No More Learning

The Marquess of Gastanaga, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, repaired
to the assembly from the viceregal Court of Brussels. Extraordinary
ministers had been sent by the Emperor, by the Kings of Spain, Poland,
Denmark, and Sweden, and by the Duke of Savoy. There was scarcely room
in the town and the neighbourhood for the English Lords and gentlemen
and the German Counts and Barons whom curiosity or official duty had
brought to the place of meeting. The grave capital of the most thrifty
and industrious of nations was as gay as Venice in the Carnival. The
walks cut among those noble limes and elms in which the villa of the
Princes of Orange is embosomed were gay with the plumes, the stars,
the flowing wigs, the embroidered coats and the gold hilted swords of
gallants from London, Berlin and Vienna. With the nobles were mingled
sharpers not less gorgeously attired than they. At night the hazard
tables were thronged; and the theatre was filled to the roof. Princely
banquets followed one another in rapid succession. The meats were
served in gold; and, according to that old Teutonic fashion with which
Shakspeare had made his countrymen familiar, as often as any of the
great princes proposed a health, the kettle drums and trumpets sounded.
Some English lords, particularly Devonshire, gave entertainments
which vied with those of Sovereigns. It was remarked that the German
potentates, though generally disposed to be litigious and punctilious
about etiquette, associated, on this occasion, in an unceremonious
manner, and seemed to have forgotten their passion for genealogical and
heraldic controversy. The taste for wine, which was then characteristic
of their nation, they had not forgotten. At the table of the Elector
of Brandenburg much mirth was caused by the gravity of the statesmen of
Holland, who, sober themselves, confuted out of Grotius and Puffendorf
the nonsense stuttered by the tipsy nobles of the Empire. One of those
nobles swallowed so many bumpers that he tumbled into the turf fire, and
was not pulled out till his fine velvet suit had been burned. [5]

In the midst of all this revelry, business was not neglected. A formal
meeting of the Congress was held at which William presided. In a short
and dignified speech, which was speedily circulated throughout Europe,
he set forth the necessity of firm union and strenuous exertion. The
profound respect with which he was heard by that splendid assembly
caused bitter mortification to his enemies both in England and in
France. The German potentates were bitterly reviled for yielding
precedence to an upstart. Indeed the most illustrious among them paid to
him such marks of deference as they would scarcely have deigned to pay
to the Imperial Majesty, mingled with the crowd in his antechamber, and
at his table behaved as respectfully as any English lord in waiting.
In one caricature the allied princes were represented as muzzled bears,
some with crowns, some with caps of state. William had them all in
a chain, and was teaching them to dance. In another caricature, he
appeared taking his ease in an arm chair, with his feet on a cushion,
and his hat on his head, while the Electors of Brandenburg and Bavaria,
uncovered, occupied small stools on the right and left; the crowd of
Landgraves and Sovereign dukes stood at humble distance; and Gastanaga,
the unworthy successor of Alva, awaited the orders of the heretic tyrant
on bended knee. [6]

It was soon announced by authority that, before the beginning of summer,
two hundred and twenty thousand men would be in the field against
France. [7] The contingent which each of the allied powers was
to furnish was made known. Matters about which it would have been
inexpedient to put forth any declaration were privately discussed by
the King of England with his allies. On this occasion, as on every other
important occasion during his reign, he was his own minister for
foreign affairs. It was necessary for the sake of form that he should be
attended by a Secretary of State; and Nottingham had therefore followed
him to Holland. But Nottingham, though, in matters concerning the
internal government of England, he enjoyed a large share of his master's
confidence, knew little more about the business of the Congress than
what he saw in the Gazettes.

This mode of transacting business would now be thought most
unconstitutional; and many writers, applying the standard of their own
age to the transactions of a former age, have severely blamed William
for acting without the advice of his ministers, and his ministers
for submitting to be kept in ignorance of transactions which deeply
concerned the honour of the Crown and the welfare of the nation. Yet
surely the presumption is that what the most honest and honourable men
of both parties, Nottingham, for example, among the Tories, and Somers
among the Whigs, not only did, but avowed, cannot have been altogether
inexcusable; and a very sufficient excuse will without difficulty be
found.

The doctrine that the Sovereign is not responsible is doubtless as old
as any part of our constitution. The doctrine that his ministers are
responsible is also of immemorial antiquity. That where there is
no responsibility there can be no trustworthy security against
maladministration, is a doctrine which, in our age and country, few
people will be inclined to dispute. From these three propositions it
plainly follows that the administration is likely to be best conducted
when the Sovereign performs no public act without the concurrence and
instrumentality of a minister. This argument is perfectly sound. But we
must remember that arguments are constructed in one way, and governments
in another. In logic, none but an idiot admits the premises and denies
the legitimate conclusion. But in practice, we see that great and
enlightened communities often persist, generation after generation, in
asserting principles, and refusing to act upon those principles. It
may be doubted whether any real polity that ever existed has exactly
corresponded to the pure idea of that polity. According to the pure idea
of constitutional royalty, the prince reigns and does not govern; and
constitutional royalty, as it now exists in England, comes nearer than
in any other country to the pure idea. Yet it would be a great error
to imagine that our princes merely reign and never govern. In the
seventeenth century, both Whigs and Tories thought it, not only the
right, but the duty, of the first magistrate to govern. All parties
agreed in blaming Charles the Second for not being his own Prime
Minister; all parties agreed in praising James for being his own Lord
High Admiral; and all parties thought it natural and reasonable that
William should be his own Foreign Secretary.

