On questions of
polite learning his decisions were regarded at all the coffeehouses as
without appeal.
polite learning his decisions were regarded at all the coffeehouses as
without appeal.
Macaulay
The
evil counsellors had long been tormented by these gloomy apprehensions,
and some of them had contemplated strange and desperate remedies. James
had scarcely mounted the throne when it began to be whispered about
Whitehall that, if the Lady Anne would turn Roman Catholic, it might not
be impossible, with the help of Lewis, to transfer to her the birthright
of her elder sister. At the French embassy this scheme was warmly
approved; and Bonrepaux gave it as his opinion that the assent of James
would be easily obtained. [299] Soon, however, it became manifest that
Anne was unalterably attached to the Established Church. All thought of
making her Queen was therefore relinquished. Nevertheless, a small knot
of fanatics still continued to cherish a wild hope that they might be
able to change the order of succession. The plan formed by these men
was set forth in a minute of which a rude French translation has been
preserved. It was to be hoped, they said, that the King might be able to
establish the true faith without resorting to extremities; but, in the
worst event, he might leave his crown at the disposal of Lewis. It was
better for Englishmen to be the vassals of France than the slaves of the
Devil. [300] This extraordinary document was handed about from Jesuit
to Jesuit, and from courtier to courtier, till some eminent Roman
Catholics, in whom bigotry had not extinguished patriotism, furnished
the Dutch Ambassador with a copy. He put the paper into the hands of
James. James, greatly agitated, pronounced it a vile forgery contrived
by some pamphleteer in Holland. The Dutch minister resolutely
answered that he could prove the contrary by the testimony of several
distinguished members of His Majesty's own Church, nay, that there would
be no difficulty in pointing out the writer, who, after all, had written
only what many priests and many busy politicians said every day in the
galleries of the palace. The King did not think it expedient to ask who
the writer was, but, abandoning the charge of forgery, protested, with
great vehemence and solemnity, that no thought of disinheriting his
eldest daughter had ever crossed his mind. "Nobody," he said, "ever
dared to hint such a thing to me. I never would listen to it. God does
not command us to propagate the true religion by injustice and this
would be the foulest, the most unnatural injustice. " [301] Notwithstanding
all these professions, Barillon, a few days later, reported to his court
that James had begun to listen to suggestions respecting a change in the
order of succession, that the question was doubtless a delicate one,
but that there was reason to hope that, with time and management, a
way might be found to settle the crown on some Roman Catholic to the
exclusion of the two Princesses. [302] During many months this subject
continued to be discussed by the fiercest and most extravagant Papists
about the court; and candidates for the regal office were actually
named. [303]
It is not probable however that James ever meant to take a course so
insane. He must have known that England would never bear for a single
day the yoke of an usurper who was also a Papist, and that any attempt
to set aside the Lady Mary would have been withstood to the death, both
by all those who had supported the Exclusion Bill, and by all those
who had opposed it. There is however no doubt that the King was an
accomplice in a plot less absurd, but not less unjustifiable,
against the rights of his children. Tyrconnel had, with his master's
approbation, made arrangements for separating Ireland from the empire,
and for placing her under the protection of Lewis, as soon as the crown
should devolve on a Protestant sovereign. Bonrepaux had been consulted,
had imparted the design to his court, and had been instructed to assure
Tyrconnel that France would lend effectual aid to the accomplishment of
this great project. [304] These transactions, which, though perhaps
not in all parts accurately known at the Hague, were strongly suspected
there, must not be left out of the account if we would pass a just
judgment on the course taken a few months later by the Princess of
Orange. Those who pronounce her guilty of a breach of filial duty must
admit that her fault was at least greatly extenuated by her wrongs. If,
to serve the cause of her religion, she broke through the most sacred
ties of consanguinity, she only followed her father's example. She did
not assist to depose him till he had conspired to disinherit her.
Scarcely had Bonrepaux been informed that Lewis had resolved to assist
the enterprise of Tyrconnel when all thoughts of that enterprise were
abandoned. James had caught the first glimpse of a hope which delighted
and elated him. The Queen was with child.
Before the end of October 1687 the great news began to be whispered.
It was observed that Her Majesty had absented herself from some public
ceremonies, on the plea of indisposition. It was said that many relics,
supposed to possess extraordinary virtue, had been hung about her.
Soon the story made its way from the palace to the coffeehouses of the
capital, and spread fast over the country. By a very small minority the
rumour was welcomed with joy. The great body of the nation listened with
mingled derision and fear. There was indeed nothing very extraordinary
in what had happened.
The King had but just completed his fifty-fourth year. The Queen was
in the summer of life. She had already borne four children who had
died young; and long afterwards she was delivered of another child
whom nobody had any interest in treating as supposititious, and who was
therefore never said to be so. As, however, five years had elapsed since
her last pregnancy, the people, under the influence of that delusion
which leads men to believe what they wish, had ceased to entertain any
apprehension that she would give an heir to the throne. On the other
hand, nothing seemed more natural and probable than that the Jesuits
should have contrived a pious fraud. It was certain that they must
consider the accession of the Princess of Orange as one of the greatest
calamities which could befall their Church. It was equally certain
that they would not be very scrupulous about doing whatever might be
necessary to save their Church from a great calamity. In books written
by eminent members of the Society, and licensed by its rulers, it was
distinctly laid down that means even more shocking to all notions of
justice and humanity than the introduction of a spurious heir into
a family might lawfully be employed for ends less important than the
conversion of a heretical kingdom. It had got abroad that some of the
King's advisers, and even the King himself, had meditated schemes for
defrauding the Lady Mary, either wholly or in part, of her rightful
inheritance. A suspicion, not indeed well founded, but by no means so
absurd as is commonly supposed, took possession of the public mind. The
folly of some Roman Catholics confirmed the vulgar prejudice. They spoke
of the auspicious event as strange, as miraculous, as an exertion of the
same Divine power which had made Sarah proud and happy in Isaac, and
had given Samuel to the prayers of Hannah. Mary's mother, the Duchess of
Modena, had lately died. A short time before her death, she had, it
was said, implored the Virgin of Loretto, with fervent vows and rich
offerings, to bestow a son on James. The King himself had, in the
preceding August, turned aside from his progress to visit the Holy
Well, and had there besought Saint Winifred to obtain for him that boon
without which his great designs for the propagation of the true faith
could be but imperfectly executed. The imprudent zealots who dwelt on
these tales foretold with confidence that the unborn infant would be a
boy, and offered to back their opinion by laying twenty guineas to one.
Heaven, they affirmed, would not have interfered but for a great end.
One fanatic announced that the Queen would give birth to twins, of whom
the elder would be King of England, and the younger Pope of Rome. Mary
could not conceal the delight with which she heard this prophecy; and
her ladies found that they could not gratify her more than by talking of
it. The Roman Catholics would have acted more wisely if they had spoken
of the pregnancy as of a natural event, and if they had borne with
moderation their unexpected good fortune. Their insolent triumph excited
the popular indignation. Their predictions strengthened the popular
suspicions. From the Prince and Princess of Denmark down to porters and
laundresses nobody alluded to the promised birth without a sneer. The
wits of London described the new miracle in rhymes which, it may well be
supposed, were not the most delicate. The rough country squires roared
with laughter if they met with any person simple enough to believe that
the Queen was really likely to be again a mother. A royal proclamation
appeared commanding the clergy to read a form of prayer and thanksgiving
which had been prepared for this joyful occasion by Crewe and Sprat.
The clergy obeyed: but it was observed that the congregations made no
responses and showed no signs of reverence. Soon in all the coffeehouses
was handed about a brutal lampoon on the courtly prelates whose pens the
King had employed. Mother East had also her full share of abuse. Into
that homely monosyllable our ancestors had degraded the name of the
great house of Este which reigned at Modena. [305]
The new hope which elated the King's spirits was mingled with many
fears. Something more than the birth of a Prince of Wales was necessary
to the success of the plans formed by the Jesuitical party. It was
not very likely that James would live till his son should be of age to
exercise the regal functions. The law had made no provision for the
case of a minority. The reigning sovereign was not competent to make
provision for such a case by will. The legislature only could supply the
defect. If James should die before the defect had been supplied, leaving
a successor of tender years, the supreme power would undoubtedly devolve
on Protestants. Those Tories who held most firmly the doctrine that
nothing could justify them in resisting their liege lord would have no
scruple about drawing their swords against a Popish woman who should
dare to usurp the guardianship of the realm and of the infant sovereign.
The result of a contest could scarcely be matter of doubt. The Prince of
Orange or his wife, would be Regent. The young King would be placed in
the hands of heretical instructors, whose arts might speedily efface
from his mind the impressions which might have been made on it in the
nursery. He might prove another Edward the Sixth; and the blessing
granted to the intercession of the Virgin Mother and of Saint Winifred
might be turned into a curse. [306] This was a danger against which
nothing but, an Act of Parliament could be a security; and to obtain
such an Act was not easy. Everything seemed to indicate that, if the
Houses were convoked, they would come up to Westminster animated by
the spirit of 1640. The event of the county elections could hardly be
doubted. The whole body of freeholders, high and low, clerical and lay,
was strongly excited against the government. In the great majority of
those towns where the right of voting depended on the payment of local
taxes, or on the occupation of a tenement, no courtly candidate could
dare to show his face. A very large part of the House of Commons was
returned by members of municipal corporations. These corporations had
recently been remodelled for the purpose of destroying the influence
of the Whigs and Dissenters. More than a hundred constituent bodies had
been deprived of their charters by tribunals devoted to the crown,
or had been induced to avert compulsory disfranchisement by voluntary
surrender. Every Mayor, every Alderman, every Town Clerk, from Berwick
to Helstone, was a Tory and a Churchman: but Tories and Churchmen were
now no longer devoted to the sovereign. The new municipalities were
more unmanageable than the old municipalities had ever been, and would
undoubtedly return representatives whose first act would be to impeach
all the Popish Privy Councillors, and all the members of the High
Commission.
In the Lords the prospect was scarcely less gloomy than in the Commons.
Among the temporal peers it was certain that an immense majority would
be against the King's measures: and on that episcopal bench, which
seven years before had unanimously supported him against those who
had attempted to deprive him of his birthright, he could now look for
support only to four or five sycophants despised by their profession and
by their country. [307]
To all men not utterly blinded by passion these difficulties appeared
insuperable. The most unscrupulous slaves of power showed signs of
uneasiness. Dryden muttered that the King would only make matters worse
by trying to mend them, and sighed for the golden days of the careless
and goodnatured Charles. [308] Even Jeffreys wavered. As long as he
was poor, he was perfectly ready to face obloquy and public hatred for
lucre. But he had now, by corruption and extortion, accumulated great
riches; and he was more anxious to secure them than to increase them.
