THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 Ex Libris 
 ISAAC FOOT
 
 Ctortbe OFultefi Atatrtmnt 
 
 WILLIAM THE TfilKD
 
 \0 
 
 WILLIAM THE THIED 
 
 TRAILL 
 ft 
 
 ILonHon 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YOKK 
 1892 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 First Edition, May i838 
 Reprinted, August 1888, 1892
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 1650-1672 
 
 Birth, ancestry, and early years State of Dutch parties William's 
 boyhood His character and ambitions Hostility of De Witt 
 and his partisans Visit to England Outbreak of the War of 
 1672 Page 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 1672-1678 
 
 William elected Stadtholder of Holland Murder of the De Witts- 
 Campaign of 1672-3 Successes of the Prince Declared here- 
 ditary Stadtholder Progress of the French arms Marriage with 
 Mary Negotiations of Nimeguen Conclusion of the Peace 
 Battle of St. Denis 9 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 1678-1688 
 
 An interval of repose Revival of continental troubles Death of 
 Charles II. Expedition of Monmouth Mission of Dykvelt 
 James's growing unpopularity Invitation to William Attempted 
 intervention by France William's declaration He sets sail, and 
 is driven back by storm Second expedition and landing . 17
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 1688 
 
 Advance to Exeter Measures of James Council of the Lords Their 
 proposals The King goes to Salisbury Defection of Churchill 
 James returns to London Negotiation Attempted flight of 
 James His arrest Advance of William Entry of Dutch troops 
 into London Actual flight of James . . . Page 30 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 1688-1689 
 
 Characteristics of the English Revolution Views of the various parties 
 The Convention Proposal to declare the throne vacant 
 The Regency question The resolution of the Commons Amend- 
 ment of the Lords The crisis Attitude of Mary Announce- 
 ment of William Resolution passed Declaration of Right 
 Tender of the Crown 39 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 1689 
 
 William's part in the Revolution Convention declared a Parliament 
 Oath of Allegiance Settlement of Civil List Appropriation 
 Clause Toleration and Comprehension Address of the Commons 
 inviting the King to declare war 56 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 1689-1690 
 
 Invasion of Ireland Campaign of 1689 Parliamentary strife The 
 conduct of the war The Gates Case The Succession Bill 
 Attempts to pass an Indemnity Bill Rancour of the Whigs
 
 CONTENTS vii 
 
 Their factious opposition to William's Irish plans Dissolution 
 of Parliament Page 67 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 1690-1691 
 
 Parliament of 1690 Tory majority Settlement of the royal income 
 Case of the Princess Anne The " Act of Grace " Detection 
 of Preston's conspiracy William's departure for Ireland Battle 
 of the Boyne Battle off Beachy Head Marlborough's Irish cam- 
 paign William's departure for the Hague ... 79 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 1691-1692 
 
 Campaign of 1691 in the Netherlands Fall of Mons Disaffection of 
 William's councillors Conclusion of year's campaign Disgrace 
 and dismissal of Marlborough Massacre of Glencoe . . 93 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 1692-1693 
 
 Gloomy European prospects Campaign of 1692 in the Netherlands- 
 Defeat of Steinkirk Attempt of Grand val Session of 1692 
 Place Bill and Triennial Bill Campaign of 1693 William out- 
 witted by Luxembourg Defeat of Landen Session of 1693-94 
 Louis's overtures of peace . . . . . .104 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 1693-1694 
 
 Formation of the first party Ministry Reintroduction of the Triennial 
 Bill and its defeat Of the Place Bill and its veto Causes 
 of the disallowance Macaulay's account examined Campaign 
 of 1694 Death of Mary 119
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 1695-1697 
 
 Campaign of 1695 Capture of Namur by the allies Dissolution of 
 Parliament William's ' ' progress " The elections New Parlia- 
 ment Grants to Portland The Assassination Plot Campaign of 
 1696 Fen wick's conspiracy Negotiations with France Peace of 
 Ryswick Page 135 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 1698-1699 
 
 Portland's embassy His life in Paris The question of the Spanish 
 Succession The First Partition Treaty General election and 
 meeting of the new Parliament Its temper Opposition to 
 William's military policy Reduction of the army . . 156 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 1699-1700 
 
 Death of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria Renewed negotiations 
 Second Partition Treaty The Irish forfeitures The Resumption 
 Bill Will and death of the King of Spain . . .171 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 1701-1702 
 
 English indifference on the Spanish Question Death of James II. 
 and Louis's recognition of the Pretender Reaction in England 
 Dissolution of Parliament Support of William's policy by its 
 successor The Treaties Accident to William His illness and 
 death Character The Whig legend examined His great qual- 
 ities as man and ruler Our debt to him . 189
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 1650-1672 
 
 Birth, ancestry, and early years State of Dutch parties William's 
 boyhood His character and ambitions Hostility of De Witt 
 and his partisans Visit to England Outbreak of the War of 
 1672. 
 
 WILLIAM HENRY, Prince of Orange and Count of Nassau, 
 a ruler destined to play a greater part in shaping the 
 destinies of modern England than any of her native 
 sovereigns, was born at the Hague on the 4th of 
 November 1650. By blood and ancestral tradition 
 he was well fitted for the work to which he was to 
 be called. The descendant of a line of statesmen and 
 warriors, the scion of a house which more than a century 
 before had been associated with the most heroic struggle 
 for national freedom that history records, he could hardly 
 have added stronger hereditary to the great personal 
 qualifications for the enterprises reserved for him. His 
 family was one of the most ancient in Europe reaching 
 back, indeed, for its origin into the regions of fable. " I 
 will not take upon me," says an English biographer, 
 writing shortly after his hero's death, "to extend the 
 Antiquity of the House of Nassau as far as the time of 
 S> B
 
 2 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 Julius Csesar, though that Emperor in his first book of 
 Commentaries, De Bella Gcdlico, says that one Nassua, 
 with his brother Cimberius, led a body of Germans out 
 of Suabia and settled upon the banks of the Rhine near 
 Treves, which is the more observable by reason of the 
 Affinity of the Words, which differ only in the Transposi- 
 tion of one Letter ; but I doubt 'tis rather Presumption 
 than Truth for any one to affirm that there is an Estate 
 upon that very Spot of Ground mentioned by Csesar 
 which belongs to the Nassovian Family to this Day." 
 Without insisting on so very ancient and remote an 
 origin as this, we may take it as certain that the House 
 of Nassau had been established in Europe for some 
 thousand years at the birth of William. As early 
 as in the thirteenth century it was honoured with the 
 imperial dignity in the person of Adolph of Nassau. 
 The title and domains of Orange were added to the 
 family in the sixteenth century by the marriage of 
 Claude de Chalons, sister and heiress of the then Prince 
 of Orange, with Henry of Nassau, from whose son Re'ne' 
 the principality passed by testamentary bequest to the 
 great Stadtholder of Holland, William, surnamed the 
 Silent, the illustrious liberator of the United Provinces 
 from the yoke of Spain. The acquisition of this petty 
 principality only twelve miles in length by nine in 
 breadth was by no means the matter of trivial im- 
 portance which its territorial dimensions might imply. 
 Its situation in the very heart of the dominions of 
 France, the incidents attaching to that situation and the 
 consequences flowing from it, contributed in their degree 
 to that complex system of forces by which the course of 
 history is determined. To William I. succeeded his son
 
 i ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 3 
 
 Maurice, the bearer of a name also memorable in the 
 history of the States, a greater soldier and a statesman 
 of scarcely less ability than his father, though of a far 
 more chequered fame. Under Maurice the power of the 
 Stadtholder or Governor was, in spite of the jealousy 
 with which it was regarded by the burgher party, con- 
 siderably advanced, and he was not without reason 
 suspected of the design of making himself an absolute 
 ruler. Dying without issue, he was succeeded by his 
 brother Frederick Henry, another renowned captain, 
 under whom the long struggle with Spain was at last 
 brought to a close by the renunciation, in the Treaty of 
 Westphalia, of the Spanish claim upon the United 
 Provinces. William II., the son of Frederick Henry, 
 was born in 1026, and succeeded his father at the age 
 of twenty-one. Endowed with all the restless activity 
 and ambition of his uncle, he attempted, in prosecu- 
 tion of the same monarchical designs as that prince, 
 to seize the city of Amsterdam by a coup de main. The 
 project, however, was defeated, and William, after a 
 troubled reign of only four years, was fatally attacked 
 by the smallpox, and died on the 27th of October 1650, 
 leavmg"~no issue. Eight days after his death, however, 
 his widow, Mary, daughter of Charles I, gave pre- 
 mature birth to the son whose career it is in these 
 pages proposed to trace. 
 
 Seldom has a new-born child been the object of such 
 diverse emotions, the centre of so many conflicting hopes 
 and fears among its countrymen as was this infant Prince. 
 To the partisans of the House of Orange he appeared as 
 the God-sent heir an earlier enfant du miracle vouch- 
 safed by Providence to save the great race of William
 
 4 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 the Silent from extinction in the male line. To the party 
 of the municipal oligarchy he presented himself as the 
 probable inheritor rather of the ambitions of his father 
 and his father's uncle, than of the virtues of his great- 
 grandfather. The latter party, who for the moment 
 had the upper hand, were fully resolved that the young 
 Prince should never wield as much power as that which 
 Prince Frederick Henry had sought during his four years' 
 reign to abuse. The party of the infant Prince, on the other 
 hand, a party headed by the Princess Dowager and her 
 mother, made up as far as possible for the lack of 
 direct and political power by incessant and indefatigable 
 intrigue; and to their efforts it was that the Pensionary De 
 Witt, the representative of the municipal party, ascribed, 
 and not without reason, the war which broke out between 
 the States and the Kump Parliament in 1651. Its effect, 
 however, was temporarily disastrous to their ambitions ; 
 for, the United Provinces being compelled to solicit 
 peace from Cromwell, the Lord Protector, who was 
 naturally opposed to the elevation of a family allied by 
 marriage to the exiled Stuarts, compelled the States of 
 Holland and West Friesland, as a condition of his 
 ratifying the articles of peace, to pass a decree that " they 
 would never elect the Prince or any of his lineage Stadt- 
 holder of their province, nor consent that he or any of 
 his family should be Captain-General of the forces of 
 the United Provinces." 
 
 Keared from his very cradle amid the animosities of 
 contending factions, the young Prince learned early those 
 
 ' four lessons of statecraft, to conceal his designs, to watch 
 his opportunities, to choose"Ks instruments, and to bide 
 
 I his time. His education, other than that which he was
 
 i CHARACTER AND AMBITIONS 5 
 
 receiving daily in the stern school of circumstances, he 
 owed to his mother alone. Under her care he acquired 
 a good knowledge of mathematics and military science, 
 and learned to speak English, French, and German 
 almost as fluently as his native tongue. The chiefs of 
 the municipal party, who became his official guardians, 
 would have willingly stinted his instruction, if by so 
 doing they might have checked his aspirations; but 
 the ambition to emulate the fame of his great predecessors, 
 and to secure the power which they had wielded, took 
 root within him from his boyish years, and grew steadily 
 with his growth. Weak and ailing from his childhood, 
 for he shared the too common lot of those infants who 
 are brought into the world before the appointed months 
 are run, he took no pleasure, as he possessed no skill, in 
 the ordinary pastimes of the boy ; and, with a mind thus 
 turned inward upon itself, from an age at which other 
 children have no care or thought but for the thousand 
 novel interests and attractions of the world without 
 them, he acquired habits of reserve and thoughtfulness 
 beyond his years. The religious faith in which he was 
 nurtured was a Calvinism of the strictest sort. His firm 
 hold of the grim doctrine of predestination stood him in 
 much the same stead as Napoleon's belief in his destiny, 
 ancTlong before he arrived at man's estate he had in 
 all probability convinced himself that the inscrutable 
 counsels of Providence had designed him for great things. 
 Humanly speaking, however, his prospects did not 
 appear to brighten before him as years went on. At 
 the age of ten he lost his mother, who had gone to 
 England to visit her brother, just restored to the throne, 
 and was there carried off by an attack of smallpox. In
 
 6 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 the same year he saw his principality of Orange forcibly 
 seized by Louis, who, after demolishing its fortifications, 
 held possession of it for five years, surrendering it only 
 in 1665. Then came the war of that year between 
 England and the Dutch Provinces, a conflict which 
 his party temporarily conceived the hope of turning to 
 their own profit, but which left them ultimately in a 
 worse plight than before ; for no provisions in the 
 Prince's interests were insisted on by his uncle, Charles 
 II., in the Treaty of Peace, and, under the instigation of 
 De Witt, the States of Holland and "West Friesland 
 subsequently passed a perpetual edict suppressing the 
 office of Stadtholder. A faint effort was made by Charles 
 II. through Sir William Temple to vindicate the rights of 
 his nephew, but the efforts of the ambassador were coldly 
 received by the Pensionary, and the matter dropped. 
 De Witt now pushed his hostility yet further, and the 
 States resorted to the ignoble and ungrateful measure of 
 calling upon the young Prince to quit the house at the 
 Hague which, though technically the property of the 
 States, had been for many years the official residence of 
 his family. To the Pensionary, who was charged with the 
 communication of this order, William replied by a spirited 
 refusal, directing his visitor to inform the States that he 
 would not quit the house unless removed by force ; 
 upon which his persecutors, apprehensive no doubt of the 
 odium which such a step would excite among the 
 common people, who were many of them well affected 
 to his historic family, allowed their demand to lapse. 
 William, now eighteen years of age, determined to make 
 a counter-move on his own part, and presenting himself be- 
 fore the assembly of the States of the province of Zealand,
 
 I DUTCH PARTIES 7 
 
 he proposed to them to elect him first noble of that 
 province, a dignity which they had been wont to confer 
 upon his ancestors at his then age. The Zealanders 
 complied readily with the request, though they did not 
 proceed, as had been expected, to elect him to the higher 
 office of Stadtholder of the province; and except by 
 entitling him to a seat in the States General as repre- 
 sentative of the nobility of Zealand, the minor honours 
 procured him nothing but the increased jealousy and 
 suspicions of the party of De Witt. Sir William Temple, 
 then ambassador at the Hague, with" whom the Prince 
 came into contact at this time, characteristically reports 
 of him in his Letters as a " young Man of more Parts than 
 ordinary and of the better Sort ; that is, not lying in that 
 kind of Wit which is neither of use to one's self nor to 
 anybody else, but in good plain Sense which showed 
 Application if he had business that deserved it ; and 
 this with extreme good and agreeable Humour and 
 Dispositions without any Vice ; that he was asleep in bed 
 always at Ten o'clock ; loved Hunting as much as he 
 hated Swearing, and preferred Cock-ale before any 
 Wine." In the year 1670 he managed after some 
 diplomatic difficulties to pay a visit to London, where he 
 received the attentions of a civic banquet, and of an 
 honorary degree at Oxford, and where too he acquired a 
 very shrewd perception of the King's leanings towards 
 the religion of Rome. 
 
 But his day was now fast approaching. At the close 
 of the year 1071 was concluded the ever-infamous Treaty 
 of Dover. Charles transformed himself, with more than 
 the celerity of the nimblest modern rat, from the cham- 
 pion of the Protestant faith in Europe into the ally of
 
 8 WILLIAM III CHAP, i 
 
 its deadliest enemy. Sir William Temple was recalled 
 from the Hague, and the Triple League between Eng- 
 land, the States, and Sweden, which that skilful envoy 
 had taken so much pains to cement, was broken up. 
 Early in 1672 war was declared by England against 
 the Dutch, and the armies of Louis, pouring into the 
 United Provinces, became masters of all their chief 
 strongholds "in as little time," to quote the vigorous 
 comparison of one of William's biographers, "as tra- 
 vellers usually employ to view them." The Prince's 
 opportunity had come.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 1672-1678 
 
 William elected Stadtholder of Holland Murder of the De Witts- 
 Campaign of 1672-3 Successes of the Prince Declared here- 
 ditary Stadtholder Progress of the French arms Marriage with 
 Mary Negotiations of Nimeguen Conclusion of the Peace 
 Battle of St. Denis. 
 
 Louis XIV., like other military malefactors before and 
 since, was himself the creator of the enemy by whom 
 his power was to be shaken to its foundations. His 
 invasion of the United Provinces, an enterprise com- 
 menced with that contempt of public right in which no 
 other potentate has ever equalled him, and prosecuted 
 with that barbarity in which only Oriental conquerors 
 have ever surpassed him, was the raeans of raising to 
 power the one European foe by whom he was destined 
 to be successfully withstood. The municipal party, 
 unduly absorbed in the task of safeguarding the liberties 
 of their country against the supposed ambitions of a 
 single fellow-countryman, had wholly neglected the 
 protection of its very existence against the known 
 ambitions of a foreign aggressor. Most of their veteran 
 troops had been disbanded ; the greatest posts in their 
 armies were in the hands of unskilled civilians ; cities 
 garrisoned with considerable forces of soldiery opened
 
 10 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 their gates and surrendered without firing a gun. 
 Popular indignation rose high. Upon William, always 
 a favourite among the commonalty, and the inheritor of 
 a name ennobled not only by civil wisdom but by 
 military exploits, all eyes were turned. An insurrection 
 in his favour took place at Dort, and the magistrates of 
 that city, intimidated by "tee clamour of the people, 
 passed an ordinance repealing the perpetual edict, and 
 made him Stadtholder. Other cities followed their 
 example, and the States-General of the provinces con- 
 firmed their decrees. The two De Witts, John and his 
 brother Cornelius, now tEe objects of popular suspicion 
 and hatred, were assassinated in a street riot ; and the 
 people, as if inspired with new courage by the restoration 
 of a Prince of Orange to a position from which princes of 
 that name had so often led them to victory, turned 
 fiercely upon their French invaders. Five thousand of 
 Louis's troops were repulsed before Ardenburg by the 
 bravery of no more than two hundred burghers, assisted 
 by the women and children of the town, and one hundred 
 garrison soldiers. The citizens of Groningen, aided by 
 the spirited students of its university, defended them- 
 selves with equal vigour and good fortune against the 
 warlike Bishop of Munster, at the head of 30,000 soldiers, 
 compelling him to raise the siege. It was evident that 
 a Dutch conquest was going to be no mere military pro- 
 menade, as had first appeared to promise, and Louis 
 thought it advisable to negotiate. To the chief of a 
 state so desperately be-sted as were the United Provinces 
 at that moment, the terms offered to William by the 
 French monarch, no less than the sovereignty of his 
 country under the protection of England and France,
 
 n STADTHOLDER OF HOLLAND 11 
 
 might well have appeared tempting. William rejected 
 them with scorn. He would never, he said, " betray the 
 trust of his country that his ancestors had so long de- 
 fended." Solicitations addressed to him in the same 
 sense by England met with the same reply. To Buck- 
 ingham, who had pressed them upon him, and warned 
 him that "if he persisted in his present humour he must 
 unavoidably see the final ruin of his cause," he made the 
 Spartan answer that he " had one way still left not to 
 see that ruin completed, whicTT r waTTo~dIe^in~lEe~rast 
 dyke." 
 
 The winter of 1672-3 had stopped the progress of the 
 French for the time, but William was unwilling to allow 
 it to arrest his own action. He laid siege to the town 
 of Woerden, and, though forced by the Duke of Luxem- 
 bourg to retreat from it, inflicted heavy losses upon the 
 enemy. Then, having invested Tongres, captured 
 Walcheren, and demolished Binch, he himself retired 
 reluctantly into winter quarters. In the following 
 spring he besieged and took Naerden, and later on 
 in the year achieved a still more important triumph 
 in the capture of Bonn, which had been put into the 
 hands of France at the beginning of the war. New 
 honours now began to be contemplated by his grateful 
 countrymen for their stout defender. The Stadtholder- 
 ship of Holland and West Friesland was not only con- 
 firmed to him for life, but was settled upon his heirs 
 male ; and on the same day the like dignity was con- 
 ferred on him by the States of Zealand an example 
 shortly afterwards followed by those of Utrecht. Nor 
 were his successes without effect upon his enemies. 
 Charles, with whose subjects the war had never been
 
 12 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 popular, concluded a peace with him after these two 
 summers of fighting, and offered his mediation between 
 the powers still at war, an offer which was accepted by 
 France. Four years, however, were to elapse, and 
 many souls of brave men to be sent to Hades, before 
 this mediation took effect in a concluded peace. In the 
 summer of 1674 was fought the fiercest engagement of 
 the whole war the bloody and indecisive battle of 
 Seneff, in which William was pitted against the re- 
 nowned Prince of Conde". The young Prince had too 
 much to gain in reputation not to be eager to provoke 
 a battle, and the old soldier too much to lose to be 
 willing to accept one if it could be avoided; but 
 William succeeded in his object. Cond6 was at first 
 victorious in an encounter between a portion of the two 
 armies, but he imprudently brought on a general battle, 
 which, after raging furiously for a whole day, left both 
 parties to claim the victory " the allies because they 
 were last upon the field, and the French on the strength 
 of the great number of prisoners and standards they had 
 carried off." " But whoever had the honour," adds Sir 
 William Temple,"" " both had the loss." It was on^EEis 
 l occasion that Conde" paid his famous compliment to the 
 ! Prince by describing him as having acted like an old 
 i general throughout the action in every respect save that 
 I of having " exposed himself like a young recruit" 
 
 For yet another four years, as has been said, this 
 struggle continued to rage, and, as it raged, to store up 
 in his heart that exhaustless fund of resentment against 
 Louis which underwent hardly any depletion till the day 
 of his death. Several times were attempts made to 
 detach William from his Spanish allies and to induce
 
 ii SUCCESSOR OF THE PRINCE 13 
 
 him to conclude a separate peace, but he remained firm 
 against all such solicitations of betrayal. In vain did 
 Arlington, specially commissioned for that purpose, 
 endeavour to tempt him to the desertion of his 'allies 
 by the offer of an English matrimonial alliance. William 
 simply replied that his fortunes were not in a condition 
 for him to think of a wife. Louis, however, was ex- 
 tremely desirous of peace on any honourable terms, and 
 William, to meet him half-way, put forward a counter- 
 proposal of a marriage between the King of Spain and 
 the eldest daughter of the Duke of Orleans, to whom 
 France should give in dowry the late conquered places 
 in Flanders. This ingenious proposal for reconciling 
 the vindication of Spanish and Dutch interests on the 
 Flemish frontier with the maintenance of French 
 military honour, can scarcely have been made with 
 any other purpose than that of putting France in the 
 wrong. William knew probably that it would not 
 square with Louis's existing hopes and pretensions, 
 and that whether Charles pressed it upon his cousin or 
 not, it was pretty certain that no more would be heard 
 of it. For the present, moreover, he was under no 
 pressure to make a peace at all. The United Provinces 
 had recovered their confidence and hopefulness, and 
 were full of admiration for and attachment to their 
 young leader. He had been actually offered the 
 sovereignty of Guelderland, and though his politic 
 moderation induced him to refuse it, opinion among 
 the other provinces was divided as to the propriety 
 of his rejecting the offer. Nothing, however, could have 
 more strikingly illustrated the commanding position 
 which he had attained among his countrymen than
 
 14 WILLIAM III 
 
 the complete paralysis which overcame them in 1675, 
 during the fortunately brief period of the Prince's 
 suffering from a dangerous attack of smallpox. From 
 this disease, so fatal to his race, he recovered with 
 apparent promptitude, but it is only too probable that 
 it left deep traces behind it on his congenitally feeble 
 frame. 
 
