No More Learning

The Commissioners read and stood aghast. The very faults of their
colleague, the known laxity of his principles, the known meanness of
his spirit, made his defection peculiarly alarming. A government must
be indeed in danger when men like Sprat address it in the language of
Hampden. The tribunal, lately so insolent, became on a sudden strangely
tame. The ecclesiastical functionaries who had defied its authority were
not even reprimanded. It was not thought safe to hint any suspicion that
their disobedience had been intentional. They were merely enjoined to
have their reports ready in four months. The Commission then broke up in
confusion. It had received a death blow. [437]

While the High Commission shrank from a conflict with the Church, the
Church, conscious of its strength, and animated by a new enthusiasm,
invited, by a series of defiances, the attack of the High Commission.
Soon after the acquittal of the Bishops, the venerable Ormond, the most
illustrious of the Cavaliers of the great civil war, sank under his
infirmities. The intelligence of his death was conveyed with speed to
Oxford. Instantly the University, of which he had long been Chancellor,
met to name a successor. One party was for the eloquent and accomplished
Halifax, another for the grave and orthodox Nottingham. Some mentioned
the Earl of Abingdon, who resided near them, and had recently been
turned out of the lieutenancy of the county for refusing to join with
the King against the established religion. But the majority, consisting
of a hundred and eighty graduates, voted for the young Duke of Ormond,
grandson of their late head, and son of the gallant Ossory. The speed
with which they came to this resolution was caused by their apprehension
that, if there were a delay even of a day, the King would attempt to
force on them some chief who would betray their rights. The apprehension
was reasonable: for, only two hours after they had separated, came a
mandate from Whitehall requiring them to choose Jeffreys. Happily the
election of young Ormond was already complete and irrevocable. [438] A
few weeks later the infamous Timothy Hall, who had distinguished himself
among the clergy of London by reading the Declaration, was rewarded with
the Bishopric of Oxford, which had been vacant since the death of the
not less infamous Parker. Hall came down to his see: but the Canons of
his Cathedral refused to attend his installation: the University refused
to create him a Doctor: not a single one of the academic youth applied
to him for holy orders: no cap was touched to him and, in his palace, he
found himself alone. [439]

Soon afterwards a living which was in the gift of Magdalene College,
Oxford, became vacant. Hough and his ejected brethren assembled and
presented a clerk; and the Bishop of Gloucester, in whose diocese the
living lay, instituted their presentee without hesitation. [440]

The gentry were not less refractory than the clergy. The assizes of
that summer wore all over the country an aspect never before known. The
Judges, before they set out on their circuits, had been summoned into
the King's presence, and had been directed by him to impress on the
grand jurors and magistrates, throughout the kingdom, the duty of
electing such members of Parliament as would support his policy. They
obeyed his commands, harangued vehemently against the clergy, reviled
the seven Bishops, called the memorable petition a factious libel,
criticized with great asperity Sancroft's style, which was indeed open
to criticism, and pronounced that his Grace ought to be whipped by
Doctor Busby for writing bad English. But the only effect of these
indecent declamations was to increase the public discontent. All the
marks of public respect which had usually been shown to the judicial
office and to the royal commission were withdrawn. The old custom
was that men of good birth and estate should ride in the train of the
Sheriff when he escorted the Judges to the county town: but such a
procession could now with difficulty be formed in any part of the
kingdom. The successors of Powell and Holloway, in particular, were
treated with marked indignity. The Oxford circuit had been allotted to
them; and they had expected to be greeted in every shire by a cavalcade
of the loyal gentry. But as they approached Wallingford, where they were
to open their commission for Berkshire, the Sheriff alone came forth to
meet them. As they approached Oxford, the eminently loyal capital of an
eminently loyal province, they were again welcomed by the Sheriff alone.
[441]

The army was scarcely less disaffected than the clergy or the gentry.
The garrison of the Tower had drunk the health of the imprisoned
Bishops. The footguards stationed at Lambeth had, with every mark of
reverence, welcomed the Primate back to his palace. Nowhere had the
news of the acquittal been received with more clamorous delight than at
Hounslow Heath. In truth, the great force which the King had assembled
for the purpose of overawing his mutinous capital had become more
mutinous than the capital itself; and was more dreaded by the court than
by the citizens. Early in August, therefore, the camp was broken up,
and the troops were sent to quarters in different parts of the country.
[442]

James flattered himself that it would be easier to deal with separate
battalions than with many thousands of men collected in one mass. The
first experiment was tried on Lord Lichfield's regiment of infantry,
now called the Twelfth of the Line. That regiment was probably selected
because it had been raised, at the time of the Western insurrection, in
Staffordshire, a province where the Roman Catholics were more numerous
and powerful than in almost any other part of England. The men were
drawn up in the King's presence. Their major informed them that His
Majesty wished them to subscribe an engagement, binding them to assist
in carrying into effect his intentions concerning the test, and that all
who did not choose to comply must quit the service on the spot. To the
King's great astonishment, whole ranks instantly laid down their pikes
and muskets. Only two officers and a few privates, all Roman Catholics,
obeyed his command. He remained silent for a short time. Then he bade
the men take up their arms. "Another time," he said, with a gloomy look,
"I shall not do you the honour to consult you. " [443]

