No More Learning

To him
she was always a land of exile, visited with reluctance and quitted with
delight. Even when he rendered to her those services of which, at this
day, we feel the happy effects, her welfare was not his chief object.
Whatever patriotic feeling he had was for Holland. There was the stately
tomb where slept the great politician whose blood, whose name, whose
temperament, and whose genius he had inherited. There the very sound of
his title was a spell which had, through three generations, called forth
the affectionate enthusiasm of boors and artisans. The Dutch language
was the language of his nursery. Among the Dutch gentry he had chosen
his early friends. The amusements, the architecture, the landscape of
his native country, had taken hold on his heart. To her he turned with
constant fondness from a prouder and fairer rival. In the gallery of
Whitehall he pined for the familiar House in the Wood at the Hague, and
never was so happy as when he could quit the magnificence of Windsor for
his far humbler seat at Loo. During his splendid banishment it was his
consolation to create round him, by building, planting, and digging, a
scene which might remind him of the formal piles of red brick, of the
long canals, and of the symmetrical flower beds amidst which his early
life had been passed. Yet even his affection for the land of his birth
was subordinate to another feeling which early became supreme in his
soul, which mixed itself with all his passions, which impelled him
to marvellous enterprises, which supported him when sinking under
mortification, pain, sickness, and sorrow, which, towards the close of
his career, seemed during a short time to languish, but which soon broke
forth again fiercer than ever, and continued to animate him even while
the prayer for the departing was read at his bedside. That feeling was
enmity to France, and to the magnificent King who, in more than one
sense, represented France, and who to virtues and accomplishments
eminently French joined in large measure that unquiet, unscrupulous,
and vainglorious ambition which has repeatedly drawn on France the
resentment of Europe.

It is not difficult to trace the progress of the sentiment which
gradually possessed itself of William's whole soul. When he was little
more than a boy his country had been attacked by Lewis in ostentatious
defiance of justice and public law, had been overrun, had
been desolated, had been given up to every excess of rapacity,
licentiousness, and cruelty. The Dutch had in dismay humbled themselves
before the conqueror, and had implored mercy. They had been told in
reply that, if they desired peace, they must resign their independence
and do annual homage to the House of Bourbon. The injured nation, driven
to despair, had opened its dykes and had called in the sea as an ally
against the French tyranny. It was in the agony of that conflict, when
peasants were flying in terror before the invaders, when hundreds of
fair gardens and pleasure houses were buried beneath the waves, when
the deliberations of the States were interrupted by the fainting and
the loud weeping of ancient senators who could not bear the thought of
surviving the freedom and glory of their native land, that William had
been called to the head of affairs. For a time it seemed to him that
resistance was hopeless. He looked round for succour, and looked in
vain. Spain was unnerved, Germany distracted, England corrupted. Nothing
seemed left to the young Stadtholder but to perish sword in hand, or to
be the Aeneas of a great emigration, and to create another Holland in
countries beyond the reach of the tyranny of France. No obstacle would
then remain to check the progress of the House of Bourbon. A few years,
and that House might add to its dominions Loraine and Flanders, Castile
and Aragon, Naples and Milan, Mexico and Peru. Lewis might wear the
imperial crown, might place a prince of his family on the throne of
Poland, might be sole master of Europe from the Scythian deserts to
the Atlantic Ocean, and of America from regions north of the Tropic
of Cancer to regions south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Such was the
prospect which lay before William when first he entered on public life,
and which never ceased to haunt him till his latest day. The French
monarchy was to him what the Roman republic was to Hannibal, what the
Ottoman power was to Scanderbeg, what the southern domination was to
Wallace. Religion gave her sanction to that intense and unquenchable
animosity. Hundreds of Calvinistic preachers proclaimed that the same
power which had set apart Samson from the womb to be the scourge of
the Philistine, and which had called Gideon from the threshing floor to
smite the Midianite, had raised up William of Orange to be the champion
of all free nations and of all pure Churches; nor was this notion
without influence on his own mind. To the confidence which the heroic
fatalist placed in his high destiny and in his sacred cause is to be
partly attributed his singular indifference to danger. He had a great
work to do; and till it was done nothing could harm him. Therefore it
was that, in spite of the prognostications of physicians, he recovered
from maladies which seemed hopeless, that bands of assassins conspired
in vain against his life, that the open skiff to which he trusted
himself on a starless night, on a raging ocean, and near a treacherous
shore, brought him safe to land, and that, on twenty fields of battle,
the cannon balls passed him by to right and left. The ardour and
perseverance with which he devoted himself to his mission have scarcely
any parallel in history. In comparison with his great object he held the
lives of other men as cheap as his own. It was but too much the habit,
even of the most humane and generous soldiers of that age, to think very
lightly of the bloodshed and devastation inseparable from great martial
exploits; and the heart of William was steeled, not only by professional
insensibility, but by that sterner insensibility which is the effect of
a sense of duty. Three great coalitions, three long and bloody wars in
which all Europe from the Vistula to the Western Ocean was in arms,
are to be ascribed to his unconquerable energy. When in 1678 the States
General, exhausted and disheartened, were desirious of repose, his voice
was still against sheathing the sword. If peace was made, it was made
only because he could not breathe into other men a spirit as fierce and
determined as his own. At the very last moment, in the hope of breaking
off the negotiation which he knew to be all but concluded, he fought one
of the most bloody and obstinate battles of that age. From the day on
which the treaty of Nimeguen was signed, he began to meditate a second
coalition. His contest with Lewis, transferred from the field to the
cabinet, was soon exasperated by a private feud. In talents, temper,
manners and opinions, the rivals were diametrically opposed to each
other. Lewis, polite and dignified, profuse and voluptuous, fond of
display and averse from danger, a munificent patron of arts and letters,
and a cruel persecutor of Calvinists, presented a remarkable contrast
to William, simple in tastes, ungracious in demeanour, indefatigable and
intrepid in war, regardless of all the ornamental branches of knowledge,
and firmly attached to the theology of Geneva. The enemies did not long
observe those courtesies which men of their rank, even when opposed to
each other at the head of armies, seldom neglect. William, indeed,
went through the form of tendering his best services to Lewis. But this
civility was rated at its true value, and requited with a dry reprimand.
The great King affected contempt for the petty Prince who was the
servant of a confederacy of trading towns; and to every mark of contempt
the dauntless Stadtholder replied by a fresh defiance. William took his
title, a title which the events of the preceding century had made one of
the most illustrious in Europe, from a city which lies on the banks of
the Rhone not far from Avignon, and which, like Avignon, though inclosed
on every side by the French territory, was properly a fief not of the
French but of the Imperial Crown. Lewis, with that ostentatious
contempt of public law which was characteristic of him, occupied Orange,
dismantled the fortifications, and confiscated the revenues. William
declared aloud at his table before many persons that he would make the
most Christian King repent the outrage, and, when questioned about these
words by the Count of Avaux, positively refused either to retract them
or to explain them away. The quarrel was carried so far that the French
minister could not venture to present himself at the drawing room of the
Princess for fear of receiving some affront. [220]

