No More Learning

The women
missed the homage due to their sex. They observed that the King spoke in
a somewhat imperious tone even to the wife to whom he owed so much, and
whom he sincerely loved and esteemed. [53] They were amused and shocked
to see him, when the Princess Anne dined with him, and when the first
green peas of the year were put on the table, devour the whole dish
without offering a spoonful to her Royal Highness; and they pronounced
that this great soldier and politician was no better than a Low Dutch
bear. [54]

One misfortune, which was imputed to him as a crime, was his bad
English. He spoke our language, but not well. His accent was foreign:
his diction was inelegant; and his vocabulary seems to have been no
larger than was necessary for the transaction of business. To the
difficulty which he felt in expressing himself, and to his consciousness
that his pronunciation was bad, must be partly ascribed the taciturnity
and the short answers which gave so much offence. Our literature he was
incapable of enjoying or of understanding. He never once, during his
whole reign, showed himself at the theatre. [55] The poets who wrote
Pindaric verses in his praise complained that their flights of sublimity
were beyond his comprehension. [56] Those who are acquainted with the
panegyrical odes of that age will perhaps be of opinion that he did not
lose much by his ignorance.

It is true that his wife did her best to supply what was wanting, and
that she was excellently qualified to be the head of the Court. She was
English by birth, and English also in her tastes and feelings. Her
face was handsome, her port majestic, her temper sweet and lively, her
manners affable and graceful. Her understanding, though very imperfectly
cultivated, was quick. There was no want of feminine wit and shrewdness
in her conversation; and her letters were so well expressed that they
deserved to be well spelt. She took much pleasure in the lighter kinds
of literature, and did something towards bringing books into fashion
among ladies of quality. The stainless purity of her private life and
the strict attention which she paid to her religious duties were the
more respectable, because she was singularly free from censoriousness,
and discouraged scandal as much as vice. In dislike of backbiting indeed
she and her husband cordially agreed; but they showed their dislike in
different and in very characteristic ways. William preserved profound
silence, and gave the talebearer a look which, as was said by a person
who had once encountered it, and who took good care never to encounter
it again, made your story go back down your throat. [57] Mary had a way
of interrupting tattle about elopements, duels, and playdebts by asking
the tattlers, very quietly yet significantly, whether they had ever read
her favourite sermon, Doctor Tillotson's on Evil Speaking. Her charities
were munificent and judicious; and, though she made no ostentatious
display of them, it was known that she retrenched from her own state in
order to relieve Protestants whom persecution had driven from France and
Ireland, and who were starving in the garrets of London. So amiable was
her conduct, that she was generally spoken of with esteem and tenderness
by the most respectable of those who disapproved of the manner in which
she had been raised to the throne, and even of those who refused
to acknowledge her as Queen. In the Jacobite lampoons of that time,
lampoons which, in virulence and malignity, far exceed any thing that
our age has produced, she was not often mentioned with severity. Indeed
she sometimes expressed her surprise at finding that libellers who
respected nothing else respected her name. God, she said, knew where
her weakness lay. She was too sensitive to abuse and calumny; He had
mercifully spared her a trial which was beyond her strength; and the
best return which she could make to Him was to discountenance all
malicious reflections on the characters of others. Assured that she
possessed her husband's entire confidence and affection, she turned the
edge of his sharp speeches sometimes by soft and sometimes by playful
answers, and employed all the influence which she derived from her many
pleasing qualities to gain the hearts of the people for him. [58]

If she had long continued to assemble round her the best society of
London, it is probable that her kindness and courtesy would have done
much to efface the unfavourable impression made by his stern and frigid
demeanour. Unhappily his physical infirmities made it impossible for him
to reside at Whitehall. The air of Westminster, mingled with the fog
of the river which in spring tides overflowed the courts of his palace,
with the smoke of seacoal from two hundred thousand chimneys, and with
the fumes of all the filth which was then suffered to accumulate in
the streets, was insupportable to him; for his lungs were weak, and his
sense of smell exquisitely keen. His constitutional asthma made rapid
progress. His physicians pronounced it impossible that he could live
to the end of the year. His face was so ghastly that he could hardly be
recognised. Those who had to transact business with him were shocked to
hear him gasping for breath, and coughing till the tears ran down his
cheeks. [59] His mind, strong as it was, sympathized with his body. His
judgment was indeed as clear as ever. But there was, during some
months, a perceptible relaxation of that energy by which he had been
distinguished. Even his Dutch friends whispered that he was not the man
that he had been at the Hague. [60] It was absolutely necessary that he
should quit London. He accordingly took up his residence in the purer
air of Hampton Court. That mansion, begun by the magnificent Wolsey, was
a fine specimen of the architecture which flourished in England under
the first Tudors; but the apartments were not, according to the notions
of the seventeenth century, well fitted for purposes of state. Our
princes therefore had, since the Restoration, repaired thither seldom,
and only when they wished to live for a time in retirement. As William
purposed to make the deserted edifice his chief palace, it was necessary
for him to build and to plant; nor was the necessity disagreeable to
him. For he had, like most of his countrymen, a pleasure in decorating
a country house; and next to hunting, though at a great interval, his
favourite amusements were architecture and gardening. He had already
created on a sandy heath in Guelders a paradise, which attracted
multitudes of the curious from Holland and Westphalia. Mary had laid the
first stone of the house. Bentinck had superintended the digging of the
fishponds. There were cascades and grottoes, a spacious orangery, and
an aviary which furnished Hondekoeter with numerous specimens of
manycoloured plumage. [61] The King, in his splendid banishment, pined
for this favourite seat, and found some consolation in creating another
Loo on the banks of the Thames. Soon a wide extent of ground was laid
out in formal walks and parterres. Much idle ingenuity was employed in
forming that intricate labyrinth of verdure which has puzzled and amused
five generations of holiday visitors from London. Limes thirty years
old were transplanted from neighbouring woods to shade the alleys.
Artificial fountains spouted among the flower beds. A new court, not
designed with the purest taste, but stately, spacious, and commodious,
rose under the direction of Wren. The wainscots were adorned with the
rich and delicate carvings of Gibbons. The staircases were in a blaze
with the glaring frescoes of Verrio. In every corner of the mansion
appeared a profusion of gewgaws, not yet familiar to English eyes. Mary
had acquired at the Hague a taste for the porcelain of China, and amused
herself by forming at Hampton a vast collection of hideous images, and
of vases on which houses, trees, bridges, and mandarins were depicted
in outrageous defiance of all the laws of perspective. The fashion, a
frivolous and inelegant fashion it must be owned, which was thus set
by the amiable Queen, spread fast and wide. In a few years almost
every great house in the kingdom contained a museum of these grotesque
baubles. Even statesmen and generals were not ashamed to be renowned as
judges of teapots and dragons; and satirists long continued to repeat
that a fine lady valued her mottled green pottery quite as much as she
valued her monkey, and much more than she valued her husband. [62] But
the new palace was embellished with works of art of a very different
kind. A gallery was erected for the cartoons of Raphael. Those great
pictures, then and still the finest on our side of the Alps, had been
preserved by Cromwell from the fate which befell most of the other
masterpieces in the collection of Charles the First, but had been
suffered to lie during many years nailed up in deal boxes. They were
now brought forth from obscurity to be contemplated by artists with
admiration and despair. The expense of the works at Hampton was a
subject of bitter complaint to many Tories, who had very gently blamed
the boundless profusion with which Charles the Second had built and
rebuilt, furnished and refurnished, the dwelling of the Duchess of
Portsmouth. [63] The expense, however, was not the chief cause of the
discontent which William's change of residence excited. There was no
longer a Court at Westminster. Whitehall, once the daily resort of the
noble and the powerful, the beautiful and the gay, the place to which
fops came to show their new peruques, men of gallantry to exchange
glances with fine ladies, politicians to push their fortunes, loungers
to hear the news, country gentlemen to see the royal family, was now,
in the busiest season of the year, when London was full, when Parliament
was sitting, left desolate. A solitary sentinel paced the grassgrown
pavement before that door which had once been too narrow for the
opposite streams of entering and departing courtiers. The services which
the metropolis had rendered to the King were great and recent; and it
was thought that he might have requited those services better than by
treating it as Lewis had treated Paris. Halifax ventured to hint this,
but was silenced by a few words which admitted of no reply. "Do you
wish," said William peevishly, "to see me dead? " [64]

