No More Learning

It was impossible, however,
to remove from his mind the impression that a concession on this point
would seriously impair his authority. Not relying on the judgment of his
ordinary advisers, he sent Portland to ask the opinion of Sir William
Temple. Temple had made a retreat for himself at a place called Moor
Park, in the neighbourhood of Farnham. The country round his dwelling
was almost a wilderness. His amusement during some years had been to
create in the waste what those Dutch burgomasters among whom he had
passed some of the best years of his life, would have considered as a
paradise. His hermitage had been occasionally honoured by the presence
of the King, who had from a boy known and esteemed the author of the
Triple Alliance, and who was well pleased to find, among the heath and
furze of the wilds of Surrey, a spot which seemed to be part of Holland,
a straight canal, a terrace, rows of clipped trees, and rectangular beds
of flowers and potherbs.

Portland now repaired to this secluded abode and consulted the oracle.
Temple was decidedly of opinion that the bill ought to pass. He was
apprehensive that the reasons which led him to form this opinion might
not be fully and correctly reported to the King by Portland, who was
indeed as brave a soldier and as trusty a friend as ever lived, whose
natural abilities were not inconsiderable, and who, in some departments
of business, had great experience, but who was very imperfectly
acquainted with the history and constitution of England. As the state
of Sir William's health made it impossible for him to go himself to
Kensington, he determined to send his secretary thither. The secretary
was a poor scholar of four or five and twenty, under whose plain garb
and ungainly deportment were concealed some of the choicest gifts that
have ever been bestowed on any of the children of men; rare powers of
observation, brilliant wit, grotesque invention, humour of the most
austere flavour, yet exquisitely delicious, eloquence singularly pure,
manly and perspicuous. This young man was named Jonathan Swift. He was
born in Ireland, but would have thought himself insulted if he had been
called an Irishman. He was of unmixed English blood, and, through life,
regarded the aboriginal population of the island in which he first drew
breath as an alien and a servile caste. He had in the late reign kept
terms at the University of Dublin, but had been distinguished there only
by his irregularities, and had with difficulty obtained his degree. At
the time of the Revolution, he had, with many thousands of his fellow
colonists, taken refuge in the mother country from the violence of
Tyrconnel, and had thought himself fortunate in being able to obtain
shelter at Moor Park. [405] For that shelter, however, he had to pay
a heavy price. He was thought to be sufficiently remunerated for his
services with twenty pounds a year and his board. He dined at the second
table. Sometimes, indeed, when better company was not to be had, he was
honoured by being invited to play at cards with his patron; and on such
occasions Sir William was so generous as to give his antagonist a little
silver to begin with. [406] The humble student would not have dared to
raise his eyes to a lady of family; but, when he had become a clergyman,
he began, after the fashion of the clergymen of that generation, to make
love to a pretty waitingmaid who was the chief ornament of the servants'
hall, and whose name is inseparably associated with his in a sad and
mysterious history.

Swift many years later confessed some part of what he felt when he found
himself on his way to Court. His spirit had been bowed down, and might
seem to have been broken, by calamities and humiliations. The language
which he was in the habit of holding to his patron, as far as we can
judge from the specimens which still remain, was that of a lacquey,
or rather of a beggar. [407] A sharp word or a cold look of the master
sufficed to make the servant miserable during several days. [408] But
this tameness was merely the tameness with which a tiger, caught, caged
and starved, submits to the keeper who brings him food. The humble
menial was at heart the haughtiest, the most aspiring, the most
vindictive, the most despotic of men. And now at length a great, a
boundless prospect was opening before him. To William he was already
slightly known. At Moor Park the King had sometimes, when his host was
confined by gout to an easy chair, been attended by the secretary about
the grounds. His Majesty had condescended to teach his companion the
Dutch way of cutting and eating asparagus, and had graciously asked
whether Mr. Swift would like to have a captain's commission in a cavalry
regiment. But now for the first time the young man was to stand in
the royal presence as a counsellor. He was admitted into the closet,
delivered a letter from Temple, and explained and enforced the arguments
which that letter contained, concisely, but doubtless with clearness and
ability. There was, he said, no reason to think that short Parliaments
would be more disposed than long Parliaments to encroach on the just
prerogatives of the Crown. In fact the Parliament which had, in the
preceding generation, waged war against a king, led him captive, sent
him to the prison, to the bar, to the scaffold, was known in our annals
as emphatically the Long Parliament. Never would such disasters have
befallen the monarchy but for the fatal law which secured that assembly
from dissolution. [409] There was, it must be owned, a flaw in this
reasoning which a man less shrewd than William might easily detect. That
one restriction of the royal prerogative had been mischievous did
not prove that another restriction would be salutary. It by no means
followed because one sovereign had been ruined by being unable to get
rid of a hostile Parliament that another sovereign might not be ruined
by being forced to part with a friendly Parliament. To the great
mortification of the ambassador, his arguments failed to shake the
King's resolution. On the fourteenth of March the Commons were summoned
to the Upper House; the title of the Triennial Bill was read; and it was
announced, after the ancient form, that the King and Queen would take
the matter into their consideration. The Parliament was then prorogued.

