No More Learning

Meanwhile he made little
proficiency in fashionable or literary accomplishments. The manners of
the Dutch nobility of that age wanted the grace which was found in
the highest perfection among the gentlemen of France, and which, in an
inferior degree, embellished the Court of England; and his manners were
altogether Dutch. Even his countrymen thought him blunt. To foreigners
he often seemed churlish. In his intercourse with the world in general
he appeared ignorant or negligent of those arts which double the
value of a favour and take away the sting of a refusal. He was little
interested in letters or science. The discoveries of Newton and
Leibnitz, the poems of Dryden and Boileau, were unknown to him. Dramatic
performances tired him; and he was glad to turn away from the stage
and to talk about public affairs, while Orestes was raving, or while
Tartuffe was pressing Elmira's hand. He had indeed some talent for
sarcasm, and not seldom employed, quite unconsciously, a natural
rhetoric, quaint, indeed, but vigorous and original. He did not,
however, in the least affect the character of a wit or of an orator. His
attention had been confined to those studies which form strenuous and
sagacious men of business. From a child he listened with interest when
high questions of alliance, finance, and war were discussed. Of geometry
he learned as much as was necessary for the construction of a ravelin or
a hornwork. Of languages, by the help of a memory singularly powerful,
he learned as much as was necessary to enable him to comprehend and
answer without assistance everything that was said to him, and every
letter which he received. The Dutch was his own tongue. He understood
Latin, Italian, and Spanish. He spoke and wrote French, English,
and German, inelegantly, it is true, and inexactly, but fluently and
intelligibly. No qualification could be more important to a man whose
life was to be passed in organizing great alliances, and in commanding
armies assembled from different countries.

One class of philosophical questions had been forced on his attention
by circumstances, and seems to have interested him more than might have
been expected from his general character. Among the Protestants of the
United Provinces, as among the Protestants of our island, there were two
great religious parties which almost exactly coincided with two great
political parties. The chiefs of the municipal oligarchy were Arminians,
and were commonly regarded by the multitude as little better than
Papists. The princes of Orange had generally been the patrons of the
Calvinistic divinity, and owed no small part of their popularity to
their zeal for the doctrines of election and final perseverance, a zeal
not always enlightened by knowledge or tempered by humanity. William
had been carefully instructed from a child in the theological system to
which his family was attached, and regarded that system with even more
than the partiality which men generally feel for a hereditary faith. He
had ruminated on the great enigmas which had been discussed in the
Synod of Dort, and had found in the austere and inflexible logic of the
Genevese school something which suited his intellect and his temper.
That example of intolerance indeed which some of his predecessors had
set he never imitated. For all persecution he felt a fixed aversion,
which he avowed, not only where the avowal was obviously politic, but on
occasions where it seemed that his interest would have been promoted
by dissimulation or by silence. His theological opinions, however,
were even more decided than those of his ancestors. The tenet of
predestination was the keystone of his religion. He often declared that,
if he were to abandon that tenet, he must abandon with it all belief in
a superintending Providence, and must become a mere Epicurean. Except in
this single instance, all the sap of his vigorous mind was early drawn
away from the speculative to the practical. The faculties which are
necessary for the conduct of important business ripened in him at a time
of life when they have scarcely begun to blossom in ordinary men.
Since Octavius the world had seen no such instance of precocious
statesmanship. Skilful diplomatists were surprised to hear the weighty
observations which at seventeen the Prince made on public affairs, and
still more surprised to see a lad, in situations in which he might
have been expected to betray strong passion, preserve a composure as
imperturbable as their own. At eighteen he sate among the fathers of the
commonwealth, grave, discreet, and judicious as the oldest among them.
At twenty-one, in a day of gloom and terror, he was placed at the head
of the administration. At twenty-three he was renowned throughout Europe
as a soldier and a politician. He had put domestic factions under his
feet: he was the soul of a mighty coalition; and he had contended with
honour in the field against some of the greatest generals of the age.

His personal tastes were those rather of a warrior than of a statesman:
but he, like his greatgrandfather, the silent prince who founded the
Batavian commonwealth, occupies a far higher place among statesmen than
among warriors. The event of battles, indeed, is not an unfailing test
of the abilities of a commander; and it would be peculiarly unjust to
apply this test to William: for it was his fortune to be almost always
opposed to captains who were consummate masters of their art, and to
troops far superior in discipline to his own. Yet there is reason to
believe that he was by no means equal, as a general in the field, to
some who ranked far below him in intellectual powers. To those whom he
trusted he spoke on this subject with the magnanimous frankness of a man
who had done great things, and who could well afford to acknowledge some
deficiencies. He had never, he said, served an apprenticeship to the
military profession. He had been placed, while still a boy, at the head
of an army. Among his officers there had been none competent to instruct
him. His own blunders and their consequences had been his only lessons.
"I would give," he once exclaimed, "a good part of my estates to have
served a few campaigns under the Prince of Conde before I had to command
against him. " It is not improbable that the circumstance which prevented
William from attaining any eminent dexterity in strategy may have been
favourable to the general vigour of his intellect. If his battles were
not those of a great tactician, they entitled him to be called a great
man. No disaster could for one moment deprive him of his firmness or of
the entire possession of all his faculties. His defeats were repaired
with such marvellous celerity that, before his enemies had sung the Te
Deum, he was again ready for conflict; nor did his adverse fortune ever
deprive him of the respect and confidence of his soldiers. That respect
and confidence he owed in no small measure to his personal courage.
Courage, in the degree which is necessary to carry a soldier without
disgrace through a campaign, is possessed, or might, under proper
training, be acquired, by the great majority of men. But courage like
that of William is rare indeed. He was proved by every test; by war,
by wounds, by painful and depressing maladies, by raging seas, by the
imminent and constant risk of assassination, a risk which has shaken
very strong nerves, a risk which severely tried even the adamantine
fortitude of Cromwell. Yet none could ever discover what that thing was
which the Prince of Orange feared. His advisers could with difficulty
induce him to take any precaution against the pistols and daggers of
conspirators. [209] Old sailors were amazed at the composure which he
preserved amidst roaring breakers on a perilous coast. In battle his
bravery made him conspicuous even among tens of thousands of brave
warriors, drew forth the generous applause of hostile armies, and was
never questioned even by the injustice of hostile factions. During his
first campaigns he exposed himself like a man who sought for death, was
always foremost in the charge and last in the retreat, fought, sword in
hand, in the thickest press, and, with a musket ball in his arm and the
blood streaming over his cuirass, still stood his ground and waved his
hat under the hottest fire. His friends adjured him to take more care of
a life invaluable to his country; and his most illustrious antagonist,
the great Conde, remarked, after the bloody day of Seneff that the
Prince of Orange had in all things borne himself like an old general,
except in exposing himself like a young soldier. William denied that he
was guilty of temerity. It was, he said, from a sense of duty and on a
cool calculation of what the public interest required that he was always
at the post of danger. The troops which he commanded had been little
used to war, and shrank from a close encounter with the veteran soldiery
of France. It was necessary that their leader should show them how
battles were to be won. And in truth more than one day which had seemed
hopelessly lost was retrieved by the hardihood with which he rallied his
broken battalions and cut down with his own hand the cowards who set the
example of flight. Sometimes, however, it seemed that he had a strange
pleasure in venturing his person. It was remarked that his spirits were
never so high and his manners never so gracious and easy as amidst
the tumult and carnage of a battle. Even in his pastimes he liked the
excitement of danger. Cards, chess, and billiards gave him no pleasure.
The chase was his favourite recreation; and he loved it most when it
was most hazardous. His leaps were sometimes such that his boldest
companions did not like to follow him. He seems even to have thought the
most hardy field sports of England effeminate, and to have pined in the
Great Park of Windsor for the game which he had been used to drive to
bay in the forests of Guelders, wolves, and wild boars, and huge stags
with sixteen antlers. [210]