 After much dispute the scene of the peace negotia- 
 tions had been fixed at Nimeguen, and the Congress 
 met there in the month of July~1676. But the diplo- 
 matists there were still to deliberateTor two years while 
 armies were fighting; and if William could have pre- 
 vented it, the peace would not have been made even as 
 soon as it was. The next two years, however, were on 
 the whole years of success for France and of defeat for 
 the allies ; and early in 1677 William, of his own accord, 
 revived a project to which, when previously broached to 
 him, he had refused to listen. The terms submitted to 
 him during the deliberations at Nimeguen were intoler- 
 able, and yet, though he obstinately refused to accept 
 them, town after town was falling before the French 
 arms, and his country was at last beginning to weary of 
 the struggle. If he must at last be forced to assent to 
 distasteful conditions, why not, as the price of his assent, 
 obtain for himself a matrimonial alliance which, besides 
 bringing him a step nearer to the English throne, would 
 immensely strengthen his position as a representative of 
 the Protestant cause in Europe. A year before he had 
 sounded Temple as to a proposal for the hand of his 
 cousin Mary, the Duke of York's eldest daughter ; and 
 had been encouraged by that ambassador to hope for 
 success in his suit. He now more formally pressed it,
 
 ii MARRIAGE WITH MARY 15 
 
 selecting the moment with considerable astuteness. 
 Neither Charles nor James had any liking for the match, 
 but the King was in the midst of a struggle with his 
 Parliament; his subserviency to Louis was inflaming 
 popular resentment against him, and a marriage of his 
 niece to William, more especially if it could be made 
 the means of bringing about a peace, appeared to pro- 
 mise the only means of extricating himself from his 
 difficulties. Danby, his minister, moreover, was just at 
 that moment trembling for his head, and was prepared 
 to exert himself to the utmost to save it by the only 
 means available the detachment of his master from 
 the French alliance. William was reluctantly invited 
 to England, and it is clear, in the whole history of the 
 affair, that he felt himself from the moment of his 
 arrival to be dominus contract-As. With respect to the 
 question whether the business of the marriage should be 
 arranged before that of the peace or vice versd, William 
 insisted upon his own order of procedure, and procured 
 its adoption. Charles consented to the marriage, and 
 compelled the assent of his brother. The States- 
 General, communicated with by express, immediately 
 signified their approval; and William, who had for- 
 tunately found the person and manners of his cousin 
 highly attractive to him, was married hurriedly and 
 privately at eleven o'clock on the night of the 4th of 
 November 1677, the anniversary of his birth. The King 
 of England did his best to reconcile his brother of France 
 to a match, the news of which, our ambassador at the 
 French Court told Danby, he received "as he would 
 have done the loss of an army," by representing it 
 as an important step towards a peace; but William
 
 16 WILLIAM III CHAP, ii 
 
 returned home with his bride, pledged only to his 
 uncle to accept a basis of peace which was to a large 
 extent, if not entirely, of his own formulation, and far 
 more liberal to the allies than anything which France 
 had proposed. Louis, however, was to get his own way 
 after all. The United Provinces were now heartily sick 
 of the war, and were, moreover, not uninfluenced by a 
 party hostile to William, who felt or feigned apprehen- 
 sion of his designs upon the liberties of the Kepublic. 
 The States -General accepted the articles of France, 
 and having by their constitution the absolute power of 
 peace and war, they were able, on the llth of August, 
 to conclude a treaty over William's head. Three days 
 after the Prince, unaware, officially at least, that the 
 signatures had been actually affixed to the treaty, made 
 a dash upon the army of Luxembourg, then besieging 
 Mons, and after a desperate encounter secured one of 
 the most brilliant successes of the war. The next morn- 
 ing, however, advices arrived from the Hague of the 
 conclusion of the peace, and William had the mortifica- 
 tion of feeling that the fruits of a victory which had 
 opened a way for the allies into the country of their 
 enemy were to remain ungathered.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 1678-1688 
 
 An interval of repose Revival of continental troubles Death of 
 Charles II. Expedition of Monmouth Mission of Dykvelt 
 James's growing unpopularity Invitation to William Attempted 
 intervention by France William's declaration He sets sail, and 
 is driven back by storm Second expedition and landing. 
 
 FOR the next six or seven years the life of the Prince of 
 Orange was to be unmarked by any striking external 
 incidents. He was occupied with all his wonted patience 
 in the reparation of the mischiefs of the Treaty of 
 Nimeguen, and in the laborious constructioTi""of that 
 great European league by "means of which he was after- 
 wards destined to arrest the course of French aggression. 
 In this undertaking, and in watching and retaliating 
 upon the encroachments which Louis XIV., almost on 
 the morrow of the treaty, began making upon its pro- 
 visions, William was sufficiently employed. In 1684 
 these encroachments became intolerable. Louis having 
 vainly demanded of the Spaniards certain towns in 
 Flanders, on the pretext of their being rightful de- 
 pendencies on places ceded to him by the Treaty of 
 Nimeguen, seized Strasburg and besieged Luxembourg 
 in physical enforcement of his claim. Spain declared 
 
 war, and William, though thwarted by the States 
 
 
 c
 
 18 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 (mainly through the instrumentality of the city of 
 Amsterdam, which was always ill-disposed towards him), 
 and denied the levy of 16,000 men which he had asked 
 for, took the field notwithstanding in support of his 
 Spanish ally. The united forces, however, were too 
 weak to effect much. Luxembourgjsgeedily surrendered, 
 and as the result a twenty years' truce, on terms not 
 very favourable for William, was concluded with France. 
 During this period, as always, affairs in England no 
 doubt demanded general vigilance; but it was not till 
 1685 that they showed signs of becoming critical. The 
 death of Charles, and the known designs of Monmouth, 
 placed William in a very delicate position. ~" During 
 Charles's life-time he had extended his protection to the 
 exiled Duke, and had even insisted so punctiliously on 
 proper respect being shown to him, that a difference had 
 arisen between William and the English Court with 
 reference to the Duke's receiving salutes from the 
 English troops, and was actually unadjusted at Charles's 
 death. Upon James's accession, however, either to clear 
 himself of all suspicion of abetting a pretender to the 
 throne, or, as some have asserted, to thwart the new 
 king's design of having his nephew seized and sent a 
 prisoner to England, William procured his departure 
 from Dutch territory. Monmouth retired to Brussels, 
 but at the instance of James, who wrote a letter to the 
 Governor of the Spanish Netherlands charging him with 
 high treason, he was ordered by that functionary to 
 quit the King of Spain's dominions, and returned to 
 Holland. Then followed his ill-fated enterprise, through- 
 out the brief course of which William maintained an 
 attitude of strict loyalty towards his father-in-law. He
 
 in AFFAIRS IN ENGLAND 19 
 
 not only despatched the six English and Scotch regi- 
 ments in the Dutch service to assist in suppressing the 
 insurrection, but he offered, if James wished, to take 
 command of the royal troops in person. The offer was 
 declined, very likely from motives of suspicion by the 
 King, but it is impossible to suggest any plausible 
 reason for questioning its bona fides. The idle story that 
 it was prompted by William's disgust at Monmouth's 
 proclaiming himself king, in breach of a promise to 
 raise William himself to the throne, bears absurdity on 
 its face. The Princess stood next in succession to the 
 throne as it was ; and if the Prince had conceived a pro- 
 ject of anticipating his wife's inheritance, he certainly 
 would not have entrusted the execution of that project 
 to the feeble hands and flighty brain of Monmouth. 
 
 But two years had scarcely passed before it really 
 became necessary for him to look after the interests of 
 her reversion. As early as the spring of 1687 it was 
 beginning to be suspected by men of foresight, both in 
 England and in Holland, that James II. 's position was 
 precarious. No one, indeed, who was capable of forming 
 a correct estimate of his character and capacities could 
 find in them any guarantees of prolonged rule. He was 
 as obstinate and insincere as his father, as selfish and 
 unscrupulous as his brother, while he was destitute alike 
 of the former's power of enlisting the devotion of in- 
 dividuals, and of the latter's easy popularity with the 
 common people. It would be unjust to him not to 
 admit that many of his gravest difficulties were pre- 
 pared for him in his brother's time, if not by his 
 brother's means ; but it cannot be denied that he had 
 made astonishing haste to convert these grave difficulties
 
 20 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 into the most formidable dangers. In little more than 
 two years from his accession in February 1685, his 
 nephew found it expedient to send over an emissary to 
 England for the purpose of so"uriding English political 
 leaders, not as yet, indeed, with any definitely-formed 
 design of intervening by force in English affairs, but 
 rather probably that, in the event of the King rendering 
 himself " impossible," the people might know where to 
 look for a substitute, and might understand that the 
 heiress-presumptive and her consort were not only the 
 most natural, but, as a matter of fact, the most eligible 
 choice for the people to make in the circumstances. 
 Dykvelt, a judicious diplomatist, made the best use of 
 His time, and while continuing to give no just ground of 
 remonstrance to James, to whom he was of course 
 nominally accredited, he managed to bring back infor- 
 mation and assurances of much value from many English 
 politicians of eminence. 
 
 Meantime, and while James was still industriously 
 undermining his throne, his relations with his destined 
 successor were becoming more strained. A dispute 
 arose between them with reference to the six English 
 regiments lent to the States under treaty. The King 
 made a demand that these regiments should be officered 
 by Catholics a claim put forward either with the object 
 of insuring their fidelity to him in case of future rupture 
 with Holland, or else merely to invite refusal and create 
 a pretext for insisting on their recall. At any rate the 
 refusal came, and on James's demanding the return of 
 the troops, the States refused this also, appealing to 
 theTterms of the treaty as only authorising the King of 
 England to require restitution of these forces in the
 
 in JAMES'S UNPOPULARITY 21 
 
 event of his being actually engaged in warfare with a 
 foreign foe. An acrimonious correspondence ensued be- 
 tween the two governments ; but James failed to move 
 the States from their firm attitude. Equally unsuccess- 
 ful was he in an attempt to inveigle the Prince into an 
 approval of that policy of pretended toleration by which 
 he was seeking to further the interests of the Catholic 
 at the expense of those of the Protestant religion in 
 England. A Scots lawyer named Stuart, who had taken 
 refuge in Holland from the religious persecution during 
 the late reign, having made, or been bribed to make, his 
 submission to the royal authority, was procured to open 
 a correspondence with the Grand Pensionary Fagel, in 
 which he pressed the latter to advise the Prince of 
 Orange to support his uncle's policy, declaring that 
 James would not repeal the penal laws unless the tests 
 were repealed also. Fagel for some time returned no 
 answer, but at last, finding the rumour in circulation that 
 the Prince had associated himself with the King's mea- 
 sures, he wrote a reply, which had no doubt been drafted 
 by William, to the refugee's request. In this remarkably 
 politic document the Prince contrived to hold the balance 
 equally between the English Protestants, with whom he 
 was particularly anxious to stand well, and the Catholic 
 continental sovereigns, whom in his struggle with France 
 he could not afford to offend. While maintaining his 
 former attitude with regard to the tests, William declared 
 that he would gladly see all other grievances on the part 
 of the English Catholics removed. He would have no man 
 subjected to punishment for his opinions, but and on 
 this point he instanced the practice of the States-General 
 themselves with respect to Eoman Catholics he was
 
 22 WILLIAM III OHAP. 
 
 not prepared to remove all official disabilities founded on 
 religious opinion. This letter was forwarded by Stuart 
 to the King, and was by him considered in council. 
 Burnet declares that all the lay papists of England who 
 were not engaged in the intrigues of the priests earnestly 
 pressed him to accept the Prince's terms as being what 
 would render them safe and easy for the future; but 
 the King as usual was obstinate, and no resolution was 
 taken on the matter. 
 
 During most of the remainder of this year the King 
 was filling up the measure of his political offences. 
 From March till October the dispute with Magdalen 
 College had raged, and the breaclTTjetween James ^ind 
 the once devoted Church of England proportionately 
 widened. But at the end of the year 1687 a moment- 
 
 ous announcement was made to the Uourt. The Queen 
 was pronounced to be pregnant, and in July of the follow- 
 ing year she was delivered of a mafe child. That an 
 infant brought into the world at so opportune a moment 
 should have been loudly alleged to be supposititious by 
 the inflamed political partisans of the time was naturally 
 to be expected. A word or two more will be said on 
 that point hereafter ; it is here only necessary to remark 
 that whether William shared the suspicions of his parti- 
 sans or not his outward behaviour on the occasion was 
 irreproachable. He congratulated his father-in-law on 
 the auspicious event ; and the infant prince was duly 
 prayed for in his private chapel at the Hague, until the 
 protest hereafter to be referred to was made against the 
 ceremony by his English partisans. Meanwhile the 
 events of the eventful year 1688 had been ripening fast 
 to their destined issue. The end of April had witnessed
 
 HI INVITATION TO WILLIAM 23 
 
 the second promulgation of the Declaration of Indulgence, 
 anH" the ferment occasioned by that new assertion of "tn"e 
 dispensing power. In July, in almost exact coincidence 
 of time with theOueen^s accouchement, came the memor- 
 able trial of the Seven Bishops, which "gave the 
 first" demonstration of the full force of that popular 
 animosity which James's rule had provoked. Some 
 months before, 1 however, Edward Russell, nephew 
 of the Earl of Bedford and cousm 6? "Algernon Sidney's 
 fellow-victim, had sought the Hague with proposals to 
 William to make "ah armed descent upon England, as 
 vindication of English liberties and the Protestant re- 
 ligion. 2 William had cautiously required a signed 
 invitation from at least a few representative statesmen 
 befoYe committing himself to such an enterprise, and on 
 the day of the acquittal of the Seven Bishops a paper, 
 signed in cipher by Lords Shrewsbury, Devonshire, 
 Danby, and Lumley, by Compton, Bishop of North- 
 ampton, by Edward Russell, and by Henry Sidney, 
 
 1 In April or May. Macaulay (after Burnet) says May ; and the 
 point is of some importance, because if, as Ralph maintains and proves 
 by reference to the date of the Elector of Brandenburg's death (an 
 event referred to by Burnet as still prospective at the date of the con- 
 ference with Russell), this interview really took place in April, it does 
 prove, as Ralph says, that " measures were forming in England against 
 the King and embraced in Holland before the second Declaration of 
 Indulgence was published, or the Order in Council which was founded 
 thereon, or the Prosecution of the Bishops was thought of ; which his 
 lordship (Burnet) holds of such weight for the justification of those 
 measures. " Ralph i. 998. 
 
 2 One of Russell's arguments for immediate action was that James's 
 soldiers, "though bad Englishmen and worse Christians, were as yet 
 such good Protestants 'that neither were" they laftaclieato His Majesty, 
 nor could His~Uaj esty depend upon them." Burnet op. Ralph, 
 Hist. i. 997.
 
 24 WILLIAM 111 CHAP. 
 
 brother of Algernon, was conveyed by Admiral Herbert 
 to the Hague. William ' was now furnished with the 
 required security for English assistance in the projected 
 undertaking, but the task before him was still one of 
 extreme difficulty. He had to allay the natural dis- 
 quietudes of the Catholic supporters of his continental 
 policy without alarming his Protestant friends in Eng- 
 land ; to win over the States-General, not by any means 
 universally favourable either to his designs against 
 James or to his attitude towards Louis (Amsterdam, 
 for instance, had sided with the former monarch in his 
 dispute with William about the return of the English 
 regiments); and, above all, he had to make his naval 
 and military preparations for a descent upon England 
 without exciting suspicions, or provoking an anticipatory 
 attack. That he managed matters with much address 
 is evident from the result, but it is no less clear that 
 luck was on his side. A quarrel of the French king 
 with the Pope, on a question of diplomatic extra-terri- 
 torial rights in the papal city, and his arrogant inter- 
 ference in the election of the Elector of Cologne, had 
 arrayed against Louis the spiritual and temporal forces 
 of Catholicism, represented respectively by the Papacy 
 and the Empire; his ill-timed persecutions of Protestants, 
 and certain prohibitive measures adopted by him against 
 Dutch trade, had the effect of alienating his partisans in 
 the States-General. In the meanwhile the combined 
 blindness and obstinacy of James permitted William to 
 prosecute his military preparations unmolested, if not 
 unsuspected. These preparations were very extensive 
 and conspicuous, and seem to have had their commence- 
 ment at an earlier date than is consistent with Burnet's
 
 in FRENCH INTERVENTION 25 
 
 theory referred to in the note on a previous page. It 
 was not, however, till the summer was beginning to 
 give place to autumn that they began to excite any 
 very distinct suspicions as to their object. The Cologne 
 quarrel formed a plausible excuse enough for them ; for 
 if Louis, as events seemed to threaten, were to occupy 
 the Rhine provinces with an army, it would be obviously 
 necessary for Holland to stand on guard. By the middle 
 of August the French king had become uneasy, and 
 despatched a special envoy in the person of M. Bonrepos 
 to awaken James to a sense of his danger. He had 
 authority, according to Burnet (whom, however, Macaulay, 
 who mostly follows him, on this point contradicts 1 ), to 
 offer James not only naval but military assistance to 
 repel the invasion with which he believed him to be 
 threatened. Bonrepos was directed by his master to 
 promise the King of England that ten or fifteen thousand 
 (others, according to Ralph, say thirty thousand) men 
 should be landed at Portsmouth if required, and asked 
 that that place should be put into his hands to keep the 
 communication between the two kingdoms. Sunderland, 
 acting perhaps bond fide, but more probably not, most 
 earnestly counselled James to reject the offer, and it was 
 rejected accordingly, the King's characteristic imbecility 
 of judgment being never more characteristically shown 
 than in his unwillingness to offend the patriotic pre- 
 judices of his subjects by accepting an offer which, had 
 
 1 It is difficult to see why. Sunderland, in his Apology, distinctly 
 Says, "I opposed to death the acceptance of them (the ships) as 
 well as any assistance of men, and I can most truly say that I was the 
 principal means of hindering both." Sunderland, no doubt, was not 
 the most veracious of men ; but one does not see his precise motive 
 for lying on this matter.
 
 28 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 he been aware of their true feelings towards him, he 
 would have recognised as his last chance of saving his 
 crown and kingdom. At this juncture Eonquillo, the 
 Spanish ambassador, went out of his way to assure 
 James of what he probably knew to be false, and 
 certainly had no reason to believe true namely, that no 
 descent upon England was in contemplation on the part 
 of William. On an early day in September, however, 
 Albeville was despatched to the Hague with instructions 
 to present a memorandum of complaint on the subject 
 of the Dutch preparations; and the day following 
 d'Avaux delivered, on the part of Louis, a threatening 
 note to the States, in which he warned them to desist 
 from their designs upon a monarch to whom he was 
 bound by "such ties of friendship and alliance" as 
 would oblige him, if James were attacked, to come to 
 his assistance. That Louis's motive in taking this step 
 was to commit his brother of England to the alliance 
 which he pretended to exist it is almost impossible to 
 doubt; but James, more and more bent upon repudiating 
 the assistance of France the more necessary it became 
 to him, did his utmost to assure the States that there 
 
 ^k 
 
 was nothing in the nature of an alliance between himself 
 and Louis. William, however, and his partisans in the 
 States-General, asked nothing better than this excuse for 
 continuing their preparations, and the Dutch armament 
 was actively pushed forward. In October the final 
 alienation of the Dutch friends of France was brought 
 about by Louis's despatching an army under the* 
 Dauphin to besiege Philipsburg, and simultaneously 
 issuing manifestos against the Emperor and the Pope. 
 Avignon had been seized by him the day before the
 
 in WILLIAM'S DECLARATION 27 
 
 siege of Philipsburg was opened ; and the attack on the 
 latter place was followed by the rapid seizure of most of 
 the important towns of the Palatinate. 
 
