No More Learning

On a
memorable day, indeed, big with the fate of his country, he again, after
many inactive and inglorious years, stood forth the Shrewsbury of 1688.
Scarcely any thing in history is more melancholy than that late and
solitary gleam, lighting up the close of a life which had dawned so
splendidly, and which had so early become hopelessly troubled and
gloomy.

On the day on which the Lords passed the Bill of Attainder, they
adjourned over the Christmas holidays. The fate of Fenwick consequently
remained during more than a fortnight in suspense. In the interval plans
of escape were formed; and it was thought necessary to place a strong
military guard round Newgate. [777] Some Jacobites knew William so
little as to send him anonymous letters, threatening that he should
be shot or stabbed if he dared to touch a hair of the prisoner's head.
[778] On the morning of the eleventh of January he passed the bill. He
at the same time passed a bill which authorised the government to detain
Bernardi and some other conspirators in custody during twelve months.
On the evening of that day a deeply mournful event was the talk of all
London. The Countess of Aylesbury had watched with intense anxiety the
proceedings against Sir John. Her lord had been as deep as Sir John in
treason, was, like Sir John, in confinement, and had, like Sir John,
been a party to Goodman's flight. She had learned with dismay that
there was a method by which a criminal who was beyond the reach of the
ordinary law might be punished. Her terror had increased at every stage
in the progress of the Bill of Attainder. On the day on which the royal
assent was to be given, her agitation became greater than her frame
could support. When she heard the sound of the guns which announced that
the King was on his way to Westminster, she fell into fits, and died in
a few hours. [779]

Even after the bill had become law, strenuous efforts were made to save
Fenwick. His wife threw herself at William's feet, and offered him a
petition. He took the petition, and said, very gently, that it should be
considered, but that the matter was one of public concern, and that he
must deliberate with his ministers before he decided. [780] She then
addressed herself to the Lords. She told them that her husband had
not expected his doom, that he had not had time to prepare himself for
death, that he had not, during his long imprisonment, seen a divine.
They were easily induced to request that he might be respited for a
week. A respite was granted; but, forty-eight hours before it expired,
Lady Mary presented to the Lords another petition, imploring them to
intercede with the King that her husband's punishment might be commuted
to banishment. The House was taken by surprise; and a motion to adjourn
was with difficulty carried by two votes. [781] On the morrow, the last
day of Fenwick's life, a similar petition was presented to the Commons.
But the Whig leaders were on their guard; the attendance was full; and
a motion for reading the Orders of the Day was carried by a hundred and
fifty-two to a hundred and seven. [782] In truth, neither branch of the
legislature could, without condemning itself, request William to spare
Fenwick's life. Jurymen, who have, in the discharge of a painful duty,
pronounced a culprit guilty, may, with perfect consistency, recommend
him to the favourable consideration of the Crown. But the Houses ought
not to have passed the Bill of Attainder unless they were convinced, not
merely that Sir John had committed high treason, but also that he could
not, without serious danger to the Commonwealth, be suffered to live. He
could not be at once a proper object of such a bill and a proper object
of the royal mercy.

On the twenty-eighth of January the execution took place. In compliment
to the noble families with which Fenwick was connected, orders were
given that the ceremonial should be in all respects the same as when a
peer of the realm suffers death. A scaffold was erected on Tower Hill
and hung with black. The prisoner was brought from Newgate in the coach
of his kinsman the Earl of Carlisle, which was surrounded by a troop
of the Life Guards. Though the day was cold and stormy, the crowd of
spectators was immense; but there was no disturbance, and no sign that
the multitude sympathized with the criminal. He behaved with a firmness
which had not been expected from him. He ascended the scaffold with
steady steps, and bowed courteously to the persons who were assembled
on it, but spoke to none, except White, the deprived Bishop of
Peterborough. White prayed with him during about half an hour. In the
prayer the King was commended to the Divine protection; but no name
which could give offence was pronounced. Fenwick then delivered a sealed
paper to the Sheriffs, took leave of the Bishop, knelt down, laid his
neck on the block, and exclaimed, "Lord Jesus, receive my soul. " His
head was severed from his body at a single blow. His remains were
placed in a rich coffin, and buried that night, by torchlight, under
the pavement of Saint Martin's Church. No person has, since that day,
suffered death in England by Act of Attainder. [783]

Meanwhile an important question, about which public feeling was much
excited, had been under discussion. As soon as the Parliament met, a
Bill for Regulating Elections, differing little in substance from the
bill which the King had refused to pass in the preceding session, was
brought into the House of Commons, was eagerly welcomed by the country
gentlemen, and was pushed through every stage. On the report it
was moved that five thousand pounds in personal estate should be a
sufficient qualification for the representative of a city or borough.
But this amendment was rejected. On the third reading a rider was
added, which permitted a merchant possessed of five thousand pounds
to represent the town in which he resided; but it was provided that no
person should be considered as a merchant because he was a proprietor of
Bank Stock or East India Stock. The fight was hard. Cowper distinguished
himself among the opponents of the bill. His sarcastic remarks on the
hunting, hawking boors, who wished to keep in their own hands the whole
business of legislation, called forth some sharp rustic retorts. A plain
squire, he was told, was as likely to serve the country well as the most
fluent gownsman, who was ready, for a guinea, to prove that black was
white. On the question whether the bill should pass, the Ayes were two
hundred, the Noes a hundred and sixty. [784]

