In the House of Commons, no member
thought it expedient to propose the repeal of the Test Act. But
leave was given to bring in a bill repealing the Corporation Act,
which had been passed by the Cavalier Parliament soon after the
Restoration, and which contained a clause requiring all municipal
magistrates to receive the sacrament according to the forms of the
Church of England. When this bill was about to be committed, it was
moved by the Tories that the committee should be instructed to make
no alteration in the law touching the sacrament. Those Whigs who
were zealous for the Comprehension must have been placed by this
motion in an embarrassing position. To vote for the instruction
would have been inconsistent with their principles. To vote against
it would have been to break with Nottingham. A middle course was
found. The adjournment of the debate was moved and carried by a
hundred and sixteen votes to a hundred and fourteen; and the subject
was not revived. In the House of Lords a motion was made for the
abolition of the sacramental test, but was rejected by a large
majority. Many of those who thought the motion right in principle
thought it ill timed. A protest was entered; but it was signed only
by a few peers of no great authority. It is a remarkable fact that
two great chiefs of the Whig party, who were in general very
attentive to their parliamentary duty, Devonshire and Shrewsbury,
absented themselves on this occasion.
The debate on the Test in the Upper
House was speedily followed by a debate on the last clause of the
Comprehension Bill. By that clause it was provided that thirty
Bishops and priests should be commissioned to revise the liturgy and
canons, and to suggest amendments. On this subject the Whig peers
were almost all of one mind. They mustered strong, and spoke warmly.
Why, they asked, were none but members of the sacerdotal order to be
intrusted with this duty? Were the laity no part of the Church of
England? When the Commission should have made its report, laymen
would have to decide on the recommendations contained in that
report. Not
a line of the Book of Common Prayer could be altered but by the
authority of King, Lords, and Commons. The King was a layman. Five
sixths of the Lords were laymen. All the members of the House of
Commons were laymen. Was it not absurd to say that laymen were
incompetent to examine into a matter which it was acknowledged that
laymen must in the last resort determine? And could any thing be
more opposite to the whole spirit of Protestantism than the notion
that a certain preternatural power of judging in spiritual cases was
vouchsafed to a particular caste, and to that caste alone; that such
men as Selden, as Hale, as Boyle, were less competent to give an
opinion on a collect or a creed than the youngest and silliest
chaplain who, in a remote manor house, passed his life in drinking
ale and playing at shovelboard? What God had instituted no earthly
power, lay or clerical, could alter: and of things instituted by
human beings a layman was surely as competent as a clergyman to
judge. That the Anglican liturgy and canons were of purely human
institution the Parliament acknowledged by referring them to a
Commission for revision and correction. How could it then be
maintained that in such a Commission the laity, so vast a majority
of the population, the laity, whose edification was the main end of
all ecclesiastical regulations, and whose innocent tastes ought to
be carefully consulted in the framing of the public services of
religion, ought not to have a single representative? Precedent was
directly opposed to this odious distinction. Repeatedly since the
light of reformation had dawned on England Commissioners had been
empowered by law to revise the canons; and on every one of those
occasions some of the Commissioners had been laymen. In the present
case the proposed arrangement was peculiarly objectionable. For the
object of issuing the commission was the conciliating of dissenters;
and it was therefore most desirable that the Commissioners should be
men in whose fairness and moderation dissenters could confide. Would
thirty such men be easily found in the higher ranks of the clerical
profession? The duty of the legislature was to arbitrate between two
contending parties, the Nonconformist divines and the Anglican
divines, and it would be the grossest injustice to commit to one of
those parties the office of umpire.
On these grounds the Whigs proposed an
amendment to the effect that laymen should be joined with clergymen
in the Commission. The contest was sharp. Burnet, who had just taken
his seat among the peers, and who seems to have been bent on winning
at almost any price the good will of his brethren, argued with all
his constitutional warmth for the clause as it stood. The numbers on
the division proved to be exactly equal. The consequence was that,
according to the rules of the House, the amendment was lost. At
length the Comprehension Bill was sent down to the Commons. There it
would easily have been carried by two to one, if it had been
supported by all the friends of religious liberty. But on this
subject the High Churchmen could count on the support of a large
body of Low Churchmen. Those members who wished well to Nottingham's
plan saw that they were outnumbered, and, despairing of a victory,
began to meditate a retreat. Just at this time a suggestion was
thrown out which united all suffrages. The ancient usage was that a
Convocation should be summoned together with a Parliament; and it
might well be argued that, if ever the advice of a Convocation could
be needed, it must be when changes in the ritual and discipline of
the Church were under consideration. But, in consequence of the
irregular manner in which the Estates of the Realm had been brought
together during the vacancy of the throne, there was no Convocation.