The audacity of his spirit was the more remarkable because his physical
organization was unusually delicate. From a child he had been weak and
sickly. In the prime of manhood his complaints had been aggravated by
a severe attack of small pox. He was asthmatic and consumptive. His
slender frame was shaken by a constant hoarse cough. He could not sleep
unless his head was propped by several pillows, and could scarcely
draw his breath in any but the purest air. Cruel headaches frequently
tortured him. Exertion soon fatigued him. The physicians constantly kept
up the hopes of his enemies by fixing some date beyond which, if there
were anything certain in medical science, it was impossible that his
broken constitution could hold out. Yet, through a life which was one
long disease, the force of his mind never failed, on any great occasion,
to bear up his suffering and languid body.

He was born with violent passions and quick sensibilities: but the
strength of his emotions was not suspected by the world. From the
multitude his joy and his grief, his affection and his resentment,
were hidden by a phlegmatic serenity, which made him pass for the most
coldblooded of mankind. Those who brought him good news could seldom
detect any sign of pleasure. Those who saw him after a defeat looked in
vain for any trace of vexation. He praised and reprimanded, rewarded and
punished, with the stern tranquillity of a Mohawk chief: but those who
knew him well and saw him near were aware that under all this ice a
fierce fire was constantly burning. It was seldom that anger deprived
him of power over himself. But when he was really enraged the first
outbreak of his passion was terrible. It was indeed scarcely safe to
approach him. On these rare occasions, however, as soon as he regained
his self command, he made such ample reparation to those whom he had
wronged as tempted them to wish that he would go into a fury again. His
affection was as impetuous as his wrath. Where he loved, he loved with
the whole energy of his strong mind. When death separated him from what
he loved, the few who witnessed his agonies trembled for his reason and
his life. To a very small circle of intimate friends, on whose fidelity
and secrecy he could absolutely depend, he was a different man from the
reserved and stoical William whom the multitude supposed to be destitute
of human feelings. He was kind, cordial, open, even convivial and
jocose, would sit at table many hours, and would bear his full share
in festive conversation. Highest in his favour stood a gentleman of
his household named Bentinck, sprung from a noble Batavian race, and
destined to be the founder of one of the great patrician houses of
England. The fidelity of Bentinck had been tried by no common test. It
was while the United Provinces were struggling for existence against the
French power that the young Prince on whom all their hopes were fixed
was seized by the small pox. That disease had been fatal to many members
of his family, and at first wore, in his case, a peculiarly malignant
aspect. The public consternation was great. The streets of the Hague
were crowded from daybreak to sunset by persons anxiously asking how his
Highness was. At length his complaint took a favourable turn. His escape
was attributed partly to his own singular equanimity, and partly to the
intrepid and indefatigable friendship of Bentinck. From the hands of
Bentinck alone William took food and medicine. By Bentinck alone William
was lifted from his bed and laid down in it. "Whether Bentinck slept or
not while I was ill," said William to Temple, with great tenderness,
"I know not. But this I know, that, through sixteen days and nights,
I never once called for anything but that Bentinck was instantly at my
side. " Before the faithful servant had entirely performed his task, he
had himself caught the contagion. Still, however, he bore up against
drowsiness and fever till his master was pronounced convalescent. Then,
at length, Bentinck asked leave to go home. It was time: for his limbs
would no longer support him. He was in great danger, but recovered, and,
as soon as he left his bed, hastened to the army, where, during many
sharp campaigns, he was ever found, as he had been in peril of a
different kind, close to William's side.

