The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 1
by Thomas Babbington Macaulay
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Return to Part 1 of 2

The magnificence displayed by the first civic magistrate was
almost regal. The gilded coach, indeed, which is now annually
admired by the crowd, was not yet a part of his state. On great
occasions he appeared on horseback, attended by a long cavalcade
inferior in magnificence only to that which, before a coronation,
escorted the sovereign from the Tower to Westminster. The Lord
Mayor was never seen in public without his rich robe, his hood of
black velvet, his gold chain, his jewel, and a great attendance
of harbingers and guards.111 Nor did the world find anything
ludicrous in the pomp which constantly surrounded him. For it was
not more than became the place which, as wielding the strength
and representing the dignity of the City of London, he was
entitled to occupy in the State. That City, being then not only
without equal in the country, but without second, had, during
five and forty years, exercised almost as great an influence on
the politics of England as Paris has, in our own time, exercised
on the politics of France. In intelligence London was greatly in
advance of every other part of the kingdom. A government,
supported and trusted by London, could in a day obtain such
pecuniary means as it would have taken months to collect from the
rest of the island. Nor were the military resources of the
capital to be despised. The power which the Lord Lieutenants
exercised in other parts of the kingdom was in London entrusted
to a Commission of eminent citizens. Under the order of this
Commission were twelve regiments of foot and two regiments of
horse. An army of drapers' apprentices and journeymen tailors,
with common councilmen for captains and aldermen for colonels,
might not indeed have been able to stand its ground against
regular troops; but there were then very few regular troops in
the kingdom. A town, therefore, which could send forth, at an
hour's notice, thousands of men, abounding in natural courage,
provided with tolerable weapons, and not altogether untinctured
with martial discipline, could not but be a valuable ally and a
formidable enemy. It was not forgotten that Hampden and Pym had
been protected from lawless tyranny by the London trainbands;
that, in the great crisis of the civil war, the London trainbands
had marched to raise the siege of Gloucester; or that, in the
movement against the military tyrants which followed the downfall
of Richard Cromwell, the London trainbands had borne a signal
part. In truth, it is no exaggeration to say that, but for the
hostility of the City, Charles the First would never have been
vanquished, and that, without the help of the City, Charles the
Second could scarcely have been restored.

These considerations may serve to explain why, in spite of that
attraction which had, during a long course of years, gradually
drawn the aristocracy westward, a few men of high rank had
continued, till a very recent period, to dwell in the vicinity of
the Exchange and of the Guildhall. Shaftesbury and Buckingham,
while engaged in bitter and unscrupulous opposition to the
government, had thought that they could nowhere carry on their
intrigues so conveniently or so securely as under the protection
of the City magistrates and the City militia. Shaftesbury had
therefore lived in Aldersgate Street, at a house which may still
be easily known by pilasters and wreaths, the graceful work of
Inigo. Buckingham had ordered his mansion near Charing Cross,
once the abode of the Archbishops of York, to be pulled down;
and, while streets and alleys which are still named after him
were rising on that site, chose to reside in Dowgate.112

These, however, were rare exceptions. Almost all the noble
families of England had long migrated beyond the walls. The
district where most of their town houses stood lies between the
city and the regions which are now considered as fashionable. A
few great men still retained their hereditary hotels in the
Strand. The stately dwellings on the south and west of Lincoln's
Inn Fields, the Piazza of Covent Garden, Southampton Square,
which is now called Bloomsbury Square, and King's Square in Soho
Fields, which is now called Soho Square, were among the favourite
spots. Foreign princes were carried to see Bloomsbury Square, as
one of the wonders of England.113 Soho Square, which had just
been built, was to our ancestors a subject of pride with which
their posterity will hardly sympathise. Monmouth Square had been
the name while the fortunes of the Duke of Monmouth flourished;
and on the southern side towered his mansion. The front, though
ungraceful, was lofty and richly adorned. The walls of the
principal apartments were finely sculptured with fruit, foliage,
and armorial bearings, and were hung with embroidered satin.114
Every trace of this magnificence has long disappeared; and no
aristocratical mansion is to be found in that once aristocratical
quarter. A little way north from Holborn, and on the verge of the
pastures and corn-fields, rose two celebrated palaces, each with
an ample garden. One of them, then called Southampton House, and
subsequently Bedford House, was removed about fifty years ago to
make room for a new city, which now covers with its squares,
streets, and churches, a vast area, renowned in the seventeenth
century for peaches and snipes. The other, Montague House,
celebrated for its frescoes and furniture, was, a few months
after the death of Charles the Second, burned to the ground, and
was speedily succeeded by a more magnificent Montague House,
which, having been long the repository of such various and
precious treasures of art, science, and learning as were scarcely
ever before assembled under a single roof, has now given place to
an edifice more magnificent still.115

Nearer to the Court, on a space called St. James's Fields, had
just been built St. James's Square and Jermyn Street. St. James's
Church had recently been opened for the accommodation of the
inhabitants of this new quarter.116 Golden Square, which was in
the next generation inhabited by lords and ministers of state,
had not yet been begun. Indeed the only dwellings to be seen on
the north of Piccadilly were three or four isolated and almost
rural mansions, of which the most celebrated was the costly pile
erected by CIarendon, and nicknamed Dunkirk House. It had been
purchased after its founder's downfall by the Duke of Albemarle.
The Clarendon Hotel and Albemarle Street still preserve the
memory of the site.

He who then rambled to what is now the gayest and most crowded
part of Regent Street found himself in a solitude, and, was
sometimes so fortunate as to have a shot at a woodcock.117 On the
north the Oxford road ran between hedges. Three or four hundred
yards to the south were the garden walls of a few great houses
which were considered as quite out of town. On the west was a
meadow renowned for a spring from which, long afterwards, Conduit
Street was named. On the east was a field not to be passed
without a shudder by any Londoner of that age. There, as in a
place far from the haunts of men, had been dug, twenty years
before, when the great plague was raging, a pit into which the
dead carts had nightly shot corpses by scores. It was popularly
believed that the earth was deeply tainted with infection, and
could not be disturbed without imminent risk to human life. No
foundations were laid there till two generations had passed
without any return of the pestilence, and till the ghastly spot
had long been surrounded by buildings.118

We should greatly err if we were to suppose that any of the
streets and squares then bore the same aspect as at present. The
great majority of the houses, indeed. have, since that time, been
wholly, or in great part, rebuilt. If the most fashionable parts
of the capital could be placed before us such as they then were,
we should be disgusted by their squalid appearance, and poisoned
by their noisome atmosphere.

In Covent Garden a filthy and noisy market was held close to the
dwellings of the great. Fruit women screamed, carters fought,
cabbage stalks and rotten apples accumulated in heaps at the
thresholds of the Countess of Berkshire and of the Bishop of
Durham.119

The centre of Lincoln's Inn Fields was an open space where the
rabble congregated every evening, within a few yards of Cardigan
House and Winchester House, to hear mountebanks harangue, to see
bears dance, and to set dogs at oxen. Rubbish was shot in every
part of the area. Horses were exercised there. The beggars were
as noisy and importunate as in the worst governed cities of the
Continent. A Lincoln's Inn mumper was a proverb. The whole
fraternity knew the arms and liveries of every charitably
disposed grandee in the neighbourhood, and as soon as his
lordship's coach and six appeared, came hopping and crawling in
crowds to persecute him. These disorders lasted, in spite of many
accidents, and of some legal proceedings, till, in the reign of
George the Second, Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, was
knocked down and nearly killed in the middle of the Square. Then
at length palisades were set up, and a pleasant garden laid
out.120

Saint James's Square was a receptacle for all the offal and
cinders, for all the dead cats and dead dogs of Westminster. At
one time a cudgel player kept the ring there. At another time an
impudent squatter settled himself there, and built a shed for
rubbish under the windows of the gilded saloons in which the
first magnates of the realm, Norfolk, Ormond, Kent, and Pembroke,
gave banquets and balls. It was not till these nuisances had
lasted through a whole generation, and till much had been written
about them, that the inhabitants applied to Parliament for
permission to put up rails, and to plant trees.121

When such was the state of the region inhabited by the most
luxurious portion of society, we may easily believe that the
great body of the population suffered what would now be
considered as insupportable grievances. The pavement was
detestable: all foreigners cried shame upon it. The drainage was
so bad that in rainy weather the gutters soon became torrents.
Several facetious poets have commemorated the fury with which
these black rivulets roared down Snow Hill and Ludgate Hill,
bearing to Fleet Ditch a vast tribute of animal and vegetable
filth from the stalls of butchers and greengrocers. This flood
was profusely thrown to right and left by coaches and carts. To
keep as far from the carriage road as possible was therefore the
wish of every pedestrian. The mild and timid gave the wall. The
bold and athletic took it. If two roisterers met they cocked
their hats in each other's faces, and pushed each other about
till the weaker was shoved towards the kennel. If he was a mere
bully he sneaked off, mattering that he should find a time. If he
was pugnacious, the encounter probably ended in a duel behind
Montague House.122

The houses were not numbered. There would indeed have been little
advantage in numbering them; for of the coachmen, chairmen,
porters, and errand boys of London, a very small proportion could
read. It was necessary to use marks which the most ignorant could
understand. The shops were therefore distinguished by painted or
sculptured signs, which gave a gay and grotesque aspect to the
streets. The walk from Charing Cross to Whitechapel lay through
an endless succession of Saracens' Heads, Royal Oaks, Blue Bears,
and Golden Lambs, which disappeared when they were no longer
required for the direction of the common people.

When the evening closed in, the difficulty and danger of walking
about London became serious indeed. The garret windows were
opened, and pails were emptied, with little regard to those who
were passing below. Falls, bruises and broken bones were of
constant occurrence. For, till the last year of the reign of
Charles the Second, most of the streets were left in profound
darkness. Thieves and robbers plied their trade with impunity:
yet they were hardly so terrible to peaceable citizens as another
class of ruffians. It was a favourite amusement of dissolute
young gentlemen to swagger by night about the town, breaking
windows, upsetting sedans, beating quiet men, and offering rude
caresses to pretty women. Several dynasties of these tyrants had,
since the Restoration, domineered over the streets. The Muns and
Tityre Tus had given place to the Hectors, and the Hectors had
been recently succeeded by the Scourers. At a later period arose
the Nicker, the Hawcubite, and the yet more dreaded name of
Mohawk.123 The machinery for keeping the peace was utterly
contemptible. There was an Act of Common Council which provided
that more than a thousand watchmen should be constantly on the
alert in the city, from sunset to sunrise, and that every
inhabitant should take his turn of duty. But this Act was
negligently executed. Few of those who were summoned left their
homes; and those few generally found it more agreeable to tipple
in alehouses than to pace the streets.124

It ought to be noticed that, in the last year of the reign of
Charles the Second, began a great change in the police of London,
a change which has perhaps added as much to the happiness of the
body of the people as revolutions of much greater fame. An
ingenious projector, named Edward Heming, obtained letters patent
conveying to him, for a term of years, the exclusive right of
lighting up London. He undertook, for a moderate consideration,
to place a light before every tenth door, on moonless nights,
from Michaelmas to Lady Day, and from six to twelve of the clock.
Those who now see the capital all the year round, from dusk to
dawn, blazing with a splendour beside which the illuminations for
La Hogue and Blenheim would have looked pale, may perhaps smile
to think of Heming's lanterns, which glimmered feebly before one
house in ten during a small part of one night in three. But such
was not the feeling of his contemporaries. His scheme was
enthusiastically applauded, and furiously attacked. The friends
of improvement extolled him as the greatest of all the
benefactors of his city. What, they asked, were the boasted
inventions of Archimedes, when compared with the achievement of
the man who had turned the nocturnal shades into noon-day? In
spite of these eloquent eulogies the cause of darkness was not
left undefended. There were fools in that age who opposed the
introduction of what was called the new light as strenuously as
fools in our age have opposed the introduction of vaccination and
railroads, as strenuously as the fools of an age anterior to the
dawn of history doubtless opposed the introduction of the plough
and of alphabetical writing. Many years after the date of
Heming's patent there were extensive districts in which no lamp
was seen.125

We may easily imagine what, in such times, must have been the
state of the quarters of London which were peopled by the
outcasts of society. Among those quarters one had attained a
scandalous preeminence. On the confines of the City and the
Temple had been founded, in the thirteenth century, a House of
Carmelite Friars, distinguished by their white hoods. The
precinct of this house had, before the Reformation, been a
sanctuary for criminals, and still retained the privilege of
protecting debtors from arrest. Insolvents consequently were to
be found in every dwelling, from cellar to garret. Of these a
large proportion were knaves and libertines, and were followed to
their asylum by women more abandoned than themselves. The civil
power was unable to keep order in a district swarming with such
inhabitants; and thus Whitefriars became the favourite resort of
all who wished to be emancipated from the restraints of the law.
Though the immunities legally belonging to the place extended
only to cases of debt, cheats, false witnesses, forgers, and
highwaymen found refuge there. For amidst a rabble so desperate
no peace officer's life was in safety. At the cry of "Rescue,"
bullies with swords and cudgels, and termagant hags with spits
and broomsticks, poured forth by hundreds; and the intruder was
fortunate if he escaped back into Fleet Street, hustled,
stripped, and pumped upon. Even the warrant of the Chief Justice
of England could not be executed without the help of a company of
musketeers. Such relics of the barbarism of the darkest ages were
to be found within a short walk of the chambers where Somers was
studying history and law, of the chapel where Tillotson was
preaching, of the coffee house where Dryden was passing judgment
on poems and plays, and of the hall where the Royal Society was
examining the astronomical system of Isaac Newton.126

Each of the two cities which made up the capital of England had
its own centre of attraction. In the metropolis of commerce the
point of convergence was the Exchange; in the metropolis of
fashion the Palace. But the Palace did not retain influence so
long as the Exchange. The Revolution completely altered the
relations between the Court and the higher classes of society. It
was by degrees discovered that the King, in his individual
capacity, had very little to give; that coronets and garters,
bishoprics and embassies, lordships of the Treasury and
tellerships of the Exchequer, nay, even charges in the royal stud
and bedchamber, were really bestowed, not by him, but by  his
advisers. Every ambitious and covetous man perceived that he
would consult his own interest far better by acquiring the
dominion of a Cornish borough, and by rendering good service to
the ministry during a critical session, than by becoming the
companion, or even the minion, of his prince. It was therefore in
the antechambers, not of George the First and of George the
Second, but of Walpole and of Pelham, that the daily crowd of
courtiers was to be found. It is also to be remarked that the
same Revolution, which made it impossible that our Kings should
use the patronage of the state merely for the purpose of
gratifying their personal predilections, gave us several Kings
unfitted by their education and habits to be gracious and affable
hosts. They had been born and bred on the Continent. They never
felt themselves at home in our island. If they spoke our
language, they spoke it inelegantly and with effort. Our national
character they never fully understood. Our national manners they
hardly attempted to acquire. The most important part of their
duty they performed better than any ruler who preceded them: for
they governed strictly according to law: but they could not be
the first gentlemen of the realm, the heads of polite society. If
ever they unbent, it was in a very small circle where hardly an
English face was to be seen; and they were never so happy as when
they could escape for a summer to their native land. They had
indeed their days of reception for our nobility and gentry; but
the reception was a mere matter of form, and became at last as
solemn a ceremony as a funeral.

Not such was the court of Charles the Second. Whitehall, when he
dwelt there, was the focus of political intrigue and of
fashionable gaiety. Half the jobbing and half the flirting of the
metropolis went on under his roof. Whoever could make himself
agreeable to the prince, or could secure the good offices of the
mistress, might hope to rise in the world without rendering any
service to the government, without being even known by sight to
any minister of state. This courtier got a frigate, and that a
company; a third, the pardon of a rich offender; a fourth, a
lease of crown land on easy terms. If the King notified his
pleasure that a briefless lawyer should be made a judge, or that
a libertine baronet should be made a peer, the gravest
counsellors, after a little murmuring, submitted.127 Interest,
therefore, drew a constant press of suitors to the gates of the
palace; and those gates always stood wide. The King kept open
house every day, and all day long, for the good society of
London, the extreme Whigs only excepted. Hardly any gentleman had
any difficulty in making his way to the royal presence. The levee
was exactly what the word imports. Some men of quality came every
morning to stand round their master, to chat with him while his
wig was combed and his cravat tied, and to accompany him in his
early walk through the Park. All persons who had been properly
introduced might, without any special invitation, go to see him
dine, sup, dance, and play at hazard, and might have the pleasure
of hearing him tell stories, which indeed he told remarkably
well, about his flight from Worcester, and about the misery which
he had endured when he was a state prisoner in the hands of the
canting meddling preachers of Scotland. Bystanders whom His
Majesty recognised often came in for a courteous word. This
proved a far more successful kingcraft than any that his father
or grandfather had practiced. It was not easy for the most
austere republican of the school of Marvel to resist the,
fascination of so much good humour and affability; and many a
veteran Cavalier, in whose heart the remembrance of unrequited
sacrifices and services had been festering during twenty years,
was compensated in one moment for wounds and sequestrations by
his sovereign's kind nod, and "God bless you, my old friend!"

Whitehall naturally became the chief staple of news. Whenever
there was a rumour that anything important had happened or was
about to happen, people hastened thither to obtain intelligence
from the fountain head. The galleries presented the appearance of
a modern club room at an anxious time. They were full of people
enquiring whether the Dutch mail was in, what tidings the express
from France had brought, whether John Sobiesky had beaten the
Turks, whether the Doge of Genoa was really at Paris These were
matters about which it was safe to talk aloud. But there were
subjects concerning which information was asked and given in
whispers. Had Halifax got the better of Rochester? Was there to
be a Parliament? Was the Duke of York really going to Scotland?
Had Monmouth really been summoned from the Hague? Men tried to
read the countenance of every minister as he went through the
throng to and from the royal closet. All sorts of auguries were
drawn from the tone in which His Majesty spoke to the Lord
President, or from the laugh with which His Majesty honoured a
jest of the Lord Privy Seal; and in a few hours the hopes and
fears inspired by such slight indications had spread to all the
coffee houses from Saint James's to the Tower.128

The coffee house must not be dismissed with a cursory mention. It
might indeed at that time have been not improperly called a most
important political institution. No Parliament had sat for years
The municipal council of the City had ceased to speak the sense
of the citizens. Public meetings, harangues, resolutions, and the
rest of the modern machinery of agitation had not yet come into
fashion. Nothing resembling the modern newspaper existed. In such
circumstances the coffee houses were the chief organs through
which the public opinion of the metropolis vented itself.

The first of these establishments had been set up by a Turkey
merchant, who had acquired among the Mahometans a taste for their
favourite beverage. The convenience of being able to make
appointments in any part of the town, and of being able to pass
evenings socially at a very small charge, was so great that the
fashion spread fast. Every man of the upper or middle class went
daily to his coffee house to learn the news and to discuss it.
Every coffee house had one or more orators to whose eloquence the
crowd listened with admiration, and who soon became, what the
journalists of our time have been called, a fourth Estate of the
realm. The Court had long seen with uneasiness the growth of this
new power in the state. An attempt had been made, during Danby's
administration, to close the coffee houses. But men of all
parties missed their usual places of resort so much that there
was an universal outcry. The government did not venture, in
opposition to a feeling so strong and general, to enforce a
regulation of which the legality might well be questioned. Since
that time ten years had elapsed, and during those years the
number and influence of the coffee houses had been constantly
increasing. Foreigners remarked that the coffee house was that
which especially distinguished London from all other cities; that
the coffee house was the Londoner's home, and that those who
wished to find a gentleman commonly asked, not whether he lived
in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane, but whether he frequented the
Grecian or the Rainbow. Nobody was excluded from these places who
laid down his penny at the bar. Yet every rank and profession,
and every shade of religious and political opinion, had its own
headquarters. There were houses near Saint James's Park where
fops congregated, their heads and shoulders covered with black or
flaxen wigs, not less ample than those which are now worn by the
Chancellor and by the Speaker of the House of Commons. The wig
came from Paris and so did the rest of the fine gentleman's
ornaments, his embroidered coat, his fringed gloves, and the
tassel which upheld his pantaloons. The conversation was in that
dialect which, long after it had ceased to be spoken in
fashionable circles, continued, in the mouth of Lord Foppington,
to excite the mirth of theatres.129 The atmosphere was like that
of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco in any other form than that of
richly scented snuff was held in abomination. If any clown,
ignorant of the usages of the house, called for a pipe, the
sneers of the whole assembly and the short answers of the waiters
soon convinced him that he had better go somewhere else. Nor,
indeed, would he have had far to go. For, in general the coffee
rooms reeked with tobacco like a guardroom: and strangers
sometimes expressed their surprise that so many people should
leave their own firesides to sit in the midst of eternal fog and
stench. Nowhere was the smoking more constant than at Will's.
That celebrated house, situated between Covent Garden and Bow
Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the talk was about
poetical justice and the unities of place and time. There was a
faction for Perrault and the moderns, a faction for Boileau and
the ancients. One group debated whether Paradise Lost ought not
to have been in rhyme. To another an envious poetaster
demonstrated that Venice Preserved ought to have been hooted from
the stage. Under no roof was a greater variety of figures to be
seen. There were Earls in stars and garters, clergymen in
cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from the
Universities, translators and index makers in ragged coats of
frieze. The great press was to get near the chair where John
Dryden sate. In winter that chair was always in the warmest nook
by the fire; in summer it stood in the balcony. To bow to the
Laureate, and to hear his opinion of Racine's last tragedy or of
Bossu's treatise on epic poetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch
from his snuff box was an honour sufficient to turn the head of a
young enthusaist. There were coffee houses where the first
medical men might be consulted. Doctor John Radcliffe, who, in
the year 1685, rose to the largest practice in London, came
daily, at the hour when the Exchange was full, from his house in
Bow Street, then a fashionable part of the capital, to
Garraway's, and was to be found, surrounded by surgeons and
apothecaries, at a particular table. There were Puritan coffee
houses where no oath was heard, and where lankhaired men
discussed election and reprobation through their noses; Jew
coffee houses where darkeyed money changers from Venice and
Amsterdam greeted each other; and Popish coffee houses where, as
good Protestants believed, Jesuits planned, over their cups,
another great fire, and cast silver bullets to shoot the King.130

These gregarious habits had no small share in forming the
character of the Londoner of that age. He was, indeed, a
different being from the rustic Englishman. There was not then
the intercourse which now exists between the two classes. Only
very great men were in the habit of dividing the year between
town and country. Few esquires came to the capital thrice in
their lives. Nor was it yet the practice of all citizens in easy
circumstances to breathe the fresh air of the fields and woods
during some weeks of every summer. A cockney, in a rural village,
was stared at as much as if he had intruded into a Kraal of
Hottentots. On the other hand, when the lord of a Lincolnshire or
Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was as easily
distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar.
His dress, his gait, his accent, the manner in which he gazed at
the shops, stumbled into the gutters, ran against the porters,
and stood under the waterspouts, marked him out as an excellent
subject for the operations of swindlers and barterers. Bullies
jostled him into the kennel. Hackney coachmen splashed him from
head to foot. Thieves explored with perfect security the huge
pockets of his horseman's coat, while he stood entranced by the
splendour of the Lord Mayor's show. Moneydroppers, sore from the
cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to him
the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted
women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed
themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked
his way to Saint James's, his informants sent him to Mile End. If
he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a fit
purchaser of everything that nobody else would buy, of
second-hand embroidery, copper rings, and watches that would not
go. If he rambled into any fashionable coffee house, he became a
mark for the insolent derision of fops and the grave waggery of
Templars. Enraged and mortified, he soon returned to his mansion,
and there, in the homage of his tenants and the conversation of
his boon companions, found consolation for the vexatious and
humiliations which he had undergone. There he was once more a
great man, and saw nothing above himself except when at the
assizes he took his seat on the bench near the Judge, or when at
the muster of the militia he saluted the Lord Lieutenant.

The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements
of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty which our
ancestors found in passing from place to place. Of all
inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted,
those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the
civilisation of our species. Every improvement of the means of
locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as
materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the
various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove
national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the
branches of the great human family. In the seventeenth century
the inhabitants of London were, for almost every practical
purpose, farther from Reading than they now are from Edinburgh,
and farther from Edinburgh than they now are from Vienna.

The subjects of Charles the Second were not, it is true, quite
unacquainted with that principle which has, in our own time,
produced an unprecedented revolution in human affairs, which has
enabled navies to advance in face of wind and tide, and brigades
of troops, attended by all their baggage and artillery, to
traverse kingdoms at a pace equal to that of the fleetest race
horse. The Marquess of Worcester had recently observed the
expansive power of moisture rarefied by heat. After many
experiments he had succeeded in constructing a rude steam engine,
which he called a fire water work, and which he pronounced to be
an admirable and most forcible instrument of propulsion.131 But
the Marquess was suspected to be a madman, and known to be a
Papist. His inventions, therefore found no favourable reception.
His fire water work might, perhaps, furnish matter for
conversation at a meeting of the Royal Society, but was not
applied to any practical purpose. There were no railways, except
a few made of timber, on which coals were carried from the mouths
of the Northumbrian pits to the banks of the Tyne.132 There was
very little internal communication by water. A few attempts had
been made to deepen and embank the natural streams, but with
slender success. Hardly a single navigable canal had been even
projected. The English of that day were in the habit of talking
with mingled admiration and despair of the immense trench by
which Lewis the Fourteenth had made a junction between the
Atlantic and the Mediterranean. They little thought that their
country would, in the course of a few generations, be
intersected, at the cost of private adventurers, by artificial
rivers making up more than four times the length of the Thames,
the Severn, and the Trent together.

It was by the highways that both travellers and goods generally
passed from place to place; and those highways appear to have
been far worse than might have been expected from the degree of
wealth and civilisation which the nation had even then attained.
On the best lines of communication the ruts were deep, the
descents precipitous, and the way often such as it was hardly
possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from the unenclosed heath
and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph Thorseby, the antiquary,
was in danger of losing his way on the great North road, between
Barnby Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his way between
Doncaster and York.133 Pepys and his wife, travelling in their
own coach, lost their way between Newbury and Reading. In the
course of the same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and
were in danger of having to pass the night on the plain.134 It
was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was
available for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay deep on the
right and the left; and only a narrow track of firm ground rose
above the quagmire.135 At such times obstructions and quarrels
were frequent, and the path was sometimes blocked up during a
long time by carriers, neither of whom would break the way. It
happened, almost every day, that coaches stuck fast, until a team
of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm, to tug
them out of the slough. But in bad seasons the traveller had to
encounter inconveniences still more serious. Thoresby, who was in
the habit of travelling between Leeds and the capital, has
recorded, in his Diary, such a series of perils and disasters as
might suffice for a journey to the Frozen Ocean or to the Desert
of Sahara. On one occasion he learned that the floods were out
between Ware and London, that passengers had to swim for their
lives, and that a higgler had perished in the attempt to cross.
In consequence of these tidings he turned out of the high road,
and was conducted across some meadows, where it was necessary for
him to ride to the saddle skirts in water.136 In the course of
another journey he narrowly escaped being swept away by an
inundation of the Trent. He was afterwards detained at Stamford
four days, on account of the state of the roads, and then
ventured to proceed only because fourteen members of the House of
Commons, who were going up in a body to Parliament with guides
and numerous attendants, took him into their company.137 On the
roads of Derbyshire, travellers were in constant fear for their
necks, and were frequently compelled to alight and lead their
beasts.138 The great route through Wales to Holyhead was in such
a state that, in 1685, a viceroy, going to Ireland, was five
hours in travelling fourteen miles, from Saint Asaph to Conway.
Between Conway and Beaumaris he was forced to walk a great part
of the way; and his lady was carried in a litter. His coach was,
with much difficulty, and by the help of many hands, brought
after him entire. In general, carriages were taken to pieces at
Conway, and borne, on the shoulders of stout Welsh peasants, to
the Menai Straits.139 In some parts of Kent and Sussex, none but
the strongest horses could, in winter, get through the bog, in
which, at every step, they sank deep. The markets were often
inaccessible during several months. It is said that the fruits of
the earth were sometimes suffered to rot in one place, while in
another place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell far
short of the demand. The wheeled carriages were, in this
district, generally pulled by oxen.140 When Prince George of
Denmark visited the stately mansion of Petworth in wet weather,
he was six hours in going nine miles; and it was necessary that a
body of sturdy hinds should be on each side of his coach, in
order to prop it. Of the carriages which conveyed his retinue
several were upset and injured. A letter from one of the party
has been preserved, in which the unfortunate courtier complains
that, during fourteen hours, he never once alighted, except when
his coach was overturned or stuck fast in the mud.141

One chief cause of the badness of the roads seems to have been
the defective state of the law. Every parish was bound to repair
the highways which passed through it. The peasantry were forced
to give their gratuitous labour six days in the year. If this was
not sufficient, hired labour was employed, and the expense was
met by a parochial rate. That a route connecting two great towns,
which have a large and thriving trade with each other, should be
maintained at the cost of the rural population scattered between
them is obviously unjust; and this injustice was peculiarly
glaring in the case of the great North road, which traversed very
poor and thinly inhabited districts, and joined very rich and
populous districts. Indeed it was not in the power of the
parishes of Huntingdonshire to mend a high-way worn by the
constant traffic between the West Riding of Yorkshire and London.
Soon after the Restoration this grievance attracted the notice of
Parliament; and an act, the first of our many turnpike acts, was
passed imposing a small toll on travellers and goods, for the
purpose of keeping some parts of this important line of
communication in good repair.142 This innovation, however,
excited many murmurs; and the other great avenues to the capital
were long left under the old system. A change was at length
effected, but not without much difficulty. For unjust and absurd
taxation to which men are accustomed is often borne far more
willingly than the most reasonable impost which is new. It was
not till many toll bars had been violently pulled down, till the
troops had in many districts been forced to act against the
people, and till much blood had been shed, that a good system was
introduced.143 By slow degrees reason triumphed over prejudice;
and our island is now crossed in every direction by near thirty
thousand miles of turnpike road.

On the best highways heavy articles were, in the time of Charles
the Second, generally conveyed from place to place by stage
waggons. In the straw of these vehicles nestled a crowd of
passengers, who could not afford to travel by coach or on
horseback, and who were prevented by infirmity, or by the weight
of their luggage, from going on foot. The expense of transmitting
heavy goods in this way was enormous. From London to Birmingham
the charge was seven pounds a ton; from London to Exeter twelve
pounds a ton.144 This was about fifteen pence a ton for every
mile, more by a third than was afterwards charged on turnpike
roads, and fifteen times what is now demanded by railway
companies. The cost of conveyance amounted to a prohibitory tax
on many useful articles. Coal in particular was never seen except
in the districts where it was produced, or in the districts to
which it could be carried by sea, and was indeed always known in
the south of England by the name of sea coal.

On byroads, and generally throughout the country north of York
and west of Exeter, goods were carried by long trains of
packhorses. These strong and patient beasts, the breed of which
is now extinct, were attended by a class of men who seem to have
borne much resemblance to the Spanish muleteers. A traveller of
humble condition often found it convenient to perform a journey
mounted on a packsaddle between two baskets, under the care of
these hardy guides. The expense of this mode of conveyance was
small. But the caravan moved at a foot's pace; and in winter the
cold was often insupportable.145

The rich commonly travelled in their own carriages, with at least
four horses. Cotton, the facetious poet, attempted to go from
London to the Peak with a single pair, but found at Saint Albans
that the journey would be insupportably tedious, and altered his
Plan.146 A coach and six is in our time never seen, except as
part of some pageant. The frequent mention therefore of such
equipages in old books is likely to mislead us. We attribute to
magnificence what was really the effect of a very disagreeable
necessity. People, in the time of Charles the Second, travelled
with six horses, because with a smaller number there was great
danger of sticking fast in the mire. Nor were even six horses
always sufficient. Vanbrugh, in the succeeding generation,
described with great humour the way in which a country gentleman,
newly chosen a member of Parliament, went up to London. On that
occasion all the exertions of six beasts, two of which had been
taken from the plough, could not save the family coach from being
embedded in a quagmire.

Public carriages had recently been much improved. During the
years which immediately followed the Restoration, a diligence ran
between London and Oxford in two days. The passengers slept at
Beaconsfield. At length, in the spring of 1669, a great and
daring innovation was attempted. It was announced that a vehicle,
described as the Flying Coach, would perform the whole journey
between sunrise and sunset. This spirited undertaking was
solemnly considered and sanctioned by the Heads of the
University, and appears to have excited the same sort of interest
which is excited in our own time by the opening of a new railway.
The Vicechancellor, by a notice affixed in all public places,
prescribed the hour and place of departure. The success of the
experiment was complete. At six in the morning the carriage began
to move from before the ancient front of All Souls College; and
at seven in the evening the adventurous gentlemen who had run the
first risk were safely deposited at their inn in London.147 The
emulation of the sister University was moved; and soon a
diligence was set up which in one day carried passengers from
Cambridge to the capital. At the close of the reign of Charles
the Second flying carriages ran thrice a week from London to the
chief towns. But no stage coach, indeed no stage waggon, appears
to have proceeded further north than York, or further west than
Exeter. The ordinary day's journey of a flying coach was about
fifty miles in the summer; but in winter, when the ways were bad
and the nights long, little more than thirty. The Chester coach,
the York coach, and the Exeter coach generally reached London in
four days during the fine season, but at Christmas not till the
sixth day. The passengers, six in number, were all seated in the
carriage. For accidents were so frequent that it would have been
most perilous to mount the roof. The ordinary fare was about
twopence halfpenny a mile in summer, and somewhat more in
winter.148

This mode of travelling, which by Englishmen of the present day
would be regarded as insufferably slow, seemed to our ancestors
wonderfully and indeed alarmingly rapid. In a work published a
few months before the death of Charles the Second, the flying
coaches are extolled as far superior to any similar vehicles ever
known in the world. Their velocity is the subject of special
commendation, and is triumphantly contrasted with the sluggish
pace of the continental posts. But with boasts like these was
mingled the sound of complaint and invective. The interests of
large classes had been unfavourably affected by the establishment
of the new diligences; and, as usual, many persons were, from
mere stupidity and obstinacy, disposed to clamour against the
innovation, simply because it was an innovation. It was
vehemently argued that this mode of conveyance would be fatal to
the breed of horses and to the noble art of horsemanship; that
the Thames, which had long been an important nursery of seamen,
would cease to be the chief thoroughfare from London up to
Windsor and down to Gravesend; that saddlers and spurriers would
be ruined by hundreds; that numerous inns, at which mounted
travellers had been in the habit of stopping, would be deserted,
and would no longer pay any rent; that the new carriages were too
hot in summer and too cold in winter; that the passengers were
grievously annoyed by invalids and crying children; that the
coach sometimes reached the inn so late that it was impossible to
get supper, and sometimes started so early that it was impossible
to get breakfast. On these grounds it was gravely recommended
that no public coach should be permitted to have more than four
horses, to start oftener than once a week, or to go more than
thirty miles a day. It was hoped that, if this regulation were
adopted, all except the sick and the lame would return to the old
mode of travelling. Petitions embodying such opinions as these
were presented to the King in council from several companies of
the City of London, from several provincial towns, and from the
justices of several counties. We Smile at these things. It is not
impossible that our descendants, when they read the history of
the opposition offered by cupidity and prejudice to the
improvements of the nineteenth century, may smile in their
turn.149

In spite of the attractions of the flying coaches, it was still
usual for men who enjoyed health and vigour, and who were not
encumbered by much baggage, to perform long journeys on
horseback. If the traveller wished to move expeditiously he rode
post. Fresh saddle horses and guides were to be procured at
convenient distances along all the great lines of road. The
charge was threepence a mile for each horse, and fourpence a
stage for the guide. In this manner, when the ways were good, it
was possible to travel, for a considerable time, as rapidly as by
any conveyance known in England, till vehicles were propelled by
steam. There were as yet no post chaises; nor could those who
rode in their own coaches ordinarily procure a change of horses.
The King, however, and the great officers of state were able to
command relays. Thus Charles commonly went in one day from
Whitehall to New-market, a distance of about fifty-five miles
through a level country; and this was thought by his subjects a
proof of great activity. Evelyn performed the same journey in
company with the Lord Treasurer Clifford. The coach was drawn by
six horses, which were changed at Bishop Stortford and again at
Chesterford. The travellers reached Newmarket at night. Such a
mode of conveyance seems to have been considered as a rare luxury
confined to princes and ministers.150

Whatever might be the way in which a journey was performed, the
travellers, unless they were numerous and well armed, ran
considerable risk of being stopped and plundered. The mounted
highwayman, a marauder known to our generation only from books,
was to be found on every main road. The waste tracts which lay on
the great routes near London were especially haunted by
plunderers of this class. Hounslow Heath, on the Great Western
Road, and Finchley Common, on the Great Northern Road, were
perhaps the most celebrated of these spots. The Cambridge
scholars trembled when they approached Epping Forest, even in
broad daylight. Seamen who had just been paid off at Chatham were
often compelled to deliver their purses on Gadshill, celebrated
near a hundred years earlier by the greatest of poets as the
scene of the depredations of Falstaff. The public authorities
seem to have been often at a loss how to deal with the
plunderers. At one time it was announced in the Gazette, that
several persons, who were strongly suspected of being highwaymen,
but against whom there was not sufficient evidence, would be
paraded at Newgate in riding dresses: their horses would also be
shown; and all gentlemen who had been robbed were invited to
inspect this singular exhibition. On another occasion a pardon
was publicly offered to a robber if he would give up some rough
diamonds, of immense value, which he had taken when he stopped
the Harwich mail. A short time after appeared another
proclamation, warning the innkeepers that the eye of the
government was upon them. Their criminal connivance, it was
affirmed, enabled banditti to infest the roads with impunity.
That these suspicions were not without foundation, is proved by
the dying speeches of some penitent robbers of that age, who
appear to have received from the innkeepers services much
resembling those which Farquhar's Boniface rendered to Gibbet.151

It was necessary to the success and even to the safety of the
highwayman that he should be a bold and skilful rider, and that
his manners and appearance should be such as suited the master of
a fine horse. He therefore held an aristocratical position in the
community of thieves, appeared at fashionable coffee houses and
gaming houses, and betted with men of quality on the race
ground.152 Sometimes, indeed, he was a man of good family and
education. A romantic interest therefore attached, and perhaps
still attaches, to the names of freebooters of this class. The
vulgar eagerly drank in tales of their ferocity and audacity, of
their occasional acts of generosity and good nature, of their
amours, of their miraculous escapes, of their desperate
struggles, and of their manly bearing at the bar and in the cart.
Thus it was related of William Nevison, the great robber of
Yorkshire, that he levied a quarterly tribute on all the northern
drovers, and, in return, not only spared them himself, but
protected them against all other thieves; that he demanded purses
in the most courteous manner; that he gave largely to the poor
what he had taken from the rich; that his life was once spared by
the royal clemency, but that he again tempted his fate, and at
length died, in 1685, on the gallows of York.153 It was related
how Claude Duval, the French page of the Duke of Richmond, took
to the road, became captain of a formidable gang, and had the
honour to be named first in a royal proclamation against
notorious offenders; how at the head of his troop he stopped a
lady's coach, in which there was a booty of four hundred pounds;
how he took only one hundred, and suffered the fair owner to
ransom the rest by dancing a coranto with him on the heath; how
his vivacious gallantry stole away the hearts of all women; how
his dexterity at sword and pistol made him a terror to all men;
how, at length, in the year 1670, he was seized when overcome by
wine; how dames of high rank visited him in prison, and with
tears interceded for his life; how the King would have granted a
pardon, but for the interference of Judge Morton, the terror of
highwaymen, who threatened to resign his office unless the law
were carried into full effect; and how, after the execution, the
corpse lay in state with all the pomp of scutcheons, wax lights,
black hangings and mutes, till the same cruel Judge, who had
intercepted the mercy of the crown, sent officers to disturb the
obsequies.154 In these anecdotes there is doubtless a large
mixture of fable; but they are not on that account unworthy of
being recorded; for it is both an authentic and an important fact
that such tales, whether false or true, were heard by our
ancestors with eagerness and faith.

