No More Learning

Charnock, King and Keyes were set first to the bar. The Chiefs of the
three Courts of Common Law and several other judges were on the bench;
and among the audience were many members of both Houses of Parliament.

It was the eleventh of March. The new Act which regulated the
procedure in cases of high treason was not to come into force till
the twenty-fifth. The culprits urged that, as the Legislature had, by
passing that Act, recognised the justice of allowing them to see their
indictment, and to avail themselves of the assistance of an advocate,
the tribunal ought either to grant them what the highest authority had
declared to be a reasonable indulgence, or to defer the trial for a
fortnight. The judges, however, would consent to no delay. They have
therefore been accused by later writers of using the mere letter of
the law in order to destroy men who, if that law had been construed
according to its spirit, might have had some chance of escape. This
accusation is unjust. The judges undoubtedly carried the real intention
of the Legislature into effect; and, for whatever injustice was
committed, the Legislature, and not the judges, ought to be held
accountable. The words, "twenty-fifth of March," had not slipped into
the Act by mere inadvertence. All parties in Parliament had long been
agreed as to the principle of the new regulations. The only matter about
which there was any dispute was the time at which those regulations
should take effect. After debates extending through several sessions,
after repeated divisions with various results, a compromise had been
made; and it was surely not for the Courts to alter the terms of that
compromise. It may indeed be confidently affirmed that, if the Houses
had foreseen the Assassination Plot, they would have fixed, not an
earlier, but a later day for the commencement of the new system.
Undoubtedly the Parliament, and especially the Whig party, deserved
serious blame. For, if the old rules of procedure gave no unfair
advantage to the Crown, there was no reason for altering them; and if,
as was generally admitted, they did give an unfair advantage to the
Crown, and that against a defendant on trial for his life, they ought
not to have been suffered to continue in force a single day. But no
blame is due to the tribunals for not acting in direct opposition both
to the letter and to the spirit of the law.

The government might indeed have postponed the trials till the new Act
came into force; and it would have been wise, as well as right, to do
so; for the prisoners would have gained nothing by the delay. The case
against them was one on which all the ingenuity of the Inns of Court
could have made no impression. Porter, Pendergrass, De la Rue and others
gave evidence which admitted of no answer. Charnock said the very little
that he had to say with readiness and presence of mind. The jury found
all the defendants guilty. It is not much to the honour of that age that
the announcement of the verdict was received with loud huzzas by the
crowd which surrounded the Courthouse. Those huzzas were renewed when
the three unhappy men, having heard their doom, were brought forth under
a guard. [676]

Charnock had hitherto shown no sign of flinching; but when he was again
in his cell his fortitude gave way. He begged hard for mercy. He
would be content, he said, to pass the rest of his days in an easy
confinement. He asked only for his life. In return for his life, he
promised to discover all that he knew of the schemes of the Jacobites
against the government. If it should appear that he prevaricated or that
he suppressed any thing, he was willing to undergo the utmost rigour
of the law. This offer produced much excitement, and some difference of
opinion, among the councillors of William. But the King decided, as in
such cases he seldom failed to decide, wisely and magnanimously. He
saw that the discovery of the Assassination Plot had changed the whole
posture of affairs. His throne, lately tottering, was fixed on an
immovable basis. His popularity had risen impetuously to as great a
height as when he was on his march from Torbay to London. Many who
had been out of humour with his administration, and who had, in their
spleen, held some communication with Saint Germains, were shocked to
find that they had been, in some sense, leagued with murderers. He would
not drive such persons to despair. He would not even put them to the
blush. Not only should they not be punished; they should not undergo the
humiliation of being pardoned. He would not know that they had offended.
Charnock was left to his fate. [677] When he found that he had no chance
of being received as a deserter, he assumed the dignity of a martyr, and
played his part resolutely to the close. That he might bid farewell to
the world with a better grace, he ordered a fine new coat to be hanged
in, and was very particular on his last day about the powdering and
curling of his wig. [678] Just before he was turned off, he delivered
to the Sheriffs a paper in which he avowed that he had conspired against
the life of the Prince of Orange, but solemnly denied that James had
given any commission authorising assassination. The denial was doubtless
literally correct; but Charnock did not deny, and assuredly could not
with truth have denied, that he had seen a commission written and signed
by James, and containing words which might without any violence be
construed, and which were, by all to whom they were shown, actually
construed, to authorise the murderous ambuscade of Turnham Green.

Indeed Charnock, in another paper, which is still in existence, but has
never been printed, held very different language. He plainly said that,
for reasons too obvious to be mentioned, he could not tell the
whole truth in the paper which he had delivered to the Sheriffs. He
acknowledged that the plot in which he had been engaged seemed, even
to many loyal subjects, highly criminal. They called him assassin
and murderer. Yet what had he done more than had been done by Mucius
Scaevola? Nay, what had he done more than had been done by every body
who bore arms against the Prince of Orange? If an array of twenty
thousand men had suddenly landed in England and surprised the usurper,
this would have been called legitimate war. Did the difference between
war and assassination depend merely on the number of persons engaged?
What then was the smallest number which could lawfully surprise an
enemy? Was it five thousand, or a thousand, or a hundred? Jonathan and
his armourbearer were only two. Yet they made a great slaughter of the
Philistines. Was that assassination? It cannot, said Charnock, be the
mere act, it must be the cause, that makes killing assassination. It
followed that it was not assassination to kill one,--and here the
dying man gave a loose to all his hatred,--who had declared a war of
extermination against loyal subjects, who hung, drew and quartered every
man who stood up for the right, and who had laid waste England to
enrich the Dutch. Charnock admitted that his enterprise would have been
unjustifiable if it had not been authorised by James; but he maintained
that it had been authorised, not indeed expressly, but by implication.
His Majesty had indeed formerly prohibited similar attempts; but
had prohibited them, not as in themselves criminal, but merely as
inexpedient at this or that conjuncture of affairs. Circumstances had
changed. The prohibition might therefore reasonably be considered as
withdrawn. His Majesty's faithful subjects had then only to look to
the words of his commission; and those words, beyond all doubt, fully
warranted an attack on the person of the usurper. [679]

