No More Learning

Old allies were separating. Old enemies
were uniting. Discontent was spreading fast through all the ranks of
the party lately dominant. A hope, still indeed faint and indefinite,
of victory and revenge, animated the party which had lately seemed to be
extinct. Amidst such circumstances the eventful and troubled year 1685
terminated, and the year 1686 began.

The prorogation had relieved the King from the gentle remonstrances
of the Houses: but he had still to listen to remonstrances, similar in
effect, though uttered in a tone even more cautious and subdued. Some
men who had hitherto served him but too strenuously for their own fame
and for the public welfare had begun to feel painful misgivings, and
occasionally ventured to hint a small part of what they felt.

During many years the zeal of the English Tory for hereditary monarchy
and his zeal for the established religion had grown up together and
had strengthened each other. It had never occurred to him that the two
sentiments, which seemed inseparable and even identical, might one day
be found to be not only distinct but incompatible. From the commencement
of the strife between the Stuarts and the Commons, the cause of the
crown and the cause of the hierarchy had, to all appearance, been one.
Charles the First was regarded by the Church as her martyr. If Charles
the Second had plotted against her, he had plotted in secret. In public
he had ever professed himself her grateful and devoted son, had knelt
at her altars, and, in spite of his loose morals, had succeeded in
persuading the great body of her adherents that he felt a sincere
preference for her. Whatever conflicts, therefore, the honest Cavalier
might have had to maintain against Whigs and Roundheads he had at least
been hitherto undisturbed by conflict in his own mind. He had seen the
path of duty plain before him. Through good and evil he was to be true
to Church and King. But, if those two august and venerable powers, which
had hitherto seemed to be so closely connected that those who were true
to one could not be false to the other, should be divided by a deadly
enmity, what course was the orthodox Royalist to take? What situation
could be more trying than that in which he would be placed, distracted
between two duties equally sacred, between two affections equally
ardent? How was he to give to Caesar all that was Caesar's, and yet to
withhold from God no part of what was God's? None who felt thus could
have watched, without deep concern and gloomy forebodings, the dispute
between the King and the Parliament on the subject of the test. If James
could even now be induced to reconsider his course, to let the Houses
reassemble, and to comply with their wishes, all might yet be well.

Such were the sentiments of the King's two kinsmen, the Earls of
Clarendon and Rochester. The power and favour of these noblemen seemed
to be great indeed. The younger brother was Lord Treasurer and prime
minister; and the elder, after holding the Privy Seal during some
months, had been appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The venerable
Ormond took the same side. Middleton and Preston, who, as managers
of the House of Commons, had recently learned by proof how dear the
established religion was to the loyal gentry of England, were also for
moderate counsels.

At the very beginning of the new year these statesmen and the great
party which they represented had to suffer a cruel mortification. That
the late King had been at heart a Roman Catholic had been, during
some months, suspected and whispered, but not formally announced. The
disclosure, indeed, could not be made without great scandal. Charles
had, times without number, declared himself a Protestant, and had
been in the habit of receiving the Eucharist from the Bishops of the
Established Church. Those Protestants who had stood by him in his
difficulties, and who still cherished an affectionate remembrance of
him, must be filled with shame and indignation by learning that his
whole life had been a lie, that, while he professed to belong to
their communion, he had really regarded them as heretics, and that the
demagogues who had represented him as a concealed Papist had been the
only people who had formed a correct judgment of his character. Even
Lewis understood enough of the state of public feeling in England to be
aware that the divulging of the truth might do harm, and had, of his own
accord, promised to keep the conversion of Charles strictly secret. [45]
James, while his power was still new, had thought that on this point it
was advisable to be cautious, and had not ventured to inter his brother
with the rites of the Church of Rome. For a time, therefore, every
man was at liberty to believe what he wished. The Papists claimed
the deceased prince as their proselyte. The Whigs execrated him as a
hypocrite and a renegade. The Tories regarded the report of his apostasy
as a calumny which Papists and Whigs had, for very different reasons,
a common interest in circulating. James now took a step which greatly
disconcerted the whole Anglican party. Two papers, in which were set
forth very concisely the arguments ordinarily used by Roman Catholics
in controversy with Protestants, had been found in Charles's strong
box, and appeared to be in his handwriting. These papers James
showed triumphantly to several Protestants, and declared that, to his
knowledge, his brother had lived and died a Roman Catholic. [46] One
of the persons to whom the manuscripts were exhibited was Archbishop
Sancroft. He read them with much emotion, and remained silent. Such
silence was only the natural effect of a struggle between respect and
vexation. But James supposed that the Primate was struck dumb by the
irresistible force of reason, and eagerly challenged his Grace to
produce, with the help of the whole episcopal bench, a satisfactory
reply. "Let me have a solid answer, and in a gentlemanlike style; and it
may have the effect which you so much desire of bringing me over to your
Church. " The Archbishop mildly said that, in his opinion, such an answer
might, without much difficulty, be written, but declined the controversy
on the plea of reverence for the memory of his deceased master. This
plea the King considered as the subterfuge of a vanquished disputant.
[47] Had he been well acquainted with the polemical literature of the
preceding century and a half, he would have known that the documents to
which he attached so much value might have been composed by any lad of
fifteen in the college of Douay, and contained nothing which had not, in
the opinion of all Protestant divines, been ten thousand times refuted.
In his ignorant exultation he ordered these tracts to be printed with
the utmost pomp of typography, and appended to them a declaration
attested by his sign manual, and certifying that the originals were
in his brother's own hand. James himself distributed the whole edition
among his courtiers and among the people of humbler rank who crowded
round his coach. He gave one copy to a young woman of mean condition
whom he supposed to be of his own religious persuasion, and assured
her that she would be greatly edified and comforted by the perusal.
In requital of his kindness she delivered to him, a few days later, an
epistle adjuring him to come out of the mystical Babylon and to dash
from his lips the cup of fornications. [48]

