 History of England, Chapter 7, Part 6. The conflict in the royal mind did not escape the eye of Barry-On. At the end of January 1687 he sent a remarkable letter to Versailles. The king, such was the substance of this document, had almost convinced himself that he could not obtain entire liberty for Roman Catholics and yet maintain the laws against Protestant dissenters. He leaned therefore to the plan of a general indulgence, but at heart he would be far better pleased if he could even now divide his protection and favour between the Church of Rome and the Church of England to the exclusion of all other religious persuasions. A very few days after this dispatch had been written, James made his first hesitating and ungracious advances towards the Puritans. He had determined to begin with Scotland, where his power to dispense with acts of Parliament had been admitted by the obsequious estates. On the 12th of February, accordingly, was published at Edinburgh, a proclamation granting relief to scrupulous consciences. This proclamation fully proves the correctness of Barry-On's judgment, even in the very act of making concessions to the Presbyterians, James could not conceal the loathing with which he regarded them. The toleration given to the Catholics was complete. The Quakers had little reason to complain, but the indulgence vouchsafe to the Presbyterians, who constituted the great body of the Scottish people, was clogged by conditions which made it almost worthless. For the Old Test, which excluded Catholics and Presbyterians alike from office, was substituted a new test, which admitted the Catholics, but excluded most of the Presbyterians. The Catholics were allowed to build chapels, and even to carry the host in procession, anywhere except in the high streets of Royal Burgs. The Quakers were suffered to assemble in public edifices, but the Presbyterians were interdicted from worshipping God anywhere but in private dwellings. They were not to presume to build meeting-houses. They were not even to use a barn or an outhouse for religious exercises, and it was distinctly notified to them that, if they dared to hold conventicals in the open air, the law, which denounced death against both preachers and hearers, should be enforced without mercy. Any Catholic priest might say mass, any Quaker might harangue his brethren, but the Privy Council was directed to see that no Presbyterian minister presumed to preach without a special license from the government. Every line of this instrument, and of the letters by which it was accompanied, shows how much it cost the king to relax in the smallest degree the rigor with which he had ever treated the old enemies of his house. There is reason indeed to believe that, when he published this proclamation, he had by no means fully made up his mind to a coalition with the Puritans, and that his object was to grant just so much favor to them as might suffice to frighten the churchmen into submission. He therefore waited a month in order to see what effect the edict put forth at Edinburgh would produce in England. That month he employed assiduously by Petra's advice in what was called closeting. London was very full. It was expected that the Parliament would shortly meet for the dispatch of business and many members were in town, the king set himself to canvass them man by man. He flattered himself that the zealous Tories, and of such with few exceptions the House of Commons consisted, would find it difficult to resist his earnest request addressed to them not collectively but separately, not from the throne but in the familiarity of conversation. The members therefore who came to pay their duty at Whitehall were taken aside and honoured with long private interviews. The king pressed them, and they were loyal gentlemen, to gratify him in the one thing on which his heart was fixed. The question, he said, touched his personal honour. The laws enacted in the late reign by fractious parliaments against the Roman Catholics had really been aimed at himself. Those laws had put a stigma on him, had driven him from the admiralty, had driven him from the council board. He had a right to expect that in the repeal of those laws all who loved and revered him would concur. When he found his hearers obdurate to extortion he resorted to intimidation and corruption. Those who refused to pleasure him in this matter were plainly told that they must not expect any mark of his favour. Pinerius as he was, he opened and distributed his hordes. Several of those who had been invited to confer with him left his bed-chamber carrying with them money received from the royal hand. The judges, who were at this time on their spring circuits, were directed by the king to see those members who remained in the country and to ascertain the intentions of each. The result of this investigation was that a great majority of the House of Commons seemed fully determined to oppose the measures of the court. Among those whose firmness excited general admiration was Arthur Herbert, brother of the chief justice, member for Dover, master of the robes, and rear admiral of England. Arthur Herbert was much loved by the sailors, and was reputed one of the best of the aristocratical class of naval officers. It had been generally supposed that he would readily comply with the royal wishes, for he was heedless of religion, he was fond of pleasure and expense, he had no private estate. His places brought him in four thousand pounds a year, and he had long been reckoned among the most devoted personal adherents of James. When however the rear admiral was closeted and required to promise that he would vote for the repeal of the test act, his answer was that his honor and conscience would not permit him to give any such pledge. Nobody doubts your honor, said the king, but a man who lives as you do ought not to talk about his conscience. To this reproach, a reproach which came with a bad grace from the lover of Catherine Sedley, Herbert manfully replied, I have my fault, sir, but I could name people who talk much more about conscience than I am in the habit of doing, and yet lead lives as loose as mine. He was dismissed from all his places, and the account of what he had been dispersed and received as master of the robes was scrutinized with great and, as he complained, with unjust severity. It was now evident that all hopes of an alliance between the churches of England and of Rome, for the purpose of sharing offices and emoluments and of crushing the Puritan sects must be abandoned. Nothing remained but to try a coalition between the church of Rome and the Puritan sects against the church of England. On the 18th of March, the king informed the Privy Council that he had determined to prorogue the parliament till the end of November and to grant by his own authority entire liberty of conscience to all his subjects. On the 4th of April appeared the memorable Declaration of Indulgence. In this declaration the king avowed that it was his earnest wish to see his people members of that church to which he himself belonged, but, since that could not be, he announced his intention to protect them in the free exercise of their religion. He repeated all those phrases which, eight years before, when he was himself an oppressed man, had been familiar to his lips, but which he had ceased to use from the day on which a turn of fortune had put it into his power to be an oppressor. He had long been convinced, he said, that conscience was not to be forced, that persecution was unfavorable to population and to trade and that it never attained the ends which persecutors had in view. He repeated his promise, already often repeated and often violated, that he would protect the established church in the enjoyment of her legal rights. He then proceeded to annul by his own sole authority, a long series of statutes. He suspended all penal laws against all classes of nonconformists. He authorized both Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters to perform their worship publicly. He forbade his subjects on pain of his highest displeasure to molest any religious assembly. He also abrogated all those acts which imposed any religious test as a qualification for any civil or military office. That the declaration of indulgence was unconstitutional is a point on which both the great English parties have always been entirely agreed. Every person capable of reasoning on a political question must perceive that a monarch who is competent to issue such a declaration is nothing less than an absolute monarch. Or is it possible to urge in defense of this act of James those pleas by which many arbitrary acts of the stewards have been vindicated or excused? It cannot be said that he misturked the bounds of his prerogative because they had not been accurately ascertained, for the truth is that he trespassed with a recent landmark full in his view. Fifteen years before that time a declaration of indulgence had been put forth by his brother with the advice of the cabal. That declaration, when compared with the declaration of James, might be called modest and cautious. The declaration of Charles dispensed only with penal laws. The declaration of James dispensed also with all religious tests. The declaration of Charles permitted the Roman Catholics to celebrate their worship in private dwellings only. Under the declaration of James they might build and decorate temples and even walk in processions along Fleet Street with crosses, images, and censors. Yet the declaration of Charles had been pronounced illegal in the most formal manner. The commons had resolved that the king had no powers to dispense with statues in matters ecclesiastical. Charles had ordered the obnoxious instrument to be canceled in his presence, had torn off the seal with his own hand, and had, both by message under his sign manual and with his own lips from his throne in full parliament, distinctly promised the two houses that the step which had given so much offense should never be drawn into precedent. The two houses had then, without one dissenting voice, joined in thanking him for his compliance with their wishes. No constitutional question had ever been decided more deliberately, more clearly, or with more harmonious consent. The defenders of James have frequently pleaded in his excuse the judgment of the court of King's Bench on the information collusively laid against Sir Edward Hales, but the plea is of no value. That judgment James had notoriously obtained by solicitation, by threats, by dismissing scrupulous magistrates, and by placing on the bench other magistrates more courtly. And yet that judgment, though generally regarded by the bar and by the nation as unconstitutional, went only to this extent that the sovereign might, for special reasons of state, grant to individuals by name exemptions from disabling statutes, that he could by one sweeping edict authorize all his subjects to disobey whole volumes of laws no tribunal had ventured in the face of the solemn parliamentary decision of 1673 to affirm. Such, however, was the position of parties that James's declaration of indulgence, though the most audacious of all the attacks made by the stewards on public freedom, was well calculated to please that very portion of the community by which all the other attacks of the stewards on public freedom had been most strenuously resisted. It could scarcely be hoped that the Protestant non-conformist separated from his countrymen by a harsh code harshly enforced would be inclined to dispute the validity of a decree which relieved him from intolerable grievances. A cool and philosophical observer would undoubtedly have proclaimed that all the evil arising from all the intolerant laws which parliaments had framed was not to be compared to the evil which would be produced by a transfer of the legislative power from the parliament to the sovereign. But such coolness and philosophy are not to be expected from men who are smarting under present pain and who are tempted by the offer of immediate ease. A Puritan divine could not indeed deny that the dispensing power now claimed by the Crown was inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the Constitution, but he might perhaps be excused if he asked what was the Constitution to him. The act of uniformity had ejected him in spite of royal promises from a benefit which was his freehold and had reduced him to beggary and dependence. The Five Mile Act had banished him from his dwelling, from his relations, from his friends, from almost all places of public resort. Under the Conventical Act his goods had been restrained and he had been flung into one noisome jail after another among highwaymen and housebreakers. Out of prison he had constantly had the officers of justice on his track. He had been forced to pay hush money to informers. He had stolen in ignominious disguises through windows and trap doors to meet his flock and had, while pouring the baptismal water or distributing the Eucharistic bread, been anxiously listening for the signal that the tip-staves were approaching. Was it not mockery to call a man thus plundered and oppressed to suffer martyrdom for the property and liberty of his plunderers and his oppressors? The declaration, despotic as it might seem to his prosperous neighbors, brought deliverance to him. He was called upon to make his choice, not between freedom and slavery, but between two yokes, and he might not unnaturally think the yoke of the king lighter than that of the church. While thoughts like these were working in the minds of many dissenters, the Anglican party was in amazement and terror. This new turn in affairs was indeed alarming. The House of Stuart, leaked with Republican and Regicide sects against the old Cavaliers of England. Popery, leaked with Puritanism against an ecclesiastical system with which the Puritans had no quarrel, except that it had retained too much that was Popish. These were portents which confounded all the calculations of statesmen. The church was then to be attacked at once on every side, and the attack was to