It was plain that, if he determined to persist in his designs, he must
remodel his army. Yet materials for that purpose he could not find in
our island. The members of his Church, even in the districts where
they were most numerous, were a small minority of the people. Hatred of
Popery had spread through all classes of his Protestant subjects, and
had become the ruling passion even of ploughmen and artisans. But there
was another part of his dominions where a very different spirit animated
the great body of the population. There was no limit to the number of
Roman Catholic soldiers whom the good pay and quarters of England would
attract across St. George's Channel. Tyrconnel had been, during some
time, employed in forming out of the peasantry of his country a military
force on which his master might depend. Already Papists, of Celtic
blood and speech, composed almost the whole army of Ireland. Barillon
earnestly and repeatedly advised James to bring over that army for the
purpose of coercing the English. [444]

James wavered. He wished to be surrounded by troops on whom he could
rely: but he dreaded the explosion of national feeling which the
appearance of a great Irish force on English ground must produce.
At last, as usually happens when a weak man tries to avoid opposite
inconveniences, he took a course which united them all. He brought over
Irishmen, not indeed enough to hold down the single city of London, or
the single county of York, but more than enough to excite the alarm and
rage of the whole kingdom, from Northumberland to Cornwall. Battalion
after battalion, raised and trained by Tyrconnel, landed on the western
coast and moved towards the capital; and Irish recruits were imported
in considerable numbers, to fill up vacancies in the English regiments.
[445]

Of the many errors which James committed, none was more fatal than this.
Already he had alienated the hearts of his people by violating their
laws, confiscating their estates, and persecuting their religion. Of
those who had once been most zealous for monarchy, he had already made
many rebels in heart. Yet he might still, with some chance of success,
have appealed to the patriotic spirit of his subjects against
an invader. For they were a race insular in temper as well as in
geographical position. Their national antipathies were, indeed, in
that age, unreasonably and unamiably strong. Never had the English
been accustomed to the control of interference of any stranger. The
appearance of a foreign army on their soil might impel them to rally
even round a King whom they had no reason to love. William might perhaps
have been unable to overcome this difficulty; but James removed it. Not
even the arrival of a brigade of Lewis's musketeers would have excited
such resentment and shame as our ancestors felt when they saw armed
columns of Papists, just arrived from Dublin, moving in military
pomp along the high roads. No man of English blood then regarded the
aboriginal Irish as his countrymen. They did not belong to our branch of
the great human family. They were distinguished from us by more than one
moral and intellectual peculiarity, which the difference of situation
and of education, great as that difference was, did not seem altogether
to explain. They had an aspect of their own, a mother tongue of their
own. When they talked English their pronunciation was ludicrous; their
phraseology was grotesque, as is always the phraseology of those who
think in one language and express their thoughts in another. They were
therefore foreigners; and of all foreigners they were the most hated and
despised: the most hated, for they had, during five centuries, always
been our enemies; the most despised, for they were our vanquished,
enslaved, and despoiled enemies. The Englishman compared with pride his
own fields with the desolate bogs whence the Rapparees issued forth to
rob and murder, and his own dwelling with the hovels where the peasants
and the hogs of the Shannon wallowed in filth together. He was a member
of a society far inferior, indeed, in wealth and civilisation, to the
society in which we live, but still one of the wealthiest and most
highly civilised societies that the world had then seen: the Irish were
almost as rude as the savages of Labrador. He was a freeman: the Irish
were the hereditary serfs of his race. He worshipped God after a pure
and rational fashion: the Irish were sunk in idolatry and superstition.
He knew that great numbers of Irish had repeatedly fled before a small
English force, and that the whole Irish population had been held down
by a small English colony; and he very complacently inferred that he was
naturally a being of a higher order than the Irishman: for it is thus
that a dominant race always explains its ascendency and excuses its
tyranny. That in vivacity, humour, and eloquence, the Irish stand high
among the nations of the world is now universally acknowledged. That,
when well disciplined, they are excellent soldiers has been proved on a
hundred fields of battle. Yet it is certain that, a century and a half
ago, they were generally despised in our island as both a stupid and a
cowardly people. And these were the men who were to hold England down
by main force while her civil and ecclesiastical constitution was
destroyed. The blood of the whole nation boiled at the thought. To be
conquered by Frenchmen or by Spaniards would have seemed comparatively
a tolerable fate. With Frenchmen and Spaniards we had been accustomed
to treat on equal terms. We had sometimes envied their prosperity,
sometimes dreaded their power, sometimes congratulated ourselves on
their friendship. In spite of our unsocial pride, we admitted that they
were great nations, and that they could boast of men eminent in the
arts of war and peace. But to be subjugated by an inferior caste was a
degradation beyond all other degradation. The English felt as the white
inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans would feel if those towns were
occupied by negro garrisons. The real facts would have been sufficient
to excite uneasiness and indignation: but the real facts were lost
amidst a crowd of wild rumours which flew without ceasing from
coffeehouse to coffeehouse and from alebench to alebench, and became
more wonderful and terrible at every stage of the progress. The number
of the Irish troops who had landed on our shores might justly excite
serious apprehensions as to the King's ulterior designs; but it was
magnified tenfold by the public apprehensions. It may well be supposed
that the rude kerne of Connaught, placed, with arms in his hands, among
a foreign people whom he hated, and by whom he was hated in turn, was
guilty of some excesses. These excesses were exaggerated by report; and,
in addition to the outrages which the stranger had really committed, all
the offences of his English comrades were set down to his account. From
every corner of the kingdom a cry arose against the foreign barbarians
who forced themselves into private houses, seized horses and waggons,
extorted money and insulted women. These men, it was said, were the sons
of those who, forty-seven years before, had massacred Protestants by
tens of thousands. The history of the rebellion of 1641, a history
which, even when soberly related, might well move pity and horror,
and which had been frightfully distorted by national and religious
antipathies, was now the favourite topic of conversation. Hideous
stories of houses burned with all the inmates, of women and young
children butchered, of near relations compelled by torture to be the
murderers of each other, of corpses outraged and mutilated, were told
and heard with full belief and intense interest. Then it was added that
the dastardly savages who had by surprise committed all these cruelties
on an unsuspecting and defenceless colony had, as soon as Oliver came
among them on his great mission of vengeance, flung down their arms
in panic terror, and had sunk, without trying the chances of a single
pitched field, into that slavery which was their fit portion. Many
signs indicated that another great spoliation and slaughter of the Saxon
settlers was meditated by the Lord Lieutenant. Already thousands
of Protestant colonists, flying from the injustice and insolence
of Tyrconnel, had raised the indignation of the mother country by
describing all that they had suffered, and all that they had, with too
much reason, feared. How much the public mind had been excited by the
complaints of these fugitives had recently been shown in a manner not
to be mistaken. Tyrconnel had transmitted for the royal approbation the
heads of a bill repealing the law by which half the soil of Ireland was
held, and he had sent to Westminster, as his agents, two of his Roman
Catholic countrymen who had lately been raised to high judicial
office; Nugent, Chief Justice of the Irish Court of King's Bench, a
personification of all the vices and weaknesses which the English then
imagined to be characteristic of the Popish Celt, and Rice, a Baron of
the Irish Exchequer, who, in abilities and attainments, was perhaps the
foremost man of his race and religion. The object of the mission was
well known; and the two Judges could not venture to show themselves in
the streets. If ever they were recognised, the rabble shouted, "Room for
the Irish Ambassadors;" and their coach was escorted with mock solemnity
by a train of ushers and harbingers bearing sticks with potatoes stuck
on the points. [446]