The feeling with which William regarded France explains the whole of his
policy towards England. His public spirit was an European public spirit.
The chief object of his care was not our island, not even his native
Holland, but the great community of nations threatened with subjugation
by one too powerful member. Those who commit the error of considering
him as an English statesman must necessarily see his whole life in a
false light, and will be unable to discover any principle, good or bad,
Whig or Tory, to which his most important acts can be referred. But,
when we consider him as a man whose especial task was to join a crowd
of feeble, divided and dispirited states in firm and energetic union
against a common enemy, when we consider him as a man in whose eyes
England was important chiefly because, without her, the great coalition
which he projected must be incomplete, we shall be forced to admit
that no long career recorded in history has been more uniform from the
beginning to the close than that of this great Prince. [221]

The clue of which we are now possessed will enable us to track without
difficulty the course, in reality consistent, though in appearance
sometimes tortuous, which he pursued towards our domestic factions.
He clearly saw what had not escaped persons far inferior to him in
sagacity, that the enterprise on which his whole soul was intent
would probably be successful if England were on his side, would be
of uncertain issue if England were neutral, and would be hopeless if
England acted as she had acted in the days of the Cabal. He saw not less
clearly that between the foreign policy and the domestic policy of the
English government there was a close connection; that the sovereign of
this country, acting in harmony with the legislature, must always have a
great sway in the affairs of Christendom, and must also have an obvious
interest in opposing the undue aggrandisement of any continental
potentate; that, on the other hand, the sovereign, distrusted and
thwarted by the legislature, could be of little weight in European
politics, and that the whole of that little weight would be thrown into
the wrong scale. The Prince's first wish therefore was that there should
be concord between the throne and the Parliament. How that concord
should be established, and on which side concessions should be made,
were, in his view, questions of secondary importance. He would have
been best pleased, no doubt, to see a complete reconciliation effected
without the sacrifice of one tittle of the prerogative. For in the
integrity of that prerogative he had a reversionary interest; and
he was, by nature, at least as covetous of power and as impatient of
restraint as any of the Stuarts. But there was no flower of the crown
which he was not prepared to sacrifice, even after the crown had been
placed on his own head, if he could only be convinced that such a
sacrifice was indispensably necessary to his great design. In the days
of the Popish plot, therefore, though he disapproved of the violence
with which the opposition attacked the royal authority, he exhorted
the government to give way. The conduct of the Commons, he said, as
respected domestic affairs, was most unreasonable but while the Commons
were discontented the liberties of Europe could never be safe; and to
that paramount consideration every other consideration ought to yield.
On these principles he acted when the Exclusion Bill had thrown
the nation into convulsions. There is no reason to believe that he
encouraged the opposition to bring forward that bill or to reject the
offers of compromise which were repeatedly made from the throne. But
when it became clear that, unless that bill were carried, there would
be a serious breach between the Commons and the court, he indicated
very intelligibly, though with decorous reserve, his opinion that the
representatives of the people ought to be conciliated at any price. When
a violent and rapid reflux of public feeling had left the Whig party for
a time utterly helpless, he attempted to attain his grand object by a
new road perhaps more agreeable to his temper than that which he had
previously tried. In the altered temper of the nation there was little
chance that any Parliament disposed to cross the wishes of the sovereign
would be elected. Charles was for a time master. To gain Charles,
therefore, was the Prince's first wish. In the summer of 1683, almost
at the moment at which the detection of the Rye House Plot made the
discomfiture of the Whigs and the triumph of the King complete, events
took place elsewhere which William could not behold without extreme
anxiety and alarm. The Turkish armies advanced to the suburbs of Vienna.
The great Austrian monarchy, on the support of which the Prince had
reckoned, seemed to be on the point of destruction. Bentinck was
therefore sent in haste from the Hague to London, was charged to omit
nothing which might be necessary to conciliate the English court, and
was particularly instructed to express in the strongest terms the horror
with which his master regarded the Whig conspiracy.

During the eighteen months which followed, there was some hope that
the influence of Halifax would prevail, and that the court of Whitehall
would return to the policy of the Triple Alliance. To that hope William
fondly clung. He spared no effort to propitiate Charles. The hospitality
which Monmouth found at the Hague is chiefly to be ascribed to the
Prince's anxiety to gratify the real wishes of Monmouth's father.
As soon as Charles died, William, still adhering unchangeably to his
object, again changed his course. He had sheltered Monmouth to please
the late King. That the present King might have no reason to complain
Monmouth was dismissed. We have seen that, when the Western insurrection
broke out, the British regiments in the Dutch service were, by the
active exertions of the Prince, sent over to their own country on the
first requisition. Indeed William even offered to command in person
against the rebels; and that the offer was made in perfect sincerity
cannot be doubted by those who have perused his confidential letters to
Bentinck. [222]

