ON the eighteenth of January 1691, the
King, having been detained some days by adverse winds, went on board
at Gravesend. Four yachts had been fitted up for him and for his
retinue. Among his attendants were Norfolk, Ormond, Devonshire,
Dorset, Portland, Monmouth, Zulestein, and the Bishop of London. Two
distinguished admirals, Cloudesley Shovel and George Rooke,
commanded the men of war which formed the convoy. The passage was
tedious and disagreeable. During many hours the fleet was becalmed
off the Godwin Sands; and it was not till the fifth day that the
soundings proved the coast of Holland to be near. The sea fog was so
thick that no land could be seen; and it was not thought safe for
the ships to proceed further in the darkness. William, tired out by
the voyage, and impatient to be once more in his beloved country,
determined to land in an open boat. The noblemen who were in his
train tried to dissuade him from risking so valuable a life; but,
when they found that his mind was made up, they insisted on sharing
the danger. That danger proved more serious than they had expected.
It had been supposed that in an hour the party would be on shore.
But great masses of floating ice impeded the progress of the skiff;
the night came on; the fog grew thicker; the waves broke over the
King and the courtiers. Once the keel struck on a sand bank, and was
with great difficulty got off. The hardiest mariners showed some
signs of uneasiness. But William, through the whole night, was as
composed as if he had been in the drawingroom at Kensington. "For
shame," he said to one of the dismayed sailors "are you afraid to
die in my company?" A bold Dutch seaman ventured to spring out, and,
with great difficulty, swam and scrambled through breakers, ice and
mud, to firm ground. Here he discharged a musket and lighted a fire
as a signal that he was safe. None of his fellow passengers,
however, thought it prudent to follow his example. They lay tossing
in sight of the flame which he had kindled, till the first pale
light of a January morning showed them that they were close to the
island of Goree. The King and his Lords, stiff with cold and covered
with icicles, gladly landed to warm and rest themselves.
After reposing some hours in the hut of a peasant, William proceeded
to the Hague. He was impatiently expected there for, though the
fleet which brought him was not visible from the shore, the royal
salutes had been heard through the mist, and had apprised the whole
coast of his arrival. Thousands had assembled at Honslaerdyk to
welcome him with applause which came from their hearts and which
went to his heart. That was one of the few white days of a life,
beneficent indeed and glorious, but far from happy. After more than
two years passed in a strange land, the exile had again set foot on
his native soil. He heard again the language of his nursery. He saw
again the scenery and the architecture which were inseparably
associated in his mind with the recollections of childhood and the
sacred feeling of home; the dreary mounds of sand, shells and weeds,
on which the waves of the German Ocean broke; the interminable
meadows intersected by trenches; the straight canals; the villas
bright with paint and adorned with quaint images and inscriptions.
He had lived during many weary months among a people who did not
love him, who did not understand him, who could never forget that he
was a foreigner.
Those Englishmen who served him most faithfully served him without
enthusiasm, without personal attachment, and merely from a sense of
public duty. In their hearts they were sorry that they had no choice
but between an English tyrant and a Dutch deliverer. All was now
changed. William was among a population by which he was adored, as
Elizabeth had been adored when she rode through her army at Tilbury,
as Charles the Second had been adored when he landed at Dover. It is
true that the old enemies of the House of Orange had not been
inactive during the absence of the Stadtholder. There had been, not
indeed clamours, but mutterings against him. He had, it was said,
neglected his native land for his new kingdom. Whenever the dignity
of the English flag, whenever the prosperity of the English trade
was concerned, he forgot that he was a Hollander. But, as soon as
his well remembered face was again seen, all jealousy, all coldness,
was at an end. There was not a boor, not a fisherman, not an
artisan, in the crowds which lined the road from Honslaerdyk to the
Hague, whose heart did not swell with pride at the thought that the
first minister of Holland had become a great King, had freed the
English, and had conquered the Irish.
