The Commons granted,
with little dispute, and without a division, six hundred thousand
pounds for the purpose of repaying to the United Provinces the
charges of the expedition which had delivered England. The facility
with which this large sum was voted to a shrewd, diligent and
thrifty people, our allies, indeed, politically, but commercially
our most formidable rivals, excited some murmurs out of doors, and
was, during many years, a favourite subject of sarcasm with Tory
pamphleteers. The liberality of the House admits however of an easy
explanation. On the very day on which the subject was under
consideration, alarming news arrived at Westminster, and convinced
many, who would at another time have been disposed to scrutinise
severely any account sent in by the Dutch, that our country could
not yet dispense with the services of the foreign troops.
France had declared
war against the States General; and the States General had
consequently demanded from the King of England those succours which
he was bound by the treaty of Nimeguen to furnish. He had ordered
some battalions to march to Harwich, that they might be in readiness
to cross to the Continent. The old soldiers of James were generally
in a very bad temper; and this order did not produce a soothing
effect. The discontent was greatest in the regiment which now ranks
as first of the line.
Though borne on the
English establishment, that regiment, from the time when it first
fought under the great Gustavus, had been almost exclusively
composed of Scotchmen; and Scotchmen have never, in any region to
which their adventurous and aspiring temper has led them, failed to
note and to resent every slight offered to Scotland. Officers and
men muttered that a vote of a foreign assembly was nothing to them.
If they could be absolved from their allegiance to King James the
Seventh, it must be by the Estates at Edinburgh, and not by the
Convention at Westminster. Their ill humour increased when they
heard that Schomberg had been appointed their colonel. They ought
perhaps to have thought it an honour to be called by the name of the
greatest soldier in Europe. But, brave and skilful as he was, he was
not their countryman: and their regiment, during the fifty-six years
which had elapsed since it gained its first honourable distinctions
in Germany, had never been commanded but by a Hepburn or a Douglas.
While they were in this angry and punctilious mood, they were
ordered to join the forces which were assembling at Harwich. There
was much murmuring; but there was no outbreak till the regiment
arrived at Ipswich. There the signal of revolt was given by two
captains who were zealous for the exiled King. The market place was
soon filled with pikemen and musketeers running to and fro. Gunshots
were wildly fired in all directions. Those officers who attempted to
restrain the rioters were overpowered and disarmed.
At length the chiefs
of the insurrection established some order, and marched out of
Ipswich at the head of their adherents. The little army consisted of
about eight hundred men. They had seized four pieces of cannon, and
had taken possession of the military chest, which contained a
considerable sum of money. At the distance of half a mile from the
town a halt was called: a general consultation was held; and the
mutineers resolved that they would hasten back to their native
country, and would live and die with their rightful King. They
instantly proceeded northward by forced marches.
When the news reached
London the dismay was great. It was rumoured that alarming symptoms
had appeared in other regiments, and particularly that a body of
fusileers which lay at Harwich was likely to imitate the example set
at Ipswich. "If these Scots," said Halifax to Reresby, "are
unsupported, they are lost. But if they have acted in concert with
others, the danger is serious indeed." The truth seems to be that
there was a conspiracy which had ramifications in many parts of the
army, but that the conspirators were awed by the firmness of the
government and of the Parliament. A committee of the Privy Council
was sitting when the tidings of the mutiny arrived in London.
William Harbord, who represented the borough of Launceston, was at
the board. His colleagues entreated him to go down instantly to the
House of Commons, and to relate what had happened. He went, rose in
his place, and told his story. The spirit of the assembly rose to
the occasion. Howe was the first to call for vigorous action.
"Address the King," he said, "to send his Dutch troops after these
men. I know not who else can be trusted." "This is no jesting
matter," said old Birch, who had been a colonel in the service of
the Parliament, and had seen the most powerful and renowned House of
Commons that ever sate twice purged and twice expelled by its own
soldiers; "if you let this evil spread, you will have an army upon
you in a few days. Address the King to send horse and foot
instantly, his own men, men whom he can trust, and to put these
people down at once." The men of the long robe
caught the flame. "It is not the learning of my profession that is
needed here," said Treby. "What is now to be done is to meet force
with force, and to maintain in the field what we have done in the
senate." "Write to the Sheriffs," said Colonel Mildmay, member for
Essex. "Raise the militia. There are a hundred and fifty thousand of
them: they are good Englishmen: they will not fail you." It was
resolved that all members of the House who held commissions in the
army should be dispensed from parliamentary attendance, in order
that they might repair instantly to their military posts. An address
was unanimously voted requesting the King to take effectual steps
for the suppression of the rebellion, and to put forth a
proclamation denouncing public vengeance on the rebels. One
gentleman hinted that it might be well to advise his Majesty to
offer a pardon to those who should peaceably submit: but the House
wisely rejected the suggestion. "This is no time," it was well said,
"for any thing that looks like fear." The address was instantly sent
up to the Lords. The Lords concurred in it. Two peers, two knights
of shires, and two burgesses were sent with it to Court. William
received them graciously, and informed them that he had already
given the necessary orders. In fact, several regiments of horse and
dragoons had been sent northward under the command of Ginkell, one
of the bravest and ablest officers of the Dutch army.