It may be observed that the ablest and best informed of those who
have censured the manner in which the negotiations of that time were
conducted are scarcely consistent with themselves. For, while they blame
William for being his own Ambassador Plenipotentiary at the Hague, they
praise him for being his own Commander in Chief in Ireland. Yet where is
the distinction in principle between the two cases? Surely every reason
which can be brought to prove that he violated the constitution, when,
by his own sole authority, he made compacts with the Emperor and
the Elector of Brandenburg, will equally prove that he violated the
constitution, when, by his own sole authority, he ordered one column to
plunge into the water at Oldbridge and another to cross the bridge of
Slane. If the constitution gave him the command of the forces of the
State, the constitution gave him also the direction of the foreign
relations of the State. On what principle then can it be maintained that
he was at liberty to exercise the former power without consulting any
body, but that he was bound to exercise the latter power in conformity
with the advice of a minister? Will it be said that an error in
diplomacy is likely to be more injurious to the country than an error
in strategy? Surely not. It is hardly conceivable that any blunder which
William might have made at the Hague could have been more injurious to
the public interests than a defeat at the Boyne. Or will it be said that
there was greater reason for placing confidence in his military than in
his diplomatic skill? Surely not. In war he showed some great moral and
intellectual qualities; but, as a tactician, he did not rank high; and
of his many campaigns only two were decidedly successful. In the talents
of a negotiator, on the other hand, he has never been surpassed. Of the
interests and the tempers of the continental courts he knew more than
all his Privy Council together. Some of his ministers were doubtless men
of great ability, excellent orators in the House of Lords, and versed
in our insular politics. But, in the deliberations of the Congress,
Caermarthen and Nottingham would have been found as far inferior to him
as he would have been found inferior to them in a parliamentary debate
on a question purely English. The coalition against France was his work.
He alone had joined together the parts of that great whole; and he alone
could keep them together. If he had trusted that vast and complicated
machine in the hands of any of his subjects, it would instantly have
fallen to pieces.

Some things indeed were to be done which none of his subjects would have
ventured to do. Pope Alexander was really, though not in name, one of
the allies; it was of the highest importance to have him for a friend;
and yet such was the temper of the English nation that an English
minister might well shrink from having any dealings, direct or indirect,
with the Vatican. The Secretaries of State were glad to leave a matter
so delicate and so full of risk to their master, and to be able
to protest with truth that not a line to which the most intolerant
Protestant could object had ever gone out of their offices.

It must not be supposed however that William ever forgot that his
especial, his hereditary, mission was to protect the Reformed Faith.
His influence with Roman Catholic princes was constantly and strenuously
exerted for the benefit of their Protestant subjects. In the spring of
1691, the Waldensian shepherds, long and cruelly persecuted, and weary
of their lives, were surprised by glad tidings. Those who had been in
prison for heresy returned to their homes. Children, who had been
taken from their parents to be educated by priests, were sent back.
Congregations, which had hitherto met only by stealth and with extreme
peril, now worshipped God without molestation in the face of day. Those
simple mountaineers probably never knew that their fate had been a
subject of discussion at the Hague, and that they owed the happiness
of their firesides, and the security of their humble temples to the
ascendency which William exercised over the Duke of Savoy. [8]

No coalition of which history has preserved the memory has had an abler
chief than William. But even William often contended in vain against
those vices which are inherent in the nature of all coalitions. No
undertaking which requires the hearty and long continued cooperation
of many independent states is likely to prosper. Jealousies inevitably
spring up. Disputes engender disputes. Every confederate is tempted to
throw on others some part of the burden which he ought himself to bear.
Scarcely one honestly furnishes the promised contingent. Scarcely one
exactly observes the appointed day. But perhaps no coalition that ever
existed was in such constant danger of dissolution as the coalition
which William had with infinite difficulty formed. The long list of
potentates, who met in person or by their representatives at the Hague,
looked well in the Gazettes. The crowd of princely equipages, attended
by manycoloured guards and lacqueys, looked well among the lime trees
of the Voorhout. But the very circumstances which made the Congress
more splendid than other congresses made the league weaker than other
leagues. The more numerous the allies, the more numerous were the
dangers which threatened the alliance. It was impossible that twenty
governments, divided by quarrels about precedence, quarrels about
territory, quarrels about trade, quarrels about religion, could long
act together in perfect harmony. That they acted together during several
years in imperfect harmony is to be ascribed to the wisdom, patience and
firmness of William.

The situation of his great enemy was very different. The resources of
the French monarchy, though certainly not equal to those of England,
Holland, the House of Austria, and the Empire of Germany united, were
yet very formidable; they were all collected in a central position; they
were all under the absolute direction of a single mind. Lewis could do
with two words what William could hardly bring about by two months of
negotiation at Berlin, Munich, Brussels, Turin and Vienna. Thus France
was found equal in effective strength to all the states which were
combined against her. For in the political, as in the natural world,
there may be an equality of momentum between unequal bodies, when the
body which is inferior in weight is superior in velocity.

This was soon signally proved. In March the princes and ambassadors
who had been assembled at the Hague separated and scarcely had they
separated when all their plans were disconcerted by a bold and skilful
move of the enemy.