 On the 10th of October, matters now being ripe for such 
 a step, William, in conjunction with some of his English 
 advisers, put forth his famous declaration. Starting 
 with a preamBle to the effect that the observance of laws 
 is necessary to the happiness of states, the instrument 
 proceeds to enumerate fifteen particulars in which the 
 laws of England had been jset at naught. The most 
 important of these were r(l) the exercise of the dispens- 
 ing power; (2) the corruption, coercion, and packing of 
 the judicial bench ; (3) the violation of the test laws by 
 the appointment of papists to offices (particularly judicial 
 and military offices, and the administration of Ireland), 
 and generally the arbitrary and illegal measures resorted 
 to by James for the propagation of the Catholic religion; 
 (4) the establishment and action of the Court of High 
 Commission ; (5) the infringement of some municipal 
 charters, and the procuring of the surrender of others; (6) 
 interference with elections by turning out of all employ- 
 ment such as refused to vote as they were required; and 
 (7) the grave suspicion which had arisen that the Prince of 
 Wales was not born of the Queen, which as yet nothing 
 had been done to remove.JE[aving set forth these griev- 
 ances, the Prince's manifesto went on to recite the close 
 interest which he and his consort had in this matter as 
 next in succession to the crown, and the earnest solicita- 
 tions which had been made to him by many lords 
 spiritual and temporal, and other English subjects of all 
 ranks, to interpose, and concluded by affirming in a very 
 distinct and solemn manner that the sole object of the
 
 28 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 expedition then preparing was to obtain the assembling 
 of a free and lawful Parliament, to whicfi the Jrnnce 
 pledged himself to refer all questions concerning the 
 due execution of the laws, and the maintenance of the 
 Protestant religion, and the conclusion of an agreement 
 between the Church of England and the Dissenters, as 
 also the inquiry into the birth of the "pretended Prince 
 of Wales " ; and that this object being attained, the 
 Prince would, as soon as the state of the nation should 
 permit of it, send home his foreign forces. 
 
 About a week after, on the 16th of October, all things 
 being now in readiness, the Prince took solemn leave of the 
 States-General, thanked them for their past kindness to 
 him, called them to witness that the motives of his 
 enterprise were solely those set forth in his declaration, 
 namely, the vindication of the liberties of England, and 
 the defence of the Protestant religion, and commended 
 his wife to their care. The scene was an affecting one, 
 and many among the assembly were melted to tears ; 
 only the Prince himself, says Burnet, "continued firm 
 in his usual gravity and phlegm." Two days later the 
 States came to a formal resolution to assist the Prince 
 of Orange with ships and forces on his expedition to Eng- 
 land, having heard his explanations thereof and found 
 them satisfactory ; and authorised their ministers at the 
 various European Courts to make use of this resolution 
 in whatever way they might find most convenient. 
 
 On the 19th William and his armament set sail from 
 Helvoetsluys7*&ut was met on the following day by a 
 violent storm which forced him to put back on the 21st. 1 
 
 1 To make some capital out of the mischance the Haarlem and 
 Amsterdam Gazettes were ordered (Ralph declares) "to set forth a
 
 in LANDING IN TORBAY 29 
 
 On the 1st of November the fleet put to sea a second 
 time, ana lor the first twelve hours held its course 
 towards the north-west. It was calculated that thus the 
 scouting vessels sent out by Dartmouth would carry- 
 back word that the landing might be expected to take 
 place on the Yorkshire coast ; and, this ruse successfully 
 effected, the fleet tacked and sailed southward for the 
 Channel. William was naturally most desirous to avoid 
 a conflict with the English fleet, and the heavy weather 
 which prevented Dartmouth from leaving the Thames 
 enabled him to attain his object. His fleet passed the 
 Straits of Dover at midday of the 3d of November, and 
 made for Torbay, where it had been determined to land. 
 In the halze7~Kowever, of the morning of the 5th of 
 November the pilot overshot the mark, and took the fleet 
 some miles- to the west. Its situation became critical. 
 Plymouth was the next port, and of Lord Bath, who 
 there commanded the King's forces, William was by no 
 means sure. From the east the royal fleet under Dart- 
 mouth was believed to be approaching. Eussell, who 
 had told Burnet that " all was over," and that he might 
 "go to prayers," was just upon taking boat for the 
 Prince's ship when the " Protestant wind," as the long 
 prayed-for easterly gale had hitherto been called, having 
 now by force .of circumstances become a breeze of a 
 distinctly Catholic tendency, was, as all good Protestants 
 of that day believed, providentially lulled. A wind of the 
 right direction and denomination sprang up shortly after, 
 and in four hours' time, by noon of the 5th of November, 
 the Prince's fleet was waftecT safely into Torbay. 
 
 lamentable relation of the losses occasioned by it," losses which, it seems, 
 included "nine men of war, a thousand horses, and Dr. Burnet."
 
 CHAPTEE IV 
 
 1688 
 
 Advance to Exeter Measures of James Council of the Lords Their 
 proposals The King goes to Salisbury Defection of Churchill 
 James returns to London Negotiation Attempted flight of 
 James His arrest Advance of William Entry of Dutch troops 
 into London Actual flight of James. 
 
 THE spot was in one respect well, in another ill chosen 
 for a descent. Nowhere, indeed, was James's tyranny 
 
 'more detested than in that quarter of England in which 
 William now found himself, but nowhere also was it 
 more feared. It was the country of the men who had 
 risen for Monmouth and fought at Sedgemoor, but it 
 was the country too of the men who had trembled 
 before Jeffreys, and whose blood had given its name to 
 his terrible Assize. The reception which William met 
 with was in fact determined by a balance of these 
 considerations. He was welcomed with abundance 
 of popular sympathy, but with little overt popular 
 support. The gentry and peasantry rejoiced at the 
 sight of his standard, but were slow in gathering to 
 it. His march to Exeter., was something like a triumph, 
 but it seemed at first, and indeed for some days after he 
 had fixed his quarters there, that he was to get nothing 
 from the people but their good wishes. That this delay
 
 CHAP, iv ADVANCE TO EXETER 31 
 
 in supporting him gave much disappointment and even 
 some anxiety to William is certain. He was too politic 
 to make any public manifestation of feelings, the dis- 
 closure of which might only have served to aggravate 
 their cause; but in private he complained indignantly 
 of the slackness of his promised adherents, and even 
 talked though here we may permit ourselves to doubt 
 his seriousness of abandoning his enterprise and return- 
 ing to Holland. At the end of a week, however, im- 
 portant partisans of his cause began to make their 
 appearance. Lord Colchester, a friend of Monmouth's, 
 was the first to join him ; Edward Russell, a son of the 
 Earl of Bedford, followed ; .Lord Abingdon, a recruit 
 from the other side of politics, was the next to give his 
 adhesion to William ; and almost at the same moment 
 the cause of James sustained the most significant re- 
 pudiation it had yet undergone in the desertion of Lord 
 Cornbury, the eldest son of Lord Clarendon, who, after an 
 unsuccessful attempt to bring over with him the three regi- 
 ments of which he was the commander, deserted them with 
 a few followers and made his way to William's quarters. 
 In London, ever since the news of the Prince's land- 
 ing, considerable agitation had prevailed, and some 
 actual rioting taken place. But the royal authority 
 was still upheld, and it was evident that the action of 
 the capital, reversing the order of revolutionary proceed- 
 ings to which France has now accustomed us, would 
 await the course of events in the provinces. As for 
 the King, he was, characteristically enough, as much 
 reassured by a week's respite from bad news as he had 
 been disturbed by the tidings of his nephew's landing ; 
 but the intelligence of Cornbury's defection threw him
 
 82 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 into a state of genuine alarm. Having convoked and 
 addressed the principal officers then in London, from 
 whom he received the most earnest professions of 
 loyalty, he prepared to set out to meet the invader at 
 Salisbury, when he was waited upon by a deputation of 
 the Lords, praying him to call a Parliament and to open 
 I a negotiation with the Prince of Orange. James, how- 
 ever, to whom no measure ever presented itself as 
 advisable sft the" proper moment for adopting it, re- 
 jected their advice. His reason was an excellent one 
 for any king in a totally different position from his. 
 He said, and with much truth, that no Parliament 
 could be freely chosen for a country with an invading 
 army encamped on its soil ; but the question which a 
 clearer-sighted sovereign would have asked himself was 
 not whether the parliamentary elector would be a free 
 agent, but whether he himself was. It was eminently 
 probable that the convocation of a Parliament would not 
 save his throne, but it was quite certain that nothing 
 else would. Nor had James the excuse of pride for 
 rejecting the Peers' advice ; he was to show in a very 
 short time that no such account of his conduct could be 
 sustained. Some monarchs might have preferred to lose 
 a crown rather than be forced into political concession 
 under coercion of an invading army. James was quite 
 willing to pay that or any other price to save his crown, 
 only he was impenetrable to the proof that it was neces- 
 sary at that moment. He set out for his destined head- 
 quarters, and reached them on the 1 9th of November ; 
 but by the time he established himself at Salisbury the 
 real royal court had collected itself at Exeter. William 
 was haranguing the "friends and fellow Protestants"
 
 iv MEASURES OF JAMES 33 
 
 who had gathered to his banner, and continually receiv- 
 ing fresh adhesions, among which that of Lord Bath, the 
 commander of the royal forces at Plymouth, was the 
 mosFTniportarit. Meanwhile, the northern population 
 of the kingdom, among whom William had been expected 
 to present himself first, were up in arms. York and 
 Nottingham were the chief centres of insurrection, and 
 to one or the other of them many of the great peers 
 and landowners of the north were already making their 
 way. Placed thus between two fires, it was evident that 
 immediate action was necessary on James's part to pre- 
 vent their meeting and engulfing him. As it was no less 
 evidently to "William's interest to defer a conflict as long 
 as possible, he succeeded in avoiding anything save 
 mere skirmishes between outposts, until the occurrence 
 of an event for which he was probably prepared, and 
 winch he had good reason to hope would insure the 
 triumph of his cause without any serious fighting at all. 
 This was no less an event than the desertion ofChurchill, 
 who, if, as is likely enough, he had been up to this point 
 doubting to which side his interests pointed the 
 only form of indecision he was liable to had by this 
 time satisfied himself that James's cause was lost. 
 AlarmetTby rumours of disaffection in his army, James's 
 eagerness for an encounter with William had now 
 entirely disappeared. He talked of retreating, but 
 Churchill strongly urged an advance. Whether, if his 
 counsels had prevailed, he would have taken over the 
 troops under his command to William, or whether he 
 would have awaited the issue of battle in order to obtain 
 still clearer light on the only question that interested 
 him, must for ever remain" uncerTain. James resolved" to 
 
 D
 
 
 34 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 fall back, and Churchill resolved not to accompany him. 
 He quitted The royai camp that night, leaving Behind 
 him a letter, in which he declared it impossible for him 
 to fight against the cause of the Protestant religion, and 
 presented himself next day at the quarters of the Prince 
 of Orange. His flight threw James into extreme con- 
 sternation. A precipitate retreat was ordered, and the 
 royal standard, now losing more and more followers 
 every day, was soon being hurried back to London. 
 Prince George of Denmark, who lives in history as Est- 
 il possible? abandoned his father-in-law at Andover, 
 and James returned to Whitehall to find that his younger 
 daughter had followed her husband's example. "God help 
 me ! " the wretched King exclaimed ; " my own children 
 have forsaken me." A man so accustomed to subordinate 
 all the kindlier instincts of human nature to the precepts 
 of his religion might have recollected that Anne had 
 only to identify the interests of Anglican Protestantism 
 with the cause of Christ in order to find excellent Scrip- 
 tural authority for turning her back upon her father. 
 
 It being now too late to hope for an accommodation 
 with his people and their invited champion, James began 
 to think of arranging one. He summoned a council of 
 the Lords spiritual and temporal tlienTn~Xb~ncton~and 
 signified his willingness to " agree with his adversary" 
 slowly, and when no longer "in the way with him." 
 He was ready now to take the advice which had been 
 tendered him before he started for Salisbury namely, 
 to summon a Parliament and open negotiations with 
 William. It was now, however, pointed out to him 
 that, his position having become worse by delay, he 
 must make an advance on his original offers by dismiss-
 
 rv NEGOTIATIONS 35 
 
 ing all Catholics from office, breaking off his relations 
 with France, and promising an amnesty to all political 
 opponents ; but as this or some similar enlargement 
 of the original terms of concession submitted to him 
 unmistakably recommended itself to common sense, the 
 
 King would not hear of it. He would summon a Parlia- 
 
 r ^(^^"^^^Mi 
 
 ment. and at once did so by directing Jeffreys to issue 
 
 writs convoking that body for the 13th of January. He 
 would negotiate with William, and he named Nottingham, 
 Halifax, and Godolphin as his commissioners for that 
 purpose. But more than this he at first declined to do. 
 On further reflection, however, it occurred to him that 
 the pang of giving these distasteful pledges might be 
 much mitigated by a secret resolve to break -them. He 
 therefore issued a proclamation granting a free pardon 
 to all who were in rebellion against him, and declaring 
 them eligible as members of the forthcoming Parliament. 
 At the same time he gave an earnest of his willingness 
 to conform to the law excluding papists from office 
 by removing the Catholic Lieutenant of the Tower. 
 Again, at the same time, and as the reverse of an 
 "earnest" of anything, he informed the French Am- 
 bassador that the negotiation with William was "a ^ 
 mere feint," and that all he wanted was to gain time "to 
 ship off his wife and the Prince of Wales." There was un- 
 doubtedly a good deal of his royal and unfortunate father 
 about James II. He seems, indeed, to have inherited 
 almost all Charles's moral qualities excepTTiis courage. I 
 Th"es"e he " threw back " to his grandfather not a for- 
 tunate illustration of the biological principle of atavism. 
 Infected with the duplicity and unredeemed by the 
 bravery of Charles I., the close of his reign is naturally I
 
 36 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 less romantic than his father's. Kings who fail in 
 business_jmdqubtedly owe it to their historical reputa- 
 tion to perish on the scaffold or the battle-field. A 
 royal martyr is a much more impressive object than 
 a royal levanter. It is better to "ascend to Heaven'" 
 aT ''ihe son of St. Louis " than to take ship for Dover 
 as " Mr. Smith." The last three weeks of James's reign 
 are weeks of painful ignominy. His plan of spiriting 
 away the infant Prince of Wales was "defeated by Dart- 
 mouth, the admiral on whom he had relied to execute 
 it, but who steadfastly refused to lend a hand to the 
 project. William's army advanced from Exeter to 
 Salisbury, and from Salisbury to Hungerford, where it 
 had been arranged that the royal commissioners should 
 meet the Prince. The result of the negotiation was 
 favourable beyond anything James had a right to 
 expect. The Prince accepted his father-in-law's offer 
 to refer all questions in dispute to the Parliament 
 about to be assembled, stipulating only that the capital 
 should be relieved from military pressure on either side ; 
 that James should, as a security against his inviting 
 French aid, place Portsmouth under the command of an 
 officer in whom both sides had confidence ; and that, 
 while London was denuded of troops, the_ Tower as 
 also Tilbury Fort should be garrisoned by the city of 
 London. It is by no means impossible that James might 
 have saved a crown, however shorn of its prerogatives, 
 had he accepted these terms. But he was bent on attempt- 
 ing to regain by foreign arms that full despotic authority 
 which he could not retain by his own. He contrived, 
 with the assistance of the chivalrous and eccentric French- 
 man Lauzun, to get the Queen and Prince of Wales
 
 jv FLIGHT AND CAPTURE OF JAMES 37 
 
 conveyed safely to France ; and twenty-four hours after- 
 wards, on the night of the llth of December, he en- 
 deavoured to follow them, but he was recognised at the 
 Isle of Sheppey, whence he was about to embark, and 
 his flight arrested. In London, where the royal forces 
 had, in obedience to James's parting orders, been dis- 
 banded by their commander-in-chief, some forty-eight 
 hours of very dangerous panic ensued upon the King's 
 departure; but a provisional government was hastily 
 formed by a committee of temporal and spiritual peers, 
 and measures promptly taken by them for the mainten- 
 ance of order. On hearing of the capture of James, they 
 immediately despatched Feversham with a troop of Life 
 Guards to escort him back to London. Here he was 
 received with some marks of popular commiseration, 
 which he mistook for reviving popular favour, and, re- 
 gaining confidence, he sent Feversham to Windsor as 
 the bearer of a letter to the Prince of Orange, express- 
 ing a desire for a personal conference with him at St. 
 James's Palace, which he offered to fit up for the Prince's 
 accommodation. William, however, as one may now 
 see plainly, was bent on creating a vacancy of the 
 throne. He no douBt keenly regretted the officiousness 
 of the sailors who had defeated James's first attempt at 
 flight, and resolved to do all in his power short of down- 
 right physical coercion to induce him to repeat the 
 attempt. He arrested Feversham for want of a military 
 safe conduct, and replied to James's letter by declining 
 the conference, and desiring him to remain at Rochester. 
 The King had by this time reached Whitehall; but, 
 disquieted by the sternness of William's message, and 
 by the arrest of his officer, his nerve began once more
 
 38 WILLIAM III CHAP, iv 
 
 to fail him. On the night of the 18th three or four 
 battalions of William's infantry and a squadron of horse 
 marched down to Whitehall, and, the English Guards 
 being withdrawn by the King's orders and to the 
 great regret of their stout old commander, Lord Craven, 
 took practical possession of the palace. In the small 
 hours of the morning Halifax and two other lords 
 arrived from Windsor with a recommendation to James 
 to retire to Ham. Ostensibly delivered in the name of 
 his own Peers, James felt satisfied that it was really a 
 hint from William. He proposed to substitute Koches- 
 ter for Ham, and the substitution was accepted by 
 William with a readiness which significantly showed 
 his desire to facilitate his uncle's flight. Early the 
 next morning James, accompanied by Lords Aylesbury, 
 Lichfield, Arran, and Dumbarton peers whose names 
 deserve if only as a matter of curiosity to be recorded, 1 
 set out for Rochester ; and four days afterwards, with 
 motives which have been variously estimated, but in 
 which fear for his life or liberty and hopes of foreign 
 assistanceTowards the recovery of his kingdom played 
 perhaps about an equal part, he again resolved to quit 
 the kingdom. A letter from his Queen intercepted 
 indeed, but which William took care to have conveyed 
 to him confirmed his resolution. Between two and 
 three o'clock on the morning of the 23d he embarked 
 on board a frigate on the Medway, and, finding the wind 
 favourable, landed after a speedy voyage at Ambleteuse, 
 whence he proceeded to St. Germains. 
 
 1 It is true that a large number of courtiers quitted Whitehall at the 
 same time, making the palace, as Ralph says, "like a Desart." But 
 the large majority of them got no further than St. James's.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 1688-1689 
 
 Characteristics of the English Revolution Views of the various parties 
 The Convention Proposal to declare the throne vacant 
 The Regency question The resolution of the Commons 
 Amendment of the Lords The crisis Attitude of Mary An- 
 nouncement of William Resolution passed Declaration of 
 Right Tender of the crown. 
 