Meanwhile the
mutineers were hastening across the country which lies between
Cambridge and the Wash. Their road lay through a vast and desolate
fen, saturated with all the moisture of thirteen counties, and
overhung during the greater part of the year by a low grey mist,
high above which rose, visible many miles, the magnificent tower of
Ely. In that dreary region, covered by vast flights of wild fowl, a
half savage population, known by the name of the Breedlings, then
led an amphibious life, sometimes wading, and sometimes rowing, from
one islet of firm ground to another.46 The roads were amongst the
worst in the island, and, as soon as rumour announced the approach
of the rebels, were studiously made worse by the country people.
Bridges were broken down. Trees were laid across the highways to
obstruct the progress of the cannon. Nevertheless the Scotch
veterans not only pushed forward with great speed, but succeeded in
carrying their artillery with them. They entered Lincolnshire, and
were not far from Sleaford, when they learned that Ginkell with an
irresistible force was close on their track. Victory and escape were
equally out of the question. The bravest warriors could not contend
against fourfold odds. The most active infantry could not outrun
horsemen. Yet the leaders, probably despairing of pardon, urged the
men to try the chance of battle. In that region, a spot almost
surrounded by swamps and pools was without difficulty found.
Here the insurgents were drawn up; and the cannon were planted at
the only point which was thought not to be sufficiently protected by
natural defences. Ginkell ordered the attack to be made at a place
which was out of the range of the guns; and his dragoons dashed
gallantly into the water, though it was so deep that their horses
were forced to swim. Then the mutineers lost heart. They beat a
parley, surrendered at discretion, and were brought up to London
under a strong guard.
Their lives were
forfeit: for they had been guilty, not merely of mutiny, which was
then not a legal crime, but of levying war against the King.
William, however, with politic clemency, abstained from shedding the
blood even of the most culpable. A few of the ringleaders were
brought to trial at the next Bury assizes, and were convicted of
high treason; but their lives were spared. The rest were merely
ordered to return to their duty. The regiment, lately so refractory,
went submissively to the Continent, and there, through many hard
campaigns, distinguished itself by fidelity, by discipline, and by
valour. This event facilitated an important change in our polity, a
change which, it is true, could not have been long delayed, but
which would not have been easily accomplished except at a moment of
extreme danger. The time had at length arrived at which it was
necessary to make a legal distinction between the soldier and the
citizen. Under the Plantagenets and the Tudors there had been no
standing army. The standing army which had existed under the last
kings of the House of Stuart had been regarded by every party in the
state with strong and not unreasonable aversion. The common law gave
the Sovereign no power to control his troops. The Parliament,
regarding them as mere tools of tyranny, had not been disposed to
give such power by statute. James indeed had induced his corrupt and
servile judges to put on some obsolete laws a construction which
enabled him to punish desertion capitally. But this construction was
considered by all respectable jurists as unsound, and, had it been
sound, would have been far from effecting all that was necessary for
the purpose of maintaining military discipline. Even James did not
venture to inflict death by sentence of a court martial. The
deserter was treated as an ordinary felon, was tried at the assizes
by a petty jury on a bill found by a grand jury, and was at liberty
to avail himself of any technical flaw which might be discovered in
the indictment.
The Revolution, by
altering the relative position of the prince and the parliament, had
altered also the relative position of the army and the nation. The
King and the Commons were now at unity; and both were alike menaced
by the greatest military power which had existed in Europe since the
downfall of the Roman empire. In a
few weeks thirty thousand veterans, accustomed to conquer, and led
by able and experienced captains, might cross from the ports of
Normandy and Brittany to our shores. That such a force would with
little difficulty scatter three times that number of militia, no man
well acquainted with war could doubt. There must then be regular
soldiers; and, if there were to be regular soldiers, it must be
indispensable, both to their efficiency, and to the security of
every other class, that they should be kept under a strict
discipline. An ill disciplined army has ever been a more costly and
a more licentious militia, impotent against a foreign enemy, and
formidable only to the country which it is paid to defend. A strong
line of demarcation must therefore be drawn between the soldiers and
the rest of the community. For the sake of public freedom, they
must, in the midst of freedom, be placed under a despotic rule. They
must be subject to a sharper penal code, and to a more stringent
code of procedure, than are administered by the ordinary tribunals.
