Delaval and Hayes
were not to be found, nor had any body in the vicinity ever seen such
men or heard of them.
were not to be found, nor had any body in the vicinity ever seen such
men or heard of them.
Macaulay
That Marlborough had the
strongest motives for placing her on the throne was evident. He could
never, in the court of her father, be more than a repentant criminal,
whose services were overpaid by a pardon. In her court the husband of
her adored friend would be what Pepin Heristal and Charles Martel had
been to the Chilperics and Childeberts. He would be the chief director
of the civil and military government. He would wield the whole power
of England. He would hold the balance of Europe. Great kings and
commonwealths would bid against each other for his favour, and exhaust
their treasuries in the vain hope of satiating his avarice. The
presumption was, therefore, that, if he had the English crown in his
hands, he would put in on the head of the Princess. What evidence there
was to confirm this presumption is not known; but it is certain that
something took place which convinced some of the most devoted friends
of the exiled family that he was meditating a second perfidy, surpassing
even the feat which he had performed at Salisbury. They were afraid
that if, at that moment, they succeeded in getting rid of William, the
situation of James would be more hopeless than ever. So fully were
they persuaded of the duplicity of their accomplice, that they not only
refused to proceed further in the execution of the plan which he had
formed, but disclosed his whole scheme to Portland.
William seems to have been alarmed and provoked by this intelligence
to a degree very unusual with him. In general he was indulgent,
nay, wilfully blind to the baseness of the English statesmen whom he
employed. He suspected, indeed he knew, that some of his servants were
in correspondence with his competitor; and yet he did not punish them,
did not disgrace them, did not even frown on them. He thought meanly,
and he had but too good reason for thinking meanly, of the whole of that
breed of public men which the Restoration had formed and had bequeathed
to the Revolution. He knew them too well to complain because he did not
find in them veracity, fidelity, consistency, disinterestedness. The
very utmost that he expected from them was that they would serve him as
far as they could serve him without serious danger to themselves. If he
learned that, while sitting in his council and enriched by his bounty,
they were trying to make for themselves at Saint Germains an interest
which might be of use to them in the event of a counterrevolution he was
more inclined to bestow on them the contemptuous commendation which was
bestowed of old on the worldly wisdom of the unjust steward than to call
them to a severe account. But the crime of Marlborough was of a very
different kind. His treason was not that of a fainthearted man desirous
to keep a retreat open for himself in every event, but that of a man of
dauntless courage, profound policy and measureless ambition. William was
not prone to fear; but, if there was anything on earth that he feared,
it was Marlborough. To treat the criminal as he deserved was indeed
impossible; for those by whom his designs had been made known to the
government would never have consented to appear against him in the
witness box. But to permit him to retain high command in that army which
he was then engaged in seducing would have been madness.
Late in the evening of the ninth of January the Queen had a painful
explanation with the Princess Anne. Early the next morning Marlborough
was informed that their Majesties had no further occasion for his
services, and that he must not presume to appear in the royal presence.
He had been loaded with honours, and with what he loved better, riches.
All was at once taken away.
The real history of these events was known to very few. Evelyn, who
had in general excellent sources of information, believed that the
corruption and extortion of which Marlborough was notoriously guilty had
roused the royal indignation. The Dutch ministers could only tell
the States General that six different stories were spread abroad by
Marlborough's enemies. Some said that he had indiscreetly suffered
an important military secret to escape him; some that he had spoken
disrespectfully of their Majesties; some that he had done ill offices
between the Queen and the Princess; some that he had been forming cabals
in the army; some that he had carried on an unauthorised correspondence
with the Danish government about the general politics of Europe; and
some that he had been trafficking with the agents of the Court of Saint
Germains. [187] His friends contradicted every one of these stories, and
affirmed that his only crime was his dislike of the foreigners who were
lording it over his countrymen, and that he had fallen a victim to the
machinations of Portland, whom he was known to dislike, and whom he had
not very politely described as a wooden fellow. The mystery, which from
the first overhung the story of Marlborough's disgrace, was darkened,
after the lapse of fifty years, by the shameless mendacity of his widow.
The concise narrative of James dispels the mystery, and makes it clear,
not only why Marlborough was disgraced, but also how several of the
reports about the cause of his disgrace originated. [188]
Though William assigned to the public no reason for exercising his
undoubted prerogative by dismissing his servant, Anne had been informed
of the truth; and it had been left to her to judge whether an officer
who had been guilty of a foul treason was a fit inmate of the palace.
Three weeks passed. Lady Marlborough still retained her post and her
apartments at Whitehall. Her husband still resided with her; and still
the King and Queen gave no sign of displeasure. At length the haughty
and vindictive Countess, emboldened by their patience, determined to
brave them face to face, and accompanied her mistress one evening to the
drawingroom at Kensington. This was too much even for the gentle Mary.
She would indeed have expressed her indignation before the crowd which
surrounded the card tables, had she not remembered that her sister was
in a state which entitles women to peculiar indulgence. Nothing was
said that night; but on the following day a letter from the Queen was
delivered to the Princess. Mary declared that she was unwilling to give
pain to a sister whom she loved, and in whom she could easily pass over
any ordinary fault; but this was a serious matter. Lady Marlborough must
be dismissed. While she lived at Whitehall her lord would live there.
Was it proper that a man in his situation should be suffered to make the
palace of his injured master his home? Yet so unwilling was His Majesty
to deal severely with the worst offenders, that even this had been
borne, and might have been borne longer, had not Anne brought the
Countess to defy the King and Queen in their own presence chamber. "It
was unkind," Mary wrote, "in a sister; it would have been uncivil in an
equal; and I need not say that I have more to claim. " The Princess,
in her answer, did not attempt to exculpate or excuse Marlborough, but
expressed a firm conviction that his wife was innocent, and implored
the Queen not to insist on so heartrending a separation. "There is no
misery," Anne wrote, "that I cannot resolve to suffer rather than the
thoughts of parting from her. "
The Princess sent for her uncle Rochester, and implored him to carry her
letter to Kensington, and to be her advocate there. Rochester declined
the office of messenger, and, though he tried to restore harmony between
his kinswomen, was by no means disposed to plead the cause of the
Churchills. He had indeed long seen with extreme uneasiness the absolute
dominion exercised over his younger niece by that unprincipled pair.
Anne's expostulation was sent to the Queen by a servant. The only
reply was a message from the Lord Chamberlain, Dorset, commanding Lady
Marlborough to leave the palace. Mrs. Morley would not be separated from
Mrs. Freeman. As to Mr. Morley, all places where he could have his three
courses and his three bottles were alike to him. The Princess and her
whole family therefore retired to Sion House, a villa belonging to the
Duke of Somerset, and situated on the margin of the Thames. In London
she occupied Berkeley House, which stood in Piccadilly, on the site
now covered by Devonshire House. [189] Her income was secured by Act of
Parliament; but no punishment which it was in the power of the Crown
to inflict on her was spared. Her guard of honour was taken away. The
foreign ministers ceased to wait upon her. When she went to Bath the
Secretary of State wrote to request the Mayor of that city not to
receive her with the ceremonial with which royal visitors were usually
welcomed. When she attended divine service at Saint James's Church she
found that the rector had been forbidden to show her the customary marks
of respect, to bow to her from his pulpit, and to send a copy of his
text to be laid on her cushion. Even the bellman of Piccadilly, it was
said, perhaps falsely, was ordered not to chaunt her praises in his
doggrel verse under the windows of Berkeley House. [190]
That Anne was in the wrong is clear; but it is not equally clear that
the King and Queen were in the right. They should have either dissembled
their displeasure, or openly declared the true reasons for it.
Unfortunately, they let every body see the punishment, and they let
scarcely any body know the provocation. They should have remembered
that, in the absence of information about the cause of a quarrel, the
public is naturally inclined to side with the weaker party, and that
this inclination is likely to be peculiarly strong when a sister is,
without any apparent reason, harshly treated by a sister. They should
have remembered, too, that they were exposing to attack what was
unfortunately the one vulnerable part of Mary's character. A cruel fate
had put enmity between her and her father. Her detractors pronounced
her utterly destitute of natural affection; and even her eulogists,
when they spoke of the way in which she had discharged the duties of the
filial relation, were forced to speak in a subdued and apologetic tone.
Nothing therefore could be more unfortunate than that she should a
second time appear unmindful of the ties of consanguinity. She was now
at open war with both the two persons who were nearest to her in blood.
Many who thought that her conduct towards her parent was justified by
the extreme danger which had threatened her country and her religion,
were unable to defend her conduct towards her sister. While Mary, who
was really guilty in this matter of nothing more than imprudence, was
regarded by the world as an oppressor, Anne, who was as culpable as her
small faculties enabled her to be, assumed the interesting character of
a meek, resigned sufferer. In those private letters, indeed, to which
the name of Morley was subscribed, the Princess expressed the sentiments
of a fury in the style of a fishwoman, railed savagely at the whole
Dutch nation, and called her brother in law sometimes the abortion,
sometimes the monster, sometimes Caliban. [191] But the nation heard
nothing of her language and saw nothing of her deportment but what was
decorous and submissive. The truth seems to have been that the rancorous
and coarseminded Countess gave the tone to Her Highness's confidential
correspondence, while the graceful, serene and politic Earl was suffered
to prescribe the course which was to be taken before the public eye.
During a short time the Queen was generally blamed. But the charm of her
temper and manners was irresistible; and in a few months she regained
the popularity which she had lost. [192]
It was a most fortunate circumstance for Marlborough that, just at the
very time when all London was talking about his disgrace, and trying to
guess at the cause of the King's sudden anger against one who had
always seemed to be a favourite, an accusation of treason was brought by
William Fuller against many persons of high consideration, was strictly
investigated, and was proved to be false and malicious. The consequence
was that the public, which rarely discriminates nicely, could not, at
that moment, be easily brought to believe in the reality of any Jacobite
conspiracy.
That Fuller's plot is less celebrated than the Popish plot is rather the
fault of the historians than of Fuller, who did all that man could do
to secure an eminent place among villains. Every person well read in
history must have observed that depravity has its temporary modes, which
come in and go out like modes of dress and upholstery. It may be doubted
whether, in our country, any man ever before the year 1678 invented and
related on oath a circumstantial history, altogether fictitious, of
a treasonable plot, for the purpose of making himself important by
destroying men who had given him no provocation. But in the year 1678
this execrable crime became the fashion, and continued to be so during
the twenty years which followed. Preachers designated it as our peculiar
national sin, and prophesied that it would draw on us some awful
national judgment. Legislators proposed new punishments of terrible
severity for this new atrocity. [193] It was not however found necessary
to resort to those punishments. The fashion changed; and during the last
century and a half there has perhaps not been a single instance of this
particular kind of wickedness.
