No More Learning

Raving and blaspheming
incessantly, like a demoniac, he came to the court. [52] As soon as
he was there, he allied himself closely with Castelmaine, Dover, and
Albeville. These men called with one voice for war on the constitution
of the Church and the State. They told their master that he owed it to
his religion and to the dignity of his crown to stand firm against the
outcry of heretical demagogues, and to let the Parliament see from the
first that he would be master in spite of opposition, and that the only
effect of opposition would be to make him a hard master.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The history of this extraordinary intrigue would be imperfect, if
it were not added that there is still extant a religious meditation,
written by the Treasurer, with his own hand, on the very same day on
which the intelligence of his attempt to govern his master by means of
a concubine was despatched by Bonrepaux to Versailles. No composition of
Ken or Leighton breathes a spirit of more fervent and exalted piety
than this effusion. Hypocrisy cannot be suspected: for the paper was
evidently meant only for the writer's own eye, and was not published
till he had been more than a century in his grave. So much is history
stranger than fiction; and so true is it that nature has caprices which
art dares not imitate. A dramatist would scarcely venture to bring on
the stage a grave prince, in the decline of life, ready to sacrifice his
crown in order to serve the interests of his religion, indefatigable in
making proselytes, and yet deserting and insulting a wife who had youth
and beauty for the sake of a profligate paramour who had neither. Still
less, if possible, would a dramatist venture to introduce a statesman
stooping to the wicked and shameful part of a procurer, and calling in
his wife to aid him in that dishonourable office, yet, in his moments of
leisure, retiring to his closet, and there secretly pouring out his soul
to his God in penitent tears and devout ejaculations. [69]

The Treasurer soon found that, in using scandalous means for the purpose
of obtaining a laudable end, he had committed, not only a crime, but a
folly. The Queen was now his enemy. She affected, indeed, to listen with
civility while the Hydes excused their recent conduct as well as they
could; and she occasionally pretended to use her influence in their
favour: but she must have been more or less than woman if she had really
forgiven the conspiracy which had been formed against her dignity and
her domestic happiness by the family of her husband's first wife. The
Jesuits strongly represented to the King the danger which he had so
narrowly escaped. His reputation, they said, his peace, his soul, had
been put in peril by the machinations of his prime minister. The Nuncio,
who would gladly have counteracted the influence of the violent party,
and cooperated with the moderate members of the cabinet, could not
honestly or decently separate himself on this occasion from Father
Petre. James himself, when parted by the sea from the charms which had
so strongly fascinated him, could not but regard with resentment and
contempt those who had sought to govern him by means of his vices. What
had passed must have had the effect of raising his own Church in his
esteem, and of lowering the Church of England. The Jesuits, whom it
was the fashion to represent as the most unsafe of spiritual guides, as
sophists who refined away the whole system of evangelical morality, as
sycophants who owed their influence chiefly to the indulgence with which
they treated the sins of the great, had reclaimed him from a life of
guilt by rebukes as sharp and bold as those which David had heard
from Nathan and Herod from the Baptist. On the other hand, zealous
Protestants, whose favourite theme was the laxity of Popish casuists
and the wickedness of doing evil that good might come, had attempted
to obtain advantages for their own Church in a way which all Christians
regarded as highly criminal. The victory of the cabal of evil
counsellors was therefore complete. The King looked coldly on Rochester.
The courtiers and foreign ministers soon perceived that the Lord
Treasurer was prime minister only in name. He continued to offer his
advice daily, and had the mortification to find it daily rejected. Yet
he could not prevail on himself to relinquish the outward show of power
and the emoluments which he directly and indirectly derived from his
great place. He did his best, therefore, to conceal his vexations from
the public eye. But his violent passions and his intemperate habits
disqualified him for the part of a dissembler. His gloomy looks, when he
came out of the council chamber, showed how little he was pleased
with what had passed at the board; and, when the bottle had gone round
freely, words escaped him which betrayed his uneasiness. [70]

He might, indeed, well be uneasy. Indiscreet and unpopular measures
followed each other in rapid succession. All thought of returning to the
policy of the Triple Alliance was abandoned. The King explicitly avowed
to the ministers of those continental powers with which he had lately
intended to ally himself, that all his views had undergone a change, and
that England was still to be, as she had been under his grandfather,
his father, and his brother, of no account in Europe. "I am in no
condition," he said to the Spanish Ambassador, "to trouble myself about
what passes abroad. It is my resolution to let foreign affairs take
their course, to establish my authority at home, and to do something for
my religion. " A few days later he announced the same intentions to the
States General. [71] From that time to the close of his ignominious
reign, he made no serious effort to escape from vassalage, though, to
the last, he could never hear, without transports of rage, that men
called him a vassal.

