No More Learning

"The poor
fellow's fate," he wrote, "has affected me much. I do not indeed think
that he managed well; but it was his ardent desire to distinguish
himself that impelled him to attempt impossibilities. " [534]

The armament which had returned to Portsmouth soon sailed again for the
coast of France, but achieved only exploits worse than inglorious. An
attempt was made to blow up the pier at Dunkirk. Some towns inhabited by
quiet tradesmen and fishermen were bombarded. In Dieppe scarcely a house
was left standing; a third part of Havre was laid in ashes; and shells
were thrown into Calais which destroyed thirty private dwellings. The
French and the Jacobites loudly exclaimed against the cowardice
and barbarity of making war on an unwarlike population. The English
government vindicated itself by reminding the world of the sufferings of
the thrice wasted Palatinate; and, as against Lewis and the flatterers
of Lewis, the vindication was complete. But whether it were consistent
with humanity and with sound policy to visit the crimes which an
absolute Prince and a ferocious soldiery had committed in the Palatinate
on shopkeepers and labourers, on women and children, who did not know
that the Palatinate existed, may perhaps be doubted.

Meanwhile Russell's fleet was rendering good service to the common
cause. Adverse winds had impeded his progress through the Straits so
long that he did not reach Carthagena till the middle of July. By that
time the progress of the French arms had spread terror even to the
Escurial. Noailles had, on the banks of the Tar, routed an army
commanded by the Viceroy of Catalonia; and, on the day on which this
victory was won, the Brest squadron had joined the Toulon squadron in
the Bay of Rosas. Palamos, attacked at once by land and sea, was taken
by storm. Gerona capitulated after a faint show of resistance. Ostalric
surrendered at the first summons. Barcelona would in all probability
have fallen, had not the French Admirals learned that the conquerors of
La Hogue was approaching. They instantly quitted the coast of Catalonia,
and never thought themselves safe till they had taken shelter under the
batteries of Toulon.

The Spanish government expressed warm gratitude for this seasonable
assistance, and presented to the English Admiral a jewel which was
popularly said to be worth near twenty thousand pounds sterling. There
was no difficulty in finding such a jewel among the hoards of gorgeous
trinkets which had been left by Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second
to a degenerate race. But, in all that constitutes the true wealth of
states, Spain was poor indeed. Her treasury was empty; her arsenals were
unfurnished; her ships were so rotten that they seemed likely to fly
asunder at the discharge of their own guns. Her ragged and starving
soldiers often mingled with the crowd of beggars at the doors of
convents, and battled there for a mess of pottage and a crust of bread.
Russell underwent those trials which no English commander whose hard
fate it has been to cooperate with Spaniards has escaped. The Viceroy
of Catalonia promised much, did nothing, and expected every thing. He
declared that three hundred and fifty thousand rations were ready to be
served out to the fleet at Carthagena. It turned out that there were not
in all the stores of that port provisions sufficient to victual a single
frigate for a single week. Yet His Excellency thought himself entitled
to complain because England had not sent an army as well as a fleet, and
because the heretic Admiral did not choose to expose the fleet to utter
destruction by attacking the French under the guns of Toulon. Russell
implored the Spanish authorities to look well to their dockyards, and to
try to have, by the next spring, a small squadron which might at least
be able to float; but he could not prevail on them to careen a single
ship. He could with difficulty obtain, on hard conditions, permission to
send a few of his sick men to marine hospitals on shore. Yet, in spite
of all the trouble given him by the imbecility and ingratitude of a
government which has generally caused more annoyance to its allies than
to its enemies, he acquitted himself well. It is but just to him to
say that, from the time at which he became First Lord of the Admiralty,
there was a decided improvement in the naval administration. Though
he lay with his fleet many months near an inhospitable shore, and at a
great distance from England, there were no complaints about the quality
or the quantity of provisions. The crews had better food and drink
than they had ever had before; comforts which Spain did not afford were
supplied from home; and yet the charge was not greater than when, in
Torrington's time, the sailor was poisoned with mouldy biscuit and
nauseous beer.

As almost the whole maritime force of France was in the Mediterranean,
and as it seemed likely that an attempt would be made on Barcelona
in the following year, Russell received orders to winter at Cadiz.
In October he sailed to that port; and there he employed himself in
refitting his ships with an activity unintelligible to the Spanish
functionaries, who calmly suffered the miserable remains of what had
once been the greatest navy in the world to rot under their eyes. [535]

Along the eastern frontier of France the war during this year seemed to
languish. In Piedmont and on the Rhine the most important events of the
campaign were petty skirmishes and predatory incursions. Lewis remained
at Versailles, and sent his son, the Dauphin, to represent him in the
Netherlands; but the Dauphin was placed under the tutelage of Luxemburg,
and proved a most submissive pupil. During several months the hostile
armies observed each other. The allies made one bold push with the
intention of carrying the war into the French territory; but Luxemburg,
by a forced march, which excited the admiration of persons versed in the
military art, frustrated the design. William on the other hand succeeded
in taking Huy, then a fortress of the third rank. No battle was fought;
no important town was besieged; but the confederates were satisfied with
their campaign. Of the four previous years every one had been marked by
some great disaster. In 1690 Waldeck had been defeated at Fleurus.
In 1691 Mons had fallen. In 1692 Namur had been taken in sight of the
allied army; and this calamity had been speedily followed by the defeat
of Steinkirk. In 1693 the battle of Landen had been lost; and Charleroy
had submitted to the conqueror. At length in 1694 the tide had begun to
turn. The French arms had made no progress. What had been gained by the
allies was indeed not much; but the smallest gain was welcome to those
whom a long run of evil fortune had discouraged.

