No More Learning

The mirth began with the first representation
of the Rehearsal, and continued down to the last edition of the Dunciad,
[397] But Sir Robert, in spite of his bad verses, and of some foibles
and vanities which had caused him to be brought on the stage under the
name of Sir Positive Atall, had in parliament the weight which a stanch
party man, of ample fortune, of illustrious name, of ready utterance,
and of resolute spirit, can scarcely fail to possess, [398] When he rose
to call the attention of the Commons to the case of Oates, some Tories,
animated by the same passions which had prevailed in the other House,
received him with loud hisses. In spite of this most unparliamentary
insult, he persevered; and it soon appeared that the majority was with
him. Some orators extolled the patriotism and courage of Oates: others
dwelt much on a prevailing rumour, that the solicitors who were employed
against him on behalf of the Crown had distributed large sums of money
among the jurymen. These were topics on which there was much difference
of opinion. But that the sentence was illegal was a proposition which
admitted of no dispute. The most eminent lawyers in the House of Commons
declared that, on this point, they entirely concurred in the opinion
given by the judges in the House of Lords. Those who had hissed when
the subject was introduced, were so effectually cowed that they did
not venture to demand a division; and a bill annulling the sentence was
brought in, without any opposition, [399]

The Lords were in an embarrassing situation. To retract was not
pleasant. To engage in a contest with the Lower House, on a question on
which that House was clearly in the right, and was backed at once by the
opinions of the sages of the law, and by the passions of the populace,
might be dangerous. It was thought expedient to take a middle course. An
address was presented to the King, requesting him to pardon Oates, [400]
But this concession only made bad worse. Titus had, like every other
human being, a right to justice: but he was not a proper object of
mercy. If the judgment against him was illegal, it ought to have been
reversed. If it was legal, there was no ground for remitting any part of
it. The Commons, very properly, persisted, passed their bill, and sent
it up to the Peers. Of this bill the only objectionable part was the
preamble, which asserted, not only that the judgment was illegal, a
proposition which appeared on the face of the record to be true, but
also that the verdict was corrupt, a proposition which, whether true or
false, was not proved by any evidence at all.

The Lords were in a great strait. They knew that they were in the wrong.
Yet they were determined not to proclaim, in their legislative capacity,
that they had, in their judicial capacity, been guilty of injustice.
They again tried a middle course. The preamble was softened down: a
clause was added which provided that Oates should still remain incapable
of being a witness; and the bill thus altered was returned to the
Commons.

The Commons were not satisfied. They rejected the amendments,
and demanded a free conference. Two eminent Tories, Rochester and
Nottingham, took their seats in the Painted Chamber as managers for the
Lords. With them was joined Burnet, whose well known hatred of Popery
was likely to give weight to what he might say on such an occasion.
Somers was the chief orator on the other side; and to his pen we owe a
singularly lucid and interesting abstract of the debate.

The Lords frankly owned that the judgment of the Court of King's Bench
could not be defended. They knew it to be illegal, and had known it to
be so even when they affirmed it. But they had acted for the best. They
accused Oates of bringing an impudently false accusation against Queen
Catherine: they mentioned other instances of his villany; and they asked
whether such a man ought still to be capable of giving testimony in a
court of justice. The only excuse which, in their opinion, could be made
for him was, that he was insane; and in truth, the incredible insolence
and absurdity of his behaviour when he was last before them seemed to
warrant the belief that his brain had been turned, and that he was not
to be trusted with the lives of other men. The Lords could not therefore
degrade themselves by expressly rescinding what they had done; nor could
they consent to pronounce the verdict corrupt on no better evidence than
common report.

The reply was complete and triumphant. "Oates is now the smallest part
of the question. He has, Your Lordships say, falsely accused the Queen
Dowager and other innocent persons. Be it so. This bill gives him no
indemnity. We are quite willing that, if he is guilty, he shall be
punished. But for him, and for all Englishmen, we demand that punishment
shall be regulated by law, and not by the arbitrary discretion of any
tribunal. We demand that, when a writ of error is before Your Lordships,
you shall give judgment on it according to the known customs and
statutes of the realm. We deny that you have any right, on such
occasions, to take into consideration the moral character of a plaintiff
or the political effect of a decision. It is acknowledged by yourselves
that you have, merely because you thought ill of this man, affirmed
a judgment which you knew to be illegal. Against this assumption of
arbitrary power the Commons protest; and they hope that you will now
redeem what you must feel to be an error. Your Lordships intimate a
suspicion that Oates is mad. That a man is mad may be a very good reason
for not punishing him at all. But how it can be a reason for inflicting
on him a punishment which would be illegal even if he were sane, the
Commons do not comprehend. Your Lordships think that you should not be
justified in calling a verdict corrupt which has not been legally proved
to be so. Suffer us to remind you that you have two distinct functions
to perform. You are judges; and you are legislators. When you judge,
your duty is strictly to follow the law. When you legislate, you may
properly take facts from common fame. You invert this rule. You are lax
in the wrong place, and scrupulous in the wrong place. As judges,
you break through the law for the sake of a supposed convenience. As
legislators, you will not admit any fact without such technical proof as
it is rarely possible for legislators to obtain. " [401]

This reasoning was not and could not be answered. The Commons were
evidently flushed with their victory in the argument, and proud of
the appearance which Somers had made in the Painted Chamber. They
particularly charged him to see that the report which he had made of the
conference was accurately entered in the journals. The Lords very wisely
abstained from inserting in their records an account of a debate in
which they had been so signally discomfited. But, though conscious of
their fault and ashamed of it, they could not be brought to do public
penance by owning, in the preamble of the Act, that they had been guilty
of injustice. The minority was, however, strong. The resolution to
adhere was carried by only twelve votes, of which ten were proxies,
[402]

Twenty-one Peers protested. The bill dropped. Two Masters in Chancery
were sent to announce to the Commons the final resolution of the Peers.
The Commons thought this proceeding unjustifiable in substance and
uncourteous in form. They determined to remonstrate; and Somers drew
up an excellent manifesto, in which the vile name of Oates was scarcely
mentioned, and in which the Upper House was with great earnestness and
gravity exhorted to treat judicial questions judicially, and not, under
pretence of administering law, to make law, [403] The wretched man,
who had now a second time thrown the political world into confusion,
received a pardon, and was set at liberty. His friends in the Lower
House moved an address to the Throne, requesting that a pension
sufficient for his support might be granted to him, [404] He was
consequently allowed about three hundred a year, a sum which he thought
unworthy of his acceptance, and which he took with the savage snarl of
disappointed greediness.