His slackness drew on him a sharp reprimand from the royal lips. In
dread of being deprived of the Great Seal, he promised whatever was
required of him: but Barillon, in reporting this circumstance to Lewis,
remarked that the King of England could place little reliance on any man
who had any thing to lose. [309]
Nevertheless James determined to persevere. The sanction of a Parliament
was necessary to his system. The sanction of a free and lawful
Parliament it was evidently impossible to obtain: but it might not be
altogether impossible to bring together by corruption, by intimidation,
by violent exertions of prerogative, by fraudulent distortions of law,
an assembly which might call itself a Parliament, and might be willing
to register any edict of the Sovereign. Returning officers must be
appointed who would avail themselves of the slightest pretence to
declare the King's friends duly elected. Every placeman, from the
highest to the lowest, must be made to understand that, if he wished to
retain his office, he must, at this conjuncture, support the throne by
his vote and interest. The High Commission meanwhile would keep its eye
on the clergy. The boroughs, which had just been remodelled to serve one
turn, might be remodelled again to serve another. By such means the
King hoped to obtain a majority in the House of Commons. The Upper
House would then be at his mercy. He had undoubtedly by law the power of
creating peers without limit: and this power he was fully determined
to use. He did not wish, and indeed no sovereign can wish, to make the
highest honour which is in the gift of the crown worthless. He cherished
the hope that, by calling up some heirs apparent to the assembly in
which they must ultimately sit, and by conferring English titles on some
Scotch and Irish Lords, he might be able to secure a majority without
ennobling new men in such numbers as to bring ridicule on the coronet
and the ermine. But there was no extremity to which he was not prepared
to go in case of necessity. When in a large company an opinion was
expressed that the peers would prove intractable, "Oh, silly," cried
Sunderland, turning to Churchill, "your troop of guards shall be called
up to the House of Lords. " [310]
Having determined to pack a Parliament, James set himself energetically
and methodically to the work. A proclamation appeared in the Gazette,
announcing that the King had determined to revise the Commissions of
Peace and of Lieutenancy, and to retain in public employment only such
gentlemen as should be disposed to support his policy. [311] A committee
of seven Privy Councillors sate at Whitehall, for the purpose of
regulating--such was the phrase--the municipal corporations. In this
committee Jeffreys alone represented the Protestant interest. Powis
alone represented the moderate Roman Catholics. All the other members
belonged to the Jesuitical faction. Among them was Petre, who had just
been sworn of the Council. Till he took his seat at the board, his
elevation had been kept a profound secret from everybody but Sunderland.
The public indignation at this new violation of the law was clamorously
expressed; and it was remarked that the Roman Catholics were even louder
in censure than the Protestants. The vain and ambitious Jesuit was now
charged with the business of destroying and reconstructing half
the constituent bodies in the kingdom. Under the committee of Privy
Councillors a subcommittee consisting of bustling agents less eminent in
rank was entrusted with the management of details. Local subcommittees
of regulators all over the country corresponded with the central board
at Westminster. [312]
The persons on whom James chiefly relied for assistance in his new and
arduous enterprise were the Lords Lieutenants. Every Lord Lieutenant
received written orders directing him to go down immediately into his
county. There he was to summon before him all his deputies, and all the
justices of the Peace, and to put to them a series of interrogatories
framed for the purpose of ascertaining how they would act at a general
election. He was to take down the answers in writing, and to transmit
them to the government. He was to furnish a list of such Roman
Catholics, and such Protestant Dissenters, as might be best qualified
for the bench and for commands in the militia. He was also to examine
into the state of all the boroughs in his county, and to make such
reports as might be necessary to guide the operations of the board of
regulators. It was intimated to him that he must himself perform these
duties, and that he could not be permitted to delegate them to any other
person. [313]
The first effect produced by these orders would have at once sobered a
prince less infatuated than James. Half the Lords Lieutenants of England
peremptorily refused to stoop to the odious service which was required
of them. They were immediately dismissed. All those who incurred this
glorious disgrace were peers of high consideration; and all had hitherto
been regarded as firm supporters of monarchy. Some names in the list
deserve especial notice.
The noblest subject in England, and indeed, as Englishmen loved to say,
the noblest subject in Europe, was Aubrey de Vere, twentieth and last of
the old Earls of Oxford. He derived his title through an uninterrupted
male descent from a time when the families of Howard and Seymour were
still obscure, when the Nevilles and Percies enjoyed only a provincial
celebrity, and when even the great name of Plantagenet had not yet
been heard in England. One chief of the house of De Vere had held high
command at Hastings: another had marched, with Godfrey and Tancred, over
heaps of slaughtered Moslem, to the sepulchre of Christ. The first Earl
of Oxford had been minister of Henry Beauclerc. The third Earl had been
conspicuous among the Lords who extorted the Great Charter from John.
The seventh Earl had fought bravely at Cressy and Pointiers. The
thirteenth Earl had, through many vicissitudes of fortune, been the
chief of the party of the Red Rose, and had led the van on the decisive
day of Bosworth. The seventeenth Earl had shone at the court of
Elizabeth, and had won for himself an honourable place among the early
masters of English poetry. The nineteenth Earl had fallen in arms for
the Protestant religion and for the liberties of Europe under the walls
of Maastricht. His son Aubrey, in whom closed the longest and most
illustrious line of nobles that England has seen, a man of loose morals,
but of inoffensive temper and of courtly manners, was Lord Lieutenant
of Essex, and Colonel of the Blues. His nature was not factious; and his
interest inclined him to avoid a rupture with the court; for his estate
was encumbered, and his military command lucrative. He was summoned
to the royal closet; and an explicit declaration of his intentions was
demanded from him. "Sir," answered Oxford, "I will stand by your Majesty
against all enemies to the last drop of my blood. But this is matter
of conscience, and I cannot comply. " He was instantly deprived of his
lieutenancy and of his regiment. [314]
Inferior in antiquity and splendour to the house of De Vere, but to the
house of De Vere alone, was the house of Talbot. Ever since the reign of
Edward the Third, the Talbots had sate among the peers of the realm. The
earldom of Shrewsbury had been bestowed, in the fifteenth century, on
John Talbot, the antagonist of the Maid of Orleans. He had been long
remembered by his countrymen with tenderness and reverence as one of
the most illustrious of those warriors who had striven to erect a great
English empire on the Continent of Europe. The stubborn courage which he
had shown in the midst of disasters had made him an object of interest
greater than more fortunate captains had inspired, and his death had
furnished a singularly touching scene to our early stage. His posterity
had, during two centuries, flourished in great honour. The head of the
family at the time of the Restoration was Francis, the eleventh Earl,
a Roman Catholic. His death had been attended by circumstances such as,
even in those licentious times which immediately followed the downfall
of the Puritan tyranny, had moved men to horror and pity. The Duke
of Buckingham in the course of his vagrant amours was for a moment
attracted by the Countess of Shrewsbury. She was easily won. Her lord
challenged the gallant, and fell. Some said that the abandoned woman
witnessed the combat in man's attire, and others that she clasped her
victorious lover to her bosom while his shirt was still dripping with
the blood of her husband. The honours of the murdered man descended to
his infant son Charles. As the orphan grew up to man's estate, it was
generally acknowledged that of the young nobility of England none had
been so richly gifted by nature. His person was pleasing, his temper
singularly sweet, his parts such as, if he had been born in a humble
rank, might well have raised him to the height of civil greatness. All
these advantages he had so improved that, before he was of age, he was
allowed to be one of the finest gentlemen and finest scholars of his
time. His learning is proved by notes which are still extant in his
handwriting on books in almost every department of literature. He
spoke French like a gentleman of Lewis's bedchamber, and Italian like a
citizen of Florence. It was impossible that a youth of such parts should
not be anxious to understand the grounds on which his family had refused
to conform to the religion of the state. He studied the disputed points
closely, submitted his doubts to priests of his own faith, laid their
answers before Tillotson, weighed the arguments on both sides long
and attentively, and, after an investigation which occupied two years,
declared himself a Protestant. The Church of England welcomed the
illustrious convert with delight. His popularity was great, and became
greater when it was known that royal solicitations and promises had
been vainly employed to seduce him back to the superstition which he had
abjured. The character of the young Earl did not however develop itself
in a manner quite satisfactory to those who had borne the chief part
in his conversion. His morals by no means escaped the contagion of
fashionable libertinism. In truth the shock which had overturned his
early prejudices had at the same time unfixed all his opinions, and
left him to the unchecked guidance of his feelings. But, though his
principles were unsteady, his impulses were so generous, his temper so
bland, his manners so gracious and easy, that it was impossible not to
love him. He was early called the King of Hearts, and never, through a
long, eventful, and chequered life, lost his right to that name. [315]
Shrewsbury was Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire and Colonel of one
of the regiments of horse which had been raised in consequence of
the Western insurrection. He now refused to act under the board of
regulators, and was deprived of both his commissions.
None of the English nobles enjoyed a larger measure of public favour
than Charles Sackville Earl of Dorset. He was indeed a remarkable man.
In his youth he had been one of the most notorious libertines of the
wild time which followed the Restoration. He had been the terror of the
City watch, had passed many nights in the round house, and had at least
once occupied a cell in Newgate. His passion for Betty Morrice, and for
Nell Gwynn, who called him her Charles the First, had given no small
amusement and scandal to the town. [316] Yet, in the midst of follies
and vices, his courageous spirit, his fine understanding, and his
natural goodness of heart, had been conspicuous. Men said that the
excesses in which he indulged were common between him and the whole race
of gay young Cavaliers, but that his sympathy with human suffering and
the generosity with which he made reparation to those whom his freaks
had injured were all his own. His associates were astonished by the
distinction which the public made between him and them. "He may do what
he chooses," said Wilmot; "he is never in the wrong. " The judgment
of the world became still more favourable to Dorset when he had been
sobered by time and marriage. His graceful manners, his brilliant
conversation, his soft heart, his open hand, were universally praised.
No day passed, it was said, in which some distressed family had not
reason to bless his name. And yet, with all his goodnature, such was
the keenness of his wit that scoffers whose sarcasm all the town feared
stood in craven fear of the sarcasm of Dorset. All political parties
esteemed and caressed him; but politics were not much to his taste. Had
he been driven by necessity to exert himself, he would probably have
risen to the highest posts in the state; but he was born to rank so high
and wealth so ample that many of the motives which impel men to engage
in public affairs were wanting to him. He took just so much part in
parliamentary and diplomatic business as sufficed to show that he wanted
nothing but inclination to rival Danby and Sunderland, and turned away
to pursuits which pleased him better. Like many other men who, with
great natural abilities, are constitutionally and habitually indolent,
he became an intellectual voluptuary, and a master of all those pleasing
branches of knowledge which can be acquired without severe application.
He was allowed to be the best judge of painting, of sculpture, of
architecture, of acting, that the court could show.
On questions of
polite learning his decisions were regarded at all the coffeehouses as
without appeal. More than one clever play which had failed on the first
representation was supported by his single authority against the whole
clamour of the pit, and came forth successful from the second trial.