The Lords had, twelve months before, readily agreed to a similar bill;
but they had since reconsidered the subject and changed their opinion.
The truth is that, if a law requiring every member of the House of
Commons to possess an estate of some hundreds of pounds a year in land
could have been strictly enforced, such a law would have been very
advantageous to country gentlemen of moderate property, but would have
been by no means advantageous to the grandees of the realm. A lord of a
small manor would have stood for the town in the neighbourhood of which
his family had resided during centuries, without any apprehension that
he should be opposed by some alderman of London, whom the electors had
never seen before the day of nomination, and whose chief title to their
favour was a pocketbook full of bank notes. But a great nobleman, who
had an estate of fifteen or twenty thousand pounds a year, and who
commanded two or three boroughs, would no longer be able to put his
younger son, his younger brother, his man of business, into Parliament,
or to earn a garter or a step in the peerage by finding a seat for a
Lord of the Treasury or an Attorney General. On this occasion therefore
the interest of the chiefs of the aristocracy, Norfolk and Somerset,
Newcastle and Bedford, Pembroke and Dorset, coincided with that of the
wealthy traders of the City and of the clever young aspirants of the
Temple, and was diametrically opposed to the interest of a squire of
a thousand or twelve hundred a year. On the day fixed for the second
reading the attendance of lords was great. Several petitions from
constituent bodies, which thought it hard that a new restriction should
be imposed on the exercise of the elective franchise, were presented and
read. After a debate of some hours the bill was rejected by sixty-two
votes to thirty-seven. [785] Only three days later, a strong party in
the Commons, burning with resentment, proposed to tack the bill which
the Peers had just rejected to the Land Tax Bill. This motion would
probably have been carried, had not Foley gone somewhat beyond the
duties of his place, and, under pretence of speaking to order, shown
that such a tack would be without a precedent in parliamentary history.
When the question was put, the Ayes raised so loud a cry that it was
believed that they were the majority; but on a division they proved
to be only a hundred and thirty-five. The Noes were a hundred and
sixty-three. [786]

Other parliamentary proceedings of this session deserve mention. While
the Commons were busily engaged in the great work of restoring the
finances, an incident took place which seemed, during a short time,
likely to be fatal to the infant liberty of the press, but which
eventually proved the means of confirming that liberty. Among the
many newspapers which had been established since the expiration of the
censorship, was one called the Flying Post. The editor, John Salisbury,
was the tool of a band of stockjobbers in the City, whose interest it
happened to be to cry down the public securities. He one day published a
false and malicious paragraph, evidently intended to throw suspicion on
the Exchequer Bills. On the credit of the Exchequer Bills depended, at
that moment, the political greatness and the commercial prosperity of
the realm. The House of Commons was in a flame. The Speaker issued his
warrant against Salisbury. It was resolved without a division that a
bill should be brought in to prohibit the publishing of news without a
license. Forty-eight hours later the bill was presented and read. But
the members had now had time to cool. There was scarcely one of them
whose residence in the country had not, during the preceding summer,
been made more agreeable by the London journals. Meagre as those
journals may seem to a person who has the Times daily on his breakfast
table, they were to that generation a new and abundant source of
pleasure. No Devonshire or Yorkshire gentleman, Whig or Tory, could bear
the thought of being again dependent, during seven months of every year,
for all information about what was doing in the world, on newsletters.
If the bill passed, the sheets, which were now so impatiently expected
twice a week at every country seat in the kingdom, would contain nothing
but what it suited the Secretary of State to make public; they would be,
in fact, so many London Gazettes; and the most assiduous reader of the
London Gazette might be utterly ignorant of the most important events of
his time. A few voices, however, were raised in favour of a censorship.
"These papers," it was said, "frequently contain mischievous
matter. " "Then why are they not prosecuted? " was the answer. "Has the
Attorney-General filed an information against any one of them? And is
it not absurd to ask us to give a new remedy by statute, when the old
remedy afforded by the common law has never been tried? " On the question
whether the bill should be read a second time, the Ayes were only
sixteen, the Noes two hundred. [787]

Another bill, which fared better, ought to be noticed as an instance of
the slow, but steady progress of civilisation. The ancient immunities
enjoyed by some districts of the capital, of which the largest and the
most infamous was Whitefriars, had produced abuses which could no longer
be endured. The Templars on one side of Alsatia, and the citizens on the
other, had long been calling on the government and the legislature to
put down so monstrous a nuisance. Yet still, bounded on the west by the
great school of English jurisprudence, and on the east by the great mart
of English trade, stood this labyrinth of squalid, tottering houses,
close packed, every one, from cellar to cockloft, with outcasts whose
life was one long war with society. The best part of the population
consisted of debtors who were in fear of bailiffs. The rest were
attorneys struck off the roll, witnesses who carried straw in their
shoes as a sign to inform the public where a false oath might be
procured for half a crown, sharpers, receivers of stolen goods, clippers
of coin, forgers of bank notes, and tawdry women, blooming with paint
and brandy, who, in their anger, made free use of their nails and their
scissors, yet whose anger was less to be dreaded than their kindness.
With these wretches the narrow alleys of the sanctuary swarmed. The
rattling of dice, the call for more punch and more wine, and the noise
of blasphemy and ribald song never ceased during the whole night. The
benchers of the Inner Temple could bear the scandal and the annoyance no
longer. They ordered the gate leading into Whitefriars to be bricked up.
The Alsatians mustered in great force, attacked the workmen, killed one
of them, pulled down the wall, knocked down the Sheriff who came to keep
the peace, and carried off his gold chain, which, no doubt, was soon in
the melting pot. The riot was not suppressed till a company of the Foot
Guards arrived. This outrage excited general indignation. The City,
indignant at the outrage offered to the Sheriff, cried loudly for
justice. Yet, so difficult was it to execute any process in the dens of
Whitefriars, that near two years elapsed before a single ringleader was
apprehended. [788]