Lewis was sensible that the meeting of the Congress was likely to
produce a great effect on the public mind of Europe. That effect he
determined to counteract by striking a sudden and terrible blow. While
his enemies were settling how many troops each of them should furnish,
he ordered numerous divisions of his army to march from widely distant
points towards Mons, one of the most important, if not the most
important, of the fortresses which protected the Spanish Netherlands.
His purpose was discovered only when it was all but accomplished.
William, who had retired for a few days to Loo, learned, with surprise
and extreme vexation, that cavalry, infantry, artillery, bridges of
boats, were fast approaching the fated city by many converging routes.
A hundred thousand men had been brought together. All the implements
of war had been largely provided by Louvois, the first of living
administrators. The command was entrusted to Luxemburg, the first of
living generals. The scientific operations were directed by Vauban, the
first of living engineers. That nothing might be wanting which could
kindle emulation through all the ranks of a gallant and loyal army, the
magnificent King himself had set out from Versailles for the camp. Yet
William had still some faint hope that it might be possible to raise the
siege. He flew to the Hague, put all the forces of the States General in
motion, and sent pressing messages to the German Princes. Within three
weeks after he had received the first hint of the danger, he was in the
neighbourhood of the besieged city, at the head of near fifty thousand
troops of different nations. To attack a superior force commanded by
such a captain as Luxemburg was a bold, almost a desperate, enterprise.
Yet William was so sensible that the loss of Mons would be an almost
irreparable disaster and disgrace that he made up his mind to run the
hazard. He was convinced that the event of the siege would determine
the policy of the Courts of Stockholm and Copenhagen. Those Courts had
lately seemed inclined to join the coalition. If Mons fell, they would
certainly remain neutral; they might possibly become hostile. "The
risk," he wrote to Heinsius, "is great; yet I am not without hope. I
will do what can be done. The issue is in the hands of God. " On the
very day on which this letter was written Mons fell. The siege had been
vigorously pressed. Lewis himself, though suffering from the gout, had
set the example of strenuous exertion. His household troops, the finest
body of soldiers in Europe, had, under his eye, surpassed themselves.
The young nobles of his court had tried to attract his notice by
exposing themselves to the hottest fire with the same gay alacrity with
which they were wont to exhibit their graceful figures at his balls. His
wounded soldiers were charmed by the benignant courtesy with which he
walked among their pallets, assisted while wounds were dressed by the
hospital surgeons, and breakfasted on a porringer of the hospital broth.
While all was obedience and enthusiasm among the besiegers, all was
disunion and dismay among the besieged. The duty of the French lines was
so well performed that no messenger sent by William was able to cross
them. The garrison did not know that relief was close at hand. The
burghers were appalled by the prospect of those horrible calamities
which befall cities taken by storm. Showers of shells and redhot bullets
were falling in the streets. The town was on fire in ten places at once.
The peaceful inhabitants derived an unwonted courage from the excess
of their fear, and rose on the soldiers. Thenceforth resistance was
impossible; and a capitulation was concluded. The armies then retired
into quarters. Military operations were suspended during some weeks;
Lewis returned in triumph to Versailles; and William paid a short visit
to England, where his presence was much needed. [9]

He found the ministers still employed in tracing out the ramifications
of the plot which had been discovered just before his departure. Early
in January, Preston, Ashton and Elliot had been arraigned at the Old
Bailey. They claimed the right of severing in their challenges. It was
therefore necessary to try them separately. The audience was numerous
and splendid. Many peers were present. The Lord President and the two
Secretaries of State attended in order to prove that the papers
produced in Court were the same which Billop had brought to Whitehall. A
considerable number of judges appeared on the bench; and Holt presided.
A full report of the proceedings has come down to us, and well deserves
to be attentively studied, and to be compared with the reports of other
trials which had not long before taken place under the same roof. The
whole spirit of the tribunal had undergone in a few months a change so
complete that it might seem to have been the work of ages. Twelve years
earlier, unhappy Roman Catholics, accused of wickedness which had never
entered into their thoughts, had stood in that dock. The witnesses for
the Crown had repeated their hideous fictions amidst the applauding hums
of the audience. The judges had shared, or had pretended to share, the
stupid credulity and the savage passions of the populace, had exchanged
smiles and compliments with the perjured informers, had roared down
the arguments feebly stammered forth by the prisoners, and had not
been ashamed, in passing the sentence of death, to make ribald jests on
purgatory and the mass. As soon as the butchery of Papists was over, the
butchery of Whigs had commenced; and the judges had applied themselves
to their new work with even more than their old barbarity. To these
scandals the Revolution had put an end. Whoever, after perusing the
trials of Ireland and Pickering, of Grove and Berry, of Sidney, Cornish
and Alice Lisle, turns to the trials of Preston and Ashton, will be
astonished by the contrast. The Solicitor General, Somers, conducted the
prosecutions with a moderation and humanity of which his predecessors
had left him no example. "I did never think," he said, "that it was the
part of any who were of counsel for the King in cases of this nature
to aggravate the crime of the prisoners, or to put false colours on the
evidence. " [10] Holt's conduct was faultless. Pollexfen, an older man
than Holt or Somers, retained a little,--and a little was too much,--of
the tone of that bad school in which he had been bred. But, though he
once or twice forgot the austere decorum of his place, he cannot
be accused of any violation of substantial justice. The prisoners
themselves seem to have been surprised by the fairness and gentleness
with which they were treated. "I would not mislead the jury, I'll assure
you," said Holt to Preston, "nor do Your Lordship any manner of injury
in the world. " "No, my Lord;" said Preston; "I see it well enough that
Your Lordship would not. " "Whatever my fate may be," said Ashton, "I
cannot but own that I have had a fair trial for my life. "

