No More Learning

James, when he came to the crown, had determined to appoint no Lord
High Admiral or Board of Admiralty, and to keep the entire direction of
maritime affairs in his own hands; and this arrangement, which would now
be thought by men of all parties unconstitutional and pernicious in the
highest degree, was then generally applauded even by people who were not
inclined to see his conduct in a favourable light. How completely the
relation in which the King stood to his Parliament and to his ministers
had been altered by the Revolution was not at first understood even by
the most enlightened statesmen. It was universally supposed that
the government would, as in time past, be conducted by functionaries
independent of each other, and that William would exercise a general
superintendence over them all. It was also fully expected that a prince
of William's capacity and experience would transact much important
business without having recourse to any adviser.

There were therefore no complaints when it was understood that he had
reserved to himself the direction of foreign affairs. This was indeed
scarcely matter of choice: for, with the single exception of Sir William
Temple, whom nothing would induce to quit his retreat for public life,
there was no Englishman who had proved himself capable of conducting an
important negotiation with foreign powers to a successful and honourable
issue. Many years had elapsed since England had interfered with weight
and dignity in the affairs of the great commonwealth of nations.
The attention of the ablest English politicians had long been almost
exclusively occupied by disputes concerning the civil and ecclesiastical
constitution of their own country. The contests about the Popish Plot
and the Exclusion Bill, the Habeas Corpus Act and the Test Act, had
produced an abundance, it might almost be said a glut, of those talents
which raise men to eminence in societies torn by internal factions. All
the Continent could not show such skilful and wary leaders of parties,
such dexterous parliamentary tacticians, such ready and eloquent
debaters, as were assembled at Westminister. But a very different
training was necessary to form a great minister for foreign affairs; and
the Revolution had on a sudden placed England in a situation in which
the services of a great minister for foreign affairs were indispensable
to her.

William was admirably qualified to supply that in which the most
accomplished statesmen of his kingdom were deficient. He had long been
preeminently distinguished as a negotiator. He was the author and the
soul of the European coalition against the French ascendency. The clue,
without which it was perilous to enter the vast and intricate maze
of Continental politics, was in his hands. His English counsellors,
therefore, however able and active, seldom, during his reign, ventured
to meddle with that part of the public business which he had taken as
his peculiar province. [11]

The internal government of England could be carried on only by the
advice and agency of English ministers. Those ministers William selected
in such a manner as showed that he was determined not to proscribe any
set of men who were willing to support his throne. On the day after
the crown had been presented to him in the Banqueting House, the Privy
Council was sworn in. Most of the Councillors were Whigs; but the names
of several eminent Tories appeared in the list. [12] The four highest
offices in the state were assigned to four noblemen, the representatives
of four classes of politicians.

In practical ability and official experience Danby had no superior among
his contemporaries. To the gratitude of the new Sovereigns he had a
strong claim; for it was by his dexterity that their marriage had been
brought about in spite of difficulties which had seemed insuperable. The
enmity which he had always borne to France was a scarcely less powerful
recommendation. He had signed the invitation of the thirtieth of June,
had excited and directed the northern insurrection, and had, in the
Convention, exerted all his influence and eloquence in opposition to
the scheme of Regency. Yet the Whigs regarded him with unconquerable
distrust and aversion. They could not forget that he had, in evil days,
been the first minister of the state, the head of the Cavaliers, the
champion of prerogative, the persecutor of dissenters. Even in becoming
a rebel, he had not ceased to be a Tory. If he had drawn the sword
against the Crown, he had drawn it only in defence of the Church. If he
had, in the Convention, done good by opposing the scheme of Regency, he
had done harm by obstinately maintaining that the throne was not vacant,
and that the Estates had no right to determine who should fill it. The
Whigs were therefore of opinion that he ought to think himself
amply rewarded for his recent merits by being suffered to escape the
punishment of those offences for which he had been impeached ten years
before. He, on the other hand, estimated his own abilities and services,
which were doubtless considerable, at their full value, and thought
himself entitled to the great place of Lord High Treasurer, which he had
formerly held. But he was disappointed. William, on principle, thought
it desirable to divide the power and patronage of the Treasury among
several Commissioners. He was the first English King who never, from the
beginning to the end of his reign, trusted the white staff in the hands
of a single subject. Danby was offered his choice between the Presidency
of the Council and a Secretaryship of State. He sullenly accepted the
Presidency, and, while the Whigs murmured at seeing him placed so high,
hardly attempted to conceal his anger at not having been placed higher.
[13]

Halifax, the most illustrious man of that small party which boasted that
it kept the balance even between Whigs and Tories, took charge of the
Privy Seal, and continued to be Speaker of the House of Lords. [14] He
had been foremost in strictly legal opposition to the late Government,
and had spoken and written with great ability against the dispensing
power: but he had refused to know any thing about the design of
invasion: he had laboured, even when the Dutch were in full march
towards London, to effect a reconciliation; and he had never deserted
James till James had deserted the throne. But, from the moment of that
shameful flight, the sagacious Trimmer, convinced that compromise was
thenceforth impossible, had taken a decided part. He had distinguished
himself preeminently in the Convention: nor was it without a peculiar
propriety that he had been appointed to the honourable office of
tendering the crown, in the name of all the Estates of England, to the
Prince and Princess of Orange; for our Revolution, as far as it can
be said to bear the character of any single mind, assuredly bears the
character of the large yet cautious mind of Halifax. The Whigs, however,
were not in a temper to accept a recent service as an atonement for an
old offence; and the offence of Halifax had been grave indeed. He had
long before been conspicuous in their front rank during a hard fight
for liberty. When they were at length victorious, when it seemed that
Whitehall was at their mercy, when they had a near prospect of dominion
and revenge, he had changed sides; and fortune had changed sides with
him. In the great debate on the Exclusion Bill, his eloquence had struck
them dumb, and had put new life into the inert and desponding party of
the Court. It was true that, though he had left them in the day of
their insolent prosperity, he had returned to them in the day of their
distress. But, now that their distress was over, they forgot that he had
returned to them, and remembered only that he had left them. [15]