From the dispute about Oates sprang another dispute, which might have
produced very serious consequences. The instrument which had declared
William and Mary King and Queen was a revolutionary instrument. It had
been drawn up by an assembly unknown to the ordinary law, and had never
received the royal sanction. It was evidently desirable that this great
contract between the governors and the governed, this titledeed by which
the King held his throne and the people their liberties, should be put
into a strictly regular form. The Declaration of Rights was therefore
turned into a Bill of Rights; and the Bill of Rights speedily passed the
Commons; but in the Lords difficulties arose.

The Declaration had settled the crown, first on William and Mary
jointly, then on the survivor of the two, then on Mary's posterity, then
on Anne and her posterity, and, lastly, on the posterity of William by
any other wife than Mary. The Bill had been drawn in exact conformity
with the Declaration. Who was to succeed if Mary, Anne, and William
should all die without posterity, was left in uncertainty. Yet the
event for which no provision was made was far from improbable. Indeed it
really came to pass. William had never had a child. Anne had repeatedly
been a mother, but had no child living. It would not be very strange if,
in a few months, disease, war, or treason should remove all those who
stood in the entail. In what state would the country then be left? To
whom would allegiance be due? The bill indeed contained a clause which
excluded Papists from the throne. But would such a clause supply the
place of a clause designating the successor by name? What if the next
heir should be a prince of the House of Savoy not three months old?
It would be absurd to call such an infant a Papist. Was he then to be
proclaimed King? Or was the crown to be in abeyance till he came to an
age at which he might be capable of choosing a religion? Might not the
most honest and the most intelligent men be in doubt whether they ought
to regard him as their Sovereign? And to whom could they look for
a solution of this doubt? Parliament there would be none: for the
Parliament would expire with the prince who had convoked it. There
would be mere anarchy, anarchy which might end in the destruction of
the monarchy, or in the destruction of public liberty. For these weighty
reasons, Barnet, at William's suggestion, proposed it the House of Lords
that the crown should, failing heirs of His Majesty's body, be entailed
on an undoubted Protestant, Sophia, Duchess of Brunswick Lunenburg,
granddaughter of James the First, and daughter of Elizabeth, Queen of
Bohemia.

The Lords unanimously assented to this amendment: but the Commons
unanimously rejected it. The cause of the rejection no contemporary
writer has satisfactorily explained. One Whig historian talks of the
machinations of the republicans, another of the machinations of
the Jacobites. But it is quite certain that four fifths of the
representatives of the people were neither Jacobites nor republicans.
Yet not a single voice was raised in the Lower House in favour of the
clause which in the Upper House had been carried by acclamation, [405]
The most probable explanation seems to be that the gross injustice which
had been committed in the case of Oates had irritated the Commons to
such a degree that they were glad of an opportunity to quarrel with the
Peers. A conference was held. Neither assembly would give way. While
the dispute was hottest, an event took place which, it might have been
thought, would have restored harmony. Anne gave birth to a son. The
child was baptized at Hampton Court with great pomp, and with many
signs of public joy. William was one of the sponsors. The other was the
accomplished Dorset, whose roof had given shelter to the Princess in her
distress. The King bestowed his own name on his godson, and announced
to the splendid circle assembled around the font that the little William
was henceforth to be called Duke of Gloucester, [406] The birth of
this child had greatly diminished the risk against which the Lords had
thought it necessary to guard. They might therefore have retracted with
a good grace. But their pride had been wounded by the severity with
which their decision on Oates's writ of error had been censured in the
Painted Chamber. They had been plainly told across the table that they
were unjust judges; and the imputation was not the less irritating
because they were conscious that it was deserved. They refused to make
any concession; and the Bill of Rights was suffered to drop, [407]

But the most exciting question of this long and stormy session was, what
punishment should be inflicted on those men who had, during the interval
between the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament and the Revolution,
been the advisers or the tools of Charles and James. It was happy for
England that, at this crisis, a prince who belonged to neither of
her factions, who loved neither, who hated neither, and who, for the
accomplishment of a great design, wished to make use of both, was the
moderator between them.