The culprits gained nothing by the moderation of the Solicitor General
or by the impartiality of the Court; for the evidence was irresistible.
The meaning of the papers seized by Billop was so plain that the dullest
juryman could not misunderstand it. Of those papers part was fully
proved to be in Preston's handwriting. Part was in Ashton's handwriting
but this the counsel for the prosecution had not the means of proving.
They therefore rested the case against Ashton on the indisputable facts
that the treasonable packet had been found in his bosom, and that he had
used language which was quite unintelligible except on the supposition
that he had a guilty knowledge of the contents. [11]

Both Preston and Ashton were convicted and sentenced to death.
Ashton was speedily executed. He might have saved his life by making
disclosures. But though he declared that, if he were spared, he would
always be a faithful subject of Their Majesties, he was fully resolved
not to give up the names of his accomplices. In this resolution he was
encouraged by the nonjuring divines who attended him in his cell. It
was probably by their influence that he was induced to deliver to the
Sheriffs on the scaffold a declaration which he had transcribed
and signed, but had not, it is to be hoped, composed or attentively
considered. In this paper he was made to complain of the unfairness of a
trial which he had himself in public acknowledged to have been eminently
fair. He was also made to aver, on the word of a dying man, that he knew
nothing of the papers which had been found upon him. Unfortunately his
declaration, when inspected, proved to be in the same handwriting with
one of the most important of those papers. He died with manly fortitude.
[12]

Elliot was not brought to trial. The evidence against him was not quite
so clear as that on which his associates had been convicted; and he was
not worth the anger of the government. The fate of Preston was long in
suspense. The Jacobites affected to be confident that the government
would not dare to shed his blood. He was, they said, a favourite at
Versailles, and his death would be followed by a terrible retaliation.
They scattered about the streets of London papers in which it was
asserted that, if any harm befell him, Mountjoy, and all the other
Englishmen of quality who were prisoners in France, would be broken
on the wheel. [13] These absurd threats would not have deferred the
execution one day. But those who had Preston in their power were not
unwilling to spare him on certain conditions. He was privy to all the
counsels of the disaffected party, and could furnish information of the
highest value. He was informed that his fate depended on himself. The
struggle was long and severe. Pride, conscience, party spirit, were on
one side; the intense love of life on the other. He went during a time
irresolutely to and fro. He listened to his brother Jacobites; and his
courage rose. He listened to the agents of the government; and his heart
sank within him. In an evening when he had dined and drunk his claret,
he feared nothing. He would die like a man, rather than save his neck by
an act of baseness. But his temper was very different when he woke the
next morning, when the courage which he had drawn from wine and company
had evaporated, when he was alone with the iron grates and stone walls,
and when the thought of the block, the axe and the sawdust rose in his
mind. During some time he regularly wrote a confession every forenoon
when he was sober, and burned it every night when he was merry. [14]
His nonjuring friends formed a plan for bringing Sancroft to visit
the Tower, in the hope, doubtless, that the exhortations of so great a
prelate and so great a saint would confirm the wavering virtue of the
prisoner. [15] Whether this plan would have been successful may be
doubted; it was not carried into effect; the fatal hour drew near; and
the fortitude of Preston gave way. He confessed his guilt, and named
Clarendon, Dartmouth, the Bishop of Ely and William Penn, as his
accomplices. He added a long list of persons against whom he could not
himself give evidence, but who, if he could trust to Penn's assurances,
were friendly to King James. Among these persons were Devonshire and
Dorset. [16] There is not the slightest reason to believe that either
of these great noblemen ever had any dealings, direct or indirect,
with Saint Germains. It is not, however, necessary to accuse Penn of
deliberate falsehood. He was credulous and garrulous. The Lord Steward
and the Lord Chamberlain had shared in the vexation with which their
party had observed the leaning of William towards the Tories; and they
had probably expressed that vexation unguardedly.
So weak a man as Penn,
wishing to find Jacobites every where, and prone to believe whatever he
wished, might easily put an erroneous construction on invectives such as
the haughty and irritable Devonshire was but too ready to utter, and on
sarcasms such as, in moments of spleen, dropped but too easily from the
lips of the keenwitted Dorset. Caermarthen, a Tory, and a Tory who had
been mercilessly persecuted by the Whigs, was disposed to make the most
of this idle hearsay. But he received no encouragement from his master,
who, of all the great politicians mentioned in history, was the least
prone to suspicion. When William returned to England, Preston was
brought before him, and was commanded to repeat the confession which
had already been made to the ministers. The King stood behind the Lord
President's chair and listened gravely while Clarendon, Dartmouth,
Turner and Penn were named. But as soon as the prisoner, passing from
what he could himself testify, began to repeat the stories which Penn
had told him, William touched Caermarthen on the shoulder and said, "My
Lord, we have had too much of this. " [17] This judicious magnanimity
had its proper reward. Devonshire and Dorset became from that day more
zealous than ever in the cause of the master who, in spite of calumny
for which their own indiscretion had perhaps furnished some ground, had
continued to repose confidence in their loyalty. [18]

Even those who were undoubtedly criminal were generally treated with
great lenity. Clarendon lay in the Tower about six months. His guilt
was fully established; and a party among the Whigs called loudly and
importunately for his head. But he was saved by the pathetic entreaties
of his brother Rochester, by the good offices of the humane and
generous Burnet, and by Mary's respect for the memory of her mother. The
prisoner's confinement was not strict. He was allowed to entertain
his friends at dinner. When at length his health began to suffer from
restraint, he was permitted to go into the country under the care of a
warder; the warder was soon removed; and Clarendon was informed that,
while he led a quiet rural life, he should not be molested. [19]