So strong and general, indeed, was at that time the aversion of the
English to the Irish that the most distinguished Roman Catholics
partook of it. Powis and Bellasyse expressed, in coarse and acrimonious
language, even at the Council board, their antipathy to the aliens.
[447] Among English Protestants that antipathy was still stronger and
perhaps it was strongest in the army. Neither officers nor soldiers were
disposed to bear patiently the preference shown by their master to a
foreign and a subject race. The Duke of Berwick, who was Colonel of the
Eighth Regiment of the Line, then quartered at Portsmouth, gave orders
that thirty men just arrived from Ireland should be enlisted. The
English soldiers declared that they would not serve with these
intruders. John Beaumont, the Lieutenant Colonel, in his own name and in
the name of five of the Captains, protested to the Duke's face against
this insult to the English army and nation. "We raised the regiment,"
he said, "at our own charges to defend His Majesty's crown in a time
of danger. We had then no difficulty in procuring hundreds of English
recruits. We can easily keep every company up to its full complement
without admitting Irishmen. We therefore do not think it consistent with
our honour to have these strangers forced on us; and we beg that we may
either be permitted to command men of our own nation or to lay down our
commissions. " Berwick sent to Windsor for directions. The King, greatly
exasperated, instantly despatched a troop of horse to Portsmouth with
orders to bring the six refractory officers before him. A council of
war sate on them. They refused to make any submission; and they were
sentenced to be cashiered, the highest punishment which a court martial
was then competent to inflict. The whole nation applauded the disgraced
officers; and the prevailing sentiment was stimulated by an unfounded
rumour that, while under arrest, they had been treated with cruelty.
[448]

Public feeling did not then manifest itself by those signs with which we
are familiar, by large meetings, and by vehement harangues. Nevertheless
it found a vent. Thomas Wharton, who, in the last Parliament, had
represented Buckinghamshire, and who was already conspicuous both as
a libertine and as a Whig, had written a satirical ballad on
the administration of Tyrconnel. In this little poem an Irishman
congratulates a brother Irishman, in a barbarous jargon, on the
approaching triumph of Popery and of the Milesian race. The Protestant
heir will be excluded. The Protestant officers will be broken. The Great
Charter and the praters who appeal to it will be hanged in one rope. The
good Talbot will shower commissions on his countrymen, and will cut the
throats of the English. These verses, which were in no respect above the
ordinary standard of street poetry, had for burden some gibberish which
was said to have been used as a watchword by the insurgents of Ulster in
1641. The verses and the tune caught the fancy of the nation. From one
end of England to the other all classes were constantly singing this
idle rhyme. It was especially the delight of the English army. More
than seventy years after the Revolution, a great writer delineated, with
exquisite skill, a veteran who had fought at the Boyne and at Namur. One
of the characteristics of the good old soldier is his trick of whistling
Lillibullero. [449]

Wharton afterwards boasted that he had sung a King out of three
kingdoms. But in truth the success of Lillibullero was the effect, and
not the cause, of that excited state of public feeling which produced
the Revolution.

While James was thus raising against himself all those national feelings
which, but for his own folly, might have saved his throne, Lewis was
in another way exerting himself not less effectually to facilitate the
enterprise which William meditated.