The vexation with which they saw Danby presiding in the Council, and
Halifax bearing the Privy Seal, was not diminished by the news that
Nottingham was appointed Secretary of State. Some of those zealous
churchmen who had never ceased to profess the doctrine of nonresistance,
who thought the Revolution unjustifiable, who had voted for a Regency,
and who had to the last maintained that the English throne could never
be one moment vacant, yet conceived it to be their duty to submit to the
decision of the Convention. They had not, they said, rebelled against
James. They had not selected William. But, now that they saw on the
throne a Sovereign whom they never would have placed there, they were
of opinion that no law, divine or human, bound them to carry the contest
further. They thought that they found, both in the Bible and in the
Statute Book, directions which could not be misunderstood. The Bible
enjoins obedience to the powers that be. The Statute Book contains an
act providing that no subject shall be deemed a wrongdoer for adhering
to the King in possession. On these grounds many, who had not concurred
in setting up the new government, believed that they might give it
their support without offence to God or man. One of the most eminent
politicians of this school was Nottingham. At his instance the
Convention had, before the throne was filled, made such changes in the
oath of allegiance as enabled him and those who agreed with him to take
that oath without scruple. "My principles," he said, "do not permit me
to bear any part in making a King. But when a King has been made, my
principles bind me to pay him an obedience more strict than he can
expect from those who have made him. " He now, to the surprise of some
of those who most esteemed him, consented to sit in the council, and
to accept the seals of Secretary. William doubtless hoped that this
appointment would be considered by the clergy and the Tory country
gentlemen as a sufficient guarantee that no evil was meditated against
the Church. Even Burnet, who at a later period felt a strong antipathy
to Nottingham, owned, in some memoirs written soon after the Revolution,
that the King had judged well, and that the influence of the Tory
Secretary, honestly exerted in support of the new Sovereigns, had saved
England from great calamities. [16]

The other Secretary was Shrewsbury. [17] No man so young had within
living memory occupied so high a post in the government. He had but just
completed his twenty-eighth year. Nobody, however, except the solemn
formalists at the Spanish embassy, thought his youth an objection to his
promotion. [18] He had already secured for himself a place in history
by the conspicuous part which he had taken in the deliverance of his
country. His talents, his accomplishments, his graceful manners, his
bland temper, made him generally popular. By the Whigs especially he
was almost adored. None suspected that, with many great and many amiable
qualities, he had such faults both of head and of heart as would
make the rest of a life which had opened under the fairest auspices
burdensome to himself and almost useless to his country.

The naval administration and the financial administration were confided
to Boards. Herbert was First Commissioner of the Admiralty. He had in
the late reign given up wealth and dignities when he found that he could
not retain them with honour and with a good conscience. He had carried
the memorable invitation to the Hague. He had commanded the Dutch fleet
during the voyage from Helvoetsluys to Torbay. His character for courage
and professional skill stood high. That he had had his follies and vices
was well known. But his recent conduct in the time of severe trial had
atoned for all, and seemed to warrant the hope that his future career
would be glorious. Among the commissioners who sate with him at the
Admiralty were two distinguished members of the House of Commons,
William Sacheverell, a veteran Whig, who had great authority in his
party, and Sir John Lowther, an honest and very moderate Tory, who in
fortune and parliamentary interest was among the first of the English
gentry. [19]

Mordaunt, one of the most vehement of the Whigs, was placed at the head
of the Treasury; why, it is difficult to say. His romantic courage, his
flighty wit, his eccentric invention, his love of desperate risks and
startling effects, were not qualities likely to be of much use to him in
financial calculations and negotiations. Delamere, a more vehement Whig,
if possible, than Mordaunt, sate second at the board, and was Chancellor
of the Exchequer. Two Whig members of the House of Commons were in the
Commission, Sir Henry Capel, brother of that Earl of Essex who died by
his own hand in the Tower, and Richard Hampden, son of the great leader
of the Long Parliament. But the Commissioner on whom the chief weight of
business lay was Godolphin. This man, taciturn, clearminded, laborious,
inoffensive, zealous for no government and useful to every government,
had gradually become an almost indispensable part of the machinery of
the state. Though a churchman, he had prospered in a Court governed by
Jesuits. Though he had voted for a Regency, he was the real head of a
treasury filled with Whigs. His abilities and knowledge, which had in
the late reign supplied the deficiencies of Bellasyse and Dover, were
now needed to supply the deficiencies of Mordaunt and Delamere. [20]

There were some difficulties in disposing of the Great Seal. The King
at first wished to confide it to Nottingham, whose father had borne it
during several years with high reputation. [21] Nottingham, however,
declined the trust; and it was offered to Halifax, but was again
declined. Both these Lords doubtless felt that it was a trust which they
could not discharge with honour to themselves or with advantage to
the public. In old times, indeed, the Seal had been generally held by
persons who were not lawyers. Even in the seventeenth century it had
been confided to two eminent men, who had never studied at any Inn
of Court. Dean Williams had been Lord Keeper to James the First.
Shaftesbury had been Lord Chancellor to Charles the Second. But such
appointments could no longer be made without serious inconvenience.
Equity had been gradually shaping itself into a refined science, which
no human faculties could master without long and intense application.
Even Shaftesbury, vigorous as was his intellect, had painfully felt his
want of technical knowledge; [22] and, during the fifteen years which had
elapsed since Shaftesbury had resigned the Seal, technical knowledge
had constantly been becoming more and more necessary to his successors.
Neither Nottingham therefore, though he had a stock of legal learning
such as is rarely found in any person who has not received a legal
education, nor Halifax, though, in the judicial sittings of the House
of Lords, the quickness of his apprehension and the subtlety of his
reasoning had often astonished the bar, ventured to accept the highest
office which an English layman can fill. After some delay the Seal was
confided to a commission of eminent lawyers, with Maynard at their head.
[23]

