The History of England_ from the Accession of James II _ Volume 4 Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay 1541 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The History of England, from
the Accession of James II — Volume 4
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will
have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
this eBook.

Title: The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 4

Author: Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay

Release date: June 26, 2008 [eBook #2613]
Most recently updated: August 12, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2613

Credits: Produced by Martin Adamson and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY
OF ENGLAND, FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES II — VOLUME 4
***

THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND
FROM THE ACCESSION OF
JAMES II,
VOLUME 4 (of 5)

(Chapters XVIII-XXII)

by Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Philadelphia
Porter & Coates

Contents

CHAPTER
XVII
CHAPTER
XVIII
CHAPTER
XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER
XXI
CHAPTER
XXII

DETAILED CONTENTS

CHAPTER XVII
William's Voyage to Holland
William's Entrance into the Hague
Congress at the Hague
William his own Minister for Foreign Affairs
William obtains a Toleration for the Waldenses; Vices inherent in the
Nature
of Coalitions
Siege and Fall of Mons
William returns to England; Trials of Preston and Ashton
Execution of Ashton
Preston's Irresolution and Confessions
Lenity shown to the Conspirators
Dartmouth
Turner; Penn
Death of George Fox; his Character
Interview between Penn and Sidney
Preston pardoned
Joy of the Jacobites at the Fall of Mons
The vacant Sees filled
Tillotson Archbishop of Canterbury
Conduct of Sancroft
Difference between Sancroft and Ken
Hatred of Sancroft to the Established Church; he provides for the episcopal
Succession among the Nonjurors
The new Bishops
Sherlock Dean of Saint Paul's
Treachery of some of William's Servants
Russell
Godolphin
Marlborough
William returns to the Continent
The Campaign of 1691 in Flanders

The War in Ireland; State of the English Part of Ireland
State of the Part of Ireland which was subject to James
Dissensions among the Irish at Limerick
Return of Tyrconnel to Ireland
Arrival of a French Fleet at Limerick; Saint Ruth
The English take the Field
Fall of Ballymore; Siege and Fall of Athlone
Retreat of the Irish Army
Saint Ruth determines to fight
Battle of Aghrim
Fall of Galway
Death of Tyrconnel
Second Siege of Limerick
The Irish desirous to capitulate
Negotiations between the Irish Chiefs and the Besiegers
The Capitulation of Limerick
The Irish Troops required to make their Election between their Country
and France
Most of the Irish Troops volunteer for France
Many of the Irish who had volunteered for France desert
The last Division of the Irish Army sails from Cork for France
State of Ireland after the War

CHAPTER XVIII
Opening of the Parliament
Debates on the Salaries and Fees of Official Men
Act excluding Papists from Public Trust in Ireland
Debates on the East India Trade
Debates on the Bill for regulating Trials in Cases of High Treason
Plot formed by Marlborough against the Government of William
Marlborough's Plot disclosed by the Jacobites
Disgrace of Marlborough; Various Reports touching the Cause of
Marlborough's Disgrace.
Rupture between Mary and Anne
Fuller's Plot
Close of the Session; Bill for ascertaining the Salaries of the Judges
rejected
Misterial Changes in England
Ministerial Changes in Scotland
State of the Highlands
Breadalbane employed to negotiate with the Rebel Clans
Glencoe
William goes to the Continent; Death of Louvois
The French Government determines to send an Expedition against England
James believes that the English Fleet is friendly to him
Conduct of Russell
A Daughter born to James
Preparations made in England to repel Invasion
James goes down to his Army at La Hogue
James's Declaration
Effect produced by James's Declaration
The English and Dutch Fleets join; Temper of the English Fleet
Battle of La Hogue
Rejoicings in England
Young's Plot

CHAPTER XIX
Foreign Policy of William
The Northern Powers
The Pope
Conduct of the Allies
The Emperor
Spain
William succeeds in preventing the Dissolution of the Coalition
New Arrangements for the Government of the Spanish Netherlands
Lewis takes the Field
Siege of Namur
Lewis returns to Versailles
Luxemburg
Battle of Steinkirk
Conspiracy of Grandval
Return of William to England
Naval Maladministration
Earthquake at Port Royal
Distress in England; Increase of Crime
Meeting of Parliament; State of Parties
The King's Speech; Question of Privilege raised by the Lords
Debates on the State of the Nation
Bill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of Treason
Case of Lord Mohun
Debates on the India Trade
Supply
Ways and Means; Land Tax
Origin of the National Debt
Parliamentary Reform
The Place Bill
The Triennial Bill
The First Parliamentary Discussion on the Liberty of the Press
State of Ireland

The King refuses to pass the Triennial Bill
Ministerial Arrangements
The King goes to Holland; a Session of Parliament in Scotland

CHAPTER XX
State of the Court of Saint Germains
Feeling of the Jacobites; Compounders and Noncompounders
Change of Ministry at Saint Germains; Middleton
New Declaration put forth by James
Effect of the new Declaration
French Preparations for the Campaign; Institution of the Order of Saint
Lewis
Middleton's Account of Versailles
William's Preparations for the Campaign
Lewis takes the Field
Lewis returns to Versailles
Manoeuvres of Luxemburg
Battle of Landen
Miscarriage of the Smyrna Fleet
Excitement in London
Jacobite Libels; William Anderton
Writings and Artifices of the Jacobites
Conduct of Caermarthen
Now Charter granted to the East India Company
Return of William to England; Military Successes of France
Distress of France
A Ministry necessary to Parliamentary Government
The First Ministry gradually formed
Sunderland
Sunderland advises the King to give the Preference to the Whigs
Reasons for preferring the Whigs
Chiefs of the Whig Party; Russell
Somers
Montague
Wharton
Chiefs of the Tory Party; Harley
Foley

Howe
Meeting of Parliament
Debates about the Naval Miscarriages
Russell First Lord of the Admiralty; Retirement of Nottingham
Shrewsbury refuses Office
Debates about the Trade with India
Bill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of Treason
Triennial Bill
Place Bill
Bill for the Naturalisation of Foreign Protestants
Supply
Ways and Means; Lottery Loan
The Bank of England
Prorogation of Parliament; Ministerial Arrangements; Shrewsbury
Secretary of State
New Titles bestowed
French Plan of War; English Plan of War
Expedition against Brest
Naval Operations in the Mediterranean
War by Land
Complaints of Trenchard's Administration
The Lancashire Prosecutions
Meeting of the Parliament; Death of Tillotson
Tenison Archbishop of Canterbury; Debates on the Lancashire
Prosecutions
Place Bill
Bill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of Treason; the Triennial Bill
passed
Death of Mary
Funeral of Mary
Greenwich Hospital founded

CHAPTER XXI
Effect of Mary's Death on the Continent
Death of Luxemburg
Distress of William
Parliamentary Proceedings; Emancipation of the Press
Death of Halifax
Parliamentary Inquiries into the Corruption of the Public Offices
Vote of Censure on the Speaker
Foley elected Speaker; Inquiry into the Accounts of the East India
Company
Suspicious Dealings of Seymour
Bill against Sir Thomas Cook
Inquiry by a joint Committee of Lords and Commons
Impeachment of Leeds
Disgrace of Leeds
Lords Justices appointed; Reconciliation between William and the Princess
Anne
Jacobite Plots against William's Person
Charnock; Porter
Goodman; Parkyns
Fenwick
Session of the Scottish Parliament; Inquiry into the Slaughter of Glencoe
War in the Netherlands; Marshal Villeroy
The Duke of Maine
Jacobite Plots against the Government during William's Absence
Siege of Namur
Surrender of the Town of Namur
Surrender of the Castle of Namur
Arrest of Boufflers
Effect of the Emancipation of the English Press
Return of William to England; Dissolution of the Parliament
William makes a Progress through the Country
The Elections

Alarming State of the Currency
Meeting of the Parliament; Loyalty of the House of Commons
Controversy touching the Currency
Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Currency
Passing of the Act regulating Trials in Cases of High Treason
Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Grant of Crown Lands in Wales to
Portland
Two Jacobite Plots formed
Berwick's Plot; the Assassination Plot; Sir George Barclay
Failure of Berwick's Plot
Detection of the Assassination Plot
Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Assassination Plot
State of Public Feeling
Trial of Charnock, King and Keyes
Execution of Charnock, King and Keyes
Trial of Friend
Trial of Parkyns
Execution of Friend and Parkyns
Trials of Rookwood, Cranburne and Lowick
The Association
Bill for the Regulation of Elections
Act establishing a Land Bank

CHAPTER XXII
Military Operations in the Netherlands
Commercial Crisis in England
Financial Crisis
Efforts to restore the Currency
Distress of the People; their Temper and Conduct
Negotiations with France; the Duke of Savoy deserts the Coalition
Search for Jacobite Conspirators in England; Sir John Fenwick
Capture of Fenwick
Fenwick's Confession
Return of William to England
Meeting of Parliament; State of the Country; Speech of William at the
Commencement of the Session
Resolutions of the House of Commons
Return of Prosperity
Effect of the Proceedings of the House of Commons on Foreign
Governments
Restoration of the Finances
Effects of Fenwick's Confession
Resignation of Godolphin
Feeling of the Whigs about Fenwick
William examines Fenwick
Disappearance of Goodman
Parliamentary Proceedings touching Fenwick's Confession
Bill for attainting Fenwick
Debates of the Commons on the Bill of Attainder
The Bill of Attainder carried up to the Lords
Artifices of Monmouth
Debates of the Lords on the Bill of Attainder
Proceedings against Monmouth
Position and Feelings of Shrewsbury
The Bill of Attainder passed; Attempts to save Fenwick
Fenwick's Execution; Bill for the Regulating of Elections

Bill for the Regulation of the Press
Bill abolishing the Privileges of Whitefriars and the Savoy
Close of the Session; Promotions and Appointments
State of Ireland
State of Scotland
A Session of Parliament at Edinburgh; Act for the Settling of Schools
Case of Thomas Aikenhead
Military Operations in the Netherlands
Terms of Peace offered by France
Conduct of Spain; Conduct of the Emperor
Congress of Ryswick
William opens a distinct Negotiation
Meetings of Portland and Boufflers
Terms of Peace between France and England settled
Difficulties caused by Spain and the Emperor
Attempts of James to prevent a general Pacification
The Treaty of Ryswick signed; Anxiety in England
News of the Peace arrives in England
Dismay of the Jacobites
General Rejoicing
The King's Entry into London
The Thanksgiving Day

CHAPTER XVII
William's Voyage to Holland—William's Entrance into the Hague—Congress
at the Hague—William his own Minister for Foreign Affairs—William
obtains a Toleration for the Waldenses; Vices inherent in the Nature of
Coalitions—Siege and Fall of Mons—William returns to England; Trials
of Preston and Ashton—Execution of Ashton—Preston's Irresolution
and Confessions—Lenity shown to the Conspirators—Dartmouth—Turner;
Penn—Death of George Fox; his Character—Interview between Penn and
Sidney—Preston pardoned—Joy of the Jacobites at the Fall of Mons—The
vacant Sees filled—Tillotson Archbishop of Canterbury—Conduct of
Sancroft—Difference between Sancroft and Ken—Hatred of Sancroft to the
Established Church; he provides for the episcopal Succession among the
Nonjurors—The new Bishops—Sherlock Dean of Saint Paul's—Treachery
of some of William's Servants—Russell—Godolphin—Marlborough—William
returns to the Continent—The Campaign of 1691 in Flanders—The War
in Ireland; State of the English Part of Ireland—State of the Part
of Ireland which was subject to James—Dissensions among the Irish at
Limerick—Return of Tyrconnel to Ireland—Arrival of a French Fleet at
Limerick; Saint Ruth—The English take the Field—Fall of Ballymore;
Siege and Fall of Athlone—Retreat of the Irish Army—Saint Ruth
determines to fight—Battle of Aghrim—Fall of Galway—Death
of Tyrconnel—Second Siege of Limerick—The Irish desirous to
capitulate—Negotiations between the Irish Chiefs and the Besiegers—The
Capitulation of Limerick—The Irish Troops required to make their
Election between their Country and France—Most of the Irish Troops
volunteer for France—Many of the Irish who had volunteered for
France desert—The last Division of the Irish Army sails from Cork for
France—State of Ireland after the War

ON the eighteenth of January 1691, the King, having been detained some
days by adverse winds, went on board at Gravesend. Four yachts had been
fitted up for him and for his retinue. Among his attendants were Norfolk,
Ormond, Devonshire, Dorset, Portland, Monmouth, Zulestein, and the
Bishop of London. Two distinguished admirals, Cloudesley Shovel and
George Rooke, commanded the men of war which formed the convoy. The
passage was tedious and disagreeable. During many hours the fleet was
becalmed off the Godwin Sands; and it was not till the fifth day that the
soundings proved the coast of Holland to be near. The sea fog was so thick
that no land could be seen; and it was not thought safe for the ships to
proceed further in the darkness. William, tired out by the voyage, and
impatient to be once more in his beloved country, determined to land in an
open boat. The noblemen who were in his train tried to dissuade him from
risking so valuable a life; but, when they found that his mind was made up,
they insisted on sharing the danger. That danger proved more serious than

they had expected. It had been supposed that in an hour the party would be
on shore. But great masses of floating ice impeded the progress of the skiff;
the night came on; the fog grew thicker; the waves broke over the King and
the courtiers. Once the keel struck on a sand bank, and was with great
difficulty got off. The hardiest mariners showed some signs of uneasiness.
But William, through the whole night, was as composed as if he had been in
the drawingroom at Kensington. "For shame," he said to one of the
dismayed sailors "are you afraid to die in my company?" A bold Dutch
seaman ventured to spring out, and, with great difficulty, swam and
scrambled through breakers, ice and mud, to firm ground. Here he
discharged a musket and lighted a fire as a signal that he was safe. None of
his fellow passengers, however, thought it prudent to follow his example.
They lay tossing in sight of the flame which he had kindled, till the first
pale light of a January morning showed them that they were close to the
island of Goree. The King and his Lords, stiff with cold and covered with
icicles, gladly landed to warm and rest themselves. 1
After reposing some hours in the hut of a peasant, William proceeded to
the Hague. He was impatiently expected there for, though the fleet which
brought him was not visible from the shore, the royal salutes had been
heard through the mist, and had apprised the whole coast of his arrival.
Thousands had assembled at Honslaerdyk to welcome him with applause
which came from their hearts and which went to his heart. That was one of
the few white days of a life, beneficent indeed and glorious, but far from
happy. After more than two years passed in a strange land, the exile had
again set foot on his native soil. He heard again the language of his nursery.
He saw again the scenery and the architecture which were inseparably
associated in his mind with the recollections of childhood and the sacred
feeling of home; the dreary mounds of sand, shells and weeds, on which the
waves of the German Ocean broke; the interminable meadows intersected
by trenches; the straight canals; the villas bright with paint and adorned
with quaint images and inscriptions. He had lived during many weary
months among a people who did not love him, who did not understand him,
who could never forget that he was a foreigner. Those Englishmen who
served him most faithfully served him without enthusiasm, without personal
attachment, and merely from a sense of public duty. In their hearts they
were sorry that they had no choice but between an English tyrant and a
Dutch deliverer. All was now changed. William was among a population by

which he was adored, as Elizabeth had been adored when she rode through
her army at Tilbury, as Charles the Second had been adored when he landed
at Dover. It is true that the old enemies of the House of Orange had not been
inactive during the absence of the Stadtholder. There had been, not indeed
clamours, but mutterings against him. He had, it was said, neglected his
native land for his new kingdom. Whenever the dignity of the English flag,
whenever the prosperity of the English trade was concerned, he forgot that
he was a Hollander. But, as soon as his well remembered face was again
seen, all jealousy, all coldness, was at an end. There was not a boor, not a
fisherman, not an artisan, in the crowds which lined the road from
Honslaerdyk to the Hague, whose heart did not swell with pride at the
thought that the first minister of Holland had become a great King, had
freed the English, and had conquered the Irish. It would have been madness
in William to travel from Hampton Court to Westminster without a guard;
but in his own land he needed no swords or carbines to defend him. "Do not
keep the people off;" he cried: "let them come close to me; they are all my
good friends." He soon learned that sumptuous preparations were making
for his entrance into the Hague. At first he murmured and objected. He
detested, he said, noise and display. The necessary cost of the war was quite
heavy enough. He hoped that his kind fellow townsmen would consider him
as a neighbour, born and bred among them, and would not pay him so bad a
compliment as to treat him ceremoniously. But all his expostulations were
vain. The Hollanders, simple and parsimonious as their ordinary habits
were, had set their hearts on giving their illustrious countryman a reception
suited to his dignity and to his merit; and he found it necessary to yield. On
the day of his triumph the concourse was immense. All the wheeled
carriages and horses of the province were too few for the multitude of those
who flocked to the show. Many thousands came sliding or skating along the
frozen canals from Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leyden, Haarlem, Delft. At ten
in the morning of the twenty-sixth of January, the great bell of the Town
House gave the signal. Sixteen hundred substantial burghers, well armed,
and clad in the finest dresses which were to be found in the recesses of their
wardrobes, kept order in the crowded streets. Balconies and scaffolds,
embowered in evergreens and hung with tapestry, hid the windows. The
royal coach, escorted by an army of halberdiers and running footmen, and
followed by a long train of splendid equipages, passed under numerous
arches rich with carving and painting, amidst incessant shouts of "Long live

the King our Stadtholder." The front of the Town House and the whole
circuit of the marketplace were in a blaze with brilliant colours. Civic
crowns, trophies, emblems of arts, of sciences, of commerce and of
agriculture, appeared every where. In one place William saw portrayed the
glorious actions of his ancestors. There was the silent prince, the founder of
the Batavian commonwealth, passing the Meuse with his warriors. There
was the more impetuous Maurice leading the charge at Nieuport. A little
further on, the hero might retrace the eventful story of his own life. He was
a child at his widowed mother's knee. He was at the altar with Diary's hand
in his. He was landing at Torbay. He was swimming through the Boyne.
There, too, was a boat amidst the ice and the breakers; and above it was
most appropriately inscribed, in the majestic language of Rome, the saying
of the great Roman, "What dost thou fear? Thou hast Caesar on board." The
task of furnishing the Latin mottoes had been intrusted to two men, who, till
Bentley appeared, held the highest place among the classical scholars of
that age. Spanheim, whose knowledge of the Roman medals was unrivalled,
imitated, not unsuccessfully, the noble conciseness of those ancient legends
which he had assiduously studied; and he was assisted by Graevius, who
then filled a chair at Utrecht, and whose just reputation had drawn to that
University multitudes of students from every part of Protestant Europe. 2
When the night came, fireworks were exhibited on the great tank which
washes the walls of the Palace of the Federation. That tank was now as hard
as marble; and the Dutch boasted that nothing had ever been seen, even on
the terrace of Versailles, more brilliant than the effect produced by the
innumerable cascades of flame which were reflected in the smooth mirror
of ice. 3 The English Lords congratulated their master on his immense
popularity. "Yes," said he; "but I am not the favourite. The shouting was
nothing to what it would have been if Mary had been with me."
A few hours after the triumphal entry, the King attended a sitting of the
States General. His last appearance among them had been on the day on
which he embarked for England. He had then, amidst the broken words and
loud weeping of those grave Senators, thanked them for the kindness with
which they had watched over his childhood, trained his young mind, and
supported his authority in his riper years; and he had solemnly commended
his beloved wife to their care. He now came back among them the King of
three kingdoms, the head of the greatest coalition that Europe had seen

during a hundred and eighty years; and nothing was heard in the hall but
applause and congratulations. 4
But this time the streets of the Hague were overflowing with the
equipages and retinues of princes and ambassadors who came flocking to
the great Congress. First appeared the ambitious and ostentatious Frederic,
Elector of Brandenburg, who, a few years later, took the title of King of
Prussia. Then arrived the young Elector of Bavaria, the Regent of
Wirtemberg, the Landgraves of Hesse Cassel and Hesse Darmstadt, and a
long train of sovereign princes, sprung from the illustrious houses of
Brunswick, of Saxony, of Holstein, and of Nassau. The Marquess of
Gastanaga, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, repaired to the assembly
from the viceregal Court of Brussels. Extraordinary ministers had been sent
by the Emperor, by the Kings of Spain, Poland, Denmark, and Sweden, and
by the Duke of Savoy. There was scarcely room in the town and the
neighbourhood for the English Lords and gentlemen and the German
Counts and Barons whom curiosity or official duty had brought to the place
of meeting. The grave capital of the most thrifty and industrious of nations
was as gay as Venice in the Carnival. The walks cut among those noble
limes and elms in which the villa of the Princes of Orange is embosomed
were gay with the plumes, the stars, the flowing wigs, the embroidered
coats and the gold hilted swords of gallants from London, Berlin and
Vienna. With the nobles were mingled sharpers not less gorgeously attired
than they. At night the hazard tables were thronged; and the theatre was
filled to the roof. Princely banquets followed one another in rapid
succession. The meats were served in gold; and, according to that old
Teutonic fashion with which Shakspeare had made his countrymen familiar,
as often as any of the great princes proposed a health, the kettle drums and
trumpets sounded. Some English lords, particularly Devonshire, gave
entertainments which vied with those of Sovereigns. It was remarked that
the German potentates, though generally disposed to be litigious and
punctilious about etiquette, associated, on this occasion, in an
unceremonious manner, and seemed to have forgotten their passion for
genealogical and heraldic controversy. The taste for wine, which was then
characteristic of their nation, they had not forgotten. At the table of the
Elector of Brandenburg much mirth was caused by the gravity of the
statesmen of Holland, who, sober themselves, confuted out of Grotius and
Puffendorf the nonsense stuttered by the tipsy nobles of the Empire. One of

those nobles swallowed so many bumpers that he tumbled into the turf fire,
and was not pulled out till his fine velvet suit had been burned. 5
In the midst of all this revelry, business was not neglected. A formal
meeting of the Congress was held at which William presided. In a short and
dignified speech, which was speedily circulated throughout Europe, he set
forth the necessity of firm union and strenuous exertion. The profound
respect with which he was heard by that splendid assembly caused bitter
mortification to his enemies both in England and in France. The German
potentates were bitterly reviled for yielding precedence to an upstart. Indeed
the most illustrious among them paid to him such marks of deference as
they would scarcely have deigned to pay to the Imperial Majesty, mingled
with the crowd in his antechamber, and at his table behaved as respectfully
as any English lord in waiting. In one caricature the allied princes were
represented as muzzled bears, some with crowns, some with caps of state.
William had them all in a chain, and was teaching them to dance. In another
caricature, he appeared taking his ease in an arm chair, with his feet on a
cushion, and his hat on his head, while the Electors of Brandenburg and
Bavaria, uncovered, occupied small stools on the right and left; the crowd
of Landgraves and Sovereign dukes stood at humble distance; and
Gastanaga, the unworthy successor of Alva, awaited the orders of the
heretic tyrant on bended knee. 6
It was soon announced by authority that, before the beginning of
summer, two hundred and twenty thousand men would be in the field
against France. 7 The contingent which each of the allied powers was to
furnish was made known. Matters about which it would have been
inexpedient to put forth any declaration were privately discussed by the
King of England with his allies. On this occasion, as on every other
important occasion during his reign, he was his own minister for foreign
affairs. It was necessary for the sake of form that he should be attended by a
Secretary of State; and Nottingham had therefore followed him to Holland.
But Nottingham, though, in matters concerning the internal government of
England, he enjoyed a large share of his master's confidence, knew little
more about the business of the Congress than what he saw in the Gazettes.
This mode of transacting business would now be thought most
unconstitutional; and many writers, applying the standard of their own age
to the transactions of a former age, have severely blamed William for acting

without the advice of his ministers, and his ministers for submitting to be
kept in ignorance of transactions which deeply concerned the honour of the
Crown and the welfare of the nation. Yet surely the presumption is that what
the most honest and honourable men of both parties, Nottingham, for
example, among the Tories, and Somers among the Whigs, not only did, but
avowed, cannot have been altogether inexcusable; and a very sufficient
excuse will without difficulty be found.
The doctrine that the Sovereign is not responsible is doubtless as old as
any part of our constitution. The doctrine that his ministers are responsible
is also of immemorial antiquity. That where there is no responsibility there
can be no trustworthy security against maladministration, is a doctrine
which, in our age and country, few people will be inclined to dispute. From
these three propositions it plainly follows that the administration is likely to
be best conducted when the Sovereign performs no public act without the
concurrence and instrumentality of a minister. This argument is perfectly
sound. But we must remember that arguments are constructed in one way,
and governments in another. In logic, none but an idiot admits the premises
and denies the legitimate conclusion. But in practice, we see that great and
enlightened communities often persist, generation after generation, in
asserting principles, and refusing to act upon those principles. It may be
doubted whether any real polity that ever existed has exactly corresponded
to the pure idea of that polity. According to the pure idea of constitutional
royalty, the prince reigns and does not govern; and constitutional royalty, as
it now exists in England, comes nearer than in any other country to the pure
idea. Yet it would be a great error to imagine that our princes merely reign
and never govern. In the seventeenth century, both Whigs and Tories
thought it, not only the right, but the duty, of the first magistrate to govern.
All parties agreed in blaming Charles the Second for not being his own
Prime Minister; all parties agreed in praising James for being his own Lord
High Admiral; and all parties thought it natural and reasonable that William
should be his own Foreign Secretary.
It may be observed that the ablest and best informed of those who have
censured the manner in which the negotiations of that time were conducted
are scarcely consistent with themselves. For, while they blame William for
being his own Ambassador Plenipotentiary at the Hague, they praise him
for being his own Commander in Chief in Ireland. Yet where is the
distinction in principle between the two cases? Surely every reason which

can be brought to prove that he violated the constitution, when, by his own
sole authority, he made compacts with the Emperor and the Elector of
Brandenburg, will equally prove that he violated the constitution, when, by
his own sole authority, he ordered one column to plunge into the water at
Oldbridge and another to cross the bridge of Slane. If the constitution gave
him the command of the forces of the State, the constitution gave him also
the direction of the foreign relations of the State. On what principle then
can it be maintained that he was at liberty to exercise the former power
without consulting any body, but that he was bound to exercise the latter
power in conformity with the advice of a minister? Will it be said that an
error in diplomacy is likely to be more injurious to the country than an error
in strategy? Surely not. It is hardly conceivable that any blunder which
William might have made at the Hague could have been more injurious to
the public interests than a defeat at the Boyne. Or will it be said that there
was greater reason for placing confidence in his military than in his
diplomatic skill? Surely not. In war he showed some great moral and
intellectual qualities; but, as a tactician, he did not rank high; and of his
many campaigns only two were decidedly successful. In the talents of a
negotiator, on the other hand, he has never been surpassed. Of the interests
and the tempers of the continental courts he knew more than all his Privy
Council together. Some of his ministers were doubtless men of great ability,
excellent orators in the House of Lords, and versed in our insular politics.
But, in the deliberations of the Congress, Caermarthen and Nottingham
would have been found as far inferior to him as he would have been found
inferior to them in a parliamentary debate on a question purely English. The
coalition against France was his work. He alone had joined together the
parts of that great whole; and he alone could keep them together. If he had
trusted that vast and complicated machine in the hands of any of his
subjects, it would instantly have fallen to pieces.
Some things indeed were to be done which none of his subjects would
have ventured to do. Pope Alexander was really, though not in name, one of
the allies; it was of the highest importance to have him for a friend; and yet
such was the temper of the English nation that an English minister might
well shrink from having any dealings, direct or indirect, with the Vatican.
The Secretaries of State were glad to leave a matter so delicate and so full
of risk to their master, and to be able to protest with truth that not a line to

which the most intolerant Protestant could object had ever gone out of their
offices.
It must not be supposed however that William ever forgot that his
especial, his hereditary, mission was to protect the Reformed Faith. His
influence with Roman Catholic princes was constantly and strenuously
exerted for the benefit of their Protestant subjects. In the spring of 1691, the
Waldensian shepherds, long and cruelly persecuted, and weary of their
lives, were surprised by glad tidings. Those who had been in prison for
heresy returned to their homes. Children, who had been taken from their
parents to be educated by priests, were sent back. Congregations, which had
hitherto met only by stealth and with extreme peril, now worshipped God
without molestation in the face of day. Those simple mountaineers probably
never knew that their fate had been a subject of discussion at the Hague,
and that they owed the happiness of their firesides, and the security of their
humble temples to the ascendency which William exercised over the Duke
of Savoy. 8
No coalition of which history has preserved the memory has had an abler
chief than William. But even William often contended in vain against those
vices which are inherent in the nature of all coalitions. No undertaking
which requires the hearty and long continued cooperation of many
independent states is likely to prosper. Jealousies inevitably spring up.
Disputes engender disputes. Every confederate is tempted to throw on
others some part of the burden which he ought himself to bear. Scarcely one
honestly furnishes the promised contingent. Scarcely one exactly observes
the appointed day. But perhaps no coalition that ever existed was in such
constant danger of dissolution as the coalition which William had with
infinite difficulty formed. The long list of potentates, who met in person or
by their representatives at the Hague, looked well in the Gazettes. The
crowd of princely equipages, attended by manycoloured guards and
lacqueys, looked well among the lime trees of the Voorhout. But the very
circumstances which made the Congress more splendid than other
congresses made the league weaker than other leagues. The more numerous
the allies, the more numerous were the dangers which threatened the
alliance. It was impossible that twenty governments, divided by quarrels
about precedence, quarrels about territory, quarrels about trade, quarrels
about religion, could long act together in perfect harmony. That they acted

together during several years in imperfect harmony is to be ascribed to the
wisdom, patience and firmness of William.
The situation of his great enemy was very different. The resources of the
French monarchy, though certainly not equal to those of England, Holland,
the House of Austria, and the Empire of Germany united, were yet very
formidable; they were all collected in a central position; they were all under
the absolute direction of a single mind. Lewis could do with two words
what William could hardly bring about by two months of negotiation at
Berlin, Munich, Brussels, Turin and Vienna. Thus France was found equal
in effective strength to all the states which were combined against her. For
in the political, as in the natural world, there may be an equality of
momentum between unequal bodies, when the body which is inferior in
weight is superior in velocity.
This was soon signally proved. In March the princes and ambassadors
who had been assembled at the Hague separated and scarcely had they
separated when all their plans were disconcerted by a bold and skilful move
of the enemy.
Lewis was sensible that the meeting of the Congress was likely to
produce a great effect on the public mind of Europe. That effect he
determined to counteract by striking a sudden and terrible blow. While his
enemies were settling how many troops each of them should furnish, he
ordered numerous divisions of his army to march from widely distant points
towards Mons, one of the most important, if not the most important, of the
fortresses which protected the Spanish Netherlands. His purpose was
discovered only when it was all but accomplished. William, who had retired
for a few days to Loo, learned, with surprise and extreme vexation, that
cavalry, infantry, artillery, bridges of boats, were fast approaching the fated
city by many converging routes. A hundred thousand men had been brought
together. All the implements of war had been largely provided by Louvois,
the first of living administrators. The command was entrusted to
Luxemburg, the first of living generals. The scientific operations were
directed by Vauban, the first of living engineers. That nothing might be
wanting which could kindle emulation through all the ranks of a gallant and
loyal army, the magnificent King himself had set out from Versailles for the
camp. Yet William had still some faint hope that it might be possible to
raise the siege. He flew to the Hague, put all the forces of the States General

in motion, and sent pressing messages to the German Princes. Within three
weeks after he had received the first hint of the danger, he was in the
neighbourhood of the besieged city, at the head of near fifty thousand troops
of different nations. To attack a superior force commanded by such a
captain as Luxemburg was a bold, almost a desperate, enterprise. Yet
William was so sensible that the loss of Mons would be an almost
irreparable disaster and disgrace that he made up his mind to run the hazard.
He was convinced that the event of the siege would determine the policy of
the Courts of Stockholm and Copenhagen. Those Courts had lately seemed
inclined to join the coalition. If Mons fell, they would certainly remain
neutral; they might possibly become hostile. "The risk," he wrote to
Heinsius, "is great; yet I am not without hope. I will do what can be done.
The issue is in the hands of God." On the very day on which this letter was
written Mons fell. The siege had been vigorously pressed. Lewis himself,
though suffering from the gout, had set the example of strenuous exertion.
His household troops, the finest body of soldiers in Europe, had, under his
eye, surpassed themselves. The young nobles of his court had tried to attract
his notice by exposing themselves to the hottest fire with the same gay
alacrity with which they were wont to exhibit their graceful figures at his
balls. His wounded soldiers were charmed by the benignant courtesy with
which he walked among their pallets, assisted while wounds were dressed
by the hospital surgeons, and breakfasted on a porringer of the hospital
broth. While all was obedience and enthusiasm among the besiegers, all
was disunion and dismay among the besieged. The duty of the French lines
was so well performed that no messenger sent by William was able to cross
them. The garrison did not know that relief was close at hand. The burghers
were appalled by the prospect of those horrible calamities which befall
cities taken by storm. Showers of shells and redhot bullets were falling in
the streets. The town was on fire in ten places at once. The peaceful
inhabitants derived an unwonted courage from the excess of their fear, and
rose on the soldiers. Thenceforth resistance was impossible; and a
capitulation was concluded. The armies then retired into quarters. Military
operations were suspended during some weeks; Lewis returned in triumph
to Versailles; and William paid a short visit to England, where his presence
was much needed. 9
He found the ministers still employed in tracing out the ramifications of
the plot which had been discovered just before his departure. Early in

January, Preston, Ashton and Elliot had been arraigned at the Old Bailey.
They claimed the right of severing in their challenges. It was therefore
necessary to try them separately. The audience was numerous and splendid.
Many peers were present. The Lord President and the two Secretaries of
State attended in order to prove that the papers produced in Court were the
same which Billop had brought to Whitehall. A considerable number of
judges appeared on the bench; and Holt presided. A full report of the
proceedings has come down to us, and well deserves to be attentively
studied, and to be compared with the reports of other trials which had not
long before taken place under the same roof. The whole spirit of the tribunal
had undergone in a few months a change so complete that it might seem to
have been the work of ages. Twelve years earlier, unhappy Roman
Catholics, accused of wickedness which had never entered into their
thoughts, had stood in that dock. The witnesses for the Crown had repeated
their hideous fictions amidst the applauding hums of the audience. The
judges had shared, or had pretended to share, the stupid credulity and the
savage passions of the populace, had exchanged smiles and compliments
with the perjured informers, had roared down the arguments feebly
stammered forth by the prisoners, and had not been ashamed, in passing the
sentence of death, to make ribald jests on purgatory and the mass. As soon
as the butchery of Papists was over, the butchery of Whigs had commenced;
and the judges had applied themselves to their new work with even more
than their old barbarity. To these scandals the Revolution had put an end.
Whoever, after perusing the trials of Ireland and Pickering, of Grove and
Berry, of Sidney, Cornish and Alice Lisle, turns to the trials of Preston and
Ashton, will be astonished by the contrast. The Solicitor General, Somers,
conducted the prosecutions with a moderation and humanity of which his
predecessors had left him no example. "I did never think," he said, "that it
was the part of any who were of counsel for the King in cases of this nature
to aggravate the crime of the prisoners, or to put false colours on the
evidence." 10 Holt's conduct was faultless. Pollexfen, an older man than
Holt or Somers, retained a little,—and a little was too much,—of the tone of
that bad school in which he had been bred. But, though he once or twice
forgot the austere decorum of his place, he cannot be accused of any
violation of substantial justice. The prisoners themselves seem to have been
surprised by the fairness and gentleness with which they were treated. "I
would not mislead the jury, I'll assure you," said Holt to Preston, "nor do

Your Lordship any manner of injury in the world." "No, my Lord;" said
Preston; "I see it well enough that Your Lordship would not." "Whatever
my fate may be," said Ashton, "I cannot but own that I have had a fair trial
for my life."
The culprits gained nothing by the moderation of the Solicitor General or
by the impartiality of the Court; for the evidence was irresistible. The
meaning of the papers seized by Billop was so plain that the dullest juryman
could not misunderstand it. Of those papers part was fully proved to be in
Preston's handwriting. Part was in Ashton's handwriting but this the counsel
for the prosecution had not the means of proving. They therefore rested the
case against Ashton on the indisputable facts that the treasonable packet had
been found in his bosom, and that he had used language which was quite
unintelligible except on the supposition that he had a guilty knowledge of
the contents. 11
Both Preston and Ashton were convicted and sentenced to death. Ashton
was speedily executed. He might have saved his life by making disclosures.
But though he declared that, if he were spared, he would always be a
faithful subject of Their Majesties, he was fully resolved not to give up the
names of his accomplices. In this resolution he was encouraged by the
nonjuring divines who attended him in his cell. It was probably by their
influence that he was induced to deliver to the Sheriffs on the scaffold a
declaration which he had transcribed and signed, but had not, it is to be
hoped, composed or attentively considered. In this paper he was made to
complain of the unfairness of a trial which he had himself in public
acknowledged to have been eminently fair. He was also made to aver, on
the word of a dying man, that he knew nothing of the papers which had
been found upon him. Unfortunately his declaration, when inspected,
proved to be in the same handwriting with one of the most important of
those papers. He died with manly fortitude. 12
Elliot was not brought to trial. The evidence against him was not quite so
clear as that on which his associates had been convicted; and he was not
worth the anger of the government. The fate of Preston was long in
suspense. The Jacobites affected to be confident that the government would
not dare to shed his blood. He was, they said, a favourite at Versailles, and
his death would be followed by a terrible retaliation. They scattered about
the streets of London papers in which it was asserted that, if any harm befell

him, Mountjoy, and all the other Englishmen of quality who were prisoners
in France, would be broken on the wheel. 13 These absurd threats would not
have deferred the execution one day. But those who had Preston in their
power were not unwilling to spare him on certain conditions. He was privy
to all the counsels of the disaffected party, and could furnish information of
the highest value. He was informed that his fate depended on himself. The
struggle was long and severe. Pride, conscience, party spirit, were on one
side; the intense love of life on the other. He went during a time irresolutely
to and fro. He listened to his brother Jacobites; and his courage rose. He
listened to the agents of the government; and his heart sank within him. In
an evening when he had dined and drunk his claret, he feared nothing. He
would die like a man, rather than save his neck by an act of baseness. But
his temper was very different when he woke the next morning, when the
courage which he had drawn from wine and company had evaporated, when
he was alone with the iron grates and stone walls, and when the thought of
the block, the axe and the sawdust rose in his mind. During some time he
regularly wrote a confession every forenoon when he was sober, and burned
it every night when he was merry. 14 His nonjuring friends formed a plan
for bringing Sancroft to visit the Tower, in the hope, doubtless, that the
exhortations of so great a prelate and so great a saint would confirm the
wavering virtue of the prisoner. 15 Whether this plan would have been
successful may be doubted; it was not carried into effect; the fatal hour
drew near; and the fortitude of Preston gave way. He confessed his guilt,
and named Clarendon, Dartmouth, the Bishop of Ely and William Penn, as
his accomplices. He added a long list of persons against whom he could not
himself give evidence, but who, if he could trust to Penn's assurances, were
friendly to King James. Among these persons were Devonshire and Dorset.
16 There is not the slightest reason to believe that either of these great
noblemen ever had any dealings, direct or indirect, with Saint Germains. It
is not, however, necessary to accuse Penn of deliberate falsehood. He was
credulous and garrulous. The Lord Steward and the Lord Chamberlain had
shared in the vexation with which their party had observed the leaning of
William towards the Tories; and they had probably expressed that vexation
unguardedly. So weak a man as Penn, wishing to find Jacobites every
where, and prone to believe whatever he wished, might easily put an
erroneous construction on invectives such as the haughty and irritable
Devonshire was but too ready to utter, and on sarcasms such as, in moments

of spleen, dropped but too easily from the lips of the keenwitted Dorset.
Caermarthen, a Tory, and a Tory who had been mercilessly persecuted by
the Whigs, was disposed to make the most of this idle hearsay. But he
received no encouragement from his master, who, of all the great politicians
mentioned in history, was the least prone to suspicion. When William
returned to England, Preston was brought before him, and was commanded
to repeat the confession which had already been made to the ministers. The
King stood behind the Lord President's chair and listened gravely while
Clarendon, Dartmouth, Turner and Penn were named. But as soon as the
prisoner, passing from what he could himself testify, began to repeat the
stories which Penn had told him, William touched Caermarthen on the
shoulder and said, "My Lord, we have had too much of this." 17 This
judicious magnanimity had its proper reward. Devonshire and Dorset
became from that day more zealous than ever in the cause of the master
who, in spite of calumny for which their own indiscretion had perhaps
furnished some ground, had continued to repose confidence in their loyalty.
18
Even those who were undoubtedly criminal were generally treated with
great lenity. Clarendon lay in the Tower about six months. His guilt was
fully established; and a party among the Whigs called loudly and
importunately for his head. But he was saved by the pathetic entreaties of
his brother Rochester, by the good offices of the humane and generous
Burnet, and by Mary's respect for the memory of her mother. The prisoner's
confinement was not strict. He was allowed to entertain his friends at
dinner. When at length his health began to suffer from restraint, he was
permitted to go into the country under the care of a warder; the warder was
soon removed; and Clarendon was informed that, while he led a quiet rural
life, he should not be molested. 19
The treason of Dartmouth was of no common dye. He was an English
seaman; and he had laid a plan for betraying Portsmouth to the French, and
had offered to take the command of a French squadron against his country.
It was a serious aggravation of his guilt that he had been one of the very
first persons who took the oaths to William and Mary. He was arrested and
brought to the Council Chamber. A narrative of what passed there, written
by himself, has been preserved. In that narrative he admits that he was
treated with great courtesy and delicacy. He vehemently asserted his
innocence. He declared that he had never corresponded with Saint

Germains, that he was no favourite there, and that Mary of Modena in
particular owed him a grudge. "My Lords," he said, "I am an Englishman. I
always, when the interest of the House of Bourbon was strongest here,
shunned the French, both men and women. I would lose the last drop of my
blood rather than see Portsmouth in the power of foreigners. I am not such a
fool as to think that King Lewis will conquer us merely for the benefit of
King James. I am certain that nothing can be truly imputed to me beyond
some foolish talk over a bottle." His protestations seem to have produced
some effect; for he was at first permitted to remain in the gentle custody of
the Black Rod. On further inquiry, however, it was determined to send him
to the Tower. After a confinement of a few weeks he died of apoplexy; but
he lived long enough to complete his disgrace by offering his sword to the
new government, and by expressing in fervent language his hope that he
might, by the goodness of God and of Their Majesties, have an opportunity
of showing how much he hated the French. 20
Turner ran no serious risk; for the government was most unwilling to
send to the scaffold one of the Seven who had signed the memorable
petition. A warrant was however issued for his apprehension; and his
friends had little hope that he would escape; for his nose was such as none
who had seen it could forget; and it was to little purpose that he put on a
flowing wig and that he suffered his beard to grow. The pursuit was
probably not very hot; for, after skulking a few weeks in England, he
succeeded in crossing the Channel, and remained some time in France. 21
A warrant was issued against Penn; and he narrowly escaped the
messengers. It chanced that, on the day on which they were sent in search
of him, he was attending a remarkable ceremony at some distance from his
home. An event had taken place which a historian, whose object is to record
the real life of a nation, ought not to pass unnoticed. While London was
agitated by the news that a plot had been discovered, George Fox, the
founder of the sect of Quakers, died.
More than forty years had elapsed since Fox had begun to see visions and
to cast out devils. 22 He was then a youth of pure morals and grave
deportment, with a perverse temper, with the education of a labouring man,
and with an intellect in the most unhappy of all states, that is to say, too
much disordered for liberty, and not sufficiently disordered for Bedlam. The
circumstances in which he was placed were such as could scarcely fail to

bring out in the strongest form the constitutional diseases of his mind. At
the time when his faculties were ripening, Episcopalians, Presbyterians,
Independents, Baptists, were striving for mastery, and were, in every corner
of the realm, refuting and reviling each other. He wandered from
congregation to congregation; he heard priests harangue against Puritans; he
heard Puritans harangue against priests; and he in vain applied for spiritual
direction and consolation to doctors of both parties. One jolly old
clergyman of the Anglican communion told him to smoke tobacco and sing
psalms; another advised him to go and lose some blood. 23 The young
inquirer turned in disgust from these advisers to the Dissenters, and found
them also blind guides. 24 After some time he came to the conclusion that
no human being was competent to instruct him in divine things, and that the
truth had been communicated to him by direct inspiration from heaven. He
argued that, as the division of languages began at Babel, and as the
persecutors of Christ put on the cross an inscription in Latin, Greek and
Hebrew, the knowledge of languages, and more especially of Latin, Greek
and Hebrew, must be useless to a Christian minister. 25 Indeed, he was so
far from knowing many languages, that he knew none; nor can the most
corrupt passage in Hebrew be more unintelligible to the unlearned than his
English often is to the most acute and attentive reader. 26 One of the
precious truths which were divinely revealed to this new apostle was, that it
was falsehood and adulation to use the second person plural instead of the
second person singular. Another was, that to talk of the month of March was
to worship the bloodthirsty god Mars, and that to talk of Monday was to pay
idolatrous homage to the moon. To say Good morning or Good evening was
highly reprehensible, for those phrases evidently imported that God had
made bad days and bad nights. 27 A Christian was bound to face death itself
rather than touch his hat to the greatest of mankind. When Fox was
challenged to produce any Scriptural authority for this dogma, he cited the
passage in which it is written that Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego were
thrown into the fiery furnace with their hats on; and, if his own narrative
may be trusted, the Chief Justice of England was altogether unable to
answer this argument except by crying out, "Take him away, gaoler." 28 Fox
insisted much on the not less weighty argument that the Turks never show
their bare heads to their superiors; and he asked, with great animation,
whether those who bore the noble name of Christians ought not to surpass
Turks in virtue. 29 Bowing he strictly prohibited, and, indeed, seemed to

consider it as the effect of Satanical influence; for, as he observed, the
woman in the Gospel, while she had a spirit of infirmity, was bowed
together, and ceased to bow as soon as Divine power had liberated her from
the tyranny of the Evil One. 30 His expositions of the sacred writings were
of a very peculiar kind. Passages, which had been, in the apprehension of
all the readers of the Gospels during sixteen centuries, figurative, he
construed literally. Passages, which no human being before him had ever
understood in any other than a literal sense, he construed figuratively. Thus,
from those rhetorical expressions in which the duty of patience under
injuries is enjoined he deduced the doctrine that selfdefence against pirates
and assassins is unlawful. On the other hand, the plain commands to baptize
with water, and to partake of bread and wine in commemoration of the
redemption of mankind, he pronounced to be allegorical. He long wandered
from place to place, teaching this strange theology, shaking like an aspen
leaf in his paroxysms of fanatical excitement, forcing his way into churches,
which he nicknamed steeple houses interrupting prayers and sermons with
clamour and scurrility, 31 and pestering rectors and justices with epistles
much resembling burlesques of those sublime odes in which the Hebrew
prophets foretold the calamities of Babylon and Tyre. 32 He soon acquired
great notoriety by these feats. His strange face, his strange chant, his
immovable hat and his leather breeches were known all over the country;
and he boasts that, as soon as the rumour was heard, "The Man in Leather
Breeches is coming," terror seized hypocritical professors, and hireling
priests made haste to get out of his way. 33 He was repeatedly imprisoned
and set in the stocks, sometimes justly, for disturbing the public worship of
congregations, and sometimes unjustly, for merely talking nonsense. He
soon gathered round him a body of disciples, some of whom went beyond
himself in absurdity. He has told us that one of his friends walked naked
through Skipton declaring the truth. 34 and that another was divinely moved
to go naked during several years to marketplaces, and to the houses of
gentlemen and clergymen. 35 Fox complains bitterly that these pious acts,
prompted by the Holy Spirit, were requited by an untoward generation with
hooting, pelting, coachwhipping and horsewhipping. But, though he
applauded the zeal of the sufferers, he did not go quite to their lengths. He
sometimes, indeed, was impelled to strip himself partially. Thus he pulled
off his shoes and walked barefoot through Lichfield, crying, "Woe to the
bloody city." 36 But it does not appear that he ever thought it his duty to

appear before the public without that decent garment from which his
popular appellation was derived.
If we form our judgment of George Fox simply by looking at his own
actions and writings, we shall see no reason for placing him, morally or
intellectually, above Ludowick Muggleton or Joanna Southcote. But it
would be most unjust to rank the sect which regards him as its founder with
the Muggletonians or the Southcotians. It chanced that among the thousands
whom his enthusiasm infected were a few persons whose abilities and
attainments were of a very different order from his own. Robert Barclay
was a man of considerable parts and learning. William Penn, though inferior
to Barclay in both natural and acquired abilities, was a gentleman and a
scholar. That such men should have become the followers of George Fox
ought not to astonish any person who remembers what quick, vigorous and
highly cultivated intellects were in our own times duped by the unknown
tongues. The truth is that no powers of mind constitute a security against
errors of this description. Touching God and His ways with man, the highest
human faculties can discover little more than the meanest. In theology the
interval is small indeed between Aristotle and a child, between Archimedes
and a naked savage. It is not strange, therefore, that wise men, weary of
investigation, tormented by uncertainty, longing to believe something, and
yet seeing objections to every thing, should submit themselves absolutely to
teachers who, with firm and undoubting faith, lay claim to a supernatural
commission. Thus we frequently see inquisitive and restless spirits take
refuge from their own scepticism in the bosom of a church which pretends
to infallibility, and, after questioning the existence of a Deity, bring
themselves to worship a wafer. And thus it was that Fox made some
converts to whom he was immeasurably inferior in every thing except the
energy of his convictions. By these converts his rude doctrines were
polished into a form somewhat less shocking to good sense and good taste.
No proposition which he had laid down was retracted. No indecent or
ridiculous act which he had done or approved was condemned; but what
was most grossly absurd in his theories and practices was softened down, or
at least not obtruded on the public; whatever could be made to appear
specious was set in the fairest light; his gibberish was translated into
English; meanings which he would have been quite unable to comprehend
were put on his phrases; and his system, so much improved that he would
not have known it again, was defended by numerous citations from Pagan

philosophers and Christian fathers whose names he had never heard. 37
Still, however, those who had remodelled his theology continued to profess,
and doubtless to feel, profound reverence for him; and his crazy epistles
were to the last received and read with respect in Quaker meetings all over
the country. His death produced a sensation which was not confined to his
own disciples. On the morning of the funeral a great multitude assembled
round the meeting house in Gracechurch Street. Thence the corpse was
borne to the burial ground of the sect near Bunhill Fields. Several orators
addressed the crowd which filled the cemetery. Penn was conspicuous
among those disciples who committed the venerable corpse to the earth.
The ceremony had scarcely been finished when he learned that warrants
were out against him. He instantly took flight, and remained many months
concealed from the public eye. 38
A short time after his disappearance, Sidney received from him a strange
communication. Penn begged for an interview, but insisted on a promise
that he should be suffered to return unmolested to his hiding place. Sidney
obtained the royal permission to make an appointment on these terms. Penn
came to the rendezvous, and spoke at length in his own defence. He
declared that he was a faithful subject of King William and Queen Mary,
and that, if he knew of any design against them, he would discover it.
Departing from his Yea and Nay, he protested, as in the presence of God,
that he knew of no plot, and that he did not believe that there was any plot,
unless the ambitious projects of the French government might be called
plots. Sidney, amazed probably by hearing a person, who had such an
abhorrence of lies that he would not use the common forms of civility, and
such an abhorrence of oaths that he would not kiss the book in a court of
justice, tell something very like a lie, and confirm it by something very like
an oath, asked how, if there were really no plot, the letters and minutes
which had been found on Ashton were to be explained. This question Penn
evaded. "If," he said, "I could only see the King, I would confess every
thing to him freely. I would tell him much that it would be important for
him to know. It is only in that way that I can be of service to him. A witness
for the Crown I cannot be for my conscience will not suffer me to be
sworn." He assured Sidney that the most formidable enemies of the
government were the discontented Whigs. "The Jacobites are not
dangerous. There is not a man among them who has common
understanding. Some persons who came over from Holland with the King

are much more to be dreaded." It does not appear that Penn mentioned any
names. He was suffered to depart in safety. No active search was made for
him. He lay hid in London during some months, and then stole down to the
coast of Sussex and made his escape to France. After about three years of
wandering and lurking he, by the mediation of some eminent men, who
overlooked his faults for the sake of his good qualities, made his peace with
the government, and again ventured to resume his ministrations. The return
which he made for the lenity with which he had been treated does not much
raise his character. Scarcely had he again begun to harangue in public about
the unlawfulness of war, when he sent a message earnestly exhorting James
to make an immediate descent on England with thirty thousand men. 39
Some months passed before the fate of Preston was decided. After
several respites, the government, convinced that, though he had told much,
he could tell more, fixed a day for his execution, and ordered the sheriffs to
have the machinery of death in readiness. 40 But he was again respited, and,
after a delay of some weeks, obtained a pardon, which, however, extended
only to his life, and left his property subject to all the consequences of his
attainder. As soon as he was set at liberty he gave new cause of offence and
suspicion, and was again arrested, examined and sent to prison. 41 At length
he was permitted to retire, pursued by the hisses and curses of both parties,
to a lonely manor house in the North Riding of Yorkshire. There, at least, he
had not to endure the scornful looks of old associates who had once thought
him a man of dauntless courage and spotless honour, but who now
pronounced that he was at best a meanspirited coward, and hinted their
suspicions that he had been from the beginning a spy and a trepan. 42 He
employed the short and sad remains of his life in turning the Consolation of
Boethius into English. The translation was published after the translator's
death. It is remarkable chiefly on account of some very unsuccessful
attempts to enrich our versification with new metres, and on account of the
allusions with which the preface is filled. Under a thin veil of figurative
language, Preston exhibited to the public compassion or contempt his own
blighted fame and broken heart. He complained that the tribunal which had
sentenced him to death had dealt with him more leniently than his former
friends, and that many, who had never been tried by temptations like his,
had very cheaply earned a reputation for courage by sneering at his
poltroonery, and by bidding defiance at a distance to horrors which, when
brought near, subdue even a constant spirit.