King and Keyes suffered with Charnock. King behaved with firmness and
decency. He acknowledged his crime, and said that he repented of it. He
thought it due to the Church of which he was a member, and on which his
conduct had brought reproach, to declare that he had been misled, not by
any casuistry about tyrannicide, but merely by the violence of his
own evil passions. Poor Keyes was in an agony of terror. His tears and
lamentations moved the pity of some of the spectators. It was said at
the time, and it has often since been repeated, that a servant drawn
into crime by a master was a proper object of royal clemency. But
those who have blamed the severity with which Keyes was treated
have altogether omitted to notice the important circumstance which
distinguished his case from that of every other conspirator. He had been
one of the Blues. He had kept up to the last an intercourse with his
old comrades. On the very day fixed for the murder he had contrived to
mingle with them and to pick up intelligence from them. The regiment had
been so deeply infected with disloyalty that it had been found necessary
to confine some men and to dismiss many more. Surely, if any example
was to be made, it was proper to make an example of the agent by whose
instrumentality the men who meant to shoot the King communicated with
the men whose business was to guard him.

Friend was tried next. His crime was not of so black a dye as that of
the three conspirators who had just suffered. He had indeed invited
foreign enemies to invade the realm, and had made preparations
for joining them. But, though he had been privy to the design of
assassination, he had not been a party to it. His large fortune however,
and the use which he was well known to have made of it, marked him out
as a fit object for punishment. He, like Charnock, asked for counsel,
and, like Charnock, asked in vain. The judges could not relax the law;
and the Attorney General would not postpone the trial. The proceedings
of that day furnish a strong argument in favour of the Act from the
benefit of which Friend was excluded. It is impossible to read them
over at this distance of time without feeling compassion for a silly ill
educated man, unnerved by extreme danger, and opposed to cool, astute
and experienced antagonists. Charnock had defended himself and those
who were tried with him as well as any professional advocate could have
done. But poor Friend was as helpless as a child. He could do little
more than exclaim that he was a Protestant, and that the witnesses
against him were Papists, who had dispensations from their priests for
perjury, and who believed that to swear away the lives of heretics was
a meritorious work. He was so grossly ignorant of law and history as to
imagine that the statute of treasons, passed in the reign of Edward the
Third, at a time when there was only one religion in Western Europe,
contained a clause providing that no Papist should be a witness, and
actually forced the Clerk of the Court to read the whole Act from
beginning to end. About his guilt it was impossible that there could be
a doubt in any rational mind. He was convicted; and he would have been
convicted if he had been allowed the privileges for which he asked.

Parkyns came next. He had been deeply concerned in the worst part of
the plot, and was, in one respect, less excusable than any of his
accomplices; for they were all nonjurors; and he had taken the oaths
to the existing government. He too insisted that he ought to be tried
according to the provisions of the new Act. But the counsel for the
Crown stood on their extreme right; and his request was denied. As he
was a man of considerable abilities, and had been bred to the bar, he
probably said for himself all that counsel could have said for him;
and that all amounted to very little. He was found guilty, and received
sentence of death on the evening of the twenty-fourth of March, within
six hours of the time when the law of which he had vainly demanded the
benefit was to come into force. [680]

The execution of the two knights was eagerly expected by the population
of London. The States General were informed by their correspondent that,
of all sights, that in which the English most delighted was a hanging,
and that, of all hangings within the memory of the oldest man, that of
Friend and Parkyns excited the greatest interest. The multitude had been
incensed against Friend by reports touching the exceeding badness of the
beer which he brewed. It was even rumoured that he had, in his zeal for
the Jacobite cause, poisoned all the casks which he had furnished to the
navy. An innumerable crowd accordingly assembled at Tyburn. Scaffolding
had been put up which formed an immense amphitheatre round the gallows.
On this scaffolding the wealthier spectators stood, row above row; and
expectation was at the height when it was announced that the show was
deferred. The mob broke up in bad humour, and not without many fights
between those who had given money for their places and those who refused
to return it. [681]