It would have been madness in William to travel from Hampton Court
to Westminster without a guard; but in his own land he needed no
swords or carbines to defend him. "Do not keep the people off;" he
cried: "let them come close to me; they are all my good friends." He
soon learned that sumptuous preparations were making for his
entrance into the Hague. At first he murmured and objected. He
detested, he said, noise and display. The necessary cost of the war
was quite heavy enough. He hoped that his kind fellow townsmen would
consider him as a neighbour, born and bred among them, and would not
pay him so bad a compliment as to treat him ceremoniously. But all
his expostulations were vain. The Hollanders, simple and
parsimonious as their ordinary habits were, had set their hearts on
giving their illustrious countryman a reception suited to his
dignity and to his merit; and he found it necessary to yield.
On the day of his triumph the concourse was immense. All the wheeled
carriages and horses of the province were too few for the multitude
of those who flocked to the show. Many thousands came sliding or
skating along the frozen canals from Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leyden,
Haarlem, Delft. At ten in the morning of the twenty-sixth of
January, the great bell of the Town House gave the signal. Sixteen
hundred substantial burghers, well armed, and clad in the finest
dresses which were to be found in the recesses of their wardrobes,
kept order in the crowded streets. Balconies and scaffolds,
embowered in evergreens and hung with tapestry, hid the windows. The
royal coach, escorted by an army of halberdiers and running footmen,
and followed by a long train of splendid equipages, passed under
numerous arches rich with carving and painting, amidst incessant
shouts of "Long live the King our Stadtholder." The front of the
Town House and the whole circuit of the marketplace were in a blaze
with brilliant colours. Civic crowns, trophies, emblems of arts, of
sciences, of commerce and of agriculture, appeared every where. In
one place William saw portrayed the glorious actions of his
ancestors.
There was the silent prince, the founder of the Batavian
commonwealth, passing the Meuse with his warriors. There was the
more impetuous Maurice leading the charge at Nieuport. A little
further on, the hero might retrace the eventful story of his own
life. He was a child at his widowed mother's knee. He was at the
altar with Diary's hand in his. He was landing at Torbay. He was
swimming through the Boyne. There, too, was a boat amidst the ice
and the breakers; and above it was most appropriately inscribed, in
the majestic language of Rome, the saying of the great Roman, "What
dost thou fear? Thou hast Caesar on board." The task of furnishing
the Latin mottoes had been intrusted to two men, who, till Bentley
appeared, held the highest place among the classical scholars of
that age. Spanheim, whose knowledge of the Roman medals was
unrivalled, imitated, not unsuccessfully, the noble conciseness of
those ancient legends which he had assiduously studied; and he was
assisted by Graevius, who then filled a chair at Utrecht, and whose
just reputation had drawn to that University multitudes of students
from every part of Protestant Europe.
When the night came, fireworks were exhibited on the great tank
which washes the walls of the Palace of the Federation. That tank
was now as hard as marble; and the Dutch boasted that nothing had
ever been seen, even on the terrace of Versailles, more brilliant
than the effect produced by the innumerable cascades of flame which
were reflected in the smooth mirror of ice. The English Lords
congratulated their master on his immense popularity. "Yes," said
he; "but I am not the favourite. The shouting was nothing to what it
would have been if Mary had been with me."
A few hours after the triumphal entry, the King attended a sitting
of the States General. His last appearance among them had been on
the day on which he embarked for England. He had then, amidst the
broken words and loud weeping of those grave Senators, thanked them
for the kindness with which they had watched over his childhood,
trained his young mind, and supported his authority in his riper
years; and he had solemnly commended his beloved wife to their care.
He now came back among them the King of three kingdoms, the head of
the greatest coalition that Europe had seen during a hundred and
eighty years; and nothing was heard in the hall but applause and
congratulations.