be under the direction of him, who, by her constitution, was her head. She might well be struck with surprise and dismay, and mingled with surprise and dismay came other bitter feelings, resentment against the perjured prince whom she had served too well, and remorse for the cruelties in which he had been her accomplice, and for which he was now, as it seemed, about to be her punisher. Her chastisement was just. She reaped that which she had sown. After the restoration, when her power was at the height, she had breathed nothing but vengeance. She had encouraged, urged, almost compelled the stewards to requite with perfidious ingratitude the recent services of the Presbyterians. Had she, in that season of her prosperity, pleaded as became her for her enemies, she might now, in her distress, have found them her friends. Perhaps it was not yet too late. Perhaps she might still be able to turn the tactics of her faithless oppressor against himself. There was among the Anglican clergy a moderate party which had always felt kindly towards the Protestant dissenters. That party was not large, but the abilities, requirements, and virtues of those who belonged to it made it respectable. It had been regarded with little favour by the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries, and had been mercilessly reviled by bigots of the School of Lod. But, from the day on which the Declaration of Indulgence appeared to the day on which the power of James ceased to inspire terror, the whole church seemed to be animated by the Spirit and guided by the Councils of the Columniated Latitudinarians. Then followed an auction, the strangest that history has recorded. On one side the King, on the other the Church, began to bid eagerly against each other for the favour of those whom tipped to that time King and Church had combined to oppress. The Protestant dissenters, who, a few months before, had been a despised and prescribed class, now held the balance of power. The harshness with which they had been treated was universally condemned. The Court tried to throw all blame on the Hierarchy. The Hierarchy flung it back on the Court. The King declared that he had unwillingly persecuted the separatists only because his affairs had been in such a state that he could not venture to disablage the established clergy. The established clergy protested that they had borne apart in severity, uncongenial to their feelings, only from deference to the authority of the King. The King got together a collection of stories about rectors and vickers who had, by threats of prosecution, wrung money out of the Protestant dissenters. He talked on this subject much and publicly, threatened to institute an inquiry which would exhibit the persons in their true character to the whole world, and actually issued several commissions empowering agents on whom he thought that he could depend, to ascertain the amount of the sums extorted in different parts of the country by professors of the dominant religion from sectaries. The advocates of the Church, on the other hand, cited instances of honest parish priests who had been reprimanded and menaced by the Court for recommending toleration in the pulpit and for refusing to spy out and hunt down little congregations of nonconformists. The King asserted that some of the Churchmen whom he had closeted had offered to make large concessions to the Catholics on condition that the persecution of the Puritans might go on. The accused Churchmen vehemently denied the truth of this charge and alleged that, if they would have complied with what he demanded for his own religion, he would most gladly have suffered them to indemnify themselves by harassing and pillaging Protestant dissenters. The Court had changed its face. The scarf and cassock could hardly appear there without calling forth sneers and malicious whispers. Maids of honor, forbore to giggle, and lords of the bedchamber bowed low when the Puritanical Visage and the Puritanical Garb, so long the favorite subjects of mockery and fashionable circles, were seen in the galleries. Taunton, which had been during two generations the stronghold of the Roundhead Party in the West, which had twice resolutely repelled the armies of Charles I, which had risen in one man to support Monmouth, and which had been turned into a shambles by Kirk and Jeffries, seemed to have suddenly succeeded to the place which Oxford had once occupied in the royal favor. The king constrained himself to show even fawning courtesy to eminent dissenters. To some he offered money. To some, municipal honors. To some, pardons for their relations and friends who, having been implicated in the Ryehouse plot, or having joined the standard of Monmouth, were now wandering on the continent or toiling among the sugar canes of Barbados. He affected even to sympathize with the kindness which the English Puritans felt for their foreign brethren. A second and a third proclamation were published at Edinburgh, which greatly extended the nurgatory toleration granted to the Presbyterians by the Edict of February. The banished Huguenots, on whom the king had frouched during many months, and whom he had defrauded of the alms contributed by the nation, were now relieved and caressed. An order and counsel was issued, appealing again in their behalf to the public liberality. The rule which required them to qualify themselves for the receipt of charity by conforming to the Anglican worship seems to have been at this time silently abrogated, and the defenders of the king's policy had the effrontery to affirm that this rule, which, as we know from the best evidence, was really devised by himself in concert with Beryon, had been adopted at the instance of the prelates of the established church. While the king was thus courting his old adversaries, the friends of the church were not less active. If the acrimony and scorn with which prelates and priests had, since the restoration, been in the habit of treating the sectaries, scarcely a trace was discernible. Those who had lately been designated as schismatics and fanatics were now dear fellow Protestants, weak brethren it might be, but still brethren, whose scruples were entitled to tender regard. If they would but be true at this crisis to the cause of the English constitution and of the reformed religion, their generosity should be speedily and largely rewarded, instead of an indulgence which was of no legal validity, a real indulgence, secured by act of parliament. Nay, many churchmen who had hitherto been distinguished by their inflexible attachment to every gesture and every word prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer now declared themselves favourable not only to toleration, but even to comprehension. The dispute, they said, about surpluses and attitudes, had too long divided those who were agreed as to the essentials of religion. When the struggle for life and death against the common enemy was over, it would be found that the Anglican clergy would be ready to make every fair concession. If the dissenters would demand only what was reasonable, not only civil but ecclesiastical dignities would be open to them, and Baxter and Howe would be able, without any stain on their honour or their conscience, to sit on the Episcopal bench. Of the numerous pamphlets in which the cause of the court and the cause of the church were at this time eagerly and anxiously pleaded before the Puritan, now by a strange turn of fortune the arbiter of the fate of his persecutors, one only is still remembered. In this masterly little tract all the arguments which could convince a nonconformist that it was his duty and his interest to prefer an alliance with the church to an alliance with the court were condensed into the smallest compass, arranged in the most perspicuous order, illustrated with lively wit, and enforced by an eloquence earnest indeed, yet never in its utmost vehemence transgressing the limits of exact good sense and good breeding. The effect of this paper was immense, for, as it was only a single sheet, more than twenty thousand copies were circulated by the post, and there was no corner of the kingdom in which the effect was not felt. Twenty-four answers were published, but the town pronounced that they were all bad, and that Lestrange's was the worst of the twenty-four. The government was greatly irritated and spared no pains to discover the author of the letter, but it was found impossible to procure legal evidence against him. Some imagined that they recognized the sentiment's addiction of temple, but in truth that amplitude and acuteness of intellect, that vivacity of fancy, that terse and energetic style, that placid dignity, half-courtly, half-philosophical, which the utmost excitement of conflict could not for a moment derange, belonged to Halifax, and to Halifax alone. The dissenters wavered, nor is it any reproach to them that they did so. They were suffering, and the king had given them relief. Some eminent pastors had emerged from confinement, others had ventured to return from exile, congregations which had hitherto met only by stealth and in darkness, now assembled at noon day and sang psalms aloud in the hearing of magistrate's church wardens and constables. Modest buildings for the worship of God after the Puritan fashion began to rise all over England. One observant traveller will still remark the date of 1687 on some of the oldest meeting-houses. Nevertheless, the offers of the church were, to a prudent dissenter, far more attractive than those of the king. The declaration was, in the eye of the law, annulity. It suspended the penal statutes against nonconformity only for so long a time as the fundamental principles of the Constitution and the rightful authority of the legislature should remain suspended. What was the value of privileges, which must be held by a tenure at once so ignominious and so insecure? There might soon be a demise of the crown, a sovereign attached to the established religion might sit on the throne, parliament composed of churchmen might be assembled. How deplorable would then be the situation of dissenters who had been in league with the Jesuits against the Constitution? The church offered an indulgence very different from that granted by James, an indulgence as valid and as sacred as the Great Charter. Both the contending parties promised religious liberty to the separatist, but one party required him to purchase it by sacrificing civil liberty, the other party invited him to enjoy civil and religious liberty together. For these reasons, even if it could be believed that the court was sincere, a dissenter might reasonably have determined to cast his lot with a church. But what guarantee was there for the sincerity of the court? All men knew what the conduct of James had been tipped to that very time. It was not impossible, indeed, that a persecutor might be convinced by argument and by experience of the advantages of toleration. But James did not pretend to have been recently convinced. On the contrary, he omitted no opportunity of protesting that he had, during many years, been on principle adverse to all intolerance. Yet, within a few months he had persecuted men, women, young girls to the death of their religion. Had he been acting against light and against the conviction of his conscience then, or was he uttering a deliberate falsehood now? From this dilemma there was no escape, and either of the two suppositions was fatal to the king's character for honesty. It was notorious also that he had been completely subjugated by the Jesuits. Only a few days before the publication of the indulgence that order had been honoured in spite of the well-known wishes of the Holy See with a new mark of his confidence and approbation. His confessor, Father Manswetty, a Franciscan whose mild temper and irreproachable life commanded general respect but who had long been hated by Tirkanal and Petra, had been discarded. The vacant place had been filled by an Englishman named Warner, who had apostatised from the religion of his country and had turned Jesuit. To the moderate Roman Catholics and to the Nuncio this change was far from agreeable. By every Protestant it was regarded as a proof that the dominion of the Jesuits over the royal mind was absolute. Whatever praises those fathers might justly claim, flattery itself could not ascribe to them either wide liberality or strict veracity. That they had never scrupled when the interest of their own order was at stake to call in the aid of the civil sword or to violate the laws of truth and of good faith had been proclaimed to the world, not only by Protestant accusers but by men whose virtue and genius were the glory of the Church of Rome. It was incredible that a devoted disciple of the Jesuits should be on principle zealous for the freedom of conscience, but it was neither incredible nor improbable that he might think himself justified in disguising his real sentiments in order to render a service to his religion. It was certain that the king at heart preferred the churchmen to the Puritans. It was certain that, while he had any hope of gaining the churchmen, he had never shown the smallest kindness to the Puritans. Could it be then doubted that if the churchmen would even now comply with his wishes he would willingly sacrifice the Puritans? His word, repeatedly pledged, had not restrained him from invading the legal rights of that clergy which had given such signal proofs of affection and fidelity to his house. What security then could his word afford to sex divided from him by the recollection of a thousand inexperial wounds inflicted and endured? When the first agitation produced by the publication of the indulgence had subsided, it appeared that a breach had taken place in the Puritan party. The minority, headed by a few busy men whose judgment was defective or was biased by interest, supported the king. Henry Kerr, who had long been the bitterest and most active pamphleteer among the nonconformists, and who had, in the days of the Popish plot, assailed James with the utmost fury in a weekly journal