The Prince was evidently at this time inclined to hope that the great
plan to which in his mind everything else was subordinate might obtain
the approbation and support of his father in law. The high tone which
James was then holding towards France, the readiness with which he
consented to a defensive alliance with the United Provinces, the
inclination which he showed to connect himself with the House of
Austria, encouraged this expectation. But in a short time the prospect
was darkened. The disgrace of Halifax, the breach between James and the
Parliament, the prorogation: the announcement distinctly made by the
King to the foreign ministers that continental politics should no longer
divert his attention from internal measures tending to strengthen his
prerogative and to promote the interest of his Church, put an end to
the delusion. It was plain that, when the European crisis came, England
would, if James were her master, either remain inactive or act in
conjunction with France. And the European crisis was drawing near. The
House of Austria had, by a succession of victories, been secured from
danger on the side of Turkey, and was no longer under the necessity
of submitting patiently to the encroachments and insults of Lewis.
Accordingly, in July 1686, a treaty was signed at Augsburg by which the
Princes of the Empire bound themselves closely together for the purpose
of mutual defence. The Kings of Spain and Sweden were parties to this
compact, the King of Spain as sovereign of the provinces contained in
the circle of Burgundy, and the King of Sweden as Duke of Pomerania. The
confederates declared that they had no intention to attack and no
wish to offend any power, but that they were determined to tolerate
no infraction of those rights which the Germanic body held under the
sanction of public law and public faith. They pledged themselves to
stand by each other in case of need, and fixed the amount of force which
each member of the league was to furnish if it should be necessary
to repel aggression. [223] The name of William did not appear in this
instrument: but all men knew that it was his work, and foresaw that
he would in no long time be again the captain of a coalition against
France. Between him and the vassal of France there could, in such
circumstances, be no cordial good will. There was no open rupture, no
interchange of menaces or reproaches. But the father in law and the son
in law were separated completely and for ever.

At the very time at which the Prince was thus estranged from the English
court, the causes which had hitherto produced a coolness between him
and the two great sections of the English people disappeared. A large
portion, perhaps a numerical majority, of the Whigs had favoured the
pretensions of Monmouth: but Monmouth was now no more. The Tories, on
the other hand, had entertained apprehensions that the interests of the
Anglican Church might not be safe under the rule of a man bred among
Dutch Presbyterians, and well known to hold latitudinarian opinions
about robes, ceremonies, and Bishops: but, since that beloved Church
had been threatened by far more formidable dangers from a very different
quarter, these apprehensions had lost almost all their power. Thus, at
the same moment, both the great parties began to fix their hopes and
their affections on the same leader. Old republicans could not refuse
their confidence to one who had worthily filled, during many years,
the highest magistracy of a republic. Old royalists conceived that they
acted according to their principles in paying profound respect to a
prince so near to the throne. At this conjuncture it was of the highest
moment that there should be entire union between William and Mary. A
misunderstanding between the presumptive heiress of the crown and her
husband must have produced a schism in that vast mass which was from all
quarters gathering round one common rallying point. Happily all risk
of such misunderstanding was averted in the critical instant by the
interposition of Burnet; and the Prince became the unquestioned chief
of the whole of that party which was opposed to the government, a party
almost coextensive with the nation.

There is not the least reason to believe that he at this time meditated
the great enterprise to which a stern necessity afterwards drove him. He
was aware that the public mind of England, though heated by grievances,
was by no means ripe for revolution. He would doubtless gladly have
avoided the scandal which must be the effect of a mortal quarrel
between persons bound together by the closest ties of consanguinity and
affinity. Even his ambition made him unwilling to owe to violence that
greatness which might be his in the ordinary course of nature and
of law. For he well knew that, if the crown descended to his wife
regularly, all its prerogatives would descend unimpaired with it, and
that, if it were obtained by election, it must be taken subject to
such conditions as the electors might think fit to impose. He meant,
therefore, as it appears, to wait with patience for the day when he
might govern by an undisputed title, and to content himself in the
meantime with exercising a great influence on English affairs, as
first Prince of the blood, and as head of the party which was decidedly
preponderant in the nation, and which was certain whenever a Parliament
should meet, to be decidedly preponderant in both Houses.

Already, it is true, he had been urged by an adviser, less sagacious and
more impetuous than himself, to try a bolder course. This adviser was
the young Lord Mordaunt. That age had produced no more inventive genius,
and no more daring spirit. But, if a design was splendid, Mordaunt
seldom inquired whether it were practicable. His life was a wild romance
made up of mysterious intrigues, both political and amorous, of violent
and rapid changes of scene and fortune, and of victories resembling
those of Amadis and Launcelot rather than those of Luxemburg and Eugene.
The episodes interspersed in this strange story were of a piece with the
main plot. Among them were midnight encounters with generous robbers,
and rescues of noble and beautiful ladies from ravishers. Mordaunt,
having distinguished himself by the eloquence and audacity with which,
in the House of Lords, he had opposed the court, repaired, soon after
the prorogation, to the Hague, and strongly recommended an immediate
descent on England. He had persuaded himself that it would be as easy to
surprise three great kingdoms as he long afterwards found it to surprise
Barcelona. William listened, meditated, and replied, in general terms,
that he took a great interest in English affairs, and would keep his
attention fixed on them. [224] Whatever his purpose had been, it is not
likely that he would have chosen a rash and vainglorious knight errant
for his confidant. Between the two men there was nothing in common
except personal courage, which rose in both to the height of fabulous
heroism. Mordaunt wanted merely to enjoy the excitement of conflict, and
to make men stare. William had one great end ever before him. Towards
that end he was impelled by a strong passion which appeared to him under
the guise of a sacred duty. Towards that end he toiled with a patience
resembling, as he once said, the patience with which he had seen a
boatman on a canal, strain against an adverse eddy, often swept back,
but never ceasing to pull, and content if, by the labour of hours, a few
yards could be gained. [225] Exploits which brought the Prince no nearer
to his object, however glorious they might be in the estimation of the
vulgar, were in his judgment boyish vanities, and no part of the real
business of life.

He determined to reject Mordaunt's advice; and there can be no doubt
that the determination was wise. Had William, in 1686, or even in 1687,
attempted to do what he did with such signal success in 1688, it is
probable that many Whigs would have risen in arms at his call. But he
would have found that the nation was not yet prepared to welcome an
armed deliverer from a foreign country, and that the Church had not yet
been provoked and insulted into forgetfulness of the tenet which had
long been her peculiar boast. The old Cavaliers would have flocked to
the royal standard. There would probably have been in all the three
kingdoms a civil war as long and fierce as that of the preceding
generation. While that war was raging in the British Isles, what might
not Lewis attempt on the Continent? And what hope would there be for
Holland, drained of her troops and abandoned by her Stadtholder?