The spirit of the Jacobites, which had been quelled for a time by the
detection of Preston's plot, was revived by the fall of Mons. The joy of the
whole party was boundless. The nonjuring priests ran backwards and
forwards between Sam's Coffee House and Westminster Hall, spreading the
praises of Lewis, and laughing at the miserable issue of the deliberations of
the great Congress. In the Park the malecontents wore their biggest looks,
and talked sedition in their loudest tones. The most conspicuous among
these swaggerers was Sir John Fenwick, who had, in the late reign, been
high in favour and in military command, and was now an indefatigable
agitator and conspirator. In his exultation he forgot the courtesy which man
owes to woman. He had more than once made himself conspicuous by his
impertinence to the Queen. He now ostentatiously put himself in her way
when she took her airing; and, while all around him uncovered and bowed
low, gave her a rude stare and cocked his hat in her face. The affront was
not only brutal, but cowardly. For the law had provided no punishment for
mere impertinence, however gross; and the King was the only gentleman
and soldier in the kingdom who could not protect his wife from contumely
with his sword. All that the Queen could do was to order the parkkeepers
not to admit Sir John again within the gates. But, long after her death, a day
came when he had reason to wish that he had restrained his insolence. He
found, by terrible proof, that of all the Jacobites, the most desperate
assassins not excepted, he was the only one for whom William felt an
intense personal aversion. 43
A few days after this event the rage of the malecontents began to flame
more fiercely than ever. The detection of the conspiracy of which Preston
was the chief had brought on a crisis in ecclesiastical affairs. The nonjuring
bishops had, during the year which followed their deprivation, continued to
reside in the official mansions which had once been their own. Burnet had,
at Mary's request, laboured to effect a compromise. His direct interference
would probably have done more harm than good. He therefore judiciously
employed the agency of Rochester, who stood higher in the estimation of
the nonjurors than any statesman who was not a nonjuror, and of Trevor,
who, worthless as he was, had considerable influence with the High Church
party. Sancroft and his brethren were informed that, if they would consent
to perform their spiritual duty, to ordain, to institute, to confirm, and to
watch over the faith and the morality of the priesthood, a bill should be
brought into Parliament to excuse them from taking the oaths. 44 This offer

was imprudently liberal; but those to whom it was made could not
consistently accept it. For in the ordination service, and indeed in almost
every service of the Church, William and Mary were designated as King
and Queen. The only promise that could be obtained from the deprived
prelates was that they would live quietly; and even this promise they had
not all kept. One of them at least had been guilty of treason aggravated by
impiety. He had, under the strong fear of being butchered by the populace,
declared that he abhorred the thought of calling in the aid of France, and
had invoked God to attest the sincerity of this declaration. Yet, a short time
after, he had been detected in plotting to bring a French army into England;
and he had written to assure the Court of Saint Germains that he was acting
in concert with his brethren, and especially with Sancroft. The Whigs called
loudly for severity. Even the Tory counsellors of William owned that
indulgence had been carried to the extreme point. They made, however, a
last attempt to mediate. "Will you and your brethren," said Trevor to Lloyd,
the nonjuring Bishop of Norwich, "disown all connection with Doctor
Turner, and declare that what he has in his letters imputed to you is false?"
Lloyd evaded the question. It was now evident that William's forbearance
had only emboldened the adversaries whom he had hoped to conciliate.
Even Caermarthen, even Nottingham, declared that it was high time to fill
the vacant sees. 45
Tillotson was nominated to the Archbishopric, and was consecrated on
Whitsunday, in the church of St. Mary Le Bow. Compton, cruelly mortified,
refused to bear any part in the ceremony. His place was supplied by Mew,
Bishop of Winchester, who was assisted by Burnet, Stillingfleet and Hough.
The congregation was the most splendid that had been seen in any place of
worship since the coronation. The Queen's drawingroom was, on that day,
deserted. Most of the peers who were in town met in the morning at
Bedford House, and went thence in procession to Cheapside. Norfolk,
Caermarthen and Dorset were conspicuous in the throng. Devonshire, who
was impatient to see his woods at Chatsworth in their summer beauty, had
deferred his departure in order to mark his respect for Tillotson. The crowd
which lined the streets greeted the new Primate warmly. For he had, during
many years, preached in the City; and his eloquence, his probity and the
singular gentleness of his temper and manners, had made him the favourite
of the Londoners. 46 But the congratulations and applauses of his friends
could not drown the roar of execration which the Jacobites set up.

According to them, he was a thief who had not entered by the door, but had
climbed over the fences. He was a hireling whose own the sheep were not,
who had usurped the crook of the good shepherd, and who might well be
expected to leave the flock at the mercy of every wolf. He was an Arian, a
Socinian, a Deist, an Atheist. He had cozened the world by fine phrases, and
by a show of moral goodness: but he was in truth a far more dangerous
enemy of the Church than he could have been if he had openly proclaimed
himself a disciple of Hobbes, and had lived as loosely as Wilmot. He had
taught the fine gentlemen and ladies who admired his style, and who were
constantly seen round his pulpit, that they might be very good Christians,
and yet might believe the account of the Fall in the book of Genesis to be
allegorical. Indeed they might easily be as good Christians as he; for he had
never been christened; his parents were Anabaptists; he had lost their
religion when he was a boy; and he had never found another. In ribald
lampoons he was nicknamed Undipped John. The parish register of his
baptism was produced in vain. His enemies still continued to complain that
they had lived to see fathers of the Church who never were her children.
They made up a story that the Queen had felt bitter remorse for the great
crime by which she had obtained a throne, that in her agony she had applied
to Tillotson, and that he had comforted her by assuring her that the
punishment of the wicked in a future state would not be eternal. 47 The
Archbishop's mind was naturally of almost feminine delicacy, and had been
rather softened than braced by the habits of a long life, during which
contending sects and factions had agreed in speaking of his abilities with
admiration and of his character with esteem. The storm of obloquy which
he had to face for the first time at more than sixty years of age was too
much for him. His spirits declined; his health gave way; yet he neither
flinched from his duty nor attempted to revenge himself on his persecutors.
A few days after his consecration, some persons were seized while
dispersing libels in which he was reviled. The law officers of the Crown
proposed to institute prosecutions; but he insisted that nobody should be
punished on his account. 48 Once, when he had company with him, a sealed
packet was put into his hands; he opened it; and out fell a mask. His friends
were shocked and incensed by this cowardly insult; but the Archbishop,
trying to conceal his anguish by a smile, pointed to the pamphlets which
covered his table, and said that the reproach which the emblem of the mask
was intended to convey might be called gentle when compared with other

reproaches which he daily had to endure. After his death a bundle of the
savage lampoons which the nonjurors had circulated against him was found
among his papers with this indorsement: "I pray God forgive them; I do." 49
The temper of the deposed primate was very different. He seems to have
been under a complete delusion as to his own importance. The immense
popularity which he had enjoyed three years before, the prayers and tears of
the multitudes who had plunged into the Thames to implore his blessing,
the enthusiasm with which the sentinels of the Tower had drunk his health
under the windows of his prison, the mighty roar of joy which had risen
from Palace Yard on the morning of his acquittal, the triumphant night
when every window from Hyde Park to Mile End had exhibited seven
candles, the midmost and tallest emblematical of him, were still fresh in his
recollection; nor had he the wisdom to perceive that all this homage had
been paid, not to his person, but to that religion and to those liberties of
which he was, for a moment, the representative. The extreme tenderness
with which the new government had long persisted in treating him seems to
have confirmed him in his error. That a succession of conciliatory messages
was sent to him from Kensington, that he was offered terms so liberal as to
be scarcely consistent with the dignity of the Crown and the welfare of the
State, that his cold and uncourteous answers could not tire out the royal
indulgence, that, in spite of the loud clamours of the Whigs, and of the
provocations daily given by the Jacobites, he was residing, fifteen months
after deprivation, in the metropolitan palace, these things seemed to him to
indicate not the lenity but the timidity of the ruling powers. He appears to
have flattered himself that they would not dare to eject him. The news,
therefore, that his see had been filled threw him into a passion which lasted
as long as his life, and which hurried him into many foolish and unseemly
actions. Tillotson, as soon as he was appointed, went to Lambeth in the
hope that he might be able, by courtesy and kindness, to soothe the irritation
of which he was the innocent cause. He stayed long in the antechamber, and
sent in his name by several servants; but Sancroft would not even return an
answer. 50 Three weeks passed; and still the deprived Archbishop showed
no disposition to move. At length he received an order intimating to him the
royal pleasure that he should quit the dwelling which had long ceased to be
his own, and in which he was only a guest. He resented this order bitterly,
and declared that he would not obey it. He would stay till he was pulled out
by the Sheriff's officers. He would defend himself at law as long as he could

do so without putting in any plea acknowledging the authority of the
usurpers. 51 The case was so clear that he could not, by any artifice of
chicanery, obtain more than a short delay. When judgment had been given
against him, he left the palace, but directed his steward to retain possession.
The consequence was that the steward was taken into custody and heavily
fined. Tillotson sent a kind message to assure his predecessor that the fine
should not be exacted. But Sancroft was determined to have a grievance,
and would pay the money. 52
From that time the great object of the narrowminded and peevish old man
was to tear in pieces the Church of which he had been the chief minister. It
was in vain that some of those nonjurors, whose virtue, ability and learning
were the glory of their party, remonstrated against his design. "Our
deprivation,"—such was the reasoning of Ken,—"is, in the sight of God, a
nullity. We are, and shall be, till we die or resign, the true Bishops of our
sees. Those who assume our titles and functions will incur the guilt of
schism. But with us, if we act as becomes us, the schism will die; and in the
next generation the unity of the Church will be restored. On the other hand,
if we consecrate Bishops to succeed us, the breach may last through ages,
and we shall be justly held accountable, not indeed for its origin, but for its
continuance." These considerations ought, on Sancroft's own principles, to
have had decisive weight with him; but his angry passions prevailed. Ken
quietly retired from the venerable palace of Wells. He had done, he said,
with strife, and should henceforth vent his feelings not in disputes but in
hymns. His charities to the unhappy of all persuasions, especially to the
followers of Monmouth and to the persecuted Huguenots, had been so large
that his whole private fortune consisted of seven hundred pounds, and of a
library which he could not bear to sell. But Thomas Thynne, Viscount
Weymouth, though not a nonjuror, did himself honour by offering to the
most virtuous of the nonjurors a tranquil and dignified asylum in the
princely mansion of Longleat. There Ken passed a happy and honoured old
age, during which he never regretted the sacrifice which he had made to
what he thought his duty, and yet constantly became more and more
indulgent to those whose views of duty differed from his. 53
Sancroft was of a very different temper. He had, indeed, as little to
complain of as any man whom a revolution has ever hurled down from an
exalted station. He had at Fressingfield, in Suffolk, a patrimonial estate,
which, together with what he had saved during a primacy of twelve years,

enabled him to live, not indeed as he had lived when he was the first peer of
Parliament, but in the style of an opulent country gentleman. He retired to
his hereditary abode; and there he passed the rest of his life in brooding
over his wrongs. Aversion to the Established Church became as strong a
feeling in him as it had been in Martin Marprelate. He considered all who
remained in communion with her as heathens and publicans. He nicknamed
Tillotson the Mufti. In the room which was used as a chapel at Fressingfield
no person who had taken the oaths, or who attended the ministry of any
divine who had taken the oaths, was suffered to partake of the sacred bread
and wine. A distinction, however, was made between two classes of
offenders. A layman who remained in communion with the Church was
permitted to be present while prayers were read, and was excluded only
from the highest of Christian mysteries. But with clergymen who had sworn
allegiance to the Sovereigns in possession Sancroft would not even pray. He
took care that the rule which he had laid down should be widely known,
and, both by precept and by example, taught his followers to look on the
most orthodox, the most devout, the most virtuous of those who
acknowledged William's authority with a feeling similar to that with which
the Jew regarded the Samaritan. 54 Such intolerance would have been
reprehensible, even in a man contending for a great principle. But Sancroft
was contending merely for a name. He was the author of the scheme of
Regency. He was perfectly willing to transfer the whole kingly power from
James to William. The question which, to this smallest and sourest of
minds, seemed important enough to justify the excommunicating of ten
thousand priests and of five millions of laymen was, whether the magistrate
to whom the whole kingly power was transferred should assume the kingly
title. Nor could Sancroft bear to think that the animosity which he had
excited would die with himself. Having done all that he could to make the
feud bitter, he determined to make it eternal. A list of the divines who had
been ejected from their benefices was sent by him to Saint Germains with a
request that James would nominate two who might keep up the episcopal
succession. James, well pleased, doubtless, to see another sect added to that
multitude of sects which he had been taught to consider as the reproach of
Protestantism, named two fierce and uncompromising nonjurors, Hickes
and Wagstaffe, the former recommended by Sancroft, the latter
recommended by Lloyd, the ejected Bishop of Norwich. 55 Such was the
origin of a schismatical hierarchy, which, having, during a short time,

excited alarm, soon sank into obscurity and contempt, but which, in
obscurity and contempt, continued to drag on a languid existence during
several generations. The little Church, without temples, revenues or
dignities, was even more distracted by internal disputes than the great
Church, which retained possession of cathedrals, tithes and peerages. Some
nonjurors leaned towards the ceremonial of Rome; others would not tolerate
the slightest departure from the Book of Common Prayer. Altar was set up
against altar. One phantom prelate pronounced the consecration of another
phantom prelate uncanonical. At length the pastors were left absolutely
without flocks. One of these Lords spiritual very wisely turned surgeon;
another left what he had called his see, and settled in Ireland; and at length,
in 1805, the last Bishop of that society which had proudly claimed to be the
only true Church of England dropped unnoticed into the grave. 56
The places of the bishops who had been ejected with Sancroft were filled
in a manner creditable to the government. Patrick succeeded the traitor
Turner. Fowler went to Gloucester. Richard Cumberland, an aged divine,
who had no interest at Court, and whose only recommendations were his
piety and erudition, was astonished by learning from a newsletter which he
found on the table of a coffeehouse that he had been nominated to the See
of Peterborough. 57 Beveridge was selected to succeed Ken; he consented;
and the appointment was actually announced in the London Gazette. But
Beveridge, though an honest, was not a strongminded man. Some Jacobites
expostulated with him; some reviled him; his heart failed him; and he
retracted. While the nonjurors were rejoicing in this victory, he changed his
mind again; but too late. He had by his irresolution forfeited the favour of
William, and never obtained a mitre till Anne was on the throne. 58 The
bishopric of Bath and Wells was bestowed on Richard Kidder, a man of
considerable attainments and blameless character, but suspected of a
leaning towards Presbyterianism. About the same time Sharp, the highest
churchman that had been zealous for the Comprehension, and the lowest
churchman that felt a scruple about succeeding a deprived prelate, accepted
the Archbishopric of York, vacant by the death of Lamplugh. 59
In consequence of the elevation of Tillotson to the See of Canterbury, the
Deanery of Saint Paul's became vacant. As soon as the name of the new
Dean was known, a clamour broke forth such as perhaps no ecclesiastical
appointment has ever produced, a clamour made up of yells of hatred, of

hisses of contempt, and of shouts of triumphant and half insulting welcome;
for the new Dean was William Sherlock.
The story of his conversion deserves to be fully told; for it throws great
light on the character of the parties which then divided the Church and the
State. Sherlock was, in influence and reputation, though not in rank, the
foremost man among the nonjurors. His authority and example had induced
some of his brethren, who had at first wavered, to resign their benefices.
The day of suspension came; the day of deprivation came; and still he was
firm. He seemed to have found, in the consciousness of rectitude, and in
meditation on the invisible world, ample compensation for all his losses.
While excluded from the pulpit where his eloquence had once delighted the
learned and polite inmates of the Temple, he wrote that celebrated Treatise
on Death which, during many years, stood next to the Whole Duty of Man
in the bookcases of serious Arminians. Soon, however, it began to be
suspected that his resolution was giving way. He declared that he would be
no party to a schism; he advised those who sought his counsel not to leave
their parish churches; nay, finding that the law which had ejected him from
his cure did not interdict him from performing divine service, he officiated
at Saint Dunstan's, and there prayed for King William and Queen Mary. The
apostolical injunction, he said, was that prayers should be made for all in
authority, and William and Mary were visibly in authority. His Jacobite
friends loudly blamed his inconsistency. How, they asked, if you admit that
the Apostle speaks in this passage of actual authority, can you maintain that,
in other passages of a similar kind, he speaks only of legitimate authority?
Or how can you, without sin, designate as King, in a solemn address to
God, one whom you cannot, without sin, promise to obey as King? These
reasonings were unanswerable; and Sherlock soon began to think them so;
but the conclusion to which they led him was diametrically opposed to the
conclusion to which they were meant to lead him. He hesitated, however,
till a new light flashed on his mind from a quarter from which there was
little reason to expect any thing but tenfold darkness. In the reign of James
the First, Doctor John Overall, Bishop of Exeter, had written an elaborate
treatise on the rights of civil and ecclesiastical governors. This treatise had
been solemnly approved by the Convocations of Canterbury and York, and
might therefore be considered as an authoritative exposition of the doctrine
of the Church of England. A copy of the manuscript was in Sancroft's
possession; and he, soon after the Revolution, sent it to the press. He hoped,

doubtless, that the publication would injure the new government; but he
was lamentably disappointed. The book indeed condemned all resistance in
terms as strong as he could himself have used; but one passage which had
escaped his notice was decisive against himself and his fellow schismatics.
Overall, and the two Convocations which had given their sanction to
Overall's teaching, pronounced that a government, which had originated in
rebellion, ought, when thoroughly settled, to be considered as ordained by
God and to be obeyed by Christian men. 60 Sherlock read, and was
convinced. His venerable mother the Church had spoken; and he, with the
docility of a child, accepted her decree. The government which had sprung
from the Revolution might, at least since the battle of the Boyne and the
flight of James from Ireland, be fairly called a settled government, and
ought therefore to be passively obeyed till it should be subverted by another
revolution and succeeded by another settled government.
Sherlock took the oaths, and speedily published, in justification of his
conduct, a pamphlet entitled The Case of Allegiance to Sovereign Powers
stated. The sensation produced by this work was immense. Dryden's Hind
and Panther had not raised so great an uproar. Halifax's Letter to a Dissenter
had not called forth so many answers. The replies to the Doctor, the
vindications of the Doctor, the pasquinades on the Doctor, would fill a
library. The clamour redoubled when it was known that the convert had not
only been reappointed Master of the Temple, but had accepted the Deanery
of Saint Paul's, which had become vacant in consequence of the deprivation
of Sancroft and the promotion of Tillotson. The rage of the nonjurors
amounted almost to frenzy. Was it not enough, they asked, to desert the true
and pure Church, in this her hour of sorrow and peril, without also
slandering her? It was easy to understand why a greedy, cowardly hypocrite
should refuse to take the oaths to the usurper as long as it seemed probable
that the rightful King would be restored, and should make haste to swear
after the battle of the Boyne. Such tergiversation in times of civil discord
was nothing new. What was new was that the turncoat should try to throw
his own guilt and shame on the Church of England, and should proclaim
that she had taught him to turn against the weak who were in the right, and
to cringe to the powerful who were in the wrong. Had such indeed been her
doctrine or her practice in evil days? Had she abandoned her Royal Martyr
in the prison or on the scaffold? Had she enjoined her children to pay
obedience to the Rump or to the Protector? Yet was the government of the

Rump or of the Protector less entitled to be called a settled government than
the government of William and Mary? Had not the battle of Worcester been
as great a blow to the hopes of the House of Stuart as the battle of the
Boyne? Had not the chances of a Restoration seemed as small in 1657 as
they could seem to any judicious man in 1691? In spite of invectives and
sarcasms, however, there was Overall's treatise; there were the approving
votes of the two Convocations; and it was much easier to rail at Sherlock
than to explain away either the treatise or the votes. One writer maintained
that by a thoroughly settled government must have been meant a
government of which the title was uncontested. Thus, he said, the
government of the United Provinces became a settled government when it
was recognised by Spain, and, but for that recognition, would never have
been a settled government to the end of time. Another casuist, somewhat
less austere, pronounced that a government, wrongful in its origin, might
become a settled government after the lapse of a century. On the thirteenth
of February 1789, therefore, and not a day earlier, Englishmen would be at
liberty to swear allegiance to a government sprung from the Revolution.
The history of the chosen people was ransacked for precedents. Was Eglon's
a settled government when Ehud stabbed him? Was Joram's a settled
government when Jehe shot him? But the leading case was that of Athaliah.
It was indeed a case which furnished the malecontents with many happy
and pungent allusions; a kingdom treacherously seized by an usurper near
in blood to the throne; the rightful prince long dispossessed; a part of the
sacerdotal order true, through many disastrous years, to the Royal House; a
counterrevolution at length effected by the High Priest at the head of the
Levites. Who, it was asked, would dare to blame the heroic pontiff who had
restored the heir of David? Yet was not the government of Athaliah as
firmly settled as that of the Prince of Orange?
Hundreds of pages written at this time about the rights of Joash and the
bold enterprise of Jehoiada are mouldering in the ancient bookcases of
Oxford and Cambridge. While Sherlock was thus fiercely attacked by his
old friends, he was not left unmolested by his old enemies. Some vehement
Whigs, among whom Julian Johnson was conspicuous, declared that
Jacobitism itself was respectable when compared with the vile doctrine
which had been discovered in the Convocation Book. That passive
obedience was due to Kings was doubtless an absurd and pernicious notion.
Yet it was impossible not to respect the consistency and fortitude of men

who thought themselves bound to bear true allegiance, at all hazards, to an
unfortunate, a deposed, an exiled oppressor. But the theory which Sherlock
had learned from Overall was unmixed baseness and wickedness. A cause
was to be abandoned, not because it was unjust, but because it was
unprosperous. Whether James had been a tyrant or had been the father of
his people was quite immaterial. If he had won the battle of the Boyne we
should have been bound as Christians to be his slaves. He had lost it; and
we were bound as Christians to be his foes. Other Whigs congratulated the
proselyte on having come, by whatever road, to a right practical conclusion,
but could not refrain from sneering at the history which he gave of his
conversion. He was, they said, a man of eminent learning and abilities. He
had studied the question of allegiance long and deeply. He had written
much about it. Several months had been allowed him for reading, prayer
and reflection before he incurred suspension, several months more before
he incurred deprivation. He had formed an opinion for which he had
declared himself ready to suffer martyrdom; he had taught that opinion to
others; and he had then changed that opinion solely because he had
discovered that it had been, not refuted, but dogmatically pronounced
erroneous by the two Convocations more than eighty years before. Surely,
this was to renounce all liberty of private judgment, and to ascribe to the
Synods of Canterbury and York an infallibility which the Church of
England had declared that even Oecumenical Councils could not justly
claim. If, it was sarcastically said, all our notions of right and wrong, in
matters of vital importance to the well being of society, are to be suddenly
altered by a few lines of manuscript found in a corner of the library at
Lambeth, it is surely much to be wished, for the peace of mind of humble
Christians, that all the documents to which this sort of authority belongs
should be rummaged out and sent to the press as soon as possible; for,
unless this be done, we may all, like the Doctor when he refused the oaths
last year, be committing sins in the full persuasion that we are discharging
duties. In truth, it is not easy to believe that the Convocation Book
furnished Sherlock with any thing more than a pretext for doing what he
had made up his mind to do. The united force of reason and interest had
doubtless convinced him that his passions and prejudices had led him into a
great error. That error he determined to recant; and it cost him less to say
that his opinion had been changed by newly discovered evidence, than that
he had formed a wrong judgment with all the materials for the forming of a

right judgment before him. The popular belief was that his retractation was
the effect of the tears, expostulations and reproaches of his wife. The lady's
spirit was high; her authority in the family was great; and she cared much
more about her house and her carriage, the plenty of her table and the
prospects of her children, than about the patriarchal origin of government or
the meaning of the word Abdication. She had, it was asserted, given her
husband no peace by day or by night till he had got over his scruples. In
letters, fables, songs, dialogues without number, her powers of seduction
and intimidation were malignantly extolled. She was Xanthippe pouring
water on the head of Socrates. She was Dalilah shearing Samson. She was
Eve forcing the forbidden fruit into Adam's mouth. She was Job's wife,
imploring her ruined lord, who sate scraping himself among the ashes, not
to curse and die, but to swear and live. While the ballad makers celebrated
the victory of Mrs. Sherlock, another class of assailants fell on the
theological reputation of her spouse. Till he took the oaths, he had always
been considered as the most orthodox of divines. But the captious and
malignant criticism to which his writings were now subjected would have
found heresy in the Sermon on the Mount; and he, unfortunately, was rash
enough to publish, at the very moment when the outcry against his political
tergiversation was loudest, his thoughts on the mystery of the Trinity. It is
probable that, at another time, his work would have been hailed by good
Churchmen as a triumphant answer to the Socinians and Sabellians. But,
unhappily, in his zeal against Socinians and Sabellians, he used expressions
which might be construed into Tritheism. Candid judges would have
remembered that the true path was closely pressed on the right and on the
left by error, and that it was scarcely possible to keep far enough from
danger on one side without going very close to danger on the other. But
candid judges Sherlock was not likely to find among the Jacobites. His old
allies affirmed that he had incurred all the fearful penalties denounced in the
Athanasian Creed against those who divide the substance. Bulky quartos
were written to prove that he held the existence of three distinct Deities; and
some facetious malecontents, who troubled themselves very little about the
Catholic verity, amused the town by lampoons in English and Latin on his
heterodoxy. "We," said one of these jesters, "plight our faith to one King,
and call one God to attest our promise. We cannot think it strange that there
should be more than one King to whom the Doctor has sworn allegiance,
when we consider that the Doctor has more Gods than one to swear by." 61

Sherlock would, perhaps, have doubted whether the government to which
he had submitted was entitled to be called a settled government, if he had
known all the dangers by which it was threatened. Scarcely had Preston's
plot been detected; when a new plot of a very different kind was formed in
the camp, in the navy, in the treasury, in the very bedchamber of the King.
This mystery of iniquity has, through five generations, been gradually
unveiling, but is not yet entirely unveiled. Some parts which are still
obscure may possibly, by the discovery of letters or diaries now reposing
under the dust of a century and a half, be made clear to our posterity. The
materials, however, which are at present accessible, are sufficient for the
construction of a narrative not to be read without shame and loathing. 62
We have seen that, in the spring of 1690, Shrewsbury, irritated by finding
his counsels rejected, and those of his Tory rivals followed, suffered
himself, in a fatal hour, to be drawn into a correspondence with the
banished family. We have seen also by what cruel sufferings of body and
mind he expiated his fault. Tortured by remorse, and by disease the effect of
remorse, he had quitted the Court; but he had left behind him men whose
principles were not less lax than his, and whose hearts were far harder and
colder.
Early in 1691, some of these men began to hold secret communication
with Saint Germains. Wicked and base as their conduct was, there was in it
nothing surprising. They did after their kind. The times were troubled. A
thick cloud was upon the future. The most sagacious and experienced
politician could not see with any clearness three months before him. To a
man of virtue and honour, indeed, this mattered little. His uncertainty as to
what the morrow might bring forth might make him anxious, but could not
make him perfidious. Though left in utter darkness as to what concerned his
interests, he had the sure guidance of his principles. But, unhappily, men of
virtue and honour were not numerous among the courtiers of that age.
Whitehall had been, during thirty years, a seminary of every public and
private vice, and swarmed with lowminded, doubledealing, selfseeking
politicians. These politicians now acted as it was natural that men
profoundly immoral should act at a crisis of which none could predict the
issue. Some of them might have a slight predilection for William; others a
slight predilection for James; but it was not by any such predilection that
the conduct of any of the breed was guided. If it had seemed certain that
William would stand, they would all have been for William. If it had

seemed certain that James would be restored, they would all have been for
James. But what was to be done when the chances appeared to be almost
exactly balanced? There were honest men of one party who would have
answered, To stand by the true King and the true Church, and, if necessary,
to die for them like Laud. There were honest men of the other party who
would have answered, To stand by the liberties of England and the
Protestant religion, and, if necessary, to die for them like Sidney. But such
consistency was unintelligible to many of the noble and the powerful. Their
object was to be safe in every event. They therefore openly took the oath of
allegiance to one King, and secretly plighted their word to the other. They
were indefatigable in obtaining commissions, patents of peerage, pensions,
grants of crown land, under the great seal of William; and they had in their
secret drawers promises of pardon in the handwriting of James.
Among those who were guilty of this wickedness three men stand
preeminent, Russell, Godolphin and Marlborough. No three men could be,
in head and heart, more unlike to one another; and the peculiar qualities of
each gave a peculiar character to his villany. The treason of Russell is to be
attributed partly to fractiousness; the treason of Godolphin is to be
attributed altogether to timidity; the treason of Marlborough was the treason
of a man of great genius and boundless ambition.
It may be thought strange that Russell should have been out of humour.
He had just accepted the command of the united naval forces of England
and Holland with the rank of Admiral of the Fleet. He was Treasurer of the
Navy. He had a pension of three thousand pounds a year. Crown property
near Charing Cross, to the value of eighteen thousand pounds, had been
bestowed on him. His indirect gains must have been immense. But he was
still dissatisfed. In truth, with undaunted courage, with considerable talents
both for war and for administration, and with a certain public spirit, which
showed itself by glimpses even in the very worst parts of his life, he was
emphatically a bad man, insolent, malignant, greedy, faithless. He
conceived that the great services which he had performed at the time of the
Revolution had not been adequately rewarded. Every thing that was given
to others seemed to him to be pillaged from himself. A letter is still extant
which he wrote to William about this time. It is made up of boasts,
reproaches and sneers. The Admiral, with ironical professions of humility
and loyalty, begins by asking permission to put his wrongs on paper,
because his bashfulness would not suffer him to explain himself by word of

mouth. His grievances were intolerable. Other people got grants of royal
domains; but he could get scarcely any thing. Other people could provide
for their dependants; but his recommendations were uniformly disregarded.
The income which he derived from the royal favour might seem large; but
he had poor relations; and the government, instead of doing its duty by
them, had most unhandsomely left them to his care. He had a sister who
ought to have a pension; for, without one, she could not give portions to her
daughters. He had a brother who, for want of a place, had been reduced to
the melancholy necessity of marrying an old woman for her money. Russell
proceeded to complain bitterly that the Whigs were neglected, that the
Revolution had aggrandised and enriched men who had made the greatest
efforts to avert it. And there is reason to believe that this complaint came
from his heart. For, next to his own interests, those of his party were dear to
him; and, even when he was most inclined to become a Jacobite, he never
had the smallest disposition to become a Tory. In the temper which this
letter indicates, he readily listened to the suggestions of David Lloyd, one
of the ablest and most active emissaries who at this time were constantly
plying between France and England. Lloyd conveyed to James assurances
that Russell would, when a favourable opportunity should present itself, try
to effect by means of the fleet what Monk had effected in the preceding
generation by means of the army. 63 To what extent these assurances were
sincere was a question about which men who knew Russell well, and who
were minutely informed as to his conduct, were in doubt. It seems probable
that, during many months, he did not know his own mind. His interest was
to stand well, as long as possible, with both Kings. His irritable and
imperious nature was constantly impelling him to quarrel with both. His
spleen was excited one week by a dry answer from William, and the next
week by an absurd proclamation from James. Fortunately the most
important day of his life, the day from which all his subsequent years took
their colour, found him out of temper with the banished King.
Godolphin had not, and did not pretend to have, any cause of complaint
against the government which he served. He was First Commissioner of the
Treasury. He had been protected, trusted, caressed. Indeed the favour shown
to him had excited many murmurs. Was it fitting, the Whigs had indignantly
asked, that a man who had been high in office through the whole of the late
reign, who had promised to vote for the Indulgence, who had sate in the
Privy Council with a Jesuit, who had sate at the Board of Treasury with two

Papists, who had attended an idolatress to her altar, should be among the
chief ministers of a Prince whose title to the throne was derived from the
Declaration of Rights? But on William this clamour had produced no effect;
and none of his English servants seems to have had at this time a larger
share of his confidence than Godolphin.
Nevertheless, the Jacobites did not despair. One of the most zealous
among them, a gentleman named Bulkeley, who had formerly been on
terms of intimacy with Godolphin, undertook to see what could be done. He
called at the Treasury, and tried to draw the First Lord into political talk.
This was no easy matter; for Godolphin was not a man to put himself
lightly into the power of others. His reserve was proverbial; and he was
especially renowned for the dexterity with which he, through life, turned
conversation away from matters of state to a main of cocks or the pedigree
of a racehorse. The visit ended without his uttering a word indicating that he
remembered the existence of King James.
Bulkeley, however, was not to be so repulsed. He came again, and
introduced the subject which was nearest his heart. Godolphin then asked
after his old master and mistress in the mournful tone of a man who
despaired of ever being reconciled to them. Bulkeley assured him that King
James was ready to forgive all the past. "May I tell His Majesty that you
will try to deserve his favour?" At this Godolphin rose, said something
about the trammels of office and his wish to be released from them, and put
an end to the interview.
Bulkeley soon made a third attempt. By this time Godolphin had learned
some things which shook his confidence in the stability of the government
which he served. He began to think, as he would himself have expressed it,
that he had betted too deep on the Revolution, and that it was time to hedge.
Evasions would no longer serve his turn. It was necessary to speak out. He
spoke out, and declared himself a devoted servant of King James. "I shall
take an early opportunity of resigning my place. But, till then, I am under a
tie. I must not betray my trust." To enhance the value of the sacrifice which
he proposed to make, he produced a most friendly and confidential letter
which he had lately received from William. "You see how entirely the
Prince of Orange trusts me. He tells me that he cannot do without me, and
that there is no Englishman for whom he has so great a kindness; but all this
weighs nothing with me in comparison of my duty to my lawful King."

If the First Lord of the Treasury really had scruples about betraying his
trust, those scruples were soon so effectually removed that he very
complacently continued, during six years, to eat the bread of one master,
while secretly sending professions of attachment and promises of service to
another.
The truth is that Godolphin was under the influence of a mind far more
powerful and far more depraved than his own. His perplexities had been
imparted to Marlborough, to whom he had long been bound by such
friendship as two very unprincipled men are capable of feeling for each
other, and to whom he was afterwards bound by close domestic ties.
Marlborough was in a very different situation from that of William's
other servants. Lloyd might make overtures to Russell, and Bulkeley to
Godolphin. But all the agents of the banished Court stood aloof from the
traitor of Salisbury. That shameful night seemed to have for ever separated
the perjured deserter from the Prince whom he had ruined. James had, even
in the last extremity, when his army was in full retreat, when his whole
kingdom had risen against him, declared that he would never pardon
Churchill, never, never. By all the Jacobites the name of Churchill was held
in peculiar abhorrence; and, in the prose and verse which came forth daily
from their secret presses, a precedence in infamy, among all the many
traitors of the age, was assigned to him. In the order of things which had
sprung from the Revolution, he was one of the great men of England, high
in the state, high in the army. He had been created an Earl. He had a large
share in the military administration. The emoluments, direct and indirect, of
the places and commands which he held under the Crown were believed at
the Dutch Embassy to amount to twelve thousand pounds a year. In the
event of a counterrevolution it seemed that he had nothing in prospect but a
garret in Holland, or a scaffold on Tower Hill. It might therefore have been
expected that he would serve his new master with fidelity, not indeed with
the fidelity of Nottingham, which was the fidelity of conscientiousness, not
with the fidelity of Portland, which was the fidelity of affection, but with
the not less stubborn fidelity of despair.
Those who thought thus knew but little of Marlborough. Confident in his
own powers of deception, he resolved, since the Jacobite agents would not
seek him, to seek them. He therefore sent to beg an interview with Colonel
Edward Sackville.

Sackville was astonished and not much pleased by the message. He was a
sturdy Cavalier of the old school. He had been persecuted in the days of the
Popish plot for manfully saying what he thought, and what every body now
thinks, about Oates and Bedloe. 64 Since the Revolution he had put his neck
in peril for King James, had been chased by officers with warrants, and had
been designated as a traitor in a proclamation to which Marlborough
himself had been a party. 65 It was not without reluctance that the stanch
royalist crossed the hated threshold of the deserter. He was repaid for his
effort by the edifying spectacle of such an agony of repentance as he had
never before seen. "Will you," said Marlborough, "be my intercessor with
the King? Will you tell him what I suffer? My crimes now appear to me in
their true light; and I shrink with horror from the contemplation. The
thought of them is with me day and night. I sit down to table; but I cannot
eat. I throw myself on my bed; but I cannot sleep. I am ready to sacrifice
every thing, to brave every thing, to bring utter ruin on my fortunes, if only
I may be free from the misery of a wounded spirit." If appearances could be
trusted, this great offender was as true a penitent as David or as Peter.
Sackville reported to his friends what had passed. They could not but
acknowledge that, if the arch traitor, who had hitherto opposed to
conscience and to public opinion the same cool and placid hardihood which
distinguished him on fields of battle, had really begun to feel remorse, it
would be absurd to reject, on account of his unworthiness, the inestimable
services which it was in his power to render to the good cause. He sate in
the interior council; he held high command in the army; he had been
recently entrusted, and would doubtless again be entrusted, with the
direction of important military operations. It was true that no man had
incurred equal guilt; but it was true also that no man had it in his power to
make equal reparation. If he was sincere, he might doubtless earn the
pardon which he so much desired. But was he sincere? Had he not been just
as loud in professions of loyalty on the very eve of his crime? It was
necessary to put him to the test. Several tests were applied by Sackville and
Lloyd. Marlborough was required to furnish full information touching the
strength and the distribution of all the divisions of the English army; and he
complied. He was required to disclose the whole plan of the approaching
campaign; and he did so. The Jacobite leaders watched carefully for
inaccuracies in his reports, but could find none. It was thought a still
stronger proof of his fidelity that he gave valuable intelligence about what

was doing in the office of the Secretary of State. A deposition had been
sworn against one zealous royalist. A warrant was preparing against
another. These intimations saved several of the malecontents from
imprisonment, if not from the gallows; and it was impossible for them not
to feel some relenting towards the awakened sinner to whom they owed so
much.
He however, in his secret conversations with his new allies, laid no claim
to merit. He did not, he said, ask for confidence. How could he, after the
villanies which he had committed against the best of Kings, hope ever to be
trusted again? It was enough for a wretch like him to be permitted to make,
at the cost of his life, some poor atonement to the gracious master, whom he
had indeed basely injured, but whom he had never ceased to love. It was not
improbable that, in the summer, he might command the English forces in
Flanders. Was it wished that he should bring them over in a body to the
French camp? If such were the royal pleasure, he would undertake that the
thing should be done. But on the whole he thought that it would be better to
wait till the next session of Parliament. And then he hinted at a plan which
he afterwards more fully matured, for expelling the usurper by means of the
English legislature and the English army. In the meantime he hoped that
James would command Godolphin not to quit the Treasury. A private man
could do little for the good cause. One who was the director of the national
finances, and the depository of the gravest secrets of state, might render
inestimable services.
Marlborough's pretended repentance imposed so completely on those
who managed the affairs of James in London that they sent Lloyd to France,
with the cheering intelligence that the most depraved of all rebels had been
wonderfully transformed into a loyal subject. The tidings filled James with
delight and hope. Had he been wise, they would have excited in him only
aversion and distrust. It was absurd to imagine that a man really
heartbroken by remorse and shame for one act of perfidy would determine
to lighten his conscience by committing a second act of perfidy as odious
and as disgraceful as the first. The promised atonement was so wicked and
base that it never could be made by any man sincerely desirous to atone for
past wickedness and baseness. The truth was that, when Marlborough told
the Jacobites that his sense of guilt prevented him from swallowing his food
by day and taking his rest at night, he was laughing at them. The loss of half
a guinea would have done more to spoil his appetite and to disturb his

slumbers than all the terrors of an evil conscience. What his offers really
proved was that his former crime had sprung, not from an ill regulated zeal
for the interests of his country and his religion, but from a deep and
incurable moral disease which had infected the whole man. James, however,
partly from dulness and partly from selfishness, could never see any
immorality in any action by which he was benefited. To conspire against
him, to betray him, to break an oath of allegiance sworn to him, were
crimes for which no punishment here or hereafter could be too severe. But
to murder his enemies, to break faith with his enemies was not only
innocent but laudable. The desertion at Salisbury had been the worst of
crimes; for it had ruined him. A similar desertion in Flanders would be an
honourable exploit; for it might restore him.
The penitent was informed by his Jacobite friends that he was forgiven.
The news was most welcome; but something more was necessary to restore
his lost peace of mind. Might he hope to have, in the royal handwriting, two
lines containing a promise of pardon? It was not, of course, for his own
sake that he asked this. But he was confident that, with such a document in
his hands, he could bring back to the right path some persons of great note
who adhered to the usurper, only because they imagined that they had no
mercy to expect from the legitimate King. They would return to their duty
as soon as they saw that even the worst of all criminals had, on his
repentance, been generously forgiven. The promise was written, sent, and
carefully treasured up. Marlborough had now attained one object, an object
which was common to him with Russell and Godolphin. But he had other
objects which neither Russell nor Godolphin had ever contemplated. There
is, as we shall hereafter see, strong reason to believe that this wise, brave,
wicked man, was meditating a plan worthy of his fertile intellect and daring
spirit, and not less worthy of his deeply corrupted heart, a plan which, if it
had not been frustrated by strange means, would have ruined William
without benefiting James, and would have made the successful traitor
master of England and arbiter of Europe.
Thus things stood, when, in May 1691, William, after a short and busy
sojourn in England, set out again for the Continent, where the regular
campaign was about to open. He took with him Marlborough, whose
abilities he justly appreciated, and of whose recent negotiations with Saint
Germains he had not the faintest suspicion. At the Hague several important
military and political consultations were held; and, on every occasion, the

superiority of the accomplished Englishman was felt by the most
distinguished soldiers and statesmen of the United Provinces. Heinsius,
long after, used to relate a conversation which took place at this time
between William and the Prince of Vaudemont, one of the ablest
commanders in the Dutch service. Vaudemont spoke well of several English
officers, and among them of Talmash and Mackay, but pronounced
Marlborough superior beyond comparison to the rest. "He has every quality
of a general. His very look shows it. He cannot fail to achieve something
great." "I really believe, cousin," answered the King, "that my Lord will
make good every thing that you have said of him."
There was still a short interval before the commencement of military
operations. William passed that interval in his beloved park at Loo.
Marlborough spent two or three days there, and was then despatched to
Flanders with orders to collect all the English forces, to form a camp in the
neighbourhood of Brussels, and to have every thing in readiness for the
King's arrival.
And now Marlborough had an opportunity of proving the sincerity of
those professions by which he had obtained from a heart, well described by
himself as harder than a marble chimneypiece, the pardon of an offence
such as might have moved even a gentle nature to deadly resentment. He
received from Saint Germains a message claiming the instant performance
of his promise to desert at the head of his troops. He was told that this was
the greatest service which he could render to the Crown. His word was
pledged; and the gracious master who had forgiven all past errors
confidently expected that it would be redeemed. The hypocrite evaded the
demand with characteristic dexterity. In the most respectful and affectionate
language he excused himself for not immediately obeying the royal
commands. The promise which he was required to fulfil had not been quite
correctly understood. There had been some misapprehension on the part of
the messengers. To carry over a regiment or two would do more harm than
good. To carry over a whole army was a business which would require
much time and management. 66 While James was murmuring over these
apologies, and wishing that he had not been quite so placable, William
arrived at the head quarters of the allied forces, and took the chief
command.

