No More Learning

He had recently ceased to be called by the tarnished name
of Grey of Wark, and was now Earl of Tankerville. He spoke on that day
with great force and eloquence for the words, "rightful and lawful. "
Leeds, after expressing his regret that a question about a mere phrase
should have produced dissension among noble persons who were all equally
attached to the reigning Sovereign, undertook the office of mediator.
He proposed that their Lordships, instead of recognising William as
rightful and lawful King, should declare that William had the right
by law to the English Crown, and that no other person had any right
whatever to that Crown. Strange to say, almost all the Tory peers were
perfectly satisfied with what Leeds had suggested. Among the Whigs there
was some unwillingness to consent to a change which, slight as it was,
might be thought to indicate a difference of opinion between the two
Houses on a subject of grave importance. But Devonshire and Portland
declared themselves content; their authority prevailed; and the
alteration was made. How a rightful and lawful possessor is to be
distinguished from a possessor who has the exclusive right by law is
a question which a Whig may, without any painful sense of shame,
acknowledge to be beyond the reach of his faculties, and leave to be
discussed by High Churchmen. Eighty-three peers immediately affixed
their names to the amended form of association; and Rochester was among
them. Nottingham, not yet quite satisfied, asked time for consideration.
[686]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XXII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The sum expected from the Land Bank was near two million six hundred
thousand pounds. Of this sum one half was to be subscribed, and one
quarter paid up by the first of August. The King, just before his
departure, had signed a warrant appointing certain commissioners, among
whom Harley and Foley were the most eminent, to receive the names of the
contributors. [705] A great meeting of persons interested in the scheme
was held in the Hall of the Middle Temple. One office was opened at
Exeter Change, another at Mercers' Hall. Forty agents went down into the
country, and announced to the landed gentry of every shire the approach
of the golden age of high rents and low interest. The Council of
Regency, in order to set an example to the nation, put down the King's
name for five thousand pounds; and the newspapers assured the world that
the subscription would speedily be filled.
[706] But when three weeks
had passed away, it was found that only fifteen hundred pounds had been
added to the five thousand contributed by the King. Many wondered at
this; yet there was little cause for wonder. The sum which the friends
of the project had undertaken to raise was a sum which only the enemies
of the project could furnish. The country gentlemen wished well to
Harley's scheme; but they wished well to it because they wanted to
borrow money on easy terms; and, wanting to borrow money, they of course
were not able to lend it. The moneyed class alone could supply what
was necessary to the existence of the Land Bank; and the Land Bank was
avowedly intended to diminish the profits, to destroy the political
influence and to lower the social position of the moneyed class. As the
usurers did not choose to take on themselves the expense of putting down
usury, the whole plan failed in a manner which, if the aspect of public
affairs had been less alarming, would have been exquisitely ludicrous.
The day drew near. The neatly ruled pages of the subscription book at
Mercers' Hall were still blank. The Commissioners stood aghast. In
their distress they applied to the government for indulgence. Many great
capitalists, they said, were desirous to subscribe, but stood aloof
because the terms were too hard. There ought to be some relaxation.
Would the Council of Regency consent to an abatement of three hundred
thousand pounds? The finances were in such a state, and the letters in
which the King represented his wants were so urgent, that the Council
of Regency hesitated. The Commissioners were asked whether they would
engage to raise the whole sum, with this abatement. Their answer was
unsatisfactory. They did not venture to say that they could command
more than eight hundred thousand pounds. The negotiation was, therefore,
broken off. The first of August came; and the whole amount contributed
by the whole nation to the magnificent undertaking from which so much
had been expected was two thousand one hundred pounds. [707]

Just at this conjuncture Portland arrived from the Continent. He had
been sent by William with charge to obtain money, at whatever cost
and from whatever quarter. The King had strained his private credit
in Holland to procure bread for his army. But all was insufficient. He
wrote to his Ministers that, unless they could send him a speedy supply,
his troops would either rise in mutiny or desert by thousands. He knew,
he said, that it would be hazardous to call Parliament together during
his absence. But, if no other resource could be devised, that hazard
must be run. [708] The Council of Regency, in extreme embarrassment,
began to wish that the terms, hard as they were, which had been offered
by the Commissioners at Mercers' Hall had been accepted. The negotiation
was renewed. Shrewsbury, Godolphin and Portland, as agents for the
King, had several conferences with Harley and Foley, who had recently
pretended that eight hundred thousand pounds were ready to be subscribed
to the Land Bank. The Ministers gave assurances, that, if, at this
conjuncture, even half that sum were advanced, those who had done this
service to the State should, in the next session, be incorporated as a
National Land Bank. Harley and Foley at first promised, with an air of
confidence, to raise what was required. But they soon went back from
their word; they showed a great inclination to be punctilious and
quarrelsome about trifles; at length the eight hundred thousand pounds
dwindled to forty thousand; and even the forty thousand could be had
only on hard conditions. [709] So ended the great delusion of the Land
Bank. The commission expired; and the offices were closed.