entitled The Packet of Advice from Rome, was now as loud in adulation as he had formally been in Calumnean insult. The chief agent, who was employed by the government to manage the Presbyterians, was Vincent Alsop, a divine of some note both as a preacher and as a writer. His son, who had incurred the penalties of treason, received pardon, and the whole influence of the father was thus engaged on the side of the court. With Alsop was joined Thomas Roswell. Roswell had, during the persecution of the dissenters which followed the detection of the Ryehouse plot, been falsely accused of preaching against the government, had been tried for his life by Jeffries, and had, in defiance of the clearest evidence, been convicted by a packed jury. The injustice of the verdict was so gross that the very courtiers cried shame. The jurymen themselves were stung by remorse when they thought over what they had done and exerted themselves to save the life of the prisoner. At length the pardon was granted, but Roswell remained bound under heavy recognizances to good behavior during life, and to periodical appearance in the court of the king's bench. His recognizances were now discharged by the royal command, and in this way his services were secured. The business of gaining the independence was principally entrusted to one of their ministers named Stephen Lobb. Lobb was a weak, violent, and ambitious man. He had gone such lengths in opposition to the government that he had been by name proscribed in several proclamations. He now made his peace and went as far in servility as he had ever done in faction. He joined the Jesuitical cabal and eagerly recommended measures from which the wisest and most honest Roman Catholics were coiled. It was remarked that he was constantly at the palace and frequently in the closet, that he lived with a splendor to which the Puritan divines were little accustomed, and that he was perpetually surrounded by suitors employing his interest to procure them offices or pardons. With Lobb was closely connected William Penn. Penn had never been a strong-headed man. The life which he had been leading during two years had not a little impaired his moral sensibility, and if his conscience ever reproached him he comforted himself by repeating that he had a good and noble end in view and that he was not paid for his services in money. By the influence of these men and of others less conspicuous addresses of thanks to the king were procured from several bodies of dissenters. Tory writers have with justice remarked that the language of these compositions was as fulsomely servile as anything that could be found in the most florid eulogies pronounced by bishops on the stewards, but on close inquiry it will appear that the disgrace belongs to but a small part of the Puritan party. There was scarcely a market town in England without at least a knot of separatists. No exertion was spared to induce them to express their gratitude for the indulgence. Circular letters imploring them to sign were sent to every corner of the kingdom in such numbers that the mailbags it was sportively said were too heavy for the post-horses. Yet all the addresses which could be obtained from all the Presbyterians, independents, and Baptists scattered over England did not in six months amount to sixty, nor was there any reason to believe that these addresses were numerously signed. End of Part 6. History of England, Chapter 7, Part 7. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. History of England from the Accession of James II by Thomas Babington Macaulay, Chapter 7, Part 7. The great body of Protestant nonconformists, firmly attached to civil liberty and distrusting the promises of the king and of the Jesuits, steadily refused to return thanks for a favour which, it might well be suspected, concealed a snare. This was the temper of all the most illustrious chiefs of the party. One of these was Baxter. He had, as we have seen, been brought to trial soon after the Accession of James, had been brutally insulted by Jeffries, and had been convicted by a jury, such as the courtly sheriffs of those times were in the habit of selecting. Baxter had been about a year and a half in prison when the court began to think seriously of gaining the nonconformists. He was not only set at liberty, but was informed that, if he chose to reside in London, he might do so without fearing that the five-mile act would be enforced against him. The government probably hoped that the recollection of past sufferings and the sense of present ease would produce the same effect on him as on Roswell and Lobb. The hope was disappointed. Baxter was neither to be corrupted nor to be deceived. He refused to join in an address of thanks for the indulgence and exerted all his influence to promote good feeling between the church and the Presbyterians. If any man stood higher than Baxter in the estimation of the Protestant dissenters, that man was John Howe. Howe had, like Baxter, been personally a gainer by the recent change of policy. The same tyranny which had flung Baxter into jail had driven Howe into banishment, and soon after Baxter had been led out of the King's bench prison, Howe returned from Utrecht to England. It was expected at White Hall that Howe would exert in favour of the court all the authority which he possessed over his brethren. The King himself condescended to ask the help of the subject whom he had oppressed. Howe appears to have hesitated, but the influence of the Hamptons, with whom he was on terms of close intimacy, kept him steady to the cause of the Constitution. A meeting of Presbyterian ministers was held at his house to consider the state of affairs and to determine on the course to be adopted. There was great anxiety at the palace to know the result. Two royal messengers were in attendance during the discussion. They carried back the unwelcome news that Howe had declared himself decidedly adverse to the dispensing power and that he had, after long debate, carried with him the majority of the assembly. To the names of Baxter and Howe must be added the name of a man far below them in station and in acquired knowledge, but in virtue they're equal and ingenious they're superior, John Bunyan. Bunyan had been bred a tinker and had served as a private soldier in the parliamentary army. Early in his life he had been fearfully tortured by remorse for his youthful sins, the worst of which seemed, however, to have been such as the world thinks venial. His keen sensibility and his powerful imagination made his internal conflicts singularly terrible. He fancied that he was under sentence of reprobation, that he had committed blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, that he had sold Christ, that he was actually possessed by a demon. Sometimes loud voices from heaven cried out to warn him. Sometimes fiends whispered in pious suggestions in his ear. He saw visions of distant mountaintops on which the sun shone brightly, but from which he was separated by a waste of snow. He felt the devil behind him pulling his clothes. He thought that the brand of cane had been set upon him. He feared that he was about to burst asunder like Judas. His mental agony distorted his health. One day he shook like a man in the palsy. On another day he felt a fire within his breast. It is difficult to understand how he survived suffering so intense and so long continued. At length the clouds broke. From the depths of despair the penitent passed to a state of serene felicity. The irresistible impulse now urged him to impart to others the blessing of which he was himself possessed. He joined the Baptist, and became a preacher and writer. His education had been that of a mechanic. He knew no language but the English as it was spoken by the common people. He had studied no great model of composition, with the exception, an important exception undoubtedly, of our noble translation of the Bible. His spelling was bad. He frequently transgressed the rules of grammar, yet his native force of genius and his experimental knowledge of all the religious passions from despair to ecstasy amply supplied in him the want of learning. His rude oratory roused and melted hearers who listened without interest to the labored discourses of great logicians and hebraists. His works were widely circulated among the humbler classes. One of them, the pilgrim's progress, was in his own lifetime translated into several foreign languages. It was, however, scarcely known to the learned and polite, and had been, during near a century, the delight of pious cottagers and artisans before it was publicly commended by any man of high literary eminence. At length critics condescended to inquire where the secret of so wide and so durable a popularity lay. They were compelled to own that the ignorant multitude had judged more correctly than the learned, and that the despised little book was really a masterpiece. Banine's indeed as decidedly the first of allegorists, as Demosthenes is the first of orators, or Shakespeare the first of dramatists. Other allegorists have shown equal ingenuity, but no other allegorist has ever been able to touch the heart and to make abstractions objects of terror, of pity, and of love. It may be doubted whether any English dissenter had suffered more severely under the penal laws than John Bunyan. Of the twenty-seven years which had elapsed since the restoration, he had passed twelve in confinement. He still persisted in preaching, but that he might preach he was under the necessity of disguising himself like a carter. He was often introduced into meetings through back doors, with a smock frock on his back, and a whip in his hand. If he had thought only of his own ease and safety, he would have hailed the indulgence with delight. He was now, at length, free to pray and exhort in open day. His congregation rapidly increased, thousands hung upon his words, and at Bedford, where he ordinarily resided, money was plentifully contributed to build a meeting-house for him. His influence among the common people was such that the government would willingly have bestowed on him some municipal office, but his vigorous understanding and his stout English heart were proof against all delusion and all temptation. He felt assured that the proffered toleration was merely a bait intended to lure the Puritan Party to destruction, nor would he, by accepting a place for which he was not legally qualified, recognize the validity of the dispensing power. One of the last acts of his virtuous life was to decline an interview to which he was invited by an agent of the government. Great as was the authority of Bunyan with the Baptists, that of William Kiffin was still greater. Bunyan was the first man among them in wealth and station. He was in the habit of exercising his spiritual gifts at their meetings, but he did not live by preaching. He traded largely. His credit on the exchange of London stood high, and he had accumulated an ample fortune. Perhaps no man could at that conjuncture have rendered more valuable service to the court, but between him and the court was interposed the remembrance of one terrible event. He was the grandfather of two of the Hewlings, those gallant youths who, of all the victims of the bloodiest sizes, had been the most generally lamented. For the sad fate of one of them, James was in a peculiar manner responsible. Jefferies had respited the younger brother. The poor-led sister had been ushered by Churchill into the royal presence and had begged for mercy, but the king's heart had been obdurate. The misery of the whole family had been great. But Kiffin was most to be pitied. He was seventy years old when he was left desolate. The survivor of those who should have survived him. The heartless and venal sycophants of Whitehall, judging by themselves, thought that the old man would be easily propitiated by an alderman's gown and by some compensation in money for the property which his grandsons had forfeited. Penn was employed in the work of seduction, but to no purpose. The king determined to try what effect his own civilities would produce. Kiffin was ordered to attend at the palace. He found a brilliant circle of noblemen and gentlemen assembled. James immediately came to him, spoke to him very graciously, concluded by saying, "'I have put you down, Mr. Kiffin, for an alderman of London.' The old man looked fixedly at the king, burst into tears and made answer, "'Sir, I am worn out. I am unfit to serve your majesty or the city. And sir, the death of my poor boys broke my heart. That wound is as fresh as ever. I shall carry it to my grave.' The king stood silent for a minute in some confusion and then said, "'Mr. Kiffin, I will find a balsam for that sore.'" Assuredly, James did not mean to say anything cruel or insolent. On the contrary, he seems to have been in an unusually gentle mood, yet no speech that is recorded of him gives so unfavorable a notion of his characters as these few words. They are the words of a hard-hearted and low-minded man, unable to conceive any laceration of the affections for which a place or a pension would not be a full compensation. That section of the dissenting body which was favorable to the king's new policy had from the first been a minority, and soon began to diminish. For the nonconformers perceived in no long time that their spiritual privileges had been abridged rather than extended by the indulgence. The chief characteristic of the Puritan was adhorrence of the peculiarities of the Church of Rome. He had quitted the Church of England only because he conceived that she too much resembled her superb and voluptuous sister, the sorceress of the golden cup and of the scarlet robe. He now found that one of the implied conditions of that alliance which some of his pastors had formed with the court was that the religion of the court should be respectfully and tenderly treated. He soon began to regret the days of persecution. While the penal laws were enforced, he had heard the words of life in secret and at his peril, but still he had heard them. When the