The military operations in Flanders recommenced early in June and
terminated at the close of September. No important action took place. The
two armies marched and countermarched, drew near and receded. During
some time they confronted each other with less than a league between them.
But neither William nor Luxemburg would fight except at an advantage;
and neither gave the other any advantage. Languid as the campaign was, it
is on one account remarkable. During more than a century our country had
sent no great force to make war by land out of the British isles. Our
aristocracy had therefore long ceased to be a military class. The nobles of
France, of Germany, of Holland, were generally soldiers. It would probably
have been difficult to find in the brilliant circle which surrounded Lewis at
Versailles a single Marquess or Viscount of forty who had not been at some
battle or siege. But the immense majority of our peers, baronets and opulent
esquires had never served except in the trainbands, and had never borne a
part in any military exploit more serious than that of putting down a riot or
of keeping a street clear for a procession. The generation which had fought
at Edgehill and Lansdowne had nearly passed away. The wars of Charles
the Second had been almost entirely maritime. During his reign therefore
the sea service had been decidedly more the mode than the land service;
and, repeatedly, when our fleet sailed to encounter the Dutch, such
multitudes of men of fashion had gone on board that the parks and the
theatres had been left desolate. In 1691 at length, for the first time since
Henry the Eighth laid siege to Boulogne, an English army appeared on the
Continent under the command of an English king. A camp, which was also
a court, was irresistibly attractive to many young patricians full of natural
intrepidity, and ambitious of the favour which men of distinguished bravery
have always found in the eyes of women. To volunteer for Flanders became
the rage among the fine gentlemen who combed their flowing wigs and
exchanged their richly perfumed snuffs at the Saint James's Coffeehouse.
William's headquarters were enlivened by a crowd of splendid equipages
and by a rapid succession of sumptuous banquets. For among the high born
and high spirited youths who repaired to his standard were some who,
though quite willing to face a battery, were not at all disposed to deny
themselves the luxuries with which they had been surrounded in Soho
Square. In a few months Shadwell brought these valiant fops and epicures
on the stage. The town was made merry with the character of a courageous
but prodigal and effeminate coxcomb, who is impatient to cross swords

with the best men in the French household troops, but who is much dejected
by learning that he may find it difficult to have his champagne iced daily
during the summer. He carries with him cooks, confectioners and
laundresses, a waggonload of plate, a wardrobe of laced and embroidered
suits, and much rich tent furniture, of which the patterns have been chosen
by a committee of fine ladies. 67
While the hostile armies watched each other in Flanders, hostilities were
carried on with somewhat more vigour in other parts of Europe. The French
gained some advantages in Catalonia and in Piedmont. Their Turkish allies,
who in the east menaced the dominions of the Emperor, were defeated by
Lewis of Baden in a great battle. But nowhere were the events of the
summer so important as in Ireland.
From October 1690 till May 1691, no military operation on a large scale
was attempted in that kingdom. The area of the island was, during the
winter and spring, not unequally divided between the contending races. The
whole of Ulster, the greater part of Leinster and about one third of Munster
had submitted to the English. The whole of Connaught, the greater part of
Munster, and two or three counties of Leinster were held by the Irish. The
tortuous boundary formed by William's garrisons ran in a north eastern
direction from the bay of Castlehaven to Mallow, and then, inclining still
further eastward, proceeded to Cashel. From Cashel the line went to
Mullingar, from Mullingar to Longford, and from Longford to Cavan,
skirted Lough Erne on the west, and met the ocean again at Ballyshannon.
68
On the English side of this pale there was a rude and imperfect order.
Two Lords Justices, Coningsby and Porter, assisted by a Privy Council,
represented King William at Dublin Castle. Judges, Sheriffs and Justices of
the Peace had been appointed; and assizes were, after a long interval, held
in several county towns. The colonists had meanwhile been formed into a
strong militia, under the command of officers who had commissions from
the Crown. The trainbands of the capital consisted of two thousand five
hundred foot, two troops of horse and two troops of dragoons, all
Protestants and all well armed and clad. 69 On the fourth of November, the
anniversary of William's birth, and on the fifth, the anniversary of his
landing at Torbay, the whole of this force appeared in all the pomp of war.
The vanquished and disarmed natives assisted, with suppressed grief and

anger, at the triumph of the caste which they had, five months before,
oppressed and plundered with impunity. The Lords Justices went in state to
Saint Patrick's Cathedral; bells were rung; bonfires were lighted; hogsheads
of ale and claret were set abroach in the streets; fireworks were exhibited on
College Green; a great company of nobles and public functionaries feasted
at the Castle; and, as the second course came up, the trumpets sounded, and
Ulster King at Arms proclaimed, in Latin, French and English, William and
Mary, by the grace of God, King and Queen of Great Britain, France, and
Ireland. 70
Within the territory where the Saxon race was dominant, trade and
industry had already begun to revive. The brazen counters which bore the
image and superscription of James gave place to silver. The fugitives who
had taken refuge in England came back in multitudes; and, by their
intelligence, diligence and thrift, the devastation caused by two years of
confusion and robbery was soon in part repaired. Merchantmen heavily
laden were constantly passing and repassing Saint George's Channel. The
receipts of the custom houses on the eastern coast, from Cork to
Londonderry, amounted in six months to sixty-seven thousand five hundred
pounds, a sum such as would have been thought extraordinary even in the
most prosperous times. 71
The Irish who remained within the English pale were, one and all, hostile
to the English domination. They were therefore subjected to a rigorous
system of police, the natural though lamentable effect of extreme danger
and extreme provocation. A Papist was not permitted to have a sword or a
gun. He was not permitted to go more than three miles out of his parish
except to the market town on the market day. Lest he should give
information or assistance to his brethren who occupied the western half of
the island, he was forbidden to live within ten miles of the frontier. Lest he
should turn his house into a place of resort for malecontents, he was
forbidden to sell liquor by retail. One proclamation announced that, if the
property of any Protestant should be injured by marauders, his loss should
be made good at the expense of his Popish neighbours. Another gave notice
that, if any Papist who had not been at least three months domiciled in
Dublin should be found there, he should be treated as a spy. Not more than
five Papists were to assemble in the capital or its neighbourhood on any
pretext. Without a protection from the government no member of the

Church of Rome was safe; and the government would not grant a protection
to any member of the Church of Rome who had a son in the Irish army. 72
In spite of all precautions and severities, however, the Celt found many
opportunities of taking a sly revenge. Houses and barns were frequently
burned; soldiers were frequently murdered; and it was scarcely possible to
obtain evidence against the malefactors, who had with them the sympathies
of the whole population. On such occasions the government sometimes
ventured on acts which seemed better suited to a Turkish than to an English
administration. One of these acts became a favourite theme of Jacobite
pamphleteers, and was the subject of a serious parliamentary inquiry at
Westminster. Six musketeers were found butchered only a few miles from
Dublin. The inhabitants of the village where the crime had been committed,
men, women, and children, were driven like sheep into the Castle, where
the Privy Council was sitting. The heart of one of the assassins, named
Gafney, failed him. He consented to be a witness, was examined by the
Board, acknowledged his guilt, and named some of his accomplices. He
was then removed in custody; but a priest obtained access to him during a
few minutes. What passed during those few minutes appeared when he was
a second time brought before the Council. He had the effrontery to deny
that he had owned any thing or accused any body. His hearers, several of
whom had taken down his confession in writing, were enraged at his
impudence. The Lords justices broke out; "You are a rogue; You are a
villain; You shall be hanged; Where is the Provost Marshal?" The Provost
Marshal came. "Take that man," said Coningsby, pointing to Gafney; "take
that man, and hang him." There was no gallows ready; but the carriage of a
gun served the purpose; and the prisoner was instantly tied up without a
trial, without even a written order for the execution; and this though the
courts of law were sitting at the distance of only a few hundred yards. The
English House of Commons, some years later, after a long discussion,
resolved, without a division, that the order for the execution of Gafney was
arbitrary and illegal, but that Coningsby's fault was so much extenuated by
the circumstances in which he was placed that it was not a proper subject
for impeachment. 73
It was not only by the implacable hostility of the Irish that the Saxon of
the pale was at this time harassed. His allies caused him almost as much
annoyance as his helots. The help of troops from abroad was indeed
necessary to him; but it was dearly bought. Even William, in whom the

whole civil and military authority was concentrated, had found it difficult to
maintain discipline in an army collected from many lands, and composed in
great part of mercenaries accustomed to live at free quarters. The powers
which had been united in him were now divided and subdivided. The two
Lords justices considered the civil administration as their province, and left
the army to the management of Ginkell, who was General in Chief. Ginkell
kept excellent order among the auxiliaries from Holland, who were under
his more immediate command. But his authority over the English and the
Danes was less entire; and unfortunately their pay was, during part of the
winter, in arrear. They indemnified themselves by excesses and exactions
for the want of that which was their due; and it was hardly possible to
punish men with severity for not choosing to starve with arms in their
hands. At length in the spring large supplies of money and stores arrived;
arrears were paid up; rations were plentiful; and a more rigid discipline was
enforced. But too many traces of the bad habits which the soldiers had
contracted were discernible till the close of the war. 74
In that part of Ireland, meanwhile, which still acknowledged James as
King, there could hardly be said to be any law, any property, or any
government. The Roman Catholics of Ulster and Leinster had fled
westward by tens of thousands, driving before them a large part of the cattle
which had escaped the havoc of two terrible years. The influx of food into
the Celtic region, however, was far from keeping pace with the influx of
consumers. The necessaries of life were scarce. Conveniences to which
every plain farmer and burgess in England was accustomed could hardly be
procured by nobles and generals. No coin was to be seen except lumps of
base metal which were called crowns and shillings. Nominal prices were
enormously high. A quart of ale cost two and sixpence, a quart of brandy
three pounds. The only towns of any note on the western coast were
Limerick and Galway; and the oppression which the shopkeepers of those
towns underwent was such that many of them stole away with the remains
of their stocks to the English territory, where a Papist, though he had to
endure much restraint and much humiliation, was allowed to put his own
price on his goods, and received that price in silver. Those traders who
remained within the unhappy region were ruined. Every warehouse that
contained any valuable property was broken open by ruffians who
pretended that they were commissioned to procure stores for the public
service; and the owner received, in return for bales of cloth and hogsheads

of sugar, some fragments of old kettles and saucepans, which would not in
London or Paris have been taken by a beggar.
As soon as a merchant ship arrived in the bay of Galway or in the
Shannon, she was boarded by these robbers. The cargo was carried away;
and the proprietor was forced to content himself with such a quantity of
cowhides, of wool and of tallow as the gang which had plundered him
chose to give him. The consequence was that, while foreign commodities
were pouring fast into the harbours of Londonderry, Carrickfergus, Dublin,
Waterford and Cork, every mariner avoided Limerick and Galway as nests
of pirates. 75
The distinction between the Irish foot soldier and the Irish Rapparee had
never been very strongly marked. It now disappeared. Great part of the
army was turned loose to live by marauding. An incessant predatory war
raged along the line which separated the domain of William from that of
James. Every day companies of freebooters, sometimes wrapped in twisted
straw which served the purpose of armour, stole into the English territory,
burned, sacked, pillaged, and hastened back to their own ground. To guard
against these incursions was not easy; for the peasantry of the plundered
country had a strong fellow feeling with the plunderers. To empty the
granary, to set fire to the dwelling, to drive away the cows, of a heretic was
regarded by every squalid inhabitant of a mud cabin as a good work. A
troop engaged in such a work might confidently expect to fall in,
notwithstanding all the proclamations of the Lords justices, with some
friend who would indicate the richest booty, the shortest road, and the safest
hiding place. The English complained that it was no easy matter to catch a
Rapparee. Sometimes, when he saw danger approaching, he lay down in the
long grass of the bog; and then it was as difficult to find him as to find a
hare sitting. Sometimes he sprang into a stream, and lay there, like an otter,
with only his mouth and nostrils above the water. Nay, a whole gang of
banditti would, in the twinkling of an eye, transform itself into a crowd of
harmless labourers. Every man took his gun to pieces, hid the lock in his
clothes, stuck a cork in the muzzle, stopped the touch hole with a quill, and
threw the weapon into the next pond. Nothing was to be seen but a train of
poor rustics who had not so much as a cudgel among them, and whose
humble look and crouching walk seemed to show that their spirit was
thoroughly broken to slavery. When the peril was over, when the signal was
given, every man flew to the place where he had hid his arms; and soon the

robbers were in full march towards some Protestant mansion. One band
penetrated to Clonmel, another to the vicinity of Maryborough; a third
made its den in a woody islet of firm ground, surrounded by the vast bog of
Allen, harried the county of Wicklow, and alarmed even the suburbs of
Dublin. Such expeditions indeed were not always successful. Sometimes
the plunderers fell in with parties of militia or with detachments from the
English garrisons, in situations in which disguise, flight and resistance were
alike impossible. When this happened every kerne who was taken was
hanged, without any ceremony, on the nearest tree. 76
At the head quarters of the Irish army there was, during the winter, no
authority capable of exacting obedience even within a circle of a mile.
Tyrconnel was absent at the Court of France. He had left the supreme
government in the hands of a Council of Regency composed of twelve
persons. The nominal command of the army he had confided to Berwick;
but Berwick, though, as was afterwards proved, a man of no common
courage and capacity, was young and inexperienced. His powers were
unsuspected by the world and by himself; 77 and he submitted without
reluctance to the tutelage of a Council of War nominated by the Lord
Lieutenant. Neither the Council of Regency nor the Council of War was
popular at Limerick. The Irish complained that men who were not Irish had
been entrusted with a large share in the administration. The cry was loudest
against an officer named Thomas Maxwell. For it was certain that he was a
Scotchman; it was doubtful whether he was a Roman Catholic; and he had
not concealed the dislike which he felt for that Celtic Parliament which had
repealed the Act of Settlement and passed the Act of Attainder. 78 The
discontent, fomented by the arts of intriguers, among whom the cunning
and unprincipled Henry Luttrell seems to have been the most active, soon
broke forth into open rebellion. A great meeting was held. Many officers of
the army, some peers, some lawyers of high note and some prelates of the
Roman Catholic Church were present. It was resolved that the government
set up by the Lord Lieutenant was unknown to the constitution. Ireland, it
was said, could be legally governed, in the absence of the King, only by a
Lord Lieutenant, by a Lord Deputy or by Lords Justices. The King was
absent. The Lord Lieutenant was absent. There was no Lord Deputy. There
were no Lords Justices. The Act by which Tyrconnel had delegated his
authority to a junto composed of his creatures was a mere nullity. The
nation was therefore left without any legitimate chief, and might, without

violating the allegiance due to the Crown, make temporary provision for its
own safety. A deputation was sent to inform Berwick that he had assumed a
power to which he had no right, but that nevertheless the army and people
of Ireland would willingly acknowledge him as their head if he would
consent to govern by the advice of a council truly Irish. Berwick
indignantly expressed his wonder that military men should presume to meet
and deliberate without the permission of their general. They answered that
there was no general, and that, if His Grace did not choose to undertake the
administration on the terms proposed, another leader would easily be found.
Berwick very reluctantly yielded, and continued to be a puppet in a new set
of hands. 79
Those who had effected this revolution thought it prudent to send a
deputation to France for the purpose of vindicating their proceedings. Of
the deputation the Roman Catholic Bishop of Cork and the two Luttrells
were members. In the ship which conveyed them from Limerick to Brest
they found a fellow passenger whose presence was by no means agreeable
to them, their enemy, Maxwell. They suspected, and not without reason,
that he was going, like them, to Saint Germains, but on a very different
errand. The truth was that Berwick had sent Maxwell to watch their motions
and to traverse their designs. Henry Luttrell, the least scrupulous of men,
proposed to settle the matter at once by tossing the Scotchman into the sea.
But the Bishop, who was a man of conscience, and Simon Luttrell, who was
a man of honour, objected to this expedient. 80
Meanwhile at Limerick the supreme power was in abeyance. Berwick,
finding that he had no real authority, altogether neglected business, and
gave himself up to such pleasures as that dreary place of banishment
afforded. There was among the Irish chiefs no man of sufficient weight and
ability to control the rest. Sarsfield for a time took the lead. But Sarsfield,
though eminently brave and active in the field, was little skilled in the
administration of war, and still less skilled in civil business. Those who
were most desirous to support his authority were forced to own that his
nature was too unsuspicious and indulgent for a post in which it was hardly
possible to be too distrustful or too severe. He believed whatever was told
him. He signed whatever was set before him. The commissaries,
encouraged by his lenity, robbed and embezzled more shamelessly than
ever. They sallied forth daily, guarded by pikes and firelocks, to seize,
nominally for the public service, but really for themselves, wool, linen,

leather, tallow, domestic utensils, instruments of husbandry, searched every
pantry, every wardrobe, every cellar, and even laid sacrilegious hands on
the property of priests and prelates. 81
Early in the spring the government, if it is to be so called, of which
Berwick was the ostensible head, was dissolved by the return of Tyrconnel.
The Luttrells had, in the name of their countrymen, implored James not to
subject so loyal a people to so odious and incapable a viceroy. Tyrconnel,
they said, was old; he was infirm; he needed much sleep; he knew nothing
of war; he was dilatory; he was partial; he was rapacious; he was distrusted
and hated by the whole nation. The Irish, deserted by him, had made a
gallant stand, and had compelled the victorious army of the Prince of
Orange to retreat. They hoped soon to take the field again, thirty thousand
strong; and they adjured their King to send them some captain worthy to
command such a force. Tyrconnel and Maxwell, on the other hand,
represented the delegates as mutineers, demagogues, traitors, and pressed
James to send Henry Luttrell to keep Mountjoy company in the Bastille.
James, bewildered by these criminations and recriminations, hesitated long,
and at last, with characteristic wisdom, relieved himself from trouble by
giving all the quarrellers fair words and by sending them all back to have
their fight out in Ireland. Berwick was at the same time recalled to France.
82
Tyrconnel was received at Limerick, even by his enemies, with decent
respect. Much as they hated him, they could not question the validity of his
commission; and, though they still maintained that they had been perfectly
justified in annulling, during his absence, the unconstitutional arrangements
which he had made, they acknowledged that, when he was present, he was
their lawful governor. He was not altogether unprovided with the means of
conciliating them. He brought many gracious messages and promises, a
patent of peerage for Sarsfield, some money which was not of brass, and
some clothing, which was even more acceptable than money. The new
garments were not indeed very fine. But even the generals had long been
out at elbows; and there were few of the common men whose habiliments
would have been thought sufficient to dress a scarecrow in a more
prosperous country. Now, at length, for the first time in many months, every
private soldier could boast of a pair of breeches and a pair of brogues. The
Lord Lieutenant had also been authorised to announce that he should soon
be followed by several ships, laden with provisions and military stores. This

announcement was most welcome to the troops, who had long been without
bread, and who had nothing stronger than water to drink. 83
During some weeks the supplies were impatiently expected. At last,
Tyrconnel was forced to shut himself up; for, whenever he appeared in
public, the soldiers ran after him clamouring for food. Even the beef and
mutton, which, half raw, half burned, without vegetables, without salt, had
hitherto supported the army, had become scarce; and the common men were
on rations of horseflesh when the promised sails were seen in the mouth of
the Shannon. 84
A distinguished French general, named Saint Ruth, was on board with his
staff. He brought a commission which appointed him commander in chief
of the Irish army. The commission did not expressly declare that he was to
be independent of the viceregal authority; but he had been assured by James
that Tyrconnel should have secret instructions not to intermeddle in the
conduct of the war. Saint Ruth was assisted by another general officer
named D'Usson. The French ships brought some arms, some ammunition,
and a plentiful supply of corn and flour. The spirits of the Irish rose; and the
Te Deum was chaunted with fervent devotion in the cathedral of Limerick.
85
Tyrconnel had made no preparations for the approaching campaign. But
Saint Ruth, as soon as he had landed, exerted himself strenuously to redeem
the time which had been lost. He was a man of courage, activity and
resolution, but of a harsh and imperious nature. In his own country he was
celebrated as the most merciless persecutor that had ever dragooned the
Huguenots to mass. It was asserted by English Whigs that he was known in
France by the nickname of the Hangman; that, at Rome, the very cardinals
had shown their abhorrence of his cruelty; and that even Queen Christina,
who had little right to be squeamish about bloodshed, had turned away from
him with loathing. He had recently held a command in Savoy. The Irish
regiments in the French service had formed part of his army, and had
behaved extremely well. It was therefore supposed that he had a peculiar
talent for managing Irish troops. But there was a wide difference between
the well clad, well armed and well drilled Irish, with whom he was familiar,
and the ragged marauders whom he found swarming in the alleys of
Limerick. Accustomed to the splendour and the discipline of French camps
and garrisons, he was disgusted by finding that, in the country to which he

had been sent, a regiment of infantry meant a mob of people as naked, as
dirty and as disorderly as the beggars, whom he had been accustomed to see
on the Continent besieging the door of a monastery or pursuing a diligence
up him. With ill concealed contempt, however, he addressed himself
vigorously to the task of disciplining these strange soldiers, and was day
and night in the saddle, galloping from post to post, from Limerick to
Athlone, from Athlone to the northern extremity of Lough Rea, and from
Lough Rea back to Limerick. 86
It was indeed necessary that he should bestir himself; for, a few days
after his arrival, he learned that, on the other side of the Pale, all was ready
for action. The greater part of the English force was collected, before the
close of May, in the neighbourhood of Mullingar. Ginkell commanded in
chief. He had under him the two best officers, after Marlborough, of whom
our island could then boast, Talmash and Mackay. The Marquess of
Ruvigny, the hereditary chief of the refugees, and elder brother of the brave
Caillemot, who had fallen at the Boyne, had joined the army with the rank
of major general. The Lord Justice Coningsby, though not by profession a
soldier, came down from Dublin, to animate the zeal of the troops. The
appearance of the camp showed that the money voted by the English
Parliament had not been spared. The uniforms were new; the ranks were
one blaze of scarlet; and the train of artillery was such as had never before
been seen in Ireland. 87
On the sixth of June Ginkell moved his head quarters from Mullingar. On
the seventh he reached Ballymore. At Ballymore, on a peninsula almost
surrounded by something between a swamp and a lake, stood an ancient
fortress, which had recently been fortified under Sarsfield's direction, and
which was defended by above a thousand men. The English guns were
instantly planted. In a few hours the besiegers had the satisfaction of seeing
the besieged running like rabbits from one shelter to another. The governor,
who had at first held high language, begged piteously for quarter, and
obtained it. The whole garrison were marched off to Dublin. Only eight of
the conquerors had fallen. 88
Ginkell passed some days in reconstructing the defences of Ballymore.
This work had scarcely been performed when he was joined by the Danish
auxiliaries under the command of the Duke of Wirtemberg. The whole army

then moved westward, and, on the nineteenth of June, appeared before the
walls of Athlone. 89
Athlone was perhaps, in a military point of view, the most important
place in the island. Rosen, who understood war well, had always
maintained that it was there that the Irishry would, with most advantage,
make a stand against the Englishry. 90 The town, which was surrounded by
ramparts of earth, lay partly in Leinster and partly in Connaught. The
English quarter, which was in Leinster, had once consisted of new and
handsome houses, but had been burned by the Irish some months before,
and now lay in heaps of ruin. The Celtic quarter, which was in Connaught,
was old and meanly built. 91 The Shannon, which is the boundary of the two
provinces, rushed through Athlone in a deep and rapid stream, and turned
two large mills which rose on the arches of a stone bridge. Above the
bridge, on the Connaught side, a castle, built, it was said, by King John,
towered to the height of seventy feet, and extended two hundred feet along
the river. Fifty or sixty yards below the bridge was a narrow ford. 92
During the night of the nineteenth the English placed their cannon. On
the morning of the twentieth the firing began. At five in the afternoon an
assault was made. A brave French refugee with a grenade in his hand was
the first to climb the breach, and fell, cheering his countrymen to the onset
with his latest breath. Such were the gallant spirits which the bigotry of
Lewis had sent to recruit, in the time of his utmost need, the armies of his
deadliest enemies. The example was not lost. The grenades fell thick. The
assailants mounted by hundreds. The Irish gave way and ran towards the
bridge. There the press was so great that some of the fugitives were crushed
to death in the narrow passage, and others were forced over the parapets
into the waters which roared among the mill wheels below. In a few hours
Ginkell had made himself master of the English quarter of Athlone; and this
success had cost him only twenty men killed and forty wounded. 93
But his work was only begun. Between him and the Irish town the
Shannon ran fiercely. The bridge was so narrow that a few resolute men
might keep it against an army. The mills which stood on it were strongly
guarded; and it was commanded by the guns of the castle. That part of the
Connaught shore where the river was fordable was defended by works,
which the Lord Lieutenant had, in spite of the murmurs of a powerful party,
forced Saint Ruth to entrust to the care of Maxwell. Maxwell had come

back from France a more unpopular man than he had been when he went
thither. It was rumoured that he had, at Versailles, spoken opprobriously of
the Irish nation; and he had, on this account, been, only a few days before,
publicly affronted by Sarsfield. 94 On the twenty-first of June the English
were busied in flinging up batteries along the Leinster bank. On the twenty-
second, soon after dawn, the cannonade began. The firing continued all that
day and all the following night. When morning broke again, one whole side
of the castle had been beaten down; the thatched lanes of the Celtic town
lay in ashes; and one of the mills had been burned with sixty soldiers who
defended it. 95
Still however the Irish defended the bridge resolutely. During several
days there was sharp fighting hand to hand in the strait passage. The
assailants gained ground, but gained it inch by inch. The courage of the
garrison was sustained by the hope of speedy succour. Saint Ruth had at
length completed his preparations; and the tidings that Athlone was in
danger had induced him to take the field in haste at the head of an army,
superior in number, though inferior in more important elements of military
strength, to the army of Ginkell. The French general seems to have thought
that the bridge and the ford might easily be defended, till the autumnal rains
and the pestilence which ordinarily accompanied them should compel the
enemy to retire. He therefore contented himself with sending successive
detachments to reinforce the garrison. The immediate conduct of the
defence he entrusted to his second in command, D'Usson, and fixed his own
head quarters two or three miles from the town. He expressed his
astonishment that so experienced a commander as Ginkell should persist in
a hopeless enterprise. "His master ought to hang him for trying to take
Athlone; and mine ought to hang me if I lose it." 96
Saint Ruth, however, was by no means at ease. He had found, to his great
mortification, that he had not the full authority which the promises made to
him at Saint Germains had entitled him to expect. The Lord Lieutenant was
in the camp. His bodily and mental infirmities had perceptibly increased
within the last few weeks. The slow and uncertain step with which he, who
had once been renowned for vigour and agility, now tottered from his easy
chair to his couch, was no unapt type of the sluggish and wavering
movement of that mind which had once pursued its objects with a
vehemence restrained neither by fear nor by pity, neither by conscience nor
by shame. Yet, with impaired strength, both physical and intellectual, the

broken old man clung pertinaciously to power. If he had received private
orders not to meddle with the conduct of the war, he disregarded them. He
assumed all the authority of a sovereign, showed himself ostentatiously to
the troops as their supreme chief, and affected to treat Saint Ruth as a
lieutenant. Soon the interference of the Viceroy excited the vehement
indignation of that powerful party in the army which had long hated him.
Many officers signed an instrument by which they declared that they did not
consider him as entitled to their obedience in the field. Some of them
offered him gross personal insults. He was told to his face that, if he
persisted in remaining where he was not wanted, the ropes of his pavilion
should be cut. He, on the other hand, sent his emissaries to all the camp
fires, and tried to make a party among the common soldiers against the
French general. 97
The only thing in which Tyrconnel and Saint Ruth agreed was in
dreading and disliking Sarsfield. Not only was he popular with the great
body of his countrymen; he was also surrounded by a knot of retainers
whose devotion to him resembled the devotion of the Ismailite murderers to
the Old Man of the Mountain. It was known that one of these fanatics, a
colonel, had used language which, in the mouth of an officer so high in
rank, might well cause uneasiness. "The King," this man had said, "is
nothing to me. I obey Sarsfield. Let Sarsfield tell me to kill any man in the
whole army; and I will do it." Sarsfield was, indeed, too honourable a
gentleman to abuse his immense power over the minds of his worshippers.
But the Viceroy and the Commander in Chief might not unnaturally be
disturbed by the thought that Sarsfield's honour was their only guarantee
against mutiny and assassination. The consequence was that, at the crisis of
the fate of Ireland, the services of the first of Irish soldiers were not used, or
were used with jealous caution, and that, if he ventured to offer a
suggestion, it was received with a sneer or a frown. 98
A great and unexpected disaster put an end to these disputes. On the
thirtieth of June Ginkell called a council of war. Forage began to be scarce;
and it was absolutely necessary that the besiegers should either force their
way across the river or retreat. The difficulty of effecting a passage over the
shattered remains of the bridge seemed almost insuperable. It was proposed
to try the ford. The Duke of Wirtemberg, Talmash, and Ruvigny gave their
voices in favour of this plan; and Ginkell, with some misgivings, consented.
99

It was determined that the attempt should be made that very afternoon.
The Irish, fancying that the English were about to retreat, kept guard
carelessly. Part of the garrison was idling, part dosing. D'Usson was at
table. Saint Ruth was in his tent, writing a letter to his master filled with
charges against Tyrconnel. Meanwhile, fifteen hundred grenadiers; each
wearing in his hat a green bough, were mustered on the Leinster bank of the
Shannon. Many of them doubtless remembered that on that day year they
had, at the command of King William, put green boughs in their hats on the
banks of the Boyne. Guineas had been liberally scattered among these
picked men; but their alacrity was such as gold cannot purchase. Six
battalions were in readiness to support the attack. Mackay commanded. He
did not approve of the plan; but he executed it as zealously and
energetically as if he had himself been the author of it. The Duke of
Wirtemberg, Talmash, and several other gallant officers, to whom no part in
the enterprise had been assigned, insisted on serving that day as private
volunteers; and their appearance in the ranks excited the fiercest enthusiasm
among the soldiers.
It was six o'clock. A peal from the steeple of the church gave the signal.
Prince George of Hesse Darmstadt, and Gustavus Hamilton, the brave chief
of the Enniskilleners, descended first into the Shannon. Then the grenadiers
lifted the Duke of Wirtemberg on their shoulders, and, with a great shout,
plunged twenty abreast up to their cravats in water. The stream ran deep and
strong; but in a few minutes the head of the column reached dry land.
Talmash was the fifth man that set foot on the Connaught shore. The Irish,
taken unprepared, fired one confused volley and fled, leaving their
commander, Maxwell, a prisoner. The conquerors clambered up the bank
over the remains of walls shattered by a cannonade of ten days. Mackay
heard his men cursing and swearing as they stumbled among the rubbish.
"My lads," cried the stout old Puritan in the midst of the uproar, "you are
brave fellows; but do not swear. We have more reason to thank God for the
goodness which He has shown us this day than to take His name in vain."
The victory was complete. Planks were placed on the broken arches of the
bridge and pontoons laid on the river, without any opposition on the part of
the terrified garrison. With the loss of twelve men killed and about thirty
wounded the English had, in a few minutes, forced their way into
Connaught. 100

At the first alarm D'Usson hastened towards the river; but he was met,
swept away, trampled down, and almost killed by the torrent of fugitives.
He was carried to the camp in such a state that it was necessary to bleed
him. "Taken!" cried Saint Ruth, in dismay. "It cannot be. A town taken, and
I close by with an army to relieve it!" Cruelly mortified, he struck his tents
under cover of the night, and retreated in the direction of Galway. At dawn
the English saw far off, from the top of King John's ruined castle, the Irish
army moving through the dreary region which separates the Shannon from
the Suck. Before noon the rearguard had disappeared. 101
Even before the loss of Athlone the Celtic camp had been distracted by
factions. It may easily be supposed, therefore, that, after so great a disaster,
nothing was to be heard but crimination and recrimination. The enemies of
the Lord Lieutenant were more clamorous than ever. He and his creatures
had brought the kingdom to the verge of perdition. He would meddle with
what he did not understand. He would overrule the plans of men who were
real soldiers. He would entrust the most important of all posts to his tool,
his spy, the wretched Maxwell, not a born Irishman, not a sincere Catholic,
at best a blunderer, and too probably a traitor. Maxwell, it was affirmed, had
left his men unprovided with ammunition. When they had applied to him
for powder and ball, he had asked whether they wanted to shoot larks. Just
before the attack he had told them to go to their supper and to take their
rest, for that nothing more would be done that day. When he had delivered
himself up a prisoner, he had uttered some words which seemed to indicate
a previous understanding with the conquerors. The Lord Lieutenant's few
friends told a very different story. According to them, Tyrconnel and
Maxwell had suggested precautions which would have made a surprise
impossible. The French General, impatient of all interference, had omitted
to take those precautions. Maxwell had been rudely told that, if he was
afraid, he had better resign his command. He had done his duty bravely. He
had stood while his men fled. He had consequently fallen into the hands of
the enemy; and he was now, in his absence, slandered by those to whom his
captivity was justly imputable. 102 On which side the truth lay it is not easy,
at this distance of time, to pronounce. The cry against Tyrconnel was, at the
moment, so loud, that he gave way and sullenly retired to Limerick.
D'Usson, who had not yet recovered from the hurts inflicted by his own
runaway troops, repaired to Galway. 103

Saint Ruth, now left in undisputed possession of the supreme command,
was bent on trying the chances of a battle. Most of the Irish officers, with
Sarsfield at their head, were of a very different mind. It was, they said, not
to be dissembled that, in discipline, the army of Ginkell was far superior to
theirs. The wise course, therefore, evidently was to carry on the war in such
a manner that the difference between the disciplined and the undisciplined
soldier might be as small as possible. It was well known that raw recruits
often played their part well in a foray, in a street fight or in the defence of a
rampart; but that, on a pitched field, they had little chance against veterans.
"Let most of our foot be collected behind the walls of Limerick and
Galway. Let the rest, together with our horse, get in the rear of the enemy,
and cut off his supplies. If he advances into Connaught, let us overrun
Leinster. If he sits down before Galway, which may well be defended, let us
make a push for Dublin, which is altogether defenceless." 104 Saint Ruth
might, perhaps, have thought this advice good, if his judgment had not been
biassed by his passions. But he was smarting from the pain of a humiliating
defeat. In sight of his tent, the English had passed a rapid river, and had
stormed a strong town. He could not but feel that, though others might have
been to blame, he was not himself blameless. He had, to say the least, taken
things too easily. Lewis, accustomed to be served during many years by
commanders who were not in the habit of leaving to chance any thing
which could be made secure by wisdom, would hardly think it a sufficient
excuse that his general had not expected the enemy to make so bold and
sudden an attack. The Lord Lieutenant would, of course, represent what had
passed in the most unfavourable manner; and whatever the Lord Lieutenant
said James would echo. A sharp reprimand, a letter of recall, might be
expected. To return to Versailles a culprit; to approach the great King in an
agony of distress; to see him shrug his shoulders, knit his brow and turn his
back; to be sent, far from courts and camps, to languish at some dull
country seat; this was too much to be borne; and yet this might well be
apprehended. There was one escape; to fight, and to conquer or to perish.
In such a temper Saint Ruth pitched his camp about thirty miles from
Athlone on the road to Galway, near the ruined castle of Aghrim, and
determined to await the approach of the English army.
His whole deportment was changed. He had hitherto treated the Irish
soldiers with contemptuous severity. But now that he had resolved to stake
life and fame on the valour of the despised race, he became another man.

During the few days which remained to him he exerted himself to win by
indulgence and caresses the hearts of all who were under his command. 105
He, at the same time, administered to his troops moral stimulants of the
most potent kind. He was a zealous Roman Catholic; and it is probable that
the severity with which he had treated the Protestants of his own country
ought to be partly ascribed to the hatred which he felt for their doctrines. He
now tried to give to the war the character of a crusade. The clergy were the
agents whom he employed to sustain the courage of his soldiers. The whole
camp was in a ferment with religious excitement. In every regiment priests
were praying, preaching, shriving, holding up the host and the cup. While
the soldiers swore on the sacramental bread not to abandon their colours,
the General addressed to the officers an appeal which might have moved the
most languid and effeminate natures to heroic exertion. They were fighting,
he said, for their religion, their liberty and their honour. Unhappy events,
too widely celebrated, had brought a reproach on the national character.
Irish soldiership was every where mentioned with a sneer. If they wished to
retrieve the fame of their country, this was the time and this the place. 106
The spot on which he had determined to bring the fate of Ireland to issue
seems to have been chosen with great judgment. His army was drawn up on
the slope of a hill, which was almost surrounded by red bog. In front, near
the edge of the morass, were some fences out of which a breastwork was
without difficulty constructed.
On the eleventh of July, Ginkell, having repaired the fortifications of
Athlone and left a garrison there, fixed his headquarters at Ballinasloe,
about four miles from Aghrim, and rode forward to take a view of the Irish
position. On his return he gave orders that ammunition should be served
out, that every musket and bayonet should be got ready for action, and that
early on the morrow every man should be under arms without beat of drum.
Two regiments were to remain in charge of the camp; the rest,
unincumbered by baggage, were to march against the enemy.
Soon after six, the next morning, the English were on the way to Aghrim.
But some delay was occasioned by a thick fog which hung till noon over
the moist valley of the Suck; a further delay was caused by the necessity of
dislodging the Irish from some outposts; and the afternoon was far
advanced when the two armies at length confronted each other with nothing

but the bog and the breastwork between them. The English and their allies
were under twenty thousand; the Irish above twenty-five thousand.
Ginkell held a short consultation with his principal officers. Should he
attack instantly, or wait till the next morning? Mackay was for attacking
instantly; and his opinion prevailed. At five the battle began. The English
foot, in such order as they could keep on treacherous and uneven ground,
made their way, sinking deep in mud at every step, to the Irish works. But
those works were defended with a resolution such as extorted some words
of ungracious eulogy even from men who entertained the strongest
prejudices against the Celtic race. 107 Again and again the assailants were
driven back. Again and again they returned to the struggle. Once they were
broken, and chased across the morass; but Talmash rallied them, and forced
the pursuers to retire. The fight had lasted two hours; the evening was
closing in; and still the advantage was on the side of the Irish. Ginkell
began to meditate a retreat. The hopes of Saint Ruth rose high. "The day is
ours, my boys," he cried, waving his hat in the air. "We will drive them
before us to the walls of Dublin." But fortune was already on the turn.
Mackay and Ruvigny, with the English and Huguenot cavalry, had
succeeded in passing the bog at a place where two horsemen could scarcely
ride abreast. Saint Ruth at first laughed when he saw the Blues, in single
file, struggling through the morass under a fire which every moment laid
some gallant hat and feather on the earth. "What do they mean?" he asked;
and then he swore that it was pity to see such fine fellows rushing to certain
destruction. "Let them cross, however;" he said. "The more they are, the
more we shall kill." But soon he saw them laying hurdles on the quagmire.
A broader and safer path was formed; squadron after squadron reached firm
ground: the flank of the Irish army was speedily turned. The French general
was hastening to the rescue when a cannon ball carried off his head. Those
who were about him thought that it would be dangerous to make his fate
known. His corpse was wrapped in a cloak, carried from the field, and laid,
with all secresy, in the sacred ground among the ruins of the ancient
monastery of Loughrea. Till the fight was over neither army was aware that
he was no more. To conceal his death from the private soldiers might
perhaps have been prudent. To conceal it from his lieutenants was madness.
The crisis of the battle had arrived; and there was none to give direction.
Sarsfield was in command of the reserve. But he had been strictly enjoined
by Saint Ruth not to stir without orders; and no orders came. Mackay and

Ruvigny with their horse charged the Irish in flank. Talmash and his foot
returned to the attack in front with dogged determination. The breastwork
was carried. The Irish, still fighting, retreated from inclosure to inclosure.
But, as inclosure after inclosure was forced, their efforts became fainter and
fainter. At length they broke and fled. Then followed a horrible carnage.
The conquerors were in a savage mood. For a report had been spread
among them that, during the early part of the battle, some English captives
who had been admitted to quarter had been put to the sword. Only four
hundred prisoners were taken. The number of the slain was, in proportion to
the number engaged, greater than in any other battle of that age. But for the
coming on of a moonless night, made darker by a misty rain, scarcely a man
would have escaped. The obscurity enabled Sarsfield, with a few squadrons
which still remained unbroken, to cover the retreat. Of the conquerors six
hundred were killed, and about a thousand wounded.
The English slept that night on the field of battle. On the following day
they buried their companions in arms, and then marched westward. The
vanquished were left unburied, a strange and ghastly spectacle. Four
thousand Irish corpses were counted on the field of battle. A hundred and
fifty lay in one small inclosure, a hundred and twenty in another. But the
slaughter had not been confined to the field of battle. One who was there
tells us that, from the top of the hill on which the Celtic camp had been
pitched, he saw the country, to the distance of near four miles, white with
the naked bodies of the slain. The plain looked, he said, like an immense
pasture covered by flocks of sheep. As usual, different estimates were
formed even by eyewitnesses. But it seems probable that the number of the
Irish who fell was not less than seven thousand. Soon a multitude of dogs
came to feast on the carnage. These beasts became so fierce, and acquired
such a taste for human flesh, that it was long dangerous for men to travel
this road otherwise than in companies. 108
The beaten army had now lost all the appearance of an army, and
resembled a rabble crowding home from a fair after a faction fight. One
great stream of fugitives ran towards Galway, another towards Limerick.
The roads to both cities were covered with weapons which had been flung
away. Ginkell offered sixpence for every musket. In a short time so many
waggon loads were collected that he reduced the price to twopence; and still
great numbers of muskets came in. 109

The conquerors marched first against Galway. D'Usson was there, and
had under him seven regiments, thinned by the slaughter of Aghrim and
utterly disorganized and disheartened. The last hope of the garrison and of
the Roman Catholic inhabitants was that Baldearg O'Donnel, the promised
deliverer of their race, would come to the rescue. But Baldearg O'Donnel
was not duped by the superstitious veneration of which he was the object.
While there remained any doubt about the issue of the conflict between the
Englishry and the Irishry, he had stood aloof. On the day of the battle he
had remained at a safe distance with his tumultuary army; and, as soon as
he had learned that his countrymen had been put to rout, he fled, plundering
and burning all the way, to the mountains of Mayo. Thence he sent to
Ginkell offers of submission and service. Ginkell gladly seized the
opportunity of breaking up a formidable band of marauders, and of turning
to good account the influence which the name of a Celtic dynasty still
exercised over the Celtic race. The negotiation however was not without
difficulties. The wandering adventurer at first demanded nothing less than
an earldom. After some haggling he consented to sell the love of a whole
people, and his pretensions to regal dignity, for a pension of five hundred
pounds a year. Yet the spell which bound his followers to hire was not
altogether broken. Some enthusiasts from Ulster were willing to fight under
the O'Donnel against their own language and their own religion. With a
small body of these devoted adherents, he joined a division of the English
army, and on several occasions did useful service to William. 110
When it was known that no succour was to be expected from the hero
whose advent had been foretold by so many seers, the Irish who were shut
up in Galway lost all heart. D'Usson had returned a stout answer to the first
summons of the besiegers; but he soon saw that resistance was impossible,
and made haste to capitulate. The garrison was suffered to retire to Limerick
with the honours of war. A full amnesty for past offences was granted to the
citizens; and it was stipulated that, within the walls, the Roman Catholic
priests should be allowed to perform in private the rites of their religion. On
these terms the gates were thrown open. Ginkell was received with
profound respect by the Mayor and Aldermen, and was complimented in a
set speech by the Recorder. D'Usson, with about two thousand three
hundred men, marched unmolested to Limerick. 111
At Limerick, the last asylum of the vanquished race, the authority of
Tyrconnel was supreme. There was now no general who could pretend that

his commission made him independent of the Lord Lieutenant; nor was the
Lord Lieutenant now so unpopular as he had been a fortnight earlier. Since
the battle there had been a reflux of public feeling. No part of that great
disaster could be imputed to the Viceroy. His opinion indeed had been
against trying the chances of a pitched field, and he could with some
plausibility assert that the neglect of his counsels had caused the ruin of
Ireland. 112
He made some preparations for defending Limerick, repaired the
fortifications, and sent out parties to bring in provisions. The country, many
miles round, was swept bare by these detachments, and a considerable
quantity of cattle and fodder was collected within the walls. There was also
a large stock of biscuit imported from France. The infantry assembled at
Limerick were about fifteen thousand men. The Irish horse and dragoons,
three or four thousand in number, were encamped on the Clare side of the
Shannon. The communication between their camp and the city was
maintained by means of a bridge called the Thomond Bridge, which was
protected by a fort. These means of defence were not contemptible. But the
fall of Athlone and the slaughter of Aghrim had broken the spirit of the
army. A small party, at the head of which were Sarsfield and a brave Scotch
officer named Wauchop, cherished a hope that the triumphant progress of
Ginkell might be stopped by those walls from which William had, in the
preceding year, been forced to retreat. But many of the Irish chiefs loudly
declared that it was time to think of capitulating. Henry Luttrell, always
fond of dark and crooked politics, opened a secret negotiation with the
English. One of his letters was intercepted; and he was put under arrest; but
many who blamed his perfidy agreed with him in thinking that it was idle to
prolong the contest. Tyrconnel himself was convinced that all was lost. His
only hope was that he might be able to prolong the struggle till he could
receive from Saint Germains permission to treat. He wrote to request that
permission, and prevailed, with some difficulty, on his desponding
countrymen to bind themselves by an oath not to capitulate till an answer
from James should arrive. 113
A few days after the oath had been administered, Tyrconnel was no more.
On the eleventh of August he dined with D'Usson. The party was gay. The
Lord Lieutenant seemed to have thrown off the load which had bowed
down his body and mind; he drank; he jested; he was again the Dick Talbot
who had diced and revelled with Grammont. Soon after he had risen from

table, an apoplectic stroke deprived him of speech and sensation. On the
fourteenth he breathed his last. The wasted remains of that form which had
once been a model for statuaries were laid under the pavement of the
Cathedral; but no inscription, no tradition, preserves the memory of the
spot. 114
As soon as the Lord Lieutenant was no more, Plowden, who had
superintended the Irish finances while there were any Irish finances to
superintend, produced a commission under the great seal of James. This
commission appointed Plowden himself, Fitton and Nagle, Lords justices in
the event of Tyrconnel's death. There was much murmuring when the names
were made known. For both Plowden and Fitton were Saxons. The
commission, however, proved to be a mere nullity. For it was accompanied
by instructions which forbade the Lords justices to interfere in the conduct
of the war; and, within the narrow space to which the dominions of James
were now reduced, war was the only business. The government was,
therefore, really in the hands of D'Usson and Sarsfield. 115
On the day on which Tyrconnel died, the advanced guard of the English
army came within sight of Limerick. Ginkell encamped on the same ground
which William had occupied twelve months before. The batteries, on which
were planted guns and bombs, very different from those which William had
been forced to use, played day and night; and soon roofs were blazing and
walls crashing in every corner of the city. Whole streets were reduced to
ashes. Meanwhile several English ships of war came up the Shannon and
anchored about a mile below the city. 116
Still the place held out; the garrison was, in numerical strength, little
inferior to the besieging army; and it seemed not impossible that the
defence might be prolonged till the equinoctial rains should a second time
compel the English to retire. Ginkell determined on striking a bold stroke.
No point in the whole circle of the fortifications was more important, and
no point seemed to be more secure, than the Thomond Bridge, which joined
the city to the camp of the Irish horse on the Clare bank of the Shannon.
The Dutch General's plan was to separate the infantry within the ramparts
from the cavalry without; and this plan he executed with great skill, vigour
and success. He laid a bridge of tin boats on the river, crossed it with a
strong body of troops, drove before him in confusion fifteen hundred
dragoons who made a faint show of resistance, and marched towards the

quarters of the Irish horse. The Irish horse sustained but ill on this day the
reputation which they had gained at the Boyne. Indeed, that reputation had
been purchased by the almost entire destruction of the best regiments.
Recruits had been without much difficulty found. But the loss of fifteen
hundred excellent soldiers was not to be repaired. The camp was abandoned
without a blow. Some of the cavalry fled into the city. The rest, driving
before them as many cattle as could be collected in that moment of panic,
retired to the hills. Much beef, brandy and harness was found in the
magazines; and the marshy plain of the Shannon was covered with firelocks
and grenades which the fugitives had thrown away. 117
The conquerors returned in triumph to their camp. But Ginkell was not
content with the advantage which he had gained. He was bent on cutting off
all communication between Limerick and the county of Clare. In a few
days, therefore, he again crossed the river at the head of several regiments,
and attacked the fort which protected the Thomond Bridge. In a short time
the fort was stormed. The soldiers who had garrisoned it fled in confusion
to the city. The Town Major, a French officer, who commanded at the
Thomond Gate, afraid that the pursuers would enter with the fugitives,
ordered that part of the bridge which was nearest to the city to be drawn up.
Many of the Irish went headlong into the stream and perished there. Others
cried for quarter, and held up handkerchiefs in token of submission. But the
conquerors were mad with rage; their cruelty could not be immediately
restrained; and no prisoners were made till the heaps of corpses rose above
the parapets. The garrison of the fort had consisted of about eight hundred
men. Of these only a hundred and twenty escaped into Limerick. 118
This disaster seemed likely to produce a general mutiny in the besieged
city. The Irish clamoured for the blood of the Town Major who had ordered
the bridge to be drawn up in the face of their flying countrymen. His
superiors were forced to promise that he should be brought before a court
martial. Happily for him, he had received a mortal wound, in the act of
closing the Thomond Gate, and was saved by a soldier's death from the fury
of the multitude. 119 The cry for capitulation became so loud and
importunate that the generals could not resist it. D'Usson informed his
government that the fight at the bridge had so effectually cowed the spirit of
the garrison that it was impossible to continue the struggle. 120 Some
exception may perhaps be taken to the evidence of D'Usson; for
undoubtedly he, like every Frenchman who had held any command in the

Irish army, was weary of his banishment, and impatient to see Paris again.
But it is certain that even Sarsfield had lost heart. Up to this time his voice
had been for stubborn resistance. He was now not only willing, but
impatient to treat. 121 It seemed to him that the city was doomed. There was
no hope of succour, domestic or foreign. In every part of Ireland the Saxons
had set their feet on the necks of the natives. Sligo had fallen. Even those
wild islands which intercept the huge waves of the Atlantic from the bay of
Galway had acknowledged the authority of William. The men of Kerry,
reputed the fiercest and most ungovernable part of the aboriginal
population, had held out long, but had at length been routed, and chased to
their woods and mountains. 122 A French fleet, if a French fleet were now to
arrive on the coast of Munster, would find the mouth of the Shannon
guarded by English men of war. The stock of provisions within Limerick
was already running low. If the siege were prolonged, the town would, in all
human probability, be reduced either by force or by blockade. And, if
Ginkell should enter through the breach, or should be implored by a
multitude perishing with hunger to dictate his own terms, what could be
expected but a tyranny more inexorably severe than that of Cromwell?
Would it not then be wise to try what conditions could be obtained while the
victors had still something to fear from the rage and despair of the
vanquished; while the last Irish army could still make some show of
resistance behind the walls of the last Irish fortress?
On the evening of the day which followed the fight at the Thomond Gate,
the drums of Limerick beat a parley; and Wauchop, from one of the towers,
hailed the besiegers, and requested Ruvigny to grant Sarsfield an interview.
The brave Frenchman who was an exile on account of his attachment to one
religion, and the brave Irishman who was about to become an exile on
account of his attachment to another, met and conferred, doubtless with
mutual sympathy and respect. 123 Ginkell, to whom Ruvigny reported what
had passed, willingly consented to an armistice. For, constant as his success
had been, it had not made him secure. The chances were greatly on his side.
Yet it was possible that an attempt to storm the city might fail, as a similar
attempt had failed twelve months before. If the siege should be turned into a
blockade, it was probable that the pestilence which had been fatal to the
army of Schomberg, which had compelled William to retreat, and which
had all but prevailed even against the genius and energy of Marlborough,
might soon avenge the carnage of Aghrim. The rains had lately been heavy.

The whole plain might shortly be an immense pool of stagnant water. It
might be necessary to move the troops to a healthier situation than the bank
of the Shannon, and to provide for them a warmer shelter than that of tents.
The enemy would be safe till the spring. In the spring a French army might
land in Ireland; the natives might again rise in arms from Donegal to Kerry;
and the war, which was now all but extinguished, might blaze forth fiercer
than ever.
A negotiation was therefore opened with a sincere desire on both sides to
put an end to the contest. The chiefs of the Irish army held several
consultations at which some Roman Catholic prelates and some eminent
lawyers were invited to assist. A preliminary question, which perplexed
tender consciences, was submitted by the Bishops. The late Lord Lieutenant
had persuaded the officers of the garrison to swear that they would not
surrender Limerick till they should receive an answer to the letter in which
their situation had been explained to James. The Bishops thought that the
oath was no longer binding. It had been taken at a time when the
communications with France were open, and in the full belief that the
answer of James would arrive within three weeks. More than twice that
time had elapsed. Every avenue leading to the city was strictly guarded by
the enemy. His Majesty's faithful subjects, by holding out till it had become
impossible for him to signify his pleasure to them, had acted up to the spirit
of their promise. 124
The next question was what terms should be demanded. A paper,
containing propositions which statesmen of our age will think reasonable,
but which to the most humane and liberal English Protestants of the
seventeenth century appeared extravagant, was sent to the camp of the
besiegers. What was asked was that all offences should be covered with
oblivion, that perfect freedom of worship should be allowed to the native
population, that every parish should have its priest, and that Irish Roman
Catholics should be capable of holding all offices, civil and military, and of
enjoying all municipal privileges. 125
Ginkell knew little of the laws and feelings of the English; but he had
about him persons who were competent to direct him. They had a week
before prevented him from breaking a Rapparee on the wheel; and they now
suggested an answer to the propositions of the enemy. "I am a stranger
here," said Ginkell; "I am ignorant of the constitution of these kingdoms;

but I am assured that what you ask is inconsistent with that constitution; and
therefore I cannot with honour consent." He immediately ordered a new
battery to be thrown up, and guns and mortars to be planted on it. But his
preparations were speedily interrupted by another message from the city.
The Irish begged that, since he could not grant what they had demanded, he
would tell them what he was willing to grant. He called his advisers round
him, and, after some consultation, sent back a paper containing the heads of
a treaty, such as he had reason to believe that the government which he
served would approve. What he offered was indeed much less than what the
Irish desired, but was quite as much as, when they considered their situation
and the temper of the English nation, they could expect. They speedily
notified their assent. It was agreed that there should be a cessation of arms,
not only by land, but in the ports and bays of Munster, and that a fleet of
French transports should be suffered to come up the Shannon in peace and
to depart in peace. The signing of the treaty was deferred till the Lords
justices, who represented William at Dublin, should arrive at Ginkell's
quarters. But there was during some days a relaxation of military vigilance
on both sides. Prisoners were set at liberty. The outposts of the two armies
chatted and messed together. The English officers rambled into the town.
The Irish officers dined in the camp. Anecdotes of what passed at the
friendly meetings of these men, who had so lately been mortal enemies,
were widely circulated. One story, in particular, was repeated in every part
of Europe. "Has not this last campaign," said Sarsfield to some English
officers, "raised your opinion of Irish soldiers?" "To tell you the truth,"
answered an Englishman, "we think of them much as we always did."
"However meanly you may think of us," replied Sarsfield, "change Kings
with us, and we will willingly try our luck with you again." He was
doubtless thinking of the day on which he had seen the two Sovereigns at
the head of two great armies, William foremost in the charge, and James
foremost in the flight. 126
On the first of October, Coningsby and Porter arrived at the English
headquarters. On the second the articles of capitulation were discussed at
great length and definitely settled. On the third they were signed. They were
divided into two parts, a military treaty and a civil treaty. The former was
subscribed only by the generals on both sides. The Lords justices set their
names to the latter. 127

By the military treaty it was agreed that such Irish officers and soldiers as
should declare that they wished to go to France should be conveyed thither,
and should, in the meantime, remain under the command of their own
generals. Ginkell undertook to furnish a considerable number of transports.
French vessels were also to be permitted to pass and repass freely between
Britanny and Munster. Part of Limerick was to be immediately delivered up
to the English. But the island on which the Cathedral and the Castle stand
was to remain, for the present, in the keeping of the Irish.
The terms of the civil treaty were very different from those which Ginkell
had sternly refused to grant. It was not stipulated that the Roman Catholics
of Ireland should be competent to hold any political or military office, or
that they should be admitted into any corporation. But they obtained a
promise that they should enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their
religion as were consistent with the law, or as they had enjoyed in the reign
of Charles the Second.
To all inhabitants of Limerick, and to all officers and soldiers in the
Jacobite army, who should submit to the government and notify their
submission by taking the oath of allegiance, an entire amnesty was
promised. They were to retain their property; they were to be allowed to
exercise any profession which they had exercised before the troubles; they
were not to be punished for any treason, felony, or misdemeanour
committed since the accession of the late King; nay, they were not to be
sued for damages on account of any act of spoliation or outrage which they
might have committed during the three years of confusion. This was more
than the Lords justices were constitutionally competent to grant. It was
therefore added that the government would use its utmost endeavours to
obtain a Parliamentary ratification of the treaty. 128
As soon as the two instruments had been signed, the English entered the
city, and occupied one quarter of it. A narrow, but deep branch of the
Shannon separated them from the quarter which was still in the possession
of the Irish. 129
In a few hours a dispute arose which seemed likely to produce a renewal
of hostilities. Sarsfield had resolved to seek his fortune in the service of
France, and was naturally desirous to carry with him to the Continent such a
body of troops as would be an important addition to the army of Lewis.
Ginkell was as naturally unwilling to send thousands of men to swell the

forces of the enemy. Both generals appealed to the treaty. Each construed it
as suited his purpose, and each complained that the other had violated it.
Sarsfield was accused of putting one of his officers under arrest for refusing
to go to the Continent. Ginkell, greatly excited, declared that he would
teach the Irish to play tricks with him, and began to make preparations for a
cannonade. Sarsfield came to the English camp, and tried to justify what he
had done. The altercation was sharp. "I submit," said Sarsfield, at last: "I am
in your power." "Not at all in my power," said Ginkell, "go back and do
your worst." The imprisoned officer was liberated; a sanguinary contest was
averted; and the two commanders contented themselves with a war of
words. 130 Ginkell put forth proclamations assuring the Irish that, if they
would live quietly in their own land, they should be protected and favoured,
and that if they preferred a military life, they should be admitted into the
service of King William. It was added that no man, who chose to reject this
gracious invitation and to become a soldier of Lewis, must expect ever
again to set foot on the island. Sarsfield and Wauchop exerted their
eloquence on the other side. The present aspect of affairs, they said, was
doubtless gloomy; but there was bright sky beyond the cloud. The
banishment would be short. The return would be triumphant. Within a year
the French would invade England. In such an invasion the Irish troops, if
only they remained unbroken, would assuredly bear a chief part. In the
meantime it was far better for them to live in a neighbouring and friendly
country, under the parental care of their own rightful King, than to trust the
Prince of Orange, who would probably send them to the other end of the
world to fight for his ally the Emperor against the Janissaries.
The help of the Roman Catholic clergy was called in. On the day on
which those who had made up their minds to go to France were required to
announce their determination, the priests were indefatigable in exhorting. At
the head of every regiment a sermon was preached on the duty of adhering
to the cause of the Church, and on the sin and danger of consorting with
unbelievers. 131 Whoever, it was said, should enter the service of the
usurpers would do so at the peril of his soul. The heretics affirmed that,
after the peroration, a plentiful allowance of brandy was served out to the
audience, and that, when the brandy had been swallowed, a Bishop
pronounced a benediction. Thus duly prepared by physical and moral
stimulants, the garrison, consisting of about fourteen thousand infantry, was
drawn up in the vast meadow which lay on the Clare bank of the Shannon.