All the various dangers by which the traveller was beset were
greatly increased by darkness. He was therefore commonly desirous
of having the shelter of a roof during the night; and such
shelter it was not difficult to obtain. From a very early period
the inns of England had been renowned. Our first great poet had
described the excellent accommodation which they afforded to the
pilgrims of the fourteenth century. Nine and twenty persons, with
their horses, found room in the wide chambers and stables of the
Tabard in Southwark. The food was of the best, and the wines such
as drew the company on to drink largely. Two hundred years later,
under the reign of Elizabeth, William Harrison gave a lively
description of the plenty and comfort of the great hostelries.
The Continent of Europe, he said, could show nothing like them.
There were some in which two or three hundred people, with their
horses, could without difficulty be lodged and fed. The bedding,
the tapestry, above all, the abundance of clean and fine linen
was matter of wonder. Valuable plate was often set on the tables.
Nay, there were signs which had cost thirty or forty pounds. In
the seventeenth century England abounded with excellent inns of
every rank. The traveller sometimes, in a small village, lighted
on a public house such as Walton has described, where the brick
floor was swept clean, where the walls were stuck round with
ballads, where the sheets smelt of lavender, and where a blazing
fire, a cup of good ale, and a dish of trouts fresh from the
neighbouring brook, were to be procured at small charge. At the
larger houses of entertainment were to be found beds hung with
silk, choice cookery, and claret equal to the best which was
drunk in London.155 The innkeepers too, it was said. were not
like other innkeepers. On the Continent the landlord was the
tyrant of those who crossed the threshold. In England he was a
servant. Never was an Englishman more at home than when he took
his ease in his inn. Even men of fortune, who might in their own
mansions have enjoyed every luxury, were often in the habit of
passing their evenings in the parlour of some neighbouring house
of public entertainment. They seem to have thought that comfort
and freedom could in no other place be enjoyed with equal
perfection. This feeling continued during many generations to be
a national peculiarity. The liberty and jollity of inns long
furnished matter to our novelists and dramatists. Johnson
declared that a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity;
and Shenstone gently complained that no private roof, however
friendly, gave the wanderer so warm a welcome as that which was
to be found at an inn.

Many conveniences, which were unknown at Hampton Court and
Whitehall in the seventeenth century, are in all modern hotels.
Yet on the whole it is certain that the improvement of our houses
of public entertainment has by no means kept pace with the
improvement of our roads and of our conveyances. Nor is this
strange; for it is evident that, all other circumstances being
supposed equal, the inns will be best where the means of
locomotion are worst. The quicker the rate of travelling, the
less important is it that there should be numerous agreeable
resting places for the traveller. A hundred and sixty years ago a
person who came up to the capital from a remote county generally
required, by the way, twelve or fifteen meals, and lodging for
five or six nights. If he were a great man, he expected the meals
and lodging to be comfortable, and even luxurious. At present we
fly from York or Exeter to London by the light of a single
winter's day. At present, therefore, a traveller seldom
interrupts his journey merely for the sake of rest and
refreshment. The consequence is that hundreds of excellent inns
have fallen into utter decay. In a short time no good houses of
that description will be found, except at places where strangers
are likely to be detained by business or pleasure.

The mode in which correspondence was carried on between distant
places may excite the scorn of the present generation; yet it was
such as might have moved the admiration and envy of the polished
nations of antiquity, or of the contemporaries of Raleigh and
Cecil. A rude and imperfect establishment of posts for the
conveyance of letters had been set up by Charles the First, and
had been swept away by the civil war. Under the Commonwealth the
design was resumed. At the Restoration the proceeds of the Post
Office, after all expenses had been paid, were settled on the
Duke of York. On most lines of road the mails went out and came
in only on the alternate days. In Cornwall, in the fens of
Lincolnshire, and among the hills and lakes of Cumberland,
letters were received only once a week. During a royal progress a
daily post was despatched from the capital to the place where the
court sojourned. There was also daily communication between
London and the Downs; and the same privilege was sometimes
extended to Tunbridge Wells and Bath at the seasons when those
places were crowded by the great. The bags were carried on
horseback day and night at the rate of about five miles an
hour.156

The revenue of this establishment was not derived solely from the
charge for the transmission of letters. The Post Office alone was
entitled to furnish post horses; and, from the care with which
this monopoly was guarded, we may infer that it was found
profitable.157 If, indeed, a traveller had waited half an hour
without being supplied he might hire a horse wherever he could.

To facilitate correspondence between one part of London and
another was not originally one of the objects of the Post Office.
But, in the reign of Charles the Second, an enterprising citizen
of London, William Dockwray, set up, at great expense, a penny
post, which delivered letters and parcels six or eight times a
day in the busy and crowded streets near the Exchange, and four
times a day in the outskirts of the capital. This improvement
was, as usual, strenuously resisted. The porters complained that
their interests were attacked, and tore down the placards in
which the scheme was announced to the public. The excitement
caused by Godfrey's death, and by the discovery of Coleman's
papers, was then at the height. A cry was therefore raised that
the penny post was a Popish contrivance. The great Doctor Oates,
it was affirmed, had hinted a suspicion that the Jesuits were at
the bottom of the scheme, and that the bags, if examined, would
be found full of treason.158 The utility of the enterprise was,
however, so great and obvious that all opposition proved
fruitless. As soon as it became clear that the speculation would
be lucrative, the Duke of York complained of it as an infraction
of his monopoly; and the courts of law decided in his favour.159

The revenue of the Post Office was from the first constantly
increasing. In the year of the Restoration a committee of the
House of Commons, after strict enquiry, had estimated the net
receipt at about twenty thousand pounds. At the close of the
reign of Charles the Second, the net receipt was little short of
fifty thousand pounds; and this was then thought a stupendous
sum. The gross receipt was about seventy thousand pounds. The
charge for conveying a single letter was twopence for eighty
miles, and threepence for a longer distance. The postage
increased in proportion to the weight of the packet.160 At
present a single letter is carried to the extremity of Scotland
or of Ireland for a penny; and the monopoly of post horses has
long ceased to exist. Yet the gross annual receipts of the
department amount to more than eighteen hundred thousand pounds,
and the net receipts to more than seven hundred thousand pounds.
It is, therefore, scarcely possible to doubt that the number of
letters now conveyed by mail is seventy times the number which
was so conveyed at the time of the accession of James the
Second.161

No part of the load which the old mails carried out was more
important than the newsletters. In 1685 nothing like the London
daily paper of our time existed, or could exist. Neither the
necessary capital nor the necessary skill was to be found.
Freedom too was wanting, a want as fatal as that of either
capital or skill. The press was not indeed at that moment under a
general censorship. The licensing act, which had been passed soon
after the Restoration, had expired in 1679. Any person might
therefore print, at his own risk, a history, a sermon, or a poem,
without the previous approbation of any officer; but the Judges
were unanimously of opinion that this liberty did not extend to
Gazettes, and that, by the common law of England, no man, not
authorised by the crown, had a right to publish political
news.162 While the Whig party was still formidable, the
government thought it expedient occasionally to connive at the
violation of this rule. During the great battle of the Exclusion
Bill, many newspapers were suffered to appear, the Protestant
Intelligence, the Current Intelligence, the Domestic
Intelligence, the True News, the London Mercury.163 None of these
was published oftener than twice a week. None exceeded in size a
single small leaf. The quantity of matter which one of them
contained in a year was not more than is often found in two
numbers of the Times. After the defeat of the Whigs it was no
longer necessary for the King to be sparing in the use of that
which all his Judges had pronounced to be his undoubted
prerogative. At the close of his reign no newspaper was suffered
to appear without his. allowance: and  his allowance was given
exclusively to the London Gazette. The London Gazette came out
only on Mondays and Thursdays. The contents generally were a
royal proclamation, two or three Tory addresses, notices of two
or three promotions, an account of a skirmish between the
imperial troops and the Janissaries on the Danube, a description
of a highwayman, an announcement of a grand cockfight between two
persons of honour, and an advertisement offering a reward for a
strayed dog. The whole made up two pages of moderate size.
Whatever was communicated respecting matters of the highest
moment was communicated in the most meagre and formal style.
Sometimes, indeed, when the government was disposed to gratify
the public curiosity respecting an important transaction, a
broadside was put forth giving fuller details than could be found
in the Gazette: but neither the Gazette nor any supplementary
broadside printed by authority ever contained any intelligence
which it did not suit the purposes of the Court to publish. The
most important parliamentary debates, the most important state
trials recorded in our history, were passed over in profound
silence.164 In the capital the coffee houses supplied in some
measure the place of a journal. Thither the Londoners flocked, as
the Athenians of old flocked to the market place, to hear whether
there was any news. There men might learn how brutally a Whig,
had been treated the day before in Westminster Hall, what
horrible accounts the letters from Edinburgh gave of the
torturing of Covenanters, how grossly the Navy Board had cheated
the crown in the Victualling of the fleet, and what grave charges
the Lord Privy Seal had brought against the Treasury in the
matter of the hearth money. But people who lived at a distance
from the great theatre of political contention could be kept
regularly informed of what was passing there only by means of
newsletters. To prepare such letters became a calling in London,
as it now is among the natives of India. The newswriter rambled
from coffee room to coffee room, collecting reports, squeezed
himself into the Sessions House at the Old Bailey if there was an
interesting trial, nay perhaps obtained admission to the gallery
of Whitehall, and noticed how the King and Duke looked. In this
way he gathered materials for weekly epistles destined to
enlighten some county town or some bench of rustic magistrates.
Such were the sources from which the inhabitants of the largest
provincial cities, and the great body of the gentry and clergy,
learned almost all that they knew of the history of their own
time. We must suppose that at Cambridge there were as many
persons curious to know what was passing in the world as at
almost any place in the kingdom, out of London. Yet at Cambridge,
during a great part of the reign of Charles the Second, the
Doctors of Laws and the Masters of Arts had no regular supply of
news except through the London Gazette. At length the services of
one of the collectors of intelligence in the capital were
employed. That was a memorable day on which the first newsletter
from London was laid on the table of the only coffee room in
Cambridge.165 At the seat of a man of fortune in the country the
newsletter was impatiently expected. Within a week after it had
arrived it had been thumbed by twenty families. It furnished the
neighboring squires with matter for talk over their October, and
the neighboring rectors with topics for sharp sermons against
Whiggery or Popery. Many of these curious journals might
doubtless still be detected by a diligent search in the archives
of old families. Some are to be found in our public libraries;
and one series, which is not the least valuable part of the
literary treasures collected by Sir James Mackintosh, will be
occasionally quoted in the course of this work.166

It is scarcely necessary to say that there were then no
provincial newspapers. Indeed, except in the capital and at the
two Universities, there was scarcely a printer in the kingdom.
The only press in England north of Trent appears to have been at
York.167

It was not only by means of the London Gazette that the
government undertook to furnish political instruction to the
people. That journal contained a scanty supply of news without
comment. Another journal, published under the patronage of the
court, consisted of comment without news. This paper, called the
Observator, was edited by an old Tory pamphleteer named Roger
Lestrange. Lestrange was by no means deficient in readiness and
shrewdness; and his diction, though coarse, and disfigured by a
mean and flippant jargon which then passed for wit in the green
room and the tavern, was not without keenness and vigour. But his
nature, at once ferocious and ignoble, showed itself in every
line that he penned. When the first Observators appeared there
was some excuse for his acrimony. The Whigs were then powerful;
and he had to contend against numerous adversaries, whose
unscrupulous violence might seem to justify unsparing
retaliation. But in 1685 all the opposition had been crushed. A
generous spirit would have disdained to insult a party which
could not reply, and to aggravate the misery of prisoners, of
exiles, of bereaved families: but; from the malice of Lestrange
the grave was no hiding place, and the house of mourning no
sanctuary. In the last month of the reign of Charles the Second,
William Jenkyn, an aged dissenting pastor of great note, who had
been cruelly persecuted for no crime but that of worshipping God
according to the fashion generally followed throughout protestant
Europe, died of hardships and privations at Newgate. The outbreak
of popular sympathy could not be repressed. The corpse was
followed to the grave by a train of a hundred and fifty coaches.
Even courtiers looked sad. Even the unthinking King showed some
signs of concern. Lestrange alone set up a howl of savage
exultation, laughed at the weak compassion of the Trimmers,
proclaimed that the blasphemous old impostor had met with a most
righteous punishment, and vowed to wage war, not only to the
death, but after death, with all the mock saints and martyrs.168
Such was the spirit of the paper which was at this time the
oracle of the Tory party, and especially of the parochial clergy.

Literature which could be carried by the post bag then formed the
greater part of the intellectual nutriment ruminated by the
country divines and country justices. The difficulty and expense
of conveying large packets from place to place was so great, that
an extensive work was longer in making its way from Paternoster
Row to Devonshire or Lancashire than it now is in reaching
Kentucky. How scantily a rural parsonage was then furnished, even
with books the most necessary to a theologian, has already been
remarked. The houses of the gentry were not more plentifully
supplied. Few knights of the shire had libraries so good as may
now perpetually be found in a servants' hall or in the back
parlour of a small shopkeeper. An esquire passed among his
neighbours for a great scholar, if Hudibras and Baker's
Chronicle, Tarlton's Jests and the Seven Champions of
Christendom, lay in his hall window among the fishing rods and
fowling pieces. No circulating library, no book society, then
existed even in the capital: but in the capital those students
who could not afford to purchase largely had a resource. The
shops of the great booksellers, near Saint Paul's Churchyard,
were crowded every day and all day long with readers; and a known
customer was often permitted to carry a volume home. In the
country there was no such accommodation; and every man was under
the necessity of buying whatever he wished to read.169

As to the lady of the manor and her daughters, their literary
stores generally consisted of a prayer book and receipt book. But
in truth they lost little by living in rural seclusion. For, even
in the highest ranks, and in those situations which afforded the
greatest facilities for mental improvement, the English women of
that generation were decidedly worse educated than they have been
at any other time since the revival of learning. At an early
period they had studied the masterpieces of ancient genius. In
the present day they seldom bestow much attention on the dead
languages; but they are familiar with the tongue of Pascal and
Moliere, with the tongue of Dante and Tasso, with the tongue of
Goethe and Schiller; nor is there any purer or more graceful
English than that which accomplished women now speak and write.
But, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, the
culture of the female mind seems to have been almost entirely
neglected. If a damsel had the least smattering of literature she
was regarded as a prodigy. Ladies highly born, highly bred, and
naturally quick witted, were unable to write a line in their
mother tongue without solecisms and faults of spelling such as a
charity girl would now be ashamed to commit.170

The explanation may easily be found. Extravagant licentiousness,
the natural effect of extravagant austerity, was now the mode;
and licentiousness had produced its ordinary effect, the moral
and intellectual degradation of women. To their personal beauty,
it was the fashion to pay rude and impudent homage. But the
admiration and desire which they inspired were seldom mingled
with respect, with affection, or with any chivalrous sentiment.
The qualities which fit them to be companions, advisers,
confidential friends, rather repelled than attracted the
libertines of Whitehall. In that court a maid of honour, who
dressed in such a manner as to do full justice to a white bosom,
who ogled significantly, who danced voluptuously, who excelled in
pert repartee, who was not ashamed to romp with Lords of the
Bedchamber and Captains of the Guards, to sing sly verses with
sly expression, or to put on a page's dress for a frolic, was
more likely to be followed and admired, more likely to be
honoured with royal attentions, more likely to win a rich and
noble husband than Jane Grey or Lucy Hutchinson would have been.
In such circumstances the standard of female attainments was
necessarily low; and it was more dangerous to be above that
standard than to be beneath it. Extreme ignorance and frivolity
were thought less unbecoming in a lady than the slightest
tincture of pedantry. Of the too celebrated women whose faces we
still admire on the walls of Hampton Court, few indeed were in
the habit of reading anything more valuable than acrostics,
lampoons, and translations of the Clelia and the Grand Cyrus.

The literary acquirements, even of the accomplished gentlemen of
that generation, seem to have been somewhat less solid and
profound than at an earlier or a later period. Greek learning, at
least, did not flourish among us in the days of Charles the
Second, as it had flourished before the civil war, or as it again
flourished long after the Revolution. There were undoubtedly
scholars to whom the whole Greek literature, from Homer to
Photius, was familiar: but such scholars were to be found almost
exclusively among the clergy resident at the Universities, and
even at the Universities were few, and were not fully
appreciated. At Cambridge it was not thought by any means
necessary that a divine should be able to read the Gospels in the
original.171 Nor was the standard at Oxford higher. When, in the
reign of William the Third, Christ Church rose up as one man to
defend the genuineness of the Epistles of Phalaris, that great
college, then considered as the first seat of philology in the
kingdom, could not muster such a stock of Attic learning as is
now possessed by several youths at every great public school. It
may easily be supposed that a dead language, neglected at the
Universities, was not much studied by men of the world. In a
former age the poetry and eloquence of Greece had been the
delight of Raleigh and Falkland. In a later age the poetry and
eloquence of Greece were the delight of Pitt and Fox, of Windham
and Grenville. But during the latter part of the seventeenth
century there was in England scarcely one eminent statesman who
could read with enjoyment a page of Sophocles or Plato.

Good Latin scholars were numerous. The language of Rome, indeed,
had not altogether lost its imperial prerogatives, and was still,
in many parts of Europe, almost indispensable to a traveller or a
negotiator. To speak it well was therefore a much more common
accomplishment shall in our time; and neither Oxford nor
Cambridge wanted poets who, on a great occasion, could lay at the
foot of the throne happy imitations of the verses in which Virgil
and Ovid had celebrated the greatness of Augustus.

Yet even the Latin was giving way to a younger rival. France
united at that time almost every species of ascendency. Her
military glory was at the height. She had vanquished mighty
coalitions. She had dictated treaties. She had subjugated great
cities and provinces. She had forced the Castilian pride to yield
her the precedence. She had summoned Italian princes to prostrate
themselves at her footstool. Her authority was supreme in all
matters of good breeding, from a duel to a minuet. She determined
how a gentleman's coat must be cut, how long his peruke must be,
whether his heels must be high or low, and whether the lace on
his hat must be broad or narrow. In literature she gave law to
the world. The fame of her great writers filled Europe. No other
country could produce a tragic poet equal to Racine, a comic poet
equal to Moliere, a trifler so agreeable as La Fontaine, a
rhetorician so skilful as Bossuet. The literary glory of Italy
and of Spain had set; that of Germany had not yet dawned. The
genius, therefore, of the eminent men who adorned Paris shone
forth with a splendour which was set off to full advantage by
contrast. France, indeed, had at that time an empire over
mankind, such as even the Roman Republic never attained. For,
when Rome was politically dominant, she was in arts and letters
the humble pupil of Greece. France had, over the surrounding
countries, at once the ascendency which Rome had over Greece, and
the ascendency which Greece had over Rome. French was fast
becoming the universal language, the language of fashionable
society, the language of diplomacy. At several courts princes and
nobles spoke it more accurately and politely than their mother
tongue. In our island there was less of this servility than on
the Continent. Neither our good nor our bad qualities were those
of imitators. Yet even here homage was paid, awkwardly indeed and
sullenly, to the literary supremacy of our neighbours. The
melodious Tuscan, so familiar to the gallants and ladies of the
court of Elizabeth, sank into contempt. A gentleman who quoted
Horace or Terence was considered in good company as a pompous
pedant. But to garnish his conversation with scraps of French was
the best proof which he could give of his parts and
attainments.172 New canons of criticism, new models of style came
into fashion. The quaint ingenuity which had deformed the verses
of Donne, and had been a blemish on those of Cowley, disappeared
from our poetry. Our prose became less majestic, less artfully
involved, less variously musical than that of an earlier age, but
more lucid, more easy, and better fitted for controversy and
narrative. In these changes it is impossible not to recognise the
influence of French precept and of French example. Great masters
of our language, in their most dignified compositions, affected
to use French words, when English words, quite as expressive and
sonorous, were at hand:173 and from France was imported the
tragedy in rhyme, an exotic which, in our soil, drooped, and
speedily died.

It would have been well if our writers had also copied the
decorum which their great French contemporaries, with few
exceptions, preserved; for the profligacy of the English plays,
satires, songs, and novels of that age is a deep blot on our
national fame. The evil may easily be traced to its source. The
wits and the Puritans had never been on friendly terms. There was
no sympathy between the two classes. They looked on the whole
system of human life from different points and in different
lights. The earnest of each was the jest of the other. The
pleasures of each were the torments of the other. To the stern
precisian even the innocent sport of the fancy seemed a crime. To
light and festive natures the solemnity of the zealous brethren
furnished copious matter of ridicule. From the Reformation to the
civil war, almost every writer, gifted with a fine sense of the
ludicrous, had taken some opportunity of assailing the
straighthaired, snuffling, whining saints, who christened their
children out of the Book of Nehemiah, who groaned in spirit at
the sight of Jack in the Green, and who thought it impious to
taste plum porridge on Christmas day. At length a time came when
the laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid,
ungainly zealots, after having furnished much good sport during
two generations, rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly
smiling, trod down under their feet the whole crowd of mockers.
The wounds inflicted by gay and petulant malice were retaliated
with the gloomy and implacable malice peculiar to bigots who
mistake their own rancour for virtue. The theatres were closed.
The players were flogged. The press was put under the
guardianship of austere licensers. The Muses were banished from
their own favourite haunts, Cambridge and Oxford. Cowly, Crashaw,
and Cleveland were ejected from their fellowships. The young
candidate for academical honours was no longer required to write
Ovidian epistles or Virgilian pastorals, but was strictly
interrogated by a synod of lowering Supralapsarians as to the day
and hour when he experienced the new birth. Such a system was of
course fruitful of hypocrites. Under sober clothing and under
visages composed to the expression of austerity lay hid during
several years the intense desire of license and of revenge. At
length that desire was gratified. The Restoration emancipated
thousands of minds from a yoke which had become insupportable.
The old fight recommenced, but with an animosity altogether new.
It was now not a sportive combat, but a war to the death. The
Roundhead had no better quarter to expect from those whom he had
persecuted than a cruel slavedriver can expect from insurgent
slaves still bearing the marks of his collars and his scourges.

The war between wit and Puritanism soon became a war between wit
and morality. The hostility excited by a grotesque caricature of
virtue did not spare virtue herself. Whatever the canting
Roundhead had regarded with reverence was insulted. Whatever he
had proscribed was favoured. Because he had been scrupulous about
trifles, all scruples were treated with derision. Because he had
covered his failings with the mask of devotion, men were
encouraged to obtrude with Cynic impudence all their most
scandalous vices on the public eye. Because he had punished
illicit love with barbarous severity, virgin purity and conjugal
fidelity were made a jest. To that sanctimonious jargon which was
his Shibboleth, was opposed another jargon not less absurd and
much more odious. As he never opened his mouth except in
scriptural phrase, the new breed of wits and fine gentlemen never
opened their mouths without uttering ribaldry of which a porter
would now be ashamed, and without calling on their Maker to curse
them, sink them, confound them, blast them, and damn them.

It is not strange, therefore, that our polite literature, when it
revived with the revival of the old civil and ecclesiastical
polity, should have been profoundly immoral. A few eminent men,
who belonged to an earlier and better age, were exempt from the
general contagion. The verse of Waller still breathed the
sentiments which had animated a more chivalrous generation.
Cowley, distinguished as a loyalist and as a man of letters,
raised his voice courageously against the immorality which
disgraced both letters and loyalty. A mightier poet, tried at
once by pain, danger, poverty, obloquy, and blindness, meditates,
undisturbed by the obscene tumult which raged all around him, a
song so sublime and so holy that it would not have misbecome the
lips of those ethereal Virtues whom he saw, with that inner eye
which no calamity could darken, flinging down on the jasper
pavement their crowns of amaranth and gold. The vigourous and
fertile genius of Butler, if it did not altogether escape the
prevailing infection, took the disease in a mild form. But these
were men whose minds had been trained in a world which had passed
away. They gave place in no long time to a younger generation of
wits; and of that generation, from Dryden down to Durfey, the
common characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering
licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman. The influence of
these writers was doubtless noxious, yet less noxious than it
would have been had they been less depraved. The poison which
they administered was so strong that it was, in no long time,
rejected with nausea. None of them understood the dangerous art
of associating images of unlawful pleasure with all that is
endearing and ennobling. None of them was aware that a certain
decorum is essential even to voluptuousness, that drapery may be
more alluring than exposure, and that the imagination may be far
more powerfully moved by delicate hints which impel it to exert
itself, than by gross descriptions which it takes in passively.

The spirit of the Antipuritan reaction pervades almost the whole
polite literature of the reign of Charles the Second. But the
very quintessence of that spirit will be found in the comic
drama. The playhouses, shut by the meddling fanatic in the day of
his power, were again crowded. To their old attractions new and
more powerful attractions had been added. Scenery, dresses, and
decorations, such as would now be thought mean or absurd, but
such as would have been esteemed incredibly magnificent by those
who, early in the seventeenth century, sate on the filthy benches
of the Hope, or under the thatched roof of the Rose, dazzled the
eyes of the multitude. The fascination of sex was called in to
aid the fascination of art: and the young spectator saw, with
emotions unknown to the contemporaries of Shakspeare and Johnson,
tender and sprightly heroines personated by lovely women. From
the day on which the theatres were reopened they became
seminaries of vice; and the evil propagated itself. The
profligacy of the representations soon drove away sober people.
The frivolous and dissolute who remained required every year
stronger and stronger stimulants. Thus the artists corrupted the
spectators, and the spectators the artists, till the turpitude of
the drama became such as must astonish all who are not aware that
extreme relaxation is the natural effect of extreme restraint,
and that an age of hypocrisy is, in the regular course of things,
followed by all age of impudence.

Nothing is more characteristic of the times than the care with
which the poets contrived to put all their loosest verses into
the mouths of women. The compositions in which the greatest
license was taken were the epilogues. They were almost always
recited by favourite actresses; and nothing charmed the depraved
audience so much as to hear lines grossly indecent repeated by a
beautiful girl, who was supposed to have not yet lost her
innocence 174

Our theatre was indebted in that age for many plots and
characters to Spain, to France, and to the old English masters:
but whatever our dramatists touched they tainted. In their
imitations the houses of Calderon's stately and highspirited
Castilian gentlemen became sties of vice, Shakspeare's Viola a
procuress, Moliere's Misanthrope a ravisher, Moliere's Agnes an
adulteress. Nothing could be so pure or so heroic but that it
became foul and ignoble by transfusion through those foul and
ignoble minds.

Such was the state of the drama; and the drama was the department
of polite literature in which a poet had the best chance of
obtaining a subsistence by his pen. The sale of books was so
small that a man of the greatest name could hardly expect more
than a pittance for the right of the best performance. There
cannot be a stronger instance than the fate of Dryden's last
production, the Fables. That volume was published when he was
universally admitted to be the chief of living English poets. It
contains about twelve thousand lines. The versification is
admirable, the narratives and descriptions full of life. To this
day Palamon and Arcite, Cymon and Iphigenia, Theodore and
Honoria, are the delight both of critics and of schoolboys. The
collection includes Alexander's Feast, the noblest ode in our
language. For the right Dryden received two hundred and fifty
pounds, less than in our days has sometimes been paid for two
articles in a review.175 Nor does the bargain seem to have been a
hard one. For the book went off slowly; and the second edition
was not required till the author had been ten years in his grave.
By writing for the theatre it was possible to earn a much larger
sum with much less trouble. Southern made seven hundred pounds by
one play.176 Otway was raised from beggary to temporary affluence
by the success of his Don Carlos.177 Shadwell cleared a hundred
and thirty pounds by a single representation of the Squire of
Alsatia.178 The consequence was that every man who had to live by
his wit wrote plays, whether he had any internal vocation to
write plays or not. It was thus with Dryden. As a satirist he has
rivalled Juvenal. As a didactic poet he perhaps might, with care
and meditation, have rivalled Lucretius. Of lyric poets he is, if
not the most sublime, the most brilliant and spiritstirring. But
nature, profuse to him of many rare gifts, had withheld from him
the dramatic faculty. Nevertheless all the energies of his best
years were wasted on dramatic composition. He had too much
judgment not to be aware that in the power of exhibiting
character by means of dialogue he was deficient. That deficiency
he did his best to conceal, sometimes by surprising and amusing
incidents, sometimes by stately declamation, sometimes by
harmonious numbers, sometimes by ribaldry but too well suited to
the taste of a profane and licentious pit. Yet he never obtained
any theatrical success equal to that which rewarded the exertions
of some men far inferior to him in general powers. He thought
himself fortunate if he cleared a hundred guineas by a play; a
scanty remuneration, yet apparently larger than he could have
earned in any other way by the same quantity of labour.179

The recompense which the wits of that age could obtain from the
public was so small, that they were under the necessity of eking
out their incomes by levying contributions on the great. Every
rich and goodnatured lord was pestered by authors with a
mendicancy so importunate, and a flattery so abject, as may in
our time seem incredible. The patron to whom a work was inscribed
was expected to reward the writer with a purse of gold. The fee
paid for the dedication of a book was often much larger than the
sum which any publisher would give for the right. Books were
therefore frequently printed merely that they might be dedicated.
This traffic in praise produced the effect which might have been
expected. Adulation pushed to the verge, sometimes of nonsense,
and sometimes of impiety, was not thought to disgrace a poet.
Independence, veracity, selfrespect, were things not required by
the world from him. In truth, he was in morals something between
a pandar and a beggar.

To the other vices which degraded the literary character was
added, towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second, the
most savage intemperance of party spirit. The wits, as a class,
had been impelled by their old hatred of Puritanism to take the
side of the court, and had been found useful allies. Dryden, in
particular, had done good service to the government. His Absalom
and Achitophel, the greatest satire of modern times had amazed
the town, had made its way with unprecedented rapidity even into
rural districts, and had, wherever it appeared bitterly annoyed
the Exclusionists. and raised the courage of the Tories. But we
must not, in the admiration which we naturally feel for noble
diction and versification, forget the great distinctions of good
and evil. The spirit by which Dryden and several of his compeers
were at this time animated against the Whigs deserves to he
called fiendish. The servile Judges and Sheriffs of those evil
days could not shed blood as fast as the poets cried out for it.
Calls for more victims, hideous jests on hanging, bitter taunts
on those who, having stood by the King in the hour of danger, now
advised him to deal mercifully and generously by his vanquished
enemies, were publicly recited on the stage, and, that nothing
might he wanting to the guilt and the shame, were recited by
women, who, having long been taught to discard all modesty, were
now taught to discard all compassion.180

It is a remarkable fact that, while the lighter literature of
England was thus becoming a nuisance and a national disgrace, the
English genius was effecting in science a revolution which will,
to the end of time, be reckoned among the highest achievements of
the human intellect. Bacon had sown the good seed in a sluggish
soil and an ungenial season. He had not expected an early crop,
and in his last testament had solemnly bequeathed his fame to the
next age. During a whole generation his philosophy had, amidst
tumults wars, and proscriptions, been slowly ripening in a few
well constituted minds. While factions were struggling for
dominion over each other, a small body of sages had turned away
with benevolent disdain from the conflict, and had devoted
themselves to the nobler work of extending the dominion of man
over matter. As soon as tranquillity was restored, these teachers
easily found attentive audience. For the discipline through which
the nation had passed had brought the public mind to a temper
well fitted for the reception of the Verulamian doctrine. The
civil troubles had stimulated the faculties of the educated
classes, and had called forth a restless activity and an
insatiable curiosity, such as had not before been known among us.
Yet the effect of those troubles was that schemes of political
and religious reform were generally regarded with suspicion and
contempt. During twenty years the chief employment of busy and
ingenious men had been to frame constitutions with first
magistrates, without first magistrates, with hereditary senates,
with senates appointed by lot, with annual senates, with
perpetual senates. In these plans nothing was omitted. All the
detail, all the nomenclature, all the ceremonial of the imaginary
government was fully set forth, Polemarchs and Phylarchs, Tribes
and Galaxies, the Lord Archon and the Lord Strategus. Which
ballot boxes were to be green and which red, which balls were to
be of gold and which of silver, which magistrates were to wear
hats and which black velvet caps with peaks, how the mace was to
be carried and when the heralds were to uncover, these, and a
hundred more such trifles, were gravely considered and arranged
by men of no common capacity and learning.181 But the time for
these visions had gone by; and, if any steadfast republican still
continued to amuse himself with them, fear of public derision and
of a criminal information generally induced him to keep his
fancies to himself. It was now unpopular and unsafe to mutter a
word against the fundamental laws of the monarchy: but daring and
ingenious men might indemnify themselves by treating with disdain
what had lately been considered as the fundamental laws of
nature. The torrent which had been dammed up in one channel
rushed violently into another. The revolutionary spirit, ceasing
to operate in politics, began to exert itself with unprecedented
vigour and hardihood in every department of physics. The year
1660, the era of the restoration of the old constitution, is also
the era from which dates the ascendency of the new philosophy. In
that year the Royal Society, destined to be a chief agent in a
long series of glorious and salutary reforms, began to exist.182
In a few months experimental science became all the mode. The
transfusion of blood, the ponderation of air, the fixation of
mercury, succeeded to that place in the public mind which had
been lately occupied by the controversies of the Rota. Dreams of
perfect forms of government made way for dreams of wings with
which men were to fly from the Tower to the Abbey, and of
doublekeeled ships which were never to founder in the fiercest
storm. All classes were hurried along by the prevailing
sentiment. Cavalier and Roundhead, Churchman and Puritan, were
for once allied. Divines, jurists, statesmen, nobles, princes,
swelled the triumph of the Baconian philosophy. Poets sang with
emulous fervour the approach of the golden age. Cowley, in lines
weighty with thought and resplendent with wit, urged the chosen
seed to take possession of the promised land flowing with milk
and honey, that land which their great deliverer and lawgiver had
seen, as from the summit of Pisgah, but had not been permitted to
enter.183 Dryden, with more zeal than knowledge, joined voice to
the general acclamation to enter, and foretold things which
neither he nor anybody else understood. The Royal Society, he
predicted, would soon lead us to the extreme verge of the globe,
and there delight us with a better view of the moon.184 Two able
and aspiring prelates, Ward, Bishop of Salisbury, and Wilkins,
Bishop of Chester, were conspicuous among the leaders of the
movement. Its history was eloquently written by a younger divine,
who was rising to high distinction in his profession, Thomas
Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester. Both Chief Justice Hale
and Lord Keeper Guildford stole some hours from the business of
their courts to write on hydrostatics. Indeed it was under the
immediate direction of Guildford that the first barometers ever
exposed to sale in London were constructed.185 Chemistry divided,
for a time, with wine and love, with the stage and the gaming
table, with the intrigues of a courtier and the intrigues of a
demagogue, the attention of the fickle Buckingham. Rupert has the
credit of having invented mezzotinto; from him is named that
curious bubble of glass which has long amused children and
puzzled philosophers. Charles himself had a laboratory at
Whitehall, and was far more active and attentive there than at
the council board. It was almost necessary to the character of a
fine gentleman to have something to say about air pumps and
telescopes; and even fine ladies, now and then, thought it
becoming to affect a taste for science, went in coaches and six
to visit the Gresham curiosities, and broke forth into cries of
delight at finding that a magnet really attracted a needle, and
that a microscope really made a fly loom as large as a
sparrow.186

In this, as in every great stir of the human mind, there was
doubtless something which might well move a smile. It is the
universal law that whatever pursuit, whatever doctrine, becomes
fashionable, shall lose a portion of that dignity which it had
possessed while it was confined to a small but earnest minority,
and was loved for its own sake alone. It is true that the follies
of some persons who, without any real aptitude for science,
professed a passion for it, furnished matter of contemptuous
mirth to a few malignant satirists who belonged to the preceding
generation, and were not disposed to unlearn the lore of their
youth.187 But it is not less true that the great work of
interpreting nature was performed by the English of that age as
it had never before been performed in any age by any nation. The
spirit of Francis Bacon was abroad, a spirit admirably compounded
of audacity and sobriety. There was a strong persuasion that the
whole world was full of secrets of high moment to the happiness
of man, and that man had, by his Maker, been entrusted with the
key which, rightly used, would give access to them. There was at
the same time a conviction that in physics it was impossible to
arrive at the knowledge of general laws except by the careful
observation of particular facts. Deeply impressed with these
great truths, the professors of the new philosophy applied
themselves to their task, and, before a quarter of a century had
expired, they had given ample earnest of what has since been
achieved. Already a reform of agriculture had been commenced. New
vegetables were cultivated. New implements of husbandry were
employed. New manures were applied to the soil.188 Evelyn had,
under the formal sanction of the Royal Society, given instruction
to his countrymen in planting. Temple, in his intervals of
leisure, had tried many experiments in horticulture, and had
proved that many delicate fruits, the natives of more favoured
climates, might, with the help of art, be grown on English
ground. Medicine, which in France was still in abject bondage,
and afforded an inexhaustible subject of just ridicule to
Moliere, had in England become an experimental and progressive
science, and every day made some new advance in defiance of
Hippocrates and Galen. The attention of speculative men had been,
for the first time, directed to the important subject of sanitary
police. The great plague of 1665 induced them to consider with
care the defective architecture, draining, and ventilation of the
capital. The great fire of 1666 afforded an opportunity for
effecting extensive improvements. The whole matter was diligently
examined by the Royal Society; and to the suggestions of that
body must be partly attributed the changes which, though far
short of what the public welfare required, yet made a wide
difference between the new and the old London, and probably put a
final close to the ravages of pestilence in our country.189 At
the same time one of the founders of the Society, Sir William
Petty, created the science of political arithmetic, the humble
but indispensable handmaid of political philosophy. No kingdom of
nature was left unexplored. To that period belong the chemical
discoveries of Boyle, and the earliest botanical researches of
Sloane. It was then that Ray made a new classification of birds
and fishes, and that the attention of Woodward was first drawn
towards fossils and shells. One after another phantoms which had
haunted the world through ages of darkness fled before the light.
Astrology and alchymy became jests. Soon there was scarcely a
county in which some of the Quorum did not smile contemptuously
when an old woman was brought before them for riding on
broomsticks or giving cattle the murrain. But it was in those
noblest and most arduous departments of knowledge in which
induction and mathematical demonstration cooperate for the
discovery of truth, that the English genius won in that age the
most memorable triumphs. John Wallis placed the whole system of
statics on a new foundation. Edmund Halley investigated the
properties of the atmosphere, the ebb and flow of the sea, the
laws of magnetism, and the course of the comets; nor did he
shrink from toil, peril and exile in the cause of science. While
he, on the rock of Saint Helena, mapped the constellations of the
southern hemisphere, our national observatory was rising at
Greenwich: and John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, was
commencing that long series of observations which is never
mentioned without respect and gratitude in any part of the globe.
But the glory of these men, eminent as they were, is cast into
the shade by the transcendent lustre of one immortal name. In
Isaac Newton two kinds of intellectual power, which have little
in common, and which are not often found together in a very high
degree of vigour, but which nevertheless are equally necessary in
the most sublime departments of physics, were united as they have
never been united before or since. There may have been minds as
happily constituted as his for the cultivation of pure
mathematical science: there may have been minds as happily
constituted for the cultivation of science purely experimental;
but in no other mind have the demonstrative faculty and the
inductive faculty coexisted in such supreme excellence and
perfect harmony. Perhaps in the days of Scotists and Thomists
even his intellect might have run to waste, as many intellects
ran to waste which were inferior only to his. Happily the spirit
of the age on which his lot was cast, gave the right direction to
his mind; and his mind reacted with tenfold force on the spirit
of the age. In the year 1685 his fame, though splendid, was only
dawning; but his genius was in the meridian. His great work, that
work which effected a revolution in the most important provinces
of natural philosophy, had been completed, but was not yet
published, and was just about to be submitted to the
consideration of the Royal Society.