The treason of Dartmouth was of no common dye. He was an English seaman;
and he had laid a plan for betraying Portsmouth to the French, and had
offered to take the command of a French squadron against his country. It
was a serious aggravation of his guilt that he had been one of the very
first persons who took the oaths to William and Mary. He was arrested
and brought to the Council Chamber. A narrative of what passed there,
written by himself, has been preserved. In that narrative he admits that
he was treated with great courtesy and delicacy. He vehemently asserted
his innocence. He declared that he had never corresponded with Saint
Germains, that he was no favourite there, and that Mary of Modena in
particular owed him a grudge. "My Lords," he said, "I am an Englishman.
I always, when the interest of the House of Bourbon was strongest here,
shunned the French, both men and women. I would lose the last drop of
my blood rather than see Portsmouth in the power of foreigners. I am not
such a fool as to think that King Lewis will conquer us merely for the
benefit of King James. I am certain that nothing can be truly imputed
to me beyond some foolish talk over a bottle. " His protestations seem
to have produced some effect; for he was at first permitted to remain in
the gentle custody of the Black Rod. On further inquiry, however, it was
determined to send him to the Tower. After a confinement of a few weeks
he died of apoplexy; but he lived long enough to complete his disgrace
by offering his sword to the new government, and by expressing in
fervent language his hope that he might, by the goodness of God and of
Their Majesties, have an opportunity of showing how much he hated the
French. [20]

Turner ran no serious risk; for the government was most unwilling to
send to the scaffold one of the Seven who had signed the memorable
petition. A warrant was however issued for his apprehension; and his
friends had little hope that he would escape; for his nose was such as
none who had seen it could forget; and it was to little purpose that he
put on a flowing wig and that he suffered his beard to grow. The pursuit
was probably not very hot; for, after skulking a few weeks in England,
he succeeded in crossing the Channel, and remained some time in France.
[21]

A warrant was issued against Penn; and he narrowly escaped the
messengers. It chanced that, on the day on which they were sent in
search of him, he was attending a remarkable ceremony at some distance
from his home. An event had taken place which a historian, whose object
is to record the real life of a nation, ought not to pass unnoticed.
While London was agitated by the news that a plot had been discovered,
George Fox, the founder of the sect of Quakers, died.

More than forty years had elapsed since Fox had begun to see visions and
to cast out devils. [22] He was then a youth of pure morals and grave
deportment, with a perverse temper, with the education of a labouring
man, and with an intellect in the most unhappy of all states, that is
to say, too much disordered for liberty, and not sufficiently disordered
for Bedlam. The circumstances in which he was placed were such as could
scarcely fail to bring out in the strongest form the constitutional
diseases of his mind. At the time when his faculties were ripening,
Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, were striving for
mastery, and were, in every corner of the realm, refuting and reviling
each other. He wandered from congregation to congregation; he heard
priests harangue against Puritans; he heard Puritans harangue against
priests; and he in vain applied for spiritual direction and consolation
to doctors of both parties. One jolly old clergyman of the Anglican
communion told him to smoke tobacco and sing psalms; another advised
him to go and lose some blood. [23] The young inquirer turned in disgust
from these advisers to the Dissenters, and found them also blind guides.
[24] After some time he came to the conclusion that no human being was
competent to instruct him in divine things, and that the truth had been
communicated to him by direct inspiration from heaven. He argued that,
as the division of languages began at Babel, and as the persecutors of
Christ put on the cross an inscription in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, the
knowledge of languages, and more especially of Latin, Greek and Hebrew,
must be useless to a Christian minister. [25] Indeed, he was so far
from knowing many languages, that he knew none; nor can the most corrupt
passage in Hebrew be more unintelligible to the unlearned than his
English often is to the most acute and attentive reader. [26] One of the
precious truths which were divinely revealed to this new apostle was,
that it was falsehood and adulation to use the second person plural
instead of the second person singular. Another was, that to talk of the
month of March was to worship the bloodthirsty god Mars, and that to
talk of Monday was to pay idolatrous homage to the moon. To say Good
morning or Good evening was highly reprehensible, for those phrases
evidently imported that God had made bad days and bad nights. [27] A
Christian was bound to face death itself rather than touch his hat
to the greatest of mankind. When Fox was challenged to produce any
Scriptural authority for this dogma, he cited the passage in which it is
written that Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego were thrown into the fiery
furnace with their hats on; and, if his own narrative may be trusted,
the Chief Justice of England was altogether unable to answer this
argument except by crying out, "Take him away, gaoler. " [28] Fox
insisted much on the not less weighty argument that the Turks never show
their bare heads to their superiors; and he asked, with great animation,
whether those who bore the noble name of Christians ought not to surpass
Turks in virtue. [29] Bowing he strictly prohibited, and, indeed,
seemed to consider it as the effect of Satanical influence; for, as he
observed, the woman in the Gospel, while she had a spirit of infirmity,
was bowed together, and ceased to bow as soon as Divine power had
liberated her from the tyranny of the Evil One. [30] His expositions of
the sacred writings were of a very peculiar kind. Passages, which had
been, in the apprehension of all the readers of the Gospels during
sixteen centuries, figurative, he construed literally. Passages, which
no human being before him had ever understood in any other than a
literal sense, he construed figuratively. Thus, from those rhetorical
expressions in which the duty of patience under injuries is enjoined he
deduced the doctrine that selfdefence against pirates and assassins is
unlawful. On the other hand, the plain commands to baptize with water,
and to partake of bread and wine in commemoration of the redemption of
mankind, he pronounced to be allegorical. He long wandered from place to
place, teaching this strange theology, shaking like an aspen leaf in his
paroxysms of fanatical excitement, forcing his way into churches,
which he nicknamed steeple houses interrupting prayers and sermons with
clamour and scurrility, [31] and pestering rectors and justices with
epistles much resembling burlesques of those sublime odes in which the
Hebrew prophets foretold the calamities of Babylon and Tyre. [32] He
soon acquired great notoriety by these feats. His strange face, his
strange chant, his immovable hat and his leather breeches were known all
over the country; and he boasts that, as soon as the rumour was heard,
"The Man in Leather Breeches is coming," terror seized hypocritical
professors, and hireling priests made haste to get out of his way. [33]
He was repeatedly imprisoned and set in the stocks, sometimes justly,
for disturbing the public worship of congregations, and sometimes
unjustly, for merely talking nonsense. He soon gathered round him a body
of disciples, some of whom went beyond himself in absurdity. He has told
us that one of his friends walked naked through Skipton declaring the
truth. [34] and that another was divinely moved to go naked during
several years to marketplaces, and to the houses of gentlemen and
clergymen. [35] Fox complains bitterly that these pious acts, prompted
by the Holy Spirit, were requited by an untoward generation with
hooting, pelting, coachwhipping and horsewhipping. But, though he
applauded the zeal of the sufferers, he did not go quite to their
lengths. He sometimes, indeed, was impelled to strip himself partially.
Thus he pulled off his shoes and walked barefoot through Lichfield,
crying, "Woe to the bloody city. " [36] But it does not appear that he
ever thought it his duty to appear before the public without that decent
garment from which his popular appellation was derived.