The explanation is simple. Oates was the founder of a school. His
success proved that no romance is too wild to be received with faith by
understandings which fear and hatred have disordered. His slanders were
monstrous; but they were well timed; he spoke to a people made credulous
by their passions; and thus, by impudent and cruel lying, he raised
himself in a week from beggary and obscurity to luxury, renown and
power. He had once eked out the small tithes of a miserable vicarage by
stealing the pigs and fowls of his parishioners. [194] He was now lodged
in a palace; he was followed by admiring crowds; he had at his mercy
the estates and lives of Howards and Herberts. A crowd of imitators
instantly appeared. It seemed that much more might be got, and that
much less was risked, by testifying to an imaginary conspiracy than by
robbing on the highway or clipping the coin. Accordingly the Bedloes,
Dangerfields, Dugdales, Turberviles, made haste to transfer their
industry to an employment at once more profitable and less perilous than
any to which they were accustomed. Till the dissolution of the Oxford
Parliament Popish plots were the chief manufacture. Then, during seven
years, Whig plots were the only plots which paid. After the Revolution
Jacobite plots came in; but the public had become cautious; and though
the new false witnesses were in no respect less artful than their
predecessors, they found much less encouragement. The history of the
first great check given to the practices of this abandoned race of men
well deserves to be circumstantially related.
In 1689, and in the beginning of 1690, William Fuller had rendered to
the government service such as the best governments sometimes require,
and such as none but the worst men ever perform. His useful treachery
had been rewarded by his employers, as was meet, with money and with
contempt. Their liberality enabled him to live during some months like
a fine gentleman. He called himself a Colonel, hired servants, clothed
them in gorgeous liveries, bought fine horses, lodged in Pall Mall, and
showed his brazen forehead, overtopped by a wig worth fifty guineas, in
the antechambers of the palace and in the stage box at the theatre.
He even gave himself the airs of a favourite of royalty, and, as if he
thought that William could not live without him, followed His Majesty
first to Ireland, and then to the Congress of Princes at the Hague.
Fuller afterwards boasted that, at the Hague, he appeared with a retinue
fit for an ambassador, that he gave ten guineas a week for an apartment,
and that the worst waistcoat which he condescended to wear was of silver
stuff at forty shillings a yard. Such profusion, of course, brought him
to poverty. Soon after his return to England he took refuge from the
bailiffs in Axe Yard, a place lying within the verge of Whitehall. His
fortunes were desperate; he owed great sums; on the government he had no
claim; his past services had been overpaid; no future service was to be
expected from him having appeared in the witness box as evidence for the
Crown, he could no longer be of any use as a spy on the Jacobites; and
by all men of virtue and honour, to whatever party they might belong, he
was abhorred and shunned.
Just at this time, when he was in the frame of mind in which men are
open to the worst temptations, he fell in with the worst of tempters,
in truth, with the Devil in human shape. Oates had obtained his liberty,
his pardon, and a pension which made him a much richer man than nineteen
twentieths of the members of that profession of which he was the
disgrace. But he was still unsatisfied. He complained that he had now
less than three hundred a year. In the golden days of the Plot he had
been allowed three times as much, had been sumptuously lodged in the
palace, had dined on plate and had been clothed in silk. He clamoured
for an increase of his stipend. Nay, he was even impudent enough to
aspire to ecclesiastical preferment, and thought it hard that, while so
many mitres were distributed, he could not get a deanery, a prebend, or
even a living. He missed no opportunity of urging his pretensions. He
haunted the public offices and the lobbies of the Houses of Parliament.
He might be seen and heard every day, hurrying, as fast as his uneven
legs would carry him, between Charing Cross and Westminster Hall,
puffing with haste and self importance, chattering about what he had
done for the good cause, and reviling, in the style of the boatmen on
the river, all the statesmen and divines whom he suspected of doing him
ill offices at Court, and keeping him back from a bishopric. When he
found that there was no hope for him in the Established Church, he
turned to the Baptists. They, at first, received him very coldly; but
he gave such touching accounts of the wonderful work of grace which had
been wrought in his soul, and vowed so solemnly, before Jehovah and the
holy angels, to be thenceforth a burning and shining light, that it was
difficult for simple and well meaning people to think him altogether
insincere. He mourned, he said, like a turtle. On one Lord's day he
thought he should have died of grief at being shut out from fellowship
with the saints. He was at length admitted to communion; but before
he had been a year among his new friends they discovered his true
character, and solemnly cast him out as a hypocrite. Thenceforth he
became the mortal enemy of the leading Baptists, and persecuted them
with the same treachery, the same mendacity, the same effrontery, the
same black malice which had many years before wrought the destruction
of more celebrated victims. Those who had lately been edified by his
account of his blessed experiences stood aghast to hear him crying out
that he would be revenged, that revenge was God's own sweet morsel,
that the wretches who had excommunicated him should be ruined, that they
should be forced to fly their country, that they should be stripped to
the last shilling. His designs were at length frustrated by a righteous
decree of the Court of Chancery, a decree which would have left a
deep stain on the character of an ordinary man, but which makes no
perceptible addition to the infamy of Titus Oates. [195] Through all
changes, however, he was surrounded by a small knot of hotheaded and
foulmouthed agitators, who, abhorred and despised by every respectable
Whig, yet called themselves Whigs, and thought themselves injured
because they were not rewarded for scurrility and slander with the best
places under the Crown.
In 1691, Titus, in order to be near the focal point of political
intrigue and faction, had taken a house within the precinct of
Whitehall. To this house Fuller, who lived hard by, found admission. The
evil work which had been begun in him, when he was still a child, by the
memoirs of Dangerfield, was now completed by the conversation of Oates.
The Salamanca Doctor was, as a witness, no longer formidable; but he was
impelled, partly by the savage malignity which he felt towards all whom
he considered as his enemies, and partly by mere monkeylike restlessness
and love of mischief, to do, through the instrumentality of others,
what he could no longer do in person. In Fuller he had found the corrupt
heart, the ready tongue and the unabashed front which are the first
qualifications for the office of a false accuser. A friendship, if that
word may be so used, sprang up between the pair. Oates opened his house
and even his purse to Fuller. The veteran sinner, both directly and
through the agency of his dependents, intimated to the novice that
nothing made a man so important as the discovering of a plot, and that
these were times when a young fellow who would stick at nothing and
fear nobody might do wonders. The Revolution,--such was the language
constantly held by Titus and his parasites,--had produced little good.
The brisk boys of Shaftesbury had not been recompensed according to
their merits. Even the Doctor, such was the ingratitude of men, was
looked on coldly at the new Court. Tory rogues sate at the council
board, and were admitted to the royal closet. It would be a noble feat
to bring their necks to the block. Above all, it would be delightful
to see Nottingham's long solemn face on Tower Hill. For the hatred with
which these bad men regarded Nottingham had no bounds, and was probably
excited less by his political opinions, in which there was doubtless
much to condemn, than by his moral character, in which the closest
scrutiny will detect little that is not deserving of approbation. Oates,
with the authority which experience and success entitle a preceptor to
assume, read his pupil a lecture on the art of bearing false witness.
"You ought," he said, with many oaths and curses, "to have made more,
much more, out of what you heard and saw at Saint Germains. Never was
there a finer foundation for a plot. But you are a fool; you are a
coxcomb; I could beat you; I would not have done so. I used to go to
Charles and tell him his own. I called Lauderdale rogue to his face. I
made King, Ministers, Lords, Commons, afraid of me. But you young men
have no spirit. " Fuller was greatly edified by these exhortations. It
was, however, hinted to him by some of his associates that, if he meant
to take up the trade of swearing away lives, he would do well not to
show himself so often at coffeehouses in the company of Titus. "The
Doctor," said one of the gang, "is an excellent person, and has done
great things in his time; but many people are prejudiced against him;
and, if you are really going to discover a plot, the less you are seen
with him the better. " Fuller accordingly ceased to frequent Oates's
house, but still continued to receive his great master's instructions in
private.
To do Fuller justice, he seems not to have taken up the trade of a false
witness till he could no longer support himself by begging or swindling.
He lived for a time on the charity of the Queen. He then levied
contributions by pretending to be one of the noble family of Sidney. He
wheedled Tillotson out of some money, and requited the good Archbishop's
kindness by passing himself off as His Grace's favourite nephew. But
in the autumn of 1691 all these shifts were exhausted. After lying in
several spunging houses, Fuller was at length lodged in the King's Bench
prison, and he now thought it time to announce that he had discovered a
plot. [196]
He addressed himself first to Tillotson and Portland; but both Tillotson
and Portland soon perceived that he was lying. What he said was,
however, reported to the King, who, as might have been expected, treated
the information and the informant with cold contempt. All that remained
was to try whether a flame could be raised in the Parliament.
Soon after the Houses met, Fuller petitioned the Commons to hear what he
had to say, and promised to make wonderful disclosures. He was brought
from his prison to the bar of the House; and he there repeated a long
romance. James, he said, had delegated the regal authority to six
commissioners, of whom Halifax was first. More than fifty lords and
gentlemen had signed an address to the French King, imploring him to
make a great effort for the restoration of the House of Stuart. Fuller
declared that he had seen this address, and recounted many of the names
appended to it. Some members made severe remarks on the improbability of
the story and on the character of the witness. He was, they said, one of
the greatest rogues on the face of the earth; and he told such things
as could scarcely be credited if he were an angel from heaven. Fuller
audaciously pledged himself to bring proofs which would satisfy the most
incredulous. He was, he averred, in communication with some agents of
James. Those persons were ready to make reparation to their country.
Their testimony would be decisive; for they were in possession of
documentary evidence which would confound the guilty. They held back
only because they saw some of the traitors high in office and near the
royal person, and were afraid of incurring the enmity of men so powerful
and so wicked. Fuller ended by asking for a sum of money, and by
assuring the Commons that he would lay it out to good account. [197]
Had his impudent request been granted, he would probably have paid his
debts, obtained his liberty, and absconded; but the House very wisely
insisted on seeing his witnesses first. He then began to shuffle.
The gentlemen were on the Continent, and could not come over without
passports. Passports were delivered to him; but he complained that they
were insufficient. At length the Commons, fully determined to get at the
truth, presented an address requesting the King to send Fuller a blank
safe conduct in the largest terms. [198] The safe conduct was sent. Six
weeks passed, and nothing was heard of the witnesses. The friends of the
lords and gentlemen who had been accused represented strongly that
the House ought not to separate for the summer without coming to some
decision on charges so grave. Fuller was ordered to attend. He pleaded
sickness, and asserted, not for the first time, that the Jacobites
had poisoned him. But all his plans were confounded by the laudable
promptitude and vigour with which the Commons acted. A Committee was
sent to his bedside, with orders to ascertain whether he really had
any witnesses, and where those witnesses resided. The members who were
deputed for this purpose went to the King's Bench prison, and found him
suffering under a disorder, produced, in all probability, by some emetic
which he had swallowed for the purpose of deceiving them. In answer to
their questions he said that two of his witnesses, Delaval and Hayes,
were in England, and were lodged at the house of a Roman Catholic
apothecary in Holborn. The Commons, as soon as the Committee had
reported, sent some members to the house which he had indicated. That
house and all the neighbouring houses were searched.