The two events which proved to the public that Sunderland and
Sunderland's party were victorious were the prorogation of the
Parliament from February to May, and the departure of Castelmaine for
Rome with the appointments of an Ambassador of the highest rank. [72]

Hitherto all the business of the English government at the papal court
had been transacted by John Caryl. This gentleman was known to his
contemporaries as a man of fortune and fashion, and as the author of two
successful plays, a tragedy in rhyme which had been made popular by
the action and recitation of Betterton, and a comedy which owes all
its value to scenes borrowed from Moliere. These pieces have long been
forgotten; but what Caryl could not do for himself has been done for him
by a more powerful genius. Half a line in the Rape of the Lock has made
his name immortal.

Caryl, who was, like all the other respectable Roman Catholics, an enemy
to violent courses, had acquitted himself of his delicate errand at Rome
with good sense and good feeling. The business confided to him was well
done; but he assumed no public character, and carefully avoided all
display. His mission, therefore, put the government to scarcely any
charge, and excited scarcely any murmurs. His place was now most
unwisely supplied by a costly and ostentatious embassy, offensive in the
highest degree to the people of England, and by no means welcome to the
court of Rome. Castelmaine had it in charge to demand a Cardinal's hat
for his confederate Petre.

About the same time the King began to show, in an unequivocal manner,
the feeling which he really entertained towards the banished Huguenots.
While he had still hoped to cajole his Parliament into submission and to
become the head of an European coalition against France, he had affected
to blame the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and to pity the unhappy
men whom persecution had driven from their country. He had caused it to
be announced that, at every church in the kingdom, a collection would
be made under his sanction for their benefit. A proclamation on this
subject had been drawn up in terms which might have wounded the pride of
a sovereign less sensitive and vainglorious than Lewis. But all was now
changed. The principles of the treaty of Dover were again the principles
of the foreign policy of England. Ample apologies were therefore made
for the discourtesy with which the English government had acted towards
France in showing favour to exiled Frenchmen. The proclamation which
had displeased Lewis was recalled. [73] The Huguenot ministers were
admonished to speak with reverence of their oppressor in their public
discourses, as they would answer it at their peril. James not only
ceased to express commiseration for the sufferers, but declared that he
believed them to harbour the worst designs, and owned that he had been
guilty of an error in countenancing them. One of the most eminent of the
refugees, John Claude, had published on the Continent a small volume
in which he described with great force the sufferings of his brethren.
Barillon demanded that some opprobrious mark should be put on his book.
James complied, and in full council declared it to be his pleasure
that Claude's libel should be burned by the hangman before the Royal
Exchange. Even Jeffreys was startled, and ventured to represent that
such a proceeding was without example, that the book was written in a
foreign tongue, that it had been printed at a foreign press, that it
related entirely to transactions which had taken place in a foreign
country, and that no English government had ever animadverted on
such works. James would not suffer the question to be discussed. "My
resolution," he said, "is taken. It has become the fashion to treat
Kings disrespectfully; and they must stand by each other. One King
should always take another's part: and I have particular reasons for
showing this respect to the King of France. " There was silence at
the board. The order was forthwith issued; and Claude's pamphlet was
committed to the flames, not without the deep murmurs of many who had
always been reputed steady loyalists. [74]

The promised collection was long put off under various pretexts. The
King would gladly have broken his word; but it was pledged so solemnly
that he could not for very shame retract. [75] Nothing, however, which
could cool the zeal of congregations was omitted. It had been expected
that, according to the practice usual on such occasions, the people
would be exhorted to liberality from the pulpits. But James was
determined not to tolerate declamations against his religion and his
ally. The Archbishop of Canterbury was therefore commanded to inform
the clergy that they must merely read the brief, and must not presume
to preach on the sufferings of the French Protestants. [76] Nevertheless
the contributions were so large that, after all deductions, the sum of
forty thousand pounds was paid into the Chamber of London. Perhaps none
of the munificent subscriptions of our own age has borne so great a
proportion to the means of the nation. [77]

The King was bitterly mortified by the large amount of the collection
which had been made in obedience to his own call. He knew, he said, what
all this liberality meant. It was mere Whiggish spite to himself and his
religion. [78] He had already resolved that the money should be of no
use to those whom the donors wished to benefit. He had been, during some
weeks, in close communication with the French embassy on this subject,
and had, with the approbation of the court of Versailles, determined on
a course which it is not very easy to reconcile with those principles of
toleration to which he afterwards pretended to be attached. The refugees
were zealous for the Calvinistic discipline and worship. James therefore
gave orders that none should receive a crust of bread or a basket of
coals who did not first take the sacrament according to the Anglican
ritual. [79] It is strange that this inhospitable rule should have been
devised by a prince who affected to consider the Test Act as an outrage
on the rights of conscience: for, however unjustifiable it may be to
establish a sacramental test for the purpose of ascertaining whether
men are fit for civil and military office, it is surely much more
unjustifiable to establish a sacramental test for the purpose of
ascertaining whether, in their extreme distress, they are fit objects of
charity. Nor had James the plea which may be urged in extenuation of
the guilt of almost all other persecutors: for the religion which he
commanded the refugees to profess, on pain of being left to starve,
was not his own religion. His conduct towards them was therefore less
excusable than that of Lewis: for Lewis oppressed them in the hope of
bringing them over from a damnable heresy to the true Church: James
oppressed them only for the purpose of forcing them to apostatize from
one damnable heresy to another.

