Among the informers who haunted his office was an Irish
vagabond
who had
borne more than one name and had professed more than one religion.
borne more than one name and had professed more than one religion.
Macaulay
[528]
Shrewsbury had a few weeks before consented to accept the seals. He had
held out resolutely from November to March. While he was trying to find
excuses which might satisfy his political friends, Sir James Montgomery
visited him. Montgomery was now the most miserable of human beings.
Having borne a great part in a great Revolution, having been charged
with the august office of presenting the Crown of Scotland to the
Sovereigns whom the Estates had chosen, having domineered without a
rival, during several months, in the Parliament at Edinburgh, having
seen before him in near prospect the seals of Secretary, the coronet
of an Earl, ample wealth, supreme power, he had on a sudden sunk into
obscurity and abject penury. His fine parts still remained; and he was
therefore used by the Jacobites; but, though used, he was despised,
distrusted and starved. He passed his life in wandering from England to
France and from France back to England, without finding a resting place
in either country. Sometimes he waited in the antechamber at Saint
Germains, where the priests scowled at him as a Calvinist, and where
even the Protestant Jacobites cautioned one another in whispers against
the old Republican. Sometimes he lay hid in the garrets of London,
imagining that every footstep which he heard on the stairs was that of
a bailiff with a writ, or that of a King's messenger with a warrant. He
now obtained access to Shrewsbury, and ventured to talk as a Jacobite to
a brother Jacobite. Shrewsbury, who was not at all inclined to put his
estate and his neck in the power of a man whom he knew to be both rash
and perfidious, returned very guarded answers. Through some channel
which is not known to us, William obtained full intelligence of what
had passed on this occasion. He sent for Shrewsbury, and again spoke
earnestly about the secretaryship. Shrewsbury again excused himself.
His health, he said, was bad. "That," said William, "is not your only
reason. " "No, Sir," said Shrewsbury, "it is not. " And he began to speak
of public grievances, and alluded to the fate of the Triennial Bill,
which he had himself introduced. But William cut him short. "There is
another reason behind. When did you see Montgomery last? " Shrewsbury was
thunderstruck. The King proceeded to repeat some things which Montgomery
had said. By this time Shrewsbury had recovered from his dismay, and
had recollected that, in the conversation which had been so accurately
reported to the government, he had fortunately uttered no treason,
though he had heard much. "Sir," said he, "since Your Majesty has been
so correctly informed, you must be aware that I gave no encouragement
to that man's attempts to seduce me from my allegiance. " William did not
deny this, but intimated that such secret dealings with noted Jacobites
raised suspicions which Shrewsbury could remove only by accepting the
seals. "That," he said, "will put me quite at ease. I know that you are
a man of honour, and that, if you undertake to serve me, you will serve
me faithfully. " So pressed, Shrewsbury complied, to the great joy of
his whole party; and was immediately rewarded for his compliance with a
dukedom and a garter. [529]
Thus a Whig ministry was gradually forming. There were now two Whig
Secretaries of State, a Whig Keeper of the Great Seal, a Whig First Lord
of the Admiralty, a Whig Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Lord Privy
Seal, Pembroke, might also be called a Whig; for his mind was one which
readily took the impress of any stronger mind with which it was brought
into contact. Seymour, having been long enough a Commissioner of the
Treasury to lose much of his influence with the Tory country gentlemen
who had once listened to him as to an oracle, was dismissed, and his
place was filled by John Smith, a zealous and able Whig, who had taken
an active part in the debates of the late session. [530] The only Tories
who still held great offices in the executive government were the Lord
President, Caermarthen, who, though he began to feel that power was
slipping from his grasp, still clutched it desperately, and the first
Lord of the Treasury, Godolphin, who meddled little out of his own
department, and performed the duties of that department with skill and
assiduity.
William, however, still tried to divide his favours between the two
parties. Though the Whigs were fast drawing to themselves the substance
of power, the Tories obtained their share of honorary distinctions.
Mulgrave, who had, during the late session, exerted his great
parliamentary talents in favour of the King's policy, was created
Marquess of Normanby, and named a Cabinet Councillor, but was never
consulted. He obtained at the same time a pension of three thousand
pounds a year. Caermarthen, whom the late changes had deeply mortified,
was in some degree consoled by a signal mark of royal approbation. He
became Duke of Leeds. It had taken him little more than twenty years to
climb from the station of a Yorkshire country gentleman to the highest
rank in the peerage. Two great Whig Earls were at the same time created
Dukes, Bedford and Devonshire. It ought to be mentioned that Bedford
had repeatedly refused the dignity which he now somewhat reluctantly
accepted. He declared that he preferred his Earldom to a Dukedom,
and gave a very sensible reason for the preference. An Earl who had
a numerous family might send one son to the Temple and another to a
counting house in the city. But the sons of a Duke were all lords; and
a lord could not make his bread either at the bar or on Change. The old
man's objections, however, were overcome; and the two great houses
of Russell and Cavendish, which had long been closely connected by
friendship and by marriage, by common opinions, common sufferings and
common triumphs, received on the same day the greatest honour which it
is in the power of the Crown to confer. [531]
The Gazette which announced these creations announced also that the King
had set out for the Continent. He had, before his departure, consulted
with his ministers about the means of counteracting a plan of naval
operations which had been formed by the French government. Hitherto
the maritime war had been carried on chiefly in the Channel and the
Atlantic. But Lewis had now determined to concentrate his maritime
forces in the Mediterranean. He hoped that, with their help, the army of
Marshal Noailles would be able to take Barcelona, to subdue the whole
of Catalonia, and to compel Spain to sue for peace. Accordingly,
Tourville's squadron, consisting of fifty three men of war, set sail
from Brest on the twenty-fifth of April and passed the Straits of
Gibraltar on the fourth of May.
William, in order to cross the designs of the enemy, determined to send
Russell to the Mediterranean with the greater part of the combined fleet
of England and Holland. A squadron was to remain in the British seas
under the command of the Earl of Berkeley. Talmash was to embark on
board of this squadron with a large body of troops, and was to attack
Brest, which would, it was supposed, in the absence of Tourville and his
fifty-three vessels, be an easy conquest.
That preparations were making at Portsmouth for an expedition, in which
the land forces were to bear a part, could not be kept a secret.
There was much speculation at the Rose and at Garraway's touching the
destination of the armament. Some talked of Rhe, some of Oleron, some of
Rochelle, some of Rochefort. Many, till the fleet actually began to
move westward, believed that it was bound for Dunkirk. Many guessed that
Brest would be the point of attack; but they only guessed this; for the
secret was much better kept than most of the secrets of that age. [532]
Russell, till he was ready to weigh anchor, persisted in assuring his
Jacobite friends that he knew nothing. His discretion was proof even
against all the arts of Marlborough. Marlborough, however, had other
sources of intelligence. To those sources he applied himself; and he
at length succeeded in discovering the whole plan of the government. He
instantly wrote to James. He had, he said, but that moment ascertained
that twelve regiments of infantry and two regiments of marines were
about to embark, under the command of Talmash, for the purpose of
destroying the harbour of Brest and the shipping which lay there.
"This," he added, "would be a great advantage to England. But no
consideration can, or ever shall, hinder me from letting you know what
I think may be for your service. " He then proceeded to caution James
against Russell. "I endeavoured to learn this some time ago from him;
but he always denied it to me, though I am very sure that he knew the
design for more than six weeks. This gives me a bad sign of this man's
intentions. "
The intelligence sent by Marlborough to James was communicated by
James to the French government. That government took its measures with
characteristic promptitude. Promptitude was indeed necessary; for, when
Marlborough's letter was written, the preparations at Portsmouth were
all but complete; and, if the wind had been favourable to the English,
the objects of the expedition might have been attained without a
struggle. But adverse gales detained our fleet in the Channel during
another month. Meanwhile a large body of troops was collected at Brest.
Vauban was charged with the duty of putting the defences in order; and,
under his skilful direction, batteries were planted which commanded
every spot where it seemed likely that an invader would attempt to
land. Eight large rafts, each carrying many mortars, were moored in the
harbour, and, some days before the English arrived, all was ready for
their reception.
On the sixth of June the whole allied fleet was on the Atlantic about
fifteen leagues west of Cape Finisterre. There Russell and Berkeley
parted company. Russell proceeded towards the Mediterranean. Berkeley's
squadron, with the troops on board, steered for the coast of Brittany,
and anchored just without Camaret Bay, close to the mouth of the harbour
of Brest. Talmash proposed to land in Camaret Bay. It was therefore
desirable to ascertain with accuracy the state of the coast. The eldest
son of the Duke of Leeds, now called Marquess of Caermarthen, undertook
to enter the basin and to obtain the necessary information. The passion
of this brave and eccentric young man for maritime adventure was
unconquerable. He had solicited and obtained the rank of Rear Admiral,
and had accompanied the expedition in his own yacht, the Peregrine,
renowned as the masterpiece of shipbuilding, and more than once already
mentioned in this history. Cutts, who had distinguished himself by
his intrepidity in the Irish war, and had been rewarded with an Irish
peerage, offered to accompany Caermarthen, Lord Mohun, who, desirous,
it may be hoped, to efface by honourable exploits the stain which a
shameful and disastrous brawl had left on his name, was serving with
the troops as a volunteer, insisted on being of the party. The Peregrine
went into the bay with its gallant crew, and came out safe, but not
without having run great risks. Caermarthen reported that the defences,
of which however he had seen only a small part, were formidable. But
Berkeley and Talmash suspected that he overrated the danger. They were
not aware that their design had long been known at Versailles, that an
army had been collected to oppose them, and that the greatest engineer
in the world had been employed to fortify the coast against them. They
therefore did not doubt that their troops might easily be put on shore
under the protection of a fire from the ships. On the following morning
Caermarthen was ordered to enter the bay with eight vessels and to
batter the French works. Talmash was to follow with about a hundred
boats full of soldiers. It soon appeared that the enterprise was even
more perilous than it had on the preceding day appeared to be. Batteries
which had then escaped notice opened on the ships a fire so murderous
that several decks were soon cleared. Great bodies of foot and horse
were discernible; and, by their uniforms, they appeared to be regular
troops. The young Rear Admiral sent an officer in all haste to warn
Talmash. But Talmash was so completely possessed by the notion that
the French were not prepared to repel an attack that he disregarded all
cautions and would not even trust his own eyes. He felt sure that the
force which he saw assembled on the shore was a mere rabble of peasants,
who had been brought together in haste from the surrounding country.