Delaval and Hayes
were not to be found, nor had any body in the vicinity ever seen such
men or heard of them. The House, therefore, on the last day of the
session, just before Black Rod knocked at the door, unanimously resolved
that William Fuller was a cheat and a false accuser; that he had
insulted the Government and the Parliament; that he had calumniated
honourable men, and that an address should be carried up to the throne,
requesting that he might be prosecuted for his villany. [199] He was
consequently tried, convicted, and sentenced to fine, imprisonment and
the pillory. The exposure, more terrible than death to a mind not lost
to all sense of shame, he underwent with a hardihood worthy of his
two favourite models, Dangerfield and Oates. He had the impudence to
persist, year after year, in affirming that he had fallen a victim to
the machinations of the late King, who had spent six thousand pounds
in order to ruin him. Delaval and Hayes--so this fable ran--had been
instructed by James in person. They had, in obedience to his orders,
induced Fuller to pledge his word for their appearance, and had then
absented themselves, and left him exposed to the resentment of the House
of Commons. [200] The story had the reception which it deserved, and
Fuller sank into an obscurity from which he twice or thrice, at long
intervals, again emerged for a moment into infamy.
On the twenty-fourth of February 1692, about an hour after the Commons
had voted Fuller an impostor, they were summoned to the chamber of the
Lords. The King thanked the Houses for their loyalty and liberality,
informed them that he must soon set out for the Continent, and commanded
them to adjourn themselves. He gave his assent on that day to many
bills, public and private; but when the title of one bill, which had
passed the Lower House without a single division and the Upper House
without a single protest, had been read by the Clerk of the Crown, the
Clerk of the Parliaments declared, according to the ancient form, that
the King and the Queen would consider of the matter. Those words had
very rarely been pronounced before the accession of William. They have
been pronounced only once since his death. But by him the power of
putting a Veto on laws which had been passed by the Estates of the Realm
was used on several important occasions. His detractors truly asserted
that he rejected a greater number of important bills than all the Kings
of the House of Stuart put together, and most absurdly inferred that the
sense of the Estates of the Realm was much less respected by him than by
his uncles and his grandfather. A judicious student of history will
have no difficulty in discovering why William repeatedly exercised a
prerogative to which his predecessors very seldom had recourse, and
which his successors have suffered to fall into utter desuetude.
His predecessors passed laws easily because they broke laws easily.
Charles the First gave his assent to the Petition of Right, and
immediately violated every clause of that great statute. Charles the
Second gave his assent to an Act which provided that a Parliament should
be held at least once in three years; but when he died the country had
been near four years without a Parliament. The laws which abolished
the Court of High Commission, the laws which instituted the Sacramental
Test, were passed without the smallest difficulty; but they did
not prevent James the Second from reestablishing the Court of High
Commission, and from filling the Privy Council, the public offices, the
courts of justice, and the municipal corporations with persons who had
never taken the Test. Nothing could be more natural than that a King
should not think it worth while to withhold his assent from a statute
with which he could dispense whenever he thought fit.
The situation of William was very different. He could not, like those
who had ruled before him, pass an Act in the spring and violate it
in the summer. He had, by assenting to the Bill of Rights, solemnly
renounced the dispensing power; and he was restrained, by prudence as
well as by conscience and honour, from breaking the compact under which
he held his crown. A law might be personally offensive to him; it might
appear to him to be pernicious to his people; but, as soon as he had
passed it, it was, in his eyes, a sacred thing. He had therefore a
motive, which preceding Kings had not, for pausing before he passed such
a law. They gave their word readily, because they had no scruple about
breaking it. He gave his word slowly, because he never failed to keep
it.
But his situation, though it differed widely from that of the princes of
the House of Stuart, was not precisely that of the princes of the House
of Brunswick. A prince of the House of Brunswick is guided, as to the
use of every royal prerogative, by the advice of a responsible ministry;
and this ministry must be taken from the party which predominates in the
two Houses, or, at least, in the Lower House. It is hardly possible to
conceive circumstances in which a Sovereign so situated can refuse
to assent to a bill which has been approved by both branches of the
legislature. Such a refusal would necessarily imply one of two things,
that the Sovereign acted in opposition to the advice of the ministry, or
that the ministry was at issue, on a question of vital importance, with
a majority both of the Commons and of the Lords. On either supposition
the country would be in a most critical state, in a state which, if
long continued, must end in a revolution. But in the earlier part of
the reign of William there was no ministry. The heads of the executive
departments had not been appointed exclusively from either party.
Some were zealous Whigs, others zealous Tories. The most enlightened
statesmen did not hold it to be unconstitutional that the King should
exercise his highest prerogatives on the most important occasions
without any other guidance than that of his own judgment. His refusal,
therefore, to assent to a bill which had passed both Houses indicated,
not, as a similar refusal would now indicate, that the whole machinery
of government was in a state of fearful disorder, but merely that there
was a difference of opinion between him and the two other branches
of the legislature as to the expediency of a particular law. Such a
difference of opinion might exist, and, as we shall hereafter see,
actually did exist, at a time when he was, not merely on friendly, but
on most affectionate terms with the Estates of the Realm.
The circumstances under which he used his Veto for the first time have
never yet been correctly stated. A well meant but unskilful attempt
had been made to complete a reform which the Bill of Rights had left
imperfect. That great law had deprived the Crown of the power of
arbitrarily removing the judges, but had not made them entirely
independent. They were remunerated partly by fees and partly by
salaries. Over the fees the King had no control; but the salaries he had
full power to reduce or to withhold. That William had ever abused this
power was not pretended; but it was undoubtedly a power which no prince
ought to possess; and this was the sense of both Houses. A bill was
therefore brought in by which a salary of a thousand a year was strictly
secured to each of the twelve judges. Thus far all was well. But
unfortunately the salaries were made a charge on the hereditary revenue.
No such proposition would now be entertained by the House of Commons,
without the royal consent previously signified by a Privy Councillor.
But this wholesome rule had not then been established; and William could
defend the proprietary rights of the Crown only by putting his negative
on the bill. At the time there was, as far as can now be ascertained, no
outcry. Even the Jacobite libellers were almost silent. It was not till
the provisions of the bill had been forgotten, and till nothing but its
title was remembered, that William was accused of having been influenced
by a wish to keep the judges in a state of dependence. [201]
The Houses broke up; and the King prepared to set out for the Continent.
Before his departure he made some changes in his household and in
several departments of the government; changes, however, which did not
indicate a very decided preference for either of the great political
parties. Rochester was sworn of the Council. It is probable that he
had earned this mark of royal favour by taking the Queen's side in the
unhappy dispute between her and her sister. Pembroke took charge of the
Privy Seal, and was succeeded at the Board of Admiralty by Charles Lord
Cornwallis, a moderate Tory; Lowther accepted a seat at the same board,
and was succeeded at the Treasury by Sir Edward Seymour. Many Tory
country gentlemen, who had looked on Seymour as their leader in the war
against placemen and Dutchmen, were moved to indignation by learning
that he had become a courtier. They remembered that he had voted for
a Regency, that he had taken the oaths with no good grace, that he had
spoken with little respect of the Sovereign whom he was now ready to
serve for the sake of emoluments hardly worthy of the acceptance of a
man of his wealth and parliamentary interest. It was strange that the
haughtiest of human beings should be the meanest, that one who seethed
to reverence nothing on earth but himself should abase himself for the
sake of quarter day. About such reflections he troubled himself very
little. He found, however, that there was one disagreeable circumstance
connected with his new office. At the Board of Treasury he must sit
below the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The First Lord, Godolphin, was a
peer of the realm; and his right to precedence, according to the rules
of the heralds, could not be questioned. But every body knew who was the
first of English commoners. What was Richard Hampden that he should
take the place of a Seymour, of the head of the Seymours? With much
difficulty, the dispute was compromised. Many concessions were made
to Sir Edward's punctilious pride. He was sworn of the Council. He
was appointed one of the Cabinet. The King took him by the hand and
presented him to the Queen. "I bring you," said William, "a gentleman
who will in my absence be a valuable friend. " In this way Sir Edward was
so much soothed and flattered that he ceased to insist on his right
to thrust himself between the First Lord and the Chancellor of the
Exchequer.
In the same Commission of Treasury in which the name of Seymour
appeared, appeared also the name of a much younger politician, who had
during the late session raised himself to high distinction in the House
of Commons, Charles Montague. This appointment gave great satisfaction
to the Whigs, in whose esteem Montague now stood higher than their
veteran chiefs Sacheverell and Littleton, and was indeed second to
Somers alone.
Sidney delivered up the seals which he had held during more than a year,
and was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Some months elapsed before
the place which he had quitted was filled up; and during this interval
the whole business which had ordinarily been divided between two
Secretaries of State was transacted by Nottingham. [202]
While these arrangements were in progress, events had taken place in a
distant part of the island which were not, till after the lapse of
many months, known in the best informed circles of London, but which
gradually obtained a fearful notoriety, and which, after the lapse of
more than a hundred and sixty years, are never mentioned without horror.
Soon after the Estates of Scotland had separated in the autumn of 1690,
a change was made in the administration of that kingdom. William was
not satisfied with the way in which he had been represented in the
Parliament House. He thought that the rabbled curates had been hardly
treated. He had very reluctantly suffered the law which abolished
patronage to be touched with his sceptre. But what especially displeased
him was that the Acts which established a new ecclesiastical polity had
not been accompanied by an Act granting liberty of conscience to those
who were attached to the old ecclesiastical polity. He had directed his
Commissioner Melville to obtain for the Episcopalians of Scotland an
indulgence similar to that which Dissenters enjoyed in England. [203]
But the Presbyterian preachers were loud and vehement against lenity
to Amalekites. Melville, with useful talents, and perhaps with fair
intentions, had neither large views nor an intrepid spirit. He shrank
from uttering a word so hateful to the theological demagogues of his
country as Toleration. By obsequiously humouring their prejudices he
quelled the clamour which was rising at Edinburgh; but the effect of his
timid caution was that a far more formidable clamour soon rose in
the south of the island against the bigotry of the schismatics who
domineered in the north, and against the pusillanimity of the government
which had not dared to withstand that bigotry. On this subject the High
Churchman and the Low Churchman were of one mind, or rather the Low
Churchman was the more angry of the two. A man like South, who had
during many years been predicting that, if ever the Puritans ceased to
be oppressed, they would become oppressors, was at heart not ill pleased
to see his prophecy fulfilled. But in a man like Burnet, the great
object of whose life had been to mitigate the animosity which the
ministers of the Anglican Church felt towards the Presbyterians, the
intolerant conduct of the Presbyterians could awaken no feeling but
indignation, shame and grief. There was, therefore, at the English Court
nobody to speak a good word for Melville. It was impossible that in
such circumstances he should remain at the head of the Scottish
administration. He was, however, gently let down from his high position.