The delicacy of his taste in French composition was extolled by Saint
Evremond and La Fontaine. Such a patron of letters England had never
seen. His bounty was bestowed with equal judgment and liberality, and
was confined to no sect or faction. Men of genius, estranged from each
other by literary jealousy or by difference of political opinion, joined
in acknowledging his impartial kindness. Dryden owned that he had been
saved from ruin by Dorset's princely generosity. Yet Montague and Prior,
who had keenly satirised Dryden, were introduced by Dorset into public
life; and the best comedy of Dryden's mortal enemy, Shadwell, was
written at Dorset's country seat. The munificent Earl might, if such had
been his wish, have been the rival of those of whom he was content to be
the benefactor. For the verses which he occasionally composed,
unstudied as they are, exhibit the traces of a genius which, assiduously
cultivated, would have produced something great. In the small volume of
his works may be found songs which have the easy vigour of Suckling,
and little satires which sparkle with wit as splendid as that of Butler.
[317]
Dorset was Lord Lieutenant of Sussex: and to Sussex the board of
regulators looked with great anxiety: for in no other county, Cornwall
and Wiltshire excepted, were there so many small boroughs. He was
ordered to repair to his post. No person who knew him expected that he
would obey. He gave such an answer as became him, and was informed that
his services were no longer needed. The interest which his many noble
and amiable qualities inspired was heightened when it was known that he
had received by the post an anonymous billet telling him that, if he did
not promptly comply with the King's wishes, all his wit and popularity
should not save him from assassination. A similar warning was sent
to Shrewsbury. Threatening letters were then much more rare than they
afterwards became. It is therefore not strange that the people, excited
as they were, should have been disposed to believe that the best and
noblest Englishmen were really marked out for Popish daggers. [318] Just
when these letters were the talk of all London, the mutilated corpse of
a noted Puritan was found in the streets. It was soon discovered that
the murderer had acted from no religious or political motive. But
the first suspicions of the populace fell on the Papists. The mangled
remains were carried in procession to the house of the Jesuits in the
Savoy; and during a few hours the fear and rage of the populace were
scarcely less violent than on the day when Godfrey was borne to his
grave. [319]
The other dismissions must be more concisely related. The Duke of
Somerset, whose regiment had been taken from him some months before, was
now turned out of the lord lieutenancy of the East Riding of Yorkshire.
The North Riding was taken from Viscount Fauconberg, Shropshire from
Viscount Newport, and Lancashire from the Earl of Derby, grandson of
that gallant Cavalier who had faced death so bravely, both on the field
of battle and on the scaffold, for the House of Stuart. The Earl of
Pembroke, who had recently served the crown with fidelity and spirit
against Monmouth, was displaced in Wiltshire, the Earl of Husband in
Leicestershire, the Earl of Bridgewater in Buckinghamshire, the Earl of
Thanet in Cumberland, the Earl of Northampton in Warwickshire, the Earl
of Abingdon in Oxfordshire, and the Earl of Scarsdale in Derbyshire.
Scarsdale was also deprived of a regiment of cavalry, and of an office
in the household of the Princess of Denmark. She made a struggle to
retain his services, and yielded only to a peremptory command of
her father. The Earl of Gainsborough was rejected, not only from the
lieutenancy of Hampshire, but also from the government of Portsmouth and
the rangership of the New Forest, two places for which he had, only a
few months before, given five thousand pounds. [320]
The King could not find Lords of great note, or indeed Protestant Lords
of any sort, who would accept the vacant offices. It was necessary
to assign two shires to Jeffreys, a new man whose landed property was
small, and two to Preston who was not even an English peer. The other
counties which had been left without governors were entrusted, with
scarcely an exception, to known Roman Catholics, or to courtiers who had
secretly promised the King to declare themselves Roman Catholics as soon
as they could do so with prudence.
At length the new machinery was put in action; and soon from every
corner of the realm arrived the news of complete and hopeless failure.
The catechism by which the Lords Lieutenants had been directed to test
the sentiments of the country gentlemen consisted of three questions.
Every magistrate and Deputy Lieutenant was to be asked, first, whether,
if he should be chosen to serve in Parliament, he would vote for a bill
framed on the principles of the Declaration of Indulgence; secondly,
whether, as an elector, he would support candidates who would engage to
vote for such a bill and, thirdly, whether, in his private capacity,
he would aid the King's benevolent designs by living in friendship with
people of all religious persuasions. [321]
As soon as the questions got abroad, a form of answer, drawn up with
admirable skill, was circulated all over the kingdom, and was generally
adopted. It was to the following effect: "As a member of the House of
Commons, should I have the honour of a seat there, I shall think it my
duty carefully to weigh such reasons as may be adduced in debate for
and against a Bill of Indulgence, and then to vote according to my
conscientious conviction. As an elector, I shall give my support to
candidates whose notions of the duty of a representative agree with my
own. As a private man, it is my wish to live in peace and charity with
every body. " This answer, far more provoking than a direct refusal,
because slightly tinged with a sober and decorous irony which could not
well be resented, was all that the emissaries of the court could extract
from most of the country gentlemen. Arguments, promises, threats, were
tried in vain. The Duke of Norfolk, though a Protestant, and though
dissatisfied with the proceedings of the government, had consented to
become its agent in two counties. He went first to Surrey, where he soon
found that nothing could be done. [322] He then repaired to Norfolk, and
returned to inform the King that, of seventy gentlemen of note who bore
office in that great province, only six had held out hopes that they
should support the policy of the court. [323] The Duke of Beaufort,
whose authority extended over four English shires and over the whole
principality of Wales, came up to Whitehall with an account not less
discouraging. [324] Rochester was Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire. All
his little stock of virtue had been expended in his struggle against the
strong temptation to sell his religion for lucre. He was still bound to
the court by a pension of four thousand pounds a year; and in return for
this pension he was willing to perform any service, however illegal or
degrading, provided only that he were not required to go through the
forms of a reconciliation with Rome. He had readily undertaken to manage
his county; and he exerted himself, as usual, with indiscreet heat and
violence. But his anger was thrown away on the sturdy squires to whom he
addressed himself. They told him with one voice that they would send up
no man to Parliament who would vote for taking away the safeguards
of the Protestant religion. [325] The same answer was given to the
Chancellor in Buckinghamshire. [326] The gentry of Shropshire, assembled
at Ludlow, unanimously refused to fetter themselves by the pledge which
the King demanded of them. [327] The Earl of Yarmouth reported from
Wiltshire that, of sixty magistrates and Deputy Lieutenants with whom
he had conferred, only seven had given favourable answers, and that even
those seven could not be trusted. [328] The renegade Peterborough made
no progress in Northamptonshire. [329] His brother renegade Dover was
equally unsuccessful in Cambridgeshire. [330] Preston brought cold news
from Cumberland and Westmoreland. Dorsetshire and Huntingdonshire were
animated by the same spirit. The Earl of Bath, after a long canvass,
returned from the West with gloomy tidings. He had been authorised to
make the most tempting offers to the inhabitants of that region. In
particular he had promised that, if proper respect were shown to the
royal wishes, the trade in tin should be freed from the oppressive
restrictions under which it lay. But this lure, which at another time
would have proved irresistible, was now slighted. All the justices
and Deputy Lieutenants of Devonshire and Cornwall, without a single
dissenting voice, declared that they would put life and property in
jeopardy for the King, but that the Protestant religion was dearer
to them than either life or property. "And, sir," said Bath, "if your
Majesty should dismiss all these gentlemen, their successors would give
exactly the same answer. " [331] If there was any district in which the
government might have hoped for success, that district was Lancashire.
Considerable doubts had been felt as to the result of what was passing
there. In no part of the realm had so many opulent and honourable
families adhered to the old religion. The heads of many of those
families had already, by virtue of the dispensing power, been made
justices of the Peace and entrusted with commands in the militia. Yet
from Lancashire the new Lord Lieutenant, himself a Roman Catholic,
reported that two thirds of his deputies and of the magistrates were
opposed to the court. [332] But the proceedings in Hampshire wounded the
King's pride still more deeply. Arabella Churchill had, more than twenty
years before, borne him a son, widely renowned, at a later period,
as one of the most skilful captains of Europe. The youth, named
James Fitzjames, had as yet given no promise of the eminence which he
afterwards attained: but his manners were so gentle and inoffensive that
he had no enemy except Mary of Modena, who had long hated the child of
the concubine with the bitter hatred of a childless wife. A small part
of the Jesuitical faction had, before the pregnancy of the Queen was
announced, seriously thought of setting him up as a competitor of the
Princess of Orange. [333] When it is remembered how signally Monmouth,
though believed by the populace to be legitimate, and though the
champion of the national religion, had failed in a similar competition,
it must seem extraordinary that any man should have been so much
blinded by fanaticism as to think of placing on the throne one who was
universally known to be a Popish bastard. It does not appear that this
absurd design was ever countenanced by the King. The boy, however, was
acknowledged; and whatever distinctions a subject, not of the royal
blood, could hope to attain were bestowed on him. He had been created
Duke of Berwick; and he was now loaded with honourable and lucrative
employments, taken from those noblemen who had refused to comply with
the royal commands. He succeeded the Earl of Oxford as Colonel of the
Blues, and the Earl of Gainsborough as Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire,
Ranger of the New Forest, and Governor of Portsmouth. On the frontier of
Hampshire Berwick expected to have been met, according to custom, by a
long cavalcade of baronets, knights and squires: but not a single person
of note appeared to welcome him. He sent out letters commanding the
attendance of the gentry: but only five or six paid the smallest
attention to his summons. The rest did not wait to be dismissed.
They declared that they would take no part in the civil or military
government of their county while the King was represented there by a
Papist, and voluntarily laid down their commissions. [334]
Sunderland, who had been named Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire in the
room of the Earl of Northampton, found some excuse for not going down to
face the indignation and contempt of the gentry of that shire; and his
plea was the more readily admitted because the King had, by that time,
begun to feel that the spirit of the rustic gentry was not to be bent.
[335]
It is to be observed that those who displayed this spirit were not
the old enemies of the House of Stuart. The Commissions of Peace and
Lieutenancy had long been carefully purged of all republican names. The
persons from whom the court had in vain attempted to extract any promise
of support were, with scarcely an exception, Tories. The elder among
them could still show scars given by the swords of Roundheads, and
receipts for plate sent to Charles the First in his distress. The
younger had adhered firmly to James against Shaftesury and Monmouth.
Such were the men who were now turned out of office in a mass by the
very prince to whom they had given such signal proofs of fidelity.