In a short time it was found that Hampton Court was too far from the
Houses of Lords and Commons, and from the public offices, to be the
ordinary abode of the Sovereign. Instead, however, of returning to
Whitehall, William determined to have another dwelling, near enough to
his capital for the transaction of business, but not near enough to be
within that atmosphere in which he could not pass a night without risk
of suffocation. At one time he thought of Holland House, the villa of
the noble family of Rich; and he actually resided there some weeks.
[65] But he at length fixed his choice on Kensington House, the suburban
residence of the Earl of Nottingham. The purchase was made for eighteen
thousand guineas, and was followed by more building, more planting,
more expense, and more discontent. [66] At present Kensington House is
considered as a part of London. It was then a rural mansion, and could
not, in those days of highwaymen and scourers, of roads deep in mire and
nights without lamps, be the rallying point of fashionable society.

It was well known that the King, who treated the English nobility and
gentry so ungraciously, could, in a small circle of his own countrymen,
be easy, friendly, even jovial, could pour out his feelings garrulously,
could fill his glass, perhaps too often; and this was, in the view of
our forefathers, an aggravation of his offences. Yet our forefathers
should have had the sense and the justice to acknowledge that the
patriotism which they considered as a virtue in themselves, could not be
a fault in him. It was unjust to blame him for not at once transferring
to our island the love which he bore to the country of his birth. If, in
essentials, he did his duty towards England, he might well be suffered
to feel at heart an affectionate preference for Holland. Nor is it
a reproach to him that he did not, in this season of his greatness,
discard companions who had played with him in his childhood, who had
stood by him firmly through all the vicissitudes of his youth and
manhood, who had, in defiance of the most loathsome and deadly forms of
infection, kept watch by his sick-bed, who had, in the thickest of the
battle, thrust themselves between him and the French swords, and whose
attachment was, not to the Stadtholder or to the King, but to plain
William of Nassau. It may be added that his old friends could not but
rise in his estimation by comparison with his new courtiers. To the
end of his life all his Dutch comrades, without exception, continued
to deserve his confidence. They could be out of humour with him, it is
true; and, when out of humour, they could be sullen and rude; but
never did they, even when most angry and unreasonable, fail to keep
his secrets and to watch over his interests with gentlemanlike and
soldierlike fidelity. Among his English councillors such fidelity was
rare. [67] It is painful, but it is no more than just, to acknowledge
that he had but too good reason for thinking meanly of our national
character. That character was indeed, in essentials, what it has always
been. Veracity, uprightness, and manly boldness were then, as now,
qualities eminently English. But those qualities, though widely diffused
among the great body of the people, were seldom to be found in the
class with which William was best acquainted. The standard of honour and
virtue among our public men was, during his reign, at the very lowest
point. His predecessors had bequeathed to him a court foul with all the
vices of the Restoration, a court swarming with sycophants, who
were ready, on the first turn of fortune, to abandon him as they had
abandoned his uncle. Here and there, lost in that ignoble crowd, was to
be found a man of true integrity and public spirit. Yet even such a
man could not long live in such society without much risk that the
strictness of his principles would be relaxed, and the delicacy of
his sense of right and wrong impaired. It was unjust to blame a prince
surrounded by flatterers and traitors for wishing to keep near him four
or five servants whom he knew by proof to be faithful even to death.