It is not very easy to explain why the nation which was so far
before its neighbours in science should in art have been far
behind them. Yet such was the fact. It is true that in
architecture, an art which is half a science, an art in which
none but a geometrician can excel, an art which has no standard
of grace but what is directly or indirectly dependent on utility,
an art of which the creations derive a part, at least, of their
majesty from mere bulk, our country could boast of one truly
great man, Christopher Wren; and the fire which laid London in
ruins had given him an opportunity, unprecedented in modern
history, of displaying his powers. The austere beauty of the
Athenian portico, the gloomy sublimity of the Gothic arcade, he
was like almost all his contemporaries, incapable of emulating,
and perhaps incapable of appreciating; but no man born on our
side of the Alps, has imitated with so much success the
magnificence of the palacelike churches of Italy. Even the superb
Lewis has left to posterity no work which can bear a comparison
with Saint Paul's. But at the close of the reign of Charles the
Second there was not a single English painter or statuary whose
name is now remembered. This sterility is somewhat mysterious;
for painters and statuaries were by no means a despised or an ill
paid class. Their social position was at least as high as at
present. Their gains, when compared with the wealth of the nation
and with the remuneration of other descriptions of intellectual
labour, were even larger than at present. Indeed the munificent
patronage which was extended to artists drew them to our shores
in multitudes. Lely, who has preserved to us the rich curls, the
full lips, and the languishing eyes of the frail beauties
celebrated by Hamilton, was a Westphalian. He had died in 1680,
having long lived splendidly, having received the honour of
knighthood, and having accumulated a good estate out of the
fruits of his skill. His noble collection of drawings and
pictures was, after his decease, exhibited by the royal
permission in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and was sold by
auction for the almost incredible sum of twenty-six thousand
pounds, a sum which bore a greater proportion to the fortunes of
the rich men of that day than a hundred thousand pounds would
bear to the fortunes of the rich men of our time.190 Lely was
succeeded by his countryman Godfrey Kneller, who was made first a
knight and then a baronet, and who, after keeping up a sumptuous
establishment, and after losing much money by unlucky
speculations, was still able to bequeath a large fortune to his
family. The two Vandeveldes, natives of Holland, had been tempted
by English liberality to settle here, and had produced for the
King and his nobles some of the finest sea pieces in the world.
Another Dutchman, Simon Varelst, painted glorious sunflowers and
tulips for prices such as had never before been known. Verrio, a
Neapolitan, covered ceilings and staircases with Gorgons and
Muses, Nymphs and Satyrs, Virtues and Vices, Gods quaffing
nectar, and laurelled princes riding in triumph. The income which
he derived from his performances enabled him to keep one of the
most expensive tables in England. For his pieces at Windsor alone
he received seven thousand pounds, a sum then sufficient to make
a gentleman of moderate wishes perfectly easy for life, a sum
greatly exceeding all that Dryden, during a literary life of
forty years, obtained from the booksellers.191 Verrio's assistant
and successor, Lewis Laguerre, came from France. The two most
celebrated sculptors of that day were also foreigners. Cibber,
whose pathetic emblems of Fury and Melancholy still adorn Bedlam,
was a Dane. Gibbons, to whose graceful fancy and delicate touch
many of our palaces, colleges, and churches owe their finest
decorations, was a Dutchman. Even the designs for the coin were
made by French artists. Indeed, it was not till the reign of
George the Second that our country could glory in a great
painter; and George the Third was on the throne before she had
reason to be proud of any of her sculptors.

It is time that this description of the England which Charles the
Second governed should draw to a close. Yet one subject of the
highest moment still remains untouched. Nothing has yet been said
of the great body of the people, of those who held the ploughs,
who tended the oxen, who toiled at the looms of Norwich, and
squared the Portland stone for Saint Paul's. Nor can very much be
said. The most numerous class is precisely the class respecting
which we have the most meagre information. In those times
philanthropists did not yet regard it as a sacred duty, nor had
demagogues yet found it a lucrative trade, to talk and write
about the distress of the labourer. History was too much occupied
with courts and camps to spare a line for the hut of the peasant
or the garret of the mechanic. The press now often sends forth in
a day a greater quantity of discussion and declamation about the
condition of the working man than was published during the
twenty-eight years which elapsed between the Restoration and the
Revolution. But it would be a great error to infer from the
increase of complaint that there has been any increase of misery.

The great criterion of the state of the common people is the
amount of their wages; and as four-fifths of the common people
were, in the seventeenth century, employed in agriculture, it is
especially important to ascertain what were then the wages of
agricultural industry. On this subject we have the means of
arriving at conclusions sufficiently exact for our purpose.

Sir William Petty, whose mere assertion carries great weight,
informs us that a labourer was by no means in the lowest state
who received for a day's work fourpence with food, or eightpence
without food. Four shillings a week therefore were, according to
Petty's calculation, fair agricultural wages.192

That this calculation was not remote from the truth we have
abundant proof. About the beginning of the year 1685 the justices
of Warwickshire, in the exercise of a power entrusted to them by
an Act of Elizabeth, fixed, at their quarter sessions, a scale of
wages for the county, and notified that every employer who gave
more than the authorised sum, and every working man who received
more, would be liable to punishment. The wages of the common
agricultural labourer, from March to September, were fixed at the
precise amount mentioned by Petty, namely four shillings a week
without food. From September to March the wages were to be only
three and sixpence a week.193

But in that age, as in ours, the earnings of the peasant were
very different in different parts of the kingdom. The wages of
Warwickshire were probably about the average, and those of the
counties near the Scottish border below it: but there were more
favoured districts. In the same year, 1685, a gentleman of
Devonshire, named Richard Dunning, published a small tract, in
which he described the condition of the poor of that county. That
he understood his subject well it is impossible to doubt; for a
few months later his work was reprinted, and was, by the
magistrates assembled in quarter sessions at Exeter, strongly
recommended to the attention of all parochial officers. According
to him, the wages of the Devonshire peasant were, without food,
about five shillings a week.194

Still better was the condition of the labourer in the
neighbourhood of Bury Saint Edmund's. The magistrates of Suffolk
met there in the spring of 1682 to fix a rate of wages, and
resolved that, where the labourer was not boarded, he should have
five shillings a week in winter, and six in summer.195

In 1661 the justices at Chelmsford had fixed the wages of the
Essex labourer, who was not boarded, at six shillings in winter
and seven in summer. This seems to have been the highest
remuneration given in the kingdom for agricultural labour between
the Restoration and the Revolution; and it is to be observed
that, in the year in which this order was made, the necessaries
of life were immoderately dear. Wheat was at seventy shillings
the quarter, which would even now be considered as almost a
famine price.196

These facts are in perfect accordance with another fact which
seems to deserve consideration. It is evident that, in a country
where no man can be compelled to become a soldier, the ranks of
an army cannot be filled if the government offers much less than
the wages of common rustic labour. At present the pay and beer
money of a private in a regiment of the line amount to seven
shillings and sevenpence a week. This stipend, coupled with the
hope of a pension, does not attract the English youth in
sufficient numbers; and it is found necessary to supply the
deficiency by enlisting largely from among the poorer population
of Munster and Connaught. The pay of the private foot soldier in
1685 was only four shillings and eightpence a week; yet it is
certain that the government in that year found no difficulty in
obtaining many thousands of English recruits at very short
notice. The pay of the private foot soldier in the army of the
Commonwealth had been seven shillings a week, that is to say, as
much as a corporal received under Charles the Second;197 and
seven shillings a week had been found sufficient to fill the
ranks with men decidedly superior to the generality of the
people. On the whole, therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude
that, in the reign of Charles the Second, the ordinary wages of
the peasant did not exceed four shillings a week; but that, in
some parts of the kingdom, five shillings, six shillings, and,
during the summer months, even seven shillings were paid. At
present a district where a labouring man earns only seven
shillings a week is thought to be in a state shocking to
humanity. The average is very much higher; and in prosperous
counties, the weekly wages of husbandmen amount to twelve,
fourteen, and even sixteen shillings. The remuneration of workmen
employed in manufactures has always been higher than that of the
tillers of the soil. In the year 1680, a member of the House of
Commons remarked that the high wages paid in this country made it
impossible for our textures to maintain a competition with the
produce of the Indian looms. An English mechanic, he said,
instead of slaving like a native of Bengal for a piece of copper,
exacted a shilling a day.198 Other evidence is extant, which
proves that a shilling a day was the pay to which the English
manufacturer then thought himself entitled, but that he was often
forced to work for less. The common people of that age were not
in the habit of meeting for public discussion, of haranguing, or
of petitioning Parliament. No newspaper pleaded their cause. It
was in rude rhyme that their love and hatred, their exultation
and their distress, found utterance. A great part of their
history is to be learned only from their ballads. One of the most
remarkable of the popular lays chaunted about the streets of
Norwich and Leeds in the time of Charles the Second may still be
read on the original broadside. It is the vehement and bitter cry
of labour against capital. It describes the good old times when
every artisan employed in the woollen manufacture lived as well
as a farmer. But those times were past. Sixpence a day was now
all that could be earned by hard labour at the loom. If the poor
complained that they could not live on such a pittance, they were
told that they were free to take it or leave it. For so miserable
a recompense were the producers of wealth compelled to toil
rising early and lying down late, while the master clothier,
eating, sleeping, and idling, became rich by their exertions. A
shilling a day, the poet declares, is what the weaver would have
if justice were done.199 We may therefore conclude that, in the
generation which preceded the Revolution, a workman employed in
the great staple manufacture of England thought himself fairly
paid if he gained six shillings a week.

It may here be noticed that the practice of setting children
prematurely to work, a practice which the state, the legitimate
protector of those who cannot protect themselves, has, in our
time, wisely and humanely interdicted, prevailed in the
seventeenth century to an extent which, when compared with the
extent of the manufacturing system, seems almost incredible. At
Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade, a little creature
of six years old was thought fit for labour. Several writers of
that time, and among them some who were considered as eminently
benevolent, mention, with exultation, the fact that, in that
single city, boys and girls of very tender age created wealth
exceeding what was necessary for their own subsistence by twelve
thousand pounds a year.200 The more carefully we examine the
history of the past, the more reason shall we find to dissent
from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new
social evils. The truth is that the evils are, with scarcely an
exception, old. That which is new is the intelligence which
discerns and the humanity which remedies them.

When we pass from the weavers of cloth to a different class of
artisans, our enquiries will still lead us to nearly the same
conclusions. During several generations, the Commissioners of
Greenwich Hospital have kept a register of the wages paid to
different classes of workmen who have been employed in the
repairs of the building. From this valuable record it appears
that, in the course of a hundred and twenty years, the daily
earnings of the bricklayer have risen from half a crown to four
and tenpence, those of the mason from half a crown to five and
threepence, those of the carpenter from half a crown to five and
fivepence, and those of the plumber from three shillings to five
and sixpence.

It seems clear, therefore, that the wages of labour, estimated in
money, were, in 1685, not more than half of what they now are;
and there were few articles important to the working man of which
the price was not, in 1685, more than half of what it now is.
Beer was undoubtedly much cheaper in that age than at present.
Meat was also cheaper, but was still so dear that hundreds of
thousands of families scarcely knew the taste of it.201 In the
cost of wheat there has been very little change. The average
price of the quarter, during the last twelve years of Charles the
Second, was fifty shillings. Bread, therefore, such as is now
given to the inmates of a workhouse, was then seldom seen, even
on the trencher of a yeoman or of a shopkeeper. The great
majority of the nation lived almost entirely on rye, barley, and
oats.

The produce of tropical countries, the produce of the mines, the
produce of machinery, was positively dearer than at present.
Among the commodities for which the labourer would have had to
pay higher in 1685 than his posterity now pay were sugar, salt,
coals, candles, soap, shoes, stockings, and generally all
articles of clothing and all articles of bedding. It may be
added, that the old coats and blankets would have been, not only
more costly, but less serviceable than the modern fabrics.

It must be remembered that those labourers who were able to
maintain themselves and their families by means of wages were not
the most necessitous members of the community. Beneath them lay a
large class which could not subsist without some aid from the
parish. There can hardly be a more important test of the
condition of the common people than the ratio which this class
bears to the whole society. At present, the men, women, and
children who receive relief appear from the official returns to
be, in bad years, one tenth of the inhabitants of England, and,
in good years, one thirteenth. Gregory King estimated them in his
time at about a fourth; and this estimate, which all our respect
for his authority will scarcely prevent us from calling
extravagant, was pronounced by Davenant eminently judicious.

We are not quite without the means of forming an estimate for
ourselves. The poor rate was undoubtedly the heaviest tax borne
by our ancestors in those days. It was computed, in the reign of
Charles the Second, at near seven hundred thousand pounds a year,
much more than the produce either of the excise or of the
customs, and little less than half the entire revenue of the
crown. The poor rate went on increasing rapidly, and appears to
have risen in a short time to between eight and nine hundred
thousand a year, that is to say, to one sixth of what it now is.
The population was then less than a third of what it now is. The
minimum of wages, estimated in money, was half of what it now is;
and we can therefore hardly suppose that the average allowance
made to a pauper can have been more than half of what it now is.
It seems to follow that the proportion of the English people
which received parochial relief then must have been larger than
the proportion which receives relief now. It is good to speak on
such questions with diffidence: but it has certainly never yet
been proved that pauperism was a less heavy burden or a less
serious social evil during the last quarter of the seventeenth
century than it is in our own time.202

In one respect it must be admitted that the progress of
civilization has diminished the physical comforts of a portion of
the poorest class. It has already been mentioned that, before the
Revolution, many thousands of square miles, now enclosed and
cultivated, were marsh, forest, and heath. Of this wild land much
was, by law, common, and much of what was not common by law was
worth so little that the proprietors suffered it to be common in
fact. In such a tract, squatters and trespassers were tolerated
to an extent now unknown. The peasant who dwelt there could, at
little or no charge, procure occasionally some palatable addition
to his hard fare, and provide himself with fuel for the winter.
He kept a flock of geese on what is now an orchard rich with
apple blossoms. He snared wild fowl on the fell which has long
since been drained and divided into corn-fields and turnip
fields. He cut turf among the furze bushes on the moor which is
now a meadow bright with clover and renowned for butter and
cheese. The progress of agriculture and the increase of
population necessarily deprived him of these privileges. But
against this disadvantage a long list of advantages is to be set
off. Of the blessings which civilisation and philosophy bring
with them a large proportion is common to all ranks, and would,
if withdrawn, be missed as painfully by the labourer as by the
peer. The market-place which the rustic can now reach with his
cart in an hour was, a hundred and sixty years ago, a day's
journey from him. The street which now affords to the artisan,
during the whole night, a secure, a convenient, and a brilliantly
lighted walk was, a hundred and sixty years ago, so dark after
sunset that he would not have been able to see his hand, so ill
paved that he would have run constant risk of breaking his neck,
and so ill watched that he would have been in imminent danger of
being knocked down and plundered of his small earnings. Every
bricklayer who falls from a scaffold, every sweeper of a crossing
who is run over by a carriage, may now have his wounds dressed
and his limbs set with a skill such as, a hundred and sixty years
ago, all the wealth of a great lord like Ormond, or of a merchant
prince like Clayton, could not have purchased. Some frightful
diseases have been extirpated by science; and some have been
banished by police. The term of human life has been lengthened
over the whole kingdom, and especially in the towns. The year
1685 was not accounted sickly; yet in the year 1685 more than one
in twenty-three of the inhabitants of the capital died.203 At
present only one inhabitant of the capital in forty dies
annually. The difference in salubrity between the London of the
nineteenth century and the London of the seventeenth century is
very far greater than the difference between London in an
ordinary year and London in a year of cholera.

Still more important is the benefit which all orders of society,
and especially the lower orders, have derived from the mollifying
influence of civilisation on the national character. The
groundwork of that character has indeed been the same through
many generations, in the sense in which the groundwork of the
character of an individual may be said to be the same when he is
a rude and thoughtless schoolboy and when he is a refined and
accomplished man. It is pleasing to reflect that the public mind
of England has softened while it has ripened, and that we have,
in the course of ages, become, not only a wiser, but also a
kinder people. There is scarcely a page of the history or lighter
literature of the seventeenth century which does not contain some
proof that our ancestors were less humane than their posterity.
The discipline of workshops, of schools, of private families,
though not more efficient than at present, was infinitely
harsher. Masters, well born and bred, were in the habit of
beating their servants. Pedagogues knew no way of imparting
knowledge but by beating their pupils. Husbands, of decent
station, were not ashamed to beat their wives. The implacability
of hostile factions was such as we can scarcely conceive. Whigs
were disposed to murmur because Stafford was suffered to die
without seeing his bowels burned before his face. Tories reviled
and insulted Russell as his coach passed from the Tower to the
scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields.204 As little mercy was shown by
the populace to sufferers of a humbler rank. If an offender was
put into the pillory, it was well if he escaped with life from
the shower of brickbats and paving stones.205 If he was tied to
the cart's tail, the crowd pressed round him, imploring the
hangman to give it the fellow well, and make him howl.206
Gentlemen arranged parties of pleasure to Bridewell on court days
for the purpose of seeing the wretched women who beat hemp there
whipped.207 A man pressed to death for refusing to plead, a woman
burned for coining, excited less sympathy than is now felt for a
galled horse or an overdriven ox. Fights compared with which a
boxing match is a refined and humane spectacle were among the
favourite diversions of a large part of the town. Multitudes
assembled to see gladiators hack each other to pieces with deadly
weapons, and shouted with delight when one of the combatants lost
a finger or an eye. The prisons were hells on earth, seminaries
of every crime and of every disease. At the assizes the lean and
yellow culprits brought with them from their cells to the dock an
atmosphere of stench and pestilence which sometimes avenged them
signally on bench, bar, and jury. But on all this misery society
looked with profound indifference. Nowhere could be found that
sensitive and restless compassion which has, in our time,
extended a powerful protection to the factory child, to the
Hindoo widow, to the negro slave, which pries into the stores and
watercasks of every emigrant ship, which winces at every lash
laid on the back of a drunken soldier, which will not suffer the
thief in the hulks to be ill fed or overworked, and which has
repeatedly endeavoured to save the life even of the murderer. It
is true that compassion ought, like all other feelings, to be
under the government of reason, and has, for want of such
government, produced some ridiculous and some deplorable effects.
But the more we study the annals of the past, the more shall we
rejoice that we live in a merciful age, in an age in which
cruelty is abhorred, and in which pain, even when deserved, is
inflicted reluctantly and from a sense of duty. Every class
doubtless has gained largely by this great moral change: but the
class which has gained most is the poorest, the most dependent,
and the most defenceless.

The general effect of the evidence which has been submitted to
the reader seems hardly to admit of doubt. Yet, in spite of
evidence, many will still image to themselves the England of the
Stuarts as a more pleasant country than the England in which we
live. It may at first sight seem strange that society, while
constantly moving forward with eager speed, should be constantly
looking backward with tender regret. But these two propensities,
inconsistent as they may appear, can easily be resolved into the
same principle. Both spring from our impatience of the state in
which we actually are. That impatience, while it stimulates us to
surpass preceding generations, disposes us to overrate their
happiness. It is, in some sense, unreasonable and ungrateful in
us to be constantly discontented with a condition which is
constantly improving. But, in truth, there is constant
improvement precisely because there is constant discontent. If we
were perfectly satisfied with the present, we should cease to
contrive, to labour, and to save with a view to the future. And
it is natural that, being dissatisfied with the present, we
should form a too favourable estimate of the past.

In truth we are under a deception similar to that which misleads
the traveller in the Arabian desert. Beneath the caravan all is
dry and bare: but far in advance, and far in the rear, is the
semblance of refreshing waters. The pilgrims hasten forward and
find nothing but sand where an hour before they had seen a lake.
They turn their eyes and see a lake where, an hour before, they
were toiling through sand. A similar illusion seems to haunt
nations through every stage of the long progress from poverty and
barbarism to the highest degrees of opulence and civilisation.
But if we resolutely chase the mirage backward, we shall find it
recede before us into the regions of fabulous antiquity. It is
now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times when
noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which would be
intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and shopkeepers
breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would raise a riot
in a modern workhouse, when to have a clean shirt once a week was
a privilege reserved for the higher class of gentry, when men
died faster in the purest country air than they now die in the
most pestilential lanes of our towns, and when men died faster in
the lanes of our towns than they now die on the coast of Guiana.
We too shall, in our turn, be outstripped, and in our turn be
envied. It may well be, in the twentieth century, that the
peasant of Dorsetshire may think himself miserably paid with
twenty shillings a week; that the carpenter at Greenwich may
receive ten shillings a day; that labouring men may be as little
used to dine without meat as they now are to eat rye bread; that
sanitary police and medical discoveries may have added several
more years to the average length of human life; that numerous
comforts and luxuries which are now unknown, or confined to a
few, may be within the reach of every diligent and thrifty
working man. And yet it may then be the mode to assert that the
increase of wealth and the progress of science have benefited the
few at the expense of the many, and to talk of the reign of Queen
Victoria as the time when England was truly merry England, when
all classes were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the
rich did not grind the faces of the poor, and when the poor did
not envy the splendour of the rich.

CHAPTER IV.

THE death of King Charles the Second took the nation by surprise.
His frame was naturally strong, and did not appear to have
suffered from excess. He had always been mindful of his health
even in his pleasures; and his habits were such as promise a long
life and a robust old age. Indolent as he was on all occasions
which required tension of the mind, he was active and persevering
in bodily exercise. He had, when young, been renowned as a tennis
player,208 and was, even in the decline of life, an indefatigable
walker. His ordinary pace was such that those who were admitted
to the honour of his society found it difficult to keep up with
him. He rose early, and generally passed three or four hours a
day in the open air. He might be seen, before the dew was off the
grass in St. James's Park, striding among the trees, playing with
his spaniels, and flinging corn to his ducks; and these
exhibitions endeared him to the common people, who always love to
See the great unbend.209

At length, towards the close of the year 1684, he was prevented,
by a slight attack of what was supposed to be gout, from rambling
as usual. He now spent his mornings in his laboratory, where he
amused himself with experiments on the properties of mercury. His
temper seemed to have suffered from confinement. He had no
apparent cause for disquiet. His kingdom was tranquil: he was not
in pressing want of money: his power was greater than it had ever
been: the party which had long thwarted him had been beaten down;
but the cheerfulness which had supported him against adverse
fortune had vanished in this season of prosperity. A trifle now
sufficed to depress those elastic spirits which had borne up
against defeat, exile, and penury. His irritation frequently
showed itself by looks and words such as could hardly have been
expected from a man so eminently distinguished by good humour and
good breeding. It was not supposed however that his constitution
was seriously impaired.210

His palace had seldom presented a gayer or a more scandalous
appearance than on the evening of Sunday the first of February
1685.211 Some grave persons who had gone thither, after the
fashion of that age, to pay their duty to their sovereign, and
who had expected that, on such a day, his court would wear a
decent aspect, were struck with astonishment and horror. The
great gallery of Whitehall, an admirable relic of the
magnificence of the Tudors, was crowded with revellers and
gamblers. The king sate there chatting and toying with three
women, whose charms were the boast, and whose vices were the
disgrace, of three nations. Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland,
was there, no longer young, but still retaining some traces of
that superb and voluptuous loveliness which twenty years before
overcame the hearts of all men. There too was the Duchess of
Portsmouth, whose soft and infantine features were lighted up
with the vivacity of France. Hortensia Mancini, Duchess of
Mazarin, and niece of the great Cardinal, completed the group.
She had been early removed from her native Italy to the court
where her uncle was supreme. His power and her own attractions
had drawn a crowd of illustrious suitors round her. Charles
himself, during his exile, had sought her hand in vain. No gift
of nature or of fortune seemed to be wanting to her. Her face was
beautiful with the rich beauty of the South, her understanding
quick, her manners graceful, her rank exalted, her possessions
immense; but her ungovernable passions had turned all these
blessings into curses. She had found the misery of an ill
assorted marriage intolerable, had fled from her husband, had
abandoned her vast wealth, and, after having astonished Rome and
Piedmont by her adventures, had fixed her abode in England. Her
house was the favourite resort of men of wit and pleasure, who,
for the sake of her smiles and her table, endured her frequent
fits of insolence and ill humour. Rochester and Godolphin
sometimes forgot the cares of state in her company. Barillon and
Saint Evremond found in her drawing room consolation for their
long banishment from Paris. The learning of Vossius, the wit of
Waller, were daily employed to flatter and amuse her. But her
diseased mind required stronger stimulants, and sought them in
gallantry, in basset, and in usquebaugh.212 While Charles.
flirted with his three sultanas, Hortensia's French page, a
handsome boy, whose vocal performances were the delight of
Whitehall, and were rewarded by numerous presents of rich
clothes, ponies, and guineas, warbled some amorous verses.213 A
party of twenty courtiers was seated at cards round a large table
on which gold was heaped in mountains.214 Even then the King had
complained that he did not feel quite well. He had no appetite
for his supper: his rest that night was broken; but on the
following morning he rose, as usual, early.

To that morning the contending factions in his council had,
during some days, looked forward with anxiety. The struggle
between Halifax and Rochester seemed to be approaching a decisive
crisis. Halifax, not content with having already driven his rival
from the Board of Treasury, had undertaken to prove him guilty of
such dishonesty or neglect in the conduct of the finances as
ought to be punished by dismission from the public service. It
was even whispered that the Lord President would probably be sent
to the Tower. The King had promised to enquire into the matter.
The second of February had been fixed for the investigation; and
several officers of the revenue had been ordered to attend with
their books on that day.215 But a great turn of fortune was at
hand.

Scarcely had Charles risen from his bed when his attendants
perceived that his utterance was indistinct, and that his
thoughts seemed to be wandering. Several men of rank had, as
usual, assembled to see their sovereign shaved and dressed. He
made an effort to converse with them in his usual gay style; but
his ghastly look surprised and alarmed them. Soon his face grew
black; his eyes turned in his head; he uttered a cry, staggered,
and fell into the arms of one of his lords. A physician who had
charge of the royal retorts and crucibles happened to be present.
He had no lances; but he opened a vein with a penknife. The blood
flowed freely; but the King was still insensible.

He was laid on his bed, where, during a short time, the Duchess
of Portsmouth hung over him with the familiarity of a wife. But
the alarm had been given. The Queen and the Duchess of York were
hastening to the room. The favourite concubine was forced to
retire to her own apartments. Those apartments had been thrice
pulled down and thrice rebuilt by her lover to gratify her
caprice. The very furniture of the chimney was massy silver.
Several fine paintings, which properly belonged to the Queen, had
been transferred to the dwelling of the mistress. The sideboards
were piled with richly wrought plate. In the niches stood
cabinets, the masterpieces of Japanese art. On the hangings,
fresh from the looms of Paris, were depicted, in tints which no
English tapestry could rival, birds of gorgeous plumage,
landscapes, hunting matches, the lordly terrace of Saint
Germains, the statues and fountains of Versailles.216 In the
midst of this splendour, purchased by guilt and shame, the
unhappy woman gave herself up to an agony of grief, which, to do
her justice, was not wholly selfish.

And now the gates of Whitehall, which ordinarily stood open to
all comers, were closed. But persons whose faces were known were
still permitted to enter. The antechambers and galleries were
soon filled to overflowing; and even the sick room was crowded
with peers, privy councillors, and foreign ministers. All the
medical men of note in London were summoned. So high did
political animosities run that the presence of some Whig
physicians was regarded as an extraordinary circumstance.217 One
Roman Catholic, whose skill was then widely renowned, Doctor
Thomas Short, was in attendance. Several of the prescriptions
have been preserved. One of them is signed by fourteen Doctors.
The patient was bled largely. Hot iron was applied to his head. A
loathsome volatile salt, extracted from human skulls, was forced
into his mouth. He recovered his senses; but he was evidently in
a situation of extreme danger.

The Queen was for a time assiduous in her attendance. The Duke of
York scarcely left his brother's bedside. The Primate and four
other bishops were then in London. They remained at Whitehall all
day, and took it by turns to sit up at night in the King's room.
The news of his illness filled the capital with sorrow and
dismay. For his easy temper and affable manners had won the
affection of a large part of the nation; and those who most
disliked him preferred his unprincipled levity to the stern and
earnest bigotry of his brother.

On the morning of Thursday the fifth of February, the London
Gazette announced that His Majesty was going on well, and was
thought by the physicians to be out of danger. The bells of all
the churches rang merrily; and preparations for bonfires were
made in the streets. But in the evening it was known that a
relapse had taken place, and that the medical attendants had
given up all hope. The public mind was greatly disturbed; but
there was no disposition to tumult. The Duke of York, who had
already taken on himself to give orders, ascertained that the
City was perfectly quiet, and that he might without difficulty be
proclaimed as soon as his brother should expire.

The King was in great pain, and complained that he felt as if a
fire was burning within him. Yet he bore up against his
sufferings with a fortitude which did not seem to belong to his
soft and luxurious nature. The sight of his misery affected his
wife so much that she fainted, and was carried senseless to her
chamber. The prelates who were in waiting had from the first
exhorted him to prepare for his end. They now thought it their
duty to address him in a still more urgent manner. William
Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, an honest and pious, though
narrowminded, man, used great freedom. "It is time,' he said, "to
speak out; for, Sir, you are about to appear before a Judge who
is no respecter of persons." The King answered not a word.

Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, then tried his powers of
persuasion. He was a man of parts and learning, of quick
sensibility and stainless virtue. His elaborate works have long
been forgotten; but his morning and evening hymns are still
repeated daily in thousands of dwellings. Though, like most of
his order, zealous for monarchy, he was no sycophant. Before he
became a Bishop, he had maintained the honour of his gown by
refusing, when the court was at Winchester, to let Eleanor Gwynn
lodge in the house which he occupied there as a prebendary.218
The King had sense enough to respect so manly a spirit. Of all
the prelates he liked Ken the best. It was to no purpose,
however, that the good Bishop now put forth all his eloquence.
His solemn and pathetic exhortation awed and melted the
bystanders to such a degree that some among them believed him to
be filled with the same spirit which, in the old time, had, by
the mouths of Nathan and Elias, called sinful princes to
repentance. Charles however was unmoved. He made no objection
indeed when the service for the visitation of the sick was read.
In reply to the pressing questions of the divines, he said that
he was sorry for what he had done amiss; and he suffered the
absolution to be pronounced over him according to the forms of
the Church of England: but, when he was urged to declare that he
died in the communion of that Church, he seemed not to hear what
was said; and nothing could induce him to take the Eucharist from
the hands of the Bishops. A table with bread and wine was brought
to his bedside, but in vain. Sometimes he said that there was no
hurry, and sometimes that he was too weak.

Many attributed this apathy to contempt for divine things, and
many to the stupor which often precedes death. But there were in
the palace a few persons who knew better. Charles had never been
a sincere member of the Established Church. His mind had long
oscillated between Hobbism and Popery. When his health was good
and his spirits high he was a scoffer. In his few serious moments
he was a Roman Catholic. The Duke of York was aware of this, but
was entirely occupied with the care of his own interests. He had
ordered the outports to be closed. He had posted detachments of
the Guards in different parts of the city. He had also procured
the feeble signature of the dying King to an instrument by which
some duties, granted only till the demise of the Crown, were let
to farm for a term of three years. These things occupied the
attention of James to such a degree that, though, on ordinary
occasions, he was indiscreetly and unseasonably eager to bring
over proselytes to his Church, he never reflected that his
brother was in danger of dying without the last sacraments. This
neglect was the more extraordinary because the Duchess of York
had, at the request of the Queen, suggested, on the morning on
which the King was taken ill, the propriety of procuring
spiritual assistance. For such assistance Charles was at last
indebted to an agency very different from that of his pious wife
and sister-in-law. A life of frivolty and vice had not
extinguished in the Duchess of Portsmouth all sentiments of
religion, or all that kindness which is the glory of her sex. The
French ambassador Barillon, who had come to the palace to enquire
after the King, paid her a visit. He found her in an agony of
sorrow. She took him into a secret room, and poured out her whole
heart to him. "I have," she said, "a thing of great moment to
tell you. If it were known, my head would be in danger. The King
is really and truly a Catholic; but he will die without being
reconciled to the Church. His bedchamber is full of Protestant
clergymen. I cannot enter it without giving scandal. The Duke is
thinking only of himself. Speak to him. Remind him that there is
a soul at stake. He is master now. He can clear the room. Go this
instant, or it will be too late."

Barillon hastened to the bedchamber, took the Duke aside, and
delivered the message of the mistress. The conscience of James
smote him. He started as if roused from sleep, and declared that
nothing should prevent him from discharging the sacred duty which
had been too long delayed. Several schemes were discussed and
rejected. At last the Duke commanded the crowd to stand aloof,
went to the bed, stooped down, and whispered something which none
of the spectators could hear, but which they supposed to be some
question about affairs of state. Charles answered in an audible
voice, "Yes, yes, with all my heart." None of the bystanders,
except the French Ambassador, guessed that the King was declaring
his wish to be admitted into the bosom of the Church of Rome.

"Shall I bring a priest?" said the Duke. "Do, brother," replied
the Sick man. "For God's sake do, and lose no time. But no; you
will get into trouble." "If it costs me my life," said the Duke,
"I will fetch a priest."

To find a priest, however, for such a purpose, at a moment's
notice, was not easy. For, as the law then stood, the person who
admitted a proselyte into the Roman Catholic Church was guilty of
a capital crime. The Count of Castel Melhor, a Portuguese
nobleman, who, driven by political troubles from his native land,
had been hospitably received at the English court, undertook to
procure a confessor. He had recourse to his countrymen who
belonged to the Queen's household; but he found that none of her
chaplains knew English or French enough to shrive the King. The
Duke and Barillon were about to send to the Venetian Minister for
a clergyman when they heard that a Benedictine monk, named John
Huddleston, happened to be at Whitehall. This man had, with great
risk to himself, saved the King's life after the battle of
Worcester, and had, on that account, been, ever since the
Restoration, a privileged person. In the sharpest proclamations
which had been put forth against Popish priests, when false
witnesses had inflamed the nation to fury, Huddleston had been
excepted by name.219 He readily consented to put his life a
second time in peril for his prince; but there was still a
difficulty. The honest monk was so illiterate that he did not
know what he ought to say on an occasion of such importance. He
however obtained some hints, through the intervention of Castel
Melhor, from a Portuguese ecclesiastic, and, thus instructed, was
brought up the back stairs by Chiffinch, a confidential servant,
who, if the satires of that age are to be credited, had often
introduced visitors of a very different description by the same
entrance. The Duke then, in the King's name, commanded all who
were present to quit the room, except Lewis Duras, Earl of
Feversham, and John Granville, Earl of Bath. Both these Lords
professed the Protestant religion; but James conceived that he
could count on their fidelity. Feversham, a Frenchman of noble
birth, and nephew of the great Turenne, held high rank in the
English army, and was Chamberlain to the Queen. Bath was Groom of
the Stole.

The Duke's orders were obeyed; and even the physicians withdrew.
The back door was then opened; and Father Huddleston entered. A
cloak had been thrown over his sacred vestments; and his shaven
crown was concealed by a flowing wig. "Sir," said the Duke, "this
good man once saved your life. He now comes to save your soul."
Charles faintly answered, "He is welcome." Huddleston went
through his part better than had been expected. He knelt by the
bed, listened to the confession, pronounced the absolution, and
administered extreme unction. He asked if the King wished to
receive the Lord's supper. "Surely," said Charles, "if I am not
unworthy." The host was brought in. Charles feebly strove to rise
and kneel before it. The priest made him lie still, and assured
him that God would accept the humiliation of the soul, and would
not require the humiliation of the body. The King found so much
difficulty in swallowing the bread that it was necessary to open
the door and procure a glass of water. This rite ended, the monk
held up a crucifix before the penitent, charged him to fix his
last thoughts on the sufferings of the Redeemer, and withdrew.
The whole ceremony had occupied about three quarters of an hour;
and, during that time, the courtiers who filled the outer room
had communicated their suspicions to each other by whispers and
significant glances. The door was at length thrown open, and the
crowd again filled the chamber of death.