The Savoy was another place of the same kind, smaller indeed, and less
renowned, but inhabited by a not less lawless population. An unfortunate
tailor, who ventured to go thither for the purpose of demanding payment
of a debt, was set upon by the whole mob of cheats, ruffians and
courtesans. He offered to give a full discharge to his debtor and a
treat to the rabble, but in vain. He had violated their franchises;
and this crime was not to be pardoned. He was knocked down, stripped,
tarred, feathered. A rope was tied round his waist. He was dragged naked
up and down the streets amidst yells of "A bailiff! A bailiff! " Finally
he was compelled to kneel down and to curse his father and mother.
Having performed this ceremony he was permitted,--and the permission was
blamed by many of the Savoyards,--to limp home without a rag upon him.
[789] The Bog of Allen, the passes of the Grampians, were not more
unsafe than this small knot of lanes, surrounded by the mansions of the
greatest nobles of a flourishing and enlightened kingdom.

At length, in 1697, a bill for abolishing the franchises of these places
passed both Houses, and received the royal assent. The Alsatians
and Savoyards were furious. Anonymous letters, containing menaces of
assassination, were received by members of Parliament who had made
themselves conspicuous by the zeal with which they had supported the
bill; but such threats only strengthened the general conviction that
it was high time to destroy these nests of knaves and ruffians. A
fortnight's grace was allowed; and it was made known that, when that
time had expired, the vermin who had been the curse of London would be
unearthed and hunted without mercy. There was a tumultuous flight to
Ireland, to France, to the Colonies, to vaults and garrets in less
notorious parts of the capital; and when, on the prescribed day, the
Sheriff's officers ventured to cross the boundary, they found those
streets where, a few weeks before, the cry of "A writ! " would have drawn
together a thousand raging bullies and vixens, as quiet as the cloister
of a cathedral. [790]

On the sixteenth of April, the King closed the session with a speech,
in which he returned warm and well merited thanks to the Houses for the
firmness and wisdom which had rescued the nation from commercial and
financial difficulties unprecedented in our history. Before he set out
for the Continent, he conferred some new honours, and made some
new ministerial arrangements. Every member of the Whig junto was
distinguished by some conspicuous mark of royal favour. Somers delivered
up the seal, of which he was Keeper; he received it back again with the
higher title of Chancellor, and was immediately commanded to affix it to
a patent, by which he was created Baron Somers of Evesham. [791] Russell
became Earl of Orford and Viscount Barfleur. No English title had
ever before been taken from a place of battle lying within a foreign
territory. But the precedent then set has been repeatedly followed; and
the names of Saint Vincent, Trafalgar, Camperdown, and Douro are now
borne by the successors of great commanders. Russell seems to have
accepted his earldom, after his fashion, not only without gratitude, but
grumblingly, and as if some great wrong had been done him. What was
a coronet to him? He had no child to inherit it. The only distinction
which he should have prized was the garter; and the garter had been
given to Portland. Of course, such things were for the Dutch; and it was
strange presumption in an Englishman, though he might have won a victory
which had saved the State, to expect that his pretensions would be
considered till all the Mynheers about the palace had been served. [792]

Wharton, still retaining his place of Comptroller of the Household,
obtained the lucrative office of Chief Justice in Eyre, South of Trent;
and his brother, Godwin Wharton, was made a Lord of the Admiralty. [793]

Though the resignation of Godolphin had been accepted in October, no new
commission of Treasury was issued till after the prorogation. Who should
be First Commissioner was a question long and fiercely disputed. For
Montague's faults had made him many enemies, and his merits many more,
Dull formalists sneered at him as a wit and poet, who, no doubt, showed
quick parts in debate, but who had already been raised far higher than
his services merited or than his brain would bear. It would be absurd
to place such a young coxcomb, merely because he could talk fluently and
cleverly, in an office on which the wellbeing of the kingdom depended.
Surely Sir Stephen Fox was, of all the Lords of the Treasury, the
fittest to be at the head of the Board. He was an elderly man, grave,
experienced, exact, laborious; and he had never made a verse in his
life. The King hesitated during a considerable time between the two
candidates; but time was all in Montague's favour; for, from the first
to the last day of the session, his fame was constantly rising. The
voice of the House of Commons and of the City loudly designated him as
preeminently qualified to be the chief minister of finance. At length
Sir Stephen Fox withdrew from the competition, though not with a very
good grace. He wished it to be notified in the London Gazette that the
place of First Lord had been offered to him, and declined by him. Such
a notification would have been an affront to Montague; and Montague,
flushed with prosperity and glory, was not in a mood to put up with
affronts. The dispute was compromised. Montague became First Lord of
the Treasury; and the vacant seat at the Board was filled by Sir Thomas
Littleton, one of the ablest and most consistent Whigs in the House
of Commons. But, from tenderness to Fox, these promotions were not
announced in the Gazette. [794]

Dorset resigned the office of Chamberlain, but not in ill humour,
and retired loaded with marks of royal favour. He was succeeded by
Sunderland, who was also appointed one of the Lords Justices, not
without much murmuring from various quarters. [795] To the Tories
Sunderland was an object of unmixed detestation. Some of the Whig
leaders had been unable to resist his insinuating address; and others
were grateful for the services which he had lately rendered to the
party. But the leaders could not restrain their followers. Plain men,
who were zealous for civil liberty and for the Protestant religion, who
were beyond the range of Sunderland's irresistible fascination, and
who knew that he had sate in the High Commission, concurred in the
Declaration of Indulgence, borne witness against the Seven Bishops, and
received the host from a Popish priest, could not, without indignation
and shame, see him standing, with the staff in his hand, close to the
throne. Still more monstrous was it that such a man should be entrusted
with the administration of the government during the absence of the
Sovereign. William did not understand these feelings. Sunderland was
able; he was useful; he was unprincipled indeed; but so were all the
English politicians of the generation which had learned, under the
sullen tyranny of the Saints, to disbelieve in virtue, and which had,
during the wild jubilee of the Restoration, been utterly dissolved in
vice. He was a fair specimen of his class, a little worse, perhaps, than
Leeds or Godolphin, and about as bad as Russell or Marlborough. Why he
was to be hunted from the herd the King could not imagine.