Soon after the prorogation William set out for the Continent. It was
necessary that, before his departure, he should make some important
changes. He was resolved not to discard Nottingham, on whose integrity,
a virtue rare among English statesmen, he placed a well founded
reliance. Yet, if Nottingham remained Secretary of State, it was
impossible to employ Russell at sea. Russell, though much mortified,
was induced to accept a lucrative post in the household; and two naval
officers of great note in their profession, Killegrew and Delaval, were
placed at the Board of Admiralty and entrusted with the command of the
Channel Fleet. [410] These arrangements caused much murmuring among the
Whigs; for Killegrew and Delaval were certainly Tories, and were by many
suspected of being Jacobites. But other promotions which took place at
the same time proved that the King wished to bear himself evenly between
the hostile factions. Nottingham had, during a year, been the sole
Secretary of State. He was now joined with a colleague in whose society
he must have felt himself very ill at ease, John Trenchard. Trenchard
belonged to the extreme section of the Whig party. He was a Taunton man,
animated by that spirit which had, during two generations, peculiarly
distinguished Taunton. He had, in the days of Popeburnings and of
Protestant flails, been one of the renowned Green Riband Club; he had
been an active member of several stormy Parliaments; he had brought
in the first Exclusion Bill; he had been deeply concerned in the plots
formed by the chiefs of the opposition; he had fled to the Continent;
he had been long an exile; and he had been excepted by name from the
general pardon of 1686. Though his life had been passed in turmoil, his
temper was naturally calm; but he was closely connected with a set of
men whose passions were far fiercer than his own. He had married the
sister of Hugh Speke, one of the falsest and most malignant of the
libellers who brought disgrace on the cause of constitutional freedom.
Aaron Smith, the solicitor of the Treasury, a man in whom the fanatic
and the pettifogger were strangely united, possessed too much influence
over the new Secretary, with whom he had, ten years before, discussed
plans of rebellion at the Rose. Why Trenchard was selected in preference
to many men of higher rank and greater ability for a post of the first
dignity and importance, it is difficult to say. It seems however that,
though he bore the title and drew the salary of Secretary of State, he
was not trusted with any of the graver secrets of State, and that he was
little more than a superintendent of police, charged to look after the
printers of unlicensed books, the pastors of nonjuring congregations,
and the haunters of treason taverns. [411]

Another Whig of far higher character was called at the same time to a
far higher place in the administration. The Great Seal had now been four
years in commission. Since Maynard's retirement, the constitution of
the Court of Chancery had commanded little respect. Trevor, who was the
First Commissioner, wanted neither parts nor learning; but his integrity
was with good reason suspected; and the duties which, as Speaker of the
House of Commons, he had to perform during four or five months in
the busiest part of every year, made it impossible for him to be an
efficient judge in equity. Every suitor complained that he had to wait
a most unreasonable time for a judgment, and that, when at length a
judgment had been pronounced, it was very likely to be reversed on
appeal. Meanwhile there was no efficient minister of justice, no great
functionary to whom it especially belonged to advise the King touching
the appointment of judges, of Counsel for the Crown, of Justices of the
Peace. [412] It was known that William was sensible of the inconvenience
of this state of things; and, during several months, there had been
flying rumours that a Lord Keeper or a Lord Chancellor would soon
be appointed. [413] The name most frequently mentioned was that of
Nottingham. But the same reasons which had prevented him from accepting
the Great Seal in 1689 had, since that year, rather gained than lost
strength. William at length fixed his choice on Somers.

Somers was only in his forty-second year; and five years had not elapsed
since, on the great day of the trial of the Bishops, his powers had
first been made known to the world. From that time his fame had been
steadily and rapidly rising. Neither in forensic nor in parliamentary
eloquence had he any superior. The consistency of his public conduct had
gained for him the entire confidence of the Whigs; and the urbanity
of his manners had conciliated the Tories. It was not without great
reluctance that he consented to quit an assembly over which he exercised
an immense influence for an assembly where it would be necessary for him
to sit in silence. He had been but a short time in great practice. His
savings were small. Not having the means of supporting a hereditary
title, he must, if he accepted the high dignity which was offered to
him, preside during some years in the Upper House without taking part in
the debates. The opinion of others, however, was that he would be more
useful as head of the law than as head of the Whig party in the Commons.
He was sent for to Kensington, and called into the Council Chamber.
Caermarthen spoke in the name of the King. "Sir John," he said, "it is
necessary for the public service that you should take this charge upon
you; and I have it in command from His Majesty to say that he can admit
of no excuse. " Somers submitted. The seal was delivered to him, with a
patent which entitled him to a pension of two thousand a year from the
day on which he should quit his office; and he was immediately sworn in
a Privy Councillor and Lord Keeper. [414]

The Gazette which announced these changes in the administration,
announced also the King's departure. He set out for Holland on the
twenty-fourth of March.

He left orders that the Estates of Scotland should, after a recess of
more than two years and a half, be again called together. Hamilton, who
had lived many months in retirement, had, since the fall of Melville,
been reconciled to the Court, and now consented to quit his retreat,
and to occupy Holyrood House as Lord High Commissioner. It was
necessary that one of the Secretaries of State for Scotland should be
in attendance on the King. The Master of Stair had therefore gone to the
Continent. His colleague, Johnstone, was chief manager for the Crown at
Edinburgh, and was charged to correspond regularly with Carstairs, who
never quitted William. [415]

It might naturally have been expected that the session would be
turbulent. The Parliament was that very Parliament which had in 1689
passed, by overwhelming majorities, all the most violent resolutions
which Montgomery and his club could frame, which had refused supplies,
which had proscribed the ministers of the Crown, which had closed the
Courts of justice, which had seemed bent on turning Scotland into an
oligarchical republic. In 1690 the Estates had been in a better temper.
Yet, even in 1690, they had, when the ecclesiastical polity of the realm
was under consideration, paid little deference to what was well known to
be the royal wish. They had abolished patronage; they had sanctioned the
rabbling of the episcopal clergy; they had refused to pass a Toleration
Act. It seemed likely that they would still be found unmanageable when
questions touching religion came before them; and such questions it
was unfortunately necessary to bring forward. William had, during the
recess, attempted to persuade the General Assembly of the Church to
receive into communion such of the old curates as should subscribe the
Confession of Faith and should submit to the government of Synods. But
the attempt had failed; and the Assembly had consequently been dissolved
by the Lord Commissioner. Unhappily, the Act which established the
Presbyterian polity had not defined the extent of the power which was
to be exercised by the Sovereign over the Spiritual Courts. No sooner
therefore had the dissolution been announced than the Moderator
requested permission to speak. He was told that he was now merely
a private person. As a private person he requested a hearing, and
protested, in the name of his brethren, against the royal mandate.
The right, he said, of the office bearers of the Church to meet and
deliberate touching her interests was derived from her Divine Head,
and was not dependent on the pleasure of the temporal magistrate.
His brethren stood up, and by an approving murmur signified their
concurrence in what their President had said. Before they retired they
fixed a day for their next meeting. [416] It was indeed a very distant
day; and when it came neither minister nor elder attended; for even the
boldest members shrank from a complete rupture with the civil
power. But, though there was not open war between the Church and the
Government, they were estranged from each other, jealous of each
other, and afraid of each other. No progress had been made towards a
reconciliation when the Estates met; and which side the Estates would
take might well be doubted.