Nor was this the only instance in which our ancestors were unjust to
him. They had expected that, as soon as so distinguished a soldier and
statesman was placed at the head of affairs, he would give some signal
proof, they scarcely knew what, of genius and vigour. Unhappily, during
the first months of his reign, almost every thing went wrong. His
subjects, bitterly disappointed, threw the blame on him, and began to
doubt whether he merited that reputation which he had won at his first
entrance into public life, and which the splendid success of his last
great enterprise had raised to the highest point. Had they been in
a temper to judge fairly, they would have perceived that for the
maladministration of which they with good reason complained he was not
responsible. He could as yet work only with the machinery which he had
found; and the machinery which he had found was all rust and rottenness.
From the time of the Restoration to the time of the Revolution, neglect
and fraud had been almost constantly impairing the efficiency of every
department of the government. Honours and public trusts, peerages,
baronetcies, regiments, frigates, embassies, governments,
commissionerships, leases of crown lands, contracts for clothing, for
provisions, for ammunition, pardons for murder, for robbery, for arson,
were sold at Whitehall scarcely less openly than asparagus at Covent
Garden or herrings at Billingsgate. Brokers had been incessantly plying
for custom in the purlieus of the court; and of these brokers the most
successful had been, in the days of Charles, the harlots, and in the
days of James, the priests. From the palace which was the chief seat of
this pestilence the taint had diffused itself through every office
and through every rank in every office, and had every where produced
feebleness and disorganization. So rapid was the progress of the decay
that, within eight years after the time when Oliver had been the umpire
of Europe, the roar of the guns of De Ruyter was heard in the Tower
of London. The vices which had brought that great humiliation on the
country had ever since been rooting themselves deeper and spreading
themselves wider. James had, to do him justice, corrected a few of the
gross abuses which disgraced the naval administration. Yet the naval
administration, in spite of his attempts to reform it, moved the
contempt of men who were acquainted with the dockyards of France and
Holland. The military administration was still worse. The courtiers
took bribes from the colonels; the colonels cheated the soldiers: the
commissaries sent in long bills for what had never been furnished: the
keepers of the arsenals sold the public stores and pocketed the price.
But these evils, though they had sprung into existence and grown
to maturity under the government of Charles and James, first made
themselves severely felt under the government of William. For Charles
and James were content to be the vassals and pensioners of a powerful
and ambitious neighbour: they submitted to his ascendency: they shunned
with pusillanimous caution whatever could give him offence; and thus,
at the cost of the independence and dignity of that ancient and glorious
crown which they unworthily wore, they avoided a conflict which would
instantly have shown how helpless, under their misrule, their once
formidable kingdom had become. Their ignominious policy it was neither
in William's power nor in his nature to follow. It was only by arms that
the liberty and religion of England could be protected against the most
formidable enemy that had threatened our island since the Hebrides were
strown with the wrecks of the Armada. The body politic, which, while it
remained in repose, had presented a superficial appearance of health
and vigour, was now under the necessity of straining every nerve in a
wrestle for life or death, and was immediately found to be unequal to
the exertion. The first efforts showed an utter relaxation of fibre, an
utter want of training. Those efforts were, with scarcely an exception,
failures; and every failure was popularly imputed, not to the rulers
whose mismanagement had produced the infirmities of the state, but to
the ruler in whose time the infirmities of the state became visible.

William might indeed, if he had been as absolute as Lewis, have used
such sharp remedies as would speedily have restored to the English
administration that firm tone which had been wanting since the death of
Oliver. But the instantaneous reform of inveterate abuses was a task far
beyond the powers of a prince strictly restrained by law, and restrained
still more strictly by the difficulties of his situation. [68]

Some of the most serious difficulties of his situation were caused by
the conduct of the ministers on whom, new as he was to the details of
English affairs, he was forced to rely for information about men and
things. There was indeed no want of ability among his chief counsellors:
but one half of their ability was employed in counteracting the other
half. Between the Lord President and the Lord Privy Seal there was an
inveterate enmity. [69] It had begun twelve years before when Danby was
Lord High Treasurer, a persecutor of nonconformists, an uncompromising
defender of prerogative, and when Halifax was rising to distinction as
one of the most eloquent leaders of the country party. In the reign of
James, the two statesmen had found themselves in opposition together;
and their common hostility to France and to Rome, to the High Commission
and to the dispensing power, had produced an apparent reconciliation;
but as soon as they were in office together the old antipathy revived.
The hatred which the Whig party felt towards them both ought, it should
seem, to have produced a close alliance between them: but in fact each
of them saw with complacency the danger which threatened the other.
Danby exerted himself to rally round him a strong phalanx of Tories.
Under the plea of ill health, he withdrew from court, seldom came to the
Council over which it was his duty to preside, passed much time in
the country, and took scarcely any part in public affairs except by
grumbling and sneering at all the acts of the government, and by doing
jobs and getting places for his personal retainers. [70] In consequence
of this defection, Halifax became prime minister, as far any minister
could, in that reign, be called prime minister. An immense load of
business fell on him; and that load he was unable to sustain. In wit and
eloquence, in amplitude of comprehension and subtlety of disquisition,
he had no equal among the statesmen of his time. But that very
fertility, that very acuteness, which gave a singular charm to his
conversation, to his oratory and to his writings, unfitted him for the
work of promptly deciding practical questions. He was slow from very
quickness. For he saw so many arguments for and against every possible
course that he was longer in making up his mind than a dull man would
have been. Instead of acquiescing in his first thoughts, he replied
on himself, rejoined on himself, and surrejoined on himself. Those who
heard him talk owned that he talked like an angel: but too often, when
he had exhausted all that could be said, and came to act, the time for
action was over.

Meanwhile the two Secretaries of State were constantly labouring to draw
their master in diametrically opposite directions. Every scheme,
every person, recommended by one of them was reprobated by the other.
Nottingham was never weary of repeating that the old Roundhead party,
the party which had taken the life of Charles the First and had plotted
against the life of Charles the Second, was in principle republican,
and that the Tories were the only true friends of monarchy. Shrewsbury
replied that the Tories might be friends of monarchy, but that they
regarded James as their monarch. Nottingham was always bringing to the
closet intelligence of the wild daydreams in which a few old eaters of
calf's head, the remains of the once formidable party of Bradshaw and
Ireton, still indulged at taverns in the city. Shrewsbury produced
ferocious lampoons which the Jacobites dropped every day in the
coffeehouses. "Every Whig," said the Tory Secretary, "is an enemy of
your Majesty's prerogative. " "Every Tory," said the Whig Secretary, "is
an enemy of your Majesty's title. " [71]