Notwithstanding the discontent which was caused by Sunderland's
elevation, England was, during this summer, perfectly quiet and in
excellent temper. All but the fanatical Jacobites were elated by the
rapid revival of trade and by the near prospect of peace. Nor were
Ireland and Scotland less tranquil.

In Ireland nothing deserving to be minutely related had taken place
since Sidney had ceased to be Lord Lieutenant. The government had
suffered the colonists to domineer unchecked over the native population;
and the colonists had in return been profoundly obsequious to the
government. The proceedings of the local legislature which sate at
Dublin had been in no respect more important or more interesting than
the proceedings of the Assembly of Barbadoes. Perhaps the most momentous
event in the parliamentary history of Ireland at this time was a dispute
between the two Houses which was caused by a collision between the coach
of the Speaker and the coach of the Chancellor. There were, indeed,
factions, but factions which sprang merely from personal pretensions and
animosities. The names of Whig and Tory had been carried across Saint
George's Channel, but had in the passage lost all their meaning. A man
who was called a Tory at Dublin would have passed at Westminster for as
stanch a Whig as Wharton. The highest Churchmen in Ireland abhorred
and dreaded Popery so much that they were disposed to consider every
Protestant as a brother. They remembered the tyranny of James, the
robberies, the burnings, the confiscations, the brass money, the Act
of Attainder, with bitter resentment. They honoured William as their
deliverer and preserver. Nay, they could not help feeling a certain
respect even for the memory of Cromwell; for, whatever else he might
have been, he had been the champion and the avenger of their race.
Between the divisions of England, therefore, and the divisions of
Ireland, there was scarcely any thing in common. In England there were
two parties, of the same race and religion, contending with each other.
In Ireland there were two castes, of different races and religions, one
trampling on the other.

Scotland too was quiet. The harvest of the last year had indeed been
scanty; and there was consequently much suffering. But the spirit of
the nation was buoyed up by wild hopes, destined to end in cruel
disappointment. A magnificent daydream of wealth and empire so
completely occupied the minds of men that they hardly felt the present
distress. How that dream originated, and by how terrible an awakening it
was broken, will be related hereafter.

In the autumn of 1696 the Estates of Scotland met at Edinburgh. The
attendance was thin; and the session lasted only five weeks. A supply
amounting to little more than a hundred thousand pounds sterling was
voted. Two Acts for the securing of the government were passed. One of
those Acts required all persons in public trust to sign an Association
similar to the Association which had been so generally subscribed in
the south of the island. The other Act provided that the Parliament of
Scotland should not be dissolved by the death of the King. But by far
the most important event of this short session was the passing of the
Act for the settling of Schools. By this memorable law it was, in the
Scotch phrase, statuted and ordained that every parish in the realm
should provide a commodious schoolhouse and should pay a moderate
stipend to a schoolmaster. The effect could not be immediately felt.
But, before one generation had passed away, it began to be evident
that the common people of Scotland were superior in intelligence to
the common people of any other country in Europe. To whatever land the
Scotchman might wander, to whatever calling he might betake himself, in
America or in India, in trade or in war, the advantage which he derived
from his early training raised him above his competitors. If he was
taken into a warehouse as a porter, he soon became foreman. If he
enlisted in the army, he soon became a serjeant. Scotland, meanwhile,
in spite of the barrenness of her soil and the severity of her climate,
made such progress in agriculture, in manufactures, in commerce, in
letters, in science, in all that constitutes civilisation, as the Old
World had never seen equalled, and as even the New World has scarcely
seen surpassed.

This wonderful change is to be attributed, not indeed solely, but
principally, to the national system of education. But to the men by whom
that system was established posterity owes no gratitude. They knew
not what they were doing. They were the unconscious instruments of
enlightening the understandings and humanising the hearts of millions.
But their own understandings were as dark and their own hearts as
obdurate as those of the Familiars of the Inquisition at Lisbon. In the
very month in which the Act for the settling of Schools was touched with
the sceptre, the rulers of the Church and State in Scotland began to
carry on with vigour two persecutions worthy of the tenth century,
a persecution of witches and a persecution of infidels. A crowd of
wretches, guilty only of being old and miserable, were accused of
trafficking with the devil. The Privy Council was not ashamed to issue
a Commission for the trial of twenty-two of these poor creatures.
[796]
The shops of the booksellers of Edinburgh were strictly searched for
heretical works. Impious books, among which the sages of the Presbytery
ranked Thomas Burnet's Sacred Theory of the Earth, were strictly
suppressed. [797] But the destruction of mere paper and sheepskin would
not satisfy the bigots. Their hatred required victims who could feel,
and was not appeased till they had perpetrated a crime such as has never
since polluted the island.