Confident that these mock soldiers would run like sheep before real
soldiers, he ordered his men to pull for the beach. He was soon
undeceived. A terrible fire mowed down his troops faster than they
could get on shore. He had himself scarcely sprung on dry ground when he
received a wound in the thigh from a cannon ball, and was carried back
to his skiff. His men reembarked in confusion. Ships and boats made
haste to get out of the bay, but did not succeed till four hundred
seamen and seven hundred soldiers had fallen. During many days the waves
continued to throw up pierced and shattered corpses on the beach of
Brittany. The battery from which Talmash received his wound is called,
to this day, the Englishman's Death.
The unhappy general was laid on his couch; and a council of war was held
in his cabin. He was for going straight into the harbour of Brest
and bombarding the town. But this suggestion, which indicated but too
clearly that his judgment had been affected by the irritation of a
wounded body and a wounded mind, was wisely rejected by the naval
officers. The armament returned to Portsmouth. There Talmash died,
exclaiming with his last breath that he had been lured into a snare by
treachery. The public grief and indignation were loudly expressed. The
nation remembered the services of the unfortunate general, forgave his
rashness, pitied his sufferings, and execrated the unknown traitors
whose machinations had been fatal to him. There were many conjectures
and many rumours. Some sturdy Englishmen, misled by national prejudice,
swore that none of our plans would ever be kept a secret from the enemy
while French refugees were in high military command. Some zealous Whigs,
misled by party sprit, muttered that the Court of Saint Germains would
never want good intelligence while a single Tory remained in the Cabinet
Council. The real criminal was not named; nor, till the archives of the
House of Stuart were explored, was it known to the world that Talmash
had perished by the basest of all the hundred villanies of Marlborough.
[533]
Yet never had Marlborough been less a Jacobite than at the moment when
he rendered this wicked and shameful service to the Jacobite cause. It
may be confidently affirmed that to serve the banished family was not
his object, and that to ingratiate himself with the banished family was
only his secondary object. His primary object was to force himself into
the service of the existing government, and to regain possession of
those important and lucrative places from which he had been dismissed
more than two years before. He knew that the country and the Parliament
would not patiently bear to see the English army commanded by foreign
generals. Two Englishmen only had shown themselves fit for high military
posts, himself and Talmash. If Talmash were defeated and disgraced,
William would scarcely have a choice. In fact, as soon as it was known
that the expedition had failed, and that Talmash was no more, the
general cry was that the King ought to receive into his favour the
accomplished Captain who had done such good service at Walcourt, at Cork
and at Kinsale. Nor can we blame the multitude for raising this cry.
For every body knew that Marlborough was an eminently brave, skilful
and successful officer; but very few persons knew that he had, while
commanding William's troops, while sitting in William's council, while
waiting in William's bedchamber, formed a most artful and dangerous plot
for the subversion of William's throne; and still fewer suspected the
real author of the recent calamity, of the slaughter in the Bay of
Camaret, of the melancholy fate of Talmash. The effect therefore of the
foulest of all treasons was to raise the traitor in public estimation.
Nor was he wanting to himself at this conjuncture. While the Royal
Exchange was in consternation at this disaster of which he was the
cause, while many families were clothing themselves in mourning for the
brave men of whom he was the murderer, he repaired to Whitehall; and
there, doubtless with all that grace, that nobleness, that suavity,
under which lay, hidden from all common observers, a seared conscience
and a remorseless heart, he professed himself the most devoted, the most
loyal, of all the subjects of William and Mary, and expressed a hope
that he might, in this emergency, be permitted to offer his sword to
their Majesties. Shrewsbury was very desirous that the offer should be
accepted; but a short and dry answer from William, who was then in
the Netherlands, put an end for the present to all negotiation. About
Talmash the King expressed himself with generous tenderness. "The poor
fellow's fate," he wrote, "has affected me much. I do not indeed think
that he managed well; but it was his ardent desire to distinguish
himself that impelled him to attempt impossibilities. " [534]
The armament which had returned to Portsmouth soon sailed again for the
coast of France, but achieved only exploits worse than inglorious. An
attempt was made to blow up the pier at Dunkirk. Some towns inhabited by
quiet tradesmen and fishermen were bombarded. In Dieppe scarcely a house
was left standing; a third part of Havre was laid in ashes; and shells
were thrown into Calais which destroyed thirty private dwellings. The
French and the Jacobites loudly exclaimed against the cowardice
and barbarity of making war on an unwarlike population. The English
government vindicated itself by reminding the world of the sufferings of
the thrice wasted Palatinate; and, as against Lewis and the flatterers
of Lewis, the vindication was complete. But whether it were consistent
with humanity and with sound policy to visit the crimes which an
absolute Prince and a ferocious soldiery had committed in the Palatinate
on shopkeepers and labourers, on women and children, who did not know
that the Palatinate existed, may perhaps be doubted.
Meanwhile Russell's fleet was rendering good service to the common
cause. Adverse winds had impeded his progress through the Straits so
long that he did not reach Carthagena till the middle of July. By that
time the progress of the French arms had spread terror even to the
Escurial. Noailles had, on the banks of the Tar, routed an army
commanded by the Viceroy of Catalonia; and, on the day on which this
victory was won, the Brest squadron had joined the Toulon squadron in
the Bay of Rosas. Palamos, attacked at once by land and sea, was taken
by storm. Gerona capitulated after a faint show of resistance. Ostalric
surrendered at the first summons. Barcelona would in all probability
have fallen, had not the French Admirals learned that the conquerors of
La Hogue was approaching. They instantly quitted the coast of Catalonia,
and never thought themselves safe till they had taken shelter under the
batteries of Toulon.
The Spanish government expressed warm gratitude for this seasonable
assistance, and presented to the English Admiral a jewel which was
popularly said to be worth near twenty thousand pounds sterling. There
was no difficulty in finding such a jewel among the hoards of gorgeous
trinkets which had been left by Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second
to a degenerate race. But, in all that constitutes the true wealth of
states, Spain was poor indeed. Her treasury was empty; her arsenals were
unfurnished; her ships were so rotten that they seemed likely to fly
asunder at the discharge of their own guns. Her ragged and starving
soldiers often mingled with the crowd of beggars at the doors of
convents, and battled there for a mess of pottage and a crust of bread.
Russell underwent those trials which no English commander whose hard
fate it has been to cooperate with Spaniards has escaped. The Viceroy
of Catalonia promised much, did nothing, and expected every thing. He
declared that three hundred and fifty thousand rations were ready to be
served out to the fleet at Carthagena. It turned out that there were not
in all the stores of that port provisions sufficient to victual a single
frigate for a single week. Yet His Excellency thought himself entitled
to complain because England had not sent an army as well as a fleet, and
because the heretic Admiral did not choose to expose the fleet to utter
destruction by attacking the French under the guns of Toulon. Russell
implored the Spanish authorities to look well to their dockyards, and to
try to have, by the next spring, a small squadron which might at least
be able to float; but he could not prevail on them to careen a single
ship. He could with difficulty obtain, on hard conditions, permission to
send a few of his sick men to marine hospitals on shore. Yet, in spite
of all the trouble given him by the imbecility and ingratitude of a
government which has generally caused more annoyance to its allies than
to its enemies, he acquitted himself well. It is but just to him to
say that, from the time at which he became First Lord of the Admiralty,
there was a decided improvement in the naval administration. Though
he lay with his fleet many months near an inhospitable shore, and at a
great distance from England, there were no complaints about the quality
or the quantity of provisions. The crews had better food and drink
than they had ever had before; comforts which Spain did not afford were
supplied from home; and yet the charge was not greater than when, in
Torrington's time, the sailor was poisoned with mouldy biscuit and
nauseous beer.
As almost the whole maritime force of France was in the Mediterranean,
and as it seemed likely that an attempt would be made on Barcelona
in the following year, Russell received orders to winter at Cadiz.
In October he sailed to that port; and there he employed himself in
refitting his ships with an activity unintelligible to the Spanish
functionaries, who calmly suffered the miserable remains of what had
once been the greatest navy in the world to rot under their eyes. [535]
Along the eastern frontier of France the war during this year seemed to
languish. In Piedmont and on the Rhine the most important events of the
campaign were petty skirmishes and predatory incursions. Lewis remained
at Versailles, and sent his son, the Dauphin, to represent him in the
Netherlands; but the Dauphin was placed under the tutelage of Luxemburg,
and proved a most submissive pupil. During several months the hostile
armies observed each other. The allies made one bold push with the
intention of carrying the war into the French territory; but Luxemburg,
by a forced march, which excited the admiration of persons versed in the
military art, frustrated the design. William on the other hand succeeded
in taking Huy, then a fortress of the third rank. No battle was fought;
no important town was besieged; but the confederates were satisfied with
their campaign. Of the four previous years every one had been marked by
some great disaster. In 1690 Waldeck had been defeated at Fleurus.
In 1691 Mons had fallen. In 1692 Namur had been taken in sight of the
allied army; and this calamity had been speedily followed by the defeat
of Steinkirk. In 1693 the battle of Landen had been lost; and Charleroy
had submitted to the conqueror. At length in 1694 the tide had begun to
turn. The French arms had made no progress. What had been gained by the
allies was indeed not much; but the smallest gain was welcome to those
whom a long run of evil fortune had discouraged.
In England, the general opinion was that, notwithstanding the disaster
in Camaret Bay, the war was on the whole proceeding satisfactorily
both by land and by sea. But some parts of the internal administration
excited, during this autumn, much discontent.
Since Trenchard had been appointed Secretary of State, the Jacobite
agitators had found their situation much more unpleasant than before.
Sidney had been too indulgent and too fond of pleasure to give them much
trouble. Nottingham was a diligent and honest minister; but he was as
high a Tory as a faithful subject of William and Mary could be; he loved
and esteemed many of the nonjurors; and, though he might force himself
to be severe when nothing but severity could save the State, he was
not extreme to mark the transgressions of his old friends; nor did he
encourage talebearers to come to Whitehall with reports of conspiracies.
But Trenchard was both an active public servant and an earnest Whig.