Such was the origin of a friendship as warm and pure as any that ancient
or modern history records. The descendants of Bentinck still preserve
many letters written by William to their ancestor: and it is not too
much to say that no person who has not studied those letters can form
a correct notion of the Prince's character. He whom even his admirers
generally accounted the most distant and frigid of men here forgets
all distinctions of rank, and pours out all his thoughts with the
ingenuousness of a schoolboy. He imparts without reserve secrets of
the highest moment. He explains with perfect simplicity vast designs
affecting all the governments of Europe. Mingled with his communications
on such subjects are other communications of a very different, but
perhaps not of a less interesting kind. All his adventures, all his
personal feelings, his long runs after enormous stags, his carousals
on St. Hubert's day, the growth of his plantations, the failure of his
melons, the state of his stud, his wish to procure an easy pad nag for
his wife, his vexation at learning that one of his household, after
ruining a girl of good family, refused to marry her, his fits of sea
sickness, his coughs, his headaches, his devotional moods, his gratitude
for the divine protection after a great escape, his struggles to submit
himself to the divine will after a disaster, are described with an
amiable garrulity hardly to have been expected from the most discreet
and sedate statesman of the age. Still more remarkable is the careless
effusion of his tenderness, and the brotherly interest which he takes
in his friend's domestic felicity. When an heir is born to Bentinck, "he
will live, I hope," says William, "to be as good a fellow as you are;
and, if I should have a son, our children will love each other, I hope,
as we have done. " [211] Through life he continues to regard the
little Bentincks with paternal kindness. He calls them by endearing
diminutives: he takes charge of them in their father's absence, and,
though vexed at being forced to refuse them any pleasure, will not
suffer them to go on a hunting party, where there would be risk of a
push from a stag's horn, or to sit up late at a riotous supper. [212]
When their mother is taken ill during her husband's absence, William,
in the midst of business of the highest moment, finds time to send off
several expresses in one day with short notes containing intelligence of
her state. [213] On one occasion, when she is pronounced out of danger
after a severe attack, the Prince breaks forth into fervent expressions
of gratitude to God. "I write," he says, "with tears of joy in my
eyes. " [214] There is a singular charm in such letters, penned by a man
whose irresistible energy and inflexible firmness extorted the respect
of his enemies, whose cold and ungracious demeanour repelled the
attachment of almost all his partisans, and whose mind was occupied by
gigantic schemes which have changed the face of the world.

His kindness was not misplaced. Bentinck was early pronounced by Temple
to be the best and truest servant that ever prince had the good
fortune to possess, and continued through life to merit that honourable
character. The friends were indeed made for each other. William wanted
neither a guide nor a flatterer. Having a firm and just reliance on
his own judgment, he was not partial to counsellors who dealt much
in suggestions and objections. At the same time he had too much
discernment, and too much elevation of mind, to be gratified by
sycophancy. The confidant of such a prince ought to be a man, not of
inventive genius or commanding spirit, but brave and faithful, capable
of executing orders punctually, of keeping secrets inviolably, of
observing facts vigilantly, and of reporting them truly; and such a man
was Bentinck.

William was not less fortunate in marriage than in friendship. Yet his
marriage had not at first promised much domestic happiness. His choice
had been determined chiefly by political considerations: nor did it seem
likely that any strong affection would grow up between a handsome
girl of sixteen, well disposed indeed, and naturally intelligent, but
ignorant and simple, and a bridegroom who, though he had not completed
his twenty-eighth year, was in constitution older than her father, whose
manner was chilling, and whose head was constantly occupied by public
business or by field sports. For a time William was a negligent husband.
He was indeed drawn away from his wife by other women, particularly by
one of her ladies, Elizabeth Villiers, who, though destitute of personal
attractions, and disfigured by a hideous squint, possessed talents which
well fitted her to partake his cares. [215] He was indeed ashamed of his
errors, and spared no pains to conceal them: but, in spite of all his
precautions, Mary well knew that he was not strictly faithful to her.
Spies and talebearers, encouraged by her father, did their best to
inflame her resentment. A man of a very different character, the
excellent Ken, who was her chaplain at the Hague during some months, was
so much incensed by her wrongs that he, with more zeal than discretion,
threatened to reprimand her husband severely. [216] She, however, bore
her injuries with a meekness and patience which deserved, and gradually
obtained, William's esteem and gratitude. Yet there still remained one
cause of estrangement. A time would probably come when the Princess, who
had been educated only to work embroidery, to play on the spinet, and to
read the Bible and the Whole Duty of Man, would be the chief of a
great monarchy, and would hold the balance of Europe, while her lord,
ambitious, versed in affairs, and bent on great enterprises, would find
in the British government no place marked out for him, and would hold
power only from her bounty and during her pleasure. It is not strange
that a man so fond of authority as William, and so conscious of a genius
for command, should have strongly felt that jealousy which, during a few
hours of royalty, put dissension between Guildford Dudley and the Lady
Jane, and which produced a rupture still more tragical between Darnley
and the Queen of Scots. The Princess of Orange had not the faintest
suspicion of her husband's feelings. Her preceptor, Bishop Compton, had
instructed her carefully in religion, and had especially guarded her
mind against the arts of Roman Catholic divines, but had left her
profoundly ignorant of the English constitution and of her own position.
She knew that her marriage vow bound her to obey her husband; and it
had never occurred to her that the relation in which they stood to each
other might one day be inverted. She had been nine years married before
she discovered the cause of William's discontent; nor would she ever
have learned it from himself. In general his temper inclined him rather
to brood over his griefs than to give utterance to them; and in this
particular case his lips were sealed by a very natural delicacy. At
length a complete explanation and reconciliation were brought about by
the agency of Gilbert Burnet.

