 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Gemma Blythe. The History of England. From the Excession of James II. By Thomas Bavington Macaulay. Chapter Six. Part One. James was now at the height of power and prosperity. Both in England and in Scotland he had vanquished his enemies and had punished them with a severity which had indeed excited their bitterest hatred. An ad at the same time effectually quelled their courage. The wig party seemed extinct. The name of wig was never used except as a term of reproach. The parliament was devoted to the king and it was in his power to keep that parliament to the end of his reign. The church was louder than ever in professions of attachment to him. An ad during the late insurrection acted up to those professions. The judges were his jewels and if they seized to be so it was in his power to remove them. The corporations were filled with his creatures. His revenues far exceeded those of his predecessors. His pride rose high. He was not the same man who a few months before. Endowed whether his throne might not be overturned in an hour. He had implored foreign help with unkingly supplications and had accepted it with tears of gratitude. Visions of dominion and glory rose before him. He already saw himself in imagination. The umbire of Europe. The champion of many states oppressed by one do powerful monarchy. So early in the month of June he had assured the United Provinces that as soon as the affairs of England were settled he would show the world a literally feared France. In conformity with these assurances he, within a month after the battle of Segemoor, concluded with the state's general a defensive treaty framed in the very spirit of the Drupal League. It was regarded, both at their egg and at Versailles, as the most significant circumstance that Halifax, who was the constant and mortal enemy of French ascendancy, and who had scarcely ever before been consulted on any grave affair since the beginning of the reign, took the lead on this occasion and seemed to have the royal ear. It was a circumstance not less significant that no previous communication was made to Beryllum. Both he and his master were taken by surprise. Lewis was much troubled and expressed great and not unreasonable anxiety as to the ulterior designs of the Prince who had lately been his pensioner and basil. There were strong rumors that William of Orange was busyed in organizing a great confederacy which was to include both branches of the House of Austria, the United Provinces, the Kingdom of Sweden, and the electorate of Brandenburg. It now seemed that this confederacy would have at its head the King and Parliament of England. In fact, negotiations ending to such a result were actually opened. Spain proposed to form a close alliance with James, and he listened to the proposition with favor. Though it was evident that such an alliance would be a little less than a declaration of war against France, but he postponed his final decision till after the Parliament should have reassembled. The fate of Christendom depended on the temper in which he might then find the commons. If they were disposed to acquiesce in his plans of domestic government, there would be nothing to prevent him from interfering with vigor and authority in the great dispute which must soon be brought to an issue on the continent. If they were refractory, he must relinquish all thoughts of arbitrating between contending nations, must again implore French assistance, must again submit to French dictation, must sink into a potent aid of the Third or Fourth Class, and must indemnify himself for the contempt with which he would be regarded abroad by triumphs over law and public opinion at home. It seemed, indeed, that it would not be easy for him to demand more than the commons were disposed to give. Already they had abundantly proved they were desirous to maintain his prerogatives unembeared and that they were by no means extreme to mark his encroachments on the rights of the people. Indeed, eleven-twelfths of the members were either dependents of the court or zealous cavaliers from the country. There were a few things which such an assembly could pertinaciously refuse to the sovereign, and I believe in the nation those few things were the very things on which James had set his heart. One of his objects was to obtain repeal of the habeas corpus act, which he hated, as it was natural that a tyrant should aid the most stringent kerb that ever legislation imposed on tyranny. This feeling remained deeply fixed in his mind to the last and appears in the instructions which he drew up in exile for the guidance of his son. But the habeas corpus act, which passed during the ascendancy of the wigs, was not more dear to the wigs than to the dories. It is indeed not wonderful that this great law should be highly prized by all Englishmen without distinction of party, for it is a law which, not by circuitous, but by direct operation, adds to the security and happiness of every inhabitant of the realm. James had yet another design odious to the party which had set him on the throne, and which had upheld him there. He wished to form a great standing army, yet taken advantage of the late insurrection to make large additions to the military force which his brother had left. The body is now designated as the first six regiments of Dragoon guards, the third and fourth regiments of Dragoons, and the ninth regiments of infantry of the line, from the seventh to the fifteenth inclusive, had just been raised. The effect of these augmentations, and of the recall of the garrison of Tangier, was that the number of regular troops in England had, in a few months, been increased from six thousand to near twenty thousand. No English king had ever, in time of peace, had such a force at his command. Yet even with this force, James was not content. He often repeated that confidence could be placed in the fidelity of the drainpans, that they sympathized with all the passions of the class to which they belonged. That had said more. There had been more militia men in the rebel army than in the royal encampment, and that, if the throne had been defended only by the array of the counties, Monmouth would have marched in triumph, from Lyme to London, the revenue, large as it was when compared with that of former kings, barely suffice to meet this new charge. A great part of the produce of the new taxes was absorbed by the naval expenditure. At the close of the late reign, the whole cost of the army, the Tangier regiments included, had been under three hundred thousand pounds a year. Six hundred thousand pounds a year would not now suffice if any further augmentation were made. It would be necessary to demand a supply from Parliament, and it was not likely that Parliament would be in a complying mood. The very name of standing army was hateful to the old nation, and to no part of the nation more hateful than to the Cavalier gentlemen who filled the lower house. In their minds, the standing army was inseparably associated with the Rump, with the Protector, with the spoliation of the Church, with the burgation of the universities, with the abolition of the Birage, with the murder of the King, with the sullen reign of the Saints, with Kant and asceticism, with fines and sequestrations, with the insults which major generals sprung from the dregs of the people, had offered to the oldest and most honorable families of the kingdom. There was, moreover, scarcely a baronet or a squire in the Parliament who did not owe part of his importance in his own county to his rank in the militia. If that national force were set aside, the gentry of England must lose much of their dignity and influence. It was therefore probable that the King would find it more difficult to obtain funds for the support of his army than even to obtain the repeal of the habeas corpus act. But both the designs which Evan mentioned was subordinate to one great design on which the King's whole soul was bent, but which was abhorred by those dory gentlemen who were ready to shed their blood for his right. Abhorred by that church which had never, during three generations of civil discord, wavered infidelity to his house. Abhorred even by that army on which, in the last extremity, he must rely. His religion was still under proscription. Many rigorous laws against Roman Catholics appeared on the statute book. An ad, within no long time, been rigorously executed. The Test Act, excluded from civil and military office, all who dissented from the Church of England and by a subsequent act, passed when the fictions of oaths had driven the nation wild. It had been provided that no person should sit in either house of parliament without solemnly abjuring the doctrine of transubstantiation. That the King should wish to obtain for the Church to which he belonged a complete toleration was natural and right. Nor is there any reason to doubt that, by little patience, prudence, injustice, such a toleration might have been obtained. The extreme antipathy and drud, with which the English people regarded his religion, was not to be ascribed solely or chiefly to theological animosity. That salvation might be found in the Church of Rome, nay, that some members of that Church had been among the brightest examples of Christian virtue, was admitted by all divines of the Anglican Communion and by the most illustrious nonconformists. It is notorious that the penal codes against Poverty were strenuously defended by many who thought Arrhenism, Quakerism, and Judaism more dangerous in a spiritual point of view than Poverty and who had yet showed no disposition to enact similar laws against Aryans, Quakers, or Jews. It is easy to explain why the Roman Catholic was treated with less indulgence than was shown to men who renounced the doctrine of the Nicene Fathers and even to men who had not been admitted by baptism within the Christian veil. There was, among the English, a strong conviction that the Roman Catholic, with the interests of his religion, were concerned, thought himself free from all the ordinary rules of morality, nay, that he thought it meritorious to violate those rules if, by so doing, he could avert injury or reproach from the Church of which he was a member. Nor was this opinion destitute of a show of reason. It was impossible to deny that Roman Catholic casualists of great eminence were written in defensive equivocation of mental reservation, of perjury, and even of assassination. Nor, it was said, had the speculations of this odious school of selfless been barren of results. The massacre of St. Bartholomew, the murder of the First William of Orange, the murder of Henry III of France, the numerous conspiracies which had been formed against the life of Elizabeth, and above all, the gun-bounded treason, were constantly cited as instances of the close connection between vicious theory and vicious practice. It was alleged that every one of these crimes had been prompted or applauded by Roman Catholic divines. The letters which Everard Digby wrote in lemon juice from the tower to his wife had recently been published and were often quoted. He was a scholar and a gentleman upright in all ordinary dealings and strongly impressed with a sense of duty to God. Yet he had been deeply concerned in the plot for blowing up King, Lord, and Commons and had, on the brink of eternity, declared