The two parties were now in a position closely resembling that in which
they had been twenty-eight years before. The party indeed which had then
been undermost was now uppermost: but the analogy between the situations
is one of the most perfect that can be found in history. Both the
Restoration and the Revolution was accomplished by coalitions. At the
Restoration, those politicians who were peculiarly zealous for liberty
assisted to reestablish monarchy: at the Revolution those politicians
who were peculiarly zealous for monarchy assisted to vindicate liberty.
The Cavalier would, at the former conjuncture, have been able to effect
nothing without the help of Puritans who had fought for the Covenant;
nor would the Whig, at the latter conjuncture, have offered a successful
resistance to arbitrary power, had he not been backed by men who had
a very short time before condemned resistance to arbitrary power as a
deadly sin. Conspicuous among those by whom, in 1660, the royal family
was brought back, were Hopis, who had in the days of the tyranny of
Charles the First held down the Speaker in the chair by main force,
while Black Rod knocked for admission in vain; Ingoldsby, whose name was
subscribed to the memorable death warrant; and Prynne, whose ears Laud
had cut off, and who, in return, had borne the chief part in cutting
off Laud's head. Among the seven who, in 1688, signed the invitation to
William, were Compton, who had long enforced the duty of obeying Nero;
Danby, who had been impeached for endeavouring to establish military
despotism; and Lumley, whose bloodhounds had tracked Monmouth to that
sad last hiding place among the fern. Both in 1660 and in 1688, while
the fate of the nation still hung in the balance, forgiveness
was exchanged between the hostile factions. On both occasions the
reconciliation, which had seemed to be cordial in the hour of danger,
proved false and hollow in the hour of triumph. As soon as Charles the
Second was at Whitehall, the Cavalier forgot the good service recently
done by the Presbyterians, and remembered only their old offences.
As soon as William was King, too many of the Whigs began to demand
vengeance for all that they had, in the days of the Rye House Plot,
suffered at the hands of the Tories. On both occasions the Sovereign
found it difficult to save the vanquished party from the fury of
his triumphant supporters; and on both occasions those whom he had
disappointed of their revenge murmured bitterly against the government
which had been so weak and ungrateful as to protect its foes against its
friends.

So early as the twenty-fifth of March, William called the attention of
the Commons to the expediency of quieting the public mind by an amnesty.
He expressed his hope that a bill of general pardon and oblivion would
be as speedily as possible presented for his sanction, and that no
exceptions would be made, except such as were absolutely necessary for
the vindication of public justice and for the safety of the state.
The Commons unanimously agreed to thank him for this instance of his
paternal kindness: but they suffered many weeks to pass without taking
any step towards the accomplishment of his wish. When at length the
subject was resumed, it was resumed in such a manner as plainly showed
that the majority had no real intention of putting an end to the
suspense which embittered the lives of all those Tories who were
conscious that, in their zeal for prerogative, they had some times
overstepped the exact line traced by law. Twelve categories were framed,
some of which were so extensive as to include tens of thousands of
delinquents; and the House resolved that, under every one of these
categories, some exceptions should be made. Then came the examination
into the cases of individuals. Numerous culprits and witnesses were
summoned to the bar. The debates were long and sharp; and it soon became
evident that the work was interminable. The summer glided away: the
autumn was approaching: the session could not last much longer; and
of the twelve distinct inquisitions, which the Commons had resolved to
institute, only three had been brought to a close. It was necessary to
let the bill drop for that year, [408]

Among the many offenders whose names were mentioned in the course of
these inquiries, was one who stood alone and unapproached in guilt and
infamy, and whom Whigs and Tories were equally willing to leave to the
extreme rigour of the law. On that terrible day which was succeeded by
the Irish Night, the roar of a great city disappointed of its revenge
had followed Jeffreys to the drawbridge of the Tower. His imprisonment
was not strictly legal: but he at first accepted with thanks and
blessings the protection which those dark walls, made famous by so many
crimes and sorrows, afforded him against the fury of the multitude,
[409] Soon, however, he became sensible that his life was still in
imminent peril. For a time he flattered himself with the hope that a
writ of Habeas Corpus would liberate him from his confinement, and that
he should be able to steal away to some foreign country, and to hide
himself with part of his ill gotten wealth from the detestation of
mankind: but, till the government was settled, there was no Court
competent to grant a writ of Habeas Corpus; and, as soon as the
government had been settled, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, [410]
Whether the legal guilt of murder could be brought home to Jeffreys may
be doubted. But he was morally guilty of so many murders that, if there
had been no other way of reaching his life, a retrospective Act of
Attainder would have been clamorously demanded by the whole nation.
A disposition to triumph over the fallen has never been one of the
besetting sins of Englishmen: but the hatred of which Jeffreys was
the object was without a parallel in our history, and partook but too
largely of the savageness of his own nature. The people, where he was
concerned, were as cruel as himself, and exulted in his misery as he
had been accustomed to exult in the misery of convicts listening to
the sentence of death, and of families clad in mourning. The rabble
congregated before his deserted mansion in Duke Street, and read on the
door, with shouts of laughter, the bills which announced the sale of
his property. Even delicate women, who had tears for highwaymen and
housebreakers, breathed nothing but vengeance against him. The lampoons
on him which were hawked about the town were distinguished by an
atrocity rare even in those days. Hanging would be too mild a death for
him: a grave under the gibbet too respectable a resting place: he ought
to be whipped to death at the cart's tail: he ought to be tortured like
an Indian: he ought to be devoured alive. The street poets portioned out
all his joints with cannibal ferocity, and computed how many pounds of
steaks might be cut from his well fattened carcass. Nay, the rage of
his enemies was such that, in language seldom heard in England, they
proclaimed their wish that he might go to the place of wailing and
gnashing of teeth, to the worm that never dies, to the fire that is
never quenched. They exhorted him to hang himself in his garters, and
to cut his throat with his razor. They put up horrible prayers that he
might not be able to repent, that he might die the same hardhearted,
wicked Jeffreys that he had lived, [411] His spirit, as mean in
adversity as insolent and inhuman in prosperity, sank down under the
load of public abhorrence. His constitution, originally bad, and much
impaired by intemperance, was completely broken by distress and anxiety.
He was tormented by a cruel internal disease, which the most skilful
surgeons of that age were seldom able to relieve. One solace was left to
him, brandy. Even when he had causes to try and councils to attend, he
had seldom gone to bed sober. Now, when he had nothing to occupy his
mind save terrible recollections and terrible forebodings, he abandoned
himself without reserve to his favourite vice. Many believed him to be
bent on shortening his life by excess. He thought it better, they said,
to go off in a drunken fit than to be hacked by Ketch, or torn limb from
limb by the populace.