brethren were assembled in the inner chamber, when the sentinels had been posted, when the doors had been locked, when the preacher in the garb of a butcher or a drayman had come in over the tiles, then at least God was truly worshiped. No portion of divine truth was suppressed or softened down for any worldly object. All the distinctive doctrines of the Puritan theology were fully and even coarsely set forth. To the Church of Rome no quarter was given. The Beast, the Antichrist, the Man of Sin, the Mystical Jezebel, the Mystical Babylon were the phrases ordinarily employed to describe that august and fascinating superstition. Such had been once the style of Alsop, of Lobb, of Rosewell, and of other ministers who had, of late, been well received at the palace. But such was now their style no longer. Divines who aspired to a high place in the king's favour and confidence could not venture to speak with asparity of the king's religion. Congregations therefore complained loudly that, since the appearance of the declaration which purported to give them entire freedom of conscience, they had never once heard the Gospel boldly and faithfully preached. Formerly they had been forced to snatch their spiritual nutriment by stealth, but when they had snatched it they had found it seasoned exactly to their taste. They were now at liberty to feed, but their food had lost all its savor. They met by daylight and in commodious edifices, but they heard discourses far less to their taste than they would have heard from the Rector. At the parish church the will worship and idolatry of Rome were every Sunday attacked with energy, but at the meeting-house, the pastor, who had a few months before reviled the established clergy as little better than papists, now carefully abstained from censuring Popary or conveyed his censures in language too delicate to shock even the ears of Father Petra. Nor was it possible to assign any credible reason for this change. The Roman Catholic doctrines had undergone no alteration. Within living memory never had Roman Catholic priests been so active in the work of making proselytes, never had so many Roman Catholic publications issued from the press, never had the attention of all who cared about religion been so closely fixed on the dispute between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. What could be thought of the sincerity of theologians who had never been weary of railing at Popary when Popary was comparatively harmless and helpless, and who now, when a time of real danger to the Reformed faith had arrived, studiously avoided tittering one word which could give offense to a Jesuit. Their conduct was indeed easily explained. It was known that some of them had obtained pardons. It was suspected that others had obtained money. Their prototype might be found in that weak apostle who from fear denied the master to whom he had boastfully professed the firmest attachment, or in that baser apostle who sold his lord for a hand full of silver. Thus the dissenting ministers, who had been gained by the court, were rapidly losing the influence which they had once possessed over their brethren. On the other hand, the sectaries found themselves attracted by a strong religious sympathy towards those prelates and priests of the Church of England who, despite of royal mandates, of threats, and of promises, were waging vigorous war with the Church of Rome. The Anglican body and the Puritan body, so long separated by a mortal enmity, were daily drawing nearer to each other, and every step which they made towards union increased the influence of him who was their common head. William was in all things fitted to be a mediator between these two great sections of the English nation. He could not be said to be a member of either. Yet neither, when in a reasonable mood, could refuse to regard him as a friend. His system of theology agreed with that of the Puritans. At the same time, he regarded Episcopacy not indeed as a divine institution, but as a perfectly lawful and eminently useful form of Church government. Questions respecting postures, robes, festivals, and literities he considered as of no vital importance. A simple worship, such as that to which he had been early accustomed, would have been most to his personal taste. But he was prepared to conform to any ritual which might be acceptable to the nation, and insisted only that he should not be required to persecute his brother Protestants whose consciences did not permit them to follow his example. Two years earlier he would have been pronounced by numerous bigots on both sides as a mere Laeditian, neither cold nor hot, and fit only to be spewed out. But the zeal which had inflamed churchmen against dissenters and dissenters against churchmen had been so tempered by common adversity and danger that the lukewarmness which had once been imputed to him as a crime was now reckoned among his chief virtues. All men were anxious to know what he thought of the declaration of indulgence. For a time hopes were entertained at Whitehall that his known respect for the rites of conscience would at least prevent him from publicly expressing disapprobation of a policy which had a specious show of liberality. Penn sent copious disquisitions to the Hague and even went thither in the hope that his eloquence, of which he had a high opinion, would prove irresistible. But though he harangued on his favorite theme with a copiousness which tired his hearers out, and though he assured them that the approach of a golden age of religious liberty had been revealed to him by a man who was permitted to converse with angels, no impression was made on the prince. You ask me, said William to one of the king's agents, to countenance an attack on my own religion, I cannot with a safe conscience do it, and I will not, no, not for the crown of England nor for the empire of the world. These words were reported to the king and disturbed him greatly. Urgent letters with his own hand. Sometimes he took the tone of an injured man. He was the head of the royal family. He was as such entitled to expect the obedience of his younger branches, and it was very hard that he was to be crossed in a matter on which his heart was set. At other times a bait which was thought irresistible was offered. If William would but give way on this one point, the English government would, in return, cooperate with him strenuously against the French. He was not to be so deluded. He knew that James, without the support of a parliament, would, even if not unwilling, be unable to render effectual service to the common cause of Europe, and there could be no doubt that if a parliament were assembled the first demand of both houses would be that the declaration should be cancelled. The princess assented to all that was suggested by her husband. Their joint opinion was now conveyed to the king in firm but temperate terms. They declared that they deeply regretted the course which his majesty had adopted. They were convinced that he had usurped a prerogative which did not by law belong to him. Against that usurpation they protested, not only as friends to civil liberty but as members of the royal house, who had a deep interest in maintaining the rights of that crown which they might one day wear. For experience had shown that in England arbitrary government could not fail to produce a reaction even more pernicious than itself, and it might reasonably be feared that the nation, alarmed and incensed by the prospect of despotism, might conceive a disgust even for the constitutional monarchy. The advice therefore which they tended to the king was that he would in all things govern according to law. They readily admitted that the law might with advantage be altered by competent authority, and that some part of his declaration well deserved to be embodied in an act of parliament. They were not persecutors. They should with pleasure see Roman Catholics as well as Protestant dissenters relieved in a proper manner from all penal statutes. They should with pleasure see Protestant dissenters admitted in a proper manner to civil office. At that point their highnesses must stop. They could not but entertain grave apprehensions that, if Roman Catholics were made capable of public trust, great evil would ensue, and it was intimated not obscurely that these apprehensions arose chiefly from the conduct of James. The opinion expressed by the prince and princess respecting the disabilities to which the Roman Catholics were subject was that of almost all the statesmen and philosophers who were then zealous for political and religious freedom. In our age, on the contrary, enlightened men have often pronounced with regret that, on this one point, William appears to disadvantage when compared to his father in law. The truth is that some considerations which are necessary to the forming of a correct judgment seem to have escaped the notice of many writers of the 19th century. End of Part 7. History of England, Chapter 7, Part 8. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Robin Cotter. July 2007. History of England, from the Assession of James II by Thomas Babington Macaulay. Chapter 7, Part 8. There are two opposite errors into which those who study the annals of our country are in constant danger of falling. The error of judging the present by the past, and the error of judging the past by the present. The former is the error of minds, prone to reverence whatever is old, the latter of minds readily attracted by whatever is new. The former error may perpetually be observed in the reasonings of conservative politicians on the questions of their own day. The latter error perpetually infects the speculations of writers of the liberal school when they discuss the transactions of an earlier age. The former error is the more pernicious in a statesman, and the latter in a historian. It is not easy for any person who in our time undertakes to treat of the revolution which overthrew the stewards to preserve with steadiness the happy mean between these two extremes. The question whether members of the Roman Catholic Church could be safely admitted to Parliament, and to office convulsed our country during the reign of James II, was set at rest by his downfall, and, having slept during more than a century, was revived by that great stirring of the human mind which followed the meeting of the National Assembly of France. During thirty years the contest went on in both houses of Parliament, in every constituent body, in every social circle. It destroyed administrations, broke up parties, made all government in one part of the Empire impossible, and at length brought us to the verge of civil war. Even when the struggle had terminated, the passions to which it had given birth still continued to rage. It was scarcely possible for any man whose mind was under the influence of those passions to see the events of the years 1687 and 1688 in a perfectly correct light. One class of politicians, starting from the true proposition that the revolution had been a great blessing to our country, arrived at the false conclusion that no test which the statesman of the revolution had thought necessary for the protection of our religion and our freedom could be safely abolished. Another class, starting from the true proposition that the disabilities imposed on the Roman Catholics had long been productive of nothing but mischief, arrived at the false conclusion that there never could have been a time when those disabilities could have been useful and necessary. The former fallacy pervaded the speeches of the acute and learned Eldon. The latter was not altogether without influence, even on an intellect so calm and philosophical as that of Macintosh. Perhaps, however, it will be found on examination that we may vindicate the course which was unanimously approved by all the great English statesmen of the seventeenth century, without questioning the wisdom of the course which was as unanimously approved by all the great English statesmen of our own time. Undoubtedly it is an evil that any citizen should be excluded from civil employment on account of his religious opinions, but a choice between evils is sometimes all that is left to human wisdom. A nation may be placed in such a situation that the majority must either impose disabilities or submit to them, and that woodward, under ordinary circumstances, be justly condemned as persecution, may fall within the bounds of legitimate self-defense, and such was, in the year 1687, the situation of England. According to the Constitution of the Realm, James possessed the right of naming almost all public functionaries political, judicial, ecclesiastical, military, and naval. In the exercise of this right he was not, as our sovereigns now are, under the necessity of acting in conformity with the advice of ministers approved by the House of Commons. It was evident, therefore, that unless he were strictly bound by law to bestow office on none but Protestants it would be in his power to bestow office on none but Roman Catholics. The Roman Catholics were few in number, and among them was not a single man whose services could be seriously missed by the Commonwealth. The proportion which they bore to the population of England was very much smaller than at present. For at present a constant stream of emigration runs from Ireland to our great towns, but in the seventeenth century there was not even in London an Irish colony. Forty-nine-fiftieths of the inhabitants of the kingdom, forty-nine-fiftieths of the property of the kingdom, almost all the political, legal, and military ability and knowledge to be found in the kingdom were Protestant. Nevertheless the king under a strong infatuation had determined to use his vast patronage as a means of making proselytes, to be if his church was, in his view, the first of all qualifications for office. To be if the national church was a positive disqualification. He reprobated, it is true, in language which has been applauded by some credulous friends of religious liberty, the monstrous injustice of that test which