 IT is significant of the peaceful and, so to speak, con- 
 stitutional character of our English Revolution that by 
 far its most momentous scenes were enacted within the 
 four walls of the meeting-places of deliberative assem- 
 blies, and find their chronicle in the dry record of votes 
 and resolutions. We have no " days," in the French 
 sense of the word, or hardly any, to commemorate. 
 The gradual, accomplishment of the political work of 
 1688-89 is not marked and emphasised like that of 
 1789-92 at every stage by some out-door event of the 
 picturesque, the stirring, or the terrible kind such for 
 instance as those by which the 14th of July, the 6th of 
 October, the 10th of August, and in a darker order of 
 memories, the 2d of September, have been made land- 
 marks in the revolutionary history of France. On 
 every one of the days thus singled out for glorious or for 
 shameful remembrance, some irrevocable step was taken 
 some new position gained by the advancing forces of
 
 40 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 French democracy from which there was no retreat. 
 We in England have no anniversaries of the kind. We 
 may remember, though we have ceased to celebrate in 
 our churches, the day in which William first set foot 
 on our shores ; but we feel that after all it was not an 
 "event" in the sense of that other great Protestant 
 deliverance with which in month-date it so fortunately 
 coincided, and for which the Anglican liturgy economi- 
 cally set apart a common form of thanksgiving. The 
 discovery of the Gunpowder Plot was an incident hav- 
 ing results of the most permanent and unalterable 
 character. It made all the difference between the 
 safety and the destruction of the Sovereign and the 
 three Estates of the Realm. Again, the execution of 
 Charles I. determined something, by committing the 
 country to the military autocracy of Cromwell and the 
 powerful reaction of the Eestoration. But this cannot 
 be said of the landing of the Prince of Orange at 
 Torbay the mere opening of a drama which might 
 have had any one of half a dozen dSn&Aments; it can 
 hardly even be said of the second and definitive flight 
 of James. The 23d of December 1688 was in one 
 sense no more of an " epoch-making " day than the 5th 
 of November in the same year. It is true that the 
 sovereign's abandonment of his throne and country 
 became tSOweliliiu^ more than a striking dramatic event ; 
 it was elevated into affact of profound ^diticjdjmport. 
 It had or was invested with inward and most moment- 
 ous IegaT~ significance, in addition to its' outward 
 historical prominence. But for all that it determined 
 nothing at the moment of its occurrence but the 
 future of a single man. It is quite conceivable that
 
 v CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTION 4] 
 
 the mere flight of James II. should have settled no 
 more than his own incapacitation that it should not 
 even have brought about the exclusion of his son from 
 the succession, still less have led to the formal recog- 
 nition of a new principle, in the English Constitution, 
 True it is that all these consequences were deducible 
 from it as matter of argument, and flowed from it in 
 fact. True it is that, when James stole down the 
 Medway in the early morning of the 23d of December, 
 he was taking a step which was capable of being turned 
 by the friends of liberty and good government, or his 
 own enemies, and it was difficult to be one without 
 being the other, to the disherison of his son, and the 
 far-reaching substitution of a statutory for a common- 
 law monarchy. But no less true is it that these results 
 were very far from being necessary or automatic in 
 their character ; that, on the contrary, they hung for 
 some critical days in the balance, and that thejactive 
 co-operation of human qualities in its very conspicuous 
 and not too common forms of courage, foresight, and 
 political dexterity, was needed in the last resort to 
 secure them. It is for this reason that our "days," 
 our anniversaries of such merely external incidents as 
 William's landing or James's departure are, compara- 
 tively speaking, so unimportant. No such incident 
 either made or insured the making of our existing 
 English Constitution. The events which really made it 
 passed, as I have said, within the walls of two delibera- 
 tive assemblies, between January 23 and February 13, 
 1689, and its making was not actually assured until this 
 period was well-nigh expired. 
 
 How important was the political work compressed
 
 42 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 within these three weeks will be at once apparent if now, 
 having noted how little was settled by the mere flight 
 of James II., we go on to consider how great was the 
 
 variety of its possible results. James had ceased to 
 be king de facto, that was all ; and the EngfislT people 
 were pretty unanimous in their determination that lie 
 should never be king de facto again. But was he still king 
 dejure 1 If not, if he was not legally sovereign, was any 
 one ? And ifso, who 1 Upon each of these last three 
 questions there was room for difference of opinion, 
 and upon at least two of them opinion was in fact 
 divided. A considerable section of the Tory part}' 
 were of opinion that James, although he had de facto 
 ceased to reign, was still the only lawful king of 
 England, in whose name, at any rate, all royal authority 
 should be exercised, and all royal acts of state performed. 
 To these men, therefore, the only legal and constitutional 
 solution of the problem appeared to be the creation of a 
 Regency. They were for raising William jotfae position 
 of Regent, and empowering him to preside over the actual 
 government of the country in this capacity during the 
 life of his father-in-law. 
 
 A second section of the Tory party held, on the other 
 hand, that James having by his own act ceased to govern, 
 had also ceasecTto reign. By deliberately laying aside 
 
 the sceptre he had brought about a demise of the crown. 
 _ . i , , , 
 
 It had simply devolved upon the person next in succession ; 
 
 . and that person was, they declared, the Princess Mary. 
 There was no need therefore for tne creation^~6f a 
 Regent, and still less for the more extreme and wholly 
 unprecedented step of appointing a new sovereign. All 
 that was necessary was a mere formal recognition by the
 
 v THE VARIOUS PARTIES 43 
 
 country of the bare legal facts of the case. According 
 to this party the Princess Mary was in truth at that 
 moment the lawful Queen of .England, and nothing more 
 was needed than a national acknowledgment of her 
 title. 
 
 To both of these doctrines the Whig party were 
 equally opposed. They held in opposition to the former, 
 that"7TamesTiaol. ceased to reign, and in opposition to the 
 latter, fHafc the crown had been not demised but simply 
 forfeited. The King's destruction ot his own right could 
 not have, and had not had, the effect of transmitting them 
 to any one else whomsoever. They resided at that 
 moment, whatever constitutional fictions might aver to 
 the contrary, in no one ; and a special expression of the 
 national will, a special exertion of the national power, 
 would be required in favour of some designated successors 
 to these rights before anybody could be regarded, 
 whether in fact or law, as invested with them. 
 
 Apart from all political prepossessions there can, I 
 think, be no serious dispute as to which was the most 
 logical and tenable contention of the three ; and that this 
 was distinctly that of the Whigs. The Tories who con- 
 tended that James had lost his right to the personal 
 exercise of the royal authority, while yet retaining so 
 much of that authority that any one who exercised it in 
 his stead must be supposed to do so as his deputy, were 
 involved in a hopeless contradiction. In assuming to 
 appoint such deputy to act for a person whom they still 
 persisted in regarding as king dejure, they were themselves 
 obviously usurping a portion of that \eryjus which they 
 professed to respect. True, they attempted to get over 
 this objection by urging that James had placed himself
 
 44 WILLIAM III CIIAP. 
 
 under a disability to exercise his royal authority, hut 
 they could point to nothing in the facts of the case to 
 support their contention. Disability to exercise royal 
 authority could, in the view of the Constitution, arise from 
 one cause alone, the same cause from which in the view 
 of the common law arises the disability to exercise civil 
 rights. The disabled King, like the disabled subject, 
 must have become mentally incapacitated ; and James's 
 incapacitation for the work of government was purely 
 moral. Setting aside the deposition and execution of his 
 father, which even the Whigs did not endeavour to elevate 
 into a regular precedent, there was no constitutional 
 sanction for the withdrawal of the reins of state from 
 the hands of the monarch, on any ground save that of 
 insanity. Once extend this, and admit that a king who 
 is merely bad may be treated as though he were mad, 
 and the Whig doctrine is thereby absolutely conceded. 
 As to the practical inconveniences of a Regency exercised 
 in the name of an actively hostile sovereign a sovereign 
 who would have been sometimes in arms against his own 
 nominal authority, and always plotting its overthrow 
 they would of course have been both grave and numerous. 
 But it is less surprising that the Regency party of that 
 day should have ignored them than that they should 
 have been so indifferent to the complete surrender of 
 their political principles which was involved in the 
 proposal to which they committed themselves. 
 
 More logical in form, but equally untenable in fact, 
 was the position assumed by the other section of the Tory 
 party. There was perhaps nothing altogether irreconcil- 
 able with their principles in the theory that a voluntary 
 abandonment of the throne might operate as a demise of
 
 v THE VARIOUS PARTIES 45 
 
 the crown ; but coolly to assert a right to pass over the 
 infant Prince of Wales on the strength of the mere idle 
 story that he was a supposititious child 1 was a pretension 
 which, especially as put forward by men who were such 
 sticklers for constitutional fictions as to insist that there 
 must at any given moment be some one person or other 
 entitled to wear the English crown, appears little short 
 of preposterous. 
 
 The Whig theory of the situation rejected the fictions 
 of both branches of the Tory party with equal decision. 
 There was no need, according to the Whigs, for the 
 country to bewilder itself in efforts to distinguish between 
 de jure and de facto sovereignty, still less to resort to 
 the far-fetched expedient of assuming a demise of the 
 crown in order to prevent the former kind of sovereignty 
 from undergoing interruption. A king, they held, might 
 lose his title to the crown by a voluntary abandonment 
 of the throne; and he might lose that title without any- 
 body succeeding to it. Indeed, since the English crown 
 devolved according to the ordinary English laws of suc- 
 cession, it was impossible that anybody should succeed 
 to it by mere operation of law during its former wearer's 
 life-time. If it was a principle of constitutional law that 
 at any given moment there must be some lawful king or 
 queen of England in existence, it was no less a principle 
 
 1 How idle this story was may best be judged by studying the so- 
 called evidence in its favour, as set forth in the pages of that writer 
 who, more perhaps than any other chronicler of the events of that 
 period, would have liked to establish its truth. No one, I think, can 
 read Burnet's account of the Queen's accouchement, so completely 
 demonstrating as it does the impossibility of the alleged fraud, without 
 wondering at the strength of the partisanship and popular prejudice 
 which could for a moment have believed in its perpetration.
 
 46 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 of the common law that nemo est hares viventis. James, 
 therefore, had according to the Whig theory ceased to 
 be sovereign, and no one else had become sovereign in 
 his stead : the throne was vacant. Being vacant it was 
 for the Convention to fill it, and the members of -that 
 body were both entitled and bound to select the fittest 
 successor to it, unconstrained, though not necessarily 
 uninfluenced, by the claims of successorship which would 
 have vested in this, that, or the other person under an 
 ordinary demise of the crown. 
 
 That this was the most logical and self-consistent 
 view of the situation appears to me undeniable ; but it 
 is a singular illustration of the manner in which events 
 may transpose the relative proportions of principles that 
 this Whig corollary from the abdication of James 
 appeared to the statesmen of the time, and even it 
 should seem to Macaulay, a century and a half after 
 them, to be a more pregnant assertion of democratic 
 doctrine, and a bolder step in its application, than that 
 expressed in the earlier proposition that James had 
 ceased to reign. Nowadays the difference between the 
 Tories who contended that the crown had heen demised, 
 and the Whigs who insisted that the throne was vacant, 
 hardly arrests the student for an instant. He is disposed 
 to brush the Tory fiction aside as alike irrational and 
 unnecessary. The real passage of the Rubicon took 
 place in his view of the matter when it was declared 
 that James had ceased to be de jure king, and no subse- 
 quent assertion of popular rights in the choice of a suc- 
 cessor could possibly be stronger or more important than 
 that declaration itself. Yet whereas the Convention 
 accepted the first of these propositions nemine contradicente,
 
 v THE CONVENTION . 47 
 
 the second was only adopted after having been once I 
 actually rejected, and was in fact the subject of so sharp | 
 a conflict of opinion as to threaten irreconcilable dead- I 
 lock between the two branches of the constituent body. 1 
 The Convention met on the 22d of January, when 
 Halifax was chosen president in the Lords ; Powle, 
 Speaker of the Commons. A letter from William, read 
 in both Houses, informed their members thalfTie nad I 
 endeavoured to the best of his power to discharge the ; 
 trust reposed in him, and that it now rested with the 
 Convention to lay the foundation of a firm security for 
 their religion, laws, and liberties. The Prince then went 
 on to refer to the dangerous condition of the Protestants 
 in Ireland and the present state of things abroad, which 
 obliged him to tell them that next to the danger of un- 
 reasonable divisions among themselves, nothing could be 
 so fatal as too great a delay in their consultations. And 
 he further intimated that as England was already bound 
 by treaty to help the Dutch in such exigencies as, de- 
 prived of the troops which he had brought over, and 
 threatened with war by Louis XIV., they might easily 
 
 1 The fact that the practical cause of this sharp conflict was the 
 rivalry between the partisans of William and those of Mary is only a 
 partial explanation of the phenomenon referred to in the text. It is 
 a reason for the Convention having debated the Whig corollary so 
 much, but not for their debating the Whig-Tory original proposition 
 so little. Of course the practical explanation is the simple one, that 
 James had made himself impossible. Both parties concurred so 
 readily in that opinion that they applied it without either of them 
 pausing to consider its scope as a precedent, and that, quite apart from 
 all controversies as to regency, demise of the crown, vacancy of the 
 throne, or what not, the first instance in which a people pronounced 
 any king impossible such king being of sound mind, and still assert- 
 ing his sovereignty let in the whole modern democratic theory.
 
 48 WILLIAM III CHAP 
 
 be reduced to, so he felt confident that the cheerful con- 
 currence of the Dutch in preserving this kingdom would 
 meet with all the returns of friendship from Protestants 
 and Englishmen whenever their own condition should 
 require assistance. To this the two Houses replied with 
 an address thanking the Prince for his great care in the 
 administration of the affairs of the kingdom to this time, 
 and formally continuing to him the same commission, 1 
 recommending to his particular care the present state 
 of Ireland. William's answer to this address was char- 
 acteristic both of his temperament and his preoccupation. 
 " My lords and gentlemen," he said, " I am glad that 
 what I have done hath pleased you ; and since you desire 
 me to continue the administration of affairs, I am willing 
 to accept it. I must recommend to you the consideration 
 of affairs abroad which makes it fit for you to expedite 
 your business, not only for making a settlement at home 
 on a good foundation, but for the safety of Europe." On 
 the 28th the Commons resolved themselves into a com- 
 mittee of the whole House, and Richard Hampden, son 
 of the great John, was voted into the chair. The hon- 
 our of having been the first to speak the word which 
 was on everybody's lips belongs to Gilbert Dolben, son 
 of a late Archbishop of York, who "made a long speech 
 tending to prove that the King's deserting his kingdom 
 without appointing any person to administer the govern- 
 ment amounted in reason and judgment of law to a 
 demise." Sir Robert Howard, one of the members for 
 
 1 It is somewhat singular that Macaulay should have taken no 
 notice of an address which really constituted William's sole legal, or 
 quasi legal title to the administration of affairs between the assembling 
 of the Convention (which necessarily revoked his original commission) 
 and the conclusion of its king-making labours.
 
 v LORDS AND COMMONS 49 
 
 Castle Rising, went a step further, and asserted that the 
 throne was vacant. The extreme Tories made a vain 
 effort to procure an adjournment, but the combination 
 against them of Whigs and their own moderates was too 
 strong for them, and after a long and stormy debate the 
 House resolved " That King James II, having endeav- 
 oured to subvert the constitution by breaking the original 
 contract between the King and people, and by the 
 advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons having 
 violated the fundamental laws and withdrawn himself 
 out of the kingdom, has abdicated the government, and 
 that the throne is thereby vacant." 
 
 This resolution was at once sent up to the Lords. 
 Before, however, they could proceed to consider it, an- 
 other message arrived from the Commons to the effect 
 that they had just voted it inconsistent with the safety 
 and welfare of this Protestant ^nation to be governed by a 
 Popish king. To this resolution the Peers assented 
 with a readiness which showed in advance that James 
 had no party in the Upper House, and that the utmost 
 length to which the Tories in that body were prepared 
 to go was to support the proposal of a Regency. The 
 first resolution of the Commons was then put aside in 
 order that this proposal might be discussed. It was 
 Archbishop Sancroft's plan, who, however, did not make 
 his appearance to advocate it, and in his absence it was 
 supported by Rochester and Nottingham, while Halifax 
 and Danby led the opposition to it. After a day's 
 debate it was lost by the narrow majority of two, forty- 
 nine peers declaring in its favour, and fifty-one against 
 it. The Lords then went into Committee on the 
 Commons' resolution, and at once proceeded, as was
 
 50 WILLIAM III OHAP. 
 
 natural enough, to dispute the clause in its preamble 
 which referred to the original contract between the 
 King and the people. No Tory of course could really 
 have subscribed to the doctrine implied in these words ; 
 but it was doubtless as hard in those days as in these to 
 interest an assembly of English politicians in affirmations 
 of abstract political principle, and some Tories probably 
 thought it not worth while to multiply causes of dissent 
 with the Lower House by attacking a purely academic 
 recital of their resolution. Anyhow, the numbers of 
 the minority slightly fell off, only forty-six peers object- 
 ing to the phrase, while fifty-three voted that it should 
 stand. The word " deserted" was then substituted with- 
 out a division for the word " abdicated," and the hour 
 being late, the Lords adjourned. 
 
 The real battle, of course, was now at hand, and to 
 any one who assents to the foregoing criticisms it will 
 be evident that it was far less of a conflict on a point 
 of constitutional principle, and far more of a struggle 
 between the parties of two distinct one cannot call 
 them rival claimants to the throne than high-flying 
 Whig writers are accustomed to represent it. It would 
 of course, be too much to say that the Whigs insisted on 
 declaring the vacancy of the throne, only because they 
 wished to place William on it, and that the Tories con- 
 tended for a demise of the crown, only because they 
 wished an English princess to succeed to the throne 
 rather than a Dutch prince. Still, it is pretty certain 
 that, but for this conflict of preferences, the two political 
 parties, who had made so little difficulty of agreeing in 
 the declaration that James had ceased to reign, would 
 never have found it so hard to concur in its almost
 
 v THE CRISIS 51 
 
 necessary sequence that the throne was vacant. The 
 debate on the last clause of the resolution began, and it 
 soon became apparent that the Whigs were outnumbered. 
 The forty-nine peers who hacT supported the proposal of 
 a Regency, which implied that the royal title was still 
 in James, were bound, of course, to oppose the proposi- 
 tion that the throne was vacant ; and they were rein- 
 forced by several peers who held that that title had 
 already devolved upon Mary. An attempt to compro- 
 mise the dispute by omitting the words pronouncing 
 the throne vacant, and inserting words which merely 
 proclaimed the Prince and Princess of Orange King and 
 Queen, was rejected by fifty-two votes to forty-seven 1 ; 
 and the original clause was then put and negatived by 
 fifty-five votes to forty-one. 
 
 Thus amended by the substitution of "deserted" 
 for "abdicated," and the omission of the words "and 
 
 1 The offer and rejection of this compromise appears to me to be 
 additional proof of the proposition advanced in the text viz. that 
 both Whigs and Tories were far more solicitous for the success of their 
 candidate than for the triumph of their principles. Macaulay, it is 
 true, contends, as from his point of view he was bound to do, that the 
 Whigs made no concession of principle in proposing their compromise ; 
 for if, he argues, the Convention could elect William and Mary there 
 must have been a vacancy of the throne. But surely the resolution 
 as amended might have been treated as merely declaratory of Mary's 
 title, and elective only so far as it associated William with her on a 
 throne which had become his wife's by succession, and so would never 
 have been vacated at all. No ; it was a genuine and not a fictitious 
 surrender of Whig principle ; and while it proved that the Whigs 
 were prepared to offer any such concession as would make William 
 King, its rejection proved that the Tories cared for no such concession 
 as did not leave Mary sole Queen. The gain of votes which the Whigs 
 secured by the compromise probably represents the proportion of peers 
 who really cared for the abstract principle apart from the concrete 
 facts.
 
 52 WILLIAM III 
 
 that the throne is thereby vacant," the resolution was 
 sent back to the Commons, who instantly and without a 
 division disagreed with the amendments. The situation 
 was now becoming critical. The prospect of a deadlock 
 between the two branches of the Convention threw 
 London into a ferment ; crowds assembled in Palace Yard ; 
 petitions were presented in that tumultuous fashion 
 which converts supplication into menace. To their 
 common credit, however, both parties united in resist- 
 ance to these attempts at popular coercion; and William 
 himself interposed to enjoin a stricter police of the capital. 
 On Monday, the 4th of February, the Lords resolved 
 to insist on their amendments ; on the following day 
 the Commons reaffirmed their disagreement with them 
 by 282 votes to 151. A free Conference between the 
 two Houses was then arranged^ and met on the follow- 
 ing^ay. "~ 
 
 But the dispute, like many another in our political 
 history, had meanwhile been settled out of court. Be- 
 tween the date of the Peers' vote and the Conference 
 Mary had communicated to j)anby her high displeasure 
 at the conduct of those who were setting up fief claims 
 in opposition to those of her husband ; and William, who 
 had previously maintained an unbroken silence, now 
 made, unsolicited, a declaration of a most important, 
 and indeed of a conclusive kind. If the Convention, he 
 said, chose to adopt the plan of a Regency, he had 
 nothing to say against it, only they must look out for 
 some other person to fill the office, for he himself would 
 not consent to do so. As to the alternative proposal of 
 putting Mary on the throne and allowing him to n.-i'gn 
 by' her courtesy, "No man," he said, "can esteem a
 
 v ATTITUDE OF MARY 53 
 
 woman more than I do the Princess ; but I am so made 
 that"! cannot think of holding anything by apron-strings; 
 nor can I think it reasonable to have any share in the 
 government unless it be put in my own person, and 
 that for the term of my life. If you think fit to settle 
 it otherwise I will not oppose you, but will go back to 
 Holland and meddle no more in your affairs. " These 
 few sentences of plain speaking swept away the clouds 
 of intrigue and pedantry as by a wholesome gust of 
 wind. Both political parties at once perceived that 
 there was but one possible issue from the situation. 
 The Conference was duly held, and the constitutional 
 question was, with great display of now unnecessary 
 learning, solemnly debated; but the managers for the 
 two Houses met only to register a foregone conclusion. 
 The word "abdicated" was restored; the vacancy of 
 the throne was voted by sixty-two votes to forty-seven ; 
 and it was immediately proposed and carried without a 
 division that the Prince and Princess of Orange should 
 be declared King and Queen of England. 
 
 It now only remained to give formal effect to this 
 resolution, and in so doing to settle the conditions 
 whereon the crown, which the Convention had now 
 distinctly recognised itself as conferring upon the Prince 
 and Princess, should be conferred. A Committee ap- 
 pointed by the Commons to consider what safeguards 
 should be taken against the aggressions of future sover- 
 eigns had made a report in which they recommended 
 not only a solemn enunciation of ancient constitutional 
 principles, but the enactment of new laws. The Com- 
 mons, however, having regard to the importance of 
 prompt action, judiciously resolved on carrying out
 
 54 WILLIAM III CHAP 
 
 / only the first part of the programme. They determined 
 to preface their tender of the crown to William and 
 Mary by a recital of the royal encroachments of the 
 past reigns, and a formal assertion of the constitutional 
 principles againstTTrilich such encroachments had 
 offended. This document, drafted by a Committee 
 of which the celebrated Somers, then a scarcely-known 
 young advocate, was the~ chairman, was the famous 
 DECLARATION or RIGHT. 
 