These things gave great uneasiness to Tory churchmen. Nor were the most
respectable Roman Catholic noblemen much better pleased. They might
indeed have been excused if passion had, at this conjuncture, made them
deaf to the voice of prudence and justice: for they had suffered much.
Protestant jealousy had degraded them from the rank to which they were
born, had closed the doors of the Parliament House on the heirs of
barons who had signed the Charter, had pronounced the command of a
company of foot too high a trust for the descendants of the generals
who had conquered at Flodden and Saint Quentin. There was scarcely one
eminent peer attached to the old faith whose honour, whose estate, whose
life had not been in jeopardy, who had not passed months in the Tower,
who had not often anticipated for himself the fate of Stafford. Men who
had been so long and cruelly oppressed might have been pardoned if they
had eagerly seized the first opportunity of obtaining at once greatness
and revenge. But neither fanaticism nor ambition, neither resentment for
past wrongs nor the intoxication produced by sudden good fortune,
could prevent the most eminent Roman Catholics from perceiving that the
prosperity which they at length enjoyed was only temporary, and, unless
wisely used, might be fatal to them. They had been taught, by a cruel
experience, that the antipathy of the nation to their religion was not
a fancy which would yield to the mandate of a prince, but a profound
sentiment, the growth of five generations, diffused through all ranks
and parties, and intertwined not less closely with the principles of the
Tory than with the principles of the Whig. It was indeed in the power
of the King, by the exercise of his prerogative of mercy, to suspend
the operation of the penal laws. It might hereafter be in his power, by
discreet management, to obtain from the Parliament a repeal of the acts
which imposed civil disabilities on those who professed his religion.
But, if he attempted to subdue the Protestant feeling of England by rude
means, it was easy to see that the violent compression of so powerful
and elastic a spring would be followed by as violent a recoil. The Roman
Catholic peers, by prematurely attempting to force their way into the
Privy Council and the House of Lords, might lose their mansions and
their ample estates, and might end their lives as traitors on Tower
Hill, or as beggars at the porches of Italian convents.

Such was the feeling of William Herbert, Earl of Powis, who was
generally regarded as the chief of the Roman Catholic aristocracy, and
who, according to Oates, was to have been prime minister if the Popish
plot had succeeded. John Lord Bellasyse took the same view of the state
of affairs. In his youth he had fought gallantly for Charles the First,
had been rewarded after the Restoration with high honours and
commands, and had quitted them when the Test Act was passed. With these
distinguished leaders all the noblest and most opulent members of their
church concurred, except Lord Arundell of Wardour, an old man fast
sinking into second childhood.

But there was at the court a small knot of Roman Catholics whose hearts
had been ulcerated by old injuries, whose heads had been turned by
recent elevation, who were impatient to climb to the highest honours of
the state, and who, having little to lose, were not troubled by
thoughts of the day of reckoning. One of these was Roger Palmer, Earl
of Castelmaine in Ireland, and husband of the Duchess of Cleveland. His
title had notoriously been purchased by his wife's dishonour and his
own. His fortune was small. His temper, naturally ungentle, had been
exasperated by his domestic vexations, by the public reproaches, and by
what he had undergone in the days of the Popish plot. He had been long a
prisoner, and had at length been tried for his life. Happily for him,
he was not put to the bar till the first burst of popular rage had spent
itself, and till the credit of the false witnesses had been blown upon.
He had therefore escaped, though very narrowly. [49] With Castelmaine
was allied one of the most favoured of his wife's hundred lovers, Henry
Jermyn, whom James had lately created a peer by the title of Lord Dover.
Jermyn had been distinguished more than twenty years before by his
vagrant amours and his desperate duels. He was now ruined by play, and
was eager to retrieve his fallen fortunes by means of lucrative posts
from which the laws excluded him. [50] To the same party belonged an
intriguing pushing Irishman named White, who had been much abroad, who
had served the House of Austria as something between an envoy and a spy,
and who had been rewarded for his services with the title of Marquess of
Albeville. [51]

Soon after the prorogation this reckless faction was strengthened by an
important reinforcement. Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel, the fiercest
and most uncompromising of all those who hated the liberties and
religion of England, arrived at court from Dublin.

Talbot was descended from an old Norman family which had been long
settled in Leinster, which had there sunk into degeneracy, which had
adopted the manners of the Celts, which had, like the Celts, adhered
to the old religion, and which had taken part with the Celts in the
rebellion of 1641. In his youth he had been one of the most noted
sharpers and bullies of London. He had been introduced to Charles and
James when they were exiles in Flanders, as a man fit and ready for
the infamous service of assassinating the Protector. Soon after the
Restoration, Talbot attempted to obtain the favour of the royal family
by a service more infamous still. A plea was wanted which might justify
the Duke of York in breaking that promise of marriage by which he had
obtained from Anne Hyde the last proof of female affection. Such a plea
Talbot, in concert with some of his dissolute companions, undertook
to furnish. They agreed to describe the poor young lady as a creature
without virtue, shame, or delicacy, and made up long romances about
tender interviews and stolen favours. Talbot in particular related how,
in one of his secret visits to her, he had unluckily overturned the
Chancellor's inkstand upon a pile of papers, and how cleverly she had
averted a discovery by laying the blame of the accident on her monkey.
These stories, which, if they had been true, would never have passed the
lips of any but the basest of mankind, were pure inventions. Talbot was
soon forced to own that they were so; and he owned it without a blush.
The injured lady became Duchess of York. Had her husband been a man
really upright and honourable, he would have driven from his presence
with indignation and contempt the wretches who had slandered her. But
one of the peculiarities of James's character was that no act, however
wicked and shameful, which had been prompted by a desire to gain his
favour, ever seemed to him deserving of disapprobation. Talbot continued
to frequent the court, appeared daily with brazen front before the
princess whose ruin he had plotted, and was installed into the lucrative
post of chief pandar to her husband. In no long time Whitehall was
thrown into confusion by the news that Dick Talbot, as he was commonly
called, had laid a plan to murder the Duke of Ormond. The bravo was
sent to the Tower: but in a few days he was again swaggering about the
galleries, and carrying billets backward and forward between his patron
and the ugliest maids of honour. It was in vain that old and discreet
counsellors implored the royal brothers not to countenance this bad man,
who had nothing to recommend him except his fine person and his taste in
dress. Talbot was not only welcome at the palace when the bottle or
the dicebox was going round, but was heard with attention on matters of
business. He affected the character of an Irish patriot, and pleaded,
with great audacity, and sometimes with success, the cause of his
countrymen whose estates had been confiscated. He took care, however, to
be well paid for his services, and succeeded in acquiring, partly by
the sale of his influence, partly by gambling, and partly by pimping,
an estate of three thousand pounds a year. For under an outward show
of levity, profusion, improvidence, and eccentric impudence, he was in
truth one of the most mercenary and crafty of mankind. He was now no
longer young, and was expiating by severe sufferings the dissoluteness
of his youth: but age and disease had made no essential change in his
character and manners. He still, whenever he opened his mouth, ranted,
cursed and swore with such frantic violence that superficial observers
set him down for the wildest of libertines. The multitude was unable to
conceive that a man who, even when sober, was more furious and boastful
than others when they were drunk, and who seemed utterly incapable
of disguising any emotion or keeping any secret, could really be a
coldhearted, farsighted, scheming sycophant. Yet such a man was Talbot.
In truth his hypocrisy was of a far higher and rarer sort than the
hypocrisy which had flourished in Barebone's Parliament. For the
consummate hypocrite is not he who conceals vice behind the semblance
of virtue, but he who makes the vice which he has no objection to show a
stalking horse to cover darker and more profitable vice which it is for
his interest to hide.