The cause of this severe disappointment was a resolution suddenly passed
by the Commons. A member had proposed that a Committee should be sent
to the Tower with authority to examine the prisoners, and to hold out
to them the hope that they might, by a full and ingenuous confession,
obtain the intercession of the House. The debate appears, from the
scanty information which has come down to us, to have been a very
curious one. Parties seemed to have changed characters. It might have
been expected that the Whigs would have been inexorably severe, and
that, if there was any tenderness for the unhappy men, that tenderness
would have been found among the Tories. But in truth many of the Whigs
hoped that they might, by sparing two criminals who had no power to do
mischief, be able to detect and destroy numerous criminals high in rank
and office. On the other hand, every man who had ever had any dealings
direct or indirect with Saint Germains, or who took an interest in any
person likely to have had such dealings, looked forward with dread to
the disclosures which the captives might, under the strong terrors of
death, be induced to make. Seymour, simply because he had gone further
in treason than almost any other member of the House, was louder than
any other member of the House in exclaiming against all indulgence
to his brother traitors. Would the Commons usurp the most sacred
prerogative of the Crown? It was for His Majesty, and not for them, to
judge whether lives justly forfeited could be without danger spared. The
Whigs however carried their point. A Committee, consisting of all the
Privy Councillors in the House, set off instantly for Newgate. Friend
and Parkyns were interrogated, but to no purpose. They had, after
sentence had been passed on them, shown at first some symptoms of
weakness; but their courage had been fortified by the exhortations of
nonjuring divines who had been admitted to the prison. The rumour
was that Parkyns would have given way but for the entreaties of his
daughter, who adjured him to suffer like a man for the good cause. The
criminals acknowledged that they had done the acts of which they had
been convicted, but, with a resolution which is the more respectable
because it seems to have sprung, not from constitutional hardihood, but
from sentiments of honour and religion, refused to say any thing which
could compromise others. [682]

In a few hours the crowd again assembled at Tyburn; and this time the
sightseers were not defrauded of their amusement. They saw indeed
one sight which they had not expected, and which produced a greater
sensation than the execution itself. Jeremy Collier and two other
nonjuring divines of less celebrity, named Cook and Snatt, had attended
the prisoners in Newgate, and were in the cart under the gallows. When
the prayers were over, and just before the hangman did his office, the
three schismatical priests stood up, and laid their hands on the heads
of the dying men who continued to kneel. Collier pronounced a form of
absolution taken from the service for the Visitation of the Sick, and
his brethren exclaimed "Amen! "

This ceremony raised a great outcry; and the outcry became louder
when, a few hours after the execution, the papers delivered by the two
traitors to the Sheriffs were made public. It had been supposed that
Parkyns at least would express some repentance for the crime which had
brought him to the gallows. Indeed he had, before the Committee of the
Commons, owned that the Assassination Plot could not be justified. But,
in his last declaration, he avowed his share in that plot, not only
without a word indicating remorse, but with something which resembled
exultation. Was this a man to be absolved by Christian divines, absolved
before the eyes of tens of thousands, absolved with rites evidently
intended to attract public attention, with rites of which there was no
trace in the Book of Common Prayer or in the practice of the Church of
England?

In journals, pamphlets and broadsides, the insolence of the three
Levites, as they were called, was sharply reprehended. Warrants were
soon out. Cook and Snatt were taken and imprisoned; but Collier was able
to conceal himself, and, by the help of one of the presses which were at
the service of his party, sent forth from his hiding place a defence of
his conduct. He declared that he abhorred assassination as much as any
of those who railed against him; and his general character warrants us
in believing that this declaration was perfectly sincere. But the
rash act into which he had been hurried by party spirit furnished his
adversaries with very plausible reasons for questioning his sincerity.
A crowd of answers to his defence appeared. Preeminent among them in
importance was a solemn manifesto signed by the two Archbishops and by
all the Bishops who were then in London, twelve in number. Even Crewe
of Durham and Sprat of Rochester set their names to this document. They
condemned the proceedings of the three nonjuring divines, as in form
irregular and in substance impious. To remit the sins of impenitent
sinners was a profane abuse of the power which Christ had delegated
to his ministers. It was not denied that Parkyns had planned an
assassination. It was not pretended that he had professed any repentance
for planning an assassination. The plain inference was that the divines
who absolved him did not think it sinful to assassinate King William.
Collier rejoined; but, though a pugnacious controversialist, he on this
occasion shrank from close conflict, and made his escape as well as he
could under a cloud of quotations from Tertullian, Cyprian and Jerome,
Albaspinaeus and Hammond, the Council of Carthage and the Council of
Toledo. The public feeling was strongly against the three absolvers. The
government however wisely determined not to confer on them the honour of
martyrdom. A bill was found against them by the grand jury of Middlesex;
but they were not brought to trial. Cook and Snatt were set at liberty
after a short detention; and Collier would have been treated with equal
lenity if he would have consented to put in bail. But he was determined
to do no act which could be construed into a recognition of the usurping
government. He was therefore outlawed; and when he died, more than
thirty years later, his outlawry had not been reversed. [683]

Parkyns was the last Englishman who was tried for high treason under the
old system of procedure. The first who was tried under the new system
was Rockwood. He was defended by Sir Bartholomew Shower, who in the
preceding reign had made himself unenviably conspicuous as a servile and
cruel sycophant, who had obtained from James the Recordership of
London when Holt honourably resigned it, and who had, as Recorder,
sent soldiers to the gibbet for breaches of military discipline. By
his servile cruelty he had earned the nickname of the Manhunter. Shower
deserved, if any offender deserved, to be excepted from the Act of
Indemnity, and left to the utmost rigour of those laws which he had so
shamelessly perverted. But he had been saved by the clemency of William,
and had requited that clemency by pertinacious and malignant opposition.
[684] It was doubtless on account of Shower's known leaning towards
Jacobitism that he was employed on this occasion. He raised some
technical objections which the Court overruled. On the merits of the
case he could make no defence. The jury returned a verdict of guilty.
Cranburne and Lowick were then tried and convicted. They suffered with
Rookwood; and there the executions stopped. [685]