It was proposed that the House should advise the King to take
measures for supplying this defect, and that the fate of the
Comprehension Bill should not be decided till the clergy had had an
opportunity of declaring their opinion through the ancient and
legitimate organ.
This proposition was received with
general acclamation. The Tories were well pleased to see such honour
done to the priesthood. Those Whigs who were against the
Comprehension Bill were well pleased to see it laid aside, certainly
for a year, probably for ever. Those Whigs who were for the
Comprehension Bill were well pleased to escape without a defeat.
Many of them indeed were not without hopes that mild and liberal
counsels might prevail in the ecclesiastical senate. An address
requesting William to summon the Convocation was voted without a
division: the concurrence of the Lords was asked: the Lords
concurred, the address was carried up to the throne by both Houses:
the King promised that he would, at a convenient season, do what his
Parliament desired; and Nottingham's Bill was not again mentioned.
Many writers, imperfectly acquainted
with the history of that age, have inferred from these proceedings
that the House of Commons was an assembly of High Churchmen: but
nothing is more certain than that two thirds of the members were
either Low Churchmen or not Churchmen at all. A very few days before
this time an occurrence had taken place, unimportant in itself, but
highly significant as an indication of the temper of the majority.
It had been suggested that the House ought, in conformity with
ancient usage, to adjourn over the Easter holidays. The Puritans and
Latitudinarians objected: there was a sharp debate: the High
Churchmen did not venture to divide; and, to the great scandal of
many grave persons, the Speaker took the chair
at nine o'clock on Easter Monday; and there was a long and busy
sitting.
This however was by no means the
strongest proof which the Commons gave that they were far indeed
from feeling extreme reverence or tenderness for the Anglican
hierarchy. The bill for settling the oaths had just come down from
the Lords framed in a manner favourable to the clergy. All lay
functionaries were required to swear fealty to the King and Queen on
pain of expulsion from office. But it was provided that every divine
who already held a benefice might continue to hold it without
swearing, unless the Government should see reason to call on him
specially for an assurance of his loyalty. Burnett had, partly, no
doubt, from the good nature and generosity which belonged to his
character, and partly from a desire to conciliate his brethren,
supported this arrangement in the Upper House with great energy. But
in the Lower House the feeling against the Jacobite priests was
irresistibly strong. On the very day on which that House voted,
without a division, the address requesting the King to summon the
Convocation, a clause was proposed and carried which required every
person who held any ecclesiastical or academical preferment to take
the oaths by the first of August 1689, on pain of suspension. Six
months, to be reckoned from that day, were allowed to the nonjuror
for reconsideration. If, on the first of February 1690, he still
continued obstinate, he was to be finally deprived.
The bill, thus amended, was sent back to
the Lords. The Lords adhered to their original resolution.
Conference after conference was held. Compromise after compromise
was suggested. From the imperfect reports which have come down to us
it appears that every argument in favour of lenity was forcibly
urged by Burnet. But the Commons were firm: time pressed: the
unsettled state of the law caused inconvenience in every department
of the public service; and the peers very reluctantly gave way. They
at the same time added a clause empowering the King to bestow
pecuniary allowances out of the forfeited benefices on a few
nonjuring clergymen. The number of clergymen thus favoured was not
to exceed twelve. The allowance was not to exceed one third of the
income forfeited. Some zealous Whigs were unwilling to grant even
this indulgence: but the Commons were content with the victory which
they had won, and justly thought that it would be ungracious to
refuse so slight a concession.
These debates were interrupted, during a
short time, by the festivities and solemnities of the Coronation.
When the day fixed for that great ceremony drew near, the House of
Commons resolved itself into a committee for the purpose of settling
the form of words
in which our Sovereigns were thenceforward to enter into covenant
with the nation. All parties were agreed as to the propriety of
requiring the King to swear that, in temporal matters, he would
govern according to law, and would execute justice in mercy. But
about the terms of the oath which related to the spiritual
institutions of the realm there was much debate.