Talbot, raised by James to the earldom of Tyrconnel, had commanded the
troops in Ireland during the nine months which elapsed between the death
of Charles and the commencement of the viceroyalty of Clarendon. When
the new Lord Lieutenant was about to leave London for Dublin, the
General was summoned from Dublin to London. Dick Talbot had long been
well known on the road which he had now to travel. Between Chester
and the capital there was not an inn where he had not been in a brawl.
Wherever he came he pressed horses in defiance of law, swore at
the cooks and postilions, and almost raised mobs by his insolent
rodomontades. The Reformation, he told the people, had ruined
everything. But fine times were coming. The Catholics would soon be
uppermost. The heretics should pay for all. Raving and blaspheming
incessantly, like a demoniac, he came to the court. [52] As soon as
he was there, he allied himself closely with Castelmaine, Dover, and
Albeville. These men called with one voice for war on the constitution
of the Church and the State. They told their master that he owed it to
his religion and to the dignity of his crown to stand firm against the
outcry of heretical demagogues, and to let the Parliament see from the
first that he would be master in spite of opposition, and that the only
effect of opposition would be to make him a hard master.

Each of the two parties into which the court was divided had zealous
foreign allies. The ministers of Spain, of the Empire, and of the States
General were now as anxious to support Rochester as they had formerly
been to support Halifax. All the influence of Barillon was employed
on the other side; and Barillon was assisted by another French agent,
inferior to him in station, but far superior in abilities, Bonrepaux.
Barillon was not without parts, and possessed in large measure the
graces and accomplishments which then distinguished the French gentry.
But his capacity was scarcely equal to what his great place required. He
had become sluggish and self indulgent, liked the pleasures of society
and of the table better than business, and on great emergencies
generally waited for admonitions and even for reprimands from Versailles
before he showed much activity. [53] Bonrepaux had raised himself from
obscurity by the intelligence and industry which he had exhibited as a
clerk in the department of the marine, and was esteemed an adept in the
mystery of mercantile politics. At the close of the year 1685, he
was sent to London, charged with several special commissions of high
importance. He was to lay the ground for a treaty of commerce; he was to
ascertain and report the state of the English fleets and dockyards;
and he was to make some overtures to the Huguenot refugees, who, it was
supposed, had been so effectually tamed by penury and exile, that they
would thankfully accept almost any terms of reconciliation. The new
Envoy's origin was plebeian, his stature was dwarfish, his countenance
was ludicrously ugly, and his accent was that of his native Gascony:
but his strong sense, his keen penetration, and his lively wit eminently
qualified him for his post. In spite of every disadvantage of birth
and figure he was soon known as a most pleasing companion and as a most
skilful diplomatist. He contrived, while flirting with the Duchess of
Mazarin, discussing literary questions with Waller and Saint Evremond,
and corresponding with La Fontaine, to acquire a considerable knowledge
of English politics. His skill in maritime affairs recommended him to
James, who had, during many years, paid close attention to the business
of the Admiralty, and understood that business as well as he was capable
of understanding anything. They conversed every day long and freely
about the state of the shipping and the dock-yards. The result of this
intimacy was, as might have been expected, that the keen and vigilant
Frenchman conceived a great contempt for the King's abilities and
character. The world, he said, had much overrated His Britannic Majesty,
who had less capacity than Charles, and not more virtues. [54]

The two envoys of Lewis, though pursuing one object, very judiciously
took different paths. They made a partition of the court. Bonrepaux
lived chiefly with Rochester and Rochester's adherents. Barillon's
connections were chiefly with the opposite faction. The consequence was
that they sometimes saw the same event in different points of view.
The best account now extant of the contest which at this time agitated
Whitehall is to be found in their despatches.

As each of the two parties at the Court of James had the support of
foreign princes, so each had also the support of an ecclesiastical
authority to which the King paid great deference. The Supreme Pontiff
was for legal and moderate courses; and his sentiments were expressed by
the Nuncio and by the Vicar Apostolic. [55] On the other side was a body
of which the weight balanced even the weight of the Papacy, the mighty
Order of Jesus.