At the treasury there was a complication of jealousies and quarrels.
[72] Both the First Commissioner, Mordaunt, and the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Delamere, were zealous Whigs but, though they held the same
political creed, their tempers differed widely. Mordaunt was volatile,
dissipated, and generous. The wits of that time laughed at the way in
which he flew about from Hampton Court to the Royal Exchange, and from
the Royal Exchange back to Hampton Court. How he found time for dress,
politics, lovemaking and balladmaking was a wonder. [73] Delamere was
gloomy and acrimonious, austere in his private morals, and punctual in
his devotions, but greedy of ignoble gain. The two principal ministers
of finance, therefore, became enemies, and agreed only in hating their
colleague Godolphin. What business had he at Whitehall in these days of
Protestant ascendency, he who had sate at the same board with Papists,
he who had never scrupled to attend Mary of Modena to the idolatrous
worship of the Mass? The most provoking circumstance was that Godolphin,
though his name stood only third in the commission, was really first
Lord. For in financial knowledge and in habits of business Mordaunt and
Delamere were mere children when compared with him; and this William
soon discovered. [74]

Similar feuds raged at the other great boards and through all the
subordinate ranks of public functionaries. In every customhouse, in
every arsenal, were a Shrewsbury and a Nottingham, a Delamere and a
Godolphin. The Whigs complained that there was no department in which
creatures of the fallen tyranny were not to be found. It was idle to
allege that these men were versed in the details of business, that they
were the depositaries of official traditions, and that the friends
of liberty, having been, during many years, excluded from public
employment, must necessarily be incompetent to take on themselves at
once the whole management of affairs. Experience doubtless had its
value: but surely the first of all the qualifications of a servant was
fidelity; and no Tory could be a really faithful servant of the new
government. If King William were wise, he would rather trust novices
zealous for his interest and honour than veterans who might indeed
possess ability and knowledge, but who would use that ability and that
knowledge to effect his ruin.

The Tories, on the other hand, complained that their share of power bore
no proportion to their number and their weight in the country, and that
every where old and useful public servants were, for the crime of being
friends to monarchy and to the Church, turned out of their posts to make
way for Rye House plotters and haunters of conventicles. These upstarts,
adepts in the art of factious agitation, but ignorant of all that
belonged to their new calling, would be just beginning to learn their
business when they had undone the nation by their blunders. To be a
rebel and a schismatic was surely not all that ought to be required of
a man in high employment. What would become of the finances, what of
the marine, if Whigs who could not understand the plainest balance
sheet were to manage the revenue, and Whigs who had never walked over a
dockyard to fit out the fleet. [75]

The truth is that the charges which the two parties brought against each
other were, to a great extent, well founded, but that the blame which
both threw on William was unjust. Official experience was to be found
almost exclusively among the Tories, hearty attachment to the new
settlement almost exclusively among the Whigs. It was not the fault
of the King that the knowledge and the zeal, which, combined, make a
valuable servant of the state must at that time be had separately or
not at all. If he employed men of one party, there was great risk of
mistakes. If he employed men of the other party, there was great risk of
treachery. If he employed men of both parties, there was still some risk
of mistakes; there was still some risk of treachery; and to these risks
was added the certainty of dissension. He might join Whigs and Tories;
but it was beyond his power to mix them. In the same office, at the
same desk, they were still enemies, and agreed only in murmuring at the
Prince who tried to mediate between them. It was inevitable that, in
such circumstances, the administration, fiscal, military, naval, should
be feeble and unsteady; that nothing should be done in quite the
right way or at quite the right time; that the distractions from which
scarcely any public office was exempt should produce disasters, and
that every disaster should increase the distractions from which it had
sprung.

There was indeed one department of which the business was well
conducted; and that was the department of Foreign Affairs. There William
directed every thing, and, on important occasions, neither asked the
advice nor employed the agency of any English politician. One invaluable
assistant he had, Anthony Heinsius, who, a few weeks after the
Revolution had been accomplished, became Pensionary of Holland. Heinsius
had entered public life as a member of that party which was jealous of
the power of the House of Orange, and desirous to be on friendly terms
with France. But he had been sent in 1681 on a diplomatic mission to
Versailles; and a short residence there had produced a complete change
in his views. On a near acquaintance, he was alarmed by the power and
provoked by the insolence of that Court of which, while he contemplated
it only at a distance, he had formed a favourable opinion. He found that
his country was despised. He saw his religion persecuted. His official
character did not save him from some personal affronts which, to the
latest day of his long career, he never forgot. He went home a devoted
adherent of William and a mortal enemy of Lewis. [76]

The office of Pensionary, always important, was peculiarly important
when the Stadtholder was absent from the Hague. Had the politics of
Heinsius been still what they once were, all the great designs of
William might have been frustrated. But happily there was between these
two eminent men a perfect friendship which, till death dissolved it,
appears never to have been interrupted for one moment by suspicion or
ill humour. On all large questions of European policy they cordially
agreed. They corresponded assiduously and most unreservedly. For though
William was slow to give his confidence, yet, when he gave it, he gave
it entire. The correspondence is still extant, and is most honourable to
both. The King's letters would alone suffice to prove that he was one
of the greatest statesmen whom Europe has produced. While he lived, the
Pensionary was content to be the most obedient, the most trusty, and
the most discreet of servants. But, after the death of the master, the
servant proved himself capable of supplying with eminent ability the
master's place, and was renowned throughout Europe as one of the great
Triumvirate which humbled the pride of Lewis the Fourteenth. [77]

The foreign policy of England, directed immediately by William in
close concert with Heinsius, was, at this time, eminently skilful and
successful. But in every other part of the administration the evils
arising from the mutual animosity of factions were but too plainly
discernible. Nor was this all.
To the evils arising from the mutual
animosity of factions were added other evils arising from the mutual
animosity of sects.