Once he was roused from a state of abject despondency by an agreeable
sensation, speedily followed by a mortifying disappointment. A parcel
had been left for him at the Tower. It appeared to be a barrel of
Colchester oysters, his favourite dainties. He was greatly moved: for
there are moments when those who least deserve affection are pleased
to think that they inspire it. "Thank God," he exclaimed, "I have still
some friends left. " He opened the barrel; and from among a heap of
shells out tumbled a stout halter, [412]

It does not appear that one of the flatterers or buffoons whom he had
enriched out of the plunder of his victims came to comfort him in the
day of trouble. But he was not left in utter solitude. John Tutchin,
whom he had sentenced to be flogged every fortnight for seven years,
made his way into the Tower, and presented himself before the fallen
oppressor. Poor Jeffreys, humbled to the dust, behaved with abject
civility, and called for wine. "I am glad, sir," he said, "to see you. "
"And I am glad," answered the resentful Whig, "to see Your Lordship
in this place. " "I served my master," said Jeffreys: "I was bound in
conscience to do so. " "Where was your conscience," said Tutchin, "when
you passed that sentence on me at Dorchester? " "It was set down in my
instructions," answered Jeffreys, fawningly, "that I was to show no
mercy to men like you, men of parts and courage. When I went back to
court I was reprimanded for my lenity. " [413] Even Tutchin, acrimonious
as was his nature, and great as were his wrongs, seems to have been
a little mollified by the pitiable spectacle which he had at first
contemplated with vindictive pleasure. He always denied the truth of
the report that he was the person who sent the Colchester barrel to the
Tower.

A more benevolent man, John Sharp, the excellent Dean of Norwich, forced
himself to visit the prisoner. It was a painful task: but Sharp had been
treated by Jeffreys, in old times, as kindly as it was in the nature
of Jeffreys to treat any body, and had once or twice been able, by
patiently waiting till the storm of curses and invectives had spent
itself, and by dexterously seizing the moment of good humour, to obtain
for unhappy families some mitigation of their sufferings. The prisoner
was surprised and pleased. "What," he said, "dare you own me now? " It was
in vain, however, that the amiable divine tried to give salutary pain
to that seared conscience. Jeffreys, instead of acknowledging his guilt,
exclaimed vehemently against the injustice of mankind. "People call me
a murderer for doing what at the time was applauded by some who are now
high in public favour. They call me a drunkard because I take punch to
relieve me in my agony. " He would not admit that, as President of the
High Commission, he had done any thing that deserved reproach. His
colleagues, he said, were the real criminals; and now they threw all
the blame on him. He spoke with peculiar asperity of Sprat, who had
undoubtedly been the most humane and moderate member of the board.

It soon became clear that the wicked judge was fast sinking under the
weight of bodily and mental suffering. Doctor John Scott, prebendary of
Saint Paul's, a clergyman of great sanctity, and author of the Christian
Life, a treatise once widely renowned, was summoned, probably on the
recommendation of his intimate friend Sharp, to the bedside of the dying
man. It was in vain, however, that Scott spoke, as Sharp had already
spoken, of the hideous butcheries of Dorchester and Taunton. To the last
Jeffreys continued to repeat that those who thought him cruel did not
know what his orders were, that he deserved praise instead of blame,
and that his clemency had drawn on him the extreme displeasure of his
master, [414]

Disease, assisted by strong drink and by misery, did its work fast. The
patient's stomach rejected all nourishment. He dwindled in a few weeks
from a portly and even corpulent man to a skeleton. On the eighteenth
of April he died, in the forty-first year of his age. He had been Chief
Justice of the King's Bench at thirty-five, and Lord Chancellor at
thirty-seven. In the whole history of the English bar there is no
other instance of so rapid an elevation, or of so terrible a fall.
The emaciated corpse was laid, with all privacy, next to the corpse of
Monmouth in the chapel of the Tower, [415]

The fall of this man, once so great and so much dreaded, the horror with
which he was regarded by all the respectable members of his own
party, the manner in which the least respectable members of that party
renounced fellowship with him in his distress, and threw on him the
whole blame of crimes which they had encouraged him to commit, ought
to have been a lesson to those intemperate friends of liberty who were
clamouring for a new proscription. But it was a lesson which too many of
them disregarded. The King had, at the very commencement of his reign,
displeased them by appointing a few Tories and Trimmers to high offices;
and the discontent excited by these appointments had been inflamed by
his attempt to obtain a general amnesty for the vanquished. He was
in truth not a man to be popular with the vindictive zealots of any
faction. For among his peculiarities was a certain ungracious humanity
which rarely conciliated his foes, which often provoked his adherents,
but in which he doggedly persisted, without troubling himself either
about the thanklessness of those whom he had saved from destruction, or
about the rage of those whom he had disappointed of their revenge. Some
of the Whigs now spoke of him as bitterly as they had ever spoken of
either of his uncles. He was a Stuart after all, and was not a Stuart
for nothing. Like the rest of the race, he loved arbitrary power.
In Holland, he had succeeded in making himself, under the forms of a
republican polity, scarcely less absolute than the old hereditary Counts
had been.
In consequence of a strange combination of circumstances, his
interest had, during a short time, coincided with the interest of the
English people: but though he had been a deliverer by accident, he was
a despot by nature. He had no sympathy with the just resentments of the
Whigs. He had objects in view which the Whigs would not willingly suffer
any Sovereign to attain. He knew that the Tories were the only tools for
his purpose. He had therefore, from the moment at which he took his seat
on the throne, favoured them unduly. He was now trying to procure an
indemnity for those very delinquents whom he had, a few months before,
described in his Declaration as deserving of exemplary punishment. In
November he had told the world that the crimes in which these men had
borne a part had made it the duty of subjects to violate their oath of
allegiance, of soldiers to desert their standards, of children to make
war on their parents. With what consistency then could he recommend that
such crimes should be covered by a general oblivion? And was there not
too much reason to fear that he wished to save the agents of tyranny
from the fate which they merited, in the hope that, at some future time,
they might serve him as unscrupulously as they had served his father in
law? [416]