It was now late in the evening. The King seemed much relieved by
what had passed. His natural children were brought to his
bedside, the Dukes of Grafton, Southampton, and Northumberland,
sons of the Duchess of Cleveland, the Duke of Saint Albans, son
of Eleanor Gwynn, and the Duke of Richmond, son of the Duchess of
Portsmouth. Charles blessed them all, but spoke with peculiar
tenderness to Richmond. One face which should have been there was
wanting. The eldest and best loved child was an exile and a
wanderer. His name was not once mentioned by his father.

During the night Charles earnestly recommended the Duchess of
Portsmouth and her boy to the care of James; "And do not," he
good-naturedly added, "let poor Nelly starve." The Queen sent
excuses for her absence by Halifax. She said that she was too
much disordered to resume her post by the couch, and implored
pardon for any offence which she might unwittingly have given.
"She ask my pardon, poor woman!" cried Charles; "I ask hers with
all my heart."

The morning light began to peep through the windows of Whitehall;
and Charles desired the attendants to pull aside the curtains,
that he might have one more look at the day. He remarked that it
was time to wind up a clock which stood near his bed. These
little circumstances were long remembered because they proved
beyond dispute that, when he declared himself a Roman Catholic,
he was in full possession of his faculties. He apologised to
those who had stood round him all night for the trouble which he
had caused. He had been, he said. a most unconscionable time
dying; but he hoped that they would excuse it. This was the last
glimpse of the exquisite urbanity, so often found potent to charm
away the resentment of a justly incensed nation. Soon after dawn
the speech of the dying man failed. Before ten his senses were
gone. Great numbers had repaired to the churches at the hour of
morning service. When the prayer for the King was read, loud
groans and sobs showed how deeply his people felt for him. At
noon on Friday, the sixth of February, he passed away without a
struggle.220

At that time the common people throughout Europe, and nowhere
more than in England, were in the habit of attributing the death
of princes, especially when the prince was popular and the death
unexpected, to the foulest and darkest kind of assassination.
Thus James the First had been accused of poisoning Prince Henry.
Thus Charles the First had been accused of poisoning James the
First. Thus when, in the time of the Commonwealth, the Princess
Elizabeth died at Carisbrook, it was loudly asserted that
Cromwell had stooped to the senseless and dastardly wickedness of
mixing noxious drugs with the food of a young girl whom he had no
conceivable motive to injure.221 A few years later, the rapid
decomposition of Cromwell's own corpse was ascribed by many to a
deadly potion administered in his medicine. The death of Charles
the Second could scarcely fail to occasion similar rumours. The
public ear had been repeatedly abused by stories of Popish plots
against his life. There was, therefore, in many minds, a strong
predisposition to suspicion; and there were some unlucky
circumstances which, to minds so predisposed, might seem to
indicate that a crime had been perpetrated. The fourteen Doctors
who deliberated on the King's case contradicted each other and
themselves. Some of them thought that his fit was epileptic, and
that he should be suffered to have his doze out. The majority
pronounced him apoplectic, and tortured him during some hours
like an Indian at a stake. Then it was determined to call his
complaint a fever, and to administer doses of bark. One
physician, however, protested against this course, and assured
the Queen that his brethren would kill the King among them.
Nothing better than dissension and vacillation could be expected
from such a multitude of advisers. But many of the vulgar not
unnaturally concluded, from the perplexity of the great masters
of the healing art, that the malady had some extraordinary
origin. There is reason to believe that a horrible suspicion did
actually cross the mind of Short, who, though skilful in his
profession, seems to have been a nervous and fanciful man, and
whose perceptions were probably confused by dread of the odious
imputations to which he, as a Roman Catholic, was peculiarly
exposed. We cannot, therefore, wonder that wild stories without
number were repeated and believed by the common people. His
Majesty's tongue had swelled to the size of a neat's tongue. A
cake of deleterious powder had been found in his brain. There
were blue spots on his breast, There were black spots on his
shoulder. Something had been, put in his snuff-box. Something had
been put into his broth. Something had been put into his
favourite dish of eggs and ambergrease. The Duchess of Portsmouth
had poisoned him in a cup of chocolate. The Queen had poisoned
him in a jar of dried pears. Such tales ought to be preserved;
for they furnish us with a measure of the intelligence and virtue
of the generation which eagerly devoured them. That no rumour of
the same kind has ever, in the present age, found credit among
us, even when lives on which great interest depended have been
terminated by unforeseen attacks of disease, is to be attributed
partly to the progress of medical and chemical science, but
partly also, it may be hoped, to the progress which the nation
has made in good sense, justice, and humanity.222

When all was over, James retired from the bedside to his closet,
where, during a quarter of an hour, he remained alone. Meanwhile
the Privy Councillors who were in the palace assembled. The new
King came forth, and took his place at the head of the board. He
commenced his administration, according to usage, by a speech to
the Council. He expressed his regret for the loss which he had
just sustained, and he promised to imitate the singular lenity
which had distinguished the late reign. He was aware, he said,
that he had been accused of a fondness for arbitrary power. But
that was not the only falsehood which had been told of him. He
was resolved to maintain the established government both in
Church and State. The Church of England he knew to be eminently
loyal. It should therefore always be his care to support and
defend her. The laws of England, he also knew, were sufficient to
make him as great a King as he could wish to be. He would not
relinquish his own rights; but he would respect the rights of
others. He had formerly risked his life in defense of his
country; and he would still go as far as any man in support of
her just liberties.

This speech was not, like modern speeches on similar occasions,
carefully prepared by the advisers of the sovereign. It was the
extemporaneous expression of the new King's feelings at a moment
of great excitement. The members of the Council broke forth into
clamours of delight and gratitude. The Lord President, Rochester,
in the name of his brethren, expressed a hope that His Majesty's
most welcome declaration would be made public. The Solicitor
General, Heneage Finch, offered to act as clerk. He was a zealous
churchman, and, as such, was naturally desirous that there should
be some permanent record of the gracious promises which had just
been uttered. "Those promises," he said, "have made so deep an
impression on me that I can repeat them word for word." He soon
produced his report. James read it, approved of it, and ordered
it to be published. At a later period he said that he had taken
this step without due consideration, that his unpremeditated
expressions touching the Church of England were too strong, and
that Finch had, with a dexterity which at the time escaped
notice, made them still stronger.223

The King had been exhausted by long watching and by many violent
emotions. He now retired to rest. The Privy Councillors, having
respectfully accompanied him to his bedchamber, returned to their
seats, and issued orders for the ceremony of proclamation. The
Guards were under arms; the heralds appeared in their gorgeous
coats; and the pageant proceeded without any obstruction. Casks
of wine were broken up in the streets, and all who passed were
invited to drink to the health of the new sovereign. But, though
an occasional shout was raised, the people were not in a joyous
mood. Tears were seen in many eyes; and it was remarked that
there was scarcely a housemaid in London who had not contrived to
procure some fragment of black crepe in honour of King
Charles.224

The funeral called forth much censure. It would, indeed, hardly
have been accounted worthy of a noble and opulent subject. The
Tories gently blamed the new King's parsimony: the Whigs sneered
at his want of natural affection; and the fiery Covenanters of
Scotland exultingly proclaimed that the curse denounced of old
against wicked princes had been signally fulfilled, and that the
departed tyrant had been buried with the burial of an ass.225 Yet
James commenced his administration with a large measure of public
good will. His speech to the Council appeared in print, and the
impression which it produced was highly favourable to him. This,
then, was the prince whom a faction had driven into exile and had
tried to rob of his birthright, on the ground that he was a
deadly enemy to the religion and laws of England. He had
triumphed: he was on the throne; and his first act was to declare
that he would defend the Church, and would strictly respect the
rights of his people. The estimate which all parties had formed
of his character, added weight to every word that fell from him.
The Whigs called him haughty, implacable, obstinate, regardless
of public opinion. The Tories, while they extolled his princely
virtues, had often lamented his neglect of the arts which
conciliate popularity. Satire itself had never represented him as
a man likely to court public favour by professing what he did not
feel, and by promising what he had no intention of performing. On
the Sunday which followed his accession, his speech was quoted in
many pulpits. "We have now for our Church," cried one loyal
preacher, "the word of a King, and of a King who was never worse
than his word." This pointed sentence was fast circulated through
town and country, and was soon the watchword of the whole Tory
party.226

The great offices of state had become vacant by the demise of the
crown and it was necessary for James to determine how they should
be filled. Few of the members of the late cabinet had any reason
to expect his favour. Sunderland, who was Secretary of State, and
Godolphin, who was First Lord of the Treasury, had supported the
Exclusion Bill. Halifax, who held the Privy Seal, had opposed
that bill with unrivalled powers of argument and eloquence. But
Halifax was the mortal enemy of despotism and of Popery. He saw
with dread the progress of the French arms on the Continent and
the influence of French gold in the counsels of England. Had his
advice been followed, the laws would have been strictly observed:
clemency would have been extended to the vanquished Whigs: the
Parliament would have been convoked in due season: an attempt
would have been made to reconcile our domestic factions; and the
principles of the Triple Alliance would again have guided our
foreign policy. He had therefore incurred the bitter animosity of
James. The Lord Keeper Guildford could hardly be said to belong
to either of the parties into which the court was divided. He
could by no means be called a friend of liberty; and yet he had
so great a reverence for the letter of the law that he was not a
serviceable tool of arbitrary power. He was accordingly
designated by the vehement Tories as a Trimmer, and was to James
an object of aversion with which contempt was largely mingled.
Ormond, who was Lord Steward of the Household and Viceroy of
Ireland, then resided at Dublin. His claims on the royal
gratitude were superior to those of any other subject. He had
fought bravely for Charles the First: he had shared the exile of
Charles the Second; and, since the Restoration, he had, in spite
of many provocations, kept his loyalty unstained. Though he had
been disgraced during the predominance of the Cabal, he had never
gone into factious opposition, and had, in the days of the Popish
Plot and the Exclusion Bill, been foremost among the supporters
of the throne. He was now old, and had been recently tried by the
most cruel of all calamities. He had followed to the grave a son
who should have been his own chief mourner, the gallant Ossory.
The eminent services, the venerable age, and the domestic
misfortunes of Ormond made him an object of general interest to
the nation. The Cavaliers regarded him as, both by right of
seniority and by right of merit, their head; and the Whigs knew
that, faithful as he had always been to the cause of monarchy, he
was no friend either to Popery or to arbitrary power. But, high
as he stood in the public estimation, he had little favor to
expect from his new master. James, indeed, while still a subject,
had urged his brother to make a complete change in the Irish
administration. Charles had assented; and it had been arranged
that, in a few months, there should be a new Lord Lieutenant.227

Rochester was the only member of the cabinet who stood high in
the favour of the King. The general expectation was that he would
be immediately placed at the head of affairs, and that all the
other great officers of the state would be changed. This
expectation proved to be well founded in part only. Rochester was
declared Lord Treasurer, and thus became prime minister. Neither
a Lord High Admiral nor a Board of Admiralty was appointed. The
new King, who loved the details of naval business, and would have
made a respectable clerk in a dockyard at Chatham, determined to
be his own minister of marine. Under him the management of that
important department was confided to Samuel Pepys, whose library
and diary have kept his name fresh to our time. No servant of the
late sovereign was publicly disgraced. Sunderland exerted so much
art and address, employed so many intercessors, and was in
possession of so many secrets, that he was suffered to retain his
seals. Godolphin's obsequiousness, industry, experience and
taciturnity, could ill be spared. As he was no longer wanted at
the Treasury, he was made Chamberlain to the Queen. With these
three Lords the King took counsel on all important questions. As
to Halifax, Ormond, and Guildford, he determined not yet to
dismiss them, but merely to humble and annoy them.

Halifax was told that he must give up the Privy seal and accept
the Presidency of the Council. He submitted with extreme
reluctance. For, though the President of the Council had always
taken precedence of the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord Privy Seal was,
in that age a much more important officer than the Lord
President. Rochester had not forgotten the jest which had been
made a few months before on his own removal from the Treasury,
and enjoyed in his turn the pleasure of kicking his rival up
stairs. The Privy Seal was delivered to Rochester's elder
brother, Henry Earl of Clarendon.

To Barillon James expressed the strongest dislike of Halifax. "I
know him well, I never can trust him. He shall have no share in
the management of public business. As to the place which I have
given him, it will just serve to show how little influence he
has." But to Halifax it was thought convenient to hold a very
different language. "All the past is forgotten," said the King,
"except the service which you did me in the debate on the
Exclusion Bill." This speech has often been cited to prove that
James was not so vindictive as he had been called by his enemies.
It seems rather to prove that he by no means deserved the praises
which have been bestowed on his sincerity by his friends.228

Ormond was politely informed that his services were no longer
needed in Ireland, and was invited to repair to Whitehall, and to
perform the functions of Lord Steward. He dutifully submitted,
but did not affect to deny that the new arrangement wounded his
feelings deeply. On the eve of his departure he gave a
magnificent banquet at Kilmainham Hospital, then just completed,
to the officers of the garrison of Dublin. After dinner he rose,
filled a goblet to the brim with wine, and, holding it up, asked
whether he had spilt one drop. "No, gentlemen; whatever the
courtiers may say, I am not yet sunk into dotage. My hand does
not fail me yet: and my hand is not steadier than my heart. To
the health of King James!" Such was the last farewell of Ormond
to Ireland. He left the administration in the hands of Lords
Justices, and repaired to London, where he was received with
unusual marks of public respect. Many persons of rank went forth
to meet him on the road. A long train of eguipages followed him
into Saint James's Square, where his mansion stood; and the
Square was thronged by a multitude which greeted him with loud
acclamations.229

The Great Seal was left in Guildford's custody; but a marked
indignity was at the same time offered to him. It was determined
that another lawyer of more vigour and audacity should be called
to assist in the administration. The person selected was Sir
George Jeffreys, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench. The
depravity of this man has passed into a proverb. Both the great
English parties have attacked his memory with emulous violence:
for the Whigs considered him as their most barbarous enemy; and
the Tories found it convenient to throw on him the blame of all
the crimes which had sullied their triumph. A diligent and candid
enquiry will show that some frightful stories which have been
told concerning him are false or exaggerated. Yet the
dispassionate historian will be able to make very little
deduction from the vast mass of infamy with which the memory of
the wicked judge has been loaded.

He was a man of quick and vigorous parts, but constitutionally
prone to insolence and to the angry passions. When just emerging
from boyhood he had risen into practice at the Old Bailey bar, a
bar where advocates have always used a license of tongue unknown
in Westminster Hall. Here, during many years his chief business
was to examine and crossexamine the most hardened miscreants of a
great capital. Daily conflicts with prostitutes and thieves
called out and exercised his powers so effectually that he became
the most consummate bully ever known in his profession.
Tenderness for others and respect for himself were feelings alike
unknown to him. He acquired a boundless command of the rhetoric
in which the vulgar express hatred and contempt. The profusion of
maledictions and vituperative epithets which composed his
vocabulary could hardly have been rivalled in the fishmarket or
the beargarden. His countenance and his voice must always have
been unamiable. But these natural advantages,--for such he seems
to have thought them,--he had improved to such a degree that
there were few who, in his paroxysms of rage, could see or hear
him without emotion. Impudence and ferocity sate upon his brow.
The glare of his eyes had a fascination for the unhappy victim on
whom they were fixed. Yet his brow and his eye were less terrible
than the savage lines of his mouth. His yell of fury, as was said
by one who had often heard it, sounded like the thunder of the
judgment day. These qualifications he carried, while still a
young man, from the bar to the bench. He early became Common
Serjeant, and then Recorder of London. As a judge at the City
sessions he exhibited the same propensities which afterwards, in
a higher post, gained for him an unenviable immortality. Already
might be remarked in him the most odious vice which is incident
to human nature, a delight in misery merely as misery. There was
a fiendish exultation in the way in which he pronounced sentence
on offenders. Their weeping and imploring seemed to titillate him
voluptuously; and he loved to scare them into fits by dilating
with luxuriant amplification on all the details of what they were
to suffer. Thus, when he had an opportunity of ordering an
unlucky adventuress to be whipped at the cart's tail, "Hangman,"
he would exclaim, "I charge you to pay particular attention to
this lady! Scourge her soundly man! Scourge her till the blood
runs down! It is Christmas, a cold time for Madam to strip in!
See that you warm her shoulders thoroughly!"230 He was hardly
less facetious when he passed judgment on poor Lodowick
Muggleton, the drunken tailor who fancied himself a prophet.
"Impudent rogue!" roared Jeffreys, "thou shalt have an easy,
easy, easy punishment!" One part of this easy punishment was the
pillory, in which the wretched fanatic was almost killed with
brickbats.231

By this time the heart of Jeffreys had been hardened to that
temper which tyrants require in their worst implements. He had
hitherto looked for professional advancement to the corporation
of London. He had therefore professed himself a Roundhead, and
had always appeared to be in a higher state of exhilaration when
he explained to Popish priests that they were to be cut down
alive, and were to see their own bowels burned, than when he
passed ordinary sentences of death. But, as soon as he had got
all that the city could give, he made haste to sell his forehead
of brass and his tongue of venom to the Court. Chiffinch, who was
accustomed to act as broker in infamous contracts of more than
one kind, lent his aid. He had conducted many amorous and many
political intrigues; but he assuredly never rendered a more
scandalous service to his masters than when he introduced
Jeffreys to Whitehall. The renegade soon found a patron in the
obdurate and revengeful James, but was always regarded with scorn
and disgust by Charles, whose faults, great as they were, had no
affinity with insolence and cruelty. "That man," said the King,
"has no learning, no sense, no manners, and more impudence than
ten carted street-walkers."232 Work was to be done, however,
which could be trusted to no man who reverenced law or was
sensible of shame; and thus Jeffreys, at an age at which a
barrister thinks himself fortunate if he is employed to conduct
an important cause, was made Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

His enemies could not deny that he possessed some of the
qualities of a great judge. His legal knowledge, indeed, was
merely such as he had picked up in practice of no very high kind.
But he had one of those happily constituted intellects which,
across labyrinths of sophistry, and through masses of immaterial
facts, go straight to the true point. Of his intellect, however,
he seldom had the full use. Even in civil causes his malevolent
and despotic temper perpetually disordered his judgment. To enter
his court was to enter the den of a wild beast, which none could
tame, and which was as likely to be roused to rage by caresses as
by attacks. He frequently poured forth on plaintiffs and
defendants, barristers and attorneys, witnesses and jurymen,
torrents of frantic abuse, intermixed with oaths and curses. His
looks and tones had inspired terror when he was merely a young
advocate struggling into practice. Now that he was at the head of
the most formidable tribunal in the realm, there were few indeed
who did not tremble before him. Even when he was sober, his
violence was sufficiently frightful. But in general his reason
was overclouded and his evil passions stimulated by the fumes of
intoxication. His evenings were ordinarily given to revelry.
People who saw him only over his bottle would have supposed him
to be a man gross indeed, sottish, and addicted to low company
and low merriment, but social and goodhumoured. He was constantly
surrounded on such occasions by buffoons selected, for the most
part, from among the vilest pettifoggers who practiced before
him. These men bantered and abused each other for his
entertainment. He joined in their ribald talk, sang catches with
them, and, when his head grew hot, hugged and kissed them in an
ecstasy of drunken fondness. But though wine at first seemed to
soften his heart, the effect a few hours later was very
different. He often came to the judgment seat, having kept the
court waiting long, and yet having but half slept off his
debauch, his cheeks on fire, his eyes staring like those of a
maniac. When he was in this state, his boon companions of the
preceding night, if they were wise, kept out of his way: for the
recollection of the familiarity to which he had admitted them
inflamed his malignity; and he was sure to take every opportunity
of overwhelming them with execration and invective. Not the least
odious of his many odious peculiarities was the pleasure which he
took in publicly browbeating and mortifying those whom, in his
fits of maudlin tenderness, he had encouraged to presume on his
favour.

The services which the government had expected from him were
performed, not merely without flinching, but eagerly and
triumphantly. His first exploit was the judicial murder of
Algernon Sidney. What followed was in perfect harmony with this
beginning. Respectable Tories lamented the disgrace which the
barbarity and indecency of so great a functionary brought upon
the administration of justice. But the excesses which filled such
men with horror were titles to the esteem of James. Jeffreys,
therefore, very soon after the death of Charles, obtained a seat
in the cabinet and a peerage. This last honour was a signal mark
of royal approbation. For, since the judicial system of the realm
had been remodelled in the thirteenth century, no Chief Justice
had been a Lord of Parliament.233

Guildford now found himself superseded in all his political
functions, and restricted to his business as a judge in equity.
At Council he was treated by Jeffreys with marked incivility. The
whole legal patronage was in the hands of the Chief Justice; and
it was well known by the bar that the surest way to propitiate
the Chief Justice was to treat the Lord Keeper with disrespect.

James had not been many hours King when a dispute arose between
the two heads of the law. The customs had been settled on Charles
for life only, and could not therefore be legally exacted by the
new sovereign. Some weeks must elapse before a House of Commons
could be chosen. If, in the meantime, the duties were suspended,
the revenue would suffer; the regular course of trade would be
interrupted; the consumer would derive no benefit, and the only
gainers would be those fortunate speculators whose cargoes might
happen to arrive during the interval between the demise of the
crown and the meeting of the Parliament. The Treasury was
besieged by merchants whose warehouses were filled with goods on
which duty had been paid, and who were in grievous apprehension
of being undersold and ruined. Impartial men must admit that this
was one of those cases in which a government may be justified in
deviating from the strictly constitutional course. But when it is
necessary to deviate from the strictly constitutional course, the
deviation clearly ought to be no greater than the necessity
requires. Guildford felt this, and gave advice which did him
honour. He proposed that the duties should be levied, but should
be kept in the Exchequer apart from other sums till the
Parliament should meet. In this way the King, while violating the
letter of the laws, would show that he wished to conform to their
spirit, Jeffreys gave very different counsel. He advised James to
put forth an edict declaring it to be His Majesty's will and
pleasure that the customs should continue to be paid. This advice
was well suited to the King's temper. The judicious proposition
of the Lord Keeper was rejected as worthy only of a Whig, or of
what was still worse, a Trimmer. A proclamation, such as the
Chief Justice had suggested, appeared. Some people had expected
that a violent outbreak of public indignation would be the
consequence; but they were deceived. The spirit of opposition had
not yet revived; and the court might safely venture to take steps
which, five years before, would have produced a rebellion. In the
City of London, lately so turbulent, scarcely a murmur was
heard.234

The proclamation, which announced that the customs would still be
levied, announced also that a Parliament would shortly meet. It
was not without many misgivings that James had determined to call
the Estates of his realm together. The moment was, indeed. most
auspicious for a general election. Never since the accession of
the House of Stuart had the constituent bodies been so favourably
disposed towards the Court. But the new sovereign's mind was
haunted by an apprehension not to be mentioned even at this
distance of time, without shame and indignation. He was afraid
that by summoning his Parliament he might incur the displeasure
of the King of France.

To the King of France it mattered little which of the two English
factions triumphed at the elections: for all the Parliaments
which had met since the Restoration, whatever might have been
their temper as to domestic politics, had been jealous of the
growing power of the House of Bourbon. On this subject there was
little difference between the Whigs and the sturdy country
gentlemen who formed the main strength of the Tory party. Lewis
had therefore spared neither bribes nor menaces to prevent
Charles from convoking the Houses; and James, who had from the
first been in the secret of his brother's foreign politics, had,
in becoming King of England, become also a hireling and vassal of
France.

Rochester, Godolphin, and Sunderland, who now formed the interior
cabinet, were perfectly aware that their late master had been in
the habit of receiving money from the court of Versailles. They
were consulted by James as to the expediency of convoking the
legislature. They acknowledged the importance of keeping Lewis in
good humour: but it seemed to them that the calling of a
Parliament was not a matter of choice. Patient as the nation
appeared to be, there were limits to its patience. The principle,
that the money of the subject could not be lawfully taken by the
King without the assent of the Commons, was firmly rooted in the
public mind; and though, on all extraordinary emergency even
Whigs might be willing to pay, during a few weeks, duties not
imposed by statute, it was certain that even Tories would become
refractory if such irregular taxation should continue longer than
the special circumstances which alone justified it. The Houses
then must meet; and since it was so, the sooner they were
summoned the better. Even the short delay which would be
occasioned by a reference to Versailles might produce irreparable
mischief. Discontent and suspicion would spread fast through
society. Halifax would complain that the fundamental principles
of the constitution were violated. The Lord Keeper, like a
cowardly pedantic special pleader as he was, would take the same
side. What might have been done with a good grace would at last
be done with a bad grace. Those very ministers whom His Majesty
most wished to lower in the public estimation would gain
popularity at his expense. The ill temper of the nation might
seriously affect the result of the elections. These arguments
were unanswerable. The King therefore notified to the country his
intention of holding a Parliament. But he was painfully anxious
to exculpate himself from the guilt of having acted undutifully
and disrespectfully towards France. He led Barillon into a
private room, and there apologised for having dared to take so
important a step without the previous sanction of Lewis. "Assure
your master," said James, "of my gratitude and attachment. I know
that without his protection I can do nothing. I know what
troubles my brother brought on himself by not adhering steadily
to France. I will take good care not to let the Houses meddle
with foreign affairs. If I see in them any disposition to make
mischief, I will send them about their business. Explain this to
my good brother. I hope that he will not take it amiss that I
have acted without consulting him. He has a right to be
consulted; and it is my wish to consult him about everything. But
in this case the delay even of a week might have produced serious
consequences."

These ignominious excuses were, on the following morning,
repeated by Rochester. Barillon received them civilly. Rochester,
grown bolder, proceeded to ask for money. "It will be well laid
out," he said: "your master cannot employ his revenues better.
Represent to him strongly how important it is that the King of
England should be dependent, not on his own people, but on the
friendship of France alone."235

Barillon hastened to communicate to Lewis the wishes of the
English government; but Lewis had already anticipated them. His
first act, after he was apprised of the death of Charles, was to
collect bills of exchange on England to the amount of five
hundred thousand livres, a sum equivalent to about thirty-seven
thousand five hundred pounds sterling Such bills were not then to
be easily procured in Paris at day's notice. In a few hours,
however, the purchase was effected, and a courier started for
London.236 As soon as Barillon received the remittance, he flew
to Whitehall, and communicated the welcome news. James was not
ashamed to shed, or pretend to shed, tears of delight and
gratitude. "Nobody but your King," he said, "does such kind, such
noble things. I never can be grateful enough. Assure him that my
attachment will last to the end of my days." Rochester,
Sunderland, and Godolphin came, one after another, to embrace the
ambassador, and to whisper to him that he had given new life to
their royal master.237

But though James and his three advisers were pleased with the
promptitude which Lewis had shown, they were by no means
satisfied with the amount of the donation. As they were afraid,
however, that they might give offence by importunate mendicancy,
they merely hinted their wishes. They declared that they had no
intention of haggling with so generous a benefactor as the French
King, and that they were willing to trust entirely to his
munificence. They, at the same time, attempted to propitiate him
by a large sacrifice of national honour. It was well known that
one chief end of his politics was to add the Belgian provinces to
his dominions. England was bound by a treaty which had been
concluded with Spain when Danby was Lord Treasurer, to resist any
attempt which France might make on those provinces. The three
ministers informed Barillon that their master considered that
treaty as no longer obligatory. It had been made, they said, by
Charles: it might, perhaps, have been binding on him; but his
brother did not think himself bound by it. The most Christian
King might, therefore, without any fear of opposition from
England, proceed to annex Brabant and Hainault to his empire.238

It was at the same time resolved that an extraordinary embassy
should be sent to assure Lewis of the gratitude and affection of
James. For this mission was selected a man who did not as yet
occupy a very eminent position, but whose renown, strangely made
up of infamy and glory, filled at a later period the whole
civilized world.

Soon after the Restoration, in the gay and dissolute times which
have been celebrated by the lively pen of Hamilton, James, young
and ardent in the pursuit of pleasure, had been attracted to
Arabella Churchill, one of the maids of honour who waited on his
first wife. The young lady was plain: but the taste of James was
not nice: and she became his avowed mistress. She was the
daughter of a poor Cavalier knight who haunted Whitehall, and
made himself ridiculous by publishing a dull and affected folio,
long forgotten, in praise of monarchy and monarchs. The
necessities of the Churchills were pressing: their loyalty was
ardent: and their only feeling about Arabella's seduction seems
to have been joyful surprise that so homely a girl should have
attained such high preferment.

Her interest was indeed of great use to her relations: but none
of them was so fortunate as her eldest brother John, a fine
youth, who carried a pair of colours in the foot guards. He rose
fast in the court and in the army, and was early distinguished as
a man of fashion and of pleasure. His stature was commanding, his
face handsome, his address singularly winning, yet of such
dignity that the most impertinent fops never ventured to take any
liberty with him; his temper, even in the most vexatious and
irritating circumstances, always under perfect command. His
education had been so much neglected that he could not spell the
most common words of his own language: but his acute and vigorous
understanding amply supplied the place of book learning. He was
not talkative: but when he was forced to speak in public, his
natural eloquence moved the envy of practiced rhetoricians.239
His courage was singularly cool and imperturbable. During many
years of anxiety and peril, he never, in any emergency, lost even
for a moment, the perfect use of his admirable judgment.

In his twenty-third year he was sent with his regiment to join
the French forces, then engaged in operations against Holland.
His serene intrepidity distinguished him among thousands of brave
soldiers. His professional skill commanded the respect of veteran
officers. He was publicly thanked at the head of the army, and
received many marks of esteem and confidence from Turenne, who
was then at the height of military glory.

Unhappily the splendid qualities of John Churchill were mingled
with alloy of the most sordid kind. Some propensities, which in
youth are singularly ungraceful, began very early to show
themselves in him. He was thrifty in his very vices, and levied
ample contributions on ladies enriched by the spoils of more
liberal lovers. He was, during a short time, the object of the
violent but fickle fondness of the Duchess of Cleveland. On one
occasion he was caught with her by the King, and was forced to
leap out of the window. She rewarded this hazardous feat of
gallantry with a present of five thousand pounds. With this sum
the prudent young hero instantly bought an annuity of five
hundred a year, well secured on landed property.240 Already his
private drawer contained a hoard of broad pieces which, fifty
years later, when he was a Duke, a Prince of the Empire, and the
richest subject in Europe, remained untouched.241

After the close of the war he was attached to the household of
the Duke of York, accompanied his patron to the Low Countries and
to Edinburgh, and was rewarded for his services with a Scotch
peerage and with the command of the only regiment of dragoons
which was then on the English establishment.242 His wife had a
post in the family of James's younger daughter, the Princess of
Denmark.

Lord Churchill was now sent as ambassador extraordinary to
Versailles. He had it in charge to express the warm gratitude of
the English government for the money which had been so generously
bestowed. It had been originally intended that he should at the
same time ask Lewis for a much larger sum; but, on full
consideration, it was apprehended that such indelicate greediness
might disgust the benefactor whose spontaneous liberality had
been so signally displayed. Churchill was therefore directed to
confine himself to thanks for what was past, and to say nothing
about the future.243

But James and his ministers, even while protesting that they did
not mean to be importunate, contrived to hint, very intelligibly,
what they wished and expected. In the French ambassador they had
a dexterous, a zealous, and perhaps, not a disinterested
intercessor. Lewis made some difficulties, probably with the
design of enhancing the value of his gifts. In a very few weeks,
however, Barillon received from Versailles fifteen hundred
thousand livres more. This sum, equivalent to about a hundred and
twelve thousand pounds sterling, he was instructed to dole out
cautiously. He was authorised to furnish the English government
with thirty thousand pounds, for the purpose of corrupting
members of the New House of Commons. The rest he was directed to
keep in reserve for some extraordinary emergency, such as a
dissolution or an insurrection.244

The turpitude of these transactions is universally acknowledged:
but their real nature seems to be often misunderstood: for though
the foreign policy of the last two Kings of the House of Stuart
has never, since the correspondence of Barillon was exposed to
the public eye, found an apologist among us, there is still a
party which labours to excuse their domestic policy. Yet it is
certain that between their domestic policy and their foreign
policy there was a necessary and indissoluble connection. If they
had upheld, during a single year, the honour of the country
abroad, they would have been compelled to change the whole system
of their administration at home. To praise them for refusing to
govern in conformity with the sense of Parliament, and yet to
blame them for submitting to the dictation of Lewis, is
inconsistent. For they had only one choice, to be dependent on
Lewis, or to be dependent on Parliament.

James, to do him justice, would gladly have found out a third
way: but there was none. He became the slave of France: but it
would be incorrect to represent him as a contented slave. He had
spirit enough to be at times angry with himself for submitting to
such thraldom, and impatient to break loose from it; and this
disposition was studiously encouraged by the agents of many
foreign powers.

His accession had excited hopes and fears in every continental
court: and the commencement of his administration was watched by
strangers with interest scarcely less deep than that which was
felt by his own subjects. One government alone wished that the
troubles which had, during three generations, distracted England,
might be eternal. All other governments, whether republican or
monarchical, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, wished to see
those troubles happily terminated.

The nature of the long contest between the Stuarts and their
Parliaments was indeed very imperfectly apprehended by foreign
statesmen: but no statesman could fail to perceive the effect
which that contest had produced on the balance of power in
Europe. In ordinary circumstances, the sympathies of the courts
of Vienna and Madrid would doubtless have been with a prince
struggling against subjects, and especially with a Roman Catholic
prince struggling against heretical subjects: but all such
sympathies were now overpowered by a stronger feeling. The fear
and hatred inspired by the greatness, the injustice, and the
arrogance of the French King were at the height. His neighbours
might well doubt whether it were more dangerous to be at war or
at peace with him. For in peace he continued to plunder and to
outrage them; and they had tried the chances of war against him
in vain. In this perplexity they looked with intense anxiety
towards England. Would she act on the principles of the Triple
Alliance or on the principles of the treaty of Dover? On that
issue depended the fate of all her neighbours. With her help
Lewis might yet be withstood: but no help could be expected from
her till she was at unity with herself. Before the strife between
the throne and the Parliament began, she had been a power of the
first rank: on the day on which that strife terminated she became
a power of the first rank again: but while the dispute remained
undecided, she was condemned to inaction and to vassalage. She
had been great under the Plantagenets and Tudors: she was again
great under the princes who reigned after the Revolution: but,
under the Kings of the House of Stuart, she was a blank in the
map of Europe. She had lost one class of energies, and had not
yet acquired another. That species of force, which, in the
fourteenth century had enabled her to humble France and Spain,
had ceased to exist. That species of force, which, in the
eighteenth century, humbled France and Spain once more, had not
yet been called into action. The government was no longer a
limited monarchy after the fashion of the middle ages. It had not
yet become a limited monarchy after the modern fashion. With the
vices of two different systems it had the strength of neither.
The elements of our polity, instead of combining in harmony,
counteracted and neutralised each other All was transition,
conflict, and disorder. The chief business of the sovereign was
to infringe the privileges of the legislature. The chief business
of the legislature was to encroach on the prerogatives of the
sovereign. The King readily accepted foreign aid, which relieved
him from the misery of being dependent on a mutinous Parliament.
The Parliament refused to the King the means of supporting the
national honor abroad, from an apprehension, too well founded,
that those means might be employed in order to establish
despotism at home. The effect of these jealousies was that our
country, with all her vast resources, was of as little weight in
Christendom as the duchy of Savoy or the duchy of Lorraine, and
certainly of far less weight than the small province of Holland.

France was deeply interested in prolonging this state of
things.245 All other powers were deeply interested in bringing it
to a close. The general wish of Europe was that James would
govern in conformity with law and with public opinion. From the
Escurial itself came letters, expressing an earnest hope that the
new King of England would be on good terms with his Parliament
and his people.246 From the Vatican itself came cautions against
immoderate zeal for the Roman Catholic faith. Benedict
Odescalchi, who filled the papal chair under the name of Innocent
the Eleventh, felt, in his character of temporal sovereign, all
those apprehensions with which other princes watched the progress
of the French power. He had also grounds of uneasiness which were
peculiar to himself. It was a happy circumstance for the
Protestant religion that, at the moment when the last Roman
Catholic King of England mounted the throne, the Roman Catholic
Church was torn by dissension, and threatened with a new schism.
A quarrel similar to that which had raged in the eleventh century
between the Emperors and the Supreme Pontiffs had arisen between
Lewis and Innocent. Lewis, zealous even to bigotry for the
doctrines of the Church of Rome, but tenacious of his regal
authority, accused the Pope of encroaching on the secular rights
of the French Crown, and was in turn accused by the Pope of
encroaching on the spiritual power of the keys. The King, haughty
as he was, encountered a spirit even more determined than his
own. Innocent was, in all private relations, the meekest and
gentlest of men: but when he spoke officially from the chair of
St. Peter, he spoke in the tones of Gregory the Seventh and of
Sixtus the Fifth. The dispute became serious. Agents of the King
were excommunicated. Adherents of the Pope were banished. The
King made the champions of his authority Bishops. The Pope
refused them institution. They took possession of the Episcopal
palaces and revenues: but they were incompetent to perform the
Episcopal functions. Before the struggle terminated, there were
in France thirty prelates who could not confirm or ordain.247

Had any prince then living, except Lewis, been engaged in such a
dispute with the Vatican, he would have had all Protestant
governments on his side. But the fear and resentment which the
ambition and insolence of the French King had inspired were such
that whoever had the courage manfully to oppose him was sure of
public sympathy. Even Lutherans and Calvinists, who had always
detested the Pope, could not refrain from wishing him success
against a tyrant who aimed at universal monarchy. It was thus
that, in the present century, many who regarded Pius the Seventh
as Antichrist were well pleased to see Antichrist confront the
gigantic power of Napoleon.

The resentment which Innocent felt towards France disposed him to
take a mild and liberal view of the affairs of England. The
return of the English people to the fold of which he was the
shepherd would undoubtedly have rejoiced his soul. But he was too
wise a man to believe that a nation so bold and stubborn, could
be brought back to the Church of Rome by the violent and
unconstitutional exercise of royal authority. It was not
difficult to foresee that, if James attempted to promote the
interests of his religion by illegal and unpopular means, the
attempt would fail; the hatred with which the heretical islanders
regarded the true faith would become fiercer and stronger than
ever; and an indissoluble association would be created in their
minds between Protestantism and civil freedom, between Popery and
arbitrary power. In the meantime the King would be an object of
aversion and suspicion to his people. England would still be, as
she had been under James the First, under Charles the First, and
under Charles the Second, a power of the third rank; and France
would domineer unchecked beyond the Alps and the Rhine. On the
other hand, it was probable that James, by acting with prudence
and moderation, by strictly observing the laws and by exerting
himself to win the confidence of his Parliament, might be able to
obtain, for the professors of his religion, a large measure of
relief. Penal statutes would go first. Statutes imposing civil
incapacities would soon follow. In the meantime, the English King
and the English nation united might head the European coalition,
and might oppose an insuperable barrier to the cupidity of Lewis.