He continued during more than a year to be Secretary of State; but
another Secretary was appointed, who was to reside near the King, and to
have the chief direction of affairs. The new Prime Minister for Scotland
was the able, eloquent and accomplished Sir John Dalrymple. His father,
the Lord President of the Court of Session, had lately been raised to
the peerage by the title of Viscount Stair; and Sir John Dalrymple was
consequently, according to the ancient usage of Scotland, designated
as the Master of Stair. In a few months Melville resigned his
secretaryship, and accepted an office of some dignity and emolument, but
of no political importance. [204]
The Lowlands of Scotland were, during the year which followed the
parliamentary session of 1690, as quiet as they had ever been within the
memory of man; but the state of the Highlands caused much anxiety to the
government. The civil war in that wild region, after it had ceased to
flame, had continued during some time to smoulder. At length, early in
the year 1691, the rebel chiefs informed the Court of Saint Germains
that, pressed as they were on every side, they could hold out no longer
without succour from France. James had sent them a small quantity of
meal, brandy and tobacco, and had frankly told them that he could do
nothing more. Money was so scarce among them that six hundred pounds
sterling would have been a most acceptable addition to their funds,
but even such a sum he was unable to spare. He could scarcely, in such
circumstances, expect them to defend his cause against a government
which had a regular army and a large revenue. He therefore informed them
that he should not take it ill of them if they made their peace with
the new dynasty, provided always that they were prepared to rise in
insurrection as soon as he should call on them to do so. [205]
Meanwhile it had been determined at Kensington, in spite of the
opposition of the Master of Stair, to try the plan which Tarbet had
recommended two years before, and which, if it had been tried when
he recommended it, would probably have prevented much bloodshed and
confusion. It was resolved that twelve or fifteen thousand pounds should
be laid out in quieting the Highlands. This was a mass of treasure which
to an inhabitant of Appin or Lochaber seemed almost fabulous, and which
indeed bore a greater proportion to the income of Keppoch or Glengarry
than fifteen hundred thousand pounds bore to the income of Lord Bedford
or Lord Devonshire. The sum was ample; but the King was not fortunate in
the choice of an agent. [206]
John Earl of Breadalbane, the head of a younger branch of the great
House of Campbell, ranked high among the petty princes of the mountains.
He could bring seventeen hundred claymores into the field; and, ten
years before the Revolution, he had actually marched into the Lowlands
with this great force for the purpose of supporting the prelatical
tyranny. [207] In those days he had affected zeal for monarchy and
episcopacy; but in truth he cared for no government and no religion.
He seems to have united two different sets of vices, the growth of
two different regions, and of two different stages in the progress of
society. In his castle among the hills he had learned the barbarian
pride and ferocity of a Highland chief. In the Council Chamber at
Edinburgh he had contracted the deep taint of treachery and corruption.
After the Revolution he had, like too many of his fellow nobles, joined
and betrayed every party in turn, had sworn fealty to William and Mary,
and had plotted against them. To trace all the turns and doublings of
his course, during the year 1689 and the earlier part of 1690, would
be wearisome. [208] That course became somewhat less tortuous when the
battle of the Boyne had cowed the spirit of the Jacobites. It now seemed
probable that the Earl would be a loyal subject of their Majesties, till
some great disaster should befall them. Nobody who knew him could trust
him; but few Scottish statesmen could then be trusted; and yet Scottish
statesmen must be employed. His position and connections marked him out
as a man who might, if he would, do much towards the work of quieting
the Highlands; and his interest seemed to be a guarantee for his zeal.
He had, as he declared with every appearance of truth, strong personal
reasons for wishing to see tranquillity restored. His domains were so
situated that, while the civil war lasted, his vassals could not tend
their herds or sow their oats in peace. His lands were daily ravaged;
his cattle were daily driven away; one of his houses had been burned
down. It was probable, therefore, that he would do his best to put an
end to hostilities. [209]
He was accordingly commissioned to treat with the Jacobite chiefs, and
was entrusted with the money which was to be distributed among them. He
invited them to a conference at his residence in Glenorchy. They came;
but the treaty went on very slowly. Every head of a tribe asked for a
larger share of the English gold than was to be obtained. Breadalbane
was suspected of intending to cheat both the clans and the King. The
dispute between the rebels and the government was complicated with
another dispute still more embarrassing. The Camerons and Macdonalds
were really at war, not with William, but with Mac Callum More; and
no arrangement to which Mac Callum More was not a party could really
produce tranquillity. A grave question therefore arose, whether
the money entrusted to Breadalbane should be paid directly to the
discontented chiefs, or should be employed to satisfy the claims
which Argyle had upon them. The shrewdness of Lochiel and the arrogant
pretensions of Glengarry contributed to protract the discussions. But
no Celtic potentate was so impracticable as Macdonald of Glencoe, known
among the mountains by the hereditary appellation of Mac Ian. [210]
Mac Ian dwelt in the mouth of a ravine situated not far from the
southern shore of Lochleven, an arm of the sea which deeply indents the
western coast of Scotland, and separates Argyleshire from Invernesshire.
Near his house were two or three small hamlets inhabited by his tribe.
The whole population which he governed was not supposed to exceed two
hundred souls. In the neighbourhood of the little cluster of villages
was some copsewood and some pasture land; but a little further up the
defile no sign of population or of fruitfulness was to be seen. In the
Gaelic tongue Glencoe signifies the Glen of Weeping; and in truth that
pass is the most dreary and melancholy of all the Scottish passes,
the very Valley of the Shadow of Death. Mists and storms brood over it
through the greater part of the finest summer; and even on those rare
days when the sun is bright, and when there is no cloud in the sky, the
impression made by the landscape is sad and awful. The path lies along
a stream which issues from the most sullen and gloomy of mountain pools.
Huge precipices of naked stone frown on both sides. Even in July the
streaks of snow may often be discerned in the rifts near the summits.
All down the sides of the crags heaps of ruin mark the headlong paths of
the torrents. Mile after mile the traveller looks in vain for the smoke
of one hut, for one human form wrapped in plaid, and listens in vain for
the bark of a shepherd's dog or the bleat of a lamb. Mile after mile the
only sound that indicates life is the faint cry of a bird of prey from
some stormbeaten pinnacle of rock. The progress of civilisation, which
has turned so many wastes into fields yellow with harvests or gay with
apple blossoms, has only made Glencoe more desolate. All the science
and industry of a peaceful age can extract nothing valuable from that
wilderness; but, in an age of violence and rapine, the wilderness itself
was valued on account of the shelter which it afforded to the plunderer
and his plunder. Nothing could be more natural than that the clan to
which this rugged desert belonged should have been noted for predatory
habits. For, among the Highlanders generally, to rob was thought at
least as honourable an employment as to cultivate the soil; and, of
all the Highlanders, The Macdonalds of Glencoe had the least productive
soil, and the most convenient and secure den of robbers. Successive
governments had tried to punish this wild race; but no large force
had ever been employed for that purpose; and a small force was easily
resisted or eluded by men familiar with every recess and every outlet of
the natural fortress in which they had been born and bred. The people of
Glencoe would probably have been less troublesome neighbours if they
had lived among their own kindred. But they were an outpost of the
Clan Donald, separated from every other branch of their own family, and
almost surrounded by the domains of the hostile race of Diarmid. [211]
They were impelled by hereditary enmity, as well as by want, to live
at the expense of the tribe of Campbell. Breadalbane's property had
suffered greatly from their depredations; and he was not of a temper to
forgive such injuries. When, therefore, the Chief of Glencoe made his
appearance at the congress in Glenorchy, he was ungraciously received.
The Earl, who ordinarily bore himself with the solemn dignity of a
Castilian grandee, forgot, in his resentment, his wonted gravity, forgot
his public character, forgot the laws of hospitality, and, with angry
reproaches and menaces, demanded reparation for the herds which had
been driven from his lands by Mac Ian's followers. Mac Ian was seriously
apprehensive of some personal outrage, and was glad to get safe back to
his own glen. [212] His pride had been wounded; and the promptings of
interest concurred with those of pride. As the head of a people who
lived by pillage, he had strong reasons for wishing that the country
might continue to be in a perturbed state. He had little chance of
receiving one guinea of the money which was to be distributed among
the malecontents. For his share of that money would scarcely meet
Breadalbane's demands for compensation; and there could be little
doubt that, whoever might be unpaid, Breadalbane would take care to
pay himself. Mac Ian therefore did his best to dissuade his allies from
accepting terms from which he could himself expect no benefit; and his
influence was not small. His own vassals, indeed, were few in number;
but he came of the best blood of the Highlands; he had kept up a close
connection with his more powerful kinsmen; nor did they like him
the less because he was a robber; for he never robbed them; and that
robbery, merely as robbery, was a wicked and disgraceful act, had never
entered into the mind of any Celtic chief. Mac Ian was therefore held in
high esteem by the confederates. His age was venerable; his aspect was
majestic; and he possessed in large measure those intellectual qualities
which, in rude societies, give men an ascendency over their fellows.
Breadalbane found himself, at every step of the negotiation, thwarted
by the arts of his old enemy, and abhorred the name of Glencoe more and
more every day. [213]
But the government did not trust solely to Breadalbane's diplomatic
skill. The authorities at Edinburgh put forth a proclamation exhorting
the clans to submit to King William and Queen Mary, and offering pardon
to every rebel who, on or before the thirty-first of December 1691,
should swear to live peaceably under the government of their Majesties.
It was announced that those who should hold out after that day would be
treated as enemies and traitors. [214] Warlike preparations were made,
which showed that the threat was meant in earnest. The Highlanders were
alarmed, and, though the pecuniary terms had not been satisfactorily
settled, thought it prudent to give the pledge which was demanded of
them. No chief, indeed, was willing to set the example of submission.
Glengarry blustered, and pretended to fortify his house. [215] "I will
not," said Lochiel, "break the ice. That is a point of honour with me.
But my tacksmen and people may use their freedom. " [216] His tacksmen
and people understood him, and repaired by hundreds to the Sheriff to
take the oaths. The Macdonalds of Sleat, Clanronald, Keppoch, and
even Glengarry, imitated the Camerons; and the chiefs, after trying to
outstay each other as long as they durst, imitated their vassals.
The thirty-first of December arrived; and still the Macdonalds of
Glencoe had not come in. The punctilious pride of Mac Ian was doubtless
gratified by the thought that he had continued to defy the government
after the boastful Glengarry, the ferocious Keppoch, the magnanimous
Lochiel had yielded: but he bought his gratification dear.
At length, on the thirty-first of December, he repaired to Fort William,
accompanied by his principal vassals, and offered to take the oaths. To
his dismay he found that there was in the fort no person competent to
administer them. Colonel Hill, the Governor, was not a magistrate;
nor was there any magistrate nearer than Inverary. Mac Ian, now fully
sensible of the folly of which he had been guilty in postponing to the
very last moment an act on which his life and his estate depended, set
off for Inverary in great distress. He carried with him a letter from
Hill to the Sheriff of Argyleshire, Sir Colin Campbell of Ardkinglass, a
respectable gentleman, who, in the late reign, had suffered severely for
his Whig principles. In this letter the Colonel expressed a goodnatured
hope that, even out of season, a lost sheep, and so fine a lost sheep,
would be gladly received. Mac Ian made all the haste in his power, and
did not stop even at his own house, though it lay nigh to the road. But
at that time a journey through Argyleshire in the depth of winter was
necessarily slow. The old man's progress up steep mountains and along
boggy valleys was obstructed by snow storms; and it was not till
the sixth of January that he presented himself before the Sheriff at
Inverary. The Sheriff hesitated. His power, he said, was limited by the
terms of the proclamation, and he did not see how he could swear a
rebel who had not submitted within the prescribed time. Mac Ian begged
earnestly and with tears that he might be sworn. His people, he said,
would follow his example. If any of them proved refractory, he would
himself send the recusant to prison, or ship him off for Islanders. His
entreaties and Hill's letter overcame Sir Colin's scruples. The oath
was administered; and a certificate was transmitted to the Council at
Edinburgh, setting forth the special circumstances which had induced the
Sheriff to do what he knew not to be strictly regular. [217]
The news that Mac Ian had not submitted within the prescribed time was
received with cruel joy by three powerful Scotchmen who were then at the
English Court. Breadalbane had gone up to London at Christmas in order
to give an account of his stewardship.
strongest motives for placing her on the throne was evident. He could
never, in the court of her father, be more than a repentant criminal,
whose services were overpaid by a pardon. In her court the husband of
her adored friend would be what Pepin Heristal and Charles Martel had
been to the Chilperics and Childeberts. He would be the chief director
of the civil and military government. He would wield the whole power
of England. He would hold the balance of Europe. Great kings and
commonwealths would bid against each other for his favour, and exhaust
their treasuries in the vain hope of satiating his avarice. The
presumption was, therefore, that, if he had the English crown in his
hands, he would put in on the head of the Princess. What evidence there
was to confirm this presumption is not known; but it is certain that
something took place which convinced some of the most devoted friends
of the exiled family that he was meditating a second perfidy, surpassing
even the feat which he had performed at Salisbury. They were afraid
that if, at that moment, they succeeded in getting rid of William, the
situation of James would be more hopeless than ever. So fully were
they persuaded of the duplicity of their accomplice, that they not only
refused to proceed further in the execution of the plan which he had
formed, but disclosed his whole scheme to Portland.