Here copies of Ginkell's proclamation were profusely scattered about; and
English officers went through the ranks imploring the men not to ruin
themselves, and explaining to them the advantages which the soldiers of
King William enjoyed. At length the decisive moment came. The troops
were ordered to pass in review. Those who wished to remain in Ireland were
directed to file off at a particular spot. All who passed that spot were to be
considered as having made their choice for France. Sarsfield and Wauchop
on one side, Porter, Coningsby and Ginkell on the other, looked on with
painful anxiety. D'Usson and his countrymen, though not uninterested in the
spectacle, found it hard to preserve their gravity. The confusion, the
clamour, the grotesque appearance of an army in which there could scarcely
be seen a shirt or a pair of pantaloons, a shoe or a stocking, presented so
ludicrous a contrast to the orderly and brilliant appearance of their master's
troops, that they amused themselves by wondering what the Parisians would
say to see such a force mustered on the plain of Grenelle. 132
First marched what was called the Royal regiment, fourteen hundred
strong. All but seven went beyond the fatal point. Ginkell's countenance
showed that he was deeply mortified. He was consoled, however, by seeing
the next regiment, which consisted of natives of Ulster, turn off to a man.
There had arisen, notwithstanding the community of blood, language and
religion, an antipathy between the Celts of Ulster and those of the other
three provinces; nor is it improbable that the example and influence of
Baldearg O'Donnel may have had some effect on the people of the land
which his forefathers had ruled. 133 In most of the regiments there was a
division of opinion; but a great majority declared for France. Henry Luttrell
was one of those who turned off. He was rewarded for his desertion, and
perhaps for other services, with a grant of the large estate of his elder
brother Simon, who firmly adhered to the cause of James, with a pension of
five hundred pounds a year from the Crown, and with the abhorrence of the
Roman Catholic population. After living in wealth, luxury and infamy,
during a quarter of a century, Henry Luttrell was murdered while going
through Dublin in his sedan chair; and the Irish House of Commons
declared that there was reason to suspect that he had fallen by the revenge
of the Papists. 134 Eighty years after his death his grave near Luttrellstown
was violated by the descendants of those whom he had betrayed, and his
skull was broken to pieces with a pickaxe. 135 The deadly hatred of which
he was the object descended to his son and to his grandson; and, unhappily,

nothing in the character either of his son or of his grandson tended to
mitigate the feeling which the name of Luttrell excited. 136
When the long procession had closed, it was found that about a thousand
men had agreed to enter into William's service. About two thousand
accepted passes from Ginkell, and went quietly home. About eleven
thousand returned with Sarsfield to the city. A few hours after the garrison
had passed in review, the horse, who were encamped some miles from the
town, were required to make their choice; and most of them volunteered for
France. 137
Sarsfield considered the troops who remained with him as under an
irrevocable obligation to go abroad; and, lest they should be tempted to
retract their consent, he confined them within the ramparts, and ordered the
gates to be shut and strongly guarded. Ginkell, though in his vexation he
muttered some threats, seems to have felt that he could not justifiably
interfere. But the precautions of the Irish general were far from being
completely successful. It was by no means strange that a superstitious and
excitable kerne, with a sermon and a dram in his head, should be ready to
promise whatever his priests required; neither was it strange that, when he
had slept off his liquor, and when anathemas were no longer ringing in his
ears, he should feel painful misgivings. He had bound himself to go into
exile, perhaps for life, beyond that dreary expanse of waters which
impressed his rude mind with mysterious terror. His thoughts ran on all that
he was to leave, on the well known peat stack and potatoe ground, and on
the mud cabin, which, humble as it was, was still his home. He was never
again to see the familiar faces round the turf fire, or to hear the familiar
notes of the old Celtic songs. The ocean was to roll between him and the
dwelling of his greyheaded parents and his blooming sweetheart. Here were
some who, unable to bear the misery of such a separation, and, finding it
impossible to pass the sentinels who watched the gates, sprang into the river
and gained the opposite bank. The number of these daring swimmers,
however, was not great; and the army would probably have been
transported almost entire if it had remained at Limerick till the day of
embarkation. But many of the vessels in which the voyage was to be
performed lay at Cork; and it was necessary that Sarsfield should proceed
thither with some of his best regiments. It was a march of not less than four
days through a wild country. To prevent agile youths, familiar with all the

shifts of a vagrant and predatory life, from stealing off to the bogs, and
woods under cover of the night, was impossible.
Indeed, many soldiers had the audacity to run away by broad daylight
before they were out of sight of Limerick Cathedral. The Royal regiment,
which had, on the day of the review, set so striking an example of fidelity to
the cause of James, dwindled from fourteen hundred men to five hundred.
Before the last ships departed, news came that those who had sailed by the
first ships had been ungraciously received at Brest. They had been scantily
fed; they had been able to obtain neither pay nor clothing; though winter
was setting in, they slept in the fields with no covering but the hedges.
Many had been heard to say that it would have been far better to die in old
Ireland than to live in the inhospitable country to which they had been
banished. The effect of those reports was that hundreds, who had long
persisted in their intention of emigrating, refused at the last moment to go
on board, threw down their arms, and returned to their native villages. 138
Sarsfield perceived that one chief cause of the desertion which was
thinning his army was the natural unwillingness of the men to leave their
families in a state of destitution. Cork and its neighbourhood were filled
with the kindred of those who were going abroad. Great numbers of
women, many of them leading, carrying, suckling their infants, covered all
the roads which led to the place of embarkation. The Irish general,
apprehensive of the effect which the entreaties and lamentations of these
poor creatures could not fail to produce, put forth a proclamation, in which
he assured his soldiers that they should be permitted to carry their wives
and families to France. It would be injurious to the memory of so brave and
loyal a gentleman to suppose that when he made this promise he meant to
break it. It is much more probable that he had formed an erroneous estimate
of the number of those who would demand a passage, and that he found
himself, when it was too late to alter his arrangements, unable to keep his
word. After the soldiers had embarked, room was found for the families of
many. But still there remained on the water side a great multitude
clamouring piteously to be taken on board. As the last boats put off there
was a rush into the surf. Some women caught hold of the ropes, were
dragged out of their depth, clung till their fingers were cut through, and
perished in the waves. The ships began to move. A wild and terrible wail
rose from the shore, and excited unwonted compassion in hearts steeled by
hatred of the Irish race and of the Romish faith. Even the stern

Cromwellian, now at length, after a desperate struggle of three years, left
the undisputed lord of the bloodstained and devastated island, could not
hear unmoved that bitter cry, in which was poured forth all the rage and all
the sorrow of a conquered nation. 139
The sails disappeared. The emaciated and brokenhearted crowd of those
whom a stroke more cruel than that of death had made widows and orphans
dispersed, to beg their way home through a wasted land, or to lie down and
die by the roadside of grief and hunger. The exiles departed, to learn in
foreign camps that discipline without which natural courage is of small
avail, and to retrieve on distant fields of battle the honour which had been
lost by a long series of defeats at home. In Ireland there was peace. The
domination of the colonists was absolute. The native population was
tranquil with the ghastly tranquillity of exhaustion and of despair. There
were indeed outrages, robberies, fireraisings, assassinations. But more than
a century passed away without one general insurrection. During that
century, two rebellions were raised in Great Britain by the adherents of the
House of Stuart. But neither when the elder Pretender was crowned at
Scone, nor when the younger held his court at Holyrood, was the standard
of that House set up in Connaught or Munster. In 1745, indeed, when the
Highlanders were marching towards London, the Roman Catholics of
Ireland were so quiet that the Lord Lieutenant could, without the smallest
risk, send several regiments across Saint George's Channel to recruit the
army of the Duke of Cumberland. Nor was this submission the effect of
content, but of mere stupefaction and brokenness of heart. The iron had
entered into the soul. The memory of past defeats, the habit of daily
enduring insult and oppression, had cowed the spirit of the unhappy nation.
There were indeed Irish Roman Catholics of great ability, energy and
ambition; but they were to be found every where except in Ireland, at
Versailles and at Saint Ildefonso, in the armies of Frederic and in the armies
of Maria Theresa. One exile became a Marshal of France. Another became
Prime Minister of Spain. If he had staid in his native land he would have
been regarded as an inferior by all the ignorant and worthless squireens who
drank the glorious and immortal memory. In his palace at Madrid he had the
pleasure of being assiduously courted by the ambassador of George the
Second, and of bidding defiance in high terms to the ambassador of George
the Third. 140 Scattered over all Europe were to be found brave Irish
generals, dexterous Irish diplomatists, Irish Counts, Irish Barons, Irish

Knights of Saint Lewis and of Saint Leopold, of the White Eagle and of the
Golden Fleece, who, if they had remained in the house of bondage, could
not have been ensigns of marching regiments or freemen of petty
corporations. These men, the natural chiefs of their race, having been
withdrawn, what remained was utterly helpless and passive. A rising of the
Irishry against the Englishry was no more to be apprehended than a rising
of the women and children against the men. 141
There were indeed, in those days, fierce disputes between the mother
country and the colony; but in those disputes the aboriginal population had
no more interest than the Red Indians in the dispute between Old England
and New England about the Stamp Act. The ruling few, even when in
mutiny against the government, had no mercy for any thing that looked like
mutiny on the part of the subject many. None of those Roman patriots, who
poniarded Julius Caesar for aspiring to be a king, would have had the
smallest scruple about crucifying a whole school of gladiators for
attempting to escape from the most odious and degrading of all kinds of
servitude. None of those Virginian patriots, who vindicated their separation
from the British empire by proclaiming it to be a selfevident truth that all
men were endowed by the Creator with an unalienable right to liberty,
would have had the smallest scruple about shooting any negro slave who
had laid claim to that unalienable right.
And, in the same manner, the Protestant masters of Ireland, while
ostentatiously professing the political doctrines of Locke and Sidney, held
that a people who spoke the Celtic tongue and heard mass could have no
concern in those doctrines. Molyneux questioned the supremacy of the
English legislature. Swift assailed, with the keenest ridicule and invective,
every part of the system of government. Lucas disquieted the administration
of Lord Harrington. Boyle overthrew the administration of the Duke of
Dorset. But neither Molyneux nor Swift, neither Lucas nor Boyle, ever
thought of appealing to the native population. They would as soon have
thought of appealing to the swine. 142 At a later period Henry Flood excited
the dominant class to demand a Parliamentary reform, and to use even
revolutionary means for the purpose of obtaining that reform. But neither
he, nor those who looked up to him as their chief, and who went close to the
verge of treason at his bidding, would consent to admit the subject class to
the smallest share of political power. The virtuous and accomplished
Charlemont, a Whig of the Whigs, passed a long life in contending for what

he called the freedom of his country. But he voted against the law which
gave the elective franchise to Roman Catholic freeholders; and he died
fixed in the opinion that the Parliament House ought to be kept pure from
Roman Catholic members. Indeed, during the century which followed the
Revolution, the inclination of an English Protestant to trample on the Irishry
was generally proportioned to the zeal which he professed for political
liberty in the abstract. If he uttered any expression of compassion for the
majority oppressed by the minority, he might be safely set down as a
bigoted Tory and High Churchman. 143
All this time hatred, kept down by fear, festered in the hearts of the
children of the soil. They were still the same people that had sprung to arms
in 1641 at the call of O'Neill, and in 1689 at the call of Tyrconnel. To them
every festival instituted by the State was a day of mourning, and every
public trophy set up by the State was a memorial of shame. We have never
known, and can but faintly conceive, the feelings of a nation doomed to see
constantly in all its public places the monuments of its subjugation. Such
monuments every where met the eye of the Irish Roman Catholics. In front
of the Senate House of their country, they saw the statue of their conqueror.
If they entered, they saw the walls tapestried with the defeats of their
fathers. At length, after a hundred years of servitude, endured without one
vigorous or combined struggle for emancipation, the French revolution
awakened a wild hope in the bosoms of the oppressed. Men who had
inherited all the pretensions and all the passions of the Parliament which
James had held at the Kings Inns could not hear unmoved of the downfall
of a wealthy established Church, of the flight of a splendid aristocracy, of
the confiscation of an immense territory. Old antipathies, which had never
slumbered, were excited to new and terrible energy by the combination of
stimulants which, in any other society, would have counteracted each other.
The spirit of Popery and the spirit of Jacobinism, irreconcilable antagonists
every where else, were for once mingled in an unnatural and portentous
union. Their joint influence produced the third and last rising up of the
aboriginal population against the colony. The greatgrandsons of the soldiers
of Galmoy and Sarsfield were opposed to the greatgrandsons of the soldiers
of Wolseley and Mitchelburn. The Celt again looked impatiently for the
sails which were to bring succour from Brest; and the Saxon was again
backed by the whole power of England. Again the victory remained with
the well educated and well organized minority. But, happily, the vanquished

people found protection in a quarter from which they would once have had
to expect nothing but implacable severity. By this time the philosophy of
the eighteenth century had purifed English Whiggism from that deep taint
of intolerance which had been contracted during a long and close alliance
with the Puritanism of the seventeenth century. Enlightened men had begun
to feel that the arguments by which Milton and Locke, Tillotson and Burnet,
had vindicated the rights of conscience might be urged with not less force in
favour of the Roman Catholic than in favour of the Independent or the
Baptist. The great party which traces its descent through the Exclusionists
up to the Roundheads continued during thirty years, in spite of royal frowns
and popular clamours, to demand a share in all the benefits of our free
constitution for those Irish Papists whom the Roundheads and the
Exclusionists had considered merely as beasts of chase or as beasts of
burden. But it will be for some other historian to relate the vicissitudes of
that great conflict, and the late triumph of reason and humanity. Unhappily
such a historian will have to relate that the triumph won by such exertions
and by such sacrifices was immediately followed by disappointment; that it
proved far less easy to eradicate evil passions than to repeal evil laws; and
that, long after every trace of national and religious animosity had been
obliterated from the Statute Book, national and religious animosities
continued to rankle in the bosoms of millions. May he be able also to relate
that wisdom, justice and time gradually did in Ireland what they had done in
Scotland, and that all the races which inhabit the British isles were at length
indissolubly blended into one people!

CHAPTER XVIII
Opening of the Parliament—Debates on the Salaries and Fees of Official
Men—Act excluding Papists from Public Trust in Ireland—Debates on the
East India Trade—Debates on the Bill for regulating Trials in Cases
of High Treason—Plot formed by Marlborough against the Government of
William—Marlborough's Plot disclosed by the Jacobites—Disgrace
of Marlborough; Various Reports touching the Cause of Marlborough's
Disgrace.—Rupture between Mary and Anne—Fuller's Plot—Close of
the Session; Bill for ascertaining the Salaries of the Judges
rejected—Misterial Changes in England—Ministerial Changes in
Scotland—State of the Highlands—Breadalbane employed to negotiate
with the Rebel Clans—Glencoe—William goes to the Continent; Death of
Louvois—The French Government determines to send an Expedition
against England—James believes that the English Fleet is friendly to
him—Conduct of Russell—A Daughter born to James—Preparations made
in England to repel Invasion—James goes down to his Army at La
Hogue—James's Declaration—Effect produced by James's Declaration—The
English and Dutch Fleets join; Temper of the English Fleet—Battle of La
Hogue—Rejoicings in England—Young's Plot

ON the nineteenth of October 1691, William arrived at Kensington from
the Netherlands. 144 Three days later he opened the Parliament. The aspect
of affairs was, on the whole, cheering. By land there had been gains and
losses; but the balance was in favour of England. Against the fall of Mons
might well be set off the taking of Athlone, the victory of Aghrim, the
surrender of Limerick and the pacification of Ireland. At sea there had been
no great victory; but there had been a great display of power and of activity;
and, though many were dissatisfied because more had not been done, none
could deny that there had been a change for the better. The ruin caused by
the foibles and vices of Torrington had been repaired; the fleet had been
well equipped; the rations had been abundant and wholesome; and the
health of the crews had consequently been, for that age, wonderfully good.
Russell, who commanded the naval forces of the allies, had in vain offered
battle to the French. The white flag, which, in the preceding year, had
ranged the Channel unresisted from the Land's End to the Straits of Dover,
now, as soon as our topmasts were descried twenty leagues off, abandoned
the open sea, and retired into the depths of the harbour of Brest. The
appearance of an English squadron in the estuary of the Shannon had
decided the fate of the last fortress which had held out for King James; and
a fleet of merchantmen from the Levant, valued at four millions sterling,
had, through dangers which had caused many sleepless nights to the

underwriters of Lombard Street, been convoyed safe into the Thames. 145
The Lords and Commons listened with signs of satisfaction to a speech in
which the King congratulated them on the event of the war in Ireland, and
expressed his confidence that they would continue to support him in the war
with France. He told them that a great naval armament would be necessary,
and that, in his opinion, the conflict by land could not be effectually
maintained with less than sixty-five thousand men. 146
He was thanked in affectionate terms; the force which he asked was
voted; and large supplies were granted with little difficulty. But when the
Ways and Means were taken into consideration, symptoms of discontent
began to appear. Eighteen months before, when the Commons had been
employed in settling the Civil List, many members had shown a very
natural disposition to complain of the amount of the salaries and fees
received by official men. Keen speeches had been made, and, what was
much less usual, had been printed; there had been much excitement out of
doors; but nothing had been done. The subject was now revived. A report
made by the Commissioners who had been appointed in the preceding year
to examine the public accounts disclosed some facts which excited
indignation, and others which raised grave suspicion. The House seemed
fully determined to make an extensive reform; and, in truth, nothing could
have averted such a reform except the folly and violence of the reformers.
That they should have been angry is indeed not strange. The enormous
gains, direct and indirect, of the servants of the public went on increasing,
while the gains of every body else were diminishing. Rents were falling;
trade was languishing; every man who lived either on what his ancestors
had left him or on the fruits of his own industry was forced to retrench. The
placeman alone throve amidst the general distress. "Look," cried the
incensed squires, "at the Comptroller of the Customs. Ten years ago, he
walked, and we rode. Our incomes have been curtailed; his salary has been
doubled; we have sold our horses; he has bought them; and now we go on
foot, and are splashed by his coach and six." Lowther vainly endeavoured to
stand up against the storm. He was heard with little favour by the country
gentlemen who had not long before looked up to him as one of their leaders.
He had left them; he had become a courtier; he had two good places, one in
the Treasury, the other in the household. He had recently received from the
King's own hand a gratuity of two thousand guineas. 147 It seemed perfectly
natural that he should defend abuses by which he profited. The taunts and

reproaches with which he was assailed were insupportable to his sensitive
nature. He lost his head, almost fainted away on the floor of the House, and
talked about righting himself in another place. 148 Unfortunately no member
rose at this conjuncture to propose that the civil establishment of the
kingdom should be carefully revised, that sinecures should be abolished,
that exorbitant official incomes should be reduced, and that no servant of
the State should be allowed to exact, under any pretence, any thing beyond
his known and lawful remuneration. In this way it would have been possible
to diminish the public burdens, and at the same time to increase the
efficiency of every public department. But unfortunately those who were
loudest in clamouring against the prevailing abuses were utterly destitute of
the qualities necessary for the work of reform. On the twelfth of December,
some foolish man, whose name has not come down to us, moved that no
person employed in any civil office, the Speaker, Judges and Ambassadors
excepted, should receive more than five hundred pounds a year; and this
motion was not only carried, but carried without one dissentient voice. 149
Those who were most interested in opposing it doubtless saw that
opposition would, at that moment, only irritate the majority, and reserved
themselves for a more favourable time. The more favourable time soon
came. No man of common sense could, when his blood had cooled,
remember without shame that he had voted for a resolution which made no
distinction between sinecurists and laborious public servants, between
clerks employed in copying letters and ministers on whose wisdom and
integrity the fate of the nation might depend. The salary of the Doorkeeper
of the Excise Office had been, by a scandalous job, raised to five hundred a
year. It ought to have been reduced to fifty. On the other hand, the services
of a Secretary of State who was well qualified for his post would have been
cheap at five thousand. If the resolution of the Commons bad been carried
into effect, both the salary which ought not to have exceeded fifty pounds,
and the salary which might without impropriety have amounted to five
thousand, would have been fixed at five hundred. Such absurdity must have
shocked even the roughest and plainest foxhunter in the House. A reaction
took place; and when, after an interval of a few weeks, it was proposed to
insert in a bill of supply a clause in conformity with the resolution of the
twelfth of December, the Noes were loud; the Speaker was of opinion that
they had it; the Ayes did not venture to dispute his opinion; the senseless
plan which had been approved without a division was rejected without a

division; and the subject was not again mentioned. Thus a grievance so
scandalous that none of those who profited by it dared to defend it was
perpetuated merely by the imbecility and intemperance of those who
attacked it. 150
Early in the Session the Treaty of Limerick became the subject of a grave
and earnest discussion. The Commons, in the exercise of that supreme
power which the English legislature possessed over all the dependencies of
England, sent up to the Lords a bill providing that no person should sit in
the Irish Parliament, should hold any Irish office, civil, military or
ecclesiastical, or should practise law or medicine in Ireland, till he had
taken the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and subscribed the
Declaration against Transubstantiation. The Lords were not more inclined
than the Commons to favour the Irish. No peer was disposed to entrust
Roman Catholics with political power. Nay, it seems that no peer objected
to the principle of the absurd and cruel rule which excluded Roman
Catholics from the liberal professions. But it was thought that this rule,
though unobjectionable in principle, would, if adopted without some
exceptions, be a breach of a positive compact. Their Lordships called for
the Treaty of Limerick, ordered it to be read at the table, and proceeded to
consider whether the law framed by the Lower House was consistent with
the engagements into which the government had entered. One discrepancy
was noticed. It was stipulated by the second civil article, that every person
actually residing in any fortress occupied by an Irish garrison, should be
permitted, on taking the Oath of Allegiance, to resume any calling which he
had exercised before the Revolution. It would, beyond all doubt, have been
a violation of this covenant to require that a lawyer or a physician, who had
been within the walls of Limerick during the siege, should take the Oath of
Supremacy and subscribe the Declaration against Transubstantiation, before
he could receive fees. Holt was consulted, and was directed to prepare
clauses in conformity with the terms of the capitulation.
The bill, as amended by Holt, was sent back to the Commons. They at
first rejected the amendment, and demanded a conference. The conference
was granted. Rochester, in the Painted Chamber, delivered to the managers
of the Lower House a copy of the Treaty of Limerick, and earnestly
represented the importance of preserving the public faith inviolate. This
appeal was one which no honest man, though inflamed by national and
religious animosity, could resist. The Commons reconsidered the subject,

and, after hearing the Treaty read, agreed, with some slight modifications,
to what the Lords had proposed. 151
The bill became a law. It attracted, at the time, little notice, but was, after
the lapse of several generations, the subject of a very acrimonious
controversy. Many of us can well remember how strongly the public mind
was stirred, in the days of George the Third and George the Fourth, by the
question whether Roman Catholics should be permitted to sit in Parliament.
It may be doubted whether any dispute has produced stranger perversions of
history. The whole past was falsified for the sake of the present. All the
great events of three centuries long appeared to us distorted and discoloured
by a mist sprung from our own theories and our own passions. Some friends
of religious liberty, not content with the advantage which they possessed in
the fair conflict of reason with reason, weakened their case by maintaining
that the law which excluded Irish Roman Catholics from Parliament was
inconsistent with the civil Treaty of Limerick. The First article of that
Treaty, it was said, guaranteed to the Irish Roman Catholic such privileges
in the exercise of his religion as he had enjoyed in the time of Charles the
Second. In the time of Charles the Second no test excluded Roman
Catholics from the Irish Parliament. Such a test could not therefore, it was
argued, be imposed without a breach of public faith. In the year 1828,
especially, this argument was put forward in the House of Commons as if it
had been the main strength of a cause which stood in need of no such
support. The champions of Protestant ascendency were well pleased to see
the debate diverted from a political question about which they were in the
wrong, to a historical question about which they were in the right. They had
no difficulty in proving that the first article, as understood by all the
contracting parties, meant only that the Roman Catholic worship should be
tolerated as in time past. That article was drawn up by Ginkell; and, just
before he drew it up, he had declared that he would rather try the chance of
arms than consent that Irish Papists should be capable of holding civil and
military offices, of exercising liberal professions, and of becoming
members of municipal corporations. How is it possible to believe that he
would, of his own accord, have promised that the House of Lords and the
House of Commons should be open to men to whom he would not open a
guild of skinners or a guild of cordwainers? How, again, is it possible to
believe that the English Peers would, while professing the most punctilious
respect for public faith, while lecturing the Commons on the duty of

observing public faith, while taking counsel with the most learned and
upright jurist of the age as to the best mode of maintaining public faith,
have committed a flagrant violation of public faith and that not a single lord
should have been so honest or so factious as to protest against an act of
monstrous perfidy aggravated by hypocrisy? Or, if we could believe this,
how can we believe that no voice would have been raised in any part of the
world against such wickedness; that the Court of Saint Germains and the
Court of Versailles would have remained profoundly silent; that no Irish
exile, no English malecontent, would have uttered a murmur; that not a
word of invective or sarcasm on so inviting a subject would have been
found in the whole compass of the Jacobite literature; and that it would
have been reserved for politicians of the nineteenth century to discover that
a treaty made in the seventeenth century had, a few weeks after it had been
signed, been outrageously violated in the sight of all Europe? 152
On the same day on which the Commons read for the first time the bill
which subjected Ireland to the absolute dominion of the Protestant minority,
they took into consideration another matter of high importance. Throughout
the country, but especially in the capital, in the seaports and in the
manufacturing towns, the minds of men were greatly excited on the subject
of the trade with the East Indies; a fierce paper war had during some time
been raging; and several grave questions, both constitutional and
commercial, had been raised, which the legislature only could decide.
It has often been repeated, and ought never to be forgotten, that our polity
differs widely from those politics which have, during the last eighty years,
been methodically constructed, digested into articles, and ratified by
constituent assemblies. It grew up in a rude age. It is not to be found entire
in any formal instrument. All along the line which separates the functions of
the prince from those of the legislator there was long a disputed territory.
Encroachments were perpetually committed, and, if not very outrageous,
were often tolerated. Trespass, merely as trespass, was commonly suffered
to pass unresented. It was only when the trespass produced some positive
damage that the aggrieved party stood on his right, and demanded that the
frontier should be set out by metes and bounds, and that the landmarks
should thenceforward be punctiliously respected.
Many of those points which had occasioned the most violent disputes
between our Sovereigns and their Parliaments had been finally decided by

the Bill of Rights. But one question, scarcely less important than any of the
questions which had been set at rest for ever, was still undetermined.
Indeed, that question was never, as far as can now be ascertained, even
mentioned in the Convention. The King had undoubtedly, by the ancient
laws of the realm, large powers for the regulation of trade; but the ablest
judge would have found it difficult to say what was the precise extent of
those powers. It was universally acknowledged that it belonged to the King
to prescribe weights and measures, and to coin money; that no fair or
market could be held without authority from him; that no ship could unload
in any bay or estuary which he had not declared to be a port. In addition to
his undoubted right to grant special commercial privileges to particular
places, he long claimed a right to grant special commercial privileges to
particular societies and to particular individuals; and our ancestors, as usual,
did not think it worth their while to dispute this claim, till it produced
serious inconvenience. At length, in the reign of Elizabeth, the power of
creating monopolies began to be grossly abused; and, as soon as it began to
be grossly abused, it began to be questioned. The Queen wisely declined a
conflict with a House of Commons backed by the whole nation. She frankly
acknowledged that there was reason for complaint; she cancelled the
patents which had excited the public clamours; and her people, delighted by
this concession, and by the gracious manner in which it had been made, did
not require from her an express renunciation of the disputed prerogative.
The discontents which her wisdom had appeased were revived by the
dishonest and pusillanimous policy which her successor called Kingcraft.
He readily granted oppressive patents of monopoly. When he needed the
help of his Parliament, he as readily annulled them. As soon as the
Parliament had ceased to sit, his Great Seal was put to instruments more
odious than those which he had recently cancelled. At length that excellent
House of Commons which met in 1623 determined to apply a strong
remedy to the evil. The King was forced to give his assent to a law which
declared monopolies established by royal authority to be null and void.
Some exceptions, however, were made, and, unfortunately, were not very
clearly defined. It was especially provided that every Society of Merchants
which had been instituted for the purpose of carrying on any trade should
retain all its legal privileges. 153 The question whether a monopoly granted
by the Crown to such a company were or were not a legal privilege was left
unsettled, and continued to exercise, during many years, the ingenuity of

lawyers. 154 The nation, however, relieved at once from a multitude of
impositions and vexations which were painfully felt every day at every
fireside, was in no humour to dispute the validity of the charters under
which a few companies to London traded with distant parts of the world.
Of these companies by far the most important was that which had been,
on the last day of the sixteenth century, incorporated by Queen Elizabeth
under the name of the Governor and Company of Merchants of London
trading to the East Indies. When this celebrated body began to exist, the
Mogul monarchy was at the zenith of power and glory. Akbar, the ablest
and best of the princes of the House of Tamerlane, had just been borne, full
of years and honours, to a mausoleum surpassing in magnificence any that
Europe could show. He had bequeathed to his posterity an empire
containing more than twenty times the population and yielding more than
twenty times the revenue of the England which, under our great Queen,
held a foremost place among European powers. It is curious and interesting
to consider how little the two countries, destined to be one day so closely
connected, were then known to each other. The most enlightened
Englishmen looked on India with ignorant admiration. The most
enlightened natives of India were scarcely aware that England existed. Our
ancestors had a dim notion of endless bazaars, swarming with buyers and
sellers, and blazing with cloth of gold, with variegated silks and with
precious stones; of treasuries where diamonds were piled in heaps and
sequins in mountains; of palaces, compared with which Whitehall and
Hampton Court were hovels; of armies ten times as numerous as that which
they had seen assembled at Tilbury to repel the Armada. On the other hand,
it was probably not known to one of the statesmen in the Durbar of Agra
that there was near the setting sun a great city of infidels, called London,
where a woman reigned, and that she had given to an association of Frank
merchants the exclusive privilege of freighting ships from her dominions to
the Indian seas. That this association would one day rule all India, from the
ocean to the everlasting snow, would reduce to profound obedience great
provinces which had never submitted to Akbar's authority, would send
Lieutenant Governors to preside in his capital, and would dole out a
monthly pension to his heir, would have seemed to the wisest of European
or of Oriental politicians as impossible as that inhabitants of our globe
should found an empire in Venus or Jupiter.

Three generations passed away; and still nothing indicated that the East
India Company would ever become a great Asiatic potentate. The Mogul
empire, though undermined by internal causes of decay, and tottering to its
fall, still presented to distant nations the appearance of undiminished
prosperity and vigour. Aurengzebe, who, in the same month in which Oliver
Cromwell died, assumed the magnificent title of Conqueror of the World,
continued to reign till Anne had been long on the English throne. He was
the sovereign of a larger territory than had obeyed any of his predecessors.
His name was great in the farthest regions of the West. Here he had been
made by Dryden the hero of a tragedy which would alone suffice to show
how little the English of that age knew about the vast empire which their
grandchildren were to conquer and to govern. The poet's Mussulman
princes make love in the style of Amadis, preach about the death of
Socrates, and embellish their discourse with allusions to the mythological
stories of Ovid. The Brahminical metempyschosis is represented as an
article of the Mussulman creed; and the Mussulman Sultanas burn
themselves with their husbands after the Brahminical fashion. This drama,
once rapturously applauded by crowded theatres, and known by heart to
fine gentlemen and fine ladies, is now forgotten. But one noble passage still
lives, and is repeated by thousands who know not whence it comes. 155
Though nothing yet indicated the high political destiny of the East India
Company, that body had a great sway in the City of London. The offices,
which stood on a very small part of the ground which the present offices
cover, had escaped the ravages of the fire. The India House of those days
was a building of timber and plaster, rich with the quaint carving and
lattice-work of the Elizabethan age. Above the windows was a painting
which represented a fleet of merchantmen tossing on the waves. The whole
edifice was surmounted by a colossal wooden seaman, who, from between
two dolphins, looked down on the crowds of Leadenhall Street. 156 In this
abode, narrow and humble indeed when compared with the vast labyrinth of
passages and chambers which now bears the same name, the Company
enjoyed, during the greater part of the reign of Charles the Second, a
prosperity to which the history of trade scarcely furnishes any parallel, and
which excited the wonder, the cupidity and the envious animosity of the
whole capital. Wealth and luxury were then rapidly increasing. The taste for
the spices, the tissues and the jewels of the East became stronger day by
day. Tea, which, at the time when Monk brought the army of Scotland to

London, had been handed round to be stared at and just touched with the
lips, as a great rarity from China, was, eight years later, a regular article of
import, and was soon consumed in such quantities that financiers began to
consider it as a fit subject for taxation. The progress which was making in
the art of war had created an unprecedented demand for the ingredients of
which gunpowder is compounded. It was calculated that all Europe would
hardly produce in a year saltpetre enough for the siege of one town fortified
on the principles of Vauban. 157 But for the supplies from India, it was said,
the English government would be unable to equip a fleet without digging up
the cellars of London in order to collect the nitrous particles from the walls.
158 Before the Restoration scarcely one ship from the Thames had ever
visited the Delta of the Ganges. But, during the twenty-three years which
followed the Restoration, the value of the annual imports from that rich and
populous district increased from eight thousand pounds to three hundred
thousand.
The gains of the body which had the exclusive possession of this fast
growing trade were almost incredible. The capital which had been actually
paid up did not exceed three hundred and seventy thousand pounds; but the
Company could, without difficulty, borrow money at six per cent., and the
borrowed money, thrown into the trade, produced, it was rumoured, thirty
per cent. The profits were such that, in 1676, every proprietor received as a
bonus a quantity of stock equal to that which he held. On the capital, thus
doubled, were paid, during five years, dividends amounting on an average
to twenty per cent. annually. There had been a time when a hundred pounds
of the stock could be purchased for sixty. Even in 1664 the price in the
market was only seventy. But in 1677 the price had risen to two hundred
and forty-five; in 1681 it was three hundred; it subsequently rose to three
hundred and sixty; and it is said that some sales were effected at five
hundred. 159
The enormous gains of the Indian trade might perhaps have excited little
murmuring if they had been distributed among numerous proprietors. But
while the value of the stock went on increasing, the number of stockholders
went on diminishing. At the time when the prosperity of the Company
reached the highest point, the management was entirely in the hands of a
few merchants of enormous wealth. A proprietor then had a vote for every
five hundred pounds of stock that stood in his name. It is asserted in the
pamphlets of that age that five persons had a sixth part, and fourteen

persons a third part of the votes. 160 More than one fortunate speculator was
said to derive an annual income of ten thousand pounds from the monopoly;
and one great man was pointed out on the Royal Exchange as having, by
judicious or lucky purchases of stock, created in no long time an estate of
twenty thousand a year. This commercial grandee, who in wealth and in the
influence which attends wealth vied with the greatest nobles of his time,
was Sir Josiah Child. There were those who still remembered him an
apprentice, sweeping one of the counting houses of the City. But from a
humble position his abilities had raised him rapidly to opulence, power and
fame. At the time of the Restoration he was highly considered in the
mercantile world. Soon after that event he published his thoughts on the
philosophy of trade. His speculations were not always sound; but they were
the speculations of an ingenious and reflecting man. Into whatever errors he
may occasionally have fallen as a theorist, it is certain that, as a practical
man of business, he had few equals. Almost as soon as he became a
member of the committee which directed the affairs of the Company, his
ascendency was felt. Soon many of the most important posts, both in
Leadenhall Street and in the factories of Bombay and Bengal, were filled by
his kinsmen and creatures. His riches, though expended with ostentatious
profusion, continued to increase and multiply. He obtained a baronetcy; he
purchased a stately seat at Wanstead; and there he laid out immense sums in
excavating fishponds, and in planting whole square miles of barren land
with walnut trees. He married his daughter to the eldest son of the Duke of
Beaufort, and paid down with her a portion of fifty thousand pounds. 161
But this wonderful prosperity was not uninterrupted. Towards the close
of the reign of Charles the Second the Company began to be fiercely
attacked from without, and to be at the same time distracted by internal
dissensions. The profits of the Indian trade were so tempting, that private
adventurers had often, in defiance of the royal charter, fitted out ships for
the Eastern seas. But the competition of these interlopers did not become
really formidable till the year 1680. The nation was then violently agitated
by the dispute about the Exclusion Bill. Timid men were anticipating
another civil war. The two great parties, newly named Whigs and Tories,
were fiercely contending in every county and town of England; and the feud
soon spread to every corner of the civilised world where Englishmen were
to be found.

The Company was popularly considered as a Whig body. Among the
members of the directing committee were some of the most vehement
Exclusionists in the City. Indeed two of them, Sir Samuel Barnardistone and
Thomas Papillon, drew on themselves a severe persecution by their zeal
against Popery and arbitrary power. 162 Child had been originally brought
into the direction by these men; he had long acted in concert with them; and
he was supposed to hold their political opinions. He had, during many
years, stood high in the esteem of the chiefs of the parliamentary
opposition, and had been especially obnoxious to the Duke of York. 163 The
interlopers therefore determined to affect the character of loyal men, who
were determined to stand by the throne against the insolent tribunes of the
City. They spread, at all the factories in the East, reports that England was
in confusion, that the sword had been drawn or would immediately be
drawn, and that the Company was forward in the rebellion against the
Crown. These rumours, which, in truth, were not improbable, easily found
credit among people separated from London by what was then a voyage of
twelve months. Some servants of the Company who were in ill humour with
their employers, and others who were zealous royalists, joined the private
traders. At Bombay, the garrison and the great body of the English
inhabitants declared that they would no longer obey any body who did not
obey the King; they imprisoned the Deputy Governor; and they proclaimed
that they held the island for the Crown. At Saint Helena there was a rising.
The insurgents took the name of King's men, and displayed the royal
standard. They were, not without difficulty, put down; and some of them
were executed by martial law. 164
If the Company had still been a Whig Company when the news of these
commotions reached England, it is probable that the government would
have approved of the conduct of the mutineers, and that the charter on
which the monopoly depended would have had the fate which about the
same time befell so many other charters. But while the interlopers were, at a
distance of many thousands of miles, making war on the Company in the
name of the King, the Company and the King had been reconciled. When
the Oxford Parliament had been dissolved, when many signs indicated that
a strong reaction in favour of prerogative was at hand, when all the
corporations which had incurred the royal displeasure were beginning to
tremble for their franchises, a rapid and complete revolution took place at
the India House. Child, who was then Governor, or, in the modern phrase,

Chairman, separated himself from his old friends, excluded them from the
direction, and negotiated a treaty of peace and of close alliance with the
Court. 165 It is not improbable that the near connection into which he had
just entered with the great Tory house of Beaufort may have had something
to do with this change in his politics. Papillon, Barnardistone, and their
adherents, sold their stock; their places in the committee were supplied by
persons devoted to Child; and he was thenceforth the autocrat of the
Company. The treasures of the Company were absolutely at his disposal.
The most important papers of the Company were kept, not in the muniment
room of the office in Leadenhall Street, but in his desk at Wanstead. The
boundless power which he exercised at the India House enabled him to
become a favourite at Whitehall; and the favour which he enjoyed at
Whitehall confirmed his power at the India House. A present of ten
thousand guineas was graciously received from him by Charles. Ten
thousand more were accepted by James, who readily consented to become a
holder of stock. All who could help or hurt at Court, ministers, mistresses,
priests, were kept in good humour by presents of shawls and silks, birds'
nests and atar of roses, bulses of diamonds and bags of guineas. 166 Of what
the Dictator expended no account was asked by his colleagues; and in truth
he seems to have deserved the confidence which they reposed in him. His
bribes, distributed with judicious prodigality, speedily produced a large
return. Just when the Court became all powerful in the State, he became all
powerful at the Court. Jeffreys pronounced a decision in favour of the
monopoly, and of the strongest acts which had been done in defence of the
monopoly. James ordered his seal to be put to a new charter which
confirmed and extended all the privileges bestowed on the Company by his
predecessors. All captains of Indiamen received commissions from the
Crown, and were permitted to hoist the royal ensigns. 167 John Child,
brother of Sir Josiah, and Governor of Bombay, was created a baronet by
the style of Sir John Child of Surat: he was declared General of all the
English forces in the East; and he was authorised to assume the title of
Excellency. The Company, on the other hand, distinguished itself among
many servile corporations by obsequious homage to the throne, and set to
all the merchants of the kingdom the example of readily and even eagerly
paying those customs which James, at the commencement of his reign,
exacted without the authority of Parliament. 168

It seemed that the private trade would now be utterly crushed, and that
the monopoly, protected by the whole strength of the royal prerogative,
would be more profitable than ever. But unfortunately just at this moment a
quarrel arose between the agents of the Company in India and the Mogul
Government. Where the fault lay is a question which was vehemently
disputed at the time, and which it is now impossible to decide. The
interlopers threw all the blame on the Company. The Governor of Bombay,
they affirmed, had always been grasping and violent; but his baronetcy and
his military commission had completely turned his head. The very natives
who were employed about the factory had noticed the change, and had
muttered, in their broken English, that there must be some strange curse
attending the word Excellency; for that, ever since the chief of the strangers
was called Excellency, every thing had gone to ruin. Meanwhile, it was
said, the brother in England had sanctioned all the unjust and impolitic acts
of the brother in India, till at length insolence and rapine, disgraceful to the
English nation and to the Christian religion, had roused the just resentment
of the native authorities. The Company warmly recriminated. The story told
at the India House was that the quarrel was entirely the work of the
interlopers, who were now designated not only as interlopers but as traitors.
They had, it was alleged, by flattery, by presents, and by false accusations,
induced the viceroys of the Mogul to oppress and persecute the body which
in Asia represented the English Crown. And indeed this charge seems not to
have been altogether without foundation. It is certain that one of the most
pertinacious enemies of the Childs went up to the Court of Aurengzebe,
took his station at the palace gate, stopped the Great King who was in the
act of mounting on horseback, and, lifting a petition high in the air,
demanded justice in the name of the common God of Christians and
Mussulmans. 169 Whether Aurengzebe paid much attention to the charges
brought by infidel Franks against each other may be doubted. But it is
certain that a complete rupture took place between his deputies and the
servants of the Company. On the sea the ships of his subjects were seized
by the English. On land the English settlements were taken and plundered.
The trade was suspended; and, though great annual dividends were still paid
in London, they were no longer paid out of annual profits.
Just at this conjuncture, while every Indiaman that arrived in the Thames
was bringing unwelcome news from the East, all the politics of Sir Josiah
were utterly confounded by the Revolution. He had flattered himself that he

had secured the body of which he was the chief against the machinations of
interlopers, by uniting it closely with the strongest government that had
existed within his memory. That government had fallen; and whatever had
leaned on the ruined fabric began to totter. The bribes had been thrown
away. The connections which had been the strength and boast of the
corporation were now its weakness and its shame. The King who had been
one of its members was an exile. The judge by whom all its most exorbitant
pretensions had been pronounced legitimate was a prisoner. All the old
enemies of the Company, reinforced by those great Whig merchants whom
Child had expelled from the direction, demanded justice and vengeance
from the Whig House of Commons, which had just placed William and
Mary on the throne. No voice was louder in accusation than that of
Papillon, who had, some years before, been more zealous for the charter
than any man in London. 170 The Commons censured in severe terms the
persons who had inflicted death by martial law at Saint Helena, and even
resolved that some of those offenders should be excluded from the Act of
Indemnity. 171 The great question, how the trade with the East should for
the future be carried on, was referred to a Committee. The report was to
have been made on the twenty-seventh of January 1690; but on that very
day the Parliament ceased to exist.
The first two sessions of the succeeding Parliament were so short and so
busy that little was said about India in either House. But, out of Parliament,
all the arts both of controversy and of intrigue were employed on both
sides. Almost as many pamphlets were published about the India trade as
about the oaths. The despot of Leadenhall Street was libelled in prose and
verse. Wretched puns were made on his name. He was compared to
Cromwell, to the King of France, to Goliath of Gath, to the Devil. It was
vehemently declared to be necessary that, in any Act which might be passed
for the regulation of our traffic with the Eastern seas, Sir Josiah should be
by name excluded from all trust. 172
There were, however, great differences of opinion among those who
agreed in hating Child and the body of which he was the head. The
manufacturers of Spitalfields, of Norwich, of Yorkshire, and of the Western
counties, considered the trade with the Eastern seas as rather injurious than
beneficial to the kingdom. The importation of Indian spices, indeed, was
admitted to be harmless, and the importation of Indian saltpetre to be
necessary. But the importation of silks and of Bengals, as shawls were then

called, was pronounced to be a curse to the country. The effect of the
growing taste for such frippery was that our gold and silver went abroad,
and that much excellent English drapery lay in our warehouses till it was
devoured by the moths. Those, it was said, were happy days for the
inhabitants both of our pasture lands and of our manufacturing towns, when
every gown, every hanging, every bed, was made of materials which our
own flocks had furnished to our own looms. Where were now the brave old
hangings of arras which had adorned the walls of lordly mansions in the
days of Elizabeth? And was it not a shame to see a gentleman, whose
ancestors had worn nothing but stuffs made by English workmen out of
English fleeces, flaunting in a calico shirt and a pair of silk stockings?
Clamours such as these had, a few years before, extorted from Parliament
the Act which required that the dead should be wrapped in woollen; and
some sanguine clothiers hoped that the legislature would, by excluding all
Indian textures from our ports, impose the same necessity on the living. 173
But this feeling was confined to a minority. The public was, indeed,
inclined rather to overrate than to underrate the benefits which might be
derived by England from the Indian trade. What was the most effectual
mode of extending that trade was a question which excited general interest,
and which was answered in very different ways.
A small party, consisting chiefly of merchants resident at Bristol and
other provincial seaports, maintained that the best way to extend trade was
to leave it free. They urged the well known arguments which prove that
monopoly is injurious to commerce; and, having fully established the
general law, they asked why the commerce between England and India was
to be considered as an exception to that law. Any trader ought, they said, to
be permitted to send from any port a cargo to Surat or Canton as freely as
he now sent a cargo to Hamburg or Lisbon. 174 In our time these doctrines
may probably be considered, not only as sound, but as trite and obvious. In
the seventeenth century, however, they were thought paradoxical. It was
then generally held to be a certain, and indeed an almost selfevident truth,
that our trade with the countries lying beyond the Cape of Good Hope could
be advantageously carried on only by means of a great Joint Stock
Company. There was no analogy, it was said, between our European trade
and our Indian trade. Our government had diplomatic relations with the
European States. If necessary, a maritime force could easily be sent from
hence to the mouth of the Elbe or of the Tagus. But the English Kings had

no envoy at the Court of Agra or Pekin. There was seldom a single English
man of war within ten thousand miles of the Bay of Bengal or of the Gulf of
Siam. As our merchants could not, in those remote seas, be protected by
their Sovereign, they must protect themselves, and must, for that end,
exercise some of the rights of sovereignty. They must have forts, garrisons
and armed ships. They must have power to send and receive embassies, to
make a treaty of alliance with one Asiatic prince, to wage war on another. It
was evidently impossible that every merchant should have this power
independently of the rest. The merchants trading to India must therefore be
joined together in a corporation which could act as one man. In support of
these arguments the example of the Dutch was cited, and was generally
considered as decisive. For in that age the immense prosperity of Holland
was every where regarded with admiration, not the less earnest because it
was largely mingled with envy and hatred. In all that related to trade, her
statesmen were considered as oracles, and her institutions as models.
The great majority, therefore, of those who assailed the Company
assailed it, not because it traded on joint funds and possessed exclusive
privileges, but because it was ruled by one man, and because his rule had
been mischievous to the public, and beneficial only to himself and his
creatures. The obvious remedy, it was said, for the evils which his
maladministration had produced was to transfer the monopoly to a new
corporation so constituted as to be in no danger of falling under the
dominion either of a despot or of a narrow oligarchy. Many persons who
were desirous to be members of such a corporation, formed themselves into
a society, signed an engagement, and entrusted the care of their interests to
a committee which contained some of the chief traders of the City. This
society, though it had, in the eye of the law, no personality, was early
designated, in popular speech, as the New Company; and the hostilities
between the New Company and the Old Company soon caused almost as
much excitement and anxiety, at least in that busy hive of which the Royal
Exchange was the centre, as the hostilities between the Allies and the
French King. The headquarters of the younger association were in
Dowgate; the Skinners lent their stately hall; and the meetings were held in
a parlour renowned for the fragrance which exhaled from a magnificent
wainscot of cedar. 175
While the contention was hottest, important news arrived from India, and
was announced in the London Gazette as in the highest degree satisfactory.