The fame of Burnet has been attacked with singular malice and
pertinacity. The attack began early in his life, and is still carried on
with undiminished vigour, though he has now been more than a century
and a quarter in his grave. He is indeed as fair a mark as factious
animosity and petulant wit could desire. The faults of his understanding
and temper lie on the surface, and cannot be missed. They were not the
faults which are ordinarily considered as belonging to his country.
Alone among the many Scotchmen who have raised themselves to distinction
and prosperity in England, he had that character which satirists,
novelists, and dramatists have agreed to ascribe to Irish adventurers.
His high animal spirits, his boastfulness, his undissembled vanity,
his propensity to blunder, his provoking indiscretion, his unabashed
audacity, afforded inexhaustible subjects of ridicule to the Tories. Nor
did his enemies omit to compliment him, sometimes with more pleasantry
than delicacy, on the breadth of his shoulders, the thickness of his
calves, and his success in matrimonial projects on amorous and opulent
widows. Yet Burnet, though open in many respects to ridicule, and even
to serious censure, was no contemptible man. His parts were quick, his
industry unwearied, his reading various and most extensive. He was at
once a historian, an antiquary, a theologian, a preacher, a pamphleteer,
a debater, and an active political leader; and in every one of these
characters made himself conspicuous among able competitors. The many
spirited tracts which he wrote on passing events are now known only
to the curious: but his History of his own Times, his History of the
Reformation, his Exposition of the Articles, his Discourse of Pastoral
Care, his Life of Hale, his Life of Wilmot, are still reprinted, nor is
any good private library without them. Against such a fact as this all
the efforts of detractors are vain. A writer, whose voluminous works,
in several branches of literature, find numerous readers a hundred and
thirty years after his death, may have had great faults, but must
also have had great merits: and Burnet had great merits, a fertile and
vigorous mind, and a style, far indeed removed from faultless purity,
but always clear, often lively, and sometimes rising to solemn and
fervid eloquence. In the pulpit the effect of his discourses, which
were delivered without any note, was heightened by a noble figure and
by pathetic action. He was often interrupted by the deep hum of his
audience; and when, after preaching out the hour glass, which in those
days was part of the furniture of the pulpit, he held it up in his hand,
the congregation clamorously encouraged him to go on till the sand had
run off once more. [217] In his moral character, as in his intellect,
great blemishes were more than compensated by great excellence. Though
often misled by prejudice and passion, he was emphatically an honest
man. Though he was not secure from the seductions of vanity, his spirit
was raised high above the influence either of cupidity or of fear. His
nature was kind, generous, grateful, forgiving. [218] His religious
zeal, though steady and ardent, was in general restrained by humanity,
and by a respect for the rights of conscience. Strongly attached to what
he regarded as the spirit of Christianity, he looked with indifference
on rites, names, and forms of ecclesiastical polity, and was by no means
disposed to be severe even on infidels and heretics whose lives
were pure, and whose errors appeared to be the effect rather of some
perversion of the understanding than of the depravity of the heart. But,
like many other good men of that age, he regarded the case of the Church
of Rome as an exception to all ordinary rules.

Burnet had during some years had an European reputation. His History of
the Reformation had been received with loud applause by all Protestants,
and had been felt by the Roman Catholics as a severe blow. The greatest
Doctor that the Church of Rome has produced since the schism of the
sixteenth century, Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, was engaged in framing an
elaborate reply. Burnet had been honoured by a vote of thanks from one
of the zealous Parliaments which had sate during the excitement of
the Popish plot, and had been exhorted, in the name of the Commons of
England, to continue his historical researches. He had been admitted to
familiar conversation both with Charles and James, had lived on terms of
close intimacy with several distinguished statesmen, particularly with
Halifax, and had been the spiritual guide of some persons of the highest
note. He had reclaimed from atheism and from licentiousness one of the
most brilliant libertines of the age, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.
Lord Stafford, the victim of Oates, had, though a Roman Catholic, been
edified in his last hours by Burnet's exhortations touching those points
on which all Christians agree. A few years later a more illustrious
sufferer, Lord Russell, had been accompanied by Burnet from the Tower to
the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The court had neglected no means
of gaining so active and able a divine. Neither royal blandishments
nor promises of valuable preferment had been spared. But Burnet, though
infected in early youth by those servile doctrines which were commonly
held by the clergy of that age, had become on conviction a Whig; and
he firmly adhered through all vicissitudes to his principles. He had,
however, no part in that conspiracy which brought so much disgrace and
calamity on the Whig party, and not only abhorred the murderous designs
of Goodenough and Ferguson, but was of opinion that even his beloved and
honoured friend Russell, had gone to unjustifiable lengths against the
government. A time at length arrived when innocence was not a sufficient
protection. Burnet, though not guilty of any legal offence, was pursued
by the vengeance of the court. He retired to the Continent, and, after
passing about a year in those wanderings through Switzerland, Italy,
and Germany, of which he has left us an agreeable narrative, reached the
Hague in the summer of 1686, and was received there with kindness and
respect. He had many free conversations with the Princess on politics
and religion, and soon became her spiritual director and confidential
adviser. William proved a much more gracious host than could have been
expected. For of all faults officiousness and indiscretion were the most
offensive to him: and Burnet was allowed even by friends and admirers
to be the most officious and indiscreet of mankind. But the sagacious
Prince perceived that this pushing, talkative divine, who was always
blabbing secrets, asking impertinent questions, obtruding unasked
advice, was nevertheless an upright, courageous and able man, well
acquainted with the temper and the views of British sects and factions.
The fame of Burnet's eloquence and erudition was also widely spread.
William was not himself a reading man. But he had now been many years at
the head of the Dutch administration, in an age when the Dutch press was
one of the most formidable engines by which the public mind of Europe
was moved, and, though he had no taste for literary pleasures, was
far too wise and too observant to be ignorant of the value of literary
assistance. He was aware that a popular pamphlet might sometimes be of
as much service as a victory in the field.
He also felt the importance
of having always near him some person well informed as to the civil and
ecclesiastical polity of our island: and Burnet was eminently qualified
to be of use as a living dictionary of British affairs. For his
knowledge, though not always accurate, was of immense extent and
there were in England and Scotland few eminent men of any political
or religious party with whom he had not conversed. He was therefore
admitted to as large a share of favour and confidence as was granted to
any but those who composed the very small inmost knot of the Prince's
private friends. When the Doctor took liberties, which was not seldom
the case, his patron became more than usually cold and sullen, and
sometimes uttered a short dry sarcasm which would have struck dumb any
person of ordinary assurance. In spite of such occurrences, however,
the amity between this singular pair continued, with some temporary
interruptions, till it was dissolved by death. Indeed, it was not easy
to wound Burnet's feelings. His selfcomplacency, his animal spirits, and
his want of tact, were such that, though he frequently gave offence, he
never took it.