Dismission however only made them more resolute. It had become a sacred
point of honour among them to stand stoutly by one another in this
crisis. There could be no doubt that, if the suffrage of the freeholders
were fairly taken, not a single knight of the shire favourable to the
policy of the government would be returned. Men therefore asked one
another, with no small anxiety, whether the suffrages were likely to be
fairly taken. The list of the Sheriffs for the new year was impatiently
expected. It appeared while the Lords Lieutenants were still engaged
in their canvass, and was received with a general cry of alarm and
indignation. Most of the functionaries who were to preside at the county
elections were either Roman Catholics or Protestant Dissenters who had
expressed their approbation of the Indulgence. [336] For a time the most
gloomy apprehensions prevailed: but soon they began to subside. There
was good reason to believe that there was a point beyond which the King
could not reckon on the support even of those Sheriffs who were members
of his own Church. Between the Roman Catholic courtier and the Roman
Catholic country gentleman there was very little sympathy. That cabal
which domineered at Whitehall consisted partly of fanatics, who were
ready to break through all rules of morality and to throw the world into
confusion for the purpose of propagating their religion, and partly of
hypocrites, who, for lucre, had apostatized from the faith in which they
had been brought up, and who now over acted the zeal characteristic
of neophytes. Both the fanatical and the hypocritical courtiers were
generally destitute of all English feeling. In some of them devotion
to their Church had extinguished every national sentiment. Some were
Irishmen, whose patriotism consisted in mortal hatred of the Saxon
conquerors of Ireland. Some, again, were traitors, who received regular
hire from a foreign power. Some had passed a great part of their lives
abroad, and either were mere cosmopolites, or felt a positive distaste
for the manners and institutions of the country which was now
subjected to their rule. Between such men and the lord of a Cheshire
or Staffordshire manor who adhered to the old Church there was scarcely
anything in common. He was neither a fanatic nor a hypocrite. He was a
Roman Catholic because his father and grandfather had been so; and he
held his hereditary faith, as men generally hold a hereditary faith,
sincerely, but with little enthusiasm. In all other points he was a
mere English squire, and, if he differed from the neighbouring squires,
differed from them by being somewhat more simple and clownish than
they. The disabilities under which he lay had prevented his mind from
expanding to the standard, moderate as that standard was, which
the minds of Protestant country gentlemen then ordinarily attained.
Excluded, when a boy, from Eton and Westminster, when a youth, from
Oxford and Cambridge, when a man, from Parliament and from the bench
of justice, he generally vegetated as quietly as the elms of the avenue
which led to his ancestral grange. His cornfields, his dairy and his
cider press, his greyhounds, his fishing rod and his gun, his ale and
his tobacco, occupied almost all his thoughts. With his neighbours, in
spite of his religion, he was generally on good terms. They knew him
to be unambitious and inoffensive. He was almost always of a good
old family. He was always a Cavalier. His peculiar notions were not
obtruded, and caused no annoyance. He did not, like a Puritan, torment
himself and others with scruples about everything that was pleasant. On
the contrary, he was as keen a sportsman, and as jolly a boon companion,
as any man who had taken the oath of supremacy and the declaration
against transubstantiation. He met his brother squires at the cover, was
in with them at the death, and, when the sport was over, took them home
with him to a venison pasty and to October four years in bottle. The
oppressions which he had undergone had not been such as to impel him
to any desperate resolution. Even when his Church was barbarously
persecuted, his life and property were in little danger. The most
impudent false witnesses could hardly venture to shock the common sense
of mankind by accusing him of being a conspirator. The Papists whom
Oates selected for attack were peers, prelates, Jesuits, Benedictines, a
busy political agent, a lawyer in high practice, a court physician. The
Roman Catholic country gentleman, protected by his obscurity, by his
peaceable demeanour, and by the good will of those among whom he lived,
carted his hay or filled his bag with game unmolested, while Coleman
and Langhorne, Whitbread and Pickering, Archbishop Plunkett and Lord
Stafford, died by the halter or the axe. An attempt was indeed made by
a knot of villains to bring home a charge of treason to Sir Thomas
Gascoigne, an aged Roman Catholic baronet of Yorkshire: but twelve of
the best gentlemen of the West Riding, who knew his way of life, could
not be convinced that their honest old acquaintance had hired cutthroats
to murder the King, and, in spite of charges which did very little
honour to the bench, found a verdict of Not Guilty. Sometimes, indeed,
the head of an old and respectable provincial family might reflect with
bitterness that he was excluded, on account of his religion, from places
of honour and authority which men of humbler descent and less ample
estate were thought competent to fill: but he was little disposed to
risk land and life in a struggle against overwhelming odds; and his
honest English spirit would have shrunk with horror from means such as
were contemplated by the Petres and Tyrconnels. Indeed he would have
been as ready as any of his Protestant neighbours to gird on his sword,
and to put pistols in his holsters, for the defence of his native land
against an invasion of French or Irish Papists. Such was the general
character of the men to whom James now looked as to his most trustworthy
instruments for the conduct of county elections. He soon found that they
were not inclined to throw away the esteem of their neighbours, and to
endanger their beads and their estates, by rendering him an infamous and
criminal service. Several of them refused to be Sheriffs. Of those who
accepted the shrievalty many declared that they would discharge their
duty as fairly as if they were members of the Established Church, and
would return no candidate who had not a real majority. [337]
If the King could place little confidence even in his Roman Catholic
Sheriffs, still less could he rely on the Puritans. Since the
publication of the Declaration several months had elapsed, months
crowded with important events, months of unintermitted controversy.
Discussion had opened the eyes of many Dissenters: but the acts of the
government, and especially the severity with which Magdalene College had
been treated, had done more than even the pen of Halifax to alarm and to
unite all classes of Protestants. Most of those sectaries who had been
induced to express gratitude for the Indulgence were now ashamed of
their error, and were desirous of making atonement by casting in their
lot with the great body of their countrymen.
The consequence of this change in the feeling of the Nonconformists, was
that the government found almost as great difficulty in the towns as in
the counties. When the regulators began their work, they had taken
it for granted that every Dissenter who had been induced to express
gratitude for the Indulgence would be favourable to the king's policy.
They were therefore confident that they should be able to fill all
the municipal offices in the kingdom with staunch friends. In the
new charters a power had been reserved to the crown of dismissing
magistrates at pleasure. This power was now exercised without limit. It
was by no means equally clear that James had the power of appointing new
magistrates: but, whether it belonged to him or not, he determined
to assume it. Everywhere, from the Tweed to the Land's End, Tory
functionaries were ejected, and the vacant places were filled with
Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists. In the new charter of the
City of London the crown had reserved the power of displacing the
masters, wardens, and assistants of all the companies. Accordingly more
than eight hundred citizens of the first consideration, all of them
members of that party which had opposed the Exclusion Bill, were turned
out of office by a single edict. In a short time appeared a supplement
to this long list. [338] But scarcely had the new officebearers been
sworn in when it was discovered that they were as unmanageable as their
predecessors. At Newcastle on Tyne the regulators appointed a Roman
Catholic Mayor and Puritan Alderman. No doubt was entertained that the
municipal body, thus remodelled, would vote an address promising to
support the king's measures. The address, however, was negatived. The
mayor went up to London in a fury, and told the king that the Dissenters
were all knaves and rebels, and that in the whole corporation the
government could not reckon on more than four votes. [339] At Reading
twenty-four Tory aldermen were dismissed. Twenty-four new aldermen
were appointed. Twenty-three of these immediately declared against the
Indulgence, and were dismissed in their turn. [340] In the course of a
few days the borough of Yarmouth was governed by three different sets
of magistrates, all equally hostile to the court. [341] These are mere
examples of what was passing all over the kingdom. The Dutch Ambassador
informed the States that at many towns the public functionaries had,
within one month, been changed twice, and even thrice, and yet changed
in vain. [342] From the records of the Privy Council it appears that the
number of regulations, as they were called, exceeded two hundred. [343]
The regulators indeed found that, in not a few places, the change
had been for the worse. The discontented Tories, even while murmuring
against the king's policy, had constantly expressed respect for his
person and his office, and had disclaimed all thoughts of resistance.
Very different was the language of some of the new members of
corporations. It was said that old soldiers of the Commonwealth, who, to
their own astonishment and that of the public, had been made aldermen,
gave the agents of the court very distinctly to understand that blood
should flow before Popery and arbitrary power were established in
England. [344]
The regulators found that little or nothing had been gained by what had
as yet been done. There was one way, and one way only, in which they
could hope to effect their object. The charters of the boroughs must
be resumed; and other charters must be granted confining the elective
franchise to very small constituent bodies appointed by the sovereign.
[345]
But how was this plan to be carried into effect? In a few of the new
charters, indeed, a right of revocation had been reserved to the crown:
but the rest James could get into his hands only by voluntary surrender
on the part of corporations, or by judgment of the King's Bench. Few
corporations were now disposed to surrender their charters voluntarily;
and such judgments as would suit the purposes of the government were
hardly to be expected even from such a slave as Wright. The writs of Quo
Warranto which had been brought a few years before for the purpose of
crushing the Whig party had been condemned by every impartial man. Yet
those writs had at least the semblance of justice; for they were brought
against ancient municipal bodies; and there were few ancient municipal
bodies in which some abuse, sufficient to afford a pretext for a penal
proceeding, had not grown up in the course of ages. But the corporations
now to be attacked were still in the innocence of infancy. The oldest
among them had not completed its fifth year. It was impossible that many
of them should have committed offences meriting disfranchisement. The
Judges themselves were uneasy. They represented that what they were
required to do was in direct opposition to the plainest principles
of law and justice: but all remonstrance was vain. The boroughs were
commanded to surrender their charters. Few complied; and the course
which the King took with those few did not encourage others to trust
him. In several towns the right of voting was taken away from the
commonalty, and given to a very small number of persons, who were
required to bind themselves by oath to support the candidates
recommended by the government. At Tewkesbury, for example, the franchise
was confined to thirteen persons. Yet even this number was too large.
Hatred and fear had spread so widely through the community that it
was scarcely possible to bring together in any town, by any process of
packing, thirteen men on whom the court could absolutely depend. It was
rumoured that the majority of the new constituent body of Tewkesbury was
animated by the same sentiment which was general throughout the nation,
and would, when the decisive day should arrive, send true Protestants
to Parliament. The regulators in great wrath threatened to reduce the
number of electors to three. [346] Meanwhile the great majority of
the boroughs firmly refused to give up their privileges. Barnstaple,
Winchester, and Buckingham, distinguished themselves by the boldness of
their opposition. At Oxford the motion that the city should resign its
franchises to the King was negatived by eighty votes to two. [347] The
Temple and Westminster Hall were in a ferment with the sudden rush of
business from all corners of the kingdom. Every lawyer in high practice
was overwhelmed with the briefs from corporations. Ordinary litigants
complained that their business was neglected. [348] It was evident that
a considerable time must elapse before judgment could be given in so
great a number of important cases. Tyranny could ill brook this delay.