The temper of the nation was such that the government might have shed
much more blood without incurring the reproach of cruelty. The feeling
which had been called forth by the discovery of the plot continued
during several weeks to increase day by day. Of that feeling the able
men who were at the head of the Whig party made a singularly skilful
use. They saw that the public enthusiasm, if left without guidance,
would exhaust itself in huzzas, healths and bonfires, but might, if
wisely guided, be the means of producing a great and lasting effect. The
Association, into which the Commons had entered while the King's speech
was still in their ears, furnished the means of combining four fifths of
the nation in one vast club for the defence of the order of succession
with which were inseparably combined the dearest liberties of the
English people, and of establishing a test which would distinguish those
who were zealous for that order of succession from those who sullenly
and reluctantly acquiesced in it. Of the five hundred and thirty members
of the Lower House about four hundred and twenty voluntarily subscribed
the instrument which recognised William as rightful and lawful King of
England. It was moved in the Upper House that the same form should be
adopted; but objections were raised by the Tories. Nottingham, ever
conscientious, honourable and narrow minded, declared that he could not
assent to the words "rightful and lawful. " He still held, as he had
held from the first, that a prince who had taken the Crown, not by
birthright, but by the gift of the Convention, could not properly be so
described. William was doubtless King in fact, and, as King in fact, was
entitled to the obedience of Christians. "No man," said Nottingham, "has
served or will serve His Majesty more faithfully than I. But to this
document I cannot set my hand. " Rochester and Normanby held similar
language. Monmouth, in a speech of two hours and a half, earnestly
exhorted the Lords to agree with the Commons. Burnet was vehement on the
same side. Wharton, whose father had lately died, and who was now Lord
Wharton, appeared in the foremost rank of the Whig peers. But no man
distinguished himself more in the debate than one whose life, both
public and private, had been one long series of faults and disasters,
the incestuous lover of Henrietta Berkeley, the unfortunate lieutenant
of Monmouth. He had recently ceased to be called by the tarnished name
of Grey of Wark, and was now Earl of Tankerville. He spoke on that day
with great force and eloquence for the words, "rightful and lawful. "
Leeds, after expressing his regret that a question about a mere phrase
should have produced dissension among noble persons who were all equally
attached to the reigning Sovereign, undertook the office of mediator.
He proposed that their Lordships, instead of recognising William as
rightful and lawful King, should declare that William had the right
by law to the English Crown, and that no other person had any right
whatever to that Crown. Strange to say, almost all the Tory peers were
perfectly satisfied with what Leeds had suggested. Among the Whigs there
was some unwillingness to consent to a change which, slight as it was,
might be thought to indicate a difference of opinion between the two
Houses on a subject of grave importance. But Devonshire and Portland
declared themselves content; their authority prevailed; and the
alteration was made. How a rightful and lawful possessor is to be
distinguished from a possessor who has the exclusive right by law is
a question which a Whig may, without any painful sense of shame,
acknowledge to be beyond the reach of his faculties, and leave to be
discussed by High Churchmen. Eighty-three peers immediately affixed
their names to the amended form of association; and Rochester was among
them. Nottingham, not yet quite satisfied, asked time for consideration.
[686]

Beyond the walls of Parliament there was none of this verbal quibbling.
The language of the House of Commons was adopted by the whole country.
The City of London led the way. Within thirty-six hours after the
Association had been published under the direction of the Speaker it
was subscribed by the Lord Mayor, by the Aldermen, and by almost all the
members of the Common Council. The municipal corporations all over the
kingdom followed the example. The spring assizes were just beginning;
and at every county town the grand jurors and the justices of the peace
put down their names. Soon shopkeepers, artisans, yeomen, farmers,
husbandmen, came by thousands to the tables where the parchments were
laid out. In Westminster there were thirty-seven thousand associators,
in the Tower Hamlets eight thousand, in Southwark eighteen thousand.
The
rural parts of Surrey furnished seventeen thousand. At Ipswich all the
freemen signed except two. At Warwick all the male inhabitants who had
attained the age of sixteen signed, except two Papists and two Quakers.
At Taunton, where the memory of the Bloody Circuit was fresh, every man
who could write gave in his adhesion to the government. All the churches
and all the meeting houses in the town were crowded, as they had never
been crowded before, with people who came to thank God for having
preserved him whom they fondly called William the Deliverer. Of all the
counties of England Lancashire was the most Jacobitical. Yet Lancashire
furnished fifty thousand signatures. Of all the great towns of England
Norwich was the most Jacobitical. The magistrates of that city were
supposed to be in the interest of the exiled dynasty. The nonjurors were
numerous, and had, just before the discovery of the plot, seemed to be
in unusual spirits and ventured to take unusual liberties. One of the
chief divines of the schism had preached a sermon there which gave rise
to strange suspicions. He had taken for his text the verse in which the
Prophet Jeremiah announced that the day of vengeance was come, that
the sword would be drunk with blood, that the Lord God of Hosts had a
sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates. Very soon it was
known that, at the time when this discourse was delivered, swords had
actually been sharpening, under the direction of Barclay and Parkyns,
for a bloody sacrifice on the north bank of the river Thames. The
indignation of the common people of Norwich was not to be restrained.
They came in multitudes, though discouraged by the municipal
authorities, to plight faith to William, rightful and lawful King. In
Norfolk the number of signatures amounted to forty-eight thousand, in
Suffolk to seventy thousand. Upwards of five hundred rolls went up
to London from every part of England. The number of names attached to
twenty-seven of those rolls appears from the London Gazette to have been
three hundred and fourteen thousand. After making the largest allowance
for fraud, it seems certain that the Association included the great
majority of the adult male inhabitants of England who were able to sign
their names. The tide of popular feeling was so strong that a man who
was known not to have signed ran considerable risk of being publicly
affronted. In many places nobody appeared without wearing in his hat a
red riband on which were embroidered the words, "General Association
for King William. " Once a party of Jacobites had the courage to parade
a street in London with an emblematic device which seemed to indicate
their contempt for the new Solemn League and Covenant. They were
instantly put to rout by the mob, and their leader was well ducked. The
enthusiasm spread to secluded isles, to factories in foreign countries,
to remote colonies. The Association was signed by the rude fishermen
of the Scilly Rocks, by the English merchants of Malaga, by the English
merchants of Genoa, by the citizens of New York, by the tobacco planters
of Virginia and by the sugar planters of Barbadoes. [687]