Even if he had himself been inclined to lenity, he would have been urged
to severity by those who surrounded him. He had constantly at his side
Hugh Speke and Aaron Smith, men to whom a hunt after a Jacobite was
the most exciting of all sports. The cry of the malecontents was that
Nottingham had kept his bloodhounds in the leash, but that Trenchard had
let them slip. Every honest gentleman who loved the Church and hated
the Dutch went in danger of his life. There was a constant bustle at
the Secretary's Office, a constant stream of informers coming in, and of
messengers with warrants going out. It was said too, that the warrants
were often irregularly drawn, that they did not specify the person, that
they did not specify the crime, and yet that, under the authority of
such instruments as these, houses were entered, desks and cabinets
searched, valuable papers carried away, and men of good birth and
breeding flung into gaol among felons. [536] The minister and his agents
answered that Westminster Hall was open; that, if any man had been
illegally imprisoned, he had only to bring his action; that juries were
quite sufficiently disposed to listen to any person who pretended to
have been oppressed by cruel and griping men in power, and that, as
none of the prisoners whose wrongs were so pathetically described had
ventured to resort to this obvious and easy mode of obtaining redress,
it might fairly be inferred that nothing had been done which could
not be justified. The clamour of the malecontents however made a
considerable impression on the public mind; and at length, a transaction
in which Trenchard was more unlucky than culpable, brought on him and on
the government with which he was connected much temporary obloquy.
Among the informers who haunted his office was an Irish vagabond who had
borne more than one name and had professed more than one religion. He
now called himself Taaffe. He had been a priest of the Roman Catholic
Church, and secretary to Adda the Papal Nuncio, but had since the
Revolution turned Protestant, had taken a wife, and had distinguished
himself by his activity in discovering the concealed property of those
Jesuits and Benedictines who, during the late reign, had been quartered
in London. The ministers despised him; but they trusted him. They
thought that he had, by his apostasy, and by the part which he had borne
in the spoliation of the religious orders, cut himself off from all
retreat, and that, having nothing but a halter to expect from King
James, he must be true to King William. [537]
This man fell in with a Jacobite agent named Lunt, who had, since the
Revolution, been repeatedly employed among the discontented gentry
of Cheshire and Lancashire, and who had been privy to those plans of
insurrection which had been disconcerted by the battle of the Boyne in
1690, and by the battle of La Hogue in 1692. Lunt had once been arrested
on suspicion of treason, but had been discharged for want of legal proof
of his guilt. He was a mere hireling, and was, without much difficulty,
induced by Taaffe to turn approver. The pair went to Trenchard. Lunt
told his story, mentioned the names of some Cheshire and Lancashire
squires to whom he had, as he affirmed, carried commissions from Saint
Germains, and of others, who had, to his knowledge, formed secret hoards
of arms and ammunition. His simple oath would not have been sufficient
to support a charge of high treason; but he produced another witness
whose evidence seemed to make the case complete. The narrative was
plausible and coherent; and indeed, though it may have been embellished
by fictions, there can be little doubt that it was in substance true.
[538] Messengers and search warrants were sent down to Lancashire. Aaron
Smith himself went thither; and Taaffe went with him. The alarm had been
given by some of the numerous traitors who ate the bread of William.
Some of the accused persons had fled; and others had buried their sabres
and muskets and burned their papers. Nevertheless, discoveries were
made which confirmed Lunt's depositions. Behind the wainscot of the old
mansion of one Roman Catholic family was discovered a commission signed
by James. Another house, of which the master had absconded, was strictly
searched, in spite of the solemn asseverations of his wife and his
servants that no arms were concealed there. While the lady, with her
hand on her heart, was protesting on her honour that her husband was
falsely accused, the messengers observed that the back of the chimney
did not seem to be firmly fixed. It was removed, and a heap of blades
such as were used by horse soldiers tumbled out. In one of the garrets
were found, carefully bricked up, thirty saddles for troopers, as
many breastplates, and sixty cavalry swords. Trenchard and Aaron Smith
thought the case complete; and it was determined that those culprits who
had been apprehended should be tried by a special commission. [539]
Taaffe now confidently expected to be recompensed for his services;
but he found a cold reception at the Treasury. He had gone down to
Lancashire chiefly in order that he might, under the protection of a
search warrant, pilfer trinkets and broad pieces from secret drawers.
His sleight of hand however had not altogether escaped the observation
of his companions. They discovered that he had made free with the
communion plate of the Popish families, whose private hoards he had
assisted in ransacking. When therefore he applied for reward, he was
dismissed, not merely with a refusal, but with a stern reprimand. He
went away mad with greediness and spite. There was yet one way in which
he might obtain both money and revenge; and that way he took. He made
overtures to the friends of the prisoners. He and he alone could undo
what he had done, could save the accused from the gallows, could cover
the accusers with infamy, could drive from office the Secretary and the
Solicitor who were the dread of all the friends of King James. Loathsome
as Taaffe was to the Jacobites, his offer was not to be slighted. He
received a sum in hand; he was assured that a comfortable annuity for
life should be settled on him when the business was done; and he was
sent down into the country, and kept in strict seclusion against the day
of trial. [540]
Meanwhile unlicensed pamphlets, in which the Lancashire plot was classed
with Oates's plot, with Dangerfield's plot, with Fuller's plot, with
Young's plot, with Whitney's plot, were circulated all over the kingdom,
and especially in the county which was to furnish the jury. Of these
pamphlets the longest, the ablest, and the bitterest, entitled a Letter
to Secretary Trenchard, was commonly ascribed to Ferguson. It is not
improbable that Ferguson may have furnished some of the materials, and
may have conveyed the manuscript to the press. But many passages are
written with an art and a vigour which assuredly did not belong to him.
Those who judge by internal evidence may perhaps think that, in some
parts of this remarkable tract, they can discern the last gleam of the
malignant genius of Montgomery. A few weeks after the appearance of the
Letter he sank, unhonoured and unlamented, into the grave. [541]
There were then no printed newspapers except the London Gazette.
But since the Revolution the newsletter had become a more important
political engine than it had previously been. The newsletters of one
writer named Dyer were widely circulated in manuscript. He affected to
be a Tory and a High Churchman, and was consequently regarded by the
foxhunting lords of manors, all over the kingdom, as an oracle. He had
already been twice in prison; but his gains had more than compensated
for his sufferings, and he still persisted in seasoning his intelligence
to suit the taste of the country gentlemen. He now turned the Lancashire
plot into ridicule, declared that the guns which had been found were old
fowling pieces, that the saddles were meant only for hunting, and that
the swords were rusty reliques of Edge Hill and Marston Moor. [542] The
effect produced by all this invective and sarcasm on the public mind
seems to have been great. Even at the Dutch Embassy, where assuredly
there was no leaning towards Jacobitism, there was a strong impression
that it would be unwise to bring the prisoners to trial. In Lancashire
and Cheshire the prevailing sentiments were pity for the accused and
hatred of the prosecutors. The government however persevered. In October
four Judges went down to Manchester. At present the population of that
town is made up of persons born in every part of the British Isles, and
consequently has no especial sympathy with the landowners, the farmers
and the agricultural labourers of the neighbouring districts. But in
the seventeenth century the Manchester man was a Lancashire man. His
politics were those of his county. For the old Cavalier families of his
county he felt a great respect; and he was furious when he thought that
some of the best blood of his county was about to be shed by a knot
of Roundhead pettifoggers from London. Multitudes of people from the
neighbouring villages filled the streets of the town, and saw with grief
and indignation the array of drawn swords and loaded carbines which
surrounded the culprits. Aaron Smith's arrangements do not seem to have
been skilful. The chief counsel for the Crown was Sir William Williams,
who, though now well stricken in years and possessed of a great estate,
still continued to practise. One fault had thrown a dark shade over the
latter part of his life. The recollection of that day on which he had
stood up in Westminster Hall, amidst laughter and hooting, to defend the
dispensing power and to attack the right of petition, had, ever
since the Revolution, kept him back from honour. He was an angry and
disappointed man, and was by no means disposed to incur unpopularity in
the cause of a government to which he owed nothing, and from which he
hoped nothing.
Of the trial no detailed report has come down to us; but we have both
a Whig narrative and a Jacobite narrative. [543] It seems that the
prisoners who were first arraigned did not sever in their challenges,
and were consequently tried together. Williams examined or rather
crossexamined his own witnesses with a severity which confused them. The
crowd which filled the court laughed and clamoured. Lunt in particular
became completely bewildered, mistook one person for another, and did
not recover himself till the judges took him out of the hands of the
counsel for the Crown. For some of the prisoners an alibi was set up.
Evidence was also produced to show, what was undoubtedly quite true,
that Lunt was a man of abandoned character. The result however seemed
doubtful till, to the dismay of the prosecutors, Taaffe entered the box.
He swore with unblushing forehead that the whole story of the plot was a
circumstantial lie devised by himself and Lunt. Williams threw down his
brief; and, in truth, a more honest advocate might well have done the
same. The prisoners who were at the bar were instantly acquitted; those
who had not yet been tried were set at liberty; the witnesses for
the prosecution were pelted out of Manchester; the Clerk of the Crown
narrowly escaped with life; and the judges took their departure amidst
hisses and execrations.
A few days after the close of the trials at Manchester William returned
to England. On the twelfth of November, only forty-eight hours after
his arrival at Kensington, the Houses met. He congratulated them on the
improved aspect of affairs. Both by land and by sea the events of the
year which was about to close had been, on the whole, favourable to the
allies; the French armies had made no progress; the French fleets had
not ventured to show themselves; nevertheless, a safe and honourable
peace could be obtained only by a vigorous prosecution of the war;
and the war could not be vigorously prosecuted without large supplies.
William then reminded the Commons that the Act by which they had settled
the tonnage and poundage on the Crown for four years was about to
expire, and expressed his hope that it would be renewed.
After the King had spoken, the Commons, for some reason which no writer
has explained, adjourned for a week. Before they met again, an event
took place which caused great sorrow at the palace, and through all the
ranks of the Low Church party. Tillotson was taken suddenly ill while
attending public worship in the chapel of Whitehall. Prompt remedies
might perhaps have saved him; but he would not interrupt the prayers;
and, before the service was over, his malady was beyond the reach of
medicine. He was almost speechless; but his friends long remembered with
pleasure a few broken ejaculations which showed that he enjoyed peace of
mind to the last. He was buried in the church of Saint Lawrence Jewry,
near Guildhall. It was there that he had won his immense oratorical
reputation. He had preached there during the thirty years which preceded
his elevation to the throne of Canterbury. His eloquence had attracted
to the heart of the City crowds of the learned and polite, from the
Inns of Court and from the lordly mansions of Saint James's and Soho. A
considerable part of his congregation had generally consisted of young
clergymen, who came to learn the art of preaching at the feet of him who
was universally considered as the first of preachers. To this church his
remains were now carried through a mourning population. The hearse was
followed by an endless train of splendid equipages from Lambeth through
Southwark and over London Bridge. Burnet preached the funeral sermon.