And now the Council of Regency, almost in despair, had recourse to the
Bank of England. Two hundred thousand pounds was the very smallest sum
which would suffice to meet the King's most pressing wants. Would the
Bank of England advance that sum? The capitalists who lead the chief
sway in that corporation were in bad humour, and not without reason. But
fair words, earnest entreaties and large promises were not spared; all
the influence of Montague, which was justly great, was exerted; the
Directors promised to do their best; but they apprehended that it would
be impossible for them to raise the money without making a second call
of twenty per cent. on their constituents. It was necessary that the
question should be submitted to a General Court; in such a court more
than six hundred persons were entitled to vote; and the result might
well be doubted. The proprietors were summoned to meet on the fifteenth
of August at Grocers' Hall. During the painful interval of suspense,
Shrewsbury wrote to his master in language more tragic than is often
found in official letters. "If this should not succeed, God knows what
can be done. Any thing must be tried and ventured rather than lie down
and die. " [710] On the fifteenth of August, a great epoch in the history
of the Bank, the General Court was held. In the chair sate Sir John
Houblon, the Governor, who was also Lord Mayor of London, and, what
would in our time be thought strange, a Commissioner of the Admiralty.
Sir John, in a speech, every word of which had been written and had been
carefully considered by the Directors, explained the case, and implored
the assembly to stand by King William. There was at first a little
murmuring. "If our notes would do," it was said, "we should be most
willing to assist His Majesty; but two hundred thousand pounds in hard
money at a time like this. " The Governor announced explicitly that
nothing but gold or silver would supply the necessities of the army in
Flanders. At length the question was put to the vote; and every hand in
the Hall was held up for sending the money. The letters from the Dutch
Embassy informed the States General that the events of that day had
bound the Bank and the government together in close alliance, and that
several of the ministers had, immediately after the meeting, purchased
stock merely in order to give a pledge of their attachment to the body
which had rendered so great a service to the State. [711]

Meanwhile strenuous exertions were making to hasten the recoinage. Since
the Restoration the Mint had, like every other public establishment in
the kingdom, been a nest of idlers and jobbers. The important office of
Warden, worth between six and seven hundred a year, had become a mere
sinecure, and had been filled by a succession of fine gentlemen,
who were well known at the hazard table of Whitehall, but who never
condescended to come near the Tower. This office had just become vacant,
and Montague had obtained it for Newton. [712] The ability, the industry
and the strict uprightness of the great philosopher speedily produced
a complete revolution throughout the department which was under his
direction. [713] He devoted himself to his task with an activity which
left him no time to spare for those pursuits in which he had surpassed
Archimedes and Galileo. Till the great work was completely done, he
resisted firmly, and almost angrily, every attempt that was made by men
of science, here or on the Continent, to draw him away from his official
duties. [714] The old officers of the Mint had thought it a great feat
to coin silver to the amount of fifteen thousand pounds in a week.
When Montague talked of thirty or forty thousand, these men of form
and precedent pronounced the thing impracticable. But the energy of
the young Chancellor of the Exchequer and of his friend the Warden
accomplished far greater wonders. Soon nineteen mills were going at once
in the Tower. As fast as men could be trained to the work in London,
bands of them were sent off to other parts of the kingdom. Mints
were established at Bristol, York, Exeter, Norwich and Chester. This
arrangement was in the highest degree popular. The machinery and the
workmen were welcomed to the new stations with the ringing of bells and
the firing of guns. The weekly issue increased to sixty thousand pounds,
to eighty thousand, to a hundred thousand, and at length to a hundred
and twenty thousand. [715] Yet even this issue, though great, not only
beyond precedent, but beyond hope, was scanty when compared with the
demands of the nation. Nor did all the newly stamped silver pass into
circulation; for during the summer and autumn those politicians who were
for raising the denomination of the coin were active and clamorous;
and it was generally expected that, as soon as the Parliament should
reassemble, the standard would be lowered. Of course no person who
thought it probable that he should, at a day not far distant, be able
to pay a debt of a pound with three crown pieces instead of four, was
willing to part with a crown piece, till that day arrived. Most of the
milled pieces were therefore hoarded. [716] May, June and July passed
away without any perceptible increase in the quantity of good money. It
was not till August that the keenest observer could discern the first
faint signs of returning prosperity. [717]