Of the members of the House of Commons who were animated by these
feelings, the fiercest and most audacious was Howe. He went so far on
one occasion as to move that an inquiry should be instituted into the
proceedings of the Parliament of 1685, and that some note of infamy
should be put on all who, in that Parliament, had voted with the Court.
This absurd and mischievous motion was discountenanced by all the most
respectable Whigs, and strongly opposed by Birch and Maynard, [417] Howe
was forced to give way: but he was a man whom no check could abash;
and he was encouraged by the applause of many hotheaded members of his
party, who were far from foreseeing that he would, after having been the
most rancorous and unprincipled of Whigs, become, at no distant time,
the most rancorous and unprincipled of Tories.

This quickwitted, restless and malignant politician, though himself
occupying a lucrative place in the royal household, declaimed, day after
day, against the manner in which the great offices of state were filled;
and his declamations were echoed, in tones somewhat less sharp and
vehement, by other orators. No man, they said, who had been a minister
of Charles or of James ought to be a minister of William. The first
attack was directed against the Lord President Caermarthen. Howe moved
that an address should be presented to the King, requesting that all
persons who had ever been impeached by the Commons might be dismissed
from His Majesty's counsels and presence. The debate on this motion was
repeatedly adjourned. While the event was doubtful, William sent Dykvelt
to expostulate with Howe. Howe was obdurate. He was what is vulgarly
called a disinterested man; that is to say, he valued money less than
the pleasure of venting his spleen and of making a sensation. "I am
doing the King a service," he said: "I am rescuing him from false
friends: and, as to my place, that shall never be a gag to prevent me
from speaking my mind. " The motion was made, but completely failed.
In truth the proposition, that mere accusation, never prosecuted to
conviction, ought to be considered as a decisive proof of guilt, was
shocking to natural justice. The faults of Caermarthen had doubtless
been great; but they had been exaggerated by party spirit, had been
expiated by severe suffering, and had been redeemed by recent and
eminent services. At the time when he raised the great county of York in
arms against Popery and tyranny, he had been assured by some of the
most eminent Whigs that all old quarrels were forgotten. Howe indeed
maintained that the civilities which had passed in the moment of peril
signified nothing. "When a viper is on my hand," he said, "I am very
tender of him; but, as soon as I have him on the ground, I set my foot
on him and crush him. " The Lord President, however, was so strongly
supported that, after a discussion which lasted three days, his enemies
did not venture to take the sense of the House on the motion against
him. In the course of the debate a grave constitutional question was
incidentally raised. This question was whether a pardon could be pleaded
in bar of a parliamentary impeachment. The Commons resolved, without a
division, that a pardon could not be so pleaded, [418]

The next attack was made on Halifax. He was in a much more invidious
position than Caermarthen, who had, under pretence of ill health,
withdrawn himself almost entirely from business. Halifax was generally
regarded as the chief adviser of the Crown, and was in an especial
manner held responsible for all the faults which had been committed with
respect to Ireland. The evils which had brought that kingdom to ruin
might, it was said, have been averted by timely precaution, or remedied
by vigorous exertion. But the government had foreseen nothing: it had
done little; and that little had been done neither at the right time nor
in the right way. Negotiation had been employed instead of troops, when
a few troops might have sufficed. A few troops had been sent when many
were needed. The troops that had been sent had been ill equipped and ill
commanded. Such, the vehement Whigs exclaimed, were the natural fruits
of that great error which King William had committed on the first day of
his reign. He had placed in Tories and Trimmers a confidence which they
did not deserve. He had, in a peculiar manner, entrusted the direction
of Irish affairs to the Trimmer of Trimmers, to a man whose ability
nobody disputed, but who was not firmly attached to the new government,
who, indeed, was incapable of being firmly attached to any government,
who had always halted between two opinions, and who, till the moment of
the flight of James, had not given up the hope that the discontents of
the nation might be quieted without a change of dynasty. Howe, on twenty
occasions, designated Halifax as the cause of all the calamities of the
country. Monmouth held similar language in the House of Lords. Though
First Lord of the Treasury, he paid no attention to financial business,
for which he was altogether unfit, and of which he had very soon become
weary. His whole heart was in the work of persecuting the Tories.
He plainly told the King that nobody who was not a Whig ought to
be employed in the public service. William's answer was cool and
determined. "I have done as much for your friends as I can do without
danger to the state; and I will do no more," [419] The only effect of
this reprimand was to make Monmouth more factious than ever. Against
Halifax especially he intrigued and harangued with indefatigable
animosity. The other Whig Lords of the Treasury, Delamere and Capel,
were scarcely less eager to drive the Lord Privy Seal from office; and
personal jealousy and antipathy impelled the Lord President to conspire
with his own accusers against his rival.