William therefore contented himself for the present with taking measures
to unite and animate that mighty opposition of which he had become
the head. This was not difficult. The fall of the Hydes had excited
throughout England strange alarm and indignation: Men felt that the
question now was, not whether Protestantism should be dominant, but
whether it should be tolerated. The Treasurer had been succeeded by a
board, of which a Papist was the head. The Privy Seal had been entrusted
to a Papist. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had been succeeded by a man
who had absolutely no claim to high place except that he was a Papist.
The last person whom a government having in view the general interests
of the empire would have sent to Dublin as Deputy was Tyrconnel. His
brutal manners made him unfit to represent the majesty of the crown. The
feebleness of his understanding and the violence of his temper made him
unfit to conduct grave business of state. The deadly animosity which he
felt towards the possessors of the greater part of the soil of Ireland
made him especially unfit to rule that kingdom. But the intemperance of
his bigotry was thought amply to atone for the intemperance of all his
other passions; and, in consideration of the hatred which he bore to the
reformed faith, he was suffered to indulge without restraint his hatred
of the English name. This, then, was the real meaning of his Majesty's
respect for the rights of conscience. He wished his Parliament to remove
all the disabilities which had been imposed on Papists, merely in
order that he might himself impose disabilities equally galling on
Protestants. It was plain that, under such a prince, apostasy was the
only road to greatness. It was a road, however, which few ventured to
take. For the spirit of the nation was thoroughly roused; and every
renegade had to endure such an amount of public scorn and detestation,
as cannot be altogether unfelt even by the most callous natures.

It is true that several remarkable conversions had recently taken place;
but they were such as did little credit to the Church of Rome. Two
men of high rank had joined her communion; Henry Mordaunt, Earl of
Peterborough, and James Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. But Peterborough, who
had been an active soldier, courtier, and negotiator, was now broken
down by years and infirmities; and those who saw him totter about the
galleries of Whitehall, leaning on a stick and swathed up in flannels
and plasters, comforted themselves for his defection by remarking that
he had not changed his religion till he had outlived his faculties.
[226] Salisbury was foolish to a proverb. His figure was so bloated
by sensual indulgence as to be almost incapable of moving, and this
sluggish body was the abode of an equally sluggish mind. He was
represented in popular lampoons as a man made to be duped, as a man who
had hitherto been the prey of gamesters, and who might as well be the
prey of friars. A pasquinade, which, about the time of Rochester's
retirement, was fixed on the door of Salisbury House in the Strand,
described in coarse terms the horror with which the wise Robert Cecil,
if he could rise from his grave, would see to what a creature his
honours had descended. [227]

These were the highest in station among the proselytes of James. There
were other renegades of a very different kind, needy men of parts who
were destitute of principle and of all sense of personal dignity. There
is reason to believe that among these was William Wycherley, the
most licentious and hardhearted writer of a singularly licentious and
hardhearted school. [228] It is certain that Matthew Tindal, who, at a
later period, acquired great notoriety by writing against Christianity,
was at this time received into the bosom of the infallible Church, a
fact which, as may easily be supposed, the divines with whom he
was subsequently engaged in controversy did not suffer to sink into
oblivion. [229] A still more infamous apostate was Joseph Haines, whose
name is now almost forgotten, but who was well known in his own time as
an adventurer of versatile parts, sharper, coiner, false witness, sham
bail, dancing master, buffoon, poet, comedian. Some of his prologues and
epilogues were much admired by his contemporaries; and his merit as an
actor was universally acknowledged. This man professed himself a Roman
Catholic, and went to Italy in the retinue of Castelmaine, but was soon
dismissed for misconduct. If any credit is due to a tradition which was
long preserved in the green room, Haines had the impudence to affirm
that the Virgin Mary had appeared to him and called him to repentance.
After the Revolution, he attempted to make his peace with the town by a
penance more scandalous than his offence. One night, before he acted in
a farce, he appeared on the stage in a white sheet with a torch in his
hand, and recited some profane and indecent doggerel, which he called
his recantation. [230]

With the name of Haines was joined, in many libels the name of a more
illustrious renegade, John Dryden. Dryden was now approaching the
decline of life. After many successes and many failures, he had at
length attained, by general consent, the first place among living
English poets. His claims on the gratitude of James were superior to
those of any man of letters in the kingdom. But James cared little for
verses and much for money. From the day of his accession he set himself
to make small economical reforms, such as bring on a government the
reproach of meanness without producing any perceptible relief to the
finances. One of the victims of his injudicious parsimony was the Poet
Laureate. Orders were given that, in the new patent which the demise of
the crown made necessary, the annual butt of sack, originally granted to
Jonson, and continued to Jonson's successors, should be omitted. [231]
This was the only notice which the King, during the first year of his
reign, deigned to bestow on the mighty satirist who, in the very crisis
of the great struggle of the Exclusion Bill, had spread terror through
the Whig ranks. Dryden was poor and impatient of poverty. He knew little
and cared little about religion. If any sentiment was deeply fixed
in him, that sentiment was an aversion to priests of all persuasions,
Levites, Augurs, Muftis, Roman Catholic divines, Presbyterian divines,
divines of the Church of England. He was not naturally a man of high
spirit; and his pursuits had been by no means such as were likely to
give elevation or delicacy to his mind. He had, during many years,
earned his daily bread by pandaring to the vicious taste of the pit,
and by grossly flattering rich and noble patrons. Selfrespect and a fine
sense of the becoming were not to be expected from one who had led a
life of mendicancy and adulation. Finding that, if he continued to call
himself a Protestant, his services would be overlooked, he declared
himself a Papist. The King's parsimony instantly relaxed. Dryden was
gratified with a pension of a hundred pounds a year, and was employed to
defend his new religion both in prose and verse.