But this time the streets of the Hague were overflowing with the
equipages and retinues of princes and ambassadors who came flocking
to the great Congress. First appeared the ambitious and ostentatious
Frederic, Elector of Brandenburg, who, a few years later, took the
title of King of Prussia. Then arrived the young Elector of Bavaria,
the Regent of Wirtemberg, the Landgraves of Hesse Cassel and Hesse
Darmstadt, and a long train of sovereign princes, sprung from the
illustrious houses of Brunswick, of Saxony, of Holstein, and of
Nassau. The Marquess of Gastanaga, Governor of the Spanish
Netherlands, repaired to the assembly from the viceregal Court of
Brussels. Extraordinary ministers had been sent by the Emperor, by
the Kings of Spain, Poland, Denmark, and Sweden, and by the Duke of
Savoy. There was scarcely room in the town and the neighbourhood for
the English Lords and gentlemen and the German Counts and Barons
whom curiosity or official duty had brought to the place of meeting.
The grave capital of the most thrifty and industrious of nations was
as gay as Venice in the Carnival. The walks cut among those noble
limes and elms in which the villa of the Princes of Orange is
embosomed were gay with the plumes, the stars, the flowing wigs, the
embroidered coats and the gold hilted swords of gallants from
London, Berlin and Vienna. With the nobles were mingled sharpers not
less gorgeously attired than they. At night the hazard tables were
thronged; and the theatre was filled to the roof. Princely banquets
followed one another in rapid succession. The meats were served in
gold; and, according to that old Teutonic fashion with which
Shakspeare had made his countrymen familiar, as often as any of the
great princes proposed a health, the kettle drums and trumpets
sounded. Some English lords, particularly Devonshire, gave
entertainments which vied with those of Sovereigns. It was remarked
that the German potentates, though generally disposed to be
litigious and punctilious about etiquette, associated, on this
occasion, in an unceremonious manner, and seemed to have forgotten
their passion for genealogical and heraldic controversy. The taste
for wine, which was then characteristic of their nation, they had
not forgotten. At the table of the Elector of Brandenburg much mirth
was caused by the gravity of the statesmen of Holland, who, sober
themselves, confuted out of Grotius and Puffendorf the nonsense
stuttered by the tipsy nobles of the Empire. One of those nobles
swallowed so many bumpers that he tumbled into the turf fire, and
was not pulled out till his fine velvet suit had been burned.
In the midst of all this revelry, business was not neglected. A
formal meeting of the Congress was held at which William presided.
In a short and dignified speech, which was speedily circulated
throughout Europe, he set forth the necessity of firm union and
strenuous exertion. The profound respect with which he was heard by
that splendid assembly caused bitter mortification to his enemies
both in England and in France. The German potentates were bitterly
reviled for yielding precedence to an upstart. Indeed the most
illustrious among them paid to him such marks of deference as they
would scarcely have deigned to pay to the Imperial Majesty, mingled
with the crowd in his antechamber, and at his table behaved as
respectfully as any English lord in waiting. In one caricature the
allied princes were represented as muzzled bears, some with crowns,
some with caps of state. William had them all in a chain, and was
teaching them to dance. In another caricature, he appeared taking
his ease in an arm chair, with his feet on a cushion, and his hat on
his head, while the Electors of Brandenburg and Bavaria, uncovered,
occupied small stools on the right and left; the crowd of Landgraves
and Sovereign dukes stood at humble distance; and Gastanaga, the
unworthy successor of Alva, awaited the orders of the heretic tyrant
on bended knee.
It was soon announced by authority that, before the beginning of
summer, two hundred and twenty thousand men would be in the field
against France.7 The contingent which each of the allied powers was
to furnish was made known. Matters about which it would have been
inexpedient to put forth any declaration were privately discussed by
the King of England with his allies. On this occasion, as on every
other important occasion during his reign, he was his own minister
for foreign affairs. It was necessary for the sake of form that he
should be attended by a Secretary of State; and Nottingham had
therefore followed him to Holland. But Nottingham, though, in
matters concerning the internal government of England, he enjoyed a
large share of his master's confidence, knew little more about the
business of the Congress than what he saw in the Gazettes.
This mode of transacting business would now be thought most
unconstitutional; and many writers, applying the standard of their
own age to the transactions of a former age, have severely blamed
William for acting without the advice of his ministers, and his
ministers for submitting to be kept in ignorance of transactions
which deeply concerned the honour of the Crown and the welfare of
the nation. Yet surely the presumption is that what the most honest
and honourable men of both parties, Nottingham, for example, among
the Tories, and Somers among the Whigs, not only did, but avowed,
cannot have been altogether inexcusable; and a very sufficient
excuse will without difficulty be found.