excluded a small minority of the nation from public trust, but he was at the same time instituting a test which excluded the majority. He thought it hard that a man who was a good financier and a loyal subject should be excluded from the post of Lord Treasurer merely for being a Papist. But he had himself turned out a Lord Treasurer whom he admitted to be a good financier and a loyal subject merely for being a Protestant. He had repeatedly and distinctly declared his resolution never to put the white staff in the hands of any heretic. With many other great offices of state he had dealt in the same way. Already the Lord President, the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord Chamberlain, the Groom of the Stole, the First Lord of the Treasury, a Secretary of State, the Lord High Commissioner of Scotland, the Chancellor of Scotland, the Secretary of Scotland, were or pretended to be Roman Catholics. Most of these functionaries had been bred churchmen and had been guilty of apostasy, open or secret, in order to obtain or to keep their high places. Every Protestant who still held an important post in the Government held it in constant uncertainty and fear. It would be endless to recount the situations of a lower rank which were filled by the favoured class. Roman Catholics already swarmed in every department of the public service. There were Lord lieutenants, deputy lieutenants, judges, justices of the peace, commissioners of the customs, envoys to foreign courts, colonels of regiments, governors of fortresses. The share which in a few months they had obtained of the temporal patronage of the Crown was much more than ten times as great as they would have had under an impartial system. Yet this was not the worst. They were made rulers of the Church of England, men who had assured the King that they held his faith, sate in the High Commission, and exercised supreme jurisdiction in spiritual things over all the prelates and priests of the established religion. Ecclesiastical benefits of great dignity had been bestowed, some on avowed papists, and some on half-concealed papists. And all this had been done while the laws against papery were still unrepealed, and while James had still a strong interest in affecting respect for the rights of conscience. What then was his conduct likely to be, if his subjects consented to free him by a legislative act from even the shadow of restraint? Is it possible to doubt that Protestants would have been as effectually excluded from employment by a strictly legal use of the royal prerogative as ever Roman Catholics had been by act of parliament? How obstinately James was determined to bestow on the members of his own Church a share of patronage altogether out of proportion to their numbers and importance is proved by the instructions which, in exile and old age, he drew up for the guidance of his son. It is impossible to read without mingled pity and derision those effusions of a mind on which all the discipline of experience and adversity had been exhausted in vain. The pretender is advised, if ever he should reign in England, to make a partition of offices, and carefully to reserve for the members of the Church of Rome a portion which might have sufficed for them if they had been one half instead of one fiftieth part of the nation. One Secretary of State, one Commissioner of the Treasury, the Secretary at War, the majority of the great dignitaries of the household, the majority of the officers of the army, are always to be Catholics. Such were the designs of James after his perverse bigotry had drawn on him a punishment which had appalled the whole world. Is it then possible to doubt what his conduct would have been if his people, deluded by the empty name of religious liberty, had suffered him to proceed without any check? Even Penn, intemperate and undiscerning as was his zeal for the declaration, seems to have felt that the partiality with which honors and emoluments were heaped on Roman Catholics, might not unnaturally excite the jealousy of the nation. He owned that, if the test act were repealed, the Protestants were entitled to an equivalent, and went so far as to suggest several equivalents. During some weeks the word equivalent, then lately imported from France, was in the mouths of all the coffee-house orators, but at length a few pages of keen logic and polished sarcasm, written by Halifax, put an end to these idle projects. One of Penn's schemes was that a law should be passed dividing the patronage of the crown into three equal parts, and that to one only of those parts members of the Church of Rome should be admitted. Even under such an arrangement the members of the Church of Rome would have obtained near twenty times their fair portion of official appointments, and yet there is no reason to believe that even to such an arrangement the king would have consented, but had he consented what guarantee could he give that he would adhere to his bargain? The dilemma propounded by Halifax was unanswerable. If laws are binding on you, observe the law which now exists. If laws are not binding on you, it is idle to offer us a law as a security. It is clear, therefore, that the pointed issue was not whether secular offices should be thrown open to all sex indifferently. While James was king, it was inevitable that there should be exclusion, and the only question was who should be excluded, Papists or Protestants, the few or the many, a hundred thousand Englishmen, or five millions. Such are the weighty arguments by which the conduct of the Prince of Orange towards the English Roman Catholics may be reconciled with the principles of religious liberty. These arguments, it will be observed, have no reference to any part of the Roman Catholic theology. It will also be observed that they ceased to have any force when the crown had been settled on a race of Protestant sovereigns, and when the power of the House of Commons in the State had become so decidedly preponderant that no sovereign, whatever might have been his opinions or his inclinations, could have imitated the example of James. The nation, however, after its terrors, its struggles, its narrow escape, was in a suspicious and vindictive mood. Means of defense, therefore, which necessity had once justified, and which necessity alone could justify, were obstinately used long after the necessity had ceased to exist, and were not abandoned till vulgar prejudice had maintained a contest of many years against reason. But in the time of James, reason and vulgar prejudice were on the same side. The fanatical and ignorant wished to exclude the Roman Catholic from office, because he worshipped stocks and stones, because he had the mark of the beast, because he had burned down London, because he had strangled Sir Edmundsbury Godfrey, and the most judicious and tolerant statesmen, while smiling at the delusions which imposed on the populace, was led, by a very different road, to the same conclusion. The great object of William, now was to unite in one body the numerous sections of the community which regarded him as their common head. In this work he had several able and trusty co-editors, among whom, too, were preeminently useful, Burnett and Dykefeldt. The services of Burnett indeed it was necessary to employ with some caution. The kindness with which he had been welcomed at the Hague had excited the rage of James. Mary received from her father two letters filled with invectives against the insolent and seditious divine whom she protected. But these accusations had so little effect on her that she sent back answers dictated by Burnett himself. At length in January 1687 the king had recourse to stronger measures. Delton, who had represented the English government in the United provinces, was removed to Paris, and was succeeded by Albeville, the weakest and basest of all the members of the Jesuitical cabal. Money was Albeville's one object, and he took it from all who offered it. He was paid at once by France and by Holland. Nay he stooped below even the miserable dignity of corruption, and accepted bribes so small that they seemed better suited to a porter or a lackey than to an envoy who had been honoured with an English baronetcy and a foreign marquisade. On one occasion he pocketed very complacently a gratuity of fifty pistols as the price of a service which he had rendered to the state's general. This man had it in charge to demand that Burnett should no longer be countenanced at the Hague. William, who was not inclined to part with a valuable friend, ordered at first, with his usual coldness, quote, I am not aware, sir, that since the doctor has been here, he has done or said anything of which his Majesty can justly complain." But James was preemptory, the time for an open rupture had not arrived, and it was necessary to give away. During more than eighteen months Burnett never came into the presence of either the prince or the princess, but he resided near them. He was fully informed of all that was passing. His advice was constantly asked. His pen was employed on all important occasions, and many of the sharpest and most effective tracks which about that time appeared in London were justly attributed to him. The rage of James flamed high. He had always been more than sufficiently prone to the angry passions, but none of his enemies, not even those who had conspired against his life, not even those who had attempted by perjury to load him with the guilt of treason and assassination, had ever been regarded by him with such animosity as he now felt for Burnett. His Majesty railed daily at the doctor in unkingly language, and meditated plans of unlawful revenge. Even blood would not slake that frantic hatred. The insolent divine must be tortured before he was permitted to die. Fortunately, he was by birth a scot, and in Scotland before he was gibbeted in the grass market, his legs might be dislocated in the boot. Proceedings were accordingly instituted against him at Edinburgh, but he had been naturalized in Holland. He had married a woman of fortune who was a native of that province, and it was certain that his adopted country would not deliver him up. It was therefore determined to kidnap him. Ruffians were hired with great sums of money for this perilous and infamous service. An order for three thousand pounds on this account was actually drawn up for signature in the office of the Secretary of State. Louis was apprised of the design, and took a warm interest in it. He would lend, he said, his best assistance to convey the villain to England, and would undertake that the Ministers of the Vengeance of James should find a secure asylum in France. Burnett was well aware of his danger, but timidity was not among his faults. He published a courageous answer to the charges which had been brought against him at Edinburgh. He knew, he said, that it was intended to execute him without a trial, but his trust was in the King of Kings, to whom innocent blood would not cry in vain, even against the mightiest princes of the earth. He gave a farewell dinner to some friends, and after the meal took solemn leave of them, as a man who was doomed to death, and with whom they could no longer safely converse. Nevertheless he continued to show himself in all the public places of the Hague, so boldly that his friends reproached him bitterly with his foolhardiness. HISTORY OF INGLAND CHAPTER VII While Burnett was William's secretary for English affairs in Holland, Dykeveld had been not less usefully employed in London. Dykeveld was one of a remarkable class of public men, who, having been bred to politics in the noble school of John DeWitt, had, after the fall of that great minister, thought that they should best discharge their duty to the Commonwealth by rallying round the Prince of Orange. In the service of the United Provinces none was in dexterity, temper, and manners superior to Dykeveld. In knowledge of English affairs none seems to have been his equal. A pretense was found for dispatching him, early in the year 1687, to England on a special mission with credentials from the State's General. But in truth his embassy was not to rule the government, but to the opposition, and his conduct was guided by private instructions, which had been drawn by Burnett, and approved by William. Dykeveld reported that James was bitterly mortified by the conduct of the Prince and Princess. Quote, my nephew's duty, said the King, is to strengthen my hands, but he has always taken a pleasure in crossing me. Dykeveld answered that in matters of private concern his Highness had shown, and was ready to show, the greatest deference to the King's wishes, but that it was scarcely reasonable to expect the aid of a Protestant Prince against the Protestant religion. The King was silenced, but not appeased. He saw with ill humour, which he could not disguise, that Dykeveld was mustering and drilling all the various divisions of the opposition, with a skill which would have been creditable to the ablest English statesmen, and which was marvellous in a foreigner. The clergy were told that they would find the Prince a friend to episcopacy, and to the Book of Common Prayer. The nonconformists were encouraged to expect from him not only toleration, but also comprehension. Even the Roman Catholics were conciliated, and some of the most respectable among them declared to the King's face that they were satisfied with what Dykeveld proposed, and that they would rather have a toleration secured by statute than an illegal and precarious ascendancy. The chiefs of all the important sections of the nation had frequent conferences in the presence of the dexterous envoy. At these meetings the sense of the Tory party was chiefly spoken by the earls of Danby and Nottingham, though more than eight years had elapsed since Danby had fallen from power, his name was still great among the old cavaliers of England, and to many even of those wigs who had formerly persecuted him were now disposed to admit that he had suffered for faults not his own, and that his zeal for the prerogative, though it had