A student of eighteen, named Thomas Aikenhead, whose habits were
studious and whose morals were irreproachable, had, in the course of his
reading, met with some of the ordinary arguments against the Bible. He
fancied that he had lighted on a mine of wisdom which had been hidden
from the rest of mankind, and, with the conceit from which half educated
lads of quick parts are seldom free, proclaimed his discoveries to four
or five of his companions. Trinity in unity, he said, was as much a
contradiction as a square circle. Ezra was the author of the Pentateuch.
The Apocalypse was an allegorical book about the philosopher's stone.
Moses had learned magic in Egypt. Christianity was a delusion which
would not last till the year 1800. For this wild talk, of which, in all
probability, he would himself have been ashamed long before he was five
and twenty, he was prosecuted by the Lord Advocate. The Lord Advocate
was that James Stewart who had been so often a Whig and so often a
Jacobite that it is difficult to keep an account of his apostasies. He
was now a Whig for the third if not for the fourth time. Aikenhead
might undoubtedly have been, by the law of Scotland, punished with
imprisonment till he should retract his errors and do penance before the
congregation of his parish; and every man of sense and humanity would
have thought this a sufficient punishment for the prate of a forward
boy. But Stewart, as cruel as he was base, called for blood. There was
among the Scottish statutes one which made it a capital crime to revile
or curse the Supreme Being or any person of the Trinity. Nothing that
Aikenhead had said could, without the most violent straining, be brought
within the scope of this statute. But the Lord Advocate exerted all his
subtlety. The poor youth at the bar had no counsel. He was altogether
unable to do justice to his own cause. He was convicted, and sentenced
to be hanged and buried at the foot of the gallows. It was in vain that
he with tears abjured his errors and begged piteously for mercy. Some
of those who saw him in his dungeon believed that his recantation was
sincere; and indeed it is by no means improbable that in him, as in many
other pretenders to philosophy who imagine that they have completely
emancipated themselves from the religion of their childhood, the near
prospect of death may have produced an entire change of sentiment. He
petitioned the Privy Council that, if his life could not be spared, he
might be allowed a short respite to make his peace with the God whom
he had offended. Some of the Councillors were for granting this small
indulgence. Others thought that it ought not to be granted unless the
ministers of Edinburgh would intercede. The two parties were evenly
balanced; and the question was decided against the prisoner by the
casting vote of the Chancellor. The Chancellor was a man who has been
often mentioned in the course of this history, and never mentioned with
honour. He was that Sir Patrick Hume whose disputatious and factious
temper had brought ruin on the expedition of Argyle, and had caused not
a little annoyance to the government of William. In the Club which had
braved the King and domineered over the Parliament there had been no
more noisy republican. But a title and a place had produced a wonderful
conversion. Sir Patrick was now Lord Polwarth; he had the custody of the
Great Seal of Scotland; he presided in the Privy Council; and thus he
had it in his power to do the worst action of his bad life.

It remained to be seen how the clergy of Edinburgh would act. That
divines should be deaf to the entreaties of a penitent who asks, not for
pardon, but for a little more time to receive their instructions and to
pray to Heaven for the mercy which cannot be extended to him on earth,
seems almost incredible. Yet so it was. The ministers demanded, not
only the poor boy's death, but his speedy death, though it should be his
eternal death. Even from their pulpits they cried out for cutting him
off. It is probable that their real reason for refusing him a respite
of a few days was their apprehension that the circumstances of his case
might be reported at Kensington, and that the King, who, while reciting
the Coronation Oath, had declared from the throne that he would not be a
persecutor, might send down positive orders that the sentence should
not be executed. Aikenhead was hanged between Edinburgh and Leith. He
professed deep repentance, and suffered with the Bible in his hand. The
people of Edinburgh, though assuredly not disposed to think lightly of
his offence, were moved to compassion by his youth, by his penitence,
and by the cruel haste with which he was hurried out of the world. It
seems that there was some apprehension of a rescue; for a strong body of
fusileers was under arms to support the civil power. The preachers who
were the boy's murderers crowded round him at the gallows, and, while
he was struggling in the last agony, insulted Heaven with prayers more
blasphemous than any thing that he had ever uttered. Wodrow has told no
blacker story of Dundee. [798]

On the whole, the British islands had not, during ten years, been so
free from internal troubles as when William, at the close of April 1697,
set out for the Continent. The war in the Netherlands was a little,
and but a little, less languid than in the preceding year. The French
generals opened the campaign by taking the small town of Aeth. They then
meditated a far more important conquest. They made a sudden push for
Brussels, and would probably have succeeded in their design but for the
activity of William. He was encamped on ground which lies within
sight of the Lion of Waterloo, when he received, late in the evening,
intelligence that the capital of the Netherlands was in danger. He
instantly put his forces in motion, marched all night, and, having
traversed the field destined to acquire, a hundred and eighteen years
later, a terrible renown, and threaded the long defiles of the Forest of
Soignies, he was at ten in the morning on the spot from which Brussels
had been bombarded two years before, and would, if he had been only
three hours later, have been bombarded again. Here he surrounded himself
with entrenchments which the enemy did not venture to attack. This was
the most important military event which, during that summer, took place
in the Low Countries. In both camps there was an unwillingness to run
any great risk on the eve of a general pacification.

Lewis had, early in the spring, for the first time during his long
reign, spontaneously offered equitable and honourable conditions to his
foes. He had declared himself willing to relinquish the conquests which
he had made in the course of the war, to cede Lorraine to its own Duke,
to give back Luxemburg to Spain, to give back Strasburg to the Empire
and to acknowledge the existing government of England. [799]

Those who remembered the great woes which his faithless and merciless
ambition had brought on Europe might well suspect that this unwonted
moderation was not to be ascribed to sentiments of justice or humanity.
But, whatever might be his motive for proposing such terms, it was
plainly the interest and the duty of the Confederacy to accept them.
For there was little hope indeed of wringing from him by war concessions
larger than those which he now tendered as the price of peace. The most
sanguine of his enemies could hardly expect a long series of campaigns
as successful as the campaign of 1695. Yet in a long series of
campaigns, as successful as that of 1695, the allies would hardly be
able to retake all that he now professed himself ready to restore.
William, who took, as usual, a clear and statesmanlike view of the whole
situation, now gave his voice as decidedly for concluding peace as he
had in former years given it for vigorously prosecuting the war; and he
was backed by the public opinion both of England and of Holland. But,
unhappily, just at the time when the two powers which alone, among
the members of the coalition, had manfully done their duty in the long
struggle, were beginning to rejoice in the near prospect of repose, some
of those governments which had never furnished their full contingents,
which had never been ready in time, which had been constantly sending
excuses in return for subsidies, began to raise difficulties such as
seemed likely to make the miseries of Europe eternal.