The doctrine that the Sovereign is not responsible is doubtless as
old as any part of our constitution. The doctrine that his ministers
are responsible is also of immemorial antiquity. That where there is
no responsibility there can be no trustworthy security against
maladministration, is a doctrine which, in our age and country, few
people will be inclined to dispute. From these three propositions it
plainly follows that the administration is likely to be best
conducted when the Sovereign performs no public act without the
concurrence and instrumentality of a minister. This argument is
perfectly sound. But we must remember that arguments are constructed
in one way, and governments in another. In logic, none but an idiot
admits the premises and denies the legitimate conclusion. But in
practice, we see that great and enlightened communities often
persist, generation after generation, in asserting principles, and
refusing to act upon those principles. It may be doubted whether any
real polity that ever existed has exactly corresponded to the pure
idea of that polity. According to the pure idea of constitutional
royalty, the prince reigns and does not govern; and constitutional
royalty, as it now exists in England, comes nearer than in any other
country to the pure idea. Yet it would be a great error to imagine
that our princes merely reign and never govern. In the seventeenth
century, both Whigs and Tories thought it, not only the right, but
the duty, of the first magistrate to govern. All parties agreed in
blaming Charles the Second for not being his own Prime Minister; all
parties agreed in praising James for being his own Lord High
Admiral; and all parties thought it natural and reasonable that
William should be his own Foreign Secretary.
It may be observed that the ablest and best informed of those who
have censured the manner in which the negotiations of that time were
conducted are scarcely consistent with themselves. For, while they
blame William for being his own Ambassador Plenipotentiary at the
Hague, they praise him for being his own Commander in Chief in
Ireland. Yet where is the distinction in principle between the two
cases? Surely every reason which can be brought to prove that he
violated the constitution, when, by his own sole authority, he made
compacts with the Emperor and the Elector of Brandenburg, will
equally prove that he violated the constitution, when, by his own
sole authority, he ordered one column to plunge into the water at
Oldbridge and another to cross the bridge of Slane. If the
constitution gave him the command of the forces of the State, the
constitution gave him also the direction of the foreign relations of
the State. On what principle then can it be maintained that he was
at liberty to exercise the former power without consulting any body,
but that he was bound to exercise the latter power in conformity
with the advice of a minister? Will it be said that an error in
diplomacy is likely to be more injurious to the country than an
error in strategy? Surely not. It is hardly conceivable that any
blunder which William might have made at the Hague could have been
more injurious to the public interests than a defeat at the Boyne.
Or will it be said that there was greater reason for placing
confidence in his military than in his diplomatic skill? Surely not.
In war he showed some great moral and intellectual qualities; but,
as a tactician, he did not rank high; and of his many campaigns only
two were decidedly successful. In the talents of a negotiator, on
the other hand, he has never been surpassed. Of the interests and
the tempers of the continental courts he knew more than all his
Privy Council together. Some of his ministers were doubtless men of
great ability, excellent orators in the House of Lords, and versed
in our insular politics. But, in the deliberations of the Congress,
Caermarthen and Nottingham would have been found as far inferior to
him as he would have been found inferior to them in a parliamentary
debate on a question purely English. The coalition against France
was his work. He alone had joined together the parts of that great
whole; and he alone could keep them together. If he had trusted that
vast and complicated machine in the hands of any of his subjects, it
would instantly have fallen to pieces. Some things indeed were to be
done which none of his subjects would have ventured to do. Pope
Alexander was really, though not in name, one of the allies; it was
of the highest importance to have him for a friend; and yet such was
the temper of the English nation that an English minister might well
shrink from having any dealings, direct or indirect, with the
Vatican. The Secretaries of State were glad to leave a matter so
delicate and so full of risk to their master, and to be able to
protest with truth that not a line to which the most intolerant
Protestant could object had ever gone out of their offices.
It must not be supposed however that William ever forgot that his
especial, his hereditary, mission was to protect the Reformed Faith.