But the proceedings of this strange Parliament, in almost every one of
its sessions, falsified all the predictions of politicians. It had once
been the most unmanageable of senates. It was now the most obsequious.
Yet the old men had again met in the old hall. There were all the most
noisy agitators of the club, with the exception of Montgomery, who was
dying of want and of a broken heart in a garret far from his native
land. There was the canting Ross and the perfidious Annandale. There
was Sir Patrick Hume, lately created a peer, and henceforth to be
called Lord Polwarth, but still as eloquent as when his interminable
declamations and dissertations ruined the expedition of Argyle. But
the whole spirit of the assembly had undergone a change. The members
listened with profound respect to the royal letter, and returned an
answer in reverential and affectionate language. An extraordinary aid
of a hundred and fourteen thousand pounds sterling was granted to the
Crown. Severe laws were enacted against the Jacobites. The legislation
on ecclesiastical matters was as Erastian as William himself could have
desired. An Act was passed requiring all ministers of the Established
Church to swear fealty to their Majesties, and directing the General
Assembly to receive into communion those Episcopalian ministers, not
yet deprived, who should declare that they conformed to the Presbyterian
doctrine and discipline. [417] Nay, the Estates carried adulation so far
as to make it their humble request to the King that he would be pleased
to confer a Scotch peerage on his favourite Portland. This was
indeed their chief petition. They did not ask for redress of a single
grievance. They contented themselves with hinting in general terms that
there were abuses which required correction, and with referring the King
for fuller information to his own Ministers, the Lord High Commissioner
and the Secretary of State. [418]

There was one subject on which it may seem strange that even the most
servile of Scottish Parliaments should have kept silence. More than a
year had elapsed since the massacre of Glencoe; and it might have
been expected that the whole assembly, peers, commissioners of shires,
commissioners of burghs, would with one voice have demanded a strict
investigation into that great crime. It is certain, however, that no
motion for investigation was made. The state of the Gaelic clans was
indeed taken into consideration. A law was passed for the more effectual
suppressing of depredations and outrages beyond the Highland line; and
in that law was inserted a special proviso reserving to Mac Callum More
his hereditary jurisdiction. But it does not appear, either from the
public records of the proceedings of the Estates, or from those private
letters in which Johnstone regularly gave Carstairs an account of what
had passed, that any speaker made any allusion to the fate of Mac
Ian and his kinsmen. [419] The only explanation of this extraordinary
silence seems to be that the public men who were assembled in the
capital of Scotland knew little and cared little about the fate of a
thieving tribe of Celts. The injured clan, bowed down by fear of
the allpowerful Campbells, and little accustomed to resort to the
constituted authorities of the kingdom for protection or redress,
presented no petition to the Estates. The story of the butchery had
been told at coffeehouses, but had been told in different ways. Very
recently, one or two books, in which the facts were but too truly
related, had come forth from the secret presses of London. But those
books were not publicly exposed to sale. They bore the name of no
responsible author. The Jacobite writers were, as a class, savagely
malignant and utterly regardless of truth. Since the Macdonalds did
not complain, a prudent man might naturally be unwilling to incur the
displeasure of the King, of the ministers, and of the most powerful
family in Scotland, by bringing forward an accusation grounded on
nothing but reports wandering from mouth to mouth, or pamphlets which no
licenser had approved, to which no author had put his name, and which no
bookseller ventured to place in his shop-window. But whether this be
or be not the true solution, it is certain that the Estates separated
quietly after a session of two months, during which, as far as can
now be discovered, the name of Glencoe was not once uttered in the
Parliament House.




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

IT is now time to relate the events which, since the battle of La Hogue,
had taken place at Saint Germains.

James, after seeing the fleet which was to have convoyed him back to his
kingdom burned down to the water edge, had returned in no good humour to
his abode near Paris. Misfortune generally made him devout after his
own fashion; and he now starved himself and flogged himself till his
spiritual guides were forced to interfere. [420]