In England, the general opinion was that, notwithstanding the disaster
in Camaret Bay, the war was on the whole proceeding satisfactorily
both by land and by sea. But some parts of the internal administration
excited, during this autumn, much discontent.

Since Trenchard had been appointed Secretary of State, the Jacobite
agitators had found their situation much more unpleasant than before.
Sidney had been too indulgent and too fond of pleasure to give them much
trouble. Nottingham was a diligent and honest minister; but he was as
high a Tory as a faithful subject of William and Mary could be; he loved
and esteemed many of the nonjurors; and, though he might force himself
to be severe when nothing but severity could save the State, he was
not extreme to mark the transgressions of his old friends; nor did he
encourage talebearers to come to Whitehall with reports of conspiracies.
But Trenchard was both an active public servant and an earnest Whig.
Even if he had himself been inclined to lenity, he would have been urged
to severity by those who surrounded him. He had constantly at his side
Hugh Speke and Aaron Smith, men to whom a hunt after a Jacobite was
the most exciting of all sports. The cry of the malecontents was that
Nottingham had kept his bloodhounds in the leash, but that Trenchard had
let them slip. Every honest gentleman who loved the Church and hated
the Dutch went in danger of his life. There was a constant bustle at
the Secretary's Office, a constant stream of informers coming in, and of
messengers with warrants going out. It was said too, that the warrants
were often irregularly drawn, that they did not specify the person, that
they did not specify the crime, and yet that, under the authority of
such instruments as these, houses were entered, desks and cabinets
searched, valuable papers carried away, and men of good birth and
breeding flung into gaol among felons. [536] The minister and his agents
answered that Westminster Hall was open; that, if any man had been
illegally imprisoned, he had only to bring his action; that juries were
quite sufficiently disposed to listen to any person who pretended to
have been oppressed by cruel and griping men in power, and that, as
none of the prisoners whose wrongs were so pathetically described had
ventured to resort to this obvious and easy mode of obtaining redress,
it might fairly be inferred that nothing had been done which could
not be justified. The clamour of the malecontents however made a
considerable impression on the public mind; and at length, a transaction
in which Trenchard was more unlucky than culpable, brought on him and on
the government with which he was connected much temporary obloquy.

Among the informers who haunted his office was an Irish vagabond who had
borne more than one name and had professed more than one religion. He
now called himself Taaffe. He had been a priest of the Roman Catholic
Church, and secretary to Adda the Papal Nuncio, but had since the
Revolution turned Protestant, had taken a wife, and had distinguished
himself by his activity in discovering the concealed property of those
Jesuits and Benedictines who, during the late reign, had been quartered
in London. The ministers despised him; but they trusted him. They
thought that he had, by his apostasy, and by the part which he had borne
in the spoliation of the religious orders, cut himself off from all
retreat, and that, having nothing but a halter to expect from King
James, he must be true to King William. [537]

This man fell in with a Jacobite agent named Lunt, who had, since the
Revolution, been repeatedly employed among the discontented gentry
of Cheshire and Lancashire, and who had been privy to those plans of
insurrection which had been disconcerted by the battle of the Boyne in
1690, and by the battle of La Hogue in 1692. Lunt had once been arrested
on suspicion of treason, but had been discharged for want of legal proof
of his guilt. He was a mere hireling, and was, without much difficulty,
induced by Taaffe to turn approver. The pair went to Trenchard. Lunt
told his story, mentioned the names of some Cheshire and Lancashire
squires to whom he had, as he affirmed, carried commissions from Saint
Germains, and of others, who had, to his knowledge, formed secret hoards
of arms and ammunition. His simple oath would not have been sufficient
to support a charge of high treason; but he produced another witness
whose evidence seemed to make the case complete. The narrative was
plausible and coherent; and indeed, though it may have been embellished
by fictions, there can be little doubt that it was in substance true.
[538] Messengers and search warrants were sent down to Lancashire. Aaron
Smith himself went thither; and Taaffe went with him. The alarm had been
given by some of the numerous traitors who ate the bread of William.
Some of the accused persons had fled; and others had buried their sabres
and muskets and burned their papers. Nevertheless, discoveries were
made which confirmed Lunt's depositions. Behind the wainscot of the old
mansion of one Roman Catholic family was discovered a commission signed
by James. Another house, of which the master had absconded, was strictly
searched, in spite of the solemn asseverations of his wife and his
servants that no arms were concealed there. While the lady, with her
hand on her heart, was protesting on her honour that her husband was
falsely accused, the messengers observed that the back of the chimney
did not seem to be firmly fixed. It was removed, and a heap of blades
such as were used by horse soldiers tumbled out. In one of the garrets
were found, carefully bricked up, thirty saddles for troopers, as
many breastplates, and sixty cavalry swords. Trenchard and Aaron Smith
thought the case complete; and it was determined that those culprits who
had been apprehended should be tried by a special commission. [539]

Taaffe now confidently expected to be recompensed for his services;
but he found a cold reception at the Treasury. He had gone down to
Lancashire chiefly in order that he might, under the protection of a
search warrant, pilfer trinkets and broad pieces from secret drawers.
His sleight of hand however had not altogether escaped the observation
of his companions. They discovered that he had made free with the
communion plate of the Popish families, whose private hoards he had
assisted in ransacking. When therefore he applied for reward, he was
dismissed, not merely with a refusal, but with a stern reprimand. He
went away mad with greediness and spite. There was yet one way in which
he might obtain both money and revenge; and that way he took. He made
overtures to the friends of the prisoners. He and he alone could undo
what he had done, could save the accused from the gallows, could cover
the accusers with infamy, could drive from office the Secretary and the
Solicitor who were the dread of all the friends of King James. Loathsome
as Taaffe was to the Jacobites, his offer was not to be slighted. He
received a sum in hand; he was assured that a comfortable annuity for
life should be settled on him when the business was done; and he was
sent down into the country, and kept in strict seclusion against the day
of trial. [540]