Should the chief magistrate promise
simply to maintain the Protestant religion established by law, or
should he promise to maintain that religion as it should be
hereafter established by law? The majority preferred the former
phrase. The latter phrase was preferred by those Whigs who were for
a Comprehension. But it was universally admitted that the two
phrases really meant the same thing, and that the oath, however it
might be worded, would bind the Sovereign in his executive capacity
only. This was indeed evident from the very nature of the
transaction. Any compact may be annulled by the free consent of the
party who alone is entitled to claim the performance. It was never
doubted by the most rigid casuist that a debtor, who has bound
himself under the most awful imprecations to pay a debt, may
lawfully withhold payment if the creditor is willing to cancel the
obligation. And it is equally clear that no assurance, exacted from
a King by the Estates of his kingdom, can bind him to refuse
compliance with what may at a future time be the wish of those
Estates.
A bill was drawn up in conformity with
the resolutions of the Committee, and was rapidly passed through
every stage. After the third reading, a foolish man stood up to
propose a rider, declaring that the oath was not meant to restrain
the Sovereign from consenting to any change in the ceremonial of the
Church, provided always that episcopacy and a written form of prayer
were retained. The gross absurdity of this motion was exposed by
several eminent members. Such a clause, they justly remarked, would
bind the King under pretence of setting him free. The coronation
oath, they said, was never intended to trammel him in his
legislative capacity. Leave that oath as it is now drawn, and no
prince can misunderstand it. No prince can seriously imagine that
the two Houses mean to exact from him a promise that he will put a
Veto on laws which they may hereafter think necessary to the
wellbeing of the country. Or if any prince should so strangely
misapprehend the nature of the contract between him and his
subjects, any divine, any lawyer, to whose advice he may have
recourse, will set his mind at ease. But if this rider should pass,
it will be impossible to deny that the coronation oath is meant to
prevent the King from giving his assent to bills which may be
presented to him by the Lords and Commons; and the most serious
inconvenience may follow. These arguments were felt to be
unanswerable, and the proviso was rejected without a division.
Every
person who has read these debates must be fully convinced that the
statesmen who framed the coronation oath did not mean to bind the
King in his legislative capacity. Unhappily, more than a hundred
years later, a scruple, which those statesmen thought too absurd to
be seriously entertained by any human being, found its way into a
mind, honest, indeed, and religious, but narrow and obstinate by
nature, and at once debilitated and excited by disease. Seldom,
indeed, have the ambition and perfidy of tyrants produced evils
greater than those which were brought on our country by that fatal
conscientiousness. A conjuncture singularly auspicious, a
conjuncture at which wisdom and justice might perhaps have
reconciled races and sects long hostile, and might have made the
British islands one truly United Kingdom, was suffered to pass away.
The opportunity, once lost, returned no more. Two generations of
public men have since laboured with imperfect success to repair the
error which was then committed; nor is it improbable that some of
the penalties of that error may continue to afflict a remote
posterity.
The Bill by which the oath was settled
passed the Upper House without amendment. All the preparations were
complete; and, on the eleventh of April, the coronation took place.
In some things it differed from ordinary coronations. The
representatives of the people attended the ceremony in a body, and
were sumptuously feasted in the Exchequer Chamber. Mary, being not
merely Queen Consort, but also Queen Regnant, was inaugurated in all
things like a King, was girt with the sword, lifted up into the
throne, and presented with the Bible, the spurs, and the orb. Of the
temporal grandees of the realm, and of their wives and daughters,
the muster was great and splendid. None could be surprised that the
Whig aristocracy should swell the triumph of Whig principles. But
the Jacobites saw, with concern, that many Lords who had voted for a
Regency bore a conspicuous part in the ceremonial.
The King's crown was carried by Grafton,
the Queen's by Somerset. The pointed sword, emblematical of temporal
justice, was borne by Pembroke. Ormond was Lord High Constable for
the day, and rode up the Hall on the right hand of the hereditary
champion, who thrice flung down his glove on the pavement, and
thrice defied to mortal combat the false traitor who should gainsay
the title of William and Mary. Among the noble damsels who supported
the gorgeous train of the Queen was her beautiful and gentle cousin,
the Lady Henrietta Hyde, whose father, Rochester, had to the last
contended against the resolution which declared the throne
vacant.102 The show of Bishops, indeed, was scanty. The Primate did
not make his appearance; and his place was supplied by Compton. On
one side of Compton, the paten was carried by Lloyd, Bishop of Saint
Asaph, eminent among the seven confessors of the preceding
year. On the other side, Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, lately a member
of the High Commission, had charge of the chalice. Burnet, the
junior prelate, preached with all his wonted ability, and more than
his wonted taste and judgment. His grave and eloquent discourse was
polluted neither by adulation nor by malignity. He is said to have
been greatly applauded; and it may well be believed that the
animated peroration in which he implored heaven to bless the royal
pair with long life and mutual love, with obedient subjects, wise
counsellors, and faithful allies, with gallant fleets and armies,
with victory, with peace, and finally with crowns more glorious and
more durable than those which then glittered on the altar of the
Abbey, drew forth the loudest hums of the Commons.
