No More Learning

It may perhaps not be impossible, even at
this distance of time, to put together dispersed fragments of evidence
in such a manner as to produce an authentic narrative which would have
astonished the unfortunate licenser himself.

There was then about town a man of good family, of some reading, and of
some small literary talent, named Charles Blount. [383] In politics he
belonged to the extreme section of the Whig party. In the days of the
Exclusion Bill he had been one of Shaftesbury's brisk boys, and had,
under the signature of Junius Brutus, magnified the virtues and public
services of Titus Oates, and exhorted the Protestants to take signal
vengeance on the Papists for the fire of London and for the murder
of Godfrey. [384] As to the theological questions which were in issue
between Protestants and Papists, Blount was perfectly impartial. He was
an infidel, and the head of a small school of infidels who were troubled
with a morbid desire to make converts. He translated from the Latin
translation part of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, and appended to it
notes of which the flippant profaneness called forth the severe censure
of an unbeliever of a very different order, the illustrious Bayle. [385]
Blount also attacked Christianity in several original treatises, or
rather in several treatises purporting to be original; for he was
the most audacious of literary thieves, and transcribed, without
acknowledgment, whole pages from authors who had preceded him. His
delight was to worry the priests by asking them how light existed
before the sun was made, how Paradise could be bounded by Pison, Gihon,
Hiddekel and Euphrates, how serpents moved before they were condemned
to crawl, and where Eve found thread to stitch her figleaves. To his
speculations on these subjects he gave the lofty name of the Oracles of
Reason; and indeed whatever he said or wrote was considered as oracular
by his disciples. Of those disciples the most noted was a bad writer
named Gildon, who lived to pester another generation with doggrel and
slander, and whose memory is still preserved, not by his own voluminous
works, but by two or three lines in which his stupidity and venality
have been contemptuously mentioned by Pope. [386]

Little as either the intellectual or the moral character of Blount may
seem to deserve respect, it is in a great measure to him that we must
attribute the emancipation of the English press. Between him and the
licensers there was a feud of long standing. Before the Revolution one
of his heterodox treatises had been grievously mutilated by Lestrange,
and at last suppressed by orders from Lestrange's superior the Bishop
of London. [387] Bohun was a scarcely less severe critic than Lestrange.
Blount therefore began to make war on the censorship and the censor.
The hostilities were commenced by a tract which came forth without any
license, and which is entitled A Just Vindication of Learning and of the
Liberty of the Press, by Philopatris. [388] Whoever reads this piece,
and is not aware that Blount was one of the most unscrupulous plagiaries
that ever lived, will be surprised to find, mingled with the poor
thoughts and poor words of a thirdrate pamphleteer, passages so elevated
in sentiment and style that they would be worthy of the greatest name
in letters. The truth is that the just Vindication consists chiefly of
garbled extracts from the Areopagitica of Milton. That noble discourse
had been neglected by the generation to which it was addressed, had
sunk into oblivion, and was at the mercy of every pilferer. The literary
workmanship of Blount resembled the architectural workmanship of those
barbarians who used the Coliseum and the Theatre of Pompey as quarries,
who built hovels out of Ionian friezes and propped cowhouses on pillars
of lazulite. Blount concluded, as Milton had done, by recommending that
any book might be printed without a license, provided that the name of
the author or publisher were registered. [389] The Just Vindication was
well received. The blow was speedily followed up. There still remained
in the Areopagitica many fine passages which Blount had not used in his
first pamphlet. Out of these passages he constructed a second pamphlet
entitled Reasons for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. [390] To these
Reasons he appended a postscript entitled A Just and True Character
of Edmund Bohun. This character was written with extreme bitterness.
Passages were quoted from the licenser's writings to prove that he held
the doctrines of passive obedience and nonresistance. He was accused of
using his power systematically for the purpose of favouring the enemies
and silencing the friends of the Sovereigns whose bread he ate; and it
was asserted that he was the friend and the pupil of his predecessor Sir
Roger.

Blount's Character of Bohun could not be publicly sold; but it was
widely circulated. While it was passing from hand to hand, and while
the Whigs were every where exclaiming against the new censor as a second
Lestrange, he was requested to authorise the publication of an anonymous
work entitled King William and Queen Mary Conquerors. [391] He readily
and indeed eagerly complied. For in truth there was between the
doctrines which he had long professed and the doctrines which were
propounded in this treatise a coincidence so exact that many suspected
him of being the author; nor was this suspicion weakened by a passage
to which a compliment was paid to his political writings. But the real
author was that very Blount who was, at that very time, labouring to
inflame the public both against the Licensing Act and the licenser.
Blount's motives may easily be divined. His own opinions were
diametrically opposed to those which, on this occasion, he put forward
in the most offensive manner. It is therefore impossible to doubt that
his object was to ensnare and to ruin Bohun. It was a base and wicked
scheme. But it cannot be denied that the trap was laid and baited with
much skill. The republican succeeded in personating a high Tory.
The atheist succeeded in personating a high Churchman. The pamphlet
concluded with a devout prayer that the God of light and love would open
the understanding and govern the will of Englishmen, so that they
might see the things which belonged to their peace. The censor was in
raptures. In every page he found his own thoughts expressed more plainly
than he had ever expressed them. Never before, in his opinion, had the
true claim of their Majesties to obedience been so clearly stated. Every
Jacobite who read this admirable tract must inevitably be converted. The
nonjurors would flock to take the oaths. The nation, so long divided,
would at length be united. From these pleasing dreams Bohun was awakened
by learning, a few hours after the appearance of the discourse which had
charmed him, that the titlepage had set all London in a flame, and that
the odious words, King William and Queen Mary Conquerors, had moved the
indignation of multitudes who had never read further. Only four days
after the publication he heard that the House of Commons had taken the
matter up, that the book had been called by some members a rascally
book, and that, as the author was unknown, the Serjeant at Arms was in
search of the licenser. [392] Bohun's mind had never been strong; and he
was entirely unnerved and bewildered by the fury and suddenness of
the storm which had burst upon him. He went to the House. Most of the
members whom he met in the passages and lobbies frowned on him. When he
was put to the bar, and, after three profound obeisances, ventured to
lift his head and look round him, he could read his doom in the angry
and contemptuous looks which were cast on him from every side. He
hesitated, blundered, contradicted himself, called the Speaker My Lord,
and, by his confused way of speaking, raised a tempest of rude laughter
which confused him still more. As soon as he had withdrawn, it was
unanimously resolved that the obnoxious treatise should be burned in
Palace Yard by the common hangman. It was also resolved, without a
division, that the King should be requested to remove Bohun from the
office of licenser. The poor man, ready to faint with grief and fear,
was conducted by the officers of the House to a place of confinement.
[393]