Some acts which in the citizen are innocent must in the soldier be
crimes. Some acts which in the citizen are punished with fine or
imprisonment must in the soldier be punished with death. The
machinery by which courts of law ascertain the guilt or innocence of
an accused citizen is too slow and too intricate to be applied to an
accused soldier. For, of all the maladies incident to the body
politic, military insubordination is that which requires the most
prompt and drastic remedies. If the evil be not stopped as soon as
it appears, it is certain to spread; and it cannot spread far
without danger to the very vitals of the commonwealth. For the
general safety, therefore, a summary jurisdiction of terrible extent
must, in camps, be entrusted to rude tribunals composed of men of
the sword.
But, though it was
certain that the country could not at that moment be secure without
professional soldiers, and equally certain that professional
soldiers must be worse than useless unless they were placed under a
rule more arbitrary and severe than that to which other men were
subject, it was not without great misgivings that a House of Commons
could venture to recognise the existence and to make provision for
the government of a standing army. There was scarcely a public man
of note who had not often avowed his conviction that our polity and
a standing army could not exist together. The Whigs had been in the
constant habit of repeating that standing armies had destroyed the
free institutions of the neighbouring nations. The Tories had
repeated as constantly that, in our own island, a standing army had
subverted the Church, oppressed the gentry, and murdered the King.
No leader of either party could, without laying himself open to the
charge of gross inconsistency, propose that such an army should
henceforth be one of the permanent establishments of the
realm. The mutiny at Ipswich, and the panic which that mutiny
produced, made it easy to effect what would otherwise have been in
the highest degree difficult. A short bill was brought in which
began by declaring, in explicit terms, that standing armies and
courts martial were unknown to the law of England. It was then
enacted that, on account of the extreme perils impending at that
moment over the state, no man mustered on pay in the service of the
crown should, on pain of death, or of such lighter punishment as a
court martial should deem sufficient, desert his colours or mutiny
against his commanding officers. This statute was to be in force
only six months; and many of those who voted for it probably
believed that it would, at the close of that period, be suffered to
expire. The bill passed rapidly and easily. Not a single division
was taken upon it in the House of Commons. A mitigating clause
indeed, which illustrates somewhat curiously the manners of that
age, was added by way of rider after the third reading. This clause
provided that no court martial should pass sentence of death except
between the hours of six in the morning and one in the afternoon.
The dinner hour was then early; and it was but too probable that a
gentleman who had dined would be in a state in which he could not
safely be trusted with the lives of his fellow creatures. With this
amendment, the first and most concise of our many Mutiny Bills was
sent up to the Lords, and was, in a few hours, hurried by them
through all its stages and passed by the King.
Thus was made,
without one dissentient voice in Parliament, without one murmur in
the nation, the first step towards a change which had become
necessary to the safety of the state, yet which every party in the
state then regarded with extreme dread and aversion. Six months
passed; and still the public danger continued. The power necessary
to the maintenance of military discipline was a second time
entrusted to the crown for a short term. The trust again expired,
and was again renewed. By slow degrees familiarity reconciled the
public mind to the names, once so odious, of standing army and court
martial. It was proved by experience that, in a well constituted
society, professional soldiers may be terrible to a foreign enemy,
and yet submissive to the civil power. What had been at first
tolerated as the exception began to be considered as the rule. Not a
session passed without a Mutiny Bill. When at length it became
evident that a political change of the highest importance was taking
place in such a manner as almost to escape notice, a clamour was
raised by some factious men desirous to weaken the hands of the
government, and by some respectable men who felt an honest but
injudicious reverence for every old constitutional tradition, and
who were unable to understand that what at one stage in the progress
of society is pernicious may at another stage be indispensable.
This clamour however, as years rolled on, became fainter and
fainter. The debate which recurred every spring on the Mutiny Bill
came to be regarded merely as an occasion on which hopeful young
orators fresh from Christchurch were to deliver maiden speeches,
setting forth how the guards of Pisistratus seized the citadel of
Athens, and how the Praetorian cohorts sold the Roman empire to
Didius. At length these declamations became too ridiculous to be
repeated. The most oldfashioned, the most eccentric, politician
could hardly, in the reign of George the Third, contend that there
ought to be no regular soldiers, or that the ordinary law,
administered by the ordinary courts, would effectually maintain
discipline among such soldiers. All parties being agreed as to the
general principle, a long succession of Mutiny Bills passed without
any discussion, except when some particular article of the military
code appeared to require amendment. It is perhaps because the army
became thus gradually, and almost imperceptibly, one of the
institutions of England, that it has acted in such perfect harmony
with all her other institutions, has never once, during a hundred
and sixty years, been untrue to the throne or disobedient to the
law, has never once defied the tribunals or overawed the constituent
bodies. To this day, however, the Estates of the Realm continue to
set up periodically, with laudable jealousy, a landmark on the
frontier which was traced at the time of the Revolution. They
solemnly reassert every year the doctrine laid down in the
Declaration of Rights; and they then grant to the Sovereign an
extraordinary power to govern a certain number of soldiers according
to certain rules during twelve months more.