Emboldened by success, the Whig leaders ventured to proceed a step
further. They brought into the Lower House a bill for the securing of
the King's person and government. By this bill it was provided that
whoever, while the war lasted, should come from France into England
without the royal license should incur the penalties of treason, that
the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act should continue to the end of
the year 1696, and that all functionaries appointed by William should
retain their offices, notwithstanding his death, till his successor
should be pleased to dismiss them. The form of Association which the
House of Commons had adopted was solemnly ratified; and it was provided
that no person should sit in that House or should hold any office, civil
or military, without signing. The Lords were indulged in the use of
their own form; and nothing was said about the clergy.

The Tories, headed by Finch and Seymour, complained bitterly of this
new test, and ventured once to divide, but were defeated. Finch seems to
have been heard patiently; but, notwithstanding all Seymour's eloquence,
the contemptuous manner in which he spoke of the Association raised a
storm against which he could not stand. Loud cries of "the Tower, the
Tower," were heard. Haughty and imperious as he was, he was forced to
explain away his words, and could scarcely, by apologizing in a manner
to which he was little accustomed, save himself from the humiliation of
being called to the bar and reprimanded on his knees. The bill went up
to the Lords, and passed with great speed in spite of the opposition of
Rochester and Nottingham. [688]

The nature and extent of the change which the discovery of the
Assassination Plot had produced in the temper of the House of Commons
and of the nation is strikingly illustrated by the history of a bill
entitled a Bill for the further Regulation of Elections of Members
of Parliament. The moneyed interest was almost entirely Whig, and was
therefore an object of dislike to the Tories. The rapidly growing power
of that interest was generally regarded with jealousy by landowners
whether they were Whigs or Tories. It was something new and monstrous
to see a trader from Lombard Street, who had no tie to the soil of our
island, and whose wealth was entirely personal and movable, post down to
Devonshire or Sussex with a portmanteau full of guineas, offer himself
as candidate for a borough in opposition to a neighbouring gentleman
whose ancestors had been regularly returned ever since the Wars of the
Roses, and come in at the head of the poll. Yet even this was not the
worst. More than one seat in Parliament, it was said, had been bought
and sold over a dish of coffee at Garraway's. The purchaser had not been
required even to go through the form of showing himself to the electors.
Without leaving his counting house in Cheapside, he had been chosen to
represent a place which he had never seen. Such things were intolerable.
No man, it was said, ought to sit in the English legislature who was
not master of some hundreds of acres of English ground. [689] A bill was
accordingly brought in which provided that every member of the House of
Commons must have a certain estate in land. For a knight of a shire the
qualification was fixed at five hundred a year; for a burgess at two
hundred a year. Early in February this bill was read a second time and
referred to a Select Committee. A motion was made that the Committee
should be instructed to add a clause enacting that all elections should
be by ballot. Whether this motion proceeded from a Whig or a Tory, by
what arguments it was supported and on what grounds it was opposed,
we have now no means of discovering. We know only that it was rejected
without a division.

Before the bill came back from the Committee, some of the most
respectable constituent bodies in the kingdom had raised their voices
against the new restriction to which it was proposed to subject them.
There had in general been little sympathy between the commercial towns
and the Universities. For the commercial towns were the chief seats of
Whiggism and Non conformity; and the Universities were zealous for the
Crown and the Church. Now, however, Oxford and Cambridge made common
cause with London and Bristol. It was hard, said the Academics, that a
grave and learned man, sent by a large body of grave and learned men to
the Great Council of the nation, should be thought less fit to sit in
that Council than a boozing clown who had scarcely literature enough
to entitle him to the benefit of clergy. It was hard, said the traders,
that a merchant prince, who had been the first magistrate of the first
city in the world, whose name on the back of a bill commanded entire
confidence at Smyrna and at Genoa, at Hamburg and at Amsterdam, who
had at sea ships every one of which was worth a manor, and who had
repeatedly, when the liberty and religion of the kingdom were in peril,
advanced to the government, at an hour's notice, five or ten thousand
pounds, should be supposed to have a less stake in the prosperity of the
commonwealth than a squire who sold his own bullocks and hops over a pot
of ale at the nearest market town. On the report, it was moved that the
Universities should be excepted; but the motion was lost by a hundred
and fifty-one votes to a hundred and forty-three. On the third reading
it was moved that the City of London should be excepted; but it was not
thought advisable to divide. The final question that the bill do pass,
was carried by a hundred and seventy-three votes to a hundred and fifty
on the day which preceded the discovery of the Assassination Plot. The
Lords agreed to the bill without any amendment.

