PREFACE TO THE FIFTH VOLUME.
I HAVE thought it right to publish that portion of the continuation
of the "History of England" which was fairly transcribed and revised
by Lord Macaulay. It is given to the world precisely as it was left:
no connecting link has been added; no reference verified; no
authority sought for or examined. It would indeed have been
possible, with the help I might have obtained from his friends, to
have supplied much that is wanting; but I preferred, and I believe
the public will prefer, that the last thoughts of the great mind
passed away from among us should be preserved sacred from any touch
but his own. Besides the revised manuscript, a few pages containing
the first rough sketch of the last two months of William's reign are
all that is left. From this I have with some difficulty deciphered
the account of the death of William. No attempt has been made to
join it on to the preceding part, or to supply the corrections which
would have been given by the improving hand of the author. But,
imperfect as it must be, I believe it will be received with pleasure
and interest as a fit conclusion to the life of his great hero.
I will only add my grateful thanks for the kind advice and
assistance given me by his most dear and valued friends, Dean Milman
and Mr. Ellis.
THE rejoicings, by which London, on the
second of December 1697, celebrated the return of peace and
prosperity, continued till long after midnight. On the following
morning the Parliament met; and one of the most laborious sessions
of that age commenced. Among the questions which it was necessary
that the Houses should speedily decide, one stood forth preeminent
in interest and importance. Even in the first transports of joy with
which the bearer of the treaty of Ryswick had been welcomed to
England, men had eagerly and anxiously asked one another what was to
be done with that army which had been famed in Ireland and Belgium,
which had learned, in many hard campaigns, to obey and to conquer,
and which now consisted of eighty-seven thousand excellent soldiers.
Was any part of this great force to be retained in the service of
the State? And, if any part, what part? The last two kings had,
without the consent of the legislature, maintained military
establishments in time of peace. But that they had done this in
violation of the fundamental laws of England was acknowledged by all
jurists, and had been expressly affirmed in the Bill of Rights. It
was therefore impossible for William, now that the country was
threatened by no foreign and no domestic enemy, to keep up even a
single battalion without the sanction of the Estates of the Realm;
and it might well be doubted whether such a sanction would be given.
It is not easy for us to see this question in the light in which it
appeared to our ancestors. No man of sense has, in our days, or in
the days of our fathers, seriously maintained that our island could
be safe without an army. And, even if our island were perfectly
secure from attack, an army would still be indispensably necessary
to us. The growth of the empire has left us no choice. The regions
which we have colonized or conquered since the accession of the
House of Hanover contain a population exceeding twenty-fold that
which the House of Stuart governed. There are now more English
soldiers on the other side of the tropic of Cancer in time of peace
than Cromwell had under his command in time of war. All the troops
of Charles II. would not have been sufficient to garrison the posts
which we now occupy in the Mediterranean Sea alone. The regiments
which defend the remote dependencies of the Crown cannot be duly
recruited and relieved, unless a force far larger than that which
James collected in the camp at Hounslow for the purpose of overawing
his capital be constantly kept up within the kingdom. The old
national antipathy to permanent military establishments, an
antipathy which was once reasonable and salutary, but which lasted
some time after it had become unreasonable and noxious, has
gradually yielded to the irresistible force of circumstances. We
have made the discovery, that an army may be so constituted as to be
in the highest degree efficient against an enemy, and yet obsequious
to the civil magistrate. We have long ceased to apprehend danger to
law and to freedom from the license of troops, and from the ambition
of victorious generals. An alarmist who should now talk such
language, as was common five generations ago, who should call for
the entire disbanding of the land force; of the realm, and who
should gravely predict that the warriors of Inkerman and Delhi would
depose the Queen, dissolve the Parliament, and plunder the Bank,
would be regarded as fit only for a cell in Saint Luke's. But before
the Revolution our ancestors had known a standing army only as an
instrument of lawless power. Judging by their own experience, they
thought it impossible that such an army should exist without danger
to the rights both of the Crown and of the people. One class of
politicians was never weary of repeating that an Apostolic Church, a
loyal gentry, an ancient nobility, a sainted King, had been foully
outraged by the Joyces and the Prides; another class recounted the
atrocities committed by the Lambs of Kirke, and by the Beelzebubs
and Lucifers of Dundee; and both classes, agreeing in scarcely any
thing else, were disposcd to agree in aversion to the red coats.