It is difficult to conceive a duller place than Saint Germains was when
he held his Court there; and yet there was scarcely in all Europe a
residence more enviably situated than that which the generous Lewis had
assigned to his suppliants. The woods were magnificent, the air clear
and salubrious, the prospects extensive and cheerful. No charm of
rural life was wanting; and the towers of the most superb city of the
Continent were visible in the distance. The royal apartments were richly
adorned with tapestry and marquetry, vases of silver and mirrors in
gilded frames. A pension of more than forty thousand pounds sterling
was annually paid to James from the French Treasury. He had a guard of
honour composed of some of the finest soldiers in Europe. If he
wished to amuse himself with field sports, he had at his command an
establishment far more sumptuous than that which had belonged to him
when he was at the head of a great kingdom, an army of huntsmen and
fowlers, a vast arsenal of guns, spears, buglehorns and tents, miles of
network, staghounds, foxhounds, harriers, packs for the boar and packs
for the wolf, gerfalcons for the heron and haggards for the wild
duck. His presence chamber and his antechamber were in outward show as
splendid as when he was at Whitehall. He was still surrounded by blue
ribands and white staves. But over the mansion and the domain brooded
a constant gloom, the effect, partly of bitter regrets and of deferred
hopes, but chiefly of the abject superstition which had taken complete
possession of his own mind, and which was affected by almost all those
who aspired to his favour. His palace wore the aspect of a monastery.
There were three places of worship within the spacious pile. Thirty or
forty ecclesiastics were lodged in the building; and their apartments
were eyed with envy by noblemen and gentlemen who had followed the
fortunes of their Sovereign, and who thought it hard that, when there
was so much room under his roof, they should be forced to sleep in the
garrets of the neighbouring town. Among the murmurers was the brilliant
Anthony Hamilton. He has left us a sketch of the life of Saint Germains,
a slight sketch indeed, but not unworthy of the artist to whom we owe
the most highly finished and vividly coloured picture of the English
Court in the days when the English Court was gayest. He complains that
existence was one round of religious exercises; that, in order to live
in peace, it was necessary to pass half the day in devotion or in the
outward show of devotion; that, if he tried to dissipate his melancholy
by breathing the fresh air of that noble terrace which looks down on the
valley of the Seine, he was driven away by the clamour of a Jesuit who
had got hold of some unfortunate Protestant royalists from England,
and was proving to them that no heretic could go to heaven. In general,
Hamilton said, men suffering under a common calamity have a strong
fellow feeling and are disposed to render good offices to each other.
But it was not so at Saint Germains. There all was discord, jealousy,
bitterness of spirit. Malignity was concealed under the show of
friendship and of piety. All the saints of the royal household were
praying for each other and backbiting each other from morning, to night.
Here and there in the throng of hypocrites might be remarked a man too
highspirited to dissemble. But such a man, however advantageously he
might have made himself known elsewhere, was certain to be treated with
disdain by the inmates of that sullen abode. [421]

Such was the Court of James, as described by a Roman Catholic. Yet,
however disagreeable that Court may have been to a Roman Catholic, it
was infinitely more disagreeable to a Protestant. For the Protestant had
to endure, in addition to all the dulness of which the Roman Catholic
complained, a crowd of vexations from which the Roman Catholic was free.
In every competition between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic the Roman
Catholic was preferred. In every quarrel between a Protestant and a
Roman Catholic the Roman Catholic was supposed to be in the right.
While the ambitious Protestant looked in vain for promotion, while
the dissipated Protestant looked in vain for amusement, the serious
Protestant looked in vain for spiritual instruction and consolation.
James might, no doubt, easily have obtained permission for those members
of the Church of England who had sacrificed every thing in his cause to
meet privately in some modest oratory, and to receive the eucharistic
bread and wine from the hands of one of their own clergy; but he did not
wish his residence to be defiled by such impious rites. Doctor Dennis
Granville, who had quitted the richest deanery, the richest archdeaconry
and one of the richest livings in England, rather than take the oaths,
gave mortal offence by asking leave to read prayers to the exiles of his
own communion. His request was refused; and he was so grossly insulted
by his master's chaplains and their retainers that he was forced to
quit Saint Germains. Lest some other Anglican doctor should be equally
importunate, James wrote to inform his agents in England that he wished
no Protestant divine to come out to him. [422] Indeed the nonjuring
clergy were at least as much sneered at and as much railed at in his
palace as in his nephew's. If any man had a claim to be mentioned with
respect at Saint Germains, it was surely Sancroft. Yet it was reported
that the bigots who were assembled there never spoke of him but with
aversion and disgust. The sacrifice of the first place in the Church,
of the first place in the peerage, of the mansion at Lambeth and the
mansion at Croydon, of immense patronage and of a revenue of more than
five thousand a year was thought but a poor atonement for the great
crime of having modestly remonstrated against the unconstitutional
Declaration of Indulgence. Sancroft was pronounced to be just such a
traitor and just such a penitent as Judas Iscariot. The old hypocrite
had, it was said, while affecting reverence and love for his master,
given the fatal signal to his master's enemies. When the mischief had
been done and could not be repaired, the conscience of the sinner had
begun to torture him. He had, like his prototype, blamed himself and
bemoaned himself. He had, like his prototype, flung down his wealth at
the feet of those whose instrument he had been. The best thing that he
could now do was to make the parallel complete by hanging himself. [423]

James seems to have thought that the strongest proof of kindness which
he could give to heretics who had resigned wealth, country, family, for
his sake, was to suffer them to be beset, on their dying beds, by his
priests. If some sick man, helpless in body and in mind, and deafened
by the din of bad logic and bad rhetoric, suffered a wafer to be thrust
into his mouth, a great work of grace was triumphantly announced to the
Court; and the neophyte was buried with all the pomp of religion. But
if a royalist, of the highest rank and most stainless character, died
professing firm attachment to the Church of England, a hole was dug in
the fields; and, at dead of night, he was flung into it and covered
up like a mass of carrion. Such were the obsequies of the Earl of
Dunfermline, who had served the House of Stuart with the hazard of
his life and to the utter ruin of his fortunes, who had fought at
Killiecrankie, and who had, after the victory, lifted from the earth the
still breathing remains of Dundee. While living he had been treated with
contumely. The Scottish officers who had long served under him had in
vain entreated that, when they were formed into a company, he might
still be their commander. His religion had been thought a fatal
disqualification. A worthless adventurer, whose only recommendation was
that he was a Papist, was preferred. Dunfermline continued, during a
short time, to make his appearance in the circle which surrounded the
Prince whom he had served too well; but it was to no purpose. The bigots
who ruled the Court refused to the ruined and expatriated Protestant
Lord the means of subsistence; he died of a broken heart; and they
refused him even a grave. [424]

The insults daily offered at Saint Germains to the Protestant religion
produced a great effect in England. The Whigs triumphantly asked whether
it were not clear that the old tyrant was utterly incorrigible; and many
even of the nonjurors observed his proceedings with shame, disgust and
alarm. [425] The Jacobite party had, from the first, been divided into
two sections, which, three or four years after the Revolution, began to
be known as the Compounders and the Noncompounders.
The Compounders were
those who wished for a restoration, but for a restoration accompanied by
a general amnesty, and by guarantees for the security of the civil and
ecclesiastical constitution of the realm. The Noncompounders thought
it downright Whiggery, downright rebellion; to take advantage of His
Majesty's unfortunate situation for the purpose of imposing on him any
condition. The plain duty of his subjects was to bring him back. What
traitors he would punish and what traitors he would spare, what laws he
would observe and with what laws he would dispense, were questions to be
decided by himself alone. If he decided them wrongly, he must answer for
his fault to heaven and not to his people.