The choice of judges did honour to the new government. Every Privy
Councillor was directed to bring a list. The lists were compared; and
twelve men of conspicuous merit were selected. [24] The professional
attainments and Whig principles of Pollexfen gave him pretensions to
the highest place. But it was remembered that he had held briefs for the
Crown, in the Western counties, at the assizes which followed the battle
of Sedgemoor. It seems indeed from the reports of the trials that he did
as little as he could do if he held the briefs at all, and that he
left to the Judges the business of browbeating witnesses and prisoners.
Nevertheless his name was inseparably associated in the public mind with
the Bloody Circuit. He, therefore, could not with propriety be put at
the head of the first criminal court in the realm. [25] After acting
during a few weeks as Attorney General, he was made Chief Justice of the
Common Pleas. Sir John Holt, a young man, but distinguished by learning,
integrity, and courage, became Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Sir
Robert Atkyns, an eminent lawyer, who had passed some years in rural
retirement, but whose reputation was still great in Westminster Hall,
was appointed Chief Baron. Powell, who had been disgraced on account
of his honest declaration in favour of the Bishops, again took his seat
among the judges. Treby succeeded Pollexfen as Attorney General; and
Somers was made Solicitor. [26]

Two of the chief places in the Royal household were filled by two
English noblemen eminently qualified to adorn a court. The high spirited
and accomplished Devonshire was named Lord Steward. No man had done more
or risked more for England during the crisis of her fate. In retrieving
her liberties he had retrieved also the fortunes of his own house. His
bond for thirty thousand pounds was found among the papers which James
had left at Whitehall, and was cancelled by William. [27]

Dorset became Lord Chamberlain, and employed the influence and patronage
annexed to his functions, as he had long employed his private means, in
encouraging genius and in alleviating misfortune. One of the first acts
which he was under the necessity of performing must have been painful to
a man of so generous a nature, and of so keen a relish for whatever
was excellent in arts and letters. Dryden could no longer remain Poet
Laureate. The public would not have borne to see any Papist among the
servants of their Majesties; and Dryden was not only a Papist, but
an apostate. He had moreover aggravated the guilt of his apostasy by
calumniating and ridiculing the Church which he had deserted. He had,
it was facetiously said, treated her as the Pagan persecutors of old
treated her children. He had dressed her up in the skin of a wild beast,
and then baited her for the public amusement. [28] He was removed; but
he received from the private bounty of the magnificent Chamberlain
a pension equal to the salary which had been withdrawn. The deposed
Laureate, however, as poor of spirit as rich in intellectual gifts,
continued to complain piteously, year after year, of the losses which he
had not suffered, till at length his wailings drew forth expressions
of well merited contempt from brave and honest Jacobites, who had
sacrificed every thing to their principles without deigning to utter one
word of deprecation or lamentation. [29]

In the Royal household were placed some of those Dutch nobles who stood
highest in the favour of the King. Bentinck had the great office of
Groom of the Stole, with a salary of five thousand pounds a year.
Zulestein took charge of the robes. The Master of the Horse was
Auverquerque, a gallant soldier, who united the blood of Nassau to the
blood of Horn, and who wore with just pride a costly sword presented to
him by the States General in acknowledgment of the courage with which he
had, on the bloody day of Saint Dennis, saved the life of William.

The place of Vice Chamberlain to the Queen was given to a man who had
just become conspicuous in public life, and whose name will frequently
recur in the history of this reign. John Howe, or, as he was more
commonly called, Jack Howe, had been sent up to the Convention by the
borough of Cirencester. His appearance was that of a man whose body was
worn by the constant workings of a restless and acrid mind. He was tall,
lean, pale, with a haggard eager look, expressive at once of flightiness
and of shrewdness. He had been known, during several years, as a small
poet; and some of the most savage lampoons which were handed about the
coffeehouses were imputed to him. But it was in the House of Commons
that both his parts and his illnature were most signally displayed.
Before he had been a member three weeks, his volubility, his asperity,
and his pertinacity had made him conspicuous. Quickness, energy, and
audacity, united, soon raised him to the rank of a privileged man. His
enemies, and he had many enemies, said that he consulted his personal
safety even in his most petulant moods, and that he treated soldiers
with a civility which he never showed to ladies or to Bishops. But no
man had in larger measure that evil courage which braves and even
courts disgust and hatred. No decencies restrained him: his spite was
implacable: his skill in finding out the vulnerable parts of strong
minds was consummate. All his great contemporaries felt his sting in
their turns. Once it inflicted a wound which deranged even the stern
composure of William, and constrained him to utter a wish that he were a
private gentleman, and could invite Mr. Howe to a short interview
behind Montague House. As yet, however, Howe was reckoned among the
most strenuous supporters of the new government, and directed all his
sarcasms and invectives against the malcontents. [30]