Spain had, as William, in the bitterness of his spirit, wrote to
Heinsius, contributed nothing to the common cause but rodomontades. She
had made no vigorous effort even to defend her own territories against
invasion. She would have lost Flanders and Brabant but for the English
and Dutch armies. She would have lost Catalonia but for the English
and Dutch fleets. The Milanese she had saved, not by arms, but by
concluding, in spite of the remonstrances of the English and Dutch
governments, an ignominious treaty of neutrality. She had not a ship of
war able to weather a gale. She had not a regiment that was not ill paid
and ill disciplined, ragged and famished. Yet repeatedly, within the
last two years, she had treated both William and the States General with
an impertinence which showed that she was altogether ignorant of her
place among states. She now became punctilious, demanded from Lewis
concessions which the events of the war gave her no right to expect, and
seemed to think it hard that allies, whom she was constantly treating
with indignity, were not willing to lavish their blood and treasure for
her during eight years more.

The conduct of Spain is to be attributed merely to arrogance and folly.
But the unwillingness of the Emperor to consent even to the fairest
terms of accommodation was the effect of selfish ambition. The Catholic
King was childless; he was sickly; his life was not worth three years'
purchase; and when he died, his dominions would be left to be struggled
for by a crowd of competitors. Both the House of Austria and the House
of Bourbon had claims to that immense heritage. It was plainly for the
interest of the House of Austria that the important day, come when it
might, should find a great European coalition in arms against the House
of Bourbon. The object of the Emperor therefore was that the war should
continue to be carried on, as it had hitherto been carried on, at a
light charge to him and a heavy charge to England and Holland, not till
just conditions of peace could be obtained, but simply till the King
of Spain should die. "The ministers of the Emperor," William wrote to
Heinsius, "ought to be ashamed of their conduct. It is intolerable
that a government which is doing every thing in its power to make the
negotiations fail, should contribute nothing to the common defence. "
[800]

It is not strange that in such circumstances the work of pacification
should have made little progress. International law, like other law, has
its chicanery, its subtle pleadings, its technical forms, which may
too easily be so employed as to make its substance inefficient. Those
litigants therefore who did not wish the litigation to come to a speedy
close had no difficulty in interposing delays. There was a long dispute
about the place where the conferences should be held. The Emperor
proposed Aix la Chapelle. The French objected, and proposed the Hague.
Then the Emperor objected in his turn. At last it was arranged that the
ministers of the Allied Powers should meet at the Hague, and that the
French plenipotentiaries should take up their abode five miles off
at Delft. [801] To Delft accordingly repaired Harlay, a man of
distinguished wit and good breeding, sprung from one of the great
families of the robe; Crecy, a shrewd, patient and laborious
diplomatist; and Cailleres, who, though he was named only third in the
credentials, was much better informed than either of his colleagues
touching all the points which were likely to be debated. [802] At the
Hague were the Earl of Pembroke and Edward, Viscount Villiers, who
represented England. Prior accompanied them with the rank of Secretary.
At the head of the Imperial Legation was Count Kaunitz; at the head of
the Spanish Legation was Don Francisco Bernardo de Quiros; the ministers
of inferior rank it would be tedious to enumerate. [803]