While such was the feeling of the nation, the King was, both as a
statesman and as a general, most unwilling to see that superb body
of troops which he had formed with infinite difficulty broken up and
dispersed. But, as to this matter, he could not absolutely rely on
the support of his ministers; nor could his ministers absolutely
rely on the support of that parliamentary majority whose attachment
had enabled them to confront enemies abroad and to crush traitors at
home, to restore a debased currency, and to fix public credit on
deep and solid foundations. The difficulties of the King's situation
are to be, in part at least, attributed to an error which he had
committed in the preceding spring. The Gazette which announced that
Sunderland been appointed Chamberlain of the Royal Household, sworn
of the Privy Council, and named one of the Lords Justices who were
to administer the government during the summer had caused great
uneasiness among plain men who remembered all the windings and
doublings of his long career. In truth, his countrymen were unjust
to him. For they thought him, not only an unprincipled and faithless
politician, which he was, but a deadly enemy of the liberties of the
nation, which he was not. What he wanted was simply to be safe, rich
and great. To these objects he had been constant through all the
vicissitudes of his life. For these objects he had passed from
Church to Church and from faction to faction, had joined the most
turbulent of oppositions without any zeal for freedom, and had
served the most arbitrary of monarchs without any zeal for monarchy;
had voted for the Exclusion Bill without being a Protestant, and had
adored the Host without being a Papist; had sold his country at once
to both the great parties which divided the Continent; had taken
money from France, and had sent intelligence to Holland. As far,
however, as he could be said to have any opinions, his opinions were
Whiggish. Since his return from exile, his influence had been
generally exerted in favour of the Whig party. It was by his counsel
that the Great Seal had been entrusted to Somers, that Nottingham
had been sacrificed to Russell, and that Montague had been preferred
to Fox. It was by his dexterous management that the Princess Anne
had been detached from the opposition, and that Godolphin had been
removed from the head of the hoard of Treasury. The party which
Sunderland had done so much to serve now held a new pledge for his
fidelity. His only son, Charles Lord Spencer, was just entering on
public life. The precocious maturity of the young man's intellectual
and moral character had excited hopes which were not destined to be
realized. His knowledge of ancient literature, and his skill in
imitating the styles of the masters of Roman eloquence, were
applauded by veteran scholars. The sedateness of his deportment and
the apparent regularity of his life delighted austere moralists. He
was known indeed to have one expensive taste; but it was a taste of
the most respectable kind. He loved books, and was bent or forming
the most magnificent private library in England. While other heirs
of noble houses were inspecting patterns of steinkirks and sword
knots, dangling after actresses, or betting on fighting cocks, he
was in pursuit of the Mentz editions of Tully's Offices, of the
Parmesan Statius, and of the inestimable Virgin of Zarottus. It was
natural that high expectations should be formed of the virtue and
wisdom of a youth whose very luxury and prodigality had a grave and
erudite air, and that even discerning men should be unable to detect
the vices which were hidden under that show of premature sobriety.
Spencer was a Whig, unhappily for the Whig party, which, before the
unhonoured and unlamented close of his life, was more than once
brought to the verge of ruin by his violent temper and his crooked
politics. His Whiggism differed widely from that of his father. It
was not a languid, speculative, preference of one theory of
government to another, but a fierce and dominant passion.
Unfortunately, though an ardent, it was at the same time a corrupt
and degenerate, Whiggism; a Whiggism so narrow and oligarchical as
to be little, if at all, preferable to the worst forms of Toryism.
The young lord's imagination had been fascinated by those swelling
sentiments of liberty which abound in the Latin poets and orators;
and he, like those poets and orators, meant by liberty something
very different from the only liberty which is of importance to the
happiness of mankind. Like them, he could see no danger to liberty
except from kings. A commonwealth, oppressed and pillaged by such
men as Opimius and Verres, was free, because it had no king. A
member of the Grand Council of Venice, who passed his whole life
under tutelage and in fear, who could not travel where he chose, or
visit whom he chose, or invest his property as he chose, whose path
was beset with spies, who saw at the corners of the streets the
mouth of bronze gaping for anonymous accusations against him, and
whom the Inquisitors of State could, at any moment, and for any or
no reason, arrest, torture, fling into the Grand Canal, was free,
because he had no king. To curtail, for the benefit of a small
privileged class, prerogatives which the Sovereign possesses and
ought to possess for the benefit of the whole nation, was the object
on which Spencer's heart was set. During many years he was
restrained by older and wiser men; and it was not till those whom he
had early been accustomed to respect had passed away, and till he
was himself at the head of affairs, that he openly attempted to
obtain for the hereditary nobility a precarious and invidious
ascendency in the State, at the expense both of the Commons and of
the Throne.
In 1695, Spencer had taken his seat in the House of Commons as
member for Tiverton, and had, during two sessions, conducted himself
as a steady and zealous Whig. The party to which he had attached
himself might perhaps have reasonably considered him as a hostage
sufficient to ensure the good faith of his father; for the Earl was
approaching that time of life at which even the most ambitious and
rapacious men generally toil rather for their children than for
themselves. But the distrust which Sunderland inspired was such as
no guarantee could quiet. Many fancied that he was,--with what
object they never took the trouble to inquire,--employing the same
arts which had ruined James for the purpose of ruining William. Each
prince had had his weak side. One was too much a Papist, and the
other too much a soldier, for such a nation as this. The same
intriguing sycophant who had encouraged the Papist in one fatal
error was now encouraging the soldier in another. It might well be
apprehended that, under the influence of this evil counsellor, the
nephew might alienate as many hearts by trying to make England a
military country as the uncle had alienated by trying to make her a
Roman Catholic country.
The parliamentary conflict on the great question of a standing army
was preceded by a literary conflict. In the autumn of 1697 began a
controversy of no common interest and importance. The press was now
free. An exciting and momentous political question could be fairly
discussed. Those who held uncourtly opinions could express those
opinions without resorting to illegal expedients and employing the
agency of desperate men. The consequence was that the dispute was
carried on, though with sufficient keenness, yet, on the whole, with
a decency which would have been thought extraordinary in the days of
the censorship.
On this occasion the Tories, though they felt strongly, wrote but
little. The paper war was almost entirely carried on between two
sections of the Whig party. The combatants on both sides were
generally anonymous. But it was well known that one of the foremost
champions of the malecontent Whigs was John Trenchard, son of the
late Secretary of State. Preeminent among the ministerial Whigs was
one in whom admirable vigour and quickness of intellect were united
to a not less admirable moderation and urbanity, one who looked on
the history of past ages with the eye of a practical statesman, and
on the events which were passing before him with the eye of a
philosophical historian. It was not necessary for him to name
himself. He could be none but Somers. The pamphleteers who
recommended the immediate and entire disbanding of the army had an
easy task. If they were embarrassed, it was only by the abundance of
the matter from which they had to make their selection. On their
side were claptraps and historical commonplaces without number, the
authority of a crowd of illustrious names, all the prejudices, all
the traditions, of both the parties in the state. These writers laid
it down as a fundamental principle of political science that a
standing army and a free constitution could not exist together.