That at this conjuncture these two great spiritual powers, once, as it
seemed, inseparably allied, should have been opposed to each other, is
a most important and remarkable circumstance. During a period of little
less than a thousand years the regular clergy had been the chief support
of the Holy See. By that See they had been protected from episcopal
interference; and the protection which they had received had been amply
repaid. But for their exertions it is probable that the Bishop of Rome
would have been merely the honorary president of a vast aristocracy of
prelates. It was by the aid of the Benedictines that Gregory the Seventh
was enabled to contend at once against the Franconian Caesars and
against the secular priesthood. It was by the aid of the Dominicans and
Franciscans that Innocent the Third crushed the Albigensian sectaries.
In the sixteenth century the Pontificate exposed to new dangers more
formidable than had ever before threatened it, was saved by a new
religious order, which was animated by intense enthusiasm and organized
with exquisite skill. When the Jesuits came to the rescue of the Papacy,
they found it in extreme peril: but from that moment the tide of battle
turned. Protestantism, which had, during a whole generation, carried all
before it, was stopped in its progress, and rapidly beaten back from
the foot of the Alps to the shores of the Baltic. Before the Order had
existed a hundred years, it had filled the whole world with memorials
of great things done and suffered for the faith. No religious community
could produce a list of men so variously distinguished:--none had
extended its operations over so vast a space; yet in none had there ever
been such perfect unity of feeling and action. There was no region of
the globe, no walk of speculative or of active life, in which Jesuits
were not to be found. They guided the counsels of Kings. They deciphered
Latin inscriptions. They observed the motions of Jupiter's satellites.
They published whole libraries, controversy, casuistry, history,
treatises on optics, Alcaic odes, editions of the fathers, madrigals,
catechisms, and lampoons. The liberal education of youth passed almost
entirely into their hands, and was conducted by them with conspicuous
ability. They appear to have discovered the precise point to which
intellectual culture can be carried without risk of intellectual
emancipation. Enmity itself was compelled to own that, in the art of
managing and forming the tender mind, they had no equals. Meanwhile they
assiduously and successfully cultivated the eloquence of the pulpit.
With still greater assiduity and still greater success they applied
themselves to the ministry of the confessional. Throughout Catholic
Europe the secrets of every government and of almost every family of
note were in their keeping. They glided from one Protestant country
to another under innumerable disguises, as gay Cavaliers, as simple
rustics, as Puritan preachers. They wandered to countries which neither
mercantile avidity nor liberal curiosity had ever impelled any
stranger to explore. They were to be found in the garb of Mandarins,
superintending the observatory at Pekin. They were to be found, spade in
hand, teaching the rudiments of agriculture to the savages of Paraguay.
Yet, whatever might be their residence, whatever might be their
employment, their spirit was the same, entire devotion to the common
cause, implicit obedience to the central authority. None of them had
chosen his dwelling place or his vocation for himself. Whether the
Jesuit should live under the arctic circle or under the equator, whether
he should pass his life in arranging gems and collating manuscripts at
the Vatican or in persuading naked barbarians in the southern hemisphere
not to eat each other, were matters which he left with profound
submission to the decision of others. If he was wanted at Lima, he was
on the Atlantic in the next fleet. If he was wanted at Bagdad, he was
toiling through the desert with the next caravan. If his ministry was
needed in some country where his life was more insecure than that of a
wolf, where it was a crime to harbour him, where the heads and quarters
of his brethren, fixed in the public places, showed him what he had to
expect, he went without remonstrance or hesitation to his doom. Nor
is this heroic spirit yet extinct. When, in our own time, a new and
terrible pestilence passed round the globe, when, in some great cities,
fear had dissolved all the ties which hold society together, when the
secular clergy had deserted their flocks, when medical succour was
not to be purchased by gold, when the strongest natural affections
had yielded to the love of life, even then the Jesuit was found by the
pallet which bishop and curate, physician and nurse, father and mother,
had deserted, bending over infected lips to catch the faint accents of
confession, and holding up to the last, before the expiring penitent,
the image of the expiring Redeemer.

But with the admirable energy, disinterestedness, and self-devotion
which were characteristic of the Society, great vices were mingled. It
was alleged, and not without foundation, that the ardent public spirit
which made the Jesuit regardless of his ease, of his liberty, and of
his life, made him also regardless of truth and of mercy; that no means
which could promote the interest of his religion seemed to him unlawful,
and that by the interest of his religion he too often meant the interest
of his Society. It was alleged that, in the most atrocious plots
recorded in history, his agency could be distinctly traced; that,
constant only in attachment to the fraternity to which he belonged, he
was in some countries the most dangerous enemy of freedom, and in others
the most dangerous enemy of order. The mighty victories which he boasted
that he had achieved in the cause of the Church were, in the judgment of
many illustrious members of that Church, rather apparent than real. He
had indeed laboured with a wonderful show of success to reduce the world
under her laws; but he had done so by relaxing her laws to suit the
temper of the world. Instead of toiling to elevate human nature to the
noble standard fixed by divine precept and example, he had lowered
the standard till it was beneath the average level of human nature. He
gloried in multitudes of converts who had been baptized in the remote
regions of the East: but it was reported that from some of those
converts the facts on which the whole theology of the Gospel depends
had been cunningly concealed, and that others were permitted to avoid
persecution by bowing down before the images of false gods, while
internally repeating Paters and Ayes. Nor was it only in heathen
countries that such arts were said to be practised. It was not strange
that people of alt ranks, and especially of the highest ranks, crowded
to the confessionals in the Jesuit temples; for from those confessionals
none went discontented away. There the priest was all things to all men.
He showed just so much rigour as might not drive those who knelt at his
spiritual tribunal to the Dominican or the Franciscan church. If he had
to deal with a mind truly devout, he spoke in the saintly tones of the
primitive fathers, but with that very large part of mankind who have
religion enough to make them uneasy when they do wrong, and not religion
enough to keep them from doing wrong, he followed a very different
system. Since he could not reclaim them from guilt, it was his business
to save them from remorse. He had at his command an immense dispensary
of anodynes for wounded consciences. In the books of casuistry which had
been written by his brethren, and printed with the approbation of his
superiors, were to be found doctrines consolatory to transgressors of
every class. There the bankrupt was taught how he might, without sin,
secrete his goods from his creditors. The servant was taught how he
might, without sin, run off with his master's plate. The pandar was
assured that a Christian man might innocently earn his living by
carrying letters and messages between married women and their gallants.
The high spirited and punctilious gentlemen of France were gratified by
a decision in favour of duelling.
The Italians, accustomed to darker and
baser modes of vengeance, were glad to learn that they might, without
any crime, shoot at their enemies from behind hedges. To deceit was
given a license sufficient to destroy the whole value of human contracts
and of human testimony. In truth, if society continued to hold together,
if life and property enjoyed any security, it was because common sense
and common humanity restrained men from doing what the Society of Jesus
assured them that they might with a safe conscience do.