Meanwhile unlicensed pamphlets, in which the Lancashire plot was classed
with Oates's plot, with Dangerfield's plot, with Fuller's plot, with
Young's plot, with Whitney's plot, were circulated all over the kingdom,
and especially in the county which was to furnish the jury. Of these
pamphlets the longest, the ablest, and the bitterest, entitled a Letter
to Secretary Trenchard, was commonly ascribed to Ferguson. It is not
improbable that Ferguson may have furnished some of the materials, and
may have conveyed the manuscript to the press. But many passages are
written with an art and a vigour which assuredly did not belong to him.
Those who judge by internal evidence may perhaps think that, in some
parts of this remarkable tract, they can discern the last gleam of the
malignant genius of Montgomery. A few weeks after the appearance of the
Letter he sank, unhonoured and unlamented, into the grave. [541]

There were then no printed newspapers except the London Gazette.
But since the Revolution the newsletter had become a more important
political engine than it had previously been. The newsletters of one
writer named Dyer were widely circulated in manuscript. He affected to
be a Tory and a High Churchman, and was consequently regarded by the
foxhunting lords of manors, all over the kingdom, as an oracle. He had
already been twice in prison; but his gains had more than compensated
for his sufferings, and he still persisted in seasoning his intelligence
to suit the taste of the country gentlemen. He now turned the Lancashire
plot into ridicule, declared that the guns which had been found were old
fowling pieces, that the saddles were meant only for hunting, and that
the swords were rusty reliques of Edge Hill and Marston Moor. [542] The
effect produced by all this invective and sarcasm on the public mind
seems to have been great. Even at the Dutch Embassy, where assuredly
there was no leaning towards Jacobitism, there was a strong impression
that it would be unwise to bring the prisoners to trial. In Lancashire
and Cheshire the prevailing sentiments were pity for the accused and
hatred of the prosecutors. The government however persevered. In October
four Judges went down to Manchester. At present the population of that
town is made up of persons born in every part of the British Isles, and
consequently has no especial sympathy with the landowners, the farmers
and the agricultural labourers of the neighbouring districts. But in
the seventeenth century the Manchester man was a Lancashire man. His
politics were those of his county. For the old Cavalier families of his
county he felt a great respect; and he was furious when he thought that
some of the best blood of his county was about to be shed by a knot
of Roundhead pettifoggers from London. Multitudes of people from the
neighbouring villages filled the streets of the town, and saw with grief
and indignation the array of drawn swords and loaded carbines which
surrounded the culprits. Aaron Smith's arrangements do not seem to have
been skilful. The chief counsel for the Crown was Sir William Williams,
who, though now well stricken in years and possessed of a great estate,
still continued to practise. One fault had thrown a dark shade over the
latter part of his life. The recollection of that day on which he had
stood up in Westminster Hall, amidst laughter and hooting, to defend the
dispensing power and to attack the right of petition, had, ever
since the Revolution, kept him back from honour. He was an angry and
disappointed man, and was by no means disposed to incur unpopularity in
the cause of a government to which he owed nothing, and from which he
hoped nothing.

Of the trial no detailed report has come down to us; but we have both
a Whig narrative and a Jacobite narrative. [543] It seems that the
prisoners who were first arraigned did not sever in their challenges,
and were consequently tried together. Williams examined or rather
crossexamined his own witnesses with a severity which confused them. The
crowd which filled the court laughed and clamoured. Lunt in particular
became completely bewildered, mistook one person for another, and did
not recover himself till the judges took him out of the hands of the
counsel for the Crown. For some of the prisoners an alibi was set up.
Evidence was also produced to show, what was undoubtedly quite true,
that Lunt was a man of abandoned character. The result however seemed
doubtful till, to the dismay of the prosecutors, Taaffe entered the box.
He swore with unblushing forehead that the whole story of the plot was a
circumstantial lie devised by himself and Lunt. Williams threw down his
brief; and, in truth, a more honest advocate might well have done the
same. The prisoners who were at the bar were instantly acquitted; those
who had not yet been tried were set at liberty; the witnesses for
the prosecution were pelted out of Manchester; the Clerk of the Crown
narrowly escaped with life; and the judges took their departure amidst
hisses and execrations.

A few days after the close of the trials at Manchester William returned
to England. On the twelfth of November, only forty-eight hours after
his arrival at Kensington, the Houses met. He congratulated them on the
improved aspect of affairs. Both by land and by sea the events of the
year which was about to close had been, on the whole, favourable to the
allies; the French armies had made no progress; the French fleets had
not ventured to show themselves; nevertheless, a safe and honourable
peace could be obtained only by a vigorous prosecution of the war;
and the war could not be vigorously prosecuted without large supplies.
William then reminded the Commons that the Act by which they had settled
the tonnage and poundage on the Crown for four years was about to
expire, and expressed his hope that it would be renewed.