William seems to have been alarmed and provoked by this intelligence
to a degree very unusual with him. In general he was indulgent,
nay, wilfully blind to the baseness of the English statesmen whom he
employed. He suspected, indeed he knew, that some of his servants were
in correspondence with his competitor; and yet he did not punish them,
did not disgrace them, did not even frown on them. He thought meanly,
and he had but too good reason for thinking meanly, of the whole of that
breed of public men which the Restoration had formed and had bequeathed
to the Revolution. He knew them too well to complain because he did not
find in them veracity, fidelity, consistency, disinterestedness. The
very utmost that he expected from them was that they would serve him as
far as they could serve him without serious danger to themselves. If he
learned that, while sitting in his council and enriched by his bounty,
they were trying to make for themselves at Saint Germains an interest
which might be of use to them in the event of a counterrevolution he was
more inclined to bestow on them the contemptuous commendation which was
bestowed of old on the worldly wisdom of the unjust steward than to call
them to a severe account. But the crime of Marlborough was of a very
different kind. His treason was not that of a fainthearted man desirous
to keep a retreat open for himself in every event, but that of a man of
dauntless courage, profound policy and measureless ambition. William was
not prone to fear; but, if there was anything on earth that he feared,
it was Marlborough. To treat the criminal as he deserved was indeed
impossible; for those by whom his designs had been made known to the
government would never have consented to appear against him in the
witness box. But to permit him to retain high command in that army which
he was then engaged in seducing would have been madness.
Late in the evening of the ninth of January the Queen had a painful
explanation with the Princess Anne. Early the next morning Marlborough
was informed that their Majesties had no further occasion for his
services, and that he must not presume to appear in the royal presence.
He had been loaded with honours, and with what he loved better, riches.
All was at once taken away.
The real history of these events was known to very few. Evelyn, who
had in general excellent sources of information, believed that the
corruption and extortion of which Marlborough was notoriously guilty had
roused the royal indignation. The Dutch ministers could only tell
the States General that six different stories were spread abroad by
Marlborough's enemies. Some said that he had indiscreetly suffered
an important military secret to escape him; some that he had spoken
disrespectfully of their Majesties; some that he had done ill offices
between the Queen and the Princess; some that he had been forming cabals
in the army; some that he had carried on an unauthorised correspondence
with the Danish government about the general politics of Europe; and
some that he had been trafficking with the agents of the Court of Saint
Germains. [187] His friends contradicted every one of these stories, and
affirmed that his only crime was his dislike of the foreigners who were
lording it over his countrymen, and that he had fallen a victim to the
machinations of Portland, whom he was known to dislike, and whom he had
not very politely described as a wooden fellow. The mystery, which from
the first overhung the story of Marlborough's disgrace, was darkened,
after the lapse of fifty years, by the shameless mendacity of his widow.
The concise narrative of James dispels the mystery, and makes it clear,
not only why Marlborough was disgraced, but also how several of the
reports about the cause of his disgrace originated. [188]
Though William assigned to the public no reason for exercising his
undoubted prerogative by dismissing his servant, Anne had been informed
of the truth; and it had been left to her to judge whether an officer
who had been guilty of a foul treason was a fit inmate of the palace.
Three weeks passed. Lady Marlborough still retained her post and her
apartments at Whitehall. Her husband still resided with her; and still
the King and Queen gave no sign of displeasure. At length the haughty
and vindictive Countess, emboldened by their patience, determined to
brave them face to face, and accompanied her mistress one evening to the
drawingroom at Kensington. This was too much even for the gentle Mary.
She would indeed have expressed her indignation before the crowd which
surrounded the card tables, had she not remembered that her sister was
in a state which entitles women to peculiar indulgence. Nothing was
said that night; but on the following day a letter from the Queen was
delivered to the Princess. Mary declared that she was unwilling to give
pain to a sister whom she loved, and in whom she could easily pass over
any ordinary fault; but this was a serious matter. Lady Marlborough must
be dismissed. While she lived at Whitehall her lord would live there.
Was it proper that a man in his situation should be suffered to make the
palace of his injured master his home? Yet so unwilling was His Majesty
to deal severely with the worst offenders, that even this had been
borne, and might have been borne longer, had not Anne brought the
Countess to defy the King and Queen in their own presence chamber. "It
was unkind," Mary wrote, "in a sister; it would have been uncivil in an
equal; and I need not say that I have more to claim. " The Princess,
in her answer, did not attempt to exculpate or excuse Marlborough, but
expressed a firm conviction that his wife was innocent, and implored
the Queen not to insist on so heartrending a separation. "There is no
misery," Anne wrote, "that I cannot resolve to suffer rather than the
thoughts of parting from her. "
The Princess sent for her uncle Rochester, and implored him to carry her
letter to Kensington, and to be her advocate there. Rochester declined
the office of messenger, and, though he tried to restore harmony between
his kinswomen, was by no means disposed to plead the cause of the
Churchills. He had indeed long seen with extreme uneasiness the absolute
dominion exercised over his younger niece by that unprincipled pair.
Anne's expostulation was sent to the Queen by a servant. The only
reply was a message from the Lord Chamberlain, Dorset, commanding Lady
Marlborough to leave the palace. Mrs. Morley would not be separated from
Mrs. Freeman. As to Mr. Morley, all places where he could have his three
courses and his three bottles were alike to him. The Princess and her
whole family therefore retired to Sion House, a villa belonging to the
Duke of Somerset, and situated on the margin of the Thames. In London
she occupied Berkeley House, which stood in Piccadilly, on the site
now covered by Devonshire House. [189] Her income was secured by Act of
Parliament; but no punishment which it was in the power of the Crown
to inflict on her was spared. Her guard of honour was taken away. The
foreign ministers ceased to wait upon her. When she went to Bath the
Secretary of State wrote to request the Mayor of that city not to
receive her with the ceremonial with which royal visitors were usually
welcomed. When she attended divine service at Saint James's Church she
found that the rector had been forbidden to show her the customary marks
of respect, to bow to her from his pulpit, and to send a copy of his
text to be laid on her cushion. Even the bellman of Piccadilly, it was
said, perhaps falsely, was ordered not to chaunt her praises in his
doggrel verse under the windows of Berkeley House. [190]
That Anne was in the wrong is clear; but it is not equally clear that
the King and Queen were in the right. They should have either dissembled
their displeasure, or openly declared the true reasons for it.
Unfortunately, they let every body see the punishment, and they let
scarcely any body know the provocation. They should have remembered
that, in the absence of information about the cause of a quarrel, the
public is naturally inclined to side with the weaker party, and that
this inclination is likely to be peculiarly strong when a sister is,
without any apparent reason, harshly treated by a sister. They should
have remembered, too, that they were exposing to attack what was
unfortunately the one vulnerable part of Mary's character. A cruel fate
had put enmity between her and her father. Her detractors pronounced
her utterly destitute of natural affection; and even her eulogists,
when they spoke of the way in which she had discharged the duties of the
filial relation, were forced to speak in a subdued and apologetic tone.
Nothing therefore could be more unfortunate than that she should a
second time appear unmindful of the ties of consanguinity. She was now
at open war with both the two persons who were nearest to her in blood.
Many who thought that her conduct towards her parent was justified by
the extreme danger which had threatened her country and her religion,
were unable to defend her conduct towards her sister. While Mary, who
was really guilty in this matter of nothing more than imprudence, was
regarded by the world as an oppressor, Anne, who was as culpable as her
small faculties enabled her to be, assumed the interesting character of
a meek, resigned sufferer. In those private letters, indeed, to which
the name of Morley was subscribed, the Princess expressed the sentiments
of a fury in the style of a fishwoman, railed savagely at the whole
Dutch nation, and called her brother in law sometimes the abortion,
sometimes the monster, sometimes Caliban. [191] But the nation heard
nothing of her language and saw nothing of her deportment but what was
decorous and submissive. The truth seems to have been that the rancorous
and coarseminded Countess gave the tone to Her Highness's confidential
correspondence, while the graceful, serene and politic Earl was suffered
to prescribe the course which was to be taken before the public eye.
During a short time the Queen was generally blamed. But the charm of her
temper and manners was irresistible; and in a few months she regained
the popularity which she had lost. [192]
It was a most fortunate circumstance for Marlborough that, just at the
very time when all London was talking about his disgrace, and trying to
guess at the cause of the King's sudden anger against one who had
always seemed to be a favourite, an accusation of treason was brought by
William Fuller against many persons of high consideration, was strictly
investigated, and was proved to be false and malicious. The consequence
was that the public, which rarely discriminates nicely, could not, at
that moment, be easily brought to believe in the reality of any Jacobite
conspiracy.
That Fuller's plot is less celebrated than the Popish plot is rather the
fault of the historians than of Fuller, who did all that man could do
to secure an eminent place among villains. Every person well read in
history must have observed that depravity has its temporary modes, which
come in and go out like modes of dress and upholstery. It may be doubted
whether, in our country, any man ever before the year 1678 invented and
related on oath a circumstantial history, altogether fictitious, of
a treasonable plot, for the purpose of making himself important by
destroying men who had given him no provocation. But in the year 1678
this execrable crime became the fashion, and continued to be so during
the twenty years which followed. Preachers designated it as our peculiar
national sin, and prophesied that it would draw on us some awful
national judgment. Legislators proposed new punishments of terrible
severity for this new atrocity. [193] It was not however found necessary
to resort to those punishments. The fashion changed; and during the last
century and a half there has perhaps not been a single instance of this
particular kind of wickedness.