So strangely were good and evil intermixed in the character of these
celebrated brethren; and the intermixture was the secret of their
gigantic power. That power could never have belonged to mere hypocrites.
It could never have belonged to rigid moralists. It was to be attained
only by men sincerely enthusiastic in the pursuit of a great end, and at
the same time unscrupulous as to the choice of means.

From the first the Jesuits had been bound by a peculiar allegiance to
the Pope. Their mission had been not less to quell all mutiny within the
Church than to repel the hostility of her avowed enemies. Their doctrine
was in the highest degree what has been called on our side of the Alps
Ultramontane, and differed almost as much from the doctrine of Bossuet
as from that of Luther. They condemned the Gallican liberties, the
claim of oecumenical councils to control the Holy See, and the claim of
Bishops to an independent commission from heaven. Lainez, in the name
of the whole fraternity, proclaimed at Trent, amidst the applause of
the creatures of Pius the Fourth, and the murmurs of French and Spanish
prelates, that the government of the faithful had been committed
by Christ to the Pope alone, that in the Pope alone all sacerdotal
authority was concentrated, and that through the Pope alone priests and
bishops derived whatever divine authority they possessed. [56] During
many years the union between the Supreme Pontiffs and the Order had
continued unbroken. Had that union been still unbroken when James the
Second ascended the English throne, had the influence of the Jesuits as
well as the influence of the Pope been exerted in favour of a moderate
and constitutional policy, it is probable that the great revolution
which in a short time changed the whole state of European affairs would
never have taken place. But, even before the middle of the seventeenth
century, the Society, proud of its services and confident in its
strength, had become impatient of the yoke. A generation of Jesuits
sprang up, who looked for protection and guidance rather to the court of
France than to the court of Rome; and this disposition was not a little
strengthened when Innocent the Eleventh was raised to the papal throne.

The Jesuits were, at that time, engaged in a war to the death against an
enemy whom they had at first disdained, but whom they had at length been
forced to regard with respect and fear. Just when their prosperity
was at the height, they were braved by a handful of opponents, who had
indeed no influence with the rulers of this world, but who were strong
in religious faith and intellectual energy. Then followed a long, a
strange, a glorious conflict of genius against power. The Jesuit called
cabinets, tribunals, universities to his aid; and they responded to
the call. Port Royal appealed, not in vain, to the hearts and to
the understandings of millions. The dictators of Christendom found
themselves, on a sudden, in the position of culprits. They were
arraigned on the charge of having systematically debased the standard of
evangelical morality, for the purpose of increasing their own influence;
and the charge was enforced in a manner which at once arrested the
attention of the whole world: for the chief accuser was Blaise Pascal.
His intellectual powers were such as have rarely been bestowed on any
of the children of men; and the vehemence of the zeal which animated him
was but too well proved by the cruel penances and vigils under which his
macerated frame sank into an early grave. His spirit was the spirit of
Saint Bernard: but the delicacy of his wit, the purity, the energy, the
simplicity of his rhetoric, had never been equalled, except by the great
masters of Attic eloquence. All Europe read and admired, laughed and
wept. The Jesuits attempted to reply: but their feeble answers were
received by the public with shouts of mockery. They wanted, it is true,
no talent or accomplishment into which men can be drilled by elaborate
discipline; but such discipline, though it may bring out the powers of
ordinary minds, has a tendency to suffocate, rather than to develop,
original genius. It was universally acknowledged that, in the literary
contest, the Jansenists were completely victorious. To the Jesuits
nothing was left but to oppress the sect which they could not confute.
Lewis the Fourteenth was now their chief support. His conscience had,
from boyhood, been in their keeping; and he had learned from them to
abhor Jansenism quite as much as he abhorred Protestantism, and very
much more than he abhorred Atheism. Innocent the Eleventh, on the other
hand, leaned to the Jansenist opinions. The consequence was, that the
Society found itself in a situation never contemplated by its founder.
The Jesuits were estranged from the Supreme Pontiff; and they were
closely allied with a prince who proclaimed himself the champion of the
Gallican liberties and the enemy of Ultramontane pretensions. Thus
the Order became in England an instrument of the designs of Lewis, and
laboured, with a success which the Roman Catholics afterwards long
and bitterly deplored, to widen the breach between the King and the
Parliament, to thwart the Nuncio, to undermine the power of the Lord
Treasurer, and to support the most desperate schemes of Tyrconnel.

Thus on one side were the Hydes and the whole body of Tory churchmen,
Powis and all the most respectable noblemen and gentlemen of the King's
own faith, the States General, the House of Austria, and the Pope. On
the other side were a few Roman Catholic adventurers, of broken fortune
and tainted reputation, backed by France and by the Jesuits.

The chief representative of the Jesuits at Whitehall was an
English brother of the Order, who had, during some time, acted as
Viceprovincial, who had been long regarded by James with peculiar
favour, and who had lately been made Clerk of the Closet. This man,
named Edward Petre, was descended from an honourable family. His manners
were courtly: his speech was flowing and plausible; but he was weak and
vain, covetous and ambitious. Of all the evil counsellors who had access
to the royal ear, he bore, perhaps, the largest part in the ruin of the
House of Stuart.