His kind and honest heart was overcome by so many tender recollections
that, in the midst of his discourse, he paused and burst into tears,
while a loud moan of sorrow rose from the whole auditory. The Queen
could not speak of her favourite instructor without weeping. Even
William was visibly moved. "I have lost," he said, "the best friend that
I ever had, and the best man that I ever knew. " The only Englishman who
is mentioned with tenderness in any part of the great mass of letters
which the King wrote to Heinsius is Tillotson. The Archbishop had left a
widow. To her William granted a pension of four hundred a year, which he
afterwards increased to six hundred. His anxiety that she should receive
her income regularly and without stoppages was honourable to him. Every
quarterday he ordered the money, without any deduction, to be brought to
himself, and immediately sent it to her. Tillotson had bequeathed to her
no property, except a great number of manuscript sermons. Such was his
fame among his contemporaries that those sermons were purchased by the
booksellers for the almost incredible sum of two thousand five hundred
guineas, equivalent, in the wretched state in which the silver coin then
was, to at least three thousand six hundred pounds. Such a price had
never before been given in England for any copyright. About the same
time Dryden, whose reputation was then in the zenith, received thirteen
hundred pounds for his translation of all the works of Virgil, and was
thought to have been splendidly remunerated. [544]
It was not easy to fill satisfactorily the high place which Tillotson
had left vacant. Mary gave her voice for Stillingfleet, and pressed
his claims as earnestly as she ever ventured to press any thing. In
abilities and attainments he had few superiors among the clergy. But,
though he would probably have been considered as a Low Churchman by
Jane and South, he was too high a Churchman for William; and Tenison was
appointed. The new primate was not eminently distinguished by eloquence
or learning: but he was honest, prudent, laborious and benevolent; he
had been a good rector of a large parish and a good bishop of a large
diocese; detraction had not yet been busy with his name; and it might
well be thought that a man of plain sense, moderation and integrity, was
more likely than a man of brilliant genius and lofty spirit to succeed
in the arduous task of quieting a discontented and distracted Church.
Meanwhile the Commons had entered upon business. They cheerfully voted
about two million four hundred thousand pounds for the army, and as
much for the navy. The land tax for the year was again fixed at four
shillings in the pound; the Tonnage Act was renewed for a term of five
years; and a fund was established on which the government was authorised
to borrow two millions and a half.
Some time was spent by both Houses in discussing the Manchester trials.
If the malecontents had been wise, they would have been satisfied with
the advantage which they had already gained. Their friends had been set
free. The prosecutors had with difficulty escaped from the hands of an
enraged multitude. The character of the government had been seriously
damaged. The ministers were accused, in prose and in verse, sometimes
in earnest and sometimes in jest, of having hired a gang of ruffians to
swear away the lives of honest gentlemen. Even moderate politicians, who
gave no credit to these foul imputations, owned that Trenchard ought to
have remembered the villanies of Fuller and Young, and to have been
on his guard against such wretches as Taaffe and Lunt. The unfortunate
Secretary's health and spirits had given way. It was said that he was
dying; and it was certain that he would not long continue to hold the
seals. The Tories had won a great victory; but, in their eagerness to
improve it, they turned it into a defeat.
Early in the session Howe complained, with his usual vehemence and
asperity, of the indignities to which innocent and honourable men,
highly descended and highly esteemed, had been subjected by Aaron Smith
and the wretches who were in his pay. The leading Whigs, with great
judgment, demanded an inquiry. Then the Tories began to flinch. They
well knew that an inquiry could not strengthen their case, and might
weaken it. The issue, they said, had been tried; a jury had pronounced;
the verdict was definitive; and it would be monstrous to give the
false witnesses who had been stoned out of Manchester an opportunity
of repeating their lesson. To this argument the answer was obvious. The
verdict was definitive as respected the defendants, but not as respected
the prosecutors. The prosecutors were now in their turn defendants, and
were entitled to all the privileges of defendants. It did not follow,
because the Lancashire gentlemen had been found, and very properly
found, not guilty of treason, that the Secretary of State or the
Solicitor of the Treasury had been guilty of unfairness or even of
rashness. The House, by one hundred and nineteen votes to one hundred
and two resolved that Aaron Smith and the witnesses on both sides
should be ordered to attend. Several days were passed in examination
and crossexamination; and sometimes the sittings extended far into the
night. It soon became clear that the prosecution had not been lightly
instituted, and that some of the persons who had been acquitted had been
concerned in treasonable schemes. The Tories would now have been content
with a drawn battle; but the Whigs were not disposed to forego their
advantage. It was moved that there had been a sufficient ground for the
proceedings before the Special Commission; and this motion was carried
without a division. The opposition proposed to add some words implying
that the witnesses for the Crown had forsworn themselves; but these
words were rejected by one hundred and thirty-six votes to one hundred
and nine, and it was resolved by one hundred and thirty-three votes to
ninety-seven that there had been a dangerous conspiracy. The Lords had
meanwhile been deliberating on the same subject, and had come to the
same conclusion. They sent Taaffe to prison for prevarication; and they
passed resolutions acquitting both the government and the judges of all
blame. The public however continued to think that the gentlemen who
had been tried at Manchester had been unjustifiably persecuted, till
a Jacobite plot of singular atrocity, brought home to the plotters by
decisive evidence, produced a violent revulsion of feeling. [545]
Meanwhile three bills, which had been repeatedly discussed in preceding
years, and two of which had been carried in vain to the foot of the
throne, had been again brought in; the Place Bill, the Bill for the
Regulation of Trials in cases of Treason, and the Triennial Bill.
The Place Bill did not reach the Lords. It was thrice read in the Lower
House, but was not passed. At the very last moment it was rejected by
a hundred and seventy-five votes to a hundred and forty-two. Howe and
Barley were the tellers for the minority. [546]
The Bill for the Regulation of Trials in cases of Treason went up again
to the Peers. Their Lordships again added to it the clause which had
formerly been fatal to it. The Commons again refused to grant any new
privilege to the hereditary aristocracy. Conferences were again held;
reasons were again exchanged; both Houses were again obstinate; and the
bill was again lost. [547]
The Triennial Bill was more fortunate. It was brought in on the first
day of the session, and went easily and rapidly through both Houses. The
only question about which there was any serious contention was, how long
the existing Parliament should be suffered to continue. After several
sharp debates November in the year 1696 was fixed as the extreme term.
The Tonnage Bill and the Triennial Bill proceeded almost side by side.
Both were, on the twenty-second of December, ready for the royal assent.
William came in state on that day to Westminster. The attendance of
members of both Houses was large. When the Clerk of the Crown read the
words, "A Bill for the frequent Calling and Meeting of Parliaments," the
anxiety was great. When the Clerk of the Parliament made answer, "Le roy
et la royne le veulent," a loud and long hum of delight and exultation
rose from the benches and the bar. [548] William had resolved many
months before not to refuse his assent a second time to so popular a
law. [549] There was some however who thought that he would not have
made so great a concession if he had on that day been quite himself.
It was plain indeed that he was strangely agitated and unnerved. It
had been announced that he would dine in public at Whitehall. But he
disappointed the curiosity of the multitude which on such occasions
flocked to the Court, and hurried back to Kensington. [550]
He had but too good reason to be uneasy. His wife had, during two or
three days, been poorly; and on the preceding evening grave symptoms had
appeared. Sir Thomas Millington, who was physician in ordinary to the
King, thought that she had the measles. But Radcliffe, who, with coarse
manners and little book learning, had raised himself to the first
practice in London chiefly by his rare skill in diagnostics, uttered
the more alarming words, small pox. That disease, over which science has
since achieved a succession of glorious and beneficient victories, was
then the most terrible of all the ministers of death. The havoc of the
plague had been far more rapid; but the plague had visited our shores
only once or twice within living memory; and the small pox was always
present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant
fears all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives
it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a
changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks
of the betrothed maiden objects of horror to the lover. Towards the
end of the year 1694, this pestilence was more than usually severe. At
length the infection spread to the palace, and reached the young and
blooming Queen. She received the intimation of her danger with true
greatness of soul. She gave orders that every lady of her bedchamber,
every maid of honour, nay, every menial servant, who had not had the
small pox, should instantly leave Kensington House. She locked herself
up during a short time in her closet, burned some papers, arranged
others, and then calmly awaited her fate.
During two or three days there were many alternations of hope and fear.
The physicians contradicted each other and themselves in a way which
sufficiently indicates the state of medical science in that age. The
disease was measles; it was scarlet fever; it was spotted fever; it was
erysipelas. At one moment some symptoms, which in truth showed that
the case was almost hopeless, were hailed as indications of returning
health. At length all doubt was over. Radcliffe's opinion proved to be
right. It was plain that the Queen was sinking under small pox of the
most malignant type.
All this time William remained night and day near her bedside. The
little couch on which he slept when he was in camp was spread for him
in the antechamber; but he scarcely lay down on it. The sight of his
misery, the Dutch Envoy wrote, was enough to melt the hardest heart.
Nothing seemed to be left of the man whose serene fortitude had been
the wonder of old soldiers on the disastrous day of Landen, and of old
sailors on that fearful night among the sheets of ice and banks of
sand on the coast of Goree. The very domestics saw the tears running
unchecked down that face, of which the stern composure had seldom been
disturbed by any triumph or by any defeat. Several of the prelates were
in attendance. The King drew Burnet aside, and gave way to an agony of
grief. "There is no hope," he cried. "I was the happiest man on earth;
and I am the most miserable. She had no fault; none; you knew her well;
but you could not know, nobody but myself could know, her goodness. "
Tenison undertook to tell her that she was dying. He was afraid that
such a communication, abruptly made, might agitate her violently, and
began with much management. But she soon caught his meaning, and, with
that gentle womanly courage which so often puts our bravery to shame,
submitted herself to the will of God. She called for a small cabinet
in which her most important papers were locked up, gave orders that, as
soon as she was no more, it should be delivered to the King, and then
dismissed worldly cares from her mind. She received the Eucharist, and
repeated her part of the office with unimpaired memory and intelligence,
though in a feeble voice. She observed that Tenison had been long
standing at her bedside, and, with that sweet courtesy which was
habitual to her, faltered out her commands that he would sit down, and
repeated them till he obeyed. After she had received the sacrament she
sank rapidly, and uttered only a few broken words. Twice she tried to
take a last farewell of him whom she had loved so truly and entirely;
but she was unable to speak. He had a succession of fits so alarming
that his Privy Councillors, who were assembled in a neighbouring room,
were apprehensive for his reason and his life. The Duke of Leeds, at the
request of his colleagues, ventured to assume the friendly guardianship
of which minds deranged by sorrow stand in need.