that it was incomprehensible to him how any Roman Catholic should think such a design sinful. The inference popularly drawn from these things was that, however fair the general character of a papist might be, there was no excess of fraud or cruelty of which he was not capable when the safety and honor of his church were at stake. The extraordinary success of the fables of oats is to be chiefly described to the prevalence of this opinion. It was to no purpose that the accused Roman Catholic appealed to the integrity, humanity, and loyalty which he had shown through the whole course of his life. It was to no purpose that he called crowds of respectable witnesses of his own persuasion to contradict monstrous romances invented by the most infamous of mankind. It was to no purpose that, with a halter around his neck, he invoked on himself the whole vengeance of the God before whom, in a few moments, he must appear if he had been guilty of meditating any ill to his prince or to his Protestant fellow countrymen. The evidence which he produced in his favor proved only how little popish oats were worth. His very virtues raised a presumption of his guilt that he had before him death and judgment in immediate prospect only made it more likely that he would deny what, without injury to the holiest of causes, he could not confess. Among the unhappy men who were convicted of the murder of Godfrey was one Protestant of no eye character, Henry Berry. It is a remarkable and well-attested circumstance that Berry's last words did more to shake the credit of the plot than the dying declarations of all the pious and honorable Roman Catholics who underwent the same fate. It was not only by the ignorant populace, it was not only by zealots in whom fanaticism had extinguished all reason and charity that the Roman Catholic was regarded as a man the very tenderness of whose conscience might make him a false witness, an incendiary or a murderer as a man who, where his church was concerned, shrank from no atrocity and could be bound by no oath. If there were in that age two persons inclined by their judgment and by their temper to toleration, those persons were Tillitson and Locke, yet Tillitson, whose indulgence for various kinds of schismatics and heretics brought on him the reproach of heteroxity, told the House of Commons from the pulpit that it was their duty to make effectual provision against the propagation of the religion more mischievous than irreligion itself. Of a religion which demanded from its followers, services directly opposed to the first principles of morality. His temper, he truly said, was prone to lenity, but his duty to the community forced him to be, in this one instance, severe. He declared that in his judgment, Pagan, who had never heard the name of Christ and were guided only by the light of nature, were more trustworthy members of civil society than men who had been formed in the schools of the Popesh, casualists. Locke, in that celebrated treatise in which he labored to show that even the grossest form of idolatry ought not to be prohibited under penal sanctions, contended that the church, which taught men not to keep faith with heretics, had no claim to toleration. End of part one. It is evident that, in such circumstances, the greatest service which an English Roman Catholic could render to his brethren in the faith, was to convince the public that whatever some rash men might, in times of violent excitement, have written or done, his church did not hold that any end could sanctify means inconsistent with morality. And this great service it was in the power of James to render. He was king. He was more powerful than any English king had been within the memory of the oldest man. It depended on him whether the reproach which lay on his religion should be taken away or should be made permanent. Had he conformed to the laws? Had he fulfilled his promises? Had he abstained from employing any unrighteous methods for the propagation of his own theological tenets? Had he suspended the operation of the penal statutes by a large exercise of his unquestionable prerogative of mercy? But at the same time, carefully abstained from violating the civil or ecclesiastical constitution of the realm, the feeling of his people must have undergone a rapid change. So conspicuous an example of good faith punctiliously observed by a Popish prince towards a Protestant nation would have quieted the public apprehensions. Men who saw that a Roman Catholic might safely be suffered to direct the whole executive administration to command the army and navy to convoke and dissolve the legislature, to appoint the bishops and deans of the Church of England, would soon have ceased to fear that any great evil would arise from allowing a Roman Catholic to be captain of a company or alderman of a burrow. It is probable that, in a few years, the sect so long detested by the nation would, with general applause, have been admitted to office and to parliament. If on the other hand James should attempt to promote the interest of his Church by violating the fundamental laws of his kingdom, and the solemn promises which he had repeatedly made in the face of the whole world, it could hardly be doubted that the charges, which it had been the fashion to bring against the Roman Catholic religion, would be considered by all Protestants as fully established. For if ever a Roman Catholic could be expected to keep faith with heretics, James might have been expected to keep faith with the Anglican clergy. To them he owed his crown. But for their strenuous opposition to the exclusion-bill, he would have been a banished man. He had repeatedly and emphatically acknowledged his obligation to them, and had vowed to maintain them in all their legal rights. If he could not be bound by ties like these it must be evident that, where his superstition was concerned, no tie of gratitude or of honour could bind him. To trust him would thenceforth be impossible, and if his people could not trust him, what member of his Church could they trust? He was not supposed to be constitutionally or habitually treacherous. To his blunt manner and to his want of consideration for the feelings of others he owed a much higher reputation for sincerity than he at all deserved. His eulogists affected to call him James the Jast. If it should then appear that, interning papest, he had also turned dissembler and promise-breaker, what conclusion was likely to be drawn by a nation already disposed to believe that potpourri had a pernicious influence on the moral character? On these grounds, many of the most eminent Roman Catholics of that age, and among them the Supreme Pontiff, were of opinion that the interest of their Church in our island would be most effectually promoted by immoderate and constitutional policy. But such reasoning had no effect on the slow understanding and imperious temper of James. In his eagerness to remove the disabilities under which the professors of his religion lay, he took a course which convinced the most enlightened and tolerant Protestants of his time, that those disabilities were essential to the safety of the State. To his policy the English Roman Catholics owed three years of lawless and insolent triumph, and a hundred and forty years of subjection and degradation. Many members of his Church held commissions in the newly raised regiments. This breach of the law for a time passed uncensured, for men were not disposed to note every irregularity which was committed by a king suddenly called upon to defend his crown and his life against rebels. But the danger was now over. The insurgents had been vanquished and punished. Their unsuccessful attempt had strengthened the government which they had hoped to overthrow. Yet still James continued to grant commissions to unqualified persons, and speedily it was announced that he was determined to be no longer bound by the Test Act, that he hoped to induce Parliament to repeal that act, but that if the Parliament proved refactory he would not the less have his own way. As soon as this was known a deep murmur, the forerunner of a tempest, gave him warning that the spirit before which his grandfather, his father, and his brother had been compelled to recede, though dormant, was not extinct. Opposition appeared first in the cabinet. Halifax did not attempt to conceal his disgust and alarm. At the Council Board he courageously gave utterance to those feelings which, as it soon appeared, pervaded the whole nation. None of his colleagues seconded him, and the subject dropped. He was summoned to the Royal Closet and had two long conferences with his master. James tried the effect of compliments and blandishments, but to no purpose. Halifax positively refused to promise that he would give his vote in the House of Lords for the repeal either of the Test Act or of the Habeas Corpus Act. Some of those who were about the King advised him not, on the eve of the meeting of Parliament, to drive the most eloquent and accomplished statesmen of the age into opposition. They represented that Halifax loved the dignity and emoluments of office. That while he continued to be Lord President, it would be hardly possible for him to put forth his whole strength against the Government, and that to dismiss him from his high post was to emancipate him from all restraint. The King was peremptory. Halifax was informed that his services were no longer needed, and his name was struck out of the Council Book. His dismissions produced a great sensation not only in England, but also at Paris, at Vienna, and at the Hague, for it was well known that he had always labored to counteract the influence exercised by the Court of Versailles on the English affairs. Lewis expressed great pleasure at the news. The Ministers of the United Provinces and of the House of Austria, on the other hand, extolled the wisdom and virtue of the discarded statesmen in a manner which gave great offence at Whitehall. James was particularly angry with the Secretary of the Imperial Legation, who did not scruple to say that the eminent service which Halifax had performed in the debate on the exclusion-bill had been requited with gross ingratitude. It soon became clear that Halifax would have many followers. A portion of the Tories, with their old leader Danby at their head, began to hold wiggish language. Even the prelates hinted that there was a point at which the loyalty due the Prince must yield to higher considerations. The discontent of the Chiefs of the Army was still more extraordinary, and still more formidable. Already began to appear the first symptoms of that feeling, which, three years later, impelled so many officers of high rank to desert the royal standard. Men who had never before had a scruple, had on a sudden become strangely scrupulous. Church Hill gently whispered that the King was going too far. Kirk, just returned from his western butchery, swore to stand by the Protestant religion. Even if he abjured the faith in which he had been bred, he would never, he said, become a Papist. He was already bespoken. If he ever did apostatise, he was bound by a solemn promise to the Emperor of Morocco to turn Musselman. While the nation, agitated by many strong emotions, looked anxiously forward to the reassembling of the houses, tidings which increased the prevailing excitement arrived from France. The long and