After the King had spoken, the Commons, for some reason which no writer
has explained, adjourned for a week. Before they met again, an event
took place which caused great sorrow at the palace, and through all the
ranks of the Low Church party. Tillotson was taken suddenly ill while
attending public worship in the chapel of Whitehall. Prompt remedies
might perhaps have saved him; but he would not interrupt the prayers;
and, before the service was over, his malady was beyond the reach of
medicine. He was almost speechless; but his friends long remembered with
pleasure a few broken ejaculations which showed that he enjoyed peace of
mind to the last. He was buried in the church of Saint Lawrence Jewry,
near Guildhall. It was there that he had won his immense oratorical
reputation. He had preached there during the thirty years which preceded
his elevation to the throne of Canterbury. His eloquence had attracted
to the heart of the City crowds of the learned and polite, from the
Inns of Court and from the lordly mansions of Saint James's and Soho. A
considerable part of his congregation had generally consisted of young
clergymen, who came to learn the art of preaching at the feet of him who
was universally considered as the first of preachers. To this church his
remains were now carried through a mourning population. The hearse was
followed by an endless train of splendid equipages from Lambeth through
Southwark and over London Bridge. Burnet preached the funeral sermon.
His kind and honest heart was overcome by so many tender recollections
that, in the midst of his discourse, he paused and burst into tears,
while a loud moan of sorrow rose from the whole auditory. The Queen
could not speak of her favourite instructor without weeping. Even
William was visibly moved. "I have lost," he said, "the best friend that
I ever had, and the best man that I ever knew. " The only Englishman who
is mentioned with tenderness in any part of the great mass of letters
which the King wrote to Heinsius is Tillotson. The Archbishop had left a
widow. To her William granted a pension of four hundred a year, which he
afterwards increased to six hundred. His anxiety that she should receive
her income regularly and without stoppages was honourable to him. Every
quarterday he ordered the money, without any deduction, to be brought to
himself, and immediately sent it to her. Tillotson had bequeathed to her
no property, except a great number of manuscript sermons. Such was his
fame among his contemporaries that those sermons were purchased by the
booksellers for the almost incredible sum of two thousand five hundred
guineas, equivalent, in the wretched state in which the silver coin then
was, to at least three thousand six hundred pounds. Such a price had
never before been given in England for any copyright. About the same
time Dryden, whose reputation was then in the zenith, received thirteen
hundred pounds for his translation of all the works of Virgil, and was
thought to have been splendidly remunerated. [544]

It was not easy to fill satisfactorily the high place which Tillotson
had left vacant. Mary gave her voice for Stillingfleet, and pressed
his claims as earnestly as she ever ventured to press any thing. In
abilities and attainments he had few superiors among the clergy. But,
though he would probably have been considered as a Low Churchman by
Jane and South, he was too high a Churchman for William; and Tenison was
appointed. The new primate was not eminently distinguished by eloquence
or learning: but he was honest, prudent, laborious and benevolent; he
had been a good rector of a large parish and a good bishop of a large
diocese; detraction had not yet been busy with his name; and it might
well be thought that a man of plain sense, moderation and integrity, was
more likely than a man of brilliant genius and lofty spirit to succeed
in the arduous task of quieting a discontented and distracted Church.

Meanwhile the Commons had entered upon business. They cheerfully voted
about two million four hundred thousand pounds for the army, and as
much for the navy. The land tax for the year was again fixed at four
shillings in the pound; the Tonnage Act was renewed for a term of five
years; and a fund was established on which the government was authorised
to borrow two millions and a half.

Some time was spent by both Houses in discussing the Manchester trials.
If the malecontents had been wise, they would have been satisfied with
the advantage which they had already gained. Their friends had been set
free. The prosecutors had with difficulty escaped from the hands of an
enraged multitude. The character of the government had been seriously
damaged. The ministers were accused, in prose and in verse, sometimes
in earnest and sometimes in jest, of having hired a gang of ruffians to
swear away the lives of honest gentlemen. Even moderate politicians, who
gave no credit to these foul imputations, owned that Trenchard ought to
have remembered the villanies of Fuller and Young, and to have been
on his guard against such wretches as Taaffe and Lunt. The unfortunate
Secretary's health and spirits had given way. It was said that he was
dying; and it was certain that he would not long continue to hold the
seals. The Tories had won a great victory; but, in their eagerness to
improve it, they turned it into a defeat.

Early in the session Howe complained, with his usual vehemence and
asperity, of the indignities to which innocent and honourable men,
highly descended and highly esteemed, had been subjected by Aaron Smith
and the wretches who were in his pay. The leading Whigs, with great
judgment, demanded an inquiry. Then the Tories began to flinch. They
well knew that an inquiry could not strengthen their case, and might
weaken it. The issue, they said, had been tried; a jury had pronounced;
the verdict was definitive; and it would be monstrous to give the
false witnesses who had been stoned out of Manchester an opportunity
of repeating their lesson. To this argument the answer was obvious. The
verdict was definitive as respected the defendants, but not as respected
the prosecutors. The prosecutors were now in their turn defendants, and
were entitled to all the privileges of defendants. It did not follow,
because the Lancashire gentlemen had been found, and very properly
found, not guilty of treason, that the Secretary of State or the
Solicitor of the Treasury had been guilty of unfairness or even of
rashness. The House, by one hundred and nineteen votes to one hundred
and two resolved that Aaron Smith and the witnesses on both sides
should be ordered to attend. Several days were passed in examination
and crossexamination; and sometimes the sittings extended far into the
night. It soon became clear that the prosecution had not been lightly
instituted, and that some of the persons who had been acquitted had been
concerned in treasonable schemes. The Tories would now have been content
with a drawn battle; but the Whigs were not disposed to forego their
advantage. It was moved that there had been a sufficient ground for the
proceedings before the Special Commission; and this motion was carried
without a division.
The opposition proposed to add some words implying
that the witnesses for the Crown had forsworn themselves; but these
words were rejected by one hundred and thirty-six votes to one hundred
and nine, and it was resolved by one hundred and thirty-three votes to
ninety-seven that there had been a dangerous conspiracy. The Lords had
meanwhile been deliberating on the same subject, and had come to the
same conclusion. They sent Taaffe to prison for prevarication; and they
passed resolutions acquitting both the government and the judges of all
blame. The public however continued to think that the gentlemen who
had been tried at Manchester had been unjustifiably persecuted, till
a Jacobite plot of singular atrocity, brought home to the plotters by
decisive evidence, produced a violent revulsion of feeling. [545]

