but it appears the most probable fact that Van Tromp sought an occasion to resist the demand of lowering the Dutch flag to the English one, and found an admiral as prepared to assert that superiority as he was to dispute it.

The English Parliament immediately issued strict orders to all its commodores to pursue and destroy all the ships of the Dutch fleet that they could find on the seas; and in the space of a month they took or burnt seventy sail of merchantmen, besides several men-of-war. The Dutch protested that the battle had not been sought by them, and proposed inquiry, and the punishment of whichever of the commanders should be proved the aggressor; but the Parliament replied that it was satisfied that the States were bent on usurping the rights of England on the seas, and on destroying the fleets, which were the walls and bulwarks of the nation, and therefore that it was necessary to stand on the defensive. The States sent De Pauw to reiterate the assurances of their peaceful intentions, and to urge the court of inquiry; but the Parliament was now as high as the States had been before, and insisted on reparation and security. De Pauw demanded what these terms meant, and was answered, full compensation for all the expense that the Commonwealth had been put to by the hostile preparations of the States, and a confederation for the mutual protection of the two nations. De Pauw knew that the first of these terms would be declined, and took his leave. On the 19th of July the Parliament proclaimed war against the States.

The Dutch were by no means afraid of the war, though they dreaded the destruction of their trade which it would occasion. They had acquired a great reputation as a naval people, and the sailors were eager to encounter the English, and revenge their defeat upon them. Van Tromp once more appeared with seventy sail of the line, and boasted that he would sweep the English from the face of the ocean. The Vice-Admiral Sir George Ayscough (or Ayscue), had just returned victorious from the reduction of Barbadoes, and was left in charge of the Channel whilst Blake went northward, in quest of the squadron which protected the Dutch fishermen. Van Tromp could not come up with Ayscough, owing to a change of wind; he, therefore, went northward after Blake, who had captured the Dutch squadron, and made the fishermen pay the tenth herring, but a storm dispersed Van Tromp's fleet, several of his ships falling into the hands of the English. When he again returned to port, he was received with great indignation by the people, who had expected wonders from him, and in his mortification he resigned.

De Ruyter was advanced into his post, and put to sea in charge of a merchant fleet, and in return fell in with Ayscough off Plymouth, who broke through his line, but was not followed up vigorously by the captains of the other vessels, and the Dutch ships escaped. Ayscough was superseded, the Parliament suspecting him of a royal tendency.

De Ruyter joined De Witt, and attacked Blake, who had under him Admirals Bourne and Penn, and a fierce engagement took place, which lasted the whole of the 28th of September. The next morning the Dutch were seen bearing away for their own coasts, several of their vessels having gone down, and one of them being taken. Blake gave chase as far as Goree, but could not pursue them amongst the shoals and sandbanks, where the small vessels of the Dutch had taken refuge. Wherever English and Dutch ships now met, there was battle. There was an affray between them in the Mediterranean, where Van Galen, with a greatly superior force, attacked and defeated Captain Baily, but was himself slain; the King of Denmark also joined the Dutch with five ships, laid an embargo on English merchandise in the Baltic, and closed the Sound against them. There were, moreover, numerous vessels under the French flag cruising about in quest of merchantmen.

As winter, however, approached, Blake, supposing the campaign would cease till spring, dispersed a number of his vessels to different ports, and was lying in the Downs with only thirty-seven sail, when he was surprised by a fleet of eighty men-of-war, and ten fire-ships. It was Van Tromp, whom the States had again prevailed on[113] to take the command, and who came vehement for the recovery of his tarnished reputation. Blake's stout heart refused to shrink from even so unequal a contest; and he fought the whole Dutch fleet with true English bulldogism, from ten in the morning till six in the evening, when the increasing darkness led to a cessation of hostilities on both sides. Blake took advantage of the night to get up the Thames as far as the quaint fishing village of Leigh. He had managed to blow up a Dutch ship, disable two others, and to do much damage generally to the Dutch fleet; but he had lost five ships himself. Van Tromp and De Ruyter sailed to and fro at the mouth of the river, and along the coast from the North Foreland to the Isle of Wight, in triumph, and then convoyed home the Dutch and French fleets. There was huge rejoicing in Holland over the great English admiral, which, considering the immense inequality of the fleets, was really an honour to Blake, for it showed how they esteemed his genius and courage. The whole of Holland was full of bravado at blocking up the Thames, and forcing the English to an ignominious peace. Van Tromp was so elated, that he stuck a besom at his masthead, intimating that he would sweep the English from off the seas.

ROYAL MUSEUM AND PICTURE GALLERY, THE HAGUE.

The English Parliament, during the winter, made strenuous efforts to wipe out this reverse. They refitted and put in order all their ships, ordered two regiments of infantry to be ready to embark as marines, raised the wages of the seamen, ordered their families to be maintained during their absence on service, and increased the rate of prize money. They sent for Monk from Scotland, and joined him and Dean in command with Blake.

The Dutch navy was estimated at this period at a hundred and fifty sail, and was flushed with success; but Blake was resolved to take down their pride, and lay ready for the first opportunity. This occurred on the 18th of February, 1653. Van Tromp appeared sailing up the Channel with seventy-two ships of war and thirty armed traders, convoying a homeward-bound merchant fleet of three hundred sail. His orders were, having seen the merchantmen safe home, to return and blockade the Thames. Blake saved him the[114] trouble, by issuing from port with eighty men-of-war, and posting himself across the Channel. Van Tromp signalled the merchant fleet under his convoy to take care of themselves, and the battle between him and Blake commenced with fury. The action took place not far from Cape La Hogue, on the coast of France. Blake and Dean, who were both on board the Triumph, led the way, and their ship received seven hundred shots in her hull. The battle lasted the whole day, in which the Dutch had six ships taken or sunk, the English losing none, but Blake was severely wounded.

The next day the fight was renewed off Weymouth as fiercely as before, and was continued all day, and at intervals through the night; and on the third day the conflict still raged till four o'clock in the afternoon, when the wind carrying the contending fleets towards the shallow waters between Boulogne and Calais, Van Tromp, with his lesser ships, escaped from the English, and pursued his course homewards, carrying the merchant fleet safely there. In the three days' fight the Dutch, according to their own account, had lost nine men-of-war and twenty-four merchantmen; according to the English account, eleven men-of-war and thirty merchantmen. They had two thousand men killed, and fifteen hundred taken prisoners. The English had only one ship sunk, though many of their vessels were greatly damaged, and their loss of killed and wounded was very severe. But they had decidedly beaten the enemy, and the excitement in Holland, on the return of the crest-fallen though valiant boaster Van Tromp, was universal. It was now the turn of the English sailors to boast, who declared that they had paid off the Dutch for Amboyna. But the defeat of their navy was nothing in comparison to the general mischief done to their trade and merchant shipping. Their fisheries employed one hundred thousand persons: these were entirely stopped; the Channel was now closed to their fleet, and in the Baltic the English committed continual ravages on their traders. Altogether, they had now lost sixteen hundred ships, and they once more condescended to seek for accommodation with the English Parliament, which, however, treated them with haughty indifference; and it was, therefore, with great satisfaction that they now beheld the change which took place in England.

The Reformers of various shades and creeds had at first been combined by the one great feeling of rescuing the country from the absolute principles of the Stuarts. They had fought bravely side by side for this great object; but in proportion as they succeeded, the differences between themselves became more apparent. The Presbyterians, Scots and English, were bent on fixing their religious opinions on the country as despotically as the Catholics and Episcopalians had done before them. But here they found themselves opposed by the Independents, who had notions of religious freedom far beyond the Presbyterians, and were not inclined to yield their freedom to any other party whatever. Their religious notions naturally disposed them towards the same equalising system in the State, and as the chiefs of the army were of this denomination, they soon found themselves in a condition to dictate to the parliament. Pride's Purge left Parliament almost purely independent, and it and the army worked harmoniously till the sweeping victories of Cromwell created a jealousy of his power. This power was the more supreme because circumstances had dispersed the other leading generals into distant scenes of action. Monk and Lambert were in Scotland till Monk was called to the fleet, Fleetwood was in Ireland, Ireton was dead. The Long Parliament, or the remnant of it, called the Rump, ably as it had conducted affairs, was daily decreasing in numbers, and dreaded to renew itself by election, because it felt certain that anything like a free election would return an overwhelming number of Presbyterians, and that they would thus commit an act of felo de se.

At no period did what is called the Commonwealth of England present any of the elements of what we conceive by a republic, that is, by a government of the free representatives of the people. Had the people been allowed to send their representatives, there would have been a considerable number of Catholics, a much greater number of Episcopalians, and both of these sections Royalists. There would have been an overwhelming number of Presbyterians, and a very moderate one of Independents. The Government was, therefore, speedily converted into an oligarchy, at the head of which were the generals of the army, and some few of the leaders of Parliament. The army, by Pride's Purge, reduced the Parliament to a junto, by turning out forcibly the majority of the representatives of the people, and the time was now fast approaching when it must resolve itself into a military dictatorship.

Cromwell had long been accused by his own party of aiming at the possession of the supreme power. At what time such ideas began to[115] dawn in his mind is uncertain; but as he felt himself rising above all his contemporaries by the energy and the comprehensive character of his mind, there is no doubt that he secretly indulged them. Ludlow, Whitelock, Hutchinson, and others, felt that such was the spirit growing in him; and many of those who had most admired his genius fell away from him, and openly denounced his ambitious intentions as they became more obvious. The excellent Colonel Hutchinson and Sir Henry Vane charged him with the ruin of the Commonwealth. But Cromwell must have long felt that nothing but a military power could maintain the ascendency of those principles which he and his fellow Independents entertained and held sacred. The world was not prepared for them. The roots of royalty were too deeply struck into the heart of the nation by centuries of its existence, to be torn out by the follies and tyrannies of one family. But if a free Parliament, which it had been the proud boast of the Reformers to be the sole seat of the national power, could not exist; if the sitting body calling itself a Parliament could not even add to its members without endangering its own existence either from itself or from the jealousy of the army—what could exist? Clearly nothing but a dictatorship, and the strongest man must come uppermost. That strongest man was without a question Cromwell.

As early as 1649 two Bills had been brought in to settle questions urgently demanded by the people, an act for a general amnesty, and for the termination of the present Parliament. On his return from the battle of Worcester, Cromwell reminded Parliament that these essential measures had not been completed. He carried the amnesty, so that all acts of hostility against the present Government previous to the battle of Worcester were pardoned, and the Royalists relieved from the fear of fresh forfeitures. The termination of Parliament was fixed for the 3rd of November, 1654, and the interval of three years was to be zealously employed in framing a scheme for the election of a new Parliament on the safest principles. At the same time Cromwell was living at Whitehall, in the house of the beheaded king, and with almost the state and power of a sovereign. He summoned, therefore, the council of the army, and discussed amongst them what they deemed necessary to be done.

In this council it was agitated as to the best form of government for England, whether a pure republic, or a government with something of monarchy in it. The officers were for a republic, the lawyers for a limited monarchy. Cromwell agreed that the government must have something of monarchy in it, and asked who they would choose if that were decided? The lawyers said Charles Stuart, or if they found him too much bent on power, his brother the Duke of Gloucester. There can be little doubt but that this was a feeler on the part of Cromwell, and as he was never likely to acquiesce in the restoration of a family which they had put down at so much cost, it would have the effect of causing him to proceed with caution. He had ascertained that the army was opposed to a king; the lawyers thought of no king but one from the old royal line. These were facts to be pondered.

Meanwhile the Parliament, without proceeding to lay a platform for its successor, evidenced a jealousy of the ascendency of the army; it voted a reduction of one-fourth of the army, and of the monthly assessment for its support from one hundred and twenty thousand pounds to ninety thousand pounds. In June, 1652, it proposed a fresh reduction, but this was opposed by the military council, and in August the officers appeared at the bar of the House with a petition, calling the attention of the Parliament to the great question of the qualifications of future parliaments, to reform of the law and religious abuses, to the dismissal of disaffected and scandalous persons from office, to the arrears due to the army, and to reform of malpractices in the Excise and the Treasury.

The contest between the army and the Parliament was evidently growing every day more active. The Commons had no desire to lay down their authority and, to retain their existence, even showed a leaning towards introducing a number of Presbyterians under the name of "Neuters." To such a project the army was never likely to assent, and Cromwell proposed, in the council at Whitehall, that Parliament should be at once dissolved, and a national council of forty persons, with himself at their head, should conduct affairs till a new Parliament could be called on established principles. The opinion, however, was that such a proceeding would be dangerous, and the authority of the council be looked upon as unwarrantable.

Whilst these matters were in agitation, Whitelock says that Cromwell, on the 8th of November, 1652, desired a private interview with him, and in this urged the necessity of taking prompt and efficient measures for securing the great objects[116] for which they had fought, and which he termed the mercies and successes which God had conferred on the nation. He inveighed warmly against the Parliament, and declared that the army began to entertain a strange distaste to it; adding that he wished there were not too much reason for it. "And really," he continued, "their pride, their self-seeking, their engrossing all places of honour and profit to themselves and their friends; their daily breaking forth into new and violent parties and factions; their delays of business, and designs to perpetuate themselves, and to continue the power in their own hands; their meddling in private matters between party and party, contrary to the institution of Parliament; their injustice and partiality in these matters, and the scandalous lives of some of the chief of them, do give much ground for people to open their mouths against them, and to dislike them." He concluded by insisting on the necessity of some controlling power over them to check these extravagances, or else nothing could prevent the ruin of the Commonwealth.

Whitelock admitted the truth of most of this, but defended the Parliament generally, and reminded Cromwell that it was the Parliament which had granted them their authority, and to Cromwell even his commission, and that it would be hard for them, under those circumstances, to curb their power.

But Cromwell broke out—"We all forget God, and God will forget us. God will give us up to confusion, and these men will help it on if they be suffered to proceed in their ways." And then, after some further talk, he suddenly observed, "What if a man should take upon him to be king?" Whitelock saw plainly enough what Oliver was thinking of, and replied as if he had directly asked whether he should assume that office himself. He told him that it would not do, and that he was much better off, and more influential as he was. "As to your person," he observed, "the title of king would be of no advantage, because you have the full kingly power already concerning the militia." He reminded him that in the appointment of civil offices, though he had no formal veto, his will was as much consulted as if he had, and so in all other departments, domestic and foreign. Moreover, he now had the power without the envy and danger which the pomp and circumstance of a king would bring.

Cromwell still argued the point; contending that though a man usurped the title without royal descent, yet the possession of the crown was declared by an Act of Henry VII. to make a good title, and to indemnify the reigning king and all his ministers for their acts. Whitelock replied that, let their enemies once get the better of them, all such bills and indemnifications would be little regarded; and that to assume the crown would at once convert the quarrel into one not between the king and the nation, but between Charles Stuart and Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell admitted this, but asked what other course he could propose. Whitelock said that of making a good bargain with Charles, who was now down, and might be treated with just on what terms they pleased; or if they thought him too confirmed in his opinions, there was the Duke of York or the Duke of Gloucester. Cromwell did not appear pleased with this suggestion; in fact, he had resolved to seize the chief power in some shape himself—and even had he not, he had too much common sense to agree to admit any one of the deposed family again to the throne, which would be to put their necks in the certain noose of royal vengeance. The death of Charles I. could never be forgiven. From this time, Whitelock says, though he made no accusation against Cromwell, yet "his carriage towards me from that time was altered, and his advising with me not so frequent and intimate as before."

Cromwell again, however, broached the subject amongst the officers and members of the Council—St. John, Lenthall the Speaker, Desborough, Harrison, Fleetwood, and Whalley, not in so direct a manner, but as that "a settlement, with something of the monarchical in it, would be very effectual." It does not appear that the project was very unanimously received by them, but they were agreed that a new representation must take place, and no "Neuters" should be admitted. Cromwell said emphatically, "Never shall any of that judgment who have deserted the cause be admitted to power." On the 19th of April the debate on this subject was continued very warmly till midnight, and they separated, to continue the discussion on the next day. Most of the officers had argued that the Parliament must be dissolved "one way or another;" but the Parliament men and lawyers, amongst them Whitelock and Widdrington, contended that a hasty dissolution would be dangerous, and Cromwell appeared to lean towards the moderate view. But scarcely had they met the next morning, and found a strange absence of the members of Parliament, and an almost equal absence of officers, when[117] Colonel Ingoldsby hastened in and informed them that the Commons were hard at work pushing forward their Bill for increasing their own numbers by the introduction of Neuters; and that it was evident that they meant to hurry it through the House before the Council could be informed of their attempt. Vane and others, well aware of Cromwell's design, were thus exerting themselves to defeat it.

CROMWELL ADDRESSING THE LONG PARLIAMENT FOR THE LAST TIME. (See p. 118.)

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At this news Cromwell instantly ordered a file of musketeers to attend him, and hastened to the House of Commons, attended by Lambert, Harrison, and some other officers. He left the soldiers in the lobby of the House, and entering, went straight to his seat, where he sat for some time listening to the debate. He first spoke to St. John, telling him that he was come for a purpose which grieved him to the very soul, and that he had sought the Lord with tears not to impose it upon him; but there was a necessity, and that the glory of God and the good of the nation required it. He then beckoned Harrison to him, and said that he judged that the Parliament was ripe for dissolution. Harrison, who was a Fifth-Monarchy man, and had been only with much persuasion brought over to this design, replied, "Sir, the work is very great and dangerous; I desire you seriously to consider before you engage in it." "You say well," answered the general, and sat yet about a quarter of an hour longer. But when the question was about to be put, he said to Harrison, "This is the time; I must do it;" and starting up, he took off his hat, and began speaking. At first he spoke of the question before the House, and commended the Parliament for much that it had done, and well he might; for whatever its present corruption, it had nobly supported him and the fleet and army in putting down all their enemies, and raising the nation in the eyes of foreigners far beyond its reputation for the last century. But soon he came round to the corruption and self-seeking of the members, accusing them of being at that moment engaged in the very work of bringing in the Presbyterians to destroy all that they had suffered so much to accomplish. Sir Harry Vane and Peter Wentworth ventured to call him to order, declaring that that was strange and unparliamentary language from a servant of the House, and one that they had so much honoured. "I know it," replied Cromwell; then stepping forward into the middle of the floor, and putting on his hat, and walking to and fro, casting angry glances at different members, he exclaimed, "I tell you, you are no Parliament. I will put an end to your prating. For shame! get you gone! Give place to honest men; to men who will more faithfully discharge their trust. You are no longer a Parliament. The Lord has done with you. He has chosen other instruments for carrying on His work."

With that he stamped upon the floor, and the soldiers appearing at the door, he bade Harrison bring them in. The musketeers instantly surrounded him, and laying his hand on the mace, he said, "What shall we do with this bauble? Take it away," and he handed it to a soldier. Then looking at Lenthall the Speaker, he said to Harrison, "Fetch him down!" Lenthall declared that he would not move from his proper post unless he was forced out of it. "Sir," said Harrison, "I will lend you a hand," and taking hold of him, he brought him down, and he walked out of the House. Algernon Sydney, then but a young member, happened to sit next to the Speaker, and Cromwell said, "Put him out!" Sydney, like the Speaker, refused to move, but Cromwell reiterated the command, "Put him out!" and Harrison and Worsley, the lieutenant-colonel of Cromwell's regiment of Ironsides, laying each a hand on his shoulder, the young patriot did not wait for the ignominy of being dragged from his seat, but rose and followed the Speaker. Cromwell then went on weeding out the members, with epithets of high reproach to each of them. Alderman Allen bade him pause and send out the soldiers, and that all might yet be well; but Cromwell only replied, "It is you that have forced me upon this. I have sought the Lord day and night that He would rather slay me than put me upon this work." He then charged the alderman with embezzlement, as treasurer to the army; and taking first one and then another by the cloak, he said to Challoner, "Thou art a drunkard!" To Wentworth, "Thou art an adulterer!" To Martin, "Thou art a still more lewd character!" Vane, as he was forced past him, exclaimed, "This is not honest; yea, it is against morality and common honesty." "O, Sir Harry Vane, Sir Harry Vane!" exclaimed Cromwell, "the Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!" Thus he saw the House cleared, no one daring to raise a hand against him, though, says Whitelock, "many wore swords, and would sometimes brag high." When all were gone, Cromwell locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. He then returned to Whitehall, and told the Council of officers, who yet remained[119] sitting, what he had done. "When I went to the House," he said, "I did not think to do this, but perceiving the spirit of the Lord strong upon me, I resolved no longer to consult flesh and blood."

Such was the manner in which the last vestige of representative government was swept away by Cromwell. Charles I. roused the fiery indignation of Parliament, and of all England, as a violater of the privileges of Parliament, by entering the House to seize five members who had offended him. Cromwell, who had been one of the first to resist and to avenge this deed, now marched in his soldiers and turned out the whole Parliament, about fifty members, with impunity. "They went away so quietly," said Cromwell, "that not a dog barked at their going." Such is the difference between a private man with a victorious army at his back, and one who, though with the name of a king, has lost a nation's confidence by his want of moral honesty. The act of Cromwell was the death of all constitutional life whatever, it was in opposition to all parties but the army; yet no man dared assume the attitude of a patriot; the military Dictatorship was accomplished (April 20, 1653).

Cromwell's whole excuse was necessity; that without his seizure of the supreme power, the Commonwealth could not exist. It ceased to exist by his very deed, and if he saved the faint form of a republic, it was only for five years. As we have seen the great example to the nations of the responsibility of kings, we have now to see an equally significant one of the impossibility of maintaining long any form of government that is not based on the mature opinion and attachment of the people. Republicanism was not the faith of England in the seventeenth century, and therefore neither the despotism of Charles could create a republic with any permanence in it, nor the strenuous grasp of Cromwell maintain it beyond the term of his own existence.

On the afternoon of this celebrated coup d'état, Cromwell proceeded to Derby House, accompanied by Harrison and Lambert, where the Council was still sitting, and thus addressed the members:—"Gentlemen, if you are here met as private persons, you shall not be disturbed; but if as a Council of State, this is no place for you; and since you cannot but know what was done at the House this morning, so take notice that the Parliament is dissolved." Bradshaw, who was presiding, said that they knew, and that all England would soon know; but that if he thought that the Parliament was dissolved, he was mistaken, "for that no power under Heaven could dissolve them, except themselves. Therefore take you notice of that." Sir Arthur Haselrig and others supported this protest, and then the Council withdrew.

Cromwell and his party immediately held a council as to what steps were to be taken, and on the 22nd they issued a declaration in the name of the Lord-General and his council of officers, ordering all authorities to continue their functions as before; and in return, addresses of confidence arrived from generals and admirals. On the 6th of June Oliver, in his own name as Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief of all the armies and forces, issued a summons to one hundred and forty persons to meet and constitute a Parliament. Six were also summoned from Wales, six from Ireland, and five from Scotland. On the 4th of July about one hundred and twenty of these persons, of Cromwell's own selection—persons, according to his summons, "fearing God, and of approved fidelity and honesty"—met in the Council-chamber at Whitehall. Many of these were gentlemen of good repute and abilities—some of them were nobles, others of noble families—as Colonel Montague, Colonel Howard, and Anthony Ashley Cooper. Others, however, were of little worldly standing, but had been selected on account of their religious zeal and character. Amongst them was one Barbon, a leatherseller in Fleet Street, who had acquired the cognomen of Praise-God, and whose name being purposely misspelled became Praise-God Barebone, and the Royalist wits of the time, therefore, dubbed the Parliament Barebone's Parliament.

The more common appellation of this singular Parliament was "The Little Parliament." Cromwell opened their session with a very long and extraordinary speech, in which he gave a history of the past contest with the monarchy, and the mercies with which they had been crowned at Naseby, Dunbar, Worcester, and other places; of the backslidings of the Long Parliament, and the "necessity" to remove it and call this assembly. He quoted a vast quantity of Scripture, and told them that they were called of God to introduce practical religion into State affairs; and he then delivered into their hands an instrument, consigning to them the supreme power in the State till the 3rd of September, 1654, three months previous to which date they were to elect their successors, who were to sit only for a year, and in turn elect their successors.

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This resignation of the supreme power once in his hands, has been described by historians as a gross piece of hypocrisy, used to avoid the odium of seizing for himself the power of the Parliament, which he had forcibly dissolved. Whether that were the case or not, it certainly was a prudent policy, and a safe one, for he knew very well that he possessed supreme power as head of the army, and could, if necessary, dismiss this Parliament as he had done the former one. In their character of pietists or saints, as they were called, this Parliament opened its session by electing Francis Rouse their Speaker, and by exercises of devotion, which continued from eight in the morning till six at night. Thirteen of the most gifted members preached and prayed in succession, and they adjourned, declaring that they had never enjoyed so much of the spirit and presence of Christ in any meetings for worship as they had done that day. It was moved the next morning that they "should go on seeking the Lord" that day too, but this was overruled, and Monday, the 11th, was fixed for that purpose. They then voted themselves the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England, invited Cromwell and four of his staff to sit as members amongst them, and on the 9th of July re-appointed the Council of State, amongst whom we find the names of Colonel Montague, afterwards Earl of Sandwich, the uncle of the poet Dryden, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Lord Viscount Lisle, brother of Algernon Sydney, Sir Ashley Cooper, and other names of equal note; and however they might be ridiculed on account of their religion, they soon showed that they were conscientious and independent men. The strongest proof of this was that they did not shrink from opposing the power and interests of Cromwell, who had selected them. Scarcely were they met, when they were appealed to to decide upon the case of John Lilburne, who, on the dissolution of the Long Parliament, petitioned Cromwell to allow him to return from his banishment. Cromwell gave no reply, but independent John took the liberty of appearing in London. He was at once seized and committed to Newgate. Lilburne, supported by his friends, petitioned the House to hear and decide the case, though it was the proper business of a jury. They might now have gratified their patron, whom Lilburne had continually assailed as a "robber," a "usurper," and a "murderer;" but they declined to interfere, and left him to the ordinary criminal court. There Lilburne so ably defended himself that he was acquitted; but he was again seized on the plea of libellous and seditious language used on his trial, and the House could then no longer refuse, at the instigation of the Council, to imprison him. Being removed from the Tower to Elizabeth Castle, in Jersey, and thence to Dover Castle, he there became a convert to the principles of George Fox, a remarkable end for so fiery and democratic a character. The Parliament lost no time in proceeding to assert that divine commission, which Cromwell, in his opening speech, had attributed to their call through him. They declared that they were appointed by the Lord, and would have greatly alarmed Cromwell had he not taken care to include amongst them a sufficient number of his staunch adherents. But they excited the same alarm in a variety of other classes. They set to work resolutely in cutting down the expenditure of the Government; they abolished all unnecessary offices; they revised the regulations of the Excise; reformed the constitution of the Treasury; reduced exorbitant salaries, and examined thoroughly the public accounts; they adopted measures for the sale of the confiscated lands, and enacted rules for the better registration of births, deaths, and marriages. They went further; they made marriage by a civil magistrate valid, and, indeed, necessary for the enjoyment of the civil effects of marriage. Marriage by a clergyman was left optional still.

They next attacked the unequal and oppressive modes of raising the one hundred and twenty thousand pounds a month for the maintenance of the army; the assessments in some cases amounting to two, in others, to ten shillings in the pound. From taxation they proceeded to law, and prepared a Bill to abolish the Court of Chancery, in which the abuses and delays had been a constant source of complaint in petitions to Parliament for years. But they were not content with destroying the Court of Chancery, they set about a general reform of the laws. They contended that every Englishman should understand the laws of his country, and that by a proper digest they might be reduced to the compass of a pocket volume. They, in fact, anticipated Napoleon in his Code, and appointed a committee to make the necessary revision, and to weed the real and useful statutes out of the chaotic mass of contradictory, obsolete, and unjust laws which overlaid them; the dicta of judges in many cases superseded and prevented the original enactments, so that men's lives and properties were at the mercy, not of the decrees of[121] Parliament, but the opinions of individuals. It may be imagined what a consternation this daring innovation excited throughout Westminster Hall, and all the dusky, cobwebby cells of the lawyers. A terrible cry was raised that a set of ignorant men were about to destroy the whole noble system of British jurisprudence, and to introduce instead the law of Moses!

TOKEN OF THE COMMONWEALTH (COPPER).

But the projects of these radical Reformers were cut short by the universal outcry from lawyers, churchmen, officials, and a host of interested classes. They were represented as a set of mad fanatics, who in Parliament were endeavouring to carry out the wild doctrines which the Anabaptists and Fifth-Monarchy men were preaching out of doors. Borne down by public opinion, Cromwell was compelled to dissolve them, in fact to resume the supreme power which he had committed to them. Accordingly, on the 12th of December, Cromwell's friends mustered in full strength, and Colonel Sydenham moved that, as the proceedings of Parliament were regarded as calculated to overturn almost every interest in the country, they could not proceed, and that they should restore their authority to the hands whence they had received it. The motion was vehemently opposed, but the Independents had adopted their plan. The mover declared that he would no longer sit in an assembly which must be rendered abortive by general opposition. He therefore rose: the Speaker, who was one of the party, rose too, and the Independents, forming a procession, proceeded to Whitehall, and resigned their commission into the hands of Cromwell. The staunch dissentients remained and engaged in prayer, in which act two officers, Goffe and White, sent to close the House, found them. White asked them what they did there. They replied, "We are seeking the Lord." "Then," said he, rudely, "you may go somewhere else, for to my certain knowledge, the Lord has not been here these many years."

BROAD OF THE COMMONWEALTH (GOLD).

CROWN OF THE COMMONWEALTH (SILVER).

Cromwell affected to receive with reluctance the onerous charge of the supreme power and responsibility; but the officers urged its necessity, and the document being soon signed by eighty members, he acceded to it. The council of officers and ministers decided that it was necessary to have "a commonwealth in a single person;" and a new constitution was drawn up; and on the 16th of December Cromwell, dressed in a suit and cloak of black velvet, with long boots and a broad gold band round his hat, proceeded in his carriage from Whitehall to the Court of Chancery. The way was lined by files of soldiers, consisting of five regiments of foot and three of horse. A long procession followed, including the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and City officers, the two Commissioners of the Great Seal, the judges, the councillors of State and of the army. On reaching the Court of Chancery, Cromwell took his place before a chair of State, which had been placed on a rich carpet, the Commissioners of the Great Seal standing on his right and left, the judges ranging themselves behind, and the civil and military officers disposing of themselves on each hand. Lambert then stepped forward and addressed the Lord-General. He spoke of the dissolution of Parliament, and of the necessity of a strong Government, not liable to be paralysed by contending opinions; and he prayed the Lord-General, in the name of the army[122] and of the official authorities of the three kingdoms, to accept the office of Lord-Protector of the Commonwealth, and to govern it for the public good by a constitution already drawn up. Cromwell assented, and thereupon Jessop, a clerk of the council, read what was called "The Instrument of Government," consisting of forty-two articles. The chief of these were, that the legislative power should be invested in the Lord-Protector and the Parliament; but chiefly in the Parliament, for every Act passed by them was to become law at the end of twenty days, though the Protector should refuse it his consent. Parliament should not be adjourned, prorogued, or dissolved without its own consent, for five months; and there was to be a new Parliament called within three years of the dissolution of the last. The members of the Parliament were adopted from a plan by Vane, brought forward during the Long Parliament—namely, three hundred and forty members for England and Wales, thirty for Scotland, and thirty for Ireland. The members were to be chosen chiefly from the counties, and no papist, Malignant, or any one who had borne arms against the Parliament, was admissible. In the Protector resided the power of making war or peace with the consent of the Council; he held the disposal of the militia, and of the regular forces and the navy, the appointment of all public offices with the approbation of Parliament, or during the recess of Parliament with that of the Council, subject to the after-approval of Parliament; but he could make no law, nor impose taxes without consent of Parliament. The civil list was fixed at two hundred thousand pounds, and a revenue for the army capable of maintaining thirty thousand men, with such a navy as the Lord-Protector should deem necessary. The elective franchise extended to persons possessed of property worth two hundred pounds, and sixty members of Parliament should constitute a quorum. All persons professing faith in Jesus Christ were to enjoy the exercise of their religion except papists, prelatists, or such as taught doctrines subversive of morality. Cromwell was named Lord-Protector for life, and his successor was to be elected by the Council, and no member of the family of the late king, or any of his line, should be capable of election. A Council was specially named by the Instrument, to consist of Philip, Lord Viscount Lisle, brother of Algernon Sydney; Fleetwood; Lambert; Sir Gilbert Pickering; Sir Charles Wolseley; Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper; Edward Montague; John Desborough, brother-in-law of Cromwell; Walter Strickland; Henry Lawrence; William Sydenham; Philip Jones; Richard Mayor, father-in-law of Richard Cromwell; Francis Rouse; Philip Skipton, or any seven of them, with power in the Protector, and a majority of the Council, to add to their number. Thurloe, the historian, was secretary of the Council, and Milton Latin secretary.

This Instrument being ready, Cromwell swore solemnly to observe it, and to cause it to be observed; and then Lambert, kneeling, offered the Protector a civic sword in the scabbard, which he took, laying aside his own, as indicating that he thenceforward would govern by the new constitution, and not by military authority. He then seated himself, covered, in the chair of State, all besides standing uncovered; he then received from the Commissioners the Great Seal, and from the Lord Mayor the sword and cap of maintenance, which he immediately returned to them. On this the court rose, and the Lord-Protector returned in state to Whitehall, the Lord Mayor bearing the sword before him, amid the shouting of the soldiers and the firing of cannon. The next day, the 17th of December, the Lord-Protector was proclaimed by sound of trumpet in Westminster and in the City, and thus had the successful general, the quondam farmer of Huntingdon, arrived at the seat of supreme power, at the seat of a long line of famous kings, though not with the name of king, to which many suspected him of aspiring. Yet even without the royal dignity, he soon found the position anything but an enviable one, for he was surrounded by hosts of men still vowed to his destruction and the restoration of the monarchy; and amongst those who had fought side by side with him towards this august eminence, were many who regarded his assumption of it as a crime, to be expiated only by his death. Though there is no reason to believe that the bulk of the nation was otherwise than satisfied with the change, his supporters were lukewarm while his enemies were ardent. There was no disguising the fact that until Parliament met his government was one of naked absolutism. The Protector forthwith established a body of "Triers" who proceeded to examine the religious beliefs of candidates for vacant benefices, and promptly presented them if the result of the examination was satisfactory. Before we proceed, however, to notice his struggles with his secret or avowed enemies, and with his new Parliament, we must notice what had been doing meanwhile in the war with Holland, which had still been raging.

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CHAPTER V.

THE COMMONWEALTH (concluded).

Naval Victory over the Dutch—Death of Van Tromp—Quasi-Royal State of the Lord-Protector—Disaffection against Cromwell—His Vigorous Rule—Charles II. offers a Reward for his Assassination—Rebellions in Scotland—Cromwell's Dealings with the Portuguese Ambassador—Reform of the Court of Chancery—Commission for Purgation of the Church—The Reformed Parliament—Exclusion of the Ultras—Dissolution of Parliament—Danger from Plots—Accident to the Protector—Death of Cromwell's Mother—Royalist Outbreaks—Cromwell's Major-Generals—Foreign Policy—War with Spain—Massacre of the Piedmontese—Capture of Jamaica—The Jews Appeal for Toleration—Cromwell's Third Parliament—Plots against his Life—The Petition and Advice—Cromwell Refuses the Royal Title—Blake's Brilliant Victory at Santa Cruz—Death of Blake—Successes against Spain—Failure of the Reconstructed Parliament—Punishment of Conspirators—Victory in the Netherlands—Absolutism of Cromwell—His Anxieties, Illness, and Death—Proclamation of Richard Cromwell—He calls a Parliament—It is Dissolved—Reappearance of the Rump—Richard Retires—Royalist Risings—Quarrels of the Army and the Rump—General Monk—He Marches upon London—Demands a Free Parliament—Royalist Reaction—Declaration of Breda—Joyful Reception of Charles.

In May, 1653, the fleets of England and Holland, each amounting to one hundred sail, put to sea. That of England was under the command of Monk, Dean, Penn, and Lawson; that of Holland under Van Tromp, De Ruyter, De Witt, and Evertsens. At first they passed each other, and whilst Monk ravaged the coast of Holland, Van Tromp was cannonading Dover. At length, on the 2nd of June, they met off the North Foreland, and a desperate conflict took place, in which Dean was killed at the side of Monk. Monk immediately threw his cloak over the body, to avoid discouraging the men, and fought on through the day. In the night Blake arrived with eighteen additional sail, and at dawn the battle was renewed. The result was that the Dutch were beaten, lost one-and-twenty sail, and had thirteen hundred men taken prisoners, besides great numbers killed and wounded. The English pursued the flying vessels to the coast of Holland, and committed many ravages amongst their merchantmen. But the undaunted Van Tromp, on the 29th of July, appeared again at sea, with above a hundred sail. Monk stood out to sea for more battle-room, and one of the Dutch captains, seeing this, said to Van Tromp that they were running; but Van Tromp, who knew the English better, replied curtly, "Sir, look to your own charge, for were there but twenty sail, they would never refuse to fight us." Monk, on his part, ordered his captains to attempt making no prizes, but to sink and destroy all the ships they could. The battle, therefore, raged furiously, from five in the morning till ten; but at length the gallant Van Tromp fell dead by a musket-shot, and the courage of the Dutch gave way. In this fight the Dutch lost thirty ships, about one thousand prisoners, besides great numbers of slain, the English losing only two vessels.

These splendid victories enabled Cromwell to conclude advantageous treaties with Holland, France, Denmark, Portugal, and Sweden. Most of these Powers sent over ambassadors to congratulate him on his elevation, and these were received at Whitehall with much state. The royal apartments were furnished anew in very magnificent style, and in the banqueting-room was placed a chair of State raised on a platform with three steps, and the Lord-Protector gave audience seated in it. The ambassadors were instructed to make three obeisances, one at the entrance, one in the middle of the room, and the third in front of the chair, which the Protector acknowledged with a grave inclination of the head. The same ceremony was repeated on retiring. Cromwell received the ambassadors of Holland to dinner, sitting on one side of the table alone, and the ambassadors with a few of the lords of the Council on the other. The Lady-Protectress at the same time entertained their ladies. In his appearances abroad the Protector assumed very much the state of a king with State coaches, Life Guards, pages, and lacqueys richly clothed. He took up his abode instantly in the royal palaces, quitting the Cockpit altogether, Whitehall being his town house, and Hampton Court his country one, where he generally went on Saturday afternoon, and spent the Sunday.

It was not, however, without many heartburnings and some plots for his destruction that his wonderful elevation was witnessed by many of his old comrades, as well as his natural enemies.

The Anabaptists and Fifth-Monarchy men, who carried their notions of political liberty as far beyond Cromwell as the Chartists of more modern[124] times carried theirs beyond the Whigs, were exceedingly violent, and denounced him as an apostate and deceiver. Feak and Powell, two Anabaptist preachers in Blackfriars, thundered from their pulpits against him as the "beast in the Apocalypse," the "old dragon," and the "man of sin." "Go, tell your Protector," they cried, "that he has deceived the Lord's people, and is a perjured villain." They declared that he was worse than the last tyrant usurper, the crookback Richard, and would not reign long.

Having borne the violent abuse of these men for some time, he at length sent them to the Tower. But amongst his own generals and former colleagues were men not less exasperated. Harrison and Ludlow were Fifth-Monarchy men, who believed that none but Christ ought to reign, and they joined the most disaffected. Harrison being asked if he would own the new protectoral government, answered fiercely, "No!" and Cromwell was obliged to send him to his own house in the country, and afterwards to commit him also to the Tower. Vane and others were not less angered, though less openly violent.

Cromwell expressed much sorrow at these symptoms of resentment amongst his old friends, and declared that he would much rather, so far as his own inclinations were concerned, have taken a shepherd's staff than that of the Protector. In Scotland and Ireland there was much dissatisfaction at the new revolution, as it was called. Even Fleetwood, his son-in-law, scarcely knew how to receive it, and Ludlow and Jones expressed no unequivocal discontent. Colonel Alured had been sent to Ireland to conduct certain forces to Monk in the Scottish Highlands, but he was an Anabaptist, and became so insubordinate that Cromwell dismissed him both from his commission and from the army. Ludlow refused to continue on the Irish Civil Commission. Cromwell, however, sent over his son Henry on a visit to Fleetwood, so that he might learn the true state of the army, and the most active or formidable of the malcontent officers were removed to England, or by degrees dismissed from the service.

In Scotland similar disaffection was apparent, but there active service against the Royalists, who were also astir with fresh vigour on this occasion, tended to divert their attention from their discontents. Charles II., from Paris, about Easter, issued a proclamation, supposed to be drawn up by Clarendon, offering five hundred pounds a year and a colonelcy in the army to any one who would take off by sword, pistol, or poison, "a certain base, mechanic fellow, by name Oliver Cromwell," who had usurped his throne. His partisans in Scotland seized the opportunity to renew the war. The Earls of Glencairn and Balcarres, Angus, Montrose, Seaforth, Atholl, Kenmure, and Lorne, the son of Argyll, were up in arms. Charles sent over General Middleton to take the chief command, and Cromwell ordered Monk again from the victorious fleet to hasten to the Highlands to oppose him, Colonel Robert Lilburne having in the meantime made a successful assault upon them. Monk speedily defeated Middleton and his associates, and the Scots lords lost no time in making their submission. Cromwell had subdued the rebellion completely by August, but still earlier he had abolished all separate rule in Scotland. In April he published three ordinances, by which he incorporated England with Scotland, abolished the Monarchy and Parliament in that country, and absolved the people from their allegiance to Charles Stuart, erecting courts baron instead of those suppressed. The people who contended through so many bloody wars against English monarchs who had attempted the same thing, now quietly submitted to this plebeian but energetic conqueror, and the Kirk only defied his authority by meeting in assembly in Edinburgh on the 20th of July. But there presently appeared amongst them Colonel Cotterel, who bade them depart, and marched them a mile out of the city between two files of soldiers, to the astonishment and terror of the inhabitants, where he informed them that if any of them were found in the capital after eight o'clock the next morning, or attempted to sit or meet more than three together, he would imprison them as disturbers of the public peace. Our old acquaintance, Baillie, beheld this amazing spectacle with consternation. "Thus," he exclaimed, "our General Assembly, the glory and strength of our Church upon earth, is by your soldiery crushed and trodden under foot. For this our hearts are sad and our eyes run down with water." Yet it does not appear that real religion suffered at all by Cromwell's innovations, either in Scotland or in England, for Kirkton says of the Kirk, "I verily believe there were more souls converted unto Christ in that short period of time than in any season since the Reformation. Ministers were painsful, people were diligent. At their solemn communions many congregations met in great multitudes, some dozens of ministers used to preach, and the people continued, as it were, in a sort of trance, so serious were they in spiritual exercises, for three days at least." Baxter, in[125] England, though a decided enemy of Cromwell, confessed that, by his weeding out scandalous ministers, and putting in "able, serious preachers, who lived a godly life," though of various opinions, "many thousands of souls blessed God" for what was done.

The proclamation of Charles, rendered abortive in the Highlands, was not without its effects in England. One Major Henshaw came over from Paris, and proposed to assassinate Cromwell as he went to Hampton Court. His plan was to get thirty stout men for the purpose. A young enthusiastic gentleman named Gerard undertook to procure twenty-five of them, and Colonel Finch and Henshaw were to bring the other five. Vowel, a schoolmaster of Islington, was very zealous in the plot, and aided in procuring arms; Billingsley, a butcher of Smithfield, engaging to seize the troopers' horses grazing in Islington fields. The soldiers were then to be fallen upon at the Mews, Charles II. was to be proclaimed, Rupert was to appear with a large force of Royalists, English, Irish, and Scots, and there was to be a general rising. Saturday, the 20th of May, was the day fixed for Cromwell's assassination; but before this wild scheme could be commenced, forty of the conspirators were seized, some of them in their beds. Vowel was hanged, and Gerard was beheaded on the 10th of July—the manner of the latter's punishment being thus changed at his own request, as being a gentleman and a soldier.

THE GREAT HALL, HAMPTON COURT PALACE.

The same day, and on the same scaffold as Gerard, was executed Don Pantaleone Sa, the brother of the Portuguese Ambassador. Sa had a quarrel with this same Gerard, who was called "Generous Gerard," an enthusiastic Royalist. They came to fighting at the Royal Exchange, where Gerard, drawing his rapier, forced the Don to fly, whereupon the next day he returned to the Exchange in search of Gerard, with a body of armed followers, and mistaking a man of the name of Greenway for Gerard, they killed him, wounded Colonel Mayo, and were not subdued without much riot. Sa was seized, tried, and condemned for this deliberate murder. He pleaded that he belonged to the embassy, and was therefore exempt from the tribunals of this country, but neither this nor the zealous exertions of his brother, the ambassador, could save him; he was condemned to die. Cromwell, though on the verge of concluding[126] a treaty with Portugal, would not concede a pardon to the bloodthirsty Portuguese, who had been found guilty by a jury of half Englishmen and half foreigners. He went to Tower Hill in a coach and six, attended by numbers of the attachés of the embassy in mourning, and his brother signed the treaty and left the country. Such an exhibition of firmness and impartiality, refusing to make any distinction in a murderer, whether noble or commoner, evinced great moral courage in Cromwell; but another execution, which took place a short time before—namely, on the 23rd of June—was not so creditable to him. This was the hanging of an old Catholic priest, named Southworth, who had been convicted thirty-seven years before, under the bloody laws of James against Popish priests, and had been banished. Being now discovered in the country, he was tried for that offence and put to death. On the scaffold he justly upbraided the Government with having taken arms for liberty, yet shedding the blood of those who differed from them on religious grounds. The stern persecution of Popery was, in fact, a blot on Cromwell's character; he had not in that respect outgrown his age.

Whilst these and other plots were exacting from the Protector a severe compensation for his high position, he was yet steadily prosecuting measures for the better administration of the national government. Being empowered by the Instrument of government, with his Council, not only to raise sufficient money for the necessary demands of government, but also "to make laws and ordinances for the peace and welfare of these nations," he actually made no less than sixty ordinances, many of them of singular wisdom and excellence. He and his Council, in fact, showed that they were in earnest to make the execution of justice cheap and prompt, and to revive a pure and zealous ministry of the gospel. In one of these ordinances they effected the Herculean labour which Barebone's Parliament had aimed at—the reformation of the Court of Chancery, the ordinance for this purpose consisting of no less than sixty-seven articles. Well might Cromwell, on the opening of Parliament, refer with pride to this great event, an event which would have taken our modern law-makers twenty years to accomplish, which, in fact, they have not accomplished yet. "The Chancery," he said in his speech, "is reformed." What a speech in four words, sufficient to have made the reign of any king famous! "The Chancery is reformed—I hope to the satisfaction of all good men." This had partly been done by distributing the causes through the other "courts of law at Westminster, where Englishmen love to have their rights tried." In order, too, to effect a most just and speedy discharge of the laws, he put better judges on the Bench, amongst them the pious Sir Matthew Hale, and made Thurloe, the friend of Milton, Secretary of State.

Two others of his ordinances were intended to purify the Church of unfit ministers, and to introduce fit and pious ones. This established two commissions, one for the examination of all clergymen offering themselves for the incumbency of any church living, and the other for inquiring after and expelling any "scandalous, ignorant, or insufficient ministers who already occupied such." These commissioners were to be permanent, so that the Church in all parts of the country should be purged of improper preachers, and supplied with able and good ones. The supreme commission for the trial of public preachers consisted of thirty-eight members—twenty-nine clergymen, nine laymen—and these were both Presbyterians and Independents, some even Anabaptists, for the Protector was less interested in what sect they belonged to, than in the fact that they were pious and able men. The commission for purging the Church consisted of from fifteen to thirty Puritan gentlemen and Puritan clergymen for each county; and when they dismissed a minister for unfitness, his family had some income allowed them. Many of the members of these last boards were chosen indiscriminately from the friends or enemies of the Protectorate, provided they were known men of real piety and judgment. Amongst these were Lord Fairfax, Thomas Scott, a zealous Republican, Admiral Blake, Sir Arthur Haselrig, Richard Mayor, the father-in-law of Richard Cromwell, for whom Cromwell entertained a high regard and respect, and had him in both Parliament, Council, and various commissions. Baxter was one of them, and, as we have said, spoke well of the operation of the system.

But the 3rd of September arrived, Oliver's fortunate day, on which he had appointed the meeting of Parliament. As the day fell on a Sunday, the members met in the afternoon for worship in Westminster Abbey, where they waited on the Protector in the Painted Chamber, who addressed them in a speech, and they then went to the House and adjourned to the next morning. Cromwell went that day to the House in great State, in his carriage, with his Life Guards, a captain of the guard walking on each side, and[127] the Commissioners of the Great Seal and other State officers following in coaches. After a sermon in the Abbey Church they proceeded to the Painted Chamber, where the Protector made a speech of three hours in the delivery. A chair of State, marvellously resembling a throne, raised on steps, and with a canopy, was placed for the Protector, who sat with his hat on, whilst the members sat bareheaded. On rising to speak he took off his hat, and made what Whitelock styles "a large and subtle speech." It was largely illustrated by Scripture quotations, it is true, for that was inseparable from the religious temperament of Cromwell; but it gave a clear review of the causes which had led to the overthrow of the monarchy, the rise of the Commonwealth, and particularly of its then form, as well as of the measures which he had adopted in Council, in the interim between his appointment and the meeting of Parliament. He told them that he regarded their greatest functions to be at that time "healing and settling;" a profound truth—for the nation, and in it every class of men, had been so torn and rent in every fibre, that to soothe and heal was the highest art and policy. Every man's hand, and every man's head, he justly observed, had been against his brother, and no sooner had they put down despotism, than liberty itself began to grow wild, and threaten them with equal danger. The Levellers, the Fifth-Monarchy men, the Communists of St. George's Hill, had compelled them to put the drag on the chariot wheels of freedom, or it would soon have taken fire. In all such revolutions, the principles of human right are pushed on by sanguine men, beyond all chance of support from a settled public opinion; and Oliver truly told them that had they gained their object for a moment, it could not have lasted long, but would have in the meantime served the turn of selfish men, who, having obtained public property, would have "cried up property and interest fast enough."

He referred with satisfaction to the means taken to insure a pure ministry, and argued for the necessity of State interference in religion, but such interference should only be for promoting a good and virtuous ministry, and by no means infringe on "liberty of conscience and liberty of the subject, two as glorious things as any that God hath given us." His fears of religious license were chiefly excited by Fifth-Monarchists; yet he did not deny that such a monarchy must come in process of time. "It is a notion," he said, "that I hope we all honour, and wait and hope for the fulfilment of, that Jesus Christ will have a time to set up a reign in our hearts, by subduing those lusts, and corruptions, and evils that are there, which now reign more in the world that I hope in due time they shall do. And when more fulness of the Spirit is poured forth to subdue iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness, then will the approach of that glory be. The cardinal divisions and contentions, among Christians so common, are not the symptoms of that kingdom. But for men on this principle to betitle themselves, that they are the only men to rule kingdoms, govern nations, and give laws to people, and determine of property and liberty, and everything else, upon such a pretension as this is, truly they had need to give clear manifestations of God's presence with them, before wise men will receive or submit to their conclusions." Still he recommended tenderness towards them, and that if their extravagances necessitated punishment, this should "evidence love, and not hatred."

He next referred to the treaties with foreign nations, amongst which, he said, that with Portugal had obtained "a thing which never before was since the Inquisition was set up there—that our people who trade thither have liberty of conscience, liberty to worship God in chapels of their own."

He finally inculcated on them the necessity for maintaining as much peace as possible, not only that they might restore the internal condition of the nation, and reduce the excessive taxation occasioned by the war on land and sea, but also to prevent foreign nations from depriving us of our manufacturing status, as they had been busily doing during our internal dissensions.

To one of his assertions we are bound to demur. "One thing more this Government hath done—it had been instrumental to call a free Parliament, which, blessed be God, we see here this day. I say a free Parliament, and that it may continue so, I hope is in the heart and spirit of every good man in England, save such discontented persons as I have formerly mentioned. It is that which, as I have desired above my life, so I shall desire to keep it above my life." The truth was that it was as free a Parliament as the circumstances of the times would admit; indeed, as was soon seen, it was much too free. A free Parliament would have brought back royalty in the State, or Presbyterian absolutism in religion. Republicanism and Independency, though in the ascendant through the genius of Cromwell and the[128] power of the army, was in a minority. Republicanism even was divided against itself, divided into moderate Republicanism and Levelling, Fifth-Monarchy and Communism in alliance. From this so-called free Parliament, Episcopalians and Catholics were excluded; this so-called free Parliament had been carefully watched during the elections, the lists of the returned had been sent up to the Council, and such as were deemed too dangerous were disallowed, amongst others Lord Grey of Groby. But even then it was found too free, and the very first thing that it set about was to call in question the Government which had authorised it.

There was a stiff contest for the Speakership, but Lenthall was chosen instead of Bradshaw, who was also nominated, because Lenthall had been Speaker of the Long Parliament, and its old members had still hope of restoring it. Amongst the members were old Sir Francis Rouse, Lord Herbert, the son of the Earl of Worcester, Fleetwood, Lambert, the Claypoles, one of whom had married a daughter of the Protector's, Cromwell's two sons, his friends the Dunches, Sir Ashley Cooper, and Lord Fairfax. Amongst the Republicans there were Bradshaw, Haselrig, Scott, Wallop, and Wildman, old Sir Henry Vane, but not the younger; and amongst the Irish members were Lord Broghill, who had fought so stoutly against Charles, and Commissary-General Reynolds. No sooner did they begin business than they opened a debate on the question of sanctioning the present form of government, a question from which they were precluded by the very Instrument which had made them a Parliament. The debate was carried on for no less than eight days, during which Bradshaw, Scott, Haselrig, and other Republicans contended that the members of the Long Parliament had been illegally deprived of their right, and that the Government in one person and a Parliament was but another form of tyranny. One speaker declared that he had fought to put down one tyrant, and was ready to fight to put down another. What right but the sword, it was asked, had one man to put down a legal Parliament, to command his commanders? They moved to go into committee on the subject, and carried it.

Cromwell was not the man to suffer this. He sent to the Lord Mayor, and ordered him to take measures to preserve the peace of the City, marched three regiments into it, and then summoned Lenthall, and bade him meet him in the Painted Chamber, on Tuesday, the 12th of September, with the Commons. Harrison, who was zealously getting up petitions for the support of the inquiry into the constitution, was clapped into the Tower. When Cromwell met the Commons, he expressed his surprise that a set of men from whom so much healing management had been expected, should immediately attempt to overturn the Government which called them together. The Instrument consisted of incidentals and fundamentals. The incidentals they were at liberty to discuss, but the fundamentals—of which the article that the power resided in one person and a Parliament was one—were out of their range. He very zealously asserted that he had been called to the head of the nation by God and the people, and that none but God and the people should take his office from him. His own wish had been to lead the life of a country gentleman, but necessity had forced him thence, and three several times he had found himself placed by the course of events at the head of the army, and by them at the head of the Government. As to the dismissal of the Long Parliament, he had been forced to that by its endeavouring to perpetuate itself, and by its tyranny and corruption. He said "that poor men, under its arbitrary power, were driven like flocks of sheep, by forty on a morning, to the confiscation of goods and estates, without any man being able to give a reason why two of them had deserved to forfeit a shilling." He had twice resigned the arbitrary power left in his hands, and having established a Government capable of saving the nation, he would sooner lie rotting in his grave and buried with infamy than suffer it to be broken up. They had now peace at home and abroad, and it would be a miserable answer to give to the people, "Oh, we quarrelled for the liberty of England; we contested and went to confusion for that."

To prevent any such evil consequences, he informed them that he had caused a stop to be put to their entrance into the Parliament House; he did not turn them out this time, he shut them out—and that none would be readmitted that did not first sign an Engagement to be true and faithful to the Protector and Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, not to propose or consent to alter the Government, as settled in a single person and Parliament.

On hearing this, the honourable members looked at one another in amazement, but one hundred and forty thought well to sign the Engagement, which lay in the lobby of the House that day, and within a month three out of the four hundred had signed. Of course all the ultra Republicans[129] refused to sign, and were excluded—Bradshaw, Haselrig, Scott, Wildman, and the rest.

JOHN MILTON. (After the Miniature by Samuel Cooper.)

This summary dealing did not cure the Parliament of considering the question for touching which they had thus been purged of a hundred members. On the 19th of September, only a week after the check they had received, they went into committee to discuss the "Instrument of Government." They took care not to touch the grand point which they had now pledged themselves not to meddle with—the government by a Protector and Parliament; but they affected to consider all the other articles as merely provisional, decreed by the Protector and the Council, but to be confirmed or rejected by Parliament. They discussed these one by one, and on the 16th of October proceeded to the question, whether the office of Protector should be elective or hereditary. Lambert advocated the office being hereditary, and pointed out the many disadvantages of the elective form. He strongly recommended the office being confined to the Cromwell family, and this, of course, was attributed to the instigation of Cromwell himself. They decided for the elective form. On the 11th of December they voted that the Protector should have a veto on Bills touching liberty of conscience, but not such as suppressed heresies, as if what they called suppressing heresies were not direct attacks on liberty of conscience. Thus they crept round the very roots of the Protectoral authority, nibbling at the powers he had forbidden them to discuss, and they proceeded to give proof of their intention to launch into all the old persecutions for religion, if they possibly could, by summoning before them John Biddle, who may be regarded as the father of the Unitarians. He[130] had been thrice imprisoned by the Long Parliament, for holding that he could not find in Scripture that Christ or the Holy Ghost was styled God. The Parliament committed him to the Gatehouse, and ordered a Bill to be prepared for his punishment.

It was high time that they were stopped in their incorrigible spirit of persecution; and by now proceeding to frame a Bill to include all their votes on the articles of the Instrument they were suddenly arrested in their progress. The Instrument provided that Parliament should not be adjourned under five months. On the 22nd of January, 1655, the Protector chose to consider that the months were not calendar but lunar months, which then expired. The Parliament, counting the other way, deemed themselves safe till the 3rd of February, but on the 22nd of January Oliver summoned them to the Painted Chamber, and observed to them, that though he had met them at first with the hope that their hearts were in the great work to which they had been called, he was quite disappointed in them. He complained that they had sent no message to him, taken no more notice of his presence in the Republic than if he had not existed, and that with all patience he had forborne teasing them with messages, hoping that they would at length proceed to some real business. "But," added he, "as I may not take notice of what you have been doing, so I think I have a very great liberty to tell you that I do not know what you have been doing; that I do not know whether you have been dead or alive. I have not once heard from you all this time. I have not, and that you all know."

He then reminded them that various discontented parties—the Royalists, the Levellers, and others—had been encouraged by their evident disposition to call in question the Government, to raise plots, and that if they were permitted to sit making quibbles about the Government itself, the nation would soon be plunged again into bloodshed and confusion. He, therefore, did then and there dissolve them as a Parliament.

The plots to which the Protector alluded had been going on for some time, and even yet were in full activity. We shall trace their main features, but we may first notice an incident which showed that Cromwell was prepared for them, resolved to sell his life manfully if attacked. On the 24th of September, 1654, immediately after compelling the Parliament to subscribe the Engagement, the Protector was out in Hyde Park, taking dinner under the shade of the trees, with Thurloe, the secretary, a man whom he constantly consulted on the affairs of the nation. After this little rural dinner, which gives us a very interesting idea of the simplicity of the great general's habits and tastes, he tried a team of six fine Friesland coach horses, presented to him by the Duke of Oldenburg. Thurloe was put into the carriage, Cromwell mounted the coachman's seat, and a postillion rode one of the fore horses. The horses soon became unruly, plunged, and threw the postillion, and then, nearly upsetting the carriage, threw the Protector from his seat, who fell upon the pole and had his legs entangled in the harness. On went the mad horses at full gallop, and one of Cromwell's shoes coming off, which had been held by the harness, he fell under the carriage, which went on without hurting him, except by some bruises. In the fall, however, a loaded pistol went off in his pocket, thus revealing the fact that he went armed.

And indeed he had great need. His mother, who died just now, on the 16th of November, and who was ninety-four years old, used, at the sound of a musket, says Ludlow, to imagine that her son was shot, and could not be satisfied unless she saw him once a day at least. Her last words to him do not give us any idea of hypocrisy in mother or son—"The Lord cause His face to shine upon you, and enable you to do great things for the glory of the Most High God, and to be a relief unto His people. My dear son, I leave my heart with thee. A good night!"

Amongst the plotters were both Royalists and Republicans. The ejected members of Parliament, in their different quarters, were stirring up discontent against Cromwell, and even declaring that it were better to have Charles Stuart back again. Colonel Overton, who had been questioned at the time of Colonel Alured's dismissal, was once more called up and questioned. In Scotland, where he lay, the Protector discovered an agitation to supersede Monk, and make the Republican Overton Commander-in-chief, and leaving only the garrisons, to march the rest of the army into England on the demand of pay and constitutional reform. Overton was committed to the Tower.

Allen—who, with Sexby and another agitator, in 1647 presented a remarkable petition from the army to the Long Parliament, and had become adjutant-general—was arrested at his father-in-law's house, in Devonshire, at the end of January, 1655, on a charge of plotting disturbances in Ireland, and exciting discontent in Bristol and Devon. Allen was a zealous Anabaptist, and the[131] excitement amongst them and other army republicans was great and extensive. Pamphlets were published, letters and agitators passed from one regiment to another, and a general rising was planned, with the seizure of Edinburgh Castle, Hull, Portsmouth, and other strong places. Cromwell was to be surprised and put to death. Colonel Wildman, one of these fanatics, who had been ejected from Parliament by refusing to sign the Recognition, was taken on the 12th of February at Exton, near Marlborough, in Wilts, by a party of horse, as he was in his furnished lodgings upstairs, leaning on his elbows, and in the act, with the door open, of dictating to his clerk, "A Declaration of the free and well-affected people of England, now in arms against the tyrant Oliver Cromwell." He was secured in Chepstow Castle, and his correspondents, Harrison, Lord Grey of Groby, and others, were secured in the Tower. Colonel Sexby for the time escaped.

About the same time a Royalist plot was also in progress. Charles Stuart, who had removed from Paris to Cologne—the French Government not wishing to give offence to Cromwell—had concocted a plot with Hyde, his Chancellor, to raise the Royalists in various quarters at once, fancying that as Cromwell had given so much offence to both people and Parliament, there was great hope of success. Charles went to Middelburg, on the coast of Holland, to be ready at a call, and Hyde was extremely confident. In Yorkshire there was a partial outbreak under Lord Mauleverer and Sir Henry Kingsby, which was speedily quelled, Kingsby being seized and imprisoned in Hull. This abortive attempt was under the management of Lord Wilmot, now Earl of Rochester, who was glad to make his escape. Another branch of the plot, under the management of Sir Joseph Wagstaff, who came over with Rochester, fared no better. Wagstaff attempted to surprise Winchester on the 7th of March, during the assizes. Penruddock, Grove, and Jones, Royalist officers, were associated with him, and about two hundred others entered Salisbury about five o'clock on the morning of the 11th, posted themselves in the market-place, liberated the prisoners from the gaol, and surprised the sheriff and two judges in their beds. Wagstaff proposed to hang the judges, but Penruddock and the rest refused to allow it; he then ordered the high sheriff to proclaim Charles Stuart, but neither he nor the crier would do it, though menaced with the gallows. Hearing that Captain Unton Crook was after them with a troop of horse, and seeing no chance of a rising, they quitted the town about three o'clock, and marched through Dorsetshire into Devonshire. At South Molton Captain Crook came up with them, and speedily made himself master of fifty of the insurgents, including Penruddock, Grove, and Jones, but Wagstaff escaped. They had expected a body of conspirators from Hampshire to join them at Salisbury, and these were actually on their way when they heard of the retreat of Wagstaff's band, and immediately dispersed. Similarly feeble outbreaks took place in the counties of Northumberland, Nottingham, Shropshire, and Montgomery. Penruddock, Grove, and Jones were beheaded at Exeter, and about fifteen others suffered there and at Salisbury; the rest of the deluded prisoners were sold to Barbadoes. Charles returned crest-fallen to Cologne, and Hyde, convinced that his plans had been betrayed, attributed the treason to Manning, whom, having secured, they had shot in the following winter, in the territory of the Duke of Neuburg.

To prevent more of these outbreaks, Cromwell planned to divide the whole country into military districts, over each of which he placed an officer, who was to act chiefly with the militia, and not with the Levelling regulars. These officers he created major-generals, beginning first with Desborough in the south-west, and, before the year was out, he had despatched, each to his district, the other major-generals—Fleetwood, Skippon, Whalley, Kelsey, Goffe, Berry, Butler, Wortley, and Barkstead, who effectually preserved the peace of the nation. During the spring also, undaunted by these disturbances, Cromwell progressed with his internal reforms, and with the greatest of all, the reform of Chancery. This was no easy matter. The lawyers were as turbulent as the Anabaptists in the army. Two of the Commissioners of the Great Seal, Whitelock and Widdrington, refused to enforce the reform, and were obliged to resign. Lisle and Fiennes, the other Commissioners, dared to carry out the change. Lenthall, the Speaker, now Master of the Rolls, protested that he would be hanged at the Rolls gate before he would obey; but he saw fit to alter his mind, and the Protector, so far from bearing any ill-will to the two conscientious Commissioners, Whitelock and Widdrington, soon after made them Commissioners of the Treasury.

We may now look back a little, to observe what Cromwell had been doing beyond the shores[132] of the kingdom. We have seen that almost all the nations of Europe sent embassies to congratulate him on his elevation to the Protectorate. The vigour of his rule speedily made them more anxious to stand on good terms with him. He soon made peace with Sweden as a Protestant country, and from natural sympathy with the Protestant fame of the great Gustavus. He concluded peace also with Holland, but with France and Spain there were more difficulties.

France had, both under Richelieu and Mazarin, lent continual aid and refuge to the Royalist cause against the Reformers. The queen, whom the Republicans had chased from the throne, was a princess of France, and was living there with numbers of the Royalists about her. Charles, the heir to the throne of England, was pensioned by France, and maintained a sort of court in Paris, whence continual disturbances and alarms were coming. It is true, the French Court had never been very munificent to the exiled Queen of England and her family. Henrietta was found by Cardinal Retz without fire, and almost without food, and Charles and his countrymen were so poor, that Clarendon, in June, 1653, wrote, "I do not know that any man is yet dead for want of bread, which I really wonder at. I am sure the king owes all that he has eaten since April, and I am not acquainted with one servant who hath a pistole in his pocket. Five or six of us eat together one meal a day for a pistole a week; but all of us owe, for God knows how many weeks, to the poor woman that feeds us." He adds that he wanted shoes and shirts, and that the Marquis of Ormond was in no better condition. The Court of Charles was as much rent with divisions and jealousies as it was poor. His brave conduct in England raised great hopes of him, but on his return to France he relapsed into all sorts of dissipations and intrigues, which made him contemptible. Amongst a troop of mistresses, Lucy Walters, or Barlow, as she was called, the mother of the afterwards celebrated Duke of Monmouth, was the most notorious.

THE ROYALIST PLOTTERS AT SALISBURY INSULTING THE SHERIFF. (See p. 131.)

As Mazarin saw the growing power of Cromwell, he was glad to get Charles removed from Paris, and his abode transferred to Cologne; but, being still the pensioner of France, Charles was equally[133] capable of annoying England from that place, as the late outbreaks showed. These circumstances no doubt rendered it very difficult for the conclusion of a peace between Cromwell and France, for Cromwell insisted on the withdrawal of the French support from the exiled family, and though France was fully disposed to abate the evil as far as possible, it could not in honour entirely abandon them. Mazarin made every possible concession on other points, and the French ambassador, Bordeaux, urged the progress of the treaty with all earnestness. But besides the grand obstacle, there were others raised by Spain. France and Spain were at war: Spain was supporting the Prince of Condé and the French insurgents, and the Spanish ambassador was indefatigable in representing that whilst Spain had been the very first to acknowledge the English Commonwealth, France had been constantly supporting the Royalist power, and in 1653 he offered to seize Calais and make it over to England as the price of the Commonwealth making peace with Spain, and common cause against France.

THE PAINTED CHAMBER, WESTMINSTER.

But there were motives which always weighed heavily with Cromwell—religion and the honour of the English flag. He had an enduring repugnance to the Catholic faith, and Spain was essentially Catholic, and at the same time was maintaining an insolent domination in the waters of the West Indies. The fame of her exclusion thence of the flags of all other nations from her colonies, and of her many atrocities committed on English colonies—as at St. Kitts in 1629, at Tortuga in 1637, and Santa Cruz in 1650—was an irresistible provocative to the combative spirit of the Protector. He demanded of the Spanish ambassador that Spain should abolish the Inquisition, and admit the English flag to the West Indian seas. De Leyda replied that he was asking from his king his two eyes, and as Cromwell would not concede either point, he demanded his passports in June, 1654, and took his leave.

Cromwell lost no time in enforcing his views on Spain—as no doubt he felt bound conscientiously to do on the great principle of suppressing Popish cruelties, and spreading the triumph of Protestantism. He sent Blake with a powerful fleet in October of that year into the Mediterranean, and another powerful armament under[134] Admirals Penn and Venables, with secret orders which were not to be opened till they arrived in certain latitudes. This fleet, whose preparation and destination kept all Europe in wonder and anxiety, sailed west, and was, in fact, destined for the West Indies. Blake, with his fleet, passed the Straits of Gibraltar, and presented to the inhabitants of the shores of the Mediterranean a spectacle such as they had not seen since the days of the Crusades—a powerful English fleet. It consisted of thirty sail, and its commission was to seize the French vessels wherever it could find them, especially to seek out and attack the fleet under the Duke of Guise. It was besides this to demand satisfaction from various offending Powers. The Grand Duke of Tuscany had, whilst Parliament was struggling with Charles, allowed Prince Rupert to sell English prizes in his ports. The Pope was, as the Antichrist, an object to be humbled, or at all events impressed sensibly with the fact that England could at any moment visit him in his capital, and that the British power was in hands both able and ready to do it. There were many injuries to our merchantmen to be avenged on the pirates of Tunis and Algiers. Cromwell's favourite maxim was, that a ship of the line was the most effective ambassador. Blake sailed along the Papal shores, exciting a deep terror, but he passed on and cast anchor before Leghorn, and demanded compensation for the offence against English honour and shipping, which was speedily granted. Not being able to discover the Duke of Guise, he proceeded to Algiers, and compelled the Dey to sign an engagement not to permit further violences by his subjects on English vessels. Thence he sailed to Tunis, and sent in the same demand, but the haughty barbarian of that place sent him word to give a look at his ports of Porto Farina and Goletta, with their fleets, and take them if he could. Blake sailed away as if in despair, but suddenly returning, he entered the harbour of Porto Farina, silencing the castle and batteries as he advanced, and set fire to the whole fleet. Both Tunis and Tripoli now found it the best policy to give the required engagement, and Blake left the Mediterranean, having given those lawless pirates a specimen of the power of England, which was not likely to be soon forgotten.

Blake had orders to look out for the next Spanish Plate fleet coming home, and he lay for some time off Cadiz; but there was now at the Court of Madrid Colonel Sexby, the Leveller, who had long been engaged with Allen, Wildman, and the Anabaptists. He had gone over to the Continent to raise some force either in conjunction with Charles or with Spain, to invade England and kill Cromwell. Sexby revealed to the Spaniards not only the object of Blake, but the real design of the fleet under Venables and Penn. More than thirty sail were mustered by the Spanish under Don Pablos de Contretras, which kept close watch on Blake. Blake longed to attack them, but his orders did not sanction it; and after hearing that the Plate fleet was detained at Carthagena, he returned to England to refit, his ships being in a sorry plight, and his men suffering from bad provisions.

During the absence of Blake, great excitement had been occasioned in England by the news of dreadful atrocities committed on the Protestants of the mountains of Piedmont. The Protestants called the Vaudois were a race who, through all ages, had, in the obscurity of their Alpine valleys, retained the doctrines of the Primitive Church, and had set at defiance both the persuasions and the persecutions of Rome. They were said to be descended from the ancient Waldenses, and were a bold, independent race of mountaineers. It was pretended that the Duke of Savoy, whose subjects they chiefly were, had granted them the free exercise of their religion so long as they remained in their ancient places of abode, the valleys of the sources of the Po, in the Savoy Alps; but that being found in Lucerna and other places, these were decided to be beyond their bounds, and they were ordered to be conformed to the Church of Rome, or sell their lands and retire from these territories. They refused to be driven from their homes on account of their religion, and being always an eyesore to the Court of Rome, the fury of persecution was let loose upon them. Friars were sent amongst them to convert them, or to denounce their destruction; they disregarded the friars, and then six regiments of soldiers were sent to drive them into the mountains. Amongst these were two regiments of refugee Irish. These fellows, ardent Catholics, smarting under the Protestant scourge which had driven them from their native land, did their work con amore. From the district of Lucerna they were driven into the higher Alpine fastnesses and pursued with the most terrible ferocities of fanatic savagery, with fire and sword and extermination. These horrors were aggravated by winter and famine, and the news of this fearful butchery rang through Protestant England with a sensation which revived all the memory of the[135] Popish horrors in the Marian time. There was one loud outcry for interference on their behalf. Press and pulpit resounded with demands of sympathy and redress: the ministers of all classes waited on Cromwell in a body to solicit his protection of the Vaudois: the army in Scotland and Ireland sent up addresses. No one appeared, however, more excited than Cromwell himself. He immediately gave two thousand pounds, and appointed a day of general humiliation, and a collection on their behalf, which was observed, and thirty-eight thousand two hundred and twenty-eight pounds were speedily raised, and sent by envoys to Geneva, to be conveyed to the sufferers. Nor did Cromwell satisfy himself with having done this. The day of the arrival of the news, June 3rd, 1655, he was about to sign a treaty of peace with France; but he refused to sign it till he had seen whether the French king and Mazarin would heartily unite with him in extorting protection from the Duke of Savoy for the sufferers. Mazarin was loth to stir in such a business, but Cromwell soon let him see that there would be no peace for France unless he did, and he consented. Three Latin letters were written by Milton at the order of the Protector to different States of Europe, calling on them to co-operate for this great end, and the mighty poet sent forth also his glorious sonnet, commencing—

which shall remain like a perpetual trumpet-blast through all time. The astonished Duke of Savoy was soon compelled to give ample guarantee for the religious liberty and security of his Protestant subjects.

The expedition to the West Indies, in its commencement, did not meet with that success which the Protector generally experienced. The fleet, consisting of sixty sail, was bound for Hispaniola, and carried four thousand troops; and in Barbadoes and other English settlements the force was augmented by volunteers, incited by promise of plunder, to ten thousand. But these fresh forces were of the worst possible description, being prisoners of a loose description shipped thither; the commanders were divided in opinion, and the attack was so wretchedly managed, that it failed with great loss. St. Domingo, which they intended to take, was deserted on their approach, but instead of entering it at once, they landed their forces forty miles off, and marched them through woods towards the town. The heat of the weather, the want of water, and the consequent disorder of the troops, prepared them for what ensued. They were suddenly attacked in a thick wood, and repulsed with great slaughter. Nothing could bring these ragamuffin forces to renew the attempt, and the commanders sailed away, but afterwards fell on Jamaica and took it. That island was then, however, considered of so little value, that it did not satisfy the Government for the loss of Hispaniola, and on their return Venables and Penn were committed to the Tower. Notwithstanding this, however, Cromwell determined to make secure the conquest of Jamaica, and extend, if possible, the West Indian possessions. Vice-admiral Goodson was ordered to take the command at Jamaica, and with him General Fortescue, Serle, Governor of Barbadoes, and General Sedgwick, from New England, were appointed Commissioners for the management of the island.

Cromwell's letters to these officers that autumn inform us that there were twenty-eight men-of-war on that station, and people from Barbadoes, from New England, and from England and Scotland, were being sent to occupy and settle the island. A thousand Irish girls were sent out. Cromwell pointed out to the Commissioners how advantageously the island lay for keeping in check the Spanish Main, and the trade with Peru and Carthagena. His comprehensive glance was alive to all the advantages of the conquest, and his resolution engaged to make the most of it. Whatever is the value of Jamaica now, we owe it to him. He believed that he was not only serving the nation but religion by humbling Spain. He wrote to the Commissioners, "The Lord Himself hath a controversy with your enemies, even with that Roman Babylon of which the Spaniard is the great underpropper. In that respect we fought the Lord's battles, and in that respect the Scriptures are most plain." Spain, of course, proclaimed war against England, to her further loss, and the glory of Cromwell and his invincible Puritan admiral, Blake. Penn and Venables resigned their commissions, and were set at liberty. On October 24th, the day after the Spanish ambassador quitted London, Cromwell signed the treaty of peace with France, by which Condé and the French malcontents were to be excluded from the British dominions, and Charles Stuart, his brother the Duke of York, Ormond, Hyde, and fifteen others of the prince's adherents, were to be excluded from France.

Cromwell opened the year 1656 amid a multitude of plots and discontents. The enemies of[136] the Republic—Royalists, Anabaptists, Levellers—were all busy in one quarter or another. Cleveland, the poet, who had been taken prisoner nine years before by David Leslie, at Newcastle, and expected to be hanged for his tirades against the Scots, but had been dismissed by Leslie with the contemptuous words, "Let the poor knave go and sell his ballads," was now seized by Colonel Haynes for seditious writings at Norwich; but Cromwell also dismissed him with like indifference.

At the close of the year the Jews, who had been forbidden England, hopeful from the more liberal mercantile notions of Cromwell, petitioned to be allowed to reside in this country, under certain conditions. Cromwell was favourable to the petition, which was presented by Manasseh Ben Israel, a leading Portuguese Jew, of Amsterdam, though his Council was against it on Scriptural grounds; but Cromwell silently took them under his protection. There was also a Committee of Trade in the House, under the earnest advocacy of the Protector, for promoting commerce. Meanwhile, Cromwell vigorously prosecuted the war against Spain. Blake and Montague were ordered to the coast of Spain, to destroy the shipping in the harbour of Cadiz, and to see whether Gibraltar could not be seized, which Cromwell, in his letters to the admirals, pointed out as admirably adapted to promote and protect our trade, and keep the Spaniard in check. Yet even this project was not carried out without trouble from the Malcontents. Some of the captains of the fleet, tampered with by Charles's emissaries, declared their disapproval of the enterprise, contending that we, and not the Spaniards, were in fault. Cromwell sent down Desborough to them, who weeded them out, and put others in their places. Blake and Montague then set sail, and reached the neighbourhood of Cadiz and Gibraltar in April, but found their defences too strong; they then proceeded to Lisbon, and brought the treaty with the Portuguese to a termination, and afterwards made an alarming visit to Malaga, and to Sallee, to curb the Moors. In July they returned to the Tagus, and in September a part of the fleet, under Captain Stayner, fell in with and defeated a fleet of eight sail, coming from America. He destroyed four of the vessels, and captured two, containing treasure worth from two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to three hundred thousand pounds.

Before this treasure reached England, Cromwell, who had exhausted his finances to fit out the fleet and prosecute the war with Spain, was compelled to call a Parliament, not only to obtain supplies, but to take measures for the security of the nation against the designs of the Royalists and their coadjutors, the Levellers. This met on the 17th of September, 1656. But Cromwell did not allow all the members elected to sit in this Parliament, any more than in the former ones. He knew well that his Government and such a Parliament could not exist together. The members elected, therefore, were not admitted to sit except they had a certificate of their approval by the Council from the Chancery clerk. By the withholding of such certificates nearly one-fourth of the members were excluded. This created a terrible outcry of invasion of Parliamentary privileges. Haselrig, Scott, Ashley Cooper, and many other violent Republicans were excluded. The excluded members signed an indignant protest, and circulated it in all parts of the country, with the list of their names appended.

The Protector opened this purged Parliament with a very long speech, which was one of the most remarkable speeches ever addressed to Parliament by any ruler. It displayed a depth and breadth of policy, an active, earnest spirit of national business, a comprehension of and desire for the establishment of such principles and prosperous measures, a recognition of the rights of the whole world as affected by the conduct of this one great nation, which have no parallel for true Christian philosophy since the days of Alfred. We have since then had great and valiant warriors, our Edwards and Henrys, but not a man who combined with the highest military genius and success a genuine, lofty, and loving Christian sentiment, and an earnest business-like mind like Cromwell. He at once laid down the principle that all hostility to the Commonwealth originated in the hatred of its free and Christian character; and he showed that all these enemies, of whatever theories, had united themselves with Spain, which was the grand adversary of this country, and had been so from the Reformation, because she was bigotedly wedded to the system of Popery, with all its monks, Jesuits, and inquisitors. He recapitulated its attempts to destroy Elizabeth and her religion; the vain attempts of the Long Parliament to make peace with it, because in any treaty where the Pope could grant absolution, you were bound and they were loose; the[137] murder of Ascham, the Long Parliament's ambassador, and no redress obtained: and now he informed them, and offered to produce the proofs, that Charles Stuart had put himself in league with Spain, and, still more strange, that the Levellers, pretending to demand a freer and more Republican Government, had entered into the unnatural alliance with Charles and Spain to murder him and destroy the Commonwealth.

ADMIRAL BLAKE.

All this was perfectly true. Sexby, the Leveller, had gone over to Charles, and thence to Spain, to solicit aid towards a Popish invasion, offering first to kill Cromwell himself. He obtained forty thousand crowns for the use of his party, and a promise of six thousand men when they were ready to land in England, who should wait in Flanders. Some of this money, when remitted to the accomplices in England, Cromwell intercepted, as he assured the Parliament. Sexby followed to accomplish his design of assassinating the Protector, as we shall find anon. Cromwell proceeded to remind Parliament of the insurrections excited by Charles's emissaries, Wagstaff and Rochester, and the conspiracy of Gerard and Vowel, the outbreaks at Salisbury, Rufford Abbey, and a score of other places; of Wildman taken in the act of penning his call to rebellion, of the design to destroy Monk in Scotland, and of similar instigations in the army in Ireland; of the plottings of the Lord Taaffe with Hyde at Antwerp; and, finally, that there had been an attempt to blow him up with gunpowder in his own house, and an officer of the Guard had been engaged to seize him in his bed. These last he characterised as "little fiddling attempts not worth naming," and which he regarded no more than he did "a mouse[138] nibbling at his heel." But he told them that the animus altogether was of that un-English and un-Christian character, that it became them to fight manfully against it, and though they were low in funds, they should still put forth all their energies to crush this malignant power of Spain, whence the other enemies drew their strength. He informed them that France was well disposed to them, and that all the rest of the world was at peace with them.

He then assured them that the major-generals had done good service in every quarter, that the improvement of the ministry had become manifest through the exertions of the Commissioners, and that the Presbyterians had themselves expressed their approbation of what had been done in that respect. He strongly recommended to them further equalisation and improvement of the laws, so that every one should have cheap and easy justice, and that the purification of the public morals should be carefully attended to—"the Cavalier interest, the badge and character of continuing profaneness, disorder, and wickedness in all places," having worked such deplorable effects. "Nobility and gentry of this nation!" he exclaimed; "in my conscience it was a shame to be a Christian, within these fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen years in this nation; whether 'in Cæsar's house' or elsewhere! It was a shame, it was a reproach to a man, and the badge of 'Puritan' was put on it." As they would maintain nobility and gentry, he told them they must not suffer these classes "to be patronisers or countenancers of debauchery and disorders! And therefore," he concluded, "I pray and beseech you, in the name of Christ, show yourselves to be men; quit yourselves like men! It doth not infer any reproach if you do show yourselves men—Christian men, which alone will make you quit yourselves."

In the early days of the sitting of this Parliament—that is, in the beginning of October—came the news of Stayner's victory over the Spanish Plate fleet, and the capture of the treasure; and in the beginning of November the money arrived, and thirty-eight waggon-loads of silver were sent up from Portsmouth to the Mint to be coined, amid universal rejoicings. Before the year closed, also, Cromwell, by the help of Mazarin, effected a temporary separation of interests between Charles Stuart and the Duke of York; but it did not last long. But by this time Colonel Sexby was in England, watching his opportunity to murder Cromwell. He was daring enough to introduce himself amongst the Protector's escort in Hyde Park, and he and his accomplices had filed nearly through the hinges of the gates through which the Protector was accustomed to pass, so that they might create a sudden obstruction and confusion, during which Sexby might shoot Cromwell. But not being able to succeed to his mind, Sexby returned to Flanders to consult with the royal party, and left sixteen hundred pounds in the hands of one Miles Sindercomb, a cashiered quartermaster, who was to carry out the bloody design. Sindercomb took a house in Hammersmith, where the road by which the Protector passed to and from Hampton Court was very narrow, and there he prepared an "infernal machine," consisting of a battery of seven blunderbusses, which was to blow Cromwell's coach to atoms as it passed; but the machine did not answer, or could not be used from the crowd of Guards; and then Sindercomb resolved to set fire to Whitehall by night, and kill Cromwell as he came out in the confusion. He had bribed a great number of accomplices, many of them in the palace itself, and had probably a considerable number of fellow conspirators, for he had a hundred swift horses in stables in the neighbourhood, on which he and his confederates might escape, the deed being done. All this was with the privity and approbation of Charles, Clarendon, and the rest of that Court, and shows the state of moral principle in it, and which, after the Restoration, broke over England like a pestilence. They were constantly dabbling in attempts at assassination, and in the Clarendon papers themselves we have Clarendon's own repeated avowals of his satisfaction in them. He styles these base assassins "brave fellows and honest gentlemen," and thinks it a pity that any agent of the Protectorate abroad should not have his throat cut.

But Sindercomb's wholesale bribery led to the detection of the plot. Amongst those tampered with was Henry Toope, a Life Guardsman, who revealed the scheme. On the 8th of January, 1657, Sindercomb attended public worship in the evening at Whitehall Chapel. Toope, Cecil—who had been engaged in the construction of the infernal machine—and Sindercomb were arrested, and having been seen about General Lambert's seat, it was examined, and there was found a basketful of the most inflammable materials—strong enough, it was said, to burn through stones—and a lighted slow-burning match, calculated to reach the combustibles about midnight. There were found also holes bored in the wainscot, to facilitate the communication of the fire, and of[139] draughts to encourage it. Toope and Cecil gave all the information that they could, but Sindercomb was obstinately silent, and being found guilty by a jury of high treason, was condemned to die on Saturday, the 13th. But the evening before, his sister taking leave of him, contrived to carry some poison to him, and the next morning he was found dead in his bed.

Parliament adjourned a week for the trial and examination of the plot, and appointed a day of thanksgiving on Friday, the 23rd. But though Sindercomb was dead, Sexby was alive, and as murderously inclined as ever, and to prevent interrupting other affairs, we may now follow him also to his exit. Though neither fleet nor money was ready to follow up the blow if successful, the gloomy Anabaptist once more set out for England with a tract in his possession, called "Killing no Murder," which was no doubt his own composition, though Colonel Titus, after the Restoration, claimed the merit of it. This tract, taking it as a settled fact that it was a noble piece of patriotism and virtue to kill a tyrant, pronounced Cromwell a tyrant, and therefore declared that it was a noble deed to kill him. It eulogised Sindercomb as the Brutus or Cato of the time. Sexby, disguised like a countryman, and with a large beard, travelled about distributing this pamphlet, but he was tracked, discovered, and lodged in the Tower. There he either went mad or pretended it, made a voluntary confession, found to be intended only to mislead, and, falling ill, died in the following January.

One of the first things which this second Parliament of the Protectorate did was to abolish the authority of the major-generals. Cromwell had assured them that they were doing good service in suppressing disturbances, and he told them so again; but there were many complaints of their rigour, especially of levying heavy fines on the Royalists; and Parliament, on the 29th of January, voted their withdrawal. The next matter, which occupied them for above three months, was the case of James Naylor, the mad Quaker, whom they sentenced to a punishment that was simply diabolical in its inhumanity. Before this was settled, Parliament entered on a far more momentous question—no less than whether they should not make Cromwell king.

Those who take an unfavourable view of the character of Cromwell, who regard him as a base mixture of hypocrisy and ambition, accuse him of having planned and manœuvred for this object; but there appears no evidence of this, but rather that the continual uneasiness created by the Royalist and Anabaptist assassins led many seriously to consider the peculiar position of the nation, and the great dangers to which it was exposed. There was nothing between the nation and all its old confusions but the life of one clear-headed, and strong-hearted, and strong-handed man, a life which was environed with perils. They deemed these dangers would be diminished by altering the form of government, and returning to a House of Lords and a Monarchy—but not to the corrupt and murder-seeking Stuarts. Had they their honest and earnest Protector converted into a king, and the succession settled on his family, the nation would jealously guard his life, and the hopes of the exiled family be diminished by the prospect of a successor of his own blood, even if he fell.

On the 23rd of February, 1657, suddenly Sir Christopher Pack, late Lord Mayor of London, craved leave to read a paper, which turned out to be drawn up in the form of a Remonstrance from Parliament to the Protector on the state of the country, and proposing a new form of government, including a House of Lords and himself as king. No sooner did the officers of the army, who had just lost their pro-consular dignity, and the other Republicans hear the proposition, than they rose, seized Pack, and hurried him from his seat to the bar of the House as a traitor. But those who were friendly to the proposition rose also in his defence, and after much commotion, the paper was not only read but debated. From this moment this subject occupied the House, with little intermission, till the 9th of May, or between two and three months. The title of the paper was changed from "A humble Address and Remonstrance," to "The humble Petition and Advice of the Parliament of England, Scotland, and Ireland." Its clauses were debated and carried one by one by a majority of a hundred to forty-four, and on the last day of the debate, March 26th, the blank left for the word king was filled in by a majority of one hundred and twenty-three to sixty-two. On the 31st of March an address was carried to the Protector at Whitehall by the Speaker and the House, praying that his Highness would be pleased to adopt their resolutions, and take upon him the state and title of king.

Unquestionably, this was the greatest temptation which had ever been thrown in the way of Cromwell. To have made his way by his energy and talent from the simple condition of a gentleman-farmer to the Dictatorship of the nation, and[140] now to have the crown and succession of these great kingdoms offered to him and his family by Parliament, was a matter which would not have been much opposed by an ordinary man. But Cromwell was not of a character lightly to accept even a crown. He showed clearly that he had a strong inclination to place himself and his posterity in that august position, but he knew too well that the honour had also its dangers and its black side. His acceptance would at once darken his fair fame by settling it in the conviction of three-fourths of the kingdom that he had only fought and put down the Stuarts to set up himself. There was, moreover, a formidable party opposed to kingship, and especially decided against it were his generals and the army. A deputation of a hundred of them had waited on him on the 27th, with an address on the subject, in which they assured him that such a thing would be "a scandal to the people, would prove more than hazardous to his person, and would pave the way for the return of Charles Stuart." Let the nation but become once more accustomed to the name of king, and it would recall the ancient race on the first opportunity.

Cromwell felt too well the truth of these representations, and therefore he required of the House time to reflect on their important offer, though he had watched carefully the progress of the debate. He desired that a committee might be appointed to confer with him on all the articles of the new Instrument of Government proposed to him. A committee of ninety-nine persons was accordingly appointed, amongst them Whitelock, Glynn, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Broghill, Nathaniel Fiennes, one of the Keepers of the Great Seal, etc. They had many meetings, but Cromwell, instead of giving his opinion upon the subject, desired to know their reasons for recommending this change. The chief reasons advanced were, the ancient habits of the nation; that the people were proud of the honour of their monarchs; that that form of government had prevailed from the most ancient period, and what no doubt weighed greatly with them was that, by the 9th of Edward IV. and the 3rd of Henry VII., it was enacted that all who took up arms for or obeyed the king de facto, were held guiltless; but not so they who served a protector de facto.

Cromwell admitted that this was a matter of precaution which demanded serious consideration, and that he regarded the proposal to him as "a very singular honour and favour," and would return such an answer as God should give him, or as he should arrive at through discussion with them; but that his conscience yet was not clear upon the subject, and they must examine the grounds for it further. Whitelock says the Protector often advised about this matter of the kingship, and other great businesses, with a select number of the committee—Lord Broghill, Mr. Pierpoint, brother of the Earl of Kingston, Thurloe, Whitelock, and Sir Charles Wolseley,—and would be shut up three or four hours together, and none else were admitted to him. He sometimes would be very cheerful with them, and, laying aside his greatness, would be exceedingly familiar; and, by way of diversion, would make verses and play at crambo with them, when every one had to try his fancy. He commonly called for tobacco, pipes, and a caudle, and would now and then take tobacco himself. Then he would fall again to his serious and great business of the kingship.

They were interrupted, however, in their colloquies, by a fresh outbreak of the Fifth-Monarchy men. These religionists, who admitted the idea of no king but Christ, were especially exasperated at this attempt to set up an earthly king, and determined to rise and prevent it. They fixed Thursday, the 9th of April, for the rising. They issued a proclamation called "A Standard set up," ordered Mile End as the place of rendezvous, and, headed by one Venner, a wine merchant, and other persons of the City, calculated on introducing the reign of the Millennium. They encouraged each other, says Thurloe, with the exhortation that though they were but worms, yet they should be made instrumental to thresh mountains. They spoke, he says, great words of the reign of the saints, and the beautiful kingdom of holies which they were to erect, and talked of taking away all taxes, excise, custom, and tithes. They had banners painted with the device of the lion of the tribe of Judah, and the motto, "Who shall raise him up?"

But the wide-awake Thurloe had watched all their motions. That morning at daybreak he marched a troop of horse down upon the meeting at Mile End, seized Venner and twenty other ringleaders, with chests of arms, many copies of the proclamation, and the famous war-flag of the lion-couchant of Judah. Major-General Harrison, Admiral Lawson, Colonel Rich, and others of the leaders of the Fifth-Monarchy men were also seized, and with these men shut up in the Tower, but no further punished. Venner ended his days for a similar attempt in the reign of Charles II.

[141]

CROMWELL REFUSING THE CROWN. (See p. 142.)

[142]

The discussions of Cromwell and the committee were resumed, and, without coming to any conclusion, on Tuesday, the 21st of April, the Protector suddenly left the consideration of the kingship, and examined the other articles of the Instrument. The chief of these were, that men of all classes should be capable of electing and being elected to Parliament or to offices of State, excepting Papists and Royalists, styled Malignants, at least such Royalists as had been in arms against the Parliament since 1642, unless they had since given signal proof of repentance by bearing arms for the Parliament; all who had been concerned in the Irish rebellion since 1650, or in any plot in England or Wales since December, 1653; all in Scotland who had been in arms against the Parliament of England or Parliament of Scotland, except such as had lived peaceably since the 1st of March, 1652. Besides those thus excluded, all freeholders of counties, and all burgesses and citizens of towns—constituting in fact a household suffrage—could vote for members of Parliament.

All who were atheistical, blasphemous, married to Popish wives, or who trained children, or suffered their children to be trained in Popery, or consented that their children should marry Papists, who scoffed at religion or at religious people, who denied the Scriptures to be God's Word, who denied the Sacraments, ministers, or magistracy to be divine ordinances (like the Fifth-Monarchy men), who were Sabbath-breakers, swearers, haunters of taverns and alehouses—in short, all who were unchristian men—were excluded from electing or being elected. All public preachers were excluded, as better employed in their own vocation, but at the recommendation of Cromwell this was restricted to such preachers as had fixed livings, and did not affect mere voluntary occasional preachers, like himself and many other officers.

A second House of Parliament was to be organised, to consist of not less than forty members, nor more than seventy, who were to be nominated by the Protector, and approved by the Commons. It was not to be called the House of Lords, nor the Upper, but the Other House. The same qualifications and disqualifications applied to it as to the Commons. All judges and public officers, as well as those of the army and navy, were to be approved of by the two Houses; or if Parliament were not sitting, by the Council. Another article settled the revenue, and all relating to it and—the most important one to the Protector—he was authorised to name his successor before his death. These matters being settled, and the Instrument revised by Parliament, on the 8th of May Cromwell summoned the House to meet him in the Banqueting-house, Whitehall, where he ratified the rest of the Instrument, but gave them this answer as to the kingship—that having taken all the circumstances into consideration, both public and private, he did not feel at liberty in his conscience to accept the government with the title of king; that whatever was not of faith was sin; and that not being satisfied that he could accept it in that form to the real advantage of the nation, he should not be an honest man if he did not firmly—but with every acknowledgment of the infinite obligations they had laid him under—decline it. This was his answer to that great and weighty business.

Whitelock assures us that Cromwell at one time had been satisfied in his private judgment that he might accept the royal title, but that the formidable opposition of the officers of the army had shown him that it might lead to dangerous and deplorable results, and that therefore he believed it better to waive it. Whatever the motives, whether those of conscience or prudence, or both, inciting the Protector, he surmounted his temptation, and decided with the firmness characteristic of him. Major-Generals Whalley, Goffe, and Berry are said to have been for his acceptance of the crown; Desborough and Fleetwood were strenuous against it, but Lambert, temporising, appearing to approve whilst he was secretly opposing, and at length coming out strong against it, was the only one whom Cromwell visited with his displeasure. He dismissed him, but with a pension of two thousand pounds a year, and Lambert retired to Wimbledon, where it had been happy for him had he remained in quiet.

On the 26th of June, 1657, the grand ceremony of the inauguration of the Protector as the head of this new Government took place in Westminster Hall. The Protector went thither from Whitehall by water, and entered the hall in the following manner:—First went his gentlemen, then a herald, next the aldermen, another herald, then Norroy, the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, and the Great Seal carried by Commissioner Fiennes, then Garter, and after him the Earl of Warwick, with the sword borne before the Protector, bareheaded, the Lord Mayor carrying the City sword at his left hand. Being seated in his chair, on the left hand of it stood the Lord Mayor and the Dutch ambassador; on the right the French ambassador and the Earl of Warwick;[143] next behind him stood his son Richard and his sons-in-law Claypole and Fleetwood, and the Privy Council. Upon a lower platform stood the Lord Viscount Lisle, Lord Montague, and Whitelock, with drawn swords. As the Protector stood under the cloth of State, the Speaker presented him with a robe of purple velvet, lined with ermine, which the Speaker and Whitelock put upon him. Then the Speaker presented him with a Bible richly gilt and bossed, girt the sword about his Highness, and delivered into his hand the sceptre of massy gold. Having done this, he made the Protector an address, and finally administered the oath. Then Mr. Manton, one of the chaplains, in prayer recommended his Highness, the Parliament, the Council, the forces by land and sea, and the whole Government and the people of the three nations to the blessing and protection of God. On that the trumpets sounded, the heralds proclaimed his Highness Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland; and again the trumpets sounded, and the people shouted, "God save the Protector!" This closed the ceremony, and the Protector and his train returned to Whitehall as they came.

The ceremony, it is clear, fell little short of a royal ceremony, with the exception of the crown and the anointing. Charles Stuart might have used the words of James of Scotland to Johnny Armstrong—"What lacks this knave that a king should have?" With the exception of the name of king, Cromwell, the farmer, was become the monarch of Great Britain and Ireland. He had all the power, and inhabited the palaces of kings. He had the right to place his son in the supreme seat after him; and one whole House of Parliament was of his own creation, while the other was purged to his express satisfaction.

Cromwell had not enjoyed his new dignity more than about six weeks, when he received the news of the death of his great Admiral Blake. His health had been for some time decaying. Scurvy and dropsy were fast destroying him, yet to the last he kept his command at sea, and finished his career with one of the most brilliant victories which had ever been achieved. During the winter and spring he maintained the blockade of Cadiz, but learning that the Plate fleet had taken refuge in the harbour of Santa Cruz, in the Island of Teneriffe, he made sail thither. He found the fleet drawn up under the guns of seven batteries in the harbour, which was shaped like a horseshoe. The merchantmen, ten in number, were ranged close inshore, and the galleons, in number and of greater force than any of his own ships, placed in front of them. It was a sight—seven forts, a castle, and sixteen ships—to have daunted any man but Blake. Don Diego Darques, the Spanish admiral, was so confident of the impregnable nature of his position, that he sent Blake word to come and take his vessels. "But," says Clarendon, "the illustrious genius of Blake was admired even by the hostile faction of his countrymen. He was the first man that declined the old track, and made it manifest that the science might be obtained in less time than was imagined; and despised those rules which had been long in practice, to keep his ship and men out of danger, which had been held in former times a point of great ability and circumspection, as if the principal art requisite in the captain of a ship had been to be sure to come safe home again; the first man who brought the ships to contemn castles on shore, which had been thought ever very formidable; the first that infused that portion of courage into the seamen, by making them see what mighty things they could do if they were resolved, and taught them to fight in fire as well as upon water."

Blake did not hesitate. The wind was blowing into the harbour on the 20th of April, 1657; and trusting to the omnipotent instincts of courage, he dashed into the harbour at eight o'clock in the morning. Stayner, who had so lately defeated the Spanish Plate fleet, and destroyed in it the viceroy of Peru, now led the way in a frigate, and Blake followed with the larger ships. His fleet altogether amounted to twenty-five sail. It was received with a hurricane of fire from the batteries on both sides the harbour and the fleet in front; but discharging his artillery right and left, he advanced, silencing the forts, and soon driving the seamen from the front line of galleons into the merchant ships. For four hours the terrible encounter continued, the British exposed to a deadly hail of ball from the shore as well as the ships, but still pressing on till the Spanish ships were all in flames, and reduced to ashes, the troops in them having escaped to land. The question, then, was how to escape out of the harbour, and from the fury of the exasperated Spaniards on the land around. But Blake drew his ships out of reach of the forts and, as if Providence had wrought in his favour—as Blake firmly believed He did—the wind about sunset veered suddenly round, and the fleet sailed securely out to sea.

The fame of this unparalleled exploit rang throughout Europe, and raised the reputation of[144] England for naval prowess to the greatest pitch. Unhappily, death was fast claiming the undaunted admiral. He was suffering at the moment that he won this brilliant triumph, and, sailing homewards, he expired (August 17, 1657) on board his ship, the St. George, just as it entered the harbour of Plymouth. Besides the high encomium of Clarendon, he received that of a writer of his own party and time, in the narrative of the "Perfect Politician"—"He was a man most wholly devoted to his country's service, resolute in his undertakings, and most faithful in his performances of them. With him valour seldom missed its reward, nor cowardice its punishment. When news was brought him of a metamorphosis in the State at home, he would then encourage the seamen to be most vigilant abroad; for, said he, it was not our duty to mind State affairs, but to keep foreigners from fooling us. In all his expeditions the wind seldom deceived him, but mostly in the end stood his friend, especially in his last undertaking in the Canary Islands. To the last he lived a single life, never being espoused to any but his country's quarrels. As he lived bravely, he died gloriously, and was buried in Henry VII.'s Chapel, yet enjoying at this time no other monument but what is raised by his valour, which time itself can hardly deface."

During this summer, Oliver had not only been gloriously engaged at sea, but he had been busy on land. He was in league with Louis XIV. of France to drive the Spaniards from the Netherlands. The French forces were conducted by the celebrated Marshal Turenne, and the Spanish by Don John of Austria, and the French insurgent chief, the Prince of Condé. Cromwell sent over six thousand men under Sir John Reynolds, who landed near Boulogne on the 13th and 14th of May. They were supported by a strong fleet under Admiral Montague, the late colleague of Blake, which cruised on the coast. The first united operations were to be the reduction of Gravelines, Mardyke, and Dunkirk, the first of which places, when taken, was to belong to France, the two latter to England. If Gravelines were taken first, it was to be put into possession of England, as a pledge for the conveyance of the two latter. This bold demand on the part of Cromwell astonished his French allies, and was violently opposed by the French cabinets, who told Louis that Dunkirk once in the hands of the English, would prove another Calais to France. But without Dunkirk, which Cromwell deemed necessary as a check to the Royalist invasions from the Netherlands, with which he was continually threatened, no aid was to be had from the Protector, and it was conceded, whence came the angry declaration from the French, that "Mazarin feared Cromwell more than the Devil."

The French Court endeavoured to employ the English forces on other work than the reduction of these stipulated places. The young French king went down to the coast to see the British army, and having expressed much admiration of them recommended them to lay siege to Montmédy, Cambray, and other towns in the interior. Cromwell was, however, too much of a man of business and a general to suffer this. He ordered his ambassador, Sir William Lockhart (who had married the Protector's niece, Miss Rosina Sewster) to remonstrate, and insist on the attack of Gravelines, Mardyke, and Dunkirk. He told the ambassador that to talk of Cambray and interior towns as guarantees was "parcels of words for children. If they will give us garrisons, let them give us Calais, Dieppe, and Boulogne." He bade him tell the Cardinal that if he meant any good from the treaty with him, he must keep it, and go to work on Dunkirk, when, if necessary, he would send over two thousand more of his veterans. This had the necessary effect: Mardyke was taken after a siege of three days only, and put into the hands of the English on the 23rd of September. The attack was then turned on Gravelines; but the enemy opened their sluices, and laid all the country round under water. On this Turenne, probably glad of the delay, put his troops at that early period into winter quarters. During this time attempts were made to corrupt the English officers by the Stuart party. The Duke of York was in the Spanish army with the English Royalist exiles, and communications were opened as of mere civility with the English at Mardyke. As the English officers took their rides between Mardyke and Dunkirk they were frequently met by the duke's officers, and conversation took place. Sir John Reynolds was imprudent enough to pay his respects to the duke on these occasions, and he was soon ordered to London to answer for his conduct; but both he and a Colonel White, who was evidence against him, were lost on the 5th of December on the Goodwin Sands. The Duke of York now made a treacherous attack on Mardyke, but was repulsed, and the affairs of Charles II. appeared so hopeless, that Burnet asserts, and the same thing is asserted also in the "Orrery Letters," that he was now mean enough to offer to marry one of Cromwell's daughters, and[145] thus settle all differences, but that Cromwell told Lord Orrery that Charles was so debauched that he would undo them all. Cromwell, indeed, just now married his two remaining single daughters, Frances and Mary, to the Lords Rich and Falconberg. Frances married Lord Rich, the son of the Earl of Warwick, and Mary Lord Falconberg, of the Yorkshire family of Bellasis, formerly so zealous for the royal party.

By permission of the Corporation of Liverpool.

CROMWELL REFUSING THE CROWN, 1657.

From the Picture by J. SCHEX in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

ARREST OF CONSPIRATORS AT THE "MERMAID." (See p. 147.)

The year 1658 opened by the meeting of the new Parliament. It was a critical venture, and not destined to succeed better than the former ones. To constitute the new House, called the Other House, Cromwell had been obliged to remove to it most of the best-affected members of the Commons. To comply with the "Petition and Advice," he had been forced to admit into the Commons many who had been expelled from former Parliaments for their violent Republicanism. The consequences at once appeared. The Other House consisted of sixty-three members. It included six of the ancient Peers—the Earls of Manchester, Warwick, Mulgrave, Falconberg, Saye and Sele, and Lord Eure. But none but Eure and Falconberg took their seats, not even the Earl of Warwick, whose son and heir, Lord Rich, had just married the Protector's daughter. He and the others objected to sit in the same House with General Hewson, who had once been a shoemaker, and Pride, who had been a drayman. Amongst the members appeared a considerable number of the officers of the army, and the chief Ministers of State. These included the Protector's two sons, Richard and Henry Cromwell, Fiennes, Keeper of the Great Seal, Lisle, Fleetwood, Monk, Whalley, Whitelock, Barkstead, Pride, Hewson, Goffe, Sir Christopher Pack, alderman of London, General Claypole, St. John, and other old friends of the Protector, besides the lords already mentioned. As they had been called by writs, which were copies of the royal writs used on such occasions, the members immediately assumed that it made them peers, and gave them a title to hereditary rank. They were addressed by Cromwell in his opening speech as "My Lords, and Gentlemen of the House of Commons." His speech was very short, for he complained of indisposition, the truth being, that the life of excitement, struggle, and[146] incessant care for twenty years had undermined his iron frame, and he was breaking down; but he congratulated them on the internal peace attained, warned them of danger from without, and exhorted them to unity and earnestness for the public good. Fiennes, after the Protector's retirement, addressed them in a much longer speech on the condition of the nation.

But all hopes of this nondescript Parliament were vain. The Other House no sooner met apart than they began inquiring into their privileges, and, assuming that they were not merely the Other House, but the Upper House, sent a message, after the fashion of the ancient peers by the judges, to desire a conference with the Commons on the subject of a fast. The Commons, however, who were by the new Instrument made judges of the Other House, being authorised to approve or disapprove of it, showed that they meant the Other House to be not an Upper House, but a lower House than themselves. They claimed to be the representatives of the people; but who, they asked, had made the Other House a House of Peers, who had given them an authority and a negative voice over them? The first thing which the Commons did was to claim the powers of the new Instrument, and admit the most violent of the excluded members, for none were to be shut out except rebels or Papists. Haselrig, who had been appointed one of the Other House, refused to sit in it; but having been elected to the Commons, he appeared there, and demanded his oath. Francis Bacon, the Clerk of the House, replied that he dared not give it him; but Haselrig insisted, and being supported by his party, he at length obtained his oath, and took his seat. It was then soon seen that the efficient Government members were gone to the Other House, and Haselrig, Scott, Robinson, and the most fiery members of the Republican section now carried things their own way, and commenced a course of vehement opposition. Scott ripped up the whole history of the House of Lords during the struggle of the Commonwealth. He said—"The Lords would not join in the trial of the king. We called the king to our bar, and arraigned him. He was for his obstinacy and guilt condemned and executed, and so let all the enemies of God perish! The House of Commons had a good conscience in it. Upon this the Lords' House adjourned, and never met again; and it was hoped the people of England should never again have a negative upon them." But the hostility of this party was not to the Other House merely, it was to the Protectorate itself, which it declaimed against, and not only in the House, but out of it, setting on foot petitions for the abolition of the Protectorate by the Commons. Whitelock remarks that this course boded the speedy dissolution of the House. Cromwell summoned both Houses to Whitehall January 25th, only five days after their meeting, and in a long and powerful speech remonstrated with the Commons on their frantic proceedings. He took a wide view of the condition of Europe, of the peace and Protestantism of England, and asked them what were their hopes, if, by their decision, they brought back the dissolute and bigoted Court which they had dismissed. He declared that the man who could contemplate the restoration of such a state of things must have the heart of a Cain; that he would make England the scene of a bloodier civil war than they had had before. He prayed, therefore, that whoever should seek to break the peace, God Almighty might root that man out of the nation; and he believed that the wrath of God would prosecute such a man to his grave, if not to hell.

But all argument was lost on that fiery section. Scott and Haselrig continued their assaults on the whole frame of government more strenuously than ever; and on the 4th of February, fifteen days from the meeting of Parliament, amid the confused bickering of Scott and Haselrig with the wearied House, arrived the Usher of the Black Rod to summon the members to the Other House, which he called boldly the House of Lords. Haselrig, in the midst of his harangue, was reminded of the presence of the Black Rod. "What care I for Black Rod?" he exclaimed, but he was compelled to obey.

The Protector expressed the intensity of his disappointment that the very men who had importuned him to assume the burden of Government, and even the title of king, should now, instead of attending to the urgent business of the nation, endeavour violently to destroy that Government, and throw everything into chaos. "I can say in the presence of God," he continued, "in comparison with Whom we are but like poor creeping ants upon the earth, I would have been glad to have lived under a wood-side, to have kept a flock of sheep rather than have undertaken such a Government as this. But undertaking it by the advice and petition of you, I did look that you, who had offered it unto me, should make it good." He added, "And if this be the end of your sitting, and this be your carriage, I think it high time to put an end to your sitting; and I do dissolve this Parliament." And thus closed the[147] last Parliament of Cromwell, after a session of a fortnight.

Having dismissed his Parliament, Cromwell had to take summary measures with the host of conspirators whom his refractory Parliaments had only tended to encourage. Since the "Killing no Murder" of Sexby, there were numbers who were by no means careful to conceal that they loved these doctrines, and persuaded the discontented that to kill Cromwell was to cure all the evils of the nation. The Royalists, on their part, who had always been advocates and practisers of assassination, were more than ever on the alert. In the beginning of the year 1658 the plan of an invasion was completed. The King of Spain furnished one hundred and fifty thousand crowns towards fitting it out: arms, ammunition, and transports were purchased in Holland, and the port of Ostend was to be the place of embarkation. The greatest drawback to the hopes of the Royalists were the dissipated and debauched habits of the king. Ormond, writing to Hyde, observed that he feared Charles's immoderate delight in empty, effeminate, and vulgar conversation was become an irresistible part of his nature, and would never suffer him to animate his own designs and the actions of others with that spirit which was necessary for his quality, and much more for his fortunes. Yet this was the man on whom their hopes of the restoration of monarchy were built. Ormond and O'Neil ventured to England in disguise, in order to ascertain what were really the resources and the spirit of the Royalists in the country. Ormond had private communication with all parties—with the Earls of Manchester and Denbigh, with Rossiter and Sir William Waller, as Presbyterians opposed to Cromwell and the Independents; with Saye and Sele and others, who were willing that Charles should return on his signing the same articles that his father had offered in the Isle of Wight; and with such of the fanatic Levellers as held the opinions of Sexby. But he found little that was encouraging amongst any of them. If we are to believe Clarendon, he was betrayed by one of those in whom he most trusted, Sir Richard Willis, who was high in the confidence of Charles, but was at the same time a paid spy of Cromwell's. It is certain that one day in March the Protector said to Lord Broghill, "An old friend of yours is in town, the Duke of Ormond, now lodged in Drury Lane, at the Papist surgeon's there. You had better tell him to be gone." Broghill found that this was the case, and gave Ormond the necessary hint, who hurried back to Bruges, and assured Charles and his Court that Cromwell had many enemies, but there was at present no chance of a successful invasion.

But if Cromwell was disposed to allow Ormond to escape, he was compelled to make an example of some other of the Royalist agitators. On the 12th of March the Protector sent for the Lord Mayor and aldermen to Whitehall, informed them that the Duke of Ormond had been lurking in the City to excite rebellion, and that it was necessary to take strict measures for putting down the seditious of all sorts. At the same time he ordered the fleet to sweep the coasts of the Netherlands, which drove in there two fleets intended for the Royalist expedition, and blockaded Ostend. He then determined to bring to justice some of the most incorrigible agitators. Sir Henry Slingsby, who had been confined in Hull ever since the outbreak of Penruddock, had not even there ceased his active resistance, employing himself to corrupt the officers of the garrison, who, being instructed by the governor, appeared to listen to his views, so that ere long he was emboldened to offer them commissions from Charles Stuart. Another person arrested was Dr. Hewit, an Episcopalian clergyman, who preached at St. Gregory's, near St. Paul's, and was a most indefatigable advocate of a royal invasion. There were numbers of the Royalist apprentices and others in the City, who were not patient enough to wait for the invasion; they resolved to rise on the 15th of May, fire the houses near the Tower, and by sound of drum proclaim the king. The Protector told Thurloe that "it was not fit that there should be a plot of this kind every winter," and Thurloe had made himself thoroughly aware of all their proceedings. As the time approached, the ringleaders were seized at the "Mermaid," in Cheapside. A High Court of Justice was appointed according to Act of Parliament, and Slingsby, Hewit, and the City incendiaries were tried. There was ample proof of their guilt. Hewit denied the authority of the court and refused to plead, but he was all the same condemned with Slingsby and six of the City traitors to death.

In the Netherlands Sir William Lockhart admirably supplied the place of Sir John Reynolds, acting both as ambassador and general. The Allied army opened the campaign of 1658 with the siege of Dunkirk. The Prince of Condé had in vain assured the Spaniards that this would be the case, whilst they imagined that the intention of the Allies was to besiege Cambray. When Don[148] John saw his mistake, he determined to attack the Allies and raise the siege. But Turenne and Lockhart would not wait to be attacked; they marched to meet the Spaniards, and surprised them before they had received their supply of ammunition for the intended assault. Don John hastily drew up his forces along a ridge of sandhills, and gave the command of the right wing to the Duke of York, and the left to Condé, himself commanding the centre. Lockhart was too ill to take the command, but gave it to Colonel Morgan, who, with his English forces, found himself opposed to the Duke of York. The English dashed up the sandhill, and soon drove the infantry of the enemy before them. They were then charged by the Duke of York at the head of the Spanish cavalry, and the battle was terrible, but nearly half of the duke's men fell under the well-directed fire of his countrymen. The left wing, however, under Condé, had given way, and the duke, leaving his rallied infantry to contend with the English in front, directed the charge of his cavalry against their flank. It was in vain; the centre gave way without fighting, and the brave English defending themselves against their numerous assailants till relieved by a body of French horse, the whole line of the Spaniards collapsed. The Duke of York, who had fought gallantly, was saved in the first charge only by the temper of his armour, and in the second he was surrounded by the enemy, and, according to his own account, only extricated himself by assuming the character of a French officer, and leading on several troopers to the charge till he saw a chance of riding off. Marshal Turenne gave the credit of the victory to the gallantry of the English, who had, at the close of the battle, scarcely a single officer left alive. At Whitehall the victory was attributed to the prayers of the saints at Court, for it happened that the Protector had set apart that day for a solemn fast, and, says Thurloe, "whilst we were praying, they were fighting, and the Lord gave a signal answer."

The Lord Falconberg was despatched to carry congratulations to Louis XIV., who was at Calais, and soon afterwards these were returned by the Duke of Crequi and M. Mancini, the nephew of Mazarin, who expressed his regret that, owing to the urgency of affairs, he was unable to come himself, as he said he had long desired; but he sent a magnificent sword from the king, and a fine piece of tapestry from himself. Dunkirk was given up to the English, Gravelines was taken, Ypres surrendered, and all the towns on the banks of the Lys fell into the hands of the conquerors.

Here closed the victorious career of Oliver Cromwell; these were the last of his triumphs, and nearly the last of his life. Though he now stood apparently at the summit of fortune, both domestic and foreign enemies being for the time subdued, yet the grand platform of life and mortal glory was already giving way beneath him. His health was undermined by the long conflict with a host of enemies, and circumstances around him were gloom. Sickness had entered, death was about to select its victims from his own house. His daughter Frances was left a young widow by the death of Lord Rich, son of the Earl of Warwick, twelve days after the dissolution of Parliament; his daughter Claypole, his favourite daughter, was lying ill, and beyond the reach of medical art at that period, and his own iron frame was yielding. Around him, in his outward affairs, the circumstances were full of anxiety. He knew that he had repulsed, but not destroyed, the domestic enemies of his Government. They were as alert as ever to the chance of starting up and again attempting to overturn his power. All his three Parliaments had proved thoroughly unmanageable, and had reduced him to the very measures so strongly condemned in Charles I.—continual interruption of the debates, invasion of privileges, and abrupt dissolutions to prevent the completion of hostile measures. The only circumstance in his favour was that Charles's arbitrary acts were for the formation of despotism; his for that of a rational liberty. Under no previous Government had the people enjoyed such just laws, such just judges, and so much liberty, especially religious liberty.

But, like Charles, Cromwell was now governing without a Parliament, and, like him, being without a Parliament, he was without funds. The wars on sea and land had emptied his exchequer, and to raise supplies by arbitrary means would cover him with the odium which had clung to the king he had overthrown. He appointed a committee of nine persons to consider as to the best means of calling a Parliament likely to work with the existing Government, and also to decide on the successor to the Protectorate. But on this committee there were secret enemies, and it came to no conclusion as to the Parliament; but as to the succession, it determined that since the succession had been left to the Protector, it was a matter of no consequence. Suspecting their motives, and deriving no benefit from them, he dismissed the committee towards the end of July, and was left with no resource but the ingenuity of[149] Thurloe, his secretary, who borrowed where he could, but was often refused. This could not, however, last. His army was his grand prop, and so long as it was duly paid and clothed there was no danger, but let payment fall into arrears, and it would soon begin to listen to the suggestions of the Republican and Anabaptist officers. With these gloomy circumstances, his suspicions seem to have grown of those about him, or of assassins who might make more successful attempts than before; as his health failed his fears acquired a decided mastery. He is said to have worn armour under his clothes: we know that he had long carried loaded pistols. Clarendon says he had become much "less easy of access, nor so much seen abroad; and he seemed to be in some disorder when his eyes found any stranger in the room, upon whom they still seemed fixed. When he intended to go to Hampton Court, which was his principal delight and diversion, it was never known till he was in the coach which way he would go; and he was still hemmed in by his guards before and behind; and the coach, in which he went was always thronged as full as it could be with his servants, who were armed, and he seldom returned the same way he went, and rarely lodged two nights together in one chamber, but had many furnished and prepared, to which his own key conducted him."

JOHN THURLOE.

Though this is the statement of an enemy, we can very well believe it, for Cromwell's life had been for years aimed at by assassins, both Royalist and Republican, by paid bravoes of Charles II., and by fanatics. These various fears and anxieties[150] told strongly as his health failed. He reached his fifty-ninth year in April, and was therefore pretty advanced towards his sixtieth. For fourteen days before the death of Mrs. Claypole, the Protector was almost day and night by her bedside, not being able to attend to any business in his deep anxiety. Mrs. Claypole died on the 6th of August, and George Fox going to Hampton Court, to represent to Cromwell the persecutions of his friends, on the 20th of that month, met him riding in Hampton Court Park at the head of his Life Guards, and was so struck with his altered appearance, that he said "he felt a waft of death go forth against him, and when he came up to him he looked like a dead man." On hearing George's statement, he desired him to come to the palace to him; but next day, when Fox went thither, he was told that he was much worse, and that the physicians were not willing he should speak with anybody.

Cromwell died on the 3rd of September, the day of Dunbar and Worcester, the day which he had set down as his fortunate day, and which was in nothing more so than in this last event. He laid down a burden which he had often said "was too heavy for man," and with the possession of that form of government which he sincerely deemed essential to truth and liberty still in his grasp. It was a form of government which had no foundation in the convictions of the people, and which sooner or later was bound to fall; and the old prejudices in favour of royalty bring back a fresh lesson of martyrdom to its votaries. The Dictatorship was at an end; it had been maintained by Cromwell's innate vigour, and could only last as long as he did. The day that he died was a day of terrible wind, and his enemies declared that the devil came in it to fetch him away; but his friends said that Nature could not witness the departure of so great a spirit without marking its strong emotion. Many are the sayings of his last hours reported by friends and foes, but it is certain that he expressed his firm belief that he died in the unbroken covenant with God.

On his deathbed the Protector had been asked to name his successor. Empowered by the "Petition and Advice," he had already named him in a sealed packet, which now, however, could not be found, and though he was supposed to say Richard, it was so indistinctly, that it was by no means certain. However, Richard was proclaimed in London and Westminster, and then in all the large towns at home, and in Dunkirk, and the colonies abroad. At first all appeared favourable for the peaceable succession of Richard. All parties hastened to congratulate him. Foreign ministers sent addresses of condolence and intimations of their desire to renew their alliances. From all parts of the country, and from the City, and from one hundred congregational churches, poured in addresses, conceived in the most fulsome affectation of religion. Cromwell had been a Moses, but his son was a Joshua. Elijah was gone, but Elisha remained.

The Royalists were confounded to find everything pass over so smoothly, but all who knew the retiring disposition of Richard, and the volcano of raging materials which lay in the sects, factions, and parties which at that moment divided and agitated England, could only look on it as the lull before the tempest. Richard Cromwell had all his life long displayed a liking only for a quiet country life. He had no ambitions, either military or political. He had lived in his domestic retirement, entering neither the field nor the cabinet, and his father, in his letters, was continually calling him "indolent Dick." It was impossible that such a man could ever curb the fierce and conflicting factions with which he was surrounded; it is most probable that he only longed to be well rid of the whole onerous burden.

There were various leaders in the army so nearly equal in rank and influence that there was sure to be strife for the chief command. Fleetwood had married a sister of the present Protector; Desborough was his uncle; his brother Henry, who was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, was a much more resolute and able man than himself; and Monk, in Scotland, had great power in his hands. The chief command in the army lay, by the late Instrument, in the Protector himself; but the officers of the army met and drew up a petition that the chief command should be conferred on some one of the generals who had shown his attachment to the cause by his services, and that no officer should be deprived of his commission except by sentence of a court-martial. Richard, by the advice of Thurloe, replied that he had appointed General Fleetwood lieutenant-general of the forces, but that to give up the supreme command would be to violate the "Petition and Advice," by which he held his own authority. This did not content the officers; they still held their meetings, a liberty which Oliver had wisely suppressed, and there were many suspicions expressed amongst them. They asserted that Henry Cromwell would soon be placed above Fleetwood, who, though conscientious, was very weak and vacillating, and[151] they demanded that Thurloe, St. John and Pierpoint, Richard's ablest counsellors, should be dismissed, as enemies to the army. It was clear that a collision must take place between these parties and Thurloe, and his friends advised Richard to call a Parliament, by which he would not only be able to curb the power of the officers, but to raise money for the payment of the soldiers. The nation was keeping a large fleet under Ayscue, or Ayscough, part of which was cruising in the Baltic, to protect the English allies, the Swedes, against the Danes and Dutch, and another, under Montague, was blockading the Dutch coast. Money, therefore, was absolutely necessary to defray expenses, and Richard consented to call a Parliament. It was a necessary evil, a formidable undertaking. For the five months that passed before their meeting, Richard ruled with all the outward state, and with more than the quiet of his father. But his father, with all his vigour and tact, had never been able to manage a Parliament, most of the members of which immediately set about to overthrow him; what hope, then, that Richard could contend with such a restless and domineering body? It was absolutely impossible, and he was speedily made sensible of it. To introduce as many members of the Commons as he could favourable to his views, he departed from his father's plan of only calling them from the larger boroughs and the counties, and restored the franchise to the lesser and decayed boroughs. Every means was used besides to obtain the return of men favourable to the Government; and in Scotland and Ireland, from whence thirty members each were admitted, the elections were conducted under the eyes of the commander of the forces. But, notwithstanding, from the very first assembling of the Commons, they showed that they were likely to be as unmanageable as ever. When Richard summoned the Commons to meet him in the Lords scarcely half the members attended, lest they should sanction the existence of a body which they disclaimed. The Commons were as much divided as the army. There were the friends of the Government, who were instructed to stand firm by the "Petition and Advice," and the Government, founded by it, of one ruling person and two Houses of Parliament. Then there were the Presbyterians and Republicans, who were for no Lords nor Protector either, and were led on by Haselrig, Scott, Bradshaw, Lambert, Ludlow, and others of those united parties, with whom Vane and Fairfax now co-operated. Fairfax, from the moment when he showed his disapprobation of the death of Charles I., had retired into private life, but now he reappeared, and though become a Royalist at heart, his spirited lady no doubt having roused that feeling in him, he voted with the Republican party, as most likely to prevail against the Protectorate, and thus pave the way to monarchy. Besides these, there were many neutrals or moderates, and a considerable sprinkling of young Royalists, who, by Charles's advice, had got in under other colours.

However much these parties differed amongst themselves, there were sufficient of them adverse to the Protectorate to commence an immediate attack upon it. They fell at once to debating the legality of the "Petition and Advice," and of course Government by a single person and two Houses. They asked what was the "Petition and Advice," and they declared it to be an instrument of no validity, passed by a very small majority of a House from which a hundred members had been forcibly excluded. The debates were long and violent. Though Parliament met on the 27th of January, 1659, it was the 14th of February before they had decided that Richard's right to the Protectorate should be settled by another Bill, but with much restricted prerogative, and it was not till the 28th of March that they allowed the right of the other House to sit, but with no superiority to the Commons, and with no authority to send messages to it except by members of the House. These points settled, there were high demands for a searching inquiry into the management of all departments of the State, with heavy charges of waste, embezzlement, oppression, and tyranny, in the collection of the excise. Threats of impeachment were held out against Thurloe and the principal ministers, as well as against Butler and some others of the officers.

This aroused the generals, who were themselves divided into two great factions. One set met at Whitehall under Ingoldsby, Whalley, Goffe, Lord Charles Howard, and others favourable to the Protector; another, under Fleetwood and Desborough, met at Wallingford House, who, though the Protector's own relations, were bent on their own and the army's ascendency. They were joined by Lambert, who, after being deprived of his commission, had remained at Wimbledon, cultivating his garden, and seeming to be forgotten; but now he came forth again and was received with enthusiasm by the soldiers, who had great confidence in his ability. Desborough used also to meet with a third party, consisting chiefly of the inferior officers, at St. James's.

[152]

At this place of meeting a council of officers was organised, which soon became influential with the Wallingford House, or Fleetwood's, section. Here they drew up an address to Richard, complaining of the arrears of their pay being withheld, and of the neglect with which the army was treated; of the attempts to overthrow the Acts passed by the Long Parliament, and the encouragement thereby given to the Royalists, who were flocking over from Flanders, and exciting discontent against "the good old cause," and against the persons and interests of those who had shed their blood for the Commonwealth. This address was presented on the 14th of April by Fleetwood, with no less than six hundred signatures. Though it did not even mention the name of this Parliament, that body felt that it was directed entirely against them, and immediately voted that no meeting or general council of officers should be held without the consent and order of the Protector, and that no person should hold any command by sea or land who did not forthwith sign an engagement that he would not in any way disturb or prevent the free meeting and debates of Parliament, or the freedom of any member of Parliament. This was certain to produce a retort from the army—it was an open declaration of war upon it; and accordingly Fleetwood and Desborough waited on Richard and assured him that it was absolutely necessary to dissolve Parliament; and Desborough, who was a bold, rough soldier, declared that if he did not do it, he felt sure the army would soon pull him out of Whitehall.

It may be questioned how far this declaration was warranted by the real facts of the case. The majority of the army was probably opposed to any violence being shown to the son of the great Protector, but in critical times it is the small knot of restless, unscrupulous spirits who rule the inert mass, and impose their own views upon the sluggish and the timid; and Desborough well knew the irresolute and impressionable character of Richard Cromwell.

On the other hand, many members of Parliament protested that they would stand by him, that if he allowed the army to suppress Parliament, he would find it immediately his own master, and would be left without a friend. Ingoldsby, Goffe, and Whalley supported this view, and one of them offered to go and kill Lambert, who was the originator of all the mischief. Richard called a council to consider the proposition. Whitelock represented the danger of dissolving Parliament, and leaving himself at the mercy of the army; but Thurloe, Lord Broghill, Fiennes, and Wolseley declared there was no alternative, for if the army and Parliament came to strife, the Cavaliers would rise and bring in Charles. Richard reluctantly gave way, and on the 22nd of April he signed a commission empowering Fiennes, the Keeper of the Seal, to dissolve Parliament. Fiennes summoned the Commons to the Upper House by the Usher of the Black Rod, but they shut the door in the face of that officer, and refused to obey, adjourning themselves for three days. Fiennes, however, declared Parliament dissolved, the Commons having been duly summoned to witness it, and a proclamation was issued to that effect.

The warning of Whitelock was at once verified; the moment that the Parliament ceased, all regard to Richard by the army ceased with it. From that moment he was deserted except by a small knot of officers—Goffe, Whalley, and Ingoldsby,—and he was as completely annihilated as Protector as if all parties had deposed him by assent and proclamation. The council of officers proceeded to take measures for the exercise of the supreme power. They placed guards to prevent the adjourned Commons from re-taking their seats at Westminster as they proposed, and by their own authority dismissed Ingoldsby, Goffe, Whalley, and the other officers who had adhered to Richard, from their commands in the army, and restored Lambert and all the others who had been cashiered by Oliver. Having thus restored the Republicanism of the army, they determined to recall the Rump, as a body which they believed they could command; and they accordingly issued an order for the reassembling of the House of Commons which Oliver had so unceremoniously dismissed on the 20th of April, 1653. At this call, Lenthall, the old Speaker of the Rump, with about forty or fifty members of the Rump, hastened the next day to Westminster, where Lambert kept guard with the troops, and after some discussion in the Painted Chamber, they went in a body to the House through two files of Lambert's soldiers, and took their places as a real Parliament. But their claim to this exclusive right was immediately disputed. The same day, the 7th of May, a large number of the members who had been excluded by Pride's purge, in 1648, of whom one hundred and ninety-four were still alive, and eighty of them residing in the capital, assembled in Westminster Hall, and sent up to the House a deputation of fourteen, headed by Prynne, Annesley, and Sir George Booth, to demand equal liberty to sit; but[153] as this would have overwhelmed them with a Presbyterian majority, the doors were closed against them: they were kept back by the soldiers who filled the lobby, who were ironically called "the keepers of the liberties of England," and they were informed that no member could sit who had not already signed the engagement. On the 9th, however, Prynne made his way into the House, and kept his seat, in spite of all efforts to dislodge him, till dinner-time; but going out to dine, he found himself shut out on his return.

THE MANOR HOUSE, WIMBLEDON (1660).

The Rump now proceeded to appoint a Committee of Safety, and then a Council of State, which included Fairfax, Lambert, Desborough, Bradshaw, Fleetwood, Ashley Cooper, Haselrig, Vane, Ludlow, St. John, and Whitelock. Letters were received from Monk in Scotland, congratulating the Rump on their return to power, but hypocritically begging them to keep in mind the services of Cromwell and his family. Lockhart sent over from Flanders the tendered services of the regiments there, and was confirmed in his office of ambassador, and also commissioned to attend a conference between the ministers of France and Spain, to be held at Fuentarabia, whither Charles Stuart had also betaken himself. Montague sent in the adhesion of the fleet, and, what was still more consoling, Henry Cromwell, whose opposition in Ireland was much dreaded, resigned his office, and was permitted to retire into private life.

The Wallingford House party of officers alone created serious apprehension. They sent in a list of fifteen demands, which were immediately taken into consideration, and the Rump successively voted, in compliance therewith, that a form of government should be passed calculated to preserve the liberties of the people, and that it should contain no single person as Protector, nor House of Peers. They also agreed that liberty of conscience should be allowed to all believers in the Scriptures who held the doctrine of the Trinity, except Papists and Prelatists. But one of these demands was for lands of inheritance to be settled on Richard Cromwell to the value of ten thousand pounds a year, and a pension on her Highness, his[154] mother, of ten thousand pounds a year. On this it was remarked that Richard was still occupying Whitehall as if he were Protector, and they made it conditional that he should remove thence. They proposed that if he retired from the Protectorate, they would grant him twenty-nine thousand pounds for the discharge of his debts, two thousand pounds for present necessities, and ten thousand pounds to him and his heirs. Richard cheerfully signed a formal abdication in May, 1659, but his pension was never paid. After the Restoration he fled to the Continent, where he remained for twenty years. He returned in 1680, and lived peaceably on his estate at Cheshunt, or at Mardon, in Hursley, near Winchester, which he received with Dorothy Mayor, and there spent a jolly life in old English state, dying in 1712. During his father's life, he is said in convivial hours to have drunk the health of his father's landlord, Charles Stuart; and he possessed a chest which contained the addresses and congratulations, even the protestations of profound fidelity from corporations, congregations, and almost all the public men, and on this chest he would seat himself in his jocund hours, amongst his convivial friends, and boast that he was sitting on the lives and fortunes of most of the leading men of England. Henry Cromwell also passed his life as a quiet country gentleman on his estate of Swinney, near Soham, in Cambridgeshire, till his death in 1673. His government of Ireland was, on his resigning, put into the hands of five commissioners, and the command of the army was given to Ludlow.

Charles and his party abroad, watching the continual bickerings of their enemies in England, put in motion all their machinery to create confusion, and to seize the opportunity of taking every possible means of procuring a revolt amongst them. Charles, to encourage his partisans, announced his intention of coming to England to head them. The 1st of August was fixed on for a rising, and Charles hastened into Boulogne, to be ready to pass over into Wales or Cornwall. The Duke of York was to lead over six hundred of the Prince of Condé's veterans, and, crossing from Boulogne, land on the coast of Kent, whilst the Duke of Gloucester was to proceed from Ostend with four thousand troops under Marshal Marsin. Unfortunately for them, their plans had been revealed to Thurloe by Sir Richard Willis, one of the king's sealed knot of seven trusted confidants. Convinced by this treason that the enterprise would fail, Charles sent circular letters to stop the rising. But these in some instances arrived too late. Many appeared in arms, and were fallen upon and routed or taken prisoners by the Parliamentarians. Sir John Gore, the Lady Mary Howard, daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, in addition to many other persons of distinction, were arrested on charges of high treason. In Cheshire Sir George Booth raised the royal standard, and took possession of Chester; but on learning the news of the king's deferring the enterprise, and that General Lambert was marching against them, he and his associates fled to Nantwich, where Lambert overtook and totally routed them. Colonel Morgan, with thirty of his men, fell on the field; the Earl of Derby was taken disguised as a servant; Sir Thomas Middleton, who was eighty years old, fled to Chirk Castle, but soon surrendered; and Booth himself, disguised as a woman, and riding on a pillion, was betrayed and taken on the road to London, near Newton Pagnell. This unlucky outbreak and defeat threw the adherents of Charles abroad into despair. Montague, the admiral, who had been won over, and had brought his fleet to the mouth of the Thames to facilitate the passage of the king's troops, pretended that he had come for provisions, and, though he was suspected, he was allowed to return to his station. Charles himself, now almost desperate, made a journey to Fuentarabia, where Mazarin and Don Louis de Haro, the ministers of France and Spain, were engaged in a treaty, in the hope that, if it were concluded, he might obtain some support from them. But he was very coldly received; Mazarin would not even see him. In fact, his fortunes were apparently at the lowest ebb, but it was in reality only the dark hour before the dawn. The day of his fortune was at hand.

Parliament, on Lambert's victory, voted him thanks and one thousand pounds to purchase a jewel in memory of it; but Lambert distributed the money amongst his soldiers. Parliament resenting this, regarded it as intended to win the soldiers to his cause, that he might tread in Cromwell's steps, and make himself Dictator. It was well known that he had entertained hopes of being named his successor, and this suspicion was immediately confirmed by his officers, whilst on their march at Derby, signing a petition, and sending it up with a demand that Fleetwood should be made permanently Commander-in-Chief, and Lambert his lieutenant-general. No sooner did Haselrig see this petition, than he denounced it as an attempt to overturn Parliament, and[155] moved the committal of Lambert and its author to the Tower. But Fleetwood repelled the charge by assuring them that Lambert, who was already in town when the petition was got up, knew nothing of it. The House, however, ordered all copies of the paper to be destroyed, and voted that any addition to the number of officers was needless, chargeable, and dangerous. At the same time they proceeded to conciliate the soldiers by advancing their pay, and, to discharge their arrears, on the 5th of October they raised the monthly assessment from thirty-five thousand pounds to one hundred thousand pounds.

Matters were, however, gone too far to be thus settled between Parliament and the army. Haselrig, Scott, and their associates were of that class of sanguine Republicans, who in their zeal think only of the principles they wish to establish, without calculating how far the country is prepared for them, and thus blindly rush on their own defeat. The Wallingford House military council prepared another paper called a petition, but which was a far more hostile communication, asserting that whoever cast scandalous imputations on the army should be brought to condign punishment. That was distinct enough, but Haselrig and his party had got the adhesion of three regiments, and relied on the promises of Monk in Scotland, and Ludlow in Ireland. On the 11th of October a vote was passed, declaring it high treason to levy any money on the people without consent of Parliament, and, therefore, as the existing taxes expired on the first day of the new year, Haselrig's following believed that they had thus rendered the army wholly dependent on them. Next day Haselrig moved and carried a motion that Desborough, Lambert, six colonels, and a major, should be deprived of their commissions for signing the late petition. By another vote Fleetwood was deprived of the office of Commander-in-chief, but made president of a board of seven members, for the management of the army. The blind zealots had witnessed to little purpose the history of late years, and the movements of armies. On the next day Lambert, with three thousand men, marched into Westminster, where he found the Houses of Parliament guarded by two regiments of foot, and four troops of horse. On his way he met Lenthall, the Speaker, attended by a guard. He ordered that official to dismount, and on refusing, according to Clarendon, pulled him from his horse, and sent him to his own house. The soldiers, on the two parties meeting, at once coalesced, and the Rump was again dismissed. The officers at Wallingford House took upon themselves to annul Haselrig's votes of the last three days, and establish a provisional Committee of Safety of twenty-three members. There was a party amongst them for restoring Richard Cromwell, who came up from Hampshire escorted by three troops of horse; but this party was outvoted by a small majority, and he retired.

Whilst these confused changes were taking place—eddies in the national affairs, but neither progress nor honour, Parliament having no power to restrain the army, nor the army any one man of a genius capable of controlling the rest,—there was at least one commander who was silently and reservedly watching the course of events, resolved to go with the strongest side, if such a side could be found. This was General Monk. He was originally a Royalist, and of a strongly Royalist family. His elder brother, with the rest of his relations, had always been zealously devoted to the king, and it is said that his wife was a most ardent advocate for the king's interest. These circumstances had caused Charles frequently to sound him by his emissaries; but though he received them courteously, and listened patiently to their statements, he gave no outward evidence that he was likely to comply with their entreaties. He was a man of deep and impenetrable secrecy and caution, of few words, and a gloomy, unimpassioned manner. Cromwell, during his life, was quite aware of the overtures and royal promises made to Monk, but could not discover the slightest thing in him to warrant a suspicion of his leaning in the smallest degree that way, and he therefore contented himself with jocularly remarking to him in a postscript in one of his letters, "'Tis said there is a cunning fellow in Scotland, called George Monk, who lies in wait there to serve Charles Stuart; pray use your diligence to take him, and send him up to me."

There was not much likelihood of Monk swerving from the Commonwealth while the strong man Cromwell lived, but now, amid such scenes of weakness, he no doubt began to feel that the royal party would have to be recalled. Such a presentiment, however, lay locked in his taciturn breast. The officers sent Colonel Cobbet to Monk in Scotland, who, however, expressed his firm adherence to the Commons, and when he heard of what Lambert and the officers had done, he wrote strong letters to them, complaining of the violence which they had done to the power and authority of Parliament. He imprisoned Cobbet, and purging his army of all who were fanatics or inclined[156] to Lambert and his party, he sent them under guard to the Border, and dismissed them into England, under penalty of death if they returned. He immediately placed strong garrisons in the castle of Edinburgh and in the citadel of Leith, and, collecting cavalry, marched to Berwick, where he placed a strong garrison. Letters were written to Lenthall in the name of himself and his officers, assuring the Parliamentary party that "he called God to witness that the asserting of the Commonwealth was the only interest of his heart." Whilst Haselrig, Lenthall, and the rest were gratified by these protestations, they remarked with wonder, and soon with deep suspicion, that he had cashiered all those officers whom they had introduced into his army, and restored those whom they had expelled. There was no alternative, however, but to act with him and watch him. In the meantime Monk had called a convention of the Scottish Estates at Berwick, and informing them that "he had received a call from heaven and earth to march into England for the better settling of the Government there," he recommended the peace of the kingdom to their care, and obtained from them a grant of sixty thousand pounds, from the arrears of taxes. He then took up his headquarters at Coldstream, and waited the course of events.

RICHARD CROMWELL. (After the Portrait by Walker.)

The Committee of Safety, on hearing of the movements of Monk, despatched Lambert with an army of seven thousand men to meet him on his march, and if he could not win him to co-operation with the rest of the army, to resist his advance by force. But having seen Lambert on his way northward, the committee sent directly to Monk[157] a deputation to endeavour to bring him over to their views, by offers of many advantages. Monk received the deputation very courteously, expressed every desire to unite with the rest of the army, provided there were some ruling power to whom all parties might be subject, and sent three commissioners to treat with the Committee of Safety on the subject. This greatly encouraged the Committee of Safety, who thought their sending Lambert against Monk had frightened him, and whilst they prepared to receive Monk's commissioners, they ordered Lambert to hasten on his march.

RECEPTION OF MONK IN THE CITY OF LONDON. (See p. 160.)

But affairs nearer home were every day becoming more disheartening. Haselrig and Morley had gone down to Portsmouth, where they were well received by the governor, and were looked up to as representing the authority of Parliament. Fleetwood sent down troops to oppose them, but the troops themselves went over to them. This success encouraged the apprentices and other dissatisfied persons in London to rise, and demand the restoration of Parliament; and though Colonel Hewson attacked and killed some of them, the spirit and the disturbance only grew the stronger. To finish the matter, Admiral Lawson appeared with the fleet in the Thames, and declared for the Parliament on the 17th of December, and, as soon as they heard this, Haselrig and Morley marched with their forces to London. At their approach the troops in Westminster revolted from the Committee and joined them, declaring that they would live and die with the Parliament. They received those officers who had lately been dismissed, and all marched into Lincoln's Inn Fields, and so to Chancery Lane, where they halted before Lenthall's house, fired three volleys of musketry, and hailed him not only Speaker of the Commons, but Lord-General of the army. This was on Christmas Eve, and Desborough's regiment, which Lambert had sent back to check these counter-movements, on hearing this news, at St. Albans, also declared for the Parliament, and sent the Speaker word of the adhesion. During all this reaction, Fleetwood had still sat with the Committee of Safety, but exhibiting the strangest want[158] of courage and decision. When urged to go and use his influence with the soldiers, to prevent their defection, he fell on his knees and prayed, or declared that it was useless, that "God had spit in his face, and would not hear him."

Whitelock relates that at this juncture he strongly advised Fleetwood to join him and go away to the king, convinced that Monk was deceiving the Parliament, and that the return of Charles was inevitable. He said, therefore, that it was better to get away to him and make terms for themselves and friends whilst the time allowed. Fleetwood was convinced, and ordered Whitelock to prepare for the journey; but Vane, Desborough, and Berry coming in, he quickly altered his mind, and declared that he had pledged his word to Lambert before he marched to do nothing of the kind without his consent. Whitelock repeated that if he did not do it, then all was lost; but Fleetwood, weak but honourable, replied he could not help it; his word was pledged: and in the end he submitted himself to the Parliament.

Lenthall, the Speaker, at the head of a party of soldiers who made themselves merry on their new Lord-General, went into the City, informed the Lord Mayor and Aldermen that the Parliament was assembling, and, on his own authority, ordered from the Tower the governor and officers put there by the Committee of Safety, and placed in command Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, who had brought in Admiral Lawson, assisted by several members of Parliament. On the 26th of December the Rump met again in that House from which they had been twice so ignominiously expelled. Their first proceeding was to annul their act against the payment of excise and customs, so that they might not be without money, and their next to dismiss Lambert, Desborough, Berry, and other officers, and to order them to retire farther from London; and they ordered Vane, who had adhered to the Committee of Safety, to confine himself to his house at Raby. Thus they were throwing down with their own hands the very bulwarks which should prevent their falling helplessly into the power of Monk and his army. Still more, they sent an order to Lambert's regiments to quit their commander, and retire to such quarters as they appointed. The soldiers having heard of their comrades in the south having gone over to the Parliament, did not hesitate to obey its orders, and Lambert found himself left alone with only about a hundred horse. At Northallerton his officers took their leave of him with tears, and he retired quietly to a house which he had in the country. Thus the expectation of a sharp encounter between Monk and Lambert was at an end, and the road was open to Monk to march to London without opposition.

He had received assurances from Lord Fairfax, that within twelve days he would join him or perish in the attempt, and he forthwith called together his friends, and demanded the surrender of York. On the 1st of January, 1660, the gates of York were thrown open to Fairfax and his followers, and the same day Monk commenced his march southward from Coldstream. Monk remained five days at York in consultation with Fairfax, who did not hesitate to avow his readiness to assist in the restoration of the king. Clarendon tells us that Charles had sent Sir Horatio Townsend to Fairfax, expressing confident hopes of Monk, and requesting him to co-operate with him; and that Parliament had become so apprehensive of him that before his arrival at York they wrote to him, advising him to send back part of his forces, as being needless now in England, while they might prevent danger in Scotland. Monk paid no attention, and the Parliament began to wish him back in Scotland altogether. But it does not appear that Monk in any way committed himself to Fairfax by his words, whatever his conduct might indicate. On the contrary, at York he caned an officer who charged him with a design of bringing in Charles Stuart. On his quitting York Fairfax disbanded his forces, and Monk pursued his march in the same mysterious silence. Parliament had appointed a Council of State, and framed the oath for its members to embrace a most stringent abjuration of royalty and of the Stuart family. The soldiers sympathising with Parliament, the officers on reaching Nottingham proposed signing an engagement to obey Parliament in all things except the bringing in of Charles Stuart. Monk declared this unnecessary, Parliament having expressed itself so strongly on that head; and at Leicester he wrote a reply to certain Royalist petitioners in Devonshire, stating his confidence that monarchy could not be reintroduced, that the excluded members of 1648 could not be safely reinstated, and that it was their bounden duty to obey and support the present Government.

At Leicester arrived two of the most democratic members of Parliament, Scott and Robinson, to watch his proceedings, but ostensibly to do him honour. He received them with all respect, and such was his apparent devotion to Parliament, that they were thoroughly satisfied and highly delighted. At every place he was met by addresses from[159] towns and counties, praying him to restore the excluded members, and procure a full and free Parliament. He replied on all occasions that he was but the servant of Parliament in a military capacity, and referred the applicants to the two deputies for their answers. These gentlemen, who were vehemently opposed to any such restoration of the excluded members, gave very free denials, with which Monk did not in any way interfere.

This conduct, we are assured by Clarendon, extremely confounded Charles and his partisans, who had calculated greatly on Monk's secret inclinations, but the dispersal of Lambert's forces, the retirement of Fairfax, and the vigorous adherence of Monk to Parliament, puzzled and depressed them. It might have been supposed that though Monk had so impenetrably concealed his designs from the adherents of the Commonwealth, that he had a secret understanding with Charles. Clarendon, who was fully in the king's confidence, and his great adviser, solemnly assures us that there was nothing of the kind; that all attempts to arrive at his purpose had been unavailing. By the consent of Charles, Monk's brother, a clergyman in Devonshire, had been induced by Sir Hugh Pollard and Sir John Grenville, the king's agents, to visit the general in the north, and endeavour to persuade him to declare for the king. But Monk took him up very shortly, and advised him to go home and come no more to him with such propositions. To the last moment this secret and solemn man kept the same immovable, impenetrable course. There is little doubt but that he felt, from the miserable weakness and disunion of both the officers and the Parliamentary leaders, the great all-controlling mind being gone, that the king must come again, and that he was ready to do the work at the safe moment. But that till he was positively certain the way was clear of every obstacle, no power on earth should move him. It is probable that he was indifferent to the fact whether the king or the Parliament ruled, but that he would decide for the stronger when it was unmistakably the stronger, and not till then.

To prevent alarm to the Parliament, he brought only five thousand troops with him from York, being much fewer than those which were quartered in London and Westminster; but from St. Albans on the 28th of January he wrote to the Speaker, requesting that five of the regiments there might be removed to other quarters before his arrival, lest there should arise strife between his soldiers and those so lately engaged in rebellion against the Parliament. This startled the Parliament, and dull must those members have been who did not perceive that they committed a series of gross blunders in destroying the greater part of the army, and disbanding their best officers, to clear the stage for a new master. But there was nothing for it but complying. They ordered the regiments to remove, but they refused. Why, they asked, were they to quit their quarters to make room for strangers? Was it expected that they should march away with several weeks' pay in arrear? But their officers, who should have supported them, were dismissed or under restraint, and by coaxing and the distribution of some money, they were induced to go. The greatest difficulty was found with a regiment which occupied Somerset House, and declared they would hold it as a garrison and defend it. But at length they, too, were persuaded to retire, and the next day, the 3rd of February, Monk marched through the City into the Strand and Westminster, where his soldiers were quartered, and himself conducted to Whitehall.

Soon after his arrival Monk, was led to the House of Commons, where a chair was placed for him within the bar, and Lenthall made him an address, applauding his wisdom and services to the Commonwealth, declaring his dispersal of their enemies as a glorious mercy, and returning him thanks. Monk replied, observing that there were demands for a full and free Parliament, but that while it was as well not to impose too many oaths, care must be taken to keep out both the Cavaliers and the fanatic party. Of course, the section of the fanatic party already in the House, with Scott and Haselrig at their head, heard this with resentment; and Monk's sincerity was immediately put to the test by the oath of abjuration of the Stuarts, as a member of the Council of State, being put to him. He parried this, by observing that seven of the councillors already sitting had not taken the oath, and that as for himself, he had given sufficient proofs of his devotion to Parliament. This increased the suspicion against him, and a more explicit proof of his sincerity was put upon him. The Common Council of London had refused to raise money in the City except at the order of a full and free Parliament. The House, therefore, commanded Monk to march into the City to seize ten of the leading opponents in the Council, and to break down the gates and portcullises of the City.

On the 9th of February, two hours after midnight, he received this trying order. If he refused, his commission would be immediately[160] withdrawn, and his plans cut short; therefore he obeyed, and marching into the City, began with all coolness and imperturbability to remove the posts and chains from the streets. The citizens, who expected different conduct from him, and entreated him to desist, assailed his men during their labour with groans and hisses. The posts and chains removed, Monk wrote to the Parliament that he considered that sufficient had been done to crush the spirit of the citizens, but he received a peremptory order to complete the business, which he did by destroying the gates and portcullises, though the soldiers themselves expressed their indignation. He then returned in no agreeable mood to Whitehall. There, however, news awaited him of conduct on the part of Parliament, which seemed to him to show that they now thought that they had made him their pliant instrument, and destroyed at the same time his popularity with the people. Whilst he had been doing this ungracious work in the City, they had been receiving with high approbation a petition from the so-called fanatic or extreme party, headed by the celebrated Barebone, praying that no man might sit in Parliament, or hold any office under Government, who did not take the oath to abjure Charles Stuart, or any single person. This was so plainly aimed at Monk, who had excused himself from this oath, that a council of his officers was at once called, whose resentment of this ungrateful conduct was expressed in a letter drawn up in his name, and despatched to the House the next morning, complaining bitterly of their allowing this attack upon him, and advising that they should take immediate measures for filling up all the vacancies in Parliament, as the only measure which would satisfy the people. To show that this was not a mere admonition but a command, he instantly quitted Whitehall, marched back into the City, summoned again the Common Council, which he had dispersed, and assured them that the conduct of Parliament had now convinced him that they were betraying the interests of the country, that he was sorry he had obeyed them so far as to do injury to "that famous city, which in all ages had been the bulwark of Parliament and of general liberty;" and that therefore he had determined to unite his lot with theirs, and to obtain through them a full and free Parliament.

This announcement was received not only with astonishment, but with enthusiastic expressions of joy. The Lord Mayor and Council plighted their troth with him and the officers, he was invited to dine at the Guildhall, and all the bells in the City were set ringing in exultation. The Corporation attended the general to his lodgings amid the acclamations and the bonfires of the people, at which they roasted rumps in ridicule of the Parliament, and heaped on it every infamy which wit and ribaldry could devise. This coup d'état awoke the Parliament to their blunder; they had made an enemy of the very man and army into whose hands they had put a power which could instantly crush them. There were some zealots, the Haselrigs and Scotts, who advised restoring Fleetwood to the chief command, and bringing back the exiled regiments; but Sunday, which intervened, enabled the more sober counsel to prevail, and they sent a deputation to invite the general to return to Whitehall, and promised that the writs for the excluded members should be ready by the day appointed. But these incidents had made an advance in Monk's proceedings. He had seen, as he came up the country, the universal demand for the restoration of the Long Parliament, and the unmitigated contempt for the present one. He had felt the pulse of the country also as to the return of the king, and his intercourse with the City had only confirmed the impression that the whole body of excluded members must come back as a stepping-stone to the recall of Charles. The Presbyterian interest in the City was as strong as ever, and its enmity to the Independents unabated. He therefore called together his officers to discuss with the deputation the points at issue, and the officers insisted that the excluded members must be restored. Monk then placed the City in a state of defence, and returned to Whitehall. There he summoned the excluded members who were in town, together with the members of the sitting Parliament, and read them a paper, in which he assured them that the people at large demanded a full and free Parliament, as the only means of settling these "bleeding nations." He declared that he would impose no restrictions on them himself, but that his guards should freely admit all the excluded as well as the other members, to take measures for a dissolution of the present Parliament, and the calling of a new one, full and free, on the 20th of April next. He did not believe, he said, that monarchy or prelacy would be tolerated by the people, but that a moderate Presbyterian government, with liberty of conscience, appeared most likely to be acceptable. And as to the Peers, if it were not proper to restore to them their House, yet he thought their hereditary marks of honour should be left them.

[161]

This speech confounded Royalists and Extremists alike. He recommended a Presbyterian government and the exclusion of monarchy; but he saw well enough what the effect of his measure would be; the Royalist excluded members would rush in, and the recall of the king would be the inevitable consequence. Accordingly the excluded members proceeded directly to the House with the other members. The guard under Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper opened and admitted them. At this sight Haselrig, Scott, and the Republican party thought it high time to consult their own security, and disappeared from the scene. The House at once set to work; annulled all the orders by which they had been excluded; elected a new Council of State, in which the most influential members were Royalists; appointed Monk Commander-in-Chief, and Commander of the Fleet in conjunction with Montague; granted him twenty thousand pounds in lieu of Hampton Court, which the Rump had settled on him; freed from sequestration Sir George Booth and his associates, who had risen for the king, together with a great number of Cavaliers and Scottish lords taken at the Battle of Worcester; borrowed sixty thousand pounds of the Common Council, established for the present the Presbyterian confession of faith; ordered copies of the Solemn League and Covenant to be hung up in all churches; placed the militia and all the chief commands in the hands of the principal nobility and gentry; and only stipulated that no person should be capable of office or command who did not subscribe to the confession—"that the war raised by the two Houses of Parliament against the late king was just and lawful, until such time as force and violence were used upon the Parliament in the year 1648."

INTERIOR OF THE PAINTED CHAMBER, WESTMINSTER, LOOKING EAST.

But at this point it was contended by the Royalists that the House of Lords was as much a House as themselves, and that they could not legally summon a new Parliament without them; but Monk would listen to nothing of this kind. He declared that as much had been conceded as the country would bear; and the Parliament was compelled to dissolve itself at the time fixed.

[162]

There could certainly be no longer any uncertainty as to whither things were tending. The Royalists were again in full power all over the kingdom, the very insurgents in the cause of Charles were liberated, freed from all penalties, and in many cases advanced to places of trust; yet Monk still dissembled. Ludlow, a staunch Republican, on the re-admission of the excluded members, went to Monk to sound him as to his intentions, and urged the necessity of supporting the Commonwealth, which had cost them so much. Monk replied with solemn hypocrisy, "Yea, we must live and die together for a Commonwealth." Yet Monk had now made up his mind: he saw that all was prepared, all perfectly safe, and during the recess he was busy arranging with the king's agents for his return. Immediately on Monk's joyful reception by the City, a Mr. Baillie, who had gone through Cheapside amongst the bonfires, and heard the king's health drunk in various places, and people talking of sending for the king, had posted off to Brussels, where Charles was. On this Sir John Grenville and a Mr. Morrice, a Devonshire Royalist, were instantly sent over to Monk, with propositions for the king's return. Clarendon assures us that so early as the beginning of April these gentlemen were in London, and in consultation with Monk, who told them that if the king would write a letter to Parliament containing the same statements, he would find a fit time to deliver it, or some other means to serve his Majesty; but that Charles must quit Flanders to give his partisans confidence that he was out of the power of the Spaniards, and would be free to act on their call; that he must go to Breda, and date his papers thence.

All this was done, and so little secrecy was observed by the Royalists on the Continent, that it was immediately known at all the courts that the king was about to be recalled, and Spaniards, Dutch, French princes and ministers, who had treated Charles with the utmost neglect and contempt, now overwhelmed him with compliments, invitations, flatteries, and offers. The Dutch Court, where was his sister, the mother of the young Stadtholder, had been as discourteous as the rest, but they now united in receiving him and doing him honour. Breda already swarmed with English Royalists, who flocked from every quarter to pay their respects.

This was observed in England with a complacency which sufficiently indicated that men's minds were made up to the restoration of the monarchy. The ultra-Republican party alone, whose zeal never condescended to measure the chances against them, endeavoured to raise the soldiers to oppose the menaced catastrophe. The army had on former occasions maintained the Commonwealth. The emissaries of the Republicans, therefore, spread themselves everywhere amongst the soldiers, warning them of the certainty of all their sacrifices, their labours, and their victories being in vain if they did not once more save the State. The old fire revived; the soldiers contemplated the loss of their arrears if the Royalists came into power, the officers the loss of their lands and their commands. They began to express vehement discontent, and the officers flocked into the capital and called on Monk to take measures for the maintenance of the Commonwealth. He professed to be bound to that object, though he had at the time in his pocket a commission from Charles constituting him Lord-General of all the military in the three kingdoms. He ordered the officers to return to their posts, and put an oath of obedience to the Parliament to the privates—all who refused it being discharged.

Disappointed in this quarter, the Republicans managed to effect the escape of Lambert, who had been committed to the Tower, and who now appeared in Warwickshire, where he induced six troops of horse and some infantry to accept his command. On the approach of General Ingoldsby, however, who was sent against him, his troops deserted him, he was captured, and conducted back to the Tower with every indignity.

On the 25th of April the new Parliament assembled; the Royalists showed a decided majority, and though the Presbyterian party managed to carry the election of Sir Harbottle Grimstone as Speaker, the Royalist tendency was overwhelming as to the main objects. Ten of the Peers assembled in their House, and elected the Earl of Manchester Speaker, and on beholding this the rest of the Peers hurried up to town, and soon there appeared a full House, excepting such Peers as had served in the king's Parliament at Oxford, or whose patents dated subsequently to the commencement of the civil war.

But all the interest was concentrated on the proceedings of the House of Commons. On the 1st of May Sir John Grenville presented himself at the door of the House, and requested to speak with the Lord-General. Monk went to him, and received, as a matter of which he knew nothing, a letter addressed to the Speaker. Looking at the seal, and affecting to discover that it bore the[163] royal arms, he ordered the guards to take care that the bearer did not escape. Grenville was speedily called in, and asked how he became possessed of this letter, and on replying that he brought it from the king, he was ordered into custody as a traitor. But here Monk interfered, saying that this was unnecessary; he perceived that he was a kinsman of his, and would be security for him. The letters were now opened, and proved to be really from the king, one addressed to the Commons, another to the Lords, a third to the Lord Mayor and Corporation, and the fourth to Monk and Montague, lord-admirals. In the letter to the Commons Charles informed them that, in the present unhappy circumstances of the nation, he recommended them to consider whether the only way to restore peace and prosperity was not to return to the ancient and time-honoured constitution of king, Lords, and Commons, under whom the kingdom had flourished so many ages. He professed that no man had a more profound veneration for Parliament and its rights than himself, and that to convince them of it, he had endorsed a declaration of his views, in which he had left everything to their settlement.

This paper was the celebrated Declaration of Breda, to which the people afterwards so often called Charles's attention, and which he took the earliest opportunity to forget, and falsify by a return to all the Stuart despotisms, oppressions, and persecutions. In this paper he granted a free pardon to all who should accept it within forty days; the confirmation of all estates and titles, and in religion "liberty to tender consciences, and that no man should be disturbed or called in question in any way regarding religion." But these promises "on the word of a king" were rendered perfectly nugatory, by excepting such persons and such measures as Parliament should in its wisdom see fit to determine otherwise. This specious declaration, which had been drawn up by Hyde, Ormond, and Nicholas, in fact secured nothing, for once in power, a servile Parliament might undo everything, as it eventually did. Prynne, who was in the House, pointed all this out, and warned them that Charles had been too long under the counsels of his mother, and too long in France and in Flanders—"the most Jesuited place in the world"—to be in religion anything better than a Papist; that at best he would be found only a Prelatist, and that his word had already been proved, on various occasions, of no more value than his father's. The Royalists, he said, would never cease instilling into him that the Presbyterian religion, now the religion of the nation, had destroyed his great-grandmother, tormented his grandfather, and put to death his father; and that as certain as there was a restoration, there would be a destruction of all the liberties of England, civil and religious. The pious Sir Matthew Hale urged on them the necessity of some better guarantee than this declaration of constitutional rights before they readmitted the king.

But all warning was lost on the House: the crisis was come, Parliament and nation seemed smitten with a sudden oblivion of their past miseries and oppressions under the Stuarts, and every branch of the community seemed impatient to be the first to put its neck once more under their yoke, and under the foot of the most debauched, unprincipled, and scandalous member which the family had ever seen. Instead of sending Grenville to the Tower, the Commons voted him thanks and a present of five hundred pounds. The Speaker, in communicating these votes to Grenville, launched into the most extravagant terms of joy on the prospect "of having their king again." The Commons drew up a most glowing letter to his Majesty, in which they declared their thankfulness to God for putting the thoughts of returning into the king's mind, "to make him glorious in the eyes of his people;" protesting that "the persons of their kings had always been dear unto Parliaments," and that they "could not bear to think of that horrid act committed against the precious life of their late king," and so forth. They not only delivered this letter to Sir John Grenville, but appointed twelve of their members to wait on his Majesty at the Hague. The London Corporation were as enthusiastic and as profuse of their proffered devotion; they presented Grenville with three hundred pounds, also appointed some of their members to wait on the king, made haste to erect the royal statue in Guildhall, and to pull down the arms of the Commonwealth.

[164]

LANDING OF CHARLES II. AT DOVER. (See p. 165.)

Montague had long been prepared to go over to the king on the first opportunity; and lest he might seem to be sent by the Parliament, and not by his own voluntary act, he set sail for the coast of Holland, leaving Lawson to bring over the deputations going to his Majesty. He lay to at Scheveling, and sent word to the king that his fleet was at his command. The Duke of York, whom Charles had made admiral, went on board, and was received with all respect and submission. Soon after came up the other ships with six[165] members of the Peers, twelve of the Commons, fourteen from the City of London, and eight or ten of the most popular ministers in London of the Presbyterian party, including Reynolds, Calamy, Case, and Marten. These gentlemen entered zealously on the hopeless task of endeavouring to persuade Charles to leave their form of worship in the ascendant, and to abstain from the use of the Common Prayer Book and the surplices; but they got no further satisfaction than that he would leave all that to the wisdom of Parliament. On the 24th of May he embarked at Scheveling, in the Naseby, which the day before had been rechristened the Royal Charles, the rest of the ships at the same time having doffed their republican appellations of unpleasant memory, and assumed right royal ones. On the 26th he landed at Dover, where, amid the thunder of cannon, he was received by Monk at the head of a splendid assemblage of the nobility and gentry. From Dover to Canterbury, and thence to London, the journey was one triumphant procession. The crowds of gentry and of shouting people presented only the aspect of a most loyal nation, amongst whom it was hard to imagine that such a thing as a Commonwealth had ever existed. On Blackheath Charles was received by the army with acclamations. The Lord Mayor and Corporation invited him to a splendid collation in a tent prepared for the purpose. All the way to Whitehall, attended by the chief nobility and by his Life Guards, and several regiments of cavalry, the houses being hung with tapestry, and the windows crowded with applauding men and women, the king riding between his two brothers, beheld nothing but an enthusiastic people. When he dismissed the last of his congratulators from the hall where his father perished, he turned to one of his confidants and said, "It surely must have been my own fault that I did not come before, for I have met no one to-day who did not protest that he always wished for my restoration."

CHAPTER VI.

THE PROGRESS OF THE NATION UNDER JAMES I., CHARLES I., AND THE COMMONWEALTH.

Manufactures and Commerce—Trade under the Stuarts—English Commerce and Dutch Competition—The East India Company—Vicissitudes of its Early History—Rival Companies—The American Colonies and West Indies—Growth of London—National Revenue—Extravagance of the Stuarts—Invention of the Title of Baronet—Illegal Monopolies—Cost of Government—Money and Coinage—Agriculture and Gardening—Dramatists of the Period—Shakespeare and his Contemporaries—Poets of the Occult School—Herbert, Herrick, Quarles—A Wealth of Poetry—Prose-Writers—Bacon's "Novum Organum"—Milton's Prose Works—Hales, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Fuller, and other Theological Writers—Harrington's "Oceana"—Sir Thomas Browne—Historians and Chroniclers—First Newspapers—Harvey's Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood—Napier's Invention of Logarithms—Music—Painting, Engraving, and Sculpture—Architecture—Manners and Customs—Sports and Pastimes—Furniture and Domestic Embellishment—Costumes—Arms and Armour—Condition of the People.

In the reigns of James and Charles England neither maintained the reputation of her navy acquired under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, nor made great progress in foreign commerce. The character of James was too timid for maritime or any other war, and when he was forced into action it was only to show his weakness. He put to death the greatest naval captain of his time, Raleigh, who, if well employed by him, might have made him as much respected at sea as was Elizabeth. Nevertheless, he built ten ships of war, and for some years spent thirty-six thousand pounds annually on the navy. The largest ship which had yet been built in England was built by him, but it was only of fourteen hundred tons. As for commerce, he was too much engaged in theological disputations, in persecution of Papists, in wrangling with his Parliaments, and in following his hawks and hounds, to think of it, and consequently grievous complaints of the decay of trade were heard every session. The Dutch were fast engrossing both the commerce and the carrying trade of England. During James's reign they traded to England with six hundred ships, and the English traded to Holland with sixty.

The naval affairs of Charles were quite as inglorious as those of his father. As James beheaded the best admiral of England, so Charles chose for[166] his the very worst in Europe, and the disgrace of Buckingham's expedition to the Isle of Rhé was the consequence. Charles's contests with his Parliaments, which terminated only with his life, destroyed all chance of his promotion of naval ascendency, and of the cultivation of commerce. All this was wonderfully changed by the vigorous spirits of the Commonwealth. The victories of Blake, by which the naval greatness of Holland and Spain was almost annihilated, raised the reputation of the British arms at sea as well as on land to the first place in the civilised world. St. John was no sooner despatched by Parliament to the Hague as ambassador, than, perceiving the immense advantage which Holland obtained from being the great carriers of Europe, he drew and got passed the celebrated Navigation Act, which—providing that no produce of Africa, Asia, or America, nor of any English colony should be imported into England except in English ships, and that the manufactures or merchandise of no country in Europe should be imported except in English ships, or the ships of the nation where they were produced—at once transferred an enormous maritime business to England.

Sir Walter Raleigh, in a treatise on the comparative commerce of England and Holland, endeavoured to draw the attention of James I. to the vast benefits that the Dutch were obtaining from our neglect. He showed that whenever there was a time of scarcity in England, instead of sending out our ships and supplying ourselves, we allowed the Dutch to pour in goods, and reap the advantage of the high prices; and he declared that in a year and a half they had taken from Bristol, Southampton, and Exeter alone, two hundred thousand pounds, which our merchants might as well have had. He reminded the king that the most productive fisheries in the world were on the British coasts, yet that the Dutch and people of the Hanse Towns came and supplied all Europe with their fish to the amount of two million pounds annually, whilst the English could scarcely be said to have any trade at all in it. The Dutch, he said, sent yearly a thousand ships laden with wine and salt, obtained in France and Spain, to the north of Europe, whilst we, with superior advantages, sent none. He pointed out equally striking facts of their enterprise in the timber trade, having no timber themselves; that our trade with Russia, which used to employ a large number of ships, had fallen off to almost nothing, whilst that of the Dutch had marvellously increased. What, he observed, was still more lamentable, we allowed them to draw the chief profit and credit even from our own manufactures, for we sent our woollen goods, to the amount of eighty thousand pieces, abroad undyed, and the Dutch and others dyed them and reshipped them to Spain, Portugal, and other countries as Flemish baizes, besides netting a profit of four hundred thousand pounds annually at our expense. Had James attended to the wise suggestions of Raleigh, instead of destroying him, and listening to such minions as Rochester and Buckingham, our commerce would have shown a very different aspect.

It is true that some years afterwards James tried to secure the profit pointed out by Raleigh from dyed cloths; but instead of first encouraging the dyeing of such cloths here, so as to enable the merchants to carry them to the markets in the South on equal or superior terms to the Dutch, he suddenly passed an Act prohibiting the export of any undyed cloths. This the Dutch met by an Act prohibiting the import of any dyed cloths into Holland; and the English not producing an equal dye to the Dutch, thus lost both markets, to the great confusion of trade; and this mischief was only gradually overcome by our merchants beginning to dye their yarn, so as to have no undyed cloth to export, and by improving their dyes.

During the reign of James commercial enterprise showed itself in the exertions of various chartered companies trading to distant parts of the world. The East India Company was established in the reign of Elizabeth, the first charter being granted by her in 1600. James was wise enough to renew it, and it went on with various success, ultimately so little in his time that at his death it was still a doubtful speculation; but under such a monarch it could not hope for real encouragement. In its very commencement he granted a charter to a rival company to trade to China, Japan, and other countries in the Indian seas, in direct violation of the East India Company's charter, which so disgusted that Company, as nearly to have caused them to relinquish their aim. In 1614 they obtained a charter from the Great Mogul to establish a factory at Surat, and the same year they obtained a similar charter from the Emperor of Japan. In 1615 Sir Thomas Roe went as ambassador from England to the Great Mogul, and resided at his court for four years. By this time the Company had extensively spread its settlements. It had factories at Acheen, Zambee, and Tekoa, in Sumatra; at Surat, Ahmedabad, Agra, Ajmere, and Burampore in the Mogul's[167] territories; at Firando, in Japan; at Bantam, Batavia, and Japara, in Java; and others in Borneo, the Banda Isles, Malacca, Siam, and Celebes; and at Masulipatam and Petapoli, on the Coromandel coast; and at Calicut, the original settlement of the Portuguese on the coast of Malabar. Their affairs were, in fact, extremely flourishing, and their stock sold at 203 per cent.; but this prosperity awoke the jealousy of the Dutch, who carried on a most profitable trade with Java and the Spice Islands, and, in spite of a treaty concluded between the two nations in 1619, the Dutch Governor-General attacked and took from the Company the island of Pulo Rangoon. This was only the beginning of their envious malice, for in 1623 they committed the notorious massacre of the English Company at Amboyna, and drove the English out of all the Spice Islands. Had this occurred in Cromwell's days, they would soon have paid a severe retribution; but James was just then anxious to secure the aid of the Dutch in restoring his son-in-law, the Elector Palatine, and these atrocities were quietly smoothed over, and left unavenged. The consequence was, that the affairs of the Company fell into a most depressed condition, and though in 1616, when their stock was worth 200 per cent., they had raised a new stock of one million six hundred and twenty-nine thousand and forty pounds, which was taken by nine hundred and fifty-four individuals, principally of the higher aristocracy, at the close of James's reign the stock had fallen to half its value.

Charles was not a more far-sighted or a juster patron of the India Company than his father. In 1631 they managed to raise a new stock of four hundred and twenty thousand pounds, but whilst they were struggling with the hostilities of their rivals, the Dutch and Portuguese, the king perpetrated precisely the same injury on them that his father had done, by granting a charter to another company, which embroiled them with the Mogul and the Chinese, causing the English to be entirely expelled from China, and injuring the India Company to a vast extent. The Civil War in England then prevented the attention of the Government from being directed to the affairs of this great Company. At the end of Charles's reign the Company's affairs were at the worst, and its trade appeared extinct. In 1649, however, Parliament encouraged the raising of new stock, which was done with extreme difficulty, and only amounted to one hundred and ninety-two thousand pounds. But in 1654, Parliament having humbled the Dutch, compelled them to pay a balance of damages of eighty-five thousand pounds and three thousand six hundred pounds to the heirs of the murdered men at Amboyna. It required years, however, to revive the prosperity of the Company, and it was only in 1657 that, obtaining a new charter from the Protector, and raising a new stock of three hundred and seventy thousand pounds, it sprang again into vigour and traded successfully till the Restoration.

During this period, too, the Incorporated Companies—Turkey Merchants, or the Levant Company; the Company of Merchant Adventurers, trading to Holland and Germany; the Muscovy Company, trading to Russia and the North, where they prosecuted also the whale fishery—were in active operation, besides a great general trade with Spain, Portugal, and other countries. The Turkey Merchants carried to the Mediterranean English cloths, lead, tin, spices, indigo, calicoes, and other Indian produce brought home by the East India Company; and they imported thence the raw silks of Persia and Syria, galls from Aleppo, cotton and cotton yarn from Cyprus and Smyrna; drugs, oils, and camlets, grograms, and mohairs of Angora. In 1652 we find coffee first introduced from Turkey, and a coffee-house set up in Cornhill. On the breaking out of the Civil War, the Muscovy Company were deprived of their charter by the Czar, because they took part with the Parliament against their king, and the Dutch adroitly came in for the trade.

These great monopolies of foreign trade were supposed to be necessary to stimulate and protect commerce; but the system of domestic monopolies which were most destructive to enterprise at home, and which had arrived at such a height under Elizabeth, was continued by both James and Charles to the last, notwithstanding the constant outcries against them, and their being compelled, ever and anon, by public spirit to make temporary concessions.

The commerce of England was now beginning to receive a sensible increase by the colonies which she had established in America and the West Indies. One of the earliest measures of James was the founding of two chartered companies to settle on the coasts of North America. One, called the London Adventurers, or South Virginia Company, was empowered to plant the coast from the 34th to the 41st degree of north latitude, which now includes Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina. The other, the company of Plymouth Adventurers, was authorised to plant[168] all from the 41st degree to the 45th, which now includes the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and New England. In 1612 a settlement was made in Bermuda. The State of New England was founded by the planting of New Plymouth in 1620, and about the same time the French were driven out of Nova Scotia, and the island of Barbadoes was taken possession of; and within a few years various other West India islands were secured and planted. James granted all the Caribbee Isles to James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, and the grant was confirmed by Charles, who also granted to Robert Heath and his heirs the Bahama Isles and the vast territory of Carolina, including the present North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and the south of Louisiana. In 1632 Charles granted the present Maryland to Lord Baltimore, a Catholic (the charter being also renewed in favour of Cecil, the second Lord Baltimore), which became the refuge of the persecuted Catholics in England, as the New England States did of the Puritans.

These immense territories were gradually peopled by the victims of crime. According as the storm of religious persecution raged against the Catholics, the Puritans, or the Episcopalians and Royalists, they got away to New England, Maryland, or Virginia. By degrees the Indians were driven back, and cotton, tobacco, and (in the West Indies) the sugar cane became objects of cultivation. James abominated tobacco, and published his "Counterblast" against it, laying various restrictions upon its growth; but as the high duties imposed upon it proved very profitable to the revenue, gradually these restrictions were relaxed, and cultivation of it at home was prohibited in favour of the Colonies. The Dutch had managed, under James and Charles, to engross the carrying trade to the English American and West Indian colonies, having a strong position at New Amsterdam, afterwards known as New York; but of this Parliament deprived them in 1646, and extended, as we have seen, the famous Navigation Act of 1651 to all the foreign trade of England. In 1655 Cromwell's conquest of Jamaica completed English power in the West Indies.

The growth of English commerce was soon conspicuous by one great result, the growth of London. It was in vain that both James and Charles issued repeated proclamations to prohibit fresh building of houses, and to order the nobility and gentry to live more on their estates in the country, and not in London, in habits of such extravagance, and drawing together so much loose company after them. From the union of the crowns of Scotland and England, this rapid increase of the metropolis, so alarming to those kings, was more than ever visible. When James came to the throne in 1603, London and Westminster were a mile apart, but the Strand was quickly populated by the crowds of Scots who followed the Court; and though St. Giles's-in-the-Fields was then a distinct town, standing in the open country, with a very deep and dirty lane, called Drury Lane, running from it to the Strand, before the Civil War it had become united to London and Westminster by new erections in Clare Market, Long Acre, Bedfordbury, and the adjoining neighbourhood. Anderson in his "History of Commerce," gives us some curious insight into this part of London at that period. "The very names of the older streets about Covent Garden," he observes, "are taken from the Royal family at this time, or in the reign of Charles II., as Catherine Street, Duke Street, York Street. Of James and Charles I.'s time, James Street, Charles Street, Henrietta Street, etc., all laid out by the great architect, Inigo Jones, as was also the fine piazza there, although that part where stood the house and gardens of the Duke of Bedford is of much later date, namely, in the reigns of King William and Queen Anne. Bloomsbury, and the streets at the Seven Dials, were built up somewhat later, as also Leicester Fields, since the restoration of Charles II., as also almost all of St. James's and St. Anne's parishes, and a great part of St. Martin's and St. Giles's. I have met with several old persons in my younger days who remembered that there was but a single house, a cake-house, between the Mews-gate at Charing Cross and St. James's Palace Gate, where now stand the stately piles of St. James's Square, Pall Mall, and other fine streets. They also remembered the west side of St. Martin's Lane to have been a quickset hedge; yet High Holborn and Drury Lane were filled with noblemen's and gentlemen's houses and gardens almost a hundred and fifty years ago. Those five streets of the south side of the Strand, running down to the river Thames, have all been built since the beginning of the seventeenth century, upon the sites of noblemen's houses and gardens, who removed farther westward, as their names denote. Even some parts within the bars of the City of London remained unbuilt within about a hundred and fifty years past, particularly all the ground between Shoe Lane and Fewters, now Fetter, Lane, so called, says Howell in his[169] 'Londonopolis,' from Fewters, an old appellation of idle people, loitering there, as in a way leading to gardens; which, in Charles I.'s reign, and even some of them since, have been built up into streets, lanes, etc. Several other parts of the City have been rendered more populous by the removal of the nobility to Westminster, on the sites of whose former spacious houses and gardens, whole streets, lanes, and courts have been added to the City since the death of Queen Elizabeth."

CECIL, SECOND LORD BALTIMORE.

The extension of the metropolis necessitated the introduction of hackney coaches, which first began to ply, but only twelve in number, in 1625. In 1634 sedan-chairs were introduced to relieve the streets of the rapidly increased number of hackney-coaches, and other carriages; and in 1635 a post-office for the kingdom was established, a foreign post having been for some years in existence. In 1653 the post was farmed for ten thousand pounds a year.

The annual revenue of James I. has been calculated at about six hundred thousand pounds, yet he was always poor, and died leaving debts to the amount of three hundred thousand pounds. He was prodigal to his favourites, and wasteful in his habits. He left the estates of the Crown, however, better than he found them, having raised their annual income from thirty-two thousand pounds to eighty thousand pounds, besides having sold lands to the amount of seven hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds. He still prosecuted the exactions of purveyance, wardship, etc., to the great annoyance of his subjects. On the occasion of his son being made a knight, he raised a tax on every knight's fee of twenty shillings, and on every twenty pounds of annual rent from lands held directly of the Crown, thus raising twenty-one thousand eight hundred pounds. On the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to the[170] Elector Palatine, he levied an aid of twenty thousand five hundred pounds, the last of these odious impositions which were demanded. The Customs on his coming to the throne brought in one hundred and twenty-seven thousand pounds a year; but towards the end of his reign, showing the great increase of commerce, they amounted to one hundred and ninety thousand pounds a year. But this was the tonnage and poundage which was so hateful to the nation, and which James had greatly augmented by his own act and deed; an encroachment which caused Parliament to refuse to his son Charles the usual grant of those duties for life; and his persistence in levying them, in spite of Parliament, was one of the chief causes of his quarrel with that body, and the loss of his crown.

James was also a great trader in titles of nobility. His price for a barony was ten thousand pounds, for the title of viscount, twenty thousand pounds, and for that of earl, thirty thousand pounds. He also invented the new title of baronet, and raised two hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds by it, at the rate of one thousand and ninety-five pounds each baronetcy. From so dignified a source do many of our aristocracy derive their honours.

Charles, though he was driven to such fatal extremities to extort money from his subjects, is calculated to have realised the enormous revenue from 1637 to 1641 inclusive, of eight hundred and ninety-five thousand pounds, of which two hundred and ten thousand pounds arose from Ship-money and other illegal sources. Both he and his father dealt in wholesale monopolies to their courtiers and others, the profits of which were so embezzled by those greedy and unprincipled men, that Clarendon says that of two hundred thousand pounds of such income in Charles's time, only one thousand five hundred pounds reached the royal treasury. Charles raised two hundred thousand pounds in 1626 by a forced loan, and another hundred thousand by exacting the fees or compensation for exemption from the assumption of knighthood by every person worth forty pounds a year.

The income and expenditure of the Commonwealth are stated to have far exceeded those of any monarch who ever sat before on the throne of England, and to have been not less than four million four hundred thousand pounds per annum. The post office, as already stated, brought in ten thousand pounds per annum. A singular tax, called the Weekly Meal, or the price of a meal a week from each person, produced upwards of one hundred thousand pounds a year, or six hundred and eight thousand four hundred pounds in the six years during which it was levied. There was a weekly assessment for the support of the war, which rose from thirty-eight thousand pounds to one hundred and twenty thousand pounds per week, which was continued as a land tax under the Protectorate, producing from 1640 to 1659 no less than thirty-two million one hundred and seventy-two thousand three hundred and twenty-one pounds. The Excise also owes its origin to this period, and produced, it is said, five hundred thousand pounds a year. Large sums were realised by the sales of Crown and Church lands,—from the sale of Crown lands, parks, etc., one million eight hundred and fifty-eight thousand pounds; from the sale of Church lands, ten million pounds; from sequestration of the revenue of the clergy for four years, three million five hundred thousand pounds; eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds from incomes of offices sequestered for the public service; four million five hundred thousand pounds from the sequestration of private estates or compositions for them; one million pounds from compositions with delinquents in Ireland; three million five hundred thousand pounds from the sale of forfeited estates in England and Ireland, etc. The ministers and commanders are asserted to have taken good care of themselves. Cromwell's own income is stated at nearly two million pounds, or one million nine hundred thousand pounds; namely, one million five hundred thousand pounds from England, forty-three thousand pounds from Scotland, and two hundred and eight thousand pounds from Ireland. The members of Parliament were paid at the rate of four pounds a week each, or about three hundred thousand pounds a year altogether; and Walker, in his "History of Independency," says that Lenthall, the Speaker, held offices to the amount of nearly eight thousand pounds a year; that Bradshaw had Eltham Palace, and an estate of one thousand pounds a year, as bestowed for presiding at the king's trial; and that nearly eight hundred thousand pounds were spent on gifts to adherents of the party. As these statements, however, are those of their adversaries, they no doubt admit of ample abatement; but after all deduction, the demands of king and Parliament on the country during the contest, and of the Protectorate in keeping down its enemies, must have been enormous. Notwithstanding this, the rate of interest on money continued through this[171] period to decline. During James's reign it was ten per cent.; in 1625, the last year of his reign, it was reduced to eight per cent., and in 1651 it was fixed by the Parliament at six per cent., at which rate it remained.

James issued various coinages. Soon after his accession he issued a coinage of gold and one of silver. The gold was of two qualities. The first of twenty-three carats three and a half grains, consisting of angels, half-angels, and quarter-angels; value ten shillings, five shillings, and two-and-sixpence. The inferior quality, of only twenty-two carats, consisted of sovereigns, half-sovereigns, crowns, and half-crowns. His silver coinage (see Vol. II., p. 436) consisted of crowns, half-crowns, shillings, sixpences, twopences, pence, and halfpence. The gold coins, being of more value than that amount of gold on the Continent, were rapidly exported, and the value of the finest gold was then raised from thirty-three pounds ten shillings to thirty-seven pounds four shillings and sixpence. The next coinage at this value consisted of a twenty-shilling piece called the unit, ten shillings called the double crown, five shillings or the Britain crown, four shillings or the thistle crown, and two-and-sixpence, or half-crown. (See Vol. II., p. 432.) This value of the gold was not found high enough, and the next year, in a fresh coinage, it was valued at forty pounds ten shillings, and consisted of rose rials of thirty shillings each, spur rials fifteen shillings, and angels at ten shillings each. But gold still rising in value, in 1611 the unit was raised to twenty-two shillings, and the other coins in proportion. In 1612 there was a great rise in gold, and James issued fresh twenty-shilling, ten-shilling, and five-shilling pieces, known as laurels, from the king's head being wreathed with laurel. The unit and twenty-shilling pieces were termed hood pieces. Besides the royal coinage, shopkeepers and other retailers put out tokens of brass and lead, which in 1613 were prohibited, and the first copper coinage in England, being of farthings, was issued.

The coins of Charles were, for the most part, of the same nature as those of his father. During his reign silver rose so much in value that it was melted down and exported to a vast extent. Though between 1630 and 1643 some ten million pounds of silver were coined, it became so scarce that the people had to give a premium for change in silver. In 1637 Charles established a mint at Aberystwith, for coining the Welsh silver, which was of great value to him during the war. From 1628 to 1640 Nicholas Briot, a Frenchman, superintended the cutting of the dies, instituted machinery for the hammer in coining and his coins were of remarkable beauty. (See Vol. II., p. 540.) Charles erected mints at most of his headquarters during the war, as Oxford, Shrewsbury, York, and other places, the coiners and dies of Aberystwith being used, and these coins are distinguished by the Prince of Wales's feathers. Many of these coins are of the rudest character; and besides these there were issued siege pieces, so called from the besieged castles where they were made, as Newark, Scarborough, Carlisle, and Pontefract. Some of these are mere bits of silver plate with the rude stamp of the castle on one side and the name of the town on the other. Others are octagonal, others lozenge-shaped, others of scarcely any regular shape. (See p. 29.)

The Commonwealth at first coined the same coins as the king, only distinguishing them by a P for Parliament. They afterwards adopted dies of their own, having on one side a St. George's cross on an antique shield encircled with a palm and laurel, and on the other two antique shields, one bearing the cross and the other the harp, surrounded by the words God with us. Their small silver coins had the arms only without any legend.

The coins of the Protectorate have on the obverse a bust of Cromwell, round which is this inscription: "Oliver D.G. R.P. Ang. Sco. Hib. &c. Pro." On the reverse they bear a shield, having in the first and fourth quarters St. George's cross, in the second St. Andrew's, in the third a harp, and in the centre a lion rampant on an escutcheon—Cromwell's own arms—surmounted by an imperial crown. The legend on this side is "Pax quæritur bello" (Peace is sought by war). The larger silver pieces have this motto round the edge: "Has nisi periturus mihi adimat nemo" (i.e. "Let no one take from me these letters unless about to die"). In those days the penalty for clipping and filing money was death. (See p. 121.)

The coins of the Commonwealth were the same for Ireland and Scotland as for England. This was not the case in the reigns of James and Charles, and the coins, though bearing the same arms, had generally a very different value. For Ireland James coined silver and copper money of about three-quarters the value of English, and called in the base coinage used by Elizabeth in the time of the rebellion. Charles only coined some silver in 1641, during the government of Lord Ormond, and therefore called Ormonds. Copper halfpence and farthings of that period are supposed to have been coined by the rebel Papists of 1642.

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In agriculture and gardening the English were excelled by their neighbours the Dutch and Flemings. Towards the latter part of this period, however, they began to imitate those nations, and to introduce their modes of drainage, their roots and seeds. In 1652 the advantage of growing clover was pointed out by Bligh, in his "Improver Improved," and Sir Richard Weston recommended soon afterwards the Flemish mode of cultivating the turnip for winter fodder for cattle and sheep. Gardening was more attended to, and both vegetables and flowers were introduced. Samuel Hartlib, a Pole, who was patronised by Cromwell, wrote various treatises on agriculture, and relates that in his time old men recollected the first gardener who went into Surrey to plant cabbages, cauliflowers, and artichokes, and to sow early peas, turnips, carrots, and parsnips. Till then almost all the supply of these things in London was imported from Holland and Flanders. About that time (1650), however, cherries, apples, pears, hops, cabbages, and liquorice were rapidly cultivated, and soon superseded the necessity of importation; but onions were still scarce, and the supply of stocks of apple, pear, cherry, vine, and chestnut trees was difficult for want of sufficient nurseries for them. There was a zealous endeavour to promote the production of raw silk, and mulberry trees and silkworms were introduced, but the abundant supply of silk from India, and the perfection of the silk manufactured in France, rendered this scheme abortive.

CHEAPSIDE AND THE CROSS IN 1660.

Whilst James was hunting and levying taxes without a Parliament, and Charles was in continual strife with his people for unconstitutional power and revenue, literature and art were still at work, and producing or preparing some of the noblest and choicest creations of genius. Shakespeare and Milton were the great lights of the age; but around and beside them burned a whole[173] galaxy of lesser, but not less exquisite, luminaries, whose selected beauties are just as delightful now as they were to their contemporaries. The names of this period, to which we still turn with admiration, reverence, and affection, are chiefly Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Marlowe, Massinger, Webster, Selden, Herrick, Herbert, Quarles, Bunyan, Bishop Hall, Hales, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Raleigh, Sir Thomas Browne, Burton (of the "Anatomy of Melancholy"), and Drummond of Hawthornden. But there are numbers of others, more unequal or more scholastic, to whose works we can occasionally turn, and find passages of wonderful beauty and power.

THE "GLOBE" THEATRE, SOUTHWARK (WITH THE "ROSE" THEATRE IN THE DISTANCE), IN 1613.

(From a Contemporary Print.)

As we come first to Shakespeare, who figured largely on the scene in the days of Queen Bess, and whose poetry we have already reviewed (Vol. II., pp. 373-5), we may take the drama of this period also in connection with him. A formal criticism on Shakespeare would be superfluous. There are whole volumes of comment on this greatest of our great writers, both in this language and others. The Germans, indeed, pride themselves on understanding him better than ourselves. The Scandinavians equally venerate him, and have an admirable translation of his dramas. Even the French, the tone and spirit of whose literature are so different from ours, have, of late years, begun to comprehend and receive him. The fact is, Shakespeare's genius is what the Germans term spherical, or many-sided. He had not a brilliancy in one direction only, but he seemed like a grand mirror, in which is truly reflected every image that falls on it. Outward nature, inner life and passion, town and country, all the features of human nature, as exhibited in every grade of life—from the cottage to the throne—are in him expressed with a truth and a natural strength, that awake in us precisely the same sensations as nature itself. The receptivity of his mind was as quick, as vast, as perfect, as his power of expression was unlimited. Every object once seen appeared photographed on his spirit, and he reproduced these lifelike images in new combinations, and mingled with such an exuberance of wit, of humour, of delicious melodies, and of exquisite poetry, as has no parallel in the whole range of literature.

It has been said that his dramas cast into the shade and made obsolete all that went before him; but, indeed, his great light equally overwhelms also all that has come after him. Where[174] is the second Shakespeare of the stage? He still stands alone as the type of dramatic greatness and perfection, and is likely to continue so. When we recollect his marvellous characters—his Hamlet, his Macbeth, his Lady Macbeth, his Othello, his Shylock, his Lear, his Ophelia, his Beatrice, his Juliet, his Rosalind—the humours and follies of Shallow, Slender, Dogberry, Touchstone, Bottom, Launce, Falstaff—or his ideal creations, Ariel, Caliban, Puck, Queen Mab—we cannot hope for the appearance of any single genius who shall at once enrich our literature with such living and speaking characters, such a profound insight into the depths and eccentricities of human nature, and such a fervent and varied expression of all the sentiments that are dearest to our hearts. But when we survey in addition the vast extent of history and country over which he has roamed, gleaning thence the most kingly personages, the most tragic incidents, the most moving and thrilling as well as the most amusing sensations and fancies, our wonder is the greater. Greece has lent him its Pericles, its Timon, its Troilus and Cressida—Rome its Cæsar, Brutus, Antony, Coriolanus—Egypt its Cleopatra. Ancient Britain, Scotland, and Denmark; all the fairest cities of Italy—Venice, Verona, Mantua; the forests of Illyria and Belgium, and the isles of the Grecian seas, are made the perpetually shifting arena of his triumphs. Through all these he ranged with a free hand, and, with a power mightier than ever was wielded by any magician, recalled to life all that was most illustrious there, giving them new and more piquant effect from the sympathetic nearness into which he brought them with the spectator, and from the enchanting scenery with which he surrounded them. All this was done by the son of the woolcomber of Stratford—the youthful ranger of the woods of Charlecote, and the uplands of Clopton,—the merry frequenter of country wakes, and then the player of London, who, so far as we know, was never out of his native land in his life.

If we are to take it for granted that after the year 1597, when he bought one of the best houses in his native town for his residence, Shakespeare spent his life there, except during the theatrical season, the greater part of his last nineteen years would be passed in the quiet of his country home. We may then settle his Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labours Lost, All's Well that Ends Well, Richard II. and Richard III., King John, Titus Andronicus (if his), the first part of Henry IV., and Romeo and Juliet, as produced in the bustle of his London life. But the far greater part, and the most magnificent and poetical, of his dramas were composed in the pleasant retirement of his native scenes; namely, the second part of Henry IV., Henry V., A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, and The Merchant of Venice, in 1598 and 1600; the second and third parts of Henry VI., Merry Wives of Windsor, 1601; Hamlet, 1602; Lear, 1608; Troilus and Cressida and Pericles, 1609; Othello (not published till after the author's death, which was the case, too, with all his other plays, though brought on the stage in his lifetime), The Winter's Tale, As You Like It, King Henry VIII., Measure for Measure, Cymbeline, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, Julius Cæsar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, The Tempest, and Twelfth Night. Shakespeare died in 1616. Of the envy which the unexampled splendour of Shakespeare's genius produced amongst inferior dramatic writers, we have an amusing specimen in the words of Robert Greene: "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shakscene in a country."

Amongst the most remarkable dramatic contemporaries of Shakespeare, or those who immediately followed him, were Chapman, Ben Jonson, Webster, Middleton, Dekker, Marston, Taylor, Tourneur, Rowley, Ford, Heywood, Shirley, and Beaumont and Fletcher. George Chapman (born, 1557; died, 1634) wrote sixteen plays, and, conjointly with Ben Jonson and Marston, one more, as well as three in conjunction with Shirley. The tragedies of Chapman are written in a grave and eloquent diction, and abound with fine passages, but you feel at once that they are not calculated, like Shakespeare's, for acting. They want the inimitable life, ease, and beauty of the great dramatist. Perhaps his tragedy of Bussy D'Ambois is his best, and next to that his Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron. Of his comedies, the best are, Eastward Ho! partly composed by Jonson and Marston, Monsieur d'Olive, and his All Fools. But Chapman's fame now rests on his translation of Homer, which, with all its rudeness of style and extreme quaintness, has always seized on the imagination of poets, and has been declared to be the best translation of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" that we possess. Pope was greatly indebted to it, having borrowed[175] from it almost all the felicitous double epithets which are found in him.

The most celebrated of Webster's tragedies, The Duchess of Malfi, was revived by Richard Hengist Horne, and put on the stage at Sadler's Wells by Phelps with considerable success. He was the author of three tragedies, Appius and Virginia, Duchess of Malfi, and The White Devil, or, Vittoria Corombona; a tragic comedy, The Devil's Law Case, or, When Women Go to Law, the Devil is full of Business, besides two comedies in conjunction with Rowley, and two others in conjunction with Dekker. Webster exhibits remarkable power of language, and an imagination of wonderful vigour, but rather too fond of horrors. Undoubtedly he was one of the best dramatists of his age, and seemed fully conscious of it. That he had a true poetic vein in him is evidenced by such passages as the "Dirge of Marcello," sung by his mother, which reminds one of the like simple homely ditties in Shakespeare:—

There are fine truths also scattered through his dramas as:—"To see what solitariness is about dying princes! As heretofore they have unpeopled towns, divided friends, and made great houses inhospitable, so now, O justice, where are their flatterers? Flatterers are but the shadows of princes' bodies; the least thick cloud makes them invisible."

Of Middleton, who wrote from twenty to thirty plays, in some of which, according to a very prevalent fashion of that age, he called in the aid of Rowley, Dekker, Fletcher, and Massinger; of Dekker, who wrote the whole or part of about thirty plays; of John Marston, who wrote eight plays; of Taylor, Tourneur, Heywood, and Ford, we can only say that their dramas abound with fine things, and would well repay a perusal. John Fletcher (born, 1576; died, 1625) and Francis Beaumont (born, 1586; died, 1616) require a more specific notice. They worked together on the same plays to the number of upwards of thirty, whilst John Fletcher wrote fourteen or fifteen himself. In fact, Fletcher, so far as can be known, was the more voluminous writer of the two, Beaumont having written little in his own name, except a masque, a few farces, dramatic pieces, and translations. The style of the two, however, was so much alike, that there is little to distinguish their productions from those of an individual mind. Beaumont and Fletcher were, as stated by Dryden, far more popular in their time than Shakespeare himself. The truth is, that they had less originality and were more compliant with the spirit of their age. They sought their characters more in the range of ordinary life, and therefore hit the tastes of a large and commoner class. They were extremely lively and forcible in dialogue, and had a flowery and dignified style which oftener approached the poetical than became it. We are everywhere met by admirable writing, and a finely-sustained tone, but we travel on without encountering those original characters that can never again be forgotten, and become a part of our world, or those exquisite gushes of poetry and poetic scenery which, like the music of Ariel, ring in the memory long afterwards. At the same time we are continually offended by extreme grossness and jarred by slovenliness and incongruity. They are of the class of great and able playwrights who command the popularity of their age, but whom future ages praise and neglect; and who are only read by the curious for the fragments of good things that they contain.

The fate of Ben Jonson (b., 1574; d., 1637) has been nearly the same. Excepting his comedies of Every Man in his Humour, Volpone, The Silent Woman, and The Alchemist, we are content to read the bulk of his dramas, and wonder at his erudition and his wit. His genius is most conspicuous in his masques and Court pageants, which were the delight of James's queen, Anne of Denmark, and the whole Court. In them the spirits of the woods seem to mingle with those of courts and cities; and fancy and a hue of romance give to royal festivities the impressions of Arcadian life. But the living poetry of the Midsummer Night's Dream or of Comus is yet wanting to touch them with perfection. Hence their chief charm died with the age which patronised them, and having once perused them, we are not drawn to them again by a loving memory, as we are to the Shakespearean woodlands and lyrical harmonies. In Jonson's graver dramas there is a cold classical tone which leaves the affections untouched and the feelings unmoved, while we respect the artistic skill and the learned dignity of the composition.

Philip Massinger (b., 1584; d., 1640), who wrote nearly forty dramatic pieces, is a vigorous writer, eloquent and effective. He is trenchant in his[176] satire, and delights in displaying pride and meanness exposed and punished. Still he is greater as a dramatist than a poet. His New Way to Pay Old Debts and The Fatal Dowry are best known to lovers of the drama. The City Madam is a play which is full of strong features of the times. Dekker assisted him in The Virgin Martyr, and is supposed to have introduced a higher and richer vein of feeling than belonged to Massinger himself.

Altogether the dramatic writing of this period has never been surpassed, and in Shakespeare has never been equalled. There is mingled with much licentiousness and coarseness a manly and healthy strength in the writers of this department; and though the bulk of these compositions have vanished from the stage, they will be long studied with enjoyment by those who delight in living portraiture of past ages, and the strong current of genuine English sense and feeling. The arrival of the Commonwealth put down all theatres and scenic amusements. The solemn religion of the Puritans was death to what they called "the lascivious mirth and levity of players." After their suppression for six years, it was found that the ordinance of the Long Parliament was clandestinely and extensively evaded; and in 1648 an Act was passed ordering all theatres to be pulled down and demolished, and the players to be punished "as rogues according to law." Towards the end of the Protectorate, however, dramatic representations again crept in cautiously, and Sir William Davenant at first giving musical entertainments and declamations at Rutland House, Charterhouse Square, and afterwards in Drury Lane, calling his entertainments "operas," at length gave regular plays. The Restoration at last set the imprisoned drama altogether free.