Half way between Delft and the Hague is a village named Ryswick; and
near it then stood, in a rectangular garden, which was bounded by
straight canals, and divided into formal woods, flower beds and melon
beds, a seat of the Princes of Orange. The house seemed to have been
built expressly for the accommodation of such a set of diplomatists as
were to meet there. In the centre was a large hall painted by Honthorst.
On the right hand and on the left were wings exactly corresponding to
each other. Each wing was accessible by its own bridge, its own gate and
its own avenue. One wing was assigned to the Allies, the other to the
French, the hall in the centre to the mediator. [804] Some preliminary
questions of etiquette were, not without difficulty, adjusted; and
at length, on the ninth of May, many coaches and six, attended by
harbingers, footmen and pages, approached the mansion by different
roads. The Swedish Minister alighted at the grand entrance. The
procession from the Hague came up the side alley on the right. The
procession from Delft came up the side alley on the left. At the first
meeting, the full powers of the representatives of the belligerent
governments were delivered to the mediator. At the second meeting,
forty-eight hours later, the mediator performed the ceremony of
exchanging these full powers. Then several meetings were spent in
settling how many carriages, how many horses, how many lacqueys, how
many pages, each minister should be entitled to bring to Ryswick;
whether the serving men should carry canes; whether they should wear
swords; whether they should have pistols in their holsters; who should
take the upper hand in the public walks, and whose carriage should break
the way in the streets. It soon appeared that the mediator would have to
mediate, not only between the coalition and the French, but also between
the different members of the coalition. The Imperial Ambassadors claimed
a right to sit at the head of the table. The Spanish Ambassador would
not admit this pretension, and tried to thrust himself in between two
of them. The Imperial Ambassadors refused to call the Ambassadors of
Electors and Commonwealths by the title of Excellency. "If I am not
called Excellency," said the Minister of the Elector of Brandenburg, "my
master will withdraw his troops from Hungary. " The Imperial Ambassadors
insisted on having a room to themselves in the building, and on having
a special place assigned to their carriages in the court. All the
other Ministers of the Confederacy pronounced this a most unjustifiable
demand, and a whole sitting was wasted in this childish dispute. It may
easily be supposed that allies who were so punctilious in their dealings
with each other were not likely to be very easy in their intercourse
with the common enemy. The chief business of Earlay and Kaunitz was to
watch each other's legs. Neither of them thought it consistent with the
dignity of the Crown which he served to advance towards the other faster
than the other advanced towards him. If therefore one of them perceived
that he had inadvertently stepped forward too quick, he went back to the
door, and the stately minuet began again. The ministers of Lewis drew
up a paper in their own language. The German statesmen protested against
this innovation, this insult to the dignity of the Holy Roman Empire,
this encroachment on the rights of independent nations, and would not
know any thing about the paper till it had been translated from good
French into bad Latin. In the middle of April it was known to every body
at the Hague that Charles the Eleventh, King of Sweden, was dead, and
had been succeeded by his son; but it was contrary to etiquette that any
of the assembled envoys should appear to be acquainted with this fact
till Lilienroth had made a formal announcement; it was not less contrary
to etiquette that Lilienroth should make such an announcement till his
equipages and his household had been put into mourning; and some weeks
elapsed before his coachmakers and tailors had completed their task. At
length, on the twelfth of June, he came to Ryswick in a carriage lined
with black and attended by servants in black liveries, and there, in
full congress, proclaimed that it had pleased God to take to himself
the most puissant King Charles the Eleventh. All the Ambassadors then
condoled with him on the sad and unexpected news, and went home to put
off their embroidery and to dress themselves in the garb of sorrow. In
such solemn trifling week after week passed away. No real progress was
made. Lilienroth had no wish to accelerate matters. While the congress
lasted, his position was one of great dignity. He would willingly have
gone on mediating for ever; and he could not go on mediating, unless the
parties on his right and on his left went on wrangling. [805]

In June the hope of peace began to grow faint. Men remembered that the
last war had continued to rage, year after year, while a congress was
sitting at Nimeguen. The mediators had made their entrance into that
town in February 1676. The treaty had not been signed till February
1679. Yet the negotiation of Nimeguen had not proceeded more slowly
than the negotiation of Ryswick. It seemed but too probable that the
eighteenth century would find great armies still confronting each other
on the Meuse and the Rhine, industrious populations still ground down
by taxation, fertile provinces still lying waste, the ocean still made
impassable by corsairs, and the plenipotentiaries still exchanging
notes, drawing up protocols, and wrangling about the place where this
minister should sit, and the title by which that minister should be
called.

But William was fully determined to bring this mummery to a speedy
close. He would have either peace or war. Either was, in his view,
better than this intermediate state which united the disadvantages of
both. While the negotiation was pending there could be no diminution
of the burdens which pressed on his people; and yet he could expect
no energetic action from his allies. If France was really disposed to
conclude a treaty on fair terms, that treaty should be concluded in
spite of the imbecility of the Catholic King and in spite of the selfish
cunning of the Emperor. If France was insecure, the sooner the truth was
known, the sooner the farce which was acting at Ryswick was over, the
sooner the people of England and Holland,--for on them every thing
depended,--were told that they must make up their minds to great
exertions and sacrifices, the better.

Pembroke and Villiers, though they had now the help of a veteran
diplomatist, Sir Joseph Williamson, could do little or nothing to
accelerate the proceedings of the Congress. For, though France had
promised that, whenever peace should be made, she would recognise the
Prince of Orange as King of Great Britain and Ireland, she had not yet
recognised him. His ministers had therefore had no direct intercourse
with Harlay, Crecy and Cailleres. William, with the judgment and
decision of a true statesman, determined to open a communication
with Lewis through one of the French Marshals who commanded in the
Netherlands. Of those Marshals Villeroy was the highest in rank. But
Villeroy was weak, rash, haughty, irritable. Such a negotiator was
far more likely to embroil matters than to bring them to an amicable
settlement. Boufflers was a man of sense and temper; and fortunately he
had, during the few days which he had passed at Huy after the fall of
Namur, been under the care of Portland, by whom he had been treated with
the greatest courtesy and kindness. A friendship had sprung up between
the prisoner and his keeper. They were both brave soldiers, honourable
gentlemen, trusty servants. William justly thought that they were far
more likely to come to an understanding than Harlay and Kaunitz even
with the aid of Lilienroth. Portland indeed had all the essential
qualities of an excellent diplomatist. In England, the people were
prejudiced against him as a foreigner; his earldom, his garter, his
lucrative places, his rapidly growing wealth, excited envy; his dialect
was not understood; his manners were not those of the men of fashion
who had been formed at Whitehall; his abilities were therefore greatly
underrated; and it was the fashion to call him a blockhead, fit only
to carry messages. But, on the Continent, where he was judged without
malevolence, he made a very different impression. It is a remarkable
fact that this man, who in the drawingrooms and coffeehouses of London
was described as an awkward, stupid, Hogan Mogan,--such was the phrase
at that time,--was considered at Versailles as an eminently polished
courtier and an eminently expert negotiator. [806] His chief
recommendation however was his incorruptible integrity. It was certain
that the interests which were committed to his care would be as dear to
him as his own life, and that every report which he made to his master
would be literally exact.