William had to consider whether he would give or withhold his assent.
The commercial towns of the kingdom, and among them the City of London,
which had always stood firmly by him, and which had extricated him
many times from great embarrassments, implored his protection. It was
represented to him that the Commons were far indeed from being unanimous
on this subject; that, in the last stage, the majority had been only
twenty-three in a full House; that the motion to except the Universities
had been lost by a majority of only eight. On full consideration he
resolved not to pass the bill. Nobody, he said, could accuse him of
acting selfishly on this occasion; his prerogative was not concerned in
the matter; and he could have no objection to the proposed law except
that it would be mischievous to his people.

On the tenth of April 1696, therefore, the Clerk of the Parliament was
commanded to inform the Houses that the King would consider of the Bill
for the further Regulation of Elections. Some violent Tories in the
House of Commons flattered themselves that they might be able to carry
a resolution reflecting on the King. They moved that whoever had advised
His Majesty to refuse his assent to their bill was an enemy to him and
to the nation. Never was a greater blunder committed. The temper of
the House was very different from what it had been on the day when the
address against Portland's grant had been voted by acclamation. The
detection of a murderous conspiracy, the apprehension of a French
invasion, had changed every thing. The King was popular. Every day ten
or twelve bales of parchment covered with the signatures of associators
were laid at his feet. Nothing could be more imprudent than to propose,
at such a time, a thinly disguised vote of censure on him. The
moderate Tories accordingly separated themselves from their angry
and unreasonable brethren. The motion was rejected by two hundred and
nineteen votes to seventy; and the House ordered the question and the
numbers on both sides to be published, in order that the world might
know how completely the attempt to produce a quarrel between the King
and the Parliament had failed. [690]

The country gentlemen might perhaps have been more inclined to resent
the loss of their bill, had they not been put into high goodhumour by
another bill which they considered as even more important. The project
of a Land Bank had been revived; not in the form in which it had, two
years before, been brought under the consideration of the House of
Commons, but in a form much less shocking to common sense and less
open to ridicule. Chamberlayne indeed protested loudly against all
modifications of his plan, and proclaimed, with undiminished confidence,
that he would make all his countrymen rich if they would only let
him. He was not, he said, the first great discoverer whom princes and
statesmen had regarded as a dreamer. Henry the Seventh had, in an evil
hour, refused to listen to Christopher Columbus; the consequence had
been that England had lost the mines of Mexico and Peru; yet what were
the mines of Mexico and Peru to the riches of a nation blessed with an
unlimited paper currency? But the united force of reason and ridicule
had reduced the once numerous sect which followed Chamberlayne to a
small and select company of incorrigible fools. Few even of the squires
now believed in his two great doctrines; the doctrine that the State
can, by merely calling a bundle of old rags ten millions sterling, add
ten millions sterling to the riches of the nation; and the doctrine
that a lease of land for a term of years may be worth many times the fee
simple. But it was still the general opinion of the country gentlemen
that a bank, of which it should be the special business to advance money
on the security of land, might be a great blessing to the nation.
Harley and the Speaker Foley now proposed that such a bank should be
established by Act of Parliament, and promised that, if their plan
was adopted, the King should be amply supplied with money for the next
campaign.

The Whig leaders, and especially Montague, saw that the scheme was a
delusion, that it must speedily fail, and that, before it failed, it
might not improbably ruin their own favourite institution, the Bank of
England. But on this point they had against them, not only the whole
Tory party, but also their master and many of their followers. The
necessities of the State were pressing. The offers of the projectors
were tempting. The Bank of England had, in return for its charter,
advanced to the State only one million at eight per cent. The Land
Bank would advance more than two millions and a half at seven per cent.
William, whose chief object was to procure money for the service of the
year, was little inclined to find fault with any source from which two
millions and a half could be obtained. Sunderland, who generally
exerted his influence in favour of the Whig leaders, failed them on this
occasion. The Whig country gentlemen were delighted by the prospect of
being able to repair their stables, replenish their cellars, and give
portions to their daughters. It was impossible to contend against such a
combination of force. A bill was passed which authorised the government
to borrow two million five hundred and sixty-four thousand pounds at
seven per cent. A fund, arising chiefly from a new tax on salt, was set
apart for the payment of the interest. If, before the first of August,
the subscription for one half of this loan should have been filled,
and if one half of the sum subscribed should have been paid into the
Exchequer, the subscribers were to become a corporate body, under the
name of the National Land Bank. As this bank was expressly intended to
accommodate country gentlemen, it was strictly interdicted from lending
money on any private security other than a mortgage of land, and was
bound to lend on mortgage at least half a million annually. The interest
on this half million was not to exceed three and a half per cent. , if
the payments were quarterly, or four per cent. , if the payments were
half yearly. At that time the market rate of interest on the best
mortgages was full six per cent. The shrewd observers at the Dutch
Embassy therefore thought that capitalists would eschew all connection
with what must necessarily be a losing concern, and that the
subscription would never be half filled up; and it seems strange that
any sane person should have thought otherwise. [691]

It was vain however to reason against the general infatuation. The
Tories exultingly predicted that the Bank of Robert Harley would
completely eclipse the Bank of Charles Montague. The bill passed both
Houses. On the twenty-seventh of April it received the royal assent; and
the Parliament was immediately afterwards prorogued.