often misled him, had been tempered by two feelings which did him honour—zeal for the established religion, and zeal for the dignity and independence of his country. He was also highly esteemed at the Hague, where it was never forgotten that he was the person who, in spite of the influence of France and of the Papists, had induced Charles to bestow the hand of the Lady Mary on her cousin. Daniel Finch, Earl of Nottingham, a nobleman whose name will frequently recur in the history of three eventful reigns, spraying from a family of unrivaled forensic eminence. One of his kinsmen had borne the seal of Charles I, had prostituted eminent parts in learning to evil purposes, and had been pursued by the vengeance of the Commons of England with Falkland at their head. A more honourable renown had, in a succeeding generation, been obtained by Henneage Finch. He had immediately after the restoration been appointed Solicitor-General. He had subsequently risen to be Attorney-General, Lord Keeper, Lord Chancellor, Baron Finch, and Earl of Nottingham. Through this prosperous career he always held the prerogative as high as he honestly or decently could. But he had never been concerned in any machinations against the fundamental laws of the realm. In the midst of a corrupt court he had kept his personal integrity unsullied. He had enjoyed high fame as an orator, though his diction, formed on models anterior to the Civil Wars, was towards the close of his life, pronounced stiff and pedantic by the wits of the rising generation. In Westminster Hall he is still mentioned with respect as the man who first educed out of the chaos, anciently called by the name of equity a new system of jurisprudence, as regular and complete as that which is administered by the judges of the common law. A considerable part of the moral and intellectual character of this great magistrate had descended with the title of Nottingham to his eldest son. His son, Earl Daniel, was an honourable and virtuous man, though enslaved by some absurd prejudices, and though liable to strange fits of caprice, he cannot be accused of having deviated from the path of right in search either of unlawful gain or of unlawful pleasure. Like his father he was a distinguished speaker, impressive but prolex, and too monotonously solemn. The person of the orator was in perfect harmony with his oratory. His attitude was rigidly erect, his complexion so dark that he might have passed for a native of a warmer climate than ours, and his harsh features were composed to an expression resembling that of a chief mourner at a funeral. It was commonly said that he looked rather like a Spanish grandee than like an English gentleman. The nicknames of Dismal, Don de Smalo, and Don Diego were fastened on him by jesters, and are not yet forgotten. He had paid much attention to the science by which his family had been raised to greatness, and was, for a man born to rank and wealth, wonderfully well-read in the laws of his country. He was a devoted son of the church, and showed his respect for her in two ways, not usual among those lords who in his time boasted that they were her special friends, by riding tracks in defence of her dogmas, and by shaping his private life according to her precepts. Like other zealous churchmen he had, till recently, been a strenuous supporter of monarchical authority, but to the policy which had been pursued since the suppression of the Western insurrection he was bitterly hostile, and not the less so, because his younger brother, Henneage, had been turned out of the office of Solicitor-General for refusing to defend the king's dispensing power. With these two great Tory earls was now united Halifax, the accomplished chief of the Trimmers. Over the mind of Nottingham, indeed, Halifax appears to have had at this time a great ascendancy. Between Halifax and Danby there was an enmity which began in the court of Charles, and which, at a later period, disturbed the court of William, but which, like many other enmities, remained suspended during the tyranny of James. The foes frequently met in the councils held by Dijkvelt, and agreed in expressing dislike of the policy of the government and reverence for the Prince of Orange. The different characters of the two statesmen appeared strongly in their dealings with the Dutch envoy. Halifax showed an admirable talent for disquisition, but shrank from coming to any bold and irrevocable decision. Danby, far less subtle and eloquent, displayed more energy, resolution, and practical sagacity. Several eminent wigs were in constant communication with Dijkvelt, but the heads of the great houses of Cavendish and Russell could not take quite so active and prominent a part as might have been expected from their station and their opinions. The fame and fortunes of Devonshire were at that moment under a cloud. He had an unfortunate quarrel with the court, arising not from a public and honorable cause, but from a private brawl in which even his warmest friends could not pronounce him altogether blameless. He had gone to Whitehall to pay his duty, and had there been insulted by a man named Colpepper, one of a set of bravos, who invested the Perlius of the court, and who attempted to curry favour with the government by affronting members of the opposition. The King himself expressed great indignation at the manner in which one of his most distinguished peers had been treated under the royal roof, and Devonshire was pacified by an intimation that the offenders should never again be admitted into the palace. The interdict, however, was soon taken off. The Earl's resentment revived. His servants took up his cause. Hostilities such as seemed to belong to a ruder age disturbed the streets of Westminster. The time of the Privy Council was occupied by the criminations and recriminations of the adverse parties. Colpepper's wife declared that she and her husband went in danger of their lives, and that their house had been assaulted by ruffians in the Cavendish livery. Devonshire replied that he had been fired at from Colpepper's windows. This was vehemently denied. A pistol it was owned, loaded with gunpowder, had been discharged, but this had been done in a moment of terror merely for the purpose of alarming the guards. While this feud was at the height, the Earl met Colpepper in the drawing-room at Whitehall, and fancied that he saw triumph and defiance in the bullies' countenance. Nothing unseemly passed in the royal site, but, as soon as the enemies had left the presence chamber, Devonshire proposed that they should instantly decide their dispute with their swords. The challenge was refused. Then the high-spirited peer forgot the respect which he owed to the place where he stood, and to his own character, and struck Colpepper in the face with a cane. All classes agreed in condemning this act as most indiscreet and indecent, nor could Devonshire himself, when he had cooled, think of it without vexation and shame. The government, however, with its usual folly, treated him so severely that in a short time the public sympathy was all on his side. A criminal information was filed in the king's bench. The defendant took his stand on the privileges of the peerage, but on this point a decision was promptly given against him, nor is it possible to deny that the decision, whether it were or were not, according to the technical rules of English law, was in strict conformity with the great principles on which all laws ought to be framed. Nothing was then left to him but to plead guilty. The tribunal had, by successive dismissions, been reduced to such complete subjection that the government which had instituted the prosecution was allowed to prescribe the punishment. The judges waited in a body on Jeffries, who insisted that they should impose a fine of not less than thirty thousand pounds. Thirty thousand pounds, when compared with the revenues of the English grandees of that age, may be considered as equivalent to one hundred and fifty thousand pounds in the nineteenth century. In the presence of the Chancellor, not a word of disapprobation was tittered, but when the judges had retired, Sir John Powell, in whom all the little honesty of the bench was concentrated, muttered that the proposed penalty was enormous, and that one-tenth part would be amply sufficient. His brethren did not agree with him, nor did he, on this occasion, show the courage by which, on a memorable day, some months later, he signally retrieved his fame. The earl was accordingly condemned to a fine of thirty thousand pounds, and to imprisonment till payment should be made. Such a sum could not then be raised at a day's notice, even by the greatest of the nobility. The sentence of imprisonment, however, was more easily pronounced than executed. Devonshire had returned to Chatsworth, where he was employed in turning the old gothic mansion of his family into an edifice worthy of Palladio. The peak was, in those days, almost as rude a district as Connemara now is, and the sheriff found, or pretended, that it was difficult to arrest the lord of so wild a region in the midst of a devoted household and tenetry. Some days were thus gained, but at last both the earl and the sheriff were lodged in prison. Meanwhile a crowd of intercessors exerted their influence. The story ran that the Countess Dowager of Devonshire had obtained admittance to the royal closet that she had reminded James how her brother-in-law, the gallant Charles Cavendish, had fallen at Gainsborough fighting for the crown, and that she had produced notes, written by Charles I and Charles II, in acknowledgement of great sons lent by her lord during the civil troubles. Those loans had never been repaid, and with the interest amounted, it was said, to more even than the immense fine which the court of King's Bench had imposed. There was another consideration which seems to have had more weight with the king than the memory of former services. It might be necessary to call a parliament. Whenever that event took place, it was believed that Devonshire would bring a writ of error, the point on which he meant to appeal from the judgment of the King's Bench, related to the privileges of peerage. The tribunal before which the appeal must come was the house of peers. On such an occasion the court could not be certain of the support even of the most courtly nobles. There was little doubt that the sentence would be annulled, and that by grasping it too much the government would lose all. James was therefore disposed to a compromise. Devonshire was informed that if he would give a bond for the whole fine, and thus preclude himself from the advantage which he might derive from a writ of error, he should be set at liberty. Whether the bond should be enforced or not would depend on his subsequent conduct. If he would support the dispensing power nothing would be exacted from him. If he was bent on popularity he must pay thirty thousand pounds for it. He refused, during some time, to consent to these terms, but confinement was insupportable to him. He signed the bond and was let out of prison. But though he consented to lay this heavy burden on his estate, nothing could induce him to promise that he would abandon his principles and his party. He was still entrusted with all the secrets of the opposition, but during some months his political friends thought it best for him, and for the cause that he should remain in the background. End of Part 9. The History of England from the Accession of James II by Thomas Bavington Macaulay Chapter 7 Part 10 The Earl of Bedford had never recovered from the effects of the great calamity which four years before had almost broken his heart. From private as well as public feelings he was adverse to the court, but he was not active in concerting measures against it. His place in the meetings of the malcontents was supplied by his nephew. This was the celebrated Edward Russell, a man of undoubted courage and capacity, but of loose principles and a turbulent temper. He was a sailor, had distinguished himself in his profession, and had in the late reign held in office in the palace, but all the ties which bound him to the royal family had been sundered by the death of his cousin William. The daring, unquiet and vindictive seaman now sat in the councils called by the Dutch envoy as the representative of the boldest and most eager section of the opposition of those men who, under the name of round heads, exclusionists and wigs, had maintained with various fortune a contest of five and forty years against three successive kings. This party, lately prostrate and almost extinct, but now again full of life and rapidly rising to ascendancy, was troubled by none of the scruples which still impeded the movements of Tories and Trimmers, and was prepared to draw the sword against the tyrant on the first day on which the sword could be drawn with reasonable hope of success. Three men are yet to be mentioned with whom Dickvelt was in confidential communication, and by whose help he hoped to secure the good will of three great professions. Bishop Compton was the agent employed to manage the clergy. Admiral Herbert undertook to exert all his influence over the navy, and an interest was established in the army by the instrumentality of Churchill. The conduct of Compton and Herbert requires no explanation. Having in all things secular served the crown with zeal and fidelity, they had incurred the royal displeasure by refusing to be employed as tools for the destruction of their own religion. Both of them had learned by experience how soon James forgot obligations, and how bitterly he remembered what it pleased him to consider as wrongs. The bishop had, by an illegal sentence, been suspended from his episcopal functions. The admiral had in one hour been reduced from opulence to penury. The situation of Churchill was widely different. He had been raised by the royal bounty from obscurity to eminence, and from poverty to wealth. Having started in life a needy ensign he was now, in his thirty-seventh year, a major general, a peer of Scotland, a peer