 The grievances wnich it recapitulated in its earlier 
 portion, fourteen in number, were as follows : (1) the 
 royal pretension to dispense with and suspend laws 
 without consent of Parliament; (2) the punishment of 
 subjects, as in the Seven Bishops' case, for petitioning 
 the Crown ; (3) the establishment of the illegal Court of 
 High Commission for ecclesiastical affairs ; (4) the levy of 
 taxes without the consent of Parliament ; (5) the main- 
 tenance of a standing army in time of peace without the 
 same consent ; (6) the disarmament of Protestants while 
 Papists were both armed and employed contrary to law ; 
 (7) the violation of the freedom of election; (8) the 
 prosecution in the King's Bench of suits only cog- 
 nisable in Parliament; (9) the return of partial and 
 corrupt juries ; (10) the requisition of excessive bail , 
 (11) the imposition of excessive fines; (12) the infliction 
 of illegal and cruel punishments ; (13) the grants of the 
 estates of accused persons before conviction. Then, after 
 solemnly reaffirming the popular rights from which these 
 abuses of the prerogative derogated, the Declaration goes 
 on to recite that, having an " entire confidence " William 
 would " preserve them from the violation of the rights 
 which they have here asserted, the Three Estates
 
 v DECLARATION OF RIGHT 56 
 
 do resolve that William and Mary, Prince and Princess 
 of Orange, be and be declared King and Queen ... to 
 hold the Crown and Royal Dignity ... to them the 
 said Prince and Princess during their Lives and the Life 
 of the Survivor of them ; and the sole and full exercise 
 of the Royal Power be only in and exercised by the 
 said Prince of Orange, in the Names of the said Prince 
 and Princess during their Lives, and after their Deceases, 
 the said Crown and Royal Dignity of the said Kingdoms 
 and Dominions to the Heirs of the Body of the said 
 Princess ; and, for default of such Issue, to the Princess 
 AnEeTof Denmark and the Heirs of her BodVJ andTfor 
 default of such Issue, to the Issue of UKe said Prince of 
 Orange." Then followed an alteration required by the 
 scrupulous conscience of Nottingham in the terms of the 
 Oath of Allegiance. 
 
 On the 1 2th of February Mary arrived from Holland. 
 On thefollowing day, in the Banqueting House at White- 
 hall, the Prince and Princess of Orange were waited on 
 by both Houses of Convention in a body. The Declara- 
 tion was read by the Clerk of the Crown; the sovereignty 
 solemnly__tendered to them by Halifax, in tnVname of 
 the Estates ; and 6n~TiEe" sameday they were pro- 
 claimed King and Queen in the usual places in the cities 
 of London and Westminster.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 1689 
 
 William's part in the Revolution Convention declared a Parliament 
 Oath of Allegiance Settlement of Civil List Appropriation 
 Clause Toleration and Comprehension Address of the Commons 
 inviting the King to declare war. 
 
 THUS prudently and calmly was effected our great 
 English Revolution. Both as an event and as an 
 achievement we have equal cause to review its history 
 with pleasure ; for if in some aspects it testifies to the 
 good fortune of our nation, it reflects credit in others on 
 the good qualities of our people. I have endeavoured 
 in the last chapter to point out that the modern Whig 
 view of the Revolution as a great conflict between two 
 opposing schools of constitutional doctors, resulting in 
 the victory of the more liberal one, is largely legendary; 
 that the struggle between Whigs and Tories resolved itself 
 almost entirely into a dispute of preferences as between 
 two alternative candidates for the throne ; and that both 
 parties showed themselves alike prepared to waive the 
 principles which they severally held on condition of 
 attaining their practical end the success of their favoured 
 candidate. But this does not in any way detract either 
 from the value of the Revolution or from the merits of 
 its authors ; while it otherwise only serves to conform it
 
 CHAP, vi THE NEW KING 57 
 
 to the normal type of English political work. All oxir 
 great constitutional precedents are the parents, of 
 principle rather than its offspring; we deduce our 
 theories from accomplished facts of our own creation, 
 the creation of such accomplished facts being itself 
 determined by no theoretical considerations, but by 
 certain practical exigencies of the moment. Few 
 Englishmen will think any worse of the Whig because, 
 although firmly wedded to the principle of national 
 sovereignty, he would have been willing to lose the oppor- 
 tunity of expressly affirming it so long as he could by any 
 means place William of Orange, with full regal power, 
 on the throne. Nor will they be any more disposed to 
 condemn the Tory in that when he found himself com- 
 pelled to give way on the practical point of the suc- 
 cession, he did not think it worth while to quarrel with 
 the assertions or implications of Whig principle con- 
 tained in the resolution by which the transfer was 
 effected. On the contrary, the temper and habits of mind 
 thus jointly illustrated are national characteristics on 
 which we especially and not unreasonably pride ourselves. 
 
 For the purposes of a precedent, too, the transaction 
 could hardly have come {nore Happily \pff\ Even a Tory 
 of to-day will admit that it was good for the future 
 development of our constitutional life that the Whig 
 principles of " national sovereignty," " original contract 
 between king and people," and all the rest of it, should 
 then and there receive unmistakable recognition and 
 irrevocable ratification ; and this beyond question they 
 did receive. No hair-splittings about desertion or 
 abdication 1 could obscure the two plain facts, that the 
 
 1 There are but two ways in which a sovereign can, while alive,
 
 58 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 nation deposed James II., and by a distinct assertion of 
 inherent, or assumption of new, authority it matters 
 not which made a new king out of a man who, but for 
 such assertion or assumption^ of authority, could never 
 have become more than the consort of a queen. 
 
 As regards the new King himself, his behaviour at this 
 great crisis in his own fortunes and the destiny of two 
 nations deserves, at any rate, the credit of honesty and 
 straightforwardness. We shall not really "aHoPtotEat 
 honour by seeking any more showy motives than those 
 which lie on the face of his conduct. The mere mas- 
 culine repugnance of the man of action to lower the 
 spear before the distaff would in any case probably 
 have induced him to reject the proposal of the Tory 
 lords. But apart from this, his shrewd knowledge of 
 men and clear insight into politics assured him that he 
 had only to refuse the false position in order to compel 
 the offer of the true one. He might have been all else 
 that he was the devoted son of Holland; the true, 
 if unimpassioned, friend of England ; the implacable 
 enemy of the French king and his designs ; the ardent 
 champion of Protestantism and the liberties of Europe ; 
 and yet only been the more tempted in every one of 
 these by a place on the steps of a powerful throne, and 
 an influence which even from that situation he might 
 
 and compos mentis, become divested of his regal attributes and authority 
 by abdication and by deposition ; and it is impossible to define abdi- 
 cation satisfactorily by any form of words which does not involve the 
 idea of a voluntary act. Even if a voluntary abandonment or " deser- 
 tion of the Government " amounted to abdication, it would not help 
 the case. James's flight from England in 1688 was no more voluntary 
 than the flight of his brother, then king de jure, after Worcester in 
 1651. Both flights were taken under what was or was conceived to 
 be force majeure.
 
 vi CHOICE OF MINISTERS 59 
 
 have wielded to the attainment of many great ends. 
 He was saved from accepting it solely by his pride, his u 
 ambition, and his perspicacity. He resented'tne thought j 
 oTTiolding power as his wife's lieutenant, and he saw 
 that he had only to refuse that post in order to make 
 himself a necessity as king. 
 
 The first act of the new sovereign was to summon 
 and swear a Privy Council, and to nominate a Ministry. 
 In the then infancy of our modern Constitution it was 
 not, as it now is, incumbent upon the sovereign to select 
 the Ministers from one particular party. It was com- 
 petent to him, and William deemed it expedient for 
 him, to tender office to the representatives of both 
 political connections. Danby, a Tory by principle, 
 though he had sided with the Whigs in opposing the 
 Regency scheme, and only broke away from them on 
 the question of declaring the throne vacant, was made 
 President of the Council. Halifax, a Trimmer indeed, 
 but of closer affinities with Whiggery than with Toryism, 
 and the chief upholder of the Whig doctrine on the 
 question of the succession, became Lord Privy Seal. 
 Nottingham, a Tory up to almost any point short of 
 passive obedience, received the seals of one Secretary- 
 ship_of State ; upon Shrewsbury, a Whig, were Bestowed 
 those of the other. The Treasury and the Admiralty 
 were committed to the Administration of Boards the 
 former under the presidency of Admiral Herbert, the 
 latter under that of Charles Mordaunt^afterwards the 
 famous and eccentric Earl of Peterborough. By an 
 exercise of the royal authority, willingly acquiesced in 
 at the time by the nation, but destined to entail more 
 momentous national consequences than any of his sub-
 
 60 WILLIAM III CHAP 
 
 jects foresaw, King William retained in his own hands 
 the exclusive direction of foreign affairs. The Great 
 SeaTwas placed in commission. 
 
 The first question propounded to the Privy Council 
 was whether the Convention should be declared a 
 lawful Parliament, or dissolved and a fresh Parlia- 
 ment summoned in the regular manner by royal 
 
 writ. The Council advised the former course, and a 
 
 L." 
 Bill declaring the Convention a Parliament was at once 
 
 I introduced and passed through the House of Lords. 
 
 ' It was opposed in the Commons by the Tories, who 
 hoped that a general election might strengthen their 
 numbers; but the resistance founded as it was upon 
 mere technical considerations, and with historical pre- 
 cedent against it was never very formidable ; and the 
 Bill passed the Lower House in a few days, and became 
 law. Among its clauses was one providing that no one 
 should, after the 1st of March then next ensuing, sit 
 or vote in either House of Parliament without taking 
 the oaths of allegiance to the new King and Queen, 
 and the Jacobites and ultra-Tories conceived the hope 
 that many peers, bishops, and commoners would find it 
 impossible to reconcile their consciences to this test. 
 As a matter of fact the non-jurors, except among the 
 Episcopal body, to whom Archbishop Bancroft set the 
 example of recusancy, were Comparatively few. Even 
 later, when the oath was tendered to the clergy at 
 
 I large, the number of those who found themselves con- 
 
 I scientiously unable to take it was but one-twentieth of 
 
 I the whole body. 1 
 
 1 This, however, it should be conceded, was really, of the two, a 
 more respectable proportion ; for the clergy had a sterner alternative
 
 vi CONVENTION DECLARED IN PARLIAMENT 61 
 
 In the interval, however, between the passing of 
 the Act and the day fixed for submission to the test, 
 the great question of the royal revenues was taken up 
 and decided. Certain proceeds of taxation were in 
 those days granted to the Crown either for a fixed 
 term of years or for life. The former, being on the 
 face of them annexed to the regal office, were of course 
 transferable without much difficulty or dispute to the new 
 incumbent of that office ; but doubts naturally arose as 
 to the exact legal status of the latter kind of imposts. 
 Some were for interpreting the word " life " as virtu- 
 ally meaning reign, upon which construction the right 
 to exact these taxes had lapsed by the deposition of the 
 sovereign to whom they were granted. Others insisted 
 on an interpretation stricter in one sense and laxer in 
 another, and argued that though William had become 
 entitled to these revenues as King he could only enjoy 
 them during the life of James. In other words, in order to 
 avoid taking liberties with the word " life," they were 
 prepared to behave with far more unbridled license to the 
 word "king." The practical inconvenience of settling 
 revenues on William during the life of James may or 
 may not have weighed more with the Parliament than 
 the theoretical anomaly of treating the former as 
 sovereign for one purpose and the latter as such for 
 another ; but anyhow it was tacitly agreed to treat the 
 grant to James as annulled by his so-called abdication. 
 The Commons then voted the sum of XI, 200,000 for 
 the current year, one half to be appropriated to the 
 
 before them than the bishops, peers, or members of the Lower House. 
 The latter had only status at stake the former, in most cases, their 
 means of subsistence.
 
 62 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 civil list, the other half to the defences of the country 
 mainly, of course, in other words, to the prosecution 
 of the impending war in Ireland. At the first sitting 
 of Parliament, after the prorogation, which took 
 place some months afterwards, the Eoyal Speech from 
 the Throne contained an announcement to the Commons 
 that in order that they might be satisfied how the 
 money had been laid out which they had already given, 
 his Majesty had directed the accounts to be laid before 
 them whenever they should think fit to call for them. 
 The privilege thus practically acknowledged may no 
 doubt be, as some constitutional lawyers have con- 
 tended, coeval with the constitution ; but it had been 
 so intermittently respected that its unvarying recog- 
 nition from this time forward is justly reckoned as one 
 of the chief gains which accrued to our parliamentary 
 system from the Revolution. It seems, however, to 
 have been only in the Stat., 9 and 10 Will. III. c. 
 44, that there appears an appropriation clause of the 
 modern type apportioning all the supplies of the session 
 to the services for which they were provided. 
 
 But while these delicate matters of royal rights and 
 official income were being disposed of, the King was 
 commendably anxious to show himself at once in some 
 other light than that of an applicant for parliamentary 
 aids. As early as the 1st of March he sent a special 
 message to the Commons calling their attention to the 
 "grievous burden" of the unpopular hearth -tax, and 
 signifying that assent either "to the regulation of it, 
 or to the taking of it wholly away," not doubting but 
 the Commons would take care of his revenue in some 
 other way. This judicious proposal gave great satis-
 
 vi TOLERATION AND COMPREHENSION 63 
 
 faction. The Commons replied in terms of warm 
 acknowledgment, and the city of London presented to 
 him an address of thanks. He interposed, however, 
 with less success and perhaps with less judgment in the 
 religious disputes by which the country was divided. 
 The traditions, alike of his nation and his house, may 
 well have encouraged him to aspire to the great office of 
 moderator and mediator between contending sects ; but 
 it is doubtful whether such a post could under any cir- 
 cumstances have been within the reach of a Dutch Cal- 
 vinist. For the imperfect and illogically - regulated 
 relief accorded by the Toleration _Act to most of the 
 dissenting denominations the country was prepared ; 
 but neither the occasion nor the idea of the Compre- 
 hension Bill a measure for widening the entrance to the 
 Church of England at the very moment when those who 
 had chosen to remain outside were being encouraged 
 by a relieving Act to remain there was in itself a 
 happy one. Churchmen were, from their own point of 
 view, entitled to argue that the two measures proceeded 
 upon two opposite and conflicting theories of state 
 policy ; that toleration, properly understood and applied, 
 would render comprehension superfluous, and had indeed 
 been accepted by the Church with that very object ; 
 and that it was but a poor return for her surrender of 
 her ancient claim to compel schismatics into her 
 fold, that she should be required unduly to extend 
 its limits for the purpose of embracing them. It is 
 probable enough that William's eye for an ecclesiastical 
 scruple was not quite as keen as his insight into the 
 principles of civil government and the workings of 
 European policy, for he seems to have been surprised
 
 64 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 and disappointed at finding that Churchmen and Dis- 
 senters, though the Toleration Act was accepted by the 
 former without serious difficulty and by the latter with 
 hearty rejoicings, would neither of them so much as look 
 at his scheme of comprehension. He evidently under- 
 stood neither the "dissidence of dissent" nor the 
 Anglicanism of the Anglican Communion. The Com- 
 prehension Bill had a troubled time of it even in the 
 House of Lords, where it was first introduced, and after 
 some debate in the House of Commons it was shelved. 
 As vainly did William attempt to compose the feud 
 between the Whig and Tory Churchman and Noncon- 
 formist by offering, so to speak, a bribe to each of them 
 to tolerate the other. The new oath of allegiance, 
 framed by Parliament for itself, required to be extended 
 to all those classes of persons who had been compelled to 
 take one. Legislation was commenced for that purpose 
 concurrently with the debates over the Comprehension 
 Bill, and the King, according to Burnet, saw here, as he 
 thought, an opportunity of bringing the disputants to a 
 mutually beneficial compromise. In his speech to the 
 Commons on the 16th of March, he signified his wish that 
 in the pending legislation " they would leave room for 
 the admission of all Protestants that were willing and 
 able to serve" a suggestion which, of course, was 
 directly aimed at the tests then excluding Dissenters 
 from office. And while he pressed this measure of 
 relief upon the Tories, he at the same time invited the 
 Whigs to make a concession to their adversaries by 
 absolving, as he was willing to do, the existing beneficed 
 clergy from the necessity of taking the new oath of 
 allegiance. He begged of the one party not to compel
 
 vr OATHS BILL 65 
 
 the Nonconformist to choose between offence against 
 conscience and exclusion from civil office, and of the 
 other party not to compel a clergyman to choose between 
 offence against conscience and expulsion from ecclesias- 
 tical office ; and he imagined that each would find their 
 account in consenting. But no. The Whig was deter- 
 mined to force the oath upon the parson ; the Tory was 
 resolved to force the test upon the dissenter. No pro- 
 vision of relief for Nonconformists was introduced into 
 the Comprehension Bill, and the measure itself was 
 shortly afterwards dropped. The Oaths Bill passed in a 
 form which compelled every beneficed clergyman to 
 swear allegiance to the new King and Queen by the 1st 
 of August 1689, on pain of suspension, to be followed on 
 the 1st of February 1690, in the event of the non- juror 
 remaining contumacious, by deprivation. 
 
 History has done justice to these well-meaning efforts 
 of William ; but the political virtue which for the 
 moment was its own reward, must, one imagines, have 
 been felt by him as painfully unremunerative. He could 
 not have expected to be personally popular, and he was 
 not, though Macaulay, in his desire for strong pictorial 
 effect, has surely exaggerated his unpopularity. But he, 
 no doubt, counted upon wielding a greater civil in- 
 fluence at the outset of his career than he in fact dis- 
 covered to be his, and must have learned, with some 
 chagrin, that he had failed to realise the vehemence of 
 those English party conflicts in which not even the 
 ablest and best intentioned of mediators can interpose 
 without disappointment until he has mastered all the 
 secrets of their intensity. On the whole, one can easily 
 understand the feelinsr of satisfaction with which he
 
 66 WILLIAM III CHAP, vi 
 
 hailed the coming of the hour when he, with whom the 
 instincts of the European statesman and soldier were 
 always dominant over these of the domestic adminis- 
 trator, was once more summoned to activity in one of 
 the two arts in which he shone. On the 19th of April the 
 Commons presented an address to the Crown, in which, 
 after reciting the various acts of hostility committed 
 by Louis XIV. against their country, " particularly the 
 present invasion of Ireland," they assured William that 
 when he "should think fit to enter into a war against 
 the French king, they would give him such assistance in 
 a parliamentary way as to enable him to support and go 
 through with the same." To this invitation from his 
 Parliament William returned an answer of ready ac- 
 quiescence, while to those about him he exclaimed, 
 with unwonted animation, " This is the first day of my 
 reign."
 
 CHAPTEE VII 
 
 1689-1690 
 
 Invasion of Ireland Campaign of 1689 Parliamentary strife The 
 conduct of the war The Gates Case The Succession Bill 
 Attempts to pass an Indemnity Bill Rancour of the Whigs 
 Their factious opposition to William's Irish plans Dissolution 
 of Parliament. 
 
 AN address from Parliament praying the sovereign to 
 declare war against a foreign state is far from a common 
 incident in our history; and even in this instance the 
 initiative then taken by the Commons was one of form 
 rather than of fact. The descent of James upon Ireland, 
 under the convoy of a French fleet of fifteen sail of the line, 
 and accompanied by a force of 2500 French soldiers, 
 amounted to an act of war on the part of France, if ever 
 such an act was committed by one nation upon another ; 
 and it was not till more than a month after the perpetra- 
 tion of this outrage that the address referred to in the last 
 chapter was presented to the King. James landed at 
 Kinsale on the 12th of March; the address to the King 
 isTTaCed, as has been said, on the 19th of April. Eng- 
 land, moreover, was not the first of the coalition of 
 Powers which the patient diplomacy of William had 
 formed against Louis to take action against the common 
 enemy. The declaration of the German Diet had
 
 68 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 appeared in February, and that of the States-General 
 in March. 
 