Two eminent men, Samuel Johnson and Walter Scott, have done their best
to persuade themselves and others that this memorable conversion
was sincere. It was natural that they should be desirous to remove
a disgraceful stain from the memory of one whose genius they justly
admired, and with whose political feelings they strongly sympathized;
but the impartial historian must with regret pronounce a very different
judgment. There will always be a strong presumption against the
sincerity of a conversion by which the convert is directly a gainer. In
the case of Dryden there is nothing to countervail this presumption.
His theological writings abundantly prove that he had never sought with
diligence and anxiety to learn the truth, and that his knowledge both
of the Church which he quitted and of the Church which he entered was of
the most superficial kind. Nor was his subsequent conduct that of a
man whom a strong sense of duty had constrained to take a step of awful
importance. Had he been such a man, the same conviction which had led
him to join the Church of Rome would surely have prevented him from
violating grossly and habitually rules which that Church, in common with
every other Christian society, recognises as binding. There would
have been a marked distinction between his earlier and his later
compositions.
He would have looked back with remorse on a literary
life of near thirty years, during which his rare powers of diction
and versification had been systematically employed in spreading moral
corruption. Not a line tending to make virtue contemptible, or to
inflame licentious desire, would thenceforward have proceeded from his
pen. The truth unhappily is that the dramas which he wrote after his
pretended conversion are in no respect less impure or profane than those
of his youth. Even when he professed to translate he constantly wandered
from his originals in search of images which, if he had found them in
his originals, he ought to have shunned. What was bad became worse in
his versions. What was innocent contracted a taint from passing
through his mind. He made the grossest satires of Juvenal more gross,
interpolated loose descriptions in the tales of Boccaccio, and polluted
the sweet and limpid poetry of the Georgics with filth which would have
moved the loathing of Virgil.

The help of Dryden was welcome to those Roman Catholic divines who were
painfully sustaining a conflict against all that was most illustrious in
the Established Church. They could not disguise from themselves the fact
that their style, disfigured with foreign idioms which had been picked
up at Rome and Douay, appeared to little advantage when compared with
the eloquence of Tillotson and Sherlock. It seemed that it was no light
thing to have secured the cooperation of the greatest living master of
the English language. The first service which he was required to perform
in return for his pension was to defend his Church in prose against
Stillingfleet. But the art of saying things well is useless to a man who
has nothing to say; and this was Dryden's case. He soon found himself
unequally paired with an antagonist whose whole life had been one long
training for controversy. The veteran gladiator disarmed the novice,
inflicted a few contemptuous scratches, and turned away to encounter
more formidable combatants. Dryden then betook himself to a weapon at
which he was not likely to find his match. He retired for a time
from the bustle of coffeehouses and theatres to a quiet retreat in
Huntingdonshire, and there composed, with unwonted care and labour, his
celebrated poem on the points in dispute between the Churches of Rome
and England. The Church of Rome he represented under the similitude of a
milkwhite hind, ever in peril of death, yet fated not to die. The beasts
of the field were bent on her destruction. The quaking hare, indeed,
observed a timorous neutrality: but the Socinian fox, the Presbyterian
wolf, the Independent bear, the Anabaptist boar, glared fiercely at
the spotless creature. Yet she could venture to drink with them at the
common watering place under the protection of her friend, the kingly
lion. The Church of England was typified by the panther, spotted indeed,
but beautiful, too beautiful for a beast of prey. The hind and the
panther, equally hated by the ferocious population of the forest,
conferred apart on their common danger. They then proceeded to discuss
the points on which they differed, and, while wagging their tails and
licking their jaws, held a long dialogue touching the real presence, the
authority of Popes and Councils, the penal laws, the Test Act,
Oates's perjuries, Butler's unrequited services to the Cavalier party,
Stillingfleet's pamphlets, and Burnet's broad shoulders and fortunate
matrimonial speculations.

The absurdity of this plan is obvious. In truth the allegory could not
be preserved unbroken through ten lines together. No art of execution
could redeem the faults of such a design. Yet the Fable of the Hind
and Panther is undoubtedly the most valuable addition which was made
to English literature during the short and troubled reign of James the
Second. In none of Dryden's works can be found passages more pathetic
and magnificent, greater ductility and energy of language, or a more
pleasing and various music.

The poem appeared with every advantage which royal patronage could give.
A superb edition was printed for Scotland at the Roman Catholic press
established in Holyrood House. But men were in no humour to be charmed
by the transparent style and melodious numbers of the apostate. The
disgust excited by his venality, the alarm excited by the policy of
which he was the eulogist, were not to be sung to sleep. The just
indignation of the public was inflamed by many who were smarting from
his ridicule, and by many who were envious of his renown. In spite of
all the restraints under which the press lay, attacks on his life and
writings appeared daily. Sometimes he was Bayes, sometimes Poet Squab.
He was reminded that in his youth he had paid to the House of Cromwell
the same servile court which he was now paying to the House of Stuart.
One set of his assailants maliciously reprinted the sarcastic verses
which he had written against Popery in days when he could have got
nothing by being a Papist. Of the many satirical pieces which appeared
on this occasion, the most successful was the joint work of two young
men who had lately completed their studies at Cambridge, and had been
welcomed as promising novices in the literary coffee-houses of London,
Charles Montague and Matthew Prior. Montague was of noble descent: the
origin of Prior was so obscure that no biographer has been able to trace
it: but both the adventurers were poor and aspiring; both had keen
and vigorous minds; both afterwards climbed high; both united in a
remarkable degree the love of letters with skill in those departments of
business for which men of letters generally have a strong distaste. Of
the fifty poets whose lives Johnson has written, Montague and Prior were
the only two who were distinguished by an intimate knowledge of trade
and finance. Soon their paths diverged widely. Their early friendship
was dissolved. One of them became the chief of the Whig party, and was
impeached by the Tories. The other was entrusted with all the mysteries
of Tory diplomacy, and was long kept close prisoner by the Whigs. At
length, after many eventful years, the associates, so long parted, were
reunited in Westminster Abbey.

Whoever has read the tale of the Hind and Panther with attention must
have perceived that, while that work was in progress, a great alteration
took place in the views of those who used Dryden as their interpreter.
At first the Church of England is mentioned with tenderness and respect,
and is exhorted to ally herself with the Roman Catholics against the
Puritan sects: but at the close of the poem, and in the preface, which
was written after the poem had been finished, the Protestant Dissenters
are invited to make common cause with the Roman Catholics against the
Church of England.