His influence with Roman Catholic princes was constantly and
strenuously exerted for the benefit of their Protestant subjects. In
the spring of 1691, the Waldensian shepherds, long and cruelly
persecuted, and weary of their lives, were surprised by glad
tidings. Those who had been in prison for heresy returned to their
homes. Children, who had been taken from their parents to be
educated by priests, were sent back. Congregations, which had
hitherto met only by stealth and with extreme peril, now worshipped
God without molestation in the face of day. Those simple
mountaineers probably never knew that their fate had been a subject
of discussion at the Hague, and that they owed the happiness of
their firesides, and the security of their humble temples to the
ascendency which William exercised over the Duke of Savoy.
No coalition of which history has preserved the memory has had an
abler chief than William. But even William often contended in vain
against those vices which are inherent in the nature of all
coalitions. No undertaking which requires the hearty and long
continued cooperation of many independent states is likely to
prosper. Jealousies inevitably spring up. Disputes engender
disputes. Every confederate is tempted to throw on others some part
of the burden which he ought himself to bear. Scarcely one honestly
furnishes the promised contingent. Scarcely one exactly observes the
appointed day. But perhaps no coalition that ever existed was in
such constant danger of dissolution as the coalition which William
had with infinite difficulty formed. The long list of potentates,
who met in person or by their representatives at the Hague, looked
well in the Gazettes. The crowd of princely equipages, attended by
manycoloured guards and lacqueys, looked well among the lime trees
of the Voorhout. But the very circumstances which made the Congress
more splendid than other congresses made the league weaker than
other leagues. The more numerous the allies, the more numerous were
the dangers which threatened the alliance. It was impossible that
twenty governments, divided by quarrels about precedence, quarrels
about territory, quarrels about trade, quarrels about religion,
could long act together in perfect harmony. That they acted together
during several years in imperfect harmony is to be ascribed to the
wisdom, patience and firmness of William.
The situation of his great enemy was very different. The resources
of the French monarchy, though certainly not equal to those of
England, Holland, the House of Austria, and the Empire of Germany
united, were yet very formidable; they were all collected in a
central position; they were all under the absolute direction of a
single mind. Lewis could do with two words what William could hardly
bring about by two months of negotiation at Berlin, Munich,
Brussels, Turin and Vienna. Thus France was found equal in effective
strength to all the states which were combined against her. For in
the political, as in the natural world, there may be an equality of
momentum between unequal bodies, when the body which is inferior in
weight is superior in velocity. This was soon signally proved. In
March the princes and ambassadors who had been assembled at the
Hague separated and scarcely had they separated when all their plans
were disconcerted by a bold and skilful move of the enemy.
Lewis was sensible that the meeting of the Congress was likely to
produce a great effect on the public mind of Europe. That effect he
determined to counteract by striking a sudden and terrible blow.
While his enemies were settling how many troops each of them should
furnish, he ordered numerous divisions of his army to march from
widely distant points towards Mons, one of the most important, if
not the most important, of the fortresses which protected the
Spanish Netherlands. His purpose was discovered only when it was all
but accomplished. William, who had retired for a few days to Loo,
learned, with surprise and extreme vexation, that cavalry, infantry,
artillery, bridges of boats, were fast approaching the fated city by
many converging routes. A hundred thousand men had been brought
together. All the implements of war had been largely provided by
Louvois, the first of living administrators.
The command was entrusted to Luxemburg, the first of living
generals. The scientific operations were directed by Vauban, the
first of living engineers. That nothing might be wanting which could
kindle emulation through all the ranks of a gallant and loyal army,
the magnificent King himself had set out from Versailles for the
camp. Yet William had still some faint hope that it might be
possible to raise the siege. He flew to the Hague, put all the
forces of the States General in motion, and sent pressing messages
to the German Princes. Within three weeks after he had received the
first hint of the danger, he was in the neighbourhood of the
besieged city, at the head of near fifty thousand troops of
different nations. To attack a superior force commanded by such a
captain as Luxemburg was a bold, almost a desperate, enterprise. Yet
William was so sensible that the loss of Mons would be an almost
irreparable disaster and disgrace that he made up his mind to run
the hazard. He was convinced that the event of the siege would
determine the policy of the Courts of Stockholm and Copenhagen.