What foundation there may have been for the imputations thrown at this
time on Halifax cannot now be fully ascertained. His enemies, though
they interrogated numerous witnesses, and though they obtained William's
reluctant permission to inspect the minutes of the Privy Council, could
find no evidence which would support a definite charge, [420] But it was
undeniable that the Lord Privy Seal had acted as minister for Ireland,
and that Ireland was all but lost. It is unnecessary, and indeed
absurd, to suppose, as many Whigs supposed, that his administration
was unsuccessful because he did not wish it to be successful. The truth
seems to be that the difficulties of the situation were great, and that
he, with all his ingenuity and eloquence, was ill qualified to cope with
those difficulties. The whole machinery of government was out of joint;
and he was not the man to set it right. What was wanted was not what he
had in large measure, wit, taste, amplitude of comprehension, subtlety
in drawing distinctions; but what he had not, prompt decision,
indefatigable energy, and stubborn resolution. His mind was at best
of too soft a temper for such work as he had now to do, and had been
recently made softer by severe affliction. He had lost two sons in less
than twelve months. A letter is still extant, in which he at this time
complained to his honoured friend Lady Russell of the desolation of his
hearth and of the cruel ingratitude of the Whigs. We possess, also, the
answer, in which she gently exhorted him to seek for consolation where
she had found it under trials not less severe than his, [421]

The first attack on him was made in the Upper House. Some Whig Lords,
among whom the wayward and petulant First Lord of the Treasury was
conspicuous, proposed that the King should be requested to appoint a new
Speaker. The friends of Halifax moved and carried the previous question,
[422] About three weeks later his persecutors moved, in a Committee
of the whole House of Commons, a resolution which imputed to him
no particular crime either of omission or of commission, but simply
declared it to be advisable that he should be dismissed from the service
of the Crown. The debate was warm. Moderate politicians of both parties
were unwilling to put a stigma on a man, not indeed faultless, but
distinguished both by his abilities and by his amiable qualities. His
accusers saw that they could not carry their point, and tried to escape
from a decision which was certain to be adverse to them, by proposing
that the Chairman should report progress. But their tactics were
disconcerted by the judicious and spirited conduct of Lord Eland, now
the Marquess's only son. "My father has not deserved," said the young
nobleman, "to be thus trifled with. If you think him culpable, say so.
He will at once submit to your verdict. Dismission from Court has
no terrors for him. He is raised, by the goodness of God, above the
necessity of looking to office for the means of supporting his rank. "
The Committee divided, and Halifax was absolved by a majority of
fourteen, [423]

Had the division been postponed a few hours, the majority would probably
have been much greater. The Commons voted under the impression that
Londonderry had fallen, and that all Ireland was lost. Scarcely had the
House risen when a courier arrived with news that the boom on the Foyle
had been broken. He was speedily followed by a second, who announced
the raising of the siege, and by a third who brought the tidings of the
battle of Newton Butler. Hope and exultation succeeded to discontent
and dismay, [424] Ulster was safe; and it was confidently expected that
Schomberg would speedily reconquer Leinster, Connaught, and Munster. He
was now ready to set out. The port of Chester was the place from which
he was to take his departure. The army which he was to command had
assembled there; and the Dee was crowded with men of war and transports.
Unfortunately almost all those English soldiers who had seen war had
been sent to Flanders. The bulk of the force destined for Ireland
consisted of men just taken from the plough and the threshing floor.
There was, however, an excellent brigade of Dutch troops under the
command of an experienced officer, the Count of Solmes. Four regiments,
one of cavalry and three of infantry, had been formed out of the French
refugees, many of whom had borne arms with credit. No person did more to
promote the raising of these regiments than the Marquess of Ruvigny. He
had been during many years an eminently faithful and useful servant of
the French government. So highly was his merit appreciated at Versailles
that he had been solicited to accept indulgences which scarcely any
other heretic could by any solicitation obtain. Had he chosen to remain
in his native country, he and his household would have been permitted to
worship God privately according to their own forms. But Ruvigny rejected
all offers, cast in his lot with his brethren, and, at upwards of eighty
years of age, quitted Versailles, where he might still have been a
favourite, for a modest dwelling at Greenwich. That dwelling was,
during the last months of his life, the resort of all that was most
distinguished among his fellow exiles. His abilities, his experience and
his munificent kindness, made him the undisputed chief of the refugees.
He was at the same time half an Englishman: for his sister had been
Countess of Southampton, and he was uncle of Lady Russell. He was long
past the time of action. But his two sons, both men of eminent courage,
devoted their swords to the service of William. The younger son,
who bore the name of Caillemote, was appointed colonel of one of
the Huguenot regiments of foot. The two other regiments of foot were
commanded by La Melloniere and Cambon, officers of high reputation. The
regiment of horse was raised by Schomberg himself, and bore his name.
Ruvigny lived just long enough to see these arrangements complete, [425]