This change in the language of the court poet was indicative of a great
change in the policy of the court. The original purpose of James
had been to obtain for the Church of which he was a member, not only
complete immunity from all penalties and from all civil disabilities,
but also an ample share of ecclesiastical and academical endowments,
and at the same time to enforce with rigour the laws against the Puritan
sects. All the special dispensations which he had granted had been
granted to Roman Catholics. All the laws which bore hardest on the
Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, had been for a time severely
executed by him. While Hales commanded a regiment, while Powis sate at
the Council board, while Massey held a deanery, while breviaries and
mass books were printed at Oxford under a royal license, while the host
was publicly exposed in London under the protection of the pikes and
muskets of the footguards, while friars and monks walked the streets of
London in their robes, Baxter was in gaol; Howe was in exile; the Five
Mile Act and the Conventicle Act were in full vigour; Puritan writers
were compelled to resort to foreign or to secret presses; Puritan
congregations could meet only by night or in waste places, and Puritan
ministers were forced to preach in the garb of colliers or of sailors.
In Scotland the King, while he spared no exertion to extort from the
Estates full relief for Roman Catholics, had demanded and obtained
new statutes of unprecedented severity against the Presbyterians. His
conduct to the exiled Huguenots had not less clearly indicated his
feelings. We have seen that, when the public munificence had placed
in his hands a large sum for the relief of those unhappy men, he, in
violation of every law of hospitality and good faith, required them to
renounce the Calvinistic ritual to which they were strongly attached,
and to conform to the Church of England, before he would dole out to
them any portion of the alms which had been entrusted to his care.

Such had been his policy as long as he could cherish, any hope that the
Church of England would consent to share ascendency with the Church of
Rome. That hope at one time amounted to confidence. The enthusiasm with
which the Tories had hailed his accession, the elections, the dutiful
language and ample grants of his Parliament, the suppression of the
Western insurrection, the complete prostration of the party which had
attempted to exclude him from the crown, elated him beyond the bounds of
reason. He felt an assurance that every obstacle would give way before
his power and his resolution. His Parliament withstood him. He tried the
effects of frowns and menaces. Frowns and menaces failed. He tried the
effect of prorogation. From the day of the prorogation the opposition
to his designs had been growing stronger and stronger. It seemed clear
that, if he effected his purpose, he must effect it in defiance of
that great party which had given such signal proofs of fidelity to his
office, to his family, and to his person. The whole Anglican priesthood,
the whole Cavalier gentry, were against him. In vain had he, by virtue
of his ecclesiastical supremacy, enjoined the clergy to abstain from
discussing controverted points. Every parish in the nation was warned
every Sunday against the errors of Rome; and these warnings were only
the more effective, because they were accompanied by professions of
reverence for the Sovereign, and of a determination to endure with
patience whatever it might be his pleasure to inflict. The royalist
knights and esquires who, through forty-five years of war and faction,
had stood so manfully by the throne, now expressed, in no measured
phrase, their resolution to stand as manfully by the Church. Dull as was
the intellect of James, despotic as was his temper, he felt that he
must change his course. He could not safely venture to outrage all
his Protestant subjects at once. If he could bring himself to make
concessions to the party which predominated in both Houses, if he could
bring himself to leave to the established religion all its dignities,
emoluments, and privileges unimpaired, he might still break up
Presbyterian meetings, and fill the gaols with Baptist preachers. But if
he was determined to plunder the hierarchy, he must make up his mind to
forego the luxury of persecuting the Dissenters. If he was henceforward
to be at feud with his old friends, he must make a truce with his old
enemies. He could overpower the Anglican Church only by forming against
her an extensive coalition, including sects which, though they differed
in doctrine and government far more widely from each other than from
her, might yet be induced, by their common jealousy of her greatness,
and by their common dread of her intolerance, to suspend their
animosities till she was no longer able to oppress them.

This plan seemed to him to have one strong recommendation. If he could
only succeed in conciliating the Protestant Nonconformists he might
flatter himself that he was secure against all chance of rebellion.
According to the Anglican divines, no subject could by any provocation
be justified in withstanding the Lord's anointed by force. The theory of
the Puritan sectaries was very different. Those sectaries had no scruple
about smiting tyrants with the sword of Gideon. Many of them did not
shrink from using the dagger of Ehud. They were probably even now
meditating another Western insurrection, or another Rye House Plot.
James, therefore, conceived that he might safely persecute the Church if
he could only gain the Dissenters. The party whose principles afforded
him no guarantee would be attached to him by interest. The party
whose interests he attacked would be restrained from insurrection by
principle.

Influenced by such considerations as these, James, from the time at
which he parted in anger with his Parliament, began to meditate a
general league of all Nonconformists, Catholic and Protestant, against
the established religion. So early as Christmas 1685, the agents of the
United Provinces informed the States General that the plan of a general
toleration had been arranged and would soon be disclosed. [232] The
reports which had reached the Dutch embassy proved to be premature.
The separatists appear, however, to have been treated with more lenity
during the year 1686 than during the year 1685. But it was only by slow
degrees and after many struggles that the King could prevail on himself
to form an alliance with all that he most abhorred. He had to overcome
an animosity, not slight or capricious, not of recent origin or hasty
growth, but hereditary in his line, strengthened by great wrongs
inflicted and suffered through a hundred and twenty eventful years, and
intertwined with all his feelings, religious, political, domestic, and
personal. Four generations of Stuarts had waged a war to the death with
four generations of Puritans; and, through that long war, there had been
no Stuart who had hated the Puritans so much, or who had been so much
hated by them, as himself. They had tried to blast his honour and
to exclude him from his birthright; they had called him incendiary,
cutthroat, poisoner; they had driven him from the Admiralty and the
Privy Council; they had repeatedly chased him into banishment; they
had plotted his assassination; they had risen against him in arms by
thousands. He had avenged himself on them by havoc such as England had
never before seen. Their heads and quarters were still rotting on poles
in all the market places of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire. Aged women
held in high honour among the sectaries for piety and charity had, for
offences which no good prince would have thought deserving even of a
severe reprimand, been beheaded and burned alive. Such had been, even
in England, the relations between the King and the Puritans; and in
Scotland the tyranny of the King and the fury of the Puritans had been
such as Englishmen could hardly conceive. To forget an enmity so long
and so deadly was no light task for a nature singularly harsh and
implacable.