Besides dramatic writers, poets abounded. It has been calculated that from the reign of Elizabeth to the Restoration, no less than four hundred writers of verse appeared. Some of these, who attained a great reputation in their day, and whose works are still retained in our collections, were rather verse-wrights than poets, and would now tax the patience of poetical readers beyond endurance. Such were William Warner, the author of "Albion's England," a history of England in metre extending from Noah's flood to the reign of Elizabeth; Samuel Daniel, the author of the "Civil Wars of Lancaster and York," in eight books; and Michael Drayton, who also wrote the "Barons' Wars" in verse, "England's Heroical Epistles," and, above all, the "Polyolbion," a topography in Alexandrine verse, in thirty books, and thirty thousand lines. Next came Giles and Phineas Fletcher, who employed their strength in composing allegoric poems. Phineas, under the delusive appellation of "The Purple Island," wrote an anatomical description of the human body, with all its veins, arteries, sinews, and so forth. This was extended to twelve books, on which an abundance of very excellent language was wasted. Besides this, he composed "Piscatory Eclogues," and other poems; and Giles, choosing a worthier subject, wrote "Christ's Victory," in the Italian ottava rima, or eight-lined stanzas. To such perversion of the name of poetry had men arrived in the age of Shakespeare.

There were sundry poets who were also translators. Of these, Edward Fairfax, of the same family as Lord Fairfax, was the most distinguished. He translated with singular vigour and poetic feeling Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered." It is still referred to with intense pleasure by the lovers of our old poetry. Joshua Sylvester—who wrote like King James against tobacco, but in verse, "Tobacco Battered"—translated, amongst other things, "The Divine Weeks and Works" of the French poet Du Bartas. Sir Richard Fanshawe translated the "Lusiad," by the Portuguese poet Camoens. Fanshawe, moreover, translated the "Pastor Fido" of Guarini, from the Italian, the "Odes" of Horace, the fourth book of the "Æneid," and the "Love for Love's Sake," of the Spaniard Mendoza. Fanshawe seemed to have a peculiar taste for the European languages derived from the Latin as for the Latin itself; thus he translated from Roman, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian poets, and from all with much taste and elegance.

Sir John Denham was a popular poet of the time, and his "Cooper's Hill" is still retained in our collections, and finds readers amongst admirers of descriptive poetry. Writers of much more sterling poetry were Sir John Davies, Drummond of Hawthornden, Bishop Hall, and Donne. Sir John Davies was long Attorney-General, and Chief-Justice of the King's Bench at the time of his death (b., 1570; d., 1626). He is author of a poem on dancing called the "Orchestra," but his great work is his "Nosce Teipsum," or "Know Thyself," a work which treats on human knowledge and the immortality of the soul. It is written in quatrains, or four-lined stanzas, and is one of the finest philosophical poems in the language as it was one of the first. There are a life and feeling in the poem which make it always fresh, like the[177] waters of a pure and deep fountain. Speaking of the soul, he says:—

HAWTHORNDEN IN 1773. (After an Etching by John Clerk of Eldin.)

Drummond of Hawthornden, near Edinburgh, wrote, besides considerable prose, some exquisite poems and sonnets formed on the Italian model; and Bishop Hall, in his satires, presents some of the most graphic sketches of English life, manners, and scenery. Dr. Donne, who was Dean of St. Paul's, and the most fashionable preacher of his day, was also the most fashionable poet—we do not except Shakespeare. He was the rage, in fact, of all admirers of poetry, and was the head of a school of which Cowley was the most extravagant disciple, and of which Crashaw, Wither, Herrick, Herbert, and Quarles had more or less of the characteristics. In all these poets there was deep feeling of spirituality, religion, and wit, and, in some of them, of nature, dashed and marred by a fantastic style, full of quaintnesses and conceits. In some of them these were so tempered as to give them an original and piquant air, as in Herrick, Herbert, and Quarles; in others, as in Donne and Cowley, they degenerated into disfigurement and absurdity. But Donne (b., 1573; d., 1631) had great and shining qualities, keen, bold satire, profound and intellectual thoughts, and a most sparkling fancy, embedding rich touches of passion and pathos, yet so marred by uncouth and strange conceits, that one scarcely knows how to estimate his compositions. In a word, they are the exact antipodes of the natural style, and this fashion was carried to its utmost extravagance by Cowley. A stanza or two from a parting address of a lover to his[178] mistress may show something of Donne's quality and manner:—

George Wither (b., 1588; d., 1667) has much less of what a contemporary happily styled the "Occult School." He says himself that he took "little pleasure in rhymes, fictions, or conceited compositions for their own sakes," but preferred "such as flowed forth without study;" and indeed, he has far more nature. He was confined for years in the Marshalsea prison, for publishing a biting satire, called "Abuses Stripped and Whipped," and there he wrote a long allegorical poem, called "The Shepherds' Hunting," in which his description of Poetry is a perfect gem of fancy and natural feeling:—

Two songs of Wither's, quoted in Percy's "Reliques"—"The Steadfast Shepherd," and the one beginning

are exquisite lines, that no reader ever forgets.

Crashaw (b., 1616; d., 1650) was of a deeply religious tone of mind, and became a Catholic. His finest poems are his religious ones, and they are full of music and passionate reveries, yet disfigured by the Donne fashion, which Dryden, and after him Johnson, inaccurately termed the Metaphysical School, instead of the Fantastic or Singularity School. His very first poem, called "The Weeper," shows how he treated even sacred subjects:—

Carew, Suckling, Lovelace are poets whose merits, in their various styles, would deserve a separate examination, but we must pass on to three other poets, who have been more known to modern readers, and who would of themselves have stamped their age as one of genuine inspiration—Herbert, Herrick, and Quarles. Herbert and Herrick, like Donne, were clergymen, and in their quiet country parsonages poured forth some of the most exquisite lyrics which enrich any language. Herrick may be said to be the born poet of nature—Herbert of devotion. Robert Herrick (b., 1591; d., 1674) was of an old family of Leicestershire. His lyrics, so full of grace, are the very soul of Nature's melody and rapture. He revels in all the charms of the country—flowers, buds, fairies, bees, the gorgeous blossoming May, the pathos and antique simplicity of rural life; its marriages, its churchyard histories, its imagery of awaking and fading existence. The free, joyous, quaint, and musical flow and rhythm of his verse have all that felicity and that ring of woodland cadences which mark the snatches of rustic verse which Shakespeare scatters through his dramas. His "Night Piece to Juliet," beginning—

is precisely of that character. His "Daffodils" express the beautiful but melancholy sentiment which he so frequently found in nature:—

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Herrick's works are his "Hesperides" and his "Noble Numbers," the latter being religious, and not equal to the former.

In religious tone, intensity, and grandeur, George Herbert (b., 1593; d., 1633) is his superior. Herbert was in early life a courtier; his eldest brother being the celebrated sceptical writer, Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Herbert's hopes of Court preferment fortunately ceasing with the death of King James, he took orders, grew extremely religious, married an admirable wife, and retired to Bemerton parsonage, about a mile from Salisbury, where he died of consumption at the age of forty. Herbert was the very personification of Chaucer's "Good Parson." His life was one constant scene of piety and benevolence. Beloved by his parishioners, happy in his congenial wife, and passionately fond of music and his poetry, his days glided away as already in heaven. The music which he loved was poured into his poetry, which overflows with tender and profound feeling, the most chaste and seraphic imagination, and the most fervent devotion. James Montgomery, of later times, not a little resembled him in his pure and beautiful piety; but there is in Herbert a greater vigour, more dignity of style, and finer felicity of imagery. There is a gravity, a sublimity, and a sweetness which mingle in his devotional lyrics, and endear them for ever to the heart. His "Temple" is a poetic fabric worthy of a Christian minstrel, and stands as an immortal refutation of the oft-repeated theory, that religious poetry cannot be at once original and attractive. What can be more noble than the following stanzas from his poem entitled "Man"?—

Besides his "Temple," Herbert wrote a prose work, "The Priest to the Temple; or, the Country Parson," which is charmingly full of the simple, child-like piety of the author. He also collected a great number of proverbs, under the title of "Jacula Prudentum."

The third of the trio of poets who seem to class themselves together by their quaintness, their fancy, and their piety, is Francis Quarles, (b., 1592; d., 1644) a man who has been treated by many critics as a mere poetaster, but who is one of the most sterling poets which English genius has produced. Quarles was a gentleman and a scholar; in his youth he was cup-bearer to Elizabeth of Bohemia, and was finally ruined by taking the Royal side in the Civil Wars. He wrote various poetical works; "Argalus and Parthenia," "A Feast for Worms," "Zion's Elegies," and a series of elegies on the death of a friend, the son of Bishop Aylmer. But the great work of Quarles is his "Emblems," which originated in a Latin poem by Herman Hugo, a Jesuit, called "Pia Desideria." This book, condemned and overlooked by the great critics, like Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," has, from generation to generation, adorned with curious woodcuts, circulated amongst the people in town and country, till it has won an extraordinary popularity: and that it has well deserved it, we need only read such verses as these to convince ourselves:—

William Browne's "Britannia's Pastorals," written at this period, have been much and justly celebrated for their faithful transcripts of nature and country life. There are others, besides, that sue for recognition as among the genuine poets of those times—Raleigh, as a lyrical poet; Sir Henry Wotton; Henry Vaughan, the author of "Silex Scintillans" and "Olor Iscanus," a disciple of Herbert's, who would demand a notice were it only to show how freely Campbell borrowed the poem of "The Rainbow" from him:—

And so Campbell:—

Altogether, no age—not even our own—has produced such a constellation of poets, nor such a mass of exquisite, superb, and imperishable poetry. Whilst Shakespeare was fast departing, Milton was rising, and during this period wrote many of his inimitable smaller poems. Even honest Andrew Marvell, when freed from his labours in the great struggle for the Commonwealth, solaced himself with writing poetry, English and Latin, and some of it of no contemptible order, as in his boat-song of the exiles of the Bermudas:—

So he forgot occasionally polemics and politics in "a holy and a cheerful note" of his own. Even the saturnine Sir Thomas Overbury, whom Somerset and his wife had murdered in the Tower, could brighten up in poetry as in his "Choice of a Wife:"—

The prose of the age was equally remarkable. First and foremost stands Francis Bacon (b., 1561; d., 1626) with his "Novum Organum," a new instrument of discovery in philosophy, and other works of a kindred character. He tells us that in his youth he took a great aversion to the philosophy of Aristotle; being, he said, a philosophy only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the life of man; and in this mind he continued through life. Besides other works of less note, in 1605 he published one of great importance on "The Advancement of Learning;" soon after he published the outline or groundwork of his "Organum," under the title of "Cogitata et Visa; or, Things Thought Out and Seen," and proudly boasted of it as the greatest birth of time. He afterwards published the "Wisdom of the Ancients," and it was not till 1621, and when he had reached the summit of his profession, and been made Viscount of St. Albans, that he brought out his great work, "The Instauration of the Sciences," of which the "Novum Organum" is the second part. No work was so little understood at the time or has occasioned such a variety of opinions since. Bacon was well aware that such would be the case, for in his will he says that he leaves his name and memory to foreign nations, and to his own countrymen after some time be passed over. Bacon asserted that he had superseded the Aristotelian philosophy, and introduced a new and accurate method of inquiry, both into mind and matter, by experiment and induction. By one party he is declared to be the great renovator of true knowledge, and the father of the modern sciences by this method; by another, that he is nothing of the kind, and that modern discovery would have progressed as well without his New Instrument; that Aristotle pursued this method of induction himself, and that Galileo discovered the motion of the earth by the same means that Bacon taught at the same time. But whoever has acquainted himself with the system of Aristotle, and, still more, with the loose and absurd method by which it was taught in the schools before Bacon's time, must see that Bacon, if he did not altogether introduce the system, reduced it to precision and accuracy, and thus put an end to the windy logic and abortive practice of[181] the schools. They were accustomed to assume false and visionary premises, and reason from them by syllogisms which, of course, proved nothing. Bacon, by proceeding by analysis and synthesis—by first extracting from a substance, or a topic, everything that did not really belong to it, and then bringing these expurgated matters into contrast—drew sure conclusions, and advanced towards positive discovery. True, Galileo worked by the same method; but Bacon taught it, and made it clear to all understandings. To say, therefore, that modern science owes nothing to Bacon is to utter a self-evident falsity. Both in experimental philosophy and in metaphysical inquiry, it is Bacon's light, and not Aristotle's, which is followed. That Bacon himself made no great discoveries in prosecuting his own method proves nothing; because, though he was not sufficiently advanced in the actual knowledge of the properties of Matter, he saw and taught clearly how such knowledge was to be acquired, and applied to the legitimate development of Science. How completely ignorant was the age of real experimental philosophy, is shown by the ridicule and contempt which was cast on the "Novum Organum." Such men as Ben Jonson and Sir Henry Wotton expressed their profound admiration of it, but by the wits of the time Bacon was laughed at as little better than a maniac. King James said, in his almost blasphemous way, that it was like the peace of God—passing all understanding; and Lord Coke said—

SCENE AT THE FUNERAL OF CHILLINGWORTH. (See p. 182.)

He was represented by men eminent in the world's opinion as "no great philosopher—a man rather of show than of depth, who wrote philosophy like a lord chancellor." Abroad, as Bacon had foreseen, his work was received in a different manner, and pronounced by the learned one of the most important accessions ever made to philosophy. Whoever will carefully study it, will find not merely the exposition of his method, but views stretching into the heights and depths, not only of our own nature but of the nature and life of the Universe in which we move, thoughts which stamp the mind of Bacon as one of the most[182] capacious, many-sided, and profound that ever appeared.

Next to Bacon's we should place the prose writings of John Milton (b., 1608; d., 1674) in general importance and intellectual greatness. As Bacon's were directed to the advancement of true liberty in philosophy, Milton's were directed to the liberation of the Church and State from the tyranny of king and custom. His "Areopagitica," a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing, is a grand plea for the freedom of the press; his "Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes," and the "Best Means of Removing Hirelings out of the Church," go to the root of all hierarchical corruption. Besides these, his "Defence of the People of England" in reply to Salmasius, his "Second Defence," in reply to Peter du Moulin, and his "Eikonoklastes" in refutation of the "Eikon Basiliké," attributed to Charles I., but written by Dr. Gauden, and others of his prose works, are written in a somewhat stiff but lofty and massive style. They foreshow the great national poet of "Paradise Lost;" and cannot be read without a deep veneration for the great Puritan champion of the liberties and fame of England.

Next to these we should name the great advocates of Protestantism, Hales and Chillingworth. The "Discourse on Schism" is the writing of Hales which brought him into notice, and led to the most important consequences. It struck at the very root of tradition and submission to the authority of the Fathers, which Laud and his party had exerted themselves to establish; and it was followed out by Chillingworth (b., 1602; d., 1644) in his "The Religion of Protestants, a Safe Way to Salvation." In this work, which has since been styled the "bulwark of Protestantism," Chillingworth endeavoured to prove the Divine authority of the Bible on the basis of historic evidence, and having done that to his satisfaction, he declared that the religion of Protestants was the Bible, and nothing but the Bible. By this rule alone they are, in his opinion, to be judged; the Scriptures alone are to be the standard of their doctrines. He thus cut off all the claims of Popery built on tradition, and established the right of private judgment. In this he served not only the Established Church, to which he belonged, but every body of Christians whatever; for they had, according to his reasoning, the same right to interpret the Bible for themselves. This gave great scandal to the bigoted party in the Church. They declared that he had destroyed faith by reducing it to simple reason. He was violently attacked by both Catholics and Puritans. Knott, a Jesuit, and Dr. Cheynell, one of the Assembly of Divines, were his most determined opponents. Cheynell wrote against him, "Chillingworthi Novissima; or, the Sickness, Heresy, Death, and Burial of W. C., with a Profane Catechism selected out of his Works." Not satisfied with this, he attended his funeral, made a violent harangue against him, and flung the "Religion of Protestants" into his grave, crying, "Get thee gone, thou cursed book, which has seduced so many precious souls—get thee gone, thou corrupt, rotten book, earth to earth, dust to dust, go and rot with thy author." The Protestant Church has fully acknowledged the services of Chillingworth. Even those who deem that there are other evidences of Christianity than the historic evidences, or even the deductions of criticism, admit that his arguments go far to demonstrate the genuineness of the Bible records, and therefore of the Christian religion. The highest encomiums have been paid to the reasoning and eloquence of Chillingworth, by Locke, Clarendon, Gibbon, Dugald Stewart, and all our theological writers.

What Chillingworth did for Protestantism, Cudworth, in his great work, "The True Intellectual System of the Universe," did for religion in general, demolishing most completely the philosophy of atheism and infidelity. Barrow, Henry More, and Jeremy Taylor, added much wealth to the theological literature of the age. More and Barrow belong more properly to the next period. Taylor (b., 1613; d., 1677), who was the son of a barber, became one of the most celebrated preachers of that time, and both his sermons and his other works have received from many of our chief critics and historians the most encomiastic praises. He has been represented as a modern Chrysostom. Much of this praise he undoubtedly deserves, but readers coming to him after such extravagant laudation, experience a sensible disappointment. His "Holy Living and Dying" may be taken as the most favourable specimen of his writings; and though grave, pleasing, and consolatory, it does not strike us by any means as highly or brilliantly eloquent. His sermons, especially on the "Marriage Ring" and on the "House of Feasting," are of the same character. They are full of piety, sweetness, and grace, but they are not eloquence of the highest class. His sentences are often wearyingly long, his illustrations do not always appear very pertinent, and his manner is too much that of the father of the fourth century, whom he appears to have greatly formed himself upon.

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The writings of Archbishop Ussher and the sermons of Bishop Andrews deserve mention; but the works of Thomas Fuller, the author of the "Worthies of England," "The Church History of Great Britain," "The Holy and Profane States," and other books, are undoubtedly the most witty and amusing of the whole period. Next to Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," a work, too, of this time, they have furnished to modern authors more original ideas, more frequent and pregnant sentiments and allusions than any others in the language. They have been rivers of thought to men who had very little of their own. Harrington's "Oceana"—a political romance, written to illustrate the opinion that the great power of nations consists in their property—has ideas to repay a reader who has leisure and patience. A writer who has always taken a high rank for originality is Sir Thomas Browne, the author of "Religio Medici," "Urn Burial," "The Garden of Cyrus," etc. Browne ranges freely from the "quincunx" of the gardens of the ancients to the highest flights of metaphysical speculation. He is quaint, abrupt, and singular, but at the same time he is extremely suggestive of thought, and extends the sphere of human inquiry and sympathy far beyond the physical limits of most writers of his class. There is also a school of historians of this age of eminent merit, at the head of which stands Sir Walter Raleigh with his "History of the World;" Knowles with his able "History of the Turks;" Daniel with his "History of England" to the reign of Edward III.; and Thomas May, with the "History of the Long Parliament," and his "Breviary of the History of Parliament," two invaluable works. Camden's "Britannia" and "Annals" appeared at this epoch. Various chronicles were also issued at this period—Hall's "Union of the Families of York and Lancaster," Grafton's "Chronicle," Holinshed's, and Baker's. The works of Stow and Speed appeared in the early part of it,—Stow's "Summary of the English Chronicles," in 1565; his "Annals," 1573; his "Flores Historiarum," an enlarged edition of his chronicle, 1600; his "Survey of London," 1598. Speed's "Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain" belongs to 1606; and his "History of Great Britain" to 1614. Besides these appeared the "Memoirs" of Rushworth. Thurloe's and Whitelock's were written, but did not appear till a later period. The commencement of the Long Parliament marked also a remarkable era, that of the first English newspapers, under the name of "Diurnals," or daily records of Parliamentary proceedings. The idea once started, newspapers rapidly spread, so that between the Civil War and the Restoration, nearly two hundred were published, but none more frequently than once a week for some time, nor afterwards oftener than twice or three times a week. It was, moreover, an age of political tracts and pamphlets. In science the discovery of the circulation of the blood by Harvey, and the invention of logarithms by Napier, were the great events of that department. On the whole, the intellectual development of the age was as great and marvellous as was its political advance. To no other modern nation can we point, which in one and the same period has produced three such men as Shakespeare, Milton, and Bacon, amid a host of lesser, but scarcely less precious lights, at the same time that it was working out one of the most stupendous revolutions in human government, and the imperishable principles of it, that the world has seen. On reviewing this period, well might Wordsworth exclaim:—

And well did he add:—

Some of the eminent musical composers already mentioned (See Vol. II., pp. 378-9) continued to embellish the reign of James. Amongst these were Ford, Ward, Weelkes, and Orlando Gibbons. The first three are distinguished for their madrigals, and Weelkes for ballads, which are unrivalled. Ward's "Die not, Fond Man," is still as popular as ever. Gibbons composed both madrigals and cathedral music. He was organist of the Royal Chapel, and was made Doctor of Music by the University of Oxford. The sacred music of Gibbons is enough of itself to exempt England from the often advanced charge of being unmusical. In 1622, Dr. Heyther, a friend of Camden, the antiquary, established a professorship of music at Oxford. Charles I. was not only fond of music, but played himself with considerable skill on the viol da gamba. Dr. William Child, himself an excellent composer, was the organist of his chapel, and Lawes, the friend of Milton, who is referred to in his sonnets and in[184] "Comus," was patronised by him. Lawes was greatly admired, and justly, by other poets, especially Herrick and Waller. Charles I., however, set a bad example, by encouraging foreign musicians instead of his own subjects. He made Lanieri, an Italian, a man in real musical science far inferior to several Englishmen then living, "Master of our Music," and his example was only too diligently followed by princes and nobles in after times.

WILLIAM HARVEY.

The rise of the Commonwealth was the fall of music in England. The stern Puritans, and especially the Scottish Presbyterians, who dubbed an organ "a kist o' whistles," denounced all music as profane, and drove organs and orchestras from the churches. Nothing was tolerated but a simple psalm tune. Cromwell, however, did not partake of this fanaticism. He was fond of music, and frequently had musical entertainments at Whitehall and Hampton Court. The great organ which had been pulled out of Magdalen College, Oxford, he had carefully conveyed to Hampton Court, where it was one of his greatest solaces. Under Cromwell the lovers of music brought out their concealed instruments, and there was once more not only domestic enjoyment of music, but open musical parties.

REDUCED FACSIMILE OF FRONT PAGE OF NO. 26 OF "A PERFECT DIURNALL." (About three-fourths the size of the original.)

If the Civil War in England was auspicious to liberty, it was disastrous to art. From the time of Henry VIII. the British monarchs had shown a decided taste for the arts. Henry had munificently patronised Holbein, and had made various purchases of foreign chefs-d'œuvre. Prince Henry inherited the taste of his mother, instead of the[185] coarse buffoonery of his father, and showed a strong attachment to men of genius and to works of genius. He began a collection of paintings, bronzes, and medals, which fell to his brother Charles. Charles was an enthusiast in art, and had he not possessed his fatal passion for despotism, would have introduced a new era in England as regarded intellectual and artistic pursuits. The study of Italian models, both in literature and art, by the aristocracy, enabled the nobles to embrace the tastes of the monarch; and England would soon have seen the fine arts flourishing to a degree which they had never enjoyed before, and which would have prevented the dark ages that succeeded. During Charles's early rule the greatest artists of the Continent flocked over to England, and found a liberal reception there. Rubens, Vandyck, Jansen, Vansomer, Mytens, Diepenbeck, Pölemberg, Gentileschi, and others visited London, and Vandyck, the greatest of them all, remained permanently. The works of Vandyck, in England, are numerous, and if we except his famous picture of "The Crucifixion" at Mechlin, we[186] possess the best of his productions. At Windsor Castle, Hampton Court, Blenheim, Wilton House, and Wentworth House, the bulk of his finest pictures are to be seen. His portraits of our princes and the chief nobility of the time are familiar to all English eyes, and place him only second to Titian in that department. At Wilton House alone there are twenty-five of Vandyck's paintings; the portrait of Philip, Earl of Pembroke, with his family, is declared by Walpole to be itself a school of this master. His dramatic portrait of Strafford and his secretary, Mainwaring, at Wentworth House, Walpole asserts to be his masterpiece. Charles had proposed to him to paint the history of the Order of the Garter on the walls of the Banqueting House at Whitehall, but the sum he demanded—said to be eighty thousand pounds, but more probably a misprint for eight thousand pounds—caused Charles to delay it, and his political troubles soon put an end to the scheme. He painted several pictures of Charles on horseback, one of which is at Windsor, and another at Hampton Court.

Rubens came to England only as an ambassador, but Charles seized the opportunity to get him to paint the apotheosis of James, on the ceiling of the Banqueting House at Whitehall. This he, however, merely sketched whilst in London and painted it at Antwerp, receiving three thousand pounds for it. The Duke of Buckingham purchased Rubens's private collection of pictures, chiefly of the Italian school, but containing some of his own, for ten thousand pounds. These were sold by the Long Parliament, and now adorn the palaces of the Escurial at Madrid, and the Belvedere at Vienna. The large pictures in the latter gallery, "St. Francis Xavier preaching to the Indians," and "Loyola casting out Devils," are amongst the very finest of his productions.

Charles, besides making collections, and drawing round him great artists, projected the establishment of an academy of arts on a princely scale. But this remained only an idea, through the breaking out of the Revolution. Parliament, in 1645, caused all such pictures at Whitehall as contained any representation of the Saviour or the Virgin to be burnt, and the rest to be sold. Fortunately there were persons in power who had more rational notions, and much was saved. Cromwell himself secured the cartoons of Raphael for three hundred pounds, and thus preserved them to the nation, and as soon as he had the authority, he put a stop to the sale of the royal collections, and even detained many pictures that had been sold.

The native artists of this period were chiefly pupils of Rubens or Vandyck. Jamesone, called the Scottish Vandyck, was a pupil of Rubens at the same time with Vandyck—Charles sat to him. William Dobson, a pupil of Vandyck, was serjeant-painter to Charles, and Robert Walker, of the Vandyck school, was Cromwell's favourite painter, to whom we owe several admirable portraits of the Protector. There were also several miniature painters of the highest merit—the two Olivers, Hoskins, and Cooper.

Up to this period engravings had become by no means prominent in England. That there had been engravers we know from various books having been illustrated by them. Geminus and Humphrey Lloyd were employed by Ortelius, of Antwerp, on his "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum." Aggas had executed a great plan of London, and Saxon county maps. Various Flemish and French engravers found employment, as Vostermans, De Voerst, and Peter Lombard. Hollar, a Bohemian, was employed extensively till the outbreak of the Civil War, and illustrated Dugdale and other writers. But the chief English engraver of this period was John Payne.

Sculpture was by no means in great advance at this period. There were several foreign artists employed in England on tombs and monuments, but as they did not at that date put their names upon them, it is difficult to attribute to every man his own. Amongst these Le Sœur, who executed the equestrian statue of Charles I. at Charing Cross, Angier, and Du Val were the chief. John Stone, master mason to the king, was by far the most skilful native sculptor. Amongst his best efforts are the monuments of Sir George Holles at Westminster, and the statue of Sir Finnes Holles, also at Westminster. Sir Dudley Carleton's tomb at Westminster, and Sutton's tomb at the Charterhouse are also his. But the greatest boon to sculpture was the introduction at this period, by the Earl of Arundel, of the remains of ancient art, hence called the Arundel Marbles.

This was the epoch of the commencement of classical architecture. The grand old Anglo-Gothic had run its course. It fell with the Catholic Church, or continued only in a mongrel and degraded state, showing continually the progress of its decline. From Henry VIII. to James this state of things continued; the miserable tasteless style, which succeeded the downfall of the picturesque Tudor, being the only architecture.[187] The change to the classical was destined to be made by Inigo Jones, whose is the great name of this period. Jones had studied in Italy, and became aware of the graceful style which Vitruvius had introduced by modulation of the ancient Greek and Roman, and which Palladio had raised to perfection. The merit of Jones is that he imported Palladio's style substantially and completely, ready as it was to his hands, and wholly unknown in England. By this means Jones acquired a reputation for genius to which nothing that he has left justifies his claim. He was first engaged in designing the scenery and machinery of the masques which Ben Jonson wrote for the queen of James I. He was appointed architect to the queen and Prince Henry. On the death of the prince he went back to Italy, but on his return to London he was appointed Surveyor-General of the Royal Buildings. The first thing which he planned was the design for an immense palace for James on the site of Whitehall. There is a simple grandeur in the drawings of it which are left, which may fairly entitle him to a reputation for the introduction of an elegant domestic architecture, although it does not warrant the extravagant terms of eulogy which have been lavished on him. The only portion of this palace which was built is the Banqueting House (afterwards the Chapel Royal) at Whitehall, being the termination of the great façade, and which contains nothing very remarkable. Jones added a chapel to Somerset House, and a west front to St. Paul's, neither of which remains. That he was far from having conceived the true principles of architecture was shown by the fact that his west front of Old St. Paul's was a classical one engrafted on a Gothic building, and this solecism he was continually repeating. One of the most glaring instances of the kind is a classical screen which he raised in the Norman Cathedral of Durham. Amongst the chief remaining buildings of Inigo Jones from which an idea of his talent may be drawn, are the Piazza and St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden, of which Quatremere de Quincy says that the most remarkable thing about it is the reputation that it enjoys; Ashburnham House, Westminster; a house on the west side of Lincoln's Inn Fields originally built for the Earl of Lindsay; an addition to St. John's College, Oxford; and by far his finest work,—if his it be, which is doubtful—Heriot's Hospital at Edinburgh. He also superintended the erection of Old Greenwich Palace.

The general aspect of the towns and streets remained the same at this period as in the former. James issued proclamation after proclamation, ordering the citizens to leave off the half-timbered style, and build the fronts, at least, entirely of brick or stone; but this was little attended to, and many a strange old fabric continued to show the fashions of past ages.

If we are to believe the memoir writers and dramatists of this period, the national manners and morals had suffered a decided deterioration. Licentious as was the court of Queen Elizabeth, there was a certain dignity and outward decorum preserved, but James introduced such coarseness and grossness of manner, such low debauch and buffoonery, that even the salutary restraint which fashion had imposed was stripped away, and all classes exhibited the most revolting features. In the reign of Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth, we had such women as the daughters of Sir Thomas More, Lady Jane Grey, Catherine Parr, and others, who cultivated literature and philosophy, the Queens Mary and Elizabeth themselves setting the example in reading and translating the most illustrious classical authors. But after James came in, notwithstanding all his learned pedantry, you hear nothing more of such tastes amongst the Court ladies, and it is very singular that amid that blaze of genius which distinguished the time under review, we find no traces of feminine genius there. On the contrary, both English dramatists and foreign writers describe the morals and manners of women of rank as almost destitute of delicacy and probity. They are described as mingling with gentlemen in taverns amid tobacco smoke, songs, and conversation of the most ribald character. They allowed liberties which would startle women of the lowest rank in these times, were desperate gamblers, and those who had the opportunity were wholesale dealers in political influence. Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, boasts of the effect of the bribes that he was accustomed to distribute amongst them. Whilst such women as the infamous and murderous Countess of Essex and the Dowager Countess Villiers were the leading stars of the Court, the tone of morals must have been low indeed. Whilst the ladies were of this stamp, we cannot expect the gentlemen to have been better, and there is no doubt but that the honours and wealth and royal favour heaped on such men as Somerset, Hay, Ramsay, and Buckingham, made debauchery and villainy quite fashionable. The character of Englishmen on their travels, Howell tells us, was expressed in an Italian proverb:—

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"An Italianised Englishman is a devil incarnate." This was said of the debauched conduct of our young men on their travels. At home they were a contemptible mixture of foppery and profanity. Buckingham and the other favourites led the way. We have recorded the audacious behaviour of Buckingham at the courts of France and Spain, and the enormous foppery of his apparel. He had a dress of uncut white velvet, covered all over with diamonds, valued at eighty thousand pounds, a great feather of diamonds, another dress of purple satin covered with pearls, valued at twenty thousand pounds, and his sword, girdle, hatbands, and spurs were thickly studded with diamonds. He had, besides these, five-and-twenty other dresses of great richness, and his numerous attendants imitated him according to their means. They began now to patch their faces with black plaister, because the officers who had served in the German wars wore such to cover their scars; and the ladies did the same. Duelling was now introduced, cheating at play was carried to an immense extent, and the dandy effeminacy of the Cavaliers was unexampled. They had the utmost contempt of all below them, and any attempt to assume the style or courtesies of address which they appropriated to themselves was resented as actual treason. The term "Master" or "Mr." was used only to great merchants or commoners of distinction; and to address such as "gentlemen" or "esquires" would have roused all the ire of the aristocracy. In proceeding through the streets at night, courtiers were conducted with torches, merchants with links, and mechanics with lanthorns.

We may imagine the feeling with which the sober and religious Puritans beheld all this, and the proud contempt with which their strictures were received. When the Civil War broke out, which was a war of religious reform as much as of political, the Puritans displayed a grave manner, a sober dress, and chastened style of speech; and the Cavaliers, in defiance and contempt, swore, drank, and indulged in debauchery all the more, to mark their superiority to the "sneaking Roundhead dogs."

Charles endeavoured to restrain this loose and indecent spirit, but it was too strong for him; and though the Puritans put it effectually down during the Commonwealth, it came back in a flood with the lewd and ribald Charles II. Charles I. also introduced a more tasteful style of Court pageants and festivities. Under James all the old fantastic masques and pageantries—in which heathen gods, goddesses, satyrs, and giants figured—prevailed. Charles gave to his pageantries a more classical character, but when the Puritans came in they put them all down, along with Maypoles, and all the wakes, and church-ales, and the like, which James had encouraged by his "Book of Sports." The Court festivals, so long as the monarchy remained, were marked by all the profusion, displays of jewellery, and dresses of cloth of gold and embroidery, which prevailed in the Tudor times. The old-fashioned country life, in which the gentlemen hunted and hawked, and the ladies spent their leisure in giving bread to the poor and making condiments, preserves, and distilled waters, was rapidly deserted during the gay days of James and Charles, and the fortune-making of favourites.

Merchants and shopkeepers were growing rich, and though they still conducted their businesses in warehouses which would appear mean and miserable to City men of to-day, and in shops with open fronts, before which the master or one of his apprentices constantly paraded, crying, "What d'ye lack?" had stately suburban houses, and vied with the nobles in their furniture and mode of living. The moral condition of the people of London at this period, according to all sorts of writers, was something inconceivably frightful. The apprentices, as we have seen, were a turbulent and excitable race, who had assumed a right to settle political matters, or to avenge any imagined attack on their privileges. At the cry of "Clubs!" they seized their clubs and swords and rushed into the streets to ascertain what was amiss. They were easily led by their ringleaders against any body or any authority that was supposed to be invading popular rights. We have seen them surrounding the Parliament House, demanding such measures as they pleased, and executing their notions of suitable chastisement of offenders by setting fire to Laud's house, and breaking down the benches of the High Commission Court. They were equally ready to encounter and disperse the constabulary or the City Guard, and to fight out their quarrels with the Templars, or others with whom they were at feud.

[189]

SHOPKEEPER AND APPRENTICE IN THE TIME OF CHARLES I. (See p. 188.)

The riots of the apprentices, however, had generally something of a John-Bullish assertion of right and justice in them; but the streets and alleys of London were infested with an equally boisterous and much more villainous crew of thieves and cut-purses. Pocket-picking was then, as now, taught as a science, and was carried to a wonderful perfection of dexterity. All kinds of rogueries were practised on country people, the memory of which remains yet in rural districts, and is still believed applicable to the metropolis. These vagabonds had their retreats about the Savoy and the brick-kilns of Islington, but their headquarters were in a part of Whitefriars called Alsatia, which possessed the right of sanctuary and swarmed with debtors, thieves, bullies, and every kind of miscreants, ready on an alarm, made by the sound of a horn, to turn out in mobs and defend their purlieus from constables and sheriffs' officers. Walking the streets in the daytime was dangerous from the affrays often going on between the apprentices and the students of the Temple, or between the butchers and weavers, or from the rude jostling and practical jokes of bullies and swashbucklers; but at night there was no safety except under a strong guard. Then Alsatia, the Savoy, and the numerous other dens of vice and violence, poured forth their myrmidons, and after nine o'clock there was no safety for quiet passengers. If we add to this description the narrowness of the roads and alleys, the unpaved and filthy state of the streets, and undrained and ill-ventilated houses, London was anything at this period but an attractive place. The plague was a frequent visitant, and we are told that kites and ravens were much kept to devour the offal and filth of the streets, instead of scavengers. In the country, things were not much better. The roads were terrible, and were infested by sturdy bands of robbers. In the neighbourhood of London, Finchley, Blackheath, Wimbledon, and Shooter's Hill were places of widespread fame for daring highwaymen. It was high time for the Puritans to come into power, and to put both town and country under a more wholesome discipline. Cromwell's soldiers, quartered in various parts of the metropolis, and his major-generals administering martial law in different parts of the country, soon altered the face of things. He shut up Spring Gardens, a place of nocturnal resort for assignations for traffickers in political corruption, and for various licentiousness; and instead of fellows prowling about the streets with sweetmeats in their pockets to kidnap children, and sell them to the plantations, he sent these scoundrels freely thither themselves. Amongst the gloomy features of this period was the relentless persecution of old[190] women, under the belief that they were witches; a practice commenced by James, but continued by the Puritans, who sent out Hopkins, the notorious witchfinder, who, in the years 1645 and 1646, traversed the country, condemning and putting to death hundreds of them, till he himself was accused of being a wizard, and was subjected to the same fate. From 1640 to the Restoration, four thousand persons are said to have perished under charge of witchcraft. In Scotland this terrible practice was carried on with even aggravated cruelties, in order to extort confession.

The sports of the aristocracy, gentry, and merchants were much the same that they had been hitherto. Hunting was the favourite pastime of James, and therefore was not likely to be neglected by the country gentry. He was also fond of hawking, and kept alive that pastime, which was dying out, some time longer. Ball games had much superseded the jousts and tournaments of other days. Tennis retained its high favour, and billiards and pall-mall, or striking a ball through a ring suspended to a pole, were becoming fashionable. Bowling, cards, dice, dancing, masques, balls, and musical entertainments varied town life. The common people stuck to their foot-ball, quoits, pitching the bar, cricket, shovel-board, bull- and bear-baiting, and cock-fighting. The Puritans put down May-games, Whitsun-ales, morrice-dances, and all amusements that savoured of a Catholic origin. They also humanely suppressed, as far as they could, the savage sports of bear and bull-baiting. Pride and Hewson killed all the bears at the bear-garden to put an end to that cruel pastime, and thence originated Butler's "Hudibras." The bowling-greens of the English were famous, and horse-racing was much in vogue. In Scotland the Reformation put to flight all sorts of games, dancing, and merry-makings, as sinful and unbecoming of Christians, and polemic discussions were the only excitements which relieved the ascetic gloom.

The interiors of houses were in this period greatly embellished, and the splendour of hangings of beds and windows had strikingly increased. Rich velvets and silks embroidered with cloth of gold and cloth of silver, and coloured satins of the most gorgeous hues abounded. The cushions of couches and chairs were equally costly, and instead of the ancient tapestry, paper and leather hangings, richly stamped and gilt, covered the walls. The Flemish artists had been called in to paint the ceilings with historical or mythological scenes, and on the walls hung the masterpieces of Flemish and Italian art. Carpets were beginning to supersede rushes on the floors, but were more commonly used as coverings for tables. In addition to the carved cabinets of oak, ebony, and ivory, and the richly-covered cushioned and high-backed chairs of the Tudor dynasty, Flemish and Dutch furniture of somewhat formal but still elegant design abounded. Superb ornaments of ivory and china had found their way from the East, and became heirlooms in great mansions. Altogether, the houses of the wealthy of those times presented a scene of stately elegance and luxury that has not since been surpassed.

The costume of the reign of James was but a continuation of that of Elizabeth. The men still wore the stiff plated ruff, occasionally varied by a plain horizontal one with lace on its edges. The long peasecod-bellied doublet continued, and the large stuffed Gallic or Venetian hose, slashed and quilted, had assumed more preposterous dimensions from James's timidity; he having both these and the doublets quilted to resist the stabs of the stiletto. Towards the end of his reign a change was noticeable. Instead of the long-waisted doublet there were short jackets, with false hanging sleeves behind; the trunk hose were covered with embroidered straps, tucked short at the thigh, and the hose gartered below the knee. We are told how they covered their cloaks and dresses with jewels on State occasions. They wore feathers at such times in their hats. Taylor, the Water Poet, says the gallants of his time

The old cloth stockings were obsolete, and stockings of silk, thread, or worsted used.

The ladies of the Court were still in the stiff Elizabethan farthingale, elevated collar, and hair dressed in the lofty style. Anne of Denmark was Elizabeth over again. But in domestic life we find the ladies attired in a far more natural style, without the farthingale, with falling collars, plain or edged with lace, and the hair with ringlets falling on each side; and this simple and more elegant fashion became at length universal in Charles's reign.

The male costume of Charles's time was extremely elegant. At the commencement of the Civil War no contrast could be greater than that of the appearance of the Cavaliers and the[191] Roundheads. The Cavalier dress consisted of a doublet of silk, satin, or velvet, with large loose sleeves slashed up the front, the collar covered by a falling band of the richest point lace, with Vandyck edging. The long breeches, fringed or pointed met the tops of the wide boots, which were also commonly ruffled with lace or lawn. A broad Flemish beaver hat, with a rich hatband and plume of feathers, was set on one side of the head, and a Spanish rapier hung from a most magnificent baldrick, or sword belt, worn sash-wise over the right shoulder, and on one shoulder was worn a short cloak with an air of carelessness. In war this short cloak was exchanged generally for the buff coat, which was also richly laced, and sometimes embroidered with gold and silver, and round the waist was worn a broad silk or satin scarf tied in a large bow behind or over the hip; or a buff jerkin without sleeves was worn over the doublet, and the lace or lawn on the boots dispensed with. The beard was worn very peaked, with small upturned moustaches, and the hair long and flowing on the shoulders. In contrast to this the Parliamentarians wore their hair cut short—whence the name of Roundhead—and studied a sober cut and colour of clothes. The first appearance of Cromwell in Parliament, described by Sir Philip Warwick, has been taken as a sufficient specimen of his costume when Protector. But Cromwell was then but a gentleman-farmer, and appeared in careless rustic habit. "I came one morning into the House," says Warwick, "well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking whom I knew not, very ordinarily apparelled, for it was a plain cloth suit, which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor. His hat was without a hatband." But no one knew better than Cromwell what was necessary to the decorum of station, and very different is the account of his appearance when going to be sworn Protector. "His Highness was in a plain but rich suit, black velvet, with cloak of the same; about his hat a broad band of gold."

The ladies' dresses of Charles's time rapidly changed from the stiff ruffs and farthingales to a more natural and elegant style. With Mrs. Turner, their introducer, went out in James's time the yellow starch ruffs and bands, for she appeared, when hanged for her share in Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, in her own yellow ornaments at the gallows. But all ruffs grew obsolete in Charles's reign, and a lady of that day would scarcely be distinguished from a lady of this. The hair was dressed much as in modern manner, the dress fell naturally without hoops, and the broad collar lay gracefully on the shoulders. The citizens' and Puritans' wives, as well as country women, wore the broad high-crowned hat, and country women appeared still in plaited ruff, and a muffler over the mouth in cold weather, tied up to the back of the head. A lady had generally her feather fan in her hand, as the modern one has her parasol.

Armour was fast disappearing; it was of little use against cannon and matchlocks. James thought armour a very good invention, for it hindered a man as much from hurting his enemy as it defended himself. But in his time little but a cuirass for the body and a helmet or bonnet was used. To the rest for the heavy matchlock in this reign was affixed a long rapier blade, called a "swine's feather," or "bristle," and used as a soldier now uses the bayonet. In the Civil War most of the officers wore only a cuirass over a buff coat; and though some of the infantry were almost fully sheathed in armour, it was soon found to be too cumbersome for rapid movements, and with the exception of the cuirassiers, who were clad in armour except the legs, they were seldom defended by more than a back- and breast-plate, and a head-piece. During the war the cavalry was divided into cuirassiers, lancers, arquebusiers, carbineers, and dragoons, according to the different weapon or armour which they carried,—the cuirass, the lance, the musket, the heavy arquebus, the carbine, or the dragon, a sort of blunderbuss. At this period the firelock was introduced by the poultry-stealers of Holland, and called after them the snaphance, or hen-stealer. The superiority of the flint-lock over the match- or cumbrous wheel-lock was soon seen and adopted.

The moral condition of the people, as we have just seen, was at this period deplorable. The neglect of education left the bulk of the working class ignorant and depraved, and the long peace which the reigns of Elizabeth and James maintained had so greatly augmented the wealth and prosperity of the nation, that the insolence of illiterate abundance added to the public exhibition of rudeness and riot. In one respect, however, the whole people had become enlightened—they had learned very extensively their political rights. The rise and opulence of the merchants and middle classes, through commerce and through the confiscation of Church lands, had impressed them with a feeling of their importance, and led them no longer to bow and cringe before the nobles, but to claim their proper authority as the third, and, indeed, the greatest estate. From the[192] time when Henry VIII. set agoing discussions regarding religious liberty, and permitted the Bible to appear in good plain English, the light which sprang up on the subject of human rights was wonderful, and could never be withdrawn or extinguished. The mistake, as regarded royal prerogative, was soon seen, and an endeavour was made to limit the reading of the Bible to the nobles and the learned only, but it was in vain. Those who had the Scriptures soon spread abroad knowledge of their great principles, and as the Stuart government was daily found to be weaker, the sense of popular right was growing stronger and more general. So soon as Parliament began to resist the encroachments of the Crown, and even to do it with arms in their hands, it became necessary to convince the people at large that their rights were at stake, and to explain what these rights were. Such knowledge as this could never be taken back again, and accordingly from this period the principle that all power proceeds from the people and exists for the people, became the great fixed sentiment of the nation.

The physical condition of the kingdom, therefore, during the reign of James, was evidently much improved, and almost justifies the glowing description of Clarendon, made to set off the mischiefs of resistance to royalty. "For twelve years before the meeting of the Long Parliament," he says, "the kingdom enjoyed the greatest calm and the fullest measure of felicity that any people, in any age, for so long a time together, had been blessed with, to the wonder and envy of all other parts of Christendom." It was inevitable that much of this prosperity must be overthrown, or rather interrupted by a ten years' fierce contest, like that which arose between the Crown and the people. That the people were not only severely pressed by taxation to support this contest, but that they were harassed, plundered, and had their agricultural operations impeded, and their crops destroyed by the combatants is certain. Consequently, during the great struggle, the price of country produce rose extremely. Wheat, which in the early part of Charles's reign was as low as 44s. a quarter, rose after 1640 to 73s.; to 85s. in 1648; and in 1649 it was 80s.; but no sooner was the Commonwealth established, and peaceful operations were renewed, than it fell as rapidly, being, in 1650, 76s. 8d., and falling so much that in 1654 it was down to 26s. This was the lowest, and it averaged during the remainder of the Protectorate, 45s., as nearly as possible its price at the commencement of the war. Other articles of life rose and fell from the same causes in the same proportion; the prices of the following articles, except during the War, may be regarded as the average ones for this period:—A fat cygnet, about 8s.; pheasants, from 5s. to 6s.; turkeys, 3s. to 4s.; fat geese, 2s. each; ducks, 8d.; best fatted capons, 2s. 4d.; hens, 1s.; pullets, 1s. 6d.; rabbits, 7d.; a dozen pigeons, 6s.; eggs, three for 1d.; fresh butter, 6d. per pound. Vegetables, being so little cultivated, were very dear: cauliflowers, 1s. 6d. each; potatoes, 2s. per pound; onions, leeks, carrots, and potherbs, dear, but not quite so high-priced. Mutton and beef were about 3-1/2d. per pound. The wages of servants hired by the year and kept, were, for a farm servant man, from 20s. to 50s. a year, according to his qualifications; those obtaining more than 40s. were expected to be able to do all the skilled work, as mowing, threshing, thatching, making ricks, hedging, and killing cattle and pigs for daily consumption. Women servants, who could bake, brew, dress meat, make malt, etc., obtained about 26s. a year, and other women servants, according to age and ability, from that sum down to 14s. a year. A bailiff obtained 52s. Labourers, or artisans hired by the day, during harvest, had, a mower, 5d. a day and his food; a reaper, haymaker, hedger, or ditcher, 4d.; a woman reaper, 3d.; a woman haymaker, 2d.; if no food was given these sums were doubled. At other times labourers received from Easter to Michaelmas, 3d. a day with food, or 7d. without; and from Michaelmas to Easter, 2d. with food, and 6d. without. Carpenters and bricklayers received 8d. a day with meat, or 1s. without; sawyers, 6d. with meat, or 1s. without; and other handicrafts nearly the same, through the year till Michaelmas, after that much less.

The great extension of foreign commerce, and the introduction of coffee, spices, cottons, and other new tropical produce, increased the comfort of domestic life. Yet, with all this prosperity, there still abounded much pauperism and vagabondism. The war naturally had this consequence—great numbers of the dispersed Cavaliers and royal troopers taking to the highways, and to a loose and predatory life. Many parishes, too, were not disposed to burden themselves with the imposition of the poor laws, which had been strengthened by various enactments since the 43rd of Elizabeth, and they therefore drove out of their boundaries the unemployed to seek work elsewhere. This but increased the vagabondism and pilfering, and time alone could enable the Government to bring the poor-law into general operation.

[193]

GREAT SEAL OF CHARLES II.

CHAPTER VII.

CHARLES II.

Character of Charles II.—The King's First Privy Council—The Convention Parliament—Submission of the Presbyterian Leaders—The Plight of those who took Part in the late King's Trial—Complaisance of the Commoners—Charles's Income—The Bill of Sales—The Ministers Bill—Settlement of the Church—Trial of the Regicides—Their Execution—Marriage of the Duke of York—Mutilation of the Remains of Cromwell—The Presbyterians Duped—The Revenue—Fifth-Monarchy Riot—Settlements of Ireland and Scotland—Execution of Argyll—Re-establishment of Episcopacy—The new Parliament violently Royalist—The King's Marriage—His Brutal Behaviour to the Queen—State of the Court—Trial of Vane and Lambert—Execution of Vane—Assassination of Regicides—Sale of Dunkirk—The Uniformity Act—Religious Persecution—Strange Case of the Marquis of Bristol—Repeal of the Triennial Act—The Conventicle and Five Mile Acts—War with Holland—Appearance of the Plague—Gross Licentiousness of the Court—Demoralisation of the Navy—Monk's Fight with the Dutch—The Great Fire.

Charles II. did not want sense. He was naturally clever, witty, and capable of a shrewd insight into the natures and purposes of men. He gave proof of all these qualities in the observation which we have recorded, at the close of the day when he was restored to his paternal mansion, that everybody assured him that they had always ardently desired his return, and that if they were to be believed, there was nobody in fault for his not having come back sooner but himself. Yet, with many qualities, which, if united to a fine moral nature, would have made him a most popular monarch, he was utterly destitute of this fine moral nature. He had had much, long, and varied experience of mankind, and had alternately seen their base adulation of royalty in power, and their baser treatment of princes in misfortune. But Charles had not the nobility to benefit by this knowledge. He had familiarised himself with every species of vice and dissipation. He was become thoroughly heartless and degraded. His highest ambition was to live, not for the good and glory of his kingdom, but for mere sensual indulgence. He was habituated to a life of the lowest debauchery, and surrounded by those who were essentially of the same debased and worthless character. To such a man had the nation—after all its glorious struggles and triumphs for the reduction of the lawless pride of royalty, and after the decent and rigorous administration of the Commonwealth—again surrendered its fate and fortunes, and surrendered them without almost any guarantee. The declaration of Breda was the only security which it had, and that was rendered perfectly nugatory by the reservation of all decisions on those questions to a Parliament which the Court could control and corrupt.

Monk presented to the king a paper containing a list of names of such persons as he professed to consider to be the most eligible for the royal service either in the Council or the Ministry. But Clarendon, who was the king's great adviser,[194] having adhered to him and his interests ever since his escape to the Continent, perused the catalogue with no little surprise. It consisted, he tells us, "of the principal persons of the Presbyterian party, to which Monk was thought to be most inclined, at least to satisfy the foolish and unruly inclinations of his wife. There were likewise the names of some who were most notorious in all the factions; and of some who, in respect of their mean qualities and meaner qualifications, nobody could imagine how they came to be named." They were, in fact, such as had been thrust on Monk by the Parliamentary leaders, who were all striving to secure their own interests; not even the Presbyterians foreseeing how severely they were punishing themselves by the restoration of the monarchy. Monk, on the Chancellor's remonstrance as to many of these names—amongst which only those of the Marquis of Hertford and the Earl of Southampton belonged to men who had at all adhered to the Royal cause—soon let him into the secret, that they were such as had importuned him to do them good offices with the king, and that he never intended to do more than forward the paper, and leave the king to do as he pleased. Clarendon soon, therefore, made out a very different list of names for the Privy Council, though he found it politic to insert almost as many names of Presbyterians as of Royalists, but with the purpose of gradually changing them.

The first Privy Council of Charles, therefore, consisted of the king's brothers, the Dukes of York and Gloucester, the Marquis of Ormond, the Earls of Lindsay, Southampton, Manchester, St. Albans, Berkshire, Norwich, Leicester, and Northumberland, the Marquises of Hertford and Dorchester, Lords Saye and Sele, Seymour, Colepepper, Wentworth, Roberts, and Berkeley, Sir Frederick Cornwallis, Sir George Carteret, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Sir Edward Nicholas, General Monk, and Morrice, his creature, who had assisted in the negotiations with the king, Colonel Charles Howard, Arthur Annesley, Denzil Holles, and Montague, general, or rather admiral, for as yet no distinctly naval officer was known—military commanders fought both on sea and land.

Amongst these Clarendon was Lord Chancellor and Prime Minister, the Duke of York was already appointed Lord High Admiral, to which was now added the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports and other offices. Sir Edward Nicholas and Morrice were joint Secretaries of State; the Earl of Southampton was made Lord Treasurer, the Marquis of Ormond Lord Steward, and the Earl of Manchester Lord Chamberlain. Monk was appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the forces in the three kingdoms, according to stipulation, and to this office was now added Master of the Horse, and he was created Duke of Albemarle, in addition to several inferior titles. His wife, who was originally a milliner, and after that had been his mistress, now figured boldly and ambitiously amongst the ladies of the Court.

The Parliament, both Lords and Commons, lost no time in seizing all such of the late king's judges as survived or were within the kingdom. The Parliament, which had no proper election—having been summoned by no lawful authority, but at Monk's command, and had obtained the name of Convention Parliament—passed an Act, which Charles authenticated, to legalise themselves, notwithstanding which it was still called by the old name of the Convention. Before the king could arrive, however, they had seized Clement, one of the king's judges, and ordered the seizure of the goods and estates of all the other regicides. On the king's arrival Denzil Holles and the Presbyterians—whose resentment against the Independents, who had so often put them out of Parliament, was blinded by desire of vengeance to the fact that the Royalists would not be long in turning on them who had done their best to dethrone Charles I., though they had not joined in putting him to death—now went in a body to Whitehall, and throwing themselves at Charles's feet, confessed that they were guilty of the horrid crime of rebellion, and implored the king's grace and pardon. Charles affected the most magnanimous clemency, and advised them to pass a Bill of Indemnity, which he had promised from Breda. But this apparent liberality was only the necessary step to the completion of his vengeance, for the declaration left to Parliament such exceptions as it thought proper; and in the present complying mood of Parliament, these exceptions would be just as numerous as the Court required. Monk had, in negotiating with Charles and Clarendon, recommended that only four should be excepted, but Clarendon and the king had long made up their minds that few of the king's judges should escape; and in this they were boldly urged on by the Royalists, who, says Clarendon, could not bear to meet the men on the king's highways, now they were the king's again, who rode on the very horses they had plundered them of, and had their houses and estates in possession.

The Commons were as ready as the Court for vengeance against their late successful rivals and[195] masters; and though Monk again urged that not more than seven should be excepted on a capital charge, they decided that ten should be tried for their lives, namely, Scott, Holland, Lisle, Barkstead, Harrison, Saye, Jones, Coke, the solicitor, Broughton, clerk to the High Court of Justice, and Dendy, who had acted as serjeant-at-arms during the trial. They then requested the king to order by proclamation all those concerned in his late father's trial to surrender themselves within fourteen days. About a score felt it much the safest to escape across the sea, but nineteen surrendered—all, but the ten doomed to death, imagining they should escape with some minor punishment. But the thirst for vengeance became every day more violent. The Commons named twenty more for exception, whose lives were to be spared, but who were to suffer forfeiture of estate and perpetual imprisonment. These were Vane, St. John, Haselrig, Ireton, brother of the deceased major-general, Desborough, Lambert, Fleetwood, Axtel, Sydenham, Lenthall, Burton, Keeble, Pack, Blackwell, Pyne, Deane, Creed, Nye, Goodwin, and Cobbett. Moreover, all such as had not surrendered to the late proclamation were excluded from the benefit of the Bill of Indemnity.

This sanguinary list, however, did not satisfy the Lords when the Bill was sent up to them. They had suffered such indignities from the Independent leaders, that they could not bring themselves to forgive, and they altered the Bill, voting that every man who had sat on the king's trial, or signed the death-warrant, should be tried as a traitor for his life. They went even further, and excepted six others, who had neither sat nor voted—namely, Vane, Hacker, Lambert, Haselrig, Axtel, and Peters; and, as if luxuriating in revenge, they allowed the relatives of several of their own body who had been put to death under the Commonwealth, amongst whom were the Earl of Derby and the Duke of Hamilton, to sit as judges. The Commons accepted the Bill as thus altered, and would have made it still more atrocious, but Charles, who was extremely pressed for money, sent desiring them to come to an end with this Bill, and hasten the money Bill.

The Commons voted the king seventy thousand pounds a month for present necessities, and then proceeded to pass not only the Indemnity Bill, but to vote the king a liberal permanent revenue. In striking contrast to the early Parliaments of his father, they at once gave him the tonnage and poundage for life. Although this was one of the chief causes of the quarrel between Charles I. and his Parliament, and one of the main causes of the war and of his decapitation, this Parliament yielded the point at once. They, moreover, ordered that the army, of which Charles was afraid, should be disbanded, and that the 29th of May should be kept as a day of perpetual thanks giving to Providence, for having restored his majesty to the nation. All these favours to Charles they offered with the humility of men who were seeking favours for themselves, and being urged by Charles to settle the amount of his revenue altogether, they appointed a committee of inquiry on the subject, which decided that, as the income of his father had been about one million one hundred thousand pounds, his income should, considering the different value of money, be fixed at the unexampled sum of one million two hundred thousand pounds per annum. This income was to be settled by a Bill in the next session.

The question of religion, and the question of forfeited property, whether belonging to the Crown, the Church, or individuals, was next brought on, and led to most stormy discussions. The result was that two Bills were passed, called the Bill of Sales and the Ministers Bill. By the Bill of Sales all the Crown lands were ordered to be restored forthwith; but the Church lands were left in abeyance for the present; the lands of individuals were also deferred to a future session. The Ministers Bill was intended to expel from the pulpits of the Church all such ministers as had been installed there since the Parliament came into power. It did not, however, give satisfaction to the Church, for it admitted all such as entered on livings legally vacant at the time to retain them. A considerable number of Presbyterian clergymen thus remained in possession, but the Independents were thoroughly excited by a clause which provided that all ministers who had not been ordained by an ecclesiastic, who had interfered in the matter of infant baptism, or had been concerned in the trial of the king, or in its justification from press or pulpit, should be excluded. Thus the Royalists were incensed at the Bill of Sales, which they called an indemnity Bill for the king's enemies, and of oblivion for his friends, and the clergy of the Church were equally enraged to see a great number of livings still left to the Presbyterians.

On the 13th of September Charles prorogued the Parliament till the 6th of November, and promised during the recess to have what was called the "healing question of religion," that is, the[196] settlement of the Church, discussed by competent parties, and to publish a declaration on the subject. Accordingly the Presbyterians were very soon promised a meeting with some of the Episcopalian clergy, and they were quite willing, seeing that they could no longer have matters their own way in the Church, to accept a platform of compromise laid down by Archbishop Ussher before his death, in which scheme the Church was to be governed by a union of suffragan bishops and synods or presbyteries, so as to unite the two great sects. But the foremost prelates and clergy of the Episcopalian Church, who were resolved to have the whole State Church to themselves, would listen to nothing so liberal or unorthodox. They refused to meet the Presbyterian clergy, and therefore Charles summoned the leaders of this sect to meet some of his chief privy councillors and ministers, as well as various bishops, at Whitehall, where Baxter and Calamy again proposed Ussher's scheme, which was as zealously rejected by the Episcopalians. The Presbyterians quoted the Eikon Basilike, to show that Charles I. was favourable to Ussher's plan, but Charles, who knew very well that the book was Dr. Gauden's, and not his father's, drily remarked that all in that work was not gospel. But what proved a complete damper to all parties, was a proposal read by Clarendon as having the king's approbation, namely, that others, besides the two parties in question, should have full liberty for religious worship, and should not be disturbed by magistrate or peace officer, provided they themselves did not disturb the peace. This was at once felt to mean toleration to the Catholics as well as the Nonconformists, and was received with silent repugnance.

On the 25th of October was issued the promised declaration for healing the strife. It went to unite the Presbyterian form of government with the Episcopal. There were to be presbyteries and synods, and no bishop was to ordain ministers or exercise the censures of the Church without the advice and assistance of the presbyteries. Presbyters were to be elected deans and canons; a number of divines of each sect were to be chosen by the king to revise the Liturgy, and all points of difference should be left unsettled till this revision was made; and no person should be molested on account of taking the Sacrament standing or kneeling, for making or not making the sign of the cross in baptism, for bowing or not bowing at the name of Jesus, for wearing or not wearing the surplice. The Presbyterians were delighted at the prospect thus afforded of free admission to good livings and dignities; but the Episcopalians intended nothing less than that any such thing should ever come to pass.

With more earnest intention the Government proceeded to judge the Regicides, and soon stepped up to the knees in blood. On the 9th of October the trials commenced at the Old Bailey, before thirty-four Commissioners appointed for the purpose. True bills were found against twenty-nine of the prisoners—namely, Sir Hardress Waller, Harrison, Carew, Cook, Hugh Peters, Scott, Clement, Scrope, Jones, Hacker, Axtel, Heveningham, Marten, Millington, Tichbourne, Row, Kilburn, Harvey, Pennington, Smith, Downes, Potter, Garland, Fleetwood, Meyn, J. Temple, P. Temple, Hewlet, and Waite.

The first man tried was Waller, who pleaded guilty, and had his life spared; the second was Harrison, the late Major-General. Harrison was a sincere and honest Fifth-Monarchy man. He said, "I humbly conceive that what was done, was done in the name of the Parliament of England; that what was done, was done by their power and authority; and I do humbly conceive it is my duty to offer unto you in the beginning, that this court, or any court below the High Court of Parliament, hath no jurisdiction of their actions." But all argument was useless addressed to such ears. Sir Orlando Bridgeman, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, who had the management of the trials, told the grand jury in his charge that no authority whatever, either of a single person or of Parliament, had any coercive power over the king. This man had received very different treatment under the Protectorate. He had submitted to Cromwell, who had not only accepted his submission, but had allowed him privately to practise the law, and in this capacity he had acted as spy and agent for Cromwell. He continually interrupted Scott, Carew, and others, when they justified their conduct on the same ground of Parliamentary sanction. The people, notwithstanding their late acclamations, could not help raising loud murmurs at these arbitrary interruptions. The prisoners defended themselves with calm intrepidity, and when Bridgeman retorted on Carew that the Parliament that he talked of was the Commons alone, a thing without precedent, Carew replied, "there never was such a war, or such a precedent;" and he boldly upbraided Bridgeman with giving evidence as a witness whilst sitting as a judge. All these were condemned to death. The clever and facetious Harry Marten made a most ingenious and persevering defence,[197] and extremely puzzled the Commissioners. He took exception to the indictment, declaring that he was not even mentioned in it. When he was shown the name Henry Marten, he objected that that was not his name, which was Harry Marten. This was overruled, but he went on to plead that the statute of Henry VIII. exempted from high treason any one acting under a king de facto, though he should not be king de jure; that the Parliament at that time was the supreme power, including the functions of both king and Parliament; that it was, in fact, the only authority there was in the country; and that it had from age to age been contended and admitted that God indicated the rightful power by giving it victory. Such was the authority that God at the time had set over them, and under that they had acted. His arguments were thrown away, and it was on this occasion that the absurd story—a typical example of many other silly stories that continued to be circulated for generations—was first given in evidence by a soldier, of him and Cromwell, on the signing of the death-warrant of the king, wiping their pens on each other's faces.

CHARLES II.

After a trial in which every ingenious and valid plea was advanced by the prisoners to deaf ears, all were condemned to death, but ten only were at present executed—Harrison, Scott, Carew, Jones, Clement, Scrope, Coke, Axtel, Hacker, and Hugh Peters, Cromwell's chaplain. Peters, by his enthusiasm and wild eloquence, had undoubtedly roused the spirit of the Parliamentarians, and especially of the army, but he had had no particular concern in the king's death, and had often exerted himself to obtain mercy and kind treatment not only for the king, but for suffering Royalists. He declared on the trial that he had never been influenced by interest or malice in all[198] that he had done; that he never received a farthing from Cromwell for his services; and that he had no hand in exciting the war, for he was abroad fourteen years, and found the war in full action on his return. Peters, whose character has been greatly maligned by the Cavaliers and their historians, appears really to have been a sincere and upright patriot; but his pleas were as useless as those of all the others.

Harrison was drawn first to Charing Cross on a hurdle. His conduct was cheerful and even animated, as with triumph he declared that many a time he had begged the Lord, if He had any hard, any reproachful, or contemptible service to be done by His people, that he might be employed in it; and that now his prayers were answered. Several times he cried out as he was drawn along, that he suffered in the most glorious cause in the world; and when a low wretch asked him, "Where's your good old cause now?" he replied, "Here it is!" clapping his hand on his heart, "and I am going to seal it with my blood." He was put to death with all the horrors of the most barbarous times, cut down alive, his bowels torn out whilst he was alive, and then his quivering heart held up to the people. Charles witnessed this revolting scene at a little distance, and yet that heartless man let the whole of the condemned suffer the same bloody barbarities. They all went to their hideous death with the same heroic spirit, and in order to daunt the old preacher, Hugh Peters, he was taken to see the hanging, drawing, and quartering of Coke, but it only seemed to animate him the more. The effect of this and of the addresses of the undaunted Regicides from the scaffold was such, that the people began to show evident disgust of these cruelties; and when Scott's turn came, the executioners endeavoured to drown his words, so that he said it must be a very bad cause that could not hear the words of a dying man. But the words and noble courage of these dying men, Bishop Burnet observes, "their show of piety, their justifying all they had done, not without a seeming joy for their suffering on that account, caused the king to be advised not to proceed further, or at least not to have the scene so near the Court as Charing Cross."

About a month before Harrison's execution, the Duke of Gloucester died of small-pox; and scarcely were the royal shambles closed for awhile when the Princess of Orange, who had come over to congratulate her brother, the king, died of small-pox, too. "At Court," says Pepys, "things are in very ill condition, there being so much emulation, poverty, and the vices of drinking, swearing, and loose amours, that I know not what will be the end of it but confusion; and the clergy are so high that all people that I meet with do protest against their practice." Sober people must have looked back with a strange feeling to the earnest and manly times of the Protectorate. But death and marriage merriments were oddly mingled in this bacchanalian Court. The daughter of old Clarendon, Ann Hyde, was married to the Duke of York, and was delivered of a son just six weeks afterwards. The queen-mother (Henrietta Maria), the Princess of Orange, and the Princess Henrietta, were violently opposed to so unroyal a marriage, but the old Chancellor had the influence with Charles to carry it through, and, instead of a disgrace, to convert it into a triumph. The wily politician pretended himself to have been not only grossly deceived in the matter, but to be intensely angry, and told Charles, according to his own account in his autobiography, on hearing the news, that if the marriage had really taken place, he would advise that "the king should immediately cause the woman to be sent to the Tower, and to be cast into a dungeon, under so strict a guard, that no living person should be permitted to come to her; and then that an Act of Parliament should be immediately passed for cutting off her head, to which he would not only give his consent, but would very willingly be the first to propose it." This picture of the heroism of a savage, however, ill agrees with the accounts of the Chancellor's real concern in the matter. Evelyn, in his diary, says, "The queen would fain have undone it, but it seems that matters were reconciled on great offers of the Chancellor's to befriend her, who was so much in debt, and was now to have the settlement of her affairs go through his hands." Accordingly, about six weeks after the arrival of Henrietta Maria at Whitehall the marriage was publicly acknowledged.

Amid all these disgraceful transactions Parliament met on the 6th of November, 1660. They proceeded to pass into a Bill the king's "healing declaration" regarding religion. The Presbyterians were in high spirits, but they were soon made to feel their folly in bringing back the Episcopalian Church with its Episcopalian head. The clergy were not so high for nothing. They knew very well what the king would do when the matter was pressed to an issue, and accordingly the expectant Presbyterians found the Court party not only voting, but openly speaking against the Bill.[199] Morrice, the creature of Monk, and now Secretary of State, and Heneage Finch, the Solicitor-General, strenuously opposed it, Finch not scrupling to avow that "it was not the king's desire that the Bill should proceed." It was thrown out, and the duped Presbyterians, instead of being persecutors, found persecution let loose upon them. The Convention Parliament, having satisfied the Court in this measure, on the 8th of December voted the attainder of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, and, having got this sanction, on the 30th of January, 1661, the Court, under cover of the clergy's pious zeal, sent a rabble of constables to tear open the graves of these great Regicides, to drag their decaying corpses to Tyburn on hurdles, to hang them, to cut them down and behead them, and then, throwing their putrid bodies into a hole under the gallows, to stick their heads on poles on the top of Westminster Hall. They proceeded to perpetrate the same revolting atrocities on the bodies of innocent and virtuous women, and on some of the most illustrious men of our annals. The remains of the brave old mother of Cromwell; of his amiable daughter, Lady Claypole; of Dorislaus, the envoy of the Parliament who had been murdered by the retainers of this Charles II. at the Hague; of May, the historian of the Parliament, and the excellent translator of Lucan's "Pharsalia;" of Pym, the great and incorruptible champion of English liberty; and of Blake, the most famous admiral that the country had yet produced, whose name alone gave it a world-wide renown, were dragged forth out of their resting-places. These, and every other body which had been buried in the Abbey whilst the Commonwealth lasted, were flung into a pit in St. Margaret's churchyard.

The settlement of the revenue by the Convention Parliament was more successful than the legislation with regard to the Church. It was determined at all events to get rid of the vexatious duties of feudal tenure; for, though they had long ceased to have any real meaning, fines were still executed on alienation of property, and reliefs exacted on the accession to his property of each new Crown tenant. Minors were still wards of the Crown, and were still liable to the odious necessity of marrying at the will of their guardian. All these claims of the Crown were now abolished. Their place was supplied, not as might naturally be supposed by a land-tax, but by an excise upon beer and other liquors, the landed interests thus finding means to shift the burden upon the shoulders of the whole nation. The sum at which the revenue was fixed was one million two hundred thousand pounds a year.

This great bargain having been completed at the close of the year, the Convention Parliament was dissolved. The year 1661 opened with a Fifth-Monarchy riot. Though Harrison and some others of that faith were put to death, and others, as Overton, Desborough, Day, and Courtenay, were in the Tower, there were secret conventicles of these fanatics in the City, and one of these in Coleman Street was headed by a wine-cooper of the name of Venner, who, as we have already seen, gave Cromwell trouble in his time. On the night of the 6th of January, Venner, with fifty or sixty other enthusiasts, rushed from their conventicle, where he had been counselling his followers not to preach, but to act. They marched through the City towards St. Paul's, calling on the people to come forth and declare themselves for King Jesus. They drove some of the train-bands before them, broke the heads of opposing watchmen, but were at length dispersed by the Lord Mayor, supported by the citizens, and fled to Caen Wood, between Highgate and Hampstead. On the 9th, however, they returned again, confident that no weapons or bullets could harm them, and once more they put the train-bands and the king's life-guards to the rout. At length, however, they were surrounded, overpowered, and, after a considerable number were killed, sixteen were taken prisoners, including Venner himself. He and eleven others were hanged, the rest being acquitted for want of evidence. Pepys says there were five hundred of the insurgents, and their cry was, "The King Jesus, and their heads upon the gates!" that is, the heads of their leaders who had been executed and stuck there.

Charles at the time was at Portsmouth with his mother, and Clarendon made the most of the riot, representing it as an attempt to liberate the Regicides in the Tower, and restore the Commonwealth. Fresh troops were raised and officered with staunch Royalists, and a large standing army of that stamp would soon have been formed, had not strong remonstrances been made by the Earl of Southampton and others, and equally strong obstacles being existent in the want of money. The House of Commons, moreover, spoke out plainly before its dissolution, as to the raising of a new army, saying, they were grown too wise to be fooled into another army, for they had discovered that the man who had the command of it could make a king of himself, though he was none before. The known intention to put the Duke of[200] York at the head of it was another strong objection. So the design for the present was abandoned.

ARREST OF ARGYLL. (See p. 201.)

In England, Scotland, and Ireland the king was, of course, beset by the claims of those who had stood by his father, or could set up any plea of service. There were claims for restoration of estates, and claims for rewards. Charles was not the man to trouble himself much about such matters, except to get rid of them. In Ireland the Catholics and Protestants equally advanced their claims. The Protestants declared that they had been the first in Ireland to invite him back, and the Catholics that they had been strongly on the late king's side, had fought for him both in Scotland and England, and had suffered severely from the late usurpers. The Protestants, however, were in possession of the forfeited estates, and Charles dared not rouse a Protestant opposition by doing justice to the Catholics, who, though the more numerous, were far the weaker party. Besides, the different interests of the claiming parties were so conflicting, that to satisfy all sides was impossible. Some of the Protestants were Episcopalians, some Presbyterians. The latter had been vehement for the Commonwealth, but to ward off the royal vengeance they had, on the fall of Richard Cromwell, been the first to tender their allegiance to Charles, and propitiate him by an offer of a considerable sum of money. Then there were Protestant loyalists, whose property under the Commonwealth had been confiscated, and there were the Catholics, who had suffered from both parties, even when ready to serve the king. There were officers who had served in the Royal army before 1649, and had never received the arrears of their pay; there were also the widows and orphans of such. To decide these incompatible demands Charles appointed a Commission. But little good could possibly accrue from this, for though there were lands sufficient to have pacified all who had just claims, these had been lavishly bestowed on Monk, the Duke of York, Ormond, Kingston, and others. Every attempt to take back lands, however unjustly held by Protestants, threatened to excite a Protestant cry of a dangerous favouring of Catholics, and of a design to reinstate the[201] Papists, who, they averred, had massacred a hundred thousand Protestants during the rebellion. Charles satisfied himself with restoring the bishops and the property of the Episcopalian Church, and left the Commission to settle the matter. But appeals from this impassive tribunal were made to himself, and he at length published his celebrated declaration for the settlement of Ireland, by which the adventurers and soldiers who had been planted on the estates of the Irish by the Commonwealth were to retain them, except they were the estates of persons who had remained entirely neutral, in which case adventurers and soldiers were to have an equivalent from the fund for reprisals. But this settled nothing, for so many charges were advanced against those who pleaded they were innocent, that few were allowed to be so. The matter was next brought before the Irish Parliament, and there again was division. The Commons, who had been appointed through the influence of the soldiers and adventurers, voted that the king's declaration should pass into law. The Lords, on the contrary, protested that it would ruin all the old families, both Catholic and Protestant. The contending parties once more appealed to the king, who, wearied with the interminable strife, seized the opportunity of the discovery of a paper formerly signed by Sir Nicholas Plunket, one of the agents of the appellants, offering Ireland to the Pope or any Catholic power who would defend them against the Parliament, to dismiss their appeal, and the Bill, based on the Royal declaration, was passed. It was soon found, however, that it was not easy to carry this law into execution.

Scotland was restored to its condition of an independent kingdom. The survivors of the Committee of Estates, which had been left in management on Charles's disastrous march into England, previous to the battle of Worcester, were ordered to resume their functions. Middleton was appointed Lord Commissioner; Glencairn Lord Chancellor; the Earl of Lauderdale Secretary of State; Rothes President of the Council; and Crawford Lord Treasurer. A Parliament was summoned to meet in Edinburgh in January, 1661, and its first measure was to restore the Episcopal hierarchy. To completely destroy every civil right of the Presbyterian Kirk, Middleton procured the passing of an Act to annul all the proceedings of the Scottish Parliament since the commencement of the contest with the late king. Even the Lord Treasurer Crawford opposed this measure, declaring that as the late king had been present at one of these Parliaments, and the present one at another, therefore to repeal the Acts of these Parliaments would be to rescind the Act of Indemnity and the approval of the Engagement. Middleton carried his point, and levelled every political right of the Kirk at a blow. The ministers of the Kirk in astonishment met to consult and to protest; they sent a deputation to the king with a remonstrance; but they arrived at a time likely to inspire them with awe, and did not escape without a painful evidence that they were no longer in the proud position of their fathers. Charles had shed the blood of vengeance plentifully in England, and there were those in Scotland whom he looked on with a menacing eye. The chief of these was the Marquis of Argyll. Argyll had been the head and leader of the Covenanters. He had counselled with and encouraged the General Assembly in its resistance to the late king's measures. He had been his most persevering enemy, and, finally, he had encouraged the invasion of England by the Scots, and had been the first to support Cromwell, even sitting in the Parliament of his son Richard. Argyll was well aware that he was an object of resentment, and kept himself secure in the Highlands. But his son, Lord Lorne, had been a steady and zealous opponent of Cromwell and the Commonwealth, and he was one of the first to congratulate Charles on his restoration. To lay hold on Argyll in his mountains was no easy matter, but if he could be beguiled from his fastnesses to Court, he might be at once punished. No symptoms of the remembrance of the past, therefore, escaped the king or his ministers, and Argyll deceived by this, and by the friendly reception of his son, wrote proposing to pay his respects to his sovereign in the capital. Charles returned him a friendly answer, and the unwary victim was not long in making his appearance in London. But he was not admitted to an audience at Whitehall, but instantly arrested and committed to the Tower. He was then sent down to Scotland to be tried by the king's ministers there, some of them, as Lauderdale and Middleton, hideous to their own age and to posterity for their sanguinary cruelty. Besides, they were eager to possess themselves of Argyll's splendid patrimony, and they pursued his impeachment with an unshrinking and unblushing ferocity which astonished even the king.

Argyll pleaded that he had only acted as the whole nation had done, and with the sanction of Parliament; that the late king had passed an Act of Oblivion for all transactions prior to 1641,[202] and the present king had given an Act of Indemnity up to 1651; that, up to that period, he could not, therefore, be called in question; that he had been out of the country during the time that most of the barbarities alleged had been committed; and that as to the Marquis of Montrose, he had been the first to commence a system of burning and extermination, and that they were compelled to treat him in the same manner. And finally, his compliance with Cromwell was not a thing peculiar to himself. They had all been coerced by that successful man; so much so, that his Majesty's Lord Advocate, then his persecutor, had taken the Engagement to him. This latter plea was the most unfortunate one that he could have used, for nothing but augmented malice could be the result of it, and there was enough of that already in the minds of his judges. Fletcher, the Lord Advocate, was thrown into a fury by the remark, called the marquis an impudent villain, and added an additional article to the charges against him—that of having conspired the late king's death.

Lord Lorne procured a letter from Charles, ordering the Lord Advocate to introduce no charge prior to 1651, and directing that on the conclusion of the trial, the proceedings should be submitted to the king before judgment was given. This would have defeated Argyll's foes had the king been honest in the matter; but Middleton represented to Charles that to stay judgment till the proceedings had been inspected by the king would look like distrust of the Parliament, and might much discourage that loyal body. Charles allowed matters, therefore, to take their course; but Middleton was again disappointed by Gilmore, the President of the Court of Sessions, declaring that all charges against the marquis since 1651 were less valid for the purposes of an attainder than those which had excited so much controversy in the cause of the Earl of Strafford, and he carried the Parliament with him. Argyll and his friends now calculated on his escape, but this was not intended. A number of letters were hunted out, said to have been written to Monk and other Commonwealth men whilst they were in power, expressing his attachment to their cause, and his decided disapprobation of the king's proceedings. These were decisive. Though the time was passed when fresh evidence could legally be introduced, these letters were read in Parliament, and the effect was that of a thunderbolt falling in the midst of Argyll's friends. They at once disappeared, overwhelmed with confusion, and sentence of death was passed on the marquis. That no time might be allowed for an appeal to the king, who wished to be excused refusing the favour of his life to his son, Argyll's execution was ordered in two days. In vain the unfortunate nobleman pleaded for ten days, in order that the king's pleasure might be ascertained; it was denied him, and understanding from that the determination of the king, he remarked, "I set the crown on his head at Scone, and this is my reward." He employed the short space left him in earnest prayer, and in the midst of his devotions, believing that he heard a voice saying, "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee!" he was wonderfully consoled and strengthened, and ascended the scaffold with a calm intrepidity which astonished and disappointed his enemies. Before laying his head on the block, he declared his ardent attachment to the Covenanters in words which flew to every quarter of Scotland, and raised him to the rank of a martyr in the estimation of the people. His head was stuck on the same spike that had received that of Montrose.

Next to Argyll, the malice of the king and Cavaliers was fiercest against Johnston of Warriston, and Swinton. Warriston was the uncle of Bishop Burnet, a most eloquent and energetic man, who had certainly done his utmost for the maintenance of the Covenant, and against the tyranny of Charles I. He was now an old man, but he fled to France, where, however, he was not long safe, for the French Government gave him up, and he was sent back and hanged. Swinton, who had turned Quaker, escaped, perhaps through Middleton's jealousy of Lauderdale, who had obtained the gift of Swinton's estate, but more probably by a substantial benefit from the estate to the Court.

The wrath of Charles next fell on the deputation of twelve eminent ministers, who had dared to present a remonstrance against the suppression of the privileges of the Kirk. They were thrown into prison, but were ultimately dismissed except Guthrie, one of the most daring and unbendable of them. He had formerly excommunicated Middleton, and had been one of the authors of the tract, "The Causes of God's Wrath." Since the Restoration he had called a public meeting to remind the king of having taken the Covenant, and to warn him against employing Malignants. Guthrie was hanged, and along with him a Captain Govan, who had, whilst the king was in Scotland, deserted to Cromwell; but why he was selected from among a host of such offenders no one could tell. This closed the catalogue of Scottish political executions for the present.

[203]

But in another form Charles and his brutal ministers were preparing deluges of fresh blood in another direction. Middleton assured Charles that the restoration of prelacy was now the earnest desire of the nation, and a proclamation was issued announcing the king's intention. Only one of the bishops of Laud's making was now alive, Sydserfe, a man of no estimation, who was sent to the distant see of Orkney, though he aspired to the archiepiscopal one of St. Andrews. That dignity was reserved for a very different man, Sharp, a pretended zealot for the Kirk, who, at the same time that he urged Middleton to restore episcopacy, persuaded his clerical brethren to send him up to London to defend the independence of the Kirk. He went, and to the astonishment and indignation of the ministers and people, returned Archbishop of St. Andrews. He endeavoured, in a letter to Middleton of May 28th, to prove that he had served the Kirk faithfully till he saw that it was of no avail, and that he took the post to keep out violent and dangerous men. This, after such a change, could be only regarded as the poor excuse of an unprincipled man. His incensed and abandoned friends heaped on him execrations, and accused him of incontinency, infanticide, and other heinous crimes. By this measure, and the co-operation of Middleton and Lauderdale, all the old bitterness was revived, and the horrors of a persecution which has scarcely an example in history, were witnessed. By Sharp's advice three other bishops were appointed, Fairfowl to the see of Glasgow, Hamilton to Galloway, and Dr. Robert Leighton to Dunblane. Leighton was the son of that Dr. Leighton whom Laud had so unmercifully treated and mutilated for his tract against prelacy. And now his son embraced prelacy, but was a very different man to Sharp—pious, liberal, learned, and a real ornament to the Church, though entering it by such a change. The four bishops went up to London to receive ordination, which was administered to them by Sheldon, Bishop of London, at Westminster, with a splendour which greatly offended the Puritan simplicity of Leighton. They were invited to take their seats in the House of Parliament, where Leighton had very soon an opportunity of opposing the introduction of the oath of Allegiance and Supremacy, which, however, all men were required to take. Sharp drove on this and other irritating measures; all meetings of presbyteries and synods were prohibited under penalty of treason, and Sharp soon recommended the enforcement of an oath abjuring the Solemn League and Covenant; and with these terrible weapons in their hands, Middleton, Sharp, and Lauderdale drove the Presbyterians from all offices in the Church, State, or magistracy, and many were compelled to flee from the country. The most astonishing thing was, that the spirit of the people had been so subdued by the arms and supremacy of Cromwell, that, instead of rising as their fathers did, they submitted in passive surprise. It required fresh indignities and atrocities to raise them again to the fighting pitch, and they came. In a short time the number of prelates was augmented to fourteen, and the Kirk appeared to be extinguished in Scotland.

Whilst these things were taking place in Ireland and Scotland, in England the king and his Cavalier courtiers were running a high career, and the new Parliament proved violently Royalist. The old great families, the old gentry, the Cavaliers, and the clergy, were all united to strain every old corrupt practice to pack a Parliament of their own fashion. Royalists, Cavaliers, and the sons of Cavaliers predominated in the new Parliament, which met on the 8th of May, 1661. Not more than fifty or sixty of the Presbyterian party were elected, for the Cavaliers everywhere proclaimed them the enemies of the monarchy, and they were scared into silence. This Parliament acquired the name of the Pension Parliament, and, to the disgrace of the country, continued to sit much longer than the so-called Long Parliament, of which the constitution was so altered as occasion demanded that it could not be properly regarded as one Parliament from 1640 to 1660—it continued eighteen years. The Parliament and the Church far outran the Court in zeal for the destruction of liberty and the restoration of a perfect despotism. The Commons commenced their proceedings by requiring every member, on pain of expulsion, to take the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. They ordered, in conjunction with the Lords, the Solemn League and Covenant to be burnt by the common hangman; they proposed to annul all the statutes of the Long Parliament, and restore the Star Chamber and Court of High Commission, but in this they failed. They passed a Bill declaring that neither House, nor both Houses together, had any legislative power without the king; that in him resided the sole command of the militia, and all other forces of land and sea; and that an oath should be taken, by all members of corporations, magistrates, and other persons bearing office, to this effect:—"I do declare and believe that it is not lawful upon any pretence whatever[204] to take arms against the king, and that I do abhor that traitorous position of taking arms by his authority against his person, or against those commissioned by him." This was called the Corporation Oath. They restored the bishops to their seats in the House of Peers; they made Episcopalian ordination indispensable to Church preferment; they revived the old Liturgy without any concession to the prejudices of the Presbyterians, and thus drove two thousand ministers from the Church in one day; they reminded the sufferers that the Long Parliament had done the same, but they did not imitate that Parliament in allowing the ejected ministers an annuity to prevent them from starving; they declared it a high misdemeanour to call the king a Papist, that is, to speak the truth, for he was notoriously one; increased the rigour of the law of treason, and knocked on the head the last chance of popular liberty by abolishing the right of sending petitions to Parliament with more than twenty names attached, except by permission of three justices of the peace, or the majority of the grand jury. When this Parliament had done these notable feats, and passed a Bill of Supply, Charles prorogued it till the 28th of November.

On assembling at this date Parliament was alarmed by Clarendon with rumours of fresh conspiracies in the country. The object was to obtain the death of more of the Regicides. The Commons fell readily into the snare. To make a spectacle of disaffected men, they ordered three eminent Commonwealth men—Lord Monson, Sir Henry Mildmay, and Sir Robert Wallop, to be drawn with ropes round their necks from the Tower to Tyburn and back again, to remain perpetual prisoners. But this did not satisfy them; they must have more blood, and though Charles had promised their lives to Sir Harry Vane and General Lambert, they demanded their trial and execution; and Charles, who had no more regard for his word than his father, complied. They were to be tried the next session. Parliament then proceeded to draw up a more stringent Conformity Bill, which passed both Houses. This Bill enacted that every clergyman should publicly, before his congregation, declare his assent to everything contained in the Common Prayer Book, and that every preacher who had not received Episcopal ordination must do so before the next feast of St. Bartholomew. They added some new collects, in one of which they styled the lecherous monarch "our most religious king." They made the 30th of January a holiday for ever, in memory of "King Charles the martyr;" and voted the king a subsidy of one million two hundred thousand pounds, and a hearth tax for ever. The king then prorogued them on the 19th of May, 1662, with many professions of economy and reformation of manners, one of which he observed as much as the other.

Of the improvement of his morals he soon gave a striking example. The Duke of York, as has been stated, had married Anne Hyde, though she had been his mistress and was on the point of being delivered of an illegitimate child, which Charles Berkeley publicly claimed as his own, and brought forward the Earls of Arran, Talbot, Jermyn, and others to testify to her loose conduct. Berkeley was afterwards brought to contradict his own statement; but these circumstances, and James's gloomy and bigoted temper, rendered it desirable that Charles should marry. Heirs and heiresses he had in abundance, had they been legitimate. Besides Lucy Walters or Barlow, by whom he had the Duke of Monmouth, though the paternity of the child was generally awarded to the brother of Algernon Sidney—for Mrs. Walters or Barlow was very liberal of her favours—Charles had, on arriving in London, established a connection with the wife of a Mr. Palmer, whose maiden name was Barbara Villiers. The husband's connivance was purchased with the title of Earl of Castlemaine, and the countess was afterwards advanced to the rank of the Duchess of Cleveland.

As it was requisite for Charles, however, to marry, his ministers looked about for a suitable wife. Nothing could reconcile him to the idea of a German bride, and the Catholic princesses of the south were regarded by the nation with suspicion, both from the memory of the last queen, and the suspected tendency of Charles himself to Popery. Whilst Charles was in France, in 1659, he made an offer to the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, which that shrewd politician—who showed himself, however, a bad prophet—politely declined, for Charles was then a mere fugitive, and the cardinal did not foresee so sudden a change.

On the recall of Charles to the throne, both Mazarin and his master, Louis XIV., saw their mistake, for they had not only treated Charles with as much indifference as if it were a moral certainty that he could never again reach the throne of England, but had even sent him out of the country at the demand of Cromwell. Mazarin now offered his niece, but the scene was changed, and Charles no longer stooped to the niece of a[205] cardinal. Louis, who had no suitable princess of France to offer him, and who wanted to prevent Portugal from falling into the power of Spain, recommended to him Donna Catarina of Braganza, the Portuguese monarch's sister. Could he accomplish this match, Louis, who was bound by treaty with Spain to offer no aid to Portugal, might be able to do it under cover of the King of England. The king's ministers, after some apprehension on the score of the lady's religion, were of opinion that the match was desirable, if it were only for the great dowry offered—five hundred thousand pounds, the Settlements of Tangier in Africa, and Bombay in the East Indies, besides a free trade to all the Portuguese colonies. De Mello, the Portuguese ambassador in London, was informed that the proposal met the approbation of the king. To link the interests of France and England closer, the Princess Henrietta, Charles's youngest sister, was married to the Duke of Orleans, the only brother of the French king.

SHILLING OF CHARLES II.

CROWN OF CHARLES II.

FIVE-GUINEA PIECE OF CHARLES II.

On the 13th of May the Portuguese princess arrived at Spithead; Charles was not there to receive her, pretending pressure of Parliamentary business, but he sent to request of her that the marriage ceremony after the Catholic form, which he had promised, might be waived. Catherine would not consent. On the 20th, Charles having arrived at Portsmouth, they were, therefore, married in private by Catherine's almoner, Stuart D'Aubigny, in the presence of Philip, afterwards Cardinal Howard, and five other witnesses, and subsequently in public by the Bishop of London.

HALFPENNY (WITH FIGURE OF BRITANNIA) OF CHARLES II.

On the journey to Hampton Court, and for a few days afterwards, Charles appeared extremely pleased with his wife, who—though she could not compete in person with the dazzling Lady Castlemaine, and has been described by some contemporaries as a homely person, as "a little swarthy body, proud, and ill-favoured"—is stated by others also to have been "a most pretty woman." According to Lely's portrait of her, she is a very pleasing brunette beauty, and by all accounts she was extremely amiable; but the misfortune was, that she had been brought up as in a convent, completely secluded from society, and therefore was little calculated, by the amount of her information, or the graces of her manners, to fascinate a person of Charles's worldly and volatile character.

How was such a woman to support her[206] influence with such a man against the beauty and determined temper of Lady Castlemaine, a woman as dissolute and unprincipled as she was handsome? In her fits of passion she often threatened the king to tear their children to pieces, and set his palace on fire; and when she was in these tempers, a contemporary says, "she resembled Medusa less than one of her dragons." Charles was the perfect slave of her charms and her passions. She had wrung from him a promise that his marriage should not cause him to withdraw himself from her, and having borne him a son a few days after his marriage, she only awaited her convalescence to take her place as one of the queen's own ladies. Catherine had heard of his amour before coming to England, for it was the talk of Europe, and her mother had bade her never to allow her name to be mentioned in her presence. But very soon the king presented her a list of the ladies of her household, and the first on the list she saw, to her astonishment, was Lady Castlemaine. She at once struck it out and, notwithstanding the king's remonstrances, declared that sooner than submit to such an indignity, she would return to Portugal. But she was not long in learning that no regard to her feelings was to be expected from this sensual and unfeeling monster. He brought Lady Castlemaine into the Queen's chamber, leading her by the hand, and presenting her before the assembled Court. Such a scandalous offence to public decorum, such a brutal insult to a young wife in a strange land, was perhaps never perpetrated before. Catherine, who did not recognise the name uttered by the king, received her graciously, and permitted her to kiss her hand; but a whisper from one of the Portuguese ladies made her aware of the outrage. She burst into tears, the blood gushed from her nostrils in the violent effort to subdue her feelings, and she fell senseless into the arms of her attendants. Instead of feeling any compunction for the pain thus inflicted on his wife, the demoralised reprobate was enraged at her for thus, as he called it, casting a slur on the reputation of the fair lady. He abused the queen for her perversity, and vowed that she should receive Lady Castlemaine as a lady of her bedchamber, as a due reparation for this public insult. It was in vain, however, that he stormed at his unhappy wife; she remained firm in her resolve, either to be freed from the pollution of the mistress's presence, or to return to Portugal. Clarendon and Ormond ventured to remonstrate with Charles on his cruelty, but Charles was especially indignant that they should "level the mistresses of kings and princes with other lewd women, it being his avowed doctrine that they ought to be looked upon as above other men's wives." However opposed such a doctrine may be to the more refined taste and purer morality of the present age, it was quite in harmony with the habits and feelings which regulated the social system of Europe at that period. Charles was at least no worse than Louis XIV., whose mistresses were admitted to the intimacy of married ladies of approved virtue and chastity. The same, too, may be said of the English Court under the first two kings of the House of Brunswick.

The part which Clarendon played on this occasion is greatly at variance with that reputation for honour, wisdom, virtue, and true dignity with which his admirers invest him. It shows that however much he might recoil at it, however deeply disgraceful and degrading he might feel it, he was ready to stoop to this disgrace and degradation, rather than sacrifice his interest at Court. Accordingly Charles let him know that he expected him not only to cease to object to his unmanly conduct to his wife, but to make himself the instrument of inducing her to submit to the ignominy; and the hoary moralist, the great minister and historian, showed himself humbly pliant, and set to work in earnest to bend the mind of this virtuous and outraged woman to the shame of receiving her husband's harlot as her daily companion and attendant. And this Clarendon did perseveringly, and at length successfully. When Catherine talked of returning to Portugal, he bade her understand that she was utterly in the power of her husband; that so far from going to Portugal, she could not even go out of the palace without his permission; and, in fact, he so worked upon the poor creature's terrors, backed by the savage threats of the king, that he broke her spirit, and taught her to acquiesce in an example of profligacy, which at once scandalised and corrupted the morals of the age. Charles, when Catherine repeated her determination to return to Portugal, told her rudely that she must first see whether her mother would receive her, and that he would send her Portuguese servants to ascertain that point; and he discharged all her attendants. Thus abandoned in a foreign country, the miserable queen told the Chancellor that she had to struggle with greater difficulties than any woman of her condition before; but that pattern minister only showed her that it was the more necessary to submit. And thus Clarendon complacently writes:—"In all this the king preserved his point; the lady[207] came to Court, was lodged there, was every day in the queen's presence, and the king in continual conference with her, whilst the queen sat untaken notice of; and if her Majesty rose at the indignity, and retired into her chamber, it may be one or two attended her; but all the company remained in the room she left, and too often said those things aloud which nobody ought to have whispered. She alone was left out in all jollities, and not suffered to have any part of those pleasant applications and caresses which she saw made abroad to everybody else; a universal mirth in all company but in hers, and in all places but in her chamber, her own servants showing more respect and more diligence to the person of the lady than towards their own mistress, who, they found, could do them less good. All these mortifications were too heavy to be borne, so that at last, when it was least expected or suspected, the queen of a sudden let herself fall first to conversation, and then to familiarity, and even in the same instant to a confidence with the lady; was merry with her in public, talked kindly of her, and in private used nobody more friendly."

Catherine was subdued to her yoke, and this was the treatment of an English king to a princess who brought him besides a splendid money dowry, the Settlement of Tangier, which might in any reign of sense and policy have been made a commanding station in the Mediterranean, and Bombay, our first Settlement in India, the nucleus of our present magnificent Indian empire.

Whilst these scenes had been passing in the palace, the lives of Cromwell's supporters were brought into question without. Vane and Lambert were put upon their trial before the Court of King's Bench on the 2nd of June. The prominent actors in the drama of the late Rebellion had both in their different ways done immense damage to Royalty; and though the Convention Parliament had requested Charles to leave them unpunished—notwithstanding that they were not included in the Bill of Indemnity—and Charles had assented, the Cavaliers could not rest satisfied without their blood. Lambert had been one of Cromwell's chief generals—one of his major-generals—and to the last he had done his best to maintain the cause of the Commonwealth by his sword, and had attempted to prevent the march of Monk at the very time that he was planning the return of the king. Vane had been one of the very ablest counsellors and diplomatists that the Commonwealth had had. True, he had not sat on the trial of the king, he had had no hand whatever in his death; but he had done two things which could never be forgotten or forgiven by the Royalists. He had furnished the minutes of the Privy Council from his father's cabinet, which determined the fate of Strafford, and the Court held him to be the real author of his death; next, though he did not assist in condemning the king, he accepted office under what was now termed the rebel Government. Besides and beyond these, he was a man of the highest diplomatic abilities, and of a spotless character and high religious temperament, which caused the vile spirit and lives of the new reigning power and party to look even viler by the contrast. The prisoners were charged with conspiring and compassing the death of the present king, and the recent acts in proof of this were alleged to be consulting with others to bring the king to destruction, and to keep him out of his kingdom and authority, and actually assembling in arms. These were vague and general charges, which might have been applied to all who had been engaged in the late Government, and on the same pleas all the Commonwealth men might have been put to death.

Lambert, who had been most courageous in the field, appeared, before a court of justice, a thorough coward. His late transactions had shown that he was a man of no military genius, and now he trembled at the sight of his judges. He assumed a very humble tone, pretended that when he opposed General Monk he did not know that he was a favourer of the house of Stuart, and he threw himself on the royal clemency. As there was clearly nothing to be feared from such a man, he received judgment of death, but was then sent to a prison in Guernsey for life, where he amused himself with painting and gardening.

But Vane showed by the ability with which he defended himself that he was a most dangerous man to so corrupt and contemptible a dynasty as now reigned. The nobility of his sentiments, the dignity of his conduct, and the acuteness of his reasonings, all marked a man who kept alive most perilous and disparaging reminiscences. Every plea that he advanced, and the power with which he advanced it, which before a fair and independent tribunal would have excited admiration, and ensured his acquittal, here only inspired terror and rage, and ensured his destruction. He contended that he was no traitor. By all principles of civil government, and by the statute of Henry VII., he had only contended against a man who was no longer king de facto. The Parliament, he said, before his union with it, had entered on[208] the contest with the late king, and put him, on what they held to be sufficient grounds, out of his former position and authority. Moreover, by the law of the land—the statute of the 11th of Henry VII., and the practice based upon it—the Parliament were become the reigning and rightful power. Under that power, and by the constitutional, acknowledged Government he had acted, taking no part in the shedding of the king's blood; and what he did after he did by the authority of the only ruling Government. He therefore denied the right of any court but the High Court of Parliament to call him in question, and he demanded counsel to assist him in any case in rebutting the charges against him. But every argument that he advanced only the more militated against himself. The court was met to condemn him and get rid of him, and the more he could prove its incompetence, the worse must their arbitrary injustice appear. The more he could prove the Commonwealth a rightful Government, the more must the present Government hate and dread him. The judges declared that Charles had never ceased to be king either de facto or de jure from the moment of his father's death. That he was not king de facto, but an outcast from England, deprived of all power and name, was notorious enough, but that mattered little; they were resolved to have it so. In order to induce Vane to plead, they promised him counsel, but when he had complied, and pleaded not guilty, they answered his demand for counsel by telling him they would be his counsel.

Before such a tribunal there could be but one result—right or wrong, the prisoner must be condemned; but Vane made so able and unanswerable a defence, that the counsel employed against him were reduced to complete silence: whereupon Chief-Justice Foster said to his colleagues, "Though we know not what to say to him, we know what to do with him." And when he adverted to the promise of the king that he should not be condemned for what was past, and to his repeated demand for counsel, the Solicitor-General exclaimed, "What counsel does he think would dare to speak for him in such a manifest case of treason, unless he could call down the heads of his fellow traitors—Bradshaw or Coke—from the top of Westminster Hall?" He might have added—in that vile state of things, that disgraceful relapse of the English public into moral and political slavery—what jury would dare to acquit him? The king was so exasperated at the accounts carried to him at Hampton Court of the bold and unanswerable defence of Vane, that he wrote to Clarendon, "The relation that hath been made to me of Sir Harry Vane's carriage yesterday in the hall is the occasion of this letter, which, if I am rightly informed, was so insolent as to justify all that he had done, acknowledging no supreme power in England but Parliament, and many things to that purpose. You have had a true account of all, and if he has given new occasion to be hanged, certainly he is too dangerous a man to let live, if we can honestly put him out of the way. Think of this, and give me some account of it to-morrow." What account Clarendon gave we may imagine, for he is careful in his own autobiography to pass over altogether so small a matter as the trial and death of this eminent man.

Vane was condemned, and executed on Tower Hill on the 14th of June, 1662, on the very spot where Strafford suffered, thus studiously making his death an act of retribution for his evidence against that nobleman. On taking leave of his wife and friends, Sir Harry confidently predicted—as the former victims, Harrison, Scott, and Peters had done—that his blood would rise from the ground against the reigning family in judgment, on earth as well as in heaven. "As a testimony and seal," he said, "to the justness of that quarrel, I leave now my life upon it, as a legacy to all the honest interests in these three nations. Ten thousand deaths rather than defile my conscience, the chastity and purity of which I value beyond all this world." So alarmed were the king and courtiers at the impression which this heroic and virtuous conduct was likely to make on the public, that they took every means to prevent the prisoner from being heard on the scaffold. They placed drummers and trumpeters under the scaffold, to drown his voice when he addressed the people. When he complained of the unfairness of his trial, Sir John Robinson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, rudely and furiously contradicted him, saying, "It's a lie; I am here to testify that it is a lie. Sir, you must not rail at the judges." When he began again, the drummers and trumpeters made the loudest din that they could, but he ordered them to be stopped, saying he knew what was meant by it. Again, as he attempted to proceed, they burst forth louder than ever; and Robinson, furious, attempted to snatch the paper out of his hand which contained his notes. Vane, however, held it firmly, and then Robinson, seeing several persons taking notes of what the prisoner said, exclaimed in a rage, "He utters rebellion, and you write it;" and the books were seized, or all that[209] could be discovered. They next, two or three of them, attempted to wrest his papers from him, and thrust their hands into his pockets, on pretence of searching for others. A more indecent scene never was witnessed, and Vane, seeing that it was useless to attempt being heard, laid his head on the block, and it was severed at a stroke.

RESCUED FROM THE PLAGUE, LONDON, 1665.

From the painting by F. W. W. TOPHAM, R.I.

"IT WAS THE CHILD OF A VERY ABLE CITIZEN OF GRACIOUS [GRACECHURCH] STREET. A SADDLER, WHO HAD BURIED ALL THE REST OF HIS CHILDREN OF THE PLAGUE, AND HIMSELF AND WIFE NOW BEING SHUT UP IN DESPAIR OF ESCAPING DID DESIRE ONLY TO SAVE THE LIFE OF THIS LITTLE CHILD; I SO PREVAILED TO HAVE IT RECEIVED STARK NAKED INTO THE ARMS OF A FRIEND, WHO BROUGHT IT (HAVING PUT IT INTO FRESH CLOTHES) TO GREENWICH."—Pepys's Diary.

But the effect of Vane's words and conduct died not with him. The people, degraded as they had become, could not avoid perceiving that the spirit of evil was abroad; that revenge was being taken for the virtue and the great principles of the Commonwealth; that the base and worthless were exterminating the true—those who were the real glory of the nation. Burnet says, "It was generally thought that the Government lost more than it gained by the death of Vane;" and even the gossiping Pepys said that he was told that "Sir Harry Vane was gone to heaven, for he died as much a saint and martyr as ever man did, and that the king had lost more by that man's death than he would get again for a long while."

SIR HARRY VANE TAKING LEAVE OF HIS WIFE AND FRIENDS. (See p. 208.)

But these plain signs could not stop the thirst for blood. Colonels Okey, Corbet, and Barkstead, three of the Regicides, had got away to Holland, as Goffe, Whalley, and Dixwell had to the New England settlements. The last three managed, in various disguises, but in continual fears, to escape; but Okey, Corbet, and Barkstead were hunted out by Downing, who, having been Cromwell's ambassador at the Hague, had made his peace with the new Government, and was ready to earn favour by making himself its bloodhound in running down his former friends. He had once been chaplain to Okey's regiment. Having secured them, the States were mean enough to surrender them, and they suffered all the horrors of hanging and embowelling at the gallows. General Ludlow, Mr. Lisle, and others of the Commonwealth men had retired to Switzerland, which nobly refused to give them up; but the Royalists determined to assassinate them if they could not have them to hack and mangle at the gibbet. Murderers were sent after them to dog them, and though Ludlow escaped, as by a miracle, from several attempts, Lisle was shot, on Sunday of all days, as he was entering the church at Lausanne; and the murderers rode[210] away shouting, "God save the king!" and made their escape into France.

If the country was discontented at the destruction of its most eminent and virtuous men, it found that it must prepare to see its foreign prestige sold to France. The king wanted money; Louis XIV. wanted Dunkirk back again, which Cromwell had wrested from France, and which remained a proof of the ascendency of England under that great ruler. Clarendon, who should have endeavoured to save the nation from that disgrace, did not know where else to look for the necessary supplies for Charles's pleasures, and if he did not suggest, actually counselled the measure. It was contended that Dunkirk was useless to England, and that the expense of maintaining it was onerous. But not only France, but Spain and Holland, knew very well its value as a bulwark against the notorious designs of Louis of adding Belgium, and if possible Holland, to France. Charles knew this very well, too, and was ready to sell it to the highest bidder. Spain and Holland were eager to make the purchase, but Charles was expecting other favours from France, and could not get them if he sold Dunkirk to either of those nations. He was in treaty with Louis for ten thousand foot and a body of cavalry, to enable him to tread down the remaining liberties of the people. He therefore gave the preference to France—for not a patriotic feeling, but the most base personal views swayed him in such matters—and struck a bargain with D'Estrades for five million livres. Charles struggled for the payment in cash, but Louis would only give bills for the amount; and then, knowing Charles's necessity, he privately sent a broker, who discounted the bills at sixteen per cent.; and Louis himself boasts, in his published works, that he thus saved five hundred thousand livres out of the bargain, without Charles being aware of it. The indignation of the public at this transaction was loud and undisguised; the merchants of London had in vain offered themselves to advance the king money, so that Dunkirk might not be sacrificed, and now the people openly said that the place was sold only to satisfy the rapacity of the king's mistresses, of whom he was getting more and more—Miss Stewart, Nell Gwynn, and others of less mark. The reprobation of the affair was so universal and violent, and Clarendon was so fiercely accused of being a party to it, that from this hour his favour with the nation was gone for ever.

Whilst the king was thus spilling the best blood, and selling the possessions of the country, the Nonconformists were vainly hoping for his fulfilment of his Declaration of Breda, as it regarded liberty to tender consciences. The Act of Uniformity came into force on the 24th of August, St. Bartholomew's Day, on which day the deprivation of two thousand Presbyterian ministers would be enforced. They therefore petitioned for three months' delay, which Charles promised, on condition that during that time they should use the Book of Common Prayer. But no sooner was this promise given than the Royalists, and especially the bishops, contended that the king was under no obligation to keep the Declaration of Breda, inasmuch as it had only been made to the Convention Parliament, which had never called for its fulfilment. Clarendon did not venture to counsel Charles to break his word, but he advised the summoning of the bishops to Hampton Court, where the question was discussed in the presence of Ormond, Monk, and the chief law-officers and ministers of State. The bishops expressed much disgust at "those fellows," the Nonconformists, still insisting on interrupting the king in the exercise of his undoubted prerogative; they were supported by the Crown lawyers, and the Act was enforced in all its rigour, despite the royal promise, which had over and over lost its slightest value. The storm of persecution burst forth on the Nonconformists with fury. Their meetings were forcibly broken up by soldiery, and their preachers and many of themselves thrust into prison on charges of heresy and violation of the laws. Numbers again prepared for flight to New England, and to prevent this sweeping emigration of useful artisans, the Earl of Bristol, the former impetuous and eccentric Lord Digby of the Civil Wars, and Ashley Cooper planned a scheme which should at once relieve both Dissenters and Catholics. This was to induce the king, on the plea of fulfilling his Declaration of Breda, to issue a declaration of indulgence of a broad and comprehensive character. This was supported in the Council by Robartes, Lord Privy Seal, and Bennet, the new Secretary of State. Accordingly, Charles, on the 6th of December, issued his declaration, called "a Declaration for Refuting Four Scandals cast on the Government"—namely, that the Act of Indemnity had been merely intended to be temporary; that there was an intention to keep a large standing army; that the king was a persecutor; and that he was a favourer of Popery. In answer to the third scandal, he declared he would submit to Parliament a Bill for ample indulgence to tender consciences; and though he would not refuse to[211] make the Catholics, like the rest of his subjects, a partaker in this privilege, yet to show the fallacy of the fourth scandal, if they abused his goodness he would pursue them with all the rigour of the laws already existing against them.

CHARLES II. AND NELL GWYNN.

From the Picture by E. M. Ward, R.A.
In the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington.

This announcement was received with an outburst of indignation by all parties except the Independents and the other Dissenters who partook of their ideas of general toleration. But the Presbyterians adhered to their ancient bigotry so firmly, that rather than Catholics should enjoy toleration, they were ready to forego it themselves. The Church, and a vast number of people of no religion at all, joined in the cry out of their hereditary alarm at Popery. The moment that the session of 1663 opened, on the 18th of February, both houses attacked the Declaration, and the Commons, though the Bill was not before them, sent an address to the king, thanking him for the other parts of the Declaration, but represented the third clause as pregnant with schism, endless liberties and importunities of sects, and certain disturbance of the national tranquillity. In the Lords the Lord-Treasurer led the opposition, and the bishops supported him with all their energies, and, to the astonishment of Charles himself, Clarendon, who had been laid up with gout, on the second day of the debate went to the House, and attacked it with a vehemence of language which gave great offence to the king. Probably Clarendon calculated on more serious damage from the popular feeling, of which his Dunkirk policy had recently given him a sharp taste, than on any strong resentment of Charles, but he was mistaken; the Bill was defeated, but the king expressed his wrath to Southampton, the Treasurer, and Clarendon, in such terms as struck terror into them, and from that time it was evident that neither of them possessed his confidence any longer. Nor did he spare the bishops. He reproached them with bigotry and ingratitude. He told them that it was owing to his Declaration of Breda that they owed their restoration, and that now they were driving him to break that promise. The intolerance of the bishops in his father's time had caused, he said, the destruction of the hierarchy, and done much to ruin the monarchy itself; and no sooner were they reinstated, than they were pursuing the same blind and fatal course. From that day, too, his manner to them changed, and his courtiers, quick to perceive the change, imitated it, and, glad to excuse their profligacy, indulged in ridicule of their persons, and mockery of their sermons.

But though Charles had boldly spoken much severe truth in the moment of his resentment, all parties calculated too well on the evanescence of anything in him like a wise or virtuous perseverance, and they pursued their object with an obstinacy which compelled the ease-loving monarch to give way. The Commons passed a Bill to check the growth of Popery, and another that of Nonconformity, but though strongly supported in the Lords, they were defeated by the Presbyterian and Catholic members. They then changed their tack, and presented an address to the king, praying him to put in force all the penal laws against the Catholics and sectaries of every description. Having expressed their wishes, the Commons granted the king four subsidies, and he was about to prorogue Parliament, when a strange incident delayed this event for some time. The king, during the discussion on the Supplies, made a statement which seemed to commit the Earl of Bristol with Parliament. The earl and the king becoming warm in mutual explanation before Lord Arlington, Charles used strong language, and Bristol, losing his temper, reproached the king with his amours, his indolence, and the sacrifice of his best friends to the malice of Clarendon, and vowed that unless justice was done him within twenty-four hours, he would do a thing that would astonish both the king and the Chancellor. This thing was to impeach Clarendon of high treason on the ground that he had, both publicly and privately, endeavoured to fix the character of a papist on the king, and had represented that he alone protected the Protestant establishment. Bristol's hasty temper had betrayed him into a charge which he could not substantiate. He was foiled with disgrace, and he only escaped being arrested by flight.

When the next session of Parliament opened, on the 16th of March, 1664, the Commons returned with unabated animus, and circumstances in the interim had occurred, which, as they favoured both the orthodox scheme and a scheme of the king's, enabled them to carry their point by conceding his. In October, a trifling insurrection broke out at Farnley Wood, in Yorkshire. The people, who were of an obscure class, appeared to be Fifth-Monarchy men and Republicans, who complained of the persecutions for religion, and of the violation of the Triennial Act, and contended that as the present Parliament had sat more than three years, it was illegal, and the people had nothing to do but to elect another of their own accord. This was a mistake; the Act did not limit the duration of Parliament, but the interval between one Parliament and another. The Triennial Act,[212] passed in the 16th of Charles I., when his Parliament wrung a number of those guarantees from him, authorised the sheriffs to issue writs for an election after any Parliament had ceased to sit three years, if the Government did not summon one, and in default of the sheriffs issuing such writs, the people might assemble, and proceed to election without writs.

The Government wanted to be rid of this Act, and therefore the Duke of Buckingham set Gere, sheriff of Yorkshire, and others, to send incendiaries amongst the people to excite them to proceedings of this sort. They were then arrested to the number of about fifty persons in Yorkshire and Westmoreland, on the plea that they were assembled without lawful cause, the Parliament, so far from having ceased to sit three years, being still sitting. The ignorant people had been probably purposely misinformed, and some of them were hanged for it. The end of Charles was gained. He told the Parliament that the Act thus encouraged seditious meetings, and that though he never wished to be without a Parliament for three years, he was resolved never to allow of a Parliament summoned by such means as prescribed by that Act. The Parliament readily repealed the Act, and passed another, still requiring a Parliament at farthest after three years' interval, but sweeping away what Charles called the "wonderful clauses" of the Bill.

In return for this favour, the Commons now solicited his assent to the Conventicle Act, which it was hoped would extinguish Dissent altogether. This was a continuation of those tyrannic Acts which were passed in this infamous reign, some of which, as the Corporation and Test Acts, even survived the revolution of 1688. The Test Act, the Act of Uniformity, by which Bishop Sheldon, the Laud of his time, ejected two thousand ministers, now the Conventicle, and soon after this the Five Mile Act, completed the code of despotism.

Here was the king, who, in the last session of Parliament, published his declaration for the indulgence of tender consciences, now wheeling round like a weathercock, and consenting to the Conventicle Act. And what was this Act? It forbade more than five persons to meet together for worship, except that worship was according to the Common Prayer Book. All magistrates were empowered to levy ten pounds on the ministers, five pounds on every hearer, and twenty pounds on the house where this conventicle, as it was called, was held. This fine, or three months' imprisonment, was the punishment for the first offence; ten pounds a hearer or six months' imprisonment for the second offence; one hundred pounds a hearer or seven years' transportation for the third; and death without benefit of clergy in case of return or escape. This diabolical Act Clarendon applauded, and said that if rigorously executed, it would have produced entire Conformity. What was Clarendon's idea of rigour?

Sheldon, the Bishop of London, let loose all the myrmidons of the law on the devoted country. The houses of Nonconformists were invaded by informers, constables, and the vilest and lowest rabble of their assailants. They broke open the houses of all Nonconformists, in search of offenders, but still more in search of plunder; they drove them from their meetings with soldiery, and thrust them into prisons—and such prisons! No language can describe the horrors and vileness of the pestiferous prisons of those days. The two thousand Nonconformist ministers were starving. "Their wives and children," says Baxter, "had neither house nor home." Such as dared to preach in fields and private houses were dragged to those horrible prisons; those who ventured to offer them food or shelter, if discovered, were treated the same. To prevent the Nonconformist ministers from remaining amongst their old friends, Sheldon, the very next session, procured the Five Mile Act, which restrained all dissenting clergy from coming within five miles of any place where they had exercised their ministry, and from teaching school, under a penalty of forty pounds for each offence.[213]

THE GREAT PLAGUE: SCENES IN THE STREETS OF LONDON. (See p. 216.)

In Scotland it was not against sects, but against the whole Presbyterian Church that the fury of the persecutors was directed. The Presbyterians had effectually crushed out all Dissenters, and now they themselves felt the iron hand of intolerance. No sooner did the Conventicle Act pass in England than the Royalist Parliament passed one there in almost the same terms, and another Act offering Charles twenty thousand foot and two thousand horse to march into England, to assist in putting down his subjects there, if necessary. Sharp was wonderfully elated by the Conventicle Act, and, establishing what proved to be a High Commission Court, he managed to place his creature, Lord Rothes, at the head of the law department as Chancellor, who brow-beat magistrates and lawyers, and twisted the laws as Sharp thought fit. The prisons were soon crammed as full as those in England, and proceedings of the law courts more resembled those of an inquisition than anything else, till the peasantry rose and endeavoured to defend themselves. The names of Lauderdale and Archbishop Sharp are made immortal for the infliction of infernal tortures; their racks and thumbscrews, their iron boots and gibbets are riveted fast and firm to their names.[214]

THUMBSCREW.

And now the king was about to plunge into war to serve the purposes of his paymaster, the ambitious French king. Whatever could weaken or embarrass Holland suited exactly the plans of Louis XIV., and to have England contending with Holland whilst he was contemplating an attack on Spain was extremely convenient. The immediate cause, however, came from the complaints of the merchants, or rather of the Duke of York. The duke was governor of an African company, which imported gold dust from the coast of Guinea, and was deeply engaged in the slave trade, supplying West Indian planters with negroes. The Dutch complained of the encroachments of the English, both there and in the East Indies, and the English replied by similar complaints. The duke advocated hostilities against the Dutch, but found Charles unwilling to be diverted from his pleasures by the anxieties of war. He was worked on, however, by appeals to his resentment against the Louvestein faction in Holland, which had treated him with great indignity whilst he was an exile, and though the differences might have been readily settled by a little honest negotiation, the duke was desirous of a plea for further aggression on the Dutch, and his plans were fostered by Downing, the ambassador at the Hague, a most unprincipled man, who under Cromwell had held the same post, and traded most profitably on the fears of the Dutch.

In the spring of 1664, James's admiral, Sir Robert Holmes, arrived on the coast of Africa with a few small ships of war, to recover the castle of Cape Coast, which the Dutch had claimed and seized. He exceeded his commission as an officer of the African Company, and not only reduced the castle of Cape Coast, but the forts of Goree, and then sailed away to America, and cast anchor at the settlement of New Amsterdam, lately taken from the Dutch by Sir Richard Nicholas, and named it after his patron, New York. The Dutch ambassador now presented the strongest remonstrances, and the king, excusing himself on the plea that Holmes had gone out on a private commission, assured the ambassador that he would have him recalled and put upon his trial. Holmes, indeed, was recalled, and sent to the Tower, but was soon after liberated. The Dutch were not disposed to sit down under this indignity, and De Ruyter attacked the English settlements on the coast of Guinea, committed great depredations, and then, sailing to the West Indies, captured above twenty sail of English merchantmen. There was now a vehement cry for war, and Charles appealed to Parliament, which granted the unprecedented supply of two millions and a half. The City of London also presented several large sums of money, for which they received the thanks of Parliament. A very remarkable circumstance attended the Act granting this Parliamentary supply. The ancient mode of subsidies was abandoned, and a mode of assessment, copied from the plan of the Commonwealth, was adopted; the first time that the Royalists practically paid homage to the Republican superiority of finance. The tax was to be raised by quarterly assessments. Moreover, the clergy, instead of voting their money separately in Convocation, were called upon to pay their taxes with the laity, and thus ended the separate jurisdiction of Convocation: it became a mere form.

The Duke of York, who, with all his faults, was by no means destitute of courage, took the command of the fleet as Lord Admiral against the Dutch, and showed much ability in his command. He divided the fleet into three squadrons, one of which he commanded himself, the second he gave to Prince Rupert, who here again appeared in English affairs, and the third to the Earl of Sandwich, formerly Admiral Montagu. The whole fleet consisted of ninety-eight sail of the line and four fire-ships. On the 4th of June, 1665, he came to an engagement near Lowestoft with the Dutch under Admiral Opdam, a gallant and experienced seaman, followed by a hundred and thirteen men-of-war, manned by the most spirited and distinguished youth of Holland. The battle was terrible, but James, discharging all his guns into Opdam's vessel, caused it to blow up, and thus destroyed the admiral with five hundred men.[215] The Dutch having lost their chief commander, drew off towards the Texel, but Van Tromp collected the scattered vessels, and there was a prospect of a second fight; but the duke went to bed, and Lord Brounker, a gentleman of the bedchamber, went on deck and ordered Penn to slacken sail. The consequence was that the Dutch were allowed to retire in safety, and much of the honour won by the duke was lost again by this circumstance. It was said that the duke knew nothing of it, and that Brounker had given the order of his own accord; but the prevailing opinion was that the duke thought he had got honour enough, and the Earl of Montague, who was serving as a volunteer, said the duke had been much impressed by seeing, in the heat of the action, the Earl of Falmouth, Lord Muskerry, and Boyle, son of the Earl of Burlington, killed by his side. Penn, moreover, was said to have told the duke that if they engaged again, the fight would be more bloody than ever, for the Dutch would grow desperate with revenge. The fleet, therefore, made homeward, and, says Pepys, the duke and his officers returned from sea "all fat and ruddy with being in the sun." It was given out as a great victory, and the duke received one hundred and twenty thousand pounds for his services; but the public was far from satisfied, and Lord Sandwich far less so. He complained to Pepys that he had borne the brunt of the battle, and that all the honour was given to the duke in the printed account. That there was much in these statements was sanctioned by the fact that the duke was removed from the fleet, and the command restored to the brave but unprincipled Sandwich. In the battle the Dutch are stated to have lost seven thousand men, and eighteen sail burnt, sunk, or taken. The English are reported to have lost only one ship, and six hundred men in killed and wounded. Amongst the slain were the Earls of Marlborough and Portland, and Admirals Lawson and Sampson.

Sandwich was scarcely in independent command when he heard of a most magnificent chance. Two Dutch merchant fleets, one from the East Indies and one from the Levant, to avoid the English fleet at the Texel, united and sailed round the north of Ireland and Scotland, and took shelter in the neutral harbour of Bergen, in Norway. They were jointly valued at twenty-five millions of livres. Sandwich sailed thither after them, and the King of Denmark, the sovereign of Norway, though at peace with the Dutch, was tempted, by the hope of sharing the booty, to let Sandwich attack them in port. Sandwich, however, was not satisfied to give the king half, as demanded, and in spite of Alefeldt, the governor, who begged him to wait till the terms were finally settled with the monarch, he ordered Captain Tyddiman to dash in and cut the ships out and all the Dutch vessels. But Tyddiman found himself between two fires; the Dutch defended themselves resolutely and the Danes, resenting this lawless proceeding, fired on them from the fort and batteries. Five of Sandwich's commanders were killed, one ship was sunk, much damage was done to the fleet, and it was glad to escape out of the harbour. Sandwich, however, was lucky enough soon after to secure eight men-of-war and about thirty other vessels, including two of the richest Indiamen, which were dispersed by a storm whilst under the convoy of De Witt. The unscrupulous Sandwich made free to appropriate two thousand pounds' worth of the booty, and allowed his officers to do the same, which occasioned his dismissal from the fleet; but to soften his disgrace, he was sent as ambassador to Spain. Parliament, to carry on the war, granted the king a fresh supply of one million two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and, at the same time, voted the one hundred and twenty thousand pounds to the duke.

Whilst these events had been transpiring the plague had been raging in the City of London, and had thence spread itself to various parts of the country. It raged with a fury almost unexampled in any age or nation. It had shown itself during the previous winter in a few individual cases, and as spring advanced, it terribly extended its devastations. In May it burst forth with frightful violence in St. Giles's, and, spreading over the adjoining parishes, soon threatened both Whitehall and the City. The nobility fled to the country, the Court retreated to Salisbury, and left Monk to represent the Government in his own person, and he boldly maintained his ground through the whole deadly time. As the hot weather advanced the mortality became terrible, and the people fled in crowds into the country, till the Lord Mayor refused to grant fresh bills of health, and the people of the neighbouring towns and villages declined to receive any one from London into them. Those who escaped out of the metropolis had to camp in the fields, whichever way they turned the inhabitants being in arms to drive them away. In June the City authorities put in force an Act of James I. They divided the City into districts, and allotted to each a staff of examiners, searchers, nurses, and watchmen. As soon as the plague was[216] ascertained to be in a house, they made a red cross upon the door a foot in length, and wrote over, "Lord, have mercy upon us!" No one was allowed to issue out of the houses bearing that fatal sign for a month, if they could keep them in. Persons escaping out of these infected houses, and mingling with others, were liable to suffer death as felons. But to remain in these houses was to perish of plague or famine, and numbers broke wildly from them at all hazards, thus carrying the infection on all sides. Many in their frenzy jumped naked from the windows, rushed wildly through the streets, and plunged into the river.

It was calculated that forty thousand work-people and servants were left destitute by the flight of their employers, and subscriptions were made to prevent them from starving, for they were not allowed to leave the City. The king gave one thousand pounds a week, the City, six hundred pounds, the Queen Dowager, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and many noblemen contributed liberally. But the aspect of the place was terrible. The dead carts were going to and fro continually to collect the bodies put out into the streets, announced by the tinkling of a bell, and at night by the glare of links. The corpses were cast into pits, and covered up as fast as possible. The most populous and lately busy streets were grass-grown; the people who walked through them kept along the middle, except they were meeting others, and then they got as far from each other as possible. Amid all this horror, the sight of ghastly death, and the ravings of delirium, whilst some brave souls devoted themselves to the assistance of the suffering and dying, crowds of others rushed to taverns, theatres, and places of debauch, and a strange maniacal mirth startled the silence of the night, and added horror to the work of death. The weekly numbers who perished rose from one thousand to eight thousand. The wildest rumours of apparitions and strange omens were afloat. The ghosts of the dead were said to be seen walking round the pits where their bodies lay; a flaming sword was said to stretch across the heavens from Westminster to above the Tower, and men, raised by the awful excitement of the scene into an abnormal state, went about, as was done at the destruction of Jerusalem, announcing the judgments of God. One man cried as he passed, "Yet forty days, and London shall be destroyed;" another stalked nakedly along, bearing on his head a chafing-dish of burning coal, and declaring that the Almighty would purge them with fire. Another came suddenly from side streets and alleys in the darkness of the night, or in open day, uttering in a deep and fearful tone, the unvarying exclamation, "Oh, the great and dreadful God!" The confounded people declared that it was a judgment of God on the nation for its sins, and especially the sins of the King and Court, and the dreadful persecution of the religious by the Government and clergy. The Presbyterian ejected preachers frequently mounted into the pulpits now deserted by their usual occupants, and preached with a solemn eloquence to audiences who listened to them from amid the shadows of death, and thus gave great offence to the incumbents, who had abandoned their own charges. This was made one plea, after the danger was over, for passing the Five Mile Act in October of this year (1665). Many other metropolitan clergy stood by their flocks, and displayed the noblest characters during the pestilence. This terrible plague swept off upwards of one hundred thousand people during the year; and though it ceased with the winter, it raged the following summer in Colchester, Norwich, Cambridge, Salisbury, and even in the Peak of Derbyshire.

Whilst the plague had been raging, numbers of the Republicans, Algernon Sidney among the rest, had gone over to Holland and taken service in its army, urging the States to invade England, and restore the Commonwealth, and a conspiracy was detected in London itself for seizing the Tower and burning the City. Rathbone, Tucker, and six others, were seized and hanged, but Colonel Danvers, their leader, escaped. Parliament attainted a number of the conspirators by name, and also every British subject who should remain in the Dutch service after a fixed day. But neither plague nor insurrection had any effect in checking the wild licence and riot of the Court. The same scenes of drinking, gambling, and debauchery went on faster than ever after the Court removed from Salisbury to Oxford. The king was in pursuit of a new flame, Miss Stewart, one of the queen's maids of honour, and the Duke of York was as violently in love with her. Charles could not eat his breakfast till he visited both her and Castlemaine; and even Clarendon complains that "it was a time when all licence in discourse and in actions was spread over the kingdom, to the heart-breaking of many good men, who had terrible apprehensions of the consequences of it."[217]

THE GREAT PLAGUE: THE MANIAC PRONOUNCING THE DOOM OF LONDON. (See p. 216.)

The war, meanwhile, went on, and now assumed a more formidable aspect, for Louis XIV. made a sudden veer round in his politics, and joined the Dutch. He was actually under conditions of peace and assistance with them, and they called[218] upon him to fulfil his engagements; but they publicly would have called in vain, had not Charles of late become too independent of his French paymaster, by having received liberal supplies from Parliament. Louis liked extremely to see Holland and England exhausting one another whilst he was aiming at the acquisition of the Netherlands; but it was not his policy to leave Charles free from his control. Charles, meanwhile, had been neglecting the very sailors who were to fight his battles against the united power of France and Holland. The sailors who had fought so gallantly last summer had lain during the winter in the streets, having received no pay. Pepys says that, whilst the plague was raging in London, they were besieging the Navy Office with clamorous demands. "Did business, though not much, at the Navy Office, because of the horrible crowd and lamentable moan of the poor seamen that lie starving in the streets for lack of money, which do trouble and perplex me to the heart; and more at noon when we were to go through them, for then above a whole hundred of them followed us, some cursing, some swearing, and some praying to us."

Whilst the royal duke had received one hundred and twenty thousand pounds for fighting one battle and leaving it unfinished, and the poor men were thus turned adrift to starvation and danger of death from the plague, the fleet had lost nearly all its experienced officers, who had been turned off because of their having helped the immortal Blake to shed glory on the Commonwealth, and their places were supplied by young, insolent, ignorant sprigs of the aristocracy, who neither knew their business, nor were disposed to do it if they did. Pepys, who, as Secretary to the Admiralty, saw all this, says that Admiral Penn spoke very freely to him on the subject, and lamented the loss which the fleet had experienced in the cashiered officers.

Such was the state of our navy when it put to sea to face the enemy. The command was entrusted to Monk and Prince Rupert. And here were fresh proofs of the wretched management of this miserable monarch. Monk had taken desperately to drinking, and to this commander the fortunes of England were entrusted in conjunction with Rupert, who, with the courage of a lion, was never in the right place at the right time. On the 1st of June, 1666, Monk discovered the Dutch fleet under De Ruyter and De Witt lying at anchor off the North Foreland. They had eighty-four sail, and Monk would have had an equal number, but Rupert had received an order to go in quest of the French fleet with thirty sail. Monk, therefore, having little more than fifty sail, was strongly advised by Sir John Harman and Sir Thomas Tyddiman not to engage with such unequal numbers, especially as the wind and sea were such as would prevent the use of their lower tier of guns. But Monk, who was probably drunk, would not listen, and was encouraged by the younger and more inexperienced officers. He bore down rapidly on the Dutch fleet, having the weather gauge, and the Dutchmen were taken so much by surprise that they had not time to weigh anchor, but cut their cables, and made for their own coast. But there they faced about, and Monk, in his turn, was obliged to tack so abruptly, that his topmast went by the board, and whilst he was bringing his vessel into order, Sir William Berkeley, who had not noticed the accident, was amid the thick of the enemy, and, being unsupported, was soon killed on his quarter-deck, and his ship and a frigate attending him were taken. Sir Thomas Tyddiman refused to engage, and Sir John Harman, surrounded by the Dutch, had his masts shot away, and was severely wounded. The masts and rigging of the English vessels were cut to pieces by chain shot, a new invention of Admiral De Witt's, and Monk, with his disabled ships, had to sustain a desperate and destructive fight till it was dark. He then gave orders to make for the first English port, but in their haste and the darkness they ran upon the Galloper Sand, where the Prince Royal, the finest vessel in the fleet, grounded, and was taken by the Dutch. The next day Monk continued a retreating fight, and would probably have lost the whole fleet, but just then Rupert, with the White squadron, appeared in sight. The next morning the battle was renewed with more equal forces till they were separated by a fog, and when that cleared away the Dutch were seen in retreat. Both sides claimed the victory, but the English had certainly suffered most, and lost the most ships. The only wonder was that they had not lost the whole. Nothing, however, could exceed the lion-like courage of the seamen. "They may be killed," exclaimed De Witt, "but they cannot be conquered." They very soon reminded him of his words, for before the end of June they were at sea again, fought, and defeated him and De Ruyter, pursued them to their own coast, entered the channel between Vlie and Schelling, and destroyed two men-of-war, one hundred and fifty merchantmen, and reduced the town of Brandaris to ashes. De Witt, enraged at this devastation, vowed to[219] Almighty God that he would never sheath the sword till he had taken ample revenge.

In August a French fleet, under the Duke of Beaufort, arrived from the Mediterranean to join the Dutch fleet, under De Ruyter, which was already in the Channel watching for position. Rupert, however, was on the look-out, and De Ruyter took refuge in the roadstead of Boulogne, but whilst Rupert was preparing to prevent the advance of Beaufort up the Channel, a storm obliged him to retreat to St. Helier, by which Beaufort was enabled to reach Dieppe; and the Dutch, severely damaged by the tempest, returned home. But this storm had produced a terrible catastrophe on land. A fire broke out in the night, between the 2nd and 3rd of September, in Pudding Lane, near Fish Street, where the Monument to commemorate the event now stands. It occurred in a bakehouse, which was built of wood and had a pitched roof, and the buildings in general being of timber, it soon spread. The wind was raging furiously from the east, and the neighbourhood being filled with warehouses of pitch, tar, resin, and other combustible materials, the conflagration rushed along with wonderful force and vehemence. The summer had been one of the hottest and driest ever known, and the timber houses were in a state to catch and burn amazingly. Clarendon says, "The fire and the wind continued in the same excess all Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, till afternoon, and flung and scattered brands into all quarters; the nights more terrible than the days, and the light the same, the light of the fire supplying that of the sun." The timidity of the Lord Mayor favoured the progress of the flames. He at first refused to admit the military to prevent the plunder of the houses, and to keep off the crowds where efforts were attempted to stop the fire; but nothing of this sort could be done, for the pipes from the New River were found to be empty, and the machine which raised water from the Thames was burnt to ashes. It was proposed to blow up some of the houses with gunpowder, to arrest the progress of the fire; but the aldermen, whose houses would be the first to be exploded, would not allow it, and thus permitted the advance of the raging element without saving their own property. Nearly the whole of the City from the Tower to Temple Bar was soon one raging mass of fire, the glare of which lit up the country for ten miles around.

The terrors of the catastrophe were fearfully aggravated by the wild rumours and suspicions that flew to and fro. It was declared to be the doings of the Papists in combination with the French and Dutch, and the pipes of the New River works at Islington being empty confirmed it. One Grant, a Catholic and partner in the works, was accused of having turned off the water on the preceding Saturday, and carried away the keys; but it was afterwards shown by the books of the company that Grant was not a partner there till the 25th of September, three weeks afterwards. There were plenty of people ready to depose that they had seen men carrying about parcels of combustibles, which, on being crushed, burst out in inextinguishable flame, and others throwing fire-balls into houses. There were twenty thousand French resident in the city, and they were declared to be engaged with the Catholics to massacre the whole population during the confusion of the fire. Distraction and terror spread on every side—some were labouring frantically to extinguish the flames, others were hurrying out their goods and conveying them away, others flying from the expected massacre, and others coming out armed to oppose the murderers. Not a foreigner or Catholic could appear in the streets without danger of his life. What made it worse, an insane Frenchman, of the name of Hubert, declared that it was he who set fire to the first house, and that his countrymen were in the plot to help him. He was examined, and was so evidently crazed, the judges declared to the king that they gave no credit whatever to his story, nor was there the smallest particle of proof produced; but the jury, in their fear and suspicion, pronounced him guilty, and the poor wretch was hanged. The inscription on the Monument after the fire, however—and which was not erased till December, 1830—accused the Catholics of being the incendiaries, for which reason, Pope, a Catholic, referring to this particular libel, says:—

"Let the cause be what it would," says Clarendon, "the effect was terrible, for above two parts of three of that great city, and those the most rich and wealthy parts, where the greatest warehouses and the best shops stood, the Royal Exchange, with all the streets about it—Lombard Street, Cheapside, Paternoster Row, St. Paul's Church, and almost all the other churches in the City, with the Old Bailey, Ludgate, all Paul's Churchyard, even to the Thames, and the greatest part of Fleet Street, all which were places the best inhabited, were all burnt without one house[220] remaining. The value or estimate of what that devouring element consumed over and above the houses, could never be computed in any degree." The houses were calculated at thirteen thousand two hundred, covering, more or less, one hundred and thirty-six acres. Eighty-nine churches were consumed.

PIE CORNER, SMITHFIELD, WHERE THE GREAT FIRE REACHED ITS LIMITS.

Towards the evening on Wednesday the wind abated, and buildings were blown up to clear the ground round Westminster Abbey, the Temple Church, and Whitehall. The next day, the weather being calm, the danger was thought to be over, but in the night the fire burst out again in the neighbourhood of the Temple, in Cripplegate, and near the Tower. The king, the Duke of York, and many noblemen assisted to blow up houses in those quarters, and thus contributed to save those places, and finally stop the conflagration. Nothing is said so completely to have roused Charles as this catastrophe, and both he and the duke were indefatigable in giving their personal attendance, encouragement, and assistance. They placed guards to prevent thieving, and distributed food to the starving inhabitants. In the fields about Islington and Highgate two hundred thousand people were seen occupying the bare ground, or under huts and tents hastily constructed, with the remains of their property lying about them. Charles was indefatigable in arranging for the accommodation of this unfortunate mass of people in the neighbouring towns and villages, till their houses could be rebuilt. But for months afterwards the enormous field of ruins presented a burning and smoking chaos. Had Charles and his brother conducted themselves at other times as during this brief but awful time, they had left very different names and effects behind them. The great misfortune for the moment even softened down the acrimony of bigotry and party; but this did not last long. An inquiry was instituted, both by the Commons and the Privy Council, into the cause of the calamity, but nothing was elicited to prove it the work of incendiaries.

The people at large firmly believed that the plague and the fire were judgments for the sins of the King and Court.

[221]

GEORGE MONK, DUKE OF ALBEMARLE.

CHAPTER VIII.

REIGN OF CHARLES II. (continued).

Demands of Parliament—A Bogus Commission—Crushing the Covenanters in Scotland—The Dutch in the Thames—Panic in London and at Court—Humiliation of England—Peace is Signed—Fall of Clarendon—The Cabal—Sir William Temple at the Hague—The Triple Alliance—Scandals at Court—Profligacy of the King and the Duke of Buckingham—Attempt to Deprive the Duke of York of the Succession—Persecution of Nonconformists—Trial of Penn and Mead—The Rights of Juries—Secret Treaty with France—Suspicious Death of Charles's Sister—"Madam Carwell"—Attack on Sir John Coventry—National Bankruptcy—War with Holland—Battle of Southwold Bay—William of Orange saves his Country—Declaration of Indulgence—Fall of the Cabal—Affairs in Scotland and Ireland—Progress of the Continental War—Mary Marries William of Orange—Louis Intrigues with the Opposition—Peace of Nimeguen—The Popish Plot—Impeachment of Danby—Temple's Scheme of Government—The Exclusion Bill—Fresh Persecutions in Scotland—Murder of Archbishop Sharp—Bothwell Bridge—Anti-Catholic Fury—Charges against James—Execution of Lord Stafford.

The career of vice which Charles had run since his restoration to the throne of England, the scandalous scenes and ruinous extravagance at Court, the loose women and debauched courtiers who figured there, and the great calamities which had latterly fallen on the nation, and, as it was generally believed, in consequence of the flagrant wickedness of the ruling persons, had by this time[222] produced a profound impression on the public mind. Unprecedented sums had been voted for the prosecution of the Dutch War, and some terrible battles had been fought at sea; but these, so far from bringing any solid advantage to the nation, had ruined its finances, and greatly damaged the navy. Besides this, there was a general and well-founded belief that the money which should have gone to fit out the navy and pay the brave seamen, had been squandered on the royal mistresses and minions. The sailors had been left in destitution, and remained so; their tickets, which had been given them as tokens of their demands for wages, had to a large extent never been redeemed, whilst the effeminate courtiers made fortunes.

When Parliament met on the 21st of September, 1666, more money was demanded, and the Commons liberally voted one million eight hundred thousand pounds, but on several conditions, one of which was that the laws should be put in force against the Catholics, who were suspected to have fired the capital. Though a Committee appointed to consider this charge failed to connect the Papists with the Fire, yet the cry remained, and Charles was compelled to order by proclamation all priests and Jesuits to quit the kingdom; all recusants to be proceeded against according to law; all Papists to be disarmed, and officers and soldiers to be dismissed from the army who should refuse the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy. There had been a demand from the aristocracy and their tenants in England, in 1663, to prevent the importation of cattle from Ireland. The landlords wanted high rents, and the tenants cried out that they could not pay them if they were to be undersold by the Irish; as if Ireland were not a part of the empire as well as England, and justly entitled to the same privileges. It was in vain that the more liberal and enlightened members asked how Ireland was to purchase our manufactured goods, if we would not take her raw produce. The Bill was passed, and sixty thousand beeves and a large quantity of sheep were thus refused entrance annually at our ports. To obviate this difficulty, the Irish slaughtered the cattle, and sent them over as dead carcasses. This was violently opposed, and this session a Bill passed, also excluding the meat. But the third and last demand on Charles was the most alarming. It was no other than that a Parliamentary Commission should be appointed to examine and audit the public accounts. It was well known that not only the king's mistresses, but many other persons about the Court, had made very free with the public revenue with the connivance of Charles. Lady Castlemaine was commonly declared to carry on a great trade in selling favours, and receiving bribes from the subjects, and lavish grants from the king.

The alarm which the passing of a Bill for this Commission of Inquiry through the Commons carried into all the courtly recesses of corruption was excessive. The whole Court was in a turmoil of consternation; there was a terrible outcry that if this were allowed, there was an end of the prerogative. Lord Ashley, the Treasurer of the Prize Money, and Carteret, the Treasurer of the Navy, were aghast, and implored Charles to declare openly that he would never consent to it. The grave and virtuous Lord Clarendon strenuously supported them, telling the king that he must not "suffer Parliament to extend their jurisdiction to cases that they had nothing to do with." He desired the king to "be firm in the resolution he had taken, and not to be put from it." And he promised when the Bill came into the Lords he would oppose it with all his power. And this was the advice of a man who himself tells us in his "Life" of the corruptions practised—of the corruptions of these very men, Ashley and Carteret; of the good round sums taken from the privy purse by "the lady," as she was called, and of the extensive grants to her of lands in Ireland, where they were not so likely to be inquired about; of the miserable condition of the navy; the dissolute life of the king; his own remonstrances, and the constant endeavours of the courtiers to divert the king's attention from anything serious.

But there was a cause much more influential than public good or public virtue which forwarded the Bill, in spite of the Court. The Duke of Buckingham had a quarrel with "the lady," and she prejudiced the king against him, and the duke was determined to have his revenge by exposing "the lady's" gross peculations. The Bill, therefore, passed the Commons, and came into the Lords, where Buckingham and his party supported it, and Clarendon and the guilty courtiers opposed it. Buckingham himself was as dissolute and unprincipled a man as any about Court, not even excepting the king and the licentious Lord Rochester. The Bill passed, and the king, in his resentment, disgraced Buckingham, deprived him of all his employments, and ordered his committal to the Tower, which he avoided only by absconding. Buckingham, however, once out of the way, the king and his virtuous Chancellor soon managed[223] to be allowed to appoint the Commission of Inquiry themselves, by which the whole affair was converted into a mockery, and came to nothing.

During this session of Parliament, wild work had been going on in the west of Scotland. The people there had resisted the ejectment of their ministers from their pulpits by Episcopalian clergy; they received them with curses, and often with showers of stones. When the Act against conventicles was passed, they still met with their old pastors in barns and moorlands, and then the soldiery under Sir James Turner were let loose upon them. They flew to arms and fought the soldiers, and made a prisoner of Turner himself. Their ministers, Semple, Maxwell, Welsh, Guthrie, and others, incited them to wield the sword of the Lord and of Gideon, and to resist the Malignants to the death. Lauderdale was in London, and the ministers told the people that the fire of London had given enough to the Government to do at home. But Sharp was in Scotland, and he put himself at the head of two troops of horse and a regiment of foot guards, and assisted by Dalziel, a man of considerable military reputation, he pursued the Covenanters to Rullion Green, in the Pentlands. There, on the 28th of November, 1666, they came to a pitched battle, in which the Covenanters were defeated, fifty being killed, and a hundred and thirty taken prisoners. The Covenanters had treated Turner and all others who fell into their hands with great lenity, but none was shown to them by Sharp. Ten of them, were hanged on one gallows in Edinburgh, and thirty-five were sent to Galloway, Ayr, and Dumfries, and there gibbeted in the face of their own friends. The implacable archbishop, with the fury of a renegade, made keen search after all who had been concerned in the affair; it was declared that eternal damnation was incurred by the rebels against the Church, and the horrors of the rack, thumbscrews, and iron boot were put vigorously into operation again. A young preacher, Maccail, whom Sir Walter Scott has represented under the name of Macbriar, was hideously tortured, but died in a rapture of joy, not a syllable of disclosure escaping him. Dalziel, a brutal and drunken captain, revelled in cruelty and outrage amongst the Whigs or Whiggamores, as they were called; hanged a man because he would not betray his own father; quartered his soldiers on people to ruin them, and perpetrated such atrocities that the Earls of Tweeddale and Kincardine went up to Court to warn the king against driving the people once more to desperation. Their representations were not without effect, but this leniency was of short duration.

The war with the Dutch and French being still continued, it was necessary for Charles to put his fleet once more in order; but his Exchequer exhibited its usual emptiness, and the Parliamentary supply would be some time before it reached the treasury. The customary resource had been to send for the bankers and capitalists of London, and make over to them some branches of the public revenue for immediate advances, these advances to be at the rate of eight per cent., and to be repaid by the taxes till all were discharged. But the losses by the fire had incapacitated the money-lenders at this crisis, and Charles, therefore, unwisely listened to the suggestion of Sir William Coventry, to lay up the principal ships in ordinary, and send out only two light squadrons to interrupt the enemy's trade in the Channel and the German Ocean. The Duke of York at once declared that this was directly to invite Holland to insult the English coasts, and plunder the maritime counties; but the want of money overruled the duke, and the consequences were precisely what he foresaw.

Charles hoped to evade the danger of this unguarded state by a peace. Louis XIV., who was anxious to conquer Flanders, made overtures through Lord Jermyn, now Earl of St. Albans, who lived in Paris, and was said to be married to the queen-mother, and he also at the same time opened negotiations with Holland, to enforce an abstinence of aid to the Flemings from that quarter, and to make peace between Holland and England. These measures effected, he would be set free from any demands of Holland to assist them against England, and he would bind Charles to afford no aid to the Spaniards. Charles was perfectly willing to accede to these plans, so that he might not be called on for more money, and after a time it was agreed that Commissioners should meet at Breda to settle the terms of peace. France was to restore the West Indian Islands taken from England, and England was to oppose no obstacle to Louis' designs against Spain. But as hostilities were not suspended, De Witt, the Dutch minister, still burning for revenge for the injuries committed by the English on the coast of Holland, declared that he would "set such a mark upon the English coast as the English had left upon that of Holland."

He knew the unprotected state of the Thames, and he ordered the Dutch fleet, to the amount of seventy sail, to draw together at the Nore. The[224] command was entrusted to De Ruyter and the brother of De Witt. The English, roused by the danger, threw a chain across the Medway at the stakes, mounted the guns on the batteries, and got together a number of fire-ships: but here the consequence of the heartless conduct of the Government to the seamen and workmen who had been employed by them hitherto and defrauded of their pay became apparent. No sense of patriotism could induce them to work for the Government. The Commissioners of the Navy were nine hundred thousand pounds in debt, notwithstanding the liberal supplies of Parliament, and the merchants would not furnish further stores except for ready money. One portion of the Dutch fleet sailed up as far as Gravesend, the other was ordered to destroy the shipping in the Medway (June, 1667). The fort at Sheerness was in such a miserable condition, that it was soon levelled to the ground. Monk had been sent down to defend the mouth of the Medway, and he raised batteries, sank ships in the narrowest part of the channel before the boom, and placed guard-ships for its protection. But the Dutch found out another channel accessible at high water, and running their fire-ships on the boom, broke the chain, silenced the batteries, and burnt the guard-ships. Monk retreated to Upnor Castle, but the Dutch soon appeared before it with their squadron; the castle was not supplied with powder, and few of the ships in the river had any. The Royal Charles was taken, the finest ship in the English fleet, the Royal James, the Royal Oak, and the London were burnt. A still greater mortification was to find numbers of the incensed English sailors manning the Dutch vessels, who shouted, "Before we fought for tickets, now we fight for dollars." Had De Ruyter pushed on for London, he might have destroyed all the merchant ships in the river; but Prince Rupert at Woolwich having sunk a number of ships to block up the channel, and raised batteries to sweep the passage, it was easier to commit devastations on the southern coast, and this squadron, under Van Ghent, dropped down to the Nore and joined the main fleet. For six weeks the Hollanders sailed proudly along our coasts, harassing the inhabitants, and attempting to burn the ships at Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Torbay. Twice De Ruyter attempted again to ascend the Thames, but by this time, in addition to the force of Rupert, Sir Edward Spragge was posted with eighteen sail of the line to oppose him.

But the panic on land was inconceivable. "The people of Chatham," says Clarendon, "which is naturally an array of seamen and officers of the navy, who might and ought to have secured all those ships, which they had time enough to have done, were in distraction; their chief officers have applied all those boats and lighter vessels, which should have towed up the ships, to carry away their own goods and household stuff, and given what they left behind for lost." "Nothing," he adds, "would have been easier than to have destroyed Chatham, and all the ships which lay higher up the river. But London was still worse. The noise of this, and the flames of the ships which were burning, made it easily believed in London that the enemy had done all that they might have; they thought they were landed in many places, and that their fleet was come up as far as Greenwich. Nor was the confusion there less than it was in the Court itself, where they who had most advanced the war, and reproached all those who had been against it as men who had no public spirit, and were not solicitous for the honour and glory of the nation—and who had never spoken of the Dutch but with scorn and contempt, as a nation rather to be cudgelled than fought with—were now the most dejected men that can be imagined; railed very bitterly at those who had advised the king to enter into that war, which had already sacrificed so many gallant men, and would probably ruin the kingdom, and wished for a peace on any terms." All the world, he says, rushed to Whitehall, and entered at pleasure, some advising the Court to quit the metropolis, and "a lord, who would be thought one of the greatest soldiers in Europe, to whom the Tower was committed, lodging there only one night, 'declared that it was not tenable,' and desired not to be charged with it, whereupon those who had taken their money there carried it away again."

From the Design for the Wall Painting in the Royal Exchange.

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON, 1666.

By STANHOPE A. FORBES A.R.A.

This is a melancholy picture of what a weak and profligate Government can reduce a great country to in less than six years. "It was said," observes Macaulay, "that the very day of that great humiliation, the king feasted with the ladies of his seraglio, and amused himself with hunting a moth about the supper-room. Then, at length, tardy justice was done to the memory of Oliver. Everywhere men magnified his valour, genius, and patriotism. Everywhere it was remembered how, when he ruled, all foreign powers had trembled at the name of England; how the States-General, now so haughty, had crouched at his feet, and how, when it was known that he was no more, Amsterdam was lighted up for a great deliverance,[225] and children ran along the canals, shouting for joy that the 'Devil' was dead. Even Royalists exclaimed that the State could be saved only by calling the old soldiers of the Commonwealth to arms. Soon the capital began to feel the miseries of a blockade. Fuel was scarcely to be procured. Tilbury Fort, the place where Elizabeth had, with manly spirit, hurled foul scorn at Parma and Spain, was insulted by the invaders. The roar of foreign guns was heard for the first and last time by the citizens of London. In the Council it was seriously proposed that, if the enemy advanced, the Tower should be abandoned. Great multitudes of people assembled in the streets, crying out that England was bought and sold. The houses and carriages of ministers were attacked by the populace, and it seemed likely that the Government would have to deal at once with an invasion and an insurrection."

TILBURY FORT.

However, deliverance came from an unexpected quarter, and the excitement in the public mind—which had been naturally aroused and alarmed by the disgraceful condition into which a corrupt and feeble administration had allowed affairs to drift—gradually subsided, and seldom has a great crisis been so luckily overcome. For whilst the Dutch had thus been humiliating England, Louis XIV. had been pushing his conquests in Flanders. With an army of seventy thousand men he compelled Binche, Tournay, Oudenarde, Courtrai, and Douai to surrender; and he was besieging Lille when the States of Holland hastened to come to terms with France and England to prevent the nearer approach of Louis to their own territories. On the 21st of July peace was signed between England and Holland and England and France, by which the Dutch kept the disputed island of Pulerone, and ceded to the English Albany and New York. France restored Antigua, Montserrat, and part of St. Kitts, and received back Nova Scotia. Denmark, which had sided with the Dutch, also signed a treaty of peace with England.

The peace was immediately succeeded by the fall of Clarendon. He had been the companion and adviser of Charles from the very boyhood of the king, and accordingly the mischief of every measure, and the disgrace which had now fallen on the nation, were all attributed to him. With great talents Clarendon had too much virtue to approve, far less flatter, the vices and follies of the Court in which he lived, and not enough to make him abandon it, and assume the character of a noble and disinterested censor. He had the sternness and gravity of Cato, but he lacked his great and[226] patriotic principles. He began as a liberal, but went over to the Royalist cause, and was a rigid advocate of the high prerogatives of the Crown, and of the supremacy of the Church. The Puritans looked on him as a combination of Strafford and Laud. He certainly would not have so far violated public right as to countenance the raising of Ship Money, or the violation of the privileges of Parliament by the seizure of its members. But the Puritans hated him for the support that he gave to the Act of Uniformity, and for so hotly resisting the king's grant of indulgence to tender consciences. On the other hand, the Royalists hated him because he maintained the inviolability of the Bill of Indemnity, by which they were restrained from ousting the purchasers from their estates lost during the Commonwealth; and they hated him not the less because he had managed to raise his daughter to the rank of Duchess of York, and thus to give himself, although a commoner, the appearance of being not only father-in-law of the next king, but father of a line of kings. They accused him of having selected the present queen as one not likely to have children, in order to favour the succession of his own, and probably one of the real causes of Charles's change towards him resulted from the courtiers having inspired him with this belief. The Commons hated him because he had uniformly endeavoured to repress their authority. He never could be brought to see the enlarged influence which the progress of wealth and intelligence had given to the Commons; nor had all that had passed under his eyes of their extraordinary power under Charles I., awakened him to the knowledge of their real position in the State. In vain did more clear-sighted men point out to him the concessions which were necessary to enable the Parliament and the Government to move on harmoniously together. The nobility disliked him because he had, by his influence with the king and the marriage of his daughter with the heir-apparent, placed himself above them, and, from the haughtiness of his nature, taken no pains to conceal that invidious position. The people detested him, for they believed that he ruled the king, and therefore was the author of all their miseries and disgraces. They accused him of selling Dunkirk, and therefore called his splendid palace, overlooking and every way outshining the royal one, Dunkirk House. The Chancellor, undoubtedly, had an incurable passion for money and acquisition of wealth, and for displaying it in the grandeur of his house, and the magnificent collection of his pictures. When the Dutch fleet was riding in the Thames, the enraged people turned all their fury on him. They broke his windows, destroyed the trees in his grounds, trod down his garden, and erected a gallows at his door.

But the intensity of aversion to him was felt at Court. He was from his youth of grave and decorous character. The lewdness and fooleries of the courtiers excited his undisguised disgust. We have seen that he could stoop to persuade the queen to tolerate the most insufferable indignities, yet he never ceased to speak to Charles of the infamy and extravagance of his mistresses, and the scandalous lives of the courtiers who fluttered around them. The only wonder is, that the malice of Castlemaine and her allies had not long ago driven him from the Court; and it speaks volumes for the hold which he had on the regard of the monarch, that he could resist their hatred so long. But now Buckingham, who had quarrelled with Lady Castlemaine, and had done his best to expose her, had made up the feud, and they directed their common enmity against their common foe. Shaftesbury, Monk, Clifford, Lauderdale, Sir William Coventry, Arlington, and others, joined them in one determined and concentrated attack. They made their onslaught when all classes were uttering their execrations upon him. He had advised the king, when the Dutch fleet was at Chatham, to dissolve Parliament, and maintain ten thousand men that he had raised by forced contribution from the neighbouring counties, to be repaid out of the next Supplies; this caught wind, and was regarded as returning to the idea of the king ruling by a standing army and without a Parliament. Charles had grown tired of his preachments about the profligacy of his life and Court, and allowed the old Chancellor to drift before the storm; he was suspected more than all of sacrificing him to his resentment for having brought about the marriage of Miss Stewart with the Duke of Richmond, though Clarendon, in a letter to Charles, denied it.

Clarendon, with his characteristic pride, refused at first to resign. He waited on the king, and reminded him of his long and faithful services, and told him that he would not consent to appear guilty by surrendering the seals. The king talked of the power of Parliament. Clarendon replied he did not fear Parliament, and told the king that Parliament could do nothing against him without his consent. But unfortunately the spirit of the censor came over him, and, entreating the king not to allow the cabal of the courtiers to prevail against him, he broke out into some severe strictures[227] on "the lady" and her abettors. The king rose and quitted the room without saying a word, and "the lady," quickly informed of the Chancellor's disgrace, rushed to the window to watch, with Arlington and May, the fallen minister retire in confusion. Charles sent Sir Orlando Bridgeman for the seals, and on the assembling of Parliament on the 10th of October, Buckingham and Bristol, who again came out of his hiding-place, urged his impeachment. Accordingly the Commons presented articles of impeachment at the bar of the Lords, charging the Chancellor with cruelty and venality in his office, with unlawful accumulation of wealth, with the sale of Dunkirk, the disclosure of the king's secrets, and the design of ruling by military force. Still Clarendon stood his ground; but the king let fall an expression in the hearing of one of his friends, that he wondered what Clarendon was still doing in England, and the old man took the hint and got across the Channel, though the proposal to imprison him till his trial had been overruled. He did not go, however, without leaving a written vindication of his public conduct, which so offended Parliament, that it ordered the paper to be burnt by the common hangman. In this vindication he declared that he had only retired for awhile, and should return at a proper time to prove his innocence, "uncontrolled by the power and malice of men who had sworn his destruction." This caused the Commons to pass a Bill ordering his trial on the 1st of February, and declaring him, in default of appearance, banished for life, incapable of ever after holding office, and liable to all the penalties of high treason. Clarendon boldly prepared to face his enemies, but illness stopped him at Calais till it was too late, and he was thus doomed to exile for life. He lost his wife about the time of his fall, which was a great blow to him, for they had lived in great affection. He continued to live chiefly at Montpellier and Moulins, engaged in writing his history of the Rebellion and of his own life, as well as a reply to Hobbes' "Leviathan" and other works; but sighing for recall, and importuning the king to allow him to return to his native country and the society of his children. Charles, however, paid no attention to his prayers, and he died at Rouen in 1674.

Clarendon being removed, the whole of the ministry established at the Restoration was broken up. Ormond was absent on his government in Ireland, Southampton was dead, Monk was grown incapacitated from drink and years, and Nicholas had retired. The new ministry acquired the notorious and appropriate name of the cabal, from the initials of their names,—Sir Thomas Clifford, First Commissioner of the Treasury, afterwards Lord Clifford; the Earl of Arlington, Secretary of State; the Duke of Buckingham, Master of the Horse, which office he purchased from Monk; Lord Ashley, Chancellor of the Exchequer, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury and Lord Chancellor; and the Duke of Lauderdale. Before this time the word cabal merely meant a cabinet. It is so used by Whitelock, Pepys, and Evelyn, from the year 1650. The present cabinet was styled by D'Estrades, "la cabale d'Espagne." The word became infamous from the conduct of these men, who were soon concerned in the king's sale of himself to Louis XIV., and most of them received large sums from France for their most treasonable and unpatriotic services. Clifford was the most honest and honourable, but he had the knack of quarrelling with his colleagues, being of a hot and overbearing temper. Bennet, Lord Arlington, was a mere courtier, had spent much time on the Continent, and picked up its frivolity and vices. He could divert the king by his lively sallies in conversation, please the ladies, and assume an imposing gravity in public debate that deceived the public. He was at heart a Romanist, but took care to conceal it. As for Buckingham, he was a most thoroughly debauched and unprincipled character, not without certain talents and literary tastes. He had written farces, and was a connoisseur in music and architecture. But he was a jaded man of pleasure, and having been out of favour with the king, was now all the more bent on complying with his humour to win his favour. He and Arlington were bitter enemies, but put on an appearance of friendship now they were in office together. Ashley was a man who could change sides, but always with an eye to the main chance. He had been a zealous Republican, and now was as zealous a Royalist; and, as for Lauderdale, he, too, had been an out-and-out Covenanter, but was now a coarse, brutal persecutor of those of his old faith, and by his diabolical cruelties has acquired a name in history amongst the most odious of inquisitors.

One of the earliest acts of the cabal gave fairer promise of sound and good policy than their after proceedings. They sent Sir William Temple to the Hague to endeavour to heal the difference with Holland, which had inflicted such incalculable evils on both countries. Not the least of those ills was the opportunity which was afforded Louis of pushing his ambitious designs on Flanders, and ultimately on Holland and Spain. Both[228] England and Holland saw so clearly the gross folly which they had displayed that Sir William soon came to terms with the States, and by the 25th of April, 1668, he had got definite treaties signed between Holland and England, and between these countries and Sweden, to make common cause for checking the further advance of the French, and to induce France to make peace with Spain. There was also a secret treaty, binding each other to make war on France for the defence of Spain. This league became known as the Triple Alliance. Louis, who made pretences to the crown of Spain, was hoping, from the infirm health of its young monarch, Charles II., to obtain that kingdom, or to partition it between himself and Leopold, the German emperor, with whom there was a secret treaty for that very purpose. So far, therefore, from opposing the plans of the new allies, he fell in with them on certain conditions—namely, that he should retain the bulk of his conquests in the Netherlands. Holland beheld this arrangement with alarm, and refused to sanction it, upon which it was concluded without her approbation, and to punish the States, Castel-Rodrigo, the Spanish governor of the Netherlands, gave up instead of Franche Comté, Lille, Tournay, Douai, Charleroi, and other places in Flanders, so that the French king advanced his frontier into the very face of Holland. This was settled by the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.

But whilst Charles was thus publicly pursuing a policy much to the satisfaction of the nation, both on account of the improved prospects for trade, and because the Triple Alliance was an essentially Protestant one, he was secretly agitating the question whether he should not openly avow Popery, and was bargaining with Louis to become his pensioner, so as to relieve himself from any need to apply to Parliament, and by this means to assume absolute power. Parliament, which met on the 10th of February, 1668, made a rigid inquiry into the proceedings of the late administration. They accused Commissioner Pett of neglect when the Dutch fleet entered the river, Admiral Penn of the embezzlement of one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds' worth of prize goods, and Brounker, who had absconded, of giving orders to shorten sail after the victory of the 3rd of June. They then voted three hundred and ten thousand pounds, much less than Buckingham had demanded; and Charles, having in his opening speech recommended some plan to be adopted, the better to satisfy the minds of his Protestant subjects, it immediately awoke a jealousy of indulgence to the Papists and Dissenters. It was found that Bridgeman, the Lord-Keeper, Sir Matthew Hale, the Chief Baron, Bishop Wilkins, and Buckingham and Ashley had been engaged in a scheme to tolerate the Presbyterians and other sects. All the old bigotry of the House burst forth; there were violent denunciations of any liberty to Nonconformists, and they again voted the continuance of the Conventicle Act. They then adjourned from the 8th of May to the 11th of August.

Buckingham, who, during the session of Parliament, had not found himself very popular, now the object of driving out Clarendon was accomplished, in seeking to strengthen his party by removing such as were not favourable to him, drove his plans almost too far. He had a dread of Clarendon returning through the influence of his daughter, the Duchess of York, and he endeavoured to undermine the duke with the king. He blamed the conduct of the Admiralty, at the head of which James was; he displaced James's friends, and put his own dependents into offices in James's own department, in spite of his remonstrances; he spread rumours that the duke had lost the royal favour, and was about to be dismissed from the office of Lord Admiral. He even affected to go about with armed followers, on the plea of being in danger from the duke. But Charles soon convinced the minister that these attempts were vain, and then Buckingham began to pay court to the duke, which was repelled with contempt. The only mode of maintaining favour with Charles was to find plenty of money, and as Buckingham had failed in that, he recommended retrenchment and economy, which suited Charles still less. For the rest, both Court and minister went on their way of open profligacy, and it would have been difficult to say which was the most void of shame or principle, the king or his chief servant. Charles was surrounded by Sedley, Buckhurst, and other libertines, who treated all the decencies of life with contempt, and the monarch laughed and encouraged them. Though Miss Stewart had become Duchess of Richmond, he continued his attentions to her. He had elevated actresses to places in his harem, who bore the familiar names of Moll Davies and Nell Gwynn. Moll Davies was a dancer, Nelly was an actress of much popularity, and was a gay, merry, and witty girl, who extremely amused the king by her wild sallies. By Mary Davies he had a daughter, who afterwards married into the noble family of Radclyffe. Nell was the mother of the first Duke of St. Albans; and Castlemaine, who[229] had now a whole troop of little Fitzroys, was during the next year made Duchess of Cleveland. Another lady was already on the way from France, sent by the cunning Louis XIV. for his own purposes. As for Buckingham, he very successfully imitated his royal master. In January of this year he fought a duel with Lord Shrewsbury, whose wife he had seduced; and Pepys says that it was reported that Lady Shrewsbury, in the dress of a page, held the duke's horse whilst he killed her husband. He then took her to his own house, and on his wife remarking that it was not fit for herself and his mistress to live together, he replied, "Why, so I have been thinking, madame, and therefore I have ordered your coach to carry you to your father's."

SAMUEL PEPYS. (After the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller.)

In this precious Court the subject of religion was just now an interesting topic. The Duke of York told Charles secretly that he could no longer remain even ostensibly a Protestant, and meant to avow his Popery. Charles replied that he was thinking of the very same thing, and they would consult with the Lords Arundel and Arlington, and Sir Thomas Clifford. They had a private meeting in the duke's closet; but though their three counsellors were Catholics open or concealed, they advised Charles to consult with Louis XIV. before taking so important a step. The French king was apprehensive that his avowal of Popery would occasion disturbances amongst his subjects, but these might be put down by the assistance of French money and French troops. That was the object at which Louis knew that this abandoned king was really driving, and the price of this assistance was to be England's co-operation in Louis's schemes of boundless ambition. Instead of[230] Charles inducing Louis to maintain peace with Holland, it was the object of Louis to drive Charles to break again the Triple Alliance, and plunge once more into the horrors of a wicked and mischievous war with that country. Charles hated the Dutch for the treatment he had received in Holland whilst an exile, and for the humiliations he had been subjected to in the last war. Louis wanted not only to swallow up the bulk of that country in his vast plans of aggrandisement, but also make himself master of Spain in case of the death of the young Spanish king. The pretended desire of Charles to adopt open Popery was merely a feint to secure the French king's money, and the next question which he raised was, whether he should avow himself before the rupture with Holland or afterwards. The Duke of York was in earnest, Charles was only playing with the Catholic scheme as a bait; and he afterwards told his sister, the Duchess of Orleans, at Dover, that "he was not so well satisfied with the Catholic religion, or his own condition, as to make it his faith." Lord Arundel and Sir Richard Billings were sent to Paris to secure the promised cash, and to keep up the farce of his conversion.

Whilst these infamous negotiations were going on, Buckingham was exerting himself to ruin the Duke of York's prospects of the succession. He observed the king's fondness for his natural son by Lucy Walters, who had borne the name of Crofts, and he caught at the idea of Charles legitimating him. Charles had created him Duke of Monmouth, and married him to the wealthy heiress of Buccleuch. Buckingham asked the king why not acknowledge a private marriage with his mother, and suggested that plenty of witnesses might be found to swear to it; but the answer of Charles destroyed this vision, who declared that he would see the lad hanged sooner than own him as his legitimate son. Buckingham, still not disconcerted, proposed an absurd scheme of carrying the queen privately to the Plantations, where she would never more be heard of; and next a divorce from her on account of her barrenness, and a second marriage. Bishop Burnet, afterwards of Sarum, had decided that such cause was sufficient for divorce, and that it only wanted an Act of Parliament authorising the divorced parties to marry again. Charles listened sufficiently to cause them to attempt such an Act. It was sought for in the case of Lord Ross, whose wife was living in open adultery; but it was soon rumoured what was the ultimate object of it. The Duke of York, therefore, opposed the Bill with all his might, and Charles supported it with equal ardour, even taking his seat on the throne in the Lords whilst it was discussed, to encourage his party. The Bill was carried, and the right to marry again has always since then been recognised in Bills of Divorce; but Charles again disappointed Buckingham, for he showed no desire to make use of it in his own case.

The King obtained from Parliament considerable supplies in the spring Session of 1670, for his consent to the renewal of the Conventicle Act, and the fury of persecution was let loose against the Nonconformists. Spies and informers were everywhere, and many of the Dissenters, to save their property, and their persons from prison, were fain to forego their usual assembling for worship in their chapels. The Society of Friends, however, scorned to concede even in appearance to this religious intolerance. They persisted in meeting as usual. They were dragged thence before magistrates, and on refusing to pay the fines were thrust into prison. No sooner were they liberated, however, than they returned, as usual, to their meetings, and when the doors were locked against them, assembled in the street, and held their meetings there. On one of these occasions, William Penn, son of Admiral Penn, and afterwards the celebrated founder of Pennsylvania, was taken with William Mead, another minister of the Society, at an open-air meeting in Gracechurch Street. They were thrust into Newgate, and brought to trial in September, 1670, before the Recorder of London, John Howell, and the Lord Mayor, Samuel Starling. This trial forms one of the most brilliant facts in the history of the independence of trial by jury, and has often been reprinted. Both Penn and Mead made noble defences, and terribly puzzled the Recorder as to the law of the case. They demanded to know on what law the indictment was based. The Recorder replied the "common law." They begged to be shown it. On this he flew into a passion, and asked them if they thought he carried the common law on his back. It had been founded on hundreds of adjudged cases, and some of the ablest lawyers could scarcely tell what it was. Penn replied that if it was so difficult to produce, it could not be common law. He still pressed for this law, and the Recorder replied, "It is lex non scripta, that which many have studied thirty or forty years to know, and would you have me tell you in a moment?" "Certainly," replied Penn; "if the common law be so hard to be understood, it is far from being common."[231] And he proceeded to tell them what the law was, and how the rights of prisoners were secured by the Acts of Henry III. and Edwards I. and III. On this the court became furious, and the Lord Mayor said, "My lord, if you take not some course with this pestilent fellow, to stop his mouth, we shall not be able to do anything to-night."

This was the style of treatment throughout the trial, but the prisoners stood firm, and were therefore taken away and thrust into the bail-dock whilst the Recorder charged the jury. But as the prisoners could catch what he was saying, which was most grossly false, Penn shouted out that it was contrary to all law to charge the jury in the absence of the prisoners. He then told the jury that they were his judges, and that they could not return a verdict till they were fully heard. The Recorder shouted, "Pull that fellow down, pull him down." Under such circumstances of violence, violence only too common in those days, the jury proceeded to bring in their verdict, which was, "Guilty of Speaking in Gracechurch Street." "And is that all?" exclaimed the Lord Mayor. "You mean guilty of speaking to a tumultuous assembly." The foreman replied, "My lord, that is all that I have in commission." In a fury, and with much browbeating, the jury were sent back to amend their verdict, but when again called into court, they brought it in writing, with all their signatures, only strengthening it by adding, "or preaching to an assembly." As that was no crime, the court in a rage ordered the jury to be shut up all night without meat, drink, fire, candle, tobacco, or any of the most necessary accommodations. Penn enjoined them to stand firm, and not give away their right, and one of them, named Edward Bushell, declared they never would. When brought up the next day, the jury declared they had no other verdict. This infuriated the Lord Mayor and Recorder beyond patience, and they vowed they would have a verdict out of them, or they should starve for it. Bushell replied they had acted according to their conscience, whereupon the Mayor said, "That conscience of yours would cut my throat, but I will cut yours as soon as I can." The Recorder added, addressing Bushell, "You are a factious fellow; I will set a mark upon you, and whilst I have anything to do in the City, I will have an eye upon you." The Lord Mayor, addressing the jury, said, "Have you no more wit than to be led by such a pitiful fellow? I will cut his nose."

Penn protested against their jury being thus insulted and abused. "Unhappy," he exclaimed, "are these juries, who are threatened to be starved, fined, and ruined if they give not in their verdict contrary to their consciences." "My lord," cried the Recorder, "you must take a course with this fellow;" and the Mayor shouted, "Stop his mouth! Gaoler, bring fetters and stake him to the ground!" To which Penn replied, "Do your pleasure: I matter not your fetters!" On this the Recorder exclaimed, "Till now I never understood the reason of the policy and prudence of the Spaniards in suffering the Inquisition among them; and certainly it will never be well with us till something like the Spanish Inquisition be in England." The jury was again shut up all night under the same condition of starvation, darkness, and destitution of common conveniences; but like brave men, after being thus imprisoned and starved for two days and two nights, they shortened their verdict into "Not guilty."

Defeated by the noble endurance of this truly English jury, the court fined every member of it forty marks, for not doing as the bench required, and committed them to prison till it was paid. They also fined Penn and Mead for contempt of court, and sent them to prison, too, till it was paid. The parties thus shamefully treated, however, had shown they were Englishmen, and were not likely to sit down with this tyranny quietly. They brought the case before the Lord Chief Justice Vaughan, who pronounced the whole proceedings illegal, and from the bench delivered a noble defence of the rights of juries.

This trial is a fair specimen of the spirit and practice of those times. The greater part of the magistrates and judges took their cue from the spirit of the Government; and the scenes of violence and injustice, of persecution for religion, and of robbery by officials of the outraged people, were of a kind not easily conceivable at this day.

Parliament being prorogued to October, Charles was now engaged in completing the secret treaty between himself and Louis, by which he was to be an annual pensioner on France to an extent releasing him in a great measure from dependence on his own Parliament. On his part, he was to employ the naval and military power of England to promote the wicked designs of Louis against his neighbours on the Continent. The conditions of the treaty were these:—1st, That the King of England should profess himself Catholic at such time as should seem to him most expedient, and after that profession should join Louis in a war on[232] Holland when the French king thought proper; 2nd, That to prevent or suppress any insurrection in consequence of this public avowal, Louis should furnish him with two millions of livres (nearly one hundred thousand pounds) and an armed force of six thousand troops if necessary; 3rd, That Louis should not violate the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, and Charles should be allowed to maintain it; 4th, That if new rights on the Spanish monarchy should accrue to Louis, Charles should aid him with all his power in obtaining these rights; 5th, That both monarchs should make war on Holland, and neither conclude peace without the knowledge and consent of the other; 6th, That the King of France should bear the charge of the war, but receive from England a force of six thousand men; 7th, That Charles should furnish fifty, Louis thirty men-of-war, the combined fleet to be commanded by the Duke of York; and that to support the charge of the war, the King of England should, during the war, receive annually three million of livres, about one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. England was to receive of the Dutch spoil Walcheren, Sluys, and the Island of Cadsand, and the interests of the Prince of Orange were to be guaranteed. These were the chief provisions of the Treaty of Dover.

THE ASSAULT ON SIR JOHN COVENTRY. (See p. 233.)

Perhaps the whole history of the world does not furnish a more infamous bargain, not even the partition of Poland in later days. Here was a King of England selling himself to the French monarch for money, to enable him to put down Protestantism and Parliament in Britain, to do all and more than his father lost his head for attempting—for Charles I. never plotted against the Protestant religion. This was bad enough, but the bargain went to enable France to put its foot on the neck of England, and to employ its forces to destroy Protestantism abroad—Protestantism and liberty; to throw Holland, and eventually all the Netherlands, and then Spain, into the power of France, making of it an empire so gigantic that neither freedom, nor Protestantism, nor any political independence could ever more exist. Had this infamous scheme come to light in Charles's time, the Stuarts would not have been driven out in 1688, but then and there. But that this odious bargain did actually take place, and was acted on, so far as Charles's domestic vices and extravagance permitted, later times[233] produced the fullest evidence. The above Treaty was deposited with Sir Thomas Clifford; and Sir John Dalrymple, seeking in the archives at Paris for material for his "Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland," published in 1790, unexpectedly stumbled on the damning evidences—under the hands of Charles and his ministers themselves—of this unholy transaction and its reward. The Duke of York was at first said to be averse from this secret treason and slavery, but he fell into it, and received his share of the money, as well as Buckingham, through whose agency a second treaty was effected, raising the annual sum to five million of livres, or nearly two hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year; the article requiring the king's change of religion being omitted altogether, Charles, meanwhile, having shown his readiness to engage in the Dutch war, which was the main question. Ashley and Lauderdale, Clifford and Arlington were also in the secret, and had their reward. Many were the suspicions of this diabolical business which oozed out, and much talk was the consequence at times; the proofs were preserved with inscrutable secrecy during the lives of the parties concerned, discovery being utter and inevitable destruction. The French copy of the Treaty has hitherto escaped all research.

THE DISGRACE OF LORD CLARENDON AFTER HIS LAST INTERVIEW WITH THE KING IN WHITEHALL PALACE, 1667.

From the Painting by E. M. WARD in the National Gallery of British Art.

To induce Charles to declare war without waiting for his confession of Catholicism, Louis sent over Charles's sister, Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans. The king met her at Dover, and the point was discussed, but Charles would not move another step till the Treaty was formally signed, and the first payment made. The duchess, indeed, was much more earnest on her own affairs. She was most miserably married to the Duke of Orleans, the brother and heir-apparent of Louis, who treated her with cruelty and neglect for other women. She was anxious for a divorce and to live in England, but Charles would not hear of what was so hostile to his interests. The unfortunate duchess returned to Paris, and within three weeks she was a corpse, though only twenty-six years of age. There was every reason to believe that she was poisoned, though the doctors, on a postmortem examination, declared there were no signs of poison; but what was the value of the testimony of medical men given at the risk of their heads? On her deathbed, when questioned by Montague, the ambassador, as to her belief on that point, though warned by her confessor to accuse nobody, the poor woman would not say that she had no suspicions, but only shrugged her shoulders, a significant expression of her internal conviction.

The duchess left behind her in England one of her maids, a Mademoiselle Querouaille, or, as the English came to call her, Madam Carwell, whom Louis had selected as a spy and agent, feeling assured that she would soon captivate this amorous king, which she did at once, and became, in the usual way, his mistress, and at the same time maid of honour to the queen. She was soon advanced to the title of Duchess of Portsmouth, and so well did she serve the purposes of Louis, that in 1673 he gave her also a French title and estate. It was now thought by Charles and James that they could venture to put down the liberties, and, as James earnestly advocated, the religion of the nation. It was proposed to fortify Portsmouth, Hull, and Plymouth, at which towns French soldiers might be introduced, and James having the command of the fleet, no interruption to their transit could take place. When Parliament met in October, Charles observed that both Holland and France were increasing their navies—he could have told them really why—and on pretence of necessary caution, he demanded large supplies to place our own navy on a proper footing. There were complaints of prodigality and hints of Popery thrown out, but a sum of no less than two million five hundred thousand pounds was voted, by taxes on land, stock, law proceedings, and salaries—in fact, an income and property tax. There was a proposal to tax theatres, and when it was objected that the theatres contributed to his Majesty's pleasure, Sir John Coventry asked sarcastically, "whether his Majesty's pleasure lay amongst the men or the women players?"

For this remark Sir John was made to pay severely. The King and the whole Court were furious at his hard hit against the Moll Davieses and Nell Gwynns. The king declared that he would send a detachment of the Guards to watch in the street where Sir John Coventry lived, and set a mark upon him. The Duke of York in vain endeavoured to dissuade the king; the Duke of Monmouth, who was living on terms of great professed friendship with Coventry, yet undertook the execution of the business. He sent Sandys, his lieutenant, and O'Brien, the son of Lord Inchiquin, with thirteen soldiers, who waited for Sir John as he returned from Parliament on the evening of the 21st of December, 1670, and encountering him in the Haymarket, assaulted him. Sir John placed his back to the wall, snatched the flambeau from the hands of his servant, and with that in one hand he so well plied his sword with the other, that he wounded several of the soldiers, and got[234] more credit by his gallantry than for any action in his life. But he was overpowered by numbers in the end, beaten to the ground, and then had his nose cut to the bone with a penknife, to make a mark for life, to teach him respect for the king. They then went back to the Duke of Monmouth's, where O'Brien, who was wounded in the arm, had it dressed. Coventry had his nose so well sewed up, that the trace of the outrage was scarcely discernible; but the House of Commons, even such a House, resented this dastardly attempt on one of its members, and it passed an Act making it felony without benefit of clergy to cut or maim the person, and banishing for life the four principal offenders unless they surrendered before a certain day, as well as rendering the crime incapable of pardon, even by Act of Parliament. But Monmouth and his assistants got out of the way, and the Parliament never had the virtue to enforce its own Act.

The year 1671 was chiefly employed in preparing for the war with Holland. Though Charles was under condition to become an avowed Roman Catholic, he published a proclamation, declaring that, as he had always adhered to the true religion as established, he would still maintain it by all the means in his power. De Witt, who was aware of what was going on, hastened to make a treaty with Spain, and Louis demanded a free passage through the Netherlands to attack Holland, or declared that he would force one at the head of sixty thousand men. Whilst war was thus impending, the Duchess of York, Hyde's daughter, died. She had been for some time a professed Catholic. Henrietta Maria, the mother of Charles, had died in August, 1669, at the Castle of Colombe, near Paris.

Charles and his ministers of the Cabal bribed by Louis (who even pensioned the mistress of Buckingham, Lady Shrewsbury, with ten thousand livres a year) prepared to rush into the war against Holland in the hope of retrieving past disgraces, and securing some valuable prizes. At the close of the last session, on pretence of maintaining the Triple Alliance, the very thing they were intending to betray, and of keeping Louis of France in check, whom they were, in fact, going to assist in his aggressions, they procured eight hundred thousand pounds from the Commons, and then immediately prorogued Parliament. But this most unprincipled trick was nothing to what they were preparing to perpetrate.

During the recess of Parliament, it was suddenly announced by proclamation on the 2nd of January, 1672, that the Exchequer was shut. To understand what was meant by this most flagitious act, we must recollect that Charles was in the habit of anticipating the supplies voted, by borrowing of the London bankers and goldsmiths, and granting them some branch of revenue to refund themselves with interest. He had at this time obtained one million three hundred thousand pounds in this manner, but calculating that the Dutch war could not be carried on without larger means than the recent Parliamentary grant, it was therefore announced that Government was not prepared to repay the principal borrowed, or, in other terms, could not grant the annual security of the incoming taxes, but the lenders must be content with the interest. This would enable the Government to receive the revenue themselves instead of paying their just debts with it. The consternation was terrible. The Exchequer had hitherto kept its engagements honourably, and had thus obtained this liberal credit. The lenders, in their turn, could not meet the demands of their creditors. The Exchange was in a panic, many of the bankers and mercantile houses failed, a great shock was given to credit throughout the kingdom, and many annuitants, widows, and orphans, who had deposited their money with them, were reduced to ruin. Ashley and Clifford were said to have been the authors of the scheme, but Ashley was a man of infinite schemes, and probably was the original inventor. Government declared that the postponement of payment should only be for one year; but the greater part of the money was never again repaid, and this sum so fraudulently obtained became the nucleus of the National Debt.

The manner in which the Government commenced the war on Holland was characterised by the same infamous disregard of all honourable principle. Though Charles had bound himself to make war on the Dutch, he had no cause of quarrel with them, whatever he pretended to have. When Louis menaced them with hostilities, Charles offered himself as a mediator, and the Dutch regarded him as such. Under these circumstances he sent Sir Robert Holmes with a large fleet to intercept a Dutch fleet of merchantmen coming from the Levant, and calculated to be worth a million and a half. Holmes, in going out, saw the squadron of Sir Edward Spragge at the back of the Isle of Wight, which had lately returned from destroying the Algerine navy; and though his orders were to take all the vessels along with him that he could find at Portsmouth, or should meet at sea, lest Spragge should obtain some of the glory and benefit, he passed on and gave him no[235] summons. The next day he descried the expected Dutch fleet; but to his chagrin he found that it was well convoyed by seven men-of-war, and the merchantmen, sixty in number, were many of them well armed. The vast preparations of Louis, and some recent movements of the English, had put them on their guard. Notwithstanding Charles's hypocritical offers of friendly mediation, he had withdrawn the honourable Sir William Temple from the Hague, and sent thither the unprincipled Downing, a man so detested there, that the mob chased him away. Van Nesse, the Dutch admiral, successfully resisted the attack of Holmes, who only managed to cut off one man-of-war and four merchantmen. The chagrin of Charles was equal to the disgrace with which this base action covered him and his ministers. Both his own subjects and foreigners denounced the action in fitting terms, and Holmes was styled "the cursed beginner of the two Dutch wars."

There was nothing now for it but to declare war, which was done by both England and France. Charles mustered up a list of trumpery charges, which, bad as they were, would have come with a better grace before attacking his allies without any notice—the detention of English traders in Surinam; the neglect to strike the Dutch flag to him in the narrow seas; and refusal to regulate their trade relations according to treaty. Louis simply complained of insults, and declared his intention to assert his glory. Under such thin veils did Louis and his bond-slave Charles attempt to hide their real intentions.

The Dutch fleet was not long in appearing at sea with seventy-five sail under De Ruyter. On the 3rd of May the Duke of York, admiral of the English fleet, consisting of only forty sail of the line, descried this powerful armament posted between Calais and Dover, to prevent his junction with the French fleet. He managed, however, to pass unobserved, and join the French squadron under D'Estrées, La Rabiniere, and Du Quesne. On the 28th they came to an engagement near Southwold Bay; the battle was terrible—scarcely any of these sanguinary conflicts of those times with the Dutch more so.

Owing to the wind and tide, not more than twenty of the English sail could engage the enemy. The French squadron under D'Estrées formed in opposition to the Zeeland squadron of Banker; but they stood away under easy sail southward and never came to action; in fact, it was the well-known policy of Louis to allow the Dutch and English to play the bulldogs with each other, and to spare his own infant navy. The Duke of York, with a part of the Red squadron, opposed De Ruyter; the Earl of Sandwich, with part of the blue, Van Ghent and the Amsterdam fleet. The English were so surrounded by multitudes of the enemy, that they could afford little aid to each other, and were exposed on all sides to a most merciless fire. By eleven o'clock the Duke of York's ship was totally disabled, and had lost one-third of her men. He himself escaped out of a cabin window, and got on board the St. Michael, of seventy guns. Poor old Admiral Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, in the Royal James, did marvels of valour. Surrounded by the enemy, he boarded a seventy-gun ship that lay athwart his hawse, and killed Van Ghent, the Dutch admiral; but assailed by two fire-ships, he destroyed one, and the other destroyed him. The Royal James was blown up, and thus the old man, who had so long figured both under the Commonwealth and Crown, finished his career. He had a foreboding of his fate, and told Evelyn, when he took leave of him to go on board, that he would see him no more. Two hundred of his men escaped.

In the afternoon the St. Michael, to which the Duke had fled, was also sinking, and he had to remove to the London. In the evening the Dutch fleet drew off, and the next morning the two divisions of the English fleet joined and offered battle, but De Ruyter tacked about and a chase commenced. Twice the English were on the point of pouring their broadsides into the enemy, when a fog saved them, and on the second day the Dutch took refuge within the Wierings. The duke showed unquestionable courage on this occasion; no real advantage to the country, however, but much cost and damage, resulted from this unnatural war to prostrate a Protestant country, in order to pander to the mad ambition of the French king. Louis all this time was taking advantage of the Dutch being thus engaged. He marched upon Holland with one hundred thousand men, assisted by the military talent of Turenne, Condé, and Luxembourg. He took Orsoi, Burick, Wesel, and Rhinberg on the Rhine, crossed the river at Schneck in the face of the enemy, and overran three of the seven united provinces. The city of Amsterdam itself was in consternation, for the fires of the French camp could be seen from the top of the Stadt House. Even the great De Witt was in despair; but at this crisis Holland was saved by a youth whose family had been jealously thrust from the Stadtholdership. This was William of Orange, afterwards William III. of England.

William of Nassau was the nephew of the[236] English King, being the son of Charles's sister. He was then only twenty-one years of age, of a sickly constitution, and at that time of no experience in State or military affairs. The House of Nassau had acquired almost sovereign power in Holland, from having rescued the country from the cruel yoke of Spain, and had rendered the office of stadtholder almost synonymous with king. The municipal body, the aristocracy of the country, jealous of the powers and aims of the House of Orange, at the death of William's father had abolished for ever the office of stadtholder, and placed the government of the country in the hands of the Town Council, the Provincial States, and the States-General. De Witt, the Grand Pensionary of the Province of Holland, was made Chief Minister, and conducted the government with consummate ability. William of Orange was a posthumous child and a ward of De Witt, who was also at the same time at the head of the Louvestein faction, which was violently opposed to the House of Nassau. But William of Orange stood high in the affections of the people. They regarded with as much jealousy the municipal oligarchy which ruled the country as that did the House of Nassau. They felt that the Orange family had achieved the independence of Holland, and, being themselves shut out from all influence in State affairs, they sympathised with the young prince. Besides, he had a princely fortune, the possession of territories entrenched behind the river Maas, and the dykes of South Holland, not easily invaded, and was not only a prince of the German Empire, but of the royal blood of England.

The people, now seeing the critical condition to which the Louvestein faction had reduced their country, demanded that the command of the army should be put into the hands of William. De Witt, who could not prevent it, endeavoured to persuade the people to bind the prince by an oath never to aspire to the stadtholdership; but the Orange party now seized their opportunity to rouse the people against the oligarchy, and they did it to such effect that De Witt and his brother were torn to pieces by the populace before the gates of the palace of the States-General at the Hague (July 24, 1672). William, who had no share in the murder, however, committed the same grave error as he did afterwards in England, in the case of the massacre of Glencoe—he rewarded the murderers, and accepted the office of Commander-in-Chief. Low as the country was reduced, its very danger was its strongest means of rescue. Germany and Spain, alarmed for the consequences to Europe, sent promises of speedy assistance, and even Charles II. seemed to perceive the folly of his proceedings. The war at sea had brought nothing but expense and bloodshed. If Spain came to a rupture with France, England would lose the benefit of its lucrative Spanish trade. Charles had sent six thousand troops, according to treaty, to assist Louis in Holland, under the command of his son Monmouth, who displayed no talents as a general, but plenty of courage—a quality of the family. With him he sent Buckingham, Arlington, and Saville as plenipotentiaries. These ministers now hastened to the Hague, and expressed the friendly feeling of England towards Holland. The Dowager Princess of Holland, who knew what friendliness had been shown towards his nephew by Charles, who, Buckingham said, did not wish to use Holland like a mistress, but love like a wife, replied, "Truly, I believe you would love us as you do your wife!"—a hard hit. From the Hague they proceeded to the camp of Louis, who, however, before he would treat with the Dutch, made the English sign a new treaty that they would not agree to any separate peace.

The terms then proposed by these allies show how little they were aware of the power yet lurking in the invalid but stubborn and subtle young Prince of Orange. Charles required, on his part, the dignity of stadtholder for the prince, his nephew, the acknowledgment of England's sovereignty of the narrow seas, ten thousand pounds per annum for liberty of fishing on the English coasts, and the fortresses of Goree, Flushing, and some others as a guarantee for the payment. Louis demanded all the territory lying on the left bank of the Rhine, all such places as the French had formerly wrested from Spain, seventeen millions of livres as indemnification of the costs of the war, which he had himself commenced, and an annual gold medal in acknowledgment of his surrendering the three provinces he had now taken, but in reality in retaliation for the medal which the States had cast on the formation of the Triple Alliance. They were also to grant freedom of worship to the Catholics.

William of Orange bade them reject the whole of these conditions. He told them that even were they beaten to the last, they could transport themselves with their wealth to the Indian Archipelago, and then erect in Java and the isles a new and more resplendent Holland, with a new and vast world around them for their empire. The courage of the people rose at the dauntless spirit[237] of their young prince, and they resolved to resist to the last man. William ordered the dykes to be cut; the invaders were obliged by a precipitate retreat to seek their own safety. Amsterdam was saved, and the different towns of Holland stood isolated amid a vast sea, which no enemy could approach without a large fleet of flat-bottomed boats, and supplies which must be conveyed by the same mode. Meanwhile William, where he could reach the French, beat them in several smart actions, and thus further raised the courage of his countrymen, whilst forces from Germany were fast pouring down the Rhine to their aid.

ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, FIRST EARL OF SHAFTESBURY. (After the Portrait by Sir Peter Lely.)

Louis XIV., who by no means relished a campaign of this kind, returned to Paris, and left Turenne to contend with the enemy, who, though he displayed the highest military talents, and still held many strong places, saw that the conquest of Holland was little better than hopeless. At sea the Duke of York arrived off the Dogger Bank, to intercept the Dutch East India fleet in vain, and De Ruyter lay snug in port.

At home Charles had promoted his Cabal Ministry, as if they had done some great deed, to honours and titles. Clifford was called Lord Clifford of Chudleigh; Lord Arlington, Earl of Arlington; and Ashley, Earl of Shaftesbury. Buckingham and Arlington received the honour of the Garter. In order to protect the bankers whom he had kept out of their money from the suits commenced against them by their creditors in Chancery, Charles desired Bridgeman to enter an injunction there, but Bridgeman doubted the rectitude of the proceeding, and he was removed, and Shaftesbury put in his place (1672), who at once issued the injunction, and appointed a[238] distant day for hearing evidence against it. Ashley, as the new Lord Chancellor, displayed a vanity and eccentricity which caused him to be greatly ridiculed by the lawyers. He went to preside on the bench in "an ash-coloured gown silver-laced, and full-ribboned pantaloons." He at first acted with much self-sufficiency and conceit, but was soon brought to his senses by the lawyers, and afterwards became one of the most tame and complying judges that ever sat on the bench. Violent altercation, however, arose between Ashley and Arlington, who expected Ashley's place made vacant in the Treasury, which was given to Clifford.

On the 5th of February, 1673, Parliament was summoned after a recess of nearly a year and a half. Ashley undertook to justify the shutting of the Exchequer and the Dutch war. But the days of the Cabal were numbered. The king, by their advice, had, during the recess, issued a Declaration of Indulgence. This was done with the hope of winning the support of the Nonconformists and the Papists. But of all subjects, that of indulgence of conscience in religion, at that period, was the most double-edged. The Nonconformists were ready enough to enjoy indulgence, but then the eternal suspicion that it was intended only as a cloak for the indulgence of Popery made them rather satisfied to be without it than enjoy it at that peril. No sooner, therefore, had they granted Charles the liberal sum of one million two hundred thousand pounds, to be collected by eighteen monthly assessments, than the Commons fell on this Proclamation of Indulgence. The members of the Church and the Nonconformists united in their denunciation of it. On the 10th of February they resolved, by a majority of one hundred and sixty-eight to one hundred and sixteen, that "penal statutes, in matters ecclesiastical, cannot be suspended except by Act of Parliament." Charles stood for awhile on his prerogative, but the effervescence in the House and country was so great that he gave way, and his declaration, on the 8th of March, that what he had done should not be drawn into a precedent, was received with acclamations by both Houses, and by rejoicings and bonfires by the people. Shaftesbury immediately passed over to the Country party, as the Opposition was called.

The Cabal was now forced to submit to another humiliation. The Country party introduced, at the instance of Shaftesbury, an Act requiring every person holding any office, civil or military, not only to take the oath of Allegiance and Supremacy, but also to receive the Sacrament in the form prescribed by the Church of England, or be incapable of accepting or holding such office. All such persons were likewise required to make a declaration against Transubstantiation, under a penalty of five hundred pounds, of being disabled from suing in any court of law, and from being a guardian or executor. This Act was passed by both Houses unanimously, the Nonconformists being promised that another Bill should be introduced to protect them from the operation of this. But before it was done Parliament was prorogued on the 29th of March, and they were caught in their own trap.

No sooner was this Act passed, which became known as the Test Act, and continued in force till the reign of George IV., than the Cabal fell to pieces. Its immediate effect was to compel Lord Clifford and Arlington to resign: the wedge was thus introduced into the Cabal, and the Duke of York, who resigned his office of Lord High Admiral, became inimical to them. The office of Lord Treasurer, resigned by Clifford, was given by the king to Sir Thomas Osborne, a gentleman of Yorkshire, who was created Earl of Danby, and became in reality Prime Minister. The rise of Danby was the certain destruction of the Cabal. His foreign policy was entirely opposed to theirs: he saw clearly enough the ruinous course of aggrandising France at the expense of the Protestant States of Europe; his views of domestic policy were more profound, though not less unprincipled than theirs. He saw the necessity of combining the old Royalist and Church interests for the support of the throne, but he set about this process by buying up the favour of the Cavaliers, the nobles, the country gentlemen, and the clergy and universities. He was not the first to bribe—the Cabal had done that so far as Parliament members were concerned—but Danby, like Walpole, and the ministers after him, bought up by direct bribes or lucrative appointments any and every man that could secure his views.

When Parliament reassembled on the 7th of January, 1674, there appeared alarming proofs of some whispered disclosures having taken place during the disruptions in the Cabal, regarding the king's secret treaty with Louis. Charles solemnly denied his having any secret engagement whatever with France. Parliament also exhibited its uneasiness regarding the practices of the Papists. The Duke of York, since the prorogation of Parliament on the 4th of November last, had married Maria D'Este, a Catholic princess, sister of[239] the Duke of Modena. This had roused all the fears of the country regarding the succession, and the Commons recommended severe measures against the Papists, and that the militia should be ready at an hour's notice to act against any disturbances on their part. They also demanded the removal from the ministry of all persons Popishly affected, and of those who advised the alliance with France and the rupture with Holland, and the placing a foreigner at the head of the army. Both army and navy, in fact, were commanded by foreigners—Prince Rupert had succeeded the Duke of York as admiral; Schomberg was sent with the army to Holland.

Charles himself not having been able in the autumn to draw his pension from Louis, and Parliament now holding fast its purse-strings, he was ready to listen to terms from Holland, whereby the triumph of the Country party was completed. On this the States offered, through the Spanish ambassador, Del Fresno, the terms which they had once already refused. The conquests on both sides should be restored, the honour of the flag conceded to England, and eight hundred thousand crowns should be paid Charles for indemnification for the expenses of the war. Had the terms been far inferior, the fact of the money would probably have decided the matter with Charles. As to the dignity of stadtholder for William, the States themselves settled that, by conferring it on him and his heirs for ever, before the time of their treaty, and nothing whatever was said of the ten thousand pounds for liberty to fish. On the 9th of February the treaty was signed, and on the 11th announced to Parliament by Charles.

We may now take a brief glance at proceedings in Scotland and Ireland.

In Scotland Archbishop Sharp had pursued his persecuting and coercive system to such an extent, that Charles was obliged to order him not to overstep his proper duties, but to confine himself to spiritual concerns alone. Such was the hatred which this renegade Churchman had excited, that in 1668 a young man of the name of Mitchell, who had witnessed the horrible cruelties which followed the battle of Rullion Green, believed himself called upon to put Sharp to death. He therefore posted himself in front of the archbishop's palace in St. Andrews, and as the archbishop came out with the Bishop of Orkney to get into his carriage, he stepped up and fired at Sharp, who was just seated; but at the same moment the Bishop of Orkney raised his arm to enter the carriage, and received the ball in his wrist. There was a cry that a man was killed, but some one exclaimed, "It is only a bishop!" and Mitchell, coolly crossing the street, mixed with the crowd, walked away, and changed his coat; and though the Council offered a large reward for his apprehension, it was six years before he was discovered.

The Earl of Rothes had been removed from the office of Royal Commissioner, and the Earl of Tweeddale, who now occupied that post, endeavoured to soften the spirit of persecution, and granted a certain indulgence. This was to admit the ejected ministers to such of their livings as were vacant, or to appoint them to others, provided they would accept collation from the bishop, and attend the presbyteries and synods. But this was to concede the question of episcopacy, and the king's supremacy in the Church. The more complying of the ejected members, to the number of forty-three, accepted the offer; but they found that by so doing they had forfeited the respect of their flocks, who deserted their churches, and crowded to other preachers more stanch to their principles. Lauderdale soon after returned to Scotland, and his very first proceeding was to pass an Act to appoint Commissioners to co-operate with English Commissioners, to endeavour to effect a union of the two kingdoms. His next was to pass another, converting the Act of Allegiance into an act of absolute Supremacy. This at once annihilated the independence of the Kirk; and a third Act was to give the king a right to maintain an army, and to march it to any part of the king's dominions. This was so evidently a step towards despotism, that not only in Scotland, but in the English Parliament, the indignation was great, and the English Commons presented an address to the Crown, praying for Lauderdale's removal. The address, however, produced no effect. Lauderdale proceeded, plausibly offering indulgence to such easy-principled ministers as would accept livings subject to the oath of Supremacy and the acknowledgment of bishops, whilst at the same time he passed an Act in July, 1670, more rigorously prohibiting conventicles within private houses or in the open air. Any minister preaching or praying at such meetings was to suffer forfeiture of both life and property. The Scots did not understand this kind of indulgence, which allowed their ministers to enter their churches by the sacrifice of their moral principles, and put them to death if they took the liberty of following their consciences.[240] The people took arms and went to their meetings, determined to defend their preachers and themselves. Lauderdale then, with the aid of Archbishop Leighton, extended the "indulgence" to all such ministers as would attend presbyteries, where the bishops should have no negative voice; but this did not deceive the people. The rigour against their own chosen ministers and places of worship was kept up, and they declared that bishops, even without a negative voice in the presbyteries, were bishops still; that such assemblies had no resemblance to those previous to 1638; that they had no power of the keys, no ordination, no jurisdiction; that the whole was but a snare to draw in unwary or self-interested ministers, and after them their flocks. To assent to such terms would be apostacy from the principles of the Kirk. Lauderdale made another step in his "indulgence" in 1673. He named eighty ejected ministers, and ordered them to repair to their churches and officiate there, but nowhere else, under severe penalties. This was to lock up the conventicles in which these preachers ministered. About one-fourth of the number refused to obey, and were confined by order of the Council to particular places. But this did not diminish the number of conventicles: it only excited a schism between the complying and the non-complying. He next passed an act of grace, pardoning all offences against the Conventicle Acts committed before the 4th of March, 1674; but this only encouraged the people to fresh freedom in their attendance on conventicles. They regarded his concessions as certain proofs of his weakness, and scorning any compliance with episcopacy and royal supremacy, their independent meetings spread and abounded more than ever. They assembled in vacant churches, where they would not have entered to listen to what they called an intrusive minister, or in the open air in glen or mountain, around a lofty pole erected as a signal. "The parish churches of the curates," says Kirton, "came to be like pest-houses, few went into any of them, and none to some; so the doors were kept locked." No policy, however severe or plausibly insinuating, could induce the wary Scots to swallow the hated pill of episcopacy.