The year 1689 is a not less important epoch in the ecclesiastical than
in the civil history of England. In that year was granted the first
legal indulgence to Dissenters. In that year was made the last serious
attempt to bring the Presbyterians within the pale of the Church of
England. From that year dates a new schism, made, in defiance of ancient
precedents, by men who had always professed to regard schism with
peculiar abhorrence, and ancient precedents with peculiar veneration.
In that year began the long struggle between two great parties of
conformists. Those parties indeed had, under various forms, existed
within the Anglican communion ever since the Reformation; but till after
the Revolution they did not appear marshalled in regular and permanent
order of battle against each other, and were therefore not known by
established names. Some time after the accession of William they began
to be called the High Church party and the Low Church party; and, long
before the end of his reign, these appellations were in common use. [78]

In the summer of 1688 the breaches which had long divided the great body
of English Protestants had seemed to be almost closed. Disputes about
Bishops and Synods, written prayers and extemporaneous prayers, white
gowns and black gowns, sprinkling and dipping, kneeling and sitting,
had been for a short space intermitted. The serried array which was then
drawn up against Popery measured the whole of the vast interval which
separated Sancroft from Bunyan. Prelates recently conspicuous as
persecutors now declared themselves friends of religious liberty, and
exhorted their clergy to live in a constant interchange of hospitality
and of kind offices with the separatists. Separatists, on the other
hand, who had recently considered mitres and lawn sleeves as the livery
of Antichrist, were putting candles in windows and throwing faggots on
bonfires in honour of the prelates.

These feelings continued to grow till they attained their greatest
height on the memorable day on which the common oppressor finally
quitted Whitehall, and on which an innumerable multitude, tricked out in
orange ribands, welcomed the common deliverer to Saint James's. When the
clergy of London came, headed by Compton, to express their gratitude to
him by whose instrumentality God had wrought salvation for the Church
and the State, the procession was swollen by some eminent nonconformist
divines. It was delightful to many good men to learn that pious and
learned Presbyterian ministers had walked in the train of a Bishop, had
been greeted by him with fraternal kindness, and had been announced by
him in the presence chamber as his dear and respected friends, separated
from him indeed by some differences of opinion on minor points, but
united to him by Christian charity and by common zeal for the essentials
of the reformed faith. There had never before been such a day in
England; and there has never since been such a day. The tide of feeling
was already on the turn; and the ebb was even more rapid than the
flow had been. In a very few hours the High Churchman began to feel
tenderness for the enemy whose tyranny was now no longer feared, and
dislike of the allies whose services were now no longer needed. It
was easy to gratify both feelings by imputing to the dissenters the
misgovernment of the exiled King. His Majesty-such was now the language
of too many Anglican divines-would have been an excellent sovereign
had he not been too confiding, too forgiving. He had put his trust in
a class of men who hated his office, his family, his person, with
implacable hatred. He had ruined himself in the vain attempt to
conciliate them. He had relieved them, in defiance of law and of the
unanimous sense of the old royalist party, from the pressure of the
penal code; had allowed them to worship God publicly after their own
mean and tasteless fashion; had admitted them to the bench of justice
and to the Privy Council; had gratified them with fur robes, gold
chains, salaries, and pensions. In return for his liberality, these
people, once so uncouth in demeanour, once so savage in opposition even
to legitimate authority, had become the most abject of flatterers. They
had continued to applaud and encourage him when the most devoted friends
of his family had retired in shame and sorrow from his palace. Who had
more foully sold the religion and liberty of his country than Titus? Who
had been more zealous for the dispensing power than Alsop? Who had urged
on the persecution of the seven Bishops more fiercely than Lobb? What
chaplain impatient for a deanery had ever, even when preaching in the
royal presence on the thirtieth of January or the twenty-ninth of
May, uttered adulation more gross than might easily be found in
those addresses by which dissenting congregations had testified their
gratitude for the illegal Declaration of Indulgence? Was it strange that
a prince who had never studied law books should have believed that
he was only exercising his rightful prerogative, when he was thus
encouraged by a faction which had always ostentatiously professed hatred
of arbitrary power? Misled by such guidance, he had gone further and
further in the wrong path: he had at length estranged from him hearts
which would once have poured forth their best blood in his defence: he
had left himself no supporters except his old foes; and, when the day
of peril came, he had found that the feeling of his old foes towards
him was still what it had been when they had attempted to rob him of his
inheritance, and when they had plotted against his life. Every man of
sense had long known that the sectaries bore no love to monarchy. It had
now been found that they bore as little love to freedom. To trust them
with power would be an error not less fatal to the nation than to the
throne. If, in order to redeem pledges somewhat rashly given, it should
be thought necessary to grant them relief, every concession ought to be
accompanied by limitations and precautions. Above all, no man who was
an enemy to the ecclesiastical constitution of the realm ought to be
permitted to bear any part in the civil government.

Between the nonconformists and the rigid conformists stood the Low
Church party. That party contained, as it still contains, two very
different elements, a Puritan element and a Latitudinarian element. On
almost every question, however, relating either to ecclesiastical polity
or to the ceremonial of public worship, the Puritan Low Churchman and
the Latitudinarian Low Churchman were perfectly agreed. They saw in the
existing polity and in the existing ceremonial no defect, no blemish,
which could make it their duty to become dissenters. Nevertheless they
held that both the polity and the ceremonial were means and not ends,
and that the essential spirit of Christianity might exist without
episcopal orders and without a Book of Common Prayer. They had, while
James was on the throne, been mainly instrumental in forming the great
Protestant coalition against Popery and tyranny; and they continued in
1689 to hold the same conciliatory language which they had held in
1688. They gently blamed the scruples of the nonconformists. It was
undoubtedly a great weakness to imagine that there could be any sin in
wearing a white robe, in tracing a cross, in kneeling at the rails of an
altar. But the highest authority had given the plainest directions as
to the manner in which such weakness was to be treated. The weak brother
was not to be judged: he was not to be despised: believers who had
stronger minds were commanded to soothe him by large compliances, and
carefully to remove out of his path every stumbling block which could
cause him to offend. An apostle had declared that, though he had himself
no misgivings about the use of animal food or of wine, he would eat
herbs and drink water rather than give scandal to the feeblest of his
flock. What would he have thought of ecclesiastical rulers who, for the
sake of a vestment, a gesture, a posture, had not only torn the Church
asunder, but had filled all the gaols of England with men of orthodox
faith and saintly life? The reflections thrown by the High Churchmen on
the recent conduct of the dissenting body the Low Churchmen pronounced
to be grossly unjust. The wonder was, not that a few nonconformists
should have accepted with thanks an indulgence which, illegal as it
was, had opened the doors of their prisons and given security to their
hearths, but that the nonconformists generally should have been true
to the cause of a constitution from the benefits of which they had been
long excluded. It was most unfair to impute to a great party the faults
of a few individuals. Even among the Bishops of the Established Church
James had found tools and sycophants. The conduct of Cartwright and
Parker had been much more inexcusable than that of Alsop and Lobb. Yet
those who held the dissenters answerable for the errors of Alsop and
Lobb would doubtless think it most unreasonable to hold the Church
answerable for the far deeper guilt of Cartwright and Parker.