Peace had been concluded between the great Mogul and the English. That
mighty potentate had not only withdrawn his troops from the factories, but
had bestowed on the Company privileges such as it had never before
enjoyed. Soon, however, appeared a very different version of the story. The
enemies of Child had, before this time, accused him of systematically
publishing false intelligence. He had now, they said, outlied himself. They
had obtained a true copy of the Firman which had put an end to the war;
and they printed a translation of it. It appeared that Aurengzebe had
contemptuously granted to the English, in consideration of their penitence
and of a large tribute, his forgiveness for their past delinquency, had
charged them to behave themselves better for the future, and had, in the
tone of a master, laid on them his commands to remove the principal
offender, Sir John Child, from power and trust. The death of Sir John
occurred so seasonably that these commands could not be obeyed. But it
was only too evident that the pacification which the rulers of the India
House had represented as advantageous and honourable had really been
effected on terms disgraceful to the English name. 176
During the summer of 1691, the controversy which raged on this subject
between the Leadenhall Street Company and the Dowgate Company kept
the City in constant agitation. In the autumn, the Parliament had no sooner
met than both the contending parties presented petitions to the House of
Commons. 177 The petitions were immediately taken into serious
consideration, and resolutions of grave importance were passed. The first
resolution was that the trade with the East Indies was beneficial to the
kingdom; the second was that the trade with the East Indies would be best
carried on by a joint stock company possessed of exclusive privileges. 178 It
was plain, therefore, that neither those manufacturers who wished to
prohibit the trade, nor those merchants at the outports who wished to throw
it open, had the smallest chance of attaining their objects. The only question
left was the question between the Old and the New Company. Seventeen
years elapsed before that question ceased to disturb both political and
commercial circles. It was fatal to the honour and power of one great
minister, and to the peace and prosperity of many private families. The
tracts which the rival bodies put forth against each other were innumerable.
If the drama of that age may be trusted, the feud between the India House
and Skinners' Hall was sometimes as serious an impediment to the course of
true love in London as the feud of the Capulets and Montagues had been at

Verona. 179 Which of the two contending parties was the stronger it is not
easy to say. The New Company was supported by the Whigs, the Old
Company by the Tories. The New Company was popular; for it promised
largely, and could not be accused of having broken its promises; it made no
dividends, and therefore was not envied; it had no power to oppress, and
had therefore been guilty of no oppression. The Old Company, though
generally regarded with little favour by the public, had the immense
advantage of being in possession, and of having only to stand on the
defensive. The burden of framing a plan for the regulation of the India
trade, and of proving that plan to be better than the plan hitherto followed,
lay on the New Company. The Old Company had merely to find objections
to every change that was proposed; and such objections there was little
difficulty in finding. The members of the New Company were ill provided
with the means of purchasing support at Court and in Parliament. They had
no corporate existence, no common treasury. If any of them gave a bribe, he
gave it out of his own pocket, with little chance of being reimbursed. But
the Old Company, though surrounded by dangers, still held its exclusive
privileges, and still made its enormous profits. Its stock had indeed gone
down greatly in value since the golden days of Charles the Second; but a
hundred pounds still sold for a hundred and twenty-two. 180 After a large
dividend had been paid to the proprietors, a surplus remained amply
sufficient, in those days, to corrupt half a cabinet; and this surplus was
absolutely at the disposal of one able, determined and unscrupulous man,
who maintained the fight with wonderful art and pertinacity.
The majority of the Commons wished to effect a compromise, to retain
the Old Company, but to remodel it, to impose on it new conditions, and to
incorporate with it the members of the New Company. With this view it
was, after long and vehement debates and close divisions, resolved that the
capital should be increased to a million and a half. In order to prevent a
single person or a small junto from domineering over the whole society, it
was determined that five thousand pounds of stock should be the largest
quantity that any single proprietor could hold, and that those who held more
should be required to sell the overplus at any price not below par. In return
for the exclusive privilege of trading to the Eastern seas, the Company was
to be required to furnish annually five hundred tons of saltpetre to the
Crown at a low price, and to export annually English manufactures to the
value of two hundred thousand pounds. 181

A bill founded on these resolutions was brought in, read twice, and
committed, but was suffered to drop in consequence of the positive refusal
of Child and his associates to accept the offered terms. He objected to every
part of the plan; and his objections are highly curious and amusing. The
great monopolist took his stand on the principles of free trade. In a
luminous and powerfully written paper he exposed the absurdity of the
expedients which the House of Commons had devised. To limit the amount
of stock which might stand in a single name would, he said, be most
unreasonable. Surely a proprietor whose whole fortune was staked on the
success of the Indian trade was far more likely to exert all his faculties
vigorously for the promotion of that trade than a proprietor who had risked
only what it would be no great disaster to lose. The demand that saltpetre
should be furnished to the Crown for a fixed sum Child met by those
arguments, familiar to our generation, which prove that prices should be left
to settle themselves. To the demand that the Company should bind itself to
export annually two hundred thousand pounds' worth of English
manufactures he very properly replied that the Company would most gladly
export two millions' worth if the market required such a supply, and that, if
the market were overstocked, it would be mere folly to send good cloth half
round the world to be eaten by white ants. It was never, he declared with
much spirit, found politic to put trade into straitlaced bodices, which,
instead of making it grow upright and thrive, must either kill it or force it
awry.
The Commons, irritated by Child's obstinacy, presented an address
requesting the King to dissolve the Old Company, and to grant a charter to a
new Company on such terms as to His Majesty's wisdom might seem fit. 182
It is plainly implied in the terms of this address that the Commons thought
the King constitutionally competent to grant an exclusive privilege of
trading to the East Indies.
The King replied that the subject was most important, that he would
consider it maturely, and that he would, at a future time, give the House a
more precise answer. 183 In Parliament nothing more was said on the subject
during that session; but out of Parliament the war was fiercer than ever; and
the belligerents were by no means scrupulous about the means which they
employed. The chief weapons of the New Company were libels; the chief
weapons of the Old Company were bribes.

In the same week in which the bill for the regulation of the Indian trade
was suffered to drop, another bill which had produced great excitement and
had called forth an almost unprecedented display of parliamentary ability,
underwent the same fate.
During the eight years which preceded the Revolution, the Whigs had
complained bitterly, and not more bitterly than justly, of the hard measure
dealt out to persons accused of political offences. Was it not monstrous,
they asked, that a culprit should be denied a sight of his indictment? Often
an unhappy prisoner had not known of what he was accused till he had held
up his hand at the bar. The crime imputed to him might be plotting to shoot
the King; it might be plotting to poison the King. The more innocent the
defendant was, the less likely he was to guess the nature of the charge on
which he was to be tried; and how could he have evidence ready to rebut a
charge the nature of which he could not guess? The Crown had power to
compel the attendance of witnesses. The prisoner had no such power. If
witnesses voluntarily came forward to speak in his favour, they could not be
sworn. Their testimony therefore made less impression on a jury than the
testimony of the witnesses for the prosecution, whose veracity was
guaranteed by the most solemn sanctions of law and of religion. The juries,
carefully selected by Sheriffs whom the Crown had named, were men
animated by the fiercest party spirit, men who had as little tenderness for an
Exclusionist of a Dissenter as for a mad dog. The government was served
by a band of able, experienced and unprincipled lawyers, who could, by
merely glancing over a brief, distinguish every weak and every strong point
of a case, whose presence of mind never failed them, whose flow of speech
was inexhaustible, and who had passed their lives in dressing up the worse
reason so as to make it appear the better. Was it not horrible to see three or
four of these shrewd, learned and callous orators arrayed against one poor
wretch who had never in his life uttered a word in public, who was ignorant
of the legal definition of treason and of the first principles of the law of
evidence, and whose intellect, unequal at best to a fencing match with
professional gladiators, was confused by the near prospect of a cruel and
ignominious death? Such however was the rule; and even for a man so
much stupefied by sickness that he could not hold up his hand or make his
voice heard, even for a poor old woman who understood nothing of what
was passing except that she was going to be roasted alive for doing an act of
charity, no advocate was suffered to utter a word. That a state trial so

conducted was little better than a judicial murder had been, during the
proscription of the Whig party, a fundamental article of the Whig creed. The
Tories, on the other hand, though they could not deny that there had been
some hard cases, maintained that, on the whole, substantial justice had been
done. Perhaps a few seditious persons who had gone very near to the
frontier of treason, but had not actually passed that frontier, might have
suffered as traitors. But was that a sufficient reason for enabling the chiefs
of the Rye House Plot and of the Western Insurrection to elude, by mere
chicanery, the punishment of their guilt? On what principle was the traitor
to have chances of escape which were not allowed to the felon? The culprit
who was accused of larceny was subject to all the same disadvantages
which, in the case of regicides and rebels, were thought so unjust; ye
nobody pitied him. Nobody thought it monstrous that he should not have
time to study a copy of his indictment, that his witnesses should be
examined without being sworn, that he should be left to defend himself,
without the help of counsel against the best abilities which the Inns of Court
could furnish. The Whigs, it seemed, reserved all their compassion for those
crimes which subvert government and dissolve the whole frame of human
society. Guy Faux was to be treated with an indulgence which was not to be
extended to a shoplifter. Bradshaw was to have privileges which were
refused to a boy who had robbed a henroost.
The Revolution produced, as was natural, some change in the sentiments
of both the great parties. In the days when none but Roundheads and
Nonconformists were accused of treason, even the most humane and
upright Cavaliers were disposed to think that the laws which were the
safeguard of the throne could hardly be too severe. But, as soon as loyal
Tory gentlemen and venerable fathers of the Church were in danger of
being called in question for corresponding with Saint Germains, a new light
flashed on many understandings which had been unable to discover the
smallest injustice in the proceedings against Algernon Sidney and Alice
Lisle. It was no longer thought utterly absurd to maintain that some
advantages which were withheld from a man accused of felony might
reasonably be allowed to a man accused of treason. What probability was
there that any sheriff would pack a jury, that any barrister would employ all
the arts of sophistry and rhetoric, that any judge would strain law and
misrepresent evidence, in order to convict an innocent person of burglary or
sheep stealing? But on a trial for high treason a verdict of acquittal must

always be considered as a defeat of the government; and there was but too
much reason to fear that many sheriffs, barristers and judges might be
impelled by party spirit, or by some baser motive, to do any thing which
might save the government from the inconvenience and shame of a defeat.
The cry of the whole body of Tories was that the lives of good Englishmen
who happened to be obnoxious to the ruling powers were not sufficiently
protected; and this cry was swelled by the voices of some lawyers who had
distinguished themselves by the malignant zeal and dishonest ingenuity
with which they had conducted State prosecutions in the days of Charles
and James.
The feeling of the Whigs, though it had not, like the feeling of the Tories,
undergone a complete change, was yet not quite what it had been. Some,
who had thought it most unjust that Russell should have no counsel and that
Cornish should have no copy of his indictment, now began to mutter that
the times had changed; that the dangers of the State were extreme; that
liberty, property, religion, national independence, were all at stake; that
many Englishmen were engaged in schemes of which the object was to
make England the slave of France and of Rome; and that it would be most
unwise to relax, at such a moment, the laws against political offences. It
was true that the injustice with which, in the late reigns, State trials had
been conducted, had given great scandal. But this injustice was to be
ascribed to the bad kings and bad judges with whom the nation had been
cursed. William was now on the throne; Holt was seated for life on the
bench; and William would never exact, nor would Holt ever perform,
services so shameful and wicked as those for which the banished tyrant had
rewarded Jeffreys with riches and titles. This language however was at first
held but by few. The Whigs, as a party, seem to have felt that they could not
honourably defend, in the season of their prosperity, what, in the time of
their adversity, they had always designated as a crying grievance. A bill for
regulating trials in cases of high treason was brought into the House of
Commons, and was received with general applause. Treby had the courage
to make some objections; but no division took place. The chief enactments
were that no person should be convicted of high treason committed more
than three years before the indictment was found; that every person indicted
for high treason should be allowed to avail himself of the assistance of
counsel, and should be furnished, ten days before the trial, with a copy of
the indictment, and with a list of the freeholders from among whom the jury

was to be taken; that his witnesses should be sworn, and that they should be
cited by the same process by which the attendance of the witnesses against
him was secured.
The Bill went to the Upper House, and came back with an important
amendment. The Lords had long complained of the anomalous and
iniquitous constitution of that tribunal which had jurisdiction over them in
cases of life and death. When a grand jury has found a bill of indictment
against a temporal peer for any offence higher than a misdemeanour, the
Crown appoints a Lord High Steward; and in the Lord High Steward's
Court the case is tried. This Court was anciently composed in two very
different ways. It consisted, if Parliament happened to be sitting, of all the
members of the Upper House. When Parliament was not sitting, the Lord
High Steward summoned any twelve or more peers at his discretion to form
a jury. The consequence was that a peer accused of high treason during a
recess was tried by a jury which his prosecutors had packed. The Lords now
demanded that, during a recess as well as during a session, every peer
accused of high treason should be tried by the whole body of the peerage.
The demand was resisted by the House of Commons with a vehemence
and obstinacy which men of the present generation may find it difficult to
understand. The truth is that some invidious privileges of peerage which
have since been abolished, and others which have since fallen into entire
desuetude, were then in full force, and were daily used. No gentleman who
had had a dispute with a nobleman could think, without indignation, of the
advantages enjoyed by the favoured caste. If His Lordship were sued at law,
his privilege enabled him to impede the course of justice. If a rude word
were spoken of him, such a word as he might himself utter with perfect
impunity, he might vindicate his insulted dignity both by civil and criminal
proceedings. If a barrister, in the discharge of his duty to a client, spoke
with severity of the conduct of a noble seducer, if an honest squire on the
racecourse applied the proper epithets to the tricks of a noble swindler, the
affronted patrician had only to complain to the proud and powerful body of
which he was a member. His brethren made his cause their own. The
offender was taken into custody by Black Rod, brought to the bar, flung into
prison, and kept there till he was glad to obtain forgiveness by the most
degrading submissions. Nothing could therefore be more natural than that
an attempt of the Peers to obtain any new advantage for their order should
be regarded by the Commons with extreme jealousy. There is strong reason

to suspect that some able Whig politicians, who thought it dangerous to
relax, at that moment, the laws against political offences, but who could not,
without incurring the charge of inconsistency, declare themselves adverse to
any relaxation, had conceived a hope that they might, by fomenting the
dispute about the Court of the Lord High Steward, defer for at least a year
the passing of a bill which they disliked, and yet could not decently oppose.
If this really was their plan, it succeeded perfectly. The Lower House
rejected the amendment; the Upper House persisted; a free conference was
held; and the question was argued with great force and ingenuity on both
sides.
The reasons in favour of the amendment are obvious, and indeed at first
sight seem unanswerable. It was surely difficult to defend a system under
which the Sovereign nominated a conclave of his own creatures to decide
the fate of men whom he regarded as his mortal enemies. And could any
thing be more absurd than that a nobleman accused of high treason should
be entitled to be tried by the whole body of his peers if his indictment
happened to be brought into the House of Lords the minute before a
prorogation, but that, if the indictment arrived a minute after the
prorogation, he should be at the mercy of a small junto named by the very
authority which prosecuted him? That any thing could have been said on the
other side seems strange; but those who managed the conference for the
Commons were not ordinary men, and seem on this occasion to have put
forth all their powers. Conspicuous among them was Charles Montague,
who was rapidly attaining a foremost rank among the orators of that age. To
him the lead seems on this occasion to have been left; and to his pen we
owe an account of the discussion, which gives a very high notion of his
talents for debate. "We have framed"—such was in substance his reasoning,
—"we have framed a law which has in it nothing exclusive, a law which
will be a blessing to every class, from the highest to the lowest. The new
securities, which we propose to give to innocence oppressed by power, are
common between the premier peer and the humblest day labourer. The
clause which establishes a time of limitation for prosecutions protects us all
alike. To every Englishman accused of the highest crime against the state,
whatever be his rank, we give the privilege of seeing his indictment, the
privilege of being defended by counsel, the privilege of having his
witnesses summoned by writ of subpoena and sworn on the Holy Gospels.
Such is the bill which we sent up to your Lordships; and you return it to us

with a clause of which the effect is to give certain advantages to your noble
order at the expense of the ancient prerogatives of the Crown. Surely before
we consent to take away from the King any power which his predecessors
have possessed for ages, and to give it to your Lordships, we ought to be
satisfied that you are more likely to use it well than he. Something we must
risk; somebody we must trust; and; since we are forced, much against our
will, to institute what is necessarily an invidious comparison, we must own
ourselves unable to discover any reason for believing that a prince is less to
be trusted than an aristocracy.
"Is it reasonable, you ask, that you should be tried for your lives before a
few members of your House, selected by the Crown? Is it reasonable, we
ask in our turn, that you should have the privilege of being tried by all the
members of your House, that is to say, by your brothers, your uncles, your
first cousins, your second cousins, your fathers in law, your brothers in law,
your most intimate friends? You marry so much into each other's families,
you live so much in each other's society, that there is scarcely a nobleman
who is not connected by consanguinity or affinity with several others, and
who is not on terms of friendship with several more. There have been great
men whose death put a third or fourth part of the baronage of England into
mourning. Nor is there much danger that even those peers who may be
unconnected with an accused lord will be disposed to send him to the block
if they can with decency say 'Not Guilty, upon my honour.' For the
ignominious death of a single member of a small aristocratical body
necessarily leaves a stain on the reputation of his fellows. If, indeed, your
Lordships proposed that every one of your body should be compelled to
attend and vote, the Crown might have some chance of obtaining justice
against a guilty peer, however strongly connected. But you propose that
attendance shall be voluntary. Is it possible to doubt what the consequence
will be? All the prisoner's relations and friends will be in their places to vote
for him. Good nature and the fear of making powerful enemies will keep
away many who, if they voted at all, would be forced by conscience and
honour to vote against him. The new system which you propose would
therefore evidently be unfair to the Crown; and you do not show any reason
for believing that the old system has been found in practice unfair to
yourselves. We may confidently affirm that, even under a government less
just and merciful than that under which we have the happiness to live, an
innocent peer has little to fear from any set of peers that can be brought

together in Westminster Hall to try him. How stands the fact? In what single
case has a guiltless head fallen by the verdict of this packed jury? It would
be easy to make out a long list of squires, merchants, lawyers, surgeons,
yeomen, artisans, ploughmen, whose blood, barbarously shed during the
late evil times, cries for vengeance to heaven. But what single member of
your House, in our days, or in the days of our fathers, or in the days of our
grandfathers, suffered death unjustly by sentence of the Court of the Lord
High Steward? Hundreds of the common people were sent to the gallows by
common juries for the Rye House Plot and the Western Insurrection. One
peer, and one alone, my Lord Delamere, was brought at that time before the
Court of the Lord High Steward; and he was acquitted. But, it is said, the
evidence against him was legally insufficient. Be it so. So was the evidence
against Sidney, against Cornish, against Alice Lisle; yet it sufficed to
destroy them. But, it is said, the peers before whom my Lord Delamere was
brought were selected with shameless unfairness by King James and by
Jeffreys. Be it so. But this only proves that, under the worst possible King,
and under the worst possible High Steward, a lord tried by lords has a better
chance for life than a commoner who puts himself on his country. We
cannot, therefore, under the mild government which we now possess, feel
much apprehension for the safety of any innocent peer. Would that we felt
as little apprehension for the safety of that government! But it is notorious
that the settlement with which our liberties are inseparably bound up is
attacked at once by foreign and by domestic enemies. We cannot consent at
such a crisis to relax the restraints which have, it may well be feared,
already proved too feeble to prevent some men of high rank from plotting
the ruin of their country. To sum up the whole, what is asked of us is that
we will consent to transfer a certain power from their Majesties to your
Lordships. Our answer is that, at this time, in our opinion, their Majesties
have not too much power, and your Lordships have quite power enough."
These arguments, though eminently ingenious, and not without real force,
failed to convince the Upper House. The Lords insisted that every peer
should be entitled to be a Trier. The Commons were with difficulty induced
to consent that the number of Triers should never be less than thirty-six, and
positively refused to make any further concession. The bill was therefore
suffered to drop. 184
It is certain that those who in the conference on this bill represented the
Commons, did not exaggerate the dangers to which the government was

exposed. While the constitution of the Court which was to try peers for
treason was under discussion, a treason planned with rare skill by a peer
was all but carried into execution.
Marlborough had never ceased to assure the Court of Saint Germains that
the great crime which he had committed was constantly present to his
thoughts, and that he lived only for the purpose of repentance and
reparation. Not only had he been himself converted; he had also converted
the Princess Anne. In 1688, the Churchills had, with little difficulty, induced
her to fly from her father's palace. In 1691, they, with as little difficulty,
induced her to copy out and sign a letter expressing her deep concern for his
misfortunes and her earnest wish to atone for her breach of duty. 185 At the
same time Marlborough held out hopes that it might be in his power to
effect the restoration of his old master in the best possible way, without the
help of a single foreign soldier or sailor, by the votes of the English Lords
and Commons, and by the support of the English army. We are not fully
informed as to all the details of his plan. But the outline is known to us from
a most interesting paper written by James, of which one copy is in the
Bodleian Library, and another among the archives of the French Foreign
Office.
The jealousy with which the English regarded the Dutch was at this time
intense. There had never been a hearty friendship between the nations. They
were indeed near of kin to each other. They spoke two dialects of one
widespread language. Both boasted of their political freedom. Both were
attached to the reformed faith. Both were threatened by the same enemy,
and would be safe only while they were united. Yet there was no cordial
feeling between them. They would probably have loved each other more, if
they had, in some respects, resembled each other less. They were the two
great commercial nations, the two great maritime nations. In every sea their
flags were found together, in the Baltic and in the Mediterranean, in the
Gulf of Mexico and in the Straits of Malacca. Every where the merchant of
London and the merchant of Amsterdam were trying to forestall each other
and to undersell each other. In Europe the contest was not sanguinary. But
too often, in barbarous countries, where there was no law but force, the
competitors had met, burning with cupidity, burning with animosity, armed
for battle, each suspecting the other of hostile designs and each resolved to
give the other no advantage. In such circumstances it is not strange that
many violent and cruel acts should have been perpetrated. What had been

done in those distant regions could seldom be exactly known in Europe.
Every thing was exaggerated and distorted by vague report and by national
prejudice. Here it was the popular belief that the English were always
blameless, and that every quarrel was to be ascribed to the avarice and
inhumanity of the Dutch. Lamentable events which had taken place in the
Spice Islands were repeatedly brought on our stage. The Englishmen were
all saints and heroes; the Dutchmen all fiends in human shape, lying,
robbing, ravishing, murdering, torturing. The angry passions which these
pieces indicated had more than once found vent in war. Thrice in the
lifetime of one generation the two nations had contended, with equal
courage and with various fortune, for the sovereignty of the German Ocean.
The tyranny of James, as it had reconciled Tories to Whigs and Churchmen
to Nonconformists, had also reconciled the English to the Dutch. While our
ancestors were looking to the Hague for deliverance, the massacre of
Amboyna and the great humiliation of Chatham had seemed to be forgotten.
But since the Revolution the old feeling had revived. Though England and
Holland were now closely bound together by treaty, they were as far as ever
from being bound together by affection. Once, just after the battle of
Beachy Head, our countrymen had seemed disposed to be just; but a violent
reaction speedily followed. Torrington, who deserved to be shot, became a
popular favourite; and the allies whom he had shamefully abandoned were
accused of persecuting him without a cause. The partiality shown by the
King to the companions of his youth was the favourite theme of the sewers
of sedition. The most lucrative posts in his household, it was said, were held
by Dutchmen; the House of Lords was fast filling with Dutchmen; the finest
manors of the Crown were given to Dutchmen; the army was commanded
by Dutchmen. That it would have been wise in William to exhibit somewhat
less obtrusively his laudable fondness for his native country, and to
remunerate his early friends somewhat more sparingly, is perfectly true. But
it will not be easy to prove that, on any important occasion during his whole
reign, he sacrificed the interests of our island to the interests of the United
Provinces. The English, however, were on this subject prone to fits of
jealousy which made them quite incapable of listening to reason. One of the
sharpest of those fits came on in the autumn of 1691. The antipathy to the
Dutch was at that time strong in all classes, and nowhere stronger than in
the Parliament and in the army. 186

Of that antipathy Marlborough determined to avail himself for the
purpose, as he assured James and James's adherents, of effecting a
restoration. The temper of both Houses was such that they might not
improbably be induced by skilful management to present a joint address
requesting that all foreigners might be dismissed from the service of their
Majesties. Marlborough undertook to move such an address in the Lords;
and there would have been no difficulty in finding some gentleman of great
weight to make a similar motion in the Commons.
If the address should be carried, what could William do? Would he yield?
Would he discard all his dearest, his oldest, his most trusty friends? It was
hardly possible to believe that he would make so painful, so humiliating a
concession. If he did not yield, there would be a rupture between him and
the Parliament; and the Parliament would be backed by the people. Even a
King reigning by a hereditary title might well shrink from such a contest
with the Estates of the Realm. But to a King whose title rested on a
resolution of the Estates of the Realm such a contest must almost
necessarily be fatal. The last hope of William would be in the army. The
army Marlborough undertook to manage; and it is highly probable that what
he undertook he could have performed. His courage, his abilities, his noble
and winning manners, the splendid success which had attended him on
every occasion on which he had been in command, had made him, in spite
of his sordid vices, a favourite with his brethren in arms. They were proud
of having one countryman who had shown that he wanted nothing but
opportunity to vie with the ablest Marshal of France. The Dutch were even
more disliked by the English troops than by the English nation generally.
Had Marlborough therefore, after securing the cooperation of some
distinguished officers, presented himself at the critical moment to those
regiments which he had led to victory in Flanders and in Ireland, had he
called on them to rally round him, to protect the Parliament, and to drive
out the aliens, there is strong reason to think that the call would have been
obeyed. He would then have had it in his power to fulfil the promises which
he had so solemnly made to his old master.
Of all the schemes ever formed for the restoration of James or of his
descendants, this scheme promised the fairest. That national pride, that
hatred of arbitrary power, which had hitherto been on William's side, would
now be turned against him. Hundreds of thousands who would have put
their lives in jeopardy to prevent a French army from imposing a

government on the English, would have felt no disposition to prevent an
English army from driving out the Dutch. Even the Whigs could scarcely,
without renouncing their old doctrines, support a prince who obstinately
refused to comply with the general wish of his people signified to him by
his Parliament. The plot looked well. An active canvass was made. Many
members of the House of Commons, who did not at all suspect that there
was any ulterior design, promised to vote against the foreigners.
Marlborough was indefatigable in inflaming the discontents of the army.
His house was constantly filled with officers who heated each other into
fury by talking against the Dutch. But, before the preparations were
complete, a strange suspicion rose in the minds of some of the Jacobites.
That the author of this bold and artful scheme wished to pull down the
existing government there could be little doubt. But was it quite certain
what government he meant to set up? Might he not depose William without
restoring James? Was it not possible that a man so wise, so aspiring, and so
wicked, might be meditating a double treason, such as would have been
thought a masterpiece of statecraft by the great Italian politicians of the
fifteenth century, such as Borgia would have envied, such as Machiavel
would have extolled to the skies?
What if this consummate dissembler should cheat both the rival kings?
What if, when he found himself commander of the army and protector of
the Parliament, he should proclaim Queen Anne? Was it not possible that
the weary and harassed nation might gladly acquiesce in such a settlement?
James was unpopular because he was a Papist, influenced by Popish priests.
William was unpopular because he was a foreigner, attached to foreign
favourites. Anne was at once a Protestant and an Englishwoman. Under her
government the country would be in no danger of being overrun either by
Jesuits or by Dutchmen. That Marlborough had the strongest motives for
placing her on the throne was evident. He could never, in the court of her
father, be more than a repentant criminal, whose services were overpaid by
a pardon. In her court the husband of her adored friend would be what
Pepin Heristal and Charles Martel had been to the Chilperics and
Childeberts. He would be the chief director of the civil and military
government. He would wield the whole power of England. He would hold
the balance of Europe. Great kings and commonwealths would bid against
each other for his favour, and exhaust their treasuries in the vain hope of
satiating his avarice. The presumption was, therefore, that, if he had the

English crown in his hands, he would put in on the head of the Princess.
What evidence there was to confirm this presumption is not known; but it is
certain that something took place which convinced some of the most
devoted friends of the exiled family that he was meditating a second
perfidy, surpassing even the feat which he had performed at Salisbury. They
were afraid that if, at that moment, they succeeded in getting rid of William,
the situation of James would be more hopeless than ever. So fully were they
persuaded of the duplicity of their accomplice, that they not only refused to
proceed further in the execution of the plan which he had formed, but
disclosed his whole scheme to Portland.
William seems to have been alarmed and provoked by this intelligence to
a degree very unusual with him. In general he was indulgent, nay, wilfully
blind to the baseness of the English statesmen whom he employed. He
suspected, indeed he knew, that some of his servants were in
correspondence with his competitor; and yet he did not punish them, did not
disgrace them, did not even frown on them. He thought meanly, and he had
but too good reason for thinking meanly, of the whole of that breed of
public men which the Restoration had formed and had bequeathed to the
Revolution. He knew them too well to complain because he did not find in
them veracity, fidelity, consistency, disinterestedness. The very utmost that
he expected from them was that they would serve him as far as they could
serve him without serious danger to themselves. If he learned that, while
sitting in his council and enriched by his bounty, they were trying to make
for themselves at Saint Germains an interest which might be of use to them
in the event of a counterrevolution he was more inclined to bestow on them
the contemptuous commendation which was bestowed of old on the worldly
wisdom of the unjust steward than to call them to a severe account. But the
crime of Marlborough was of a very different kind. His treason was not that
of a fainthearted man desirous to keep a retreat open for himself in every
event, but that of a man of dauntless courage, profound policy and
measureless ambition. William was not prone to fear; but, if there was
anything on earth that he feared, it was Marlborough. To treat the criminal
as he deserved was indeed impossible; for those by whom his designs had
been made known to the government would never have consented to appear
against him in the witness box. But to permit him to retain high command
in that army which he was then engaged in seducing would have been
madness.

Late in the evening of the ninth of January the Queen had a painful
explanation with the Princess Anne. Early the next morning Marlborough
was informed that their Majesties had no further occasion for his services,
and that he must not presume to appear in the royal presence. He had been
loaded with honours, and with what he loved better, riches. All was at once
taken away.
The real history of these events was known to very few. Evelyn, who had
in general excellent sources of information, believed that the corruption and
extortion of which Marlborough was notoriously guilty had roused the royal
indignation. The Dutch ministers could only tell the States General that six
different stories were spread abroad by Marlborough's enemies. Some said
that he had indiscreetly suffered an important military secret to escape him;
some that he had spoken disrespectfully of their Majesties; some that he had
done ill offices between the Queen and the Princess; some that he had been
forming cabals in the army; some that he had carried on an unauthorised
correspondence with the Danish government about the general politics of
Europe; and some that he had been trafficking with the agents of the Court
of Saint Germains. 187 His friends contradicted every one of these stories,
and affirmed that his only crime was his dislike of the foreigners who were
lording it over his countrymen, and that he had fallen a victim to the
machinations of Portland, whom he was known to dislike, and whom he
had not very politely described as a wooden fellow. The mystery, which
from the first overhung the story of Marlborough's disgrace, was darkened,
after the lapse of fifty years, by the shameless mendacity of his widow. The
concise narrative of James dispels the mystery, and makes it clear, not only
why Marlborough was disgraced, but also how several of the reports about
the cause of his disgrace originated. 188
Though William assigned to the public no reason for exercising his
undoubted prerogative by dismissing his servant, Anne had been informed
of the truth; and it had been left to her to judge whether an officer who had
been guilty of a foul treason was a fit inmate of the palace. Three weeks
passed. Lady Marlborough still retained her post and her apartments at
Whitehall. Her husband still resided with her; and still the King and Queen
gave no sign of displeasure. At length the haughty and vindictive Countess,
emboldened by their patience, determined to brave them face to face, and
accompanied her mistress one evening to the drawingroom at Kensington.
This was too much even for the gentle Mary. She would indeed have

expressed her indignation before the crowd which surrounded the card
tables, had she not remembered that her sister was in a state which entitles
women to peculiar indulgence. Nothing was said that night; but on the
following day a letter from the Queen was delivered to the Princess. Mary
declared that she was unwilling to give pain to a sister whom she loved, and
in whom she could easily pass over any ordinary fault; but this was a
serious matter. Lady Marlborough must be dismissed. While she lived at
Whitehall her lord would live there. Was it proper that a man in his situation
should be suffered to make the palace of his injured master his home? Yet
so unwilling was His Majesty to deal severely with the worst offenders, that
even this had been borne, and might have been borne longer, had not Anne
brought the Countess to defy the King and Queen in their own presence
chamber. "It was unkind," Mary wrote, "in a sister; it would have been
uncivil in an equal; and I need not say that I have more to claim." The
Princess, in her answer, did not attempt to exculpate or excuse
Marlborough, but expressed a firm conviction that his wife was innocent,
and implored the Queen not to insist on so heartrending a separation.
"There is no misery," Anne wrote, "that I cannot resolve to suffer rather
than the thoughts of parting from her."
The Princess sent for her uncle Rochester, and implored him to carry her
letter to Kensington, and to be her advocate there. Rochester declined the
office of messenger, and, though he tried to restore harmony between his
kinswomen, was by no means disposed to plead the cause of the Churchills.
He had indeed long seen with extreme uneasiness the absolute dominion
exercised over his younger niece by that unprincipled pair. Anne's
expostulation was sent to the Queen by a servant. The only reply was a
message from the Lord Chamberlain, Dorset, commanding Lady
Marlborough to leave the palace. Mrs. Morley would not be separated from
Mrs. Freeman. As to Mr. Morley, all places where he could have his three
courses and his three bottles were alike to him. The Princess and her whole
family therefore retired to Sion House, a villa belonging to the Duke of
Somerset, and situated on the margin of the Thames. In London she
occupied Berkeley House, which stood in Piccadilly, on the site now
covered by Devonshire House. 189 Her income was secured by Act of
Parliament; but no punishment which it was in the power of the Crown to
inflict on her was spared. Her guard of honour was taken away. The foreign
ministers ceased to wait upon her. When she went to Bath the Secretary of

State wrote to request the Mayor of that city not to receive her with the
ceremonial with which royal visitors were usually welcomed. When she
attended divine service at Saint James's Church she found that the rector
had been forbidden to show her the customary marks of respect, to bow to
her from his pulpit, and to send a copy of his text to be laid on her cushion.
Even the bellman of Piccadilly, it was said, perhaps falsely, was ordered not
to chaunt her praises in his doggrel verse under the windows of Berkeley
House. 190
That Anne was in the wrong is clear; but it is not equally clear that the
King and Queen were in the right. They should have either dissembled their
displeasure, or openly declared the true reasons for it. Unfortunately, they
let every body see the punishment, and they let scarcely any body know the
provocation. They should have remembered that, in the absence of
information about the cause of a quarrel, the public is naturally inclined to
side with the weaker party, and that this inclination is likely to be peculiarly
strong when a sister is, without any apparent reason, harshly treated by a
sister. They should have remembered, too, that they were exposing to attack
what was unfortunately the one vulnerable part of Mary's character. A cruel
fate had put enmity between her and her father. Her detractors pronounced
her utterly destitute of natural affection; and even her eulogists, when they
spoke of the way in which she had discharged the duties of the filial
relation, were forced to speak in a subdued and apologetic tone. Nothing
therefore could be more unfortunate than that she should a second time
appear unmindful of the ties of consanguinity. She was now at open war
with both the two persons who were nearest to her in blood. Many who
thought that her conduct towards her parent was justified by the extreme
danger which had threatened her country and her religion, were unable to
defend her conduct towards her sister. While Mary, who was really guilty in
this matter of nothing more than imprudence, was regarded by the world as
an oppressor, Anne, who was as culpable as her small faculties enabled her
to be, assumed the interesting character of a meek, resigned sufferer. In
those private letters, indeed, to which the name of Morley was subscribed,
the Princess expressed the sentiments of a fury in the style of a fishwoman,
railed savagely at the whole Dutch nation, and called her brother in law
sometimes the abortion, sometimes the monster, sometimes Caliban. 191 But
the nation heard nothing of her language and saw nothing of her deportment
but what was decorous and submissive. The truth seems to have been that

the rancorous and coarseminded Countess gave the tone to Her Highness's
confidential correspondence, while the graceful, serene and politic Earl was
suffered to prescribe the course which was to be taken before the public
eye. During a short time the Queen was generally blamed. But the charm of
her temper and manners was irresistible; and in a few months she regained
the popularity which she had lost. 192
It was a most fortunate circumstance for Marlborough that, just at the
very time when all London was talking about his disgrace, and trying to
guess at the cause of the King's sudden anger against one who had always
seemed to be a favourite, an accusation of treason was brought by William
Fuller against many persons of high consideration, was strictly investigated,
and was proved to be false and malicious. The consequence was that the
public, which rarely discriminates nicely, could not, at that moment, be
easily brought to believe in the reality of any Jacobite conspiracy.
That Fuller's plot is less celebrated than the Popish plot is rather the fault
of the historians than of Fuller, who did all that man could do to secure an
eminent place among villains. Every person well read in history must have
observed that depravity has its temporary modes, which come in and go out
like modes of dress and upholstery. It may be doubted whether, in our
country, any man ever before the year 1678 invented and related on oath a
circumstantial history, altogether fictitious, of a treasonable plot, for the
purpose of making himself important by destroying men who had given him
no provocation. But in the year 1678 this execrable crime became the
fashion, and continued to be so during the twenty years which followed.
Preachers designated it as our peculiar national sin, and prophesied that it
would draw on us some awful national judgment. Legislators proposed new
punishments of terrible severity for this new atrocity. 193 It was not however
found necessary to resort to those punishments. The fashion changed; and
during the last century and a half there has perhaps not been a single
instance of this particular kind of wickedness.
The explanation is simple. Oates was the founder of a school. His success
proved that no romance is too wild to be received with faith by
understandings which fear and hatred have disordered. His slanders were
monstrous; but they were well timed; he spoke to a people made credulous
by their passions; and thus, by impudent and cruel lying, he raised himself
in a week from beggary and obscurity to luxury, renown and power. He had

once eked out the small tithes of a miserable vicarage by stealing the pigs
and fowls of his parishioners. 194 He was now lodged in a palace; he was
followed by admiring crowds; he had at his mercy the estates and lives of
Howards and Herberts. A crowd of imitators instantly appeared. It seemed
that much more might be got, and that much less was risked, by testifying
to an imaginary conspiracy than by robbing on the highway or clipping the
coin. Accordingly the Bedloes, Dangerfields, Dugdales, Turberviles, made
haste to transfer their industry to an employment at once more profitable
and less perilous than any to which they were accustomed. Till the
dissolution of the Oxford Parliament Popish plots were the chief
manufacture. Then, during seven years, Whig plots were the only plots
which paid. After the Revolution Jacobite plots came in; but the public had
become cautious; and though the new false witnesses were in no respect
less artful than their predecessors, they found much less encouragement.
The history of the first great check given to the practices of this abandoned
race of men well deserves to be circumstantially related.
In 1689, and in the beginning of 1690, William Fuller had rendered to the
government service such as the best governments sometimes require, and
such as none but the worst men ever perform. His useful treachery had been
rewarded by his employers, as was meet, with money and with contempt.
Their liberality enabled him to live during some months like a fine
gentleman. He called himself a Colonel, hired servants, clothed them in
gorgeous liveries, bought fine horses, lodged in Pall Mall, and showed his
brazen forehead, overtopped by a wig worth fifty guineas, in the
antechambers of the palace and in the stage box at the theatre. He even gave
himself the airs of a favourite of royalty, and, as if he thought that William
could not live without him, followed His Majesty first to Ireland, and then
to the Congress of Princes at the Hague. Fuller afterwards boasted that, at
the Hague, he appeared with a retinue fit for an ambassador, that he gave
ten guineas a week for an apartment, and that the worst waistcoat which he
condescended to wear was of silver stuff at forty shillings a yard. Such
profusion, of course, brought him to poverty. Soon after his return to
England he took refuge from the bailiffs in Axe Yard, a place lying within
the verge of Whitehall. His fortunes were desperate; he owed great sums;
on the government he had no claim; his past services had been overpaid; no
future service was to be expected from him having appeared in the witness
box as evidence for the Crown, he could no longer be of any use as a spy on

the Jacobites; and by all men of virtue and honour, to whatever party they
might belong, he was abhorred and shunned.
Just at this time, when he was in the frame of mind in which men are
open to the worst temptations, he fell in with the worst of tempters, in truth,
with the Devil in human shape. Oates had obtained his liberty, his pardon,
and a pension which made him a much richer man than nineteen twentieths
of the members of that profession of which he was the disgrace. But he was
still unsatisfied. He complained that he had now less than three hundred a
year. In the golden days of the Plot he had been allowed three times as
much, had been sumptuously lodged in the palace, had dined on plate and
had been clothed in silk. He clamoured for an increase of his stipend. Nay,
he was even impudent enough to aspire to ecclesiastical preferment, and
thought it hard that, while so many mitres were distributed, he could not get
a deanery, a prebend, or even a living. He missed no opportunity of urging
his pretensions. He haunted the public offices and the lobbies of the Houses
of Parliament. He might be seen and heard every day, hurrying, as fast as
his uneven legs would carry him, between Charing Cross and Westminster
Hall, puffing with haste and self importance, chattering about what he had
done for the good cause, and reviling, in the style of the boatmen on the
river, all the statesmen and divines whom he suspected of doing him ill
offices at Court, and keeping him back from a bishopric. When he found
that there was no hope for him in the Established Church, he turned to the
Baptists. They, at first, received him very coldly; but he gave such touching
accounts of the wonderful work of grace which had been wrought in his
soul, and vowed so solemnly, before Jehovah and the holy angels, to be
thenceforth a burning and shining light, that it was difficult for simple and
well meaning people to think him altogether insincere. He mourned, he
said, like a turtle. On one Lord's day he thought he should have died of grief
at being shut out from fellowship with the saints. He was at length admitted
to communion; but before he had been a year among his new friends they
discovered his true character, and solemnly cast him out as a hypocrite.
Thenceforth he became the mortal enemy of the leading Baptists, and
persecuted them with the same treachery, the same mendacity, the same
effrontery, the same black malice which had many years before wrought the
destruction of more celebrated victims. Those who had lately been edified
by his account of his blessed experiences stood aghast to hear him crying
out that he would be revenged, that revenge was God's own sweet morsel,

that the wretches who had excommunicated him should be ruined, that they
should be forced to fly their country, that they should be stripped to the last
shilling. His designs were at length frustrated by a righteous decree of the
Court of Chancery, a decree which would have left a deep stain on the
character of an ordinary man, but which makes no perceptible addition to
the infamy of Titus Oates. 195 Through all changes, however, he was
surrounded by a small knot of hotheaded and foulmouthed agitators, who,
abhorred and despised by every respectable Whig, yet called themselves
Whigs, and thought themselves injured because they were not rewarded for
scurrility and slander with the best places under the Crown.
In 1691, Titus, in order to be near the focal point of political intrigue and
faction, had taken a house within the precinct of Whitehall. To this house
Fuller, who lived hard by, found admission. The evil work which had been
begun in him, when he was still a child, by the memoirs of Dangerfield, was
now completed by the conversation of Oates. The Salamanca Doctor was,
as a witness, no longer formidable; but he was impelled, partly by the
savage malignity which he felt towards all whom he considered as his
enemies, and partly by mere monkeylike restlessness and love of mischief,
to do, through the instrumentality of others, what he could no longer do in
person. In Fuller he had found the corrupt heart, the ready tongue and the
unabashed front which are the first qualifications for the office of a false
accuser. A friendship, if that word may be so used, sprang up between the
pair. Oates opened his house and even his purse to Fuller. The veteran
sinner, both directly and through the agency of his dependents, intimated to
the novice that nothing made a man so important as the discovering of a
plot, and that these were times when a young fellow who would stick at
nothing and fear nobody might do wonders. The Revolution,—such was the
language constantly held by Titus and his parasites,—had produced little
good. The brisk boys of Shaftesbury had not been recompensed according
to their merits. Even the Doctor, such was the ingratitude of men, was
looked on coldly at the new Court. Tory rogues sate at the council board,
and were admitted to the royal closet. It would be a noble feat to bring their
necks to the block. Above all, it would be delightful to see Nottingham's
long solemn face on Tower Hill. For the hatred with which these bad men
regarded Nottingham had no bounds, and was probably excited less by his
political opinions, in which there was doubtless much to condemn, than by
his moral character, in which the closest scrutiny will detect little that is not

deserving of approbation. Oates, with the authority which experience and
success entitle a preceptor to assume, read his pupil a lecture on the art of
bearing false witness. "You ought," he said, with many oaths and curses, "to
have made more, much more, out of what you heard and saw at Saint
Germains. Never was there a finer foundation for a plot. But you are a fool;
you are a coxcomb; I could beat you; I would not have done so. I used to go
to Charles and tell him his own. I called Lauderdale rogue to his face. I
made King, Ministers, Lords, Commons, afraid of me. But you young men
have no spirit." Fuller was greatly edified by these exhortations. It was,
however, hinted to him by some of his associates that, if he meant to take
up the trade of swearing away lives, he would do well not to show himself
so often at coffeehouses in the company of Titus. "The Doctor," said one of
the gang, "is an excellent person, and has done great things in his time; but
many people are prejudiced against him; and, if you are really going to
discover a plot, the less you are seen with him the better." Fuller
accordingly ceased to frequent Oates's house, but still continued to receive
his great master's instructions in private.
To do Fuller justice, he seems not to have taken up the trade of a false
witness till he could no longer support himself by begging or swindling. He
lived for a time on the charity of the Queen. He then levied contributions by
pretending to be one of the noble family of Sidney. He wheedled Tillotson
out of some money, and requited the good Archbishop's kindness by passing
himself off as His Grace's favourite nephew. But in the autumn of 1691 all
these shifts were exhausted. After lying in several spunging houses, Fuller
was at length lodged in the King's Bench prison, and he now thought it time
to announce that he had discovered a plot. 196
He addressed himself first to Tillotson and Portland; but both Tillotson
and Portland soon perceived that he was lying. What he said was, however,
reported to the King, who, as might have been expected, treated the
information and the informant with cold contempt. All that remained was to
try whether a flame could be raised in the Parliament.
Soon after the Houses met, Fuller petitioned the Commons to hear what
he had to say, and promised to make wonderful disclosures. He was brought
from his prison to the bar of the House; and he there repeated a long
romance. James, he said, had delegated the regal authority to six
commissioners, of whom Halifax was first. More than fifty lords and

gentlemen had signed an address to the French King, imploring him to
make a great effort for the restoration of the House of Stuart. Fuller
declared that he had seen this address, and recounted many of the names
appended to it. Some members made severe remarks on the improbability
of the story and on the character of the witness. He was, they said, one of
the greatest rogues on the face of the earth; and he told such things as could
scarcely be credited if he were an angel from heaven. Fuller audaciously
pledged himself to bring proofs which would satisfy the most incredulous.
He was, he averred, in communication with some agents of James. Those
persons were ready to make reparation to their country. Their testimony
would be decisive; for they were in possession of documentary evidence
which would confound the guilty. They held back only because they saw
some of the traitors high in office and near the royal person, and were afraid
of incurring the enmity of men so powerful and so wicked. Fuller ended by
asking for a sum of money, and by assuring the Commons that he would lay
it out to good account. 197 Had his impudent request been granted, he would
probably have paid his debts, obtained his liberty, and absconded; but the
House very wisely insisted on seeing his witnesses first. He then began to
shuffle. The gentlemen were on the Continent, and could not come over
without passports. Passports were delivered to him; but he complained that
they were insufficient. At length the Commons, fully determined to get at
the truth, presented an address requesting the King to send Fuller a blank
safe conduct in the largest terms. 198 The safe conduct was sent. Six weeks
passed, and nothing was heard of the witnesses. The friends of the lords and
gentlemen who had been accused represented strongly that the House ought
not to separate for the summer without coming to some decision on charges
so grave. Fuller was ordered to attend. He pleaded sickness, and asserted,
not for the first time, that the Jacobites had poisoned him. But all his plans
were confounded by the laudable promptitude and vigour with which the
Commons acted. A Committee was sent to his bedside, with orders to
ascertain whether he really had any witnesses, and where those witnesses
resided. The members who were deputed for this purpose went to the King's
Bench prison, and found him suffering under a disorder, produced, in all
probability, by some emetic which he had swallowed for the purpose of
deceiving them. In answer to their questions he said that two of his
witnesses, Delaval and Hayes, were in England, and were lodged at the
house of a Roman Catholic apothecary in Holborn. The Commons, as soon

as the Committee had reported, sent some members to the house which he
had indicated. That house and all the neighbouring houses were searched.
Delaval and Hayes were not to be found, nor had any body in the vicinity
ever seen such men or heard of them. The House, therefore, on the last day
of the session, just before Black Rod knocked at the door, unanimously
resolved that William Fuller was a cheat and a false accuser; that he had
insulted the Government and the Parliament; that he had calumniated
honourable men, and that an address should be carried up to the throne,
requesting that he might be prosecuted for his villany. 199 He was
consequently tried, convicted, and sentenced to fine, imprisonment and the
pillory. The exposure, more terrible than death to a mind not lost to all sense
of shame, he underwent with a hardihood worthy of his two favourite
models, Dangerfield and Oates. He had the impudence to persist, year after
year, in affirming that he had fallen a victim to the machinations of the late
King, who had spent six thousand pounds in order to ruin him. Delaval and
Hayes—so this fable ran—had been instructed by James in person. They
had, in obedience to his orders, induced Fuller to pledge his word for their
appearance, and had then absented themselves, and left him exposed to the
resentment of the House of Commons. 200 The story had the reception
which it deserved, and Fuller sank into an obscurity from which he twice or
thrice, at long intervals, again emerged for a moment into infamy.
On the twenty-fourth of February 1692, about an hour after the
Commons had voted Fuller an impostor, they were summoned to the
chamber of the Lords. The King thanked the Houses for their loyalty and
liberality, informed them that he must soon set out for the Continent, and
commanded them to adjourn themselves. He gave his assent on that day to
many bills, public and private; but when the title of one bill, which had
passed the Lower House without a single division and the Upper House
without a single protest, had been read by the Clerk of the Crown, the Clerk
of the Parliaments declared, according to the ancient form, that the King
and the Queen would consider of the matter. Those words had very rarely
been pronounced before the accession of William. They have been
pronounced only once since his death. But by him the power of putting a
Veto on laws which had been passed by the Estates of the Realm was used
on several important occasions. His detractors truly asserted that he rejected
a greater number of important bills than all the Kings of the House of Stuart
put together, and most absurdly inferred that the sense of the Estates of the