All the peculiarities of his character fitted him to be the peacemaker
between William and Mary. When persons who ought to esteem and love
each other are kept asunder, as often happens, by some cause which three
words of frank explanation would remove, they are fortunate if they
possess an indiscreet friend who blurts out the whole truth. Burnet
plainly told the Princess what the feeling was which preyed upon
her husband's mind. She learned for the first time, with no small
astonishment, that, when she became Queen of England, William would
not share her throne. She warmly declared that there was no proof of
conjugal submission and affection which she was not ready to give.
Burnet, with many apologies and with solemn protestations that no human
being had put words into his mouth, informed her that the remedy was in
her own hands. She might easily, when the crown devolved on her, induce
her Parliament not only to give the regal title to her husband, but
even to transfer to him by a legislative act the administration of the
government. "But," he added, "your Royal Highness ought to consider well
before you announce any such resolution. For it is a resolution which,
having once been announced, cannot safely or easily be retracted. " "I
want no time for consideration," answered Mary. "It is enough that I
have an opportunity of showing my regard for the Prince. Tell him what
I say; and bring him to me that he may hear it from my own lips. " Burnet
went in quest of William; but William was many miles off after a stag.
It was not till the next day that the decisive interview took place.
"I did not know till yesterday," said Mary, "that there was such a
difference between the laws of England and the laws of God. But I now
promise you that you shall always bear rule: and, in return, I ask only
this, that, as I shall observe the precept which enjoins wives to obey
their husbands, you will observe that which enjoins husbands to love
their wives. " Her generous affection completely gained the heart of
William. From that time till the sad day when he was carried away in
fits from her dying bed, there was entire friendship and confidence
between them. Many of her letters to him are extant; and they contain
abundant evidence that this man, unamiable as he was in the eyes of the
multitude, had succeeded in inspiring a beautiful and virtuous woman,
born his superior, with a passion fond even to idolatry.

The service which Burnet had rendered to his country was of high moment.
A time had arrived at which it was important to the public safety that
there should be entire concord between the Prince and Princess.

Till after the suppression of the Western insurrection grave causes of
dissension had separated William both from Whigs and Tories. He had
seen with displeasure the attempts of the Whigs to strip the executive
government of some powers which he thought necessary to its efficiency
and dignity. He had seen with still deeper displeasure the countenance
given by a large section of that party to the pretensions of Monmouth.
The opposition, it seemed, wished first to make the crown of England
not worth the wearing, and then to place it on the head of a bastard and
impostor. At the same time the Prince's religious system differed widely
from that which was the badge of the Tories. They were Arminians
and Prelatists. They looked down on the Protestant Churches of the
Continent, and regarded every line of their own liturgy and rubric
as scarcely less sacred than the gospels. His opinions touching the
metaphysics of theology were Calvinistic. His opinions respecting
ecclesiastical polity and modes of worship were latitudinarian. He owned
that episcopacy was a lawful and convenient form of church government;
but he spoke with sharpness and scorn of the bigotry of those who
thought episcopal ordination essential to a Christian society. He had
no scruple about the vestments and gestures prescribed by the Book of
Common Prayer. But he avowed that he should like the rites of the Church
of England better if they reminded him less of the rites of the Church
of Rome. He had been heard to utter an ominous growl when first he
saw, in his wife's private chapel, an altar decked after the Anglican
fashion, and had not seemed well pleased at finding her with Hooker's
Ecclesiastical Polity in her hands. [219]

He therefore long observed the contest between the English factions
attentively, but without feeling a strong predilection for either side.
Nor in truth did he ever, to the end of his life, become either a
Whig or a Tory. He wanted that which is the common groundwork of both
characters; for he never became an Englishman. He saved England, it is
true; but he never loved her, and he never obtained her love. To him
she was always a land of exile, visited with reluctance and quitted with
delight. Even when he rendered to her those services of which, at this
day, we feel the happy effects, her welfare was not his chief object.
Whatever patriotic feeling he had was for Holland. There was the stately
tomb where slept the great politician whose blood, whose name, whose
temperament, and whose genius he had inherited. There the very sound of
his title was a spell which had, through three generations, called forth
the affectionate enthusiasm of boors and artisans. The Dutch language
was the language of his nursery. Among the Dutch gentry he had chosen
his early friends. The amusements, the architecture, the landscape of
his native country, had taken hold on his heart. To her he turned with
constant fondness from a prouder and fairer rival. In the gallery of
Whitehall he pined for the familiar House in the Wood at the Hague, and
never was so happy as when he could quit the magnificence of Windsor for
his far humbler seat at Loo. During his splendid banishment it was his
consolation to create round him, by building, planting, and digging, a
scene which might remind him of the formal piles of red brick, of the
long canals, and of the symmetrical flower beds amidst which his early
life had been passed. Yet even his affection for the land of his birth
was subordinate to another feeling which early became supreme in his
soul, which mixed itself with all his passions, which impelled him
to marvellous enterprises, which supported him when sinking under
mortification, pain, sickness, and sorrow, which, towards the close of
his career, seemed during a short time to languish, but which soon broke
forth again fiercer than ever, and continued to animate him even while
the prayer for the departing was read at his bedside. That feeling was
enmity to France, and to the magnificent King who, in more than one
sense, represented France, and who to virtues and accomplishments
eminently French joined in large measure that unquiet, unscrupulous,
and vainglorious ambition which has repeatedly drawn on France the
resentment of Europe.