CHAPTER XXII

Military Operations in the Netherlands--Commercial Crisis in
England--Financial Crisis--Efforts to restore the Currency--Distress of
the People; their Temper and Conduct--Negotiations with France; the
Duke of Savoy deserts the Coalition--Search for Jacobite Conspirators
in England; Sir John Fenwick--Capture of Fenwick--Fenwick's
Confession--Return of William to England--Meeting of Parliament;
State of the Country; Speech of William at the Commencement of
the Session--Resolutions of the House of Commons--Return of
Prosperity--Effect of the Proceedings of the House of Commons on
Foreign Governments--Restoration of the Finances--Effects of Fenwick's
Confession--Resignation of Godolphin--Feeling of the Whigs
about Fenwick--William examines Fenwick--Disappearance of
Goodman--Parliamentary Proceedings touching Fenwick's Confession--Bill
for attainting Fenwick--Debates of the Commons on the Bill of
Attainder--The Bill of Attainder carried up to the Lords--Artifices of
Monmouth--Debates of the Lords on the Bill of Attainder--Proceedings
against Monmouth--Position and Feelings of Shrewsbury--The Bill of
Attainder passed; Attempts to save Fenwick--Fenwick's Execution;
Bill for the Regulating of Elections--Bill for the Regulation of
the Press--Bill abolishing the Privileges of Whitefriars and the
Savoy--Close of the Session; Promotions and Appointments--State of
Ireland--State of Scotland--A Session of Parliament at Edinburgh;
Act for the Settling of Schools--Case of Thomas Aikenhead--Military
Operations in the Netherlands--Terms of Peace offered by France--Conduct
of Spain; Conduct of the Emperor--Congress of Ryswick--William opens a
distinct Negotiation--Meetings of Portland and Boufflers--Terms of Peace
between France and England settled--Difficulties caused by Spain and the
Emperor--Attempts of James to prevent a general Pacification--The Treaty
of Ryswick signed; Anxiety in England--News of the Peace arrives in
England--Dismay of the Jacobites--General Rejoicing--The King's Entry
into London--The Thanksgiving Day

ON the seventh of May 1696, William landed in Holland. [692] Thence he
proceeded to Flanders, and took the command of the allied forces, which
were collected in the neighbourhood of Ghent. Villeroy and Boufflers
were already in the field. All Europe waited impatiently for great news
from the Netherlands, but waited in vain. No aggressive movement was
made. The object of the generals on both sides was to keep their troops
from dying of hunger; and it was an object by no means easily attained.
The treasuries both of France and England were empty. Lewis had,
during the winter, created with great difficulty and expense a gigantic
magazine at Givet on the frontier of his kingdom. The buildings were
commodious and of vast extent. The quantity of provender laid up in
them for horses was immense. The number of rations for men was commonly
estimated at from three to four millions. But early in the spring
Athlone and Cohorn had, by a bold and dexterous move, surprised Givet,
and had utterly destroyed both storehouses and stores. [693] France,
already fainting from exhaustion, was in no condition to repair such a
loss. Sieges such as those of Mons and Namur were operations too costly
for her means. The business of her army now was, not to conquer, but to
subsist.

The army of William was reduced to straits not less painful. The
material wealth of England, indeed, had not been very seriously impaired
by the drain which the war had caused; but she was suffering severely
from the defective state of that instrument by which her material wealth
was distributed.

Saturday, the second of May, had been fixed by Parliament as the last
day on which the clipped crowns, halfcrowns and shillings were to be
received by tale in payment of taxes. [694] The Exchequer was besieged
from dawn till midnight by an immense multitude. It was necessary to
call in the guards for the purpose of keeping order. On the following
Monday began a cruel agony of a few months, which was destined to be
succeeded by many years of almost unbroken prosperity. [695]

Most of the old silver had vanished. The new silver had scarcely made
its appearance. About four millions sterling, in ingots and hammered
coin, were lying in the vaults of the Exchequer; and the milled money as
yet came forth very slowly from the Mint. [696] Alarmists predicted that
the wealthiest and most enlightened kingdom in Europe would be reduced
to the state of those barbarous societies in which a mat is bought with
a hatchet, and a pair of mocassins with a piece of venison.

There were, indeed, some hammered pieces which had escaped mutilation;
and sixpences not clipped within the innermost ring were still current.
This old money and the new money together made up a scanty stock of
silver, which, with the help of gold, was to carry the nation through
the summer. [697] The manufacturers generally contrived, though with
extreme difficulty, to pay their workmen in coin. [698] The upper
classes seem to have lived to a great extent on credit. Even an opulent
man seldom had the means of discharging the weekly bills of his baker
and butcher. [699] A promissory note, however, subscribed by such a man,
was readily taken in the district where his means and character were
well known. The notes of the wealthy moneychangers of Lombard Street
circulated widely. [700] The paper of the Bank of England did much
service, and would have done more, but for the unhappy error into which
the Parliament had recently been led by Harley and Foley. The confidence
which the public had felt in that powerful and opulent Company had been
shaken by the Act which established the Land Bank. It might well be
doubted whether there would be room for the two rival institutions; and
of the two, the younger seemed to be the favourite of the government and
of the legislature. The stock of the Bank of England had gone rapidly
down from a hundred and ten to eighty-three. Meanwhile the goldsmiths,
who had from the first been hostile to that great corporation, were
plotting against it. They collected its paper from every quarter; and on
the fourth of May, when the Exchequer had just swallowed up most of the
old money, and when scarcely any of the new money had been issued, they
flocked to Grocers' Hall, and insisted on immediate payment. A single
goldsmith demanded thirty thousand pounds. The Directors, in this
extremity, acted wisely and firmly. They refused to cash the notes which
had been thus maliciously presented, and left the holders to seek a
remedy in Westminster Hall. Other creditors, who came in good faith to
ask for their due, were paid. The conspirators affected to triumph over
the powerful body, which they hated and dreaded. The bank which had
recently begun to exist under such splendid auspices, which had seemed
destined to make a revolution in commerce and in finance, which had been
the boast of London and the envy of Amsterdam, was already insolvent,
ruined, dishonoured. Wretched pasquinades were published, the Trial
of the Land Bank for murdering the Bank of England, the last Will and
Testament of the Bank of England, the Epitaph of the Bank of England,
the Inquest on the Bank of England. But, in spite of all this clamour
and all this wit, the correspondents of the States General reported,
that the Bank of England had not really suffered in the public esteem,
and that the conduct of the goldsmiths was generally condemned. [701]