The party in Holland which was favourable to France was a minority, but
a minority strong enough, according to the constitution of the Batavian
federation, to prevent the Stadtholder from striking any great blow.
To keep that minority steady was an object to which, if the Court of
Versailles had been wise, every other object would at that conjuncture
have been postponed. Lewis however had, during some time, laboured,
as if of set purpose, to estrange his Dutch friends; and he at length,
though not without difficulty, succeeded in forcing them to become
his enemies at the precise moment at which their help would have been
invaluable to him.

There were two subjects on which the people of the United Provinces were
peculiarly sensitive, religion and trade; and both their religion and
their trade the French King assailed. The persecution of the Huguenots,
and the revocation of the edict of Nantes, had everywhere moved the
grief and indignation of Protestants. But in Holland these feelings were
stronger than in any other country; for many persons of Dutch birth,
confiding in the repeated and solemn declarations of Lewis that the
toleration granted by his grandfather should be maintained, had, for
commercial purposes, settled in France, and a large proportion of the
settlers had been naturalised there. Every post now brought to Holland
the tidings that these persons were treated with extreme rigour on
account of their religion. Dragoons, it was reported, were quartered on
one. Another had been held naked before a fire till he was half roasted.
All were forbidden, under the severest penalties, to celebrate the rites
of their religion, or to quit the country into which they had, under
false pretences, been decoyed. The partisans of the House of Orange
exclaimed against the cruelty and perfidy of the tyrant. The opposition
was abashed and dispirited. Even the town council of Amsterdam, though
strongly attached to the French interest and to the Arminian theology,
and though little inclined to find fault with Lewis or to sympathize
with the Calvinists whom he persecuted, could not venture to oppose
itself to the general sentiment; for in that great city there was
scarcely one wealthy merchant who had not some kinsman or friend
among the sufferers. Petitions numerously and respectably signed
were presented to the Burgomasters, imploring them to make strong
representations to Avaux. There were even suppliants who made their way
into the Stadthouse, flung themselves on their knees, described with
tears and sobs the lamentable condition of those whom they most loved,
and besought the intercession of the magistrates. The pulpits resounded
with invectives and lamentations. The press poured forth heartrending
narratives and stirring exhortations. Avaux saw the whole danger. He
reported to his court that even the well intentioned--for so he always
called the enemies of the House of Orange--either partook of the public
feeling or were overawed by it; and he suggested the policy of making
some concession to their wishes. The answers which he received from
Versailles were cold and acrimonious. Some Dutch families, indeed, which
had not been naturalised in France, were permitted to return to their
country. But to those natives of Holland who had obtained letters of
naturalisation Lewis refused all indulgence. No power on earth, he said,
should interfere between him and his subjects. These people had chosen
to become his subjects; and how he treated them was a matter with which
no neighbouring state had anything to do. The magistrates of Amsterdam
naturally resented the scornful ingratitude of the potentate whom they
had strenuously and unscrupulously served against the general sense of
their own countrymen. Soon followed another provocation which they felt
even more keenly. Lewis began to make war on their trade. He first
put forth an edict prohibiting the importation of herrings into his
dominions, Avaux hastened to inform his court that this step had excited
great alarm and indignation, that sixty thousand persons in the United
Provinces subsisted by the herring fishery, and that some strong measure
of retaliation would probably be adopted by the States. The answer which
he received was that the King was determined, not only to persist, but
also to increase the duties on many of those articles in which Holland
carried on a lucrative trade with France. The consequence of these
errors, errors committed in defiance of repeated warnings, and, as it
should seem, in the mere wantonness of selfwill, was that now, when the
voice of a single powerful member of the Batavian federation might have
averted an event fatal to all the politics of Lewis, no such voice was
raised. The Envoy, with all his skill, vainly endeavoured to rally
the party by the help of which he had, during several years, held
the Stadtholder in check. The arrogance and obstinacy of the master
counteracted all the efforts of the servant. At length Avaux was
compelled to send to Versailles the alarming tidings that no reliance
could be placed on Amsterdam, so long devoted to the French cause, that
some of the well intentioned were alarmed for their religion, and that
the few whose inclinations were unchanged could not venture to utter
what they thought. The fervid eloquence of preachers who declaimed
against the horrors of the French persecution, and the lamentations of
bankrupts who ascribed their ruin to the French decrees, had wrought
up the people to such a temper, that no citizen could declare himself
favourable to France without imminent risk of being flung into the
nearest canal. Men remembered that, only fifteen years before, the most
illustrious chief of the party adverse to the House of Orange had been
torn to pieces by an infuriated mob in the very precinct of the palace
of the States General. A similar fate might not improbably befall those
who should, at this crisis, be accused of serving the purposes of France
against their native land, and against the reformed religion. [450]

While Lewis was thus forcing his friends in Holland to become, or to
pretend to become, his enemies, he was labouring with not less success
to remove all the scruples which might have prevented the Roman Catholic
princes of the Continent from countenancing William's designs. A new
quarrel had arisen between the Court of Versailles and the Vatican, a
quarrel in which the injustice and insolence of the French King were
perhaps more offensively displayed than in any other transaction of his
reign.