The explanation is simple. Oates was the founder of a school. His
success proved that no romance is too wild to be received with faith by
understandings which fear and hatred have disordered. His slanders were
monstrous; but they were well timed; he spoke to a people made credulous
by their passions; and thus, by impudent and cruel lying, he raised
himself in a week from beggary and obscurity to luxury, renown and
power. He had once eked out the small tithes of a miserable vicarage by
stealing the pigs and fowls of his parishioners. [194] He was now lodged
in a palace; he was followed by admiring crowds; he had at his mercy
the estates and lives of Howards and Herberts. A crowd of imitators
instantly appeared. It seemed that much more might be got, and that
much less was risked, by testifying to an imaginary conspiracy than by
robbing on the highway or clipping the coin. Accordingly the Bedloes,
Dangerfields, Dugdales, Turberviles, made haste to transfer their
industry to an employment at once more profitable and less perilous than
any to which they were accustomed. Till the dissolution of the Oxford
Parliament Popish plots were the chief manufacture. Then, during seven
years, Whig plots were the only plots which paid. After the Revolution
Jacobite plots came in; but the public had become cautious; and though
the new false witnesses were in no respect less artful than their
predecessors, they found much less encouragement. The history of the
first great check given to the practices of this abandoned race of men
well deserves to be circumstantially related.
In 1689, and in the beginning of 1690, William Fuller had rendered to
the government service such as the best governments sometimes require,
and such as none but the worst men ever perform. His useful treachery
had been rewarded by his employers, as was meet, with money and with
contempt. Their liberality enabled him to live during some months like
a fine gentleman. He called himself a Colonel, hired servants, clothed
them in gorgeous liveries, bought fine horses, lodged in Pall Mall, and
showed his brazen forehead, overtopped by a wig worth fifty guineas, in
the antechambers of the palace and in the stage box at the theatre.
He even gave himself the airs of a favourite of royalty, and, as if he
thought that William could not live without him, followed His Majesty
first to Ireland, and then to the Congress of Princes at the Hague.
Fuller afterwards boasted that, at the Hague, he appeared with a retinue
fit for an ambassador, that he gave ten guineas a week for an apartment,
and that the worst waistcoat which he condescended to wear was of silver
stuff at forty shillings a yard. Such profusion, of course, brought him
to poverty. Soon after his return to England he took refuge from the
bailiffs in Axe Yard, a place lying within the verge of Whitehall. His
fortunes were desperate; he owed great sums; on the government he had no
claim; his past services had been overpaid; no future service was to be
expected from him having appeared in the witness box as evidence for the
Crown, he could no longer be of any use as a spy on the Jacobites; and
by all men of virtue and honour, to whatever party they might belong, he
was abhorred and shunned.
Just at this time, when he was in the frame of mind in which men are
open to the worst temptations, he fell in with the worst of tempters,
in truth, with the Devil in human shape. Oates had obtained his liberty,
his pardon, and a pension which made him a much richer man than nineteen
twentieths of the members of that profession of which he was the
disgrace. But he was still unsatisfied. He complained that he had now
less than three hundred a year. In the golden days of the Plot he had
been allowed three times as much, had been sumptuously lodged in the
palace, had dined on plate and had been clothed in silk. He clamoured
for an increase of his stipend. Nay, he was even impudent enough to
aspire to ecclesiastical preferment, and thought it hard that, while so
many mitres were distributed, he could not get a deanery, a prebend, or
even a living. He missed no opportunity of urging his pretensions. He
haunted the public offices and the lobbies of the Houses of Parliament.
He might be seen and heard every day, hurrying, as fast as his uneven
legs would carry him, between Charing Cross and Westminster Hall,
puffing with haste and self importance, chattering about what he had
done for the good cause, and reviling, in the style of the boatmen on
the river, all the statesmen and divines whom he suspected of doing him
ill offices at Court, and keeping him back from a bishopric. When he
found that there was no hope for him in the Established Church, he
turned to the Baptists. They, at first, received him very coldly; but
he gave such touching accounts of the wonderful work of grace which had
been wrought in his soul, and vowed so solemnly, before Jehovah and the
holy angels, to be thenceforth a burning and shining light, that it was
difficult for simple and well meaning people to think him altogether
insincere. He mourned, he said, like a turtle. On one Lord's day he
thought he should have died of grief at being shut out from fellowship
with the saints. He was at length admitted to communion; but before
he had been a year among his new friends they discovered his true
character, and solemnly cast him out as a hypocrite. Thenceforth he
became the mortal enemy of the leading Baptists, and persecuted them
with the same treachery, the same mendacity, the same effrontery, the
same black malice which had many years before wrought the destruction
of more celebrated victims. Those who had lately been edified by his
account of his blessed experiences stood aghast to hear him crying out
that he would be revenged, that revenge was God's own sweet morsel,
that the wretches who had excommunicated him should be ruined, that they
should be forced to fly their country, that they should be stripped to
the last shilling. His designs were at length frustrated by a righteous
decree of the Court of Chancery, a decree which would have left a
deep stain on the character of an ordinary man, but which makes no
perceptible addition to the infamy of Titus Oates. [195] Through all
changes, however, he was surrounded by a small knot of hotheaded and
foulmouthed agitators, who, abhorred and despised by every respectable
Whig, yet called themselves Whigs, and thought themselves injured
because they were not rewarded for scurrility and slander with the best
places under the Crown.
In 1691, Titus, in order to be near the focal point of political
intrigue and faction, had taken a house within the precinct of
Whitehall. To this house Fuller, who lived hard by, found admission. The
evil work which had been begun in him, when he was still a child, by the
memoirs of Dangerfield, was now completed by the conversation of Oates.
The Salamanca Doctor was, as a witness, no longer formidable; but he was
impelled, partly by the savage malignity which he felt towards all whom
he considered as his enemies, and partly by mere monkeylike restlessness
and love of mischief, to do, through the instrumentality of others,
what he could no longer do in person. In Fuller he had found the corrupt
heart, the ready tongue and the unabashed front which are the first
qualifications for the office of a false accuser. A friendship, if that
word may be so used, sprang up between the pair. Oates opened his house
and even his purse to Fuller. The veteran sinner, both directly and
through the agency of his dependents, intimated to the novice that
nothing made a man so important as the discovering of a plot, and that
these were times when a young fellow who would stick at nothing and
fear nobody might do wonders. The Revolution,--such was the language
constantly held by Titus and his parasites,--had produced little good.
The brisk boys of Shaftesbury had not been recompensed according to
their merits. Even the Doctor, such was the ingratitude of men, was
looked on coldly at the new Court. Tory rogues sate at the council
board, and were admitted to the royal closet. It would be a noble feat
to bring their necks to the block. Above all, it would be delightful
to see Nottingham's long solemn face on Tower Hill. For the hatred with
which these bad men regarded Nottingham had no bounds, and was probably
excited less by his political opinions, in which there was doubtless
much to condemn, than by his moral character, in which the closest
scrutiny will detect little that is not deserving of approbation. Oates,
with the authority which experience and success entitle a preceptor to
assume, read his pupil a lecture on the art of bearing false witness.
"You ought," he said, with many oaths and curses, "to have made more,
much more, out of what you heard and saw at Saint Germains. Never was
there a finer foundation for a plot. But you are a fool; you are a
coxcomb; I could beat you; I would not have done so. I used to go to
Charles and tell him his own. I called Lauderdale rogue to his face. I
made King, Ministers, Lords, Commons, afraid of me. But you young men
have no spirit. " Fuller was greatly edified by these exhortations. It
was, however, hinted to him by some of his associates that, if he meant
to take up the trade of swearing away lives, he would do well not to
show himself so often at coffeehouses in the company of Titus. "The
Doctor," said one of the gang, "is an excellent person, and has done
great things in his time; but many people are prejudiced against him;
and, if you are really going to discover a plot, the less you are seen
with him the better. " Fuller accordingly ceased to frequent Oates's
house, but still continued to receive his great master's instructions in
private.
To do Fuller justice, he seems not to have taken up the trade of a false
witness till he could no longer support himself by begging or swindling.
He lived for a time on the charity of the Queen. He then levied
contributions by pretending to be one of the noble family of Sidney. He
wheedled Tillotson out of some money, and requited the good Archbishop's
kindness by passing himself off as His Grace's favourite nephew. But
in the autumn of 1691 all these shifts were exhausted. After lying in
several spunging houses, Fuller was at length lodged in the King's Bench
prison, and he now thought it time to announce that he had discovered a
plot. [196]
He addressed himself first to Tillotson and Portland; but both Tillotson
and Portland soon perceived that he was lying. What he said was,
however, reported to the King, who, as might have been expected, treated
the information and the informant with cold contempt. All that remained
was to try whether a flame could be raised in the Parliament.
Soon after the Houses met, Fuller petitioned the Commons to hear what he
had to say, and promised to make wonderful disclosures. He was brought
from his prison to the bar of the House; and he there repeated a long
romance. James, he said, had delegated the regal authority to six
commissioners, of whom Halifax was first. More than fifty lords and
gentlemen had signed an address to the French King, imploring him to
make a great effort for the restoration of the House of Stuart. Fuller
declared that he had seen this address, and recounted many of the names
appended to it. Some members made severe remarks on the improbability of
the story and on the character of the witness. He was, they said, one of
the greatest rogues on the face of the earth; and he told such things
as could scarcely be credited if he were an angel from heaven. Fuller
audaciously pledged himself to bring proofs which would satisfy the most
incredulous. He was, he averred, in communication with some agents of
James. Those persons were ready to make reparation to their country.
Their testimony would be decisive; for they were in possession of
documentary evidence which would confound the guilty. They held back
only because they saw some of the traitors high in office and near the
royal person, and were afraid of incurring the enmity of men so powerful
and so wicked. Fuller ended by asking for a sum of money, and by
assuring the Commons that he would lay it out to good account. [197]
Had his impudent request been granted, he would probably have paid his
debts, obtained his liberty, and absconded; but the House very wisely
insisted on seeing his witnesses first. He then began to shuffle.
The gentlemen were on the Continent, and could not come over without
passports. Passports were delivered to him; but he complained that they
were insufficient. At length the Commons, fully determined to get at the
truth, presented an address requesting the King to send Fuller a blank
safe conduct in the largest terms. [198] The safe conduct was sent. Six
weeks passed, and nothing was heard of the witnesses. The friends of the
lords and gentlemen who had been accused represented strongly that
the House ought not to separate for the summer without coming to some
decision on charges so grave. Fuller was ordered to attend. He pleaded
sickness, and asserted, not for the first time, that the Jacobites
had poisoned him. But all his plans were confounded by the laudable
promptitude and vigour with which the Commons acted. A Committee was
sent to his bedside, with orders to ascertain whether he really had
any witnesses, and where those witnesses resided. The members who were
deputed for this purpose went to the King's Bench prison, and found him
suffering under a disorder, produced, in all probability, by some emetic
which he had swallowed for the purpose of deceiving them. In answer to
their questions he said that two of his witnesses, Delaval and Hayes,
were in England, and were lodged at the house of a Roman Catholic
apothecary in Holborn. The Commons, as soon as the Committee had
reported, sent some members to the house which he had indicated. That
house and all the neighbouring houses were searched.
Delaval and Hayes
were not to be found, nor had any body in the vicinity ever seen such
men or heard of them. The House, therefore, on the last day of the
session, just before Black Rod knocked at the door, unanimously resolved
that William Fuller was a cheat and a false accuser; that he had
insulted the Government and the Parliament; that he had calumniated
honourable men, and that an address should be carried up to the throne,
requesting that he might be prosecuted for his villany. [199] He was
consequently tried, convicted, and sentenced to fine, imprisonment and
the pillory. The exposure, more terrible than death to a mind not lost
to all sense of shame, he underwent with a hardihood worthy of his
two favourite models, Dangerfield and Oates. He had the impudence to
persist, year after year, in affirming that he had fallen a victim to
the machinations of the late King, who had spent six thousand pounds
in order to ruin him. Delaval and Hayes--so this fable ran--had been
instructed by James in person. They had, in obedience to his orders,
induced Fuller to pledge his word for their appearance, and had then
absented themselves, and left him exposed to the resentment of the House
of Commons. [200] The story had the reception which it deserved, and
Fuller sank into an obscurity from which he twice or thrice, at long
intervals, again emerged for a moment into infamy.