The Low Church clergymen were a minority, and not a large minority, of
their profession: but their weight was much more than proportioned to
their numbers: for they mustered strong in the capital: they had great
influence there; and the average of intellect and knowledge was higher
among them than among their order generally. We should probably overrate
their numerical strength, if we were to estimate them at a tenth part
of the priesthood. Yet it will scarcely be denied that there were among
them as many men of distinguished eloquence and learning as could be
found in the other nine tenths. Among the laity who conformed to the
established religion the parties were not unevenly balanced. Indeed
the line which separated them deviated very little from the line which
separated the Whigs and the Tories. In the House of Commons, which
had been elected when the Whigs were triumphant, the Low Church party
greatly preponderated. In the Lords there was an almost exact equipoise;
and very slight circumstances sufficed to turn the scale.

The head of the Low Church party was the King. He had been bred a
Presbyterian: he was, from rational conviction, a Latitudinarian; and
personal ambition, as well as higher motives, prompted him to act as
mediator among Protestant sects. He was bent on effecting three great
reforms in the laws touching ecclesiastical matters. His first object
was to obtain for dissenters permission to celebrate their worship in
freedom and security. His second object was to make such changes in
the Anglican ritual and polity as, without offending those to whom
that ritual and polity were dear, might conciliate the moderate
nonconformists. His third object was to throw open civil offices to
Protestants without distinction of sect. All his three objects were
good; but the first only was at that time attainable. He came too late
for the second, and too early for the third.

A few days after his accession, he took a step which indicated, in a
manner not to be mistaken, his sentiments touching ecclesiastical polity
and public worship. He found only one see unprovided with a Bishop. Seth
Ward, who had during many years had charge of the diocese of Salisbury,
and who had been honourably distinguished as one of the founders of
the Royal Society, having long survived his faculties, died while
the country was agitated by the elections for the Convention, without
knowing that great events, of which not the least important had passed
under his own roof, had saved his Church and his country from ruin. The
choice of a successor was no light matter. That choice would inevitably
be considered by the country as a prognostic of the highest import.
The King too might well be perplexed by the number of divines whose
erudition, eloquence, courage, and uprightness had been conspicuously
displayed during the contentions of the last three years. The preference
was given to Burnet. His claims were doubtless great. Yet William might
have had a more tranquil reign if he had postponed for a time the well
earned promotion of his chaplain, and had bestowed the first great
spiritual preferment, which, after the Revolution, fell to the
disposal of the Crown, on some eminent theologian, attached to the new
settlement, yet not generally hated by the clergy. Unhappily the name
of Burnet was odious to the great majority of the Anglican priesthood.
Though, as respected doctrine, he by no means belonged to the extreme
section of the Latitudinarian party, he was popularly regarded as the
personification of the Latitudinarian spirit. This distinction he owed
to the prominent place which he held in literature and politics, to the
readiness of his tongue and of his pert, and above all to the frankness
and boldness of his nature, frankness which could keep no secret, and
boldness which flinched from no danger. He had formed but a low estimate
of the character of his clerical brethren considered as a body; and,
with his usual indiscretion, he frequently suffered his opinion to
escape him. They hated him in return with a hatred which has descended
to their successors, and which, after the lapse of a century and a half,
does not appear to languish.

As soon as the King's decision was known, the question was every where
asked, What will the Archbishop do? Sancroft had absented himself from
the Convention: he had refused to sit in the Privy Council: he had
ceased to confirm, to ordain, and to institute; and he was seldom
seen out of the walls of his palace at Lambeth. He, on all occasions,
professed to think himself still bound by his old oath of allegiance.
Burnet he regarded as a scandal to the priesthood, a Presbyterian in a
surplice. The prelate who should lay hands on that unworthy head would
commit more than one great sin. He would, in a sacred place, and before
a great congregation of the faithful, at once acknowledge an usurper
as a King, and confer on a schismatic the character of a Bishop. During
some time Sancroft positively declared that he would not obey the
precept of William. Lloyd of Saint Asaph, who was the common friend of
the Archbishop and of the Bishop elect, intreated and expostulated
in vain. Nottingham, who, of all the laymen connected with the new
government, stood best with the clergy, tried his influence, but to no
better purpose. The Jacobites said every where that they were sure of
the good old Primate; that he had the spirit of a martyr; that he was
determined to brave, in the cause of the Monarchy and of the Church, the
utmost rigour of those laws with which the obsequious parliaments of the
sixteenth century had fenced the Royal Supremacy. He did in truth hold
out long. But at the last moment his heart failed him, and he looked
round him for some mode of escape. Fortunately, as childish scruples
often disturbed his conscience, childish expedients often quieted it. A
more childish expedient than that to which he now resorted is not to be
found in all the tones of the casuists. He would not himself bear a part
in the service. He would not publicly pray for the Prince and Princess
as King and Queen. He would not call for their mandate, order it to be
read, and then proceed to obey it. But he issued a commission empowering
any three of his suffragans to commit, in his name, and as his
delegates, the sins which he did not choose to commit in person. The
reproaches of all parties soon made him ashamed of himself. He then
tried to suppress the evidence of his fault by means more discreditable
than the fault itself. He abstracted from among the public records of
which he was the guardian the instrument by which he had authorised his
brethren to act for him, and was with difficulty induced to give it up.
[79]