In Ireland, the prohibition of importing Irish cattle into England was followed by a like prohibition from the Scottish Parliament, and the Irish Parliament retaliated by prohibiting Scottish woollens being imported into Ireland. These illiberal measures only spread mischief and misery on all sides. So long as the Duke of Ormond retained the lord-lieutenancy, he endeavoured to mitigate these evils. He procured the liberty of free trade between Ireland and all foreign countries, whether at war or peace with England; and five hundred families of Walloons were induced to settle in Ireland and to establish the manufacture of woollen and linen cloths. But the many sufferers from the Act of Settlement, which confirmed the possession of the Irish lands in the hands of the English soldiers and adventurers, complained greatly of Ormond, and his enemies at Court procured his removal in 1669. After him succeeded Lord Robartes, and next Lord Berkeley; but it mattered little who governed, nothing could induce the natives to sit down quietly under the loss of their estates, and that, too, whilst they had been often firm loyalists and the intruders rebels. In 1671 a Commission was appointed to inquire into all alleged grievances, consisting of Prince Rupert, Buckingham, Lauderdale, Anglesey, Ashley, and others. This lasted till March 26th, 1673, but ended in nothing. The possessors of the Irish lands were too powerful at Court, and no result followed but fresh severities against the Catholics, who were expelled from all corporations, and their priests banished the kingdom.

The war between France and the confederates—Holland, Austria, and Spain—had now spread all over Europe, both by land and sea. Louis poured his soldiers in torrents into the Netherlands, and excited insurrections in the dependencies of Spain. He managed to excite sedition against her in Sicily, and against Austria in Hungary. De Ruyter, the famous admiral, was despatched by the Prince of Orange to assist the Spaniards in Sicily, and was killed at Messina. On the other hand, Louis's great general, Turenne, was killed at the battle of Salzbach, on the Rhine. After his death, the Austrian general, Montecucculi, defeated the French repeatedly, and recovered Alsace. But Vauban, who introduced a new system of fortification, recovered the ascendency of Louis, by teaching the French how to defend towns. Louis maintained this enormous war at a cost which brought an immense burden on France, and laid the foundation of the great Revolution which horrified Europe. On the other hand, William of Orange manfully maintained the conflict under many disadvantages. His authority at home was often questioned; the governors of the Spanish Netherlands frequently crossed his plans, and his German allies frequently failed him. Yet reverse after reverse[241] was not able to damp his spirit, or overcome his imperturbable tenacity of purpose. Charles, during this awful struggle of his nephew, was enjoying peace, but a most inglorious peace, purchased by the money of Louis, to allow him to destroy all the independent States of Europe. Not even the interests of his own subjects were protected. In the course of seven months fifty-three sail of merchantmen were captured by the French cruisers. The sufferers made loud complaints, and Charles promised to obtain restoration, but very little was ever obtained. He received his annual pension from Louis; and though he drew it through Chiffinch, his pander and man of the back stairs, the transaction was well known to his ministers Danby and Lauderdale, and his brother the Duke of York.

VIEW IN THE HAGUE: THE GEVANGENPOORT IN WHICH CORNELIUS AND JOHN DE WITT WERE IMPRISONED (1672).

When he reassembled his Parliament on the 5th of February, 1677, the Country party, headed by Shaftesbury and Buckingham in the Lords, contended that the Parliament was legally at an end. That, by two statutes of Edward III., it was required that Parliaments should be held once a year, or oftener; and this Parliament having been prorogued for a period of fifteen months, had ceased to exist. But Lord Chancellor Finch truly replied, that by the Triennial Act of Charles I. the vacations were extended to three years. In the Commons there was also a motion for a dissolution, but it was postponed. The motion[242] of Buckingham in the Lords to vote the present Parliament effete was negatived, and he, Salisbury, Shaftesbury, and Wharton, were ordered by the House to retract their illegal opinions, and beg pardon of the House and the king. They refused, and were committed to the Tower. The following day the motion for a dissolution in the Commons was lost by a minority of one hundred and forty-two to one hundred and ninety-three. Defeated in the attempt to break up this corrupt Pension Parliament, the Opposition in the Lords next endeavoured to secure the succession against a Catholic prince. Charles had no children but illegitimate ones, and James, therefore, was heir to the Crown. The Bill passed the Lords, and provided that on the demise of the king, the bishops should tender a declaration against Transubstantiation to the heir; and if he refused to take it, they should appoint to all bishoprics and benefices, and take charge of the education of the king's children; but the Commons rejected the Bill on the ground of the undue power which it conferred on the bishops; and they immediately threw out another Bill of the Peers for abolishing the punishment of death for Popish recusancy. The two Houses, however, agreed in abolishing the detestable writ De hæretico comburendo.

This Parliament has been accused of singular inconsistency in calling upon the king to declare war against France, in order to check that country in its ominous progress against Holland and the Netherlands, and yet refusing him money. A very valid plea for anxiously desiring the declaration of war, and yet shrinking from putting money into Charles's hands, might have been advanced had it been an honest Parliament. The nation saw with great discontent and humiliation the growing ascendency of France, the increase of Louis's navy, the expansion of his ambitious plans, the danger of Protestant Holland, and the despicable position into which England had fallen. It had fears of Popery, fears of absolutism through a standing army. There were dark rumours, though no direct proofs, of the king's secret league with France. Whilst they, therefore, would have willingly granted him money for a war with France, they dreaded to do it, knowing how it would go in folly, and believing how it would go to strengthen despotism. They did not leave him destitute; he had the excise, and they now granted six hundred thousand pounds for the building of new ships; but they took care to tie it up, by proper securities, to its legitimate purpose. How well they were justified was shown by the first use which the king made of the money now received from France. The bulk of it went to purchase votes in the House of Commons.

Unfortunately, this Parliament was little more honest than the king himself; it was receiving bribes on all sides. Dalrymple shows that Spanish, Dutch, German, and French money was freely distributed amongst the members. In 1673 three leaders of the Opposition in the Commons were bribed with six thousand pounds, to induce them to vote unusually large supplies, and they did it. They were now in the pay of all the chief contending countries in Europe. When they raised the cry of war on this occasion, the king expressed his readiness, but demanded six hundred thousand pounds at the least for the necessary expenditure. Thereupon Spain bribed the patriots to vote for it with twenty thousand pounds, and the King of France bribed them against war with a still larger sum. The proposal was thrown out, Louis having feed not only the Parliament but the ministers and the king. On receiving about two hundred thousand pounds from Louis, Charles adjourned Parliament on the 16th of April, and did not call it together again till the next January. Never, surely, had everything like principle or patriotism so thoroughly abandoned the nation. Soon after the adjournment, Buckingham, Salisbury, and Wharton, made their submission to the king, and were released; Shaftesbury held out seven months longer, and then followed their example.

During the recess the Prince of Orange came to England. Though William could place little dependence on the alliance of his uncle Charles, yet he could not be insensible that a marriage with Mary opened up a prospect towards the throne of England, and that an alliance between the two Protestant nations must mutually strengthen their position in Europe. He therefore began to cultivate the friendship of Danby, the Prime Minister, and then solicited the union which he had before declined. The overture was received with a coldness that the more sensibly impressed the prince with the political blunder which he had committed. He therefore humbled himself, and requested permission to make a visit to London and apologise for his past conduct and explain his future views. Charles not only resented William's refusal of his former offer, but he was jealous of his intrigues with the popular leaders; and though he did not forbid his coming, he stipulated[243] that he should return before the meeting of Parliament. On the 9th of October he joined his uncle at Newmarket, and, having the services of Danby and Temple, Charles was soon persuaded to his marriage with the princess. James appeared at first averse from the connection, but he soon acquiesced; and whilst Charles boasted of having made this alliance to secure the religion of the nation, James took credit to himself from his consent, of proving how false were the suspicions which had been expressed of his intention to make changes in both the religion and the State. The marriage gave universal satisfaction, and during the festivities with which it was celebrated at Court, in November, 1677, William engaged the king in the project of a general peace. The following were the proposals arrived at by them, to be submitted to the different Powers: That Holland and France should mutually restore the conquests that they had made; that the Duchy of Lorraine should be restored to the duke, its rightful sovereign; and that France should keep possession of the places won from Spain, except Ath, Charleroi, Oudenarde, Courtrai, Tournai, Condé, and Valenciennes, which should be restored, and form a chain of fortresses between the new frontier of France and the old ones of Holland. Charles despatched Lord Feversham to lay the proposals before Louis; but the French king would not listen to them, and tidings reached William which caused him immediately to hasten home.

In spite of the season, the end of November, Louis had taken the field, according to his novel plan of winter campaign, and invested Guislain, which was expected to fall in a few days.

This decisive conduct on the part of Louis roused the wrath of Charles; he had adjourned Parliament from the 16th of April to the 15th of January. He expressed his surprise to Louis at the unreasonableness of his conduct, and despatched directions to Hyde, the ambassador at the Hague, to enter into a separate treaty with the States, on the model of the Triple Alliance, engaging not only to defend each other against all aggressors, but to continue to force the other parties to come to fair terms. Such a treaty was signed at the Hague on the 31st of December. Louis, on hearing of it, stopped the payment of Charles's pension, but at the same time he proposed, through Montagu, the English ambassador, a truce of twelve months, during which all might be arranged, and then he threw out a bait which he knew would be extremely tempting to Charles,—that if he could persuade his nephew to consent to the cession of Condé, Valenciennes, and Tournai, their full value should be paid to the king in bars of gold, concealed in bales of silk, and any sum that the Lord Treasurer might name in reward of his services should be remitted in diamonds and pearls. But both Danby and the Duke of York set their faces against any such disgraceful compromise; Danby remaining steady to his views of the danger of the French ascendency, and the duke being zealous for the interests of his new son-in-law, and in the hope of receiving the command of any auxiliary force sent from England to co-operate with Holland. At the duke's suggestion the English forces were recalled from the army of France, a strong squadron was sent to the Mediterranean to reinforce the fleet under Sir John Narborough, and the Port of Ostend was demanded from Spain as a depôt for the English army in Flanders.

This unusual vigour induced Louis to set in motion the forces of the Opposition both in England and Holland. To Barillon, his ambassador at London, he sent over the younger Ruvigny, who was related to Lady Vaughan, and intimate with the Russell family. The ambassadors first tried to bring Charles over again by the most liberal offers of money; they warned him to beware of the pernicious counsels of Danby, who was seeking popularity; and to Danby himself they paid the highest compliments, and begged him to use his influence with the king. Charles, who never long resisted the temptations of money, was not, however, yet to be moved, and the ambassadors then tried their influence with the Opposition. They found Holles and Lord William Russell extremely hostile to the Court, but suspicious of a secret engagement between Charles and Louis. This suspicion the ambassadors did their best to root out, and Holles and Russell engaged to attach to the supply conditions which should cause the king to reject it. The ambassadors promised that Louis, on his part, should use all his influence to cause a dissolution of Parliament, and to ruin Danby, measures which the Opposition desired. They even offered money to the Opposition, and asked Lord William Russell to give them the names of such persons as they should reward for their services in this matter. Russell repelled the offer with indignation, and replied that he should be sorry to have anything to do with men who could be bought with money. They did not, however, find others of the patriots quite so scrupulous. Louis, at the same time, was at work at the Hague, insinuating through his agents that William, now[244] connected with England, was joined with Charles, whom the Dutch most cordially hated, in a common scheme for ruling Holland and England by a military force, and that their only safety lay in peace and disbandment of troops. Their arts were so successful, that the Dutch began to cry for peace on any terms.

When Parliament met on the 28th of January, Charles announced that he had made a league, offensive and defensive, with Holland, for the protection of Flanders, and that if France would not consent to a peace on fair terms, they would endeavour to force it; but that he should require to put ninety ships into commission, and raise thirty or forty thousand troops, and a liberal supply would be necessary to defray the cost. This was the very thing that the Country party had been clamouring for, but they had now been drawn into a false position by the acts of Louis; and though they could not condemn the proposals, they declared that no peace ought to be made with France, except such as should restrain that country to the limits set by the treaty of the Pyrenees. This, under the present circumstances, it would be folly to ask of Louis, and Charles reproached the Opposition with the inconsistency of their conduct, in throwing obstacles in the way of the very measure they had clamoured for, especially after he had followed their own advice in making the treaty with Holland. The Ministry, however, carried a vote for the maintenance of the necessary fleet and army, and a supply was granted on general taxes to cover the expenditure.

Meanwhile Louis had pushed his military operations forward in the Netherlands with a vigour which confounded his enemies. Towards the end of January he proceeded from Paris to Metz; Namur and Mons were invested, and before the end of March he had made himself master of Ypres and Ghent. By this means he had opened a road into the very heart of Holland, and exposed Brussels to his attacks; and both on the Continent and in England the cry was now for more vigorous measures. Three thousand soldiers were sent by Charles to Ostend, and the levy of forces was proceeded with briskly. But the more Charles exerted himself to raise troops and prepare actively for war, the more the Opposition expressed their suspicions of the use intended for these troops. Russell talked of Popery, and Sir Gilbert Gerrard declared that the forces would never be used against any foreign enemy; that their object was nearer home. They demanded, therefore, that the king should at once declare war against France, recall his Commissioners from Nimeguen, and dismiss the French ambassador. This language on the part of men many of whom had been receiving their money to compel a peace advantageous to France, surprised not a little Barillon and Ruvigny, who remonstrated with Holles and Russell, Shaftesbury and Buckingham. But they were told that the real object was to embarrass the king in raising these troops; for that, once raised, he would secure the leaders of the Opposition, and then would obtain from the slavish Parliament any supplies that he might demand, thus at once making himself independent of Parliament and of Louis.

That the Opposition had grounds for their fears there was little question, and the French envoys were obliged to be satisfied with this odd-looking sort of friendship. Charles undoubtedly had rather have the army and the supplies than go to war with Louis; and the consternation of the confederates now opened up to him a new chance of obtaining Louis's money, and keeping the peace. Both the Prince of Orange and Spain, by its ambassadors, informed him that they would now no longer object to the cession of Tournai and Valenciennes, if France would restore the other five towns, with Ypres and Ghent. Charles, who now thought all difficulty removed, hastened to write these conditions to Louis, and so confident was he that they would be accepted, that he caused Danby to add, in a private letter, that if the peace were effected on these terms, he should expect a pension of six millions of livres for the next three years for his services. In a postscript the king himself wrote, "This is writ by my order.—C. R." This letter, afterwards produced against Danby, occasioned his ruin.

But Louis was not so easily satisfied after his recent victories. He demanded Ypres and Condé as well as Tournai and Valenciennes. Charles professed to be disgusted with this grasping disposition, but both Holland and Spain expressed their willingness to yield. The conquest of Ghent and French gold produced their effect, and an armistice was entered into to allow time for preparing the articles of peace. To satisfy Charles, Louis assented to his demand of a pension of six million livres, on condition that he bound himself to break with Holland if it refused to sign the treaty on the conditions now offered, to recall his troops from Flanders, to reduce his army to six thousand men, and to prorogue and then dissolve Parliament.

When Parliament met on the 23rd of May,[245] they demanded that Charles should immediately declare war or disband the whole of the troops recently raised. They voted two hundred thousand pounds on condition that the troops should be at once paid off with it, and two hundred thousand pounds more for the navy. The king asked for three hundred thousand pounds a year in addition to his present income, to enable him to punish the pirates of Algiers, and take that position in the Continental politics which the rank of England required; but to this the Commons turned a deaf ear.

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. (After the Portrait by Sir Peter Lely.)

By the middle of June the plenipotentiaries at Nimeguen had settled all the preliminaries of peace, and were on the point of signing, when Louis started another difficulty—that he would continue to hold the six towns stipulated to be restored to Spain, till the Emperor of Germany had restored the conquests made from his ally, the King of Sweden. The confederates refused to admit any such condition, and preparations were again made for war. Charles sent over four thousand men under the Earl of Ossory to join the English forces in Flanders, and Temple hastened to the Hague, to complete a fresh treaty with the States, binding each other to prosecute the war against Louis unless he abandoned the claim for Sweden. This might have had effect with Louis, had he not convincing evidence that Charles was not in earnest. At the very moment of this apparent spirit, Charles was bargaining for more money with Barillon, in the chamber of his French mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth. At Barillon's instigation, one Ducros, a French monk, was sent to Temple, at Nimeguen, desiring him to persuade the Swedish ambassadors to concede[246] their claims and make peace; and Louis, by giving a hint of this fact to the States General, so alarmed them at the perfidy of their pretended ally, that they hastened to sign the treaty with France, without any stipulation in favour of Spain. The Spanish Netherlands were at the mercy of Louis, and the coalition against him was completely broken up.

William of Orange, who was extremely mortified at having to treat for peace on such terms, and rightly attributing the necessity to the conduct of Charles, took the opportunity to give a parting chastisement to the French, though he had not, as has been asserted, knowledge of the conclusion of the treaty. On the 4th of August, four days after the signing of the peace by Beverning, the Dutch plenipotentiary at Nimeguen, he attacked the Duke of Luxembourg before Mons. Luxembourg had reduced the city to great distress, and had not relaxed his siege during the armistice; William, therefore, knowing nothing, or affecting to know nothing of the signing of the peace—though at that time it was known in London—fell on the duke with all the forces he could muster, Dutch, English, and Spanish, and a desperate battle took place. William took the abbey of St. Denis in front of the French camp; Villahermosa, the Spanish general, took the ruined fortress of Casteau, but was driven out of it again before night. The English troops under Lord Ossory did wonders. About five thousand men fell on one side or the other. At night the two armies resumed their places. It was expected that William the next day would utterly rout Luxembourg; and had the continuance of the war permitted, might have made his long-contemplated march into France. But the next day Luxembourg desired a conference, and informed William that the peace was concluded, and William retired towards Nivelles, and the French towards Ath. He had managed to prevent the important fortress of Mons falling into the hands of France.

Scarcely had these events taken place, when William was surprised by an overture from Charles, to unite with him, according to the treaty between them, to compel Louis to grant the Spaniards the terms formerly offered at Nimeguen. The motive for this does not appear clear. If he knew of its conclusion, as he must have done, he could not expect William immediately to violate the peace just made. Probably he wished to appear to the Spaniards to be anxious to keep his engagement to them, for he made the same professions to them, and on the faith of that the Spaniards demanded better terms; but equally probable is the idea that he wanted an excuse for not disbanding the army. William is said, however, to have exclaimed to Hyde, who brought the message, "Was ever anything so hot and so cold as this Court of yours? Will the king never learn a word that I shall never forget since my last passage to England, when, in a great storm, the captain all night was crying to the man at the helm, 'Steady! steady! steady!' If this despatch had come twenty days ago, it had changed the face of affairs in Christendom, and the war might have been carried on till France had yielded to the treaty of the Pyrenees, and left the world in quiet for the rest of our lives; as it comes now, it will have no effect at all." Louis resented the interference of Charles at this moment, and suspended the payment of his pension. He, however, receded from some of his terms, and referred the settlement of the differences with the Spaniards and the Emperor of Germany to the Dutch. Before the end of October peace was concluded with all parties. Holland had recovered all she had lost, and obtained an advantageous treaty of commerce with France. Spain had lost Franche-Comté, and twelve fortresses in Flanders; Germany had regained Philippsburg in exchange for Freiburg; Sweden recovered what it had lost to Denmark and the Elector of Brandenburg; and Louis was left with a power and reputation that made him the arbitrator of Europe.

We now come to one of the most extraordinary displays of a succession of plots, or pretended plots, which ever occurred in the history of any nation. From a small and most improbable beginning they spread and ramified themselves in all directions, involving the most distinguished persons of the State, ascending to the royal house, threatening the lives of the Duke of York, of the queen, and even of the king. Though defeated in their highest aims, they yet brought to execution a considerable number of persons of various ranks, including several noblemen and commoners of distinction. When they appeared to be extinguished for a short period, they broke out again with fresh force, and struck down fresh victims; and whilst much of the machinery of the agitators remained in the deepest obscurity, the mind of the nation was wrought up to a condition of the most terrible suspicion, wonder, and alarm. In the half-absurdity of the charges, the half-development of ominous truths, the public was thrown into a long fever of terror and curiosity, and seemed to lose[247] its judgment and discretion, and to be ready to destroy its noblest citizens on the evidence of the most despicable of mankind.

From the moment that some obscure indications of a secret league between the king and Louis of France had emerged to the light, the people were haunted by fears and rumours of plots, and designs against the national liberty. Especially since the Duke of York had avowed himself a Catholic, and the king had a French Catholic mistress, and spent much time with the French ambassador, Barillon, in her apartments, there were continual apprehensions of an attempt to introduce Popery, and to suppress the public freedom by a standing army. The country was nearer the mark than it was aware of, and had it come by any chance to the knowledge of the full truth that their monarch was the bond-slave of France, to favour its ambitious designs of averting the balance of power on the Continent, and extending the French empire, at the expense of its neighbours, to the widest boundary of the Empire of Charlemagne, the immediate consequence would have been revolution, and the expulsion of the Stuarts a few years earlier. But as the real facts were kept in profound secrecy, all manner of vague rumours rose from the facts themselves, like smoke from a hidden fire.

There was a party, moreover, in Parliament, called the Country party, or, in our modern phrase, the Opposition, which now included several of the displaced statesmen of the Cabal, especially Buckingham and Shaftesbury. These men had no scruples to restrain them from embarrassing the Government, and in particular from denouncing their successful rival, the Lord Treasurer Danby. They knew well the secret which the public only suspected; but they had been too much mixed up with it to render it safe to reveal too much of it. But enough might be employed to destroy the Prime Minister, and to gain another end—the exclusion of the Duke of York and the prevention of a Papist succession.

To destroy Danby, who was thoroughly anti-Gallican in his policy; to exclude James from the throne and secure a Protestant succession; to compel the king to rule by a Protestant Government, and to have recourse to Parliament for support; there certainly appeared nothing more likely than to raise a terror of a Papist conspiracy, and to link it sufficiently with suspicious connection with France. This was done with marvellous success amid a wonderful exhibition of strange events, except that of excluding James from the throne, and even this was all but accomplished. Probably the conception of the scheme was due to the fertile mind of Shaftesbury, and its execution to the same master of chicane, assisted by the unscrupulous Buckingham.

On the 12th of August, as the king was walking in the park, one Kirby, a chemist, who had been occasionally employed in the royal laboratory, and was therefore known to Charles, approached and said, "Sir, keep within the company. Your enemies have a design upon your life, and you may be shot in this very walk." Charles stepped aside with him, and asked him the meaning of his words. He replied that two men, Grove and Pickering, had engaged to shoot him, and that Sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, had agreed to poison him. Charles showed very little change of manner or countenance, but told Kirby to meet him that evening at the house of Chiffinch, his well-known procurer, and pursued his walk. In the evening Kirby repeated what he had said, and added that he received the information from Dr. Tongue, rector of St. Michael's, in Wood Street, who was well known to several persons about the Court. This Dr. Tongue was a singular mixture of cunning and credulity, who had long been an alarmist, and who had printed yearly and quarterly pamphlets against the Jesuits, "to alarm and awaken his Majesty and the two Houses." Tongue was sent for, and brought a mass of papers, divided into forty-three articles, giving a narrative of the conspiracy, which he pretended had been thrust under his door. Charles referred him to Danby, and to him Tongue repeated the story of Grove, otherwise called Honest William, and Pickering, and said he would find out their abode, or point them out when walking, according to their daily custom, in the park. Orders were given to arrest these assassins, but they did not appear, and Tongue gave various frivolous reasons for their non-appearance. It was said that they were gone to Windsor, but they could not be found there. Charles came at once to the conclusion that the whole was a hoax, and when Danby requested permission to lay the narrative before the Privy Council, he replied, "No, not even before my brother! It would only create alarm, and might put the design of murdering me into somebody's head."

The contempt which the king showed and expressed for the whole affair might have caused it to drop, but there was unquestionably a party at work behind, which would not suffer it to stop. Tongue informed Danby that he had met with the[248] person whom he suspected of having drawn up the papers; that he had given him a more particular account of the conspiracy, but he begged that his name might be concealed, lest the Papists should murder him. He moreover assured Danby that on a certain day a packet of treasonable letters would pass through the post-office at Windsor, addressed to Bedingfield, the confessor of the Duke of York. Danby hastened to Windsor to intercept the packet, but found it already in the hands of the king. Bedingfield had delivered them to the duke, saying that the papers appeared to contain treasonable matter, and that they certainly were not in the hands of the persons whose names they bore. The duke carried them at once to the king.

These papers now underwent a close examination, and the result was that all were convinced that they were gross forgeries. One was clearly in the same hand as the papers presented before by Tongue; the rest, though in a feigned hand, bore sufficient evidence of being the work of the same person. The king was more than ever convinced that the whole was a hoax, and desired that no further notice might be taken of it. Kirby frequently made his appearance at Court, but Charles always passed him without notice. As there appeared no prospect of proceeding with the matter at Court, the person who had conveyed the papers to Dr. Tongue now went to Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, an active justice of the peace at Westminster, and made affidavit, not only of the truth of the former papers, but also of thirty-eight more articles, making altogether eighty-one articles. This mysterious person now appeared as one Titus Oates, a clergyman, and it was ascertained that he had been lodging at Kirby's, at Vauxhall, and that Dr. Tongue had also retired thither, on the plea of concealment from the Papists. Godfrey, on perceiving that Coleman, secretary to the late Duchess of York, and a friend of his own, was named in the affidavit as a chief conspirator, immediately communicated the fact to Coleman, and Coleman communicated it to the Duke of York.

James was now more than ever convinced that, whatever were the plot, its object was to bring the Catholics into odium, and lead to his exclusion from the throne, and demanded of Charles that it should be inquired into. Danby now seemed to favour the king's view of keeping it quiet, but this only led James to suspect that the minister wished to hold it back till Parliament met, when its disclosure might be useful in an impeachment with which he was menaced. Charles, at the duke's renewed entreaty, reluctantly ordered Tongue and Oates to appear before the Privy Council. Accordingly Titus Oates, soon to become so notorious, appeared before the Council on the 28th of September, 1678, in a clerical gown and a new suit of clothes, and with an astonishing assurance delivered in writing the following strange story. The Pope, he said, claimed Great Britain and Ireland, on the ground of the heresy of the prince and people, and had commanded the Jesuits to take possession of it for him. De Oliva, general of the Order, had arranged everything for this purpose, and had named under the seal of the Society, all the persons to fill the offices of the State. Lord Arundel was created Lord Chancellor; Lord Powis, Treasurer; Sir William Godolphin, Privy Seal; Coleman, Secretary of State; Lord Bellasis, General of the Army; Lord Peters, Lieutenant-General; Lord Stafford, Paymaster. All inferior offices, and all the dignities of the Church were filled up, many of them with Spaniards and other foreigners. Moreover, the Jesuits were dispersed throughout Ireland, organising insurrections and massacres; in Scotland they were acting under the guise of Covenanters; in Holland they were raising a French party against the Prince of Orange, and in England preparing for the murder of the king, and of the duke, too, if he did not consent to the scheme. They had no lack of money. They had one hundred thousand pounds in the bank, had sixty thousand pounds in yearly rents, had received from La Chaise, the confessor of the French king, a donation of ten thousand pounds, and a promise from De Corduba, the Provincial of New Castile, of as much more. In March last a man named Honest William, and Pickering, a lay brother, had been commissioned to shoot the king at Windsor, and had been severely punished for the failure of the attempt. On the 24th of April a consultation had been held by Jesuits from all parts, at the White Horse Tavern in the Strand, to decide on the mode of killing the king; when three sets of assassins were engaged—the two already mentioned, two Benedictine monks, Coniers and Anderton, and four Irishmen. Ten thousand pounds had been offered to Wakeman, the queen's physician, to poison the king, but he had refused to do it for less than fifteen thousand pounds, which was agreed to, and five thousand pounds had been paid down. He had often seen Wakeman since amongst the Jesuits. The Irish assassins were to receive twenty guineas each for stabbing the king. Honest William was[249] to receive fifteen hundred pounds, and Pickering thirty thousand masses, valued at the same sum. They were to shoot the king with silver bullets. A wager, he said, was laid that the king should eat no more Christmas pies, and that if he would not become R.C. (Roman Catholic, or Rex Catholicus), he should no longer be C.R. Oates averred that he had gone to the Jesuits at Valladolid, thence with letters from them to Burgos, thence to Madrid, back to England, thence had gone to St. Omer, and back to England with fresh instructions. They made him cognisant of their plans for the murder, and he saw on their papers all the names signed. Since his return he had discovered that they set fire to London in 1666, and had used seven hundred fire-balls, familiarly called Tewkesbury mustard pills, as containing a notable biting sauce. Their success encouraged them to set fire to Southwark in 1676, by which they had gained two thousand pounds above their expenses, as they had by carrying off diamonds in the London fire made fourteen thousand pounds. They had now a plan to set fire to Wapping, Westminster, and the ships in the river. There were twenty thousand Catholics in London, who had engaged to rise in twenty-four hours or less, and could easily cut the throats of one hundred thousand Protestants. In Scotland eight thousand Catholics had agreed to take arms; a general massacre of Protestants was planned in Ireland; Ormond was to be murdered; forty thousand black bills were provided for the Irish massacre, and Coleman had sent thither two hundred thousand pounds. Poole, the author of the "Synopsis," Dr. Stillingfleet, and De Brunt were also to be put to death.

TITUS OATES BEFORE THE PRIVY COUNCIL. (See p. 250.)

The recital of this astounding story was listened to with amazement and incredulity. The listeners looked at one another in wonder at the audacity of the man who could relate such horrible and improbable designs, and expect to be believed, after the account which he gave of the mode by which he professed to obtain his information. This was that he had feigned a conversion to discover the designs of the Jesuits; had been duly admitted to the priesthood and to their monasteries, and finally entrusted with the conveyance of their diabolical messages. The Duke of York declared the whole[250] to be a most impudent imposture, but others thought no man in his senses would come forward with such a startling tale, and implicate so many persons of consideration without some grounds. Where, they asked, were his proofs? Where were the papers that had been confided to him, which would be evidence against the traitors? Oates confessed that he had no such papers, but that he would undertake to procure abundance if he were furnished with warrants and officers to arrest the persons whom he had accused, and seize their papers. This was granted, and the next day the inquiry went on. It was objected to the letters seized at Windsor, that they were written in feigned hands, and were full of orthographical errors. Oates replied that that was the art of the Jesuits, who gave such documents a suspicious look, that if discovered they might pretend that they were forged. But Charles, who became even more persuaded that the thing was got up, asked Oates what sort of a man Don John was, as he professed to have been introduced to him at Madrid. Oates replied at once that he was tall, dark, and thin. The king turned to the duke and smiled, for they both were well acquainted with Don John's person, which had more of the Austrian than the Spaniard, and was fair, stout, and short. "And where did you see La Chaise," added Charles, "pay down the ten thousand pounds from the French king?" "At the house of the Jesuits," replied Oates, unhesitatingly, "close to the Louvre." "Man!" exclaimed Charles, who knew Paris better than Oates, "the Jesuits have no house within a mile of the Louvre."

These palpable blunders confirmed Charles in his opinion, and seemed to annihilate the veracity of Oates. The king, certain of the whole affair proving a sheer invention, went away to Newmarket, and left the duke and Danby to finish the inquiry. But they who had set Oates to work knew more than he did, and presently such confirmation was given to Oates's assertions as astonished every one. At first, the clue appeared broken. On examining the papers of Harcourt, the Provincial of the Jesuits, nothing bearing the slightest indications of a plot could be discovered; but not so with the papers of Coleman. This man was the son of a clergyman in Suffolk, who had turned Catholic, and was not only appointed secretary to the Duchess of York, but after her death was much in the confidence of James. Coleman was undoubtedly a great dabbler in conspiracy. He had maintained a correspondence with Father La Chaise, the confessor of Louis XIV., with the Pope's nuncio at Brussels, and other Catholics, for the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in England, and he made himself a centre of intelligence to the Catholics at home and abroad. He lived in great style, and his table was frequented by the Whig members during the sitting of Parliament. He sent weekly news-letters to the Catholics in various quarters, and made in them the severest remarks on the ambition of the French king and the conduct of the English Government. Yet all this time he was importuning Louis to furnish money for the establishment of the Catholic Church in England again. He obtained three thousand five hundred pounds from the bankers whom Charles had broken faith with on the shutting of the Exchequer, on pretence of influence with Parliament, and two thousand five hundred pounds from Barillon, to distribute amongst members of Parliament.

In 1675 a foreigner of the name of Buchateau, but who was called Louis Luzancy, had come to England, pretending to be a Catholic who was desirous of joining the English Church, and who gave information to some of the Opposition leaders that Father St. Germain, confessor to the Duchess of York, had threatened to murder him if he did not recant Protestantism. This made a great sensation, and he then said he had made the discovery of a Popish plot, in which the king was to be killed, and the streets of London were to run with the blood of massacred Protestants. Though it was soon shown by Du Maresque, a French Protestant clergyman, that Luzancy had fled from France for forgery, and a swindling transaction at Oxford soon proved that he was a great scoundrel, yet his story won him much patronage: he was ordained and presented to the living of Dovercourt, in Essex, during this present year. His pretended plot was very like this of Oates's, and might possibly be its model. He had accused Coleman of similar practices, but Coleman had boldly faced him and put him to silence. But now Coleman had fled, itself a sign of guilt; amongst his papers were found abundant evidence of his correspondence with the French Court in 1674, 1675, and 1676. In one letter he said to La Chaise, "We have here a mighty work upon our hands, no less than the conversion of three kingdoms, and by that, perhaps, the utter subduing of a pestilent heresy, which has for a long time domineered over a great part of this northern world. There never were such hopes of success since the days of Queen Mary." He declared[251] the duke devoted to the cause and also to the French king. He said, "I can scarcely believe myself awake, or the thing real, when I think of a prince in such an age as we live in converted to such a degree of zeal and piety as not to regard anything in the world in comparison of God Almighty's glory, the salvation of his own soul, and the conversion of our poor kingdom." He declared that Charles was inclined to favour the Catholics, and that money would do anything with him. "Money cannot fail of persuading the king to anything. There is nothing it cannot make him do, were it ever so much to his prejudice. It has such absolute power over him he cannot resist it. Logic built upon money has in our Court more powerful charms than any other sort of argument." Therefore he recommended three hundred thousand pounds to be sent over on condition that Parliament should be dissolved.

These discoveries perfectly electrified the public. That there was a plot they now had no doubt whatever, and the information touching so close on the real secret of Charles's pension, must have startled even him. Coleman, in these letters, stated that Parliament had been postponed in 1675 till April, to serve the French designs, by preventing Holland from obtaining assistance from England. Yet when Oates had been confronted with Coleman before his flight, though Oates pretended great intimacy with him, he actually did not recognise him. Another proof, if any were wanted, that Oates was acting on the knowledge of others, not on his own. Whoever they were, they had become acquainted with Coleman's French correspondence, and who so likely as Shaftesbury and the Whigs who used to frequent this man's house, and who were themselves deep in a similar intrigue with the French Court?

Still more astounding events, however, followed close on this discovery. No sooner was this discovery in the letters of Coleman made, than Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, the magistrate before whom Oates had made his affidavit of the plot, who was a particular friend of Coleman's, and had warned him of his danger, was missing, and was found murdered amongst some bushes in a dry ditch between Primrose Hill and Old St. Pancras Church. Godfrey was of a sensitive disposition, which sometimes approached to insanity. On the apprehension of Coleman, Godfrey had been seized with great alarm, and expressed his conviction that he should be the first martyr of this plot. On the 12th of October he burnt a large quantity of papers, and that day he was seen hurrying about the town in a state of serious absent-mindedness. From that day he was missing, and it was not till the sixth day that his body was found. He lay forward, resting on his knees, his breast, and the left side of his face. His sword was thrust through his heart with such violence, that it appeared at his back. His cane was stuck upright in the bank, his gloves lay near it on the grass, his rings were on his fingers, and his money was in his purse. All these circumstances seemed to indicate suicide; and to confirm it, it was reported that when the sword was withdrawn, it was followed by a rush of blood. This, however, the doctors denied, and on being stripped, the purple mark round his neck showed that he had been strangled, and then thrust through, and his body, cane, and gloves so disposed as to persuade the parties that he had killed himself.

But who, then, were the murderers? This was never discovered, but the public, putting together all the circumstances, declared that the Papists had done it, and that Oates's story was all true. That Catholics, or at least such as were in the scheme of Coleman, had done it, appears very probable, although it has been argued that they had no motive. But it must be remembered that Godfrey was a friend and associate of Coleman's. He had always been a partisan of the Catholics; he gave Coleman warning to fly; he showed great alarm himself, and commenced burning papers. All these circumstances indicate complicity. That he was deep in the secrets of the party, and had dangerous papers in his possession, is clear. Coleman was in custody, and something might be drawn out of him. Godfrey might be arrested, and a man of his nervous temperament might reveal what concerned the lives of many others. There were the strongest motives, therefore, for those who had any concern in the dangerous conspiracy of Coleman, to have Godfrey at least out of the way.

The public mind was in the wildest state of alarm and fermentation. Every hour teemed with fresh rumours. Murders, assassinations, and invasions were the constant talk of the panic-struck public. The City put itself into a posture of defence; chains and posts were put up, and no man deemed himself safe.

In this state of the public mind Parliament met on the 21st of October. Charles informed Parliament that he had obtained more favourable terms for Spain by his army in Flanders, but that the[252] expense had been enormous; the supplies were not only exhausted, but the revenue of the next year was anticipated, and it would require a liberal grant even to disband the army. He alluded but passingly to the plot, for it touched too nearly on the tender ground of his French secret, but said he left the examination of the plot entirely to the law. But both Danby and the Opposition rushed into the question, contrary to the wish of Charles. Danby was anxious to divert the House from the threatened impeachment of himself, and the Opposition to establish a Popish plot, to damage the Duke of York's prospects in the succession.

Oates was called before both Houses, as well as Dr. Tongue, and such was the effect of their statements, that guards were placed in the cellars under the Parliament House, to prevent another gunpowder plot; and Charles was implored to order every Catholic, not a householder, to quit London, to dismiss all Papists from his service, and have his food prepared only by orthodox cooks. Committees were appointed to search the conspiracy to the bottom. Shaftesbury took the lead in that of the Lords, and there was busy work issuing warrants for searches and arrests, sending out informers and officers, examining and committing prisoners. In consequence of the charges made by Oates against Lords Arundel, Powis, Bellasis, Petre, and Stafford, as having received appointments from the Pope of the chief offices of State, they were arrested and committed to the Tower.

The Commons introduced a new Test Act to exclude every Catholic from Parliament. This had indeed been effected in the Commons in the preceding session by the Oath of Supremacy, and the declaration against Transubstantiation; but the present test went to exclude the Catholic peers from their House also. It prescribed the taking of the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance, and a declaration that the Church of Rome was an idolatrous church. Such a test had been frequently introduced before and thrown out, but in this public furore it rapidly passed the Commons, and reached a third reading in the Lords, when James, with tears in his eyes, entreated them to exempt him from so severe an exclusion, protesting that his religion should always remain a thing between God and his own soul. A proviso, exempting him from its operation, was added to the Bill; but in the Commons this passed by only two votes. Thus the Catholic peers were excluded by Titus Oates from their seats, and their successors did not regain them till 1829.

Under the stimulating effect of the repeated summonses of Oates before Parliament, and his continually augmenting disclosures, both Houses voted that "There had been and still was a damnable and hellish plot contrived and carried on by the Popish recusants for assassinating and murdering the king, and for subverting the Government, and rooting out and destroying the Protestant religion." Titus Oates was declared "the saviour of his country," and a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year was, at the instigation of Parliament, settled on him. To increase the effect of his disclosures, the funeral of the murdered Godfrey was conducted with every circumstance of public parade. He had been carried from Primrose Hill to his own house, and thousands had crowded thither to see the martyr of Protestantism. Seventy-two divines, in full canonicals, walked in procession to St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, where he was buried, and they were followed by a thousand gentlemen in mourning, including many members of Parliament. Dr. Lloyd, his friend and Rector of the parish, preached a sermon from the text, "As a man falleth before the wicked, so fellest thou." And he had two stout fellows in the pulpit with him, dressed as clergymen, to defend him from the Papists.

The fury against the Catholics now amounted to a frenzy. Two thousand suspected traitors were thrust into the prisons of the metropolis, and thirty thousand Catholics, who refused to take the obnoxious oaths, were compelled to quit their homes in London, and remove to twenty miles' distance from Whitehall. The train-bands and volunteers, to the number of twenty thousand, were occasionally kept all night under arms; batteries were planted, and every military precaution was taken to prevent a surprise. The terror spread over the whole country; orders were issued to disarm the Catholics everywhere, and every one was compelled to take the oaths, or give security for keeping the peace.

THOMAS OSBORNE, FIRST DUKE OF LEEDS. (From the Portrait by Van der Vaart.)

And who was this Titus Oates, who had been able to conjure up such a storm? One of the most loathsome of mankind. His real name was Ambrose. He was the son of a ribbon weaver, who turned Anabaptist preacher during the Commonwealth, and managed to secure an orthodox pulpit at the Restoration. Titus was sent to Cambridge, where he took orders, and became a curate in different parishes, and afterwards chaplain on board a man-of-war. But wherever he went, the worst of characters pursued him, as[253] addicted to a mischievous and litigious temper, and to the most debased and disgraceful vices. Out of every situation he was expelled with infamy, and was convicted twice of perjury by a jury. Reduced by his crimes to beggary, he fell into the hands of Dr. Tongue, and by him was engaged to simulate the character of a convert to Catholicism, so as to be able to discover all that he could of the secret views and designs of the Papists. He was reconciled, as the Catholics term it, to the church by a priest of the name of Berry or Hutchinson, who was first of one religion and then of another, and nothing long, and sent to the Jesuits' College at Valladolid, in Spain. But he was successively ejected both from that college and from St. Omer, with accumulated infamy. Returning to England he became the ready tool of Tongue, who no doubt was also the tool of deeper and more distinguished agitators behind. The Jesuits had held one of their triennial meetings at the Duke of York's. This Tongue and Oates converted into a special meeting, for the prosecution of their great national plot, but fixed it at the White Horse in the Strand. They then forged their mass of letters and papers, purporting to be the documents and correspondence of these Jesuits, planning the assassination of the king. These were written in Greek characters by Oates, copied into English ones by Tongue, and communicated as a great discovery to Kirby. Such were the apparent unravellers of the alleged plot; but these puppets had their strings pulled by far more masterly men, who were constantly extending their ground and linking up fresh machinery in the scheme. The weak part of the affair was, that on the testimony of Oates alone the whole[254] rested. Those whom he incriminated, to a man, steadily denied any knowledge or participation in any such plot as he pretended. It was necessary to have two witnesses for convicting traitors, and other tools were not long wanting. Government had offered a large reward and full pardon to any one who could discover the assassins of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, and in a few days a letter was received from one William Bedloe, desiring that he might be arrested in Bristol and brought to London to give evidence. The warrant for his apprehension was, singularly enough, sent to Bedloe himself, who caused his own arrest by delivering it to the Mayor of Bristol. This Bedloe turned out to be as thorough a scoundrel as Oates himself. He had been employed as a groom by Lord Bellasis, and afterwards in his house; had travelled as a courier on the Continent, and occasionally passed himself off as a nobleman. He had been seized and convicted of swindling transactions in various countries, and was just released from Newgate, when his eye was attracted by the reward of five hundred pounds for the discovery of the murderers of Godfrey.

In his first examination by the king and the two Secretaries of State, he disavowed all knowledge of the plot, but said he had seen the dead body at Somerset House, where the queen lived, and that Le Fevre, the Jesuit, told him that he and Walsh, another Jesuit, a servant of Lord Bellasis's and attendant in the queen's chapel, had smothered him between two pillows, and that they offered him two thousand pounds to assist in conveying the body away. The next day, before the House of Lords, he contradicted himself dreadfully, for the story of the two pillows did not accord with the state of the body when found. Now he said that he was not smothered, but strangled with a cravat. And so far from knowing nothing of the plot, he confessed to knowing all about the commissions offered to the Lords Arundel, Powis, Bellasis, and others, and he added wonders and horrors of his own. Ten thousand men, he said, were to land from Holland in Bridlington Bay, and seize Hull; Jersey and Guernsey were to be invaded by a fleet and army from Brest; an army from Spain of twenty or thirty thousand men was to land at Milford Haven, and there be joined by Powis and Petre with another army. There were forty thousand men ready in London, to kill all the soldiers as they came out of their lodgings. He was to have four thousand pounds for a great murder, meaning no doubt that of the king, and the Government was to be offered to one, if he would hold it of the Church. The king, Monmouth, Ormond, Buckingham, and Shaftesbury were to be killed. Lords Carrington and Brudenel were named as engaged in the plot, and were immediately arrested. When Charles heard this astounding story, so diametrically opposed to his former tales, he exclaimed, "Surely the man has received a new lesson during the last four-and-twenty hours!" and no doubt he had. These additions and improvements were constantly going on, without regard to the most glaring self-contradictions; but the temper of Parliament made them disregard obvious falsehoods of the most flagrant kind. So long as there was a chance of excluding the Duke of York from Parliament, these horrible stories were kept before the public imagination; but the moment the proviso passed in his favour, the attack was diverted into another and a higher channel. Buckingham had formerly endeavoured to induce Charles to divorce the queen: now a deadly attack was made upon her.

On the 23rd of November, a Mr. Lloyd sought an interview with the king, and informed him that Titus Oates was in possession of information that would incriminate the queen. Charles, who had shown more sense than any one through the whole business, and might have crushed it in a short time if he had had half the active exertion that he had shrewdness, expressed his decided disbelief, yet admitted Oates to make his statement. It was this, that he saw a letter in July, in which Wakeman, the queen's physician, asserted that her majesty had given her consent to the murder of the king; that he himself was at Somerset House one day in August, with several Jesuits, and was left in the antechamber whilst they went in to the queen; that the door being ajar, he heard a female voice exclaim, "I will no longer suffer such indignities to my bed! I will join in his death and the propagation of the Catholic faith;" that when the Jesuits retired he looked into the room and saw there only the queen. Now Oates had repeatedly and distinctly declared that he knew of no other persons implicated except those he had informed of; and when he made the charge against Wakeman, had said not a word of this grave accusation. Charles was certain that it was altogether false, but to prove the man, sent the Earls of Ossory and Bridgewater to make him point out the room and antechamber; but he could not do it. Charles again declared that the fellow had been instigated by some interested person, and ordered strict guard[255] to be kept over him, and no one to be allowed to speak with him. Bedloe, however, was brought forward to confirm Oates's statement, and declared that he had overheard a conversation between Catherine and Lord Bellasis, Coleman, and some French gentlemen, in the gallery of the queen's chapel, in which she, after shedding tears, consented to the king's murder. Bedloe had been careful not to point out any private rooms for this scene, because he had made a fatal blunder in laying the scene of Godfrey's murder in a room always occupied by the queen's footmen, and at the very time that the king was there; and not only was there a throng of persons all over the palace, but a sentinel was posted at every door, and a detachment of the Guards was drawn out in the court.

Bedloe, however, delivered his charge in writing to the House of Commons, and then Oates appeared at the Bar, and, with a front of brass and in a loud voice, exclaimed, "I, Titus Oates, accuse Catherine, Queen of England, of high treason." The astounded Commons immediately sent an address to Charles, requesting that the queen might be removed from Whitehall, and desired a conference with the Lords. The Lords, however, were not so precipitate; they desired first to see the depositions made before the Council, then summoned Oates and Bedloe, and strictly examined them. They particularly pressed them to explain why this monstrous charge had not been produced before, and as they could give no sufficient reason, they declined any conference on the subject. Shaftesbury exerted himself to overrule this conclusion, but in vain; and the charge was dropped, the king observing, "They think I have a mind for a new wife; but for all that I won't see an innocent woman abused." Impeachments, however, were received by the Lords against the peers whom these miscreants had accused.

And now began the bloody work which these villains had remorselessly elaborated for a number of innocent persons, to serve the great end of their employers. The first victim, however, was one whom a third base wretch, thirsting for blood-money, a broken-down Scotsman, of the name of Carstairs, had accused. This was Stayley, a Catholic banker, whom the man said he had heard telling a Frenchman of the name of Firmin, of Marseilles, in a tavern in Covent Garden, that the king was the greatest rogue in the world, and that he would kill him with his own hand. Carstairs had gone to Stayley and told him what he professed to have heard, but offered to suppress the fact for two hundred pounds. Stayley treated him with deserved contempt, but he was arrested within five days and tried for his life. Burnet, on hearing the name of the accuser, hastened to Sir William Jones, the Attorney-General, and told him that this Carstairs was a man of the vilest character, and not to be believed on his oath; but Jones asked him who had authorised him to defame the king's witness, and Burnet timidly withdrew. Firmin could have decided what Stayley had really said, but he was kept in custody and not allowed to appear on the trial, and Stayley was condemned and hanged.

Coleman perished next, on the evidence of Oates and Bedloe, that he had been plotting with the French Court; but he contended it was only to obtain money for restoring Catholicism, and not to injure any person. It was clear that he had received money from the French king, and therefore was guilty of a serious crime, but it was equally clear that both Oates and Bedloe fabricated much falsehood against him. His own letters, however, were insurmountable evidence of his guilt. Next came Ireland, Fenwick, Grove, Whitbread, and Pickering. Ireland, a Jesuit priest, was accused of having signed, with fifty other Jesuits, a resolution to kill the king, and the others of having engaged to assist in the design. Oates swore to the guilt of the whole, Bedloe only to that of Ireland, Grove, and Pickering, who were condemned, and died protesting that they, before their apprehension, had never heard of such a thing as a plot, much less had any concern in one. Bedloe claimed to be the chief witness respecting the death of Godfrey; but though he had unscrupulously seconded the evidence of Oates, Oates would not support him in this case. He was obliged, therefore, to look out for a second witness, and it was two months before he could find one. At length, on the 21st of December, one Prance, a silversmith, who had worked in the queen's chapel, was apprehended on suspicion, he having absented himself from his house for several days about the time of Godfrey's murder. The moment Bedloe saw him, he exclaimed, "That man is one of the murderers." It was in vain that he denied it, equally vain that he brought witnesses to prove that he did not leave home at the time of Godfrey's death, but a week before. He was thrown into Newgate, and loaded with irons; some say he was tortured, others that he was worked upon by threats and promises. He confessed, and accused three others—Hill, Green, and Berry, three[256] servants in Somerset House. But scarcely had he done so, when he entreated to be brought before the king and Council again, and there on his knees, and with every sign of agony and remorse, protested that all that he had said was false, that he knew nothing whatever of either the murder or the murderers. Afterwards, in prison, where he was chained to the floor, the horror of his feelings was such, that Dr. Lloyd, who preached Godfrey's funeral sermon, and now was become Dean of Bangor, said that he was occasionally bereft of his reason. When urged to confess, he again, however, repeated his former statement, but with various strange additions; then Dr. Lloyd declined to have anything more to do with it, but left him to Boyce, the gaoler. Prance afterwards said that Boyce wrote many things that he copied after him, and he could see that Boyce had been with Bedloe and Lord Shaftesbury, and that he was told he must make his evidence agree with Bedloe's, or he would be sure to be hanged. The first story of Prance was that they had killed Godfrey because he was an enemy to the queen's servants; that Green strangled him with a handkerchief, and punched him on the breast with his knee: but finding him not dead, wrung his neck; that on the following Wednesday night, about twelve o'clock, the body was put into a sedan chair and taken to the Soho, and there conveyed on horseback before Hill to the place in the fields where he was found, and where they thrust his sword through him.

Hill, Green, and Berry stoutly denied the whole affair, and pointed out the gross contradictions between the evidence of Bedloe and Prance; but Chief Justice Scroggs, who presided at all these trials, and showed himself a most brutal and unprincipled judge, overruled all that. Mrs. Hill, who brought witnesses into court in favour of her husband, complained vehemently that they were browbeaten and laughed at. "My witnesses," she exclaimed, "are not rightfully examined; they are modest, and are laughed at." The unhappy victims were all condemned, and died still protesting their innocence. Berry, who was a Protestant, was respited a week, with a promise of pardon if he would confess; but he would not—a sufficient proof of the man's innocence, who would not purchase life by a lie.

These victims having suffered, the drama of plots now produced a new act. It was one of the great objects, as we have said, not only to damage the succession of the Duke of York and to alarm the king, but to ruin the Prime Minister, Danby, who had superseded the Cabal. Intrigues were entered into with Montagu, the ambassador at Paris, for this purpose. Montagu was, of course, in the secret of the money transactions between the English and French Courts, and could, if it were his interest, produce enough to destroy Danby, without letting too much light in upon the whole foul business; for not only the king on one side, but the patriots and the Opposition on the other, were equally implicated. A fortunate incident facilitated their plans. Montagu and Danby were at feud, and Danby only wanted a fair pretext to remove Montagu from his post at Paris. In this position of things Montagu furnished ample ground for his recall. He had made love to Charles's famous mistress, the Duchess of Cleveland, now superseded by the Duchess of Portsmouth. Cleveland was living in Paris a life as little creditable as her life had been in England. But Montagu deserted her for her daughter, and, on her resenting this, threatened if she continued to annoy him, to expose her intrigues in the French Court, for she was become a great political tool of Louis in his practices on England. But Cleveland was not a woman to submit to be snubbed and menaced even by a king, much less by a minister: she wrote at once to Charles a furious letter against Montagu, for she had still great influence with the king. She alleged that Montagu, who had been employed by Charles to find out an astrologer, who had foretold accurately Charles's restoration and entry into London on the 29th of May, 1660, had bribed this man to give such answers to the king as suited his own purposes. He had often told her that both the king and the duke were fools—one a dull, governable fool, and the other a wilful fool; that he wished the Parliament would send them both on their travels again; that the king always chose a greater beast than himself to govern him, and much of the like kind.

Montagu did not wait for the blow which was sure to follow this missive, but suddenly, without notice or permission, left Paris and appeared in England. He put himself in communication with Shaftesbury and his party, and also with Barillon, who would be only too glad to get Danby dismissed from office. Danby watched the movements of Montagu with anxiety, knowing that he had the power to make fatal disclosures. To secure himself from the attack of the Government, and at the same time to enable him to effect his own purpose, Montagu offered himself as a candidate for Parliament at Grinstead,[257] but was defeated by the influence of Danby. At Northampton he was returned by the mayor, Sir William Temple, while the Government nominee was returned by the sheriff; but the popular party defended his election, and Montagu gained his seat. It was agreed with the Opposition that he should lay a charge against Danby of treasonable correspondence with France, and other offences, and that they should move for his impeachment on these grounds. Besides this, Montagu had made a bargain with Barillon that one hundred thousand livres should be paid to the most powerful of the Opposition, for their endeavours to crush Danby, and one hundred thousand livres to himself, or forty thousand livres of rentes on the Hôtel de Ville, or a pension of fifty thousand livres—according to the decision of the king—if Danby were excluded from office.

HÔTEL DE VILLE, PARIS, IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. (From an Engraving by Rigaud.)

Danby was not ignorant of the storm brewing, and it was thought best not to wait for its bursting; but the king sent and seized Montagu's papers, on pretence that he had been intriguing with the Pope's nuncio in Paris; and Erneley, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced this fact to the House. It was a very adroit proceeding, but Montagu soon discovered that the precious casket containing the most important papers had been overlooked in the search. Montagu stated to the House that Danby had missed his aim, that the papers were safe, and a deputation was despatched to fetch them. They returned with a small despatch box, and from this Montagu produced two letters of Danby, one of them the letter in which Danby solicited a pension of six million livres, on condition that he procured a peace from the allies, and to which Charles had added the words, "This is writ by my order.—C. R."

On the reading of this letter the House was thrown into a violent agitation. The secret dealings of the king were partly brought to light. It was now seen that Charles's zeal for the war was only a pretence to extract money from the nation, and, this obtained, that he was ready to sell the honour of the country to France; and that the minister had consented to the infamous transaction. They immediately voted Danby's impeachment by a majority of sixty-three, and[258] appointed a committee—of which Montagu was one—to draw up the articles. There was a danger that Danby would retort on Montagu by producing letters of his own, proving that he was mixed up with these transactions from the beginning, and had indeed been made the medium of their proposal; but Montagu trusted to the impossibility of detaching their evidence from such as would have angered the country against the king. He was right; yet two of his letters were sent by Danby to the House, one giving information that Ruvigny was sent to London to treat through Lord William Russell with the Opposition, and the other containing a proposal from Montagu of a grant of money to Charles on the conclusion of peace. These, at another time, would have produced a wonderful sensation, but they were now cast aside to pursue the higher game, and the next day—December 21st—the impeachment of Danby was sent up to the Lords.

On the 23rd Danby replied to the charges by pleading that he had written the letter from the dictation of the king, who had certified the fact by his own hand in the postscript; that it was well known that he was neither a Papist nor a friend to the French alliance, but that he had reason to believe that his accuser, a man who, from his perfidy and breach of the most sacred trust, all men must abhor, had been assisted by French counsel in getting up this impeachment. He denied any guilty practices, and demanded only a fair trial. There was a motion made to commit him to the Tower, but this was overruled, and a day was fixed on which the Lord Treasurer should make his defence. But to defeat this, Danby now advised the king to do that which he had repeatedly dissuaded him from—namely, to dissolve the Parliament. Accordingly, on the 30th of December, it was prorogued for four weeks, and before it could meet again, namely, on the 24th of January, 1679, he dissolved it by proclamation, summoning another to meet in forty days.

This Pension Parliament had now lasted nearly eighteen years. A wonderful change had come over the spirit of this Parliament since its first meeting. Soon after Charles's return no Parliament could be more slavishly submissive. It had restored to him almost everything that the Long Parliament had taken from his father—the power of the army, the customs, and excise; it had passed the most severe and arbitrary Acts for the supremacy of the Church, and the plunder and persecution of Catholics and Dissenters. The Act of Uniformity, the Corporation Act, the Test Act, the Conventicle Act, the Five-Mile Act, the Act which excluded Catholic peers from their House, by which the Church and Crown had been exalted, and the liberties of the people abridged, were all the work of this Parliament. But in time, a different temper displayed itself in this very pliant House. It stiffened and became uncompliant. But this was not at all by a growth of virtue in it. Various circumstances had produced this change. Buckingham, Shaftesbury, and others of the Cabal ministry and their adherents, had lost place and favour, and had organised a stout Opposition. Their chief objects were to mortify and thwart the king, to destroy the prospect of the Popish Duke of York's succession, and to overthrow their rival, Danby. In the prosecution of these selfish ends, they had, as usual, assumed the easy mask of patriotism, and had been joined by the Republican and Patriot party. They had got up the cry of Popery, and driven the nation frantic by alarm of Popish plots, and into much bloodshed, of which the end was not yet. Their present attack on Danby was to thrust down a much better man than themselves, though by no means a perfect one. But Danby had always detested the French alliance, and the use made of it to ruin the Protestant nations on the Continent and destroy the balance of power, in favour of France. He had consented, it is true, but most reluctantly, to write some of the king's begging letters to Louis, and now the Opposition, whose hands were filthy with handling Louis's bribe, had contrived to make him appear not the enemy, but actually the ally and tool of France. Montagu, the great broker of these corruptions, who had taken good care of himself, was become the chastiser of a man who was not a tenth part so guilty as himself. But the darkest part of this story is the share which the Patriotic party had in this receipt of French money, and amongst them Algernon Sidney and Hampden, the grandson of the great patriot. But in excuse for them it may be urged that they did not vote against their consciences.

When the new Parliament met it was found to be more violently anti-Roman than the old one. The duke's known, the king's suspected, Popery created a feeling in the nation that nothing could remove, and which the recent excitements about a Popish plot had roused into a universal flame. This flame the popular party took every means to fan; and though the Government exerted all its power, its candidates were everywhere received with execrations, and assertions of the bloody[259] machinations of the Papists. The new Parliament, therefore, came up with vehement zeal against the plotters, and with unabated determination to punish Danby. But the warning which the progress of the election gave was not lost on Danby. He considered that it would be one of the most powerful means of abating the public jealousy of Popery, if the king could be induced to send the duke out of the kingdom. Charles recoiled at so harsh a measure, and tried the vain expedient of inducing James to pretend at least conversion, by sending the Primate and other bishops to persuade him to return to the Established Church. It was of course useless, and then Charles was obliged to advise James to withdraw for awhile, and reside at Brussels. James complied on two conditions—that the king should give him a formal order to leave the kingdom, so that he might not seem to steal away out of fear; and that he should pledge himself publicly that he would never acknowledge the legitimacy of Monmouth, who had given out that he had four witnesses, in case of Charles's death, to prove his marriage with his mother. This was done in presence of the Council, the members adding their signatures, and Charles ordered the instrument to be enrolled in Chancery. James quitted London with the duchess on the 4th of March, leaving his daughter Anne with her uncle, that the people might not suppose that he sought to convert her to Popery at Brussels.

On the 6th of March Parliament met, and the Commons were immediately engaged in a dispute with the Crown regarding the election of a Speaker. They elected their old one, Mr. Seymour; the Lord Treasurer appointed Sir Thomas Mears, one of his most active opponents in the last Parliament. But during the interval since the dissolution, Danby had been hard at work to convert, by some means or other, some of his most formidable enemies. After some altercation the Commons gave way, and Mears was appointed.

But this exercise of royal prerogative only embittered the House to punish Danby and screen Montagu. The Lords passed a resolution that the dissolution of Parliament did not affect an impeachment—a doctrine which has become constitutional. Montagu had absconded, but reappeared when his election to Parliament gave him personal protection. Everything, therefore, portending the conviction of Danby, Charles ordered him to resign his staff, and then announced this fact to Parliament, at the same time informing them that as he had ordered him to write the letters in question, he had granted him a pardon, and that he would renew the pardon a dozen times if there were a continued attempt to prosecute him for an act simply of obedience to his sovereign.

But this attempt to take their victim out of their hands was resented by the Commons as a direct breach of their privileges, and having looked for a copy of this pardon in Chancery, and not finding it, they learned from the Lord Chancellor that the pardon had been brought ready drawn by Danby to the king, who signed it; and that the Seal had not been affixed by himself, but by the person who carried the bag, at Charles's own order. This irregularity the more inflamed the Parliament. Powle, one of the French pensioners, with that air of injured virtue which politicians so easily assume, inveighed indignantly against Danby, who, he said, had brought the country to the brink of ruin by pandering to the mercenary policy of Louis—the very thing he had opposed,—and had raised a standing army and paid it with French money. Moreover, he had concealed the Popish plot, and spoken of Oates with contempt. The Commons forthwith passed a Bill of Attainder, and the Lords sent to take Danby into custody; but he had absconded. On the 10th of April, however, he surrendered himself to the Lords, and was sent to the Tower. Lord Essex was appointed Lord Treasurer in his stead, and Lord Sunderland, Secretary of State, took the station of Prime Minister. Essex was popular, solid, and grave in his temperament, but not of brilliant talent. Sunderland was a very different man. He was clever, intriguing, insinuating in his manners, but as thoroughly corrupt and unprincipled as the worst part of the generation in which he lived. He had long been ambassador at the Court of France, and the very fact of his holding that post between two such monarchs as Louis and Charles, was proof enough that he was supple, and not restrained by any nice sense of morals or honesty. He was perfidious to all parties—a Cavalier by profession, but at the same time that he was serving arbitrary monarchs most slavishly, he was Republican in heart. He was especially attentive to the mother of Monmouth and the Duchess of Portland, because he knew that they had great influence with his master.

[260]

ASSASSINATION OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. (See p. 263.)

At this crisis Sir William Temple proposed to Charles a measure which he thought most likely to abate the virulence of Parliament, and at the same time prevent ministers from pursuing any clandestine purposes to excite the suspicion of the Parliament and nation. Temple had always[261] shown himself above and apart from the mere interested ambitious and selfish objects of the king's ministers. Whenever he was wanted, he was called from his philosophic retreat of Moor Park, in Surrey, to do some work of essential benefit to the nation, which it required a man of character and ability to accomplish. He had effected the Triple Alliance and the marriage of the Princess Mary with William of Orange; he had refused to have any concern with the intrigues of the Cabal; and now, when Parliament was fast hastening to press on the prerogative, he proposed that the Privy Council should be increased to thirty members, half consisting of officers of State, and half of leading and independent members of the Lords and Commons. All these were to be entrusted with every secret movement and proposition of government; and the king was to pledge himself to be guided by their advice. Temple augured that nothing pernicious could be broached by unscrupulous ministers in a body where half were independent members of Parliament, holding no office from the Crown; and that, on the other hand, Parliament could not so vehemently suspect the tendency of measures which had first the approbation of their own popular leaders. The House of Commons had now driven three successive ministries from office—Clarendon, the Cabal, and Danby—and was still bent on a career violently opposed to the Crown. If Temple had calculated that the effect would be to neutralise or convert the democratic members, he would have been right; but that such a Council could ever work any other way was impossible. The king would never long submit measures, intended to maintain his prerogative, to a Council which was not likely to carry his views at once to both Houses; but he might, and undoubtedly would, in many cases, succeed in bringing over the Opposition orators to his interest. This was the immediate effect on most of them. Shaftesbury, Lord Russell, Saville, Viscount Halifax, Powle, and Seymour, the late Speaker, were included in the Council. But Temple soon found that men of such contrary views would not pull well together, and was compelled to break his chief condition, and compose a sort of inner council, of himself, Capel, Halifax, Essex, and Sunderland, who prepared and really managed everything. Halifax was a man of the most brilliant talents, ambitious, yet not thinking himself so, but so little swayed by mere party, that he was called a trimmer, and gloried in the title. For the rest—Capel, Cavendish, and Powle lost the confidence of the Commons, which looked on the new institution with distrust; Russell and Shaftesbury alone spoke out as boldly as ever, and retained more influence in the two Houses than they gained in the Council. In fact, the Opposition members soon found that they might propose, but the king would not be outvoted in his own Council. The very first measure suggested, was that all persons of Popish tendencies should be weeded out of office, out of the posts of lord-lieutenants, the magistracy, and the courts of law; but Charles, perceiving that the object was to remove the staunchest supporters of the Crown, quickly put an end to it. He called for the rolls, and wherever he saw a name marked for removal, gave such ludicrous and absurd reason for its retention, that there was no gravely answering him. One objected to, he said, was a "good cocker," another an "expert huntsman," "kept good foxhounds," or a "good house," "had always excellent chines of beef," and the like. Arguments were thrown away on the king, and the matter came to nothing.

On the other hand, Shaftesbury, who had been made President of the Council by Charles himself, undiverted by this from his great object, pursued his Popery alarms out of doors, where the king could not checkmate him. A fire broke out in a printing-house in Fetter Lane, and the servant was induced to confess that one Stubbs had promised her five pounds to do it, who in turn said Gifford, his confessor, had set him on, urging it was no sin; and he added that London was to be set on fire again by French Papists. The absurd story soon grew into a rumour that the Duke of York was coming with a French army to claim the throne and re-establish Popery with all its horrors. Shaftesbury declared in the Lords that Popery must be rooted out if there was to be any liberty left; that Popery and slavery, like two sisters, went ever hand-in-hand; that one might now go first, now the other; but wherever one was seen, the other was certainly not far off. The Commons eagerly seizing on the temper of the nation, voted unanimously a Bill of Exclusion against the Duke of York, and that a Protestant successor should be appointed, as though the duke were actually dead. Sir William Temple attempted to weaken this movement by attributing it to Monmouth and Shaftesbury, between whom, it was asserted, there was a secret understanding that if Monmouth's scheme of proving his legitimacy succeeded, Shaftesbury should be his Prime Minister. Probably by the advice[262] of Temple, Charles proposed a plan for a compromise—that in case a Popish prince succeeded, every power of altering the law should be taken out of his hands; that no judges, justices, lord-lieutenants, privy councillors, or officers of the navy should be appointed without consent of Parliament; and that no livings or dignities in the Church should be at the option of the king, but of a board of the most pious and Protestant divines. Shaftesbury, however, ridiculed all these precautions, as attempting to bind Samson with green withes, which he could snap with the greatest ease. The Commons were of that mind, and on the 21st of May, 1679, passed their Exclusion Bill by a majority of two hundred and seven against one hundred and twenty-eight. The Commons followed this up by proceeding in a body to the House of Lords, and demanding judgment against Danby. They also required that the Prelates should not vote on Danby's case, fearing that their numbers might give the Crown a majority; but to this the Lords were opposed, and though the bishops offered to concede the point, the king forbade them, as the matter involved his prerogative. The Commons persisting in their demand, now instituted a strict inquiry into the cases of bribery of members of Parliament by the late minister, and ordered one of his agents, Fox, the Treasurer of the Navy, to proceed to Whitehall in company of three members, and bring his books and papers for examination. The king resented the searching of his house as a gross insult, and the books and papers were refused; but Fox was compelled to state how many members he had paid money to, and he named twenty-seven individuals. This was on the 24th of May, and Charles, to cut the inquiry short, suddenly sent for the Commons, and prorogued Parliament for ten weeks. Shaftesbury was so enraged at this unexpected obstruction to his plans, that he vowed in the House of Lords that it should cost the king's advisers of this measure their heads.

This prorogation was, on other accounts, one of the most remarkable eras in our Parliamentary annals, for before pronouncing the Parliament prorogued, the king gave his consent to the Habeas Corpus Act, and allowed the Act establishing the censorship of the press to expire. The carrying of the Habeas Corpus Act was owing mainly to the influence of Shaftesbury, and was a benefit of such magnitude, that it might cover a multitude of the sins of that extraordinary man, who, with all his faults, had a genuine substratum of patriotism in him. The press had hitherto never been free. Elizabeth cut off the hands of Puritans who offended her, and her successors dragged them into their Star Chamber. Even the Long Parliament, when they abolished the Star Chamber, declined to liberate the press, notwithstanding Milton's eloquent appeal for the liberty of unlicensed printing. The press was at length free, but only for a time, being too dangerous an engine to the corrupt government which so long succeeded.

Whilst the blood of unfortunate victims of imaginary plots was flowing in England, in Scotland the same ruthless persecution had continued against the Covenanters. Lauderdale had married the Countess of Dysart, a most extravagant and rapacious woman, who acquired complete influence over him; and to find resources for her expense, he levied fines on the Nonconformists with such rigour and avidity, that it was believed that he really sought to drive the people to rebellion, in order to have a plea for plundering them. Such was the woful condition of Scotland, delivered over by the lewd and reckless king to a man who combined the demon characters of cruelty, insult, and avarice, in no ordinary degree. Complaints from the most distinguished and most loyal inhabitants were only answered by requiring them to enter into bonds that neither they, nor their families, nor tenants should withdraw from the Established Church, under the same penalties as real delinquents. The gentry refused to enter into such bonds. Lauderdale, therefore, determined to treat the whole West of Scotland as in an actual state of revolt, and not only sent troops with artillery to march into the devoted districts, but let loose upon them bands of wild Highlanders, and commanded even the nobility, as well as others, to give up their arms. The outraged population—left exposed to the spoliation of the Highlanders, who, though they spared the lives, freely robbed the inhabitants—sent a deputation of some of their most eminent men to lay their sufferings before the king himself. They were, however, dismissed with a reprimand, Charles replying, "I perceive that Lauderdale has been guilty of many bad things against the people of Scotland, but I cannot find that he has acted in anything contrary to my interest."

At length Lauderdale's confederate, Archbishop Sharp, was murdered by a band of Covenanting enthusiasts in Fife. There the cruelties of the archbishop were pre-eminently intolerable. There David Hackston of Rathillet, his brother-in-law, John Balfour of Kinloch, or Balfour of Burley, as[263] he is immortalised by Sir Walter Scott in "Old Mortality," James Russell of Kettle, and six others determined to take vengeance on a notorious creature of Sharp's, one Carmichael, who had pursued his levy of fines with such brutality, as to have beaten and burnt with lighted matches women and children, to compel them to betray their masters, husbands, brothers, or fathers. On the 3rd of May, 1679, Carmichael had been out hunting, but hearing of Rathillet and his band being on the watch for him, he left the field and got home. The conspirators were returning disappointed, when a greater prey fell into their hands. The wife of a farmer at Baldinny sent a lad to tell them that the archbishop's coach was on the road, going from Ceres towards St. Andrews. The delighted men gave chase, and, compelling the old man to leave his coach, barbarously murdered him. The assassins only crossed to the other side of Magus Muir, where the bloody deed had been perpetrated, and in a cottage they spent the remainder of the day in prayer and praising God for the accomplishment of what they deemed this noble work. They then rode into the West, where they joined Donald Cargill, one of the most noted of the Cameronian preachers, with Spreul, and Robert Hamilton, a young man of good family, and a former pupil of Bishop Burnet's, who had been excited by the persecutions of the people to come out and attempt their relief.

The murder of the archbishop only roused the Government to more determined rigour, and the persecuted people, grown desperate, threw off in great numbers all remaining show of obedience and resolved to resist to the death. The more moderate Presbyterians lamented and condemned the murder of the Primate, but the more enthusiastic looked upon it as a judgment of God. They resolved to face the soldiery, and they had soon an opportunity, for Graham of Claverhouse, a man who acquired a terrible fame in these persecutions, being stationed at Glasgow, drew out a troop of dragoons and other cavalry, and went in pursuit of them. He encountered them at a place near Loudon Hill, in a boggy ground called Drumclog, where the Covenanters, under Hamilton, Balfour, and Cleland, defeated his forces, and put them to flight, killing about thirty of them, including a relative of Claverhouse's (June 11, 1679). The insurgents under Hamilton, elated with their victory, marched after Claverhouse into Glasgow itself, but were repulsed. They went on, however, increasing so fast, that Claverhouse evacuated Glasgow, and marched eastward, leaving all the west of Scotland in their hands.

On the news reaching London, Charles despatched the Duke of Monmouth, with a large body of the royal guards, to quell the rebellion. On the 21st of June, as the Covenanters lay near the town of Hamilton, they received the intelligence that Monmouth, with his forces joined to those of Claverhouse, was approaching. The insurgents had soon taken to quarrelling amongst themselves, and the more moderate section were now for submitting on favourable terms. Rathillet and the more determined would not hear of any surrender, but marched off and left the waverers, who sent a memorial to Monmouth, declaring that they were ready to leave all their complaints to a free Parliament, and free Assembly of the Church. The duke, who showed much mildness throughout this campaign, replied that he felt greatly for their sufferings, but that they must lay down their arms, and then he would intercede for them with the king. On the receipt of this answer the greatest confusion prevailed; the moderate durst not risk a surrender on such terms, remembering the little mercy they had hitherto received from the Government; the more violent, with a fatal want of prudence, now insisted on cashiering their officers, who had shown what they called a leaning towards Erastianism, or, in other words, a disposition to submit to the civil power.

Whilst they were in this divided state, Monmouth's army appeared in sight on the 22nd of June. The Covenanters, therefore, compelled to fight or fly, seized on the bridge of Bothwell, which crossed the Clyde between the village of Bothwell and the town of Hamilton. It was narrow, and in the centre there stood a gateway. Here Rathillet, Balfour, and others posted themselves with about three hundred men to defend this pass. But the army of Monmouth, on the slope of the hill descending from Bothwell to the Clyde, commanded the opposite hill, on which the Covenanters were posted, with his artillery, and under its fire a strong body of troops advanced to force the bridge. Balfour and Rathillet defended their post bravely, but the gate was at length carried, and they were pushed back at the point of the bayonet. They found themselves unsupported by the main body, which, on the artillery playing murderously upon them, had retreated to Hamilton Heath, about a quarter of a mile distant. There they rallied, and repulsed one or two charges, and broke a body of Highlanders; but undisciplined, disunited, and without artillery to[264] cope with that of Monmouth, they were only exposed to slaughter. They turned and fled.

Monmouth commanded a halt, to spare the fugitives. But Claverhouse pursued and cut them down to the number of four hundred men, besides taking twelve hundred prisoners. Some of the ministers and leaders were executed, the more obstinate were sent as slaves to the Plantations, many of them being lost at sea, and the rest were liberated on giving bonds for conformity. The efforts of Monmouth procured an indemnity and indulgence, which might, after this severe chastisement, have produced the most salutary effect; but this was speedily superseded by the old, faithless, and cruel régime of Lauderdale, and the still more brutal rule of the Duke of York.

During this time the Popish plot, with fresh actors and ramifications, was agitated by the anti-Papal party with unabated zeal. On the 24th of April, 1679, a Protestant barrister, Nathaniel Reading, was tried for tampering with the evidence against Catholic noblemen in prison, in order to reduce the charge from treason to felony. It appeared that Bedloe had engaged him to do it, and then informed against him. There appeared on the trial many damning circumstances against the character and veracity of Bedloe, yet Reading was condemned to pay a fine of one thousand pounds, and to suffer a year's imprisonment.

Bedloe, Oates, and Prance were again, however, brought forward in June against Whitbread and Fenwick, who had been illegally remanded to prison on their former trial, and three other Jesuits—Harcourt, Gavan, and Turner—were now also examined, and a new witness, one Dugdale, a discarded steward of Lord Aston's, was introduced. Oates had little to add to his former story, but Bedloe and Prance were prolific in new charges. It was in vain that the prisoners pointed out their gross prevarications and palpable falsehoods. They were all condemned, as well as Langhorne, a celebrated Catholic barrister. The infamous Jeffreys, now Recorder of London, sentenced them, amid the loud acclamations of the spectators, and they were all executed, after being offered a pardon on condition of confessing the plot, and disclosing what they knew. Langhorne was promised his life if he would reveal the property of the Jesuits, and on its proving only of the value of twenty thousand or thirty thousand pounds, he was told it was too insignificant to save his life. A second time his life was offered him if he would reveal the plot, but he replied he knew of no plot, and all were executed with the usual horrors. Next came up for trial Sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, and Corker, Rumby, and Marshall, Benedictine monks; but the diabolical perjury of Oates this time received such an exposure, that the prisoners were all acquitted. Philip Lloyd, the clerk of the Council, deposed that when Oates had been questioned by the Lord Chancellor whether he knew anything personally of Sir George Wakeman, he had solemnly sworn that he did not, yet this morning he had charged him with different acts of treason committed in his own presence.

Notwithstanding this rebuff to the despicable informer, the three monks were recommitted on a fresh charge, and in every quarter of the kingdom similar persecutions were carried on, numbers were thrown into prison, and eight other Catholics were executed in different places.

The Duke of York was every day becoming more uneasy in his residence at Brussels. Knowing the intrigues of Shaftesbury and his party to advance the claims of Monmouth, he repeatedly solicited the king to let him return, and Charles falling ill in August, at Windsor, consented, and James made his appearance at Court, much to the consternation of Monmouth and his supporters. The king recovering, to put an end to the intrigues and feuds between the two dukes, Charles sent Monmouth to Brussels, instead of James, and ordered James to retire to Scotland. Being, as usual, pressed for money, Charles again importuned Louis for one million livres for three years; but Louis replied that he did not see at this period what services England could render him for that expense: and James advised him to manage without the money, by adopting a system of rigid economy. In August he prorogued Parliament for a year, and endeavoured to carry on without the French king's pension. On seeing this, Louis, through Barillon, renewed his offers, but Charles felt too proud to accept them, and then the French king once more turned to the Patriots, so-called, to instigate fresh annoyances. Barillon paid to Buckingham one thousand guineas, two thousand five hundred guineas were distributed amongst Baber, Littleton, Harbord, and Poole; and Montague received fifty thousand livres in part payment of his reward for overthrowing Danby. The consequences were now seen. On the 17th of November, the anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth, an anti-Popish procession was organised by Shaftesbury and that party, though carried on under the auspices of the Green Ribbon Club. The bellman went first, ringing his bell, and[265] exclaiming at intervals, "Remember Mr. Justice Godfrey!" Then came a man in the habit of a Jesuit, supporting before him on horseback an effigy of the murdered magistrate, followed by a long train of men and women, habited as monks, nuns, priests, and Catholic bishops in capes and mitres, and Protestant bishops in lawn sleeves, six cardinals with their caps, and, lastly, the Pope on a litter, with his arch-prompter, the Devil, by his side. This procession, commencing in Moorgate, traversed the streets at night with flambeaux, amid a hundred thousand spectators, who were frantic with cries of vengeance against Papists and Popery. At Temple Bar, in front of the club-house, they burnt the whole array of Popish effigies, amid fireworks and rending shouts.

THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH.

This exhibition of fury against the Catholics was reported all over Europe with astonishment and awe; but, on the other hand, it roused Charles to dismiss Shaftesbury from the presidency of the Council, and to order James to assume his proper place at Court. Russell, Capel, Cavendish, and Powle, seeing their party reduced to impotence in the Council, resigned, and Essex threw up the Treasury, and was succeeded by Hyde, the second son of Clarendon. Sir William Temple also retired again to his rural retreat, and Sydney Godolphin became a leading man in the Council. Both Hyde and Godolphin were men of much talent, but decided Tories. The character of Lawrence Hyde has been vigorously sketched by Macaulay. He was a Cavalier of the old school, a zealous champion of the Crown and of the Church, and a hater of Republicans and Nonconformists. He had, consequently, a great body of personal adherents. The clergy, especially,[266] looked on him as their own man, and extended to his foibles an indulgence of which, to say the truth, he stood in some need, for he drank deep, and when he was in a rage—and he was very often in a rage—he swore like a trooper. "Godolphin," says the same authority, "had low and frivolous personal tastes, and was much addicted to racing, card-playing, and cock-fighting."

Between these new ministers and the Opposition the contest grew more vehement. Shaftesbury persuaded Monmouth to return in 1680, and much rejoicing was got up for him in public. The king was extremely angry, and ordered him to retire, but Monmouth paid no attention to the paternal command; and there was great talk of a certain black box, in which the proofs of the marriage of Monmouth's mother, Lucy Walters or Barlow, were contained. Charles summoned all the persons alleged to know of this box and its contents, and questioned them, when there clearly appeared to be no such box or such evidence; and these facts were published in the Gazette. Still, the duke was extremely popular with the people, and occupied a prominent place in the public eye. He was Duke of Monmouth in England, of Buccleuch in Scotland, Master of the Horse, Commander of the First Troop of Life Guards, Chief Justice in Eyre south of Trent, a Knight of the Garter, and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge; and the Opposition did all they could to enhance his importance. The war of Whig and Tory, now the established terms, was fierce.

Of course the Popish plot continued to play its part, its puppets being moved, and its victims selected by the great political Oppositionists. There was also another plot, called from the hiding-place of the incriminating documents, the Meal-Tub plot, in which the Presbyterians were charged with conspiring to raise an army and establish a Republic. The chief object of all these got-up plots was to drive James from the succession, and two parties were at work for this purpose, who agreed so far as excluding James, but were divided as to the successor to be set up. Monmouth was the idol of Shaftesbury and his party; William of Orange the selected favourite of Temple, Hyde, Godolphin, and their party—a far more intellectual and able one. Against James this common object of his exclusion told fearfully; for the rest, the deep and cautious character of the Dutchman, and the light and frivolous one of Monmouth, made William's chance far the best. Shaftesbury, Buckingham, and their adherents contrived to win over the Duchess of Portsmouth to part of their views by concealing the rest. They represented to her that if the king were brought to nominate his successor, as Cromwell had done, and as an Act of Parliament would enable him to do, her eldest son might be chosen. The bait took, especially when it was coupled with the terrors of an impeachment in default of compliance, which threatened her ruin and that of her children. She flattered herself that the illegitimacy of her son might be got over, and went zealously into the affair. On the other hand, Shaftesbury made himself sure that if this plan were accomplished, Monmouth would be the successor-elect. She pledged herself to use all her influence with Charles, and she was empowered to assure him of a large supply of money from Parliament, and the same power of naming his successor as had been given to Henry VIII.

Charles appeared to fall into the scheme, but demanded no less than eight hundred thousand pounds. For this he probably would have sold his brother's birthright. The question of James's exclusion was discussed in the Council, and Charles ordered James to return again to Scotland. But what probably saved James was want of faith between the leaders of the two exclusion factions and Charles, and between each other. Each faction knew that the other had its own successor in view, and both doubted Charles too much to trust him with the money before the Exclusion Act was passed. Barillon, the French ambassador, whose object was to maintain James, also came in as a third party, with French money, to embarrass and divide them. To cut the main difficulty, Shaftesbury determined to damage James irrevocably before the country; he, therefore, on the 26th of October, 1680, brought forward a wretch called Dangerfield to accuse the duke, before the Commons, of having been at the bottom of the late plot against the Presbyterians; of having given him the instructions to forge and distribute the lists and commissions; of having presented him with twenty guineas; given him a promise of much greater reward; and ridiculed his hesitation to shed the king's blood.

The audacity of an Opposition that could bring forward so horrible a charge against the heir-apparent, on the evidence of a scoundrel branded by sixteen convictions for base crimes, is something incredible. But no sooner had Dangerfield made the statement, than the House was thrown into a wonderful agitation, and Lord William[267] Russell rose and moved that effectual measures be taken to suppress Popery and prevent a Popish succession. From that day to the 2nd of November a succession of other witnesses and depositions were brought before the House to strengthen the charge. The deposition of Bedloe, on his deathbed, affirming all his statements, was read; one Francisco de Faria, a converted Jew, asserted that an offer had been made to him by the late Portuguese ambassador, to whom he was interpreter, to assassinate Oates, Bedloe, and Shaftesbury; Dugdale related all his proofs against the lords in the Tower; Prance repeated the story of the murder of Godfrey, with fresh embellishments; and Mr. Treby read the report of the Committee of inquiry into the plot. The House, almost beside itself, passed a Bill to disable the Duke of York, as a Papist, from succeeding, and stipulating that any violence offered to the king should be revenged on the whole body of the Papists. But on the 15th of November the Lords rejected it by sixty-three against thirty. Shaftesbury then proposed, as the last means of safety, that the king should divorce the queen, marry again, and have a chance of legitimate issue; but on this the king put an effectual damper. Disappointed in both these objects, the Opposition resorted to the cowardly measure of shedding more innocent blood, in order to have a fresh opportunity of exciting the alarm and rage of the people against Popery. They selected, from the five Popish lords in the Tower, the Lord Stafford for their victim. He was nearly seventy years of age, and in infirm health, and they flattered themselves he would not be able to make much defence. He was arraigned in Westminster Hall before a Court of Managers, as in the case of Lord Strafford. The trial lasted seven days, and Oates, Dugdale, Prance, Tuberville, and Denis, all men of the most infamous and perjured character, charged him with having held consultations with emissaries of the Pope, and having endeavoured to engage Dugdale to assassinate the king, and so forth. The old earl made an admirable defence, in which he dissected most effectually the characters of his traducers; but he was condemned by a majority of fifty-five to thirty-one, and was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 29th of December, 1680. The sheriffs of London objected to the order for his beheading, contending that he ought to suffer all the horrors of the law against traitors; but the king commanded them to obey his order. On the scaffold the earl, whose mild and pious demeanour made a deep impression on the Popery-frightened people, declared his entire innocence, and the people, standing with bare heads, replied, "We believe you, my lord. God bless you, my lord!"

CHAPTER IX.

REIGN OF CHARLES II. (concluded).

Charles's Embarrassments—Exclusion Intrigues—Parliament Dissolved—The King again Pensioned by Louis—New Parliament at Oxford—Violence of the Whigs—Charles Dissolves the Oxford Parliament—Execution of Archbishop Plunket—Arrest of Shaftesbury—Dismay of the Gang of Perjurers—Oates turned out of Whitehall—Shaftesbury's Lists—Visit of William of Orange—James in Scotland—Defeat of the Cameronians—Cargill's Manifesto—The Duke of York's Tyranny—Flight of Argyll—The Torture in Edinburgh—Arrogance of Monmouth—Contest between the Court and the City—Death of Shaftesbury—Rye-House Plot—Suicide of the Earl of Essex—Trial of Lord William Russell—Extraordinary Declaration of the University of Oxford—Trial of Algernon Sidney—The Duke of Monmouth Pardoned—Base Conduct of Monmouth—Trial of Hampden—Trials in Scotland—Absolutism of Charles—Forfeiture of Charters by the Corporations—Influence of the Duke of York—Opposition of Halifax—Sickness and Death of the King.

Amid the contending factions of his Court, and in spite of the most absolute destitution of money, Charles is described as being outwardly merry.

Yet his situation would have embarrassed a much wiser man. The Opposition, trusting to his need of money, calculated on his giving way on the Exclusion Bill; and they kept up their warfare by speeches, pamphlets, and addresses to the public, and by secret pressure on him through his ministers, his mistress, his nephew, the Prince of Orange, and his allies. Sunderland and Godolphin urged his concession to the Opposition in Parliament. The duchess, when he sought retirement with her, harped on the same string.[268] Halifax, who had offended the Opposition greatly by his determined resistance to the Exclusion Bill, now proposed a Bill of Limitations of the authority of James in case of his succession; and the Prince of Orange warned the king on no account to adopt this Bill, because it would undermine the very foundation of the monarchy.

ARRIVAL OF CHARLES AT OXFORD. (See p. 269.)

The Spaniards complained that Louis was violating the Treaty of Nimeguen, and called on Charles to act as their ally and a party to the Treaty. To contend with Louis required money, even if he were so disposed, and money he had none. Instead of answering his demands for it, the Commons expressed their resentment of his resistance to the Exclusion Bill, by attacking all the supporters of the king. They summoned various Tory leaders on one pretence or another to their bar; they demanded the removal of Jeffreys from the office of Recorder of London, and he made haste to submit; they voted impeachments against Scroggs and North, the chief justices, and Lewis Weston and other judges. They sent a message to the king, that unless the Duke of York was excluded, there was no safety to Protestantism. They voted that the Marquis of Worcester, Halifax, Clarendon, and Feversham, were promoters of Popery; that they and Lawrence Hyde, and Seymour, ought to be removed from the king's council, and that till then no money could be voted; and, moreover, that any one lending the king money upon any branch of the revenue, should be adjudged an enemy of the country. As they were going on voting still further resolutions of a like kind, Charles prorogued Parliament, and then by proclamation dissolved it, ordering another to assemble at the end of two months at Oxford.

The very naming of the place of meeting struck the Opposition with alarm. In London they had a great protection in a strongly sympathising population; but Oxford was notorious for its Royalist and Tory feeling; and there Charles, amid a fiery mob of fortune-seeking gownsmen, and a strong body of soldiery, might overawe Parliament, and direct particular attacks against the Opposition leaders. These fears were well founded. But the king had, in the interim, also strengthened himself in another manner. He had[269] first set to work every one of the duke's friends that he possibly could, to induce him at least to appear to conform to the demands of Parliament, but finding this utterly unavailing, he had turned to his old friend Louis. The French monarch, who never liked to leave Charles at the mercy of his Parliament, again gratified his desire, and agreed to pay him two millions of livres this year, and half a million of crowns in each of the two following years, on condition that he should leave the Spaniards to his overbearing encroachments. The many hints thrown out of secret treaties between Charles and Louis had not been lost, and no written contract of this agreement was made, but it was treated as a matter of honour, and only the two monarchs, with Barillon on the one side, and Hyde on the other, were included in the secret.

Being thus made independent of his Parliament, Charles disregarded the strongest remonstrances against holding the Parliament in Oxford, and on the day appointed appeared there, attended by a troop of Horse Guards, besides crowds of armed courtiers, and the Opposition members and their party, likewise armed, and attended by armed followers. It appeared more like a preparation for war than for peaceful debate. Charles addressed the assembled hearers in the tone of a man who had money in his pocket. He spoke strongly of the factious proceedings of the last Parliament, and of his determination neither to exercise arbitrary power himself, nor to suffer it in others; but to show that he had every disposition to consult the wishes of his subjects, he proposed to grant them almost everything they had solicited. He then offered the substance of the Bill of Limitations proposed by Halifax, that James should be banished five hundred miles from the British shores during the king's life; that, on succeeding, though he should have the title of king, the powers of government should be vested in a regent, and this regent, in the first instance, be his daughter, the Princess Mary of Orange, and after her her sister Anne; that if James should have a son educated in the Protestant faith, the regency should continue only till he reached his majority; that, besides this, all Catholics of incomes of more than one hundred pounds per annum should be banished, the fraudulent conveyance of their estates be pronounced void, and their children taken from them, and educated in Protestantism.

This was a sweeping concession; short of expelling James altogether, nothing more could be expected, and it was scarcely to be expected that Charles would concede that. On this one point he had always displayed unusual firmness, and it was a firmness highly honourable to him, for by it he maintained the rights of a brother, at the expense of the aggrandisement of his own son. Nothing would have been easier than to have, by a little finesse, conveyed the crown to Monmouth, the favourite of the Protestant bulk of the nation, and for whom he had a real affection. But the Whigs lost their opportunity; they were blinded to their own interest by the idea of their strength, and thought that, having so much offered, they were about to gain all. This was the culminating point of their success; but they rejected the offer, and from that hour the tide of their power ebbed, and their ruin was determined.

There was another attempt to spur on the country to carry the Exclusion Bill, by making use of a miserable pretence of a plot got up by two low adventurers, Everard and Fitzharris. First these fellows pretended that the king was leagued with the duke to establish Popery; but when Fitzharris was thrown into Newgate, he got up another story, that he had been offered ten thousand pounds by the Duchess of Modena to murder the king, and that a foreign invasion was to assist the Catholic attempt. The Opposition were ready to seize on this man as another Dangerfield, to move the country by the disclosure of these plots. But Charles was beforehand with them, cut off all intercourse with the prisoner, and ordered the Attorney-General to proceed against him. The Commons claimed to deal with him, and sent up an impeachment to the Lords; the Lords refused to entertain it, and voted that he should be tried as the king directed, by common law. The Commons were exasperated, and declared that this was a denial of justice, a violation of the rights of Parliament, and any inferior court interfering would be guilty of a high breach of the privileges of their House. They were going on with the reading of the Exclusion Bill, when suddenly the king summoned them to the House of Lords, and dissolved Parliament. He had, on hearing of their proceedings, privately put the crown and robes of State into a sedan-chair, and hastened to the House. The astonishment and rage of the Opposition were inconceivable. Shaftesbury called on the members not to leave the House, but it was in vain; they gradually withdrew: the king rode off, attended by a detachment of his Guards, to Windsor, and thus, after the session of a week, ended his fifth and last Parliament.

If the Whigs had not been blinded by their[270] passions and their fancied success, they might have seen the reaction that was taking place. The long series of pretended plots had gradually opened the eyes of the people; they began to wonder how they could have believed them, and have consented to the spilling of so much blood on the evidence of such despicable characters. At the execution of Lord Stafford, instead of those yells of rage with which they had received some of the previous victims, they cried that they believed him, and prayed God to bless him. They might have seen this change still more clearly in what now followed. Charles issued a Declaration of his reasons for dissolving this Parliament;—that he had offered them everything that reasonable men could desire, for which he had received only expressions of discontent, and endeavours to usurp his authority; that they had arrested Englishmen for offences with which Parliament had nothing to do; had declared the most distinguished persons enemies to the king on mere suspicion; had forbade any one to lend the king money in anticipation of his revenue; had insisted on excluding the heir apparent from the succession, notwithstanding all possible guarantees; and that they were endeavouring to create a quarrel between the two Houses, because the Lords would not interfere with the king's prerogative. This Declaration, which was read in the churches, produced a strong effect. The king was regarded as unreasonably treated, and addresses of support were sent up from all quarters. The University of Cambridge went the length of saying that "our kings derive not their titles from the people, but from God, and that to Him only they are accountable. They had an hereditary right of succession, which no religion, no law, no fault, no forfeiture can alter or diminish." The Whigs published a counter-address, but, still drawing their arguments from Oates's plot, it failed to tell; this delusion had gone by, and the opposite one of Divine Right was moving now, in consequence, with an exaggerated impetus. The king persisted in bringing Fitzharris to trial; the Whigs endeavoured to defend him by pleading that, being impeached by the Commons, no other court than Parliament could try him; but this was overruled, he was tried, condemned, and hanged.

At the same time suffered the titular Archbishop of Armagh; the last victim of the Popish plot, and perhaps the most hardly and unjustly used. Oliver Plunket, the archbishop, was imprisoned merely for receiving orders in the Catholic Church, contrary to the law; but whilst in prison some of the Irish informers charged him with being concerned in the Popish plot; but instead of trying him in Ireland, where he was well known and could produce his witnesses, he was brought to England, and before his evidence could arrive, was tried and executed (July 1, 1681). A more shameful proceeding has never been recorded. The Earl of Essex, who had been Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland, solicited his pardon, saying to Charles, that from his own knowledge, the charge against him was undoubtedly false. "Then," retorted the king, "on your head, my lord, be his blood. You might have saved him if you would. I cannot pardon him, because I dare not." The storm, in fact, was about to burst on the heads of those who had raised it. There was no Parliament to defend them, and the Government now proceeded to retaliate. The miscreants who had served Shaftesbury in running down his victims now perceived the change of public opinion, and either slunk away or offered their services to Government against their former employers.

The first to be arrested were Shaftesbury himself, College, surnamed the "Protestant joiner," and Rouse, the leader of the mob from Wapping. Lord Howard was already in the Tower on the denunciation of Fitzharris. The Grand Jury refused to find the Bill of Indictment against Lord Howard; they did the same in the case of Rouse, but College was tried, and the same witnesses who had been deemed worthy enough to condemn the Catholics were brought against him. But the jury now refused to believe them against a Protestant, and acquitted him. College, however, was not permitted to escape so easily. He was a noisy and determined leader of the people, sang songs and distributed prints, ridiculing the king and Court, and was celebrated as the inventor of the Protestant flail. It was found that some of his misdemeanours had been committed in Oxfordshire, and he was sent down and tried there, where the Tory feeling was not likely to let him off again. There the miserable wretches, whose concocted evidence had doomed to death so many charged by them as participators in the Popish plot, were now arrayed against each other. Dugdale, Tuberville, and Smith swore against College; Oates, Bolron, and others committed the political blunder of contradicting them, and representing them in colours that in truth belonged to the whole crew. For this proceeding Oates was deprived of his pension and turned out of Whitehall; but College was condemned amid roars of applause from the gownsmen. The execution[271] of College was the commencement of a murderous retaliation on the Whigs, as savage as had been theirs on the Catholics. Shaftesbury, through the influence of the sheriffs, and the vehement demonstrations of the City made in his favour, was saved for the present by the jury ignoring the indictment, amid the acclamations of the people, and the event was celebrated by bonfires, ringing of bells, and shouts of "Monmouth!" "Shaftesbury!" and "Buckingham!"

But the arrest of Shaftesbury had led to consequences which were fatal to him, and most disastrous to the Whig party generally. Amongst his papers were found, in particular, two which roused the indignation of the Tory and Catholic parties to a perfect fury. One was the form of an Association for excluding James and all Catholics from the throne, and from political power, and including a vow to pursue to the death all who should oppose this great purpose. The other contained two lists of the leading persons in every county, ranged under the heads of "worthy men," and "men worthy," the latter phrase being supposed to mean worthy to be hanged. When this was published, the "men worthy" sent up the most ardent addresses of loyalty, and readiness to support the Crown in all its views; and many of the "worthy men" even hastened to escape from the invidious distinction. The king lost no time in taking advantage of this ferment. He availed himself of the information contained in these lists, and struck out the most prominent "worthy men" in office and commission. As the Dissenters had supported Shaftesbury and his party, he let loose the myrmidons of persecution against them, and they were fined, distrained upon, and imprisoned as remorselessly as ever. He determined to punish the City for its partisanship, and by a quo warranto to inquire into its many different privileges.

At this critical moment William of Orange proposed to pay a visit to his uncles, which his loving father-in-law, James, strenuously opposed, but which the easy Charles permitted. It was soon seen that William, though his ostensible object was to induce Charles to enter into a league against France—whose king continued, in spite of treaties, to press on his encroachments,—yet was courted by the Exclusionists, even by Monmouth, as well as Lord William Russell and other Whigs. With all his habitual caution he could not avoid letting it be seen that he was proud of the courtship. He even consented to accept an invitation from the City to dinner, to the great disgust of the Court, which was in high dudgeon at the conduct of the sheriffs, and William soon returned. His object was to ascertain the strength of the Whig party, and though the tide was rapidly running against it at that moment, he went back with the conviction that some violent change was not very far off. Though Charles promised William to join the alliance against France, and call a Parliament, no sooner was the prince gone than he assured Louis that he was his friend, and received a fresh bribe of a million of livres to allow France to attack Luxembourg, one of the main keys of Holland.

James, during these months, had been distinguishing himself in Scotland in a manner which promised but a poor prospect to Protestantism should he ever come to the throne. After the battle of Bothwell Bridge, the Covenanting party seemed for awhile to have sunk into the earth and disappeared; but ere long there was seen emerging again from their hiding-places the more determined and enthusiastic section which followed Donald Cargill and Richard Cameron. These so-called Cameronians believed that Charles Stuart, by renouncing the Solemn League and Covenant, had renounced all right to rule over them; and Cameron, with some twenty of his adherents, affixed (June, 1680) on the cross of Sanquhar "a declaration and testimony of the true Presbyterian, anti-prelatic, anti-erastian, and persecuted party in Scotland." In this bold paper they disowned Charles Stuart, who ought, they said, to have been denuded years before of being king, ruler, or magistrate, on account of his tyranny. They declared war on him as a tyrant and usurper; they also disowned all power of James, Duke of York, in Scotland, and declared that they would treat their enemies as they had hitherto treated them.

The host of Israel, as they styled themselves, consisted of six-and-twenty horse and forty foot. At Aird's Moss, this knot of men, who spoke such loud things, were surprised by three troops of dragoons, and Cameron, as bold in action as in word, rushed on this unequal number, crying, "Lord, take the ripest, spare the greenest." He fell with his brother and seven others (July 20, 1680). Rathillet, who was there, was wounded and taken prisoner, but Cargill escaped. Rathillet was tried and executed for the murder of Archbishop Sharp. His hands were first cut off at the foot of the gallows; after hanging, his head was cut off, and fixed on a spike at Cupar, and his body was hung in chains at Magus Moor. Cargill reappeared in September, 1680, at Torwood, in Stirlingshire, and[272] there preached; and then, after the sermon, pronounced this extraordinary excommunication:—"I, being a minister of Jesus Christ, and having authority from Him, do, in His name and by His spirit, excommunicate, cast out of the true Church, and deliver up to Satan, Charles II., King of Scotland, for his mocking of God, his perjury, his uncleanness of adultery and incest, his drunkenness, and his dissembling with God and man." He also excommunicated the Duke of York for idolatry, Monmouth for his slaughter of the Lord's people at Bothwell Bridge, Lauderdale for blasphemy, apostasy, and adultery, and other offences.

The Government thought it time to hunt out this nest of enthusiasts, and put to death, as a terror, the prisoners taken at Aird's Moss. Two of these were women, Isabel Alison and Marian Harvey, who went to the gallows rejoicing. The Duke of York offered to pardon some of them if they would only say, "God save the king," but they refused, and congratulated each other that they should that night sup in Paradise. Cargill and four followers were hanged in July, 1681.

James now professed great leniency and liberality. Instead of persecuting the Cameronians, he drafted them off into a Scottish regiment which was serving abroad in Flanders, in the pay of Spain. He put a stop to many of Lauderdale's embezzlements, and turned out some of the worst of his official blood-suckers. He promised to maintain episcopacy, and to put down conventicles, and brought into Parliament a new Test Act, which was to swear every one to the king's supremacy, and to passive obedience. His leniency was then soon at an end, and the object he was driving at was too palpable to escape the slightest observation. But Fletcher of Saltoun, Lord Stair, and some other bold patriots, opposed the design, and carried a clause in the Test Act for the defence of the Protestant religion, which was so worded as to make it mean Presbyterianism of the Confession of Faith of 1560. This so little suited James that he was impelled to add another clause, excusing the princes of the blood from taking his own test. But Lord Belhaven boldly declared that the object of it was to bind a Popish successor. At this frank avowal, James's assumed liberality deserted him, and he sent Lord Belhaven prisoner to Edinburgh castle, and ordered the Attorney-General to impeach him. He removed Lord Stair from his office of President of the Court of Session, and commenced prosecutions against both him and Fletcher of Saltoun. The Earl of Argyll, however, whose father had been executed by Charles soon after his restoration, made a decided speech against the Test, and James called upon him at the Council board to take it. Argyll took it with certain qualifications, whereupon James appeared to be satisfied, and invited Argyll to sit beside him at the Council board, and repeatedly took the opportunity of whispering in his ear, as if he bestowed his highest confidence on him. But this was but the fawning of the tiger ere he made his spring. Two days after he sent him to the castle on a charge of treason for limiting the Test. James, however, when some of the courtiers surmised that his life and fortune must pay for his treason, exclaimed, "Life and fortune! God forbid!" Yet on the 20th of November, 1681, instructions arrived from England to accuse him of high treason, and on the 12th of December he was brought to trial. To show what was to be expected from such a trial, the Marquis of Montrose, the grandson of the celebrated Montrose, whom the father of Argyll and the Covenanters hanged, and who was, in consequence, the implacable enemy of the present earl and all his house, was made foreman of the jury, and delivered the sentence of guilty. The whole Council were called on to endorse this sentence; even the bishops were not allowed to be exempt, according to their privilege, from being concerned in a doom of blood; and the earl's own friends and adherents had not the firmness to refuse selling their names. Argyll, however, disappointed his enemies, by escaping from his cell in Edinburgh Castle in the disguise of a page to his daughter-in-law, Lady Lindsay, and made his way to England, and thence to Holland, where, like many other fugitives from England and Scotland, he took refuge with William of Orange.

James now, whilst the Parliament was terror-stricken by this example of royal vengeance, brought in a Bill making it high treason in any one to maintain the lawfulness of excluding him from the throne, either on account of his religion or for any other reason whatever. By this he showed to the Exclusionists that they must expect a civil war with Scotland if they attempted to bar his way to the throne of England. Deeming himself now secure, he gave way to his natural cruelty of temper, and indulged in tortures and barbarities which seemed almost to cast the atrocities of Lauderdale into the shade. It was his custom to have the prisoners for religion so tortured in the Privy Council, that even the old hardened courtiers who had witnessed the merciless doings of Lauderdale and Middleton, escaped from the board as soon as[273] the iron boots were introduced. But James not only seemed to enjoy the agonies of the sentenced with a peculiar satisfaction, but he made an order that the whole of the Privy Council should remain during these more than inquisitorial horrors. He was thus employing himself, when he was summoned to England by Charles, who assured him that he should be allowed soon to return permanently, on condition that he made over part of his Parliamentary allowance to the French mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth.

ESCAPE OF ARGYLL. (See p. 272.)

The duke being allowed to return, and being restored to the office of Lord High Admiral, and lodged in St. James's Palace, Monmouth, who had been assured that James should be retained in Scotland, also returned from abroad, in spite of the positive command of the king. On the Duke of York's return, the Tories, who regarded it as a proof of the ascendency of their principles, framed an address of congratulation, and of abhorrence of Shaftesbury's scheme of Association. When Monmouth arrived, the Whig party received him with still more boisterous enthusiasm. The City was in a turmoil of delight, but in the blaze of his popularity, Monmouth, conceiving that the Whig influence was on the decline, endeavoured to follow the example of Sunderland, who had made his peace with the king, and the Duke was readmitted to the Cabinet. But Monmouth was too narrowly watched, and though he had sent offers of reconciliation through his wife, the reproaches of Shaftesbury, Russell, and his other partisans, made him draw back, and under pretence of paying a visit to the Earl of Macclesfield, he set out, as in 1680, on a tour through the provinces.

Nothing could exceed Monmouth's folly in this progress. Had he been the undoubted heir apparent to the crown, he could not have assumed more airs of royalty; and at a moment when the eyes of both the king and James were following him with jealous vigilance, this folly was the more egregious. Wherever he came he was met by the nobles and great landowners at the head of their tenantry, most of whom were armed, and conducted in royal state to their houses. He was thus received by the Lords Macclesfield, Brandon, Rivers, Colchester, Delamere, and Grey, as well as by the leading gentry. He travelled[274] attended by a hundred men on horseback, one half of whom preceded, and the other followed him. As he approached a town, he quitted his coach and mounted his horse, on which he rode alone in the centre of the procession. On entering the town, the nobles, gentry, and city officials took their places in front, the tenantry and common people fell in behind, shouting, "A Monmouth! a Monmouth! and no York!" Wherever he dined he ordered two hundred covers to be laid for the guests, and the people, conducted by proper officers, passed through the room in at one door and out at another, in order to see him, as if he were a king. At Liverpool he did not hesitate to touch for the king's evil. Wherever there were fairs, races, or other public assemblies, he was sure to appear, and ingratiate himself with the populace, not only by his flattering bows and smiles, but by entering into their sports. He was a man of amazing agility, and ran races on foot with the most celebrated pedestrians, and after beating them in his shoes, he would run again in his boots against them in their shoes, and win still. The prizes that he thus gained he gave away at christenings in the evening.

Whilst he was thus exciting the wonder of the common people by his popular acts, accomplishments, and condescensions, the spies of Chiffinch, his father's old agent for secret purposes, were constantly around him, and sent up hourly reports to Court. Jeffreys, who was now Chief Justice of Chester, and himself addicted to much low company, buffoonery, and drunkenness off the bench, and the wildest and most insulting conduct upon it, seized the opportunity of some slight disturbances, which occurred during Monmouth's stay there, to win favour with the Duke of York, by taking into custody and punishing some of his followers. At Stafford Monmouth had engaged to dine in the public streets with the whole population; but as he was walking towards the appointed place, a king's messenger appeared, and arrested him on a charge of "passing through the kingdom with multitudes of riotous people, to the disturbance of the peace and the terror of the king's subjects." Shaftesbury was not there, or Monmouth might have been advised to throw himself on the protection of the people, and the rebellion which he stirred up a few years later might have occurred then, for Shaftesbury was now advising all the leaders of his party to rise; but Monmouth surrendered without resistance, and was conveyed to the capital, where he was admitted to bail himself in a bond of ten thousand pounds, and his sureties in two thousand pounds each. The king, with that affection which he always showed for this vain and foolish young man, appeared satisfied with having cut short his mock-heroic progress.

But though the British Absalom for the present escaped thus easily, the war of royalty and reassured Toryism on the long triumphant Whigs was beginning in earnest. Shaftesbury, since his discharge from the Tower, had seen with terror the rapid rising of the Tory influence, the vindictive addresses from every part of the country against him, and the undisguised cry of passive obedience. The circumstances seemed not only to irritate his temper, but to have destroyed the cool steadiness of his judgment. He felt assured that it would not be long before he would be singled out for royal vengeance; and he busied himself with his subordinate agents in planning schemes for raising the country. These agents and associates were Walcot, formerly an officer under the Commonwealth in the Irish army; Rumsey, another military adventurer, who had been in the war in Portugal; Ferguson, a Scottish minister, who deemed both the king and the duke apostates and tyrants, to be got rid of by almost any means; and West, a lawyer. These men had their agents and associates of the like views, and they assured Shaftesbury they could raise the City at any time.

But the tug of war was actually beginning between the Court and the City, and the prospect was so little flattering to the City, that Halifax said there would soon be hanging, and Shaftesbury even thought of attempting a reconciliation with the duke. He made an overture, to which James replied, that though Lord Shaftesbury had been the most bitter of his enemies, all his offences should be forgotten whenever he became a dutiful subject of his Majesty. But second thoughts did not encourage Shaftesbury to trust to the smooth speech of the man who never forgot or forgave.

So long as the Whigs were in the ascendant, their sheriffs could secure juries to condemn their opponents and save their friends. Charles and James determined, whilst the Tory feeling ran so high, to force the government of the City from the Whigs, and to hold the power in their own hands. Sir John Moore, the then Lord Mayor, was brought over to their interest, and they availed themselves of an old but disused custom to get sheriffs nominated to their own minds. Thus the Government had a complete triumph in the City; and they pursued their advantage. A prosecution was commenced against Pilkington, one[275] of the late sheriffs, who in his vexation unguardedly said, "The Duke of York fired the City at the burning of London, and now he is coming to cut our throats." Damages were laid at one hundred thousand pounds, and awarded by a jury at Hertford. Pilkington, whose sentence amounted to imprisonment for life, and Shute, his late colleague, Sir Patience Ward, Cornel, Ford, Lord Grey, and others were tried, Ward for perjury, the rest for riot and assault on the Lord Mayor, and convicted. In all these proceedings Mr. Serjeant Jeffreys was an active instrument to promote the Government objects.

But these triumphs were only temporary. The Court determined to establish a permanent power over the City. It therefore proceeded by a writ of quo warranto to deprive the City of its franchise. The case was tried before Sir Edward Sanders and the other judges of the King's Bench. The Attorney-General pleaded that the City had perpetrated two illegal acts—they had imposed an arbitrary tax on merchandise brought into the public market, and had accused the king, by adjourning Parliament, of having interrupted the necessary business of the nation. After much contention and delay, in the hope that the City would voluntarily lay itself at the feet of the monarch, judgment was pronounced that "the City of London should be taken and seized with the king's hands." When the authorities prayed the non-carrying out of the sentence, the Lord Chancellor North candidly avowed the real object of the proceeding,—that the king was resolved to put an end to the opposition of the City, by having a veto on the appointment of the Lord Mayor and sheriffs; that he did not wish to interfere in their affairs or liberties further, but this power he was determined to possess, and therefore the judgment was confirmed June 20th, 1683, and London was reduced to an absolute slavery to the king's will. It was equally determined to proceed by the same means of a quo warranto to suppress the charters of the other corporations in the kingdom.

Shaftesbury had seen the progress of this enormous change with the deepest alarm. He retired to his house in Aldersgate Street, and not feeling himself secure there, hid himself successively in different parts of the City, striving, through his agents, to move Monmouth, Essex, and Grey to rise, and break this progress of despotism. He boasted that he had ten thousand link-boys yet in the City, who would rise at the lifting of his finger. It was proposed by Monmouth that he should engage the Lords Macclesfield, Brandon, and Delamere to rise in Cheshire and Lancashire. Lord William Russell corresponded with Sir Francis Drake in the west of England, Trenchard engaged to raise the people of Taunton. But Monmouth had more than half betrayed the scheme to the king, and the progress of events in the City grew formidable. Shaftesbury was struck with despair, and fled in November, 1682. He escaped to Harwich in the guise of a Presbyterian minister, and got thence over to Holland. He took up his residence at Amsterdam, where he was visited by Oates and Waller; but his mortification at the failure of his grand scheme of "walking the king leisurely out of his dominions, and making the Duke of York a vagabond like Cain on the face of the earth," broke his spirits and his constitution. The gout fixed itself in his stomach, and on the 21st of January, 1683, he expired, only two months after his quitting England.

The fall of this extraordinary man and of his cause is a grand lesson in history. His cause was the best in the world—that of maintaining the liberties of England against the designs of one of the most profligate and despotic Courts that ever existed. But by following crooked by-paths and dishonest schemes, and by employing the most villainous of mankind for accomplishing his object, he ruined it. Had he and his fellows, who had more or less of genuine patriotism in them, combined to rouse their country by high, direct, and honourable means, they would have won the confidence of their country, and saved it, or have perished with honour. As it was, the great national achievement was reserved for others.

The flight and death of Shaftesbury struck terror into the Whig party. Many gave up the cause in despair; others of a timid nature went over to the enemy, and others, spurred on by their indignation, rushed forward into more rash and fatal projects; and at this moment one of the extraordinary revelations took place which rapidly brought to the gallows and the block nearly the whole of Shaftesbury's agents, coadjutors, and colleagues, including Lord William Russell and Algernon Sidney.

We have seen that Shaftesbury and his party had been seriously contemplating an insurrection to compel Charles to adopt measures for securing a Protestant succession which they could not persuade him to, and that the efforts of the arch-agitator and his agents, West, Ferguson, Rouse, Rumsey, Walcot, and others, to excite the[276] nobles of the Whig party to action, had proved abortive and induced Shaftesbury to fly. Unfortunately, the royal party being now in the full tide of retribution, the more contemptible portion of those who had been most active in carrying on the Whig aggressions began to consider what was to be gained by betraying their associates. On the 1st of June a Scotsman was arrested on suspicion at Newcastle, and on him was found a letter, which indicated agreement between the Opposition parties in Scotland and England. A quick inquiry was set on foot after further traces of the alarming facts; and on the 12th, the very day on which judgment was pronounced against the City, Josiah Keeling, a man who had been extremely prominent in the late contests about the sheriffs, and who had displayed his zeal by actually laying hands on the Lord Mayor Moore, for his support of the Government, now waited on Lord Dartmouth, the Duke of York's close friend, and informed him of particulars of the late schemes, as if they were yet actively in operation against the king's life. Dartmouth took the informer to Sir Leoline Jenkins, Secretary of State, who had been extremely active in the proceedings against the City. The story which Keeling laid before Sir Leoline was to the following appalling purport:—That in the month of March last, when the king and Duke of York were about to proceed to Newmarket, to the races, Goodenough, the late Under Sheriff, one of Shaftesbury's most busy men in the City, lamenting the slavery to which the City was fast being reduced, asked him how many men he could engage to kill the king and the duke too; that he had repeated the same question to him whilst the king and the duke were there; and that he then consented to join the plot, and to endeavour to procure accomplices. Accordingly, he engaged Burton, a cheesemonger, Thompson, a carver, and Barber, an instrument-maker of Wapping. They then met with one Rumbold, a maltster at the "Mitre" Tavern, without Aldgate, where it was settled to go down to a house that Rumbold had, called the Rye House, on the River Lea, near Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire, and there execute their design. This house lay conveniently by the wayside, and a number of men concealed under a fence could easily shoot down the king's postilion and horses, and then kill him and the duke, and the four guards with them. If they failed to stop the carriage, a man placed with a cart and horse in a cross lane a few paces farther on was to run his horse and cart athwart the road, and there stop it, till they had completed their design. From this circumstance the plot obtained the name of the Rye House Plot.

At a subsequent meeting at the "Dolphin," behind the Exchange, there was a disagreement as to the time when the king would return, and thus they missed the opportunity, for Rumbold, who went down, said the king and duke passed the place with only five Life-Guards. Various other plans were then laid—one to cut off the king between Windsor and Hampton Court.

Secretary Jenkins, after listening to this recital, told Keeling that it would require another witness to establish a charge of treason against the conspirators, and Keeling fetched his brother John, who swore with him to these and many other particulars—namely, that Goodenough had organised a plan for raising twenty districts in the City, and that twenty thousand pounds were to be distributed amongst the twenty managers of these districts; that the Duke of Monmouth was to head the insurrection, a person called the colonel was to furnish one thousand pounds, and different men in different parts of the country were to raise their own neighbourhoods; that the murder was now to come off at the next bull-feast in Red Lion Fields. Two days afterwards they added that Goodenough had informed them that Lord William Russell would enter heart and soul into the design of killing the king and the Duke of York.

A proclamation was immediately issued for the arrest of Rumbold, Colonel Rumsey, Walcot, Wade, Nelthorp, Thompson, Burton, and Hone; but it was supposed that John Keeling, who had been reluctantly dragged into the affair by Josiah, had given them warning, and they had all got out of the way. Barber, the instrument-maker of Wapping, however, was taken, and declared that he had never understood that the design was against the king, but only against the duke. West soon surrendered himself, and, in hope of pardon, gave most extensive evidence against Ferguson and a dozen others; like Oates and Bedloe, continually adding fresh facts and dragging in fresh people. He said Ferguson had brought money to buy arms; that Wildman had been furnished with means to buy arms; that Lord Howard of Escrick had gone deeply into it; that Algernon Sidney and Wildman were in close correspondence with the conspirators in Scotland; that at meetings held at the "Devil Tavern," it was projected to shoot the king in a narrow street as he was returning from the theatre; that they had hinted something of their design to the Duke of[277] Monmouth, but not the killing part of it, but that he had sternly replied they must look on him as a son; and then the relations of this wretched turncoat lawyer assumed all the wildness of a Bluebeard story. Ferguson would hear of nothing but killing. The new Lord Mayor, the new sheriffs Rich and North, were to be killed, and their skins stuffed and hung up in Guildhall; the judges were to be flayed, too, and their skins suspended in Westminster Hall and other great traitors were to have their skins hung up in the Parliament House.

THE RYE HOUSE.

Next, Rumsey turned informer, and, improving as he went on, he also accused Lord William Russell, Mr. Trenchard, Roe, the Sword-Bearer of Bristol, the Duke of Monmouth, Sir Thomas Armstrong, Lord Grey, and Ferguson. He had, he said, met most of these persons at Shepherd's, a wine-merchant, near Lombard Street, and nothing less was intended by most of them than killing the king and his brother. Trenchard had promised a thousand foot and three hundred horse in the West, and Ferguson had engaged to raise twelve hundred Scots who had fled to England after the battle of Bothwell Bridge. Shepherd, the wine-merchant, was called, and said that Shaftesbury, before going to Holland, the Duke of Monmouth, Lords William Russell and Grey, Armstrong, Rumsey, and Ferguson had met at his house, and, he was informed, had talked about securing his Majesty's Guards, and had walked about the Court end of the town at night, and reported a very remiss state of the Guards on duty. He added that as the design had not obtained sufficient support, so far as he knew, it was laid aside.

On the 26th of June a proclamation was issued for the apprehension of Monmouth, Grey, Russell, Armstrong, Walcot, and others. Monmouth, Grey, Armstrong, and Ferguson escaped; Lord William Russell, Sidney, Essex, Wildman, Howard of Escrick, Walcot, and others were taken, then or soon after. Russell was the first secured. He was found quietly seated in his library, and though the messengers had walked to and fro for some time before his door, as if wishing him to get away, he took no steps towards it, but as soon as the officer had shown his warrant,[278] he went with him as though he had been backed by a troop. When examined before the Council, he is said, even by his own party, to have made but a feeble defence. He admitted having been at Shepherd's, but only to buy wines. He understood that some of those whom he had seen there were a crowd of dangerous designers; he should not, therefore, mention them, but only the Duke of Monmouth, against whom there could be no such charge. He denied that he had heard there anything about a rising in the West or in Scotland, but only that in the latter country there were many people in distress, ministers and others, whom it would be a great charity to relieve. He was committed to the Tower, and on entering it he said he was sworn against, and they would have his life. His servant replied that he hoped matters were not so bad as that, but he rejoined, "Yes! the devil is loose!" He saw the course things were taking; the spirit that was in the ascendant; he knew that he had entered into revolutionary schemes sufficiently for his condemnation, and that the Duke of York, who had an old hatred for him, would never let him escape.

Lord Howard was one of the last arrested. He went about after the arrest of several of the others, declaring that there really was no plot; that he knew of none; yet after that it is asserted, and strong evidence adduced for it, that to save his own life he had made several offers to the Court to betray his kinsman Russell. Four days before Russell's trial, a serjeant-at-arms, attended by a troop of horse, was sent to Howard's house at Knightsbridge, and after a long search discovered him in his shirt in the chimney of his room. His conduct when taken was most cowardly and despicable, and fully justified the character that he had of being one of the most perfidious and base of men. He wept, trembled, and entreated, and begging a private interview with the king and duke, he betrayed his associates to save himself. Russell had always had a horror and suspicion of him, but he had managed to captivate Sidney by his vehement professions of Republicanism, and by Sidney and Essex he had been induced to tolerate the traitor. The Earl of Essex was taken at his house at Cassiobury, and was escorted to town by a party of horse. He might have escaped through the assistance of his friends, but he deemed that his flight would tend to condemn his friend Russell, and he refused.

He was a man of a melancholy temperament, but he bore up bravely till he was shut up in the Tower, in the same cell where his wife's grandfather, the Earl of Northumberland, in the reign of Elizabeth, had died by his own hands or those of an assassin, and from which his father, the Lord Capel, had been led to execution under the Commonwealth. He now became greatly depressed. The rest of the prisoners—Sidney, Hampden, Armstrong, Baillie of Jerviswood, and others, both Scottish and English—displayed the most firm bearing before the Council, and refused to answer the questions put to them. Sidney told the king and his ministers that if they wished to incriminate him, it was not from himself that they would get their information.

Lord William Russell was brought to trial on the 13th of July, at the Old Bailey. He was charged with conspiring the death of the king, and consulting to levy war upon him. Intense interest was attached to this trial, in consequence of the high character of the prisoner, and because it must decide how far the Whig leaders were concerned in the designs of lower conspirators. He requested a delay till afternoon or next morning, because material witnesses had not arrived, but the Attorney-General, Sir Robert Sawyer, replied, "You would not have given the king an hour's notice for saving his life; the trial must proceed." He then requested the use of pen, ink, and paper, and for permission to avail himself of the documents he had with him. These requests were granted, and he then asked for some one to help him to take notes; and the court replied that he might have the service of any of his servants for that purpose. "My lord," said Russell, addressing Chief Justice Pemberton, "my wife is here to do it." This observation, and the lady herself then rising up to place herself at her husband's side to perform this office, produced a lively sensation in the crowd of spectators. The daughter of the excellent and popular Lord Southampton thus devoting herself to assist her husband in his last extremity, was an incident not likely to lose its effect on the mind of Englishmen, and the image

"Of that sweet saint who sat by Russell's side"

has ever since formed a favourite theme for the painter and the poet.

The witnesses first produced against him were Rumsey and Shepherd. Rumsey deposed that the prisoner had attended a meeting at Shepherd's for concerting a plan to surprise the king's Guards at the Savoy and the Mews, and Shepherd confirmed this evidence. Russell admitted the being at Shepherd's, and meeting the persons alleged, but[279] denied the object stated so far as he himself was concerned, or so far as he had heard or understood. The last and most infamous witness was Lord Howard of Escrick, a man of ability and address, but a thorough profligate, and generally despised, and by Russell himself long suspected. Yet even he seemed to feel the infamy of his position, and to give his evidence with shame. Whilst in the midst of it, the Court was electrified by the news that the Earl of Essex had that moment committed suicide in his cell. He had called for a razor, shut himself up in a closet, and cut his throat so effectually that he had nearly severed his head from his body. When the news, however, reached the court of the Old Bailey, the sensation was intense. The witness himself was greatly agitated by it, and Jeffreys, who was counsel for the Crown, seized upon it to damage the cause of the prisoner at the bar. He argued that the very act showed the conscious guilt of Essex, who had been constantly mixed up in the proceedings of Russell.

Howard swore that he had heard from Monmouth, Walcot, and others, that Russell had been deeply concerned with the conspirators, and especially their head, Lord Shaftesbury. He alleged that Russell had taken part in two discussions at Hampden's, where they had arranged the treasonable correspondence with the Earl of Argyll and his adherents in Scotland; and was aware of the agent, one Aaron Smith, being sent to Scotland for the purpose of organising their co-operation. Being pressed to say whether Lord William took an active part in these discussions, he did not plainly assert that he did, as he said he was well known to be cautious and reserved in his discourse, but that all was understood, and he appeared to consent to everything. Russell admitted having been at those meetings, but again denied any knowledge of any such designs, and declared that Lord Howard's evidence was mere hearsay evidence, and of no legal weight whatever; and that, moreover, Howard had positively declared repeatedly that there was no plot, and had sworn to his (Russell's) innocence. On this Howard was recalled, and explained that it was before his arrest that he had ridiculed and denied the plot—which, under the circumstances, was natural enough—and he had sworn to Lord William's innocence only as far as regarded a design of assassination of the king and duke, but not as regarded his participation in the general plot. West and the serjeant-at-arms, who had the Scottish prisoners in custody, were also called to prove the reality of the plot, and of their looking chiefly to Lord William Russell to head it.

On his part the prisoner contended that none of the witnesses were to be relied on, because they were swearing against him in order to save their own lives. He also argued that, according to the statute of 25 Edward III., the statute decided not the design to levy war, but the overt act, to constitute treason. But the Attorney-General replied that not only to levy war, but to conspire to levy war against the king, to kill, depose, or constrain him, was treason by the statute. Before the jury retired, Russell addressed them, saying, "Gentlemen, I am now in your hands eternally; my honour, my life, and all; and I hope the heats and animosities that are amongst you will not so bias you as to make you in the least inclined to find an innocent man guilty. I call heaven and earth to witness that I never had a design against the king's life. I am in your hands, so God direct you." They returned a verdict of guilty, and Treby, the Recorder of London, who had been an active Exclusionist, pronounced the sentence of death. In spite of the efforts of his relatives, the sentence was carried out on the 21st of July, 1683.

On the day of Lord William Russell's death, the University of Oxford marked the epoch by one of those rampant assertions of Toryism which have too often disgraced that seat of learning. It published a "Judgment and Declaration," as passed in their Convocation, for the honour of the holy and undivided Trinity, the preservation of Catholic truth in the Church, and that the king's majesty might be secured both from the attempts of open bloody enemies and the machinations of treacherous heretics and schismatics. In this declaration they attacked almost every principle of civil and religious liberty, which had been promulgated and advocated in the works of Milton, Baxter, Bellarmin, Owen, Knox, Buchanan, and others. They declared that the doctrines of the civil authority being derived from the people; of there existing any compact, tacit or expressed, between the prince and his subjects from the obligation of which, should one party retreat, the other becomes exempt; of the sovereign forfeiting his right to govern if he violate the limitations established by the laws of God and man, were all wicked, abominate, and devilish doctrines, deserving of everlasting reprobation. And they called upon "All and singular the readers, tutors, and catechists, diligently to instruct and ground their scholars in that most necessary doctrine, which in a manner is the badge[280] and character of the Church of England, of submitting to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, teaching that this submission and obedience is to be clear, absolute, and without exception of any state or order of men." This doctrine of slaves, which Oxford would have fixed on the nation as the badge of Englishmen, they were in a very few years, under James, taught the practical blessing of. They had, when their turn came, quickly enough of it, flung the badge to the winds, and made a present of their plate to the Dutch prince, who came to drive their sovereign from the throne.

Before the trial of Algernon Sidney took place, Sir George Jeffreys was made Lord Chief Justice in place of Sanders, who was incapacitated by sickness. Before this alternately laughing and blackguarding demon Algernon Sidney, the last of the republicans, was arraigned at the bar of the King's Bench on the 7th of September, 1683. Rumsey, Keeling, and West were brought against him, as against Russell, but the main witness was the despicable Lord Howard, whom Evelyn truly calls, "That monster of a man, Lord Howard of Escrick." On their evidence he was charged with being a member of the Council of six, sworn to kill the king and overturn his Government; with having attended at those meetings already mentioned at Hampden's, Russell's, and Shepherd's; and with having undertaken to send Aaron Smith to Scotland, to concert a simultaneous insurrection, and to persuade the leading Scottish conspirators to come to London, on pretence of proceeding to Carolina.

Sidney, after Howard had delivered his evidence, was asked if he had any questions to put to the witness, but he replied with the utmost scorn, that "he had no questions to ask such as him!" "Then," said the Attorney-General, "silence—you know the rest of the proverb." The difficulty remained to prove Sidney's treason, for there were no two witnesses able or willing to attest an overt act. But if it depended on the existence of fact, there was not one of the Council of six who was not guilty of really conspiring to drive out the next successor to the Crown. Neither Russell, nor Hampden, nor Sidney, though they laboured in self-defence to prove the plot improbable, ever really denied its existence. They knew that it did exist, and were too honest to deny it, though they notoriously sought to evade the penalty of it, by contending that nothing of the kind was or could be proved. But what said Hampden himself after the Revolution, before a committee of the House of Lords? Plainly, "that the coming into England of King William was nothing else but the continuation of the Council of Six." The conspiracy by that time was become in the eyes of the Government no longer a crime, but a meritorious fact. The injustice thus done to these patriots was not that they had not committed treason against the existing Government, but that they were condemned on discreditable and insufficient evidence. When men conspire to get rid of a tyrannous government by force, they commit what is legally rendered treason, and must take the consequence, if detected by the ruling powers. But that circumstance does not render the attempt less meritorious, and if it succeeds they have their reward. In this case the prisoners knew very well that if their real doings could be proved against them, they must fall by the resentment of those whom they sought to get rid of; but they resisted, and justly, being condemned on the evidence of traitors like Lord Howard, and even then by evidence less than the law required.

To make out the two necessary witnesses in this case, the Attorney-General brought forward several persons to prove that the Scottish agents of conspiracy for whom Sidney had sent had actually arrived in London; but he relied much more on a manuscript pamphlet which was found in Sidney's desk when he was arrested. This pamphlet appeared to be an answer to Filmer's book, which argued that possession was the only right to power. Three persons were called to swear that it was in Sidney's handwriting; but the chief of these was the same perfidious Shepherd, the wine-merchant, who had so scandalously betrayed his party. He had seen Sidney sign several endorsements, and believed this to be his writing. A second, who had seen him write once, and a third, who had not seen him write at all, but had seen his hand on some bills, thought it like his writing. This was by no means conclusive, but that did not trouble the Court; it went on to read passages in order to show the treasonableness of the manuscript, and then it was adroitly handed to the prisoner on the plea of enabling him to show any reasons for its being deemed harmless; but Sidney was not caught by so palpable a trick. He put back the book as a thing that no way concerned him. On this Jeffreys turned over the leaves, and remarked, "I perceive you have arranged your matter under certain heads; so, what heads will you have read?" Sidney replied that the man who wrote it might speak to that;[281] and asked with indignation whether a paper found in his study against Nero and Caligula would prove that he had conspired against Charles II.? What credit, he asked, was due to such a man as Lord Howard, who had betrayed every one that had anything to do with him, and had said that he could not get his pardon till the drudgery of swearing was over? He contended that Howard was his debtor, that he had a mortgage on his estate, and to get rid of repayment was now seeking his life. He commented on the oldness of the work in the manuscript, and asked the Attorney-General how many years the book of Filmer's, which it replied to, had been written. Jeffreys told him they had nothing to do with Filmer's book; the question was, would he acknowledge the authorship of the pamphlet? Sidney replied, "No;" that it was neither proved to be his, nor contained any treason if it had been.

TRIAL OF LORD WILLIAM RUSSELL. (See p. 278.)

(After the Picture by Sir George Hayter.)

[282]

Jeffreys, after a parade of humanity, declaring that the king desired not to take away any man's life which was not clearly forfeited to the law, but had rather that many guilty men should escape than one innocent man suffer, concluded, nevertheless, by telling the jury that scribere est agere—that they had evidence enough before them, and they, accordingly, brought in a verdict of guilty.

When the prisoner was brought up on the 26th of November to receive sentence, he pleaded in arrest of judgment that he had had no trial, that some of his jurors were not freeholders, and that his challenges had not been complied with; yet he seems to have exercised that right to a great extent, for the panel contains the names of eighty-nine persons, of whom fifty-five were challenged, absent, or excused. As jurymen, however, then were summoned, there might still be much truth in his plea. He objected, too, that there was a material flaw in the indictment, the words in the king's title—Defender of the Faith—being left out. "But," exclaimed Jeffreys, "that you would deprive the king of his life, that is in very full, I think." But this plea had a certain effect, and a Mr. Bampfield, a barrister, contended that the judgment should not be proceeded with whilst there was so material a defect in the indictment. Sidney also insisted that there was no proof of the manuscript being his, or of its being treason, and demanded that the Duke of Monmouth should be summoned, as he could not be earlier found, and now was at hand. But Jeffreys overruled all his pleadings, and declared that there was nothing further to do than to pass sentence. "I must appeal to God and the world that I am not heard," said Sidney. "Appeal to whom you will," retorted Jeffreys, brutally, and with many terms of crimination and abuse, passed on him sentence of death with all its butcheries. On the 7th of December he was led to execution.

A very different man at this epoch obtained his pardon, and played a very different part. The weak, impulsive, ambitious, and yet vacillating Monmouth was by means of Halifax reconciled to his father. Halifax, who was known as a minister by the name of the Trimmer, though he had aided the Tories in gaining the ascendant, no sooner saw the lengths at which they were driving, than he began to incline to the other side. His tendency was always to trim the balance. When the Whigs were in the ascendant he was a decided Tory; he did his best to throw out the Exclusion Bill, and when it was thrown out he was one of the first to advocate measures for preventing the mischiefs of a Popish succession. His genius was not to stimulate some great principle, and bear it on in triumph, but to keep the prevailing crisis from running into extravagance. He was, like Danby, an enemy to the French alliance; he loathed the doctrine of passive obedience; he was opposed to long absence of Parliaments; he dared to intercede for Russell and Sidney, when the Tory faction were demanding their blood; he saw the undue influence that the Duke of York had acquired by the late triumph over the Whigs, and he began to patronise Monmouth as a counterpoise; he wrote some letters for Monmouth, professing great penitence, and Monmouth copied and sent them, and the king at once relented. On the 25th of October Charles received him at the house of Major Long, in the City; and though he assumed an air of displeasure, and upbraided him with the heinous nature of his crimes, he added words which showed that he meant to forgive. On the 4th of November there was another private interview, and Halifax laboured hard to remove all difficulties. The king offered him full forgiveness, but on condition that he submitted himself entirely to his pleasure. On the 24th of November he threw himself at the feet of the king and the Duke of York, and implored their forgiveness, promising to be the first man, in case of the king's death, to draw the sword for the maintenance of the duke's claims. The duke had been prepared beforehand for this scene, and accorded apparently his forgiveness. But Monmouth was then weak enough to be induced to confirm the testimony of Lord Howard against his late associates, and to reveal the particulars of[283] their negotiations with Argyll in Scotland. This he did under solemn assurances that all should remain secret, and nothing should be done which should humiliate him. Having done this, his outlawry was reversed, a full pardon formally drawn, and a present of six thousand pounds was made him by the king to start afresh with.

No sooner, however, was this done than he saw with consternation his submission and confession published in the Gazette. He denied that he had revealed anything to the king which confirmed the sentences lately passed on Russell and Sidney. The king was enraged, and insisted that he should in writing contradict these assertions. He was again cowardly enough to comply, and immediately being assailed by the reproaches of his late friends, and especially of Hampden, whose turn was approaching, and who said that Monmouth had sealed his doom, he hastened to Charles, and in great excitement and distress demanded back his letter. Charles assured him that it should never be produced in any court as evidence against the prisoners, and advised him to take some time to reflect on the consequences to himself of the withdrawal. But next morning, the 7th of December, renewing his entreaty for the letter, it was returned him in exchange for a less decisive statement, and Charles bade him never come into his presence again. He then retired to his seat in the country, and once more offered to sign a paper as strong as the last. Even Charles felt the infamy of this proceeding, and refused the offer.

But still it was determined to make use of him, and he was subpœnaed to give evidence on the approaching trial of Hampden. He pleaded the promise that his confession should not be used against the prisoners, but he was told that he had cancelled that obligation by his subsequently withdrawing his letter. Seeing by this that he would be dragged before a public court to play the disgraceful part of Lord Howard, he suddenly disappeared from his house in Holborn, and escaped to Holland, where he was well received by Prince William, who was now the grand refuge of English and Scottish refugees of all parties and politics. As Monmouth's escape deprived the court of his evidence, and only one main witness, Lord Howard, could be obtained, the charge of high treason was abandoned, and that of a misdemeanour was substituted. Howard was the chief witness, and Hampden was found guilty and punished by a fine of forty thousand pounds, and imprisoned till paid, besides having to find two securities for his good behaviour during life. When he complained of the severity of the sentence, which was equivalent to imprisonment during the life of his father, he was reminded that his crime really amounted to treason, and therefore was very mild.

On the return of the Duke of York to Scotland, the persecutions of the defeated Covenanters had been renewed there with a fury and diabolical ferocity which has scarcely a parallel in history. Wives were tortured for refusing to betray their husbands, children because they would not discover their parents. People were tortured and then hanged merely because they would not say that the insurrection there was a rebellion, or the killing of Archbishop Sharp was a murder. The fortress of the Bass Rock, Dumbarton Castle, and other strongholds were crammed with Covenanters and Cameronians. Witnesses, a thing unheard of before, were now tortured. "This," says Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall, "was agreeable to the Roman law, but not to ours; it was a barbarous practice, but yet of late frequently used amongst us." He also informs us that Generals Dalziel and Drummond had imported thumbscrews from Russia, where they had seen them used, by which they crushed the thumbs of prisoners to compel them to confess. All the laws of evidence were thrown aside, and the accused were condemned on presumptive evidence. On such testimony the property of numbers was forfeited, and the notorious Graham of Claverhouse was enriched by the estate of a suspected Covenanter.

By these torrents of blood, these diabolical engines of iron boots, thumbscrews, and other tortures; by witnesses forced to implicate their neighbours, and a herd of vile caitiffs brought forward to swear away the lives and fortunes of every man who dared to entertain, though he scarcely ventured to avow, a free opinion; by the Church preaching passive obedience; by servile, bullying, and brutal judges; Charles had now completely subdued the spirit of the nation, and had, through the aid of French money, obtained that absolute power which his father in vain fought for.

One of the first uses which he made of this beautiful tranquillity was to destroy the ancient seminaries of freedom—the corporations of the country. Writs of quo warranto were issued, and the corporations, like the nation at large, prostrate at the foot of the polluted throne, were compelled by threats and promises to resign their ancient privileges. "Neither," says Lingard, "had the boroughs much reason to complain. By[284] the renewal of their charters they lost no franchise which it was reasonable they should retain; many acquired rights which they did not previously possess; but individuals suffered, because the exercise of authority was restricted to a smaller number of burgesses, and these, according to custom, were in the first instance named by the Crown."

THE BASS ROCK.

There, indeed, lay the gist and mischief of the whole matter. Charles cared little what other privileges they enjoyed so that he could deprive them of their most important privilege—their independence, and make them not only slavish institutions, but instruments for the general enslavement of the country. "In the course of time," says the same historian, "several boroughs, by the exercise of those exclusive privileges, which had been conferred on them by ancient grants from the Crown, had grown into nests or asylums of public malefactors, and on that account were presented as nuisances by the grand juries of the county assizes." This was a good reason why those "several boroughs" should have been reformed; but none whatever why all boroughs should be compelled to surrender their independence to a despotic monarch. The great instrument in this sweeping usurpation was the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, a man admirably calculated for the work by his power of coaxing, jeering, browbeating, and terrifying the reluctant corporations. Before he set out on his summer circuit this year, Charles presented him with a ring from his own finger, as a mark of his especial esteem, at the same time giving him a very necessary piece of advice, Chief Justice as he was, to beware of drinking too much, as the weather would be hot. The ring was called Jeffreys' bloodstone, being presented to him just after the execution of Sir Thomas Armstrong.

Though blood had ceased to flow, persecution of the Whigs had not ceased. Sir Samuel Barnardiston, the foreman of the grand jury which had ignored the Bill against Lord Shaftesbury, was not forgotten. He was tried for a libel, and fined ten thousand pounds, and ordered to find security for his good behaviour during life. Williams, the Speaker of the House of Commons, was prosecuted for merely having discharged the duties of his[285] office, in signing the votes; Braddon and Speke were tried and punished severely for slandering the king and duke by charging them with the murder of Essex. And James now indulged his spleen against Titus Oates for his proceedings against the Catholics, and his endeavour to exclude James from the succession. The pretence seized upon was, that Oates and Dutton Colt had declared that the Duke of York was a traitor, and that before he should come to the succession, he should be banished or hanged, the hanging being the fitter. Jeffreys, who tried them, had a particular pleasure in sentencing Oates, who, in the days of his popularity, had hit the rascally lawyer hard. In 1680 Jeffreys had fallen under the censure of Parliament for interfering in its concerns, and they had not only brought him to his knees at their bar, but had compelled him to resign the recordership of London. On the trial of College, the "Protestant joiner," Oates had appealed to Jeffreys, then Serjeant Jeffreys, to confirm a part of his evidence. Jeffreys indignantly said he did not intend becoming evidence for a man like him; whereupon Oates coolly replied, "I don't desire Sir George Jeffreys to become an evidence for me; I have had credit in Parliaments, and Sir George had disgrace in one of them." Jeffreys was stunned by this repartee, and merely replied, "Your servant, doctor; you are a witty man and a philosopher." But now the tide had turned; Jeffreys had the witty man at his mercy, and he fined him and Colt one hundred thousand pounds, or imprisonment till paid, which meant so long as they lived.

Tardy justice was also done to the Catholic peers who were in the Tower. Lord Stafford had fallen the victim of Protestant terrors during the ascendency of the Whigs; Lord Petre died, worn out by his confinement, but the Lords Powis, Arundel, and Bellasis, after lying in durance vile for five years, were brought up by writ of Habeas corpus, and were discharged on each entering into recognisances of ten thousand pounds for himself, and five thousand pounds each for four sureties, to appear at the bar of the House if called for. The judges, now that the Duke of York, the Catholic prince, was in power, could admit that these victims of a political faction "ought in justice and conscience to have been admitted to bail long ago." Danby, too, was liberated on the same terms, though he never could be forgiven by the king or duke for his patronage of Oates, and his zeal in hunting out the plot.

The influence of James was every day more manifest. Charles restored James to his former status by placing him at the head of the Admiralty; and, to avoid subjecting him to the penalties of the Test Act, himself signed all the papers which required the signature of the Lord High Admiral. Seeing that this was received with perfect complacency, he went a step farther, and, in defiance of the Test Act, introduced James again into the Council. This, indeed, excited some murmurs, even the Tories being scandalised at his thus coolly setting aside an Act of Parliament.

No sooner was James reinstated in the Council, than he planned yet more daring changes. Under the plea which he afterwards carried so far in his own reign, of relieving the Dissenters, he sought to relieve the Catholics from their penalties. What his regard was for the Dissenters has been sufficiently shown by their cruel persecution in England, and by his own especial oppression of the Covenanters in Scotland.

One morning, however, Jeffreys, who had lately been admitted to the Council, appeared at the board with an immense bundle of papers and parchments, and informed the king that they were the rolls of the names of the recusants that he had collected during his late circuit. He declared that the gaols were crammed with them, and that their case deserved the serious attention of the king. Lord Keeper North, who saw instantly the drift of the motion, and who had a profound jealousy of Jeffreys, who, he knew, was anxiously looking for the Seals, asked whether all the names in the list belonged to persons who were in prison? Jeffreys replied no, for the prisons could not hold all the persons convicted of recusancy. North then observed, that besides Catholics there were vast numbers of Nonconformists and other persons included in those lists, who were professed enemies of the king, and of Church and State, and that it would be far easier and safer to grant particular pardons to Catholics, than thus at once to set at liberty all the elements of commotion in the kingdom. The blow was struck. Strong as was the Government then, it dared not give a measure of exemption exclusively to the Catholics. The scheme, it was obviously seen, was transparent, and there was a significant silence. Neither Halifax, nor Rochester, nor the more Protestant members having occasion to open their mouths, the Council passed to other business.

But Halifax saw with alarm the advancing influence of the duke, and trembled for his own hold of office, for the duke, he knew, hated him[286] mortally. He, therefore, as a certain resource against this advancing power, advised Charles to call a Parliament, but that Charles had resolved never to do. He still received a considerable sum from Louis, though not so large in amount nor so regularly paid as when his services were more needful; and to decrease his expenditure, he had, during the last year, sent a squadron under Lord Dartmouth to destroy the fortification of Tangier, which he had received as part of the dowry of the queen. Had that Settlement been well managed, it would have given England great advantages in the Mediterranean; but nothing of that kind was well managed by this unpatriotic king. To spare the expenditure necessary for its maintenance, he thus destroyed the defences, and left the place to the Moors, to the great indignation of Portugal, which thought rightly that, if he did not value it, he might have restored it.

Defeated in that quarter, Halifax next endeavoured to stop the advancement of Lord Rochester. This was Lawrence Hyde, the second son of the late Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and the especial favourite of the duke. He had (in 1682) not only been created Earl of Rochester, but made First Commissioner of the Treasury. Halifax beheld in his rise an ominous competitor, especially as the duke was the mainspring of his prosperity. He therefore accused Rochester of negligence or embezzlement in his office, and succeeded in removing him (1684) from the Treasury board to the Presidency of the Council. This Halifax called kicking a man upstairs. Nor did Rochester's promotion end here. He was soon after appointed to the government of Ireland, the old and veteran colleague of Rochester's father, and the staunch champion of Charles in the days of his adversity, being removed to make way for him. The great object, however, was not simply Rochester's promotion, but the organisation of a powerful Catholic army in Ireland, for which it was deemed Ormond was not active enough, this army having reference to James's views on England, which afterwards proved his ruin.

By this appointment Rochester was removed from immediate rivalry with Halifax; but sufficient elements of danger still surrounded that minister. Halifax and his colleagues had succeeded in strengthening the Protestant succession by the marriage of the second daughter of the duke, Anne, to a Protestant prince; but even in this event the influence of Louis had been active. Through the medium of Sunderland, who continued in office, and maintained a close intimacy with the French mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth, Louis took care that, though the nation would not tolerate any but a Protestant prince for Anne's husband, it should be one of no great importance. George, Prince of Hanover, afterwards George I., had been selected, and made a visit to London, but returned without the princess. The fortune, it had been suggested, was not enough for the penurious German; his father recalled him to marry the Princess of Zell, a circumstance which Anne never forgot or forgave. In the midst of the agitation of the Rye House Plot, and but two days before the execution of Lord William Russell, another wooer appeared in George, brother of the King of Denmark. This young man also had the approbation of Louis, and the match took place a week after his arrival.

Still Halifax felt a growing insecurity in the royal favour. The whole influence of the Duke of York was exerted to ruin him, and he therefore determined once more to attempt to re-establish Monmouth in the king's favour. This popular but weak young man was living in great honour at the Court of the Prince of Orange. Many remonstrances had been made by the Duke of York to his daughter and son-in-law, against their encouragement of a son who had taken so determined a part both against his own father, the king, and himself, their father. But the prince and princess were well aware of Charles's affection for his undutiful son, and therefore did not fear seriously offending him. Under the management of Halifax, Van Citters, the Dutch ambassador in London, went over to the Hague on pretence of negotiating some measure of importance between the two countries. The Prince of Orange affected to comply with the wishes of Charles for the removal of Monmouth. But this nobleman, instead of taking up his residence at Brussels, as was given out, suddenly returned to London privately, had an interview with his father, and as suddenly returned to the Hague, saying that in three months he should be publicly admitted at Court, and the Duke of York be banished afresh. Charles, meantime, had proposed to James to go and hold a Parliament in Scotland, as if conferring a mark of particular honour and confidence on him. But the private visit of Monmouth had not escaped James, nor the correspondence of Halifax with him, and this caused a fresh energy of opposition to that minister to be infused into the duke's creatures at Court. Halifax had recommended a most enlightened measure to the king as regarded the American colonies, which,[287] had it been adopted, might have prevented their loss at a later period. He represented that the grant of local legislatures to them would be the best means of developing their resources, and governing them in peace; but on this admirable suggestion the duke's partisans seized as something especially anti-monarchical and injurious to the power of the king. The duke, the Duchess of Portsmouth, and the Earl of Sunderland re-echoed these opinions, and drew from Charles a promise that unless Halifax retired of himself, he should be dismissed on the first plausible occasion. The influence of the French king was also at work to effect the overthrow of Halifax. It was in vain that Louis had endeavoured to buy him as he had done the king, the duke, and the other ministers; and as he could not be bought, the only alternative was to drive him from office. He was feebly supported by the Lord Keeper North; he was actively and zealously undermined by his colleagues, Sunderland and Godolphin; but still Charles hesitated. He enjoyed the wit and brilliant conversation of Halifax; he knew well his ability, and, still more, he was in a most indolent and undecided frame of mind. Macaulay has well described him at this moment:—"The event depended wholly on the will of Charles, and Charles could not come to a decision. In his perplexity he promised everything to everybody. He would stand by France, he would break with France; he would never meet another Parliament; he would order writs for a Parliament without delay. He assured the Duke of York that Halifax should be dismissed from office, and Halifax that the duke should be sent to Scotland. In public he affected implacable resentment against Monmouth, and in private conveyed to Monmouth assurances of unalterable affection. How long, if the king's life had been protracted, his hesitation would have lasted, and what would have been his resolve, can only be conjectured."

But his time was come. It was not likely that a man who had led the dissipated life that Charles had, would live to a very old age. He was now in his fifty-fifth year, and the twenty-fifth of his reign, that is, reckoning from the Restoration, and not from the death of his father, as the Royalists, who would never admit that a king could be unkinged, did. His health, or, more visibly, his spirits, had lately much failed—no doubt the consequence of that giving way of his debilitated system, which was soon to carry him off. His gaiety had quite forsaken him; he was gloomy, depressed, finding no pleasure in anything, and only at any degree of ease in sauntering away his time amongst his women. It was thought that his conscience began to trouble him for the profligacy of his life, and the blood that had been shed under his rule; but Charles was not a man much troubled with a conscience; he was sinking without being aware of it, and the heaviness of death was lying on him. On Monday, the 2nd of February, 1685, he rose at an early hour from a restless couch. Dr. King, a surgeon and chemist, who had been employed by him in experiments, perceived that he walked heavily, and with an unsteady gait. His face was ghastly, his head drooping, and his hand retained on his stomach. When spoken to he returned no answer, or a very incoherent one. King hastened out, and informed the Earl of Peterborough that the king was in a strange state, and did not speak one word of sense. They returned instantly to the king's apartment, and had scarcely entered it when he fell on the floor in an apoplectic fit. As no time was to be lost, Dr. King, on his own responsibility, bled him. The blood flowed freely, and he recovered his consciousness. When the physicians arrived they perfectly approved of what Dr. King had done, and applied strong stimulants to various parts of his body. The Council ordered one thousand pounds to be paid to Dr. King for his prompt services, but the fee was never paid.

As soon as the king rallied a little, he asked for the queen, who hastened to his bedside, and waited on him with the most zealous affection, till the sight of his sufferings threw her into fits, and the physicians ordered her to her own apartment. Towards evening Charles had a relapse, but the next morning he rallied again, and was so much better, that the physicians issued a bulletin, expressing hope of his recovery; but the next day he changed again for the worse, and on the fourth evening it was clear that his end was at hand. The announcement of his dangerous condition spread consternation through the City; the momentary news of his improvement was received with unequivocal joy, the ringing of bells, and making of bonfires. When the contrary intelligence of his imminent danger was made known, crowds rushed to the churches to pray for his recovery; and it is said the service was interrupted by the sobs and tears of the people. In the royal chapel prayers every two hours were continued during his remaining moments.

James was never a moment from the dying king's bedside. He was afterwards accused of having poisoned him—a suspicion for which there[288] does not appear the slightest foundation; but, apart from natural brotherly regard, James was on the watch to guard the chances of his succession. Every precaution was taken to secure the tranquillity of the City, and to insure an uninterrupted proclamation of his accession. In the room, too, were as constantly a great number of noblemen and bishops. There were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London, Durham, and Ely, and Bath and Wells, besides twenty-five lords and privy councillors. A bishop, with some of the nobles, took turns to watch each night.

Early on the Thursday morning, Ken, of Bath and Wells, ventured to warn the king of his danger, and Charles receiving the solemn intelligence with an air of resignation, he proceeded to read the Office for the Visitation of the Sick. He asked Charles if he repented of his sins, and on replying that he did, Ken gave him absolution according to the prescribed form of the Church of England, and then inquired whether he should administer the Sacrament. To this there was no answer. Ken, supposing that the king did not clearly comprehend the question, repeated it more distinctly. Charles replied there was yet plenty of time. The bread and wine, however, were brought, and placed on a table near him; but though the question was again repeatedly asked by the bishop, Charles only replied, "he would think of it."

The mystery was, however, solved by the French mistress, who, drawing Barillon, the French ambassador into her boudoir, said, "Monsieur l'Ambassadeur, I am going to tell you the greatest secret in the world, and my head would be in danger if it were known here. The king, in the bottom of his heart, is a Catholic, and nobody tells him the state he is in, or speaks to him of God. I can no longer with propriety enter into his chamber, where the queen is almost constantly with him; the Duke of York thinks about his own affairs, and has no time to take the care that he ought of the king's conscience. Go and tell him that I have conjured you to warn him to do what he can to save the soul of the king, his brother. He is master in the royal chamber, and can make any one withdraw from it as he lists. Lose no time, for if you delay ever so little, it may be too late."

When Barillon whispered this to James, he started as from a lethargy, and said, "You are right, there is no time to lose. I will rather hazard all than not do my duty." A priest was found in Huddleston, who had been with the king in the battle of Worcester, and accompanied him in his flight. He had become a Benedictine monk, and had been appointed one of the chaplains of the queen.

The duke, stooping to the king's ear, had inquired in a whisper whether he should bring him a Catholic priest, and Charles instantly replied, "For God's sake, do!" The duke then requested, in the king's name, all the company to retire into an adjoining room, except the Earl of Bath, Lord of the Bedchamber, and Lord Feversham, Captain of the Guard, and as soon as this was done, Huddleston, disguised in a wig and gown, was introduced by the backstairs by Chiffinch, who for so many years had been employed to introduce very different persons. Barillon says that Huddleston was no great doctor, which is probably true enough, having originally been a soldier, but he managed to administer the Sacrament to the king, and also the extreme unction. Charles declared he pardoned all his enemies, and prayed to be pardoned by God, and forgiven by all whom he had injured.

This ceremony lasted three-quarters of an hour, and the excluded attendants passed the time in much wonder and significant guesses. They looked at one another in amazement, but spoke only with their eyes, or in whispers. The Lords Bath and Feversham being both Protestants, however, seemed to disarm the fears of the bishops. But when Huddleston withdrew, the news was speedily spread. That night he was in much pain; the queen sent to excuse her absence, and to beg that he would pardon any offence that she might at any time have given him. "Alas! poor woman!" he replied, "she beg my pardon! I beg hers with all my heart; take back to her that answer." He then sent for his illegitimate sons, except Monmouth, whom he never mentioned, and recommended them to James, and, taking each by the hand, gave them his blessing. The bishops, affected by this edifying sight, threw themselves on their knees, and begged he would bless them too; whereupon he was raised up and blessed them all. Having blessed the bishops, he next blessed the ladies of his harem, and particularly recommended to his successor the care of the Duchess of Portsmouth, who had been pretty active for his exclusion, and also the Duchess of Cleveland, hoping, moreover, that "poor Nelly"—Nell Gwynne—would not be left to starve. Three hours afterwards this strange monarch breathed his last on the 6th of February, 1685.

By permission of the Corporation of Liverpool.

THE ANTE-CHAMBER OF WHITEHALL DURING THE LAST MOMENTS OF CHARLES II., 1685.

From the Picture by E. M. WARD, R.A., in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

[289]

GREAT SEAL OF JAMES II.

CHAPTER X.

REIGN OF JAMES II.

James's Speech to the Council—Rochester supersedes Halifax—Other Changes in the Ministry—James Collects the Customs without Parliament—French Pension continued—Scottish Parliament—Oates and Dangerfield—Meeting of Parliament—It grants Revenue for Life—Monmouth and Argyll—Argyll's Expedition—His Capture and Execution—Monmouth's Expedition—He enters Taunton—Failure of his Hopes—Battle of Sedgemoor—Execution of Monmouth—Cruelties of Kirke and Jeffreys—The Bloody Assize—The Case of Lady Alice Lisle—Decline of James's Power—He Breaks the Test Act—Revocation of the Edict of Nantes—Prorogation of Parliament—Acquittal of Delamere—Alienation of the Church—Parties at Court—The Dispensing Power Asserted—Livings granted to Catholics—Court of High Commission Revived—Army on Hounslow Heath—Trial of "Julian" Johnson—James's Lawlessness in Scotland and Ireland—Declaration of Indulgence—The Party of the Prince of Orange and the Princess Mary—Expulsion of the Fellows of Magdalen College—New Declaration of Indulgence—Protest of the Seven Bishops—Birth of the Prince of Wales—Trial and Acquittal of the Bishops—Invitation to William of Orange—Folly of James—William's Preparations—Blindness of James and Treachery of his Ministers—William's Declaration—James convinced, makes Concessions—William lands at Torbay—His Advance to Exeter—Churchill's Treason—Flight of the Princess Anne and her Husband—James sends Commissioners to Treat with William—Flight of James—Riots in London—Return of James—His Final Flight to France—The Convention—The Succession Question—Declaration of Rights—William and Mary joint Sovereigns.

To the reign of merry cruelty now succeeded the reign of gloomy, ascetic, undisguised ferocity. Charles could laugh and sport with his ladies, whilst his subjects were imprisoned and tortured. James, who never laughed, pursued his cruel bent with a settled butcher-like mood, and would have extirpated nations, were it in his power, to restore Catholicism, and establish the political absolutism adored by the Stuarts. Yet he began the reign of the Inquisition with the hypocrisy of the Jesuit. When the breath had left the body of Charles, James retired for a quarter of an hour to his chamber, and then met the Privy Council with a speech which promised everything that he was most resolved not to perform. He began by eulogising the deceased "as a good and gracious king." If he really thought his late merry, debauched, and despotic brother good and gracious, it was an evil omen for the nation, whose ruler had such conceptions of what was good and gracious. He then added, "I have been reported to be a man fond of arbitrary power; but that is not the only falsehood which has been reported of me; and I shall make it my endeavour to preserve this Government, both in Church and State, as it is by law now established. I know the principles of the Church of England are favourable to monarchy, and the members of it have shown themselves good and loyal subjects; therefore I shall take care to defend and support it. I know, too, that the laws of England are sufficient to make the king as great a monarch as I can wish; and as I shall never depart from the just rights and prerogatives of the Crown, so I shall never invade any man's[290] property. I have often before ventured my life in defence of this nation, and shall go as far as any man in preserving it in all its just rights and liberties."

The first thing which scandalised the people was the miserable economy of the late king's funeral. It was said to be scarcely befitting a private gentleman, and the Scottish Covenanters asserted that the dead tyrant had been treated, as the Scriptures declared tyrants should be, to the "burial of an ass." The first thing which James set about was the rearrangement of the Cabinet. There was but one man in the Cabinet of the late king who had his entire confidence—this was Rochester, the second son of the late Lord Clarendon. To him he gave the office of Lord High Treasurer, thus constituting him Prime Minister; to Godolphin, who had held this office, he gave that of Chamberlain to the Queen. Halifax was deprived of the Privy Seal, and was made President of the Council, a post both less lucrative and less influential, a circumstance which highly delighted Rochester, who now saw the wit who said he had been kicked upstairs, served in precisely the same way. Sunderland, the late Secretary of State, was suffered to retain his office. He had intrigued and acted against James; both he and Godolphin had supported the Exclusion Bill, but Sunderland now with his usual supple artifice, represented that he could have no hope of the king's favour but from the merit of his future services; and as he possessed some dangerous secrets, he was permitted to keep his place. He did not, however, content himself with this, but cherished the ambition of superseding Rochester as Lord Treasurer, and therefore represented himself to the Catholics as their staunch friend, whilst they knew that Rochester was the champion of the Church of England. For the present, nevertheless, from having been at high feud with both Rochester and Clarendon, he cultivated a strong friendship with them to make his position firm with the king. Halifax had opposed the Exclusion Bill, but he had become too well known as a decided enemy of Popery and of the French ascendency. James, therefore, tolerated him for the present, and whilst he assured him that all the past was forgotten, except the service he had rendered by his opposition to the Exclusion Bill, he told Barillon, the French ambassador, that he knew him too well to trust him, and only gave him the post of President of the Council to show how little influence he had.

The Great Seal was retained also by Lord Guildford, who, though he was by no means a friend of liberty, was too much a stickler for the law to be a useful tool of arbitrary power. James secretly hated him, and determined to associate a more unscrupulous man with him in the functions of his office. This was his most obedient and most unflinching creature, the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, of whose unexampled villainies we shall soon hear too much. Guildford was by the overbearing Jeffreys at once thrust back into the mere routine of a judge in equity, and all his State functions and patronage were usurped by this daring man. At the Council board Jeffreys treated him with the most marked contempt, and even insult, and poor Guildford soon saw all influence and profit of the Chancellorship, as well as the Chief Justiceship, in the hands of Jeffreys, and himself reduced to a cipher.

But the most ungenerous proceeding was that of depriving the old and faithful Lord Ormond of the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland. Ormond had not only stood firmly by Charles I., but had suffered unrepiningly the evil fortunes of Charles II. He had shared his exile, and had done all in his power for his restoration. He had opposed all the endeavours by the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Bill to get rid of James, and was highly respected in his office in Ireland. He had lately lost his eldest son, Lord Ossory, and, though aged, was still vigorous and zealous in discharge of his duties. But he had the unpardonable faults of being a firm Protestant and as firm an advocate for the constitutional restrictions of the Crown. James recalled him from his Lord-Lieutenancy on the plea that he was wanted at Court in his other office of Lord Steward of the Household. But the ancient chief felt the ungrateful act, and, at a farewell dinner at Dublin to the officers of the garrison, in toasting the health of the king, he filled a cup of wine to the brim, and, holding it aloft without spilling a drop, declared that whatever the courtiers might say, neither hand, heart, nor reason yet failed him—that he knew no approach of dotage.

Having made these changes in the ministry, James lost no time in letting his subjects see that he meant to enjoy his religion without the restraints to which he had been accustomed. He had been used to attend Mass with the queen in her oratory, with the doors carefully closed; but the second Sunday after his accession he ordered the chapel doors to be thrown wide open, and went thither in procession. The Duke of Somerset, who bore the sword of State, stopped at the[291] threshold. James bade him advance, saying, "Your father would have gone farther." But Somerset replied, "Your Majesty's father would not have gone so far." At the moment of the elevation of the Host, the courtiers were thrown into a strange agitation. The Catholics fell on their knees, and the Protestants hurried away. On Easter Sunday Mass was attended with still greater ceremony. Somerset stopped at the door, according to custom, but the Dukes of Norfolk, Northumberland, Grafton, Richmond, and many other noblemen, accompanied the king as far as the gallery. Godolphin and Sunderland also complied, but Rochester absolutely refused to attend. Not satisfied with proclaiming his Catholicism, James produced two papers, which he said he had found in the strong box of the late king, wherein Charles was made to avow his persuasion that there could be no true Church but the Roman, and that all who dissented from that Church, whether communities or individuals, became heretic. James declared the arguments to be perfectly unanswerable, and challenged Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, to attempt it. This was not very consistent with his speech as regarded the Church of England, and his next step was as great a violation of his assurance that he would not invade any man's property. Funds for carrying on the Government were necessary, and James declared that as the customs and part of the excise had only been granted to Charles for his life, they had now lapsed, and that it would produce great inconvenience to wait for the meeting of Parliament for their re-enactment. Nothing prevented him from calling Parliament at once, but James undoubtedly had a fancy for trying his father's favourite measure of levying taxes without Parliament. It was contended that as no law for customs or excise now existed, all goods newly imported would come in duty free, and ruin the merchants who had to sell goods which had paid the duty. North, Lord Guildford, recommended that the duties should be levied as usual, but the proceeds kept in the Exchequer till Parliament met and authorised their appropriation; but Jeffreys was a councillor much more after the king's heart. He recommended that an edict should at once be issued, ordering the duties to be paid as usual to his Majesty, and this advice was carried, every one being afraid of being declared disloyal, or a trimmer, who voted against it. The proclamation was issued, but, to render it more palatable, it announced that a Parliament would be very soon called, and as many addresses as possible from public bodies, sanctioning the measure, were procured. The barristers and students of the Middle Temple, in their address, thanked the king for preserving the customs, and both they and the two universities expressed the most boundless obedience to the king's sovereign and unlimited power. But the public at large looked on with silent foreboding. "The compliments of these bodies," says Dalrymple, "only served to remind the nation that the laws had been broken."

Before venturing to assemble Parliament James endeavoured to render Louis of France acquiescent in this step. He knew from the history of the late reign how averse Louis was from English Parliaments, which were hostile to his designs against the Continental nations. He therefore had a private interview with Barillon, in which he apologised most humbly for the necessity of calling a Parliament. He begged him to assure his master of his grateful attachment, and that he was determined to do nothing without his consent. If the Parliament attempted to meddle in any foreign affairs, he would send them about their business. Again he begged him to explain this, and that he desired to consult his brother of France in everything, but then he must have money by some means. This hint of money was followed up the next day by Rochester, and Barillon hastened to convey the royal wishes. But Louis had lost no time in applying the effectual remedy for a Parliament, the moment the assembling of one became menaced. He sent over five hundred thousand crowns, which Barillon carried in triumph to Whitehall, and James wept tears of joy and gratitude over the accursed bribe. But he and his ministers soon hinted that the money, though most acceptable, would not render him independent of Parliament, and Barillon pressed his sovereign to send more with an urgency which rather offended Louis, and rendered it possible that the ambassador had a pretty good commission out of what he obtained. James sent over to Versailles Captain Churchill, already become Lord Churchill, and in time to become known to us and all the world as the Duke of Marlborough. He was to express James's gratitude and his assurances of keeping in view the interests of France, and so well did the proceedings of Churchill in Paris and of Barillon in England, prosper, that successive remittances, amounting to two millions of livres, were sent over. But of this, except four hundred and seventy thousand livres, the arrears of the late[292] king's pension, and about thirty thousand pounds for the corruption of the House of Commons, Louis strictly forbade Barillon paying over more at present to James without his orders. In fact, he was no more assured of the good faith of James than he had been of that of Charles; and he had ample reason for his distrust, for at the very same time James was negotiating a fresh treaty with his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange.

It is impossible to comprehend the full turpitude of this conduct of James without keeping steadily in view the aims of both James and Louis. James's, like that of all the Stuarts, was simply to destroy the British constitution and reign absolutely. To do this the money of France was needed to render them independent of Parliaments, and a prospect of French troops should the English at length rebel against these attempts at their enslavement. The object of Louis was to keep England from affording any aid to any power on the Continent, whilst he was endeavouring to overrun it with his armies.

On the day of the coronation in England (April 23rd), St. George's Day, the Parliament in Scotland met. James called on the Scots to set a good example to the approaching Parliament of England in a liberal provision for the Crown; and the Scottish Estates, as if complimented by this appeal, not only responded to it by annexing the excise to the Crown for ever, and offering him besides two hundred and sixty thousand pounds a year for his own life, but declared their abhorrence of "all principles derogatory to the king's sacred, supreme, sovereign, and absolute power and authority." They did more, they passed an Act making it death for any one to preach in a conventicle, whether under a roof or in the open air. In England the elections were going on most favourably, and therefore James seized on the opportunity, whilst all appeared smiling and secure, to indulge his appetite for a little vengeance.

On the 7th of May, Titus Oates, the enemy of James and of Popery, the arch-instrument of the Whig agitators, was brought up to the bar of the King's Bench, before the terrible Jeffreys. When he was now brought up, the Court was crowded with people, a large proportion of them being Catholics, glad to see the punishment of their ruthless enemy. But if they expected to see him depressed or humbled, they were much disappointed. He came up bold and impudent as ever. Jeffreys flung his fiercest Billingsgate at him, but Oates returned him word for word unabashed. On his last trial he had sworn he had attended a council of Jesuits on the 24th of April, 1671, in London, but it was now proved beyond doubt that on that very day Oates was at St. Omer. He had sworn also to being present at the commission of treasonable acts by Ireland, the Jesuit, in London, on the 8th and 12th of August, and on the 2nd of September of the same year. It was now also clearly proved that Ireland left London that year on the 2nd of August, and did not return till the 14th of September. Oates was convicted of perjury on both indictments, and was sentenced to pay a thousand marks on each indictment; to be stripped of his clerical habit; to be pilloried in Palace Yard, and led round Westminster Hall, with an inscription over his head describing his crime. He was again to be pilloried in front of the Royal Exchange, and after that to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, and after two days' interval whipped again from Newgate to Tyburn. If he survived this, which was not expected, he was to be confined for life, but five times every year he was to stand again in the pillory.

If the crimes of this wretch were monstrous, his punishment was equally so. He had the assurance on his trial to call many persons of distinction, including members of Parliament, to give evidence in his favour, but he was answered only by bitter reproaches, for having led them into the spilling of much innocent blood. The lash was applied the first day so unmercifully, that though he endured it for some time, it compelled him to utter the most horrible yells. Several times he fainted, but the flagellations never stopped, and when the flogging ceased, it was doubted whether he was alive. The most earnest entreaties were made to the king and queen to have the second flogging omitted, but they were both inexorable. Yet the guilty wretch survived through all, though he was said to have received seventeen hundred stripes the second day on his already lacerated body. So long as James reigned, he was subjected to the pillory five times a year, but he lived to be pardoned at the Revolution, and receive a pension of five pounds a week in lieu of that granted him by Charles II. He died in 1705.

Dangerfield, who had not only succeeded in destroying so many innocent victims, but had displayed villainy and ingratitude of the blackest dye, was also convicted, and sentenced to pay five hundred pounds, and to be pilloried twice and whipped twice over the same ground as Oates. He was extremely insolent on his trial, but on hearing his sentence he was struck with horror,[293] flew into the wildest exclamations, declared himself a dead man, and chose a text for his funeral sermon. Singularly enough, his end was really at hand. On returning from his whipping a gentleman named Robert Francis, of Gray's Inn, stepped up to the coach and asked him how his back was. Dangerfield replied by a curse, and Francis thrusting at him with his cane, wounded him in the eye; the wound was declared to occasion his death, though the unmerciful flogging was probably the real cause, and Francis was tried for the murder, and hanged.

JAMES II.

The meeting of Parliament on the 19th of May drew the public attention from these barbarities. Every means had been exerted to influence the elections. In the counties the reaction of Toryism, and the effects of the Rye House Plot in defeating and intimidating the Whigs, gave the Court every advantage. In the corporations the deprivation of their ancient charters made them the slaves of Government. But even with these advantages James was not satisfied. Wherever there appeared likely to be any independent spirit shown, agents were sent down to overawe the people, and to force a choice of the Government candidate. On the 22nd of May James went to the House of Lords in great state to open Parliament. He took his seat on the throne with the crown on his head, and his queen, and Anne, his daughter, Princess of Denmark, standing on the right hand of the throne. The Spanish and other Catholic ambassadors were present, and heard the Pope, the Mass, the worship of the Virgin Mary, and the saints all renounced, as the Lords took their oaths. James then produced a written speech and read it. He repeated in it what he had before declared to[294] the Council, that he would maintain the Constitution and the Church as by law established, and added that, "Having given this assurance concerning their religion and property, they might rely on his word." Although it had been the custom to listen to the royal speech in respectful silence, at this declaration the members of both Houses broke into loud acclamations. He then informed them that he expected a revenue for life, such as they had voted his late brother. Again the expression of accord was loud and satisfactory, but what followed was not so palatable. "The inclination men have for frequent Parliaments, some may think, would be the best secured by feeding me from time to time by such proportions as they shall think convenient, and this argument, it being the first time I speak to you from the throne, I will answer once for all, that this would be a very improper method to take with me; and that the best way to engage me to meet you often is always to use me well. I expect, therefore, that you will comply with me in what I have desired, and that you will do it speedily." This agreeable assurance he followed up by announcing a rebellion to have broken out in Scotland under Argyll and other refugees from Holland.

When the Commons returned to their own House, Lord Preston entered into a high eulogium of the king, telling the House that his name spread terror over all Europe, and that the reputation of England was already beginning to rise under his rule; they had only to have full confidence in him as a prince who had never broken his word, and thus enable him to assert the dignity of England. The House went into a Committee of Supply, and voted his Majesty the same revenue that Charles had enjoyed, namely, one million two hundred thousand pounds a year for life. But when several petitions against some of the late elections were presented, a serious opposition asserted itself in a most unexpected quarter. This was from Sir Edward Seymour, of Berry Pomeroy Castle, the member for Exeter. Seymour was both a Tory and a High Churchman, proud of his descent from the Lord Protector Seymour, and who had great influence in the western counties. He was a man of indifferent moral character, but able and accomplished, and a forcible debater. He was now irritated by the Government proceedings in the elections which had interfered with his interests, and made a fierce attack on the Government pressure on the electors; denounced the removal of the charters and the conduct of the returning officers; declared that there was a design to repeal the Test and Habeas Corpus Acts, and moved that no one whose right to sit was disputed should vote till that right had been ascertained by a searching inquiry. There was no seconder to the motion, and it fell to the ground; for the whole House, including the Whigs, sat, as it were, thunderstruck. But the effect was deep and lasting, and in time did not fail of its end.

For the present, however, things went smoothly enough. The king informed the House—through Sir Dudley North, the brother of the Lord Keeper Guildford, and the person who had been elected Sheriff of London by the influence of Charles for his ready and ingenious modes of serving the royal will—that his late brother had left considerable debts, and that the naval and ordnance stores were getting low. The House promptly agreed to lay on new taxes and North induced them to tax sugar and tobacco, so that the king now had a revenue of one million nine hundred thousand pounds from England, besides his pension from France, and was strong in revenue.

The Lords were employed in doing an act of justice in calling before them Lord Danby, and rescinding the impeachment still hanging over his head, and also summoning to their bar Lords Powis, Arundel, and Bellasis, the victims of the Popish plot, and fully discharging them as well as the Earl of Tyrone. They also introduced a Bill reversing the attainder of Lord Stafford, who had been executed for treason and concern in the Popish plot, now admitting that he had been unjustly sacrificed through the perjury of Oates. The Commons were proceeding to the third reading of this Bill, when the rebellion of Monmouth was announced, and the question remained unsettled till the trial of Warren Hastings more than a century afterwards, when men of all parties declared that Oates's Popish plot was a fiction, and the attainder of Stafford was then formally reversed.

The political refugees who had fled to Holland and sought protection from Prince William were numerous, and some of them of considerable distinction. Monmouth and the Earl of Argyll were severally looked up to as the heads of the English and Scottish exiles. The furious persecution against the Covenanters in Scotland and the Whigs in England had not only swelled these bands of refugees, but rendered them at once ardent for revenge and restoration. Amongst them Ford; Lord Grey of Wark; Ferguson, who had been conspicuous among the Whig plotters; Wildman and Danvers, of the same party; Ayloffe and Wade, Whig lawyers and plotters;[295] Goodenough, formerly Sheriff of London, who gave evidence against the Papists; Rumbold, the Rye House maltster, and others, were incessantly endeavouring to excite Monmouth to avail himself of his popularity, and the hatred of Popery which existed, to rebel against his uncle and strike for the crown. Monmouth, however, for some time betrayed no desire for so hazardous an undertaking. On the death of Charles he had returned from the Hague, to avoid giving cause of jealousy to James, and led the life of an English gentleman at Brussels. William of Orange strongly advised him to take a command in the war of Austria against the Turks, where he might win honour and a rank worthy of his birth; but Monmouth would not listen to it. He had left his wife, the great heiress of Buccleuch, to whom he had been married almost as a boy from royal policy, and had attached himself to Lady Henrietta Wentworth, Baroness Wentworth of Nettlestede. The attachment, though illicit, appeared to be mutual and ardent. Monmouth confessed that Lady Henrietta, who was beautiful, amiable, and accomplished, had weaned him from a vicious life, and had their connection been lawful, nothing could have been more fortunate for Monmouth. In her society he seemed to have grown indifferent to ambition and the life of courts. But he was beset by both Grey and Ferguson, and, unfortunately for him, they won over Lady Wentworth to their views. She encouraged Monmouth, and offered him her income and her jewels to furnish him with immediate funds. With such an advocate, Grey and Ferguson at length succeeded. Grey was a man of blemished character. He had run off with his wife's sister, a daughter of the Earl of Berkeley, and was a poor and desperate adventurer, notoriously cowardly on the field of battle. Ferguson was a fiery demagogue and zealot of insurrection. He had been a preacher and schoolmaster amongst the Dissenters, then a clergyman of the Church, and finally had become a most untiring intriguer, and was deep in the Rye House Plot. Under all this fire of rebellion, however, there was more than a suspected foul smoke of espionage. He was shrewdly believed, though not by his dupes, to be in the pay of Government, and employed to betray its enemies to ruin.

Monmouth having consented to take the lead in an invasion, though with much reluctance and many misgivings, a communication was opened with Argyll and the Scottish malcontents. We have seen that Argyll, after his father had been inveigled from his mountains and beheaded, had himself nearly suffered the same fate from James when in Scotland. He had been imprisoned and condemned to death on the most arbitrary grounds, and had only managed to escape in disguise. He had purchased an estate at Leeuwarden, in Friesland, where the great Mac Cailean More, as he was called by the Highlanders, lived in much seclusion. He was now drawn from it once more to revisit his native country at the head of an invading force. But the views of the refugees were so different, and their means so small, that it was some time before they could agree upon a common plan of action. It was at length arranged that a descent should be made simultaneously on Scotland and England—the Scottish expedition headed by Argyll, that on England by Monmouth. But to maintain a correspondence and a sort of unison, two Englishmen, Ayloffe and Rumbold the maltster, were to accompany the Scots, and two Scotsmen, Fletcher of Saltoun and Ferguson, the English force. Monmouth was sworn not to claim any rank or reward on the success of the enterprise, except such as should be awarded him by a free Parliament; and Argyll was compelled, although he had the nominal command of the army, to submit to hold it only as one of a committee of twelve, of whom Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth was to be president.

In fact, Argyll at the outset displayed a fatal want of knowledge of human nature or firmness of resolution, in consenting to accept a command on so impossible a basis. To expect success as a military leader when hampered with the conflicting opinions of a dozen men of ultra views in religion and politics, and of domineering wills, was the height of folly. Hume, who took the lead in the committee, was a man of enormous conceit, a great talker, and a very dilatory actor. Next to him was Sir John Cochrane, the second son of Lord Dundonald, who was almost equally self-willed and jealous of the power of Argyll. With their Republican notions, they endeavoured to impose such restrictions on the power of the earl as were certain to insure the ruin of the attempt, in which everything must depend on the independent action of a single mind.

We have already noticed the character of Ferguson, one of the twain selected to accompany Monmouth. Fletcher of Saltoun, the other, was a far different man—a man of high talent, fine taste, and finished education. At the head of a popular senate he would have shone as an orator and statesman; but he had those qualities of lofty[296] pride and headstrong will which made him by no means a desirable officer in an army of adventurers, although his military skill was undoubted. What was worse, from the very first he foreboded no good result from the expedition, and accompanied it only because he would not seem to desert his more sanguine countrymen. When Wildman and Danvers sent from London flaming accounts of the ripeness of England for revolt, and said that just two hundred years before the Earl of Richmond landed in England with a mere handful of men, and wrested the Crown from Richard, Fletcher coolly replied that there was all the difference between the fifteenth century and the seventeenth.

These men, Wildman and Danvers, represented the country as so prepared to receive Monmouth, that he had only to show his standard for whole counties to flock to it. They promised also six thousand pounds in aid of the preparations. But the fact was that little or no money came, and James and his ministers were duly informed of the measures of the insurgents, and were at once using every means with the Dutch Government to prevent the sailing of the armaments, and taking steps for the defence of the Scottish and English coasts. We may first follow the fortunes of Argyll and his associates, who sailed first. He put out from the coast of Holland on the 2nd of May, and after a prosperous voyage, sighted Kirkwall, in Orkney, on the 6th. There he very unwisely anchored, and suffered two followers to go on shore to collect intelligence. The object of his armament then became known, and was sure to reach the English Government in a little time. The Bishop of Orkney boldly ordered the two insurgents to be secured, and refused to give them up. After three days lost in endeavouring to obtain their release, they seized some gentlemen living on the coast, and offered them in exchange. The bishop paid no regard to their proposal or their menaces, and they were compelled to pursue their voyage.

The consequence of this ill-advised measure was that news of the armament was sent to Edinburgh with all speed, and whilst the invading force was beating round the northern capes and headlands, active preparations were made for defence. The whole of the militia, amounting to twenty thousand men, were called out; a third of these, accompanied by three thousand regulars, were marched into the western counties. At Dunstaffnage, Argyll sent his son Charles ashore to summon the Campbells to arms, but he returned with the report that many of the chiefs had fled or were in prison, and the rest afraid to move. At Campbelltown, in Kintyre, Argyll published a proclamation, setting forth that he came to suppress Popery, prelacy, and Erastianism, and to take the crown from James, whom he accused of persecution of the Covenanters, and the poisoning of his brother. He sent across the hills the fiery cross to summon all true men to his standard, and appointed Tarbert as the place of rendezvous. About eighteen hundred men mustered at the call, but any advantage to be derived from this handful of men was far more than counterbalanced by the pertinacious interference of Cochrane and Hume. They insisted on arranging everything, even the appointment of the officers over Argyll's own clan. They insisted also that the attack should be directed against the Lowlands, though Argyll wisely saw that they had no chance whatever in the open country with their present force. He contended that having first cleared the Western Highlands of the national soldiery, they should soon have five or six thousand Highlanders at their command, and might then descend on the Lowlands with effect. Rumbold advocated this prudential course, but all reasoning was lost on Hume and Cochrane, who insolently accused Argyll of wanting only to secure his own territories, and sailed away with part of the troops to the Lowlands. They found the coast, however, well guarded by the English ships, and escaped up the Clyde to Greenock. There they again quarrelled between themselves, and finding the people not at all disposed to join them, they returned to Argyll. But they had learned no wisdom: the earl again proposed to endeavour to secure Inverary—they as firmly opposed it. They, therefore, fixed on the castle of Ealan Ghierig as their present headquarters, landed their arms and stores, and made an officer named Elphinstone commander of the fort. Argyll and Rumbold now drove back the troops of Athol, and prepared to march on Inverary; but from this they were diverted by a call from Hume and Cochrane at the ships, who were about to be attacked by the English fleet. Argyll hastened to them, and proposed to give fight to the English, but was again prevented by these infatuated men. The earl, therefore, in utter despair, passed into Dumbartonshire, and was the very next day followed by the news of the capture of all his ships, and the flight of Elphinstone from Ealan Ghierig, without striking a blow. As a last desperate attempt, Argyll proposed to make a rush on Glasgow and secure a strong footing there; but the very men[297] who had so strongly urged the attempt on the Lowlands now deserted him in numbers, and on the march nothing but disasters from the insubordination of the little army ensued. They were attacked on all sides by the militia, and when the earl and Ayloffe advised a bold attack on the enemy, Hume and his partisans protested against it. The end of all was that, becoming involved amongst morasses, the army was seized with panic, and rapidly melted away. The wrong-headed Hume escaped, and reached the Continent; Cochrane was taken, and soon after Rumbold, Major Fullerton, and Argyll himself were seized.

THE LAST SLEEP OF ARGYLL. (See p. 297.)

(From the Fresco by E. M. Ward, R.A., in the House of Commons.)

The conduct of Argyll after his capture was distinguished by a calm dignity which showed how superior he was to the factious, pugnacious men who had baffled all his plans. With his arms pinioned behind him, he was led bareheaded through the streets of Edinburgh, from Holyrood to the castle. The Royalists thus revelled in revenging on the son the act of his father thirty-five years before, when he caused Montrose to be conducted over the very same ground. The headsman marched before him with his axe, and on reaching his cell in the castle Argyll was put into irons, and informed that his execution would quickly follow. This was the 20th of June; his execution did not take place till the 30th. During the ten days the orders of James were that he should be tried all ways to compel him to confess the full particulars of the invasion, its originators, supporters, and participators. It was understood that James meant that his favourite application of the boots and thumbscrews should be used, but this was not attempted. Argyll was menaced, but his firm refusal to reveal anything that would incriminate others, convinced his enemies that it was useless, and could only cover them with odium. The last day of his life he lay down to rest, ere the hour of his execution should arrive. During his sleep, a renegade Privy Councillor insisted on entering his cell. The door was gently opened, and there lay the great Argyll in heavy chains and sleeping the happy sleep of infancy. The[298] beholder turned and fled, sick at heart. His former sentence of death was deemed sufficient to supersede any fresh trial, and being brought out to the scaffold, and saying that he died in peace with all men, one of the Episcopalian clergymen stepped to the edge of the scaffold and exclaimed to the people, "My lord dies a Protestant." "Yes," said the earl, also going forward, "a Protestant, and cordial hater of Popery, prelacy, and all superstition." His head was fixed on the top of the Tolbooth, where that of Montrose had formerly stood.

On the 30th of May, nearly a month after the sailing of Argyll, Monmouth left the Texel. His squadron consisted of a frigate of thirty-two guns, called the Helderenbergh, and three small tenders, a fourth tender having been refused by the Dutch. He was attended by about eighty officers, and a hundred and fifty men of different degrees, fugitives from England and Scotland. With such a force he proposed to conquer the crown of England! All the fine promises of money by Wildman and Danvers had ended in smoke, and he had only been able, chiefly through the revenues of Lady Henrietta Wentworth, to supply himself with arms and stores for a small body of cavalry and infantry. The voyage was long and tedious, the weather was stormy, and the Channel abounded with the royal cruisers. On the morning of the 11th of June his little fleet appeared off the port of Lyme, in Dorsetshire.

Monmouth was extremely popular with the people, and on discovering that it was their favourite hero come to put down the Popish tyrant, he was received with loud acclamations. "Monmouth and the Protestant religion!" was the cry. There was a rush to enlist beneath his banners, and within four-and-twenty hours he was at the head of fifteen hundred men. Dare, one of the adventurers, had been put ashore as they came along the coast to ride across the country and rouse the people of Taunton, and he now came in at the head of about forty horsemen, with the news that the people of Somersetshire were in favour of his cause. But with this arrival came the tidings that the Dorsetshire and Somersetshire folk were mustering at Bridport to attack them, and Monmouth ordered Lord Grey, who was the commander of the cavalry, to march there at once, and disperse them before they had collected in strength. But here an incident occurred which showed the unruly materials that he had to work with. Dare had mounted himself on a fine horse in his expedition to Taunton, and Fletcher of Saltoun, who was second in command of the cavalry under Grey, without asking leave of Dare, as superior officer, and being himself badly mounted, took possession of his horse. Dare refused to let him have it, they came to high words, Dare shook his whip at Fletcher, and the proud Scot drew his pistol and shot Dare dead on the spot. This summary proceeding, which might have passed in the ruder country of Scotland, created a violent outburst amongst the soldiers of Monmouth. They demanded of the duke instant execution of the murderer, and it was only by getting on board the Helderenbergh that Fletcher escaped with his life. He returned to Holland, and thus was lost to the expedition almost its only man of any talent and experience.

The next morning Grey, accompanied by Wade, led forth his untrained cavalry to attack the militia at Bridport. There was a smart brush with the militia, in which Monmouth's raw soldiers fought bravely, and would have driven the enemy from the place, but Grey, who was an arrant coward in the field, turned his horse and fled, never drawing bit till he reached Lyme. The men were indignant, and Monmouth was confounded with this conduct of his chief officer; but nevertheless he had not moral firmness to put some more trusty officer in his place. Four days after his landing, the 15th of June, Monmouth marched forward to Axminster, where he encountered Christopher Monk, Duke of Albemarle, the son of the first General Monk, at the head of four thousand men of the trained bands. Though daunted at first, Monmouth accepted the situation, and disposed his men admirably for a fight. He drew up the main body in battle array on advantageous ground, sent out his skirmishers to the front, and, as a last precaution, lined the hedges of a narrow lane, through which Albemarle must pass to come at him, with musketeers. Monk, however, was too cautious to risk a pitched battle on these terms—the more especially as his own forces were untrustworthy. There appeared so much enthusiasm for Monmouth amongst his troops that, fearing their desertion, he drew back. The result was that the whole body was speedily thrown into disorder, that panic seized them, and that they fled pell-mell towards Exeter, flinging away their arms and uniforms to expedite their escape. Monmouth, however, probably not aware of the extent of the rout, steadily pursued his march to Chard, and thence to Taunton, where he arrived on the 18th of June, just a week after his landing, and was received by the whole place with the warmest demonstrations of joy.

All this seemed auspicious and encouraging, but[299] it did not satisfy Monmouth. He knew that, without the adhesion of the army and the leading gentry, he should never make his way to the crown. Their adhesion had been promised him, but where were they? Not a regiment had given a sign of being ready to join him. Lords Macclesfield, Brandon, Delamere, and other Whig noblemen—who, he had been assured, would instantly fly to his standard—lay all still. Trenchard of Taunton, who had promised to join him, unlike his townsmen, fled at his approach, and made his way into Holland, to the Prince of Orange. Wildman, who had promised such wonders of county support and of money, did not appear. On the contrary, the nobility and gentry from all parts of the country, with the clergy, were pouring in addresses of attachment and support to James. Parliament, both Lords and Commons, displayed the same spirit.

The common people might believe that the son of Lucy Walters was legitimate, but the educated classes knew better, and that Monmouth could never be king. Parliament, therefore, at once voted James four hundred thousand pounds for present necessities, and laid new taxes for five years on foreign silks, linen, and spirits. They ordered Monmouth's declaration to be burnt by the hangman, and rapidly passed against him a Bill of Attainder, setting a reward of five thousand pounds on his head. They were ready to go farther, and the Commons actually passed a Bill for the preservation of the king's person and government, making it high treason to say that Monmouth was legitimate, or to make any motion in Parliament to alter the succession. But James, knowing the uselessness of any such Act, adjourned Parliament without waiting for the Act passing the Lords, and dismissed the nobles and gentry to defend his interests in their different localities. He took care, however, to revive the censorship of the press, which had expired in 1679.

When Monmouth, with consternation, noted these adverse circumstances, Ferguson was ready with a reason. It was that Monmouth had committed a capital error in not taking the title of king. The style and title of king, he asserted, carried a wonderful weight with the English. But of this right he had deprived himself by abjuring this title and leaving it entirely to James. The majority would fight for the man who was in possession of the royal name, but for whom were they to fight who fought for Monmouth? Nobody could tell, and the result must be discouragement. Grey seconded Ferguson: Wade and the Republicans opposed the scheme. But probably Monmouth was only too willing to be persuaded, and, accordingly, on the 20th of June, he was proclaimed in the market-place of Taunton. As the names of both rivals were James, and James II. would continue to mean James who now had that title, Monmouth was styled King Monmouth. Immediately on taking this step, Monmouth issued four proclamations. Following the example of James, he set a price on the head of James, late Duke of York; declared the Parliament sitting at Westminster an unlawful assembly, and ordered it to disperse; forbade the people to pay taxes to the usurper; and proclaimed Albemarle a traitor, unless he forthwith repaired to the standard of King Monmouth, where he would be cordially received.

Almost every part of this proceeding was a gross political blunder. By assuming the royal title he lost nearly everything, and gained nothing. He offended the Republican party, and divided the allegiance of his little army, some of the most energetic of whose officers, as Wade and others, were of that political faith. He offended that great Protestant party which was looking forward to the Protestant succession of William of Orange and the Princess Mary, and in case of their want of issue to the Princess Anne. He cut off all retreat to Holland in case of failure, and all hope of mercy from James if he fell into his hands. By pledging himself on landing not to aspire to the crown, and thus immediately breaking his pledge, he inspired the thinking portion of the people with deep distrust, as inducing the same disregard of his word as had been so long conspicuous in the Stuarts. With all the influential Protestants who might have joined him, so soon as events gave hope of success, considering him the champion of a Protestant succession, he had placed himself in a hopeless position, because that succession could only come through a legitimate issue. By denouncing the Parliament that body became his mortal foes. The only party from which he could now expect any support was the people, and without means, without leaders, without military training, the result could only be failure, utter and fearful.

And despite the persuasions of Ferguson, the melancholy truth seemed already to stare the unhappy Monmouth in the face. He received a secret answer from Albemarle, addressed to James Scott, late Duke of Monmouth, telling him that he knew who was his lawful king, and that he had better have let rebellion alone. As he rode out of[300] Taunton on the 22nd of June towards Bridgewater, it was remarked that he looked gloomy and dejected; the very people who crowded in the road to greet him with huzzas, could not help remarking how different was the expression of his countenance to what it had been in his gay procession there five years before. The only man who seemed elated with anticipation of triumph was Ferguson, and if, as is suspected to have been the case, he were playing the traitor to the unfortunate Monmouth, he might now well grow confident of his diabolical success.

THE CROSS, BRIDGEWATER, WHERE MONMOUTH WAS PROCLAIMED KING.

On reaching Bridgewater, where there existed a strong Whig body, Monmouth was again well received. The mayor and aldermen in their robes welcomed him, and preceded him in procession to the Cross, where they proclaimed him king. He took up his abode in the castle, encamped his army on the castle field, and crowds rushed to enlist in his service. His army already amounted to six thousand men, and might soon have been doubled or trebled; but his scanty supply of arms and equipments was already exhausted. He had no money, and men without weapons were useless. Numbers of them endeavoured to arm themselves, mob-fashion, with scythes, pitchforks, and other implements of husbandry and of mining.

Meanwhile, troops were drawing from all quarters, and preparing to overwhelm the invaders. Lord Feversham and Churchill, afterwards Marlborough, were ordered to march with strong bodies of troops to the West. Churchill was already arrived, and Feversham rapidly approaching. The militias of Sussex and Oxfordshire were drawing that way, followed by bodies of volunteer gownsmen from Oxford. To prevent any of the Whig party from affording Monmouth aid, they and the Nonconformists were closely watched, and many seized and imprisoned.

From Bridgewater Monmouth advanced to Glastonbury, and thence to Wells and Shepton Mallet. He appeared to have no precise object, but to seek reinforcements; from Shepton Mallet he directed his march on Bristol, which was only defended by the Duke of Beaufort and the muster of his tenantry. Bristol, once gained, would give them a strong position, and afford large supplies of money, stores, and arms. But Churchill harassed[301] his rear on the march, and to reach the Gloucestershire side of the town, which was easiest of assault it was necessary to march round by Keynsham Bridge, which was partly destroyed. Men were despatched to repair it, and Monmouth following, on the 24th of June was at Ponsford, within five miles of the city. On reaching Keynsham Bridge, it was found to be repaired, but they were there encountered by a body of Life Guards under Colonel Oglethorpe, and Bristol having received reinforcements, the attack on it was abandoned. It was then proposed to get across the Severn and march for Shropshire and Cheshire, where he had been enthusiastically received in his progress; but the plan was not deemed practicable, and he advanced to Bath, which was too strongly garrisoned to make any impression upon. On the 26th they halted at Philip's Norton.

Feversham was now at their heels, and attacked them, the charge being led by the Duke of Grafton—the son of Charles and the Duchess of Cleveland—who fought bravely, but was repulsed. Monmouth, however, took advantage of the night to steal away to Frome, which was well affected to his cause, but had been just visited and disarmed by the Earl of Pembroke with the Wiltshire militia. The night march thither had been through torrents of rain and muddy roads; Frome could afford neither assistance nor protection; and, to add to his disappointment, here news reached him of the total failure of Argyll's expedition into Scotland, and that Feversham was now joined by his artillery and was in pursuit of him. Under these disastrous circumstances, and not a man of note, not a regiment of regulars or militia (as had been so liberally promised him by Wildman and Danvers) having come over to him, Monmouth bitterly cursed his folly in having listened to them, and resolved to ride off with his chief adherents, and get back to the Continent and his beloved Lady Wentworth. But from this ignominious idea he was dissuaded by Lord Grey, and they retreated again towards Bridgewater, where a report represented fresh assembling of armed peasantry. They reached that town on the 2nd of July, and, whilst throwing up trenches for defence, on the 5th Feversham arrived with about five thousand men, and pitched his tents on Sedgemoor, about three miles from the town. Feversham himself, with the cavalry at Weston Zoyland, and the Earl of Pembroke with the Wiltshire militia, about fifteen hundred in number, camped at the village of Middlezoy. Monmouth and his officers ascended the tower of the church and beheld the disposition of the enemy. Sedgemoor had formerly been a vast marsh, where Alfred, in his time, had sought a retreat from the triumphant Danes, and it was now intersected by several deep ditches, as most fen lands are, behind which the royal army lay. Near Chedzoy were some regiments of infantry which Monmouth had formerly commanded at Bothwell Bridge.

It was reported that the soldiers were left, by the reckless incapacity of the general, to drink cider and preserve little watch; and Monmouth, who saw that they lay in a very unconnected condition, conceived that by a skilful night attack he could easily surprise them. The gormandising incapacity of Louis Duras, now Lord Feversham, a foreigner who had been advanced by Charles II., was notorious, and the transcendent military talents of Churchill, who was in subordinate command, were yet little known. Preparations were therefore instantly made for the surprise. Scouts were sent out to reconnoitre the ground, who reported that two deep ditches full of mud and water lay between them and the hostile camp, which would have to be passed. At eleven o'clock at night the troops, with "Soho" for their watchword, marched out of Bridgewater in profound silence, taking a circuitous route, which would make the march about six miles. It was a moonlight night, but the moor lay enveloped in a thick fog, and about one in the morning the troops of Monmouth approached the royal camp. Their guides conducted the soldiers by a causeway over each of the two ditches, and Monmouth drew up his men for the attack, but by accident a pistol went off; the sentinels of the division of the army—the Foot Guards—which lay in front of them, were alarmed, and, listening, became aware of the trampling of the rebels as they were forming in rank. They fired their carbines and flew to rouse the camp. There was an instant galloping and running in all directions. Feversham and the chief officers were aroused, and drums beat to arms, and the men ran to get into rank. No time was to be lost, and Monmouth ordered Grey to dash forward with the cavalry, but he was suddenly brought to a halt by a third dyke, of which they had no information. The Foot Guards on the other side of the dyke demanded who was there, and on the cry of "King Monmouth!" they discharged a volley of musketry with such effect, that the untrained horses of Grey's cavalry became at once unmanageable; the men, thrown into confusion, were seized with panic and fled wherever they could find a way or their horses[302] chose to carry them. Grey, as usual, was in the van of the fugitives. But, on the other hand, Monmouth came now rushing forward with his infantry, and, in his turn, finding himself stopped by the muddy dyke, he fired across it at the enemy, and a fierce fight took place, which was maintained for three-quarters of an hour. Nothing could be more brave and determined than Monmouth and his peasant soldiers. But day was now breaking, the cavalry of Feversham, and the infantry of Churchill, were bearing down on their flanks from different quarters, and Monmouth, then seeing that his defeat was inevitable, forgot the hero and rode off to save his life, leaving his brave, misguided followers to their fate. If anything could have added to the base ignominy of Monmouth's desertion of his adherents, it was the undaunted courage which they showed even when abandoned. They stood boldly to their charge; they cut down the horsemen with their scythes, or knocked them from their saddles with the butt end of their guns; they repulsed the vigorous attack of Oglethorpe, and left Sarsfield for dead on the field. But, unfortunately, their powder failed, and they cried out for fresh supplies in vain. The men with the ammunition waggons had followed the flight of the cavalry, and driven far away from the field. Still the brave peasantry and soldiers fought desperately with their scythes and gunstocks, till the cannon was brought to bear on them, and mowed them down in heaps. As they began to give way the royal cavalry charged upon them from the flank, the infantry poured across the ditch, the stout men, worthy of a better fate and leader, were overwhelmed and broke, but not before a thousand of them lay dead on the moor, or before they had killed or wounded more than three hundred of the king's troops.