The great body of the English Jacobites were more or less Compounders.
The pure Noncompounders were chiefly to be found among the Roman
Catholics, who, very naturally, were not solicitous to obtain any
security for a religion which they thought heretical, or for a polity
from the benefits of which they were excluded. There were also some
Protestant nonjurors, such as Kettlewell and Hickes, who resolutely
followed the theory of Filmer to all the extreme consequences to which
it led. But, though Kettlewell tried to convince his countrymen that
monarchical government had been ordained by God, not as a means of
making them happy here, but as a cross which it was their duty to
take up and bear in the hope of being recompensed for their sufferings
hereafter, and though Hickes assured them that there was not a single
Compounder in the whole Theban legion, very few churchmen were inclined
to run the risk of the gallows merely for the purpose of reestablishing
the High Commission and the Dispensing Power.

The Compounders formed the main strength of the Jacobite party in
England; but the Noncompounders had hitherto had undivided sway at Saint
Germains. No Protestant, no moderate Roman Catholic, no man who dared to
hint that any law could bind the royal prerogative, could hope for the
smallest mark of favour from the banished King. The priests and the
apostate Melfort, the avowed enemy of the Protestant religion and of
civil liberty, of Parliaments, of trial by jury and of the Habeas Corpus
Act, were in exclusive possession of the royal ear. Herbert was called
Chancellor, walked before the other officers of state, wore a black robe
embroidered with gold, and carried a seal; but he was a member of the
Church of England; and therefore he was not suffered to sit at the
Council Board. [426]

The truth is that the faults of James's head and heart were incurable.
In his view there could be between him and his subjects no reciprocity
of obligation. Their duty was to risk property, liberty, life, in order
to replace him on the throne, and then to bear patiently whatever he
chose to inflict upon them. They could no more pretend to merit
before him than before God. When they had done all, they were still
unprofitable servants. The highest praise due to the royalist who shed
his blood on the field of battle or on the scaffold for hereditary
monarchy was simply that he was not a traitor. After all the severe
discipline which the deposed King had undergone, he was still as much
bent on plundering and abasing the Church of England as on the day when
he told the kneeling fellows of Magdalene to get out of his sight, or
on the day when he sent the Bishops to the Tower. He was in the habit
of declaring that he would rather die without seeing England again than
stoop to capitulate with those whom he ought to command. [427] In the
Declaration of April 1692 the whole man appears without disguise, full
of his own imaginary rights, unable to understand how any body but
himself can have any rights, dull, obstinate and cruel. Another paper
which he drew up about the same time shows, if possible, still more
clearly, how little he had profited by a sharp experience. In that paper
he set forth the plan according to which he intended to govern when he
should be restored. He laid it down as a rule that one Commissioner of
the Treasury, one of the two Secretaries of State, the Secretary at War,
the majority of the Great Officers of the Household, the majority of
the Lords of the Bedchamber, the majority of the officers of the army,
should always be Roman Catholics. [428]

It was to no purpose that the most eminent Compounders sent from
London letter after letter filled with judicious counsel and earnest
supplication. It was to no purpose that they demonstrated in the
plainest manner the impossibility of establishing Popish ascendancy in
a country where at least forty-nine fiftieths of the population and much
more than forty-nine fiftieths of the wealth and the intelligence were
Protestant. It was to no purpose that they informed their master that
the Declaration of April 1692 had been read with exultation by his
enemies and with deep affliction by his friends, that it had been
printed and circulated by the usurpers, that it had done more than all
the libels of the Whigs to inflame the nation against him, and that it
had furnished those naval officers who had promised him support with a
plausible pretext for breaking faith with him, and for destroying the
fleet which was to have convoyed him back to his kingdom. He continued
to be deaf to the remonstrances of his best friends in England
till those remonstrances began to be echoed at Versailles. All the
information which Lewis and his ministers were able to obtain touching
the state of our island satisfied them that James would never be
restored unless he could bring himself to make large concessions to his
subjects. It was therefore intimated to him, kindly and courteously,
but seriously, that he would do well to change his counsels and his
counsellors. France could not continue the war for the purpose of
forcing a Sovereign on an unwilling nation. She was crushed by public
burdens. Her trade and industry languished. Her harvest and her vintage
had failed. The peasantry were starving. The faint murmurs of the
provincial Estates began to be heard. There was a limit to the amount
of the sacrifices which the most absolute prince could demand from those
whom he ruled. However desirous the Most Christian King might be to
uphold the cause of hereditary monarchy and of pure religion all
over the world, his first duty was to his own kingdom; and, unless a
counterrevolution speedily took place in England, his duty to his own
kingdom might impose on him the painful necessity of treating with the
Prince of Orange. It would therefore be wise in James to do without
delay whatever he could honourably and conscientiously do to win back
the hearts of his people.

Thus pressed, James unwillingly yielded. He consented to give a share
in the management of his affairs to one of the most distinguished of the
Compounders, Charles Earl of Middleton.