Nothing was omitted which could terrify the refractory boroughs into
submission. At Buckingham some of the municipal officers had spoken of
Jeffreys in language which was not laudatory. They were prosecuted, and
were given to understand that no mercy should be shown to them unless
they would ransom themselves by surrendering their charter. [349] At
Winchester still more violent measures were adopted. A large body of
troops was marched into the town for the sole purpose of burdening and
harassing the inhabitants. [350] The town continued resolute; and the
public voice loudly accused the King of imitating the worst crimes of
his brother of France. The dragonades, it was said, had begun. There was
indeed reason for alarm. It had occurred to James that he could not more
effectually break the spirit of an obstinate town than by quartering
soldiers on the inhabitants.
evil counsellors had long been tormented by these gloomy apprehensions,
and some of them had contemplated strange and desperate remedies. James
had scarcely mounted the throne when it began to be whispered about
Whitehall that, if the Lady Anne would turn Roman Catholic, it might not
be impossible, with the help of Lewis, to transfer to her the birthright
of her elder sister. At the French embassy this scheme was warmly
approved; and Bonrepaux gave it as his opinion that the assent of James
would be easily obtained. [299] Soon, however, it became manifest that
Anne was unalterably attached to the Established Church. All thought of
making her Queen was therefore relinquished. Nevertheless, a small knot
of fanatics still continued to cherish a wild hope that they might be
able to change the order of succession. The plan formed by these men
was set forth in a minute of which a rude French translation has been
preserved. It was to be hoped, they said, that the King might be able to
establish the true faith without resorting to extremities; but, in the
worst event, he might leave his crown at the disposal of Lewis. It was
better for Englishmen to be the vassals of France than the slaves of the
Devil. [300] This extraordinary document was handed about from Jesuit
to Jesuit, and from courtier to courtier, till some eminent Roman
Catholics, in whom bigotry had not extinguished patriotism, furnished
the Dutch Ambassador with a copy. He put the paper into the hands of
James. James, greatly agitated, pronounced it a vile forgery contrived
by some pamphleteer in Holland. The Dutch minister resolutely
answered that he could prove the contrary by the testimony of several
distinguished members of His Majesty's own Church, nay, that there would
be no difficulty in pointing out the writer, who, after all, had written
only what many priests and many busy politicians said every day in the
galleries of the palace. The King did not think it expedient to ask who
the writer was, but, abandoning the charge of forgery, protested, with
great vehemence and solemnity, that no thought of disinheriting his
eldest daughter had ever crossed his mind. "Nobody," he said, "ever
dared to hint such a thing to me. I never would listen to it. God does
not command us to propagate the true religion by injustice and this
would be the foulest, the most unnatural injustice. " [301] Notwithstanding
all these professions, Barillon, a few days later, reported to his court
that James had begun to listen to suggestions respecting a change in the
order of succession, that the question was doubtless a delicate one,
but that there was reason to hope that, with time and management, a
way might be found to settle the crown on some Roman Catholic to the
exclusion of the two Princesses. [302] During many months this subject
continued to be discussed by the fiercest and most extravagant Papists
about the court; and candidates for the regal office were actually
named. [303]
It is not probable however that James ever meant to take a course so
insane. He must have known that England would never bear for a single
day the yoke of an usurper who was also a Papist, and that any attempt
to set aside the Lady Mary would have been withstood to the death, both
by all those who had supported the Exclusion Bill, and by all those
who had opposed it. There is however no doubt that the King was an
accomplice in a plot less absurd, but not less unjustifiable,
against the rights of his children. Tyrconnel had, with his master's
approbation, made arrangements for separating Ireland from the empire,
and for placing her under the protection of Lewis, as soon as the crown
should devolve on a Protestant sovereign. Bonrepaux had been consulted,
had imparted the design to his court, and had been instructed to assure
Tyrconnel that France would lend effectual aid to the accomplishment of
this great project. [304] These transactions, which, though perhaps
not in all parts accurately known at the Hague, were strongly suspected
there, must not be left out of the account if we would pass a just
judgment on the course taken a few months later by the Princess of
Orange. Those who pronounce her guilty of a breach of filial duty must
admit that her fault was at least greatly extenuated by her wrongs. If,
to serve the cause of her religion, she broke through the most sacred
ties of consanguinity, she only followed her father's example. She did
not assist to depose him till he had conspired to disinherit her.
Scarcely had Bonrepaux been informed that Lewis had resolved to assist
the enterprise of Tyrconnel when all thoughts of that enterprise were
abandoned. James had caught the first glimpse of a hope which delighted
and elated him. The Queen was with child.
Before the end of October 1687 the great news began to be whispered.
It was observed that Her Majesty had absented herself from some public
ceremonies, on the plea of indisposition. It was said that many relics,
supposed to possess extraordinary virtue, had been hung about her.
Soon the story made its way from the palace to the coffeehouses of the
capital, and spread fast over the country. By a very small minority the
rumour was welcomed with joy. The great body of the nation listened with
mingled derision and fear. There was indeed nothing very extraordinary
in what had happened.
The King had but just completed his fifty-fourth year. The Queen was
in the summer of life. She had already borne four children who had
died young; and long afterwards she was delivered of another child
whom nobody had any interest in treating as supposititious, and who was
therefore never said to be so. As, however, five years had elapsed since
her last pregnancy, the people, under the influence of that delusion
which leads men to believe what they wish, had ceased to entertain any
apprehension that she would give an heir to the throne. On the other
hand, nothing seemed more natural and probable than that the Jesuits
should have contrived a pious fraud. It was certain that they must
consider the accession of the Princess of Orange as one of the greatest
calamities which could befall their Church. It was equally certain
that they would not be very scrupulous about doing whatever might be
necessary to save their Church from a great calamity. In books written
by eminent members of the Society, and licensed by its rulers, it was
distinctly laid down that means even more shocking to all notions of
justice and humanity than the introduction of a spurious heir into
a family might lawfully be employed for ends less important than the
conversion of a heretical kingdom. It had got abroad that some of the
King's advisers, and even the King himself, had meditated schemes for
defrauding the Lady Mary, either wholly or in part, of her rightful
inheritance. A suspicion, not indeed well founded, but by no means so
absurd as is commonly supposed, took possession of the public mind. The
folly of some Roman Catholics confirmed the vulgar prejudice. They spoke
of the auspicious event as strange, as miraculous, as an exertion of the
same Divine power which had made Sarah proud and happy in Isaac, and
had given Samuel to the prayers of Hannah. Mary's mother, the Duchess of
Modena, had lately died. A short time before her death, she had, it
was said, implored the Virgin of Loretto, with fervent vows and rich
offerings, to bestow a son on James. The King himself had, in the
preceding August, turned aside from his progress to visit the Holy
Well, and had there besought Saint Winifred to obtain for him that boon
without which his great designs for the propagation of the true faith
could be but imperfectly executed. The imprudent zealots who dwelt on
these tales foretold with confidence that the unborn infant would be a
boy, and offered to back their opinion by laying twenty guineas to one.
Heaven, they affirmed, would not have interfered but for a great end.
One fanatic announced that the Queen would give birth to twins, of whom
the elder would be King of England, and the younger Pope of Rome. Mary
could not conceal the delight with which she heard this prophecy; and
her ladies found that they could not gratify her more than by talking of
it. The Roman Catholics would have acted more wisely if they had spoken
of the pregnancy as of a natural event, and if they had borne with
moderation their unexpected good fortune. Their insolent triumph excited
the popular indignation. Their predictions strengthened the popular
suspicions. From the Prince and Princess of Denmark down to porters and
laundresses nobody alluded to the promised birth without a sneer. The
wits of London described the new miracle in rhymes which, it may well be
supposed, were not the most delicate. The rough country squires roared
with laughter if they met with any person simple enough to believe that
the Queen was really likely to be again a mother. A royal proclamation
appeared commanding the clergy to read a form of prayer and thanksgiving
which had been prepared for this joyful occasion by Crewe and Sprat.
The clergy obeyed: but it was observed that the congregations made no
responses and showed no signs of reverence. Soon in all the coffeehouses
was handed about a brutal lampoon on the courtly prelates whose pens the
King had employed. Mother East had also her full share of abuse. Into
that homely monosyllable our ancestors had degraded the name of the
great house of Este which reigned at Modena. [305]
The new hope which elated the King's spirits was mingled with many
fears. Something more than the birth of a Prince of Wales was necessary
to the success of the plans formed by the Jesuitical party. It was
not very likely that James would live till his son should be of age to
exercise the regal functions. The law had made no provision for the
case of a minority. The reigning sovereign was not competent to make
provision for such a case by will. The legislature only could supply the
defect. If James should die before the defect had been supplied, leaving
a successor of tender years, the supreme power would undoubtedly devolve
on Protestants. Those Tories who held most firmly the doctrine that
nothing could justify them in resisting their liege lord would have no
scruple about drawing their swords against a Popish woman who should
dare to usurp the guardianship of the realm and of the infant sovereign.
The result of a contest could scarcely be matter of doubt. The Prince of
Orange or his wife, would be Regent. The young King would be placed in
the hands of heretical instructors, whose arts might speedily efface
from his mind the impressions which might have been made on it in the
nursery. He might prove another Edward the Sixth; and the blessing
granted to the intercession of the Virgin Mother and of Saint Winifred
might be turned into a curse. [306] This was a danger against which
nothing but, an Act of Parliament could be a security; and to obtain
such an Act was not easy. Everything seemed to indicate that, if the
Houses were convoked, they would come up to Westminster animated by
the spirit of 1640. The event of the county elections could hardly be
doubted. The whole body of freeholders, high and low, clerical and lay,
was strongly excited against the government. In the great majority of
those towns where the right of voting depended on the payment of local
taxes, or on the occupation of a tenement, no courtly candidate could
dare to show his face. A very large part of the House of Commons was
returned by members of municipal corporations. These corporations had
recently been remodelled for the purpose of destroying the influence
of the Whigs and Dissenters. More than a hundred constituent bodies had
been deprived of their charters by tribunals devoted to the crown,
or had been induced to avert compulsory disfranchisement by voluntary
surrender. Every Mayor, every Alderman, every Town Clerk, from Berwick
to Helstone, was a Tory and a Churchman: but Tories and Churchmen were
now no longer devoted to the sovereign. The new municipalities were
more unmanageable than the old municipalities had ever been, and would
undoubtedly return representatives whose first act would be to impeach
all the Popish Privy Councillors, and all the members of the High
Commission.
In the Lords the prospect was scarcely less gloomy than in the Commons.
Among the temporal peers it was certain that an immense majority would
be against the King's measures: and on that episcopal bench, which
seven years before had unanimously supported him against those who
had attempted to deprive him of his birthright, he could now look for
support only to four or five sycophants despised by their profession and
by their country. [307]
To all men not utterly blinded by passion these difficulties appeared
insuperable. The most unscrupulous slaves of power showed signs of
uneasiness. Dryden muttered that the King would only make matters worse
by trying to mend them, and sighed for the golden days of the careless
and goodnatured Charles. [308] Even Jeffreys wavered. As long as he
was poor, he was perfectly ready to face obloquy and public hatred for
lucre. But he had now, by corruption and extortion, accumulated great
riches; and he was more anxious to secure them than to increase them.