It had long been the rule at Rome that no officer of justice or finance
could enter the dwelling inhabited by the minister who represented a
Catholic state. In process of time not only the dwelling, but a large
precinct round it, was held inviolable. It was a point of honour with
every Ambassador to extend as widely as possible the limits of the
region which was under his protection. At length half the city consisted
of privileged districts, within which the Papal government had no more
power than within the Louvre or the Escurial. Every asylum was thronged
with contraband traders, fraudulent bankrupts, thieves and assassins. In
every asylum were collected magazines of stolen or smuggled goods. From
every asylum ruffians sallied forth nightly to plunder and stab. In no
town of Christendom, consequently, was law so impotent and wickedness
so audacious as in the ancient capital of religion and civilisation. On
this subject Innocent felt as became a priest and a prince. He
declared that he would receive no Ambassador who insisted on a right so
destructive of order and morality. There was at first much murmuring;
but his resolution was so evidently just that all governments but
one speedily acquiesced. The Emperor, highest in rank among Christian
monarchs, the Spanish court, distinguished among all courts by
sensitiveness and pertinacity on points of etiquette, renounced the
odious privilege. Lewis alone was impracticable. What other sovereigns
might choose to do, he said, was nothing to him. He therefore sent a
mission to Rome, escorted by a great force of cavalry and infantry. The
Ambassador marched to his palace as a general marches in triumph through
a conquered town. The house was strongly guarded.
Round the limits of
the protected district sentinels paced the rounds day and night, as on
the walls of a fortress. The Pope was unmoved. "They trust," he cried,
"in chariots and in horses; but we will remember the name of the Lord
our God. " He betook him vigorously to his spiritual weapons, and laid
the region garrisoned by the French under an interdict. [451]

This dispute was at the height when another dispute arose, in which the
Germanic body was as deeply concerned as the Pope.

Cologne and the surrounding district were governed by an Archbishop, who
was an Elector of the Empire. The right of choosing this great prelate
belonged, under certain limitations, to the Chapter of the Cathedral.
The Archbishop was also Bishop of Liege, of Munster, and of Hildesheim.
His dominions were extensive, and included several strong fortresses,
which in the event of a campaign on the Rhine would be of the highest
importance. In time of war he could bring twenty thousand men into the
field. Lewis had spared no effort to gain so valuable an ally, and had
succeeded so well that Cologne had been almost separated from Germany,
and had become an outwork of France. Many ecclesiastics devoted to the
court of Versailles had been brought into the Chapter; and Cardinal
Furstemburg, a mere creature of that court, had been appointed
Coadjutor.

In the summer of the year 1688 the archbishopric became vacant.
Furstemburg was the candidate of the House of Bourbon. The enemies of
that house proposed the young Prince Clement of Bavaria. Furstemburg was
already a Bishop, and therefore could not be moved to another diocese
except by a special dispensation from the Pope, or by a postulation, in
which it was necessary that two thirds of the Chapter of Cologne should
join. The Pope would grant no dispensation to a creature of France. The
Emperor induced more than a third part of the Chapter to vote for the
Bavarian prince. Meanwhile, in the Chapters of Liege, Munster, and
Hildesheim, the majority was adverse to France. Lewis saw, with
indignation and alarm, that an extensive province which he had begun
to regard as a fief of his crown was about to become, not merely
independent of him, but hostile to him. In a paper written with great
acrimony he complained of the injustice with which France was on
all occasions treated by that See which ought to extend a parental
protection to every part of Christendom. Many signs indicated his fixed
resolution to support the pretensions of his candidate by arms against
the Pope and the Pope's confederates. [452]

Thus Lewis, by two opposite errors, raised against himself at once the
resentment of both the religious parties between which Western Europe
was divided. Having alienated one great section of Christendom by
persecuting the Huguenots, he alienated another by insulting the Holy
See. These faults he committed at a conjuncture at which no fault could
be committed with impunity, and under the eye of an opponent second in
vigilance, sagacity, and energy, to no statesman whose memory history
has preserved. William saw with stern delight his adversaries toiling
to clear away obstacle after obstacle from his path. While they raised
against themselves the enmity of all sects, he laboured to conciliate
all. The great design which he meditated, he with exquisite skill
presented to different governments in different lights; and it must be
added that, though those lights were different, none of them was false.
He called on the princes of Northern Germany to rally round him in
defence of the common cause of all reformed Churches. He set before
the two heads of the House of Austria the danger with which they were
threatened by French ambition, and the necessity of rescuing England
from vassalage and of uniting her to the European confederacy. [453] He
disclaimed, and with truth, all bigotry. The real enemy, he said, of
the British Roman Catholics was that shortsighted and headstrong monarch
who, when he might easily have obtained for them a legal toleration, had
trampled on law, liberty, property, in order to raise them to an odious
and precarious ascendency. If the misgovernment of James were suffered
to continue, it must produce, at no remote time, a popular outbreak,
which might be followed by a barbarous persecution of the Papists. The
Prince declared that to avert the horrors of such a persecution was one
of his chief objects. If he succeeded in his design, he would use the
power which he must then possess, as head of the Protestant interest, to
protect the members of the Church of Rome. Perhaps the passions excited
by the tyranny of James might make it impossible to efface the penal
laws from the statute book but those laws should be mitigated by a
lenient administration. No class would really gain more by the proposed
expedition than those peaceable and unambitious Roman Catholics who
merely wished to follow their callings and to worship their Maker
without molestation. The only losers would be the Tyrconnels, the
Dovers, the Albevilles, and the other political adventurers who, in
return for flattery and evil counsel, had obtained from their credulous
master governments, regiments, and embassies.