The unfortunate rebels were pursued with fury, and hunted through the day out of the neighbouring villages, whither they had flown for concealment. The road towards Bridgewater was crowded with flying men and infuriated troopers following and cutting them down. Many of those who rushed frantically into the streets of Bridgewater fell and died there of their wounds, for the soldiers, who were treated by the farmers to hogsheads of cider, were drunk with drinking, with blood and fury. A vast number of prisoners were secured, for they were a profitable article of merchandise in the Plantations; five hundred were crowded into the single church of Weston Zoyland, and the battle and pursuit being over, the conqueror commenced that exhibition of vengeance which was always so dear to James. Gibbets were erected by the wayside, leading from the battle-field to Bridgewater, and no less than twenty of the prisoners were hanging on them. The peasantry were compelled to bury the slain, and those most suspected of favouring the rebels were set to quarter the victims who were to be suspended in chains. Meanwhile Monmouth, Grey, and Buyse, the Brandenburger, were flying for their lives. They took the north road, hoping to escape into Wales. At Chedzoy Monmouth drew up a moment to hide his George and procure a fresh horse. From the summit of a hill they turned and saw the final defeat and slaughter of their deluded followers. They pushed forward for the Mendip Hills, and then directed their course towards the New Forest, hoping to obtain some vessel on that coast to convey them to the Continent. On Cranborne Chase their horses were completely exhausted; they therefore turned them loose, hid their saddles and bridles, and proceeded on foot. But the news of the defeat of the rebels had travelled as fast as they, and in the neighbourhood of Ringwood and Poole parties of cavalry were out scouring the country, in hopes of the reward of five thousand pounds for Monmouth. Lord Lumley and Sir William Portman, the commanders, agreed to divide the sum among their parties if successful, and early on the morning of the 7th, Grey and the guide were taken at the junction of the two cross roads. This gave proof that the more important prize was not far off. The officers enclosed a wide circle of land, within which they imagined Monmouth and Buyse must yet be concealed; and at five the next morning the Brandenburger was discovered. He confessed that he had parted from Monmouth only four hours before, and the search was renewed with redoubled eagerness. The place was a network of small enclosures, partly cultivated and covered with growing crops of pease, beans, and corn, partly overrun with fern and brambles. The crops and thickets were trodden and beaten down systematically in the search, and at seven o'clock Monmouth himself was discovered in a ditch covered with fern.

"AFTER SEDGEMOOR."

From the Painting by W. Rainey, R.I.

Monmouth, though mild and agreeable in his manners, had never displayed any high moral qualities. Indeed, if we bear in mind the frivolous and debauched character of the Court in which he had grown up, whether it were the Court of the exile or of the restored king, it would have been wonderful if he had. He was handsome, gay, good-natured, but dissolute and[303] unprincipled. He was ready to conspire against his father or his uncle, to profess the utmost contrition when defeated, and to forget it as soon as forgiven. He has been properly described as the Absalom of modern times. If he merely deserted his miserable followers on the battle-field, he now more meanly deserted his own dignity. He continued, from the moment of his capture to that when he ascended the scaffold, prostrating himself in the dust of abasement, and begging for his life in the most unmanly terms. He wrote to James instantly from Ringwood, so that his humble and agonised entreaties for forgiveness would arrive with the news of his arrest. James admitted the crawling supplicant to the desired interview, but it was in the hope of the promised word of wondrous revelation, not with any intention of pardoning him. He got him to sign a declaration that his father had assured him that he was never married to his mother, and then coolly told him that his crime was of too grave a dye to be forgiven. The queen, who was the only person present besides James and the two Secretaries of State, Sunderland and Middleton, is said to have insulted him in a most merciless and unwomanly manner. When, therefore, Monmouth saw that nothing but his death would satisfy the king and queen, he appeared to resume his courage and fortitude, and rising with an air of dignity, he was taken away. But his apparent firmness lasted only till he was out of their presence. On his way to the Tower he entreated Lord Dartmouth to intercede for him—"I know, my lord," he said, "that you loved my father; for his sake, for God's sake, endeavour to obtain mercy for me." But Dartmouth replied that there could be no pardon for one who had assumed the royal title. Grey displayed a much more manly behaviour. In the presence of the king he admitted his guilt, but did not even ask forgiveness. As Monmouth was under attainder, no trial was deemed necessary, and it was determined that he should be executed on Wednesday morning, the next day but one. On the fatal morning of the 15th he was visited by Dr. Tenison, afterwards archbishop, who discoursed with him, but not very profitably, on the errors of his ways. Before setting out for the scaffold, his wife and children came to take leave of him. Lady Monmouth was deeply moved; Monmouth himself spoke kindly to her, but was cold and passionless. When the hour arrived, he went to execution with the same courage that he had always gone into battle. He was no more the cringing, weeping supplicant, but a man who had made up his mind to die. A disgusting scene of butchery followed, owing to the nervousness of the executioner. The populace were so enraged at the man's clumsiness, that they would have torn him to pieces if they could have got at him. Many rushed forward to dip their handkerchiefs in Monmouth's blood, and the barbarous circumstances of his execution and the unfeeling persecution of the prelates, did not a little to restore his fame as a martyr to liberty and Protestantism.

Whilst these things were going on in London, the unfortunate people in the West were suffering a dreadful penalty for their adherence to Monmouth. Feversham was called to town, and covered with honours and rewards, though it was notorious that he had done nothing towards the victory. Buckingham even declared that he had won the battle of Sedgemoor in bed. In his place was left one of the most ferocious and unprincipled monsters that ever disgraced the name of soldier. This was Colonel Kirke, who had been governor of Tangier until it was abandoned, and now practised the cruelties that he had learned in his unrestrained command there. In that Settlement, left to do his licentious will on those in his power, he acquired a name for arbitrary, oppressive, and dissolute conduct, which in ordinary times would have insured his death. He now commanded the demoralised soldiers that he had brought back with him, and who, whilst they were capable of every atrocity, were called "Kirke's lambs," because, as a Christian regiment sent against the heathen, they bore on their banner the desecrated sign of the Lamb. His debauched myrmidons were let loose on the inhabitants of Somersetshire, and such as they could not extort money from, they accused on the evidence of the most abandoned miscreants, and hanged and quartered, boiling the quarters in pitch, to make them longer endure the weather on their gibbets. The most horrible traditions still remain of Kirke and his lambs. He and his officers are said to have caused the unhappy wretches brought in, who were not able to pay a heavy ransom, to be hanged on the sign-post of the inn where they messed, and to have caused the drums to beat as they were in the agonies of death, saying they would give them music to their dancing. To prolong their sufferings, Kirke would occasionally have them cut down alive, and then hung up again; and such numbers were quartered, that the miserable peasants compelled to do that revolting work, were said to stand ankle deep in blood. All this was duly reported to the king in London, who[304] directed Lord Sunderland to assure Kirke that "he was very well satisfied with his proceedings." It was asserted in London that in the single week following the battle, Kirke butchered a hundred of his victims, besides pocketing large sums for the ransom of others, yet he declared that he had not gone to the lengths to which he was ordered. On the 10th of August he was sent for to Court, to state personally the condition of the West, James being apprehensive that he had let the rich delinquents escape for money, and the system of butchery was left to Colonel Trelawny, who continued it without intermission, soldiers pillaging the wretched inhabitants, or dragging them away to execution under the forms of martial law. But a still more sweeping and systematic slaughter was speedily initiated under a different class of exterminators—butchers in ermine.

MONMOUTH'S INTERVIEW WITH THE KING. (See p. 303.)

Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, the most diabolical judge that ever sat on the bench—now rendered furious by nightly debauch and daily commission of cruelties; in his revels hugging in mawkish and disgusting fondness his brutal companions; in his discharge of his judicial duties passing the most barbarous sentences in the most blackguard and vituperative language; in whose blazing eye, distorted visage, and bellowing voice raged the unmitigated fiend,—was sent forth by his delighted master to consummate his vengeance on the unhappy people whom the soldiers had left alive and cooped up in prison. He was already created Baron of Wem, dubbed by the people Earl of Flint, and, the Lord Keeper just now dying, he was promised the Great Seal if he shed blood enough to satisfy his ruthless king. Four other judges were associated with him, rather for form than for anything else, for Jeffreys was the hardened, daring, and unscrupulous instrument on whom James confidently relied.

Jeffreys' Bloody Assize, as it was then and always has been termed, both from its wholesale slaughter and from the troops which accompanied him throughout the circuit—a name constantly used by the unfeeling king himself—was opened at Winchester on the 27th of August, and commenced with a case of hitherto unexampled ruthlessness. Mrs. Alice Lisle—or, as she was generally called, Lady Alice, her husband, one of the[305] judges of Charles I., having been created a lord by Cromwell—was now an infirm and aged woman, deaf and lethargic. Her husband had been murdered, as we have related, by the Royalists, as he was entering the church at Lausanne. Lady Alice was known far and wide for her benevolence. Though her husband was on the other side, she had always shown active kindness to the followers of the king during the Civil War, and on this account, after her husband's death, his estate had been granted to her. During the rebellion of Monmouth her son had served in the king's army against the invader; yet this poor old lady was now accused of having given a night's shelter to Hicks, a Nonconformist minister, and Nelthorpe, a lawyer, outlawed for his concern in the Rye House Plot. They were fugitives from Sedgemoor, and the law of treason was that he who harbours a traitor is liable to death, the punishment of a traitor. Mrs. Lisle had no counsel, and pleaded that though she knew that Hicks was a Presbyterian minister, she did not know that he and Nelthorpe were concerned in the rebellion, and there was no direct proof of the fact.

Jeffreys terrified the witnesses, and then came the turn of the jury. They retired to consult, but not coming to a speedy conclusion, for they were afraid of the judge, and yet loth to condemn the prisoner, Jeffreys sent them word that if they did not agree he would lock them up all night. They then came into court and expressed their doubts of Mrs. Lisle knowing that Hicks had been with Monmouth. Jeffreys told them that their doubt was altogether groundless, and sent them back to agree. Again they returned, unable to get rid of their doubt. Then Jeffreys thundered against them in his fiercest style, and declared that were he on the jury, he would have found her guilty had she been his own mother. At length the jury gave way and brought in a verdict of guilty. The next morning Jeffreys pronounced sentence upon her amid a storm of vituperation against the Presbyterians, to whom he supposed Mrs. Lisle belonged. He ordered her, according to the rigour of the old law of treason, to be burned alive that very afternoon.

This monstrous sentence thoroughly roused the inhabitants of the place; and the clergy of the cathedral, the staunchest supporters of the king's beloved arbitrary power, remonstrated with Jeffreys in such a manner, that he consented to a respite of five days, in order that application might be made to the king. The clergy sent a deputation to James, earnestly interceding for the life of the aged woman, on the ground of her generous conduct on all occasions to the king's friends. Ladies of high rank, amongst them the Ladies St. John and Abergavenny, pleaded tenderly for her life. Feversham, moved by a bribe of a thousand pounds, joined in the entreaty, but nothing could move that obdurate heart, and all the favour that James would grant her was that she should be beheaded instead of burnt. Her execution, accordingly, took place at Winchester on the 2nd of September, and James II. won the unenviable notoriety of being the only tyrant in England, however implacable, who had ever dyed his hands in woman's blood for the merciful deed of attempting to save the lives of the unfortunate. What made this case worse was, that neither Hicks nor Nelthorpe had yet been tried, so that the trial of Mrs. Lisle was altogether illegal, and the forcing of the jury completed one of the most diabolical instances of judicial murder on record.

From Winchester Jeffreys proceeded to Dorchester. He came surrounded by still more troops, and, in fact, rather like a general to take bloody vengeance, than as a judge to make a just example of the guilty, mingled with mercy, on account of the ignorance of the offenders. The ferocious tyrant was rendered more ferocious, from his temper being exasperated by the agonies of the stone which his drunken habits had inflicted on him. He had the court hung with scarlet, as if to announce his sanguinary determination. When the clergyman who preached before him recommended mercy in his sermon, he was seen to make a horrible grimace, expressive of his savage disdain of such a sentiment. It was whilst preparing to judge the three hundred prisoners collected there, that he received the news of his elevation to the woolsack. He had received orders from James to make effectual work with the rebels, and he now adopted a mode of despatching the unhappy wretches in wholesale style. As it would be a very tedious work to try all that number one by one, he devised a more expeditious plan. He sent two officers to them into the prison, offering them mercy or certain death. All who chose to make confession of their guilt should be treated with clemency, all who refused should be led to immediate execution. His clemency amounted to a respite of a day or two—he hanged them all the same. Writing to Sunderland, Jeffreys said on the 16th of September:—"This day I began with the rebels, and have despatched ninety-eight." Of the three hundred, two hundred and ninety-two received sentence of death. Eighty only were[306] hanged, the rest were, for the most part, sent to the Plantations as slaves.

From Dorchester he went to Exeter, where two hundred and forty-three prisoners awaited their doom. He proceeded in the same way, and condemned the whole body in a batch, and as they saved him much trouble, he did not hang so many of them. Taunton, the capital of Somersetshire, the county where the rebellion was the strongest, presented him with no fewer than a thousand prisoners. Here he perfectly revelled in his bloody task. The work seemed to have the effect of brandy or champagne upon him. He grew every day more exuberant and riotous. He was in such a state of excitement from morning to night, that many thought him drunk the whole time. He laughed like a maniac, bellowed, scolded, cut his filthy jokes on the astounded prisoners, and was more like an exulting demon than a man. There were two hundred and thirty-three prisoners hanged, drawn, and quartered in a few days. The whole number hanged in this bloody campaign has been variously stated at from three to seven hundred. Probably the medium is the most correct. But so many were hung in chains, or their jointed quarters and limbs displayed on the highways, village greens, and in the market-places, that the whole country was infected with the intolerable stench. Some of their heads were nailed on the porches of parish churches; the whole district was a perfect Golgotha. It was in vain that the most distinguished people endeavoured to check the infuriated judge's rage; he only turned his evil diatribes on them, and gave them what he called "a lick with the rough side of his tongue." Because Lord Stowell, a Royalist, complained of the remorseless butchery of the poor people of his neighbourhood, he gibbeted a corpse at his park gate.

The fate of the transported prisoners was worse than death itself. They were eight hundred and forty in number, and were granted as favours to the courtiers. Jeffreys estimated that they were, on an average, worth from ten pounds to fifteen pounds apiece to the grantee. They were not to be shipped to New England or New Jersey, because the Puritan inhabitants might have a sympathy with them on account of their religion, and mitigate the hardship of their lot. They were to go to the West Indies, where they were to be slaves, and not acquire their freedom for ten years. They were transported in small vessels with all the horrors of the slave trade. They were crowded so that they had not room for lying down all at once; were never allowed to go on deck; and in darkness, starvation, and pestiferous stench, they died daily in such quantities that the loss of one-fifth of them was calculated on. The rest reached the Plantations, ghastly, emaciated, and all but lifeless. Even the innocent school girls, many under ten years of age, at Taunton, who had gone in procession to present a banner to Monmouth, at the command of their mistress, were not excused. The queen, who had never preferred a single prayer to her husband for mercy to the victims of this unprecedented proscription, was eager to participate in the profit, and had a hundred sentenced men awarded to her, the profit on which was calculated at one thousand pounds. Her maids of honour solicited a share of this blood-money, and had a fine of seven thousand pounds on these poor girls assigned to them.

The only persons who escaped from this sea of blood were Grey, Sir John Cochrane, who had been in Argyll's expedition, Storey, who had been commissary to Monmouth's army, Wade, Goodenough, and Ferguson. All these owed their escape to money or their secret services in giving information against their old friends, except Ferguson, who by some means escaped to the Continent. On the other hand, Bateman, the surgeon who had bled Oates in Newgate after his scourging, and by his attentions saved his life, was, for a mere duty of his profession, arrested, tried, hanged, and quartered.

James now seemed at the summit of his ambition. He had established an actual reign of terror. The dreadful massacre of the West struck dumb the most courageous, and this gloomy tyrant gave full play to his love of cruelty. The Nonconformists were everywhere beset by informers, who imprisoned, robbed, and abused them at pleasure. They could only meet for worship in the most obscure places and in the most secret manner. Their houses were broken into and searched on pretence of discovering conventicles. Their ministers were seized and thrust into prison. Baxter was there; Howe was obliged to escape abroad. Never, even in the time of Laud, had the oppression been so universal and crushing. All spirit of resistance appeared to be quenched in terror. The close of the year 1685 was long remembered as one of indescribable and unexampled depression and speechless misery.

James, on the contrary, never was so triumphant. He believed that he had now struck effectual terror into the country, and might rule[307] at will. He had increased the army, and openly declared the necessity of increasing it further. He had in many instances dispensed with the Test Act in giving many commissions in the army to Catholics, and he resolved to abolish both that Act and the Habeas Corpus Act. His great design was to restore the Roman religion to full liberty in England; he believed that he was able now to accomplish that daring deed. Parliament was to meet in the beginning of November, and he announced to his Cabinet his intention to have the Test Act repealed by it, or, if it refused, to dispense with it by his own authority. This declaration produced the utmost consternation. Halifax, however, was the only member who dared to warn him of the consequences, and avowed that he would be compelled to oppose the measure. James endeavoured to win him over to his views, but finding it vain, determined to dismiss him from office. His more prudent Councillors cautioned him against such an act on the eve of the meeting of Parliament, on the ground that Halifax possessed great influence, and might head a dangerous opposition. But James was the last man to see danger ahead, and Halifax ceased to be President of the Council. The news was received with astonishment in England, with exultation in Paris, and with discontent at the Hague.

The dismissal of Halifax produced a great sensation out of doors. The Opposition gathered new courage. Danby and his party showed themselves early to coalesce with the adherents of Halifax. The whispered assurance that Halifax was dismissed for refusing to betray the Test and Habeas Corpus Acts created general alarm, and even the leading officers of the army did not hesitate to express their disapprobation. Just at this crisis, only a week before Parliament would assemble, came the news of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. This Edict had been issued under the ministry of Richelieu, and had closed the long and bloody war between Catholic France and its Protestant subjects. Under certain restrictions the Huguenots were tolerated, and were contented. But Louis, urged by the Jesuits, had long been infringing on the conditions of the treaty. He had dismissed all Huguenots from his service, had forbade them to be admitted to the profession of the law, and compelled Protestant children to be educated by Catholics. Now at length he abolished the Edict altogether, by which the Huguenots were once more at the mercy of dragoons and ruffian informers and constables. Their ministers were banished, their children torn from them, and sent to be educated in convents. The unhappy people seeing nothing but destruction before them, fled out of the kingdom on all sides. No less than fifty thousand families were said to have quitted France, some of them of high rank and name, the bulk of them weavers in silk and stuffs, hatters, and artificers of various kinds. Many settled in London, where they introduced silk weaving, and where their descendants yet remain, still bearing their French names, in Bethnal Green and Spitalfields. Others carried their manufacturing industry to Saxony, and others emigrated to the Cape as vine growers. France, by this blind act of bigotry, lost a host of her best citizens, and had her arts carried to her rivals.

This was a terrible blow to the scheme of James for restoring Romanism to power in England. The people justly said, if a politic monarch like Louis could not refrain at such a serious cost from persecuting Protestants, what was England to expect should Romanism gain the ascendency here, under a bigoted and narrow-minded king like James? James himself saw the full extent of the, to him, inopportune occurrence, and professed to join heartily in the universal outcry of Europe, not excepting the very Pope himself, and Spain, the land of Jesuits and inquisitions; for those parties who were suffering from the aggressions of Louis found it, like James, convenient to make an outcry. What more irritated James was an address which the French clergy in a body had presented to Louis, applauding the deed and declaring that the pious king of England was looking to Louis for his aid in reducing his heretical subjects. This address was read with astonishment and terror by the English people, and James hastened to condemn the revocation of the Edict, and to promote and contribute to the relief of the refugees who had sought shelter here. This affected sympathy did not last long.

On the 9th of November James met his Parliament. He congratulated them on the suppression of the rebellion in the West, but observed that it had shown how little dependence could be placed on the militia. It would be necessary to maintain a strong regular force, and that would, of course, require proportionate funds. He had, he observed, admitted some officers to commissions who had not taken the test, but they were such as he could rely on, and he was resolved to continue them there. On their return to their House the Lords tamely voted him an address of thanks, but[308] with the Commons a demur on this head arose, and a delay of three days was voted before considering an address. This was ominous, and during the interval the ambassadors of Austria and the Pope advised James not to quarrel with the Parliament. Barillon, on the contrary, urged him towards the fatality, for which he required little stimulus. If he quarrelled with his Parliament, he must become Louis's slave, and leave Austria, Spain, and Italy at his mercy. When the Parliament resumed the question, the members, both Whigs and Tories, who were alike opposed to James's projected aggressions, carefully avoided any irritating topic except that of the army. They took no notice of the atrocities committed in the west; they did not revert to the illegal practices by which members in the interest of Government had been returned, but they skilfully proposed improvements in the militia, so as to supersede the necessity of a standing army. When the vote for Supply was proposed, the House carried a motion for bringing in a Bill for rendering the militia more effective, and on this motion Seymour of Exeter, a Tory, as well as Sir William Temple, and Sir John Maynard, who had taken a leading part in the Parliamentary struggle against Charles I., and was now upwards of eighty years of age, took part: several officers of the army, including Charles Fox, Paymaster of the Forces, voted on the popular side of the question. Of course they were dismissed. But the House now having broken the ice, voted an address to the king on the subject of maintaining inviolate the Test Act. When they went into Committee for the Supply, the king demanded one million two hundred thousand pounds, the House proposed four hundred thousand pounds. They were afterwards willing to advance the sum to seven hundred thousand pounds, but the Ministers put the motion for the original sum to the vote, and were defeated. The next day the Commons went in procession to Whitehall, with their address regarding the test. James received them sullenly, and told them that whatever they pleased to do, he would abide by all his promises. This was saying that he would violate the Test Act as he had done. On returning to their House, John Coke of Derby said he hoped they were all Englishmen, and were not to be frightened from their duty by a few high words. As the House had been careful to avoid any expressions disrespectful to the king, they resented this manly but incautious speech, and committed Coke to the Tower. The Court took courage at this proceeding, but though the Commons had not all at once recovered their independent tone, the discontent was strongly fermenting, and though Seymour had at first in vain called on them to examine the abuses of the franchise during the last election, they now took up the question, and Sir John Lowther of Cumberland, another Tory member, headed this movement. The same spirit in the same day broke out in the Lords. Though they had voted thanks for the address, Halifax now contended that that was merely formal, and the Earl of Devonshire, William Cavendish, the bosom friend of Lord William Russell, and Viscount Mordaunt, afterwards the celebrated Earl of Peterborough, proposed to consider the king's speech, and vehemently denounced a standing army. What was still more significant was, that Compton, the Bishop of London, a Royalist, and the son of a Royalist—that Earl of Northampton who had fought for Charles I.,—and who had, moreover, been the educator of the two princesses, not only spoke for himself, but for the whole bench and Church, and declared that the constitution, civil and ecclesiastic, was in danger. Here was a quick end of the doctrine of Non-resistance. Jeffreys endeavoured to reply to these ominous harangues, but the bully of the bench, where he had it all his own way, here cut a very different figure. He was scarified in a style of refined sarcasm, against which his coarse Billingsgate was worse than harmless; it recoiled upon his own head, and this brutal monster, cowardly as he was insolent, sank prostrate before the whole House, and even gave way to a dastardly flood of tears of shame. James, astonished and enraged, but not warned by this first breath of the rising tempest, the next morning hurried to the House of Lords and prorogued Parliament till the 10th of February; but it never met again, being repeatedly prorogued, till the national spirit arose which drove him from the throne.

JUDGE JEFFREYS. (After a Painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller.)

The prorogation of Parliament was followed by the trial of three Whig leaders of eminence. These were Gerard, Lord Brandon, the eldest son of the Earl of Macclesfield, Hampden, the grandson of the patriot, and Henry Booth, Lord Delamere. Hampden and Gerard were accused afresh of having been concerned in the Rye House Plot, Delamere of having been in league with Monmouth. Grey, Earl of Stamford, had been on the eve of being tried by the Peers on a similar charge of concern in the Rye House Plot, but the prorogation defeated that, and he was soon after liberated. These were the men against whom[309] Grey had been induced to give information, and who, with Wade and Goodenough, were witnesses. Hampden and Gerard were tried at the Old Bailey and condemned. But Grey had stipulated that their lives should be safe, and they were redeemed by their relatives at a heavy price. Delamere, as a peer of the realm, was tried by a High Court of Peers, and as he was accused of having been engaged with Monmouth, his life was in danger. Jeffreys was appointed Lord High Steward, and he selected thirty peers as triers, all of whom in politics were opposed to Delamere, and half of them ministers and members of the royal household. He did not stop there, but as he had a personal spite against Delamere for having complained of him to Parliament when Chief Justice of Chester, and called him a "drunken jackpudding," he did his best personally to condemn him. But in spite of the murderous bias with which the villainous judge had contrived the prisoner's death, the Lords Triers unanimously acquitted him. This was a fact that equally electrified James and the country. Both saw that there was a spirit abroad that was no longer to be trifled with. The people openly rejoiced; the infatuated tyrant raged, but took no warning. The very Tories who had carried the Crown hitherto through every attempt, the Established Church which had preached Non-resistance, saw the gulf, to the edge of which their principles had brought them. Their loyalty paused at the threshold of Romanism, and the destruction of the safeguards of the liberty of the subject. The deadly artifices which an abandoned judge and a lawless monarch had employed against the life of Delamere, might soon be practised[310] against every one of them. The spell of despotism, therefore, was broken. The spirit of an unconquerable suspicion had reached the very cabinet and the household of the Romish king, and his power was at an end.

But the greater the danger the more recklessly the bigotry-blinded monarch rushed upon it. His father had been bent on destroying the Constitution, but stood firm to the Anglican Church; James was resolved to root out both Church and Constitution together; but to his narrow intellect it never occurred that if his father lost his head in attempting half of this impossible enterprise, his danger was double in aiming at the whole. At the very beginning of the year 1686 he took a sudden stride in the direction of avowed Romanism, and during the whole year he marched forward with an insane hardihood that struck the boldest and most adventurous of his friends with consternation. The fact as to whether Charles II. had died a Catholic or a Protestant was still a matter of dispute. A few knew the truth, more surmised, but the bulk of the people still believed him to have been a Protestant. James determined to sweep away the remaining delusion. He therefore brought forth the two papers from Charles's strong box, and challenged the whole bench of bishops to refute them. He especially called on Sancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to do it; but as the Primate from policy declined it, James took it for granted that they were secretly admitted to be unanswerable. He therefore had them printed in magnificent style, and appended to them his own signature, asserting that they were his late brother's own composition, and left in his own handwriting. He had this proof of Charles's Romanism distributed liberally to his courtiers, to the prelates and dignitaries of the Church, and amongst the people, even delivering them out of his coach window to the crowds as he drove about. He thus at once made known that his late brother had been secretly a Romanist, and that he was himself an open and uncompromising one.

His next step was to throw all the power of the Government into the hands of the most unscrupulous Catholics. His brother-in-law, Rochester, the Lord Treasurer, was nominally his Prime Minister, but Sunderland and a knot of Catholics were the really ruling junto. Sunderland, one of the basest men that ever crawled in the dust of a Court's corruption, was the head of this secret cabal. Sunderland, in the last reign, had been a violent Exclusionist. He had intrigued with the Duchess of Portsmouth, through her, if possible, to bring Charles to consent to this measure; but so soon as James was on the throne, he became his most servile tool, declaring that as he had nothing to hope but from the king's clemency and his own efforts to make compensation for the past, James could have no more efficient servant. James, who was a mean soul himself, did not spurn this meanness, but made use of it, and truly Sunderland earned his dirty bread. Avarice was his master vice, and he would have sold two souls for money if he had them. He retained the post of President of the Council, and held with it his old one of Secretary of State; whilst observing the course which James was taking, he did not despair to wrest from the staunch Protestant Rochester his still more lucrative office of Lord Treasurer. He had not the foresight to perceive that the project which James entertained to restore Romanism must bring speedy destruction on them all. This sordid minister was, at the same time, in the pay of Louis, at the rate of six thousand pounds a year, to betray all his master's most secret counsels to him.

With Sunderland were associated in the secret Romish junto—Sunderland himself not being an avowed Catholic, but a private professor—some of those Catholic lords who had been imprisoned on account of the Popish plots—Arundel, Bellasis, and William Herbert, Earl of Powis. To these were added Castlemaine, the man who for a title and revenue had sold his wife to Charles II. He had been imprisoned, too, on account of the Popish plot, and was ready to take vengeance by assisting to destroy his Protestant enemies and their Church together. With him were associated two of the most profligate and characterless men of that profligate age—Jermyn, celebrated for his duels and his licentious intrigues, and lately created by James Lord Dover, and a man familiarly named Dick Talbot—whom James had also for these crimes, which were merits in James's eyes, made Earl of Tyrconnel. These merits were, that Talbot was ready for any service of unmanly villainy that his master could desire. Like another prime favourite and associate of James, Lord Chancellor Jeffreys, Tyrconnel was notorious for his drinking, gambling, lying, swearing, bullying, and debauchery. He was equally ready to lie away a woman's character or to assassinate a better man than himself. In the last reign, when it was desired by the Court to ruin the character of James's wife, Anne Hyde, that she might be got rid of, he joined with Colonel Berkeley in the[311] infamous assertion that they had had the most familiar intrigues with her. When they did not succeed with James, they as readily confessed that the whole was a lie. A man with the least spark of honour in him would have remembered this unpardonable villainy to his now deceased wife, and have banished the wretch from Court. James promoted him, and made him one of his most intimate companions. Tyrconnel offered to murder the Duke of Ormond, and was rewarded for his readiness by being made commander of the forces in Ireland; but his services were chiefly at present demanded at Court.

FOURPENNY PIECE OF JAMES II.

To this precious cabal was added Father Petre, the Jesuit Provincial, brother of Lord Petre, and the organ of the Jesuits at Court. The Pope, too, had his agents at Court, Adda, his nuncio, and a vicar-apostolic; but these advocated cautious measures, for Innocent XI. had a difficult card to play in the Popedom. Louis, the greatest of the Catholic kings, was the most dangerous enemy of the temporal power of the Pope, as of every other temporal power, and the Jesuits were all at variance with him, because he leaned toward the Jansenist party, which at this time was in the ascendency, through the triumphant attacks on the Jesuits by Pascal in his "Lettres Provinciales." The Jesuits, on the contrary, advocated all James's views. These generally subtle men seemed driven, by their falling estimation all over Europe, to clutch at a hope of power in England, and they had at all times been famed for their sly policy of insinuation rather than for their caution and moderation when successful. For their high-handed proceedings they had then, as they have since, been driven again and again from almost every Christian country. They did not display more than their ordinary foresight in the affairs of James.

But we should not possess a complete view of the position and character of James's Court if we did not take in a few other actors—the French king's agents, and the king's mistresses. To Barillon, who had so long been ambassador at the English Court, and the agent of Louis's bribes, the French king had sent over Bonrepaux; and whilst Barillon attached himself to Sunderland and the secret Catholic cabal, Bonrepaux devoted his attentions to Rochester and his section of the ministry, so that Louis learned the minutest movements and opinions of both parties. These parties, in their turn, made use of the king's mistresses; for James, although in disposition the very opposite of Charles, was, with all his morose profession of zealous piety, just as loose in his adulteries.

FIVE-GUINEA PIECE OF JAMES II.

With the aid of the Council of his Catholic cabal, James now began in earnest to put down Protestantism in this kingdom, and restore Romanism. As there was no hope of money from Parliament, he made his peace with the King of France, stooped his shoulder to the burden, and became once more a servant unto tribute. He abandoned all the best interests of England, apologised to Louis for having received the Huguenots, and took measures to defeat the very subscription in their favour which he had commenced and recommended. He arrested John Claude, one of the refugees who had published an account of the persecutions of the Huguenots by Louis, and caused his book to be publicly burnt. In spite of this and his open discouragement, the subscription amounted to forty thousand pounds, but he took good care that the unfortunate Huguenots should never get the money, by ordering every one who applied for it to first take the Sacrament according to the Anglican ritual, which he knew differed so much from their own mode, as to form an effectual bar, which it did. And this was the man who complained of the Test Act as a violation of conscience. He had himself dispensed with this Act in defiance of the law, but he now sought to obtain a sanction from the judges for the breach of the Act. To Parliament he durst not appeal; he therefore called on the twelve judges to declare that he possessed this dispensing power as part of his prerogative. The judges to a man refused; he dismissed them[312] and appointed more pliant ones. But the law officers of the Crown were equally stubborn. Sawyer, the Attorney-General, told the king that he dared not do it, for it was not to abolish a statute, but the whole statute law from the accession of Elizabeth. Sawyer was too useful to be dismissed, but Heneage Finch, the Solicitor-General, was turned out, and Powis, a barrister of no mark, was put in his place. A case was immediately tried in the Court of King's Bench, to obtain the judges' sanction. Sir Edward Hales was formally prosecuted for holding a commission in the army, being a Catholic; but the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward Herbert, took the opinion of the new judges upon it, which was, that the king possessed the power to dispense with the Act, and judgment was given accordingly. No sooner was James in possession of this decision of the King's Bench, than he appointed the four Catholic lords of his secret cabal members of the Privy Council—namely, Arundel, Bellasis, Powis, and Dover.

Having perpetrated this daring act in the Council, James hastened to exercise the same power in the Church. Encouraged by the known opinions and intentions of the king, several clergymen who had outwardly conformed to the Church of England and held livings, now threw off the mask and proclaimed themselves of the Catholic Church, and applied to James to authorise them still to hold their livings. These were Obadiah Walker, Master of University College, Oxford; Boyce, Dean, and Bernard, fellows of different colleges; and Edward Sclater, curate of Putney and Esher. The king granted them dispensations to hold their livings, despite their avowed conversion to the doctrines of another Church, on the plea that he would not oppress their consciences. But to support men in holding livings in a Church which they had abandoned was so outrageous a violation of that Church's conscience, that it was impossible long to be submitted to. James, in his very contracted mind, imagined that, because the bishops and ministers had so zealously advocated absolute submission to his will, they would practise it. How little could he have read human nature. Of these sudden converts, Sclater and Walker as suddenly reconverted themselves at the Revolution.

James having now his hand in, went on boldly. He had permitted professed converts to Catholicism to retain their Protestant livings, he next appointed a Catholic to a Church dignity. John Massey, a Fellow of Merton, who had gone over to Rome, was, in violation of every local and national statute, appointed Dean of Christ Church. Massey at once erected an altar and celebrated Mass in the cathedral of Christ Church, and James told the Pope's nuncio that this should soon be the case in Cambridge. It remained now only to fill the sees of the Church with Catholic bishops as they fell vacant; and to enable him to do that, it was necessary, in the first place, to possess himself of a power in the Church like that which he had assumed in the State. He must have a tribunal before which he could summon any refractory clergy, as he could now by his pliant judges control any appeal to the bench. He therefore determined to revive the Court of High Commission, that terrible engine of the Tudors and the Stuarts, which the Long Parliament had put down. This court had power not only to cite any clergyman before it who dared to preach or publish anything reflecting on the views or measures of the king, but "to correct, amend, and alter the statutes of the universities, churches, and schools," or where the statutes were bad to make new ones, and the powers of the Commission were declared to be effectual for these purposes, "notwithstanding any law or statute to the contrary." In fact, all the powers of the High Commission were revived, and the old device and motto were adopted on the seal.

[313]

WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM THE BROCAS.

This was a direct and daring declaration of war on the Church. The Act of Supremacy was thus turned against it, and every clergyman, professor, and schoolmaster, from the Primate to the simple curate and tutor, was laid at the mercy of this insane tyrant. The alarm of the whole Court and country when this outstanding fact was made known, was indescribable. The staunchest courtiers trembled at the temerity of the monarch: the French ministers and the Jesuits alone applauded. The new and terrible power of the tribunal was quickly brought into play. The Commission was made known about the middle of July, and seven commissioners were named. At their head stood Jeffreys, who was now to display his truculent spirit in the character of a Grand Inquisitor. The six other commissioners were Archbishop Sancroft, Bishops Crewe of Durham and Sprat of Rochester, Lords Rochester, Sunderland, and the Chief Justice Herbert. Sancroft excused himself from acting on the plea of ill-health, and James in anger immediately ordered him to be omitted in the summons to the Privy Council, saying, if his health were too bad to attend the Commission, it was equally so to attend the[314] Council, and Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, was put on the Commission in his stead. These pliant Churchmen and courtiers were quickly shown what work they had to do. Amongst the clergymen who had ventured to preach against the Roman Church, and to reply to the attacks which the Romish preachers were now emboldened to make on the Anglican Church, beginning at Whitehall itself, Sharp, Dean of Norwich, and one of the royal chaplains, had been honest enough to defend his own faith, and expose the errors of Rome, in a sermon at his own Church of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields. Compton, the Bishop of London, was immediately called upon by Sunderland to suspend him. But Compton, though he had lately fallen under the royal displeasure for opposing James's designs in the House of Lords, and had been dismissed from the Privy Council, and from his post of Dean of the Royal Chapel, replied that he could not suspend Sharp without hearing him in his defence. Thereupon Compton was at once summoned before the new Commissioners. He demurred, declared the Court illegal, that he was a prelate, and amenable only to his peers in the Church, or, as lord of Parliament, to his peers in Parliament. Consenting, however, at length to appear, he was abruptly asked by Jeffreys why he had not suspended Sharp. Compton demanded a copy of the Commission, to see by what right they summoned him. This roused the base blood of Jeffreys, who began to insult the prelate, as he had done many a good man before, declaring that he would take another course with him; but the rest of the Commissioners recalled the brutal bully to a sense of the respect due to the bishop. After the hearing of the case, Rochester, Herbert, and Sprat declared for his acquittal; but James, enraged at his Treasurer, vowed if he did not give his vote against Compton, he would dismiss him from his office. The place-loving minister gave way. Compton was suspended from his spiritual functions, but dared the Court to touch his revenues; and the Chief Justice warned James that did he attempt to seize them, he would be defeated at common law. For awhile, therefore, James was obliged to restrain his proceedings till, as he resolved, he had put the laws more completely under his feet.

But enough had already been done to produce a change such as never had been seen in England since the days of Queen Mary. Encouraged by the king's countenance and proceedings, the Catholics now openly set at nought all the severe laws against them, their chapels, and priests. Though it was still death by the law for any Romish clergyman to appear in England, and all meetings of Catholics for worship were forbidden under the severest penalties, the streets now swarmed with the clergy in full canonicals, and Popish chapels were opened in every part of the kingdom. The Protestant public gazed in astonishment at sights which neither they nor their fathers had beheld in England. The frieze cowls, and girdles of rope, crosses, and rosaries, passed before them as apparitions of an almost fabulous time. James threw open the old chapel at St. James's, where a throng of Benedictine monks located themselves. He built for himself a public chapel at Whitehall, and induced Sandford, an Englishman, but the envoy of the Prince Palatine, to open a third in the City. A brotherhood of Franciscans established themselves in Lincoln's Inn Fields; another of Carmelites appeared in the City; a convent was founded in Clerkenwell, on the site of the ancient cloister of St. John, and a Jesuit church and school were opened in the Savoy, under a rector named Palmer.

The same ominous change appeared all over the country, especially in those districts where Catholics were numerous. But neither in town nor country were the common people disposed to see the whole empire of Popery thus restored. They assembled and attacked the Catholics going into their chapels, insulted them, knocked down their crosses and images, and turned them into the streets. Hence riots ran high and fiercely in London, Worcester, Coventry, and other places. The Lord Mayor ordered the chapel of the Prince Palatine in Lime Street to be closed, but he was severely threatened by the king and Jeffreys. The mob then took the matter into their hands; they attacked the chapel at high Mass, drove out the people and priests, and set the cross on the parish pump. It was in vain that the train bands were ordered out to quell the riot; they refused to fight for Popery.

But this spirit, which would have caused a wiser monarch to pause, only incensed James, and he assembled an army of thirteen thousand men on Hounslow Heath to overawe the City, and conveyed thither twenty-six pieces of artillery, and ample supplies of ammunition from the Tower. But it boded little prospect of support from his army that the people of London immediately fraternised with it, and the camp became the great holiday resort of all classes, resembling, in the strange concourse of strange characters who appeared there, Schiller's description of the camp[315] of Wallenstein. James, however, was proud of his army, and flattered himself that from his having formerly been a general in the French service, he could command it to some purpose. But there were as clever tacticians as himself at work. He allowed Mass to be publicly celebrated in the tent of Lord Dumbarton, the second in command, and this, with the known fact that many officers were Catholics, and the sight of priests and friars strolling about amongst the tents, roused the zeal of Protestant patriots. Foremost amongst these was Dr. Samuel Johnson, who had been chaplain to Lord William Russell, and was a man of liberal ideas of government, and a sturdy champion of Protestantism. In the last reign he had written a severe satire on James, under the title of "Julian the Apostate," in which he drew a vigorous parallel between the Roman apostate and the English one. Julian, according to him, an idolater even when he pretended not to be, was a persecutor when he pretended freedom of conscience, and robbed cities of their municipal charters, which were zealous for the true faith. For this daring philippic he was prosecuted and imprisoned in the King's Bench, but this did not prevent him from still making war on the Popish prince. "Julian" Johnson, as he was called, had found, while imprisoned in the King's Bench, congenial society in the companionship of a fellow-prisoner, whose name was Hugh Speke. This man, Speke, being of a gloomy, seditious temperament, furnished "Julian" Johnson with money to print, and encouraged him by every kind of argument in endeavouring to excite in the Hounslow camp an active spirit of hostility to the Romish schemers. Thereupon Johnson wrote and published a stirring address to the soldiers, which was distributed in thousands amongst the army. There could be no mistake concerning the style of this document, even if the writer and his friend had kept their counsel, as they did not. The publication was speedily traced to Johnson, who was thereupon brought up to the bar of the King's Bench, and, after a long examination, condemned to stand three times in the pillory, to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn, and to pay a fine of five hundred marks.

Johnson was one of those sturdy, uncompromising reformers—always found, like the petrel, just before the occurrence of a storm—who are regarded with almost more terror and aversion by men of more moderate views or weaker nerves, than by the national offenders whom they attack. When assured by the judge that he might be thankful to the Attorney-General that he had not arraigned him of high treason, he indignantly replied that he thanked him not; that he did not consider himself favoured by being degraded and whipped like a hound, when Popish writers disseminated with impunity what they pleased. This was denied by the Attorney-General and the bench; but Johnson was prepared for them, and pulling a whole mass of such publications from his pocket, which were issued by permission of the royal censor, he read their titles aloud, saying, "There, let Mr. Attorney-General now show whether he will do his duty by them." To spare the priesthood degradation in the person of Johnson, he was cited, at the command of the High Commission, before Crewe and Sprat, the royal Commissioners, accompanied by the Bishops of Rochester and Peterborough, to the chapter-house of St. Paul's, and personally degraded from his order. In having the Bible taken from him in the ceremony, Johnson shed some tears, but said, "You cannot deprive me of its blessed promises." He received two hundred and seventeen lashes in enforcing his punishment, but bore it stoutly, and declared that he could have sung a psalm had he not deemed that it might appear like bravado.

Though the clergy blamed Johnson, and stood aloof from him as a firebrand, because he preached resistance to Popery, which they were soon to do themselves, they were now loud in their pulpits in replying to its attacks, and exposing its lying legends, and its mummery of relics, its tricks of priestcraft, its denial of the Scriptures and the Cup to the laity, the celibacy of the clergy, the abuse of the confessional, and the idolatry of image worship, and prayers to saints. Distinguished amongst these declaimers were Tillotson, Tenison, Stillingfleet, Sherlock, Prideaux, Wake, Atterbury, and many lesser lights in the pulpit. But this zeal was not confined to preachers, for the printing presses of the Universities were kept constantly going. The Catholics, under royal patronage, replied as actively, and the war of pamphlets and pulpits foreshadowed a war of actual arms. James, as blind to all signs of the times as his father had been, went insanely on his way, now eagerly endeavouring to convert his daughter Anne, and now as resolutely scheming to deprive his daughter Mary of the succession. In Scotland and Ireland his crusade against the constitution of the realm and the Protestant religion was equally fierce and reckless.

To Scotland James sent down orders to the Government to dispense with the test and admit[316] Catholics to all offices, and nothing was to be published without the Chancellor's licence, so that no reflections might be made on the Catholic religion or the king's order. The Duke of Queensberry—who was Lord Treasurer, and therefore regarded as Prime Minister—though a Tory, declared that he would not undertake to do anything against the Protestant religion, but there were not wanting sycophants who were ready to attempt just what the king pleased, in the hope of supplanting Queensberry. These were Lord Perth, the Chancellor, and his brother Lord Melfort, Secretary of State. They went over to Romanism as a means of preferment, and were imitated by the Earl of Murray, a descendant of the Regent, and a member of the Privy Council. Perth opened a Catholic chapel in his house, and soon received a cargo of priests' dresses, images, crosses, and rosaries. The incensed mob attacked the house during Mass, tore down the iron bars from the windows, chased the worshippers from their shrine, and pelted Lady Perth with mud. The soldiers were called out, and considerable bloodshed followed. James, irritated instead of being warned, sent down orders to punish the rioters severely, to screen the Catholics from penalties, and to renew the persecution of the Covenanters with all rigour. Alarmed at these insensate commands, three members of the Privy Council—the Duke of Hamilton, Sir George Lockhart, and General Drummond—hastened up to London to explain to James the impossibility of enforcing them, but made no impression.

On the 29th of April the time arrived for the meeting of the Scottish Parliament, when a letter from James was read calling on the Estates to pass a Bill freeing the Catholics from all penalties; but so far from the Parliament accepting such a proposition, the Lords of the Articles, whose business it was to introduce the propositions for new measures, and who had been chosen by James himself, declined to comply with the proposal. In vain they were urged by Perth, Melfort, and Murray; they remained refractory for three weeks, and then only dared to recommend that the Catholics should be permitted to worship in their own houses. But even this the Parliament would not consent to, and, after a week's debate, threw out even this very much modified scheme. James, who had during this discussion seen the intense anxiety in England to learn the news of the progress of the debate, perpetrated one of the most audacious acts of arbitrary power that modern times have witnessed. He sent for the mail bags from the North regularly, and detained all correspondence thence till the matter was ended. No single Scottish letter was issued in London for a whole week.

When at last the news, in spite of him, burst forth amid loud rejoicings, he was enraged, but, like his father, he declared that he would do by his own royal authority what he wanted; that he had been only foolish in asking for what the Act of Supremacy gave him in Scotland as perfectly as in England. He therefore launched the bolts of his vengeance at those who had disputed his will. Queensberry was dismissed from all his offices, the Bishop of Dunkeld ejected from his see, and crowds of Papists were appointed to the posts of those who had refused to obey the royal mandate. Without the ceremony of an Act of Parliament, James proceeded to usurp the rights of boroughs, and to appoint provosts and town councillors at his will; he ordered the judges to declare all the laws against Catholics void, and announced his intention of fitting up a Roman Catholic chapel in Holyrood. These measures struck a momentary terror and deep silence into the Scottish people, but it was only the silence preceding the storm.

In Ireland James had a preponderating body of Catholics eager to receive justice and the restoration of their estates at his hands. But only a wise and cautious monarch could succeed in making decent recompense to the native Irish for their many sufferings and spoliations. Their lands, by the Act of Settlement, were for the most part in the hands of a sturdy race of Englishmen, both Episcopalians and Presbyterians, who had been placed there at successive periods, and extensively by the Commonwealth. To announce that he would repeal this Act, and reinvest the natives with their ancient demesnes, was at once to rouse to arms a body of such pluck and nerve as the Celtic race had no chance with, notwithstanding their numbers. At the news that the Act was to be revoked, and the Church and Government of Ireland to be put into the hands of Catholics, the timid English gentry fled, the trade of the island received a paralysing blow, and the sturdy Saxon population prepared not only to defend their possessions, but to exterminate, if necessary, the aboriginal tribes.

Clarendon, the Lord-Lieutenant, the brother of Rochester, the Prime Minister of England, in great alarm wrote to James, detailing the immediate effects of this announcement; but James persisted in his obstinate course. He declared[317] that the Protestants were his enemies, and that it was necessary to fortify himself with his friends; that his father had lost his head by conceding—he should have said by conceding too late,—and that he would concede nothing. He went on putting Catholics into the Privy Council, into the corporations and the army, dismissing Protestants to make room for them. He then sent out Tyrconnel, as his unscrupulous instrument, to occupy the post already his, of head of the army; he was at the same time furnished with instructions to take virtually all the functions of government into his hands, and reduce Clarendon to a cipher. Clarendon, like all the Hydes, was meanly attached to office and its emoluments, or he would at once have resigned rather than suffer the indignity of beholding his office usurped by a bullying ruffian like Tyrconnel. This desperate gambler, duellist, and debauchee, soon began to talk of the Act of Settlement as a damned and villainous thing; set about remodelling the army so as to exclude all Protestants, and replace them by Catholics; officers and men of the Protestant faith were dismissed by wholesale; he was in league with the priests to drill the entire Papist population, so as to confer the whole power of the island on them, and place every Protestant throat at their mercy. In a very few weeks he had introduced two thousand Popish soldiers into the army, and gave out that by Christmas the whole of the troops would be native Catholic. In the Church and the State he pushed on rudely the same measures, and with a violence of conduct and of language which appeared more like drunken madness than anything else. Taking the cue from him, and instructed by the priests, everybody treated Clarendon with marked insult and contempt. Still clinging meanly to office, he appealed to his brother in London to obtain for him more honourable treatment, but was thunderstruck by the news that Rochester himself had been dismissed.

PARLIAMENT HALL, EDINBURGH.

Rochester, the champion to whom the Protestants of the Anglican Church looked up for aid, had, as miserably as his brother, disgraced himself by suffering his honour to be compromised by the love of office and income. He saw the career which James was running, and[318] which no remonstrance or popular menace could arrest, and instead of resigning with dignity when his counsels became useless, he had even flattered James with the hope of his conversion. But he did not deceive the Jesuit Cabal which surrounded and governed James. They assured the king that nothing would ever make Rochester a genuine supporter of Catholic views, and the sooner he cut himself loose from the connection the better. Accordingly, on the 19th of December, the king, with many professions of regard, took from his brother-in-law Rochester the Treasurer's staff, but softened his fall by granting him out of Lord Grey's estate lands to the yearly value of seventeen hundred pounds, and an annuity of four thousand pounds for his own life and that of his son. He was spared also the mortification of seeing his rival Sunderland invested with his office; the Treasurership was put in commission; Lord Arundel received the Privy Seal, and Bellasis was made First Lord of the Treasury, whilst Dover, a ruined gambler, and Godolphin received places at the board.

The fall of Clarendon followed rapidly on that of Rochester. On the 8th of January, 1687, he received the order to resign his post to Tyrconnel. Such was the panic at this news, that no less than fifteen hundred families of gentlemen, merchants, and tradesmen, are said to have fled from Dublin to England in a week, and a reign of terror commenced all over Ireland. The known intentions of the king, and the character of his Lord-Lieutenant, were the signals for proscription to all Protestants, and they were turned out of the army, the offices of State, from the bench, and the magistracy, with an indecency which astonished the moderate Catholics themselves. Law and justice appeared to be at an end. The worst passions of a population long loaded with every species of injustice were let loose, and the once dominant race now saw themselves the objects of unconcealed hatred and recrimination. The wild population drove off their cattle, set fire to their houses, and the newly-raised soldiery devoted themselves with the gusto of vengeance to pillaging, murdering, and outraging the Protestant settlers with a frightful exultation.

Such were the ominous circumstances under which the year 1687 opened. By driving from him his relatives, the Hydes, James had severed the last ties between him and Protestantism; had demolished the last guarantees of Protestant security. The whole Protestant public, and many of the more clear-sighted Catholics, looked forward with an awful sense of impending mischief, and they were only too correct in their apprehensions.

James was determined to push forward his schemes for the restoration of Romanism in defiance of every long-cherished prejudice of the people, and of every constitutional principle. Besides the conversions which interest had made amongst the courtiers, there were a few other persons of more or less distinction who for royal favour had apostatised, but the number was most insignificant. The Earl of Peterborough, and the Earl of Salisbury—the descendant of Cecil, Elizabeth's minister,—had embraced Catholicism, and amongst literary men some half dozen. There were Wycherley, the obscene dramatist, Haines, a low comedian, and Tindal, who afterwards became a professed deist; but the most remarkable and deplorable instance was that of the poet Dryden. Dryden had sufficiently degraded his fine talents by plays and other compositions which could not be read now without a blush; but his compliance with the impure taste of the age had not enriched him. He enjoyed a pension of one hundred pounds a year from Charles, but that expired with Charles, and James, on renewing it, withdrew the usual butt of sack which accompanied it. After that no further notice was taken of the poet who had rendered such services to the royal cause, and, pressed by his needs, Dryden declared himself a Papist, and was speedily rewarded by royal notice and emolument. Henceforward his pen was employed to defend the royal religion, and the most remarkable result of his labours remains in his celebrated poem of "The Hind and Panther."

Slight as were these triumphs over the steadfast minds of Englishmen, James began now to be aware that he must win over bodies which he really hated, and had hitherto persecuted with all his might, if he meant to succeed. We have had occasion to relate the horrible cruelties and sanguinary ferocity with which he had pursued the Covenanters in Scotland and the Puritans in England, but he now deemed it necessary to pretend himself their friend. The Church had so uniformly and vehemently proclaimed the doctrine of Non-resistance, that he imagined he was pretty sure of it; but in Scotland and England the Nonconformists were a numerous and sturdy race, and danger from them might be apprehended in case Romanism was too exclusively reinstated. He therefore concluded to make his approaches to this object by feigning a love of religious liberty. He commenced first in Scotland by issuing a Declaration of Indulgence, on the 12th of February, 1687[319], but with an avowal of absolutism and a niggardly concession of religious liberty, which were not likely to be very gratefully received by the Scots. "We, by our sovereign authority, prerogative royal and absolute power, do hereby give and grant our royal toleration. We allow and tolerate the modern Presbyterians to meet in their private houses, and to hear such ministers as have been or are willing to accept of our indulgence; but they are not to build meeting-houses, but to exercise in houses. We tolerate Quakers to meet in their form in any place or places appointed for their worship; and we, by our sovereign authority, suspend, stop, and disable all laws and Acts of Parliament made and executed against any of our Roman Catholic subjects, so that they shall be free to exercise their religion and to enjoy all; but they are to exercise in houses or chapels; and we cass, disannul, and discharge all oaths by which our subjects are disabled from holding offices."

Thus James had declared himself absolute, above all laws, and at liberty to discharge any Act of Parliament. The same breath which gave a decree of religious liberty, annihilated every other liberty, and made the whole nation dependent on the will of one man. But whilst thus sweeping away all the labours of all past Parliaments at his pleasure, he with an inconsistency which betrayed a secret feeling that the power of Parliament was not so easily set aside, even then contemplated calling Parliament together if he could have but a prospect that it would confirm what he had done in Scotland, and proposed immediately to do in England. He therefore commenced a system of what has been called "closetings." He sent for the Tory members of Parliament, who were in town, one by one, and taking them into his closet at Whitehall, tried by personal persuasions and by bribes—for though dreadfully penurious, he now all at once became liberal of promises, and tolerably liberal of money—and entreated the members to oblige him by voting for the abolition of the laws against Catholics, which he told them had been, in truth, directed against himself; and whilst he promised, he threatened, too, in case his wishes were not complied with. Whilst he made this experiment in town, the judges now on circuit were ordered to send for the members in the country to the different county towns, and use the same persuasions. The result was by no means satisfactory. If there was one feeling stronger than another which had taken possession of the public mind, it was, then and long after, that the Catholics were not to be trusted with power, and that to grant them opportunity would be to restore the horrors of Queen Mary's days. James himself met with some signal rebuffs, and in every instance he dismissed the refusers from any office that they held; amongst them Herbert, Master of the Robes, and Rear-Admiral of England.

As no good was to be obtained from Parliament, he at once prorogued it again till November, asserting that he would grant toleration on his own authority; and on the 8th of April he issued his "Declaration of Indulgence for England." This Declaration, though in not quite positive and reiterated terms, set forth the same principle of absolutism, and independence of Parliament. "We have thought fit, by virtue of our royal prerogative, to issue forth this our declaration of indulgence, making no doubt of the concurrence of our two Houses of Parliament when we shall think it convenient for them to meet." He made no secret in it of wishing to see Catholicism the religion of the land; but, as the people did not seem willing to accept it, he had resolved to give to all professions of religion the same freedom. He talked like a philosopher about the virtues and justice of entire toleration, and the impolicy as well as injustice of persecution—conveniently ignoring that his practice, whenever he had had the power, had been in direct opposition to these smooth maxims. He not only then proceeded to abolish all the penal acts which had ever been passed, giving free right of worship, public or private, to all denominations, but denounced the utmost vengeance of the laws against any one who should disturb any congregation or person in the exercise of their religion.

The substance of the Declaration was admirable; it was so because it was the Christian truth; but the deed had two defects, and they were fatal ones. It was granted at the expense of the whole Constitution; and to admit that it was valid was to abandon Magna Charta and the Petition of Right, and accept instead the arbitrary will of the monarch. The second and equally fatal objection was that every one knew, from James's practice, and his proved deceitfulness, and his obstinate persistency, that the whole was but a snare to introduce Romanism, and then tread down every other form of religion. James boasted to the Pope's nuncio that the Declaration would be a great blow, and that in a general liberty of conscience the Anglican Church would go down, for persecution of the Dissenters would then be revenged upon her, and, unsupported by the Crown, she would meet with[320] deserved contempt. And, had the toleration been legitimately obtained and guaranteed, after the servile conduct of the Church at that time, this might have been the case. The Dissenters had every reason to be thankful for toleration. They had been trodden down by the Anglican hierarchy; they had been dragged before the arbitrary High Commission, and plundered and imprisoned at pleasure. The bishops had supported every unrighteous act against them—the Conventicle Acts, the Test Act, the Five-Mile Act, the Act of Uniformity; and now they could enjoy their property, the peace of their firesides, their liberty, and their worship in the open sight of God and man. These were great boons, and, therefore, a great number of Nonconformists expressed their gratitude for them. The Quakers in particular sent up a grateful address, which was presented by Penn with an equally warm speech; but both they and the other Dissenters restricted themselves to thanking James for the ease they enjoyed, without going into the question of his right to grant it. Some few individuals, in their enthusiasm, or worked upon by the Court, went beyond this; but the general body of the Nonconformists were on their guard, and some of the most eminent leaders refused even to address the king in acknowledgment of the boon. Amongst these were Baxter, who had been so ignominiously treated by Jeffreys; Howe, who had had to flee abroad; and Bunyan, who had suffered twelve years' imprisonment for his faith; they boldly reminded their followers of the unconstitutional and, therefore, insecure basis on which the relief rested; that a Protestant successor might come—even if before that Popery, grown strong, had not crushed them—and again subject them to the harsh dominance of the Anglican hierarchy.

No exertions were omitted to induce the Dissenters to send up addresses; and they were actively canvassed by members of their different bodies, as Carr, Alsop, Lobb, and Rosewell, the last of whom was liberated from prison for the purpose. James took care to throw all the blame of the past persecutions on the Church, which, he said, had been at the bottom of all those councils. The Church, on the other hand, deserted by the Crown, retorted the accusation, and attributed every act of persecution to the Government, to which it professed unwillingly to have submitted. Thus was seen the edifying sight of the two arch-oppressors quarrelling, and in their bitter recriminations letting out the confession that they both knew very well how base and un-Christian their conduct had been.

But there was a third party to which all alike looked with anxiety in this crisis, and this consisted of William of Orange and his wife. As Protestants, and the probable successors of James, if they approved of the Indulgence, they would greatly strengthen the king; if they disapproved of it altogether, it would give a shock to the Protestant interest in England. But William was too politic not to see all the bearings of the question, and he and the princess jointly avowed their entire approval of complete toleration of all phases of the Christian religion, but their disapproval of the illegal means by which James aimed to effect it, and of Catholics being admitted to place and power. These were precisely the views of the great majority of Englishmen; and accordingly James sank still deeper in public odium on this publication, and William and Mary rose in popularity. They seized the opportunity to organise a most powerful party in their favour, and thus pave the way to an accession to the throne, which their sagacity assured them would much sooner arrive than the natural demise of the king. Mary has been censured for so readily uniting in a plan to drive her father from the throne. So long as the policy of James promised a continuance of his power, no steps were taken by Mary to supersede him; so soon as it became evident that no earthly power, to say nothing of justice or right, could keep him on the throne, it became a mere act of prudence to take care that no alien interest usurped her own. That Mary contemplated or committed any act of personal cruelty or harshness towards her father beyond securing her succession against an intruder, remains to be shown. Her husband, with all his virtues, was not proof against allowing, if not perpetrating, questionable acts; and he had been so jealous of his dignity and power, that for years he brooded in gloomy discontent on the prospect of Mary's succession to the crown of England without his having any claim to share it, not even communicating his splenetic feeling to her. But this secret was penetrated by Burnet, explained to Mary and, through her generosity, at once the difficulty was dissipated by her engaging to admit him to a full share of her hereditary authority. From that moment William redoubled his zeal to secure the succession; but there is no question that Mary exerted her filial regard to secure her father against any personal injustice.

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JOHN DRYDEN. (After the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller.)

William now despatched to England orders to his ambassador, Dykvelt, to use his endeavours to knit up the different sections of the discontented into one paramount interest in his favour. The scattered elements of an overwhelming power lay around the throne, which James, by his blind folly and tyranny, had made hostile to himself, and prepared ready to the hand of a master to combine for his destruction. Danby, who had fallen in the late reign for his opposition to the French influence, and who had been the means of uniting Mary to William, had regained extensive influence amongst both Tories and Whigs, and was driven by James into determined opposition. Halifax, who had been the chief champion of James's accession by opposing the Exclusion Bill, and whose dangerous eloquence made him especially formidable, had been dismissed and neglected by him. Finch, Earl of Nottingham, a zealous Tory and Churchman, and one of the most powerful orators of the House of Lords, he made his enemy by his dismissal of his younger brother from the post of Solicitor-General for not acquiescing in the king's dispensing powers, and by his attacks on the Church and the Constitution. The Earl of Devonshire he had managed, by imprisonment and a monstrous fine, equally to disgust; and the Earl of Bedford he had completely alienated by the execution of his son, Lord William Russell. Compton, the Bishop of London; Herbert, lately Rear-Admiral of England; Clarendon, Rochester, Lumley, Shrewsbury, had all, by a most insensate folly, been offended by dismission and private injuries. There was not a man of any talent or influence whom this fatuous tyrant had not driven from him in his obstinate resolve to set Romanism and despotism along with him on the throne, except Lord Churchill, upon whom he continued to heap favours, but who was too worldly-wise not to[322] see that his benefactor was running headlong to ruin, and who was by no means the man to share ruin out of gratitude. Dykvelt executed his mission so well, that in four months he returned to the Hague with a packet of letters in his possession from all those noblemen, bishops, and others, including Admiral Russell, the cousin of the decapitated Lord William Russell, promising William their most enthusiastic support. From the Princess Anne, who was bound up heart and soul with Churchill and his clever wife—afterwards the celebrated Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough—her sister Mary also received the most cordial assurances that nothing should induce her to abandon her religion, or her attachment to her sister's rights.

Dykvelt returned from England on the 9th of June; and, to continue the effect produced in that country, on the 8th of August another agent in the person of General Zulestein was despatched thither. His ostensible mission was to offer an address of condolence on the death of the queen's mother, the Duchess of Modena; but his real one was to strengthen the connection with the malcontents, which he could the more unsuspectedly do from his military character, and from his having taken no particular part in diplomacy. Zulestein was completely successful; but these proceedings could not entirely escape James or his envoy at the Hague, the Catholic Marquis of Abbeville, who succeeded in getting Burnet, the active adviser of William, removed from open intercourse with the Court. But Burnet was still not far off, and through his chief counsellors, Bentinck and Halweyn, William still consulted with him on every step of the plans regarding England. James also sought to reach William through Stewart, a Scottish lawyer, who had fled from his persecutions of the Covenanters to the Hague, but who, on the appearance of the Declaration of Indulgence, most suddenly went to the king's side, in hopes of promotion. Stewart wrote a letter to Fagel, the Grand Pensionary, who had great influence with William, which he confessed was at the suggestion of the king, strongly urging him to use his power with William to persuade him to support James's act; but Fagel, with a dexterous policy, replied in another letter, stating that the prince and princess were advocates for the most ample toleration, but not for the abolition of the Test, or of any other Act having the inviolability of the Anglican Church for its object. This was calculated to satisfy the Catholics of every privilege which they could reasonably expect from the laws and the public opinion of England, whilst it fully assured the Church of its safety under William and Mary.

Every fresh movement thus contributed to strengthen the position of William, and to show to James, had he had sufficient mind to comprehend it, how completely his conduct had deprived him of the confidence of his subjects. Even the Pope took no pains to conceal how suicidal he deemed his policy. He would have sufficiently rejoiced in any rational prospect of the return of England to the Church of Rome, but he was not dull enough to imagine the sentiment of the king the sentiment of the nation; on the contrary, he was persuaded that the rash cabals of the Jesuits were inevitably hastening a crisis which must the more deeply root the Anglican antipathy to Popery. James had despatched Castlemaine as ambassador to Rome with a splendid retinue. It was not enough that this open affront was done to his country by sending a Catholic ambassador to the Pope, and in the person, too, of a man who had no distinction except the disgraceful one of having purchased his title by the prostitution of his wife; but Castlemaine was deputed to solicit a dispensation from Innocent for Father Petre to receive the Episcopal dignity, which was forbidden to a Jesuit. James contemplated nothing less than making Petre Archbishop of York, which see he kept vacant for the purpose; but the Pope was too much at enmity with the Jesuits, as well as with James for his impolitic conduct, and his alliance with the great French aggressor, to concede any such favour. Castlemaine, who was living in pomp at Rome, threatened to take his departure if this request was not granted, and Innocent only sarcastically replied by bidding him start in the cool of the morning, and take care of his health on the journey.

This discourtesy shown him by the head of that religion for which he was putting everything to the hazard, had, however, only the effect of further raising the pugnacity of James. He determined only the more to honour and exalt Popery in England. The nuncio, Adda, had been made Archbishop of Amasia—a mere title of honour, in consequence of James's desire that he should be publicly acknowledged at his Court. Hitherto both he and the Vicar-Apostolic, Leyburn, had been instructed by the Papal Court to keep a careful incognito; but James would no longer consent to this; and, accordingly, on the 1st of May, 1686, Adda had been publicly consecrated at Whitehall, by the titular Archbishop[323] of Ireland, assisted by Leyburn, the Vicar-Apostolic. In the evening of that day the nuncio was received into the royal circle, in the queen's apartments; and James shocked and disgusted his courtiers by falling on his knees before him and imploring his blessing. It was the first time that an English Court had seen their monarch, for a very long period, doing homage at the feet of a Papal nuncio, and the effect was humiliating. On the 3rd of July the nuncio was favoured with a public reception at Windsor. He went thither attended by a numerous procession of the ministers and of officials of the Court, and was conveyed in a royal coach, wearing a purple robe, and a brilliant cross upon his breast. In his train were seen with surprise and contempt the equipages of Crewe, Bishop of Durham, and Cartwright, Bishop of Chester. The Duke of Somerset, as First Lord of the Bedchamber, was expected to introduce him; but he declined, representing the penalties to which the act would expose him. This refusal was the less expected, because he had not objected to carry the sword of State before his Majesty when the king had gone to the royal Papal chapel. James was indignant. "I thought," he said, "that I was doing you a great honour by appointing you to escort the minister of the first of all crowned heads." Somerset, moved to a firmness of demeanour and language unusual even in him, declared that he dared not break the law. James replied, "I will make you fear me as well as the law. Do you not know that I am above the law?" "Your Majesty," replied Somerset, with commingled dignity and affected humility, "may be above the law, but I am not; and I am only safe while I obey the law." The king, not used to being thwarted, much less to language of so plain a sort, turned from him in a rage, and the next day issued a decree depriving him of his posts in the Household and of his command in the Guards.

This most impolitic conduct James followed, on the 1st of February, 1687, by a still more absurd and ludicrous, but equally mischievous, reception. It was that of Cocker, an English Benedictine monk, who, being more deeply implicated in treason than his friends cared to confess, had narrowly escaped with his life in the trials of the Popish plot. This man the Elector of Cologne had appointed his Resident at the English Court—probably at the suggestion of James, and in defiance of public opinion; and James now insisted that he should receive a public introduction to Court, in the habit of his order, and attended by six other monks in a like costume. Thus James took a pleasure in violating the laws and insulting public opinion at every turn, to show that he was independent of both; and he now prepared to commence in earnest the destruction of the Church.

Before advancing to this dangerous experiment, however, he deemed it necessary to tighten the discipline of the army, which had shown no little disgust at his proceedings.

Many of James's soldiers had deserted, and it was found that they were under no oath or obligation which rendered such desertion liable to serious punishment. But James determined to punish them, even condignly, in order to strike a sufficient terror into the whole army. He consulted the judges as to whether he did not possess this power; they said that he did not. Instead of accepting this answer, James dismissed Herbert, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Sir John Holt, another judge of the same bench and Recorder of London, and put in their places Sir Robert Wright, a creature of Jeffreys', a man of ruined and base character, Richard Allibone, and Sir Bartholomew Shower as Recorder. With these infamous instruments he went to work; and, instead of trying the offenders by court-martial, he brought them before these men in the King's Bench and in the Old Bailey, and hanged them in sight of their regiments. By these outrages on every law and principle of constitutional safety James thought he had terrified the army into obedience; and he now attacked the very existence of the Universities, in order to give the education of the country into the hands of Popery.

James commenced his encroachments on the Universities by ordering one Alban Francis, a Benedictine monk, to be admitted a Master of Arts of Cambridge. That many persons not strictly admissible by the rules of the University had received honorary degrees, including foreigners of different forms of faith, and even a Turk, was indisputable; but the object of these favours was so clear that no mischief could arise from the practice. But now the Universities were but too well aware that James aimed at a thorough usurpation of these schools by the Catholics to lightly pass the matter by. The heads of colleges sent hastily to Albemarle, their Chancellor, begging him to explain to the king that the person named could not be admitted according to the statutes; at the same time they conceded so far as to offer to admit Francis on his taking the Oaths of Supremacy and Obedience.

[324]

He refused. James menaced the authorities, but in vain, and he summoned them before the High Commission Court. John Pechell, the Vice-Chancellor of the University, attended by eight fellows, including the illustrious Isaac Newton—afterwards Sir Isaac—appeared, and were received by Jeffreys with all his devilish bluster. Pechell was soon terrified at this most brutal monster, whose employment alone would have sufficiently stamped the character of James; and, when any of the other fellows attempted to speak, Jeffreys roared out, "You are not Vice-Chancellor; when you are, you may talk; till then, hold your tongue." Finding, however, that, though he could embarrass, he could not bend the Vice-Chancellor, Jeffreys, by order of James, declared Pechell dismissed from the office of Vice-Chancellor, and all his emoluments suspended. This was a gross violation of the rights of the University, and Jeffreys added to the outrage a piece of his usually blasphemous advice to the fellows—"Go your way and sin no more, lest a worse thing befall you."

JAMES DOING HOMAGE TO THE PAPAL NUNCIO. (See p. 323.)

The decease of the President of Magdalen College, Oxford, enabled James to follow up his plans without loss of time. Magdalen was one of the very richest of the English foundations, and consisted of a president, forty fellows, and thirty scholars, called Demies. It was the law of the foundation that the President could only be elected from those who were or had been members of that college, or of New College. The President died in March, 1687, and the 13th of April was fixed for the election of the new one. A Dr. Smith, a learned Orientalist, and an enthusiastically loyal man, applied for the royal consent, but was informed that the king was determined to give it only to one of his own religion; and, to the astonishment and disgust of the college, one Anthony Farmer was named as the royal nominee. The choice seemed made to insult the University in the highest degree possible, for not only was Farmer a Popish convert, but a man of the most drunken, debauched, and infamous character that could have been picked from the vilest haunts of unnamable wickedness. The astounded fellows humbly but earnestly remonstrated, but in vain. On the appointed day, despite the king's positive[325] injunctions, and the presence of his agent, the choice fell on a distinguished and highly virtuous member of the college, John Hough.

The irate king summoned the fellows before the beastly Jeffreys and the High Commission, as he had summoned the heads of the University of Cambridge. There Jeffreys exhibited his wonted display of insufferable Billingsgate; and when Dr. Fairfax, one of the fellows, had the boldness to call in question the legality of the High Commission, he lost all patience. "Who is this man? What commission has he to be impudent here? Seize him; put him into a dark room. What does he do without a keeper? He is under my care as a lunatic. I wonder nobody has applied to me for the custody of him." But, after all, the character of Farmer was shown to be so vilely reprobate, that he was dropped, and the college ordered to receive Dr. Parker, Bishop of Oxford.

Parker was not an openly acknowledged Papist, but was understood to be really one; but he was neither a fellow of Magdalen nor of New College, and the fellows were firm enough to stand by their own election of Dr. Hough. James determined to go in person to Oxford and overawe these obstinate men; and he was the more bent upon it, having in the meantime suffered a similar defeat in endeavouring to force a Catholic into the hospital connected with the Charterhouse School. The trustees refused, and were called before Jeffreys. There he began browbeating the master, Thomas Burnet, but was unexpectedly opposed by the venerable Duke of Ormond. At this the bully swagger of this most hideous and contemptible judge that ever sat on a bench at once gave way, for he had no real courage. He stole from the court, and the scheme failed for the day. But the High Commission having sentenced Hough to be deposed from the presidentship of Magdalen, and Fairfax from his fellowship, again met, and summoned the trustees of the Charterhouse. Here again they were awed by a letter addressed to the king, signed by the trustees, including the names of Ormond, Halifax, Danby, and Nottingham, the chiefs of all the great parties who secured to James his crown, and still by their forbearance kept it on his head, so that they were compelled to pause before proceeding farther.

On the 16th of August James set out on a progress, with every display of royal state which could impress on the minds of his subjects an idea of his kingly position. He proceeded to Portsmouth, Southampton, Bath; thence by Gloucester and Worcester to Ludlow, Shrewsbury, and Chester; whence he again turned south, and reached Oxford on the 3rd of September. Everywhere he had been attended by the High Sheriffs of the counties with splendid retinues; and the clergy in the towns had flocked around him in great numbers, though he continued on his progress to neglect their preaching for Mass. If outward circumstances could be relied on, it might have been supposed that the king had never been more popular; and, with all the prestige of this tour, he summoned the refractory fellows of Magdalen before him, and rated them soundly on their disobedience. They knelt and offered him a petition, but he haughtily refused to look at it, bidding them go that instant and elect the Bishop of Oxford, or expect his high displeasure. But the fellows could not be thus brought to submission, and James quitted the town in high dudgeon.

On the 20th of October James sent down a special commission, consisting of Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, Wright, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and Jenner, a baron of the Exchequer, attended by three troops of cavalry, with drawn swords, to Oxford, to expel Hough and instal Parker. Parker was installed, but the fellows would not acknowledge him. James, therefore, ejected them altogether. In a few weeks Parker died, and then the king proceeded to put the whole college into the hands of Papists, appointing Gifford, one of the four vicars-apostolic, president; for now, in the regular progress of his system, James had admitted four vicars-apostolic instead of one, which had been the case before. It may be imagined what resentment this arbitrary proceeding occasioned, not only in the Universities themselves, but amongst the clergy in every quarter of the kingdom, who now saw that nothing would deter the king from uprooting the deepest foundations of the Church.

Still more daring and atrocious schemes were agitated by James and his Popish cabal. Soon after his accession it had been proposed to set aside the claims of the Princess of Orange, and make Anne heir-apparent, on condition that she embraced Popery. Anne refused. It was then proposed to make over Ireland to Louis of France in case Mary of Orange could not be prevented from succeeding to England; and Louis expressed his assent to the proposal. Tyrconnel was to make all necessary preparations for this traitorous transfer. But at this moment a new light broke on James, which quashed these unnatural and[326] unnational projects: the queen was declared pregnant. The news of this prospect was received by the public with equal incredulity and suspicion. The queen had had several children, who had died in their infancy; and there was nothing improbable in the expectation of another child, although five years had elapsed since her last confinement. The prospect of an heir, however, true or false, drove James on further and more desperate projects. Should a son be born, and live, which none of the queen's children had done hitherto, the Popish heir would be exposed to the danger of a long minority. James might die before the son had been firmly rooted in the Catholic faith, and the Protestant bishops and nobles would surround him with Protestant instructors, and most likely ruin all James's plans of perpetuating Popery. To obviate this, he determined to have an Act of Parliament, settling the form of the child's guardianship and education, and vesting all the necessary powers in Catholic hands. Any prudent man would at least have waited to see the birth and probable life of the child before rushing on so desperate a scheme; for, to have an Act, he must call a Parliament; and to call a Parliament in the present feeling of the nation was to bring together one of the most determinedly Protestant assemblies of men that had ever been seen. But James was of that mole-eyed, bigot character which rushed headlong on the most perilous issues. He determined to pack a Parliament by means which none but a madman would have attempted. Whether from county or borough, he could expect nothing but a most obstinate and universal demonstration in favour of the Church and Constitution. His brother Charles, for his own purposes, had deprived the towns of their charters, because they were Whig and often Nonconformist, and had given them others, which put them into the hands of the Tories and Churchmen, and these were the very men who now would resist James's plans to the death. The country was equally Church and Tory, but all this did not daunt James. He determined to remodel the corporations, and to change every magistrate in the counties that was not ready to carry out his views. He appointed a Board of Regulators at Whitehall to examine into the state of the corporations and introduce new rules and new men as they thought fit. These regulators were seven in number, and all Catholics and Jesuits, except the king's incarnate devil, Jeffreys. These men appointed deputations of chosen tools to visit the different corporations, and report to them; and James issued a proclamation announcing his intention to revise the commissions of the peace, and of the lieutenancy of counties. In fact, James proceeded like a man who was satisfied that he could do just as he pleased with the Constitution of a country which, through all ages, had shown itself more jealous of its Constitution than any other in the world.

He sent for the lords-lieutenants, and delivered to them a paper of instructions, with which they were each to proceed to their several counties. They were to summon all the magistrates, and tell them what his Majesty expected from them on the ensuing election of Parliament, and to send him up their individual answers, along with the list of all the Catholic and Dissenting gentlemen who might take the place of those who should dare to object to the king's plans on the bench or in the militia. The proposal was so audacious, that the greater proportion of the lords-lieutenants peremptorily refused to undertake any such commission; these included the noblest names in the peerage, and they were at once dismissed. The sweeping measure of turning out the Duke of Somerset, the Viscounts Newport and Falconberg, the Earls of Derby, Dorset, Shrewsbury, Oxford, Pembroke, Rutland, Bridgewater, Thanet, Abingdon, Northampton, Scarsdale, Gainsborough, and many others, showed how far James was gone in his madness. As the king could not get any noblemen to take the places of the dismissed, he filled them up as he could, and even made his butcher, Jeffreys, lord-lieutenant of two counties. But all was in vain; he soon received answers from every quarter that the whole nation, town and country, absolutely refused to obey the king's injunctions. Even those who had gone most zealously to work were obliged to return with most disconsolate reports, and to assure the king that, if he turned out every magistrate and militia officer, the next would still vote against Popery. Catholics and Nonconformists, though glad of indulgence, would not consent to attempt measures which could only end in defeat and confusion. The Nonconformists would not move a finger to endanger Protestantism. It was the same in the corporations. Some of these James could deprive of their charters, for the new ones frequently contained a power of revocation; but when he had done this he found himself no forwarder, for the new ministers upon the points that he had at heart were as sturdy as the old. Other towns from which he demanded the surrender of their charters refused. Wherever James could eject[327] the Church members of corporations he did so, from London to the remotest borough, and put in Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists. It was perfectly useless; they were as Protestant as the Church. Even where he obtained a few truckling officials, they found it impossible to make the people vote as they wished; and in the counties the Catholic or Dissenting sheriffs were equally indisposed to press the Government views, or unable to obtain them if they did. He changed the borough magistrates in some cases two or three times, but in vain. Some of the people in the towns did not content themselves with mere passive resistance; they loudly declared their indignation, and the tyrant marched soldiers in upon them; but only to hear them exclaim that James was imitating his dear brother of France, and dragonading the Protestants.

Whilst these things were going on all over the country, James was putting on the same insane pressure in every public department of Government. The heads of departments were called on to pledge themselves to support the wishes of the king, and to demand from their subordinates the same obedience. The refractory were dismissed, even to the highest law officers of the Crown; and James demanded from the judges a declaration that even the Petition of Right could not bar the exercise of his prerogative; but the bench consulted in secret, and the result was never known. He even contemplated granting no licences to inns, beer-houses, or coffee-houses, without an engagement to support the king, in spite of Church or magistrate; but another of his measures now brought things to a crisis.

James determined to make his intentions known for fully restoring Popery by a new Declaration of Indulgence, in which he reminded his subjects of his determined character, and of the numbers of public servants that he had already dismissed for opposing his will. This Declaration he published on the 27th of April, 1688, and he ordered the clergy to read it from all pulpits in London on the 20th and 27th of May, and in the country on the 3rd and 10th of June. This was calling on the bishops and clergy to practise their doctrine of Non-resistance to some purpose; it was tantamount to demanding from them to co-operate in the overthrow of their own Church. They were, as may be supposed, in an awful dilemma; and now was the time for the Dissenters—whom they had so sharply persecuted and so soundly lectured on the duty of entire submission—to enjoy their embarrassment. But the Dissenters were too generous, and had too much in common at stake. They met and sent deputations to the clergy, and exhorted them to stand manfully for their faith, declaring that they would stand firmly by them. A meeting of the metropolitan clergy was called, at which were present Tillotson, Sherlock, Stillingfleet—great names—and others high in the Church. They determined not to read the Declaration on the 20th, and sent round a copy of this resolution through the City, where eighty-five incumbents immediately signed it.

The bishops meanwhile met at Lambeth, and discussed the same question. Cartwright of Chester, one of the king's most servile tools, and a member of the High Commission, took care to be there, to inform the king of what passed; but during his stay nothing but a disposition to compliance appeared to prevail, and he hurried away to Whitehall with the news. No sooner, however, was he gone than letters were secretly despatched, summoning the bishops of the province of Canterbury; and another meeting took place on the 18th, or two days prior to the Sunday fixed for the further reading of the Declaration. The bishops concluded not to read it, and six of them waited on the king with the written resolution. James was confounded, having assured himself that they meant to comply. He used the most menacing language, and declared that they had set up the standard of rebellion; and ordered them from his presence to go at once and see that he was obeyed. To prevent the publication of the resolution, he detained it; but that very evening it was printed and hawked through the streets, where it was received with acclamations by the people. Any but a mad bigot, seeing the feelings of the public, would have instantly revoked the declaration; but James was not that man. Sunday arrived, and out of all the hundred churches, the Declaration was only read in four, and with the effect of instantly clearing them, amid murmurs of indignation. Still it was not too late to recall the Order in Council; and even James himself, with all his folly and infatuation, was now staggered. It was strongly recommended in the Council to abandon the Declaration; but James listened to his evil genius, the brutal Jeffreys, and determined to bring the seven signing bishops to trial before the Court of King's Bench, on a charge of seditious libel. The fatal counsel was adopted, and they were summoned to appear before the Privy Council on the 8th of June.

In the interval the bishops and clergy in all parts of England, with few exceptions, showed[328] the same resolute spirit. The Bishops of Gloucester, Norwich, Salisbury, Winchester, Exeter, and London, signed copies of the same petition. The Bishop of Carlisle regretted that, not belonging to the province of Canterbury, he could not do the same. The Bishop of Worcester refused to distribute the Declaration amongst his clergy; and the same spirit showed itself amongst the parochial clergy, who almost to a man refused to read it.

On the evening of the day appointed, the seven prelates—namely, Sancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lloyd of St. Asaph, Ken of Bath and Wells, Turner of Ely, Lake of Chichester, White of Peterborough, and Trelawney of Bristol—attended the Privy Council. Jeffreys took up the petition, and, showing it to Sancroft, asked him if that was not the paper which he had written, and the six bishops present had signed. Sancroft and his colleagues had been instructed by the ablest lawyers in England as to the course they should pursue, and the dangers to be avoided. The Primate, therefore, instead of acknowledging the paper, turned to the king and said—"Sir, I am called hither as a criminal, which I never was before; and, since I have that unhappiness, I trust your Majesty will not be offended if I decline answering questions which may tend to criminate me." "This is mere chicanery," said James. "I hope you will not disown your own handwriting." Lloyd of St. Asaph said that it was agreed by all divines that no man in their situation was obliged to answer any such question; but, as James still pressed for an answer, Sancroft observed that, though he were not bound to accuse himself, yet, if the king commanded it, he would answer, taking it for granted that his Majesty would not take advantage to bring his admission there in evidence against him. James said he would not command him; but Jeffreys told them to withdraw for awhile, and when they were called back, James commanded the Primate, and he acknowledged the writing. They were then again sent out, and, on coming back, were told by Jeffreys that they would be proceeded against, not before the High Commission, but, "with all fairness," before the King's Bench.

They were then called upon to enter into recognisances, but they refused, on the plea that they were peers of Parliament, and that no peer of Parliament could be required to enter into recognisances in case of libel. This greatly disconcerted James, for it compelled him to send them to prison, and he justly feared the effect of it on the public. But there was no alternative; a warrant was signed for their commitment to the Tower, and they were sent thither in a barge.

The scene which immediately took place showed that James had at length a glimmering of the danger which he had raised. The whole river was crowded with wherries full of people, who crowded round the bishops to entreat their blessings, many rushing breast-high into the water to come near enough. James, in terror, ordered the garrison and guards of the Tower to be doubled; but the same spirit animated the soldiers, who knelt at the approach of the prelates, and also solicited their blessing. Presently the soldiers were found carousing to the health of their prisoners; and when Sir Edward Hales, who had been made Lieutenant of the Tower for his going over to Popery, desired the officers to put a stop to it, they returned and told him that it was impossible, for the soldiers would drink nobody's health but the bishops'. Every day the gates of the Tower were besieged by the equipages of the chief nobility. The very Nonconformists came in bodies to condole with their old persecutors; and Tower Hill was one constant throng of people manifesting their sympathy.

Two days only after the bishops were sent to the Tower—namely, the 10th of June—was announced what, under other circumstances, would have been a most auspicious event for James—the birth of an heir. But the nation was so full of suspicion, both of the monarch and the Jesuits that he had around him, that it would not credit the news that the healthy boy which was born was the actual child of James and his queen. It was certainly of the highest moment that James should have taken every precaution to have the birth verified beyond dispute; but in this respect he had been as singularly maladroit as in all his other affairs. As the Protestants were, of course, highly suspicious, he should have had the usual number of Protestant witnesses ready. But the queen, who sat playing cards at Whitehall till near midnight, was suddenly taken ill a month before the calculated time, and there was neither the Princess Anne present—she was away at Bath,—nor the Archbishop of Canterbury, nor the Dutch ambassador—whom it was so necessary to satisfy on behalf of the Prince and Princess of Orange,—nor any of the Hyde family, not even the Earl of Clarendon, the uncle of Mary and Anne. On the contrary, there were plenty of Jesuits, and the renegades Dover, Peterborough, Murray, Sunderland—who directly afterwards[329] avowed himself a Catholic—Mulgrave, and others. The consequence was that the whole people declared the child spurious; that it had been introduced into the bed in a warming-pan; and when the public announcement was made, and a day of solemn thanksgiving was appointed, there was no rejoicing. Fireworks were let off by order of Government; but the night was black and tempestuous, and flashes of lurid lightning paled the artificial fires, and made the people only the more firm in the belief that heaven testified against the imposture. And yet there was no imposture. There were some Protestants present—sufficient to prevent any collusion, and particularly Dr. Chamberlain, the eminent accoucheur; but James, by his folly and tyranny, had deprived himself of the public confidence, and fixed on his innocent offspring a brand of disavowment, which clung to him and his fortunes, and has only been removed by the cooler judgment of recent times. William of Orange sent over Zulestein to congratulate James on the birth of an heir; but that minister brought back the account that not one person in ten believed the child to be the queen's.

THE SEVEN BISHOPS ENTERING THE TOWER. (See p. 328.)

On Friday, the 15th of June, the first day of[330] term, the bishops were brought from the Tower to the King's Bench, and, pleading not guilty, they were admitted to bail till the 29th of June. During this fortnight the public excitement continued to augment, and from every quarter of the kingdom—even from the Presbyterians of Scotland, who had shown themselves such determined opponents of prelacy, and had been such sufferers from it—came messages of sympathy and encouragement to the bishops. On that day immense crowds assembled to receive their blessings, and to utter others on their way to Westminster Hall; and this homage was the warmer because the prelates had resisted the demand of Sir Edward Hales, the Lieutenant of the Tower, for his fees, this renegade having shown them little courtesy, and now plainly letting them know that, if they came again into his hands, they should lie on the bare stones.

Every means had been taken to pack a jury. Sir Samuel Astrey, the Clerk of the Crown, had been summoned to the palace, and been instructed by James and his great legal adviser, Jeffreys. The judges, too, were of the most base and complying character. They were such as had been raised from the very lowest ranks of the bar for their servile fitness, and because the more eminent lawyers would not stoop to such ignominy. They were Wright; Allibone, a Papist; Holloway and Powell; the Attorney-General, Sir Thomas Powis, an inferior lawyer; the Solicitor-General, Sir William Williams, a man of ability and vigour, but rash, imperious, and unpopular. Ranged against these were the most brilliant lawyers of the time—Sawyer and Finch, formerly Attorney- and Solicitor-General; Pemberton, formerly Chief Justice; Maynard; Sir George Treby, who had been Recorder of London, and others. Somers, afterwards Lord Chancellor in William's reign, was the bishops' junior counsel. The foreman of the jury was Sir Roger Langley. On the side of the prosecution, the judges, and even the blustering Jeffreys, betrayed a sense of terror.

The trial commenced at nine in the morning, and not till seven in the evening did the jury retire to consider their verdict. The lawyers for the prisoners raised great difficulties as to proving the handwriting of the libel, and next in proving its being published in Westminster. The Crown lawyers were obliged to bring into court Blathwayt, a clerk of the Privy Council, for this object; and then the counsel for the prisoners stopped him, and compelled him to state what had passed there between the bishops and the king—much to the chagrin of the Government party. Before the publication could be proved, even Sunderland was obliged to be brought into court in a sedan. He was pale, trembled violently from fright and shame of his late apostacy, and gave his evidence with his eyes fixed on the ground. But even then, when the judges came to consider the bishops' petition, they were divided in opinion. Wright and Allibone declared it a libel, and contended for the royal right of the dispensing power; but Holloway conceded that the petition appeared to him perfectly allowable from subjects to their sovereign; and Powell set himself right with the public and wrong with the Court—a significant sign—by boldly declaring both the Dispensing Power and the Declaration of Indulgence contrary to law.

With such sentiments developing themselves on the bench, there could be little doubt what the verdict would be; yet the jury sat all night, from seven o'clock till six the next morning, before they were fully agreed, there being, however, only three dissentients at first. When the court met at ten o'clock, the crowd, both within and without, was crushing and immense; and when the foreman pronounced the words "Not guilty," Halifax was the first to start up and wave his hat; and such a shout was sent up as was heard as far as Temple Bar. The news flew far and wide; the[331] shouting and rejoicing broke out in every quarter of the town. The whole population, nobility, clergy, people, all seemed gone mad. There were more than sixty lords who had stood out the trial, and now threw money amongst the throngs as they drove away. The people formed a line down to the water's edge, and knelt as the bishops passed through, asking their blessing. The Attorney-General, Williams, was pursued in his coach with curses and groans; and Cartwright, the Bishop of Chester, and James's tool of the High Commission, being descried, was hooted at as "That wolf in sheep's clothing!" and, as he was a very fat man, one cried, "Room for the man with the Pope in his belly!"

The whole town was in an intoxication of delight. Bonfires were lit, guns fired, bells rung all night, and the Pope in effigy was burnt in several places—one before the door of Whitehall itself; another was kindled before the door of the Earl of Salisbury, who had lately gone over to Popery; and his servants, in their ill-timed zeal, rushing out to extinguish it, were attacked, and, firing on the people, killed the parish beadle, who was come to attempt what they themselves were attempting—to put out the fire. That morning James had gone to review his troops on Hounslow Heath. He received the news of the acquittal by a special messenger while in Lord Feversham's tent. He was greatly enraged, and set out at once for London. Before, however, he was clear of the camp the news had flown amongst the soldiers, and a tremendous cheering startled him. "What noise is that?" demanded James. "Oh!" said the general, "it is nothing but the soldiers shouting because the bishops are acquitted." "And call you that nothing?" asked James; and added angrily, "but so much the worse for them."

The very day which pronounced the acquittal of the bishops saw signed and despatched an invitation from the leading Whigs to William of Orange to come over and drive the tyrant from the throne. The Whigs had long been contemplating and preparing for this end; they now saw that the crisis was come. The brutal and besotted king had effectually alienated all hearts from him. From him nothing but destruction of every liberty and sentiment that Englishmen held dear was to be expected; and in the heir which was now, as was generally believed, foisted on the nation by the king and the Jesuits, there was only the pledge of the reign of Popery and proscription, and of the extermination of all those high hopes and privileges which were entwined with Protestant freedom. The Whig leaders had sent repeatedly to William to stimulate him to the enterprise; but, apart from his habitual caution and the salutary fear that Monmouth's reception had inspired, the Prince of Orange had many difficulties to contend with from the peculiar constitution of the Dutch Republic, and the peculiar views and interests of his allies. Though at the head of the Dutch confederation, he had always experienced much opposition from individual states and cities, especially Amsterdam, which his great enemy, Louis of France, managed to influence. This invitation called him to expel from his throne a Catholic king, and replace his Government by a Protestant one, though the Pope and Spain, the most Catholic of countries, were his close allies, and must not be offended. He had, therefore, stipulated that he should receive such an invitation under the hands and seals of the Whig leaders as should leave little doubt of his reception, and that he should be regarded as the saviour from an intolerable ruler, and not forced to attempt a conquest which must in its very success bring ruin by wounding the national pride of England.

He now received a paper, signed by the Earls of Shrewsbury, Devonshire, and Danby, Lord Lumley, Bishop Compton, Edward Russell, the Admiral of England, and Henry Sidney, the brother of the late Algernon Sidney, and afterwards Earl of Romney. This paper, which had been furnished at William's request, was but the result of negotiations between himself and the Whig leaders for some time. He now called into council with the English envoy his confidential friends, Bentinck and Dykvelt, and it was resolved that the time for action was come, and that the invitation should be accepted. In the meantime, whilst William began in earnest, but as secretly as circumstances would allow, his preparations, James at home did everything which a foolish and obstinate ruler could do to complete the alienation of the affections of his subjects. He returned from his camp to his capital only to find it in transports of delight over his own defeat, and resounding with the explosions of guns and crackers, with drinkings of the health of the bishops in the streets, and with the effigy of the Pope blazing before his own gate. So far from making him pause at the contemplation of the avowed and universal spirit of his people, he was only the more exasperated, and continued muttering, "So much the worse for them." He determined to take summary vengeance on the clergy, on the lawyers who[332] had opposed or deserted him, on the army, and on the people. He at once promoted Mr. Solicitor-General Williams, for his unscrupulous conduct on the trial of the bishops, to a baronetcy, and would have placed so convenient a man on the bench could he have spared him at the bar. He dismissed Powell and Holloway; he determined to visit with his vengeance all the clergy throughout the kingdom who had refused to read the Declaration; and an order was issued to all the chancellors of the dioceses and the archdeacons to make a return of them. No matter that they approached ten thousand in number; if necessary, he would drive them all from their benefices. The judges on the circuits were ordered to denounce these refractory clergy, and to speak in the most derogatory terms of the bishops. He broke up his camp, the soldiers of which had been intended to overawe the capital, and stand by whilst he destroyed the national Constitution and the national religion; but had now terrified and disgusted him by drinking the healths of the liberated bishops.

But all his angry attempts only recoiled on himself, and showed more clearly than ever that the reins of power were irrecoverably slipping from his fingers. The spell of royalty—a people's respect—was utterly broken. The chancellors and archdeacons paid no attention to the order for reporting their independent brethren; the High Commission met, and, so far from finding any returns, received a letter from one of the most truckling of their own body, Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, resigning his place in the High Commission. If such a man saw the handwriting on the wall, the warning, they felt, must be imminent, and they departed in confusion. The judges, on their part, found themselves deserted on their circuits; nobody but the sheriff and his javelin men came to meet them, and then went through their duties amid every sign of indifference to their dignity. They were treated, not as the high-minded judges of England, but as the base and venal tools of a most lawless and mischievous monarch. The soldiers were as bold in their separate quarters as they had been in camp. James thought he could deal with them separately, and tried the experiment by ordering a regiment of infantry, which had been raised in the Catholic district of Staffordshire, to sign an engagement to support him in dispersing all the rest, or to quit the army. Almost to a man they piled their arms, and the confounded king was obliged to withdraw the order. But James had a remedy even for the defection of the army. In Ireland the brutal and debauched Tyrconnel had been busily engaged in drilling Irish Celts, and preparing an army so strongly Catholic that he might by this means carry out the royal design of repealing the Act of Settlement, and driving the Protestant colonists from their lands. These troops James sent for, regiment after regiment, and the people of England saw, with equal indignation and alarm, that their liberties, their religion, their laws, were to be trodden down, and the kingdom reduced to a miserable abode of slaves by the wild tribes of the sister island, vengeful with centuries of unrequited oppressions. This put the climax to the national resentment, and still more pressing messages were sent over to William to hasten his approach, and leaders of party in large numbers contemplated a speedy transit to his standard. It was at this juncture that the wild genius of Wharton gave vent to the pent-up feelings of Protestant wrath, by the adaptation of the old Irish tune of "Lillibullero" to English words.

William, meanwhile, was making strenuous preparations for his enterprise. He formed a camp at Nimeguen, collecting troops and artillery from the different fortresses. Twenty-four additional ships of war were fitted out for service, and arms and accoutrements were in busy preparation in every manufactory in Holland. He had saved up unusual funds for him, and had money also pouring in from England and from the refugee Huguenots, who hoped much from his enterprise in favour of Protestantism. It was impossible that all this preparation could escape the attention of other nations, and especially of the quick-sighted Louis XIV. of France. But William had a ready answer—that he wanted an extra squadron to go in pursuit of a number of Algerine corsairs which had made their appearance off the Dutch coasts. The military preparations were not so easily explained; but though Louis was satisfied that they were intended against England, James, blind to his danger, as strongly suspected that they were meant to operate against France. The only enemies which William had to really dread were Louis and the Council of Amsterdam, which Louis had so long influenced to hostility to William, and without whose consent no expedition could be permitted. But the ambition and the persecuting bigotry of Louis removed this only difficulty out of William's way in a manner which looked like the actual work of Providence. The two points on which Amsterdam was pre-eminently sensitive were trade and Protestantism. Louis contrived to incense them on both these heads. His[333] unrelenting persecution of the Huguenots, including also Dutch Protestants who had settled in France, raised an intense feeling in Amsterdam, stimulated by the outcries and representations of their relatives there. To all appeals for tolerance and mercy Louis was utterly deaf; and whilst this feeling was at its height, he imposed a heavy duty on the importation of herrings from Holland into France. Sixty thousand persons in Holland depended on this trade, and the effect was, therefore, disastrous. In vain did the French envoy, Avaux, represent these things; Louis continued haughty and inexorable.

VIEW IN THE HAGUE: THE HALL OF THE KNIGHTS IN THE BINNENHOF.

These circumstances, in which the pride and bigotry of Louis got the better of his worldly policy, completed the triumph of William of Orange. He seized on them to effect a removal of the long-continued jealousies of the Council of Amsterdam against him. He entered into negotiations with the leading members of the Council through his trusty friends Bentinck and Dykvelt, and as they were in the worst of humours with Louis, the old animosities against William were suffered to sleep, and he obtained the sanction of the States-General to his proposed expedition for the release of England from the French and Catholic influences, and its reception into the confederation of Protestant nations. Another circumstance just at this crisis occurred to strengthen all these feelings in Holland and Germany, and to account for any amount of troops collected at Nimeguen. The aggressions of Louis had roused and combined all Europe against him. Powers both Catholic and Protestant had felt themselves compelled to unite in order to repress his attempts at universal dominion. The King of Spain, the Emperor of Germany, the King of Sweden had entered into the League of Augsburg to defend the empire; and to these were added various Italian princes, with the Pope Innocent XI. himself at their head. Louis had not hesitated to insult the Pope on various occasions, and now he saw the pontiff in close coalition with heretic princes to repel his schemes.

In May of this year died Ferdinand of Bavaria, the Elector of Cologne. Besides Cologne, the elector possessed the bishoprics of Liége, Münster, and Hildesheim. In 1672 Louis had endeavoured[334] to secure a successor to the Elector in the French interest. He therefore proposed as his coadjutor the Cardinal Furstemberg, Bishop of Strasburg; and he would have succeeded, but it was necessary, in order to his choice, that Furstemberg should first resign his bishopric; to this the Pope, in his hostility to Louis, would not consent; he refused his dispensation. But now, the Elector having died, the contest was renewed. Louis again proposed the cardinal; the allies of the League of Augsburg nominated the Prince Clement of Bavaria, who was elected and confirmed by the Pope, though a youth of only seventeen years of age. The allies were equally successful in the bishoprics of Liége, Münster, and Hildesheim; but the principal fortresses, Bonn, Neutz, Kaiserswerth, and Rheinberg, were held by the troops of Furstemberg, and therefore were at the service of France. Louis was, however, exasperated at the partial defeat of his plans, and complained loudly of the partiality of the Pope, and began to march troops to the support of Furstemberg.

But whilst Louis was actually planning a sweeping descent on the German Empire, in which William of Orange lay pre-eminently in his way, he was at the same time in danger of a more momentous occurrence—that of William leaving the way open by sailing for England. If William should succeed in placing himself on the throne of England, he would be able to raise a far more formidable opposition to his plans of aggrandisement than he had ever yet done. Even with his small resources he had proved a terrible enemy, and had arrayed all Europe against him; what would he do if he could bring all the powers of England by land and sea to co-operate with Holland, Spain, Austria, Sweden, and the Netherlands? The stupidity of James and the offended pride of Louis saved William in this dilemma, and led Louis to commit on this occasion the cardinal blunder of his reign.

It was impossible that Louis could be ignorant of what William was doing. The preparations of ships and troops were indications of a contemplated attack somewhere. It might be directed to resist the French on the side of Germany; but other facts equally noticeable demonstrated that the object was England. Avaux, the French envoy at the Hague, in the absence of Abbeville, who was on a visit to England, noticed, in the months of April and May, a swift sailing boat, which made rapid and frequent passages between England and Rotterdam; and he noticed that, after every arrival from England, there were closetings of William and the English Whig leaders at the Hague, especially Russell. After the birth of the heir-apparent of England, William despatched Zulestein to London with his professedly warm, though they could not be very sincere, congratulations on the event; but soon after, on the escape to the Hague of Rear-Admiral Herbert, who was supposed to carry the invitation of the leading Whigs to William, the prince omitted the child's name in the prayers for the royal family of England, and openly expressed his doubts of his being the real child of the queen.

These circumstances, the continued activity of the military preparations, the constant sailings of this mysterious boat, and the subsequent closetings, with the continual growth of the number of distinguished English refugees at the Hague, satisfied the French envoy that a descent on England was certain and nigh at hand. Avaux not only warned Louis of the imminent danger, but he warned James by every successive mail from the Hague, through Barillon. Louis took the alarm. He despatched Bonrepaux to London to arouse James to a due sense of his peril, and offered to join his fleet with an English one to prevent the passage of the Dutch armament. He held a powerful body of troops ready to march to the frontiers of Holland, and ordered Avaux to announce to the States-General that his master was fully cognisant of the warlike preparations of the Stadtholder; that he was quite aware of their destination, and that, as the King of England was his ally, he should consider the first act of hostility against James as a declaration of war against himself. He at the same time declared the Cardinal Furstemberg and the Chapter of Cologne under his protection. Simultaneously the same message was delivered to the Spanish Governor of Flanders, and Marshal d'Humières was despatched to take the command of the French army in that quarter.

This plain declaration fell like a thunderbolt into the midst of the States-General. There was the utmost evident confusion. A poor and embarrassed excuse was made, and a courtier sent post haste to fetch William from Minden, where he was in secret negotiation with the Elector of Brandenburg. If James took the alarm, and Louis, as was his intent, went heartily into the coalition to defeat the enterprise, it must become a most hazardous undertaking, even if it were at all feasible. But the folly of that most wrong-headed of the Stuarts again saved the Prince of[335] Orange, and removed the last difficulty out of the way of his enterprise. James would not believe a word of the warning. He would not believe that his own daughter would sanction an attempt at his dethronement. He would not believe that William's armament had any other object than the King of France himself. He highly resented the declaration of Louis that there was an alliance between them, as calculated to alarm his own subjects, especially his Protestant ones. He received Bonrepaux with cold hauteur in return for his offers of assistance; and Van Citters, the Dutch ambassador, with proportionate cordiality, who hastened on the part of the States to assure him that the French communications were sheer inventions. He gave orders that all the foreign ministers should be informed that there was no such league between France and England as Louis had pretended for his own purposes.

In fact, James was living all this time in the midst of a set of traitors, who, even to his most confidential minister, Sunderland, had secretly gone over to William, and were putting him in possession of every daily thought, word, and intention of their master. Besides the seven that had signed, and of whom Admiral Russell was already with William, the Earl of Shrewsbury had fled to him, having mortgaged his estates and taken forty thousand pounds with him, and offered it to the prince. The two sons of the Marquis of Winchester, Lord Wiltshire, and a younger brother; Halifax's son, Lord Eland; Danby's son, Lord Dumblaine; Lord Lorne, the son of the unfortunate Earl of Argyll; Lord Mordaunt, Gerard, Earl of Macclesfield, and Admiral Herbert were already with him. Herbert had been appointed Admiral to the Dutch fleet, with a pension of six thousand pounds a year. Wildman, Carstairs, Ferguson, Hume, who had escaped from the Argyll and Monmouth expeditions, went there; and, whilst the sons of Halifax and Danby were with William, they themselves, though remaining in England with Devonshire, Lumley, and others, were sworn to rise in his favour the moment he landed. But the worst of the unsuspected traitors at his own Court were the Lords Churchill and Sunderland. James had made Churchill almost everything that he was; on Sunderland he had heaped benefits without stint or measure. He had scraped money together by all possible means; and James did not merely connive at it, he favoured it. This meanest of creeping things was in the pay of France to the amount of six thousand pounds per annum; he had a pension from Ireland of five thousand pounds more; as President of the Council he occupied the post of Prime Minister, and derived immense emoluments from fines, forfeitures, pardons, and the like. Rather than lose his place, he had openly professed Catholicism; but scarcely had he thus sold his soul for his beloved pelf and power, when he saw as plainly as any one else that the ground was sliding from under the feet of his foolish master, and was overwhelmed with consternation. He hastened again to sell himself to William, on condition that his honours and property should be secure; and thus had James his very Prime Minister, his most confidential and trusted servant, at every turn drawing out all his plans and thoughts, and sending them to his intended invader. Sunderland's wife was the mistress of Sidney, who was at the Hague; and, through her, this most contemptible of men sent constantly his traitorous communications to her paramour, and so to William.

With such snakes in the grass about him, James was completely blinded to his danger. Churchill and Sunderland persuaded him that there was no danger from Holland, and inflamed his resentment at what they called the presumption of Louis. They were completely successful; and Sunderland, after the establishment of William in England, made a boast of this detestable conduct. Louis was so much disgusted by the haughty rejection of his warning, that he himself committed a gross political error. Instead of preventing the descent on England, and the aggrandisement of his great opponent William—by far the most important measure for him—by directly attacking the frontiers of Holland, and keeping William engaged, in his vexation he abandoned the besotted James, and made an attack on the German Empire. Dividing his army, one portion of it, under the Marquis of Boufflers, seized Worms, Mainz, and Treves; a second, under Humières, made itself master of Bonn; and a third, under the Duke of Duras and Marshal Vauban, took Philippsburg by storm. The greater part of the Rhine was at once in Louis's hands, and great was the triumph in Paris. But not the less was the exultation of William of Orange; for now, the French army removed, and the mind of Louis incensed against James, the way was wide open for him to England.

No time was now lost in preparing to depart. A Memorial, professing to be addressed by the Protestants of England to the States, but supposed to have been drawn up by Burnet, was published,[336] accompanied by two declarations in the name of William to the people of England and Scotland. These latter were the work of the Grand Pensionary Fagel, but condensed and adapted more to the English taste by Burnet. In the Memorial the people of England were made to complain of the wholesale violation of the Constitution and the liberties of his subjects by James, and of the attempt to fix a false and Popish heir on the nation. They called on William to come over and vindicate the rights of his wife, and at the same time to rescue the country of her birth and her rightful claims from Popery and arbitrary power.

The Declaration to England and Scotland in reply was drawn with consummate art. William admitted that he had seen with deep concern the fundamental and continual violations of the laws of the kingdom. The contempt of Acts of Parliament; the expulsion of just judges from the bench to make room for the servile instruments of oppression; the introduction of prohibited persons into both the State and Church, to the jeopardy of freedom and true religion; the arbitrary treatment of persons of dignity by the illegal High Commission Court; the forcible introduction of Papists into the colleges; the removal of lords-lieutenants, and the destruction of corporations which stood firmly for the rights and religion of the nation; the attempt to impose a spurious and Popish issue on the throne, and the equally atrocious attempt to tread down English liberties by an army of Irish Papists: for these reasons William declared himself ready to comply with the prayers of the English people, and to come over with a sufficient force for his own protection, but with no intention or desire of conquest, but simply to restore freedom by an independent Parliament, to inquire into the circumstances attending the birth of the pretended prince, and to leave everything else to the decision of Parliament and the nation. He declared that he should endeavour to re-establish the Church of England and the Church of Scotland, and at the same time to protect the just rights of other professors of religion willing to live as good subjects in obedience to the laws.

When copies of these papers were sent to James by his ambassador, Abbeville, from the Hague, the delusion of the affrighted monarch was suddenly and rudely dissipated. He gazed on the ominous documents—in which his subjects invited a foreign prince to take possession of his throne, and that prince, his son-in-law, accepted the proposal—with a face from which the colour fled, and with a violently trembling frame. Fear at once did that which no reason, no accumulation of the most visible signs of his vanishing popularity could ever effect. He at once hastened to make every concession. He summoned his Council, and forwarded a despatch to the Hague, declaring that he regarded the siege of Philippsburg by Louis as a breach of the Treaty of Nimeguen, and that he was ready to take the field against him in conjunction with the forces of Spain and Holland. Before an answer could be received, James hurried forward the work of retractation. When he looked around him there was not a power or party that he had not alienated—the Cavaliers and Tories who fought for his father, and supported his brother through a thousand arbitrary measures; the Church, the Dissenters, the army, the navy, the bench, the bar, the whole people, held in constant terror of being made the abject victims of Popish domination, he had, in his insane rage for his religion, offended, injured, and alarmed beyond measure. He now sought to win back the able Halifax; he issued a proclamation, protesting that he would protect the Church, and maintain the Act of Uniformity; that Catholics should no longer be admitted to Parliament or the Council. He sent for the bishops, and asked for their earnest advice in the restoration of public affairs. He ordered the restoration of the deposed magistrates and lords-lieutenants; he reinstated Compton, Bishop of London; he gave back the charter to the City, and, a few days after, the charters of the provincial corporations; he immediately abolished the Court of High Commission; and finally replaced Dr. Hough and the ejected fellows of Magdalen College in full possession of their house and privileges.

These sweeping concessions showed plainly that the tyrant knew very well how odious his encroachments had been, and that nothing but fear could force their abandonment from his ungenerous soul. They had, therefore, the less effect. There was public rejoicing, indeed, but it was for the victory over the mean despot, not for gratitude for concessions which it was felt would be resumed the moment danger should pass; and this feeling was deepened by an accident. The Bishop of Winchester was sent down to Oxford to formally reinstate the principal and fellows of Magdalen, but was as suddenly recalled; and this event, coupled with a rumour that the Dutch fleet had put to sea, but was dispersed by a storm[337] and put back, made the people more firmly conclude that no faith could be reposed in the words of James. The bishop, it was contended, had been temporarily recalled on urgent affairs; but the effect remained the same. Still, the City of London celebrated the recovery of its charter with much rejoicing, and sent a deputation to express their gratitude to the king. The Dukes of Somerset, Ormond, and Newcastle, the Marquis of Winchester, the Earls of Derby, Nottingham, and Danby, and the Bishop of London, declared their fidelity, and the prelates issued a form of prayer for the safety and prosperity of the royal family.

WILLIAM OF ORANGE EMBARKING TO JOIN THE "BRILL." (See p. 338.)

Whilst James was exerting himself to conciliate his subjects, he was equally industrious in putting the kingdom into a posture of defence. He made Lord Dartmouth Commander of the Fleet, which consisted of thirty-seven men-of-war, and seven fire-ships—a naval force inferior to that of the prince, and, still worse, weak in the principles of loyalty, though Dartmouth himself might be relied on. His army, including about six thousand Irish and Scots, amounted to forty thousand men—more than enough to repel the force of the invaders, had the hearts of the men been in the cause.

William was compelled to delay his embarkation for more than a week by tempestuous weather. His fleet, under the command of Herbert, which was lying off Scheveningen, on the 28th of September, was compelled to seek shelter in Helvoetsluys. The wind raged furiously till the 15th of October, and public prayers were offered in the churches for more favourable weather. All attempts to invade England had, since William of Normandy's enterprise, been notoriously defeated by storms; and the people became so superstitious on this head that it was found necessary, under severe penalties, to forbid foreboding language. On the 16th, the wind abating, William took a solemn leave of the States-General. He thanked them for their long and devoted support of him in his endeavours for the independence of Europe, and committed his wife to their protection whilst he was absent for the same great object, and the security of the Protestant religion. He declared that if he died[338] it would be as their servant; if he lived, it would be as their friend. The Pensionary Fagel, now old and failing, replied with great emotion; and, amid the tears of most present, William stood like a stoic, without any visible agitation. The deputies of the principal towns accompanied him to the water side, and that evening he went on board his frigate the Brill. The next day a public fast was held in the Hague, with sermons and prayers for the success of the expedition, and Mary continued to retain her place in the church in public during the long service from half-past ten in the morning till half-past seven in the afternoon.

On the afternoon of the 19th the fleet sailed from Helvoetsluys, the men-of-war, in three divisions, forming a long line out at sea, and the transports driving before the breeze nearer land. The day was fine, the wind steady from the south-west; and as the eventful squadron passed the sandy downs of Scheveningen, the inhabitants of the Hague crowded them in thousands, and raised acclamations of anticipated success. But the scene rapidly changed. By ten o'clock at night a furious tempest was again raging, which dispersed the fleet, sank one ship, damaged many others, compelled them to throw overboard great quantities of stores, and destroyed a thousand horses through their being closed down under hatches. The fleet managed to regain Helvoetsluys, which William himself reached on the 21st. He refused to go on shore, but sent to the States for fresh supplies, and busied himself in pushing on his repairs.

The news of this disaster reached England with many aggravations, so that it was imagined that the expedition would be given up for that season; and James declared with much satisfaction that it was what he expected, the Host having been exposed for several days. He seized, however, the time afforded by this delay to assemble an extraordinary body, the members of the Privy Council, the peers who were in or near London, the judges, the law officers of the Crown, the Lord Mayor and aldermen, the queen-dowager, and two-and-twenty women—some ladies about the queen, some menials. The Princess Anne was summoned, but excused herself on account of indisposition. "I have called you together," said James, "upon a very extraordinary occasion; but extraordinary diseases must have extraordinary remedies. The malicious endeavours of my enemies have so poisoned the minds of many of my subjects, that, by the reports I have from all hands, I have reason to believe that many do think this son which God has pleased to bless me with be none of mine, but a supposititious child." The witnesses were all examined on oath except the queen-dowager, and presented such a mass of evidence as was undoubtedly complete, and it was enrolled in chancery and published. But such was the intense prejudice of the age that it failed to convince the public at large. As Anne was not present, the Council waited on her with a copy of the evidence, on which she observed, "My lords, this was not necessary; the king's word is more to me than all these depositions." Yet her uncle, Clarendon, assures us that she never mentioned the child but with ridicule, and only once was heard to call it the Prince of Wales, and that was when she thought it was dying. Anne, in fact, was devoted to the cause of the Prince of Orange; and Barillon says that she avoided every opportunity of convincing herself of what she did not wish to believe.

This singular deed of verification of the child's identity was the last act of the ministry of Sunderland. His treason had not escaped observation. A letter of his wife's had been intercepted and shown to him by the king, in which she was found in close correspondence with Sidney. He strictly denied all knowledge of it, and did not hesitate to advert to his wife's liaison with Sidney as sufficiently exculpatory of himself. For a time he lulled James's suspicions, but they again revived; and, on the very evening of this extraordinary council, James sent Middleton and demanded the Seals. To the last Sunderland acted the part of injured innocence; but was not long in getting away to the Hague, not, however, in time to join William before his second embarkation. His office of Secretary to the Southern Department was given to Middleton, and of Secretary to the Northern Department to Lord Preston, both Protestants. Petre was dismissed from the Council, but retained his post as Clerk of the Closet at Whitehall. But all this did not alter the tone of public feeling. The very day before the assembling of the extraordinary council, the London mob demolished a new Catholic chapel; and on the 14th of October, the king's birthday, there had been no sign of rejoicing, not even the firing of the Tower guns; but the people reminded one another that it was the anniversary of the landing of William the Conqueror. Their thoughts were running on the landing of another William.

On the 1st of November the Prince of Orange again set sail, and this time with a favourable[339] though strong gale from the east. Besides the English noblemen and gentlemen whom we have mentioned, including also Fletcher of Saltoun, William had with him Marshal Schomberg, an able and experienced general, who was appointed second in command; Bentinck, Overkirk, and Counts Solmes and Sturm. Herbert was the chief admiral, much to the chagrin of the Dutch admirals, but very wisely so determined by William, who well knew the hereditary jealousy of the Dutch fleet, and the remembered boast and besom of Van Tromp in England. He resolved that, if they came to conflict with Lord Dartmouth, it should be English commander against English, or his cause might receive great prejudice. For twelve hours William drove before the breeze towards the coasts of Yorkshire, as if intending to land there; then, suddenly tacking, he stood down the Channel before the gale. Dartmouth attempted to issue from the mouth of the Thames to intercept him, but the violent wind which favoured William perfectly disabled him. His vessels as they came out to sea were driven back with much damage, compelled to strike yards and top-masts, and to lie abreast the Longsand; whilst William, leading the way in the Brill, sailed rapidly past with his whole fleet and a crowd of other vessels that had gathered in his rear, to the amount of nearly seven hundred. It was twenty-four hours before Dartmouth could give chase, and on the 5th of November William reached Torbay, his real destination.

William took up his quarters in a cottage whilst his troops were landing, and from its thatched roof waved the flag of Holland, bearing the significant motto, "I will maintain the Protestant Religion and the Liberties of England." Burnet was one of the first to congratulate William on his landing on English soil; and, at the recommendation of Carstares, the first thing on the complete disembarkation was to collect the troops, and return public thanks to Heaven for the successful passage of the armament. The next day William marched in the direction of Exeter; but the rains continued, and the roads were foul, so that he made little progress. It was not till the 9th that he appeared before the city. The people received him with enthusiasm, but the magistracy shrank back in terror, and Bishop Lamplough and the dean had fled to warn the king of the invasion. The city was in utter confusion, and at first shut its gates; but as quickly agreed to open them, and William was accommodated in the vacated deanery. But the people of the West had suffered too much from the support of Monmouth not to have learnt caution. A service was ordered in the cathedral to return thanks for the safe arrival of the prince; but the canons absented themselves, and only some of the prebendaries and choristers attended, and, as soon as Burnet began to read the prince's declaration, these hurried out as fast as they could. On Sunday, which was the 11th, Burnet was the only clergyman that could be got to preach before the prince, and the Dissenters refused the fanatic Ferguson admittance to their chapel. This extraordinary person, however, who appears to have been one-third enthusiast and two-thirds knave, called for a hammer, and exclaiming, "I will take the kingdom of heaven by storm!" broke open the door, marched to the pulpit with his drawn sword in his hand, and delivered one of those wild and ill-judged philippics against the king which did so much mischief in the attempt of Monmouth.

Altogether, so far the cause of William appeared as little promising as that of Monmouth had done. Notwithstanding the many earnest entreaties from men of high rank and of various classes—nobles, bishops, officers of the army and navy,—a week had elapsed, and no single person of influence had joined him. The people only, as in Monmouth's case, had crowded about him with shouts of welcome. William was extremely disappointed and chagrined; he declared that he was deluded and betrayed, and he vowed that he would re-embark, and leave those who had called for him to work out their own deliverance, or receive their due punishment. But on Monday, the 12th, his spirits were a little cheered by a gentleman of Crediton, named Burrington, attended by a few followers, joining his standard. This was immediately followed, however, by the news that Lord Lovelace, with about seventy of his tenants and neighbours, had been intercepted by the militia at Cirencester, taken prisoners, and sent to Gloucester Castle. The slow movement of the disaffected appears to have originated in William's not having landed in Yorkshire, as was expected, but in the west, where he was not expected. In the North Lords Delamere and Brandon in Cheshire, Danby and Lumley in Yorkshire, Devonshire and Chesterfield in Derbyshire, in Lancashire the Earl of Manchester, in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire Rutland and Stamford, and others were all waiting to receive him. The very army which had been encamped on Hounslow Heath was the seat of a secret conspiracy of officers, with Churchill himself at their head, who kept up constant communication[340] with the club at the "Rose" tavern in Covent Garden, of which Lord Colchester was president. But all this concert was paralysed for a time by William's appearance in so distant a quarter.

But the elements of revolt, which had suffered a momentary shock, now began to move visibly. The very day that Lord Lovelace was captured, Lord Colchester marched into Exeter, attended by about seventy horse, and accompanied by the hero of "Lillibullero," Thomas Wharton. They were quickly followed by Russell, the son of the Duke of Bedford, one of the earliest promoters of the revolution, and still more significantly by the Earl of Abingdon, a staunch Tory, who had supported James till he saw that nothing but the reign of Popery would satisfy him. A still more striking defection from the king immediately followed. Lord Cornbury, the eldest son of the Earl of Clarendon, pretended to have received orders to march with three regiments of cavalry stationed at Salisbury Moor, to the enemy in the west. He was a young man entirely under the influence of Lord Churchill, having been brought up in the household of his cousin, the Princess Anne, where Churchill and his wife directed everything; and there can be no doubt that this movement was the work of Churchill. As the cavalry proceeded from place to place by a circuitous route to Axminster, the officers became suspicious, and demanded to see the orders. Cornbury replied that his orders were to beat up the quarters of the army in the night near Honiton. The loyal officers, who had received hints that all was not right, demanded to see the written orders; but Cornbury, who had none to produce, stole away in the dark with a few followers who were in the secret, and got to the Dutch camp. His regiment, and that of the Duke of Berwick, James's own (natural) son, with the exception of about thirty troops, returned to Salisbury; but the third regiment, the Duke of St. Albans', followed the colonel, Langton, to Honiton, where General Talmash received them; and most of the officers and a hundred and fifty privates declared for the prince, the rest being made prisoners, but soon afterwards discharged.

The news of this defection of one so near to the king's family created the greatest consternation in the palace. In his terror James summoned a military council. He was anxious to receive the assurances of fidelity from his other officers—as if any assurances, under the circumstances, anything but leading them against the enemy, could test the loyalty of these men. He told them that he wished to be satisfied that there were no more Cornburys amongst them; and that if any had scruples about fighting for him, he was ready to receive back their commissions. Of course they protested the most ardent devotion to his cause, though there was not a man of them that was not already pledged to desert him. Churchill, recently made a lieutenant-general, and the Duke of Grafton, the king's nephew, were especially fervid in their expressions of loyalty; so, too, were Trelawney, smarting secretly over the persecution of his brother, the Bishop of Bristol, and the savage Kirke, who, when James had importuned him to turn Papist, had replied that he "was sorry, but he had already engaged to the Grand Turk that if he changed his religion he would become a Mussulman." Reassured by these hollow professions, James gave orders for joining the camp at Salisbury; but the next morning, before he could set out, he was waited on by a numerous deputation of lords spiritual and temporal, with Sancroft at their head, praying that a free Parliament might be immediately called, and communication opened with the Prince of Orange.

James received the deputation ungraciously. In all his hurried concessions he had still shown his stubborn spirit by refusing to give up the Dispensing power; and now, though he declared that what they asked he passionately desired, he added that he could not call a Parliament till the Prince of Orange quitted the kingdom. "How," he asked, "can you have a free Parliament whilst a foreign prince, at the head of a foreign force, has the power to return a hundred members?" He then fell foul of the bishops, reminding them that the other day they refused to avow under their hands their disapproval of the invasion, on the plea that their vocation was not in politics; and yet here they were at the very head of a political movement. He charged them with fomenting the rebellion, and retired, declaring to his courtiers that he would not concede an atom. He then appointed a council of five lords—of whom two were Papists, and the third Jeffreys—to keep order during his absence, sent off the Prince of Wales to Portsmouth to the care of the Duke of Berwick, the commander, and set out for Salisbury. He reached his camp on the 19th of November, and ordered a review the next day at Warminster, of Kirke's division. Churchill and Kirke were particularly anxious that he should proceed to this review, and Kirke and Trelawney hastened on to their forces, on pretence of making the necessary preparations. On the other hand, Count de Roye as earnestly dissuaded James from going to Warminster. He[341] told him that the enemy's advanced foot was at Wincanton, and that the position at Warminster, or even that where they were at Salisbury, was untenable. James, however, was resolved to go; but the next morning, the 20th, he was prevented by a violent bleeding at the nose, which continued unchecked for three days.

WILLIAM OF ORANGE ENTERING EXETER. (See p. 339.)

Scarcely had this impediment occurred when[342] news came that the king's forces had been attacked at Wincanton, and worsted by some of the division of General Mackay. James was now assured that, had he gone to Warminster, he would have been seized by traitors near his person, and carried off to the enemy's quarters. He was advised to arrest Churchill and Grafton; but, with his usual imprudence, he refused, and summoned them along with the other officers to a military council, to decide whether they should advance or retreat. Feversham, Roye, and Dumbarton argued for a retreat; Churchill persisted in his recommendation of an advance to the post at Warminster. The council lasted till midnight, when Churchill and Grafton, seeing that their advice was not followed, felt the time was come to throw off the mask, and therefore rode directly away to the prince's lines. The next morning the discovery of this desertion filled the camp with consternation, and this was at its height when it was known that Churchill's brother, a colonel, Trelawney, Barclay, and about twenty privates had ridden after the fugitives. It was said that Kirke was gone too, but it was not the fact; and he was now arrested for having disobeyed orders sent to him from Salisbury; but he professed such indignation at the desertion of Churchill and the others, that the shallow-minded king set him again at liberty. The deserters were received by William with a most gracious welcome, though Schomberg remarked of Churchill that he was the first lieutenant-general that he had ever heard of running away from his colours.

In James's camp all was confusion, suspicion, and dismay. There was not a man who was sure of his fellow, and the retreat which commenced more resembled a flight. Numbers who would have fought had they been led at once to battle, now lost heart, and stole away on all sides. The news that found its way every hour into the demoralised camp was enough to ruin any army. From every quarter came tidings of insurrection. The Earl of Bath, the Governor of Plymouth, had surrendered the place solemnly to William; Sir Edward Seymour, Sir William Portman, Sir Francis Warre—men of immense influence in Devon, Somerset, and Dorset—were already with William at Exeter; a paper had been drawn up and signed by the leading persons there to stand by the prince, and, whether he succeeded or whether he fell, never to cease till they had obtained all the objects in his declaration; Delamere had risen in Chester, and had reached Manchester on his way south; Danby had surprised the garrison at York; the town had warmly welcomed him, and a great number of peers, baronets, and gentlemen were in arms with him. Devonshire had called together the authorities and people of Derby, and published his reason for appearing in arms, calling on them to assist all true men in obtaining a settlement of the public rights in a free Parliament. At Nottingham he was met by the Earls of Rutland, Stamford, Manchester, Chesterfield, and the Lords Cholmondeley and Grey de Ruthyn.

These were tidings of a reaction as determined as James's headstrong career had been; but the worst had not yet overtaken him. On the evening of November 24th he had retreated towards London as far as Andover. Prince George of Denmark, the husband of the Princess Anne, and the Duke of Ormond, supped with him. Prince George was a remarkably stupid personage, whose constant reply to any news was, "Est-il possible?" When the intelligence of one desertion after another came he had exclaimed, "Est-il possible?" But the moment supper was over and the king gone to bed, Prince George and Ormond rode off to the enemy too. When James the next morning was informed of this mortifying news, he coolly replied, "What! Is 'Est-il possible' gone too? Were he not my son-in-law, a single trooper would have been a greater loss." With the prince and Ormond had also fled Lord Drumlanrig, the eldest son of the Duke of Queensberry, Mr. Boyle, Sir George Hewit, and other persons of distinction. The blow was severe; and though James at the first moment, being stunned, as it were, seemed to bear it with indifference, he pursued his way to London in a state of intense exasperation. There the first news that met him was the flight of his own daughter Anne. Anne was bound up, soul and body, with the Churchills, and it had no doubt been for some time settled amongst them that they should all get away to the prince her brother-in-law.

It was towards evening of the same day that Anne fled that James arrived at Whitehall, agitated by the awful desertions of his highest officers and his nearest relatives. This announcement put the climax to his torture. He exclaimed, "God[343] help me! My very children have forsaken me." Severe as the punishment of his desperate treason against his people deserved to be, this certainly was a cruel fate. For some days a lady near his person records that she thought she saw in him occasional aberrations of intellect. That night he sat late in council, and it was urged on him to call together such peers and prelates as were in London to consult on the necessary steps in this crisis. The next day came together nearly fifty peers and bishops, and James asked their advice as to calling a Parliament. On this head there appeared no difference of opinion; but Halifax, Nottingham, and others, urged with equal earnestness that all Catholics should be dismissed from office, and a general amnesty published for all in arms against him. James assented to the calling a Parliament, but his eyes were still not opened to the folly of his past conduct, and he would give no assurance of dismissing the Papists, and broke out into vehement language at the proposal to pardon his enemies. "My lords," he said, "you are wonderfully anxious for the safety of my enemies, but none of you troubles himself about my safety." And he vowed that he would yet take vengeance on those who had deserted him, and, above all, on Churchill. Clarendon, who was on the eve of running off to William, took the opportunity to utter the bitter feelings which his dismissal from the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland to make way for Tyrconnel had no doubt long left in his mind. He upbraided James with his dogged and incurable Popery, with sacrificing everybody and everything for it; declaring that, even at that moment, James was raising a regiment from which Protestants were rigorously excluded. He taunted him with running away from the enemy, and asked him who was likely to fight for him when he himself was the first to flee.

After this severe treatment by his closest connections, James appeared to comply with the advice of the lords. He sent for Halifax, Nottingham, and Godolphin, and informed them that he had appointed them Commissioners to treat with William. He dismissed Sir Edward Hales from the Tower, and placed Bevil Skelton, a Protestant, there. But the nature or the intention of this most obtuse of bigots was by no means changed; he was internally as determined as ever to reverse every concession on the first possible occasion. Barillon tells us that he assured him that all this was a mere feint; that he only sent the Commissioners to William in order to gain time for sending his wife and child into France; that as to calling a Parliament, that would only be to put himself into their power, and compel him to submit to their conditions; that he had no faith in his troops, except the Irish; none of the rest would fight for him; and, therefore, as soon as the queen and young prince were safe, he should get away to Ireland, Scotland, or France, and await the turn of events. Such was the utterly hopeless character of the Stuart race!

To clear the way for the escape of the royal infant, Lord Dover was put in command at Portsmouth, and James sent orders to Lord Dartmouth to see that the child was safely conveyed to the French coast. In anticipation of the accomplishment of this object, he made every preparation for his own flight. He sent to Jeffreys to bring the Great Seal, and take up his quarters with it in the palace, lest by any means it should fall into the hands of the invader, and thus give an air of authority to his proceedings. But his escape was delayed by unpleasant news from Lord Dartmouth. The announcement of the calling of a Parliament, and of attempted agreement with the Prince of Orange, had spread exultation through the navy, and the officers had despatched an address of fervent thanks to James, when the arrival of the infant prince awoke a general suspicion that all was still hollow, and that James meant nothing but escape. The officers were in great agitation, and plainly pointed out to Dartmouth his heavy responsibility if he allowed the prince to quit the kingdom. Dartmouth, therefore, wrote James, declaring that he would risk his life for the support of the Crown, but that he dared not undertake to facilitate the escape of the Prince of Wales. This was confounding news, and James took instant measures for the return of his son to London, and for his escape by another means to France.

Meanwhile William was gradually advancing towards the capital, and, on the 6th of December, the king's Commissioners met him at Hungerford, where they found the Earls of Clarendon and Oxford already swelling the Court of the invader. They were received with much respect, and submitted their master's proposal that all matters in dispute should be referred to the Parliament for which the writs were ordered, and that, in the meantime, the Dutch army should not advance nearer than forty miles from London. The Whigs in William's Court were decidedly averse from reconciliation with James, whose implacable nature they knew; but William insisted on acceding to the terms, on condition that the royal forces should[344] remove the same distance from the capital, and that the Tower of London and Tilbury Fort should be put into the keeping of the City authorities. If it were necessary for the king and prince to proceed to Westminster during the negotiations, they should go attended only by a small guard. Nothing could be fairer; but William knew well the character of his father-in-law, and felt assured that he would by some means shuffle out of the agreement, and throw the odium of failure on himself; and he was not deceived. Never had James so fair an opportunity of recovering his position and securing his throne, under constitutional restraints, for his life; but he was totally incapable of such wisdom and honesty.

On the very day that the royal Commissioners reached William's camp, James received the Prince of Wales back from Portsmouth, and prepared to send him off to France by another route. On the night of the 10th of December he sent the queen across the Thames in darkness and tempest, disguised as an Italian lady, and attended by two Italian women, one of whom was the child's nurse, and the other carried the boy in her arms. They were guarded by two French refugees of distinction—Antonine, Count of Lauzun, and his friend Saint Victor. They arrived safely at Gravesend, where a yacht awaited them, on board of which were Lord and Lady Powis. Saint Victor returned to inform James that they had got clear off, and in a few hours they were safely in Calais.

Scarcely did Saint Victor bring the cheering news of the auspicious sailing of the yacht, when the Commissioners arrived with the conditions that had been agreed on by William. Here was the guarantee for a speedy adjustment of all his difficulties; but the false and distorted-minded James only saw in the circumstance a wretched means of further deceit and contempt of his people and of all honourable negotiation. He pretended to be highly satisfied, summoned for the morrow a meeting of all the peers in town, and of the Lord Mayor and aldermen, and directed that they should deliberate freely and decide firmly for the good of the country. This done, he retired to rest, ordered Jeffreys to be with him early in the morning, said to Lord Mulgrave, as he bade him good night, that the news from William was most satisfactory, and, before morning, had secretly decamped, leaving his kingdom to take care of itself rather than condescend to a pacification with his son-in-law and his subjects, which should compel him to rule as a constitutional king.

But James was not satisfied with this contemptible conduct; he indulged himself before going with creating all the confusion that he could. Had the writs, which were preparing, been left for issue on the 15th of January, 1689, a new Parliament would be in existence, ready to settle the necessary measures for future Government; he therefore collected the writs and threw them into the fire with his own hands, and annulled a number which were already gone out, by an instrument for the purpose. He also left a letter for Lord Feversham, announcing his departure from the kingdom, and desiring him no longer to expose the lives of himself and his soldiers "by resistance to a foreign army and a poisoned nation;" then, taking the Great Seal in his hand, he bade the Earl of Northumberland, who was the Lord of the Bedchamber on duty, and lay on a pallet bed in the king's room, not to unlock the door till the usual hour in the morning, and then, disguised as a country gentleman, disappeared down the back stairs. He was waited for by Sir Edward Hales, whom he afterwards created Earl of Tenterden, and they proceeded in a hackney-coach to Millbank, where they crossed the river in a boat to Vauxhall. When in mid-stream, he flung the Great Seal into the water, trusting that it would never be seen any more; but it was afterwards dragged up by a fishing-net. James, attended by Hales and Sheldon, one of the royal equerries, drove at a rapid pace for Elmley Ferry, near the Isle of Sheppey, having relays of horse ready engaged. They reached that place at ten in the morning, and got on board the Custom House hoy which was waiting for them, and dropped down the river.[345]

JAMES HEARING OF THE LANDING OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE. (After the Painting by E. M. Ward, R.A.)

In the morning, when the Duke of Northumberland opened the king's chamber door, and it was discovered that James had fled, the consternation in the palace may be imagined. The courtiers and the numbers of persons who were waiting to fulfil their morning duties, and the lords who had been summoned to council, spread the exciting tidings, and the capital became a scene of the wildest and most alarming confusion. Feversham obeyed the orders of the king left in his letter, without pausing to ask any advice, or to calculate what might be the consequences. These were as serious as might have been expected. There was no Government, no constituted authority to appeal to. Lord Rochester had continued loyal to the last; but the base desertion of James and the imminent danger at once decided him. He bade the Duke of Northumberland muster the Guards, and[346] declare for William. The officers of the other regiments in London followed the advice, and endeavoured to keep together their men, declaring for the Prince of Orange. The lords who had been summoned to Council hastened into the City to concert measures with the Lord Mayor and aldermen for the public safety. A meeting was hastily called in Guildhall, where the peers, twenty-five in number, and five bishops, with Sancroft and the new Archbishop of York at their head, formed themselves into a provisional council to exercise the functions of Government till the Prince of Orange should arrive, for whom they sent a pressing message, praying him to hasten and unite with them for the preservation of the Constitution and the security of the Church. The two Secretaries of State were sent for, but Preston alone came; Middleton denied the authority of the self-created Council. The Lieutenant of the Tower, Bevil Skelton, was ordered to give up the keys to Lord Lucas, and an order was sent to Lord Dartmouth, desiring him to dismiss all Popish officers from the fleet, and attempt nothing against the Dutch fleet. But no measures could prevent the outbreak of the mob in London. The feeling against the Catholics displayed itself on all sides. Under pretence of searching for Papists, the hordes of blackguards from every low purlieu of London swarmed forth and broke into houses, and plundered them at their pleasure. The vile Jeffreys was with difficulty saved from the fury of the mob.

James, his heartless master, was also seized. The Custom House hoy in which he embarked was found wanting in ballast, and the captain was obliged to run her ashore near Sheerness. About eleven at night on the 12th of December, before the hoy could be floated again by the tide, she was boarded by a number of fishermen who were on the look-out for fugitives, and the appearance of the king immediately attracted their notice. "That is Father Petre," cried one fellow; "I know him by his hatchet face." James was immediately seized and searched; but, though he had his coronation ring in his pocket, besides other jewels, they missed them, and did not recognise him. They carried him ashore at Feversham, where, at the inn, amid the insults of this rabble, he declared himself their king. The Earl of Winchelsea, hearing of the king's detention, hastened to his assistance, had him removed to the house of the Mayor, and sent word of his capture to London.

When the countryman who carried the messages from Lord Winchelsea arrived at Whitehall, the news of the king's detention occasioned the greatest embarrassment. The lords had sent for William, and hoped that they were well rid of the foolish king. Nothing could have been easier than their course if James had got over to the Continent. The throne would be declared vacant, and the Prince and Princess of Orange invited to occupy it, on giving the necessary guarantees for the maintenance of the Constitution. But now the whole question was involved in difficulties. If James persisted in his right to the throne, in what capacity was William to be received? Could any safe measures be arranged with a man like James? Was he to be deposed, and his son-in-law and daughter forcibly placed on his throne? The dilemma was equally embarrassing to the lords and prelates, and to the prince himself. When the messenger was introduced, and delivered a letter from James, but without any address, Halifax moved that they should instantly adjourn, and thus leave the letter unnoticed. Halifax was deeply incensed at the trick which James had played off upon him in sending him to negotiate with William merely that he might get away, and was now resolved to adhere to the prince; but Lord Mulgrave prevailed on the lords to retain their seats, and obtained from them an order that Lord Feversham should take two hundred Life Guards, and protect the king from insult. Feversham demanded the precise powers of his order, and was told that he must defend the king from insult, but by no means impede the freest exercise of his personal freedom. This meant that they would be glad if he facilitated his escape. Halifax immediately left London, and joined the Prince of Orange, who was now at Henley-on-Thames. Sancroft and the clergy, as soon as they were aware that the king had not left the country, retired from any further participation in the Council. William and his adherents were extremely chagrined at this untoward turn of affairs. When the messenger arrived at Henley he was referred to Burnet, who said, "Why did you not let the king go?"

But when Feversham arrived at the town whose name he bore, the king was no longer disposed to escape. His friends who had gathered about him, Middleton and Lord Winchelsea especially, had endeavoured to show him that his strength lay in remaining. Had he vacated the throne by quitting the kingdom, it had been lost for ever; but now he was king, and might challenge his right; and the prince could not dispossess him without[347] incurring the character of a usurper, and throwing a heavy odium of unnatural severity on himself and his wife. James had sufficient mind left to perceive the strength thus pointed out to him. He resolved to return to his capital, and from Rochester despatched Feversham with a letter to William, whom he found advanced to Windsor, proposing a conference in London, where St. James's should be prepared for the prince. By this time William and his Council had determined on the plan to be pursued in the great difficulty. He had calculated on James's being gone, and had issued orders to the king's army and to the lords at Whitehall in the style of a sovereign. His leading adherents had settled amongst themselves the different offices that they were to occupy as the reward of their adhesion. It was resolved, therefore, if possible, to frighten James into a second flight. No sooner had Feversham delivered his despatch than he was arrested, and thrown into the Round Tower on the charge of having disbanded the army without proper orders, to the danger of the capital, and of having entered the prince's camp without a passport. Zulestein was despatched to inform James that William declined the proposed conference, and recommended him to remain at Rochester.

James, however, was now bent on returning to London. He had not waited for the prince's answer, but on Sunday, the 16th of December, he entered his capital in a sort of triumphal procession. He was preceded by a number of gentlemen, bareheaded. Immense crowds assembled as if to welcome him back again. They cheered him as he rode along. The bells were rung, and bonfires were lit in the streets. Elated by these signs, as he imagined them, of returning popularity, he no sooner reached Whitehall than he called around him the Jesuits who had hidden themselves, stationed Irish soldiers as guards around his palace, had grace said at his table by a Jesuit priest, and expressed his high indignation at the lords and prelates who had presumed to usurp his functions in his absence—who had, in fact, saved the capital from destruction when he had abandoned it. His folly, however, received an abrupt check. Zulestein was announced, and delivered the stern message of William. James was confounded, but again repeated his invitation for his nephew to come to town, that they might settle all differences in a personal conference. Zulestein coldly assured him that William would not enter London whilst it contained troops not under his orders. "Then," said James, "let him bring his own guards, and I will dismiss mine, for I am as well without any as such that I dare not trust." Zulestein, however, retired without further discussion, and the moment he was gone, James was informed of the arrest of Feversham.

Alarmed at these proofs of the stern spirit of William, James sent in haste to Stamps and Lewis, the leading members of the City Council—the Lord Mayor had never recovered his terror of Jeffreys' presence,—to offer to place himself under their protection till all necessary guarantees for the public liberties had been given and accepted. But the Common Council had not had time to forget his seizure of their charter, and they prudently declined to enter into an engagement which, they said, they might not be able to fulfil. Whilst James was thus learning that though the City acclamations might be proofs of regret for his misfortunes, they were by no means proofs of a desire for his continuing to reign, William, on the same day, the 17th, bade all his leading adherents hold a solemn council, to consider what steps should be taken in this crisis. It was understood that he would never consent to enter London whilst James was there, and it was resolved that he should be removed to Ham House, near Richmond, which the brutal Lauderdale had built out of the bribes of Louis XIV. and the money wrung from the ravaged people of Scotland. Halifax, Shrewsbury, and Delamere were despatched to James with this intimation, though Clarendon had done all in his power to have James seized and confined in some foreign fortress till Tyrconnel surrendered Ireland to the prince's party.

Simultaneously with the three lords, William ordered his forces to advance towards London. In the evening of the 17th James heard that the Dutch soldiers had occupied Chelsea and Kennington. By ten o'clock at night Solmes, at the head of three battalions of infantry, was already making across St. James's Park, and sent word that his orders were to occupy Whitehall, and he advised the Earl of Craven, who commanded the Coldstream Guards, to retire. Craven—though now in his eightieth year, was still possessed of the courage and chivalry which he had displayed in the wars of Germany, and which had won him the heart of Elizabeth of Bohemia, who was said to be married to him—declared that, so long as he retained life, no foreign prince should make a King of England a prisoner in his own palace. James, however, ordered him to retire. The Coldstream Guards withdrew, and the Dutch guards[348] surrounded the palace. James, as if there were no danger to his person, went composedly to bed, but only to be roused out of his first sleep to receive the deputation from the prince. On reading the letter proposing his removal to Ham, which Halifax informed him must be done before ten o'clock in the morning, James seems to have taken a final resolve to get away. He protested against going to Ham, as a low, damp place in winter, but offered to retire to Rochester. This was a pretty clear indication of his intention to flee—the very object desired. A messenger was despatched in all speed to the prince, who returned with his full approbation before daybreak.

The morning of the 18th was miserably wet and stormy, but a barge was brought to Whitehall Stairs, and the wretched monarch went on board, attended by the Lords Arran, Dumbarton, Dundee, Lichfield, and Aylesbury. The spectators could not behold this melancholy abdication—for such it was—of the last potentate of a most unwise line, who had lost a great empire by his incurable infatuation, without tears. Even Shrewsbury and Delamere showed much emotion, and endeavoured to soothe the fallen king; but Halifax, incurably wounded in his diplomatic pride by the hollow mission to the prince at Hungerford, stood coldly apart. Boats containing a hundred Dutch soldiers surrounded his barge as it dropped down the river. James landed and slept at Gravesend, and then proceeded to Rochester, where he remained four days.

Though his advisers entreated him not to fly, James had now sunk the last manly feeling of a monarch who would dare much and sacrifice more to retain a noble empire for his family. A dastardly fear that if he remained he would be put to death like his father took possession of him. He made a last offer to the bishops, through the Bishop of Winchester, as he had done to the City of London, to put himself into their hands for safety, but they also declined the responsibility, and he then gave all over as lost. On the evening of the 22nd of December he sat down before supper, and wrote a declaration of his motives for quitting the kingdom. About midnight he stole quietly away with the Duke of Berwick, his natural son, and, after much difficulty, through storm and darkness, reached a fishing smack hired for the purpose, which, on Christmas Day, landed him at Ambleteuse, on the coast of France. Thence he hastened to the castle of St. Germains, which Louis had appointed for his residence, and where, on the 28th, he found his wife and child awaiting him. Louis also was there to receive him, had settled on him a revenue of forty-five thousand pounds sterling yearly, besides giving him ten thousand pounds for immediate wants. The conduct of Louis was truly princely, not only in thus conferring on the fallen monarch a noble and delightful residence, with an ample income, but in making it felt by his courtiers and all France, that he expected the exiled family to be treated with the respect due to the sovereigns of England.

The flight of James had removed the great difficulty of William—that of having recourse to some measure of harshness towards him, as imprisonment, or forcible deposition and banishment, which would have greatly lowered his popularity. The adherents of James felt all this, and were confounded at the advantage which the impolitic monarch had given to his enemies. The joy of William's partisans was great and unconcealed. In France the success of William was beheld with intense mortification, for it was the death-blow to the ascendency of Louis in Europe, which had been the great object of all his wars, and the expensive policy of his whole life. In Holland the elevation of their Stadtholder to the head of the English realm was beheld as the greatest triumph of their nation; and Dykvelt and Nicholas Witsen were deputed to wait on him in London and congratulate him on his brilliant success. But, notwithstanding all these favourable circumstances, there were many knotty questions to be settled before William could be recognised as sovereign. The country was divided into various parties, one of which, including the Tories and the Church, contended that no power or law could affect the divine right of kings; and that although a king by his infamy, imbecility, or open violation of the laws might be restrained from exercising the regal functions personally, those rights remained untouched, and must be invested for the time in a regent chosen by the united Parliament of the nation. Others contended that James's unconstitutional conduct and subsequent flight amounted to an abdication, and that the royal rights had passed on to the next heir; and the only question was, which was the true heir—the daughter of James, the wife of William, or the child called the Prince of Wales? The more determined Whigs contended that the arbitrary conduct of the House of Stuart, and especially of James, who attempted to destroy both the Constitution and the Church, had abrogated the original compact between prince and people, and[349] returned the right of electing a new monarch into the hands of the people; and the only question was, who should that choice be? There were not wanting some who advised William boldly to assume the crown by right of conquest; but he was much too wise to adopt this counsel, having already pledged himself to the contrary in his Declaration, and also knowing how repugnant such an assumption would be to the proud spirit of the nation.

To settle these points he called together, on the 23rd of December, the peers, all the members of any Parliament summoned in the reign of Charles II. who happened to be in town, and the Lord Mayor and aldermen, with fifty other citizens of London, at St. James's, to advise him as to the best mode of fulfilling the terms of his Declaration. The two Houses, thus singularly constituted, proceeded to deliberate on the great question in their own separate apartments. The Lords chose Halifax as their Speaker; the Commons, Henry Powle. The Lords came to the conclusion that a Convention was the only authority which could determine the necessary measures; that in the absence of Charles II. a Convention had called him back to the throne, and therefore a Convention in the absence of James might exercise the same legitimate function. When the Lords presented an address to this effect on the 25th, William received it, but said it would be necessary to receive the conclusion of the Commons before any act could take place. On the 27th the Commons came to the same decision, and William was requested to exercise the powers of the executive till the Convention should assemble.

In issuing orders for the election of the members of the Convention, William displayed a most politic attention to the spirit of the Constitution. He gave direction that no compulsion or acts of undue persuasion should be exercised for the return of candidates; no soldiers should be allowed to be present in the boroughs where the elections were proceeding; for, unlike James, William knew that he had the sense of the majority of the people with him. The same measure was adopted with regard to Scotland. There, no sooner had William arrived in England, than the people rose against James's Popish ministers, who were glad to flee or conceal themselves. Perth, the miserable renegade and tyrant, endeavoured to escape by sea; he was overtaken, brought ignominiously back, and flung into the prison of Kirkcaldy. The Papists were everywhere disarmed, the Popish chapels were attacked and ransacked. Holyrood House, which swarmed with Jesuits, and with their printing presses, was not exempt from this summary visitation; and bonfires were made of all sorts of Popish paraphernalia—crosses, books, images, and pictures. William now called together such Scottish noblemen and gentlemen as were in London, who adopted a resolution requesting him to call a Convention of the Estates of Scotland, to meet on the 14th of March, and in the meantime to take on himself the same executive authority as in England. William was, therefore, the elected ruler of the whole kingdom for the time. This power he proceeded to exercise with a prudence and wisdom which were in striking contrast to the antagonism of James. All parties and religions were protected as subjects; Feversham was released, and the administration of justice proceeded with a sense of firmness and personal security which gave general confidence.

On the 22nd of January, 1689, the Convention met. The Lords again chose Halifax as Speaker, the Commons, Powle. The Catholic lords had not been summoned, and were not there. In the Lords, Bishop Sherlock and a small knot of Tories were for recalling James, and attempting the impossible thing of binding him to the Constitution; another party, of which Sancroft was known to be the head, though he had not the courage to go there and advocate it, were for a regency; whilst Danby contended for proclaiming the Princess Mary in her own right; and the Whigs were for nominating William as an elective prince. In the Commons, similar parties appeared; but the great majority were for declaring the throne vacant, and, on the 28th, they passed a resolution to that effect, and the next day another, that no Popish king could possess the throne. These carried up to the Lords were, after a debate of two days, also adopted, but only by small majorities.

James now sent a letter to each House, declaring that he had not abdicated, but had been compelled to withdraw by necessity; and he offered to return and redress every grievance. Both Houses refused to receive the letters; but in both the question as to who should be the successor to the throne was violently debated. Lord Lovelace and William Killigrew presented a petition to the Commons, demanding that the crown should be given to the Prince and Princess of Orange jointly. A member asked if the petition were signed, and Lovelace replied "No," but added that he would soon procure signatures enough.[350] In fact, there were noisy crowds about the House; and Lovelace was suspected of having brought the mob from the City to intimidate the opponents. His proceedings were strongly protested against, and William himself sent for him and expressed his disapprobation of bringing any such influence to force the deliberations of the Convention. The Earl of Devonshire then gathered a meeting of the advocates of the prince and princess at his house, where the question was discussed, and where Halifax concluded for William and Danby for Mary. To obtain, if possible, some idea of the leaning of William, who had preserved the most profound silence during the debates, Danby put the question to a friend and countryman of William's present what was the real wish of William. He replied that it was not for him to say, but that, if he must give an opinion, he did not believe that the prince would consent to be gentleman-usher to his wife. This opened the eyes of Danby, who said, "Then you all know enough, and I far too much." In fact, blind must all have been who had studied the character of William not to have seen from the first that he came there to be king, and that on equal terms at least with his wife. The man who had for years brooded in jealous secrecy over the idea that his wife would one day be raised over his own head by her claim on the British crown, was not likely to accept less than an equal throne with her.

Whilst this question was still agitating both Houses, Mary herself settled it by a letter to Danby, in which she thanked him for his zeal in her behalf; she declared that she was the wife of William, and had long resolved, if the throne fell to her, to surrender her power, by consent of Parliament, into his hands. This was decisive, and the enemies of William had only the hope left that the Princess Anne might protest against William, and insist on the precedence of her rights and those of her issue. But Anne had long been perfectly accordant with William and Mary, and declared herself entirely willing that William should hold the throne for his life.

Mary and Anne having spoken out, William now sent for Halifax, Danby, Shrewsbury, and the other leaders, and told them that, having come for the good of the nation, he had thought it right to leave the nation to settle its election of a ruler, and that he had still no desire to interfere, except to clear their way so far as he himself was concerned. He wished therefore to say that, if they decided to appoint a regent, he declined to be that man. On the other hand, if they preferred placing the princess, his wife, on the throne, he had nothing to object; but if they offered to give him during his life the nominal title of king, he could not accept it; that no man respected or esteemed the princess more than he did, but that he could never consent to be tied to the apronstrings of any woman, even the very highest and best of her sex; that if they chose to offer him the crown for life, he would freely accept it; if not, he would return cheerfully to his own country, having done that which he had promised. He added that he thought, in any case, the rights of Anne and her issue should be carefully protected.

This left no doubt as to what must be the result. A second conference was held on the 5th of February between the two Houses, where the contest was again renewed as to whether the throne was actually vacant, and they parted without coming to any agreement; but the Lords, on returning to their own House, yielded, and sent down to the Commons the new oaths, and the resolution that the prince and princess should be declared king and queen. The Commons, who had already come to this conclusion, would not, however, formally pass it till they had taken measures for securing the rights of the subject before finally conferring the crown. They therefore drew up what was called the "Declaration of Rights," by which, while calling William and Mary to the throne, they enumerated the constitutional principles on which the crown should be held. This Declaration was passed on the 12th of February, and about a year afterwards was formally enacted, under the title of the "Bill of Rights," which contains the great charter of the liberties of the English people.

The Declaration stated that, whereas the late king, James II., had assumed and exercised a power of dispensing with and suspending laws without consent of Parliament, and had committed and prosecuted certain prelates because they had refused to concur in such arbitrary powers; had erected an illegal tribunal to oppress the Church and the subject; had levied taxes, and maintained a standing army in time of peace without consent of Parliament; had quartered soldiers contrary to law; had armed and employed Papists contrary to law; had violated the freedom of election, and prosecuted persons in the King's Bench for causes only cognisable by Parliament; and whereas, besides these, the personal acts of the late king, partial and corrupt juries had been[351] returned, excessive fines had been imposed, illegal and cruel punishments inflicted, the estates of persons granted away before forfeiture or judgment; all these practices being utterly contrary to the known laws, statutes, and freedom of the realm:

And whereas the said king, having abdicated the throne, and the Prince of Orange, who under God had delivered the realm from this tyranny, had invited the estates of the realm to meet and secure the religion and freedom of the kingdom; therefore, the Lords spiritual and temporal, and the Commons in Parliament assembled, did, for the vindication and assertion of their ancient rights, declare—That to suspend the execution of the laws, or to dispense with the execution of laws by regal authority without consent of Parliament, that to erect boards of commissioners, and levy money without Parliament, to keep a standing army in time of peace without the will of Parliament, are all contrary to law; that the election of members of Parliament ought to be free, speech in Parliament free, and to be impeached nowhere else; no excessive bail, or excessive fines, nor cruel or unjust punishments can be awarded; that jurors ought to be duly impanelled, and, in trials for high treason, be freeholders; that grants and promises of fines before conviction are illegal and void; and that, for redress of grievances and the amendment of laws, Parliaments ought to be frequently held. All these things are claimed by the Declaration as the undoubted rights and inheritance of Englishmen; and, believing that William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, will preserve from violation all these rights and all other their rights, they resolve and declare them to be King and Queen of England, France, and Ireland for their joint and separate lives, the full exercise of the administration being in the prince; and, in default of heirs of the Princess Mary, the succession to fall to the Princess Anne of Denmark; and, in the default of such issue to the Princess Anne of Denmark, to the posterity of William. On the same 12th of February on which this most important document was passed, the Princess Mary landed at Greenwich.

The next morning, Wednesday, the 13th of February, 1689, the two Houses waited on William and Mary, who received them in the Banqueting room at Whitehall. The prince and princess entered, and stood under the canopy of State side by side. Halifax was speaker on the occasion. He requested their Highnesses to hear a resolution of both Houses, which the Clerk of the House of Lords then read. It was the Declaration of Rights. Halifax then, in the name of all the Estates of the realm, requested them to accept the crown. William, for himself and his wife, accepted the offer, declaring it the more welcome that it was given in proof of the confidence of the whole nation. He then added for himself, "And as I had no other intention in coming hither than to preserve your religion, laws, and liberties, so you may be sure that I shall endeavour to support them, and be willing to concur in anything that shall be for the good of the kingdom, and to do all that is in my power to advance the welfare and the glory of the nation."

This declaration was no sooner brought to an end than it was received with shouts of satisfaction by the whole assembly, and, being heard by the crowds without, was re-echoed by one universal "Hurrah!" The Lords and Commons, as in courtesy bound, then retired; and, at the great gate of the palace, the heralds and pursuivants, clad in their quaint tabards, proclaimed William and Mary King and Queen of England, at the same time praying for them, according to custom, "a long and happy reign." The dense mass of people, filling the whole street to Charing Cross, answered with a stunning shout; and thus, in three months and eight days from the landing of William at Torbay, the Great Revolution of 1688 was completed.

[352]

CHAPTER XI.

PROGRESS OF THE NATION FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO THE GREAT REVOLUTION.

Religion: Nonconformist Sects—Imprisonment of Bunyan—Fox and the Society of Friends—The Punishment of James Naylor—Expulsion of Roger Williams—Other Religious Sects—Literature: Milton—His Works—Cowley—Butler—Dryden—Minor Poets—Dramatists of the Restoration—Prose Writers: Milton and Dryden—Hobbes—Clarendon—Baxter—Bunyan—Walton—Evelyn and Pepys—Founding of the Royal Society—Physical Science—Discoveries of Napier, Newton, and Flamsteed—Mathematicians and Chemists—Harvey and Worcester—Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving—Coinage—Music—Furniture—Costume—Manners and Customs—State of London—Sports and Amusements—Country Life—Travelling—The Clergy—Yeomen—Village Sports—Growth of the Revenue and Commerce—Growing prosperity of the North of England—The Navigation Act—Norwich and Bristol—Postal Arrangements—Advantages Derived from the Industries of the Foreign Refugees—The East India Company—Condition of the People: Wages—The Poor Law—Efforts of Philanthropists.

The struggles of the Church we have sufficiently traced in our recent chapters. With the Restoration it came back to full power and possession of its revenues and honours, and held them firmly against all rivals till James menaced them with the recall of the Roman hierarchy, when, joining with the alarmed public, it compelled the monarch himself to fly, and continued on its own vantage-ground. The only notice of religious phenomena at this period demanded of us is rather what regards the sects which now became conspicuous.

The leading sects, the Presbyterians, the Independents, and the Baptists—then called Anabaptists—differed little in their faith. They were all of the Calvinistic school, whilst the Episcopal Church was already divided by the contending parties of Calvinists and Arminians. We have related the struggles of the Presbyterians, English and Scottish, for the possession of the Establishment in England to the exclusion of all other faiths; the triumph of the Independents, with more liberal views, through Cromwell and the army, and the expulsion of both these parties from the national pulpits following on the Restoration. The Baptists, though many of them were high in the army and the State during the Commonwealth, never displayed the political ambition of the other two great denominations. They cut, indeed, no figure in the secular affairs of the nation, but they were most honourably distinguished by their assertion of the right of private opinion. They were as tolerant of religious liberty as the Independents, or more so, from whom they differed only in their views of the rite of Baptism. Their early history in England was adorned by the appearance in their pulpits of one of the most extraordinary men of modern times—John Bunyan, whose "Pilgrim's Progress" continues to delight all classes of men, and will continue to do so as long as the English language is read. Bunyan, a tinker by trade, was serving in the Parliamentary army at Leicester, at the time of the battle of Naseby; and when Charles I. fled to that town John was ordered out as a sentinel, and his life was saved by another soldier volunteering to take his duty, who was shot at his post. Bunyan was thrown into prison for daring to preach under Charles II., and lay in gaol twelve years and a half, solely because he had a conscience of his own; and was only liberated on the Declaration of Indulgence by James II. A Mr. Smyth, a clergyman of the Church of England, who adopted their faith, was the first to open a chapel for the Baptists in London, and, encouraged by his example, others were soon opened, and the views of the denomination soon spread over England and Wales, in later times to be eloquently expounded by Robert Robinson and Robert Hall.

But the most remarkable organisation of a religious body was that of the Society of Friends, or, as they soon came to be nicknamed, Quakers, whose founder, George Fox, was born at Drayton, in Leicestershire, in 1624. His father was a weaver, and George was apprenticed to a shoemaker, who also had a little farm. He informs us in his own journal that he preferred the farming, and chiefly devoted himself to it. When he was about nineteen he became deeply impressed with a religious feeling. It was a time when religious discussion was making rapid progress amongst the people from the more general access to the Bible, and many were dissatisfied with the different churches, which seemed too much engaged in attempts at worldly aggrandisement, and at achieving a dominance over each other.[353] George was one of these. In seeking for clear views of religious faith, such as could set his mind at rest, he went to various clergymen of the Established Church first, but he found no light. One of them bade him take tobacco and sing psalms; and another, Cradock of Coventry, was beginning to speak comfortably to George as they walked in the garden, when the embryo reformer unluckily happened to set his foot on a flower-border, which threw the clergyman into such a rage that the discourse was abruptly brought to an end.

ROGER WILLIAMS LEAVING HIS HOME IN MASSACHUSETTS. (See p. 354.)

Finding no relief or illumination from professors, as he called them, Fox wisely took his Bible, and used to retire into a hollow tree in the fields, where he read and prayed earnestly to God to enlighten his understanding to comprehend the sacred volume, and the genuine will of the Lord. The result was that he came to a clear and steadfast conviction that Christianity was strictly a spiritual thing, having nothing specifically to do with States and Governments, with worldly pomp and power, and strivings after mortal honours and high places; that Christ simply and strictly defined it when He said, "My kingdom is not of this world." He saw that it was the grand principle by which the soul of man is intended to be regenerated—born again, in fact, and made fitting to enter into the kingdom of disembodied souls, in the presence of God and His angels. He found himself, in a word, called back from the conflicting views and empty ceremonies of the time to Christianity as it existed among the Apostles—a perfectly spiritual, and holy, and disinterested thing, embodying the wisdom and the truth of God, and inhabiting, not formal creeds and outward ceremonies, but the heart of man, and thence influencing all his thoughts and actions for good. George perceived that all fixed creeds, all rites and ceremonies, all investments in State power, were but as cobwebs and old rags with which the self-interest and self-love of men had enveloped, encumbered, and degraded it; and he felt himself called to go forth and proclaim this, which he emphatically styled "the truth."

Fox carried his great Christian text into every act and department of life. He was the first to elevate woman to her true place—an[354] intellectual, moral, and political equality with man; basing his principle on the apostolic declaration that male and female are all one in Christ Jesus. Acting on this principle, the women of his Society became preachers, and transacted their own affairs of association in their own meetings. He refused to take an oath before a magistrate, because Christ expressly forbade His disciples to swear at all under any circumstances; he refused to say "Thou" to a poor man, and "You" to a rich one, as was then the odious practice; he refused to take off his hat as a mark of homage to the wealthy and great, on the same principle that it was a custom of pride and invidious distinction; and he addressed prince or magistrate with the respectful boldness which became a man sensible that the only true dignity was the dignity of truth. The sufferings which were brought upon him and his followers by these novel doctrines and practices from all parties were terrible. About three thousand of them were imprisoned, even under the more liberal rule of the Commonwealth, and as many under Charles II. Their property was spoliated, their meeting-houses were pulled down, and their families grossly insulted in their absence. Yet the doctrine spread rapidly, and many eminent men embraced it; amongst others, William Penn, the son of Admiral Penn, and the learned Robert Barclay, who wrote the celebrated vindication of their faith.

At the same time the violent agitation of the period, and the enthusiasm of this new doctrine, led some of Fox's followers into considerable extravagances. The most prominent case was that of James Naylor, who for a time was undoubtedly led into insanity by the effervescence of his mind under his religious zeal; and allowed women to lead his horse into Exeter, crying "Holy! holy! holy!" and spreading their scarves and handkerchiefs in the way before him, as if he had been the Saviour come again. Naylor professed that this homage was not offered to him personally, but to Christ within him. His case occupied the House of Commons for nearly two months altogether. There were violent debates on it from morning till night; but at length, on the 17th of December, 1656, it was voted that he should be set in the pillory in Palace Yard for two hours; then be whipped from Westminster to the Old Exchange, London, twice, wearing a paper containing a description of his crimes; should have his tongue bored through with a hot iron by the hangman for his blasphemy; be branded on the forehead with the letter B; that he should be sent to Bristol, and there whipped through the city on a market-day, paraded face backwards on a saddleless horse, and then sent back to Bridewell, in London, where he should be kept to hard labour, and debarred from the visits of his friends, and from access to pens, ink, and paper.

All this was rigidly inflicted upon him, and borne heroically. After two years' confinement in Bridewell he was dismissed, thoroughly cured of his hallucination, ready to admit it, but as firm in his adhesion to the principles of Quakerism as ever; and the Society, pitying his fall, never withdrew from him their sympathy or the enjoyment of his membership. He died soon after his release.

In America, in New England, the Quakers were more fiercely persecuted than in England by the Puritans, who had themselves fled from persecution. In Massachusetts and Connecticut they were ordered to have their ears cut off if men, to be publicly whipped if women; and for a second offence to have their tongues bored through if they dared to come into these colonies; and this not deterring them, they hanged several men and women. Endicott, the Governor of Connecticut, when one of them quoted the words of St. Paul, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being," irreverently replied, "And so does every cat and dog."

This intolerance of the Puritans was equally exerted against one of their own members, the venerable Roger Williams, who was driven from Massachusetts for courageously advocating the doctrine of perfect freedom of conscience. In fact, Roger Williams was one of the very first, if not the first man, who proclaimed this great doctrine; and therefore deserves to be held in eternal remembrance. The honour of being the earliest publisher of the right of spiritual freedom must, perhaps, be awarded to Leonard Busher, who published a work on the subject in 1614, and dedicated it to King James. Roger Williams, expelled from Massachusetts, proceeded to Narraganset Bay, and became the founder of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, where the most perfect freedom of religious faith was allowed.

Besides the sects in England already enumerated, there were many minor ones. The "Millenarians," or "Fifth Monarchy Men," whose views we have already explained. To this sect Major-General Harrison belonged; and they created a riot under Venner, the wine-cooper. There was a sect called "The Seekers," amongst whom Fox[355] once fell, and many of them joined him, believing they had found what they sought. There were the "Ranters," a body noted for their noise and vociferation; "Behmenists," or disciples of the German mystic, Jacob Behmen; "Vanists," followers of the religious views of Sir Harry Vane; and lastly, "Muggletonians," the disciples of one Ludovick Muggleton and John Reeve.

Muggleton was a journeyman tailor, and he and Reeve pretended to be the two witnesses mentioned in the eleventh chapter of "The Revelation." They were fanatics of the wildest and most furious character, and professed to have power to save or damn all whom they pleased, and they "dealt damnation round the land" with the utmost freedom. The Quakers and Behmenists were the objects of their most violent denunciations, probably because Fox and Penn protested against their wild and fanatic doctrines, which were the antipodes of those of Fox; for, instead of representing God as a pure spirit, they asserted that He had a corporeal body, and came down to earth in it as Christ, leaving the prophet Elias in heaven to rule in His absence. They contended that man's soul is inseparably united to his body, dies and rises again with it. They professed to have an especial knowledge of "the place and nature of heaven, and the place and nature of hell;" with the persons and natures of devils and angels. The truculent ravings of these fanatics may be seen in the works and letters of Muggleton, still extant. In one letter he delivers sentence of damnation on six-and-twenty Quakers at once. "Inasmuch," he says, "as God hath chosen me on earth to be the judge of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, therefore, in obedience to my commission from the true God, I do pronounce all these twenty-six persons whose names are above written, cursed and damned in their souls and bodies from the presence of God, elect men, and angels in eternity." But this was little: he declared all Quakers, and Behmenists, and numbers of other people damned and cursed for ever.

This repulsive apostle of perdition was tried at the Old Bailey, and convicted of blasphemy in 1676, and died in 1697, at the age of eighty-eight.

We have seen with what a desolating sweep the bloody conflicts of the Parliament against the encroachments of kingship prostrated the pursuits of literature and art. We might have expected that the return to established tranquillity under restored monarchy would have caused a new spring of genius. But in no reign in England, and in no country except France, have debauchery and the most hideous grossness so defiled the productions of poetry and the drama.

Amid the satyr crew of degraded men and women who then represented the literary world of England, some few, however, maintained a pure and dignified career. At the head of these, equally exalted above the rest by genius and purity of life and morals, stood John Milton (b. 1608; d. 1674), one of the greatest epic poets, if not the greatest, that the world has produced. Milton had saturated himself with the poetic spirit, imagery, and expression of the Prophetic bards, as well as with knowledge of those of Greece and Rome; and he brought to bear an immense mass of varied learning on his subject with a power of appropriation that gave to it a new and wonderful life instead of the aspect of pedantry. The names of people and places which he moulds into his diction seem to open up to the imagination regions of unimagined grandeur and beauty amid strains of solemnest music; and the descriptions of scenery, such as abound in "Comus," "Lycidas," and "Arcades," as well as those diffused through "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained," are like the most exquisite glimpses into the most fair and solitary landscapes, breathing every rural fragrance, and alive with all rural sounds and harmonies.

But it was when he was old, and poor, and blind, and living among the hatred and the ribald obscenity of the Restoration, that he had scaled those sublime altitudes of genius, and seemed to walk on the celestial hills amid their pure and glorious inhabitants, rather than on earth surrounded by rankest impurities and basest natures. It was when

"His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart,"

when he had fallen on evil days, that he had alone allowed himself leisure to work out these the earliest of his aspirations. Long before—when he had returned from his pleasant sojourn in Italy, where he saw Galileo in his prison, and was himself received and honoured by the greatest men of the land, as in anticipation of his after glory, and was now engaged in defending the sternest measures of the Republicans—in his "Reasons of Church Government urged against Prelacy" he unfolded the grand design of his master work, but kept it self-denyingly in his soul till he had done his duty to his country. The views which he cherished in his literary ambition are as exalted in their moral grandeur as his[356] genius was in its native character. These were, he said, "That what the greatest and choicest arts of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy and those Hebrews of old did for their country, I, in my proportion, with this over and above of being a Christian, might do for mine, not caring to be named once abroad, though perhaps I could attain unto that, but content me with these British islands as my world." At this period, it seems, he had not made up his mind whether he should adopt "the epic form, as exemplified by Homer, Virgil, and Tasso, or the dramatic, wherein Sophocles and Euripides reign; or in the style of those magnificent odes and hymns of Pindarus and Callimachus, not forgetting that of all those kinds of writing the highest models are to be found in the Holy Scriptures in the Book of Job, in the Song of Solomon, and the Apocalypse of St. John, in the grand songs interspersed throughout the Law and the Prophets." But in one thing he was fixed—that the work should be one "not raised from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist, or the trencher fury of some rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out His seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases."

So he waited, fighting the battles of his country side by side with Cromwell and Hampden, Pym and Marvell; and when at length he found leisure to achieve his last great triumph, he was left alone in the field. He had outlived the long battle of king and people, in which extraordinary men and as extraordinary events had arisen, and shaken the whole civilised world. Blind, poor, and old, as if some special guardianship of Providence had shielded him, or as if the very foes who had dragged the dreaded Cromwell from his grave feared the imprecations of posterity, and shrank from touching that sacred head—there sat the sublime old man at his door, feeling, with grateful enjoyment, the genial sunshine falling upon him; or dictating immortal verses to his daughters, as the divine afflatus seized him.

Much has been said of the small sum received for his "Paradise Lost," and the slow recognition which it met with. But it is not a fact that "Paradise Lost" was coolly greeted. Long before Addison gave his laudatory critique in the Spectator, the glory of Milton's great poem had been attested by Barrow, Andrew Marvell, Lord Anglesea, who used often to visit him in Bunhill Fields, by the Duke of Buckingham, and by many other celebrated men. Sir John Denham appeared in the House of Commons with a proof-sheet of "Paradise Lost" in his hand, wet from the press, and, being asked what it was, replied, "part of the noblest poem that ever was written in any language or age." The poem went into two editions during the author's life, and he corrected it for a third, which was published soon after his death. In fact, Milton's fame had to rise from under piled heaps of hatred and ignominy on account of his politics and religion, for he had attacked the Church as formidably as the State in his treatise on "The Best Mode of Removing Hirelings" out of it, as well as in his book against prelacy; but it flung off all that load of prejudice, and rose to universal acknowledgment.

We need not detain ourselves with much detail of his other poetical works, which are now familiar to all readers. They consist of his early poems, including the exquisite "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," his "Comus" and "Lycidas," a mask and an elegy: his magnificent sonnets, his "Samson Agonistes," a sacred drama, but constructed strictly on the Grecian model. It has been often said that Milton had no genius for the drama; the "Samson" is a sufficient refutation of that opinion. It is full of dramatic power and interest; it is like some ancient piece of sculpture, unique, grand, massive, and solemn; and, indeed, had Milton devoted himself to the drama, it would have been rather in the style of Sophocles than of Shakespeare, for he was too lofty and earnest in his whole nature for real humour, or for much variation in mood and manner. He could never have been a comic poet, but, had he willed it, would undoubtedly have been a great tragic one. The epic character, however, prevailed in him, and decided his career.

[357]

MILTON DICTATING "PARADISE LOST" TO HIS DAUGHTERS. (See p. 356.)

(After the Picture by Munkacsy.)

Besides these poetical works, were his odes, including the splendid ones of the "Nativity" and the "Passion," and a great number of translations from the chief poets of Greece, Rome, and Italy, original poems written in Latin and Italian, portion of the Psalms "done into metre," and "Paradise Regained." This last poem, though bearing no degree of equality to the "Paradise Lost," is yet a noble poem, and would have made a great reputation for any other man. It is clearly not so[358] well thought out and elaborated as the "Paradise Lost," which was the dream of his youth, the love and the labour of his prime. "Paradise Regained," on the other hand, was the chance suggestion of Thomas Elwood, his Latin reader, and closed with the temptation of Christ in the wilderness, instead of including the Crucifixion and Ascension, which might have given the poet a scope equal in magnificence to that of his former great epic. Of his prose works we shall speak presently.

The most popular of all poets of this period was Abraham Cowley (b. 1618; d. 1667). He is a striking example of those authors whom the critics of the time cry to the skies, and whom more discriminating posterity are willing to forget. Cowley, in his lifetime, had ten times the fame of Milton. Johnson, so unjust to many of our poets, can hardly be said to be so to Cowley. He says—"Though in his own time considered of unrivalled excellence, and as having taken a flight beyond all that went before him, Cowley's reputation could not last. His character of writing was not his own; he unhappily adopted that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present praise; and, not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients have continued to delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself with a deciduous laurel."

He, in fact, for popularity's sake, preferred art, or rather artifice, to nature. Yet there are many beautiful thoughts, much real fancy and wit scattered through his poems; but they are too often buried in outrageous conceits and distorted metre. He never seems really in earnest, but always playing with his subject, and constructing gewgaws instead of raising immortal structures.

Cowley was a zealous Royalist; he went over to France when the queen of Charles I. retired thither, and became her secretary for her private correspondence with Charles. Afterwards he was sent over in the character of a spy on the Republican party and its proceedings. "Under pretence of privacy and retirement, he was to take occasion of giving notice of the posture of things in this nation;" but became suspected, and was arrested. He then fawned on Cromwell, wrote verses in his honour, which, however, were only shown in private; and, when the Commonwealth began to exhibit signs of dissolution, he again hastened to the exiled Court in France, and came back in the crowd of Royalists eager for promotion. But his flattering of Cromwell had been reported, and he was treated with coldness. Yet after some time, through Buckingham and the Earl of St. Albans, he obtained a lease of some lands, and, after the ill reception of his play of "The Cutter of Colman Street," he retired into the country, first to Barn Elms, and next to Chertsey, in Surrey, where he died in his forty-ninth year.

The great satirist of the age was Samuel Butler (b. 1600; d. 1680), who in his "Hudibras" introduced a new kind of poetry—a comic doggerel, now styled, as sui generis, Hudibrastic. Butler was the son of a yeoman, and had been educated for the Church without those connections which lead to promotion. With an immense accumulation of learning, and talent enough to have made half a dozen bishops, he became at one time a clerk to one Jeffreys, a justice of the peace at Earl's Coomb, in Worcestershire, and afterwards to Sir Samuel Luke, at Woodend, in Bedfordshire. In these situations he gleaned the characters and materials for his "Hudibras," a burlesque on the Puritans. Sir Samuel Luke was the actual Hudibras. The poem ridicules the Puritans in every way, but especially for attempting to put down bear-baiting; and accordingly the first canto—

Hudibras and his man Ralpho attack the bear, but are defeated, and then Hudibras retires and makes love to a rich widow. He is a Presbyterian, and Ralpho an Independent; and in the course of the story all the leading characters of the Commonwealth, Cromwell, Fleetwood, Desborough, Lambert, are ridiculed by name, as are Pym, Calamy, Case, Byfield, Lentham, and the rest under more or less transparent nicknames, as Ashley Cooper, under the name of the "politician," and John Lilburne, under that of "brother haberdasher." The first part was published in 1663, the second in 1664, and the third in 1678, fourteen years later. Still the poem remained unfinished. It did not require, however, even the second part to make it famous. It was received with one universal burst of laughter and applause by the Royalists. Charles II. and his courtiers were merrier over it than all, and Charles quoted it continually with unfailing gusto. The Earl of Dorset resolved to seize the opportunity, and introduce the author, through Buckingham, to Charles. Buckingham gave him an audience, but just as they were entering on conversation, Buckingham saw some ladies of loose character going past, ran out after them, and the poet was not only forgotten, but could never get a second interview. Clarendon, however, promised to see him duly rewarded, but never kept his word, and[359] Butler lived poor and died neglected, at the age of eighty. This shameful neglect has been much commented on; but no one seems to have reflected that there may have been more in this than mere neglect. Butler, in his double-edged satire, made some very hard hits at the Church, and, while ridiculing the Puritans, gave some not very light back-strokes to the licentiousness of the Royalists. He wrote an avowed "Satire on the Licentiousness of the Age;" and in his third part so far vented his resentment at his neglect as to satirise Charles himself for being led by the apronstrings of his numerous mistresses. He laughed at the sages of the newly established Royal Society in his "Elephant in the Moon;" and such a man is more frequently kicked than rewarded. The Church did not forget his sallies against it, and refused him burial in Westminster Abbey. When he wrote the questions and answers between the man disguised as a devil and Hudibras—

though the sting was intended for the Puritans, the Puritans laid hold on the passage, and quoted it against the Church, and this and like blows rebounded, no doubt, on the poets head.

The most illustrious name of this period next to that of Milton is that of John Dryden (b. 1631; d. 1701). He wrote almost every kind of poetry—satires, odes, plays, romantic stories—and translated Juvenal, Persius, the epistles of Ovid, and Virgil. It was unfortunate for the genius of Dryden that he was generally struggling with poverty, and by marrying an aristocratic and uncongenial wife, the sister of Sir Robert Howard, he was all the more compelled to exert his powers to live in the style which their circumstances demanded. Hence he produced an immense mass of writings which added little to his fame. Foremost amongst these are his plays, nearly thirty in number, which were mostly unsuccessful, and which abound with such gross indecencies that, had they even high merit otherwise, they would be found to be unperusable. He had the presumption to new-model Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" and the "Tempest"—two of the most poetical compositions in existence—and blurred them with the foul leprosy of obscenity. He treated the "Paradise Lost" in the same way; nor did his necessities lead him to these enormities only; but there is little doubt they drove him to apostatise from his religion, and from his original political faith. His first poem of any note was a most eulogistic elegy on the death of Cromwell, in which, amongst many other such things, he said—

His very next poem, and that of some length, was "Astræa Redux; a Poem on the Happy Restoration and Return of his Sacred Majesty Charles II.," immediately followed by "A Panegyric on his Coronation," in which he heaps still more glowing praise on the young royal libertine, and flings dust as liberally at his late idol:—

The accomplished sycophant received as his reward the office of Poet Laureate, with three hundred pounds a year; and he paid officiously more than his peppercorn of praise in the "Annus Mirabilis, or Year of Wonders, 1666," in which the sea fights with the Dutch and the Fire of London were commemorated in elegiac stanzas, and the most fulsome and almost impious adulation was poured in showers on both the king and his heir apparent, the Duke of York—not forgetting an especial poetical address to the duchess on her husband's victories over the Hollanders. No doubt Dryden made himself sure that his Laureate salary was safe, but he was mistaken. James, though "the best who ever bore the name," could forget benefits, and even flatteries; but he never forgot an ill turn, or anything that endangered his great design of restoring Popery; and Dryden, to please the Church and the late king, whom he did not know to be at heart a Papist, had written his "Religio Laici," in which he had pulled the Catholic Church to pieces, and lauded superlatively the Anglican hierarchy. James first took away his butt of sack, and then his salary; whereupon Dryden directly turned Catholic, and wrote "The Hind and the Panther," to beslaver Popery, kick down Protestantism, and reconcile the public to James's invidious scheme of abolishing the Test Act for his own purposes. This succeeded, and Dryden continued to receive his pay, and do his dirty work during James's reign. It was expected that he would wheel round again on William and Mary's success; but he lived and died Catholic.

[360]

With all respect for the genius of Dryden, it is thus impossible for a truthful historian to take any but a melancholy view of his personal character, and of the mass of his writings. They are, in fact, mostly on subjects that do not fall within the legitimate province of true poetry. His "Absalom and Achitophel"—written to ridicule Monmouth and Shaftesbury, with their accomplice, Buckingham, under the name of "Zimri," and to damage the Whig party generally—is transcendently clever; but even the highest satirical and political verse is not poetry—it is only cleverness in verse; and this is the grand characteristic of Dryden's poetry—it is masterly verse. There is no creative faculty in it; it is a matter of style rather than of soul and sentiment; and in style he is a great master. This made Milton say that Dryden was a good rhymester, but no poet; and in Milton's conception of poetry, and in that which has taught us to venerate Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, and others, Dryden was not a poet of the highest rank. A modern critic has given him great credit for "creative power and genius" in his adaptations of some of Chaucer's tales; but this is a mistake. The creative genius is Chaucer's; Dryden has only remodelled the tales in modern language; the ideas, the invention, are all Chaucer's; Dryden's share consists in his wonderful, elastic, musical diction, in which he undoubtedly excels every English author in the heroic measure. Pope's is more artificial, but is far behind in musical rhythm and elastic vigour. Dryden's heroic verse is music itself, and music full of its highest elements. In it the trumpet sings, the drum beats, the organ blows in solemn thunder, the flute and fife shrill forth eloquence, and all mingled instruments seem to chorus in a combination of blissful sounds and feelings. In the latter part of his life Dryden, standing independent of all Government drudgery, shows more worthily both in life and verse. His translation of Virgil yet remains the best in our language. He had done with his contemptible squabbles with Elkanah Settle and Shadwell, who won from him the honours and profits of the theatre; and his "Fables," as he called them—tales from Chaucer—seemed to inspire him with a more really poetic feeling. In them he seemed to grow purer, and to open his soul to the influences of classical and natural beauty, to the charms of nature, and of old romance. These tales will always remain the truest monuments of Dryden's fame. His odes, much as they have been praised, are rather feats of art than outpourings of poetic inspiration. His "Alexander's Feast" is but a description of the effects of music on a drunken conqueror and a courtesan. Who now would dream of placing it by the side of Coleridge's "Ode to France," or Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Childhood"? But any one turning to "Palamon and Arcite" will find himself in a real fairyland of poetry, and perceive how much Keats, Leigh Hunt, and other modern poets have formed themselves on his style, and have even adopted his triplets.

We have given so much space to these the greatest poets of this period, that we have little for the rest. We have mentioned Andrew Marvell's beautiful ballad, "The Emigrants" (p. 180), and Wither's poems (p. 178), in our previous review. Sir John Denham's descriptive poem, "Cooper's Hill," had great popularity, and is a good specimen of that class of verse. Waller was a reigning favourite for his lyrics, which are elegant, but destitute of any high principle or emotion, as the man was, who wrote a panegyric on Cromwell and another on Charles II.; and when Charles told him he thought that on Cromwell the better, replied, "Sir, we poets never excel so well in writing truth as in writing fiction." Amongst the courtiers of Charles, Buckingham and Rochester were poets. Buckingham's comedy, "The Rehearsal," which was written to ridicule the heroic drama copied by Dryden from the French, still finds admirers; and the genius of Rochester was unquestionable, but still inferior to his obscenity. Sir Charles Sedley, another courtier, wrote comedies and songs almost equally famous for their dissoluteness. Charles Cotton, the author of "Virgil Travestied," was a writer of much wit, but nearly equal grossness, though he was the intimate friend of Izaak Walton, who was also no mean poet. The Earls of Roscommon and Dorset were popular, the first for his "Essay on Translated Verse," written in verse, and the other for his splendid ballad written at sea, commencing "To all you ladies now on land." Pomfret, a clergyman, wrote a didactic poem called "The Choice," which Dr. Johnson declared to be more frequently read than almost any poem in the language, and which Southey believed to be the most popular poem in the language. It is, in reality, one of the common-places gone by. Sir William Davenant, a reputed son of Shakespeare, wrote "Gondibert," a heroic poem in elegiac stanzas, which has good parts, but, as a whole, is intolerably dull. Sir Richard Fanshawe was celebrated as a translator,[361] especially of Guarini's "Pastor Fido." Another translator from Greek and Spanish was Thomas Stanley, the learned editor of Æschylus, and the author of "The History of Philosophy." Besides these may be mentioned Bulteel, a popular songwriter; Philip Ayres, a lyrical poet; Dr. Henry More, author of a poem, "The Life of the Soul," in Spenserian stanzas; and Flatman, an imitator of Cowley.

SAMUEL BUTLER.

The dramatic writing of the period was rather voluminous than first-rate. Davenant wrote above twenty plays, masks, etc.; but the most eminent dramatists were the unfortunate Otway, Nathaniel Lee, Sir George Etherege, Wycherley, Crowne, Southern, and Jasper Mayne. Otway's "Orphan" and "Venice Preserved" still maintain their fame; he wrote altogether ten plays. Nathaniel Lee wrote ten tragedies, a great mixture of talent and bombast. The most celebrated of them are his "Theodosius" and his "Rival Queens." Crowne wrote seventeen plays, in which the selections made by Charles Lamb in his "Dramatic Specimens" show that there exists perhaps the most pre-eminent dramatic genius of the age. Etherege is the author of three comedies of great polish and brilliancy, and set the pattern for Wycherley, and for Congreve, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh in the next period. Wycherley wrote four comedies equally remarkable for vigour and indecency. In fact, it is scarcely necessary to repeat that the whole of the dramatic literature of this period is thoroughly disfigured with the coarsest and most revolting sensuality and obscenity. Southern belongs properly to the next era, as he produced only two of his plays during this period—his tragedy of "The Loyal[362] Brother," and his comedy of "The Disappointment." Shadwell and Settle inundated the stage with worthless plays; and Mrs. Aphra Behn, a courtesan as well as writer, was the author of a whole host of comedies, novels, and poems. Of the two comedies by Jasper Mayne—who, by-the-by, was a clergyman—"The City Match" is the better. Perhaps we ought not to close this review of the poets without a mention of the most successful poetaster of the age, Nahum Tate, who was in such estimation as to be allowed to supply our churches with his most wretched version of the Psalms, and to be employed by Dryden to continue his satire of "Absalom and Achitophel."

At the head of the prose writers of this period, as of the poets, we must place Milton. Though his writings are for the most part on controversial subjects, they were subjects of such immense importance that they acquired a lasting value. They bear a certain relation to his poetry. This in its highest exhibition celebrated the triumph of the Deity over the powers of evil. His prose writings were employed to support the struggle of liberty against the advocates of all political evil—absolutism. Poetry seemed to have become the habitual expression of his mind, and, therefore, there is in his prose style a certain awkwardness and stiffness. He moves like David in armour that he had not well proved; and his utterance, solemn and full of deep thought and erudition, is, as it were, forced and formal. But when he warms up with the greatness of his subject, he runs into a strain of grave eloquence which has scarcely an equal in the language.

The great prose works of Milton comprise his "History of England" from the earliest times to the Conquest, including all the old legends of the chroniclers, the arrival of Brute from Rome, the story of King Lear, and those fine fables which have been the storehouses of poets and dramatists; his "Tractate on Education;" his magnificent "Areopagitica;" his "Tenure of Kings and Magistrates;" the "Eikonoklastes;" the "Defensio pro Populo Anglicano" and "Defensio Secunda"—vindicating the conduct of England in deposing impracticable kings; his "Treatise on the Best Manner of Removing Hirelings out of the Church;" his essay on "Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes;" his "State Letters," written at the command of Cromwell; an "Art of Logic;" a "Treaty of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and what Best Means may be used against the Growth of Popery;" and his "Familiar Letters," in Latin. Besides these he left in manuscript a "Brief History of Muscovy," and a "System of Theology"—both since published. It may be safely said that scarcely any other writer has left such a sound and profound body of knowledge of all that is necessary for the maintenance of freedom, civil and religious, in the State.

Dryden is also a vigorous prose writer; but nothing can be more characteristic of the two men than the prose of Milton and Dryden. The one is grave, solemn, independent, upholding the sacred interests of religion and liberty; the other, that of Dryden—besides short lives of Polybius, Lucian, and Plutarch, and an "Essay on Dramatic Literature"—consists chiefly of a mass of his dramatic writings, couched in the most extravagant and unmanly terms of flattery. It is in vain to say that this was the spirit of the time; we have only to turn to Milton and behold that a great soul despised such sycophancy as much then as now.

Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion" and Memoirs of his own life assume a permanent importance from the position which he occupied in the struggles of those times; as literary compositions they are unique in style, but as historical authority, it is necessary to read them with caution.

Hobbes (b. 1588; d. 1679), the celebrated philosopher of Malmesbury, was one of the most powerful minds of the age. By his works, called the "Leviathan," his treatise on "Human Nature," on "Liberty and Necessity," and his "Decameron Physiologicum," with others of the like kind, he became the head of a great school of writers, which found wide acceptance in France, Germany, and England. Mr. Mill says—"Hobbes is a great name in philosophy, on account both of what he taught, and the extraordinary impulse which he communicated to the spirit of free inquiry in Europe." But, on the other hand, it has been well observed by a modern writer that, "as for what is properly to be called his system of philosophy—and it is to be observed that in his own writings his views in metaphysics, in morals, in politics, are all bound and built up together into one consistent whole—the question of the truth or falsehood of that seems to be completely settled. Nobody now professes more than a partial Hobbism. If so much of the creed of the philosopher of Malmesbury as affirms the non-existence of any essential distinction between right and wrong, the non-existence of conscience or the moral sense, the non-existence of anything beyond mere sensation in either emotion or intelligence, and other[363] similar negatives of his moral and metaphysical doctrine, has still its satisfied disciples, who is now a Hobbist either in politics or mathematics? Yet certainly it is in these latter departments that we must look for the greater part of what is absolutely original in the notions of this teacher. Hobbes's philosophy of human nature is not amiss as a philosophy of Hobbes's own human nature. Without passions or imagination himself, and steering his own course through life by the mere calculations of an enlightened selfishness, one half of the broad mass of Humanity was to him nothing better than a blank."

Hobbes was a thorough advocate of personal monarchy, as is testified by his "De Corpore Politico," his "Leviathan," and "Behemoth," the last being a history of the Civil War from 1640 to 1660. Hobbes lived to a great age, praised by his admirers as an example of independence. His arguments were ably answered by Cudworth, by Clarendon, Bishops Cumberland, Bramhall, and Tenison, by Dr. Henry More in his "History of Philosophy;" by Eachard, and others.

A writer who has had a different influence was Richard Baxter (b. 1615; d. 1691). Baxter held the same position in the religious world as Halifax in the political one. Halifax gloried in the name of a "Trimmer." He was constantly occupying the middle post in the world of party. Sometimes one party congratulated itself that it had him, but presently it found him defending measures of its opponents. In fact, he was an independent thinker, and, extending his hand to either party as he thought it right at the moment, he turned the balance of conflicting opinions. Exactly so with Baxter; a clergyman of the Church of England, he was yet a decided Nonconformist. He was a Monarchist in theory, but was so disgusted with the Royalists for their licentiousness and notions of absolutism, that he went over to the camp of Cromwell and preached in it. But when Cromwell assumed the supreme power, again Baxter was on the other side, condemning to his face his usurpation. Baxter's mediating views led him to hope, on the return of Charles II., that Nonconformity and the Church might shake hands. He believed in Charles's "Healing Declaration," and drew up an accommodating Liturgy, but found himself deceived; the Hierarchy rejected such compromises. He became a sufferer from Nonconformity, and yet remained an advocate of Conformity to a certain extent. So was it in his theological views; with one hand he embraced Calvin, with the other Arminius. He rejected Calvin's doctrine of Reprobation, yet accepted his theory of Election—that is, that certain persons are pre-ordained from all eternity as instruments for certain work by God; but he agreed with Arminius's assertion that all men whatever are capable of salvation, for that Christ distinctly declared that He died for all, and that whoever believed should be saved. The views of Baxter were adopted by large numbers, who became a sect under the name of "Baxterians;" but they were gradually absorbed into the different denominations of the Independents, Baptists, etc., who may now be considered as generally holding Baxter's mild and amiable opinions. Watts and Doddridge were eminent professors of Baxter's creed. The chief works of Baxter are his "Methodus Theologiæ," his "Catholic Theology," and his "Saints' Everlasting Rest." The last is by far the most popular. It has been circulated by tens of thousands into all quarters where the English language reaches, and, like the "Pilgrim" of Bunyan, is to be found on the shelves of the cottage and the farm in the remotest nooks. Perhaps no book ever gave so much consolation to the spirits of so many simple and earnest seekers after religious rest as this work of the venerable Richard Baxter.

Bunyan (b. 1628; d. 1688) was a contemporary of Baxter, but a man of a more robust and sturdy temper. Lying twelve years in Bedford gaol for his religious faith, he there produced his immortal "Pilgrim's Progress," a work which, as the production of an illiterate tinker, was contemptuously ignored by the critics and the learned of the time, till it had spread like a flood over the whole land and was become the delight of the nation. The "Pilgrim" is a wonderful work for any man, and Bunyan was undoubtedly a genius of the very first class.

With Baxter and Bunyan, the gentle angler, Izaak Walton (b. 1593; d. 1683), claims a place for his "Lives of Religious Worthies," and not less for his "Complete Angler," one of the first works, along with "Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," which awoke the love of nature.

Side by side with these worthies stands John Evelyn (b. 1620; d. 1706), a man who mixed with the Court in Charles II.'s reign without defiling himself. He was the model of a true English gentleman—pious, honourable, and exerting himself at once to maintain sound morals and to promote science. His Memoirs present a lively picture of the dissolute age in which he lived; and he sought to draw men away from the[364] sink of corruption by encouraging them to plant and cultivate their estates. For this he wrote his "Sylva; or, a Discourse of Forest Trees," still a standard and most delightful work. He was one of the first members and promoters of the Royal Society, and wrote "Numismata, a Discourse of Medals;" a "Parallel of Ancient and Modern Architecture;" a work on Theology; and the first "Gardener's Almanac."

JOHN BUNYAN.

As a memoir-writer of the same period Samuel Pepys (b. 1632; d. 1703) is more popular than Evelyn. Pepys was Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II.; and his inimitably-gossiping volumes of whatever he saw during those times have been often reprinted and read everywhere with great unction. Pepys, besides this, continued a most invaluable collection of old ballads begun by Selden, from which Bishop Percy amply helped himself in collecting his "Reliques;" so that to Pepys and John Selden we really owe much of that great revolution in taste and poetry which we ascribe almost exclusively to Percy. Another Memorialist of this period was Sir William Temple, a man who, like Evelyn, maintained a high moral status, and was held in great esteem for his philosophical essays. In Scotland Sir George Mackenzie stood conspicuous for his "Institution of the Laws of Scotland," and not less for various works of taste, as his "Aretina; or, The Serious Romance," and his "Religio Stoici; or, The Virtuoso." Burnet, the author of "The Sacred Theory of the Earth," also belongs to this period. In his work the Biblical account of the origin of the earth is made the foundation of a scientific treatise.

The Church at this period possessed great and[365] eloquent men—Tillotson, Sherlock, Barrow, South, Stillingfleet, and others. Their sermons remain as storehouses of religious argument. They were nearly all of the Arminian school. Barrow was, besides, one of the ablest geometricians that have appeared.

GRESHAM COLLEGE, WHERE THE ROYAL SOCIETY WAS FIRST HOUSED.

During the period now under review a great step in the progress of science was made by the foundation of the Royal Society. The honour of originating this famous society belongs to Mr. Theodore Haak, a German, who was resident in London. At his suggestion a number of scientific gentlemen, including Dr. Goddard, a physician in Wood Street, but also a preparer of lenses for telescopes; Dr. Wallis, the mathematician; Dr. Wilkins, afterwards Bishop of Chester; Drs. Ent, Gisson, and Merrit, and Mr. Samuel Foster, professor of astronomy in Gresham College. These meetings began in 1645, and were held at one of their houses, or in Gresham College, or at apartments in Cheapside. Though some of these gentlemen were removed by promotion, others continued to join it, as Boyle, Evelyn, Wren—afterwards Sir Christopher. In 1662 a royal charter was obtained, and in the following year additional privileges were granted under a second charter. The first President was Lord Brouncker, and the first council consisted of Mr.—afterwards Lord—Brereton, Sir Kenelm Digby, Sir Robert Moray, Sir William Petty, Sir Paul Neile, Messrs. Boyle, Slingsbey, Christopher and Matthew Wren, Balle, Areskine, Oldenburg, Henshaw, and Dudley Palmer, and Drs. Wilkins, Wallis, Timothy Clarke, and Ent. Balle was the first treasurer, and Wilkins and Oldenburg the first secretaries. The Society was pledged not to meddle with questions of theology or State, and their chief subjects of notice were the physical sciences, anatomy, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, navigation, statistics, chemistry, magnetism, mechanics, and kindred topics. In the spring of the second year the Society numbered a hundred and fifteen members; amongst them, besides many noblemen and gentlemen of distinction, we find the names of Aubrey, Dr. Barrow, Dryden, Cowley, Waller, and Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester. The Society commenced the publication of its[366] Transactions in 1665, which became a record of the progress of physical and mathematical science for a long series of years.

During the short period over which the present review ranges—that is, from the Restoration in 1660 to the Revolution in 1688, that is, only twenty-eight years—some of the greatest discoveries in science were made which have occurred in the history of the world; namely, the discovery of the circulation of the blood by Dr. William Harvey; the improvement of the tables of logarithms constructed by Napier; the invention of fluxions by Newton, and the calculus of fluxions, or the differential calculus, by Leibnitz; the discovery of the perfected theory of gravitation, by Newton; the foundation of modern astronomy, by Flamsteed; and the construction of a steam-engine by the Marquis of Worcester, originally suggested by Solomon de Caus, a Frenchman.

Napier (b. 1550; d. 1617) published his tables of Logarithms in 1614, under the title of "Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio," and in the same or the next year he and his friend, Henry Briggs, gave them their improved and perfect form, for from that time to the present they have admitted of no further improvement. They came from the hands of their author and his assisting friend perfect. The principle of their construction Napier did not declare; but this important revelation was made by Briggs and Napier's son in 1619. By these tables Napier superseded the long and laborious arithmetical operations which great calculators had previously to undergo, and which the most simple trigonometrical operations demanded. Without this wonderful aid even Newton could not have lived to formulate the principles that he drew from, and established for ever upon, the material accumulated by prior mathematicians. Napier in fact furnished by these tables a scale by which not only the advantages which he proposed of shortening arithmetical and trigonometrical labour were effected, but which enabled his successors to weigh the atmosphere and take the altitudes of mountains, compute the lengths and areas of all curves, and to introduce a calculus by which the most unexpected results should be reached. "By reducing to a few days the labour of many months," says Laplace, "it doubles, as it were, the life of an astronomer, besides freeing him from the errors and disgust inseparable from long calculations."