The subordinate places in every public office were divided between the
two parties: but the Whigs had the larger share. Some persons, indeed,
who did little honour to the Whig name, were largely recompensed for
services which no good man would have performed. Wildman was made
Postmaster General. A lucrative sinecure in the Excise was bestowed on
Ferguson. The duties of the Solicitor of the Treasury were both very
important and very invidious. It was the business of that officer to
conduct political prosecutions, to collect the evidence, to instruct the
counsel for the Crown, to see that the prisoners were not liberated on
insufficient bail, to see that the juries were not composed of persons
hostile to the government. In the days of Charles and James, the
Solicitors of the Treasury had been with too much reason accused of
employing all the vilest artifices of chicanery against men obnoxious
to the Court. The new government ought to have made a choice which was
above all suspicion. Unfortunately Mordaunt and Delamere pitched upon
Aaron Smith, an acrimonious and unprincipled politician, who had been
the legal adviser of Titus Oates in the days of the Popish Plot, and who
had been deeply implicated in the Rye House Plot. Richard Hampden, a
man of decided opinions but of moderate temper, objected to this
appointment. His objections however were overruled. The Jacobites, who
hated Smith and had reason to hate him, affirmed that he had obtained
his place by bullying the Lords of the Treasury, and particularly by
threatening that, if his just claims were disregarded, he would be the
death of Hampden. [31]

Some weeks elapsed before all the arrangements which have been mentioned
were publicly announced: and meanwhile many important events had taken
place. As soon as the new Privy Councillors had been sworn in, it was
necessary to submit to them a grave and pressing question. Could the
Convention now assembled be turned into a Parliament? The Whigs, who had
a decided majority in the Lower House, were all for the affirmative.
The Tories, who knew that, within the last month, the public feeling had
undergone a considerable change, and who hoped that a general election
would add to their strength, were for the negative. They maintained
that to the existence of a Parliament royal writs were indispensably
necessary. The Convention had not been summoned by such writs: the
original defect could not now be supplied: the Houses were therefore
mere clubs of private men, and ought instantly to disperse.

It was answered that the royal writ was mere matter of form, and that to
expose the substance of our laws and liberties to serious hazard for the
sake of a form would be the most senseless superstition. Wherever the
Sovereign, the Peers spiritual and temporal, and the Representatives
freely chosen by the constituent bodies of the realm were met together,
there was the essence of a Parliament. Such a Parliament was now
in being; and what could be more absurd than to dissolve it at a
conjuncture when every hour was precious, when numerous important
subjects required immediate legislation, and when dangers, only to be
averted by the combined efforts of King, Lords, and Commons, menaced
the State? A Jacobite indeed might consistently refuse to recognise the
Convention as a Parliament. For he held that it had from the beginning
been an unlawful assembly, that all its resolutions were nullities,
and that the Sovereigns whom it had set up were usurpers. But with what
consistency could any man, who maintained that a new Parliament ought to
be immediately called by writs under the great seal of William and Mary,
question the authority which had placed William and Mary on the throne?
Those who held that William was rightful King must necessarily hold that
the body from which he derived his right was itself a rightful Great
Council of the Realm. Those who, though not holding him to be rightful
King, conceived that they might lawfully swear allegiance to him as King
in fact, might surely, on the same principle, acknowledge the Convention
as a Parliament in fact. It was plain that the Convention was the
fountainhead from which the authority of all future Parliaments must be
derived, and that on the validity of the votes of the Convention must
depend the validity of every future statute. And how could the
stream rise higher than the source? Was it not absurd to say that the
Convention was supreme in the state, and yet a nullity; a legislature
for the highest of all purposes, and yet no legislature for the
humblest purposes; competent to declare the throne vacant, to change
the succession, to fix the landmarks of the constitution, and yet not
competent to pass the most trivial Act for the repairing of a pier or
the building of a parish church?

These arguments would have had considerable weight, even if every
precedent had been on the other side. But in truth our history afforded
only one precedent which was at all in point; and that precedent
was decisive in favour of the doctrine that royal writs are not
indispensably necessary to the existence of a Parliament. No royal writ
had summoned the Convention which recalled Charles the Second. Yet
that Convention had, after his Restoration, continued to sit and to
legislate, had settled the revenue, had passed an Act of amnesty, had
abolished the feudal tenures. These proceedings had been sanctioned by
authority of which no party in the state could speak without reverence.
Hale had borne a considerable share in them, and had always maintained
that they were strictly legal. Clarendon, little as he was inclined to
favour any doctrine derogatory to the rights of the Crown, or to the
dignity of that seal of which he was keeper, had declared that, since
God had, at a most critical conjuncture, given the nation a good
Parliament, it would be the height of folly to look for technical flaws
in the instrument by which that Parliament was called together. Would
it be pretended by any Tory that the Convention of 1660 had a more
respectable origin than the Convention of 1689? Was not a letter written
by the first Prince of the Blood, at the request of the whole peerage,
and of hundreds of gentlemen who had represented counties and towns, at
least as good a warrant as a vote of the Rump?