Towards the close of June Portland sent to Boufflers a friendly message,
begging for an interview of half an hour. Boufflers instantly sent off
an express to Lewis, and received an answer in the shortest time in
which it was possible for a courier to ride post to Versailles and back
again. Lewis directed the Marshal to comply with Portland's request, to
say as little as possible, and to learn as much as possible. [807]

On the twenty-eighth of June, according to the Old Style, the meeting
took place in the neighbourhood of Hal, a town which lies about ten
miles from Brussels, on the road to Mons. After the first civilities
had been exchanged, Boufflers and Portland dismounted; their attendants
retired; and the two negotiators were left alone in an orchard. Here
they walked up and down during two hours, and, in that time, did
much more business than the plenipotentiaries at Ryswick were able to
despatch in as many months. [808]

Till this time the French government had entertained a suspicion,
natural indeed, but altogether erroneous, that William was bent on
protracting the war, that he had consented to treat merely because
he could not venture to oppose himself to the public opinion both
of England and of Holland, but that he wished the negotiation to be
abortive, and that the perverse conduct of the House of Austria and the
difficulties which had arisen at Ryswick were to be chiefly ascribed
to his machinations. That suspicion was now removed. Compliments, cold,
austere and full of dignity, yet respectful, were exchanged between the
two great princes whose enmity had, during a quarter of a century, kept
Europe in constant agitation. The negotiation between Boufflers and
Portland proceeded as fast as the necessity of frequent reference to
Versailles would permit. Their first five conferences were held in the
open air; but, at their sixth meeting, they retired into a small house
in which Portland had ordered tables, pens, ink and paper to be placed;
and here the result of their labours was reduced to writing.

The really important points which had been in issue were four. William
had at first demanded two concessions from Lewis; and Lewis had demanded
two concessions from William.

William's first demand was that France should bind herself to give no
help or countenance, directly or indirectly, to any attempt which might
be made by James, or by James's adherents, to disturb the existing order
of things in England.

William's second demand was that James should no longer be suffered to
reside at a place so dangerously near to England as Saint Germains.

To the first of these demands Lewis replied that he was perfectly
ready to bind himself by the most solemn engagements not to assist or
countenance, in any manner, any attempt to disturb the existing order of
things in England; but that it was inconsistent with his honour that the
name of his kinsman and guest should appear in the treaty.

To the second demand Lewis replied that he could not refuse his
hospitality to an unfortunate king who had taken refuge in his
dominions, and that he could not promise even to indicate a wish that
James would quit Saint Germains. But Boufflers, as if speaking his own
thoughts, though doubtless saying nothing but what he knew to be in
conformity to his master's wishes, hinted that the matter would probably
be managed, and named Avignon as a place where the banished family might
reside without giving any umbrage to the English government.

Lewis, on the other side, demanded, first, that a general amnesty should
be granted to the Jacobites; and secondly, that Mary of Modena should
receive her jointure of fifty thousand pounds a year.

With the first of these demands William peremptorily refused to comply.
He should always be ready, of his own free will, to pardon the offences
of men who showed a disposition to live quietly for the future under
his government; but he could not consent to make the exercise of his
prerogative of mercy a matter of stipulation with any foreign power. The
annuity claimed by Mary of Modena he would willingly pay, if he could
only be satisfied that it would not be expended in machinations against
his throne and his person, in supporting, on the coast of Kent, another
establishment like that of Hunt, or in buying horses and arms for
another enterprise like that of Turnham Green. Boufflers had mentioned
Avignon. If James and his Queen would take up their abode there, no
difficulties would be made about the jointure.

At length all the questions in dispute were settled. After much
discussion an article was framed by which Lewis pledged his word of
honour that he would not favour, in any manner, any attempt to subvert
or disturb the existing government of England. William, in return, gave
his promise not to countenance any attempt against the government of
France. This promise Lewis had not asked, and at first seemed inclined
to consider as an affront. His throne, he said, was perfectly secure,
his title undisputed. There were in his dominions no nonjurors, no
conspirators; and he did not think it consistent with his dignity to
enter into a compact which seemed to imply that he was in fear of plots
and insurrections such as a dynasty sprung from a revolution might
naturally apprehend. On this point, however, he gave way; and it was
agreed that the covenants should be strictly reciprocal. William ceased
to demand that James should be mentioned by name; and Lewis ceased to
demand that an amnesty should be granted to James's adherents. It was
determined that nothing should be said in the treaty, either about the
place where the banished King of England should reside, or about the
jointure of his Queen. But William authorised his plenipotentiaries at
the Congress to declare that Mary of Modena should have whatever, on
examination, it should appear that she was by law entitled to have.
What she was by law entitled to have was a question which it would have
puzzled all Westminster Hall to answer. But it was well understood that
she would receive, without any contest, the utmost that she could have
any pretence for asking as soon as she and her husband should retire to
Provence or to Italy. [809]

Before the end of July every thing was settled, as far as France
and England were concerned. Meanwhile it was known to the ministers
assembled at Ryswick that Boufflers and Portland had repeatedly met
in Brabant, and that they were negotiating in a most irregular and
indecorous manner, without credentials, or mediation, or notes, or
protocols, without counting each other's steps, and without calling each
other Excellency. So barbarously ignorant were they of the rudiments of
the noble science of diplomacy that they had very nearly accomplished
the work of restoring peace to Christendom while walking up and down
an alley under some apple trees. The English and Dutch loudly applauded
William's prudence and decision. He had cut the knot which the Congress
had only twisted and tangled. He had done in a month what all the
formalists and pedants assembled at the Hague would not have done in
ten years. Nor were the French plenipotentiaries ill pleased. "It
is curious," said Harlay, a man of wit and sense, "that, while the
Ambassadors are making war, the generals should be making peace. " [810]
But Spain preserved the same air of arrogant listlessness; and the
ministers of the Emperor, forgetting apparently that their master had,
a few months before, concluded a treaty of neutrality for Italy without
consulting William, seemed to think it most extraordinary that William
should presume to negotiate without consulting their master.