Shrewsbury had a few weeks before consented to accept the seals. He had
held out resolutely from November to March. While he was trying to find
excuses which might satisfy his political friends, Sir James Montgomery
visited him. Montgomery was now the most miserable of human beings.
Having borne a great part in a great Revolution, having been charged
with the august office of presenting the Crown of Scotland to the
Sovereigns whom the Estates had chosen, having domineered without a
rival, during several months, in the Parliament at Edinburgh, having
seen before him in near prospect the seals of Secretary, the coronet
of an Earl, ample wealth, supreme power, he had on a sudden sunk into
obscurity and abject penury. His fine parts still remained; and he was
therefore used by the Jacobites; but, though used, he was despised,
distrusted and starved. He passed his life in wandering from England to
France and from France back to England, without finding a resting place
in either country. Sometimes he waited in the antechamber at Saint
Germains, where the priests scowled at him as a Calvinist, and where
even the Protestant Jacobites cautioned one another in whispers against
the old Republican. Sometimes he lay hid in the garrets of London,
imagining that every footstep which he heard on the stairs was that of
a bailiff with a writ, or that of a King's messenger with a warrant. He
now obtained access to Shrewsbury, and ventured to talk as a Jacobite to
a brother Jacobite. Shrewsbury, who was not at all inclined to put his
estate and his neck in the power of a man whom he knew to be both rash
and perfidious, returned very guarded answers. Through some channel
which is not known to us, William obtained full intelligence of what
had passed on this occasion. He sent for Shrewsbury, and again spoke
earnestly about the secretaryship. Shrewsbury again excused himself.
His health, he said, was bad. "That," said William, "is not your only
reason. " "No, Sir," said Shrewsbury, "it is not. " And he began to speak
of public grievances, and alluded to the fate of the Triennial Bill,
which he had himself introduced. But William cut him short. "There is
another reason behind. When did you see Montgomery last? " Shrewsbury was
thunderstruck. The King proceeded to repeat some things which Montgomery
had said. By this time Shrewsbury had recovered from his dismay, and
had recollected that, in the conversation which had been so accurately
reported to the government, he had fortunately uttered no treason,
though he had heard much. "Sir," said he, "since Your Majesty has been
so correctly informed, you must be aware that I gave no encouragement
to that man's attempts to seduce me from my allegiance. " William did not
deny this, but intimated that such secret dealings with noted Jacobites
raised suspicions which Shrewsbury could remove only by accepting the
seals. "That," he said, "will put me quite at ease. I know that you are
a man of honour, and that, if you undertake to serve me, you will serve
me faithfully. " So pressed, Shrewsbury complied, to the great joy of
his whole party; and was immediately rewarded for his compliance with a
dukedom and a garter. [529]
Thus a Whig ministry was gradually forming. There were now two Whig
Secretaries of State, a Whig Keeper of the Great Seal, a Whig First Lord
of the Admiralty, a Whig Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Lord Privy
Seal, Pembroke, might also be called a Whig; for his mind was one which
readily took the impress of any stronger mind with which it was brought
into contact. Seymour, having been long enough a Commissioner of the
Treasury to lose much of his influence with the Tory country gentlemen
who had once listened to him as to an oracle, was dismissed, and his
place was filled by John Smith, a zealous and able Whig, who had taken
an active part in the debates of the late session. [530] The only Tories
who still held great offices in the executive government were the Lord
President, Caermarthen, who, though he began to feel that power was
slipping from his grasp, still clutched it desperately, and the first
Lord of the Treasury, Godolphin, who meddled little out of his own
department, and performed the duties of that department with skill and
assiduity.
William, however, still tried to divide his favours between the two
parties. Though the Whigs were fast drawing to themselves the substance
of power, the Tories obtained their share of honorary distinctions.
Mulgrave, who had, during the late session, exerted his great
parliamentary talents in favour of the King's policy, was created
Marquess of Normanby, and named a Cabinet Councillor, but was never
consulted. He obtained at the same time a pension of three thousand
pounds a year. Caermarthen, whom the late changes had deeply mortified,
was in some degree consoled by a signal mark of royal approbation. He
became Duke of Leeds. It had taken him little more than twenty years to
climb from the station of a Yorkshire country gentleman to the highest
rank in the peerage. Two great Whig Earls were at the same time created
Dukes, Bedford and Devonshire. It ought to be mentioned that Bedford
had repeatedly refused the dignity which he now somewhat reluctantly
accepted. He declared that he preferred his Earldom to a Dukedom,
and gave a very sensible reason for the preference. An Earl who had
a numerous family might send one son to the Temple and another to a
counting house in the city. But the sons of a Duke were all lords; and
a lord could not make his bread either at the bar or on Change. The old
man's objections, however, were overcome; and the two great houses
of Russell and Cavendish, which had long been closely connected by
friendship and by marriage, by common opinions, common sufferings and
common triumphs, received on the same day the greatest honour which it
is in the power of the Crown to confer. [531]
The Gazette which announced these creations announced also that the King
had set out for the Continent. He had, before his departure, consulted
with his ministers about the means of counteracting a plan of naval
operations which had been formed by the French government. Hitherto
the maritime war had been carried on chiefly in the Channel and the
Atlantic. But Lewis had now determined to concentrate his maritime
forces in the Mediterranean. He hoped that, with their help, the army of
Marshal Noailles would be able to take Barcelona, to subdue the whole
of Catalonia, and to compel Spain to sue for peace. Accordingly,
Tourville's squadron, consisting of fifty three men of war, set sail
from Brest on the twenty-fifth of April and passed the Straits of
Gibraltar on the fourth of May.
William, in order to cross the designs of the enemy, determined to send
Russell to the Mediterranean with the greater part of the combined fleet
of England and Holland. A squadron was to remain in the British seas
under the command of the Earl of Berkeley. Talmash was to embark on
board of this squadron with a large body of troops, and was to attack
Brest, which would, it was supposed, in the absence of Tourville and his
fifty-three vessels, be an easy conquest.
That preparations were making at Portsmouth for an expedition, in which
the land forces were to bear a part, could not be kept a secret.
There was much speculation at the Rose and at Garraway's touching the
destination of the armament. Some talked of Rhe, some of Oleron, some of
Rochelle, some of Rochefort. Many, till the fleet actually began to
move westward, believed that it was bound for Dunkirk. Many guessed that
Brest would be the point of attack; but they only guessed this; for the
secret was much better kept than most of the secrets of that age. [532]
Russell, till he was ready to weigh anchor, persisted in assuring his
Jacobite friends that he knew nothing. His discretion was proof even
against all the arts of Marlborough. Marlborough, however, had other
sources of intelligence. To those sources he applied himself; and he
at length succeeded in discovering the whole plan of the government. He
instantly wrote to James. He had, he said, but that moment ascertained
that twelve regiments of infantry and two regiments of marines were
about to embark, under the command of Talmash, for the purpose of
destroying the harbour of Brest and the shipping which lay there.
"This," he added, "would be a great advantage to England. But no
consideration can, or ever shall, hinder me from letting you know what
I think may be for your service. " He then proceeded to caution James
against Russell. "I endeavoured to learn this some time ago from him;
but he always denied it to me, though I am very sure that he knew the
design for more than six weeks. This gives me a bad sign of this man's
intentions. "
The intelligence sent by Marlborough to James was communicated by
James to the French government. That government took its measures with
characteristic promptitude. Promptitude was indeed necessary; for, when
Marlborough's letter was written, the preparations at Portsmouth were
all but complete; and, if the wind had been favourable to the English,
the objects of the expedition might have been attained without a
struggle. But adverse gales detained our fleet in the Channel during
another month. Meanwhile a large body of troops was collected at Brest.
Vauban was charged with the duty of putting the defences in order; and,
under his skilful direction, batteries were planted which commanded
every spot where it seemed likely that an invader would attempt to
land. Eight large rafts, each carrying many mortars, were moored in the
harbour, and, some days before the English arrived, all was ready for
their reception.
On the sixth of June the whole allied fleet was on the Atlantic about
fifteen leagues west of Cape Finisterre. There Russell and Berkeley
parted company. Russell proceeded towards the Mediterranean. Berkeley's
squadron, with the troops on board, steered for the coast of Brittany,
and anchored just without Camaret Bay, close to the mouth of the harbour
of Brest. Talmash proposed to land in Camaret Bay. It was therefore
desirable to ascertain with accuracy the state of the coast. The eldest
son of the Duke of Leeds, now called Marquess of Caermarthen, undertook
to enter the basin and to obtain the necessary information. The passion
of this brave and eccentric young man for maritime adventure was
unconquerable. He had solicited and obtained the rank of Rear Admiral,
and had accompanied the expedition in his own yacht, the Peregrine,
renowned as the masterpiece of shipbuilding, and more than once already
mentioned in this history. Cutts, who had distinguished himself by
his intrepidity in the Irish war, and had been rewarded with an Irish
peerage, offered to accompany Caermarthen, Lord Mohun, who, desirous,
it may be hoped, to efface by honourable exploits the stain which a
shameful and disastrous brawl had left on his name, was serving with
the troops as a volunteer, insisted on being of the party. The Peregrine
went into the bay with its gallant crew, and came out safe, but not
without having run great risks. Caermarthen reported that the defences,
of which however he had seen only a small part, were formidable. But
Berkeley and Talmash suspected that he overrated the danger. They were
not aware that their design had long been known at Versailles, that an
army had been collected to oppose them, and that the greatest engineer
in the world had been employed to fortify the coast against them. They
therefore did not doubt that their troops might easily be put on shore
under the protection of a fire from the ships. On the following morning
Caermarthen was ordered to enter the bay with eight vessels and to
batter the French works. Talmash was to follow with about a hundred
boats full of soldiers. It soon appeared that the enterprise was even
more perilous than it had on the preceding day appeared to be. Batteries
which had then escaped notice opened on the ships a fire so murderous
that several decks were soon cleared. Great bodies of foot and horse
were discernible; and, by their uniforms, they appeared to be regular
troops. The young Rear Admiral sent an officer in all haste to warn
Talmash. But Talmash was so completely possessed by the notion that
the French were not prepared to repel an attack that he disregarded all
cautions and would not even trust his own eyes. He felt sure that the
force which he saw assembled on the shore was a mere rabble of peasants,
who had been brought together in haste from the surrounding country.