The conflict in the royal mind did not escape the eye of Barillon. At
the end of January, 1687, he sent a remarkable letter to Versailles. The
King,--such was the substance of this document,--had almost convinced
himself that he could not obtain entire liberty for Roman Catholics
and yet maintain the laws against Protestant Dissenters. He leaned,
therefore, to the plan of a general indulgence; but at heart he would
be far better pleased if he could, even now, divide his protection and
favour between the Church of Rome and the Church of England, to the
exclusion of all other religious persuasions. [233]

A very few days after this despatch had been written, James made his
first hesitating and ungracious advances towards the Puritans. He had
determined to begin with Scotland, where his power to dispense with
acts of parliament had been admitted by the obsequious Estates. On
the twelfth of February, accordingly, was published at Edinburgh a
proclamation granting relief to scrupulous consciences. [234] This
proclamation fully proves the correctness of Barillon's judgment. Even
in the very act of making concessions to the Presbyterians, James could
not conceal the loathing with which he regarded them. The toleration
given to the Catholics was complete. The Quakers had little reason
to complain. But the indulgence vouchsafed to the Presbyterians, who
constituted the great body of the Scottish people, was clogged by
conditions which made it almost worthless. For the old test, which
excluded Catholics and Presbyterians alike from office, was substituted
a new test, which admitted the Catholics, but excluded most of the
Presbyterians. The Catholics were allowed to build chapels, and even
to carry the host in procession anywhere except in the high streets of
royal burghs: the Quakers were suffered to assemble in public edifices:
but the Presbyterians were interdicted from worshipping God anywhere but
in private dwellings: they were not to presume to build meeting houses:
they were not even to use a barn or an outhouse for religious exercises:
and it was distinctly notified to them that, if they dared to hold
conventicles in the open air, the law, which denounced death against
both preachers and hearers, should be enforced without mercy. Any
Catholic priest might say mass: any Quaker might harangue his brethren:
but the Privy Council was directed to see that no Presbyterian minister
presumed to preach without a special license from the government. Every
line of this instrument, and of the letters by which it was accompanied,
shows how much it cost the King to relax in the smallest degree the
rigour with which he had ever treated the old enemies of his house.
[235]

There is reason, indeed, to believe that, when he published this
proclamation, he had by no means fully made up his mind to a coalition
with the Puritans, and that his object was to grant just so much favour
to them as might suffice to frighten the Churchmen into submission.
He therefore waited a month, in order to see what effect the edict put
forth at Edinburgh would produce in England. That month he employed
assiduously, by Petre's advice, in what was called closeting. London was
very full. It was expected that the Parliament would shortly meet for
the dispatch of business; and many members were in town. The King set
himself to canvass them man by man. He flattered himself that zealous
Tories,--and of such, with few exceptions, the House of Commons
consisted,--would find it difficult to resist his earnest request,
addressed to them, not collectively, but separately, not from the
throne, but in the familiarity of conversation. The members, therefore,
who came to pay their duty at Whitehall were taken aside, and honoured
with long private interviews. The King pressed them, as they were loyal
gentlemen, to gratify him in the one thing on which his heart was fixed.
The question, he said, touched his personal honour. The laws enacted in
the late reign by factious Parliaments against the Roman Catholics had
really been aimed at himself. Those laws had put a stigma on him, had
driven him from the Admiralty, had driven him from the Council Board. He
had a right to expect that in the repeal of those laws all who loved
and reverenced him would concur. When he found his hearers obdurate
to exhortation, he resorted to intimidation and corruption. Those who
refused to pleasure him in this matter were plainly told that they must
not expect any mark of his favour. Penurious as he was, he opened and
distributed his hoards. Several of those who had been invited to confer
with him left his bedchamber carrying with them money received from the
royal hand. The Judges, who were at this time on their spring circuits,
were directed by the King to see those members who remained in the
country, and to ascertain the intentions of each. The result of this
investigation was, that a great majority of the House of Commons seemed
fully determined to oppose the measures of the court. [236] Among those
whose firmness excited general admiration was Arthur Herbert, brother
of the Chief Justice, member for Dover, Master of the Robes, and Rear
Admiral of England. Arthur Herbert was much loved by the sailors,
and was reputed one of the best of the aristocratical class of naval
officers. It had been generally supposed that he would readily comply
with the royal wishes: for he was heedless of religion; he was fond of
pleasure and expense; he had no private estate; his places brought him
in four thousand pounds a year; and he had long been reckoned among
the most devoted personal adherents of James. When, however, the Rear
Admiral was closeted, and required to promise that he would vote for the
repeal of the Test Act, his answer was, that his honour and conscience
would not permit him to give any such pledge. "Nobody doubts your
honour," said the King; "but a man who lives as you do ought not to talk
about his conscience. " To this reproach, a reproach which came with a
bad grace from the lover of Catharine Sedley, Herbert manfully replied,
"I have my faults, sir: but I could name people who talk much more about
conscience than I am in the habit of doing, and yet lead lives as loose
as mine. " He was dismissed from all his places; and the account of what
he had disbursed and received as Master of the Robes was scrutinised
with great and, as he complained, with unjust severity. [237]

It was now evident that all hope of an alliance between the Churches of
England and of Rome, for the purpose of sharing offices and emoluments,
and of crushing the Puritan sects, must be abandoned. Nothing remained
but to try a coalition between the Church of Rome and the Puritan sects
against the Church of England.

On the eighteenth of March the King informed the Privy Council that he
had determined to prorogue the Parliament till the end of November, and
to grant, by his own authority, entire liberty of conscience to all
his subjects. [238] On the fourth of April appeared the memorable
Declaration of Indulgence.