The distress of the common people was severe, and was aggravated by the
follies of magistrates and by the arts of malecontents. A squire who was
one of the quorum would sometimes think it his duty to administer to his
neighbours, at this trying conjuncture, what seemed to him to be equity;
and as no two of these rural praetors had exactly the same notion of
what was equitable, their edicts added confusion to confusion. In one
parish people were, in outrageous violation of the law, threatened with
the stocks, if they refused to take clipped shillings by tale. In the
next parish it was dangerous to pay such shillings except by weight.
[718] The enemies of the government, at the same time, laboured
indefatigably in their vocation. They harangued in every place of public
resort, from the Chocolate House in Saint James's Street to the sanded
kitchen of the alehouse on the village green. In verse and prose they
incited the suffering multitude to rise up in arms. Of the tracts
which they published at this time, the most remarkable was written by
a deprived priest named Grascombe, of whose ferocity and scurrility the
most respectable nonjurors had long been ashamed. He now did his best
to persuade the rabble to tear in pieces those members of Parliament
who had voted for the restoration of the currency. [719] It would be too
much to say that the malignant industry of this man and of men like him
produced no effect on a population which was doubtless severely tried.
There were riots in several parts of the country, but riots which were
suppressed with little difficulty, and, as far as can be discovered,
without the shedding of a drop of blood. [720] In one place a crowd of
poor ignorant creatures, excited by some knavish agitator, besieged the
house of a Whig member of Parliament, and clamorously insisted on having
their short money changed. The gentleman consented, and desired to know
how much they had brought. After some delay they were able to produce a
single clipped halfcrown. [721] Such tumults as this were at a distance
exaggerated into rebellions and massacres. At Paris it was gravely
asserted in print that, in an English town which was not named, a
soldier and a butcher had quarrelled about a piece of money, that the
soldier had killed the butcher, that the butcher's man had snatched up
a cleaver and killed the soldier, that a great fight had followed, and
that fifty dead bodies had been left on the ground. [722] The truth
was, that the behaviour of the great body of the people was beyond
all praise. The judges when, in September, they returned from their
circuits, reported that the temper of the nation was excellent. [723]
There was a patience, a reasonableness, a good nature, a good faith,
which nobody had anticipated. Every body felt that nothing but mutual
help and mutual forbearance could prevent the dissolution of society. A
hard creditor, who sternly demanded payment to the day in milled money,
was pointed at in the streets, and was beset by his own creditors with
demands which soon brought him to reason. Much uneasiness had been felt
about the troops. It was scarcely possible to pay them regularly; if
they were not paid regularly, it might well be apprehended that they
would supply their wants by rapine; and such rapine it was certain that
the nation, altogether unaccustomed to military exaction and oppression,
would not tamely endure. But, strange to say, there was, through this
trying year, a better understanding than had ever been known between
the soldiers and the rest of the community. The gentry, the farmers,
the shopkeepers supplied the redcoats with necessaries in a manner
so friendly and liberal that there was no brawling and no marauding.
"Severely as these difficulties have been felt," L'Hermitage writes,
"they have produced one happy effect; they have shown how good the
spirit of the country is. No person, however favourable his opinion
of the English may have been, could have expected that a time of such
suffering would have been a time of such tranquillity. " [724]

Men who loved to trace, in the strangely complicated maze of human
affairs, the marks of more than human wisdom, were of opinion that, but
for the interference of a gracious Providence, the plan so elaborately
devised by great statesmen and great philosophers would have failed
completely and ignominiously. Often, since the Revolution, the English
had been sullen and querulous, unreasonably jealous of the Dutch, and
disposed to put the worst construction on every act of the King. Had
the fourth of May found our ancestors in such a mood, it can scarcely be
doubted that sharp distress, irritating minds already irritable, would
have caused an outbreak which must have shaken and might have subverted
the throne of William. Happily, at the moment at which the loyalty of
the nation was put to the most severe test, the King was more popular
than he had ever been since the day on which the Crown was tendered to
him in the Banqueting House. The plot which had been laid against his
life had excited general disgust and horror. His reserved manners, his
foreign attachments were forgotten. He had become an object of personal
interest and of personal affection to his people. They were every where
coming in crowds to sign the instrument which bound them to defend and
to avenge him. They were every where carrying about in their hats the
badges of their loyalty to him. They could hardly be restrained from
inflicting summary punishment on the few who still dared openly to
question his title. Jacobite was now a synonyme for cutthroat. Noted
Jacobite laymen had just planned a foul murder. Noted Jacobite priests
had, in the face of day, and in the administration of a solemn ordinance
of religion, indicated their approbation of that murder. Many honest and
pious men, who thought that their allegiance was still due to James, had
indignantly relinquished all connection with zealots who seemed to think
that a righteous end justified the most unrighteous means. Such was
the state of public feeling during the summer and autumn of 1696; and
therefore it was that hardships which, in any of the seven preceding
years, would certainly have produced a rebellion, and might perhaps
have produced a counterrevolution, did not produce a single tumult too
serious to be suppressed by the constable's staff.