But scarcely was he in his prison when a large body of members
clamorously demanded a more important victim. Burnet had, shortly after
he became Bishop of Salisbury, addressed to the clergy of his diocese a
Pastoral Letter, exhorting them to take the oaths. In one paragraph of
this letter he had held language bearing some resemblance to that of the
pamphlet which had just been sentenced to the flames. There were indeed
distinctions which a judicious and impartial tribunal would not have
failed to notice. But the tribunal before which Burnet was arraigned was
neither judicious nor impartial. His faults had made him many enemies,
and his virtues many more. The discontented Whigs complained that he
leaned towards the Court, the High Churchmen that he leaned towards the
Dissenters; nor can it be supposed that a man of so much boldness and so
little tact, a man so indiscreetly frank and so restlessly active,
had passed through life without crossing the schemes and wounding the
feelings of some whose opinions agreed with his. He was regarded with
peculiar malevolence by Howe. Howe had never, even while he was in
office, been in the habit of restraining his bitter and petulant tongue;
and he had recently been turned out of office in a way which had
made him ungovernably ferocious. The history of his dismission is not
accurately known, but it was certainly accompanied by some circumstances
which had cruelly galled his temper. If rumour could be trusted, he had
fancied that Mary was in love with him, and had availed himself of an
opportunity which offered itself while he was in attendance on her
as Vice Chamberlain to make some advances which had justly moved her
indignation. Soon after he was discarded, he was prosecuted for having,
in a fit of passion, beaten one of his servants savagely within the
verge of the palace. He had pleaded guilty, and had been pardoned; but
from this time he showed, on every occasion, the most rancorous personal
hatred of his royal mistress, of her husband, and of all who were
favoured by either. It was known that the Queen frequently consulted
Burnet; and Howe was possessed with the belief that her severity was to
be imputed to Burnet's influence. [394] Now was the time to be revenged.
In a long and elaborate speech the spiteful Whig--for such he still
affected to be--represented Burnet as a Tory of the worst class. "There
should be a law," he said, "making it penal for the clergy to introduce
politics into their discourses. Formerly they sought to enslave us by
crying up the divine and indefeasible right of the hereditary prince.
Now they try to arrive at the same result by telling us that we are a
conquered people. " It was moved that the Bishop should be impeached.
To this motion there was an unanswerable objection, which the Speaker
pointed out. The Pastoral Letter had been written in 1689, and was
therefore covered by the Act of Grace which had been passed in 1690. Yet
a member was not ashamed to say, "No matter: impeach him; and force
him to plead the Act. " Few, however, were disposed to take a course so
unworthy of a House of Commons. Some wag cried out, "Burn it; burn it;"
and this bad pun ran along the benches, and was received with shouts of
laughter. It was moved that the Pastoral Letter should be burned by the
common hangman. A long and vehement debate followed. For Burnet was
a man warmly loved as well as warmly hated. The great majority of the
Whigs stood firmly by him; and his goodnature and generosity had made
him friends even among the Tories. The contest lasted two days. Montague
and Finch, men of widely different opinions, appear to have been
foremost among the Bishop's champions. An attempt to get rid of the
subject by moving the previous question failed. At length the main
question was put; and the Pastoral Letter was condemned to the flames by
a small majority in a full house. The Ayes were a hundred and sixty-two;
the Noes a hundred and fifty-five. [395] The general opinion, at least
of the capital, seems to have been that Burnet was cruelly treated.
[396]

He was not naturally a man of fine feelings; and the life which he had
led had not tended to make them finer. He had been during many years
a mark for theological and political animosity. Grave doctors had
anathematized him; ribald poets had lampooned him; princes and ministers
had laid snares for his life; he had been long a wanderer and an exile,
in constant peril of being kidnapped, struck in the boots, hanged and
quartered. Yet none of these things had ever seemed to move him. His
selfconceit had been proof against ridicule, and his dauntless temper
against danger. But on this occasion his fortitude seems to have failed
him. To be stigmatized by the popular branch of the legislature as a
teacher of doctrines so servile that they disgusted even Tories, to be
joined in one sentence of condemnation with the editor of Filmer, was
too much. How deeply Burnet was wounded appeared many years later, when,
after his death, his History of his Life and Times was given to the
world. In that work he is ordinarily garrulous even to minuteness
about all that concerns himself, and sometimes relates with amusing
ingenuousness his own mistakes and the censures which those mistakes
brought upon him. But about the ignominious judgment passed by the House
of Commons on his Pastoral Letter he has preserved a most significant
silence. [397]

The plot which ruined Bohun, though it did no honour to those who
contrived it, produced important and salutary effects. Before the
conduct of the unlucky licenser had been brought under the consideration
of Parliament, the Commons had resolved, without any division, and, as
far as appears, without any discussion, that the Act which subjected
literature to a censorship should be continued. But the question had
now assumed a new aspect; and the continuation of the Act was no longer
regarded as a matter of course. A feeling in favour of the liberty of
the press, a feeling not yet, it is true, of wide extent or formidable
intensity, began to show itself. The existing system, it was said, was
prejudicial both to commerce and to learning. Could it be expected that
any capitalist would advance the funds necessary for a great literary
undertaking, or that any scholar would expend years of toil and research
on such an undertaking, while it was possible that, at the last moment,
the caprice, the malice, the folly of one man might frustrate the whole
design? And was it certain that the law which so grievously restricted
both the freedom of trade and the freedom of thought had really added
to the security of the State? Had not recent experience proved that the
licenser might himself be an enemy of their Majesties, or, worse still,
an absurd and perverse friend; that he might suppress a book of which it
would be for their interest that every house in the country should have
a copy, and that he might readily give his sanction to a libel which
tended to make them hateful to their people, and which deserved to be
torn and burned by the hand of Ketch? Had the government gained much by
establishing a literary police which prevented Englishmen from
having the History of the Bloody Circuit, and allowed them, by way of
compensation, to read tracts which represented King William and Queen
Mary as conquerors?