While William exerted himself to enlist on his side the sympathies both
of Protestants and of Roman Catholics, he exerted himself with not less
vigour and prudence to provide the military means which his undertaking
required. He could not make a descent on England without the sanction
of the United Provinces. If he asked for that sanction before his design
was ripe for execution, his intentions might possibly be thwarted by
the faction hostile to his house, and would certainly be divulged to the
whole world. He therefore determined to make his preparations with all
speed, and, when they were complete, to seize some favourable moment for
requesting the consent of the federation. It was observed by the agents
of France that he was more busy than they had ever known him. Not a day
passed on which he was not seen spurring from his villa to the Hague.
He was perpetually closeted with his most distinguished adherents.
Twenty-four ships of war were fitted out for sea in addition to the
ordinary force which the commonwealth maintained. There was, as it
chanced, an excellent pretence for making this addition to the marine:
for some Algerine corsairs had recently dared to show themselves in the
German Ocean. A camp was formed near Nimeguen. Many thousands of troops
were assembled there. In order to strengthen this army the garrisons
were withdrawn from the strongholds in Dutch Brabant. Even the renowned
fortress of Bergopzoom was left almost defenceless. Field pieces,
bombs, and tumbrels from all the magazines of the United Provinces were
collected at the head quarters. All the bakers of Rotterdam toiled day
and night to make biscuit. All the gunmakers of Utrecht were found too
few to execute the orders for pistols and muskets. All the saddlers
of Amsterdam were hard at work on harness and bolsters. Six thousand
sailors were added to the naval establishment. Seven thousand new
soldiers were raised. They could not, indeed, be formally enlisted
without the sanction of the federation: but they were well drilled, and
kept in such a state of discipline that they might without difficulty be
distributed into regiments within twenty-four hours after that sanction
should be obtained. These preparations required ready money: but William
had, by strict economy, laid up against a great emergency a treasure
amounting to about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling.
What more was wanting was supplied by the zeal of his partisans. Great
quantities of gold, not less, it was said, than a hundred thousand
guineas, came to him from England. The Huguenots, who had carried with
them into exile large quantities of the precious metals, were eager
to lend him all that they possessed; for they fondly hoped that, if he
succeeded, they should be restored to the country of their birth; and
they feared that, if he failed, they should scarcely be safe even in the
country of their adoption. [454]

Through the latter part of July and the whole of August the preparations
went on rapidly, yet too slowly for the vehement spirit of William.
Meanwhile the intercourse between England and Holland was active. The
ordinary modes of conveying intelligence and passengers were no longer
thought safe. A light bark of marvellous speed constantly ran backward
and forward between Schevening and the eastern coast of our island.
[455] By this vessel William received a succession of letters from
persons of high note in the Church, the state, and the army. Two of the
seven prelates who had signed the memorable petition, Lloyd, Bishop of
St. Asaph, and Trelawney, Bishop of Bristol, had, during their residence
in the tower, reconsidered the doctrine of nonresistance, and were
ready to welcome an armed deliverer. A brother of the Bishop of Bristol,
Colonel Charles Trelawney, who commanded one of the Tangier regiments,
now known as the Fourth of the Line, signified his readiness to draw his
sword for the Protestant religion. Similar assurances arrived from the
savage Kirke. Churchill, in a letter written with a certain elevation
of language, which was the sure mark that he was going to commit a
baseness, declared that he was determined to perform his duty to heaven
and to his country, and that he put his honour absolutely into the hands
of the Prince of Orange. William doubtless read these words with one of
those bitter and cynical smiles which gave his face its least pleasing
expression. It was not his business to take care of the honour of other
men; nor had the most rigid casuists pronounced it unlawful in a general
to invite, to use, and to reward the services of deserters whom he could
not but despise. [456]

Churchill's letter was brought by Sidney, whose situation in England
had become hazardous, and who, having taken many precautions to hide
his track, had passed over to Holland about the middle of August. [457]
About the same time Shrewsbury and Edward Russell crossed the German
Ocean in a boat which they had hired with great secrecy, and appeared at
the Hague. Shrewsbury brought with him twelve thousand pounds, which he
had raised by a mortgage on his estates, and which he lodged in the bank
of Amsterdam. [458] Devonshire, Danby, and Lumley remained in England,
where they undertook to rise in arms as soon as the Prince should set
foot on the island.