Middleton's family and his peerage were Scotch. But he was closely
connected with some of the noblest houses of England; he had resided
long in England; he had been appointed by Charles the Second one of the
English Secretaries of State, and had been entrusted by James with the
lead of the English House of Commons. His abilities and acquirements
were considerable; his temper was easy and generous; his manners were
popular; and his conduct had generally been consistent and honourable.
He had, when Popery was in the ascendant, resolutely refused to purchase
the royal favour by apostasy. Roman Catholic ecclesiastics had been sent
to convert him; and the town had been much amused by the dexterity with
which the layman baffled the divines. A priest undertook to demonstrate
the doctrine of transubstantiation, and made the approaches in the usual
form. "Your Lordship believes in the Trinity. " "Who told you so? " said
Middleton. "Not believe in the Trinity! " cried the priest in amazement.
"Nay," said Middleton; "prove your religion to be true if you can; but
do not catechize me about mine. " As it was plain that the Secretary
was not a disputant whom it was easy to take at an advantage, the
controversy ended almost as soon as it began. [429] When fortune
changed, Middleton adhered to the cause of hereditary monarchy with a
stedfastness which was the more respectable because he would have had no
difficulty in making his peace with the new government. His sentiments
were so well known that, when the kingdom was agitated by apprehensions
of an invasion and an insurrection, he was arrested and sent to the
Tower; but no evidence on which he could be convicted of treason was
discovered; and, when the dangerous crisis was past, he was set at
liberty. It should seem indeed that, during the three years which
followed the Revolution, he was by no means an active plotter. He saw
that a Restoration could be effected only with the general assent of the
nation, and that the nation would never assent to a Restoration without
securities against Popery and arbitrary power. He therefore conceived
that, while his banished master obstinately refused to give such
securities, it would be worse than idle to conspire against the existing
government.

Such was the man whom James, in consequence of strong representations
from Versailles, now invited to join him in France. The great body
of Compounders learned with delight that they were at length to be
represented in the Council at Saint Germains by one of their favourite
leaders. Some noblemen and gentlemen, who, though they had not approved
of the deposition of James, had been so much disgusted by his perverse
and absurd conduct that they had long avoided all connection with him,
now began to hope that he had seen his error. They had refused to
have any thing to do with Melfort; but they communicated freely with
Middleton. The new minister conferred also with the four traitors whose
infamy has been made preeminently conspicuous by their station, their
abilities, and their great public services; with Godolphin, the great
object of whose life was to be in favour with both the rival Kings at
once, and to keep, through all revolutions and counterrevolutions, his
head, his estate and a place at the Board of Treasury; with Shrewsbury,
who, having once in a fatal moment entangled himself in criminal and
dishonourable engagements, had not had the resolution to break through
them; with Marlborough, who continued to profess the deepest repentance
for the past and the best intentions for the future; and with Russell,
who declared that he was still what he had been before the day of La
Hogue, and renewed his promise to do what Monk had done, on condition
that a general pardon should be granted to all political offenders,
and that the royal power should be placed under strong constitutional
restraints.

Before Middleton left England he had collected the sense of all the
leading Compounders. They were of opinion that there was one expedient
which would reconcile contending factions at home, and lead to the
speedy pacification of Europe. This expedient was that James should
resign the Crown in favour of the Prince of Wales, and that the Prince
of Wales should be bred a Protestant. If, as was but too probable, His
Majesty should refuse to listen to this suggestion, he must at least
consent to put forth a Declaration which might do away the unfavourable
impression made by his Declaration of the preceding spring. A paper such
as it was thought expedient that he should publish was carefully drawn
up, and, after much discussion, approved.

Early in the year 1693, Middleton, having been put in full possession of
the views of the principal English Jacobites, stole across the Channel,
and made his appearance at the Court of James. There was at that Court
no want of slanderers and sneerers whose malignity was only the more
dangerous because it wore a meek and sanctimonious air. Middleton found,
on his arrival, that numerous lies, fabricated by the priests who feared
and hated him, were already in circulation. Some Noncompounders too
had written from London that he was at heart a Presbyterian and a
republican. He was however very graciously received, and was appointed
Secretary of State conjointly with Melfort. [430]

It very soon appeared that James was fully resolved never to resign the
Crown, or to suffer the Prince of Wales to be bred a heretic; and it
long seemed doubtful whether any arguments or entreaties would induce
him to sign the Declaration which his friends in England had prepared.
It was indeed a document very different from any that had yet appeared
under his Great Seal. He was made to promise that he would grant a free
pardon to all his subjects who should not oppose him after he should
land in the island; that, as soon as he was restored, he would call
a Parliament; that he would confirm all such laws, passed during the
usurpation, as the Houses should tender to him for confirmation; that
he would waive his right to the chimney money; that he would protect and
defend the Established Church in the enjoyment of all her possessions
and privileges; that he would not again violate the Test Act; that he
would leave it to the legislature to define the extent of his dispensing
power; and that he would maintain the Act of Settlement in Ireland.