Confident that these mock soldiers would run like sheep before real
soldiers, he ordered his men to pull for the beach. He was soon
undeceived. A terrible fire mowed down his troops faster than they
could get on shore. He had himself scarcely sprung on dry ground when he
received a wound in the thigh from a cannon ball, and was carried back
to his skiff. His men reembarked in confusion. Ships and boats made
haste to get out of the bay, but did not succeed till four hundred
seamen and seven hundred soldiers had fallen. During many days the waves
continued to throw up pierced and shattered corpses on the beach of
Brittany. The battery from which Talmash received his wound is called,
to this day, the Englishman's Death.
The unhappy general was laid on his couch; and a council of war was held
in his cabin. He was for going straight into the harbour of Brest
and bombarding the town. But this suggestion, which indicated but too
clearly that his judgment had been affected by the irritation of a
wounded body and a wounded mind, was wisely rejected by the naval
officers. The armament returned to Portsmouth. There Talmash died,
exclaiming with his last breath that he had been lured into a snare by
treachery. The public grief and indignation were loudly expressed. The
nation remembered the services of the unfortunate general, forgave his
rashness, pitied his sufferings, and execrated the unknown traitors
whose machinations had been fatal to him. There were many conjectures
and many rumours. Some sturdy Englishmen, misled by national prejudice,
swore that none of our plans would ever be kept a secret from the enemy
while French refugees were in high military command. Some zealous Whigs,
misled by party sprit, muttered that the Court of Saint Germains would
never want good intelligence while a single Tory remained in the Cabinet
Council. The real criminal was not named; nor, till the archives of the
House of Stuart were explored, was it known to the world that Talmash
had perished by the basest of all the hundred villanies of Marlborough.
[533]
Yet never had Marlborough been less a Jacobite than at the moment when
he rendered this wicked and shameful service to the Jacobite cause. It
may be confidently affirmed that to serve the banished family was not
his object, and that to ingratiate himself with the banished family was
only his secondary object. His primary object was to force himself into
the service of the existing government, and to regain possession of
those important and lucrative places from which he had been dismissed
more than two years before. He knew that the country and the Parliament
would not patiently bear to see the English army commanded by foreign
generals. Two Englishmen only had shown themselves fit for high military
posts, himself and Talmash. If Talmash were defeated and disgraced,
William would scarcely have a choice. In fact, as soon as it was known
that the expedition had failed, and that Talmash was no more, the
general cry was that the King ought to receive into his favour the
accomplished Captain who had done such good service at Walcourt, at Cork
and at Kinsale. Nor can we blame the multitude for raising this cry.
For every body knew that Marlborough was an eminently brave, skilful
and successful officer; but very few persons knew that he had, while
commanding William's troops, while sitting in William's council, while
waiting in William's bedchamber, formed a most artful and dangerous plot
for the subversion of William's throne; and still fewer suspected the
real author of the recent calamity, of the slaughter in the Bay of
Camaret, of the melancholy fate of Talmash. The effect therefore of the
foulest of all treasons was to raise the traitor in public estimation.
Nor was he wanting to himself at this conjuncture. While the Royal
Exchange was in consternation at this disaster of which he was the
cause, while many families were clothing themselves in mourning for the
brave men of whom he was the murderer, he repaired to Whitehall; and
there, doubtless with all that grace, that nobleness, that suavity,
under which lay, hidden from all common observers, a seared conscience
and a remorseless heart, he professed himself the most devoted, the most
loyal, of all the subjects of William and Mary, and expressed a hope
that he might, in this emergency, be permitted to offer his sword to
their Majesties. Shrewsbury was very desirous that the offer should be
accepted; but a short and dry answer from William, who was then in
the Netherlands, put an end for the present to all negotiation. About
Talmash the King expressed himself with generous tenderness. "The poor
fellow's fate," he wrote, "has affected me much. I do not indeed think
that he managed well; but it was his ardent desire to distinguish
himself that impelled him to attempt impossibilities. " [534]
The armament which had returned to Portsmouth soon sailed again for the
coast of France, but achieved only exploits worse than inglorious. An
attempt was made to blow up the pier at Dunkirk. Some towns inhabited by
quiet tradesmen and fishermen were bombarded. In Dieppe scarcely a house
was left standing; a third part of Havre was laid in ashes; and shells
were thrown into Calais which destroyed thirty private dwellings. The
French and the Jacobites loudly exclaimed against the cowardice
and barbarity of making war on an unwarlike population. The English
government vindicated itself by reminding the world of the sufferings of
the thrice wasted Palatinate; and, as against Lewis and the flatterers
of Lewis, the vindication was complete. But whether it were consistent
with humanity and with sound policy to visit the crimes which an
absolute Prince and a ferocious soldiery had committed in the Palatinate
on shopkeepers and labourers, on women and children, who did not know
that the Palatinate existed, may perhaps be doubted.
Meanwhile Russell's fleet was rendering good service to the common
cause. Adverse winds had impeded his progress through the Straits so
long that he did not reach Carthagena till the middle of July. By that
time the progress of the French arms had spread terror even to the
Escurial. Noailles had, on the banks of the Tar, routed an army
commanded by the Viceroy of Catalonia; and, on the day on which this
victory was won, the Brest squadron had joined the Toulon squadron in
the Bay of Rosas. Palamos, attacked at once by land and sea, was taken
by storm. Gerona capitulated after a faint show of resistance. Ostalric
surrendered at the first summons. Barcelona would in all probability
have fallen, had not the French Admirals learned that the conquerors of
La Hogue was approaching. They instantly quitted the coast of Catalonia,
and never thought themselves safe till they had taken shelter under the
batteries of Toulon.
The Spanish government expressed warm gratitude for this seasonable
assistance, and presented to the English Admiral a jewel which was
popularly said to be worth near twenty thousand pounds sterling. There
was no difficulty in finding such a jewel among the hoards of gorgeous
trinkets which had been left by Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second
to a degenerate race. But, in all that constitutes the true wealth of
states, Spain was poor indeed. Her treasury was empty; her arsenals were
unfurnished; her ships were so rotten that they seemed likely to fly
asunder at the discharge of their own guns. Her ragged and starving
soldiers often mingled with the crowd of beggars at the doors of
convents, and battled there for a mess of pottage and a crust of bread.
Russell underwent those trials which no English commander whose hard
fate it has been to cooperate with Spaniards has escaped. The Viceroy
of Catalonia promised much, did nothing, and expected every thing. He
declared that three hundred and fifty thousand rations were ready to be
served out to the fleet at Carthagena. It turned out that there were not
in all the stores of that port provisions sufficient to victual a single
frigate for a single week. Yet His Excellency thought himself entitled
to complain because England had not sent an army as well as a fleet, and
because the heretic Admiral did not choose to expose the fleet to utter
destruction by attacking the French under the guns of Toulon. Russell
implored the Spanish authorities to look well to their dockyards, and to
try to have, by the next spring, a small squadron which might at least
be able to float; but he could not prevail on them to careen a single
ship. He could with difficulty obtain, on hard conditions, permission to
send a few of his sick men to marine hospitals on shore. Yet, in spite
of all the trouble given him by the imbecility and ingratitude of a
government which has generally caused more annoyance to its allies than
to its enemies, he acquitted himself well. It is but just to him to
say that, from the time at which he became First Lord of the Admiralty,
there was a decided improvement in the naval administration. Though
he lay with his fleet many months near an inhospitable shore, and at a
great distance from England, there were no complaints about the quality
or the quantity of provisions. The crews had better food and drink
than they had ever had before; comforts which Spain did not afford were
supplied from home; and yet the charge was not greater than when, in
Torrington's time, the sailor was poisoned with mouldy biscuit and
nauseous beer.
As almost the whole maritime force of France was in the Mediterranean,
and as it seemed likely that an attempt would be made on Barcelona
in the following year, Russell received orders to winter at Cadiz.
In October he sailed to that port; and there he employed himself in
refitting his ships with an activity unintelligible to the Spanish
functionaries, who calmly suffered the miserable remains of what had
once been the greatest navy in the world to rot under their eyes. [535]
Along the eastern frontier of France the war during this year seemed to
languish. In Piedmont and on the Rhine the most important events of the
campaign were petty skirmishes and predatory incursions. Lewis remained
at Versailles, and sent his son, the Dauphin, to represent him in the
Netherlands; but the Dauphin was placed under the tutelage of Luxemburg,
and proved a most submissive pupil. During several months the hostile
armies observed each other. The allies made one bold push with the
intention of carrying the war into the French territory; but Luxemburg,
by a forced march, which excited the admiration of persons versed in the
military art, frustrated the design. William on the other hand succeeded
in taking Huy, then a fortress of the third rank. No battle was fought;
no important town was besieged; but the confederates were satisfied with
their campaign. Of the four previous years every one had been marked by
some great disaster. In 1690 Waldeck had been defeated at Fleurus.
In 1691 Mons had fallen. In 1692 Namur had been taken in sight of the
allied army; and this calamity had been speedily followed by the defeat
of Steinkirk. In 1693 the battle of Landen had been lost; and Charleroy
had submitted to the conqueror. At length in 1694 the tide had begun to
turn. The French arms had made no progress. What had been gained by the
allies was indeed not much; but the smallest gain was welcome to those
whom a long run of evil fortune had discouraged.
In England, the general opinion was that, notwithstanding the disaster
in Camaret Bay, the war was on the whole proceeding satisfactorily
both by land and by sea. But some parts of the internal administration
excited, during this autumn, much discontent.
Since Trenchard had been appointed Secretary of State, the Jacobite
agitators had found their situation much more unpleasant than before.
Sidney had been too indulgent and too fond of pleasure to give them much
trouble. Nottingham was a diligent and honest minister; but he was as
high a Tory as a faithful subject of William and Mary could be; he loved
and esteemed many of the nonjurors; and, though he might force himself
to be severe when nothing but severity could save the State, he was
not extreme to mark the transgressions of his old friends; nor did he
encourage talebearers to come to Whitehall with reports of conspiracies.
But Trenchard was both an active public servant and an earnest Whig.