There is reason to believe that, at this conjuncture, William first
received assurances of support from a very different quarter. The
history of Sunderland's intrigues is covered with an obscurity which it
is not probable that any inquirer will ever succeed in penetrating:
but, though it is impossible to discover the whole truth, it is easy
to detect some palpable fictions. The Jacobites, for obvious reasons,
affirmed that the revolution of 1688 was the result of a plot concerted
long before. Sunderland they represented as the chief conspirator. He
had, they averred, in pursuance of his great design, incited his
too confiding master to dispense with statutes, to create an illegal
tribunal, to confiscate freehold property, and to send the fathers of
the Established Church to a prison. This romance rests on no evidence,
and, though it has been repeated down to our own time, seems hardly
to deserve confutation. No fact is more certain than that Sunderland
opposed some of the most imprudent steps which James took, and in
particular the prosecution of the Bishops, which really brought on the
decisive crisis. But, even if this fact were not established, there
would still remain one argument sufficient to decide the controversy.
What conceivable motive had Sunderland to wish for a revolution? Under
the existing system he was at the height of dignity and prosperity.
As President of the Council he took precedence of the whole temporal
peerage. As Principal Secretary of State he was the most active and
powerful member of the cabinet. He might look forward to a dukedom.
He had obtained the garter lately worn by the brilliant and versatile
Buckingham, who, having squandered away a princely fortune and a
vigorous intellect, had sunk into the grave deserted, contemned, and
broken-hearted. [459] Money, which Sunderland valued more than honours,
poured in upon him in such abundance that, with ordinary management, he
might hope to become, in a few years, one of the wealthiest subjects in
Europe. The direct emolument of his posts, though considerable, was a
very small part of what he received. From France alone he drew a regular
stipend of near six thousand pounds a year, besides large occasional
gratuities. He had bargained with Tyrconnel for five thousand a year, or
fifty thousand pounds down, from Ireland. What sums he made by selling
places, titles, and pardons, can only be conjectured, but must have been
enormous. James seemed to take a pleasure in loading with wealth one
whom he regarded as his own convert. All fines, all forfeitures went to
Sunderland. On every grant toll was paid to him. If any suitor ventured
to ask any favour directly from the King, the answer was, "Have you
spoken to my Lord President? " One bold man ventured to say that the Lord
President got all the money of the court. "Well," replied His Majesty
"he deserves it all. " [460] We shall scarcely overrate the amount of the
minister's gains, if we put them at thirty thousand pounds a year: and
it must be remembered that fortunes of thirty thousand pounds a year
were in his time rarer than fortunes of a hundred thousand pounds a year
now are. It is probable that there was then not one peer of the realm
whose private income equalled Sunderland's official income.

What chance was there that, in a new order of things, a man so
deeply implicated in illegal and unpopular acts, a member of the High
Commission, a renegade whom the multitude, in places of general resort,
pursued with the cry of Popish dog, would be greater and richer? What
chance that he would even be able to escape condign punishment?

He had undoubtedly been long in the habit of looking forward to the time
when William and Mary might be, in the ordinary course of nature and
law, at the head of the English government, and had probably attempted
to make for himself an interest in their favour, by promises and
services which, if discovered, would not have raised his credit at
Whitehall. But it may with confidence be affirmed that he had no wish
to see them raised to power by a revolution, and that he did not at
all foresee such a revolution when, towards the close of June 1688, he
solemnly joined the communion of the Church of Rome.

Scarcely however had he, by that inexpiable crime, made himself an
object of hatred and contempt to the whole nation, when he learned
that the civil and ecclesiastical polity of England would shortly be
vindicated by foreign and domestic arms. From that moment all his plans
seem to have undergone a change. Fear bowed down his whole soul, and was
so written in his face that all who saw him could read. [461] It could
hardly be doubted that, if there were a revolution, the evil counsellors
who surrounded the throne would be called to a strict account: and among
those counsellors he stood in the foremost rank. The loss of his places,
his salaries, his pensions, was the least that he had to dread. His
patrimonial mansion amid woods at Althorpe might be confiscated. He
might lie many years in a prison. He might end his days in a foreign
land a pensioner on the bounty of France. Even this was not the worst.
Visions of an innumerable crowd covering Tower Hill and shouting with
savage joy at the sight of the apostate, of a scaffold hung with black,
of Burnet reading the prayer for the departing, and of Ketch leaning on
the axe with which Russell and Monmouth had been mangled in so butcherly
a fashion, began to haunt the unhappy statesman. There was yet one way
in which he might escape, a way more terrible to a noble spirit than
a prison or a scaffold. He might still, by a well timed and useful
treason, earn his pardon from the foes of the government. It was in his
power to render to them at this conjuncture services beyond all price:
for he had the royal ear; he had great influence over the Jesuitical
cabal; and he was blindly trusted by the French Ambassador. A channel of
communication was not wanting, a channel worthy of the purpose which it
was to serve. The Countess of Sunderland was an artful woman, who, under
a show of devotion which imposed on some grave men, carried on, with
great activity, both amorous and political intrigues. [462] The handsome
and dissolute Henry Sidney had long been her favourite lover. Her
husband was well pleased to see her thus connected with the court of the
Hague. Whenever he wished to transmit a secret message to Holland, he
spoke to his wife: she wrote to Sidney; and Sidney communicated her
letter to William. One of her communications was intercepted and carried
to James. She vehemently protested that it was a forgery. Her husband,
with characteristic ingenuity, defended himself by representing that it
was quite impossible for any man to be so base as to do what he was in
the habit of doing. "Even if this is Lady Sunderland's hand," he said,
"that is no affair of mine. Your Majesty knows my domestic misfortunes.
The footing on which my wife and Mr. Sidney are is but too public. Who
can believe that I would make a confidant of the man who has injured my
honour in the tenderest point, of the man whom, of all others, I ought
most to hate? " [463] This defence was thought satisfactory; and secret
intelligence was still transmitted from the wittol to the adulteress,
from the adulteress to the gallant, and from the gallant to the enemies
of James.