In this Declaration the King avowed that it was his earnest wish to see
his people members of that Church to which he himself belonged. But,
since that could not be, he announced his intention to protect them
in the free exercise of their religion. He repeated all those phrases
which, eight years before, when he was himself an oppressed man, had
been familiar to his lips, but which he had ceased to use from the day
on which a turn of fortune had put it into his power to be an oppressor.
He had long been convinced, he said, that conscience was not to be
forced, that persecution was unfavourable to population and to trade,
and that it never attained the ends which persecutors had in view. He
repeated his promise, already often repeated and often violated, that
he would protect the Established Church in the enjoyment of her legal
rights. He then proceeded to annul, by his own sole authority, a long
series of statutes. He suspended all penal laws against all classes
of Nonconformists. He authorised both Roman Catholics and Protestant
Dissenters to perform their worship publicly. He forbade his subjects,
on pain of his highest displeasure, to molest any religious assembly.
He also abrogated all those acts which imposed any religious test as a
qualification for any civil or military office. [239]

That the Declaration of Indulgence was unconstitutional is a point on
which both the great English parties have always been entirely agreed.
Every person capable of reasoning on a political question must perceive
that a monarch who is competent to issue such a declaration is nothing
less than an absolute monarch. Nor is it possible to urge in defence
of this act of James those pleas by which many arbitrary acts of the
Stuarts have been vindicated or excused. It cannot be said that
he mistook the bounds of his prerogative because they had not been
accurately ascertained. For the truth is that he trespassed with a
recent landmark full in his view. Fifteen years before that time, a
Declaration of Indulgence had been put forth by his brother with
the advice of the Cabal. That Declaration, when compared with the
Declaration of James, might be called modest and cautious. The
Declaration of Charles dispensed only with penal laws. The Declaration
of James dispensed also with all religious tests. The Declaration of
Charles permitted the Roman Catholics to celebrate their worship in
private dwellings only. Under the Declaration of James they might build
and decorate temples, and even walk in procession along Fleet Street
with crosses, images, and censers. Yet the Declaration of Charles had
been pronounced illegal in the most formal manner. The Commons had
resolved that the King had no power to dispense with statutes in matters
ecclesiastical. Charles had ordered the obnoxious instrument to be
cancelled in his presence, had torn off the seal with his own hand, and
had, both by message under his sign manual, and with his own lips from
his throne in full Parliament, distinctly promised the two Houses that
the step which had given so much offence should never be drawn into
precedent. The two Houses had then, without one dissentient voice,
joined in thanking him for this compliance with their wishes. No
constitutional question had ever been decided more deliberately, more
clearly, or with more harmonious consent.

The defenders of James have frequently pleaded in his excuse the
judgment of the Court of King's Bench, on the information collusively
laid against Sir Edward Hales: but the plea is of no value. That
judgment James had notoriously obtained by solicitation, by threats,
by dismissing scrupulous magistrates, and by placing on the bench
other magistrates more courtly. And yet that judgment, though generally
regarded by the bar and by the nation as unconstitutional, went only
to this extent, that the Sovereign might, for special reasons of state,
grant to individuals by name exemptions from disabling statutes. That he
could by one sweeping edict authorise all his subjects to disobey whole
volumes of laws, no tribunal had ventured, in the face of the solemn
parliamentary decision of 1673, to affirm.

Such, however, was the position of parties that James's Declaration of
Indulgence, though the most audacious of all the attacks made by the
Stuarts on public freedom, was well calculated to please that very
portion of the community by which all the other attacks of the Stuarts
on public freedom had been most strenuously resisted. It could
scarcely be hoped that the Protestant Nonconformist, separated from
his countrymen by a harsh code harshly enforced, would be inclined to
dispute the validity of a decree which relieved him from intolerable
grievances. A cool and philosophical observer would undoubtedly have
pronounced that all the evil arising from all the intolerant laws which
Parliaments had framed was not to be compared to the evil which would be
produced by a transfer of the legislative power from the Parliament to
the Sovereign. But such coolness and philosophy are not to be expected
from men who are smarting under present pain, and who are tempted by the
offer of immediate ease. A Puritan divine, could not indeed deny that
the dispensing power now claimed by the crown was inconsistent with
the fundamental principles of the constitution. But he might perhaps
be excused if he asked, What was the constitution to him? The Act of
Uniformity had ejected him, in spite of royal promises, from a benefice
which was his freehold, and had reduced him to beggary and dependence.
The Five Mile Act had banished him from his dwelling, from his
relations, from his friends, from almost all places of public resort.
Under the Conventicle Act his goods had been distrained; and he had
been flung into one noisome gaol after another among highwaymen and
housebreakers. Out of prison he had constantly had the officers of
justice on his track; he had been forced to pay hushmoney to informers;
he had stolen, in ignominious disguises, through windows and trapdoors,
to meet his flock, and had, while pouring the baptismal water, or
distributing the eucharistic bread, been anxiously listening for the
signal that the tipstaves were approaching. Was it not mockery to
call on a man thus plundered and oppressed to suffer martyrdom for the
property and liberty of his plunderers and oppressors? The Declaration,
despotic as it might seem to his prosperous neighbours, brought
deliverance to him. He was called upon to make his choice, not between
freedom and slavery, but between two yokes; and he might not unnaturally
think the yoke of the King lighter than that of the Church.

While thoughts like these were working in the minds of many Dissenters,
the Anglican party was in amazement and terror. This new turn in affairs
was indeed alarming. The House of Stuart leagued with republican and
regicide sects against the old Cavaliers of England; Popery leagued with
Puritanism against an ecclesiastical system with which the Puritans had
no quarrel, except that it had retained too much that was Popish, these
were portents which confounded all the calculations of statesmen. The
Church was then to be attacked at once on every side and the attack was
to be under the direction of him who, by her constitution, was her head.
She might well be struck with surprise and dismay. And mingled with
surprise and dismay came other bitter feelings; resentment against
the perjured Prince whom she had served too well, and remorse for the
cruelties in which he had been her accomplice, and for which he was now,
as it seemed, about to be her punisher. Her chastisement was just. She
reaped that which she had sown. After the Restoration, when her power
was at the height, she had breathed nothing hut vengeance. She had
encouraged, urged, almost compelled the Stuarts to requite with
perfidious ingratitude the recent services of the Presbyterians. Had
she, in that season of her prosperity, pleaded, as became her, for her
enemies, she might now, in her distress, have found them her friends.
Perhaps it was not yet too late. Perhaps she might still be able to turn
the tactics of her faithless oppressor against himself. There was
among the Anglican clergy a moderate party which had always felt kindly
towards the Protestant Dissenters.