We are not, however, to suppose that Napier was the first who had a perception of the nature of logarithms. In almost all grand discoveries the man of genius stands upon the shoulders of preceding geniuses to reach that culminating point which brings out the full discovery. In very early ages it was known that if the terms of an arithmetical and geometrical series were placed in juxtaposition, the multiplication, division, involution, and evolution of the latter would answer to and might actually be effected by a corresponding addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of the former. Archimedes employed this principle in his "Arenarius," a treatise on the number of the sands. Stifel, in his "Arithmetica Integra," published at Nürnberg in 1644, exhibits a still clearer notion of the use of this principle; but the merit of Napier was this—that whilst those who preceded him could only apply the principle to certain numbers, he discovered the means of applying it to all, and thus was enabled to construct and bring to perfection at once his admirable tables. There was an attempt to show that he had stolen the idea from Longomontanus, but that great mathematician settles this matter by himself attributing the whole invention to Napier.

Besides the Logarithms, Napier—or, to give him his full title, Lord Napier of Merchiston—is also noted for his elegant theorems, called his "Analogies," and his theorem of "the five circular parts," which furnishes a ready solution of all the cases of right-angled spherical triangles. He also invented what are called "Napier's Bones," to facilitate the performance of multiplication and division; instruments of such value, that had he not discovered the logarithms, they would have, to a certain extent, supplied their place.

The discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (b. 1642; d. 1727), however, put the crown to the glories of this period. Their extent can only be learnt by a perusal of his "Principia; or, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy," containing his complete theory of the laws of the universe, based on the grand doctrine of Gravitation, of which he published afterwards a popular view under the title of "De Mundi Systemate," enunciating the truths contained in the third book of the "Principia;" his "Optics," containing his theories of light and colour, founded on a host of curious experiments; his "De Quadratura Curvarum," containing an exposition of his method of fluxions; his "Method of Fluxions and Analysis by Infinite Series." A great many of those discoveries were[367] made known to the public through his communications to the Royal Society. The announcement of his binomial theorem, by which he was able to determine the area and rectification of curves, the surface and contacts of the solids formed by their revolution and the position of their centre of gravity—a theory of infinite avail in his determination of the laws of the planetary bodies—is dated 1664, that of his "Method of Fluxions," 1665; but he did not claim this till 1669. He professed to have written a tract on the subject in 1664, but he did not produce this tract till he had seen some of the same results published in Mercator's "Logarithmotechnia," four years afterwards. In 1666 he demonstrated the great law of gravitation, and applied it to the planets, but was baffled in his attempts to apply it to the moon through a false estimate of the earth's diameter. This was corrected by Picard's measurement of an arc of the meridian, with which Newton became acquainted in 1682, and then after sixteen years' delay he completed his system. But his "Principia" was not published collectively till 1687; his "Optics" till 1704, with his "De Quadratura Curvarum."

Unparalleled as were the achievements of Newton, these were not accomplished, any more than any other great performances, without substantial hints and assistance from preceding or contemporary genius. The very principle of gravitation had been pointed out by Robert Hooke, and Newton was compelled to admit, and offered to publish a scholium acknowledging the fact, that Hooke, Wren, and Halley had already deduced this law—that the gravitation of the planets was as the curvic square of the distance—from Kepler's second law of analogy between the periodic times and the mean distances of the planets. Newton's defenders say that he probably made this concession for the sake of peace; but was Newton likely to surrender a great truth, vitally affecting his fame for science and discovery, if there were not solid grounds for it?

Still less to the credit of Newton was his conduct towards Leibnitz in the dispute regarding the Differential Calculus. Leibnitz having heard through Oldenburg that Newton had made discoveries as to the measurement of tangents, in fact, as to his binomial theorem, and as to fluxions, desired to have some account of them, and Newton, through Oldenburg, communicated to Leibnitz his binomial theorem, but concealed his knowledge of fluxions under a most abstruse anagram, which was formed from the words, "Data Equatione quotcunque fluentes quantitates envolvente fluxiones invenire, et vice versâ." It has been well observed that if Leibnitz could draw any light from that anagram, he must have possessed superhuman sagacity. Leibnitz, however, having himself made most important discoveries in fluxions, at once and candidly communicated the theory of what he called, and what is still called, the differential calculus, to Newton. This, Newton, in a scholium included in his "Principia," admitted to be a method hardly differing from his own except in the form of words and symbols. Yet in the third edition of the "Principia" he omitted this confession, claimed the exclusive invention of the differential calculus for himself, and branded Leibnitz as a plagiarist. The fact was, that Leibnitz had gone a step beyond Newton. Newton had discovered fluxions, but Leibnitz had discovered the fluxionary calculus, or, as he termed it, the differential calculus.

Still more discreditable was the conduct of Newton to Flamsteed (b. 1646; d. 1719). Flamsteed was the first Astronomer Royal. Charles II. established an observatory at Greenwich, one of the best things he ever did. The observatory was, in fact, the queen's house in Greenwich Park, and Flamsteed was appointed Astronomical Observator, with the magnificent salary of a hundred pounds a year, and not a single instrument, not even a telescope. It was in vain that he applied for instruments; and his appointment might have been a sinecure had he not procured instruments at his own expense, and taught pupils to maintain himself. But through all these difficulties he went on making observations, and in time not only made a mass of the most valuable lunar observations, but had made a map and catalogue of the stars, such as there had never been before for completeness and accuracy. His catalogue included three thousand three hundred stars, "whose places were more accurate than any determined in the next fifty years, and whose selection and nomenclature has served as a basis to every catalogue since that time." Bailey, Flamsteed's biographer, claims—and very justly claims—that the commencement of modern astronomy dates from his observations, for no one would care to go beyond them to compare any made in our day.

Newton was very intimate with Flamsteed, and with good cause, for he depended on his supplying him with the necessary observations to enable him to establish his lunar theory, and it is on evidence that Flamsteed furnished him with every lunar observation that he made. When Flamsteed[368] had completed his catalogue, he proposed to publish it, and Prince George of Denmark, knowing that Flamsteed had expended on his instruments two thousand pounds more than his salary, offered to pay for the printing. A committee, consisting of Newton, Sir Christopher Wren, Dr. Arbuthnot, Dr. Gregory, and Mr. Roberts, was appointed to superintend this publication. The whole story, based on letters and documents of the time found at Greenwich observatory, is too long to be detailed here; but the upshot of it is, that the catalogue and observations of Flamsteed were printed and published, not as his own, but as those of Halley. In vain did Flamsteed protest against this most scandalous deed. Newton and his associates were strong in the favour of the queen and Halifax, and Newton used the most opprobrious language to the man by whose labours he had so greatly benefited, and whom he had now helped to rob of his dearest possession—his fame. The softest name that he gave him was that of "puppy." Flamsteed could obtain no redress—though they had broken his seal to come at his catalogue—till after the death of Queen Anne and Halifax, when he was enabled to get possession of the remainder of the books called Halley's, styled, "Historia Celestis libri duo." He immediately began preparations for publishing them himself, and demanded his MSS. from Newton, who refused, and was sued for them by Flamsteed. In the meantime, to avoid being compelled to give up the MSS. to the rightful owner, Newton handed them over to Halley! Every insult was offered to Flamsteed. He was summoned before the Royal Society to answer whether he had his instruments in order, a matter in which the Society had no authority, and what made the matter more atrocious, the instruments were Flamsteed's own. Newton even twitted Flamsteed with his one hundred pounds a year salary, at which Flamsteed indignantly reminded him that he had been receiving three hundred pounds a year himself ever since he came to London. Flamsteed's work was not completed till after his death, when it appeared under the name of "Historia Cœlestis Britannica."

It is difficult to conceive more overbearing, unjust, and unworthy proceedings than those of Newton against Flamsteed. Sir David Brewster, in his "Life of Newton," endeavoured to defend him by asserting that Flamsteed did not appreciate Newton's theory; as if Flamsteed was not quite at liberty to have his own opinion, an opinion shared by many at the time, and which theory, in the first edition of the "Principia," the only one then out, was in some respects grossly incorrect—"rejected," as Flamsteed remarked, "by the heavens." Brewster also urged that Flamsteed showed unwillingness to furnish Newton with the requisite lunar observations. He was under no obligation whatever to do so; yet, as proved, he furnished him with all he had made. It is contended also that the committee had a right to break the seal of Flamsteed to get at his catalogue—an assertion than which nothing can be more immoral.

On the whole view of this case, as it rests on broad facts, we are compelled, in justice between man and man, to declare our opinion that Flamsteed was not only one of the most illustrious astronomers which England has ever produced, but also one of the most ill-used of men; and without derogating an iota from the scientific merits of Sir Isaac Newton, it is clear, from his conduct to both Leibnitz and Flamsteed, that he adds another proof to that of Bacon, that intellectual greatness and moral greatness do not necessarily reside in the same mind.

Amongst the other men of mathematical note in this period we may mention Henry Briggs, the coadjutor of Napier. His "Trigonometrica Britannica" showed that he had had a near view of the binomial theorem afterwards discovered by Newton. This work was published after his death by his friend, Henry Gellibrand, also an able mathematician. Thomas Harriott, author of a work on algebra—"Artis Analyticæ Praxis"—is said to have discovered the solar spots before Galileo, and the satellites of Jupiter only a few days after Galileo. Jeremiah Horrocks was beforehand with Newton in the theory of the lunar motions, which Newton afterwards demonstrated to be the necessary consequence of gravitation. Dr. Wallis, Crabtree, Gascoigne, Milbourn, Shakerley, and Gunter—the author of Gunter's Scale—were all men of high merit in those branches of science. Barrow we have already mentioned as a distinguished geometrician as well as a theologian. He was only excelled in optics by Newton himself; and in his "Sectiones Geometricæ" he nearly anticipated Newton's principle of fluxions. James Gregory, professor of mathematics at Edinburgh, the first constructor of a reflecting telescope; and his nephew, David Gregory, of Oxford; John Collins, author of various philosophical works and papers; Roger Cotes, author of "Harmonia Mensurarum," etc.; and Dr. Brook Taylor, author of "Methodus Incrementorum," were all substantial[369] contributors to the higher sciences at this era. Halley, whose name occurs so unfavourably in the affair with Flamsteed, succeeded him as Astronomer Royal, and is noted as being the first to find out the exact return of a comet which bears his name, and for his catalogue of the southern stars, published in 1679. Besides his profound astronomical talents, he added in various ways to the knowledge of the time. He was the first to construct tables of mortality; introduced improvements in the diving-bell; and wrote treatises on the variations of the compass, on the trade winds, and other subjects.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

In pneumatics and chemistry the Honourable Robert Boyle made some discoveries, and considerably improved the air-pump; and Robert Hooke, already mentioned as one of the earliest theorists of gravitation, also had a pretty clear notion of the gas now termed oxygen. Thomas Sydenham is a great name in medicine of this time; and the department of natural history took a new start under the hands of Ray, Willoughby, Lester, and others. Ray published his "Historia Plantarum," and edited Willoughby's works on birds and fishes. Conchology was advanced by Martin Lester, and Woodward opened up the new region of mineralogy. The two most extraordinary discoveries, however, next to those of Newton, were those of the circulation of the blood by Harvey (b. 1578; d. 1657), and of the steam-engine by Solomon de Caus, introduced into England by the Marquis of Worcester (b. 1601; d. 1667).

The theory of the circulation of the blood, like almost every other great theory founded on fact, was not left for Harvey to think out ab origine. That the blood flowed from the heart to the[370] extremities was known to the ancients, and stated by Aristotle. Galen even had argued, from the discovery of valves in the pulmonary artery, that the blood was also returned to the heart. Servetus, of Geneva, the same who was put to death for heresy, had demonstrated the circulation through the lungs, and again this theory had been propounded by Rualdus Columbus in 1559. In 1571 Cæsalpinus of Arezzo came still nearer to the true theory, from observing the swelling of veins below a ligature—thence inferring that the blood flowed from the extremities as well as to them. It is clear, therefore, that all but positive demonstration was arrived at when Harvey appeared. But though this demonstration was all that was now needed, it was a work of no ordinary courage and genius. The few facts known were overlaid by such a mass of absurd and contradictory notions amongst medical men, that nothing but the nicest and completest experiments could establish the truth. This Harvey undertook to do, and accomplished it. He informed Boyle, as we learn from that philosopher's "Treatise on Final Causes," that the idea of the true circulation was first suggested to him when studying under Fabricius Aquapendente, at Padua, by noticing the valves in the veins—the same that had attracted the attention of Galen. To ascertain the fact, he made numerous accurate experiments on both dead and living animals, and the result was the clearest proof of the fact that the blood is propelled from the heart through the arteries, and returned to it through the veins. Besides this, his experiments threw a flood of light on the action of the heart, on its diastolic and systolic functions, as observed both in adult subjects and in the fœtus; on the true action of the lungs on the blood, and other important points. His completed views were so opposed to the notions of the Faculty at the time, that a stupendous prejudice was raised against him, and his practice fell off greatly from the clamour which was raised against what his fellow-practitioners called his wild speculations. It is a well-known fact that not one medical man who had passed his fortieth year ever admitted the discovery of Harvey. The most famous anatomists abroad joined in the outcry against his theory. Primrosius, Parisanus, Riolanus, professors of anatomy at Paris, and Plempius, professor at Louvain, were violent against it. Harvey very modestly permitted the storm to blow, certain that a truth built on positive facts would in the end prevail. He refused to answer the attacks of any one but Riolanus; but his friend, Dr. Ent, ably wielded the pen in his defence, and Harvey had the pleasure to see Plempius before long confess himself a convert, and many others then followed.

Besides Harvey's great discovery, he made many other anatomical investigations with great care and ability, and especially on a vital subject, detailed in his treatise "De Generatione." His merits became so fully acknowledged that he was elected President of the College of Physicians.

But the gifted men of this age who could determine the laws of worlds, and systems of worlds, and the vital principles of the living body, failed to perceive the wondrous capabilities of another invention destined to revolutionise society at a later day. The Marquis of Worcester, whom we have seen figuring conspicuously as the Earl of Glamorgan, in the civil strife of Charles I.'s reign, constructed a steam-engine—a very rude one, of course—which Sorbiere, a Frenchman, saw at work at his lordship's house at Vauxhall in 1663. It was capable of throwing up water to a great height. This engine is described by the marquis in his "Century of Inventions," published this same year, 1663. It is the sixty-eighth in the catalogue, and entitled "An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire." He used a cannon for his boiler, and says he has seen "water run like a constant fountain-stream forty feet high. One vessel of water rarefied by fire driveth up forty of cold water."

The marquis had learned this invention from the work of a Frenchman, Solomon de Caus, entitled "Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes." This De Caus had travelled in England, and had importuned his own countrymen to examine what he deemed a wonderful discovery—the power of steam; but, like Thomas Gray, when urging on England a system of railroads, he was treated as a bore and a maniac. The marquis found De Caus actually confined in the Bicêtre in Paris as a madman, for wanting to convince his countrymen of the marvellous powers of steam. The marquis's own notion appeared to be that the engine might be employed chiefly for the raising of water—a trait attributed to him by Stuart, in his "Anecdotes of Steam-Engines," published in 1651, in which the writer mentions a little engine at work at his house in Lambeth, which "might be applied to draw or hale ships, boates, etc., up rivers against the stream; to draw carts, wagons, etc., as fast without cattel; to draw the plough without cattel, to the same dispatch, if need be."

The views of the marquis were thus rapidly[371] expanding on the subject; and it is wonderful that the invention should have been suffered to sleep a century and a half longer. Still more wonderful is it that the powers of steam slept so long, when, according to Gibbon, the architect of St. Sophia, Constantinople, centuries ago, was so well aware of it that he used to shake the house of his neighbour, an enemy of his, with steam machinery.

Of architecture there was none belonging to this period. The glorious old Gothic had closed for the time its career, and even the most eminent architects despised it. Inigo Jones introduced an Italian style, and committed the atrocity of erecting Grecian screens in Gothic cathedrals; and we shall find Wren, the architect of the noble classical fabric of St. Paul's, equally incapable of perceiving the beauty of Gothic. To him it was barbarian.

With Charles II. came in French taste, and almost all the professors of painting, sculpture, and engraving were foreigners. The whole art of painting was expended in portraiture and on the decorations of walls and ceilings after the fashion of Le Brun, but not with his genius. Verrio and Sir Peter Lely engrossed the patronage of the Court, and the admiration of the public.

Antonio Verrio, a Neapolitan painter, who transferred himself to France and then to England, covered immense spaces of wall and ceiling at Windsor Castle and other places with his gods, goddesses, and similar figures, pouring them out, as Walpole observes, without much invention and as little taste, but certainly with a great show of colour. He painted most of the ceilings at Windsor, one side of the Hall of St. George and the chapel, most of which works are now destroyed. On the ceiling of St. George's Hall he drew Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, as Faction dispersing libels; and the housekeeper, Mrs. Marriott, as Fury, because she had offended him. He was paid an enormous sum for these works, and spent it in ostentation. He had a house in St. James's Park, and was also master gardener to the king. Walpole gives an extraordinary example of his freedom in demanding money of the king. He had just received a thousand pounds when he appeared at Court, and found Charles in such a circle that he could not approach him; but, nothing daunted, he called out to him that he desired to speak to him. Being asked what he wanted, he replied, "Money." The king smiled, and reminded him of the thousand pounds just had. "Yes," said he, "but pedlars and painters cannot give long credit; that was soon paid away, and I have no gold left." "At that rate," said Charles, "you would spend more than I do." "True," replied the impudent foreigner; "but does your majesty keep an open table as I do?"

Being a Tory, at the Revolution he refused to paint for King William; but was employed by the Earl of Exeter at Burleigh House, and the Earl of Devonshire, at Chatsworth, where plenty of his works remain. Dr. Waagen says he received more from Lord Exeter alone than Raphael or Michael Angelo received for all their immortal works. The earl paid him for twelve years one thousand five hundred pounds a year—that is, eighteen thousand pounds, besides his keep and equipage at his disposal. At length the earl persuaded him to work for King William at Hampton Court, where, besides other things, he painted the staircase so badly that he was suspected to have done it on purpose.

In the wake of Verrio came Jacques Rousseau and Charles de la Fosse, the painters of the dome of the Invalides in Paris. Some few Englishmen, too, were employed in fresco-painting. Among them were Isaac Fuller, remains of whose performance may be seen in the dome of St. Mary Abchurch, in London; John Freeman, a scene painter; and Robert Streater, a man of superior skill, who painted the ceiling of the theatre at Oxford, and many other ceilings, besides historical subjects, and even still life.

Lely, the painter of Charles's beauties, now at Hampton Court, was a native of Germany, but had studied chiefly in Holland, where Charles is supposed to have met with him. His ladies are endowed with remarkable beauty and grace, but there is a certain likeness running through them all, especially in the complexion, the tone and tint of the flesh, as well as the disposal of the drapery, which gives one the inevitable impression that they are to a great degree got up, and made rather after his peculiar model than their own real appearance. However, whether they are striking likenesses or not, they are beautiful pictures. His draperies are arranged in broad folds, and he relieves his figures by a landscape background, which made Walpole say, "His nymphs trail fringes and embroidery through meadows and purling streams." The essence of Lely's painting is Court artifice. It is showy, affected, and meretricious. Besides his Court portraits he occasionally attempted the historic, one of the best of this kind which he executed being "Susannah and the Elders," at Burleigh House.[372] Amongst a crowd of foreigners who sought to share Sir Peter Lely's popularity were Henry Gascar, James Huysman, and Sunman, from the Netherlands—all excellent portrait painters. Netscher also came to England for a time; and William Wissing, of Amsterdam, an admirable artist, succeeded Lely at his death, and was only eclipsed by the rising fame of Kneller, a German, who afterwards became King William's Court painter. Of the French school was Philip Duval, a pupil of the celebrated Le Brun.

EVELYN "DISCOVERING" GRINLING GIBBONS. (See p. 372.)

Amongst native portrait painters may be mentioned Michael Wright, a Scotsman, who painted the judges for the Guildhall of London; though he is more noted for his portrait of Lacy, the actor, in three characters; of Henry Anderton, a pupil of Streater's, who became very popular; of John Greenhill, and Thomas Flatman, the last being also a poet of some note.

A number of Dutch and Flemish painters of still life were also employed in England at this period, of whom the most celebrated were Vansoon, Hoogstraten, Roestraten, and Varelst, who also attempted portraiture. There were also Abraham Hondius, animal painter, and Danker, Vosterman, Griffier, Lancrinck, and the two Vanderveldes, landscape painters. The Vanderveldes were justly in high esteem; Lancrinck was the painter of Lely's backgrounds.

The two great sculptors were Caius Gabriel Cibber, a native of Holstein, and Grinling Gibbons, whom Macaulay calls a Dutchman, but who, though supposed to be of Dutch extraction, was an Englishman, born in Spur Alley, London. Cibber—who was the father of Colley Cibber, afterwards Poet Laureate, and immortalised by Pope in the "Dunciad"—is now chiefly known by his two figures of "Raging" and "Melancholy Madness," which adorned the principal gate of old Bethlehem Hospital, and were afterwards removed to South Kensington—works of real genius. He also erected the bas-reliefs on the pedestal of the London Monument, and did much work at Chatsworth.

Grinling Gibbons was found by John Evelyn in a cottage at Deptford, carving his celebrated[373] "Stoning of St. Stephen," after Tintoretto, and by him introduced at Court. He executed a marble statue of Charles II. for the area of the Royal Exchange, and another in bronze of James II. for the garden at the back of Whitehall, which fixed his high merit as a sculptor; but his unrivalled genius in carving soon drew him from sculpture, and he became extensively employed at Windsor, Chatsworth, Petworth, and other great houses, carving flowers, feathers, foliage, and like ornaments, which rival in wood the lightness and accuracy of nature. In the chapel at Windsor he executed abundance of carving of doves, pelicans, palm-branches, etc. At St. Paul's he did much of the foliage and festoons of the stalls and the side aisles of the choir. At Chatsworth there are feathers in lime-wood that rival those of the living goose; and he there executed in wood a point-lace cravat of marvellous delicacy. At Southwick, in Hants, he embellished an entire gallery, and a room at Petworth, which is generally regarded as amongst his very finest performances.

Engraving at this era fell also greatly into the hands of foreigners. Loggan, Booteling, Valet, Hollar, and Vanderbank were amongst the chief; but there were two Englishmen who were not less patronised by their countrymen. Robert White was a pupil of Loggan's, and, like his master, excelled in portraits. Walpole enumerates two hundred and fifty-five works of this artist, many of them heads drawn by himself, and striking likenesses. But William Faithorne was unquestionably at the head of his profession. Faithorne in his youth fought on the royal side, and was taken by Cromwell at the siege of Basing House along with Hollar. Hollar left England during the Commonwealth, and resided at Antwerp, where he executed his fine portraits from Leonardo da Vinci, Holbein, and other great masters. On the Restoration he returned to England, and did the plates in Dugdale's "Monasticon," "History of St. Paul's," and "Antiquities of Warwickshire," and in Thoroton's "Nottinghamshire;" and he made drawings of the town and fortress of Tangier for Charles, which he engraved, some of these drawings still remaining in the British Museum. Faithorne took refuge in France, and there studied under Nanteuil, and acquired a force, freedom, richness, and delicacy in portrait engraving which were unequalled in his own time, and have scarcely been surpassed in ours. He drew also in crayons.

The art of mezzotint was introduced at this period by Prince Rupert, who was long supposed to have invented it; this, however, has since then been doubted; but its introduction by him is certain; and it became so much cultivated as to become almost exclusively an English art.

The coins of this period were the work of the Roteri family. Of these there were John and Norbert (his son), Joseph and Philip. Their father was a Dutch banker, who had obliged Charles during his exile by the loan of money, on condition that, in case of restoration, he should employ his sons. They were men of much taste and skill, as their coins show, though by no means equal to Simon, the coiner of Cromwell. They, however, introduced some decided improvements into our coin, particularly that of graining or letters on the rims of the coin. Charles called in all the Commonwealth money, and coined fresh. In 1662 the gold coin called a guinea was first invented, from gold brought from the coast of Guinea, and bore the stamp of an elephant under the king's head, in honour of the African company which imported it. In the last year of Charles's reign he coined farthings of tin, with only a bit of copper in the middle. The figure of Britannia still retained on our copper coinage was first introduced in the copper coinage of Charles (see p. 205), and was modelled by Philip Roteri from Miss Stuart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond, of whom Charles was deeply enamoured, much to the scandal of all decent subjects.

James II. followed the fashion of Charles in coining tin halfpence and farthings with copper centres. After his abdication he was reduced in Ireland to the necessity of coining money out of old brass cannon, and pots and pans, and, when these failed, out of pewter.

With the Restoration came back mirth and music, which had been banished by the Puritans from both churches and private houses. However, it is but just to except Cromwell and Milton from censure. Cromwell was especially fond of the organ, and gave concerts in his own house when at the head of the Government. Milton, as might be supposed from his poetical nature, and the solemn music of his verse, was equally attached to harmony of sounds. He was the friend of Henry Lawes, one of the greatest composers of the time, and addressed to him the well-known sonnet on the publication of his airs, beginning

But perhaps the Royalists were all the more musical on their return to power to mark their[374] contempt of the gloomy Puritans, and music burst forth in church and chapel, in concert, and theatre, and private house with redoubled energy. The theatres and operas did not delay to draw the public by the charms of music as well as of representation. Even during the latter years of the Commonwealth Sir William Davenant opened a kind of theatre under the name of masque and concert, and enlivened it by music. The Royalists at Oxford during the time Charles I.'s Court was there, held weekly musical parties with the members of the University; and no sooner was the Commonwealth at an end than the heads of houses, fellows, and other gentlemen renewed these parties, and furnished themselves with all necessary instruments, and the compositions of the best masters. But what marks the musical furore of this period more than all was the flocking of the aristocracy and the finest musical performers to the miserable house of a dealer in coal-dust in Clerkenwell, where musical parties were held. "It was," says Dr. John Hawkins, "in Aylesbury Street, Clerkenwell. The room of the performance was over the coal-shop; and, strange to tell, Tom Britton's concert was the weekly resort of the old, the young, the gay, the fair of all ranks, including the highest order of nobility." Dr. Pepusch and frequently Handel played the harpsichord there—though this must have been at a later period, for he did not arrive in England till 1710. Mr. Needler, Accountant-General of the Excise; Hughes the poet, Wollaston the painter, and many other amateurs were among the performers. Walpole says Britton took money from his visitors, but Hawkins entirely denies it.

The example of Tom Britton was contagious, and similar places of musical entertainment, but on the principle of professional emolument, were soon opened east and west. Amongst the first of these was Sadler's Wells.

One of the finest composers for the theatre and opera was Matthew Lock. He was appointed Composer in Ordinary to Charles II., and composed a church service and some anthems; but he was much more famous for his setting of songs, and the music to plays. He wrote that to Davenant's alteration of "Macbeth," to Shadwell's opera, "Psyche," and various other dramas. He received a salary of two hundred pounds a year as Director of the King's Music. He became a convert to Catholicism, and was made Organist to Catherine, the queen of Charles. But the rage for everything French was growing, and Lock was succeeded in his office by a Frenchman, Cambert, who produced an English opera; and he by Louis Grabut, another Frenchman, who set Dryden's "Albion and Albanius," a satire on Shaftesbury—a poor performance. After Charles quarrelled with Louis XIV., Italian taste superseded the French, and Italian music and musicians were patronised. Amongst the latter Nicola Matteis was a popular violinist.

But that which possessed the most decided merit was the church music of this period. It was not that which one would have expected in the reign of Charles II., but we must do him the justice to say that he seems to have encouraged greatly the musical services of the Church. He united all the distinguished composers and performers, to assist in restoring this service to its former glory; and, amongst the survivors of his father's reign, reappeared Dr. Child, Dr. Christopher Gibbons, Dr. Rogers, Dr. Wilson, Henry Lawes, Milton's friend, Byrne, Lowe, and Cook, commonly called Captain Cook, from his having borne a commission in the Royalist army. Cook was made Master of the Children of the Choir, in the Royal Chapel; Child, Gibbons, and Lowe, Organists; Lawes, Clerk of the Cheque; Rogers, Organist at Eton; Byrne, Organist at St. Paul's; and Wilson was attached to the service in Westminster Abbey.

By these means the church musical service was soon raised to a high pitch of excellence; a spirit was diffused through the whole kingdom from the king's chapel, and the cathedral services became as fine as ever. Captain Cook trained his boy-choristers to admiration, and out of them arose some of the best composers of sacred music that England possesses. Amongst them are Pelham Humphrey, Michael Wise, John Blow, and, superior to them all, Henry Purcell. Some of these produced anthems whilst mere striplings, which still remain in use. Amongst these Pelham Humphrey greatly distinguished himself; and was, therefore, sent by Charles to Paris, to study under the famous Lulli, and then made gentleman of his chapel. At the death of Cook, his master, he succeeded to his office. Michael Wise became for a time, Organist of Salisbury Cathedral, but returned to the Royal Chapel as one of the gentlemen. His anthems are still greatly admired. Blow succeeded Humphrey as Master of the Children, and was Organist of Westminster Abbey. He published various compositions, both sacred and secular, some of which are yet in much esteem, while others have fallen into neglect.

But the musical master of the age was Henry[375] Purcell (b. 1658; d. 1695), organist of Westminster Abbey, and afterwards of the king's chapel. His sacred music, especially his "Te Deum" and "Jubilate," has never been surpassed. Dr. Burney declared him superior to all the foreign composers of the day—Carissimi, Stradella, Scarlatti, Keiser, Lulli, and Rameau; but others do not except any composers of any previous age. In his secular music he again surpassed himself. His music of the drama is voluminous. He set the songs in Nahum Tate's "Dido;" the music for Lee's "Theodosius;" that for the "Tempest," as altered by Dryden, which is still heard with delight; that for the "Prophetess," altered by Dryden and Betterton, from Beaumont and Fletcher; the songs of Dryden's "King Arthur," in which are the lovely air "Fairest Isle," the charming duet "Two Daughters of this Aged Stream are We," and the inimitable frost-scene. He furnished the music for Howard's and Dryden's "Indian Queen." In Dryden's altered "Boadicea," the duet and chorus "To Arms," and the air "Britons, strike home," are still heard with acclamations on all occasions of patriotic excitement. Besides these he wrote airs, overtures, and set tunes for numerous other dramas, as Dryden's and Lee's "Timon of Athens," "Œdipus," "The Fairy Queen," altered from the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and Dryden's "Tyrannic Love." He wrote many odes, glees, catches, rounds, many single songs and duets, twelve sonatas for two violins and a bass, etc. The air of "Lillibullero" is attributed to him. His widow published many of these after his death, in two folio volumes called "Orpheus Britannicus." The music of Purcell is national property, and, in spite of more recent genius, will long continue to be heard with rapture.

Notwithstanding Charles II.'s restoration of church music, he endeavoured to degrade it by the introduction of French customs, and at one time introduced a band of twenty-four fiddlers into his chapel, in imitation of Louis XIV. Tom D'Urfey ridiculed it in the song, "Four-and-twenty Fiddlers all in a Row;" and Evelyn describes his disgust at witnessing this strange sight, "more fit for a tavern or playhouse than a church." The public feeling, indeed, soon caused the king to withdraw the Gallic innovation.

Amongst the musical productions of this time we may note Blow's "Amphion Anglicus," Roger North's "Memoir of Music," still in manuscript; Sir Francis North's "Philosophical Essay on Music," Lord Brouncker's translation of Descartes' "Musicæ Compendium." Marsh, Archbishop of Armagh, was the first to treat acoustics methodically, in a paper in the "Philosophical Transactions." Dr. Wallis, one of the founders of the Royal Society, and an eminent mathematician, wrote much in the "Philosophical Transactions" on musical subjects, and published an edition of "Ptolemy's Harmonies." Thomas Mace, John Birchensha, Christopher Simpson, and John Playford are musical authors of that age.

The furniture of this period had the general characteristics of the last age. Cane backs and seats began to be used in chairs, and the beautiful marqueterie work adorned tables, cabinets, clock-cases, wardrobes, and other rich pieces of furniture. The Louis Quatorze style, with its rich sweeps and abundance of carving and gilding, began to appear in England, but did not attain to general use till a later period. The floors began to be covered with gay-coloured mats and carpets, but the richest pieces of Turkey carpet were still more frequently used for table-covers. Oil-cloth was now introduced from Germany, and manufactured in London. The Gobelins tapestry manufactory was established in France in 1677, and towards the end of this period the walls of the great mansions of England were covered with the products of its looms.

The costume of gentlemen underwent rapid and various metamorphoses in Charles II.'s time. From the rich and elegant costume of Charles I. it degenerated first into one with an exceedingly short doublet, without any under waistcoat, loose petticoat breeches, with long drooping lace ruffles at the knee. This costume, however, still retained much of the Vandyke style. It had the high-crowned hat and plume of feathers, the falling lace collar, and the natural hair. But soon came the monstrous peruke, or periwig, as the word was corrupted to in England, copied from the fashion of the Court of Louis XIV., which superseded the natural hair in both men and women, the women appearing to have adopted it first. Then followed the square, long coat, and huge jack-boots, and cocked hat, which became the general dress of the next century. False hair had been worn by both sexes in the times of Elizabeth and James I., but never to the same preposterous extent as now. Charles II., though adopting the periwig fashion himself, and thus confirming it, yet refused to allow the clergy to use it. He wrote a letter to the University of Cambridge, ordering the clergy neither to wear periwigs, nor smoke tobacco, nor read their sermons;[376] and, on a fellow of Clare Hall venturing to preach before him in a wig and holland sleeves, he ordered the statutes concerning decency of apparel to be put in force against him and similar offenders.

The high-crowned hat or broad-leaved sombrero of Spain not harmonising well with the periwig, the crown was suddenly lowered, the brim turned up, and a drooping feather thrown backwards over it. The petticoat breeches came in as early as 1658; and, in the following year, Randal Holmes thus describes a gentleman's dress:—"A short-waisted doublet and petticoat breeches, the lining being lower than the breeches, is tied above the knees; the breeches are ornamented with ribands up to the pocket, and half their breadth upon the thigh. The waistband is set round with ribands, and the shirt hanging out over them." These petticoat breeches soon grew into actual skirts, and the doublet or jacket, which at the beginning of the reign scarcely came below the breast, towards the end of it was so elongated that it was an actual coat, and had buttons and buttonholes all down the front.

Along with a particular costume described by Evelyn, which Charles adopted in 1666, consisting of a long close vest of black cloth or velvet pinked with white satin; a loose surcoat over it of an Oriental character, and instead of shoes and stockings, buskins or brodequins; he also wore small buckles instead of shoestrings. Charles was so proud of this dress that he vowed he would never wear any other; but it did not last long, and buckles did not become the general fashion till the reign of Queen Anne.

Long and short kersey stockings were an article of export in this period, as well as stockings of leather, silk, or woollen, and worsted for men and children. Socks also occur under the name of "the lower end of stockings." Amongst the imports were hose of crewel, called Mantua hose, and stockings of wadmal. Neckcloths or cravats of Brussels and Flanders lace were worn towards the end of the "Merry Monarch's" reign, and tied in a knot under the chin, the ends hanging down square.

The costume of Knights of the Garter assumed its present shape, the cap of estate, with its ostrich and heron plume, and the broad blue ribbon worn over the left shoulder and brought under the right arm, where the jewel or lesser George hangs, being introduced just before the publication of Ashmole's "History of the Order." The baron's coronet dates from this reign.

The costume of James II.'s reign varied little from that of Charles. The hats indeed assumed various cocks, according to the fancy of some leader or party. One cock was called the Monmouth cock.

The ladies in the voluptuous reign of Charles II. abandoned the straight-laced dresses with the straight-laced manners of their Puritan predecessors. Bare bosoms and bare arms to the elbows were displayed, and the hair, confined only by a single bandeau of pearls, or adorned by a single rose, fell in graceful profusion upon their snowy necks. The rounded arm reclined on the rich satin petticoat; whilst the gown of the same rich material extended its voluminous train behind. Lely's portraits are not to be regarded as representing the strict costume of the age, but they give us its spirit—a studied negligence, an elegant déshabillé. The starched ruff, the steeple-crowned hat, the rigid stomacher, and the stately farthingale were, however, long retained by less fashionable dames of the country; and when the ruff was discarded, a rich lace tippet veiled the breast. The women of ordinary rank also still retained much of this costume, with the hood and tippet.

In their riding habits the ladies imitated the costume of the men as nearly as they could. Evelyn says that he saw the queen in September, 1666, going to take the air "in her cavalier riding-habit, hat, and feathers, and horseman's coat." This seems to be a very rational dress for the occasion, yet the sight did not please Mr. Pepys, for he remarks about the same time—"Walking in the galleries at Whitehall, I find the ladies of honour dressed in their riding garbs, with coats and doublets, with deep skirts—just for all the world like men, and buttoned in their doublets up to the breast, with periwigs and with hats. So that only for a long petticoat dragging under their men's coats, nobody could take them for women in any point whatever, which was an odd sight, and a sight that did not please me."

Yet Mrs. Stuart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond, did please him:—"But, above all, Mrs. Stuart, in her dress, with her hat cocked and a rich plume, with her sweet eye, and little Roman nose, and excellent taille, is now the greatest beauty I ever saw, I think, in my life."

The military costume of the period remained much the same as during the civil wars and Commonwealth; but vambraces were abandoned by the arquebusiers, and defensive armour was gradually falling into disuse. The helmet and[377] corset, or cuirass, or the gorget alone, worn over a buff coat, formed all the defence of steel worn by the officers at this period. "The arms, offensive and defensive," says the statute of the 13th and 14th of Charles II., "are to be as follows:—The defensive armour of the Cavalry to consist of a back, breast, and pot, and the breast and pot to be pistol-proof. The offensive arms a sword, and case of pistols, the barrels whereof are not to be under fourteen inches in length. For the Foot, a musketeer is ordered to have a musket, the barrel not under three feet in length; a collar of bandeliers, with a sword. Pikemen to be armed with a pike of ash, sixteen feet long, with a back, breast, head-piece, and sword."

COSTUMES OF THE TIME OF CHARLES II.

The familiar names of several of the regiments of the British army commence from Charles II.'s reign. The Life Guards were raised in 1661—composed and treated, however, like the Gardes du Corps of the French,—being principally gentlemen of families of distinction, who themselves, or their fathers, had fought in the Civil War. In the same year the Blues were embodied, and called the Oxford Blues, from their first commander, Aubrey, Earl of Oxford. The Coldstream Guards date their formation from 1660, and two regiments were added to the one raised about ten years previously by General Monk at Coldstream, on the borders of Scotland. To these were added the 1st Royal Scots, brought over from France at the Restoration; the 2nd, or Queen's, raised in 1661; the 3rd, or Old Buffs, so named from their accoutrements being composed of buffalo leather, embodied in 1665; the Scottish Fusiliers, afterwards the 21st, raised in 1678, and so called from their carrying the fusil, invented in France in 1630—being a firelock lighter than the musket, but about the same length; and the 4th, or King's Own, raised in 1680.

During this reign the bayonet—so called from Bayonne, where it was invented—was sometimes three-edged, sometimes flat, with a wooden hilt like a dagger, and was screwed or merely stuck into the muzzle of the gun. The bayonet superseded the rapier attached to the musket-rest in James's reign. Even then the bayonet was a far inferior weapon to what it subsequently became, as it had to be removed[378] to fire and charge again. The Grenadiers were introduced in 1678, and were so called from being practised to fling hand grenades, each man having a pouch full. To these James added, in 1685, the 1st, or King's regiment of Dragoon Guards, the 2nd, or Queen's Dragoon Guards, and the 5th and 7th regiments, called the Royal Fusiliers; and in 1688, the year of the Revolution, the 23rd, or Welsh Fusiliers, were raised.

We need not repeat what has been so frequently stated in these pages about the profligacy of the Court and aristocracy in Charles II.'s reign, which soon polluted the spirit of the greater part of the country. However harsh and repulsive were the manners and social maxims of the Puritans, they were infinitely preferable to the licentiousness and blasphemy of the Cavaliers, who mistook vulgarity and obscenity for gentility. Notwithstanding the traditionary feeling left by the Royalist writers of these times, and too faithfully taken up by such writers as Sir Walter Scott, it is now beginning to be perceived that the Cavaliers were, in reality, the vulgar of the age. If to swear, gamble, bully, murder, and use the most indecent language, and lead the most indecent lives, be marks of vulgarity, these were the distinctive marks of too many of the Cavaliers. The Puritans, with all their acerbity and intolerance, had a reverence for sound and Christian principles at the core of their system. Virtue and moral piety were their admiration, however rudely they demonstrated it. But the Cavaliers gloried in every opposite vice the more, because the Puritans, whom they despised, denounced them. We have seen the spirit of private assassination which animated them, and led them to the murder of Dorislaus, the Commonwealth ambassador in Holland; of Ascam, its minister at Madrid; of Colonel Lisle, at Lausanne; and their repeated attempts on the life of Cromwell, in pursuance of their avowed doctrine of assassination shown in the tract called "Killing no Murder." This does anything but justify their high claim to the title of men of honour, and finds no parallel in the principles or practices of the Puritans of England, though the Scottish Covenanters stooped to this base practice in the murder of Archbishop Sharp.

Then as to profane swearing, their conversation, larded with oaths, would have disgraced the most uncouth trooper of to-day. "The new band of wits and fine gentlemen," says Macaulay, "never opened their mouths without uttering a ribaldry of which a porter would now be ashamed, and without calling on their Maker to curse them, sink them, confound them, blast them, and damn them." "No man," says Lord Somers, "was accounted a gentleman, or person of any honour, that had not in two hours' sitting invented some new modish oath, or found out the late intrigue between the Lord B. and the Lady P., laughed at the fopperies of priests, and made lampoons and drollery on the sacred Scriptures themselves." As to drinking and gambling, these vices were beyond conception; and the plunder of the people by the Cavalier troopers was carried on as if they had been in an enemy's country.

We have only to refer to the abandoned character of the women of Charles's Court, and amongst the aristocracy, who imitated the monarch in selecting mistresses and even wives from the stage, to remind the reader of the immoral character of the age. As we have already said, any one who would convince himself of the sink of infamy and obscenity which society was then, has only to look at the plays which were acted; at their language, declaimed by women without a blush or any evidence of disgust; plays written even by such men as Dryden. "Whatever our dramatists touched," says Macaulay, "they tainted. In their imitations the houses of Calderon's stately and high-spirited Castilian gentlemen became sties of vice, Shakespeare's 'Viola' a procuress, Molière's 'Misanthrope' a ravisher, Molière's 'Agnes' an adulteress. Nothing could be so pure or so heroic, but that it became foul and ignoble by transfusion through those foul and ignoble minds." The same writer, making a few exceptions—and a noble one in the case of Milton—says of the poets of that age that "from Dryden to D'Urfey the common characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman."

Whilst such was the condition of the Court, the aristocracy, the theatre, and the literature of the country, we may imagine what was the condition of the lower orders. The state of London was little, if anything, improved in civilisation—by no means improved in its moral tone—since the days of James I. The city was rising in a more healthy and substantial form from the fire, with wider streets, and better drainage; but it was still badly lighted, and disgraced by filthy kennels.

At the close of Charles II.'s reign London was lighted, by contract, by one Herring, who engaged to place a lamp at every tenth door, when there[379] was no moon, from six to twelve o'clock at night, from Michaelmas to Lady-Day; and this was thought to be a wonderful advance. To us it would appear just darkness visible; and vast tracts of population were destitute of even this feeble glimmer. Whitefriars still continued the haunt of thieves, bullies, desperate debtors, and abandoned women, who rushed out and defended themselves from any visitations of duns or constables. The neighbourhood of Whitehall itself was little better, from the resort of the bully-mob of those who called themselves gentlemen. These young men, often belonging to good families, or the sons of wealthy citizens, assembled for noise and mischief in theatres and in the streets. They had been successively known as the "Darr Hearts," "the Heroics," "the Muns," "Tityre Tu's," "the Hectors," "the Roaring Boys," and "Bonaventors," so continually figuring in the comedies of the time. They now bore the name of "the Scourers," and frequented the theatres to damn plays, and the coffee-houses to pick up the last sayings of the wits, which were commonly not very cleanly, when such men as Rochester, Sedley, Dryden, and Wycherley were the stars there. They then sallied into the streets in bands, breaking windows, tearing off knockers, defacing signs, upsetting stalls, fish- or fruit-sellers, storming taverns, beating quiet passengers, and rudely insulting respectable women. Frequently they came to a regular fight with some other mob of "Scourers," and then rushed headlong, knocking down all whom they met. The watchmen carefully kept out of their way, and the military had to disperse them when they became particularly riotous. One great delight of these genteel ruffians was to hustle passengers into the kennel, or into Fleet Ditch and its tributaries, which ran then in open Styx-like blackness along the streets. To add to these dangers of walking the City in the evening thieves and pickpockets assaulted the passers by from dark entries below; and it was the common practice to empty all sorts of filth out of chamber windows. The City apprentices still kept up their riotous character. On one occasion, having attacked and beaten their masters, they were some of them put into the pillory; whereupon they tore down the pillory, and when set up again they again pulled it down. There were feuds and street encounters everywhere. The weavers and butchers, the frequenters of bear-gardens and theatres, or sword-players, were continually falling into parties and ending the dispute by a general mêlée.

The aristocracy had evacuated the City-especially since the fire—and had located themselves along the Strand, Lincoln's Inn Fields, Bloomsbury, Soho, and all quarters tending towards Whitehall; others located themselves in Covent Garden; and in the fields now covered by the piles of Bedford Square and the British Museum stood the magnificent mansions of Bedford House and Montague House. But most of the sites of the splendid squares and streets of our now West End were open country, or the rubbish-heaps of the neighbourhood. Club-life was just beginning. There were numbers of political clubs, the most famous of which was the King's Head, or Green Ribbon Club, from the members wearing a green ribbon in their hats, to distinguish them from their opponents. There was the club of Shaftesbury and the Whig party, which was engaged in the design of excluding the Duke of York from the succession, and which raised all the Titus Oates plots to accomplish their object. It met at the King's Head Tavern opposite to the Temple Gate. But coffee-houses, now become general, were in reality clubs; and every class and party had its coffee-house, where its members met. There was the literary coffee-house, called Will's, situate between Covent Garden and Bow Street, where Dryden was the great man, and where literary lords, literary lawyers, dramatists, players, and wits of all sorts met to settle the merits of literature and the stage. There were lawyers' coffee-houses, citizens' coffee-houses, doctors' coffee-houses, the chief of them Garraway's; Jesuits' coffee-houses, Puritans' coffee-houses, and Popish coffee-houses, where every man found his fellows, and partisans met and learned the news; and in these haunts the spirit of party and of religious antagonism was carried to its fiercest height. The chief place of public lounging was the New Exchange in the City, and Spring Gardens, Hyde Park, and the Mulberry Garden, which were continually occurring in the comedies of the day as the places of assignation, as well as the fashionable masquerades.

But whilst such were the most marked features of life in London at that day, we are not to suppose that there was not a large number of the population who retained a love of virtue, purity, and domestic life. The religious were a numerous class; and the stern morality of the Nonconformists beheld with pity and indignation the dissipated flutterings of the corrupt world around them. Besides these there was a numerous population of sober citizens, who, though they did not go with[380] the Puritans in religion, were disgusted with the French manners, maxims, houses, and cookery, and stood by their native modes and ideas with sturdy John Bullism. The musical taste of the age tended to draw them together to more rational enjoyments than debauchery and the tainted stage, and the increasing use of coffee and tea gave to musical and social parties a more homelike and refined character.

CHELSEA HOSPITAL.

The popular sports and amusements still, however, were of the usual description. All the old cruel sports of bear-baiting, bull-baiting, and cock-fights, which the Puritans had suppressed, came back with royalty. Horse-racing was in vogue; and gambling was such a fever amongst the wealthy, that many great estates were squandered at cards; and the Duke of St. Albans, when more than eighty years of age, and quite blind, used to sit at the gaming-table from day to day, with a man beside him to tell him the cards. Billiards, chess, backgammon, and cribbage were in great request; and bowls, ninepins, boat-racing, yacht-racing, running at the ring, were sports both with the people and the gentry. Ladies joined in playing at bowls; skating was introduced by the courtiers, who had spent much time in Holland. Swimming and foot-races were fashionable. Colonel Blood planned to shoot Charles once when he went to swim in the Thames near Chelsea, and the Duke of Monmouth, as we have seen, in his popular tour ran races against all comers, first without boots, and then beat them running in his boots whilst the others ran without.

Charles prided himself on his pedestrian feats. The common people were as much delighted as their ancestors with all the exhibitions of Bartholomew Fair and Smithfield, of fire-eaters, jugglers, rope-dancers, dancing dogs and monkeys, Punch, feats of strength, and travelling theatres, where some Scripture story was represented, as is yet the case on the Continent.

In the country, life continued to move on at its usual rate. Land had not approached to anything like its present value, and education was an immense way farther behind, so that a large number of the aristocracy, including nearly the whole of the squirearchy, continued to live on[381] their estates, and rarely made a visit to London. The ravages which the Civil War had made in all parts of the country had left traces on many a rental which were yet far from being obliterated; and the contempt into which the clerical office had fallen since the Reformation, and absorption of the Church lands, left one outlet for the sons of the squirearchy at this time little available. The landed gentry, therefore, for the most part continued to occupy a position of much local importance, but, with few exceptions, did not mingle with the great world of London, or aspire to lead in social or political rivalry on the national arena. The squire was on the bench and at the quarter sessions; he was often colonel of the militia, and knew his importance in the country; but beyond that he was little heard of except when civil strife called him out to defend the altar and the throne. But within his own little world he was all in all, proud of his power, and prouder of his pedigree; but if the Squire Westerns of Fielding's time are faithfully portrayed, how much more rustic, Toryfied, and confined in the range of their ideas and experience must they have been nearly two hundred years before. Few of them had the ambition to distinguish themselves by literary attainments—such accomplishments they left to the Drydens and Danbys of the metropolis. Many heirs of estates, therefore, at this era never went to a university, or, if they did, made but a brief abode there, and returned little better for the sojourn, depending on their property to give them all the éclat they aspired to. To enjoy the sports of the field, attend the county race meeting and county ball, to live surrounded by huntsmen and gamekeepers, to keep a coarse but exuberant table, and to terminate the day's sport by a drunken carouse, included the pursuits and habits of three-fourths of this class.

As these gentry went little to town, their manners were proportionally rustic, and their circle of ideas confined, but from their confinement the more sturdy. Toryism of the extremest type was rampant amongst them. Church and State, and the most hearty contempt of everything like Dissent and of foreigners, were regarded as the only maxims for Englishmen; and the most absolute submission of the peasantry to the despotic squirearchy was exacted. In a justice-room if a man was poor it was taken for granted that he was wrong. Justice Shallows and Dogberrys were not the originals of the pages of Shakespeare, but of the country bench of magistrates and its constabulary. Ideas travelled slowly, for books were few. A Bible, a Common Prayer-book, and a "Guillim's Heraldry" were the extent of many a gentleman's library. Newspapers were suppressed by the restrictions on the press during the latter part of Charles's reign; and the news-letters which supplied the country contained a very meagre amount of facts, but no discussion.

There were few coaches, except in the districts immediately round London, or to the distance of twenty or thirty miles, and the roads were in general impassable in winter. On all but the main lines of highway, pack-horses carried the necessary merchandise from place to place through deep narrow tracks, some of which remain to our time. It took four or five days to reach London by coach from Chester, York, or Bristol, and this was attended by perils and discomforts that made travellers loth to encounter such a journey, and often to make their wills before starting. Macaulay has summed up the terrors of the road, as given by our Diarists, in the following passage:—"On the best lines of communication the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and the ways often such that it was hardly possible to distinguish them in the dusk from the unenclosed heath and fen on both sides. Ralph Thoresby, the antiquary, was in danger of losing his way on the Great North Road between Barnby Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his way between Doncaster and York; Pepys and his wife, travelling in their own coach, lost their way between Newbury and Reading. In the course of the same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and were in danger of having to pass the night on the plain. It was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was available for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay deep on the right and the left, and only a narrow track of firm ground rose above the quagmire. At such times obstructions and quarrels were common, and the pass was frequently blocked up during a long time by carriers neither of whom would give way. It happened almost every day that coaches stuck fast, until a team of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm to tug them out of the slough. But in bad seasons the travellers had to encounter inconveniences still more serious. Thoresby, who was in the habit of travelling between Leeds and the capital, has recorded in his Diary such a series of perils and disasters as might suffice for a journey to the Frozen Ocean, or to the desert of Sahara. On one occasion he learned that the floods were out between Ware and London, that[382] passengers had to swim for their lives, and that a higgler had perished in the attempt to cross. In consequence of these tidings he turned out of the high road, and was conducted across some meadows, when it was necessary for him to ride to the skirts in water. In the course of another journey he narrowly escaped being swept away by an inundation of the Trent. He was afterwards detained at Stamford four days, on account of the state of the roads, and then ventured to proceed only because fourteen members of the House of Commons, who were going up in a body to Parliament, with guides and numerous attendants, took him into their company. On the roads of Derbyshire travellers were in constant fear for their necks, and were frequently compelled to alight and lead their beasts. The great route through Wales to Holyhead was in such a state that, in 1685, a viceroy, going to Ireland, was five hours travelling fourteen miles—from St. Asaph to Conway. Between Conway and Beaumaris he was forced to walk a great part of the way, and his lady was carried in a litter. His coach was, with much difficulty, and by the help of many hands, brought after him entire. In general, carriages were taken to pieces at Conway and borne on the shoulders of stout Welsh peasants to the Menai Straits. In some parts of Kent and Sussex none but the strongest horses could, in winter, get through the bog, in which at every step they sank deep. The markets were often inaccessible during several months. It is said the fruits of the earth were sometimes suffered to rot in one place, while in another place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell short of the demand. The wheeled carriages in this district were generally pulled by oxen. When Prince George of Denmark visited the stately mansion of Petworth in wet weather he was six hours going nine miles; and it was necessary that a body of sturdy hinds should be on each side of his coach, in order to prop it. Of the carriages which conveyed his retinue several were upset and injured. A letter from one of the party has been preserved, in which the unfortunate courtier complains that, during fourteen hours, he never once alighted, except when his coach was overturned or stuck fast in the mud."

To avoid the nuisance of carriages on such roads the habit prevailed of travelling on horseback; but then it was necessary to go well armed, and, if possible, in company, for the country was infested with highwaymen. The adventures of horsemen were commonly as numerous and exciting as those of the folk who used carriages, though mails and carriages were also frequently stopped by the highwaymen of the day. To abate the difficulties of the road, on the Restoration the turnpike system was adopted—a new era in road-making—and what were called flying coaches were put on the amended ways, which conveyed passengers at a better rate.

During the Commonwealth, travellers met equally provoking impediments in passing through towns, if they dared to travel on Sundays. There was a fine for such a breach of the Sabbath; and Elwood describes his ludicrous dilemma when riding to a Friends' Meeting on Sunday, on a borrowed horse, with a borrowed hat and great-coat; for his father had locked up his own horse, hat, and coat to keep him from the conventicle. Being stopped and brought before a magistrate, he was ordered to pay the fine; but he replied that he had no money. "You have a good horse, however," observed the magistrate. "That is borrowed," said Elwood. "Well, you have a good great-coat." "That is borrowed, too," added Elwood. "Nay, then, we must have your hat, it is a good one." "That also is borrowed," continued the young Quaker. At which the magistrate, declaring that he never saw such a traveller in his life, who had nothing but what was borrowed, ordered him to be detained till the morrow, and then sent back again.

In the times we are now reviewing the tables were turned, and the Royalist churchmen and squirearchy were employing their country leisure in breaking up the conventicles of all sorts of Dissenters, pulling down the meeting-houses of the obstinate Quakers, and sending them to prison by shoals. Sir Christopher Wren, by order of the king, tried his hand at pulling down Quakers' meeting-houses, before he built St. Paul's. The spirit of political and ecclesiastical party violence raged through the country, and formed a strange contrast, in the cruelties and oppression practised on the truly religious portion of the community, to the profligacy of the gentry and, above all, of the Court. What rendered this condition of things more gloomy was the low position which the country clergy then occupied. The property of the Church having fallen into the hands of the aristocracy, the generality of country livings were poor, and depended chiefly on the small tithes and a miserable glebe of a few acres. Whilst some few men of distinguished abilities, like Burnet, Tillotson, Barrow, and Stillingfleet, rose to distinction and occupied the few wealthy dignities[383] and livings, the parish clergymen were too commonly men of low origin and little education. Men of family disdained the office, and the chaplain of a great house was looked on as little better than a servant; he married the cook or the housekeeper, and became the hanger-on of some country hall, joining in the rude riot and the ruder jests of his patron. Even so late as Fielding's time, the relative position of the squire and the parson were those of Western and parson Adams.

Perhaps the most pleasing feature of country life was that of the position of the yeoman, or man of small independent property. This class had been increased by the various distributions of great estates; and it is calculated that at this time one-seventh at least of the population consisted of men with their families who lived on their own little demesnes producing from fifty to a hundred pounds a year. The number of men who farmed the lands of the aristocracy at that time is affirmed to have been much fewer than those who farmed their own. This independence of condition gave them independence of mind, and it was amongst this class that the strongest resistance to the dominance and intolerance of the squirearchy was found. Many of them during the Civil War and the Commonwealth adopted the Puritan faith, and continued to maintain it in defiance of Five-Mile Acts, Conventicle Acts, and Acts of Uniformity. From them descended the sturdy spirit which, uniting with a kindred spirit in towns, continued to vindicate the liberties and manly bearing of the British population.

Nor amid the corruptions and bitternesses of the times had all the ancient poetical customs of the people disappeared. Neither the asceticism of the Puritan nor the profligacy of the Cavalier had been able to utterly extinguish such customs as had a touch of nature in them. The Londoners made their swarming excursions to Greenwich, and Richmond, and Epping Forest, where they gave way to all their pent-up fun and frolic, and enlivened the banks of the Thames with their songs as they rowed to and fro. The old holidays of the departed church still survived. Valentine's Day was still a day of love missives, and of presents of gloves, jewellery, silk stockings, and ornamental garters from gentlemen to their valentines. Mayday reassumed its jollity; may-poles, put down by the Commonwealth, again lifted their heads; and Herrick's beautiful verses resumed their reality:—

The Puritans beheld the return of the custom with horror. In 1660, the year that Charles II. and may-poles came back again, a Puritan, writing from Newcastle, says:—"Sir,—The country as well as the town abounds with vanities, now the reins of liberty and licentiousness are let loose. Maypoles, and players, and jugglers, and all things else now pass current. Sin now appears with a brazen face." Just as Charles and James were landing in the merry month of May, at Dover, Thomas Hall published his "Funebria Floræ, the Downfall of May Games"—a most inopportune moment. With equal horror, the Puritans beheld the old sports at village wakes and Whitsuntide, the jollity of harvest homes, and the mirthful uproar of Christmas, come back. New Year's Day, with its gifts—a Roman custom as old as Romulus—not only reappeared as a means of expressing affection amongst friends, but as a source of great profit to the king and nobility. For as Numa ordered gifts to be given to the gods on that day, so gifts were now presented by the nobility to the king, and long after his time by the dependents of the nobility, and those who sought favour from them, to the nobles. Pepys says that the whole fortunes of some courtiers consisted in these gifts. But Christmas boxes, which originated in New Year's gifts, and have become confounded with them in England, have survived the New Year's gifts of the time we are reviewing.

The great evidences of the growth of a nation are the increase of its trade, its population, and its governmental revenue. When these three things continue to augment, pari passu, there can be no question of the substantial progress of a nation. All these had been steadily on the increase during this period, and the advocates of royalty point to these circumstances to prove the mischiefs of the Civil War and the Commonwealth. It would be enough in reply, even did we admit the reality of the alleged facts, to observe that the mischief, whatever it was, was necessitated by the crimes and tyrannies of royalty. But we have only to look carefully at the whole case to see that the prosperity following the Restoration had its source in the Commonwealth. In spite of the violent changes and dislocations of society during the period of the conflict with Charles I., these upheavings and tempests threw down and swept[384] away a host of things which cramped and smothered the free action of commerce and internal industry. The lava which burst in fiery streams from the volcano of revolution, though it might for a time destroy life and property, only required a little more time to moulder and fertilise the earth. A host of mischievous monopolies were annihilated in this convulsion. The foreign commerce was carefully extended. Not only at home were Englishmen relieved from the incubus of Government absolutism, and interference with private speculation, but the haughty fleets of Dutch, and French, and Spaniards were swept from the ocean, and English merchants were encouraged to extend their enterprises, not only by the greater security at sea, but by the act of the Long Parliament allowing the import of commodities from its colonies and possessions in America, Asia, and Africa, only in English bottoms. This, it has been contended, did us no good, because it compelled the Dutch to turn their attention to the Baltic trade, and enabled them to get the precedence of us there. But this is a mistake; for the removal of the overbearing fleets of the Dutch, and the stimulus given to our commerce by this privilege, led to a far greater amount of mercantile activity in England, and helped us to assume a position in which at a later date we could safely introduce the principles of free navigation.

MAY DAY REVELS IN THE TIME OF CHARLES II.

Cromwell fostered British commerce by all the means in his power, and most successfully; and the commercial activity thus excited acquired power, and continued to increase ever afterwards. He encouraged and extended the colonies, especially by the acquisition of Jamaica, and the trade with the West Indies and American colonies added increasingly, during the period now under review, to our commercial wealth and navy. The writer of "The World's Mistake in Oliver Cromwell," published in the "Harleian Miscellany," says:—"When this tyrant, or Protector, as some call him, turned out the Long Parliament in April, 1653, the kingdom had arrived at the highest pitch of trade it ever knew. The riches of the nation showed itself in the high value of land and of all our native commodities, which are the certain marks of opulence." Besides this, the great quantity of land thrown into the hands of[385] small proprietors, from time to time, and from a succession of causes, ever since the breaking up of the Roman Church, and all its monasteries and convents by Henry VIII., was every day telling more markedly on the wealth and spirit of the people. We have just seen what a powerful body the yeomanry had grown; and, from the same causes, a large accession of capital had flowed into trade. The culture of these divided lands was enormously increased; instead of lying as vast deserts and hunting grounds, they now were become fertile farms. The internal resources of the country were rapidly and constantly developing themselves; and from the cool transfer of the taxation from the aristocracy to the people at large, it had become the interest of the monarchs, if they did little positively to accelerate the growth of national wealth, at least to leave in freedom the capital-increasing exertions of the population. The more the people traded abroad, the greater were the proceeds of the customs; the more they consumed, the greater the proceeds of the excise; now the chief items of the royal revenue. All the sources of national wealth originated in the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth, for the transfers of the customs and excise were first made then, and only resumed after the Restoration.

SHIPS OF THE TIME OF CHARLES II.

We may now notice the rapid growth of these items of revenue. In the first year of Charles II.'s reign—namely, 1660—the proceeds of the customs were £361,356; in the last year of James's reign, 1688, they were £781,987. Thus, in twenty-eight years the customs had more than doubled themselves. We have not the same complete accounts of the excise, imports and exports, for the same period; but those which we have show the same progressive ratio. In 1663, the imports and exports together amounted to £6,038,831; in 1669, or only six years afterwards, they were £6,259,413; and, since 1613, they had risen up to this amount from £4,628,586. This showed a steady increase of consumption in the nation. During this time the imports exceeded the exports considerably, demonstrating the fact that the internal wealth was greater than the export of goods; but the balance of trade gradually adjusted itself, and, in 1699, the excess[386] of exports over imports was £1,147,660; showing that even exportable articles of manufacture, of raw produce, or of commodities the growth of our colonies and settlements, had continued to increase. The proceeds of the excise in 1660, when Charles became possessed of it, amounted only to about one million; but increased so rapidly that in little more than a century it reached ten millions.

The value of land, and of all kinds of property, rose in proportion. Davenant, in his "Discourses on Trade," shows that the value of the whole rental of England in 1660 was but £6,000,000; in 1688 it was £14,000,000. So that, in 1660, the whole land of England, at twelve years' purchase, was worth only £72,000,000; but, in 1688, at fourteen years' purchase, its then estimated value, it was worth £254,000,000.

As to the mercantile shipping of the country, its tonnage in 1688 was nearly double what it was in 1666. Sir William Petty, in his "Political Arithmetic," published in 1676, states that, within the previous forty years, the houses in London had doubled themselves: the coal trade from Newcastle had quadrupled itself, being then 80,000 tons yearly; the Guinea and American trades had grown up from next to nothing to 40,000 tons of shipping; the customs were trebled; the postage of letters increased from one to twenty; the whole income of Government, in short, was trebled; and the number and splendour of coaches, equipages, and household furniture were wonderfully increased.

These effects were surely no results of the wise measures of such monarchs as Charles and James; they were traceable, as clearly as light to the sun, to the bold and able heads of the Long Parliament and Commonwealth, to their victories over the enemies and rivals of the nation, and to the able regulations which they had made in all quarters for the honourable maintenance of our name and the prosperity of our commerce. What such men as Charles and James did may be seen by examining the condition of what fell under their own management. What the nation at large did by its native energy we have just seen; what these monarchs did let us now see. The royal navy, in 1666, amounted only to 62,594 tons; but in 1685, the last year of Charles, it amounted to 103,558 tons; and, though it fell off a little under James, in 1688, the last year of James, it still reached 101,892 tons. This looks admirable on the surface; but it is necessary to look under the surface, and then we perceive a marvellous difference. The nation had become justly proud of its navy, which had destroyed the great Armada, and, under Blake, had put down the supremacy of Holland and Spain at sea; and though the Commons were averse from trusting Charles II. with money, after they saw that it all went to concubines and parasites, they were never appealed to on the subject of the navy in vain. When Danby was minister, they voted at once £600,000 for the building of thirty new men-of-war. On the evidence of Pepys, the Secretary of the Admiralty, we have it, that scarcely any of this magnificent array of ships were fit for use. The very thirty new vessels for which the £600,000 had been voted had been built of such villainous timber that they were absolutely unseaworthy; and the rest were so rotten and worm-eaten that they would have sunk if they were carried out of port. The same testimony was borne by the French ambassador, Bonrepaux, who, when Charles made a bluster as if he would go to sea, in 1686, examined our fleet, and reported to his Government that it need not trouble itself about the English navy, for that both ships and men were merely nominal. In fact, the money which should have repaired the ships and paid the officers and men had gone the way of all Charles's money. Pepys was pursued in the streets by starving sailors, who demanded the redemption of their tickets; shoals of them lay in the streets, without food or means of procuring shelter; many of them perished of hunger, and some officers are said to have shared the same fate. The whole was the most shameful scene of waste of the public money, neglect of vessels and of men, of utter indolence on the part of the Crown, and consequent negligence on the part of the authorities; of scandalous corruption in many of them, and knavery and peculation in contractors. Such was the state of things that, in 1667, or seven years after the Commonwealth, the Dutch, under De Ruyter, entered the Thames, destroyed the fortifications at Sheerness, took and burned some of our largest ships, and threw the capital into paroxysms of terror. "Many English sailors," says Pepys, "were heard on board the Dutch ships, crying, 'We did heretofore fight for tickets—now we fight for dollars!'"

Besides the causes already enumerated for the rapid progress of England in wealth and prosperity at this period, the persecutions of Protestants abroad, which drove hither their weavers and artisans, and the union with Scotland, giving internal peace and security, had a wonderful influence. De Witt, the celebrated Dutch minister, refers to these causes in a remarkable passage of[387] his work called "The Interest of Holland," published in 1669. "When," he says, "the compulsive laws of the Netherland Halls had first driven the cloth-weaving from the cities into our villages, and, by the cruelty of the Duke of Alva, the say-weaving went also after it, the English by degrees began to send their manufactures throughout Europe; they became potent at sea, and no longer to depend on the Netherlands. Also by that discovery of the inexpressibly rich cod-bank of Newfoundland, those of Bristol in particular made use of that advantage. Moreover, the long persecution of Puritans in England has occasioned the planting of many English colonies in America, by which they derive a very considerable foreign trade thither; so that this mighty island, united with Ireland under one king, seated in the midst of Europe, having a clear, deep coast, with good havens and bays, in so narrow a sea that all foreign ships that sail either to the eastward or the westward are necessitated, even in fair weather, to shun the dangerous French coast, and sail along that of England, and in stormy weather to run in and preserve their lives, ships, and merchandise in the bays—so that England now, by its conjunction with Scotland, being much increased in strength, as well as by manufactures as by a great navigation, will in all respects be formidable to all Europe."

The clear-sighted Dutch diplomatist has summed up the grand points of England's advantages at that and succeeding periods, and some of these deserve our particular attention. The union with Scotland, though yet dependent only on the Crown of the two countries resting on the same head, was a circumstance of infinite advantage. It gave a settlement and security to all the northern portions of the island which they had never enjoyed before. Till James VI. of Scotland became James I. of England, not only agriculture but all kinds of manufacturing and commercial enterprise were kept in check by the frequent hostile inroads of the Scots. Even when there was peace between the Crowns, the fierce people inhabiting both sides of the Border were in continual bickerings with each other; and a numerous body of mosstroopers, whose only profession was plunder, harassed the rich plains of England by their predatory raids. The state of things described by Sir Walter Scott as existing in these regions only about a century ago, gives us a lively idea of what must have been the savagery of the Borderers at the time we are describing. If he himself, as he tells us, was probably the first who drove a gig into Liddesdale, and if at that time the wilds and moorlands of the Border were peopled by tribes of freebooters as lawless as savages, what must have been the state of the northern counties whilst the two countries were at feud? We are told that even the judges and king's officers could not reach the towns on the Border without a strong military guard.

But as the union of the Crowns became settled and consolidated, a new era commenced north of the Trent. These counties, full of coal and ironstone, abounding with streams and all the materials for manufacture, began to develop their resources, and to advance in population and activity at an unexampled rate. Birmingham and Sheffield extended their hardware trade; Leeds and its neighbouring villages, its cloth manufactures; Manchester, its cotton-spinning, though yet little aided by machinery; and Liverpool was rapidly rising as a port by its trade with Ireland. The union of the Crowns was, in fact, the beginning of that marvellous impetus which has at this day covered all the north with coal-works, iron-works, potteries, spinning and weaving factories, and towns, which have grown up around them with their 530,000 people, like Birmingham; their 425,000, like Sheffield; their 445,000, like Leeds; their 780,000, like Manchester (with Salford); and 716,000, like Liverpool. It was the same security amid attendant advantages which raised the immense commercial and manufacturing population of Glasgow, Paisley, Greenock, and neighbouring towns on the other side of the Border—Glasgow alone now numbering its 787,000 people.

In the south and west Norwich and Bristol were most flourishing towns. Norwich owed its growth and prosperity to the establishment of the worsted manufacture, brought thither by the Flemings as early as the reign of Henry I., in the thirteenth century, and to the influence of four thousand other Flemings, who fled from the cruelty of the Duke of Alva in Elizabeth's time, bringing their manufacture of bombazines, which has now expanded itself into a great trade in bombazines, shawls, crapes, damasks, camlets, and imitations of Irish and French stuffs. Norwich had its fine old cathedral, its bishop's palace, its palace of the Duke of Norfolk, adorned with the paintings of Italy, and where the duke used at this time to live with a state little less than royal. It had also a greater number of old churches than any town in England, except London: old hospitals and grammar schools, and the finest market-place in the kingdom.

Bristol, next to London, was the great trading[388] port, and the commerce with America and the West Indies was fast swelling its importance. One of its most lucrative and, at the same time, most infamous sources of commerce was the conveyance of convicts to the Plantations of America and Jamaica. We have seen the eagerness of the courtiers of James II., and even the queen and ladies, for a share of this traffic, and the numbers of the unfortunate men implicated in the insurrection of Monmouth who were sent off thither and sold. Jeffreys himself condemned eight hundred and forty of them to this slavery, and calculated that they were worth ten pounds apiece to those who had to sell them to the British merchants, who probably made much more of them. That the profits were enormous is evident by the avidity with which victims were sought after, and with which innocent persons were kidnapped for the purpose. Bristol, indeed, at that time was engaged in a veritable white slave-trade, and the magistrates were deep in it, which fact coming to Jeffreys' knowledge, he made it a plea for extorting money from them.

To understand, however, the immense difference between the England of that day and of the present, we have only to state that the population of none of these pre-eminent towns amounted to 30,000, few county towns exceeded 4,000 or 5,000, and the whole population of England was, according to various calculations, at the most five millions and a half, nor was it increasing at all rapidly.

To protect the trade of England, Charles II. passed an Act (statute 12 Car. II., c. 18), commonly called the Navigation Act, carrying out the principle of the Act of the Commonwealth already referred to, confining the import of all commodities from Asia, Africa, or America to English bottoms, and also all goods from Europe to English ships, or the ships of the particular country exporting them. The next year a similar Act was passed by the Scottish Parliament. The Act of the Commonwealth had effected its purpose—the depression of the Dutch carrying trade—and it was now time to relax these restrictions, but we shall see that even at a later day it required a struggle to repeal these laws, and to convince people, by the subsequent immense increase of foreign commerce, of the impolicy of them. Charles's Government went further, and, in 1662, forbade any wine but Rhenish, or any spirits, grocery, tobacco, potashes, pitch, tar, salt, resin, deals, firs, timber, or olive oil, to be imported from Germany or the Netherlands. In 1677, alarmed at the vast importation of French goods and produce, his Government prohibited every French article for three years; but the Act remained unrepealed till the 1st of James II., by which our merchants and shopkeepers were deprived of great profits on these silks, wines, fruits, and manufactured articles, and the public of the comfort of them.

Another evidence of the growth of the country was the increase of the business of the post-office. The origin of the English post-office is due to Charles I., who, at the commencement of his disputes with the Parliament, established a system of posts and relays. This the Civil War put an end to; but the Commonwealth, in 1656, established the post-office, with several improvements. At the accession of Charles, a new Act was passed (12 Car. II., c. 25); and three years afterwards the proceeds of this office and of the wine duties were settled on the Duke of York and his heirs male. The duke farmed it out at £21,500, but on his accession the revenue amounted to £65,000. By this post a single letter was carried eighty miles for twopence; beyond eighty miles threepence was charged, and there was an advance according to the weight of packets. The privilege of franking was allowed, though not expressly granted in the Act, to peers and members of Parliament. There were mails, however, only on alternate days, and in distant and difficult parts of the country, as on the borders of Cornwall and the fens of Lincolnshire, only once a week. Wherever the Court went mails were sent daily; this was the case, also, to the Downs, and, in the season, to Bath and Tunbridge Wells. Where coaches did not run, men on horseback carried the bags. The increasing business of London soon demanded a more frequent delivery, and the penny post was first started by William Dockwray, which delivered letters six times a day in the City, and four times in the outskirts. At this time the post-office business included the furnishing of all post-horses—whence the name; and the Governments on the Continent generally retain more or less of this practice. The growth of England from the time of the Stuarts till now receives a significant proof in the present gross revenue for letters, stamps, telegrams, and other post office business being upwards of £16,000,000 a year.

The transmission of the mails made it necessary to improve the roads, and hence arose the toll-bar system, by an Act of 15 Car. II., which ordered the repairing of highways and the erection of bars or gates upon them, in Hertfordshire[389], Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire, owing to the Great North Road being so much cut up by the heavy malt and barley waggons going to Ware, whence their contents were forwarded by water to London and other towns. The system was found so advantageous that it gradually became general.

THE OLD EAST INDIA HOUSE IN 1630.

The extension and improvement of our manufactures was greatly promoted by the persecution of the Protestants in France and the Spanish Netherlands. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, compelled thousands of citizens to seek refuge in England, who, as we have seen, were at first warmly patronised by James II., but afterwards as much discouraged. Their value to the country was, however, too obvious for the community to sanction this neglect. They settled in Spitalfields, and introduced the weaving of silks, brocades, and lutestrings; and the trade and the descendants of these refugees until lately distinguished the same quarter of London. It is supposed that they also brought with them the art of making the finest kinds of writing paper, which was previously imported from France.

Before this, and from the very beginning of this period, other foreigners—refugees tempted by liberal offers—had introduced other manufactures. In the year of Charles's accession, the Anglo-French population of Jersey and Guernsey were allowed to import wool from England duty free, and pushed their manufacture—worsted hosiery—to great perfection. In 1660 some Flemings introduced the improved arts of dyeing and dressing woollen cloths, by which they raised our cloths to an equality with the Continental ones. Other foreigners in the same year were encouraged to commence the manufacture of linen and tapestry. Some others settled at Ipswich, in 1669, and the Scots, who had carried the linen-weaving to Ireland, were at this time making great progress with it there. In 1670 the Duke of Buckingham brought from Venice men skilled in the manufacturing of glass; the Dutch loom was brought over, and, in 1676, the printing of calicoes, now so vast a trade at Manchester, was commenced in London, in imitation of those brought from India. In 1680 machines for ribbon-weaving were introduced, to which Coventry owed so much of her trade. The art of tinning[390] sheet-iron was brought over from Germany by natives of that country, at the instigation of Andrew Yarranton, the agent of an English company. A Dutchman erected the first wire-mill in England at Sheen, near Richmond; and pinchbeck was introduced by its inventor under the patronage of Prince Rupert. In fact, the seeds of many of the greatest branches of English manufactures were sown during this period.

One of our largest trading companies also was fast growing, and was destined to lay the foundation of the grandest colonial territory which the world ever saw. Most of the companies which had previously existed were now gone down, or were broken up by the increasing aversion of the nation to monopolies; but the East India Company were every day acquiring fresh life and power. The scene of their operations lay so distant from public observation, particularly at that day when the means of communication were so tardy and partial, and the Press did not maintain an instant and perpetual attention upon everything concerning the realm, that the Government were only too glad to leave with the Company the whole management of those remote affairs, especially as they poured so much profit into the country, of which the Government had their share. Accordingly, Charles had scarcely seated himself on his throne than he renewed the charter of the Company granted by Cromwell in 1657, with augmented powers. This charter, dated the 3rd of April, 1661, gave the Company the most absolute and unconditional power. They were authorised to seize and send home any Englishman presuming to trade in the East, and found so trading either in India or the Indian seas. They were empowered to appoint their own judges, and conduct the whole civil and military establishment; to make war or peace with any of the native powers, or any powers not Christian; to build any ports they pleased there or in St. Helena for their accommodation and defence. In short, the most complete absolutism was conferred on them in their territories, or such as they should gain, and the most entire secrecy of transactions, by shutting out every individual who might be disposed to pry into or criticise their proceedings.

Bombay, which Charles had received with Catherine from Portugal, as part of her marriage portion, was, in 1667, handed over to the Company, and the effect of this addition of territory and of power was soon seen. In 1676 their accumulated profits had doubled their capital, and the price of their stock rose to 245 per cent. The following facts, drawn from a publication supposed to be written by Sir Josiah Child, entitled "The East India Trade a most Profitable Trade to this Kingdom," which appeared in 1667, will show the extraordinary traffic of the Company at that early period. They employed, the writer said, from thirty to thirty-five ships of from three hundred to six hundred tons burden. Their annual exports amounted to £430,000, and their imports to £860,000; consisting of silks, raw and wrought, calico, drugs, pepper, indigo, saltpetre, etc. They, moreover, licensed other traders, who brought from India diamonds, pearls, musk, ambergris, etc., to the amount of £150,000, and took out goods from England to double that amount.

The writer proceeds to show how profitable this trade was to the public as well as to the Company:—"The pepper I reckon at eightpence a pound weight; so necessary a spice for all people, which formerly cost us three shillings and fourpence a pound, being nowhere to be had but in India; and were we obliged to have it from the Dutch, they would probably raise it as high as they do their other spices; yet, supposing it so low as one shilling and fourpence a pound, it would be a further expense of £6,000 to the nation. Saltpetre is of that absolute necessity that, without it, we should be like the Israelites under the bondage of the Philistines—without the means of defending ourselves. Possibly, if we had no Indian trade, we might, in time of peace, purchase it, though it would cost us double what it does now. But, in case of war, where could we have sufficient? Not surely from our enemies. Or would our gentlemen, citizens, and farmers be willing to have their cellars and rooms dug up, as in Charles I.'s reign, and be deprived of freedom in their own houses, exposed and laid open to saltpetre-men? Which method would be, besides, by no means equal to the affording us the necessary supplies. Raw silk we might possibly be supplied with from other parts, though not so cheap as from India; and Indian wrought silks serve us instead of so much Italian or French silks, which would cost us almost treble the price of Indian silks, to the kingdom's loss of about £20,000 a year. Calicoes serve instead of the like quantity of French, Dutch, and Flemish linen, which would cost us thrice as much; hereby £200,000 or £300,000 is saved to the nation."

Amongst the articles of the greatest luxury which the Company imported was tea. So long as we procured tea from the Dutch merchants it was too dear for general use. So late as 1666—that[391] is, six years after the Restoration—it cost fifty shillings a pound from the Dutch East India Company; but the English Company soon afterwards made their way to China, in 1678, and imported four thousand seven hundred pounds of it; and from this period we may date the more frequent use of tea. It was long, however, before it became the formidable rival of beef and beer at breakfast, or superseded these articles at the afternoon meal. It was at first sold in the liquid state in London, and it was many years before it made its way through the country; many ladies, in ignorance of its true use, committing the mistake of boiling the leaves, and serving them up as greens, throwing away the liquid!

In 1677, under the privilege of a new charter from Charles, the Company began to earn money in their Indian territories. These privileges were again extended by a fresh charter from Charles in 1683, and by James in 1686. In 1687 the Company laid the foundations of Calcutta, and went on rapidly acquiring trade and territory, to be noticed at a later period.

Meanwhile, the trade with our American and West Indian colonies was becoming valuable. During the latter years of the Stuart dynasty, the exports to these colonies had risen to the amount of about £400,000 per annum, in different manufactures, provisions, household furniture, etc.; and the imports thence in tobacco, sugar, ginger, cotton wool, fustic, indigo, cocoa, fish, furs, and timber to nearly a million. Thus the trade and wealth of England at the close of this period were in a condition of healthy and rapid development, and our colonial system was beginning to attract the "envy and admiration of the world." What this has grown to by a steady progression in our time may be seen by comparing the revenue of the country now with what it was then. Then it amounted to about £1,500,000; now it amounts from all sources to over £141,000,000.

Notwithstanding the rapid growth of the country in commerce and internal wealth, it would be a false indication that the working classes were well off. They were a body without education, without political rights, and, consequently, without that intelligence and union which can alone insure the fair reward of their labour; nor was the humanity of the most civilised portion of the community at that period of a degree which regarded the sufferings of others with much feeling. All accounts of it leave the impression that it was a hard and cruel age; as is usually the case, when sensuality and barbarity go hand in hand. The sanguinary vengeance which Charles took on the leaders of the Commonwealth immediately on his restoration; the savage persecutions for religion in England and Scotland; the terrible use of the iron boot and the thumbscrew in the latter country; the bloody campaign of Jeffreys in England; the sale of convicts, and the kidnapping of innocent people for the Plantations; public whippings, pilloryings, brandings, and tongue-borings, as in the case of James Naylor—all indicate a brutal and unfeeling tone of society. Macaulay quotes from writers of the age many other revolting traits of this stamp. "Whigs were disposed to murmur because Stafford was suffered to die without seeing his bowels burned before his face. Tories reviled and insulted Russell as his coach passed from the Tower to the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields. As little mercy was shown by the populace to sufferers of a humbler rank. If an offender was put into the pillory, it was well if he escaped with life, from the shower of brickbats and paving-stones. If he were tied to the cart's tail, the crowd pressed round him, imploring the hangman to give it the fellow well, and make him howl. Gentlemen arranged parties of pleasure to Bridewell, on court days, for the purpose of seeing the wretched women who beat hemp there whipped. A man pressed to death for refusing to plead, or burned for coining, excited less sympathy than is now felt for a galled horse or an overdriven ox. Fights, compared with which a boxing-match is a refined and humane spectacle, were the favourite diversions of a large part of the town. Multitudes assembled to see gladiators hack each other to pieces with deadly weapons, and shouted with delight when one of the combatants lost a finger or an eye. The prisons were hells on earth—seminaries of every crime and every disease. At the assizes, the lean and yellow culprits brought with them from their cells to the dock an atmosphere of stench and pestilence which sometimes avenged them signally on the bench, bar, and jury. But on all this misery society looked with profound indifference."

But we shall soon find that this conclusion is, on the whole, too sweeping. Even that age had its philanthropists, and we may name the crowds who flocked to witness the agonies of a hanging man to point in some degree the wide distance between the mobs of this age and that. But, as concerns the condition of the people, the important difference is that the humanity which now pervades the community was scarcely to be[392] recognised then. The poor were treated with little tenderness. Though four-fifths of the working people were engaged in agriculture, agriculture was then extended over a very small portion of the country. There was a surplus of hands, and these, therefore, were poorly paid, whilst their clothing and provisions were comparatively high. Not more than half the area of the island was then, it is supposed, in cultivation, and the tillage was rude and slovenly. The rate of wages for agricultural labourers, wood-cutters, shepherds, and the like, differed in different parts of England, but in the best it did not average more than four shillings a week with food, or six shillings without. In 1661, the magistrates of Essex fixed the rate of wages from March to September at eightpence a day with food, and one shilling and twopence without; and for the other months, sixpence with food, and a shilling without. Women had, of course, less. In most counties a similar scale was fixed by the magistrates; and an Act of Elizabeth empowered them to punish whoever gave more or less, and the labourer who received more or less. Wheat at that time was seventy shillings a quarter—a price enormously in excess of current prices. All kinds of clothing that they could make themselves were much higher than with us, because manufacturing was not so extensive.

The wages of artisans were but little better, except in London, where first-rate bricklayers and carpenters could earn two shillings or two-and-sixpence a day. In many counties, indeed, they were restricted to the same rate as that of the labourers. In 1685 this was the case in Warwickshire, where the daily wages of masons, bricklayers, carpenters, shinglers, and other handicraftsmen, were fixed with those of ploughmen, miners, ditchers, etc., at only sixpence a day. A shilling a day is quoted as extravagant wages. The consequence was that children were compelled to work as early as six years of age. This was very much the case at Norwich; and writers of the time refer with pride to the fact that before nine years of age children earned more than was necessary for their own support by twelve thousand pounds a year! The consequence of the miserable pay and the dearness of food and clothing was an amount of pauperism scarcely less than in the reign of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth. The poor rates amounted at that period to from seven to nine hundred thousand pounds a year.

The condition of the poor was rendered infinitely worse two years after the restoration of Charles II. than it had been, by an Act which was passed to prevent them from settling in any other place than the one where they had previously resided. This was the origin of the law of settlement, which continued down to 1834 to harass the poor, and to waste the parochial funds in litigation. In fact, Sir Frederick Eden, in his work on "The State of the Poor," asserts that it caused more litigation, and was more profitable to the lawyers, than any other Act ever passed.

The preamble of the Act of 1662 recounts the prevalence of pauperism, and at the same time professes that this enactment "is for the good of the poor"! "The necessity," it says, "number, and continued increase of the poor, not only within the circles of London and Westminster, with the liberties of each of them, but also through the whole kingdom of England and dominion of Wales, is very great and exceeding burdensome, being occasioned by reason of some defects in the law concerning the settlement of the poor, and for want of due provision of the regulations of relief and employment in such parishes or places where they are legally settled, which doth enforce many to turn incorrigible rogues, and others to perish for want, together with the neglect of the faithful execution of such laws and statutes as have formerly been made for the apprehension of rogues and vagabonds, and for the good of the poor."

It was therefore provided that any two justices of the peace should, on complaint made by the churchwardens and overseers of the poor, within forty days after the arrival of any new comer in the parish, proceed to remove him by force to the parish where he had last a legal settlement, either as native, householder, sojourner, apprentice or servant, unless he either rented a house of ten pounds a year, or could give such security against becoming chargeable as the judges should deem sufficient. This was made more stringent by a subsequent Act, 1 James II. c. 17, which, to prevent any one from getting a settlement by the neglect or oversight of the parish authorities, dated the day of his entrance into the parish only from the time that he gave a written notice of his new abode and the number of his family.

These enactments, in fact, converted the free labourers of England into serfs. They were bound to the soil, and could not move from the spot unless by the will of the overseers and justices. It was not necessary that a man should[393] become chargeable to the parish in order to effect his removal; it was enough that the authorities could assume that he might become so; and it was not till 1795—in fact, till the reign of George III.—that this oppressive law was ameliorated, allowing working people to change their abode as they saw a better chance of employment elsewhere, so long as they did not come upon the parish.

The unsatisfactory state of pauperism to which the law of settlement brought the kingdom set numbers of heads at work to plan schemes of employing the destitute poor; and Sir Josiah Child proposed that persons should be appointed for this purpose, to be called "the fathers of the poor." This seems to be the origin of the modern guardians of the poor. It was too early in the history of endeavour to educate and employ the poor, for these recommendations to receive much general attention; but there were some individuals who set themselves zealously to work to convert the swarming paupers into profitable workers and respectable members of society. The most eminent of these were two shopkeepers of London, Andrew Yarranton and Thomas Firmin. Yarranton was a linendraper; and, being employed by "twelve gentlemen of England" to bring over men from Saxony and Bohemia who understood the art of tinning sheet-iron, he there made close observation of the manufacture of linen, and conceived the idea of introducing the linen manufacture, and employing the unemployed poor upon it and the manufacture of iron. He went to Ipswich, to see whether the linen manufacture could not be established there; but he found the poor already so well employed in the stuff and say and Colchester trade, that he did not think it a suitable place. He calculated the paupers at that time at a hundred thousand, and reckoned that by employing this number at fourpence a day each would occasion a profitable outlay amongst them of upwards of six hundred thousand pounds, by which means almost the whole of the poor-rates would be saved. In 1677 he published a book containing his views called "England's Improvement by Sea and Land," showing how to set at work all the poor of England, with the growth of our own lands; to prevent unnecessary suits at law, with the benefits of a voluntary register; where to procure vast quantities of timber for the building of ships, with the advantage of making the great rivers of England navigable. He gave rules for the prevention of fires in London and other cities, and informed the several companies of handicraftsmen how they might always have cheap bread and drink. In short, Mr. Yarranton was a regularly speculative man, but one who had a good share of calculating common sense in the midst of his manufacturing and philanthropic schemes. Apparently he travelled the kingdom well, and made careful observations as to the best localities for carrying on his proposed trades; and he seems to have come to the conclusion that the midland counties would be the best for the linen manufacture, and that most people might be employed on it. The midland counties he regarded as admirably adapted for the growth of flax, from the fertility of the land, and for the trade, because of the easy conveyance of goods by water on the rivers Trent, Soar, Avon, and Thames, from the counties of Nottingham, Leicester, Warwick, Northampton, and Oxford. He found many parts of England already so well supplied with manufactures, that he did not think the poor required more work there; and his descriptions of the manufactures going on in different parts of the island give a lively view of the manufacturing industry of the time. "In the West of England," he says, "clothing of all sorts, as in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, and a small portion of Warwickshire; in Derby, Nottingham, and Yorkshire, the iron and woollen manufactures; in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex, the woollen manufacture; in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, some cloth, iron, and materials for shipping. Then the counties to raise provisions and to vend them at London, to feed that great mouth, are Cambridge, Huntingdon, Buckingham, Hertford, Middlesex, and Berks."

A publication like this of Andrew Yarranton was calculated to produce the most beneficial change in the condition of the people. It pointed out the true resources and wealth of the nation, and showed a way to get rid of pauperism, and at the same time to raise and enrich the whole realm. It made landowners aware of the extent to which their estates would be augmented in value by the introduction of popular industries; and one of its most immediate effects seems to have been its influence on Yarranton's fellow London shopkeeper, Mr. Thomas Firmin.

In "The Life of Mr. Thomas Firmin, late citizen of London, written by one of his most intimate acquaintance," 1698, we learn that he was a shopkeeper of Leadenhall Street. We learn, moreover, that he was born at Ipswich in 1632, and[394] began the world as a tradesman with a hundred pounds. His character for probity and ability was already such that he flourished, married a citizen's daughter with five hundred pounds, and in process of time occupied superior premises in Lombard Street. Here, though a confirmed Unitarian, and entertaining the celebrated Unitarian leader, Mr. Biddle, and procuring him an allowance of one hundred crowns from Cromwell whilst he was kept prisoner in Scilly, yet he was on intimate terms with Dr. Tillotson, and many other eminent Churchmen. Though not bearing on our main subject, the following extract is worth diffusing amongst the religious of to-day:—"During the imprisonment of Mr. Biddle at Scilly, Mr. Firmin was settled in Lombard Street, where first Mr. Jacomb, then Dr. Outram, was minister. With these two, being excellent preachers and learned men, he maintained a respectful and kind friendship. Now also he grew into intimacy with Dr. Whichcot, Dr. Worthington, Dr. Wilkins, afterwards Bishop of Chester; Mr. Tillotson (for he was not yet doctor), Archbishop of Canterbury; but in their dignity, and to their very last, Mr. Firmin had the same place and degree in their friendship and esteem that at any time formerly he had. While Dr. Tillotson preached the Tuesday's lecture at St. Lawrence, so much frequented by all the divines of the town, and by a great many persons of quality and distinction, when the doctor was obliged to be at Canterbury, where he was dean, or was out of town, either for diversion or health, he generally left it to Mr. Firmin to provide preachers for his lecture; and Mr. Firmin never failed to supply his place with some very eminent preacher, so that there never was a complaint on the account of Dr. Tillotson's absence; and this Mr. Firmin could easily do, for now there was hardly a divine of note, whether in London or in the country, that frequented London, but Mr. Firmin was become acquainted with him; which thing helped him much to serve the interests of many hopeful young preachers and scholars, candidates for lectures, schools, cures, or rectories, for whom he would solicit with as much affection and diligence as other men do for their sons or other near relations. See here a trader, who knew no Latin or Greek, no logic or philosophy, compassed about by an incredible number of learned friends who differed so widely in opinion from him."

The secret of it was Firmin's freedom from bigotry, and his perfectly benevolent character. When the Plague broke out in 1665, which carried off nearly a hundred thousand people, and left vast numbers destitute from the flight of the employers, Firmin seized on the plan of manufacturing linen, so earnestly recommended by Yarranton, and this upon a method first set on foot by Thomas Gouge, the clergyman of St. Sepulchre's. This was to buy up both flax and hemp rudely dressed, and give it out to the poor to spin at their own homes. He built a house in Aldersgate, which he called his great work-house, or spinning-house, and there he gave out the flax and hemp, and took in the yarn. The object of Firmin was not to make money by the speculation, but to allow the poor people all the profit; and, indeed, he allowed them more, for he sank a considerable sum of money in it. But he was fast growing rich, and he was too wise to allow himself to become the slave of riches; and though from six hundred pounds his capital had grown to twenty thousand pounds, he determined not to leave more than five thousand pounds behind him. His object was to employ the people instead of giving them money as a charity; and he observed that he found it greatly to the relief of the poor; for that they could earn threepence or fourpence a day, working only such times as they could spare from any other occupations, "who, being at work in their own homes, and where they could with convenience attend it, many of them became so much pleased with it, that so much money given them for doing nothing would not have done them half so much good as that which they got by their own labour in this employment."

But Firmin had not studied the dry rules of political economy, and had, therefore, no objection to give money too where he saw it was needed. He had studied in the school of Christ, who said, "The poor ye have always with you"; and "What you do to one of these little ones you do also unto me." He was not opposed to all almshouses and hospitals, lest people should calculate on them and grow lazy. Concerning this work-house and the spinners, he would often say that "to pay the spinners, to relieve 'em with money begged for 'em, with coals and sheeting, was to him such a pleasure as magnificent buildings, pleasant walks, well-cultivated orchards and gardens, the jollity of music and wine, or the charms of love or study, are to others."

The East India and Guinea Companies, as well as many private persons, took his goods; and the Fire of London, following the Plague, gave him plenty of work to do in the way of assisting the destitute. Firmin added woollen spinning and weaving to the spinning of flax and hemp;[395] but, after all, he considered the making of linens the most adapted to employ the people in such circumstances. "I know of no commodity of the like value," he says, "that can be set up with less stock. Three parts of four, even of that cloth which comes not to above two shillings an ell, will be paid for work to the spinner and weaver; and many times a woman will spin a pound of flax that cost but sixpence or sevenpence to that fineness, that she will receive twelvepence or fourteenpence for her pains, which will make an ell of cloth worth three shillings; at which rate five parts of six will be paid for labour: nay, sometimes I have seen a pound of flax, not worth above one and sixpence at most, spun to that fineness that it hath been worth ten shillings; and in other parts I have seen a pound of flax of not much higher value spun to that fineness that it hath been worth three or four pounds sterling."

Firmin next set children to work in schools of industry—a plan again introduced as new in our own day. The idea, he confesses, came from abroad, but he had the honour of introducing it in England. "I have," he says, "at this time some children working for me, not above seven or eight years old, who are able to earn twopence a day, and some, that are a little older, two shillings a week; and I doubt not to bring any child about that age to do the like; and still, as they grow up and become proficients, even in this poor trade of spinning, they will be able to get more and spin better than older people. Neither would I have those schools confined only to spinning, but to take in knitting, and make lace or plain work, or any other work which children shall be thought most fit for." He then refers to the foreign practice, and to the fact of children being employed at Norwich, where it was computed that they had earned twelve thousand pounds more than they had spent in knitting fine Jersey stockings.

This was a plan admirable for teaching children all kinds of businesses and household work, but liable to enormous abuses; and the trading community seized on it and carried it into coal mines, and cotton and other factories, to that fearful extent of cruelty that compelled the Legislature of our time to step in and protect the unhappy children. Firmin's honest and benevolent mind did not foresee this evil use of the idea; yet he was by no means incautious. He used to beg often as much as five hundred pounds a year, and distribute it amongst the poor; but he always took pains to inquire into cases of real necessity, and visited the sufferers in their own houses to convince himself of their actual distress.

In Yarranton, Gouge, and Firmin we see the pioneers of that great host of philanthropists who have from time to time followed in their steps, till now the whole country is alive with schools, ragged schools, reformatories, schemes of industry, and the numerous institutions which are on foot to improve the condition of the poor. In that age we see the germs of the vast manufacturing system which has made one great workshop of Britain, and caused its redundant population to overflow to the amount of nearly a quarter of a million a year into other countries and hemispheres, carrying their industrious habits and skill to found new nations. Indeed, taking altogether the age under review, notwithstanding the dissoluteness of the Government and the selfishness of the upper and middle classes, and the roughness of the lower, it was an epoch in which the elements of future greatness were rife. The rigour and independence which punished the tyranny of Charles I., and created the Commonwealth, though they seemed to recede in Charles II.'s reign, again displayed themselves under James II., and driving away the impracticable Stuarts, established an elective monarchy, the Bill of Rights, and religious freedom. In that period philanthropy became united with manufacturing and commercial enterprise, whence have sprung the glory and greatness of England; and then, too, in the writings of Child, Davenant, Petty, and others, dawned the first principles of political economy, afterwards elaborated into a system by Adam Smith, and still perfecting itself as a science by the correction of its errors, and the blending of a spirit of humanity with its original exactness of deduction. The great principles of the Commonwealth moulding the monarchy at the Revolution to its demands, settled permanently the liberties and the ascendency of the English race.

[396]

GREAT SEAL OF WILLIAM AND MARY.

CHAPTER XII.

REIGN OF WILLIAM AND MARY.

Accession of William and Mary—Discontent of the Church and the Army—William's First Ministry—His Dutch Followers—The Convention becomes a Parliament—Oath of Allegiance—Settlement of the Revenue—Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act—The Mutiny Bill—Settlement of Religion—The Coronation—Declaration of War with France—Violence of the Revolution in Scotland—Parties in the Scottish Parliament—Letter from James—Secession of Dundee—Edinburgh in Arms—Settlement of the Government—Dundee in the Highlands—Battle of Killiecrankie—Mackay Concludes the War—The Revolution in Ireland—Panic among the Englishry—Londonderry and Enniskillen Garrisoned—Negotiations of Tyrconnel—His Temporary Success—Landing of James—He Enters Dublin—His Journey into Ulster—The Siege of Londonderry—It is Saved—Legislation of the Irish Parliament—Arrival of Schomberg—Factiousness of the English Whigs—State of the English Army in Ireland—Renewed Violence of the Whigs—The Corporation Act Thrown Out—William Threatens to Leave England—Dissolution of Parliament—Tory Reaction—Venality of the New Parliament—Settlement of the Revenue—Whig Propositions—The Act of Grace—Preparations for War—A Jacobite Plot—William goes to Ireland—Progress of the War under Schomberg—Gradual Improvement of his Position and Ruin of the Jacobite Army—The Battle of the Boyne—Flight of James—William Enters the Irish Capital—News from England—Siege of Limerick—Battle of Beachy Head—Landing of the French in Torbay—Courage of the English People—Settlement of Scotland—Marlborough's Successes in Ireland—Parliament Grants Liberal Supplies—Preston's Plot Thwarted—William Sets Out for Holland—Vigour of Louis—Fall of Mons—Trial of Jacobite Conspirators—Treason in High Places—Punishment of the Non-Jurors—The Continental Campaign—Condition of Ireland—Arrival of St. Ruth—Siege of Athlone—Battle of Aghrim—Second Siege and Capitulation of Limerick.

William of Orange had now fully succeeded in his enterprise. By the resolution of the two Houses of Parliament on the 13th of February, 1689, he was admitted to hold the Crown for his life in conjunction with his wife, who was not merely queen consort, but queen regnant. They were declared to be elected to that office and dignity by the free choice of the nation. They could neither of them claim the Crown by direct succession, for James was alive, and protesting against the idea of his abdication. Mary could not claim by succession, even if James had abdicated; for, although there had been much endeavour to prove the infant son of James a supposititious child, the effort had failed. There was no sufficient proof of the fact, but much evidence against it; and nobody now doubts that the infant who afterwards acquired the name of the Pretender was the real son of James and the queen. Had the right of succession been admitted, neither William nor Mary could have succeeded; but this right was now, in fact, denied. The right for the subjects to elect their own monarchs was proclaimed by the Bill of Rights; and by that right, and no other, William and Mary sat on the English throne.

But splendid as was the position which William had achieved—that of the monarch of one of the very first kingdoms of the world—his throne was no bed of roses. The Catholics and the Tories[397] still retained their old leaning towards James. True, many of the Tories had been greatly embittered against James by his later measures, but now that he was deposed, and a monarch sat on the throne who had been notoriously brought in by the Whigs, a strong reaction took place in them. They professed surprise at William assuming the sceptre; they pretended that they had expected from his declaration that he intended only to assist them in bringing James to reason, and in putting him under proper constitutional restraints. Numbers of them were already in full correspondence with the banished prince. The clergy were equally disaffected. They had resisted the attempts of James to bring in Popery, but they had now got a Presbyterian king, and were not very sanguine of his support of the hierarchy.

KENSINGTON PALACE. (From a Photograph by F. G. O. Stuart, Southampton.)

Similar feelings prevailed in the army. It had been powerful in numbers, but had done nothing to withstand a foreign prince at the head of foreign troops marching through the country, and placing himself on the throne. They had not been exactly defeated, because they had not come to a regular engagement; but they saw a foreign prince, supported by his foreign troops, presiding in the country; and though not beaten, they felt humbled, and were now as near to mutiny as they had been ready to revolt under James.

As for the Whig party, which had invited and supported William, they were only eager for office and emolument. It was not patriotism in the bulk of them which animated them, but the triumph of their party; and they thought that nothing could ever pay them for the favour they had conferred on William. The accounts of those writers who were present and cognisant of their proceedings represent them as clamorous for place, honour, and emolument, no one thinking that William could do enough for them, and every one ready to upbraid him for giving to others those posts to which they thought they were more entitled.

His first public measure was to announce that all Protestant subjects who were in office on the 1st of December last should retain their posts till further notice. On the 17th of February he published the list of his Privy Council, which[398] contained men of almost all parties—Danby, Halifax, and even old Sancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in order to show the Church that its interests would be protected. This and all other endeavours, however, failed to win over the High Church prelate.

If some of the members of the Council gazed at each other in astonishment to find themselves included in one body, still more was that the case with the Ministry. Danby, though a Tory, was made President of the Council; but whilst this offended others, who remembered that he had opposed the idea of the throne being vacant, though he had resisted the appointment of a regency, he himself was woefully disappointed in not receiving the White Staff. But William neither now nor till the end of his reign entrusted the office of Lord High Treasurer to a single person, but put it in commission. On the other hand, Halifax, who had not joined William's party till the last moment, received again the Privy Seal, and was continued Speaker of the House of Lords, to the great disgust of the Whigs, who remembered how long he had deserted them, and how successfully he had opposed them on the question of the Exclusion Bill. To add to their chagrin, the Earl of Nottingham was made Secretary of State. Nottingham had been foremost amongst those who had maintained the doctrine of passive obedience; who had denied that the throne could for an instant become vacant; who had declined to give up James or to call in William, but had also led this party in submitting to the decision of the Convention in favour of William and Mary, on the ground that we are enjoined by the New Testament to be subject to the powers that be. The other Secretary, the Earl of Shrewsbury, was indeed a Whig, and in the highest favour with that party. He had been foremost in calling in William; but then he was a mere youth, only eight-and-twenty years of age. Admiral Herbert expected to be appointed Lord High Admiral, and to have the entire control of the Admiralty; but he had the mortification to see a number of others placed at the Board of Admiralty to share his authority, though he bore nominally the name of First Lord of it. Churchill expected to be made Master of the Ordnance for his treason to James; but William had too certain evidence that he was at this very moment a traitor to himself; was in correspondence with the Court of St. Germain's, and believed that he would be one of the first to run if any future success warranted a hope of James's restoration. He was therefore appointed only to a post in the household, along with Devonshire, Mordaunt, Oxford, Dorset, Lovelace, and others; whilst the gallant foreigner Schomberg was made Master of the Ordnance.

Whilst the leaders, therefore, were deeply disappointed, all aspirants to favour were extremely jealous of the three staunch Dutch adherents of William—Bentinck, Overkirk, and Zulestein—whom William kept about him with a very natural feeling, for they had been faithful to him through all his arduous struggles in his own country, and were now, indeed, almost the only men in whom he could put implicit confidence. The main thing in which Danby, Halifax, Nottingham, and Shrewsbury agreed was in complaining that William did not make them his confidants, but preferred the secret advice of Bentinck, whom he soon made Earl of Portland, and the counsel of Sidney, whom he created Lord Sidney. William had but too much cause for keeping the knowledge of his thoughts and intentions from those around him, for many amongst his privy councillors and chief ministers would have betrayed them at once to the exiled monarch. Danby had been heard to say, even after James had quitted England, that if he would only abandon his priests, he might come back again; and others besides Churchill were in regular traitorous correspondence with James's Court. With all William's caution, not a thing was discussed in his council but was immediately transmitted to St. Germain's. To his trusty countrymen already mentioned William gave profitable offices near his person. His great friend Bentinck was made Groom of the Stole, with five thousand pounds a year; Overkirk Master of the Horse; and Zulestein had charge of the robes.

These arrangements being made, on the 18th of February, William, for the first time, addressed the two Houses of Parliament. It is remarkable that the very subject which he introduced to them was a demand for liberal supplies to carry on the war on the Continent. He had, he said, no choice in the matter, as France had already begun war on England.

William reminded them, too, that their domestic affairs would demand serious attention, and especially the condition of Ireland, where a strong feeling was known to exist for the fallen dynasty, through the interests of the Catholic religion. He exhorted them, moreover, to take immediate measures for securing the despatch of business. This alluded to the settlement of the great question[399] whether the Convention could continue to sit legally after the deposition of the monarch who had called it. The question had been debated in the Council, and now, on the king's retiring, the lords immediately laid on the table of the House a Bill declaring the Convention a valid Parliament. It was speedily carried and sent down to the Commons; but there it excited a warm debate. The Whigs were vociferous for it; the Tories, who believed that the calling of a new Parliament would be in their favour, were as vehemently against it. The depositions of Edward II. and Richard II. were referred to and strongly argued upon; but the case in point was the Convention which recalled Charles II., and continued to sit and act long after. Sir John Maynard moreover contended that, as they were like men who found themselves in a trackless desert, it was not for them to stand crying, "Where is the king's highway?" but to take the track that would lead them out of it. That track was the precedent of Charles II.'s reign. The House passed the Bill without a division, and it received the Royal assent on the tenth day after the accession.

A clause in this Bill provided that, after the 1st of March, no person could sit or vote in either House until he had taken the new oath of allegiance to their majesties. Great excitement was occasioned by this oath. It was hoped by the Tories and High Church there would be found a sufficient number of persons of influence who would refuse the oath, so as to render the seat of the new monarchs unstable, and open the way to the return of James. Care was taken to consult the prejudices of the adherents to the old notions of right divine as much as possible, and the words "rightful and lawful sovereigns," after deliberation were omitted; but this did not prevent many from refusing it. As the day approached for taking the oath, the capital was full of rumours. It was said that the Duke of Grafton had escaped to France in order to reconcile himself to his uncle; and numerous other persons were supposed to have followed his example. When the day arrived, however, Grafton was one of the first to present himself; and the number of the lords who declined it, amongst them the Earls of Clarendon, Lichfield, and Exeter, with the Archbishop of Canterbury and some of the bishops, was small. Of the bishops, five were of those who refused to obey the commands of James to publish his Indulgence, and had been sent to the Tower. Rochester, the brother of Clarendon, was expected to refuse the oath, as he had adhered to James after Clarendon had abandoned him; but Clarendon's income was secure from his estate. Rochester had a pension of four thousand pounds a year, which he would lose if he refused the oath—a strong argument, which seems to have proved convincing, for he took the oath. Four hundred of the Lower House had taken the oath on the 2nd of March, and amongst them Seymour, who had led the Tory Opposition; but when the oath was extended to the clergy and other individuals in office, above four hundred of the clergy, including some of the most distinguished dignitaries, refused it; and thus began the great schism of the non-jurors, who long continued to figure as the unswerving advocates of divine right.

The next great question was that of the revenue. The Parliaments of Charles and James had been exceedingly munificent in their grants of income. In the heat of their loyalty at the Restoration, the Commons forgot all the salutary fears of their predecessors, and gave up every point for which they had contended with Charles I. Tonnage and poundage were granted for life, and afterwards confirmed to James. They settled on these monarchs half of the excise in perpetuity, and half for life. The fixed revenue of Charles and James had been one million two hundred thousand pounds, but the actual revenue had been a great deal more. It was now found by examination of the accounts that James had been in the annual receipt of no less than two millions, of which ninety thousand pounds had been expended in secret service money. William had, since arriving at Whitehall, been in the habit of collecting and applying this magnificent revenue as chief of the State; and seemed to expect that it would be now settled on him. The first question discussed was, whether an income granted to a monarch for life could be received legally by his successor in case of his abdication so long as he lived. Many of the chief lawyers contended that the revenue was granted to the monarch in his political capacity, and not to the man, and that, therefore, the prince who came to discharge his official duties so long as he lived was rightfully in receipt of it. But the more common sense opinion prevailed, that the prince who superseded another by the call of the nation must receive all his rights as well as his call from the nation. The House therefore passed to the question of the amount of the revenue, and they did not appear very much disposed to use the same lavish folly towards William as they had done towards the late monarchs. Instead of granting him a life revenue,[400] they granted him one million two hundred thousand pounds, the sum allowed to Charles II., but only for three years, one half of which was to be appropriated to the civil list, the other half to the public defences. William was sensibly chagrined by this caution, and complained much of want of confidence in him, and of unusual parsimony. He presented a claim of seven hundred thousand pounds from the Dutch, the cost of the expedition which had placed him on the throne. The Commons consented to pay six hundred thousand pounds, and William received the sum for his careful countrymen with a very ill grace. The Commons did not the less displease him by reducing his demand for the navy from one million one hundred thousand pounds to seven hundred thousand pounds, and by granting the supply for the army for only six months; Sir Edward Seymour all the time warning them that it was the foolish liberality of Charles II.'s Parliament which enabled him to enslave the nation as he had done.

WILLIAM III.

One thing which did William great credit, however, was the recommendation to the Commons to abolish the abominable hearth-tax. As he had advanced from Torbay to London, the people had importuned him on all sides to set aside this detestable tax, which had been farmed out to rapacious collectors, who treated the people with every species of insult, cruelty, and violence in enforcing payment of it. It was a most unequal tax, which fell with disproportionate weight on the very poor; for as it was levied, not by the value of the property, but by the number of chimneys, the peasant in many cases paid nearly as much as a man of[401] really great substance; and where the money was not ready when called for, the tax-gatherers forced open even bedrooms, and sold the very bed from beneath the sick, and the table at which the family sat. William was much impressed by its injustice, and, at his special desire, the Act was repealed.

MARY II.

Whilst in the midst of the money debates, a circumstance occurred which materially hastened the decision, and no doubt increased the liberality of the Commons. William announced to them that James had sailed from Brest, with an armament, for Ireland. But the alarm of James's descent on Ireland, and the disaffection in the army, roused the Commons from their tone of caution. They passed resolutions of patriotic devotion to the Crown, and in an address assured William that their lives and fortunes were at his service in its defence. They went further. As there were great numbers of political persons in custody—persons openly disaffected to the present dynasty having been prudently secured during the progress of the revolution,—now that the revolution was completed, and authorised judges were once more on the bench, it was feared that these prisoners would demand their habeas corpus, and come forth at the very moment when all the adherents of James were on the alert to watch the effect of his reception in Ireland. The Commons, therefore, passed an Act to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act for the present.

But simultaneously the Commons were passing another Act of scarcely less significance. Hitherto there had been no military power of controlling and punishing soldiers or officers who offended against discipline or their oath. They were subject only to the civil tribunals, and must be[402] brought there, and tried and punished as any other subjects. James had obtained from his servile judges a decision that he might punish any deserter from his standard summarily; but this was not law, and the Commons, now alarmed by an affair at Ipswich, where a regiment of Scottish soldiers had mutinied, passed an Act called the Mutiny Bill, by which any military offenders might be arrested by military authority, and tried and condemned by court-martial in perfect independence of the civil authority. This Bill, which passed without a single dissentient vote, at once converted the soldiers into a separate class, and in effect founded what all parties disclaimed and affected to dread—a standing army. Like the Act for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, it was only for a limited period; but the unsettled state of the kingdom at the moment of its expiration caused it to be renewed, and it became a permanent institution, though to this day we annually go through the ceremony of formally renewing the Mutiny Bill.

The passing these extraordinary measures excited the alarm of many even well-disposed to the revolution; but to the adherents of the Stuart dynasty they afforded the opportunity for the most vehement declamation against the new monarch. The person, the manners, the spirit, and intentions of William were severely criticised. He was undeniably of a close and gloomy temperament, and found it impossible to assume that gaiety and affability of demeanour which to Charles II. were natural. He had the manners and the accent of a foreigner, and chilled all those who approached him at Court by his cold and laconic manners. In fact, he knew that he was surrounded by traitors, and could unbend only in the company of his Dutch favourites. He became extremely unpopular, and not all the endeavours and the agreeable and cordial manners of the queen could prevent the serious effect of his own reserved temper. At the same time more was truly to be attributed to the force of circumstances than to any bias of William towards tyranny. In one direction William was anxious to extend the liberties of the nation. He was for establishing the utmost freedom of religious opinion. He would have abolished the Test Act, and granted free enjoyment of all Christian creeds and of office to members of all denominations; but though there was no fear of a leaning to Popery in him, he found himself stoutly opposed in these intentions by his subjects. The Church was split into High Church and Low Church, jurors and non-jurors; but every party in the Church, and almost every body of Dissenters, was averse from conceding any liberty of creed or capability of office to the Catholics. Again, the Church was bent against admission of any one to office who refused to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles, and to take the oaths, not only of Allegiance but of Supremacy. Under these circumstances William found it impossible to set aside the Test Act or the Corporation Act; but he brought in and passed the celebrated Toleration Act. Yet even this Act, from which we still date our enjoyment of religious liberty, was circumscribed. It did not repeal the obnoxious Act of Uniformity, the Five Mile Act, the Conventicle Act, and those other statutes which so harassed and oppressed the Dissenters; but it exempted them from their operation on certain conditions. They must subscribe thirty-four out of the Thirty-nine Articles, which most of them could do; the Baptists were excused from professing belief in the efficacy of infant baptism; and the Quakers from taking an oath if they professed a general belief in Christianity, promised fidelity to the Government, and made a declaration against transubstantiation. This Act, therefore, cautious and meagre as it appeared, gave a freedom to the Dissenting world which it had hitherto been destitute of.

COVENANTERS PREACHING.

From the Picture by Sir George Harvey, R.S.A.,
in the Corporation Art Gallery, Glasgow.

William made a resolute effort also to heal the great schism of the Church, and admit, by a comprehensive Bill, the main body of Nonconformists. By this Bill as introduced, it was proposed to excuse all ministers of the Established Church from the necessity of subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles; they were only to make this declaration: "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 practise according thereunto." The same looseness of declaration was extended to the two universities. Presbyterian ministers could be admitted to the pulpits and livings of the Church by accepting from a bishop a simple command to preach, administer the sacraments, and perform all the ministerial offices of the Church. Except in a few churches, the clergyman might wear the surplice or not, as he wished; might omit the sign of the cross in baptism; might christen children with or without godfathers and godmothers; might administer the Sacrament to persons sitting or kneeling, as they pleased. Besides this, the Bill proposed a Commission to revise the liturgy, the canons, and the constitution[403] of the ecclesiastical courts. But it was soon found that no such sweeping changes could be effected. There was no determined opposition to the revision of the liturgy, but the danger to the rites on which the High Church laid so much stress soon called forth powerful resistance. It was represented that all manner of anomalous and contradictory practices would soon rend to pieces the harmony and decorum of the Church. Presbyterian and Puritan would set at defiance the most honoured practices of the Establishment. The Dissenting body were as much alarmed as the High Church. This wide door of admission to the Church, it was feared, would draw away a whole host of their ministers and members; and as the Test Act was by no means to be removed, they would thus become additionally unable to contend for its future abolition. The Bill, after much discussion and many modifications, fell to the ground.

The next attempt was to modify the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, so as to accommodate the consciences of the Non-jurors; but it was finally agreed that all persons holding ecclesiastical or academical preferment who did not take the oaths before the 1st of August should be suspended, a pecuniary allowance to the deprived, in some cases to be at the option of the king, but not to exceed one-third of the income forfeited. This was followed by the passing of a new Coronation Oath, by which their majesties bound themselves to maintain the Protestant religion as established by law, and the coronation took place on the 11th of April.

These domestic matters being thus settled, war was declared against France on the 13th of May. The inhuman desolation of the Palatinate in the preceding winter, where Louis's general, Duras, had laid waste the whole country, burned down the towns, leaving all of that fertile and populous district one black and terrible desert, had roused the powers of Europe against him. Germany, Spain, Holland, and England all prepared for vengeance, and the people and Parliament of England were equally loud in denunciation of the worthless desolator.

Whilst these affairs had been progressing in England, Scotland had been equally active. The Scots had even more profound cause of hatred to James, and more hope of effectual relief from William, than the English. In England the Church had managed to maintain its ascendency, and the fierceness of persecution had been somewhat restrained. There the iron boot and thumbscrews, and the fury of Tory troopers, had not perpetrated the horrors that they had done north of the Tweed. The Scots had had the hateful yoke of Episcopacy forced on them, their Church completely put down, and their liberties in a variety of ways crushed by the authorised licence of James's delegated ministers.

No sooner, therefore, had James fled than the suppressed feeling of the people burst forth. At Edinburgh crowds assembled, took down the heads of the slaughtered Whigs from the gates, and committed them in solemn ceremony to the earth. The episcopal clergy were set upon in many parts of Scotland, especially in the West, where the Covenanters prevailed, and where they had suffered so much from the emissaries of the Church. The Covenanters now chased them away from their manses, ransacked them, turned their wives and children out, broke all the furniture, or set fire to it. They tore the gown from the back of the clergyman if they could catch him, destroyed all the prayer-books they could find, locked up the church, and warned ministers not to be found there again. Two hundred clergymen were thus forcibly ejected. Christmas Day was selected for the commencement of this summary process, to mark their abhorrence of such superstitious festivals. As amid this violence many began to plunder, the Presbyterian ministers and elders assembled, and resolved that in future every incumbent of a parish should have due notice served on him to quit his parsonage peaceably, to avoid the necessity of being driven out by force.

The bishops and dignitaries made an instant appeal to William for protection, and a proclamation was issued—for William had no military force in Scotland—ordering the people to desist from further violence towards the clergy till the Parliament should determine the form of the establishment. But so little regard was paid to it, that on the same day that it was published at Glasgow, the mob rushed to the cathedral, and drove out the congregation with sticks and stones.

On the 14th of March the Scottish Convention of Estates met. By the able management of Sir James Dalrymple of Stair—afterwards Lord Stair—and his son, Sir John Dalrymple, who was an able debater, it was so managed that chiefly Whigs were returned. Sir James was a man of great legal learning, and consummate talent, though of doubtful character, who had been deprived of his position as a privy councillor and Chief Lord of the Court of Session, and had gone over to Holland, and was William's main adviser as to Scottish affairs. His son, Sir John, longer[404] continued to side with the Stuarts, and was made Lord Advocate; but at the Revolution he appeared in the other party, and was supposed to have been for some time in effect pledged to William's cause in secret through his father. He at once declared for William on his landing, and exerted himself zealously for his interests in Scotland.

With the Dalrymples was associated George Lord Melville, who had also been for some time with William in Holland. On the other hand, the celebrated Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, and Colin Lindsay, Earl of Balcarres, were the chief agents of James in Scotland. These two leaders had pretended to go over to William, or at least to acquiesce in the change of dynasty; had waited on him on his arrival at Whitehall, and been well received by him. William was urged to arrest these noblemen, as too deeply implicated in the tyrannies of James and the murder of the Covenanters ever to be allowed to mingle with the new order of things; but William would not listen to the advice, determining to give every one a fair trial of living peaceably. So far did they promise this, that William granted them an escort of cavalry on their return to Scotland, without which they would not have been allowed by the Covenanters to reach Edinburgh alive. The name of Claverhouse was a horror in every Scottish home in the Lowlands, where he was loathed for his terrible cruelties towards the Presbyterian population.

No sooner did they reach Edinburgh than they set to work with all possible activity to assist the interests of James in the Convention and the country. The Duke of Gordon, who held the castle for James, was on the point of surrendering it when they arrived; but they exhorted him to hold out, and called upon all the Royalists who were elected at the Convention to take their places and defend the absent king's interests. When the Estates met, the Earl of Argyll, who had been proscribed by James, took his seat amid the murmurs of the Jacobites, who declared that, as a person under legal attainder, he was incapable of performing any office in the State. This was, however, overruled by the majority. Melville, who had been living abroad too, and had reappeared with William, presented himself, but without any opposition. The Duke of Hamilton was put in nomination by the Whigs for the presidency of the Convention, and the Duke of Athol by the Jacobites. Neither of them was a man whose conduct in the late reign was entitled to respect. Hamilton had adhered to James to the last, and had acquiesced in many invasions of the laws and liberties of Scotland; Athol had not only been a violent partisan of James, but had fawned on William immediately on his arrival, and, being coldly received, had wheeled round again. Hamilton was chosen president; and the moment this was discovered twenty of the Jacobites instantly went over to the stronger side. It was a striking fact that in Scotland, while the great body of the people had stood to the death for their principles, the nobility had become so corrupt through compliance with the corrupt Court, and in eagerness for office, that public principle was at the lowest ebb amongst them.

The Convention having thus organised itself, sent a deputation to the Duke of Gordon demanding the surrender of the castle, as its cannon might at any moment knock in the roof of the Parliament House, and drive thence the Convention. Gordon requested twenty-four hours to consider the proposition; but Dundee and Balcarres again succeeded in inducing him to hold out. The Convention determined to try the force of arms. They summoned the castle to surrender in due form, and pronounced the penalties of high treason on all who dared to occupy it in defiance of the Estates. They called out a guard to stop communication with the castle, and made preparations for a regular siege of the fortress. The next day a messenger arrived from King James with a letter, which, on being read, was found to be a furious denunciation of the Convention, and of every one who had shown a willingness to receive William. At the same time it offered pardon to all traitors who should return to their duty in a fortnight, with the alternative, if they refused, of the utmost vengeance of the Crown. There was no regret for any past acts which might have tended to alienate his subjects, no promises of future redress. The very friends of the king, whom nothing could alter or improve, were astonished and dispirited, and they stole away out of the Convention, pursued through the streets by the groans and curses of the crowd. At the same time, a letter was read from William, modest and liberal, trusting to the result of the free deliberations of the Estates. James, as was always the case with him, had done incalculable service to the cause of his rival. His most bigoted adherents could not avoid seeing that, were he restored to the throne, he would only continue to pursue the blind and foolish course which had already driven him from it. What added to the disgust of all parties was, that the letter was countersigned by Melfort, James's[405] Secretary of State—a furious Papist and apostate from Protestantism, and nearly equally abhorred by both Protestants and Catholics.

COVENANTERS EVICTING AN EPISCOPALIAN CLERGYMAN. (See p. 403.)

The Royalists, thus hopeless of effecting anything in the Convention, and yet unwilling to yield up the cause, adopted the advice of Dundee and Balcarres, who had the authority of James to open a rival Convention at Stirling. Athol consented to go with them; but on Monday, the 18th, he showed a fear of so far committing himself, and requested the party to wait for him another day. But the case of Dundee did not admit even a day's delay. The Covenanters of the West, whom Hamilton, and the Dalrymples had summoned to Edinburgh, and who for some time had come dropping in in small parties, till all the cellars and wynds of the city were thronged with them, vowed to kill the hated persecutor; and he made haste to flee, accompanied by his dare-devil followers, all as well-known to, and as detested by, the Covenanters as himself for their atrocities in the West. Whilst the Convention was in deliberation, sentinels from the castle hurried in to say that Claverhouse had galloped up to the foot of the fortress on the road to Stirling, accompanied by a detachment of his horsemen, and that he had climbed up the precipice high enough to hold a conversation with Gordon.

At this news the Convention was thrown into a tumult of indignation. Hamilton ordered the doors to be locked, and the keys laid on the table, so that no one should go out but such persons as should be sent by the assembly to call the citizens to arms. By this means all such Royalists as were in became prisoners till such time as the citizens were ready. Lord Leven, the second son of Lord Melville, who inherited the title of old General Leslie in right of his mother, was sent to call the Covenanters to arms; and presently the streets were thronged with the men of the West in rude military array, sufficient to ensure the safety of the Estates. As the drums beat to arms, Dundee descended from the rock and, waving his cap, with the cry that he went to where the spirit of Montrose called him, rode off towards Stirling.

The Convention now proceeded with their business. They sent a letter of thanks to William, which the bishops to a man refused to sign; the[406] Bishop of Edinburgh having, as chaplain, before prayed for the return of James. William has been said to have privately wished that Episcopacy might be established in Scotland; but, if so, such specimens of the prelatic spirit there must have gone far to extinguish that desire. Other symptoms of opposition were not wanting, even yet. The Duke of Queensberry arrived from London, and revived the spirits of the Jacobites. Again they urged the Duke of Gordon to fire on the city, but he refused; and the chances of resistance were now taken away by the arrival of General Mackay with the three regiments of Scots who had served under William in Holland. The Convention immediately appointed Mackay general of their forces; and, thus placed at their ease, they proceeded to arrange the government. They appointed a committee, after the manner of the Lords of the Articles, to draw up the plan which should be adopted. As a last means of postponing this business, a proposal was made by the Jacobites to join with the Whigs to concert a scheme of union of the kingdom with England. This was a scheme which was now growingly popular. During the Commonwealth the trade of England had been opened to Scotland. All custom-houses, and levying of duties on goods imported or exported between the countries, had been removed. The Scots had been admitted to perfect freedom of foreign trade with England, and the benefit had become too apparent to be lightly relinquished. But, on the Restoration, all this had been altered. The old and invidious restrictions had been renewed, and the great loss of wealth thus induced had wonderfully modified the spirit of national pride which opposed the abandonment of the ancient independence of the nation. The Dalrymples and Lord Tarbet were favourable to this proposition, but the Convention at large was too wise to endanger the defeat of the acknowledgment of the new sovereign by an indefinitely-prolonged debate on so vital a question. They proceeded to declare that James, by his misconduct, had "forfaulted" his right to the crown; that is, that he had forfeited it—a much more manly and correct plea than that James had "abdicated," which he continued to protest that he never had done, and he was at this moment in arms with Ireland asserting his unrelinquished claim to it. As the term "forfaulted," according to Scottish law, would have excluded all his posterity, an exception was made in favour of Mary and Anne, and their issue. This resolution was warmly defended by Sir John Dalrymple, and as warmly by Sir James Montgomery, the member for Ayrshire, who had been a determined champion of the Covenanters; and was resisted by the bishops, especially by the Archbishop of Glasgow. It was carried with only five dissentient voices, and was then read at the Market Cross, in the High Street, by Hamilton, attended by the Lord Provost and the heralds, and the Earl of Argyll, the son of James's decapitated victim. Sir John Dalrymple and Sir James Montgomery were deputed to carry it, with the second resolution that the crown should be offered to William and Mary, to London. To define on what principles this offered transfer of the crown was made, a Claim of Right, in imitation of the English Bill of Rights, was drawn up and accompanied it.

But with the acknowledgment of William as King of Scotland he was far from having acquired a state of comfort. In both his Governments his ministers and pretended friends were his continual tormentors. In England his Council and his chief ministers were at daggers drawn—every one dissatisfied with the post he occupied, jealous of the promotion of his rivals, and numbers of them in close correspondence with the Court of James. In Scotland it was precisely the same; it was impossible to satisfy the ambition and the cupidity of his principal adherents. The Covenanters were exasperated because the Episcopalians were merely dismissed from the Establishment, and were not handed over to retaliation of all the injuries they had received from them. Sir James Montgomery, who expected a much higher post, was offered that of Chief Justice Clerk, and refused it with disdain. He at once concerted plans of opposition, and made his attack amidst a whole host of similarly disappointed aspirants. Amongst these were two who had been in the insurrections of Monmouth and Argyll—Sir Patrick Hume and Fletcher of Saltoun, men of great ability, but of reckless and insubordinate character. A club was formed, in which these men, with Montgomery, the Lords Annandale and Ross, and a whole tribe of minor malcontents, did all in their power to thwart and embarrass the government of William. The chief promotion had been conferred on the Duke of Hamilton, who was made Lord High Commissioner; the Earl of Crawford, a very indigent, but very bitter Presbyterian, who before this appointment did not know where to get a dinner, was made President of Parliament; Sir James Dalrymple was appointed the Principal Lord of Session, and his son, Sir John, was restored to his office of Lord Advocate. Lord Melville became[407] Secretary of State, and Sir William Lockhart Solicitor-General. But whilst some of these thought they ought to have had something higher or more lucrative, there were scores for whom the limited administration of Scotland afforded no situation in accordance with their own notions of their merits, and these hastened to join the opposition.

Meanwhile Dundee was exerting himself in the Highlands to rouse the clans in favour of King James. But this he found an arduous matter. The Highlanders, at a distance from the scenes and the interests which divided both England and the Lowlands of Scotland, occupied with their hunting and their own internal feuds, cared little for either King James or King William. If anything, they would probably have given the preference to William, for James had more than once sent his troops after them to chastise them for their inroads into the domains of their Saxon fellow-subjects. Dundee himself had retired to his own estate, and offered to remain at peace if he received from William's ministers a pledge that he should not be molested. But, unfortunately for him, an emissary from James in Ireland, bearing letters to Dundee and Balcarres, was intercepted, and immediately Balcarres was arrested, and Dundee made his escape into the Highlands. There, though he could not move any of the clans by motives of loyalty to declare for James, he contrived to effect this object through their own internal enmities. Most of them had an old and violent feud with the clan Campbell. The Argyll family had, through a long succession of years, extended its territories and its influence over the Western Highlands at the expense of the other clans, some of which it had nearly extirpated; and now the head of the family came back from exile in the favour of the new monarch, and all these clans, the Stuarts, the Macnaghtens, the Camerons, the Macdonalds, the Macleans, were in alarm and expectation of a severe visitation for past offences, and for unpaid feudal dues. They were, therefore, moved from this cause to unite against William, because it was to unite against MacCallum More, the chieftain of Argyll. If William was put down, Argyll was put down. Whilst Dundee was busy mustering these clans, and endeavouring to reconcile their petty jealousies and bring them to act together, he sent earnestly to James in Ireland to despatch to him a tolerable body of regular troops, for without them he despaired of keeping long together his half savage and unmanageable Highlanders. Till then he avoided a conflict with the troops sent by the Convention under Mackay against him. It was in vain that Mackay marched from one wild district to another; the enemy still eluded him amongst the intricate fastnesses and forests of the Highlands till his troops were wearied out with climbing crags, and threading rugged defiles and morasses; and he returned to quarters in Stirling, Aberdeen, and other towns at the foot of the mountain district.

It was the opinion of Lord Tarbet, who understood the statistics of the Highlands well, that, if William would send about five thousand pounds to enable the clans to discharge their debts to the Earl of Argyll, and obtain from that chieftain an assurance that he would abstain from hostilities against them, they would all submit at once, and leave Dundee to find support where he could. But his advice was attempted to be carried out in so absurd a manner, by choosing an agent from the clan Campbell as the mediator on the occasion, that the clans refused to treat with him, and became all the more devoted to the interests of James.

Things were in this position when in June a civil contention broke out in Athol. The marquis, unwilling to declare for either side, had retired to England, and his eldest son, Lord Murray, who had married a daughter of the Duke of Hamilton, and declared for King William, was opposed by the marquis's steward, who declared for King James. The steward held Blair Castle, and Lord Murray besieged him in it. This called out Dundee to repel Murray and support the steward, the adherent of James; and Mackay, hoping now to meet with him, put his forces in march for the place of strife. The two armies, in fact, at length came into contact in the stern pass of Killiecrankie, near Dunkeld. This was then one of the wildest and most terrible defiles in the Highlands; the mountain torrent of the Garry roaring through its deep and rocky strait.

The forces of Dundee consisted of about three thousand Highlanders, and a body of Irish, under an officer of the name of Cannon, amounting to about three hundred, an ill-armed and ragged rabble whom James had sent over instead of the efficient regiments for which Dundee had so earnestly prayed. On the other hand, Mackay commanded about the same number of regular troops; these were the three Scottish regiments which he had brought from Holland, a regiment of English infantry—afterwards the Thirteenth of the Line—and two regiments of Lowland Scots,[408] newly raised, commanded by the Lords Kenmore and Leven. He had, besides, two troops of horse, one of which was led by Lord Belhaven.

On the morning of Saturday, the 17th of June, Mackay had just struggled through the pass of Killiecrankie, his twelve hundred baggage-horses—for no wheel-carriages could approach such a place—were scarcely through, when the enemy was upon them. The men had thrown themselves down on an open space on the banks of the Garry, to recover from their fatigue, when they were called to resume their arms by the appearance of Dundee leading on his troops of wild Highlanders. Cameron of Lochiel, a man of distinguished bravery and ability, was second in command, and urged Dundee to come to an engagement without the least delay. The two armies drew up, that of Mackay with the Garry on its left, that of Dundee with the stream on its right. Lord Murray and the few forces with him united with the forces of Mackay.

It was early in the afternoon when the hostile parties began to fire on each other, and the regular troops of Mackay did considerable execution on the Highlanders; yet it was seven o'clock in the evening before Dundee gave the order to charge. Then the Highlanders raised a wild shout, which was returned by the enemy with a cry so much less lively and determined, that Lochiel exclaimed, "We shall do it now; that is not the cry of men who are going to win." The Highlanders dropped their plaids and rushed forward. They were received by a steady fire of the Lowlanders; but, as these prepared to charge with the bayonet, they were so much delayed by the nature of the operation—having, according to the practice of the time, to stick the bayonets into the muzzles of their guns, instead of, as now, having them already fixed beneath them—that the Highlanders were down upon them before they were prepared, and cut through and through their lines. Having discharged their fire-arms, the Celts threw them away, and assailed the Lowland troops with dirk and claymore. The whole of the Scottish regiments broke, and were scattered like leaves before a whirlwind. Balfour was killed at the head of his regiment; Mackay's brother fell whilst gallantly endeavouring to keep together his men; and Mackay himself was compelled to give way. The English horse were yet on the ground, and Mackay spurred towards them, and called on them to charge and break the onslaught of the furious Highlanders on the foot; but he called in vain; in spite of the brave example of Belhaven, the horse fled as fast as their steeds could carry them. There was nothing for it but for Mackay to endeavour to save himself; and, followed by only one servant, he managed to cut his way through the enemy and reach a neighbouring height.

There the scene that presented itself was astounding. His whole army had vanished except the English regiment, which kept together in perfect order, and a few of the troops of Lord Leven. These had poured a murderous fire into the ranks of the Highlanders, and still shot numbers of them down as in fiery rage they pursued the flying Lowlanders down the ravine, where the confused mass of enemies were plunged in chaotic strife—one violent, horrid effort to escape or to kill. In this strange mêlée were involved the twelve hundred pack-horses, which alone effected a diversion for the fugitives, the Highlanders stopping to make themselves masters of so rich a booty.

Mackay lost no time in getting the English regiment, with Lord Leven and his remnant of men, and such few others as he could collect, across the Garry. This being effected he halted, and again looked back, expecting that he should be hotly pursued, but no such thing; the Highlanders were, in fact, too agreeably detained by the plunder. But this supposition did not account to him for the easy manner in which such a general as Dundee allowed of his retreat, and he declared to his guards that he was sure Dundee must have fallen. And in this opinion he was right. Dundee had fallen in the very commencement of the general charge. He had led it on, contrary to the advice of Lochiel, who had urged on him the necessity of not exposing himself too much. Waving his hat, and calling his soldiers to follow him, he dashed forward, when a bullet struck him below the cuirass, which was raised by his action of rising in his stirrups and waving his arm, and he fell to the ground. The tradition of the Highlands is, that Dundee was believed to have made a compact with the devil, and bore a charmed life, which no ball of lead or iron could touch; that a soldier of Mackay's army, seeing him galloping unharmed amid showers of flying balls, plucked a silver button from his own coat, and fired at him with instant effect. The fall of the general was observed only by a few of his own soldiers who were near him, and one of them caught him in his arms. He asked, "How goes the day?" "Well for King James," said the man, "but I am sorry for your lordship." "If it be well for the king," replied Dundee, "it matters the less for me," and expired.

[409]

BATTLE OF KILLIECRANKIE: THE LAST CHARGE OF DUNDEE. (See p. 408.)

[410]

Mackay made his way over the mountains by Weem Castle and Castle Drummond to Stirling. On the way he overtook the fugitives from Ramsay's regiment, who had fled at the first onset. They were completely cowed and demoralised; and it was only by threatening to shoot any man that left the track that he could prevent them from dispersing amongst the hills. Many of them, after all, managed to elude his vigilance, and were killed by the Highlanders for their clothes. It was reported that Mackay lost two thousand men in the battle, and that five hundred were made prisoners; but, on the other hand, a great number of the Highlanders fell on the field. The rest, before retreating with the booty, piled a great heap of stones on the spot where Claverhouse fell. This is still shown, and is the only monument of John Graham, Viscount Dundee, for the Church of Blair Athol in which he was buried has long since disappeared, and his tomb with it.

The news of the defeat of Mackay caused consternation throughout the Lowlands, and even in London, whither it was carried by couriers charged with earnest appeals to the king to hasten forces on to Scotland, to protect the people from the torrents of victorious barbarians from the mountains, who were with terror expected to devastate the whole country. The Scottish Convention urged Hamilton to dismiss them, that they might provide for their safety; but fast on the heels of the first news came that of the certain death of Dundee, which at once reassured the country; for, without him, the Highlanders were regarded as comparatively innocuous, as a body without a head. And this was very near the truth; for the command had now fallen on the Irish officer Cannon, who, with his ragamuffin brigade, was not likely to remain long very formidable. In fact, he very soon managed to disgust the proud Highland chieftains. Lochiel returned home, and many of the Celts, satisfied with their plunder, followed his example. Others, however, stimulated by the hope of similar good fortune, came rushing from their hills, adding, by their conflicting prejudices and wild insubordination, only to the weakness of the force. Cannon dispatched a party of the Robertsons into the Lowlands to collect cattle and provisions for his army; but Mackay came upon them at St. Johnstone's, and killed one hundred and twenty of them, and took thirty prisoners. This revived the spirit of his troops, and infused new confidence through the country. In fact, Mackay was an excellent general, and was unremitting in his exertions to renew the courage and discipline of his troops. He had seen the fatal effect of the clumsy use of the bayonets at Killiecrankie, and he lost no time in having them made to screw upon the muskets, so that these could be fired with them ready fixed.

And very soon he had need of all his generalship. The ministers at Edinburgh had ordered him to garrison Dunkeld with the Cameronian regiment newly raised. The town was unfortified; and in vain Mackay protested against exposing his men thus to the attack of the whole body of the Highlanders encamped at Blair Castle. But the Highland army, led on by Cannon, were received with a spirit worthy of the old race of Covenanters, were repulsed, and driven back with great slaughter. The young commander Lieutenant-Colonel Cleland, and after him Captain Monro, fell at the head of the besieged; but the victory was decisive. The Highlanders dispersed with their booty to their homes; Cannon, with his disorderly Irish, escaped to the Isle of Mull; the fame of Mackay and his troops was higher than ever, and the war in Scotland was at an end.

We have continued to this point the affairs of Scotland, that we might not interrupt the still more important transactions which at the same time took place in Ireland. On the 12th of March, two days before the opening of the Scottish Convention, James had landed in Ireland. That island was peculiarly open to the influence of James, for the bulk of the population were Catholics, and they were thrown into a state of great excitement by the hope of being able to drive the Protestants from their estates by his appearance there with a French army, of wreaking vengeance on them for all their past oppressions, and of regaining their ancient patrimony.

From the moment almost that James had mounted the throne of England, he began his preparations for putting down Protestantism in Ireland, and raising a military power there which should enable him to crush it also in England. The Protestant judges had been removed one after another from the bench, so that little justice could be obtained in Irish tribunals by Protestant suitors. The Protestants were diligently weeded out of the army, and lying Dick Talbot, the Earl of Tyrconnel, James's most obsequious tool, was his Lord-Lieutenant, and bent on carrying out his plans to the fullest extent. There arose a terrible panic amongst the Protestants that a general massacre was contemplated, and the Englishry began[411] to collect whatever of value they could carry with them, and escape across the Channel into England or Wales. Tyrconnel sent for the leading Protestants to Dublin, and protested with many oaths that the whole rumour was a malicious and groundless lie. Nobody, however, put any faith in his assurances, and the exodus rapidly increased, whilst such Protestants as possessed any means of defence in towns, armed themselves, threw up fortifications, and determined to sell their lives dear. Such was the case at Kenmare, in Kerry; at Bandon, Mallow, Sligo, Charleville, Enniskillen, and Londonderry.

Such was the state of Ireland at the time of the landing of William at Torbay. Tyrconnel despatched a body of Popish infantry in December, 1688, to take possession of Enniskillen. The inhabitants summoned the Protestants of the surrounding country to their aid, rushed out on the soldiers as they approached the gates of the town, and defeated them. They then appointed Gustavus Hamilton, a captain in the army, their governor, and determined to hold their own against the lieutenant-governor. Londonderry likewise shut its gates in the face of the Earl of Antrim, who armed a Popish regiment to garrison their town. This exploit was the work of thirteen apprentices, whose bold and decisive deed was quickly imitated by the rest of the inhabitants. The town was put into a posture of thorough defence, the country round was alarmed, the Protestant gentry flocked in with armed followers, horse and foot, and Antrim thought it prudent to retire to Coleraine.

At another time Tyrconnel would have taken a bloody vengeance on the courageous Protestants of Ulster, but matters in England appeared too critical to permit him such indulgence. He had recourse, therefore, to artifice. He despatched Lord Mountjoy, the Master of the Ordnance, with his regiment, which included many Protestants, to Londonderry. Mountjoy was a Protestant himself, though an adherent of King James; had much property in Ulster, and was highly respected there. The citizens of Londonderry willingly admitted him within their walls, and suffered him to leave a garrison there, consisting solely of Protestant soldiers, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Lundy as governor. To the people of Enniskillen Mountjoy was less courteous; he somewhat curtly treated a deputation thence, and advised them to submit unconditionally to James. Tyrconnel even affected to enter into negotiation with William, and General Richard Hamilton was not very wisely despatched by William to Ireland to treat with him. Hamilton had been in command under Tyrconnel till a recent period, and had been sent by him with reinforcements to James in England. There, finding James had fled, he coolly went over to William, and, strangely enough, was deemed sufficiently trustworthy to be returned to his old master as negotiator. He no sooner arrived than he once more declared for King James. Tyrconnel, however, did not himself so soon throw off the mask of duplicity. He protested to the Prince of Orange that he was quite disposed to treat for the surrender of Ireland, and to the alarmed Catholics of Ireland—who got some wind of his proceedings—that he had not the most distant idea of submitting. On the other hand, he prevailed on Lord Mountjoy, who had so well served him at Londonderry, to go on a mission to James at St. Germains, professedly to procure a concession from James that his Irish subjects should submit to William for the present, and not rush into a contest to which they were unequal, but wait for better times. The real truth was, that James had already despatched Captain Rush from St. Germains to Tyrconnel to assure him that he was coming himself with all haste with a powerful fleet and army. Tyrconnel was, therefore, desirous to get Mountjoy secured, as he was capable of uniting the Protestants and heading them against the bloody butchery that James and Tyrconnel destined for them. Mountjoy somewhat reluctantly fell into the snare. He proceeded to France, accompanied by Chief Baron Rice, a fanatical Papist, who had boasted that he would drive a coach and six through the Act of Settlement. Rice had secret instructions to denounce Mountjoy as a traitor, and to recommend James to make him fast. No sooner, therefore, did he present himself at St. Germains than he was clapped into the Bastille.

This act of diabolical treachery being completed, Tyrconnel now abandoned further disguise, and prepared to hand over the whole Protestant population of Ireland to the exterminating fury of the Catholic natives. "Now or never! now and for ever!" was the watchword of blood and death to all the Englishry. It was embroidered on the viceregal banner, and floated over the castle of Dublin. The Catholics were called on to arm and secure Ireland for the Irish. The call was obeyed with the avidity of savages. Those who had not arms manufactured them out of scythes, forks, and other rural implements. Every smithy was aglow, every hammer resounding in preparation of pike[412] and skean, the Irish long knife. By February, 1689, the army of Ireland was swelled with regulars and irregulars to a hundred thousand men. There was one universal shout of Bacchanalian acclaim, and rush to secure the plunder of the Protestants. The houses of the wealthy were ransacked, the cattle driven off, the buildings, and even the heaths set fire to. The wild marauders roasted the slaughtered cattle and sheep at huge fires often made of timbers of the buildings, emptied the cellars, and sang songs of triumph over the heretic Englishry, and of Ireland restored to its legitimate owners. What an Ireland it was likely to become under them was soon evident. They were not content to kill enough to satisfy their hunger; these children of oppression and ignorance, like wolves, destroyed for the mere pleasure of destroying; and D'Avaux, the French ambassador, who accompanied James over the country from Kinsale to Dublin, describes it as one black, wasted desert, for scores of miles without a single inhabitant, and calculates that in six weeks these infuriate savages had slaughtered fifty thousand cattle and three or four hundred thousand sheep.

Before such an inundation of fury and murder, the few Protestant inhabitants were swept away like chaff before the wind. All the fortified towns and houses in the south were forced by the ruthless mob and soldiery, or were abandoned, and the people fled for their lives to seek an asylum in Ulster. Those of Kenmare managed to get across in a small vessel to Bristol.

In all this fearful scene of devastation Hamilton, who had come over as the emissary of William, was one of the most active and unpitying agents. Enniskillen and Londonderry were the only Protestant places which now held out, and Hamilton commenced his march northward to reduce them. This march was only another wild blast of desolation, like that which had swept the south, and left the country a howling wilderness. In addition to Hamilton's regular troops, hosts of the self-armed and merciless Irish collected on his track, and burnt, plundered, and murdered without mercy. The people fled before the rout, themselves burning their own dwellings, and laying waste with fire the whole district, so that it should afford no shelter or sustenance to the enemy. The whole of the Protestant population retreated northwards, leaving even Lisburn and Antrim deserted. Thirty thousand fugitives soon found themselves cooped up within the walls of Londonderry, and many thousands were shut up in Enniskillen.

At this crisis James landed at Kinsale, and marched to Cork. He had brought no army, but a number of officers to command the Irish troops. His General-in-Chief was Count Rosen, a man of much military experience. Next to him were Lieutenant-General Maumont, Brigadier-General Pusignan, and four hundred other officers of different ranks. He was accompanied by Count D'Avaux, who had been ambassador in England, a man clever, shrewd, keenly observant, and with little mercy or principle. His object was to secure Ireland rather for Louis than for James, and he served his master with cunning and zeal. James brought with him arms for ten thousand men, abundance of ammunition, and a military chest of about a hundred and twenty thousand pounds sterling. Before quitting St. Germains Louis XIV. himself had paid James a parting visit, displayed towards him the most marked friendship, embraced him at parting, and told him, in his epigrammatic way, that the greatest good that he could desire for him was that they might never meet again.

James landed on the 12th of March, and two days after was in Cork. The Irish received him with enthusiastic acclamations as a saviour; but the effects of his anticipated arrival, and the measures concerted by himself and carried out by the brutal Tyrconnel, met him on the instant. He was anxious to push on to Dublin; but the whole country was a desert, and horses could not be procured in sufficient numbers to convey his baggage, nor food to sustain them on the way. During the detention consequent on this, Tyrconnel arrived to welcome His Majesty to Ireland. On the 24th of March he entered Dublin amid the hurrahs and the festive demonstrations of flowers, garlands of evergreens, of tapestry and carpets hung from the windows, of processions of young girls in white, and friars and priests with their crosses, and with the host itself. At sight of that, James alighted, and, falling on his knees in the mud, bared his head in humble devotion. The next morning James proceeded to form his Privy Council. This was composed of his natural son, the Duke of Berwick, the Duke of Powis; the Earls of Abercorn, Melfort, Dover, Carlingford, and Clanricarde; the Lords Thomas Howard, Kilmallock, Merrion, Kenmare; Lord Chief Justice Herbert, the Bishop of Chester, General Sarsfield, Colonel Dorrington, and, strangely enough, D'Avaux, who should have retained the independent position of ambassador; the Marquis D'Abbeville, and two other foreigners. The[413] Protestant Bishop of Meath, at the head of his clergy, appeared before him, imploring his protection, and permission to lay before him the account of the injuries they and their flocks had received. James affected to declare that he was just as much as ever desirous to afford full liberty of conscience, and to protect all his subjects in their rights and opinions; but he said it was impossible to alter what had already taken place, and he gave an immediate proof of the impartiality which Protestants were likely to receive at his hands by dismissing Keating, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, the only Protestant judge still remaining on the bench.

These measures dispatched, it became the question whether, in the interval before the meeting of Parliament, James should continue in Dublin, or should proceed to the army besieging Londonderry, and encourage it by his presence. This called forth the conflicting views and interests of his adherents, and his whole court became rent by struggling factions. The English exiles warmly urged the king to proceed to Ulster. They cared little for the fate of Ireland, their views and wishes were fixed on England. In the north, as soon as Londonderry was put down, it was easy for James to go across to Scotland, there to commence the campaign for the recovery of the English crown. But this was the very thing which his Irish partisans dreaded. They felt certain that if James recovered the English throne, they should be left to contend with the colonists of Ulster themselves; and the victorious ascendency of that small but sturdy body of people was too vividly burnt into their minds by ages of their domination. They therefore counselled James to remain as a king at Dublin, and leave his generals to put down the opposition in the north; and in this they were zealously seconded by D'Avaux and the French. James on the throne of England would be a very different person to James on the throne of Ireland only. In the one case, if he succeeded, he might ere long become independent of Louis; if he failed, the English Protestant king would soon subdue Ireland to his sway. But if James continued only monarch of Ireland, he must continue wholly dependent on Louis. He could only maintain himself there by his aid in men and money, and then Ireland would become gradually a French colony—a dependence most flattering to the pride and power of France—a perpetual thorn in the side of England.

The contention between the two parties was fierce, and Tyrconnel joined with the French and Irish in advising James to remain at Dublin. On the other hand, Melfort and the English pointed out to him the immense advantage to his prospects to settle the last remains of disaffection in the north, and to appear again in arms in his chief kingdom, where they persuaded him that the Highlanders and all the Catholic and Royalist English would now flock to his standard. William, they assured him, was to the highest degree unpopular; a powerful party in Scotland were opposed to him, and in the ascendant. These views prevailed. James, attended by D'Avaux and the French officers, set out for Ulster. The journey was again through a country blasted by the horrors of war and robbery. There was no fodder for their horses, scarcely a roof to shelter the heads of the travellers; and, after a long and terrible journey, plunging and struggling through deep roads, and bogs where there was no road at all, famished and worn out by fatigue, they reached Charlemont on the 13th of April. When James at length arrived before Londonderry, the fall of that place did not appear likely to be quite so early an event as he had been led to believe. Rosen, however, treated lightly the resistance which the inhabitants could make. The walls of the town were old, the ditches could scarcely be discerned, the gates and drawbridges were in disorder, and the town was commanded at various points by heights from which artillery might play upon it. What was still more favourable to James, it was well known that Lundy, the governor, was a traitor. Rosen was placed in the chief command, and Maumont next to him over the head of Hamilton. Lundy meanwhile depressed the spirits of the people within by telling them that it was useless to attempt to defend such a place, and kept up a secret correspondence with the enemy without, informing them of all that passed there, and of its weak points and condition. He did more—he contrived to send away succours which arrived from England. Colonel Cunningham appeared in the bay with a fleet having on board two regiments for the defence of the place. Cunningham and his chief officers went on shore and waited on the governor. Lundy called a council, taking care to exclude all but his own creatures; and these informed Cunningham that it was mere waste of men and money to land them; the town was perfectly indefensible; and that, in fact, he was going to surrender it. His supporters confirmed this view of the case, and Cunningham and his officers withdrew, and soon after made sail homeward, to the[414] despair of the inhabitants; Lundy, as he saw them depart, sending word into the enemy's camp that he was ready to surrender.

But the spirit of the inhabitants was now roused. They openly declared Lundy a traitor, and, if they could have found him, would have killed him on the spot. He had, however, concealed himself, and at night was enabled, by connivance of his friends, to escape over the walls in disguise. As night approached, the people, to their astonishment, found the gates set open, and the keys were not to be found. People said they had seen the confederates of Lundy stealing out, and the alarm flew through the place. The townsmen came together, and called all to arms by beat of drum. A message was despatched to Cunningham to bring in his forces; but he was already on the move, and declared that his orders permitted him only to follow the commands of the governor.

Thus deserted, the inhabitants courageously resolved to depend on their own energies. They placed Major Baker and Captain Murray at the head of the armed citizens, who amounted to seven thousand, many of them Ulster gentlemen of family, and endowed with all the dauntless spirit which had made them so long masters of the north of Ireland. At this moment, too, the Rev. George Walker, the Rector of Donaghmore, who had been driven in along with the rest of the fugitives, displayed that spirit, eloquence, and ability which inspired the whole place with a wonderful enthusiasm, and which have made his name famous amongst the Protestant patriots of Ireland. Walker was appointed joint governor with Major Baker, and they set themselves to work to organise their armed people into military bodies with their proper officers, to place cannon on all the most effective points, and post sentinels on the walls and at the gates. The forces of James were already drawn up before the place, expecting the promised surrender of Lundy. Presently a trumpeter appeared at the southern gate, and demanded the fulfilment of the governor's engagement. He was answered that the governor had no longer any command there. The next day, the 20th of April, James sent Lord Strabane, a Catholic peer of Ireland, offering a free pardon for all past offences on condition of an immediate surrender, and a bribe to Captain Murray, who was sent to hold a parley with him, of a thousand pounds and a colonelcy in the royal army. Murray repelled the offer with contempt, and advised Strabane, if he valued his safety, to make the best of his way out of gunshot.

At this unexpected answer, James displayed the same pusillanimity which marked his conduct when he fled from England. Instead of ordering the place to be stormed, he lost heart, and, though he had been only eleven days before the town, set off back to Dublin, taking Count Rosen with him, and leaving Maumont in command, with Hamilton and Pusignan under him. Then the siege was pushed on with spirit. The batteries were opened on the town, to which the townsmen replied vigorously; and, on the 21st of April, made a desperate sally under Captain Murray, killed General Maumont and two hundred of the Irish, and, under cover of a strong fire kept up by a party headed by Walker, regained the town. The siege under Hamilton, who succeeded to the command, then languished. On the 4th of May the townspeople made another sally, and killed Pusignan. After this sallies became frequent, the bold men of Londonderry carried off several officers prisoners into the town, and two flags of the French, which they hung up in the cathedral. It was at length resolved by the besiegers to carry the place by storm, but they were repelled with great loss, the very women joining in the mêlée, and carrying ammunition and refreshments to the defenders on the walls. As the storming of the town was found to be impracticable, Hamilton commenced a blockade. The troops were drawn round the place, and a strong boom thrown across the river, and the besiegers awaited the progress of famine.

All this time the people of Enniskillen had been making a noble diversion. They had marched out into the surrounding country, levied contributions of provisions from the native Irish, and given battle to and defeated several considerable bodies of troops sent against them. They took and sacked Belturbet, and carried off a great quantity of provisions; they made skirmishing parties, and scoured the country in the rear of the army besieging Londonderry, cutting off straggling foragers, and impeding supplies. The news of the continued siege of Londonderry, and the heroic conduct of the people of both these places, raised a wonderful enthusiasm in England on their behalf. Lundy, who had reached London, and Cunningham, who had brought back his regiments, were arrested, and Lundy was thrown into the Tower and Cunningham into the Gatehouse. Kirke was also dispatched with a body of troops from Liverpool to relieve the besieged in[415] Londonderry. On the 15th of June his squadron was discerned approaching, and wonderful was the exultation when it was ascertained that Kirke had arrived with troops, arms, ammunition, and supplies of food.

It was high time that relief should have come, for they were reduced to the most direful extremities, and were out of cannon-ball, and nearly out of powder. But they were doomed to a horrible disappointment. Kirke, who could be bold enough in perpetrating barbarities on defenceless people, was too faint-hearted to attempt forcing the boom in the river, and relieving the place. He drew off his fleet to the entrance of Lough Foyle, and lay there in tantalising inactivity. His presence, instead of benefiting them, brought fresh horrors upon them; for no sooner did James in Dublin learn that there was a chance of Kirke's throwing in fresh forces and provisions, than he dispatched Rosen to resume the command, with orders to take the place at all costs.

This Rosen, who was a Russian, from Livonia, was a brutal savage, and vowed that he would take the place, or roast the inhabitants alive. He first began by endeavouring to undermine the walls; but the besieged so briskly attacked the sappers, that they soon killed a hundred of them, and compelled them to retire. Filled with fury, Rosen swore that he would raze the walls to the ground, and massacre every creature in the town,—men, women, and children. He flung a shell into the place, to which was attached a threat that, if they did not at once surrender, he would collect from the whole country round all the people, their friends and relatives, the women, the children, the aged, drive them under the walls, and keep them there till they perished. He knew that the besieged could give them no support, for they were perishing fast themselves from famine, and its attendant fevers and diseases. The fighting men were so weak that they often fell down in endeavouring to strike a blow at the enemy. They were living on dogs, rats, any vile thing they could seize. They had eaten up all the horses to three, which were mere skin and bone. They had salted the hides and chewed them to keep down their ravening hunger. There were some amongst them who began to talk of eating the bodies of those who fell in the action. Numbers perished daily in their houses of exhaustion, and the stench arising from the unburied dead was terrible and pestilential. Many of their best men had died from fever, amongst them Major Baker, their military governor, and Colonel Mitchelbourne had been elected in his place. They were reduced to fire brickbats instead of cannon-balls; and their walls were so battered, that it was not they but their own spirit which kept out the enemy. Yet, amid these horrors, they treated the menace with silent contempt, and sent out an order that any one even uttering the word "Surrender," should be instantly put to death.

The savage Rosen put his menace into force. He drove the wretched people from the country, at the point of the pike, under the walls. On the 2nd of July this melancholy crowd of many hundreds was seen by the besieged from the walls, hemmed in between the town and the army—old men incapable of bearing arms, miserable women, and lamenting children, where, without food or shelter, they were cooped up between their enemies and their friends, who could not help them. Many of these unhappy people had protections under James's own hand, but Rosen cared not for that. For two days and nights this woful throng of human beings was kept there, in spite of the strong remonstrances of Hamilton and other English officers, who were not accustomed to such devilish modes of war. The indignant men in Londonderry erected gallows on the walls, and sent Rosen word that, unless he let the perishing people go, they would hang up the principal of their prisoners. But it was not till many of the victims had died, and a storm of indignation at this unheard-of barbarity assailed him in his own camp, that Rosen opened his ranks and allowed the poor wretches to depart.

James, who was himself by no means of the melting mood, was shocked when he heard of this diabolical barbarity, and the comments upon it amongst those around him. He recalled Rosen and restored the command to Hamilton. Then the siege again went on with redoubled fury, and all the last expiring strength of the besieged was required to sustain it. Hamilton also terrified them by continual ruses and false rumours. He ordered his soldiers to raise a loud shout, and the besieged to be informed that Enniskillen had fallen, and that now there was no hope whatever for them. The besieged were so depressed by this news, for they had no means of testing it, that they offered to capitulate, but could obtain no terms that they could accept. And all this time the imbecile or base Kirke was lying within a few miles of them with abundance of provisions, and a force capable with ease of forcing its way to them. He had even the cruelty to send in a secret message to Walker that he was coming in full[416] force, and then to lie still again for more than a fortnight. At length, however, he received a peremptory order from William to force the boom and relieve the town. No sooner did this order reach him than he showed with what ease he could have accomplished this at first, six weeks ago. The boom was burst asunder by two vessels—the Mountjoy and Phœnix—dashing themselves against it, while they were covered by a third, the Dartmouth, and the place was open (July 30) to the conveyance of the troops and the provisions. Kirke was invited to take the command, and the Irish camp, despairing of any success, drew off on the 1st of August, and raised this most memorable siege, in which four out of the seven thousand defenders perished, besides a multitude of other inhabitants, amounting, according to some calculations, to eight or nine thousand souls. On the side of the Irish as many are said to have fallen; and of the thirty-six French gunners who directed the cannonade, all had been killed but five. Besides the miseries endured in the town, those of the poor people who survived being driven under the walls found, on their return to what had been their homes, that they were their homes no longer. Their villages, crops, ricks, buildings, all had been burnt down, and the whole country laid waste.

THE "MOUNTJOY" AND "PHŒNIX" BREAKING THE BOOM AT LONDONDERRY. (See p. 416.)

The Enniskilleners had meanwhile been actively engaged against other detachments of James's army, but had bravely beaten them off, and on the same day that Londonderry was relieved had won a signal victory over them at Newton Butler, attacking five thousand Irish under General Macarthy, though they themselves numbered only about three hundred, and killing, it is said, two thousand, and driving five hundred more into Lough Erne, where they were drowned. This decisive defeat of the Irish hastened the retreat of the army retiring from Londonderry. They fled towards Dublin in haste and terror, leaving behind their baggage. Sarsfield abandoned Sligo, and James was on the very point of abandoning Dublin in the midst of the panic that seized it. At the same time came from Scotland the news of the death of Dundee at Killiecrankie; and on the 13th of August Marshal Schomberg landed at Carrickfergus with an army of sixteen thousand,[417] composed of English, Scots, Dutch, Danes, and French Huguenots. Matters were fast assuming a serious aspect for James; his affairs not only in the field, but his civil government, falling every day into a more ominous condition.

LANDING OF MARSHAL SCHOMBERG AT CARRICKFERGUS. (See p. 416.)

One reason for James quitting the siege of Londonderry in person was that the time for the assembling of his Irish Parliament drew near. No sooner did he reach Dublin than he was met by the news that the English fleet under Admiral Herbert had been beaten by the French at Bantry Bay. Herbert had been ordered to intercept the French fleet between Brest and Ireland; but he had missed it, and James had safely landed. Whilst he was still beating about, a second squadron, under Chateau Renard, had also made its way over, and anchored with the first in Bantry Bay. On Herbert discovering them there, confident in their superior numbers, they came out, and there was a sharp fight. In the evening Herbert sheered off towards the Scilly Isles, and the French with great exultation, as in a victory, returned into the bay. James found the French at Dublin in high spirits at the unusual circumstance of beating English sailors; but his English adherents were by no means pleased with this triumphing over their countrymen, hostile though they were; and James, who had always prided himself on the English navy, is said, when D'Avaux boasted how the French had beaten the English, to have replied gloomily, "It is the first time." Even the English exiles in France showed a similar mortification, though the French victory, such as it was, was in their cause. Both sides, however, claimed the victory. In England Parliament voted thanks to Herbert; in Dublin James ordered bonfires and a Te Deum.

On the 7th of May, the day after the Te Deum, James met his Parliament. What sort of a Parliament it was, and what it was likely to do in Ireland may be surmised from the fact that there were only six Protestants in the whole House of Commons, consisting of two hundred and fifty members. Only fourteen lords appeared to his summons, and of these only four were Protestants. By new creations, and by reversal of attainders against Catholic peers, he managed to add seventeen more members to the Upper House, all[418] Catholics, so that in the whole Parliament there were only ten Protestants, and four of these were the Bishops of Meath, Ossory, Cork, and Limerick. The majority of these members were not only Catholic, eager to visit upon the Protestants all the miseries and spoliations which the latter had inflicted on them, but they were men totally unaccustomed to the business of legislation or government, from having been long excluded from such functions, and condemned to pass their time on their estates in that half savage condition which qualified them rather for bandits than for lawgivers and magistrates.

James's first act was that of complete toleration of liberty of conscience to all Christian denominations. This sounded well, and was in perfect keeping with his declarations and endeavours in England for which he had been driven out, and England had now an opportunity of observing with what justice; of judging whether or not his real object had been wrongfully suspected. In his speech from the throne, he reverted with great pride to these endeavours, and to his determination still to be the liberator of conscience. This was language worthy of the noblest lawgiver that ever existed; but, unfortunately, James's English subjects never could be persuaded of his sincerity, and did not believe that this happiness would arrive as the result of his indulgence. The very next Act which he now passed decided that they had not mistrusted him without cause. Scarcely had he passed the Act of Toleration, when he followed it up by the repeal of the Act of Settlement, by which the Protestants held their estates, and their rights and liberties in Ireland. This just and tolerant monarch thus, at one stroke, handed over the whole Protestant body to the mercy of the Irish Catholics, and to one universal doom of confiscation. The Bill was received with exultation by this Parliament, which portended all the horrors which were to follow.

But there were other parties whose estates were not derived from the Act of Settlement, but from purchase, and another Act was passed to include them. It was a Bill confiscating the property of all who had aided or abetted the Prince of Orange in his attempt on the Crown, or who were absent and did not return to their homes before the 5th of October. The number of persons included in this great Act of Attainder, as it was called, amounted to between two and three thousand, including men of all ranks from the highest noble to the simplest freeholder. All the property of absentees above seventeen years of age was transferred to the king. The most unbounded lust of robbery and revenge was thus kindled in the public mind. Every one who wanted his neighbour's property, or had a grudge against him, hurried to give in his name to the Clerk of the House of Commons, and, without any or much inquiry, it was inserted in the Bill.

To make the separation of England and Ireland complete, and to set up the most effectual barrier against his own authority, should he again regain the throne of England, James permitted his Parliament to pass an Act declaring that the Parliament of England had no power or authority over Ireland, and this contrary to the provisions of Poynings' Act, which gave the initiative power to the English Council, and made every Irish Act invalid unless first submitted to the King and Council of England.

Having transferred the property of the laity back to the Irish, another Act made as sweeping a conveyance of that of the Church from the Protestant to the Catholic clergy. Little regard had been had to Catholic rights in piling property on the Protestant hierarchy, and as little was shown in taking it back again. The Anglican clergy were left in a condition of utter destitution, and more than this, they were not safe if they appeared in public. They were hooted, pelted, and sometimes fired at. All colleges and schools from which the Protestants had excluded the Catholics were now seized and employed as Popish seminaries or monasteries. The College of Dublin was turned into a barrack and a prison. No Protestants were allowed to appear together in numbers more than three, on pain of death. This was James's notion of the liberty of conscience, and a tender regard for "every man's rights and liberties." It was a fine lesson, too, for the clergy and gentry who had welcomed him to Ireland as the friends of passive obedience. They had now enough of that doctrine, and went over pretty rapidly to a different notion. The Protestants everywhere were overrun by soldiers and rapparees. Their estates were seized, their houses plundered, their persons insulted and abused, and a more fearful condition of things never existed in any country at any time. The officers of the army sold the Protestants protections, which were no longer regarded when fresh marauders wanted more money.

This model Parliament voted twenty thousand pounds a year to Tyrconnel for bringing this state of things about, and twenty thousand pounds a month to the king. But the country was so[419] completely desolated, and its trade so completely destroyed by this reign of terror and of licence, that James did not find the taxes come in very copiously; and he resorted to a means of making money plentiful worthy of himself. He collected all the old pots, pans, brass knockers, old cannon, and metal in almost any shape, and coined clumsy money out of them, on which he put about a hundred times their intrinsic value. The consequence was that shopkeepers refused to receive this base coin. All men to whom debts were due, or who had mortgages on other men's property, were opposed to having them discharged by a heap of metal which in a few weeks might be worth only a few pence a pound. Those who refused such payment were arrested, and menaced with being hanged at their own doors. Many were thrown into prison, and trade and intercourse were plunged into a condition of the wildest anarchy. The whole country was a scene of violence, confusion, and distress. Such was the state of Ireland and of James's Court when, as we have seen, Schomberg landed with his army at Carrickfergus on the 23rd of August, and roused James, his Court, and the whole country to a sense of their danger, and of the necessity for one great and universal effort. A spirit of new life seemed to animate them, and James, receiving fresh hope from the sight, marched from Dublin at the head of his troops to encounter Schomberg.

During the summer the Court of William had not been an enviable place. In the spring the Parliament had proceeded to reverse the judgments which had been passed in the last reign against Lord William Russell, Algernon Sidney, the Earl of Devonshire, Cornish, Alice Lisle, and Samuel Johnson. Some of the Whigs who had suffered obtained pecuniary compensation, but Johnson obtained none. He was deemed by the Whigs to be too violent—in fact, he was a Radical of that day. The scoundrel Titus Oates crawled again from his obscurity, and, by help of his old friends the Whigs, managed to obtain a pension of three hundred pounds a year. This done, there was an attempt to convert the Declaration of Rights into a Bill of Rights—thus giving it all the authority of Parliamentary law; and in this Bill it was proposed, in case of William, Mary, and Anne all dying without issue, to settle the succession on the Duchess Sophia of Brunswick Lüneburg, the daughter of the Queen of Bohemia, and granddaughter of James I.; but it failed for the time. A Bill of Indemnity was also brought in as an Act of oblivion of all past offences; but this too was rejected. The triumphant Whigs, so far from being willing to forgive the Tories who had supported James, and had been their successful opponents during the attempts through Titus Oates and his fellow-plotters to exclude James from the succession, were now clamorous for their blood and ruin. William refused to comply with their truculent desires, and became, in consequence, the object of their undisguised hatred. They particularly directed their combined efforts against Danby, now Earl of Caermarthen, and Halifax. They demanded that Caermarthen should be dismissed from the office of President of the Council, and Halifax from holding the Privy Seal, and being Speaker of the House of Lords. But William steadfastly resisted their demands, and declared that he had done enough for them and their friends, and would do no more especially in the direction of vengeance against such as were disposed to live quietly and serve the State faithfully.

On the 19th of October the second session of William's first Parliament met. The Commons were liberal in voting supplies; they granted at once two million pounds, and declared that they would support the king to the utmost of their ability in reducing Ireland to his authority, and in prosecuting the war with France. The required sum was to be levied partly by a poll-tax, partly by new duties on tea, coffee, and chocolate, partly by an assessment of one hundred thousand pounds on the Jews, but chiefly by a tax on real property. The Jews, however, protested that they would sooner quit the kingdom than submit to the imposition, and that source was abandoned. The Commons next took up the Bill of Rights, and passed it, omitting the clause respecting the succession of the House of Brunswick, which measure was not brought forward again for eleven years. They, however, took care, at the suggestion of Burnet to insert a clause that no person who should marry a Papist should be capable of ascending the throne; and if any one on the throne so married, the subjects should be absolved from their allegiance.

After thus demonstrating their zeal for maintaining the throne in affluence and power, the Commons next proceeded to display it in a careful scrutiny of the mode in which the last supplies had been spent. The conduct of both army and navy had not been such as to satisfy the public. The Commons had, indeed, not only excused the defeat of Herbert at Bantry Bay, but even thanked him for it as though it had been a[420] victory. But neither had Schomberg effected anything in Ireland; and he loudly complained that it was impossible to fight with an army that was not supplied with the necessary food, clothing, or ammunition. This led to a searching scrutiny into the commissariat department, William himself being the foremost in the inquiry, and the most frightful peculation and abuses were brought to light. The muskets and other arms fell to pieces in the soldiers' hands; and, when fever and pestilence were decimating the camp there was not a drug to be found, though one thousand seven hundred pounds had been charged Government for medicines. What baggage and supplies there were could not be got to the army for want of horses to draw the waggons; and the very cavalry went afoot, because Shales, the Commissary-General, had let out the horses destined for this service to the farmers of Cheshire to do their work. The meat for the men stank, the brandy was so foully adulterated that it produced sickness and severe pains. In the navy the case was the same; and Herbert, now Lord Torrington, was severely blamed for not being personally at the fleet to see into the condition of his sailors, but was screened from deserved punishment by his connections. The king was empowered by Parliament at length to appoint a Commission of Inquiry to discover the whole extent of the evil, and to take remedies against its recurrence.

FIVE-GUINEA PIECE OF WILLIAM AND MARY.

CROWN OF WILLIAM AND MARY.

FOURPENNY PIECE OF WILLIAM AND MARY.

Then the Commons reverted again to their fierce party warfare. Whigs and Tories manifested an equal desire to crush their opponents if they had the power, and they kept William in a constant state of uneasiness by their mutual ferocity, and their alternate eagerness to force him into persecution and blood. Edmund Ludlow, one of the regicides, who had managed to escape the murderous vengeance of Charles and James, but whose companion, John Lisle, had fallen by the hands of Charles's assassins at Lausanne, had been persuaded that he might now return to England unmolested. But he soon found that he was mistaken. The Tories vehemently demanded his arrest of the king, and William was obliged to promise compliance; but he appeared in no haste in issuing the warrant; and probably a hint was given to Ludlow, for he escaped again to the Continent, and there remained till his death.

HALFPENNY OF WILLIAM AND MARY.

On the other hand, the Whigs were as unrelaxing in their desire of persecuting the Tories. They refused to proceed with the Indemnity Bill, which William was anxious to get passed as a final preventive of their deadly intentions. They arrested and sent to the Tower the Earls of Peterborough and Salisbury for going over from their party to that of James in the last reign, in order to impeach them of high treason. The same was done to Sir Edward Hales and Obadiah Walker. They appointed a committee to inquire into the share of various individuals in the deaths of Lord William Russell, Sidney, and others of the[421] Whig party. The committee was termed "the Committee of Murder," and they summoned such of the judges, law officers of the Crown, and others as had taken part in these prosecutions. Sir Dudley North and Halifax were called before them, and underwent a severe examination; but they did not succeed in establishing a charge sufficient to commit them upon. Halifax had already resigned the Speakership of the House of Lords, and they sought to bring William to deprive him of the Privy Seal. In these proceedings of the Commons, John Hampden, the grandson of the great patriot, and John Howe, were the most violent. Hampden went the length of saying that William ought to dismiss every man who had gone over to him from the late king, and ought not to employ any one who entertained Republican principles. This declaration, from a man who had himself been a full-length Republican and the friend of Sidney, threw the House into a roar of laughter; but that did not abash Hampden. On behalf of a committee of the Commons, he drew up an address so violent that it was altogether dropped, calling on the king to dismiss the authors of the late malversations and the consequent failures of the army and navy.

The Whigs next brought in a Bill to restore to the corporations their charters, which had been taken away by Charles II.; but, not content with the legitimate fact of the restoration of these ancient rights, they again seized on this as an opportunity for inflicting a blow on the Tories. They introduced at the instigation of William Sacheverell, a clause disqualifying for seven years every mayor, recorder, common councilman, or other officer who had been in any way a party to the surrender of these charters. They added a penalty of five hundred pounds and perpetual disqualification for every person who, in violation of this clause, should presume to hold office in any corporation. They declared that if the Lords should hesitate to pass this Bill, they would withhold the supplies till it was acquiesced in.

But William did not hesitate to express his displeasure with the Bill, and with the indecent hurry with which it was pushed forward. A short delay was interposed, and meanwhile the news of the intended passing of the Bill was carried into every quarter of the kingdom, and the Tories, Peers and Commons, who had gone down to their estates for Christmas, hastened up to town to oppose it. The battle was furious. The Whigs flattered themselves that, if they carried this Bill, the returns to the next Parliament would be such that they should be able to exclude their opponents from all power and place. After a fierce and prolonged debate, the Bill was thrown out, and the Tories, elated by their victory, again brought forward the Indemnity Bill; but this time they were defeated in turn, and the Whigs immediately proceeded with their design of converting this Bill into one of pains and penalties; and to show that they were in earnest, they summoned Sir Robert Sawyer before the House for his part in the prosecution of the Whigs in the last reign. He had been Attorney-General, and conducted some of the worst cases which were decided under Jeffreys and his unprincipled colleagues, with a spirit which had made him peculiarly odious. The case of Sir Thomas Armstrong was in particular brought forward—a very flagrant one. Sir Thomas had been charged with being engaged in the Rye House plot. He had escaped to the Netherlands, but the authorities having been bribed to give him up, he was brought back, and hanged, without a hearing, as an outlaw. It was a barbarous case, and deserved the severest condemnation. But it was pleaded, on the other hand, that Sawyer had rendered great services to the Whig cause; that he had stoutly resisted the attempts of James to introduce Popery and despotism; that he had resigned his office rather than advocate the Dispensing Power, and had undertaken the defence of the seven bishops. No matter; he was excepted from indemnity and expelled the House. A committee of the whole House proceeded to make out a complete list of all the offenders to be excluded from the benefit of the Bill.

This brought William to a resolve which, if carried into effect, would have given a death-blow to the Whig party, and have neutralised the glory of their accomplishment of the Revolution. He sent for his chief ministers, and announced to them his determination to relinquish the fruitless task of endeavouring to govern a country thus torn to pieces by faction; that he was weary of the whole concern, and would return to Holland, never more to meddle with English affairs, but abandon them to the queen; that for ten months he had been vainly endeavouring to make peace between the factions of Whig and Tory, and to prevent them from rushing at each other's throats; that they clearly regarded nothing but their mutual animosities, for in their indulgence they utterly neglected the urgent affairs of the nation. Their enemy was in Ireland, yet it had no effect in bringing them to their senses. Still[422] worse, every department of the Government was overrun with corruption, peculation, and neglect. The public service was paralysed; the public peace was entirely destroyed; and as for himself, with far from robust health and with the duty of settling the Government upon him, it was useless further to contend; he could contend no longer. A squadron was ready to bear him away, and he could only hope that they would show more regard to the wishes of the queen than they had to his.

Whether William was in earnest, or whether he only had recourse to a ruse to bring the combatants to their senses, the result was the same. The ministers stood confounded. To drive the king from the country by their quarrels, and that at a time when the old and implacable enemy of Protestantism and liberty was at their doors, would be a blow to freedom and to their own credit from which the most disastrous consequences must flow. They entreated him on their knees and with tears to forego this design, promising all that he could desire. William at length consented to make one more trial; but it was only on condition that the Bill of Indemnity should pass, and that he should himself proceed to Ireland, and endeavour, by his own personal and determined effort, to drive James thence.

Accordingly, on January 27, 1690, he called together the two Houses, and, announcing his intention to proceed to Ireland, declared the Parliament dissolved, amid the utmost signs of consternation in the Whigs, and shouts of exultation from the Tories. This act of William's to defeat the malice of the Whigs, and his continued firm resistance to their endeavours to fine and disqualify the Tories, had a wonderful effect on that party. A numerous body of them deputed Sir John Lowther to carry their thanks to the king, and assure him that they would serve him with all their hearts and influence. Numbers of them who had hitherto stood aloof began to appear at Court, and attended the levee to kiss the king's hand. William gave orders to liberate those whom the Whigs had sent to prison on charges of treason.

On the 1st of February the hour arrived in which all ecclesiastics who had neglected to take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy would be deposed. A considerable number of them came in in time; but Sancroft, the Primate, and five of his bishops, stood out, and were deprived of their bishoprics, but were treated with particular lenity.

It was soon found that the conduct of the Whigs had alienated a great mass of the people. Their endeavours, by Sacheverell's clause, to disqualify all who had consented to the surrender of the corporation charters, had made mortal enemies of those persons, many of whom were at the moment the leading members of the corporations, and therefore possessing the highest influence on the return of members to the new Parliament. The same was the case in the country, amongst those who had been sheriffs or other officers at that period. The consequence was that the Tories returned a decided majority to the new House, and amongst them came up Sir Robert Sawyer from Cambridge, whilst the violence of Hampden had caused his exclusion.

The revival of the Tory influence introduced great changes in the ministry. Halifax resigned the Privy Seal. Mordaunt—now Earl of Monmouth—Delamere, Sidney Godolphin, and Admiral Herbert—now Earl of Torrington—were dismissed. Caermarthen was continued Lord President of the Council, and Prime Minister. Sir John Lowther was appointed First Lord of the Treasury, in place of Monmouth. Nottingham retained his post as Secretary of State; and Thomas Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, was placed at the head of the Admiralty, Torrington having, to his great discontent, to yield that position, but retaining that of High Admiral, and being satisfied by a splendid grant of ten thousand acres of Crown land in the Peterborough fens. Delamere, too, was soothed on his dismissal by being created Earl of Warrington. Richard Hampden became Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Parliament met on the 20th of March, and the Commons, under the new Tory influence, elected Sir John Trevor Speaker, who was besides made First Commissioner of the Great Seal. In this man is said to have commenced that system of Government corruption of Parliament—the buying up, or buying off of members, which grew to such a height, and attained its climax under Sir Robert Walpole. Trevor was an unscrupulous Tory, and Burnet says he was "furnished with such sums of money as might purchase some votes." He undertook, accordingly, to manage the party in the House. The Whigs were in the worst of humours, but they had now learnt that it was not wise to push matters with the Crown too far, and as a body they watched their opportunity for recovering by degrees their ascendency. Some of the more violent, however, as the Earl of Shrewsbury and the notorious Ferguson, entered into immediate correspondence with James.

[423]

William, in his opening speech, dwelt chiefly on the necessity of settling the revenue, to enable him to proceed to Ireland, and on passing the Bill of Indemnity; and he was very plain in expressing his sense of the truculent spirit of party, which, in endeavouring to wound one another, injured and embarrassed his Government still more. He informed them that he had drawn up an Act of Grace, constituting the Bill of Indemnity, and should send it to them for their acceptance; for it is the practice for all such Acts to proceed from the Crown, and then to be voted by the Peers, and finally by the Commons. He then informed them that he left the administration during his absence in Ireland in the hands of the Queen; and he desired that if any Act was necessary for the confirmation of that authority, they should pass it. The Commons at once passed a vote of thanks, and engaged to support the Government of their Majesties by every means in their power. On the 27th of March they passed unanimously the four following resolutions—namely, that all the hereditary revenues of King James, except the hearth-tax, were vested now in their present Majesties; that a Bill should be brought in to declare and perpetuate this investment; that the moiety of the excise granted to Charles and James should be secured by Bill to their present Majesties for life; and finally, that the customs which had been granted to Charles and James for their lives should be granted for four years from the next Christmas. William was much dissatisfied with the last proviso, and complained that the Commons should show less confidence in him, who had restored their liberties, than in Charles and James, who destroyed them. Sir John Lowther pressed this point on the Commons strongly, but in vain; and Burnet told King William that there was no disrespect meant towards him, but that the Commons wished to establish this as a general principle, protective of future subjects from the evils which the ill-judged liberality of past Parliaments had produced.

The next measure on which the Whigs and Tories tried their strength was a Bill brought in by the Whigs to do what was already sufficiently done in the Bill of Rights—to pronounce William and Mary the rightful and lawful sovereigns of this realm, and next to declare that all the acts of the late Convention should be held as valid as laws. The first part, already sufficiently recognised, was quietly passed over; but the Tories made a stout opposition to extending the Act beyond the year 1689, on the plea that nothing could convert the self-constituted Convention into a legal Parliament. But the distinction was a mere party distinction; for, if the Convention was not a legal body, nothing could render its acts so. The Earl of Nottingham, who headed this movement, entered a strong protest on the journal of the Lords against it, and this protest was signed by many peers, and amongst them the Whig peers, Bolton, Macclesfield, Stamford, Bedford, Newport, Monmouth, Herbert, Suffolk, Warrington, and Oxford. The Bill, however, was carried, and with still more ease in the Commons.

The Tories, mortified at the triumph of the Whigs, now brought in a Bill to change the military government of the City of London as the lieutenancy of the counties had been changed. They thanked the king for having by his measures brought in so many Churchmen and thrown out so many Nonconformists. This Bill the Whigs managed to impede till the session closed; but not so with another from the Tory party, ordering payment of the five hundred pounds fines incurred by all who had taken office or served as magistrates without taking the necessary Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy. This was carried, and the money ordered to be paid into the Exchequer, and a separate account of it to be kept.

The defeat of the Whigs only infused more fierceness in the party warfare. They hastened to bring in a Bill compelling every person in office, civil, ecclesiastical, or military, to take an oath to abjure King James and his right to the Crown, thence called the Abjuration Oath. This oath might, moreover, be tendered by any magistrate to any subject of their Majesties whatever, and whoever refused it was to be committed to prison, and kept there till he complied. It was hoped by the Whigs that this Bill would greatly embarrass the Tories who had taken office under the present monarchy, and accordingly it met with a decided opposition in the Commons, and was thrown out by a majority of one hundred and ninety-two to one hundred and seventy-eight. It was then, with some alteration, introduced as a fresh Bill into the Lords. William went down to the Lords to listen personally to the debate; and several of the peers made very free and pertinent remarks on the uselessness of so many oaths to bind any disloyal or unconscientious person.

The Bill was defeated in the Lords by being committed, but never reported, for on the 20th of May, after King William had given his consent to the Bill, which he had recommended, for conferring on the queen full powers to administer the[424] government during his absence in Ireland, and also to that revising the quo warranto judgment against the City of London, the Marquis of Caermarthen appeared in the House with an Act of Grace ready drawn and signed by the king.

HENRY VII.'S CHAPEL, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

William had tried in vain to curb the deadly animosities of the contending parties by Bills of Indemnity. These could be discussed and rejected, not so an Act of Grace: it issued from the sovereign, and came already signed to Parliament. It must be at once accepted or rejected by each House, and in such a case as the present, where it was meant as a healing and pacifying act, it could not be rejected without a disloyal and ungracious air. Accordingly it was received with the deference which it deserved, and both Houses gave their sanction to it, standing bareheaded, and without one dissenting voice. From the benefit of this Act of Grace, pardoning all past offences, were, it is true, excepted thirty names, prominent amongst whom were the Marquis of Powis, the Lords Sunderland, Huntingdon, Dover, Melfort, and Castlemaine; the Bishops of Durham and St. Davids; the Judges Herbert, Jenner, Withers, and Holloway; Roger Lestrange; Lundy, the traitor governor of Londonderry; Father Petre; and Judge Jeffreys. This last monster of infamy was already deceased in the Tower, but it was well understood that if the others named only kept themselves at peace they would never be inquired after. Neither party, however, thanked William for the constrained peace. The Whigs[425] were disappointed of the vengeance they burned to enjoy; the Tories, and even those who had the most narrowly escaped the intended mischief, ungenerously said that if William had really anything to avenge, he would not have pardoned it.

WILLIAM PENN.

The day after the passing of this important Act he prorogued Parliament. The Convocation which had been summoned, and met in Henry VII.'s Chapel—St. Paul's, its usual meeting-place, having been burnt down in the Great Fire, was not yet rebuilt—had been prorogued some time before. Its great topic had been the scheme of comprehension, which was warmly advocated by Burnet and the more liberal members, but the High Church was as high and immovable as ever. Nothing could be accomplished, and from this time the Nonconformists gave up all hope of any reunion with the Church.

William now made preparations for the Irish campaign. It was time, for Schomberg had effected little, and the English fleet had done worse than nothing at sea. It was not only in Ireland that the danger of William lay, or whence came his troubles. He had to maintain the contest on the Continent against Louis XIV., against James in Ireland, against corruption and imbecility in his fleet, against the most wholesale mismanagement and peculation in every department of the English Government, and against the feuds and disaffection of his own courtiers and servants. Whilst the contests which we have just related were agitating Parliament, William was vigorously at work inquiring into the malversation all around him. Shales, the Commissary-General, was dismissed, and a new spirit was introduced into the commissariat under the vigilant eye of[426] William himself. Instead of the vile poisons and putrid meats, excellent provisions were supplied to the army. The villainies by which the poor soldiers had been robbed of their clothing, and bedding, and tents, terminated, and they were soon well clothed, lodged, and equipped. The road to Chester swarmed with waggons conveying wholesome supplies, and a fleet lay there ready to convey the king over, with additional troops and stores. Before he set out himself, the army in Ireland amounted to thirty thousand effective men.

But the affairs of the Channel fleet were in the worst possible condition. William there committed the error of continuing Torrington, better known as Admiral Herbert—who had been suspected of a leaning towards James, and who had been already beaten at Bantry Bay—in the chief command, when he removed him from his post of First Lord of the Admiralty. Herbert was a debauched, effeminate fellow, indulging in all sorts of license and luxury, whilst his sailors were suffering the most atrocious treatment. They had such meat served out to them that neither they nor even dogs could touch it. They were ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-paid; the contractors and the officers were enriching themselves at their expense; and, what was worse, they were compelled to bear the disgrace of having our commerce interrupted in all directions by the French cruisers. Whilst they lay inactive in Portsmouth, the French scoured the English coast, and captured trading vessels with their cargoes to the value of six hundred thousand pounds.

William had, however, difficulties at home to surmount before he could depart for Ireland. Just as he was prepared to set out, the discovery was made of an extensive traitorous correspondence between a number of concealed Jacobites and the Court of St. Germains. Some of his own ministers and courtiers were deep in it. Two messengers had been despatched from James's queen from St. Germains, with letters to the conspiring Jacobites. One of these, of the name of Fuller, was induced by some means to betray the secret. He went boldly to Whitehall, and delivered his despatches to William. Crone, the other, was arrested, and soon after another messenger of the name of Tempest. The disclosures made through this means revealed an extensive ramification of treason that was enough to appal the stoutest heart and coolest brain. The queen's own relative, Clarendon, was one of the most zealous plotters; Ailesbury and Dartmouth, who had both taken the oaths to the new monarchs, were among the most guilty; and the latter, though an admiral, was prepared, in connection with other officers, to betray the coast defences, and to carry over their ships to the enemy. William Penn was arrested on account of an intercepted letter to James, and charged with treason; but he denied any treasonable intentions, and said he only corresponded with James as an old friend. Nothing of a criminal nature could be proved against him, and he was soon liberated. Viscount Preston, who had been raised to that dignity by James, but was not admitted by the peers to possess a valid patent of nobility, was another; and what was far more mortifying, the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had so recently resigned the seals as Secretary of State, was discovered to be deeply implicated. It was found that the conspiracy was spread far and wide throughout the country, and that the Jacobites in Worcestershire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and other northern counties, were laying in arms and ammunition, and gentlemen who had received commissions from James were actually mustering and drilling troops on the solitary moorlands. The correspondence was as active between England and Ireland, as between England and France.

Amid dangers of such magnitude it may seem strange that William should venture to leave England, and burthen his wife with the cares and responsibilities of such a crisis, amid the machinations of so many determined enemies; but his affairs as imperiously demanded his presence in Ireland, and he therefore took the best measures that he could for the assistance and security of the queen. He appointed a council of nine of the most efficient and trusty persons he could think of, some Whigs, some Tories. They were Devonshire, Dorset, Monmouth, Edward Russell, Caermarthen, Pembroke, Nottingham, Marlborough, and Lowther. In making this selection William must have put aside many personal prejudices. Marlborough was appointed as most likely to advise the queen as to military affairs, though he was the known partisan and adviser of Anne. Russell, who was an admiral and Treasurer of the Navy, was the person to advise her in naval matters, and Caermarthen was, from his experience, and as having a great regard for the queen, the man on whom she could most rely for the management of the main business of the State. William solemnly laid upon them the great trust which he reposed in them, and called upon them as men and statesmen, to afford the queen every assistance which her being left under such trying circumstances demanded for[427] her. He likewise informed Rochester that he was well acquainted with the treasonable practices of his brother Clarendon, and bade him warn him from him to tempt him no further to a painful severity.

Having arranged this matter, William set out on the 4th of June for Chester, where he embarked on the 11th, and landed at Carrickfergus on the 14th. He proceeded immediately towards Belfast, and was met by Schomberg on the way. William was attended by Prince George of Denmark, the Duke of Ormond, the Earls of Oxford, Scarborough, and Manchester, Mr. Boyle, and many other persons of distinction. He appointed the whole of his army to rendezvous at Loughbrickland, and immediately set about organising his plans, and preparing his stores for an active campaign. Before we enter upon that, however, we must take a hasty glance at what Schomberg had done during the autumn, winter, and spring.

This was little for so numerous an army, commanded by so experienced a general. Schomberg was, it is true, eighty years of age, and many complained that time had diminished his fire, and that much more ought to have been effected. But William, who may be supposed a most competent judge, cast no blame upon him; on the contrary, he thanked him for having preserved his army at all, his troops having had to contend with the horrors of a deficient and most villainous commissariat, as we have already shown.

Schomberg on landing had taken Carrickfergus, Newry, and Dundalk, where he entrenched himself. He had found the country through which he passed a perfect waste. It could afford him no provisions, and, if he were compelled to fall back, no shelter. James, on his landing, had advanced from Dublin to Drogheda, where he was with twenty thousand men, besides vast numbers of wild Irish, armed with scythes, pikes, and skeans. But Schomberg found himself in no condition for fighting. His baggage could not reach him for want of waggons, and from the state of the roads. His arms were many of them good for nothing, being the vile rubbish furnished by the contractors under the management of the fraudulent Ministry and the infamous Commissary-General Shales. His soldiers were suffering from want of proper clothing, shoes, beds, and tents. Worse still, the soldiers were fast perishing with fever. Bad food, bad clothing, bad lodging, and drenching and continual rains without proper shelter, were fast doing their work on the English army. Schomberg did his best. He stimulated his soldiers to make roofs to their huts of turf and fern, and to make their beds of heather and fern, raised on dry mounds above the soaking rains. But all was in vain. The soldiers were become spiritless and demoralised. They were either too listless to move or too excited by whisky, which they managed to get, to follow his recommendations. Scenes like those which appeared in London during the Plague now horrified his camp. The soldiers gave way to wild license, drank, swore, sang bacchanalian songs, drank the Devil's health, and made seats of the corpses of their dead comrades at their revels, which they declared were the only ones they had to keep them out of the wet.

The sickness appeared at the same time in the English fleet which lay off the coast at Carrickfergus, and swept away almost every man from some of the vessels. By the commencement of November, Schomberg's army could not number more than five thousand effective men. The Irish in James's army did not suffer so much, and they rejoiced in the pestilence which was thus annihilating their heretic enemies. But the weather at length compelled James to draw off, first to Ardee, and then into winter quarters in different towns. Schomberg, thus set at liberty, quickly followed his example, and quartered his troops for the winter in the different towns of Ulster, fixing his headquarters at Lisburn. His army had, however, lost above six thousand men by disease.

In February, 1690, the campaign was begun by the Duke of Berwick, James's natural son, who attacked William's advanced post at Belturbet; but he met with such a reception that he nearly lost his life, being severely wounded and having his horse killed under him. In fact, the condition of the two armies had been completely changed during the winter by the different management of the two commanders. Schomberg had been diligently exerting himself to restore the health and to perfect the discipline of his troops. As spring advanced he received the benefit of William's exertions and stern reforms in England. Good, healthy food, good clothing, bedding, tents, and arms arrived. Fresh troops were from time to time landing, amongst them regiments of German and Scandinavian mercenaries. By the time of William's arrival the army was in a fine and vigorous condition, and amounted to thirty thousand men.

Not so the army of James: it had grown more and more disorderly. James and his Court had returned to Dublin, where they spent the winter[428] in the grossest dissoluteness and neglect of all discipline or law. Gambling, riot, and debauchery scandalised the sober Catholics, who had hoped for a saviour in James. Of all the army, the cavalry alone had been maintained by its officers in discipline. The foot soldiers roamed over the country at pleasure, plundering their own compatriots. James's own kitchen and larder were supplied by his foragers from the substance of his subjects, without regard to law or any prospect of payment. It was in vain that remonstrances were made; James paid no attention to them. His bad money was gone; he had used up all the old pots, pans, and cracked cannon, and applied to Louis for fresh remittances, which did not arrive. To complete the ruin of his affairs, he requested the withdrawal of Rosen and D'Avaux, who, heartless as they were, saw the ruinous course things were taking, and remonstrated against it. Lauzun, an incompetent commander, was sent over to take their place, accompanied by about seven thousand French infantry. When Lauzun arrived in Ireland, the desolation of the country, the rude savagery of the people, and the disorders of the Court and capital, were such as to strike him and his officers with astonishment and horror. He declared in his letters to the French minister, Louvois, that the country was in so frightful a state that no person who had lived in any other could conceive it; that James's chief functionaries pulled each his different way, instead of assisting the king; and that "such were the wants, disunions, and dejection, that the king's affairs looked like the primitive chaos."

Unfortunately, Lauzun was not the man to reduce chaos to order. He had accompanied Mary, the queen of James, in her flight from London to Paris, and had there too won the good graces of Madame Maintenon; and by the influence of these ladies, who imagined him a great general, he obtained this important command. He had to fill the place of both D'Avaux and Rosen, of ambassador and general, without the sagacity and skill which would have fitted him for either. He conceived the greatest contempt and hatred of the Irish, and was not likely to work well with them. Such was the condition in which James was found on the landing of King William.

William, we have said, pushed on immediately to Belfast, and thence, without permitting himself to be delayed by the congratulatory multitudes that surrounded him, he hastened forward to his main army at Loughbrickland. The soldiers of his army consisted of a variety of nations, many of whom had won fame under great leaders. There were Dutch, who had fought under William and his great generals against those of Louis of France; Germans, Danes, Finlanders, French Huguenots, now purged of their false countrymen; English and Scottish troops, who had fought also in Holland, in Tangier, at Killiecrankie; and Anglo-Irish, who had won such laurels at Londonderry, Enniskillen, and Newton Butler. All were animated by the presence of the king, and of his assembled generals of wide renown, and with the confidence of putting down the Popish king, and his French supporters and Irish adherents, who had robbed and expelled them and their families. The Germans and Dutch burned to meet again the French invaders of their country, the desolators of the Palatinate; and the French Protestants were as much on fire to avenge themselves on their Catholic countrymen, who had been their oppressors. It was not merely English troops acting on ordinary grounds of hostility against Irish ones, but representatives of almost all Protestant Europe collected to avenge the wrongs of Protestants and of their own countries.

William was confident in his army, and declared that he was not come to Ireland to let the grass grow under his feet. Schomberg still recommended caution when it was no longer needed, and thus gave a colour to the words of those who accused him of having shown too much caution already, which they insinuated was but the result of old age. On the 24th of June, only ten days after landing, William was in full march southwards. James did not wait for his coming, but abandoned Dundalk and retreated into Drogheda. His generals, indeed, represented to him that caution and delay were his best policy against so powerful a force, and even recommended that he should retreat beyond Dublin and entrench himself at Athlone, as a more central and defensible position; but James would not listen to this, and Tyrconnel strengthened him in the resolution.

[429]

JAMES ENTERING DUBLIN AFTER THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE. (See p. 431.)

The morning of the 1st of July, destined to become a great epoch in Ireland, rose brilliantly, and the opposing armies were in motion by four o'clock. William overnight had given the word "Westminster" as the recognition sign, and ordered his men to wear each a green sprig in his hat, to distinguish them from the enemy, who, out of compliment to France, wore a white cockade, generally of paper. According to William's disposition of battle, Meinhart Schomberg, the son of the old general, supported by Portland and Douglas[430] with the Scottish guards, was to take the right and secure the bridge of Slane. He himself headed the left wing near Drogheda with a strong force of cavalry, and Schomberg the centre, which was opposite Oldbridge, where he was supported by the Blues of Solmes, and the brave Londonderries and Enniskilleners, and on his left the French Huguenots under Caillemot, and between them and William the Danes. Meinhart Schomberg found the bridge of Slane already occupied by Sir Neil O'Neil, with a regiment of Irish Dragoons; but the English charged them briskly, killed O'Neil, and made themselves masters of the bridge. This was a grand advantage at the outset. It enabled the English to attack the right wing of James, and endangered their seizure of the pass of Duleek, a very narrow defile in the hills, about four miles in their rear, by which they would cut off altogether their retreat. Lauzun, who had posted the main strength of the Irish infantry at the foot of Oldbridge, and supported them by Sarsfield's horse, was compelled to despatch the horse towards Slane Bridge, to guard against this danger, thus weakening his centre.

Nearly at the same moment that this movement took place, William put himself at the head of his cavalry, and with his sword in his left hand, for his right arm was too sore and stiff from a gunshot received on the previous day to hold it, he dashed into the river and led his wing across. At the same moment Schomberg gave the word, and the centre was in motion. Solmes' Dutch Blues led the way, and their example was instantly followed by the men of Londonderry and Enniskillen, and at their left the Huguenots. The men waded through the stream, holding aloft their muskets and ammunition. The brunt of the encounter was there, for there the enemy had expected the main attack, and had not only concentrated their forces there, horse and foot, but had defended the bank with a breastwork and batteries. The English had to advance against the deadly fire from these defences, and from the thronging Irish, who raised the wildest hurrahs, whilst they could return no fire till they were nearly across and sufficiently raised from the water. Then they saw the breastwork and the batteries lined with one mass of foes. They, however, pushed resolutely forward, fired, charged the foe, and in an instant the whole demoralised Irish broke and fled. Never was there so complete and ignominious a rout. These men, on whom so much depended, but who, despite all warnings to James, had been suffered to plunder and riot without restraint or discipline, now dispersed with so dastardly a rapidity that it was more like a dream than a reality.