heroic struggle which the Huguenots had maintained against the French government had been brought to a final close by the ability and vigor of Richelot. That great statesman vanquished them. But he confirmed to them the liberty of conscience which had been bestowed upon them by the Edict of Nantes. They were suffered, under some restraints, of no galling kind to worship God according to their own ritual, and to write in defence of their own doctrine. They were admissible to political and military employment, nor did their heresy, during a considerable time, practically impede their rise in the world. Some of them commanded the armies of state, and others presided over important departments of the civil administration. At length a change took place. Louis XIV had from an early age regarded the Calvinists with an aversion at once religious and political. As a zealous Roman Catholic he detested their theological dogmas. As a prince fond of arbitrary power he detested those Republican theories which were intermingled with the Genevies Divinity. He gradually retrenched all the privileges which the schismatics enjoyed. He interfered with the education of Protestant children, confiscated property bequeathed to Protestant constatories, and on frivolous pretext shut up Protestant churches. The Protestant ministers were harassed by their tax-gatherers. The Protestant magistrates were deprived of the honour of nobility. The Protestant officers of the royal household were informed that his majesty dispensed with their services. Orders were given that no Protestant should be admitted into legal profession. The oppressed sect showed some faint signs of that spirit which in the preceding century had bidden defiance to the whole power of the House of Valois. Massacres and executions followed. Dragoons were quartered in the towns where the heretics were numerous and in the country seats of the heretic gentry, and the cruelty and licentiousness of these rude missionaries was sanctioned or leniently censured by the government. Still, however, the Edict of Nantes, though practically violated in its most essential provisions, had not been formally rescinded, and the king repeatedly declared in solemn public acts that he was resolved to maintain it. But the bigots and flatterers who had his ear gave him advice which he was but too willing to take. They represented to him that his rigorous policy had been eminently successful, that little or no resistance had been made to his will, that thousands of Huguenots had already been converted, that if he would take the one decisive step which yet remained, those who were still obstinate would speedily submit, France would be purged from the taint of heresy and her prince would have earned a heavenly crown, not less glorious than that of St. Louis. These arguments prevailed. The final blow was struck. The Edict of Nantes was revoked, and a crowd of decrees against the sectaries appeared in rapid succession. Boys and girls were torn from their parents and sent to be educated in convents. All Calvinistic ministers were commanded either to abjure their religion or to quit their country within a fortnight. The other professors of the Reformed faith were forbidden to leave the kingdom, and in order to prevent them from making their escape, the outports and frontiers were strictly guarded. It was thought that the flocks, thus separated from the evil shepherds, would soon return to the true fold. But in spite of all the vigilance of the military police there was a vast emigration. It was calculated that in a few months fifty thousand families quitted France forever, nor were the refugees such as a country can well spare. They were generally persons of intelligent minds, of industrious habits, and of austere morals. In the list are to be found names eminent in war, in science, in literature, and in art. Some of the exiles offered their swords to William of Orange, and distinguished themselves by the fury with which they fought against their persecutor. Others avenged themselves with weapons still more formidable, and by means of the presses of Holland, England, and Germany, inflamed during thirty years the public mind of Europe against the French government. A more peaceful class erected silk factories in the eastern suburb of London. One detachment of emigrants taught the Saxons to make the stuffs and hats of which France had hitherto enjoyed a monopoly. Another planted the first vines in the neighborhood of the Cape of Good Hope. In ordinary circumstances, the courts of Spain and of Rome would have eagerly applauded a prince who had made vigorous war on heresy. But such was the hatred inspired by the injustice and haughtiness of Louis, that when he became a persecutor, the courts of Spain and Rome took the side of religious liberty, and loudly reprobated the cruelty of turning a savage and licentious soldiery loose on an unoffending people. One cry of grief and rage rose from the whole of Protestant Europe. The tidings of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes reached to England about a week before the day to which Parliament stood adjourned. It was clear then that the spirit of Gardener and of Alva was still the spirit of the Roman Catholic Church. Louis was not inferior to James in generosity and humanity, and was certainly far superior to James in all the abilities and requirements of a statesman. Louis had, like James, repeatedly promised to respect the privileges of his Protestant subjects. Yet Louis was now avowedly a persecutor of the reformed religion. What reason was there, then, to doubt that James waited only for an opportunity to follow the example? He was already forming in defiance of the law a military force officered to a great extent by Roman Catholics. Was there anything unreasonable in the apprehension that this force might be employed to do what the French dragoons had done? James was almost as much disturbed as his subjects by the conduct of the Court of Versailles. In truth, that Court had acted as if it had meant to embarrass and annoy him. He was about to ask from a Protestant legislature a full toleration for Roman Catholics. Nothing, therefore, could be more unwelcome to him than the intelligence that, in a neighboring country, toleration had just been withdrawn by a Roman Catholic government from Protestants. His vexation was increased by a speech which the bishop of Valence, in the name of the Gallican clergy, addressed at this time to Louis XIV. The pious sovereign of England, the orator said, looked to the most Christian king for support against a heretical nation. It was remarked that the members of the House of Commons showed particular anxiety to procure copies of this harangue, and that it was read by all Englishmen with indignation and alarm. James was desirous to counteract the impression which these things had made, and was also at that moment by no means unwilling to let all Europe see that he was not the slave of France. He therefore declared publicly that he disapproved of the manner in which the Huguenots had been treated, granted to the exiles some relief from his privy purse, and by letters under his great seal, invited his subjects to imitate his liberality. In a very few months it became clear that all this compassion was feigned for the purpose of conjoaling his parliament, that he regarded the refugees with mortal hatred, and that he regretted nothing so much as his own inability to do what Louis had done. CHAPTER VI. PART III. On the 9th of November the houses met, the commons were summoned to the bar of the lords, and the king spoke from the throne. His speech had been composed by himself. He congratulated his loving subjects on the suppression of the rebellion in the west, but he added that the speed with which that rebellion had risen to a formidable height, and the length of time during which it had continued to rage, must convince all men how little dependence could be placed on the militia. He had therefore made additions to the regular army. The charge of that army would henceforth be more than double of what it had been, and he trusted that the commons would grant him the means of defraying the increased expense. He then informed his hearers that he had employed some officers who had not taken the test, but he knew them to be fit for public trust. He feared that artful men might avail themselves of this irregularity to disturb the harmony which existed between himself and his parliament, but he would speak out. He was determined not to part with servants on whose fidelity he could rely, and whose help he might perhaps soon need. This explicit declaration that he had broken the laws which were regarded by the nation as the chief safeguards of the established religion, and that he was resolved to persist in breaking those laws, was not likely to soothe the excited feelings of his subjects. The lords seldom disposed to take the lead in opposition to a government, consented to vote him formal thanks for what he had said. But the commons were in a less complying mood. When they had returned to their own house, there was a long silence, and the faces of many of the most respectable members expressed deep concern. At length Middleton rose and moved the house to go instantly into committee on the king's speech, but Sir Edmund Jennings, a zealous Tory from Yorkshire, who was supposed to speak the sentiments of Danby, protested against this course, and demanded time for consideration. Sir Thomas Clarkes, maternal uncle of the Duke of Albemarle, and long distinguished in Parliament as a man of business, and a vigilant steward of the public money, took the same side. The feeling of the house could not be mistaken. Sir John Earnley, Chancellor of the Ex-Checker, insisted that the delay should not exceed forty-eight hours, but he was overruled, and it was resolved that the discussion should be postponed for three days. The interval was well employed by those who took the lead against the court. They had indeed no light work to perform. In three days a country party was to be organized. The difficulty of the task is in our age not easily to be appreciated. For in our age all the nation may be said to assist at every deliberation of the lords and commons. What is said by the leaders of the ministry and of the opposition after midnight is read by the whole metropolis at dawn, by the inhabitants of Northumberland and Cornwall in the afternoon, and in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland on the morrow. In our age therefore the stages of legislation, the rules of debate, the tactics of faction, the opinions, temper and style of every active member of either house, are familiar to hundreds of thousands. Every man who now enters Parliament possesses what, in the seventeenth century, would have been called a great stock of parliamentary knowledge. Such knowledge was then to be obtained only by actual parliamentary service. The difference between an old and a new member was as great as the difference between a veteran soldier and a recruit just taken from the plow, and James's Parliament contained a most unusual proportion of new members who had brought from their country seats to Westminster no political knowledge and many violent prejudices. These gentlemen hated the papists, but hated the wigs not less intensely, and regarded the king with superstitious veneration. To