What, they asked, had destroyed the noble commonwealths of Greece?
What had enslaved the mighty Roman people? What had turned the
Italian republics of the middle ages into lordships and duchies? How
was it that so many of the kingdoms of modern Europe had been
transformed from limited into absolute monarchies? The States
General of France, the Cortes of Castile, the Grand Justiciary of
Arragon, what had been fatal to them all? History was ransacked for
instances of adventurers who, by the help of mercenary troops, had
subjugated free nations or deposed legitimate princes; and such
instances were easily found. Much was said about Pisistratus,
Timophanes, Dionysius, Agathocles, Marius and Sylla, Julius Caesar
and Augustus Caesar, Carthage besieged by her own mercenaries, Rome
put up to auction by her own Praetorian cohorts, Sultan Osman
butchered by his own Janissaries, Lewis Sforza sold into captivity
by his own Switzers. But the favourite instance was taken from the
recent history of our own land. Thousands still living had seen the
great usurper, who, strong in the power of the sword, had triumphed
over both royalty and freedom. The Tories were reminded that his
soldiers had guarded the scaffold before the Banqueting House. The
Whigs were reminded that those same soldiers had taken the mace from
the table of the House of Commons. From such evils, it was said, no
country could be secure which was cursed with a standing army. And
what were the advantages which could be set off against such evils?
Invasion was the bugbear with which the Court tried to frighten the
nation. But we were not children to be scared by nursery tales. We
were at peace; and, even in time of war, an enemy who should attempt
to invade us would probably be intercepted by our fleet, and would
assuredly, if he reached our shores, be repelled by our militia.
Some people indeed talked as if a militia could achieve nothing
great. But that base doctrine was refuted by all ancient and all
modern history. What was the Lacedaemonian phalanx in the best days
of Lacedaemon?
What was, the Roman legion in the best days of Rome? What were the
armies which conquered at Cressy, at Poitiers, at Agincourt, at
Halidon, or at Flodden? What was that mighty array which Elizabeth
reviewed at Tilbury? In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries Englishmen who did not live by the trade of war had made
war with success and glory. Were the English of the seventeenth
century so degenerate that they could not be trusted to play the men
for their own homesteads and parish churches? For such reasons as
these the disbanding of the forces was strongly recommended.
Parliament, it was said, might perhaps, from respect and tenderness
for the person of His Majesty, permit him to have guards enough to
escort his coach and to pace the rounds before his palace. But this
was the very utmost that it would be right to concede. The defence
of the realm ought to be confided to the sailors and the militia.
Even the Tower ought to have no garrison except the trainbands of
the Tower Hamlets.
It must be evident to every intelligent and dispassionate man that
these declaimers contradicted themselves. If an army composed of
regular troops really was far more efficient than an army composed
of husbandmen taken from the plough and burghers taken from the
counter, how could the country be safe with no defenders but
husbandmen and burghers, when a great prince, who was our nearest
neighbour, who had a few months before been our enemy, and who
might, in a few months, be our enemy again, kept up not less than a
hundred and fifty thousand regular troops? If, on the other hand,
the spirit of the English people was such that they would, with
little or no training, encounter and defeat the most formidable
array of veterans from the continent, was it not absurd to apprehend
that such a people could be reduced to slavery by a few regiments of
their own countrymen? But our ancestors were generally so much
blinded by prejudice that this inconsistency passed unnoticed. They
were secure where they ought to have been wary, and timorous where
they might well have been secure. They were not shocked by hearing
the same man maintain, in the same breath, that, if twenty thousand
professional soldiers were kept up, the liberty and property of
millions of Englishmen would be at the mercy of the Crown, and yet
that those millions of Englishmen, fighting for liberty and
property, would speedily annihilate an invading army composed of
fifty or sixty thousand of the conquerors of Steinkirk and Landen.
Whoever denied the former proposition was called a tool of the
Court. Whoever denied the latter was accused of insulting and
slandering the nation.
Somers was too wise to oppose himself directly to the strong current
of popular feeling. With rare dexterity he took the tone, not of an
advocate, but of a judge. The danger which seemed so terrible to
many honest friends of liberty he did not venture to pronounce
altogether visionary. But he reminded his countrymen that a choice
between dangers was sometimes all that was left to the wisest of
mankind. No lawgiver had ever been able to devise a perfect and
immortal form of government. Perils lay thick on the right and on
the left; and to keep far from one evil was to draw near to another.
That which, considered merely with reference to the internal polity
of England, might be, to a certain extent, objectionable, might be
absolutely essential to her rank among European Powers, and even to
her independence. All that a statesman could do in such a case was
to weigh inconveniences against each other, and carefully to observe
which way the scale leaned. The evil of having regular soldiers, and
the evil of not having them, Somers set forth and compared in a
little treatise, which was once widely renowned as the Balancing
Letter, and which was admitted, even by the malecontents, to be an
able and plausible composition. He well knew that mere names
exercise a mighty influence on the public mind; that the most
perfect tribunal which a legislator could construct would be
unpopular if it were called the Star Chamber; that the most
judicious tax which a financier could devise would excite murmurs if
it were called the Shipmoney; and that the words Standing Army then
had to English ears a sound as unpleasing as either Shipmoney or
Star Chamber. He declared therefore that he abhorred the thought of
a standing army. What he recommended was, not a standing, but a
temporary army, an army of which Parliament would annually fix the
number, an army for which Parliament would annually frame a military
code, an army which would cease to exist as soon as either the Lords
or the Commons should think that its services were not needed. From
such an army surely the danger to public liberty could not by wise
men be thought serious. On the other hand, the danger to which the
kingdom would be exposed if all the troops were disbanded was such
as might well disturb the firmest mind. Suppose a war with the
greatest power in Christendom to break out suddenly, and to find us
without one battalion of regular infantry, without one squadron of
regular cavalry; what disasters might we not reasonably apprehend?