The engagement was now general, from the left where William commanded, almost under the walls of Drogheda, to the bridge of Slane. The English and their allies had forced their way across the river, and were engaged in fierce contest with the Irish horse and the French cavalry and foot. When Schomberg saw the cavalry of Tyrconnel and Hamilton bear down upon his centre, and that they had actually driven back Solmes' Blues into the river, he dashed into the river himself, to rally and encourage them. Probably stung by a generous sense of shame, for he had discouraged the attempt to attack the Irish army in that position, the old man now exhibited an opposite degree of incaution, for without defensive armour he rushed into the mêlée, disregarding the advice of his officers to put on his cuirass. As he rode through the river, Caillemot was borne past him to the north bank mortally wounded, but still crying to his brave Huguenots, "On! on! my lads! To glory! to glory!" Schomberg took up the cry of encouragement to the men, appalled by the loss of their general, and said, "Allons, messieurs, voilà vos persécuteurs!" But scarcely had he uttered the words when he, too, received a mortal wound and fell. When he was found he was dead, with a bullet wound through his neck, and a couple of sword gashes on his head.

For half an hour the battle raged with a fury such as the oldest soldiers of the Netherlands now declared they had never seen surpassed. Hamilton and Tyrconnel led on their cavalry against Schomberg's forces with a steadiness and bravery that were as much to their credit as their conduct in civil life had been disgraceful. William, on his part, had found a warm reception on the left. The Irish horse withstood him stoutly, and drove back his guards and the Enniskilleners repeatedly. On his first coming up to the Enniskilleners, he was mistaken for one of the enemy, and was near being shot by a trooper. The mistake being rectified, the Enniskilleners followed him with enthusiasm. William threw away all thought of danger, and led them into the thickest of the fight. At one moment a ball carried away the cock of his pistol, at another the heel of his boot, but he still led on. The Enniskilleners fought desperately, and the horse of Ginkell charged brilliantly.

KING WILLIAM III. AT THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE.

From the Painting probably by Jan. Wyck,
in the National Portrait Gallery.

They were thus fighting their way towards the centre, and had advanced as far as Plottin Castle, about a mile and a half from Oldbridge, when the[431] Irish horse made a last furious effort, drove back the Enniskilleners, and killed a number of them. William rallied them, and again led them to the charge, broke the Irish cavalry, and took prisoner Hamilton, who had been heading this gallant charge. When William saw, wounded and a prisoner, the man who had proved so traitorous to him when sent to Ireland, he said, "Is this business over, or will your horse make more fight?" "On my honour, sir," replied Hamilton, "I believe they will." "Your honour, indeed!" muttered William; but ordering the wounded man to be properly attended to, he rode forward to join the main body and end the fight.

That was now soon over. The centre and the right wing had done dreadful execution. They had nearly annihilated whole regiments. One of them had only thirty men left without a wound. They had fought in a manner worthy of a better cause and a better leader, for James had early abandoned the field, and left his deluded followers to the mercy of the enemy. No sooner did he see the Irish fly before the enemy at Oldbridge than, from his safe position on the hill of Donore, he gave orders for all the baggage and the artillery, except six pieces, already in full employ in the engagement, to be conveyed with all speed on the road to Dublin, so as to effect their passage through the defile of Duleek; and, escorted by Sarsfield's horse, he made all haste after them.

If James was one of the worst and most infatuated monarchs that ever reigned in time of peace, in war he was the most dastardly. In England he fled disgracefully on the approach of William, without a blow, and here again he showed the same utter want of spirit and energy. He had taken no care to keep his soldiers disciplined and in proper tone for the coming war, and he deserted them at the first symptoms of reverse. If the English had pushed on briskly from the bridge of Slane, they might still have intercepted him, and brought him prisoner to William; but, the conflict over, they relaxed their efforts, and William gave orders to spare the flying troops as much as possible. When Lauzun and Tyrconnel approached the pass of Duleek with their retreating cavalry, they found it choked with a confused mass of waggons, artillery, and terrified fugitives. They therefore faced about, and repelled the pursuers till the rout had got through. The cavalry of William still followed the flying throng as far as the Neale, a second pass, and till it grew dark, when they returned to the main army. James continued his panic flight, however, never stopping till he reached Dublin. The city had all day been in a state of intense excitement. First had come the news that William was wounded, then that he was dead; amid the rejoicing of the Jacobites came the horrid news of the defeat, followed about sunset by James himself, attended by about two hundred cavalry, haggard, wayworn, and covered with dust. All that night kept pouring in the defeated troops, and early in the morning James, not deeming himself safe, took leave of the mayor, aldermen, and officers of his army, upbraiding the Irish with their cowardice in having deserted him almost without a blow, and vowing that he would never trust to an Irish army again. The Irish returned the compliment, and declared that, if the English would exchange kings, they were ready to fight again, and to conquer too. If any man had ever caused his own misfortune and defeat, it was James; but he never took the means to avoid discomfiture, and he never saw, or at least, never seemed to see, that the blame lay with himself. Without, therefore, making another effort, though he had a large army still on foot, and all the south of Ireland to employ it in, he continued his flight towards Waterford, in terror all the way lest he should be overtaken by William's cavalry, and, reaching Waterford on the third day, he got away by water, without loss of time, to Kinsale, whence he sailed for France, quitting Ireland at the spot where he had entered it.

It might have been expected that Tyrconnel and Lauzun would yet rally their forces at Dublin, and make a resolute stand there. But the decisive defeat of the Boyne, the untrustworthiness of the Irish infantry, the loss on the field amounting to upwards of one thousand five hundred, and those chiefly cavalry, the desertion of vast numbers of infantry on the road southward, and the precipitate flight of James, discouraged them. Towards evening of the same day that James left, Tyrconnel and Lauzun mustered their forces and marched out of the city, determining to make their stand on the Shannon, within the strong defences of Athlone and Limerick. No sooner had they evacuated the city than the Protestants issued from their retreats, liberated all the prisoners, and sent off messengers to invite William to enter his new capital in triumph. This he did on the 6th of July, and then made for Waterford.

William's object in reaching Waterford was to take ship for England—not, like James, to abandon his army out of mere cowardice—but in order[432] to protect England too. He had received news that the French, under Tourville, were hovering on the southern coast of England; that they had again defeated the British fleet under the wretched Torrington, and were meditating invasion of the country. He hastened on; the Irish troops at his approach abandoned Clonmel and Kilkenny. Waterford was similarly evacuated, and William, nominating Count Solmes commander-in-chief during his absence, was about to embark, when he received further intelligence. Tourville had made a partial descent at Teignmouth in Devonshire, sacked it, and then drawn off in consequence of the menacing attitude of the inhabitants of the western counties. He therefore hastened to rejoin his army, which was on the way towards Limerick, where Douglas had found such resistance that he had been compelled to raise the siege. On the 9th of August he sat down before that town, and found the Irish determined to make a resolute defence of it.

The Irish, ashamed of their conduct at the battle of the Boyne, and seeing their Saxon masters once more rapidly recovering their ascendency in the island, one and all, men and officers, determined on here making a stand to the death. They did not owe their spirit to their French allies, for Lauzun and his officers ridiculed the idea of defending the place, which they regarded as most miserably fortified. Tyrconnel joined them in that opinion; but Sarsfield encouraged his countrymen, and exhorted them to cast up breastworks of earth, which, in our times—as at Sebastopol—have convinced military men that they are far more impervious to cannon than stone or brick walls. He could not convince the French, who had lost all faith in Irish prowess, and who pined to return to France from the miseries and privations of Ireland; nor Tyrconnel, who was old, and completely dispirited by the action of the Boyne. He and the French drew off with the French forces into Galway; and Boisseleau, a Frenchman, who did sympathise with the Irish, and Sarsfield, were left to defend the place. They had yet twenty thousand men, who were animated by a new spirit, and were destined to make the defence of Limerick as famous as that of Londonderry.

Limerick stood partly on an island in the Shannon; and to take that part it was necessary to have boats, for only a single bridge connected the two parts of the town, or the two towns, as they were called—the English and the Irish. William had a quantity of tin boats on the way for this service, and his cannon and ammunition were also following him. Sarsfield seized immediately on this circumstance when it came to his knowledge. He got out of the city in the night, surprised the escort of the guns, and destroyed the guns, blew up the powder, and made good his return to the town. This exploit raised Sarsfield wonderfully in the opinion of his countrymen, and at the same time raised their own spirits.

William sent for fresh guns from Waterford, and pressed on the siege; but the autumnal rains began to deluge the low, marshy banks of the Shannon, and to sweep away his men with fever. The Irish, on the other hand, had received a fresh stimulus to exertion in the arrival of Baldearg O'Donnel, the chief of one of the most famous old races of Ulster, who had been in the service of Spain, and had returned to assist his countrymen in this last effort to throw off the yoke of the Saxon. The high veneration for the name of the O'Donnel, and the character of the man, placed him at the head of a large class of the Irish in Limerick. There was a prophecy that an O'Donnel was to conquer the English, and the enthusiastic Celts believed that this was the time. And, in truth, the prediction appeared beginning to verify itself, for, after a desperate attempt to take the town by storm on the 27th of August, William resolved to raise the siege, and place his troops in healthy quarters for the winter. During this attempt, William had another narrow escape from a cannon-ball. His men, too, after breaching the walls in several places, and carrying the counterscarp, or covered way, suffered great loss. On the 30th the siege was raised, and William hastened to Waterford, and thence to England. He left the government of the island in the care of three Lords Justices, namely, Viscount Sidney, Lord Coningsby, and Sir Charles Porter. About the same time Tyrconnel and Lauzun quitted Ireland for France, leaving the affairs of James in a council of civilians, and the army under a commission, at the head of which stood the Duke of Berwick as commander-in-chief, and in the very lowest place the brave Sarsfield, of whom the aged Tyrconnel entertained a jealousy worthy of himself and of his master.

Reproduced by André & Sleigh, Ld., Bushey, Herts.

A LOST CAUSE: THE FLIGHT OF JAMES II. AFTER THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE, 1690.

By ANDREW C. GOW, R.A. From the Painting in the National Gallery of British Art.

THE FRENCH RETREATING FROM TORBAY. (See p. 434.)

We must now take notice of what had been passing in England and Scotland during William's campaign in Ireland. Immediately after his departure the traitor Crone was brought to the bar, and, after a full and fair trial, convicted and condemned to death. Pardon, however, was offered him on condition of his revealing what he knew[433] of the Jacobite machinations. After a violent struggle with himself, and after two respites, he complied, and gave important information to the Privy Council. The evidences of an active conspiracy of the Jacobites were too prominent to be overlooked. Tourville, the French admiral, was hovering on the coasts of Devon and Dorsetshire, and the Jacobites, as expecting a descent of a French force, were all in a state of the greatest excitement. It was deemed necessary to arrest a number of the most dangerous conspirators, amongst whom was Clarendon, the queen's uncle; and he and the rest were committed to the Tower. Torrington was ordered to join the fleet in the Downs, and chase the French admiral from the coast. At St. Helens he was joined by a powerful Dutch squadron, under the command of Admiral Evertsen, and they lay off Ventnor, whilst Tourville with his fleet lay off the Needles. An engagement was expected every hour, when Torrington was seen to draw off from the coast of the Isle of Wight, and retreat before the French admiral towards the Strait of Dover. The alarm in London became excessive. The scheme of the Jacobites, as it was revealed to the Council, was to enter the Thames; the Jacobites in London had agreed to rise and seize the queen, and proclaim James. James himself had engaged to leave Ireland to Lauzun and Tyrconnel, and throw himself once more amongst his adherents in England. Another squadron of the French was to land at Torbay; and the country once in their possession, the united French fleet was to cut off the return of William from Ireland. With a knowledge of these plans, and the doubtful conduct of Torrington, the Privy Council was in a state of great agitation. Caermarthen was for the most decisive measures, in which he was energetically supported by Monmouth. They proposed that Russell, who was not only a first-rate officer, but a determined one, should be sent over to the fleet, and Monmouth, at his own request, as a military officer, was sent with him. A dispatch, however, was sent before them, ordering Torrington to come to an engagement at all hazards, and this compelled him to act before Russell and Monmouth could get on board. On the 30th of June, the day before the battle of the Boyne, he felt himself[434] compelled to come to an engagement with Tourville off Beachy Head. Tourville had eighty-two men-of-war; the united fleet of England and Holland did not exceed sixty; but a Blake or Russell would have thought little of the difference. Torrington, as had been too plainly evident in the affair of Bantry Bay, was a man of very different stuff. When compelled to fight, he determined that the Dutch should bear the brunt of it. He therefore placed the Dutch vessels in the van, and gave the signal to engage. The Dutch fought with their usual bravery, and for many hours sustained almost the whole fury of the battle, little supported by the English. Torrington showed no inclination to engage, but appeared rather disposed to see the Dutch, whom he hated, annihilated. A few of the English captains did their duty gallantly; but, so far as Torrington was concerned, had it not been for the Dutch, the French might have ascended the Thames, as Van Tromp formerly did, and insulted the whole seaboard of the country at their pleasure. When the Dutch had lost two admirals and many other officers they drew off, their ships being in a terribly shattered condition. One of their dismantled ships fell into the hands of the French, the others Torrington ordered to be either burnt or towed away; and, ignominiously retiring into the Thames, he pulled up the buoys, to prevent the French from following. Tourville, however, had suffered so much from the Dutch, that he drew off towards his own coast, and left the Londoners to suffer all the alarms without the danger of invasion. London, indeed, was in the same state of terror as in the time of the Dutch invasion of the Thames. The wildest rumours were every hour arriving. The confidence in Torrington was gone, and he was generally denounced as being a traitor to the Government. Either he was a most incompetent commander or his heart was not in the cause: and the latter was no doubt the fact; for, though his treason was not patent at this time, it afterwards became certain enough that he maintained a close correspondence with the Courts of both St. Germains and Versailles. But, whether traitor or imbecile, London was in no degree confident of his being able to repel the French. It was believed by numbers that the dockyards at Chatham would be destroyed, the ships in the Thames under protection of the Tower be set fire to, and the Tower itself be cannonaded. To add to the gloom and affright, the news of the defeat of Count Waldeck at Fleurus, in the Netherlands, by Luxemburg, Louis's general, just then arrived. Paris was ablaze with fireworks and rejoicings; London was all gloom and panic.

And truly there were menacing circumstances. Tourville was bearding the English on their own coasts; Torrington dared not or would not go to encounter him; and Marshal Humières lay with a strong force on the opposite shores, not far from Dunkirk, in readiness, it was believed, to go on board Tourville's fleet and make a descent on England, where the Jacobites were prepared to join the invaders. But on the fourth day after the battle of Beachy Head arrived the news of William's splendid victory on the Boyne, and the spirit of the nation rose at once. It was felt that the ascendency of James was over, and the news of his ignominious flight, which soon followed, completely extinguished the hopes of his partisans, and gave stability to the throne of William and Mary.

And this was soon strikingly demonstrated. Tourville triumphantly ranged along the English coasts, after his victory at Beachy Head, without opposition, and he now imagined that nothing was necessary to the restoration of James but a descent on England with a tolerable force, which was certain to be welcomed by the expectant Jacobites. Accordingly Tourville took on board a considerable body of soldiers, and made for the coast of Devon. His fleet numbered a hundred and eleven sail, but of these a large number were mere Mediterranean galleys, rowed by slaves, and sent as transports to carry over the troops. On the 22nd of July he landed at Torbay, where William himself had landed; but, instead of finding the gentry or the people ready to join him in support of King James, the whole west rose as one man at the glare of the beacon signals which blazed on the hill-tops. Messengers were spurring from place to place all night to carry the exact intelligence to the authorities; and the next morning all Devonshire appeared to be marching for Torbay. Tourville speedily beheld numbers of armed horsemen, the gentry and yeomanry of the neighbourhood, assembled on the hills, and everything warned him to embark again as quickly as possible. But he would not retire without leaving some trace of his visit. He despatched a number of his galleys to Teignmouth, where the French landed, set fire to the town, burned down a hundred houses, destroyed the fishing-boats in the harbour, killed or drove away all the live stock they could find, and demolished the interior of the churches, the pulpits, the communion-tables, and the Bibles and Prayer-books, which they tore up[435] and trampled under foot in their hatred of Protestantism. This specimen of what England was to expect if she received back James at the point of French bayonets produced the most salutary effects on the whole nation.

Mary showed herself equal to the emergency in the absence of her husband. She applied to the Lord Mayor to know what state of defence the City was in, and received the most prompt and satisfactory answer. His lordship assured her that the City would stand by her to a man; that it had ten thousand men, well armed and disciplined, prepared to march, if necessary, at an hour's notice; that it would raise six regiments of foot and two regiments of horse at its own cost, and pay besides into the royal treasury a hundred thousand pounds. The country everywhere displayed the same loyalty. The yeoman cavalry of the different counties assembled in arms; those of Suffolk, Essex, Hertford, and Buckingham, marched to Hounslow Heath, where Mary received them amid acclamations of loyalty; she received the cavalry troops of Kent and Surrey on Blackheath. The militia was called out; noblemen hurried to their counties to take command of the forces there; and others, amongst whom was the lately recreant Shrewsbury, flocked to Whitehall to offer their lives and fortunes for the defence of the throne. The miners of Cornwall appeared, ten thousand in number, armed as best they might be, ready to expel the invaders. Those of the Jacobites who stubbornly retained their faith in James, who still designated him as the "stone which the builders had foolishly rejected," and who by their secret press urged the people to the assassination of William, and to vengeance on his Protestant supporters, slunk into hiding-places and remained prudently quiet. Even the non-juring clergy and bishops excited the indignation of the masses as men who encouraged by their conduct the hopes of the Papists; and the Bishop of Norwich was attacked in his palace, and was only rescued by the prompt measures of the authorities. The non-jurors were suspected of leaning not only to James, but to Popery; and a new liturgy, which had been printed and industriously circulated, praying, in no ambiguous words, for the restoration of James by a foreign invasion, and for the murder of William, was widely believed to proceed from them, although they strenuously denied it.

Such was the position of things in England when William returned from Ireland. In Scotland great changes had taken place. The remains of the Jacobite force in the Highlands had been effectually put down. In the spring of 1690 James had sent over an officer with the commission of General-in-Chief of the Jacobite forces in Scotland. General Buchan, therefore, took precedence of the drunken and incompetent Cannon; but all the troops that he could muster were not more than one thousand four hundred, and these were surprised and crushed by William's general, Sir Thomas Livingstone, who occupied Inverness. General Mackay completed the subjugation of the Highlands by building a fort at Inverlochy, called, after the king, Fort William, which effectually held the Camerons and Macdonalds in check. The last chance of James was over in that quarter.

At Edinburgh the battle with the disaffected politicians came very soon to a similar end. The most prominent of them, Montgomery, Ross, and Annandale, offered to yield their opposition if William would admit them to favour and office; but William disdained to purchase their adhesion, and they then, in resentment, flung themselves into the arms of James. The treaty was carried on through the medium of James's agent in London, one Neville Payne; and Mary, James's queen, sent over dispatches, creating Montgomery for his treason Earl of Ayr and Secretary of State, with a pension of ten thousand pounds to relieve his immediate necessities, for he was miserably poor and harassed by creditors. Ross was to be made an earl, and have the command of the Guards; and Annandale was to be a marquis, Lord High Commissioner, and Governor of Edinburgh Castle. But this measure, which the Court of St. Germains fondly fancied was going to give them the ascendency in the Scottish Parliament, produced an exactly contrary effect. The old Tory Jacobites were so much incensed at this favour shown to these renegade Whigs, whilst they themselves were passed over, that the whole plot went to pieces in an explosion of jealousy, and on the meeting of the nobles the new proselytes of Jacobinism, who were to have turned the scale in favour of the Stuart dynasty, were found to be utterly helpless and abandoned.

This turbulent and factious party being thus broken up, and some of them going over to the new Government voluntarily as the means of safety, and others being brought over by timely offers of place or money, the settlement of the affairs of Scotland became tolerably easy. The Presbyterian religion was declared the established religion of Scotland. Contrary to the will of William, a Toleration Act for that kingdom had[436] been rejected. The confession of faith of the Westminster Assembly was adopted; the remaining Presbyterian ministers who had been rejected at the Restoration, now reduced from three hundred and fifty to sixty, were restored, and the Episcopalian ministers were forcibly ejected in turn, and Presbyterians installed. The old synodal polity was restored, and the sixty old restored ministers, and such as they should appoint, were ordered to visit all the different parishes, and see that none but godly ministers, sound in the Presbyterian faith, were occupying the manses and the pulpits. This, however, did not satisfy a section of the old Cameronian school. They complained that the Parliament had betrayed the Solemn League and Covenant, and had sworn, and had caused others to swear, to a non-Covenanting monarch, and they refused to bow the knee to this Baal. Thus a non-juring party sprang up also in Scotland. In William's opinion, however, too much had been done in the way of conformity; and on his return from Ireland he selected as Lord High Commissioner to Scotland Lord Carmichael, a nobleman of liberal mind, and accompanied this appointment by a letter to the General Assembly, declaring that he would never consent to any violent or persecuting measures, and that he expected the same from them. "We never," he nobly observed, "could be of the mind that violence was suited to the advancing of true religion; nor do we intend that our authority shall ever be a tool to the irregular passions of any party. Moderation is what religion enjoins, what neighbouring churches expect from you, and what we recommend to you." And the determination of the monarch put a strong and beneficial restraint on the spirit of the religious zealots of the North.

EDINBURGH CASTLE IN 1725. (From a Print of the Period.)

William had returned from Ireland with a great accession of power and éclat. He had shown that the imbecile and bigoted James could not stand for a moment before him; he had reduced Ireland to such general subjection that the remaining insurgents in the south could not long hold out. To hasten this result, and to cut off the access of fresh reinforcements from France, he now sent out an expedition, which had been some time preparing under Marlborough, to reduce Cork and Kinsale, and garrison them for himself. That strange but able man, Marlborough, though he was at this very moment in full correspondence with the Court of St. Germains so as to meet all chances, and even the now remote one of James ever regaining the throne, though he was disliked and suspected by William and Mary, yet himself proposed this expedition, anxious to grasp some of the glory of re-conquering Ireland, and[437] perhaps not inattentive to the equally attractive prospect of winning booty. Marlborough was already lying at Portsmouth with his squadron when William reached London; and sailing thence on the 18th, he landed at Cork on the 21st of September, with five thousand men. The Duke of Würtemberg there joined him with his four thousand Danes, together making a strong force, but which was in danger of becoming paralysed by the German duke insisting on taking the chief command on account of his superior rank. Marlborough was not a man willingly to resign any position likely to do him honour; but he consented to share the command, taking it on alternate days. With him he had also the Duke of Grafton, one of Charles II.'s illegitimate sons, who had fallen under suspicion of leaning to his uncle James, but, to prove his loyalty to William, came out as a volunteer. Cork was vigorously attacked, and in forty-eight hours it capitulated. The garrison, between four and five thousand men, surrendered as prisoners, and Marlborough promised to use his endeavours to obtain the favour of William for both them and the citizens. He forbade his troops to plunder, but was obliged to use force to repel the hordes of wild people who rushed in and began ransacking the Catholics. The Duke of Grafton fell in the attack.

Without losing a day, Marlborough sent forward his cavalry to Kinsale to demand its surrender, and followed with his infantry. The Irish set fire to the town, and retired into two forts, the Old Fort and the New Fort. The English, however, managed to put out the fire, and Marlborough arriving, invested the forts, and took the Old Fort by storm, killing nearly five hundred men, who refused to surrender. The garrison of the New Fort, after seeing Marlborough prepared to storm that too, yielded on condition that they might go to Limerick. They were twelve hundred strong. In this fort was found abundance of provisions, a thousand barrels of wheat, and eighty pipes of claret.

Having executed this mission, and secured the two forts for the king, Marlborough re-embarked, and reached London again in little more than a month from the day that he sailed from Portsmouth. William, astonished at the rapidity of this success, declared that there was no officer living who had seen so little service, who was so qualified for a general as Marlborough. The English people went still further, and declared their countryman had achieved more in a single month than the king's Dutch favourites in two campaigns.

On the 2nd of October William opened the new session of Parliament. He was received with the warmest demonstrations of attachment. He had shown himself strong, and James had shown himself weak. The country had been alarmed by the menace of invasion, and all parties were disposed to rally round the monarch who gave them every promise of security and pre-eminence. In his speech he paid the highest tribute to the bravery of the army, and declared that, had his affairs allowed him to have begun the campaign earlier, he should have been able to clear the whole country of the enemy. In order to do that in the ensuing campaign, and to put a check on the too conspicuous designs of the French, it would be essential to grant liberal supplies. He reminded them of the dishonour which had befallen the English flag, and of the necessity of promptness in Parliament to enable him to wipe away the stain, and to secure the reputation of England by crushing the efforts of the king of France.

His speech was received with loud acclamations. Thanks were voted for his achievements in Ireland, and to the queen for her able administration during his absence; and the Commons proceeded to vote supplies on a scale which had yet had no example. The army was fixed at sixty-nine thousand men, of whom twelve thousand were to consist of cavalry. The navy was to consist of twenty-eight thousand men; and the cost of the whole, including ordnance, was estimated at four million pounds. In return for this unprecedented force and unprecedented allowance for it, the Commons demanded that they should appoint a commission of nine to examine and bring forward the accounts: the commissioners to be all members of their own House. The proposition was acceded to without opposition by both the peers and the king, and a Bill, including the appointment of the commissioners, was prepared and passed. On the 15th of November a Bill received the royal assent for doubling the excise on beer, ale, and other liquors; and on the 20th of December another Bill passed for granting certain duties upon East India goods, wrought silks, and other merchandise; and a second Bill for increasing the duties on wine, vinegar, and tobacco.

In considering ways and means, the Commons proposed, as they had laid so many burdens on themselves, that the persons of all those who had been engaged in the rebellion in Ireland should be attainted, and their estates confiscated, and the proceeds be applied to the discharge of the expenses of the war; and they brought in and passed[438] a Bill for that purpose. But the Lords did not appear inclined to sanction so wholesale a confiscation of the estates of all the Catholics of Ireland, as this would have amounted to; nor could it be very acceptable to the king, though they proposed to place a considerable portion of the forfeitures at his disposal. The Lords allowed the Bill to lie on their table, notwithstanding several urgent reminders from the Commons, and so at last it dropped. This must have been what William particularly desired, for it was contrary to his natural clemency to let loose the fiends of party fury after the sufficiently deadly evils of war, and it was contrary to his promises to many who had submitted on assurances of impunity; and having got the chief supplies which he wanted, he sought to shorten the Session as much as possible, by telling Parliament that, by a certain day, it was necessary for him to leave for Holland on important affairs. Yet, after the liberal votes of the Commons, still keeping in memory the disgrace of the navy, he added that, if some annual provision could be made for augmenting the navy, and building some new men-of-war, "it would be a very necessary care for that time, both for the honour and safety of the nation." The Commons thought so much the same that they voted an additional five hundred thousand pounds expressly for building new ships of war.

The last proceeding which marked this Session was the discovery of a fresh Jacobite plot. The Tory minister Caermarthen had long been the object of the particular enmity of the Whigs, and they were doing everything possible to undermine his influence. At last their efforts appeared to be growing perceptible. The king had introduced into the ministry, one after another, men to whom Caermarthen had a particular aversion, or who were particularly hostile to his power. Godolphin was made First Lord of the Treasury; Marlborough was rising fast in the military department; and Sidney was sent for by William from Ireland, without consulting Caermarthen, and appointed Secretary of State. His enemies were eagerly watching for the favourable moment to come down on the declining minister and complete his ruin, when he suddenly, at the very close of the year and the Session, laid before William all the particulars of a desperate plot of the Jacobites, which showed plainly enough that a minister of such vigilance was not to be lightly dispensed with. Fortune, however, rather than his own sagacity, had favoured the Prime Minister.

The anticipated absence of William from England in the spring appeared to offer a favourable conjuncture for James making another attempt for the recovery of the throne. The Jacobites, therefore, had met and concluded to send three of their number to St. Germains to consult with the Court there on the best means of effecting this object. It was proposed that James should make great protestations of his determination to allow of and secure the political and religious rights of all his subjects, and that he should come attended only by so moderate a force that it should not look like a French invasion. The opinions of the leading Jacobites were to be conveyed by these messengers in a packet of letters to be carefully concealed; and amongst the writers of these letters were the Earl of Dartmouth, Viscount Preston—so-called—and the Earl of Clarendon. This weak man, whom William had warned through Rochester of his knowledge of his practices, and who had declared that he would never again meddle with treason, was again as busy as ever. A vessel was engaged, called the James and Elizabeth, to carry over the three agents, namely, Preston, Ashton, and Elliott, who were to come on board on the last night of the year. The skipper of the James and Elizabeth, though offered extraordinary pay for the trip, suspecting what was the nature of his passengers, gave notice of the fact to Caermarthen, who sent and boarded the vessel at midnight, when the traitors were secured along with their papers, which were conveyed to the Secretary of State's office at Whitehall, where Caermarthen and Nottingham passed the night in examining the contents of the fatal packet, and the next morning laid them before the king.

This great discovery, which fell like a thunderbolt on the Jacobites, was scarcely less disconcerting to the Whigs. It was hopeless after this to attempt anything against so alert and trusty a minister. William, relieved from all apprehensions of danger by this timely discovery, left the three traitors in the custody of his Government, and the leaders yet at large under their eye, and hastened to get over to Holland. On the 5th of January he prorogued Parliament till the 31st of March; and in his farewell speech he said that he thought it proper to assure them that he should make no grants of the forfeited lands in England or Ireland; that those matters could be settled in Parliament in such a manner as should be thought most expedient. Unfortunately, this was a promise which William failed to keep, and[439] which brought upon him no lack of trouble in the future. On the 6th, whilst his English subjects were indulging in all the festivities of the season, William set out, attended by a splendid train of courtiers, for the Hague, where a great Congress was appointed to consider the best means of resisting the aggressions of Louis of France. He was received by his subjects, after a dangerous voyage, with shouts of joy.

William's spirit and sound sense seemed to reanimate the drooping energies of the Allies. The quota of troops to be furnished by every prince was determined; it was agreed to bring two hundred and twenty thousand men into the field in spring, and never to rest till they had not only driven Louis from the territories of his neighbours, but had compelled him to give toleration to his Protestant subjects. These matters arranged, William made use of the influence which the new alliance with the Duke of Savoy gave him, to procure a cessation of the persecutions of the duke's Protestant subjects, the Waldenses. To him these simple mountain shepherds—Christians of a Church remaining independent of Rome from the earliest times—owed it that they could once more live in peace; that numbers of them were released from dungeons, and their children, who had been torn from them to be educated in Popery, were restored.

All being thus favourably settled, the princes dispersed to their several States, and William retired to obtain a short period of relaxation at Loo. But he was speedily roused from his repose. The proceedings of the Congress had been closely and anxiously watched by Louis of France. He saw that its deliberations were certain to produce a profound impression on Europe, and he resolved to neutralise this by one of his sudden and telling blows. At once all his available means and forces were put in motion. A hundred thousand soldiers were in rapid march on Mons, one of the most important fortresses of the Spanish Netherlands. Louis did not even trust the operations of this assault to his famous general, Luxemburg, and the greatest military genius of the age, Vauban; but he hurried to the scene of action himself, early as the season was—in March. Five days after the siege commenced Louis was there, accompanied by the Dauphin, the Dukes of Orleans and of Chartres. He pushed on the attack with vigour, to have it over before any assistance could arrive. Though suffering from the gout, he went about amongst the soldiers, encouraging them by the blandest and most familiar addresses; helped personally to bind up their wounds in the hospitals, and partook of the broth prepared for them. With his quick perception of the dangers from his adversaries, he had noticed the diversion which it was intended that the Duke of Savoy should make, by taking the field on that side; and he had suddenly thrown an army into Savoy, captured Nice, and provided the duke with enough to do to hold his own. By this means he had been able to bring from the Maritime Alps a large body of troops to this siege.

William was sensible of the disastrous effect which the fall of Mons would have on the spirits of his Allies, and on the Courts of Sweden and Denmark which had been brought to the point of joining the confederation; he therefore rushed from his place of temporary retirement, mustered the forces of the States-General, sent dispatches after the German princes, urging them to bring up all the troops they could collect to the rescue of Mons, and to the generals of the Spanish troops in Flanders. By forced marches he advanced towards the devoted city; but all the vices of confederations were now glaringly apparent in contrast to the single and prompt action of a despot. The German princes, naturally slow, were already far off; the Spanish generals were utterly unprepared for such an emergency; and William found it almost impossible to procure even horses to drag his artillery and stores. He sent on, however, hasty messengers to apprise the people of Mons of his approach; but the vigilance of the French prevented them from reaching the city. An immense quantity of artillery was thundering against the walls of Mons; breaches were made in them; a redoubt was carried, sword in hand; shells fell in showers on the roofs and streets of the town, which was burning in ten places. The inhabitants, appalled by the terrible destruction awaiting them, threatened to murder the garrison if they did not surrender; and the garrison, ignorant of the relief which William was bringing, surrendered on the 20th of April. William, deeply chagrined, returned to the Hague, and thence hastened back to London; whilst Louis, in proud triumph, returned to Versailles to receive the congratulations of his courtiers on his splendid coup-de-main.

On William's return to London, he found his Government had tried the traitors, Preston, Ashton, and Elliott. Preston and Ashton were found guilty, and sentenced to death; Elliott was not brought to trial. By some it has been asserted that the evidence of his being admitted into the real interior of the plot was not clear; by others, that[440] he purchased his escape by disclosures. Ashton was hanged on the 18th of January—the very day on which William had embarked at Gravesend for Holland. Preston, after much vacillation between the desire to accept a proffered pardon and repugnance to the conditions attached to it—that of making a full disclosure of his accomplices—at length chose life and dishonour, and made charges against Clarendon, Dartmouth, Turner Bishop of Ely, and William Penn. Clarendon was sent for a time to the Tower; Dartmouth, who was accused, as an admiral, of the heinous crime of intending to betray Portsmouth to the French, indignantly repelled the accusation, and died in the Tower without having been brought to trial. Turner escaped to France. Penn was accused of writing to James to assure him that, with thirty thousand men, he might command England. But this message to James rested on the evidence of the lying and infamous Melfort, who was totally unworthy of all belief; and Penn, so far from shrinking from the charge, went straight to Sidney, the Secretary of State, and denied the whole allegation. That he had a friendly feeling for and commiseration of James, he did not deny; but he declared himself a faithful subject of William and Mary, and, so far from being willing to aid any design against them, if he became aware of any such he would at once disclose it. Instead of clapping Penn in the Tower—which the Government would have done, had they any such letters inviting James to come over with thirty thousand men,—he was suffered to depart in full freedom. He afterwards made a religious journey on the Continent as a minister of the Society of Friends, and then he returned to England; but without any attempt on the part of Government to molest him.

But there were deeper and more real traitors than any of these around William—namely, Admiral Russell, Sidney Godolphin, and Marlborough. These men, encouraged by the fall of Mons and the triumphant aspect of Louis's affairs, renewed with fresh activity their intrigues with the Court of James. It was in vain that William heaped riches, honours, and places of confidence upon them; they were ready to receive any amount of favours, but still kept an eye open to the possible return of James, and made themselves secure of pardon from him, and kept him duly informed of all the intended movements of William both at home and on the Continent. Russell was made High Admiral in place of Torrington. He was Treasurer of the Navy, enjoyed a pension of three thousand pounds a year, and a grant from the Crown of property of great and increasing value near Charing Cross. But, with an insatiable greediness, he still complained of unrequited services; and, having a shoal of poor and hungry relatives badgering him for places and pensions, he complained that their incessant demands could not be gratified; and he cherished the hope that he could sell his treason at a favourable crisis to King James at no mean price. Godolphin was First Commissioner of the Treasury, sat in the Privy Council, and enjoyed the confidence of the sovereign; his former conduct in being one of the most pliant tools of James, ready to vote for his Act of Indulgence, being overlooked. Yet he was sworn, through the agency of a Mr. Bulkeley, to serve the interests of James. Hand in hand with him went Marlborough, who—though he was now fast overcoming the long-retained prejudices of William, and had been honoured by his commission in the expedition to Ireland, and by his warm approbation on his return, and had the prospect of a brilliant command of the army in Flanders, where he could indulge his highest ambition—was yet a most thorough traitor, making a hypocritical pretence of great sorrow to James for his desertion of him, and, through Colonel Sackville, and Lloyd, the non-juring Bishop of Norwich, offering, on a good opportunity, to carry over the whole army to James.

Amid these lurking treasons, the exultation of the Jacobites over the fall of Mons was open and insolent. They came by swarms out of their hiding-places, and thronged the Park and the neighbourhood of the Palace, even insulting the queen in her drives before William's return.

William's indignation on hearing these facts roused him to put the laws in force against the non-juring bishops. The most extraordinary lenity had been shown them. They had been suffered to reside in their sees and occupy their palaces; they had been offered to be excused taking the oaths on condition that they would live quietly, and discharge their ecclesiastical functions of ordaining ministers, confirming their young flocks, and other such duties, but without avail. Now that Turner was discovered in treasonable correspondence with St. Germains, and the rest refused to disavow what he had attributed to them in his letters, it was resolved to eject them. Sancroft was ejected from Lambeth, and Tillotson was nominated Archbishop of Canterbury in his place; Ken was[441] removed from Bath and Wells, and Kidder instituted in his stead. In place of Turner, succeeded Dr. Patrick; Fowler was appointed to Gloucester, and Cumberland to Peterborough. Soon after Lamplugh, Archbishop of York, died and Dr. Sharp took his place. Sancroft continued to maintain all his old pugnacity, and nominated other bishops in opposition to William's Government as sees fell vacant. But perhaps the most savage outcry was raised on the appointment of Dr. Sherlock to the deanery of St. Paul's, vacated by the election of Tillotson to Canterbury. Tillotson himself was furiously assailed by the Jacobites as a thief and a false shepherd, who had stolen into the fold of the rightful pastor. Sherlock had been a zealous non-juror himself, but had been seriously convinced of the Scriptural ordinance to submit to any Government, whatever its origin, which was firmly established. He was, therefore, violently and scurrilously assailed as a perjured apostate. Amongst the ejected non-juring clergy, Henry Dodwell was so insolent, that William remarked, "That Dodwell wants me to put him in prison, but I will disappoint him." The magnanimous forbearance of William, and the audacious impertinence of the non-jurors in consequence, form a wonderful contrast.

THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. (After the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller.)

Scarcely had William time to settle these affairs, and arrange the plan of campaign in Ireland, when he was compelled to return to Holland. Unaware as yet of the more recent treason of Marlborough, he took him with him. He had conceived the highest opinion of his military talents, and he was confirmed in this opinion, on his arrival at the Hague, by the Prince of Vaudemont, a distinguished commander in the Dutch[442] service. He praised highly the Generals Talmash and Mackay; as to Marlborough, he declared that he had every quality of a general; that his very look showed it, and that he was certainly destined to do something great. William replied that he was of the same conviction.

William found himself at the head of seventy thousand men of various nations, the different contingents of the Allies, and the beginning of the campaign was very promising. He sent Marlborough on to Flanders to collect the forces there, and form a camp to cover Brussels against the advance of Luxemburg and the French. His convenient position no doubt suggested to James the idea of his immediate execution of his promised treason. James, therefore, sent him word that he expected his fulfilment of his engagement; but to this startling demand Marlborough replied that the time was not come. It was necessary to have first obtained a complete ascendency over the troops, or, instead of following him, they would abandon him, and the only consequence would be making things worse. William's immediate arrival put an end to the temptation, and he marched against Luxemburg, who retired before him. He next sent a detachment against Marshal Boufflers, who was besieging Liége, and, having succeeded in this, he crossed the Sambre, to endeavour to bring Luxemburg to an engagement. But this crafty general, who had an inferior though well-appointed army, took care to avoid a general action, calculating that William's army, made up of so many nonentities, would, if let alone, ere long go to pieces. Thus the summer was spent in marches and counter-marches without any result, except of wearying out the patience of William, who in September surrendered the command to the Prince of Waldeck, and retired to his favourite hunting-seat at Loo, and soon after returned to England.

The summer campaign was carried on by the Allies in other quarters with more or less success. In Spain the French made some barbarous inroads, but were vigorously repelled. They were more successful in their combat with the Duke of Savoy. Marshal Catinat took several of their towns, besieged Coni, and advanced within three leagues of Turin, the duke's capital. Just, however, as they were hoping for a signal triumph, they were arrested by the appearance of a new hero, destined, in co-operation with Marlborough, to shake to the foundations the power of Louis XIV. This was Eugene, Prince of Savoy. Eugene, being joined by young Schomberg with a few troops, and some money from William, at the suggestion of Schomberg made a sudden march across the mountains, raised the siege of Coni, and then, issuing on the plains, drove back Catinat, and regained Carmagnola. On the Rhine, where the Elector of Saxony commanded, nothing of moment was effected; but the French allies, the Turks, who were harassing Austria, received a severe defeat at Salankeman, on the Danube, which placed the Emperor of Germany at his ease.

The campaign in Ireland did not begin till June. The condition of that island during the winter was miserable in the extreme. The ravages which the Irish—mad with oppression, ignorance, and revenge, let loose by the frightful policy of James—had inflicted on the country from the north to the south, such as we have described them, must necessarily have left it a prey to famine, chaos, and crime. In the north, where the Protestants had regained the power, there was the commencement of restoration. Those who had fled to England with their movable property came swarming back. It was, indeed, to towns burnt down and fields laid waste; but they brought with them money, and, still more, indomitable energies, which impelled them instantly to begin rebuilding their dwellings, at least in such a manner as to shelter them from the elements, and to cultivate and sow their fields. Commerce came back with them; and the estuaries of the Foyle, the Lagan, the Bann, the Carlingford, and the Boyne were busy with ships and boats pouring in food, seed, and live-stock. So soon as Nature had time to do her part and to ripen her crops, there would be once more comparative plenty, and there was an animating prospect of a secure permanence of peace and order. But in the south, and still more the south-west, where the troops of James still held their ground, the condition of things was as appalling as can be conceived. In the north the Protestants kept a tight hand on the native Irish; they refused them the possession of arms; they forbade them to proceed more than three miles from their own dwellings, except to attend market; and not more than five Papists were to meet together on any occasion or pretence. They forbade them to approach the frontier within ten miles, to prevent them from communicating with the enemy. If outrages were committed, they were visited with unsparing severity. But if the north was strict and yet struggling, the south was in a fearful state of calamity. The soldiers traversed the country, levying contributions of[443] cattle and provisions wherever they could find them. They were no better than so many bandits and rapparees, who swarmed over the desolated region, carrying violence, terror, and spoliation wherever they came. There was no money but James's copper trash, bearing high nominal values. Provisions and clothes, where they were to be had, fetched incredible prices; and merchants feared to approach the ports, because they were in as much danger of wholesale robbery as the shopkeepers and farmers on land.

In the Irish camp the utmost license, disorder, and destitution prevailed. The Duke of Berwick was elected to command during the absence of Tyrconnel in France; but his power was a mere fiction, and he let things take their course. Sarsfield was the only officer who had any real influence with the soldiers. But early in the spring Tyrconnel returned, bringing some supplies of money and clothing; and in April a fleet also arrived, bringing arms, ammunition, flour, and provisions. With these came what was much needed—two general officers—St. Ruth and D'Usson. St. Ruth was a general of considerable experience. He had lately served in Savoy, and had the prestige of victory; but he was vain and cruel, was mortally hated by the Huguenots for his persecutions of them, and was called by them "the hangman." His very name, therefore, was a guarantee for the Huguenot troops in the English service fighting to the utmost. He was astonished and disgusted at the dirty, ragged, and disorderly crew that bore the name of the Irish army; but he began actively to repress their license, and to drill them into some discipline.

On the 6th of June Ginkell took the field against him with a body of efficient troops, reinforced by some excellent regiments from Scotland, and having now under his command Talmash and Mackay, two brave officers. At the head of the French refugees was the Marquis Ruvigny, the brother-in-law of General Caillemot, who fell at the Boyne. On the 7th Ginkell reached Ballymore, and compelled the fortress there, containing a garrison of one thousand men, to surrender, and sent all the prisoners to Dublin. Having placed the fortress, which stood on an island in the lake, in good defence, he marched forward, and, on the 18th, sat down before the very strongly-fortified town of Athlone. On his march he had been joined by the Duke of Würtemberg and his Danish division.

Athlone stood on the Shannon, the river cutting it in two. The stream there was deep and rapid, and was spanned by a bridge on which stood two mills, worked by the current below, and on the Connaught side was a strong fort, called King John's Fort, with a tower seventy feet high, and flanking the river for a distance of two hundred feet. The town on the Leinster side, where Ginkell was, was defended by bold earthen ramparts, the most indestructible of any kind by cannon. Ginkell, however, lost no time in attacking it. On the 20th his cannon were all in order for bombarding, and he opened a terrible fire on the town. Under cover of his fire the troops rushed to the walls, and the French refugees were the first to mount a breach, and one of them, flinging his grenade, fell with a shout of triumph. His example was quickly followed. The assailants sprang over the walls in hundreds, clearing the way with hand grenades; and the Irish giving way, there was a hot pursuit along the bridge, by which they sought to escape into the other half of the town. The crash and confusion there were such, that many of the flying Irish were trodden under foot, and others were forced over the parapets of the bridge, and perished in the Shannon. The near side of the town was in Ginkell's possession, with the loss of only twenty men killed and forty wounded.

The cannonade was continued on the bridge and on the town across the river, and the next day it was repeated with increased effect from batteries thrown up along the river bank. The next morning it was discovered that the mills were greatly damaged; one, indeed, had taken fire, and its little garrison of sixty men had perished in it. A great part of the fort had also been beaten down. The French officers had constructed a tête-de-pont at the end of the bridge to assist the fort, had broken down some of the arches, and made the conquest of a passage by the bridge next to impossible. To add to the difficulty of the enterprise, St. Ruth had hastened from Limerick with an army superior in numbers to that of Ginkell. But this force was more imposing in appearance than formidable in reality. St. Ruth, calculating on the difficulty of the passage, imagined that he could hold the place with little loss till the autumnal rains drove the English from the field through sickness. He therefore ordered D'Usson to attend to the defence of the passage, and fixed his camp about three miles from the town.

There was a weak spot, however, which was pointed out to Ginkell—a ford at some little distance from the bridge. It is true that a force[444] was posted to guard this ford, commanded by Maxwell, an officer who had recently been to St. Germains with dispatches from the Duke of Berwick, and was put into command at this ford by Tyrconnel in defiance of St. Ruth—the interference of Tyrconnel in military affairs, much to the disgust of St. Ruth, being as constant as if he were commander-in-chief as well as lord-lieutenant. Sarsfield soon became aware of the design of Ginkell to attempt this ford, and warned St. Ruth of it. But the vanity of that officer made him treat the warning with scorn. "What!" said he, "attempt the ford; they dare not do it, and I so near." Warned again, he exclaimed, "Monsieur! Ginkell's master ought to hang him for attempting to take Athlone, and mine ought to hang me if I let him." Sarsfield, who knew better what the enemy dared do, said as he withdrew, "He does not know the English."

THE ASSAULT OF ATHLONE. (See p. 443.)

Ginkell himself, after reconnoitring the ford and the breastwork opposite, had no great desire for the attempt. He continued the cannonade on the fort and town till the end of June, and it became necessary, from the want of forage, to advance or retreat. A council of war was called. Mackay was against the attempt, but Würtemberg, Talmash, and Ruvigny were for it, and Ginkell, though hesitatingly, consented. There was observed a degree of carelessness in the Irish soldiers guarding the ford; there had been a rumour in their camp that the English were about to retreat in despair, and the light-hearted Hibernians had begun to relax their vigilance, and to gamble and idle about. It was resolved to seize the opportunity and dash over at once. Fifteen hundred grenadiers were selected for the service, and a handsome present was distributed to each man. The Duke of Würtemberg, Talmash, and a number of other officers volunteered to accompany them as privates, and the spirits of the men rose to enthusiasm. In memory of the auspicious day at the Boyne they stuck each a green twig in their hats, and, locking their arms twenty abreast, they plunged into the stream. In their ardour they lifted up the Duke of Würtemberg and bore him on their shoulders. Six battalions were drawn up ready to support them, under the command of Mackay.[445] The stream, even at the ford, was deep enough to reach their chins, and very strong; but the resolute men pressed on, and soon got firm footing, and, with a stunning shout, reached the other bank. The Irish, suddenly aroused to the danger, hurried to the bank, fired a single volley, and broke. The grenadiers the next moment were over the breastwork, and in full pursuit of the enemy. In a few minutes they had chased the guards from the head of the bridge; planks were thrown over the broken arches, and the troops, rushing over, enabled others to cross in rude pontoons; and in less than an hour the English were masters of the town, with the loss of only twelve men killed and about thirty wounded.

SCENE AT THE REMOVAL OF THE IRISH SOLDIERS FROM LIMERICK. (See p. 447.)

D'Usson made a vain attempt to regain the town; he was repelled with ruinous loss, and was himself thrown down by the flying rout and nearly trampled to death. St. Ruth, when he heard that the town was taken, exclaimed, "Taken! that is impossible, and I close at hand." But he found it no longer safe to be so close at hand. In the night, covered with shame at his folly and absurd confidence, he struck his tents, and made a hasty retreat towards Aghrim, where, encouraged by the natural strength of bogs and hills, he halted and entrenched himself. There was the fiercest bickering in the camp; the French party and the Irish charging each other with the misfortune. St. Ruth, to excuse himself, laid the blame on Maxwell, whose duty it was to guard the ford. Maxwell was not there to defend himself, for his soldiers fled faster than he, and he was made prisoner. But Tyrconnel, who had always supported Maxwell, protested that he had done his duty like a brave man, and had, along with himself, repeatedly warned St. Ruth of his temerity. The dispute rose so high that Tyrconnel quitted the camp, and retired to Limerick in high dudgeon.

Being relieved from the presence and interference of Tyrconnel, St. Ruth again resolved to fight. He was stung by the loss of reputation which he had sustained at Athlone, and by the reflection of its injurious impression at the Court of France. Sarsfield, one of those Cassandra-like counsellors who give the most prudent advice but are never listened to, attempted to dissuade[446] him. He pointed out how far superior in discipline and bottom were the troops of Ginkell to those which he now commanded, and recommended a system of excursive warfare, which should harass and, by seizing favourable crises, defeat the English piecemeal. His words were lost on St. Ruth, who prepared for the approach of Ginkell by going amongst his soldiers personally to rouse their desire to reconquer their good name, and by sending the priests amongst them to stimulate them by religious motives. Ginkell did not let him wait long. As soon as he had settled the defences of Athlone, he pursued his march towards Aghrim.

On the 12th of July he came up with the army of St. Ruth, and found it very strongly posted. Before him was a morass of half a mile across; beyond the morass rose the hills round the old ruined castle of Aghrim, and at their feet, between them and the bog, the infantry were strongly entrenched, and supported by the cavalry posted commandingly on the slopes of the hills. Difficult as was the approach, it was recommended by Mackay to make an instant attack, whilst the spirits of the troops were high from the first sight of the enemy they had so lately beaten. The battle was determined on, though it was getting late in the afternoon. The infantry struck boldly into the red bog, and plunged on courageously, though often up to their waists in mud and water. Mackay led his horse against their right, and Eppinger's dragoons and Portland's horse advanced against their left. The cavalry found their way through the bogs very difficult; the Dutch and English dragoons met with a repulse in the pass of Urachree, and the infantry were in front of the enemy long before the cavalry could operate on the wings. The Irish infantry that day fought bravely. They poured a fierce fire into the English, and were well supported by the horse. The battle became desperate; the English fought their way into the entrenchments, and drove the Irish up one of the hills; but there they found two old Danish forts, the old castle of Aghrim, and every hedge and thicket lined with muskets. The contest was unequal, and the infantry found themselves at length driven back to the margin of the bog. Elated at the sight, St. Ruth exclaimed, "The day is ours! Now will we drive these English back to the gates of Dublin!"

But he was deceived. Talmash rallied the foot, and led them again to the conflict; and whilst the struggle was renewed and the day fast closing, St. Ruth perceived the horse of Mackay and Ruvigny, the English and Huguenot cavalry, approaching on the right. They came over but a few soldiers abreast, through a narrow track between the bogs; but they soon formed in a dense body, and St. Ruth rode off to encounter them and stop them from out-flanking his force. As he galloped up towards them, a cannon-shot carried off his head. The officers threw a cloak over his body to prevent his fall from disheartening his men. But the absence of command was soon felt. The English fought with fresh fury; and Sarsfield, who was in the rear with the reserve, waiting orders, did not advance till the Irish ranks were broken and all was over. The flight became general. The English horse pursued and hewed down the fugitives as long as they could see; and had not Sarsfield covered the miserable fugitives with his horse, scarcely a man of the infantry would have been left.

The English army camped for the night on the ground which had been occupied by the enemy. Nearly twenty thousand English and their allies entered the battle against something more than the same number of Irish and French. On the side of the English six hundred were killed and one thousand wounded. On the part of the Irish four thousand fell on the field, and nearly as many are said to have perished in the flight. The panic-stricken multitude, flinging their arms away, continued their flight, some of them to Limerick, and others to Galway, where D'Usson was now in command. Whole waggon-loads of muskets and other arms were picked up and purchased by Ginkell at a few pence apiece.

The English spent the next day in burying their own dead; but left the corpses of the Irish on the field, and marched forward to attack Galway. D'Usson, who had about two thousand five hundred men in Galway, made at first a show of resistance, calculating on the assistance of Baldearg O'Donnell. But O'Donnell, after endeavouring in vain to bargain for an earldom, consented to accept five hundred pounds a year and a commission in William's army. This unexpected event compelled D'Usson to surrender, on condition that he might march out and join the Irish army in its last place of retreat, Limerick.

Ginkell soon followed and invested the town. The last struggle for a monarch little worthy the cause of so much bloodshed was now to be fought out. At Limerick the Irish were to make their last stand for the possession of their native country. If they failed here, the Saxon remained absolute lord of their soil.

[447]

On the 14th of August the advanced guard of Ginkell's army appeared in sight of Limerick. On the same day Tyrconnel, who was in authority in this city, died of apoplexy, and D'Usson and Sarsfield were left in full command of the troops. A commission was produced, which appointed three lords-justices—Plowden, Fitton, and Nagle; but the city was in reality a military garrison, and the military ruled. There were fifteen thousand infantry in the town, and three or four thousand cavalry posted on the Clare side of the Shannon, communicating with the town on the island by the Thomond bridge. By this means communication was kept up with the country on that side, so that provisions might be brought in; and several cargoes of biscuits and other dry stores were imported from France. The country all around, however, had been so swept by successive forages, that it was difficult to collect any cattle or corn, and the stoutest hearts were little confident of being able to maintain a long defence.

Ginkell took possession of the Limerick side of the town, and reoccupied the ground before held by the besiegers. He commenced by erecting fresh batteries of far heavier cannon than William brought to bear on the city, and soon poured a fiery storm of balls and shells into it, which crashed in the roofs and laid whole streets desolate. At the same time a squadron of English men-of-war sailed up the Shannon, and closed access to the city or escape from it by water. The town, however, held out till the 22nd of September, when Ginkell, beginning to fear the rains and fevers of autumn, and that they might compel him to draw off, and thus continue the war to another year, determined to obtain possession of the bridge, and attack the cavalry on the other side. He therefore passed the river by a bridge of William's tin boats, and, assaulting the cavalry, put them to utter rout. They left their camp with many arms and much store of provisions, and fled with as much precipitation as they had done from Aghrim, scattering again the whole country with their arms. Ginkell next attacked the fort which defended the bridge, carried it and the bridge, and thus was able to invest the whole town. In the haste to draw up the movable part of the bridge nearest to the city, the soldiers retreating from the fort were shut out, and a terrible massacre was made of them on the bridge. Out of eight hundred men only one hundred and twenty escaped into Limerick.

This disaster broke the spirit of the Irish entirely. Even the stout-hearted Sarsfield was convinced that all was over, and it was resolved to capitulate. An armistice was agreed to. The Irish demanded that they should retain their property and their rights; that there should be perfect freedom for the Catholic worship, a Catholic priest for every parish, full enjoyment of all municipal privileges, and full capability to hold all civil and military offices. Ginkell refused these terms, but offered others so liberal that they were loudly condemned by the English, who were hungering after the estates of the Irish. He consented that all such soldiers as desired to continue in the service of James should be not only allowed to do so, but should be shipped to France in English vessels; that French vessels should be permitted to come up and return in safety; that all soldiers who were willing to enter William's service should be received, and that on taking the oath of allegiance all past offences should be overlooked, and they and all Irish subjects taking the oaths should retain their property, should not be sued for any damages or spoliation committed during the war, nor prosecuted for any treason, felony, or misdemeanour, but should, moreover, be capable of holding any office or practising any profession which they were capable of before the war. They were to be allowed to exercise their religion in peace as fully as in the reign of Charles II. It is to the disgrace of England that this part of the treaty should not have been kept.

These terms were accepted, and the treaty was signed on the 3rd of October, and thus terminated this war, which, in the vain endeavour to restore a worthless monarch, had turned Ireland into a desert and a charnel-house. When it came to the choice of the soldiers to which banner they would ally themselves, out of the fifteen thousand men, about ten thousand chose to follow the fortunes of James, and were shipped off with all speed, as they began to desert in great numbers. Many of those who actually embarked did it under a solemn assurance from Sarsfield that their wives and children should go with them; but, once having the men on board, this pledge was most cruelly broken, and the greatest part of the women and children were left in frantic misery on the shore. The scenes which took place on this occasion at Cork are described as amongst the most heartrending in history. But this agony once over, the country sank down into a condition of passive but gloomy quiet, which it required more than a century to dissipate. Whilst Scotland again and again was agitated by the endeavours to[448] reinstate the expelled dynasty, Ireland remained passive; and it was not till the French Revolution scattered its volcanic fires through Europe that she once more began to shake the yoke on her galled neck. Yet during all this time a burning sense of her subjection glowed in her blood, and the name of the Luttrel who went over to the Saxon at the dividing day at Limerick, and received for his apostacy the estates of his absent brother, remained a term of execration amongst the Irish. Meanwhile the Irish regiments which went to France won a brilliant reputation in the wars of the Continent, and many of the officers rose to high position in France, in Spain, in Austria, and Prussia. Their descendants still rank with the nobility of those countries.

CHAPTER XIII.

WILLIAM AND MARY.

Proceedings in Parliament—Complaints against Admiral Russell—Treason in the Navy—Legislation against the Roman Catholics—The East India Company—Treasons Bill—The Poll Tax—Changes in the Ministry—Marlborough is deprived of his Offices—His Treachery—The Queen's Quarrel with the Princess Anne—William goes Abroad—Fall of Namur—Battle of Steinkirk—Results of the Campaign—The Massacre of Glencoe—Proposed Invasion of England—James's Declaration—Russell's Hesitation overcome by the Queen—Battle of La Hogue—Gallant Conduct of Rooke—Young's Sham Plot—Founding of Greenwich Hospital—Ill Success of the Fleet—Discontent of the People—Complaints in the Lords and Commons—The Land Tax—Origin of the National Debt—Liberty of the Press—The Continental Campaign—Battle of Landen—Loss of the Smyrna Fleet—Attack on the Navy—New Legislation—Banking Schemes of Chamberlayne and Paterson—The Bank of England Established—Ministerial Changes—Negotiations for Peace—Marlborough's Treason and the Death of Talmash—Illness and Death of Queen Mary.

On the 19th of October William arrived from Holland, and on the 22nd he opened Parliament. He congratulated it on the termination of the war in Ireland, and on the progress of the English arms both on land and sea. It was true that on the Continent there had been no very decisive action, but the Allies had compelled the French to retreat before them, and to confess their power by avoiding a general engagement with them. At sea, though not so much had been effected in some directions as might have been hoped, yet the French had been driven from the open into their own ports, and an English fleet had convoyed a large merchant fleet from the Mediterranean in safety. This was very different to previous years, when their cruisers had made great captures of our merchantmen. We had also sent a fleet up the Shannon, which prevented them from aiding the insurgents in Ireland, and were now in undisputed supremacy again on the ocean. Of course William had to demand heavy supplies to maintain the fleet in this position, and to pursue the war with vigour against Louis. All this the members of both Houses listened to with apparent satisfaction, and voted him cordial thanks.

On the 6th of November it was unanimously voted in the Commons that the supplies asked for by the Crown should be granted; and first they voted £1,575,898 for the service of the navy, including the building of three new docks at Portsmouth—one dry and two wet ones. On the 16th they resolved that the army, in compliance with William's recommendation, should be raised to 46,924 men; and on the 4th of January, 1692, they voted £2,100,000 for the maintenance of the army, of which Ireland was to pay £165,000.

But though a large majority in both Houses supported warmly the endeavour to curb the inordinate ambition of Louis XIV., these sums were not passed by the Commons without searching inquiries into the accounts and into the abuses which, notwithstanding William's vigilance, abounded in all departments of Government. No doubt the party in opposition, as is generally the case, did much of this work of reform more to gratify their private resentment, and to make their rivals' term of office anything but agreeable, than from genuine patriotism; but, at the same time, there was plenty of ground for their complaints. Serious charges were made against Admiral Russell for his lukewarm conduct at sea, and his mismanagement of the Admiralty. The[449] fact was that Russell, as was strongly suspected, and as we now know from documents since come to light, was no less a traitor than Torrington, Dartmouth, and Marlborough. He was in active correspondence with James, and ready, if some turn in affairs should serve to make it advantageous, to go over to him with the fleet, or as much of it as would follow him, and others of the admirals; for Delaval, Killigrew, and other admirals and naval officers, were as deep in the treason.

There were loud complaints of the vileness of the commissariat still, and it was declared that far more of our men fell by disease from bad and adulterated food than in battle. The complaints against Russell, who was called to the bar of the House, he threw upon the Admiralty, and the Admiralty on the commissariat department. Russell complained also of the ministry, and particularly of the Earl of Nottingham; and thus, by this system of mutual recrimination, all parties contrived to escape. The Commons, however, were not so to be silenced. They charged on the officers of the army, on its commissariat, on the men in office, and on the Government officials almost universally, the same monstrous system of corruption, peculation, and negligence of every thing but making money for themselves. They insisted on a rigorous examination of all the accounts by their own members, and they voted that all salaries and profits arising from any place or places under the Crown should not amount to more than five hundred pounds for any one person, except in the cases of the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Commissioners of the Great Seal, the judges, ambassadors, and officers of the army and navy.

GEORGE SAVILLE, MARQUIS OF HALIFAX.

[450]

There were plenty of posts in which this restriction would have been most salutary, for men in some of the most trivial and useless of them were pocketing many thousands of pounds; but it was soon found that the whole nation could not furnish sufficient people patriotic enough to serve their country for five hundred pounds a year each; and, therefore, in a few weeks a fresh resolution was taken, which negatived this.

The business of the year 1691 closed by the passing of a Bill to exclude all Catholics, in pursuance of the Treaty of Limerick, from holding any office in Ireland, civil, military, or ecclesiastical, or from practising in any profession, or sitting in the Irish Parliament, before they had taken the Oath of Allegiance. The Commons attempted by this Bill to make it necessary for a Catholic to take also the Oath of Supremacy, and the Oath against Transubstantiation; but the Lords showed that this was contrary to the first article of the Treaty of Limerick, and this clause was struck out, and the Bill then passed. When the agitation for Catholic emancipation commenced, loud complaints were made that by this Bill the Treaty of Limerick had been violated. But this was a mistake; the violation of it took place some years afterwards by another Bill. The first article of the Treaty provided that on a Catholic taking the Oath of Allegiance, he should be admitted to all the privileges specified, according to the law in Charles II.'s time; and this law, whether always enforced or not, empowered the Crown to tender this Oath to all subjects.

The year 1692 was opened by Parliament bringing forward several important Bills, which were, however, too much contested to be carried this year. The first of these was a Bill for regulating the trade of the East India Company, increasing the number of shareholders, restricting the amount of stock in the hands of individuals, and incorporating a new Company which had sprung up with the old one. The East India Company had become a most flourishing concern. From the Restoration to this time, only thirty-three years, its annual imports had risen in value from eight thousand pounds to three hundred thousand pounds. Its capital amounted only to three hundred and seventy thousand pounds, but it yielded an annual profit of thirty per cent., besides having, up to 1676, doubled the value of the whole capital. The Company, however, instead of increasing in shareholders, was rapidly sinking into a monopoly of a few individuals. Amongst these Sir Josiah Child, whom we lately quoted in our review of the commerce of the period, stood chief, and was become, as it were, the king and despot of the whole concern. Five members were said to possess or hold one-sixth of all the votes, and amongst these Child had the predominant amount. His income from the Company was stated at twenty thousand pounds a year, and his word was law in it.

These enormous profits naturally called forth a rival company, and the contest between them grew from year to year till it came to occupy and divide the spirit of the whole mercantile world. The new Company insisted on the right of trading also to many parts of India, the old one stood on their charter as a charter of exclusion of all others. The favour of Government was purchased by the old Company by well-applied gifts of money to Government, and by sharing with Government the profitable patronage. The question was now brought before Parliament, and hotly debated; but the Bill was dropped for the present, and a proposition to William to grant a charter to the new Company was evaded, on the plea of requiring deep consideration.

The next important Bill was for regulating trials in cases of high treason. It was time that great reforms should take place on this head. During the Stuart times men had been most easily and conveniently put out of the way, by counsel being refused them under charge of high treason, and by refusal to allow them the perusal of the Bill of Indictment previous to the trial. Juries were packed by sheriffs, and State prisoners were thus murdered at will. The same gross injustice extended to prisoners charged with other offences; but the great strain towards injustice was in the case of those charged by the State with treason, and against whom it employed the ablest lawyers of the realm. By this machinery, all through the reigns of the Stuarts, as well as of their predecessors, whole throngs of men, many of them of extraordinary endowments and high rank, had been judicially destroyed. The proposed Bill, therefore, provided that every person charged with high treason should be allowed to have his own counsel, to have a copy of the indictment delivered to him ten days before the trial, along with a list of the freeholders from whom his jury were to be selected, that he might have opportunity to challenge any of them. The Bill was most desirable, but it was frustrated for the time by the Lords insisting on an extension of their own privileges regarding such trials. Instead of being tried by the court of the Lord High Steward—who could[451] summon twelve or more peers at his discretion if the Parliament was not sitting—they demanded that, during the recess, as during the Session, every peer should be summoned to attend any such trial. The Commons somewhat unreasonably opposed this very proper reform, on the ground that the peers had too many privileges already, and the Bill dropped for the time.

Besides these the Commons sent up various other bills, which were nearly all rejected by the Lords. There was a Bill for reducing the rate of interest on money; a Bill investing in the king the forfeited estates in both England and Ireland as a fund for the war; a Bill to proportion the pay in the army to the real complement of men; for there was a practice, in which Marlborough was especially engaged, of returning regiments as complete which were far from being so, and of pocketing the pay of the men wanting. There was a Bill to continue the commissioners of public accounts, most unreasonably rejected by the Lords, whilst they allowed to pass a Bill which has always been regarded with hostility in England—a poll tax, levying on all persons, except servants, children, and paupers, a shilling a quarter; on every peer of Parliament, ten pounds a year; on every income of three hundred pounds a year, ten shillings per annum; and on all gentlemen of three hundred pounds a year income from real property, and on all clergymen or teachers with incomes of eighty pounds, one pound each a year.

On the 29th of February William prorogued Parliament, and made active preparations for his departure for the Continent. Before he took his leave, however, he made various changes in his Cabinet and Ministry, which showed that the Whigs were still losing ground with him, and the Tories, or the "Trimmers," who veered, according to circumstances, to one party or the other, acquiring favour. The Earl of Rochester, younger brother of Lord Clarendon, one of Mary's uncles; Lord Ranelagh, Lord Cornwallis, and Sir Edward Seymour, who had all along hitherto opposed the king, were made members of the Privy Council, and the Earl of Pembroke Privy Seal. Charles Montague was made a Commissioner of the Treasury, and Sidney Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. But the circumstance which occasioned the greatest sensation, and wonder, and mystery was the sudden dismissal of Lord Marlborough from all his offices under the king, both in the Court and the army. As Marlborough had been manifestly rising in William's estimation from the successful display of his military talents, this abrupt dismissal excited the keenest curiosity of both Court and country, which William took no means to gratify. But from what we now know of the causes of this striking expression of William's displeasure, we can well understand that there was more in it than William could, without implicating the Princess Anne, make known.

We have seen that Marlborough all along, whilst courting the favour of William, was endeavouring to recover that of James. He had been one of the very first to abandon that monarch when trusted by him, but he had written letters expressing the bitterest repentance and remorse for that treason, whilst he was thus prepared, if necessary, to perpetrate a new one. But Marlborough, as he had a genius capable of the very highest achievements, had one also capable of the most complicated treacheries in politics. It was not enough for him to be serving William and vowing secretly to James that he was only watching his opportunity to serve him, but he had a third and more alluring treason. He and his wife had the ductile and yet obstinate princess Anne completely in their hands. They lived with her at Whitehall, they drew largely from her income, they selected her friends, they moulded her likings and her antipathies; she was a complete puppet in their keeping. From his lucrative station as keeper of Anne's purse, person, and conscience, through his clever and unprincipled wife, Marlborough watched intently the temper of the nation. He saw that there was an intense jealousy of the Dutch, not only amongst the people on account of trade and national rivalry, but in the Parliament and aristocracy, on account of William's preference for his Dutch friends. Bentinck, Ginkell, Overkirk, and Zulestein were the only men in whom he reposed entire confidence. On them he heaped wealth, estates, and honours. Ginkell was just now elevated to an earldom, and a large grant of lands was contemplated for him in Ireland. On Portland rich grants had been bestowed, and more were anticipated. William's continual absences on the Continent, his cold reserve whilst in England, the large expenditure of men and money for the prosecution of the Continental war, though really for the liberties of Europe, were represented by the discontented as a wholesale draft upon the country for the aggrandisement of Holland.

These were the things Marlborough saw which gave vitality to the intrigues of the Jacobites; and the only causes which prevented the revulsion from becoming general in favour of James[452] were his incurable despotism, his imbecility as a monarch, and the certain return of Popery in his train. But there was another person to whom none of these objections applied—the Princess Anne—the person already in his guidance or power. Anne was at once English and a Protestant. The former fact gave her a mighty advantage over William—the latter over James. Would it not, therefore, be possible to substitute Anne for her father? To do this it was only necessary to inflame the prejudice in Parliament and among the people against the Dutch influence, to inoculate the army with the same feeling, already well-disposed to it by jealousy of the Dutch troops, and to obviate the objections of those who repelled the idea of bringing back James by turning their attention on one nearer home. The absence of William on the Continent, and the disaffection of most of the admirals, would afford an opportunity of resisting his return to both army and navy. And with Anne queen, Marlborough would become the pillar of her throne, commander of her army, and dispenser of her patronage.

That this was no mere dream is clear enough now. It was, indeed, one of the various rumours of the time. Evelyn says that it was one of these that Marlborough "was endeavouring to breed division in the army, and to make himself the more necessary by making an ill correspondence betwixt the princess and the Court." But James himself as plainly asserts the fact of this charge against Marlborough. "It was the plan," he says, "of my friends to recall me through the Parliament. My Lord Churchill was to propose in Parliament to drive away all the foreigners from the councils and the army of the kingdom. If the Prince of Orange consented to this, he would have been in their hands. If he refused, Parliament would have declared against him, and Lord Churchill was, at the same time, to cause the army to declare for the Parliament, the fleet the same, and then to recall me. Already this plan was in agitation, and a large party was already gained over, when some faithful but indiscreet subjects, thinking to serve me, and imagining that Lord Churchill was not acting for me, but really for the Princess of Denmark, discovered all to Bentinck, and thus destroyed the whole scheme."

The proof that William was satisfied that Marlborough's grand plan was real, was that he at once dismissed him from all his employments. That Marlborough had long intrigued with James, William was quite aware, but on that account he never troubled him; this, however, was by far a more dangerous treachery, and he resented it accordingly. The Marlboroughs, notwithstanding, continued at Whitehall with Anne, and might probably never have been molested, had not the imperious Lady Marlborough in her anger determined to set the king and queen at defiance. She, therefore, had the assurance to accompany the princess to the Drawing-Room at Kensington Palace a few evenings after, and the next day brought an expostulatory letter from the queen to her sister, informing her that after such an outrage Lady Marlborough must quit Whitehall. Anne sent to entreat Mary to pass the matter over, declaring that there was no misery that she would not suffer rather than be deprived of Lady Marlborough. The only answer was an order from the Lord Chamberlain, commanding her ladyship to quit the palace. Anne, determined not to lose the society of her favourite, left Whitehall with the Marlboroughs, and betook herself to Sion House, which was lent to her by the Duke of Somerset, and soon after she removed to Berkeley House, standing on the present site of Devonshire House, in Piccadilly, which became her permanent residence. There all the Marlborough faction assembled, and there Anne vented her indignation without restraint or delicacy against William, calling him a "Dutch abortion," a "monster," a "Caliban." A fresh stimulus was given to the malice of that clique; every means was used to excite hatred of the Government of William, and to increase the partisans of James. With such a termagant spirit as Lady Marlborough, and such a plotting spirit as that of her husband, a strong feeling was excited against the queen, who was represented as totally without heart, as having usurped the throne of her father, and sought to strip her sister of her most valued friendships. Amidst such an atmosphere of malice and detraction William was compelled to leave the queen.

[453]

LADY MARLBOROUGH AND THE PRINCESS ANNE AT THE QUEEN'S DRAWING-ROOM. (See p. 452.)

He embarked for Holland on the 5th of March. He left the country amid the rumours of false plots and real schemes of invasion. One Fuller, under the tuition of the notorious Titus Oates, had been accusing no less than fifty lords and gentlemen, including Halifax and some of the king's own ministers, of having pledged themselves to bring in James. However true it might be that many of these were at heart really ready for such a change, it was clearly shown that Fuller's story was got up merely to make money by it, and it was treated with contempt. The rumour of an invasion was, as we shall find, more real. Disbelieving it, or pressed by the necessity of giving a blow to Louis[454] in Flanders, William made a speedy journey to the Hague. There the difficulties which he had to overcome were such as would have sunk the courage of any less firm-hearted man. But though William managed to just hold his stupid and selfish Allies together—too stupid and selfish to perceive their own real interests—he found it impossible to get them into the field. Whilst they were moving like tortoises, each afraid to be before his neighbour, each taking leave to delay because his neighbour delayed, Louis rushed into the arena with his wonted alertness. On the 20th of May he was in his camp at Flanders. He made a grand review of his troops in the neighbourhood of Mons. There a hundred and twenty thousand men were drawn up in a line eight miles long. Such a circumstance was well calculated to spread a deadening report amongst the Allies of the crushing vastness of his army. He was attended by a splendid retinue of nearly all the princes and rulers of France; there was the Duke de Chartres, in his fifteenth year only; the Dukes of Bourbon and Vendôme; the Prince of Conti; and whole troops of young nobles following them as volunteers. Louis appeared in the midst of them with all the splendour and luxury of an Eastern emperor.

From the imposing review Louis bore down directly on Namur. Namur stood strongly at the confluence of the Meuse and the Sambre. It was strong by nature on the sides next the rivers, and made so by art on the land side. The Baron de Cohorn, an engineer who rivalled Vauban, was always in William's army to advise and throw up fortifications. Cohorn had made it one of the most considerable fortresses on the Continent, and he now lay in the city with a garrison of nine thousand men, under the Prince de Brabazon. All the other fortresses—Mons, Valenciennes, Cambray, Antwerp, Ostend, Ypres, Lille, Tournay, Luxemburg, and others, had yielded to the Grand Monarque; Namur alone had resisted every attempt upon it. And now Louis invested it with his whole force. Louis himself laid siege to the place with forty thousand men, and posted Luxemburg with eighty thousand more on the road between Namur and Brussels. Brabazon calculated on the army of William effecting the relief of the place, and Louis resolved to make his approach impossible.

William, joined by the forces of Brandenburg and Liége, and with his army swelled to a hundred thousand men, advanced to the Mehaigne, within cannon-shot of Luxemburg's camp, but there he found himself stopped. Luxemburg's army lay on the other bank of the river, and was so strongly posted, and watched so vigilantly every movement of William, that he saw no means of forcing a way towards the beleaguered city. Whilst thus impeded by the river and the vast force of Luxemburg, Nature came to complete the chafing king's mortifications. Heavy rains set in on St. Medard's Day, the 8th of June, the French St. Swithin. The rivers burst their banks, and the whole country lay under water. If William had had the means to cross the river, the drenching torrents and the muddy soil would have rendered all military operations impossible. Louis with difficulty kept his men to their posts in the siege. Still the assault was pushed on. Cohorn, the engineer, was disabled by a severe wound whilst defending a fort on which he greatly prided himself; and from that hour the defence languished. Brabazon was a man of no spirit; Cohorn's fort was taken, and the town surrendered on the 20th of June.

The exultation of Louis and the French on the fall of Namur was unbounded. This triumph had been won in the very presence of William and the Allies at the head of a hundred thousand men. He ordered medals to be struck to commemorate this success, which his flatterers, and amongst them Boileau himself, declared was more glorious than the mastery of Troy by the Greeks. Te Deum was sung in Paris; the French nation was in ecstasies, and Louis returned to Versailles to enjoy the incense of his elated courtiers and mistresses. But he did not return without a sting to his triumph. The news of a signal defeat of his fleet at La Hogue reached him even as he lay before Namur, and the thunder of William's artillery at the great intelligence wounded his vanity though it could not reach his army.

Louis having quitted the Netherlands, Luxemburg strongly garrisoned Namur, despatched the Marquis of Boufflers to La Bassière, and himself encamped at Soignies. William posted himself at Genappe, sent detachments to Ghent and Liége, and determined to attack Luxemburg. This general shifted his ground to a position between Steinkirk and Enghien, and William then encamped at Lambeque. Here he discovered that all his movements had been previously betrayed to Luxemburg by the private secretary of the Elector of Bavaria, one Millevoix, a letter of whose to the French general had been picked up by a peasant, and brought to the camp. William seized on the circumstance to mislead Luxemburg. The detected spy was compelled to write a letter to the French general, informing him that the next day[455] William was intending to send out a foraging party, and, to prevent it from being surprised, would draw out a large body of troops to protect it. The letter being despatched to the French camp, William took immediate measures for the engagement. His object was to surprise the camp of Luxemburg, and the story of the foraging party was to prevent his alarm on the approach of the troops. He sent his heavy baggage across the Seine, and by four in the morning his troops were on the march towards Luxemburg's position. The Duke of Würtemberg led the van with ten battalions of English, Dutch, and Danish infantry, supported by a large body of horse and foot under the command of General Mackay, and Count Solmes followed with the reserve.

William's forces reached the outposts of Luxemburg's army about two o'clock in the afternoon, and drove them in with a sudden and unlooked-for onset. A regiment from the Bourbonnais was put to instant flight, and William, who had been informed that he should have to march through a country of hedges, ditches, and narrow lanes, but that, on approaching Luxemburg's army, he would find it open plain, now calculated that he had nothing to do but to dash into the surprised camp and produce universal confusion. He had indeed had to pick his way through hedges and ditches, but now, instead of the open plain, there lay still a network of hedges and ditches between him and the enemy. This caused so much delay, that the enemy soon became aware of the real fact, that William was upon them with his whole army. There was an instant hurrying to standards, and William found himself face to face with a body sufficient to dispute the ground with him till the whole was in order.

Luxemburg had been deceived by the forced letter of Millevoix. He had relied on it as being as correct as usual; and, though scout after scout brought intelligence of the English approaching, he deemed it only the foraging party and their supporters, and sat coolly at cards till it was nearly too late. Then he mounted his horse, reconnoitred the enemy, threw forward the Swiss regiments and the far-famed Household Troops of Louis, and encouraged his men to fight with their usual bravery. The young princes put themselves at the head of the Household Troops, and displayed an enthusiasm which communicated itself to the whole line. They found as vigorous opponents in the Duke of Würtemberg and the gallant and pious Mackay. The conflict was maintained at the muzzles of the muskets, and Luxemburg afterwards declared that he never saw so fierce a struggle. The Duke of Würtemberg had already seized one of the enemy's batteries, and penetrated within their entrenchments, but the immense weight of troops that kept pouring on against them at length bore them back. Mackay sent messenger after messenger to bid Solmes hasten up his reserve, but, from cowardice or treachery, Solmes would not move. He said coolly, "Let us see what sport these English bulldogs will make." At length William sent an express order for him to move up; whereupon he trotted his horse forward a little, but never advanced his infantry. When, therefore, Mackay saw that his soldiers were being hewed down by hundreds, and no succour came, he said, "God's will be done," and fought on till he fell. The contest was not, however, decided till the detachment of Boufflers appeared upon the field. Luxemburg sent off an express to hasten him to his assistance; but Boufflers, unlike Solmes, had not waited for that—he had heard the firing, and was already on the way. Then William was compelled to order his troops to draw off; and this retreat he managed with his accustomed skill. He was, however, roused out of his usual stoicism by the infamous conduct of Solmes; and the whole army declared that they would not have been repulsed but for his base desertion of them. The French claimed the victory, though William retired to his camp in good order, and both armies continued to occupy their former position. The fame of William as a general in the field was greatly injured. He was acknowledged to be admirable at a retreat; but it was said that a first-rate general seldom practised that portion of the art of war. But his enemies, by their very joy at this rebuff, acknowledged their sense of his power.

After this nothing of consequence distinguished the campaign in the Netherlands. On the 26th of September William left the army under command of the Elector of Bavaria, and retired to his hunting seat at Loo. The camp was broken up, and the infantry marched to Marienkirke, and the horse to Caure. But hearing that Boufflers had invested Charleroi and Luxemburg, he sent troops under the Elector of Bavaria to raise the siege of those towns. Boufflers retired, and then the Elector distributed his troops into winter quarters; and Luxemburg on his side left the army under Boufflers, and went to Paris.

Besides this there had been an attempt on the part of England to besiege Dunkirk. The Duke of Leinster was sent over with troops, which were joined by others from William's camp; but they[456] thought the attempt too hazardous, and returned, having done nothing. William quitted Holland, and on the 18th of October arrived in England. The result of this expensive campaign, where such unexampled preparations had been followed only by defeat and the loss of five thousand men, excited deep dissatisfaction; and the abortive attempt to recover Dunkirk increased it. The public complained that William had lain inactive at Grammont whilst Louis took Namur, and that if he could not cross the Scheldt in the face of the French army, he might have crossed it higher up, and taken Louis in the flank; that he might, instead of lying inert to witness his enemy's triumph, have boldly marched into France and laid waste Louis's own territories, which would have quickly drawn him away from Namur. Such, indeed, might have been the decisive movements of a great military genius, but there is no reason to think that William was such a genius. His most striking qualities were dogged perseverance and insensibility to defeat.

During William's absence, a variety of circumstances had taken place which threw a dark shade upon his fame, which threatened almost to shake his throne, and which gratified the naval pride of the country.

The horrible event which had occurred in Scotland, still properly styled the Massacre of Glencoe, had just become known to the English as William left for the Continental campaign, and threw no little odium upon him. The dissatisfaction which William felt at his Bill of Toleration for Scotland having been refused by the Scottish Parliament, induced him to remove Lord Melville, who had suffered the liberal views of the king to be swamped by the Presbyterians, as William thought, too easily. He therefore appointed Sir James Dalrymple, whom he had created Viscount Stair, Lord President of the Court of Session; and his son, Sir John—called then, according to the custom of Scotland, the Master of Stair—as Lord Advocate, took the lead in the management of Scottish affairs. One of the matters which came under his notice was that of the settling of the Highlands; and it was resolved by William's Cabinet, where Lord Stair and the Earl of Argyll were consulted as the great authorities on Scottish measures, that twelve thousand pounds should be distributed amongst the Highland chiefs, to secure their goodwill. Unfortunately, the agent that was chosen for the distribution of this money was one of the hated tribe of Campbell. It was the Earl of Breadalbane, who had deadly feuds with some of the clans; and, as they regarded him with aversion and suspicion, the most insurmountable obstacles arose to any reasonable arrangement. Besides that every chief wanted more money than Breadalbane thought he ought to have, the Earl of Argyll contended that these chiefs owed him large sums, and that their quotas should be paid over to him in liquidation of those debts. To this the chiefs would not consent, and when the money was not paid over, they loudly avowed their conviction that Breadalbane meant to appropriate it to himself.

Amongst the chiefs, Macdonald of Glencoe was especially obnoxious to Breadalbane. Glencoe is a peculiarly wild and gloomy glen in Argyllshire. The English meaning of the word is "the glen of weeping," a name singularly appropriate from its being frequently enveloped in dense mists and drizzling rains. It was too barren and rugged for agriculture, and, accordingly, its little section of the clan Donald were noted for their predatory habits, common, indeed, to all the Highlanders, and deemed as actually honourable. They had committed frequent raids on the lands of Breadalbane, and therefore, when the old chief presented himself amongst the other chiefs at the castle of Breadalbane, he was rudely insulted, and was called upon to make reparation for his damages done to the Campbells. Macdonald—or, as he was commonly styled, Mac Ian—was glad to get away in safety. Incensed at his treatment, he exerted all his arts and influence amongst the other chiefs to embarrass and frustrate the attempts of Breadalbane towards a settlement.

Whilst these things were in agitation, the English Government issued a proclamation, that every rebel who did not come in and take the oaths to William and Mary before the 1st of January, 1692, should be held to be a traitor, and treated accordingly. Notwithstanding considerable delay, all the chiefs took care to come in before the appointed day except Mac Ian. In his stubborn rage against Breadalbane he deferred his submission to the last moment. On the 31st of December, however, he presented himself at Fort William to take the oaths; but Colonel Hill, the Governor, refused to administer the oaths, on the plea that he was not a magistrate, and told Mac Ian that it was necessary that he should go to Inverary and swear before the sheriff. The old chief was confounded; this was the last day of grace, and it was impossible to[457] reach Inverary in the depth of winter in time. Hill, however, gave him a letter to the sheriff expressing a hope that, as Mac Ian had presented himself in time to take the oaths, though under an error as to the authority, he would allow him to take them. Mac Ian did not reach Inverary till the 6th of January, and the sheriff, after much entreaty and many tears from the old chief, consented to administer the oaths, and dispatch information of the circumstances to the Council in Edinburgh.

GLENCOE: SCENE OF THE MASSACRE. (From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co., Aberdeen.)

The news did not reach Breadalbane and Argyll in Edinburgh, but in London, whither they had gone to represent the state of these affairs; and both they and the Master of Stair, who was there too, instead of being glad that all the chiefs had come in, were exceedingly rejoiced that Mac Ian had not submitted till after the prescribed time. They agreed to suppress the fact that Mac Ian had come in, though after the date, and only laid before William's Council the circumstance that he had not come in at the expiry of the limited time. A proposal was therefore made by them that this "nest of robbers," as they termed the people of Glencoe, should be utterly routed out, without which, they declared, there could be no peace in the Highlands. William therefore signed a warrant laid before him for that purpose, putting his signature both at top and bottom.

With this fatal instrument in their hands, these worthless men instantly took measures to wreak their vengeance on this little horde of people, and to root them completely out. An order was sent to Governor Hill to dispatch a sufficient force to Glencoe to kill every man, woman, and child in it. Whether Hill was deemed too humane or too dignified for the office of wholesale butcher, does not appear; but he was directed to send Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton on the errand. Hamilton, however, to make all sure by studying the place, sent, on the 1st of February, a Captain Campbell—better known as Glenlyon, from the place of his residence. Glenlyon took with him one hundred and twenty men, part of a regiment of Campbells, and marched to Glencoe; and then appeared the full diabolism of the scheme of Mr. Secretary Stair and his associates, Argyll and Breadalbane. He was not to fall on the[458] Macdonalds and put them to the sword as open and proscribed enemies, but to secure the completion of the barbarous design by a plan of the most revolting treachery on record. He was to profess to come as a friend, only to seek temporary quarters on his wintry march, and especially to visit a niece of his married to one of the sons of Mac Ian. He was to feign friendship, to live with the poor people some time in familiarity till all suspicion was laid to rest, and then to murder them in cold blood.

Accordingly, when this band of soldiers was seen approaching, a son of the chief and some of the people went out to learn the cause of the visit. The reply was, "All in friendship, and only to seek quarters." The traitors were welcomed, and lodged amongst the different families. Glenlyon and some of his men were accommodated by a man called Inverriggen; Lindsay, the lieutenant, accepted the hospitality of old Mac Ian; and a sergeant named Barbour was received by a leading man called Auchintriater. For nearly a fortnight this air of friendship was kept up. Glenlyon professed much attachment to his niece and her husband. He and Lindsay played at cards with the chief and his sons, and all went gaily, as far as whisky, and French brandy, and blithe spirits on the part of the hosts, could make it so. But all this time Glenlyon was studying how the more completely to secure the destruction of every soul in the glen. He and his men noted carefully every outlet, and the result of the observations was sent to Hamilton. All being considered ready, Hamilton fixed the 13th of February for the slaughter, and appointed to be there before five o'clock in the morning, and to stop all the earths to which the "old fox and his cubs," as he termed Mac Ian and his sons, could flee. That night, as he was marching with four hundred men through the snows to do this butcherly deed, Glenlyon was spending the evening with Mac Ian, and engaged to dine the next day with "his murdered man."

But with all the Judas-like deceit with which he carried on his hellish design, that evening two men were heard lamenting they had something to do that they did not relish. A suspicion was awakened, and one of the sons of Mac Ian went at midnight to Glenlyon's lodgings to see if he could discover anything. In confirmation of his worst suspicions he found him and his men all up and armed. Yet he suffered himself to be persuaded by the villain that they were called to a sudden march to chastise some of the Glengarry clan for marauding; and the young man returned home and went to bed. Glenlyon had said, "Do you think I would do anything against my own niece and her husband?"

At five in the morning, though Hamilton had not arrived, the bloodthirsty Glenlyon commenced the massacre by murdering his host and all his family. Lindsay did the same by his host, old Mac Ian and his family; and Barbour shot down his host and family in the same manner. Then the soldiers at every hut imitated their example, and speedily there was a hewing and shooting down of victims flying from the huts to the defiles for escape. Men, women, children, pleading most piteously, were ruthlessly murdered. But, fortunately, the sound of the fire-arms aroused the whole glen at once, and the rush of the affrighted people was too simultaneous to allow of their being killed. The greater part of them escaped in the darkness to the hills, for Hamilton had not arrived to blockade the defiles. The sanguinary haste of Glenlyon had saved the majority. The two sons of Mac Ian were amongst the number who escaped. Above thirty people, however, were massacred, and an old man of seventy, unable to fly, was brutally stabbed. But those who had escaped the sword and musket only escaped to the snow-covered rocks to perish, many of them of cold and famine, for the wretches set fire to everything in the valley, and left it one black and hideous desert.

When the news of this terrible affair at length spread, the public could scarcely believe that so demoniacal a deed could have been done in a Christian country. The Jacobites did not fail to dilate on its infamy with emphasis. The whole frightful particulars were gleaned up industriously by the non-jurors from the soldiers of the regiment, which happened the next summer to be quartered in England. All the execration due to such a deed was liberally showered on the courtiers, on the actors of the brutal butchery, and on the king who had sanctioned it. Terror, if not conscience seized on the chief movers in it. Breadalbane sent his steward to Glencoe, to induce the miserable inhabitants who had returned to their burnt-up valley to sign a paper asserting that they did not charge him with any participation in the crime, promising in return to use his influence with the king to obtain a full pardon and immunity from forfeiture for them all. Glenlyon was shunned as a monster wherever he appeared; but Stair, so far from showing any shame or remorse, seemed to glory in the deed. As for William, there was a zealous attempt to make it appear that he did not know[459] of what had been done; and when his warrant was produced, then that he was deceived as to the circumstances of the case. Unfortunately for William's reputation there was a searching inquiry into the facts of the affair, and when he did know these in all their atrocity, he failed to punish the perpetrators. Stair was for the time dismissed, but very soon restored to William's service; and after this all attempts would be futile to absolve him from gross want of feeling and of justice in the case. It is a black spot on his fame, and must remain so. Burnet, who is always anxious to defend William, says that, from the letters and documents produced which he himself read, so many persons were concerned in the business that "the king's gentleness prevailed to a fault," and so he did not proceed against them—a singular kind of gentleness! At the very least, the blood-guiltiness of Breadalbane, Stair, and Glenlyon, was so prominent, and they were so few, that they ought to have been made examples of; and such a mark of the sense of the atrocity of the crime would have wiped from William's reputation the clinging stain.

Scarcely had William left England in the spring, when the country was menaced by an invasion; and whilst he was contending with Luxemburg in Flanders, the queen and her ministers had been as actively contending with real and imaginary plots, and with the French fleet at La Hogue. The Papists of Lancashire had for some time been particularly active in encouraging in King James the idea that he would be welcomed again in England by his subjects. One Lant, a carpenter, had been despatched to St. Germains, and brought back assurances that his Majesty would, in the course of the spring, certainly land in England. He also sent over Colonel Parker, one of the parties engaged to assassinate William, to concert the necessary measures with the Catholics and Jacobites for the invasion. Parker assured them that James would embark at La Hogue with thirty thousand men. Johnson, a priest, was said to be associated with Parker to murder William before his departure if possible; but the king had gone already when they arrived.

The great minister of Louis, Louvois, was dead. He had always opposed these ideas of invasion of England as absurd and impracticable. His removal enabled James to persuade Louis to attempt the enterprise. It was determined to muster a fleet of eighty sail. The Count de Tourville commanded five-and-forty of them, and under him the Count D'Estrées thirty-five more. The most active preparations were making for the completion of all things necessary for the equipment of this fleet, and the army which it was to carry over. The ships under Tourville lay at Brest, those of D'Estrées at Toulon; they were to meet at Ushant, and take on board the army at La Hogue. James was in high spirits; he was puffed up by the invitations which the Catholic emissaries had brought him; he had, he believed, firmly won over the admirals of the fleet, Russell, Carter, Delaval, and Killigrew. Whilst in this elation of mind he sent over invitations to many Protestant ladies of quality to attend the expected accouchement of his queen. He said many base aspersions had been cast on the birth of his son, and he desired now to prevent a recurrence of such slanders; he therefore offered to all the distinguished persons invited safe conducts both for going and returning from the French monarch. No one accepted the invitation; and a daughter was born to James about whom no one in England was very much concerned.

But the preparations of James and Louis occasioned similar preparations in England. The militia was called out; London was strongly guarded by troops; the train-bands of the southern counties appeared in arms on the coasts; the beacons were all vigilantly watched, and the fleet was manned and equipped with all possible speed and strength.

The invitation of James to the birth of his daughter was speedily followed by a proclamation to his subjects in England. James had always done himself more harm by his Declarations than all the efforts of his friends and allies could do him good; and this was precisely of that character. He expressed no regret for any of his past actions or measures; he betrayed no suspicion, even, that he might have governed more wisely. On the contrary, he represented himself as having always been right, good, and gracious, and his subjects wrong, captious, and unreasonable. He had always meant and done well, but he had been shamefully maligned. He now promised to maintain the Church indeed; but people had had too recent a proof of how he had maintained it in Ireland. He meant to pardon many of his enemies; but, at the same time, added such a list of proscriptions as made it look more like a massacre than an amnesty. Amongst those excepted from all pardon were the Duke of Ormond, the Marquis of Winchester, the Earls of Sunderland, Danby, and Nottingham, the Lords Delamere, Wiltshire, Colchester, Cornbury, and Dunblane; the Bishop of St. Asaph; Drs. Tillotson and Burnet. He excepted[460] even the poor fishermen who at Faversham had mistaken him for a Jesuit priest on his flight, and called him "hatchet-face." All judges, magistrates, sheriffs, jurymen, gaolers, turnkeys, constables, and every one who had acted under William in securing and condemning any Jacobite; all justices and other authorities who should not immediately on his landing abandon the Government and support him; and all gaolers who should not at once set at liberty all prisoners confined for any conspiracy in favour of James, or for any political deed on that side, all were alike condemned. In short, such was the Draconian rigour with which the Declaration was drawn that there was hardly a man who was not a downright Jacobite who did not tremble at the belief that it might include him.

The queen and her ministers no sooner read the Declaration than they saw the whole effect of it. They had it printed and circulated all over the kingdom, with a clever running commentary. Parliament was summoned for the 24th of May, and a number of persons, charged with being concerned in a plot for bringing in James, were arrested, and others absconded. Amongst those seized were Marlborough and Lord Huntingdon, who were sent to the Tower; Mr. Ridley, Mr. Knevitt, Mr. Hastings, and Mr. Ferguson, were sent to Newgate; the Bishop of Rochester was confined to his own house; the Lords Brudenel and Fanshawe, the Earls of Dunmore and Middleton, and Sir Andrew Forrester, were next secured. The Earls of Scarsdale, Lichfield, and Newborough, the Lords Griffin, Forbes, Sir John Fenwick, Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe, and others, escaped. The princess Anne expected arrest.

On the 11th of May, a week after Marlborough was sent to the Tower, Russell sailed from the Downs in quest of the French fleet. He was at the head of ninety-nine sail of the line, the greatest force which had ever descended the English Channel. Off Beachy Head he had met Carter and Delaval, who had been watching the French ports, and a fine fleet of Dutchmen were also in conjunction with him. There were between thirty and forty thousand sailors, Dutch and English, on board, and he was supported by the Admirals Delaval, Ashley, Cloudesley Shovel, Carter, and Rooke. Van Almonde was in command of the Dutch squadron, with Callemberg and Vandergoes. James meanwhile was at La Hogue with the army, anxiously awaiting the fleet of De Tourville to carry it over. James confidently calculated on the disaffection of the English admirals, Russell, Delaval, Carter, and others. He sent an emissary to remind Russell of his promises, and to promise him and the other admirals high rewards in return. But Lloyd, the emissary, had found Russell wonderfully changed. The fatal Declaration had produced the same effect on him as on others. He told the man that he was desirous to serve James, but that he must first grant a general pardon; and besides, if he met the French fleet, though James was aboard of it, he would never allow himself to be beaten by the French.

In London the terror of this known disaffection had been great. The queen and her ministers consulted deeply what should be done. Should they send and arrest the traitors? The effect, they foresaw, would be to scatter terror through the whole fleet. They adopted a far more politic plan. On the 15th of May, as the combined fleet lay off St. Helens, Russell called together the officers on board his own ship, and informed them that he had a letter from the queen to read them. In this she stated that she had heard rumours of disaffection amongst the officers, but would not believe it. She knew they would fight as became Englishmen for their country. The letter had an instant and wondrous effect. They immediately signed unanimously a declaration that they would live and die for the Crown, the Protestant religion, and the freedom of England. On the 18th the fleet sailed for the coast of France, and next day the fleet of Tourville was descried. Tourville had only forty-five ships of the line, and he had orders, if he met the English fleet, to engage. But Louis had since learned the junction of the Dutch with the English, and despatched messengers to warn him, but they were intercepted. Tourville, however, notwithstanding the preponderance of the enemy, determined to engage. He had been upbraided after the fight at Beachy Head as timid; his blood was roused, and, besides, he confidently believed that three-fourths of the English fleet were secretly for James, and would at the first brush come over to him. As he lay off Barfleur on the morning of the 19th he saw the long line of the enemy before him, and bore down upon them for battle.

At eleven o'clock the French admiral opened fire on part of the English fleet, the rest not being able to get up from the wind being contrary. The spirit with which the English received him at once dissipated Tourville's hopes of defection amongst them. The conflict continued with uncommon fury till one o'clock, when Russell was compelled to allow his flag-ship, the Rising Sun, carrying a hundred and four guns, to be towed out of the line from the damage she had received. But the[461] fight continued furiously till three o'clock, when a fog parted the enemies. Soon after, however, a wind favourable to the English sprang up, and, at the same time, dispersed the fog. Fresh ships of the English came up, and the conflict continued to rage till eight in the evening. During this time Carter, who had been one of the most deeply pledged to James, but who had fought like a lion, fell mortally wounded, but as he was carried down to his cabin, he cried to his men to fight the ship as long as she could swim. Tourville, who was now contending hopelessly against numbers, drew off, but was closely pursued, and the most terrible carnage was made of the men on board his great ship, the Royal Sun, the pride of the French navy. He fought, however, stoutly so long as the light continued; and then the whole French fleet made all sail for the French ports.

The next morning the English gave chase, and Russell's vessel was retarded for some time by the falling of her topmast, but soon they were once more in full pursuit. About twenty of the French ships escaped through the perilous Race of Alderney, between that island and the coast of Cotentin, where the English dared not pursue them; and these vessels, by their desperate courage, escaped to St. Malo. Tourville had shifted his flag to the Ambitious, and the Royal Sun, battered and drenched in blood, made its way, and, with the Admiral and the Conquerant, managed to reach Cherbourg, whither Delaval pursued and burnt them, with several other vessels. Tourville himself and the rest of the fleet escaped into the harbour of La Hogue, where they drew themselves up in shallow water, close under the guns of the Forts De Lisset and St. Vaast.

Here they flattered themselves that they were in safety. The army destined to invade England lay close at hand, and James, his son the Duke of Berwick, the Marshal Bellefond, and other great officers, were in the forts. But Sir George Rooke, by the orders of Russell, embarked his men in all the light frigates and open boats that could be procured, and advanced boldly upon the French men-of-war as they lay drawn up upon the beach. Regardless of the fire from the forts and the ships, the English rushed to the attack with loud hurrahs, proud to beard the French under the eyes of the very army of French and renegade Irish which dared to dream of invading England. The daring of the deed struck such a panic into the French sailors, that they quickly abandoned the vessels which lay under Fort Lisset. The fort and batteries seemed paralysed by the same event, and the English set fire to the vessels. In vain Tourville manned his boats, and attempted to drive back the English sailors; his mariners jumped to land again. In vain the soldiers ashore hurried down and poured in a volley on the British seamen; they successfully burnt all the six vessels lying under Lisset, and returned to their ships without the loss of a man.

The next morning Rooke was again afloat with the tide, and leading his fleet of boats and his brave sailors against the vessels lying under the Fort St. Vaast. The fort did more execution than the other fort the day before; but all was in vain. The British sailors climbed up the vessels; the French fled precipitately out of them, and they were all burnt to the water's edge, except a few smaller ones, which were towed away to the English fleet. When James saw these surprising acts he is said to have involuntarily exclaimed, "See my brave English sailors." But guns of the exploding vessels going off killed some of the people standing near him, and he then, coming to a more sober reflection, said, "Heaven fights against me," and retired. There was an end of all hope of ever invading England, and he hastened back to St. Germains in deep dejection.

The news of this most brilliant and most important battle, which gave such a blow to the power and prestige of Louis, was received in London with transports of delight. England was once more safe; France was humbled; invasion at an end. Sixteen of the finest ships of France had been destroyed, and on the part of England only one fire-ship. The glory was England's, for, though the Dutch had fought well, it was the English who had borne the brunt and done the miracles of bravery at La Hogue. The tidings were borne to William's camp at Grammont, and set all the cannon roaring the exultation into the ears of Luxemburg and his army.

At home there was now time to inquire into the particulars of the plot for which Marlborough and others had been detained. Luckily for them there was found to have been a sham conspiracy got up by one Young, a debauched clergyman, who had been imprisoned for bigamy and for many other crimes. Like Oates and his compeers, and the more recent Fuller, he hoped to make money, and, therefore, had accused Marlborough, Sprat the Bishop of Rochester, and the rest, of being in it. On examination, the plot was found to be a mere barefaced forgery, got up by Young and another miscreant named Blackhead. They had written an engagement to bring in King[462] James, and seize William, and forged to it the names of Marlborough, Cornbury, Sancroft the ex-Primate, and Sprat, Bishop of Rochester. This document they had contrived to hide in a flower-pot at the bishop's house at Bromley. The bishop was arrested, but denied all knowledge of the plot, and then Blackhead confessed. Young, however, feigned another plot, and endeavoured to inveigle into it a poor man of the name of Holland, who also informed the Earl of Nottingham. Young was imprisoned and pilloried, and ministers were glad to admit the accused to bail. For Marlborough and others this false plot was a genuine godsend. They were deep in real treason, and this sham treason screened their reputations just at the moment when the power of James was being annihilated, and that of William rising in fresh vigour.

But the Government was not satisfied with the success of the battle of La Hogue. It was too decisive to be left, they thought, in barren glory; it ought to be followed up by a more severe blow to France. Amid the public rejoicings, Sidney, Portland, and Rochester went down to Portsmouth to congratulate the fleet on its success. They distributed twenty-seven thousand pounds amongst the seamen, and gold medals were bestowed on the officers; and, to mark the sense of the king and queen of this great achievement of the sailors, it was announced that the wounded should be tended at the public charge in the hospitals of St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew; and, still more, that the palace of Greenwich, begun by Charles II., should be finished and appropriated for ever as the home of superannuated sailors. Thus originated this noble institution, this home for maimed and declining mariners.

But for this honour conferred on the fleet fresh exploits were demanded of it—that it should sail to St. Malo, bombard the town, and destroy the remainder of Tourville's fleet, which had taken shelter there. Accordingly, Rooke was dispatched to take soundings on the dangerous shores of Brittany, and Russell mustered his fleet, which, having taken on board transports of fourteen thousand troops under young Schomberg—now Duke of Leinster—accompanied by Ruvigny—now Earl of Galway—and his Huguenots, and the Earl of Argyll, with his regiment, part of which had committed the melancholy massacre of Glencoe, stood out to sea. Off Portland, however, a council of war was called, and it was contended, by a majority of both naval and military officers, that it was too late in the season—it was only the 28th of July—to attempt such an enterprise amid the dangerous rocks and under the guns of the forts and batteries of St. Malo. The fleet, therefore, returned to St. Helens, much to the astonishment and disgust of the whole nation. High words arose between the Earl of Nottingham, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Russell. The Minister accused the Admiral of cowardice and breach of duty in thus tamely giving up the enterprise against France.

Nottingham's hands were wonderfully strengthened by the deep discontent of the merchants, who complained that they were almost ruined by the so-much-vaunted victory of La Hogue; that before, we had a fleet in the Mediterranean and another out in the Channel protecting the traders; but that now the fleet had been concentrated to fight Tourville, and then, instead of taking up proper positions to check the French ships of war and privateers, had contemptibly returned to port; that the French, embittered by the defeat of La Hogue, had now sent out their men-of-war in every direction, and, finding our merchantmen defenceless, had committed the most awful havoc amongst them. Fifty vessels alone, belonging to London and Bristol, had been taken by them. More than a hundred of our trading vessels had been carried into St. Malo, which Russell, by destroying that port, could have prevented or avenged; while Bart, of Dunkirk, had scoured the Baltic and the northern coasts of Britain, and Trouin had actually ascended the Shannon, and committed frightful mischief in Clare.

Amid such expressions of discontent King William returned from Holland to England. He landed on the 18th of October. He had had little success in his campaign; La Hogue was the only bright spot of the year, and the scene which now met him on his return was lowering and depressing. There had been an earthquake in Jamaica, which, in three minutes, had converted Port Royal, the most flourishing city of the West Indies, into a heap of ruins, burying one thousand five hundred of the inhabitants, and extending the calamity to the merchants of London and Bristol. The distress in England itself was general and severe. A rainy season had ruined the harvest, and reduced the people to a state of extreme misery. Bread riots were frequent, and the complaints of the excessive burthen of taxation were loud and general. Burglaries and highway robberies were of the most audacious kind. William, however, was not a man to sit and brood over such things. He at once sent out parties of cavalry into the districts where the robberies were[463] frequent, and, by bribing some of the thieves, got information of the rest, whom his police hunted out industriously. Their chief captain, one Whitney, was taken and hanged, and the highways and domestic hearths were soon as secure as ever.

He called together Parliament on the 4th of November, where there was every reason to expect no little faction and difficulties. Parliament was not merely divided into Ministerialists and Opposition, it was broken into sundry parties, all exasperated by one cause or another. The Whigs were sore with their loss of office to a great extent; the Lords were nettled at the Commons refusing their claims put forward in the Lord High Steward's Court Bill, and were urged to contention by Marlborough and the other lords who had been imprisoned, and who were loud in denouncing the proceeding as a breach of their privileges. There was a great jealousy of William's employment of so many Dutch in preference to Englishmen, and the Commons were discontented with the manner in which public business was conducted.

William was aware of the difficult part he had to play, and in his opening speech he took care to put La Hogue in the foreground, and to congratulate them on this glorious victory gained by Englishmen. He confessed that the success of the campaign on land had been but moderate, but he praised in the highest terms the valour of the British soldiers. He expatiated on the power and the designs of France, told them that the cause of Protestantism was the cause of England, that Louis must be humbled, and that for that purpose there must be still liberal supplies. He threw out a hint of carrying the war into France itself, and assured them that his own aims were identical with theirs, and that he would willingly sacrifice his life for the honour and welfare of the nation. To conciliate both Houses, he condescended to ask their advice and assistance in putting the national affairs into the best possible condition—a piece of candour of which he speedily found reason to repent. Both Houses voted him thanks for his gracious speech, and, immediately seizing on his request for advice, began to offer it in good earnest.

The Lords at once took up the case of Marlborough, Huntingdon, and Scarsdale. They complained that in ungratefully persecuting Marlborough the Court had gone the full length of treating the Princess of Denmark with severity and indignity. Her guards had been taken away; when she went to Bath, the magistrates had orders to omit the honours due to royalty, and the Church to omit her name in the prayers; and this simply because she had shown her attachment to the Countess of Marlborough. Marlborough, thus supported by the Lords, who had their own cause of pique about the Lord High Steward's Court Bill, and by the disrespect shown to the Princess, was loud in his complaints of the harshness with which he had been treated, and of being kept in prison with his friends in defiance of Habeas Corpus. The Earl of Shrewsbury, the Marquis of Halifax, the Earls of Mulgrave, Devonshire, Montague, Bradford, Stamford, Monmouth, and Warrington, supported him from various motives, many of them being Whigs; and the Jacobites fanned the flame, hoping for a rupture. Lord Lucas, Constable of the Tower, was ordered to produce the warrants of commitment, and the Clerk of the King's Bench to lay before them the affidavit of Aaron Smith, the Solicitor of the Treasury, on which they had been remanded; and Smith was sharply cross-examined. The judges were ordered to attend, and the Lords passed a resolution that the law had been violated in the case of the noble prisoners. They then consulted on the best mode of fully discharging them. The debate was so violent that the Ministers were alarmed, and proposed to the King to adjourn Parliament till the 17th of the month, and in the meanwhile to liberate the noblemen from their bail. Accordingly, on the reassembling of the Lords, they were informed that the King had discharged the recognisances of the accused nobles, and the Lords sullenly dropped the question.

But though disappointed here, the Lords immediately fastened on the king's request of advice. They moved that a committee of both Houses should be appointed for preparing this advice. The motion, however, was rejected by a majority of twelve. Nevertheless, they determined to give the king advice themselves. They agreed to an Address, praying his Majesty to appoint an Englishman commander of the forces, and that English officers should take precedence of all in the confederate army, except the officers of Crowned heads. This was meant to affect the Dutch, who were only the subjects of a Stadtholder. They also desired that the forces left in England should be all English, commanded by an English general; that such officers as pressed men for the fleet should be cashiered, and that no foreigner should sit at the Board of Ordnance. All those matters, aimed at the king's favoured countrymen, William received coldly, returning only short and dry answers.

[464]

The Lords next attacked Russell for his neglect to make the descent intended on the coast of France. They ordered books and papers concerning that matter to be laid before them. A committee was appointed, and the substance of the charge was communicated to the Commons as concerning a member of that House.

GREENWICH HOSPITAL.

The Commons on their part took up the charge against Russell as a charge against themselves. They informed the Lords that they found that Russell had conducted himself at the head of the fleet with fidelity, courage, and ability. Russell made his defence, and accused Nottingham of being the cause of the non-descent. He declared that above twenty days had elapsed between his writing to Nottingham and receiving an answer; that therefore the expedition had become abortive from not receiving timely and necessary information and orders. Nottingham's friends in the Commons warmly took up his defence; the Lords demanded a conference; the Commons refused it, and, amid this noise and animosity, the important subject was left undecided.

The Commons then proceeded to give the King the advice and the assistance which he had so unluckily asked. They demanded that books and papers should be laid before them necessary to enable them to inquire into the management of the Government offices; but they soon came to a stand, for, inquiring into the abuses of the Admiralty, the merits or demerits of Nottingham and Russell came again into question. One or both of them had been guilty of gross mismanagement, but each House defended its own member, and the only result was a motion in the Commons, which, whilst it acquitted Russell, seemed to reflect on Nottingham. The Lords resenting, made severe reprisals on the character and conduct of Russell, and then the incident ended.

The Commons were more generally united in condemning the failure of the battle of Steinkirk and the conduct of Solmes. Some officers in the House, however, defended the behaviour of the Dutch officers on that occasion, and especially of Overkirk in bringing the remains of Mackay's troops out of the battle. But they said not a word in vindication of Solmes, and William, to his disgrace, still continued this insolent foreigner,[465] who had wilfully sacrificed the lives of the brave English soldiers, in his command.

BURNING OF BLOUNT'S PAMPHLET BY THE COMMON HANGMAN. (See p. 466.)

The Commons now went into the question of supplies. They were fully prepared to sustain the king in his exertions to check the arms of France, though they protested against a fact which they had discovered by examinations of the treaty between the Allies, that the English paid two-thirds of the expense of the war. After grumbling, however, they voted fifty-four thousand men for the army, twenty thousand of them to remain at home, and thirty-three thousand men for the navy. They voted two millions for the army, and two millions for the navy, besides seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds to supply the deficiency of the quarterly poll. Still there was likely to be a deficiency. Notwithstanding the large grants of the previous year, the expenditure had far exceeded them; it was, therefore, proposed to resort to a land tax—the first imposed since the Restoration, and the grand transfer of taxation from the aristocracy to the nation at large. The Peers made a violent opposition, not to the tax, but to their estates being valued and assessed by any but commissioners of their own body. But they finally gave way, and a land tax of four shillings in the pound was carried. When Louis heard of these unusual supplies, he could not restrain his amazement. "My little cousin, the Prince of Orange," he said, "seems to be firm in the saddle; but no matter, the last louis d'or must carry it."

Little did Louis know the condition of England when he said that. If the last piece of gold was to carry it, the chance lay much on the side of England. Whilst France was fast sinking in exhaustion from his enormous wars and lavish luxury, whilst his people were sunk in destitution, and trade and agriculture were languishing, England was fast rising in wealth from commerce, colonies, and internal industry, and was capable of maintaining the struggle for an indefinite period.

Yet it was at this moment that the National Debt assumed its determinate shape. It had existed, indeed, since the fraud of Charles I. on the London merchants by the shutting of the exchequer. It was now said to be suggested by Burnet that there were heaps of money hidden[466] away in chests and behind wainscots for want of safe and convenient public security, and that, by Government giving that security at a fixed percentage, it might command any amount of money by incurring only a slight increase of annual taxation for the interest. The idea itself, however, was familiar to William, for the Dutch had long had a debt of five million pounds, which was regarded by the people as the very best security for their money. Accordingly, a Bill was passed on the 3rd of January, 1693, for raising a million by loan, and another million by annuities, which were to be paid by a new duty on beer and other liquors; and thus, with a formal establishment of the National Debt, closed the year 1692.

The opening of 1693 was distinguished by a warm debate on the liberty of the press. The licensing, which was about to expire, was proposed for renewal. The eloquent appeal of Milton, in his "Areopagitica," that all books which bore the names of the author or publisher should be exempt from the power of the licensers, had hitherto produced no effect; but now circumstances occurred which drew the subject into notice, and raised many other voices in favour of such exemption. In the Lords, Halifax, Mulgrave, and Shrewsbury warmly advocated the principles of Milton; but though the Bill passed, it was only by a slight majority, and with a protest against it, signed by eleven peers; nor was it to pass for more than two years. The circumstance which roused this strong feeling was, that Burnet had published a pastoral letter to the clergy of his diocese, recommending them to take the oaths to William and Mary, in which, amongst their claims to the throne, he had unfortunately mentioned that of conquest. This had escaped general attention till the Royal Licenser, Edmund Bohun, a high Tory, who had taken the oaths on this very plea that the king and queen had won the throne by conquest, fell into the trap of one Blount, whose works he had refused to license. This man wrote an anonymous pamphlet with the title, "King William and Queen Mary Conquerors." The unlucky censor fell into the trap, and licensed it. Then the storm of Whig indignation broke over his head. He was summoned before Parliament and committed to custody. The book was ordered to be burnt by the hangman, and the House unanimously passed a resolution praying his Majesty to dismiss him from his office. The unfortunate licenser was then discharged on his own petition, after having been reprimanded on his knees by the Speaker. Burnet's pastoral letter was likewise ordered to be burnt by the hangman, much to the bishop's shame and mortification. But the liberty of the press was achieved. When the Two Years Act maintaining the censorship expired, the Commons refused to renew it. William prorogued Parliament on the 14th of March, and prepared to set out for the Continental campaign.

William, on his part, had more than his usual difficulty in bringing his Allies into the field. Indeed, they were far more occupied in their petty feuds than thinking of presenting a sufficient front to the great enemy who, if successful, would tread them all down in their own territories as Buonaparte afterwards crushed their posterity. The Courts of Baden, of Saxony, of Austria, and of the lesser Powers, were all quarrelling amongst themselves. The Northern Powers were still trying to weaken the Allies, and so form a third party; and on the side of Italy, Savoy was menaced by numerous forces of France, and ill-supported by Austria. The Prince of Hesse had neglected to furnish his quota, and yet wanted a chief command. The Prince of Baden and the Elector of Saxony were at strife for the command of the army of the Rhine. When William had brought all these wretched and provoking Allies into some degree of order, he mustered seventy thousand men in the field, and Louis came against him with a hundred and twenty thousand.

Louis marched himself with his army with all the pomp and splendour that he could assume. He brought all his Court with him, as if his officers should be stimulated to the utmost by having to fight under the very eyes of their king and the courtiers and ladies, Madame de Maintenon amongst them. Louis's plan of action was precisely what it had been in the two previous campaigns. As he had suddenly invested Mons and Namur by overwhelming forces, before his enemy could approach, he now proposed to surprise and take Brussels or Liége, and so carry off the glory of the exploit both from the Allies and his own general, Luxemburg. This was a cheap and easy way of securing fame without danger; but this time William was too quick for him. Louis arrived at the commencement of June at Namur, where his ladies held a brilliant court. But William had taken up a strong position at Parke, near Louvain, and thrown reinforcements into Maestricht, Huy, and Charleroi. Louis perceived that he was checkmated, and his desire of acquiring still more martial honours suddenly[467] evaporated. Nothing but hard fighting could make an impression on his stubborn antagonist, and for that Louis had no fancy. He determined, therefore, to return to Versailles with his ladies and his Court, and leave Luxemburg to fight it out. The alarm at this proposal in the camp was intense. Luxemburg represented to Louis that it would have the certain effect of damping the spirits of the soldiers, and raise those of the enemy. He reminded him that now he had nothing to do but to bear down upon the Allies with all his powers, and sweep them away by mere momentum, and put an end to the war. But all his entreaties were lost on the Grand Monarque, who had rather steal a victory than win one. He not only persisted in going, but he weakened the forces of Luxemburg by dispatching the division of Boufflers, amounting to twenty thousand men, which he had taken under his own especial command, under Boufflers and the Dauphin, to join Marshal de Lorges, who had orders again to ravage the Palatinate.

But, in reality, Luxemburg was better without the pompous and voluptuous king. He had no one now to come between himself and his real military genius, in which he infinitely excelled William; and he immediately brought his skill into play. Before attacking the Allies he resolved to divide them on the true Macchiavellian principle, "divide et impera." He therefore made a feint of marching upon Liége. Liége was one of the places that it was expected that the French would aim at securing this campaign, and the inhabitants had very cavalierly declined to take any measures for defending themselves, saying it was the business of the Allies. William, therefore, put his forces in motion to prevent this catastrophe. He had advanced as far as Neer-Hespen; there, however, he heard that Luxemburg had obtained possession of Huy, which had been defended by a body of troops from Liége and Count Tilly, but which, though supported by another division under the Duke of Würtemberg, had been compelled to return to Liége.

William now dispatched twenty thousand men to reinforce Liége, and thus accomplish the very thing at which Luxemburg was aiming. The moment he learnt that William had reduced his force by this detachment, he marched from Huy on the 28th of July, and passed the Jaar near its source with an army exceeding that of the Allies by thirty-five thousand men. William, now aware of Luxemburg's design, committed one of those blunders in strategy, which, except for his indomitable tenacity of purpose, would long ago have ruined him. He could have put the deep river Gerte between him and the enemy; it was just in the rear. His generals strongly urged him to do this, where he might have maintained his position till he had recalled his forces from Liége. But he would not listen to them. He was afraid of having to retreat before Luxemburg, and discouraging his men. He set about, therefore, instantly to strengthen his then position. It was naturally strong; on his right hand lay the village of Neer-Winden amongst a network of hedges, and deep lanes, with a small stream winding through it; on his right lay the village of Romsdorff, on a brook named the Landen, whence the battle took its name. William ordered an entrenchment to be thrown up from one village to the other, and mounted with a formidable rampart of stakes. Batteries were raised along this breastwork, and the two villages were made as strong as the time would allow.

The Allies commenced immediately a cannonade with a hundred pieces of cannon on the ramparts, which did great execution; but the French soon returned the compliment, and about eight o'clock made a furious attack on the villages of Lare and Neer-Winden. These places were several times lost and regained. In one of the assaults the Duke of Berwick was taken prisoner. Perceiving himself surrounded by the English, he plucked off his white cockade, and endeavoured to pass himself off as an English officer. His English tongue might have served him, but he had fallen under the eye of his uncle, Brigadier Churchill, who received him affectionately, and conducted him to William, who addressed him with courtesy, but never saw him again, as he was immediately after the battle exchanged for the Duke of Ormond, who was wounded and taken prisoner in the action. Meanwhile the battle was raging fiercely all along the line. The French repeatedly rushed up to the breastworks, and were as often driven back by the slaughtering fire of the infantry. A fresh attack was made on Neer-Winden, supported by the division under the Duke of Bourbon, but which was repulsed with terrible carnage. Then Luxemburg called together his staff to consult, and it was resolved to try one more assault on Neer-Winden with the famous Household Troops, which had carried the day at Mons and Namur. William met them at the head of several English regiments, which charged the Household Troops with such impetuosity that, for the first time, they were forced to give way. But whilst William was[468] exerting himself on the right, with a desperation and a risking of his person which astonished everyone, the centre had become much weakened, and a murderous fight was going on at Romsdorff, or Neer-Landen, on the left. There the Prince of Conti renewed the flagging contest by bringing up some of the finest regiments of the French infantry, whilst Villeroi there encountered the Bavarian cavalry, under Count D'Arco. In this mêlée the Duke of Chartres narrowly escaped being taken. Whilst the battle was thus obstinately disputed, the Marquis D'Harcourt brought up two-and-twenty fresh squadrons from Huy, which falling on the English, Dutch, and Hanoverians struggling against the united onslaught of Luxemburg, Marsin, and Marshal de Joyeuse, bore them down by actual numbers. The whole line gave way; and now was seen the folly of William leaving the river in his rear instead of having it in front. The confusion became terrible to escape over the bridge, and a frightful carnage must have followed had not William, with the regiments of Wyndham, Lumley, and Galway, borne the brunt of the pursuing host till the rest of his army got over the bridge of Neer-Hespen. As it was, the rout and disorder were dreadful; numbers flung themselves into the river, but found it too deep, and were drowned. The Duke of Ormond was here severely wounded. Here, too, Solmes, mortally wounded, was seized by the enemy. The "English bulldogs" did not mourn his loss. If William by his want of judgment had led his troops into this trap, he did his best to get them out of it. He repeatedly dismounted to encourage his men, inciting them by voice and example to stand up to the enemy. He had two led horses shot close behind him; one bullet passed through his hat, another through his sleeve, and a third carried away the knot of his sash. At length he got his army over the bridge, and encamped on the other bank of the river. The French did not attempt to pursue; they were worn out with their violent exertion, and passed the night on the field of battle amongst the heaps of slain and wounded. The next morning presented the most appalling scene of butchery, unequalled by any battle of that epoch, except that of Malplaquet. Twenty thousand men are said to have perished in this bloody struggle, about an equal number on each side. On the French side fell Count Montchevreuil and the Duke D'Uzes, the premier peer of France. Luxemburg, exhausted with this effort, remained fifteen days at Waren, reorganising his shattered forces; and William employed the time in a similar manner, recalling the troops from Liége and from other places; so that in a short time he was again ready for action, his headquarters being Louvain.

The battle of Landen was the great event of the campaign of 1693. When Luxemburg was rejoined by Boufflers from the Rhine, he invested Charleroi, and that with so much adroitness that William was not able to prevent him. Charleroi capitulated on the 11th of October, and Louis ordered a Te Deum and other rejoicings for this fresh triumph. But though he professed to triumph, he had little cause to do so. He had formerly overrun Holland, Flanders, or Franche-Comté in a single campaign, and sometimes without a battle; now he had beaten the Allies at Fleurus, Steinkirk, and Landen, and yet here they were as ready to fight him as ever. His country was sinking into the very depths of misery and destitution, the campaign had cost him ten thousand men, and though he had taken sixty cannon, nine mortars, and a great number of colours and standards, he could not advance twenty miles in the direction of the United Provinces without running the risk of a similar decimation of his troops. It was a humiliating position, after all. After the surrender of Charleroi both armies went into winter quarters.

If the affairs of England had been unsuccessful by land, they had been most disastrous by sea. Before leaving for Holland William ordered that Killigrew and Delaval should, with their whole fleet, amounting to nearly a hundred sail, get out to sea early, and blockade the French fleets in their ports, so as to allow our merchantmen to pursue their voyages with security. Our ports were crowded with trading vessels, which had long been waiting to sail to the Mediterranean and other seas with cargoes. About the middle of May the admirals united their squadrons at St. Helens, and, being joined by a considerable number of Dutch men-of-war, they took on board five regiments of soldiers, intending to make a descent on Brest. No less than four hundred merchantmen were ready to start, and on the 6th of June the united fleet put out from St. Helens to convoy them so far as to be out of danger of the French fleets, when Sir George Rooke was to take them forward to the Mediterranean under guard of twenty sail. But the French appear to have been perfectly informed of all the intentions of the English Government from the traitors about the Court, and the English to have been perfectly ignorant of the motions of the French. Instead of Tourville allowing himself to be blockaded in[469] Brest, and D'Estrées in Toulon, they were already out and sailing down towards Gibraltar, where they meant to lie in wait for the English.

LOUIS XIV.

The united fleet of the Allies having, therefore, accompanied Rooke and the merchantmen about two hundred miles beyond Ushant, returned. Rooke did not think they were by any means certain of their enemies being behind them, and earnestly entreated the admirals to go on farther, but in vain. They not only turned back, but went home, without making the slightest attempt to carry out the attack on Brest. When they reached England it was well known that Tourville had recently quitted Brest, and was pursuing his course south to join D'Estrées. The consternation and indignation were beyond bounds. A swift vessel was despatched to overtake and recall Rooke and the merchant vessels if possible. But it is proverbial that a stern chase is a long chase. It was impossible to come up with Rooke; he had reached Cape St. Vincent, and there learnt that a French fleet was lying in the Bay of Lagos; but, imagining that it was only a detached squadron, he went on, till on the 16th of June he perceived before him the whole French fleet, amounting to eighty vessels.

As to engaging such an unequal force, that would have been a wilful sacrifice of himself and his charge. The Dutch Admiral Vandergoes agreed with him that the best thing was for the merchant vessels to run into the Spanish ports Faro, San Lucar, or Cadiz, as best served them, others were too far out at sea; these he stood out to protect as long as he could, and they made, some for Ireland, some for Corunna and Lisbon. He himself then made all sail for Madeira, which he reached[470] in safety. Two of the Dutch ships, being overtaken by the French, ran in shore, and thus drawing the French after them, helped the others to get off. Captains Schrijver and Vander Poel fought stoutly as long as they could, and then surrendered. The French commander Coetlegon took seven of the Smyrna merchantmen, and sank four under the rocks of Gibraltar. The loss to the merchants was fearful. The news of this great calamity spread a gloom over the City of London, and many were loud in attributing disloyalty to Killigrew and Delaval, probably not without cause, for that they were in correspondence with St. Germains is only too certain.

Sir George Rooke returned from Madeira to Cork, which he reached on the 3rd of August, his ships of war and the traders which had followed him for safety numbering fifty vessels. Leaving the rest of his ships to convoy the merchantmen to Kinsale, he returned to the fleet, which was cruising in the Channel, and which now returned to St. Helens, where they had already landed the soldiers. About the same time a squadron, which had gone out to seize the island of Martinique, under Sir Francis Wheeler, after coasting Newfoundland and Canada, returned totally unsuccessful. The Dutch set sail for Holland on the 19th of September, and thus terminated this inglorious naval campaign.

On the 7th of November Parliament met. William had a poor story of his campaign to relate, but he attributed his defeat to the enormous exertions which Louis had made, and on that plea demanded still greater efforts from England. He asked that the army should be raised to a hundred and ten thousand men, and the navy proportionably augmented. He complained bitterly of the mismanagement of the fleet, and the Commons immediately proceeded to inquire into the cause of it. The Whigs made a vehement charge of treachery and neglect against Delaval and Killigrew; the Tories, to defend them, threw the blame on the Admiralty. Lord Falkland, who was Chief Commissioner, was proved by Rainsford, the Receiver of the Navy, to have embezzled a large sum, and it was moved that he be committed to the Tower. This, however, was overruled, but he was reprimanded in his place. The Lords then took up the same examination, and endeavoured to turn the blame from the Earl of Nottingham to Sir John Trenchard, the Whig secretary. Nottingham declared that early in June he received a list of the French fleet from Paris, and the time of their sailing, and handed it to Trenchard, whose duty it was to send the orders to the admirals. But Trenchard was in his turn screened by the Whigs. The matter was again taken up by the Commons, and Lord Falkland was declared guilty of a high misdemeanour and committed to the Tower, whence, however, in two days he was released on his own petition. Robert Harley—destined to make a great figure in the succeeding reign—Foley, and Harcourt, all of whom from being Whigs had become Tories, presented to the House a statement of the receipts and disbursements of the revenue, which displayed the grossest mismanagement. But the farther the inquiry went, the more flagrant became the discoveries of the corruption of both Ministers and members of Parliament, through bounties, grants, places, pensions, and secret-service money; so that it was clear that Parliament was so managed that Ministers could baffle any Bill, quash any grievance, and prepare any fictitious statement of account. The result was that William was compelled to dismiss Nottingham, and to place Russell at the head of the Admiralty. The seals which Nottingham resigned were offered to Shrewsbury, but were not at once accepted.

Having expressed their feelings on the mismanagement and treachery of the past year, the Commons proceeded to vote the supplies for the next, and in this they showed no want of confidence in the king. They did not, indeed, vote him his hundred and ten thousand troops, but they voted eighty-three thousand one hundred and twenty-one, but not till they had called for the treaties existing between William and his Allies, and the quota which every one was to furnish. To defray the charge, they voted five millions and a half, in nearly equal proportions between the army and the navy, including four hundred thousand pounds to pay the arrears of the Session; and this they ordered to be raised by a land tax of four shillings in the pound, and a further excise on beer, a duty on salt, and a lottery. This was a profusion which would have made the country stand aghast under the abhorrent rule of James, and the force was nearly double that with which Cromwell had made himself the dread of Europe.

THE FOUNDING OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND, 1694.

From the Original Design by GEORGE HARCOURT for the Wall Panel in the Royal Exchange.

These matters being settled, the Commons considered the popular questions of the Bill for Regulating the Trials for High Treason, the Triennial Bill, and the Place Bill. None of these Bills were made law. The Triennial Bill and the Bill for Regulating the Trials for High Treason were lost; the Place Bill was carried, but William refused to ratify it, under the idea that it was intended to[471] abridge his prerogative. The excitement in the Commons was intense. It was resolved to address his Majesty, and such an address was drawn up and presented by the whole House. William received them very graciously, but conceded nothing, and Harley declared, on returning to the House, that the king's answer was no answer at all. Menaces of showing their power on the next occasion by stopping the supplies were thrown out, and it was proposed to go up to his Majesty again to demand a more explicit answer; but the Whigs represented the danger of thus encouraging the hopes of the Jacobites by the prospect of a breach between King and Parliament, and the matter dropped.

The question of the charter of the East India Company was again warmly debated. The feud between the old and the new Company had grown so violent that the old Company, fearing Government might be induced to grant a charter to the new Company, had put forth all its powers of bribery, and had succeeded. But the former had somehow neglected the payment of the tax on joint-stock companies, by which, according to the terms of the Act, their charter was forfeited. The new Company eagerly seized on this circumstance to prevent a renewal of the charter; but the old Company put nearly one hundred thousand pounds at the disposal of Sir Thomas Cook, one of their members, and also member of Parliament, and by a skilful distribution of this sum amongst the king's Ministers, Caermarthen and Seymour coming in for a large share, they succeeded in getting their charter renewed.

The new Company and the merchants of London were exasperated at this proceeding. They published an account of the whole transaction; they represented that the old Company was guilty of the grossest oppression and the most scandalous acts of violence and injustice in India and its seas; they asserted that two of their own ships had exported in one year more cloths than the old Company had exported in three years; and they offered to send more the next year of both cloths and other merchandise than the Company had sent in five; but the bribes prevailed, and the old Company obtained its charter—not very definite in its terms, however, as regarded its monopoly, and subject to such alterations and restrictions within a given time as the king should see fit. At this juncture the old Company were imprudent enough to obtain an order from the Admiralty to restrain a valuable ship called the Redbridge, lying in the Thames, from sailing. Her papers were made out for Alicante, but it was well known that she was bound for the Indies. The owners appealed to Parliament, and Parliament declared the detention of the vessel illegal, and, moreover, that all subjects of England had a right to trade to the Indies, unless prohibited by Act of Parliament. Encouraged by this decision, the new Company prayed the Commons to grant them a direct sanction to trade thither, and the old Company, on their part, prayed for a Parliamentary sanction to their charter; but no decision in either case was come to, and for some years scenes of strange contention continued to be enacted between the rival Companies and free traders in the seas and ports of those distant regions.

The last Act of this Parliamentary session proved the most important of all; it was the establishment of the Bank of England. Banking, now so universal, was but of very recent introduction to England. The Lombard Jews had a bank in Italy as early as 808; Venice had its bank in 1157; Geneva in 1345; Barcelona in 1401. In Genoa, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Rotterdam there had long been banks, but in England men had continued, till within a very short time previous to this period, to hoard and pay out their own money from their own strong boxes. The goldsmiths of Lombard Street had of late become bankers, and people began to pay by orders on them, and travellers to take orders from them on foreign banks. It was now beginning to be strongly agitated to establish joint-stock banks, and there were various speculative heads at work with plans for them. One Hugh Chamberlayne and his coadjutor, John Briscoe, published a scheme of a land bank, by which gentlemen were to give security for their notes on their land; on the principle that land was as real and substantial property as gold. But the extravagant and unsound views as to the actual value of land which they promulgated ruined their credit. Because an estate was worth twenty thousand pounds at twenty years' purchase, they argued that it was worth that every twenty years, and, therefore, could be immediately convertible at the same rate for any number of years—as if they could put a hundred years' purchase in the first twenty, and raise the hundred years' value, or one hundred thousand pounds, on it at once.

There was, however, a more sober and shrewd projector, William Paterson, a calculating Scotsman, who in 1691 had laid before Government a plan for a national bank on sound and feasible principles. His scheme had received little[472] attention, but now, though a million of money was raised by the lottery, another million was needed, and Paterson secured the attention of Charles Montague, a rising statesman, to his scheme. Paterson represented that the Government might easily relieve itself of the difficulty of raising this money, and of all future similar difficulties, by establishing a national bank, at the same time that it conferred the most important advantages on the public at large. He had already firmly impressed Michael Godfrey, an eminent London merchant, and the brother of the unfortunate Sir Edmundsbury Godfrey, with the immense merits of his scheme. They now submitted these merits, and the particularly attractive one to a young politician of raising himself by a happy mode of serving the Government, and acquiring immediate distinction for practical sagacity. Montague was a young man of high family, but a younger brother's younger son—poor, clever, accomplished, and intensely ambitious. At Cambridge he had distinguished himself as a wit and a versifier; but he was now in the Commons, and had made a rapid reputation as an orator and statesman by his management of the Bill for Regulating the Trials for High Treason. This man—vain, ostentatious, not too nice in his means of climbing, but with talents equal to the most daring enterprise, and who afterwards became better known as the Earl of Halifax—saw the substantial character of Paterson's scheme, and took it up. Whilst he worked the affair in Parliament, Godfrey was to prepare the City for it.

Montague submitted the scheme to the Committee of Ways and Means, and as they were at their wits' end to raise the required million, they caught at it eagerly. The proposed plan was to grant a charter to a company of capitalists, under the name of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England. This company was to have authority to issue promissory notes, discount bills of Exchange, and to deal in bullion and foreign securities. Their first act was to be to lend the Government twelve hundred thousand pounds, at eight per cent., and to receive, as means of repayment, the proceeds of a new duty on tonnage, whence the bank at first received the name of the Tonnage Bank. The Bill for establishing this bank was introduced ostensibly to Parliament as a Bill for imposing this new duty on tonnage; the charter of the proposed bank being granted in consideration of its making an immediate advance on the tonnage duty. In the Commons it underwent many sallies of wit and sarcasm, as one of the thousand speculations of the time; but in the City, where its real character was at once perceived by the Lombard Street money-dealers, it was instantly assailed by a perfect storm of execration. It was declared to be a scheme for enabling the Government to raise money at any moment and to any extent, independently of Parliament, and thus to accomplish all that the Charleses and Jameses had ever aimed at. To silence this suspicion, Montague introduced a clause making it illegal, and amounting to forfeiture of its charter, for the bank to lend any money to Government without the consent of the Parliament. This, however, did not lay the tempest. It was now denounced as a Republican institution borrowed from Holland and Genoa, and meant to undermine the monarchy; it was a great fact, the objectors urged, that banks and kings had never existed together.

Notwithstanding all opposition, however, the Bill passed the Commons; and though it met with fresh and determined opposition in the Lords, where it was declared to be a scheme of the usurers to enrich themselves at the expense of the aristocracy, on Caermarthen coolly asking them, if they threw out this Bill, how they meant to pay the Channel fleet, they passed it; and such was its success in the City, that in less than ten days the whole sum required by Government was subscribed. Such was the origin of that wonderful institution, the Bank of England. One other measure of importance was carried by this Parliament, namely, the Triennial Act, limiting Parliament to three years.

Immediately that the Bank of England Bill had received the royal assent, William prorogued Parliament, and rewarded Montague for his introduction of the scheme of the bank, by making him Chancellor of the Exchequer. Shrewsbury was now induced to accept the Seals. William having shown him that he was aware of his being tampered with by the agents of James, demanded his acceptance of them as a pledge of his fidelity. To secure him effectually—for William knew well that nothing but interest would secure Whigs—he conferred on him the vacant Garter and a dukedom. Seymour was dismissed, and his place as a Lord of the Treasury was given to John Smith, a zealous Whig, so that excepting Caermarthen, Lord President, and Godolphin, First Lord of the Treasury, the Cabinet was purely Whig. The old plan of mixed Ministries was being rapidly abandoned.

William had closed the session of Parliament[473] on the 25th of April, 1694, and in a few days he was sailing for Rotterdam. Before going, however, he had ventured to refuse offers of peace from Louis. This ambitious monarch, by his enormous efforts to vanquish the Allies, had greatly exhausted his kingdom. Scarcely ever had France, in the worst times of her history, been reduced so low, and a succession of bad seasons and consequent famine had completed the misery of his people. He therefore employed the King of Denmark to make advances for a peace. He offered to surrender all pretensions to the Netherlands, and to agree to the Duke of Bavaria succeeding to Flanders on the death of the King of Spain; but he made no offer of acknowledging William and Mary as rightful sovereigns of England. Many thought that William ought, on such conditions, to have made peace, and thus saved the money and men annually consumed in Flanders. But Parliament and the English people both knew Louis far too well to suppose that the moment that he had recruited his finances he would not break through all his engagements and renew the war with redoubled energy. His people were now reduced in many places to feed on nettles, and his enemies deemed it the surest policy to press him whilst in his extremity.

COSTUMES OF THE TIME OF WILLIAM AND MARY.

Finding that he did not succeed in obtaining peace, Louis resolved to act on the defensive in the coming campaign in every quarter except in Catalonia, where his whole fleet could co-operate with the Count de Noailles, the commander of his land forces. William, who had received intelligence of this plan of the campaign, before his departure, ordered the British fleet under Russell to prevent the union of the French squadrons from Brest and Toulon. Russell was then to proceed to the Mediterranean to drive the French from the coast of Catalonia, and co-operate with the Spaniards on land. Meanwhile, the Earl of Berkeley, with another detachment of the fleet, was to take on board a strong force under the command of General Talmash, and bombard Brest in the absence of Tourville. All this was ably planned, but the whole scheme was defeated by the treachery of his courtiers: by Godolphin, his own First Lord of the Treasury, and by Marlborough,[474] against whom the most damning evidence exists. Macpherson and Dalrymple, in the State papers discovered by them at Versailles, have shown that the whole of William's plans on this occasion were communicated to James by Godolphin, Marlborough, and Colonel Sackville, and have given us the strongest reasons for believing that the preparations of the fleet were purposely delayed by Caermarthen, the new Duke of Leeds, Shrewsbury, Godolphin, and others, letters for that purpose being discovered addressed to them by James through the Countess of Shrewsbury.

But of all the infamous persons thus plotting against the sovereign they had sworn to serve, and from whom they had many of them just received the highest honours that the Government could bestow, none equalled in infamy the detestable Marlborough. This man, who was professing allegiance at the same time to both William and James, and who would have betrayed either of them for his own purposes, was indefatigable in hunting out the king's secrets, and dispatching them with all haste, enforcing the disgrace of his own country and the massacre of his own countrymen with all his eloquence—the sole object being his own aggrandisement. Talmash was the only general who could be compared with him in military talent. Talmash betrayed and disgraced, Marlborough, who was suspected and rejected by William for his treason, felt sure he himself must be employed. Accordingly, he importuned Russell for a knowledge of the destination of the fleet; but Russell, who probably by this time had found it his interest to be true to his sovereign, refused to enlighten him. But Marlborough was not to be thus defeated in his traitorous designs. He was on most intimate terms with Godolphin, and most likely obtained the real facts from him. Godolphin, indeed, had already warned the French through James of the intended blow, and Marlborough followed up the intelligence by a letter dated the 2nd of May, in which he informed James that twelve regiments of infantry and two regiments of marines were about to embark under command of Talmash, in order to destroy Brest.

This diabolical treason had its full effect. Tourville had already sailed. He left Brest on the 25th of April, and was at this moment in the Straits of Gibraltar, which he passed on the 4th of May. Brest was defenceless; but Louis, thus apprised of his danger, instantly sent the great engineer of the age, Vauban, to put the port into the best possible state of defence, and dispatched after him a powerful body of troops. The weather favoured the traitors and the French. The English fleet was detained by contrary winds; it did not quit St. Helens till the 29th of May. On the 5th of June the fleet was off Cape Finisterre, where a council of war was held, and the next day Russell sailed for the Mediterranean with the greater part of the fleet. Lord Berkeley with the remainder, having on board General Talmash and his six thousand troops, turned his prows towards Brest. But by this time the town was in full occupation by a great body of soldiers, and Vauban had planted batteries commanding the port in every direction, in addition to eight large rafts in the harbour well supplied with mortars. In fact, there were no less than ninety mortars and three hundred cannons; all the passages under the castle were made bomb-proof, and there were at least five thousand infantry and a regiment of dragoons in the place. The English had no friendly traitors amongst the French to act the Marlborough and apprise them of all these preparations; and they rushed blindly on the destruction which their own perfidious countrymen had organised for them. The greater part of the unhappy men were slaughtered, and Talmash was shot through the thigh, and borne off to the ships. Talmash died in a few days, exclaiming that he had been betrayed by his own countrymen. He was so, more absolutely than he or even most of his contemporaries were aware of. The object of Marlborough was accomplished more completely than he could have anticipated. His rival was not disgraced, but destroyed—taken out of his way; and the hypocritical monster went to Whitehall to condole with the queen over this national dishonour and calamity, and to offer what he truly called "his own unworthy sword." When the offer was forwarded to William in Holland, he bluntly rejected it; but Marlborough ultimately achieved his end, and we ought never to forget, when we remember Ramillies, Blenheim, and Malplaquet, that amongst the acts by which he rose to a dukedom was the massacre of Camaret Bay.

On the 9th of November William landed at Margate, where the queen met him, and their journey to the capital was like an ovation. On the 12th the king met his Parliament, and congratulated it on having decidedly given a check to the arms of the French. This was true, though it had not been done by any battle during the campaign. Russell by relieving Barcelona, which[475] had been blockaded by two French fleets, had effaced the defeat of Camaret Bay, and in the Netherlands, if there had been no battle, there had been no repulse, as in every former campaign. He had now no Mons, no Fleurus, no Namur, no Landen to deplore; on the contrary, he had driven the French to their own frontiers without the loss of a man. But he still deemed it necessary to continue their exertions, and completely to reduce the French arrogance, and he called for supplies as liberal as in the preceding year. The Customs Act was about to expire, and he desired its renewal.

The Commons adjourned for a week, and before they met again Archbishop Tillotson was taken suddenly ill whilst performing service in the chapel at Whitehall, and died on the 22nd of November. With the exception of the most violent Jacobites, who could not forgive him taking the primacy whilst Sancroft was living, the archbishop was universally and justly beloved and venerated. In the City especially, where he had preached at St. Lawrence in the Jewry for nearly thirty years, and where, as we have seen, his friend Firmin took care to have his pulpit supplied with the most distinguished preachers during his absence at Canterbury, he was enthusiastically admired as a preacher and beloved as a man. The king and queen were greatly attached to him, and William pronounced him, at his death, the best friend he ever had, and the best man he ever knew.

Tillotson was succeeded by Dr. Tenison, Bishop of Lincoln. Mary was very earnest for Stillingfleet; but even Stillingfleet was too High Church for William. Could he, however, have foreseen that it was the last request that the queen would ever make, he would, no doubt, have complied with it. In a few weeks Mary herself was seized with illness. She had been worn down by the anxieties of governing amid the feuds of parties and the plottings of traitors during the King's absence, and had now not strength to combat with a strong disease. The disease was, moreover, the most fatal which then attacked the human frame—the small-pox. No means had yet been discovered to arrest its ravages, and in her case the physicians were for a time divided in opinion as to its real character. One thought it measles, one scarlet fever, another spotted fever, a fourth erysipelas. The famous Radcliffe at once pronounced it small-pox. It was soon perceived that it would prove fatal, and Dr. Tenison was selected to break the intelligence to her. She received the solemn announcement with great fortitude and composure. She instantly issued orders that no person, not even the ladies of her bedchamber, should approach her if they had not already had the complaint. She shut herself up for several hours in her closet, during which she was busy burning papers and arranging others. Her sister Anne, on being apprised of her danger, sent a message, offering to come and see her; but she thanked her, and replied that she thought she had better not. But Mary sent her a friendly message, expressing her forgiveness of whatever she might have thought unkindness in Anne.

In everything else the very enemies of Mary were compelled to praise her. She was tall, handsome, and dignified in person, yet of the most mild and amiable manners; strong in her judgment, quick in perceiving the right, anxious to do it, warm in her attachment to her friends, and most lenient towards her enemies. To her husband she was devotedly attached; had the most profound confidence in his abilities, and was more happy in regarding herself as his faithful wife than as joint sovereign of the realm. William, on his part, had not avoided giving her the mortification of seeing a mistress in his Court in the person of Mrs. Villiers, yet she had borne it with a quiet dignity which did her much credit; and now William showed that, cold as he was outwardly, he was passionately attached to her. His grief was so excessive that, when he knew that he must lose her, he fainted many times in succession, and his own life even began to be despaired of. He would not quit her bedside for a moment day or night till he was borne away in a sinking state a short time before she expired. After her death he shut himself up for some weeks, and scarcely saw any one, and attended to no business, till it was feared that he would lose his reason. During his illness he had called Burnet into his closet, and, bursting into a passion of tears, he said, "he had been the happiest, and now he was going to be the most miserable of men; that during the whole course of their marriage he had never known a single fault in her. There was a worth in her that no one knew beside himself."

Mary died on the 28th of December in the utmost peace after taking the Sacrament, and William, deprived of his unselfish wife's support, was left to carry on his great work alone. But apart from the loss of popularity entailed by the death of so able and beloved a consort, it cannot be said that William's position was altered by the death of his wife; so completely was he the master-spirit.

[476]

CHAPTER XIV.

REIGN OF WILLIAM III. (continued).

Rising Hopes of the Jacobites—Expulsion of Trevor for Venality—Examination of the Books of the East India Company—Impeachment of Leeds—The Glencoe Inquiry—The Darien Scheme—Marlborough's Reconciliation with William—Campaign of 1695—Surrender of Namur—William's Triumphant Return—General Election and Victory of the Whigs—New Parliament—Re-establishment of the Currency—Treasons Bill passed—A Double Jacobite Plot—Barclay's Preparations—Failure of Berwick's Insurrection Scheme—William Avoids the Snare—Warnings and Arrests—Sensation in the House of Commons—Trial and Execution of the Conspirators—The Association Bill becomes Law—Land Bank Established—Commercial Crisis—Failure of the Land Bank—The Bank of England supplies William with Money—Arrest of Sir John Fenwick—His Confession—William ignores it—Good Temper of the Commons—They take up Fenwick's Confession—His Silence—A Bill of Attainder passes both Houses—Execution of Fenwick—Ministerial Changes—Louis desires Peace—Opposition of the Allies—French Successes—Terms of Peace—Treaty of Ryswick—Enthusiasm in England.

The death of Queen Mary raised marvellously the hopes of the Jacobites and the Court of St. Germains. Though the Jacobites had charged Mary with ascending the throne contrary to the order of succession, they now asserted that William had no right thereto, and that Mary's claim, however weak, had been his only colourable plea for his usurpation. Mary it was whose amiability and courtesy had reconciled the public to the government of her husband. His gloomy and morose character and manners, and his attachment to nothing but Holland and Dutchmen, they said, had thoroughly disgusted the whole nation, and would now speedily bring his reign to an end. He spent a great part of the year on the Continent; Mary had managed affairs admirably in his absence, but who was to manage them now? They must soon go into confusion, and the people be glad to bring back their old monarch.

And truly the wholesale corruption of his Parliament and ministers served to give some force to their anticipations. Hardly ever was there a time when dishonesty and peculation, hideous as they have been in some periods of our Government were more gross, general, and unblushing than amongst the boasted Whigs who had brought about the Revolution. From the highest to the lowest they were insatiably greedy, unprincipled, and unpatriotic—if want of patriotism is evidenced by abusing the institutions and betraying the honour of the nation. One of the best of them died in April, 1695—George Saville, Marquis of Halifax. He bore the name of "the Trimmer," but rather because parties had changed than that he himself had changed. He had discouraged extreme measures, especially such as were bloody and vindictive. He had endeavoured to save the heads of both Stafford and Russell; he had opposed the virulence of the Whigs in the days of the Popish plot, and of the Tories in that of the Rye House Plot. But even he had not kept himself free from intriguing with St. Germains. Compared, however, with the unclean beasts that he left behind, he was a saint.

The tide of inquiry was now, however, flowing fast, and higher delinquents were reached by it every day. In 1695 there was a charge made against Sir John Trevor, Speaker of the House of Commons, for receiving a bribe of one thousand guineas to ensure the passing of the City Orphans Bill. This was a Bill to enable the Corporation of London to make a sort of funded debt of the money of the orphans of freemen which had been left in their charge, and which they had spent. To carry this Bill, and cover their criminality, bribes had been given, not only to Trevor, but to Hungerford, Chairman of the Grand Committee, and many others. Trevor—who had been one of Judge Jeffreys' creatures—was ejected from the Chair of the House, where he had long made a trade of selling his influence to the amount of at least six thousand pounds per annum, besides his salary of four thousand pounds. For his insolence and greed he had become universally hated, and there was great rejoicing over his exposure and expulsion from the House. Paul Foley, the Chairman of the Committee of Inquiry, was elected Speaker of the House in his stead; Hungerford was also expelled; Seymour came into question. His overbearing manners had created him plenty of enemies; and on his remarking on the irregular conduct of a member, the indignant individual replied that it[477] was "certainly wrong to talk during a discussion, but it was far worse to take money for getting a Bill passed." The hint thrown out was quickly seized, and on examining the books of the East India Company, to which enormous bribery also was traced, it was found that Seymour had received a bribe of ten thousand pounds, but under the artful cover of selling him two hundred tons of saltpetre for much less than its value. It was, moreover, sold ostensibly to a man named Colston, but really to Seymour, so that the House could not expel him, but a public mark was stamped on his character.

WILLIAM PATERSON. (Facsimile of the only known Engraving.)

But the examination of the books of the East India Company laid bare a series of bribes of Ministers and Parliament men, which made all the rest dwindle into insignificance. In previous years there were found items in the books of one thousand two hundred and eighty-four pounds and two thousand and ninety-six pounds; but in the past year, during the great contest with the new Company, Sir Thomas Cook, who had been empowered to bribe at his discretion, had expended on Ministers and Members no less a sum than one hundred and sixty-seven thousand pounds. Wharton, himself a most profligate man, pursued these inquiries on the part of the Commons with untiring avidity. In order to damp this inquiry, the guilty parties caused it to be whispered about that it was best not to press the matter too far, as a large part of the money might have been given to the King through Portland. But nothing could stop the inquest, and it turned out that large sums had been offered to the King but had been refused, and that fifty thousand pounds offered to Portland had also been refused.[478] Nottingham, too, had refused ten thousand pounds, but others had not been so scrupulous. Cook declined at first to disclose the names of those who had received the money, but he was threatened with a Bill to compel him on terms which, had he persisted, would have ruined him. He then offered to disclose all on condition that a clause in the Bill should indemnify him against the consequences of his disclosures. This was done, and Sir Basil Firebrace was named as receiving a sum of forty thousand pounds. When pressed to explain what had become of this money, the worthy knight fell into great confusion and loss of memory; but he was obliged to account for the cash, and then it came out that he had, through a Mr. Bates, paid five thousand five hundred guineas to Caermarthen, now Duke of Leeds. The duke denied having had the money, and then Bates said he had left it with one Robarts, a foreign servant of the duke's, to count it out for him, and this with the duke's permission. Robarts, however, was so bad at counting coin, that he had taken half a year to do it in, and only brought it back on the very morning that the Committee of Inquiry was formed.

The duke did not deny that he had got all the money that he could through Bates from the Company for others; but this, according to the morals of that age, was considered quite pardonable. To take a bribe himself was criminal if found out, to assist others in selling their votes was venial. The Commons impeached the duke, but then his servant Robarts was missing, and as Leeds insisted on his presence as evidence for him, the impeachment remained uncarried out. In fact, William, who, though suffering perpetually from the gross corruption all around him, was always the first to screen great offenders, now hastened Parliament to a conclusion.

In the following week the Scottish Parliament commenced its session after an interval of two years. The Duke of Hamilton was dead, and John Hay, Marquis of Tweeddale, was appointed Lord High Commissioner, a man in years, and of fair character. The question which immediately seized the attention of the Estates was the massacre of Glencoe. That sanguinary affair had now come to the public knowledge in all its perfidy and barbarity, and there was a vehement demand for inquiry and for justice on the perpetrators. The facts which had reached the queen long ago regarding this dark transaction had greatly shocked her, and she had been earnest for a searching investigation; but William, who must now have been aware that the matter would not bear the light very well, had not been too desirous to urge it on. The Jacobites, however, never ceased to declaim on the fearful theme; and the Presbyterians, who hated the Master of Stair, who under James had been one of their worst persecutors, and was a man without any real religion, were not the less importunate for its unveiling. Seeing that the Parliament would now have it dragged to the light, William made haste to make the movement his own. He signed a Commission appointing Tweeddale its head, and sent it down with all haste to Edinburgh. The Parliament expressed great thanks to the king for this act of justice, but it deceived nobody, for it was felt at once that no Commission would have issued but for the public outcry, and it was now meant to take it out of the earnest hands of the Estates, and defeat it as far as possible; and this turned out to be the case. The report of the Commission was long in appearing, and had not the Estates been very firm, it might have been longer, and have been effectually emasculated, for the Lord High Commissioner was on the point of sending it to William, who was now in the Netherlands, and deeply immersed in the affairs of the campaign. The Estates insisted on its immediate production, and Tweeddale was compelled to obey. It then appeared that several of the Macdonalds had been admitted to give their evidence on the atrocities committed in their glen: and the conclusion was come to that it was a barbarous murder. The king's warrant, however, was declared to have authorised no such butchery, and the main blame was thrown on the Master of Stair and the Earl of Breadalbane. Undoubtedly Sir John Dalrymple, the Master of Stair, had urged on by his letter the massacre of the clan with unflinching cruelty; but William contented himself with merely dismissing him from his office.

To put the Scots Parliament into good humour, William promised them through the Marquis of Tweeddale, that if they would pass an Act establishing a colony in Africa, America, or any other part of the world where it was open to the English rightfully to plant a colony, he would grant them a charter with as full powers as he had done to the subjects of his other dominions. This was, no doubt, in consequence of a scheme agitated by Paterson, the originator of the Bank of England, for founding a colony on the Isthmus of Darien, for trading between the Atlantic and Pacific—forming, in fact, a link of commerce between China and India, as well as the Spanish States on the Pacific coasts and Europe. The Act, supposed to be drawn by Paterson himself, was passed, and[479] preparations begun for carrying the scheme into effect, but the expedition did not sail till 1698. Parliament granted some indulgence to the Episcopalians, by which seventy of their clergy retained their livings, and voted a hundred and twenty thousand pounds for the services of the State.

At the moment that William was about to set out for the Continent, a plot for his assassination was discovered, but the conspirators were not brought to trial till the following year.

William embarked on the 12th of May for Holland. Before going he had appointed as Lords Justices to carry on the government in his absence—Archbishop Tenison; Somers, Keeper of the Great Seal; Pembroke, Keeper of the Privy Seal; Devonshire, the Lord Steward; Dorset, the Lord Chamberlain; Shrewsbury, the Secretary of State; and Godolphin, First Lord of the Treasury. There had also been a formal reconciliation between him and the Princess Anne. Marlborough and his wife were now all anxiety for this reconciliation. The queen being gone, and William, from his infirmities, not being expected to reach a long life, Marlborough saw Anne at once brought many degrees nearer the throne. Instead of James ever returning, the crafty Marlborough felt sure that, even if William did not succeed in retaining his popularity, any change would seat, not James, but Anne on the throne. It was his interest, therefore, to promote by all means Anne's chance of succession, because, once on the throne, he felt that he should be the ruling power. Anne was, therefore, induced by him and his countess to write a conciliatory letter to William, proposing to wait on him and endeavour to console him in his distress. This had not been done without some difficulty and delay, but, when once effected, William received the princess very cordially; gave her the greater part of the late queen's jewels, restored all her honours, her name was once more united in the prayers for the royal family, and the foreign ambassadors presented themselves at her house. In one thing, however, Marlborough was disappointed. William did not appoint Anne regent during his absence, as he had hoped, because he knew that that would be simply making Marlborough viceroy. The King still retained his dislike to the Marlboroughs, and though he permitted them to reside again under the same roof with the princess, he refused for some time to admit Marlborough to kiss his hand in the circle at Kensington, and offered him no renewal of his offices and command.

William entered on the campaign of 1695 under unusual advantages. Louis of France had reduced his country to such distress that he was now obliged to stand on the defensive. The people were loud in their complaints all over France of the merciless exactions for the continuance of the war. They were actually perishing of famine. Barbessieux, the minister, was not able to devise resources like the able Louvois, who was gone; and now Louis had lost by death the great Marshal Luxemburg, who had won for him almost all his martial renown. The forces in Flanders, deprived of their heroic and experienced head, were badly supplied with provisions, badly recruited, and to make all worse, Louis, as he had chosen his prime minister, now selected his general—not from the men of real military talent, but from a courtier and man of pleasure—Villeroi. He was a tall, handsome man, much admired by the ladies, and a reckless gambler, but totally unfit to cope with William in the field. Boufflers was still at the head of a division of the army, but under Villeroi.

Louis was apprehensive that the Allies would make a push at Dunkirk. He therefore ordered a new line to be drawn between the Lys and the Scheldt, and every means to be taken to cover Dunkirk, Ypres, Tournai, and Namur. William arrived in the camp of the Allies on the 5th of July, and immediately marched against Villeroi, who retired behind his lines between Ypres and Menin. He, however, detached ten thousand men to support Boufflers, who had advanced as far as Pont d'Espières. William then sent forward the Elector of Bavaria to confront Boufflers, who also retired behind his lines, and the Elector passed the Scheldt, and posted himself at Kirk. William, having thus driven the French to the frontiers of Flanders, then despatched the Baron von Heyden from the camp of the Elector of Bavaria, along with Ginkell, to invest Namur. At the same time, leaving Vaudemont to confront the army of Villeroi on the border of Flanders, William suddenly marched also for Namur, the Brandenburgers having orders to advance from another quarter. William's hope was, by this ably concerted plan, completely to invest Namur before any fresh troops could be poured into it; but Boufflers, perceiving his design, managed to throw himself into the city with seven regiments of dragoons, by which the garrison was raised to fifteen thousand men. Immediately on the heels of Boufflers arrived William and the Elector, and encamped on both sides of the Sambre and Meuse, thus investing the whole place.

[480]

They began to throw up their entrenchments on the 6th of July, under the direction of the celebrated engineer, Cohorn. The city had always been strong; it had been of late years made much stronger by Cohorn, and since then the French had added to its defences. Its castle was deemed impregnable; the town was full of provisions and of brave soldiers, and it was regarded as a somewhat rash act in William to attempt so formidable a fortress, with the chance of being taken in the rear by Villeroi at the head of eighty thousand men. The moment that Villeroi saw the object of William he began to put himself in motion to attack Vaudemont, and, having beaten him, to, advance on Namur. Vaudemont, however, began to fortify his camp, and Villeroi's vanguard appearing at Dentreghem, he entrenched himself on both sides. Villeroi made sure, nevertheless, of a complete victory over him, having such a superiority of force, and he sent word to Louis that he would speedily hear of a victory. But Vaudemont, perceiving another body of French advancing from the Scheldt so as to enclose him, very adroitly drew back, and made a retreat, much admired by military judges, to Ghent. This he was able to effect through the cowardice of Louis's natural son, the Duke of Maine. Villeroi accordingly advanced unopposed and brutally bombarded Brussels.

FIVE-GUINEA PIECE OF WILLIAM.

William was all this time—except for a few days when he was anxiously observing the French proceedings before Brussels—prosecuting the siege of Namur with a determined ardour which cost a terrible amount of human lives. The trenches had been first opened on the 11th of July, and the batteries on both sides commenced a furious fire. This continued for a week, and on the 18th a storming party, headed by Lord Cutts, consisting of five battalions of English, Scots, and Dutch, attacked the works on the right of the counterscarp, supported by six English battalions under General Fitzpatrick, whilst nine thousand pioneers advanced on the left under General Salisch. Twelve hundred of the Allies fell in this bloody action, whilst William, looking on in exultation, thought not of their destruction, but of the bulldog valour of the British soldiers, exclaiming to the Elector of Bavaria, "See my brave English! See my brave English!" They drove in the enemy, though at a terrible sacrifice.

On the 30th of July the Elector of Bavaria attacked Vauban's line that surrounded the defences of the castle, and broke through it, and reached even Cohorn's celebrated fort, under the eyes of Cohorn himself, but could not effect a lodgment in it. On the 2nd of August another party of grenadiers, headed by the dare-devil Lord Cutts, attacked and lodged themselves on the second counterscarp. The governor, Count Guiscard, now engaged to give up the town, time being allowed for the garrison to retire into the citadel. This being done, and the Allies having engaged to give up the one thousand five hundred wounded men left below, on the 13th the bombardment of the fort commenced with renewed fury. Both sides fought with the fanaticism of courage, and committed great havoc on each other. Boufflers at length attempted to cut his way through the besiegers in a headlong sally, but was repulsed, and shut up again.

HALF-CROWN OF WILLIAM.

At this crisis Villeroi's army had reached Fleurus, and fired ninety pieces of cannon to apprise the besieged of their vicinity. William immediately left the conduct of the siege to the Elector of Bavaria, and drew out a strong force to confront Villeroi, who was reinforced by a large body of troops from Germany. This was a most anxious moment to the people of both England and France. The armies of the two nations were drawn out against each other, and covered the plains of the Sambre and the Meuse. Boufflers was urging Villeroi to strike a decisive stroke for his deliverance and the rescue of Namur, and William had Boufflers in the rear if he was beaten by Villeroi.

[481]

SURRENDER OF BOUFFLERS. (See p. 481.)

At Versailles Louis was imploring heaven for victory, with all his Court on their knees, confessing and receiving the Eucharist; and in London the Jacobites, frantic with confident expectation that now William would be annihilated, filled the town with all sorts of horrible rumours and alarms. But after having faced each other for three days, Villeroi saw that the position and numbers of the Allies were too formidable, and he quietly decamped along the river Mehaigne to Boneffe. As Boufflers was now left without hope of succour, the Allies informed him of the retreat of Villeroi and summoned him to surrender without occasioning more slaughter. But there was a tradition in the French army that no marshal of France had ever capitulated, and he stood out until the English, at the cost of two thousand men, had effected a lodgment in the place.

Boufflers now demanded forty-eight hours to bury his dead, which was granted him; and, in truth, he had need of it, for his trenches were choked with the fallen, and his force was already reduced to about one-third its original strength. When he entered the town, the garrison mustered fifteen thousand men; now it was only about five thousand. When the dead were buried, Boufflers offered to surrender in ten days if he were not relieved before; but the Allies would not listen to anything but an immediate surrender, and he complied, on condition that the garrison should be allowed to march out with the honours of war, but leaving the artillery and stores to the conquerors. The Allies announced the surrender to Villeroi by the discharge of their artillery, and by a running fire of all their musketry three times repeated. He knew the meaning of it, and retreated towards Mons.

Accordingly, on the 26th of August, Boufflers marched forth with drums beating and flags flying, William, the Elector of Bavaria, and all the officers being assembled to witness this gratifying spectacle. Boufflers lowered his sword in token of submission to the Elector of Bavaria, and the troops marched on. Before Boufflers, however, passed out of the trenches, Dykvelt informed him that he was the prisoner of the King of England. Boufflers was highly enraged at what he regarded as an act of gross perfidy; but he was informed[482] that he was detained in consequence of his sovereign having broken the cartel, and refused to deliver up the captured garrisons of Dixmude and Deynze, and that he was held as a hostage for the faithful discharge of the articles agreed upon. There was no denying the perfidy of his king, which had caused this incident, and Boufflers sent an express to inform Louis, who immediately returned a promise that the garrisons should be sent back, and Boufflers was forthwith released. On his return to Fontainebleau, he was received by Louis as if he were a conqueror, and created a duke, with a grant of money to enable him to support his new rank. The capture of Namur was the great event of the campaign, and spread exultation throughout all the countries of the Allies. It seemed to wipe out the successive defeats of Mons, Fleurus, Landen, and the former loss of Namur; it showed the Allies at length victorious, and Louis discomfited and on the wane.

William arrived in London from Holland on the 20th of October. He was received with acclamations, illuminations, and ringing of bells. His progress through London and to Kensington was like that of a conqueror. As if he were destined to take no rest, that very day the Council was assembled, and it was concluded to dissolve Parliament. William, however, had been enjoying relaxation at Loo, and no doubt this question of the dissolution of Parliament had been discussed and arranged prior to his arrival. It was deemed wiser to take the nation at this moment when it was in a good humour, than to defer the dissolution till the 25th of next March, when, by the Triennial Act, Parliament must expire, and the public mind might be different. Another motive was said to operate with William—the impeachment of Leeds. William was always very reluctant to bring great delinquents to justice; but in the case of Leeds there were causes for this reluctance which we must respect. It was to Leeds, when he was yet Lord Danby, that William owed his match with Mary, and Mary had ever had the greatest regard for Leeds, who, on his part, had served her assiduously during the king's absences. A new Parliament would not be likely to take up again his impeachment, and, accordingly, the old one was dissolved, and the new one called for the 22nd of November.

This announcement threw into full activity the newly acquired liberty of the press. Since the Revolution, despite the restrictions of the censorship, the press had been extremely busy, and when it was obliged to work in secret, it had been all the more venomous. The Jacobites had employed it to spread sedition and lies, but it now came forward in favour of the king and the Constitution. There were tracts on the election, and besides the old news-letters, there were regular newspapers which advocated their own views, but with a decency and moderation which surprised all parties. Amongst the pamphlets was one—the last literary effort of Halifax—called, "Some Cautions Offered to those who are to Choose Members," which gave some good advice, especially not to choose lawyers, because they were in the habit of pleading on both sides, and were sure to look after their own advancement more than that of the country; nor officers in the army, who, the writer thought, were out of place in Parliament, attempting to do what no man ever can do—serve two masters. He also warned them against pensioners and dependents on the Crown, who do not make good representatives of the people; and against those who, for reasons best known to themselves, had opposed the Triennial Bill. Finally, he bade them seek honest Englishmen, but warned them that they were not very easy to find. The constituencies followed his advice, and the Whig party were victorious. Some of the members of the late Parliament most opposed to Government were not returned—as Sir John Knight, for Bristol, who had been so furious against William's favourite Dutchmen, and Seymour, for Exeter. Neither could John Hampden, who had saved his neck in the Rye House Plot by the loss of character, and had since shown as much insolence in Parliament as he did meanness then, get returned, and in his mortification he committed suicide—to such degeneracy had fallen the grandson of the illustrious patriot.

When Parliament met on the 22nd, they chose Paul Foley as Speaker of the Commons. The king, in his speech, again demanded large supplies for the continuance of the war, and informed them that the funds granted last Session had fallen far short of the expenses. This was by no means agreeable news, and William well knew that there was a large party in the country which complained loudly of this system of foreign warfare, which, like a bottomless gulf, swallowed up all the resources of the country. But he took care to flatter the national vanity by praising the valour of the English soldiers, and by expressing his confidence that England would never consent to the French king making himself master of Europe, and that nothing but the power and bravery of[483] England could prevent it. He complained that his Civil List was fixed so low that he could not live upon it; and, passing from his own affairs, he recommended to their consideration the deplorable state of the coinage.

When the address came to be considered, some strong speeches were delivered against the enormous demands made by the king for this continual war. Musgrave and Howe represented the nation as bleeding to death under this Dutch vampyrism; but William had touched the right chord in the national character, and an address of thanks and zealously promised support was carried. The Commons likewise voted again above five millions for the services of the year.

The first business which occupied the attention of the Commons was the state of the currency. The old silver coin had become so clipped and sweated that, on an average, it now possessed little more than half its proper weight. The consequence was, all transactions in the country were in a state of confusion, and the most oppressive frauds were practised, especially on the poor. They were paid in this nominal coin, but, when they offered it for the purchase of the articles of life, the vendors refused to receive it at more than its intrinsic worth, by which means the price of everything was nearly doubled. The old hammered money was easily imitated, and whilst the clippers went on diminishing the weight of the coin, the forgers were as busy producing spurious imitations of it. The most terrible examples were made of such coiners, till juries refused to send such numbers of them to be hanged. All money-dealers received the coin only at its value by weight, but paid it out by tale, and thus made enormous fortunes. The house of Duncombe, Earls of Feversham, is said to have thus raised itself from insignificance to a coronet.

The House of Lords, therefore, took up the subject of recoinage, and invited the Commons to unite with them in it; but the Commons, considering it a matter more properly belonging to them, went into a committee of the whole House on the subject. The debate continued for several days. There was a strong party opposed to recoinage, on the ground that, if the silver coin were called in, there would be no money to pay the soldiers abroad, nor for merchants to take up their bills of exchange with; that the consequence would be universal stagnation and misery. But at this rate the old coin must have stayed out so long that literally there would none of it be left. It was resolved to have a new coinage; but Lowndes, the Secretary of the Treasury, proposed that the standard should be lowered—in fact, that a nominal instead of a real value should be impressed upon it; that ninepence should be called a shilling—as if thereby any greater value could be given to it. This mode of raising the price of everything by lowering the value of the coinage, which would now be laughed at by the merest tyro in political economy, had then its partisans; but John Locke exploded the whole delusion in a little tract written at the desire of Somers, which showed all the inconveniences and injustice which would flow from a lowered standard. There were, however, other difficulties to be met, and these were, whether the Government or the public should bear the loss of the clipped coin, and by what means it could best be called in. If the Government bore the loss, and ordered all persons to bring in their clipped coin and receive full-weighted coin instead, that would be a direct premium on clipping, and all the coin would be clipped before it was paid in. Somers proposed as a remedy to proclaim that all the hammered coins should henceforth be taken by Government only by weight; but that, after having been weighed within three days, every one should take it back with a note authorising him to receive the difference between the deficiency of weight and the full weight at a future time. By this means Government would have suffered the loss.

Locke, on the contrary, proposed that Government should receive all clipped coin up to a day to be announced, at full value; after that day only at its value by weight; and something of this kind was carried by Montague after a debate in the House. It was ordered that, after a certain day, no clipped money should pass except in payment of taxes, or as loans to Government. After another fixed day, no clipped money should pass in any payment whatsoever; and that, on a third day, all persons should bring in all their clipped money to be recoined, making just what it would, and after that time clipped money should not be a legal tender at any value, or be received at the Mint.

By this plan the holders of clipped money suffered part of the loss where they could not be in time; but the public eventually bore the greatest part of it, for a Bill was brought in to indemnify Government for its share of the loss, by a duty on glass windows, which was calculated to raise twelve hundred thousand pounds. This was the origin of that window-tax which under William Pitt's Government grew to such a nuisance.

In order to meet the demand for milled and unclipped coin to be given in exchange for the clipped[484] coin to be brought in, premiums were offered of five per cent. on good milled money, and of threepence per pound on all plate that should be brought in to be melted into the new coins. The 4th of May, 1696, was fixed as the last day for receiving the clipped money in payment of taxes; and early in February furnaces were at work melting down the old coin into ingots, which were sent to the Tower in readiness, and the coining began. Ten of these furnaces were erected in a garden behind the Treasury; yet, in spite of every endeavour to prevent inconvenience, the Jacobites managed to excite great alarm in the minds of the people. There was a widespread panic that there would be grave personal losses and wrongs, and that all receipts of money would be stopped, and that there would be general distress. The malcontents attacked Montague and the other ministers in the House; the merchants demanded indemnification for the rise which guineas had taken, namely, from twenty shillings and sixpence to thirty shillings, in consequence of the scarcity of the silver coinage; for a guinea now, instead of purchasing twenty shillings' worth of their goods, would purchase one-third more; so that their stocks were reduced one-third in value till the silver coinage was again plentiful. Parliament, to remove this cause of complaint, inserted a clause in the Bill, offering a premium on plate, fixing the price of a guinea at two-and-twenty shillings. Still, however, people imagined that guineas would be scarce, and so gold would rise, and hoarded them up, which made them scarce. But Government worked manfully at the recoining. Mints were set up at York, Bristol, Exeter, and Chester as well as in London, and in less than twelve months the coinage was produced with such success that the English currency, which had been the worst, was now the best in Europe.

The Bill for regulating the trials for high treason was again brought in, and, being still steadily refused by the Lords unless with their clause for granting them the privilege of trying any of their order by the whole House of Peers instead of by the Court of the Lord High Steward, the Commons now gave way, allowed the clause, and the Bill passed. It was ordered to come into force on the 25th of March next, 1696.

The year 1696 opened with a great Jacobite plot. James had tried the effect of declarations proposing to protect the liberties of the subject and the rights of the Established Church, and nobody believed him, and with good reason. Seeing, therefore, that empty pretences availed nothing, he thought seriously of invasion, and of something worse—of preparing his way by the assassination of William. During the winter of 1695-6 Louis fell into his schemes. In 1694 two emissaries, Crosley and Parker, had been sent over from St. Germains to London to excite the Jacobites to insurrection; but they had been discovered and imprisoned. Parker contrived to escape out of the Tower, but Crosley was examined; but, nothing being positively proved against him, he was liberated on bail. It was now resolved to send over fresh and more important agents—one of these no less a person than the Duke of Berwick, James's son, and Sir George Barclay, a Scottish refugee.

The fact was that there were two parts of the scheme. As in the conspiracy of Grey and Raleigh in the time of James I., there was "the main plot" and "the bye plot," so there was here a general scheme for an invasion, and a particular scheme for the assassination of the king. This assassination was to come off first, and an army and transports were to be ready on the French coast, to take advantage of the consternation occasioned by the murder. The management of the general plot was confided to Berwick, and of the murder plot to Barclay. Berwick must be supposed to have been well aware of the assassination scheme from the first, for both James and Louis were, and the whole movements of the army and navy were dependent on it. But if Berwick did not know of it at first, he was made acquainted with it in London, as we shall see; but it was the policy of both Louis, James, and Berwick, to avoid all appearance of a knowledge which would have covered them with infamy;—this was to fall on the lesser tools of their diabolical scheme, and they were to reap the benefit of it.

A mode of communication between the Court of St. Germains and the Jacobites in England had long been established through a man named Hunt, who was a noted smuggler. This man had a house about half a mile from the Sussex coast, on Romney Marsh. The whole country round was a boggy and dreary waste, and therefore, having scarcely an inhabitant, was admirably adapted to the smuggling in of French goods and French plots. There Barclay landed in January and proceeded to London. He was followed in a few days by the Duke of Berwick, and very soon by about twenty coadjutors, some[485] of whom were troopers of James's guard, amongst them one named Cassels, another brigadier Ambrose Rookwood, one of a family which had been in almost every plot since the Gunpowder Plot, and a Major John Bernardi, a man of Italian origin.

CONSPIRATORS LANDING AT ROMNEY MARSH. (See p. 484.)

James saw and instructed many of these men himself before they left St. Germains, and furnished them with funds. He had given Barclay eight hundred pounds to pay expenses and engage assistants, which Barclay complained of as a miserable and insufficient sum. These men were now informed that they must put themselves under the orders of Barclay, and they would easily discover him at evening walking in the piazza of Covent Garden, and might recognise him by his white handkerchief hanging from his pocket. Meanwhile, Barclay had begun to open communication with the most determined Jacobites. The first of these were Charnock—who had originally been a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, but had apostatised, become a violent papistical agitator, and finally an officer in James's army—and Sir William Parkyns, a lawyer and officer of the Court of Chancery, for whilst plotting against the king, he had sworn fidelity to him, and was receiving his pay. These men most gladly united with Barclay, for they had been engaged in the very same design for some time. They assured him that there was no chance of effecting an invasion without preceding it by dispatching William. But to do this they wanted first an authority from James, and to be assured that it would be followed up. Hereupon Barclay showed them his commission from James.

As Barclay's myrmidons arrived from France his hopes grew high; he called them his Janissaries, and said he trusted they would win a Star and Garter for him. He wanted forty for his purposes, and these men made up at once half the number. Fresh desperadoes rapidly joined the band, until it was evident that the number of conspirators was getting far too numerous, and far too indiscriminate in character for safety. It was necessary to use haste, and Barclay tells us he was constantly studying how and where best to accomplish their object. He set two of his gang to haunt the neighbourhood[486] of the Palace, and to learn what they could of the king's movements. They went to Kensington and to every place which William frequented, to find out the most suitable spot and opportunity.

At last the conspirators fixed on Turnham Green as the best for their detestable purpose. They learned that when William returned from hunting he crossed the Thames there by the ferry-boat, not getting out of his carriage, and that he did not wait for his Guards, but drove on from the water side till they overtook him. It was a low, swampy place, hidden amongst bushes at the western end of the Green. The conspirators were now thirty-five, while the King had rarely more than twenty-five Guards with him. The day fixed was Saturday, the 15th of February, for it was on Saturdays that William made these hunting excursions. As soon as they knew that the king had started, the conspirators were to follow in different bodies, and from different directions, so as to avoid observation. They were to remain at small public-houses near the crossing-place, and as soon as their scouts gave them notice of the king's party approaching the Surrey side of the river, they were to put themselves in bylanes, to be ready to intercept him. They were to be divided into four sets, one headed by Porter, one by Charnock, a third by Rookwood, and the fourth by Barclay himself. Two parties were simultaneously to rush upon the coach as it passed a cross road, one from each side; Rookwood was to come from his hiding-place in the rear, and Barclay to appear in front, and to him the death of the King was assigned. Horses and arms were purchased by Barclay for the occasion, and the horses were kept in different stables, so as to excite no suspicion.

All was now in readiness. The Duke of Berwick had remained in London till matters were in this position. He had been equally busy in endeavouring to induce the Jacobite leaders to rise in arms. He told them that his father, with ten thousand soldiers, was lying at Calais ready to cross when this movement was made, but that the King of France would not consent to the army crossing till the English had given proof of their being in earnest to receive King James in arms. Nor could they think this unreasonable; he had twice sent expeditions to co-operate with them, once in 1690, when De Tourville landed in Devonshire, and again in 1692, when his fleet had come up to the very shore in expectation of being joined by the English fleet, but, on the contrary, had been attacked by that fleet, and the losses at La Hogue suffered in consequence. They could not expect Louis to venture his ships and troops again till he saw a real demonstration for James in England; then his army would cross at once. But these representations were all lost on the Jacobites; they continued to say, "Only let James land with an army, and we shall be ready to join him." Berwick returned to France, and hastened to inform James, whom he met on the way to Calais to join the invading army, that there was no chance of a rising in England till a French army landed, but that he had a confident hope that the conspirators would succeed in dispatching William, and then would be the time to cross over. James went on to Calais to the army which Boufflers was called from Flanders to command, and Berwick went on to Versailles to communicate to Louis the state of affairs, and all parties waited for the falling of the blow in England.

Such was now the position of these two monarchs and the Duke of Berwick, whom the Jacobite writers have so confidently endeavoured to clear of the crime of participating in this base scheme of assassination. True, Berwick, whilst in England, would have nothing to do with the conspiracy itself, because, he declared, it was—not criminal, no, that was not his objection—but it was too dangerous, and would probably cause all engaged in it to be hanged. On the safe side of the water, therefore, whilst the humbler ruffians were risking their necks for them, these three arch assassins waited for the signal that the deed was done—a fire which was to be lit on one of the Kentish hills.

Meanwhile the conspiracy was suffering, as might have been expected, from the admission of too many colleagues. As the time approached, Fisher, who had boasted that he would himself kill one of the king's coach-horses, went and informed Portland that there was a design of taking the king's life. Portland at first paid little attention to this information, but it was soon confirmed in a manner which left him no alternative but to apprise the king of it. On the evening of the 14th a Mr. Pendergrass, a Catholic gentleman of Hampshire, waited on Portland, and assured him that if the king went on the morrow to hunt he was certain to be assassinated. Pendergrass said the king was the enemy of his religion, but that his religion would not permit him to see such a thing done without giving him a warning, and he[487] entreated Portland to induce the king not to go out on any account. When pressed to name his accomplices, he declined, saying they were his friends, and one of them his benefactor; he would not betray them. The fact was, that Porter had sent for Pendergrass up from the country to take part in the assassination; but, though he was under great obligations to Porter, he refused. He would have been ready to unite in an invasion, but not in a murder.

The king was with difficulty prevented by Portland from going, but he did stay, and when it was announced to the conspirators that the king had given up hunting for that day, they were a good deal startled; but, as the weather was assigned as the cause, they imagined they were still unbetrayed, and waited for the next Saturday; one of them, Chambers, a great ruffian, who had been severely wounded at the battle of the Boyne, and had a savage malice against William, vowing to have his life yet or lose his own.

Between this day and the next Saturday, however, De la Rue had grown afraid, and went and gave a warning similar to Pendergrass's. On the Friday Pendergrass was sent for to the king's closet, where William was alone with Portland and Lord Cutts, who had fought so bravely at Namur. William was very courteous to Pendergrass, and thanked him for his information, complimented him as a man of honour, but desired him to name the conspirators. Pendergrass persisted in his refusal, except he had the king's assurance that his information should not cause the destruction of these men, but only be used to prevent the commission of the crime. This assurance being solemnly given, he named them. It does not, however, appear that this solemn assurance was kept, for undoubtedly Pendergrass's information was used for the arrest of the conspirators, and though he himself was not brought openly forward in court against them, they were condemned and executed through that means, so that not using his evidence openly was a mere quibble; and even this was laid aside as soon as, at Pendergrass's demand, they had engaged to use Porter's evidence on condition of his safety.

Ignorant of the mine ready charged under their feet, the conspirators anxiously awaited Saturday, the 22nd. This time all outwardly bade fair for success; the usual preparations were made at the palace for the hunting. There had been during the week no sign of any agitation or bustle, nor word dropped which could give the slightest suspicion that their design was known. The Guards were sent off to go round by Kingston Bridge to Richmond, as there was then no bridge nearer. The king's coach came out to take him away, and the conspirators were breakfasting at Porter's lodgings when word was hurriedly brought to them that the coach had been sent back to the stables, and the Guards had come galloping back, saying that a discovery of something terrible had been made. If the men had not been infatuated by their zeal for the assassination, as is very general in such cases, they would now have made the best of their way into some place of security. The return of the Guards in such hurry, and with such rash words, was not very skilful on the part of the Government if they meant to take the conspirators; and, as the arrests were delayed till night, there was ample time for them to have all got off. But they still flattered themselves that, though some whisper of the design had reached the Palace, the actual conspirators were unknown, and they were only the more bent on seizing some instant mode of accomplishing their object.

That night the king's officers were upon them, and Charnock, Rookwood, and Bernardi were taken in their beds. The next day seventeen more were arrested, and three of the Blues also. Barclay had had more cunning than the rest; he had absconded and got safe to France. The Lord Mayor was sent for to Whitehall, and desired to put the City into a perfect state of readiness for action. A council was held; it was agreed to send for some regiments from Flanders in consequence of the preparations at Calais; the Earl of Dorset was sent down to his lieutenancy of Sussex; Sidney, Lord Romney, Warden of the Cinque Ports, was also despatched for the guard of the coast of Kent; and Russell hastened to assume the command of the fleet. On Monday, the 24th, the king went to the House of Lords, sent for the Commons, and announced to the assembled Parliament the discovery of the plot, and the arrest of a number of the traitors. The sensation was intense. The two Houses united in an address of congratulation for the king's safety, with which they went in a body to Kensington, and the same day the Commons passed two Bills, one suspending the Habeas Corpus, and the other declaring that Parliament should not be dissolved by the king's death in case any such conspiracy should succeed. Sir Rowland Gwyn moved that the House should enrol itself as an Association for the defence of the king and country. The idea was instantly seized by Montague, who saw how immensely it would[488] strengthen the Whigs, and the deed was immediately drawn, and ordered to be ready for signature the next morning. In this the House bound itself to defend the king with their own lives against James and his adherents, and to avenge him on his murderers in case of such an assassination, and to maintain the order of succession as fixed by the Bill of Rights.

The next morning the members hurried in to sign the form of Association; and, as some were not present, it was ordered that all who had not signed it within sixteen days should be called upon to do so or formally to refuse. They resolved that any one who declared the Association illegal should be held to be a promoter of the wicked designs of James, and an enemy to the laws and liberties of the country. They prayed the king to banish by proclamation all Papists to a distance of ten miles from the cities of London and Westminster, and to order the judges to put the laws in force throughout the country against Roman Catholics and non-jurors.

The forms of the Association and the address of the two Houses were immediately printed and published, along with a proclamation offering one thousand pounds reward for the discovery and apprehension of each of the conspirators, and one thousand pounds, with a free pardon, to each of the accomplices who should deliver himself up and reveal what he knew. One after another the miscreants were dragged from their hiding-places, or gave themselves up as king's evidence for the thousand pounds and free pardon.

On the 11th of March, Charnock and two others were placed at the bar of the Old Bailey before Lord Chief Justice Holt and other judges. The prisoners demanded that their trials should be postponed till after the 25th of the month, when the new Act for trials for treason came into force, and which allowed counsel to the accused; but the counsel for the Crown would not consent to it—a circumstance which does no honour to William and his ministers, for from them the order to proceed must now have been given. All the accused denied that James knew of or had done anything to sanction the attempt to assassinate the king; but this assertion neither agrees with the depositions made by the other conspirators admitted as evidence, nor with the facts of the case; and, indeed, Charnock left a paper, still in the Bodleian Library of Oxford, in which he declares that the attempt would not have been justifiable had it not been sanctioned by James; that his Majesty's commission did fully justify it, and that it was just as proper to attempt to kill the Prince of Orange at the head of his Guards, serving as they did the king whose throne he had usurped, and who was at war with him, as if he had been at the head of twenty thousand men. They had their king's commission for it, and their king being at declared war, it was quite legitimate to attack and kill William wherever they could meet with him. Despite this high assumption, Charnock, after conviction, offered, if they would pardon him, to reveal the whole particulars of the plot, and the names of every one concerned in it; but there was evidence enough; his offer was not accepted, and the three were executed at Tyburn on the 24th.

The Association into which the Commons had entered for the defence of the king had not yet been made law, but a Bill was now brought in for that purpose. Out of the five hundred and thirteen members of the Commons, four hundred had signed it; but on its reaching the Lords exception was made by the Tories to the words "rightful and lawful sovereign" as applied to William. Even Nottingham, who had so long and faithfully served William, declared that he could not accept them; that William was king de facto he admitted, but not king by rightful succession. He was supported by Rochester, Normanby, and others; but on the Duke of Leeds proposing that the words "rightful and lawful" should be altered to "having right by law," and no other person having such right, singularly enough the Tories acquiesced in the change, though it would not be easy for minds in general to perceive a distinction between being a rightful and lawful sovereign and a sovereign who had a full and, indeed, exclusive right by law. The Commons retained their own form and the Lords theirs. The Bill of the Commons was passed on the 4th of April. It provided that all such persons as refused the oaths to his Majesty should be liable to the forfeitures and penalties of Papist recusants; that all who questioned William's being "a lawful and rightful sovereign" should be subject to heavy penalties; that no person refusing to sign this Association should be capable of holding any office, civil or military, of sitting in Parliament, or being admitted into the service of the Prince or Princess of Denmark. All magistrates, of course, were included in the requirements, and some who refused to sign were dismissed. The Lords were to use their own form, and with this understanding it passed their House without delay. The bishops drew up a form for[489] themselves, and, according to Burnet, not above a hundred clergymen all over England refused to sign. The people everywhere signed the bond with almost universal enthusiasm, even in the most Papist districts, as Lancashire and Cheshire.

BISHOP BURNET.

Before this remarkable session closed, a Bill was brought in to check the corruption of elections. It had now become common for moneyed men to go down to country boroughs and buy their way into Parliament by liberal distribution of their gold. It was, therefore, proposed to introduce a property qualification for members of Parliament; that a member for a county should be required to possess five hundred pounds a year in land, and a member for a town three hundred pounds a year in land. It was even proposed to adopt the ballot, but that was rejected. The Bill itself was carried through both Houses, but William declined to ratify it. The towns abounded with Whigs, and had stood stoutly by him, and it appeared to be a sweeping infringement on their privileges to debar them from electing men in whom they had confidence because they were not landed proprietors, though they might otherwise be wealthy as well as duly qualified for such duties.

He ratified, however, another Bill intended for the benefit of the landed gentry. This was for the establishment of Hugh Chamberlayne's Land Bank. Unsound and delusive as the principles of this scheme were, it had the great attraction to the landowners of offering them extensive accommodation and a fancied accession of wealth, and to William the further advance of a large sum for his wars. The Bank of England had only furnished him with one million at eight per cent.;[490] this Land Bank was to lend him two millions and a half at seven per cent. It was ratified by William, and the Parliament was prorogued the same day, April the 27th.

At home the confusion and distress were indescribable, and lasted all the year. In the spring and till autumn it was a complete national agony. The last day for the payment of the clipped coin into the Treasury was the 4th of May. As that day approached there was a violent rush to the Exchequer to pay in the old coin and get new. But there was very little new ready, and all old coin that was not clipped was compelled to be allowed to remain out some time longer. Notwithstanding this, the deficiency of circulating medium was so great that even men of large estate had to give promissory notes for paying old debts, and take credit for procuring the necessaries of life. The notes of the new Bank of England and of the Lombard Street money-changers gave also considerable relief; but the whole amount of notes and coin did not suffice to carry on the business of the nation. Numbers of work-people of all kinds were turned off because their employers had not money to pay them with. The shopkeepers could not afford to give credit to every one, and, as their trade stagnated in consequence, they were compelled to sacrifice their commodities to raise the necessary sums to satisfy their own creditors. There was a heavy demand on the poor rates, and the magistrates had orders to have sufficient force in readiness to keep down rioting. This distress was aggravated by those who had new milled money, hoarding it up lest they should get no more of it, or in expectation that its scarcity would raise its value enormously, and that they could pay their debts to a great advantage, or purchase what they wanted at still greater advantage.

The Jacobites were delighted with this state of things, and did all they could to inflame the people against the Government, which they said had thus needlessly plunged the nation in such extreme suffering. There were numbers of exciting tracts issued for this purpose, and especially by a depraved priest named Grascombe, who urged the people to kill the members of Parliament who had advocated the calling in of the silver coin. To make the calamity perfect, the Land Bank had proved as complete a bubble as Montague and other men of discernment had declared it would. The landed gentry wanted to borrow from it, not to invest in it; its shares remained untaken; and it found, when the Government demanded the two million six hundred thousand pounds which it had pledged itself to advance, that its coffers were empty; and it ceased to exist, or rather to pretend to have any life.

The bursting of the Land Bank bubble was severely trying to the new Bank of England. The failure of the one alarmed the public as to the stability of the other, and the Jacobites and the Lombard Street rival money-lenders lent their cordial aid to increase the panic. The Lombard Street bankers made a vigorous run upon the bank. They collected all its paper that they could lay hands on, and demanded instant payment in hard cash. Immediately after the 4th of May, when the Government had taken in the bulk of the money, and had issued out very little, they made a dead set against the bank. One goldsmith alone presented thirty thousand pounds in notes. The bank resolved to refuse the payment of the notes thus obviously presented in order to ruin it, and then the Lombard Street bankers exultingly announced everywhere that the boasted new institution was insolvent. But the bank, leaving the Lombard Street goldsmiths to seek a remedy at law, continued to give cash for all notes presented by the fair creditors, and the public steadily supported them in this system, and condemned the selfish money-dealers. Montague also contrived to relieve the tightness to a considerable extent by availing himself of a clause in the Act of the Land Bank, empowering Government to issue a new species of promissory notes, bearing interest on security of the annual taxes. These bills, called now and henceforward Exchequer Bills, were issued from a hundred pounds to five pounds, and were everywhere received with avidity. They also urged on the mints in the production of the new coinage, and to facilitate this they made Sir Isaac Newton Master of the Mint, who exerted himself in his important office with extraordinary zeal and patriotism.

In August, William sent Portland over from Flanders, where the campaign was almost wholly barren of events, to bring him money for the subsistence of his troops by some means. The failure of the Land Bank made his demand appear hopeless; but the Government applied to the Bank of England, and, notwithstanding it's own embarrassments, it advanced to the Government two hundred thousand pounds on the 15th of August, and that in hard cash, for it was plainly told that its paper was of no use in Flanders. Yet to such extremities was the bank reduced that at the same time it was obliged to pay its demands by[491] three-fourths the value of its notes in cash, marking that amount as paid on the notes, and returning them into circulation reduced to one-fourth of their original value. As the bank, however, so bravely supported the Government, the Government determined as firmly to support the bank; and the public confidence, which had never entirely failed it, from this moment grew stronger and stronger. As the year drew towards a close, the rapidly increasing issue of the new coin began to reduce the intensity of the distress, and the forbearance of creditors of all kinds enabled the nation to bear up wonderfully, much to the chagrin of its enemies both at home and abroad, where the most ridiculous stories of English poverty and ruin were circulated.

But, except the trouble arising from the coinage, the great event during William's absence had been the capture of Sir John Fenwick, and his examination, with the view of tracing the further ramifications of the conspiracy in which he had been engaged. Fenwick, if not engaged in the assassination scheme, was charged by Porter and the other king's evidence with being fully privy to it, and deep in the plot for the invasion. He was a man of high birth, high connections, being married to a sister of the Earl of Carlisle, had held high office in the state, and was a most indefatigable and zealous traitor. During the king's absence, and when the Jacobites were in great spirits, hoping to drive out William, he had shown the most marked and unmanly disrespect to the queen. It was not, therefore, likely that he would escape the just punishment of his treason if he were caught. For a long time he managed to conceal himself, and during his concealment he and his friends were hard at work to remove the only witnesses that he dreaded. These were Porter and a person named Goodman. The Earl of Aylesbury, who was also in the Tower on a similar charge, was equally anxious to have these two men out of the way, and the friends of both plotters united to get rid of them by bribery. For this purpose, besides the active personal exertions of Lady Fenwick, they employed two Irishmen of their party—one Clancey, a barber, and Donelagh, a disbanded captain.

Clancey met Porter at a tavern, and offered him three hundred guineas down, three hundred more as soon as he landed in France, and an annuity of one hundred pounds a year. Porter was greatly tempted by the offer, and at length consented to accept it. A day was fixed for the payment of the first three hundred guineas at the tavern, but, on reflection in the interval, he did not like the prospect of having to face at St. Germains the king whose agents he had betrayed to death, and the friends and associates of those agents. He saw that nothing could obtain their forgiveness, or prevent them from taking mortal revenge on him. He therefore posted to the Secretary of State, and revealed the whole affair. The necessary measures were taken, and Porter attended punctually at the meeting with Clancey. He received the three hundred guineas, and then, giving a concerted signal, the officers of Government rushed in and secured Clancey, who was tried for subornation, convicted, and set in the pillory.

This discovery, through the double treachery of Porter, alarmed Fenwick for his personal safety. He no longer deemed himself secure in the kingdom, for he had taken such part in the attempt to win over Porter—writing a letter for him to take with him to St. Germains to secure his good reception there—that it was too obvious that he was not far off. Porter was indemnified for his loss of the promised annuity by a much better one from William's government—no less than two hundred and fifty pounds a year—and would undoubtedly, if possible, hunt out Fenwick. Sir John, therefore, made prompt arrangements for his own escape to France. There was no time to be lost; he was indicted at the next sessions in the City for treason. Porter and Goodman gave evidence before the grand jury, who returned a true bill. Sir John managed to escape to near Romney Marsh, where a vessel was to take him off, but, unfortunately, on the way he met an officer, who had been apprehending two smugglers. The man knew him, and offered the smugglers a pardon and reward to assist in seizing him. Sir John fled, and they pursued; and he is said to have been taken in the end near Slyfield Mill, between Stoke Dabernon and Bookham, in Surrey.

Sir John had contrived, after being taken, to write a letter to his wife, by one Webber who was with him, in which he declared that all was now over unless she could get her relatives, the Howards, to intercede for him. They might promise for him that he would spend his life abroad, and would pledge himself never to draw a sword against the present government. If that could not be done, the only chance left was to bribe a juryman to starve out the jury.

This letter was intercepted, and when Sir John[492] was brought before the Lords Justices at Whitehall, and he appeared very high, and denied the charges against him indignantly, it was laid before him to his sudden terror and confusion. He saw how completely he had committed himself by his confession, and he turned pale, and seemed half inclined to admit his guilt. In the silence of his prison he revolved another scheme, and on the 10th of August, two months after his apprehension, he presented a memorial to the Duke of Devonshire, offering to disclose to the king all that he knew of the plots, with every one concerned in them, and throwing himself on the mercy of the king. Having so fully betrayed his own guilt, this seemed the only chance of obtaining a lenient judgment. Devonshire sent over the memorial to William in Holland, and was desired by him to receive Fenwick's confession.

OLD MERCERS' HALL, WHERE THE BANK OF ENGLAND WAS FIRST ESTABLISHED.

This was in due time written down and delivered, and, had it been a real revelation of the plots and their agents, would have probably obtained considerable indulgence for him. But it disclosed nothing that was not already well known to William. Passing over all the other parties who were secretly engaged in labouring for the overthrow of William's government and the restoration of James—persons whose names and doings would have been of the utmost value to the Government—he merely accused Marlborough, Russell, Godolphin, and Shrewsbury. The intrigues of all these were far more familiar to William and his intimate friends than they were to Fenwick. William and Devonshire were disappointed. The whole thing had the air of a ruse to hide the still undiscovered delinquents, and make a merit of a stale and useless piece of information. Devonshire, on forwarding the list, observed that, whatever these noblemen had been, they were, to all appearance, very firm to the king now. William, on reading Fenwick's paper, was incensed. "I am astonished," he wrote to Shrewsbury, "at the fellow's effrontery. Observe this honest man's sincerity: he has nothing to say, except against my friends. Not a word about the plans of his brother Jacobites." He ordered the prisoner to be brought to trial without delay.

Fenwick, in fact, had only insured his own[493] doom. He probably thought William was not aware of the double-dealing of his own ministers, and that he should be able to throw a bombshell into the Whig camp, while he screened his own fellow-seditionists; but he found he had to deal with a man much more sagacious than himself. William ordered the confession of Sir John to be laid before the Lords Justices, and himself acquainted some of the accused of what it contained, and expressed his contempt of it. Marlborough and Russell, if they had not before made up their minds to avoid any further tampering with St. Germains, seem from this moment to have done so. It was clear their secret was not only well known to William, but, pretty generally, to the agents of James. Marlborough, however, took it calmly; Russell made a great pretence of innocence, and demanded inquiry. Shrewsbury alone seemed dismayed and overcome by it. He wrote to William, admitting that Lord Middleton, James's secretary, had been over several times, and had visited him, but this he attributed to their nearness of kinship. He said—"One night at supper, when he was pretty well in drink, he told me he intended to go beyond seas, and asked me if I could command him no service. I then told him, by the course he was taking, it would never be in his power to do himself or his friends service; and if the time should come that he expected, I looked upon myself as an offender not to be forgiven." Shrewsbury added that perhaps these accusations "might render him incapable of serving William"—meaning that he might not think him fit to retain the Seals under such a suspicion by the public, but that, if he could not answer for the generality of the world, yet the noble and frank manner in which his Majesty had used him on that occasion would ever be acknowledged by him with all gratitude.

LADY FENWICK INTERCEDING FOR HER HUSBAND. (See p. 496.)

Fenwick, perceiving the fatal blunder that he had made, sent in a second confession; but this appeared rather to absolve James and his adherents from any knowledge of the baser plan of assassination, and from having sanctioned the scheme of seizing William's person, than to throw[494] any new light on the real workers in the treason. Things were in this position when William returned on the 6th of October. The courtiers at once flocked to Kensington to pay their respects to his majesty, and amongst them the noblemen who had been so deeply accused by Fenwick, with the single exception of Shrewsbury. William received them all most graciously, and asked where Shrewsbury was. He was informed that he was ill, and the next day the duke himself wrote to say that he had had a fall from his horse, had received considerable injury, and was incapable of travelling. But the king and the other ministers well knew that the real cause was his extreme sensitiveness, which made him ashamed to face his sovereign after the discovery of his delinquency; and both they and William wrote to urge his appearance at Court as soon as possible. William said—"You are much wanted here. I am impatient to embrace you, and to assure you that my esteem for you is undiminished." Somers wrote to him that unless he appeared in his place at Court it would convince the public that he felt the justice of Fenwick's charge.