The general to whom the direction of the expedition against Ireland was
confided had wonderfully succeeded in obtaining the affection and esteem
of the English nation. He had been made a Duke, a Knight of the Garter,
and Master of the Ordnance: he was now placed at the head of an army:
and yet his elevation excited none of that jealousy which showed itself
as often as any mark of royal favour was bestowed on Bentinck,
on Zulestein, or on Auverquerque. Schomberg's military skill was
universally acknowledged. He was regarded by all Protestants as a
confessor who had endured every thing short of martyrdom for the truth.
For his religion he had resigned a splendid income, had laid down the
truncheon of a Marshal of France, and had, at near eighty years of
age, begun the world again as a needy soldier of fortune. As he had
no connection with the United Provinces, and had never belonged to the
little Court of the Hague, the preference given to him over English
captains was justly ascribed, not to national or personal partiality,
but to his virtues and his abilities. His deportment differed widely
from that of the other foreigners who had just been created English
peers. They, with many respectable qualities, were, in tastes, manners,
and predilections, Dutchmen, and could not catch the tone of the society
to which they had been transferred. He was a citizen of the world, had
travelled over all Europe, had commanded armies on the Meuse, on the
Ebro, and on the Tagus, had shone in the splendid circle of Versailles,
and had been in high favour at the court of Berlin. He had often been
taken by French noblemen for a French nobleman. He had passed some time
in England, spoke English remarkably well, accommodated himself easily
to English manners, and was often seen walking in the park with English
companions. In youth his habits had been temperate; and his temperance
had its proper reward, a singularly green and vigorous old age. At
fourscore he retained a strong relish for innocent pleasures: he
conversed with great courtesy and sprightliness: nothing could be in
better taste than his equipages and his table; and every cornet of
cavalry envied the grace and dignity with which the veteran appeared in
Hyde Park on his charger at the head of his regiment, [426] The House
of Commons had, with general approbation, compensated his losses and
rewarded his services by a grant of a hundred thousand pounds. Before
he set out for Ireland, he requested permission to express his gratitude
for this magnificent present. A chair was set for him within the bar. He
took his seat there with the mace at his right hand, rose, and in a
few graceful words returned his thanks and took his leave. The Speaker
replied that the Commons could never forget the obligation under which
they already lay to His Grace, that they saw him with pleasure at the
head of an English army, that they felt entire confidence in his zeal
and ability, and that, at whatever distance he might be, he would always
be in a peculiar manner an object of their care. The precedent set on
this interesting occasion was followed with the utmost minuteness, a
hundred and twenty-five years later, on an occasion more interesting
still. Exactly on the same spot on which, in July 1689, Schomberg had
acknowledged the liberality of the nation, a chair was set, in July
1814, for a still more illustrious warrior, who came to return
thanks for a still more splendid mark of public gratitude. Few things
illustrate more strikingly the peculiar character of the English
government and people than the circumstance that the House of Commons,
a popular assembly, should, even in a moment of joyous enthusiasm, have
adhered to ancient forms with the punctilious accuracy of a College of
Heralds; that the sitting and rising, the covering and the uncovering,
should have been regulated by exactly the same etiquette in the
nineteenth century as in the seventeenth; and that the same mace which
had been held at the right hand of Schomberg should have been held in
the same position at the right hand of Wellington, [427]

On the twentieth of August the Parliament, having been constantly
engaged in business during seven months, broke up, by the royal command,
for a short recess. The same Gazette which announced that the Houses had
ceased to sit announced that Schomberg had landed in Ireland, [428]

During the three weeks which preceded his landing, the dismay and
confusion at Dublin Castle had been extreme. Disaster had followed
disaster so fast that the mind of James, never very firm, had been
completely prostrated. He had learned first that Londonderry had
been relieved; then that one of his armies had been beaten by the
Enniskilleners; then that another of his armies was retreating, or
rather flying, from Ulster, reduced in numbers and broken in spirit;
then that Sligo, the key of Connaught, had been abandoned to the
Englishry. He had found it impossible to subdue the colonists, even when
they were left almost unaided. He might therefore well doubt whether it
would be possible for him to contend against them when they were backed
by an English army, under the command of the greatest general living.
The unhappy prince seemed, during some days, to be sunk in despondency.
On Avaux the danger produced a very different effect. Now, he thought,
was the time to turn the war between the English and the Irish into a
war of extirpation, and to make it impossible that the two nations could
ever be united under one government. With this view, he coolly submitted
to the King a proposition of almost incredible atrocity. There must be
a Saint Bartholomew. A pretext would easily be found. No doubt, when
Schomberg was known to be in Ireland, there would be some excitement in
those southern towns of which the population was chiefly English. Any
disturbance, wherever it might take place, would furnish an excuse for a
general massacre of the Protestants of Leinster, Munster, and
Connaught, [429] As the King did not at first express any horror at this
suggestion, [430] the Envoy, a few days later, renewed the subject, and
pressed His Majesty to give the necessary orders. Then James, with a
warmth which did him honour, declared that nothing should induce him to
commit such a crime. "These people are my subjects; and I cannot be
so cruel as to cut their throats while they live peaceably under my
government. " "There is nothing cruel," answered the callous diplomatist,
"in what I recommend. Your Majesty ought to consider that mercy to
Protestants is cruelty to Catholics. " James, however, was not to be
moved; and Avaux retired in very bad humour. His belief was that the
King's professions of humanity were hypocritical, and that, if the
orders for the butchery were not given, they were not given only because
His Majesty was confident that the Catholics all over the country would
fall on the Protestants without waiting for orders, [431] But Avaux
was entirely mistaken. That he should have supposed James to be as
profoundly immoral as himself is not strange. But it is strange that
so able a man should have forgotten that James and himself had quite
different objects in view. The object of the Ambassador's politics was
to make the separation between England and Ireland eternal. The object
of the King's politics was to unite England and Ireland under his
own sceptre; and he could not but be aware that, if there should be a
general massacre of the Protestants of three provinces, and he should
be suspected of having authorised it or of having connived at it, there
would in a fortnight be not a Jacobite left even at Oxford, [432]

Just at this time the prospects of James, which had seemed hopelessly
dark, began to brighten. The danger which had unnerved him had roused
the Irish people. They had, six months before, risen up as one man
against the Saxons. The army which Tyrconnel had formed was, in
proportion to the population from which it was taken, the largest that
Europe had ever seen. But that army had sustained a long succession of
defeats and disgraces, unredeemed by a single brilliant achievement. It
was the fashion, both in England and on the Continent, to ascribe those
defeats and disgraces to the pusillanimity of the Irish race, [433] That
this was a great error is sufficiently proved by the history of every
war which has been carried on in any part of Christendom during five
generations. The raw material out of which a good army may be formed
existed in great abundance among the Irish. Avaux informed his
government that they were a remarkably handsome, tall, and well made
race; that they were personally brave; that they were sincerely attached
to the cause for which they were in arms; that they were violently
exasperated against the colonists. After extolling their strength and
spirit, he proceeded to explain why it was that, with all their strength
and spirit, they were constantly beaten. It was vain, he said, to
imagine that bodily prowess, animal courage, or patriotic enthusiasm
would, in the day of battle, supply the place of discipline. The
infantry were ill armed and ill trained. They were suffered to pillage
wherever they went. They had contracted all the habits of banditti.
There was among them scarcely one officer capable of showing them their
duty. Their colonels were generally men of good family, but men who had
never seen service. The captains were butchers, tailors, shoemakers.
Hardly one of them troubled himself about the comforts, the
accoutrements, or the drilling of those over whom he was placed. The
dragoons were little better than the infantry. But the horse were, with
some exceptions, excellent. Almost all the Irish gentlemen who had
any military experience held commissions in the cavalry; and, by
the exertions of these officers, some regiments had been raised and
disciplined which Avaux pronounced equal to any that he had ever seen.
It was therefore evident that the inefficiency of the foot and of the
dragoons was to be ascribed to the vices, not of the Irish character,
but of the Irish administration, [434]