It is not difficult to trace the progress of the sentiment which
gradually possessed itself of William's whole soul. When he was little
more than a boy his country had been attacked by Lewis in ostentatious
defiance of justice and public law, had been overrun, had
been desolated, had been given up to every excess of rapacity,
licentiousness, and cruelty. The Dutch had in dismay humbled themselves
before the conqueror, and had implored mercy. They had been told in
reply that, if they desired peace, they must resign their independence
and do annual homage to the House of Bourbon. The injured nation, driven
to despair, had opened its dykes and had called in the sea as an ally
against the French tyranny. It was in the agony of that conflict, when
peasants were flying in terror before the invaders, when hundreds of
fair gardens and pleasure houses were buried beneath the waves, when
the deliberations of the States were interrupted by the fainting and
the loud weeping of ancient senators who could not bear the thought of
surviving the freedom and glory of their native land, that William had
been called to the head of affairs. For a time it seemed to him that
resistance was hopeless. He looked round for succour, and looked in
vain. Spain was unnerved, Germany distracted, England corrupted. Nothing
seemed left to the young Stadtholder but to perish sword in hand, or to
be the Aeneas of a great emigration, and to create another Holland in
countries beyond the reach of the tyranny of France. No obstacle would
then remain to check the progress of the House of Bourbon. A few years,
and that House might add to its dominions Loraine and Flanders, Castile
and Aragon, Naples and Milan, Mexico and Peru. Lewis might wear the
imperial crown, might place a prince of his family on the throne of
Poland, might be sole master of Europe from the Scythian deserts to
the Atlantic Ocean, and of America from regions north of the Tropic
of Cancer to regions south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Such was the
prospect which lay before William when first he entered on public life,
and which never ceased to haunt him till his latest day. The French
monarchy was to him what the Roman republic was to Hannibal, what the
Ottoman power was to Scanderbeg, what the southern domination was to
Wallace. Religion gave her sanction to that intense and unquenchable
animosity. Hundreds of Calvinistic preachers proclaimed that the same
power which had set apart Samson from the womb to be the scourge of
the Philistine, and which had called Gideon from the threshing floor to
smite the Midianite, had raised up William of Orange to be the champion
of all free nations and of all pure Churches; nor was this notion
without influence on his own mind. To the confidence which the heroic
fatalist placed in his high destiny and in his sacred cause is to be
partly attributed his singular indifference to danger. He had a great
work to do; and till it was done nothing could harm him. Therefore it
was that, in spite of the prognostications of physicians, he recovered
from maladies which seemed hopeless, that bands of assassins conspired
in vain against his life, that the open skiff to which he trusted
himself on a starless night, on a raging ocean, and near a treacherous
shore, brought him safe to land, and that, on twenty fields of battle,
the cannon balls passed him by to right and left. The ardour and
perseverance with which he devoted himself to his mission have scarcely
any parallel in history. In comparison with his great object he held the
lives of other men as cheap as his own. It was but too much the habit,
even of the most humane and generous soldiers of that age, to think very
lightly of the bloodshed and devastation inseparable from great martial
exploits; and the heart of William was steeled, not only by professional
insensibility, but by that sterner insensibility which is the effect of
a sense of duty. Three great coalitions, three long and bloody wars in
which all Europe from the Vistula to the Western Ocean was in arms,
are to be ascribed to his unconquerable energy. When in 1678 the States
General, exhausted and disheartened, were desirious of repose, his voice
was still against sheathing the sword. If peace was made, it was made
only because he could not breathe into other men a spirit as fierce and
determined as his own. At the very last moment, in the hope of breaking
off the negotiation which he knew to be all but concluded, he fought one
of the most bloody and obstinate battles of that age. From the day on
which the treaty of Nimeguen was signed, he began to meditate a second
coalition. His contest with Lewis, transferred from the field to the
cabinet, was soon exasperated by a private feud. In talents, temper,
manners and opinions, the rivals were diametrically opposed to each
other. Lewis, polite and dignified, profuse and voluptuous, fond of
display and averse from danger, a munificent patron of arts and letters,
and a cruel persecutor of Calvinists, presented a remarkable contrast
to William, simple in tastes, ungracious in demeanour, indefatigable and
intrepid in war, regardless of all the ornamental branches of knowledge,
and firmly attached to the theology of Geneva. The enemies did not long
observe those courtesies which men of their rank, even when opposed to
each other at the head of armies, seldom neglect. William, indeed,
went through the form of tendering his best services to Lewis. But this
civility was rated at its true value, and requited with a dry reprimand.
The great King affected contempt for the petty Prince who was the
servant of a confederacy of trading towns; and to every mark of contempt
the dauntless Stadtholder replied by a fresh defiance. William took his
title, a title which the events of the preceding century had made one of
the most illustrious in Europe, from a city which lies on the banks of
the Rhone not far from Avignon, and which, like Avignon, though inclosed
on every side by the French territory, was properly a fief not of the
French but of the Imperial Crown. Lewis, with that ostentatious
contempt of public law which was characteristic of him, occupied Orange,
dismantled the fortifications, and confiscated the revenues. William
declared aloud at his table before many persons that he would make the
most Christian King repent the outrage, and, when questioned about these
words by the Count of Avaux, positively refused either to retract them
or to explain them away. The quarrel was carried so far that the French
minister could not venture to present himself at the drawing room of the
Princess for fear of receiving some affront. [220]

The feeling with which William regarded France explains the whole of his
policy towards England. His public spirit was an European public spirit.
The chief object of his care was not our island, not even his native
Holland, but the great community of nations threatened with subjugation
by one too powerful member. Those who commit the error of considering
him as an English statesman must necessarily see his whole life in a
false light, and will be unable to discover any principle, good or bad,
Whig or Tory, to which his most important acts can be referred. But,
when we consider him as a man whose especial task was to join a crowd
of feeble, divided and dispirited states in firm and energetic union
against a common enemy, when we consider him as a man in whose eyes
England was important chiefly because, without her, the great coalition
which he projected must be incomplete, we shall be forced to admit
that no long career recorded in history has been more uniform from the
beginning to the close than that of this great Prince. [221]