It was idle to say that a descent could not take place without ample
notice, and that we should have time to raise and discipline a great
force.
An absolute prince, whose orders, given in profound secresy, were
promptly obeyed at once by his captains on the Rhine and on the
Scheld, and by his admirals in the Bay of Biscay and in the
Mediterranean, might be ready to strike a blow long before we were
prepared to parry it. We might be appalled by learning that ships
from widely remote parts, and troops from widely remote garrisons,
had assembled at a single point within sight of our coast. To trust
to our fleet was to trust to the winds and the waves. The breeze
which was favourable to the invader might prevent our men of war
from standing out to sea. Only nine years ago this had actually
happened. The Protestant wind, before which the Dutch armament had
run full sail down the Channel, had driven King James's navy back
into the hames. It must then be acknowledged to be not improbable
that the enemy might land. And, if he landed, what would he find? An
open country; a rich country; provisions everywhere; not a river but
which could be forded; no natural fastnesses such as protect the
fertile plains of Italy; no artificial fastnesses such as, at every
step, impede the progress of a conqueror in the Netherlands. Every
thing must then be staked on the steadiness of the militia; and it
was pernicious flattery to represent the militia as equal to a
conflict in the field with veterans whose whole life had been a
preparation for the day of battle. The instances which it was the
fashion to cite of the great achievements of soldiers taken from the
threshing floor and the shopboard were fit only for a schoolboy's
theme. Somers, who had studied ancient literature like a man,--a
rare thing in his time,--said that those instances refuted the
doctrine which they were meant to prove. He disposed of much idle
declamation about the Lacedaemonians by saying, most concisely,
correctly and happily, that the Lacedaemonian commonwealth really
was a standing army which threatened all the rest of Greece. In
fact, the Spartan had no calling except war.
Of arts, sciences and letters he was ignorant. The labour of the
spade and of the loom, and the petty gains of trade, he
contemptuously abandoned to men of a lower caste. His whole
existence from childhood to old age was one long military training.
Meanwhile the Athenian, the Corinthian, the Argive, the Theban, gave
his chief attention to his oliveyard or his vineyard, his warehouse
or his workshop, and took up his shield and spear only for short
terms and at long intervals. The difference therefore between a
Lacedaemonian phalanx and any other phalanx was long as great as the
difference between a regiment of the French household troops and a
regiment of the London trainbands. Lacedaemon consequently continued
to be dominant in Greece till other states began to employ regular
troops. Then her supremacy was at an end. She was great while she
was a standing army among militias. She fell when she had to contend
with other standing armies. The lesson which is really to be learned
from her ascendency and from her decline is this, that the
occasional soldier is no match for the professional soldier.
The same lesson Somers drew from the history of Rome; and every
scholar who really understands that history will admit that he was
in the right. The finest militia that ever existed was probably that
of Italy in the third century before Christ. It might have been
thought that seven or eight hundred thousand fighting men, who
assuredly wanted neither natural courage nor public spirit, would
have been able to protect their own hearths and altars against an
invader. An invader came, bringing with him an army small and
exhausted by a march over the snows of the Alps, but familiar with
battles and sieges. At the head of this army he traversed the
peninsula to and fro, gained a succession of victories against
immense numerical odds, slaughtered the hardy youth of Latium like
sheep, by tens of thousands, encamped under the walls of Rome,
continued during sixteen years to maintain himself in a hostile
country, and was never dislodged till he had by a cruel discipline
gradually taught his adversaries how to resist him.
It was idle to repeat the names of great battles won, in the middle
ages, by men who did not make war their chief calling; those battles
proved only that one militia might beat another, and not that a
militia could beat a regular army. As idle was it to declaim about
the camp at Tilbury. We had indeed reason to be proud of the spirit
which all classes of Englishmen, gentlemen and yeomen, peasants and
burgesses, had so signally displayed in the great crisis of 1588.
But we had also reason to be thankful that, with all their spirit,
they were not brought face to face with the Spanish battalions.
Somers related an anecdote, well worthy to be remembered, which had
been preserved by tradition in the noble house of De Vere. One of
the most illustrious men of that house, a captain who had acquired
much experience and much fame in the Netherlands, had, in the crisis
of peril, been summoned back to England by Elizabeth, and rode with
her through the endless ranks of shouting pikemen. She asked him
what he thought of the army. "It is," he said, "a brave army." There
was something in his tone or manner which showed that he meant more
than his words expressed. The Queen insisted on his speaking out.
"Madam," he said, "Your Grace's army is brave indeed. I have not in
the world the name of a coward, and yet I am the greatest coward
here. All these fine fellows are praying that the enemy may land,
and that there may be a battle; and I, who know that enemy well,
cannot think of such a battle without dismay." De Vere was doubtless
in the right. The Duke of Parma, indeed, would not have subjected
our country; but it is by no means improbable that, if he had
effected a landing, the island would have been the theatre of a war
greatly resembling that which Hannibal waged in Italy, and that the
invaders would not have been driven out till many cities had been
sacked, till many counties had been wasted, and till multitudes of
our stout-hearted rustics and artisans had perished in the carnage
of days not less terrible than those of Thrasymene and Cannae. While
the pamphlets of Trenchard and Somers were in every hand, the
Parliament met.