The obstinate and imperious nature of the King gave great advantages to
those who advised him to be firm, to yield nothing, and to make himself
feared. One state maxim had taken possession of his small understanding,
and was not to be dislodged by reason. To reason, indeed, he was not in
the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called,
was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed
to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and,
as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was
erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and
conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections.
[57] "I will make no concession," he often repeated; "my father made
concessions, and he was beheaded. " [58] If it were true that concession had
been fatal to Charles the First, a man of sense would have known that a
single experiment is not sufficient to establish a general rule even
in sciences much less complicated than the science of government; that,
since the beginning of the world, no two political experiments were ever
made of which all the conditions were exactly alike; and that the only
way to learn civil prudence from history is to examine and compare an
immense number of cases. But, if the single instance on which the King
relied proved anything, it proved that he was in the wrong. There can be
little doubt that, if Charles had frankly made to the Short Parliament,
which met in the spring of 1640, but one half of the concessions which
he made, a few months later, to the Long Parliament, he would have
lived and died a powerful King. On the other hand, there can be no doubt
whatever that, if he had refused to make any concession to the Long
Parliament, and had resorted to arms in defence of the ship money and
of the Star Chamber, he would have seen, in the hostile ranks, Hyde and
Falkland side by side with Hollis and Hampden. But, in truth, he would
not have been able to resort to arms; for nor twenty Cavaliers would
have joined his standard. It was to his large concessions alone that he
owed the support of that great body of noblemen and gentlemen who fought
so long and so gallantly in his cause. But it would have been useless to
represent these things to James.

Another fatal delusion had taken possession of his mind, and was never
dispelled till it had ruined him. He firmly believed that, do what
he might, the members of the Church of England would act up to their
principles. It had, he knew, been proclaimed from ten thousand pulpits,
it had been solemnly declared by the University of Oxford, that even
tyranny as frightful as that of the most depraved of the Caesars did not
justify subjects in resisting the royal authority; and hence he was weak
enough to conclude that the whole body of Tory gentlemen and clergymen
would let him plunder, oppress, and insult them without lifting an
arm against him. It seems strange that any man should have passed his
fiftieth year without discovering that people sometimes do what they
think wrong: and James had only to look into his own heart for abundant
proof that even a strong sense of religious duty will not always prevent
frail human beings from indulging their passions in defiance of divine
laws, and at the risk of awful penalties. He must have been conscious
that, though he thought adultery sinful, he was an adulterer: but
nothing could convince him that any man who professed to think rebellion
sinful would ever, in any extremity, be a rebel. The Church of England
was, in his view, a passive victim, which he might, without danger,
outrage and torture at his pleasure; nor did he ever see his error till
the Universities were preparing to coin their plate for the purpose of
supplying the military chest of his enemies, and till a Bishop, long
renowned for loyalty, had thrown aside his cassock, girt on a sword, and
taken the command of a regiment of insurgents.

In these fatal follies the King was artfully encouraged by a minister
who had been an Exclusionist, and who still called himself a Protestant,
the Earl of Sunderland. The motives and conduct of this unprincipled
politician have often been misrepresented. He was, in his own lifetime,
accused by the Jacobites of having, even before the beginning of the
reign of James, determined to bring about a revolution in favour of
the Prince of Orange, and of having, with that view, recommended a
succession of outrages on the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of
the realm. This idle story has been repeated down to our own days by
ignorant writers. But no well informed historian, whatever might be his
prejudices, has condescended to adopt it: for it rests on no evidence
whatever; and scarcely any evidence would convince reasonable men that
Sunderland deliberately incurred guilt and infamy in order to bring
about a change by which it was clear that he could not possibly be a
gainer, and by which, in fact, he lost immense wealth and influence. Nor
is there the smallest reason for resorting to so strange a hypothesis.
For the truth lies on the surface. Crooked as this man's course was, the
law which determined it was simple. His conduct is to be ascribed to the
alternate influence of cupidity and fear on a mind highly susceptible of
both those passions, and quicksighted rather than farsighted. He
wanted more power and more money. More power he could obtain only at
Rochester's expense; and the obvious way to obtain power at Rochester's
expense was to encourage the dislike which the King felt for Rochester's
moderate counsels. Money could be most easily and most largely obtained
from the court of Versailles; and Sunderland was eager to sell himself
to that court. He had no jovial generous vices. He cared little for wine
or for beauty: but he desired riches with an ungovernable and insatiable
desire. The passion for play raged in him without measure, and had not
been tamed by ruinous losses. His hereditary fortune was ample. He had
long filled lucrative posts, and had neglected no art which could make
them more lucrative: but his ill luck at the hazard table was such that
his estates were daily becoming more and more encumbered. In the hope of
extricating himself from his embarrassments, he betrayed to Barillon all
the schemes adverse to France which had been meditated in the English
cabinet, and hinted that a Secretary of State could in such times
render services for which it might be wise in Lewis to pay largely. The
Ambassador told his master that six thousand guineas was the smallest
gratification that could be offered to so important a minister. Lewis
consented to go as high as twenty-five thousand crowns, equivalent to
about five thousand six hundred pounds sterling. It was agreed that
Sunderland should receive this sum yearly, and that he should, in
return, exert all his influence to prevent the reassembling of the
Parliament. [59] He joined himself therefore to the Jesuitical cabal,
and made so dexterous an use of the influence of that cabal that he
was appointed to succeed Halifax in the high dignity of Lord President
without being required to resign the far more active and lucrative post
of Secretary. [60] He felt, however, that he could never hope to obtain
paramount influence in the court while he was supposed to belong to
the Established Church. All religions were the same to him. In private
circles, indeed, he was in the habit of talking with profane contempt of
the most sacred things. He therefore determined to let the King have the
delight and glory of effecting a conversion. Some management, however,
was necessary. No man is utterly without regard for the opinion of
his fellow creatures; and even Sunderland, though not very sensible to
shame, flinched from the infamy of public apostasy. He played his part
with rare adroitness. To the world he showed himself as a Protestant. In
the royal closet he assumed the character of an earnest inquirer after
truth, who was almost persuaded to declare himself a Roman Catholic, and
who, while waiting for fuller illumination, was disposed to render every
service in his power to the professors of the old faith. James, who
was never very discerning, and who in religious matters was absolutely
blind, suffered himself, notwithstanding all that he had seen of human
knavery, of the knavery of courtiers as a class, and of the knavery of
Sunderland in particular, to be duped into the belief that divine grace
had touched the most false and callous of human hearts. During many
months the wily minister continued to be regarded at court as a
promising catechumen, without exhibiting himself to the public in the
character of a renegade. [61]