Meanwhile three bills, which had been repeatedly discussed in preceding
years, and two of which had been carried in vain to the foot of the
throne, had been again brought in; the Place Bill, the Bill for the
Regulation of Trials in cases of Treason, and the Triennial Bill.

The Place Bill did not reach the Lords. It was thrice read in the Lower
House, but was not passed. At the very last moment it was rejected by
a hundred and seventy-five votes to a hundred and forty-two. Howe and
Barley were the tellers for the minority. [546]

The Bill for the Regulation of Trials in cases of Treason went up again
to the Peers. Their Lordships again added to it the clause which had
formerly been fatal to it. The Commons again refused to grant any new
privilege to the hereditary aristocracy. Conferences were again held;
reasons were again exchanged; both Houses were again obstinate; and the
bill was again lost. [547]

The Triennial Bill was more fortunate. It was brought in on the first
day of the session, and went easily and rapidly through both Houses. The
only question about which there was any serious contention was, how long
the existing Parliament should be suffered to continue. After several
sharp debates November in the year 1696 was fixed as the extreme term.
The Tonnage Bill and the Triennial Bill proceeded almost side by side.
Both were, on the twenty-second of December, ready for the royal assent.
William came in state on that day to Westminster. The attendance of
members of both Houses was large. When the Clerk of the Crown read the
words, "A Bill for the frequent Calling and Meeting of Parliaments," the
anxiety was great. When the Clerk of the Parliament made answer, "Le roy
et la royne le veulent," a loud and long hum of delight and exultation
rose from the benches and the bar. [548] William had resolved many
months before not to refuse his assent a second time to so popular a
law. [549] There was some however who thought that he would not have
made so great a concession if he had on that day been quite himself.
It was plain indeed that he was strangely agitated and unnerved. It
had been announced that he would dine in public at Whitehall. But he
disappointed the curiosity of the multitude which on such occasions
flocked to the Court, and hurried back to Kensington. [550]

He had but too good reason to be uneasy. His wife had, during two or
three days, been poorly; and on the preceding evening grave symptoms had
appeared. Sir Thomas Millington, who was physician in ordinary to the
King, thought that she had the measles. But Radcliffe, who, with coarse
manners and little book learning, had raised himself to the first
practice in London chiefly by his rare skill in diagnostics, uttered
the more alarming words, small pox. That disease, over which science has
since achieved a succession of glorious and beneficient victories, was
then the most terrible of all the ministers of death. The havoc of the
plague had been far more rapid; but the plague had visited our shores
only once or twice within living memory; and the small pox was always
present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant
fears all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives
it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a
changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks
of the betrothed maiden objects of horror to the lover. Towards the
end of the year 1694, this pestilence was more than usually severe. At
length the infection spread to the palace, and reached the young and
blooming Queen. She received the intimation of her danger with true
greatness of soul. She gave orders that every lady of her bedchamber,
every maid of honour, nay, every menial servant, who had not had the
small pox, should instantly leave Kensington House. She locked herself
up during a short time in her closet, burned some papers, arranged
others, and then calmly awaited her fate.

During two or three days there were many alternations of hope and fear.
The physicians contradicted each other and themselves in a way which
sufficiently indicates the state of medical science in that age. The
disease was measles; it was scarlet fever; it was spotted fever; it was
erysipelas. At one moment some symptoms, which in truth showed that
the case was almost hopeless, were hailed as indications of returning
health. At length all doubt was over. Radcliffe's opinion proved to be
right. It was plain that the Queen was sinking under small pox of the
most malignant type.

All this time William remained night and day near her bedside. The
little couch on which he slept when he was in camp was spread for him
in the antechamber; but he scarcely lay down on it. The sight of his
misery, the Dutch Envoy wrote, was enough to melt the hardest heart.
Nothing seemed to be left of the man whose serene fortitude had been
the wonder of old soldiers on the disastrous day of Landen, and of old
sailors on that fearful night among the sheets of ice and banks of
sand on the coast of Goree. The very domestics saw the tears running
unchecked down that face, of which the stern composure had seldom been
disturbed by any triumph or by any defeat. Several of the prelates were
in attendance. The King drew Burnet aside, and gave way to an agony of
grief. "There is no hope," he cried. "I was the happiest man on earth;
and I am the most miserable. She had no fault; none; you knew her well;
but you could not know, nobody but myself could know, her goodness. "
Tenison undertook to tell her that she was dying. He was afraid that
such a communication, abruptly made, might agitate her violently, and
began with much management. But she soon caught his meaning, and, with
that gentle womanly courage which so often puts our bravery to shame,
submitted herself to the will of God. She called for a small cabinet
in which her most important papers were locked up, gave orders that, as
soon as she was no more, it should be delivered to the King, and then
dismissed worldly cares from her mind. She received the Eucharist, and
repeated her part of the office with unimpaired memory and intelligence,
though in a feeble voice. She observed that Tenison had been long
standing at her bedside, and, with that sweet courtesy which was
habitual to her, faltered out her commands that he would sit down, and
repeated them till he obeyed. After she had received the sacrament she
sank rapidly, and uttered only a few broken words. Twice she tried to
take a last farewell of him whom she had loved so truly and entirely;
but she was unable to speak. He had a succession of fits so alarming
that his Privy Councillors, who were assembled in a neighbouring room,
were apprehensive for his reason and his life. The Duke of Leeds, at the
request of his colleagues, ventured to assume the friendly guardianship
of which minds deranged by sorrow stand in need. A few minutes before
the Queen expired, William was removed, almost insensible, from the sick
room.