On the whole the ceremony went off well,
and produced something like a revival, faint, indeed, and transient,
of the enthusiasm of the preceding December. The day was, in London
and in many other places, a day of general rejoicing. The churches
were filled in the morning: the afternoon was spent in sport and
carousing; and at night bonfires were lighted, rockets discharged,
and windows lighted up. The Jacobites however contrived to discover
or to invent abundant matter for scurrility and sarcasm. They
complained bitterly, that the way from the hall to the western door
of the Abbey had been lined by Dutch soldiers. Was it seemly that an
English king should enter into the most solemn of engagements with
the English nation behind a triple hedge of foreign swords and
bayonets? Little affrays, such as, at every great pageant, almost
inevitably take place between those who are eager to see the show
and those whose business it is to keep the communications clear,
were exaggerated with all the artifices of rhetoric. One of the
alien mercenaries had backed his horse against an honest citizen who
pressed forward to catch a glimpse of the royal canopy. Another had
rudely pushed back a woman with the but end of his musket. On such
grounds as these the strangers were compared to those Lord Danes
whose insolence, in the old time, had provoked the Anglo-saxon
population to insurrection and massacre. But there was no more
fertile theme for censure than the coronation medal, which really
was absurd in design and mean in execution. A chariot appeared
conspicuous on the reverse; and plain people were at a loss to
understand what this emblem had to do with William and Mary. The
disaffected wits solved the difficulty by suggesting that the artist
meant to allude to that chariot which a Roman princess, lost to all
filial affection, and blindly devoted to the interests of an
ambitious husband, drove over the still warm remains of her father.
Honours were, as usual, liberally
bestowed at this festive season.
Three garters which happened to be at the disposal of the Crown
were given to Devonshire, Ormond, and Schomberg. Prince George was
created Duke of Cumberland. Several eminent men took new
appellations by which they must henceforth be designated. Danby
became Marquess of Caermarthen, Churchill Earl of Marlborough, and
Bentinck Earl of Portland. Mordaunt was made Earl of Monmouth, not
without some murmuring on the part of old Exclusionists, who still
remembered with fondness their Protestant Duke, and who had hoped
that his attainder would be reversed, and that his title would be
borne by his descendants. It was remarked that the name of Halifax
did not appear in the list of promotions. None could doubt that he
might easily have obtained either a blue riband or a ducal coronet;
and, though he was honourably distinguished from most of his
contemporaries by his scorn of illicit gain, it was well known that
he desired honorary distinctions with a greediness of which he was
himself ashamed, and which was unworthy of his fine understanding.
The truth is that his ambition was at this time chilled by his
fears.
To those whom he trusted he hinted his
apprehensions that evil times were at hand. The King's life was not
worth a year's purchase: the government was disjointed, the clergy
and the army disaffected, the parliament torn by factions: civil war
was already raging in one part of the empire: foreign war was
impending. At such a moment a minister, whether Whig or Tory, might
well be uneasy; but neither Whig nor Tory had so much to fear as the
Trimmer, who might not improbably find himself the common mark at
which both parties would take aim. For these reasons Halifax
determined to avoid all ostentation of power and influence, to
disarm envy by a studied show of moderation, and to attach to
himself by civilities and benefits persons whose gratitude might be
useful in the event of a counterrevolution. The next three months,
he said, would be the time of trial. If the government got safe
through the summer it would probably stand.
Meanwhile questions of external policy
were every day becoming more and more important. The work at which
William had toiled indefatigably during many gloomy and anxious
years was at length accomplished. The great coalition was formed. It
was plain that a desperate conflict was at hand. The oppressor of
Europe would have to defend himself against England allied with
Charles the Second King of Spain, with the Emperor Leopold, and with
the Germanic and Batavian federations, and was likely to have no
ally except the Sultan, who was waging war against the House of
Austria on the Danube.
Lewis had, towards the close of the
preceding year, taken his enemies at a disadvantage, and had struck
the first blow before they were prepared to parry it. But that blow,
though heavy, was not aimed at the part where it might have been
mortal. Had hostilities been commenced on the Batavian frontier,
William and his army would probably have been detained on the
continent, and James might have continued to govern England.