In that age persons who were not specially interested in a public
bill very seldom petitioned Parliament against it or for it. The only
petitions therefore which were at this conjuncture presented to the two
Houses against the censorship came from booksellers, bookbinders and
printers. [398] But the opinion which these classes expressed was
certainly not confined to them.

The law which was about to expire had lasted eight years. It was renewed
for only two years. It appears, from an entry in the journals of the
Commons which unfortunately is defective, that a division took place on
an amendment about the nature of which we are left entirely in the dark.
The votes were ninety-nine to eighty. In the Lords it was proposed,
according to the suggestion offered fifty years before by Milton and
stolen from him by Blount, to exempt from the authority of the licenser
every book which bore the name of an author or publisher. This amendment
was rejected; and the bill passed, but not without a protest signed by
eleven peers who declared that they could not think it for the public
interest to subject all learning and true information to the arbitrary
will and pleasure of a mercenary and perhaps ignorant licenser. Among
those who protested were Halifax, Shrewsbury and Mulgrave, three
noblemen belonging to different political parties, but all distinguished
by their literary attainments. It is to be lamented that the signatures
of Tillotson and Burnet, who were both present on that day, should be
wanting. Dorset was absent. [399]

Blount, by whose exertions and machinations the opposition to the
censorship had been raised, did not live to see that opposition
successful. Though not a very young man, he was possessed by an insane
passion for the sister of his deceased wife. Having long laboured in
vain to convince the object of his love that she might lawfully marry
him, he at last, whether from weariness of life, or in the hope of
touching her heart, inflicted on himself a wound of which, after
languishing long, he died. He has often been mentioned as a blasphemer
and selfmurderer. But the important service which, by means doubtless
most immoral and dishonourable, he rendered to his country, has passed
almost unnoticed. [400]

Late in this busy and eventful session the attention of the Houses was
called to the state of Ireland. The government of that kingdom had,
during the six months which followed the surrender of Limerick, been
in an unsettled state. It was not till the Irish troops who adhered to
Sarsfield had sailed for France, and till the Irish troops who had made
their election to remain at home had been disbanded, that William at
length put forth a proclamation solemnly announcing the termination
of the civil war. From the hostility of the aboriginal inhabitants,
destitute as they now were of chiefs, of arms and of organization,
nothing was to be apprehended beyond occasional robberies and murders.
But the war cry of the Irishry had scarcely died away when the first
faint murmurs of the Englishry began to be heard. Coningsby was during
some months at the head of the administration. He soon made himself in
the highest degree odious to the dominant caste. He was an unprincipled
man; he was insatiable of riches; and he was in a situation in which
riches were easily to be obtained by an unprincipled man. Immense sums
of money, immense quantities of military stores had been sent over
from England. Immense confiscations were taking place in Ireland. The
rapacious governor had daily opportunities of embezzling and extorting;
and of those opportunities he availed himself without scruple or shame.
This however was not, in the estimation of the colonists, his greatest
offence. They might have pardoned his covetousness; but they could not
pardon the clemency which he showed to their vanquished and enslaved
enemies. His clemency indeed amounted merely to this, that he loved
money more than he hated Papists, and that he was not unwilling to sell
for a high price a scanty measure of justice to some of the oppressed
class. Unhappily, to the ruling minority, sore from recent conflict and
drunk with recent victory, the subjugated majority was as a drove of
cattle, or rather as a pack of wolves. Man acknowledges in the inferior
animals no rights inconsistent with his own convenience; and as man
deals with the inferior animals the Cromwellian thought himself at
liberty to deal with the Roman Catholic. Coningsby therefore drew on
himself a greater storm of obloquy by his few good acts than by his many
bad acts. The clamour against him was so violent that he was removed;
and Sidney went over, with the full power and dignity of Lord
Lieutenant, to hold a Parliament at Dublin. [401]

But the easy temper and graceful manners of Sidney failed to produce a
conciliatory effect. He does not indeed appear to have been greedy of
unlawful gain. But he did not restrain with a sufficiently firm hand
the crowd of subordinate functionaries whom Coningsby's example and
protection had encouraged to plunder the public and to sell their good
offices to suitors. Nor was the new Viceroy of a temper to bear hard
on the feeble remains of the native aristocracy. He therefore speedily
became an object of suspicion and aversion to the Anglosaxon settlers.
His first act was to send out the writs for a general election. The
Roman Catholics had been excluded from every municipal corporation; but
no law had yet deprived them of the county franchise. It is probable
however that not a single Roman Catholic freeholder ventured to approach
the hustings. The members chosen were, with few exceptions, men animated
by the spirit of Enniskillen and Londonderry, a spirit eminently heroic
in times of distress and peril, but too often cruel and imperious in
the season of prosperity and power. They detested the civil treaty of
Limerick, and were indignant when they learned that the Lord Lieutenant
fully expected from them a parliamentary ratification of that odious
contract, a contract which gave a licence to the idolatry of the
mass, and which prevented good Protestants from ruining their Popish
neighbours by bringing civil actions for injuries done during the war.
[402]

On the fifth of October 1692 the Parliament met at Dublin in Chichester
House. It was very differently composed from the assembly which had
borne the same title in 1689. Scarcely one peer, not one member of the
House of Commons, who had sate at the King's Inns, was to be seen. To
the crowd of O's and Macs, descendants of the old princes of the island,
had succeeded men whose names indicated a Saxon origin. A single O,
an apostate from the faith of his fathers, and three Macs, evidently
emigrants from Scotland, and probably Presbyterians, had seats in the
assembly.