The clue of which we are now possessed will enable us to track without
difficulty the course, in reality consistent, though in appearance
sometimes tortuous, which he pursued towards our domestic factions.
He clearly saw what had not escaped persons far inferior to him in
sagacity, that the enterprise on which his whole soul was intent
would probably be successful if England were on his side, would be
of uncertain issue if England were neutral, and would be hopeless if
England acted as she had acted in the days of the Cabal. He saw not less
clearly that between the foreign policy and the domestic policy of the
English government there was a close connection; that the sovereign of
this country, acting in harmony with the legislature, must always have a
great sway in the affairs of Christendom, and must also have an obvious
interest in opposing the undue aggrandisement of any continental
potentate; that, on the other hand, the sovereign, distrusted and
thwarted by the legislature, could be of little weight in European
politics, and that the whole of that little weight would be thrown into
the wrong scale. The Prince's first wish therefore was that there should
be concord between the throne and the Parliament. How that concord
should be established, and on which side concessions should be made,
were, in his view, questions of secondary importance. He would have
been best pleased, no doubt, to see a complete reconciliation effected
without the sacrifice of one tittle of the prerogative. For in the
integrity of that prerogative he had a reversionary interest; and
he was, by nature, at least as covetous of power and as impatient of
restraint as any of the Stuarts. But there was no flower of the crown
which he was not prepared to sacrifice, even after the crown had been
placed on his own head, if he could only be convinced that such a
sacrifice was indispensably necessary to his great design. In the days
of the Popish plot, therefore, though he disapproved of the violence
with which the opposition attacked the royal authority, he exhorted
the government to give way. The conduct of the Commons, he said, as
respected domestic affairs, was most unreasonable but while the Commons
were discontented the liberties of Europe could never be safe; and to
that paramount consideration every other consideration ought to yield.
On these principles he acted when the Exclusion Bill had thrown
the nation into convulsions. There is no reason to believe that he
encouraged the opposition to bring forward that bill or to reject the
offers of compromise which were repeatedly made from the throne. But
when it became clear that, unless that bill were carried, there would
be a serious breach between the Commons and the court, he indicated
very intelligibly, though with decorous reserve, his opinion that the
representatives of the people ought to be conciliated at any price. When
a violent and rapid reflux of public feeling had left the Whig party for
a time utterly helpless, he attempted to attain his grand object by a
new road perhaps more agreeable to his temper than that which he had
previously tried. In the altered temper of the nation there was little
chance that any Parliament disposed to cross the wishes of the sovereign
would be elected. Charles was for a time master. To gain Charles,
therefore, was the Prince's first wish. In the summer of 1683, almost
at the moment at which the detection of the Rye House Plot made the
discomfiture of the Whigs and the triumph of the King complete, events
took place elsewhere which William could not behold without extreme
anxiety and alarm. The Turkish armies advanced to the suburbs of Vienna.
The great Austrian monarchy, on the support of which the Prince had
reckoned, seemed to be on the point of destruction. Bentinck was
therefore sent in haste from the Hague to London, was charged to omit
nothing which might be necessary to conciliate the English court, and
was particularly instructed to express in the strongest terms the horror
with which his master regarded the Whig conspiracy.

During the eighteen months which followed, there was some hope that
the influence of Halifax would prevail, and that the court of Whitehall
would return to the policy of the Triple Alliance. To that hope William
fondly clung. He spared no effort to propitiate Charles. The hospitality
which Monmouth found at the Hague is chiefly to be ascribed to the
Prince's anxiety to gratify the real wishes of Monmouth's father.
As soon as Charles died, William, still adhering unchangeably to his
object, again changed his course. He had sheltered Monmouth to please
the late King. That the present King might have no reason to complain
Monmouth was dismissed. We have seen that, when the Western insurrection
broke out, the British regiments in the Dutch service were, by the
active exertions of the Prince, sent over to their own country on the
first requisition. Indeed William even offered to command in person
against the rebels; and that the offer was made in perfect sincerity
cannot be doubted by those who have perused his confidential letters to
Bentinck. [222]

The Prince was evidently at this time inclined to hope that the great
plan to which in his mind everything else was subordinate might obtain
the approbation and support of his father in law. The high tone which
James was then holding towards France, the readiness with which he
consented to a defensive alliance with the United Provinces, the
inclination which he showed to connect himself with the House of
Austria, encouraged this expectation. But in a short time the prospect
was darkened. The disgrace of Halifax, the breach between James and the
Parliament, the prorogation: the announcement distinctly made by the
King to the foreign ministers that continental politics should no longer
divert his attention from internal measures tending to strengthen his
prerogative and to promote the interest of his Church, put an end to
the delusion. It was plain that, when the European crisis came, England
would, if James were her master, either remain inactive or act in
conjunction with France. And the European crisis was drawing near. The
House of Austria had, by a succession of victories, been secured from
danger on the side of Turkey, and was no longer under the necessity
of submitting patiently to the encroachments and insults of Lewis.
Accordingly, in July 1686, a treaty was signed at Augsburg by which the
Princes of the Empire bound themselves closely together for the purpose
of mutual defence. The Kings of Spain and Sweden were parties to this
compact, the King of Spain as sovereign of the provinces contained in
the circle of Burgundy, and the King of Sweden as Duke of Pomerania. The
confederates declared that they had no intention to attack and no
wish to offend any power, but that they were determined to tolerate
no infraction of those rights which the Germanic body held under the
sanction of public law and public faith. They pledged themselves to
stand by each other in case of need, and fixed the amount of force which
each member of the league was to furnish if it should be necessary
to repel aggression. [223] The name of William did not appear in this
instrument: but all men knew that it was his work, and foresaw that
he would in no long time be again the captain of a coalition against
France. Between him and the vassal of France there could, in such
circumstances, be no cordial good will. There was no open rupture, no
interchange of menaces or reproaches. But the father in law and the son
in law were separated completely and for ever.