 On the 24th of March James entered Dublin, which, 
 in common with all the other cities of the three southern 
 provinces of Ireland, had declared for his cause; but 
 after only three weeks' stay in the capital it was decided, 
 against the advice of his chief French counsellor, d'Avaux, 
 who with the Lord Deputy Tyrconnel, and the Irish 
 Catholic party in general, were for keeping him among 
 the Celtic population of the island, that he should go 
 northward and take command of the royal army in 
 Ulster. He accordingly set out on the 14th of April, 
 and after some further hesitations caused by conflicting 
 reports as to the results of a skirmish between the 
 Protestants and a body of his own men at Strabane, 
 arrived a few days later among his troops, who were 
 quartered a few miles south of Londonderry, a city which, 
 with Inniskillen, had formed the rallying point for 
 the Protestant minority when the outbreak of the 
 Eevolution, awakening the hopes of the Catholic popu- 
 lation, appeared to threaten the " English garrison " 
 with a repetition of the horrors of 1641. Here it had 
 been fully expected by James's more sanguine counsellors 
 that he would be, if not loyally, at any rate submissively 
 received. The appearance of their lawful sovereign 
 before their walls would at any rate, it was thought, 
 confirm the wavering allegiance of the military under the 
 command of the Governor, Colonel Lundy. As a matter 
 of fact, it only served to arouse a spirit of determined 
 resistance in the townsmen, to unite the soldiery in the 
 same cause, and to precipitate the flight of the Jacobite 
 governor. James and his retinue, on approaching the
 
 vii INVASION OF IRELAND 69 
 
 gate, were fired on from the nearest bastion ; a 
 subsequent demand for surrender was contemptuously 
 rejected, and after a few days' delay before the town its 
 rejected sovereign set off in chagrin and disappointment 
 to return to Dublin, leaving Londonderry to prepare for 
 that heroic defence of three months against the com- 
 bined forces of war, disease, and famine, which has made 
 her 'name famous among the cities of the world. James's 
 firsl act on his return to the capital was to summon 
 a Parliament, and a Parliament, of a sort, responded 
 to the summons. That is to say, out of a hundred 
 temporal peers then in Ireland, fourteen, of whom ten 
 were Catholics, obeyed the summons, while the fidelity 
 at any rate of the faithful Commons was guaranteed by 
 the fact that only six out of the total number of two 
 hundred and fifty were Protestants. Having assembled, 
 they promptly proceeded to attest this virtue by the 
 wholesale confiscation of the lands of Protestants, and 
 the proscription of their heads. Ulster, however, was 
 still unreduced, and while that was so, denunciatory and 
 spoliatory decrees might well turn out to be mere waste 
 paper. The dashing Inniskilleners the cavalry, so to 
 speak, of that Protestant army in which Londonderry 
 played the part of the immovable square of infantry had 
 actually meditated, though they never carried out, an 
 attempt to relieve their beleaguered sister city, and 
 at Newtown Butler they were able to render signal 
 service to their cause by the defeat of General Macarthy 
 and 6000 Irish. By the end of July Londonderry 
 had been relieved ; early in August Marshal iSchom- 
 berg, then one of the most renewed of European 
 generals, landed at Carrickfergus with 16,000 men, and
 
 70 WILLIAM III CHAP 
 
 it became evident even to the most hopeful of James's 
 adherents that the northern province was lost to him 
 irretrievably. 
 
 William meanwhile still remained in London busied 
 with the task, at once delicate and laborious, of administer- 
 ing the government of a distrustful and almost unfriendly 
 people through the agency of two bitterly divided 
 factions. The parliamentary session had become more 
 prolific of quarrels and more barren of counsel as it pro- 
 ceeded. The two Houses and the two parties had agreed 
 with little difficulty to do justice to some of the admitted 
 victims of the oppression practised under the last two 
 sovereigns. The attainders of Sidney, Eussell, and others 
 were reversed without recorded dissent, but the case of 
 Gates gave rise to acute conflict between the Lords and 
 Commons a conflict in which, though the conduct of the 
 former assembly was undoubtedly arbitrary, the temper, 
 or, at any rate, the motives of the latter appear by no 
 means worthy of the unqualified praise bestowed upon 
 them by the great Whig historian. Undoubtedly the 
 Peers were without justification in refusing to reverse a 
 sentence which the judges had solemnly pronounced 
 illegal; but it is ridiculous to represent the Commons, as 
 a body of judicially minded legislators, doing violence 
 to their natural sentiments in their determination to 
 obtain justice for Gates. Such a theory is at once refuted 
 by the fact that, after his release under royal pardon, 
 his personal adherents in the Commons proved numerous 
 enough to disgrace their party and their country by 
 procuring a pension of three hundred a year for perhaps 
 the most infamous wretch who ever disgraced human 
 naturUE The dispute is of importance because it has
 
 vii THE SUCCESSION BILL 71 
 
 been suggested that to the bitterness of feeling en- 
 gendered by it was due the subsequent quarrel between 
 the two Houses over the succession clauses in the Bill 
 of Rights. At the end of this famous enactment the 
 statutory affirmation of the claims formulated by the 
 Convention in the Declaration of Right it had been 
 proposed at William's suggestion that to the several 
 enumerated reversions of the British Crown a further 
 remainder should be added. In the Declaration, as will 
 be remembered, the crown was settled, after the death of 
 the King or Queen, upon the survivor, and after the 
 death of such survivor upon the heirs of Mary, failing 
 whom upon Anne and her heirs, failing whom upon the 
 issue of William by any other wife than Mary. It 
 appearing by no means improbable, having regard to the 
 fact that the King and Queen were childless, and that 
 Anne had repeatedly failed to rear the children to whom 
 she had given birth, that there might be a failure of 
 all the named reversioners, and that the otherwise legal 
 right of some Catholic prince might thereupon come into 
 conflict with the statutory exclusion of Catholic sover- 
 eigns, William proposed to entail the crown after the 
 last mentioned limitation upon an undoubted Protestant, 
 Sophia of Hanover, granddaughter of James L, and her 
 issue, being Protestants. That the proposal was a well- 
 conceived one is evidenced by the fact that it was 
 actually adopted by Parliament in the succeeding reign ; 
 but though the Lords to whom it was submitted by 
 Burnet accepted it unanimously, the Commons would 
 have none of it. The irritation left by the Gates quarrel 
 may in part have accounted for this, but Macaulay 
 attributes too childish a temper to the Lower House in
 
 72 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 implying as he does that ill-humour is the sole explana- 
 tion of their resistance. They in fact alleged several 
 grounds of objection of unequal weight, but of which 
 one at least has every appearance of bona fides, viz. 
 that the mentioning of the House of Hanover would 
 give an opportunity to foreigners of intermeddling too 
 far in the affairs of the nation. But whatever the excuse, 
 we can readily imagine that William regarded the action 
 of the Commons as purely factious, and although the 
 birth at this juncture of another son and heir to the 
 Princess Anne deprived the succession dispute of its 
 urgency, the cool-headed Dutchman can hardly but have 
 been impressed with the keenness of that political strife 
 which could keep the two branches of the legislature 
 asunder when the cost of their dissension was the post- 
 ponement of the greatest statutory assertion of their 
 liberties since Magna Charta. For as a consequence of 
 the irreconcilable dispute on the succession clause, 
 the Bill of Eights had of course to be dropped; and 
 between this date and the 20th- of August, when Parlia- 
 ment was prorogued, the breach between William and 
 the Whigs was still further widened by the rancour with 
 which they pursued their political enemies, and resisted 
 the attempts of the King to procure a statutory amnesty 
 for past political offences. Impartiality was easier of 
 course for him than them, but William's natural affini- 
 ties of mind and politics cannot but have been rather 
 with the Whigs than the Tories, and the steadiness of 
 purpose with which he persisted in his patriotic though 
 hopeless attempt at combining representatives of both 
 political parties in his councils is, upon any view of the 
 matter, highly honourable to him. It was the Whigs
 
 vii RANCOUR OF THE WHIGS 73 
 
 who from the first made the experiment hopeless, and 
 who finally determined its failure. We owe them the 
 English Constitution, but we owe them also, at any rate 
 in the rigid inflexible shape which it has since assumed, 
 that genius vultu mutabUis albus et ater, the English 
 party-system. 
 
 Parliament met again after a two months' recess on 
 the 19th of October, and seemed at first disposed to act with 
 somewhat more of unity in support of the Executive. 
 They unanimously affirmed their determination to assist 
 the King in the reconquest of Ireland, and in a vigorous 
 prosecution of the war with France, for which purposes 
 they voted an extraordinary supply of two millions, a 
 portion of which it was at first proposed, on principles 
 which the enactors of the Bill of Rights (passed this 
 session without William's suggested amendment) had 
 inherited in a slightly modified form from the signatory 
 of Magna Charta, to raise by a special tax upon Jews. 
 Supplies voted, however, disunion recommenced. The 
 Whigs had come back from their short holiday more 
 bloodthirsty than ever. Beginning with a legitimate 
 cause of complaint against the administration in respect 
 of the mismanagement of the war in Ireland, where the 
 whole organisation of the commissariat seems to have 
 been almost of a Crimean inefficiency, they easily con- 
 verted this just grievance into a general protest against 
 the presence of Tories in the Government. An attempt 
 was made to induce William to say by whose advice he 
 had employed Henry Shales, the knavish Commissary- 
 General, to whom the scandal was mainly if not wholly 
 due the object of course being to found an accusation 
 against some one or other of the Tory officials to whom
 
 74 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 Shales's retention in his post was assumed to be due. 
 It would have been enough for William to reply that he 
 found the man Commissary on his accession, and simply 
 continued him in office. He refused to gratify the 
 malicious curiosity of the address presented to him on 
 the subject, though he assented very readily to another 
 for the appointment of a commission to examine into 
 the state of affairs in Ireland. 
 
 The Tories were next destined to cross the sorely- 
 troubled king by the resistance which they offered to 
 him on a delicate question connected with the provision 
 for his sister-in-law. On the vote of the Civil List, and 
 the question arising under it as to the establishment 
 of the Princess Anne, it had been originally proposed 
 by William that he himself should undertake this 
 charge out of his own revenues ; but through the in- 
 strumentality of the Churchills a strong party was 
 formed among the Tories to insist upon Anne having 
 a settlement independent of the Crown. Seventy 
 thousand a year was the (for those days) extravagant 
 sum which they demanded, and which proved too much 
 even for an indulgent House of Commons to grant. 
 The vote was reduced to 50,000, and though William's 
 dislike to the idea of a parliamentary settlement upon 
 his sister-in-law induced him to raise his own original 
 offer of 30,000 to 50,000 Anne still held out, and 
 a yearly income of the amount last mentioned was 
 accordingly secured to her for life by Act of Parliament. 
 In none of the parts played by the various actors in this 
 little political drama (the sequel to which was the 
 permanent estrangement of the Queen and King from 
 the Princess) is it easy to discern the promptings of any
 
 vii THE PRINCESS ANNE 75 
 
 public principle, or indeed of any decorously avowable 
 motive whatever. The Tories would seem to have 
 been wholly swayed either by party and ecclesiastical 
 prepossessions, or by personal interests of a lower kind 
 either by sentimental sympathy with a High Church- 
 woman, or by a practical eye to the Marlborough gold. 
 As to William it was eminently natural that he should 
 wish to retain at least one string of this puppet of the 
 Churchills in his own hands; as natural as that the 
 Churchills themselves should wish to deprive him of 
 it, and that the puppet herself should respond to the 
 vigorous pulling of the strings which they already held. 
 Neither of the two latter parties would probably have 
 cared to allege any public motive for their behaviour in 
 the transaction. It is to be presumed, however, that 
 William would have done so if he could ; and it is at 
 least noteworthy that the only objection which he seems 
 to have taken to Anne's parliamentary settlement affords 
 no logical support to his own alternative proposal. That 
 Anne should have her income settled on her for life, 
 while his was only voted to him annually, was doubtless 
 a just ground of complaint ; but the proper redress of 
 the anomaly would have been to subject his sister-in- 
 law's income like his own to the annual revision of the 
 House of Commons. The fact that the King was de- 
 pendent upon Parliament could be no reason for making 
 the Princess dependent not upon Parliament, but upon 
 the King. 
 
 Meanwhile the session wore on, and William's cherished 
 project of an Act of Indemnity was no nearer realisa- 
 tion. He had earnestly recommended it to Parliament 
 in the Speech from the Throne, but nothing was further
 
 76 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 from the hearts of the dominant party in the Commons 
 than the idea of amnesty. They seemed bent on assur- 
 ing themselves the tranquil exit of Marshal Narvaez, 
 who died in peace with all mankind by dint of leaving 
 himself no enemies to forgive. An Indemnity Bill 
 was for form's sake brought in at the beginning of 
 November, but no progress was made with it. Pro- 
 scription took the place of purgation. Lords Salisbury 
 and Peterborough, Sir Edward Hales, and others, were 
 marked out for impeachment and summoned according 
 to their status to the bar of one or the other House. 
 The Lords appointed a committee to inquire into 
 the judicial murders of Russell and Sidney, and Sir 
 Dudley North and Lord Halifax were cited before this 
 body to answer for their shares, real or alleged, in these 
 dark transactions. John Hampden, a grandson of the 
 greater John, was conspicuous for the violence of his 
 hostility to the official Tories, and by his instrumentality 
 a committee was appointed to prepare an address to the 
 King to remove the authors of the late failures and to 
 appoint "unsuspected persons" to the management of 
 affairs. The address, however, presented by Hampden 
 was sharply criticised for the violence of its language, 
 and the House of Commons ultimately laid it aside. 
 So plainly, indeed, was the Whig party now losing ground 
 in that House, and so grave had become their appre- 
 hensions of declining popularity in the country, that with 
 a view of at least recovering their position at the polling- 
 booths they resolved upon one of the boldest and most 
 unscrupulous strokes of party tactics which our history 
 records. Into a Bill then before the House for restoring 
 the charters to these corporations which had surrendered
 
 vii WILLIAM'S IRISH PLANS 77 
 
 them to the Crown, they introduced a clause excluding 
 from municipal office all persons who had been impli- 
 cated in the surrenders of such charters or, in other 
 words, all Tories, thus designing to fill the municipalities 
 with Whig office-bearers and to secure the control of the 
 elections to the Whig party. Smuggled into the Bill in a 
 House half depleted of its members by the approach of 
 Christmas, it needed a vigorous whip of the Tories to 
 procure the rejection of this clause by a narrow majority; 
 and William's disgust at this manoeuvre was further 
 intensified by the attachment to his much-desired In- 
 demnity Bill of a bill of pains and penalties against 
 political delinquents. So acute at this moment became 
 his chagrin and disappointment at the condition of 
 English politics that he was strongly tempted to wash 
 his hands of the whole distasteful and thankless business, 
 and he was with difficulty prevailed upon by his ministers 
 to abandon his design of bidding adieu to the country 
 which he had come to deliver and retiring to his native 
 land. Dissuaded from this, he resolved that he would at 
 least reduce Ireland to submission if he had failed to 
 compose the quarrels of his Parliament ; and he let it 
 be known that he was about to quit the capital for the 
 headquarters of his army in Ulster. But against this, 
 too, the Whigs vehemently protested. An address de- 
 precatory of the project was said to be preparing ; and 
 William, his patience exhausted by this last sally of 
 faction, determined to appeal to the good sense and 
 patriotism of the country. 
 
 Accordingly, on the 27th of January, after having in 
 a speech from the throne announced his resolve to go 
 to Ireland in person, "and with the blessing of God
 
 78 WILLIAM III CHAI-. vn 
 
 Almighty endeavour to reduce that kingdom, that it 
 may no longer be a charge to this," the King, to the high 
 satisfaction of the Tories and the proportional discom- 
 fiture of the Whigs, proceeded to prorogue Parliament 
 with a view to its early dissolution.
 
 Parliament of 1690 Tory majority Settlement of the royal income 
 Case of the Princess Anne The ' ' Act of Grace " Detection 
 of Preston's conspiracy William's departure for Ireland Battle 
 of the Boyne Battle of Beachy Head Marlborough's Irish cam- 
 paign Session of 1690. 
 
 THE elections were contested with the utmost energy of 
 party spirit. Both Whigs and Tories strove their hardest 
 for the victory, but the policy of the King's appeal to 
 the country was justified by the success of the latter. 
 A Tory majority was returned to the House of Com- 
 mons, and William felt that there was now at last 
 a fair prospect of his effectually mediating between 
 factions. To have replaced a party to whom he owed 
 everything by a party who owed everything to him 
 was undoubtedly a great step towards the attainment 
 of his ends. He had at least secured a majority who 
 could affect no right to dictate his policy, and had 
 reduced those who could and did advance this preten- 
 sion to a minority. His first act was to remodel his 
 Ministry. Halifax resigned the Privy Seal, which was 
 placed in commission ; Danby, who had been raised at 
 the distribution of honours accompanying the corona- 
 tion to the Marquisate of Caermarthen, became Lord
 
 80 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 President ; Sir John Lowther, First Lord of the 
 I Treasury not then, as now, the chief office in the 
 5 Administration. Whigs and Tories were still mingled 
 in the Government, but no longer in the old pro- 
 portions. 
 
 On the 20th of March the new Parliament met, and the 
 King addressed it in a speech in which he announced 
 his intention of proceeding to Ireland as soon as might 
 be, and recommended to the prompt attention of the 
 two Houses the question of the settlement of the royal 
 revenue and of the enactment of an amnesty. In the 
 former of these matters their action was more conform- 
 able to sound constitutional principle than agreeable 
 to the King. In addition to the hereditary revenues 
 which had passed with the crown to William and Mary, 
 the Commons would only agree to settle absolutely upon 
 the King and Queen about one third of the fiscal revenues 
 which had been assured to the last two sovereigns 
 for the term of their lives. That portion of the excise, 
 estimated at 300,000, which had been settled upon 
 James II. for life, was now settled upon William and 
 Mary for their joint and separate lives. But, on the 
 other hand, the customs duties, amounting to 600,000, 
 which had been settled for life on Charles and James 
 successively, were granted to the Crown for a term of 
 only four years. This restriction, in which Whigs and 
 Tories concurred, was not unnaturally displeasing to a 
 sovereign who justly valued himself on the ability, in- 
 tegrity, and thrift which made him, as he conceived, at 
 once the most efficient and the most trustworthy steward 
 of the national resources ; but that he should have re- 
 sented the action of Parliament in this matter not
 
 vni THE NEW PARLIAMENT 81 
 
 merely as a limitation upon the free play of his policy, 
 but as a personal slight to himself, instructively illus- 
 trates the very limited extent to which the principles 
 of the British Constitution, as we now know it, had 
 established themselves in the joint recognition of the 
 sovereign and the legislature. If there was one principle 
 more inevitably implied in the Revolution that William 
 had headed than another, it was that no personal claims 
 of any individual sovereign could be allowed either to 
 suspend or in any degree to qualify the general rule 
 of parliamentary control. Had William contended, 
 whether reasonably or unreasonably, that the restraint 
 placed on him by Parliament was more severe than 
 needed to be imposed upon any sovereign, his position 
 would have been a defensible one ; but his complaint, 
 as Burnet testifies, was that the Commons were showing 
 an undue and ungenerous jealousy of their particular 
 sovereign for the time being. His claim to enjoy the 
 same amount of freedom as his predecessor had abused 
 was founded simply on the fact that James was James 
 and that he was William ; and that was obviously one 
 of these circumstances of which the administrators of a 
 general rule, intended to apply to any number of future 
 Jameses and Williams, could not possibly take into 
 account. Had this general rule been recognised with 
 anything approaching to its acceptance in these days, it 
 is impossible to suppose that so clear and fair an intelli- 
 gence as William's could have missed its application to 
 himself. 
 
 No doubt it may have caused him some irritation to 
 observe with what rapidity the coalition of Whigs and 
 Tories, which had formed for the purpose of limiting 
 
 G
 
 82 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 his independence, dissolved again when that work was 
 done. In a few weeks the two parties were as fiercely 
 at odds as ever upon a Whig Abjuration Bill, the main 
 object of which, though" m one quite indefensible 
 clause it went far beyond this, was to impose a test 
 which the official Tories could not swallow, and so to 
 drive them from office. It was not enough that a man 
 should have sworn allegiance to King William ; he must 
 also expressly abjure allegiance to King James. Who 
 knew but that he might have taken the former oath in 
 some non-natural sense or with some mental reservations ? 
 And though the answer seemed obvious that he might 
 take the latter in the same sense and with the same 
 reservations, the Bill was prosecuted to its rejection in 
 the House of Commons by a majority of thirty-three. An 
 Abjuration Bill of a somewhat less stringent kind was 
 then introduced into the House of Lords, the debate 
 upon which William personally attended. He had let 
 it be known, however, that he was opposed to the former 
 measure, and it is probable that he had no great liking 
 for the latter. Anyhow, it underwent so much mutila- 
 tion in committee that its authors did not care to 
 persevere with it. 
 
 The Tory majority, however, was soon after employed 
 to an even more useful purpose in the final accomplish- 
 ment of William's policy of pacification. Kesolved that 
 on this occasion the measure of indemnity should not be 
 defeated by delay ,"the King suEmitted it personally to 
 the Upper House in the form of an Act of Grace for 
 political offences a proceeding which, according to con- 
 stitutional practice, abridged its deliberative stages in 
 each House of Parliament to a single reading. Intro-
 
 viii THE ACT OF GRACE 83 
 
 duced under such auspices, and assured of the support 
 of a party always dominant in the Upper House, and 
 now possessing a majority in the Lower, it passed 
 without any opposition into law, and is undoubtedly 
 entitled to take its place among the most honourable 
 and statesmanlike acts of William's career. Its value 
 as a political precedent was scarcely capable of exag- 
 geration even by Macaulay; and if he somewhat inor- 
 dinately applauds the enlightened clemency which it 
 was as easy for any brave and dispassionate foreigner 
 to recommend as it was difficult for English parties 
 embittered by the mutual wrongs of a generation of 
 conflict to accept, it would be falling into the converse 
 error to insist on any serious qualification of the his- 
 torian's praises. William's great qualities were his own ; 
 they must at least divide the credit of his high-minded 
 and sagacious policy with the accident of his antecedents 
 in his own country and of his position in ours ; nor 
 would it be gracious to attempt too nice an apportion- 
 ment of the shares. 
 