The words with which the King opened the session brought the great
question to a speedy issue. "The circumstances," he said, "of
affairs abroad are such, that I think myself obliged to tell you my
opinion, that, for the present, England cannot be safe without a
land force; and I hope we shall not give those that mean us ill the
opportunity of effecting that under the notion of a peace which they
could not bring to pass by war."
The speech was well received; for that Parliament was thoroughly
well affected to the Government. The members had, like the rest of
the community, been put into high good humour by the return of peace
and by the revival of trade. They were indeed still under the
influence of the feelings of the preceding day; and they had still
in their ears the thanksgiving sermons and thanksgiving anthems; all
the bonfires had hardly burned out; and the rows of lamps and
candles had hardly been taken down. Many, therefore, who did not
assent to all that the King had said, joined in a loud hum of
approbation when he concluded. As soon as the Commons had retired to
their own chamber, they resolved to present an address assuring His
Majesty that they would stand by him in peace as firmly as they had
stood by him in war. Seymour, who had, during the autumn, been going
from shire to shire, for the purpose of inflaming the country
gentlemen against the ministry, ventured to make some uncourtly
remarks; but he gave so much offence that he was hissed down, and
did not venture to demand a division.
The friends of the Government were greatly elated by the proceedings
of this day. During the following week hopes were entertained that
the Parliament might be induced to vote a peace establishment of
thirty thousand men. But these hopes were delusive. The hum with
which William's speech had been received, and the hiss which had
drowned the voice of Seymour, had been misunderstood. The Commons
were indeed warmly attached to theKing's person and government, and
quick to resent any disrespectful mention of his name. But the
members who were disposed to let him have even half as many troops
as he thought necessary were a minority. On the tenth of December
his speech was considered in a Committee of the whole House; and
Harley came forward as the chief of the opposition. He did not, like
some hot headed men, among both the Whigs and the Tories, contend
that there ought to be no regular soldiers. But he maintained that
it was unnecessary to keep up, after the peace of Ryswick, a larger
force than had been kept up after the peace of Nimeguen. He moved,
therefore, that the military establishment should be reduced to what
it had been in the year 1680. The Ministers found that, on this
occasion, neither their honest nor their dishonest supporters could
be trusted. For, in the minds of the most respectable men, the
prejudice against standing armies was of too long growth and too
deep root to be at once removed; and those means by which the Court
might, at another time, have secured the help of venal politicians
were, at that moment, of less avail than usual. The Triennial Act
was beginning to produce its effects. A general election was at
hand. Every member who had constituents was desirous to please them;
and it was certain that no member would please his constituents by
voting for a standing army; and the resolution moved by Harvey was
strongly supported by Howe, was carried, was reported to the House
on the following day, and, after a debate in which several orators
made a great display of their knowledge of ancient and modern
history, was confirmed by one hundred and eighty-five votes to one
hundred and forty-eight.
In this debate the fear and hatred with which many of the best
friends of the Government regarded Sunderland were unequivocally
manifested. "It is easy," such was the language of several members,
"it is easy to guess by whom that unhappy sentence was inserted in
the speech from the Throne. No person well acquainted with the
disastrous and disgraceful history of the last two reigns can doubt
who the minister is, who is now whispering evil counsel in the ear
of a third master." The Chamberlain, thus fiercely attacked, was
very feebly defended. There was indeed in the House of Commons a
small knot of his creatures; and they were men not destitute of a
certain kind of ability; but their moral character was as bad as
his. One of them was the late Secretary of the Treasury, Guy, who
had been turned out of his place for corruption. Another was the
late Speaker, Trevor, who had, from the chair, put the question
whether he was or was not a rogue, and had been forced to pronounce
that the Ayes had it. A third was Charles Duncombe, long the
greatest goldsmith of Lombard Street, and now one of the greatest
landowners of the North Riding of Yorkshire. Possessed of a private
fortune equal to that of any duke, he had not thought it beneath him
to accept the place of Cashier of the Excise, and had perfectly
understood how to make that place lucrative; but he had recently
been ejected from office by Montague, who thought, with good reason,
that he was not a man to be trusted. Such advocates as Trevor, Guy
and Duncombe could do little for Sunderland in debate. The statesmen
of the junto would do nothing for him. They had undoubtedly owed
much to him. His influence, cooperating with their own great
abilities and with the force of circumstances, had induced the King
to commit the direction of the internal administration of the realm
to a Whig Cabinet. But the distrust which the old traitor and
apostate inspired was not to be overcome. The ministers could not be
sure that he was not, while smiling on them, whispering in
confidential tones to them, pouring out, as it might seem, all his
heart to them, really calumniating them in the closet or suggesting
to the opposition some ingenious mode of attacking them. They had
very recently been thwarted by him. They were bent on making Wharton
a Secretary of State, and had therefore looked forward with
impatience to the retirement of Trumball, who was indeed hardly
equal to the duties of his great place. To their surprise and
mortification they learned, on the eve of the meeting of Parliament,
that Trumball had suddenly resigned, and Vernon, the Under
Secretary, had been summoned to Kensington, and had returned thence
with the seals. Vernon was a zealous Whig, and not personally
unacceptable to the chiefs of his party. But the Lord Chancellor,
the First Lord of the Treasury, and the First Lord of the Admiralty,
might not unnaturally think it strange that a post of the highest
importance should have been filled up in opposition to their known
wishes, and with a haste and a secresy which plainly showed that the
King did not wish to be annoyed by their remonstrances. The Lord
Chamberlain pretended that he had done all in his power to serve
Wharton. But the Whig chiefs were not men to be duped by the
professions of so notorious a liar. Montague bitterly described him
as a fireship, dangerous at best, but on the whole most dangerous as
a consort, and least dangerous when showing hostile colours. Smith,
who was the most efficient of Montague's lieutenants, both in the
Treasury and in the Parliament, cordially sympathised with his
leader. Sunderland was therefore left undefended. His enemies became
bolder and more vehement every day. Sir Thomas Dyke, member for
Grinstead, and Lord Norris, son of the Earl of Abingdon, talked of
moving an address requesting the King to banish for ever from the
Court and the Council that evil adviser who had misled His Majesty's
royal uncles, had betrayed the liberties of the people, and had
abjured the Protestant religion.