form an opposition out of such materials was a feat which required the most skillful and delicate management. Some men of great weight, however, undertook the work and performed it with success. Several experienced Whig politicians, who had not seats in that Parliament, gave useful advice and information. On the day proceeding that which had been fixed for the debate, many meetings were held at which the leaders instructed the novices, and it soon appeared that these exertions had not been thrown away. The foreign embassies were all in a ferment. It was well understood that a few days would now decide the great question whether the king of England was or was not to be the vassal of the king of France. The ministers of the House of Austria were most anxious that James should give satisfaction to his Parliament. Innocent had sent to London two persons charged to inculcate moderation, both by admonition and by example. One of them was John Laburn, an English Dominican who had been Secretary to Cardinal Howard, and who, with some learning and a rich vein of natural humour, was the most cautious, dexterous, and taciturn of men. He had recently been concentrated, Bishop of Adrumetum, and named Vicar Apostolic in Great Britain. Ferdinand, Count of Ada, an Italian of no eminent abilities, but of mild temper and courtly manners, had been appointed Nuncio. These functionaries were eagerly welcomed by James. No Roman Catholic Bishop had exercised spiritual functions in the island during more than half a century. No Nuncio had been received here during the hundred and twenty-seven years which had elapsed since the death of Mary. Laburn was lodged in Whitehall, and received a pension of a thousand pounds a year. Ada did not yet assume a public character. He passed for a foreigner of rank, whom curiosity had brought to London, appeared daily at court, and was treated with high consideration. Both the papal emissaries did their best to diminish, as much as possible, the odium inseparable from the offices which they filled, and to restrain the rash zeal of James. The Nuncio, in particular, declared that nothing could be more injurious to the interests of the Church of Rome than a rupture between the King and the Parliament. Berylain was active on the other side, the instructions which he received from Versailles in this occasion well deserved to be studied, for they furnish a key to the policy systematically pursued by his master towards England during the twenty years which preceded our revolution. The advices for Madrid, Louis wrote, were alarming. Strong hopes were entertained there, that James would ally himself closely with the House of Austria, as soon as he should be assured that his Parliament would give him no trouble. In these circumstances it was evidently the interest of France that the Parliament should prove refractory. Berylain was therefore directed to act with all possible precautions against detection, the part of a make-bait. At court he was to emit no opportunity of stimulating the religious zeal and the kingly pride of James, but at the same time it might be desirable to have some secret communication with the malcontents. Such communication would indeed be hazardous and would require the utmost adroitness, yet it might perhaps be in the power of the Ambassador, without committing himself or his Government, to animate the zeal of the opposition for the laws and liberties of England, and to let it be understood that those laws and liberties were not regarded by his Master with an unfriendly eye. Louis, when he dictated these instructions, did not foresee how speedily and how completely his uneasiness would be removed by the obstinacy and stupidity of James. On the twelfth of November the House of Commons resolved itself into a committee on the royal speech. The Solicitor-General Henneage Finch was in the chair. The debate was conducted by the Chiefs of the New Country Party with rare tact and address. No expression indicating disrespect to the sovereign or sympathy for rebels was suffered to escape. The Western insurrection was always mentioned with abhorrence. Nothing was said of the barbarities of Kirk and Jeffries. It was admitted that the heavy expenditure which had been occasioned by the late troubles justified the King in asking some further supply. But strong objections were made to the augmentation of the army and to the infraction of the Test Act. The subject of the Test Act the courtiers appear to have carefully avoided. They harangued, however, with some force on the great superiority of a regular army to a militia. One of them tauntingly asked whether the defense of the kingdom was to be entrusted to the bee-feeders. Another said that he should be glad to know how the Devonshire train-bands, who had fled in confusion before Monmouth's Slythemen, would have faced the household troops of Lewis. But these arguments had little effect on Cavaliers who still remembered with bitterness the stern rule of the protector. The general feeling was forcibly expressed by the first of the Tory country-gentlemen of England, Edward Seymour. He admitted that the militia was not in a satisfactory state, but maintained that it might be remodeled. The remodeling might require money, but for his own part he would rather give a million to keep up a force from which he had nothing to fear, than half a million to keep up a force of which he must ever be afraid. Let the train-bands be disciplined, let the navy be strengthened, and the country would be secure. A standing army was at best a mere drain on the public resources. The soldier was withdrawn from all useful labour. He produced nothing. He consumed the fruits of the industry of other men, and he domineered over those by whom he was supported. But the nation was now threatened, not only with a standing army, but with a popish standing army, with a standing army officered by men who might be very amiable and honourable, but who were on principle enemies to the constitution of the realm. Sir William Twizden, member for the county of Kent, spoke on the same side with great keenness and loud applause. Sir Richard Temple, one of the few wigs who had a seat in that parliament, dexterously accommodating his speech to the temper of his audience, reminded the House that a standing army had been found, by experience, to be as dangerous to the just authority of princes as to the liberty of nations. Sir John Maynard, the most learned lawyer of his time, took part in the debate. He was now more than eighty years old, and could well remember the political contests of the reign of James I. He had sat in the long parliament, and had taken part with the round heads, but had always been for lenient councils, and had laboured to bring about a general reconciliation. His abilities, which age had not impaired, and his professional knowledge, which had long overawed all Westminster Hall, commanded the ear of the House of Commons. He, too, declared himself against the augmentation of the regular forces. After much debate, it was resolved that a supply should be granted to the Crown, but it was also resolved that a bill should be brought in for making the militia more efficient. This last resolution was tantamount to a declaration against the standing army. The King was greatly displeased, and it was whispered that if things went on thus the session would not be of long duration. On the moral the contention was renewed. The language of the country party was perceptibly bolder and sharper than on the preceding day. That paragraph of the King's speech which related to supply preceded the paragraph which related to the test. On this ground Middleton proposed that the paragraph relating to supply should be first considered in committee. The opposition moved to the previous question. They contended that the reasonable and constitutional practice was to grant no money till grievances had been redressed, and that there would be an end of this practice if the House thought itself bound surveily to follow the order in which matters were mentioned by the King from the throne. The division was taken on the question whether Middleton's motion should be put. The no's were ordered by the speaker to go forth into the lobby. They resented this much, and complained loudly of his servility and partiality, for they conceived that, according to the intricate and subtle rule which was then enforced, and which, in our time, was superseded by a mere rational and convenient practice, they were entitled to keep their seats, and it was held by all the parliamentary tacticians of that age that the party which stayed in the House had an advantage over the party which went out. For the accommodation on the benches was then so deficient that no person who had been fortunate enough to get a good seat was willing to lose it. Nevertheless, to the dismay of the ministers, many persons on whose votes the Court had absolutely depended were seen moving towards the door. Among them was Charles Fox, Paymaster of the Forces, and son of Sir Stephen Fox, clerk of the Green Cloth. The Paymaster had been induced by his friends to absent himself during part of the discussion, but his anxiety had become insupportable. He came down to the Speaker's Chamber, heard part of the debate, withdrew, and after hesitating for an hour or two between conscience and five thousand pounds a year, took a manly resolution, and rushed into the House just in time to vote. Two officers of the Army, Colonel John Darcy, son of the Lord Conyers, and Captain James Kendall withdrew to the lobby. Middleton went down to the bar and expostulated warmly with them. He particularly addressed himself to Kendall, a needy retainer of the Court, who had in obedience to the royal mandate been sent to Parliament by a packed corporation in Cornwall, and who had recently obtained a grant of a hundred head of rebels sentenced to transportation. Sir, said Middleton, have not you a troop of horse in his Majesty's service? Yes, my Lord, answered Kendall, but my elder brother is just dead, and has left me seven hundred a year. When the tellers had done their office, it appeared that the eyes were one hundred and eighty-two, and the nose one and eighty-three. In that House of Commons, which had been brought together by the unscrupulous use of chicanery, of corruption, and of violence. In that House of Commons, of which James had said that more than eleven-twelfths of the members were such as he would himself have nominated, the Court had sustained a defeat on a vital question. End of Part Three. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recorded by Chris Chapman. September 2006. The History of England. From the Accession of James II. By Thomas Babington Macaulay. Chapter Six. Part Four. In consequence of this vote, the expressions which the King had used respecting the test were, on the 13th of November, taken into consideration. It was resolved, after much discussion, that an address should be presented to him, reminding him that he could not legally continue to employ officers who refused to qualify, and pressing him to give such directions as might quiet the apprehensions and jealousies of his people. A motion was then made that the lords should be requested to join in the address. Whether this motion was honestly made by the opposition, in the hope that the concurrence of the peers would add weight to the remonstrance, or artfully made by the courtiers, in the hope that a breach between the houses might be the consequence, it is now impossible to discover. The proposition was rejected. The House then resolved itself into a committee for the purpose of considering the amount of supply to be granted. The King wanted 1400,000 pounds, but the ministers saw that it would be vain to ask for so large a sum. The Chancellor of the Exchequer mentioned 1200,000 pounds. The Chiefs of the Opposition replied that to vote for such a grant would be to vote for the permanence of the present military establishment. They were disposed to give only so much as might suffice to keep the regular troops on foot till the militia could be remodeled, and they therefore proposed 400,000 pounds. The courtiers exclaimed against this motion as unworthy of the House and disrespectful to the King, but they were manfully encountered. One of the western members, John Wyndham, who sat for Salisbury, especially distinguished himself. He had always, he said, looked with dread and diversion on standing armies, and recent experience had strengthened those feelings. He then ventured to touch on a theme which had hitherto been studiously avoided. He described the desolation of the western counties. The people, he said, were weary of the oppression of the troops, weary of free quarters, of depredations, of still fowler crimes which the law called felonies, but for which, when perpetrated by this class of felons, no redress could be obtained. The King's servants had indeed told the House that excellent rules had been laid down for the government of the army, but none could venture to say that these rules had been observed. What then was the inevitable inference? Did not the contrast between the paternal injunctions issued from the throne and the insupportable tyranny of the soldiers prove that the army was even now too strong for the Prince as well as for the people? The commons might, surely, with perfect consistency, while they reposed entire confidence in the intentions of his Majesty, refused to make any addition to a force which it was clear that his Majesty could not manage. The motion that the sum to be granted should not exceed 400,000 pounds was lost by 12 votes. This victory of the ministers was little better than a defeat. The leaders of the country party, nothing disheartened, retreated a little, made another stand and proposed the sum of 700,000 pounds. The committee divided again and the courtiers were beaten by 212 votes to 170. On the following day, the commons went in procession to Whitehall with their address on the subject of the test. The king received them on his throne. The address was drawn up in respectful and affectionate language, for the great majority of those who had voted for it were zealously and even superstitiously loyal and had readily agreed to insert some complementary phrases and to omit every word which the courtiers thought offensive. The answer of James was a cold and sullen reprimand. He declared himself greatly displeased and amazed that the commons should have profited so little by the admonition which he had given them. But, said he, however you may proceed on your part, I will be very steady in all the promises which I have made to you. The commons reassembled in their chamber, discontented, yet somewhat over-awed. To most of them the king was still an object of filial reverence. Three more years filled with injuries and with insults more galling than injuries were scarcely sufficient to dissolve the ties which bound the cavalier gentry to the throne. The speaker repeated the substance of the king's reply. There was, for some time, a solemn stillness. Then the order of the day was read in regular course and the house went into committee on the bill for remodeling the militia. In a few hours, however, the spirit of the opposition revived. When, at the close of the day, the speaker resumed the chair, Wharton, the boldest and most active of the wigs, proposed that a time should be appointed for taking his majesty's answer into consideration. John Koch, member for Derby, though a noted Tory, seconded Wharton. I hope, he said, that we are all Englishmen and that we shall not be frightened from our duty by a few high words. It was manfully but not wisely spoken. The whole house was in a tempest. Take down his words, to the bar, to the tower, resounded from every side. Those who were most lenient proposed that the offender should be reprimanded, but the ministers vehemently insisted that he should be sent to prison. The house might pardon, they said, offences committed against itself, but had no right to pardon an insult offered to the crown. Koch was sent to the tower. The indiscretion of one man had deranged the whole system of tactics, which had been so ably concerted by the chiefs of the opposition. It was in vain that, at that moment, Edward Seymour attempted to rally his followers, exorted them to fix a day for discussing the king's answer, and expressed his confidence that the discussion would be conducted with the respect due from subject to the sovereign. The members were so much cowed by the royal displeasure and so much incensed by the rudeness of Koch that it would not have been safe to divide. The house adjourned, and the ministers flattered themselves that the spirit of opposition was quelled. But on the morrow, the 19th of November, new and alarming symptoms appeared. The time had arrived for taking into consideration the petitions which had been presented from all parts of England against the late elections. When, on the first meeting of the parliament, Seymour had complained of the force and fraud by which the government had presented the sense of constituent bodies from being fairly taken, he had found no seconder. But many who had then flinched from his side had subsequently taken heart, and, with Sir John Lauver, member for Cumberland, at their head, had, before the recess, suggested that there ought to be an inquiry into the abuses which had so much excited the public mind. The house was now in a much more angry temper, and many voices were boldly raised in menace and accusation. The ministers were told that the nation expected, and should have, signal redress. Meanwhile, it was dexterously intimated that the best atonement which a gentleman who had been brought into the house by irregular means could make to the public was to use his ill-acquired power in defense of the religion and liberties of his country. No member who, in that crisis, did his duty had anything to fear. It might be necessary to unseat him, but the whole influence of the opposition should be employed to procure his re-election. On the same day it became clear that the spirit of opposition had spread from the commons to the lords, and even to the Episcopal bench. William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire, took the lead in the upper house, and he was well qualified to do so. In wealth and influence he was second to none of the English nobles, and the general voice designated him as the finest gentleman of his time. His magnificence, his taste, his talents, his classical learning, his high spirit, the grace and urbanity of his manners were admitted by his enemies. His eulogists, unhappily, could not pretend that his morals had escaped untainted from the widespread contagion of that age. Though an enemy of potpourri and of arbitrary power, he had been averse to extreme courses, had been willing, when the exclusion bill was lost, to agree to a compromise, and had never been concerned in the illegal and imprudent schemes, which had brought discredit on the Whig party. But, though regretting part of the conduct of his friends, he had not on that account failed to perform zealously the most arduous and perilous duties of friendship. He had stood near Russell at the bar, had parted from him on the sad morning of the execution with close embraces, and with many bitter tears. Nay had offered to manage an escape at the hazard of his own life. This great nobleman now proposed that a day should be fixed for considering the royal speech. It was contended on the other side that the lords, by voting thanks for the speech, had precluded themselves from complaining of it. But this objection was treated with contempt by Halifax. Such thanks, he said with the sarcastic pleasantry in which he excelled, imply no approbation. We are thankful whenever our gracious sovereign deigns to speak to us. Especially thankful are we when, as on the present occasion, he speaks out and gives us fair warning of what we are to suffer. Dr Henry Compton, Bishop of London, spoke strongly for the motion. Though not gifted with eminent abilities, nor deeply versed in the learning of his profession, he was always heard by the house with respect. For he was one of the few clergymen who could, in that age, boast of noble blood. His own loyalty and the loyalty of his family had been signally proved. His father, the Second Earl of Northampton, had fought bravely for King Charles I and, surrounded by the parliamentary soldiers, had fallen, sword in hand, refusing to give or take quarter. The bishop himself, before he was ordained, had borne arms in the guards. And, though he generally did his best to preserve the gravity and sobriety befitting a prelate, some flashes of his military spirit would, to the last, occasionally break forth. He had been entrusted with the religious education of the two princesses, and had acquitted himself of that important duty, in a manner which had satisfied all good Protestants, and had secured to him considerable influence over the minds of his pupils, especially of the Lady Anne. He now declared that he was empowered to speak the sense of his brethren, and that, in their opinion and in his own, the whole civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm was in danger. One of the most remarkable speeches of that day was made by a young man whose eccentric career was destined to amaze Europe. This was Charles Maudaunt, Viscount Maudaunt, widely renowned many years later, as Earl of Peterborough. Already he had given abundant proofs of his courage, of his capacity, and of that strange unsoundness of mind which made his courage and capacity almost useless to his country. Already he had distinguished himself as a wit and a scholar, as a soldier and a sailor. He had even set his heart on rivaling Bordelou and Bosway. Though an avowed free thinker, he had sat up all night at sea to compose sermons, and had, with great difficulty, been prevented from edifying the crew of a man of war with his pious oratory. He now addressed the House of Peers for the first time with characteristic eloquence, sprightliness, and audacity. He blamed the commons for not having taken a bolder line. They have been afraid, he said, to speak out. They have talked of apprehensions and jealousies. What have apprehension and jealousy to do here? Apprehension and jealousy are the feelings with which we regard future and uncertain evils. The evil which we are considering is neither future nor uncertain. A standing army exists. It is officered by papists. We have no foreign enemy. There is no rebellion in the land. For what then is this force maintained, except for the purpose of subverting our laws, and establishing that arbitrary power which is so justly abhorred by Englishmen? Jeffries