The Parliament, thus composed, had then less than the powers of the
Assembly of Jamaica or of the Assembly of Virginia. Not merely was the
Legislature which sate at Dublin subject to the absolute control of the
Legislature which sate at Westminster: but a law passed in the fifteenth
century, during the administration of the Lord Deputy Poynings, and
called by his name, had provided that no bill which had not been
considered and approved by the Privy Council of England should be
brought into either House in Ireland, and that every bill so considered
and approved should be either passed without amendment or rejected.
[403]

The session opened with a solemn recognition of the paramount authority
of the mother country. The Commons ordered their clerk to read to them
the English Act which required them to take the Oath of Supremacy and to
subscribe the Declaration against Transubstantiation. Having heard the
Act read, they immediately proceeded to obey it. Addresses were then
voted which expressed the warmest gratitude and attachment to the King.
Two members, who had been untrue to the Protestant and English interest
during the troubles, were expelled. Supplies, liberal when compared with
the resources of a country devastated by years of predatory war, were
voted with eagerness. But the bill for confirming the Act of Settlement
was thought to be too favourable to the native gentry, and, as it could
not be amended, was with little ceremony rejected. A committee of the
whole House resolved that the unjustifiable indulgence with which the
Irish had been treated since the battle of the Boyne was one of the
chief causes of the misery of the kingdom. A Committee of Grievances
sate daily till eleven in the evening; and the proceedings of this
inquest greatly alarmed the Castle. Many instances of gross venality
and knavery on the part of men high in office were brought to light, and
many instances also of what was then thought a criminal lenity towards
the subject nation. This Papist had been allowed to enlist in the army;
that Papist had been allowed to keep a gun; a third had too good a
horse; a fourth had been protected against Protestants who wished to
bring actions against him for wrongs committed during the years of
confusion. The Lord Lieutenant, having obtained nearly as much money as
he could expect, determined to put an end to these unpleasant inquiries.
He knew, however, that if he quarrelled with the Parliament for treating
either peculators or Papists with severity, he should have little
support in England. He therefore looked out for a pretext, and was
fortunate enough to find one. The Commons had passed a vote which might
with some plausibility be represented as inconsistent with the
Poynings statute. Any thing which looked like a violation of that great
fundamental law was likely to excite strong disapprobation on the other
side of Saint George's Channel. The Viceroy saw his advantage, and
availed himself of it. He went to the chamber of the Lords at Chichester
House, sent for the Commons, reprimanded them in strong language,
charged them with undutifully and ungratefully encroaching on the rights
of the mother country, and put an end to the session. [404]

Those whom he had lectured withdrew full of resentment. The imputation
which he had thrown on them was unjust. They had a strong feeling of
love and reverence for the land from which they sprang, and looked with
confidence for redress to the supreme Parliament. Several of them went
to London for the purpose of vindicating themselves and of accusing the
Lord Lieutenant. They were favoured with a long and attentive audience,
both by the Lords and by the Commons, and were requested to put the
substance of what had been said into writing. The humble language of
the petitioners, and their protestations that they had never intended to
violate the Poynings statute, or to dispute the paramount authority of
England, effaced the impression which Sidney's accusations had made.
Both Houses addressed the King on the state of Ireland. They censured
no delinquent by name; but they expressed an opinion that there had been
gross maladministration, that the public had been plundered, and that
Roman Catholics had been treated with unjustifiable tenderness. William
in reply promised that what was amiss should be corrected. His friend
Sidney was soon recalled, and consoled for the loss of the viceregal
dignity with the lucrative place of Master of the Ordnance. The
government of Ireland was for a time entrusted to Lords justices, among
whom Sir Henry Capel, a zealous Whig, very little disposed to show
indulgence to Papists, had the foremost place.

The prorogation drew nigh; and still the fate of the Triennial Bill was
uncertain. Some of the ablest ministers thought the bill a good one;
and, even had they thought it a bad one, they would probably have tried
to dissuade their master from rejecting it. It was impossible, however,
to remove from his mind the impression that a concession on this point
would seriously impair his authority. Not relying on the judgment of his
ordinary advisers, he sent Portland to ask the opinion of Sir William
Temple. Temple had made a retreat for himself at a place called Moor
Park, in the neighbourhood of Farnham. The country round his dwelling
was almost a wilderness.
His amusement during some years had been to
create in the waste what those Dutch burgomasters among whom he had
passed some of the best years of his life, would have considered as a
paradise. His hermitage had been occasionally honoured by the presence
of the King, who had from a boy known and esteemed the author of the
Triple Alliance, and who was well pleased to find, among the heath and
furze of the wilds of Surrey, a spot which seemed to be part of Holland,
a straight canal, a terrace, rows of clipped trees, and rectangular beds
of flowers and potherbs.

Portland now repaired to this secluded abode and consulted the oracle.
Temple was decidedly of opinion that the bill ought to pass. He was
apprehensive that the reasons which led him to form this opinion might
not be fully and correctly reported to the King by Portland, who was
indeed as brave a soldier and as trusty a friend as ever lived, whose
natural abilities were not inconsiderable, and who, in some departments
of business, had great experience, but who was very imperfectly
acquainted with the history and constitution of England. As the state
of Sir William's health made it impossible for him to go himself to
Kensington, he determined to send his secretary thither. The secretary
was a poor scholar of four or five and twenty, under whose plain garb
and ungainly deportment were concealed some of the choicest gifts that
have ever been bestowed on any of the children of men; rare powers of
observation, brilliant wit, grotesque invention, humour of the most
austere flavour, yet exquisitely delicious, eloquence singularly pure,
manly and perspicuous. This young man was named Jonathan Swift. He was
born in Ireland, but would have thought himself insulted if he had been
called an Irishman. He was of unmixed English blood, and, through life,
regarded the aboriginal population of the island in which he first drew
breath as an alien and a servile caste. He had in the late reign kept
terms at the University of Dublin, but had been distinguished there only
by his irregularities, and had with difficulty obtained his degree. At
the time of the Revolution, he had, with many thousands of his fellow
colonists, taken refuge in the mother country from the violence of
Tyrconnel, and had thought himself fortunate in being able to obtain
shelter at Moor Park. [405] For that shelter, however, he had to pay
a heavy price. He was thought to be sufficiently remunerated for his
services with twenty pounds a year and his board. He dined at the second
table. Sometimes, indeed, when better company was not to be had, he was
honoured by being invited to play at cards with his patron; and on such
occasions Sir William was so generous as to give his antagonist a little
silver to begin with. [406] The humble student would not have dared to
raise his eyes to a lady of family; but, when he had become a clergyman,
he began, after the fashion of the clergymen of that generation, to make
love to a pretty waitingmaid who was the chief ornament of the servants'
hall, and whose name is inseparably associated with his in a sad and
mysterious history.