Sunderland had been uneasy from the first moment at which his name
had been mentioned in the House of Commons. He was now in an agony
of terror. The whole enigma of his life, an enigma of which many
unsatisfactory and some absurd explanations have been propounded, is
at once solved if we consider him as a man insatiably greedy of
wealth and power, and yet nervously apprehensive of danger. He
rushed with ravenous eagerness at every bait which was offered to
his cupidity. But any ominous shadow, any threatening murmur,
sufficed to stop him in his full career, and to make him change his
course or bury himself in a hiding place. He ought to have thought
himself fortunate indeed, when, after all the crimes which he had
committed, he found himself again enjoying his picture gallery and
his woods at Althorpe, sitting in the House of Lords, admitted to
the royal closet, pensioned from the Privy Purse, consulted about
the most important affairs of state. But his ambition and avarice
would not suffer him to rest till he held a high and lucrative
office, till he was a regent of the kingdom. The consequence was, as
might have been expected, a violent clamour; and that clamour he had
not the spirit to face.
His friends assured him that the threatened address would not be
carried. Perhaps a hundred and sixty members might vote for it; but
hardly more. "A hundred and sixty!" he cried: "No minister can stand
against a hundred and sixty. I am sure that I will not try." It must
be remembered that a hundred and sixty votes in a House of five
hundred and thirteen members would correspond to more than two
hundred votes in the present House of Commons; a very formidable
minority on the unfavourable side of a question deeply affecting the
personal character of a public man. William, unwilling to part with
a servant whom he knew to be unprincipled, but whom he did not
consider as more unprincipled than many other English politicians,
and in whom he had found much of a very useful sort of knowledge,
and of a very useful sort of ability, tried to induce the ministry
to come to the rescue. It was particularly important to soothe
Wharton, who had been exasperated by his recent disappointment, and
had probably exasperated the other members of the junto. He was sent
for to the palace. The King himself intreated him to be reconciled
to the Lord Chamberlain, and to prevail on the Whig leaders in the
Lower House to oppose any motion which Dyke or Norris might make.
Wharton answered in a manner which made it clear that from him no
help was to be expected. Sunderland's terrors now became
insupportable. He had requested some of his friends to come to his
house that he might consult them; they came at the appointed hour,
but found that he had gone to Kensington, and had left word that he
should soon be back. When he joined them, they observed that he had
not the gold key which is the badge of the Lord Chamberlain, and
asked where it was. "At Kensington," answered Sunderland. They found
that he had tendered his resignation, and that it had been, after a
long struggle, accepted. They blamed his haste, and told him that,
since he had summoned them to advise him on that day, he might at
least have waited till the morrow. "To morrow," he exclaimed, "would
have ruined me. To night has saved me."
Meanwhile, both the disciples of Somers and the disciples of
Trenchard were grumbling at Harley's resolution. The disciples of
Somers maintained that, if it was right to have an army at all, it
must be right to have an efficient army. The disciples of Trenchard
complained that a great principle had been shamefully given up. On
the vital issue, Standing Army or no Standing Army, the Commons had
pronounced an erroneous, a fatal decision. Whether that army should
consist of five regiments or of fifteen was hardly worth debating.
The great dyke which kept out arbitrary power had been broken. It
was idle to say that the breach was narrow; for it would soon be
widened by the flood which would rush in. The war of pamphlets raged
more fiercely than ever. At the same time alarming symptoms began to
appear among the men of the sword. They saw themselves every day
described in print as the scum of society, as mortal enemies of the
liberties of their country. Was it reasonable,--such was the
language of some scribblers,--that an honest gentleman should pay a
heavy land tax, in order to support in idleness and luxury a set of
fellows who requited him by seducing his dairy maids and shooting
his partridges? Nor was it only in Grub Street tracts that such
reflections were to be found. It was known all over the town that
uncivil things had been said of the military profession in the House
of Commons, and that Jack Howe, in particular, had, on this subject,
given the rein to his wit and to his ill nature. Some rough and
daring veterans, marked with the scars of Steinkirk and singed with
the smoke of Namur, threatened vengeance for these insults. The
writers and speakers who had taken the greatest liberties went in
constant fear of being accosted by fierce-looking captains, and
required to make an immediate choice between fighting and being
caned. One gentleman, who had made himself conspicuous by the
severity of his language, went about with pistols in his pockets.
Howe, whose courage was not proportionate to his malignity and
petulance, was so much frightened, that he retired into the country.
The King, well aware that a single blow given, at that critical
conjuncture, by a soldier to a member of Parliament might produce
disastrous consequences, ordered the officers of the army to their
quarters, and, by the vigorous exertion of his authority and
influence, succeeded in preventing all outrage.