spoke against the motion in the coarse and savage style of which he was a master, that he soon found that it was not quite so easy to browbeat the proud and powerful barons of England in their own hall as to intimidate advocates whose bread depended on his favour or prisoners whose necks were at his mercy. A man whose life has been passed in attacking and domineering, whatever may be his talents and courage, generally makes a mean figure when he is vigorously assailed. For, being unaccustomed to stand on the defensive, he becomes confused, and the knowledge that all those whom he has insulted are enjoying his confusion confuses him still more. Jeffries was now, for the first time since he had become a great man, encountered on equal terms by adversaries who did not fear him. To the general delight he passed at once from the extreme of insolence to the extreme of meanness and could not refrain from weeping with rage and vexation. Nothing indeed was wanting to his humiliation, for the house was crowded by about a hundred peers, a larger number than had voted even on the great day of the exclusion bill. The king too was present. His brother had been in the habit of attending the sittings of the lords for amusement, and used often to say that a debate was as entertaining as a comedy. James came not to be diverted, but in the hope that his presence might impose some restraint on the discussion. He was disappointed. The sense of the house was so strongly manifested that, after a closing speech of great keenness from Halifax, the courtiers did not venture to divide. An early day was fixed for taking the royal speech into consideration, and it was ordered that every peer who was not at a distance from Westminster should be in his place. End of part four. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Chris Chapman, October 2006. The History of England, from the accession of James II, by Thomas Babington Macaulay. Chapter 6, Part 5. On the following morning the king came down in his robes to the House of Lords. The usher of the black rod summoned the commons to the bar, and the chancellor announced that the parliament was prorogued to the 10th of February. The members who had voted against the court were dismissed from the public service. Charles Fox quitted the pay office. The Bishop of London ceased to be Dean of the Chapel Royal, and his name was struck out of the list of privy councillors. The effect of the prorogation was to put an end to a legal proceeding of the highest importance. Thomas Gray, Earl of Stamford, sprung from one of the most illustrious houses of England, had been recently arrested and committed close prisoner to the tower on a charge of high treason. He was accused of having been concerned in the Rye House plot. A true bill had been found against him by the grand jury of the city of London, and had been removed into the House of Lords, the only court before which a temporal peer can, during a session of parliament, be arraigned for any offence higher than a misdemeanor. The 1st of December had been fixed for the trial, and orders had been given that Westminster Hall should be fitted up with seats and hangings. In consequence of the prorogation, the hearing of the cause was postponed for an indefinite period, and Stamford soon regained his liberty. Three other wigs of great eminence were in confinement when the session closed. Charles Gerard, Lord Gerard of Brandon, eldest son of the Earl of Macclesfield, John Hamden, grandson of the renowned leader of the Long Parliament, and Henry Booth, Lord Delamere. Gerard and Hamden were accused of having taken part in the Rye House plot, Delamere of having abetted the Western insurrection. It was not the intention of the government to put either Gerard or Hamden to death. Grey had stipulated for their lives before he consented to become a witness against them, but there was a still stronger reason for sparing them. They were heirs to large property, but their fathers were still living. The court could therefore get little in the way of forfeiture, and might get much in the way of ransom. Gerard was tried, and from the very scanty accounts which have come down to us seems to have defended himself with great spirit and force. He boasted of the exertions and sacrifices made by his family in the cause of Charles the First, and proved rumsy, the witness who had murdered Russell by telling one story and Cornish by telling another to be utterly undeserving of credit. The jury, with some hesitation, found a verdict of guilty. After long imprisonment Gerard was suffered to redeem himself. Hamden had inherited the political opinions and a large share of the abilities of his grandfather, but had degenerated from the uprightness and the courage by which his grandfather had been distinguished. It appears that the prisoner was, with cruel cunning, long kept in an agony of suspense in order that his family might be induced to pay largely for mercy. His spirit sank under the terrors of death. When brought to the bar of the old Bailey, he not only pleaded guilty, but disgraced the illustrious name which he bore by abject submissions and entreaties. He protested that he had not been privy to the design of assassination, but he owned that he had meditated rebellion, professed deep repentance for his offence, implored the intercession of the judges, and vowed that if the royal clemency were extended to him, his whole life should be passed in evincing his gratitude for such goodness. The wigs were furious at his pusillanimity, and loudly declared him to be far more deserving of blame than Gray, who, even in turning King's evidence, had preserved a certain decorum. Hamden's life was spared, but his family paid several thousand pounds to the Chancellor. Some courtiers of less note succeeded in extorting smaller sums. The unhappy man had spirit enough to feel keenly the degradation to which he had stooped. He survived the day of his death. He survived the day of his ignominy several years. He lived to see his party triumphant, to be once more an important member of it, to rise high in the state, and to make his persecutors tremble in their turn. But his prosperity was embittered by one insupportable recollection. He never regained his cheerfulness, and that length died by his own hand. That Delamere, if he had needed the royal mercy, would have found it is not very probable. It is certain that every advantage which the letter of the law gave to the government was used against him without scruple or shame. He was in a different situation from that in which Stamford stood. The indictment against Stamford had been removed into the House of Lords during the session of Parliament, and therefore could not be prosecuted till the Parliament should reassemble. All the peers would then have voices, and would be judges as well of law as a fact. But the bill against Delamere was not found till after the prorogation. He was therefore within the jurisdiction of the Court of the Lord High Steward. This court, to which belongs during a recess of Parliament, the cognizance of treasons and felonies committed by temporal peers, was then so constituted that no prisoner charged with the political offence could expect an impartial trial. The King named a Lord High Steward. The Lord High Steward named, at his discretion, certain peers to sit on their accused brother. The number to be summoned was indefinite. No challenge was allowed. A simple majority, provided that it consisted of twelve, was sufficient to convict. The High Steward was sole judge of the law, and the Lord's triers formed merely a jury to pronounce on the question of fact. Jeffries was appointed High Steward. He selected thirty triers, and the selection was characteristic of the man and of the times. All the thirty were in politics vehemently opposed to the prisoner. Fifteen of them were kernels of regiments, and might be removed from their lucrative commands at the pleasure of the King. Among the remaining fifteen were the Lord Treasurer, the principal secretary of state, the steward of the household, the controller of the household, the captain of the band of gentlemen pensioners, the Queen's Chamberlain, and other persons who were bound by strong ties of interest to the court. Nevertheless, Delamere had some great advantages over the humbler culprits who had been arraigned at the Old Bailey. There the jurymen, violent partisans, taken for a single day by courtly sheriffs from the mass of society and speedily sent back to mingle with that mass, were under no restraint of shame, and being little accustomed to way-evidence, followed without scruple the directions of the bench. But in the High Steward's court every trier was a man of some experience in grave affairs. Every trier filled a considerable space in the public eye. Every trier, beginning from the lowest, had to rise separately and to give in his verdict on his honour before a great concourse. That verdict, accompanied with his name, would go to every part of the world and would live in history. Moreover, though the selected nobles were all Tories and almost all placement, many of them had begun to look with uneasiness on the king's proceedings and to doubt whether the case of Delamere might not soon be their own. Jeffries conducted himself, as was his want, insolently and unjustly. He had indeed an old grudge to stimulate his zeal. He had been Chief Justice of Chester when Delamere, then Mr. Booth, represented that county in Parliament. Booth had bitterly complained to the commons that the dearest interests of his constituents were entrusted to a drunken jackpudding. The revengeful judge was now not ashamed to resort to artifices which even an advocate would have been culpable. He reminded the Lord's triers in very significant language that Delamere had in Parliament objected to the bill for attaining Monmouth, a fact which was not and could not be in evidence. But it was not in the power of Jeffries to over awe a synod of peers as he had been in the habit of over awe in common juries. The evidence for the crown would probably have been thought amply sufficient on the western circuit or at the city sessions, but could not for a moment impose on such men as Rochester, Goodolphin and Churchill. Nor were they, with all their faults, depraved enough to condemn a fellow creature to death against the plainest rules of justice. Grey, Wade and Goodenough were produced, but could only repeat what they had heard said by Monmouth and by Wildman's emissaries. The principal witness for the prosecution, a miscreant named Saxton, who had been concerned in the rebellion and was now laboring to earn his pardon by swearing against all who were obnoxious to the government, who proved by overwhelming evidence to have told a series of falsehoods. All the triers from Churchill who, as junior Baron, spoke first, up to the treasurer, pronounced on their honour, that Delamere was not guilty. The gravity and pomp of the whole proceeding made a deep impression even on the nuncio, accustomed as he was to the ceremonies of Rome, ceremonies which, in solemnity and splendour, exceed all that the rest of the world can show. The king, who was present and was unable to complain of a decision evidently just, went into a rage with Saxton, and vowed that the wretch should first be pilloried before Westminster Hall for perjury, and then sent down