Happily, Lewis, under an infatuation which many pious Protestants
confidently ascribed to the righteous judgment of God, had neglected
the point on which the fate of the whole civilised world depended,
and had made a great display of power, promptitude, and energy, in a
quarter where the most splendid achievements could produce nothing
more than an illumination and a Te Deum. A French army under the
command of Marshal Duras had invaded the Palatinate and some of the
neighbouring principalities. But this expedition, though it had been
completely successful, and though the skill and vigour with which it
had been conducted had excited general admiration, could not
perceptibly affect the event of the tremendous struggle which was
approaching. France would soon be attacked on every side. It would
be impossible for Duras long to retain possession of the provinces
which he had surprised and overrun. An atrocious thought rose in the
mind of Louvois, who, in military affairs, had the chief sway at
Versailles. He was a man distinguished by zeal for what he thought
the public interests, by capacity, and by knowledge of all that
related to the administration of war, but of a savage and obdurate
nature.
If the cities of the Palatinate could
not be retained, they might be destroyed. If the soil of the
Palatinate was not to furnish supplies to the French, it might be so
wasted that it would at least furnish no supplies to the Germans.
The ironhearted statesman submitted his plan, probably with much
management and with some disguise, to Lewis; and Lewis, in an evil
hour for his fame, assented. Duras received orders to turn one of
the fairest regions of Europe into a wilderness. Fifteen years
earlier Turenne had ravaged part of that fine country. But the
ravages committed by Turenne, though they have left a deep stain on
his glory, were mere sport in comparison with the horrors of this
second devastation. The French commander announced to near half a
million of human beings that he granted them three days of grace,
and that, within that time, they must shift for themselves. Soon the
roads and fields, which then lay deep in snow, were blackened by
innumerable multitudes of men, women, and children flying from their
homes. Many died of cold and hunger: but enough survived to fill the
streets of all the cities of Europe with lean and squalid beggars,
who had once been thriving farmers and shopkeepers. Meanwhile the
work of destruction began. The flames went up from every
marketplace, every hamlet, every parish church, every country seat,
within the devoted provinces. The fields where the corn had been
sown were ploughed up. The orchards were hewn down. No promise of a
harvest was left on the fertile plains near what had once been
Frankenthal. Not a vine, not an almond tree, was to be seen on the
slopes of the sunny hills round what had once been Heidelberg. No
respect was shown to palaces, to temples, to monasteries, to
infirmaries, to beautiful works of art, to monuments of the
illustrious dead. The farfamed castle of the Elector Palatine was
turned into a heap of ruins. The adjoining hospital was sacked. The
provisions, the medicines, the pallets on which the sick lay were
destroyed. The very stones of which Mannheim had been built were
flung into the Rhine. The magnificent Cathedral of Spires perished,
and with it the marble sepulchres of eight Caesars. The coffins were
broken open. The ashes were scattered to the winds. Treves, with its
fair bridge, its Roman amphitheatre, its venerable churches,
convents, and colleges, was doomed to the same fate. But, before
this last crime had been perpetrated, Lewis was recalled to a better
mind by the execrations of all the neighbouring nations, by the
silence and confusion of his flatterers, and by the expostulations
of his wife.
He had been more than two years secretly
married to Frances de Maintenon, the governess of his natural
children. It would be hard to name any woman who, with so little
romance in her temper, has had so much in her life. Her early years
had been passed in poverty and obscurity. Her first husband had
supported himself by writing burlesque farces and poems. When she
attracted the notice of her sovereign, she could no longer boast of
youth or beauty: but she possessed in an extraordinary degree those
more lasting charms, which men of sense, whose passions age has
tamed, and whose life is a life of business and care, prize most
highly in a female companion. Her character was such as has been
well compared to that soft green on which the eye, wearied by warm
tints and glaring lights, reposes with pleasure. A just
understanding; an inexhaustible yet never redundant flow of
rational, gentle, and sprightly conversation; a temper of which the
serenity was never for a moment ruffled, a tact which surpassed the
tact of her sex as much as the tact of her sex surpasses the tact of
ours; such were the qualities which made the widow of a buffoon
first the confidential friend, and then the spouse, of the proudest
and most powerful of European kings. It was said that Lewis had been
with difficulty prevented by the arguments and vehement entreaties
of Louvois from declaring her Queen of France. It is certain that
she regarded Louvois as her enemy. Her hatred of him, cooperating
perhaps with better feelings, induced her to plead the cause of the
unhappy people of the Rhine. She appealed to those sentiments of
compassion which, though weakened by many corrupting influences,
were not altogether extinct in her husband's mind, and to those
sentiments of religion which had too often impelled him to cruelty,
but which, on the present occasion, were on the side of humanity. He
relented: and Treves was spared.107 In truth he could hardly fail
to perceive that he had committed a great error. The devastation of
the Palatinate, while it had not in any sensible degree lessened the
power of his enemies, had inflamed their animosity, and had
furnished them with inexhaustible matter for invective. The cry of
vengeance rose on every side. Whatever scruple either branch of the
House of Austria might have felt about coalescing with Protestants
was completely removed. Lewis accused the Emperor and the Catholic
King of having betrayed the cause of the Church; of having allied
themselves with an usurper who was the avowed champion of the great
schism; of having been accessary to the foul wrong done to a lawful
sovereign who was guilty of no crime but zeal for the true religion.