Innocent was confirmed in his judgment by the principal
Englishmen who resided at his court. Of these the most
illustrious was Philip Howard, sprung from the noblest houses of
Britain, grandson, on one side, of an Earl of Arundel, on the
other, of a Duke of Lennox. Philip had long been a member of the
sacred college: he was commonly designated as the Cardinal of
England; and he was the chief counsellor of the Holy See in
matters relating to his country. He had been driven into exile by
the outcry of Protestant bigots; and a member of his family, the
unfortunate Stafford, had fallen a victim to their rage. But
neither the Cardinal's own wrongs, nor those of his house, had so
heated his mind as to make him a rash adviser. Every letter,
therefore, which went from the Vatican to Whitehall, recommended
patience, moderation, and respect for the prejudices of the
English people.248

In the mind of James there was a great conflict. We should do him
injustice if we supposed that a state of vassalage was agreeable
to his temper. He loved authority and business. He had a high
sense of his own personal dignity. Nay, he was not altogether
destitute of a sentiment which bore some affinity to patriotism.
It galled his soul to think that the kingdom which he ruled was
of far less account in the world than many states which possessed
smaller natural advantages; and he listened eagerly to foreign
ministers when they urged him to assert the dignity of his rank,
to place himself at the head of a great confederacy, to become
the protector of injured nations, and to tame the pride of that
power which held the Continent in awe. Such exhortations made his
heart swell with emotions unknown to his careless and effeminate
brother. But those emotions were soon subdued by a stronger
feeling. A vigorous foreign policy necessarily implied a
conciliatory domestic policy. It was impossible at once to
confront the might of France and to trample on the liberties of
England. The executive government could undertake nothing great
without the support of the Commons, and could obtain their
support only by acting in conformity with their opinion. Thus
James found that the two things which he most desired could not
be enjoyed together. His second wish was to be feared and
respected abroad. But his first wish was to be absolute master at
home. Between the incompatible objects on which his heart was set
he, for a time, went irresolutely to and fro. The conflict in his
own breast gave to his public acts a strange appearance of
indecision and insincerity. Those who, without the clue,
attempted to explore the maze of his politics were unable to
understand how the same man could be, in the same week, so
haughty and so mean. Even Lewis was perplexed by the vagaries of
an ally who passed, in a few hours, from homage to defiance, and
from defiance to homage. Yet, now that the whole conduct of James
is before us, this inconsistency seems to admit of a simple
explanation.

At the moment of his accession he was in doubt whether the
kingdom would peaceably submit to his authority. The
Exclusionists, lately so powerful, might rise in arms against
him. He might be in great need of French money and French troops.
He was therefore, during some days, content to be a sycophant and
a mendicant. He humbly apologised for daring to call his
Parliament together without the consent of the French government.
He begged hard for a French subsidy. He wept with joy over the
French bills of exchange. He sent to Versailles a special embassy
charged with assurances of his gratitude, attachment, and
submission. But scarcely had the embassy departed when his
feelings underwent a change. He had been everywhere proclaimed
without one riot, without one seditions outcry. From all corners
of the island he received intelligence that his subjects were
tranquil and obedient. His spirit rose. The degrading relation in
which he stood to a foreign power seemed intolerable. He became
proud, punctilious, boastful, quarrelsome. He held such high
language about the dignity of his crown and the balance of power
that his whole court fully expected a complete revolution in the
foreign politics of the realm. He commanded Churchill to send
home a minute report of the ceremonial of Versailles, in order
that the honours with which the English embassy was received
there might be repaid, and not more than repaid, to the
representative of France at Whitehall. The news of this change
was received with delight at Madrid, Vienna, and the Hague.249
Lewis was at first merely diverted. "My good ally talks big," he
said; "but he is as fond of my pistoles as ever his brother was."
Soon, however, the altered demeanour of James, and the hopes with
which that demeanour inspired both the branches of the House of
Austria, began to call for more serious notice. A remarkable
letter is still extant, in which the French King intimated a
strong suspicion that he had been duped, and that the very money
which he had sent to Westminster would be employed against
him.250

By this time England had recovered from the sadness and anxiety
caused by the death of the goodnatured Charles. The Tories were
loud in professions of attachment to their new master. The hatred
of the Whigs was kept down by fear. That great mass which is not
steadily Whig or Tory, but which inclines alternately to Whiggism
and to Toryism, was still on the Tory side. The reaction which
had followed the dissolution of the 0xford parliament had not yet
spent its force.

The King early put the loyalty of his Protestant friends to the
proof. While he was a subject, he had been in the habit of
hearing mass with closed doors in a small oratory which had been
fitted up for his wife. He now ordered the doors to be thrown
open, in order that all who came to pay their duty to him might
see the ceremony. When the host was elevated there was a strange
confusion in the antechamber. The Roman Catholics fell on their
knees: the Protestants hurried out of the room. Soon a new pulpit
was erected in the palace; and, during Lent, a series of sermons
was preached there by Popish divines, to the great discomposure
of zealous churchmen.251

A more serious innovation followed. Passion week came; and the
King determined to hear mass with the same pomp with which his
predecessors had been surrounded when they repaired to the
temples of the established religion. He announced his intention
to the three members of the interior cabinet, and requested them
to attend him. Sunderland, to whom all religions were the same,
readily consented. Godolphin, as Chamberlain of the Queen, had
already been in the habit of giving her his hand when she
repaired to her oratory, and felt no scruple about bowing himself
officially in the house of Rimmon. But Rochester was greatly
disturbed. His influence in the country arose chiefly from the
opinion entertained by the clergy and by the Tory gentry, that he
was a zealous and uncompromising friend of the Church. His
orthodoxy had been considered as fully atoning for faults which
would otherwise have made him the most unpopular man in the
kingdom, for boundless arrogance, for extreme violence of temper,
and for manners almost brutal.252 He feared that, by complying
with the royal wishes, he should greatly lower himself in the
estimation of his party. After some altercation he obtained
permission to pass the holidays out of town. All the other great
civil dignitaries were ordered to be at their posts on Easter
Sunday. The rites of the Church of Rome were once more, after an
interval of a hundred and twenty-seven years, performed at
Westminster with regal splendour. The Guards were drawn out. The
Knights of the Garter wore their collars. The Duke of Somerset,
second in rank among the temporal nobles of the realm, carried
the sword of state. A long train of great lords accompanied the
King to his seat. But it was remarked that Ormond and Halifax
remained in the antechamber. A few years before they had
gallantly defended the cause of James against some of those who
now pressed past them. Ormond had borne no share in the slaughter
of Roman Catholics. Halifax had courageously pronounced Stafford
not guilty. As the timeservers who had pretended to shudder at
the thought of a Popish king, and who had shed without pity the
innocent blood of a Popish peer, now elbowed each other to get
near a Popish altar, the accomplished Trimmer might, with some
justice, indulge his solitary pride in that unpopular
nickname.253

Within a week after this ceremony James made a far greater
sacrifice of his own religious prejudices than he had yet called
on any of his Protestant subjects to make. He was crowned on the
twenty-third of April, the feast of the patron saint of the
realm. The Abbey and the Hall were splendidly decorated. The
presence of the Queen and of the peeresses gave to the solemnity
a charm which had been wanting to the magnificent inauguration of
the late King. Yet those who remembered that inauguration
pronounced that there was a great falling off. The ancient usage
was that, before a coronation, the sovereign, with all his
heralds, judges, councillors, lords, and great dignitaries,
should ride in state from the Tower of Westminster. Of these
cavalcades the last and the most glorious was that which passed
through the capital while the feelings excited by the Restoration
were still in full vigour. Arches of triumph overhung the road.
All Cornhill, Cheapside, Saint Paul's Church Yard, Fleet Street,
and the Strand, were lined with scaffolding. The whole city had
thus been admitted to gaze on royalty in the most splendid and
solemn form that royalty could wear. James ordered an estimate to
be made of the cost of such a procession, and found that it would
amount to about half as much as he proposed to expend in covering
his wife with trinkets. He accordingly determined to be profuse
where he ought to have been frugal, and niggardly where he might
pardonably have been profuse. More than a hundred thousand pounds
were laid out in dressing the Queen, and the procession from the
Tower was omitted. The folly of this course is obvious. If
pageantry be of any use in politics, it is of use as a means of
striking the imagination of the multitude. It is surely the
height of absurdity to shut out the populace from a show of which
the main object is to make an impression on the populace. James
would have shown a more judicious munificence and a more
judicious parsimony, if he had traversed London from east to west
with the accustomed pomp, and had ordered the robes of his wife
to be somewhat less thickly set with pearls and diamonds. His
example was, however, long followed by his successors; and sums,
which, well employed, would have afforded exquisite gratification
to a large part of the nation, were squandered on an exhibition
to which only three or four thousand privileged persons were
admitted. At length the old practice was partially revived. On
the day of the coronation of Queen Victoria there was a
procession in which many deficiencies might be noted, but which
was seen with interest and delight by half a million of her
subjects, and which undoubtedly gave far greater pleasure, and
called forth far greater enthusiasm, than the more costly display
which was witnessed by a select circle within the Abbey.

James had ordered Sancroft to abridge the ritual. The reason
publicly assigned was that the day was too short for all that was
to be done. But whoever examines the changes which were made will
see that the real object was to remove some things highly
offensive to the religious feelings of a zealous Roman Catholic.
The Communion Service was not read. The ceremony of presenting
the sovereign with a richly bound copy of the English Bible, and
of exhorting him to prize above all earthly treasures a volume
which he had been taught to regard as adulterated with false
doctrine, was omitted. What remained, however, after all this
curtailment, might well have raised scruples in the mind of a man
who sincerely believed the Church of England to be a heretical
society, within the pale of which salvation was not to be found.
The King made an oblation on the altar. He appeared to join in
the petitions of the Litany which was chaunted by the Bishops. He
received from those false prophets the unction typical of a
divine influence, and knelt with the semblance of devotion, while
they called down upon him that Holy Spirit of which they were, in
his estimation, the malignant and obdurate foes. Such are the
inconsistencies of human nature that this man, who, from a
fanatical zeal for his religion, threw away three kingdoms, yet
chose to commit what was little short of an act of apostasy,
rather than forego the childish pleasure of being invested with
the gewgaws symbolical of kingly power.254

Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely, preached. He was one of those
writers who still affected the obsolete style of Archbishop
Williams and Bishop Andrews. The sermon was made up of quaint
conceits, such as seventy years earlier might have been admired,
but such as moved the scorn of a generation accustomed to the
purer eloquence of Sprat, of South, and of Tillotson. King
Solomon was King James. Adonijah was Monmouth. Joab was a Rye
House conspirator; Shimei, a Whig libeller; Abiathar, an honest
but misguided old Cavalier. One phrase in the Book of Chronicles
was construed to mean that the King was above the Parliament; and
another was cited to prove that he alone ought to command the
militia. Towards the close of the discourse the orator very
timidly alluded to the new and embarrassing position in which the
Church stood with reference to the sovereign, and reminded his
hearers that the Emperor Constantius Chlorus, though not himself
a Christian, had held in honour those Christians who remained
true to their religion, and had treated with scorn those who
sought to earn his favour by apostasy. The service in the Abbey
was followed by a stately banquet in the Hall, the banquet by
brilliant fireworks, and the fireworks by much bad poetry.255

This may be fixed upon as the moment at which the enthusiasm of
the Tory party reached the zenith. Ever since the accession of
the new King, addresses had been pouring in which expressed
profound veneration for his person and office, and bitter
detestation of the vanquished Whigs. The magistrates of Middlesex
thanked God for having confounded the designs of those regicides
and exclusionists who, not content with having murdered one
blessed monarch, were bent on destroying the foundations of
monarchy. The city of Gloucester execrated the bloodthirsty
villains who had tried to deprive His Majesty of his just
inheritance. The burgesses of Wigan assured their sovereign that
they would defend him against all plotting Achitophels and
rebellions Absaloms. The grand jury of Suffolk expressed a hope
that the Parliament would proscribe all the exclusionists. Many
corporations pledged themselves never to return to the House of
Commons any person who had voted for taking away the birthright
of James. Even the capital was profoundly obsequious. The lawyers
and the traders vied with each other in servility. Inns of Court
and Inns of Chancery sent up fervent professions of attachment
and submission. All the great commercial societies, the East
India Company, the African Company, the Turkey Company, the
Muscovy Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Maryland
Merchants, the Jamaica Merchants, the Merchant Adventurers,
declared that they most cheerfully complied with the royal edict
which required them still to pay custom. Bristol, the second city
of the island, echoed the voice of London. But nowhere was the
spirit of loyalty stronger than in the two Universities. Oxford
declared that she would never swerve from those religious
principles which bound her to obey the King without any
restrictions or limitations. Cambridge condemned, in severe
terms, the violence and treachery of those turbulent men who had
maliciously endeavoured to turn the stream of succession out of
the ancient channel.256

Such addresses as these filled, during a considerable time, every
number of the London Gazette. But it was not only by addressing
that the Tories showed their zeal. The writs for the new
Parliament had gone forth, and the country was agitated by the
tumult of a general election. No election had ever taken place
under circumstances so favourable to the Court. Hundreds of
thousands whom the Popish plot had scared into Whiggism had been
scared back by the Rye House plot into Toryism. In the counties
the government could depend on an overwhelming majority of the
gentlemen of three hundred a year and upwards, and on the clergy
almost to a man. Those boroughs which had once been the citadels
of Whiggism had recently been deprived of their charters by legal
sentence, or had prevented the sentence by voluntary surrender.
They had now been reconstituted in such a manner that they were
certain to return members devoted to the crown. Where the
townsmen could not be trusted, the freedom had been bestowed on
the neighbouring squires. In some of the small western
corporations, the constituent bodies were in great part composed
of Captains and Lieutenants of the Guards. The returning officers
were almost everywhere in the interest of the court. In every
shire the Lord Lieutenant and his deputies formed a powerful,
active, and vigilant committee, for the purpose of cajoling and
intimidating the freeholders. The people were solemnly warned
from thousands of pulpits not to vote for any Whig candidate, as
they should answer it to Him who had ordained the powers that be,
and who had pronounced rebellion a sin not less deadly than
witchcraft. All these advantages the predominant party not only
used to the utmost, but abused in so shameless a manner that
grave and reflecting men, who had been true to the monarchy in
peril, and who bore no love to republicans and schismatics, stood
aghast, and augured from such beginnings the approach of evil
times.257

Yet the Whigs, though suffering the just punishment of their
errors, though defeated, disheartened, and disorganized, did not
yield without an effort. They were still numerous among the
traders and artisans of the towns, and among the yeomanry and
peasantry of the open country. In some districts, in Dorsetshire
for example, and in Somersetshire, they were the great majority
of the population. In the remodelled boroughs they could do
nothing: but, in every county where they had a chance, they
struggled desperately. In Bedfordshire, which had lately been
represented by the virtuous and unfortunate Russell, they were
victorious on the show of hands, but were beaten at the poll.258
In Essex they polled thirteen hundred votes to eighteen
hundred.259 At the election for Northamptonshire the common
people were so violent in their hostility to the court candidate
that a body of troops was drawn out in the marketplace of the
county town, and was ordered to load with ball.260 The history of
the contest for Buckinghamshire is still more remarkable. The
whig candidate, Thomas Wharton, eldest son of Philip Lord
Wharton, was a man distinguished alike by dexterity and by
audacity, and destined to play a conspicuous, though not always a
respectable, part in the politics of several reigns. He had been
one of those members of the House of Commons who had carried up
the Exclusion Bill to the bar of the Lords. The court was
therefore bent on throwing him out by fair or foul means. The
Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys himself came down into
Buckinghamshire, for the purpose of assisting a gentleman named
Hacket, who stood on the high Tory interest. A stratagem was
devised which, it was thought, could not fail of success. It was
given out that the polling would take place at Ailesbury; and
Wharton, whose skill in all the arts of electioneering was
unrivalled, made his arrangements on that supposition. At a
moment's warning the Sheriff adjourned the poll to Newport
Pagnell. Wharton and his friends hurried thither, and found that
Hacket, who was in the secret, had already secured every inn and
lodging. The Whig freeholders were compelled to tie their horses
to the hedges, and to sleep under the open sky in the meadows
which surround the little town. It was with the greatest
difficulty that refreshments could be procured at such short
notice for so large a number of men and beasts, though Wharton,
who was utterly regardless of money when his ambition and party
spirit were roused, disbursed fifteen hundred pounds in one day,
an immense outlay for those times. Injustice seems, however, to
have animated the courage of the stouthearted yeomen of Bucks,
the sons of the constituents of John Hampden. Not only was
Wharton at the head of the poll; but he was able to spare his
second votes to a man of moderate opinions, and to throw out the
Chief Justice's candidate.261

In Cheshire the contest lasted six days. The Whigs polled about
seventeen hundred votes, the Tories about two thousand. The
common people were vehement on the Whig side, raised the cry of
"Down with the Bishops," insulted the clergy in the streets of
Chester, knocked down one gentleman of the Tory party, broke the
windows and beat the constables. The militia was called out to
quell the riot, and was kept assembled, in order to protect the
festivities of the conquerors. When the poll closed, a salute of
five great guns from the castle proclaimed the triumph of the
Church and the Crown to the surrounding country. The bells rang.
The newly elected members went in state to the City Cross,
accompanied by a band of music, and by a long train of knights
and squires. The procession, as it marched, sang "Joy to Great
Caesar," a loyal ode, which had lately been written by Durfey,
and which, though like all Durfey's writings, utterly
contemptible, was, at that time, almost as popular as
Lillibullero became a few years later.262 Round the Cross the
trainbands were drawn up in order: a bonfire was lighted: the
Exclusion Bill was burned: and the health of King James was drunk
with loud acclamations. The following day was Sunday. In the
morning the militia lined the streets leading to the Cathedral.
The two knights of the shire were escorted with great pomp to
their choir by the magistracy of the city, heard the Dean preach
a sermon, probably on the duty of passive obedience, and were
afterwards feasted by the Mayor.263

In Northumberland the triumph of Sir John Fenwick, a courtier
whose name afterwards obtained a melancholy celebrity, was
attended by circumstances which excited interest in London, and
which were thought not unworthy of being mentioned in the
despatches of foreign ministers. Newcastle was lighted up with
great piles of coal. The steeples sent forth a joyous peal. A
copy of the Exclusion Bill, and a black box, resembling that
which, according to the popular fable, contained the contract
between Charles the Second and Lucy Walters, were publicly
committed to the flames, with loud acclamations.264

The general result of the elections exceeded the most sanguine
expectations of the court. James found with delight that it would
be unnecessary for him to expend a farthing in buying votes. He
Said that, with the exception of about forty members, the House
of Commons was just such as he should himself have named.265 And
this House of Commons it was in his power, as the law then stood,
to keep to the end of his reign.

Secure of parliamentary support, be might now indulge in the
luxury of revenge. His nature was not placable; and, while still
a subject, he had suffered some injuries and indignities which
might move even a placable nature to fierce and lasting
resentment. One set of men in particular had, with a baseness and
cruelty beyond all example and all description, attacked his
honour and his life, the witnesses of the plot. He may well be
excused for hating them; since, even at this day, the mention of
their names excites the disgust and horror of all sects and
parties.

Some of these wretches were already beyond the reach of human
justice. Bedloe had died in his wickedness, without one sign of
remorse or shame.266 Dugdale had followed, driven mad, men said,
by the Furies of an evil conscience, and with loud shrieks
imploring those who stood round his bed to take away Lord
Stafford.267 Carstairs, too, was gone. His end had been all
horror and despair; and, with his last breath, he had told his
attendants to throw him into a ditch like a dog, for that he was
not fit to sleep in a Christian burial ground.268 But Oates and
Dangerfield were still within the reach of the stern prince whom
they had wronged. James, a short time before his accession, had
instituted a civil suit against Oates for defamatory words; and a
jury had given damages to the enormous amount of a hundred
thousand pounds.269 The defendant had been taken in execution,
and was lying in prison as a debtor, without hope of release. Two
bills of indictment against him for perjury had been found by the
grand jury of Middlesex, a few weeks before the death of Charles.
Soon after the close of the elections the trial came on.

Among the upper and middle classes Oates had few friends left.
The most respectable Whigs were now convinced that, even if his
narrative had some foundation in fact, he had erected on that
foundation a vast superstructure of romance. A considerable
number of low fanatics, however, still regarded him as a public
benefactor. These people well knew that, if he were convicted,
his sentence would be one of extreme severity, and were therefore
indefatigable in their endeavours to manage an escape. Though he
was as yet in confinement only for debt, he was put into irons by
the authorities of the King's Bench prison; and even so he was
with difficulty kept in safe custody. The mastiff that guarded
his door was poisoned; and, on the very night preceding the
trial, a ladder of ropes was introduced into the cell.

On the day in which Titus was brought to the bar, Westminster
Hall was crowded with spectators, among whom were many Roman
Catholics, eager to see the misery and humiliation of their
persecutor.270 A few years earlier his short neck, his legs
uneven, the vulgar said, as those of a badger, his forehead low
as that of a baboon, his purple cheeks, and his monstrous length
of chin, had been familiar to all who frequented the courts of
law. He had then been the idol of the nation. Wherever he had
appeared, men had uncovered their heads to him. The lives and
estates of the magnates of the realm had been at his mercy. Times
had now changed; and many, who had formerly regarded him as the
deliverer of his country, shuddered at the sight of those hideous
features on which villany seemed to be written by the hand of
God.271

It was proved, beyond all possibility of doubt, that this man had
by false testimony deliberately murdered several guiltless
persons. He called in vain on the most eminent members of the
Parliaments which had rewarded and extolled him to give evidence
in his favour. Some of those whom he had summoned absented
themselves. None of them said anything tending to his
vindication. One of them, the Earl of Huntingdon, bitterly
reproached him with having deceived the Houses and drawn on them
the guilt of shedding innocent blood. The Judges browbeat and
reviled the prisoner with an intemperance which, even in the most
atrocious cases, ill becomes the judicial character. He betrayed,
however, no sign of fear or of shame, and faced the storm of
invective which burst upon him from bar, bench, and witness box,
with the insolence of despair. He was convicted on both
indictments. His offence, though, in a moral light, murder of the
most aggravated kind, was, in the eye of the law, merely a
misdemeanour. The tribunal, however, was desirous to make his
punishment more severe than that of felons or traitors, and not
merely to put him to death, but to put him to death by frightful
torments. He was sentenced to be stripped of his clerical habit,
to be pilloried in Palace Yard, to be led round Westminster Hall
with an inscription declaring his infamy over his head, to be
pilloried again in front of the Royal Exchange, to be whipped
from Aldgate to Newgate, and, after an interval of two days, to
be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. If, against all probability,
he should happen to survive this horrible infliction, he was to
be kept close prisoner during life. Five times every year he was
to be brought forth from his dungeon and exposed on the pillory
in different parts of the capital.272 This rigorous sentence was
rigorously executed. On the day on which Oates was pilloried in
Palace Yard he was mercilessly pelted and ran some risk of being
pulled in pieces.273 But in the City his partisans mustered in
great force, raised a riot, and upset the pillory.274 They were,
however, unable to rescue their favourite. It was supposed that
he would try to escape the horrible doom which awaited him by
swallowing poison. All that he ate and drank was therefore
carefully inspected. On the following morning he was brought
forth to undergo his first flogging. At an early hour an
innumerable multitude filled all the streets from Aldgate to the
Old Bailey. The hangman laid on the lash with such unusual
severity as showed that he had received special instructions. The
blood ran down in rivulets. For a time the criminal showed a
strange constancy: but at last his stubborn fortitude gave way.
His bellowings were frightful to hear. He swooned several times;
but the scourge still continued to descend. When he was unbound,
it seemed that he had borne as much as the human frame can bear
without dissolution. James was entreated to remit the second
flogging. His answer was short and clear: "He shall go through
with it, if he has breath in his body." An attempt was made to
obtain the Queen's intercession; but she indignantly refused to
say a word in favour of such a wretch. After an interval of only
forty-eight hours, Oates was again brought out of his dungeon. He
was unable to stand, and it was necessary to drag him to Tyburn
on a sledge. He seemed quite insensible; and the Tories reported
that he had stupified himself with strong drink. A person who
counted the stripes on the second day said that they were
seventeen hundred. The bad man escaped with life, but so narrowly
that his ignorant and bigoted admirers thought his recovery
miraculous, and appealed to it as a proof of his innocence. The
doors of the prison closed upon him. During many months he
remained ironed in the darkest hole of Newgate. It was said that
in his cell he gave himself up to melancholy, and sate whole days
uttering deep groans, his arms folded, and his hat pulled over
his eyes. It was not in England alone that these events excited
strong interest. Millions of Roman Catholics, who knew nothing of
our institutions or of our factions. had heard that a persecution
of singular barbarity had raged in our island against the
professors of the true faith, that many pious men had suffered
martyrdom, and that Titus Oates had been the chief murderer.
There was, therefore, great joy in distant countries when it was
known that the divine justice had overtaken him. Engravings of
him, looking out from the pillory, and writhing at the cart's
tail, were circulated all over Europe; and epigrammatists, in
many languages, made merry with the doctoral title which he
pretended to have received from the University of Salamanca, and
remarked that, since his forehead could not be made to blush, it
was but reasonable that his back should do so.275

Horrible as were the sufferings of Oates, they did not equal his
crimes. The old law of England, which had been suffered to become
obsolete, treated the false witness, who had caused death by
means of perjury, as a murderer.276 This was wise and righteous;
for such a witness is, in truth, the worst of murderers. To the
guilt of shedding innocent blood he has added the guilt of
violating the most solemn engagement into which man can enter
with his fellow men, and of making institutions, to which it is
desirable that the public should look with respect and
confidence, instruments of frightful wrong and objects of general
distrust. The pain produced by ordinary murder bears no
proportion to the pain produced by murder of which the courts of
justice are made the agents. The mere extinction of life is a
very small part of what makes an execution horrible. The
prolonged mental agony of the sufferer, the shame and misery of
all connected with him, the stain abiding even to the third and
fourth generation, are things far more dreadful than death
itself. In general it may be safely affirmed that the father of a
large family would rather be bereaved of all his children by
accident or by disease than lose one of them by the hands of the
hangman. Murder by false testimony is therefore the most
aggravated species of murder; and Oates had been guilty of many
such murders. Nevertheless the punishment which was inflicted
upon him cannot be justified. In sentencing him to be stripped of
his ecclesiastical habit and imprisoned for life, the judges
exceeded their legal power. They were undoubtedly competent to
inflict whipping; nor had the law assigned a limit to the number
of stripes. But the spirit of the law clearly was that no
misdemeanour should be punished more severely than the most
atrocious felonies. The worst felon could only be hanged. The
judges, as they believed, sentenced Oates to be scourged to
death. That the law was defective is not a sufficient excuse: for
defective laws should be altered by the legislature, and not
strained by the tribunals; and least of all should the law be
strained for the purpose of inflicting torture and destroying
life. That Oates was a bad man is not a sufficient excuse; for
the guilty are almost always the first to suffer those hardships
which are afterwards used as precedents against the innocent.
Thus it was in the present case. Merciless flogging soon became
an ordinary punishment for political misdemeanours of no very
aggravated kind. Men were sentenced, for words spoken against the
government, to pains so excruciating that they, with unfeigned
earnestness, begged to be brought to trial on capital charges,
and sent to the gallows. Happily the progress of this great evil
was speedily stopped by the Revolution, and by that article of
the Bill of Rights which condemns all cruel and unusual
punishments.

The villany of Dangerfield had not, like that of Oates, destroyed
many innocent victims; for Dangerfield had not taken up the trade
of a witness till the plot had been blown upon and till juries
had become incredulous.277 He was brought to trial, not for
perjury, but for the less heinous offense of libel. He had,
during the agitation caused by the Exclusion Bill, put forth a
narrative containing some false and odious imputations on the
late and on the present King. For this publication he was now,
after the lapse of five years, suddenly taken up, brought before
the Privy Council, committed, tried, convicted, and sentenced to
be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate and from Newgate to Tyburn.
The wretched man behaved with great effrontery during the trial;
but, when he heard his doom, he went into agonies of despair,
gave himself up for dead, and chose a text for his funeral
sermon. His forebodings were just. He was not, indeed, scourged
quite so severely as Oates had been; but he had not Oates's iron
strength of body and mind. After the execution Dangerfield was
put into a hackney coach and was taken back to prison. As he
passed the corner of Hatton Garden, a Tory gentleman of Gray's
Inn, named Francis, stopped the carriage, and cried out with
brutal levity, "Well, friend, have you had your heat this
morning?" The bleeding prisoner, maddened by this insult,
answered with a curse. Francis instantly struck him in the face
with a cane which injured the eye. Dangerfield was carried dying
into Newgate. This dastardly outrage roused the indignation of
the bystanders. They seized Francis, and were with difficulty
restrained from tearing him to pieces. The appearance of
Dangerfield's body, which had been frightfully lacerated by the
whip, inclined many to believe that his death was chiefly, if not
wholly, caused by the stripes which he had received. The
government and the Chief Justice thought it convenient to lay the
whole blame on Francis, who; though he seems to have been at
worst guilty only of aggravated manslaughter, was tried and
executed for murder. His dying speech is one of the most curious
monuments of that age. The savage spirit which had brought him to
the gallows remained with him to the last. Boasts of his loyalty
and abuse of the Whigs were mingled with the parting ejaculations
in which he commended his soul to the divine mercy. An idle
rumour had been circulated that his wife was in love with
Dangerfield, who was eminently handsome and renowned for
gallantry. The fatal blow, it was said, had been prompted by
jealousy. The dying husband, with an earnestness, half
ridiculous, half pathetic, vindicated the lady's character. She
was, he said, a virtuous woman: she came of a loyal stock, and,
if she had been inclined to break her marriage vow, would at
least have selected a Tory and a churchman for her paramour.278

About the same time a culprit, who bore very little resemblance
to Oates or Dangerfield, appeared on the floor of the Court of
King's Bench. No eminent chief of a party has ever passed through
many years of civil and religious dissension with more innocence
than Richard Baxter. He belonged to the mildest and most
temperate section of the Puritan body. He was a young man when
the civil war broke out. He thought that the right was on the
side of the Houses; and he had no scruple about acting as
chaplain to a regiment in the parliamentary army: but his clear
and somewhat sceptical understanding, and his strong sense of
justice, preserved him from all excesses. He exerted himself to
check the fanatical violence of the soldiery. He condemned the
proceedings of the High Court of Justice. In the days of the
Commonwealth he had the boldness to express, on many occasions,
and once even in Cromwell's presence, love and reverence for the
ancient institutions of the country. While the royal family was
in exile, Baxter's life was chiefly passed at Kidderminster in
the assiduous discharge of parochial duties. He heartily
concurred in the Restoration, and was sincerely desirous to bring
about an union between Episcopalians and Presbyterians. For, with
a liberty rare in his time, he considered questions of
ecclesiastical polity as of small account when compared with the
great principles of Christianity, and had never, even when
prelacy was most odious to the ruling powers, joined in the
outcry against Bishops. The attempt to reconcile the contending
factions failed. Baxter cast in his lot with his proscribed
friends, refused the mitre of Hereford, quitted the parsonage of
Kidderminster, and gave himself up almost wholly to study. His
theological writings, though too moderate to be pleasing to the
bigots of any party, had an immense reputation. Zealous Churchmen
called him a Roundhead; and many Nonconformists accused him of
Erastianism and Arminianism. But the integrity of his heart, the
purity of his life, the vigour of his faculties, and the extent
of his attainments were acknowledged by the best and wisest men
of every persuasion. His political opinions, in spite of the
oppression which he and his brethren had suffered, were moderate.
He was friendly to that small party which was hated by both Whigs
and Tories. He could not, he said, join in cursing the Trimmers,
when he remembered who it was that had blessed the
peacemakers.279

In a Commentary on the New Testament he had complained, with some
bitterness, of the persecution which the Dissenters suffered.
That men who, for not using the Prayer Book, had been driven from
their homes, stripped of their property, and locked up in
dungeons, should dare to utter a murmur, was then thought a high
crime against the State and the Church. Roger Lestrange, the
champion of the government and the oracle of the clergy, sounded
the note of war in the Observator. An information was filed.
Baxter begged that he might be allowed some time to prepare for
his defence. It was on the day on which Oates was pilloried in
Palace Yard that the illustrious chief of the Puritans, oppressed
by age and infirmities, came to Westminster Hall to make this
request. Jeffreys burst into a storm of rage. "Not a minute," he
cried, "to save his life. I can deal with saints as well as with
sinners. There stands Oates on one side of the pillory; and, if
Baxter stood on the other, the two greatest rogues in the kingdom
would stand together."

When the trial came on at Guildhall, a crowd of those who loved
and honoured Baxter filled the court. At his side stood Doctor
William Bates, one of the most eminent of the Nonconformist
divines. Two Whig barristers of great note, Pollexfen and Wallop,
appeared for the defendant. Pollexfen had scarcely begun his
address to the jury, when the Chief Justice broke forth:
"Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set a mark on you. You are
the patron of the faction. This is an old rogue, a schismatical
knave, a hypocritical villain. He hates the Liturgy. He would
have nothing but longwinded cant without book;" and then his
Lordship turned up his eyes, clasped his hands, and began to sing
through his nose, in imitation of what he supposed to be Baxter's
style of praying "Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people,
thy dear people." Pollexfen gently reminded the court that his
late Majesty had thought Baxter deserving of a bishopric. "And
what ailed the old blockhead then," cried Jeffreys, "that he did
not take it?" His fury now rose almost to madness. He called
Baxter a dog, and swore that it would be no more than justice to
whip such a villain through the whole City.

Wallop interposed, but fared no better than his leader. "You are
in all these dirty causes, Mr. Wallop," said the Judge.
"Gentlemen of the long robe ought to be ashamed to assist such
factious knaves." The advocate made another attempt to obtain a
hearing, but to no purpose. "If you do not know your duty," said
Jeffreys, "I will teach it you."

Wallop sate down; and Baxter himself attempted to put in a word.
But the Chief Justice drowned all expostulation in a torrent of
ribaldry and invective, mingled with scraps of Hudibras. "My
Lord," said the old man, "I have been much blamed by Dissenters
for speaking respectfully of Bishops." "Baxter for Bishops!"
cried the Judge, "that's a merry conceit indeed. I know what you
mean by Bishops, rascals like yourself, Kidderminster Bishops,
factious snivelling Presbyterians!" Again Baxter essayed to
speak, and again Jeffreys bellowed "Richard, Richard, dost thou
think we will let thee poison the court? Richard, thou art an old
knave. Thou hast written books enough to load a cart, and every
book as full of sedition as an egg is full of meat. By the grace
of God, I'll look after thee. I see a great many of your
brotherhood waiting to know what will befall their mighty Don.
And there," he continued, fixing his savage eye on Bates, "there
is a Doctor of the party at your elbow. But, by the grace of God
Almighty, I will crush you all."

Baxter held his peace. But one of the junior counsel for the
defence made a last effort, and undertook to show that the words
of which complaint was made would not bear the construction put
on them by the information. With this view he began to read the
context. In a moment he was roared down. "You sha'n't turn the
court into a conventicle." The noise of weeping was heard from
some of those who surrounded Baxter. "Snivelling calves!" said
the Judge.

Witnesses to character were in attendance, and among them were
several clergymen of the Established Church. But the Chief
Justice would hear nothing. "Does your Lordship think," said
Baxter, "that any jury will convict a man on such a trial as
this?" "I warrant you, Mr. Baxter," said Jeffreys: "don't trouble
yourself about that." Jeffreys was right. The Sheriffs were the
tools of the government. The jurymen, selected by the Sheriffs
from among the fiercest zealots of the Tory party, conferred for
a moment, and returned a verdict of Guilty. "My Lord," said
Baxter, as he left the court, "there was once a Chief Justice who
would have treated me very differently." He alluded to his
learned and virtuous friend Sir Matthew Hale. "There is not an
honest man in England," answered Jeffreys, "but looks on thee as
a knave."280

The sentence was, for those times. a lenient one. What passed in
conference among the judges cannot be certainly known. It was
believed among the Nonconformists, and is highly probable, that
the Chief Justice was overruled by his three brethren. He
proposed, it is said, that Baxter should be whipped through
London at the cart's tail. The majority thought that an eminent
divine, who, a quarter of a century before, had been offered a
mitre, and who was now in his seventieth year, would be
sufficiently punished for a few sharp words by fine and
imprisonment.281

The manner in which Baxter was treated by a judge, who was a
member of the cabinet and a favourite of the Sovereign,
indicated, in a manner not to be mistaken, the feeling with which
the government at this time regarded the Protestant
Nonconformists. But already that feeling had been indicated by
still stronger and more terrible signs. The Parliament of
Scotland had met. James had purposely hastened the session of
this body, and had postponed the session of the English Houses,
in the hope that the example set at Edinburgh would produce a
good effect at Westminster. For the legislature of his northern
kingdom was as obsequious as those provincial Estates which Lewis
the Fourteenth still suffered to play at some of their ancient
functions in Britanny and Burgundy. None but an Episcopalian
could sit in the Scottish Parliament, or could even vote for a
member, and in Scotland an Episcopalian was always a Tory or a
timeserver. From an assembly thus constituted, little opposition
to the royal wishes was to he apprehended; and even the assembly
thus constituted could pass no law which had not been previously
approved by a committee of courtiers.