Weaker reasons than these would have satisfied the Whigs who formed
the majority of the Privy Council. The King therefore, on the fifth
day after he had been proclaimed, went with royal state to the House of
Lords, and took his seat on the throne. The Commons were called in; and
he, with many gracious expressions, reminded his hearers of the perilous
situation of the country, and exhorted them to take such steps as might
prevent unnecessary delay in the transaction of public business. His
speech was received by the gentlemen who crowded the bar with the deep
hum by which our ancestors were wont to indicate approbation, and which
was often heard in places more sacred than the Chamber of the Peers.
[32] As soon as he had retired, a Bill declaring the Convention a
Parliament was laid on the table of the Lords, and rapidly passed by
them. In the Commons the debates were warm. The House resolved itself
into a Committee; and so great was the excitement that, when the
authority of the Speaker was withdrawn, it was hardly possible to
preserve order. Sharp personalities were exchanged. The phrase, "hear
him," a phrase which had originally been used only to silence
irregular noises, and to remind members of the duty of attending to the
discussion, had, during some years, been gradually becoming what it
now is; that is to say, a cry indicative, according to the tone, of
admiration, acquiescence, indignation, or derision. On this occasion,
the Whigs vociferated "Hear, hear," so tumultuously that the Tories
complained of unfair usage. Seymour, the leader of the minority,
declared that there could be no freedom of debate while such clamour was
tolerated. Some old Whig members were provoked into reminding him that
the same clamour had occasionally been heard when he presided, and had
not then been repressed. Yet, eager and angry as both sides were, the
speeches on both sides indicated that profound reverence for law and
prescription which has long been characteristic of Englishmen, and
which, though it runs sometimes into pedantry and sometimes into
superstition, is not without its advantages.
Even at that momentous
crisis, when the nation was still in the ferment of a revolution, our
public men talked long and seriously about all the circumstances of the
deposition of Edward the Second and of the deposition of Richard
the Second, and anxiously inquired whether the assembly which, with
Archbishop Lanfranc at its head, set aside Robert of Normandy, and put
William Rufus on the throne, did or did not afterwards continue to act
as the legislature of the realm. Much was said about the history
of writs; much about the etymology of the word Parliament. It is
remarkable, that the orator who took the most statesmanlike view of the
subject was old Maynard. In the civil conflicts of fifty eventful years
he had learned that questions affecting the highest interests of the
commonwealth were not to be decided by verbal cavils and by scraps of
Law French and Law Latin; and, being by universal acknowledgment the
most subtle and the most learned of English jurists, he could express
what he felt without the risk of being accused of ignorance and
presumption. He scornfully thrust aside as frivolous and out of place
all that blackletter learning, which some men, far less versed in such
matters than himself, had introduced into the discussion. "We are,"
he said, "at this moment out of the beaten path. If therefore we are
determined to move only in that path, we cannot move at all. A man in
a revolution resolving to do nothing which is not strictly according to
established form resembles a man who has lost himself in the wilderness,
and who stands crying 'Where is the king's highway? I will walk nowhere
but on the king's highway. ' In a wilderness a man should take the track
which will carry him home. In a revolution we must have recourse to
the highest law, the safety of the state. " Another veteran Roundhead,
Colonel Birch, took the same side, and argued with great force and
keenness from the precedent of 1660. Seymour and his supporters were
beaten in the Committee, and did not venture to divide the House on the
Report. The Bill passed rapidly, and received the royal assent on the
tenth day after the accession of William and Mary. [33]

The law which turned the Convention into a Parliament contained a clause
providing that no person should, after the first of March, sit or vote
in either House without taking the oaths to the new King and Queen. This
enactment produced great agitation throughout society. The adherents of
the exiled dynasty hoped and confidently predicted that the recusants
would be numerous. The minority in both Houses, it was said, would be
true to the cause of hereditary monarchy. There might be here and there
a traitor; but the great body of those who had voted for a Regency would
be firm. Only two Bishops at most would recognise the usurpers. Seymour
would retire from public life rather than abjure his principles. Grafton
had determined to fly to France and to throw himself at the feet of his
uncle. With such rumours as these all the coffeehouses of London were
filled during the latter part of February. So intense was the public
anxiety that, if any man of rank was missed, two days running, at his
usual haunts, it was immediately whispered that he had stolen away to
Saint Germains. [34]

The second of March arrived; and the event quieted the fears of one
party, and confounded the hopes of the other. The Primate indeed and
several of his suffragans stood obstinately aloof: but three Bishops and
seventy-three temporal peers took the oaths. At the next meeting of the
Upper House several more prelates came in. Within a week about a hundred
Lords had qualified themselves to sit. Others, who were prevented by
illness from appearing, sent excuses and professions of attachment
to their Majesties. Grafton refuted all the stories which had been
circulated about him by coming to be sworn on the first day. Two members
of the Ecclesiastical Commission, Mulgrave and Sprat, hastened to make
atonement for their fault by plighting their faith to William. Beaufort,
who had long been considered as the type of a royalist of the old
school, submitted after a very short hesitation. Aylesbury and
Dartmouth, though vehement Jacobites, had as little scruple about taking
the oath of allegiance as they afterwards had about breaking it. [35]
The Hydes took different paths. Rochester complied with the law; but
Clarendon proved refractory. Many thought it strange that the brother
who had adhered to James till James absconded should be less sturdy than
the brother who had been in the Dutch camp. The explanation perhaps
is that Rochester would have sacrificed much more than Clarendon by
refusing to take the oaths. Clarendon's income did not depend on the
pleasure of the Government but Rochester had a pension of four thousand
a year, which he could not hope to retain if he refused to acknowledge
the new Sovereigns. Indeed, he had so many enemies that, during some
months, it seemed doubtful whether he would, on any terms, be suffered
to retain the splendid reward which he had earned by persecuting the
Whigs and by sitting in the High Commission. He was saved from what
would have been a fatal blow to his fortunes by the intercession of
Burnet, who had been deeply injured by him, and who revenged himself as
became a Christian divine. [36]

In the Lower House four hundred members were sworn in on the second
of March; and among them was Seymour. The spirit of the Jacobites was
broken by his defection; and the minority with very few exceptions
followed his example. [37]

Before the day fixed for the taking of the oaths, the Commons had begun
to discuss a momentous question which admitted of no delay. During the
interregnum, William had, as provisional chief of the administration,
collected the taxes and applied them to the public service; nor could
the propriety of this course be questioned by any person who approved
of the Revolution. But the Revolution was now over: the vacancy of the
throne had been supplied: the Houses were sitting: the law was in full
force; and it became necessary immediately to decide to what revenue the
Government was entitled.

Nobody denied that all the lands and hereditaments of the Crown had
passed with the Crown to the new Sovereigns. Nobody denied that all
duties which had been granted to the Crown for a fixed term of years
might be constitutionally exacted till that term should expire. But
large revenues had been settled by Parliament on James for life; and
whether what had been settled on James for life could, while he lived,
be claimed by William and Mary, was a question about which opinions were
divided.