James sent to Vienna and Madrid piteous letters, in which he
recounted his misfortunes, and implored the assistance of his
brother kings, his brothers also in the faith, against the unnatural
children and the rebellious subjects who had driven him into exile.
But there was little difficulty in framing a plausible answer both
to the reproaches of Lewis and to the supplications of James.
Leopold and Charles declared that they had not, even for purposes of
just selfdefence, leagued themselves with heretics, till their enemy
had, for purposes of unjust aggression, leagued himself with
Mahometans. Nor was this the worst. The French King, not content
with assisting the Moslem against the Christians, was himself
treating Christians with a barbarity which would have shocked the
very Moslem. His infidel allies, to do them justice, had not
perpetrated on the Danube such outrages against the edifices and the
members of the Holy Catholic Church as he who called himself the
eldest son of that Church was perpetrating on the Rhine. On these
grounds, the princes to whom James had appealed replied by
appealing, with many professions of good will and compassion, to
himself. He was surely too just to blame them for thinking that it
was their first duty to defend their own people against such
outrages as had turned the Palatinate into a desert, or for calling
in the aid of Protestants against an enemy who had not scrupled to
call in the aid of the Turks.
During the winter and the earlier part of the spring,
the powers hostile to France were gathering their strength for a
great effort, and were in constant communication with one another.
As the season for military operations approached, the solemn appeals
of injured nations to the God of battles came forth in rapid
succession. The manifesto of the Germanic body appeared in February;
that of the States General in March; that of the House of
Brandenburg in April; and that of Spain in May.109 Here, as soon as
the ceremony of the coronation was over, the House of Commons
determined to take into consideration the late
proceedings
of the French king.
In the debate, that hatred of the
powerful, unscrupulous and imperious Lewis, which had, during twenty
years of vassalage, festered in the hearts of Englishmen, broke
violently forth. He was called the most Christian Turk, the most
Christian ravager of Christendom, the most Christian barbarian who
had perpetrated on Christians outrages of which his infidel allies
would have been ashamed. A committee, consisting chiefly of ardent
Whigs, was appointed to prepare an address. John Hampden, the most
ardent Whig among them, was put into the chair; and he produced a
composition too long, too rhetorical, and too vituperative to suit
the lips of the Speaker or the ears of the King. Invectives against
Lewis might perhaps, in the temper in which the House then was, have
passed without censure, if they had not been accompanied by severe
reflections on the character and administration of Charles the
Second, whose memory, in spite of all his faults, was affectionately
cherished by the Tories. There were some very intelligible allusions
to Charles's dealings with the Court of Versailles, and to the
foreign woman whom that Court had sent to lie like a snake in his
bosom. The House was with good reason dissatisfied. The address was
recommitted, and, having been made more concise, and less
declamatory and acrimonious, was approved and presented.
William's attention was called to the
wrongs which France had done to him and to his kingdom; and he was
assured that, whenever he should resort to arms for the redress of
those wrongs, he should be heartily supported by his people. He
thanked the Commons warmly. Ambition, he said, should never induce
him to draw the sword: but he had no choice: France had already
attacked England; and it was necessary to exercise the right of self
defence. A few days later war was proclaimed. Of the grounds of
quarrel alleged by the Commons in their address, and by the King in
his manifesto, the most serious was the interference of Lewis in the
affairs of Ireland. In that country great events had, during several
months, followed one another in rapid succession. Of those events it
is now time to relate the history, a history dark with crime and
sorrow, yet full of interest and instruction. |