of England. He commanded a troop of life-guards. He had been appointed to several honourable and lucrative offices, and as yet there was no sign that he had lost any part of the favour to which he owed so much. He was bound to James not only by the common obligations of allegiance, but by military honour, by personal gratitude, and as appeared to superficial observers by the strongest ties of interest. But Churchill himself was no superficial observer. He knew exactly what his interest really was. If his master were once at full liberty to employ papists, not a single protestant would be employed. For a time a few highly-favourite servants of the Crown might possibly be exempted from the general proscription in the hope that they would be induced to change their religion. But even these would, after a short respite, fall one by one, as Rochester had already fallen. John might indeed secure himself from this danger, and might raise himself still higher in the royal favour by conforming to the Church of Rome. And it might seem that one who was not less distinguished by avarice and baseness than by capacity and valor was not likely to be shocked at the thought of hearing amass. But so inconsistent his human nature that there are tender spots even in seared consciences, and thus this man, who had owed his rise to his sister's dishonour, who had been kept by the most profuse, imperious, and shameless of harlots, and whose public life, to those who can look steadily through the dazzling blaze of genius and glory, will appear a prodigy of turpitude, believed implicitly in the religion which he had learned as a boy, and shuddered at the thought of formally abjuring it. A terrible alternative was before him. The earthly evil which he most dreaded was poverty. The one crime from which his heart recoiled was apostasy. And if the designs of the court succeeded, he could not doubt that between poverty and apostasy he must soon make his choice. He therefore determined to cross these designs, and it soon appeared that there was no guilt and no disgrace which he was not ready to incur in order to escape from the necessity of parting either with his places or with his religion. It was not only as a military commander, high in rank and distinguished by skill and courage that Churchill was able to render services to the opposition. It was, if not absolutely essential, yet most important to the success of William's plans that his sister-in-law, who in the order of succession to the English throne stood between his wife and himself, should act in cordial union with him. All his difficulties would have been greatly augmented if Anne had declared herself favourable to the indulgence. Which side she might take depended on the will of others, for her understanding was sluggish, and though there was latent in her character a hereditary willfulness and stubbornness which many years later great power and great provocations developed, she was as yet a willing slave to a nature far more vivacious and imperious than her own. The person by whom she was absolutely governed was the wife of Churchill, a woman who afterwards exercised a great influence on the fate of England and of Europe. The name of this celebrated favourite was Sarah Jennings. Her elder sister Frances had been distinguished by beauty and levity even among the crowd of beautiful faces and light characters which adorned and disgraced Whitehall during the wild carnival of the Restoration. On one occasion Frances dressed herself like an orange girl and cried fruit about the streets. Sober people predicted that a girl of so little discretion and delicacy would not easily find a husband. She was, however, twice married, and was now the wife of Tirkanal. Sarah, less regularly beautiful, was perhaps more attractive. Her face was expressive, her form wanted no feminine charm, and the profusion of her fine hair, not yet disguised by powder according to that barbarous fashion which she lived to see introduced, was the delight of numerous admirers. Among the gallants who sued for her favour, Colonel Churchill, young, handsome, graceful, insinuating, eloquent, and brave, obtained the preference. He must have been enamoured, indeed, for he had little property except the annuity which he had bought with the infamous wages bestowed on him by the Duchess of Cleveland. He was insatiable of riches—Sarah was poor—and a plain girl with a large fortune was proposed to him. His love, after a struggle, prevailed over his avarice. Marriage only strengthened his passion, and to the last hour of his life Sarah enjoyed the pleasure and distinction of being the one human being who was able to mislead that far-sighted and sure-footed judgment, who was fervently loved by that cold heart, and who was surveyally feared by that intrepid spirit. In a worldly sense the fidelity of Churchill's love was amply rewarded. His bride, though slenderly portioned, brought with her a dowry which judiciously employed made him at length a duke of England, a prince of the empire, the captain general of a great coalition, the arbiter between mighty princes, and what he valued more, the wealthiest subject in Europe. She had been brought up from childhood with the princess Anne, and a close friendship had arisen between the girls. In character they resembled each other very little. Anne was slow and taciturn. To those whom she loved she was meek. The form which her anger assumed was sulleness. She had a strong sense of religion, and was attached even with bigotry to the rights and government of the Church of England. Alexandra was lively and voluble, domineered over those whom she regarded with the most kindness, and when she was offended, vented her rage in tears and tempestuous reproaches. To sanctity she made no pretence, and indeed narrowly escaped the imputation of irreligion. She was not yet what she became when one class of vices had been fully developed in her by prosperity, and another by adversity, when her brain had been turned by success and flattery, when her heart had been ulcerated by disasters and mortifications. She lived to be that most odious and miserable of human beings, an ancient crone at war with her whole kind, at war with her own children and grandchildren, great indeed and rich, but valuing greatness and riches chiefly because they enabled her to brave public opinion and to indulge without restraint her hatred to the living and the dead. In the reign of James she was regarded as nothing worse than a fine high-spirited young woman who could now and then be cross and arbitrary, but whose flaws of temper might well be pardoned in consideration of her charms. It is a common observation that differences of taste, understanding, and disposition are no impediments to friendship, and that the closest intimacies often exist between minds each of which supplies what is wanting to the other. Lady Churchill was loved and even worshipped by Anne. The princess could not live apart from the object of her romantic fondness. She married. Anne was a faithful and even an affectionate wife. But Prince George, a dull man whose chief pleasures were derived from his dinner and his bottle, acquired over her no influence comparable to that exercised by her female friend, and soon gave himself up with stupid patience to the dominion of that vehement and commanding spirit by which his wife was governed. Anne was born to the royal pair, and Anne was by no means without the feelings of a mother, but the tenderness which she felt for her offspring was languid when compared with her devotion to the companion of her early years. At length the princess became impatient of the restraint which etiquette imposed on her. She could not bear to hear the words Madame and Royal Highness from the lips of one who was more to her than a sister. Such words were indeed necessary in the gallery or the drawing-room, but they were disused in the closet. Anne was Mrs. Morley. Lady Churchill was Mrs. Freeman, and under these childish names was carried on during twenty years, a correspondence on which at last the fate of administrations and dynasties depended. But as yet Anne had no political power, and little patronage, her friend attended her as First Lady of the Bedchamber, with a salary of only four hundred pounds a year. There is reason, however, to believe that even at this time Churchill was able to gratify his ruling passion by means of his wife's influence. The princess, though her income was large and her taste simple, contracted debts with her father, not without some murmurs, discharged, and it was rumored that her embarrassments had been caused by her prodigal bounty to her favorite. At length the time had arrived when this singular friendship was to exercise a great influence on public affairs. What part Anne would take in the contest which distracted England was a matter of deep anxiety. Filial duty was on one side. The interests of the religion to which she was sincerely attached were on the other. A less inert nature might well have remained long in suspense when drawn in opposite directions by motives so strong and so respectable. But the influence of the Churchills decided the question, and their patroness became an important member of that extensive league of which the Prince of Orange was the head. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Leader, Bloomington, Illinois. History of England from the accession of James II by Thomas Babington Macaulay Chapter 7 Part XI In June 1687 Dykevill returned to the Hague. He presented to the stage general a royal epistle filled with eulogies of his conduct during his residence in London. These eulogies, however, were merely formal. James, in private communications written with his own hand, bitterly complained that the envoy had lived in close intimacy with the most factious men in the realm and had encouraged them in all their evil purposes. Dykevill carried with him also a packet of letters from the most eminent of those with whom he had conferred during his stay in England. The writers generally expressed unbounded reverence and affection for William, and referred him to the bearer for fuller information as to their views. Halifax discussed the state and prospects of the country with his usual subtlety and vivacity, but took care not to pledge himself to any perilous line of conduct. Danby wrote in a bolder and more determined tone, and could not refrain from slyly sneering at the fears and scruples of his accomplished rival. But the most remarkable letter was from Churchill. It was written with that natural eloquence which, illiterate as he was, he never wanted on great occasions, and with an air of magnanimity which, profiteous as he was, he could with singular dexterity assume. The Princess Anne, he said, had commanded him to assure her lustrous relatives at the Hague that she was fully resolved by God's help rather to lose her life than to be guilty of apostasy. As for himself, his places and the royal favor were as nothing to him in comparison with his religion. He concluded by declaring in lofty language that, though he could not pretend to have lived the life of a saint, he should be found ready, on occasion, to die the death of a martyr. Dykefeld's mission had succeeded so well that a pretense was soon found for sending another agent to continue the work which had been so auspiciously commenced. The new envoy, afterwards the founder of a noble English house which became extinct in our own time, was an illegitimate cousin German of William, and bore a title taken from the Lordship of Zulstein. Zulstein's relationship to the House of Orange gave him importance in the public eye. His bearing was that of a gallant soldier. He was indeed in diplomatic talents and knowledge far inferior to Dykefeld, but even this inferiority had its advantages. A military man who had never appeared to trouble himself about political affairs could, without exciting any suspicion, hold with the English aristocracy an intercourse which, if he had been a noted master of state craft, would have been jealously watched. Zulstein, after a short absence, returned to his country, charged with letters and verbal messages not less important than those which had been entrusted to his predecessor. A regular correspondence was from this time established between the prince and the opposition. Agents of various ranks passed and repast between the Thames and the Hague. Among these, a scotchman of some parts and great activity named Johnstone was the most useful. He was cousin of Burnett, and son of an eminent covenanter who had, soon after the restoration, been put to death for treason, and who was honoured by his party as a martyr. The estrangement between the King of England and the Prince of Orange became daily more complete. A serious dispute had arisen concerning the six British regiments which were in the pay of the United Provinces. The King wished to put these regiments under the command of Roman Catholic officers. The Prince resolutely opposed this design. The King had recourse to his favourite commonplaces about toleration. The Prince replied that he only followed his Majesty's example. It was notorious that loyal and able men had been turned out of office in England merely for being Protestants. It was then surely competent to the stockholder and the State's general to withhold high public trust from papists. This answer provoked James to such a degree that, in his rage, he lost sight of veracity and common sense. It was false, he vehemently said, that he had ever turned out anybody on religious grounds. And if he had, what was that to the Prince or to the States? Were they his masters? Were they to sit in judgment on the conduct of foreign sovereigns? From that time he became desirous to recall his subjects who were in the Dutch service. By bringing them over to England he should, he conceived, at once strengthen himself, and weaken his worst enemies. But there were financial difficulties which was impossible for him to overlook. The number of troops already in his service was as great as his revenue, though large