Several Commissioners, of whom the Chancellor was one, had been
appointed to dispense the public alms. When they met for the first time,
Jeffreys announced the royal pleasure. The refugees, he said, were too
generally enemies of monarchy and episcopacy. If they wished for relief,
they must become members of the Church of England, and must take the
sacrament from the hands of his chaplain. Many exiles, who had come full
of gratitude and hope to apply for succour, heard their sentence, and
went brokenhearted away. [80]

May was now approaching; and that month had been fixed for the meeting
of the Houses: but they were again prorogued to November. [81] It
was not strange that the King did not wish to meet them: for he had
determined to adopt a policy which he knew to be, in the highest degree,
odious to them. From his predecessors he had inherited two prerogatives,
of which the limits had never been defined with strict accuracy, and
which, if exerted without any limit, would of themselves have sufficed
to overturn the whole polity of the State and of the Church. These were
the dispensing power and the ecclesiastical supremacy. By means of the
dispensing power the King purposed to admit Roman Catholics, not merely
to civil and military, but to spiritual, offices. By means of the
ecclesiastical supremacy he hoped to make the Anglican clergy his
instruments for the destruction of their own religion.

This scheme developed itself by degrees. It was not thought safe to
begin by granting to the whole Roman Catholic body a dispensation from
all statutes imposing penalties and tests. For nothing was more fully
established than that such a dispensation was illegal. The Cabal had,
in 1672, put forth a general Declaration of Indulgence. The Commons,
as soon as they met, had protested against it. Charles the Second had
ordered it to be cancelled in his presence, and had, both by his own
mouth and by a written message, assured the Houses that the step which
had caused so much complaint should never be drawn into precedent. It
would have been difficult to find in all the Inns of Court a barrister
of reputation to argue in defence of a prerogative which the Sovereign,
seated on his throne in full Parliament, had solemnly renounced a few
years before. But it was not quite so clear that the King might not,
on special grounds, grant exemptions to individuals by name. The first
object of James, therefore, was to obtain from the courts of common
law an acknowledgment that, to this extent at least, he possessed the
dispensing power.

But, though his pretensions were moderate when compared with those which
he put forth a few months later, he soon found that he had against him
almost the whole sense of Westminster Hall. Four of the Judges gave him
to understand that they could not, on this occasion, serve his purpose;
and it is remarkable that all the four were violent Tories, and that
among them were men who had accompanied Jeffreys on the Bloody Circuit,
and who had consented to the death of Cornish and of Elizabeth Gaunt.
Jones, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, a man who had never before
shrunk from any drudgery, however cruel or servile, now held in the
royal closet language which might have become the lips of the purest
magistrates in our history. He was plainly told that he must either
give up his opinion or his place. "For my place," he answered, "I care
little. I am old and worn out in the service of the crown; but I am
mortified to find that your Majesty thinks me capable of giving a
judgment which none but an ignorant or a dishonest man could give. " "I
am determined," said the King, "to have twelve Judges who will be all
of my mind as to this matter. " "Your Majesty," answered Jones, "may
find twelve Judges of your mind, but hardly twelve lawyers. " [82] He was
dismissed together with Montague, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and
two puisne Judges, Neville and Charlton. One of the new Judges was
Christopher Milton, younger brother of the great poet. Of Christopher
little is known except that, in the time of the civil war, he had been
a Royalist, and that he now, in his old age, leaned towards Popery. It
does not appear that he was ever formally reconciled to the Church of
Rome: but he certainly had scruples about communicating with the Church
of England, and had therefore a strong interest in supporting the
dispensing power. [83]

The King found his counsel as refractory as his Judges. The first
barrister who learned that he was expected to defend the dispensing
power was the Solicitor General, Heneage Finch. He peremptorily refused,
and was turned out of office on the following day. [84] The Attorney
General, Sawyer, was ordered to draw warrants authorising members of
the Church of Rome to hold benefices belonging to the Church of England.
Sawyer had been deeply concerned in some of the harshest and most
unjustifiable prosecutions of that age; and the Whigs abhorred him as a
man stained with the blood of Russell and Sidney: but on this occasion
he showed no want of honesty or of resolution. "Sir," said he, "this is
not merely to dispense with a statute; it is to annul the whole statute
law from the accession of Elizabeth to this day. I dare not do it; and I
implore your Majesty to consider whether such an attack upon the rights
of the Church be in accordance with your late gracious promises. " [85]
Sawyer would have been instantly dismissed as Finch had been, if the
government could have found a successor: but this was no easy matter. It
was necessary for the protection of the rights of the crown that one
at least of the crown lawyers should be a man of learning, ability, and
experience; and no such man was willing to defend the dispensing power.
The Attorney General was therefore permitted to retain his place
during some months.