Even if he had himself been inclined to lenity, he would have been urged
to severity by those who surrounded him. He had constantly at his side
Hugh Speke and Aaron Smith, men to whom a hunt after a Jacobite was
the most exciting of all sports. The cry of the malecontents was that
Nottingham had kept his bloodhounds in the leash, but that Trenchard had
let them slip. Every honest gentleman who loved the Church and hated
the Dutch went in danger of his life. There was a constant bustle at
the Secretary's Office, a constant stream of informers coming in, and of
messengers with warrants going out. It was said too, that the warrants
were often irregularly drawn, that they did not specify the person, that
they did not specify the crime, and yet that, under the authority of
such instruments as these, houses were entered, desks and cabinets
searched, valuable papers carried away, and men of good birth and
breeding flung into gaol among felons. [536] The minister and his agents
answered that Westminster Hall was open; that, if any man had been
illegally imprisoned, he had only to bring his action; that juries were
quite sufficiently disposed to listen to any person who pretended to
have been oppressed by cruel and griping men in power, and that, as
none of the prisoners whose wrongs were so pathetically described had
ventured to resort to this obvious and easy mode of obtaining redress,
it might fairly be inferred that nothing had been done which could
not be justified. The clamour of the malecontents however made a
considerable impression on the public mind; and at length, a transaction
in which Trenchard was more unlucky than culpable, brought on him and on
the government with which he was connected much temporary obloquy.
Among the informers who haunted his office was an Irish vagabond who had
borne more than one name and had professed more than one religion. He
now called himself Taaffe. He had been a priest of the Roman Catholic
Church, and secretary to Adda the Papal Nuncio, but had since the
Revolution turned Protestant, had taken a wife, and had distinguished
himself by his activity in discovering the concealed property of those
Jesuits and Benedictines who, during the late reign, had been quartered
in London. The ministers despised him; but they trusted him. They
thought that he had, by his apostasy, and by the part which he had borne
in the spoliation of the religious orders, cut himself off from all
retreat, and that, having nothing but a halter to expect from King
James, he must be true to King William. [537]
This man fell in with a Jacobite agent named Lunt, who had, since the
Revolution, been repeatedly employed among the discontented gentry
of Cheshire and Lancashire, and who had been privy to those plans of
insurrection which had been disconcerted by the battle of the Boyne in
1690, and by the battle of La Hogue in 1692. Lunt had once been arrested
on suspicion of treason, but had been discharged for want of legal proof
of his guilt. He was a mere hireling, and was, without much difficulty,
induced by Taaffe to turn approver. The pair went to Trenchard. Lunt
told his story, mentioned the names of some Cheshire and Lancashire
squires to whom he had, as he affirmed, carried commissions from Saint
Germains, and of others, who had, to his knowledge, formed secret hoards
of arms and ammunition. His simple oath would not have been sufficient
to support a charge of high treason; but he produced another witness
whose evidence seemed to make the case complete. The narrative was
plausible and coherent; and indeed, though it may have been embellished
by fictions, there can be little doubt that it was in substance true.
[538] Messengers and search warrants were sent down to Lancashire. Aaron
Smith himself went thither; and Taaffe went with him. The alarm had been
given by some of the numerous traitors who ate the bread of William.
Some of the accused persons had fled; and others had buried their sabres
and muskets and burned their papers. Nevertheless, discoveries were
made which confirmed Lunt's depositions. Behind the wainscot of the old
mansion of one Roman Catholic family was discovered a commission signed
by James. Another house, of which the master had absconded, was strictly
searched, in spite of the solemn asseverations of his wife and his
servants that no arms were concealed there. While the lady, with her
hand on her heart, was protesting on her honour that her husband was
falsely accused, the messengers observed that the back of the chimney
did not seem to be firmly fixed. It was removed, and a heap of blades
such as were used by horse soldiers tumbled out. In one of the garrets
were found, carefully bricked up, thirty saddles for troopers, as
many breastplates, and sixty cavalry swords. Trenchard and Aaron Smith
thought the case complete; and it was determined that those culprits who
had been apprehended should be tried by a special commission. [539]
Taaffe now confidently expected to be recompensed for his services;
but he found a cold reception at the Treasury. He had gone down to
Lancashire chiefly in order that he might, under the protection of a
search warrant, pilfer trinkets and broad pieces from secret drawers.
His sleight of hand however had not altogether escaped the observation
of his companions. They discovered that he had made free with the
communion plate of the Popish families, whose private hoards he had
assisted in ransacking. When therefore he applied for reward, he was
dismissed, not merely with a refusal, but with a stern reprimand. He
went away mad with greediness and spite. There was yet one way in which
he might obtain both money and revenge; and that way he took. He made
overtures to the friends of the prisoners. He and he alone could undo
what he had done, could save the accused from the gallows, could cover
the accusers with infamy, could drive from office the Secretary and the
Solicitor who were the dread of all the friends of King James. Loathsome
as Taaffe was to the Jacobites, his offer was not to be slighted. He
received a sum in hand; he was assured that a comfortable annuity for
life should be settled on him when the business was done; and he was
sent down into the country, and kept in strict seclusion against the day
of trial. [540]
Meanwhile unlicensed pamphlets, in which the Lancashire plot was classed
with Oates's plot, with Dangerfield's plot, with Fuller's plot, with
Young's plot, with Whitney's plot, were circulated all over the kingdom,
and especially in the county which was to furnish the jury. Of these
pamphlets the longest, the ablest, and the bitterest, entitled a Letter
to Secretary Trenchard, was commonly ascribed to Ferguson. It is not
improbable that Ferguson may have furnished some of the materials, and
may have conveyed the manuscript to the press. But many passages are
written with an art and a vigour which assuredly did not belong to him.
Those who judge by internal evidence may perhaps think that, in some
parts of this remarkable tract, they can discern the last gleam of the
malignant genius of Montgomery. A few weeks after the appearance of the
Letter he sank, unhonoured and unlamented, into the grave. [541]
There were then no printed newspapers except the London Gazette.
But since the Revolution the newsletter had become a more important
political engine than it had previously been. The newsletters of one
writer named Dyer were widely circulated in manuscript. He affected to
be a Tory and a High Churchman, and was consequently regarded by the
foxhunting lords of manors, all over the kingdom, as an oracle. He had
already been twice in prison; but his gains had more than compensated
for his sufferings, and he still persisted in seasoning his intelligence
to suit the taste of the country gentlemen. He now turned the Lancashire
plot into ridicule, declared that the guns which had been found were old
fowling pieces, that the saddles were meant only for hunting, and that
the swords were rusty reliques of Edge Hill and Marston Moor. [542] The
effect produced by all this invective and sarcasm on the public mind
seems to have been great. Even at the Dutch Embassy, where assuredly
there was no leaning towards Jacobitism, there was a strong impression
that it would be unwise to bring the prisoners to trial. In Lancashire
and Cheshire the prevailing sentiments were pity for the accused and
hatred of the prosecutors. The government however persevered. In October
four Judges went down to Manchester. At present the population of that
town is made up of persons born in every part of the British Isles, and
consequently has no especial sympathy with the landowners, the farmers
and the agricultural labourers of the neighbouring districts. But in
the seventeenth century the Manchester man was a Lancashire man. His
politics were those of his county. For the old Cavalier families of his
county he felt a great respect; and he was furious when he thought that
some of the best blood of his county was about to be shed by a knot
of Roundhead pettifoggers from London. Multitudes of people from the
neighbouring villages filled the streets of the town, and saw with grief
and indignation the array of drawn swords and loaded carbines which
surrounded the culprits. Aaron Smith's arrangements do not seem to have
been skilful. The chief counsel for the Crown was Sir William Williams,
who, though now well stricken in years and possessed of a great estate,
still continued to practise. One fault had thrown a dark shade over the
latter part of his life. The recollection of that day on which he had
stood up in Westminster Hall, amidst laughter and hooting, to defend the
dispensing power and to attack the right of petition, had, ever
since the Revolution, kept him back from honour. He was an angry and
disappointed man, and was by no means disposed to incur unpopularity in
the cause of a government to which he owed nothing, and from which he
hoped nothing.
Of the trial no detailed report has come down to us; but we have both
a Whig narrative and a Jacobite narrative. [543] It seems that the
prisoners who were first arraigned did not sever in their challenges,
and were consequently tried together. Williams examined or rather
crossexamined his own witnesses with a severity which confused them. The
crowd which filled the court laughed and clamoured. Lunt in particular
became completely bewildered, mistook one person for another, and did
not recover himself till the judges took him out of the hands of the
counsel for the Crown. For some of the prisoners an alibi was set up.
Evidence was also produced to show, what was undoubtedly quite true,
that Lunt was a man of abandoned character. The result however seemed
doubtful till, to the dismay of the prosecutors, Taaffe entered the box.
He swore with unblushing forehead that the whole story of the plot was a
circumstantial lie devised by himself and Lunt. Williams threw down his
brief; and, in truth, a more honest advocate might well have done the
same. The prisoners who were at the bar were instantly acquitted; those
who had not yet been tried were set at liberty; the witnesses for
the prosecution were pelted out of Manchester; the Clerk of the Crown
narrowly escaped with life; and the judges took their departure amidst
hisses and execrations.
A few days after the close of the trials at Manchester William returned
to England. On the twelfth of November, only forty-eight hours after
his arrival at Kensington, the Houses met. He congratulated them on the
improved aspect of affairs. Both by land and by sea the events of the
year which was about to close had been, on the whole, favourable to the
allies; the French armies had made no progress; the French fleets had
not ventured to show themselves; nevertheless, a safe and honourable
peace could be obtained only by a vigorous prosecution of the war;
and the war could not be vigorously prosecuted without large supplies.
William then reminded the Commons that the Act by which they had settled
the tonnage and poundage on the Crown for four years was about to
expire, and expressed his hope that it would be renewed.
After the King had spoken, the Commons, for some reason which no writer
has explained, adjourned for a week. Before they met again, an event
took place which caused great sorrow at the palace, and through all the
ranks of the Low Church party. Tillotson was taken suddenly ill while
attending public worship in the chapel of Whitehall. Prompt remedies
might perhaps have saved him; but he would not interrupt the prayers;
and, before the service was over, his malady was beyond the reach of
medicine. He was almost speechless; but his friends long remembered with
pleasure a few broken ejaculations which showed that he enjoyed peace of
mind to the last. He was buried in the church of Saint Lawrence Jewry,
near Guildhall. It was there that he had won his immense oratorical
reputation. He had preached there during the thirty years which preceded
his elevation to the throne of Canterbury. His eloquence had attracted
to the heart of the City crowds of the learned and polite, from the
Inns of Court and from the lordly mansions of Saint James's and Soho. A
considerable part of his congregation had generally consisted of young
clergymen, who came to learn the art of preaching at the feet of him who
was universally considered as the first of preachers. To this church his
remains were now carried through a mourning population. The hearse was
followed by an endless train of splendid equipages from Lambeth through
Southwark and over London Bridge. Burnet preached the funeral sermon.