But Shrewsbury, whose mind so readily preyed on itself, could not bring himself to face the king, and sent to request leave to resign the Seals. With a magnanimity wonderfully different to that of Henry VIII., who would have had all these nobles' heads off in a few days, William would not hear of his resignation, telling the duke that it would bring the worst suspicions on him; and, more on Shrewsbury's account than his own, he insisted on his keeping the Seals. At length he consented, but still dared not go to town, but remained in the seclusion of his home amongst the wilds of Gloucestershire.

On the 20th of October William opened the session of Parliament with a speech in which he reviewed the troubles and difficulties of the past year. He admitted the distress which the endeavours to restore the coinage to a healthy state had occasioned; the pressure caused by the limited coinage being yet only partly relieved. He avowed that the liberal funds voted in the last session had fallen far short of the public needs, and that the Civil List could not be maintained without further aid; but, on the other hand, he contended that they had many causes of congratulation. Abroad the enemy had obtained no advantage, and at home the fortitude and temper with which the nation had struggled through the hardships attending the recoinage—increased as these had been by the fears or selfishness of those who had hoarded their money—were admirable. A little time must bear them through this, and he had to inform them that he had received overtures of peace from France. He should be prepared to accept proper terms, but the way to obtain them was to treat sword in hand. He therefore recommended them to be at once liberal and prompt in voting the supplies. He recommended to their sympathy the French Protestants, who were in a most miserable condition, and he trusted to their taking efficient measures for the maintenance of the public credit.

The Commons, on retiring to their House, at the instance of Montague, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, passed three resolutions, which demonstrated the confidence of the country in the Government, and constituted in themselves the most absolute defeat of all the grumblers and malcontents possible. Montague had advocated the Bank of England; that had succeeded. He had denounced the scheme of the Land Bank; that had proved, as he declared it to be, a delusion, and had brought ruin on its projectors. He had carried the plans of Government for the restoration of the coinage stoutly through the most unexampled crises. When the paper of the Bank of England was fluctuating in value, the enemies of Government casting suspicion on it, so that it would occasionally sink one-fourth of its value in the course of a single day; when both the Allies and the enemies of England fancied that her credit was gone and her resources exhausted, Montague knew better, and by his spirit and eloquence kept the machine of Government going, and now he reached a point of unquestionable triumph. The credit of the country was no longer falling, but rising; the coinage was fast assuming a position which it had never enjoyed for ages, and the confidence of Parliament displayed itself in its votes. The resolutions which confounded the adversaries of William's Government, and which have often been referred to as motives for encouragement in periods of Governmental distress, were these:—First, that the Commons would support the king against all foreign and domestic enemies; secondly, that the standard of gold and silver should not be altered; thirdly, that they would make good all Parliamentary funds established since the king's succession. An address was passed on the basis of these resolutions, which was followed by another from the Lords, and the Commons proceeded in the same spirit to vote six millions for the current expenses of the year.

[495]

The great topic of the remainder of the session was the inquiry into the guilt of Sir John Fenwick. In denouncing the noblemen named in his confession, he had made them and their adherents his mortal enemies. The Whigs were deeply incensed through the accusation of Russell and Shrewsbury, and the Whigs were now more influential than ever. Instead of damaging them and embarrassing William, Fenwick had fatally damaged himself. As for Godolphin, who was the only Tory in the Ministry, they contrived to get him to offer his resignation, which, unlike that of Shrewsbury, was accepted, so that the Whigs had now a ministry wholly of their party. Russell was loud in his demands of vengeance, and William, at the suggestion of the Whigs, sent for Fenwick, and insisted that he should supply further information as to the real conspirators, whom he had evidently purposely screened. Fenwick declined, and William gave him to understand that he had nothing more to expect from him.

The stubbornness of Fenwick soon received an explanation. His wife had managed to corrupt Goodman, the second witness against him. An annuity of five hundred pounds had been offered him to abscond, accompanied by the menace of assassination if he refused. He consented to flee, and was accompanied by an agent, named O'Brien, to St. Germains. Fenwick now believed himself safe, as no man could be condemned on a charge of high treason upon the evidence of one witness. But the vengeance of his enemies was not thus to be defeated. Sir John might have recollected how often the end in such cases had been secured by a Bill of Attainder. Fenwick himself had been a zealous advocate for such a Bill against Monmouth. When it became known that Goodman was spirited away, the exasperation of the Commons was extreme. On the 6th of November Russell vehemently demanded of the House that it should examine and decide whether the accused parties were guilty or not. Before proceeding to extremities the Commons, however, called Sir John before them, and offered to intercede with the king on his behalf if he made a full and immediate confession. But he would not consent to become the informer against his own party, and was remanded. It was then resolved, by a hundred and seventy-nine votes to sixty-one that a Bill of Attainder should be brought in. The two parties put forth all their strength, and the Bill was not carried till the 26th. For twenty days the eloquence and influence of the House were in violent agitation. The Tories were seen contending for the liberty of the subject, which they had so often overridden by such bills, and the Whigs as vehemently pressed on the measure as they had formerly denounced similar ones when directed against those of their own party.

During the debates the depositions of Goodman made before the Grand Jury, fully implicating Sir John in the conspiracy, were laid before the House in support of the evidence of Porter. Goodman's absence was proved, to the satisfaction of the House, to be owing to the inducements and exertions of Fenwick's friends; and two of the grand jurymen were examined, and detailed the evidence received by them from Goodman on his examination, fully agreeing with that sent in in writing. Some petty jurymen, also, who had decided the case of another conspirator, confirmed this evidence. The Commons had proof enough of his guilt, though it might want the legal formality of two direct witnesses.

In the Lords the Earl of Monmouth made an adroit movement in favour of Sir John. He defended him warmly, at the same time that he sent to him in prison, through the Duchess of Norfolk, his cousin, a scheme for defeating his enemies. He advised him to maintain the truth of his confession, to declare that he derived his information from high quarters, and to beg the king to demand of the Earls of Portland and Romney whether the information in their possession against the noblemen implicated did not correspond with his own; the king, moreover, should be urged to lay before Parliament the evidence on which he had suddenly dismissed Marlborough, and any letters intercepted on their way from St. Germains to these parties. This would have been a thunderbolt to the Government, and Monmouth awaited in exultation its effect. But Sir John disappointed him. He feared to exasperate further the king and his judges the Lords, to whom the accused belonged, and did not take the hint. Monmouth, incensed, then turned against him himself. Marlborough exerted himself with all his power to condemn him, even getting the Prince of Denmark to go and vote against him. The bishops remained, and voted, eight of them, against the passing of the Bill. Burnet and Tenison, however, both spoke and voted for it, with little regard to the practice that the prelates should take no part in advocating measures of blood. The Lords Godolphin and Bath, though both amongst those accused by Fenwick, voted in his favour, and Shrewsbury absented himself from the debate. The Duke of[496] Devonshire, too, to whom he had carried his confession, voted against the Bill. Sir John offered to make a full disclosure on condition of receiving a full pardon, but this was not accorded him, and he refused further confession on any other terms. At length, on the 27th of December, the Bill was carried, but only by a majority of seven—sixty-eight votes to sixty-one. Forty-one lords, including eight bishops, entered a protest on the journal against the decision.

Unfortunately for Monmouth, the friends of Sir John were so incensed at his turning round against him, that the Earl of Carlisle, Lady Fenwick's brother, produced to the House the papers which he had sent to Sir John in prison, and stated the censures on the king with which he had accompanied them. A tempest suddenly burst over his head, of indescribable fury. The Whigs were exasperated at his endeavouring to sacrifice Russell and Shrewsbury to save Fenwick, and the Tories at his endeavouring to sacrifice Marlborough and Godolphin, and at his treacherously deserting Sir John for not following his advice. He was committed to the Tower, deprived of all his places, and his name erased from the list of privy councillors.

Parliament having passed this Act, adjourned for the Christmas holidays, and every exertion was made to obtain a pardon for Sir John. His wife threw herself at the feet of William, but he only replied that he must consult his ministers before he could give an answer. On the 11th of January, 1697, he put his signature to the Bill. When Parliament met again she presented a petition to the House of Lords, praying them to intercede with the king to commute the sentence to perpetual banishment, but without success. On the 28th of January Fenwick was conducted to execution on Tower Hill. On the scaffold he delivered to the sheriff a sealed paper, in which he complained of the irregularity of the proceeding against him, denied any participation in the plan of assassination, but confessed his attachment to James, and his belief in the right of the Prince of Wales after him.

After an abortive attempt to pass a Bill establishing a property qualification for the Commons, another to put the press again under the licensing system, and another to abolish those dens of protected crime, the Savoy and Whitefriars, Parliament was prorogued on the 16th of April.

Whilst this desperate conflict had been going on between Whig and Tory in England, in Scotland a most useful measure had passed the Scottish Parliament, namely, an Act establishing a school and schoolmaster in every parish, and to this admirable Act it is that Scotland owes the superior intelligence of its working classes. At the same time the rigid bigotry of the clergy perpetrated one of the most revolting acts in history. A youth of eighteen, named Thomas Aikenhead, had picked up some of the sceptical notions of Hobbes and Tindal, and was arrested, tried, and hanged for blasphemy between Leith and Edinburgh. It was in vain that he expressed the utmost repentance for his errors, the ministers were impatient for his death, and he died accordingly, to the disgrace of the Presbyterian Church and the whole country.

William embarked for Holland on the 26th of April, having before his departure made several promotions. To the disgust of many, Sunderland was appointed one of the Lords Justices and Lord Chamberlain. The Protestants wondered that a man who had apostatised when there was a Popish king, should find such favour with a Presbyterian one; and the honourable-minded that a man who had stooped to so many dirty acts and arts should be thus exalted by a prince of sober morals. But William's only excuse was that his ministers were so bad that there was little to choose in their principles, and that he employed them not for their virtues but their abilities. Russell was rewarded for running down Fenwick with the title of Earl of Orford; the Lord Keeper Somers was elevated to the full dignity of Lord Chancellor, and created Baron Somers of Evesham. Montague was made First Lord of the Treasury, in place of Godolphin; Lord Wharton, in addition to his post of Comptroller of the Household, was appointed Chief Justice in Eyre, south of the Trent; and his brother, Godwin Wharton, became a Lord of the Admiralty.

The campaign in Flanders was commenced by the French with an activity apparently intended to impress upon the Allies their ample ability to carry on the war, although, in fact, never had France more need of peace. Its finances were exhausted, its people were miserable; but far more than the sufferings of his subjects to Louis were the ambitious projects which he was now particularly cherishing. John Sobieski, the brave deliverer of Vienna from the Turks, the King of Poland, was dead, and Louis was anxious to place the Prince of Conti on the throne of that kingdom. He had, however, a still more weighty motive for peace. The King of Spain, the sickly and imbecile Charles II., was fast hastening to[497] the tomb. He was childless; no provision was made by the Spanish Government for filling the throne, and Louis of France was watching for his death. Louis himself was married to the elder sister of the Spanish king, and the Dauphin was thus next in succession, but the marriage had been attended by a renunciation of rights. The question was one of great intricacy; and we will postpone for the present a discussion of the rights of the Dauphin and the rival claimants—the Archduke Charles and the Electoral Prince. But if the throne of Spain fell vacant during the alliance, the Allies, and William amongst them, would support the Emperor's claims. Accordingly, it was to the interest of the Emperor to prolong the war, and to the interest of Louis to end it.

LORD SOMERS. (After the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller.)

Spain and Germany, therefore, were averse from peace. William and Louis were the only parties, each for his own purposes, really anxious for it. Louis, early in the spring, had made overtures to Dykvelt through Cailleres, which were really surprising. They were no less than to relinquish all the conquests made by him during the war, to restore Lorraine to its duke, Luxemburg to Spain, Strasburg to the Empire, and to acknowledge William's title to the crown of England without condition or reserve. Such terms the Allies never could have expected. They were a renunciation by the ambitious Louis of all that he had been fighting for during so many years—of all that he had drained his kingdom of its life and wealth to accomplish. That he contemplated maintaining the peace any longer than till he had secured Spain and Poland is not to be supposed. If he obtained peace now, these objects would[498] become more feasible, and he knew that William, his most formidable enemy, would have disbanded his army, and would have to create a new one and a new alliance before he could take the field again to oppose him.

These undoubtedly were Louis's notions, and it was plausibly urged by Spain and Austria that it was better now to press him as he was sinking till he was perfectly prostrate, and then bind him effectually. But, on the other hand, William felt that England and Holland had to bear the brunt of the war; that it was all very well for Spain and Germany to cry "Keep on," but the fact was, they did little or nothing towards keeping on. The Germans had no union, and, therefore, no strength. They sent excuses instead of their contingents and instead of money to pay their share of the cost of the war. When they did rise, they were nearly always behind their time and divided in their counsels. As for Spain, it literally did nothing to defend its own territories. The whole of Flanders would have been lost but for William and his Dutch and English troops. Catalonia would have been lost but for Russell and his fleet. Moreover, without consulting the Allies, Spain had joined in a treaty with Savoy and France to save its Milanese territory, and to the extreme prejudice of the Allies, it had, by releasing the French armies from Italy, increased the force in Flanders. William was greatly incensed by the endeavours of these Powers to continue the war; and Louis, as the best spur to their backwardness, determined to seize Brussels, and conduct himself as if bent on active aggression.

Catinat, relieved from his command in Savoy, had now joined Villeroi and Boufflers in Flanders, and these generals determined to surprise Brussels. They first advanced on the little town of Ath, and William, who was but just recovering from an attack of illness, uniting his forces with those of the Elector of Bavaria, endeavoured to prevent them. He was, however, too late; but he marched hastily towards Brussels to defend it against Villeroi and Boufflers. He passed over the very ground on which the battle of Waterloo was long afterwards fought, and posted himself on the height whence Villeroi had bombarded the city two years before. Neither side, however, was anxious to engage and incur all the miseries of a great battle, with the prospect of a near peace. They therefore entrenched themselves and continued to lie there for the rest of the summer, awaiting the course of events. Louis, however, assailed the King of Spain in another quarter—Catalonia. There Vendôme attacked the viceroy and defeated him, and invested Barcelona, which, though bravely defended by the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, was obliged to capitulate. At the same time came the news of another blow. Louis had sent out a squadron under Admiral Pointes to attack the Spanish settlements in the West Indies, and he had sacked and plundered the town of Carthagena, and carried home an immense treasure. These disasters made Spain as eager for peace as she had before been averse, and the Emperor of Germany was obliged to cease talking of returning to the position of the Treaty of Westphalia—a state of things totally out of the power of the Allies to restore.

The Plenipotentiaries of the different Powers now at last were ordered to meet; the only question was, Where? The Emperor proposed Aix-la-Chapelle or Frankfort, but Louis objected to any German town, but was willing that the place should be the Hague. It was at length settled to be the Hague. The Ambassadors of the Allies were to occupy the Hague itself; and the French, Delft, about five miles distant. Midway between these towns lies the village of Ryswick, and close to it a palace belonging then to William, called Neubourg House. There it was determined that the Plenipotentiaries should meet for business. The palace was admirably adapted, by its different entrances and alleys, for the approach of the different bodies of diplomatists without any confusion, and there was a fine, large, central hall for their deliberations. There appeared for England the Earl of Pembroke, the Viscount Villiers, Sir Joseph Williamson, and Matthew Prior, the poet, as their secretary. For the Emperor, the gruff Kaunitz, the celebrated Imperial Minister, was at the head of the German referees. For France came Harlay, Crecy, and Cailleres. Don Quiros was the Minister of Spain, and there were whole throngs of the representatives of the lesser Powers. The Minister of Sweden, Count Lilienroth, was appointed mediator, and, after various arrangements regarding precedence, on the 9th of May the Plenipotentiaries met; but, it seemed, only to entangle themselves in a multitude of absurd difficulties regarding their respective ranks and titles. The Ambassadors of Spain and of the Emperor were the most ridiculous in their punctilios. Then came the news of the death of the King of Sweden (Charles XI.), and the waiting of the mediator for a renewal of his powers, and for putting himself into mourning, and it was the middle of June before any real business had been[499] done. William grew out of patience, and determined to take a shorter cut to the object in view. He empowered Portland to arrange with Boufflers, with whom he had become acquainted at the time of the latter's arrest at Namur, the preliminaries of a peace between France, England, and Holland. Portland and Boufflers met at a country house near Hal, about ten miles from Brussels on the road to Mons, and within sight of the hostile armies. The questions to be settled between these two plain and straightforward negotiators were these:—William demanded that Louis should bind himself not to assist James, directly or indirectly, in any attempt on the throne of England, and that James should no longer be permitted to reside in France. These demands being sent by express to Paris, Louis at once agreed to the first requisition, that he should engage never to assist James in any attempt on England; but as to the second, he replied that he could not, from honour and hospitality, banish James from France, but he would undertake to induce him to remove to Avignon, if he did not voluntarily prefer going to Italy. William accepted this modified acquiescence. On the other hand, Louis demanded from William that he should give an amnesty to all the Jacobites, and should allow Mary of Modena her jointure of fifty thousand pounds a year.

William peremptorily refused to grant the amnesty—that was an interference with the prerogative of his crown which he could permit to no foreign Power. The jointure he was willing to pay, on condition that the money should not be employed in designs against his crown or life, and that James, his queen, and Court, should remove to Avignon and continue to reside there. Neither the residence of the exiled family nor the matter of the jointure was to be mentioned in the treaty, but William authorised his Plenipotentiaries at the Congress to say that Mary of Modena should have everything which on examination should be found to be lawfully her due. This, indeed, may be considered an ambiguous phrase, for Mary, as well as James, being deposed, all her legal rights connected with the Crown had lapsed. William was afterwards much blamed for the non-payment of this jointure; but those who charged him with breach of faith knew very well that the jointure was only conditionally offered, and that the conditions were altogether disregarded.

The ceremonious and do-nothing Plenipotentiaries were greatly startled by the news that Portland and Boufflers were continually meeting, and were supposed to be actually making a treaty without them. A thing so irregular, so undiplomatic, was unheard of; but William was a man of business, and, in spite of forms and ceremonies, pushed on the treaty and concluded it. Spain, which had arranged a separate treaty in Savoy, was especially scandalised. But still more was James alarmed and incensed. He addressed two memorials to the princes of the confederacy—one to the Catholic Princes, entreating them to unite with him against England for his rights, reminding them that his case was theirs, and that the English revolution was setting a fatal precedent for them; the other was to the princes at large, warning them against infringing his inalienable rights by entering into any agreement with the usurper to transfer his crown and dignity to him. These producing no effect, he issued a third, protesting against any engagements they might enter into to his prejudice, or the prejudice of his son; and declaring that he should himself never feel bound by any of them.

If Louis was not moved by his entreaties and remonstrances, it was not likely that the princes who had for eight years been fighting in alliance with his rival would. Perhaps, however, James felt it only his duty to put in his disclaimer. The negotiations went on. Besides the terms offered by France to William and his Allies being accepted by all except the Emperor, it was agreed that Commissioners should meet in London from France to settle the respective pretensions of France and England to the territories of Hudson's Bay. The Dutch made a separate treaty of commerce with France. France surrendered all conquests made since the Treaty of Nimeguen, and placed the chief fortresses in the Low Countries in the hands of Dutch garrisons; except eighty towns and villages, which the French claimed from longer possession, and the right to which was to be determined by commissioners, with a power of appeal to the States-General. A demand of toleration was made on behalf of the French Protestants, but was refused on the same ground as William refused the amnesty to the Jacobites—interference with the prerogative of Louis. On the 10th of July the representatives of the Emperor were asked by the French to sign, but, on declining, the 21st of August was fixed as the last day on which France would be bound by its offer. William and the rest of the Allies were greatly exasperated at this refusal of the Emperor. The 21st arrived, and, the[500] Commissioners not signing, the representatives of France declared his most Christian Majesty had now withdrawn Strasburg from his offer, and would annex it for ever to his realm; and, moreover, if the treaty were not signed on or before the 10th of September, he should not hold himself bound by the rest of his engagements.

WILLIAM'S TRIUMPHANT PROCESSION TO WHITEHALL. (See p. 501.)

[501]

On the 10th the rest of the Allies signed the treaty, but the Emperor still held out, and a further time was allowed him, namely, till the 1st of November. On the 11th of September an event occurred which made the resistance of the Emperor the more obstinate for a time. Prince Eugene fought a great battle at Zenta against the Sultan in person, completely routed the Turks, and killed or caused to be drowned in the Theiss the Grand Vizier, the Aga of the Janissaries, and thirty thousand of the enemy. There were six thousand more wounded or taken prisoners, with their artillery, baggage, tents, ammunition, and provisions. The Grand Seignior himself escaped with difficulty, whilst the Imperialists lost only about one thousand men in the action. The Emperor hoped that such a brilliant victory would induce the Allies to prolong the war; but, as it produced no such effect, he was obliged to comply. The petty princes, who had done nothing during the war but create delays and embarrassments, stood out to the very last on the demand that the Lutheran religion should be restored in Louis's territories, where it had been put down; but they stood out in vain. The treaty was duly signed and ratified at the time fixed.

The new treaty produced very different sensations in France and England. In France there was much murmuring. For what, it was asked, had the king been fighting all these years? He had given up everything, and could only have done that under defeat. The Court of St. Germains and James's adherents were in despair. In England the most riotous joy broke forth. There were all the usual demonstrations of such occasions—bonfires, drinking, and firing of guns. The bells rang out from every steeple, and the Bank of England stocks, which were at twenty per cent. below par, rose to par. The Jacobites cursed Louis for a traitor to the cause of James, and fled to hide themselves. The rejoicings were equally enthusiastic all over the kingdom.

When William entered his capital it was a regular triumph. From Greenwich to Whitehall it was one dense crowd of hurrahing people; troops of militia and train-bands, the City authorities attending him in all their paraphernalia, the Foot Guards standing under arms at Whitehall, and the windows all the way crowded with handsome or excited faces. The 2nd of December was appointed as a day of public thanksgiving, and the new cathedral of St. Paul's was crowded by its first great assemblage on the occasion. There were deputations bringing zealous addresses to the foot of the Throne, and foremost and most loyal in language amongst them was that of the University of Oxford, which had so long distinguished itself by its Toryism and devotion to the Stuarts.

There was cause, indeed, for joy; for the country was for a time freed from the most exhausting war in which it had ever been engaged. It had passed through it with credit, though its armies and navies were in a great measure commanded by traitors. Its wealth and credit were higher than ever; and, above all, the tone and temper of the nation were sure guarantees that the return of James or his son was the most impossible of things. Still, had the Allies on the Continent been true to each other, and to the principles for which they professed to contend, they might have inflicted a far more complete punishment on the heartless ambition of Louis, and thus prevented the speedy recurrence of the horrors which they now hoped were for a long time at an end.

[502]

CHAPTER XV.

REIGN OF WILLIAM III. (concluded).

William Meets his Parliament—Reduction of the Standing Army—Visit of Peter the Great—Schemes of Louis—The East India Company—Spanish Partition Scheme—Its Inception and Progress—Somers's Hesitation—The Treaty is Signed—New Parliament—Tory Reaction—Dismissal of the Dutch Guards—William forms an Intention of Quitting England—Attack on the late Ministry—Jobbery in the Admiralty—Paterson's Darien Scheme—Douglas's Reasons against It—Enthusiasm of the Scots—Departure of the First Expedition and its Miserable Failure—The Untimely End of the Second Expedition—Second Partition Scheme—Double-dealing of the French—New Parliament—Attack on Somers—Report on the Irish Grants—Resumption Bill passed—William's Unpopularity—Death of the Duke of Gloucester—Conclusion of the New Partition Treaty and its Results—Charles makes over his Dominions to the French Candidate—His Death—Disgust of William at Louis's Duplicity—Tory Temper of the House—The Succession Question—Debates on Foreign Policy—The Succession Act passed—New Negotiations with France—Attack on the Whig Ministers—Acknowledgment of the Spanish King—Impeachment of the Whigs—The Kentish Petition—Its Reception by the House—The Legion Memorial—Panic in the House—Violent Struggle between the two Houses—The Impeachments dropped—William goes Abroad—The Grand Alliance and its Objects—Beginning of the War—Death of James II.—Louis acknowledges the Pretender—Reaction in England—New Parliament and Ministry—The King's Speech—British Patriotism is Roused—Voting of Supplies—The Bills of Attainder and Abjuration—Illness and Death of William—His Character.

William met his Parliament on the 3rd of December. He congratulated it on the achievement of a peace in which the Confederates had accomplished all they had fought for—the repression of the ambitious attempts of France to bring under its yoke the rest of the kingdoms on the Continent. She had been compelled to yield up everything which she had seized from the commencement of the war. But he reminded them that this had not been accomplished except at a heavy cost. They had supported him nobly in furnishing that cost, and he trusted they would not now be less prompt to discharge the remaining unpaid claims, and in taking measures to liquidate by degrees the debts incurred. He expressed his hope that they would provide him for life with a sufficient Civil List to maintain the necessary dignity of the Crown. Though the war was over, he reminded them that there were many reasons why the army and navy should yet be maintained on a respectable footing.

The Commons voted him an address, in which they united in the congratulations on the restoration of peace, but passed over the subject of the army. William noticed the omission, and felt it deeply. Nobody was more aware than himself that, though they had bound France by the treaty of Ryswick, no bonds of that kind ever held Louis XIV. any longer than it suited his necessities or his schemes of aggrandisement. He observed that Louis still kept on foot his large armies, and that he still retained James and his Court at St. Germains, in open violation of the treaty; and the circumstances of Spain, whose king was gradually dying childless, with Louis intently watching to pounce on his dominions, filled him, as it did every far-seeing man, with deep anxiety. Though no king ever less sought to infringe the liberties of his subjects, yet William, naturally fond of an army and of military affairs, was especially anxious at this crisis for the retention of a respectable force. He knew that Europe, though freed from actual war, was, through the restless ambition of Louis, still living only in an armed peace.

The Commons did not leave him long in suspense. In a few days they went into the subject of the proposal to keep up the army. The spirit of the House was high against a standing army. All the old arguments were produced—that a standing army was totally inconsistent with the liberties of the people; that the moment you put the sword into the hands of mercenaries, the king became the master of the rights of the nation, and a despot. They asked, "If a standing army were to be maintained, what should they have gained by the revolution?" The Tories, who were anxious to damage the Whigs, and the Jacobites, who were anxious to damage William's government altogether, were particularly eloquent on these topics. The true patriots, and they were few, were eloquent from principle. It was in vain that the friends of William represented that it was a very different thing to maintain an army in particular circumstances which depended on the will of Parliament, from maintaining one at the sole pleasure of the king. The opponents of a standing army contended that a militia was the natural[503] force for internal defence, which could be brought to nearly as much perfection as regular troops, and could be called out when wanted; and that the navy was our proper army, and that if kept in due efficiency it was able, not only to protect us and our trade, but to render all such assistance to other nations as became a generous and Christian nation. By a division of a hundred and eighty-five votes against a hundred and forty-eight, the House resolved that all the forces raised since 1686 should be disbanded.

PETER THE GREAT AT DEPTFORD DOCKYARD.

From the Painting by Daniel Maclise, R.A.
in the Royal Holloway College, Egham.

This fell with an appalling shock on William. All his army of brave mercenaries, his Dutch guards, his Huguenot cavalry, must be sent away. He would, it was found, be left only with about eight thousand regular troops. Never was there such a stripping of a martial monarch, who had figured at the head of upwards of a hundred thousand men against the greatest military power of Europe. He made little remark publicly, but he poured out his grief to his great correspondent the Dutch Grand Pensionary, Heinsius, and to Burnet. To them he said that it would make his alliance of so little value, his state so contemptible, that he did not see how he was to carry on the government; that he never could have imagined, after what he had done for the nation, that they would treat him thus; and that, had he imagined it, he would never have meddled with the affairs of England; that he was weary of governing a country which had rather lay itself open to its enemies than trust him, who had acted all his life so faithfully for them. But it was useless complaining; the country was resolved on having no standing army, and every attempt of Ministers to modify or enlarge the resolution was disregarded. They proposed that the Bill should be committed, because it would leave the king in the hands of the old Tory regiments; and, again, that five hundred thousand pounds per annum should be granted for the maintenance of Guards and garrisons. Both motions were negatived. There was a strong feeling excited against Sunderland, on the supposition that he had encouraged the king in his desire for a large army, because he warmly argued for it; and that minister, equally odious to both parties, felt it safest to retire. He therefore resigned his post of Lord Chamberlain, though William did all he could to dissuade him from doing so, and sought the seclusion of his princely abode of Althorp.

These were the last transactions of the English Government in 1697; but there was at this moment a person residing in England who was destined to produce greater changes in the face of Europe, and in its relations, than any who had gone before him. This was Peter the Czar of Muscovy, who was at this time residing at Sayes Court, a house of the celebrated John Evelyn, at Deptford, and studying the fleet and shipbuilding of England, in order to create a naval power for himself. He was only a youth of five-and-twenty, and was the monarch of a country then sunk in barbarism, which was unrepresented at the Courts of Europe, was little heard of by the rest of the Continent, and whose merchants were forbidden, on pain of death, to trade with other countries. Yet already Peter had raised a regular army, and something of a navy, putting them under the management of Scottish and French officers. By means of these, in 1696, he had besieged and taken Azov. He had put himself through all the ranks of the army, beginning as a common soldier; and he had then determined to see personally the chief maritime nations, Holland and England, and learn what he could of the arts that made them so powerful. He set out with only twelve attendants, amongst whom were his two chief princes, Menschikoff, who had been originally a pieman, and Galitzin. These were to act as his ambassadors to the Courts of Holland and England, he himself remaining incognito. He first settled at Zaandam, in Holland, where he lived in a small lodging, dressed and worked with his attendants as ship-carpenters, learning to forge the ironwork of ships, as well as to prepare their woodwork. He had a yacht on the Zuyder Zee, and practised its management, and studied rope-making and sail-making. He found himself too much crowded about and stared at on his removal to London, where he spent his time chiefly in the dockyards of Deptford, Woolwich, and Chatham. William used to go and see him at Sayes Court, and sent the Marquis of Caermarthen to attend upon him, where they are said to have drunk brandy and pepper together during the long winter evenings. In the ensuing April disturbances at home called him away, but not before he had destroyed Evelyn's fine holly hedges by driving over them in the deep snows in his sledge, to Evelyn's great mortification.

At the opening of the year 1698, all appeared peace in Europe, but it was the quiet only which lies in the bosom of a volcano. Enormous expenditure of blood and treasure had been made to repel the unprincipled schemes of Louis XIV. Europe seemed to have triumphed over him. He had suddenly surrendered all that he had striven[504] for, as if he perceived the impossibility of his aspirations. Nothing was less the fact. Never had he been so daring in his plans of aggrandisement as at this moment. Why should he continue to drain his kingdom of its population and its substance to grasp merely at Flanders, when, by exerting the arts of diplomacy, he might possess himself, not only of Flanders, but of all Spain, the north of Italy, the Sicilies, the South American and Indian dependencies? This grand scheme Louis now resolved to compass. He had married, as we have said, the Infanta, Maria Theresa, the sister of Charles II. of Spain, and had children by her. On marrying her he had sworn to renounce all claims to the Spanish throne through her; but this weighed nothing with Louis. He resolved that a son of the Dauphin—that is, his grandson through Maria Theresa—should be put forward as the French candidate in lieu of his father. Against him was the Emperor of Germany, the first cousin of Charles II., but he had resigned his claims in favour of his son by a second marriage—the Archduke Charles. By his first marriage with a younger sister of Charles II. he was the grandfather of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria. But the rights of this claimant, like those of the Dauphin's son Philip, were somewhat discountenanced by the fact that his grandfather's marriage had been accompanied by a renunciation of rights. It will be seen, therefore, that the question was one of some intricacy, and it was complicated by doubts as to the validity of the renunciations. Louis determined that the House of Austria should be set aside, and his own issue occupy the Spanish throne, when France, in fact, stretching from Gibraltar to Flanders, and including a large share of Italy, would be able to give law to the Continent, and swallow up Flanders and Holland, if not Germany too. This was the danger which wrought on the anxious heart of William at this moment.

Montague, in the height of his popularity, undertook and carried a measure which eventually, however, did the Whigs infinite mischief. Ministers had applied to the East India Company for a loan. The Company offered to lend them seven hundred thousand pounds, to be repaid out of the supplies at the convenience of Government. The new Company, which had so long been striving after a charter, hearing of the proposal, immediately outbade the old Company, offering to lend the Government two million pounds at eight per cent. The bait was too tempting to resist; a Bill was brought into the Commons, and passed its first reading by a large majority. The old Company, alarmed, petitioned the House, stating the claims it possessed, from having been encouraged by many royal charters to invest its capital, and to create a trade with India. It begged the House to consider that a thousand families depended on the stock, and that the property of the Company in India, producing an annual revenue of forty-four thousand pounds, would all be destroyed or reduced to trifling value. They deposed that they had expended a million of money in fortifications alone; that during the war they had lost twelve ships and cargoes worth fifteen hundred thousand pounds; that since the last subscription they had paid two hundred and ninety-five thousand pounds for customs, and above eighty-five thousand pounds in taxes. They had furnished ten thousand barrels of gunpowder when the Government was greatly pressed for it, and taken eighty thousand pounds' worth of Exchequer Bills. The House weighed the proposal, but was persuaded by Montague to give the preference to the new Company. On this the old Company offered, notwithstanding their great losses, to advance two millions to Government, on condition that the charter to the new Company was not granted. The offer came too late; the Bill for the new Company was passed, and carried also in the Lords, but with considerable opposition, and a protest from one-and-twenty peers. This Act was, notwithstanding, deemed a very unjust and arbitrary measure; and the arguments of the Whigs for a standing army, and their embezzlements in the Government offices and by most flagrant contracts, seriously affected their popularity.

Towards the end of July William went to Holland, and having addressed the States-General, and given audience to a number of ambassadors at the Hague, he betook himself to his favourite seat at Loo, where, in August, he was joined by Portland, the Pensionary Heinsius, and the Count Tallard, an emissary from Louis XIV. In this retirement they discussed one of the boldest projects which could possibly be entertained by statesmen, namely, a partition of the Spanish dominions. That the scheme was Louis XIV.'s there can be no question, and, daring as it was, served but as the blinding manœuvre which covered still more daring ones. The ultimate object of Louis was the seizure of the crown and territories of Spain, to which we have already alluded, but William, with great address, at once set to work to countermine him.

This plan of dividing the empire of Spain amongst such parties as should suit the views of[505] William and Louis had been suggested by France, apparently very soon after the peace of Ryswick, and had been going on all the spring in England in profound secrecy. One of the motives for sending Portland to Paris in January had been to learn the full particulars of this scheme, which had been somewhat mysteriously opened to William. In writing to Heinsius on the 3rd of January, when Portland was about to start for France, William expressed his surprise as to the real meaning of "something that was proposed to be done by the Republic, France, and England, towards the maintenance of the peace," and imagined it might relate to their position with the Emperor. However, he added, "the earl of Portland will readily be able to get at the bottom of this affair in France, and that is another reason for hastening his departure as much as possible."

VIEW IN THE HAGUE: OLD GATE IN THE BINNENHOF, WITH THE ARMS OF THE COUNTY OF HOLLAND.

Portland was scarcely settled in his diplomatic position in Paris when the scheme was broached to him, but at first cautiously. On the 15th of March he wrote to William that the Ministers Pomponne and De Torcy had communicated to him, but in the profoundest secrecy, that the king their master desired to make him the medium of a most important negotiation with the king of England. The impending death of the king of Spain was likely to throw the whole of Europe into war again, unless this were prevented by engagements entered into by the kings of France[506] and England to prevent it. For if the Emperor were allowed to succeed to Spain with its dependencies, Flanders, Italy, and the colonies, he would become so powerful that he would be dangerous to all Europe. Portland declared that he could give no opinion, nor could the king his master give an answer, so far as he could see, until he had the full views of the king of France on the subject; and that the naval and maritime interests of England and Holland might be greatly affected by any arrangement regarding the succession of the Spanish territories. The French Ministers said it would be easy to order matters regarding the Low Countries to the satisfaction of England and Holland, and that France would guarantee that the crown of Spain should not be annexed to that of France; but as to the Indies, or the security of English trade in the Mediterranean, Portland could draw nothing from them. The views of France were so far not very clear; but Portland added the important piece of information that the Count de Tallard was at that very moment setting out for London, ostensibly to congratulate William, but really to prosecute this negotiation.

Accordingly, Tallard arrived in London on the 19th of March, and he and William, in strict secrecy, admitting no one else to their confidence, discussed this scheme of Louis. This was no other than that the crown of Spain, with the Spanish Netherlands and colonies, should not be allowed to pass to the Emperor, but should be settled on the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, the third claimant; that Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, the province of Guipuzcoa on the French side of the Pyrenees, Fontarabia, San Sebastian, Ferrol, and some towns on the Tuscan coast then owned by Spain, and called Presidii, should be settled by a mutual treaty between them on the Dauphin; and that Milan should be settled on the Archduke Charles, the second son of the Emperor, to whom he had resigned his rights.

The negotiations were carried on in England in closest secrecy between William and Tallard, William entering into engagements which most momentously affected England as well as all Europe, without taking a particle of advice from his Council, much less seeking the advice of Parliament—a proceeding which we should now consider unconstitutional, but which was then by no means unusual. When he quitted England after the dissolution of Parliament, it was only the more unobservedly to complete this extraordinary business. Tallard followed him to Loo, and they were soon after joined by Portland. It was now about the middle of August, and William wrote to Somers, desiring him to send him full powers under the Great Seal to complete the negotiation, leaving the names in blanks. He said he had ordered Portland to write to Vernon, the Secretary of State, to draw out the commission with his own hand, so that no creature should know anything of it except Somers and one or two of the other most trusted Ministers. He told Somers that it was confidently believed that the King of Spain could not outlive the month of October—might die much sooner, and, therefore, not a moment was to be lost.

In consequence of this communication, Somers, who was seeking health at Tunbridge Wells, immediately called into his counsels Russell (now Lord Orford), Montague, and Shrewsbury. He informed William that Montague and Secretary Vernon had come down to him at Tunbridge; they had seriously discussed this very momentous question, and that it seemed to them that it might be attended with very many ill consequences if the French did not act a sincere part; that the people of England would undoubtedly resent being drawn into any fresh war; and that it required deep consideration what would be the condition of Europe should this proposed partition be carried out. To them it seemed that if Sicily were in French hands, they would become entire masters of the Levant trade; that if they obtained any of the Spanish ports on the Tuscan coast, Milan would be so entirely shut in from independent intercourse or commerce by sea and land that it would be utterly powerless; that if France had Guipuzcoa and the other Spanish places on the French side of the Pyrenees, the rest of Spain would be as completely open to French invasion as Catalonia now was; and, finally, if this negotiation was concluded, what guarantee had William for the king of France's faithful execution of it? Were England and Holland to sit still and see France enforce this partition? "If that be so," says Somers, "what security ought we to expect from the French that, while we are neuter, they will confine themselves to the terms of the treaty, and not attempt to take further advantage?" These considerations were sound, but William had certainly chosen the lesser of two evils, for the placing of the French candidate on the throne of Spain would have entirely overturned the European balance.

In obedience to the king's orders, Somers sent the carte blanche with the Great Seal affixed; but[507] he had failed in inducing Vernon to give him a warrant for affixing the Seal. The Secretary was too well aware of the unconstitutional character of this proceeding to issue such a warrant, and Somers was obliged to content himself with keeping the king's letter as his authority for the act. Undeterred by the plain suggestions of Somers and the other Ministers as to the total want of security which he had for Louis's observance of this treaty, and the dangerous power it conferred on France, William was in such haste to conclude the treaty, that the Earl of Portland and Sir Joseph Williamson had signed a rough draft before Somers's carte blanche arrived; and on the 11th of October, or about six weeks after its receipt, the formal treaty was signed by Portland, Williamson, Tallard, and Heinsius.

William returned to England in the beginning of December. He arrived on the 4th, and opened his new Parliament on the 6th. It had been obliged to be prorogued owing to his prolonged stay, having been called for August. The Ministers in William's absence had not taken much pains to influence the elections, and it soon appeared that a very independent body of gentlemen had been sent up. Not only had the electors put forward men of free principles, but the press had warmly urged the selection of a Liberal Speaker as essential to the full exercise of Parliamentary freedom. There were three candidates for the Speakership more particularly in view—Sir Edward Seymour, Sir Thomas Littleton, and Harley, the one supported by the Tories.

A paper on the choice of a Speaker had been actively circulated, which said that the great Lord Burleigh declared "that England could never be undone except by a Parliament," and that whenever we were enslaved like our Continental neighbours, it would be by the joint influence of a corrupt Parliament and a standing army. It cried down Seymour as a man who had constantly been bargaining with the Court since the days of the Pension Parliament of Charles II.; and it declared that men holding office under the Crown were most unfit for the office of Speaker. This was aimed at Littleton, which seemed a good omen for the Court, but, as it soon appeared, was no sound indication, for Harley was not elected, but Littleton.

In his opening speech William told the Commons that, notwithstanding the state of peace, it would be necessary for them to consider well the strength which they ought to maintain both at sea and on land; that the honour and even safety of the nation depended on not stripping it too much of its forces in the eyes of foreign nations. It was necessary, he contended, that Europe should be impressed with the idea that they would not be wanting to themselves. They had acquired a great position among the nations, and it was their duty to preserve it. He recommended them to make some progress in the discharge of the debts incurred in this long and expensive war, for an English Parliament could never, he imagined, neglect the sacred obligations which it had assumed. He also suggested to them some measures for the improvement of trade and for the discouragement of profaneness, and he begged them to act with unanimity.

The remarks on the necessity of maintaining more troops than the last Parliament had determined on, and on defraying the debts incurred by the war, seemed to rouse an extraordinary spirit of anger and disrespect in the new House. It neglected the ordinary courtesy of an Address. Before leaving for Holland in the summer, William left a sealed paper, ordering Ministers not to reduce the army in compliance to less than sixteen thousand men. Probably this was become known, and there had got abroad a persuasion that the king meant to resist the will of the Parliament in this respect; no other cause appeared sufficient to explain the animus which now manifested itself. The House resounded with speeches against standing armies, and on the waste of the people's substance on foreign wars, and it resolved that all the land forces of England in English pay should not exceed seven thousand, and that these should all be natural-born subjects; that not more than twelve thousand should be maintained in Ireland—these, too, all natural-born subjects, and to be supported by the revenue of Ireland. The Ministers had told the king before the meeting of Parliament that they thought they could obtain a grant of ten or twelve thousand in England, and William had replied that they might as well leave none as so few. But now that this storm broke out, the Ministers, seeing no possibility of carrying the number they had hoped for, sat silent, to the great disgust of the king.

This resolution went to strip William of his Dutch Guards whom he had brought with him, and who had attended him in so many actions, and of the brave Huguenots, who had done such signal service in Ireland. The spirit of the Commons, instead of being merely economical, was in this instance petty and miserable. It was neither grateful nor becoming to its dignity, to make so sweeping a reduction of the army,[508] to begrudge the king who had rescued them from the miserable race of the Stuarts, and had so nobly acquiesced in everything which regarded their liberties, the small satisfaction of a few Dutch and Huguenot troops. The Huguenots especially, it might have been expected, would have experienced some sympathy from the Parliament, not only in return for their own gallant services, but because their friends and fellow-religionists were at this moment suffering the severest persecution. But a deep dislike of foreigners had seized the nation, and this had been rendered the more intense from the lavish wealth which William heaped on Portland and others, and from his retiring every year to spend the summer months in Holland. They had never been accustomed to have their monarch passing a large portion of his time abroad, and they regarded it as an evidence that he only had any regard for the Dutch. The Commons, without considering his feelings, introduced a Bill founded on their resolution, carried it briskly through the House, and sent it up to the Lords, where it also passed.

Deeply annoyed, William is said to have walked to and fro on learning that the Commons insisted on his dismissing the Dutch Guards, and to have muttered, "By God, if I had a son, these Guards should not quit me." He wrote to Lord Galway, one of his foreign friends, "There is a spirit of ignorance and malice prevails here beyond conception." To Heinsius he wrote in a similar strain, "that he was so chagrined at the conduct of the Commons, that he was scarcely master of his thoughts, and hinted at coming to extremities, and being in Holland sooner than he had thought." In fact, he was so much excited as to menace again throwing up the government. He sat down and penned a speech which he proposed to address to the two Houses; it is still preserved in the British Museum. It ran:—"My Lords and Gentlemen,—I came into this kingdom, at the desire of the nation, to save it from ruin, and to preserve your religion, laws, and liberties; and for this object I have been obliged to sustain a long and burthensome war for this kingdom, which, by the grace of God and the bravery of this nation, is at present terminated by a good peace; in which you may live happily and in repose if you would contribute to your own security, as I recommended at the opening of the Session. But seeing, on the contrary, that you have so little regard for my advice, and take so very little care of your own safety, and that you expose yourselves to evident ruin in depriving yourselves of the only means for your defence, it would neither be just nor reasonable for me to be witness of your ruin, not being able on my part to avoid it, being in no condition to defend and protect you, which was the only view I had in coming to this country." And it then went on to desire them to name proper persons to take charge of the government, promising, however, to come again whenever they would put him in his proper place, with proper power to defend them. The entreaties of Somers, however, induced him to abandon his purpose.

The mischief which the Whigs had done themselves by granting a charter to the new East India Company, in violation of the existing charter of the old Company, merely because the former Company had offered them a large money bait, encouraged the Tories greatly in their endeavours to regain power. They exhorted the old Company to petition that means should be taken to enable it to maintain its trade and property against the new Company for the remaining portion of the twenty-one years of its charter; and there were not wanting some in the House who declared that the new charter, granted in violation of an existing one, and from such corrupt motives, should be abolished. Montague, however, who had passed the Act for this charter, was able to protect it, but not to prevent fresh onslaughts on the unpopular Whigs. They were charged with gross corruption, and with embezzlement of the public revenue, for the purchase of great estates for themselves, and the grievous burthen of the people by taxation. Russell, Earl of Orford, was specially singled out by the Commons. He was both First Lord of the Admiralty and Treasurer of the Navy, as well as Admiral, and assumed great authority, forgetful of the humble station from which he had risen. He was charged with keeping large sums of public money for his own private use, instead of paying the officers and seamen when their pay was due. They called for his accounts, and there appeared to be four hundred and sixty thousand pounds in his hands. In his defence he represented that this was actually in course of payment, and that part of the sum was yet in tallies, which must be converted into cash before it could be distributed. But this did not satisfy the Commons. They voted an address to the[509] king, complaining of the impropriety of one and the same person being Lord High Admiral, Chief Commissioner of the Board of Admiralty, and Treasurer; of gross misapplication of the public money; of many unnecessary changes introduced into the navy; of delays in granting convoys; and of favouritism to particular officers. Orford was prudent enough to retire from his offices before the storm which was gathering burst in all its fury upon him. The Tories, elated by this success, endeavoured to get Sir George Rooke put into Orford's place; but the Whigs were yet strong enough and imprudent enough to get the Earl of Bridgewater named First Lord of the Admiralty—a man almost wholly unacquainted with naval affairs; and Lord Haversham, another of the "land admirals," as the sailors called these unprofessional men, succeeded to Priestman, one of the Junior Lords, who retired.

CHARLES MONTAGUE, EARL OF HALIFAX. (After the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller.)

Those matters being settled, the House voted fifteen thousand pounds for sailors for the year, the vote expressly stipulating for sailors only, lest the king should include some land forces under the name of marines. They also granted one million four hundred and eighty-four thousand pounds for the service of the year, to be raised by a land and income tax of three shillings in the pound. To this Act, availing themselves of their sole right to introduce money Bills, they also "tacked" a clause appointing commissioners to take an account of the estates forfeited in Ireland by the last rebellion, in order to their being applied in ease of the subjects in England. This was another sharp reminder of the king's proceedings. It had been promised by him[510] that he would not bestow the forfeited estates without the sanction of the House, but in disregard of this he had given large estates to his favourites. William was deeply mortified by this clause, and some of the Lords entered a protest against it, on the ground that the clause was foreign to the contents of the Bill, and was contrary to the practice of Parliament. The king, however, did not venture to refuse his signature to the Act, which he passed on the 4th of May, 1699, and at the same time prorogued the Parliament.

Before quitting England, William was obliged to almost entirely remodel his Ministry. The Duke of Leeds retired from the Presidency of the Council; his influence had expired with the discovery of his bribe from the East India Company. The Earl of Pembroke, a moderate Tory, who performed his official duties with zeal and integrity, was put in his place. Villiers, Earl of Jersey, having returned from his embassy to France, was made Secretary of State in place of the Duke of Shrewsbury, who became Lord Chamberlain. The Earl of Manchester went as ambassador to France in place of Jersey, and Lord Lonsdale, another Tory, obtained the Privy Seal. On the 2nd of June, William, having appointed a regency, embarked for Holland, where he retired to Loo, but not to peace of mind, for he saw events marching to an ominous result. The forces of England and of the Continent were disbanded, except those of Louis, which were rapidly increased; and not only the Spanish monarchy, but all Europe, appeared at his mercy. But before following these movements, we must trace some nearer home.

Ireland was quiet. The Parliament of that kingdom had voted one hundred and twenty thousand pounds for the maintenance of the twelve thousand troops ordered by the English Parliament to be quartered in that country, and the Duke of Bolton and the Earls of Berkeley and Galway were appointed Lords Justices.

In Scotland far different was the state of things. There excitement raged against the Ministry of England, and not the less against the king, who disowned their Company, organised to carry out the Act granted for trading to Africa and the Indies. The charter for this Company was granted by the Scottish Parliament, and ratified by William in 1695. Its professed object was to trade with the East and West Indies and Africa; but there was a plan for carrying out these objects, which does not seem to have been made known to the Government, or made public generally, till after the acquisition of the charter. This was to seize on the Isthmus of Darien, to establish a strong colony there, and not only to grow rich through possession of the gold mines, but to found ports both on the Atlantic and on the Pacific, so that a great carrying trade might be prosecuted between Europe and China and the East Indies by that route.

William Paterson, the projector of this scheme, was the same man who had projected and carried into being, through the influence of Montague, the Bank of England. He has been generally represented as a visionary speculator and schemer, and has not unfrequently been confounded with John Law, of Lauriston, the author of the famous South Sea Bubble and Mississippi Scheme, which spread such ruin through both France and England. Paterson, however, was a very different man. Undoubtedly he was a most speculative genius, but in his speculations there was something grand, substantial, and based, for the most part, on the purest moral principles. The Bank of England is a lasting memorial of his real sagacity and acute talents. It was well devised, and immediately rose to entire success. Through some disagreement in the mode of management Paterson sold out his stock, and proposed the erection of an Orphan Bank, connected with the Orphan Fund established by the Corporation of London already mentioned. This was not entertained, and he then projected his grand scheme for the Scottish Company to trade to the Indies. This scheme, so far from being visionary, had all the elements of a great and far-seeing reality. The unsound portion of Paterson's project was the not sufficiently taking into account these political obstacles:—Spain possessed, or rather claimed to possess, the Isthmus of Darien. Louis of France was contemplating the seizure of Spain, and its American territories. William was under treaty of peace with both Spain and Louis. It was impossible, therefore, to obtain possession of the Isthmus of Darien without producing a fresh European war. To attempt it by treaty was useless, for Spain would never consent to permit England, of which she was in the highest degree jealous, thus to establish a great mercantile colony in the midst of her most valuable Transatlantic colonies, from which she was annually drawing her cargoes of gold and other valuable products. Louis of France, who was resolved to succeed to the Spanish Empire, was as little likely to permit such a thing. To obtain possession of Darien, then, could only be done by invasion, and that invasion[511] must produce immediate war, for which William was not prepared.

But the scheme was got up ostensibly to trade to the East and West Indies and Africa. There was no mention of Panama; and its prospects were so fair that they seized on the imaginations of the English and Scottish public. The Company was to have the monopoly of trade with Asia, Africa, and America for thirty-one years. Paterson had spent ten years in the West Indies, and, as it is supposed, in Panama. At all events, he had the reputation of being intimately acquainted with those regions and their resources. His proposals of the Company were eagerly accepted both in London and Edinburgh. Though it was intended to raise only three hundred and sixty thousand pounds as the original stock for both countries, three hundred thousand pounds were subscribed in London alone in a few days. But this remarkable success excited all the vindictive feelings of Companies whose interests this new league appeared likely to affect. The East India Companies, new and old, immediately were on the alert, and raised such a feeling in the House of Commons that it resolved to impeach Paterson and the bankers, Coutts and Cohen, for the commission of an illegal act in daring to levy money in England without the sanction of the English Legislature. In the meantime a subscription list had been opened at Hamburg, and by this the Dutch East India Company was equally alarmed, and the influence both of the Dutch and of the English Companies was made to bear on the king. William, who had been too much absorbed by his warfare with Louis to perceive the hostile feelings which he was exciting by passing the Scottish Act, now made haste to condemn his own precipitancy. He complained that he had been deceived by the Scottish Government, and at once gave orders to prohibit the scheme, and sent similar orders to his consul at Hamburg to forbid the subscription there. The senate of the city of Hamburg was induced to prohibit the canvassing of the Company's agents; and the English subscribers, alarmed at the menaces of the king and Commons, withdrew their names. Nor were these all the enemies of this scheme. There were Scottish traders united for commerce with India by the ordinary route, and these joined in the cry. One of these, Mr. Robert Douglas, attacked the scheme in a very able letter. In this letter we are first let into the secret that the real destination is not so much the West Indies as Darien, on the mainland. It is not, however, from Paterson having mentioned expressly Darien that Douglas declares it to be that place, but he infers it from the fact that the locality darkly hinted at by Paterson is at once near the Caribbean isles, and at the same time so situated "that it will alter the whole method of trade in Europe, and effectually ruin both the English and Dutch East Indian Companies, because it opens a shorter, safer, and more convenient way to the East Indies by the Pacific from England and Holland."

Douglas then points out that it is not nearer or more convenient than the old way to the western or Bombay coast of the Indian peninsula; that it was then a very dangerous route, because our merchant vessels on that track would have to pass the Dutch, Batavian, and Spice Island settlements, which would show the utmost hostility to such a traffic; but still more, that it was impossible, because this Isthmus of Panama was the track by which Spain conveyed her treasure from Peru to Portobello; that as to the rightful possession of the country by Spain, the city of Darien, called Santa Maria, was one of the first cities built by them on the mainland of America, as the province was the first province possessed by them. These were sound reasons why the king could not consent to any such invasion of the territory of Spain, and why Spain was not likely to concede it by treaty. These reasons should have made Paterson and the Scots pause.

Unwarned by the great outcry, the firm opposition, and insurmountable obstacles, Paterson and the Scots went on. The Scottish people, who conceived the idea of achieving enormous wealth in the golden regions of Central America, regarded themselves as victims of the jealousy of William's favourite Dutch, and of the haughty monopolising spirit of the English, and the whole country was in a ferment. They considered themselves insulted and most perfidiously treated by the king, who had freely sanctioned the Company, and then as unceremoniously disowned and trampled on it. They went on with the subscriptions, and speedily the amount rose to four hundred thousand pounds. The highest and most intelligent of the Scottish nobility, as well as the people generally, were sanguine contributors. Their younger sons saw a new highway to opulence and distinction suddenly opened. Many lords mortgaged all that they could to secure an ample share of the expected benefits. Their tenantry and servants were enthusiastic in their adhesion to it; and the officers whom the peace had left at large, prepared for[512] fresh campaigns and adventures in the golden regions.

The Company had a number of stout ships built in Holland to convey the emigrants and their stores. On the 25th of July, 1698, four of these ships—the St. Andrew, the Unicorn, the Caledonia, and the Endeavour—containing one thousand two hundred men, set sail from Leith. Such was the excitement that all Edinburgh seemed to have poured out to see the departure of the colonists, and hundreds of soldiers and sailors who could not be engaged clamoured to be taken on board. Many contrived to get into the vessels and endeavour to conceal themselves in the hold, and when discovered they clung to the timbers and riggings, offering service without pay.

When the vessels had sailed, the Scottish Parliament unanimously addressed the king on behalf of the Company and the validity of the charter. The Lord President, Sir Hugh Dalrymple, the brother of Lord Stair, and Sir James Stuart, the Lord Advocate, also presented memorials defending the rights of the Company. Paterson committed the error of sailing in the fleet as a private individual. He had incurred the resentment of the Company by having remitted twenty thousand pounds to Hamburg for stores, part of which, through no fault of his own, was embezzled by the agent. The Company, therefore, refused to give him the command of the colony, but appointed a council of seven members without a head. This was certain to entail want of unity of purpose, and consequent failure. Paterson was the only man qualified by his abilities, his experience, and his knowledge of the country to take the command. He is said to have seen and conversed with the celebrated buccaneer Dampier and his surgeon Lionel Wafer on the statistics of Darien; and, if the expedition was sent at all, it should have been under his entire control. Nothing, in the political circumstances, could have insured the establishment of the colony; but Paterson's guidance would have prevented the dire calamities which ensued. He was certain that the vessels were not properly furnished with provisions and stores before setting out, and he in vain urged an examination. When out at sea a few days, he was enabled to get an examination, when there was discovered to be a serious deficiency, but then it was too late. They next sailed for Madeira, where their sealed orders were opened, and they then bore away for the West Indies. They put into St. Thomas's, and there might have obtained plenty of provisions from a ship-captain but for the perverseness of the council. The advice of Paterson was uniformly rejected out of jealousy. On the 30th of October they landed in a fine bay on the coast of Darien, capable of holding one thousand ships, and about four miles east of Golden Island.

The incapable council, in spite of Paterson's advice, would plant their new town in a bog, but the effects on their health soon forced them to remove to higher ground. They erected a fort and threw up defences at Acta, which they named New St. Andrews; and on a hill opposite made a signal-station, where they placed a corps of Highlanders to keep a good look-out for the approach of any enemy.

But the miserable management of the council brought speedy misfortune on the infant colony. The people were suffering from want of everything. Paterson soon lost his wife, and numbers sank under disappointment, insufficient food, and the climate. The natives were friendly to them, but wanted them to go and fight the Spaniards. It was soon found that the mountains and forests offered enormous obstacles to a transit to the shores of the Pacific. The different leaders of the expedition fell to quarrelling, and Paterson endeavoured in vain to reconcile them. They sent out vessels to the West Indian islands for provisions. One they lost, and another endeavouring to get to New York, after beating about for a month, was driven back. Amid the rapidly-sinking colonists and the fatal feuds of the leaders, they received on the 18th of May, 1699, the stunning news that the king had issued a proclamation denouncing the act of the colonists as having infringed his treaty with Spain by forcibly entering the Spanish territory of Panama, and forbidding any of the English governors of the West Indian islands to furnish them with provisions or any necessaries.

The moment Louis XIV. heard of their settling in Darien he had offered to the king of Spain to send ships and forces and drive them out for him. The Spanish Minister at London, the Marquis de Canales, on the 3rd of May presented a remonstrance against this breach of the peace with his master. Dalrymple, who has left much information on this expedition in his "Memoirs," says the Dutch and English opponents were at the bottom of this remonstrance; that Spain had let the affair go on a long time without noticing it; and that the rights of the Company had been debated before William, in presence of the Spanish ambassador, before the colony sailed. All this may[513] be true, for the real destination of the expedition was kept secret till the fleet arrived at Madeira, and Spain protested as soon as she discovered whither it had gone. William, who was just now making treaties with Louis, and anxious to be on good terms with Spain, strictly enforced the orders to deprive the suffering colony of all means of remaining. These measures of the king produced the most fatal consequences in the colony. Every one, says Paterson, was in haste to be gone from it. In vain he tried to persuade them to stay for more positive orders. Pennicook, the captain of the fleet, was reported to be intending to steal away with his ship, on the supposition that they had all been proclaimed pirates, and would be hanged. The poor colonists continued to die off rapidly, and news now came that the Spaniards were marching against them with a strong force.

SCENE AT THE DEPARTURE FROM LEITH OF THE DARIEN EXPEDITION. (See p. 512.)

[514]

Famine, sickness, and the fear of being massacred in their weakness by the enemy, compelled the colonists to evacuate the place. On the 18th of June, 1699, the Unicorn, St. Andrew, and Caledonia sailed from Golden Island for New York. On the voyage they met the sloop which they had sent to Jamaica for provisions. It had got none, owing to the royal proclamation, and they all proceeded on their route. They lost one hundred and fifty out of two hundred and fifty of their number on the voyage, and arrived at New York in October, more like skeletons than living men. On the 13th of November Paterson and his companions reached England in the Caledonia. The indignation of the Scots at their treatment was beyond bounds, and the more so because, unacquainted with the real facts of the case, they had sent out a second expedition of one thousand three hundred men.

The history of this second expedition was as miserable as that of the first. On arriving, the new adventurers, instead of a flourishing colony, found the place deserted, and only a few miserable Indians to tell them the fate of their predecessors. With this new arrival came four Presbyterian clergymen, who assumed the command, and seemed to think of nothing but establishing a presbytery in all its rigour and uncharitableness. Paterson, like Penn in Pennsylvania, and Lord Baltimore in Baltimore, had proclaimed perfect civil and religious liberty to men of all creeds and nations. This was now reversed; there was nothing but the most harsh and senseless Phariseeism. Instead of a comfort, these men proved one of the worst curses of this unfortunate colony, thwarting and damping the exertions of the people, and continually threatening them with hell fire. Two of these ministers perished.

In the midst of these miseries arrived Captain Campbell, of Ferrol, with a force of his own men. He attacked and dispersed a body of one thousand Spaniards sent against him; but this was only a fresh offence against Spain, and, therefore, against William. They were soon, however, assailed by a more powerful Spanish squadron. Campbell got away to New York, the rest of the colony capitulated, and there was an end of the unhappy expedition to Darien. The Spaniards humanely allowed the remnant of this wretched company to embark in one of their vessels, the Rising Sun; but as the British authorities at all the islands refused them any succour or stores whatever, only eighty of them arrived alive in England.

Scotland was in a frenzy of indignation at this cold-blooded conduct of the king, who, if he had visited the projectors with severity, ought to have had some compassion for the poor deluded sufferers. The exasperated Scots called on the king to withdraw his proclamation against a Company which had an undoubted right by charter to trade to the West Indies, if not to the mainland. They demanded that the Scottish Parliament should be summoned; but William only sent evasive answers, and the fury of the people rose to such a height that nothing was talked of but that the king had forfeited his right to the allegiance of Scotland by his conduct, and of war with England.

Meanwhile the partition treaty had become known to the Court at Madrid, and William's share in it excited great indignation. At the same time the agents of Louis had prevailed on the dying king to nominate the Electoral Prince of Bavaria his heir to the crown. Scarcely, however, was this done when this young prince died, being only eight years of age. Louis still kept up the farce of disinterestedness, and persuaded William to enter into a second treaty, mentioned later on, settling the crown of Spain on the Archduke Charles, but leaving the Italian States to the Dauphin. Again were William, Portland, and Tallard, with an agent of the Emperor, busy on the new partition at Loo. But whilst they were busy there, the French ambassador was equally busy at Madrid, inflaming the mind of the imbecile king against William and the Emperor, and prevailed on him, as we shall see, to leave the whole Spanish[515] monarchy to the Dauphin's son Philip. The king of Spain was also induced to send a strong remonstrance against the interference of William in the affairs of the Spanish monarchy to Mr. Stanhope, the English Minister at Madrid. Similar remonstrances were presented for form's sake to the Ministers of France and Holland. The Spanish Minister in London, Canales, was ordered to present a still stronger remonstrance to the Lords Justices in London, in which the Court of Spain informed them that his Spanish Majesty would take the necessary measures himself for the succession of his crown; adding that if these proceedings, these machinations and projects, were not speedily put an end to, there would undoubtedly commence a terrible war, in which the English, who had felt what the last war had brought upon them, would have the worst of it. Canales, who had a high personal resentment against William, who had forbidden him the Court for the insolence of appearing covered, announced haughtily that on the meeting of Parliament he should appeal to it against the king's proceedings.

No sooner was this paper transmitted to Loo than William sent orders to the Spanish ambassador to quit England in eighteen days, and during that period to confine himself to his house. He was informed that no communication whatever would be received from him or any of his servants. Mr. Stanhope was instructed at the Court of Madrid to complain of this conduct of Canales, as an attempt to excite sedition in the kingdom by appealing to the people and Parliament against the king. Mr. Stanhope was then instructed to cease all diplomatic intercourse with the Court and to return home. The Spanish Court, on its part, justified the act of its Minister, and Mr. Stanhope took his leave. The Spanish ambassador at the Hague delivered a similar memorial to that delivered in London, which the States-General refused to read. In these circumstances William returned to England about the middle of October.

The temper of his people had not improved during his absence. The Tories were bent on driving every Whig from office. They even now compelled the lately all-powerful Montague to resign his seat at the Treasury Board as well as the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. Montague was well aware of the humour of the present House of Commons, and anticipated an attack on his two offices by his resignation. Lord Tankerville, formerly Lord Grey of Wark, took his place at the Treasury, and Smith, another member of that Board, became Chancellor. At the same time William gave the office of Lord Chamberlain to the Duke of Shrewsbury, vacant since the retirement of Sunderland. Besides Shrewsbury, there remained no other Whig in office except Somers, and the Tories were at this moment endeavouring to spring a mine under his feet.

William met his Parliament on the 16th of November. He addressed them with much studied care to avoid topics of offence, but he found it impossible. He recommended them to take further measures, both by sea and land, for the safety of the kingdom, to punish unlawful and clandestine trading, and to devise, if possible, measures for the employment of the poor. He expressed his resolution to discourage vice, and declared that he would do anything in his power towards the welfare of the nation. "And to conclude," he said, "since our aims are only for the general good, let us act with confidence in each other; which will not fail, with God's blessing, to make me a happy king, and you a great and flourishing people."

The very words "let us act with confidence" roused up this captious Parliament. They sent him a remonstrance instead of an Address of thanks, complaining of there being some who endeavoured to sow distrust and dissension between them and the king. It was in vain that William protested that this supposition was totally unfounded, and that if any should presume to bring to him any calumnies against his faithful Commons, he would treat them as his worst enemies; they were unappeased. They wanted, in fact, occasion to drive Somers from his councils, and they soon found a plea.

During the war, piracy had grown to a great height upon the coasts of North America, and the colonists were themselves deep in it. Lord Bellamont, the Governor of New York, had recommended that a man-of-war should be sent to clear the pirates away; but the Admiralty objected that they had not sailors enough to spare for such a service. It was then determined by the Lord Chancellor Somers, the Duke of Shrewsbury, the Earls of Romney, Orford, and Bellamont, with a few private individuals, to send out a vessel at their own expense. This the king approved of, and promised to contribute one-half of the expense, and stipulated for one-tenth of the profits. Besides the usual letters of marque given to privateers, the captain was furnished with[516] a warrant under the Great Seal, authorising him to make war on the pirates and the French, both in those and other seas. Unfortunately, this commission was given to a man who was himself a notorious pirate—one Captain Kidd, whose fame still lives on the American coasts, and is the theme of popular ballads. The man promptly showed in his true colours.

The old East India Company complained bitterly of Kidd's outrages in the Indian seas, declaring that they would bring it into trouble with the Great Mogul. In the beginning of December a motion was made in the Commons that "the letters patent granted to the Earl of Bellamont and others of pirates' goods were dishonourable to the king, and contrary to the laws of nations and the laws and statutes of the realm, invasive of property, and destructive of trade and commerce." There was a violent debate, in which the Tories contended that the Lord Chancellor Somers had knowingly affixed the Great Seal to the commission to enrich himself, his colleagues, and the king, out of the plunder of unfortunate merchants. The motion was rejected by a large majority; the character of Somers stood too high for such a charge to reach him. But the Opposition did not rest here; it was determined to wound the king and his Government in every possible quarter.

There lay a cause in Ireland much more dangerous to the king and his Chancellor than the affairs of Captain Kidd. William had promised not to bestow any of the confiscated lands there without consent of Parliament. In disregard of his word he had conferred immense estates on his Dutch favourites, Portland, Albemarle, Athlone, and his French one, Lord Galway (Ruvigny), as well as on his mistress, Mrs. Villiers. The Commons, therefore, appointed Commissioners to inquire into the royal grants there. These Commissioners were the Earl of Drogheda, Sir Francis Brewster, Sir Richard Leving, Hamilton, Annesley, Trenchard, and Langford. The four last-named Commissioners were earnest supporters of the Commons' inquiry; but it was soon perceived by them that the Earl of Drogheda, Brewster, and Leving were in the interest of the Government. When they came to draw up their report, those three Commissioners vehemently dissented, and made an appeal to each House of Parliament, declaring that the report had not their concurrence, and that it was not borne out by the evidence laid before them. They complained that the other Commissioners had endeavoured to overbear them in a most arbitrary manner, trying to influence them by letters and instructions which they alleged they had received from members of the Commons. The Commons, however, regarding Drogheda, Brewster, and Leving as tools of the Court, paid no attention to their remonstrance. They received the report signed by the other four, who, on their part, complained that in the prosecution of their inquiry they had been greatly hindered by the backwardness of the people of Ireland to give information for fear of the vengeance of the grantees, and from reports industriously spread that the inquiry, through the influence of the Crown and the new grantees, would come to nothing. The three dissentient Commissioners agreed to much of this, but attributed the fear of the people to the grantees at large, and not to those recently favoured by Government. They affirmed that John Burke, commonly called Lord Bophin, had agreed to pay to Lord Albemarle seven thousand five hundred pounds for procuring from the king letters patent restoring him to his honours and estates. They gave amazing details of the wholesale plunder of cattle, horses, sheep, etc., from the Catholics, which had never been accounted for to the Crown. The report stated the persons who had been outlawed since the 13th of February, 1689, for participation in the rebellion amounted in England to fifty-seven, but in Ireland to 3,921; that the lands confiscated in Ireland since that period amounted to 1,060,792 acres, with a rental of £211,623; which, at twenty years' purchase were of the value of over £4,000,000; that some of these lands had been restored to their ancient proprietors, but chiefly by heavy bribes to the persons who had betrayed his Majesty's trust in them. They then gave a list of seventy-six grants under the Great Seal, amongst which stood prominent those to Lord Romney, who as Lord Sidney had been Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, consisting of 49,517 acres; two to the king's recent favourite, Keppel of Guelderland, made by William Earl of Albemarle, amounting to 106,633 acres; to William Bentinck, Lord Woodstock, the son of Portland, 135,820 acres; to Ginkell, Earl of Athlone, 26,480 acres; and to Ruvigny, the Huguenot, Earl of Galway, 36,148 acres. After all the deductions and allowances, they valued the estates forfeited since the 13th of February, 1689, and not restored at £2,699,343—a ridiculous over-estimate.

The Commons instantly set themselves to frame[517] a Bill of Resumption of all the grants. They ordered the report of the Commissioners, the speeches and promises of the king regarding these forfeited estates, and their former resolutions regarding them, to be printed, that the whole country might judge of this matter for itself. And they resolved that any member of the Privy Council who should procure or be concerned in procuring grants from the Crown for their own purposes, should be deemed guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour. As the Tories were the means of carrying this Resumption Bill, the Whigs, to avenge themselves, moved by way of amendment that all grants made since the 6th of February, 1684, should be resumed, and the Tories were caught in their own snare, for they could not with any show of consistency oppose a measure of their own originating. Therefore the Bill passed, and they were compelled to disgorge all the Crown property they had settled on themselves from the accession of James. Ministers proposed to insert a clause to reserve one third of the forfeited property for the king's own disposal; but the Commons would not listen to it, and resolved not to receive any petition from any person whatever concerning the grants. That justice might be done to purchasers and creditors in the Act of Resumption, they appointed thirteen trustees to hear and determine all claims, to sell to the highest purchasers, and to appropriate the money to pay the arrears of the army. The Lords introduced some alterations, but the Commons rejected them, and to prevent the Bill from being lost in the Lords they consolidated it with a money Bill for the service of the year. The Lords demanded a conference, and the Commons, exasperated at their interference in a money Bill, prepared to go greater lengths. They assumed the aspect of the Commons in Charles I.'s time. They ordered the doors to be closed, and called for a list of the Privy Councillors. They then moved that John, Lord Somers, should be expelled from the service of the king for ever. The resolution was not carried, but the temper of the House was such as made wise men tremble for an approaching crisis. The king was disposed to refuse to pass the Bill even if the Lords did; but when the Commons left the Bill in the hands of the Lords, and that House was warned on all sides that they would have to pass the Bill, or the consequences might be fatal, he gave way, though with undisguised resentment. The Commons were proceeding with a fresh resolution for an address to his Majesty, praying that not any foreigner, except Prince George of Denmark, should be admitted to his Majesty's Council in England or Ireland, the resolution being aimed at Portland, Albemarle, and Galway, when the king sent a private message to the peers, desiring them to pass the Resumption Bill, and on the 11th of April he went down to the House, and gave it the royal assent. He then ordered the Earl of Bridgewater, in the absence of Somers, who was ill, to prorogue Parliament, and it was accordingly prorogued to the 23rd of May without any speech.

William left England in the beginning of July, but before his departure he endeavoured to persuade Somers to give way to the rancour of the Commons, and resign the Seals. Somers refused to resign voluntarily, arguing that it would imply a fear of his enemies, or a consciousness of guilt; but William, who knew the necessity of leaving a better feeling behind him if possible, sent Lord Jersey to Somers for the Seals, and offered them successively to Chief Justice Holt, and to Treby the Attorney-General; both declined, however, what would have turned the enmity of Parliament on them, and William was eventually obliged to bestow them on Nathan Wright, one of the Serjeants-at-Law, a man of no mark and very indifferent qualifications for the office. William offered the government of Ireland to Shrewsbury; but he, too, declined the office, and set out for Italy. Every one seemed afraid of engaging in his Government, so bitter was the Parliament against him. Even his trusty Portland, now absolutely groaning under the weight of riches which William had heaped upon him, retired from his place in his household, and Lord Jersey was appointed Chamberlain, and Lord Romney, Groom of the Stole. William had never left the kingdom in circumstances of so much unpopularity, and scarcely had he gone when the Duke of Gloucester, the only child of the Princess Anne, died at the age of eleven (July 30, 1700). This gave fresh hopes to the Jacobites. They sent a messenger to St. Germains with the news, and began to bestir themselves all over the kingdom. In truth, the outlook was very gloomy for the Protestant succession. No such successor was as yet appointed. The health and spirits of William were fast sinking. His person and government were extremely unpopular. The House of Brunswick had treated his advances with marked contempt, but they now came forward, urged by the critical state of things, and made their first visit of acknowledgment to the king. The Princess Sophia, Electress Dowager of Hanover, was the person[518] on whom the eyes of the Protestants were now turned; but the nation was in a state of much uncertainty. It was rumoured that even Anne had sent a conciliatory letter to her father, and the public mind was disturbed by fears of a disputed succession, and of the reviving chances of a Stuart king.

William during this year had been busy concluding the new treaty of partition. Tallard, Portland, and Jersey had assisted in it. It was signed by them in London early in March, and by Briord and the Plenipotentiaries of the States at the Hague on the 25th of October. It had substituted the Archduke Charles, the second son of the Emperor, for the deceased Electoral Prince of Bavaria, as heir to Spain with the Spanish Flanders and colonies; but the Dauphin was still to possess Naples and the other Italian States, with Lorraine and Bar, which the Duke of Lorraine was to exchange for Milan. In case of the archduke dying, some other son of the Emperor was to succeed, but not the king of the Romans, for it was stipulated that Spain and the Empire, or France and Spain, were never to be united under one crown. The first treaty was made known to the different Powers, and excited much astonishment and disapprobation. The Emperor of Germany, notwithstanding his son was made successor to the Spanish monarchy, Flanders, America, and the Indies, was not conciliated. He expressed his amazement that the kings of other countries should take it upon them to carve up the Spanish monarchy without the consent of the present possessor and the Estates of the kingdom. He denied the right of these Powers to compel him to accept a part when he was heir to the whole, and to pronounce his forfeiture of even that part if within three months he did not consent to this unwarrantable proceeding. The other princes of Germany were unwilling to excite the enmity of the House of Austria by expressing their approval of the scheme, and Brandenburg, which was just now in treaty with the Emperor for the acknowledgment of Prussia as a kingdom, which was signed on the 16th of November, of course united with him. The Italian States were alarmed at the prospects of being handed over to France, and the Swiss declined to sanction the treaty. In Spain the aristocracy, who had vast estates in Sicily, Naples, and the other Italian provinces, and who enjoyed the viceroyalties, and governorships, and other good offices there, were greatly incensed at the idea of all these passing to the French.

The miserable and dying king was in agonies. He had already made a will, leaving the crown and all its dependencies to the Emperor, but neither he nor the Emperor had taken the precaution of securing the Italian provinces by marching a strong army thither—probably from fear of arousing Louis to a premature war. He now called a Council of State to deliberate on the succession; but the unfortunate prince had to deliberate with a Council which had long been bought over by the French. Only two of the Council had the patriotism to vote that the question should be submitted to the Cortes; they were overborne by the voices of the rest, who had been corrupted by Harcourt, the French Minister. Amongst them were prominent the Marquis de Monterey and Cardinal Portocarrero. They advised that they should consult the faculties of law and theology, and these faculties were already bribed by France. The French faction persuaded further the starving people that all their troubles had been produced by the partisans of Austria; and the enraged mob surrounded the palace and demanded to see the king, who was compelled to show himself, though he was too weak to stand without help. All this time the condition of the king of Spain was frightful. His conscience, accustomed to be swayed by his religious advisers, was torn to and fro by the contending exertions of Portocarrero and the queen. Portocarrero was a man of vast influence; he was not only cardinal but Archbishop of Toledo, and affected a deep concern for the king. Charles, intensely attached to his own family, and having a strong persuasion that its claims were the claims of the nation, was yet so tortured by the arguments of the priests of the opposite factions, and the entreaties of the queen, that no poor soul was ever in so dreadful a purgatory. At length, after the most violent contests, he sank in passive weakness, and on the 2nd of October he signed the will dictated by France. Having done it, he burst into tears, and sighed out "Now I am nothing!"

But this signing was effected in deepest secrecy; neither the queen nor any one but a small junto of the French faction was aware of it. As Charles, however, still lingered between life and death for a month yet, the French made every preparation for the event, and Portocarrero took possession of the Great Seals, and dispersed all his agents, so as to secure the transfer of the crown to France. On the 1st of November, 1700, the unhappy monarch died, at the age of thirty-nine, and the will was made known, to the[519] consternation of the queen and the Austrian and English ambassadors, who were till that moment in profound ignorance of it. As soon as the news reached Paris, Count Zinzendorf, the Imperial ambassador, presented himself at Versailles, and inquired whether the king meant to abide by the treaty of partition or accept the will. The Marquis de Torcy answered for Louis that he meant certainly to abide by the treaty. But this was only to gain time. Louis had long made up his mind, and when he heard that Charles was dead, he exclaimed, "There are no longer any Pyrenees." William's statesmanlike plans had been foiled by his confederate's treachery.

William had returned to England towards the end of October, a few days before the death of the King of Spain. He was deeply chagrined at this unexpected event, but, in the present temper of England—disgusted with his proceedings with Louis for the partition of Spain—he could not openly complain. Not the less, however, did he unburthen his feelings to his friend the Pensionary Heinsius. Writing to him, he said, "I never relied much on the engagements with France, but I must confess that I did not think they would on this occasion have broken, in the face of the whole world, a solemn treaty before it was well accomplished." He confessed that he had been duped, and that he felt it the more because his English subjects did not disguise their opinion that the will was better than the partition, against which one party had complained because of the large amount given to France, the other at the injustice of forestalling the wishes of the French, and both at the secrecy with which the negotiations had been conducted. He expressed his deep anxiety regarding the Spanish Netherlands, which, it seemed, must fall into the hands of France, and as to what barrier was to be set up between them and Holland; and he concluded by saying that he should bear all the blame for having trusted to France after his experience that no trust was to be put in it.

But, besides his health and the mortification of Louis's triumphant deceit, William had plenty of troubles from the temper of his Parliament, and the state of the factions which harassed his Government. With such gloomy auspices came in the year 1701. The king had now replaced the retiring Whigs of his Ministry by Tories. Lord Godolphin was made First Commissioner of the Treasury; Lord Tankerville succeeded Lord Lonsdale, deceased, as Privy Seal; Lord Rochester was sent as Lord-Lieutenant to Ireland; and Sir Charles Hedges was appointed Secretary of State. By their advice Parliament was dissolved, and writs were issued for the meeting of the new one on the 6th of February.

When Parliament met, it was found that the late Speaker, Sir Thomas Littleton, had absented himself from the House, and the Tories proposed in his stead Robert Harley, who was now fast rising into favour with that party. The king had requested Littleton, in fact, to withdraw, that the Tories might get in their man; but there was such a ferment in the House that it was obliged to be adjourned till the 20th. Then the Whigs brought forward Sir Richard Onslow, but he was defeated by a majority of two hundred and forty-nine to one hundred and twenty-five. This showed that a strong Tory Commons had been returned, and yet it was not true that all the Tories were unanimous. There was, indeed, a considerable breach in the party. Those of them who had been passed over in the selection of the Ministry, or had other causes of pique against the Government, remained in opposition, and occasioned the king and their own party no little embarrassment. Amongst these were the Duke of Leeds, the Marquis of Normanby, the Earl of Nottingham, Seymour, Musgrave, Howe, Finch, and Showers. It was strongly suspected, too, that Louis had made use of Tallard to bribe some members of Parliament and of the Government to an awful extent to oppose any measures for war and Continental combinations.

In his opening speech William informed the Parliament that the death of the Duke of Gloucester had rendered it necessary that they should take into consideration the succession to the Crown after him and the Princess Anne, who had now no heir; for the happiness of the nation and the security of the Protestant religion made it the subject of the highest moment. The subject of next importance, and scarcely inferior, he said, was the death of the late King of Spain, and the succession arranged by his will, which had made so great an alteration in affairs abroad as demanded their most serious consideration for the interests and safety of England, and the preservation of the peace of Europe and of the Protestant religion. That these great topics might have due consideration, he had desired that they should receive it in a new Parliament. He next referred to the necessity for making a proper provision for the current expenditure, and for the reduction of the debt, and recommended them to put the fleet into effective condition.

[520]

The Electress Sophia of Hanover, the next in succession to Anne, was the daughter of Frederick the Prince Palatine, and Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia, therefore granddaughter of James I. No sooner did Sophia hear of the death of the Duke of Gloucester than she took with her her daughter, the Electress of Brandenburg, and made a visit to William at Loo. She had a twofold object, to obtain his promise of favouring her succession to the crown of England, and his acknowledgment of Brandenburg as a kingdom under the name of Prussia, a favour which the Emperor, as we have seen, had already conceded. William seems to have assured the Electress of his intention to support both her claim to the English crown, and that of her daughter to the title of Queen of Prussia, and immediately left for England.

THE ROYAL PALACE OF WHITEHALL FROM THE THAMES, IN THE BEGINNING OF THE 17TH CENTURY.

At the same time, the Court of St. Germains was on the alert to get the Prince of Wales accepted, and the English Jacobites sent Mr. F. Graham, a brother of the late Lord Preston, to James, to make certain proposals regarding the succession of the Prince of Wales. It was proposed that he should be sent to England and there educated in Protestantism; but this condition James was certain not to agree to, and accordingly the whole scheme fell to the ground. It is said that the Princess Anne was favourable to the prince's succession could he have been brought up a Protestant; but his parents declared that they would rather see him dead.

The Tories, who were averse from a Continental war, appear to have held a large meeting, to propose an address to his Majesty, praying him to acknowledge the new King of Spain; and had they done this, they would probably have found the king ready to listen to them, for the States were urging him to do the same thing. But though the proposition was warmly advocated, Mr. Monckton, happening to say that if they carried this motion, the next he supposed would be to recommend the acknowledgment of the Prince of Wales, the idea appeared to startle the meeting, and the matter was dropped. But the Whig party was still inclined to war. They had been the advocates and supporters of the former one; they knew that William was strongly disposed to it, and that to support him was the way to regain his favour. Besides, Marlborough was[521] anxious to distinguish himself at the head of an army; in that respect he was at one with the Whigs, and had their support. The Whigs saw the fast-failing health of William, and looked towards the Princess Anne with whom the Marlboroughs were everything. A strong spirit of war, therefore, manifested itself in the Commons, in spite of the inclinations of Ministers. Secretary Vernon, writing to the Earl of Manchester at Paris, told him that so great a spirit had rarely been seen in the House of Commons for supporting the interests of England and Holland; and this was fully borne out by a unanimous vote of the House on the 24th of February, declaring that it would stand by the king, and support him in all such measures as went to maintain the independence of England, the security of the Protestant religion, and the peace of Europe. The question, however, of the best mode of maintaining peace, whether by conceding the French claims on Spain, or arming to resist them, was warmly debated by the different factions. William was agreeably surprised at the tone of the House, and on the 17th he informed them of his satisfaction at their assurances, which he took to be important for the honour and safety of England. He then handed to them the pressing memorial of the States-General to him, to acknowledge the Duke of Anjou as the king of Spain. They had themselves agreed to do this, in terror lest the French should march over their defenceless frontiers; yet they told William that they would do nothing without his consent and approbation. They counted, however, fully on this, and painted earnestly the dangers to which they were exposed by any opposition to France, and called on him to supply the English aid secured to them by treaty. But they did not seem inclined to vote supplies for the purpose.

Parliament now entered on the great deliberation of the Session, the appointment of the successor to the crown after the Princess of Denmark. It was a subject which the king had recommended from the throne at the commencement of the Session, and which the failing health of William and the prospect of agitations all over Europe warned them not to defer. This important business, however, was set about in an extraordinary manner. Roger Coke says a Whig member meant to bring in a Bill to fix the succession on the House of Brunswick, but that the Tories, becoming aware of it, set Sir John Bowles, one of their own party, to bring one in. This Bowles was a half-crazy man, and in the end became altogether insane; and the Bill being put into his hands looked as though the Tories meant to cast contempt upon it. The Bill was sent into Committee, and Bowles was put in the chair; but whenever the discussion was brought in the members hastened out of the House, and the matter seemed to hang for several weeks as though no one would proceed with it under the present management. But at length Harley took it up in earnest, and remarked that there were some very necessary preliminary questions to be settled before they proceeded to vote the different clauses of the Bill; that the nation had been in too great haste when it settled the Government on the previous occasion, and had consequently overlooked many securities to the liberties of the nation which might have been obtained; that now they were under no immediate pressure, and it would be inexcusable to fall into the same error. Before, therefore, they proceeded to nominate the person who should succeed, they ought to settle the conditions under which he and his descendants should succeed. This advice was taken, much to the surprise of William, who found the Tories, now in the ascendant, endeavouring to curtail the royal prerogative, and by every one of their restrictions casting a decided censure upon him. The public, likewise, were so much puzzled by this conduct that they suspected that the motion of Harley was intended to defeat the Brunswick succession altogether. But the terms on which William and Mary had been admitted to the throne were the work of the Whigs, and the Tories could not let slip this opportunity of showing how negligent they had been of the rights of the nation.

Accordingly, after great discussions carried on for about three months, the following resolutions were agreed to and embodied in the Bill:—"That whoever should hereafter come to the possession of this Crown shall join in communion with the Church of England as by law established; that in case the Crown and dignity of this realm shall hereafter come to any person not being a native of this kingdom of England, this nation be not obliged to engage in any war for the defence of any dominions or territories which do not belong to the Crown of England without the consent of Parliament; that no person who shall hereafter come to the possession of the Crown shall go out of the dominions of England, Scotland, or Ireland without consent of Parliament; that from and after the time that further limitations by this Act shall take effect, all matters and things relating to[522] the well-governing of this kingdom, which are properly cognisable in the Privy Council by the laws and customs of the realm, shall be transacted there, and all resolutions taken thereupon shall be signed by such of the Privy Council as shall advise and consent to the same; that after the limitations shall take effect, no person born out of the kingdom of England, Scotland, or Ireland, or the dominions thereunto belonging, although he be naturalised and made a denizen, except such as are born of English parents, shall be capable to be of the Privy Council, or a member of either House of Parliament, or to enjoy any office or place of trust, either civil or military, or to have any grant of lands, tenements, or hereditaments from the Crown to himself, or to any other in trust for him; that no person who has an office or place of profit under the King, or receives a pension from the Crown, shall be capable of serving as a member of the House of Commons; that after the limitation shall take effect, judges' commissions shall be made quamdiu se bene gesserint,[A] and their salaries ascertained and established, but, upon the address of both Houses of Parliament, it may be lawful to remove them; that no pardon under the Great Seal of England be pleadable to an impeachment by the Commons in Parliament." Having settled these preliminaries, the Bill provided that the Princess Sophia, Duchess Dowager of Hanover, be declared the next in succession to the Crown of England in the Protestant line after his Majesty and the Princess Anne, and the heirs of their bodies respectively; and that the further limitation of the Crown be to the said Princess Sophia and the heirs of her body, being Protestants.

When this extraordinary Bill was sent up to the Lords, it was not expected to pass there without much opposition and cutting down. There was, in fact, an evident reluctance there, as well as in the Commons, to enter on the question. Many lords absented themselves, and others, as the Marquis of Normanby, the Earls of Huntingdon and Plymouth, and the Lords Guildford and Jeffreys, opposed it. Burnet attempted to move some amendments; but some lords crying out "No amendments! no amendments!" none were further attempted, and the Bill was sent down to the Commons as it went up.

Had such a sweeping Bill as this passed the Houses some years ago, William would have refused to ratify it, as he refused so long to ratify the Triennial Bill. Certainly it was from beginning to end the most trenchant piece of censure on his conduct.

During these transactions negotiations were going on at the Hague between England, France, Holland, and Spain. Mr. Stanhope, Envoy Extraordinary to the States-General, was empowered to treat, in union with Holland, for a continuation of the peace on certain conditions. These conditions were, that Louis should withdraw all his troops from the Spanish Netherlands, and engage to send no fresh ones into any of the Flemish towns; that no troops but native-born troops of Flanders or Spain should be kept there, except in Nieuport and Ostend, which should be given up to king William as cautionary towns, and in Luxemburg, Namur, and Mons, which should be garrisoned by the States-General, for the security of their frontiers, but without prejudice to the rights and revenues of the Crown of Spain; that no towns in the Spanish Netherlands, nor any port belonging to Spain, should be given up to or exchanged with France on any pretence whatever; that the subjects of England should enjoy the same liberties and privileges as they did on the demise of the late king of Spain, and in as ample a manner as the French or any other nation, in all parts of the Spanish dominions, whether by land or sea; that the Emperor should be invited to join, and that any other princes or States who desired to unite for the preservation of the peace of Europe should be admitted to the treaty.

D'Avaux, the French Minister, received these demands with an air of the utmost astonishment, and declared that they could not have been higher if his master had lost four successive battles. That the French troops would be removed from Flanders as soon as Spain could send forces to replace them, he said was certain; but for the rest of the Articles, he could only send them to Versailles for the consideration of the king. Louis expressed the utmost indignation at these demands, which he declared to be most insolent, and could only be put forward by William with a desire to provoke a war. He said that he would renew the treaty of Ryswick, which was all that could be reasonably expected. In fact, though the demands were no more than were necessary for the security of Holland, William, knowing the nature of Louis, and that he was now at the head of France, Spain, and a great part of Italy, could not seriously have expected that he would accede to them. Perhaps William intended him to reject them,[523] as that would furnish a good casus belli, and would enable him to rouse the spirit of the English people to a martial tone. Accordingly he communicated the refusal of the French Court to accede to the terms offered; but the Commons, feeling that the object was to engage them in support of a Continental Congress, which might lead them into another war more oppressive than the former one, they thanked his Majesty in an address for his communication, but called for copies of the Partition Treaty, that they might inform themselves on the precise terms agreed upon in that treaty with France. The Tories, however much they might be disposed to maintain the same course themselves, would by no means omit the opportunity of damaging the Whig Ministers who had been concerned in that business. They had already agreed to send ten thousand men to the aid of the States-General in support of the treaty of 1677, and they now set to work to establish by this inquiry a plea against Lord Somers, Portland, and the others engaged in the treaty.

The Lords, not to be behind, also called for copies of the two treaties. They appointed a Committee to examine them, and placed Nottingham, a thorough Tory, in the chair. There was a sprinkling of Whigs in the Committee to give it an air of fairness, and a strong contest went on between the two parties. On the fourth resolution, that there were no instructions in writing given to the Plenipotentiaries of England, and that, if verbal orders were given, they were given without being submitted to the Council, Portland, who had been almost the sole manager of these treaties, in conjunction with William, by permission of the king informed them that he had, by the king's order, laid the matter before six of the king's Ministers—namely, Pembroke, Marlborough, Lonsdale, Somers, Halifax, and Secretary Vernon. These lords then endeavoured to excuse themselves by admitting that, the Earl of Jersey having read the first treaty to them, they had objected to various particulars, but being informed that the king had already carried the matter as far as possible, and could get no better terms, and that, in fact, everything was settled, they had nothing for it but to desist from their objections. Various protests were entered against the resolutions in Committee, but the Report, when brought up, was to this effect:—That the lords spiritual and temporal had found, to their great sorrow, that the treaty made with the French king had been very prejudicial to the peace and safety of Europe; that it had probably given occasion to the late king of Spain to make his will in favour of the Duke of Anjou; that the sanction of France having possession of Sicily, Naples, several ports in the Mediterranean, the province of Guipuzcoa, and the Duchy of Lorraine, was not only very injurious to the interests of Europe, but contrary to the pretence of the treaty itself, which was to prevent too many territories being united under one crown; that it appeared that this treaty never was submitted to the consideration of the Council, or the Committee of the Council [in our phrase, the Cabinet], and they prayed his Majesty in future to take the advice of his natural-born subjects, whose interest and natural affection to their country would induce them to seek its welfare and prosperity. This last observation was aimed at Portland.

The Ministers, such as were admitted to the secret of the treaty, as well as the king, had undoubtedly violated the Constitution; and had the Tories been honest, they might have rendered essential service to the country by punishing them. But their object was too apparently to crush Portland and Somers, and to let the rest go, whom they quietly passed over. The new Lord Keeper carried up the address to the king, but the members at large, not relishing the unpleasant office, took care not to accompany him, and he found himself at the palace almost alone. Two or three of the lords-in-waiting were all that served to represent the House of Peers. On its being read, William endeavoured to conceal his chagrin, and merely replied that the address contained matter of grave moment, and that he would always take care that all treaties should be made so as to contribute to the honour and safety of England.

The debates in the Commons were in the meantime still more vehement on the same subject. Sir Edward Seymour declared that the Partition Treaty was as infamous as a highway robbery, and Howe went further, denouncing it as a felonious treaty; an expression which so exasperated the king that he protested, if the disparity of condition between him and that member had not been too great, he would have demanded satisfaction by his sword. These discussions in the two Houses excited out of doors a general condemnation of the treaty, and threw fresh odium on the Government.

On the last day of March a message was communicated to both Houses by Secretary[524] Hedges, that no further negotiation appeared possible with France, from its decided rejection of the terms offered, and its continuing to concede only the renewal of the treaty of Ryswick. The Commons, instead of an immediate answer, adjourned to the 2nd of April, and then resolved unanimously to desire his Majesty to carry on the negotiations with the States-General, and take such measures as should conduce to the safety of the kingdom. In reply to two resolutions from the States-General, and a memorial presented by their envoy in England, which the king laid before them, they assured him that they would support him, supplying the twenty ships and ten thousand men which they were bound to find by the treaty of 1677. This gave no sanction to any negotiations for a fresh alliance with the Powers formerly combined against France; and William was deeply mortified, but he merely thanked them for their assurances of aid, and informed them that he had sent orders to his Ambassador at the Hague still to endeavour to come to terms with France and Spain.

On the 19th of April the Marquis de Torcy handed to the Earl of Manchester, at Paris, a letter from the new king of Spain to the king of England, announcing his accession to the throne, and expressing a desire to cultivate terms of friendship with him. This announcement had been made long before to the other European Powers, and it might well have been doubted whether William would now acknowledge his right. To do that was to admit the validity of the late king of Spain's will, and there could then be no real reason to refuse the conditions of the treaty of Ryswick. William was from this cause in a state of great perplexity; but the Earl of Rochester and the new Ministers urged him to reply and admit the Duke of Anjou's right. The States-General had already done it, and, in fact, unless England and the old allies of the Emperor were prepared to dispute it with efficient arms, it was useless to refuse. Accordingly, after a severe struggle with himself, William wrote to "the Most Serene and Potent Prince, Brother, and Cousin," congratulating him on his happy arrival in his kingdom of Spain, and expressing his assurance that the ancient friendship between the two Crowns would remain inviolate, to the mutual advantage and prosperity of the two nations. With this was certainly ended every right of England to dispute the possession of all the territories and dependencies of the Spanish monarch by the new king; and there could be no justifiable cause of war with France until she attempted to renew her hostilities to neighbouring peoples.

Whilst affairs were in this position abroad, the anxiety of William was increased to the utmost by the war which was waging between the two rival factions in Parliament. In endeavouring to damage the Whigs to the utmost, the Tories damaged and tortured the king, who was sufficiently miserable with the prospects on the Continent and his fast-failing health. The Commons now determined to impeach Portland and Somers on the ground of their concern in the second Partition Treaty, contrary to the constitutional usages of the country. To procure fresh matter against Somers and Orford, the pirate, Captain Kidd, was brought from Newgate, where he was now lying, and examined at the bar of the House; but nothing was got thereby. In the case of Portland and Montague there were additional charges in reference to the grants and dilapidations of the royal revenue for which they were said to be answerable.

At this juncture the men of Kent manifested their old public spirit by sending in a petition, praying the House to endeavour to rise above their party squabbles, and to combine for the furtherance of the public business. The whole community were beginning to grow disgusted with the dissensions, which had evidently more of party rancour than patriotism at their bottom. This petition had been got up and signed by grand jurors, magistrates, and freeholders of the county, assembled at Maidstone, and confided to Sir Thomas Hales, one of their members. But Sir Thomas, on looking over it, was so much alarmed that he handed it to the other member, Mr. Meredith. Meredith, in his turn, was so impressed with the hazardous nature of the petition that, on presenting it, he informed the House that some of the supporters of it, five gentlemen of fortune and distinction, were in the lobby, and ready to attest their signatures. They were called in accordingly, and owned their signatures, when they were ordered to withdraw, and the petition was read. It concluded by saying, "that the experience of all ages made it manifest that no nation can be great or happy without union. We hope that no pretence whatever shall be able to create a misunderstanding amongst ourselves, or the least distrust of His Most Sacred Majesty, whose great actions for this nation are writ in the hearts of his subjects, and can never, without the blackest ingratitude, be forgot. We[525] most humbly implore this honourable House to have regard to the voice of the people, that our religion and safety may be effectually provided for, that your addresses may be turned into Bills of Supply, and that His Most Sacred Majesty, whose propitious and unblemished reign over us we pray God long to continue, may be able powerfully to assist his allies before it is too late."

CAPTAIN KIDD BEFORE THE BAR OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. (See p. 524.)

In proportion to the excellence of the advice was the indignation with which it was received by the angry Commons. When men are conscious that they are acting from private motives of no very respectable kind under the mask of patriotism, the discovery that they are seen through invariably exasperates them. Accordingly, the House was furious at this very seasonable petition. Some of the members went out to the petitioners, and called upon them to make a proper submission to the affronted House; but they strongly refused, maintaining that they had only done their duty, whereupon the House voted that the petition was scandalous, insolent, seditious, and tending to the destruction of the Constitution; and they ordered the Sergeant-at-Arms to take the petitioners into custody. But the stout men of Kent were not secured without a vigorous resistance. They were then sent to the Gatehouse prison; but their treatment only damaged the Commons, for the public were greatly of the same opinion. Similar petitions were soon preparing in different quarters, and these gentlemen were much visited in their confinement, which continued till the prorogation. It was, moreover, much questioned whether the Commons had not greatly outstripped their real authority, and infringed the statute of the 13th of Charles II., which guarantees the right of petition.

The Tory party in the Commons then returned to their prosecutions of the late Whig Ministers. But the day of strange things seemed to have arrived. One day Harley, the Speaker of the Commons, received a packet from the hands of a poor woman as he entered the House. Such an incident could not take place now, the Commons having protected themselves from such irregular missives by making it necessary that all petitions should have the names of the places, as well as the persons whence they came, clearly stated, and be confided to the care of a member in good time for him to note its character and contents. This, however, turned out[526] to be no petition, but a command. "The enclosed memorial," it was stated in a letter accompanying, "you are charged with in behalf of many thousands of the good people of England. There is neither Popish, Jacobite, seditious, Court, or party, interest concerned in it, but honesty and truth. You are commanded by two hundred thousand Englishmen to deliver it to the House of Commons, and to inform them that it is no banter, but serious truth, and a serious regard to it is expected. Nothing but justice and their duty is required; and it is required by them who have both a right to require, and power to compel it—namely, the people of England. We could have come to the House strong enough to oblige you to hear us, but we have avoided any tumults, not desiring to embroil, but to serve, our native country. If you refuse to communicate it to them, you will find cause in a short time to repent it."

This strange memorial, which is known to have been written by Defoe, was signed "Legion," and charged the House with unwarrantable practices under fifteen heads. A new claim of right was arranged under seven heads. Amongst the reprehensible proceedings of the Commons were stated to be, the voting of the Partition Treaty fatal to Europe, because it gave too much of the Spanish dominions to France, and not concerning themselves to prevent them from taking possession of them all. Deserting of the Dutch when the French were almost at their doors, and till it was almost too late to help them, it declared to be unjust to our treaties, unkind to our confederates, dishonourable to the English nation, and negligent of the safety of both our neighbours and ourselves. Addressing the king to displace his friends on base surmises, before the legal trial or any article proven, was pronounced illegal, contrary to the course of law, and putting execution before judgment. It also declared the delaying of proceedings on impeachments to blast the reputations of the accused without proving the charges, to be illegal, oppressive, destructive of the liberties of Englishmen, and a reproach to Parliaments. In the same strain it criticised the attacks on the king's person, especially those of that "impudent rascal John Howe," who had said openly that his Majesty had made a "felonious treaty," insinuating that the Partition Treaty was a combination to rob the king of Spain, when it was quite as just as to blow up one man's house to save that of his neighbour. The Commons were admonished to mend their ways, as shown to them in the memorial, on pain of incurring the resentment of an injured nation; and the document concluded thus, "for Englishmen are no more to be slaves to Parliament than to kings—our name is Legion, and we are many."

No sooner was this paper read than the blustering Commons were filled with consternation. They summoned all the members of the House by the Sergeant-at-Arms; anticipations of sedition and tumult were expressed, and an address to his Majesty was drawn up in haste, calling on him to take measures for the public peace. Howe, one of the noisiest men in the House, and accustomed to say very bold things, and other Tory members, declared their lives in danger; others got away into the country, believing that "Legion" was on the point of attacking the Parliament. A Committee was appointed to sit permanently in the Speaker's chamber, to take every means for averting a catastrophe, with power to call before them all persons necessary for throwing light on the danger, and to examine papers. At length, however, as "Legion" did not appear, and all remained quiet, the House began to recover its senses; it began at the same time to dawn upon their apprehensions that they had been hoaxed by some clever wag. This wag, as we have said, was none other than the inimitable author of "Robinson Crusoe," one of the shrewdest political writers of the time.

The Lords now demanded that the trial of Somers and the other noblemen should proceed without any further delay, but the Commons proposed that it should be conducted before a Committee of both Houses. This they did to bar the way of the trial, for they appeared rather to desire to destroy the characters of the accused than to proceed to extremities. They were aware that the accused nobles had a majority in their favour in their own House, and that to impeach them there was to fail. They, therefore, passed an unjustifiable address to the King, praying him to dismiss the five peers from his Council, even before the impeachments were heard. For the same reasons the Lords refused to admit the Commons to a share in the trial, because in their House there was a majority the other way. They replied, therefore, that such Committees were contrary to custom in cases of impeachment for misdemeanour; that the only exception was that in the case of the Earl of Danby and the five Popish lords, and that the fate of it was sufficient warning to avoid such a precedent, for the Committee could not proceed for altercations, and the affair could only be got rid of by dissolving Parliament. The Commons still argued for it, the Lords persisted in their[527] refusal, and at this moment the dispute was interrupted by the king calling on both Houses to attend to the ratification of the new Succession Bill.

After this the contest regarding the mode of trial of the impeached nobles was renewed with unabated acrimony. In one of the conferences on the subject Lord Haversham declared his opinion that the Commons themselves really believed the accused lords innocent; "for there are," he said, "various other lords implicated in the very same business, and yet the Commons make no charge against them, but leave them at the head of affairs, near the King's person, to do any mischief they are inclined to, and impeach others, when they are all alike guilty, and concerned in the same facts." This was a hard hit, for it was the simple truth, and the delegates of the Commons, as they could not deny it, could only affect to take violent offence at it. There was fresh correspondence, but the Lords cut the matter short by deciding that there should be no Committee of both Houses for regulating the trials of the impeached nobles. The Commons, however, on the 14th of June sent up their charges against the Earl of Halifax, declining to proceed against Portland, as they said, out of respect to his Majesty.

The Lords now gave notice that they would proceed with the trials of the accused nobles, beginning with that of Lord Somers first, as the Commons had proposed, and called on the Commons to make good their charge. On the other hand, the Commons, still insisting on their right to have a voice in regulating the trials, made an order that no member of their House should appear at the "pretended" trial of the Lord Somers. Notwithstanding, the Lords gave notice that they would proceed on the 17th of June to the trial of Somers, in Westminster Hall. The Commons refused to attend, declaring that they were the only judges, and that the evidence was not yet prepared. This produced a violent debate in the Lords, where the Tory Ministers supported their party in the Commons; but the order for the trial was carried, followed by strong protests against it. On the day of the trial the Lords sent a message to the Commons to inform them that they were going to the Hall, and the Commons not appearing there, the Lords again returned to their own House, and settled the question to be put; and again returning to Westminster Hall, the question was then put:—"That John Lord Somers be acquitted of the articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Commons, and all things therein contained; and that the impeachment be dismissed." This was carried by a majority of thirty-five. A similar course was taken with regard to the other accused.

It had been a miserable Session to the king. His health continued to fail, and, amid his endeavours to conceal the decay of his constitution, that his Allies might not be discouraged, he had found his favourite Minister violently attacked, himself by no means spared, and the Session almost wholly wasted in party feud. It had, however, passed the Succession Bill, and now, to his agreeable surprise, voted him unexpectedly liberal supplies, and sanctioned his forming alliances against France. He now lost no time in appointing a regency; and gave the command of the ten thousand troops, sent to Holland, to Marlborough—an appointment, however despicable the man, the very best he could have made in a military point of view. At the commencement of July he sailed for Holland, accompanied by the Earls of Carlisle, Romney, Albemarle, General Overkirk, and others, and landed on the 3rd of the month. The Scottish troops voted had arrived in Holland before him, and the ten thousand men from England and Ireland were just arriving, so that William appeared again amongst his countrymen at the head of a respectable army of his new subjects. When he presented himself, however, before the States-General the day after his arrival, his appearance was such as to create great alarm in all that saw him. In his energies they put the almost sole trust of effectual resistance to France, and he was clearly fast sinking. He was wasted, pale, and haggard. The last Session of Parliament, and the fierce dissensions which had been carried on between the factions of Whig and Tory, neither of which looked to anything but the indulgence of their own malice, had done more to wear him out than a dozen campaigns. He might well declare that that had been the most miserable year of his existence. What strength he had left, however, he devoted unshrinkingly to the grand object of his existence, the war for the balance of power. He expressed his great joy to be once more amongst his faithful countrymen; and, in truth, he must have felt it like a cordial, for around him in England he saw nothing but unprincipled strife of parties. William told the States that he had hoped, after the peace of Ryswick, to have been able to pass his remaining days in[528] repose, but that the changes which had taken place in Europe were such as no man could see the end of. He was still resolved, he said, notwithstanding this, to pursue the great object of the peace of Europe with unremitting zeal, whether it was to be achieved by negotiation or war; and he assured them of the active support of his English subjects. The States, in their reply, took care to express how much they depended on the courage and power of the English, and to compliment them on the splendid fame for valour which they had acquired in the late struggle.

William then set out to survey the defences of the frontiers, and the state of the garrisons; and having visited Bergen-op-Zoom, Sluys, and other places, and taken such measures as appeared necessary, he returned to the Hague, where the news met him that Louis had recalled his Ambassador, D'Avaux, who left a memorial in a very insolent tone, asserting that his royal master was convinced that no good could come of the negotiations, but still declaring that it depended on themselves whether there should be peace or war. This event by no means surprised William, for both he and Marlborough had felt from the first that there was no sincerity in the professions of D'Avaux, and that they were meant only to gain time. The treaty between England, Holland, and the Emperor was, therefore, urged forward, and was signed on the 7th of September, being styled "The Second Grand Alliance." By this treaty it was contracted that the three Allies should mutually exert themselves to procure satisfaction for the Emperor for the Spanish succession, and security for the peace and trade of the Allies. Two months were yet to be allowed for obtaining the objects by negotiation. If this failed, war was to be made to recover the Spanish Flanders, the kingdoms of Sicily, Naples, and the other Spanish territories in Italy; moreover, the States and England might seize and keep for themselves whatever they could of the colonial possessions of Spain. No peace was to be made by any one of the Allies until they had obtained security for the absolute separation of France and Spain, and that France should not hold the Spanish Indies. All kings, princes, and States were invited to enter the alliance, and tempting offers of advantages were made to induce them to do so. William had already secured the interest of Denmark, and the promises of Sweden; but the young King of Sweden, Charles XII., was too busily pursuing the war with Russia and Poland to lend any real service to this cause. At the very moment that the Allies were canvassing for confederates, this "Madman of the North," as he was called, gave the Czar Peter a most terrible overthrow at Narva on the 30th of November, 1700, killing thirty thousand of his men. Holstein and the Palatinate came into the treaty, and the news from Italy soon induced the German petty princes to profess their adhesion, especially the Electors of Bavaria and Cologne, who had received subsidies from France, and raised troops, with which they would have declared for Louis had not the victories of Prince Eugene swayed their mercenary minds the other way.

Several months before the signing of the treaty at the Hague, Eugene, at the head of the Emperor's troops in Italy, had opened the war. He had entered Italy at Vicenza, and passed the Adige near Carpi, where, being opposed by Catinat and the Duke of Savoy, he defeated them with considerable slaughter, and forced them to retire into Mantuan territory. Catinat and the French had excited the hatred of the peasantry by their insolence and oppressions, and they flew to arms and assisted Eugene, who was very popular with them, by harassing the outposts of the French, cutting off their foragers, and obstructing their supplies. Marshal Villeroi being sent to their aid, Catinat retired in disgust. Villeroi marched towards Chiari, and attacked Eugene in his camp, but was repulsed with the loss of five thousand men. By the end of the campaign the Prince had reduced all the Mantuan territory except Mantua itself and Goito, which he blockaded. He reduced all the places on the Oglio, and continued in the field all the winter, displaying a genius for war which greatly alarmed the king of France. He despatched fresh reinforcements to Piedmont under Marshal Vendôme, but he found the Duke of Savoy now cold and backward in assisting him. The duke had got all that he could look for from France; his second daughter was married to the new king of Spain, and, satisfied with that, he was by no means ambitious of French domination in his own territories.

On the other hand, France endeavoured to distract Austria by sowing insurrection in Hungary, and Louis's emissaries were busy all over Europe. He managed to make an alliance with Portugal, though the king himself was attached to the House of Austria, but was a weak prince, and was betrayed by his Ministers, who were[529] corrupted by France. Meanwhile the English and Dutch fleets sailed in strong force along the coasts of Spain, to overawe the French, and another fleet was despatched to the West Indies, to be ready in case of hostilities. In Spain itself both people and nobles began to repent bitterly of their subjection to France. They felt greatly annoyed at the insolence of the king's French Ministers and attendants, who treated the highest grandees with very little consideration. The French dress was introduced into the Court, and French manners also, and a formal edict was issued, putting the French nobles on the same level with the proud hidalgoes of Spain. The finances of Spain were at the lowest ebb, the spirit of the nation was thoroughly demoralised, and the condition of France was very little better. These circumstances, being universally known, encouraged the Allies in their projects. Yet the Emperor, for whose cause the Alliance was ostensibly created, was almost equally poor. He had engaged to bring 90,000 troops into the field—66,000 infantry and 24,000 horse; yet he was compelled to negotiate a loan with Holland for 500,000 crowns. William, on his part, was to furnish 33,000 infantry and 7,000 horse; and the States-General 32,000 infantry and 20,000 horse.

THE PRETENDER PROCLAIMED KING OF ENGLAND BY ORDER OF LOUIS XIV. (See p. 529.)

At this juncture James II. lay on his deathbed. Louis XIV. made three successive visits to the dying king; and this strange monarch—who had no feeling for human misery in the gross, who let loose his legions to lay waste happy human homes in all the countries round him, to ravage, massacre, and destroy the unoffending people by barbarities which must have instructed the very devils in cruelty—shed tears over the departure of this poor old man, whose life had been one vast miserable blunder, and whose death was the best thing that could happen to him. He promised the dying man that he would maintain the right of his son to the English crown as he had maintained his, though he had sworn at the treaty of Ryswick to do nothing to disturb the throne of William; and (September 16, 1701), as soon as the breath was out of James's body, he proclaimed the prince King of England by the title of James III.[530] This title was acknowledged by the King of Spain, the Duke of Savoy, and the Pope. The moment William received the news of Louis having proclaimed James's son King of England, he despatched a messenger to inform the King of Sweden, who was guarantee of the peace of Ryswick, of this flagrant breach of it. He ordered the Earl of Manchester immediately to retire from Paris without taking leave, and Poussin, the Secretary of Tallard, to quit London. Louis pretended that his acknowledgment of the Prince of Wales was mere form; that he meant no infraction of the treaty, and might justly complain of William's declarations and preparations in favour of the Emperor. In fact, kings never want pleas when they have a purpose, however unwarrantable it may be. The people of England hastened to express their abhorrence of the perfidy of the French king. Addresses of resentment were poured in from London and from all parts of the kingdom, with declarations of a strong determination to defend the king and his crown against all pretenders or invaders.

William was impatient to be in London to make the necessary arrangements for a new Ministry and a new Parliament, and also for the war which was now inevitable. But he was detained by a severe illness; in fact, he was fast succumbing to the weakness of his constitution, and the ravages made on it by his stupendous exertions in the wars he had been constantly engaged in, and, still more, by the eternal war and harass of the unprincipled factions which raged around his island throne. He arrived in England on the 4th of November, where he found the two factions raging against each other with unabated rancour, and the public in a ferment of indignation at the proclamation of the king of the French acknowledging the Pretender, and still more at an edict which Louis had published on the 16th of September, prohibiting all trade with England, except in beer, cider, glass bottles, and wool, and the wearing of any article of English manufacture after the 1st of November next. William closeted himself with some of his Ministry who, he still hoped, might be disposed to different measures; but finding them still as determined as ever to pursue their former course and to insist on their impeachments, he dissolved Parliament on the 4th of November, and called a new one for the 31st of December.

The two parties went to the election for the new Parliament with the same fierce bitterness with which they had fought through the last Session. The bribery, corruption, and intimidation were of the most open and shameless kind; but the Whigs, having the moneyed interest in their favour, carried the day, having no doubt with them at the same time the sentiment of the better part of the nation.

The new Ministry was immediately arranged. On the 24th of December Charles Howard, the Earl of Carlisle, was appointed First Lord of the Treasury, in place of Lord Godolphin. On the 4th of January, 1702, Charles Montague, Earl of Manchester, who had been ambassador at Paris, was made Secretary of State in place of Sir Charles Hedges; on the 18th the Earl of Pembroke was transferred from the Presidency of the Council, and made Lord High Admiral; and Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset, took the Presidency. Henry Boyle, afterwards Earl of Carleton, was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer; the Privy Seal, having been in commission since the death of the Earl of Tankerville, remained so. The Cabinet thus consisted of the personal friends of the king, and the Whigs had strengthened their party, having carried the elections in most of the counties and chief boroughs; yet they found themselves so far from a commanding majority that they were immediately defeated in the election of the Speaker. The king was desirous of seeing Sir Thomas Littleton in the chair; but the Tories managed to elect Harley; Henry St. John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, who was sent up from Wootton Basset, seconding the motion for Harley. The speech, which was drawn up by Somers according to Sunderland's advice, was then read by William.

In this speech, which was greatly admired, the king said that he trusted that they had met together with a full sense of the common danger of Europe, and of that resentment of the conduct of the French king which had been so strongly and universally expressed in the loyal addresses of the people; that in setting up the pretended Prince of Wales as King of England they had offered to him and to the nation the highest indignity, and put in jeopardy the Protestant religion, and the peace and security of the realm, and he was sure they would take every means to secure the Crown in the Protestant line, and to extinguish the hopes of all pretenders and their abettors; that the French king, by placing his grandson on the throne of Spain, had put himself in a condition to oppress the rest of Europe, and, under the pretence of maintaining it as a separate monarchy, had yet made himself master of the dominions of Spain,[531] placed it entirely under his control, and so surrounded his neighbours that, though the name of peace continued, they were put to the expense and inconvenience of war; that this endangered the whole of our trade, and even our peace and safety at home, and deprived us of that position which we ought to maintain for the preservation of the liberties of Europe; that to obviate these calamities he had entered into several alliances according to the encouragement given him by both Houses of Parliament, and was still forming others. And he then said emphatically, "It is fit I should tell you that the eyes of all Europe are upon this Parliament. All matters are at a stand till your resolutions are known; therefore no time ought to be lost. You have yet an opportunity, by God's blessing, to secure to you and your posterity the quiet enjoyment of your religion and liberties if you are not wanting to yourselves, but will exert the ancient vigour of the English nation; but I tell you plainly my opinion is, if you do not lay hold on this occasion, you have no reason to hope for another."

He then recommended the Commons to take measures for the discharge of the debt and for preserving public credit, by the sacred maxim that they shall never be losers who trust to a Parliamentary security. In asking them for the necessary aids he was only urging that they should care for their safety and honour at a critical time. He reminded them that in the late war he ordered yearly accounts of the expenditure to be laid before them, and passed several Bills for securing a proper examination of accounts. He was quite willing that any further measures should be adopted for that end, so that it might appear whether the debts had arisen from misapplication or mere deficiency of the funds. He then finally touched on the sore point of the dissensions; trusting that both Houses were determined to avoid all manner of disputes and differences, and resolved to act with a general and hearty concurrence for promoting the common cause which alone could insure a happy Session. He should think it as great a blessing as could befall England, if he could perceive them inclined to lay aside those unhappy feuds which divided and weakened them, for that he himself was disposed to make all his subjects easy as to even the highest offences committed against him. He conjured them to disappoint the hopes of their enemies, and let there be no other distinction amongst them for the future but of those who were for the Protestant religion and the present establishment, and those who were for a Popish prince and a French Government. For his part, he desired to be the common father of his people, and if they desired to see England placed at the head of the Protestant interest and hold the balance of Europe, they had only to improve the present opportunity.

The effect of this speech was wonderful. It flew through the nation, which was already worked up into a war-fever, with the rapidity of lightning, and was everywhere received with enthusiasm. The zealous supporters of the principles of the Revolution had it printed in ornamental style, in English, Dutch, and French, and it was soon translated into other languages and disseminated all over Europe. It was the announcement of a determined war against the grasping ambition of France, and the eyes of the whole world were truly fixed on England, which volunteered to take the lead in this serious enterprise. As for the supporters of William and the Protestant government, they framed his speech and hung it in their houses as the last legacy of the Protestant king to his people. The Lords immediately drew up a zealous address, in which they echoed his resentment of the conduct of the French king in acknowledging the pretended Prince of Wales, and declared that they would not only support and defend him against the pretended Prince of Wales and all other pretenders, but, should they be deprived of his Majesty's protection, they would still defend the crown of England, by virtue of the Acts of Parliament, against all but the recognised successors. On the 5th of January the Commons presented a similar address, and assured the king that they would enable him to make good the alliances he had made and such as he should yet make for the peace of Europe. The Lords, not to be behind the Commons, presented a second and more explicit address, in which they not only engaged to support the king in his alliances, but declared that Europe could never be safe till the Emperor was restored to all his rights, and the invaders of Spain should be expelled. And they, too, declared their full approbation of the king's new alliances, and their full determination to support him in them.

William, warned by the resentment of the last House of Commons at the concealment of the Partition Treaties, now laid his present treaties at once before the new Parliament. On the 6th of January Secretary Vernon laid before both Houses copies of the treaty with the King of Denmark and the States-General, the secret Articles attached to this treaty, the treaty between the King of Sweden, the States-General, and William, and the[532] separate treaty between William and the States-General, signed in the month of November. The Commons were as prompt in expressing their approbation of them, and on the 9th of January they proposed, by an address to his Majesty, to take care that an article should be introduced into the several treaties of alliance, binding the Allies never to make peace with France until reparation was made for the indignity offered by the French king in declaring the pretended Prince of Wales King of England. They also resolved that a Bill should be brought in for the abjuration of the pretended Prince of Wales.

They then went into the question of the supplies, and voted unanimously that £600,000 should be borrowed at six per cent. for the services of the navy, and £50,000 for Guards and garrisons. They agreed to the number of troops which the king had stipulated as his contingent in the war, namely, 30,000 foot and 7,000 horse; and added 8,300 more English soldiers to the 10,000 already sent to Holland, and voted 40,000 seamen. His Majesty's Allies were to be invited to embark a certain proportion of troops on board his Majesty's ships of war. All the king's contracts for subsidising troops belonging to foreign princes were confirmed, and to defray the charges of these naval and military forces they imposed taxes with an alacrity almost unparalleled. They imposed four shillings in the pound on all lands and incomes, including annuities, pensions, and stipends, and on all the professional profits of lawyers, doctors, surgeons, teachers of separate congregations, brokers, factors, etc. Then an additional tax of two and a half per cent. was put on all stock-in-trade and money out at interest, and of five shillings in the pound on all salaries, fees, and perquisites. They laid on a poll-tax of four shillings per head, so completely had this generation come to tolerate this hated form of imposition, which formerly roused the people to open rebellion. Besides this, they taxed the capital stock of all corporations and public companies which should be transferred in sale to the amount of one per cent., and, finally, they placed sixpence a bushel on malt, and a further duty on mum, cider, and perry.

On the 15th of January they passed unanimously a Bill for the attainder of the pretended Prince of Wales, and sent it up to the Lords, and the Lords, exceeding them in zeal, added a clause attainting also the ex-queen Mary of Modena as regent of the pretended Prince of Wales. The Commons, however, objected to this amendment as calculated to sanction a practice of attainting persons by added clauses instead of original Bills, which they designated as a pernicious course, as not allowing the full consideration due to so momentous a measure. They struck it out, but the Lords demanded a conference, and pressed their amendment on the ground that the Commons had themselves adopted that practice so long ago as the 3rd of Henry VIII. The Commons were not likely to pay much regard to the practice of either House in the reign of that lawless monarch, and returned the Bill to the Lords without the clause, and the Lords, on further reflection, passed it.

This was followed in the Lords by the Bill so strongly recommended by Sunderland for the abjuration of the pretended Prince of Wales, in which was a clause introduced into the oath, acknowledging William rightful and lawful sovereign. There was a violent debate on the point whether this oath should be voluntary or compulsory. The Earl of Nottingham strongly opposed its being compulsory, and he was supported by other lords of the Tory party. They contended that the Government was first settled with another oath, which had the value of an original contract, and any other oath was unnecessary; that this oath could do nothing more than that oath had done. All inclined to keep that oath had kept it, and all inclined to break it had broken it, and these would break this or any other oath. Whilst they were in debate, Sir Charles Hedges introduced a clause which made it obligatory on all persons enjoying appointments in Church and State, and with an obligation to maintain the Government in King, Lords, and Commons, and to maintain the Church of England, with toleration to the Dissenters. After a sharp debate it passed the Commons, but only by a majority of one. In this Bill it was made equally penal to compass or imagine the death of the Princess of Denmark as it was the death of the king. The Bill was strenuously opposed in the Lords, but it was carried, and Nottingham and nineteen other peers entered their protest against it. The Quakers had endeavoured to get themselves exempted from the operation of the Bill, but in vain. This zeal of the Whigs in Parliament for imposing fresh oaths did them no good, but tended to revive the unpopularity which had so lately driven them from office. Whilst these subjects were before Parliament, the Lords made a fresh attempt, by a Bill of their own, to procure the attainder of Mary of Modena, but the Commons let the Bill lie.

In Scotland the clamour against the Government for its treatment of the Darien scheme still[533] continued. The Earl of Nottingham, therefore, moved that the Scottish Parliament should be dissolved, and an attempt be made to unite the two kingdoms, by which all causes of complaint would be hereafter removed, since all parties would have a like interest in the trade of the nation. The king was greatly bent on this design, but he had met with an accident which prevented him from going to the House of Lords to propose it. But he sent a message both to the Lords and to the Commons, expressing his earnest desire that a union should take place, and that Commissioners were already appointed in Scotland to treat with such Commissioners as should be appointed in England for that end. He represented that he was fully satisfied that nothing could more contribute to the security and happiness of the two kingdoms than such a union, and that he should esteem it a peculiar felicity if, during his reign, so great an event should take place.

VIEW IN THE HAGUE: CHAMBERS OF THE STATES-GENERAL IN THE BINNENHOF.

But the accident alluded to was of a more serious nature than was suspected, and, falling on a weak and exhausted frame, was about to bring his reign to an abrupt close. In riding towards Hampton Court on the 20th of February, on his accustomed Saturday's excursion to hunt there, his horse fell with him and fractured his collar-bone, besides doing him other serious injury. He was carried to Hampton Court, where the bone was set; and though the surgeon remarked that his pulse was feverish, he was deemed in too feeble a condition to admit of benefit by bleeding. Contrary, moreover, to the advice of his medical attendants, he would insist on returning that same evening to Kensington, and was, accordingly, conveyed thither in a carriage; but on arriving, it was found that the collar-bone, by the jolting of the carriage, was again displaced. It was again set, and the king slept well the night through after it. For several days no bad consequences appeared; but on the 1st of March great pain and weakness were felt in his knee. Ronjat, his surgeon, a Frenchman, who had re-set the bone, had contended that he ought to have been bled; Bidloo, his Dutch physician, had opposed it as injurious in his debilitated state. He was now attended by Sir Thomas Millington, Sir Richard Blackmore, Sir[534] Theodore Colledon, Dr. Bidloo, and other eminent physicians. Again he appeared to rally, and on the 4th of March he took several turns in the gallery at Kensington; but, sitting down on a couch, he fell asleep, and awoke shivering and in high fever. On this there was a hurry to pass several Bills through the Lords that they might receive his signature, in case of fatal termination of his illness. These were the Malt-tax Bill, the Bill for the Prince of Wales's Attainder, and one in favour of the Quakers, making their affirmation valid instead of an oath. These being prepared, and the king not being able to use his hand, the royal signature was affixed by a stamp made for the purpose.

This took place on the 7th of March, and was not a moment too soon, for the king's symptoms rapidly gained strength, and he died the next day. The Earl of Albemarle, his great favourite, arrived from Holland on the day preceding his death, and it was thought the good news which he brought would cheer him, but William appeared to receive his information with indifference, and merely replied, "Je tire vers ma fin" ("I approach my end"). The news of the king's danger filled the antechamber with such a throng of courtiers as is generally witnessed at the expected moment of a monarch's decease; not prompted by affection, but on the watch to seize the earliest moment to make their court to his successor. Physicians, statesmen, and emissaries of interested parties were there mingled, eagerly listening for the reports of his state, and ready to fly with the news of his decease. Amongst these were the messengers of the Princess Anne and of Lady Marlborough, who, with her husband, now absent with the army in Holland, had scarcely less to expect from the event. Yet even Lady Marlborough, assuredly by no means sensitive where her ambition was concerned, expresses her disgust at the scene. "When the king came to die, I felt nothing of the satisfaction which I once thought I should have had on this occasion; and my Lord and Lady Jersey's writing and sending perpetually to give an account [to the Princess Anne] as his breath grew shorter and shorter, filled me with horror." These Jerseys, who were thus courting the favour of the heiress to the Crown by these incessant messages of the advancing death of the king, had been amongst those on whom he had heaped favours and benefits pre-eminently. Such is the end of princes. The closing scene is thus detailed by Bishop Burnet, who to the last showed himself one of the steadiest and most grateful of his courtiers:—"The king's strength and pulse were still sinking as the difficulty of breathing increased, so that no hope was left. The Archbishop of Canterbury and I went to him on Saturday morning, and did not stir from him till he died. The Archbishop prayed on Saturday some time with him, but he was then so weak that he could scarce speak, but gave him his hand, as a sign that he firmly believed the truth of the Christian religion, and said he intended to receive the Sacrament. His reason and all his senses were entire to the last minute. About five in the morning he desired the Sacrament, and went through the Office with great appearance of seriousness, but could not express himself; when this was done, he called for the Earl of Albemarle, and gave him a charge to take care of his papers. He thanked M. Auverquerque for his long and faithful services. He took leave of the Duke of Ormond, and called for the Earl of Portland, but before he came his voice quite failed; so he took him by the hand and carried it to his heart with great tenderness. He was often looking up to heaven in many short ejaculations. Between seven and eight o'clock the rattle began; the commendatory prayer was said to him, and as it ended he died, on Sunday, the 8th of March, in the fifty-second year of his age, having reigned thirteen years and a few days."

It was found on opening the body that he had had an adhesion of the lungs, which being torn from the side to which it had adhered by the fall from his horse, was the cause of his death. His head and heart were sound, but he had scarcely any blood in his body.

In person William was of a spare frame, middle stature, and delicate constitution, being subject to an asthma and cough from his childhood, supposed to be the consequences of small-pox. He had an aquiline nose, clear bright eyes, a finely-developed forehead, a grave aspect, and was very taciturn, except amongst his immediate friends, who were almost all his own countrymen. His reserved and repellent manner gave great offence to his English courtiers and nobles, and the lavish wealth which he heaped on his favourite Dutchmen heightened this feeling. He never liked Englishmen, and they never liked him. For his neglect to attach himself to the English there is, however, much excuse. The men about his Court, and the very party who brought him in, were a most selfish, rapacious,[535] and unprincipled set. It is difficult to point to a truly noble and genuinely patriotic man amongst them. Perhaps the most unexceptionable were the Earl of Devonshire and Lord Somers; but the greater part of them were men whose chief object was self-aggrandisement; and the party fight which the two factions kept up around the Throne made it anything but an enviable seat. The peculation and jobbery in every department of the State were wholesale and unblushing, and the greater part of those who were ostensibly serving him and receiving his pay, were secretly engaged to his enemies, spies upon all his actions and intentions, and traitors, in a perpetual transmission of his projects to the Court of his deadly foes. The forbearance which he constantly manifested towards those despicable men was something admirable and almost superhuman. Though he was well aware of their treason, he still employed and endeavoured to conciliate them. With a cold exterior, William was far from destitute of affection. This he showed in the confidence with which he entrusted the government to his wife in his absence, and in his passionate grief for her death. It was also manifested in his warm and unshaken attachment to the friends who had shared his fortunes, who spoke his tongue, who knew his whole mind and nature, and who served him with a fidelity, amid an age of treachery and a Court of deep corruption, than which there is nothing more beautiful in history.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE REIGN OF ANNE.

Accession of the Queen—Meeting of the Houses of Parliament—Scotland and Ireland—Power of Marlborough—The Revenue—Tory Colour of the Ministry—The Coronation—Declaration of War—Marlborough goes to the Seat of War—General Aspect of Affairs—Marlborough's Difficulties—His Campaign—Operations by Sea—Meeting of Parliament—Supply—Marlborough's Dukedom—The Occasional Conformity Bill—Dismissal of Rochester—Opening of the Campaign of 1703—Fall of Bonn—Failure to take Antwerp—Savoy and Portugal join the Allies—Visit of the Archduke Charles to England—The Storm—Jacobite Conspiracy—Ashby versus White—Queen Anne's Bounty—Marlborough's Great Plans—The States-General hoodwinked—His March—Dismay of the French—Junction with Eugene—Advance on the Danube—Assault of the Schellenberg—The Prince of Baden's Conceit—Approach of Tallard—The Eve of Blenheim—The Battle—Conclusion of the Campaign—Marlborough's Diplomacy—Capture of Gibraltar—Battle of Malaga—Proceedings in Parliament—The Campaign of 1705—Attempt to recover Gibraltar—Peterborough's Exploits in Spain—Proposal to Invite the Electress Sophia to England—Consequent Legislation—Battle of Ramillies—Eugene relieves Turin—Disasters in Spain—Meeting of the Commissioners for the Union—Condition of the Treaty—Opposition in Scotland—Riots in Edinburgh—Conduct of the Opposition—The Measure carried by Bribery—Its Discussion in the English Parliament—The Royal Assent given.

When Anne succeeded to the throne she was in her thirty-eighth year. She was fat, indolent, and good-natured. She had long been under the complete management of the imperious Lady Marlborough, and through her Marlborough expected to be the real ruler of the country. Through them the queen had imbibed a deep-rooted hatred of the Whigs, whom they had taught her to regard as the partisans of King William, and the real authors of all the indignities and mortifications which she had endured during his reign. The Tories therefore calculated confidently on recovering full power under her, and had resolved to place Marlborough at the head of the army. The queen, on her part, had a great leaning towards the Tories, as the enemies of the Whigs and the friends of the Church, to which she was strongly attached. The endeavours which had been made in her father's time to make a Catholic of her, and in her brother-in-law's time to level the distinctions between Church and Dissent, had only rooted more deeply her predilection for the Church; nor did the fact of her husband being a Lutheran, and maintaining his Lutheran chapel and minister in the palace, at all diminish this feeling.

No sooner was the king dead than Lord Jersey and other courtiers who had been eagerly watching the shortening of his breath hastened to bring the news to Anne, who, with Lady Marlborough, sat on that Sunday morning waiting for the message which should announce her queen; and Bishop Burnet, among others, conveyed the sad tidings to her. Though it was Sunday, both Houses of[536] Parliament met, for they were empowered still to sit by an Act passed in William's reign, and the death of William was announced to the Commons by Mr. Secretary Vernon. There was much speechifying, Mr. Granville saying, "We have lost a great king, and got a most gracious queen." Both Houses then proceeded to the palace with addresses of felicitation, and were graciously received. The Privy Council also waited on the queen, who assured them of her determination to maintain the laws, liberties, and religion of the country, to secure the succession in the Protestant line, and the Church and State as by law established. The Privy Council having taken the oaths, she caused a proclamation to be issued, signifying her pleasure that all persons in office should continue to hold their respective posts till further orders.

On the 11th of March she went in state to the House of Lords. She was accompanied in her coach by her consort, the Prince of Denmark, and Marlborough carried the Sword of State before her. Lady Marlborough occupied the place close behind the queen. Anne had a remarkably rich and touching voice, and it had been cultivated, at the suggestion of her uncle, Charles II., for elocutionary delivery, as especially important for a monarch. She concluded her speech with these words:—"As I know my own heart to be entirely English, I can sincerely assure you that there is not anything that you can expect or desire from me which I shall not be ready to do for the happiness and prosperity of England, and you shall always find me a strict and religious observer of my word." Not only did she receive the thanks of both Houses for her gracious assurances, but congratulatory addresses from the City of London, from the bishop and clergy of London, from the various bodies of Dissenters, and the different counties and chief towns of the kingdom.

Some difficulty had been expected in Scotland from the Jacobites, but all passed over easily, the Jacobites thinking that as Anne had no issue, the Stuarts would be sure to enjoy "their ain again" on her death. The Secretaries of State for Scotland, and such of the Scottish Privy Councillors who were in London, waited on her, read to her their "Claim of Rights," and tendered her the Coronation Oath with many professions of loyalty; and this ceremony being completed, the Earl of Marchmont, the Chancellor of Scotland, was dispatched to represent the queen in the General Assembly of the Kirk which was about to meet. In Ireland the natives were so rigorously ruled that they excited no alarm.

The queen announced the coronation for the 23rd of April, and took up her abode at Windsor, as St. James's was completely hung with black, and was too gloomy for living in. She also took immediate possession of William's favourite residence at Kensington, which George of Denmark had always coveted. William's remains were unceremoniously transferred to "the Prince's Chamber" at Westminster, and the Dutch colony, as the attendants of William were called, were routed out, to their great indignation. Before a week had expired Anne accomplished what she had so often attempted in vain—she conferred the Order of the Garter on Marlborough. He was appointed Captain-General of the English army, both at home and abroad, and, soon after, Master of the Ordnance. The Prince of Denmark was made Lord High Admiral, with the title of Generalissimo of the Forces; but as he was both ignorant of and indisposed to the management of both naval and military affairs, Marlborough was the real Commander-in-Chief of the forces.

The Commons voted her Majesty the same revenue as King William had enjoyed, and pledged themselves to the repudiation of the pretended Prince of Wales, and to the defence of her Majesty's person and the Protestant succession. On the 30th of March the queen went to the House of Lords and ratified the Act for the revenue and for her household, and generously relinquished one hundred thousand pounds of the income granted. At the same time she passed a Bill continuing the Commission for examination of the public accounts; but these necessary inquiries were always defeated by the principal persons who were deep in the corruption. The villainy was almost universal, and, therefore, was carefully screened from efficient search.

In naming her Ministers the Tory bias of the queen at once showed itself. Godolphin, the family ally of the Marlboroughs, was appointed Lord Treasurer; Nottingham was made principal Secretary of State, and was allowed to name Sir Charles Hedges as the other Secretary in place of Mr. Vernon; Rochester, the queen's uncle, was made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; the Duke of Somerset, Lord President of the Council, was dismissed to make way for the Earl of Pembroke, who could scarcely rank as a Tory, but disclaimed being a Whig: the Earl of Bradford was made Treasurer of the Household through the influence of Rochester; the Marquis of Normanby received[537] the Privy Seal—a reward for his happy flattery; and the Earl of Jersey retained his post of Chamberlain for his assiduous transmission of the news of William's "shortening breath." Sir Nathaniel Wright remained Lord Keeper; and Sharp, Archbishop of York, became the queen's adviser in all ecclesiastical matters. The only Whigs who retained office were the Duke of Devonshire, Lord High Steward, and Mr. Boyle, Chancellor of the Exchequer; and, on Shrewsbury's refusing the post of Master of the Horse, the Duke of Somerset, though displaced as Lord President, was induced to accept that office. The Prince of Denmark appointed a council for himself, into which he introduced none but Tories. At the head of this board, which was deemed wholly illegal, but which was not called in question by Parliament from respect to the queen, he placed Sir George Rooke, a most decided antagonist to the Whigs, and made him President of the Commission for Managing the Fleet.

BISHOP BURNET ANNOUNCING HER ACCESSION TO ANNE. (See p. 535.)

[538]

On the 23rd of April the coronation took place, being St. George's Day. The queen was so corpulent and so afflicted with gout that she could not stand more than a few minutes at a time, and was obliged to be removed from one situation to another during this fatiguing ceremony in an open chair. Tenison, the Archbishop of Canterbury, officiated, and the whole ceremony and banquet did not end till eight in the evening. Everybody, say the newspapers, was satisfied, even the thieves, who managed to carry off the whole of the plate used at the banquet in Westminster Hall, together with a rich booty of table-linen and pewter.

During March and April there was a continual arrival of ambassadors-extraordinary to congratulate her Majesty on her accession. Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, most of the German States, and particularly those of Zell and Hanover, sent their envoys; and there was a strong discussion in the Council on the necessity of declaring war against France. Marlborough and his faction were, of course, for war, in which he hoped to win both glory and affluence; but Rochester and the majority of the Council, including the Dukes of Somerset and Devon, and the Earl of Pembroke, strongly opposed it, on the ground that the quarrel really concerned the Continental States and not us, and that it was sufficient on our part to act as auxiliaries, and not as the principal. The queen, however, being determined by the Marlborough influence to declare war, laid her intentions before Parliament, which supported her, and accordingly war was proclaimed on the 4th of May, the Emperor and the States-General issuing their proclamations at the same time. Louis was charged with having seized on the greater part of the Spanish dominions, with the design of destroying the liberties of Europe, and with grossly insulting the queen by declaring the pretended Prince of Wales the real king of Great Britain and Ireland. When these charges were read over by De Torcy to Louis, he broke out into keen reproaches against the Queen of England, and vowed that he would "make Messieurs the Dutch repent of their presumption." He delayed his counter-declaration till the 3rd of July. The Commons presented an address to her Majesty, praying her Majesty to unite with the Emperor and the States to prohibit all intercourse with France and Spain, and at the same time to promote commerce in other directions; and the Lords addressed her, praying her to sanction the fitting out of privateers to make reprisals on the enemies' ships, which interrupted our trade, and also to grant charters to all persons who should seize on any of the French and Spanish territories in the Indies. The queen thanked them for their zeal, and prorogued Parliament on the 25th of May.

We may now turn our attention to the progress of the war. When the States-General received the news of the death of William, they were struck with the utmost consternation. They appeared to be absolutely paralysed with terror and dismay. There was much weeping, and amid vows and embraces they passed a resolution to defend their country with their lives. The arrival of the address of the Queen of England to her Privy Council roused their spirits, and this was followed by a letter from the Earl of Marlborough, addressed to the Pensionary Fagel, assuring the States of the queen's determination to continue the alliance and assistance against the common enemy. The queen herself addressed to the States a letter confirming these assurances, and despatched it by Mr. Stanhope, who was again appointed Ambassador at the Hague. Marlborough himself, who left England on the 12th of May to assume his foreign command, arriving directly afterwards in the character not only of Commander-in-Chief of the British forces, with a salary of ten thousand pounds a year, but of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, assured the States that the Queen of England was resolved to maintain all the alliances, and resist the encroachments of the French in the same spirit as the late king.

War had been going on some time on the Rhine before Marlborough arrived there, and still[539] longer before he was prepared to join in it. In Germany many negotiations had been going on to induce the petty States to act as contingents of the Empire, or to keep them from joining the French against their own nation. The House of Brunswick had engaged to bring to the allied army ten thousand men; Prussia had engaged to co-operate, and Saxe-Gotha and Wolfenbüttel to abandon the French. The Electors of Bavaria and Cologne, who had, most traitorously to the Empire, aided France in her attempts to enslave Germany, pretended now to stand neutral, but the neutrality was hollow; and the position of affairs in Poland effectually prevented the northern Powers of Germany from sending assistance to the Allies in Flanders. Charles XII., still pursuing the Elector of Saxony as King of Poland, threatened to invade Saxony. He marched first to Warsaw, and ordered the Cardinal-Primate to summon a Diet to choose another king, and Augustus, the Saxon King, posted himself at Cracow. This state of affairs overawed Prussia, and beyond the Alps the condition of Savoy and Milan, where the French were strong, tended to prevent a full concentration of force in the Netherlands against France.

The position of the contending forces on the Rhine and in the Netherlands was this:—The Prince of Saarbrück, at the head of twenty-five thousand men, Dutch, Prussians, and Badenese, was besieging Kaiserwerth. Athlone and Cohorn were covering the siege of Kaiserwerth, Athlone (Ginkell) lying between the Rhine and the Meuse, Cohorn with ten thousand at the mouth of the Scheldt. On the other hand, Tallard, with thirteen thousand men on the opposite side of the Rhine, annoyed the besiegers of Kaiserwerth with his artillery, and managed to throw into the town fresh troops, ammunition, and supplies. Count Delamotte and the Spanish Marquis of Bedmar covered the western frontier of the Spanish Netherlands, and the Prince of Baden was posted on the Upper Rhine.

Whilst in this position Cohorn marched into the Netherlands, destroyed the French lines between the forts of Donat and Isabella, and levied contributions on the chatellany of Bruges; but Bedmar and Delamotte advancing, he cut the dykes, inundated the country, and retired under the walls of Sluys. Meanwhile the Duke of Burgundy, taking the command of the army of Boufflers at Zanten, near Cleves, formed a design to surprise Nimeguen in conjunction with Tallard, who suddenly quitted his post near Kaiserwerth, and joined Burgundy. Nimeguen was without a garrison, and ill supplied with artillery, and must have fallen an easy prey, had not Athlone, perceiving the object of the enemy, by a masterly march got the start of them, and posted himself under the walls of the town before the arrival of the French guards.

Marlborough all this time was undergoing his first experience of the difficulties of acting at the head of a miscellaneous body of allies, and with the caution of Dutch burgomasters. He had blamed William severely for his slow movements, and now he was himself hampered by the same obstructions. It was the end of June before he could bring into order the necessary arrangements for taking the field. Nor could he have effected this so soon had not the near surprise of Nimeguen alarmed the Dutch for their frontiers, and quickened their movements. The fall of Kaiserwerth was another circumstance in his favour. He collected the forces which had been engaged there, marched the English troops up from Breda, and in the beginning of July found himself at Nimeguen at the head of sixty thousand men. Even then he did not find himself clear of difficulties. His bold plans were checked by the presence of two field deputies which the Dutch always sent along with their generals, and who would not permit him to undertake any movement until they had informed the States-General of it and received their sanction. Thus it was not the general in the field, but the States-General at a distance, who really directed the evolutions of the war; and the only wonder is, that a general in such absurd leading-strings could effect anything at all. Besides this standing nuisance, Marlborough found Athlone, the Prince of Saarbrück, and the other chief generals, all contending for equal authority with him, and refusing to submit to his commands; and when the States-General freed him, by a positive order, from this difficulty, the Hanoverians refused to march without an order from Bothmar, their Ambassador at the Hague. Instead of sending to Bothmar, Marlborough summoned him to the camp, as the proper place for him if he was to direct the movements of the Hanoverian troops, and got rid of this obstacle only to find the Prussians raising the same difficulties.

It was not till the 7th of July that he crossed the Waal and encamped at Druckenburg, a little south of Nimeguen. It was the 16th when he[540] crossed the Meuse and posted himself at Overhasselt, with the French forces in front at the distance of two leagues and a half, entrenched between Goch and Gedap. Here, in a letter to Godolphin, he complained that still the fears of the Dutch hampered his movements. He then recrossed the river at Grave, and reached Gravenbroek, where he was joined by the British train of artillery from Holland. Thus prepared, he advanced on the French; on the 2nd of August was at Petit Brugel in their front; but they retired before him, leaving Spanish Guelderland in his power. He determined to bring the French to an engagement, but was restrained by the fears of the Dutch deputies; but, fortunately for him, the French generals had their fears too, and the Duke of Burgundy, finding Marlborough pressing on him in spite of his obstructions, resigned his command rather than risk a defeat, and returned to Versailles, leaving the command to Boufflers. The deputies of the States, encouraged by these symptoms, recommended Marlborough to clear the French from Spanish Guelderland, where the places which they still held on the Meuse interrupted the commerce of that river. Though the Dutch were merely looking at their own interests in this design, Marlborough was glad to attack the enemy anywhere. He despatched General Schultz to reduce the town and castle of Werk, and in the beginning of September laid siege to Venloo, which, on the 28th of the month, surrendered. Fort St. Michael, at Venloo, was stormed by the impetuous Lord Cutts, unrivalled at that work, at the head of the English volunteers, amongst whom the young Earl of Huntingdon greatly distinguished himself. He next invested and reduced Ruremond and the fort of Stevensweert; and Boufflers, confounded by the rapid successes of Marlborough, retiring on Liége, the English general followed him, reduced the place, stormed the citadel, and seized in it three hundred thousand florins in gold, and a million florins in bills on the substantial merchants of the city, who promptly paid the money. This terminated the campaign. Marlborough had wonderfully raised his reputation, won the entire confidence of the States, and, having seen the French retire behind their lines, he distributed his troops into winter quarters, and projected his journey homewards.

The operations at sea had not been so decisive as those of Marlborough on land. On the 12th of May Sir John Munden, sent out to intercept the French fleet convoying the Viceroy of Mexico from Corunna to the West Indies, chased fourteen sail of French ships into Corunna, but, judging the fortifications too strong to attack them there, put out to sea, and soon afterwards returned home for provisions, to the great indignation of the people. Munden was tried by court-martial and acquitted, but the Prince of Denmark dismissed him from the service notwithstanding. King William having planned the reduction of Cadiz, the queen was now advised to put the project into execution. Sir George Rooke was sent out with a squadron of fifty ships of the line, besides frigates, fire-ships, and smaller vessels, and carrying the Duke of Ormond with a land force of fourteen thousand men. The fleet sailed from St. Helens near the end of June, and anchored on the 12th of August within two leagues of Cadiz. The governor of fort St. Catherine was summoned to surrender, but he refused; and on the 15th the Duke of Ormond landed under a fire from the batteries, and soon took the forts of St. Catherine and St. Mary. He issued a proclamation declaring that they came, not to make war on the Spaniards, but to free Spain from the yoke of France, and that the people and their property should be protected. But the English soldiers paid no regard to the proclamation, but got drunk in the wine stores and committed great excesses. Some of the general officers were found as eager as the soldiers for pillaging; and the inhabitants, resenting their sufferings, held aloof. To complete the mischief, the land and sea commanders, as has been too commonly the case, fell to quarrelling. Ormond wanted to storm the Isla de Leon; Rooke deemed it too hazardous. An attempt was made to batter Matagorda fort, but failed, and the troops were re-embarked.

As the fleet was returning from its inglorious enterprise, it was met by Captain Hardy, who informed the commander that the galleons from the West Indies had entered Vigo Bay under convoy of a French squadron. A council of war was immediately summoned, and it was resolved to tack about and proceed to Vigo. They appeared before the place on the 11th of October. The passage into the harbour they found strongly defended by forts and batteries on both sides, and the passage closed by a strong boom of iron chains, topmasts, and cables. The admirals shifted their flags into smaller vessels, for neither first nor second rates could enter. Five-and-twenty English and Dutch ships of the line of[541] lesser size, with their frigates, fire-ships, and ketches, now prepared to make the attempt to force the boom and burn the fleet, and the Duke of Ormond prepared the way by landing two thousand eight hundred men six miles from Vigo, and marching on the harbour, where he attacked and carried a strong fort and a platform of forty pieces of cannon at its mouth. The moment the British colours were seen flying on the fort the fleet put itself in motion. Admiral Hopson led the way in the Torbay, and, running with all sail set, dashed against the boom and burst through it. He was followed by the whole squadron under a tremendous fire from the ships and batteries; but both ships and batteries were soon silenced, the batteries by the soldiers on land, the ships by the fleet. They captured eight ships of war and six galleons; the rest were set fire to by themselves or the French, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the English. The Spaniards had lost no time in removing as much of the plate and merchandise as they could; but the Allies seized on seven millions of pieces of eight in plate and other goods, and the Spaniards are supposed to have saved twice as much. Sir George Rooke left Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who had just arrived, to bring home the prizes, and sailed for England with the rest of the fleet and troops in triumph, complaining that Cadiz, too, might have been taken had Ormond done his duty, and Ormond retorting the blame upon him.

LORD GODOLPHIN. (After the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller.)

Had this terminated the usual campaign it might have been considered, to a certain extent, a success; but an expedition, sent out to cruise in the waters of the West Indies, under the brave[542] old Benbow, had a worse fate. He came up with a French fleet under Du Casse, steering along the shore of Santa Martha, and though he had ten sail of the line, and the enemy only the same, he found himself deserted by most of his captains, under the plea that the enemy was too strong. Benbow, upbraiding their cowardice, attacked the whole fleet with only two vessels. The battle lasted, off and on, from the 19th of August to the 24th, some others of the ships occasionally joining him. On the last day his leg was shattered by a chain-shot, and he was wounded in the face and in the arm; yet he caused himself to be placed on the quarter-deck in a cradle, and continued issuing his orders to the last. Seeing it in vain to contend longer, he returned to Jamaica, and ordered a court-martial to be held. The reason assigned for the disobedience of the officers was the rough conduct of Benbow, who was one of the old boisterous school of seamen, but brave and honest. The disgrace thus inflicted on his command, combining with his shattered condition, soon also brought him to his grave.

Marlborough returned to England in November, and was received with great applause. Notwithstanding some sharp criticisms on his campaign, the public saw clearly enough that he was a far superior general to William, and augured great things from his future command. The queen met her new Parliament on the 20th of October, which turned out to be so completely Tory as to carry all before it in that direction. The Government had no occasion to make much exertion to obtain that result; it was enough that the queen's decided leaning to the Tories was known. Addresses of congratulation on the brilliant success of the British arms under Marlborough were presented by both Houses, which, they said, "retrieved" the ancient honour and glory of the English nation. This word "retrieved" roused all the spleen of the Whigs, who knew that it was meant as a censure on them and King William, who, they contended, had maintained the honour of the English nation by joining the great confederacy by which the security of the queen's throne at that moment was established, and by training our soldiers to their ancient pitch of discipline and valour. They moved that the word "maintained" should be substituted for "retrieved," but it was carried against them, amid the most unmeasured abuse of the memory of the late king, Marlborough being cried to the skies at his expense.

The Tories next showed their strength in calling in question various elections of Whig members, and carried the inquiry against them with the most open and impudent partiality.

The Commons then voted the supplies, and in practice justified the Whigs, by being as lavish for the war as they had been. They voted forty thousand seamen, and the same number of land forces, to act along with the Allies. They granted eight hundred and thirty-three thousand eight hundred and twenty-six pounds for their maintenance; three hundred and fifty thousand pounds for Guards and garrisons; seventy thousand nine hundred and seventy-three pounds for ordnance; and fifty-one thousand eight hundred and forty-three pounds for subsidies to the Allies—altogether, one million three hundred and six thousand six hundred and forty-two pounds for the war alone, independent of the usual national expenses, and these soon required an increase. The queen demanded of the Commons a further provision for her husband, the Prince of Denmark, in case of her decease. Howe moved that one hundred thousand pounds a year should be settled on the prince in case he should be the survivor. No objection was offered to the amount, but strenuous opposition was given to a clause in the Bill exempting the prince from the provision in the Act of Settlement, which prevented any foreigner, even though naturalised, from holding any employments under the Crown; but the Court was bent on carrying this, and did so.

Having secured her husband, Anne then sent a message to the Commons to inform them that she had created the Earl of Marlborough a duke for his eminent services, and praying them to settle five thousand pounds a year on him to enable him to maintain his new dignity. This was so glaring a case of favouritism that the Commons, with all their loyalty, expressed their decided disapprobation. The outcry was so great that the Marlboroughs declined what they saw no means of getting—the grant—and the queen intimated that fact to the House; but she immediately offered her favourites two thousand pounds a year out of her privy purse, which, with affected magnanimity, they also declined, hoping yet to obtain, at some more favourable crisis, the Parliamentary grant; and, after that really happened, they then claimed the queen's offer too. But the opposition of the Tories, whom Marlborough had been serving with all his influence in Parliament, alienated him from that party, and he went over to the Whigs.

What galled Marlborough as much as anything was that he had been in the House of Lords[543] strongly supporting one of the most illiberal attempts of the Tories to destroy the effect of the Act of Toleration. The extreme Tories regarded the Church as entitled to confer all favours, and they were determined to give it a power by which all corporations and elections should be thrown into the hands of the Government. For this purpose Mr. Bromley, Mr. Annesley, and Mr. St. John, who, as a man of notoriously unorthodox principles, ought at least to have been tolerant, brought in the Occasional Conformity Bill. They complained that Dissenters and other disaffected persons took the oaths, and often went again to the Dissenting meetings; that this was a gross piece of hypocrisy, and left the Church exposed to much danger from them. They proposed, therefore, to insist that all who had taken the Sacrament and test for offices of trust, or for the magistracy of corporations, and afterwards went to any meeting of the Dissenters, should forfeit their employments, pay a fine of one hundred pounds, and five pounds for every day that they continued to hold their office after having been at a Dissenters' meeting, as well as be disabled from holding any other employment till after a year's conformity. The Bill was carried in the Tory Commons by an overwhelming majority; but it was as strongly opposed in the Lords, where the Whigs were not disposed to pull down the greatest trophy of their legislation. The Bishops generally voted against the Bill, and Burnet was extremely active against it. Probably few of them were actuated by a sense of the monstrosity of the Test and Corporation Acts, which compelled all to take the Sacrament, whether opposed to it in that form or not, and thus shut out the honest and pious, and let in those who had neither honesty nor religion. But they saw that it would again let loose all the detestable race of spies and informers from which the country was now happily free, and would, in reality, only injure instead of benefiting the Church, by making her an object of general hatred. The Tories themselves affected great veneration for the Toleration Act, whilst they would thus have stifled all toleration.

The queen and the whole Court exerted themselves to force the Bill through the Upper House, as they had done that for the prince's salary. Marlborough argued vehemently for it, but the Whig lords hit upon a way of defeating it by seeming to comply. They agreed to its passing on condition that all who took the test, and then went to conventicles, should simply be deprived of their employments and be fined twenty pounds. They knew that the Commons would not allow the slightest interference of the Lords with the money part of the Bill, and this proved to be the case. The Lords searched their rolls, and showed numerous cases in which they had altered fines, but the Commons refused to admit any such power. A conference in the Painted Chamber was held, but with a like result, and after long contention the Bill was, happily for the nation, dropped.

A Bill was next brought in to allow another year of grace to all who had not taken the oath abjuring the pretended Prince of Wales. The Tories contended that the Jacobite party had now come over to the queen; but it was shown on the other side that this was but a specious deception; that the agents of St. Germains were in as full activity as ever; were constantly coming and going; and whilst they appeared to favour the queen, it was only to get as strong a party as possible into the House, eventually to abolish both the abjuration and the Protestant Succession Bill: that to this end they now advised all persons to take the Abjuration Bill, and to be able to get into Parliament or power. The Bill was carried in the Commons; but the Lords again tacked two clauses to it, one declaring it high treason to endeavour to alter the succession as settled in the Princess Sophia, and the other to impose the oath on the Irish. These were not money clauses; whoever refused them must appear disinclined to the Protestant succession. The Commons were completely entrapped, and, to the surprise of everybody, they accepted the clauses, and thus the Bill, which was originally favourable to the Jacobites, became much more rigid against them. The queen sent the Lord Keeper, on the 27th of February, 1703, to prorogue Parliament.

Lord Rochester was now entirely removed from the queen's councils. His near relationship to the queen, and his being accounted the champion of the Church, made him presume in the Council, where he was blustering and overbearing. He was disappointed in not being placed at the head of the Treasury, and quarrelled continually with Lord Godolphin. He had now voted against Marlborough's grant of five thousand pounds a year, and thus incurred the mortal hatred of the all-powerful Lady Marlborough. It was clear that Rochester must give way, or the Council must be rent by continual feuds. He was opposed to the war—another cause of hostility from the Marlboroughs—to whom it was money, fame, and everything. He received such intimations from the queen as caused him to retire into the country in disgust. As he refused all summonses to attend[544] the Council, her Majesty ordered him to proceed to his government in Ireland, where his presence was much needed. He replied with great insolence that he would not go to Ireland, and the post of Lord-Lieutenant was conferred on the Duke of Ormond. Still declining to attend the Council, the queen ordered that he should no more be summoned, and thus terminated Anne's connection with her relatives by the mother's side. The elder brother of Rochester, Lord Clarendon, had been excluded the Court for refusing the abjuration of the pretended Prince of Wales, and his son, Lord Cornbury, little better than an idiot, was sent to govern the North American colonies, that he might be out of the way, a system of colonial management by which these colonies were at length entirely estranged. Rochester survived this disgrace but a very few weeks.

It was proposed between the Emperor of Germany and the Allies that the campaign of 1703 should be opened with effect, and by measures which should go far to paralyse France. The Archduke Charles, the Emperor's second son, was to declare himself King of Spain, to propose for the hand of the Infanta of Portugal, and to proceed to that country to prosecute his claims on Spain by the assistance of the English and Dutch fleets. Meanwhile the Emperor promised to take the field with such a force as to drive the Elector of Bavaria, the active and able ally of France, out of his dominions. But Louis, as usual, was too rapid in his movements for the slow Germans. He ordered Marshal Villars, who lay with thirty thousand men at Strasburg, to pass the Rhine, and advance into Bavaria to the support of the Elector. The war was thus skilfully diverted by Louis from the Rhine into the very neighbourhood of the Emperor. On the other hand, Marlborough, who was the soul of the war on the Lower Rhine, had been detained by his exertions to counteract the efforts of Louis XIV. in another quarter. Insurrections had broken out amongst Louis's Protestant subjects in the Cevennes, who had been barbarously oppressed. Marlborough, who cared more for the paralysing of Louis than for the interests of Protestantism, strongly proposed in the Council that assistance should be sent to the mountaineers of the Cevennes. This was fighting Louis with his own weapons, who was exciting insurrection in Hungary and Bohemia amongst the subjects of the Emperor. Nottingham and others of the Council as strongly opposed this measure, on the principle of not exciting subjects against their legitimate sovereign; but Marlborough prevailed. Arms and ammunition were forwarded to the Cevennes, and direct communications were ordered to be opened with the insurgents, which would have compelled Louis to detain a large force for the subjugation of these rebels, which otherwise would have gone to the Rhine; but these aids never reached the unfortunate mountaineers.

Marlborough reached the Hague on the 17th of March, much earlier still than William used to arrive there. Nor had the war paused for his arrival. He had stimulated the Prussians to be in action much earlier. In February they had reduced the fortress of the Rhineberg, and then proceeded to blockade Guelders, the last place in the power of France on the frontiers of Spanish Guelderland. It was fortunate, for the unity of command, that Athlone and Saarbrück, Marlborough's jealous rivals, were both dead; so that now Marlborough had only the Dutch camp deputies as clogs on his movements, but they were quite sufficient often to neutralise his most spirited projects. He found Villeroi and Boufflers posted on the frontiers of the Spanish Netherlands, and his design was to attack and drive them out of Flanders and Brabant. But here, in the very commencement, he was obliged by the States-General to give up his own views to theirs. They desired an immediate attack on Bonn, persuading themselves that the Elector of Cologne would rather capitulate than risk the ruin of the town. Marlborough went reluctantly but not inertly into this plan, foreseeing that it would waste much precious time, and prevent him from falling on Villeroi and Boufflers at the right moment, when the attempt to support the Elector of Bavaria had drawn many of their forces away into Germany. He was the more chagrined the more he saw of the want of energy in the Allies. He proceeded to Nimeguen to arrange with Cohorn the plan of the siege of Bonn. He visited and inspected the garrisons at Venloo, Ruremond, Maestricht, and the other places which he took in the previous campaign on the Meuse. Arriving at Cologne, he found preparations made for a siege, but in a most negligent manner; and Cohorn especially excited his disgust by proposing to defer the siege of this place till the end of summer. But Marlborough knew too well the necessity of preventing an attack from that quarter; ordered the place to be invested, and then marched on Bonn with forty battalions, sixty squadrons, and a hundred pieces of artillery. The trenches were opened on the 3rd of May, and it was assaulted from three different quarters at once; on one side by the[545] forces under the hereditary prince of Hesse-Cassel, on another by those under Cohorn, and on the third by Lieutenant-General Fagel. The city capitulated on the 15th, and the commander, the Marquis D'Allegré, and his garrison were conducted to Luxemburg. During the siege continually arrived the news of the successes of the Elector of Bavaria, and the failures of the Imperial troops; and Villeroi and Boufflers advanced, took Tongres, and menaced the Allies from that quarter with forty thousand men.

H.R.H. THE PRINCESS ANNE OF DENMARK, AFTERWARDS QUEEN OF ENGLAND.

From the Painting by W. Wissing and J. Vandervaart.

No sooner was Bonn reduced than Marlborough determined to prosecute his original plan of driving the French from Flanders. He now dispatched Cohorn, Spaar, and Opdam to commence operations at Bergen-op-Zoom, whilst he addressed himself to dislodge Villeroi and Boufflers from Tongres. In order to divide the energies of the French, a part of his plan was that the powerful English and Dutch fleet was to keep the coast of that country in alarm from Calais to Dieppe, and actually to make a descent on the land near the latter port. But the French resolved to cut off the division of Opdam from the main army. Boufflers, with twenty thousand men, surprised him, and the Dutch falling into confusion, Opdam believed the day lost, and fled to Breda.

VIEW IN LISBON: THE PRÁÇA DE DOM PEDRO.

Opdam's miscarriage had greatly deranged Marlborough's plan of attack on Antwerp. Spaar and Cohorn were already near Antwerp with their united forces, but the check received by Opdam's division delayed the simultaneous advance. Villeroi lay in the path of Marlborough near St. Job, and declared that he would wait for him; but the moment the duke advanced to Hoogstraat to give him battle, he set fire to his camp and retreated within his lines with all haste. Boufflers had joined Bedmar in Antwerp, and Marlborough advanced and laid siege to Huy, which surrendered on the 27th of August. He now called a council of war to decide the plan of attack on Antwerp, and was well supported by the Danish, Hanoverian, and Hessian generals, but again found opposition from the Dutch officers and the deputies of the States, who deemed the attempt too dangerous. They recommended him to attempt the reduction of Limburg, by which they would acquire a whole province; and despairing now of accomplishing his great object, the reduction of Antwerp, this campaign—having the Dutch officers, the Dutch deputies, and the Dutch Louvestein faction all working against him—he turned aside to Limburg, and reduced it in a couple of days. This acquisition put into the power of the Allies the whole country from Cologne, including Liége; and Guelders being afterwards stormed by the Prussian[546] General Lottum, the whole of Spanish Guelderland remained theirs.

Elsewhere the war went in favour of the French, and the affairs of the Emperor never appeared more gloomy; instead of recovering Spain, Louis was fast depriving him of his Empire. He was supporting against him the rebellious Hungarians, who were in arms under Prince Ragotski, and who had plenty of oppressions to complain of. Suddenly, however, some gleams of light shot across his gloom. The Duke of Savoy, who seldom remained true to one side long, grew alarmed at the French being masters of the Milanese, and was induced to open communications with the Emperor. But the secret negotiations were speedily discovered by the French, and the Duke of Vendôme received orders to disarm the Savoyards who were in his army; to demand that the troops of Savoy should be reduced to the scale of 1696, and that four principal fortresses should be put into the hands of France. But the Duke of Savoy was by no means inclined to submit to these demands. He treated them as insults to an ally, and ordered the arrest of the French ambassador and several officers of his nation. Louis, astonished at the decision of these proceedings, wrote the duke a most menacing letter, informing him that as neither honour, interest, religion, nor the oaths of alliance were regarded by him, he should leave the Duke of Vendôme to deal with him, who would give him four-and-twenty hours to determine his course in. This imperious letter only hastened the duke's alienation. He concluded the treaty with Vienna, and answered Louis's letter by a defiance. He acknowledged the Archduke Charles King of Spain, and despatched envoys to Holland and England. Queen Anne immediately sent an ambassador to Turin; and a body of Imperial horse under Visconti, followed by fifteen thousand foot under Count Staremberg, issued from the Modenese, and in the midst of the most stormy weather and through miry roads marched to join the Duke of Savoy at Canelli. The French harassed them fearfully on the march, but could not prevent their junction, by which Piedmont was placed in security.

In the same way, Portugal had declared for the Emperor. The fear of having Louis in possession of Spain had operated with Portugal, as similar causes had operated with Savoy. The King of Portugal agreed to give his daughter to the Archduke Charles, on condition that the right to the throne of Spain was transferred to him. England and Holland were to support the Portuguese and the new King of Spain from the sea. The treaty was concluded at Lisbon, and a fleet of forty-nine sail, under Sir Cloudesley Shovel, lay off Lisbon to protect the coasts from the French. Charles was to be conveyed to Lisbon by a powerful fleet, having on board twelve thousand soldiers, who were, on landing, to be joined by twenty-eight thousand Portuguese. The allied fleets had done nothing of importance during this summer.

The Archduke Charles, having assumed the title of King of Spain, set out from Vienna about the middle of September, and reached Düsseldorf on the 16th of October, where he was met by the Elector Palatine and the Duke of Marlborough, who was commissioned by Queen Anne to offer his congratulations. Marlborough accompanied Charles of Austria to the Hague, where they were both received with high honours by the States-General. Marlborough then hastened over to England to be ready to receive the royal guest on his way to Portugal. On the 26th of December the new King of Spain arrived at Spithead in the Dutch squadron sent to convey him. The queen dispatched the Dukes of Somerset and Marlborough to conduct him to Windsor, and Prince George met him on the way at Petworth, the seat of the Duke of Somerset, and conducted him to Windsor on the 29th. The king was entertained in great state for three days at Windsor, during which time he was politic enough to ingratiate himself with the Duchess of Marlborough. When the duchess presented the bason and napkin after supper to the queen for her to wash her hands, the king gallantly took the napkin and held it himself, and on returning it to the queen's great favourite, he presented her with a superb diamond ring.

After three days the king returned to Portsmouth, and on the 4th of January, 1704, he embarked on board the fleet commanded by Sir George Rooke, for Portugal, accompanied by a body of land forces under the Duke of Schomberg. The voyage was, however, a most stormy one, and when the fleet had nearly reached Cape Finisterre, it was compelled to put back to Spithead, where it remained till the middle of February. His next attempt was more successful, and he landed in Lisbon amid much popular demonstration, though the Court itself was sunk in sorrow by the death of the Infanta, whom he went to marry.

Before the arrival of Charles in England, it had been visited by one of the most terrible storms on record. The tempest began on the 27th of November, 1703, attended by such thunder and lightning as had never been experienced by living man. The Thames overflowed its banks, and was several[547] feet deep in Westminster Hall. The houses in London seemed shaken from their foundations, and many actually fell, burying the inhabitants in their ruins. The loss in London alone was estimated at a million sterling, and the storm raged with equal fury in other places. Bristol was a great sufferer; but the greatest destruction fell on the fleet. Thirteen ships of war were lost, and fifteen hundred seamen, including Rear-Admiral Beaumont, who foundered in the Downs. Many of the oldest trees in the parks were torn up, and the lead on the churches was rolled up in scrolls. This unparalleled storm raged most fiercely along the southern and western counties, being scarcely felt in the northern ones. The Bishop of Bath and Wells, with his wife, was killed in the episcopal palace by the fall of a stack of chimneys.

The queen opened Parliament on the 9th of November. She spoke of the new treaties with the Duke of Savoy and the King of Portugal as subjects of congratulation; and on the 12th the Lords presented an address to the queen, expressing their satisfaction at her having entered into these treaties, and even displayed a zeal beyond them. The Commons on their part voted fifty-eight thousand soldiers and forty thousand sailors as the standard of the army and navy, and they granted the requisite supplies with the utmost readiness. No sooner was this patriotic demonstration made, than the Commons again introduced the Occasional Conformity Bill, and carried it by a large majority, on pretence that the Church was in danger; but the Lords attacked it with greater animosity than ever, and threw it out.

At this moment the nation became alarmed with the rumour of a conspiracy amongst the Jacobites in Scotland. When the queen, on the 17th of December, went to the Lords to give her assent to the Land Tax Bill, she informed them that she had made discoveries of a seditious nature in Scotland, which, as soon as it could be done with prudence, she assured them should be laid before them. The Lords, in their loyalty, were not disposed to wait for these disclosures, but appointed a Committee to inquire into the plot, and even went so far as to take some of the parties implicated out of the hands of the queen's messengers, to examine them themselves.

The year 1704 opened amid these inquiries. The Queen laid before the House of Lords the papers concerning the Highland plot, with one exception, which the Earl of Nottingham asserted could not yet be made public without tending to prevent further discovery. This only stimulated the Lords, who addressed the queen, praying that the whole of the papers might be submitted to them. The queen replied that she did not expect to be pressed in this manner, but she ordered the papers in question to be delivered to them under seal. The Peers pursued the inquiry with renewed vigour, and soon issued a report that it appeared to them that there had been a dangerous conspiracy, instigated by Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, carried on for raising a rebellion in Scotland, and invading that kingdom with French forces, in order to subvert her Majesty's Government and bring in the pretended Prince of Wales, and that they were of opinion that nothing had given so much encouragement to this conspiracy as the Scots not coming into the Hanover succession as fixed in England. They therefore besought the queen to procure the settlement of the Crown of Scotland on the Princess Sophia, and when that was done they would use all their influence for a union of the two kingdoms.

Anne expressed her entire concurrence in these views, and the Lords then presented another address in answer to the second address of the Commons. They charged the Commons with manifesting a want of zeal for the queen's safety, and with showing a strange reluctance that the particulars of the plot should be brought to light, obstructing all through, as much as in them lay, the necessary inquiry; and fresh fuel was immediately furnished to the flame already blazing between the two Houses. One Matthew Ashby, a freeman of Aylesbury, brought an action against William White and others, the constables of Aylesbury, for preventing him from exercising his franchise at the last election. This was an unheard-of proceeding, all matters relating to elections being from time immemorial referred to the House of Commons itself. The circumstances of the case, however, furnished some reason for this departure from the rule. It appeared that four constables made the return, who were known to have bargained with a particular candidate, and to have so managed that the election should be his. In appeals to the Commons the party which happened to be in power had in a most barefaced manner always decided in favour of the man of their own side. Ashby, therefore, sought what he hoped would prove a more impartial tribunal. He tried the cause at the assizes, and won it; but it was then moved in the Queen's Bench to quash these proceedings as novel and contrary to all custom. Three of the judges were opposed to hearing the case, the matter belonging[548] notoriously to the House of Commons; and they argued that, if this practice were introduced, it would occasion a world of suits, and make the office of returning members a very dangerous one. The Lord Chief Justice Holt alone was in favour of it. He contended that there was a great difference between the election of a member and a right to vote. The decision of the election undoubtedly belonged to the Commons, but the right to vote being founded upon a forty-shilling freehold, upon burgage land, upon a prescription, or the charter of a borough, was clearly establishable by a court of law. The judges at length permitted the trial, but, being three against one, the decision was for the constables. This aroused the indignation of the whole Whig party, and the cause was removed by a writ of error to the House of Lords. The Lords, after a full hearing, and taking the opinions of the judges, confirmed the judgment given in favour of Ashby at the assizes.

The Commons now took up the affair with great warmth. They passed five resolutions—namely, that all matters relating to elections and the right of examining and determining the qualifications of electors belonged solely to them; that Ashby was guilty of a breach of their privileges, and they denounced the utmost weight of their resentment against all persons who should follow his example and bring any such suit into a court of law, as well as against all counsel, attorneys, or others who should assist in such suit. They ordered these resolutions to be affixed to the gates of Westminster Hall. The Lords took instant measures to rebut these charges. They appointed a committee to draw up a statement of the case, and resolved upon its Report "that every person being wilfully hindered from exercising his right of voting might seek for justice and redress in common courts of law against the officer by whom his vote had been refused; that any assertion to the contrary was destructive of the property of the subject, against the freedom of election, and manifestly tending to the encouragement of bribery and corruption; and finally that the declaring Matthew Ashby guilty of a breach of privilege of the House of Commons was an unprecedented attempt upon the Judicature of Parliament in the House of Lords, and an attempt to subject the law of England to the will and votes of the Commons."

They ordered the Lord-Keeper to send copies of the case and their votes to all the Sheriffs of England, to be by them communicated to the boroughs in their respective counties. The House of Commons was greatly enraged at this, but it had no power to prevent it, and it had the mortification to see that the public feeling went entirely with the Lords, who certainly were the defenders of the rights of the subject, whilst the Commons, corruptly refusing a just redress to such appeals, endeavoured to prevent the sufferers from obtaining it anywhere else.

One of the most striking acts of this reign was the grant of the first-fruits and tenths of church livings to the poor clergy. The tenths were about eleven thousand pounds a year, and the first-fruits about five thousand pounds. These moneys had been collected by the bishops since the Reformation and paid to the Crown. They had never, says Burnet, "been applied to any good use, but were still obtained by favourites for themselves and friends, and in King Charles's time went chiefly amongst his women and children. It seemed strange that, whilst the clergy had much credit at Court, they had never resented this as sacrilege unless it were applied to some religious purpose, and that during Archbishop Laud's favour with King Charles I., or at the restoration of King Charles II., no endeavours had been used to appropriate this to better uses; sacrilege was charged on other things on very slight grounds, but this, which was more visible, was always forgot." But the fund was too convenient a fund for favourites to get grants upon. It is much to the credit of Burnet that he managed to divert this misused fund from the greedy clutches of courtiers and mistresses, to the amelioration of the condition of the unhappy working clergy. He proposed the scheme first to William, who listened to it readily, being assured by Burnet that nothing would tend to draw the hearts of the clergy so much towards him, and put a stop to the groundless clamour that he was the enemy of the clergy. Somers and Halifax heartily concurred in the plan; but the avaricious old Sunderland got a grant of it upon two dioceses for two thousand pounds a year for two lives, which frustrated the aims of the reformers. Burnet, however, succeeded better with Anne. He represented that there were hundreds of cures that had not twenty pounds a year, and some thousands that had not thirty pounds, and asked what could the clergy be or do under such circumstances? Therefore, on the 7th of February, 1704, Sir Charles Hedges, the Secretary of State, announced to the Commons that her Majesty had remitted the arrears of the tenths to the poor clergy, and had resolved to grant[549] in future the whole of the first-fruits and tenths for the augmentation of small livings. The Commons replied in an address, expressing their sense of her pious care for the Church, and brought in a Bill to enable her to alienate this branch of the revenue, and to create a corporation by charter, to apply the money, according to the queen's intention, in increasing the wretched stipends of the poorer clergy. There was an attempt made to relieve the clergy altogether from the payment of first-fruits and tenths, and to devote some other fund to the relief of the poor clergy; but as Anne's intention was not to relieve the rich but to comfort the poor, she would not listen to it. The Statute of Mortmain was also relaxed by a provision of the Bill, so far as to allow individuals to make augmentations to benefices by deed of gift or by bequest. The Bishops were unanimous for the Bill, and addresses of thanks from all the clergy of England were presented to Anne on the occasion of this noble gift of what has been ever since known as Queen Anne's Bounty. However, Anne was far from being so generous to Dissenters, or to any other sect in the kingdom. On the contrary, she had just before allowed the Parliament of Ireland to stop the poor sum of twelve hundred pounds per annum, which had been paid by the late king to the indigent Presbyterian ministers of Ulster, who had so manfully defended the north of Ireland against James.

THE KING OF SPAIN AT WINDSOR: HIS GALLANTRY TO THE DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH. (See p. 546.)

On the 3rd of April the queen prorogued Parliament till the 4th of July. The Convocation had during this time kept up its bitter controversy, and had done nothing more except thank the queen for the grant of the first-fruits and tenths, and the Commons for having espoused their cause.

Marlborough had left London for the Hague on the 15th of January whilst Parliament was sitting. He was promised fifty thousand British troops under his own immediate command, and he was planning a campaign which gave the first evidence of a real military genius being at the head of the Allied forces, since these Dutch wars began. He saw that the Elector of Bavaria, by his alliance with the French, was striking at the very heart of the Empire, and that, if permitted to continue his plans, he would soon, with his[550] French allies, be in possession of Vienna. Nothing could be more deplorable than the condition of Austria. Besides the successes of the Elector of Bavaria, the insurgents of Hungary were triumphant, and between the two the Empire was on the verge of ruin. The Elector of Bavaria had possessed himself of all the places on the Danube as far as Passau, and should he come to act in concert with the Hungarians, Vienna would be lost. Prince Eugene put himself into communication with Marlborough, and these two great generals determined on striking a blow which should at once free Austria from its dangers. This was no other than a bold march of a powerful army to the Danube, and the destruction of the Elector of Bavaria.

This was a design so far out of the mediocre range of Dutch campaigns that it was determined not to let its real character become known till it could be instantly put in execution, certain that the States-General, terrified at so daring a scheme, would prohibit it at once. To go securely to work, therefore, by the advice of Eugene, the Emperor applied to the Queen of England to send an army to his rescue. Marlborough supported the application with all his energy, and, having procured the queen's consent, he left England on the 15th of January, was in the Hague on the 19th, and put himself into secret communication with the Grand Pensionary Heinsius. He fully approved of the scheme, and promised to give it his most strenuous support. It was thought, however, imprudent to confide the real extent of the plan to other persons, not only because it was sure to alarm the States-General, but because it had been all along observed that every proposal, as soon as it became known to the Government or heads of the army, was immediately treacherously conveyed to the French. The proposal made to the States-General, therefore, was merely that the next campaign should be made on the Moselle, as if the design were to penetrate into France along that river.

The States-General, as was expected, appeared thunderstruck by even the proposal of carrying the war to the Moselle, and it was only by the zeal of Heinsius that they were brought to consent to it. That accomplished, they were induced to grant a subsidy to the Prince of Baden, and another to the Circle of Suabia, and to take into pay four thousand Würtembergers instead of the same number of Dutch and English despatched to Portugal. There was a promise of money given to the Prince of Savoy, with an assurance of so vigorous a campaign on this side of the Alps that the French should not be able to send many troops against him. Similar assurances of co-operation were given to the Elector Palatine and to the new King of Prussia. These matters being arranged, Marlborough hastened back to England, and persuaded the queen to remit a hundred thousand crowns to Suabia, and to make a large remittance to the Prince of Baden out of the privy purse. He then put himself on a good understanding with the now partly Whig Ministry, himself as well as his indefatigable duchess coming out in Whig colours. He then returned to the Netherlands in the beginning of April. He found in his absence that the terms of his design, little of it as was known, had been actively operating in the cautious Dutch mind, and the States of Zealand and Friesland in particular were vehemently opposed to so bold a measure as carrying the war to the Moselle. Marlborough, who had brought with him to support him in command his brother General Churchill, Lieutenant-General Lumley, the Earl of Orkney, and other officers of distinction, told the States plainly that he had the authority of his queen for taking such measures as he thought best for the common cause, and that he was determined to march with his forty thousand men to the Moselle. This struck with silence the opposers of the measure: the States consented with a good grace to the proposition, and gave him such powers as they never would have done had they any idea to what an extent he meant to use them. Prince Eugene alone, who was commanding the Allied army on the Upper Danube, was in the secret. Leaving Overkirk with a strong force to guard the frontiers of Holland, he commenced at once his march to Utrecht, where he spent a few days with Albemarle, thence to Ruremond, and so to Maestricht, and on the 8th of May advanced to Bedburg, in the Duchy of Juliers, which had been appointed as the place of rendezvous. There he found General Churchill with fifty-one battalions, and ninety-two squadrons of horse.

Being joined by various detachments of Prussians, Hessians, Lüneburgers, and others, and also by eleven Dutch battalions, Marlborough, on the 19th of May, commenced his great expedition into the heart of Germany. On the 26th he was at Coblentz, and from the grand old fortress of Ehrenbreitstein he watched the passage of his army over the Moselle and the Rhine. He wrote to the States-General for fresh reinforcements in order to secure his most important movement, and[551] marched along the banks of the Rhine to Broubach. There he also wrote to the King of Prussia, praising the Prussian troops, and entreating him to send him more of them. While he was at Mainz, he halted a day to rest his troops, and there received the agreeable news that the States were sending after him twenty squadrons, and eight battalions of Danish auxiliaries; but at the same time he was mortified to find that the Prince of Baden had managed so badly as to allow the ten thousand troops forwarded by Tallard to join the Elector of Bavaria without molestation, and had lost the most tempting opportunities, whilst the Elector was marching through narrow defiles, of cutting off his march and reducing him to extremities.

The French were filled with wonder at this march of Marlborough, far out from the usual scene of the English operations, and could not for some time realise the object of it. At one time they expected only an attack on the Moselle, but that river and the Rhine being crossed, they apprehended that his design was to raise the siege of Landau, and this was confirmed by the advance of the Landgrave of Hesse to Mannheim. But when he crossed the Neckar and advanced on Erpingen, and was continually strengthened by fresh junctions of Prussians, Hessians, and Palatines, they began to comprehend his real object. He waited at Erpingen for the coming up of General Churchill with the artillery and part of the infantry, and he employed the time in sending a despatch to warn the Prince of Baden that Tallard and Villeroi were about to unite their armies, pass the Rhine, and hasten to the support of the Elector of Bavaria. He pressed on the prince the extreme importance of preventing this passage of the French army. He told him that they must not trouble themselves about any damage that Villeroi might do on the left bank of the Rhine, if he could only be kept there, as in that case he felt assured that six weeks would see the army of the Elector of Bavaria annihilated, and the Empire saved.

Marlborough was anxious to keep the Prince of Baden engaged on the Rhine, so that he might himself have the co-operation of the far abler Eugene on the Danube. On the 9th of June he crossed the Neckar again, marched to Mondelsheim, and on the 10th met for the first time Prince Eugene, who was destined to be for ever connected with his name in military glory. At Hippach Marlborough reviewed his cavalry in the presence of Eugene, who expressed his utmost admiration at their appearance and discipline. He was equally struck with the lively and ardent expression of the countenances of the English soldiers, which Marlborough handsomely assured him was caused by their pleasure in seeing so renowned a commander. To the intense mortification of Eugene and Marlborough, the Prince of Baden, whom they were anxious to detain on the Rhine, quitted the post where his presence was so much required, and came up and joined them. He was determined to be in the quarter where the greatest share of reputation was to be won, and from his princely rank he did not hesitate to claim the chief command.

This notion of their princely claims, combined with their mediocrity of military talent, has always been the mischief of a campaign in alliance with the small princes of Germany. The whole plan of Marlborough and Eugene was in danger of defeat, and Eugene was compelled to go to the Rhine, and Marlborough to admit of the Prince of Baden taking the command on alternate days. He secretly resolved, however, that any actions of consequence should be entered upon only on his own day. Eugene had now taken his departure, and on the 15th of June was at Philippsburg, on the Rhine, and Marlborough felt it time to press on, for the States-General were now continually sending to him alarming accounts of the French, and entreating him to send back part of his army for their defence. Accordingly, on the 20th, he set forward, and passed successfully the narrow, dangerous, and troublesome pass of Geislingen, lying amongst the mountains which separated him from the plains of the Danube. This pass was two miles long, heavy with the deepest mud, and abounding with torrents swollen by the rains. Once through, he came into contact with the forces of the Prince of Baden, which were posted at Wertersteppen. On the 24th the united armies reached Elchingen, near the Danube. The Elector of Bavaria, who was posted at Ulm, retired, at his approach, along the banks of the Danube to a former encampment of himself and his French allies, in a low and swampy place between Lauingen and Dillingen. Marlborough advanced to the little river Brenz, and encamped within two leagues of the enemy, with his right at Amerdighem and his left at Onderingen. There he waited till the 27th, when his brother, General Churchill, came up with the artillery and part of the infantry. The army now amounted to ninety-six battalions, two hundred and two squadrons, with forty-eight pieces of artillery, pontoons, etc. He still, however, judged it prudent to wait for the Danish[552] horse under the Duke of Würtemberg, which were daily expected.

During this delay the Elector forestalled the Allies in securing the fortress of the Schellenberg, situated on a lofty hill overhanging the town of Donauwörth. Marlborough saw the immense advantage thus gained, and determined, cost what it might, to drive them from this stronghold. It was held by the General Count D'Arco, with twelve thousand men; and it was clear that it could not be forced without great loss. But there was no time to delay. So long as the Elector held Schellenberg he kept them in check, and was enabled to wait for the arrival of French forces sent to relieve him. The Prince of Baden was confounded at the daring of such an undertaking, and strongly opposed it; but Marlborough told him that every day's delay only enabled the enemy to strengthen himself by fresh entrenchments both there and in their swampy camp. On the 1st of July Marlborough, having the command for the day, ordered the assault of the Schellenberg. At three o'clock in the morning this hardy attempt began. The picked troops advanced to the front of the Schellenberg, crossing, on bridges prepared for the occasion, the deep and rapid stream called the Wernitz, about noon. The Austrian grenadiers were far in the rear, and it was five in the afternoon before the order was given for the column to ascend. It was a murderous prospect for the assailants. The hill was steep and rugged; the ascent was rendered additionally difficult by a wood, a rivulet, and a deep ravine; whilst the summit of the hill was covered with soldiers ready to pour down the most destructive storm of shot, and that with the prospect of an unlimited supply of soldiers and ammunition from Donauwörth and the camp on the other side of the Danube, which was connected with this side by a bridge. Lord Mordaunt with fifty English grenadiers led the way as a forlorn hope. The officers of the attacking column were nearly all killed, and it appeared likely to be swept down the hill, but a battalion of English Guards stood its ground firmly, and restored the courage of the rest, and once more they advanced. D'Arco then gathered in his flanks and threw the whole weight of his soldiery upon them to annihilate them, still pouring murderous discharges of grape into them. It appeared impossible that any body of men could exist under such disadvantages, and the whole column seemed giving way, when General Lumley rushed forward at the head of a body of horse, rallied the failing ranks, and led them again to the charge. During this terrible conflict the assailants had not been sacrificed unavenged. They had exterminated their enemies almost as fast as they came, and at this moment a powder magazine exploding in the camp of the Bavarians, spread such consternation that the Allies, taking advantage of the panic, rushed forward, burst into the entrenchments, and threw the whole force into confusion. This confusion was put to the climax by the Bavarians observing the Prince of Baden ascending the hill from the side of Donauwörth, at the head of the Imperial troops. The panic was complete; the French and Bavarians broke in every direction, and made the best of their way down the hill to secure the passage of the bridge over the Danube. The Allies gave chase, and made a fearful carnage amongst the fugitives. By the time they reached the bridge, such was the rush and crush to cross it that it gave way. Numbers were plunged into the stream and perished; numbers were driven by the force behind over the banks; numbers were massacred on the spot. Of the twelve thousand troops who had ascended the Schellenberg, only three thousand ever rejoined the Elector of Bavaria, but many came in as stragglers and joined the Allies. There were seven or eight thousand destroyed on that bloody evening.

What was to be expected from the particular spirit which the Prince of Baden had shown, took place. Though he deprecated the attack of the Schellenberg at all, and though he allowed the English to bear the terrible brunt of the ascent, and came up in the rear of the engagement, because he reached the entrenchments before Marlborough himself came up, he claimed the honour of the victory. Had he headed the attacking column, he would have had no other claim but that of a brave officer, for the whole plan of the campaign and the whole plan of the attack of the Schellenberg were Marlborough's. Had the prince had his way, there would have been no battle at all. Marlborough repelled the mean attempt to steal his victory with contempt, and spoke some homely truths to the Prince. It served the Louvestein faction in the Netherlands, however, with a pretext to injure Marlborough, by casting a medal bearing the portrait of the Prince, and on the reverse the lines of Schellenberg. But all over the world, not excepting Germany, justice was done to Marlborough, and from that moment his name became famous, celebrated in songs even by the French, dreaded by French children, whose mothers stilled them with the terrible word "Malbrouk."

[553]

But the French were hastening to prevent the destruction of their Bavarian ally. Marlborough received the news that they had promised to send to the Elector, under Tallard, fifty battalions of foot, and sixty squadrons of horse of the best troops in France, which should make him stronger than the Confederates. These troops had already crossed the Rhine, and were making their way through the Black Forest. At the same time Eugene, though obliged to divide his forces, at once to watch Villeroi on the Rhine and to check the march of Tallard, promised Marlborough that he would do his uttermost to retard the junction. Meanwhile the Elector, in too dangerous a proximity to the victorious army, abandoned Donauwörth, broke up his camp, and retreated towards Augsburg, leaving his own dominions open to the incursions of the Allies. Marlborough lost no time in availing himself of the chance. He prepared to cross the deep and rapid river Lech, which was effected on the 7th of July at Gunderkingen.

PRINCE EUGINE OF SAVOY. (After the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller.)

Marlborough was now in Bavaria, and the garrison at Neuburg retreating to Ingolstadt, he had the whole of the country at his mercy. He posted his camp at Mittelstetten on the 10th, and sent word to the Elector that if he did not choose to come to terms he would do his best to ruin his country; but the Elector, strongly encamped under the walls of Augsburg, and promised early succour by the French, made no sign of treating. Marlborough suffered his troops to levy contributions on the country round, and his army lived luxuriously at the expense of the unfortunate Bavarians. The true policy of the Allies was to march on the Elector, and dispose of him before the French could come up; but for this the[554] Prince of Baden was in too ill a humour. In fact, the two generals were on the worst possible terms with each other, and the consequence was, the obvious interests of the campaign were sacrificed to the feud and jealousy of the leaders. Marlborough proposed to march on Munich, the capital, and take it, but the Prince would not furnish the necessary artillery, and the thing was impossible. Marlborough spent five days in taking Rain, a fortress of little consequence. He also dispatched thirty squadrons to assist Eugene in obstructing the march of the French to join the Elector. He contrived also to open negotiations with the Elector of Bavaria. The envoy of the Emperor offered to the Elector to restore all his dominions, and pay him a subsidy of two hundred thousand crowns, on condition of his breaking with the French and assisting the Emperor with twelve thousand men. But the negotiation came to nothing, for Tallard was now rapidly advancing with his army, and the Elector, instead of keeping an appointment with the Emperor's envoy, sent him word that since the King of France had made such powerful exertions to support him, he thought himself in honour obliged to remain firm to his alliance. The Allied generals were so much exasperated at this result that they gave up the whole country, as far as the walls of Munich, to the ravages of the soldiery, and three hundred burning towns, villages, and castles marked the terrible fury of the Allies, and left an indelible stain on the glories of that campaign.

Scarcely had Marlborough removed from before Augsburg when the Elector quitted his camp and marched to Biberach, and there effected a junction with Tallard.

On the 6th of August Prince Eugene galloped into Marlborough's camp to announce this fact, and to take measures for competing with them. It was resolved between them to get rid of the fatal incubus of the Prince of Baden, with his pride and his jealousy, by leaving him to continue the siege of Ingolstadt, for which purpose they left him twenty-three battalions and thirty-one squadrons. Marlborough then prepared again to cross the Lech and the Danube, and advance to Exheim. Here Prince Eugene, who had set out to bring up his force to form a junction with Marlborough, galloped back to inform him that the united French and Bavarian army was in full march towards Dillingen, evidently intending to attack the little army of Eugene. It was, therefore, agreed that the troops of Eugene should fall back, and those of Marlborough should cross the Danube to make a speedy junction with them. Eugene took possession of the strong camp on the Schellenberg, and had his main position at Donauwörth. On the evening of the 10th Marlborough began to throw detachments of his army across the Danube—an operation of no little difficulty, owing to his having to cross the Aicha, the Lech, and the Wernitz, as well as the Danube, and all these floods were swollen by the rains. The whole of the army, however, was got over at different points on the 11th, and on the 12th Marlborough's baggage and artillery came up.

The English Guards were pushed forward towards Schwenningen, and Marlborough and Eugene ascended together the tower of a village church to get a view of the country. There they discovered the French and Bavarians busy marking out a camp between Blenheim and Lutzingen. They saw at once the great advantage they should have by falling on the enemy before they had strongly entrenched themselves, and whilst in the confusion of encamping themselves. No sooner, however, did they issue their orders, than some of the general officers demurred as to the danger of attacking the foe in so strong a position as the one they had chosen. But Marlborough told them that circumstances compelled them to fight, and the sooner the better. Marlborough and Eugene were busy planning the order of the battle, and at two o'clock of the morning of the 13th of August, the forces were in full advance. In another hour they were across the Kessell, with a combined force of fifty-two thousand men and fifty-two pieces of artillery.

Tallard saw the march of the Allied army with great satisfaction. He thought it would now be easy for him to interpose a strong force between Marlborough and the army of the Prince of Baden before Ingolstadt. But the Allies did not mean to give him any time for that. They pushed briskly forward over very difficult ground, intersected by rivulets and ditches; and as they were seen at seven in the morning steadily advancing, the French and Bavarians hastily abandoned the new lines which they were forming, and retreated towards their old camp. On still went Marlborough and Eugene, accompanied in advance by a Prussian officer who had fought there the preceding year, and knew the country well. They found the enemy posted along the rising ground from Blenheim to Lutzingen, with a gap between the villages, which they had endeavoured to render secure by posting there a strong body of cavalry. At the same time, between Blenheim and the Danube, was made a strong barricade of waggons,[555] behind which were stationed a brigade of dismounted dragoons. Three brigades of cavalry took up their stand in the village, and barricaded all entrances or openings with waggons, felled trees, planks, or whatever could be found. Tallard was in command at Blenheim, the Elector of Bavaria and General Marsin at Lutzingen. The castle and church-tower at Blenheim were filled with soldiers, and the Count Clerambault was ordered to defend the village of Blenheim by his artillery to the last.

Against this position, defended by fifty-seven thousand men, or about five thousand more than the Allies, advanced the Confederate army. In front of the enemy also ran the little river Nebel, which was deep, and the bottom muddy. Marlborough led on the left wing against Blenheim, and Eugene the right against Lutzingen. The first of the army to cross the Nebel and advance against Blenheim was a body of English and Hessians under Major-General Wilkes and Lord Cutts. Cutts, who was famous for a storm, was ordered to make an impetuous attack on the village; and, getting across the Nebel by means of fascines, he led his horse under a terrible fire of grape right against the palisadoes and barricades. The French poured into the assailants, however, such a storm of grape as mowed down great numbers of officers and men, amongst whom was General Rowe, who had advanced to the very face of the palisadoes with his lieutenant-colonel and major. The English in the van were thrown into confusion and assailed by three squadrons of gendarmes; but the Hessians advanced to their aid, and the French were driven back to their lines. Lord Cutts then led on his horse, and maintained a desperate fight under the fire of the protected French. Whilst they were engaged in this deadly mélée the brigades of Hudson and Ferguson had crossed the stream, and marched right up to the village, silencing some batteries which commanded the fords of the river. The fight was maintained hand to hand, the opponents thrusting at each other through the interstices of the palisadoes; but the contest was too unequal between the covered and uncovered, and with the soldiers from the old castle and the church-tops pouring down showers of musket-balls on the Allies.

During this time Marlborough had been leading another body of troops along the banks of the Nebel, and joining them under a terrible fire of grape opposite to the gap between the villages, and only waiting, to bear on this point, for the artillery, under the Prince of Holstein-Beck, getting over the river. The Prince no sooner had got partly across the stream than his advance was furiously attacked by the Irish Brigade, which was in the pay of Louis XIV. They cut the advance nearly to pieces, and would have effectually prevented the transit of artillery had not Marlborough himself hastened to the spot and beaten them off, as well as heavy bodies of French and Bavarian cavalry. He then posted a body of horse along the river to protect the crossing of the forces.

Lord Cutts during this had fallen back from the entrenchments of the village, finding it impossible to clear a way into it without artillery. But the artillery over, Marlborough united his forces with those of Eugene, which were bearing on Lutzingen, and was preparing for his grand design of cutting the French and Bavarians asunder, by throwing his whole weight on the cavalry posted between the villages. It was not, however, till five in the afternoon that he was able to lead on the attack, consisting of two columns of horse supported by infantry. He dashed rapidly up the hill towards the important point, on which was concentrated Tallard's cavalry, and part of the infantry from the village. Marlborough gained the summit of the hill under heavy loss, but there the enemy stood in such solid force that he was driven back for a hundred paces. The heat of the battle was at this point, and if Marlborough had been compelled to give way, there was little chance of succeeding against the enemy; but he returned with all his vigour to the charge, by this time his artillery had gained the summit, and after a desperate struggle the fire of the French began to slacken. As soon as he perceived that, he made a grand charge, broke the horse, and cut to pieces or made prisoners of seven regiments of infantry.

Tallard, seeing his cavalry in flight, and his infantry fast being overpowered, sent messengers to call the Elector to his aid, and to order up the rest of the infantry from Blenheim. But the Elector was in full engagement with Eugene, and found enough to do to maintain possession of Lutzingen. Nor did Marlborough allow time for the coming up of fresh enemies. He attacked Tallard with such impetuosity, and such an overwhelming force of cavalry, that he was completely disorganised, and, turning his horse, galloped off towards Sonderheim, another part of his cavalry making for Hochstadt. Marlborough pursued Tallard at full speed, slaughtering his men all down the declivity towards the Danube, where they had thrown over a bridge between Hochstadt and Blenheim; but being so pressed, and at the same[556] time attacked in the flank, numbers were forced into the river and perished. Tallard, being surrounded, and his son killed, was compelled to surrender near a mill behind the village of Sonderheim, together with the Marquis of Montperous, General of Horse, the Majors-General de Seppeville, De Silly, De la Valiere, and many other officers. Those who fled towards Hochstadt fared little better. They became entangled in a morass, where they were cut to pieces, drowned in the Danube, or made prisoners, except the celebrated brigade of Grignan, and some of the gendarmes, who regained the heights of Hochstadt.

Meanwhile Prince Eugene had been sharply engaged with the Elector of Bavaria at Lutzingen, and after receiving several repulses had succeeded in driving the Elector out of Lutzingen; and, turning his flank, he posted himself on the edge of a ravine to mark the condition of the field in general. He there received a message from Marlborough to say that he was now able to come to his assistance if he needed it; but the prince replied that he had no need of it, for the forces of Marsin and the Elector were driven out of Lutzingen and Oberclau, and that his cavalry were pursuing them to Morselingen and Teissenhoven, whence they retreated to Dillingen and Lauingen. Marlborough despatched a body of cavalry to Eugene near the blazing village of Lutzingen; but the darkness now settling down, the commander, amid the smoke of powder and of the burning village, mistook the troops of Eugene for the Bavarians and wheeled round, so that the opportunity was lost of inflicting fresh injury on the fugitives.

There were still twelve thousand men unsubdued in Blenheim, and Marlborough began to surround the place. These forces had lost their commander, Clerambault, who had been carried away in the rush down the hill and was drowned in the Danube; but the men still made a vigorous resistance. Every minute, however, they were getting more hemmed in by troops and artillery. Fire was set to the buildings, and every chance of escape was cut off. For some time they maintained a killing fire from the walls and houses; but as the flames advanced, they made several attempts at cutting through their assailants, but were driven back at every point. They finally offered to capitulate, but Marlborough would hear of nothing but an unconditional surrender, to which they were obliged to assent. Besides these, whole regiments had laid down their arms, and begged for quarter. Thus was annihilated at a blow the invincible army of France, which was to have seized on Vienna, destroyed the Empire, and placed all Germany and the Continent under the feet of Louis. The event had fully justified the bold design of Marlborough; instead of fighting the enemy in detail, he attacked him at his very heart, and closed the campaign by a single master-stroke.