Swift many years later confessed some part of what he felt when he found
himself on his way to Court. His spirit had been bowed down, and might
seem to have been broken, by calamities and humiliations. The language
which he was in the habit of holding to his patron, as far as we can
judge from the specimens which still remain, was that of a lacquey,
or rather of a beggar. [407] A sharp word or a cold look of the master
sufficed to make the servant miserable during several days. [408] But
this tameness was merely the tameness with which a tiger, caught, caged
and starved, submits to the keeper who brings him food. The humble
menial was at heart the haughtiest, the most aspiring, the most
vindictive, the most despotic of men. And now at length a great, a
boundless prospect was opening before him. To William he was already
slightly known. At Moor Park the King had sometimes, when his host was
confined by gout to an easy chair, been attended by the secretary about
the grounds. His Majesty had condescended to teach his companion the
Dutch way of cutting and eating asparagus, and had graciously asked
whether Mr. Swift would like to have a captain's commission in a cavalry
regiment. But now for the first time the young man was to stand in
the royal presence as a counsellor. He was admitted into the closet,
delivered a letter from Temple, and explained and enforced the arguments
which that letter contained, concisely, but doubtless with clearness and
ability. There was, he said, no reason to think that short Parliaments
would be more disposed than long Parliaments to encroach on the just
prerogatives of the Crown. In fact the Parliament which had, in the
preceding generation, waged war against a king, led him captive, sent
him to the prison, to the bar, to the scaffold, was known in our annals
as emphatically the Long Parliament. Never would such disasters have
befallen the monarchy but for the fatal law which secured that assembly
from dissolution. [409] There was, it must be owned, a flaw in this
reasoning which a man less shrewd than William might easily detect. That
one restriction of the royal prerogative had been mischievous did
not prove that another restriction would be salutary. It by no means
followed because one sovereign had been ruined by being unable to get
rid of a hostile Parliament that another sovereign might not be ruined
by being forced to part with a friendly Parliament. To the great
mortification of the ambassador, his arguments failed to shake the
King's resolution. On the fourteenth of March the Commons were summoned
to the Upper House; the title of the Triennial Bill was read; and it was
announced, after the ancient form, that the King and Queen would take
the matter into their consideration. The Parliament was then prorogued.

Soon after the prorogation William set out for the Continent. It was
necessary that, before his departure, he should make some important
changes. He was resolved not to discard Nottingham, on whose integrity,
a virtue rare among English statesmen, he placed a well founded
reliance. Yet, if Nottingham remained Secretary of State, it was
impossible to employ Russell at sea. Russell, though much mortified,
was induced to accept a lucrative post in the household; and two naval
officers of great note in their profession, Killegrew and Delaval, were
placed at the Board of Admiralty and entrusted with the command of the
Channel Fleet. [410] These arrangements caused much murmuring among the
Whigs; for Killegrew and Delaval were certainly Tories, and were by many
suspected of being Jacobites. But other promotions which took place at
the same time proved that the King wished to bear himself evenly between
the hostile factions. Nottingham had, during a year, been the sole
Secretary of State. He was now joined with a colleague in whose society
he must have felt himself very ill at ease, John Trenchard. Trenchard
belonged to the extreme section of the Whig party. He was a Taunton man,
animated by that spirit which had, during two generations, peculiarly
distinguished Taunton. He had, in the days of Popeburnings and of
Protestant flails, been one of the renowned Green Riband Club; he had
been an active member of several stormy Parliaments; he had brought
in the first Exclusion Bill; he had been deeply concerned in the plots
formed by the chiefs of the opposition; he had fled to the Continent;
he had been long an exile; and he had been excepted by name from the
general pardon of 1686. Though his life had been passed in turmoil, his
temper was naturally calm; but he was closely connected with a set of
men whose passions were far fiercer than his own. He had married the
sister of Hugh Speke, one of the falsest and most malignant of the
libellers who brought disgrace on the cause of constitutional freedom.
Aaron Smith, the solicitor of the Treasury, a man in whom the fanatic
and the pettifogger were strangely united, possessed too much influence
over the new Secretary, with whom he had, ten years before, discussed
plans of rebellion at the Rose. Why Trenchard was selected in preference
to many men of higher rank and greater ability for a post of the first
dignity and importance, it is difficult to say. It seems however that,
though he bore the title and drew the salary of Secretary of State, he
was not trusted with any of the graver secrets of State, and that he was
little more than a superintendent of police, charged to look after the
printers of unlicensed books, the pastors of nonjuring congregations,
and the haunters of treason taverns. [411]

Another Whig of far higher character was called at the same time to a
far higher place in the administration. The Great Seal had now been four
years in commission. Since Maynard's retirement, the constitution of
the Court of Chancery had commanded little respect. Trevor, who was the
First Commissioner, wanted neither parts nor learning; but his integrity
was with good reason suspected; and the duties which, as Speaker of the
House of Commons, he had to perform during four or five months in
the busiest part of every year, made it impossible for him to be an
efficient judge in equity. Every suitor complained that he had to wait
a most unreasonable time for a judgment, and that, when at length a
judgment had been pronounced, it was very likely to be reversed on
appeal. Meanwhile there was no efficient minister of justice, no great
functionary to whom it especially belonged to advise the King touching
the appointment of judges, of Counsel for the Crown, of Justices of the
Peace. [412] It was known that William was sensible of the inconvenience
of this state of things; and, during several months, there had been
flying rumours that a Lord Keeper or a Lord Chancellor would soon
be appointed. [413] The name most frequently mentioned was that of
Nottingham. But the same reasons which had prevented him from accepting
the Great Seal in 1689 had, since that year, rather gained than lost
strength. William at length fixed his choice on Somers.