Holt, Treby, Pollexfen, indeed all the eminent Whig lawyers, Somers
excepted, held that these revenues had been granted to the late King, in
his political capacity, but for his natural life, and ought therefore,
as long as he continued to drag on his existence in a strange land,
to be paid to William and Mary. It appears from a very concise and
unconnected report of the debate that Somers dissented from this
doctrine. His opinion was that, if the Act of Parliament which had
imposed the duties in question was to be construed according to the
spirit, the word life must be understood to mean reign, and that
therefore the term for which the grant had been made had expired. This
was surely the sound opinion: for it was plainly irrational to treat the
interest of James in this grant as at once a thing annexed to his
person and a thing annexed to his office; to say in one breath that the
merchants of London and Bristol must pay money because he was naturally
alive, and that his successors must receive that money because he was
politically defunct. The House was decidedly with Somers. The members
generally were bent on effecting a great reform, without which it was
felt that the Declaration of Rights would be but an imperfect guarantee
for public liberty. During the conflict which fifteen successive
Parliaments had maintained against four successive Kings, the chief
weapon of the Commons had been the power of the purse; and never had
the representatives of the people been induced to surrender that weapon
without having speedy cause to repent of their too credulous loyalty.
In that season of tumultuous joy which followed the Restoration, a large
revenue for life had been almost by acclamation granted to Charles the
Second. A few months later there was scarcely a respectable Cavalier in
the kingdom who did not own that the stewards of the nation would have
acted more wisely if they had kept in their hands the means of checking
the abuses which disgraced every department of the government. James
the Second had obtained from his submissive Parliament, without a
dissentient voice, an income sufficient to defray the ordinary expenses
of the state during his life; and, before he had enjoyed that income
half a year, the great majority of those who had dealt thus liberally
with him blamed themselves severely for their liberality. If experience
was to be trusted, a long and painful experience, there could be no
effectual security against maladministration, unless the Sovereign were
under the necessity of recurring frequently to his Great Council for
pecuniary aid. Almost all honest and enlightened men were therefore
agreed in thinking that a part at least of the supplies ought to be
granted only for short terms. And what time could be fitter for the
introduction of this new practice than the year 1689, the commencement
of a new reign, of a new dynasty, of a new era of constitutional
government? The feeling on this subject was so strong and general that
the dissentient minority gave way. No formal resolution was passed; but
the House proceeded to act on the supposition that the grants which had
been made to James for life had been annulled by his abdication. [38]

It was impossible to make a new settlement of the revenue without
inquiry and deliberation. The Exchequer was ordered to furnish such
returns as might enable the House to form estimates of the public
expenditure and income. In the meantime, liberal provision was made
for the immediate exigencies of the state. An extraordinary aid, to be
raised by direct monthly assessment, was voted to the King. An Act was
passed indemnifying all who had, since his landing, collected by his
authority the duties settled on James; and those duties which had
expired were continued for some months.

Along William's whole line of march, from Torbay to London, he had been
importuned by the common people to relieve them from the intolerable
burden of the hearth money. In truth, that tax seems to have united all
the worst evils which can be imputed to any tax. It was unequal, and
unequal in the most pernicious way: for it pressed heavily on the poor,
and lightly on the rich. A peasant, all whose property was not worth
twenty pounds, was charged ten shillings. The Duke of Ormond, or the
Duke of Newcastle, whose estates were worth half a million, paid only
four or five pounds. The collectors were empowered to examine the
interior of every house in the realm, to disturb families at meals,
to force the doors of bedrooms, and, if the sum demanded were not
punctually paid, to sell the trencher on which the barley loaf was
divided among the poor children, and the pillow from under the head
of the lying-in woman. Nor could the Treasury effectually restrain the
chimneyman from using his powers with harshness: for the tax was farmed;
and the government was consequently forced to connive at outrages and
exactions such as have, in every age made the name of publican a proverb
for all that is most hateful.

William had been so much moved by what he had heard of these grievances
that, at one of the earliest sittings of the Privy Council, he
introduced the subject. He sent a message requesting the House of
Commons to consider whether better regulations would effectually prevent
the abuses which had excited so much discontent. He added that he would
willingly consent to the entire abolition of the tax if it should appear
that the tax and the abuses were inseparable. [39] This communication
was received with loud applause. There were indeed some financiers of
the old school who muttered that tenderness for the poor was a fine
thing; but that no part of the revenue of the state came in so exactly
to the day as the hearth money; that the goldsmiths of the City could
not always be induced to lend on the security of the next quarter's
customs or excise, but that on an assignment of hearth money there was
no difficulty in obtaining advances. In the House of Commons, those who
thought thus did not venture to raise their voices in opposition to
the general feeling. But in the Lords there was a conflict of which the
event for a time seemed doubtful. At length the influence of the
Court, strenuously exerted, carried an Act by which the chimney tax was
declared a badge of slavery, and was, with many expressions of gratitude
to the King, abolished for ever. [40]

The Commons granted, with little dispute, and without a division,
six hundred thousand pounds for the purpose of repaying to the United
Provinces the charges of the expedition which had delivered England. The
facility with which this large sum was voted to a shrewd, diligent and
thrifty people, our allies, indeed, politically, but commercially our
most formidable rivals, excited some murmurs out of doors, and
was, during many years, a favourite subject of sarcasm with Tory
pamphleteers. [41] The liberality of the House admits however of an
easy explanation. On the very day on which the subject was under
consideration, alarming news arrived at Westminster, and convinced many,
who would at another time have been disposed to scrutinise severely any
account sent in by the Dutch, that our country could not yet dispense
with the services of the foreign troops.