In the same week in
which the first Mutiny Bill was laid on the table of the Commons,
another temporary law, made necessary by the unsettled state of the
kingdom, was passed. Since the flight of James many persons who were
believed to have been deeply implicated in his unlawful acts, or to
be engaged in plots for his restoration, had been arrested and
confined. During the vacancy of the throne, these men could derive
no benefit from the Habeas Corpus Act. For the machinery by which
alone that Act could be carried into execution had ceased to exist;
and, through the whole of Hilary term, all the courts in Westminster
Hall had remained closed. Now that the ordinary tribunals were about
to resume their functions, it was apprehended that all those
prisoners whom it was not convenient to bring instantly to trial
would demand and obtain their liberty. A bill was therefore brought
in which empowered the King to detain in custody during a few weeks
such persons as he should suspect of evil designs against his
government. This bill passed the two Houses with little or no
opposition.49 But the malecontents out of doors did not fail to
remark that, in the late reign, the Habeas Corpus Act had
not been one day suspended. It was the fashion to call James a
tyrant, and William a deliverer. Yet, before the deliverer had been
a month on the throne, he had deprived Englishmen of a precious
right which the tyrant had respected. This is a kind of reproach
which a government sprung from a popular revolution almost
inevitably incurs. From such a government men naturally think
themselves entitled to demand a more gentle and liberal
administration than is expected from old and deeply rooted power.
Yet such a government, having, as it always has, many active
enemies, and not having the strength derived from legitimacy and
prescription, can at first maintain itself only by a vigilance and a
severity of which old and deeply rooted power stands in no need.
Extraordinary and irregular vindications of public liberty are
sometimes necessary: yet, however necessary, they are almost always
followed by some temporary abridgments of that very liberty; and
every such abridgment is a fertile and plausible theme for sarcasm
and invective.
Unhappily sarcasm and
invective directed against William were but too likely to find
favourable audience. Each of the two great parties had its own
reasons for being dissatisfied with him; and there were some
complaints in which both parties joined. His manners gave almost
universal offence. He was in truth far better qualified to save a
nation than to adorn a court. In the highest parts of statesmanship,
he had no equal among his contemporaries. He had formed plans not
inferior in grandeur and boldness to those of Richelieu, and had
carried them into effect with a tact and wariness worthy of Mazarin.
Two countries, the seats of civil liberty and of the Reformed Faith,
had been preserved by his wisdom and courage from extreme perils.
Holland he had delivered from foreign, and England from domestic
foes. Obstacles apparently insurmountable had been interposed
between him and the ends on which he was intent; and those obstacles
his genius had turned into stepping stones. Under his dexterous
management the hereditary enemies of his house had helped him to
mount a throne; and the persecutors of his religion had helped him
to rescue his religion from persecution. Fleets and armies,
collected to withstand him, had, without a struggle, submitted to
his orders. Factions and sects, divided by mortal antipathies, had
recognised him as their common head. Without carnage, without
devastation, he had won a victory compared with which all the
victories of Gustavus and Turenne were insignificant. In a few weeks
he had changed the relative position of all the states in Europe,
and had restored the equilibrium which the preponderance of one
power had destroyed. Foreign nations did ample justice to his great
qualities. In every Continental country where Protestant
congregations met, fervent thanks were offered to God, who, from
among the progeny of His servants, Maurice, the deliverer of Germany,
and William, the deliverer of Holland, had raised up a third
deliverer, the wisest and mightiest of all. At Vienna, at Madrid,
nay, at Rome, the valiant and sagacious heretic was held in
honour as the chief of the great confederacy against the House of
Bourbon; and even at Versailles the hatred which he inspired was
largely mingled with admiration.
Here he was less
favourably judged. In truth, our ancestors saw him in the worst of
all lights. By the French, the Germans, and the Italians, he was
contemplated at such a distance that only what was great could be
discerned, and that small blemishes were invisible. To the Dutch he
was brought close: but he was himself a Dutchman. In his intercourse
with them he was seen to the best advantage, he was perfectly at his
ease with them; and from among them he had chosen his earliest and
dearest friends. But to the English he appeared in a most
unfortunate point of view. He was at once too near to them and too
far from them. He lived among them, so that the smallest peculiarity
of temper or manner could not escape their notice. Yet he lived
apart from them, and was to the last a foreigner in speech, tastes,
and habits.