Those Courts had lately seemed inclined to join the coalition. If
Mons fell, they would certainly remain neutral; they might possibly
become hostile. "The risk," he wrote to Heinsius, "is great; yet I
am not without hope. I will do what can be done. The issue is in the
hands of God." On the very day on which this letter was written Mons
fell. The siege had been vigorously pressed. Lewis himself, though
suffering from the gout, had set the example of strenuous exertion.
His household troops, the finest body of soldiers in Europe, had,
under his eye, surpassed themselves. The young nobles of his court
had tried to attract his notice by exposing themselves to the
hottest fire with the same gay alacrity with which they were wont to
exhibit their graceful figures at his balls. His wounded soldiers
were charmed by the benignant courtesy with which he walked among
their pallets, assisted while wounds were dressed by the hospital
surgeons, and breakfasted on a porringer of the hospital broth.
While all was obedience and enthusiasm among the besiegers, all was
disunion and dismay among the besieged. The duty of the French lines
was so well performed that no messenger sent by William was able to
cross them. The garrison did not know that relief was close at hand.
The burghers were appalled by the prospect of those horrible
calamities which befall cities taken by storm. Showers of shells and
redhot bullets were falling in the streets. The town was on fire in
ten places at once. The peaceful inhabitants derived an unwonted
courage from the excess of their fear, and rose on the soldiers.
Thenceforth resistance was impossible; and a capitulation was
concluded. The armies then retired into quarters. Military
operations were suspended during some weeks; Lewis returned in
triumph to Versailles; and William paid a short visit to England,
where his presence was much needed.
He found the ministers still employed in tracing out the
ramifications of the plot which had been discovered just before his
departure. Early in January, Preston, Ashton and Elliot had been
arraigned at the Old Bailey. They claimed the right of severing in
their challenges. It was therefore necessary to try them separately.
The audience was numerous and splendid. Many peers were present. The
Lord President and the two Secretaries of State attended in order to
prove that the papers produced in Court were the same which Billop
had brought to Whitehall. A considerable number of judges appeared
on the bench; and Holt presided. A full report of the proceedings
has come down to us, and well deserves to be attentively studied,
and to be compared with the reports of other trials which had not
long before taken place under the same roof. The whole spirit of the
tribunal had undergone in a few months a change so complete that it
might seem to have been the work of ages. Twelve years earlier,
unhappy Roman Catholics, accused of wickedness which had never
entered into their thoughts, had stood in that dock. The witnesses
for the Crown had repeated their hideous fictions amidst the
applauding hums of the audience. The judges had shared, or had
pretended to share, the stupid credulity and the savage passions of
the populace, had exchanged smiles and compliments with the perjured
informers, had roared down the arguments feebly stammered forth by
the prisoners, and had not been ashamed, in passing the sentence of
death, to make ribald jests on purgatory and the mass. As soon as
the butchery of Papists was over, the butchery of Whigs had
commenced; and the judges had applied themselves to their new work
with even more than their old barbarity. To these scandals the
Revolution had put an end. Whoever, after perusing the trials of
Ireland and Pickering, of Grove and Berry, of Sidney, Cornish and
Alice Lisle, turns to the trials of Preston and Ashton, will be
astonished by the contrast. The Solicitor General, Somers, conducted
the prosecutions with a moderation and humanity of which his
predecessors had left him no example. "I did never think," he said,
"that it was the part of any who were of counsel for the King in
cases of this nature to aggravate the crime of the prisoners, or to
put false colours on the evidence."
Holt's conduct was faultless. Pollexfen, an older man than Holt or
Somers, retained a little,--and a little was too much,--of the tone
of that bad school in which he had been bred. But, though he once or
twice forgot the austere decorum of his place, he cannot be accused
of any violation of substantial justice. The prisoners themselves
seem to have been surprised by the fairness and gentleness with
which they were treated. "I would not mislead the jury, I'll assure
you," said Holt to Preston, "nor do Your Lordship any manner of
injury in the world." "No, my Lord;" said Preston; "I see it well
enough that Your Lordship would not." "Whatever my fate may be,"
said Ashton, "I cannot but own that I have had a fair trial for my
life."