Realm was much less respected by him than by his uncles and his
grandfather. A judicious student of history will have no difficulty in
discovering why William repeatedly exercised a prerogative to which his
predecessors very seldom had recourse, and which his successors have
suffered to fall into utter desuetude.
His predecessors passed laws easily because they broke laws easily.
Charles the First gave his assent to the Petition of Right, and immediately
violated every clause of that great statute. Charles the Second gave his
assent to an Act which provided that a Parliament should be held at least
once in three years; but when he died the country had been near four years
without a Parliament. The laws which abolished the Court of High
Commission, the laws which instituted the Sacramental Test, were passed
without the smallest difficulty; but they did not prevent James the Second
from reestablishing the Court of High Commission, and from filling the
Privy Council, the public offices, the courts of justice, and the municipal
corporations with persons who had never taken the Test. Nothing could be
more natural than that a King should not think it worth while to withhold
his assent from a statute with which he could dispense whenever he thought
fit.
The situation of William was very different. He could not, like those who
had ruled before him, pass an Act in the spring and violate it in the summer.
He had, by assenting to the Bill of Rights, solemnly renounced the
dispensing power; and he was restrained, by prudence as well as by
conscience and honour, from breaking the compact under which he held his
crown. A law might be personally offensive to him; it might appear to him
to be pernicious to his people; but, as soon as he had passed it, it was, in his
eyes, a sacred thing. He had therefore a motive, which preceding Kings had
not, for pausing before he passed such a law. They gave their word readily,
because they had no scruple about breaking it. He gave his word slowly,
because he never failed to keep it.
But his situation, though it differed widely from that of the princes of the
House of Stuart, was not precisely that of the princes of the House of
Brunswick. A prince of the House of Brunswick is guided, as to the use of
every royal prerogative, by the advice of a responsible ministry; and this
ministry must be taken from the party which predominates in the two
Houses, or, at least, in the Lower House. It is hardly possible to conceive

circumstances in which a Sovereign so situated can refuse to assent to a bill
which has been approved by both branches of the legislature. Such a refusal
would necessarily imply one of two things, that the Sovereign acted in
opposition to the advice of the ministry, or that the ministry was at issue, on
a question of vital importance, with a majority both of the Commons and of
the Lords. On either supposition the country would be in a most critical
state, in a state which, if long continued, must end in a revolution. But in
the earlier part of the reign of William there was no ministry. The heads of
the executive departments had not been appointed exclusively from either
party. Some were zealous Whigs, others zealous Tories. The most
enlightened statesmen did not hold it to be unconstitutional that the King
should exercise his highest prerogatives on the most important occasions
without any other guidance than that of his own judgment. His refusal,
therefore, to assent to a bill which had passed both Houses indicated, not, as
a similar refusal would now indicate, that the whole machinery of
government was in a state of fearful disorder, but merely that there was a
difference of opinion between him and the two other branches of the
legislature as to the expediency of a particular law. Such a difference of
opinion might exist, and, as we shall hereafter see, actually did exist, at a
time when he was, not merely on friendly, but on most affectionate terms
with the Estates of the Realm.
The circumstances under which he used his Veto for the first time have
never yet been correctly stated. A well meant but unskilful attempt had been
made to complete a reform which the Bill of Rights had left imperfect. That
great law had deprived the Crown of the power of arbitrarily removing the
judges, but had not made them entirely independent. They were
remunerated partly by fees and partly by salaries. Over the fees the King
had no control; but the salaries he had full power to reduce or to withhold.
That William had ever abused this power was not pretended; but it was
undoubtedly a power which no prince ought to possess; and this was the
sense of both Houses. A bill was therefore brought in by which a salary of a
thousand a year was strictly secured to each of the twelve judges. Thus far
all was well. But unfortunately the salaries were made a charge on the
hereditary revenue. No such proposition would now be entertained by the
House of Commons, without the royal consent previously signified by a
Privy Councillor. But this wholesome rule had not then been established;
and William could defend the proprietary rights of the Crown only by

putting his negative on the bill. At the time there was, as far as can now be
ascertained, no outcry. Even the Jacobite libellers were almost silent. It was
not till the provisions of the bill had been forgotten, and till nothing but its
title was remembered, that William was accused of having been influenced
by a wish to keep the judges in a state of dependence. 201
The Houses broke up; and the King prepared to set out for the Continent.
Before his departure he made some changes in his household and in several
departments of the government; changes, however, which did not indicate a
very decided preference for either of the great political parties. Rochester
was sworn of the Council. It is probable that he had earned this mark of
royal favour by taking the Queen's side in the unhappy dispute between her
and her sister. Pembroke took charge of the Privy Seal, and was succeeded
at the Board of Admiralty by Charles Lord Cornwallis, a moderate Tory;
Lowther accepted a seat at the same board, and was succeeded at the
Treasury by Sir Edward Seymour. Many Tory country gentlemen, who had
looked on Seymour as their leader in the war against placemen and
Dutchmen, were moved to indignation by learning that he had become a
courtier. They remembered that he had voted for a Regency, that he had
taken the oaths with no good grace, that he had spoken with little respect of
the Sovereign whom he was now ready to serve for the sake of emoluments
hardly worthy of the acceptance of a man of his wealth and parliamentary
interest. It was strange that the haughtiest of human beings should be the
meanest, that one who seethed to reverence nothing on earth but himself
should abase himself for the sake of quarter day. About such reflections he
troubled himself very little. He found, however, that there was one
disagreeable circumstance connected with his new office. At the Board of
Treasury he must sit below the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The First Lord,
Godolphin, was a peer of the realm; and his right to precedence, according
to the rules of the heralds, could not be questioned. But every body knew
who was the first of English commoners. What was Richard Hampden that
he should take the place of a Seymour, of the head of the Seymours? With
much difficulty, the dispute was compromised. Many concessions were
made to Sir Edward's punctilious pride. He was sworn of the Council. He
was appointed one of the Cabinet. The King took him by the hand and
presented him to the Queen. "I bring you," said William, "a gentleman who
will in my absence be a valuable friend." In this way Sir Edward was so

much soothed and flattered that he ceased to insist on his right to thrust
himself between the First Lord and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In the same Commission of Treasury in which the name of Seymour
appeared, appeared also the name of a much younger politician, who had
during the late session raised himself to high distinction in the House of
Commons, Charles Montague. This appointment gave great satisfaction to
the Whigs, in whose esteem Montague now stood higher than their veteran
chiefs Sacheverell and Littleton, and was indeed second to Somers alone.
Sidney delivered up the seals which he had held during more than a year,
and was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Some months elapsed before
the place which he had quitted was filled up; and during this interval the
whole business which had ordinarily been divided between two Secretaries
of State was transacted by Nottingham. 202
While these arrangements were in progress, events had taken place in a
distant part of the island which were not, till after the lapse of many
months, known in the best informed circles of London, but which gradually
obtained a fearful notoriety, and which, after the lapse of more than a
hundred and sixty years, are never mentioned without horror.
Soon after the Estates of Scotland had separated in the autumn of 1690, a
change was made in the administration of that kingdom. William was not
satisfied with the way in which he had been represented in the Parliament
House. He thought that the rabbled curates had been hardly treated. He had
very reluctantly suffered the law which abolished patronage to be touched
with his sceptre. But what especially displeased him was that the Acts
which established a new ecclesiastical polity had not been accompanied by
an Act granting liberty of conscience to those who were attached to the old
ecclesiastical polity. He had directed his Commissioner Melville to obtain
for the Episcopalians of Scotland an indulgence similar to that which
Dissenters enjoyed in England. 203 But the Presbyterian preachers were loud
and vehement against lenity to Amalekites. Melville, with useful talents,
and perhaps with fair intentions, had neither large views nor an intrepid
spirit. He shrank from uttering a word so hateful to the theological
demagogues of his country as Toleration. By obsequiously humouring their
prejudices he quelled the clamour which was rising at Edinburgh; but the
effect of his timid caution was that a far more formidable clamour soon rose
in the south of the island against the bigotry of the schismatics who

domineered in the north, and against the pusillanimity of the government
which had not dared to withstand that bigotry. On this subject the High
Churchman and the Low Churchman were of one mind, or rather the Low
Churchman was the more angry of the two. A man like South, who had
during many years been predicting that, if ever the Puritans ceased to be
oppressed, they would become oppressors, was at heart not ill pleased to
see his prophecy fulfilled. But in a man like Burnet, the great object of
whose life had been to mitigate the animosity which the ministers of the
Anglican Church felt towards the Presbyterians, the intolerant conduct of
the Presbyterians could awaken no feeling but indignation, shame and grief.
There was, therefore, at the English Court nobody to speak a good word for
Melville. It was impossible that in such circumstances he should remain at
the head of the Scottish administration. He was, however, gently let down
from his high position. He continued during more than a year to be
Secretary of State; but another Secretary was appointed, who was to reside
near the King, and to have the chief direction of affairs. The new Prime
Minister for Scotland was the able, eloquent and accomplished Sir John
Dalrymple. His father, the Lord President of the Court of Session, had lately
been raised to the peerage by the title of Viscount Stair; and Sir John
Dalrymple was consequently, according to the ancient usage of Scotland,
designated as the Master of Stair. In a few months Melville resigned his
secretaryship, and accepted an office of some dignity and emolument, but
of no political importance. 204
The Lowlands of Scotland were, during the year which followed the
parliamentary session of 1690, as quiet as they had ever been within the
memory of man; but the state of the Highlands caused much anxiety to the
government. The civil war in that wild region, after it had ceased to flame,
had continued during some time to smoulder. At length, early in the year
1691, the rebel chiefs informed the Court of Saint Germains that, pressed as
they were on every side, they could hold out no longer without succour
from France. James had sent them a small quantity of meal, brandy and
tobacco, and had frankly told them that he could do nothing more. Money
was so scarce among them that six hundred pounds sterling would have
been a most acceptable addition to their funds, but even such a sum he was
unable to spare. He could scarcely, in such circumstances, expect them to
defend his cause against a government which had a regular army and a large
revenue. He therefore informed them that he should not take it ill of them if

they made their peace with the new dynasty, provided always that they were
prepared to rise in insurrection as soon as he should call on them to do so.
205
Meanwhile it had been determined at Kensington, in spite of the
opposition of the Master of Stair, to try the plan which Tarbet had
recommended two years before, and which, if it had been tried when he
recommended it, would probably have prevented much bloodshed and
confusion. It was resolved that twelve or fifteen thousand pounds should be
laid out in quieting the Highlands. This was a mass of treasure which to an
inhabitant of Appin or Lochaber seemed almost fabulous, and which indeed
bore a greater proportion to the income of Keppoch or Glengarry than
fifteen hundred thousand pounds bore to the income of Lord Bedford or
Lord Devonshire. The sum was ample; but the King was not fortunate in the
choice of an agent. 206
John Earl of Breadalbane, the head of a younger branch of the great
House of Campbell, ranked high among the petty princes of the mountains.
He could bring seventeen hundred claymores into the field; and, ten years
before the Revolution, he had actually marched into the Lowlands with this
great force for the purpose of supporting the prelatical tyranny. 207 In those
days he had affected zeal for monarchy and episcopacy; but in truth he
cared for no government and no religion. He seems to have united two
different sets of vices, the growth of two different regions, and of two
different stages in the progress of society. In his castle among the hills he
had learned the barbarian pride and ferocity of a Highland chief. In the
Council Chamber at Edinburgh he had contracted the deep taint of treachery
and corruption. After the Revolution he had, like too many of his fellow
nobles, joined and betrayed every party in turn, had sworn fealty to William
and Mary, and had plotted against them. To trace all the turns and doublings
of his course, during the year 1689 and the earlier part of 1690, would be
wearisome. 208 That course became somewhat less tortuous when the battle
of the Boyne had cowed the spirit of the Jacobites. It now seemed probable
that the Earl would be a loyal subject of their Majesties, till some great
disaster should befall them. Nobody who knew him could trust him; but few
Scottish statesmen could then be trusted; and yet Scottish statesmen must be
employed. His position and connections marked him out as a man who
might, if he would, do much towards the work of quieting the Highlands;
and his interest seemed to be a guarantee for his zeal. He had, as he

declared with every appearance of truth, strong personal reasons for
wishing to see tranquillity restored. His domains were so situated that,
while the civil war lasted, his vassals could not tend their herds or sow their
oats in peace. His lands were daily ravaged; his cattle were daily driven
away; one of his houses had been burned down. It was probable, therefore,
that he would do his best to put an end to hostilities. 209
He was accordingly commissioned to treat with the Jacobite chiefs, and
was entrusted with the money which was to be distributed among them. He
invited them to a conference at his residence in Glenorchy. They came; but
the treaty went on very slowly. Every head of a tribe asked for a larger share
of the English gold than was to be obtained. Breadalbane was suspected of
intending to cheat both the clans and the King. The dispute between the
rebels and the government was complicated with another dispute still more
embarrassing. The Camerons and Macdonalds were really at war, not with
William, but with Mac Callum More; and no arrangement to which Mac
Callum More was not a party could really produce tranquillity. A grave
question therefore arose, whether the money entrusted to Breadalbane
should be paid directly to the discontented chiefs, or should be employed to
satisfy the claims which Argyle had upon them. The shrewdness of Lochiel
and the arrogant pretensions of Glengarry contributed to protract the
discussions. But no Celtic potentate was so impracticable as Macdonald of
Glencoe, known among the mountains by the hereditary appellation of Mac
Ian. 210
Mac Ian dwelt in the mouth of a ravine situated not far from the southern
shore of Lochleven, an arm of the sea which deeply indents the western
coast of Scotland, and separates Argyleshire from Invernesshire. Near his
house were two or three small hamlets inhabited by his tribe. The whole
population which he governed was not supposed to exceed two hundred
souls. In the neighbourhood of the little cluster of villages was some
copsewood and some pasture land; but a little further up the defile no sign
of population or of fruitfulness was to be seen. In the Gaelic tongue
Glencoe signifies the Glen of Weeping; and in truth that pass is the most
dreary and melancholy of all the Scottish passes, the very Valley of the
Shadow of Death. Mists and storms brood over it through the greater part of
the finest summer; and even on those rare days when the sun is bright, and
when there is no cloud in the sky, the impression made by the landscape is
sad and awful. The path lies along a stream which issues from the most

sullen and gloomy of mountain pools. Huge precipices of naked stone
frown on both sides. Even in July the streaks of snow may often be
discerned in the rifts near the summits. All down the sides of the crags
heaps of ruin mark the headlong paths of the torrents. Mile after mile the
traveller looks in vain for the smoke of one hut, for one human form
wrapped in plaid, and listens in vain for the bark of a shepherd's dog or the
bleat of a lamb. Mile after mile the only sound that indicates life is the faint
cry of a bird of prey from some stormbeaten pinnacle of rock. The progress
of civilisation, which has turned so many wastes into fields yellow with
harvests or gay with apple blossoms, has only made Glencoe more desolate.
All the science and industry of a peaceful age can extract nothing valuable
from that wilderness; but, in an age of violence and rapine, the wilderness
itself was valued on account of the shelter which it afforded to the plunderer
and his plunder. Nothing could be more natural than that the clan to which
this rugged desert belonged should have been noted for predatory habits.
For, among the Highlanders generally, to rob was thought at least as
honourable an employment as to cultivate the soil; and, of all the
Highlanders, The Macdonalds of Glencoe had the least productive soil, and
the most convenient and secure den of robbers. Successive governments
had tried to punish this wild race; but no large force had ever been
employed for that purpose; and a small force was easily resisted or eluded
by men familiar with every recess and every outlet of the natural fortress in
which they had been born and bred. The people of Glencoe would probably
have been less troublesome neighbours if they had lived among their own
kindred. But they were an outpost of the Clan Donald, separated from every
other branch of their own family, and almost surrounded by the domains of
the hostile race of Diarmid. 211 They were impelled by hereditary enmity, as
well as by want, to live at the expense of the tribe of Campbell.
Breadalbane's property had suffered greatly from their depredations; and he
was not of a temper to forgive such injuries. When, therefore, the Chief of
Glencoe made his appearance at the congress in Glenorchy, he was
ungraciously received. The Earl, who ordinarily bore himself with the
solemn dignity of a Castilian grandee, forgot, in his resentment, his wonted
gravity, forgot his public character, forgot the laws of hospitality, and, with
angry reproaches and menaces, demanded reparation for the herds which
had been driven from his lands by Mac Ian's followers. Mac Ian was
seriously apprehensive of some personal outrage, and was glad to get safe

back to his own glen. 212 His pride had been wounded; and the promptings
of interest concurred with those of pride. As the head of a people who lived
by pillage, he had strong reasons for wishing that the country might
continue to be in a perturbed state. He had little chance of receiving one
guinea of the money which was to be distributed among the malecontents.
For his share of that money would scarcely meet Breadalbane's demands for
compensation; and there could be little doubt that, whoever might be
unpaid, Breadalbane would take care to pay himself. Mac Ian therefore did
his best to dissuade his allies from accepting terms from which he could
himself expect no benefit; and his influence was not small. His own vassals,
indeed, were few in number; but he came of the best blood of the
Highlands; he had kept up a close connection with his more powerful
kinsmen; nor did they like him the less because he was a robber; for he
never robbed them; and that robbery, merely as robbery, was a wicked and
disgraceful act, had never entered into the mind of any Celtic chief. Mac Ian
was therefore held in high esteem by the confederates. His age was
venerable; his aspect was majestic; and he possessed in large measure those
intellectual qualities which, in rude societies, give men an ascendency over
their fellows. Breadalbane found himself, at every step of the negotiation,
thwarted by the arts of his old enemy, and abhorred the name of Glencoe
more and more every day. 213
But the government did not trust solely to Breadalbane's diplomatic skill.
The authorities at Edinburgh put forth a proclamation exhorting the clans to
submit to King William and Queen Mary, and offering pardon to every
rebel who, on or before the thirty-first of December 1691, should swear to
live peaceably under the government of their Majesties. It was announced
that those who should hold out after that day would be treated as enemies
and traitors. 214 Warlike preparations were made, which showed that the
threat was meant in earnest. The Highlanders were alarmed, and, though the
pecuniary terms had not been satisfactorily settled, thought it prudent to
give the pledge which was demanded of them. No chief, indeed, was
willing to set the example of submission. Glengarry blustered, and
pretended to fortify his house. 215 "I will not," said Lochiel, "break the ice.
That is a point of honour with me. But my tacksmen and people may use
their freedom." 216 His tacksmen and people understood him, and repaired
by hundreds to the Sheriff to take the oaths. The Macdonalds of Sleat,
Clanronald, Keppoch, and even Glengarry, imitated the Camerons; and the

chiefs, after trying to outstay each other as long as they durst, imitated their
vassals.
The thirty-first of December arrived; and still the Macdonalds of Glencoe
had not come in. The punctilious pride of Mac Ian was doubtless gratified
by the thought that he had continued to defy the government after the
boastful Glengarry, the ferocious Keppoch, the magnanimous Lochiel had
yielded: but he bought his gratification dear.
At length, on the thirty-first of December, he repaired to Fort William,
accompanied by his principal vassals, and offered to take the oaths. To his
dismay he found that there was in the fort no person competent to
administer them. Colonel Hill, the Governor, was not a magistrate; nor was
there any magistrate nearer than Inverary. Mac Ian, now fully sensible of
the folly of which he had been guilty in postponing to the very last moment
an act on which his life and his estate depended, set off for Inverary in great
distress. He carried with him a letter from Hill to the Sheriff of Argyleshire,
Sir Colin Campbell of Ardkinglass, a respectable gentleman, who, in the
late reign, had suffered severely for his Whig principles. In this letter the
Colonel expressed a goodnatured hope that, even out of season, a lost
sheep, and so fine a lost sheep, would be gladly received. Mac Ian made all
the haste in his power, and did not stop even at his own house, though it lay
nigh to the road. But at that time a journey through Argyleshire in the depth
of winter was necessarily slow. The old man's progress up steep mountains
and along boggy valleys was obstructed by snow storms; and it was not till
the sixth of January that he presented himself before the Sheriff at Inverary.
The Sheriff hesitated. His power, he said, was limited by the terms of the
proclamation, and he did not see how he could swear a rebel who had not
submitted within the prescribed time. Mac Ian begged earnestly and with
tears that he might be sworn. His people, he said, would follow his
example. If any of them proved refractory, he would himself send the
recusant to prison, or ship him off for Islanders. His entreaties and Hill's
letter overcame Sir Colin's scruples. The oath was administered; and a
certificate was transmitted to the Council at Edinburgh, setting forth the
special circumstances which had induced the Sheriff to do what he knew
not to be strictly regular. 217
The news that Mac Ian had not submitted within the prescribed time was
received with cruel joy by three powerful Scotchmen who were then at the

English Court. Breadalbane had gone up to London at Christmas in order to
give an account of his stewardship. There he met his kinsman Argyle.
Argyle was, in personal qualities, one of the most insignificant of the long
line of nobles who have borne that great name. He was the descendant of
eminent men, and the parent of eminent men. He was the grandson of one
of the ablest of Scottish politicians; the son of one of the bravest and most
truehearted of Scottish patriots; the father of one Mac Callum More
renowned as a warrior and as an orator, as the model of every courtly grace,
and as the judicious patron of arts and letters, and of another Mac Callum
More distinguished by talents for business and command, and by skill in the
exact sciences. Both of such an ancestry and of such a progeny Argyle was
unworthy. He had even been guilty of the crime, common enough among
Scottish politicians, but in him singularly disgraceful, of tampering with the
agents of James while professing loyalty to William. Still Argyle had the
importance inseparable from high rank, vast domains, extensive feudal
rights, and almost boundless patriarchal authority. To him, as to his cousin
Breadalbane, the intelligence that the tribe of Glencoe was out of the
protection of the law was most gratifying; and the Master of Stair more than
sympathized with them both.
The feeling of Argyle and Breadalbane is perfectly intelligible. They
were the heads of a great clan; and they had an opportunity of destroying a
neighbouring clan with which they were at deadly feud. Breadalbane had
received peculiar provocation. His estate had been repeatedly devastated;
and he had just been thwarted in a negotiation of high moment. Unhappily
there was scarcely any excess of ferocity for which a precedent could not be
found in Celtic tradition. Among all warlike barbarians revenge is esteemed
the most sacred of duties and the most exquisite of pleasures; and so it had
long been esteemed among the Highlanders. The history of the clans
abounds with frightful tales, some perhaps fabulous or exaggerated, some
certainly true, of vindictive massacres and assassinations. The Macdonalds
of Glengarry, for example, having been affronted by the people of Culloden,
surrounded Culloden church on a Sunday, shut the doors, and burned the
whole congregation alive. While the flames were raging, the hereditary
musician of the murderers mocked the shrieks of the perishing crowd with
the notes of his bagpipe. 218 A band of Macgregors, having cut off the head
of an enemy, laid it, the mouth filled with bread and cheese, on his sister's
table, and had the satisfaction of seeing her go mad with horror at the sight.

They then carried the ghastly trophy in triumph to their chief. The whole
clan met under the roof of an ancient church. Every one in turn laid his
hand on the dead man's scalp, and vowed to defend the slayers. 219 The
inhabitants of Eigg seized some Macleods, bound them hand and foot, and
turned them adrift in a boat to be swallowed up by the waves or to perish of
hunger. The Macleods retaliated by driving the population of Eigg into a
cavern, lighting a fire at the entrance, and suffocating the whole race, men,
women and children. 220 It is much less strange that the two great Earls of
the house of Campbell, animated by the passions of Highland chieftains,
should have planned a Highland revenge, than that they should have found
an accomplice, and something more than an accomplice, in the Master of
Stair.
The Master of Stair was one of the first men of his time, a jurist, a
statesman, a fine scholar, an eloquent orator. His polished manners and
lively conversation were the delight of aristocratical societies; and none
who met him in such societies would have thought it possible that he could
bear the chief part in any atrocious crime. His political principles were lax,
yet not more lax than those of most Scotch politicians of that age. Cruelty
had never been imputed to him. Those who most disliked him did him the
justice to own that, where his schemes of policy were not concerned, he was
a very goodnatured man. 221 There is not the slightest reason to believe that
he gained a single pound Scots by the act which has covered his name with
infamy. He had no personal reason to wish the Glencoe men ill. There had
been no feud between them and his family. His property lay in a district
where their tartan was never seen. Yet he hated them with a hatred as fierce
and implacable as if they had laid waste his fields, burned his mansion,
murdered his child in the cradle.
To what cause are we to ascribe so strange an antipathy? This question
perplexed the Master's contemporaries; and any answer which may now be
offered ought to be offered with diffidence. 222 The most probable
conjecture is that he was actuated by an inordinate, an unscrupulous, a
remorseless zeal for what seemed to him to be the interest of the state. This
explanation may startle those who have not considered how large a
proportion of the blackest crimes recorded in history is to be ascribed to ill
regulated public spirit. We daily see men do for their party, for their sect, for
their country, for their favourite schemes of political and social reform,
what they would not do to enrich or to avenge themselves. At a temptation

directly addressed to our private cupidity or to our private animosity,
whatever virtue we have takes the alarm. But, virtue itself may contribute to
the fall of him who imagines that it is in his power, by violating some
general rule of morality, to confer an important benefit on a church, on a
commonwealth, on mankind. He silences the remonstrances of conscience,
and hardens his heart against the most touching spectacles of misery, by
repeating to himself that his intentions are pure, that his objects are noble,
that he is doing a little evil for the sake of a great good. By degrees he
comes altogether to forget the turpitude of the means in the excellence of
the end, and at length perpetrates without one internal twinge acts which
would shock a buccaneer. There is no reason to believe that Dominic would,
for the best archbishopric in christendom, have incited ferocious marauders
to plunder and slaughter a peaceful and industrious population, that Everard
Digby would for a dukedom have blown a large assembly of people into the
air, or that Robespierre would have murdered for hire one of the thousands
whom he murdered from philanthropy.
The Master of Stair seems to have proposed to himself a truly great and
good end, the pacification and civilisation of the Highlands. He was, by the
acknowledgment of those who most hated him, a man of large views. He
justly thought it monstrous that a third part of Scotland should be in a state
scarcely less savage than New Guinea, that letters of fire and sword should,
through a third part of Scotland, be, century after century, a species of legal
process, and that no attempt should be made to apply a radical remedy to
such evils. The independence affected by a crowd of petty sovereigns, the
contumacious resistance which they were in the habit of offering to the
authority of the Crown and of the Court of Session, their wars, their
robberies, their fireraisings, their practice of exacting black mail from
people more peaceable and more useful than themselves, naturally excited
the disgust and indignation of an enlightened and politic gownsman, who
was, both by the constitution of his mind and by the habits of his
profession, a lover of law and order. His object was no less than a complete
dissolution and reconstruction of society in the Highlands, such a
dissolution and reconstruction as, two generations later, followed the battle
of Culloden. In his view the clans, as they existed, were the plagues of the
kingdom; and of all the clans, the worst was that which inhabited Glencoe.
He had, it is said, been particularly struck by a frightful instance of the
lawlessness and ferocity of those marauders. One of them, who had been

concerned in some act of violence or rapine, had given information against
his companions. He had been bound to a tree and murdered. The old chief
had given the first stab; and scores of dirks had then been plunged into the
wretch's body. 223 By the mountaineers such an act was probably regarded
as a legitimate exercise of patriarchal jurisdiction. To the Master of Stair it
seemed that people among whom such things were done and were approved
ought to be treated like a pack of wolves, snared by any device, and
slaughtered without mercy. He was well read in history, and doubtless knew
how great rulers had, in his own and other countries, dealt with such
banditti. He doubtless knew with what energy and what severity James the
Fifth had put down the mosstroopers of the border, how the chief of
Henderland had been hung over the gate of the castle in which he had
prepared a banquet for the King; how John Armstrong and his thirty-six
horsemen, when they came forth to welcome their sovereign, had scarcely
been allowed time to say a single prayer before they were all tied up and
turned off. Nor probably was the Secretary ignorant of the means by which
Sixtus the Fifth had cleared the ecclesiastical state of outlaws. The eulogists
of that great pontiff tell us that there was one formidable gang which could
not be dislodged from a stronghold among the Apennines. Beasts of burden
were therefore loaded with poisoned food and wine, and sent by a road
which ran close to the fastness. The robbers sallied forth, seized the prey,
feasted and died; and the pious old Pope exulted greatly when he heard that
the corpses of thirty ruffians, who had been the terror of many peaceful
villages, had been found lying among the mules and packages. The plans of
the Master of Stair were conceived in the spirit of James and of Sixtus; and
the rebellion of the mountaineers furnished what seemed to be an excellent
opportunity for carrying those plans into effect. Mere rebellion, indeed, he
could have easily pardoned. On Jacobites, as Jacobites, he never showed
any inclination to bear hard. He hated the Highlanders, not as enemies of
this or that dynasty, but as enemies of law, of industry and of trade. In his
private correspondence he applied to them the short and terrible form of
words in which the implacable Roman pronounced the doom of Carthage.
His project was no less than this, that the whole hill country from sea to sea,
and the neighbouring islands, should be wasted with fire and sword, that the
Camerons, the Macleans, and all the branches of the race of Macdonald,
should be rooted out. He therefore looked with no friendly eye on schemes
of reconciliation, and, while others were hoping that a little money would

set everything right, hinted very intelligibly his opinion that whatever
money was to be laid out on the clans would be best laid out in the form of
bullets and bayonets. To the last moment he continued to flatter himself that
the rebels would be obstinate, and would thus furnish him with a plea for
accomplishing that great social revolution on which his heart was set. 224
The letter is still extant in which he directed the commander of the forces in
Scotland how to act if the Jacobite chiefs should not come in before the end
of December. There is something strangely terrible in the calmness and
conciseness with which the instructions are given. "Your troops will destroy
entirely the country of Lochaber, Lochiel's lands, Keppoch's, Glengarry's
and Glencoe's. Your power shall be large enough. I hope the soldiers will
not trouble the government with prisoners." 225
This despatch had scarcely been sent off when news arrived in London
that the rebel chiefs, after holding out long, had at last appeared before the
Sheriffs and taken the oaths. Lochiel, the most eminent man among them,
had not only declared that he would live and die a true subject to King
William, but had announced his intention of visiting England, in the hope of
being permitted to kiss His Majesty's hand. In London it was announced
exultingly that every clan, without exception, had submitted in time; and the
announcement was generally thought most satisfactory. 226 But the Master
of Stair was bitterly disappointed. The Highlands were then to continue to
be what they had been, the shame and curse of Scotland. A golden
opportunity of subjecting them to the law had been suffered to escape, and
might never return. If only the Macdonalds would have stood out, nay, if an
example could but have been made of the two worst Macdonalds, Keppoch
and Glencoe, it would have been something. But it seemed that even
Keppoch and Glencoe, marauders who in any well governed country would
have been hanged thirty years before, were safe. 227 While the Master was
brooding over thoughts like these, Argyle brought him some comfort. The
report that Mac Ian had taken the oaths within the prescribed time was
erroneous. The Secretary was consoled. One clan, then, was at the mercy of
the government, and that clan the most lawless of all. One great act of
justice, nay of charity, might be performed. One terrible and memorable
example might be given. 228
Yet there was a difficulty. Mac Ian had taken the oaths. He had taken
them, indeed, too late to be entitled to plead the letter of the royal promise;
but the fact that he had taken them was one which evidently ought not to

have been concealed from those who were to decide his fate. By a dark
intrigue, of which the history is but imperfectly known, but which was, in
all probability, directed by the Master of Stair, the evidence of Mac Ian's
tardy submission was suppressed. The certificate which the Sheriff of
Argyleshire had transmitted to the Council at Edinburgh, was never laid
before the board, but was privately submitted to some persons high in
office, and particularly to Lord President Stair, the father of the Secretary.
These persons pronounced the certificate irregular, and, indeed, absolutely
null; and it was cancelled.
Meanwhile the Master of Stair was forming, in concert with Breadalbane
and Argyle, a plan for the destruction of the people of Glencoe. It was
necessary to take the King's pleasure, not, indeed, as to the details of what
was to be done, but as to the question whether Mac Ian and his people
should or should not be treated as rebels out of the pale of the ordinary law.
The Master of Stair found no difficulty in the royal closet. William had, in
all probability, never heard the Glencoe men mentioned except as banditti.
He knew that they had not come in by the prescribed day. That they had
come in after that day he did not know. If he paid any attention to the
matter, he must have thought that so fair an opportunity of putting an end to
the devastations and depredations from which a quiet and industrious
population had suffered so much ought not to be lost.
An order was laid before him for signature. He signed it, but, if Burnet
may be trusted, did not read it. Whoever has seen anything of public
business knows that princes and ministers daily sign, and indeed must sign,
documents which they have not read; and of all documents a document
relating to a small tribe of mountaineers, living in a wilderness not set down
in any map, was least likely to interest a Sovereign whose mind was full of
schemes on which the fate of Europe might depend. 229 But, even on the
supposition that he read the order to which he affixed his name, there seems
to be no reason for blaming him. That order, directed to the Commander of
the Forces in Scotland, runs thus: "As for Mac Ian of Glencoe and that tribe,
if they can be well distinguished from the other Highlanders, it will be
proper, for the vindication of public justice, to extirpate that set of thieves."
These words naturally bear a sense perfectly innocent, and would, but for
the horrible event which followed, have been universally understood in that
sense. It is undoubtedly one of the first duties of every government to
extirpate gangs of thieves. This does not mean that every thief ought to be

treacherously assassinated in his sleep, or even that every thief ought to be
publicly executed after a fair trial, but that every gang, as a gang, ought to
be completely broken up, and that whatever severity is indispensably
necessary for that end ought to be used. If William had read and weighed
the words which were submitted to him by his Secretary, he would probably
have understood them to mean that Glencoe was to be occupied by troops,
that resistance, if resistance were attempted, was to be put down with a
strong hand, that severe punishment was to be inflicted on those leading
members of the clan who could be proved to have been guilty of great
crimes, that some active young freebooters, who were more used to handle
the broad sword than the plough, and who did not seem likely to settle
down into quiet labourers, were to be sent to the army in the Low
Countries, that others were to be transported to the American plantations,
and that those Macdonalds who were suffered to remain in their native
valley were to be disarmed and required to give hostages for good
behaviour. A plan very nearly resembling this had, we know, actually been
the subject of much discussion in the political circles of Edinburgh. 230
There can be little doubt that William would have deserved well of his
people if he had, in this manner, extirpated not only the tribe of Mac Ian,
but every Highland tribe whose calling was to steal cattle and burn houses.
The extirpation planned by the Master of Stair was of a different kind.
His design was to butcher the whole race of thieves, the whole damnable
race. Such was the language in which his hatred vented itself. He studied
the geography of the wild country which surrounded Glencoe, and made his
arrangements with infernal skill. If possible, the blow must be quick, and
crushing, and altogether unexpected. But if Mac Ian should apprehend
danger and should attempt to take refuge in the territories of his neighbours,
he must find every road barred. The pass of Rannoch must be secured. The
Laird of Weems, who was powerful in Strath Tay, must be told that, if he
harbours the outlaws, he does so at his peril. Breadalbane promised to cut
off the retreat of the fugitives on one side, Mac Callum More on another. It
was fortunate, the Secretary wrote, that it was winter. This was the time to
maul the wretches. The nights were so long, the mountain tops so cold and
stormy, that even the hardiest men could not long bear exposure to the open
air without a roof or a spark of fire. That the women and the children could
find shelter in the desert was quite impossible. While he wrote thus, no
thought that he was committing a great wickedness crossed his mind. He

was happy in the approbation of his own conscience. Duty, justice, nay
charity and mercy, were the names under which he disguised his cruelty;
nor is it by any means improbable that the disguise imposed upon himself.
231
Hill, who commanded the forces assembled at Fort William, was not
entrusted with the execution of the design. He seems to have been a humane
man; he was much distressed when he learned that the government was
determined on severity; and it was probably thought that his heart might fail
him in the most critical moment. He was directed to put a strong
detachment under the orders of his second in command, Lieutenant Colonel
Hamilton. To Hamilton a significant hint was conveyed that he had now an
excellent opportunity of establishing his character in the estimation of those
who were at the head of affairs. Of the troops entrusted to him a large
proportion were Campbells, and belonged to a regiment lately raised by
Argyle, and called by Argyle's name, It was probably thought that, on such
an occasion, humanity might prove too strong for the mere habit of military
obedience, and that little reliance could be placed on hearts which had not
been ulcerated by a feud such as had long raged between the people of Mac
Ian and the people of Mac Callum More.
Had Hamilton marched openly against the Glencoe men and put them to
the edge of the sword, the act would probably not have wanted apologists,
and most certainly would not have wanted precedents. But the Master of
Stair had strongly recommended a different mode of proceeding. If the least
alarm were given, the nest of robbers would be found empty; and to hunt
them down in so wild a region would, even with all the help that
Breadalbane and Argyle could give, be a long and difficult business.
"Better," he wrote, "not meddle with them than meddle to no purpose.
When the thing is resolved, let it be secret and sudden." 232 He was obeyed;
and it was determined that the Glencoe men should perish, not by military
execution, but by the most dastardly and perfidious form of assassination.
On the first of February a hundred and twenty soldiers of Argyle's
regiment, commanded by a captain named Campbell and a lieutenant
named Lindsay, marched to Glencoe. Captain Campbell was commonly
called in Scotland Glenlyon, from the pass in which his property lay. He
had every qualification for the service on which he was employed, an
unblushing forehead, a smooth lying tongue, and a heart of adamant. He

was also one of the few Campbells who were likely to be trusted and
welcomed by the Macdonalds; for his niece was married to Alexander, the
second son of Mac Ian.
The sight of the red coats approaching caused some anxiety among the
population of the valley. John, the eldest son of the Chief, came,
accompanied by twenty clansmen, to meet the strangers, and asked what
this visit meant. Lieutenant Lindsay answered that the soldiers came as
friends, and wanted nothing but quarters. They were kindly received, and
were lodged under the thatched roofs of the little community. Glenlyon and
several of his men were taken into the house of a tacksman who was named,
from the cluster of cabins over which he exercised authority, Inverriggen.
Lindsay was accommodated nearer to the abode of the old chief.
Auchintriater, one of the principal men of the clan, who governed the small
hamlet of Auchnaion, found room there for a party commanded by a
serjeant named Barbour. Provisions were liberally supplied. There was no
want of beef, which had probably fattened in distant pastures; nor was any
payment demanded; for in hospitality, as in thievery, the Gaelic marauders
rivalled the Bedouins. During twelve days the soldiers lived familiarly with
the people of the glen. Old Mac Ian, who had before felt many misgivings
as to the relation in which he stood to the government, seems to have been
pleased with the visit. The officers passed much of their time with him and
his family. The long evenings were cheerfully spent by the peat fire with the
help of some packs of cards which had found their way to that remote
corner of the world, and of some French brandy which was probably part of
James's farewell gift to his Highland supporters. Glenlyon appeared to be
warmly attached to his niece and her husband Alexander. Every day he
came to their house to take his morning draught. Meanwhile he observed
with minute attention all the avenues by which, when the signal for the
slaughter should be given, the Macdonalds might attempt to escape to the
hills; and he reported the result of his observations to Hamilton.
Hamilton fixed five o'clock in the morning of the thirteenth of February
for the deed. He hoped that, before that time, he should reach Glencoe with
four hundred men, and should have stopped all the earths in which the old
fox and his two cubs,-so Mac Ian and his sons were nicknamed by the
murderers,—could take refuge. But, at five precisely, whether Hamilton had
arrived or not, Glenlyon was to fall on, and to slay every Macdonald under
seventy.

The night was rough. Hamilton and his troops made slow progress, and
were long after their time. While they were contending with the wind and
snow, Glenlyon was supping and playing at cards with those whom he
meant to butcher before daybreak. He and Lieutenant Lindsay had engaged
themselves to dine with the old Chief on the morrow.
Late in the evening a vague suspicion that some evil was intended
crossed the mind of the Chief's eldest son. The soldiers were evidently in a
restless state; and some of them uttered strange cries. Two men, it is said,
were overheard whispering. "I do not like this job;" one of them muttered,
"I should be glad to fight the Macdonalds. But to kill men in their beds—"
"We must do as we are bid," answered another voice. "If there is any thing
wrong, our officers must answer for it." John Macdonald was so uneasy
that, soon after midnight, he went to Glenlyon's quarters. Glenlyon and his
men were all up, and seemed to be getting their arms ready for action. John,
much alarmed, asked what these preparations meant. Glenlyon was profuse
of friendly assurances. "Some of Glengarry's people have been harrying the
country. We are getting ready to march against them. You are quite safe. Do
you think that, if you were in any danger, I should not have given a hint to
your brother Sandy and his wife?" John's suspicions were quieted. He
returned to his house, and lay down to rest.
It was five in the morning. Hamilton and his men were still some miles
off; and the avenues which they were to have secured were open. But the
orders which Glenlyon had received were precise; and he began to execute
them at the little village where he was himself quartered. His host
Inverriggen and nine other Macdonalds were dragged out of their beds,
bound hand and foot, and murdered. A boy twelve years old clung round the
Captain's legs, and begged hard for life. He would do any thing; he would
go any where; he would follow Glenlyon round the world. Even Glenlyon,
it is said, showed signs of relenting; but a ruffian named Drummond shot
the child dead.
At Auchnaion the tacksman Auchintriater was up early that morning, and
was sitting with eight of his family round the fire, when a volley of
musketry laid him and seven of his companions dead or dying on the floor.
His brother, who alone had escaped unhurt, called to Serjeant Barbour, who
commanded the slayers, and asked as a favour to be allowed to die in the
open air. "Well," said the Serjeant, "I will do you that favour for the sake of

your meat which I have eaten." The mountaineer, bold, athletic, and
favoured by the darkness, came forth, rushed on the soldiers who were
about to level their pieces at him, flung his plaid over their faces, and was
gone in a moment.
Meanwhile Lindsay had knocked at the door of the old Chief and had
asked for admission in friendly language. The door was opened. Mac Ian,
while putting on his clothes and calling to his servants to bring some
refreshment for his visitors, was shot through the head. Two of his
attendants were slain with him. His wife was already up and dressed in such
finery as the princesses of the rude Highland glens were accustomed to
wear. The assassins pulled off her clothes and trinkets. The rings were not
easily taken from her fingers but a soldier tore them away with his teeth.
She died on the following day.
The statesman, to whom chiefly this great crime is to be ascribed, had
planned it with consummate ability: but the execution was complete in
nothing but in guilt and infamy. A succession of blunders saved three
fourths of the Glencoe men from the fate of their chief. All the moral
qualities which fit men to bear a part in a massacre Hamilton and Glenlyon
possessed in perfection. But neither seems to have had much professional
skill; Hamilton had arranged his plan without making allowance for bad
weather, and this in a country and at a season when the weather was very
likely to be bad. The consequence was that the fox earths, as he called them,
were not stopped in time. Glenlyon and his men committed the error of
despatching their hosts with firearms instead of using the cold steel. The
peal and flash of gun after gun gave notice, from three different parts of the
valley at once; that murder was doing. From fifty cottages the half naked
peasantry fled under cover of the night to the recesses of their pathless glen.
Even the sons of Mac Ian, who had been especially marked out for
destruction, contrived to escape. They were roused from sleep by faithful
servants. John, who, by the death of his father, had become the patriarch of
the tribe, quitted his dwelling just as twenty soldiers with fixed bayonets
marched up to it. It was broad day long before Hamilton arrived. He found
the work not even half performed. About thirty corpses lay wallowing in
blood on the dunghills before the doors. One or two women were seen
among the number, and, a yet more fearful and piteous sight, a little hand,
which had been lopped in the tumult of the butchery from some infant. One
aged Macdonald was found alive. He was probably too infirm to fly, and, as

he was above seventy, was not included in the orders under which Glenlyon
had acted. Hamilton murdered the old man in cold blood. The deserted
hamlets were then set on fire; and the troops departed, driving away with
them many sheep and goats, nine hundred kine, and two hundred of the
small shaggy ponies of the Highlands.
It is said, and may but too easily be believed, that the sufferings of the
fugitives were terrible. How many old men, how many women with babes
in their arms, sank down and slept their last sleep in the snow; how many,
having crawled, spent with toil and hunger, into nooks among the
precipices, died in those dark holes, and were picked to the bone by the
mountain ravens, can never be known. But it is probable that those who
perished by cold, weariness and want were not less numerous than those
who were slain by the assassins. When the troops had retired, the
Macdonalds crept out of the caverns of Glencoe, ventured back to the spot
where the huts had formerly stood, collected the scorched corpses from
among the smoking ruins, and performed some rude rites of sepulture. The
tradition runs that the hereditary bard of the tribe took his seat on a rock
which overhung the place of slaughter, and poured forth a long lament over
his murdered brethren, and his desolate home. Eighty years later that sad
dirge was still repeated by the population of the valley. 233
The survivors might well apprehend that they had escaped the shot and
the sword only to perish by famine. The whole domain was a waste.
Houses, barns, furniture, implements of husbandry, herds, flocks, horses,
were gone. Many months must elapse before the clan would be able to raise
on its own ground the means of supporting even the most miserable
existence. 234
It may be thought strange that these events should not have been instantly
followed by a burst of execration from every part of the civilised world. The
fact, however, is that years elapsed before the public indignation was
thoroughly awakened, and that months elapsed before the blackest part of
the story found credit even among the enemies of the government. That the
massacre should not have been mentioned in the London Gazettes, in the
Monthly Mercuries which were scarcely less courtly than the Gazettes, or in
pamphlets licensed by official censors, is perfectly intelligible. But that no
allusion to it should be found in private journals and letters, written by
persons free from all restraint, may seem extraordinary. There is not a word

on the subject in Evelyn's Diary. In Narcissus Luttrell's Diary is a
remarkable entry made five weeks after the butchery. The letters from
Scotland, he says, described that kingdom as perfectly tranquil, except that
there was still some grumbling about ecclesiastical questions. The Dutch
ministers regularly reported all the Scotch news to their government. They
thought it worth while, about this time, to mention that a collier had been
taken by a privateer near Berwick, that the Edinburgh mail had been
robbed, that a whale, with a tongue seventeen feet long and seven feet
broad, had been stranded near Aberdeen. But it is not hinted in any of their
despatches that there was any rumour of any extraordinary occurrence in
the Highlands. Reports that some of the Macdonalds had been slain did
indeed, in about three weeks, travel through Edinburgh up to London. But
these reports were vague and contradictory; and the very worst of them was
far from coming up to the horrible truth. The Whig version of the story was
that the old robber Mac Ian had laid an ambuscade for the soldiers, that he
had been caught in his own snare, and that he and some of his clan had
fallen sword in hand. The Jacobite version, written at Edinburgh on the
twenty-third of March, appeared in the Paris Gazette of the seventh of
April. Glenlyon, it was said, had been sent with a detachment from Argyle's
regiment, under cover of darkness, to surprise the inhabitants of Glencoe,
and had killed thirty-six men and boys and four women. 235 In this there
was nothing very strange or shocking. A night attack on a gang of
freebooters occupying a strong natural fortress may be a perfectly
legitimate military operation; and, in the obscurity and confusion of such an
attack, the most humane man may be so unfortunate as to shoot a woman or
a child. The circumstances which give a peculiar character to the slaughter
of Glencoe, the breach of faith, the breach of hospitality, the twelve days of
feigned friendship and conviviality, of morning calls, of social meals, of
healthdrinking, of cardplaying, were not mentioned by the Edinburgh
correspondent of the Paris Gazette; and we may therefore confidently infer
that those circumstances were as yet unknown even to inquisitive and busy
malecontents residing in the Scottish capital within a hundred miles of the
spot where the deed had been done. In the south of the island the matter
produced, as far as can now be judged, scarcely any sensation. To the
Londoner of those days Appin was what Caffraria or Borneo is to us. He
was not more moved by hearing that some Highland thieves had been
surprised and killed than we are by hearing that a band of Amakosah cattle

stealers has been cut off, or that a bark full of Malay pirates has been sunk.
He took it for granted that nothing had been done in Glencoe beyond what
was doing in many other glens. There had been a night brawl, one of a
hundred night brawls, between the Macdonalds and the Campbells; and the
Campbells had knocked the Macdonalds on the head.
By slow degrees the whole truth came out. From a letter written at
Edinburgh about two months after the crime had been committed, it appears
that the horrible story was already current among the Jacobites of that city.
In the summer Argyle's regiment was quartered in the south of England, and
some of the men made strange confessions, over their ale, about what they
had been forced to do in the preceding winter. The nonjurors soon got hold
of the clue, and followed it resolutely; their secret presses went to work;
and at length, near a year after the crime had been committed, it was
published to the world. 236 But the world was long incredulous. The
habitual mendacity of the Jacobite libellers had brought on them an
appropriate punishment. Now, when, for the first time, they told the truth,
they were supposed to be romancing. They complained bitterly that the
story, though perfectly authentic, was regarded by the public as a factious
lie. 237 So late as the year 1695, Hickes, in a tract in which he endeavoured
to defend his darling tale of the Theban legion against the unanswerable
argument drawn from the silence of historians, remarked that it might well
be doubted whether any historian would make mention of the massacre of
Glencoe. There were in England, he said, many thousands of well educated
men who had never heard of that massacre, or who regarded it as a mere
fable. 238
Nevertheless the punishment of some of the guilty began very early. Hill,
who indeed can hardly be called guilty, was much disturbed. Breadalbane,
hardened as he was, felt the stings of conscience or the dread of retribution.
A few days after the Macdonalds had returned to their old dwellingplace,
his steward visited the ruins of the house of Glencoe, and endeavoured to
persuade the sons of the murdered chief to sign a paper declaring that they
held the Earl guiltless of the blood which had been shed. They were assured
that, if they would do this, all His Lordship's great influence should be
employed to obtain for them from the Crown a free pardon and a remission
of all forfeitures. 239 Glenlyon did his best to assume an air of unconcern.
He made his appearance in the most fashionable coffeehouse at Edinburgh,
and talked loudly and self-complacently about the important service in

which he had been engaged among the mountains. Some of his soldiers,
however, who observed him closely, whispered that all this bravery was put
on. He was not the man that he had been before that night. The form of his
countenance was changed. In all places, at all hours, whether he waked or
slept, Glencoe was for ever before him. 240
But, whatever apprehensions might disturb Breadalbane, whatever
spectres might haunt Glenlyon, the Master of Stair had neither fear nor
remorse. He was indeed mortified; but he was mortified only by the
blunders of Hamilton and by the escape of so many of the damnable breed.
"Do right, and fear nobody;" such is the language of his letters. "Can there
be a more sacred duty than to rid the country of thieving? The only thing
that I regret is that any got away." 241
On the sixth of March, William, entirely ignorant, in all probability, of
the details of the crime which has cast a dark shade over his glory, had set
out for the Continent, leaving the Queen his viceregent in England. 242
He would perhaps have postponed his departure if he had been aware that
the French Government had, during some time, been making great
preparations for a descent on our island. 243 An event had taken place which
had changed the policy of the Court of Versailles. Louvois was no more. He
had been at the head of the military administration of his country during a
quarter of a century; he had borne a chief part in the direction of two wars
which had enlarged the French territory, and had filled the world with the
renown of the French arms; and he had lived to see the beginning of a third
war which tasked his great powers to the utmost. Between him and the
celebrated captains who carried his plans into execution there was little
harmony. His imperious temper and his confidence in himself impelled him
to interfere too much with the conduct of troops in the field, even when
those troops were commanded by Conde, by Turenne or by Luxemburg. But
he was the greatest Adjutant General, the greatest Quartermaster General,
the greatest Commissary General, that Europe had seen. He may indeed be
said to have made a revolution in the art of disciplining, distributing,
equipping and provisioning armies. In spite, however, of his abilities and of
his services, he had become odious to Lewis and to her who governed
Lewis. On the last occasion on which the King and the minister transacted
business together, the ill humour on both sides broke violently forth. The
servant, in his vexation, dashed his portfolio on the ground. The master,

forgetting, what he seldom forgot, that a King should be a gentleman, lifted
his cane. Fortunately his wife was present. She, with her usual prudence,
caught his arm. She then got Louvois out of the room, and exhorted him to
come back the next day as if nothing had happened. The next day he came;
but with death in his face. The King, though full of resentment, was touched
with pity, and advised Louvois to go home and take care of himself. That
evening the great minister died. 244