All this time the feeling in favour of a regular force seemed to be
growing in the House of Commons. The resignation of Sunderland had
put many honest gentlemen in good humour. The Whig leaders exerted
themselves to rally their followers, held meetings at the "Rose,"
and represented strongly the dangers to which the country would be
exposed, if defended only by a militia. The opposition asserted that
neither bribes nor promises were spared. The ministers at length
flattered themselves that Harley's resolution might be rescinded. On
the eighth of January they again tried their strength, and were
again defeated, though by a smaller majority than before. A hundred
and sixty-four members divided with them. A hundred and eighty-eight
were for adhering to the vote of the eleventh of December. It was
remarked that on this occasion the naval men, with Rooke at their
head, voted against the Government.
It was necessary to yield. All that remained was to put on the words
of the resolution of the eleventh of December the most favourable
sense that they could be made to bear. They did indeed admit of very
different interpretations. The force which was actually in England
in 1680 hardly amounted to five thousand men. But the garrison of
Tangier and the regiments in the pay of the Batavian federation,
which, as they were available for the defence of England against a
foreign or domestic enemy, might be said to be in some sort part of
the English army, amounted to at least five thousand more. The
construction which the ministers put on the resolution of the
eleventh of December was, that the army was to consist of ten
thousand men; and in this construction the House acquiesced. It was
not held to be necessary that the Parliament should, as in our time,
fix the amount of the land force. The Commons thought that they
sufficiently limited the number of soldiers by limiting the sum
which was to be expended in maintaining soldiers. What that sum
should be was a question which raised much debate. Harley was
unwilling to give more than three hundred thousand pounds. Montague
struggled for four hundred thousand. The general sense of the House
was that Harley offered too little, and that Montague demanded too
much. At last, on the fourteenth of January, a vote was taken for
three hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Four days later the House
resolved to grant half-pay to the disbanded officers till they
should be otherwise provided for. The half-pay was meant to be a
retainer as well as a reward. The effect of this important vote
therefore was that, whenever a new war should break out, the nation
would be able to command the services of many gentlemen of great
military experience. The ministry afterwards succeeded in obtaining,
much against the will of a portion of the opposition, a separate
vote for three thousand marines.
A Mutiny Act, which had been passed in 1697, expired in the spring
of 1698. As yet no such Act had been passed except in time of war;
and the temper of the Parliament and of the nation was such that the
ministers did not venture to ask, in time of peace, for a renewal of
powers unknown to the constitution. For the present, therefore, the
soldier was again, as in the times which preceded the Revolution,
subject to exactly the same law which governed the citizen.
It was only in matters relating to the army that the government
found the Commons unmanageable. Liberal provision was made for the
navy. The number of seamen was fixed at ten thousand, a great force,
according to the notions of that age, for a time of peace. The funds
assigned some years before for the support of the civil list had
fallen short of the estimate. It was resolved that a new arrangement
should be made, and that a certain income should be settled on the
King. The amount was fixed, by an unanimous vote, at seven hundred
thousand pounds; and the Commons declared that, by making this ample
provision for his comfort and dignity, they meant to express their
sense of the great things which he had done for the country. It is
probable, however, that so large a sum would not have been given
without debates and divisions, had it not been understood that he
meant to take on himself the charge of the Duke of Gloucester's
establishment, and that he would in all probability have to pay
fifty thousand pounds a year to Mary of Modena. The Tories were
unwilling to disoblige the Princess of Denmark; and the Jacobites
abstained from offering any opposition to a grant in the benefit of
which they hoped that the banished family would participate.
It was not merely by pecuniary liberality that the Parliament
testified attachment to the Sovereign. A bill was rapidly passed
which withheld the benefit of the Habeas Corpus Act, during twelve
months more, from Bernardi and some other conspirators who had been
concerned in the Assassination Plot, but whose guilt, though
demonstrated to the conviction of every reasonable man, could not be
proved by two witnesses. At the same time new securities were
provided against a new danger which threatened the government. The
peace had put an end to the apprehension that the throne of William
might be subverted by foreign arms, but had, at the same time,
facilitated domestic treason. It was no longer necessary for an
agent from Saint Germains to cross the sea in a fishing boat, under
the constant dread of being intercepted by a cruiser. It was no
longer necessary for him to land on a desolate beach, to lodge in a
thatched hovel, to dress himself like a carter, or to travel up to
town on foot. He came openly by the Calais packet, walked into the
best inn at Dover, and ordered posthorses for London. Meanwhile
young Englishmen of quality and fortune were hastening in crowds to
Paris. They would naturally wish to see him who had once been their
king; and this curiosity, though in itself innocent, might have evil
consequences. Artful tempters would doubtless be on the watch for
every such traveller; and many such travellers might be well pleased
to be courteously accosted, in a foreign land, by Englishmen of
honourable name, distinguished appearance, and insinuating address.
It was not to be expected that a lad fresh from the university would
be able to refute all the sophisms and calumnies which might be
breathed in his ear by dexterous and experienced seducers. Nor would
it be strange if he should, in no long time, accept an invitation to
a private audience at Saint Germains, should be charmed by the
graces of Mary of Modena, should find something engaging in the
childish innocence of the Prince of Wales, should kiss the hand of
James, and should return home an ardent Jacobite. An Act was
therefore passed forbidding English subjects to hold any intercourse
orally, or by writing, or by message, with the exiled family. A day
was fixed after which no English subject, who had, during the late
war, gone into France without the royal permission or borne arms
against his country was to be permitted to reside in this kingdom,
except under a special license from the King. Whoever infringed
these rules incurred the penalties of high treason.