All that the government asked was readily granted. In a financial
point of view, indeed, the liberality of the Scottish Estates was
of little consequence. They gave, however, what their scanty
means permitted. They annexed in perpetuity to the crown the
duties which had been granted to the late King, and which in his
time had been estimated at forty thousand pounds sterling a year.
They also settled on James for life an additional annual income
of two hundred and sixteen thousand pounds Scots, equivalent to
eighteen thousand pounds sterling. The whole Sum which they were
able to bestow was about sixty thousand a year, little more than
what was poured into the English Exchequer every fortnight.282

Having little money to give, the Estates supplied the defect by
loyal professions and barbarous statutes. The King, in a letter
which was read to them at the opening of their session, called on
them in vehement language to provide new penal laws against the
refractory Presbyterians, and expressed his regret that business
made it impossible for him to propose such laws in person from
the throne. His commands were obeyed. A statute framed by his
ministers was promptly passed, a statute which stands forth even
among the statutes of that unhappy country at that unhappy
period, preeminent in atrocity. It was enacted, in few but
emphatic words, that whoever should preach in a conventicle under
a roof, or should attend, either as preacher or as hearer, a
conventicle in the open air, should be punished with death and
confiscation of property.283

This law, passed at the King's instance by an assembly devoted to
his will, deserves especial notice. For he has been frequently
represented by ignorant writers as a prince rash, indeed, and
injudicious in his choice of means, but intent on one of the
noblest ends which a ruler can pursue, the establishment of
entire religious liberty. Nor can it be denied that some portions
of his life, when detached from the rest and superficially
considered, seem to warrant this favourable view of his
character.

While a subject he had been, during many years, a persecuted man;
and persecution had produced its usual effect on him. His mind,
dull and narrow as it was, had profited under that sharp
discipline. While he was excluded from the Court, from the
Admiralty, and from the Council, and was in danger of being also
excluded from the throne, only because he could not help
believing in transubstantiation and in the authority of the see
of Rome, he made such rapid progress in the doctrines of
toleration that he left Milton and Locke behind. What, he often
said, could be more unjust, than to visit speculations with
penalties which ought to be reserved for acts? What more
impolitic than to reject the services of good soldiers, seamen,
lawyers, diplomatists, financiers, because they hold unsound
opinions about the number of the sacraments or the pluripresence
of saints? He learned by rote those commonplaces which all sects
repeat so fluently when they are enduring oppression, and forget
so easily when they are able to retaliate it. Indeed he rehearsed
his lesson so well, that those who chanced to hear him on this
subject gave him credit for much more sense and much readier
elocution than he really possessed. His professions imposed on
some charitable persons, and perhaps imposed on himself. But his
zeal for the rights of conscience ended with the predominance of
the Whig party. When fortune changed, when he was no longer
afraid that others would persecute him, when he had it in his
power to persecute others, his real propensities began to show
themselves. He hated the Puritan sects with a manifold hatred,
theological and political, hereditary and personal. He regarded
them as the foes of Heaven, as the foes of all legitimate
authority in Church and State, as his great-grandmother's foes
and his grandfather's, his father's and his mother's, his
brother's and his own. He, who had complained so fondly of the
laws against Papists, now declared himself unable to conceive how
men could have the impudence to propose the repeal of the laws
against Puritans.284 He, whose favourite theme had been the
injustice of requiring civil functionaries to take religious
tests, established in Scotland, when he resided there as Viceroy,
the most rigorous religious test that has ever been known in the
empire.285 He, who had expressed just indignation when the
priests of his own faith were hanged and quartered, amused
himself with hearing Covenanters shriek and seeing them writhe
while their knees were beaten flat in the boots.286 In this mood
he became King; and he immediately demanded and obtained from the
obsequious Estates of Scotland as the surest pledge of their
loyalty, the most sanguinary law that has ever in our island been
enacted against Protestant Nonconformists.

With this law the whole spirit of his administration was in
perfect harmony. The fiery persecution, which had raged when he
ruled Scotland as vicegerent, waxed hotter than ever from the day
on which he became sovereign. Those shires in which the
Covenanters were most numerous were given up to the license of
the army. With the army was mingled a militia, composed of the
most violent and profligate of those who called themselves
Episcopalians. Preeminent among the bands which oppressed and
wasted these unhappy districts were the dragoons commanded by
John Graham of Claverhouse. The story ran that these wicked men
used in their revels to play at the torments of hell, and to call
each other by the names of devils and damned souls.287 The chief
of this Tophet, a soldier of distinguished courage and
professional skill, but rapacious and profane, of violent temper
and of obdurate heart, has left a name which, wherever the
Scottish race is settled on the face of the globe, is mentioned
with a peculiar energy of hatred. To recapitulate all the crimes,
by which this man, and men like him, goaded the peasantry of the
Western Lowlands into madness, would be an endless task. A few
instances must suffice; and all those instances shall be taken
from the history of a single fortnight, that very fortnight in
which the Scottish Parliament, at the urgent request of James,
enacted a new law of unprecedented severity against Dissenters.

John Brown, a poor carrier of Lanarkshire, was, for his singular
piety, commonly called the Christian carrier. Many years later,
when Scotland enjoyed rest, prosperity, and religious freedom,
old men who remembered the evil days described him as one versed
in divine things, blameless in life, and so peaceable that the
tyrants could find no offence in him except that he absented
himself from the public worship of the Episcopalians. On the
first of May he was cutting turf, when he was seized by
Claverhouse's dragoons, rapidly examined, convicted of
nonconformity, and sentenced to death. It is said that, even
among the soldiers, it was not easy to find an executioner. For
the wife of the poor man was present; she led one little child by
the hand: it was easy to see that she was about to give birth to
another; and even those wild and hardhearted men, who nicknamed
one another Beelzebub and Apollyon, shrank from the great
wickedness of butchering her husband before her face. The
prisoner, meanwhile, raised above himself by the near prospect of
eternity, prayed loud and fervently as one inspired, till
Claverhouse, in a fury, shot him dead. It was reported by
credible witnesses that the widow cried out in her agony, "Well,
sir, well; the day of reckoning will come;" and that the murderer
replied, "To man I can answer for what I have done; and as for
God, I will take him into mine own hand." Yet it was rumoured
that even on his seared conscience and adamantine heart the dying
ejaculations of his victim made an impression which was never
effaced.288

On the fifth of May two artisans, Peter Gillies and John Bryce,
were tried in Ayrshire by a military tribunal consisting of
fifteen soldiers. The indictment is still extant. The prisoners
were charged, not with any act of rebellion, but with holding the
same pernicious doctrines which had impelled others to rebel, and
with wanting only opportunity to act upon those doctrines. The
proceeding was summary. In a few hours the two culprits were
convicted, hanged, and flung together into a hole under the
gallows.289

The eleventh of May was made remarkable by more than one great
crime. Some rigid Calvinists had from the doctrine of reprobation
drawn the consequence that to pray for any person who had been
predestined to perdition was an act of mutiny against the eternal
decrees of the Supreme Being. Three poor labouring men, deeply
imbued with this unamiable divinity, were stopped by an officer
in the neighbourhood of Glasgow. They were asked whether they
would pray for King James the Seventh. They refused to do so
except under the condition that he was one of the elect. A file
of musketeers was drawn out. The prisoners knelt down; they were
blindfolded; and within an hour after they had been arrested,
their blood was lapped up by the dogs.290

While this was done in Clydesdale, an act not less horrible was
perpetrated in Eskdale. One of the proscribed Covenanters,
overcome by sickness, had found shelter in the house of a
respectable widow, and had died there. The corpse was discovered
by the Laird of Westerhall, a petty tyrant who had, in the days
of the Covenant, professed inordinate zeal for the Presbyterian
Church, who had, since the Restoration, purchased the favour of
the government by apostasy, and who felt towards the party which
he had deserted the implacable hatred of an apostate. This man
pulled down the house of the poor woman, carried away her
furniture, and, leaving her and her younger children to wander in
the fields, dragged her son Andrew, who was still a lad, before
Claverhouse, who happened to be marching through that part of the
country. Claverhouse was just then strangely lenient. Some
thought that he had not been quite himself since the death of the
Christian carrier, ten days before. But Westerhall was eager to
signalise his loyalty, and extorted a sullen consent. The guns
were loaded, and the youth was told to pull his bonnet over his
face. He refused, and stood confronting his murderers with the
Bible in his hand. "I can look you in the face," he said; "I have
done nothing of which I need be ashamed. But how will you look in
that day when you shall be judged by what is written in this
book?" He fell dead, and was buried in the moor.291

On the same day two women, Margaret Maclachlin and Margaret
Wilson, the former an aged widow, the latter a maiden of
eighteen, suffered death for their religion in Wigtonshire. They
were offered their lives if they would consent to abjure the
cause of the insurgent Covenanters, and to attend the Episcopal
worship. They refused; and they were sentenced to be drowned.
They were carried to a spot which the Solway overflows twice a
day, and were fastened to stakes fixed in the sand between high
and low water mark. The elder sufferer was placed near to the
advancing flood, in the hope that her last agonies might terrify
the younger into submission. The sight was dreadful. But the
courage of the survivor was sustained by an enthusiasm as lofty
as any that is recorded in martyrology. She saw the sea draw
nearer and nearer, but gave no sign of alarm. She prayed and sang
verses of psalms till the waves choked her voice. After she had
tasted the bitterness of death, she was, by a cruel mercy unbound
and restored to life. When she came to herself, pitying friends
and neighbours implored her to yield. "Dear Margaret, only say,
God save the King!" The poor girl, true to her stern theology,
gasped out, "May God save him, if it be God's will!" Her friends
crowded round the presiding officer. "She has said it; indeed,
sir, she has said it." "Will she take the abjuration?" he
demanded. "Never!" she exclaimed. "I am Christ's: let me go!" And
the waters closed over her for the last time.292

Thus was Scotland governed by that prince whom ignorant men have
represented as a friend of religious liberty, whose misfortune it
was to be too wise and too good for the age in which he lived.
Nay, even those laws which authorised him to govern thus were in
his judgment reprehensibly lenient. While his officers were
committing the murders which have just been related, he was
urging the Scottish Parliament to pass a new Act compared with
which all former Acts might be called merciful.

In England his authority, though great, was circumscribed by
ancient and noble laws which even the Tories would not patiently
have seen him infringe. Here he could not hurry Dissenters before
military tribunals, or enjoy at Council the luxury of seeing them
swoon in the boots. Here he could not drown young girls for
refusing to take the abjuration, or shoot poor countrymen for
doubting whether he was one of the elect. Yet even in England he
continued to persecute the Puritans as far as his power extended,
till events which will hereafter be related induced him to form
the design of uniting Puritans and Papists in a coalition for the
humiliation and spoliation of the established Church.

One sect of Protestant Dissenters indeed he, even at this early
period of his reign, regarded with some tenderness, the Society
of Friends. His partiality for that singular fraternity cannot be
attributed to religious sympathy; for, of all who acknowledge the
divine mission of Jesus, the Roman Catholic and the Quaker differ
most widely. It may seem paradoxical to say that this very
circumstance constituted a tie between the Roman Catholic and the
Quaker; yet such was really the case. For they deviated in
opposite directions so far from what the great body of the nation
regarded as right, that even liberal men generally considered
them both as lying beyond the pale of the largest toleration.
Thus the two extreme sects, precisely because they were extreme
sects, had a common interest distinct from the interest of the
intermediate sects. The Quakers were also guiltless of all
offence against James and his House. They had not been in
existence as a community till the war between his father and the
Long Parliament was drawing towards a close. They had been
cruelly persecuted by some of the revolutionary governments. They
had, since the Restoration, in spite of much ill usage, submitted
themselves meekly to the royal authority. For they had, though
reasoning on premises which the Anglican divines regarded as
heterodox, arrived, like the Anglican divines, at the conclusion,
that no excess of tyranny on the part of a prince can justify
active resistance on the part of a subject. No libel on the
government had ever been traced to a Quaker.293 In no conspiracy
against the government had a Quaker been implicated. The society
had not joined in the clamour for the Exclusion Bill, and had
solemnly condemned the Rye House plot as a hellish design and a
work of the devil.294 Indeed, the friends then took very little
part in civil contentions; for they were not, as now, congregated
in large towns, but were generally engaged in agriculture, a
pursuit from which they have been gradually driven by the
vexations consequent on their strange scruple about paying tithe.
They were, therefore, far removed from the scene of political
strife. They also, even in domestic privacy, avoided on principle
all political conversation. For such conversation was, in their
opinion, unfavourable to their spirituality of mind, and tended
to disturb the austere composure of their deportment. The yearly
meetings of that age repeatedly admonished the brethren not to
hold discourse touching affairs of state.295 Even within the
memory of persons now living those grave elders who retained the
habits of an earlier generation systematically discouraged such
worldly talk.296 It was natural that James should make a wide
distinction between these harmless people and those fierce and
reckless sects which considered resistance to tyranny as a
Christian duty which had, in Germany, France, and Holland, made
war on legitimate princes, and which had, during four
generations, borne peculiar enmity to the House of Stuart.

It happened, moreover, that it was possible to grant large relief
to the Roman Catholic and to the Quaker without mitigating the
sufferings of the Puritan sects. A law was in force which imposed
severe penalties on every person who refused to take the oath of
supremacy when required to do so. This law did not affect
Presbyterians, Independents, or Baptists; for they were all ready
to call God to witness that they renounced all spiritual
connection with foreign prelates and potentates. But the Roman
Catholic would not swear that the Pope had no jurisdiction in
England, and the Quaker would not swear to anything. On the other
hand, neither the Roman Catholic nor the Quaker was touched by
the Five Mile Act, which, of all the laws in the Statute Book,
was perhaps the most annoying to the Puritan Nonconformists.297

The Quakers had a powerful and zealous advocate at court. Though,
as a class, they mixed little with the world, and shunned
politics as a pursuit dangerous to their spiritual interests, one
of them, widely distinguished from the rest by station and
fortune, lived in the highest circles, and had constant access to
the royal ear. This was the celebrated William Penn. His father
had held great naval commands, had been a Commissioner of the
Admiralty, had sate in Parliament, had received the honour of
knighthood, and had been encouraged to expect a peerage. The son
had been liberally educated, and had been designed for the
profession of arms, but had, while still young, injured his
prospects and disgusted his friends by joining what was then
generally considered as a gang of crazy heretics. He had been
sent sometimes to the Tower, and sometimes to Newgate. He had
been tried at the Old Bailey for preaching in defiance of the
law. After a time, however, he had been reconciled to his family,
and had succeeded in obtaining such powerful protection that,
while all the gaols of England were filled with his brethren, he
was permitted, during many years, to profess his opinions without
molestation. Towards the close of the late reign he had obtained,
in satisfaction of an old debt due to him from the crown, the
grant of an immense region in North America. In this tract, then
peopled only by Indian hunters, he had invited his persecuted
friends to settle. His colony was still in its infancy when James
mounted the throne.

Between James and Penn there had long been a familiar
acquaintance. The Quaker now became a courtier, and almost a
favourite. He was every day summoned from the gallery into the
closet, and sometimes had long audiences while peers were kept
waiting in the antechambers. It was noised abroad that he had
more real power to help and hurt than many nobles who filled high
offices. He was soon surrounded by flatterers and suppliants. His
house at Kensington was sometimes thronged, at his hour of
rising, by more than two hundred suitors.298 He paid dear,
however, for this seeming prosperity. Even his own sect looked
coldly on him, and requited his  services with obloquy. He was
loudly accused of being a Papist, nay, a Jesuit. Some affirmed
that he had been educated at St. Omers, and others that he had
been ordained at Rome. These calumnies, indeed, could find credit
only with the undiscerning multitude; but with these calumnies
were mingled accusations much better founded.

To speak the whole truth concerning Penn is a task which requires
some courage; for he is rather a mythical than a historical
person. Rival nations and hostile sects have agreed in canonising
him. England is proud of his name. A great commonwealth beyond
the Atlantic regards him with a reverence similar to that which
the Athenians felt for Theseus, and the Romans for Quirinus. The
respectable society of which he was a member honours him as an
apostle. By pious men of other persuasions he is generally
regarded as a bright pattern of Christian virtue. Meanwhile
admirers of a very different sort have sounded his praises. The
French philosophers of the eighteenth century pardoned what they
regarded as his superstitious fancies in consideration of his
contempt for priests, and of his cosmopolitan benevolence,
impartially extended to all races and to all creeds. His name has
thus become, throughout all civilised countries, a synonyme for
probity and philanthropy.

Nor is this high reputation altogether unmerited. Penn was
without doubt a man of eminent virtues. He had a strong sense of
religious duty and a fervent desire to promote the happiness of
mankind. On one or two points of high importance, he had notions
more correct than were, in his day, common even among men of
enlarged minds: and as the proprietor and legislator of a
province which, being almost uninhabited when it came into his
possession, afforded a clear field for moral experiments, he had
the rare good fortune of being able to carry his theories into
practice without any compromise, and yet without any shock to
existing institutions. He will always be mentioned with honour as
a founder of a colony, who did not, in his dealings with a savage
people, abuse the strength derived from civilisation, and as a
lawgiver who, in an age of persecution, made religious liberty
the cornerstone of a polity. But his writings and his life
furnish abundant proofs that he was not a man of strong sense. He
had no skill in reading the characters of others. His confidence
in persons less virtuous than himself led him into great errors
and misfortunes. His enthusiasm for one great principle sometimes
impelled him to violate other great principles which he ought to
have held sacred. Nor was his rectitude altogether proof against
the temptations to which it was exposed in that splendid and
polite, but deeply corrupted society, with which he now mingled.
The whole court was in a ferment with intrigues of gallantry and
intrigues of ambition. The traffic in honours, places, and
pardons was incessant. It was natural that a man who was daily
seen at the palace, and who was known to have free access to
majesty, should be frequently importuned to use his influence for
purposes which a rigid morality must condemn. The integrity of
Penn had stood firm against obloquy and persecution. But now,
attacked by royal smiles, by female blandishments, by the
insinuating eloquence and delicate flattery of veteran
diplomatists and courtiers, his resolution began to give way.
Titles and phrases against which he had often borne his testimony
dropped occasionally from his lips and his pen. It would be well
if he had been guilty of nothing worse than such compliances with
the fashions of the world. Unhappily it cannot be concealed that
he bore a chief part in some transactions condemned, not merely
by the rigid code of the society to which he belonged, but by the
general sense of all honest men. He afterwards solemnly protested
that his hands were pure from illicit gain, and that he had never
received any gratuity from those whom he had obliged, though he
might easily, while his influence at court lasted, have made a
hundred and twenty thousand pounds.299 To this assertion full
credit is due. But bribes may be offered to vanity as well as to
cupidity; and it is impossible to deny that Penn was cajoled into
bearing a part in some unjustifiable transactions of which others
enjoyed the profits.

The first use which he made of his credit was highly commendable.
He strongly represented the sufferings of his brethren to the new
King, who saw with pleasure that it was possible to grant
indulgence to these quiet sectaries and to the Roman Catholics,
without showing similar favour to other classes which were then
under persecution. A list was framed of prisoners against whom
proceedings had been instituted for not taking the oaths, or for
not going to church, and of whose loyalty certificates had been
produced to the government. These persons were discharged, and
orders were given that no similar proceeding should be instituted
till the royal pleasure should be further signified. In this way
about fifteen hundred Quakers, and a still greater number of
Roman Catholics, regained their liberty.300

And now the time had arrived when the English Parliament was to
meet. The members of the House of Commons who had repaired to the
capital were so numerous that there was much doubt whether their
chamber, as it was then fitted up, would afford sufficient
accommodation for them. They employed the days which immediately
preceded the opening of the session in talking over public
affairs with each other and with the agents of the government. A
great meeting of the loyal party was held at the Fountain Tavern
in the Strand; and Roger Lestrange, who had recently been
knighted by the King, and returned to Parliament by the city of
Winchester, took a leading part in their consultations.301

It soon appeared that a large portion of the Commons had views
which did not altogether agree with those of the Court. The Tory
country gentlemen were, with scarcely one exception, desirous to
maintain the Test Act and the Habeas Corpus Act; and some among
them talked of voting the revenue only for a term of years. But
they were perfectly ready to enact severe laws against the Whigs,
and would gladly have seen all the supporters of the Exclusion
Bill made incapable of holding office. The King, on the other
hand, desired to obtain from the Parliament a revenue for life,
the admission of Roman Catholics to office, and the repeal of the
Habeas Corpus Act. On these three objects his heart was set; and
he was by no means disposed to accept as a substitute for them a
penal law against Exclusionists. Such a law, indeed, would have
been positively unpleasing to him; for one class of Exclusionists
stood high in his favour, that class of which Sunderland was the
representative, that class which had joined the Whigs in the days
of the plot, merely because the Whigs were predominant, and which
had changed with the change of fortune. James justly regarded
these renegades as the most serviceable tools that he could
employ. It was not from the stouthearted Cavaliers, who had been
true to him in his adversity, that he could expect abject and
unscrupulous obedience in his prosperity. The men who, impelled,
not by zeal for liberty or for religion, but merely by selfish
cupidity and selfish fear, had assisted to oppress him when he
was weak, were the very men who, impelled by the same cupidity
and the same fear, would assist him to oppress his people now
that he was strong.302 Though vindictive, he was not
indiscriminately vindictive. Not a single instance can be
mentioned in which he showed a generous compassion to those who
had opposed him honestly and on public grounds. But he frequently
spared and promoted those whom some vile motive had induced to
injure him. For that meanness which marked them out as fit
implements of tyranny was so precious in his estimation that he
regarded it with some indulgence even when it was exhibited at
his own expense.

The King's wishes were communicated through several channels to
the Tory members of the Lower House. The majority was easily
persuaded to forego all thoughts of a penal law against the
Exclusionists, and to consent that His Majesty should have the
revenue for life. But about the Test Act and the Habeas Corpus
Act the emissaries of the Court could obtain no satisfactory
assurances.303

On the nineteenth of May the session was opened. The benches of
the Commons presented a singular spectacle. That great party,
which, in the last three Parliaments, had been predominant, had
now dwindled to a pitiable minority, and was indeed little more
than a fifteenth part of the House. Of the five hundred and
thirteen knights and burgesses only a hundred and thirty-five had
ever sate in that place before. It is evident that a body of men
so raw and inexperienced must have been, in some important
qualities, far below the average of our representative
assemblies.304

The management of the House was confided by James to two peers of
the kingdom of Scotland. One of them, Charles Middleton, Earl of
Middleton, after holding high office at Edinburgh, had, shortly
before the death of the late King, been sworn of the English
Privy Council, and appointed one of the Secretaries of State.
With him was joined Richard Graham, Viscount Preston, who had
long held the post of Envoy at Versailles.

The first business of the Commons was to elect a Speaker. Who
should be the man, was a question which had been much debated in
the cabinet. Guildford had recommended Sir Thomas Meres, who,
like himself, ranked among the Trimmers. Jeffreys, who missed no
opportunity of crossing the Lord Keeper, had pressed the claims
of Sir John Trevor. Trevor had been bred half a pettifogger and
half a gambler, had brought to political life sentiments and
principles worthy of both his callings, had become a parasite of
the Chief Justice, and could, on occasion, imitate, not
unsuccessfully, the vituperative style of his patron. The minion
of Jeffreys was, as might have been expected, preferred by James,
was proposed by Middleton, and was chosen without opposition.305

Thus far all went smoothly. But an adversary of no common prowess
was watching his time. This was Edward Seymour of Berry Pomeroy
Castle, member for the city of Exeter. Seymour's birth put him on
a level with the noblest subjects in Europe. He was the right
heir male of the body of that Duke of Somerset who had been
brother-in-law of King Henry the Eighth, and Protector of the
realm of England. In the limitation of the dukedom of Somerset,
the elder Son of the Protector had been postponed to the younger
son. From the younger son the Dukes of Somerset were descended.
From the elder son was descended the family which dwelt at Berry
Pomeroy. Seymour's fortune was large, and his influence in the
West of England extensive. Nor was the importance derived from
descent and wealth the only importance which belonged to him. He
was one of the most skilful debaters and men of business in the
kingdom. He had sate many years in the House of Commons, had
studied all its rules and usages, and thoroughly understood its
peculiar temper. He had been elected speaker in the late reign
under circumstances which made that distinction peculiarly
honourable. During several generations none but lawyers had been
called to the chair; and he was the first country gentleman whose
abilities and acquirements had enabled him to break that long
prescription. He had subsequently held high political office, and
had sate in the Cabinet. But his haughty and unaccommodating
temper had given so much disgust that he had been forced to
retire. He was a Tory and a Churchman: he had strenuously opposed
the Exclusion Bill: he had been persecuted by the Whigs in the
day of their prosperity; and he could therefore safely venture to
hold language for which any person suspected of republicanism
would have been sent to the Tower. He had long been at the head
of a strong parliamentary connection, which was called the
Western Alliance, and which included many gentlemen of
Devonshire, Somersetshire, and Cornwall.306

In every House of Commons, a member who unites eloquence,
knowledge, and habits of business, to opulence and illustrious
descent, must be highly considered. But in a House of Commons
from which many of the most eminent orators and parliamentary
tacticians of the age were excluded, and which was crowded with
people who had never heard a debate, the influence of such a man
was peculiarly formidable. Weight of moral character was indeed
wanting to Edward Seymour. He was licentious, profane, corrupt,
too proud to behave with common politeness, yet not too proud to
pocket illicit gain. But he was so useful an ally, and so
mischievous an enemy that he was frequently courted even by those
who most detested him.307

He was now in bad humour with the government. His interest had
been weakened in some places by the remodelling of the western
boroughs: his pride had been wounded by the elevation of Trevor
to the chair; and he took an early opportunity of revenging
himself.

On the twenty-second of May the Commons were summoned to the bar
of the Lords; and the King, seated on his throne, made a speech
to both Houses. He declared himself resolved to maintain the
established government in Church and State. But he weakened the
effect of this declaration by addressing an extraordinary
admonition to the Commons. He was apprehensive, he said, that
they might be inclined to dole out money to him from time to
time, in the hope that they should thus force him to call them
frequently together. But he must warn them that he was not to be
so dealt with, and that, if they wished him to meet them often
they must use him well. As it was evident that without money the
government could not be carried on, these expressions plainly
implied that, if they did not give him as much money as he
wished, he would take it. Strange to say, this harangue was
received with loud cheers by the Tory gentlemen at the bar. Such
acclamations were then usual. It has now been, during many years,
the grave and decorous usage of Parliaments to hear, in
respectful silence, all expressions, acceptable or unacceptable,
which are uttered from the throne.308

It was then the custom that, after the King had concisely
explained his reasons for calling Parliament together, the
minister who held the Great Seal should, at more length, explain
to the Houses the state of public affairs. Guildford, in
imitation of his predecessors, Clarendon, Bridgeman, Shaftesbury,
and Nottingham, had prepared an elaborate oration, but found, to
his great mortification, that his services were not wanted.309

As soon as the Commons had returned to their own chamber, it was
proposed that they should resolve themselves into a Committee,
for the purpose of settling a revenue on the King.

Then Seymour stood up. How he stood, looking like what he was,
the chief of a dissolute and high spirited gentry, with the
artificial ringlets clustering in fashionable profusion round his
shoulders, and a mingled expression of voluptuousness and disdain
in his eye and on his lip, the likenesses of him which still
remain enable us to imagine. It was not, the haughty Cavalier
said, his wish that the Parliament should withhold from the crown
the means of carrying on the government. But was there indeed a
Parliament? Were there not on the benches many men who had, as
all the world knew, no right to sit there, many men whose
elections were tainted by corruption, many men forced by
intimidation on reluctant voters, and many men returned by
corporations which had no legal existence? Had not constituent
bodies been remodelled, in defiance of royal charters and of
immemorial prescription? Had not returning officers been
everywhere the unscrupulous agents of the Court? Seeing that the
very principle of representation had been thus systematically
attacked, he knew not how to call the throng of gentlemen which
he saw around him by the honourable name of a House of Commons.
Yet never was there a time when it more concerned the public weal
that the character of Parliament should stand high. Great dangers
impended over the ecclesiastical and civil constitution of the
realm. It was matter of vulgar notoriety, it was matter which
required no proof, that the Test Act, the rampart of religion,
and the Habeas Corpus Act, the rampart of liberty, were marked
out for destruction. "Before we proceed to legislate on questions
so momentous, let us at least ascertain whether we really are a
legislature. Let our first proceeding be to enquire into the
manner in which the elections have been conducted. And let us
look to it that the enquiry be impartial. For, if the nation
shall find that no redress is to be obtained by peaceful methods,
we may perhaps ere long suffer the justice which we refuse to
do." He concluded by moving that, before any supply was granted,
the House would take into consideration petitions against
returns, and that no member whose right to sit was disputed
should be allowed to vote.

Not a cheer was heard. Not a member ventured to second the
motion. Indeed, Seymour had said much that no other man could
have said with impunity. The proposition fell to the ground, and
was not even entered on the journals. But a mighty effect had
been produced. Barillon informed his master that many who had not
dared to applaud that remarkable speech had cordially approved of
it, that it was the universal subject of conversation throughout
London, and that the impression made on the public mind seemed
likely to be durable.310

The Commons went into committee without delay, and voted to the
King, for life, the whole revenue enjoyed by his brother.311

The zealous churchmen who formed the majority of the House seem
to have been of opinion that the promptitude with which they had
met the wish of James, touching the revenue, entitled them to
expect some concession on his part. They said that much had been
done to gratify him, and that they must now do something to
gratify the nation. The House, therefore, resolved itself into a
Grand Committee of Religion, in order to consider the best means
of providing for the security of the ecclesiastical
establishment. In that Committee two resolutions were unanimously
adopted. The first expressed fervent attachment to the Church of
England. The second called on the King to put in execution the
penal laws against all persons who were not members of that
Church.312

The Whigs would doubtless have wished to see the Protestant
dissenters tolerated, and the Roman Catholics alone persecuted.
But the Whigs were a small and a disheartened minority. They
therefore kept themselves as much as possible out of sight,
dropped their party name, abstained from obtruding their peculiar
opinions on a hostile audience, and steadily supported every
proposition tending to disturb the harmony which as yet subsisted
between the Parliament and the Court.

When the proceedings of the Committee of Religion were known at
Whitehall, the King's anger was great. Nor can we justly blame
him for resenting the conduct of the Tories If they were disposed
to require the rigorous execution of the penal code, they clearly
ought to have supported the Exclusion Bill. For to place a Papist
on the throne, and then to insist on his persecuting to the death
the teachers of that faith in which alone, on his principles,
salvation could be found, was monstrous. In mitigating by a
lenient administration the severity of the bloody laws of
Elizabeth, the King violated no constitutional principle. He only
exerted a power which has always belonged to the crown. Nay, he
only did what was afterwards done by a succession of sovereigns
zealous for Protestantism, by William, by Anne, and by the
princes of the House of Brunswick. Had he suffered Roman Catholic
priests, whose lives he could save without infringing any law, to
be hanged, drawn, and quartered for discharging what he
considered as their first duty, he would have drawn on himself
the hatred and contempt even of those to whose prejudices he had
made so shameful a concession, and, had he contented himself with
granting to the members of his own Church a practical toleration
by a large exercise of his unquestioned prerogative of mercy,
posterity would have unanimously applauded him.

The Commons probably felt on reflection that they had acted
absurdly. They were also disturbed by learning that the King, to
whom they looked up with superstitious reverence, was greatly
provoked. They made haste, therefore, to atone for their offence.
In the House, they unanimously reversed the decision which, in
the Committee, they had unanimously adopted. and passed a
resolution importing that they relied with entire confidence on
His Majesty's gracious promise to protect that religion which was
dearer to them than life itself.313

Three days later the King informed the House that his brother had
left some debts, and that the stores of the navy and ordnance
were nearly exhausted. It was promptly resolved that new taxes
should be imposed. The person on whom devolved the task of
devising ways and means was Sir Dudley North, younger brother of
the Lord Keeper. Dudley North was one of the ablest men of his
time. He had early in life been sent to the Levant, and had there
been long engaged in mercantile pursuits. Most men would, in such
a situation, have allowed their faculties to rust. For at Smyrna
and Constantinople there were few books and few intelligent
companions. But the young factor had one of those vigorous
understandings which are independent of external aids. In his
solitude he meditated deeply on the philosophy of trade, and
thought out by degrees a complete and admirable theory,
substantially the same with that which, a century later, was
expounded by Adam Smith. After an exile of many years, Dudley
North returned to England with a large fortune, and commenced
business as a Turkey merchant in the City of London. His profound
knowledge, both speculative and practical, of commercial matters,
and the perspicuity and liveliness with which he explained his
views, speedily introduced him to the notice of statesmen. The
government found in him at once an enlightened adviser and an
unscrupulous slave. For with his rare mental endowments were
joined lax principles and an unfeeling heart. When the Tory
reaction was in full progress, he had consented to be made
Sheriff for the express purpose of assisting the vengeance of the
court. His juries had never failed to find verdicts of Guilty;
and, on a day of judicial butchery, carts, loaded with the legs
and arms of quartered Whigs, were, to the great discomposure of
his lady, driven to his fine house in Basinghall Street for
orders. His services had been rewarded with the honour of
knighthood, with an Alderman's gown, and with the office of
Commissioner of the Customs. He had been brought into Parliament
for Banbury, and though a new member, was the person on whom the
Lord Treasurer chiefly relied for the conduct of financial
business in the Lower House.314

Though the Commons were unanimous in their resolution to grant a
further supply to the crown, they were by no means agreed as to
the sources from which that supply should be drawn. It was
speedily determined that part of the sum which was required
should be raised by laying an additional impost, for a term of
eight years, on wine and vinegar: but something more than this
was needed. Several absurd schemes were suggested. Many country
gentlemen were disposed to put a heavy tax on all new buildings
in the capital. Such a tax, it was hoped, would check the growth
of a city which had long been regarded with jealousy and aversion
by the rural aristocracy. Dudley North's plan was that additional
duties should be imposed, for a term of eight years, on sugar and
tobacco. A great clamour was raised Colonial merchants, grocers,
sugar bakers and tobacconists, petitioned the House and besieged
the public offices. The people of Bristol, who were deeply
interested in the trade with Virginia and Jamaica, sent up a
deputation which was heard at the bar of the Commons. Rochester
was for a moment staggered; but North's ready wit and perfect
knowledge of trade prevailed, both in the Treasury and in the
Parliament, against all opposition. The old members were amazed
at seeing a man who had not been a fortnight in the House, and
whose life had been chiefly passed in foreign countries, assume
with confidence, and discharge with ability, all the functions of
a Chancellor of the Exchequer.315

His plan was adopted; and thus the Crown was in possession of a
clear income of about nineteen hundred thousand pounds, derived
from England alone. Such an income was then more than sufficient
for the support of the government in time of peace.316

The Lords had, in the meantime, discussed several important
questions. The Tory party had always been strong among the peers.
It included the whole bench of Bishops, and had been reinforced
during the four years which had elapsed since the last
dissolution, by several fresh creations. Of the new nobles, the
most conspicuous were the Lord Treasurer Rochester, the Lord
Keeper Guildford. the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, the Lord
Godolphin, and the Lord Churchill, who, after his return from
Versailles, had been made a Baron of England.

The peers early took into consideration the case of four members
of their body who had been impeached in the late reign, but had
never been brought to trial, and had, after a long confinement,
been admitted to bail by the Court of King's Bench. Three of the
noblemen who were thus under recognisances were Roman Catholics.
The fourth was a Protestant of great note and influence, the Earl
of Danby. Since he had fallen from power and had been accused of
treason by the Commons, four Parliaments had been dissolved; but
he had been neither acquitted nor condemned. In 1679 the Lords
had considered, with reference to his situation, the question
whether an impeachment was or was not terminated by a
dissolution. They had resolved, after long debate and full
examination of precedents, that the impeachment was still
pending. That resolution they now rescinded. A few Whig nobles
protested against this step, but to little purpose. The Commons
silently acquiesced in the decision of the Upper House. Danby
again took his seat among his peers, and became an active and
powerful member of the Tory party.317

The constitutional question on which the Lords thus, in the short
space of six years, pronounced two diametrically opposite
decisions, slept during more than a century, and was at length
revived by the dissolution which took place during the long trial
of Warren Hastings. It was then necessary to determine whether
the rule laid down in 1679, or the opposite rule laid down in
1685, was to be accounted the law of the land. The point was long
debated in both houses; and the best legal and parliamentary
abilities which an age preeminently fertile both in legal and in
parliamentary ability could supply were employed in the
discussion. The lawyers were not unequally divided. Thurlow,
Kenyon, Scott, and Erskine maintained that the dissolution had
put an end to the impeachment. The contrary doctrine was held by
Mansfield, Camden, Loughborough, and Grant. But among those
statesmen who grounded their arguments, not on precedents and
technical analogies, but on deep and broad constitutional
principles, there was little difference of opinion. Pitt and
Grenville, as well as Burke and Fox, held that the impeachment
was still pending Both Houses by great majorities set aside the
decision of 1685, and pronounced the decision of 1679 to be in
conformity with the law of Parliament.

Of the national crimes which had been committed during the panic
excited by the fictions of Oates, the most signal had been the
judicial murder of Stafford. The sentence of that unhappy
nobleman was now regarded by all impartial persons as unjust. The
principal witness for the prosecution had been convicted of a
series of foul perjuries. It was the duty of the legislature, in
such circumstances, to do justice to the memory of a guiltless
sufferer, and to efface an unmerited stain from a name long
illustrious in our annals. A bill for reversing the attainder of
Stafford was passed by the Upper House, in spite of the murmurs
of a few peers who were unwilling to admit that they had shed
innocent blood. The Commons read the bill twice without a
division, and ordered it to be committed. But, on the day
appointed for the committee, arrived news that a formidable
rebellion had broken out in the West of England. It was
consequently necessary to postpone much important business. The
amends due to the memory of Stafford were deferred, as was
supposed, only for a short time. But the misgovernment of James
in a few months completely turned the tide of public feeling.
During several generations the Roman Catholics were in no
condition to demand reparation for injustice, and accounted
themselves happy if they were permitted to live unmolested in
obscurity and silence. At length, in the reign of King George the
Fourth, more than a hundred and forty years after the day on
which the blood of Stafford was shed on Tower Hill, the tardy
expiation was accomplished. A law annulling the attainder and
restoring the injured family to its ancient dignities was
presented to Parliament by the ministers of the crown, was
eagerly welcomed by public men of all parties, and was passed
without one dissentient voice.318

It is now necessary that I should trace the origin and progress
of that rebellion by which the deliberations of the Houses were
suddenly interrupted.

CHAPTER V.

TOWARDS the close of the reign of Charles the Second, some Whigs
who had been deeply implicated in the plot so fatal to their
party, and who knew themselves to be marked out for destruction,
had sought an asylum in the Low Countries.