His slackness drew on him a sharp reprimand from the royal lips. In
dread of being deprived of the Great Seal, he promised whatever was
required of him: but Barillon, in reporting this circumstance to Lewis,
remarked that the King of England could place little reliance on any man
who had any thing to lose. [309]
Nevertheless James determined to persevere. The sanction of a Parliament
was necessary to his system. The sanction of a free and lawful
Parliament it was evidently impossible to obtain: but it might not be
altogether impossible to bring together by corruption, by intimidation,
by violent exertions of prerogative, by fraudulent distortions of law,
an assembly which might call itself a Parliament, and might be willing
to register any edict of the Sovereign. Returning officers must be
appointed who would avail themselves of the slightest pretence to
declare the King's friends duly elected. Every placeman, from the
highest to the lowest, must be made to understand that, if he wished to
retain his office, he must, at this conjuncture, support the throne by
his vote and interest. The High Commission meanwhile would keep its eye
on the clergy. The boroughs, which had just been remodelled to serve one
turn, might be remodelled again to serve another. By such means the
King hoped to obtain a majority in the House of Commons. The Upper
House would then be at his mercy. He had undoubtedly by law the power of
creating peers without limit: and this power he was fully determined
to use. He did not wish, and indeed no sovereign can wish, to make the
highest honour which is in the gift of the crown worthless. He cherished
the hope that, by calling up some heirs apparent to the assembly in
which they must ultimately sit, and by conferring English titles on some
Scotch and Irish Lords, he might be able to secure a majority without
ennobling new men in such numbers as to bring ridicule on the coronet
and the ermine. But there was no extremity to which he was not prepared
to go in case of necessity. When in a large company an opinion was
expressed that the peers would prove intractable, "Oh, silly," cried
Sunderland, turning to Churchill, "your troop of guards shall be called
up to the House of Lords. " [310]
Having determined to pack a Parliament, James set himself energetically
and methodically to the work. A proclamation appeared in the Gazette,
announcing that the King had determined to revise the Commissions of
Peace and of Lieutenancy, and to retain in public employment only such
gentlemen as should be disposed to support his policy. [311] A committee
of seven Privy Councillors sate at Whitehall, for the purpose of
regulating--such was the phrase--the municipal corporations. In this
committee Jeffreys alone represented the Protestant interest. Powis
alone represented the moderate Roman Catholics. All the other members
belonged to the Jesuitical faction. Among them was Petre, who had just
been sworn of the Council. Till he took his seat at the board, his
elevation had been kept a profound secret from everybody but Sunderland.
The public indignation at this new violation of the law was clamorously
expressed; and it was remarked that the Roman Catholics were even louder
in censure than the Protestants. The vain and ambitious Jesuit was now
charged with the business of destroying and reconstructing half
the constituent bodies in the kingdom. Under the committee of Privy
Councillors a subcommittee consisting of bustling agents less eminent in
rank was entrusted with the management of details. Local subcommittees
of regulators all over the country corresponded with the central board
at Westminster. [312]
The persons on whom James chiefly relied for assistance in his new and
arduous enterprise were the Lords Lieutenants. Every Lord Lieutenant
received written orders directing him to go down immediately into his
county. There he was to summon before him all his deputies, and all the
justices of the Peace, and to put to them a series of interrogatories
framed for the purpose of ascertaining how they would act at a general
election. He was to take down the answers in writing, and to transmit
them to the government. He was to furnish a list of such Roman
Catholics, and such Protestant Dissenters, as might be best qualified
for the bench and for commands in the militia. He was also to examine
into the state of all the boroughs in his county, and to make such
reports as might be necessary to guide the operations of the board of
regulators. It was intimated to him that he must himself perform these
duties, and that he could not be permitted to delegate them to any other
person. [313]
The first effect produced by these orders would have at once sobered a
prince less infatuated than James. Half the Lords Lieutenants of England
peremptorily refused to stoop to the odious service which was required
of them. They were immediately dismissed. All those who incurred this
glorious disgrace were peers of high consideration; and all had hitherto
been regarded as firm supporters of monarchy. Some names in the list
deserve especial notice.
The noblest subject in England, and indeed, as Englishmen loved to say,
the noblest subject in Europe, was Aubrey de Vere, twentieth and last of
the old Earls of Oxford. He derived his title through an uninterrupted
male descent from a time when the families of Howard and Seymour were
still obscure, when the Nevilles and Percies enjoyed only a provincial
celebrity, and when even the great name of Plantagenet had not yet
been heard in England. One chief of the house of De Vere had held high
command at Hastings: another had marched, with Godfrey and Tancred, over
heaps of slaughtered Moslem, to the sepulchre of Christ. The first Earl
of Oxford had been minister of Henry Beauclerc. The third Earl had been
conspicuous among the Lords who extorted the Great Charter from John.
The seventh Earl had fought bravely at Cressy and Pointiers. The
thirteenth Earl had, through many vicissitudes of fortune, been the
chief of the party of the Red Rose, and had led the van on the decisive
day of Bosworth. The seventeenth Earl had shone at the court of
Elizabeth, and had won for himself an honourable place among the early
masters of English poetry. The nineteenth Earl had fallen in arms for
the Protestant religion and for the liberties of Europe under the walls
of Maastricht. His son Aubrey, in whom closed the longest and most
illustrious line of nobles that England has seen, a man of loose morals,
but of inoffensive temper and of courtly manners, was Lord Lieutenant
of Essex, and Colonel of the Blues. His nature was not factious; and his
interest inclined him to avoid a rupture with the court; for his estate
was encumbered, and his military command lucrative. He was summoned
to the royal closet; and an explicit declaration of his intentions was
demanded from him. "Sir," answered Oxford, "I will stand by your Majesty
against all enemies to the last drop of my blood. But this is matter
of conscience, and I cannot comply. " He was instantly deprived of his
lieutenancy and of his regiment. [314]
Inferior in antiquity and splendour to the house of De Vere, but to the
house of De Vere alone, was the house of Talbot. Ever since the reign of
Edward the Third, the Talbots had sate among the peers of the realm. The
earldom of Shrewsbury had been bestowed, in the fifteenth century, on
John Talbot, the antagonist of the Maid of Orleans. He had been long
remembered by his countrymen with tenderness and reverence as one of
the most illustrious of those warriors who had striven to erect a great
English empire on the Continent of Europe. The stubborn courage which he
had shown in the midst of disasters had made him an object of interest
greater than more fortunate captains had inspired, and his death had
furnished a singularly touching scene to our early stage. His posterity
had, during two centuries, flourished in great honour. The head of the
family at the time of the Restoration was Francis, the eleventh Earl,
a Roman Catholic. His death had been attended by circumstances such as,
even in those licentious times which immediately followed the downfall
of the Puritan tyranny, had moved men to horror and pity. The Duke
of Buckingham in the course of his vagrant amours was for a moment
attracted by the Countess of Shrewsbury. She was easily won. Her lord
challenged the gallant, and fell. Some said that the abandoned woman
witnessed the combat in man's attire, and others that she clasped her
victorious lover to her bosom while his shirt was still dripping with
the blood of her husband. The honours of the murdered man descended to
his infant son Charles. As the orphan grew up to man's estate, it was
generally acknowledged that of the young nobility of England none had
been so richly gifted by nature. His person was pleasing, his temper
singularly sweet, his parts such as, if he had been born in a humble
rank, might well have raised him to the height of civil greatness. All
these advantages he had so improved that, before he was of age, he was
allowed to be one of the finest gentlemen and finest scholars of his
time. His learning is proved by notes which are still extant in his
handwriting on books in almost every department of literature. He
spoke French like a gentleman of Lewis's bedchamber, and Italian like a
citizen of Florence. It was impossible that a youth of such parts should
not be anxious to understand the grounds on which his family had refused
to conform to the religion of the state. He studied the disputed points
closely, submitted his doubts to priests of his own faith, laid their
answers before Tillotson, weighed the arguments on both sides long
and attentively, and, after an investigation which occupied two years,
declared himself a Protestant. The Church of England welcomed the
illustrious convert with delight. His popularity was great, and became
greater when it was known that royal solicitations and promises had
been vainly employed to seduce him back to the superstition which he had
abjured. The character of the young Earl did not however develop itself
in a manner quite satisfactory to those who had borne the chief part
in his conversion. His morals by no means escaped the contagion of
fashionable libertinism. In truth the shock which had overturned his
early prejudices had at the same time unfixed all his opinions, and
left him to the unchecked guidance of his feelings. But, though his
principles were unsteady, his impulses were so generous, his temper so
bland, his manners so gracious and easy, that it was impossible not to
love him. He was early called the King of Hearts, and never, through a
long, eventful, and chequered life, lost his right to that name. [315]
Shrewsbury was Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire and Colonel of one
of the regiments of horse which had been raised in consequence of
the Western insurrection. He now refused to act under the board of
regulators, and was deprived of both his commissions.
None of the English nobles enjoyed a larger measure of public favour
than Charles Sackville Earl of Dorset. He was indeed a remarkable man.
In his youth he had been one of the most notorious libertines of the
wild time which followed the Restoration. He had been the terror of the
City watch, had passed many nights in the round house, and had at least
once occupied a cell in Newgate. His passion for Betty Morrice, and for
Nell Gwynn, who called him her Charles the First, had given no small
amusement and scandal to the town. [316] Yet, in the midst of follies
and vices, his courageous spirit, his fine understanding, and his
natural goodness of heart, had been conspicuous. Men said that the
excesses in which he indulged were common between him and the whole race
of gay young Cavaliers, but that his sympathy with human suffering and
the generosity with which he made reparation to those whom his freaks
had injured were all his own. His associates were astonished by the
distinction which the public made between him and them. "He may do what
he chooses," said Wilmot; "he is never in the wrong. " The judgment
of the world became still more favourable to Dorset when he had been
sobered by time and marriage. His graceful manners, his brilliant
conversation, his soft heart, his open hand, were universally praised.
No day passed, it was said, in which some distressed family had not
reason to bless his name. And yet, with all his goodnature, such was
the keenness of his wit that scoffers whose sarcasm all the town feared
stood in craven fear of the sarcasm of Dorset. All political parties
esteemed and caressed him; but politics were not much to his taste. Had
he been driven by necessity to exert himself, he would probably have
risen to the highest posts in the state; but he was born to rank so high
and wealth so ample that many of the motives which impel men to engage
in public affairs were wanting to him. He took just so much part in
parliamentary and diplomatic business as sufficed to show that he wanted
nothing but inclination to rival Danby and Sunderland, and turned away
to pursuits which pleased him better. Like many other men who, with
great natural abilities, are constitutionally and habitually indolent,
he became an intellectual voluptuary, and a master of all those pleasing
branches of knowledge which can be acquired without severe application.
He was allowed to be the best judge of painting, of sculpture, of
architecture, of acting, that the court could show.
On questions of
polite learning his decisions were regarded at all the coffeehouses as
without appeal. More than one clever play which had failed on the first
representation was supported by his single authority against the whole
clamour of the pit, and came forth successful from the second trial.