The culprits gained nothing by the moderation of the Solicitor
General or by the impartiality of the Court; for the evidence was
irresistible. The meaning of the papers seized by Billop was so
plain that the dullest juryman could not misunderstand it. Of those
papers part was fully proved to be in Preston's handwriting. Part
was in Ashton's handwriting but this the counsel for the prosecution
had not the means of proving. They therefore rested the case against
Ashton on the indisputable facts that the treasonable packet had
been found in his bosom, and that he had used language which was
quite unintelligible except on the supposition that he had a guilty
knowledge of the contents.
Both Preston and Ashton were convicted and sentenced to death.
Ashton was speedily executed. He might have saved his life by making
disclosures. But though he declared that, if he were spared, he
would always be a faithful subject of Their Majesties, he was fully
resolved not to give up the names of his accomplices. In this
resolution he was encouraged by the nonjuring divines who attended
him in his cell. It was probably by their influence that he was
induced to deliver to the Sheriffs on the scaffold a declaration
which he had transcribed and signed, but had not, it is to be hoped,
composed or attentively considered. In this paper he was made to
complain of the unfairness of a trial which he had himself in public
acknowledged to have been eminently fair. He was also made to aver,
on the word of a dying man, that he knew nothing of the papers which
had been found upon him. Unfortunately his declaration, when
inspected, proved to be in the same handwriting with one of the most
important of those papers. He died with manly fortitude.
Elliot was not brought to trial. The evidence against him was not
quite so clear as that on which his associates had been convicted;
and he was not worth the anger of the government. The fate of
Preston was long in suspense. The Jacobites affected to be confident
that the government would not dare to shed his blood. He was, they
said, a favourite at Versailles, and his death would be followed by
a terrible retaliation. They scattered about the streets of London
papers in which it was asserted that, if any harm befell him,
Mountjoy, and all the other Englishmen of quality who were prisoners
in France, would be broken on the wheel.
These absurd threats would not have deferred the execution one day.
But those who had Preston in their power were not unwilling to spare
him on certain conditions. He was privy to all the counsels of the
disaffected party, and could furnish information of the highest
value. He was informed that his fate depended on himself. The
struggle was long and severe. Pride, conscience, party spirit, were
on one side; the intense love of life on the other. He went during a
time irresolutely to and fro. He listened to his brother Jacobites;
and his courage rose. He listened to the agents of the government;
and his heart sank within him. In an evening when he had dined and
drunk his claret, he feared nothing. He would die like a man, rather
than save his neck by an act of baseness. But his temper was very
different when he woke the next morning, when the courage which he
had drawn from wine and company had evaporated, when he was alone
with the iron grates and stone walls, and when the thought of the
block, the axe and the sawdust rose in his mind. During some time he
regularly wrote a confession every forenoon when he was sober, and
burned it every night when he was merry.14 His nonjuring friends
formed a plan for bringing Sancroft to visit the Tower, in the hope,
doubtless, that the exhortations of so great a prelate and so great
a saint would confirm the wavering virtue of the prisoner.
Whether this plan would have been successful may be doubted; it was
not carried into effect; the fatal hour drew near; and the fortitude
of Preston gave way. He confessed his guilt, and named Clarendon,
Dartmouth, the Bishop of Ely and William Penn, as his accomplices.
He added a long list of persons against whom he could not himself
give evidence, but who, if he could trust to Penn's assurances, were
friendly to King James. Among these persons were Devonshire and
Dorset.