The Directors soon found it impossible to procure silver enough to meet
every claim which was made on them in good faith. They then bethought
them of a new expedient. They made a call of twenty per cent. on the
proprietors, and thus raised a sum which enabled them to give every
applicant fifteen per cent. in milled money on what was due to him. They
returned him his note, after making a minute upon it that part had
been paid. [702] A few notes thus marked are still preserved among the
archives of the Bank, as memorials of that terrible year. The paper
of the Corporation continued to circulate, but the value fluctuated
violently from day to day, and indeed from hour to hour; for the public
mind was in so excitable a state that the most absurd lie which a
stockjobber could invent sufficed to send the price up or down. At one
time the discount was only six per cent. , at another time twenty-four
per cent. A tenpound note, which had been taken in the morning as worth
more than nine pounds, was often worth less than eight pounds before
night. [703]

Another, and, at that conjuncture, a more effectual substitute for
a metallic currency, owed its existence to the ingenuity of Charles
Montague. He had succeeded in engrafting on Harley's Land Bank Bill a
clause which empowered the government to issue negotiable paper bearing
interest at the rate of threepence a day on a hundred pounds. In the
midst of the general distress and confusion appeared the first Exchequer
Bills, drawn for various amounts from a hundred pounds down to five
pounds. These instruments were rapidly distributed over the kingdom by
the post, and were every where welcome. The Jacobites talked violently
against them in every coffeehouse, and wrote much detestable verse
against them, but to little purpose. The success of the plan was such,
that the ministers at one time resolved to issue twentyshilling bills,
and even fifteenshilling bills, for the payment of the troops. But it
does not appear that this resolution was carried into effect. [704]

It is difficult to imagine how, without the Exchequer Bills, the
government of the country could have been carried on during that year.
Every source of revenue had been affected by the state of the currency;
and one source, on which the Parliament had confidently reckoned for the
means of defraying more than half the charge of the war, had yielded not
a single farthing.

The sum expected from the Land Bank was near two million six hundred
thousand pounds. Of this sum one half was to be subscribed, and one
quarter paid up by the first of August. The King, just before his
departure, had signed a warrant appointing certain commissioners, among
whom Harley and Foley were the most eminent, to receive the names of the
contributors. [705] A great meeting of persons interested in the scheme
was held in the Hall of the Middle Temple. One office was opened at
Exeter Change, another at Mercers' Hall. Forty agents went down into the
country, and announced to the landed gentry of every shire the approach
of the golden age of high rents and low interest. The Council of
Regency, in order to set an example to the nation, put down the King's
name for five thousand pounds; and the newspapers assured the world that
the subscription would speedily be filled. [706] But when three weeks
had passed away, it was found that only fifteen hundred pounds had been
added to the five thousand contributed by the King. Many wondered at
this; yet there was little cause for wonder. The sum which the friends
of the project had undertaken to raise was a sum which only the enemies
of the project could furnish. The country gentlemen wished well to
Harley's scheme; but they wished well to it because they wanted to
borrow money on easy terms; and, wanting to borrow money, they of course
were not able to lend it. The moneyed class alone could supply what
was necessary to the existence of the Land Bank; and the Land Bank was
avowedly intended to diminish the profits, to destroy the political
influence and to lower the social position of the moneyed class. As the
usurers did not choose to take on themselves the expense of putting down
usury, the whole plan failed in a manner which, if the aspect of public
affairs had been less alarming, would have been exquisitely ludicrous.
The day drew near. The neatly ruled pages of the subscription book at
Mercers' Hall were still blank. The Commissioners stood aghast. In
their distress they applied to the government for indulgence. Many great
capitalists, they said, were desirous to subscribe, but stood aloof
because the terms were too hard. There ought to be some relaxation.
Would the Council of Regency consent to an abatement of three hundred
thousand pounds? The finances were in such a state, and the letters in
which the King represented his wants were so urgent, that the Council
of Regency hesitated. The Commissioners were asked whether they would
engage to raise the whole sum, with this abatement. Their answer was
unsatisfactory. They did not venture to say that they could command
more than eight hundred thousand pounds. The negotiation was, therefore,
broken off. The first of August came; and the whole amount contributed
by the whole nation to the magnificent undertaking from which so much
had been expected was two thousand one hundred pounds.