He struggled long and hard. He pleaded his conscience. Could a son of
the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church bind himself to protect and
defend heresy, and to enforce a law which excluded true believers from
office? Some of the ecclesiastics who swarmed in his household told
him that he could not without sin give any such pledge as his undutiful
subjects demanded. On this point the opinion of Middleton, who was a
Protestant, could be of no weight. But Middleton found an ally in
one whom he regarded as a rival and an enemy. Melfort, scared by the
universal hatred of which he knew himself to be the object, and afraid
that he should be held accountable, both in England and in France, for
his master's wrongheadedness, submitted the case to several eminent
Doctors of the Sorbonne. These learned casuists pronounced the
Declaration unobjectionable in a religious point of view. The great
Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, who was regarded by the Gallican Church as a
father scarcely inferior in authority to Cyprian or Augustin, showed,
by powerful arguments, both theological and political, that the scruple
which tormented James was precisely of that sort against which a
much wiser King had given a caution in the words, "Be not righteous
overmuch. " [431] The authority of the French divines was supported by
the authority of the French government. The language held at Versailles
was so strong that James began to be alarmed. What if Lewis should take
serious offence, should think his hospitality ungratefully requited,
should conclude a peace with the usurpers, and should request his
unfortunate guests to seek another asylum? It was necessary to submit.
On the seventeenth of April 1693 the Declaration was signed and sealed.
The concluding sentence was a prayer. "We come to vindicate our own
right and to establish the liberties of our people; and may God give
us success in the prosecution of the one as we sincerely intend the
confirmation of the other! " [432] The prayer was heard. The success of
James was strictly proportioned to his sincerity. What his sincerity
was we know on the best evidence. Scarcely had he called on heaven to
witness the truth of his professions, when he directed Melfort to send a
copy of the Declaration to Rome with such explanations as might satisfy
the Pope. Melfort's letter ends thus: "After all, the object of this
Declaration is only to get us back to England. We shall fight the battle
of the Catholics with much greater advantage at Whitehall than at Saint
Germains. " [433]

Meanwhile the document from which so much was expected had been
despatched to London. There it was printed at a secret press in the
house of a Quaker; for there was among the Quakers a party, small
in number, but zealous and active, which had imbibed the politics of
William Penn. [434] To circulate such a work was a service of some
danger; but agents were found. Several persons were taken up while
distributing copies in the streets of the city. A hundred packets were
stopped in one day at the Post Office on their way to the fleet. But,
after a short time, the government wisely gave up the endeavour to
suppress what could not be suppressed, and published the Declaration at
full length, accompanied by a severe commentary. [435]

The commentary, however, was hardly needed. The Declaration altogether
failed to produce the effect which Middleton had anticipated. The truth
is that his advice had not been asked till it mattered not what advice
he gave. If James had put forth such a manifesto in January 1689, the
throne would probably not have been declared vacant. If he had put forth
such a manifesto when he was on the coast of Normandy at the head of an
army, he would have conciliated a large part of the nation, and he might
possibly have been joined by a large part of the fleet. But both in 1689
and in 1692 he had held the language of an implacable tyrant; and it
was now too late to affect tenderness of heart and reverence for the
constitution of the realm. The contrast between the new Declaration and
the preceding Declaration excited, not without reason, general suspicion
and contempt. What confidence could be placed in the word of a Prince
so unstable, of a Prince who veered from extreme to extreme? In 1692
nothing would satisfy him but the heads and quarters of hundreds of poor
ploughmen and boatmen who had, several years before, taken some rustic
liberties with him at which his grandfather Henry the Fourth would have
had a hearty laugh. In 1693 the foulest and most ungrateful treasons
were to be covered with oblivion. Caermarthen expressed the general
sentiment. "I do not," he said, "understand all this. Last April I was
to be hanged. This April I am to have a free pardon. I cannot imagine
what I have done during the past year to deserve such goodness. "
The general opinion was that a snare was hidden under this unwonted
clemency, this unwonted respect for law. The Declaration, it was said,
was excellent; and so was the Coronation oath. Every body knew how King
James had observed his Coronation oath; and every body might guess how
he would observe his Declaration. While grave men reasoned thus,
the Whig jesters were not sparing of their pasquinades. Some of the
Noncompounders, meantime, uttered indignant murmurs. The King was in bad
hands, in the hands of men who hated monarchy. His mercy was cruelty of
the worst sort. The general pardon which he had granted to his enemies
was in truth a general proscription of his friends. Hitherto the judges
appointed by the usurper had been under a restraint, imperfect indeed,
yet not absolutely nugatory. They had known that a day of reckoning
might come, and had therefore in general dealt tenderly with the
persecuted adherents of the rightful King. That restraint His Majesty
had now taken away. He had told Holt and Treby that, till he should land
in England, they might hang royalists without the smallest fear of being
called to account. [436]

But by no class of people was the Declaration read with so much disgust
and indignation as by the native aristocracy of Ireland. This then was
the reward of their loyalty. This was the faith of kings. When England
had cast James out, when Scotland had rejected him, the Irish had still
been true to him; and he had, in return, solemnly given his sanction to
a law which restored to them an immense domain of which they had been
despoiled. Nothing that had happened since that time had diminished
their claim to his favour. They had defended his cause to the last; they
had fought for him long after he had deserted them; many of them, when
unable to contend longer against superior force, had followed him into
banishment; and now it appeared that he was desirous to make peace with
his deadliest enemies at the expense of his most faithful friends. There
was much discontent in the Irish regiments which were dispersed through
the Netherlands and along the frontiers of Germany and Italy. Even the
Whigs allowed that, for once, the O's and Macs were in the right, and
asked triumphantly whether a prince who had broken his word to his
devoted servants could be expected to keep it to his foes? [437]

While the Declaration was the subject of general conversation in
England, military operations recommenced on the Continent. The
preparations of France had been such as amazed even those who estimated
most highly her resources and the abilities of her rulers. Both her
agriculture and her commerce were suffering. The vineyards of Burgundy,
the interminable cornfields of the Beauce, had failed to yield their
increase; the looms of Lyons were silent; and the merchant ships were
rotting in the harbour of Marseilles. Yet the monarchy presented to its
numerous enemies a front more haughty and more menacing than ever. Lewis
had determined not to make any advance towards a reconciliation with the
new government of England till the whole strength of his realm had been
put forth in one more effort. A mighty effort in truth it was, but too
exhausting to be repeated. He made an immense display of force at once
on the Pyrenees and on the Alps, on the Rhine and on the Meuse, in the
Atlantic and in the Mediterranean. That nothing might be wanting which
could excite the martial ardour of a nation eminently highspirited, he
instituted, a few days before he left his palace for the camp, a new
military order of knighthood, and placed it under the protection of his
own sainted ancestor and patron. The new cross of Saint Lewis shone on
the breasts of the gentlemen who had been conspicuous in the trenches
before Mons and Namur, and on the fields of Fleurus and Steinkirk; and
the sight raised a generous emulation among those who had still to win
an honourable fame in arms. [438]