These refugees were in general men of fiery temper and weak
judgment. They were also under the influence of that peculiar
illusion which seems to belong to their situation. A politician
driven into banishment by a hostile faction generally sees the
society which he has quitted through a false medium. Every object
is distorted and discoloured by his regrets, his longings, and
his resentments. Every little discontent appears to him to
portend a revolution. Every riot is a rebellion. He cannot be
convinced that his country does not pine for him as much as he
pines for his country. He imagines that all his old associates,
who still dwell at their homes and enjoy their estates, are
tormented by the same feelings which make life a burden to
himself. The longer his expatriation, the greater does this
hallucination become. The lapse of time, which cools the ardour
of the friends whom he has left behind, inflames his. Every month
his impatience to revisit his native land increases; and every
month his native land remembers and misses him less. This
delusion becomes almost a madness when many exiles who suffer in
the same cause herd together in a foreign country. Their chief
employment is to talk of what they once were, and of what they
may yet be, to goad each other into animosity against the common
enemy, to feed each other with extravagant hopes of victory and
revenge. Thus they become ripe for enterprises which would at
once be pronounced hopeless by any man whose passions had not
deprived him of the power of calculating chances.

In this mood were many of the outlaws who had assembled on the
Continent. The correspondence which they kept up with England
was, for the most part, such as tended to excite their feelings
and to mislead their judgment. Their information concerning the
temper of the public mind was chiefly derived from the worst
members of the Whig party, from men who were plotters and
libellers by profession, who were pursued by the officers of
justice, who were forced to skulk in disguise through back
streets, and who sometimes lay hid for weeks together in
cocklofts and cellars. The statesmen who had formerly been the
ornaments of the Country Party, the statesmen who afterwards
guided the councils of the Convention, would have given advice
very different from that which was given by such men as John
Wildman and Henry Danvers.

Wildman had served forty years before in the parliamentary army,
but had been more distinguished there as an agitator than as a
soldier, and had early quitted the profession of arms for
pursuits better suited to his temper. His hatred of monarchy had
induced him to engage in a long series of conspiracies, first
against the Protector, and then against the Stuarts. But with
Wildman's fanaticism was joined a tender care for his own safety.
He had a wonderful skill in grazing the edge of treason. No man
understood better how to instigate others to desperate
enterprises by words which, when repeated to a jury, might seem
innocent, or, at worst, ambiguous. Such was his cunning that,
though always plotting, though always known to be plotting, and
though long malignantly watched by a vindictive government, he
eluded every danger, and died in his bed, after having seen two
generations of his accomplices die on the gallows.319 Danvers was
a man of the same class, hotheaded, but fainthearted, constantly
urged to the brink of danger by enthusiasm, and constantly
stopped on that brink by cowardice. He had considerable influence
among a portion of the Baptists, had written largely in defence
of their peculiar opinions, and had drawn down on himself the
severe censure of the most respectable Puritans by attempting to
palliate the crimes of Matthias and John of Leyden. It is
probable that, had he possessed a little courage, he would have
trodden in the footsteps of the wretches whom he defended. He
was, at this time, concealing himself from the officers of
justice; for warrants were out against him on account of a
grossly calumnious paper of which the government had discovered
him to be the author.320

It is easy to imagine what kind of intelligence and counsel men,
such as have been described, were likely to send to the outlaws
in the Netherlands. Of the general character of those outlaws an
estimate may be formed from a few samples.

One of the most conspicuous among them was John Ayloffe, a lawyer
connected by affinity with the Hydes, and through the Hydes, with
James. Ayloffe had early made himself remarkable by offering a
whimsical insult to the government. At a time when the ascendancy
of the court of Versailles had excited general uneasiness, he had
contrived to put a wooden shoe, the established type, among the
English, of French tyranny, into the chair of the House of
Commons. He had subsequently been concerned in the Whig plot; but
there is no reason to believe that he was a party to the design
of assassinating the royal brothers. He was a man of parts and
courage; but his moral character did not stand high. The Puritan
divines whispered that he was a careless Gallio or something
worse, and that, whatever zeal he might profess for civil
liberty, the Saints would do well to avoid all connection with
him.321

Nathaniel Wade was, like Ayloffe, a lawyer. He had long resided
at Bristol, and had been celebrated in his own neighbourhood as a
vehement republican. At one time he had formed a project of
emigrating to New Jersey, where he expected to find institutions
better suited to his taste than those of England. His activity in
electioneering had introduced him to the notice of some Whig
nobles. They had employed him professionally, and had, at length,
admitted him to their most secret counsels. He had been deeply
concerned in the scheme of insurrection, and had undertaken to
head a rising in his own city. He had also been privy to the more
odious plot against the lives of Charles and James. But he always
declared that, though privy to it, he had abhorred it, and had
attempted to dissuade his associates from carrying their design
into effect. For a man bred to civil pursuits, Wade seems to have
had, in an unusual degree, that sort of ability and that sort of
nerve which make a good soldier. Unhappily his principles and his
courage proved to be not of sufficient force to support him when
the fight was over, and when in a prison, he had to choose
between death and infamy.322

Another fugitive was Richard Goodenough, who had formerly been
Under Sheriff of London. On this man his party had long relied
for services of no honourable kind, and especially for the
selection of jurymen not likely to be troubled with scruples in
political cases. He had been deeply concerned in those dark and
atrocious parts of the Whig plot which had been carefully
concealed from the most respectable Whigs. Nor is it possible to
plead, in extenuation of his guilt, that he was misled by
inordinate zeal for the public good. For it will be seen that
after having disgraced a noble cause by his crimes, he betrayed
it in order to escape from his well merited punishment.323

Very different was the character of Richard Rumbold. He had held
a commission in Cromwell's own regiment, had guarded the scaffold
before the Banqueting House on the day of the great execution,
had fought at Dunbar and Worcester, and had always shown in the
highest degree the qualities which distinguished the invincible
army in which he served, courage of the truest temper, fiery
enthusiasm, both political and religious, and with that
enthusiasm, all the power of selfgovernment which is
characteristic of men trained in well disciplined camps to
command and to obey. When the Republican troops were disbanded,
Rumbold became a maltster, and carried on his trade near
Hoddesdon, in that building from which the Rye House plot derives
its name. It had been suggested, though not absolutely
determined, in the conferences of the most violent and
unscrupulous of the malecontents, that armed men should be
stationed in the Rye House to attack the Guards who were to
escort Charles and James from Newmarket to London. In these
conferences Rumbold had borne a part from which he would have
shrunk with horror, if his clear understanding had not been
overclouded, and his manly heart corrupted, by party spirit.324

A more important exile was Ford Grey, Lord Grey of Wark. He had
been a zealous Exclusionist, had concurred in the design of
insurrection, and had been committed to the Tower, but had
succeeded in making his keepers drunk, and in effecting his
escape to the Continent. His parliamentary abilities were great,
and his manners pleasing: but his life had been sullied by a
great domestic crime. His wife was a daughter of the noble house
of Berkeley. Her sister, the Lady Henrietta Berkeley, was allowed
to associate and correspond with him as with a brother by blood.
A fatal attachment sprang up. The high spirit and strong passions
of Lady Henrietta broke through all restraints of virtue and
decorum. A scandalous elopement disclosed to the whole kingdom
the shame of two illustrious families. Grey and some of the
agents who had served him in his amour were brought to trial on a
charge of conspiracy. A scene unparalleled in our legal history
was exhibited in the Court of King's Bench. The seducer appeared
with dauntless front, accompanied by his paramour. Nor did the
great Whig lords flinch from their friend's side even in that
extremity. Those whom he had wronged stood over against him, and
were moved to transports of rage by the sight of him. The old
Earl of Berkeley poured forth reproaches and curses on the
wretched Henrietta. The Countess gave evidence broken by many
sobs, and at length fell down in a swoon. The jury found a
verdict of Guilty. When the court rose Lord Berkeley called on
all his friends to help him to seize his daughter. The partisans
of Grey rallied round her. Swords were drawn on both sides; a
skirmish took place in Westminster Hall; and it was with
difficulty that the Judges and tipstaves parted the combatants.
In our time such a trial would be fatal to the character of a
public man; but in that age the standard of morality among the
great was so low, and party spirit was so violent, that Grey
still continued to have considerable influence, though the
Puritans, who formed a strong section of the Whig party, looked
somewhat coldly on him.325

One part of the character, or rather, it may be, of the fortune,
of Grey deserves notice. It was admitted that everywhere, except
on the field of battle, he showed a high degree of courage. More
than once, in embarrassing circumstances, when his life and
liberty were at stake, the dignity of his deportment and his
perfect command of all his faculties extorted praise from those
who neither loved nor esteemed him. But as a soldier he incurred,
less perhaps by his fault than by mischance, the degrading
imputation of personal cowardice.

In this respect he differed widely from his friend the Duke of
Monmouth. Ardent and intrepid on the field of battle, Monmouth
was everywhere else effeminate and irresolute. The accident of
his birth, his personal courage, and his superficial graces, had
placed him in a post for which he was altogether unfitted. After
witnessing the ruin of the party of which he had been the nominal
head, he had retired to Holland. The Prince and Princess of
Orange had now ceased to regard him as a rival. They received him
most hospitably; for they hoped that, by treating, him with
kindness, they should establish a claim to the gratitude of his
father. They knew that paternal affection was not yet wearied
out, that letters and supplies of money still came secretly from
Whitehall to Monmouth's retreat, and that Charles frowned on
those who sought to pay their court to him by speaking ill of his
banished son. The Duke had been encouraged to expect that, in a
very short time, if he gave no new cause of displeasure, he would
be recalled to his native land, and restored to all his high
honours and commands. Animated by such expectations he had been
the life of the Hague during the late winter. He had been the
most conspicuous figure at a succession of balls in that splendid
Orange Hall, which blazes on every side with the most
ostentatious colouring of Jordæns and Hondthorst.326 He had
taught the English country dance to the Dutch ladies, and had in
his turn learned from them to skate on the canals. The Princess
had accompanied him in his expeditions on the ice; and the figure
which she made there, poised on one leg, and clad in petticoats
shorter than are generally worn by ladies so strictly decorous,
had caused some wonder and mirth to the foreign ministers. The
sullen gravity which had been characteristic of the Stadtholder's
court seemed to have vanished before the influence of the
fascinating Englishman. Even the stern and pensive William
relaxed into good humour when his brilliant guest appeared.327

Monmouth meanwhile carefully avoided all that could give offence
in the quarter to which he looked for protection. He saw little
of any Whigs, and nothing of those violent men who had been
concerned in the worst part of the Whig plot. He was therefore
loudly accused, by his old associates, of fickleness and
ingratitude.328

By none of the exiles was this accusation urged with more
vehemence and bitterness than by Robert Ferguson, the Judas of
Dryden's great satire. Ferguson was by birth a Scot; but England
had long been his residence. At the time of the Restoration,
indeed, he had held a living in Kent. He had been bred a
Presbyterian; but the Presbyterians had cast him out, and he had
become an Independent. He had been master of an academy which the
Dissenters had set up at Islington as a rival to Westminster
School and the Charter House; and he had preached to large
congregations at a meeting house in Moorfields. He had also
published some theological treatises which may still be found in
the dusty recesses of a few old libraries; but, though texts of
Scripture were always on his lips, those who had pecuniary
transactions with him soon found him to be a mere swindler.

At length he turned his attention almost entirely from theology
to the worst part of politics. He belonged to the class whose
office it is to render in troubled times to exasperated parties
those services from which honest men shrink in disgust and
prudent men in fear, the class of fanatical knaves. Violent,
malignant, regardless of truth, insensible to shame, insatiable
of notoriety, delighting in intrigue, in tumult, in mischief for
its own sake, he toiled during many years in the darkest mines of
faction. He lived among libellers and false witnesses. He was the
keeper of a secret purse from which agents too vile to be
acknowledged received hire, and the director of a secret press
whence pamphlets, bearing no name, were daily issued. He boasted
that he had contrived to scatter lampoons about the terrace of
Windsor, and even to lay them under the royal pillow. In this way
of life he was put to many shifts, was forced to assume many
names, and at one time had four different lodgings in different
corners of London. He was deeply engaged in the Rye House plot.
There is, indeed, reason to believe that he was the original
author of those sanguinary schemes which brought so much
discredit on the whole Whig party. When the conspiracy was
detected and his associates were in dismay, he bade them farewell
with a laugh, and told them that they were novices, that he had
been used to flight, concealment and disguise, and that he should
never leave off plotting while he lived. He escaped to the
Continent. But it seemed that even on the Continent he was not
secure. The English envoys at foreign courts were directed to be
on the watch for him. The French government offered a reward of
five hundred pistoles to any who would seize him. Nor was it easy
for him to escape notice; for his broad Scotch accent, his tall
and lean figure, his lantern jaws, the gleam of his sharp eyes
which were always overhung by his wig, his cheeks inflamed by an
eruption, his shoulders deformed by a stoop, and his gait
distinguished from that of other men by a peculiar shuffle, made
him remarkable wherever he appeared. But, though he was, as it
seemed, pursued with peculiar animosity, it was whispered that
this animosity was feigned, and that the officers of justice had
secret orders not to see him. That he was really a bitter
malecontent can scarcely be doubted. But there is strong reason
to believe that he provided for his own safety by pretending at
Whitehall to be a spy on the Whigs, and by furnishing the
government with just so much information as sufficed to keep up
his credit. This hypothesis furnishes a simple explanation of
what seemed to his associates to be his unnatural recklessness
and audacity. Being himself out of danger, he always gave his
vote for the most violent and perilous course, and sneered very
complacently at the pusillanimity of men who, not having taken
the infamous precautions on which he relied, were disposed to
think twice before they placed life, and objects dearer than
life, on a single hazard 329

As soon as he was in the Low Countries he began to form new
projects against the English government, and found among his
fellow emigrants men ready to listen to his evil counsels.
Monmouth, however, stood obstinately aloof; and, without the help
of Monmouth's immense popularity, it was impossible to effect
anything. Yet such was the impatience and rashness of the exiles
that they tried to find another leader. They sent an embassy to
that solitary retreat on the shores of Lake Leman where Edmund
Ludlow, once conspicuous among the chiefs of the parliamentary
army and among the members of the High Court of Justice, had,
during many years, hidden himself from the vengeance of the
restored Stuarts. The stern old regicide, however, refused to
quit his hermitage. His work, he said, was done. If England was
still to be saved, she must be saved by younger men.330

The unexpected demise of the crown changed the whole aspect of
affairs. Any hope which the proscribed Whigs might have cherished
of returning peaceably to their native land was extinguished by
the death of a careless and goodnatured prince, and by the
accession of a prince obstinate in all things, and especially
obstinate in revenge. Ferguson was in his element. Destitute of
the talents both of a writer and of a statesman, he had in a high
degree the unenviable qualifications of a tempter; and now, with
the malevolent activity and dexterity of an evil spirit, he ran
from outlaw to outlaw, chattered in every ear, and stirred up in
every bosom savage animosities and wild desires.

He no longer despaired of being able to seduce Monmouth. The
situation of that unhappy young man was completely changed. While
he was dancing and skating at the Hague, and expecting every day
a summons to London, he was overwhelmed with misery by the
tidings of his father's death and of his uncle's accession.
During the night which followed the arrival of the news, those
who lodged near him could distinctly hear his sobs and his
piercing cries. He quitted the Hague the next day, having
solemnly pledged his word both to the Prince and to the Princess
of Orange not to attempt anything against the government of
England, and having been supplied by them with money to meet
immediate demands.331

The prospect which lay before Monmouth was not a bright one.
There was now no probability that he would be recalled from
banishment. On the Continent his life could no longer be passed
amidst the splendour and festivity of a court. His cousins at the
Hague seem to have really regarded him with kindness; but they
could no longer countenance him openly without serious risk of
producing a rupture between England and Holland. William offered
a kind and judicious suggestion. The war which was then raging in
Hungary, between the Emperor and the Turks, was watched by all
Europe with interest almost as great as that which the Crusades
had excited five hundred years earlier. Many gallant gentlemen,
both Protestant and Catholic, were fighting as volunteers in the
common cause of Christendom. The Prince advised Monmouth to
repair to the Imperial camp, and assured him that, if he would do
so, he should not want the means of making an appearance
befitting an English nobleman.332 This counsel was excellent: but
the Duke could not make up his mind. He retired to Brussels
accompanied by Henrietta Wentworth, Baroness Wentworth of
Nettlestede, a damsel of high rank and ample fortune, who loved
him passionately, who had sacrificed for his sake her maiden
honour and the hope of a splendid alliance, who had followed him
into exile, and whom he believed to be his wife in the sight of
heaven. Under the soothing influence of female friendship, his
lacerated mind healed fast. He seemed to have found happiness in
obscurity and repose, and to have forgotten that he had been the
ornament of a splendid court and the head of a great party, that
he had commanded armies, and that he had aspired to a throne.

But he was not suffered to remain quiet. Ferguson employed all
his powers of temptation. Grey, who knew not where to turn for a
pistole, and was ready for any undertaking, however desperate,
lent his aid. No art was spared which could draw Monmouth from
retreat. To the first invitations which he received from his old
associates he returned unfavourable answers. He pronounced the
difficulties of a descent on England insuperable, protested that
he was sick of public life, and begged to be left in the
enjoyment of his newly found happiness. But he was little in the
habit of resisting skilful and urgent importunity. It is said,
too, that he was induced to quit his retirement by the same
powerful influence which had made that retirement delightful.
Lady Wentworth wished to see him a King. Her rents, her diamonds,
her credit were put at his disposal. Monmouth's judgment was not
convinced; but he had not the firmness to resist such
solicitations.333

By the English exiles he was joyfully welcomed, and unanimously
acknowledged as their head. But there was another class of
emigrants who were not disposed to recognise his supremacy.
Misgovernment, such as had never been known in the southern part
of our island, had driven from Scotland to the Continent many
fugitives, the intemperance of whose political and religious zeal
was proportioned to the oppression which they had undergone.
These men were not willing to follow an English leader. Even in
destitution and exile they retained their punctilious national
pride, and would not consent that their country should be, in
their persons, degraded into a province. They had a captain of
their own, Archibald, ninth Earl of Argyle, who, as chief of the
great tribe of Campbell, was known among the population of the
Highlands by the proud name of Mac Callum More. His father, the
Marquess of Argyle, had been the head of the Scotch Covenanters,
had greatly contributed to the ruin of Charles the First, and was
not thought by the Royalists to have atoned for this offence by
consenting to bestow the empty title of King, and a state prison
in a palace, on Charles the Second. After the return of the royal
family the Marquess was put to death. His marquisate became
extinct; but his son was permitted to inherit the ancient
earldom, and was still among the greatest if not the greatest, of
the nobles of Scotland. The Earl's conduct during the twenty
years which followed the Restoration had been, as he afterwards
thought, criminally moderate. He had, on some occasions, opposed
the administration which afflicted his country: but his
opposition had been languid and cautious. His compliances in
ecclesiastical matters had given scandal to rigid Presbyterians:
and so far had he been from showing any inclination to resistance
that, when the Covenanters had been persecuted into insurrection,
he had brought into the field a large body of his dependents to
support the government.

Such had been his political course until the Duke of York came
down to Edinburgh armed with the whole regal authority The
despotic viceroy soon found that he could not expect entire
support from Argyle. Since the most powerful chief in the kingdom
could not be gained, it was thought necessary that he should be
destroyed. On grounds so frivolous that even the spirit of party
and the spirit of chicane were ashamed of them, he was brought to
trial for treason, convicted, and sentenced to death. The
partisans of the Stuarts afterwards asserted that it was never
meant to carry this sentence into effect, and that the only
object of the prosecution was to frighten him into ceding his
extensive jurisdiction in the Highlands. Whether James designed,
as his enemies suspected, to commit murder, or only, as his
friends affirmed, to commit extortion by threatening to commit
murder, cannot now be ascertained. "I know nothing of the Scotch
law," said Halifax to King Charles; "but this I know, that we
should not hang a dog here on the grounds on which my Lord Argyle
has been sentenced."334

Argyle escaped in disguise to England, and thence passed over to
Friesland. In that secluded province his father had bought a
small estate, as a place of refuge for the family in civil
troubles. It was said, among the Scots that this purchase had
been made in consequence of the predictions of a Celtic seer, to
whom it had been revealed that Mac Callum More would one day be
driven forth from the ancient mansion of his race at Inverary.335
But it is probable that the politic Marquess had been warned
rather by the signs of the times than by the visions of any
prophet. In Friesland Earl Archibald resided during some time so
quietly that it was not generally known whither he had fled. From
his retreat he carried on a correspondence with his friends in
Great Britain, was a party to the Whig conspiracy, and concerted
with the chiefs of that conspiracy a plan for invading
Scotland.336 This plan had been dropped upon the detection of the
Rye House plot, but became again the Subject of his thoughts
after the demise of the crown.

He had, during his residence on the Continent, reflected much
more deeply on religious questions than in the preceding years of
his life. In one respect the effect of these reflections on his
mind had been pernicious. His partiality for the synodical form
of church government now amounted to bigotry. When he remembered
how long he had conformed to the established worship, he was
overwhelmed with shame and remorse, and showed too many signs of
a disposition to atone for his defection by violence and
intolerance. He had however, in no long time, an opportunity of
proving that the fear and love of a higher Power had nerved him
for the most formidable conflicts by which human nature can be
tried.

To his companions in adversity his assistance was of the highest
moment. Though proscribed and a fugitive. he was still, in some
sense, the most powerful subject in the British dominions. In
wealth, even before his attainder, he was probably inferior, not
only to the great English nobles, but to some of the opulent
esquires of Kent and Norfolk. But his patriarchal authority, an
authority which no wealth could give and which no attainder could
take away, made him, as a leader of an insurrection, truly
formidable. No southern lord could feel any confidence that, if
he ventured to resist the government, even his own gamekeepers
and huntsmen would stand by him. An Earl of Bedford, an Earl of
Devonshire, could not engage to bring ten men into the field. Mac
Callum More, penniless and deprived of his earldom, might at any
moment, raise a serious civil war. He bad only to show himself on
the coast of Lorn; and an army would, in a few days, gather round
him. The force which, in favourable circumstances, he could bring
into the field, amounted to five thousand fighting, men, devoted
to his service accustomed to the use of target and broadsword,
not afraid to encounter regular troops even in the open plain,
and perhaps superior to regular troops in the qualifications
requisite for the defence of wild mountain passes, hidden in
mist, and torn by headlong torrents. What such a force, well
directed, could effect, even against veteran regiments and
skilful commanders, was proved, a few years later, at
Killiecrankie.

But, strong as was the claim of Argyle to the confidence of the
exiled Scots, there was a faction among them which regarded him
with no friendly feeling, and which wished to make use of his
name and influence, without entrusting to him any real power. The
chief of this faction was a lowland gentleman, who had been
implicated in the Whig plot, and had with difficulty eluded the
vengeance of the court, Sir Patrick Hume, of Polwarth, in
Berwickshire. Great doubt has been thrown on his integrity, but
without sufficient reason. It must, however, be admitted that he
injured his cause by perverseness as much as he could have done
by treachery. He was a man incapable alike of leading and of
following, conceited, captious, and wrongheaded, an endless
talker, a sluggard in action against the enemy and active only
against his own allies. With Hume was closely connected another
Scottish exile of great note, who had many, of the same faults,
Sir John Cochrane, second son of the Earl of Dundonald.

A far higher character belonged to Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, a
man distinguished by learning and eloquence, distinguished also
by courage, disinterestedness, and public spirit but of an
irritable and impracticable temper. Like many of his most
illustrious contemporaries, Milton for example, Harrington,
Marvel, and Sidney, Fletcher had, from the misgovernment of
several successive princes, conceived a strong aversion to
hereditary monarchy. Yet he was no democrat. He was the head of
an ancient Norman house, and was proud of his descent. He was a
fine speaker and a fine writer, and was proud of his intellectual
superiority. Both in his character of gentleman, and in his
character of scholar, he looked down with disdain on the common
people, and was so little disposed to entrust them with political
power that he thought them unfit even to enjoy personal freedom.
It is a curious circumstance that this man, the most honest,
fearless, and uncompromising republican of his time, should have
been the author of a plan for reducing a large part of the
working classes of Scotland to slavery. He bore, in truth, a
lively resemblance to those Roman Senators who, while they hated
the name of King, guarded the privileges of their order with
inflexible pride against the encroachments of the multitude, and
governed their bondmen and bondwomen by means of the stocks and
the scourge.

Amsterdam was the place where the leading emigrants, Scotch and
English, assembled. Argyle repaired thither from Friesland,
Monmouth from Brabant. It soon appeared that the fugitives had
scarcely anything in common except hatred of James and impatience
to return from banishment. The Scots were jealous of the English,
the English of the Scots. Monmouth's high pretensions were
offensive to Argyle, who, proud of ancient nobility and of a
legitimate descent from kings, was by no means inclined to do
homage to the offspring of a vagrant and ignoble love. But of all
the dissensions by which the little band of outlaws was
distracted the most serious was that which arose between Argyle
and a portion of his own followers. Some of the Scottish exiles
had, in a long course of opposition to tyranny, been excited into
a morbid state of understanding and temper, which made the most
just and necessary restraint insupportable to them. They knew
that without Argyle they could do nothing. They ought to have
known that, unless they wished to run headlong to ruin, they must
either repose full confidence in their leader, or relinquish all
thoughts of military enterprise. Experience has fully proved that
in war every operation, from the greatest to the smallest, ought
to be under the absolute direction of one mind, and that every
subordinate agent, in his degree, ought to obey implicitly,
strenuously, and with the show of cheerfulness, orders which he
disapproves, or of which the reasons are kept secret from him.
Representative assemblies, public discussions, and all the other
checks by which, in civil affairs, rulers are restrained from
abusing power, are out of place in a camp. Machiavel justly
imputed many of the disasters of Venice and Florence to the
jealousy which led those republics to interfere with every one of
their generals.337 The Dutch practice of sending to an army
deputies, without whose consent no great blow could be struck,
was almost equally pernicious. It is undoubtedly by no means
certain that a captain, who has been entrusted with dictatorial
power in the hour of peril, will quietly surrender that power in
the hour of triumph; and this is one of the many considerations
which ought to make men hesitate long before they resolve to
vindicate public liberty by the sword. But, if they determine to
try the chance of war, they will, if they are wise, entrust to
their chief that plenary authority without which war cannot be
well conducted. It is possible that, if they give him that
authority, he may turn out a Cromwell or a Napoleon. But it is
almost certain that, if they withhold from him that authority,
their enterprises will end like the enterprise of Argyle.

Some of the Scottish emigrants, heated with republican
enthusiasm, and utterly destitute of the skill necessary to the
conduct of great affairs, employed all their industry and
ingenuity, not in collecting means for the attack which they were
about to make on a formidable enemy, but in devising restraints
on their leader's power and securities against his ambition. The
selfcomplacent stupidity with which they insisted on Organising
an army as if they had been organising a commonwealth would be
incredible if it had not been frankly and even boastfully
recorded by one of themselves.338

At length all differences were compromised. It was determined
that an attempt should be forthwith made on the western coast of
Scotland, and that it should be promptly followed by a descent on
England.

Argyle was to hold the nominal command in Scotland: but be was
placed under the control of a Committee which reserved to itself
all the most important parts of the military administration. This
committee was empowered to determine where the expedition should
land, to appoint officers, to superintend the levying of troops,
to dole out provisions and ammunition. All that was left to the
general was to direct the evolutions of the army in the field,
and he was forced to promise that even in the field, except in
the case of a surprise, he would do nothing without the assent of
a council of war.

Monmouth was to command in England. His soft mind had as usual,
taken an impress from the society which surrounded him. Ambitious
hopes, which had seemed to be extinguished, revived in his bosom.
He remembered the affection with which he had been constantly
greeted by the common people in town and country, and expected
that they would now rise by hundreds of thousands to welcome him.
He remembered the good will which the soldiers had always borne
him, and flattered himself that they would come over to him by
regiments. Encouraging messages reached him in quick succession
from London. He was assured that the violence and injustice with
which the elections had been carried on had driven the nation
mad, that the prudence of the leading Whigs had with difficulty
prevented a sanguinary outbreak on the day of the coronation, and
that all the great Lords who had supported the Exclusion Bill
were impatient to rally round him. Wildman, who loved to talk
treason in parables, sent to say that the Earl of Richmond, just
two hundred years before, had landed in England with a handful of
men, and had a few days later been crowned, on the field of
Bosworth, with the diadem taken from the head of Richard. Danvers
undertook to raise the City. The Duke was deceived into the
belief that, as soon as he set up his standard, Bedfordshire,
Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, Cheshire would rise in arms.339 He
consequently became eager for the enterprise from which a few
weeks before he had shrunk. His countrymen did not impose on him
restrictions so elaborately absurd as those which the Scotch
emigrants had devised. All that was required of him was to
promise that he would not assume the regal title till his
pretensions has been submitted to the judgment of a free
Parliament.

It was determined that two Englishmen, Ayloffe and Rumbold,
should accompany Argyle to Scotland, and that Fletcher should go
with Monmouth to England. Fletcher, from the beginning, had
augured ill of the enterprise: but his chivalrous spirit would
not suffer him to decline a risk which his friends seemed eager
to encounter. When Grey repeated with approbation what Wildman
had said about Richmond and Richard, the well read and thoughtful
Scot justly remarked that there was a great difference between
the fifteenth century and the seventeenth. Richmond was assured
of the support of barons, each of whom could bring an army of
feudal retainers into the field; and Richard had not one regiment
of regular soldiers.340

The exiles were able to raise, partly from their own resources
and partly from the contributions of well wishers in Holland, a
sum sufficient for the two expeditions. Very little was obtained
from London. Six thousand pounds had been expected thence. But
instead of the money came excuses from Wildman, which ought to
have opened the eyes of all who were not wilfully blind. The Duke
made up the deficiency by pawning his own jewels and those of
Lady Wentworth. Arms, ammunition, and provisions were bought, and
several ships which lay at Amsterdam were freighted.341

It is remarkable that the most illustrious and the most grossly
injured man among the British exiles stood far aloof from these
rash counsels. John Locke hated tyranny and persecution as a
philosopher; but his intellect and his temper preserved him from
the violence of a partisan. He had lived on confidential terms
with Shaftesbury, and had thus incurred the displeasure of the
court. Locke's prudence had, however, been such that it would
have been to little purpose to bring him even before the corrupt
and partial tribunals of that age. In one point, however, he was
vulnerable. He was a student of Christ Church in the University
of Oxford. It was determined to drive from that celebrated
college the greatest man of whom it could ever boast. But this
was not easy. Locke had, at Oxford, abstained from expressing any
opinion on the politics of the day. Spies had been set about him.
Doctors of Divinity and Masters of Arts had not been ashamed to
perform the vilest of all offices, that of watching the lips of a
companion in order to report his words to his ruin. The
conversation in the hall had been purposely turned to irritating
topics, to the Exclusion Bill, and to the character of the Earl
of Shaftesbury, but in vain. Locke neither broke out nor
dissembled, but maintained such steady silence and composure as
forced the tools of power to own with vexation that never man was
so complete a master of his tongue and of his passions. When it
was found that treachery could do nothing, arbitrary power was
used. After vainly trying to inveigle Locke into a fault, the
government resolved to punish him without one. Orders came from
Whitehall that he should be ejected; and those orders the Dean
and Canons made haste to obey.

Locke was travelling on the Continent for his health when he
learned that he had been deprived of his home and of his bread
without a trial or even a notice. The injustice with which he had
been treated would have excused him if he had resorted to violent
methods of redress. But he was not to be blinded by personal
resentment he augured no good from the schemes of those who had
assembled at Amsterdam; and he quietly repaired to Utrecht,
where, while his partners in misfortune were planning their own
destruction, he employed himself in writing his celebrated letter
on Toleration.342

The English government was early apprised that something was in
agitation among the outlaws. An invasion of England seems not to
have been at first expected; but it was apprehended that Argyle
would shortly appear in arms among his clansmen. A proclamation
was accordingly issued directing that Scotland should be put into
a state of defence. The militia was ordered to be in readiness.
All the clans hostile to the name of Campbell were set in motion.
John Murray, Marquess of Athol, was appointed Lord Lieutenant of
Argyleshire, and, at the head of a great body of his followers,
occupied the castle of Inverary. Some suspected persons were
arrested. Others were compelled to give hostages. Ships of war
were sent to cruise near the isle of Bute; and part of the army
of Ireland was moved to the coast of Ulster.343

While these preparations were making in Scotland, James called
into his closet Arnold Van Citters, who had long resided in
England as Ambassador from the United Provinces, and Everard Van
Dykvelt, who, after the death of Charles, had been sent by the
State General on a special mission of condolence and
congratulation. The King said that he had received from
unquestionable sources intelligence of designs which were forming
against the throne by his banished subjects in Holland. Some of
the exiles were cutthroats, whom nothing but the special
providence of God had prevented from committing a foul murder;
and among them was the owner of the spot which had been fixed for
the butchery. "Of all men living," said the King, "Argyle has the
greatest means of annoying me; and of all places Holland is that
whence a blow may be best aimed against me." The Dutch envoys
assured his Majesty that what he had said should instantly be
communicated to the government which they represented, and
expressed their full confidence that every exertion would be made
to satisfy him.344

They were justified in expressing this confidence. Both the
Prince of Orange and the States General, were, at this time, most
desirous that the hospitality of their country should not be
abused for purposes of which the English government could justly
complain. James had lately held language which encouraged the
hope that he would not patiently submit to the ascendancy of
France. It seemed probable that he would consent to form a close
alliance with the United Provinces and the House of Austria.
There was, therefore, at the Hague, an extreme anxiety to avoid
all that could give him offence. The personal interest of William
was also on this occasion identical with the interest of his
father in law.

But the case was one which required rapid and vigorous action;
and the nature of the Batavian institutions made such action
almost impossible. The Union of Utrecht, rudely formed, amidst
the agonies of a revolution, for the purpose of meeting immediate
exigencies, had never been deliberately revised and perfected in
a time of tranquillity. Every one of the seven commonwealths
which that Union had bound together retained almost all the
rights of sovereignty, and asserted those rights punctiliously
against the central government. As the federal authorities had
not the means of exacting prompt obedience from the provincial
authorities, so the provincial authorities had not the means of
exacting prompt obedience from the municipal authorities. Holland
alone contained eighteen cities, each of which was, for many
purposes, an independent state, jealous of all interference from
without. If the rulers of such a city received from the Hague an
order which was unpleasing to them, they either neglected it
altogether, or executed it languidly and tardily. In some town
councils, indeed, the influence of the Prince of Orange was all
powerful. But unfortunately the place where the British exiles
had congregated, and where their ships had been fitted out, was
the rich and populous Amsterdam; and the magistrates of Amsterdam
were the heads of the faction hostile to the federal government
and to the House of Nassau. The naval administration of the
United Provinces was conducted by five distinct boards of
Admiralty. One of those boards sate at Amsterdam, was partly
nominated by the authorities of that city, and seems to have been
entirely animated by their spirit.

All the endeavours of the federal government to effect what James
desired were frustrated by the evasions of the functionaries of
Amsterdam, and by the blunders of Colonel Bevil Skelton, who had
just arrived at the Hague as envoy from England. Skelton had been
born in Holland during the English troubles, and was therefore
supposed to be peculiarly qualified for his post;345 but he was,
in truth, unfit for that and for every other diplomatic
situation. Excellent judges of character pronounced him to be the
most shallow, fickle, passionate, presumptuous, and garrulous of
men.346 He took no serious notice of the proceedings of the
refugees till three vessels which had been equipped for the
expedition to Scotland were safe out of the Zuyder Zee, till the
arms, ammunition, and provisions were on board, and till the
passengers had embarked. Then, instead of applying, as he should
have done, to the States General, who sate close to his own door,
he sent a messenger to the magistrates of Amsterdam, with a
request that the suspected ships might be detained. The
magistrates of Amsterdam answered that the entrance of the Zuyder
Zee was out of their jurisdiction, and referred him to the
federal government. It was notorious that this was a mere excuse,
and that, if there had been any real wish at the Stadthouse of
Amsterdam to prevent Argyle from sailing, no difficulties would
have been made. Skelton now addressed himself to the States
General. They showed every disposition to comply with his demand,
and, as the case was urgent, departed from the course which they
ordinarily observed in the transaction of business. On the same
day on which he made his application to them, an order, drawn in
exact conformity with his request, was despatched to the
Admiralty of Amsterdam. But this order, in consequence of some
misinformation, did not correctly describe the situation of the
ships. They were said to be in the Texel. They were in the Vlie.
The Admiralty of Amsterdam made this error a plea for doing
nothing; and, before the error could be rectified, the three
ships had sailed.347

The last hours which Argyle passed on the coast of Holland were
hours of great anxiety. Near him lay a Dutch man of war whose
broadside would in a moment have put an end to his expedition.
Round his little fleet a boat was rowing, in which were some
persons with telescopes whom he suspected to be spies. But no
effectual step was taken for the purpose of detaining him; and on
the afternoon of the second of May he stood out to sea before a
favourable breeze.

The voyage was prosperous. On the sixth the Orkneys were in
sight. Argyle very unwisely anchored off Kirkwall, and allowed
two of his followers to go on shore there. The Bishop ordered
them to be arrested. The refugees proceeded to hold a long and
animated debate on this misadventure: for, from the beginning to
the end of their expedition, however languid and irresolute their
conduct might be, they never in debate wanted spirit or
perseverance. Some were for an attack on Kirkwall. Some were for
proceeding without delay to Argyleshire. At last the Earl seized
some gentlemen who lived near the coast of the island, and
proposed to the Bishop an exchange of prisoners. The Bishop
returned no answer; and the fleet, after losing three days,
sailed away.

This delay was full of danger. It was speedily known at Edinburgh
that the rebel squadron had touched at the Orkneys. Troops were
instantly put in motion. When the Earl reached his own province,
he found that preparations had been made to repel him. At
Dunstaffnage he sent his second son Charles on Shore to call the
Campbells to arms. But Charles returned with gloomy tidings. The
herdsmen and fishermen were indeed ready to rally round Mac
Callum More; but, of the heads of the clan, some were in
confinement, and others had fled. Those gentlemen who remained at
their homes were either well affected to the government or afraid
of moving, and refused even to see the son of their chief. From
Dunstaffnage the small armament proceeded to Campbelltown, near
the southern extremity of the peninsula of Kintyre. Here the Earl
published a manifesto, drawn up in Holland, under the direction
of the Committee, by James Stewart, a Scotch advocate, whose pen
was, a few months later, employed in a very different way. In
this paper were set forth, with a strength of language sometimes
approaching to scurrility, many real and some imaginary
grievances. It was hinted that the late King had died by poison.
A chief object of the expedition was declared to be the entire
suppression, not only of Popery, but of Prelacy, which was termed
the most bitter root and offspring of Popery; and all good
Scotchmen were exhorted to do valiantly for the cause of their
country and of their God.