One of the chief
functions of our Sovereigns had long been to preside over the
society of the capital. That function Charles the Second had
performed with immense success. His easy bow, his good stories, his
style of dancing and playing tennis, the sound of his cordial laugh,
were familiar to all London. One day he was seen among the elms of
Saint James's Park chatting with Dryden about poetry. Another day
his arm was on Tom Durfey's shoulder; and his Majesty was taking a
second, while his companion sang "Phillida, Phillida," or "To horse,
brave boys, to Newmarket, to horse." James, with much less vivacity
and good nature, was accessible, and, to people who did not cross
him, civil. But of this sociableness William was entirely destitute.
He seldom came forth from his closet; and, when he appeared in the
public rooms, he stood among the crowd of courtiers and ladies,
stern and abstracted, making no jest and smiling at none. His
freezing look, his silence, the dry and concise answers which he
uttered when he could keep silence no longer, disgusted noblemen and
gentlemen who had been accustomed to be slapped on the back by their
royal masters, called Jack or Harry, congratulated about race cups
or rallied about actresses. The women missed the homage due to their
sex. They observed that the King spoke in a somewhat imperious tone
even to the wife to whom he owed so much, and whom he sincerely
loved and esteemed. They were amused and shocked to see him, when
the Princess Anne dined with him, and when the first green peas of
the year were put on the table, devour the whole dish without
offering a spoonful to her Royal Highness; and they pronounced that
this great soldier and politician was no better
than a Low Dutch bear.
One misfortune, which
was imputed to him as a crime, was his bad English. He spoke our
language, but not well. His accent was foreign: his diction was
inelegant; and his vocabulary seems to have been no larger than was
necessary for the transaction of business. To the difficulty which
he felt in expressing himself, and to his consciousness that his
pronunciation was bad, must be partly ascribed the taciturnity and
the short answers which gave so much offence. Our literature he was
incapable of enjoying or of understanding. He never once, during his
whole reign, showed himself at the theatre. The poets who wrote
Pindaric verses in his praise complained that their flights of
sublimity were beyond his comprehension. Those who are acquainted
with the panegyrical odes of that age will perhaps be of opinion
that he did not lose much by his ignorance.
It is true that his
wife did her best to supply what was wanting, and that she was
excellently qualified to be the head of the Court. She was English
by birth, and English also in her tastes and feelings. Her face was
handsome, her port majestic, her temper sweet and lively, her
manners affable and graceful. Her understanding, though very
imperfectly cultivated, was quick. There was no want of feminine wit
and shrewdness in her conversation; and her letters were so well
expressed that they deserved to be well spelt. She took much
pleasure in the lighter kinds of literature, and did something
towards bringing books into fashion among ladies of quality. The
stainless purity of her private life and the strict attention which
she paid to her religious duties were the more respectable, because
she was singularly free from censoriousness, and discouraged scandal
as much as vice. In dislike of backbiting indeed she and her husband
cordially agreed; but they showed their dislike in different and in
very characteristic ways. William preserved profound silence, and
gave the talebearer a look which, as was said by a person who had
once encountered it, and who took good care never to encounter it
again, made your story go back down your throat.
Mary had a way of
interrupting tattle about elopements, duels, and playdebts by asking
the tattlers, very quietly yet significantly, whether they had ever
read her favourite sermon, Doctor Tillotson's on Evil Speaking. Her
charities were munificent and judicious; and, though she made no
ostentatious display of them, it was known that she retrenched from
her own state in order to relieve Protestants whom persecution had
driven from France and Ireland, and who were starving in the garrets
of London. So amiable was her conduct, that she was generally spoken
of with esteem and tenderness by the most respectable of those who
disapproved of the manner in which she had been raised to the throne,
and even of those who refused to acknowledge her as Queen. In the
Jacobite lampoons of that time, lampoons which, in virulence and
malignity, far exceed any thing that our age has produced, she was
not often mentioned with severity. Indeed she sometimes expressed
her surprise at finding that libellers who respected nothing else
respected her name. God, she said, knew where her weakness lay. She
was too sensitive to abuse and calumny; He had mercifully spared her
a trial which was beyond her strength; and the best return which she
could make to Him was to discountenance all malicious reflections on
the characters of others. Assured that she possessed her husband's
entire confidence and affection, she turned the edge of his sharp
speeches sometimes by soft and sometimes by playful answers, and
employed all the influence which she derived from her many pleasing
qualities to gain the hearts of the people for him.