Louvois had constantly opposed all plans for the invasion of England.
His death was therefore regarded at Saint Germains as a fortunate event. 245
It was however necessary to look sad, and to send a gentleman to Versailles
with some words of condolence. The messenger found the gorgeous circle
of courtiers assembled round their master on the terrace above the orangery.
"Sir," said Lewis, in a tone so easy and cheerful that it filled all the
bystanders with amazement, "present my compliments and thanks to the
King and Queen of England, and tell them that neither my affairs nor theirs
will go on the worse by what has happened." These words were doubtless
meant to intimate that the influence of Louvois had not been exerted in
favour of the House of Stuart. 246 One compliment, however, a compliment
which cost France dear, Lewis thought it right to pay to the memory of his
ablest servant. The Marquess of Barbesieux, son of Louvois, was placed, in
his twenty-fifth year, at the head of the war department. The young man
was by no means deficient in abilities, and had been, during some years,
employed in business of grave importance. But his passions were strong;
his judgment was not ripe; and his sudden elevation turned his head. His
manners gave general disgust. Old officers complained that he kept them
long in his antechamber while he was amusing himself with his spaniels
and his flatterers. Those who were admitted to his presence went away
disgusted by his rudeness and arrogance. As was natural at his age, he
valued power chiefly as the means of procuring pleasure. Millions of
crowns were expended on the luxurious villa where he loved to forget the
cares of office in gay conversation, delicate cookery and foaming
champagne. He often pleaded an attack of fever as an excuse for not
making his appearance at the proper hour in the royal closet, when in truth
he had been playing truant among his boon companions and mistresses.
"The French King," said William, "has an odd taste. He chooses an old
woman for his mistress, and a young man for his minister." 247
There can be little doubt that Louvois, by pursuing that course which had
made him odious to the inmates of Saint Germains, had deserved well of his
country. He was not maddened by Jacobite enthusiasm. He well knew that
exiles are the worst of all advisers. He had excellent information; he had
excellent judgment; he calculated the chances; and he saw that a descent
was likely to fail, and to fail disastrously and disgracefully. James might
well be impatient to try the experiment, though the odds should be ten to
one against him. He might gain; and he could not lose. His folly and

obstinacy had left him nothing to risk. His food, his drink, his lodging, his
clothes, he owed to charity. Nothing could be more natural than that, for the
very smallest chance of recovering the three kingdoms which he had thrown
away, he should be willing to stake what was not his own, the honour of the
French arms, the grandeur and the safety of the French monarchy. To a
French statesman such a wager might well appear in a different light. But
Louvois was gone. His master yielded to the importunity of James, and
determined to send an expedition against England. 248
The scheme was, in some respects, well concerted. It was resolved that a
camp should be formed on the coast of Normandy, and that in this camp all
the Irish regiments which were in the French service should be assembled
under their countryman Sarsfield. With them were to be joined about ten
thousand French troops. The whole army was to be commanded by Marshal
Bellefonds.
A noble fleet of about eighty ships of the line was to convoy this force to
the shores of England. In the dockyards both of Brittany and of Provence
immense preparations were made. Four and forty men of war, some of
which were among the finest that had ever been built, were assembled in
the harbour of Brest under Tourville. The Count of Estrees, with thirty-five
more, was to sail from Toulon. Ushant was fixed for the place of
rendezvous. The very day was named. In order that there might be no want
either of seamen or of vessels for the intended expedition, all maritime
trade, all privateering was, for a time, interdicted by a royal mandate. 249
Three hundred transports were collected near the spot where the troops
were to embark. It was hoped that all would be ready early in the spring,
before the English ships were half rigged or half manned, and before a
single Dutch man of war was in the Channel. 250
James had indeed persuaded himself that, even if the English fleet should
fall in with him, it would not oppose him. He imagined that he was
personally a favourite with the mariners of all ranks. His emissaries had
been busy among the naval officers, and had found some who remembered
him with kindness, and others who were out of humour with the men now
in power. All the wild talk of a class of people not distinguished by
taciturnity or discretion was reported to him with exaggeration, till he was
deluded into a belief that he had more friends than enemies on board of the
vessels which guarded our coasts. Yet he should have known that a rough

sailor, who thought himself ill used by the Admiralty, might, after the third
bottle, when drawn on by artful companions, express his regret for the good
old times, curse the new government, and curse himself for being such a
fool as to fight for that government, and yet might be by no means prepared
to go over to the French on the day of battle. Of the malecontent officers,
who, as James believed, were impatient to desert, the great majority had
probably given no pledge of their attachment to him except an idle word
hiccoughed out when they were drunk, and forgotten when they were sober.
One those from whom he expected support, Rear Admiral Carter, had
indeed heard and perfectly understood what the Jacobite agents had to say,
had given them fair words, and had reported the whole to the Queen and her
ministers. 251
But the chief dependence of James was on Russell. That false, arrogant
and wayward politician was to command the Channel Fleet. He had never
ceased to assure the Jacobite emissaries that he was bent on effecting a
Restoration. Those emissaries fully reckoned, if not on his entire
cooperation, yet at least on his connivance; and there could be no doubt
that, with his connivance, a French fleet might easily convoy an army to our
shores. James flattered himself that, as soon as he had landed, he should be
master of the island. But in truth, when the voyage had ended, the
difficulties of his enterprise would have been only beginning. Two years
before he had received a lesson by which he should have profited. He had
then deceived himself and others into the belief that the English were
regretting him, were pining for him, were eager to rise in arms by tens of
thousands to welcome him. William was then, as now, at a distance. Then,
as now, the administration was entrusted to a woman. Then, as now, there
were few regular troops in England. Torrington had then done as much to
injure the government which he served as Russell could now do. The
French fleet had then, after riding, during several weeks, victorious and
dominant in the Channel, landed some troops on the southern coast. The
immediate effect had been that whole counties, without distinction of Tory
or Whig, Churchman or Dissenter, had risen up, as one man, to repel the
foreigners, and that the Jacobite party, which had, a few days before,
seemed to be half the nation, had crouched down in silent terror, and had
made itself so small that it had, during some time, been invisible. What
reason was there for believing that the multitude who had, in 1690, at the
first lighting of the beacons, snatched up firelocks, pikes, scythes, to

defend, their native soil against the French, would now welcome the French
as allies? And of the army by which James was now to be accompanied the
French formed the least odious part. More than half of that army was to
consist of Irish Papists; and the feeling, compounded of hatred and scorn,
with which the Irish Papists had long been regarded by the English
Protestants, had by recent events been stimulated to a vehemence before
unknown. The hereditary slaves, it was said, had been for a moment free;
and that moment had sufficed to prove that they knew neither how to use
nor how to defend their freedom. During their short ascendency they had
done nothing but slay, and burn, and pillage, and demolish, and attaint, and
confiscate. In three years they had committed such waste on their native
land as thirty years of English intelligence and industry would scarcely
repair. They would have maintained their independence against the world, if
they had been as ready to fight as they were to steal. But they had retreated
ignominiously from the walls of Londonderry. They had fled like deer
before the yeomanry of Enniskillen. The Prince whom they now presumed
to think that they could place, by force of arms, on the English throne, had
himself, on the morning after the rout of the Boyne, reproached them with
their cowardice, and told them that he would never again trust to their
soldiership. On this subject Englishmen were of one mind. Tories,
Nonjurors, even Roman Catholics, were as loud as Whigs in reviling the ill
fated race. It is, therefore, not difficult to guess what effect would have been
produced by the appearance on our soil of enemies whom, on their own
soil, we had vanquished and trampled down.
James, however, in spite of the recent and severe teaching of experience,
believed whatever his correspondents in England told him; and they told
him that the whole nation was impatiently expecting him, that both the West
and the North were ready to rise, that he would proceed from the place of
landing to Whitehall with as little opposition as when, in old times, he
returned from a progress. Ferguson distinguished himself by the confidence
with which he predicted a complete and bloodless victory. He and his
printer, he was absurd enough to write, would be the two first men in the
realm to take horse for His Majesty. Many other agents were busy up and
down the country, during the winter and the early part of the spring. It does
not appear that they had much success in the counties south of Trent. But in
the north, particularly in Lancashire, where the Roman Catholics were more
numerous and more powerful than in any other part of the kingdom, and

where there seems to have been, even among the Protestant gentry, more
than the ordinary proportion of bigoted Jacobites, some preparations for an
insurrection were made. Arms were privately bought; officers were
appointed; yeomen, small farmers, grooms, huntsmen, were induced to
enlist. Those who gave in their names were distributed into eight regiments
of cavalry and dragoons, and were directed to hold themselves in readiness
to mount at the first signal. 252
One of the circumstances which filled James, at this time, with vain
hopes, was that his wife was pregnant and near her delivery. He flattered
himself that malice itself would be ashamed to repeat any longer the story
of the warming pan, and that multitudes whom that story had deceived
would instantly return to their allegiance. He took, on this occasion, all
those precautions which, four years before, he had foolishly and perversely
forborne to take. He contrived to transmit to England letters summoning
many Protestant women of quality to assist at the expected birth; and he
promised, in the name of his dear brother the Most Christian King, that they
should be free to come and go in safety. Had some of these witnesses been
invited to Saint James's on the morning of the tenth of June 1688, the House
of Stuart might, perhaps, now be reigning in our island. But it is easier to
keep a crown than to regain one. It might be true that a calumnious fable
had done much to bring about the Revolution. But it by no means followed
that the most complete refutation of that fable would bring about a
Restoration. Not a single lady crossed the sea in obedience to James's call.
His Queen was safely delivered of a daughter; but this event produced no
perceptible effect on the state of public feeling in England. 253
Meanwhile the preparations for his expedition were going on fast. He
was on the point of setting out for the place of embarkation before the
English government was at all aware of the danger which was impending. It
had been long known indeed that many thousands of Irish were assembled
in Normandy; but it was supposed that they had been assembled merely that
they might be mustered and drilled before they were sent to Flanders,
Piedmont, and Catalonia. 254 Now, however, intelligence, arriving from
many quarters, left no doubt that an invasion would be almost immediately
attempted. Vigorous preparations for defence were made. The equipping
and manning of the ships was urged forward with vigour. The regular troops
were drawn together between London and the sea. A great camp was
formed on the down which overlooks Portsmouth. The militia all over the

kingdom was called out. Two Westminster regiments and six City
regiments, making up a force of thirteen thousand fighting men, were
arrayed in Hyde Park, and passed in review before the Queen. The
trainbands of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey marched down to the coast.
Watchmen were posted by the beacons. Some nonjurors were imprisoned,
some disarmed, some held to bail. The house of the Earl of Huntingdon, a
noted Jacobite, was searched. He had had time to burn his papers and to
hide his arms; but his stables presented a most suspicious appearance.
Horses enough to mount a whole troop of cavalry were at the mangers; and
this evidence, though not legally sufficient to support a charge of treason,
was thought sufficient, at such a conjuncture, to justify the Privy Council in
sending him to the Tower. 255 Meanwhile James had gone down to his army,
which was encamped round the basin of La Hogue, on the northern coast of
the peninsula known by the name of the Cotentin. Before he quitted Saint
Germains, he held a Chapter of the Garter for the purpose of admitting his
son into the order. Two noblemen were honoured with the same distinction,
Powis, who, among his brother exiles, was now called a Duke, and Melfort,
who had returned from Rome, and was again James's Prime Minister. 256
Even at this moment, when it was of the greatest importance to conciliate
the members of the Church of England, none but members of the Church of
Rome were thought worthy of any mark of royal favour. Powis indeed was
an eminent member of the English aristocracy; and his countrymen disliked
him as little as they disliked any conspicuous Papist. But Melfort was not
even an Englishman; he had never held office in England; he had never sate
in the English Parliament; and he had therefore no pretensions to a dignity
peculiarly English. He was moreover hated by all the contending factions of
all the three kingdoms. Royal letters countersigned by him had been sent
both to the Convention at Westminster and to the Convention at Edinburgh;
and, both at Westminster and at Edinburgh, the sight of his odious name and
handwriting had made the most zealous friends of hereditary right hang
down their heads in shame. It seems strange that even James should have
chosen, at such a conjuncture, to proclaim to the world that the men whom
his people most abhorred were the men whom he most delighted to honour.
Still more injurious to his interests was the Declaration in which he
announced his intentions to his subjects. Of all the State papers which were
put forth even by him it was the most elaborately and ostentatiously
injudicious. When it had disgusted and exasperated all good Englishmen of

all parties, the Papists at Saint Germains pretended that it had been drawn
up by a stanch Protestant, Edward Herbert, who had been Chief Justice of
the Common Pleas before the Revolution, and who now bore the empty title
of Chancellor. 257 But it is certain that Herbert was never consulted about
any matter of importance, and that the Declaration was the work of Melfort
and of Melfort alone. 258 In truth, those qualities of head and heart which
had made Melfort the favourite of his master shone forth in every sentence.
Not a word was to be found indicating that three years of banishment had
made the King wiser, that he had repented of a single error, that he took to
himself even the smallest part of the blame of that revolution which had
dethroned him, or that he purposed to follow a course in any respect
differing from that which had already been fatal to him. All the charges
which had been brought against him he pronounced to be utterly
unfounded. Wicked men had put forth calumnies. Weak men had believed
those calumnies. He alone had been faultless. He held out no hope that he
would consent to any restriction of that vast dispensing power to which he
had formerly laid claim, that he would not again, in defiance of the plainest
statutes, fill the Privy Council, the bench of justice, the public offices, the
army, the navy, with Papists, that he would not reestablish the High
Commission, that he would not appoint a new set of regulators to remodel
all the constituent bodies of the kingdom. He did indeed condescend to say
that he would maintain the legal rights of the Church of England; but he had
said this before; and all men knew what those words meant in his mouth.
Instead of assuring his people of his forgiveness, he menaced them with a
proscription more terrible than any which our island had ever seen. He
published a list of persons who had no mercy to expect. Among these were
Ormond, Caermarthen, Nottingham, Tillotson and Burnet. After the roll of
those who were doomed to death by name, came a series of categories. First
stood all the crowd of rustics who had been rude to His Majesty when he
was stopped at Sheerness in his flight. These poor ignorant wretches, some
hundreds in number, were reserved for another bloody circuit. Then came
all persons who had in any manner borne a part in the punishment of any
Jacobite conspirator; judges, counsel, witnesses, grand jurymen, petty
jurymen, sheriffs and undersheriffs, constables and turnkeys, in short, all
the ministers of justice from Holt down to Ketch. Then vengeance was
denounced against all spies and all informers who had divulged to the
usurpers the designs of the Court of Saint Germains. All justices of the

peace who should not declare for their rightful Sovereign the moment that
they heard of his landing, all gaolers who should not instantly set political
prisoners at liberty, were to be left to the extreme rigour of the law. No
exception was made in favour of a justice or of a gaoler who might be
within a hundred yards of one of William's regiments, and a hundred miles
from the nearest place where there was a single Jacobite in arms.
It might have been expected that James, after thus denouncing vengeance
against large classes of his subjects, would at least have offered a general
amnesty to the rest. But of general amnesty he said not a word. He did
indeed promise that any offender who was not in any of the categories of
proscription, and who should by any eminent service merit indulgence,
should receive a special pardon. But, with this exception, all the offenders,
hundreds of thousands in number, were merely informed that their fate
should be decided in Parliament.
The agents of James speedily dispersed his Declaration over every part of
the kingdom, and by doing so rendered a great service to William. The
general cry was that the banished oppressor had at least given Englishmen
fair warning, and that, if, after such a warning, they welcomed him home,
they would have no pretence for complaining, though every county town
should be polluted by an assize resembling that which Jeffreys had held at
Taunton. That some hundreds of people,—the Jacobites put the number so
low as five hundred,—were to be hanged without mercy was certain; and
nobody who had concurred in the Revolution, nobody who had fought for
the new government by sea or land, no soldier who had borne a part in the
conquest of Ireland, no Devonshire ploughman or Cornish miner who had
taken arms to defend his wife and children against Tourville, could be
certain that he should not be hanged. How abject too, how spiteful, must be
the nature of a man who, engaged in the most momentous of all
undertakings, and aspiring to the noblest of all prizes, could not refrain
from proclaiming that he thirsted for the blood of a multitude of poor
fishermen, because, more than three years before, they had pulled him
about and called him Hatchetface. If, at the very moment when he had the
strongest motives for trying to conciliate his people by the show of
clemency, he could not bring himself to hold towards them any language
but that of an implacable enemy, what was to be expected from him when
he should be again their master? So savage was his nature that, in a
situation in which all other tyrants have resorted to blandishments and fair

promises, he could utter nothing but reproaches and threats. The only words
in his Declaration which had any show of graciousness were those in which
he promised to send away the foreign troops as soon as his authority was
reestablished; and many said that those words, when examined, would be
found full of sinister meaning. He held out no hope that he would send
away Popish troops who were his own subjects. His intentions were
manifest. The French might go; but the Irish would remain. The people of
England were to be kept down by these thrice subjugated barbarians. No
doubt a Rapparee who had run away at Newton Butler and the Boyne might
find courage enough to guard the scaffolds on which his conquerors were to
die, and to lay waste our country as he had laid waste his own.
The Queen and her ministers, instead of attempting to suppress James's
manifesto, very wisely reprinted it, and sent it forth licensed by the
Secretary of State, and interspersed with remarks by a shrewd and severe
commentator. It was refuted in many keen pamphlets; it was turned into
doggrel rhymes; and it was left undefended even by the boldest and most
acrimonious libellers among the nonjurors. 259
Indeed, some of the nonjurors were so much alarmed by observing the
effect which this manifesto produced, that they affected to treat it as
spurious, and published as their master's genuine Declaration a paper full of
gracious professions and promises. They made him offer a free pardon to all
his people with the exception of four great criminals. They made him hold
out hopes of great remissions of taxation. They made him pledge his word
that he would entrust the whole ecclesiastical administration to the
nonjuring bishops. But this forgery imposed on nobody, and was important
only as showing that even the Jacobites were ashamed of the prince whom
they were labouring to restore. 260
No man read the Declaration with more surprise and anger than Russell.
Bad as he was, he was much under the influence of two feelings, which,
though they cannot be called virtuous, have some affinity to virtue, and are
respectable when compared with mere selfish cupidity. Professional spirit
and party spirit were strong in him. He might be false to his country, but not
to his flag; and, even in becoming a Jacobite, he had not ceased to be a
Whig. In truth, he was a Jacobite only because he was the most intolerant
and acrimonious of Whigs. He thought himself and his faction ungratefully
neglected by William, and was for a time too much blinded by resentment

to perceive that it would be mere madness in the old Roundheads, the old
Exclusionists, to punish William by recalling James. The near prospect of
an invasion, and the Declaration in which Englishmen were plainly told
what they had to expect if that invasion should be successful, produced, it
should seem, a sudden and entire change in Russell's feelings; and that
change he distinctly avowed. "I wish," he said to Lloyd, "to serve King
James. The thing might be done, if it were not his own fault. But he takes
the wrong way with us. Let him forget all the past; let him grant a general
pardon; and then I will see what I can do for him." Lloyd hinted something
about the honours and rewards designed for Russell himself. But the
Admiral, with a spirit worthy of a better man, cut him short. "I do not wish
to hear anything on that subject. My solicitude is for the public. And do not
think that I will let the French triumph over us in our own sea. Understand
this, that if I meet them I fight them, ay, though His Majesty himself should
be on board."
This conversation was truly reported to James; but it does not appear to
have alarmed him. He was, indeed, possessed with a belief that Russell,
even if willing, would not be able to induce the officers and sailors of the
English navy to fight against their old King, who was also their old
Admiral.
The hopes which James felt, he and his favourite Melfort succeeded in
imparting to Lewis and to Lewis's ministers. 261 But for those hopes,
indeed, it is probable that all thoughts of invading England in the course of
that year would have been laid aside. For the extensive plan which had been
formed in the winter had, in the course of the spring, been disconcerted by a
succession of accidents such as are beyond the control of human wisdom.
The time fixed for the assembling of all the maritime forces of France at
Ushant had long elapsed; and not a single sail had appeared at the place of
rendezvous. The Atlantic squadron was still detained by bad weather in the
port of Brest. The Mediterranean squadron, opposed by a strong west wind,
was vainly struggling to pass the pillars of Hercules. Two fine vessels had
gone to pieces on the rocks of Ceuta. 262 Meanwhile the admiralties of the
allied powers had been active. Before the end of April the English fleet was
ready to sail. Three noble ships, just launched from our dockyards, appeared
for the first time on the water. 263 William had been hastening the maritime
preparations of the United Provinces; and his exertions had been successful.
On the twenty-ninth of April a fine squadron from the Texel appeared in the

Downs. Soon came the North Holland squadron, the Maes squadron, the
Zealand squadron. 264 The whole force of the confederate powers was
assembled at Saint Helen's in the second week of May, more than ninety
sail of the line, manned by between thirty and forty thousand of the finest
seamen of the two great maritime nations. Russell had the chief command.
He was assisted by Sir Ralph Delaval, Sir John Ashley, Sir Cloudesley
Shovel, Rear Admiral Carter, and Rear Admiral Rooke. Of the Dutch
officers Van Almonde was highest in rank.
No mightier armament had ever appeared in the British Channel. There
was little reason for apprehending that such a force could be defeated in a
fair conflict. Nevertheless there was great uneasiness in London. It was
known that there was a Jacobite party in the navy. Alarming rumours had
worked their way round from France. It was said that the enemy reckoned
on the cooperation of some of those officers on whose fidelity, in this crisis,
the safety of the State might depend. Russell, as far as can now be
discovered, was still unsuspected. But others, who were probably less
criminal, had been more indiscreet. At all the coffee houses admirals and
captains were mentioned by name as traitors who ought to be instantly
cashiered, if not shot. It was even confidently affirmed that some of the
guilty had been put under arrest, and others turned out of the service. The
Queen and her counsellors were in a great strait. It was not easy to say
whether the danger of trusting the suspected persons or the danger of
removing them were the greater. Mary, with many painful misgivings,
resolved, and the event proved that she resolved wisely, to treat the evil
reports as calumnious, to make a solemn appeal to the honour of the
accused gentlemen, and then to trust the safety of her kingdom to their
national and professional spirit.
On the fifteenth of May a great assembly of officers was convoked at
Saint Helen's on board the Britannia, a fine three decker, from which
Russell's flag was flying. The Admiral told them that he had received a
despatch which he was charged to read to them. It was from Nottingham.
The Queen, the Secretary wrote, had been informed that stories deeply
affecting the character of the navy were in circulation. It had even been
affirmed that she had found herself under the necessity of dismissing many
officers. But Her Majesty was determined to believe nothing against those
brave servants of the State. The gentlemen who had been so foully
slandered might be assured that she placed entire reliance on them. This

letter was admirably calculated to work on those to whom it was addressed.
Very few of them probably had been guilty of any worse offence than rash
and angry talk over their wine. They were as yet only grumblers. If they had
fancied that they were marked men, they might in selfdefence have become
traitors. They became enthusiastically loyal as soon as they were assured
that the Queen reposed entire confidence in their loyalty. They eagerly
signed an address in which they entreated her to believe that they would,
with the utmost resolution and alacrity, venture their lives in defence of her
rights, of English freedom and of the Protestant religion, against all foreign
and Popish invaders. "God," they added, "preserve your person, direct your
counsels, and prosper your arms; and let all your people say Amen." 265
The sincerity of these professions was soon brought to the test. A few
hours after the meeting on board of the Britannia the masts of Tourville's
squadron were seen from the cliffs of Portland. One messenger galloped
with the news from Weymouth to London, and roused Whitehall at three in
the morning. Another took the coast road, and carried the intelligence to
Russell. All was ready; and on the morning of the seventeenth of May the
allied fleet stood out to sea. 266
Tourville had with him only his own squadron, consisting of forty-four
ships of the line. But he had received positive orders to protect the descent
on England, and not to decline a battle. Though these orders had been given
before it was known at Versailles that the Dutch and English fleets had
joined, he was not disposed to take on himself the responsibility of
disobedience. He still remembered with bitterness the reprimand which his
extreme caution had drawn upon him after the fight of Beachy Head. He
would not again be told that he was a timid and unenterprising commander,
that he had no courage but the vulgar courage of a common sailor. He was
also persuaded that the odds against him were rather apparent than real. He
believed, on the authority of James and Melfort, that the English seamen,
from the flag officers down to the cabin boys, were Jacobites. Those who
fought would fight with half a heart; and there would probably be numerous
desertions at the most critical moment. Animated by such hopes he sailed
from Brest, steered first towards the north east, came in sight of the coast of
Dorsetshire, and then struck across the Channel towards La Hogue, where
the army which he was to convoy to England had already begun to embark
on board of the transports. He was within a few leagues of Barfleur when,
before daybreak, on the morning of the nineteenth of May, he saw the great

armament of the allies stretching along the eastern horizon. He determined
to bear down on them. By eight the two lines of battle were formed; but it
was eleven before the firing began. It soon became plain that the English,
from the Admiral downward, were resolved to do their duty. Russell had
visited all his ships, and exhorted all his crews. "If your commanders play
false," he said, "overboard with them, and with myself the first." There was
no defection. There was no slackness. Carter was the first who broke the
French line. He was struck by a splinter of one of his own yard arms, and
fell dying on the deck. He would not be carried below. He would not let go
his sword. "Fight the ship," were his last words: "fight the ship as long as
she can swim." The battle lasted till four in the afternoon. The roar of the
guns was distinctly heard more than twenty miles off by the army which
was encamped on the coast of Normandy. During the earlier part of the day
the wind was favourable to the French; they were opposed to half of the
allied fleet; and against that half they maintained the conflict with their
usual courage and with more than their usual seamanship. After a hard and
doubtful fight of five hours, Tourville thought that enough had been done to
maintain the honour of the white flag, and began to draw off. But by this
time the wind had veered, and was with the allies. They were now able to
avail themselves of their great superiority of force. They came on fast. The
retreat of the French became a flight. Tourville fought his own ship
desperately. She was named, in allusion to Lewis's favourite emblem, the
Royal Sun, and was widely renowned as the finest vessel in the world. It
was reported among the English sailors that she was adorned with an image
of the Great King, and that he appeared there, as he appeared in the Place of
Victories, with vanquished nations in chains beneath his feet. The gallant
ship, surrounded by enemies, lay like a great fortress on the sea, scattering
death on every side from her hundred and four portholes. She was so
formidably manned that all attempts to board her failed. Long after sunset,
she got clear of her assailants, and, with all her scuppers spouting blood,
made for the coast of Normandy. She had suffered so much that Tourville
hastily removed his flag to a ship of ninety guns which was named the
Ambitious. By this time his fleet was scattered far over the sea. About
twenty of his smallest ships made their escape by a road which was too
perilous for any courage but the courage of despair. In the double darkness
of night and of a thick sea fog, they ran, with all their sails spread, through
the boiling waves and treacherous rocks of the Race of Alderney, and, by a

strange good fortune, arrived without a single disaster at Saint Maloes. The
pursuers did not venture to follow the fugitives into that terrible strait, the
place of innumerable shipwrecks. 267
Those French vessels which were too bulky to venture into the Race of
Alderney fled to the havens of the Cotentin. The Royal Sun and two other
three deckers reached Cherburg in safety. The Ambitious, with twelve other
ships, all first rates or second rates, took refuge in the Bay of La Hogue,
close to the headquarters of the army of James.
The three ships which had fled to Cherburg were closely chased by an
English squadron under the command of Delaval. He found them hauled up
into shoal water where no large man of war could get at them. He therefore
determined to attack them with his fireships and boats. The service was
gallantly and successfully performed. In a short time the Royal Sun and her
two consorts were burned to ashes. Part of the crews escaped to the shore;
and part fell into the hands of the English. 268
Meanwhile Russell with the greater part of his victorious fleet had
blockaded the Bay of La Hogue. Here, as at Cherburg, the French men of
war had been drawn up into shallow water. They lay close to the camp of
the army which was destined for the invasion of England. Six of them were
moored under a fort named Lisset. The rest lay under the guns of another
fort named Saint Vaast, where James had fixed his headquarters, and where
the Union flag, variegated by the crosses of Saint George and Saint Andrew,
hung by the side of the white flag of France. Marshal Bellefonds had
planted several batteries which, it was thought, would deter the boldest
enemy from approaching either Fort Lisset or Fort Saint Vaast. James,
however, who knew something of English seamen, was not perfectly at
ease, and proposed to send strong bodies of soldiers on board of the ships.
But Tourville would not consent to put such a slur on his profession.
Russell meanwhile was preparing for an attack. On the afternoon of the
twenty-third of May all was ready. A flotilla consisting of sloops, of
fireships, and of two hundred boats, was entrusted to the command of
Rooke. The whole armament was in the highest spirits. The rowers, flushed
by success, and animated by the thought that they were going to fight under
the eyes of the French and Irish troops who had been assembled for the
purpose of subjugating England, pulled manfully and with loud huzzas
towards the six huge wooden castles which lay close to Fort Lisset. The

French, though an eminently brave people, have always been more liable to
sudden panics than their phlegmatic neighbours the English and Germans.
On this day there was a panic both in the fleet and in the army. Tourville
ordered his sailors to man their boats, and would have led them to
encounter the enemy in the bay. But his example and his exhortations were
vain. His boats turned round and fled in confusion. The ships were
abandoned. The cannonade from Fort Lisset was so feeble and ill directed
that it did no execution. The regiments on the beach, after wasting a few
musket shots, drew off. The English boarded the men of war, set them on
fire, and having performed this great service without the loss of a single
life, retreated at a late hour with the retreating tide. The bay was in a blaze
during the night; and now and then a loud explosion announced that the
flames had reached a powder room or a tier of loaded guns. At eight the
next morning the tide came back strong; and with the tide came back Rooke
and his two hundred boats. The enemy made a faint attempt to defend the
vessels which were near Fort Saint Vaast. During a few minutes the
batteries did some execution among the crews of our skiffs; but the struggle
was soon over. The French poured fast out of their ships on one side; the
English poured in as fast on the other, and, with loud shouts, turned the
captured guns against the shore. The batteries were speedily silenced. James
and Melfort, Bellefonds and Tourville, looked on in helpless despondency
while the second conflagration proceeded. The conquerors, leaving the
ships of war in flames, made their way into an inner basin where many
transports lay. Eight of these vessels were set on fire. Several were taken in
tow. The rest would have been either destroyed or carried off, had not the
sea again begun to ebb. It was impossible to do more, and the victorious
flotilla slowly retired, insulting the hostile camp with a thundering chant of
"God save the King."
Thus ended, at noon on the twenty-fourth of May, the great conflict
which had raged during five days over a wide extent of sea and shore. One
English fireship had perished in its calling. Sixteen French men of war, all
noble vessels, and eight of them three-deckers, had been sunk or burned
down to the keel. The battle is called, from the place where it terminated,
the battle of La Hogue. 269
The news was received in London with boundless exultation. In the fight
on the open sea, indeed, the numerical superiority of the allies had been so
great that they had little reason to boast of their success. But the courage

and skill with which the crews of the English boats had, in a French
harbour, in sight of a French army, and under the fire of French batteries,
destroyed a fine French fleet, amply justified the pride with which our
fathers pronounced the name of La Hogue. That we may fully enter into
their feelings, we must remember that this was the first great check that had
ever been given to the arms of Lewis the Fourteenth, and the first great
victory that the English had gained over the French since the day of
Agincourt. The stain left on our fame by the shameful defeat of Beachy
Head was effaced. This time the glory was all our own. The Dutch had
indeed done their duty, as they have always done it in maritime war,
whether fighting on our side or against us, whether victorious or
vanquished. But the English had borne the brunt of the fight. Russell who
commanded in chief was an Englishman. Delaval who directed the attack
on Cherburg was an Englishman. Rooke who led the flotilla into the Bay of
La Hogue was an Englishman. The only two officers of note who had
fallen, Admiral Carter and Captain Hastings of the Sandwich, were
Englishmen. Yet the pleasure with which the good news was received here
must not be ascribed solely or chiefly to national pride. The island was safe.
The pleasant pastures, cornfields and commons of Hampshire and Surrey
would not be the seat of war. The houses and gardens, the kitchens and
dairies, the cellars and plate chests, the wives and daughters of our gentry
and clergy would not be at the mercy of Irish Rapparees, who had sacked
the dwellings and skinned the cattle of the Englishry of Leinster, or of
French dragoons accustomed to live at free quarters on the Protestants of
Auvergne. Whigs and Tories joined in thanking God for this great
deliverance; and the most respectable nonjurors could not but be glad at
heart that the rightful King was not to be brought back by an army of
foreigners.
The public joy was therefore all but universal. During several days the
bells of London pealed without ceasing. Flags were flying on all the
steeples. Rows of candles were in all the windows. Bonfires were at all the
corners of the streets. 270 The sense which the government entertained of
the services of the navy was promptly, judiciously and gracefully
manifested. Sidney and Portland were sent to meet the fleet at Portsmouth,
and were accompanied by Rochester, as the representative of the Tories.
The three Lords took down with them thirty-seven thousand pounds in coin,
which they were to distribute as a donative among the sailors. 271 Gold

medals were given to the officers. 272 The remains of Hastings and Carter
were brought on shore with every mark of honour. Carter was buried at
Portsmouth, with a great display of military pomp. 273 The corpse of
Hastings was brought up to London, and laid, with unusual solemnity,
under the pavement of Saint James's Church. The footguards with reversed
arms escorted the hearse. Four royal state carriages, each drawn by six
horses, were in the procession; a crowd of men of quality in mourning
cloaks filled the pews; and the Bishop of Lincoln preached the funeral
sermon. 274 While such marks of respect were paid to the slain, the
wounded were not neglected. Fifty surgeons, plentifully supplied with
instruments, bandages, and drugs, were sent down in all haste from London
to Portsmouth. 275 It is not easy for us to form a notion of the difficulty
which there then was in providing at short notice commodious shelter and
skilful attendance for hundreds of maimed and lacerated men. At present
every county, every large town, can boast of some spacious palace in which
the poorest labourer who has fractured a limb may find an excellent bed, an
able medical attendant, a careful nurse, medicines of the best quality, and
nourishment such as an invalid requires. But there was not then, in the
whole realm, a single infirmary supported by voluntary contribution. Even
in the capital the only edifices open to the wounded were the two ancient
hospitals of Saint Thomas and Saint Bartholomew. The Queen gave orders
that in both these hospitals arrangements should be made at the public
charge for the reception of patients from the fleet. 276 At the same time it
was announced that a noble and lasting memorial of the gratitude which
England felt for the courage and patriotism of her sailors would soon rise on
a site eminently appropriate. Among the suburban residences of our kings,
that which stood at Greenwich had long held a distinguished place. Charles
the Second liked the situation, and determined to rebuild the house and to
improve the gardens. Soon after his Restoration, he began to erect, on a spot
almost washed by the Thames at high tide, a mansion of vast extent and
cost. Behind the palace were planted long avenues of trees which, when
William reigned, were scarcely more than saplings, but which have now
covered with their massy shade the summer rambles of several generations.
On the slope which has long been the scene of the holiday sports of the
Londoners, were constructed flights of terraces, of which the vestiges may
still be discerned. The Queen now publicly declared, in her husband's name,

that the building commenced by Charles should be completed, and should
be a retreat for seamen disabled in the service of their country. 277
One of the happiest effects produced by the good news was the calming
of the public mind. During about a month the nation had been hourly
expecting an invasion and a rising, and had consequently been in an
irritable and suspicious mood. In many parts of England a nonjuror could
not show himself without great risk of being insulted. A report that arms
were hidden in a house sufficed to bring a furious mob to the door. The
mansion of one Jacobite gentleman in Kent had been attacked, and, after a
fight in which several shots were fired, had been stormed and pulled down.
278 Yet such riots were by no means the worst symptoms of the fever which
had inflamed the whole society. The exposure of Fuller, in February, had, as
it seemed, put an end to the practices of that vile tribe of which Oates was
the patriarch. During some weeks, indeed, the world was disposed to be
unreasonably incredulous about plots. But in April there was a reaction. The
French and Irish were coming. There was but too much reason to believe
that there were traitors in the island. Whoever pretended that he could point
out those traitors was sure to be heard with attention; and there was not
wanting a false witness to avail himself of the golden opportunity.
This false witness was named Robert Young. His history was in his own
lifetime so fully investigated, and so much of his correspondence has been
preserved, that the whole man is before us. His character is indeed a curious
study. His birthplace was a subject of dispute among three nations. The
English pronounced him Irish. The Irish, not being ambitious of the honour
of having him for a countryman, affirmed that he was born in Scotland.
Wherever he may have been born, it is impossible to doubt where he was
bred; for his phraseology is precisely that of the Teagues who were, in his
time, favourite characters on our stage. He called himself a priest of the
Established Church; but he was in truth only a deacon; and his deacon's
orders he had obtained by producing forged certificates of his learning and
moral character. Long before the Revolution he held curacies in various
parts of Ireland; but he did not remain many days in any spot. He was
driven from one place by the scandal which was the effect of his lawless
amours. He rode away from another place on a borrowed horse, which he
never returned. He settled in a third parish, and was taken up for bigamy.
Some letters which he wrote on this occasion from the gaol of Cavan have
been preserved. He assured each of his wives, with the most frightful

imprecations, that she alone was the object of his love; and he thus
succeeded in inducing one of them to support him in prison, and the other to
save his life by forswearing herself at the assizes. The only specimens
which remain to us of his method of imparting religious instruction are to
be found in these epistles. He compares himself to David, the man after
God's own heart, who had been guilty both of adultery and murder. He
declares that he repents; he prays for the forgiveness of the Almighty, and
then intreats his dear honey, for Christ's sake, to perjure herself. Having
narrowly escaped the gallows, he wandered during several years about
Ireland and England, begging, stealing, cheating, personating, forging, and
lay in many prisons under many names. In 1684 he was convicted at Bury
of having fraudulently counterfeited Sancroft's signature, and was sentenced
to the pillory and to imprisonment. From his dungeon he wrote to implore
the Primate's mercy. The letter may still be read with all the original bad
grammar and bad spelling. 279 The writer acknowledged his guilt, wished
that his eyes were a fountain of water, declared that he should never know
peace till he had received episcopal absolution, and professed a mortal
hatred of Dissenters. As all this contrition and all this orthodoxy produced
no effect, the penitent, after swearing bitterly to be revenged on Sancroft,
betook himself to another device. The Western Insurrection had just broken
out. The magistrates all over the country were but too ready to listen to any
accusation that might be brought against Whigs and Nonconformists. Young
declared on oath that, to his knowledge, a design had been formed in
Suffolk against the life of King James, and named a peer, several
gentlemen, and ten Presbyterian ministers, as parties to the plot. Some of
the accused were brought to trial; and Young appeared in the witness box;
but the story which he told was proved by overwhelming evidence to be
false. Soon after the Revolution he was again convicted of forgery, pilloried
for the fourth or fifth time, and sent to Newgate. While he lay there, he
determined to try whether he should be more fortunate as an accuser of
Jacobites than he had been as an accuser of Puritans. He first addressed
himself to Tillotson. There was a horrible plot against their Majesties, a plot
as deep as hell; and some of the first men in England were concerned in it.
Tillotson, though he placed little confidence in information coming from
such a source, thought that the oath which he had taken as a Privy
Councillor made it his duty to mention the subject to William. William,
after his fashion, treated the matter very lightly. "I am confident," he said,

"that this is a villany; and I will have nobody disturbed on such grounds."
After this rebuff, Young remained some time quiet. But when William was
on the Continent, and when the nation was agitated by the apprehension of
a French invasion and of a Jacobite insurrection, a false accuser might hope
to obtain a favourable audience. The mere oath of a man who was well
known to the turnkeys of twenty gaols was not likely to injure any body.
But Young was master of a weapon which is, of all weapons, the most
formidable to innocence. He had lived during some years by counterfeiting
hands, and had at length attained such consummate skill in that bad art that
even experienced clerks who were conversant with manuscript could
scarcely, after the most minute comparison, discover any difference
between his imitations and the originals. He had succeeded in making a
collection of papers written by men of note who were suspected of
disaffection. Some autographs he had stolen; and some he had obtained by
writing in feigned names to ask after the characters of servants or curates.
He now drew up a paper purporting to be an Association for the Restoration
of the banished King. This document set forth that the subscribers bound
themselves in the presence of God to take arms for His Majesty, and to
seize on the Prince of Orange, dead or alive. To the Association Young
appended the names of Marlborough, of Cornbury, of Salisbury, of
Sancroft, and of Sprat, Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster.
The next thing to be done was to put the paper into some hiding place in
the house of one of the persons whose signatures had been counterfeited. As
Young could not quit Newgate, he was forced to employ a subordinate
agent for this purpose. He selected a wretch named Blackhead, who had
formerly been convicted of perjury and sentenced to have his ears clipped.
The selection was not happy; for Blackhead had none of the qualities which
the trade of a false witness requires except wickedness. There was nothing
plausible about him. His voice was harsh. Treachery was written in all the
lines of his yellow face. He had no invention, no presence of mind, and
could do little more than repeat by rote the lies taught him by others.
This man, instructed by his accomplice, repaired to Sprat's palace at
Bromley, introduced himself there as the confidential servant of an
imaginary Doctor of Divinity, delivered to the Bishop, on bended knee, a
letter ingeniously manufactured by Young, and received, with the
semblance of profound reverence, the episcopal benediction. The servants
made the stranger welcome. He was taken to the cellar, drank their master's

health, and entreated them to let him see the house. They could not venture
to show any of the private apartments. Blackhead, therefore, after begging
importunately, but in vain, to be suffered to have one look at the study, was
forced to content himself with dropping the Association into a flowerpot
which stood in a parlour near the kitchen.
Every thing having been thus prepared, Young informed the ministers
that he could tell them something of the highest importance to the welfare
of the State, and earnestly begged to be heard. His request reached them on
perhaps the most anxious day of an anxious month. Tourville had just stood
out to sea. The army of James was embarking. London was agitated by
reports about the disaffection of the naval officers. The Queen was
deliberating whether she should cashier those who were suspected, or try
the effect of an appeal to their honour and patriotism. At such a moment the
ministers could not refuse to listen to any person who professed himself
able to give them valuable information. Young and his accomplice were
brought before the Privy Council. They there accused Marlborough,
Cornbury, Salisbury, Sancroft and Sprat of high treason. These great men,
Young said, had invited James to invade England, and had promised to join
him. The eloquent and ingenious Bishop of Rochester had undertaken to
draw up a Declaration which would inflame the nation against the
government of King William. The conspirators were bound together by a
written instrument. That instrument, signed by their own hands, would be
found at Bromley if careful search was made. Young particularly requested
that the messengers might be ordered to examine the Bishop's flowerpots.
The ministers were seriously alarmed. The story was circumstantial; and
part of it was probable. Marlborough's dealings with Saint Germains were
well known to Caermarthen, to Nottingham, and to Sidney. Cornbury was a
tool of Marlborough, and was the son of a nonjuror and of a notorious
plotter. Salisbury was a Papist. Sancroft had, not many months before, been,
with too much show of reason, suspected of inviting the French to invade
England. Of all the accused persons Sprat was the most unlikely to be
concerned in any hazardous design. He had neither enthusiasm nor
constancy. Both his ambition and his party spirit had always been
effectually kept in order by his love of ease and his anxiety for his own
safety. He had been guilty of some criminal compliances in the hope of
gaining the favour of James, had sate in the High Commission, had
concurred in several iniquitous decrees pronounced by that court, and had,

with trembling hands and faltering voice, read the Declaration of
Indulgence in the choir of the Abbey. But there he had stopped. As soon as
it began to be whispered that the civil and religious constitution of England
would speedily be vindicated by extraordinary means, he had resigned the
powers which he had during two years exercised in defiance of law, and had
hastened to make his peace with his clerical brethren. He had in the
Convention voted for a Regency; but he had taken the oaths without
hesitation; he had borne a conspicuous part in the coronation of the new
Sovereigns; and by his skilful hand had been added to the Form of Prayer
used on the fifth of November those sentences in which the Church
expresses her gratitude for the second great deliverance wrought on that
day. 280 Such a man, possessed of a plentiful income, of a seat in the House
of Lords, of one agreeable house among the elms of Bromley, and of
another in the cloisters of Westminster, was very unlikely to run the risk of
martyrdom. He was not, indeed, on perfectly good terms with the
government. For the feeling which, next to solicitude for his own comfort
and repose, seems to have had the greatest influence on his public conduct,
was his dislike of the Puritans; a dislike which sprang, not from bigotry, but
from Epicureanism. Their austerity was a reproach to his slothful and
luxurious life; their phraseology shocked his fastidious taste; and, where
they were concerned, his ordinary good nature forsook him. Loathing the
nonconformists as he did, he was not likely to be very zealous for a prince
whom the nonconformists regarded as their protector. But Sprat's faults
afforded ample security that he would never, from spleen against William,
engage in any plot to bring back James. Why Young should have assigned
the most perilous part in an enterprise full of peril to a man singularly
pliant, cautious and selfindulgent, it is difficult to say.
The first step which the ministers took was to send Marlborough to the
Tower. He was by far the most formidable of all the accused persons; and
that he had held a traitorous correspondence with Saint Germains was a fact
which, whether Young were perjured or not, the Queen and her chief
advisers knew to be true. One of the Clerks of the Council and several
messengers were sent down to Bromley with a warrant from Nottingham.
Sprat was taken into custody. All the apartments in which it could
reasonably be supposed that he would have hidden an important document
were searched, the library, the diningroom, the drawingroom, the
bedchamber, and the adjacent closets. His papers were strictly examined.

Much food prose was found, and probably some bad verse, but no treason.
The messengers pried into every flowerpot that they could find, but to no
purpose. It never occurred to them to look into the room in which
Blackhead had hidden the Association: for that room was near the offices
occupied by the servants, and was little used by the Bishop and his family.
The officers returned to London with their prisoner, but without the
document which, if it had been found, might have been fatal to him.
Late at night he was brought to Westminster, and was suffered to sleep at
his deanery. All his bookcases and drawers were examined; and sentinels
were posted at the door of his bedchamber, but with strict orders to behave
civilly and not to disturb the family.
On the following day he was brought before the Council. The
examination was conducted by Nottingham with great humanity and
courtesy. The Bishop, conscious of entire innocence, behaved with temper
and firmness. He made no complaints. "I submit," he said, "to the
necessities of State in such a time of jealousy and danger as this." He was
asked whether he had drawn up a Declaration for King James, whether he
had held any correspondence with France, whether he had signed any
treasonable association, and whether he knew of any such association. To
all these questions he, with perfect truth, answered in the negative, on the
word of a Christian and a Bishop. He was taken back to his deanery. He
remained there in easy confinement during ten days, and then, as nothing
tending to criminate him had been discovered, was suffered to return to
Bromley.
Meanwhile the false accusers had been devising a new scheme.
Blackhead paid another visit to Bromley, and contrived to take the forged
Association out of the place in which he had hid it, and to bring it back to
Young. One of Young's two wives then carried it to the Secretary's Office,
and told a lie, invented by her husband, to explain how a paper of such
importance had come into her hands. But it was not now so easy to frighten
the ministers as it had been a few days before. The battle of La Hogue had
put an end to all apprehensions of invasion. Nottingham, therefore, instead
of sending down a warrant to Bromley, merely wrote to beg that Sprat
would call on him at Whitehall. The summons was promptly obeyed, and
the accused prelate was brought face to face with Blackhead before the
Council. Then the truth came out fast. The Bishop remembered the

villanous look and voice of the man who had knelt to ask the episcopal
blessing. The Bishop's secretary confirmed his master's assertions. The false
witness soon lost his presence of mind. His cheeks, always sallow, grew
frightfully livid. His voice, generally loud and coarse, sank into a whisper.
The Privy Councillors saw his confusion, and crossexamined him sharply.
For a time he answered their questions by repeatedly stammering out his
original lie in the original words. At last he found that he had no way of
extricating himself but by owning his guilt. He acknowledged that he had
given an untrue account of his visit to Bromley; and, after much
prevarication, he related how he had hidden the Association, and how he
had removed it from its hiding place, and confessed that he had been set on
by Young.
The two accomplices were then confronted. Young, with unabashed
forehead, denied every thing. He knew nothing about the flowerpots. "If
so," cried Nottingham and Sidney together, "why did you give such
particular directions that the flowerpots at Bromley should be searched?" "I
never gave any directions about the flowerpots," said Young. Then the
whole board broke forth. "How dare you say so? We all remember it." Still
the knave stood up erect, and exclaimed, with an impudence which Oates
might have envied, "This hiding is all a trick got up between the Bishop and
Blackhead. The Bishop has taken Blackhead off; and they are both trying to
stifle the plot." This was too much. There was a smile and a lifting up of
hands all round the board. "Man," cried Caermarthen, "wouldst thou have
us believe that the Bishop contrived to have this paper put where it was ten
to one that our messengers had found it, and where, if they had found it, it
might have hanged him?"
The false accusers were removed in custody. The Bishop, after warmly
thanking the ministers for their fair and honourable conduct, took his leave
of them. In the antechamber he found a crowd of people staring at Young,
while Young sate, enduring the stare with the serene fortitude of a man who
had looked down on far greater multitudes from half the pillories in
England. "Young," said Sprat, "your conscience must tell you that you have
cruelly wronged me. For your own sake I am sorry that you persist in
denying what your associate has confessed." "Confessed!" cried Young;
"no, all is not confessed yet; and that you shall find to your sorrow. There is
such a thing as impeachment, my Lord. When Parliament sits you shall hear
more of me." "God give you repentance," answered the Bishop. "For,

depend upon it, you are in much more danger of being damned than I of
being impeached." 281
Forty-eight hours after the detection of this execrable fraud, Marlborough
was admitted to bail. Young and Blackhead had done him an inestimable
service. That he was concerned in a plot quite as criminal as that which they
had falsely imputed to him, and that the government was to possession of
moral proofs of his guilt, is now certain. But his contemporaries had not, as
we have, the evidence of his perfidy before them. They knew that he had
been accused of an offence of which he was innocent, that perjury and
forgery had been employed to ruin him, and that, in consequence of these
machinations, he had passed some weeks in the Tower. There was in the
public mind a very natural confusion between his disgrace and his
imprisonment. He had been imprisoned without sufficient cause. Might it
not, in the absence of all information, be reasonably presumed that he had
been disgraced without sufficient cause? It was certain that a vile calumny,
destitute of all foundation, had caused him to be treated as a criminal in
May. Was it not probable, then, that calumny might have deprived him of
his master's favour in January?
Young's resources were not yet exhausted. As soon as he had been carried
back from Whitehall to Newgate, he set himself to construct a new plot, and
to find a new accomplice. He addressed himself to a man named Holland,
who was in the lowest state of poverty. Never, said Young, was there such a
golden opportunity. A bold, shrewd, fellow might easily earn five hundred
pounds. To Holland five hundred pounds seemed fabulous wealth. What, he
asked, was he to do for it? Nothing, he was told, but to speak the truth, that
was to say, substantial truth, a little disguised and coloured. There really
was a plot; and this would have been proved if Blackhead had not been
bought off. His desertion had made it necessary to call in the help of fiction.
"You must swear that you and I were in a back room upstairs at the Lobster
in Southwark. Some men came to meet us there. They gave a password
before they were admitted. They were all in white camlet cloaks. They
signed the Association in our presence. Then they paid each his shilling and
went away. And you must be ready to identify my Lord Marlborough and
the Bishop of Rochester as two of these men." "How can I identify them?"
said Holland, "I never saw them." "You must contrive to see them,"
answered the tempter, "as soon as you can. The Bishop will be at the Abbey.
Anybody about the Court will point out my Lord Marlborough." Holland

immediately went to Whitehall, and repeated this conversation to
Nottingham. The unlucky imitator of Oates was prosecuted, by order of the
government, for perjury, subornation of perjury, and forgery. He was
convicted and imprisoned, was again set in the pillory, and underwent, in
addition to the exposure, about which he cared little, such a pelting as had
seldom been known. 282 After his punishment, he was, during some years,
lost in the crowd of pilferers, ringdroppers and sharpers who infested the
capital. At length, in the year 1700, he emerged from his obscurity, and
excited a momentary interest. The newspapers announced that Robert
Young, Clerk, once so famous, had been taken up for coining, then that he
had been found guilty, then that the dead warrant had come down, and
finally that the reverend gentleman had been hanged at Tyburn, and had
greatly edified a large assembly of spectators by his penitence. 283

CHAPTER XIX
Foreign Policy of William—The Northern Powers—The Pope—Conduct of
the Allies—The Emperor—Spain—William succeeds in preventing the
Dissolution of the Coalition—New Arrangements for the Government of
the Spanish Netherlands—Lewis takes the Field—Siege of Namur—Lewis
returns to Versailles—Luxemburg—Battle of Steinkirk—Conspiracy
of Grandval—Return of William to England—Naval
Maladministration—Earthquake at Port Royal—Distress in England;
Increase of Crime—Meeting of Parliament; State of Parties—The King's
Speech; Question of Privilege raised by the Lords—Debates on the
State of the Nation—Bill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of
Treason—Case of Lord Mohun—Debates on the India Trade—Supply—Ways
and Means; Land Tax—Origin of the National Debt—Parliamentary
Reform—The Place Bill—The Triennial Bill—The First Parliamentary
Discussion on the Liberty of the Press—State of Ireland—The King
refuses to pass the Triennial Bill—Ministerial Arrangements—The King
goes to Holland; a Session of Parliament in Scotland