Burnet however had, under the authority of this instrument, been
consecrated. When he next waited on Mary, she reminded him of the
conversations which they had held at the Hague about the high duties and
grave responsibility of Bishops. "I hope," she said, "that you will put
your notions in practice. " Her hope was not disappointed. Whatever
may be thought of Burnet's opinions touching civil and ecclesiastical
polity, or of the temper and judgment which he showed in defending those
opinions, the utmost malevolence of faction could not venture to deny
that he tended his flock with a zeal, diligence, and disinterestedness
worthy of the purest ages of the Church. His jurisdiction extended over
Wiltshire and Berkshire. These counties he divided into districts which
he sedulously visited. About two months of every summer he passed in
preaching, catechizing, and confirming daily from church to church. When
he died there was no corner of his diocese in which the people had not
had seven or eight opportunities of receiving his instructions and of
asking his advice. The worst weather, the worst roads, did not prevent
him from discharging these duties. On one occasion, when the floods were
out, he exposed his life to imminent risk rather than disappoint a rural
congregation which was in expectation of a discourse from the Bishop.
The poverty of the inferior clergy was a constant cause of uneasiness
to his kind and generous heart. He was indefatigable and at length
successful in his attempts to obtain for them from the Crown that
grant which is known by the name of Queen Anne's Bounty. [80] He was
especially careful, when he travelled through his diocese, to lay
no burden on them. Instead of requiring them to entertain him, he
entertained them. He always fixed his headquarters at a market town,
kept a table there, and, by his decent hospitality and munificent
charities, tried to conciliate those who were prejudiced against his
doctrines. When he bestowed a poor benefice, and he had many such to
bestow, his practice was to add out of his own purse twenty pounds a
year to the income. Ten promising young men, to each of whom he allowed
thirty pounds a year, studied divinity under his own eye in the close
of Salisbury. He had several children but he did not think himself
justified in hoarding for them. Their mother had brought him a good
fortune. With that fortune, he always said, they must be content: He
would not, for their sakes, be guilty of the crime of raising an estate
out of revenues sacred to piety and charity. Such merits as these will,
in the judgment of wise and candid men, appear fully to atone for every
offence which can be justly imputed to him. [81]

When he took his seat in the House of Lords, he found that assembly
busied in ecclesiastical legislation. A statesman who was well known
to be devoted to the Church had undertaken to plead the cause of the
Dissenters. No subject in the realm occupied so important and commanding
a position with reference to religious parties as Nottingham. To the
influence derived from rank, from wealth, and from office, he added
the higher influence which belongs to knowledge, to eloquence, and to
integrity. The orthodoxy of his creed, the regularity of his devotions,
and the purity of his morals gave a peculiar weight to his opinions on
questions in which the interests of Christianity were concerned. Of all
the ministers of the new Sovereigns, he had the largest share of the
confidence of the clergy. Shrewsbury was certainly a Whig, and probably
a freethinker: he had lost one religion; and it did not very clearly
appear that he had found another. Halifax had been during many years
accused of scepticism, deism, atheism. Danby's attachment to episcopacy
and the liturgy was rather political than religious. But Nottingham
was such a son as the Church was proud to own. Propositions, therefore,
which, if made by his colleagues, would infallibly produce a violent
panic among the clergy, might, if made by him, find a favourable
reception even in universities and chapter houses. The friends
of religious liberty were with good reason desirous to obtain his
cooperation; and, up to a certain point, he was not unwilling to
cooperate with them. He was decidedly for a toleration. He was even for
what was then called a comprehension: that is to say, he was desirous
to make some alterations in the Anglican discipline and ritual for the
purpose of removing the scruples of the moderate Presbyterians. But he
was not prepared to give up the Test Act. The only fault which he found
with that Act was that it was not sufficiently stringent, and that it
left loopholes through which schismatics sometimes crept into civil
employments. In truth it was because he was not disposed to part with
the Test that he was willing to consent to some changes in the Liturgy.
He conceived that, if the entrance of the Church were but a very little
widened, great numbers who had hitherto lingered near the threshold
would press in. Those who still remained without would then not be
sufficiently numerous or powerful to extort any further concession, and
would be glad to compound for a bare toleration. [82]

The opinion of the Low Churchmen concerning the Test Act differed widely
from his. But many of them thought that it was of the highest
importance to have his support on the great questions of Toleration and
Comprehension. From the scattered fragments of information which have
come down to us, it appears that a compromise was made. It is quite
certain that Nottingham undertook to bring in a Toleration Bill and a
Comprehension Bill, and to use his best endeavours to carry both bills
through the House of Lords. It is highly probable that, in return for
this great service, some of the leading Whigs consented to let the Test
Act remain for the present unaltered.

There was no difficulty in framing either the Toleration Bill or the
Comprehension Bill. The situation of the dissenters had been much
discussed nine or ten years before, when the kingdom was distracted
by the fear of a Popish plot, and when there was among Protestants a
general disposition to unite against the common enemy. The government
had then been willing to make large concessions to the Whig party, on
condition that the crown should be suffered to descend according to the
regular course. A draught of a law authorising the public worship of the
nonconformists, and a draught of a law making some alterations in the
public worship of the Established Church, had been prepared, and would
probably have been passed by both Houses without difficulty, had not
Shaftesbury and his coadjutors refused to listen to any terms, and, by
grasping at what was beyond their reach, missed advantages which might
easily have been secured. In the framing of these draughts, Nottingham,
then an active member of the House of Commons, had borne a considerable
part. He now brought them forth from the obscurity in which they had
remained since the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, and laid them,
with some slight alterations, on the table of the Lords. [83]

The Toleration Bill passed both Houses with little debate. This
celebrated statute, long considered as the Great Charter of religious
liberty, has since been extensively modified, and is hardly known to
the present generation except by name. The name, however, is still
pronounced with respect by many who will perhaps learn with surprise
and disappointment the real nature of the law which they have been
accustomed to hold in honour.