He early suggested to the King the expediency of appointing a secret
committee of Roman Catholics to advise on all matters affecting the
interests of their religion. This committee met sometimes at Chiffinch's
lodgings, and sometimes at the official apartments of Sunderland,
who, though still nominally a Protestant, was admitted to all its
deliberations, and soon obtained a decided ascendency over the other
members. Every Friday the Jesuitical cabal dined with the Secretary. The
conversation at table was free; and the weaknesses of the prince whom
the confederates hoped to manage were not spared. To Petre Sunderland
promised a Cardinal's hat; to Castelmaine a splendid embassy to Rome;
to Dover a lucrative command in the Guards; and to Tyrconnel high
employment in Ireland. Thus hound together by the strongest ties of
interest, these men addressed themselves to the task of subverting the
Treasurer's power. [62]

There were two Protestant members of the cabinet who took no decided
part in the struggle. Jeffreys was at this time tortured by a cruel
internal malady which had been aggravated by intemperance. At a dinner
which a wealthy Alderman gave to some of the leading members of the
government, the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Chancellor were so drunk
that they stripped themselves almost stark naked, and were with
difficulty prevented from climbing up a signpost to drink His Majesty's
health. The pious Treasurer escaped with nothing but the scandal of the
debauch: but the Chancellor brought on a violent fit of his complaint.
His life was for some time thought to be in serious danger. James
expressed great uneasiness at the thought of losing a minister who
suited him so well, and said, with some truth, that the loss of such a
man could not be easily repaired. Jeffreys, when he became convalescent,
promised his support to both the contending parties, and waited to
see which of them would prove victorious. Some curious proofs of his
duplicity are still extant. It has been already said that the two French
agents who were then resident in London had divided the English court
between them. Bonrepaux was constantly with Rochester; and Barillon
lived with Sunderland. Lewis was informed in the same week by Bonrepaux
that the Chancellor was entirely with the Treasurer, and by Barillon
that the Chancellor was in league with the Secretary. [63]

Godolphin, cautious and taciturn, did his best to preserve neutrality.
His opinions and wishes were undoubtedly with Rochester; but his office
made it necessary for him to be in constant attendance on the Queen; and
he was naturally unwilling to be on bad terms with her. There is indeed
reason to believe that he regarded her with an attachment more
romantic than often finds place in the hearts of veteran statesmen;
and circumstances, which it is now necessary to relate, had thrown her
entirely into the hands of the Jesuitical cabal. [64]

The King, stern as was his temper and grave as was his deportment, was
scarcely less under the influence of female attractions than his
more lively and amiable brother had been. The beauty, indeed, which
distinguished the favourite ladies of Charles was not necessary to
James. Barbara Palmer, Eleanor Gwynn, and Louisa de Querouaille were
among the finest women of their time. James, when young, had surrendered
his liberty, descended below his rank, and incurred the displeasure of
his family for the coarse features of Anne Hyde. He had soon, to the
great diversion of the whole court, been drawn away from his plain
consort by a plainer mistress, Arabella Churchill. His second wife,
though twenty years younger than himself, and of no unpleasing face or
figure, had frequent reason to complain of his inconstancy. But of
all his illicit attachments the strongest was that which bound him to
Catharine Sedley.

This woman was the daughter of Sir Charles Sedley, one of the most
brilliant and profligate wits of the Restoration. The licentiousness of
his writings is not redeemed by much grace or vivacity; but the charms
of his conversation were acknowledged even by sober men who had no
esteem for his character. To sit near him at the theatre, and to hear
his criticisms on a new play, was regarded as a privilege. [65] Dryden
had done him the honour to make him a principal interlocutor in the
Dialogue on Dramatic Poesy. The morals of Sedley were such as, even in
that age, gave great scandal. He on one occasion, after a wild revel,
exhibited himself without a shred of clothing in the balcony of a
tavern near Covent Garden, and harangued the people who were passing in
language so indecent and profane that he was driven in by a shower of
brickbats, was prosecuted for a misdemeanour, was sentenced to a heavy
fine, and was reprimanded by the Court of King's Bench in the most
cutting terms. [66] His daughter had inherited his abilities and his
impudence. Personal charms she had none, with the exception of two
brilliant eyes, the lustre of which, to men of delicate taste, seemed
fierce and unfeminine. Her form was lean, her countenance haggard.
Charles, though he liked her conversation, laughed at her ugliness, and
said that the priests must have recommended her to his brother by way of
penance. She well knew that she was not handsome, and jested freely on
her own homeliness. Yet, with strange inconsistency, she loved to
adorn herself magnificently, and drew on herself much keen ridicule
by appearing in the theatre and the ring plastered, painted, clad in
Brussels lace, glittering with diamonds, and affecting all the graces of
eighteen. [67]

The nature of her influence over James is not easily to be explained. He
was no longer young. He was a religious man; at least he was willing
to make for his religion exertions and sacrifices from which the great
majority of those who are called religious men would shrink. It seems
strange that any attractions should have drawn him into a course of life
which he must have regarded as highly criminal; and in this case
none could understand where the attraction lay. Catharine herself was
astonished by the violence of his passion. "It cannot be my beauty," she
said; "for he must see that I have none; and it cannot be my wit, for he
has not enough to know that I have any. "