There is not the slightest reason to believe that either of these
great noblemen ever had any dealings, direct or indirect, with Saint
Germains. It is not, however, necessary to accuse Penn of deliberate
falsehood. He was credulous and garrulous. The Lord Steward and the
Lord Chamberlain had shared in the vexation with which their party
had observed the leaning of William towards the Tories; and they had
probably expressed that vexation unguardedly. So weak a man as Penn,
wishing to find Jacobites every where, and prone to believe whatever
he wished, might easily put an erroneous construction on invectives
such as the haughty and irritable Devonshire was but too ready to
utter, and on sarcasms such as, in moments of spleen, dropped but
too easily from the lips of the keenwitted Dorset. Caermarthen, a
Tory, and a Tory who had been mercilessly persecuted by the Whigs,
was disposed to make the most of this idle hearsay. But he received
no encouragement from his master, who, of all the great politicians
mentioned in history, was the least prone to suspicion. When William
returned to England, Preston was brought before him, and was
commanded to repeat the confession which had already been made to
the ministers. The King stood behind the Lord President's chair and
listened gravely while Clarendon, Dartmouth, Turner and Penn were
named. But as soon as the prisoner, passing from what he could
himself testify, began to repeat the stories which Penn had told
him, William touched Caermarthen on the shoulder and said, "My Lord,
we have had too much of this."
This judicious magnanimity had its proper reward. Devonshire and
Dorset became from that day more zealous than ever in the cause of
the master who, in spite of calumny for which their own indiscretion
had perhaps furnished some ground, had continued to repose
confidence in their loyalty.
Even those who were undoubtedly criminal were generally treated with
great lenity. Clarendon lay in the Tower about six months. His guilt
was fully established; and a party among the Whigs called loudly and
importunately for his head. But he was saved by the pathetic
entreaties of his brother Rochester, by the good offices of the
humane and generous Burnet, and by Mary's respect for the memory of
her mother. The prisoner's confinement was not strict. He was
allowed to entertain his friends at dinner. When at length his
health began to suffer from restraint, he was permitted to go into
the country under the care of a warder; the warder was soon removed;
and Clarendon was informed that, while he led a quiet rural life, he
should not be molested.
The treason of Dartmouth was of no common dye. He was an English
seaman; and he had laid a plan for betraying Portsmouth to the
French, and had offered to take the command of a French squadron
against his country. It was a serious aggravation of his guilt that
he had been one of the very first persons who took the oaths to
William and Mary. He was arrested and brought to the Council
Chamber. A narrative of what passed there, written by himself, has
been preserved. In that narrative he admits that he was treated with
great courtesy and delicacy. He vehemently asserted his innocence.
He declared that he had never corresponded with Saint Germains, that
he was no favourite there, and that Mary of Modena in particular
owed him a grudge. "My Lords," he said, "I am an Englishman. I
always, when the interest of the House of Bourbon was strongest
here, shunned the French, both men and women. I would lose the last
drop of my blood rather than see Portsmouth in the power of
foreigners. I am not such a fool as to think that King Lewis will
conquer us merely for the benefit of King James. I am certain that
nothing can be truly imputed to me beyond some foolish talk over a
bottle." His protestations seem to have produced some effect; for he
was at first permitted to remain in the gentle custody of the Black
Rod. On further inquiry, however, it was determined to send him to
the Tower. After a confinement of a few weeks he died of apoplexy;
but he lived long enough to complete his disgrace by offering his
sword to the new government, and by expressing in fervent language
his hope that he might, by the goodness of God and of Their
Majesties, have an opportunity of showing how much he hated the
French.
Turner ran no serious risk; for the government was most unwilling to
send to the scaffold one of the Seven who had signed the memorable
petition. A warrant was however issued for his apprehension; and his
friends had little hope that he would escape; for his nose was such
as none who had seen it could forget; and it was to little purpose
that he put on a flowing wig and that he suffered his beard to grow.
The pursuit was probably not very hot; for, after skulking a few
weeks in England, he succeeded in crossing the Channel, and remained
some time in France.
A warrant was issued against Penn; and he narrowly escaped the
messengers. It chanced that, on the day on which they were sent in
search of him, he was attending a remarkable ceremony at some
distance from his home. An event had taken place which a historian,
whose object is to record the real life of a nation, ought not to
pass unnoticed. While London was agitated by the news that a plot
had been discovered, George Fox, the founder of the sect of Quakers,
died. |