Zealous as Argyle was for what he considered as pure religion, he
did not scruple to practice one rite half Popish and half Pagan.
The mysterious cross of yew, first set on fire, and then quenched
in the blood of a goat, was sent forth to summon all the
Campbells, from sixteen to sixty. The isthmus of Tarbet was
appointed for the place of gathering. The muster, though small
indeed when compared with what it would have been if the spirit
and strength of the clan had been unbroken, was still formidable.
The whole force assembled amounted to about eighteen hundred men.
Argyle divided his mountaineers into three regiments, and
proceeded to appoint officers.

The bickerings which had begun in Holland had never been
intermitted during the whole course of the expedition; but at
Tarbet they became more violent than ever. The Committee wished
to interfere even with the patriarchal dominion of the Earl over
the Campbells, and would not allow him to settle the military
rank of his kinsmen by his own authority. While these
disputatious meddlers tried to wrest from him his power over the
Highlands, they carried on their own correspondence with the
Lowlands, and received and sent letters which were never
communicated to the nominal General. Hume and his confederates
had reserved to themselves the superintendence of the Stores, and
conducted this important part of the administration of war with a
laxity hardly to be distinguished from dishonesty, suffered the
arms to be spoiled, wasted the provisions, and lived riotously at
a time when they ought to have set to all beneath them an example
of abstemiousness.

The great question was whether the Highlands or the Lowlands
should be the seat of war. The Earl's first object was to
establish his authority over his own domains, to drive out the
invading clans which had been poured from Perthshire into
Argyleshire, and to take possession of the ancient seat of his
family at Inverary. He might then hope to have four or five
thousand claymores at his command. With such a force he would be
able to defend that wild country against the whole power of the
kingdom of Scotland. and would also have secured an excellent
base for offensive operations. This seems to have been the wisest
course open to him. Rumbold, who had been trained in an excellent
military school, and who, as an Englishman, might be supposed to
be an impartial umpire between the Scottish factions, did all in
his power to strengthen the Earl's hands. But Hume and Cochrane
were utterly impracticable. Their jealousy of Argyle was, in
truth, stronger than their wish for the success of the
expedition. They saw that, among his own mountains and lakes, and
at the head of an army chiefly composed of his own tribe, he
would be able to bear down their opposition, and to exercise the
full authority of a General. They muttered that the only men who
had the good cause at heart were the Lowlanders, and that the
Campbells took up arms neither for liberty nor for the Church of
God, but for Mac Callum More alone.

Cochrane declared that he would go to Ayrshire if he went by
himself, and with nothing but a pitchfork in his hand. Argyle,
after long resistance, consented, against his better judgment, to
divide his little army. He remained with Rumbold in the
Highlands. Cochrane and Hume were at the head of the force which
sailed to invade the Lowlands.

Ayrshire was Cochrane's object: but the coast of Ayrshire was
guarded by English frigates; and the adventurers were under the
necessity of running up the estuary of the Clyde to Greenock,
then a small fishing village consisting of a single row of
thatched hovels, now a great and flourishing port, of which the
customs amount to more than five times the whole revenue which
the Stuarts derived from the kingdom of Scotland. A party of
militia lay at Greenock: but Cochrane, who wanted provisions, was
determined to land. Hume objected. Cochrane was peremptory, and
ordered an officer, named Elphinstone, to take twenty men in a
boat to the shore. But the wrangling spirit of the leaders had
infected all ranks. Elphinstone answered that he was bound to
obey only reasonable commands, that he considered this command as
unreasonable, and, in short, that he would not go. Major
Fullarton, a brave man, esteemed by all parties, but peculiarly
attached to Argyle, undertook to land with only twelve men, and
did so in spite of a fire from the coast. A slight skirmish
followed. The militia fell back. Cochrane entered Greenock and
procured a supply of meal, but found no disposition to
insurrection among the people.

In fact, the state of public feeling in Scotland was not such as
the exiles, misled by the infatuation common in all ages to
exiles, had supposed it to be. The government was, indeed,
hateful and hated. But the malecontents were divided into parties
which were almost as hostile to one another as to their rulers;
nor was any of those parties eager to join the invaders. Many
thought that the insurrection had no chance of success. The
spirit of many had been effectually broken by long and cruel
oppression. There was, indeed, a class of enthusiasts who were
little in the habit of calculating chances, and whom oppression
had not tamed but maddened. But these men saw little difference
between Argyle and James. Their wrath had been heated to such a
temperature that what everybody else would have called boiling
zeal seemed to them Laodicean lukewarmness. The Earl's past life
had been stained by what they regarded as the vilest apostasy.
The very Highlanders whom he now summoned to extirpate Prelacy he
had a few years before summoned to defend it. And were slaves who
knew nothing and cared nothing about religion, who were ready to
fight for synodical government, for Episcopacy, for Popery, just
as Mac Callum More might be pleased to command, fit allies for
the people of God? The manifesto, indecent and intolerant as was
its tone, was, in the view of these fanatics, a cowardly and
worldly performance. A settlement such as Argyle would have made,
such as was afterwards made by a mightier and happier deliverer,
seemed to them not worth a struggle. They wanted not only freedom
of conscience for themselves, but absolute dominion over the
consciences of others; not only the Presbyterian doctrine,
polity, and worship, but the Covenant in its utmost rigour.
Nothing would content them but that every end for which civil
society exists should be sacrificed to the ascendency of a
theological system. One who believed no form of church government
to be worth a breach of Christian charity, and who recommended
comprehension and toleration, was in their phrase, halting
between Jehovah and Baal. One who condemned such acts as the
murder of Cardinal Beatoun and Archbishop Sharpe fell into the
same sin for which Saul had been rejected from being King over
Israel. All the rules, by which, among civilised and Christian
men, the horrors of war are mitigated, were abominations in the
sight of the Lord. Quarter was to be neither taken nor given. A
Malay running a muck, a mad dog pursued by a crowd, were the
models to be imitated by warriors fighting in just self-defence.
To reasons such as guide the conduct of statesmen and generals
the minds of these zealots were absolutely impervious. That a man
should venture to urge such reasons was sufficient evidence that
he was not one of the faithful. If the divine blessing were
withheld, little would be effected by crafty politicians, by
veteran captains, by cases of arms from Holland, or by regiments
of unregenerate Celts from the mountains of Lorn. If, on the
other hand, the Lord's time were indeed come, he could still, as
of old, cause the foolish things of the world to confound the
wise, and could save alike by many and by few. The broadswords of
Athol and the bayonets of Claverhouse would be put to rout by
weapons as insignificant as the sling of David or the pitcher of
Gideon.348

Cochrane, having found it impossible to raise the population on
the south of the Clyde, rejoined Argyle, who was in the island of
Bute. The Earl now again proposed to make an attempt upon
Inverary. Again he encountered a pertinacious opposition. The
seamen sided with Hume and Cochrane. The Highlanders were
absolutely at the command of their chieftain. There was reason to
fear that the two parties would come to blows; and the dread of
such a disaster induced the Committee to make some concession.
The castle of Ealan Ghierig, situated at the mouth of Loch
Riddan, was selected to be the chief place of arms. The military
stores were disembarked there. The squadron was moored close to
the walls in a place where it was protected by rocks and shallows
such as, it was thought, no frigate could pass. Outworks were
thrown up. A battery was planted with some small guns taken from
the ships. The command of the fort was most unwisely given to
Elphinstone, who had already proved himself much more disposed to
argue with his commanders than to fight the enemy.

And now, during a few hours, there was some show of vigour.
Rumbold took the castle of Ardkinglass. The Earl skirmished
successfully with Athol's troops, and was about to advance on
Inverary, when alarming news from the ships and factions in the
Committee forced him to turn back. The King's frigates had come
nearer to Ealan Ghierig than had been thought possible. The
Lowland gentlemen positively refused to advance further into the
Highlands. Argyle hastened back to Ealan Ghierig. There he
proposed to make an attack on the frigates. His ships, indeed,
were ill fitted for such an encounter. But they would have been
supported by a flotilla of thirty large fishing boats, each well
manned with armed Highlanders. The Committee, however, refused to
listen to this plan, and effectually counteracted it by raising a
mutiny among the sailors.

All was now confusion and despondency. The provisions had been so
ill managed by the Committee that there was no longer food for
the troops. The Highlanders consequently deserted by hundreds;
and the Earl, brokenhearted by his misfortunes, yielded to the
urgency of those who still pertinaciously insisted that he should
march into the Lowlands.

The little army therefore hastened to the shore of Loch Long,
passed that inlet by night in boats, and landed in
Dumbartonshire. Hither, on the following morning, came news that
the frigates had forced a passage, that all the Earl's ships had
been taken, and that Elphinstone had fled from Ealan Ghierig
without a blow, leaving the castle and stores to the enemy.

All that remained was to invade the Lowlands under every
disadvantage. Argyle resolved to make a bold push for Glasgow.
But, as soon as this resolution was announced, the very men, who
had, up to that moment, been urging him to hasten into the low
country, took fright, argued, remonstrated, and when argument and
remonstrance proved vain, laid a scheme for seizing the boats,
making their own escape, and leaving their General and his
clansmen to conquer or perish unaided. This scheme failed; and
the poltroons who had formed it were compelled to share with
braver men the risks of the last venture.

During the march through the country which lies between Loch Long
and Loch Lomond, the insurgents were constantly infested by
parties of militia. Some skirmishes took place, in which the Earl
had the advantage; but the bands which he repelled, falling back
before him, spread the tidings of his approach, and, soon after
he had crossed the river Leven, he found a strong body of regular
and irregular troops prepared to encounter him.

He was for giving battle. Ayloffe was of the same opinion. Hume,
on the other hand, declared that to fight would be madness. He
saw one regiment in scarlet. More might be behind. To attack such
a force was to rush on certain death The best course was to
remain quiet till night, and then to give the enemy the slip.

A sharp altercation followed, which was with difficulty quieted
by the mediation of Rumbold. It was now evening. The hostile
armies encamped at no great distance from each other. The Earl
ventured to propose a night attack, and was again overruled.

Since it was determined not to fight, nothing was left but to
take the step which Hume had recommended. There was a chance
that, by decamping secretly, and hastening all night across
heaths and morasses, the Earl might gain many miles on the enemy,
and might reach Glasgow without further obstruction. The watch
fires were left burning; and the march began. And now disaster
followed disaster fast. The guides mistook the track across the
moors, and led the army into boggy ground. Military order could
not be preserved by undisciplined and disheartened soldiers under
a dark sky, and on a treacherous and uneven soil. Panic after
panic spread through the broken ranks. Every sight and sound was
thought to indicate the approach of pursuers. Some of the
officers contributed to spread the terror which it was their duty
to calm. The army had become a mob; and the mob melted fast away.
Great numbers fled under cover of the night. Rumbold and a few
other brave men whom no danger could have scared lost their way,
and were unable to rejoin the main body. When the day broke, only
five hundred fugitives, wearied and dispirited, assembled at
Kilpatrick.

All thought of prosecuting the war was at an end: and it was
plain that the chiefs of the expedition would have sufficient
difficulty in escaping with their lives. They fled in different
directions. Hume reached the Continent in safety. Cochrane was
taken and sent up to London. Argyle hoped to find a secure asylum
under the roof of one of his old servants who lived near
Kilpatrick. But this hope was disappointed; and he was forced to
cross the Clyde. He assumed the dress of a peasant and pretended
to be the guide of Major Fullarton, whose courageous fidelity was
proof to all danger. The friends journeyed together through
Renfrewshire as far as Inchinnan. At that place the Black Cart
and the White Cart, two streams which now flow through prosperous
towns, and turn the wheels of many factories, but which then held
their quiet course through moors and sheepwalks, mingle before
they join the Clyde. The only ford by which the travellers could
cross was guarded by a party of militia. Some questions were
asked. Fullarton tried to draw suspicion on himself, in order
that his companion might escape unnoticed. But the minds of the
questioners misgave them that the guide was not the rude clown
that he seemed. They laid hands on him. He broke loose and sprang
into the water, but was instantly chased. He stood at bay for a
short time against five assailants. But he had no arms except his
pocket pistols, and they were so wet, in consequence of his
plunge, that they would not go off. He was struck to the ground
with a broadsword, and secured.

He owned himself to be the Earl of Argyle, probably in the hope
that his great name would excite the awe and pity of those who
had seized him. And indeed they were much moved. For they were
plain Scotchmen of humble rank, and, though in arms for the
crown, probably cherished a preference for the Calvinistic church
government and worship, and had been accustomed to reverence
their captive as the head of an illustrious house and as a
champion of the Protestant religion But, though they were
evidently touched, and though some of them even wept, they were
not disposed to relinquish a large reward and to incur the
vengeance of an implacable government. They therefore conveyed
their prisoner to Renfrew. The man who bore the chief part in the
arrest was named Riddell. On this account the whole race of
Riddells was, during more than a century, held in abhorrence by
the great tribe of Campbell. Within living memory, when a Riddell
visited a fair in Argyleshire, he found it necessary to assume a
false name.

And now commenced the brightest part of Argyle's career. His
enterprise had hitherto brought on him nothing but reproach and
derision. His great error was that he did not resolutely refuse
to accept the name without the power of a general. Had he
remained quietly at his retreat in Friesland, he would in a few
years have been recalled with honour to his country, and would
have been conspicuous among the ornaments and the props of
constitutional monarchy. Had he conducted his expedition
according to his own views, and carried with him no followers but
such as were prepared implicitly to obey all his orders, he might
possibly have effected something great. For what he wanted as a
captain seems to have been, not courage, nor activity, nor skill,
but simply authority. He should have known that of all wants this
is the most fatal. Armies have triumphed under leaders who
possessed no very eminent qualifications. But what army commanded
by a debating club ever escaped discomfiture and disgrace?

The great calamity which had fallen on Argyle had this advantage,
that it enabled him to show, by proofs not to be mistaken, what
manner of man he was. From the day when he quitted. Friesland to
the day when his followers separated at Kilpatrick, he had never
been a free agent. He had borne the responsibility of a long
series of measures which his judgment disapproved. Now at length
he stood alone. Captivity had restored to him the noblest kind of
liberty, the liberty of governing himself in all his words and
actions according to his own sense of the right and of the
becoming. From that moment he became as one inspired with new
wisdom and virtue. His intellect seemed to be strengthened and
concentrated, his moral character to be at once elevated and
softened. The insolence of the conquerors spared nothing that
could try the temper of a man proud of ancient nobility and of
patriarchal dominion. The prisoner was dragged through Edinburgh
in triumph. He walked on foot, bareheaded, up the whole length of
that stately street which, overshadowed by dark and gigantic
piles of stone, leads from Holyrood House to the Castle. Before
him marched the hangman, bearing the ghastly instrument which was
to be used at the quartering block. The victorious party had not
forgotten that, thirty-five years before this time, the father of
Argyle had been at the head of the faction which put Montrose to
death. Before that event the houses of Graham and Campbell had
borne no love to each other; and they had ever since been at
deadly feud. Care was taken that the prisoner should pass through
the same gate and the same streets through which Montrose had
been led to the same doom.349 When the Earl reached the Castle
his legs were put in irons, and he was informed that he had but a
few days to live. It had been determined not to bring him to
trial for his recent offence, but to put him to death under the
sentence pronounced against him several years before, a sentence
so flagitiously unjust that the most servile and obdurate lawyers
of that bad age could not speak of it without shame.

But neither the ignominious procession up the High Street, nor
the near view of death, had power to disturb the gentle and
majestic patience of Argyle. His fortitude was tried by a still
more severe test. A paper of interrogatories was laid before him
by order of the Privy Council. He replied to those questions to
which he could reply without danger to any of his friends, and
refused to say more. He was told that unless he returned fuller
answers he should be put to the torture. James, who was doubtless
sorry that he could not feast his own eyes with the sight of
Argyle in the boots, sent down to Edinburgh positive orders that
nothing should be omitted which could wring out of the traitor
information against all who had been concerned in the treason.
But menaces were vain. With torments and death in immediate
prospect Mac Callum More thought far less of himself than of his
poor clansmen. "I was busy this day," he wrote from his cell,
"treating for them, and in some hopes. But this evening orders
came that I must die upon Monday or Tuesday; and I am to be put
to the torture if I answer not all questions upon oath. Yet I
hope God shall support me."

The torture was not inflicted. Perhaps the magnanimity of the
victim had moved the conquerors to unwonted compassion. He
himself remarked that at first they had been very harsh to him,
but that they soon began to treat him with respect and kindness.
God, he said, had melted their hearts. It is certain that he did
not, to save himself from the utmost cruelty of his enemies,
betray any of his friends. On the last morning of his life he
wrote these words: "I have named none to their disadvantage. I
thank God he hath supported me wonderfully!"

He composed his own epitaph, a short poem, full of meaning and
spirit, simple and forcible in style, and not contemptible in
versification. In this little piece he complained that, though
his enemies had repeatedly decreed his death, his friends had
been still more cruel. A comment on these expressions is to be
found in a letter which he addressed to a lady residing in
Holland. She had furnished him with a large sum of money for his
expedition, and he thought her entitled to a full explanation of
the causes which had led to his failure. He acquitted his
coadjutors of treachery, but described their folly, their
ignorance, and their factious perverseness, in terms which their
own testimony has since proved to have been richly deserved. He
afterwards doubted whether he had not used language too severe to
become a dying Christian, and, in a separate paper, begged his
friend to suppress what he had said of these men "Only this I
must acknowledge," he mildly added; "they were not governable."

Most of his few remaining hours were passed in devotion, and in
affectionate intercourse with some members of his family. He
professed no repentance on account of his last enterprise, but
bewailed, with great emotion, his former compliance in spiritual
things with the pleasure of the government He had, he said, been
justly punished. One who had so long been guilty of cowardice and
dissimulation was not worthy to be the instrument of salvation to
the State and Church. Yet the cause, he frequently repeated, was
the cause of God, and would assuredly triumph. "I do not," he
said, "take on myself to be a prophet. But I have a strong
impression on my spirit, that deliverance will come very
suddenly." It is not strange that some zealous Presbyterians
should have laid up his saying in their hearts, and should, at a
later period, have attributed it to divine inspiration.

So effectually had religious faith and hope, co-operating with
natural courage and equanimity, composed his spirits, that, on
the very day on which he was to die, he dined with appetite,
conversed with gaiety at table, and, after his last meal, lay
down, as he was wont, to take a short slumber, in order that his
body and mind might be in full vigour when he should mount the
scaffold. At this time one of the Lords of the Council, who had
probably been bred a Presbyterian, and had been seduced by
interest to join in oppressing the Church of which he had once
been a member, came to the Castle with a message from his
brethren, and demanded admittance to the Earl. It was answered
that the Earl was asleep. The Privy Councillor thought that this
was a subterfuge, and insisted on entering. The door of the cell
was softly opened; and there lay Argyle, on the bed, sleeping, in
his irons, the placid sleep of infancy. The conscience of the
renegade smote him. He turned away sick at heart, ran out of the
Castle, and took refuge in the dwelling of a lady of his family
who lived hard by. There he flung himself on a couch, and gave
himself up to an agony of remorse and shame. His kinswoman,
alarmed by his looks and groans, thought that he had been taken
with sudden illness, and begged him to drink a cup of sack. "No,
no," he said; "that will do me no good." She prayed him to tell
her what had disturbed him. "I have been," he said, "in Argyle's
prison. I have seen him within an hour of eternity, sleeping as
sweetly as ever man did. But as for me -------"

And now the Earl had risen from his bed, and had prepared himself
for what was yet to be endured. He was first brought down the
High Street to the Council House, where he was to remain during
the short interval which was still to elapse before the
execution. During that interval he asked for pen and ink, and
wrote to his wife: "Dear heart, God is unchangeable: He hath
always been good and gracious to me: and no place alters it.
Forgive me all my faults; and now comfort thyself in Him, in whom
only true comfort is to be found. The Lord be with thee, bless
and comfort thee, my dearest. Adieu."

It was now time to leave the Council House. The divines who
attended the prisoner were not of his own persuasion; but he
listened to them with civility, and exhorted them to caution
their flocks against those doctrines which all Protestant
churches unite in condemning. He mounted the scaffold, where the
rude old guillotine of Scotland, called the Maiden, awaited him,
and addressed the people in a speech, tinctured with the peculiar
phraseology of his sect, but breathing the spirit of serene
piety. His enemies, he said, he forgave, as he hoped to be
forgiven. Only a single acrimonious expression escaped him. One
of the episcopal clergymen who attended him went to the edge of
the scaffold, and called out in a loud voice, "My Lord dies a
Protestant." "Yes," said the Earl, stepping forward, "and not
only a Protestant, but with a heart hatred of Popery, of Prelacy,
and of all superstition." He then embraced his friends, put into
their hands some tokens of remembrance for his wife and children,
kneeled down, laid his head on the block, prayed during a few
minutes, and gave the signal to the executioner. His head was
fixed on the top of the Tolbooth, where the head of Montrose had
formerly decayed.350

The head of the brave and sincere, though not blameless Rumbold,
was already on the West Port of Edinburgh. Surrounded by factious
and cowardly associates, he had, through the whole campaign,
behaved himself like a soldier trained in the school of the great
Protector, had in council strenuously supported the authority of
Argyle, and had in the field been distinguished by tranquil
intrepidity. After the dispersion of the army he was set upon by
a party of militia. He defended himself desperately, and would
have cut his way through them, had they not hamstringed his
horse. He was brought to Edinburgh mortally wounded. The wish of
the government was that he should be executed in England. But he
was so near death, that, if he was not hanged in Scotland, he
could not be hanged at all; and the pleasure of hanging him was
one which the conquerors could not bear to forego. It was indeed
not to be expected that they would show much lenity to one who
was regarded as the chief of the Rye House plot, and who was the
owner of the building from which that plot took its name: but the
insolence with which they treated the dying man seems to our more
humane age almost incredible. One of the Scotch Privy Councillors
told him that he was a confounded villain. "I am at peace with
God," answered Rumbold, calmly; "how then can I be confounded?"

He was hastily tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged and
quartered within a few hours, near the City Cross in the High
Street. Though unable to stand without the support of two men, he
maintained his fortitude to the last, and under the gibbet raised
his feeble voice against Popery and tyranny with such vehemence
that the officers ordered the drums to strike up, lest the people
should hear him. He was a friend, he said, to limited monarchy.
But he never would believe that Providence had sent a few men
into the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions
ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. "I desire," he cried, "to
bless and magnify God's holy name for this, that I stand here,
not for any wrong that I have done, but for adhering to his cause
in an evil day. If every hair of my head were a man, in this
quarrel I would venture them all."

Both at his trial and at his execution he spoke of assassination
with the abhorrence which became a good Christian and a brave
soldier. He had never, he protested, on the faith of a dying man,
harboured the thought of committing such villany. But he frankly
owned that, in conversation with his fellow conspirators, he had
mentioned his own house as a place where Charles and James might
with advantage be attacked, and that much had been said on the
subject, though nothing had been determined. It may at first
sight seem that this acknowledgment is inconsistent with his
declaration that he had always regarded assassination with
horror. But the truth appears to be that he was imposed upon by a
distinction which deluded many of his contemporaries. Nothing
would have induced him to put poison into the food of the two
princes, or to poinard them in their sleep. But to make an
unexpected onset on the troop of Life Guards which surrounded the
royal coach, to exchange sword cuts and pistol shots, and to take
the chance of slaying or of being slain, was, in his view, a
lawful military operation. Ambuscades and surprises were among
the ordinary incidents of war. Every old soldier, Cavalier or
Roundhead, had been engaged in such enterprises. If in the
skirmish the King should fall, he would fall by fair fighting and
not by murder. Precisely the same reasoning was employed, after
the Revolution, by James himself and by some of his most devoted
followers, to justify a wicked attempt on the life of William the
Third. A band of Jacobites was commissioned to attack the Prince
of Orange in his winter quarters. The meaning latent under this
specious phrase was that the Prince's throat was to be cut as he
went in his coach from Richmond to Kensington. It may seem
strange that such fallacies, the dregs of the Jesuitical
casuistry, should have had power to seduce men of heroic spirit,
both Whigs and Tories, into a crime on which divine and human
laws have justly set a peculiar note of infamy. But no sophism is
too gross to delude minds distempered by party spirit.351

Argyle, who survived Rumbold a few hours, left a dying testimony
to the virtues of the gallant Englishman. "Poor Rumbold was a
great support to me, and a brave man, and died Christianly."352

Ayloffe showed as much contempt of death as either Argyle or
Rumbold: but his end did not, like theirs, edify pious minds.
Though political sympathy had drawn him towards the Puritans, he
had no religious sympathy with them, and was indeed regarded by
them as little better than an atheist. He belonged to that
section of the Whigs which sought for models rather among the
patriots of Greece and Rome than among the prophets and judges of
Israel. He was taken prisoner, and carried to Glasgow. There he
attempted to destroy himself with a small penknife: but though he
gave himself several wounds, none of them proved mortal, and he
had strength enough left to bear a journey to London. He was
brought before the Privy Council, and interrogated by the King,
but had too much elevation of mind to save himself by informing
against others. A story was current among the Whigs that the King
said, "You had better be frank with me, Mr. Ayloffe. You know
that it is in my power to pardon you." Then, it was rumoured, the
captive broke his sullen silence, and answered, "It may he in
your power; but it is not in your nature." He was executed under
his old outlawry before the gate of the Temple, and died with
stoical composure 353

In the meantime the vengeance of the conquerors was mercilessly
wreaked on the people of Argyleshire. Many of the Campbells were
hanged by Athol without a trial; and he was with difficulty
restrained by the Privy Council from taking more lives. The
country to the extent of thirty miles round Inverary was wasted.
Houses were burned: the stones of mills were broken to pieces:
fruit trees were cut down, and the very roots seared with fire.
The nets and fishing boats, the sole means by which many
inhabitants of the coast subsisted, were destroyed. More than
three hundred rebels and malecontents were transported to the
colonies. Many of them were also Sentenced to mutilation. On a
single day the hangman of Edinburgh cut off the ears of
thirty-five prisoners. Several women were sent across the
Atlantic after being first branded in the cheek with a hot iron.
It was even in contemplation to obtain an act of Parliament
proscribing the name of Campbell, as the name of Macgregor had
been proscribed eighty years before.354

Argyle's expedition appears to have produced little sensation in
the south of the island. The tidings of his landing reached
London just before the English Parliament met. The King mentioned
the news from the throne; and the Houses assured him that they
would stand by him against every enemy. Nothing more was required
of them. Over Scotland they had no authority; and a war of which
the theatre was so distant, and of which the event might, almost
from the first, be easily foreseen, excited only a languid
interest in London.

But, a week before the final dispersion of Argyle's army England
was agitated by the news that a more formidable invader had
landed on her own shores. It had been agreed among the refugees
that Monmouth should sail from Holland six days after the
departure of the Scots. He had deferred his expedition a short
time, probably in the hope that most of the troops in the south
of the island would be moved to the north as soon as war broke
out in the Highlands, and that he should find no force ready to
oppose him. When at length he was desirous to proceed, the wind
had become adverse and violent.

While his small fleet lay tossing in the Texel, a contest was
going on among the Dutch authorities. The States General and the
Prince of Orange were on one side, the Town Council and Admiralty
of Amsterdam on the other.

Skelton had delivered to the States General a list of the
refugees whose residence in the United Provinces caused
uneasiness to his master. The States General, anxious to grant
every reasonable request which James could make, sent copies of
the list to the provincial authorities. The provincial
authorities sent copies to the municipal authorities. The
magistrates of all the towns were directed to take such measures
as might prevent the proscribed Whigs from molesting the English
government. In general those directions were obeyed. At Rotterdam
in particular, where the influence of William was all powerful,
such activity was shown as called forth warm acknowledgments from
James. But Amsterdam was the chief seat of the emigrants; and the
governing body of Amsterdam would see nothing, hear nothing, know
of nothing. The High Bailiff of the city, who was himself in
daily communication with Ferguson, reported to the Hague that he
did not know where to find a single one of the refugees; and with
this excuse the federal government was forced to be content. The
truth was that the English exiles were as well known at
Amsterdam, and as much stared at in the streets, as if they had
been Chinese.355

A few days later, Skelton received orders from his Court to
request that, in consequence of the dangers which threatened his
master's throne, the three Scotch regiments in the service of the
United Provinces might be sent to Great Britain without delay. He
applied to the Prince of Orange; and the prince undertook to
manage the matter, but predicted that Amsterdam would raise some
difficulty. The prediction proved correct. The deputies of
Amsterdam refused to consent, and succeeded in causing some
delay. But the question was not one of those on which, by the
constitution of the republic, a single city could prevent the
wish of the majority from being carried into effect. The
influence of William prevailed; and the troops were embarked with
great expedition.356

Skelton was at the same time exerting himself, not indeed very
judiciously or temperately, to stop the ships which the English
refugees had fitted out. He expostulated in warm terms with the
Admiralty of Amsterdam. The negligence of that board, he said,
had already enabled one band of rebels to invade Britain. For a
second error of the same kind there could be no excuse. He
peremptorily demanded that a large vessel, named the
Helderenbergh, might be detained. It was pretended that this
vessel was bound for the Canaries. But in truth, she had been
freighted by Monmouth, carried twenty-six guns, and was loaded
with arms and ammunition. The Admiralty of Amsterdam replied that
the liberty of trade and navigation was not to be restrained for
light reasons, and that the Helderenbergh could not be stopped
without an order from the States General. Skelton, whose uniform
practice seems to have been to begin at the wrong end, now had
recourse to the States General. The States General gave the
necessary orders. Then the Admiralty of Amsterdam pretended that
there was not a sufficient naval force in the Texel to seize so
large a ship as the Helderenbergh, and suffered Monmouth to sail
unmolested.357

The weather was bad: the voyage was long; and several English
men-of-war were cruising in the channel. But Monmouth escaped
both the sea and the enemy. As he passed by the cliffs of
Dorsetshire, it was thought desirable to send a boat to the beach
with one of the refugees named Thomas Dare. This man, though of
low mind and manners, had great influence at Taunton. He was
directed to hasten thither across the country, and to apprise his
friends that Monmouth would soon be on English ground.358

On the morning of the eleventh of June the Helderenbergh,
accompanied by two smaller vessels, appeared off the port of
Lyme. That town is a small knot of steep and narrow alleys, lying
on a coast wild, rocky, and beaten by a stormy sea. The place was
then chiefly remarkable for a pier which, in the days of the
Plantagenets, had been constructed of stones, unhewn and
uncemented. This ancient work, known by the name of the Cob,
enclosed the only haven where, in a space of many miles, the
fishermen could take refuge from the tempests of the Channel.

The appearance of the three ships, foreign built and without
colours, perplexed the inhabitants of Lyme; and the uneasiness
increased when it was found that the Customhouse officers, who
had gone on board according to usage, did not return. The town's
people repaired to the cliffs, and gazed long and anxiously, but
could find no solution of the mystery. At length seven boats put
off from the largest of the strange vessels, and rowed to the
shore. From these boats landed about eighty men, well armed and
appointed. Among them were Monmouth, Grey, Fletcher, Ferguson,
Wade, and Anthony Buyse, an officer who had been in the service
of the Elector of Brandenburg.359

Monmouth commanded silence, kneeled down on the shore, thanked
God for having preserved the friends of liberty and pure religion
from the perils of the sea, and implored the divine blessing on
what was yet to be done by land. He then drew his sword, and led
his men over the cliffs into the town.

As soon as it was known under what leader and for what purpose
the expedition came, the enthusiasm of the populace burst through
all restraints. The little town was in an uproar with men running
to and fro, and shouting "A Monmouth! a Monmouth! the Protestant
religion!" Meanwhile the ensign of the adventurers, a blue flag,
was set up in the marketplace. The military stores were deposited
in the town hall; and a Declaration setting forth the objects of
the expedition was read from the Cross.360

This Declaration, the masterpiece of Ferguson's genius, was not a
grave manifesto such as ought to be put forth by a leader drawing
the sword for a great public cause, but a libel of the lowest
class, both in sentiment and language.361 It contained
undoubtedly many just charges against the government. But these
charges were set forth in the prolix and inflated style of a bad
pamphlet; and the paper contained other charges of which the
whole disgrace falls on those who made them. The Duke of York, it
was positively affirmed, had burned down London, had strangled
Godfrey, had cut the throat of Essex, and had poisoned the late
King. On account of those villanous and unnatural crimes, but
chiefly of that execrable fact, the late horrible and barbarous
parricide,--such was the copiousness and such the felicity of
Ferguson's diction,--James was declared a mortal and bloody
enemy, a tyrant, a murderer, and an usurper. No treaty should be
made with him. The sword should not be sheathed till he had been
brought to condign punishment as a traitor. The government should
be settled on principles favourable to liberty. All Protestant
sects should be tolerated. The forfeited charters should be
restored. Parliament should be held annually, and should no
longer be prorogued or dissolved by royal caprice. The only
standing force should be the militia: the militia should be
commanded by the Sheriffs; and the Sheriffs should be chosen by
the freeholders. Finally Monmouth declared that he could prove
himself to have been born in lawful wedlock, and to be, by right
of blood, King of England, but that, for the present, he waived
his claims, that he would leave them to the judgment of a free
Parliament, and that, in the meantime, he desired to be
considered only as the Captain General of the English
Protestants, who were in arms against tyranny and Popery.

Disgraceful as this manifesto was to those who put it forth, it
was not unskilfully framed for the purpose of stimulating the
passions of the vulgar. In the West the effect was great. The
gentry and clergy of that part of England were indeed, with few
exceptions, Tories. But the yeomen, the traders of the towns, the
peasants, and the artisans were generally animated by the old
Roundhead spirit. Many of them were Dissenters, and had been
goaded by petty persecution into a temper fit for desperate
enterprise. The great mass of the population abhorred Popery and
adored Monmouth. He was no stranger to them. His progress through
Somersetshire and Devonshire in the. summer of 1680 was still
fresh in the memory of all men.

He was on that occasion sumptuously entertained by Thomas Thynne
at Longleat Hall, then, and perhaps still, the most magnificent
country house in England. From Longleat to Exeter the hedges were
lined with shouting spectators. The roads were strewn with boughs
and flowers. The multitude, in their eagerness to see and touch
their favourite, broke down the palings of parks, and besieged
the mansions where he was feasted. When he reached Chard his
escort consisted of five thousand horsemen. At Exeter all
Devonshire had been gathered together to welcome him. One
striking part of the show was a company of nine hundred young men
who, clad in a white uniform, marched before him into the
city.362 The turn of fortune which had alienated the gentry from
his cause had produced no effect on the common people. To them he
was still the good Duke, the Protestant Duke, the rightful heir
whom a vile conspiracy kept out of his own. They came to his
standard in crowds. All the clerks whom he could employ were too
few to take down the names of the recruits. Before he had been
twenty-four hours on English ground he was at the head of fifteen
hundred men. Dare arrived from Taunton with forty horsemen of no
very martial appearance, and brought encouraging intelligence as
to the state of public feeling in Somersetshire. As Yet all
seemed to promise well.363

But a force was collecting at Bridport to oppose the insurgents.
On the thirteenth of June the red regiment of Dorsetshire militia
came pouring into that town. The Somersetshire, or yellow
regiment, of which Sir William Portman, a Tory gentleman of great
note, was Colonel, was expected to arrive on the following
day.364 The Duke determined to strike an immediate blow. A
detachment of his troops was preparing to march to Bridport when
a disastrous event threw the whole camp into confusion.

Fletcher of Saltoun had been appointed to command the cavalry
under Grey. Fletcher was ill mounted; and indeed there were few
chargers in the camp which had not been taken from the plough.
When he was ordered to Bridport, he thought that the exigency of
the case warranted him in borrowing, without asking permission, a
fine horse belonging to Dare. Dare resented this liberty, and
assailed Fletcher with gross abuse. Fletcher kept his temper
better than any one who knew him expected. At last Dare,
presuming on the patience with which his insolence had been
endured, ventured to shake a switch at the high born and high
spirited Scot Fletcher's blood boiled. He drew a pistol and shot
Dare dead. Such sudden and violent revenge would not have been
thought strange in Scotland, where the law had always been weak,
where he who did not right himself by the strong hand was not
likely to be righted at all, and where, consequently, human life
was held almost as cheap as in the worst governed provinces of
Italy. But the people of the southern part of the island were not
accustomed to see deadly weapons used and blood spilled on
account of a rude word or gesture, except in duel between
gentlemen with equal arms. There was a general cry for vengeance
on the foreigner who had murdered an Englishman. Monmouth could
not resist the clamour. Fletcher, who, when his first burst of
rage had spent itself, was overwhelmed with remorse and sorrow,
took refuge on board of the Helderenbergh, escaped to the
Continent, and repaired to Hungary, where he fought bravely
against the common enemy of Christendom.365

Situated as the insurgents were, the loss of a man of parts and
energy was not easily to be repaired. Early on the morning of the
following day, the fourteenth of June, Grey, accompanied by Wade,
marched with about five hundred men to attack Bridport. A
confused and indecisive action took place, such as was to be
expected when two bands of ploughmen, officered by country
gentlemen and barristers, were opposed to each other. For a time
Monmouth's men drove the militia before them. Then the militia
made a stand, and Monmouth's men retreated in some confusion.
Grey and his cavalry never stopped till they were safe at Lyme
again: but Wade rallied the infantry and brought them off in good
order.366

There was a violent outcry against Grey; and some of the
adventurers pressed Monmouth to take a severe course. Monmouth,
however, would not listen to this advice. His lenity has been
attributed by some writers to his good nature, which undoubtedly
often amounted to weakness. Others have supposed that he was
unwilling to deal harshly with the only peer who served in his
army. It is probable, however, that the Duke, who, though not a
general of the highest order, understood war very much better
than the preachers and lawyers who were always obtruding their
advice on him, made allowances which people altogether inexpert
in military affairs never thought of making. In justice to a man
who has had few defenders, it must be observed that the task,
which, throughout this campaign, was assigned to Grey, was one
which, if he had been the boldest and most skilful of soldiers,
he would scarcely have performed in such a manner as to gain
credit. He was at the head of the cavalry. It is notorious that a
horse soldier requires a longer training than a foot soldier, and
that the war horse requires a longer training than his rider.
Something may be done with a raw infantry which has enthusiasm
and animal courage: but nothing can be more helpless than a raw
cavalry, consisting of yeomen and tradesmen mounted on cart
horses and post horses; and such was the cavalry which Grey
commanded. The wonder is, not that his men did not stand fire
with resolution, not that they did not use their weapons with
vigour, but that they were able to keep their seats.

Still recruits came in by hundreds. Arming and drilling went on
all day. Meantime the news of the insurrection had spread fast
and wide. On the evening on which the Duke l