If we form our judgment of George Fox simply by looking at his own
actions and writings, we shall see no reason for placing him, morally
or intellectually, above Ludowick Muggleton or Joanna Southcote. But it
would be most unjust to rank the sect which regards him as its founder
with the Muggletonians or the Southcotians. It chanced that among
the thousands whom his enthusiasm infected were a few persons whose
abilities and attainments were of a very different order from his own.
Robert Barclay was a man of considerable parts and learning. William
Penn, though inferior to Barclay in both natural and acquired abilities,
was a gentleman and a scholar. That such men should have become the
followers of George Fox ought not to astonish any person who remembers
what quick, vigorous and highly cultivated intellects were in our own
times duped by the unknown tongues. The truth is that no powers of mind
constitute a security against errors of this description. Touching God
and His ways with man, the highest human faculties can discover little
more than the meanest. In theology the interval is small indeed between
Aristotle and a child, between Archimedes and a naked savage. It is not
strange, therefore, that wise men, weary of investigation, tormented by
uncertainty, longing to believe something, and yet seeing objections to
every thing, should submit themselves absolutely to teachers who, with
firm and undoubting faith, lay claim to a supernatural commission. Thus
we frequently see inquisitive and restless spirits take refuge from
their own scepticism in the bosom of a church which pretends to
infallibility, and, after questioning the existence of a Deity, bring
themselves to worship a wafer. And thus it was that Fox made some
converts to whom he was immeasurably inferior in every thing except the
energy of his convictions. By these converts his rude doctrines were
polished into a form somewhat less shocking to good sense and good
taste. No proposition which he had laid down was retracted. No indecent
or ridiculous act which he had done or approved was condemned; but what
was most grossly absurd in his theories and practices was softened down,
or at least not obtruded on the public; whatever could be made to appear
specious was set in the fairest light; his gibberish was translated into
English; meanings which he would have been quite unable to comprehend
were put on his phrases; and his system, so much improved that he would
not have known it again, was defended by numerous citations from Pagan
philosophers and Christian fathers whose names he had never heard.
[37] Still, however, those who had remodelled his theology continued
to profess, and doubtless to feel, profound reverence for him; and his
crazy epistles were to the last received and read with respect in Quaker
meetings all over the country. His death produced a sensation which was
not confined to his own disciples. On the morning of the funeral a
great multitude assembled round the meeting house in Gracechurch Street.
Thence the corpse was borne to the burial ground of the sect near
Bunhill Fields. Several orators addressed the crowd which filled the
cemetery. Penn was conspicuous among those disciples who committed the
venerable corpse to the earth. The ceremony had scarcely been finished
when he learned that warrants were out against him. He instantly took
flight, and remained many months concealed from the public eye. [38]

A short time after his disappearance, Sidney received from him a strange
communication. Penn begged for an interview, but insisted on a promise
that he should be suffered to return unmolested to his hiding place.
Sidney obtained the royal permission to make an appointment on these
terms. Penn came to the rendezvous, and spoke at length in his own
defence. He declared that he was a faithful subject of King William and
Queen Mary, and that, if he knew of any design against them, he would
discover it. Departing from his Yea and Nay, he protested, as in the
presence of God, that he knew of no plot, and that he did not believe
that there was any plot, unless the ambitious projects of the French
government might be called plots. Sidney, amazed probably by hearing
a person, who had such an abhorrence of lies that he would not use the
common forms of civility, and such an abhorrence of oaths that he would
not kiss the book in a court of justice, tell something very like a lie,
and confirm it by something very like an oath, asked how, if there were
really no plot, the letters and minutes which had been found on Ashton
were to be explained. This question Penn evaded. "If," he said, "I could
only see the King, I would confess every thing to him freely. I would
tell him much that it would be important for him to know. It is only
in that way that I can be of service to him. A witness for the Crown I
cannot be for my conscience will not suffer me to be sworn. " He assured
Sidney that the most formidable enemies of the government were the
discontented Whigs. "The Jacobites are not dangerous. There is not a man
among them who has common understanding. Some persons who came over from
Holland with the King are much more to be dreaded. " It does not appear
that Penn mentioned any names. He was suffered to depart in safety. No
active search was made for him. He lay hid in London during some months,
and then stole down to the coast of Sussex and made his escape to
France. After about three years of wandering and lurking he, by the
mediation of some eminent men, who overlooked his faults for the sake
of his good qualities, made his peace with the government, and again
ventured to resume his ministrations. The return which he made for the
lenity with which he had been treated does not much raise his character.
Scarcely had he again begun to harangue in public about the unlawfulness
of war, when he sent a message earnestly exhorting James to make an
immediate descent on England with thirty thousand men. [39]