Somers was only in his forty-second year; and five years had not elapsed
since, on the great day of the trial of the Bishops, his powers had
first been made known to the world. From that time his fame had been
steadily and rapidly rising. Neither in forensic nor in parliamentary
eloquence had he any superior. The consistency of his public conduct had
gained for him the entire confidence of the Whigs; and the urbanity
of his manners had conciliated the Tories. It was not without great
reluctance that he consented to quit an assembly over which he exercised
an immense influence for an assembly where it would be necessary for him
to sit in silence. He had been but a short time in great practice. His
savings were small. Not having the means of supporting a hereditary
title, he must, if he accepted the high dignity which was offered to
him, preside during some years in the Upper House without taking part in
the debates. The opinion of others, however, was that he would be more
useful as head of the law than as head of the Whig party in the Commons.
He was sent for to Kensington, and called into the Council Chamber.
Caermarthen spoke in the name of the King. "Sir John," he said, "it is
necessary for the public service that you should take this charge upon
you; and I have it in command from His Majesty to say that he can admit
of no excuse. " Somers submitted. The seal was delivered to him, with a
patent which entitled him to a pension of two thousand a year from the
day on which he should quit his office; and he was immediately sworn in
a Privy Councillor and Lord Keeper. [414]

The Gazette which announced these changes in the administration,
announced also the King's departure. He set out for Holland on the
twenty-fourth of March.

He left orders that the Estates of Scotland should, after a recess of
more than two years and a half, be again called together. Hamilton, who
had lived many months in retirement, had, since the fall of Melville,
been reconciled to the Court, and now consented to quit his retreat,
and to occupy Holyrood House as Lord High Commissioner. It was
necessary that one of the Secretaries of State for Scotland should be
in attendance on the King. The Master of Stair had therefore gone to the
Continent. His colleague, Johnstone, was chief manager for the Crown at
Edinburgh, and was charged to correspond regularly with Carstairs, who
never quitted William. [415]

It might naturally have been expected that the session would be
turbulent. The Parliament was that very Parliament which had in 1689
passed, by overwhelming majorities, all the most violent resolutions
which Montgomery and his club could frame, which had refused supplies,
which had proscribed the ministers of the Crown, which had closed the
Courts of justice, which had seemed bent on turning Scotland into an
oligarchical republic. In 1690 the Estates had been in a better temper.
Yet, even in 1690, they had, when the ecclesiastical polity of the realm
was under consideration, paid little deference to what was well known to
be the royal wish. They had abolished patronage; they had sanctioned the
rabbling of the episcopal clergy; they had refused to pass a Toleration
Act. It seemed likely that they would still be found unmanageable when
questions touching religion came before them; and such questions it
was unfortunately necessary to bring forward. William had, during the
recess, attempted to persuade the General Assembly of the Church to
receive into communion such of the old curates as should subscribe the
Confession of Faith and should submit to the government of Synods. But
the attempt had failed; and the Assembly had consequently been dissolved
by the Lord Commissioner. Unhappily, the Act which established the
Presbyterian polity had not defined the extent of the power which was
to be exercised by the Sovereign over the Spiritual Courts. No sooner
therefore had the dissolution been announced than the Moderator
requested permission to speak. He was told that he was now merely
a private person. As a private person he requested a hearing, and
protested, in the name of his brethren, against the royal mandate.
The right, he said, of the office bearers of the Church to meet and
deliberate touching her interests was derived from her Divine Head,
and was not dependent on the pleasure of the temporal magistrate.
His brethren stood up, and by an approving murmur signified their
concurrence in what their President had said. Before they retired they
fixed a day for their next meeting. [416] It was indeed a very distant
day; and when it came neither minister nor elder attended; for even the
boldest members shrank from a complete rupture with the civil
power. But, though there was not open war between the Church and the
Government, they were estranged from each other, jealous of each
other, and afraid of each other. No progress had been made towards a
reconciliation when the Estates met; and which side the Estates would
take might well be doubted.

But the proceedings of this strange Parliament, in almost every one of
its sessions, falsified all the predictions of politicians. It had once
been the most unmanageable of senates. It was now the most obsequious.
Yet the old men had again met in the old hall. There were all the most
noisy agitators of the club, with the exception of Montgomery, who was
dying of want and of a broken heart in a garret far from his native
land. There was the canting Ross and the perfidious Annandale. There
was Sir Patrick Hume, lately created a peer, and henceforth to be
called Lord Polwarth, but still as eloquent as when his interminable
declamations and dissertations ruined the expedition of Argyle. But
the whole spirit of the assembly had undergone a change. The members
listened with profound respect to the royal letter, and returned an
answer in reverential and affectionate language. An extraordinary aid
of a hundred and fourteen thousand pounds sterling was granted to the
Crown. Severe laws were enacted against the Jacobites. The legislation
on ecclesiastical matters was as Erastian as William himself could have
desired. An Act was passed requiring all ministers of the Established
Church to swear fealty to their Majesties, and directing the General
Assembly to receive into communion those Episcopalian ministers, not
yet deprived, who should declare that they conformed to the Presbyterian
doctrine and discipline. [417] Nay, the Estates carried adulation so far
as to make it their humble request to the King that he would be pleased
to confer a Scotch peerage on his favourite Portland. This was
indeed their chief petition. They did not ask for redress of a single
grievance. They contented themselves with hinting in general terms that
there were abuses which required correction, and with referring the King
for fuller information to his own Ministers, the Lord High Commissioner
and the Secretary of State. [418]