If she had long
continued to assemble round her the best society of London, it is
probable that her kindness and courtesy would have done much to
efface the unfavourable impression made by his stern and frigid
demeanour. Unhappily his physical infirmities made it impossible for
him to reside at Whitehall. The air of Westminster, mingled with
tile fog of the river which in spring tides overflowed the courts of
his palace, with the smoke of seacoal from two hundred thousand
chimneys, and with the fumes of all the filth which was then
suffered to accumulate in the streets, was insupportable to him; for
his lungs were weak, and his sense of smell exquisitely keen. His
constitutional asthma made rapid progress. His physicians pronounced
it impossible that he could live to the end of the year. His face
was so ghastly that he could hardly be recognised. Those who had to
transact business with him were shocked to hear him gasping for
breath, and coughing till the tears ran down his cheeks. His mind,
strong as it was, sympathized with his body. His judgment was indeed
as clear as ever. But there was, during some months, a perceptible
relaxation of that energy by which he had been distinguished. Even
his Dutch friends whispered that he was not the man that he had been
at the Hague. It was absolutely necessary that he should quit
London. He accordingly took up his residence in the purer air of
Hampton Court. That mansion, begun by the magnificent Wolsey, was a
fine specimen of the architecture which flourished in England under
the first Tudors; but the apartments were not, according to the
notions of the seventeenth century, well fitted for purposes of
state. Our princes therefore had, since the Restoration, repaired
thither seldom, and only when they wished to live for a time in
retirement. As William purposed to make the deserted edifice his
chief palace, it was necessary for him to build and to plant; nor
was the necessity disagreeable to him. For he had, like most of his
countrymen, a pleasure in decorating a country house; and next to
hunting, though at a great interval, his favourite amusements were
architecture and gardening. He had already created on a sandy heath
in Guelders a paradise, which attracted multitudes of the curious
from Holland and Westphalia. Mary had laid the first stone of the
house. Bentinck had superintended the digging of the fishponds.
There were cascades and grottoes, a spacious orangery, and an aviary
which furnished Hondekoeter with numerous specimens of manycoloured
plumage. The King, in his splendid banishment, pined for this
favourite seat, and found some consolation in creating another Loo
on the banks of the Thames. Soon a wide extent of ground was laid
out in formal walks and parterres. Much idle ingenuity was employed
in forming that intricate labyrinth of verdure which has puzzled and
amused five generations of holiday visitors from London. Limes
thirty years old were transplanted from neighbouring woods to shade
the alleys. Artificial fountains spouted among the flower beds. A
new court, not designed with the purest taste, but stately,
spacious, and commodious, rose under the direction of Wren. The
wainscots were adorned with the rich and delicate carvings of
Gibbons. The staircases were in a blaze with the glaring frescoes of
Verrio. In every corner of the mansion appeared a profusion of
gewgaws, not yet familiar to English eyes. Mary had acquired at the
Hague a taste for the porcelain of China, and amused herself by
forming at Hampton a vast collection of hideous images, and of vases
on which houses, trees, bridges, and mandarins were depicted in
outrageous defiance of all the laws of perspective. The fashion, a
frivolous and inelegant fashion it must be owned, which was thus set
by the amiable Queen, spread fast and wide. In a few years almost
every great house in the kingdom contained a museum of these
grotesque baubles. Even statesmen and generals were not ashamed to
be renowned as judges of teapots and dragons; and satirists long
continued to repeat that a fine lady valued her mottled green
pottery quite as much as she valued her monkey, and much more than
she valued her husband. But the new palace was embellished with
works of art of a very different kind. A gallery was erected for the
cartoons of Raphael. Those great pictures, then and still the finest
on our side of the Alps, had been preserved by Cromwell from the
fate which befell most of the other masterpieces in the collection
of Charles the First, but had been suffered to lie during many years
nailed up in deal boxes. They were now brought forth from obscurity
to be contemplated by artists with admiration and despair. The
expense of the works at Hampton was a subject of bitter complaint to
many Tories, who had very gently blamed the boundless profusion with
which Charles the Second had built and rebuilt, furnished and
refurnished, the dwelling of the Duchess of Portsmouth. The expense,
however, was not the chief cause of the discontent which William's
change of residence excited. There was no longer a Court at
Westminster. Whitehall, once the daily resort of the noble and the
powerful, the beautiful and the gay, the place to which fops came to
show their new peruques, men of gallantry to exchange glances with
fine ladies, politicians to push their fortunes, loungers to hear
the news, country gentlemen to see the royal family, was now, in the
busiest season of the year, when London was full, when Parliament
was sitting, left desolate. A solitary sentinel paced the grassgrown
pavement before that door which had once been too narrow for the
opposite streams of entering and departing courtiers. The services
which the metropolis had rendered to the King were great and recent;
and it was thought that he might have requited those services better
than by treating it as Lewis had treated Paris. Halifax ventured to
hint this, but was silenced by a few words which admitted of no
reply. "Do you wish," said William peevishly, "to see me dead?"