It is highly probable that the first decisive assurances of Sunderland's
support were conveyed orally by Sidney to William about the middle of
August. It is certain that, from that time till the expedition was
ready to sail, a most significant correspondence was kept up between the
Countess and her lover. A few of her letters, partly written in cipher,
are still extant. They contain professions of good will and promises
of service mingled with earnest intreaties for protection. The writer
intimates that her husband will do all that his friends at the Hague
can wish: she supposes that it will be necessary for him to go
into temporary exile: but she hopes that his banishment will not be
perpetual, and that his patrimonial estate will be spared; and she
earnestly begs to be informed in what place it will be best for him to
take refuge till the first fury of the storm is over. [464]

The help of Sunderland was most welcome. For, as the time of striking
the great blow drew near, the anxiety of William became intense. From
common eyes his feelings were concealed by the icy tranquillity of his
demeanour: but his whole heart was open to Bentinck. The preparations
were not quite complete. The design was already suspected, and could
not be long concealed. The King of France or the city of Amsterdam might
still frustrate the whole plan. If Lewis were to send a great force into
Brabant, if the faction which hated the Stadtholder were to raise its
head, all was over. "My sufferings, my disquiet," the Prince wrote, "are
dreadful. I hardly see my way. Never in my life did I so much feel the
need of God's guidance. " [465] Bentinck's wife was at this time dangerously
ill; and both the friends were painfully anxious about her. "God support
you," William wrote, "and enable you to bear your part in a work
on which, as far as human beings can see, the welfare of his Church
depends. " [466]

It was indeed impossible that a design so vast as that which had been
formed against the King of England should remain during many weeks
a secret. No art could prevent intelligent men from perceiving that
William was making great military and naval preparations, and from
suspecting the object with which those preparations were made. Early in
August hints that some great event was approaching were whispered up
and down London. The weak and corrupt Albeville was then on a visit to
England, and was, or affected to be, certain that the Dutch government
entertained no design unfriendly to James. But, during the absence of
Albeville from his post, Avaux performed, with eminent skill, the
duties both of French and English Ambassador to the States, and supplied
Barillon as well as Lewis with ample intelligence. Avaux was satisfied
that a descent on England was in contemplation, and succeeded in
convincing his master of the truth. Every courier who arrived at
Westminster, either from the Hague or from Versailles, brought earnest
warnings. [467] But James was under a delusion which appears to have
been artfully encouraged by Sunderland. The Prince of Orange, said the
cunning minister, would never dare to engage in an expedition beyond
sea, leaving Holland defenceless. The States, remembering what they had
suffered and what they had been in danger of suffering during the great
agony of 1672, would never incur the risk of again seeing an invading
army encamped on the plain between Utrecht and Amsterdam. There was
doubtless much discontent in England: but the interval was immense
between discontent and rebellion. Men of rank and fortune were not
disposed lightly to hazard their honours, their estates, and their
lives. How many eminent Whigs had held high language when Monmouth was
in the Netherlands! And yet, when he set up his standard, what eminent
Whig had joined it? It was easy to understand why Lewis affected to give
credit to these idle rumours. He doubtless hoped to frighten the King
of England into taking the French side in the dispute about Cologne. By
such reasoning James was easily lulled into stupid security. [468] The
alarm and indignation of Lewis increased daily. The style of his letters
became sharp and vehement. [469] He could not understand, he wrote, this
lethargy on the eve of a terrible crisis. Was the King bewitched? Were
his ministers blind? Was it possible that nobody at Whitehall was aware
of what was passing in England and on the Continent? Such foolhardy
security could scarcely be the effect of mere improvidence. There must
be foul play. James was evidently in bad hands. Barillon was earnestly
cautioned not to repose implicit confidence in the English ministers:
but he was cautioned in vain. On him, as on James, Sunderland had cast a
spell which no exhortation could break.

Lewis bestirred himself vigorously. Bonrepaux, who was far superior
to Barillon in shrewdness, and who had always disliked and distrusted
Sunderland, was despatched to London with an offer of naval assistance.
Avaux was at the same time ordered to declare to the States General that
France had taken James under her protection. A large body of troops was
held in readiness to march towards the Dutch frontier. This bold attempt
to save the infatuated tyrant in his own despite was made with the full
concurrence of Skelton, who was now Envoy from England to the court of
Versailles.

Avaux, in conformity with his instructions, demanded an audience of the
States. It was readily granted. The assembly was unusually large. The
general belief was that some overture respecting commerce was about
to be made; and the President brought a written answer framed on that
supposition. As soon as Avaux began to disclose his errand, signs
of uneasiness were discernible. Those who were believed to enjoy the
confidence of the Prince of Orange cast down their eyes. The agitation
became great when the Envoy announced that his master was strictly bound
by the ties of friendship and alliance to His Britannic Majesty, and
that any attack on England would be considered as a declaration of war
against France. The President, completely taken by surprise, stammered
out a few evasive phrases; and the conference terminated. It was at
the same time notified to the States that Lewis had taken under his
protection Cardinal Furstemburg and the Chapter of Cologne. [470]

The Deputies were in great agitation. Some recommended caution and
delay. Others breathed nothing but war. Fagel spoke vehemently of
the French insolence, and implored his brethren not to be daunted by
threats. The proper answer to such a communication, he said, was to
levy more soldiers, and to equip more ships. A courier was instantly
despatched to recall William from Minden, where he was holding a
consultation of high moment with the Elector of Brandenburg.