The delicacy of his taste in French composition was extolled by Saint
Evremond and La Fontaine. Such a patron of letters England had never
seen. His bounty was bestowed with equal judgment and liberality, and
was confined to no sect or faction. Men of genius, estranged from each
other by literary jealousy or by difference of political opinion, joined
in acknowledging his impartial kindness. Dryden owned that he had been
saved from ruin by Dorset's princely generosity. Yet Montague and Prior,
who had keenly satirised Dryden, were introduced by Dorset into public
life; and the best comedy of Dryden's mortal enemy, Shadwell, was
written at Dorset's country seat. The munificent Earl might, if such had
been his wish, have been the rival of those of whom he was content to be
the benefactor. For the verses which he occasionally composed,
unstudied as they are, exhibit the traces of a genius which, assiduously
cultivated, would have produced something great. In the small volume of
his works may be found songs which have the easy vigour of Suckling,
and little satires which sparkle with wit as splendid as that of Butler.
[317]
Dorset was Lord Lieutenant of Sussex: and to Sussex the board of
regulators looked with great anxiety: for in no other county, Cornwall
and Wiltshire excepted, were there so many small boroughs. He was
ordered to repair to his post. No person who knew him expected that he
would obey. He gave such an answer as became him, and was informed that
his services were no longer needed. The interest which his many noble
and amiable qualities inspired was heightened when it was known that he
had received by the post an anonymous billet telling him that, if he did
not promptly comply with the King's wishes, all his wit and popularity
should not save him from assassination. A similar warning was sent
to Shrewsbury. Threatening letters were then much more rare than they
afterwards became. It is therefore not strange that the people, excited
as they were, should have been disposed to believe that the best and
noblest Englishmen were really marked out for Popish daggers. [318] Just
when these letters were the talk of all London, the mutilated corpse of
a noted Puritan was found in the streets. It was soon discovered that
the murderer had acted from no religious or political motive. But
the first suspicions of the populace fell on the Papists. The mangled
remains were carried in procession to the house of the Jesuits in the
Savoy; and during a few hours the fear and rage of the populace were
scarcely less violent than on the day when Godfrey was borne to his
grave. [319]
The other dismissions must be more concisely related. The Duke of
Somerset, whose regiment had been taken from him some months before, was
now turned out of the lord lieutenancy of the East Riding of Yorkshire.
The North Riding was taken from Viscount Fauconberg, Shropshire from
Viscount Newport, and Lancashire from the Earl of Derby, grandson of
that gallant Cavalier who had faced death so bravely, both on the field
of battle and on the scaffold, for the House of Stuart. The Earl of
Pembroke, who had recently served the crown with fidelity and spirit
against Monmouth, was displaced in Wiltshire, the Earl of Husband in
Leicestershire, the Earl of Bridgewater in Buckinghamshire, the Earl of
Thanet in Cumberland, the Earl of Northampton in Warwickshire, the Earl
of Abingdon in Oxfordshire, and the Earl of Scarsdale in Derbyshire.
Scarsdale was also deprived of a regiment of cavalry, and of an office
in the household of the Princess of Denmark. She made a struggle to
retain his services, and yielded only to a peremptory command of
her father. The Earl of Gainsborough was rejected, not only from the
lieutenancy of Hampshire, but also from the government of Portsmouth and
the rangership of the New Forest, two places for which he had, only a
few months before, given five thousand pounds. [320]
The King could not find Lords of great note, or indeed Protestant Lords
of any sort, who would accept the vacant offices. It was necessary
to assign two shires to Jeffreys, a new man whose landed property was
small, and two to Preston who was not even an English peer. The other
counties which had been left without governors were entrusted, with
scarcely an exception, to known Roman Catholics, or to courtiers who had
secretly promised the King to declare themselves Roman Catholics as soon
as they could do so with prudence.
At length the new machinery was put in action; and soon from every
corner of the realm arrived the news of complete and hopeless failure.
The catechism by which the Lords Lieutenants had been directed to test
the sentiments of the country gentlemen consisted of three questions.
Every magistrate and Deputy Lieutenant was to be asked, first, whether,
if he should be chosen to serve in Parliament, he would vote for a bill
framed on the principles of the Declaration of Indulgence; secondly,
whether, as an elector, he would support candidates who would engage to
vote for such a bill and, thirdly, whether, in his private capacity,
he would aid the King's benevolent designs by living in friendship with
people of all religious persuasions. [321]
As soon as the questions got abroad, a form of answer, drawn up with
admirable skill, was circulated all over the kingdom, and was generally
adopted. It was to the following effect: "As a member of the House of
Commons, should I have the honour of a seat there, I shall think it my
duty carefully to weigh such reasons as may be adduced in debate for
and against a Bill of Indulgence, and then to vote according to my
conscientious conviction. As an elector, I shall give my support to
candidates whose notions of the duty of a representative agree with my
own. As a private man, it is my wish to live in peace and charity with
every body. " This answer, far more provoking than a direct refusal,
because slightly tinged with a sober and decorous irony which could not
well be resented, was all that the emissaries of the court could extract
from most of the country gentlemen. Arguments, promises, threats, were
tried in vain. The Duke of Norfolk, though a Protestant, and though
dissatisfied with the proceedings of the government, had consented to
become its agent in two counties. He went first to Surrey, where he soon
found that nothing could be done. [322] He then repaired to Norfolk, and
returned to inform the King that, of seventy gentlemen of note who bore
office in that great province, only six had held out hopes that they
should support the policy of the court. [323] The Duke of Beaufort,
whose authority extended over four English shires and over the whole
principality of Wales, came up to Whitehall with an account not less
discouraging. [324] Rochester was Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire. All
his little stock of virtue had been expended in his struggle against the
strong temptation to sell his religion for lucre. He was still bound to
the court by a pension of four thousand pounds a year; and in return for
this pension he was willing to perform any service, however illegal or
degrading, provided only that he were not required to go through the
forms of a reconciliation with Rome. He had readily undertaken to manage
his county; and he exerted himself, as usual, with indiscreet heat and
violence. But his anger was thrown away on the sturdy squires to whom he
addressed himself. They told him with one voice that they would send up
no man to Parliament who would vote for taking away the safeguards
of the Protestant religion. [325] The same answer was given to the
Chancellor in Buckinghamshire. [326] The gentry of Shropshire, assembled
at Ludlow, unanimously refused to fetter themselves by the pledge which
the King demanded of them. [327] The Earl of Yarmouth reported from
Wiltshire that, of sixty magistrates and Deputy Lieutenants with whom
he had conferred, only seven had given favourable answers, and that even
those seven could not be trusted. [328] The renegade Peterborough made
no progress in Northamptonshire. [329] His brother renegade Dover was
equally unsuccessful in Cambridgeshire. [330] Preston brought cold news
from Cumberland and Westmoreland. Dorsetshire and Huntingdonshire were
animated by the same spirit. The Earl of Bath, after a long canvass,
returned from the West with gloomy tidings. He had been authorised to
make the most tempting offers to the inhabitants of that region. In
particular he had promised that, if proper respect were shown to the
royal wishes, the trade in tin should be freed from the oppressive
restrictions under which it lay. But this lure, which at another time
would have proved irresistible, was now slighted. All the justices
and Deputy Lieutenants of Devonshire and Cornwall, without a single
dissenting voice, declared that they would put life and property in
jeopardy for the King, but that the Protestant religion was dearer
to them than either life or property. "And, sir," said Bath, "if your
Majesty should dismiss all these gentlemen, their successors would give
exactly the same answer. " [331] If there was any district in which the
government might have hoped for success, that district was Lancashire.
Considerable doubts had been felt as to the result of what was passing
there. In no part of the realm had so many opulent and honourable
families adhered to the old religion. The heads of many of those
families had already, by virtue of the dispensing power, been made
justices of the Peace and entrusted with commands in the militia. Yet
from Lancashire the new Lord Lieutenant, himself a Roman Catholic,
reported that two thirds of his deputies and of the magistrates were
opposed to the court. [332] But the proceedings in Hampshire wounded the
King's pride still more deeply. Arabella Churchill had, more than twenty
years before, borne him a son, widely renowned, at a later period,
as one of the most skilful captains of Europe. The youth, named
James Fitzjames, had as yet given no promise of the eminence which he
afterwards attained: but his manners were so gentle and inoffensive that
he had no enemy except Mary of Modena, who had long hated the child of
the concubine with the bitter hatred of a childless wife. A small part
of the Jesuitical faction had, before the pregnancy of the Queen was
announced, seriously thought of setting him up as a competitor of the
Princess of Orange. [333] When it is remembered how signally Monmouth,
though believed by the populace to be legitimate, and though the
champion of the national religion, had failed in a similar competition,
it must seem extraordinary that any man should have been so much
blinded by fanaticism as to think of placing on the throne one who was
universally known to be a Popish bastard. It does not appear that this
absurd design was ever countenanced by the King. The boy, however, was
acknowledged; and whatever distinctions a subject, not of the royal
blood, could hope to attain were bestowed on him. He had been created
Duke of Berwick; and he was now loaded with honourable and lucrative
employments, taken from those noblemen who had refused to comply with
the royal commands. He succeeded the Earl of Oxford as Colonel of the
Blues, and the Earl of Gainsborough as Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire,
Ranger of the New Forest, and Governor of Portsmouth. On the frontier of
Hampshire Berwick expected to have been met, according to custom, by a
long cavalcade of baronets, knights and squires: but not a single person
of note appeared to welcome him. He sent out letters commanding the
attendance of the gentry: but only five or six paid the smallest
attention to his summons. The rest did not wait to be dismissed.
They declared that they would take no part in the civil or military
government of their county while the King was represented there by a
Papist, and voluntarily laid down their commissions. [334]
Sunderland, who had been named Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire in the
room of the Earl of Northampton, found some excuse for not going down to
face the indignation and contempt of the gentry of that shire; and his
plea was the more readily admitted because the King had, by that time,
begun to feel that the spirit of the rustic gentry was not to be bent.
[335]
It is to be observed that those who displayed this spirit were not
the old enemies of the House of Stuart. The Commissions of Peace and
Lieutenancy had long been carefully purged of all republican names. The
persons from whom the court had in vain attempted to extract any promise
of support were, with scarcely an exception, Tories. The elder among
them could still show scars given by the swords of Roundheads, and
receipts for plate sent to Charles the First in his distress. The
younger had adhered firmly to James against Shaftesury and Monmouth.
Such were the men who were now turned out of office in a mass by the
very prince to whom they had given such signal proofs of fidelity.