Some months passed before the fate of Preston was decided. After several
respites, the government, convinced that, though he had told much, he
could tell more, fixed a day for his execution, and ordered the sheriffs
to have the machinery of death in readiness. [40] But he was again
respited, and, after a delay of some weeks, obtained a pardon, which,
however, extended only to his life, and left his property subject to all
the consequences of his attainder. As soon as he was set at liberty
he gave new cause of offence and suspicion, and was again arrested,
examined and sent to prison. [41] At length he was permitted to retire,
pursued by the hisses and curses of both parties, to a lonely manor
house in the North Riding of Yorkshire. There, at least, he had not to
endure the scornful looks of old associates who had once thought him
a man of dauntless courage and spotless honour, but who now pronounced
that he was at best a meanspirited coward, and hinted their suspicions
that he had been from the beginning a spy and a trepan. [42] He employed
the short and sad remains of his life in turning the Consolation
of Boethius into English. The translation was published after the
translator's death. It is remarkable chiefly on account of some very
unsuccessful attempts to enrich our versification with new metres, and
on account of the allusions with which the preface is filled. Under
a thin veil of figurative language, Preston exhibited to the public
compassion or contempt his own blighted fame and broken heart. He
complained that the tribunal which had sentenced him to death had dealt
with him more leniently than his former friends, and that many, who
had never been tried by temptations like his, had very cheaply earned
a reputation for courage by sneering at his poltroonery, and by bidding
defiance at a distance to horrors which, when brought near, subdue even
a constant spirit.

The spirit of the Jacobites, which had been quelled for a time by the
detection of Preston's plot, was revived by the fall of Mons. The joy of
the whole party was boundless. The nonjuring priests ran backwards and
forwards between Sam's Coffee House and Westminster Hall, spreading
the praises of Lewis, and laughing at the miserable issue of the
deliberations of the great Congress. In the Park the malecontents wore
their biggest looks, and talked sedition in their loudest tones. The
most conspicuous among these swaggerers was Sir John Fenwick, who had,
in the late reign, been high in favour and in military command, and
was now an indefatigable agitator and conspirator. In his exultation he
forgot the courtesy which man owes to woman. He had more than once
made himself conspicuous by his impertinence to the Queen. He now
ostentatiously put himself in her way when she took her airing; and,
while all around him uncovered and bowed low, gave her a rude stare
and cocked his hat in her face. The affront was not only brutal, but
cowardly. For the law had provided no punishment for mere impertinence,
however gross; and the King was the only gentleman and soldier in the
kingdom who could not protect his wife from contumely with his sword.
All that the Queen could do was to order the parkkeepers not to admit
Sir John again within the gates. But, long after her death, a day came
when he had reason to wish that he had restrained his insolence. He
found, by terrible proof, that of all the Jacobites, the most desperate
assassins not excepted, he was the only one for whom William felt an
intense personal aversion. [43]

A few days after this event the rage of the malecontents began to
flame more fiercely than ever. The detection of the conspiracy of which
Preston was the chief had brought on a crisis in ecclesiastical
affairs. The nonjuring bishops had, during the year which followed their
deprivation, continued to reside in the official mansions which had
once been their own. Burnet had, at Mary's request, laboured to effect
a compromise. His direct interference would probably have done more harm
than good. He therefore judiciously employed the agency of Rochester,
who stood higher in the estimation of the nonjurors than any statesman
who was not a nonjuror, and of Trevor, who, worthless as he was, had
considerable influence with the High Church party. Sancroft and his
brethren were informed that, if they would consent to perform their
spiritual duty, to ordain, to institute, to confirm, and to watch over
the faith and the morality of the priesthood, a bill should be brought
into Parliament to excuse them from taking the oaths. [44] This offer
was imprudently liberal; but those to whom it was made could not
consistently accept it. For in the ordination service, and indeed in
almost every service of the Church, William and Mary were designated
as King and Queen. The only promise that could be obtained from the
deprived prelates was that they would live quietly; and even this
promise they had not all kept. One of them at least had been guilty of
treason aggravated by impiety. He had, under the strong fear of being
butchered by the populace, declared that he abhorred the thought
of calling in the aid of France, and had invoked God to attest the
sincerity of this declaration. Yet, a short time after, he had been
detected in plotting to bring a French army into England; and he had
written to assure the Court of Saint Germains that he was acting in
concert with his brethren, and especially with Sancroft. The Whigs
called loudly for severity. Even the Tory counsellors of William owned
that indulgence had been carried to the extreme point. They made,
however, a last attempt to mediate. "Will you and your brethren," said
Trevor to Lloyd, the nonjuring Bishop of Norwich, "disown all connection
with Doctor Turner, and declare that what he has in his letters imputed
to you is false? " Lloyd evaded the question. It was now evident that
William's forbearance had only emboldened the adversaries whom he had
hoped to conciliate. Even Caermarthen, even Nottingham, declared that it
was high time to fill the vacant sees. [45]