The events which took place in the autumn of 1689 sufficiently proved
that the ill fated race, which enemies and allies generally agreed
in regarding with unjust contempt, had, together with the faults
inseparable from poverty, ignorance, and superstition, some fine
qualities which have not always been found in more prosperous and more
enlightened communities. The evil tidings which terrified and bewildered
James stirred the whole population of the southern provinces like the
peal of a trumpet sounding to battle. That Ulster was lost, that the
English were coming, that the death grapple between the two hostile
nations was at hand, was proclaimed from all the altars of three and
twenty counties. One last chance was left; and, if that chance failed,
nothing remained but the despotic, the merciless, rule of the Saxon
colony and of the heretical church. The Roman Catholic priest who had
just taken possession of the glebe house and the chancel, the Roman
Catholic squire who had just been carried back on the shoulders of the
shouting tenantry into the hall of his fathers, would be driven forth to
live on such alms as peasants, themselves oppressed and miserable,
could spare. A new confiscation would complete the work of the Act
of Settlement; and the followers of William would seize whatever the
followers of Cromwell had spared. These apprehensions produced such an
outbreak of patriotic and religious enthusiasm as deferred for a time
the inevitable day of subjugation. Avaux was amazed by the energy which,
in circumstances so trying, the Irish displayed. It was indeed the wild
and unsteady energy of a half barbarous people: it was transient: it
was often misdirected: but, though transient and misdirected, it did
wonders. The French Ambassador was forced to own that those officers
of whose incompetency and inactivity he had so often complained had
suddenly shaken off their lethargy. Recruits came in by thousands. The
ranks which had been thinned under the walls of Londonderry were soon
again full to overflowing. Great efforts were made to arm and clothe the
troops; and, in the short space of a fortnight, every thing presented a
new and cheering aspect, [435]

The Irish required of the King, in return for their strenuous exertions
in his cause, one concession which was by no means agreeable to him. The
unpopularity of Melfort had become such, that his person was scarcely
safe. He had no friend to speak a word in his favour. The French hated
him. In every letter which arrived at Dublin from England or from
Scotland, he was described as the evil genius of the House of Stuart. It
was necessary for his own sake to dismiss him. An honourable pretext was
found. He was ordered to repair to Versailles, to represent there the
state of affairs in Ireland, and to implore the French government to
send over without delay six or seven thousand veteran infantry. He laid
down the seals; and they were, to the great delight of the Irish, put
into the hands of an Irishman, Sir Richard Nagle, who had made himself
conspicuous as Attorney General and Speaker of the House of Commons.
Melfort took his departure under cover of the night: for the rage of
the populace against him was such that he could not without danger show
himself in the streets of Dublin by day. On the following morning James
left his capital in the opposite direction to encounter Schomberg, [436]

Schomberg had landed in Antrim. The force which he had brought with him
did not exceed ten thousand men. But he expected to be joined by the
armed colonists and by the regiments which were under Kirke's command.
The coffeehouse politicians of London fully expected that such a general
with such an army would speedily reconquer the island. Unhappily it soon
appeared that the means which had been furnished to him were altogether
inadequate to the work which he had to perform: of the greater part
of these means he was speedily deprived by a succession of unforeseen
calamities; and the whole campaign was merely a long struggle maintained
by his prudence and resolution against the utmost spite of fortune.

He marched first to Carrickfergus. That town was held for James by two
regiments of infantry. Schomberg battered the walls; and the Irish,
after holding out a week, capitulated. He promised that they should
depart unharmed; but he found it no easy matter to keep his word. The
people of the town and neighbourhood were generally Protestants of
Scottish extraction. They had suffered much during the short ascendency
of the native race; and what they had suffered they were now eager
to retaliate. They assembled in great multitudes, exclaiming that the
capitulation was nothing to them, and that they would be revenged. They
soon proceeded from words to blows. The Irish, disarmed, stripped, and
hustled, clung for protection to the English officers and soldiers.
Schomberg with difficulty prevented a massacre by spurring, pistol in
hand, through the throng of the enraged colonists, [437]

From Carrickfergus Schomberg proceeded to Lisburn, and thence, through
towns left without an inhabitant, and over plains on which not a cow,
nor a sheep, nor a stack of corn was to be seen, to Loughbrickland. Here
he was joined by three regiments of Enniskilleners, whose dress, horses,
and arms locked strange to eyes accustomed to the pomp of reviews, but
who in natural courage were inferior to no troops in the world, and who
had, during months of constant watching and skirmishing, acquired many
of the essential qualities of soldiers. [438]

Schomberg continued to advance towards Dublin through a desert. The few
Irish troops which remained in the south of Ulster retreated before
him, destroying as they retreated. Newry, once a well built and thriving
Protestant borough, he found a heap of smoking ashes. Carlingford too
had perished. The spot where the town had once stood was marked only by
the massy remains of the old Norman castle.