In a short time it
was found that Hampton Court was too far from the Houses of Lords
and Commons, and from the public offices, to be the ordinary abode
of the Sovereign. Instead, however, of returning to Whitehall,
William determined to have another dwelling, near enough to his
capital for the transaction of business, but not near enough to be
within that atmosphere in which he could not pass a night without
risk of suffocation. At one time he thought of Holland House, the
villa of the noble family of Rich; and he actually resided there
some weeks. But he at length fixed his choice on Kensington House,
the suburban residence of the Earl of Nottingham. The purchase was
made for eighteen thousand guineas, and was followed by more
building, more planting, more expense, and more discontent. At
present Kensington House is considered as a part of London. It was
then a rural mansion, and could not, in those days of highwaymen and
scourers, of roads deep in mire and nights without lamps, be the
rallying point of fashionable society.
It was well known
that the King, who treated the English nobility and gentry so
ungraciously, could, in a small circle of his own countrymen, be
easy, friendly, even jovial, could pour out his feelings
garrulously, could fill his glass, perhaps too often; and this was,
in the view of our forefathers, an aggravation of his offences. Yet
our forefathers should have had the sense and the justice to
acknowledge that the patriotism which they considered as a virtue in
themselves, could not be a fault in him. It was unjust to blame him
for not at once transferring to our island the love which he bore to
the country of his birth. If, in essentials, he did his duty towards
England, he might well be suffered to feel at heart an affectionate
preference for Holland.
Nor is it a reproach to him that he did not, in this season of his
greatness, discard companions who had played with him in his
childhood, who had stood by him firmly through all the vicissitudes
of his youth and manhood, who had, in defiance of the most loathsome
and deadly forms of infection, kept watch by his sick-bed, who had,
in the thickest of the battle, thrust themselves between him and the
French swords, and whose attachment was, not to the Stadtholder or
to the King, but to plain William of Nassau. It may be added that
his old friends could not but rise in his estimation by comparison
with his new courtiers. To the end of his life all his Dutch
comrades, without exception, continued to deserve his confidence.
They could be out of humour with him, it is true; and, when out of
humour, they could be sullen and rude; but never did they, even when
most angry and unreasonable, fail to keep his secrets and to watch
over his interests with gentlemanlike and soldierlike fidelity.
Among his English councillors such fidelity was rare. It is painful,
but it is no more than just, to acknowledge that he had but too good
reason for thinking meanly of our national character. That character
was indeed, in essentials, what it has always been. Veracity,
uprightness, and manly boldness were then, as now, qualities
eminently English. But those qualities, though widely diffused among
the great body of the people, were seldom to be found in the class
with which William was best acquainted.
The standard of
honour and virtue among our public men was, during his reign, at the
very lowest point. His predecessors had bequeathed to him a court
foul with all the vices of the Restoration, a court swarming with
sycophants, who were ready, on the first turn of fortune, to abandon
him as they had abandoned his uncle. Here and there, lost in that
ignoble crowd, was to be found a man of true integrity and public
spirit. Yet even such a man could not long live in such society
without much risk that the strictness of his principles would be
relaxed, and the delicacy of his sense of right and wrong impaired.
It was unjust to blame a prince surrounded by flatterers and
traitors for wishing to keep near him four or five servants whom he
knew by proof to be faithful even to death.
Nor was this the only
instance in which our ancestors were unjust to him. They had
expected that, as soon as so distinguished a soldier and statesman
was placed at the head of affairs, he would give some signal proof,
they scarcely knew what, of genius and vigour. Unhappily, during the
first months of his reign, almost every thing went wrong. His
subjects, bitterly disappointed, threw the blame on him, and began
to doubt whether he merited that reputation which he had won at his
first entrance into public life, and which the splendid success of
his last great enterprise had raised to the highest point. Had they
been in a temper
to judge fairly, they would have perceived that for the
maladministration of which they with good reason complained he was
not responsible. He could as yet work only with the machinery which
he had found; and the machinery which he had found was all rust and
rottenness. From the time of the Restoration to the time of the
Revolution, neglect and fraud had been almost constantly impairing
the efficiency of every department of the government. Honours and
public trusts, peerages, baronetcies, regiments, frigates,
embassies, governments, commissionerships, leases of crown lands,
contracts for clothing, for provisions, for ammunition, pardons for
murder, for robbery, for arson, were sold at Whitehall scarcely less
openly than asparagus at Covent Garden or herrings at Billingsgate.