Soon after the battle three thousand Germans, who had been serving in the French army, joined the Allies; and on the 19th of August, six days after the battle, Marlborough and Eugene began their march towards Ulm. Three days before that, the garrison of Augsburg had quitted that city, and Marlborough and Eugene called on the Prince of Baden to leave a few troops at Ingolstadt to invest it, as it must now necessarily surrender, and to join them with the rest of his forces, that they might sweep the enemy completely out of Germany. Marshal Tallard was sent under a guard of dragoons to Frankfort, and Marlborough encamped at Sefillingen, near Ulm. There he and Eugene were joined by Louis of Baden, and, leaving a sufficient force to reduce Ulm, the combined army marched towards the Rhine. At Bruchsal, near Philippsburg, the Prince of Baden insisted that they should all stay and compel the surrender of Landau. This was opposed to the whole plans of Marlborough and Eugene, which were to give the French no time to reflect, but to drive them over their own frontiers. The Prince was now more than ever obstinate. The glory which Marlborough had won, and part of which he had tried to filch from him, was extremely galling to him, and especially that so much honour should fall to the lot of a heretic. The generals were obliged to follow his fancy; they allowed the Prince to sit down before the town, and Marlborough and Eugene encamped at Croon-Weissingen to support him. This took place on the 12th of September, and Landau held out till the 23rd of November, when it capitulated on honourable terms, and the King of the Romans characteristically came into the camp to have the honour of taking the place—so fond are these German princes of stepping into other people's honours instead of winning them for themselves. By this delay the precious remainder of the campaign was lost, and the French had time given them to recover their spirits, and to take measures for holding what was yet left them. After this the Confederate army sat down before Trarbach, which surrendered to the hereditary Prince of Hesse-Cassel[557] in the middle of December, which closed the campaign.

BATTLE OF BLENHEIM: CHARGE OF MARLBOROUGH'S HORSE. (See p. 555.)

[558]

Marlborough had not waited for these insignificant operations, but had proceeded to Berlin to engage the King of Prussia to suspend his claims on the Dutch, and to enter more zealously into the alliance for the perfect clearance of the French from Germany. He prevailed on the king to promise eight thousand troops for the assistance of the Duke of Savoy, and to be commanded by the Prince Eugene; and he exerted himself with the Emperor to effect a settlement with the insurgents in Hungary, but his own triumphs stood in the way of his success. The Emperor, since Marlborough's victories, was so elated that he would listen to no reasonable terms. From Berlin Marlborough proceeded to Hanover, and paid his court to the family which was to succeed to the Crown of England. Thence he went to the Hague, where he was received with high honours by the States-General on account of the victories which he would never have achieved could they have restrained him. He arrived in England in the middle of December, carrying with him Marshal Tallard and the rest of the distinguished officers, with the standards and other trophies of his victories. He was received with acclaim by all classes except a few ultra-Tories, who threatened to impeach him for his rash march to the Danube. As Parliament had assembled, Marlborough took his seat in the House of Peers the day after his arrival, where he was complimented on his magnificent success by the Lord Keeper. This was followed by a deputation with a vote of thanks from the Commons, and by similar honours from the City. But perhaps the most palpable triumph of Marlborough was the transferring of the military trophies which he had taken, from the Tower, where they were first deposited, to Westminster Hall. This was done by each soldier carrying a standard or other trophy, amid the thunders of artillery and the hurrahs of the people; such a spectacle never having been witnessed since the days of the Spanish Armada. The royal manor of Woodstock was granted him, and Blenheim Mansion erected at the cost of the nation.

Besides the victories of Marlborough, there had been successes at sea, and one of them of far more consequence than was at the time imagined—namely, the conquest of Gibraltar.

Sir George Rooke, having landed King Charles at Lisbon, sent Rear-Admiral Dilkes with a squadron to cruise off Cape Spartel, and himself, by order of the queen, sailed for the relief of Nice and Villafranca, which were supposed to be in danger from the French under the Duke of Vendôme. King Charles at the same time desired him to make a demonstration in his favour before Barcelona, for he was assured that a force had only to appear on that coast and the whole population would declare for him. Rooke, accordingly, taking on board the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, who had formerly been Viceroy of Catalonia, sailed for Barcelona, and invited the governor to declare for his rightful sovereign, King Charles. The governor replied that Philip V. was his lawful sovereign. The Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, however, assured the admiral that there were five to one in the city in favour of King Charles, and Rooke allowed the prince to land with two thousand men; but there was no sign of any movement in favour of Austria. The Dutch ketches then bombarded the place with little effect, and the troops were re-embarked, lest they should be fallen upon by superior numbers. On the 16th of June, Rooke being joined by Sir Cloudesley Shovel, they sailed to Nice, but found it in no danger; and they then went in quest of the French fleet, which Rooke in the preceding month had caught sight of on their way to Toulon. On the 17th of July a council of war was held in the road of Tetuan, and it was resolved to make an attempt on Gibraltar, which was represented to have only a slender garrison. On the 21st the fleet came to anchor before Gibraltar, and the marines, under the command of the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, landed on the narrow sandy isthmus which connects the celebrated rock with the mainland, and called on the governor to surrender. Though cut off from relief from the land, and with a formidable fleet in the bay, the governor stoutly replied that he would defend the place to the last extremity.

The next day Rooke gave orders for cannonading the town. On the 23rd, soon after daybreak, the cannonading commenced with terrible effect. Fifteen thousand shots were discharged in five or six hours; the South Mole Head was demolished, and the Spaniards driven in every quarter from their guns. Captain Whitaker was then ordered to arm all the boats, and assault that quarter. Captains Hicks and Jumper, who were nearest the Mole, immediately manned their pinnaces, and entered the fortifications sword in hand. They were soon, however, treading on a mine, which the Spaniards exploded, killing or wounding two[559] lieutenants and about a hundred men. But Hicks and Jumper seized a platform, and kept their ground till they were supported by Captain Whitaker with the rest of the seamen, who took by storm a redoubt between the town and the Mole. Then the governor capitulated, and the Prince of Hesse entered the place with his marines, amazed at once at the strength of the place and the ease with which it had been taken. In fact, this key of the Mediterranean, which has since defied the united powers of Christendom, was taken in three days, one day of which was rendered almost useless by the fierceness of the wind.

Rooke left the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt and the marines to hold the fortress, and returned to Tetuan to take in wood and water, and again sailed up the Mediterranean. On the 9th of August he came in sight of the French fleet lying off Malaga, and ready to receive him. It consisted of fifty-two great ships and four-and-twenty galleys, under the Count de Toulouse, High Admiral of France, and all clean and in the best condition; Rooke's fleet of fifty-three ships of the line, exclusive of frigates, was inferior to the French in guns and men, as well as in weight of metal; and, what was worse, the ships were very foul in their bottoms, and many of them ill provided with ammunition. Nevertheless, Rooke determined to engage; and on Sunday, the 13th, at ten o'clock in the morning, the battle began, and raged till two in the afternoon, when the van of the French gave way. This result would have been much earlier arrived at, had not several of the English ships soon exhausted their powder, and been forced to draw out of the line. During the afternoon firing at longer distances was kept up, but at night Toulouse bore away to leeward. The next morning the wind favoured the French, but they did not avail themselves of it, but bore away for Toulon, pursued by Rooke as well as the foulness of his ships would let him. Not a ship was lost or taken by either side in the battle, but the loss in killed and wounded was great. On the part of the English the killed and wounded amounted to three thousand; on the French side it was supposed to reach four thousand, including two hundred officers killed. Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who led the van, said that he had never seen a sea-fight so furiously contested. The effect of the battle was to render the French shy of coming to any great engagement on the sea during the remainder of the war.

The Parliament of England met on the 29th of October, and the queen congratulated the two Houses on the remarkable success which had attended her arms, and trusted that it would enable her to secure the great object for which they fought—the liberty of Europe. She encouraged them to carry on their debates without contentions, and avowed her determination to be indulgent to all her subjects. But nothing could prevent the animosity which raged between the Whig and Tory factions from showing itself. The Lords congratulated her Majesty on the glorious victories of Marlborough, without noticing those of Sir George Rooke; and the Commons, to whose party Rooke, an old Tory, belonged, exalted his exploits to an equality with those of Marlborough. Notwithstanding the queen's promise of being kind and indulgent to all her subjects, a strenuous attempt was again made to carry the Occasional Conformity Bill. At the suggestion of Mr. William Bromley it was tacked to the Land Tax Bill, and was so sent up to the Peers. The queen went to the House of Lords to listen to the debate, where she heard Tenison, the Archbishop of Canterbury, honestly denounce the illiberal and persecuting spirit which had suggested such a Bill. This praiseworthy language was strongly echoed out of doors by De Foe, whose pen was never idle on such occasions, and the Court now seemed to be convinced that it had gone too far. Godolphin, who had on former occasions voted for it, now opposed it, and the Lords threw it out by a majority of one-and-twenty votes.

The two Houses of Parliament continued fighting out the remainder of the Session with the case of the Aylesbury election. Encouraged by the conduct of the Lords and the declaration of Lord Chief Justice Holt—that if any messengers of the Commons dared to enter Westminster Hall to seize any lawyer who had pleaded in favour of the Aylesbury electors, he would commit them to Newgate,—five fresh electors sued the constables, on the ground of their having been impeded in the exercise of their franchise. The Commons committed these five persons to Newgate, and they thereupon applied to the Court of Queen's Bench for a Habeas Corpus. The Court refused to interfere. Two of the prisoners then petitioned the queen to bring their case before her in Parliament. The Commons immediately prayed the queen not to interfere with their privileges by granting a Writ of Error in this case. She replied that she would not willingly do anything to give them just cause of offence, but that this matter relating to judicial proceedings was of such high importance to the subject that she thought herself bound to weigh and consider everything relating to[560] it. The Commons, fearing from this answer that the queen might be induced to grant the prisoners a Writ of Error, sent and took them from Newgate, and kept them in the custody of their Serjeant-at-Arms, at the same time voting all the lawyers who had pleaded in favour of the prisoners guilty of a breach of privilege. The prisoners then appealed to the Lords, and the Lords, after seeking a conference with the Commons to arrive at some conclusion as to the right in this case, but with no result, appealed to the queen, declaring that the Commons were assailing the birthright of every subject, and violating Magna Charta by refusing these citizens the right of appealing to a court of justice; and they prayed her to give orders for the immediate issue of the Writs of Error. Her Majesty assured them that she would have complied with their request, but that it was now absolutely necessary to prorogue Parliament, and therefore further proceedings, they would see, must be useless. The Lords considered this as a triumph, the queen's words implying that they had right on their side, and thus equally implying a censure on the Commons. In fact, the queen was glad to get rid of the dilemma and of this troublesome Tory Parliament at the same time. The same day that the Lords waited on her she went to their House and prorogued Parliament till the 1st of May, 1705; but on the 5th of April she dissolved it by proclamation, and writs were issued for calling a new one.

Marlborough in 1705 went early to the Continent. On the 13th of March he embarked for the Hague. He had a splendid plan of operations for this campaign on the Moselle, but he found, notwithstanding his now grand reputation, the usual obstacles to daring action in the Dutch phlegm. Having conquered this, and obtained leave to convey the troops to the Moselle, he was met by a still more mortifying difficulty in the conduct of the Prince of Baden, who was at the head of the German contingents. This man had never been cordial since the first successes of Marlborough. He was consumed with a deadly jealousy of his fame, and thought it no use fighting in company with him, as Marlborough would be sure to get all the honours. He therefore hung back from co-operation in Marlborough's plan, pretending illness; which, had the illness been real, should, at such a crisis for his country, have induced him to delegate the command of the forces for its defence to some other general. To add to the difficulties of Marlborough, the inferior French generals, Villeroi and others, who had risen into prominence through the interest of Madame de Maintenon and her priests and Jesuits, were removed from this quarter, and Villars, the most able commander now of the French, sent instead. The intention was to besiege Saar-Louis, but the wretched Prince of Baden did not keep his engagement. He had advanced, not with a strong army but only a small body of Imperial troops, to Kreutznach, where he again feigned illness, went off to the baths at Schlangenbad, and left the troops in the command of the Count Friez. The defection was so barefaced that many began to suspect him of being corrupted by the French; but he was really sick—of Marlborough's renown.

The duke, thus deceived, was unable to carry out his enterprise, and fell back instead of attacking Villars. In his contempt of the Prince of Baden, before retreating he sent a trumpet to Villars, saying, "Do me the justice to believe that my retreat is entirely owing to the failure of the Prince of Baden; but my esteem for you is still greater than my resentment of his conduct." But though forced to this mortifying expedient, Marlborough saw that he could quickly vindicate his reputation by uniting with the army of the Netherlands, and carrying operations against the enemy there. General Overkirk had not been able to stand his ground. The French had invested and taken Huy, and Villars had commenced the siege of Liége. Marlborough marched to Treves, where he called a council of war, and it was resolved to drive Villars from the walls of Liége. On the 19th of June the army commenced its march, and proceeded with such expedition that it passed the Meuse on the 1st of July. Villars, on Marlborough's approach, abandoned Liége and retired to Tongres, and thence retreated behind his lines, which extended to Marche aux Dames on the Meuse, along the Mehaigne as far as Lenuève. No sooner did Marlborough come up with Overkirk than he determined to recover Huy, and sent General Scholten, who reduced it in a few days. To wipe out as quickly the impression of his retreat from the Moselle, he despatched General Hompesch to the States-General to demand permission to attack the French lines, which was granted him.

ANNE.

Marlborough then detailed his plan of operation in two successive councils of war, where it was generally approved, but still opposed as rash by some of the Dutch generals. The enemy had manned his lines with a hundred battalions and forty-six squadrons; the forces of the Confederates were something more than that in amount; and in order to weaken the enemy on the point where[561] he contemplated his attack, the duke directed Overkirk to make a feint, as though he were about to attack the lines on the Mehaigne. The ruse succeeded. The French weakened their lines where Marlborough really contemplated the attack, in order to strengthen them in the direction of Namur. All being ready. Marlborough marched in the night between the 17th and 18th of July, to force the lines at Heyselem, the castle of Wauge, and the villages of Wauge, Neerhespen, and Oostmalen. This succeeded, and after some hard fighting the duke extended his forces within a portion of the French lines, capturing the Marquis D'Alègre, Count Horne, a major-general, two brigadier-generals, and many other officers, besides ten cannon and numerous standards and colours. In consequence of this defeat the Elector of Bavaria and Marshal Villeroi retreated across the Geete and the Dyle in all haste. Marlborough marched after them, capturing twelve hundred prisoners who could not keep up with the retreating force, and on the 15th was at Mildert, whence he marched the next day to Genappe, and thence to Fischermont, driving in the enemy's post as he advanced. He was now on ground destined to become much more famous in our time. On the 17th Overkirk had his headquarters at Waterloo, the enemy lying in their front across the roads to Brussels and Louvain, near the wood of Soignies. Here Marlborough proposed to come to a general engagement with them, but again he was thwarted by the Dutch officers and deputies, and most determinedly by General Schlangenburg. The duke, indignant at this dastardly obstruction of his operations, wrote very plainly to the States-General, complaining of the[562] uselessness of pursuing the campaign if they had yet no confidence in his prudence and military talent. In order that the Dutch people should know of his complaints, he took care to have the letter published in the papers at the Hague, and that similar complaints should reach his own Court. These being made public, roused a storm of indignation against the meddling Dutch field-deputies, who presumed to justify their conduct to the States-General in several letters. But the anger of both England and Holland soon roused the States-General to a sense of their folly. Hearing that the queen was about to despatch the Earl of Pembroke, the President of the Council, as Envoy Extraordinary to the Hague, to remonstrate on their suicidal conduct, the States-General hastened to apologise to the duke, and to remove Schlangenburg from his command. The opportunity, however, of a decisive blow on the French had been missed, and little was achieved this campaign.

Meanwhile the Spaniards were making a desperate effort for the recovery of Gibraltar. Marshal Tessé laid siege to it, whilst De Pointes blockaded it by sea. These French officers pushed on the siege with vigour, and the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt sent a despatch to Lisbon, desiring Sir John Leake to hasten to his assistance. Sir John set sail at once with five ships of the line and a body of troops, and on the 10th of March came in sight of five ships of De Pointes, who was evidently aware of him and getting out of the way. Leake gave chase, took one, and drove the rest on shore to the west of Marbella. The rest of the French ships in the bay of Malaga made the best of their way to Toulon. Gibraltar being thus again open from the sea, the Marquis de Tessé withdrew the greater part of his forces, leaving only sufficient to maintain the blockade on land.

But a far more striking demonstration was made from another quarter. This was made on Valencia and Catalonia by the witty and accomplished, and equally unscrupulous, Earl of Peterborough, formerly known as Lord Mordaunt. This dashing nobleman, become Earl of Peterborough by the death of his uncle, was despatched with reinforcements amounting to five thousand soldiers and a strong fleet under command of Sir Cloudesley Shovel. On the 20th of June they arrived at Lisbon, where they were joined by Sir John Leake and the Dutch Admiral Allemonde. They proposed to put to sea with eight-and-forty ships of the line, and cruise between Cape Spartel and the Bay of Cadiz to prevent the junction of the Toulon and Brest fleets. But the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, who had arrived from Gibraltar, assured them that the people of Catalonia and Valencia were strongly attached to King Charles, and only required the presence of a sufficient force to declare themselves. The adventure was just of the kind to charm the active spirit of Lord Peterborough. It was proposed that King Charles should sail with them on board the fleet, and that they should make a descent on Barcelona. On the 11th of August they anchored in the Bay of Altea, and issued a proclamation in the Spanish language, and found that the people flocked in to acknowledge King Charles. They took the town of Denia and garrisoned it for Charles with four hundred men under Major Ramos.

Such was the enthusiasm of the inhabitants that Peterborough proposed to make a forced march right for Madrid at once, and set Charles on the throne without further delay, declaring that he was confident of taking the capital by a coup de main; and there is little doubt but he would have succeeded had he had the sole command. But such daring projects, the flashes of genius, only confound matter-of-fact men; the plan was looked on as little short of madness, the adventure was overruled, the fleet sailed, and on the 22nd arrived in the bay of Barcelona. There was a garrison of five thousand men within the town and castle of Barcelona, and the English force amounted to little more than six thousand. But the inhabitants displayed the utmost loyalty to the new king; they received him with acclamations, and the English landed and invested the town. Here again, however, the erratic genius of Lord Peterborough startled more orthodox commanders. By all the rules of war the town ought to be taken first, and the castle afterwards; but Peterborough saw that the castle commanded the town, and must be continually inflicting injury on them in the course of the siege. He determined, therefore, not by the laws of war, but of common sense, to take the castle first. None but the brave Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt held his view of the matter, and to him alone did he, therefore, communicate his plans; but he took a close survey of this strong castle of Montjuich, convinced himself that it was not so well garrisoned as was represented, and that it might be taken by address and promptitude. He instantly began to re-embark some of his troops, as if about to abandon the enterprise, so as to throw the Spaniards off their guard, and[563] then suddenly, on the night of the 3rd of December, sent about fourteen hundred men by two different routes to attack the castle. He himself, accompanied by the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, led the first of these bodies, General Stanhope the other. It was not till about daybreak that the earl made his attack on the outworks of the castle, and established himself on a platform with a few small field-pieces and mortars. There they awaited the coming up of General Stanhope; but he had missed his way, and did not arrive in time. The governor of the castle, seeing the small number of the assailants, made a headlong sally from the castle, thinking to sweep the rash detachment down the hill, but he found himself mistaken; and whilst Lord Peterborough was in close engagement with him, General Stanhope came up, and the governor withdrew within the walls. The English then began to throw bombshells into the castle, and one of these speedily ignited a magazine, and blew it up with a tremendous explosion. The governor himself was killed by it, and the garrison in consternation surrendered.

Lord Peterborough could now not only invest the city without annoyance from the castle, but could turn the guns of the castle on the Spaniards, showing the correctness of his ideas in opposition to the red-tape of war. He pursued the siege with such effect that Velasquez, the governor, agreed to surrender in four days if he did not receive relief in that time; but he was not able to hold out even these four days, for the country swarmed with Miquelets, a sort of lawless Catalans, who declared for the Austrians. Numbers of these, who had assisted the seamen in throwing bombs from the ketches into the city, and in other operations against the town, now clambered over the walls, and began plundering the inhabitants and violating the women. The governor and his troops were unable to put them down. They threatened to throw open the gates and let in whole hordes of the like rabble, to massacre the people and sack the place. Velasquez was therefore compelled, before the expiration of the four days, to call in the assistance of the Earl of Peterborough himself, who rode into the city at the head of a body of troops with General Stanhope and other officers, and amid the random firing of the Miquelets, by his commands and by the occasional use of the flat of their swords, the marauders were reduced to quiet. Having quelled this frightful riot, Lord Peterborough and his attendants again quitted the city, and awaited the rest of the four days, much to the astonishment of the Spaniards, who had been taught to look on the English as a species of lawless and heretical barbarians. Barcelona surrendered on the day appointed, and immediately the whole of Catalonia, and every fortified place in it, except Rosas, declared for Charles.

The Earl of Peterborough did not, however, pause in his movements. He marched for San Matteo, at a distance of thirty leagues, to raise the siege carried on by the forces of King Philip. Through roads such as Spain has always been famous for down to the campaigns of Wellington, he plunged and dragged along his cannon, appeared before San Matteo in a week, raised the siege, and again set forward towards the city of Valencia, which he speedily reduced, and took in it the Marquis de Villagarcia, the Viceroy, and the Archbishop. Soon every place in Catalonia and Valencia acknowledged the authority of King Charles except the seaport of Alicante. The whole campaign resembled more a piece of romance than a reality. The earl's own officers could scarcely believe their senses; and as for the Spaniards, they said he had a devil in him, and was master of all magic and necromancy.

When the Parliament met on the 25th of October, it was found that a strong majority of Whigs had been returned; and, in the struggle for the Speakership, the nominee of the Tories, Mr. Bromley, was rejected, and the nominee of the Whigs, Mr. John Smith, chosen by a majority of two hundred and fifty to two hundred and seven. The speech of the queen was said to be the composition of the new Lord Keeper, Cowper, but to have undergone considerable revision in the Council. In this the Whig policy shone strongly forth. She expressed her determination to continue the war till the Bourbon prince was driven from the throne of Spain, and the Austrian prince established.

In the House of Lords, Lord Haversham proposed that, for the security of the Protestant succession and of the Church, the House should address the queen, praying her to invite over the heir-presumptive to the Crown—that is, the Electress Sophia of Hanover. The Tories trusted that if they could get over the Princess Sophia and her son George, they would be able to play off one Court against the other; that, though the Whigs had got possession of the queen, they should then be able to ingratiate themselves with her successor, and thus prepare to supersede the Whigs altogether in the new reign. At the[564] same time they should be supporting the popular feeling regarding the Protestant succession, and annoying the queen, who had dismissed them from her favour. There had been for some time a party called the Hanoverian Tories, who were bent on securing their interest with that House; and the Jacobites joined this party, hoping, under cover of a pretence for the Protestant succession, they might yet find an occasion for promoting the hopes of the Pretender. But this was a hazardous policy for both parties; for, as Anne was mortally jealous of her successor, as is generally the case with princes, the Tories only more completely lost all chance of regaining her favour; and as the Electress Sophia, knowing Anne's feeling, was obliged to disclaim any wish to come to England during the queen's life, she was thus, in fact, obliged to disown the efforts of the Tories. Sophia, indeed, wrote to the queen herself, informing her that an agent from the discontented party in England had come to her Court to invite herself and the Electoral Prince, her son George, into England, assuring them that a party there was ready to propose it; but that she had caused the said person to be acquainted that she judged the message to come from such as were enemies to her family, that she would never hearken to such a proposal but when it came from the queen herself, and that she had discouraged the attempt so much that it was believed nothing more would be heard of it.

The Tories thought that they had now placed the Whigs on the horns of a dilemma; that they must either offend the House of Hanover and the popular feeling of the country by opposing the motion, or lose the favour of the queen by conceding this specious measure; for Anne would have resented above everything the slightest suggestion that her successors were waiting for her throne in England, and courted by whichever party was in opposition.

But the Whigs had weighed all the dangers of the dilemma, and were prepared with special remedies for them. So far did they profess themselves from wishing to weaken the certainty of the Protestant succession that, without adopting the very dubious measure recommended, they proposed to appoint a regency to hold the government, in case of the death of her present Majesty, for the successor, till he or she should arrive in this country. By this adroit measure the queen was spared the annoyance of seeing her successor converted into a rival, and yet the prospects of this succession were strengthened. Accordingly, a Bill was brought in, appointing the seven persons who should at the time possess the offices of Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper, Lord Treasurer, Lord President, Lord Privy Seal, Lord High Admiral, and Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, as a regency, who should proclaim the next successor throughout the kingdom, and join with a certain number of persons, named also regents by the successor, in three lists, to be sealed up and deposited with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Keeper, and the Minister residentiary at Hanover. These regents were to conduct the administration; and the last Parliament, even though dissolved, should reassemble and continue to sit for six months after the decease of her Majesty. This Bill, notwithstanding the opposition of the Tories, was carried through both Houses.

To prevent any unpleasant feeling at Hanover, the Whigs immediately passed another Bill, naturalising not only the Princess Sophia but all her descendants, wheresoever or whensoever born, and they sent over to Hanover the Earl of Halifax, with letters from Lord Somers, Lord Cowper, and other leading Whigs, but, above all, from the Duke of Marlborough, and conveying to the Prince George the Order of the Garter from the queen. By these measures the Whigs completely turned the Tory stratagems against that party itself, whose attempts to damage them they thus rendered the means of a perfect triumph, not only retaining the warm favour of the queen, but establishing an alliance with the House of Hanover which, with few interruptions, continued to the commencement of the reign of George III.

On the 19th of March, 1706, the queen prorogued Parliament till the 21st of May. Towards the end of April Marlborough proceeded to Holland to commence the campaign. The severe defeat which the troops of Louis had received in Germany the last year nerved him to fresh exertions. He had little fear of dealing with the Prince of Baden on the Upper Rhine; but Marlborough in the Netherlands, Eugene in Savoy, and Peterborough in Spain, demanded his whole vigour, and he determined to act with decision on all points, and especially against Marlborough. He heard that the Danes and Prussians had not yet joined the Confederate army, and he ordered Villeroi to attack it before these reinforcements could come up. In consequence of this order Villeroi and the Elector of Bavaria—who, in spite of his severe chastisement, still adhered to France against his own country—passed the Dyle, and[565] posted themselves, on the 19th of May, at Tirlemont. They were there joined by the cavalry under Marshal Marsin, and encamped between Tirlemont and Judoigne.

Marlborough assembled his army between Borschloen and Groswaren, and found it to consist of seventy-four battalions of foot, and one hundred and twenty-three squadrons of horse and dragoons, well supplied with artillery and pontoons. Hearing that the French were advancing towards him, Marlborough, being now joined by the Danes, set forward and appeared in eight columns before the village of Ramillies. The French, who had already taken possession of Ramillies, and strongly fortified it, entrenched themselves in a strong camp, the right extending to the Mehaigne, and covered by the villages of Tavière and Ramillies, and their left to Autre-Église. The duke posted his right wing near Foltz, on the brook of Yause, and his left at the village of Franquenies. Villeroi had committed the capital blunder of leaving his wings sundered by impassable ground, so that they could not act in support of each other.

It was about half-past one o'clock when Marlborough ordered General Schulz, with twelve battalions, to attack Ramillies, whilst Overkirk attacked Autre-Église on the left. Schulz, who had twenty pieces of cannon, opened fire on Ramillies, but met with so warm a reception that he had great difficulty in maintaining his ground; but Marlborough supported him with column after column, and the fight there was raging terribly. In the midst of it Marlborough, seeing some of the men driven from the guns, galloped up to encourage them. He was recognised by the French, who made a dash and surrounded him. He broke through them, however, by a desperate effort; but in endeavouring to regain his own ranks, his horse fell in leaping a ditch, and the duke was thrown. As the French were hotly upon them, another moment and he must have been taken, but Captain Molesworth, one of his aide-de-camps, mounted him on his own horse. As he was in the act of springing into the saddle, a cannon-ball took off the head of Colonel Brenfield, who held the stirrup; but Marlborough himself escaped, and regained the main body unhurt, except for a few bruises. Meanwhile Overkirk, with the Dutch guards, and by help of the Danes, had succeeded in driving the French from the enclosures of Autre-Église, cutting off the communication between the two wings, and driving numbers of the French into the Mehaigne. The Bavarians under the Elector fought bravely; more so than the French, for these were become dispirited by their repeated defeats, and especially the rout of Blenheim. Their veteran troops were extremely reduced in numbers; and Louis, to fill the ranks, had forced the unwilling peasantry into the army, sending them even in chains to the campaign to prevent them from deserting on the way. Such troops could not do much against the victorious Allies under a general like Marlborough.

On Marlborough regaining the ranks, he led up the attack with fresh vigour. The village of Ramillies was carried and most of the French who defended it were cut to pieces. The Prince of Würtemberg and the Prince of Hesse-Cassel got into the rear of Villeroi, and the panic became general. The infantry began to retreat—at first in tolerable order, protected by the cavalry, which were posted between Ossuz and Autre-Église; but the English cavalry, under General Wyndham and General Ward, having managed to get over a rivulet which separated them, fell on them with such spirit near the farm of Chaintrain that they were thrown into confusion. The Bavarians suffered severely, and the Elector had a narrow escape for his life. Villeroi himself with difficulty made good his flight. In the midst of the rout a narrow pass, through which the French were flying, suddenly became obstructed by the breakdown of some baggage waggons. The cavalry, pressing on in their rear, then made terrible havoc amongst them. The flight was continued all the way to Judoigne, and Lord Orkney, with some squadrons of light horse, never drew bit till they had chased the fugitives into Louvain, nearly seven leagues from Ramillies. The baggage, cannon, colours—everything fell into the hands of the Allies. There were one hundred and twenty colours, six hundred officers, and six thousand private soldiers captured.

Besides these, it was calculated that eight thousand were killed and wounded. Of the Allies, Marlborough declared that only one thousand fell, and two thousand were wounded. The Prince Maximilian of Bavaria and Prince Monbason were among the slain; amongst the prisoners were Major-Generals Palavicini and Mezières, the Marquises De Bar, De Nonant, and De la Baume (the son of Marshal Tallard), Montmorency (nephew of the Duke of Luxemburg), and many other persons of rank.

Villeroi had fled to Brussels, but Marlborough was soon at the gates; the French general took his departure, and Marlborough entered that city in triumph, amid the acclamations of the people. The whole of the Spanish Netherlands[566] was recovered by the battle of Ramillies; Louvain, Mechlin, Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, threw open their gates. Ostend, Menin, Dendermonde, and Ath, made some resistance, but successively surrendered and acknowledged King Charles. The delighted Emperor and King Charles offered to make Marlborough Governor of Flanders, which he willingly accepted, but was compelled to relinquish the honour by the indomitable jealousy of the Dutch. At the beginning of November Marlborough sent his army into winter quarters—the English at Ghent, the Danes at Bruges, and the Germans along the River Demer—and betook himself to the Hague, to hold consultations on the plan of the next campaign, and to receive proposals from Louis, which, however, ended in nothing.

On the heels of Ramillies came the tidings of a still less expected defeat in Savoy. The Duke de Vendôme was recalled from Piedmont after the defeat of Ramillies to supersede Villeroi, and the Duke of Orleans, under the direction of Marshal de Marsin, was sent to Piedmont, with orders to besiege Turin. This siege was carried on through the summer; and when the Duke of Savoy had refused all offers of accommodation made by France, the Duke de Feuillade, having completed his lines of circumvallation, made the last offer of courtesy to the impassive Duke of Savoy. Eugene was beyond the Adige, and knew the formidable obstacles in his path; but at the call of the distressed duke he forced his way in the face of every opposition, crossed river after river, threaded his way between the lines, and at length formed a junction with the Duke of Savoy. After this union they advanced undauntedly on Turin, and reached its vicinity on the 13th of August. They crossed the Po between Montcalier and Cavignan, and on the 5th of September captured a convoy of eight hundred loaded mules. They then crossed the Doria, and encamped with their right wing on that river, and their left on the Stura. The entrenchments of the foe had the convent of the Capuchins, called Notre Dame, in their centre opposite. The Duke of Orleans proposed to march out of their entrenchments and attack the army of Savoy, but Marsin showed him an order from the Court of Versailles forbidding so much hazard. The Prince did not leave them long to deliberate, but attacked them in their entrenchments, he himself leading up the left wing, and the duke the centre. After some hard fighting both commanders forced the entrenchments, and drove the French in precipitation over the Po. The Savoyards had about three thousand men killed and wounded. Prince Eugene pursued the Duke of Orleans and the Duke de Feuillade to the very borders of Dauphiné. Unbroken gloom now hung over Versailles. Louis affected to bear his reverses with indifference; but the violent restraint he put upon himself so much endangered his health that his physicians were compelled frequently to bleed him. The only gleams of comfort which broke through the ominous silence of the gay Court of France were afforded by an advantage gained by the Count de Medavi-Grancey over the Prince of Hesse-Cassel in the neighbourhood of Castiglione, and the forcing him to the Adige, with a loss of two thousand men. Besides this, the mismanagement of King Charles in Spain, which prevented the success of the Earl of Peterborough, was calculated in some degree to solace the confounded French.

King Philip had made a great effort to recover the city of Barcelona. Early in the spring he appeared before that city with a considerable army of French and Spaniards, and invested it. He was supported by a fleet under the Count de Toulouse, and succeeded in re-taking the castle of Montjuich; and King Charles, who was cooped up in the town, sent urgent despatches to Lord Peterborough at Valencia to come to his assistance. Peterborough immediately marched to his relief with two thousand men, but found Philip's besieging army too numerous to engage with. On the 8th of May, however, Sir John Leake, who had sailed from Lisbon with thirty ships of the line, showed himself in the bay, and the Count de Toulouse sailed away for Toulon without attempting to strike a blow; and Philip no sooner saw himself abandoned by the French fleet, and in danger of an attack from both land and sea, than he made as hasty a retreat, leaving his tents with the sick and wounded behind him.

Philip had recalled to his service the Duke of Berwick, who had only been dismissed because he was no favourite with the queen, and he was posted on the Portuguese frontiers. But, notwithstanding this, the Earl of Galway crossed these frontiers with an army of twenty thousand men, took Alcantara, and made prisoners of the garrison, numbering four thousand men. He then advanced on Madrid, Lord Peterborough engaging to meet him, with King Charles, at the capital. At his approach Philip fled with his queen to Burgos, carrying with him all the valuables he could convey, and destroying what he could not take. About the end of June the Earl[567] of Galway entered Madrid without resistance; and had the Earl of Peterborough, with the king, met him, according to agreement, the war would have been at an end. But Peterborough, who, had he been at liberty to act as he pleased, would have soon been in Madrid, was sorely hampered by the king. Charles had reached Saragossa, and been acknowledged sovereign of Aragon and Valencia; but he was afraid of advancing towards the capital, lest they should be cut off by the enemy. In vain did Peterborough urge and entreat, and show the necessity of despatch to meet Galway. The wretched monarch had made his chief councillor the Prince of Lichtenstein, who had none of the brilliant dashing qualities of Peterborough, and against that dead German weight Peterborough strove in vain. The timid stupid king was immovable, till Galway—finding that he was unsupported in Madrid, and that the Spaniards looked with indignation on an army of Portuguese with a heretic general in possession of their capital—took his departure. Meanwhile King Philip and the Duke of Berwick had met, and, on the frontier, had received fresh reinforcements from France. They therefore returned and availed themselves of Galway's unfortunate position to recover the capital. Galway evacuated the place on their approach without a blow, and retreated towards Aragon to form a junction with Peterborough and the king. On the 6th of August Charles and Peterborough came up with Galway at Guadalaxara; but, notwithstanding this increase of force, nothing could persuade the dastard Austrian prince to advance. Peterborough, who had all the fiery temperament of a hero of romance, instead of the patience of Marlborough, which had so often triumphed over German pride and Dutch phlegm, lost all patience and gave up the enterprise. He returned to the coast of the Mediterranean, and with him went all chance of Charles of Austria securing the Spanish throne. Peterborough set sail with a squadron to endeavour to aid the Duke of Savoy, the victory of Eugene not yet having occurred.

When Peterborough was gone, nothing but distraction raged in the camp of the confederates. Lord Galway could assert no supreme command against the Prince of Lichtenstein and the Portuguese general; every one was at variance with his fellow-officer, and all were disgusted with the Austrian counsellors of Charles, and with his inert and hopeless character. The Duke of Berwick, availing himself of their divisions, marched down upon them, and they made a hasty retreat towards Valencia and the mountains of New Castile. After incredible sufferings they reached Requena, the last town of New Castile, where, considering themselves secure, from the nature of the country, they went into winter quarters at the end of September, and Charles and his attendants proceeded to Valencia, where he wrote to the Duke of Marlborough, recounting his misfortunes—the result of his own incapacity—and vehemently entreating for fresh forces and supplies from England and Holland. Could a large army have been sent under the Earl of Peterborough, with authority for his undisputed command, there is no doubt but that he would very speedily have cleared Spain of the French; but against this was supposed to operate the influence of Marlborough himself, who did not wish to see another English general raised to a rivalry of glory with him.

The victory of Prince Eugene rendering the presence of the Earl of Peterborough unnecessary in Piedmont, he made a second voyage to Genoa, to induce that republic to lend King Charles and his Allies money for his establishment. The English fleet in the Mediterranean continued sailing from place to place with six or eight thousand men on board, seeking some occasion to annoy the coast of France, whilst these men might have been of the utmost service in Spain if commanded by Peterborough. As it was, half of them are said to have perished in this objectless cruise; and another squadron under the Earl of Rivers, sent to join Lord Galway at the siege of Alicante, suffered as much. In short, no campaign ever appears to have combined more mismanagement than this in Spain, including the movements of the fleet to support it.

But whilst these various fortunes of war were taking place on the Continent, a victory greater than that of Ramillies or of Turin was achieved at home. This was the accomplishment of the Union of the two kingdoms of Scotland and England, and with it the extinction of those heartburnings and embarrassments which were continually arising out of the jealousies of Scotland of the overbearing power of England. In the last Session nothing appeared farther off; nay, a Bill—the Bill of Security—had passed, which threatened to erect again two thrones in the island, with all the rivalries and bloodshed of former years. The provisions of this Bill, which practically excluded the House of Hanover from the throne of Scotland, were much resented in England, and the[568] two nations seemed to be on the brink of war. The Commissioners, however, appointed by England and Scotland to decide the terms of this agreement, met on the 16th of April in the council-chamber of the Cockpit, near Whitehall, and continued their labours till the 22nd of July, when they had agreed upon the conditions, and on that day mutually signed them. In discussing the proposed plans of this Union, the Scots were found to incline to a federal Union, like that of Holland; but the English were resolved that, if made at all, the Union of the two kingdoms should be complete—a perfect incorporation of Scotland, so that there should be for ever an end of the troubles and annoyances of the Scottish Parliament. The last reign, and the present, had shown too clearly the inconveniences of that Parliament, the means it gave to disaffected men—and especially to such as were disappointed of their ambitious aims by the Government—of fanning up feuds and stopping the business of the country; nay, of threatening, as of late, to establish again their own independent state, and their own king. Therefore the English Commissioners would listen to nothing but a thorough amalgamation. The Lord Keeper proposed that the two kingdoms should for ever be united into one realm by the name of Great Britain; that this realm should be represented by one and the same Parliament; and that the succession to the Crown should be such as was already determined by the Act of Parliament passed in the late reign, called "An Act for the Further Limitation of the Crown and the Better Securing the Rights and Liberties of the Subject." The Scots, whilst seeming to comply with this proposal, endeavoured to introduce various clauses about the rights and privileges of the people of Scotland in England, and of the English in Scotland, and that the Crown should be established in the same persons as those mentioned in the Act referred to; but the Lord Keeper declined to enter into any consideration of any proposals, but simply for a full and complete Union of the two kingdoms into one, with the same universal rights, declaring that nothing but such solidification would effect perfect and lasting harmony. The Scots gave way, and the terms agreed upon were mutually signed on the 22nd of July, 1706.

GREAT SEAL OF ANNE.

The conditions of this famous treaty were—That the succession to the throne of Great Britain should be vested in the Princess Sophia and her heirs, according to the Act passed by the English Parliament for that purpose; that there should be but one Parliament for the whole kingdom; that all the subjects should enjoy the same rights and privileges; that they should have the same allowances, encouragements, and drawbacks, and lie under the same regulations and restrictions as to trade and commerce; that Scotland should not be charged with the temporary duties on certain commodities; that the sum of three hundred and ninety-eight thousand one hundred and three pounds should be granted to the Scots as an equivalent for such parts of the customs and excise charged upon that kingdom in consequence of the[569] Union as would be applicable to the payment of the debts of England, according to the proportions which the customs and excise of Scotland bore to those of England; that as the revenues of Scotland should increase, a fair equivalent should be allowed for such proportion of the said increase as should be applicable to payment of the debts of England; that the sums to be thus paid should be employed in reducing the coin of Scotland to the standard and value of the English coin, in paying off the capital, stock, and interest due to the proprietors of the African Company, which should be immediately dissolved, in discharging all the public debts of the kingdom of Scotland, in promoting and encouraging manufactures and fisheries under the direction of Commissioners to be appointed by her Majesty, and accountable to the Parliament of Great Britain; that the laws relating to public right, policy, and civil government, should be alike throughout the whole kingdom; that no alteration should be made in laws which concerned private right, except for the evident benefit of the people of Scotland; that the Court of Session and all other courts of judicature in Scotland should remain as constituted, with all authority and privileges as before the Union, subject only to the power of the Parliament of the United Kingdom; that all heritable offices, superiorities, heritable jurisdictions, offices for life, and jurisdictions for life, should remain the same as rights and properties as then enjoyed by the laws of Scotland; that the rights and privileges of the royal boroughs in Scotland were to remain unaltered; that Scotland should be represented in Parliament by sixteen peers and forty-five commoners, to be elected in a manner to be settled by the present Parliament of Scotland; that all peers of Scotland and the successors to their honours and dignities should, from and after the Union, take rank and precedency next and immediately after the English peers of the like orders and degrees at the time of the Union, and before all English peers of the like orders and degrees as should be created after the Union; that they should be tried as peers of Great Britain, and enjoy all privileges of peers of England, except that of sitting in the House of Lords and the privileges depending thereon, and particularly the right of sitting upon the trials of[570] peers; that the crown, sceptre, and sword of State, the records of Parliament, and all other records, rolls, and registers whatsoever, should still remain as they were in Scotland; that all laws and statutes in either kingdom inconsistent with these terms of Union should cease and be declared void by the Parliaments of the two kingdoms.

THE PEOPLE OF EDINBURGH ESCORTING THE DUKE OF HAMILTON TO HOLYROOD PALACE. (See p. 571.)

But though the Articles of the Union had received the sanction of the Commissioners, they had yet to receive that of the Scottish and English Parliaments, and no sooner did the matter come before the Scottish one than a storm broke out in Scotland against the Union, which convulsed the whole country, and threatened to annihilate the measure. The Jacobites and discontented, because unemployed, nobles set to work in every direction to operate on the national pride, telling the people they would be reduced to insignificance and to slavery to the proud and overbearing English, and arousing the odium theologicum by representing that no sooner would the Union be complete than the English hierarchy would, through the English Parliament, put down the Presbyterian religion and set up Episcopacy again, and that the small minority of Scottish members in each House would be unable to prevent it.

On the 3rd of October the Duke of Queensberry, as Lord Commissioner for the queen, opened the last Session of the Scottish Parliament. Queensberry, who with the Earl of Stair, had been on the Commission, and had laboured hard to bring it to a satisfactory issue, now laid the Treaty before the Parliament, expressing his conviction that the queen would have it carried out with the utmost impartiality and care for the rights of all her subjects. He read a letter from Anne, assuring them that the only way to secure their present and future happiness, and to disappoint the designs of their enemies and her Majesty's, who would do all in their power to prevent or delay the Union, was to adopt it with as little delay as possible. The Commissioner then said, to appease any fears on account of the Kirk, that not only were the laws already in existence for its security maintained, but that he was empowered to consent to anything which they should think necessary for that object. He then read the Treaty, and it was ordered to be printed, and put into the hands of all the members of Parliament. No sooner were the printed copies in the hands of the public than the tempest broke. The Dukes of Athol and of Hamilton, the Lords Annandale and Belhaven, and other Jacobites, represented that the project was most injurious and disgraceful to Scotland; that it had at one blow destroyed the independence and dignity of the kingdom, which for two thousand years had defended her liberties against all the armies and intrigues of England; that now it was delivered over by these traitors, the Commissioners, bound hand and foot, to the English; that the few members who were to represent Scotland in the English Parliament would be just so many slaves or machines, and have no influence whatever; that all Scotland did, by this arrangement, but send one more member to the House of Commons than Cornwall, a single county of England; and that the Scots must expect to see their sacred Kirk again ridden over rough-shod by the English troopers, and the priests of Baal installed in their pulpits.

Defoe, who had the curiosity to go to Scotland and watch the circumstances attending the adoption of this great measure, has left us a very lively account of the fury to which the people were worked up by these representations. Mobs paraded the streets of Edinburgh, crying that they "were Scotsmen, and would be Scotsmen still." They hooted, hissed, and pursued all whom they knew to be friendly to the Treaty, and there was little safety for them in the streets. "Parties," he says, "whose interests and principles differed as much as light and darkness, who were contrary in opinion, and as far asunder in everything as the poles, seemed to draw together here. It was the most monstrous sight in the world to see the Jacobite and the Presbyterian, the persecuting prelatic Nonjuror and the Cameronian, the Papist and the Reformed Protestant, parley together, join interests, and concert measures together; to see the Jacobites at Glasgow huzzahing the mob, and encouraging them to have a care of the Church; the high-flying Episcopal Dissenter crying out the overture was not a sufficient security for the Kirk."

From the 3rd of October, when the Parliament opened, to the 1st of November, the fury of the people continued to increase, and the utmost was done to rouse the old Cameronian spirit in the West of Scotland by alarming rumours of the intention of England to restore Episcopacy by force. The whole country was in a flame. Under such circumstances the Articles of the Treaty had to be discussed in the Scottish Parliament. The opponents did not venture to denounce any Union at all, but they insisted that it ought only to be a federal one, by which they contended Scotland would still, whilst co-operating with England in everything necessary for the good of the realm at large, maintain her ancient dignity, retain her Parliament,[571] her constitution, and ancient sovereignty. When they found themselves in a minority even on this point they contended that it was not in the power of Parliament to settle so momentous a question; that the Session ought to be adjourned for a short time, in order that members might go down to their constituents, and thus learn what was really the mind of the nation. Failing in this, they exerted themselves to get a host of petitions sent up from the boroughs, claiming to have a right on the part of the constituents to instruct and limit their representatives, and warning them, above all things, to go no further than a federal Union.

In order to lead to a popular demonstration, the opponents moved that there should be a day set apart for public prayer and fast, therein seeking the will of God as to the Union. The Parliament did not oppose this, and the 18th of October was settled for this purpose; but it passed off very well both in town and country, and the incendiaries were disappointed. Another mode of overawing the Parliament was then resorted to. Rumours were set afloat that the people would turn out all together, and come to the Parliament House and cry, "No Union!" They would seize on the regalia, and carry them to the castle for safety. And in fact a great mob followed the Duke of Hamilton, who was carried to and from the House in a chair, owing to some temporary lameness; but the Guards stopped them at the gates of Holyrood, whereupon they declared that they would return the next day a thousand times stronger, and pull the traitors out of their Houses, and so put an end to the Union in their own way. And the next day, the 23rd of October, they did assemble in dense crowds, filling the Parliament Close, and crowding the door, so that members had much difficulty in getting out at the close of the sitting. As soon as the Duke of Hamilton entered his chair, they raised loud hurrahs, and followed his chair in a body. But the alarm was given, a troop of soldiers appeared, cleared the street, and seized half a dozen of the ringleaders. More soldiers were obliged to be called out, and a rumour being abroad that a thousand seamen were coming up from Leith to join the rioters, the City Guard was marched into the Parliament Close, and took possession of all the avenues. A battalion of Guards was also stationed at the palace, the garrison in the castle was kept in readiness for action, and a troop of dragoons accompanied the Ministers wherever they went.

Defeated in their object of overawing the Parliament, the opposition now cried mightily that the Parliament was overawed by soldiers, and that the Treaty was being rammed down the throat of the public by bayonets; that this was the beginning of that slavery to which the country was about to be reduced. But Queensberry and his friends replied that there was much greater danger of coercion from an ignorant and violent mob than from the orderly soldiery, who made no attempt whatever to influence the deliberations. Every Article indeed was resisted seriatim. Hamilton, Athol, Fletcher of Saltoun, Belhaven, were vehement and persevering in their opposition; but still, with some modifications, the Articles were carried one after another. In the midst of the contention Hamilton was confounded by receiving a letter from Lord Middleton, at the Court of St. Germains, desiring, in the name of the Pretender, that the opposition to the Union should cease; for that his Grace (the Pretender) had it much at heart to give his sister this proof of his ready compliance with her wishes, nothing doubting but that he should one day have it in his power to restore Scotland to its ancient weight and independence. Hamilton was desired to keep this matter, however, a profound secret, as the knowledge of it at this time might greatly prejudice the cause and the interests of his master both in Scotland and England. Hamilton was thus thoroughly paralysed in his opposition, and at the same time was in the awkward position of not being able to explain his sudden subsidence into inaction.

On the other hand, the English Government saw the advantage of distributing a liberal sum of money amongst the patriots of Scotland; and the grossest bribery and corruption were unblushingly resorted to. Twenty thousand pounds were sent down for this purpose, and the passage of the Union aided by a still more profuse distribution of promises of places, honours, and of compensation to those who had been sufferers in the Darien scheme. By these means the opposition was sufficiently soothed down to enable the Ministers to carry the Treaty by a majority of one hundred and ten. An Act was prepared for regulating the election of the sixteen peers and forty-five commoners to represent Scotland in the British Parliament; and on the 25th of the following March, 1707, the Scottish Parliament suspended its sittings. Amongst those who contributed mainly to the carrying of this great measure, and that against an opposition which at one time appeared likely to sweep everything before it, were the Dukes of Queensberry and Argyll, the Earls of Montrose,[572] Seafield, and Stair, assisted by the Earls of Roxburgh and Marchmont, who had come over from the opposite party through promises of favour and distinction.

COSTUMES OF THE REIGN OF ANNE.

So ended the year 1706; and the English Parliament was informed by the queen, on the 28th of January, 1707, that the Articles of the Treaty, with some alterations and additions, were agreed upon by the Scottish Parliament, and should now be laid before them. She said, "You have now an opportunity before you of putting the last hand to a happy Union of the two kingdoms, which, I hope, will be a lasting blessing to the whole island, a great addition to its wealth and power, and a firm security to the Protestant religion. The advantages which will accrue to us all from a Union are so apparent that I will add no more but that I will look upon it as a particular happiness if this great work, which has been so often attempted without success, can be brought to perfection in my reign."

But the Tories did not mean to let it pass without a sharp attack. They saw the immense accession of strength which the Whigs, the authors of the measure under King William, would obtain from it. Seymour and others denounced it, not merely with vehemence, but with indecency. The High Churchmen took particular offence at Presbytery being established in Scotland, and insisted much on the contradiction of maintaining one religion in Scotland and another in England, and the scandal of the queen, who was a Churchwoman, being sworn to maintain Presbyterianism in opposition to it. The Lords Grey, North, Stowell, Rochester, Howard, Leigh, and Guildford, protested against the low rate of the land-tax charged in Scotland, complaining, with great reason, that it was fixed at only forty-eight thousand pounds, which was never to be increased, however the value of property might rise in that country; and Lord Nottingham said that it was highly unreasonable that the Scots, who were by[573] the Treaty let into all the branches of the English trade, and paid so little towards the expense of the government, should, moreover, have such a round sum by way of equivalent. The Lords North, Grey, Guernsey, Granville, Abingdon, and others, supported that view.

But the discussions on the various Articles were cut short by a clever stratagem adopted by Government in the House of Commons. There, as the same arguments were being urged, and Sir John Packington was declaring that this forced incorporation, carried against the Scottish people by corruption and bribery within doors, by force and violence without, was like marrying a woman against her consent, Sir Simon Harcourt, the Solicitor-General, introduced a Bill of ratification, in which he enumerated the various Articles in the preamble, together with the Acts made in both Parliaments for the security of the two Churches, and, in conclusion, wound up with a single clause, by which the whole was ratified and enacted into a law. The Opposition was thus taken by surprise. They had not objected to the recital of the Articles, which was a bare matter of fact; and when they found themselves called upon to argue merely on the concluding and ratifying clause, they were thrown out of their concerted plan of action of arguing on each point in detail, and lost their presence of mind. The Whigs, on the other hand, pressed the voting on the clause of ratification with such vehemence that it was carried by a majority of one hundred and fourteen before the Opposition could recover from their surprise, occasioned by the novel structure of the Bill. Being then hurried up to the Lords, the fact that it had passed the Commons seemed to take the edge off their hostility. The Duke of Buckingham, indeed, expressed his apprehensions that sixteen Scottish peers, thrown into a House where there were rarely a hundred peers in attendance, might have occasionally a very mischievous effect on English interests. Lord North also proposed a rider, purporting that nothing in the ratification of the Union should be construed to extend to an approbation or acknowledgment of Presbyterianism as the true Protestant religion; but this was rejected by a majority of fifty-five. The Bill passed, but under protests from Nottingham, Buckingham, and seventeen other lords.

On the 4th of March Anne gave the Royal Assent to the Bill, and expressed, as well she might, her satisfaction at the completion of this great measure, the greatest of her reign or of many reigns. On the 11th of March both Houses waited on her Majesty to congratulate her on the "conclusion of a work that, after so many fruitless endeavours, seemed designed by Providence to add new lustre to the glories of her Majesty's reign." No man had more contributed, by his wise suggestions and zealous exertions, to the completion of this great national act than Lord Somers.

As the Act did not come into effect till the 1st of May, numbers of traders in both kingdoms were on the alert to reap advantages from it. The English prepared to carry quantities of such commodities into Scotland as would entitle them to a drawback, intending to bring them back after the 1st of May; and the Scots, as their duties were much lower than those of England, intended to import large quantities of wine, brandy, and similar articles, to sell them into England after the Union. Some of the Ministers were found to have embarked in these fraudulent schemes, which so alarmed the English merchants that they presented a remonstrance to the Commons. The Commons began to prepare a Bill on the subject, but it was discovered that the previous resolutions of the House sufficiently provided against these practices; and, as the 1st of May was now so near, the matter dropped.

[574]

CHAPTER XVII.

THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE (continued).

Negotiations for Peace—The Ministry becomes Whig—Harley—Marlborough and Charles of Sweden—The Allies in Spain—Battle of Almanza—The French Triumphant in Spain—Attack on Toulon—Destruction of Shovel's Fleet—Jacobitism in Scotland—First Parliament of Great Britain—Abigail Hill—The Gregg Affair—Retirement of Harley and St. John from the Ministry—Attempted Invasion of Scotland—Campaign of 1708—Battle of Oudenarde—Capture of Lille—Leake takes Sardinia and Minorca—Death of Prince George of Denmark—The Junto—Terrible Plight of France—Marlborough's Plans for 1709—Louis Negotiates with Holland—Torcy's Terms—Ultimatum of the Allies—Rejection of the Terms—Patriotism of the French Nation—Fall of Tournay—Battle of Malplaquet—Meeting of Parliament—Dr. Sacheverell's Sermons—His Impeachment resolved upon—Attitude of the Court—The Trial and Sacheverell's Defence—The Riots—Dispersal of the Rabble—The Sentence—Bias of the Queen—The Tories in Power—Renewed Overtures for Peace—Their Failure—The Campaigns in the Netherlands and in Spain—Brihuega and its Consequence—Marlborough's Reign at an End—Unpopularity of Marlborough—Dismissal of the Duchess—Triumph of the Tories—Guiscard's Attack on Harley—Popularity of Harley—Marlborough's Last Campaign—Failure of the Attack on Quebec—The Ministry determine to make Peace—Overtures to the Pretender—He refuses to Change his Religion—Gualtier's Mission to Versailles—Indignation of the Dutch—The Basis of Negotiations—Signing of the Preliminaries—Excitement Abroad and at Home—Prorogation of Parliament—Strengthening of the Ministry—Debates in the two Houses—The Whigs adopt the Occasional Conformity Bill—Creation of Peers—Dismissal of Marlborough from his Employments—Walpole expelled the House.

The great event of the Union of the kingdoms has carried us somewhat past the course of general events. After the last disastrous campaign Louis XIV., humbled to a degree that he was hitherto unacquainted with, employed the Elector of Bavaria to propose a congress to the Duke of Marlborough and the States-General. He had already presented a memorial to the Dutch Government through the Marquis D'Alègre, and he besought the Pope to use his influence to this end. The terms which Louis offered in the moment of his alarm were such as well merited the attention of the Allies. He proposed to cede either Spain and the West Indies to King Charles, or Milan, Naples, and Sicily; to grant to the Dutch a barrier of fortified towns on the frontiers of the Spanish Netherlands; and to indemnify the Duke of Savoy for the ravages committed on his territories. Never since the commencement of the war had the Allies such an opportunity of closing the war triumphantly. They could thus balance the powers of France and Austria by dividing the Spanish monarchy, and give to the Dutch all they asked—a secure frontier. But the great doubt was whether Louis was in earnest, or only seeking to gain time during which he might continue to divide the Allies. And the Allies were by no means eager to accept Louis's offers. The Dutch were greatly elated by Marlborough's astonishing victories, and Marlborough himself was in no humour to stop in the mid-career of his glory. He is said to have induced the Grand Pensionary Heinsius—who was now as much devoted to him as he had formerly been to King William—to keep the Dutch high in their demands, whilst Marlborough induced the English Court to demand indemnity for the immense sums which England had expended in these wars. In these circumstances the offers of France were declined on the plea that England could not enter into any negotiations except in concert with the Allies. Had the English people known of the offers, there would have probably been a loud demand for peace; but they were kept secret, and the attention of the nation being then engrossed by the question of the Union, the matter was passed over,—not, however, without exciting fresh resentment against Marlborough amongst the Tory leaders.

During the Session of 1706-1707 the Ministry grew more completely Whig. Through the influence of Lady Marlborough rather than of the Duke, who was much averse from the free principles and free language of his son-in-law the Earl of Sunderland, that nobleman was made one of the Secretaries of State in the place of Sir Charles Hedges. This change was equally repugnant to Harley, the other Secretary, who was now the only Tory Minister left in the Cabinet. The three Tory Commissioners of the Board of Trade—Prior the poet being one—were removed, and three Whigs were introduced. Sir James Montague, the brother of the Earl of Halifax, was made Solicitor-General; and Sir George Rooke and the few remaining Tory Privy Councillors had their names erased. Harley was thus left, apparently without support, a Tory in a Cabinet[575] all except himself Whig. But Harley was that kind of man that he not only managed to maintain his place, but eventually ruined and scattered the whole Whig party. He was by no means a man of genius, though he affected the company of such men. Pope, Swift, Bolingbroke, Arbuthnot, and Prior, were his friends and associates. His intellect was narrow and commonplace, but it was persevering; and though he was a wretched and confused speaker, yet he continually acquired more and more influence in the House of Commons, and ultimately raised himself to the peerage, and for many years to the chief direction of the national affairs. The secret of this was that he had made himself master of the laws and practices of Parliament, and on all disputed questions could clear up the point past dispute, so that he came to be regarded as far more profound than he was.

The Duke of Marlborough, relying on the support of the Whig Cabinet, which the influence of his contriving wife had created, set out in the month of April for the Continent. The condition to which his successes had reduced France was such that the Allies were in the highest spirits. The French Treasury was exhausted; and, in the absence of real money, Louis endeavoured to supply the deficiency by mint bills, in imitation of the Bank of England bills; but they were already at a discount of fifty-three per cent. The lands lay uncultivated, manufacturers were at a pause for want of capital, the people were perishing with famine, and nothing could be more deplorable than the state of France. Nothing could have saved Louis at this crisis but want of unity amongst the Allies, and already the artful Louis had contrived to get in the wedge of disunion. The Emperor, allured by the prospect of the evacuation of Italy, and of seizing Naples for himself, had come to a secret understanding with the French king, which was equally treacherous and suicidal; for the direct result, as any man but the stolid Emperor would have foreseen, was to liberate the French forces from the North of Italy to reinforce those in the Netherlands and those endeavouring to drive his brother Charles from Spain.

Marlborough, on his part, did everything that he could to keep the Allies together, and to combine them into a victorious strength; but it had always been his misfortune, as it had been that of William, to have to suffer from their regard to their own petty jealousies rather than to the grand object in view. He set out directly from the Hague to visit Hanover, and stimulate the young Elector to active assistance. He then set out to pay a visit to Charles XII. of Sweden, who was encamped at Alt Ranstadt, only a few marches from the Court of Hanover. The Swedish military madman, neglecting the Czar Peter, who was making continual inroads on his Finnish and Esthonian territories, and was now actually laying the foundations of a new capital and seaport on the shores of the Baltic, had pursued, with blind and inveterate hatred, Augustus, the Elector of Saxony, who had presumed to allow himself, in spite of the Swedish king, to be elected King of Poland. Marlborough's flattery appeared to produce the intended effect. The rough Swede assured him that he had a great regard for the Queen of England, and for the objects of the Grand Alliance, and should do nothing contrary to it; that he detested the domineering spirit of the French, and that no good need be expected till they were reduced to the condition they were in at the peace of Westphalia; that he had come into Saxony to demand certain satisfaction, and that when he had obtained it he should go away, and not sooner. But notwithstanding Charles's profession, he continued to harass and alarm the Emperor until he had obtained from him all that he chose to demand, when he marched away into Poland to encounter the Czar. Marlborough himself returned by way of the Courts of Prussia and Hanover to the Hague, giving everywhere the utmost satisfaction by his arrangements with Charles XII., who had made every neighbouring Court uneasy lest he might turn his erratic arms against them.

But the campaign in the Netherlands this year bore no relation to the great expectations formed of it. No grand action was fought there; and in Spain the adroit manœuvre of Louis, by which, through his treaty with the selfish and short-sighted Emperor, he had liberated his troops from Italy to throw them upon that country, and the want of unity between Charles and his auxiliaries, quite changed the face of affairs. The Whigs had studiously left the reinforcements in Spain insufficient, from the idea that it was better to continue to distract the attention of Louis in that direction than by a bold and vigorous effort to drive him from the country. They had a vain idea of conquering France, and thought this more easy to achieve while the French arms were demanded in various quarters. But the astute Louis was not so readily dealt with. He contrived, as we have seen, to amuse the Allies in Flanders without coming to blows. He coped without difficulty[576] with the Germans on the Rhine; and, though fiercely attacked at Toulon by the Savoyards, he defeated the Allies in Spain, to the great astonishment of Europe.

By this time the opinion formed of King Charles when he was in England by those who had opportunity of observing him, was now become that of all who had come near him in Spain—that he was a very poor creature. The Earl of Peterborough, who had been travelling about with little success to borrow money for such a contest, and had returned to Spain, but without any command, did not hesitate to say that people were great fools to fight for such a couple of simpletons as Charles and Philip. Charles was surrounded by a set of Austrians who were utterly incapable of commanding, and who made it equally impossible for any one else to command. The great plan of the campaign was to march boldly on Madrid; but Charles was, as before, too timid to venture on such a step. He remained in Catalonia, and ordered the Earl of Galway with the Dutch and English forces, and Das Minas, with the Portuguese, to defend the frontiers of Aragon and Valencia; and thus he contrived to wait for fresh troops from England, or from Italy, where they were no longer wanted. Whilst Das Minas and Galway, who was only second in command, were laying siege to Velina, in Valencia, and were in want of almost everything—food, clothes, and ammunition—they heard that the Duke of Berwick was hastening, by forced marches, to attack them. They therefore drew off towards the town of Almanza, and there fell in with the enemy, who proved to be considerably stronger than themselves. They came to an engagement, however, on the 14th of April. The battle began about two in the afternoon, and the whole force of each army was engaged. The centre of the Allies, consisting of Dutch and English, fought most valiantly, and repeatedly threw back the forces of the Duke of Berwick. For six long and bloody hours they maintained the fight; but the two wings were beaten and dispersed; the Portuguese horse on the right at the first charge, but the Dutch and English on the left, only after a brave but unequal resistance. When the gallant centre was thus exposed on both flanks, they formed themselves into a square, and retired from the field, fighting doggedly as they went. But at length their ammunition was spent, they were worn out with fatigue, and they surrendered, to the extent of thirteen battalions. The Portuguese, part of the English horse, and the infantry who guarded the baggage, retreated to Alcira, where the Earl of Galway joined them with about two thousand five hundred horse, and they escaped. It was a complete triumph for the French and Spaniards. The Allies lost five thousand men, besides the wounded and the large force which surrendered.

Nothing now could stop Berwick, who won great reputation by this decisive action. He marched into Valencia, taking town after town, whilst Saragossa at the same time surrendered, without a shot, to the Duke of Orleans. Berwick marched for the Ebro, which he crossed on the 4th of June, and at length pursued and shut up the flying confederates in Lerida. Charles was too inert or too dastardly to lead his troops thither, though they lay at no great distance; and the place was taken by storm, and given up to all the licence of the soldiery. After this Manilla surrendered so late as the 17th of December, and with that the campaign closed. The Duke of Orleans returned to Paris, and the Duke of Berwick remained with the army till towards spring, when Louis sent for him in haste into France, ordering him to quit Spain unknown to Philip, lest he should endeavour to detain him. The Earl of Galway and Das Minas embarked at Barcelona for Lisbon, leaving General Carpenter with the English forces remaining in Catalonia, the only portion of Spain now left to the pusillanimous Charles.

The operation, however, which most alarmed the French Court was that of the Duke of Savoy against Provence. This had been planned by Marlborough and Prince Eugene, and would undoubtedly have had a brilliant success had not the Emperor been secretly planning his attempt on Naples, instead of sending all his forces into Italy to the support of this enterprise. The Duke of Savoy and Prince Eugene, though abandoned by this selfish and small-souled Emperor, on whose account the great Powers of Europe were expending so much life and wealth, crossed the Alps by the Col de Tende with twenty thousand men, whilst Sir Cloudesley Shovel appeared on the coast of Provence with the united fleet of England and Holland to support them. Eugene crossed the Var on the 10th of July, Sir John Norris and his English sailors clearing the way for him in their gunboats. But the French were fast marching towards Toulon from various quarters, Villars having been despatched with a large force, as we have stated, from the army of Flanders. The Duke of[577] Savoy, on the other hand, instead of pushing on to Toulon with all speed, halted his army to rest, and then marched leisurely forward. By this means, not only had the French been able to collect a very powerful army, but had had time to strengthen greatly the fortifications of Toulon. When the practised eye of Prince Eugene took a survey of the formidable heights of Toulon, and of the great force on the outworks, with the power of the batteries, he advised the duke not to attempt the siege of the place with the forces at his command. The duke, however, would persist, and an assault was made on the outworks on the hill of St. Catherine, and on two small forts near the harbour. These were carried, but at a great cost of life, including that of the gallant Prince of Saxe-Gotha. But fresh French troops kept pouring in; it was impossible to maintain even this advantage. On the 15th of August the hill of St. Catherine was recovered by the French, and the Savoyards were even attacked in their own camp. On this an order was given to bombard the place, both from sea and land, in retaliation for the ravages committed by the French on Turin; the bombardment, especially from the sea, was made with terrible effect. A great part of the city was demolished, and the English and Dutch sailors destroyed eight ships of the line in the harbours, and utterly ruined two batteries. In the night of the 25th of August the army of Savoy retired; on the 31st it crossed the Var without any pursuit of the French, and then laid siege to Susa, an old and strong town at the foot of the Alps, which surrendered after a fortnight's investment.

WRECK OF SIR CLOUDESLEY SHOVEL'S FLEET. (See p. 577.)

Sir Cloudesley Shovel, leaving a squadron with Sir Thomas Dilkes in the Mediterranean, sailed for England, and on the night of the 22nd of October, 1707, closed his career in a sudden and melancholy manner. By some miscalculation his vessels got amongst the rocks of Scilly. His own ship struck on a rock about eight o'clock at night, and went down, drowning him and every soul on board. Three other vessels shared the same fate, only the captain and twenty-four men of one of them escaping. Sir Cloudesley Shovel had risen[578] from a humble origin in Suffolk, had raised himself to the head of the maritime service of his country by his bravery, skill, and integrity. His body, when cast ashore, was stripped by the wreckers and buried in the sand, but was afterwards discovered and interred in Westminster Abbey.

Meanwhile disaffection was rife in Scotland, where there had been for some time a very zealous emissary of the Court of St. Germains, one Colonel Hooke. Colonel Hooke transmitted to Chamillard, the Minister of Louis XIV., flaming accounts of this state of things in Scotland, and represented that never was there so auspicious an opportunity of introducing the king of England (the Pretender) again to his ancient throne of Scotland—a circumstance than which nothing could be more advantageous to France. A civil war created in Great Britain must completely prevent the English from longer impeding the affairs of Louis on the Continent. All the power of England would be needed at home; and on the Elder Pretender succeeding in establishing himself on the throne of the United Kingdom, France would be for ever relieved from the harassing antagonism of England—the only real obstacle to the amplest completion of all France's plans for Continental dominion. These accounts were very highly coloured, as from most quarters, particularly from the Duke of Hamilton, Hooke only met with discouragement. From others, however, Hooke received more encouragement. He obtained a memorial to Louis XIV., signed by the Lord High Constable the Earl of Errol, by the Lords Stormont, Panmure, Kinnaird, and Drummond, and by some men of smaller note. The leading men did not sign. They were not willing to endanger their necks without some nearer prospect of invasion. Hooke, indeed, pretended that the lords who did sign, signed as proxies for many others, such as the Earls of Caithness, Eglintoun, Aberdeen, and Buchan, Lord Saltoun, and others. With this memorial Hooke went back to St. Germains, and what the document wanted in weight he made up by verbal assurances of the impatience of all Scotland for the arrival of the king. But the truth appears to be that France expected a stronger demonstration on the part of Scotland, and Scotland on the part of France, and so the adventure hung fire. It was not till the following year that sufficient spirit could be aroused to send out an armament, and not till upwards of twenty of the Jacobite lords and gentlemen, including the Duke of Hamilton, in spite of all his caution, had been arrested.

The first Parliament of Great Britain met on the 23rd of October, 1707. The queen, in her speech, endeavoured to make the best of the last unfortunate summer's military operations. The retreat of the Imperialist troops on the Rhine was freely admitted, but it was considered an encouraging circumstance that the command there was now in the hands of the Elector of Hanover, and it was announced that measures were taken for strengthening the forces in that quarter. Little could be said of the proceedings in the Netherlands, and less of those in Spain, including the fatal battle of Almanza; but the most was made of the attack upon, and the bombardment of, Toulon. But the speech promised renewed vigour in every quarter, and called for augmented supplies. The deficiencies of military and naval action—for we had also suffered a considerable defeat at sea from the celebrated French Admiral, Du Guai Trouin, off the Lizard Point, in which two ships of the line were taken and a third was blown up—an endeavour was made to cover by allusions to the happy event of the Union. The Commons, in their Address, seized on this point of congratulation, and declared it a "mark of the Divine goodness that her Majesty had been made the glorious instrument of this happy Union, which would so strengthen the kingdom as to make it a terror to all its enemies." The Lords joined with the Commons in an affectionate Address to her Majesty, declaring that the only means of obtaining an honourable peace was the entire recovery of Spain. To support these assurances by deeds the Commons voted the enormous sum of six millions for the supplies.

Meanwhile the influence of the Marlboroughs at Court was on the wane, and that partly through their own shortsightedness. The Duchess of Marlborough had introduced into the palace, when she was Groom of the Stole, Mistress of the Robes, and more queen than the queen herself, a poor relation of her own, one Abigail Hill. Abigail, from whose position as a bedchamber woman, and from whose singular rise and fortunes all women of low degree and intriguing character have derived the name of Abigails, being placed so near the queen, soon caught her eye, took her fancy, and speedily became prime favourite. Harley, the Tory Minister, being also her cousin, as was the Duchess of Marlborough, with equal tact discovered her to be a useful tool for him. The Duchess of Marlborough, trusting to her long absolute sway over the mind of Queen Anne, begun when she was a princess; to[579] the firm establishment of the Whig faction in power, her own work, because the Tories had opposed the five thousand pounds a year which the queen, at the instigation of the duchess, demanded for Marlborough before he had even won the battle of Blenheim; and finally, relying on the great services which Marlborough had now rendered, had become intolerable in her tyranny over the queen. The Marlboroughs all this time were making use, not only of their position to enjoy power, but to scrape up money with an insatiable and unblushing avarice. The time was now approaching, however, for the queen's liberation from the heavy yoke of Sarah Marlborough. The duchess, in the midst of power and pride, had still for some time felt the ground mysteriously gliding from under her feet.

She found that Abigail Hill was, in reality, no longer Abigail Hill; that she had for a whole year been privately married to Mr. Masham, Groom of the Bedchamber to the Prince of Denmark; and that the queen herself had honoured this secret marriage by her presence at Dr. Arbuthnot's lodgings, at which time Anne, the duchess now remembered, had called for a round sum from the privy purse. In short, the duchess herself tells us that in less than a week after the inquiries she discovered that her cousin "was become an absolute favourite."

At this crisis an unlucky incident for the cunning Harley occurred. He had in his office one William Gregg, a clerk, who was detected in a treasonable correspondence with Chamillard the French Minister. He was arrested and thrown into the Old Bailey. The Whigs hoped to be able to implicate Harley himself in this secret correspondence. There had just been an attempt to get Lord Godolphin dismissed from his office, and he, the Duke of Marlborough, Sunderland, and their party, now seized eagerly on this chance to expel Harley and his acute coadjutor, St. John, from the Cabinet. Seven lords, including these, and all Whigs, were deputed to examine Gregg in prison, and are said to have laboured hard to induce Gregg to accuse Harley; but they were disappointed. Gregg remained firm, was tried, condemned, and hanged. Alexander Valiere, John Bara, and Claude Baude, the secretary of the ambassador to the Duke of Savoy, with that Minister's consent, were also imprisoned on the charge of carrying Gregg's correspondence to the governor and commissioners of Calais and Boulogne. On the scaffold Gregg was said to have delivered a paper to the ordinary, clearing Harley altogether; but this was not produced till Harley was once more in the ascendant. The lords deputed to examine Gregg and the smugglers Bara and Valiere, declared that Gregg had informed them that Harley had employed these men to carry correspondence, and that all the papers in the office of Harley lay about so openly that any one might read them. Both these assertions, and the paper said to have been left by Gregg, had much that is doubtful about them. The one statement proceeded from the Whigs, evidently to destroy Harley; the Gregg paper, on the other hand, not being produced till Harley was out of danger, was quite as evidently the work of Harley to clear his character. The charges, however, were sufficient to drive Harley and St. John from office for the time. When the Council next met, the Duke of Somerset rose, and pointing to Harley said rudely to the queen that if she suffered that fellow to treat of affairs in the absence of Marlborough and Godolphin, he could not serve her. Marlborough and Godolphin continued to absent themselves from the Council, and the queen was compelled to dismiss Harley. With him went out St. John, the Secretary of War; and Mr. Robert Walpole, a young man whose name was destined to fill a large space of history under the Georges, was put into his place.

Whilst things were on this footing, the nation was alarmed by an attempt at invasion. Louis XIV. had at length been persuaded that a diversion in Scotland would have a very advantageous effect by preventing England from sending so many troops and supplies against him to the Continent. Early in February, therefore, an emissary was sent over to Scotland in the person of Charles Fleming, brother of the Earl of Wigtown. He was to see the leading Jacobites, and assure them that their king was coming; and that as soon as the French fleet appeared in sight they were to proclaim the king everywhere, raise the country, seize arms, and open up again their previous communications with persons within the different forts and garrisons—thus proving that they had tampered with the troops and garrisons of Scotland, and that, as asserted by different historians, the regular troops in that country, about two thousand five hundred, were not to be trusted by the English. They were also to seize the equivalent money, which was still lying in the Castle of Edinburgh. On the earliest intimation of these designs, the suspected Scottish nobles, including the Duke of Hamilton and twenty-one others, lords or gentlemen, were secured. The Habeas[580] Corpus Act was suspended; the Pretender and his abettors were declared traitors; and all Popish recusants were ordered to remove ten miles from the cities of London and Westminster. The alarm was not an empty one. The Pretender, who had now assumed the name of the Chevalier de St. George, was furnished with a fleet and army, which assembled at Dunkirk. The fleet, under the command of Admiral Forbin, consisted of five ships of the line and twenty frigates. It was to carry over five thousand troops, under the command of General de Gace, afterwards known as Marshal de Matignon. Before the expedition, however, could sail, the Chevalier was taken ill of the measles, and the postponement of the expedition ruined its chances. A powerful fleet under the command of Admiral Sir George Byng, with squadrons under Sir John Leake and Lord Dursley, was sent to blockade the port of Dunkirk, and prevent the sailing of the French expedition. The French were astonished at the appearance of so large a fleet, imagining that Leake had gone to Lisbon with his squadron; and Count de Forbin represented to the French Court the improbability of their being able to sail. A storm, however, drove the English ships from their station. The French fleet then ventured out on the 17th of March, but was soon driven back by the same tempest. On the 19th, however, it again put out, and made for the coast of Scotland. But Sir George Byng had stretched his ships along the whole coast, to the very Firth of Forth; and on the French squadron approaching the Forth, it perceived the English ships there before it, and stood off again. Byng gave chase and took the Salisbury, a ship of the line, having on board old Lord Griffin, two sons of Lord Middleton, a French lieutenant-general, various other French and Irish officers, and five companies of French soldiers. In the night Forbin altered his course, and thus in the morning was out of the reach of the English. The Chevalier was impatient that Forbin should proceed to Inverness, and there land him and the troops; but the wind was so violent and dead against them that Forbin contended that they would all be lost if they continued the attempt, and the Chevalier, having entered the Firth of Forth, reluctantly returned to Dunkirk.

Such was the alarm in London owing to these circumstances that there was a heavy run on the Bank, increased to the utmost by all who were disaffected to the Government. The Commons also suspended the Habeas Corpus Act, and the country was alive with military preparations.

The Allies and France prepared for a vigorous campaign in the Netherlands. Notwithstanding the low state of Louis XIV.'s funds and a series of severe disasters which had attended his arms, he put forth wonderful energies for the maintenance of his designs. He assembled at least one hundred thousand men in the Netherlands, under the command of the Duke of Burgundy, the Duke of Vendôme, the Duke of Berwick—who had been so suddenly called from Spain—Marshal Boufflers, and the Old Pretender, who sought here to learn martial skill, which he might employ in attempting to regain his crown. On the other hand, Marlborough went to the Hague towards the end of March, where he was met by Prince Eugene, and the plan of the campaign was concerted between them, the Pensionary Heinsius, and the States-General. Eugene then returned to Vienna to bring up reinforcements, and Marlborough proceeded to Flanders to assemble the army, and be in readiness for the junction of Eugene. Before Eugene and Marlborough parted, however, they had gone together to Hanover, and persuaded the Elector to be contented with merely acting on the defensive, so that he might spare a part of his forces for the projected operations in Flanders. His son, the Electoral Prince—afterwards George II. of England—took a command of cavalry in the Imperial army under Marlborough.

SARAH DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH. (After the Portrait by Sir Peter Lely.)

The Duke of Vendôme, on the 25th of May, posted his army at Soignies, whilst Marlborough was encamped at Billinghen and Halle, only three leagues distant. The French then moved towards Braine-la-Leuvre, and Marlborough, supposing that they meant to occupy the banks of the Dyle and cut him off from Louvain, made a rapid night march, and on the 3rd of June was at Terbank, Overkirk occupying the suburbs of Louvain. There, as the Allies were yet far inferior in numbers, they imagined the French would give them battle; but such were not the French plans. They had advanced only to Genappe and Braine-la-Leuvre, and now sought by stratagem to regain the towns they had lost in Flanders. They knew that the Allies had drawn out all their forces, and that few of these towns had any competent garrisons. The inhabitants of many of these places had a leaning to France, from the heavy exactions of the Dutch, and the popularity of the Elector of Bavaria and the Count de Bergeyck, who was a warm adherent of the Bourbons. The[581] French, therefore, resolving to profit by these circumstances, despatched troops to Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres, and were soon admitted to these places. They next invested Oudenarde; but Marlborough, being now joined by Eugene, made a rapid march to that town, and took up a strong position before it. The French, however, unwilling to come to an engagement, passed the Scheldt, and attempted to defeat the Allies by attacking them whilst they were in the act of passing it after them. The Allies, however, effected their transit, and came to an engagement with the enemy between the Scheldt and the Lys on the 11th of July. The French amounted to one hundred thousand, the Allies to little more than eighty thousand. The latter, however, had this great advantage—that the commanders of the Allies were united, those of the French were of contrary views. The Duke of Vendôme was prevented from attacking the Allies during their passage of the river by the remissness of the Duke of Burgundy. When it was already three o'clock in the afternoon, and the Allies were safe over, then Burgundy was eager for an attack, and the Duke of Vendôme as averse from it, the proper opportunity having been lost. The wiser general was eventually overruled, and Major-General Grimaldi was ordered to attack Count Rantzau, who was posted on a marshy plain near the village of Eyne, with a muddy rivulet in front of him, with the king's Household Troops. But these troops, when they saw the nature of the rivulet, would not[582] charge, and filed off to the right. Rantzau then crossed the rivulet himself, and, whilst General Cadogan assaulted the village of Eyne, attacked and drove before him several squadrons of the enemy. In this attack the Electoral Prince of Hanover greatly distinguished himself by his gallant charge at the head of Bülow's dragoons. He had his horse killed under him, and Colonel Laschky killed at his side. Several French regiments were completely broken, and many officers and standards were taken by the Hanoverians. The general engagement, however, did not take place till about five o'clock, when the Duke of Argyll came up with the infantry. Overkirk and Tilly, who led on the left of the Allies, were the first to make the French give way, when they were attacked in flank by the Dutch infantry under the Prince of Orange and Count Oxenstjerna, and completely routed their right. After that the whole line gave way. In vain Vendôme exerted himself to check their flight and reform them; they fled in wild confusion along the road from Oudenarde towards Ghent, and Vendôme could do nothing but protect their rear. Their greatest protector, however, was the night, which stopped the pursuit of the Allies. As soon as it was light the pursuit was resumed; but this was checked by the French grenadiers, who were posted behind the hedges that skirted the road, and the French army reached Ghent at eight in the morning, and encamped on the canal on the other side of the city at Lovendegen, after one of the most thorough defeats that they had ever sustained. They lost three thousand men, were deserted by two thousand more, and had seven thousand taken, besides ten pieces of cannon, more than a hundred colours and standards, and four thousand horses. The loss of the Allies was not inconsiderable, amounting to nearly two thousand men.

After resting a couple of days on the field of battle, a detachment was sent to level the French lines between Ypres and the Lys; another to lay the country under contributions as far as Arras, which ravaged the country and greatly alarmed Paris itself by carrying the war into France. This alarm was heightened by the Allies next advancing upon the city of Lille, which was considered the key to Paris and to half of France. Lille was very strongly defended by batteries and entrenchments, and by a garrison of twenty-one battalions of the best troops in France, commanded by Boufflers. This daring act combined all the skill and chief leaders on each side for the attack or the defence. The Dukes of Burgundy, Vendôme, and Berwick hastened to the relief of the place. Marlborough, Eugene, the Prince of Orange, Augustus, King of Poland, and the Landgrave of Hesse, were engaged in the siege. All the art and valour on both sides were put forth. The French endeavoured to cut off the supplies of the Allies coming from Ostend; but Major-General Webbe, who guarded these supplies with a body of six thousand men, defeated an attacking party of twenty-two thousand French under the Count de la Motte, near Wynendale, killing six thousand of them, and accomplishing one of the most brilliant exploits of the whole war. After a stubborn and destructive defence Boufflers capitulated for the town on the 22nd of October, but contrived to hold the citadel till the 9th of December.

Lille, important as it was, was not won, it is said, without a loss of at least twelve thousand of the Allies, whilst Boufflers was reckoned to have lost half his garrison. During the siege Eugene had to hasten to the rescue of Brussels. After the fall of Lille the Allies reduced Ghent, Bruges, and all the towns they had lost; and the French, greatly humiliated, abandoned Flanders, and retired into their own territories, the French Court being filled with consternation at these terrible reverses. The Duke of Berwick was highly incensed at the management of the campaign by Vendôme and Burgundy. He states that during the siege of Lille Marlborough, through him, made propositions for peace, which were, however, haughtily rejected by the not yet sufficiently humbled Louis. Marlborough would probably have been glad to have procured peace now, that he might watch the critical state of affairs at home, where Harley and Mrs. Masham were steadily driving their mines beneath the feet of the Whigs, and where the whole body of Tories were constantly endeavouring to misrepresent his proceedings in the war, continually prognosticating defeats from alleged blunders, which, nevertheless, were as regularly refuted by the most brilliant successes.

The campaign in Catalonia had begun in favour of the French, but there, too, had ended decidedly in favour of the Allies. There the Earl of Galway was superseded by General Stanhope, an able and active officer; and Count Stahremberg, the Imperial general, was a man of like stamp. But before the Imperial troops had arrived in the English fleet commanded by Sir John Leake, the Duke of Orleans had besieged and taken Tortosa and[583] Denia, the garrison of the latter place being detained prisoners, contrary to the articles of capitulation. No sooner, however, did Generals Stanhope and Stahremberg get into the scene of action than they put a stop to the progress of the French, and maintained the rest of the province intact. They soon, moreover, planned a striking enterprise. Sir John Leake carried over to Sardinia a small body of troops under the command of the Marquis D'Alconzel, assaulted and took Cagliari, and received the submission of the whole island, which acknowledged King Charles, and sent a very timely supply of thirty thousand sacks of corn to the army in Catalonia, where it was extremely needed. General Stanhope then, with the consent of Count Stahremberg, set sail for Minorca with a few battalions of Spaniards, Italians, and Portuguese, accompanied by a fine train of British artillery directed by Brigadier Wade and Colonel Petit. They landed on the 26th of August at Port Mahon, and invested St. Philip, its chief fortress. They so disposed their forces that the garrison, which consisted only of one thousand Spaniards and six hundred French marines, under Colonel Jonquiere, imagined that there were at least twenty thousand invaders, and, in consequence, surrendered after some sharp fighting, in which Brigadier Wade, at the head of a party of grenadiers, stormed a redoubt with such fury as amazed the garrison. On the 30th of September not only Port Mahon but the whole island was in the hands of the English, the garrison of Port Fornelles having also submitted to the attack of Admirals Leake and Whitaker. The inhabitants were delighted with the change, King Philip having so heavily oppressed them and deprived them of their privileges.

On the 28th of October the Prince of Denmark, the husband of the queen, died at Kensington Palace, in his fifty-fifth year. George of Denmark was a man not destitute of sense, but of no distinguished ability. He was a good-natured bon-vivant, who was, however, fond of the queen, who was very much attached to him. They lived together in great harmony and affection, having no jars or jealousies. They had several children, who all died early, their son, the Duke of Gloucester, arriving at the greatest age. Anne was supposed to have a strong conviction that the death of all her children was a judgment on her for her desertion of her father and the repudiation of her brother the Prince of Wales, whom, though she was the first to brand as a supposititious child, she came to recognise as her own brother.

On the death of the prince his offices were quickly divided amongst the expectant Whigs. The Earl of Pembroke took his office of Lord High Admiral, resigning the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland and the Presidency of the Council. But he soon found the business of the Admiralty too arduous for him, and it was put into commission, the Chief Commissioner being Lord Orford, that mercenary Russell whom the Whigs had so long been endeavouring to restore to that post. The post of Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle was separated from that of Admiral to accommodate Lord Dorset. Lord Somers was again brought into the Cabinet as President of the Council. Even the witty and wicked Lord Wharton was promoted to the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland. As Marlborough and Godolphin had a great fear and distrust of Wharton, this astonished many, but was accounted for by those more in the secrets of Court by Wharton being in possession of an autograph letter of Godolphin's to the Court of St. Germains, by which that Minister, and probably Marlborough, too, was greatly in his power.

But though the Whig Junto, as it was called, were now apparently omnipotent in the Government, that was far from being the case. Harley and Mrs. Masham had the ear of the queen as much or more than ever. They were continually closeted with her, and laboured hard to disconcert all the measures of the Whigs; the fierce and implacable Duchess of Marlborough, raging with jealousy of the influence of Mrs. Masham, who had supplanted her, did perhaps still more than Harley himself, by her impolitic anger and insolence, to render the queen only the more desirous to be rid of the Marlborough pest. Nothing but the duke's continued victories made the countenance of the duchess at Court possible.

Dreadful as was the condition to which the fiendish ambition of Louis XIV. had reduced Flanders, Spain, the North of Italy, and many parts of Germany, that of his own country and subjects was still more deplorable. Trade, agriculture, everything had been shrivelled up by the perpetual demands of these incessant wars. The wealthy classes were become as poor as the rest; the middle classes were ruined; the common people were drained off to the army if men, and sank into beggary if women, children, or old people. All credit was at an end; the Treasury of the king was empty; and his chief banker, Bernard, was bankrupt, as were hundreds of the same class of men. The most violent and[584] spasmodic exertions had been made to raise the supplies for the armies in the different fields, and still of late nothing had come but tidings after tidings of disastrous and murderous defeats. The farmers of the taxes were out in all parts of France endeavouring to extort those levies which the ordinary tax-gatherers had demanded and distrained for in vain. The people of France were under a perpetual visitation of these officers; and though they were ill prepared to pay once, had frequently to pay more than once, the same taxes being demanded by different officers, the regular tax-collector, or the agents of those to whom they were farmed out. The Ministers themselves, Chamillard, Pontchartrain, and others of the proud servants of the Grand Monarque, were compelled to make journeys through the provinces to raise money for the necessities of the State in any way that could be devised. Such was the terrible condition of France: the people starving, ruined, and hopeless, and yet the daily victims of an incessant visitation of tax-gatherers, who, whilst they failed to procure the necessary sums for the war, were actively plundering and embezzling on their own account. Nothing but the immeasurable pride of the haughty but now defeated king could cause him to hold out; and even this chance seemed scarcely left him, for the enemy was on the frontiers of France—had, in fact, already crossed them, and laid the country under contribution in Picardy, and another campaign might see them in full march on Paris.

The Duke of Marlborough had not, as usual, visited England at the end of the campaign in 1708, which did not terminate till actual winter. He continued at the Hague, his enemies said, merely to look after his own interests; for, by various modes which we have already mentioned, he was making immense sums by his command. But although we may be quite satisfied that Marlborough would never neglect his own interests, these interests equally, or perhaps more pressingly, demanded his presence in England. Harley and the Tories, he knew, were actively though secretly engaged in ruining his credit with the queen, and the conduct of his wife was not of a kind to counteract these efforts. But Marlborough's interests were inseparably linked to his reputation, and that reputation now demanded his most vigilant attention at the Hague. He saw the triumphant position of the Allies, and the miserable condition of France. It is asserted, therefore, that he and Prince Eugene had planned boldly to march, on the opening of the next campaign, into France, and carry the war to the gates of Paris. There is no more doubt that they could have done this than that the Allies did it in 1814, and again in 1815. The whole of the wars against France had been too timidly carried on. With the forces which were at William's command, the war might have been made offensive instead of defensive, and Louis have found his own territories subjected to the ravages which he had committed on those of the States and the German Empire. Now there was nothing to prevent the victorious arms of Marlborough from penetrating to the French capital and humbling the troubler of Europe, or to prevent the Allies from there dictating their own terms of peace. Nothing, indeed, but the subtle acts of Louis, and the timid policy of the Dutch.

And already Marlborough was aware that Louis, compelled to open his eyes to his critical situation, was beginning to tamper with the Dutch for a separate peace. Some of his own nearest kinsmen, and especially his grandson the Duke of Burgundy, had spoken very plainly to Louis. They had asked him whether he meant irretrievably to ruin France in order to establish his grandson on the throne of Spain. They had laid fully before him the wasted condition of France, and the rapidly-growing ascendency of the Allies. The pride of the old king was forced to stoop, and he consented to sue for peace. He could not, however, bring himself to seek this of the Allies all together, but from Holland, whom he hoped by his arts to detach from the Confederation. He despatched Bouillé, the President of the Council, to Holland, who met Buys and Vanderdussen, the Pensionaries of Amsterdam and Gouda, at Woerden, between Leyden and Utrecht, and Bouillé offered to make terms with the Dutch very advantageous to them. Vanderdussen and Buys replied that he must first of all put into their hands certain fortified towns necessary for the security of their frontier. To this Bouillé would not listen. The Dutch communicated the French proposals to their Allies, and told the French Minister that they could enter into no negotiations without them. Prince Eugene hastened from Vienna to the Hague, and he and Marlborough consulted on the propositions with Heinsius, Buys, and Vanderdussen; and it was unanimously decided that they could not be accepted.

It was now near the end of April, and the Allies saw that it would not do to allow Louis[585] to amuse them with offers which came to nothing, when they should be marching towards his capital. Whilst, therefore, Bouillé despatched the news of the rejection of his offers to Versailles, Marlborough made a hasty journey to England, to take the opinion of his Government as to the terms of the treaty. The receipt of Bouillé's despatch at the French Court produced the utmost consternation. The king was fixed in his proud determination to offer no ampler terms; his Minister represented that it was impossible to carry on the war. There was no alternative, and at length Bouillé was instructed to amuse the Allies with the proposal to repurchase Lille and to yield up Tournay, till the Marquis de Torcy could arrive to his assistance. De Torcy, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, set off for the Hague, not openly as the French Plenipotentiary, but merely furnished with a courier's passport, and ran many risks of being seized on the way. At Brussels he had a narrow escape, but he reached the Hague late at night on the 6th of May. De Torcy now offered much more enlarged terms. Louis was willing to destroy the fortifications of Dunkirk at the instance of the Allies; to engage to send the Pretender out of France, and also not to aid him in any attempt on the throne of Great Britain, provided that provision was made for his security and maintenance. He would give up Sicily, but would retain Naples—a country entirely gone out of his power for more than two years, and in possession of Austria. He even proposed that Philip should resign Spain and the Indies; but his allies, the Electors of Bavaria and Cologne, must be provided for, as they had sacrificed their own territories in his alliance. The main difficulties appeared to be the frontier towns of Lille, New Brisac, and Hermingen, in Flanders, De Torcy contending that the surrender of Ypres, Menin, Condé, and a few inferior fortresses, would be sufficient for frontier defences. As they would give up Spain, the only obstacle in the south appeared the demand on Naples. These terms would have been received with exultation by the Allies some time ago, but they were now in a different position, and their demands were proportionate.

LONDON COFFEE-HOUSE IN THE REIGN OF ANNE.

[586]

As De Torcy could not bring the Dutch Ministers to concede anything, he consented to meet Prince Eugene and Marlborough, who had now returned from England with Lord Townshend. To these was added Count Zinzendorf, as Minister for the Emperor. The French Minister, assisted by Bouillé, though he was treating in a condition of the deepest anxiety, yet maintained all the high pretensions which his Court had so long assumed. He offered the surrender of Spain, but he would give no guarantee for its evacuation. He contended that the word of his king was enough—-as if the word of any king could be accepted in such a case, and especially of Louis, who had broken his a thousand times. He pleaded that the king's great age, his earnest desire for peace and repose in his declining years, and the situation of his affairs, were of themselves ample guarantees for the fulfilment of that Article of the treaty; and he even melted into tears in his earnestness to bring the ambassadors to accept the word of the Grand Monarque. This was all mere child's play in a treaty which was to be the result of such a war, and to establish the future peace of Europe. As time was going on, the representatives of the Allies, at the end of May, presented their ultimatum, in forty Articles, the chief of which were these:—That Philip should within two months totally evacuate Spain and Sicily, which with the Indies were to be made over to Charles; that if Philip refused to evacuate Spain and Sicily, the King of France, so far from helping him, should assist the Allies to expel him; that Spain should never, nor any part of it, be united to the crown of France; that the Dutch should receive, as a barrier to their States, Furnes, Fort Kenoq, Menin, Saverge, Ypres, Warneton, Comines, Vervick, Lille, Condé, Tournay, and Maubeuge; that the French should deliver up all the towns, cities, and fortresses which they had taken in the Netherlands; that the fortifications of Dunkirk should be destroyed and never again be restored; that the Pretender should quit France; that the Queen of England's title and that of the Protestant succession should be acknowledged; that the interests of the Electors of Bavaria and Cologne should be settled by the congress which should settle this peace; and that the Duke of Savoy should receive back everything taken from him, and should also retain Exilles, Feneshelles, Chaumont, and the valley of Pragelas. Strasburg and Kehl were to be given up by Louis, but Alsace itself retained. The new King of Prussia and the new Elector of Hanover should both be acknowledged, and all these preliminaries should be adopted and the treaty completed within two months.

De Torcy, who could not expect for a moment that Louis would consent to any such terms, to gain time, however, engaged to send them to Versailles. He set off for Paris, but at Douay he saw Marshal Villars, showed him the conditions of peace, and told him to put his army in order, for they would never be accepted. Villars replied that he should be prepared, but that the army was on the point of utter starvation, and such was the destitution of the country that he had no conception how the troops were to exist. No sooner did De Torcy reach Paris than it was announced to the Allies that Louis would never accept such terms. Bouillé was recalled, and was commissioned by the Allies to assure the king that no others would be offered; and that, if they were not accepted by the 15th of June, they should take the field. But the French king had gained one great object by the negotiation—it enabled him to represent to his subjects his earnest efforts for peace, and the arrogant obstinacy of the Allies. He had letters circulated all over France representing the anxious endeavours he had made to put an end to bloodshed and to the miseries of Europe; that he had offered to make unheard-of sacrifices, but to no purpose; everything had been rejected by the Allies but a fresh carnage and spoliation. He represented that the more he had conceded, the more they had risen in their demands; that he found it impossible to satisfy their inordinate demands, except at the cost of the ruin and the eternal infamy of France.

The effect of this representation was wonderful. The whole of France was so roused by indignation at the supposed treatment of their king, the insolent rejection of his peaceful desires, that they execrated the selfish arrogance of the Allies, for Louis had insinuated that they were carrying on the war only for their own personal interests. The kingdom, impoverished and reduced as it was, determined to support the ill-used monarch with the last remnant of its substance; and such exertions were made for the continued struggle as astonished the world. Nor was the effect of Louis's representations lost on Marlborough's enemies in England. They declaimed on the unreasonableness of the Allies almost as loudly as the French, and they particularly denounced the demand that Louis should help to dethrone and expatriate his own grandson, as the[587] most astounding piece of assumption that had ever been heard of.

On the 21st of June Marlborough and Prince Eugene crossed the frontiers of France, and with a force of one hundred and ten thousand men drew up in a plain near Lille. Marshal Villars, considered now the ablest general of France, encamped his army on the plain of Sens, between two impassable morasses, and began to entrench himself. The Allies reconnoitred his position, but found it too strong to attack him in it; and as they could not advance towards Paris, leaving such an enemy behind them, they made a feint of attacking Ypres; and then, suddenly marching on Tournay in the night of the 27th of June, they presented themselves before it on the 7th of July. The place was strong, but the garrison was weak. It consisted of only twelve battalions of infantry and four squadrons of horse, in very inefficient condition. Villars endeavoured to throw into the place seven thousand fresh troops, but he could not effect it. The governor, Lieutenant de Surville, was a man of great military skill and determination, and he maintained the siege with such vigour that the Allies were not only detained before the place for a long and invaluable time, but lost many men. The town capitulated on the 28th of July, when the Allies were about to carry it by storm, but the citadel held out till the 3rd of September. The same day, leaving a detachment under the Earl of Albemarle to level the defences, the Allies crossed the Scheldt and determined to besiege Mons. They sent forward a detachment under the Prince of Hesse to attack the French lines from the Haine to the Sambre, which were abandoned at his approach. At this juncture Marshal Boufflers arrived to support Villars, and, though his superior in command, agreed to serve under him. Marlborough, hearing that Villars had quitted his camp, and that the French were on the march to attack the Prince of Hesse and cut off the approaches to Mons, made a rapid movement, which brought him face to face with the French army, which consisted of one hundred and twenty thousand men—ten thousand more than the army of the Allies. Villars and Boufflers were encamped behind the woods of Lanière and Tasnière, in the neighbourhood of Malplaquet. The Allies encamped with their right near Sart and Bleron, and the left on the edge of the wood of Lanière, the headquarters being at Blaregines. On the 9th of September the outposts of the two armies began to skirmish; but the French fell back on an encampment near Malplaquet, and spent the night in fortifying their position. Had the Allies immediately attacked them the battle would have been less obstinate; but Marlborough was waiting for the coming up of eighteen battalions, left to rase the fortifications of Tournay. For the two days that he thus continued to wait, the French, with unremitting activity, proceeded to cast up triple entrenchments; and were, in fact, so completely covered with lines, hedges, entrenchments, cannon, and trees laid across, that the Dutch field-deputies declared that it would be madness to attack them in such a situation. But on the 10th, when the expected battalions had arrived, Marlborough and Eugene determined to give battle.

Early on the morning of the 11th of September they availed themselves of a thick fog to erect batteries on each wing, and, the day clearing about eight o'clock, the engagement began. The battle began on the right by eighty-six battalions, commanded by General Schuylemberg and the Duke of Argyll, supported by two-and-twenty battalions under Count Lottum, who broke through the French lines, and fought with such fury that, notwithstanding their strong barricades, the French in less than an hour were forced from their entrenchments, and compelled to seek refuge in the woods of Sart and Tasnière. The contest was far more desperate on the left, where the Prince of Orange and Baron Fagel, with six-and-thirty battalions, attacked the right of the enemy, posted in the woods of Lanière, and covered with three entrenchments. The Prince of Orange led on the charge with wonderful bravery, having two horses killed under him, and the greater part of his officers killed around him. The engagement was now general, and the French continued to fight with the fury of despair from eight in the morning till three in the afternoon, when, seeing all their lines forced, their left being utterly routed, and the centre under Villars giving way, Villars himself being dangerously wounded, they began to retreat towards Bavay, under the direction of Boufflers, and retired to a position between Quesnoy and Valenciennes. The forest of Ardennes served to protect the French from the pursuit of their enemies, and enabled them to carry off most of their cannon and standards. About forty colours and standards, and sixteen pieces of cannon, were taken by the Allies, with a considerable number of prisoners. But on surveying the field of battle they found that this was the dearest victory which they had ever purchased. About twenty thousand[588] of their soldiers lay slain, and about ten thousand of the enemy. Thirty thousand lives sacrificed in one battle! Neither Blenheim nor Ramillies could compare with Malplaquet in monstrosity of carnage. Nor was the impression produced equal to the destruction. The French, under the able command of Villars, notwithstanding their defeat, felt rather reassured than depressed. They had inflicted far more damage than they had received; and Villars declared that, had he not been so severely wounded, he would not have left the field without the victory. The French having retired into Valenciennes, the Allies continued the siege of Mons, which capitulated on the 23rd of October, and the armies then retired into winter quarters, after which some resultless negotiations ensued.

FIVE-GUINEA PIECE OF ANNE.

The Parliament of Great Britain met on the 15th of November, and the queen, opening it in person, announced in her speech that France had been endeavouring, by false and hollow artifices, to amuse the Allies with a prospect of peace, but with the real intent to sow jealousies amongst them; that the Allies had wisely rejected the insidious overtures; that our arms had been as successful as in any former campaign, and had now laid France open to the advance of the confederate troops; and that if they granted her, as she trusted they would, liberal supplies, she believed that she would now soon reduce that exorbitant and oppressive power which had so long threatened the liberties of Europe. Both Lords and Commons presented addresses fully approving of the rejection of the king of France's delusive overtures. They thanked the Duke of Marlborough for his splendid victory at Malplaquet. The Commons voted six million two hundred thousand pounds for the services of the year, and established the lottery and other schemes for raising this heavy sum.

FARTHING OF ANNE.

The great topic, however, which engrossed almost the whole attention this Session, not only of Parliament, but of the whole nation, was not foreign affairs, not the general war, but a party war at home, which was carried on with the most extraordinary furor, and put the whole public into a flame. The ostensible cause of this vehement conflict was the publication of a couple of sermons by a clergyman, hitherto of no mark; the real cause was the determination of Harley and the Tories to damage the Whigs irremediably, and to drive them at once from the service of the State and the support of the people. They therefore seized with consummate tact on these sermons, which were, as printed, stupid though rabid performances; and which, had they not been adroitly steeped in party spirit—the most inflammable of all spirits—and set fire to, might soon have slept forgotten in the linings of trunks, or as wrappers of butter and cheese.

TWO-GUINEA PIECE OF ANNE.

On the 13th of December, 1709, Mr. Dolben, the son of the Archbishop of York, denounced, in the House of Commons, two sermons preached and published by Dr. Henry Sacheverell, Rector of St. Saviour's, in Southwark. The first of these sermons had been preached, on the 15th of August, at the assizes at Derby, before the Judge and Sheriff. The second had been preached, on the 5th of November, before the Lord Mayor and Corporation in St. Paul's Cathedral. In both these sermons he had made an attack, if not avowedly on the Government, on the principles on which the Throne and the whole Government[589] were established. He professed the most entire doctrines of non-resistance and passive obedience, which, at the same time that they made him appear incapable, if he had the power, of over-turning any Government, led him to entirely sap and undermine the Government and title of the queen, by representing the resistance which had been made to the encroachments of the Stuarts, and especially to James II., as perfectly impious and treasonable, contrary to the laws of God and the political institutions of men. He reprobated the Revolution and all that flowed from it; and thus, pretending to passive obedience, he was, in the fullest sense, preaching resistance and a counter-revolution. Whilst crying non-resistance, he was, as far as in him lay, arming all those who were hostilely inclined to overturn the throne of Anne, as built only on rebellion and on maxims subversive of the divine right of kings. In his second sermon, which he called "Perils of False Brethren," he preached flamingly against the danger to the Church; danger from the false and democratic bishops who had been put in by the usurper William of Orange; danger from the Dissenters, whom he had by law tolerated, and made powerful in the State and against the true Church. With such a jubilant avidity was this war-note responded to by High Church clergy, High Church zealots of all sorts, and the Tories ready to rush to the assault on any promising occasion, that no less than forty thousand copies of these sermons are said to have been sold. "Nothing," says Dr. Johnson, "ever sold like it, except 'The Whole Duty of Man.'"

ROBERT HARLEY, EARL OF OXFORD. (After the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller.)

The motion made by Mr. Dolben in regard to Sacheverell in the House of Commons was seconded[590] by Sir Peter King, one of the Aldermen of London, who had listened to the sermon in St. Paul's with astonishment and indignation. He denounced it as abounding with matter false, injurious, impious, and tending to sedition and schism in the Church. This had not been the case with all the City dignitaries on that occasion. Sir Gilbert Heathcote had indeed been equally astonished at it, and declared that the preacher ought to be called to account for it; but the Lord Mayor, Sir Samuel Garrard, had applauded it, and had allowed it to be published with his sanction. Neither was it the first of the kind which had been preached in London. One Francis Higgins had been haranguing on the same topics in the pulpits all over the metropolis, with the most outrageous declamations on the dangers of the Church. Sacheverell, however, had brought the fever to a crisis. The most violent paragraphs were read in the House of Commons, and voted scandalous and seditious libels. The doctor was summoned to the bar of the House, and, having acknowledged the authorship of the sermons, pleaded the encouragement which he had received from the Lord Mayor to print the one on "The Perils of False Brethren." Sir Samuel Garrard, who was a member of the House, now repudiated his encouragement, and the doctor being ordered to withdraw, it was resolved that he should be impeached of high crimes and misdemeanours at the bar of the Lords, and Mr. Dolben was ordered to conduct his impeachment. A committee was appointed to prepare the Articles, and Sacheverell was taken into custody.

When the impeachment was carried up to the Lords, Sacheverell petitioned to be admitted to bail, but this was refused. The Commons committed him to the custody of the Deputy-Usher of the Black Rod, but the Lords afterwards admitted him to bail. The Articles were carried up to the Lords on the 13th of January, 1710, and Sacheverell drew up an answer, in which he wholly denied some of the Articles, and endeavoured to justify himself in respect to the rest. The Commons made a reply, and declared themselves ready to prove the charge. A long delay, however, took place before the day of trial could be fixed. The queen was more than suspected of being favourable to Sacheverell, as influenced by Harley, Mrs. Masham, and the Tories. When the doctor appeared before the Commons, he was attended by Dr. Lancaster, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, and above a hundred of the most distinguished clergymen of London and other towns, conspicuous amongst them being several of the queen's own chaplains. From the moment that Sacheverell was taken into custody by the Commons, the Church and Tory party had set all their engines to work to raise the populace. These agents were everywhere, distributing money, treating the mob to ale, and spreading the most alarming rumours—that the Puritans, the Presbyterians, and the Dissenters were all combined to pull down the Church and restore the old republican practices, and that the prosecution of Sacheverell was a trial of their strength. The pulpits resounded in all quarters with these alarms, with the intention of working up the people to a pitch of desperation, and they succeeded. The mob became furious, and paraded the streets and round the palace, crying, "God save the Queen and Dr. Sacheverell! Queen and High Church!"

Marlborough took his departure for Holland, and the trial of Sacheverell was fixed for the 27th of February in Westminster Hall. The managers for the Commons were the Lords William Paulet and Coningsby, Sir Thomas Parker, Sir Joseph Jekyl, Sir John Hollis, Sir John Holland, Sir James Montague, Sir Peter King (Recorder of London), Mr. Robert Eyre (Solicitor-General), Mr. James Stanhope, Mr. Robert Walpole, Mr. Spencer Cowper, Mr. John Smith, Mr. John Dolben, and Mr. William Thompson. The prisoner was defended by Sir Simon Harcourt and Mr. Constantine Phipps, and was attended by Drs. Smallridge and Atterbury. The Lord Chancellor Cowper demanded of the Lords whether it was their pleasure that Dr. Sacheverell should be called before them; and the answer being in the affirmative, he was placed at the bar, his friends Atterbury and Smallridge standing at his side. Silence being ordered, the doctor was asked whether he was ready to take his trial; to which he answered with great confidence that he was, and should always be ready to obey the laws of the land. The Articles of Impeachment were then read. They accused him of having publicly reflected on the late Revolution; of having suggested that it was brought about by odious and unjustifiable means; of having defamed the Act of Toleration, and cast scurrilous reflections on those who advocated religious toleration; of asserting that the Church was in great peril from her Majesty's Administration; of maintaining that the civil Constitution of the country was also in danger; of stigmatising many of the dignitaries of the Church—some of whom the queen herself had placed in their posts—as false[591] brethren; and of libelling her Majesty's Ministers, and especially of branding the Lord High Treasurer with the name of "Volpone;" and, finally, with having, in discharge of his sacred office, wickedly wrested and perverted the Holy Scriptures.

These charges were well supported by various members of the Commons, and amongst them Robert Walpole particularly distinguished himself. The counsel for the doctor then pleaded in his behalf, and endeavoured to answer the arguments adduced against him. Sacheverell, however, was not contented with this; he delivered a defence himself which has been generally considered to be the work of the high Tory divine Atterbury, and probably with good reason. In this he dwelt much on his responsibility as a clergyman, and represented the interests of all his brethren and of the Church as involved in this attack made upon them through his person. He expressed the utmost loyalty towards the queen and the Constitution; denied having called in question the Revolution, though he had certainly condemned in the strongest terms the resistance by which it was achieved. He declared himself in favour of the Protestant succession, and asserted that, as his principle was that of non-resistance in all cases, he could not by any word or act of his own endanger the Government as by law established; as if his very declaration of the principle of non-resistance and passive obedience did not condemn in toto the Revolution, the means by which the queen came to the throne, and encourage all those who were seeking to restore Popery and the Stuarts as the rightful religion and rightful possessors of the throne, both of which had been, according to his doctrines, forced from their legitimate place by ungodly and un-Christian violence; and he concluded by calling on God and His holy angels to witness that he had never been guilty of the wicked, seditious, or malicious acts imputed to him in the impeachment.

As the doctor went to and from the Hall, his chair was thronged round by dense crowds, which attended him to his lodgings in the Temple, or thence to Westminster Hall. Numbers pressed forward to kiss his hand; they lifted their hats to him with the utmost reverence. The windows were crowded by ladies and gentlemen, who cheered him vociferously, and many flung down presents to him. The doctor returned the salutations by continual bows and smiles, and seemed wonderfully elated by his sudden consequence. His chairmen seemed to partake of his glory, and stepped on as proudly as if they had been carrying the queen. "This huzzaing," says Defoe, "made the doctor so popular that the ladies began to talk of falling in love with him; but this was only a prelude to the High Church affair. An essay was to be made on the mob, and the huzzaing of the rabble was to be artfully improved." Accordingly after the trial the next day, February 28th, the mob assembled in dense masses—sweeps, link-boys, butchers, by a sturdy guard of whom the doctor was always escorted to and from the Hall—collected in the City and began to cry "Down with the Dissenters! High Church for ever!" And they soon put their cries in practice by assaulting the Dissenting chapels, and sacking their interiors. The Tory writers of the time pretend that the rioters did this of their own accord, as the mobs had destroyed the Catholic chapels in 1688; but this was not the case. The proceedings of the mob were stimulated and directed by gentlemen, who followed them in hackney coaches, according to Cunningham, who is the only writer who has furnished us with full details of these outrages. They then directed their rage against the house of Bishop Burnet, which stood on the other side of St. John's Square, and attempted to demolish it. This they must have done under instructions from their disguised instigators, for Burnet was hated by the High Church and Tory party for the distinguished part which he had borne in the Revolution, for his constant attachment to King William and his measures, and especially for his advocacy of toleration. They vowed they would put the Low Church Bishop to death if they could catch him; but the respectable inhabitants vigorously interposed in defence of the Bishop's house and life, and the mob were compelled to desist.

So long as the rioters were only burning and ruining the Dissenting chapels, the Court remained most calmly quiescent; but when the news came that they were beginning to attack "Low Church as by law established," there was a bustle and a fright at St. James's. This fright was wonderfully increased when Sunderland rushed into the presence of the queen and announced that the mob was on the march to pull down and rifle the Bank of England in honour of "High Church and Dr. Sacheverell." At this news the queen turned deadly pale, and trembled. She bade Sunderland send instantly the Horse and Foot Guards and disperse the rioters. Captain Horsey, the officer on duty at St. James's, was at once summoned into the royal presence, and[592] Sunderland delivered to him the queen's order to disperse the mob, but to use discretion, and not to proceed to extremities. Horsey was one of the anti-Marlborough faction, and received the command in evident dudgeon. "Am I to preach to the mob, or am I to fight them?" he asked. "If you want preaching, please to send some one with me who is a better hand at holding forth than I am; if you want fighting, it is my trade, and I will do my best." Sunderland could only repeat the order. Horsey easily dispersed the rabble, who were more valiant against peaceable Dissenters than against soldiers. In one or two places they seemed as though they would make a stand; but on any attempt of the Guards to charge them they flew like leaves before the wind.

DRINKING TO THE HEALTH OF DR. SACHEVERELL. (See p. 593.)

The trial lasted for three weeks, and every day the same crowds assembled, the same hurraing of Sacheverell, the same appeals to the queen on behalf of the Church and Dr. Sacheverell were shouted by the enthusiastic mob. No one scarcely dared to appear abroad without an artificial oak-leaf in his hat, which was considered the badge of restored monarchy, and all the time the doctor carried the air of a conqueror. At length, on the 10th of March, the Lords adjourned to their own House to consider this point, raised by the counsel for Sacheverell—whether in prosecutions by impeachments the particular words supposed to be criminal should be expressly specified in such impeachments. The question was referred to the judges, who decided that the particular words ought to be so specified. It was objected that the judges had decided according to the rules of Westminster Hall, and not according to the usages of Parliament, and it was resolved to adhere to the usages of Parliament, lest it should become a practice for the judges to decide on questions of Parliamentary right and privilege. On the 16th of March the Lords came to the consideration of their judgment, and the queen attended incognita to hear the debate, which was long and earnest. In the end Sacheverell was pronounced guilty by a majority of seventeen; but four-and-thirty peers entered a protest against the judgment, and his sentence bore no proportion to[593] the usual ones in such cases. He was merely suspended from preaching for three years, and his sermons were condemned to be burnt by the common hangman.

MAKING FRIENDS WITH MRS. MASHAM. (See p. 594.)

This gentle sentence was regarded by the people and the Tories as a real triumph. It was proof of the decline of the Whig party, and of the fear of offending the public. The event was celebrated by Sacheverell's mob-friends by bonfires, and by the inhabitants of London and Westminster by illuminations. There was plenty of beer supplied to the populace from some quarter, and every one passing along was compelled to drink the health of Dr. Sacheverell, the "champion of the Church." Sacheverell himself went from house to house in a state of triumph to thank the lords and gentlemen who had taken his side. From some of these, as the Duke of Argyll, he met with a rebuff; but the great doctor, with a roaring mob at his heels, was generally flatteringly received, and he took care to boast that after his sentence it was clear that the Whigs were down and the Church was saved. The University of Oxford, which had received a snub from the Lords by their ordering its famous decree asserting the absolute authority and indefeasible right of princes, to be burnt with Sacheverell's sermons, was loud in professed triumph and sympathy with the doctor. The House of Commons was indignant at the lenity of his treatment, and declared that his sentence was an actual benefit to him, by exempting him from the duties of his living, and enabling him to go about fomenting sedition.

The queen prorogued Parliament on the 5th of April, expressing her concern for the occasion which had occupied so much of the Session. She declared that no prince could have a more zealous desire for the welfare of the Church than she had, and that it was mischievous in wicked and malicious libels to pretend that the Church was in danger; and she trusted that men would now study to be quiet, and mind their own business, instead of busying themselves to revive questions of a very high nature, and which could only be with an ill intention. But every one knew all the while that Anne was only too pleased at the demonstrations which had been made through[594] Sacheverell; that they had damaged the Whigs essentially, and brought the day near when she could safely send them adrift, and liberate herself for ever from them and the Marlboroughs. Mrs. Masham now ruled triumphantly, and disposed of commissions and offices as royally as ever the duchess had done. It was openly said in the army that fighting was not the road to promotion, but carrying Mrs. Masham's lapdogs, or putting a heavy purse into the hand of Mrs. Abigail Earwig. The Duchess of Marlborough did not abate her exertions to recover favour, but they were in vain; and the great Marlborough complained in a letter to the queen that all his victories for her Majesty's honour could not shield him from the malice of a bedchamber-woman.

Indeed, the display of the queen's bias now became rapid and open. The Duke of Shrewsbury, who had now joined the Tories, returned from his long residence at Rome, where he had married an Italian lady, and had taken the part of Sacheverell in the trial. The queen immediately dismissed the Marquis of Kent, a staunch Whig, from the office of Lord Chamberlain, and, much to the grief and consternation of the Lord Treasurer, Godolphin, bestowed it on Shrewsbury. There was great alarm among the Whigs, and Walpole recommended the instant and entire resignation of the whole Cabinet as the only means to intimidate the queen and her secret advisers; but Harley is said to have persuaded the rest of the Ministers that the only object was to get rid of Godolphin, Marlborough, and his son-in-law Sunderland. The rumour of Sunderland's dismissal became general, and not without foundation. The queen had an extreme dislike to him, not only because of his belonging to Marlborough's clique, but on account of his blunt and outspoken manners. He was perfectly undisguised in his expressions of dislike for Mrs. Masham, and of his resolve, if possible, to turn her out of the palace; but, with the queen's devotion to that lady, he could have taken no surer way of getting himself out. The Duchess of Marlborough, who could not now obtain access to the queen, yet wrote to her, imploring her to defer any intention of removing Lord Sunderland till the duke's return; but the queen forthwith gave Sunderland his dismissal, and appointed Lord Dartmouth, an actual Jacobite, in his place. Anne endeavoured to qualify Lord Sunderland's dismissal by offering him a retiring pension, but he rejected it with disdain; and such was the fear that the Duke of Marlborough, on this act of disrespect to him, would throw up the command of the army, that all the leading Ministers—including Cowper, Somers, Halifax, Devonshire, Godolphin, and Orford—wrote to him, imploring him to retain his command, as well for the security of the Whig Government as for his own glory and the good of the country. The Allies on the Continent were equally alarmed at this indication of the declining favour of Marlborough, and France was just as elated at it. But nothing could now stay the fall of the Whigs. Anne, indeed, ordered Mr. Secretary Boyle to write to the Allied sovereigns and to the States-General to assure them that nothing was farther from her thoughts than the removal of the Duke of Marlborough from his command, and that she still proposed to conduct her government by the same party. The hollowness of these assurances was immediately shown by her also dismissing Godolphin from the Treasury, and appointing Harley Chancellor of the Exchequer. Harley thereupon proposed to Lord Chancellor Cowper and Walpole to make a coalition, but they rejected the overture; and as a Tory Cabinet could not expect to carry on with a Whig House of Commons, a dissolution was determined upon, and Parliament was dissolved accordingly, and writs were issued for a new election.

The nomination of the Tory Cabinet immediately followed. Lord Rochester, the queen's High Church and deep-drinking uncle, was made President of the Council in place of Somers; the Duke of Buckingham succeeded the Duke of Devonshire as Lord Steward; St. John succeeded Mr. Secretary Boyle; Sir Simon Harcourt, as Lord Chancellor, superseded Lord Cowper; the Duke of Ormonde took the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland from Lord Wharton; the Duke of Somerset had anticipated these changes by throwing up his post of Master of the Horse, and the Earl of Orford was removed from the Admiralty, and that office was put in commission. In the room of Walpole, George Granville was made Secretary at War. Here was a clean sweep of all the Whigs, except some subordinate officials, who clung to office as long as it was permitted. Dr. Sacheverell had done a mighty work for the Tories, and, having a living in Wales conferred on him, he made quite a triumphant progress thither in May, during all the heat and violence of the elections, still labouring in his vocation of self-glorification, and of damaging the Whig cause as much as he could, in which he was energetically supported by his patrons.

[595]

On the Continent war and negotiation were going on at the same time whilst the Sacheverell fever had been raging at home. Early in the spring Louis XIV., sensible of the miserable condition of his kingdom, had again made overtures for peace. The Ministers of the two parties met at first on board a yacht at Maardyk, but the French preferred the wretched little town of Gertruydenberg for their sojourn, where they complained of the miserable accommodations they obtained. The Dutch States-General had sent a pressing request that Marlborough might be allowed to go to Holland in time to give his advice in these negotiations, and the two Houses of Parliament seconded this request. The queen readily consented, though it was suspected the whole was done at the suggestion of Marlborough himself, to show how essential his services were deemed by the Allies. Though Marlborough hastened to the Hague in consequence, he did not in any way appear openly in the matter, but appeared busy with Prince Eugene in setting early on foot the campaign. The French ambassadors represented themselves as being not only most meanly entertained, but as meanly and narrowly watched—their letters being opened, and their propositions met by haughty discourtesy. Certainly, if we were to regard the concessions made by Louis XIV. on this occasion as honestly offered, the Allies had never a fairer opportunity of closing the war triumphantly, and were most culpable in refusing them. Louis offered to give up all Spain, and the Indies, East and West; to acknowledge Charles king of undivided Spain; to give no support to Philip, but to claim for him only Sicily and Naples. When it was objected that Naples was already in the possession of Austria, and could not be given up, the ambassadors waived the claim of Naples, and contented themselves with Sicily and Sardinia for Philip. As a security for Philip evacuating Spain, they offered to give up four cautionary towns in Flanders; to restore Strasburg and Brisac; to destroy all their fortifications on the Rhine from Basle to Philippsburg; to level all the fortifications of Dunkirk; and to surrender to the Dutch Maubeuge, Condé, Furnes, Menin, Ypres, Tournai, and Lille.

Surely nothing could be more complete. By gaining all these advantages the Allies gained everything they had been fighting for. They wanted not only an agreement for the surrender of Spain, but a sufficient guarantee for it; and this guarantee they demanded in the shape of an engagement that Louis should help them with actual money and arms to expel Philip from Spain if he refused to evacuate it, and really to place Austria in possession of it. This was certainly putting the sincerity of Louis to sufficient test, and Louis failed under it. He contended that it would be monstrous and unnatural to take arms against his own grandson, but that he would contribute money for this purpose—which, to ordinary intellects, looks quite as monstrous. He offered, according to his able Prime Minister De Torcy, to pay five hundred thousand livres a month towards this object, or even to raise it to a million of money if the Allies would not be satisfied with less. But as the Allies, in the first place, knew that Louis had not money to meet the demands of his own Government, and, in the second place, that Philip had sent an express declaration to the Allies, when this question was mooted before, that he stood on his rightful claim through the will of Charles II., the late King of Spain, and would recognise no pretensions of any party to deal with his patrimony—they declined the offer, and declared they would be contented with nothing less than the actual possession of the country. They knew that at the very time that these negotiations were going on, Philip was making fresh and strenuous exertions to drive Charles from Spain; that he had appealed to Louis to send him the Duc de Vendôme to take the command in that country, with which request Louis promptly complied. They knew that France had only to close the passes of the Pyrenees, and, under the pretence of protecting her own frontiers from the armies in Spain, shut out all attack on Philip, except by sea.

On this rock, therefore, the whole negotiation was wrecked. Louis had flattered himself that Marlborough, distracted by the state of affairs in England, would be anxious to make peace, in order that he might be on the spot to resist the fall of the Whig party at home, and with it of his influence. But the wiser De Torcy reasoned very differently. He saw that the party of Marlborough was already ruined, and for him to return home would be to return to insignificance, mortification, and insult. His only safety and strength lay in the continuance of the war; on the chance of reaping new victories, and, therefore, new humiliation to his enemies. And in this De Torcy was correct. Marlborough did not appear in the matter. Lord Townshend for England, and Count Zinzendorff for the Emperor, were consulted by the States-General on all the points of the treaty; but the Pensionary Heinsius, the devoted[596] friend of Marlborough and Eugene, kept them au fait on the whole subject, and influenced the States-General as they dictated. The result was that, after the negotiations had continued from the 19th of March to the 21st of July, during which there was a rapid and frequent interchange of messages with Versailles, the conference broke up.

The campaign had not paused for the issue of the conference. Eugene and Marlborough left the Hague on the 15th of March, and assembled their troops, which quartered on the Meuse, at Tournai. The confederate army amounted to sixty thousand men, with which they invested Douay, and, Eugene remaining to carry on the siege, Marlborough advanced to Vitry, where he encamped. Marshal Villars—at the head of an army numerous and well appointed, considering the distresses of France, and all the more numerous because men, destitute of the means of livelihood, flocked to the royal banners—passed the Scheldt and encamped at Bouchain, declaring that he would engage the Allies; but he thought better of it. His aim was to embarrass the siege of Douay, in which there was a strong French garrison, commanded by General Albergotti. The defence was vigorous, Albergotti making frequent sallies, and altogether the Allies suffered severely before the town. It was compelled, however, to capitulate on the 26th of June. Eugene and Marlborough, being again united, contemplated forcing the lines of the enemy between Arras and Miramont, but finding them too strong, they resolved to besiege Béthune, which in spite of the menacing attitude of Marshal Villars, who marched out of his entrenchments as if going to attack them, surrendered on the 29th of August. They afterwards took also the inconsiderable towns of Aire and Verrant, and there the campaign ended. The armies broke up and retired to winter quarters.

This was a poor result after the grand schemes of storming Boulogne and marching upon Paris. The fact was, that the anxious condition of affairs at home completely paralysed Marlborough. He was no longer the man he had been. His mind was dragged different ways, and was harassed with anxieties. He could no longer concentrate his attention on one great plan of warfare, and the consequence was, that his action was spiritless and indecisive. He seemed to have lost the secret of success, and met with annoyances which his vigilance and promptitude had hitherto prevented. On one occasion a great supply of powder and other stores was intercepted by the enemy, though under the guard of twelve hundred foot and four hundred and eighty horse. In a word he was discouraged, divided in his own mind, and the spell of victory, or rather of high enterprise, was broken.

In other quarters the scene was not more encouraging. Nothing of consequence was effected on the Rhine, and in Piedmont the Duke of Savoy, still out of humour with the Emperor, did nothing. The Imperial forces were commanded by Count Daun, who endeavoured to cross the Alps and penetrate into Dauphiné, but was effectually kept back by the Duke of Berwick, who held the mountain passes. In Spain, after a brilliant commencement of the campaign, everything went to ruin. General Stanhope, having passed in his Parliamentary character through the Sacheverell campaign, joined the Imperial general, Count Stahremberg, in Catalonia, in May. On the 10th of July they encountered the army of King Philip at Almenara. Stanhope had the charge of the cavalry, killed with his own hand the commander of Philip's guards, General Amessaga, and routed the whole body of horse, upon which the infantry retired precipitately on Lerida. General Stahremberg pursued the flying army to Saragossa, where King Philip made a stand, but was again defeated, with a loss of five thousand men, seven thousand taken prisoners, with all his artillery, and a great number of colours and standards. Charles and his confederates entered Saragossa in triumph, and Philip continued his flight to Madrid. Whilst victory was with them, General Stanhope urged King Charles to push on to Madrid, drive Philip into the Pyrenees, and secure the pass of Pampeluna, the only one by which Louis could send reinforcements. But the inert Austrian loitered away a whole month at Saragossa, and it was not till the middle of September that Stanhope could induce him to advance. On the 21st of that month Stanhope, still leading the way, entered Madrid without opposition, Philip and all the grandees having retreated to Valladolid. On the 28th Charles himself made his entry into Madrid, but General Stanhope soon perceived that he had no welcome. The Castilians to a man were for Philip, and did the army of Charles all the mischief they could, cutting off his supplies, attacking his outposts, and destroying all the stragglers and foragers that they could meet with. Stanhope still urged Charles to send on a detachment to secure Toledo, and to keep open the passage of the Tagus to facilitate an expected advance of Portuguese troops in his favour. The Portuguese, however, did not make their appearance; provisions failed in Madrid, for the peasantry held back the supply, and the whole army marched to Toledo, where it[597] found itself still worse off. Philip, meanwhile, had sent in haste to request reinforcements from Louis under the command of the Duc de Vendôme, and these approaching, the timid Charles hastened back into Catalonia as the only place of security.

THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH'S INTERVIEW WITH ANNE. (See p. 599.)

[598]

Such was continually the fluctuating condition of the war in Spain. The Spaniards had no inclination to support Charles, and the Allies only sent troops sufficient to win victories, but not to maintain them, still less to secure the passes in the Pyrenees and keep back fresh French armies. It was another of our futile attempts to support a man who, unless he could support himself, had no business there. At this juncture the Tories, having risen into power, withheld fresh reinforcements. They were not hearty in the war, and our small army there was left to contend with impossibilities. The English and Imperialists unwillingly following in the track of the king towards Catalonia, for the sake of better procuring provisions on the route, had separated and marched at some distance from each other, though in parallel lines. In this condition they were suddenly overtaken by Vendôme on the 8th of December, and Stanhope, with his five thousand men, found himself surrounded by the main army of the French. This was an instance of want of circumspection which was not anticipated in General Stanhope after his vigorous and able operations hitherto, and procured him severe blame. He managed to despatch a messenger to Stahremberg for help; but his powder was nearly exhausted, and after courageously defending himself till the next day, he was compelled to surrender himself in the little town of Brihuega. Stahremberg was accused of tardy movement for the relief of Stanhope, but he was probably prevented from coming up by the forces of Vendôme, who attacked him also on the 10th at Villaviciosa. Vendôme's troops are said to have doubled in number those of Stahremberg. Stahremberg's left wing was routed, and great slaughter made of them; but Stahremberg himself maintained the fight with his right wing till night, when the French retreated, having suffered equally severely with the troops of Stahremberg. The Imperial general, however, found himself unable to pursue the advantage; he ordered all the guns to be spiked, and retreated as fast as possible into Catalonia. Vendôme pursued him, took Balaguer on the way, in which he left a garrison, and followed Stahremberg to the very walls of Barcelona. About the same time the Duc de Noailles invested Gironne, and took it in the severity of the winter weather; and thus was Charles, after a few months' campaign, which began so splendidly, stripped of the whole Spanish monarchy, with the exception of Catalonia, which was itself greatly exposed and very inefficiently defended.

At home the new Parliament met on the 25th of November. There was a strong infusion of Tories sent up, but there was still also a strong party of Whigs. The Tories, however, carried the Speakership in the person of Mr. Bromley, in the place of the late Whig Speaker, Onslow; but the chief managers of the Sacheverell trial had managed to secure their own return. The queen, on the other hand, showed her prejudice by knighting Mr. Constantine Phipps, Sacheverell's counsel, and making him Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and giving other promotions to marked Tories. In her Speech, Anne declared that she would support the Church of England, maintain the Constitution, and grant the indulgence allowed by law to scrupulous consciences. The word was no longer "toleration," but "indulgence," the very phrase used by Sacheverell—another proof of the queen's leaning towards the doctor. And this phrase now became general in the High Church, the doctrine being that whatever liberty the Dissenters enjoyed was of indulgence, and not of right. In the House of Lords the Earl of Scarborough moved the usual vote of thanks to the Duke of Marlborough, but the Duke of Argyll opposed it; and the duke's friends let the matter drop, hoping to carry it when the duke returned. Other signs of the great change which had taken place in the domestic policy of the nation quickly followed. The Earl of Peterborough, who had so long suffered from the overwhelming shade of Marlborough, was appointed Ambassador-Extraordinary to the Imperial Court. The Earl of Rivers was appointed Ambassador to Hanover; and Richard Hill, a kinsman of Mrs. Masham, Ambassador-Extraordinary to the States-General, and also to the Council of State appointed for the government of the Spanish Netherlands, in the place of Lieutenant-General Cadogan. Colonels Meredith, Macartney, and Honeywood, were deprived of their regiments for drinking confusion to the enemies of the Duke of Marlborough. The Marlborough reign was at an end.

The Tories being now in power, there was an entire revolution of opinion and of measures. Everything which had been applauded and encouraged under the Whigs was now to be decried; everything which had been kept down was to be set on high. When Marlborough, therefore,[599] arrived during the Christmas holidays, it was to a most cold reception. There were no longer popular acclamations, nor Lords and Commons hurrying to offer him thanks and eulogies for his eminent services. The public mind had been carefully indoctrinated on this point, and the great commander landed in a most expressive silence. He waited, as was his duty, on the queen, was admitted to about half an hours audience, and the next morning attended a meeting of the Privy Council. But both in the Presence and the Council Chamber the same ominous and freezing silence reigned. The queen plainly told him that he was now no longer to expect the thanks of Parliament as formerly; and she added that, notwithstanding, she trusted he would act in harmony with her Ministers. Marlborough showed no outward signs of resentment. He was anxious still to continue the command of the army, and to put the finish to his successes by compelling a satisfactory peace from Louis, now reduced to the most terrible straits.

The duke saw that it was time for the duchess to resign her offices. The queen had repeatedly insisted to Marlborough that the duchess should deliver up the gold keys, the token of her offices of Groom of the Stole and Mistress of the Robes; but that resolute woman refused to comply. Marlborough, unable to obtain the keys, endeavoured to mollify the queen's anger at the delay. His appeal, however, did not decrease the queen's impatience, and Marlborough imperatively demanded the keys from his wife. For some time she vehemently refused to part with them, but after a violent and stormy altercation (according to Cunningham) she finished by flinging them at his head. The duke snatched them up and hurried to the palace with them, where, says the same authority, the Queen received them with far greater pleasure than if he had brought her the spoils of the army; at which, he says, "the duchess flew about the town in a rage, and with eyes and words full of vengeance."

There was no doubt that the queen's exultation was great at being at length liberated from the heavy and imperious yoke of the Marlboroughs. People who had absented themselves from Court for years, now presented themselves there to pay their respects, and, amongst them, the Duke of Beaufort congratulated Anne that he could now salute his queen in reality. The duchess's places were immediately given to the Duchess of Somerset and Mrs. Masham. The Tory raid against the Whigs was pursued with unpausing ardour. An inquiry was set on foot in the Lords into the conduct of the war in Spain. The Earl of Peterborough's turn was now come. He was examined before a committee, and imputed the mismanagement of the war in Spain to Galway and General Stanhope. Galway made an able defence, but the House, notwithstanding, passed a resolution that Lord Peterborough had most honourably distinguished himself by his able counsels and active services in Spain; and that Galway, Lord Tyrawley, and General Stanhope had been very culpable in advising an offensive war in Spain, which had caused all our misfortunes, and especially the battle of Almanza. But in blaming the generals they blamed also the Ministers who sanctioned the war, and then so badly supported it. The failure of the attempt on Toulon was attributed to the same cause. Thanks were voted to Lord Peterborough; and in rendering them it was not forgotten to make some caustic criticisms on Marlborough.

To increase the power of the Tory landlords in the House of Commons, and diminish that of the Whig supporters in the boroughs, an Act was introduced—and the Commons were weak enough to pass it—making it necessary that every candidate for Parliament in the counties should possess six hundred a year in real property, and for a borough seat three hundred; and this law lasted to our time, when, however, it was repealed.

But in spite of the triumphant position of the Tories, Harley found his individual position far from enviable. His caution made him inimical to the more violent Tories, who were impatient to exercise their power without restraint; of which his colleague St. John, at once ambitious and unprincipled, artfully availed himself to undermine the man by whom he had risen. But an incident occurred to excite a fresh interest in Harley, and give a new impetus to his power. Amongst the horde of foreigners—Germans, Italians, French, and Poles—who contrived to draw English money by acting as spies on their own governments, and very frequently on the English one too, was the so-called Marquis of Guiscard. This man had been in receipt of five hundred pounds a year. He had obtained the salary, it is said, through St. John, being a devoted companion of that accomplished scoundrel in his dissipations. Harley doubted the value of his services, and reduced the pension to four hundred pounds a year; and St. John is also said to have suffered him to endure the curtailment without much remonstrance, and[600] then, to avoid Guiscard's importunities, refused to see him. Guiscard immediately offered his services to the French Government as a spy on the English Court, through a letter to one Moreau, a banker of Paris. The letter was intercepted, and Guiscard arrested. On being brought before the Privy Council he desired to speak in private to St. John, whom, it is suspected, he intended to assassinate, but St. John refused his demand. He then exclaimed, "That is hard! not one word!" and suddenly stepping up to Harley, he cried, "Have at thee, then!" and stabbed him with his penknife. The knife, striking against the breastbone, broke near the handle; but the excited foreigner struck him again with such force that Harley fell to the ground covered with blood. St. John, seeing Harley fall, exclaimed, "The villain has killed Mr. Harley!" drew his sword, and ran him through. The whole Council was up and in confusion. All drew their swords and surrounded the murderous prisoner. He was wounded in various places, and knocked down by blows from the hands of others. The doorkeepers and messengers rushed in at the noise, and Guiscard was dragged to prison. He died in Newgate of his wounds; and such was the curiosity of the populace to see his body that the turnkey kept it in pickle, and made a good sum by showing him for several days.

Harley's wound was not serious, but it served to make a political hero and martyr of him; Guiscard being represented as a Papist, and instigated from France to destroy this champion of England and the Church. On Harley's appearance in the House of Commons he was congratulated on his happy escape in a most eulogistic speech by the Speaker; and an Act was passed, making it felony without benefit of clergy to attempt the life of a Privy Councillor. The Earl of Rochester dying at this juncture, left Harley entirely at the head of the Cabinet, and he was immediately raised to the peerage, first as Baron Wigmore, and then as Earl of Oxford and Mortimer. He was, moreover, appointed Lord Treasurer, much to his own gratification and glory, but little to the furtherance of the national business, for he was naturally inert and indecisive, whilst all around him was a scandalous scene of corruption, intrigue, and neglect.

Marlborough had set out for Holland in the month of February. He assembled his army at Orchies, between Lisle and Douay, about the middle of April, and Marshal Villars encamped between Cambray and Arras. The duke soon after passed the Scarpe, and took post between Douay and Bouchain, where he was joined by his faithful comrade-in-arms Prince Eugene; but that great general was soon compelled to leave him to repel the French forces which were directed against Germany on the Upper Rhine. The army of Marshal Villars was a very numerous one, and he had defended his lines with redoubts and other works so formidably that he thought he would at last checkmate Marlborough. These lines extended from Bouchain, on the Scheldt, along the Sanset and the Scarpe to Arras, and thence along the Upper Scarpe to Cambray. But Marlborough did not despair of entering them by stratagem, if not by force. He ordered a great quantity of fascines to be prepared, and made a pretence of a direct attack on the lines where he was; but he at the same time secretly despatched Generals Cadogan and Hompesch to surprise the passage of the Sanset at Arleux. Brigadier Sutton was also despatched with the artillery and pontoons to lay bridges over the canals near Goulezen, and over the Scarpe at Vitry. By the time that these operations could be effected, Marlborough suddenly quitted his position at nine in the evening, marched the whole of his army through the night, and by five in the morning had crossed the Scarpe at Vitry. There, receiving the information that Hompesch had secured the passes of the Sanset and the Scheldt, Marlborough continued his march on Arleux; and, after a march of ten leagues without halting, was encamped on the Scheldt between Estrun and Ois. Thus, by this unexampled dexterity and exertion, he was completely within the boasted impregnable lines of Villars. This general, on becoming aware of his opponent's motions, pursued him with headlong haste, but he arrived too late to prevent his design; and, whilst the Duke of Marlborough was extolled as a general of consummate ability, Villars was ridiculed even by his own officers for suffering himself to be outwitted.

The Dutch deputies this time, so far from retarding the duke's enterprise, were desirous that he should at once attack Villars; but he would not hazard a battle whilst his men were fatigued by their enormous march. He determined, on the contrary, to commence the siege of Bouchain. The place was remarkably strong, and difficult of access from its situation in a marsh; yet, by the 10th of August, 1711, he had compelled it to surrender, the garrison of six thousand becoming prisoners of war. With this exploit Marlborough closed his brilliant career. His enemies at home—Oxford, St. John, Dartmouth, and the Tories in[601] general—had fondly hoped that this campaign he was going to certain defeat and disgrace; but, in spite of all his disadvantages, he had placed the Allied armies, by this conquest of Bouchain, on the highway to Paris. The Allies were in possession of the Meuse, almost as far as the Sambre; of the Scheldt from Tournai; and of the Lys as far as it was navigable. They had reduced Spanish Guelderland, Limburg, Brabant, and Flanders, with the greatest part of Hainault, and were in a position, by one more vigorous campaign, to carry the war to the very gates of Louis's capital. Such a triumph, however, the malice of the Tories had determined that Britain and the world should not witness. After the capture of Bouchain, the Allied armies went into quarters in the frontier towns, ready for the campaign of the spring; and in the middle of November Marlborough returned to England.

THE FRACAS IN THE PRIVY COUNCIL. (See p. 600.)

In Spain, whither the Duke of Argyll had been sent to command the English forces, nothing had been done, from the want of everything to carry on the war, and the expedition of Mrs. Masham's brother Jack Hill to Quebec had met with the fate which might have been expected. This expedition had been planned by Colonel Nicholson, who had taken possession of Nova Scotia and garrisoned Port Royal. He had brought to England four American Indians to excite attention, and represented the great advantages which would accrue from the conquest of Canada and the expulsion of the French from that part of the world. The idea was excellent, and, had it been carried out with ability, might have anticipated the policy of Lord Chatham and the victory of Wolfe; but the Ministers were not hearty in the cause. Harley is said to have been averse from it, and St. John to have advocated it because he saw that it would gratify Mrs. Masham. In an ill-advised hour, therefore, the command of this important expedition was confided to a man against whose total unfitness for command of every sort Marlborough had earnestly warned them. At Boston, in New England, the expedition was joined by two regiments of colonists and about four thousand men, consisting of American planters, Palatines, and Indians, encamped at Albany, in order to march by land into Canada, whilst[602] the fleet advanced up the St. Lawrence. The squadron had already entered the river when, on the 21st of August, it was assailed by a violent tempest. Eight transports were driven aground and wrecked, and eight hundred men perished—some by drowning, others by the tomahawks of the Indians and the muskets of the French colonists. The damage, however, was of no important extent to a really able commander; but the poor witless Hill, thrust into responsibility by favouritism, was utterly confounded. The fleet put back to Spanish River Bay, where a council was held, and, as the forces were only victualled for six weeks, it was determined to return home.

But whilst Marlborough had been ably preparing the way in Flanders for finishing the war in triumph, and compelling the King of France to make such a peace as should secure the peace of Europe and indemnify England for all that she had suffered and expended for that object, the Tory Ministers and the queen had been as busy undermining and rendering abortive his plans and exertions. They were determined to make peace at any cost, so that the Whigs should receive nothing but reproaches from the nation for having led it into so long and bloody a war without any real results. The Tories were to render the war useless, and the Whigs to bear the blame of it.

St. John was clearly ready to admit the Pretender instead of the House of Hanover, and had been in close correspondence with the Court of St. Germains, and there is every reason to believe that it was with the cognisance and approval of the queen, who hated the House of Hanover. But Harley was bent on maintaining the Protestant succession, whilst he was equally determined on the achievement of a peace damaging to the Whigs. He knew too well that, however the queen might lean towards the restoration of her brother, the Pretender, the nation would never submit to it. He therefore entered into a secret negotiation with France on another basis to that of St. John.

Nothing is more certain than that the queen was strongly inclined to admit the claims of her brother, James Stuart, the Old Pretender, if he could be brought to renounce the Catholic religion, and that she entered into a correspondence on this head. It is true that she continued to express doubts of his being really her brother, yet she every now and then let observations escape her which showed that she really believed him to be so. It was on the ground of this conviction that she corresponded with him regarding his succession to the Crown, and was only compelled to give up his claim because she could not bring him to abandon his attachment to his religion. Amongst those who supported the claims of the Pretender were her uncle Rochester and Marshal Tallard—still prisoner of war at Nottingham, and kept there by Louis on the understanding that he was more useful there as a secret negotiator than he would be anywhere else at the head of an army.

After the disgrace of Guiscard the Abbé Gualtier became the agent of Harley for carrying on the proposals for peace with France. Gualtier was a man of very infamous life, but he was a more cautious and diplomatic man than Guiscard. He and Tallard urged on the Pretender's claims to the last moment. So late as May of the year 1711 the Pretender addressed a long letter to Queen Anne, which is to be seen in the Macpherson State Papers, in which, addressing her as his sister, he appeals to her by the natural affection which he bears her, and which he protests that their common father bore her till his death, to see him righted. He reminds her of her promises which she had made to her father on this head, and argues that, as he never would relinquish his just claims, the only way to prevent the continual excitement, disquietude, and wars injurious to the realm, is to admit his claim. And he concludes thus:—"And now, madam, as you tender your own honour and happiness, and the preservation and re-establishment of an ancient royal family, the safety and welfare of a brave people, who are almost sinking under present weights, and have reason to fear far greater, who have no reason to complain of me, and whom I must still and do love as my own, I conjure you to meet me in this friendly way of composing our differences, by which only we can hope for those good effects which will make us both happy, yourself more glorious than in all the other parts of your life, and your memory dear to all posterity."

The Pretender offered to give all liberty to the Church and to the Dissenters, but he would not abandon his own religion. On reading this letter the disappointed queen said to the Duke of Buckingham—who had married her half-sister, James II.'s natural daughter Catherine, by Catherine Sedley, and who was in her confidence—"How can I serve him, my lord? You well know that a Papist cannot enjoy this crown in peace. Why has the example of the father no weight with the son?" Here she acknowledged that the Pretender was the son of James. But she added, "He prefers his religious errors to the throne of a great kingdom; he must thank himself, therefore, for[603] his exclusion." Still she begged Buckingham to try further to persuade him; it was in vain, and Anne gave up the hope of his restoration, and turned her whole mind to the conclusion of a peace including the Protestant succession.

Gualtier was despatched to Versailles secretly, and, to avoid detection, without any papers, but with full instructions relating to the proposals for peace. He introduced himself to De Torcy, the Prime Minister of Louis, and assured him that the English Government was prepared to enter into negotiations for peace independently of the Dutch, whom De Torcy had found so immovable. This was delightful news to the French Minister, who was overwhelmed with the necessities of France, which were come to that pass that peace on any terms, or invasion, appeared inevitable. In his own memoirs De Torcy says that "to ask a French Minister then whether he wished for peace, was like asking a man suffering under a long and dangerous malady whether he wished to be better." On being convinced that Gualtier was a bonâ-fide agent of the English Court, the French Court was thrown into the most delightful astonishment. Gualtier told De Torcy that it was not necessary to commit himself by written documents on the matter; he had only to write a simple note to Lord Jersey, saying that he was glad to have heard of his lordship's health through the Abbé, and had charged him with his thanks; that this would give the English Ministers to understand that their proposition had been favourably entertained, and that the negotiation would be gone into in earnest.

So far as the English Ministers were concerned, they now rushed on with that reckless impetuosity of which wily politicians like Louis and De Torcy were sure to take advantage. Gualtier was authorised to write to De Torcy in the name of the English Ministry, requesting his most Christian Majesty to communicate to them the terms on which he would feel disposed to make a general peace—just as if England, and not France, were at an extremity, and in a condition not to dictate, but only to accept of terms. Louis was so general in his answer that it was necessary for Gualtier to make another journey to Versailles—thus giving the idea that it was England rather than France which was all anxiety for a peace. Gualtier returned with certain propositions, but Marlborough was now driving Villars before him, and was in possession of Bouchain, and prepared to make himself master of Paris in another campaign. We were entitled to make the amplest demands, and our Allies were entitled to know what they were, and to enjoy the benefit of circumstances. Our Ministers continued to negotiate without the Dutch and Germans, because they meant to accept terms which they knew their allies would not condescend to. But the intelligence of our proceedings soon reached the Hague, and the States-General quickly demanded an explanation, and at the same time announced again to De Torcy, that they were prepared to treat in co-operation with England. The English Ministers were thereupon compelled to communicate the French memorial to the States-General. Lord Raby, the British ambassador at the Hague, wrote urging the necessity of keeping faith with the Dutch, who were greatly incensed at our taking measures for a peace without them, and apprising them that every letter received from France conveyed the delight of the French in the prospect of being able to sow discord amongst the Allies. The States soon informed the Ministers of England that they were quite prepared to go along with them in the treaty for peace, but they would insist on the conditions being ample and satisfactory. In order to convert Lord Raby into a devoted advocate of a disgraceful and undignified policy, St. John wrote to inform him that it was her Majesty's pleasure that he should come over to England, in order to make himself perfect master of the important subjects about to be discussed. Lord Raby was a Wentworth, nearly allied in descent to the Earl of Strafford who was beheaded in the time of Charles I., and he had long been soliciting for himself the renewal of that title. St. John therefore adroitly announced to him that, on his reaching London, it was her Majesty's gracious intention to confer that honour upon him. This intimation at once threw Raby into a fever of gratitude, and he made the most ardent professions of doing all in his power to serve her Majesty.

MARLBOROUGH HOUSE IN THE TIME OF ANNE.

These obstacles to their entering into a dishonourable peace being removed, Gualtier was once more despatched to Versailles, and this time accompanied by Matthew Prior, a poet of some pretension and much popularity, but much more distinguished as a diplomatist. He had lived in France, knew the French and French Court well, having been secretary to the embassies of the Earls of Portland and Jersey. Prior was a man of courtly and insinuating manners, and devoted to Harley and the Tory interest. The propositions which he brought from the queen as[604] the basis of the peace were—that the Dutch should have a barrier in the Netherlands; that the German Empire should have another on the Rhine; that the Duke of Savoy should receive back all towns or territories taken during the war; that proper protection should be obtained for the trade of England and Holland; that France should acknowledge the title of Anne and the Protestant succession; that the fortifications of Dunkirk should be destroyed; that Gibraltar and Port Mahon should continue in British possession; that Newfoundland and Hudson's Bay should also be acknowledged as British, but that the French should be allowed to trade to Hudson's Bay; that in other respects France and England should retain their possessions in America as they did before the war; that the Assiento, or contract for supplying the Spanish Colonies of South America with slaves—which had formerly been held by the Portuguese, but, since 1702, by the French—should be made over to England, with four towns on the Spanish Main, anywhere between the Straits of Magellan and California, as depôts for the slaves when first brought over. The terms might have been better, but they were substantial. As Prior and Gualtier had no powers to accept terms from France, M. Mesnager, an expert diplomatist, deputy from Rouen to the Board of Trade in Paris, was despatched to London with the English envoys. They were to return in all secrecy, and Mesnager was furnished with certain instructions wholly unknown to Prior and Gualtier. These were, that an equivalent for the destruction of the fortifications of Dunkirk was to be demanded; and that some towns in Flanders which the French had lost, particularly Lille and Tournay, should be restored. These demands he was to keep very close, and only cautiously but firmly open to the principal negotiators. But the secret was out that a treaty was on foot with France, and the general opinion was that the Ministers were bent on making peace on any terms. The Government, nevertheless, kept the matter as much out of sight as possible. The queen sent Prior to apologise to Mesnager for his being received in so secret a manner, and Oxford, St. John, Jersey, and Shrewsbury were appointed to confer with him privately. On the 8th of[605] October the English Commissioners and Mesnager had agreed upon the preliminaries and signed them. Mesnager was then privately introduced to the queen at Windsor, who made no secret of her anxiety for peace, telling him she would do all in her power to complete the treaty and live in good-fellowship with the King of France, to whom she was so closely allied in blood. At supper she said publicly that she had agreed to treat with France. The Ministers were just as incautious, for Swift was invited by St. John the same evening to sup with him and a small party in his apartments in Windsor Castle. This party consisted of no other persons than Mesnager himself, Gualtier, and the infamous Abbé Dubois, tutor to the young Duke of Orleans, this profligate having also been engaged in assisting Mesnager in the treaty. With them was Prior. All these particulars Swift wrote, as he wrote everything, to Stella in Ireland. Yet when the preliminaries were handed to Count Gallas, the Imperial ambassador, who, in his indignation, immediately had them translated and inserted in one of the daily papers, the queen was so angry that she forbade his reappearing at Court, and informed him that he could quit the kingdom as soon as he thought proper. He departed immediately, and the queen, to prevent an explosion on the part of the Allies, wrote to the Emperor to say that she should be happy to receive any other person that he might send. Raby, now Earl of Strafford, was hurried to the Hague to announce to the States the fact of her having signed these preliminaries, and to desire them to appoint a spot where the Plenipotentiaries of the Allies and France should meet to discuss them.[606] Both the Dutch and the Emperor were startled and greatly confounded at the discovery of the nature of the terms accepted. They used every means to persuade the queen to draw back and accept no terms except those which had been offered to France after the battle of Malplaquet, but rather to push on the war vigorously, certain that they must very soon obtain all they demanded.

HENRY ST. JOHN (AFTERWARDS VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE).

Nor was the excitement less at home. The news was out—the preliminaries were before the public by the act of the Imperial ambassador, and the Whigs were in a fury of indignation. They accused the Ministers of being about to sacrifice the country, its power, and interests to a shameful cowardice at the very moment that the labours and sufferings of years had brought it to the verge of triumph, and when Louis XIV. was old and tottering into the grave, leaving his kingdom exhausted and powerless. But notwithstanding the violent opposition both at home and abroad, the Ministers persisted in their course. The queen wrote to the Electress Sophia of Hanover, entreating her and her son to use their exertions with the Allies for the peace of Europe. She sent over the Earl of Rivers to further her appeal; but the Electoral Prince, so far from dreading to endanger his succession, sent back a letter by Earl Rivers to the queen, strongly condemning the terms on which the peace was proposed, and he ordered his ambassador, the Baron von Bothmar, to present a memorial to the queen, showing the pernicious consequences to Europe of allowing Philip to retain Spain and the Indies. This bold and independent act greatly exasperated the queen and her Ministers, and was extolled by the Whigs. There had been attempts to influence the Elector by offering him the command of the army in Flanders, in case of the removal of Marlborough, but that also he declined.

Many of the Tories were as much opposed to the terms of the treaty as the Whigs, and it was proposed to unite in a strong remonstrance against the conduct of the Ministers in being willing to accept them; but the intention getting wind, the queen suddenly prorogued Parliament to the 7th of December, with the expectation of the arrival of absent Scottish peers, who were all Tories, and a determination, if necessary, to create a batch of English Tory peers. Notwithstanding all resistance, it was finally settled with the Allies that their representatives should meet those of England and France, to treat for a general peace, at Utrecht, on the 1st of January, 1712.

The Ministers, in the meantime, went on strengthening their position. Sir Simon Harcourt was created Baron Harcourt, and was raised from Lord Keeper of the Seal to Lord Chancellor; the Duke of Buckingham was appointed President of the Council in place of Lord Rochester, deceased, and was succeeded in his office of Steward of the Household by Earl Paulet, who had quitted the Treasury to make way for Harley's elevation to the Treasurership. The Duke of Newcastle dying, Robinson, Bishop of Bristol, was made Lord Privy Seal, a new thing since the days of Wolsey and Laud for a Churchman. In Scotland the Jacobites were so much elated by the proceedings of the Tories, and by whispers of what really took place, while Mesnager was in secret conference with the queen—namely, a zealous advocacy on his part of the setting aside the Protestant succession, and the re-admission of the Pretender's claims—that they proceeded to great lengths. They were in the end so daring as to induce the Faculty of Advocates of Edinburgh to receive a medal of the Pretender from the same ardent Duchess of Gordon who had sent him word to come when he pleased, and to what port he pleased, and that he would be well received. This medal had on the obverse side a head of the Pretender, with the words, "Cujus est?" and on the reverse the island of Britain and the word "Reddite." This they not only received, but sent hearty thanks to the duchess for it. The Hanoverian Ambassador was made aware of this incident, and presented a memorial on the subject, which, however, only served to bring Sir David Dalrymple, a zealous Whig and advocate for the Protestant succession, into trouble, on the plea that he ought to have prosecuted Mr. Dundas of Arniston for returning public thanks for the medal, whilst Arniston himself, who boldly published a vindication of his conduct, was suffered to escape.

On the opening of Parliament on the 7th of December, the queen announced that "notwithstanding the arts of those who delighted in war, both time and place were appointed for opening the treaty for a general peace." This was carrying into the Royal Speech the animus which the Tories had shown against the Whigs in all their speeches and pamphlets lately. They had endeavoured to make the Whigs odious to the nation as a faction bent on war solely for its own selfish interests, and regardless of the interests of the nation or the sufferings of mankind. Though the Speech contained other[607] matters, everything else passed without criticism or notice. This declaration produced a vehement sensation, and roused all the party fire on both sides. The Ministers were astonished to see the Earl of Nottingham, who had hitherto gone with them, now adopt the Whig side in a very vigorous and telling speech. He denounced the preliminaries as basely surrendering the great objects of the war, and moved that a clause should be inserted in the Address to the effect that no peace could be safe or honourable to Great Britain or to Europe, if Spain and the Indies should be allotted to any branch of the House of Bourbon. In the discussion it was shown that the statement in the queen's Speech, that the Allies were all prepared to adopt the preliminaries, was utterly untrue. The Earl of Anglesey contended, on the other side, that it was high time to ease the nation of the monstrous burthens of the war; and he aimed some heavy blows at the Duke of Marlborough, affirming that a good peace might have been effected after the battle of Ramillies, but for the private interests of certain persons.

This called up Marlborough in his own defence. He bowed towards the place where the queen was listening to the debate incognita, and appealed to her, much to her embarrassment, whether, when he had the honour to serve her Majesty as plenipotentiary as well as general, he had not always faithfully informed her and her Council of all the proposals of peace which had been made, and had desired instructions for his guidance in such affairs. He appealed also to Heaven, whether he was not always anxious for a safe, honourable, and lasting peace, and whether he was not always very far from entertaining any design of prolonging the war for his own private advantage, as his enemies had most falsely insinuated. When the question was put, the amendment of the Earl of Nottingham was carried by a majority of sixty-two to fifty-four—that is, of only eight—notwithstanding all the exertions of the Court party, and much to its astonishment. In the Commons, however, the Ministry had a stronger party, and there they assured the queen in their Address that they would do all in their power to disappoint as well the acts and designs of those who for private views might delight in war, as the hopes of the enemy conceived from the divisions amongst themselves. Walpole moved an amendment similar to that of the Lords, and it was lost by a majority of two hundred and thirty-two to one hundred and six.

The Ministers were determined now to be rid of Marlborough. He not only stood at the head of the Whigs at home, and threw his great military reputation into the scale against the Tories in this question of peace or war, but whilst he retained his command of the army, he immensely strengthened the opposition of the Allies to the present terms of pacification. It was resolved that he should be dismissed, a measure which they felt would destroy much of his influence. The Whigs, moreover, at this crisis fell into a snare laid for them by the Earl of Nottingham, which extremely damaged them, and in the same proportion benefited the Tories. He persuaded them that if they would only consent to the passing of the Occasional Conformity Bill, there were numerous persons of influence ready to quit the ranks of Oxford and St. John; and though the Whigs were entirely opposed in principle to this illiberal and unjust measure, they were weak enough, in the hope of strengthening their party, to permit it to pass. The Dissenters, greatly exasperated at this treachery, abandoned the Whig cause; the promised proselytes did not come over, and Lord Dartmouth adds that "Lord Nottingham himself had the mortification afterwards to see his Bill repulsed with some scorn, and himself not much better treated."

In this state of affairs closed the year 1711. During the Christmas holiday the Ministry matured several measures for the advancement of their party. They were still in a minority in the Lords, and they sought to remedy this by inducing the queen to create twelve new peers. Lord Dartmouth, in his notes to Burnet, expresses his astonishment on seeing the queen suddenly take from her pocket a list of twelve new lords, and ordering him to bring warrants for them. Dartmouth, unprepared for so sweeping a measure, asked whether her Majesty intended to have them all made at once; and Anne replied, "Certainly; that the Whigs and Lord Marlborough did all they could to distress her; that she had made fewer lords than any of her predecessors; and that she must help herself as well as she could." Among these new peers were again two Scotsmen, but not peers, only the sons of peers, and the husband of her favourite, Mrs. Masham. The witty Lord Wharton did not spare a joke upon them at the time, by asking one of them, when the question was put, whether "they voted by their foreman?" as though they had been a jury.

The disgrace of Marlborough was now completed. On the 21st of December he had been[608] charged in the House of Commons with having made use of his command of the army to make enormous sums of money at the expense of the men; that he had appropriated one hundred and seventy-seven thousand pounds by taking two and a half per cent. on all subsidies for foreign troops maintained by England, and sixty-three thousand pounds from Sir Solomon de Medina and Antonio Alvarez Machado, the Jew contractors for bread for the army; that his secretary, Cardonnel, had exacted five hundred gold ducats from the contractors each time a new contract was signed, all which had to be taken out of the quality of the food or clothing of the soldiers. The queen therefore wrote to him, informing him that as there was a serious charge made against him by the Commissioners of Accounts, she thought it best to dismiss him from all his employments in order that the matter might be impartially investigated. Nor did she neglect to add that the conduct of his wife towards herself had made her more willing to adopt this measure.

Marlborough, in defence, pleaded to the queen, as he had to the Commissioners of Inquiry, that he had appropriated nothing which had not been the established perquisites of the commander-in-chief of the army in the Low Countries both before the Revolution and since; and that, whatever sums he had received from those sources, he had employed in the service of the public in keeping secret correspondence, and in getting intelligence of the enemy's motions and designs; and that, and he could certainly say it with justice, he had employed this money so successfully, that he had on no occasion suffered himself to be surprised, but had often been able to surprise and defeat the enemy. To this cause, next to the blessing of God and the bravery of the troops, he attributed most of the advantages of the war. There can be little doubt that Marlborough made the best of the power granted him for appropriating these sums; that was his weak point; but he does not appear to have exceeded the letter of his warrant; and the truth is that the system itself was more in fault than the general.

But notwithstanding Marlborough's proofs that his appropriations were according to long-established custom, the Commons admitted no such plea. They voted that the two and a half per cent. deducted by him from the pay of the foreign troops was public money, and that he ought to account for it. They threatened to institute proceedings for its recovery through the law officers of the Crown, and they expelled Cardonnel, the duke's secretary, from the House for his receipt of the fees mentioned in the contracts. They had the satisfaction, also, of punishing Robert Walpole, one of Marlborough's most staunch defenders, for taking, when Secretary of War, five hundred guineas, and a note for five hundred more, on the signing of a contract for forage for her Majesty's troops quartered in Scotland. The deed deserved punishment, but it was one which all secretaries perpetrated equally with Walpole, as he showed, and which would never have been noticed had Walpole yielded to the Tory entreaties and carried his great abilities to their side. They, however, voted the fact a high breach of trust, and of notorious corruption, and ordered his expulsion from the House and his committal to the Tower. The borough of Lynn, which Walpole represented, immediately re-elected him; but the Commons pronounced him incapable of sitting in that Parliament, and declared the election void.

[609]

INDEX

• Abjuration Oath, The, 423.
• Adjutators, The, 62.
• "Agreement of the People," The, 84.
• Aghrim, Battle of, 446.
• Allegiance and Supremacy, Act of, 238.
• Allen, plot against Cromwell, 130.
• Almanza, Battle of, 576.
• Amboyna, the massacre of Englishmen by Dutch, 111.
• America, Rise of colonies in, 167.
• Anabaptists denounce Cromwell, 124;
• outbreak among, 140.
• Anne, Queen, reconciled with William, 479;
• succeeds to the throne, 535;
• speech to Parliament, her Tory bias, 536;
• coronation of, 538;
• Jacobite plot against, 547;
• "Bounty," 549;
• the union between England and Scotland, 573;
• letter from the Pretender, 602.
• Apprentices, London, petition the Commons, 5;
• fight at Westminster, 6.
• Architecture during the Stuart period, 371.
• Argyll, Earl of, in conflict with Montrose, 42;
• defeated by Montrose, 43.
• Argyll, Marquis of, Execution of, 202.
• Argyll, Earl of (9th Earl), accused of high treason, 272;
• expedition against James II., 296;
• capture and execution of, 297.
• Army, Reduction of the standing, 502-507.
• Arundel Marbles, The, 186.
• Ashburnham, Lord, 51.
• Assembly, The General, address to Charles I., 43.
• "Assize, The Bloody," 304-306;
• trial of Lady Alice Lisle, interference of James II., 305;
• at Exeter and Taunton, 306.
• Association for defence of the king, 488.
• Athlone, Capture of, 443-445.
• Ayscough, Admiral Sir George, the reduction of Barbadoes, suspected of Royalist sympathies by Parliament, 112.
• Baden, Prince of, the war against Louis XIV., 552;
• jealousy of Marlborough, 552, 554.
• Bank of England established, 471.
• Barclay, plot against William III., 485.
• "Barebone's Parliament," 119.
• Baxter, Richard, 363.
• Beachy Head, Battle of, 434.
• Beaumont, Francis, 175.
• Bedloe, the informer, 254.
• Benbow, Admiral, 541.
• Berkeley, Sir John, 71, 72;
• messenger between Charles I. and Cromwell, 74.
• Bishops, Trial of the Seven, 328-331;
• public sympathy during, 330;
• the acquittal, 331.
• Blake, Admiral Robert, siege of Lyme Regis, 30;
• conflicts with Prince Rupert, 110;
• encounters van Tromp, 112;
• defeats the Dutch fleet, 123;
• expedition against France, 134;
• and expedition against Spain, 136;
• battle of Santa Cruz, 143;
• death of, 144.
• Blenheim, Battle of, 555.
• Bolingbroke, Lord, 594;
• correspondence with the Pretender, 602.
• Borlase, Sir John, 2.
• Bothwell Brig, Battle of, 263.
• Boyd, Rev. Zachary, preaches against Cromwell, 105.
• Boyne, Battle of the, 430.
• Bradshaw, John, arraignment of Charles I., 86-88;
• arguments against the absolutism of kings, 87.
• Breda, Charles II. at, 162;
• Declaration of, 163.
• Bristol, Earl of, charge against Charles II., 211.
• Bristol, Siege of, 44.
• Browne, Sir Thomas, 183.
• Browne, William, 180.
• Buckingham, Lord, 227.
• Burnet, Bishop, memorial to William of Orange, 336;
• on tithes, 548;
• unpopularity with the Tories, 591.
• Butler, Samuel, 358.
• Byng, Admiral Sir George, 580.
• Cabal, The, 227, 238.
• Cameronians, The, 271.
• Capel, Lord, impeached of high treason by the Commons, 12;
• trial and execution of, 94.
• Carew, Thomas, 178.
• Carisbrooke Castle, Charles I. at, 73.
• "Case of the Army," The, 71.
• Catherine of Portugal, marriage to Charles II., 205.
• Catholics, Injunctions against, in Ireland, 2;
• massacre of Protestants, resolution by Parliament, 3;
• secret sympathy of Charles I. with, 286;
• efforts of James II. in favour of, 311;
• a Privy Council of, livings in the Church of England given to, 312;
• triumph in England, riots in London, 314;
• trial of "Julian" Johnson, crusade against Protestantism in Scotland and Ireland, 315, 316;
• dismissal of Rochester and Clarendon, 318;
• the Declaration of Indulgence, 319;
• policy of William of Orange, 320;
• supremacy in the Universities, 325;
• opposition to James II. by Protestant bishops, 327;
• an army of Irish, 332;
• memorial to William of Orange, concessions to Protestants by James II., 336;
• William's declaration, 338.
• Cevennes, Insurrections in the, 544.
• Chalgrove, Battle at, 20.
• Chapman, Thomas, 174.
• Charles I. receives a deputation of Catholics, 2;
• chagrined at proceedings of the Commons, presented with the "Remonstrance," speech to the Commons, 4;
• prepares articles of high treason against five Commoners, visit to the Houses of Parliament, 7;
• decides on war, passes two important bills, 8;
• receives declaration from Parliament, retires to York, 10;
• fails in his attempt to enter Hull, 11;
• insists on his demands, raises his standard at Nottingham, 14;
• his inconsistency, Battle of Edgehill, 15;
• scheme for the extinction of Parliament, 27;
• defeats Parliamentary troops under Essex, 30;
• tries accommodation, 35;
• propositions from the Scots, 36;
• battle of Naseby, 39, 40;
• flight into Wales, 42;
• endeavours to join Montrose, 44;
• ruin virtually complete, 46;
• proposals contemptuously treated by Parliament, 48;
• disavowal of treaty with Irish Catholics, 49;
• offer of negotiations to Parliament, 50;
• flight from Oxford, 51;
• surrenders to the Scots, 52;
• endeavours to raise army from Ireland and France, discusses Episcopacy and Presbytery, 55;
• meditates escape from England, 57;
• his stubbornness, 70;
• escape from Hampton Court, at Carisbrooke Castle, 72;
• a close prisoner, 74;
• reaction in his favour, 75;
• resolve regarding Presbyterianism, 80;
• concessions, at Hurst Castle, 82;
• his trial, 86-88;
• execution, 90.
• Charles II. proclaimed king in Scotland, 92;
• reception among the Scots, 101;
• agrees to take the Covenant, 102;
• demands by the Assembly, 108;
• attempted flight, concessions by the Covenanters, 104;
• crowned at Scone, invades England, defeated at Worcester, escapes to Normandy, 106;
• his proclamation from Paris, 124;
• his life in France, 132;
• rising in England in his favour, 154;
• his character, 193;
• first Privy Council, 194;
• his marriage, 205;
• loss of prestige to France, 210;
• war with Holland, 214;
• the Treaty of Dover, 231;
• his embarrassments, 267;
• described by Macaulay, 287;
• his illness and death, 287, 288;
• coins of, 373.
• Chancery, Reform of the Court of, 126.
• Chillingworth, 182.
• Churchill (see Marlborough).
• Clarendon, Lord, supports Charles I., 12;
• quoted, 52, 65, 149;
• his view of Cromwell, 68;
• reply to Parliament in favour of Charles I., 75;
• influence at the Court of Charles II., 198, 206;
• fall of, 225;
• character of, 226.
• Claverhouse, Graham of, 264;
• exertions in favour of James II., 407;
• death at Killiecrankie, 408.
• Clonmel attacked by Cromwell, 100.
• Clotworthy, Sir John, on the Irish Papists, 2.
• Coaching in the time of Charles II., 381.
• Coins at the time of Charles II., 373;
• in the reign of William and Mary, 483.
• Colepepper, Sir John, 12.
• Commerce under Cromwell, 384;
• under the Stuarts, 386-388;
• value with America and the West Indies, 391.
• Commonwealth, The, 90;
• difficulties with Portugal, acknowledged by Spain, 110;
• war with Holland, 110, 114;
• treaties with Holland, France, Denmark, Portugal and Sweden, 123.
• Conformity Bill, The, 204.
• Conventicle Act, The, 212.
• Cooper, Sir Anthony Ashley, 122.
• Costumes in the Stuart period, 191, 377.
• Coventry, Lord, impeached of high treason by the Commons, 12.
• Coventry, Sir John, 233.
• Cowley, Abraham, popularity as a poet, 358.
• Crashaw, Thomas, 178.
• Cromwell, Henry, 154.
• Cromwell, Oliver, remarks on the "Remonstrance," 4;
• takes a commission in the Parliamentary army, 13;
• his military tact, 18;
• his success as a General, 20;
• Battle of Marston Moor, 29;
• irritated by Parliament's inaction, 30;
• charge against the Earl of Manchester, proposes the "Self-denying Ordinance," his genius in War, 39;
• victories, 47;
• his character, 68;
• defeats Royalists at Preston, invited to Edinburgh, 78;
• war in Ireland, 97-100;
• captures Dublin, 98;
• deplorable fanaticism of, 99;
• appointed commander-in-chief, invades Scotland, 103;
• defeats Leslie, 104;
• at Glasgow, 105;
• victory at Worcester, 106;
• arrival in London, 107;
• meditates kingly power, 116;
• dissolves the Long Parliament, 118;
• constitutes a Parliament in his own name, 119;
• becomes Lord Protector, 121;
• installation as Protector, 122;
• plan against Royalist outbreaks, 131;
• dispute with Spain, 133;
• great speech to Parliament, 136;
• refuses the crown, 142;
• inauguration at the head of the Government, makes war against Spain, 144;
• his last Parliament, 147;
• last days of, 148;
• death of, 150.
• Cromwell, Richard, succeeds to the Protectorate, difficulties with the army, 150;
• his power ceases, 152;
• abdicates, 154.
• Cudworth, William, 182.
• Cutts, Lord, at the Battle of Blenheim, 555.
• Dalrymple, Sir James, influence in Scottish affairs, 403.
• Danby, Earl, Impeachment of, 257;
• imprisoned in the Tower, 259.
• Dangerfield, the informer, 266.
• Daniel, Samuel, 176.
• Darien expedition, The, 512;
• its miserable end, 514.
• "Declaration of Indulgence," 319.[610]
• Defoe denounces the Occasional Conformity Bill, 559;
• quoted, 570.
• Delamere, Lord, Trial of, 309.
• Denbigh, Earl of, Commission to Charles I., 36.
• Denham, Sir John, 176, 361.
• Denmark, Prince George of, 583.
• De Ruyter, in command of the Dutch fleet, 111;
• victory over the English, defeated by Blake, 112.
• De Torcy, French ambassador, 586.
• Devonshire, Earl of, impeached of high treason by the Commons, 12.
• De Witt, in command of the Dutch fleet, 111;
• defeated by Blake, 112;
• his "Interest of Holland," 387.
• Digby, Lord, 49;
• letter from Charles I., 53.
• Donne, John, 177.
• Dorislaus, Dr., assassinated by Royalists, 96.
• Dover, Earl of, impeached of high treason by the Commons, 12.
• Dover, Treaty of, 231.
• Dramatic writing under the Stuarts, 361, 378.
• Drayton, Michael, 176.
• Drogheda, Storming of, by Cromwell, 98.
• Drumclog, Battle of, 263.
• Drummond of Hawthornden, 177.
• Dryden, John, 318;
• poems of, 359;
• prose, 362.
• Dublin, Capture by Cromwell, 98.
• Dunbar, Battle of, 104.
• Dundee, Viscount (see Claverhouse).
• Dunkirk, Siege of, 147.
• Dutch, attack by fleet on the Thames, 223;
• defeated at Southwold Bay, 235.
• Dykvelt, Dutch ambassador at the English court, 320;
• efforts in behalf of the Prince of Orange, 321.
• East India Company, Origin of the, 166;
• bill for regulating the trade of, 450.
• Edgehill, Battle of, 15.
• "Engagement," The, 92.
• "Engagers," 96.
• Engraving at the time of Charles II., 373.
• Episcopacy, Charles I. discusses with Alexander Henderson, 55.
• Essex, Earl of, appointed commander of the Parliamentary army, 13;
• victory at Edgehill, 15, 16;
• rewarded by Parliament, 116;
• his dilatory spirit, 19;
• victories, receives overtures from Charles I., defeated, 30;
• resignation of, 33.
• Eugene, Prince, in command with Marlborough, 554;
• the battle of Lutzingen, 556.
• Evelyn, John, 363.
• Exclusion Bill, The, 261.
• Fairfax, Lord, his Parliament sympathy, 14;
• appointed commander-in-chief of the Parliament army, 32;
• the battle of Naseby, 39;
• mediates between the army and Parliament, 62;
• enters London, 67;
• attitude to the king, 68;
• disturbances in London, 77;
• trial of Charles I., 86;
• resigns his command, 102;
• re-appointed to leading command, resigns office, 103;
• his Royalist leanings, 158.
• Falkland, Lord, his defection from the Parliament ranks, 12;
• death of, character of, 23.
• Fenwick, Sir John, plot against William III., 491;
• trial of, 495.
• Feversham, Lord, 300.
• Fifth-Monarchy men, 124;
• Cromwell's speech in regard to the, 127;
• rising at Mile-end, 140.
• Fire of London, The, 219.
• Firmin, Mr., benevolent scheme in regard to pauperism, 394.
• Flamsteed, the astronomer, 367.
• Fleetwood, General, appointed Cromwell's deputy in Ireland, 107;
• policy of, 151.
• Fletcher, John, 175.
• Fletcher of Saltoun, 272, 295;
• opposed to the union between England and Scotland, 571.
• Fox, George, 352.
• France, treaty with Cromwell, 135;
• war in the Netherlands, 144;
• opposition to William III., 425.
• Friends, The Society of, 229;
• persecution in America, 354;
• efforts in regard to the Abjuration Bill, 532.
• Fuller, Thomas, 183.
• Galway, Earl of, in command against Louis XIV. in Spain, 567.
• Gaultier, Abbé, 602.
• "Gerard, Generous," 125.
• Germany, Emperor of, Agreement between, and the Allies, 544.
• Gibbons, Dr., music of, 183.
• Gibbons, Grinling, the sculptor, 372.
• Gibraltar, Capture of, 559;
• efforts by Spain for its recovery, 562.
• Glamorgan, Earl of, commission from Charles I. to the Irish Catholics, 48.
• Godfrey, Sir Edmundbury, Murder of, 250.
• Godolphin, Lord, appointed Lord Treasurer, 536.
• Gordon, Duke of, 404.
• Goring, Colonel, in command of Royalist troops, 76, 78;
• trial of, 93.
• Graham, John, of Claverhouse (see Claverhouse).
• Granville, Mr., speech at the accession of Queen Anne, 536.
• Gregg, William, executed for high treason, 579.
• Grenville, Sir Richard, 82.
• Guiscard, Marquis of, 600.
• Habeas Corpus Act, Suspension of the, 401.
• Hague, Treaty of the, 243.
• Hale, Sir Matthew, 126.
• Halifax, Earl of, character of, 261;
• his policy as "Trimmer," 282;
• opposition from Duke of York, 285;
• superseded by Rochester, 290;
• pamphlet by, 482.
• Hamilton, Duke of, opposition to the union between England and Scotland, 571.
• Hamilton, Marquis of, policy of the, his duplicity, 24;
• leads a Scots army into England, 77;
• defeated by Cromwell at Preston, 78;
• executed by order of the Commonwealth, 94.
• Hammond, Colonel, 72.
• Hampden, John, his gentleness, 2;
• impeached, 7;
• takes a commission in the Parliamentary army, 13;
• death at Chalgrove, character of, 20.
• Hampton Court, Charles I. at, 71.
• Harcourt, Sir Simon, Bill in regard to union between England and Scotland, 573.
• Harley, Earl of Oxford, elected Speaker, 530;
• accused of Jacobite sympathy, dismissed from office, 579;
• efforts against the Whigs, 588;
• raised to the Peerage, 600;
• secret negotiations with France, 602.
• Harrison, Colonel, at the battle of Naseby, 39;
• his fanaticism, 124;
• imprisoned in the Tower, 128.
• Harvey, Dr. W., 366.
• Haversham, Lord, 563.
• Hazelrig, Impeachment of, by Charles I., 7.
• Heinsius, Dutch Chancellor, 550, 574.
• Henrietta, Queen, reception in Holland, 8;
• her powers of fascination, 18;
• flight to France, 30.
• Herbert, George, 179.
• Herrick, Robert, 178.
• Hill, Abigail, 578.
• Hobbes, Thomas, 362.
• Holland, Earl of, Royalist rising under, 78;
• executed by order of the Commonwealth, 94.
• Holland, jealousy of the Commonwealth, 110;
• birth of William III., maritime greatness, 111;
• war with England, 111-114;
• fleet defeated by Blake, treaty with England, 123.
• Holles, impeached by Charles I., 7.
• Holmby, Charles I. at, 59.
• Hooke, Colonel, Jacobite plot by, 378.
• Hotham, Sir John, defence of Hull against Charles I., 10;
• proclaimed a traitor, 11.
• Howard, Lord, of Charlton, impeached of high treason by the Commons, 12.
• Hyde, Lawrence (see Rochester).
• Hyde (see Clarendon).
• Incorporated companies, 167.
• Indemnity, Bill of, 195.
• Independents, difficulties with the Presbyterians, 59;
• their hour of triumph, treatment of Charles I., 68.
• Indies, Expedition to the West, by fleet of Parliament, 135.
• Indulgence, The Declaration of, 318.
• Industries introduced by foreign refugees, 389.
• Inquiry, Bill for Commission of, 222.
• "Instrument of Government," The, 122.
• Ireland, Rebellion in, 1, 3;
• massacre, 3;
• Catholic confederacy, 26;
• war in, 97-100;
• claims under Charles II., 200;
• government under James II., 316;
• exertions of James II. against Protestantism, 410;
• revolution under Tyrconnel, 411;
• landing of James II., 412;
• siege of Londonderry, 413-416;
• James's Parliament, 417;
• battle of the Boyne, 430;
• defence of Limerick, 432;
• capture of Athlone, 443-445.
• Ireton, General, at the battle of Naseby, 39;
• his opinion regarding Charles I., 72;
• the "Agreement of the People," 84;
• his command in Ireland, death of, 107.
• Jacobites, outcry against the Scottish union, 570;
• great zeal in Scotland, 606.
• Jamaica, Capture of, 135.
• James I., commerce under, 165;
• coinages by, 171;
• costume during the reign of, 190;
• prices, 192.
• James II., speech to the Privy Council, 289;
• cabinet of, 290;
• openly avows Roman Catholicism, 291, 310;
• policy with Louis XIV., 291;
• difficulties with Parliament, 307;
• counsellors of, 310;
• acts of opposition to the Church, 312-314;
• religious persecution in Scotland, 316;
• his government in Ireland, 316-318;
• the Declaration of Indulgence, 318;
• absolute power of, 319;
• pays homage to the Papal Nuncio, outrages in army affairs, 323;
• encroachments on the universities, 325;
• a new Declaration of Indulgence, 327;
• decay of power, 332;
• his wrongheadedness, 334;
• concessions on approach of William of Orange, 336;
• utterly deserted, 343;
• flight from London, 344;
• capture and return, 346-347;
• escape to France, 348;
• coins of, 373;
• letter to the Scottish Convention, 404;
• landing in Ireland, forms a Privy Council, 412;
• his Irish Parliament, 417;
• his legislation in Ireland, 418;
• his Irish army, 427;
• defeat at the Boyne, 431;
• declaration, 459;
• death of, 529.
• Jeffreys, Lord, Chief Justice at Chester, 274;
• gift from Charles II., 284;
• brutal character of, 285;
• the Bloody Assize, 304.
• Jermyn, Lord, 46.
• Jews, petition to Parliament for permitting them to live in England, 136.
• Johnson, "Julian," 315.
• Jonson, Ben, 175.
• Joyce, Cornet, seizes Charles I., 63.
• Junto, The Whig, 583.
• Juxon, Bishop, 55.
• Killiecrankie, Battle of, 408.
• "Killing no Murder," 139.
• Kilsyth, Battle of, 44.
• Kimbolton, Lord, Impeachment of, 7.
• Kirby, the informer, 247.
• "Kirke's Lambs," 303.
• La Hogue, Battle of, 460.
• Lambert, General, appointed deputy in Ireland, 107;
• trial under Charles II., 207.
• Landen, Battle of, 467.
• Langdale, Sir Marmaduke, capture of Berwick, 77.
• Laud, Archbishop, impeachment of, executed, 34-35.
• Lauderdale, Earl of, 203.
• Lauzun, Marshal, 428.
• League and Covenant, The Solemn, 25.
• Leibnitz, 366.
• Leicester, Earl of, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 3.
• Leighton, Archbishop, 203.
• Lely, the painter, 371.
• Lenthall, the Speaker, 7, 128.
• Leslie, General Sir David, in command of the Scottish cavalry, 44;
• defeats Montrose, 46;
• defeated by Cromwell at Cockburnspath, 104;
• receives overtures from Charles I., 55;
• defeat at Dunbar, 104.
• Levellers, The, vow against Cromwell and the king, 71;
• turbulence of, 94.
• Leven, Earl of, 44, 103.
• Levesey, Sir Michael, 78.
• Lilburne, Colonel, Character of, 71;
• advocates a Republic, 94;
• tried for sedition, 120.
• Lille, Capture of, by the Allies, 582.
• "Lillibulero," 332.
• Lindsay, Lord, at the battle of Edgehill, 15, 16.[611]
• Lisle, Sir George, shot by Parliamentary troops, 78.
• Literature in the Stuart period, 355 et seqq.
• Locke, John, proposal regarding coinage, 483.
• Lockhart, Sir William, Cromwell's ambassador at the Hague, 147.
• London, Defence against Charles I., 16;
• growth of, 168;
• moral condition under the Stuarts, 188, 379;
• the Great Plague, 215-16;
• the Great Fire, 219;
• terror at the French invasion under Tourville, 434;
• great storm of 1704, 547.
• Londonderry, Siege of, 413-416.
• Long Parliament, The, Cromwell's address to the, 118;
• the coup d'état, 118-119.
• Louis XIV., in league with Cromwell against Spain, 144;
• war with Holland, 235, 243;
• joins with James II. against William of Orange, 334;
• decay of power, 498;
• designs in Spain, 505;
• proclaims the son of James II. King of England, 529;
• inroads on the German Empire, 546;
• great exertions against the Allies, 564;
• emissaries in Scotland in support of the Pretender, 579;
• active operations on the Continent, 580;
• capture of Lille, rejects propositions of peace, 582;
• ruinous effects of his ambition, 583;
• sues for peace with Holland, 584;
• his terms of peace, 585;
• the forty articles, refuses the ultimatum of the Allies, 586;
• fall of Tournay, battle of Malplaquet, 587;
• renews overtures for peace, 595.
• Lucas, Sir Charles, shot by Parliamentary troops, 78.
• Ludlow, Colonel, denounces Charles I., 80;
• fanaticism of, dislike to Cromwell, 124.
• Lunsford, Colonel, appointed Lieutenant of the Tower, 5.
• Macaulay quoted, 224.
• Mackay, General, in command in Scotland, 406;
• battle of Killiecrankie, 408.
• Mackenzie, Sir George, 364.
• Maguire, Cornelius, Irish rebel leader, 1.
• Malplaquet, Battle of, 587.
• Manchester, Earl of, disputes with Cromwell, 30.
• Marlborough, Duke of, in command in Ireland, 437;
• character of, 440, 451;
• dismissed from office, 452;
• imprisonment, 460;
• receives the Order of the Garter from Queen Anne, appointed Captain-General of the English army, 536;
• influence of his party, commander-in-chief, 538;
• in command on the Rhine, his bold plans, 539;
• warm welcome in England, alienation from the Tories, 542;
• the Toleration Act, 543;
• campaign in Flanders, 544-545;
• campaign on the Moselle, 550;
• assault on Schellenberg, 552;
• battle of Blenheim, 555;
• third campaign against the French, 560;
• battle of Ramillies, 565;
• wane of his party influence, 578;
• battle of Oudenarde, 580;
• battle of Malplaquet, 587;
• decline of power, 596;
• end of his influence, 598;
• in disgrace, 599;
• opposition to his efforts by the Tories, 602;
• his fall, 607;
• the charges brought against him, his defence, 608.
• Marston Moor, Battle of, 28.
• Marten, Henry, 91.
• Marvell, Andrew, 360.
• Mary, Princess, at the Dutch Court, 8.
• Massinger, Philip, 175.
• Mayday, Celebration of, 383.
• Mazarin, 47, 133.
• Meal-Tub Plot, The, 266.
• Middleton, Thomas, 175.
• Mildmay, Sir Henry, 83.
• Militia Bill, Opposition of Charles I. to, 11.
• Milton, John, 91;
• his prose, 182;
• his Republican sympathy, 355;
• Paradise Lost, 356.
• Ministers' Bill, The, 195.
• Monk, General, policy in Scotland, 108;
• his reserve, 155;
• march to London, 159;
• proclaims a full and free Parliament, 160;
• secretly working for the Restoration, 162;
• receives Charles II. at Dover, 165;
• commander-in-chief, 194.
• Monmouth, Duke of, 263;
• popularity of, 266;
• makes a royal progress through the provinces, 273;
• proclamation for his apprehension, 277;
• reconciliation with his father, 282;
• at the Court of Holland, 286;
• expelled from Holland, his reception in England, 298;
• political blunder of, 299;
• battle of Sedgemoor, 301;
• death of, 303.
• Monmouth, Earl of, impeached by the Commons, 12.
• Mons captured by Louis XIV., 439.
• Montagu, Lord, 256.
• Montreuil, negotiation with Scots on behalf of Charles I., 50.
• Montrose, Marquis of, policy of, 24;
• unfurls the royal standard at Dumfries, at Blair Athol, defeats Elcho, 42;
• attack on Argyleshire, defeats Argyll, defeats John Ury, 43;
• a second victory over Baillie, 44;
• fame of, rising in favour of Charles II., 101;
• defeat in Ross-shire, betrayal of, execution, 102.
• Moore, Roger, incites the Irish against England, 2.
• Mountjoy, Lord, Treachery of James II. towards, 411.
• "Muggletonians," 355.
• Muscovy Company, The, 167.
• Music under the Puritans, 373;
• in the time of Charles II., 374.
• Namur, captured by Louis XIV., 454;
• second siege, 480;
• fall of, 481.
• Nantes, Edict of, revocation of by Louis XIV., 307.
• Napier, Lord, of Merchiston, 366.
• Naseby, Battle of, 39.
• Navigation Act, passed by Parliament, 111;
• in operation, 388;
• growth of trading companies, 390.
• Navy, English, in the Stuart period, 386.
• Netherlands, Disturbances in the, 147.
• "Neuters," 115.
• Newbury, Battle of, 22.
• Newcastle, Marquis of, in command of the Royalist army, 26;
• Battle of Marston Moor, 28.
• Newmarket, meeting of Parliament soldiers, 62.
• Newport, Lord, controversy with the king, 6.
• Newton, Sir Isaac, 366.
• Nonconformists, The, 352.
• Non-Jurors, Rise of the faction of, 399.
• Northumberland, Earl of, Lord High Admiral, under Parliament, 10, 11.
• Nottingham, Charles I. raises his standard at, 14.
• "Novum Organum," The, 181.
• Oates, Titus, the Popish plot, his story before the Council, 248;
• imitators of, 250;
• effect upon the people, 251;
• his real character, 252;
• his forgeries, 253;
• impeachments by, 255;
• convicted of perjury, 292.
• Oath, Coronation, of William and Mary, 403.
• Occasional Conformity Bill, The, 543, 547.
• O'Connelly, Sir John, 2.
• O'Neil, Sir Phelim, 2;
• the Irish massacre of 1641, 3.
• Orange, Prince of, 587.
• Orange, William of (see William III.).
• Ordinance, The Self-denying, 31.
• Ormond, Earl, makes terms with Parliament, 55;
• leader of the Irish Royalists, 97;
• secret visit to England on behalf of Charles I., 147;
• unfair treatment by James II., 290.
• "Orrery Letters," The, 144.
• Oudenarde, Battle of, 580.
• Overton, Colonel, plot against Cromwell, 130.
• Owen, Sir John, Trial of, by Parliament, 93.
• Oxford, Charles I. at, 18;
• Parliament at, 27, 268;
• declaration by the University of, 279.
• Pack, Sir Christopher, "Remonstrance" against Cromwell by, 139.
• Painting during the Stuart period, 371.
• Papal Nuncio, James II. pays homage to the, 323.
• Parker, Dr., effort of James II. to install him at Magdalen College, 324.
• Parliament, discussion with Charles I., 18;
• makes a new Great Seal, 19;
• further propositions to Charles I., 38;
• treaties with the Scots regarding possession of Charles I., 54;
• resolution in regard to the Constitution, 76;
• condemns Charles I., 86-88;
• dishonesty under Charles II., 242.
• Parliament, The Little, 119.
• Parsons, Sir William, 1.
• Partition Treaty, The, 523.
• Paterson, William, projector of the Bank of England, 510.
• Pauperism under the Stuarts, plan for decrease of, by Yarranton, 393;
• benevolent scheme of Firmin, 394.
• Penn, William, 229.
• Pension Parliament, The, 258.
• Pepys, Samuel, 364.
• Peterborough, Earl of, his able generalship, assault of Barcelona, 562;
• brilliant exploits in Spain, 563.
• Peters, Hugh, 97, 198.
• "Petition and Advice," The, 145;
• legality of, debated in Parliament, 151.
• Petre, Father, Jesuit Provincial, at the court of James II., 311.
• Petty, Sir William, on mercantile shipping, 386.
• Philiphaugh, Battle of, 46.
• Plague, The Great, 215, 216.
• Plymouth Adventuress, The, 167.
• Poets during the Stuart period, 174.
• Post Office, Origin of the English, 388.
• Poynings' Act, 38.
• Presbyterians, difference from Independents, 59;
• treaty with Charles I., 79;
• condition under Charles II., 196;
• assailed in Scotland, 212.
• Press, Liberty of the, 466, 482.
• Preston, Battle of, 78.
• "Pride's Purge," 83.
• Prose writers during the Stuart period, 362.
• Protestantism, declaration of William III., 397.
• Prynne, William, his efforts against Laud, 34.
• Purcell, Henry, 374.
• Pym, 26.
• Quakers, The (see Society of Friends).
• Quebec, Expedition to, 601.
• Rainsborough, Colonel, revolt of fleet in favour of Charles I., 76.
• Raleigh, Sir Walter, 166.
• Ramillies, Battle of, 565.
• Remonstrance on the state of the kingdom, composition of, 4.
• Resumption Bill, The, 517.
• Revenue in the Stuart period, 385.
• Rights, Declaration of, 350;
• Bill of, 423.
• Rochester, Earl of, Prime Minister, 310;
• love of office, 317;
• fall of, 318;
• loyalty to James II., 344;
• declares for William, 345.
• Rooke, Admiral Sir George, expedition to Cadiz, 540;
• Battle of Vigo Bay, 541;
• Capture of Gibraltar, 559.
• Rosen, General, at the siege of Londonderry, his savagery, 415.
• Royal Society, Founding of the, 365.
• Rubens, 186.
• Rullion Green, Battle of, 223.
• Rump, The, origin of the name, 83;
• influence in political affairs, 152, 153.
• Rupert, Prince, his style of warfare, 16;
• battle at Chalgrove, 19;
• victories by, 27;
• surrenders Bristol, character of, 44;
• carries on the war by sea, 109.
• Russell, Lord William, 278;
• trial and execution of, 279.
• Rye House Plot, The, 276.
• Ryswick, Treaty of, 501.
• Sacheverell, Dr. Henry, accused of high treason, 588;
• taken into custody, 590;
• riots by partisans, 591;
• trial of, 592, 593.
• Sales, Bill of, 195.
• Sancroft, Archbishop, Trial of, 328.
• Schomberg, Marshal, 416;
• arrival in Ireland, 427;
• death at the Battle of the Boyne, 430.
• Scone, Charles II. crowned at, 106.
• Scotland, dealings with the Parliament, invasion of England, 24;
• army crosses the Tweed, 27;
• propositions of leaders to Charles I., 35;
• rising under Montrose, 101, 102;
• invaded by Cromwell, Cromwell's military stations, 103;
• Charles II. crowned at Scone, 106;
• disaffection to Cromwell, 124;
• claims under Charles II., 200, 201;
• persecutions by Charles II., Presbyterianism assailed, 212;
• the Covenanters, 222;
• continued religious persecutions, 262, 283, 316;
• meeting of Parliament, 292;[612]
• the triumph of Presbytery, meeting of the Convention, 403;
• Jacobite rising, 407-410;
• affairs under William and Mary, 435;
• Massacre of Glencoe, 456;
• Parliament of William and Mary, 478;
• excitement against the Orange ministry, 510;
• enthusiasm in the Darien expedition, 512;
• indignation against William, 514;
• union with England, 567.
• "Scourers, The," 379.
• Sedgemoor, Battle of, 301.
• "Seekers," The, 354.
• Self-denying Ordinance, The, 32.
• Sexby, Colonel, at the court of Madrid, 134;
• attempt of Popish invasion, 137.
• Seymour, Sir Edward, 294.
• Shaftesbury, Earl of (First Earl), attacks on Popery, 261;
• schemes of rebellion, 274;
• death of, character of, 275.
• Shakespeare, 173.
• Sharp, Archbishop, 203;
• murder of, 263.
• Sheldon. Dr., 55.
• Sherlock, Bishop, proposal in favour of James II. at the Revolution, 349.
• Shovel, Sir Cloudesley, 559;
• in command of the English fleet, 576;
• wreck and death of, 577.
• Sidney, Algernon, Trial and execution of, 280-282.
• Sindercomb, attempt to assassinate Cromwell, 138.
• Solemn League and Covenant, The, 25.
• Somers, Lord, 506;
• forced to resign the Lord Chancellorship, 517;
• trial of, 527;
• integrity of, 535.
• Spain, acknowledges the Commonwealth, 110;
• dispute with Cromwell, 133;
• visit of king Charles to England, 546;
• collapse of his power, 567.
• Spencer, Earl of Northampton, impeached of high treason by the Commons, 12.
• Sport under Charles II., 380.
• Stafford, Lord, Trial and execution of, 267.
• Steam-engine introduced into England, 369.
• St. John, Oliver, chief justice under the Commonwealth, 91.
• Strode impeached, 7.
• Suckling, Sir John, 178.
• Sunderland, Earl of, Prime Minister under Charles II., character of, 259;
• intrigues in behalf of James II., 310;
• treason to James II., 338.
• Tallard, Marshal, 554.
• Tangier, Settlement of, 207.
• Tarbet, Lord, advice to William III. regarding the Highlands, 140, 407.
• Tate, Mr., moves the self-denying ordinance, 32.
• Temple, Sir William, 261, 308.
• Test Act, Operation of the, 320.
• Thurloe, John, secretary for the Parliament, 37;
• secretary of the Parliamentary Council, 122;
• Secretary of State, 125;
• his alertness, 140, 407.
• Tories, early conflicts with the Whigs, 420, 422;
• efforts to gain power, 508;
• rivalry with the Whigs under William III., 524;
• influence under Queen Anne, Marlborough's alienation from the, 542.
• Treason, Bill for regulating trials in cases of high, 450, 484.
• Treaty of Ryswick, The, 501.
• Treaty, The Partition, 523.
• Triennial Act, The, 211.
• "Triers," 122.
• "Trimmers," The, 451.
• Tuam, Archbishop of, killed in a skirmish, 48.
• Turenne, Marshal, 144.
• Turkey merchants, The, 167.
• Tyrconnel, Earl of, appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, 318;
• plot with James II. to hand over Ireland to Louis XIV., 325;
• treacherous character of, 411.
• Union between England and Scotland, The, 573.
• Uxbridge, Meeting of Royalist and Parliamentary Commissioners at, 37.
• Vane, Sir Harry, 83;
• ability of, 207;
• executed by Charles II., 208.
• Vaudois, Massacre of the, 134.
• Vaughan, Lord Chief Justice, the trial of Penn, noble defence of the rights of juries, 231.
• Vendôme, Duke of, 580.
• Venner, rising of Fifth-Monarchy men under, 140.
• Verrio, Antonio, the painter, influence with Charles II., 371.
• Vigo Bay, Battle of, 541.
• Villeroi, Marshal, 565.
• Waldenses, The, 439.
• Waller, Edmund, 22.
• Walton, Isaac, 363.
• Warner, William, 176.
• Warwick, Earl of, Admiral of the Parliamentary fleet, 78;
• in league with the Royalists, 79.
• Webster, John, 175.
• Westminster Assembly, The, disagreement of Presbyterians and Independents, 34.
• Wexford, capture by Cromwell, 99.
• Whigs, the name "Whiggamores," 84;
• keen rivalry with the Tories, 508, 524;
• triumph under William and Mary, 530.
• White, Robert, the engraver, 373.
• Whitelock, 116, 142.
• Wildman, Colonel, plot against Cromwell, 131.
• William III., dauntless spirit and ready resource of, 236;
• arrival in England, 242;
• marriage to his cousin Princess Mary, 243;
• conquests in the Netherlands, 244-246;
• visit to England, 271;
• his opinion of the Declaration of Indulgence, popularity in England, 320;
• invited to expel James II., 331;
• prepares to invade England, 332;
• memorial in favour of, 335;
• embarks for England, 338;
• landing at Torbay, 339-342;
• enters London, 348;
• the succession difficulty, 349;
• the Declaration of Rights, 350;
• accession of, 396;
• his first Ministry, 397;
• settlement of the revenue, 399;
• acknowledged king of Scotland, 406;
• conflict with the Whigs, 419;
• speech to Parliament, 423;
• Irish campaign, 425;
• his army in Ireland, 428;
• battle of the Boyne, 430;
• popularity with Parliament, 437;
• with his army in the Netherlands, 452-456;
• Continental campaign, 466;
• reconciled with Anne, 479;
• reception in London after capture of Namur, 482;
• plot against, 485;
• campaign in Flanders, 496;
• triumphal entry into London, 501;
• question as to the succession, 521;
• illness, 530;
• marks of the nation's confidence, 531;
• fall from his horse, 533;
• death of, 534;
• appearance and character of, 402, 534.
• Williams, Archbishop, attacked by a Puritan mob, address to the king, 6.
• Winceby-on-the-Wolds, Battle at, 26.
• Windebank, Colonel, 39.
• Window tax, Origin of the, 483.
• Wither, George, 178.
• Worcester, Battle of, 106.
• Worcester, Marquis of, 370.
• Working classes, The, under the Stuarts, 391;
• wages of artizans, enactments against free labour, 392.
• Wroth, Sir Thomas, 74.
• Yarranton, Mr., plan for decrease of pauperism, 393.
• York, Duke of, in the custody of Parliament, 54;
• escape to Holland, 75;
• at the siege of Dunkirk, 148;
• Admiral against the Dutch, 214;
• victory at Southwold Bay, 235;
• the Popish plot, 248;
• opposes Monmouth, 264;
• government in Scotland, 283 (see also James II.).
• Young, Commodore, victory over the Dutch fleet, 111.
• Zulestein, General, mission to England, 322;
• messenger to James II. from William of Orange, 347.