On the twenty-fourth of February 1692, about an hour after the Commons
had voted Fuller an impostor, they were summoned to the chamber of the
Lords. The King thanked the Houses for their loyalty and liberality,
informed them that he must soon set out for the Continent, and commanded
them to adjourn themselves. He gave his assent on that day to many
bills, public and private; but when the title of one bill, which had
passed the Lower House without a single division and the Upper House
without a single protest, had been read by the Clerk of the Crown, the
Clerk of the Parliaments declared, according to the ancient form, that
the King and the Queen would consider of the matter. Those words had
very rarely been pronounced before the accession of William. They have
been pronounced only once since his death. But by him the power of
putting a Veto on laws which had been passed by the Estates of the Realm
was used on several important occasions. His detractors truly asserted
that he rejected a greater number of important bills than all the Kings
of the House of Stuart put together, and most absurdly inferred that the
sense of the Estates of the Realm was much less respected by him than by
his uncles and his grandfather. A judicious student of history will
have no difficulty in discovering why William repeatedly exercised a
prerogative to which his predecessors very seldom had recourse, and
which his successors have suffered to fall into utter desuetude.
His predecessors passed laws easily because they broke laws easily.
Charles the First gave his assent to the Petition of Right, and
immediately violated every clause of that great statute. Charles the
Second gave his assent to an Act which provided that a Parliament should
be held at least once in three years; but when he died the country had
been near four years without a Parliament. The laws which abolished
the Court of High Commission, the laws which instituted the Sacramental
Test, were passed without the smallest difficulty; but they did
not prevent James the Second from reestablishing the Court of High
Commission, and from filling the Privy Council, the public offices, the
courts of justice, and the municipal corporations with persons who had
never taken the Test. Nothing could be more natural than that a King
should not think it worth while to withhold his assent from a statute
with which he could dispense whenever he thought fit.
The situation of William was very different. He could not, like those
who had ruled before him, pass an Act in the spring and violate it
in the summer. He had, by assenting to the Bill of Rights, solemnly
renounced the dispensing power; and he was restrained, by prudence as
well as by conscience and honour, from breaking the compact under which
he held his crown. A law might be personally offensive to him; it might
appear to him to be pernicious to his people; but, as soon as he had
passed it, it was, in his eyes, a sacred thing. He had therefore a
motive, which preceding Kings had not, for pausing before he passed such
a law. They gave their word readily, because they had no scruple about
breaking it. He gave his word slowly, because he never failed to keep
it.
But his situation, though it differed widely from that of the princes of
the House of Stuart, was not precisely that of the princes of the House
of Brunswick. A prince of the House of Brunswick is guided, as to the
use of every royal prerogative, by the advice of a responsible ministry;
and this ministry must be taken from the party which predominates in the
two Houses, or, at least, in the Lower House. It is hardly possible to
conceive circumstances in which a Sovereign so situated can refuse
to assent to a bill which has been approved by both branches of the
legislature. Such a refusal would necessarily imply one of two things,
that the Sovereign acted in opposition to the advice of the ministry, or
that the ministry was at issue, on a question of vital importance, with
a majority both of the Commons and of the Lords. On either supposition
the country would be in a most critical state, in a state which, if
long continued, must end in a revolution. But in the earlier part of
the reign of William there was no ministry. The heads of the executive
departments had not been appointed exclusively from either party.
Some were zealous Whigs, others zealous Tories. The most enlightened
statesmen did not hold it to be unconstitutional that the King should
exercise his highest prerogatives on the most important occasions
without any other guidance than that of his own judgment. His refusal,
therefore, to assent to a bill which had passed both Houses indicated,
not, as a similar refusal would now indicate, that the whole machinery
of government was in a state of fearful disorder, but merely that there
was a difference of opinion between him and the two other branches
of the legislature as to the expediency of a particular law. Such a
difference of opinion might exist, and, as we shall hereafter see,
actually did exist, at a time when he was, not merely on friendly, but
on most affectionate terms with the Estates of the Realm.
The circumstances under which he used his Veto for the first time have
never yet been correctly stated. A well meant but unskilful attempt
had been made to complete a reform which the Bill of Rights had left
imperfect. That great law had deprived the Crown of the power of
arbitrarily removing the judges, but had not made them entirely
independent. They were remunerated partly by fees and partly by
salaries. Over the fees the King had no control; but the salaries he had
full power to reduce or to withhold. That William had ever abused this
power was not pretended; but it was undoubtedly a power which no prince
ought to possess; and this was the sense of both Houses. A bill was
therefore brought in by which a salary of a thousand a year was strictly
secured to each of the twelve judges. Thus far all was well. But
unfortunately the salaries were made a charge on the hereditary revenue.
No such proposition would now be entertained by the House of Commons,
without the royal consent previously signified by a Privy Councillor.
But this wholesome rule had not then been established; and William could
defend the proprietary rights of the Crown only by putting his negative
on the bill. At the time there was, as far as can now be ascertained, no
outcry. Even the Jacobite libellers were almost silent. It was not till
the provisions of the bill had been forgotten, and till nothing but its
title was remembered, that William was accused of having been influenced
by a wish to keep the judges in a state of dependence. [201]
The Houses broke up; and the King prepared to set out for the Continent.
Before his departure he made some changes in his household and in
several departments of the government; changes, however, which did not
indicate a very decided preference for either of the great political
parties. Rochester was sworn of the Council. It is probable that he
had earned this mark of royal favour by taking the Queen's side in the
unhappy dispute between her and her sister. Pembroke took charge of the
Privy Seal, and was succeeded at the Board of Admiralty by Charles Lord
Cornwallis, a moderate Tory; Lowther accepted a seat at the same board,
and was succeeded at the Treasury by Sir Edward Seymour. Many Tory
country gentlemen, who had looked on Seymour as their leader in the war
against placemen and Dutchmen, were moved to indignation by learning
that he had become a courtier. They remembered that he had voted for
a Regency, that he had taken the oaths with no good grace, that he had
spoken with little respect of the Sovereign whom he was now ready to
serve for the sake of emoluments hardly worthy of the acceptance of a
man of his wealth and parliamentary interest. It was strange that the
haughtiest of human beings should be the meanest, that one who seethed
to reverence nothing on earth but himself should abase himself for the
sake of quarter day. About such reflections he troubled himself very
little. He found, however, that there was one disagreeable circumstance
connected with his new office. At the Board of Treasury he must sit
below the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The First Lord, Godolphin, was a
peer of the realm; and his right to precedence, according to the rules
of the heralds, could not be questioned. But every body knew who was the
first of English commoners. What was Richard Hampden that he should
take the place of a Seymour, of the head of the Seymours? With much
difficulty, the dispute was compromised. Many concessions were made
to Sir Edward's punctilious pride. He was sworn of the Council. He
was appointed one of the Cabinet. The King took him by the hand and
presented him to the Queen. "I bring you," said William, "a gentleman
who will in my absence be a valuable friend. " In this way Sir Edward was
so much soothed and flattered that he ceased to insist on his right
to thrust himself between the First Lord and the Chancellor of the
Exchequer.
In the same Commission of Treasury in which the name of Seymour
appeared, appeared also the name of a much younger politician, who had
during the late session raised himself to high distinction in the House
of Commons, Charles Montague. This appointment gave great satisfaction
to the Whigs, in whose esteem Montague now stood higher than their
veteran chiefs Sacheverell and Littleton, and was indeed second to
Somers alone.
Sidney delivered up the seals which he had held during more than a year,
and was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Some months elapsed before
the place which he had quitted was filled up; and during this interval
the whole business which had ordinarily been divided between two
Secretaries of State was transacted by Nottingham. [202]
While these arrangements were in progress, events had taken place in a
distant part of the island which were not, till after the lapse of
many months, known in the best informed circles of London, but which
gradually obtained a fearful notoriety, and which, after the lapse of
more than a hundred and sixty years, are never mentioned without horror.
Soon after the Estates of Scotland had separated in the autumn of 1690,
a change was made in the administration of that kingdom. William was
not satisfied with the way in which he had been represented in the
Parliament House. He thought that the rabbled curates had been hardly
treated. He had very reluctantly suffered the law which abolished
patronage to be touched with his sceptre. But what especially displeased
him was that the Acts which established a new ecclesiastical polity had
not been accompanied by an Act granting liberty of conscience to those
who were attached to the old ecclesiastical polity. He had directed his
Commissioner Melville to obtain for the Episcopalians of Scotland an
indulgence similar to that which Dissenters enjoyed in England. [203]
But the Presbyterian preachers were loud and vehement against lenity
to Amalekites. Melville, with useful talents, and perhaps with fair
intentions, had neither large views nor an intrepid spirit. He shrank
from uttering a word so hateful to the theological demagogues of his
country as Toleration. By obsequiously humouring their prejudices he
quelled the clamour which was rising at Edinburgh; but the effect of his
timid caution was that a far more formidable clamour soon rose in
the south of the island against the bigotry of the schismatics who
domineered in the north, and against the pusillanimity of the government
which had not dared to withstand that bigotry. On this subject the High
Churchman and the Low Churchman were of one mind, or rather the Low
Churchman was the more angry of the two. A man like South, who had
during many years been predicting that, if ever the Puritans ceased to
be oppressed, they would become oppressors, was at heart not ill pleased
to see his prophecy fulfilled. But in a man like Burnet, the great
object of whose life had been to mitigate the animosity which the
ministers of the Anglican Church felt towards the Presbyterians, the
intolerant conduct of the Presbyterians could awaken no feeling but
indignation, shame and grief. There was, therefore, at the English Court
nobody to speak a good word for Melville. It was impossible that in
such circumstances he should remain at the head of the Scottish
administration. He was, however, gently let down from his high position.