The dismay was at first great among the malecontents. For English
and Irish Jacobites, who had served under the standards of Lewis or
hung about the Court of Saint Germains, had, since the peace, come
over in multitudes to England. It was computed that thousands were
within the scope of the new Act. But the severity of that Act was
mitigated by a beneficent administration. Some fierce and stubborn
non-jurors who would not debase themselves by asking for any
indulgence, and some conspicuous enemies of the government who had
asked for indulgence in vain, were under the necessity of taking
refuge on the Continent. But the great majority of those offenders
who promised to live peaceably under William's rule obtained his
permission to remain in their native land.
In the case of one great offender there were some circumstances
which attracted general interest, and which might furnish a good
subject to a novelist or a dramatist. Near fourteen years before
this time, Sunderland, then Secretary of State to Charles the
Second, had married his daughter Lady Elizabeth Spencer to Donough
Macarthy, Earl of Clancarty, the lord of an immense domain in
Munster. Both the bridegroom and the bride were mere children, the
bridegroom only fifteen, the bride only eleven. After the ceremony
they were separated; and many years full of strange vicissitudes
elapsed before they again met. The boy soon visited his estates in
Ireland. He had been bred a member of the Church of England; but his
opinions and his practice were loose. He found himself among kinsmen
who were zealous Roman Catholics. A Roman Catholic king was on the
throne. To turn Roman Catholic was the best recommendation to favour
both at Whitehall and at Dublin Castle. Clancarty speedily changed
his religion, and from a dissolute Protestant became a dissolute
Papist. After the Revolution he followed the fortunes of James; sate
in the Celtic Parliament which met at the King's Inns; commanded a
regiment in the Celtic army; was forced to surrender himself to
Marlborough at Cork; was sent to England, and was imprisoned in the
Tower.
The Clancarty estates, which were supposed to yield a rent of not
much less than ten thousand a year, were confiscated. They were
charged with an annuity to the Earl's brother, and with another
annuity to his wife; but the greater part was bestowed by the King
on Lord Woodstock, the eldest son of Portland; During some time, the
prisoner's life was not safe. For the popular voice accused him of
outrages for which the utmost license of civil war would not furnish
a plea. It is said that he was threatened with an appeal of murder
by the widow of a Protestant clergyman who had been put to death
during the troubles. After passing three years in confinement,
Clancarty made his escape to the Continent, was graciously received
at St. Germains, and was entrusted with the command of a corps of
Irish refugees. When the treaty of Ryswick had put an end to the
hope that the banished dynasty would be restored by foreign arms, he
flattered himself that he might be able to make his peace with the
English Government. But he was grievously disappointed. The interest
of his wife's family was undoubtedly more than sufficient to obtain
a pardon for him. But on that interest he could not reckon. The
selfish, base, covetous, father-in-law was not at all desirous to
have a highborn beggar and the posterity of a highborn beggar to
maintain. The ruling passion of the brother-in-law was a stern and
acrimonious party spirit. He could not bear to think that he was so
nearly connected with an enemy of the Revolution and of the Bill of
Rights, and would with pleasure have seen the odious tie severed
even by the hand of the executioner. There was one, however, from
whom the ruined, expatriated, proscribed young nobleman might hope
to find a kind reception. He stole across the Channel in disguise,
presented himself at Sunderland's door, and requested to see Lady
Clancarty. He was charged, he said, with a message to her from her
mother, who was then lying on a sick bed at Windsor. By this fiction
he obtained admission, made himself known to his wife, whose
thoughts had probably been constantly fixed on him during many
years, and prevailed on her to give him the most tender proofs of an
affection sanctioned by the laws both of God and of man. The secret
was soon discovered and betrayed by a waiting woman. Spencer learned
that very night that his sister had admitted her husband to her
apartment. The fanatical young Whig, burning with animosity which he
mistook for virtue, and eager to emulate the Corinthian who
assassinated his brother, and the Roman who passed sentence of death
on his son, flew to Vernon's office, gave information that the Irish
rebel, who had once already escaped from custody, was in hiding hard
by, and procured a warrant and a guard of soldiers. Clancarty was
found in the arms of his wife, and dragged to the Tower. She
followed him and implored permission to partake his cell. These
events produced a great stir throughout the society of London.
Sunderland professed everywhere that he heartily approved of his
son's conduct; but the public had made up its mind about
Sunderland's veracity, and paid very little attention to his
professions on this or on any other subject. In general, honourable
men of both parties, whatever might be their opinion of Clancarty,
felt great compassion for his mother who was dying of a broken
heart, and his poor young wife who was begging piteously to be
admitted within the Traitor's Gate. Devonshire and Bedford joined
with Ormond to ask for mercy. The aid of a still more powerful
intercessor was called in. Lady Russell was esteemed by the King as
a valuable friend; she was venerated by the nation generally as a
saint, the widow of a martyr; and, when she deigned to solicit
favours, it was scarcely possible that she should solicit in vain.
She naturally felt a strong sympathy for the unhappy couple, who
were parted by the walls of that gloomy old fortress in which she
had herself exchanged the last sad endearments with one whose image
was never absent from her. She took Lady Clancarty with her to the
palace, obtained access to William, and put a petition into his
hand. Clancarty was pardoned on condition that he should leave the
kingdom and never return to it. A pension was granted to him, small
when compared with the magnificent inheritance which he had
forfeited, but quite sufficient to enable him to live like a
gentleman on the Continent. He retired, accompanied by his
Elizabeth, to Altona. |