At the moment of the King's accession a sense of the new responsibility
which lay on him made his mind for a time peculiarly open to religious
impressions. He formed and announced many good resolutions, spoke in
public with great severity of the impious and licentious manners of the
age, and in private assured his Queen and his confessor that he would
see Catharine Sedley no more. He wrote to his mistress entreating her
to quit the apartments which she occupied at Whitehall, and to go to a
house in Saint James's Square which had been splendidly furnished for
her at his expense. He at the same time promised to allow her a large
pension from his privy purse. Catharine, clever, strongminded, intrepid,
and conscious of her power, refused to stir. In a few months it began
to be whispered that the services of Chiffinch were again employed, and
that the mistress frequently passed and repassed through that private
door through which Father Huddleston had borne the host to the bedside
of Charles. The King's Protestant ministers had, it seems, conceived a
hope that their master's infatuation for this woman might cure him
of the more pernicious infatuation which impelled him to attack their
religion. She had all the talents which could qualify her to play on his
feelings, to make game of his scruples, to set before him in a strong
light the difficulties and dangers into which he was running headlong.
Rochester, the champion of the Church, exerted himself to strengthen her
influence. Ormond, who is popularly regarded as the personification of
all that is pure and highminded in the English Cavalier, encouraged the
design. Even Lady Rochester was not ashamed to cooperate, and that in
the very worst way. Her office was to direct the jealousy of the injured
wife towards a young lady who was perfectly innocent. The whole court
took notice of the coldness and rudeness with which the Queen treated
the poor girl on whom suspicion had been thrown: but the cause of Her
Majesty's ill humour was a mystery. For a time the intrigue went on
prosperously and secretly. Catharine often told the King plainly what
the Protestant Lords of the Council only dared to hint in the most
delicate phrases. His crown, she said, was at stake: the old dotard
Arundell and the blustering Tyrconnel would lead him to his ruin. It is
possible that her caresses might have done what the united exhortations
of the Lords and the Commons, of the House of Austria and the Holy See,
had failed to do, but for a strange mishap which changed the whole face
of affairs. James, in a fit of fondness, determined to make his mistress
Countess of Dorchester in her own right. Catharine saw all the peril of
such a step, and declined the invidious honour. Her lover was obstinate,
and himself forced the patent into her hands. She at last accepted it
on one condition, which shows her confidence in her own power and in
his weakness. She made him give her a solemn promise, not that he would
never quit her, but that, if he did so, he would himself announce his
resolution to her, and grant her one parting interview.

As soon as the news of her elevation got abroad, the whole palace was
in an uproar. The warm blood of Italy boiled in the veins of the Queen.
Proud of her youth and of her charms, of her high rank and of her
stainless chastity, she could not without agonies of grief and rage
see herself deserted and insulted for such a rival. Rochester, perhaps
remembering how patiently, after a short struggle, Catharine of Braganza
had consented to treat the mistresses of Charles with politeness, had
expected that, after a little complaining and pouting, Mary of Modena
would be equally submissive. It was not so. She did not even attempt
to conceal from the eyes of the world the violence of her emotions.
Day after day the courtiers who came to see her dine observed that the
dishes were removed untasted from the table. She suffered the tears to
stream down her cheeks unconcealed in the presence of the whole circle
of ministers and envoys. To the King she spoke with wild vehemence.
"Let me go," she cried. "You have made your woman a Countess: make her
a Queen. Put my crown on her head. Only let me hide myself in some
convent, where I may never see her more. " Then, more soberly, she asked
him how he reconciled his conduct to his religious professions. "You are
ready," she said, "to put your kingdom to hazard for the sake of your
soul; and yet you are throwing away your soul for the sake of that
creature. " Father Petre, on bended knees, seconded these remonstrances.
It was his duty to do so; and his duty was not the less strenuously
performed because it coincided with his interest. The King went on for
a time sinning and repenting. In his hours of remorse his penances
were severe. Mary treasured up to the end of her life, and at her death
bequeathed to the convent of Chaillot, the scourge with which he had
vigorously avenged her wrongs upon his own shoulders. Nothing but
Catharine's absence could put an end to this struggle between an ignoble
love and an ignoble superstition. James wrote, imploring and commanding
her to depart. He owned that he had promised to bid her farewell in
person. "But I know too well," he added, "the power which you have over
me. I have not strength of mind enough to keep my resolution if I see
you. " He offered her a yacht to convey her with all dignity and comfort
to Flanders, and threatened that if she did not go quietly she should be
sent away by force. She at one time worked on his feelings by pretending
to be ill. Then she assumed the airs of a martyr, and impudently
proclaimed herself a sufferer for the Protestant religion. Then again
she adopted the style of John Hampden. She defied the King to remove
her. She would try the right with him. While the Great Charter and the
Habeas Corpus Act were the law of the land, she would live where she
pleased. "And Flanders," she cried; "never! I have learned one thing
from my friend the Duchess of Mazarin; and that is never to trust myself
in a country where there are convents. " At length she selected Ireland
as the place of her exile, probably because the brother of her patron
Rochester was viceroy there. After many delays she departed, leaving the
victory to the Queen. [68]

The history of this extraordinary intrigue would be imperfect, if
it were not added that there is still extant a religious meditation,
written by the Treasurer, with his own hand, on the very same day on
which the intelligence of his attempt to govern his master by means of
a concubine was despatched by Bonrepaux to Versailles. No composition of
Ken or Leighton breathes a spirit of more fervent and exalted piety
than this effusion. Hypocrisy cannot be suspected: for the paper was
evidently meant only for the writer's own eye, and was not published
till he had been more than a century in his grave. So much is history
stranger than fiction; and so true is it that nature has caprices which
art dares not imitate.