He continued during more than a year to be Secretary of State; but
another Secretary was appointed, who was to reside near the King, and to
have the chief direction of affairs. The new Prime Minister for Scotland
was the able, eloquent and accomplished Sir John Dalrymple. His father,
the Lord President of the Court of Session, had lately been raised to
the peerage by the title of Viscount Stair; and Sir John Dalrymple was
consequently, according to the ancient usage of Scotland, designated
as the Master of Stair. In a few months Melville resigned his
secretaryship, and accepted an office of some dignity and emolument, but
of no political importance. [204]
The Lowlands of Scotland were, during the year which followed the
parliamentary session of 1690, as quiet as they had ever been within the
memory of man; but the state of the Highlands caused much anxiety to the
government. The civil war in that wild region, after it had ceased to
flame, had continued during some time to smoulder. At length, early in
the year 1691, the rebel chiefs informed the Court of Saint Germains
that, pressed as they were on every side, they could hold out no longer
without succour from France. James had sent them a small quantity of
meal, brandy and tobacco, and had frankly told them that he could do
nothing more. Money was so scarce among them that six hundred pounds
sterling would have been a most acceptable addition to their funds,
but even such a sum he was unable to spare. He could scarcely, in such
circumstances, expect them to defend his cause against a government
which had a regular army and a large revenue. He therefore informed them
that he should not take it ill of them if they made their peace with
the new dynasty, provided always that they were prepared to rise in
insurrection as soon as he should call on them to do so. [205]
Meanwhile it had been determined at Kensington, in spite of the
opposition of the Master of Stair, to try the plan which Tarbet had
recommended two years before, and which, if it had been tried when
he recommended it, would probably have prevented much bloodshed and
confusion. It was resolved that twelve or fifteen thousand pounds should
be laid out in quieting the Highlands. This was a mass of treasure which
to an inhabitant of Appin or Lochaber seemed almost fabulous, and which
indeed bore a greater proportion to the income of Keppoch or Glengarry
than fifteen hundred thousand pounds bore to the income of Lord Bedford
or Lord Devonshire. The sum was ample; but the King was not fortunate in
the choice of an agent. [206]
John Earl of Breadalbane, the head of a younger branch of the great
House of Campbell, ranked high among the petty princes of the mountains.
He could bring seventeen hundred claymores into the field; and, ten
years before the Revolution, he had actually marched into the Lowlands
with this great force for the purpose of supporting the prelatical
tyranny. [207] In those days he had affected zeal for monarchy and
episcopacy; but in truth he cared for no government and no religion.
He seems to have united two different sets of vices, the growth of
two different regions, and of two different stages in the progress of
society. In his castle among the hills he had learned the barbarian
pride and ferocity of a Highland chief. In the Council Chamber at
Edinburgh he had contracted the deep taint of treachery and corruption.
After the Revolution he had, like too many of his fellow nobles, joined
and betrayed every party in turn, had sworn fealty to William and Mary,
and had plotted against them. To trace all the turns and doublings of
his course, during the year 1689 and the earlier part of 1690, would
be wearisome. [208] That course became somewhat less tortuous when the
battle of the Boyne had cowed the spirit of the Jacobites. It now seemed
probable that the Earl would be a loyal subject of their Majesties, till
some great disaster should befall them. Nobody who knew him could trust
him; but few Scottish statesmen could then be trusted; and yet Scottish
statesmen must be employed. His position and connections marked him out
as a man who might, if he would, do much towards the work of quieting
the Highlands; and his interest seemed to be a guarantee for his zeal.
He had, as he declared with every appearance of truth, strong personal
reasons for wishing to see tranquillity restored. His domains were so
situated that, while the civil war lasted, his vassals could not tend
their herds or sow their oats in peace. His lands were daily ravaged;
his cattle were daily driven away; one of his houses had been burned
down. It was probable, therefore, that he would do his best to put an
end to hostilities. [209]
He was accordingly commissioned to treat with the Jacobite chiefs, and
was entrusted with the money which was to be distributed among them. He
invited them to a conference at his residence in Glenorchy. They came;
but the treaty went on very slowly. Every head of a tribe asked for a
larger share of the English gold than was to be obtained. Breadalbane
was suspected of intending to cheat both the clans and the King. The
dispute between the rebels and the government was complicated with
another dispute still more embarrassing. The Camerons and Macdonalds
were really at war, not with William, but with Mac Callum More; and
no arrangement to which Mac Callum More was not a party could really
produce tranquillity. A grave question therefore arose, whether
the money entrusted to Breadalbane should be paid directly to the
discontented chiefs, or should be employed to satisfy the claims
which Argyle had upon them. The shrewdness of Lochiel and the arrogant
pretensions of Glengarry contributed to protract the discussions. But
no Celtic potentate was so impracticable as Macdonald of Glencoe, known
among the mountains by the hereditary appellation of Mac Ian. [210]
Mac Ian dwelt in the mouth of a ravine situated not far from the
southern shore of Lochleven, an arm of the sea which deeply indents the
western coast of Scotland, and separates Argyleshire from Invernesshire.
Near his house were two or three small hamlets inhabited by his tribe.
The whole population which he governed was not supposed to exceed two
hundred souls. In the neighbourhood of the little cluster of villages
was some copsewood and some pasture land; but a little further up the
defile no sign of population or of fruitfulness was to be seen. In the
Gaelic tongue Glencoe signifies the Glen of Weeping; and in truth that
pass is the most dreary and melancholy of all the Scottish passes,
the very Valley of the Shadow of Death. Mists and storms brood over it
through the greater part of the finest summer; and even on those rare
days when the sun is bright, and when there is no cloud in the sky, the
impression made by the landscape is sad and awful. The path lies along
a stream which issues from the most sullen and gloomy of mountain pools.
Huge precipices of naked stone frown on both sides. Even in July the
streaks of snow may often be discerned in the rifts near the summits.
All down the sides of the crags heaps of ruin mark the headlong paths of
the torrents. Mile after mile the traveller looks in vain for the smoke
of one hut, for one human form wrapped in plaid, and listens in vain for
the bark of a shepherd's dog or the bleat of a lamb. Mile after mile the
only sound that indicates life is the faint cry of a bird of prey from
some stormbeaten pinnacle of rock. The progress of civilisation, which
has turned so many wastes into fields yellow with harvests or gay with
apple blossoms, has only made Glencoe more desolate. All the science
and industry of a peaceful age can extract nothing valuable from that
wilderness; but, in an age of violence and rapine, the wilderness itself
was valued on account of the shelter which it afforded to the plunderer
and his plunder. Nothing could be more natural than that the clan to
which this rugged desert belonged should have been noted for predatory
habits. For, among the Highlanders generally, to rob was thought at
least as honourable an employment as to cultivate the soil; and, of
all the Highlanders, The Macdonalds of Glencoe had the least productive
soil, and the most convenient and secure den of robbers. Successive
governments had tried to punish this wild race; but no large force
had ever been employed for that purpose; and a small force was easily
resisted or eluded by men familiar with every recess and every outlet of
the natural fortress in which they had been born and bred. The people of
Glencoe would probably have been less troublesome neighbours if they
had lived among their own kindred. But they were an outpost of the
Clan Donald, separated from every other branch of their own family, and
almost surrounded by the domains of the hostile race of Diarmid. [211]
They were impelled by hereditary enmity, as well as by want, to live
at the expense of the tribe of Campbell. Breadalbane's property had
suffered greatly from their depredations; and he was not of a temper to
forgive such injuries. When, therefore, the Chief of Glencoe made his
appearance at the congress in Glenorchy, he was ungraciously received.
The Earl, who ordinarily bore himself with the solemn dignity of a
Castilian grandee, forgot, in his resentment, his wonted gravity, forgot
his public character, forgot the laws of hospitality, and, with angry
reproaches and menaces, demanded reparation for the herds which had
been driven from his lands by Mac Ian's followers. Mac Ian was seriously
apprehensive of some personal outrage, and was glad to get safe back to
his own glen. [212] His pride had been wounded; and the promptings of
interest concurred with those of pride. As the head of a people who
lived by pillage, he had strong reasons for wishing that the country
might continue to be in a perturbed state. He had little chance of
receiving one guinea of the money which was to be distributed among
the malecontents. For his share of that money would scarcely meet
Breadalbane's demands for compensation; and there could be little
doubt that, whoever might be unpaid, Breadalbane would take care to
pay himself. Mac Ian therefore did his best to dissuade his allies from
accepting terms from which he could himself expect no benefit; and his
influence was not small. His own vassals, indeed, were few in number;
but he came of the best blood of the Highlands; he had kept up a close
connection with his more powerful kinsmen; nor did they like him
the less because he was a robber; for he never robbed them; and that
robbery, merely as robbery, was a wicked and disgraceful act, had never
entered into the mind of any Celtic chief. Mac Ian was therefore held in
high esteem by the confederates. His age was venerable; his aspect was
majestic; and he possessed in large measure those intellectual qualities
which, in rude societies, give men an ascendency over their fellows.
Breadalbane found himself, at every step of the negotiation, thwarted
by the arts of his old enemy, and abhorred the name of Glencoe more and
more every day. [213]
But the government did not trust solely to Breadalbane's diplomatic
skill. The authorities at Edinburgh put forth a proclamation exhorting
the clans to submit to King William and Queen Mary, and offering pardon
to every rebel who, on or before the thirty-first of December 1691,
should swear to live peaceably under the government of their Majesties.
It was announced that those who should hold out after that day would be
treated as enemies and traitors. [214] Warlike preparations were made,
which showed that the threat was meant in earnest. The Highlanders were
alarmed, and, though the pecuniary terms had not been satisfactorily
settled, thought it prudent to give the pledge which was demanded of
them. No chief, indeed, was willing to set the example of submission.
Glengarry blustered, and pretended to fortify his house. [215] "I will
not," said Lochiel, "break the ice. That is a point of honour with me.
But my tacksmen and people may use their freedom. " [216] His tacksmen
and people understood him, and repaired by hundreds to the Sheriff to
take the oaths. The Macdonalds of Sleat, Clanronald, Keppoch, and
even Glengarry, imitated the Camerons; and the chiefs, after trying to
outstay each other as long as they durst, imitated their vassals.
The thirty-first of December arrived; and still the Macdonalds of
Glencoe had not come in. The punctilious pride of Mac Ian was doubtless
gratified by the thought that he had continued to defy the government
after the boastful Glengarry, the ferocious Keppoch, the magnanimous
Lochiel had yielded: but he bought his gratification dear.
At length, on the thirty-first of December, he repaired to Fort William,
accompanied by his principal vassals, and offered to take the oaths. To
his dismay he found that there was in the fort no person competent to
administer them. Colonel Hill, the Governor, was not a magistrate;
nor was there any magistrate nearer than Inverary. Mac Ian, now fully
sensible of the folly of which he had been guilty in postponing to the
very last moment an act on which his life and his estate depended, set
off for Inverary in great distress. He carried with him a letter from
Hill to the Sheriff of Argyleshire, Sir Colin Campbell of Ardkinglass, a
respectable gentleman, who, in the late reign, had suffered severely for
his Whig principles. In this letter the Colonel expressed a goodnatured
hope that, even out of season, a lost sheep, and so fine a lost sheep,
would be gladly received. Mac Ian made all the haste in his power, and
did not stop even at his own house, though it lay nigh to the road. But
at that time a journey through Argyleshire in the depth of winter was
necessarily slow. The old man's progress up steep mountains and along
boggy valleys was obstructed by snow storms; and it was not till
the sixth of January that he presented himself before the Sheriff at
Inverary. The Sheriff hesitated. His power, he said, was limited by the
terms of the proclamation, and he did not see how he could swear a
rebel who had not submitted within the prescribed time. Mac Ian begged
earnestly and with tears that he might be sworn. His people, he said,
would follow his example. If any of them proved refractory, he would
himself send the recusant to prison, or ship him off for Islanders. His
entreaties and Hill's letter overcame Sir Colin's scruples. The oath
was administered; and a certificate was transmitted to the Council at
Edinburgh, setting forth the special circumstances which had induced the
Sheriff to do what he knew not to be strictly regular. [217]
The news that Mac Ian had not submitted within the prescribed time was
received with cruel joy by three powerful Scotchmen who were then at the
English Court. Breadalbane had gone up to London at Christmas in order
to give an account of his stewardship.