Nevertheless, the effect of the commercial and financial crisis in
England was felt through all the fleets and armies of the coalition. The
great source of subsidies was dry. No important military operation could
any where be attempted. Meanwhile overtures tending to peace had been
made, and a negotiation had been opened. Callieres, one of the ablest
of the many able envoys in the service of France, had been sent to
the Netherlands, and had held many conferences with Dykvelt. Those
conferences might perhaps have come to a speedy and satisfactory close,
had not France, at this time, won a great diplomatic victory in another
quarter. Lewis had, during seven years, been scheming and labouring in
vain to break the great array of potentates whom the dread of his might
and of his ambition had brought together and kept together. But, during
seven years, all his arts had been baffled by the skill of William; and,
when the eighth campaign opened, the confederacy had not been weakened
by a single desertion. Soon however it began to be suspected that the
Duke of Savoy was secretly treating with the enemy. He solemnly assured
Galway, who represented England at the Court of Turin, that there
was not the slightest ground for such suspicions, and sent to William
letters filled with professions of zeal for the common cause, and with
earnest entreaties for more money. This dissimulation continued till a
French army, commanded by Catinat, appeared in Piedmont. Then the Duke
threw off his disguise, concluded peace with France, joined his troops
to those of Catinat, marched into the Milanese, and informed the allies
whom he had just abandoned that, unless they wished to have him for an
enemy, they must declare Italy neutral ground. The Courts of Vienna
and Madrid, in great dismay, submitted to the terms which he dictated.
William expostulated and protested in vain. His influence was no longer
what it had been. The general opinion of Europe was, that the riches
and the credit of England were completely exhausted; and both her
confederates and her enemies imagined that they might safely treat her
with indignity. Spain, true to her invariable maxim that every thing
ought to be done for her and nothing by her, had the effrontery to
reproach the Prince to whom she owed it that she had not lost the
Netherlands and Catalonia, because he had not sent troops and ships
to defend her possessions in Italy. The Imperial ministers formed and
executed resolutions gravely affecting the interests of the coalition
without consulting him who had been the author and the soul of the
coalition. [725] Lewis had, after the failure of the Assassination Plot,
made up his mind to the disagreeable necessity of recognising William,
and had authorised Callieres to make a declaration to that effect. But
the defection of Savoy, the neutrality of Italy, the disunion among the
allies, and, above all, the distresses of England, exaggerated as they
were in all the letters which the Jacobites of Saint Germains received
from the Jacobites of London, produced a change. The tone of Callieres
became high and arrogant; he went back from his word, and refused to
give any pledge that his master would acknowledge the Prince of Orange
as King of Great Britain. The joy was great among the nonjurors. They
had always, they said, been certain that the Great Monarch would not be
so unmindful of his own glory and of the common interest of Sovereigns
as to abandon the cause of his unfortunate guests, and to call an
usurper his brother. They knew from the best authority that His Most
Christian Majesty had lately, at Fontainebleau, given satisfactory
assurances on this subject to King James. Indeed, there is reason
to believe that the project of an invasion of our island was again
seriously discussed at Versailles. [726] Catinat's army was now at
liberty. France, relieved from all apprehension on the side of Savoy,
might spare twenty thousand men for a descent on England; and, if the
misery and discontent here were such as was generally reported, the
nation might be disposed to receive foreign deliverers with open arms.

So gloomy was the prospect which lay before William, when, in the
autumn of 1696, he quitted his camp in the Netherlands for England. His
servants here meanwhile were looking forward to his arrival with very
strong and very various emotions. The whole political world had
been thrown into confusion by a cause which did not at first appear
commensurate to such an effect.

During his absence, the search for the Jacobites who had been concerned
in the plots of the preceding winter had not been intermitted; and of
these Jacobites none was in greater peril than Sir John Fenwick. His
birth, his connections, the high situations which he had filled, the
indefatigable activity with which he had, during several years, laboured
to subvert the government, and the personal insolence with which he had
treated the deceased Queen, marked him out as a man fit to be made an
example. He succeeded, however, in concealing himself from the officers
of justice till the first heat of pursuit was over. In his hiding place
he thought of an ingenious device which might, as he conceived, save him
from the fate of his friends Charnock and Parkyns. Two witnesses were
necessary to convict him. It appeared from what had passed on the trials
of his accomplices, that there were only two witnesses who could prove
his guilt, Porter and Goodman. His life was safe if either of these men
could be persuaded to abscond.