 Impatience to proceed to Ireland had probably some- 
 thing to do with the expeditious form of procedure 
 adopted by the King in the case of the Indemnity Act. 
 On the 20th of May it became law. On the same day 
 William informed the Houses that his departure for the 
 seat of war could be delayed no longer ; and after having 
 given his assent to an Act empowering the Queen to 
 administer the government during his absence, he pro- 
 rogued Parliament until the 14th of July. Then, having 
 appointed from the list of Privy Councillors a small 
 interior Council of Nine to advise the Queen, and having 
 delayed no longer than was necessary to place in their
 
 84 WILLIAM III 
 
 hands the threads of a newly-discovered conspiracy, 1 
 William took a tender farewell of his wife, and set forth 
 on the strange errand of defeating the army, if not 
 destroying the life, of his wife's father. "God send," 
 he exclaimed, " that no harm may come to him." His 
 anxiety on this score for the Queen's sake was painful ; 
 but otherwise, though he belonged to that order of brave 
 men whose spirits are fortified rather than exhilarated 
 by danger, he was cheered by the approach of the hour 
 of action. Ireland in the hands of a hostile army, the 
 shores of England threatened by a hostile fleet, a danger- 
 ous conspiracy only detected on the eve of success, a 
 formidable insurrection imminent in the country he was 
 leaving behind him, he could still say to Burnet " As 
 for me, but for one thing I should enjoy the prospect of 
 being on horseback and under canvas again. For I am 
 sure that I am fitter to direct a campaign than to manage 
 your Houses of Lords and Commons." 
 
 On the 14th of June he landed at Carrickfergus, and 
 immediately set out for Belfast to take over the com- 
 mand from Schomberg. All Ulster rose with enthusiasm 
 to receive him, and the soldiers, whom treachery and 
 incompetency had been sacrificing by the hundred to the 
 ravages of disease and privation, took heart once more. 
 After ten days spent in concentrating his forces at 
 
 1 The conspiracy known as Preston's a plan of inviting the French 
 king to land troops in England, and offering to second his efforts by 
 an insurrection, and, if possible, the treacherous surrender of the 
 whole or a part of the British fleet. Clarendon and Dartmouth, with 
 other more or less eminent personages, were implicated in it, including, 
 at least as was suspected, the Quaker, William Penn. The conspira- 
 tors were betrayed by an accomplice, and soine of them sent to the 
 Tower. Lord Preston, a Scotch peer, a ringleader of the conspiracy, 
 was tried and convicted for high treason, but subsequently pardoned.
 
 vin BATTLE OF THE BOYNE 85 
 
 Loughbricklaiid, William started southward at the head 
 of 36,000 men. Two days after his nephew's landing 
 James had left Dublin to lead his troops to Dundalk 
 with the view either of giving battle at that point, or 
 merely, as has been suggested, of eating up the country 
 between the capital and the invading army, so as to 
 impede its advance by difficulties of supply. But if the 
 former were the original object of the movement it was 
 soon abandoned. When William's army approached 
 Dundalk James fell back upon Ardee ; and the former 
 still pressing southwards, the latter still continued his 
 retreat, until the pursuer was brought to a halt on the 
 morning of the 30th of June by the halt of the pursued, 
 and the English and Irish armies at last looked each other 
 in the face across the now historic waters of the Boyne. 
 Lauzun, who had succeeded De Rosen in the command 
 of James's forces, was a courtier rather than a general, 
 but the position he had here taken up, behind entrench- 
 ments and with a river in front, was strategically a 
 strong one so strong indeed that the veteran Schomberg 
 doubted his master's wisdom in resolving upon an 
 immediate attack. But William, as he had told the 
 Ulster men, had not come to Ireland to " let the grass 
 grow under his feet." He had the advantage in 
 numbers ; the advantage in generalship ; above all, the 
 advantage in the quality of his troops, who, if but few 
 of them were as good as the trained French soldiers of 
 his adversary, were none of them so bad as the rapparee 
 Irish levies who formed the bulk of James's forces. 
 The day passed in an exchange of shots across the river, 
 from one of which William had well-nigh lost his life. 
 Having sat down to breakfast somewhat close to the
 
 86 WILLIAM III OHAI-. 
 
 brink of the Boyne, he attracted the attention of the 
 Irish sentries on the opposite shore. Two field-pieces 
 were planted opposite to him, and, on his rising and 
 remounting his horse, were discharged at the group of 
 which he was the centre. The first shot killed a man 
 and two horses at some distance from him ; the second, 
 better aimed, struck the river bank and grazed the 
 King's shoulder in its ricochet, inflicting a slight flesh 
 wound. His staff thronged anxiously about him, but 
 William, in his usual dry and stoical fashion, relieved 
 their fears. He was unharmed, he told them, but 
 "there was no need for any bullet to come nearer." 
 His wound was dressed, and he remained in the saddle 
 till nightfall. At nine o'clock he held a council of war, 
 and, against the advice of Schomberg, declared his 
 determination of effecting a passage of the river on the 
 following day. Unable to dissuade his master from 
 the rash project, as he deemed it, the veteran general 
 urged that at least a portion of the army should be sent 
 up the stream at midnight to Slane Bridge, and crossing 
 it at that point, should be in readiness either to 
 assist them in the event of their attack being unsuc- 
 cessful, by a diversion in the rear of James's army, 
 or, in case the river should have been carried, to cut 
 off the retreat of the Irish by the pass of Duleek. 
 This plan, which, if adopted, would probably, as one 
 of William's biographers points out, have ended the 
 campaign at a stroke, was rejected : why, does not 
 very clearly appear. The tactics were such as might 
 have been thought likely to commend themselves to 
 William, and he could apparently have well spared the 
 men to execute them. It is said by the biographer above
 
 VIH BATTLE OF THE BOYNE 87 
 
 referred to that the plan was opposed " by the Dutch 
 generals " ; but it is not impossible that the objection 
 may have really come from the King himself, and have 
 been founded not on strategical but on political con- 
 siderations. William, as we know, was especially 
 solicitous about his father-in-law's life, and not perhaps 
 suspecting how well it would be cared for by its owner, 
 whom he must have remembered to have once been 
 brave, he may have rejected Schomberg's scheme for its 
 very completeness, and because he not unnaturally 
 assumed that in cutting off the retreat of James's army 
 he would be cutting off the retreat of James himself. 
 The too complimentary assumption that the royal general 
 would be last rather than first in the flight had yet to 
 be rebutted by events. But whatever the reason, the 
 Marshal's plan was rejected ; he retired, chagrined and 
 hurt, from the council, and the last night of the old 
 soldier's life was spent, it is melancholy to think, in dis- 
 pleasure with the master whom he had so long and 
 faithfully served. 
 
 The morning of the 1st of July broke fair, and a little 
 after sunrise the English army advanced in three 
 divisions to the attack. The right under the younger 
 Schomberg, assisted by the Earl of Portland and James 
 Douglas, was detailed for the same operation which the 
 Marshal would have had executed four hours earlier, and 
 by a surprise. Having marched a few miles up the river to 
 Slane Bridge, and finding there but one regiment of 
 Irish dragoons, they easily beat them back, crossed the 
 bridge, and made good their footing on the southern 
 bank of the Boyne. Lauzun, apprehensive for his 
 command of the pass of Duleek, had detached the best of
 
 88 WILLIAM III 
 
 his troops his own countrymen to resist the further 
 advance of the English right ; and the centre and left of 
 William's army were opposed at the lower fords by the 
 Irish Catholics alone. Between them and the Dutch 
 Guards, the French Huguenots, the men of Londonderry 
 and Inniskillen, it was impar congresses indeed. 1 
 Schomberg in command of the centre took the water at 
 the ford of Old Bridge. William at the head of the left 
 wing, consisting entirely of cavalry, made for a more 
 difficult and dangerous crossing lower down. At one 
 point only does the passage of the river appear to have 
 been for more than a moment doubtful. The Danes and 
 Huguenots under Cambon and Caillemot were set upon 
 in the act of landing by the Irish cavalry under Richard 
 Hamilton ; the former were driven back again into the 
 water, and the latter, unarmed with pikes, began to give 
 ground. The conflict raged hotly for a short space at 
 the southern exit of the ford; Caillemot fell mortally 
 wounded ; the whole brigade was wavering; when old 
 Schomberg, who had been watching the action from 
 the northern bank, dashed impetuously into the river. 
 
 1 James's ungenerous reproaches of his defeated troops, and the 
 many French complaints quoted by Macaulay might not in themselves 
 prove conclusively that the Irish showed greater natural cowardice, 
 as distinguished from mere military unsteadiness, than other un- 
 disciplined levies. But the mere fact that with all their advantages of 
 position, commanding a river which their adversaries had to cross, 
 they made, with the exception of Hamilton's horse, so miserable an 
 exhibition of themselves, is a clear enough indication of personal de- 
 ficiencies. It is only fair to remember, however, that the generalship 
 of James's army was beneath contempt. To leave a bridge a few miles 
 above their position unprotected by artillery, and indeed with only a 
 single regiment of cavalry available for resisting its being crossed by 
 a hostile army, is surely the last word of tactical ineptitude.
 
 89 
 
 " Allons, Messieurs ! " he cried to the Huguenots, as he 
 pointed to the French Catholics in James's ranks, 
 " wila vos persfauteurs ! " As he uttered the words a 
 small hand of Irish horsemen came galloping in upon the 
 main body, the Huguenots, mistaking them for friends, 
 having allowed them to pass. In the confused mele"e 
 which followed the Marshal was surrounded; he received 
 two sahre cuts on his head, and a musket shot, said in 
 one account to have been fired in a fatal mistake " by 
 one of his own men," laid him dead upon the ground. 
 The arrival of William, who had with difficulty forced his 
 way across through the strongly flowing tide, at once 
 decided the doubtful struggle. " Men of Inniskillen, what 
 will you do for me 1 " was his inspiriting question to the 
 sorely pressed Protestants of Ulster ; and drawing his 
 sword with an arm yet stiff from the wound of the 
 previous morning, he led his Dutch Guards and Innis- 
 killeners against the still unbroken Irish centre. Ulster- 
 men and Hollanders vied with each other in steadiness 
 and valour ; Schomberg's cavalry came opportunely to 
 their support ; De Ginkell's horse effected as timely a 
 diversion on the enemy's left. Hamilton and his riders 
 being thus driven back, the heart of the defence was 
 broken, and after one more brief stand at Plottin Castle, 
 where the Inniskilleners were temporarily checked and 
 had again to be rallied, and where Hamilton was 
 wounded and made prisoner, the defeat of the Irish army 
 became a rout, and their retreat a flight. James, who 
 had watched the battle from the hill of Donore till it 
 went against him, had already hurried through the pass 
 of Duleek, and was making the best of his way to 
 Dublin. His army, now a broken and confused mass of
 
 I 
 
 90 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 fugitives, struggled after him through the defile. The 
 battle of the Boyne was won. 
 
 The victory, though not so immediately decisive as it 
 might have been if Schomberg's plan had been adopted, 
 was practically fatal to the Jacobite cause. Drogheda 
 surrendered the next day. James, who had reached 
 Dublin on the evening of the battle, quitted it the day 
 after for ever. On the 3d of July he reached Waterf ord, 
 whence he embarked on board a French frigate and 
 sailed for Brest. Lauzun and Tyrconnel collected their 
 straggling forces as best they could, and, evacuating the 
 Irish capital immediately after James's flight, marched 
 westward with the design of reorganising resistance at 
 such still remaining strongholds of the deposed monarch 
 as Limerick and Athlone. 
 
 William fixed his headquarters at Finglas, near 
 Dublin, but enjoyed no long period of unmixed satis- 
 faction with his victory. The day before the two armies 
 closed upon the Boyne, the French fleet, under De 
 Tourville, had encountered what should have been the 
 combined fleets of England and the States off Beachy 
 Head, but by the supineness or treachery of the English 
 Admiral the Dutch had been left to bear the brunt of 
 the battle alone. After hours of hard fighting they 
 drew off with the worst of the encounter, and Admiral 
 Herbert, destroying some of the Dutch ships, and taking 
 the rest in tow, sailed up the Thames, leaving the enemy 
 in undisputed possession of the Channel. The news of 
 this defeat, and of the alarm for our unprotected coasts 
 which it had occasioned in London, reached William on 
 the 27th of July at Carrick-on-Suir, where he was 
 encamped, after having reduced Waterford. He imme-
 
 viu MARLBOROUGH'S IRISH CAMPAIGN 91 
 
 diately hurried to Dublin with the intention of embarking 
 to England ; but, reassured by later advices informing 
 him that the French attempt at a descent on the Devon- 
 shire coast had proved a failure, he returned to head- 
 quarters, and hastened to prosecute the campaign. The 
 glory of the Boyne, however, was destined to be somewhat 
 dimmed before many weeks were past. At Limerick the 
 Celtic Irish showed, with the variability of their unstable 
 race, that they could fight bravely when "i' th' humour." 
 Sarsfield, left in command by the departure in disgust of 
 Lauzun and Tyrconnel, approved himself a leader of 
 vigour and resource. He intercepted and destroyed 
 William's heavier battering-train before it could reach 
 him. The besieged of Limerick, fighting with a desperate 
 courage, which even their women imitated, beat back an 
 assault of the English forces with much bloodshed, and 
 on the 30th of August, fearing the ravages of disease 
 with the approach of the autumnal rains, William raised 
 the siege of the city and returned to England. The 
 campaign thus left undecided was to be taken in hand 
 by a greater commander than himself. Landing in 
 Ireland some three weeks later, the Earl of Marlborough 
 gave promise of his future military prowess in the 
 remarkable speed and success of his operations. In five 
 weeks after leaving Portsmouth he had taken Cork 
 and Kinsale, and had not his fast sickening army con- 
 strained his retirement, would probably have settled 
 the whole Irish business out of hand. He returned 
 to London to receive from William, who, besides 
 being incapable of jealousy, was in the habit of 
 underrating his own generalship, the graceful compli- 
 ment that "no officer living who has seen so little
 
 92 WILLIAM III CHAP, vni 
 
 service as my Lord Maryborough is so fit for great 
 commands." 
 
 On the 2d of November the King once more met his 
 Parliament, and under more favourable auspices than 
 ever before during his reign. The imminent dangers to 
 which the nation had been exposed had brought about 
 a temporary truce between parties ; the skill, energy, 
 and valour with which the King had borne his part in 
 averting them had, moreover, united them in a common 
 sentiment of admiration and gratitude. Thanks were 
 voted both to William, and separately to Mary, who had 
 indeed well merited them by the spirit and vigour which 
 she had displayed during the critical days that followed 
 the defeat of Beachy Head. Supplies of unusual mag- 
 nitude were voted with unusual readiness, and the short 
 session, marked only by an abortive bill for confiscating 
 the property of Jacobites, passed tranquilly away. On 
 the 5th of January William thanked the Houses for 
 their supplies, and assuring them, in words on which 
 later events were to place an awkward commentary, that 
 he would not grant away any of the forfeited property in 
 Ireland till they had had an opportunity of declaring 
 their wishes in that matter, he adjourned Parliament, 
 and on the following day he quitted London to return 
 for the first time in two years to his native country.
 
 CHAPTEE IX 
 
 1691-1692 
 
 Campaign of 1691 in the Netherlands Fall of Mons Disaffection of 
 William's councillors Conclusion of year's campaign Disgrace 
 and dismissal of Marlborough Massacre of Glencoe. 
 
 THE night of William's arrival off the coast of Holland 
 was wild and stormy ; but impatient to be ashore, he 
 quitted the ship which had carried him for an open 
 boat, and after a night of extreme danger and hardship, 
 which he passed through with his usual fearlessness and 
 stoicism, effected a landing. His welcome among his 
 people was enthusiastic, and his reception by the 
 assembled notables electors, princes, dukes, and 
 ministers -plenipotentiary then assembled in Congress 
 at the Hague was signally respectful. Those among 
 them in whom the statesman was strongest were no 
 doubt chiefly impressed by his successful elevation of 
 himself to a powerful throne ; while to the high aristo- 
 cratic and monarchical party among them it was suffi- 
 cient that he filled it by a title at least good enough to 
 relieve him of the reproach of mere high-handed usurpa- 
 tion. Each, after his manner, did homage to the quali- 
 ties of character, or the accidents of birth, which are 
 respectively implied in the two meanings of the word 
 " succeed " ; over both alike, however, the ascendency .
 
 94 WILLIAM III OHAP. 
 
 of William was now in all probability much more firmly 
 established. As wielding the power of England he was 
 in a material sense, though not perhaps in any very 
 imposing degree, stronger than he had been; but the 
 accession to his moral prestige from his remarkable 
 achievements, in the field and in the council, of the two 
 previous years was doubtless very great. The banded 
 enemies of the French monarch looked undoubtedly with 
 new feelings upon the head of their coalition. 
 
 William addressed the Congress at its opening in a 
 stirring speech in which he impressed on them the 
 necessity of union in counsel and promptitude in action; 
 and with such effect that the Congress resolved to oppose 
 Louis with an army of 220,000 men, to which William, 
 acting as his own war minister a function which he 
 assumed as constantly as that of the conduct of foreign 
 affairs engaged to contribute a contingent of 20,000. 
 While the Congress, however, were talking their enemy 
 was acting. A heavy blow was dealt at the confederacy 
 by the capture of Mons, which surrendered to the vigorous 
 siege of the French, commanded by the King in person, 
 within a few weeks of the separation of the Congress. 
 On the news of its danger William collected a force with 
 all speed for its relief, but he was too late to save it ; 
 and the short period of suspension of hostilities which 
 followed upon this disaster he took advantage of to 
 return to England. His presence there was really more 
 needed than he at the time imagined, for it is probable 
 that at no time during the early years of his reign had 
 he so much reason to distrust the fidelity of so many of 
 his most highly placed servants. To review the intrigues 
 with the exiled monarch, in which men like Maryborough,
 
 ix CAMPAIGN OF 1691 95 
 
 Russell, Godolphin, and Shrewsbury were at this moment 
 either voluntarily engaged, orDeing successfully pressed to 
 join, is altogether beyond the scope of this volume. But 
 it may be worth while to interpose one observation here 
 on what appears to me to be a common, and, in a certain 
 sense, a mitigating feature of all these duplicities. They 
 differ no doubt to a certain extent in depth of moral 
 turpitude one from another, just as the moral characters 
 and motives of those who committed them so differed. 
 The devouring ambition which actuated Marlborough, 
 the disappointed Whiggism which was the dominant 
 impulse with Russell, gave place in a man like Godol- 
 phin to mere distrust of the future, and anxiety to 
 
 ' "~ " ' ~ ~ I i " 
 
 provide against the incalculable. But it is only fair to 
 
 recollect that this last, and for statesmen of that age, 
 most venial motive of action, most probably played a 
 considerable part in all their double-dealing. None of I 
 them considered William's position assured. All per- ' 
 ceived that he had so far failed, and all doubted whether 
 he would ever succeed, in winning the affection of the 
 people. Whether he would succeed in the experiment of 
 governing by his factious and deeply-divided Parliament 
 was, to say the least of it, a question of the gravest un- 
 certainty ; and they governed their conduct accordingly. 
 It is not necessary to suppose that because an individual 
 statesman in William's service maintained communica^ 
 tion with James's agents with more or less vague 
 promises of assistance he contemplated any downright 
 betrayal of William's cause. In most cases his deceit 
 was rather of that negative sort which seeks to make 
 to itself friends betimes of the mammon of unrighteous- 
 ness. The deceiver was anxious in the event of a
 
 96 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 counter-revolution to stand well with the restored 
 monarch, and intended no further treachery to his exist- 
 ing master than is necessarily involved in the attempt to 
 serve two masters at once. 
 
 In May 1691 William returned to Flanders taking 
 Marlborough with him. The day of that great soldier 
 
 had not yeTcome, but though invested with no military 
 command, it should seem that he attended councils of 
 war where his great abilities as a general attracted the 
 notice and admiration of experts. In June the business 
 of campaigning was recommenced in the leisurely and 
 ceremonious manner peculiar to the age, and with that 
 strict attention to the limits of the " season " which in 
 our own day is only bestowed upon the gaieties of 
 London and the sports of the country. From early in 
 June until the arrival of what may be called the " close- 
 time," towards the end of September, the armies of 
 France and of the allies continued to perform their 
 stately military minuet to the high satisfaction of their 
 commanders, but without suffering or inflicting on one 
 another any serious blows. 
 