There was one subject on which it may seem strange that even the most
servile of Scottish Parliaments should have kept silence. More than a
year had elapsed since the massacre of Glencoe; and it might have
been expected that the whole assembly, peers, commissioners of shires,
commissioners of burghs, would with one voice have demanded a strict
investigation into that great crime. It is certain, however, that no
motion for investigation was made. The state of the Gaelic clans was
indeed taken into consideration. A law was passed for the more effectual
suppressing of depredations and outrages beyond the Highland line; and
in that law was inserted a special proviso reserving to Mac Callum More
his hereditary jurisdiction. But it does not appear, either from the
public records of the proceedings of the Estates, or from those private
letters in which Johnstone regularly gave Carstairs an account of what
had passed, that any speaker made any allusion to the fate of Mac
Ian and his kinsmen. [419] The only explanation of this extraordinary
silence seems to be that the public men who were assembled in the
capital of Scotland knew little and cared little about the fate of a
thieving tribe of Celts. The injured clan, bowed down by fear of
the allpowerful Campbells, and little accustomed to resort to the
constituted authorities of the kingdom for protection or redress,
presented no petition to the Estates. The story of the butchery had
been told at coffeehouses, but had been told in different ways. Very
recently, one or two books, in which the facts were but too truly
related, had come forth from the secret presses of London. But those
books were not publicly exposed to sale. They bore the name of no
responsible author. The Jacobite writers were, as a class, savagely
malignant and utterly regardless of truth. Since the Macdonalds did
not complain, a prudent man might naturally be unwilling to incur the
displeasure of the King, of the ministers, and of the most powerful
family in Scotland, by bringing forward an accusation grounded on
nothing but reports wandering from mouth to mouth, or pamphlets which no
licenser had approved, to which no author had put his name, and which no
bookseller ventured to place in his shop-window. But whether this be
or be not the true solution, it is certain that the Estates separated
quietly after a session of two months, during which, as far as can
now be discovered, the name of Glencoe was not once uttered in the
Parliament House.




CHAPTER XX

State of the Court of Saint Germains--Feeling of the Jacobites;
Compounders and Noncompounders--Change of Ministry at Saint Germains;
Middleton--New Declaration put forth by James--Effect of the new
Declaration--French Preparations for the Campaign; Institution of the
Order of Saint Lewis--Middleton's Account of Versailles--William's
Preparations for the Campaign--Lewis takes the Field--Lewis returns to
Versailles--Manoeuvres of Luxemburg--Battle of Landen--Miscarriage
of the Smyrna Fleet--Excitement in London--Jacobite Libels; William
Anderton--Writings and Artifices of the Jacobites--Conduct of
Caermarthen--Now Charter granted to the East India Company--Return of
William to England; Military Successes of France--Distress of France--A
Ministry necessary to Parliamentary Government--The First Ministry
gradually formed--Sunderland--Sunderland advises the King to give the
Preference to the Whigs--Reasons for preferring the Whigs--Chiefs of
the Whig Party; Russell--Somers--Montague--Wharton--Chiefs of the Tory
Party; Harley--Foley--Howe--Meeting of Parliament--Debates about the
Naval Miscarriages--Russell First Lord of the Admiralty; Retirement
of Nottingham--Shrewsbury refuses Office--Debates about the Trade with
India--Bill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of Treason--Triennial
Bill--Place Bill--Bill for the Naturalisation of Foreign
Protestants--Supply--Ways and Means; Lottery Loan--The Bank of
England--Prorogation of Parliament; Ministerial Arrangements; Shrewsbury
Secretary of State--New Titles bestowed--French Plan of War; English
Plan of War--Expedition against Brest--Naval Operations in
the Mediterranean--War by Land--Complaints of Trenchard's
Administration--The Lancashire Prosecutions--Meeting of the Parliament;
Death of Tillotson--Tenison Archbishop of Canterbury; Debates on the
Lancashire Prosecutions--Place Bill--Bill for the Regulation of Trials
in Cases of Treason; the Triennial Bill passed--Death of Mary--Funeral
of Mary--Greenwich Hospital founded

IT is now time to relate the events which, since the battle of La Hogue,
had taken place at Saint Germains.

James, after seeing the fleet which was to have convoyed him back to his
kingdom burned down to the water edge, had returned in no good humour to
his abode near Paris. Misfortune generally made him devout after his
own fashion; and he now starved himself and flogged himself till his
spiritual guides were forced to interfere. [420]

It is difficult to conceive a duller place than Saint Germains was when
he held his Court there; and yet there was scarcely in all Europe a
residence more enviably situated than that which the generous Lewis had
assigned to his suppliants. The woods were magnificent, the air clear
and salubrious, the prospects extensive and cheerful. No charm of
rural life was wanting; and the towers of the most superb city of the
Continent were visible in the distance. The royal apartments were richly
adorned with tapestry and marquetry, vases of silver and mirrors in
gilded frames. A pension of more than forty thousand pounds sterling
was annually paid to James from the French Treasury. He had a guard of
honour composed of some of the finest soldiers in Europe. If he
wished to amuse himself with field sports, he had at his command an
establishment far more sumptuous than that which had belonged to him
when he was at the head of a great kingdom, an army of huntsmen and
fowlers, a vast arsenal of guns, spears, buglehorns and tents, miles of
network, staghounds, foxhounds, harriers, packs for the boar and packs
for the wolf, gerfalcons for the heron and haggards for the wild
duck. His presence chamber and his antechamber were in outward show as
splendid as when he was at Whitehall. He was still surrounded by blue
ribands and white staves. But over the mansion and the domain brooded
a constant gloom, the effect, partly of bitter regrets and of deferred
hopes, but chiefly of the abject superstition which had taken complete
possession of his own mind, and which was affected by almost all those
who aspired to his favour. His palace wore the aspect of a monastery.
There were three places of worship within the spacious pile. Thirty or
forty ecclesiastics were lodged in the building; and their apartments
were eyed with envy by noblemen and gentlemen who had followed the
fortunes of their Sovereign, and who thought it hard that, when there
was so much room under his roof, they should be forced to sleep in the
garrets of the neighbouring town. Among the murmurers was the brilliant
Anthony Hamilton. He has left us a sketch of the life of Saint Germains,
a slight sketch indeed, but not unworthy of the artist to whom we owe
the most highly finished and vividly coloured picture of the English
Court in the days when the English Court was gayest. He complains that
existence was one round of religious exercises; that, in order to live
in peace, it was necessary to pass half the day in devotion or in the
outward show of devotion; that, if he tried to dissipate his melancholy
by breathing the fresh air of that noble terrace which looks down on the
valley of the Seine, he was driven away by the clamour of a Jesuit who
had got hold of some unfortunate Protestant royalists from England,
and was proving to them that no heretic could go to heaven. In general,
Hamilton said, men suffering under a common calamity have a strong
fellow feeling and are disposed to render good offices to each other.
But it was not so at Saint Germains. There all was discord, jealousy,
bitterness of spirit. Malignity was concealed under the show of
friendship and of piety. All the saints of the royal household were
praying for each other and backbiting each other from morning, to night.
Here and there in the throng of hypocrites might be remarked a man too
highspirited to dissemble. But such a man, however advantageously he
might have made himself known elsewhere, was certain to be treated with
disdain by the inmates of that sullen abode. [421]