Mary died in peace with Anne. Before the physicians had pronounced the
case hopeless, the Princess, who was then in very delicate health, had
sent a kind message; and Mary had returned a kind answer. The Princess
had then proposed to come herself; but William had, in very gracious
terms, declined the offer. The excitement of an interview, he said,
would be too much for both sisters. If a favourable turn took place, Her
Royal Highness should be most welcome to Kensington. A few hours later
all was over. [551]

The public sorrow was great and general. For Mary's blameless life, her
large charities and her winning manners had conquered the hearts of
her people. When the Commons next met they sate for a time in profound
silence. At length it was moved and resolved that an Address of
Condolence should be presented to the King; and then the House broke
up without proceeding to other business. The Dutch envoy informed the
States General that many of the members had handkerchiefs at their
eyes. The number of sad faces in the street struck every observer. The
mourning was more general than even the mourning for Charles the Second
had been. On the Sunday which followed the Queen's death her virtues
were celebrated in almost every parish church of the Capital, and in
almost every great meeting of nonconformists. [552]

The most estimable Jacobites respected the sorrow of William and the
memory of Mary. But to the fiercer zealots of the party neither the
house of mourning nor the grave was sacred. At Bristol the adherents of
Sir John Knight rang the bells as if for a victory. [553] It has often
been repeated, and is not at all improbable, that a nonjuring divine, in
the midst of the general lamentation, preached on the text, "Go; see
now this cursed woman and bury her; for she is a King's daughter. " It is
certain that some of the ejected priests pursued her to the grave with
invectives. Her death, they said, was evidently a judgment for her
crime. God had, from the top of Sinai, in thunder and lightning,
promised length of days to children who should honour their parents; and
in this promise was plainly implied a menace. What father had ever been
worse treated by his daughters than James by Mary and Anne? Mary was
gone, cut off in the prime of life, in the glow of beauty, in the
height of prosperity; and Anne would do well to profit by the warning.
Wagstaffe went further, and dwelt much on certain wonderful coincidences
of time. James had been driven from his palace and country in Christmas
week. Mary had died in Christmas week. There could be no doubt that, if
the secrets of Providence were disclosed to us, we should find that the
turns of the daughter's complaint in December 1694 bore an exact
analogy to the turns of the father's fortune in December 1688. It was
at midnight that the father ran away from Rochester; it was at midnight
that the daughter expired. Such was the profundity and such the
ingenuity of a writer whom the Jacobite schismatics justly regarded as
one of their ablest chiefs. [554]

The Whigs soon had an opportunity of retaliating. They triumphantly
related that a scrivener in the Borough, a stanch friend of hereditary
right, while exulting in the judgment which had overtaken the Queen, had
himself fallen down dead in a fit. [555]

The funeral was long remembered as the saddest and most august that
Westminster had ever seen. While the Queen's remains lay in state at
Whitehall, the neighbouring streets were filled every day, from sunrise
to sunset, by crowds which made all traffic impossible. The two Houses
with their maces followed the hearse, the Lords robed in scarlet and
ermine, the Commons in long black mantles. No preceding Sovereign had
ever been attended to the grave by a Parliament; for, till then, the
Parliament had always expired with the Sovereign. A paper had indeed
been circulated, in which the logic of a small sharp pettifogger was
employed to prove that writs, issued in the joint names of William and
Mary, ceased to be of force as soon as William reigned alone. But this
paltry cavil had completely failed. It had not even been mentioned
in the Lower House, and had been mentioned in the Upper only to be
contemptuously overruled. The whole Magistracy of the City swelled the
procession. The banners of England and France, Scotland and Ireland,
were carried by great nobles before the corpse. The pall was borne
by the chiefs of the illustrious houses of Howard, Seymour, Grey, and
Stanley. On the gorgeous coffin of purple and gold were laid the crown
and sceptre of the realm. The day was well suited to such a ceremony.
The sky was dark and troubled; and a few ghastly flakes of snow fell on
the black plumes of the funeral car. Within the Abbey, nave, choir
and transept were in a blaze with innumerable waxlights. The body was
deposited under a magnificent canopy in the centre of the church while
the Primate preached. The earlier part of his discourse was deformed by
pedantic divisions and subdivisions; but towards the close he told what
he had himself seen and heard with a simplicity and earnestness more
affecting than the most skilful rhetoric. Through the whole ceremony the
distant booming of cannon was heard every minute from the batteries of
the Tower. The gentle Queen sleeps among her illustrious kindred in the
southern aisle of the Chapel of Henry the Seventh. [556]