France had declared war against the States General; and the States
General had consequently demanded from the King of England those
succours which he was bound by the treaty of Nimeguen to furnish. [42]
He had ordered some battalions to march to Harwich, that they might be
in readiness to cross to the Continent. The old soldiers of James
were generally in a very bad temper; and this order did not produce a
soothing effect. The discontent was greatest in the regiment which now
ranks as first of the line. Though borne on the English establishment,
that regiment, from the time when it first fought under the great
Gustavus, had been almost exclusively composed of Scotchmen; and
Scotchmen have never, in any region to which their adventurous and
aspiring temper has led them, failed to note and to resent every slight
offered to Scotland. Officers and men muttered that a vote of a foreign
assembly was nothing to them. If they could be absolved from their
allegiance to King James the Seventh, it must be by the Estates at
Edinburgh, and not by the Convention at Westminster. Their ill humour
increased when they heard that Schomberg had been appointed their
colonel. They ought perhaps to have thought it an honour to be called by
the name of the greatest soldier in Europe. But, brave and skilful as
he was, he was not their countryman: and their regiment, during the
fifty-six years which had elapsed since it gained its first honourable
distinctions in Germany, had never been commanded but by a Hepburn or a
Douglas. While they were in this angry and punctilious mood, they were
ordered to join the forces which were assembling at Harwich. There was
much murmuring; but there was no outbreak till the regiment arrived at
Ipswich. There the signal of revolt was given by two captains who were
zealous for the exiled King. The market place was soon filled with
pikemen and musketeers running to and fro. Gunshots were wildly fired
in all directions. Those officers who attempted to restrain the rioters
were overpowered and disarmed. At length the chiefs of the insurrection
established some order, and marched out of Ipswich at the head of their
adherents. The little army consisted of about eight hundred men. They
had seized four pieces of cannon, and had taken possession of the
military chest, which contained a considerable sum of money. At the
distance of half a mile from the town a halt was called: a general
consultation was held; and the mutineers resolved that they would hasten
back to their native country, and would live and die with their rightful
King. They instantly proceeded northward by forced marches. [43]

When the news reached London the dismay was great. It was rumoured that
alarming symptoms had appeared in other regiments, and particularly
that a body of fusileers which lay at Harwich was likely to imitate the
example set at Ipswich. "If these Scots," said Halifax to Reresby,
"are unsupported, they are lost. But if they have acted in concert with
others, the danger is serious indeed. " [44] The truth seems to be that
there was a conspiracy which had ramifications in many parts of the
army, but that the conspirators were awed by the firmness of the
government and of the Parliament. A committee of the Privy Council
was sitting when the tidings of the mutiny arrived in London. William
Harbord, who represented the borough of Launceston, was at the board.
His colleagues entreated him to go down instantly to the House of
Commons, and to relate what had happened. He went, rose in his place,
and told his story. The spirit of the assembly rose to the occasion.
Howe was the first to call for vigorous action. "Address the King," he
said, "to send his Dutch troops after these men. I know not who else can
be trusted. " "This is no jesting matter," said old Birch, who had been a
colonel in the service of the Parliament, and had seen the most powerful
and renowned House of Commons that ever sate twice purged and twice
expelled by its own soldiers; "if you let this evil spread, you will
have an army upon you in a few days. Address the King to send horse and
foot instantly, his own men, men whom he can trust, and to put these
people down at once. " The men of the long robe caught the flame. "It
is not the learning of my profession that is needed here," said Treby.
"What is now to be done is to meet force with force, and to maintain
in the field what we have done in the senate. " "Write to the Sheriffs,"
said Colonel Mildmay, member for Essex. "Raise the militia. There are a
hundred and fifty thousand of them: they are good Englishmen: they will
not fail you. " It was resolved that all members of the House who
held commissions in the army should be dispensed from parliamentary
attendance, in order that they might repair instantly to their military
posts. An address was unanimously voted requesting the King to take
effectual steps for the suppression of the rebellion, and to put forth
a proclamation denouncing public vengeance on the rebels. One gentleman
hinted that it might be well to advise his Majesty to offer a pardon
to those who should peaceably submit: but the House wisely rejected the
suggestion. "This is no time," it was well said, "for any thing that
looks like fear. " The address was instantly sent up to the Lords.
The Lords concurred in it. Two peers, two knights of shires, and two
burgesses were sent with it to Court. William received them graciously,
and informed them that he had already given the necessary orders. In
fact, several regiments of horse and dragoons had been sent northward
under the command of Ginkell, one of the bravest and ablest officers of
the Dutch army. [45]

Meanwhile the mutineers were hastening across the country which lies
between Cambridge and the Wash. Their road lay through a vast and
desolate fen, saturated with all the moisture of thirteen counties, and
overhung during the greater part of the year by a low grey mist, high
above which rose, visible many miles, the magnificent tower of Ely. In
that dreary region, covered by vast flights of wild fowl, a half savage
population, known by the name of the Breedlings, then led an amphibious
life, sometimes wading, and sometimes rowing, from one islet of firm
ground to another. [46] The roads were amongst the worst in the island,
and, as soon as rumour announced the approach of the rebels, were
studiously made worse by the country people. Bridges were broken down.
Trees were laid across the highways to obstruct the progress of the
cannon. Nevertheless the Scotch veterans not only pushed forward with
great speed, but succeeded in carrying their artillery with them. They
entered Lincolnshire, and were not far from Sleaford, when they learned
that Ginkell with an irresistible force was close on their track.
Victory and escape were equally out of the question. The bravest
warriors could not contend against fourfold odds. The most active
infantry could not outrun horsemen. Yet the leaders, probably despairing
of pardon, urged the men to try the chance of battle. In that region, a
spot almost surrounded by swamps and pools was without difficulty found.
Here the insurgents were drawn up; and the cannon were planted at the
only point which was thought not to be sufficiently protected by natural
defences. Ginkell ordered the attack to be made at a place which was
out of the range of the guns; and his dragoons dashed gallantly into the
water, though it was so deep that their horses were forced to swim. Then
the mutineers lost heart. They beat a parley, surrendered at discretion,
and were brought up to London under a strong guard. Their lives were
forfeit: for they had been guilty, not merely of mutiny, which was
then not a legal crime, but of levying war against the King. William,
however, with politic clemency, abstained from shedding the blood even
of the most culpable. A few of the ringleaders were brought to trial
at the next Bury assizes, and were convicted of high treason; but their
lives were spared. The rest were merely ordered to return to their duty.
The regiment, lately so refractory, went submissively to the Continent,
and there, through many hard campaigns, distinguished itself by
fidelity, by discipline, and by valour. [47]