Several statutes which had been passed between the accession of Queen
Elizabeth and the Revolution required all people under severe penalties
to attend the services of the Church of England, and to abstain from
attending conventicles. The Toleration Act did not repeal any of these
statutes, but merely provided that they should not be construed to
extend to any person who should testify his loyalty by taking the Oaths
of Allegiance and Supremacy, and his Protestantism by subscribing the
Declaration against Transubstantiation.

The relief thus granted was common between the dissenting laity and
the dissenting clergy. But the dissenting clergy had some peculiar
grievances. The Act of Uniformity had laid a mulct of a hundred pounds
on every person who, not having received episcopal ordination, should
presume to administer the Eucharist. The Five Mile Act had driven many
pious and learned ministers from their houses and their friends, to live
among rustics in obscure villages of which the name was not to be seen
on the map. The Conventicle Act had imposed heavy fines on divines who
should preach in any meeting of separatists; and, in direct opposition
to the humane spirit of our common law, the Courts were enjoined to
construe this Act largely and beneficially for the suppressing of
dissent and for the encouraging of informers. These severe statutes were
not repealed, but were, with many conditions and precautions, relaxed.
It was provided that every dissenting minister should, before he
exercised his function, profess under his hand his belief in the
articles of the Church of England, with a few exceptions. The
propositions to which he was not required to assent were these; that the
Church has power to regulate ceremonies; that the doctrines set forth in
the Book of Homilies are sound; and that there is nothing superstitious
and idolatrous in the ordination service. If he declared himself a
Baptist, he was also excused from affirming that the baptism of infants
is a laudable practice. But, unless his conscience suffered him to
subscribe thirty-four of the thirty-nine articles, and the greater part
of two other articles, he could not preach without incurring all the
punishments which the Cavaliers, in the day of their power and their
vengeance, had devised for the tormenting and ruining of schismatical
teachers.

The situation of the Quaker differed from that of other dissenters,
and differed for the worse. The Presbyterian, the Independent, and
the Baptist had no scruple about the Oath of Supremacy. But the Quaker
refused to take it, not because he objected to the proposition that
foreign sovereigns and prelates have no jurisdiction in England, but
because his conscience would not suffer him to swear to any proposition
whatever. He was therefore exposed to the severity of part of that penal
code which, long before Quakerism existed, had been enacted against
Roman Catholics by the Parliaments of Elizabeth. Soon after the
Restoration, a severe law, distinct from the general law which applied
to all conventicles, had been passed against meetings of Quakers. The
Toleration Act permitted the members of this harmless sect to hold
their assemblies in peace, on condition of signing three documents, a
declaration against Transubstantiation, a promise of fidelity to the
government, and a confession of Christian belief. The objections which
the Quaker had to the Athanasian phraseology had brought on him the
imputation of Socinianism; and the strong language in which he sometimes
asserted that he derived his knowledge of spiritual things directly from
above had raised a suspicion that he thought lightly of the authority
of Scripture. He was therefore required to profess his faith in the
divinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and in the inspiration of the
Old and New Testaments.

Such were the terms on which the Protestant dissenters of England were,
for the first time, permitted by law to worship God according to their
own conscience. They were very properly forbidden to assemble with
barred doors, but were protected against hostile intrusion by a
clause which made it penal to enter a meeting house for the purpose of
molesting the congregation.

As if the numerous limitations and precautions which have been mentioned
were insufficient, it was emphatically declared that the legislature
did not intend to grant the smallest indulgence to any Papist, or to any
person who denied the doctrine of the Trinity as that doctrine is set
forth in the formularies of the Church of England.

Of all the Acts that have ever been passed by Parliament, the Toleration
Act is perhaps that which most strikingly illustrates the peculiar vices
and the peculiar excellences of English legislation. The science
of Politics bears in one respect a close analogy to the science of
Mechanics. The mathematician can easily demonstrate that a certain
power, applied by means of a certain lever or of a certain system of
pulleys, will suffice to raise a certain weight. But his demonstration
proceeds on the supposition that the machinery is such as no load will
bend or break. If the engineer, who has to lift a great mass of real
granite by the instrumentality of real timber and real hemp, should
absolutely rely on the propositions which he finds in treatises on
Dynamics, and should make no allowance for the imperfection of his
materials, his whole apparatus of beams, wheels, and ropes would soon
come down in ruin, and, with all his geometrical skill, he would be
found a far inferior builder to those painted barbarians who, though
they never heard of the parallelogram of forces, managed to pile up
Stonehenge. What the engineer is to the mathematician, the active
statesman is to the contemplative statesman. It is indeed most important
that legislators and administrators should be versed in the philosophy
of government, as it is most important that the architect, who has to
fix an obelisk on its pedestal, or to hang a tubular bridge over an
estuary, should be versed in the philosophy of equilibrium and motion.
But, as he who has actually to build must bear in mind many things never
noticed by D'Alembert and Euler, so must he who has actually to govern
be perpetually guided by considerations to which no allusion can be
found in the writings of Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham. The perfect
lawgiver is a just temper between the mere man of theory, who can see
nothing but general principles, and the mere man of business, who can
see nothing but particular circumstances. Of lawgivers in whom the
speculative element has prevailed to the exclusion of the practical,
the world has during the last eighty years been singularly fruitful.
To their wisdom Europe and America have owed scores of abortive
constitutions, scores of constitutions which have lived just long enough
to make a miserable noise, and have then gone off in convulsions. But in
the English legislature the practical element has always predominated,
and not seldom unduly predominated, over the speculative. To think
nothing of symmetry and much of convenience; never to remove an anomaly
merely because it is an anomaly; never to innovate except when some
grievance is felt; never to innovate except so far as to get rid of the
grievance; never to lay down any proposition of wider extent than the
particular case for which it is necessary to provide; these are the
rules which have, from the age of John to the age of Victoria, generally
guided the deliberations of our two hundred and fifty Parliaments. Our
national distaste for whatever is abstract in political science amounts
undoubtedly to a fault. But it is, perhaps, a fault on the right side.
That we have been far too slow to improve our laws must be admitted.
But, though in other countries there may have occasionally been more
rapid progress, it would not be easy to name any other country in which
there has been so little retrogression.

The Toleration Act approaches very near to the idea of a great
English law.