His kind and honest heart was overcome by so many tender recollections
that, in the midst of his discourse, he paused and burst into tears,
while a loud moan of sorrow rose from the whole auditory. The Queen
could not speak of her favourite instructor without weeping. Even
William was visibly moved. "I have lost," he said, "the best friend that
I ever had, and the best man that I ever knew. " The only Englishman who
is mentioned with tenderness in any part of the great mass of letters
which the King wrote to Heinsius is Tillotson. The Archbishop had left a
widow. To her William granted a pension of four hundred a year, which he
afterwards increased to six hundred. His anxiety that she should receive
her income regularly and without stoppages was honourable to him. Every
quarterday he ordered the money, without any deduction, to be brought to
himself, and immediately sent it to her. Tillotson had bequeathed to her
no property, except a great number of manuscript sermons. Such was his
fame among his contemporaries that those sermons were purchased by the
booksellers for the almost incredible sum of two thousand five hundred
guineas, equivalent, in the wretched state in which the silver coin then
was, to at least three thousand six hundred pounds. Such a price had
never before been given in England for any copyright. About the same
time Dryden, whose reputation was then in the zenith, received thirteen
hundred pounds for his translation of all the works of Virgil, and was
thought to have been splendidly remunerated. [544]
It was not easy to fill satisfactorily the high place which Tillotson
had left vacant. Mary gave her voice for Stillingfleet, and pressed
his claims as earnestly as she ever ventured to press any thing. In
abilities and attainments he had few superiors among the clergy. But,
though he would probably have been considered as a Low Churchman by
Jane and South, he was too high a Churchman for William; and Tenison was
appointed. The new primate was not eminently distinguished by eloquence
or learning: but he was honest, prudent, laborious and benevolent; he
had been a good rector of a large parish and a good bishop of a large
diocese; detraction had not yet been busy with his name; and it might
well be thought that a man of plain sense, moderation and integrity, was
more likely than a man of brilliant genius and lofty spirit to succeed
in the arduous task of quieting a discontented and distracted Church.
Meanwhile the Commons had entered upon business. They cheerfully voted
about two million four hundred thousand pounds for the army, and as
much for the navy. The land tax for the year was again fixed at four
shillings in the pound; the Tonnage Act was renewed for a term of five
years; and a fund was established on which the government was authorised
to borrow two millions and a half.
Some time was spent by both Houses in discussing the Manchester trials.
If the malecontents had been wise, they would have been satisfied with
the advantage which they had already gained. Their friends had been set
free. The prosecutors had with difficulty escaped from the hands of an
enraged multitude. The character of the government had been seriously
damaged. The ministers were accused, in prose and in verse, sometimes
in earnest and sometimes in jest, of having hired a gang of ruffians to
swear away the lives of honest gentlemen. Even moderate politicians, who
gave no credit to these foul imputations, owned that Trenchard ought to
have remembered the villanies of Fuller and Young, and to have been
on his guard against such wretches as Taaffe and Lunt. The unfortunate
Secretary's health and spirits had given way. It was said that he was
dying; and it was certain that he would not long continue to hold the
seals. The Tories had won a great victory; but, in their eagerness to
improve it, they turned it into a defeat.
Early in the session Howe complained, with his usual vehemence and
asperity, of the indignities to which innocent and honourable men,
highly descended and highly esteemed, had been subjected by Aaron Smith
and the wretches who were in his pay. The leading Whigs, with great
judgment, demanded an inquiry. Then the Tories began to flinch. They
well knew that an inquiry could not strengthen their case, and might
weaken it. The issue, they said, had been tried; a jury had pronounced;
the verdict was definitive; and it would be monstrous to give the
false witnesses who had been stoned out of Manchester an opportunity
of repeating their lesson. To this argument the answer was obvious. The
verdict was definitive as respected the defendants, but not as respected
the prosecutors. The prosecutors were now in their turn defendants, and
were entitled to all the privileges of defendants. It did not follow,
because the Lancashire gentlemen had been found, and very properly
found, not guilty of treason, that the Secretary of State or the
Solicitor of the Treasury had been guilty of unfairness or even of
rashness. The House, by one hundred and nineteen votes to one hundred
and two resolved that Aaron Smith and the witnesses on both sides
should be ordered to attend. Several days were passed in examination
and crossexamination; and sometimes the sittings extended far into the
night. It soon became clear that the prosecution had not been lightly
instituted, and that some of the persons who had been acquitted had been
concerned in treasonable schemes. The Tories would now have been content
with a drawn battle; but the Whigs were not disposed to forego their
advantage. It was moved that there had been a sufficient ground for the
proceedings before the Special Commission; and this motion was carried
without a division. The opposition proposed to add some words implying
that the witnesses for the Crown had forsworn themselves; but these
words were rejected by one hundred and thirty-six votes to one hundred
and nine, and it was resolved by one hundred and thirty-three votes to
ninety-seven that there had been a dangerous conspiracy. The Lords had
meanwhile been deliberating on the same subject, and had come to the
same conclusion. They sent Taaffe to prison for prevarication; and they
passed resolutions acquitting both the government and the judges of all
blame. The public however continued to think that the gentlemen who
had been tried at Manchester had been unjustifiably persecuted, till
a Jacobite plot of singular atrocity, brought home to the plotters by
decisive evidence, produced a violent revulsion of feeling. [545]
Meanwhile three bills, which had been repeatedly discussed in preceding
years, and two of which had been carried in vain to the foot of the
throne, had been again brought in; the Place Bill, the Bill for the
Regulation of Trials in cases of Treason, and the Triennial Bill.
The Place Bill did not reach the Lords. It was thrice read in the Lower
House, but was not passed. At the very last moment it was rejected by
a hundred and seventy-five votes to a hundred and forty-two. Howe and
Barley were the tellers for the minority. [546]
The Bill for the Regulation of Trials in cases of Treason went up again
to the Peers. Their Lordships again added to it the clause which had
formerly been fatal to it. The Commons again refused to grant any new
privilege to the hereditary aristocracy. Conferences were again held;
reasons were again exchanged; both Houses were again obstinate; and the
bill was again lost. [547]
The Triennial Bill was more fortunate. It was brought in on the first
day of the session, and went easily and rapidly through both Houses. The
only question about which there was any serious contention was, how long
the existing Parliament should be suffered to continue. After several
sharp debates November in the year 1696 was fixed as the extreme term.
The Tonnage Bill and the Triennial Bill proceeded almost side by side.
Both were, on the twenty-second of December, ready for the royal assent.
William came in state on that day to Westminster. The attendance of
members of both Houses was large. When the Clerk of the Crown read the
words, "A Bill for the frequent Calling and Meeting of Parliaments," the
anxiety was great. When the Clerk of the Parliament made answer, "Le roy
et la royne le veulent," a loud and long hum of delight and exultation
rose from the benches and the bar. [548] William had resolved many
months before not to refuse his assent a second time to so popular a
law. [549] There was some however who thought that he would not have
made so great a concession if he had on that day been quite himself.
It was plain indeed that he was strangely agitated and unnerved. It
had been announced that he would dine in public at Whitehall. But he
disappointed the curiosity of the multitude which on such occasions
flocked to the Court, and hurried back to Kensington. [550]
He had but too good reason to be uneasy. His wife had, during two or
three days, been poorly; and on the preceding evening grave symptoms had
appeared. Sir Thomas Millington, who was physician in ordinary to the
King, thought that she had the measles. But Radcliffe, who, with coarse
manners and little book learning, had raised himself to the first
practice in London chiefly by his rare skill in diagnostics, uttered
the more alarming words, small pox. That disease, over which science has
since achieved a succession of glorious and beneficient victories, was
then the most terrible of all the ministers of death. The havoc of the
plague had been far more rapid; but the plague had visited our shores
only once or twice within living memory; and the small pox was always
present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant
fears all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives
it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a
changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks
of the betrothed maiden objects of horror to the lover. Towards the
end of the year 1694, this pestilence was more than usually severe. At
length the infection spread to the palace, and reached the young and
blooming Queen. She received the intimation of her danger with true
greatness of soul. She gave orders that every lady of her bedchamber,
every maid of honour, nay, every menial servant, who had not had the
small pox, should instantly leave Kensington House. She locked herself
up during a short time in her closet, burned some papers, arranged
others, and then calmly awaited her fate.
During two or three days there were many alternations of hope and fear.
The physicians contradicted each other and themselves in a way which
sufficiently indicates the state of medical science in that age. The
disease was measles; it was scarlet fever; it was spotted fever; it was
erysipelas. At one moment some symptoms, which in truth showed that
the case was almost hopeless, were hailed as indications of returning
health. At length all doubt was over. Radcliffe's opinion proved to be
right. It was plain that the Queen was sinking under small pox of the
most malignant type.
All this time William remained night and day near her bedside. The
little couch on which he slept when he was in camp was spread for him
in the antechamber; but he scarcely lay down on it. The sight of his
misery, the Dutch Envoy wrote, was enough to melt the hardest heart.
Nothing seemed to be left of the man whose serene fortitude had been
the wonder of old soldiers on the disastrous day of Landen, and of old
sailors on that fearful night among the sheets of ice and banks of
sand on the coast of Goree. The very domestics saw the tears running
unchecked down that face, of which the stern composure had seldom been
disturbed by any triumph or by any defeat. Several of the prelates were
in attendance. The King drew Burnet aside, and gave way to an agony of
grief. "There is no hope," he cried. "I was the happiest man on earth;
and I am the most miserable. She had no fault; none; you knew her well;
but you could not know, nobody but myself could know, her goodness. "
Tenison undertook to tell her that she was dying. He was afraid that
such a communication, abruptly made, might agitate her violently, and
began with much management. But she soon caught his meaning, and, with
that gentle womanly courage which so often puts our bravery to shame,
submitted herself to the will of God. She called for a small cabinet
in which her most important papers were locked up, gave orders that, as
soon as she was no more, it should be delivered to the King, and then
dismissed worldly cares from her mind. She received the Eucharist, and
repeated her part of the office with unimpaired memory and intelligence,
though in a feeble voice. She observed that Tenison had been long
standing at her bedside, and, with that sweet courtesy which was
habitual to her, faltered out her commands that he would sit down, and
repeated them till he obeyed. After she had received the sacrament she
sank rapidly, and uttered only a few broken words. Twice she tried to
take a last farewell of him whom she had loved so truly and entirely;
but she was unable to speak. He had a succession of fits so alarming
that his Privy Councillors, who were assembled in a neighbouring room,
were apprehensive for his reason and his life. The Duke of Leeds, at the
request of his colleagues, ventured to assume the friendly guardianship
of which minds deranged by sorrow stand in need.