Dismission however only made them more resolute. It had become a sacred
point of honour among them to stand stoutly by one another in this
crisis. There could be no doubt that, if the suffrage of the freeholders
were fairly taken, not a single knight of the shire favourable to the
policy of the government would be returned. Men therefore asked one
another, with no small anxiety, whether the suffrages were likely to be
fairly taken. The list of the Sheriffs for the new year was impatiently
expected. It appeared while the Lords Lieutenants were still engaged
in their canvass, and was received with a general cry of alarm and
indignation. Most of the functionaries who were to preside at the county
elections were either Roman Catholics or Protestant Dissenters who had
expressed their approbation of the Indulgence. [336] For a time the most
gloomy apprehensions prevailed: but soon they began to subside. There
was good reason to believe that there was a point beyond which the King
could not reckon on the support even of those Sheriffs who were members
of his own Church. Between the Roman Catholic courtier and the Roman
Catholic country gentleman there was very little sympathy. That cabal
which domineered at Whitehall consisted partly of fanatics, who were
ready to break through all rules of morality and to throw the world into
confusion for the purpose of propagating their religion, and partly of
hypocrites, who, for lucre, had apostatized from the faith in which they
had been brought up, and who now over acted the zeal characteristic
of neophytes. Both the fanatical and the hypocritical courtiers were
generally destitute of all English feeling. In some of them devotion
to their Church had extinguished every national sentiment. Some were
Irishmen, whose patriotism consisted in mortal hatred of the Saxon
conquerors of Ireland. Some, again, were traitors, who received regular
hire from a foreign power. Some had passed a great part of their lives
abroad, and either were mere cosmopolites, or felt a positive distaste
for the manners and institutions of the country which was now
subjected to their rule. Between such men and the lord of a Cheshire
or Staffordshire manor who adhered to the old Church there was scarcely
anything in common. He was neither a fanatic nor a hypocrite. He was a
Roman Catholic because his father and grandfather had been so; and he
held his hereditary faith, as men generally hold a hereditary faith,
sincerely, but with little enthusiasm. In all other points he was a
mere English squire, and, if he differed from the neighbouring squires,
differed from them by being somewhat more simple and clownish than
they. The disabilities under which he lay had prevented his mind from
expanding to the standard, moderate as that standard was, which
the minds of Protestant country gentlemen then ordinarily attained.
Excluded, when a boy, from Eton and Westminster, when a youth, from
Oxford and Cambridge, when a man, from Parliament and from the bench
of justice, he generally vegetated as quietly as the elms of the avenue
which led to his ancestral grange. His cornfields, his dairy and his
cider press, his greyhounds, his fishing rod and his gun, his ale and
his tobacco, occupied almost all his thoughts. With his neighbours, in
spite of his religion, he was generally on good terms. They knew him
to be unambitious and inoffensive. He was almost always of a good
old family. He was always a Cavalier. His peculiar notions were not
obtruded, and caused no annoyance. He did not, like a Puritan, torment
himself and others with scruples about everything that was pleasant. On
the contrary, he was as keen a sportsman, and as jolly a boon companion,
as any man who had taken the oath of supremacy and the declaration
against transubstantiation. He met his brother squires at the cover, was
in with them at the death, and, when the sport was over, took them home
with him to a venison pasty and to October four years in bottle. The
oppressions which he had undergone had not been such as to impel him
to any desperate resolution. Even when his Church was barbarously
persecuted, his life and property were in little danger. The most
impudent false witnesses could hardly venture to shock the common sense
of mankind by accusing him of being a conspirator. The Papists whom
Oates selected for attack were peers, prelates, Jesuits, Benedictines, a
busy political agent, a lawyer in high practice, a court physician. The
Roman Catholic country gentleman, protected by his obscurity, by his
peaceable demeanour, and by the good will of those among whom he lived,
carted his hay or filled his bag with game unmolested, while Coleman
and Langhorne, Whitbread and Pickering, Archbishop Plunkett and Lord
Stafford, died by the halter or the axe. An attempt was indeed made by
a knot of villains to bring home a charge of treason to Sir Thomas
Gascoigne, an aged Roman Catholic baronet of Yorkshire: but twelve of
the best gentlemen of the West Riding, who knew his way of life, could
not be convinced that their honest old acquaintance had hired cutthroats
to murder the King, and, in spite of charges which did very little
honour to the bench, found a verdict of Not Guilty. Sometimes, indeed,
the head of an old and respectable provincial family might reflect with
bitterness that he was excluded, on account of his religion, from places
of honour and authority which men of humbler descent and less ample
estate were thought competent to fill: but he was little disposed to
risk land and life in a struggle against overwhelming odds; and his
honest English spirit would have shrunk with horror from means such as
were contemplated by the Petres and Tyrconnels. Indeed he would have
been as ready as any of his Protestant neighbours to gird on his sword,
and to put pistols in his holsters, for the defence of his native land
against an invasion of French or Irish Papists. Such was the general
character of the men to whom James now looked as to his most trustworthy
instruments for the conduct of county elections. He soon found that they
were not inclined to throw away the esteem of their neighbours, and to
endanger their beads and their estates, by rendering him an infamous and
criminal service. Several of them refused to be Sheriffs. Of those who
accepted the shrievalty many declared that they would discharge their
duty as fairly as if they were members of the Established Church, and
would return no candidate who had not a real majority. [337]
If the King could place little confidence even in his Roman Catholic
Sheriffs, still less could he rely on the Puritans. Since the
publication of the Declaration several months had elapsed, months
crowded with important events, months of unintermitted controversy.
Discussion had opened the eyes of many Dissenters: but the acts of the
government, and especially the severity with which Magdalene College had
been treated, had done more than even the pen of Halifax to alarm and to
unite all classes of Protestants. Most of those sectaries who had been
induced to express gratitude for the Indulgence were now ashamed of
their error, and were desirous of making atonement by casting in their
lot with the great body of their countrymen.
The consequence of this change in the feeling of the Nonconformists, was
that the government found almost as great difficulty in the towns as in
the counties. When the regulators began their work, they had taken
it for granted that every Dissenter who had been induced to express
gratitude for the Indulgence would be favourable to the king's policy.
They were therefore confident that they should be able to fill all
the municipal offices in the kingdom with staunch friends. In the
new charters a power had been reserved to the crown of dismissing
magistrates at pleasure. This power was now exercised without limit. It
was by no means equally clear that James had the power of appointing new
magistrates: but, whether it belonged to him or not, he determined
to assume it. Everywhere, from the Tweed to the Land's End, Tory
functionaries were ejected, and the vacant places were filled with
Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists. In the new charter of the
City of London the crown had reserved the power of displacing the
masters, wardens, and assistants of all the companies. Accordingly more
than eight hundred citizens of the first consideration, all of them
members of that party which had opposed the Exclusion Bill, were turned
out of office by a single edict. In a short time appeared a supplement
to this long list. [338] But scarcely had the new officebearers been
sworn in when it was discovered that they were as unmanageable as their
predecessors. At Newcastle on Tyne the regulators appointed a Roman
Catholic Mayor and Puritan Alderman. No doubt was entertained that the
municipal body, thus remodelled, would vote an address promising to
support the king's measures. The address, however, was negatived. The
mayor went up to London in a fury, and told the king that the Dissenters
were all knaves and rebels, and that in the whole corporation the
government could not reckon on more than four votes. [339] At Reading
twenty-four Tory aldermen were dismissed. Twenty-four new aldermen
were appointed. Twenty-three of these immediately declared against the
Indulgence, and were dismissed in their turn. [340] In the course of a
few days the borough of Yarmouth was governed by three different sets
of magistrates, all equally hostile to the court. [341] These are mere
examples of what was passing all over the kingdom. The Dutch Ambassador
informed the States that at many towns the public functionaries had,
within one month, been changed twice, and even thrice, and yet changed
in vain. [342] From the records of the Privy Council it appears that the
number of regulations, as they were called, exceeded two hundred. [343]
The regulators indeed found that, in not a few places, the change
had been for the worse. The discontented Tories, even while murmuring
against the king's policy, had constantly expressed respect for his
person and his office, and had disclaimed all thoughts of resistance.
Very different was the language of some of the new members of
corporations. It was said that old soldiers of the Commonwealth, who, to
their own astonishment and that of the public, had been made aldermen,
gave the agents of the court very distinctly to understand that blood
should flow before Popery and arbitrary power were established in
England. [344]
The regulators found that little or nothing had been gained by what had
as yet been done. There was one way, and one way only, in which they
could hope to effect their object. The charters of the boroughs must
be resumed; and other charters must be granted confining the elective
franchise to very small constituent bodies appointed by the sovereign.
[345]
But how was this plan to be carried into effect? In a few of the new
charters, indeed, a right of revocation had been reserved to the crown:
but the rest James could get into his hands only by voluntary surrender
on the part of corporations, or by judgment of the King's Bench. Few
corporations were now disposed to surrender their charters voluntarily;
and such judgments as would suit the purposes of the government were
hardly to be expected even from such a slave as Wright. The writs of Quo
Warranto which had been brought a few years before for the purpose of
crushing the Whig party had been condemned by every impartial man. Yet
those writs had at least the semblance of justice; for they were brought
against ancient municipal bodies; and there were few ancient municipal
bodies in which some abuse, sufficient to afford a pretext for a penal
proceeding, had not grown up in the course of ages. But the corporations
now to be attacked were still in the innocence of infancy. The oldest
among them had not completed its fifth year. It was impossible that many
of them should have committed offences meriting disfranchisement. The
Judges themselves were uneasy. They represented that what they were
required to do was in direct opposition to the plainest principles
of law and justice: but all remonstrance was vain. The boroughs were
commanded to surrender their charters. Few complied; and the course
which the King took with those few did not encourage others to trust
him. In several towns the right of voting was taken away from the
commonalty, and given to a very small number of persons, who were
required to bind themselves by oath to support the candidates
recommended by the government. At Tewkesbury, for example, the franchise
was confined to thirteen persons. Yet even this number was too large.
Hatred and fear had spread so widely through the community that it
was scarcely possible to bring together in any town, by any process of
packing, thirteen men on whom the court could absolutely depend. It was
rumoured that the majority of the new constituent body of Tewkesbury was
animated by the same sentiment which was general throughout the nation,
and would, when the decisive day should arrive, send true Protestants
to Parliament. The regulators in great wrath threatened to reduce the
number of electors to three. [346] Meanwhile the great majority of
the boroughs firmly refused to give up their privileges. Barnstaple,
Winchester, and Buckingham, distinguished themselves by the boldness of
their opposition. At Oxford the motion that the city should resign its
franchises to the King was negatived by eighty votes to two. [347] The
Temple and Westminster Hall were in a ferment with the sudden rush of
business from all corners of the kingdom. Every lawyer in high practice
was overwhelmed with the briefs from corporations. Ordinary litigants
complained that their business was neglected. [348] It was evident that
a considerable time must elapse before judgment could be given in so
great a number of important cases. Tyranny could ill brook this delay.
Nothing was omitted which could terrify the refractory boroughs into
submission. At Buckingham some of the municipal officers had spoken of
Jeffreys in language which was not laudatory. They were prosecuted, and
were given to understand that no mercy should be shown to them unless
they would ransom themselves by surrendering their charter. [349] At
Winchester still more violent measures were adopted. A large body of
troops was marched into the town for the sole purpose of burdening and
harassing the inhabitants. [350] The town continued resolute; and the
public voice loudly accused the King of imitating the worst crimes of
his brother of France. The dragonades, it was said, had begun. There was
indeed reason for alarm. It had occurred to James that he could not more
effectually break the spirit of an obstinate town than by quartering
soldiers on the inhabitants.