The affection with which her husband cherished her memory was soon
attested by a monument the most superb that was ever erected to any
sovereign. No scheme had been so much her own, none had been so near her
heart, as that of converting the palace at Greenwich into a retreat
for seamen. It had occurred to her when she had found it difficult to
provide good shelter and good attendance for the thousands of brave men
who had come back to England wounded after the battle of La Hogue. While
she lived scarcely any step was taken towards the accomplishing of her
favourite design. But it should seem that, as soon as her husband had
lost her, he began to reproach himself for having neglected her wishes.
No time was lost. A plan was furnished by Wren; and soon an edifice,
surpassing that asylum which the magnificent Lewis had provided for
his soldiers, rose on the margin of the Thames. Whoever reads the
inscription which runs round the frieze of the hall will observe that
William claims no part of the merit of the design, and that the praise
is ascribed to Mary alone. Had the King's life been prolonged till the
works were completed, a statue of her who was the real foundress of
the institution would have had a conspicuous place in that court which
presents two lofty domes and two graceful colonnades to the multitudes
who are perpetually passing up and down the imperial river. But that
part of the plan was never carried into effect; and few of those who
now gaze on the noblest of European hospitals are aware that it is a
memorial of the virtues of the good Queen Mary, of the love and sorrow
of William, and of the great victory of La Hogue.




CHAPTER XXI

Effect of Mary's Death on the Continent--Death of Luxemburg--Distress of
William--Parliamentary Proceedings; Emancipation of the Press--Death
of Halifax--Parliamentary Inquiries into the Corruption of the Public
Offices--Vote of Censure on the Speaker--Foley elected Speaker; Inquiry
into the Accounts of the East India Company--Suspicious Dealings of
Seymour--Bill against Sir Thomas Cook--Inquiry by a joint Committee
of Lords and Commons--Impeachment of Leeds--Disgrace of Leeds--Lords
Justices appointed; Reconciliation between William and the
Princess Anne--Jacobite Plots against William's Person--Charnock;
Porter--Goodman; Parkyns--Fenwick--Session of the Scottish Parliament;
Inquiry into the Slaughter of Glencoe--War in the Netherlands; Marshal
Villeroy--The Duke of Maine--Jacobite Plots against the Government
during William's Absence--Siege of Namur--Surrender of the Town of
Namur--Surrender of the Castle of Namur--Arrest of Boufflers--Effect
of the Emancipation of the English Press--Return of William to England;
Dissolution of the Parliament--William makes a Progress through the
Country--The Elections--Alarming State of the Currency--Meeting of the
Parliament; Loyalty of the House of Commons--Controversy touching the
Currency--Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Currency--Passing
of the Act regulating Trials in Cases of High Treason--Parliamentary
Proceedings touching the Grant of Crown Lands in Wales to Portland--Two
Jacobite Plots formed--Berwick's Plot; the Assassination Plot;
Sir George Barclay--Failure of Berwick's Plot--Detection of the
Assassination Plot--Parliamentary Proceedings touching the
Assassination Plot--State of Public Feeling--Trial of Charnock, King and
Keyes--Execution of Charnock, King and Keyes--Trial of Friend--Trial of
Parkyns--Execution of Friend and Parkyns--Trials of Rookwood, Cranburne
and Lowick--The Association--Bill for the Regulation of Elections--Act
establishing a Land Bank

ON the Continent the news of Mary's death excited various emotions. The
Huguenots, in every part of Europe to which they had wandered, bewailed
the Elect Lady, who had retrenched from her own royal state in order to
furnish bread and shelter to the persecuted people of God. [557] In the
United Provinces, where she was well known and had always been
popular, she was tenderly lamented. Matthew Prior, whose parts and
accomplishments had obtained for him the patronage of the magnificent
Dorset, and who was now attached to the Embassy at the Hague, wrote
that the coldest and most passionless of nations was touched. The very
marble, he said, wept. [558] The lamentations of Cambridge and Oxford
were echoed by Leyden and Utrecht. The States General put on mourning.
The bells of all the steeples of Holland tolled dolefully day after
day. [559] James, meanwhile, strictly prohibited all mourning at Saint
Germains, and prevailed on Lewis to issue a similar prohibition at
Versailles. Some of the most illustrious nobles of France, and among
them the Dukes of Bouillon and of Duras, were related to the House of
Nassau, and had always, when death visited that House, punctiliously
observed the decent ceremonial of sorrow. They were now forbidden to
wear black; and they submitted; but it was beyond the power of the great
King to prevent his highbred and sharpwitted courtiers from whispering
to each other that there was something pitiful in this revenge taken by
the living on the dead, by a parent on a child. [560]

The hopes of James and of his companions in exile were now higher than
they had been since the day of La Hogue. Indeed the general opinion of
politicians, both here and on the Continent was that William would find
it impossible to sustain himself much longer on the throne. He would
not, it was said, have sustained himself so long but for the help of his
wife. Her affability had conciliated many who had been repelled by his
freezing looks and short answers. Her English tones, sentiments and
tastes had charmed many who were disgusted by his Dutch accent and Dutch
habits. Though she did not belong to the High Church party, she loved
that ritual to which she had been accustomed from infancy, and complied
willingly and reverently with some ceremonies which he considered, not
indeed as sinful, but as childish, and in which he could hardly bring
himself to take part. While the war lasted, it would be necessary that
he should pass nearly half the year out of England. Hitherto she had,
when he was absent, supplied his place, and had supplied it well.
Who was to supply it now? In what vicegerent could he place equal
confidence? To what vicegerent would the nation look up with equal
respect? All the statesmen of Europe therefore agreed in thinking that
his position, difficult and dangerous at best, had been made far more
difficult and more dangerous by the death of the Queen. But all the
statesmen of Europe were deceived; and, strange to say, his reign was
decidedly more prosperous and more tranquil after the decease of Mary
than during her life.