Fenwick was not the only person who had strong reason to wish that
Porter or Goodman, or both, might be induced to leave England. Aylesbury
had been arrested, and committed to the Tower; and he well knew that, if
these men appeared against him, his head would be in serious danger. His
friends and Fenwick's raised what was thought a sufficient sum; and two
Irishmen, or, in the phrase of the newspapers of that day, bogtrotters,
a barber named Clancy, and a disbanded captain named Donelagh, undertook
the work of corruption.

The first attempt was made on Porter. Clancy contrived to fall in with
him at a tavern, threw out significant hints, and, finding that those
hints were favourably received, opened a regular negotiation. The terms
offered were alluring; three hundred guineas down, three hundred more as
soon as the witness should be beyond sea, a handsome annuity for life,
a free pardon from King James, and a secure retreat in France. Porter
seemed inclined, and perhaps was really inclined, to consent. He said
that he still was what he had been, that he was at heart attached to
the good cause, but that he had been tried beyond his strength. Life was
sweet. It was easy for men who had never been in danger to say that none
but a villain would save himself by hanging his associates; but a few
hours in Newgate, with the near prospect of a journey on a sledge
to Tyburn, would teach such boasters to be more charitable. After
repeatedly conferring with Clancy, Porter was introduced to Fenwick's
wife, Lady Mary, a sister of the Earl of Carlisle. Every thing was soon
settled. Donelagh made the arrangements for the flight. A boat was in
waiting. The letters which were to secure to the fugitive the protection
of King James were prepared by Fenwick. The hour and place were fixed at
which Porter was to receive the first instalment of the promised reward.
But his heart misgave him. He had, in truth, gone such lengths that it
would have been madness in him to turn back. He had sent Charnock, King,
Keyes, Friend, Parkyns, Rookwood, Cranburne, to the gallows. It was
impossible that such a Judas could ever be really forgiven. In France,
among the friends and comrades of those whom he had destroyed, his life
would not be worth one day's purchase. No pardon under the Great Seal
would avert the stroke of the avenger of blood. Nay, who could say that
the bribe now offered was not a bait intended to lure the victim to the
place where a terrible doom awaited him? Porter resolved to be true
to that government under which alone he could be safe; he carried
to Whitehall information of the whole intrigue; and he received full
instructions from the ministers. On the eve of the day fixed for his
departure he had a farewell meeting with Clancy at a tavern. Three
hundred guineas were counted out on the table. Porter pocketed them,
and gave a signal. Instantly several messengers from the office of the
Secretary of State rushed into the room, and produced a warrant.
The unlucky barber was carried off to prison, tried for his offence,
convicted and pilloried. [727]

This mishap made Fenwick's situation more perilous than ever. At the
next sessions for the City of London a bill of indictment against him,
for high treason, was laid before the grand jury. Porter and Goodman
appeared as witnesses for the Crown; and the bill was found. Fenwick
now thought that it was high time to steal away to the Continent.
Arrangements were made for his passage. He quitted his hiding place, and
repaired to Romney Marsh. There he hoped to find shelter till the vessel
which was to convey him across the Channel should arrive. For, though
Hunt's establishment had been broken up, there were still in that dreary
region smugglers who carried on more than one lawless trade. It chanced
that two of these men had just been arrested on a charge of harbouring
traitors. The messenger who had taken them into custody was returning to
London with them, when, on the high road, he met Fenwick face to face.
Unfortunately for Fenwick, no face in England was better known than his.
"It is Sir John," said the officer to the prisoners: "Stand by me, my
good fellows, and, I warrant you, you will have your pardons, and a
bag of guineas besides. " The offer was too tempting to be refused; but
Fenwick was better mounted than his assailants; he dashed through them,
pistol in hand, and was soon out of sight. They pursued him; the hue and
cry was raised; the bells of all the parish churches of the Marsh rang
out the alarm; the whole country was up; every path was guarded; every
thicket was beaten; every hut was searched; and at length the fugitive
was found in bed. Just then a bark, of very suspicious appearance, came
in sight; she soon approached the shore, and showed English colours; but
to the practised eyes of the Kentish fishermen she looked much like
a French privateer. It was not difficult to guess her errand. After
waiting a short time in vain for her passenger, she stood out to sea.
[728]

Fenwick, unluckily for himself, was able so far to elude the vigilance
of those who had charge of him as to scrawl with a lead pencil a short
letter to his wife.