beyond all present and though parsimoniously administered would support. If the battalions now at Holland were added to the existing establishment the treasury would be bankrupt. Perhaps Lewis might be induced to take them into his service. They would, in that case, be removed from a country where they were exposed to the corrupting influence of a Republican government in a Calvinistic worship, and would be placed in a country where none ventured to dispute the mandates of the sovereign or the doctrines of the true church. The soldiers would soon unlearn every political and religious heresy. Their native prince might always, at short notice, command their help and would, on any emergency, be able to rely on their fidelity. A negotiation on this subject was opened between Whitehall and Varsai. Lewis had as many soldiers as he wanted, and had it been otherwise he would not have been disposed to take Englishmen into his service, for the pay of England, low as it must seem to our generation, was much higher than the pay of France. At the same time it was a great object to deprive William of so fine a brigade. After some weeks of correspondence, Barion was authorized to promise that, if James would recall the British troops from Holland, Lewis would bear the charge of supporting two thousand of them in England. This offer was accepted by James with warm expressions of gratitude. Having made these arrangements, he requested the State's General to send back the six regiments. The State's General, completely governed by William, answered that such a demand, in such circumstances, was not authorized by the existing treaties, and positively refused to comply. It is remarkable that Amsterdam, which had voted for keeping these troops in Holland when James needed their help against the Western insurgents, now contended vehemently that his request ought to be granted. On both occasions the sole object of those who ruled that great city was to cross the Prince of Orange. The Dutch arms, however, were scarcely so formidable to James as the Dutch presses. English books and pamphlets against his government were daily printed at the Hague, nor could any vigilance prevent copies from being smuggled by tens of thousands into the county's bordering on the German Ocean. Among these publications one was distinguished by its importance, and by the immense effect which it produced. The opinion which the Prince and Princess of Orange held, respecting the indulgence, was well known to all who were conversant with public affairs. But, as no official announcement of that opinion had appeared, many persons who had not access to good private sources of information were deceived or perplexed by the confidence with which the partisans of the court asserted that their highnesses approved of the King's late acts. To contradict those assertions publicly would have been a simple and obvious course if the sole object of William had been to strengthen his interest in England. But he considered England chiefly as an instrument necessary to the execution of his great European design. Toward that design he hoped to obtain the cooperation of both branches of the House of Austria, of the Italian princes, and even the sovereign Pontiff. There was reason to fear that any declaration which was satisfactory to British Protestants would excite alarm and disgust at Madrid, Vienna, Turin, and Rome. For this reason the Prince long abstained from formally expressing his sentiments. At length it was represented to him that his continued silence had excited much uneasiness and distress among his well-wishers, and that it was time to speak out. He therefore determined to explain himself. A scotch wig, named James Stewart, had fled some years before to Holland in order to avoid the boot and the gallows, and had become intimate with the grand pensionary Fagel, who enjoyed a large share of the stockholder's confidence and favor. By Stewart had been drawn up the violent and acrimonious manifesto of Argyle. When the indulgence appeared, Stewart conceived that he had an opportunity of obtaining not only pardon, but reward. He offered his services to the government of which he had been the enemy. They were accepted, and he addressed to Fagel a letter purporting to have been written by the direction of James. In that letter the pensionary was exhorted to use all his influence with the Prince and Princess for the purpose of inducing them to support their father's policy. After some delay Fagel transmitted a reply, deeply meditated, and drawn up with exquisite art. No person who studies that remarkable document can fail to perceive that, though it is framed in a manner well calculated to reassure and delight English Protestants, it contains not a word which would give offense even at the Vatican. It was announced that William and Mary would, with pleasure, resist in abolishing every law which made any Englishman liable to punishment for his religious opinions. But between punishments and disabilities a distinction was taken. To admit Roman Catholics to office would, in the judgment of their highnesses, be neither for the general interest of England, nor even for the interest of the Roman Catholics themselves. This manifesto was translated into several languages and circulated widely on the continent. Of the English version, carefully prepared by Burnett, nearly fifty-thousand copies were introduced into the eastern shires, and rapidly distributed over the whole kingdom. No state paper was ever more completely successful. The Protestants of our island applauded the manly firmness with which William declared that he could not consent to entrust papus with any share in the government. The Roman Catholic princes, on the other hand, were pleased by the mild and temperate style in which his resolution was expressed, and by the hope which he held out that, under his administration, no member of their church would be molested on account of religion. It is probable that the pope himself was among those who read this celebrated letter with pleasure. He had some months before dismissed Castleman in a manner which showed little regard for the feelings of Castleman's master. Innocent thoroughly disliked the whole domestic and foreign policy of the English government. He saw that the unjust and impolitic measures of the Jesuitical cabal were far more likely to make the penal law's perpetual than to bring about an abolition of the test. His quarrel with the court of Versailles was every day becoming more and more serious, nor could he, either in his character of temporal prince or in his character of sovereign pontiff, feel cordial friendship for a vassal of that court. Everything was ill-qualified to remove these disgusts. He was indeed well acquainted with Rome and was, for a layman, deeply read in theological controversy. But he had none of the address which his post required, and even had he been a diplomatist of the greatest ability, there was a circumstance which would have disqualified him for the particular mission on which he had been sent. He was known all over Europe as the husband of the most shameless of women, and he was known in no other way. It was impossible to speak to him or of him without remembering in what manner the very title by which he was called had been acquired. This circumstance would have mattered little if he had been accredited to some disillet court, such as that in which the machanesse of multispawn had lately been dominant. But there was an obvious impropriety in sending him on an embassy rather of a spiritual than of a secular nature to a pontiff of primitive austerity. The Protestants all over Europe sneered, and innocent, already unfavorably disposed to the English government, considered the compliment which had been paid him at so much risk and at so heavy a cost as little better than an affront. The salary of the ambassador was fixed at a hundred pounds a week. All men complained that this was too little, thrice the sum, he said, would hardly suffice. For at Rome the ministers of all the great continental powers exerted themselves to surpass one another in splendor, under the eyes of a people whom the habit of seeing magnificent buildings, decorations, and ceremonies had made fastidious. He always declared that he had been a loser by his mission. He was accompanied by several young gentlemen of the best Roman Catholic families in England, Ratcliffs, Arendelle's, and Tishburn's. At Rome he was lodged in the palace of the House of Pamphili, on the south of the stately place of Navona. He was early admitted to a private interview with Innocent, but the public audience was long delayed. Indeed, Castleman's preparations for that great occasion were so sumptuous that, though commenced at Easter 1686, they were not complete to the following November. And in November the Pope had, or pretended to have, an attack of gout which caused another postponement. In January 1687, at length, the solemn introduction and homage were performed with unusual pomp. The stagecoaches, which had been built at Rome for the pageant, were so superb that they were thought worthy to be transmitted to posterity in fine engravings and to be celebrated by poets in several languages. The front of the ambassador's palace was decorated on this great day with absurd allegorical paintings of gigantic size. There was St. George with his foot on the neck of Titus Charus, and Hercules with his club crushing college, the Protestant joiner, who in vain attempted to defend himself with his flail. After this public appearance, Castleman invited all the persons of note then assembled at Rome to a banquet in that gay and splendid gallery which is adorned with paintings of subjects from the Aeneid by Peter of Cortona. The whole city crowded to the show, and it was with difficulty that a company of Swiss guards could keep order among the spectators. The nobles of the pontifical state in return gave costly entertainments to the ambassador, and poets and wits were employed to lavish on him and his master in sipid and hyperbolic collagulation, such as flourishes most when genius and taster in the deepest decay. Foremost among the flatterers was a crowned head. More than thirty years had elapsed since Christina, the daughter of the great Gustavus, had voluntarily descended from the Swedish throne. After long wanderings, in the course of which she had committed many follies and crimes, she had finally taken up her abode at Rome, where she busied herself with astrological calculations and with the intrigues of the conclave, and amused herself with pictures, gems, manuscripts, and medals. She now compotes some Italian stanzas in honor of the English prince who, sprung, like herself, from a race of kings here too far regarded as the champions of the Reformation, had, like herself, been reconciled to the ancient church. A splendid assembly met in her palace. Her verses, set to music, were sung with universal applause, and one of her literary dependents pronounced an oration on the same subject in a style so florid that it seems to have offended the taste of the English hearers. The Jesuits, hostile to the Pope, devoted to the interests of France and disposed to pay every honor to James, received the English embassy with the utmost pomp in that princely house where the remains of Ignatius L'orella lined and shrined in lasolite and gold. Sculpture, painting, poetry, and eloquence were employed to compliment the strangers, but all these arts had sunk into deep degeneracy. There was a great display of turgid and impure latinity unworthy of so erudite in order, and some of the inscriptions which adorned the walls had a fault more serious than even a bad style. It was said in one place that James had sent his brother as his messenger to heaven, and in another that James had furnished the wings with which his brother had sorted to a higher region. There was a still more unfortunate distitch which at the time attracted little notice but which, a few months later, was remembered and malignantly interpreted. O king, said the poet, ceased to sigh for a son. Though nature may refuse your wish, the stars will find a way to grant it. In the midst of these festivities Castlemaine had to suffer cruel mortifications and humiliations. The Pope treated him with extreme coldness and reserve. As often as the ambassador pressed for an answer to the request which he had been instructed to make in favour of Peter, Innocent was taken with a violent fit of coughing, which put an end to the conversation. The fame of these singular audiences spread over Rome. Pascun was not silent. While the curious and tackling population of the idlest of cities, the Jesuits and the prelates of the French faction only accepted, laughed at Castlemaine's discomforture. His temper, naturally unameable, was soon exasperated to violence, and he circulated a memorial reflecting on the Pope. He had now put himself in the wrong. The sagacious Italian had got the advantage and took care to keep it. He positively declared that the rule which excluded Jesuits from ecclesiastical preferment should not be relaxed in favour of Father Peter. Castlemaine much provoked, threatened to leave Rome. Innocent replied, with a meek impertinence which was the more provoking because it could scarcely be distinguished from simplicity that his excellency might go if he liked, but if we must lose him, added the venerable Pontiff, I hope that he will take care of his health on the road. English people do not know how dangerous it is in this country to travel in the heat of day. The best way is to start before dawn and to take some rest at noon. With this salutary advice and with a string of beads the unfortunate ambassador was dismissed. In a few months appeared, both in the Italian and in the English tongue, a pompous history of the mission, magnificently printed in folio and illustrated with plates. The frontispiece, to the great scandal of all Protestants, represented Castlemaine in the robes of a pier, with his coronet in his hand kissing the toe of Innocent. End of part 11. End of chapter 7.