A few hours after he had lost the most tender and beloved of all his
friends, he was delivered from the most formidable of all his enemies.
Death had been busy at Paris as well as in London. While Tenison was
praying by the bed of Mary, Bourdaloue was administering the last
unction to Luxemburg. The great French general had never been a
favourite at the French Court; but when it was known that his feeble
frame, exhausted by war and pleasure, was sinking under a dangerous
disease, the value of his services was, for the first time, fully
appreciated; the royal physicians were sent to prescribe for him; the
sisters of Saint Cyr were ordered to pray for him; but prayers and
prescriptions were vain. "How glad the Prince of Orange will be," said
Lewis, "when the news of our loss reaches him. " He was mistaken. That
news found William unable to think of any loss but his own. [561]

During the month which followed the death of Mary the King was incapable
of exertion. Even to the addresses of the two Houses of Parliament he
replied only by a few inarticulate sounds. The answers which appear in
the journals were not uttered by him, but were delivered in writing.
Such business as could not be deferred was transacted by the
intervention of Portland, who was himself oppressed with sorrow. During
some weeks the important and confidential correspondence between the
King and Heinsius was suspended. At length William forced himself to
resume that correspondence: but his first letter was the letter of a
heartbroken man. Even his martial ardour had been tamed by misery. "I
tell you in confidence," he wrote, "that I feel myself to be no longer
fit for military command. Yet I will try to do my duty; and I hope that
God will strengthen me. " So despondingly did he look forward to the most
brilliant and successful of his many campaigns. [562]

There was no interruption of parliamentary business. While the Abbey was
hanging with black for the funeral of the Queen, the Commons came to a
vote, which at the time attracted little attention, which produced no
excitement, which has been left unnoticed by voluminous annalists, and
of which the history can be but imperfectly traced in the archives of
Parliament, but which has done more for liberty and for civilisation
than the Great Charter or the Bill of Rights. Early in the session a
select committee had been appointed to ascertain what temporary statutes
were about to expire, and to consider which of those statutes it
might be expedient to continue. The report was made; and all the
recommendations contained in that report were adopted, with one
exception. Among the laws which the committee advised the House to renew
was the law which subjected the press to a censorship. The question was
put, "that the House do agree with the committee in the resolution that
the Act entitled an Act for preventing Abuses in printing seditious,
treasonable and unlicensed Pamphlets, and for regulating of Printing and
Printing Presses, be continued. " The Speaker pronounced that the Noes
had it; and the Ayes did not think fit to divide.

A bill for continuing all the other temporary Acts, which, in the
opinion of the Committee, could not properly be suffered to expire, was
brought in, passed and sent to the Lords. In a short time this bill came
back with an important amendment. The Lords had inserted in the list of
Acts to be continued the Act which placed the press under the control of
licensers. The Commons resolved not to agree to the amendment, demanded
a conference, and appointed a committee of managers. The leading
manager was Edward Clarke, a stanch Whig, who represented Taunton, the
stronghold, during fifty troubled years, of civil and religious freedom.

Clarke delivered to the Lords in the Painted Chamber a paper containing
the reasons which had determined the Lower House not to renew the
Licensing Act. This paper completely vindicates the resolution to which
the Commons had come. But it proves at the same time that they knew not
what they were doing, what a revolution they were making, what a power
they were calling into existence. They pointed out concisely, clearly,
forcibly, and sometimes with a grave irony which is not unbecoming, the
absurdities and iniquities of the statute which was about to expire. But
all their objections will be found to relate to matters of detail. On
the great question of principle, on the question whether the liberty of
unlicensed printing be, on the whole, a blessing or a curse to society,
not a word is said. The Licensing Act is condemned, not as a thing
essentially evil, but on account of the petty grievances, the exactions,
the jobs, the commercial restrictions, the domiciliary visits which were
incidental to it. It is pronounced mischievous because it enables
the Company of Stationers to extort money from publishers, because
it empowers the agents of the government to search houses under the
authority of general warrants, because it confines the foreign book
trade to the port of London; because it detains valuable packages of
books at the Custom House till the pages are mildewed. The Commons
complain that the amount of the fee which the licenser may demand is not
fixed. They complain that it is made penal in an officer of the Customs
to open a box of books from abroad, except in the presence of one of the
censors of the press. How, it is very sensibly asked, is the officer to
know that there are books in the box till he has opened it? Such were
the arguments which did what Milton's Areopagitica had failed to do.

The Lords yielded without a contest. They probably expected that some
less objectionable bill for the regulation of the press would soon be
sent up to them; and in fact such a bill was brought into the House of
Commons, read twice, and referred to a select committee. But the session
closed before the committee had reported; and English literature
was emancipated, and emancipated for ever, from the control of the
government. [563] This great event passed almost unnoticed. Evelyn and
Luttrell did not think it worth mentioning in their diaries. The
Dutch minister did not think it worth mentioning in his despatches.
No allusion to it is to be found in the Monthly Mercuries. The public
attention was occupied by other and far more exciting subjects.

One of those subjects was the death of the most accomplished, the most
enlightened, and, in spite of great faults, the most estimable of the
statesmen who were formed in the corrupt and licentious Whitehall of
the Restoration. About a month after the splendid obsequies of Mary, a
funeral procession of almost ostentatious simplicity passed round the
shrine of Edward the Confessor to the Chapel of Henry the Seventh.