At the very time at which the Prince was thus estranged from the English
court, the causes which had hitherto produced a coolness between him
and the two great sections of the English people disappeared. A large
portion, perhaps a numerical majority, of the Whigs had favoured the
pretensions of Monmouth: but Monmouth was now no more. The Tories, on
the other hand, had entertained apprehensions that the interests of the
Anglican Church might not be safe under the rule of a man bred among
Dutch Presbyterians, and well known to hold latitudinarian opinions
about robes, ceremonies, and Bishops: but, since that beloved Church
had been threatened by far more formidable dangers from a very different
quarter, these apprehensions had lost almost all their power. Thus, at
the same moment, both the great parties began to fix their hopes and
their affections on the same leader. Old republicans could not refuse
their confidence to one who had worthily filled, during many years,
the highest magistracy of a republic. Old royalists conceived that they
acted according to their principles in paying profound respect to a
prince so near to the throne. At this conjuncture it was of the highest
moment that there should be entire union between William and Mary. A
misunderstanding between the presumptive heiress of the crown and her
husband must have produced a schism in that vast mass which was from all
quarters gathering round one common rallying point. Happily all risk
of such misunderstanding was averted in the critical instant by the
interposition of Burnet; and the Prince became the unquestioned chief
of the whole of that party which was opposed to the government, a party
almost coextensive with the nation.

There is not the least reason to believe that he at this time meditated
the great enterprise to which a stern necessity afterwards drove him. He
was aware that the public mind of England, though heated by grievances,
was by no means ripe for revolution. He would doubtless gladly have
avoided the scandal which must be the effect of a mortal quarrel
between persons bound together by the closest ties of consanguinity and
affinity. Even his ambition made him unwilling to owe to violence that
greatness which might be his in the ordinary course of nature and
of law. For he well knew that, if the crown descended to his wife
regularly, all its prerogatives would descend unimpaired with it, and
that, if it were obtained by election, it must be taken subject to
such conditions as the electors might think fit to impose. He meant,
therefore, as it appears, to wait with patience for the day when he
might govern by an undisputed title, and to content himself in the
meantime with exercising a great influence on English affairs, as
first Prince of the blood, and as head of the party which was decidedly
preponderant in the nation, and which was certain whenever a Parliament
should meet, to be decidedly preponderant in both Houses.

Already, it is true, he had been urged by an adviser, less sagacious and
more impetuous than himself, to try a bolder course. This adviser was
the young Lord Mordaunt. That age had produced no more inventive genius,
and no more daring spirit. But, if a design was splendid, Mordaunt
seldom inquired whether it were practicable. His life was a wild romance
made up of mysterious intrigues, both political and amorous, of violent
and rapid changes of scene and fortune, and of victories resembling
those of Amadis and Launcelot rather than those of Luxemburg and Eugene.
The episodes interspersed in this strange story were of a piece with the
main plot. Among them were midnight encounters with generous robbers,
and rescues of noble and beautiful ladies from ravishers. Mordaunt,
having distinguished himself by the eloquence and audacity with which,
in the House of Lords, he had opposed the court, repaired, soon after
the prorogation, to the Hague, and strongly recommended an immediate
descent on England. He had persuaded himself that it would be as easy to
surprise three great kingdoms as he long afterwards found it to surprise
Barcelona. William listened, meditated, and replied, in general terms,
that he took a great interest in English affairs, and would keep his
attention fixed on them. [224] Whatever his purpose had been, it is not
likely that he would have chosen a rash and vainglorious knight errant
for his confidant. Between the two men there was nothing in common
except personal courage, which rose in both to the height of fabulous
heroism. Mordaunt wanted merely to enjoy the excitement of conflict, and
to make men stare. William had one great end ever before him. Towards
that end he was impelled by a strong passion which appeared to him under
the guise of a sacred duty. Towards that end he toiled with a patience
resembling, as he once said, the patience with which he had seen a
boatman on a canal, strain against an adverse eddy, often swept back,
but never ceasing to pull, and content if, by the labour of hours, a few
yards could be gained. [225] Exploits which brought the Prince no nearer
to his object, however glorious they might be in the estimation of the
vulgar, were in his judgment boyish vanities, and no part of the real
business of life.

He determined to reject Mordaunt's advice; and there can be no doubt
that the determination was wise. Had William, in 1686, or even in 1687,
attempted to do what he did with such signal success in 1688, it is
probable that many Whigs would have risen in arms at his call. But he
would have found that the nation was not yet prepared to welcome an
armed deliverer from a foreign country, and that the Church had not yet
been provoked and insulted into forgetfulness of the tenet which had
long been her peculiar boast. The old Cavaliers would have flocked to
the royal standard. There would probably have been in all the three
kingdoms a civil war as long and fierce as that of the preceding
generation. While that war was raging in the British Isles, what might
not Lewis attempt on the Continent? And what hope would there be for
Holland, drained of her troops and abandoned by her Stadtholder?

William therefore contented himself for the present with taking measures
to unite and animate that mighty opposition of which he had become
the head. This was not difficult. The fall of the Hydes had excited
throughout England strange alarm and indignation: Men felt that the
question now was, not whether Protestantism should be dominant, but
whether it should be tolerated. The Treasurer had been succeeded by a
board, of which a Papist was the head. The Privy Seal had been entrusted
to a Papist. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had been succeeded by a man
who had absolutely no claim to high place except that he was a Papist.
The last person whom a government having in view the general interests
of the empire would have sent to Dublin as Deputy was Tyrconnel. His
brutal manners made him unfit to represent the majesty of the crown. The
feebleness of his understanding and the violence of his temper made him
unfit to conduct grave business of state. The deadly animosity which he
felt towards the possessors of the greater part of the soil of Ireland
made him especially unfit to rule that kingdom. But the intemperance of
his bigotry was thought amply to atone for the intemperance of all his
other passions; and, in consideration of the hatred which he bore to the
reformed faith, he was suffered to indulge without restraint his hatred
of the English name. This, then, was the real meaning of his Majesty's
respect for the rights of conscience. He wished his Parliament to remove
all the disabilities which had been imposed on Papists, merely in
order that he might himself impose disabilities equally galling on
Protestants. It was plain that, under such a prince, apostasy was the
only road to greatness. It was a road, however, which few ventured to
take.