This event facilitated an important change in our polity, a change
which, it is true, could not have been long delayed, but which would not
have been easily accomplished except at a moment of extreme danger. The
time had at length arrived at which it was necessary to make a legal
distinction between the soldier and the citizen. Under the Plantagenets
and the Tudors there had been no standing army. The standing army
which had existed under the last kings of the House of Stuart had been
regarded by every party in the state with strong and not unreasonable
aversion. The common law gave the Sovereign no power to control his
troops. The Parliament, regarding them as mere tools of tyranny, had not
been disposed to give such power by statute. James indeed had
induced his corrupt and servile judges to put on some obsolete laws a
construction which enabled him to punish desertion capitally. But this
construction was considered by all respectable jurists as unsound,
and, had it been sound, would have been far from effecting all that was
necessary for the purpose of maintaining military discipline. Even James
did not venture to inflict death by sentence of a court martial. The
deserter was treated as an ordinary felon, was tried at the assizes by a
petty jury on a bill found by a grand jury, and was at liberty to
avail himself of any technical flaw which might be discovered in the
indictment.

The Revolution, by altering the relative position of the prince and the
parliament, had altered also the relative position of the army and the
nation. The King and the Commons were now at unity; and both were alike
menaced by the greatest military power which had existed in Europe
since the downfall of the Roman empire. In a few weeks thirty thousand
veterans, accustomed to conquer, and led by able and experienced
captains, might cross from the ports of Normandy and Brittany to our
shores. That such a force would with little difficulty scatter three
times that number of militia, no man well acquainted with war could
doubt. There must then be regular soldiers; and, if there were to be
regular soldiers, it must be indispensable, both to their efficiency,
and to the security of every other class, that they should be kept under
a strict discipline. An ill disciplined army has ever been a more costly
and a more licentious militia, impotent against a foreign enemy, and
formidable only to the country which it is paid to defend. A strong line
of demarcation must therefore be drawn between the soldiers and the
rest of the community. For the sake of public freedom, they must, in the
midst of freedom, be placed under a despotic rule. They must be subject
to a sharper penal code, and to a more stringent code of procedure,
than are administered by the ordinary tribunals. Some acts which in the
citizen are innocent must in the soldier be crimes. Some acts which in
the citizen are punished with fine or imprisonment must in the soldier
be punished with death. The machinery by which courts of law ascertain
the guilt or innocence of an accused citizen is too slow and too
intricate to be applied to an accused soldier. For, of all the maladies
incident to the body politic, military insubordination is that which
requires the most prompt and drastic remedies. If the evil be not
stopped as soon as it appears, it is certain to spread; and it cannot
spread far without danger to the very vitals of the commonwealth. For
the general safety, therefore, a summary jurisdiction of terrible extent
must, in camps, be entrusted to rude tribunals composed of men of the
sword.

But, though it was certain that the country could not at that moment
be secure without professional soldiers, and equally certain that
professional soldiers must be worse than useless unless they were placed
under a rule more arbitrary and severe than that to which other men were
subject, it was not without great misgivings that a House of Commons
could venture to recognise the existence and to make provision for the
government of a standing army. There was scarcely a public man of note
who had not often avowed his conviction that our polity and a standing
army could not exist together. The Whigs had been in the constant habit
of repeating that standing armies had destroyed the free institutions of
the neighbouring nations. The Tories had repeated as constantly that, in
our own island, a standing army had subverted the Church, oppressed the
gentry, and murdered the King. No leader of either party could, without
laying himself open to the charge of gross inconsistency, propose that
such an army should henceforth be one of the permanent establishments
of the realm. The mutiny at Ipswich, and the panic which that mutiny
produced, made it easy to effect what would otherwise have been in the
highest degree difficult. A short bill was brought in which began by
declaring, in explicit terms, that standing armies and courts martial
were unknown to the law of England. It was then enacted that, on account
of the extreme perils impending at that moment over the state, no man
mustered on pay in the service of the crown should, on pain of death,
or of such lighter punishment as a court martial should deem sufficient,
desert his colours or mutiny against his commanding officers. This
statute was to be in force only six months; and many of those who voted
for it probably believed that it would, at the close of that period,
be suffered to expire. The bill passed rapidly and easily. Not a single
division was taken upon it in the House of Commons. A mitigating clause
indeed, which illustrates somewhat curiously the manners of that age,
was added by way of rider after the third reading. This clause provided
that no court martial should pass sentence of death except between the
hours of six in the morning and one in the afternoon. The dinner hour
was then early; and it was but too probable that a gentleman who had
dined would be in a state in which he could not safely be trusted with
the lives of his fellow creatures. With this amendment, the first and
most concise of our many Mutiny Bills was sent up to the Lords, and was,
in a few hours, hurried by them through all its stages and passed by the
King. [48]

Thus was made, without one dissentient voice in Parliament, without one
murmur in the nation, the first step towards a change which had become
necessary to the safety of the state, yet which every party in the state
then regarded with extreme dread and aversion.