Tillotson was nominated to the Archbishopric, and was consecrated
on Whitsunday, in the church of St. Mary Le Bow. Compton, cruelly
mortified, refused to bear any part in the ceremony. His place was
supplied by Mew, Bishop of Winchester, who was assisted by Burnet,
Stillingfleet and Hough. The congregation was the most splendid that
had been seen in any place of worship since the coronation. The Queen's
drawingroom was, on that day, deserted. Most of the peers who were in
town met in the morning at Bedford House, and went thence in procession
to Cheapside. Norfolk, Caermarthen and Dorset were conspicuous in the
throng. Devonshire, who was impatient to see his woods at Chatsworth
in their summer beauty, had deferred his departure in order to mark his
respect for Tillotson. The crowd which lined the streets greeted the new
Primate warmly. For he had, during many years, preached in the City; and
his eloquence, his probity and the singular gentleness of his temper
and manners, had made him the favourite of the Londoners. [46] But the
congratulations and applauses of his friends could not drown the roar of
execration which the Jacobites set up. According to them, he was a thief
who had not entered by the door, but had climbed over the fences. He was
a hireling whose own the sheep were not, who had usurped the crook of
the good shepherd, and who might well be expected to leave the flock
at the mercy of every wolf. He was an Arian, a Socinian, a Deist, an
Atheist. He had cozened the world by fine phrases, and by a show of
moral goodness: but he was in truth a far more dangerous enemy of the
Church than he could have been if he had openly proclaimed himself a
disciple of Hobbes, and had lived as loosely as Wilmot. He had taught
the fine gentlemen and ladies who admired his style, and who were
constantly seen round his pulpit, that they might be very good
Christians, and yet might believe the account of the Fall in the book
of Genesis to be allegorical. Indeed they might easily be as good
Christians as he; for he had never been christened; his parents were
Anabaptists; he had lost their religion when he was a boy; and he had
never found another. In ribald lampoons he was nicknamed Undipped John.
The parish register of his baptism was produced in vain. His enemies
still continued to complain that they had lived to see fathers of the
Church who never were her children. They made up a story that the Queen
had felt bitter remorse for the great crime by which she had obtained a
throne, that in her agony she had applied to Tillotson, and that he had
comforted her by assuring her that the punishment of the wicked in
a future state would not be eternal. [47] The Archbishop's mind was
naturally of almost feminine delicacy, and had been rather softened than
braced by the habits of a long life, during which contending sects and
factions had agreed in speaking of his abilities with admiration and of
his character with esteem. The storm of obloquy which he had to face for
the first time at more than sixty years of age was too much for him. His
spirits declined; his health gave way; yet he neither flinched from his
duty nor attempted to revenge himself on his persecutors. A few days
after his consecration, some persons were seized while dispersing libels
in which he was reviled. The law officers of the Crown proposed to
institute prosecutions; but he insisted that nobody should be punished
on his account. [48] Once, when he had company with him, a sealed packet
was put into his hands; he opened it; and out fell a mask. His friends
were shocked and incensed by this cowardly insult; but the Archbishop,
trying to conceal his anguish by a smile, pointed to the pamphlets which
covered his table, and said that the reproach which the emblem of the
mask was intended to convey might be called gentle when compared with
other reproaches which he daily had to endure. After his death a bundle
of the savage lampoons which the nonjurors had circulated against him
was found among his papers with this indorsement: "I pray God forgive
them; I do. " [49]

The temper of the deposed primate was very different. He seems to have
been under a complete delusion as to his own importance. The immense
popularity which he had enjoyed three years before, the prayers and
tears of the multitudes who had plunged into the Thames to implore his
blessing, the enthusiasm with which the sentinels of the Tower had drunk
his health under the windows of his prison, the mighty roar of joy
which had risen from Palace Yard on the morning of his acquittal,
the triumphant night when every window from Hyde Park to Mile End had
exhibited seven candles, the midmost and tallest emblematical of him,
were still fresh in his recollection; nor had he the wisdom to perceive
that all this homage had been paid, not to his person, but to that
religion and to those liberties of which he was, for a moment, the
representative. The extreme tenderness with which the new government had
long persisted in treating him seems to have confirmed him in his
error. That a succession of conciliatory messages was sent to him from
Kensington, that he was offered terms so liberal as to be scarcely
consistent with the dignity of the Crown and the welfare of the State,
that his cold and uncourteous answers could not tire out the royal
indulgence, that, in spite of the loud clamours of the Whigs, and of
the provocations daily given by the Jacobites, he was residing, fifteen
months after deprivation, in the metropolitan palace, these things
seemed to him to indicate not the lenity but the timidity of the ruling
powers. He appears to have flattered himself that they would not dare to
eject him. The news, therefore, that his see had been filled threw him
into a passion which lasted as long as his life, and which hurried him
into many foolish and unseemly actions. Tillotson, as soon as he
was appointed, went to Lambeth in the hope that he might be able, by
courtesy and kindness, to soothe the irritation of which he was the
innocent cause. He stayed long in the antechamber, and sent in his name
by several servants; but Sancroft would not even return an answer.