Brokers had been incessantly plying for custom in the purlieus of
the court; and of these brokers the most successful had been, in the
days of Charles, the harlots, and in the days of James, the priests.
From the palace which was the chief seat of this pestilence the
taint had diffused itself through every office and through every
rank in every office, and had every where produced feebleness and
disorganization. So rapid was the progress of the decay that, within
eight years after the time when Oliver had been the umpire of
Europe, the roar of the guns of De Ruyter was heard in the Tower of
London. The vices which had brought that great humiliation on the
country had ever since been rooting themselves deeper and spreading
themselves wider. James had, to do him justice, corrected a few of
the gross abuses which disgraced the naval administration. Yet the
naval administration, in spite of his attempts to reform it, moved
the contempt of men who were acquainted with the dockyards of France
and Holland. The military administration was still worse. The
courtiers took bribes from the colonels; the colonels cheated the
soldiers: the commissaries sent in long bills for what had never
been furnished: the keepers of the arsenals sold the public stores
and pocketed the price. But these evils, though they had sprung into
existence and grown to maturity under the government of Charles and
James, first made themselves severely felt under the government of
William. For Charles and James were content to be the vassals and
pensioners of a powerful and ambitious neighbour: they submitted to
his ascendency: they shunned with pusillanimous caution whatever
could give him offence; and thus, at the cost of the independence
and dignity of that ancient and glorious crown which they unworthily
wore, they avoided a conflict which would instantly have shown how
helpless, under their misrule, their once formidable kingdom had
become. Their ignominious policy it was neither in William's power
nor in his nature to follow. It was only by arms that the liberty
and religion of England could be protected against the most
formidable enemy that had threatened our island since the Hebrides
were strown with the wrecks of the Armada. The body politic,
which, while it remained in repose, had presented a superficial
appearance of health and vigour, was now under the necessity of
straining every nerve in a wrestle for life or death, and was
immediately found to be unequal to the exertion. The first efforts
showed an utter relaxation of fibre, an utter want of training.
Those efforts were, with scarcely an exception, failures; and every
failure was popularly imputed, not to the rulers whose mismanagement
had produced the infirmities of the state, but to the ruler in
whose time the infirmities of the state became visible.
William might indeed,
if he had been as absolute as Lewis, have used such sharp remedies
as would speedily have restored to the English administration that
firm tone which had been wanting since the death of Oliver. But the
instantaneous reform of inveterate abuses was a task far beyond the
powers of a prince strictly restrained by law, and restrained still
more strictly by the difficulties of his situation. Some of the most
serious difficulties of his situation were caused by the conduct of
the ministers on whom, new as he was to the details of English
affairs, he was forced to rely for information about men and things.
There was indeed no want of ability among his chief counsellors: but
one half of their ability was employed in counteracting the other
half. Between the Lord President and the Lord Privy Seal there was
an inveterate enmity. It had begun twelve years before when Danby
was Lord High Treasurer, a persecutor of nonconformists, an
uncompromising defender of prerogative, and when Halifax was rising
to distinction as one of the most eloquent leaders of the country
party. In the reign of James, the two statesmen had found themselves
in opposition together; and their common hostility to France and to
Rome, to the High Commission and to the dispensing power, had
produced an apparent reconciliation; but as soon as they were in
office together the old antipathy revived. The hatred which the Whig
party felt towards them both ought, it should seem, to have produced
a close alliance between them: but in fact each of them saw with
complacency the danger which threatened the other. Danby exerted
himself to rally round him a strong phalanx of Tories. Under the
plea of ill health, he withdrew from court, seldom came to the
Council over which it was his duty to preside, passed much time in
the country, and took scarcely any part in public affairs except by
grumbling and sneering at all the acts of the government, and by
doing jobs and getting places for his personal retainers. In
consequence of this defection, Halifax became prime minister, as far
any minister could, in that reign, be called prime minister. An
immense load of business fell on him; and that load he was unable to
sustain. In wit and eloquence, in amplitude of comprehension and
subtlety of disquisition, he had no equal among the statesmen
of his time. But that very fertility, that very acuteness, which
gave a singular charm to his conversation, to his oratory and to his
writings, unfitted him for the work of promptly deciding practical
questions. He was slow from very quickness. For he saw so many
arguments for and against every possible course that he was longer
in making up his mind than a dull man would have been. Instead of
acquiescing in his first thoughts, he replied on himself, rejoined
on himself, and surrejoined on himself. Those who heard him talk
owned that he talked like an angel: but too often, when he had
exhausted all that could be said, and came to act, the time for
action was over. |