WHILE England was agitated, first by the dread of an invasion, and then
by joy at the deliverance wrought for her by the valour of her seamen,
important events were taking place on the Continent. On the sixth of March
the King had arrived at the Hague, and had proceeded to make his
arrangements for the approaching campaign. 284
The prospect which lay before him was gloomy. The coalition of which
he was the author and the chief had, during some months, been in constant
danger of dissolution. By what strenuous exertions, by what ingenious
expedients, by what blandishments, by what bribes, he succeeded in
preventing his allies from throwing themselves, one by one, at the feet of
France, can be but imperfectly known. The fullest and most authentic
record of the labours and sacrifices by which he kept together, during eight
years, a crowd of fainthearted and treacherous potentates, negligent of the
common interest and jealous of each other, is to be found in his
correspondence with Heinsius. In that correspondence William is all
himself. He had, in the course of his eventful life, to sustain some high parts
for which he was not eminently qualified; and, in those parts, his success
was imperfect. As Sovereign of England, he showed abilities and virtues
which entitle him to honourable mention in history; but his deficiencies
were great. He was to the last a stranger amongst us, cold, reserved, never
in good spirits, never at his ease. His kingdom was a place of exile. His
finest palaces were prisons. He was always counting the days which must

elapse before he should again see the land of his birth, the clipped trees, the
wings of the innumerable windmills, the nests of the storks on the tall
gables, and the long lines of painted villas reflected in the sleeping canals.
He took no pains to hide the preference which he felt for his native soil and
for his early friends; and therefore, though he rendered great services to our
country, he did not reign in our hearts. As a general in the field, again, he
showed rare courage and capacity; but, from whatever cause, he was, as a
tactician, inferior to some of his contemporaries, who, in general powers of
mind, were far inferior to him. The business for which he was preeminently
fitted was diplomacy, in the highest sense of the word. It may be doubted
whether he has ever had a superior in the art of conducting those great
negotiations on which the welfare of the commonwealth of nations depends.
His skill in this department of politics was never more severely tasked or
more signally proved than during the latter part of 1691 and the earlier part
of 1692.
One of his chief difficulties was caused by the sullen and menacing
demeanour of the Northern powers. Denmark and Sweden had at one time
seemed disposed to join the coalition; but they had early become cold, and
were fast becoming hostile. From France they flattered themselves that they
had little to fear. It was not very probable that her armies would cross the
Elbe, or that her fleets would force a passage through the Sound. But the
naval strength of England and Holland united might well excite
apprehension at Stockholm and Copenhagen. Soon arose vexatious
questions of maritime right, questions such as, in almost every extensive
war of modern times, have arisen between belligerents and neutrals. The
Scandinavian princes complained that the legitimate trade between the
Baltic and France was tyrannically interrupted. Though they had not in
general been on very friendly terms with each other, they began to draw
close together, intrigued at every petty German court, and tried to form
what William called a Third Party in Europe. The King of Sweden, who, as
Duke of Pomerania, was bound to send three thousand men for the defence
of the Empire, sent, instead of them, his advice that the allies would make
peace on the best terms which they could get. 285 The King of Denmark
seized a great number of Dutch merchantships, and collected in Holstein an
army which caused no small uneasiness to his neighbours. "I fear," William
wrote, in an hour of deep dejection, to Heinsius, "I fear that the object of
this Third Party is a peace which will bring in its train the slavery of

Europe. The day will come when Sweden and her confederates will know
too late how great an error they have committed. They are farther, no doubt,
than we from the danger; and therefore it is that they are thus bent on
working our ruin and their own. That France will now consent to reasonable
terms is not to be expected; and it were better to fall sword in hand than to
submit to whatever she may dictate." 286
While the King was thus disquieted by the conduct of the Northern
powers, ominous signs began to appear in a very different quarter. It had,
from the first, been no easy matter to induce sovereigns who hated, and
who, in their own dominions, persecuted, the Protestant religion, to
countenance the revolution which had saved that religion from a great peril.
But happily the example and the authority of the Vatican had overcome
their scruples. Innocent the Eleventh and Alexander the Eighth had regarded
William with ill concealed partiality. He was not indeed their friend; but he
was their enemy's enemy; and James had been, and, if restored, must again
be, their enemy's vassal. To the heretic nephew therefore they gave their
effective support, to the orthodox uncle only compliments and benedictions.
But Alexander the Eighth had occupied the papal throne little more than
fifteen months. His successor, Antonio Pignatelli, who took the name of
Innocent the Twelfth, was impatient to be reconciled to Lewis. Lewis was
now sensible that he had committed a great error when he had roused
against himself at once the spirit of Protestantism and the spirit of Popery.
He permitted the French Bishops to submit themselves to the Holy See. The
dispute, which had, at one time, seemed likely to end in a great Gallican
schism, was accommodated; and there was reason to believe that the
influence of the head of the Church would be exerted for the purpose of
severing the ties which bound so many Catholic princes to the Calvinist
who had usurped the British throne.
Meanwhile the coalition, which the Third Party on one side and the Pope
on the other were trying to dissolve, was in no small danger of falling to
pieces from mere rottenness. Two of the allied powers, and two only, were
hearty in the common cause; England, drawing after her the other British
kingdoms; and Holland, drawing after her the other Batavian
commonwealths. England and Holland were indeed torn by internal
factions, and were separated from each other by mutual jealousies and
antipathies; but both were fully resolved not to submit to French
domination; and both were ready to bear their share, and more than their

share, of the charges of the contest. Most of the members of the
confederacy were not nations, but men, an Emperor, a King, Electors,
Dukes; and of these men there was scarcely one whose whole soul was in
the struggle, scarcely one who did not hang back, who did not find some
excuse for omitting to fulfil his engagements, who did not expect to be
hired to defend his own rights and interests against the common enemy. But
the war was the war of the people of England and of the people of Holland.
Had it not been so, the burdens which it made necessary would not have
been borne by either England or Holland during a single year. When
William said that he would rather die sword in hand than humble himself
before France, he expressed what was felt, not by himself alone, but by two
great communities of which he was the first magistrate. With those two
communities, unhappily, other states had little sympathy. Indeed those two
communities were regarded by other states as rich, plaindealing, generous
dupes are regarded by needy sharpers. England and Holland were wealthy;
and they were zealous. Their wealth excited the cupidity of the whole
alliance; and to that wealth their zeal was the key. They were persecuted
with sordid importunity by all their confederates, from Caesar, who, in the
pride of his solitary dignity, would not honour King William with the title
of Majesty, down to the smallest Margrave who could see his whole
principality from the cracked windows of the mean and ruinous old house
which he called his palace. It was not enough that England and Holland
furnished much more than their contingents to the war by land, and bore
unassisted the whole charge of the war by sea. They were beset by a crowd
of illustrious mendicants, some rude, some obsequious, but all indefatigable
and insatiable. One prince came mumping to them annually with a
lamentable story about his distresses. A more sturdy beggar threatened to
join the Third Party, and to make a separate peace with France, if his
demands were not granted. Every Sovereign too had his ministers and
favourites; and these ministers and favourites were perpetually hinting that
France was willing to pay them for detaching their masters from the
coalition, and that it would be prudent in England and Holland to outbid
France.
Yet the embarrassment caused by the rapacity of the allied courts was
scarcely greater than the embarrassment caused by their ambition and their
pride. This prince had set his heart on some childish distinction, a title or a
cross, and would do nothing for the common cause till his wishes were

accomplished. That prince chose to fancy that he had been slighted, and
would not stir till reparation had been made to him. The Duke of Brunswick
Lunenburg would not furnish a battalion for the defence of Germany unless
he was made an Elector. 287 The Elector of Brandenburg declared that he
was as hostile as he had ever been to France; but he had been ill used by the
Spanish government; and he therefore would not suffer his soldiers to be
employed in the defence of the Spanish Netherlands. He was willing to bear
his share of the war; but it must be in his own way; he must have the
command of a distinct army; and he must be stationed between the Rhine
and the Meuse. 288 The Elector of Saxony complained that bad winter
quarters had been assigned to his troops; he therefore recalled them just
when they should have been preparing to take the field, but very coolly
offered to send them back if England and Holland would give him four
hundred thousand rixdollars. 289
It might have been expected that at least the two chiefs of the House of
Austria would have put forth, at this conjuncture, all their strength against
the rival House of Bourbon. Unfortunately they could not be induced to
exert themselves vigorously even for their own preservation. They were
deeply interested in keeping the French out of Italy. Yet they could with
difficulty be prevailed upon to lend the smallest assistance to the Duke of
Savoy. They seemed to think it the business of England and Holland to
defend the passes of the Alps, and to prevent the armies of Lewis from
overflowing Lombardy. To the Emperor indeed the war against France was
a secondary object. His first object was the war against Turkey. He was dull
and bigoted. His mind misgave him that the war against France was, in
some sense, a war against the Catholic religion; and the war against Turkey
was a crusade. His recent campaign on the Danube had been successful. He
might easily have concluded an honourable peace with the Porte, and have
turned his arms westward. But he had conceived the hope that he might
extend his hereditary dominions at the expense of the Infidels. Visions of a
triumphant entry into Constantinople and of a Te Deum in Saint Sophia's
had risen in his brain. He not only employed in the East a force more than
sufficient to have defended Piedmont and reconquered Loraine; but he
seemed to think that England and Holland were bound to reward him
largely for neglecting their interests and pursuing his own. 290
Spain already was what she continued to be down to our own time. Of
the Spain which had domineered over the land and the ocean, over the Old

and the New World, of the Spain which had, in the short space of twelve
years, led captive a Pope and a King of France, a Sovereign of Mexico and
a Sovereign of Peru, of the Spain which had sent an army to the walls of
Paris and had equipped a mighty fleet to invade England, nothing remained
but an arrogance which had once excited terror and hatred, but which could
now excite only derision. In extent, indeed, the dominions of the Catholic
King exceeded those of Rome when Rome was at the zenith of power. But
the huge mass lay torpid and helpless, and could be insulted or despoiled
with impunity. The whole administration, military and naval, financial and
colonial, was utterly disorganized. Charles was a fit representative of his
kingdom, impotent physically, intellectually and morally, sunk in ignorance,
listlessness and superstition, yet swollen with a notion of his own dignity,
and quick to imagine and to resent affronts. So wretched had his education
been that, when he was told of the fall of Mons, the most important fortress
in his vast empire, he asked whether Mons was in England. 291 Among the
ministers who were raised up and pulled down by his sickly caprice, was
none capable of applying a remedy to the distempers of the State. In truth to
brace anew the nerves of that paralysed body would have been a hard task
even for Ximenes. No servant of the Spanish Crown occupied a more
important post, and none was more unfit for an important post, than the
Marquess of Gastanaga. He was Governor of the Netherlands; and in the
Netherlands it seemed probable that the fate of Christendom would be
decided. He had discharged his trust as every public trust was then
discharged in every part of that vast monarchy on which it was boastfully
said that the sun never set. Fertile and rich as was the country which he
ruled, he threw on England and Holland the whole charge of defending it.
He expected that arms, ammunition, waggons, provisions, every thing,
would be furnished by the heretics. It had never occurred to him that it was
his business, and not theirs, to put Mons in a condition to stand a siege. The
public voice loudly accused him of having sold that celebrated stronghold
to France. But it is probable that he was guilty of nothing worse than the
haughty apathy and sluggishness characteristic of his nation.
Such was the state of the coalition of which William was the head. There
were moments when he felt himself overwhelmed, when his spirits sank,
when his patience was wearied out, and when his constitutional irritability
broke forth. "I cannot," he wrote, "offer a suggestion without being met by a
demand for a subsidy." 292 "I have refused point blank," he wrote on another

occasion, when he had been importuned for money, "it is impossible that
the States General and England can bear the charge of the army on the
Rhine, of the army in Piedmont, and of the whole defence of Flanders, to
say nothing of the immense cost of the naval war. If our allies can do
nothing for themselves, the sooner the alliance goes to pieces the better." 293
But, after every short fit of despondency and ill humour, he called up all the
force of his mind, and put a strong curb on his temper. Weak, mean, false,
selfish, as too many of the confederates were, it was only by their help that
he could accomplish what he had from his youth up considered as his
mission. If they abandoned him, France would be dominant without a rival
in Europe. Well as they deserved to be punished, he would not, to punish
them, acquiesce in the subjugation of the whole civilised world. He set
himself therefore to surmount some difficulties and to evade others. The
Scandinavian powers he conciliated by waiving, reluctantly indeed, and not
without a hard internal struggle, some of his maritime rights. 294 At Rome
his influence, though indirectly exercised, balanced that of the Pope
himself. Lewis and James found that they had not a friend at the Vatican
except Innocent; and Innocent, whose nature was gentle and irresolute,
shrank from taking a course directly opposed to the sentiments of all who
surrounded him. In private conversations with Jacobite agents he declared
himself devoted to the interests of the House of Stuart; but in his public acts
he observed a strict neutrality. He sent twenty thousand crowns to Saint
Germains; but he excused himself to the enemies of France by protesting
that this was not a subsidy for any political purpose, but merely an alms to
be distributed among poor British Catholics. He permitted prayers for the
good cause to be read in the English College at Rome; but he insisted that
those prayers should be drawn up in general terms, and that no name should
be mentioned. It was in vain that the ministers of the Houses of Stuart and
Bourbon adjured him to take a more decided course. "God knows," he
exclaimed on one occasion, "that I would gladly shed my blood to restore
the King of England. But what can I do? If I stir, I am told that I am
favouring the French, and helping them to set up an universal monarchy. I
am not like the old Popes. Kings will not listen to me as they listened to my
predecessors. There is no religion now, nothing but wicked, worldly policy.
The Prince of Orange is master. He governs us all. He has got such a hold
on the Emperor and on the King of Spain that neither of them dares to
displease him. God help us! He alone can help us." And, as the old man

spoke, he beat the table with his hand in an agony of impotent grief and
indignation. 295
To keep the German princes steady was no easy task; but it was
accomplished. Money was distributed among them, much less indeed than
they asked, but much more than they had any decent pretence for asking.
With the Elector of Saxony a composition was made. He had, together with
a strong appetite for subsidies, a great desire to be a member of the most
select and illustrious orders of knighthood. It seems that, instead of the four
hundred thousand rixdollars which he had demanded, he consented to
accept one hundred thousand and the Garter. 296 His prime minister
Schoening, the most covetous and perfidious of mankind, was secured by a
pension. 297 For the Duke of Brunswick Lunenburg, William, not without
difficulty, procured the long desired title of Elector of Hanover. By such
means as these the breaches which had divided the coalition were so
skilfully repaired that it appeared still to present a firm front to the enemy.
William had complained bitterly to the Spanish government of the
incapacity and inertness of Gastanaga. The Spanish government, helpless
and drowsy as it was, could not be altogether insensible to the dangers
which threatened Flanders and Brabant. Gastanaga was recalled; and
William was invited to take upon himself the government of the Low
Countries, with powers not less than regal. Philip the Second would not
easily have believed that, within a century after his death, his greatgrandson
would implore the greatgrandson of William the Silent to exercise the
authority of a sovereign at Brussels. 298
The offer was in one sense tempting; but William was too wise to accept
it. He knew that the population of the Spanish Netherlands was firmly
attached to the Church of Rome. Every act of a Protestant ruler was certain
to be regarded with suspicion by the clergy and people of those countries.
Already Gastanaga, mortified by his disgrace, had written to inform the
Court of Rome that changes were in contemplation which would make
Ghent and Antwerp as heretical as Amsterdam and London. 299 It had
doubtless also occurred to William that if, by governing mildly and justly,
and by showing a decent respect for the ceremonies and the ministers of the
Roman Catholic religion, he should succeed in obtaining the confidence of
the Belgians, he would inevitably raise against himself a storm of obloquy
in our island. He knew by experience what it was to govern two nations
strongly attached to two different Churches. A large party among the

Episcopalians of England could not forgive him for having consented to the
establishment of the presbyterian polity in Scotland. A large party among
the Presbyterians of Scotland blamed him for maintaining the episcopal
polity in England. If he now took under his protection masses, processions,
graven images, friaries, nunneries, and, worst of all, Jesuit pulpits, Jesuit
confessionals and Jesuit colleges, what could he expect but that England
and Scotland would join in one cry of reprobation? He therefore refused to
accept the government of the Low Countries, and proposed that it should be
entrusted to the Elector of Bavaria. The Elector of Bavaria was, after the
Emperor, the most powerful of the Roman Catholic potentates of Germany.
He was young, brave, and ambitious of military distinction. The Spanish
Court was willing to appoint him, and he was desirous to be appointed; but
much delay was caused by an absurd difficulty. The Elector thought it
beneath him to ask for what he wished to have. The formalists of the
Cabinet of Madrid thought it beneath the dignity of the Catholic King to
give what had not been asked. Mediation was necessary, and was at last
successful. But much time was lost; and the spring was far advanced before
the new Governor of the Netherlands entered on his functions. 300
William had saved the coalition from the danger of perishing by
disunion. But by no remonstrance, by no entreaty, by no bribe, could he
prevail on his allies to be early in the field. They ought to have profited by
the severe lesson which had been given them in the preceding year. But
again every one of them lingered, and wondered why the rest were
lingering; and again he who singly wielded the whole power of France was
found, as his haughty motto had long boasted, a match for a multitude of
adversaries. 301 His enemies, while still unready, learned with dismay that
he had taken the field in person at the head of his nobility. On no occasion
had that gallant aristocracy appeared with more splendour in his train. A
single circumstance may suffice to give a notion of the pomp and luxury of
his camp. Among the musketeers of his household rode, for the first time, a
stripling of seventeen, who soon afterwards succeeded to the title of Duke
of Saint Simon, and to whom we owe those inestimable memoirs which
have preserved, for the delight and instruction of many lands and of many
generations, the vivid picture of a France which has long passed away.
Though the boy's family was at that time very hard pressed for money, he
travelled with thirty-five horses and sumpter mules. The princesses of the
blood, each surrounded by a group of highborn and graceful ladies,

accompanied the King; and the smiles of so many charming women
inspired the throng of vain and voluptuous but highspirited gentlemen with
more than common courage. In the brilliant crowd which surrounded the
French Augustus appeared the French Virgil, the graceful, the tender, the
melodious Racine. He had, in conformity with the prevailing fashion,
become devout, had given up writing for the theatre; and, having
determined to apply himself vigorously to the discharge of the duties which
belonged to him as historiographer of France, he now came to see the great
events which it was his office to record. 302 In the neighbourhood of Mons,
Lewis entertained the ladies with the most magnificent review that had ever
been seen in modern Europe. A hundred and twenty thousand of the finest
troops in the world were drawn up in a line eight miles long. It may be
doubted whether such an army had ever been brought together under the
Roman eagles. The show began early in the morning, and was not over
when the long summer day closed. Racine left the ground, astonished,
deafened, dazzled, and tired to death. In a private letter he ventured to give
utterance to an amiable wish which he probably took good care not to
whisper in the courtly circle: "Would to heaven that all these poor fellows
were in their cottages again with their wives and their little ones!" 303
After this superb pageant Lewis announced his intention of attacking
Namur. In five days he was under the walls of that city, at the head of more
than thirty thousand men. Twenty thousand peasants, pressed in those parts
of the Netherlands which the French occupied, were compelled to act as
pioneers. Luxemburg, with eighty thousand men, occupied a strong position
on the road between Namur and Brussels, and was prepared to give battle to
any force which might attempt to raise the siege. 304 This partition of duties
excited no surprise. It had long been known that the great Monarch loved
sieges, and that he did not love battles. He professed to think that the real
test of military skill was a siege. The event of an encounter between two
armies on an open plain was, in his opinion, often determined by chance;
but only science could prevail against ravelins and bastions which science
had constructed. His detractors sneeringly pronounced it fortunate that the
department of the military art which His Majesty considered as the noblest
was one in which it was seldom necessary for him to expose to serious risk
a life invaluable to his people.
Namur, situated at the confluence of the Sambre and the Meuse, was one
of the great fortresses of Europe. The town lay in the plain, and had no

strength except what was derived from art. But art and nature had combined
to fortify that renowned citadel which, from the summit of a lofty rock,
looks down on a boundless expanse of cornfields, woods and meadows,
watered by two fine rivers. The people of the city and of the surrounding
region were proud of their impregnable castle. Their boast was that never,
in all the wars which had devastated the Netherlands, had skill or valour
been able to penetrate those walls. The neighbouring fastnesses, famed
throughout the world for their strength, Antwerp and Ostend, Ypres, Lisle
and Tournay, Mons and Valenciennes, Cambray and Charleroi, Limburg and
Luxemburg, had opened their gates to conquerors; but never once had the
flag been pulled down from the battlements of Namur. That nothing might
be wanting to the interest of the siege, the two great masters of the art of
fortification were opposed to each other. Vauban had during many years
been regarded as the first of engineers; but a formidable rival had lately
arisen, Menno, Baron of Cohorn, the ablest officer in the service of the
States General. The defences of Namur had been recently strengthened and
repaired under Cohorn's superintendence; and he was now within the walls.
Vauban was in the camp of Lewis. It might therefore be expected that both
the attack and the defence would be conducted with consummate ability.
By this time the allied armies had assembled; but it was too late. 305
William hastened towards Namur. He menaced the French works, first from
the west, then from the north, then from the east. But between him and the
lines of circumvallation lay the army of Luxemburg, turning as he turned,
and always so strongly posted that to attack it would have been the height
of imprudence. Meanwhile the besiegers, directed by the skill of Vauban
and animated by the presence of Lewis, made rapid progress. There were
indeed many difficulties to be surmounted and many hardships to be
endured. The weather was stormy; and, on the eighth of June, the feast of
Saint Medard, who holds in the French Calendar the same inauspicious
place which in our Calendar belongs to Saint Swithin, the rain fell in
torrents. The Sambre rose and covered many square miles on which the
harvest was green. The Mehaigne whirled down its bridges to the Meuse.
All the roads became swamps. The trenches were so deep in water and mire
that it was the business of three days to move a gun from one battery to
another. The six thousand waggons which had accompanied the French
army were useless. It was necessary that gunpowder, bullets, corn, hay,
should be carried from place to place on the backs of the war horses.

Nothing but the authority of Lewis could, in such circumstances, have
maintained order and inspired cheerfulness. His soldiers, in truth, showed
much more reverence for him than for what their religion had made sacred.
They cursed Saint Medard heartily, and broke or burned every image of him
that could be found. But for their King there was nothing that they were not
ready to do and to bear. In spite of every obstacle they constantly gained
ground. Cohorn was severely wounded while defending with desperate
resolution a fort which he had himself constructed, and of which he was
proud. His place could not be supplied. The governor was a feeble man
whom Gastanaga had appointed, and whom William had recently advised
the Elector of Bavaria to remove. The spirit of the garrison gave way. The
town surrendered on the eighth day of the siege, the citadel about three
weeks later. 306
The history of the fall of Namur in 1692 bears a close resemblance to the
history of the fail of Mons in 1691. Both in 1691 and in 1692, Lewis, the
sole and absolute master of the resources of his kingdom, was able to open
the campaign, before William, the captain of a coalition, had brought
together his dispersed forces. In both years the advantage of having the first
move decided the event of the game. At Namur, as at Mons, Lewis, assisted
by Vauban conducted the siege; Luxemburg covered it; William vainly tried
to raise it, and, with deep mortification, assisted as a spectator at the victory
of his enemy.
In one respect however the fate of the two fortresses was very different.
Mons was delivered up by its own inhabitants. Namur might perhaps have
been saved if the garrison had been as zealous and determined as the
population. Strange to say, in this place, so long subject to a foreign rule,
there was found a patriotism resembling that of the little Greek
commonwealths. There is no reason to believe that the burghers cared about
the balance of power, or had any preference for James or for William, for
the Most Christian King or for the Most Catholic King. But every citizen
considered his own honour as bound up with the honour of the maiden
fortress. It is true that the French did not abuse their victory. No outrage
was committed; the privileges of the municipality were respected, the
magistrates were not changed. Yet the people could not see a conqueror
enter their hitherto unconquered castle without tears of rage and shame.
Even the barefooted Carmelites, who had renounced all pleasures, all
property, all society, all domestic affection, whose days were all fast days,

who passed month after month without uttering a word, were strangely
moved. It was in vain that Lewis attempted to soothe them by marks of
respect and by munificent bounty. Whenever they met a French uniform
they turned their heads away with a look which showed that a life of prayer,
of abstinence and of silence had left one earthly feeling still unsubdued. 307
This was perhaps the moment at which the arrogance of Lewis reached
the highest point. He had achieved the last and the most splendid military
exploit of his life. His confederated foes, English, Dutch and German, had,
in their own despite, swelled his triumph, and had been witnesses of the
glory which made their hearts sick. His exultation was boundless. The
inscriptions on the medals which he struck to commemorate his success, the
letters by which he enjoined the prelates of his kingdom to sing the Te
Deum, were boastful and sarcastic. His people, a people among whose
many fine qualities moderation in prosperity cannot be reckoned, seemed
for a time to be drunk with pride. Even Boileau, hurried along by the
prevailing enthusiasm, forgot the good sense and good taste to which he
owed his reputation. He fancied himself a lyric poet, and gave vent to his
feelings in a hundred and sixty lines of frigid bombast about Alcides, Mars,
Bacchus, Ceres, the lyre of Orpheus, the Thracian oaks and the Permessian
nymphs. He wondered whether Namur, had, like Troy, been built by Apollo
and Neptune. He asked what power could subdue a city stronger than that
before which the Greeks lay ten years; and he returned answer to himself
that such a miracle could be wrought only by Jupiter or by Lewis. The
feather in the hat of Lewis was the loadstar of victory. To Lewis all things
must yield, princes, nations, winds, waters. In conclusion the poet addressed
himself to the banded enemies of France, and tauntingly bade them carry
back to their homes the tidings that Namur had been taken in their sight.
Before many months had elapsed both the boastful king and the boastful
poet were taught that it is prudent as well as graceful to be modest in the
hour of victory.
One mortification Lewis had suffered even in the midst of his prosperity.
While he lay before Namur, he heard the sounds of rejoicing from the
distant camp of the allies. Three peals of thunder from a hundred and forty
pieces of cannon were answered by three volleys from sixty thousand
muskets. It was soon known that these salutes were fired on account of the
battle of La Hogue. The French King exerted himself to appear serene.
"They make a strange noise," he said, "about the burning of a few ships." In

truth he was much disturbed, and the more so because a report had reached
the Low Countries that there had been a sea fight, and that his fleet had
been victorious. His good humour however was soon restored by the
brilliant success of those operations which were under his own immediate
direction. When the siege was over, he left Luxemburg in command of the
army, and returned to Versailles. At Versailles the unfortunate Tourville
soon presented himself, and was graciously received. As soon as he
appeared in the circle, the King welcomed him in a loud voice. "I am
perfectly satisfied with you and with my sailors. We have been beaten, it is
true; but your honour and that of the nation are unsullied." 308
Though Lewis had quitted the Netherlands, the eyes of all Europe were
still fixed on that region. The armies there had been strengthened by
reinforcements drawn from many quarters. Every where else the military
operations of the year were languid and without interest. The Grand Vizier
and Lewis of Baden did little more than watch each other on the Danube.
Marshal Noailles and the Duke of Medina Sidonia did little more than
watch each other under the Pyrenees. On the Upper Rhine, and along the
frontier which separates France from Piedmont, an indecisive predatory war
was carried on, by which the soldiers suffered little and the cultivators of
the soil much. But all men looked, with anxious expectation of some great
event, to the frontier of Brabant, where William was opposed to
Luxemburg.
Luxemburg, now in his sixty-sixth year, had risen, by slow degrees, and
by the deaths of several great men, to the first place among the generals of
his time. He was of that noble house of Montmorency which united many
mythical and many historical titles to glory, which boasted that it sprang
from the first Frank who was baptized into the name of Christ in the fifth
century, and which had, since the eleventh century, given to France a long
and splendid succession of Constables and Marshals. In valour and abilities
Luxemburg was not inferior to any of his illustrious race. But, highly
descended and highly gifted as he was, he had with difficulty surmounted
the obstacles which impeded him in the road to fame. If he owed much to
the bounty of nature and fortune, he had suffered still more from their spite.
His features were frightfully harsh, his stature was diminutive; a huge and
pointed hump rose on his back. His constitution was feeble and sickly.
Cruel imputations had been thrown on his morals. He had been accused of
trafficking with sorcerers and with vendors of poison, had languished long

in a dungeon, and had at length regained his liberty without entirely
regaining his honour. 309 He had always been disliked both by Louvois and
by Lewis. Yet the war against the European coalition had lasted but a very
short time when both the minister and the King felt that the general who
was personally odious to them was necessary to the state. Conde and
Turenne were no more; and Luxemburg was without dispute the first soldier
that France still possessed. In vigilance, diligence and perseverance he was
deficient. He seemed to reserve his great qualities for great emergencies. It
was on a pitched field of battle that he was all himself. His glance was rapid
and unerring. His judgment was clearest and surest when responsibility
pressed heaviest on him and when difficulties gathered thickest around him.
To his skill, energy and presence of mind his country owed some glorious
days. But, though eminently successful in battles, he was not eminently
successful in campaigns. He gained immense renown at William's expense;
and yet there was, as respected the objects of the war, little to choose
between the two commanders. Luxemburg was repeatedly victorious; but he
had not the art of improving a victory. William was repeatedly defeated; but
of all generals he was the best qualified to repair a defeat.
In the month of July William's headquarters were at Lambeque. About six
miles off, at Steinkirk, Luxemburg had encamped with the main body of his
army; and about six miles further off lay a considerable force commanded
by the Marquess of Boufflers, one of the best officers in the service of
Lewis.
The country between Lambeque and Steinkirk was intersected by
innumerable hedges and ditches; and neither army could approach the other
without passing through several long and narrow defiles. Luxemburg had
therefore little reason to apprehend that he should be attacked in his
entrenchments; and he felt assured that he should have ample notice before
any attack was made; for he had succeeded in corrupting an adventurer
named Millevoix, who was chief musician and private secretary of the
Elector of Bavaria. This man regularly sent to the French headquarters
authentic information touching the designs of the allies.
The Marshal, confident in the strength of his position and in the accuracy
of his intelligence, lived in his tent as he was accustomed to live in his hotel
at Paris. He was at once a valetudinarian and a voluptuary; and, in both
characters, he loved his ease. He scarcely ever mounted his horse. Light

conversation and cards occupied most of his hours. His table was luxurious;
and, when he had sate down to supper, it was a service of danger to disturb
him. Some scoffers remarked that in his military dispositions he was not
guided exclusively by military reasons, that he generally contrived to
entrench himself in some place where the veal and the poultry were
remarkably good, and that he was always solicitous to keep open such
communications with the sea as might ensure him, from September to April,
a regular supply of Sandwich oysters.
If there were any agreeable women in the neighbourhood of his camp,
they were generally to be found at his banquets. It may easily be supposed
that, under such a commander, the young princes and nobles of France vied
with one another in splendour and gallantry. 310
While he was amusing himself after his wonted fashion, the confederate
princes discovered that their counsels were betrayed. A peasant picked up a
letter which had been dropped, and carried it to the Elector of Bavaria. It
contained full proofs of the guilt of Millevoix. William conceived a hope
that he might be able to take his enemies in the snare which they had laid
for him. The perfidious secretary was summoned to the royal presence and
taxed with his crime. A pen was put into his hand; a pistol was held to his
breast; and he was commanded to write on pain of instant death. His letter,
dictated by William, was conveyed to the French camp. It apprised
Luxemburg that the allies meant to send out a strong foraging party on the
next day. In order to protect this party from molestation, some battalions of
infantry, accompanied by artillery, would march by night to occupy the
defiles which lay between the armies. The Marshal read, believed and went
to rest, while William urged forward the preparations for a general assault
on the French lines.
The whole allied army was under arms while it was still dark. In the grey
of the morning Luxemburg was awakened by scouts, who brought tidings
that the enemy was advancing in great force. He at first treated the news
very lightly. His correspondent, it seemed, had been, as usual, diligent and
exact. The Prince of Orange had sent out a detachment to protect his
foragers, and this detachment had been magnified by fear into a great host.
But one alarming report followed another fast. All the passes, it was said,
were choked with multitudes of foot, horse and artillery, under the banners
of England and of Spain, of the United Provinces and of the Empire; and

every column was moving towards Steinkirk. At length the Marshal rose,
got on horseback, and rode out to see what was doing.
By this time the vanguard of the allies was close to his outposts. About
half a mile in advance of his army was encamped a brigade named from the
province of Bourbonnais. These troops had to bear the first brunt of the
onset. Amazed and panicstricken, they were swept away in a moment, and
ran for their lives, leaving their tents and seven pieces of cannon to the
assailants.
Thus far William's plans had been completely successful but now fortune
began to turn against him. He had been misinformed as to the nature of the
ground which lay between the station of the brigade of Bourbonnais and the
main encampment of the enemy. He had expected that he should be able to
push forward without a moment's pause, that he should find the French
army in a state of wild disorder, and that his victory would be easy and
complete. But his progress was obstructed by several fences and ditches;
there was a short delay; and a short delay sufficed to frustrate his design.
Luxemburg was the very man for such a conjuncture. He had committed
great faults; he had kept careless guard; he had trusted implicitly to
information which had proved false; he had neglected information which
had proved true; one of his divisions was flying in confusion; the other
divisions were unprepared for action. That crisis would have paralysed the
faculties of an ordinary captain; it only braced and stimulated those of
Luxemburg. His mind, nay his sickly and distorted body, seemed to derive
health and vigour from disaster and dismay. In a short time he had disposed
every thing. The French army was in battle order. Conspicuous in that great
array were the household troops of Lewis, the most renowned body of
fighting men in Europe; and at their head appeared, glittering in lace and
embroidery hastily thrown on and half fastened, a crowd of young princes
and lords who had just been roused by the trumpet from their couches or
their revels, and who had hastened to look death in the face with the gay
and festive intrepidity characteristic of French gentlemen. Highest in rank
among these highborn warriors was a lad of sixteen, Philip Duke of
Chartres, son of the Duke of Orleans, and nephew of the King of France. It
was with difficulty and by importunate solicitation that the gallant boy had
extorted Luxemburg's permission to be where the fire was hottest. Two
other youths of royal blood, Lewis Duke of Bourbon, and Armand Prince of
Conti, showed a spirit worthy of their descent. With them was a descendant

of one of the bastards of Henry the Fourth, Lewis Duke of Vendome, a man
sunk in indolence and in the foulest vice, yet capable of exhibiting on a
great occasion the qualities of a great soldier. Berwick, who was beginning
to earn for himself an honourable name in arms, was there; and at his side
rode Sarsfield, whose courage and ability earned, on that day, the esteem of
the whole French army. Meanwhile Luxemburg had sent off a pressing
message to summon Boufflers. But the message was needless. Boufflers
had heard the firing, and, like a brave and intelligent captain, was already
hastening towards the point from which the sound came.
Though the assailants had lost all the advantage which belongs to a
surprise, they came on manfully. In the front of the battle were the British
commanded by Count Solmes. The division which was to lead the way was
Mackay's. He was to have been supported, according to William's plan, by a
strong body of foot and horse. Though most of Mackay's men had never
before been under fire, their behaviour gave promise of Blenheim and
Ramilies. They first encountered the Swiss, who held a distinguished place
in the French army. The fight was so close and desperate that the muzzles of
the muskets crossed. The Swiss were driven back with fearful slaughter.
More than eighteen hundred of them appear from the French returns to have
been killed or wounded. Luxemburg afterwards said that he had never in his
life seen so furious a struggle. He collected in haste the opinion of the
generals who surrounded him. All thought that the emergency was one
which could be met by no common means. The King's household must
charge the English. The Marshal gave the word; and the household, headed
by the princes of the blood, came on, flinging their muskets back on their
shoulders. "Sword in hand," was the cry through all the ranks of that terrible
brigade: "sword in hand. No firing. Do it with the cold steel." After a long
and desperate resistance the English were borne down. They never ceased
to repeat that, if Solmes had done his duty by them, they would have beaten
even the household. But Solmes gave them no effective support. He pushed
forward some cavalry which, from the nature of the ground, could do little
or nothing. His infantry he would not suffer to stir. They could do no good,
he said, and he would not send them to be slaughtered. Ormond was eager
to hasten to the assistance of his countrymen, but was not permitted.
Mackay sent a pressing message to represent that he and his men were left
to certain destruction; but all was vain. "God's will be done," said the brave
veteran. He died as he had lived, like a good Christian and a good soldier.

With him fell Douglas and Lanier, two generals distinguished among the
conquerors of Ireland. Mountjoy too was among the slain. After languishing
three years in the Bastile, he had just been exchanged for Richard Hamilton,
and, having been converted to Whiggism by wrongs more powerful than all
the arguments of Locke and Sidney, had instantly hastened to join William's
camp as a volunteer. 311 Five fine regiments were entirely cut to pieces. No
part of this devoted band would have escaped but for the courage and
conduct of Auverquerque, who came to the rescue in the moment of
extremity with two fresh battalions. The gallant manner in which he brought
off the remains of Mackay's division was long remembered with grateful
admiration by the British camp fires. The ground where the conflict had
raged was piled with corpses; and those who buried the slain remarked that
almost all the wounds had been given in close fighting by the sword or the
bayonet.
It was said that William so far forgot his wonted stoicism as to utter a
passionate exclamation at the way in which the English regiments had been
sacrificed. Soon, however, he recovered his equanimity, and determined to
fall back. It was high time; for the French army was every moment
becoming stronger, as the regiments commanded by Boufflers came up in
rapid succession. The allied army returned to Lambeque unpursued and in
unbroken order. 312
The French owned that they had about seven thousand men killed and
wounded. The loss of the allies had been little, if at all, greater. The relative
strength of the armies was what it had been on the preceding day; and they
continued to occupy their old positions. But the moral effect of the battle
was great. The splendour of William's fame grew pale. Even his admirers
were forced to own that, in the field, he was not a match for Luxemburg. In
France the news was received with transports of joy and pride. The Court,
the Capital, even the peasantry of the remotest provinces, gloried in the
impetuous valour which had been displayed by so many youths, the heirs of
illustrious names. It was exultingly and fondly repeated all over the
kingdom that the young Duke of Chartres could not by any remonstrances
be kept out of danger, that a ball had passed through his coat that he had
been wounded in the shoulder. The people lined the roads to see the princes
and nobles who returned from Steinkirk. The jewellers devised Steinkirk
buckles; the perfumers sold Steinkirk powder. But the name of the field of
battle was peculiarly given to a new species of collar. Lace neckcloths were

then worn by men of fashion; and it had been usual to arrange them with
great care. But at the terrible moment when the brigade of Bourbonnais was
flying before the onset of the allies, there was no time for foppery; and the
finest gentlemen of the Court came spurring to the front of the line of battle
with their rich cravats in disorder. It therefore became a fashion among the
beauties of Paris to wear round their necks kerchiefs of the finest lace
studiously disarranged; and these kerchiefs were called Steinkirks. 313
In the camp of the allies all was disunion and discontent. National
jealousies and animosities raged without restraint or disguise. The
resentment of the English was loudly expressed. Solmes, though he was
said by those who knew him well to have some valuable qualities, was not a
man likely to conciliate soldiers who were prejudiced against him as a
foreigner. His demeanour was arrogant, his temper ungovernable. Even
before the unfortunate day of Steinkirk the English officers did not
willingly communicate with him, and the private men murmured at his
harshness. But after the battle the outcry against him became furious. He
was accused, perhaps unjustly, of having said with unfeeling levity, while
the English regiments were contending desperately against great odds, that
he was curious to see how the bulldogs would come off. Would any body, it
was asked, now pretend that it was on account of his superior skill and
experience that he had been put over the heads of so many English officers?
It was the fashion to say that those officers had never seen war on a large
scale. But surely the merest novice was competent to do all that Solmes had
done, to misunderstand orders, to send cavalry on duty which none but
infantry could perform, and to look on at safe distance while brave men
were cut to pieces. It was too much to be at once insulted and sacrificed,
excluded from the honours of war, yet pushed on all its extreme dangers,
sneered at as raw recruits, and then left to cope unsupported with the finest
body of veterans in the world. Such were the complains of the English
army; and they were echoed by the English nation.
Fortunately about this time a discovery was made which furnished both
the camp at Lambeque and the coffeehouses of London with a subject of
conversation much less agreeable to the Jacobites than the disaster of
Steinkirk.
A plot against the life of William had been, during some months,
maturing in the French War Office. It should seem that Louvois had

originally sketched the design, and had bequeathed it, still rude, to his son
and successor Barbesieux. By Barbesieux the plan was perfected. The
execution was entrusted to an officer named Grandval. Grandval was
undoubtedly brave, and full of zeal for his country and his religion. He was
indeed flighty and half witted, but not on that account the less dangerous.
Indeed a flighty and half witted man is the very instrument generally
preferred by cunning politicians when very hazardous work is to be done.
No shrewd calculator would, for any bribe, however enormous, have
exposed himself to the fate of Chatel, of Ravaillac, or of Gerarts. 314
Grandval secured, as he conceived, the assistance of two adventurers,
Dumont, a Walloon, and Leefdale, a Dutchman. In April, soon after William
had arrived in the Low Countries, the murderers were directed to repair to
their post. Dumont was then in Westphalia. Grandval and Leefdale were at
Paris. Uden in North Brabant was fixed as the place where the three were to
meet and whence they were to proceed together to the headquarters of the
allies. Before Grandval left Paris he paid a visit to Saint Germains, and was
presented to James and to Mary of Modena. "I have been informed," said
James, "of the business. If you and your companions do me this service,
you shall never want."
After this audience Grandval set out on his journey. He had not the
faintest suspicion that he had been betrayed both by the accomplice who
accompanied him and by the accomplice whom he was going to meet.
Dumont and Leefdale were not enthusiasts. They cared nothing for the
restoration of James, the grandeur of Lewis, or the ascendency of the
Church of Rome. It was plain to every man of common sense that, whether
the design succeeded or failed, the reward of the assassins would probably
be to be disowned, with affected abhorrence, by the Courts of Versailles and
Saint Germains, and to be torn with redhot pincers, smeared with melted
lead, and dismembered by four horses. To vulgar natures the prospect of
such a martyrdom was not alluring. Both these men, therefore, had, almost
at the same time, though, as far as appears, without any concert, conveyed
to William, through different channels, warnings that his life was in danger.
Dumont had acknowledged every thing to the Duke of Zell, one of the
confederate princes. Leefdale had transmitted full intelligence through his
relations who resided in Holland. Meanwhile Morel, a Swiss Protestant of
great learning who was then in France, wrote to inform Burnet that the
weak and hotheaded Grandval had been heard to talk boastfully of the event

which would soon astonish the world, and had confidently predicted that
the Prince of Orange would not live to the end of the next month.
These cautions were not neglected. From the moment at which Grandval
entered the Netherlands, his steps were among snares. His movements were
watched; his words were noted; he was arrested, examined, confronted with
his accomplices, and sent to the camp of the allies. About a week after the
battle of Steinkirk he was brought before a Court Martial. Ginkell, who had
been rewarded for his great services in Ireland with the title of Earl of
Athlone, presided; and Talmash was among the judges. Mackay and Lanier
had been named members of the board; but they were no more; and their
places were filled by younger officers.
The duty of the Court Martial was very simple; for the prisoner attempted
no defence. His conscience had, it should seem, been suddenly awakened.
He admitted, with expressions of remorse, the truth of all the charges, made
a minute, and apparently an ingenuous, confession, and owned that he had
deserved death. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, and
underwent his punishment with great fortitude and with a show of piety. He
left behind him a few lines, in which he declared that he was about to lose
his life for having too faithfully obeyed the injunctions of Barbesieux.
His confession was immediately published in several languages, and was
read with very various and very strong emotions. That it was genuine could
not be doubted; for it was warranted by the signatures of some of the most
distinguished military men living. That it was prompted by the hope of
pardon could hardly be supposed; for William had taken pains to discourage
that hope. Still less could it be supposed that the prisoner had uttered
untruths in order to avoid the torture. For, though it was the universal
practice in the Netherlands to put convicted assassins to the rack in order to
wring out from them the names of their employers and associates, William
had given orders that, on this occasion, the rack should not be used or even
named. It should be added, that the Court did not interrogate the prisoner
closely, but suffered him to tell his story in his own way. It is therefore
reasonable to believe that his narrative is substantially true; and no part of it
has a stronger air of truth than his account of the audience with which
James had honoured him at Saint Germains.
In our island the sensation produced by the news was great. The Whigs
loudly called both James and Lewis assassins. How, it was asked, was it

possible, without outraging common sense, to put an innocent meaning on
the words which Grandval declared that he had heard from the lips of the
banished King of England? And who that knew the Court of Versailles
would believe that Barbesieux, a youth, a mere novice in politics, and rather
a clerk than a minister, would have dared to do what he had done without
taking his master's pleasure? Very charitable and very ignorant persons
might perhaps indulge a hope that Lewis had not been an accessory before
the fact. But that he was an accessory after the fact no human being could
doubt. He must have seen the proceedings of the Court Martial, the
evidence, the confession. If he really abhorred assassination as honest men
abhor it, would not Barbesieux have been driven with ignominy from the
royal presence, and flung into the Bastile? Yet Barbesieux was still at the
War Office; and it was not pretended that he had been punished even by a
word or a frown. It was plain, then, that both Kings were partakers in the
guilt of Grandval. And if it were asked how two princes who made a high
profession of religion could have fallen into such wickedness, the answer
was that they had learned their religion from the Jesuits. In reply to these
reproaches the English Jacobites said very little; and the French government
said nothing at all. 315
The campaign in the Netherlands ended without any other event
deserving to be recorded. On the eighteenth of October William arrived in
England. Late in the evening of the twentieth he reached Kensington,
having traversed the whole length of the capital. His reception was cordial.
The crowd was great; the acclamations were loud; and all the windows
along his route, from Aldgate to Piccadilly, were lighted up. 316
But, notwithstanding these favourable symptoms, the nation was
disappointed and discontented. The war had been unsuccessful by land. By
sea a great advantage had been gained, but had not been improved. The
general expectation had been that the victory of May would be followed by
a descent on the coast of France, that Saint Maloes would he bombarded,
that the last remains of Tourville's squadron would be destroyed, and that
the arsenals of Brest and Rochefort would be laid in ruins. This expectation
was, no doubt, unreasonable. It did not follow, because Rooke and his
seamen had silenced the batteries hastily thrown up by Bellefonds, that it
would be safe to expose ships to the fire of regular fortresses. The
government, however, was not less sanguine than the nation. Great
preparations were made. The allied fleet, having been speedily refitted at

Portsmouth, stood out again to sea. Rooke was sent to examine the
soundings and the currents along the shore of Brittany. 317 Transports were
collected at Saint Helens. Fourteen thousand troops were assembled on
Portsdown under the command of Meinhart Schomberg, who had been
rewarded for his father's services and his own with the highest rank in the
Irish peerage, and was now Duke of Leinster. Under him were Ruvigny,
who, for his good service at Aghrim, had been created Earl of Galway, La
Melloniere and Cambon with their gallant bands of refugees, and Argyle
with the regiment which bore his name, and which, as it began to be
rumoured, had last winter done something strange and horrible in a wild
country of rocks and snow, never yet explored by any Englishman.
On the twenty-sixth of July the troops were all on board. The transports
sailed, and in a few hours joined the naval armament in the neighbourhood
of Portland. On the twenty-eighth a general council of war was held. All the
naval commanders, with Russell at their head, declared that it would be
madness to carry their ships within the range of the guns of Saint Maloes,
and that the town must be reduced to straits by land before the men of war
in the harbour could, with any chance of success, be attacked from the sea.
The military men declared with equal unanimity that the land forces could
effect nothing against the town without the cooperation of the fleet. It was
then considered whether it would be advisable to make an attempt on Brest
or Rochefort. Russell and the other flag officers, among whom were Rooke,
Shovel, Almonde and Evertsen, pronounced that the summer was too far
spent for either enterprise. 318 We must suppose that an opinion in which so
many distinguished admirals, both English and Dutch, concurred, however
strange it may seem to us, was in conformity with what were then the
established principles of the art of maritime war. But why all these
questions could not have been fully discussed a week earlier, why fourteen
thousand troops should have been shipped and sent to sea, before it had
been considered what they were to do, or whether it would be possible for
them to do any thing, we may reasonably wonder. The armament returned
to Saint Helens, to the astonishment and disgust of the whole nation. 319
The ministers blamed the commanders; the commanders blamed the
ministers. The recriminations exchanged between Nottingham and Russell
were loud and angry. Nottingham, honest, industrious, versed in civil
business, and eloquent in parliamentary debate, was deficient in the
qualities of a war minister, and was not at all aware of his deficiencies.

Between him and the whole body of professional sailors there was a feud of
long standing. He had, some time before the Revolution, been a Lord of the
Admiralty; and his own opinion was that he had then acquired a profound
knowledge of maritime affairs. This opinion however he had very much to
himself. Men who had passed half their lives on the waves, and who had
been in battles, storms and shipwrecks, were impatient of his somewhat
pompous lectures and reprimands, and pronounced him a mere pedant, who,
with all his book learning, was ignorant of what every cabin boy knew.
Russell had always been froward, arrogant and mutinous; and now
prosperity and glory brought out his vices in full strength. With the
government which he had saved he took all the liberties of an insolent
servant who believes himself to be necessary, treated the orders of his
superiors with contemptuous levity, resented reproof, however gentle, as an
outrage, furnished no plan of his own, and showed a sullen determination to
execute no plan furnished by any body else. To Nottingham he had a strong
and a very natural antipathy. They were indeed an ill matched pair.
Nottingham was a Tory; Russell was a Whig. Nottingham was a speculative
seaman, confident in his theories. Russell was a practical seaman, proud of
his achievements. The strength of Nottingham lay in speech; the strength of
Russell lay in action. Nottingham's demeanour was decorous even to
formality; Russell was passionate and rude. Lastly Nottingham was an
honest man; and Russell was a villain. They now became mortal enemies.
The Admiral sneered at the Secretary's ignorance of naval affairs; the
Secretary accused the Admiral of sacrificing the public interests to mere
wayward humour; and both were in the right. 320
While they were wrangling, the merchants of all the ports in the kingdom
raised a cry against the naval administration. The victory of which the
nation was so proud was, in the City, pronounced to have been a positive
disaster. During some months before the battle all the maritime strength of
the enemy had been collected in two great masses, one in the Mediterranean
and one in the Atlantic. There had consequently been little privateering; and
the voyage to New England or Jamaica had been almost as safe as in time
of peace. Since the battle, the remains of the force which had lately been
collected under Tourville were dispersed over the ocean. Even the passage
from England to Ireland was insecure. Every week it was announced that
twenty, thirty, fifty vessels belonging to London or Bristol had been taken
by the French. More than a hundred prices were carried during that autumn

into Saint Maloes alone. It would have been far better, in the opinion of the
shipowners and of the underwriters, that the Royal Sun had still been afloat
with her thousand fighting men on board than that she should be lying a
heap of ashes on the beach at Cherburg, while her crew, distributed among
twenty brigantines, prowled for booty over the sea between Cape Finisterre
and Cape Clear. 321
The privateers of Dunkirk had long been celebrated; and among them,
John Bart, humbly born, and scarcely able to sign his name, but eminently
brave and active, had attained an undisputed preeminence. In the country of
Anson and Hawke, of Howe and Rodney, of Duncan, Saint Vincent and
Nelson, the name of the most daring and skilful corsair would have little
chance of being remembered. But France, among whose many
unquestioned titles to glory very few are derived from naval war, still ranks
Bart among her great men. In the autumn of 1692 this enterprising
freebooter was the terror of all the English and Dutch merchants who traded
with the Baltic. He took and destroyed vessels close to the eastern coast of
our island. He even ventured to land in Northumberland, and burned many
houses before the trainbands could be collected to oppose him. The prizes
which he carried back into his native port were estimated at about a hundred
thousand pounds sterling. 322 About the same time a younger adventurer,
destined to equal or surpass Bart, Du Guay Trouin, was entrusted with the
command of a small armed vessel. The intrepid boy,—for he was not yet
twenty years old,—entered the estuary of the Shannon, sacked a mansion in
the county of Clare, and did not reimbark till a detachment from the
garrison of Limerick marched against him. 323
While our trade was interrupted and our shores menaced by these rovers,
some calamities which no human prudence could have averted increased
the public ill humour. An earthquake of terrible violence laid waste in less
than three minutes the flourishing colony of Jamaica. Whole plantations
changed their place. Whole villages were swallowed up. Port Royal, the
fairest and wealthiest city which the English had yet built in the New
World, renowned for its quays, for its warehouses, and for its stately streets,
which were said to rival Cheapside, was turned into a mass of ruins. Fifteen
hundred of the inhabitants were buried under their own dwellings. The
effect of this disaster was severely felt by many of the great mercantile
houses of London and Bristol. 324