to the west to be hanged drawn and quartered for treason. The public joy at the acquittal of Delamere was great. The reign of terror was over. The innocent began to breathe freely, and false accusers to tremble. One letter written on this occasion is scarcely to be read without tears. The widow of Russell, in her retirement, learned the good news with mingled feelings. I do bless God, she wrote, that he has caused some stop to be put to the shedding of blood in this poor land. Yet, when I should rejoice with them that do rejoice, I seek a corner to weep in. I find I am capable of no more gladness, but every new circumstance, the very comparing my night of sorrow after such a day, with theirs of joy, does, from a reflection of one kind or another, rack my uneasy mind. Though I am far from wishing the close of theirs like mine, yet I cannot refrain, giving some time to lament mine was not like theirs. And now the tide was on the turn. The death of Stafford, witnessed with signs of tenderness and remorse by the populace to whose rage he was sacrificed, marks the close of one prescription. The acquittal of Delamere marks the close of another. The crimes which had disgraced the stormy tribune ship of Shaftesbury had been fearfully expiated. The blood of innocent papists had been avenged more than tenfold by the blood of zealous protestants. Another great reaction had commenced. Factions were fast taking new forms. Old allies were separating. Old enemies were uniting. Discontent was spreading fast through all the ranks of the party lately dominant. A hope, still indeed faint and indefinite, of victory and revenge, animated the party which had lately seemed to be extinct. Amidst such circumstances the eventful and troubled year 1685 terminated and the year 1686 began. End of part five. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Chris Chapman November 2006 The History of England From the Accession of James II by Thomas Babington Macaulay Chapter 6 Part 6 The prorogation had relieved the king from the gentle remonstrances of the houses, but he had still to listen to remonstrances similar in effect though uttered in a tone even more cautious and subdued. Some men who had hitherto served him but too strenuously for their own fame and for the public welfare had begun to feel painful misgivings and occasionally ventured to hint a small part of what they felt. During many years the zeal of the English Tory for hereditary monarchy and his zeal for the established religion had grown up together and had strengthened each other. It had never occurred to him that the two sentiments which seemed inseparable and even identical might one day be found to be not only distinct but incompatible. From the commencement of the strife between the stewards and the commons, the cause of the crown and the cause of the hierarchy had, to all appearance, been won. Charles I was regarded by the church as her martyr. If Charles II had plotted against her, he had plotted in secret. In public he had ever professed himself, her grateful and devoted son, had knelt at her altars and in spite of his loose morals had succeeded in persuading the great body of her adherents that he felt a sincere preference for her. Whatever conflicts therefore the honest cavalier might have had to maintain against wigs and round heads, he had at least been hitherto undisturbed by conflict in his own mind. He had seen the path of duty plain before him. Through good and evil he was to be true to church and king. But if those two august and venerable powers which had hitherto seemed to be so closely connected that those that were true to one could not be false to the other, should be divided by a deadly enmity, what cause was the orthodox royalist to take? What situation could be more trying than that in which he would be placed, distracted between two duties equally sacred, between two affections equally ardent? How was he to give to Caesar all that was Caesar's and yet to withhold from God no part of what was God's? None who felt thus could have watched without deep concern and gloomy forebodings the dispute between the king and the parliament on the subject of the test. If James could even now be induced to reconsider his course, to let the houses reassemble and to comply with their wishes, all might yet be well. Such were the sentiments of the kings two kinsmen, the earls of Clarendon and Rochester. The power and favour of these noblemen seemed to be great indeed. The younger brother was Lord Treasurer and Prime Minister, and the elder, after holding the privy seal during some months, had been appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The venerable Ormond took the same side. Middleton and Preston, who as managers of the House of Commons, had recently learned by proof how dear the established religion was to the loyal gentry of England, were also for moderate councils. At the very beginning of the New Year, these statesmen and the great party which they represented had to suffer a cruel mortification. That the late king had been at heart, a Roman Catholic, had been, during some months, suspected and whispered, but not formally announced. The disclosure, indeed, could not be made without great scandal. Charles had, times without number, declared himself a Protestant, and had been in the habit of receiving the Eucharist from the bishops of the established church. Those Protestants who had stood by him in his difficulties, and who still cherished an affectionate remembrance of him, must be filled with shame and indignation by learning that his whole life had been a lie, that while he professed to belong to their communion, he had really regarded them as heretics, and that the demagogues who had represented him as a concealed papist had been the only people who had formed a correct judgment of his character. Even Lewis understood enough of the state of public feeling in England to be aware that the divulging of the truth might do harm, and had, of his own accord, promised to keep the conversion of Charles strictly secret. James, while his power was still new, had thought that on this point it was advisable to be cautious, and had not ventured to inter his brother with the rites of the Church of Rome. For a time, therefore, every man was at liberty to believe what he wished. The papists claimed the deceased prince as their proselyte. The wigs executed him as a hypocrite and a renegade. The Tories regarded the report of his apostasy as a calumny which papists and wigs had, for very different reasons, a common interest in circulating. James now took a step which greatly disconcerted the whole Anglican party. Two papers in which were set forth very concisely the arguments ordinarily used by Roman Catholics in controversy with Protestants had been found in Charles's strongbox and appeared to be in his handwriting. These papers James showed triumphantly to several Protestants, and declared that to his knowledge his brother had lived and died a Roman Catholic. One of the persons to whom the manuscripts were exhibited was Archbishop Sandcroft. He read them with much emotion and remained silent. Such silence was only the natural effect of a struggle between respect and vexation. But James supposed that the primate was struck dumb by the irresistible force of reason and eagerly challenged his grace to produce, with the help of the whole Episcopal bench, a satisfactory reply. Let me have a solid answer and in a gentleman-like style, and it may have the effect which you so much desire of bringing me over to your church. The Archbishop mildly said that in his opinion such an answer might, without much difficulty, be written, but declined the controversy on the plea of reverence for the memory of his deceased master. This plea, the king considered as the subterfuge of a vanquished disputant. Had he been well acquainted with the polemical literature of the preceding century and a half, he would have known that the documents to which he attached so much value might have been composed by any lad of fifteen in the College of Douay, and contained nothing which had not, in the opinion of all Protestant divines, been ten thousand times refuted. In his ignorant exaltation, he ordered these tracts to be printed with the utmost pomp of typography, and appended to them a declaration attested by his sign manual, and certifying that the originals were in his brother's own hand. James himself distributed the whole edition among his courtiers, and among the people of humbler rank who crowded round his coach. He gave one copy to a young woman of mean condition, whom he supposed to be of his own religious persuasion, and assured her that she would be greatly edified and comforted by the perusal. In requital of his kindness, she delivered to him a few days later an epistle adjuring him to come out of the mystical Babylon, and to dash from his lips the cup of fornications. These things gave great uneasiness to Tory Churchman, nor were the most respectable Roman Catholic noblemen much better pleased. They might indeed have been excused if passion had, at this conjuncture, made them deaf to the voice of crudence and justice, for they had suffered much. Protestant jealousy had degraded them from the rank to which they were born, had closed the doors of the Parliament House on the heirs of barons who had signed the charter, had pronounced the command of a company of foot, to hire trust for the descendants of the generals who had conquered at Flaudon and St Quentin. There was scarcely one eminent peer attached to the old faith, whose honour, whose estate, whose life had not been in jeopardy, who had not passed months in the Tower, who had not often anticipated for himself the fate of Stafford. Men who had been so long and cruelly oppressed might have been pardoned if they had eagerly seized the first opportunity of obtaining at once greatness and revenge. But neither fanaticism nor ambition, neither resentment for past wrongs, nor the intoxication produced by sudden good fortune, could prevent the most eminent Roman Catholics from perceiving that the prosperity which they at length enjoyed was only temporary, and, unless wisely used, might be fatal to them. They had been taught, by a cruel experience, that the antipathy of the nation to their religion was not a fancy which would yield to the mandate of a Prince, but a profound sentiment, the growth of five generations, diffused through all ranks and parties, and intertwined not less closely with the principles of the Tory than with the principles of the Whig. It was indeed in the power of the King, by the exercise of his prerogative of mercy, to suspend the operation of the penal laws. It might hereafter be in his power by discrete management to obtain from the Parliament a repeal of the acts which imposed civil disabilities on those who professed his religion. But, if he attempted to subdue the Protestant feeling of England by rude means, it was easy to see that the violent compression of so powerful and elastic a spring would be followed by, as violent, a recoil. The Roman Catholic peers, by prematurely attempting to force their way into the Privy Council and the House of Lords, might lose their mansions and their ample estates, and might end their lives as traitors on Tower Hill, or as beggars at the Portures of Italian Convents. Such was the feeling of William Herbert, Earl of Poes, who was generally regarded as the chief of the Roman Catholic aristocracy, and who, according to Oates, was to have been Prime Minister if the Popish plot had succeeded. Lord John Bellicise took the same view of the state of affairs. In his youth he had fought gallantly for Charles I, had been rewarded after the restoration with high honours and commands, and had quitted them when the test act was passed. With these distinguished leaders, all the noblest and most opulent members of their church concurred, except Lord Arundel of Warder, an old man, fast sinking into second childhood. End of part six. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recorded by Ian Bartholomew. The History of England, from the Accession of James II, by Thomas Babington Macaulay. Volume 1, Chapter 6, Part 7. But there was at the court a small knot of Roman Catholics whose hearts had been ulcerated by old injuries, whose heads had been turned by recent elevation who were impatient to climb the highest honours of the state, and who, having little to lose, were not troubled by thoughts of the day of reckoning. One of these was Roger Palmer, Earl of Castle Main in Ireland, and husband to the Duchess of Cleveland. His title had notoriously been purchased by his wise dishonour and his own. His fortune was small. His temper, naturally ungentle, had been exasperated by his domestic vexations, by the public reproaches, and by what he had undergone in the days of the Popish plot. He had been long a prisoner, and had at length been tried for his life. Happily for him, he was not put to the bar till the first burst of popular rage had spent itself, until the credit of the false witnesses had been blown upon. He had therefore escaped, though very narrowly. With Castle Main was allied one of the most favoured of his wise hundred lovers, Henry Germain, whom James had lately created appear by the title of Lord Dover. Germain had been distinguished more than twenty years before by his vagrant amours and his desperate duels. He was now ruined by play, and was eager to retrieve his fallen fortunes by means of lucrative posts from which the laws excluded him. To the same party belonged an intriguing, pushing Irishman named White, who had been much abroad, and who served the House of Austria as something between an envoy and a spy, and who had been rewarded for his services with the title of Marcus of Albaville. Soon after the prerogation, this reckless faction was strengthened by an important reinforcement. Richard Tolbert, Earl of Tyconnell, the fiercest and most uncompromising of all those who hated the liberties and religion of England, arrived at court from Dublin. Tolbert was descended from an old Norman family which had been long settled in Leinster, which had there sunk into degeneracy, which had adopted the manners of the Celts, which had, like the Celts, adhered to the old religion, and which had taken part with the Celts in the rebellion of 1641. In his youth he had been one of the most noted sharpers and bullies of London. He had been introduced to Charles and James when there were exiles in Flanders as a man fit and ready for the infamous service of assassinating the Protector. Soon after the restoration, Tolbert attempted to obtain the favour of the royal family by a service more infamous still. A plea was wanted which might justify the Duke of York in breaking that promise of marriage by which he had obtained from Anne Hyde the last proof of female affection. Such a plea, Tolbert, in concert with some of his dissolute companions, undertook to furnish. They agreed to describe the poor young lady as a creature without virtue, shame or delicacy, and made up long romances about tender interviews and stolen favours. Tolbert in particular related how, in one of his secret visits to her, he had unluckily overturned the chancellor's ink stand upon a pile of papers, and how cleverly she had averted a discovery by laying the blame of the accident on her monkey. These stories, which, if they had been true, would never have passed the lips of any but the basest of mankind, were pure invention. Tolbert was soon forced to own that they were so, and he owned it without a blush. The injured lady became Duchess of York, had her husband been a man really upright and honourable, he would have driven from his presence with indignation and contempt the wretches who had slandered her. But one of the peculiarities of James's character was that no act, however wicked and shameful, which had been prompted by a desire to gain his favour, ever seemed to him deserving of disapprobation. Tolbert continued to frequent the court, appeared daily with brazen front before the princess whose ruin he had plotted, and was installed into the lucrative post of chief panda to her husband. In no long time, Whitehall was thrown into confusion by the news that Dick Tolbert, as he was commonly called, had laid a plan to murder the Duke of Ormond. The braver was sent to the tower, but in a few days he was again swaggering about in the galleries, and carrying belays backwards and forwards between his patron and the ugliest maids of honour. It was in vain that the old and discreet counsellors implored the royal brothers not to countenance this bad man, who had nothing to recommend him except his fine person and his taste in dress. Tolbert was not only welcome at the palace when the bottle or the dice box was going round, but was heard with attention on matters of business. He affected the character of an Irish patriot, and pleaded with great audacity, and sometimes with success, the cause of his countrymen whose estates had been confiscated. He took care, however, to be well paid for his services, and succeeded in acquiring, partly by the sale of his influence, partly by gambling, and partly by pimping, in a state of three thousand pounds a year, for under an outward show of levity, profusion, improvidence, and eccentric impudence, he was in truth one of the most mercenary and crafty of mankind. He was now no longer young, and was expiating by severe sufferings the disiluteness of his youth. But age and disease had made no essential change in his character and manners. He still, whenever he opened his mouth, ranted, cursed, and swore with such frantic violence that superficial observation set him down for the wildest of libertines. The multitude was unable to conceive that a man who even when sober was more furious and boastful than others when they were drunk, and who seemed utterly incapable of distinguishing any emotion or keeping any secret, could really be a cold-hearted, far-sighted, scheming sycophant. Yet such a man was Tolbert. In truth, his hypocrisy was of a far higher and rarer sort than the hypocrisy which had flourished in the barebones parliament. For the consummate hypocrite is not he who conceals vice behind the zemblance of virtue, but he who makes the vice which he has no objection to, show a stalking horse to cover darker and more profitable vice, which it is for his interests to hide. Tolbert, raised by James to the earldom of Tyconnell, had commanded the troops in Ireland during the nine months which elapsed between the death of Charles and the commencement of the vice-royalty of Clarendon. When the new Lord Lieutenant was about to leave London for Dublin, the general was summoned from Dublin to London. Dick Tolbert had long been well known on the road which he had now to travel. Between Chester and the capital, there was not an inn where he had not been in a brawl. Wherever he came, he pressed horses in defiance of law, swore at the cooks and postillions, and almost raised mobs by his insolent rodimentards. The Reformation, he told the people, had ruined everything. But fine times were coming, the Catholics would soon be uppermost, the heretics should pay for all. Raving and blaspheming incessantly, like a demoniac, he came to the court. As soon as he was there, he allied himself closely with Castlemane, Dover and Albaville. These men called with one voice for war on the constitution of the church and the state. They told their master that he owed it to his religion and to the dignity of his crown to stand firm against the outcry of heretical demagogues, and to let the parliament see from the first that he would be master in spite of opposition, and that the only effect of opposition would be to make him a hard master. Each of the two parties into which the court was divided had zealous foreign allies. The ministers of Spain, of the empire and of the state's general, were now as anxious to support Rochester as they had formally been to support Halifax. All the influence of Baralon was employed on the other side, and Baralon was assisted by another French agent, inferior to him in station, but far superior in abilities. Bon repos. Baralon was not without parts, and possessed in large measure the graces and accomplishments which then distinguish the French gentry. But his capacity was scarcely equal to what his great place required. He had become sluggish and self-indulgent, like the pleasures of society and of the table better than business, and on great emergencies generally waited for the admonitions and even for reprimands from Versailles before he showed much activity. Bon repos had raised himself from obscurity by the intelligence and industry which he had exhibited as a clerk in the department of the marine, and was esteemed and adept in the mystery of mercantile politics. At the close of the year 1685 he was sent to London, charged with several special commissions of high importance. He was to lay the ground for a treaty of commerce. He was to ascertain and report the state of the English fleet and the dockyards, and he was to make some overtures to the Huguenot refugees, who, it was supposed, had been so effectually tamed by punery and exile that they would thankfully accept almost any terms of reconciliation. The new envoy's origin was plebeian, his stature was dwarfish, his countenance was ludicrously ugly, and his accent was that of his native Gascony, but his strong sense, his keen penetration, and his lively wit eminently qualified him for his post. In spite of every disadvantage of birth and figure, he was soon known as the most pleasing companion and as a most skillful diplomatist. He contrived, while flirting with the Duchess of Mazarin, discussing literary questions with Waller and Saint Evermont, and corresponding with Lafontaine, to acquire a considerable knowledge of English politics. His skill in maritime affairs recommended him to James, who had, during many years, paid close attention to the business of the Admiralty, and understood that business as well as he was capable of understanding anything. They conversed every day, long and freely about the state of the shipping and the dockyards. The result of this intimacy was, as might have been expected, that the keen and vigilant Frenchman conceived a great contempt for the king's abilities and character. The world, he said, had much overrated his Britannic majesty, who had less capacity than Charles, and not more virtues. The two envoys of Louis, they're pursuing one object very judiciously, took different paths. They made a partition of the court. Bonropo lived chiefly with Rochester and Rochester's adherents, Barillon's connections were chiefly with the opposite faction. The consequence was that they sometimes saw the