Such was the Court of James, as described by a Roman Catholic. Yet,
however disagreeable that Court may have been to a Roman Catholic, it
was infinitely more disagreeable to a Protestant. For the Protestant had
to endure, in addition to all the dulness of which the Roman Catholic
complained, a crowd of vexations from which the Roman Catholic was free.
In every competition between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic the Roman
Catholic was preferred. In every quarrel between a Protestant and a
Roman Catholic the Roman Catholic was supposed to be in the right.
While the ambitious Protestant looked in vain for promotion, while
the dissipated Protestant looked in vain for amusement, the serious
Protestant looked in vain for spiritual instruction and consolation.
James might, no doubt, easily have obtained permission for those members
of the Church of England who had sacrificed every thing in his cause to
meet privately in some modest oratory, and to receive the eucharistic
bread and wine from the hands of one of their own clergy; but he did not
wish his residence to be defiled by such impious rites. Doctor Dennis
Granville, who had quitted the richest deanery, the richest archdeaconry
and one of the richest livings in England, rather than take the oaths,
gave mortal offence by asking leave to read prayers to the exiles of his
own communion. His request was refused; and he was so grossly insulted
by his master's chaplains and their retainers that he was forced to
quit Saint Germains. Lest some other Anglican doctor should be equally
importunate, James wrote to inform his agents in England that he wished
no Protestant divine to come out to him. [422] Indeed the nonjuring
clergy were at least as much sneered at and as much railed at in his
palace as in his nephew's. If any man had a claim to be mentioned with
respect at Saint Germains, it was surely Sancroft. Yet it was reported
that the bigots who were assembled there never spoke of him but with
aversion and disgust. The sacrifice of the first place in the Church,
of the first place in the peerage, of the mansion at Lambeth and the
mansion at Croydon, of immense patronage and of a revenue of more than
five thousand a year was thought but a poor atonement for the great
crime of having modestly remonstrated against the unconstitutional
Declaration of Indulgence. Sancroft was pronounced to be just such a
traitor and just such a penitent as Judas Iscariot. The old hypocrite
had, it was said, while affecting reverence and love for his master,
given the fatal signal to his master's enemies. When the mischief had
been done and could not be repaired, the conscience of the sinner had
begun to torture him. He had, like his prototype, blamed himself and
bemoaned himself. He had, like his prototype, flung down his wealth at
the feet of those whose instrument he had been. The best thing that he
could now do was to make the parallel complete by hanging himself. [423]

James seems to have thought that the strongest proof of kindness which
he could give to heretics who had resigned wealth, country, family, for
his sake, was to suffer them to be beset, on their dying beds, by his
priests. If some sick man, helpless in body and in mind, and deafened
by the din of bad logic and bad rhetoric, suffered a wafer to be thrust
into his mouth, a great work of grace was triumphantly announced to the
Court; and the neophyte was buried with all the pomp of religion. But
if a royalist, of the highest rank and most stainless character, died
professing firm attachment to the Church of England, a hole was dug in
the fields; and, at dead of night, he was flung into it and covered
up like a mass of carrion. Such were the obsequies of the Earl of
Dunfermline, who had served the House of Stuart with the hazard of
his life and to the utter ruin of his fortunes, who had fought at
Killiecrankie, and who had, after the victory, lifted from the earth the
still breathing remains of Dundee. While living he had been treated with
contumely. The Scottish officers who had long served under him had in
vain entreated that, when they were formed into a company, he might
still be their commander. His religion had been thought a fatal
disqualification. A worthless adventurer, whose only recommendation was
that he was a Papist, was preferred. Dunfermline continued, during a
short time, to make his appearance in the circle which surrounded the
Prince whom he had served too well; but it was to no purpose. The bigots
who ruled the Court refused to the ruined and expatriated Protestant
Lord the means of subsistence; he died of a broken heart; and they
refused him even a grave. [424]

The insults daily offered at Saint Germains to the Protestant religion
produced a great effect in England. The Whigs triumphantly asked whether
it were not clear that the old tyrant was utterly incorrigible; and many
even of the nonjurors observed his proceedings with shame, disgust and
alarm. [425] The Jacobite party had, from the first, been divided into
two sections, which, three or four years after the Revolution, began to
be known as the Compounders and the Noncompounders. The Compounders were
those who wished for a restoration, but for a restoration accompanied by
a general amnesty, and by guarantees for the security of the civil and
ecclesiastical constitution of the realm. The Noncompounders thought
it downright Whiggery, downright rebellion; to take advantage of His
Majesty's unfortunate situation for the purpose of imposing on him any
condition. The plain duty of his subjects was to bring him back. What
traitors he would punish and what traitors he would spare, what laws he
would observe and with what laws he would dispense, were questions to be
decided by himself alone. If he decided them wrongly, he must answer for
his fault to heaven and not to his people.