In the week in which this celebrated order began to exist Middleton
visited Versailles. A letter in which he gave his friends in England
an account of his visit has come down to us. [439] He was presented to
Lewis, was most kindly received, and was overpowered by gratitude and
admiration. Of all the wonders of the Court,--so Middleton wrote,--its
master was the greatest. The splendour of the great King's personal
merit threw even the splendour of his fortunes into the shade. The
language which His Most Christian Majesty held about English politics
was, on the whole, highly satisfactory. Yet in one thing this
accomplished prince and his able and experienced ministers were
strangely mistaken. They were all possessed with the absurd notion
that the Prince of Orange was a great man. No pains had been spared
to undeceive them; but they were under an incurable delusion. They saw
through a magnifying glass of such power that the leech appeared to them
a leviathan. It ought to have occurred to Middleton that possibly the
delusion might be in his own vision and not in theirs. Lewis and the
counsellors who surrounded him were far indeed from loving William. But
they did not hate him with that mad hatred which raged in the breasts of
his English enemies. Middleton was one of the wisest and most moderate
of the Jacobites. Yet even Middleton's judgment was so much darkened
by malice that, on this subject, he talked nonsense unworthy of his
capacity. He, like the rest of his party, could see in the usurper
nothing but what was odious and contemptible, the heart of a fiend, the
understanding and manners of a stupid, brutal, Dutch boor, who generally
observed a sulky silence, and, when forced to speak, gave short testy
answers in bad English. The French statesmen, on the other hand, judged
of William's faculties from an intimate knowledge of the way in which he
had, during twenty years, conducted affairs of the greatest moment
and of the greatest difficulty. He had, ever since 1673, been playing
against themselves a most complicated game of mixed chance and skill
for an immense stake; they were proud, and with reason, of their own
dexterity at that game; yet they were conscious that in him they had
found more than their match. At the commencement of the long contest
every advantage had been on their side. They had at their absolute
command all the resources of the greatest kingdom in Europe; and he was
merely the servant of a commonwealth, of which the whole territory was
inferior in extent to Normandy or Guienne. A succession of generals
and diplomatists of eminent ability had been opposed to him. A powerful
faction in his native country had pertinaciously crossed his designs.
He had undergone defeats in the field and defeats in the senate; but his
wisdom and firmness had turned defeats into victories. Notwithstanding
all that could be done to keep him down, his influence and fame had been
almost constantly rising and spreading. The most important and arduous
enterprise in the history of modern Europe had been planned and
conducted to a prosperous termination by him alone. The most extensive
coalition that the world had seen for ages had been formed by him, and
would be instantly dissolved if his superintending care were withdrawn.
He had gained two kingdoms by statecraft, and a third by conquest; and
he was still maintaining himself in the possession of all three in spite
of both foreign and domestic foes. That these things had been effected
by a poor creature, a man of the most ordinary capacity, was an
assertion which might easily find credence among the nonjuring parsons
who congregated at Sam's Coffee-house, but which moved the laughter of
the veteran politicians of Versailles.

While Middleton was in vain trying to convince the French that
William was a greatly overrated man, William, who did full justice to
Middleton's merit, felt much uneasiness at learning that the Court of
Saint Germains had called in the help of so able a counsellor. [440]
But this was only one of a thousand causes of anxiety which during that
spring pressed on the King's mind. He was preparing for the opening of
the campaign, imploring his allies to be early in the field, rousing the
sluggish, haggling with the greedy, making up quarrels, adjusting points
of precedence. He had to prevail on the Cabinet of Vienna to send timely
succours into Piedmont. He had to keep a vigilant eye on those Northern
potentates who were trying to form a third party in Europe. He had to
act as tutor to the Elector of Bavaria in the Netherlands. He had to
provide for the defence of Liege, a matter which the authorities of
Liege coolly declared to be not at all their business, but the business
of England and Holland. He had to prevent the House of Brunswick
Wolfenbuttel from going to blows with the House of Brunswick Lunenburg;
he had to accommodate a dispute between the Prince of Baden and the
Elector of Saxony, each of whom wished to be at the head of an army on
the Rhine; and he had to manage the Landgrave of Hesse, who omitted to
furnish his own contingent, and yet wanted to command the contingents
furnished by other princes. [441]

And now the time for action had arrived. On the eighteenth of May Lewis
left Versailles; early in June he was under the walls of Namur. The
Princesses, who had accompanied him, held their court within the
fortress. He took under his immediate command the army of Boufflers,
which was encamped at Gembloux. Little more than a mile off lay the army
of Luxemburg. The force collected in that neighbourhood under the French
lilies did not amount to less than a hundred and twenty thousand men.
Lewis had flattered himself that he should be able to repeat in 1693 the
stratagem by which Mons had been taken in 1691 and Namur in 1692; and
he had determined that either Liege or Brussels should be his prey.
But William had this year been able to assemble in good time a force,
inferior indeed to that which was opposed to him, but still formidable.
With this force he took his post near Louvain, on the road between the
two threatened cities, and watched every movement of the enemy.

Lewis was disappointed. He found that it would not be possible for him
to gratify his vanity so safely and so easily as in the two preceding
years, to sit down before a great town, to enter the gates in triumph,
and to receive the keys, without exposing himself to any risk greater
than that of a staghunt at Fontainebleau. Before he could lay siege
either to Liege or to Brussels he must fight and win a battle. The
chances were indeed greatly in his favour; for his army was more
numerous, better officered and better disciplined than that of the
allies. Luxemburg strongly advised him to march against William.