 On the 19th of October William arrived in England, 
 and three days later he opened Parliament. The cir- 
 cumstances under which he met the Houses were on the 
 whole favourable, and the mood of the Sovereign and 
 Legislature was one of mutual good humour. It is 
 true that the campaign in the Netherlands had been 
 ineffectual, but its failure was more than balanced by 
 successes nearer home. Ireland had been subdued and 
 pacified, the navy of England had recovered its ascend- 
 ency in the Channel. The King's speech to the two 
 Houses elicited a warm reply, and the large supplies
 
 ix DISAFFECTION OF HIS COUNCILLORS 97 
 
 which he had still to demand for the prosecution of 
 continental warfare was granted to him without demur. 
 Nor was the session in other respects one of much 
 difficulty for the King. The House of Commons indeed 
 renewed its complaints of the magnitude of official 
 salaries and fees, but, showing little or no capacity to 
 discriminate between legitimate remuneration for public 
 services and mere corrupt abuses, they naturally failed 
 to agree upon any measure of reform. The Bill for 
 regulating trials for high treason a measure destined 
 to be a subject of long contention between the two 
 Houses was introduced for the first time this session, 
 and, passing the* Commons, underwent in the House of 
 Lords an amendment to which the Lower House refused 
 to assent. On the merits of the case it ought un- 
 doubtedly to have been adopted, but it happened to 
 touch the royal prerogative, and the Commons made 
 this the excuse for gratifying their not unreasonable 
 jealousy of the exclusive privileges in the matter of 
 justiciability which were possessed by the Peers. They 
 showed no hesitation a little later on in making a dis- 
 tinct encroachment on the royal rights by imposing the 
 salaries of the judges as a permanent charge upon the 
 hereditary revenues of the Crown without the sover- 
 eign's consent. On this Bill William exercised for the 
 first time his right of veto. That such first employment 
 of it should have been on a matter touching his own 
 interests, and at the same time affecting the indepen- 
 dence of the judicial bench, was unfortunate ; but it is 
 impossible to complain of his exerting his constitutional 
 authority in this case to arrest a measure of such a kind 
 as would not, even in our more advanced days, be intro- 
 
 H
 
 98 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 duced without the express assent of the Crown. The 
 "event" of the year 1691 was undoubtedly the polit- 
 ical intrigue, the discovery of which led to the dismissal 
 and disgrace of Marlborough. That indefatigable 
 plotter, who was still holding active communication with 
 St. Germains, undertook to move an address in the 
 House of Lords requesting that all foreigners might be 
 dismissed from the service of the Crown. It was said 
 and believed that his object in doing this was to inflame 
 the national and professional jealousies of the country 
 and the army against the Dutch officers in William's 
 service, so that in the event of William declining to 
 act upon the advice of his Parliament, he would find 
 both the people and the soldiery prepared to support 
 him in an ulterior design of deposing the King and 
 placing Anne upon the throne, with himself as mayor 
 of the palace. The plot, however, if plot there was, 
 fell through ; and assuming it to have been really con- 
 ceived, the natural resentment with which it inspired 
 William would of course sufficiently account for the 
 disgrace and dismissal of Marlborough which followed 
 immediately afterwards. 1 The attempt of the half- 
 lunatic, half- villain Fuller to repeat the exploits of Gates, 
 with a trumped-up and promptly disproved charge of 
 conspiracy against many prominent personages, inspired 
 doubts in the public mind as to whether there had ever 
 been any Scotch plot at all. 
 
 Here, too, that is, among the record of the events of 
 
 1 The whole affair is still surrounded with obscurity. At least 
 half a dozen conflicting explanations of Marlborough's fall are in exist- 
 ence, and from the same hand that of Burnet. It cannot be said 
 that the conspiracy theory, which Macaulay of course adopts, is in 
 itself at all improbable.
 
 ix MARLBOROUGH'S DISGRACE 99 
 
 the winter of 1691 and the spring of 1692, seems the 
 most fitting place to take notice of a strange and terrible 
 incident, which, though of little importance from the 
 historical point of view, could on no account be omitted 
 from a biography of William III. On the 13th of Feb- 
 ruary 1692, at five o'clock in the morning, was perpe- 
 trated, under circumstances of signal perfidy and barbarity, 
 the crime known as the Massacre of Glencoe the surprise 
 and slaughter of the chief and thirty-eight men of the 
 Macdonalds by two companies of soldiers, who had been 
 quartered upon the clan for the preconcerted purpose of 
 their extirpation, under the command of Captain Camp 
 bell of Glenlyon. It is not necessary, and would here 
 be impossible, to give more than a highly condensed 
 account of the intrigues, amounting almost to con- 
 spiracy, among various enemies of the ill-fated clan, 
 rfrhich preceded the massacre. Suffice it to say that 
 private revenge combined with public policy to suggest 
 the act. It was the joint work of the Earls of Bread- 
 albane and Argyle hereditary foes of the Macdonalds 
 and of the Secretary of State for Scotland, Sir John 
 Dalrymple, Master of Stair ; but the order upon which 
 this official assumed to act was signed and countersigned 
 by the King himself. It was in these words : "As for 
 Maclan of Glencoe and that tribe, if they can be dis- 
 tinguished from the other Highlanders, it will be proper 
 for the vindication of public justice to extirpate that set 
 of thieves." The " other Highlanders " from whom they 
 were to be distinguished had, in accordance with a 
 proclamation issued in the autumn of the previous year, 
 made formal submission to the Government and taken 
 the oath of allegiance to the sovereign before the 1st of
 
 100 WILLIAM III OHAP. 
 
 January 1692. This, by an accident, Maclan had failed 
 to do. He had presented himself on the 31st of Decem- 
 ber 1691 to the officer in command at Fort William ; 
 but, being informed by him that he had no power to 
 administer the oaths, the old chief was obliged to betake 
 himself to Inverary, to be there sworn by the Sheriff of 
 Argyleshire, Sir Colin Campbell of Ardkinglass, who, 
 although the submitted Highlander did not arrive there 
 till the 6th of January, consented, after some demur, to 
 administer to him the oaths. A certificate setting forth 
 the circumstances was transmitted to the Council at 
 Edinburgh, but was there cancelled for irregularity ; and 
 the fact of Maclan's tardy submission does not appear to 
 have been indeed, we may affirm with confidence that 
 it never was brought to the knowledge of the King. 
 Acting, however, on the pretended authority of the 
 royal order, the Master of Stair gave directions to the 
 military authorities that " the thieving tribe of Glencoe 
 be rooted out to purpose"; adding in a later despatch to 
 the commander of Fort William : " Pray, when the thing 
 concerning Glencoe is resolved let it be secret and sudden; 
 better not meddle with them than not to purpose ; " and 
 again, in a still later communication: "I hope the 
 soldiers will not trouble the Government with prisoners." 
 Acting on these sinister injunctions, Captain Campbell 
 of Glenlyon marched his men to Glencoe, and, pretend- 
 ing that he came as a friend and not as an enemy, 
 quartered them upon the Macdonalds, by whom they 
 were cordially received and hospitably entertained. 
 After a twelve days' sojourn among the clan, Glenlyon 
 received orders from his superior officer to proceed to 
 his bloody work, and at five in the morning of the 13th
 
 IX MASSACRE OF GLENCOE 101 
 
 of February the soldiers fell upon their unsuspecting 
 hosts in their sleep. The massacre, however, was less 
 skilfully executed than it had been cunningly planned. 
 The greater portion of the Macdonalds, including the 
 sons of the chief, effected their escape; but Maclan 
 himself, with his wife and thirty-eight of his clansmen, 
 including some women and children, were ruthlessly 
 murdered. As many more, in all probability, fell 
 victims to the rigours of a Highland winter in their 
 attempted flight. In those days of slow communication 
 it was long before the story of the savage deed became 
 known, or at least before it was recognised as possessing 
 a more trustworthy character than the ordinary Jacobite 
 fables of the day ; and it was eagerly caught up, of 
 course, by the political enemies of the King and the 
 Government. History has acquitted William of all 
 complicity with the crime in the precise form in which 
 it was committed, as indeed it would only be reasonable 
 to acquit any ruler possessing, we will not say common 
 humanity, but the common instincts of the soldier. But 
 Burnet's attempt to exonerate his master on the plea of 
 having signed the order of " extirpation " through in- 
 advertence, and Macaulay's half-suggestion that it was 
 his general incuriousness in Scotch affairs which made 
 him Stair's unquestioning instrument in the matter, 
 must be alike dismissed. It was not William's practice 
 to affix his signature to public documents of which he 
 knew not the purport ; and the mere fact that the 
 Macdonalds of Glencoe were excepted by name from 
 the submitted clans, and with the careful proviso that 
 the proposed measure should only be taken against them 
 "if they could well be separated from the rest," seems
 
 102 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 to afford sufficient proof that to this particular matter of 
 Scotch administration, at any rate, his attention was 
 specially called. 
 
 There is, in short, no good reason to doubt that when 
 William signed the order for the " extirpation " of the 
 Macdonalds he meant them to be extirpated. He 
 treated his act as equivalent to the issue of one of those 
 "letters of fire and sword" which in those wild days of 
 Highland history formed a recognised instrument of 
 police. He would undoubtedly have been quite pre- 
 pared to hear that a regiment had been marched into the 
 valley of Glencoe, had put the contumacious clansmen 
 (as he believed them to be) to the sword, and left their 
 village a heap of smoking ruins. As undoubtedly he 
 was not prepared to hear that a body of soldiers had 
 quartered themselves on the clan under pretence of 
 amity, and had treacherously slaughtered them at un- 
 awares. But though it is likely enough that when he 
 did hear of this he was disgusted with the unsoldierly 
 cowardice of the proceeding, we should mistake both the 
 man and the time in supposing that he viewed it with 
 the horror and detestation which in our own days it 
 excites. He regarded it, so far as one can judge, as a 
 mere blundering excess of duty and nothing more. Four 
 years later, when an inquiry was instituted into the 
 matter by the Scotch Parliament, he showed no disposi- 
 tion to press it forward ; l and later on, when a commission 
 reported that the affair of Glencoe was a murder for which 
 
 1 Macaulay, in that injudicious spirit of special pleading which is 
 often so damaging to his hero, says that the King, " who knew little and 
 cared little " about Scotland, "forgot to urge the commissioners." 
 As if a king would be likely to " forget " an inquiry as to whether one 
 of his secretaries of state had or had not been guilty of murder.
 
 IX MASSACRE OF GLEtfCOE 103 
 
 the Master of Stair was primarily responsible, he steadily 
 declined to inflict any further penalty on the chief culprit 
 than he had already suffered in his dismissal from office. 
 Burnet's excuse for William that he was alarmed at 
 finding how many men it would be necessary for 
 him to punish for the massacre is, as Macaulay rightly 
 says, no justification for his screening the one criminal 
 whose case was so easily distinguishable from the others, 
 and whose guilt was so much more heinous than theirs. 
 It is idle, in short, to deny that in the matter of the 
 Glencoe Massacre William incurred something of the 
 responsibility of an accessory after the fact.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 1692-1693 
 
 Gloomy European prospects Campaign of 1692 in the Netherlands 
 Defeat of Steinkirk Attempt of Grandval Session of 1692 
 Place Bill and Triennial Bill Campaign of 1693 William out- 
 witted by Luxembourg Defeat of Landen Session of 1693-94 
 Louis's overtures of peace. 
 
 NEVER perhaps in the whole course of his unresting life 
 were the energies of William more severely taxed, and 
 never did his great moral and intellectual qualities shine 
 forth with a brighter lustre, than in the years 1692-93. 
 The great victory of La Hogue and the destruction of 
 the flower of the French fleet did, it is true, relieve 
 England of any immediate dread either of insurrection 
 or invasion, and so far the prospect before him acquired 
 a slight improvement towards the summer of 1692. But 
 this was the only gleam of light in the horizon ; else- 
 where the darkness gathered more thickly than ever as 
 the months rolled on. The years 1692 and 1693 were 
 years of diplomatic difficulties and military reverses the 
 one encountered with unerring sagacity and untiring 
 patience, the other sustained with a noble fortitude. 
 The great coalition of Powers which he had succeeded in 
 forming to resist the ambition of Louis was never nearer 
 dissolution than in the spring of 1692. The Scandi-
 
 CHAP, x EUROPEAN PROSPECTS 105 
 
 navian states, who had held aloof from it from the first, 
 were now rapidly changing the benevolence of their 
 neutrality into something not easily distinguishable from 
 its reverse. The new Pope Innocent XII. showed him- 
 self far less amicably disposed towards William than his 
 two predecessors. The decrepitude of Spain and the 
 arrogant self-will of Austria were displaying themselves 
 more conspicuously tn"an ever. Savoy was ruled by a 
 duke who was more than half suspected of being a 
 traitor. Out of matensls so rotten and so ill-assorted as 
 these had the one statesman of the whole group to build 
 up and maintain the barrier which he was bent on erect- 
 ing against the inroads of France. By what incessant toil 
 and unfailing tact, with what insistences here and con- 
 cessions there, with what appeals to the vanity of this 
 potentate, the bigotry of that, the cupidity of the third, 
 and the apprehensions of all, he succeeded in keeping 
 them side by side and with their faces to the common 
 enemy it would be impossible to describe, in a manner at 
 all worthy of the subject, within the space at my command. 
 Suffice it to say that William did succeed in saving the 
 league from dissolution, and in getting their armies once 
 more into the field. But not, unfortunately, to any 
 purpose. The campaign of the present year was destined 
 to repeat the errors of the last, and these errors were to 
 be paid for at a heavier cost. Mons had fallen in 1691, 
 through the delays and mismanagement of the allied 
 armies; and in 1692 a greater fortress than Mons was to 
 share its fate. The French king was bent upon the 
 capture of the great stronghold of Namur, and the enemy, 
 as in the case of Mons, were too slow in their movements 
 and too ineffective in their dispositions to prevent it.
 
 106 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 Marching to the assault of the doomed city, with a 
 magnificence of courtly pageantry which had never before 
 been witnessed in warfare, Louis sat down before Namur, 
 and in eight days its faint-hearted governor, the nominee 
 of the Spanish viceroy of the Netherlands, surrendered 
 at discretion. Having accomplished, or rather having 
 graciously condescended to witness the accomplishment 
 of this feat of arms, Louis returned to Versailles, 
 leaving his army under the command of Luxembourg. 
 The fall of Namur was a severe blow to the hopes of 
 William, but yet worse disasters were in store for him. 
 He was now pitted against one who enjoyed the reputation 
 of the greatest general of the age, and William, a fair 
 but by no means brilliant strategist, was unequal to the 
 contest with his accomplished adversary. Luxembourg 
 lay at Steinkirk, and William approaching ^Trim from 
 a place named Tiambeque, opened his attack upon him 
 by a well -conceived surprise which promised at first 
 to throw the French army into complete disorder. 
 Luxembourg's resource and energy, however, were equal 
 to the emergency. He rallied and steadied his troops 
 with astonishing speed, and the nature of the ground 
 preventing the allies from advancing as rapidly as they 
 had expected, they found the enemy in a posture to receive 
 them. The British forces were in the front, commanded 
 by Count Solmes, the division of Mackay, a name now 
 honourable for many generations in the annals of 
 continental, no less than of Scottish warfare, leading the 
 way. These heroes, for so, though as yet untried soldiers, 
 they approved themselves, were to have been supported 
 by Count Solmes with a strong body of cavalry and 
 infantry, but at the critical moment he failed them
 
 X DEFEAT OF STEINKIRK 107 
 
 miserably, and his failure decided the fortunes of the 
 day. After a desperate struggle, in which they long 
 sustained the attack of the French household troops, the 
 flower of Louis's army, Mackay's division began to give 
 way. But no effective help arrived from Solmes. His 
 cavalry could not act from the nature of the ground, 
 and he refused to devote his infantry to what he declared 
 was useless slaughter. The division was practically 
 annihilated. Its five regiments, " Cutts's, Mackay's, 
 Angus's, Graham's, and Leven's, all," as Corporal Trim 
 relates pathetically, " cut to pieces, and so had the English 
 Life-guards been too, had it not been for some regiments 
 on the right, who marched up boldly to their relief, and 
 received the enemy's fire in their faces, before any one of 
 their own platoons discharged a musket." Bitter was the 
 resentment in the English army at the desertion of these 
 gallant troops by Count de Solmes, and William gave 
 vent to one of his rare outbursts of anger at the sight. 
 We have it indeed on the authority above quoted 
 unimpeachable as first-hand tradition, for Sterne had 
 heard the story of these wars at the knees of an eye- 
 witness of and actor in them that the King " would not 
 suffer the Count to come into his presence for many 
 months after." The destruction of Mackay's division had 
 indeed decided the issue of the struggle. Luxembourg's 
 army was being rapidly strengthened by reinforcements 
 from that of Boufflers, and there was nothing for it but 
 retreat. The loss on both sides had been great, but the 
 moral effect of the victory was still greater. William's 
 reputation for generalship, perhaps unduly raised by 
 his recent exploits in Ireland, underwent a serious 
 decline. The French were exultant at the demonstration
 
 108 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 of his inferiority to Luxembourg, and the victory of 
 Steinkirk inflamed the national pride to an overweening 
 degree. 
 
 William's popularity with his own army and people, 
 however, was at this time about to receive one of those 
 friendly "lifts" which his more unscrupulous enemies 
 were continually giving it throughout his life. Grandval, 
 a French officer, undertook, at the instigation TTiTsaid 
 of Barbesieux, the French Minister, and with the con- 
 nivance of James II., to assassinate him, and set out 
 with that purpose, accompanied by two accomplices, for 
 the camp of the allies. Both of these .men, however, 
 appear, with an originality and independence of initiative 
 not often found among traitors, to have played him false 
 simultaneously, yet without any collusion with each 
 other. Grandval had not been long in the Netherlands 
 before he was arrested, brought to trial before a court- 
 martial, and, on his own confession, sentenced to death. 
 His statement, attested by the officers constituting the 
 court-martial, was published immediately after his 
 execution, and the world then learnt that the dying 
 man's meditated crime was, according to his solemn 
 asseveration, suggested to him by a minister then, and 
 after the exposure still retained, in the service of Louis 
 XIV. ; and that James had signified to him at an inter- 
 view at St. Germains that he had been informed of the 
 "business" on which he was setting out, and that if 
 Grandval and his companions rendered him that service 
 " they should never want." Neither the French king 
 nor his Minister ever made any reply to Grandval's 
 confession; but James, though he put forth no public 
 disclaimer, denied on this as on other occasions that he
 
 x ATTEMPT OF GEANDVAL 109 
 
 had ever participated in any of the schemes for killing 
 William. Probably the projectors of such schemes were 
 careful never to mention the ugly word assassination in 
 the royal ears, so that it might always be possible for 
 his ex-Majesty to assume that nothing was contemplated 
 but William's "taking-off" in a less serious than the 
 Shakspearean sense. Plots to kidnap the "usurper" 
 were almost as commonly broached as plots to assas- 
 sinate him; and it was convenient that exalted per- 
 sonages should be able to persuade others, if not 
 themselves, that they were thinking only of seizing 
 William's person when their humbler instruments were 
 in reality bent upon taking his life. 
 
 Towards the end of October William arrived in 
 England, and was received with an amount of popular 
 acclamation to which the crime of Grandval had con- 
 tributed more than his own military prowess. In a few 
 days Parliament met, and the King addressed the two 
 Houses in a judicious speech, in which he congratulated 
 them on their great naval victory, condoled with them 
 on their military reverses, referred Avith concern to the 
 distress occasioned by the failure of the last harvest, and 
 informed them in effect that yet more money would be 
 required for the effective prosecution of the war. The 
 address in reply was amiable enough, but the Parlia- 
 ment, as the event soon proved, was in no very manage 
 able mood. The confusion of parties caused by William's 
 perseverance in his well-meant attempt at mixed govern- 
 ment was now at its height, and the state of things 
 created was undoubtedly not favourable either to 
 executive or legislative efficiency. An assembly divided 
 as was the then House of Commons by two intersecting
 
 110 WILLIAM III OHAX. 
 
 lines of cleavage, with its Whig and Tory demarcation, 
 traversed by a cross division into "court party" and 
 "country party," was obviously not a body likely to 
 display much unity and vigour. Jealousy of officialism 
 forbade ministers to reckon on the consentaneous support 
 even of members of their own way of political thinking, 
 while on the other hand party differences prevented the 
 formation of a strong opposition. 
 
 The session of 1692 was, however, fruitful both in 
 legislative achievement and in successful legislative 
 effort. In this year was made that valuation for the 
 land-tax, which subsisted until the tax itself was made 
 perpetual and redeemable more than a century after- 
 wards in 1798 ; and the first loan of one million sterling, 
 contracted by the Government in the name of a National 
 Debt, which has now increased to almost a thousand 
 times that amount. But the measures with which the 
 biographer of William is more directly concerned were 
 the Place Bill and the Triennial Bill. Of both of these 
 legislative projects I shall have more to say hereafter. 
 Here let it be enough to note that the former was lost 
 in the House of Lords by a majority of three votes ; 
 and that the latter after passing both Houses was held 
 in suspense by William until just the eve of the pro- 
 rogation, and then vetoed. The occasion is one of 
 special interest to English literature, as it was in reference 
 to this Bill that the King consulted Sir William Temple, 
 whose strong advice to his master to assent to the Bill 
 was conveyed through the medium of his young secretary 
 Jonathan Swift. After making several ministerial 
 changes, including as the most important the elevation of 
 Lord Somers to the Chancellorship, William prorogued
 
 X SESSION OF 1692 111 
 
 Parliament, and once more, in the perpetual succession 
 of the toils of war to the labours of Government, betook 
 himself to the Netherlands. The outlook of the con 
 tinental struggle had not improved ; and the task before 
 him, both diplomatic and military, was as formidable as 
 ever. He had as usual petty quarrels to compose among 
 the allied Powers, and wounded vanities to soothe, to 
 animate the energies of the lagging, and to keep an eye 
 on the movements of the false. The effort in which he 
 was the least successful was the last mentioned but one ; 
 he was unable with all his efforts to collect a force equal 
 to that of Luxembourg. He managed, however, to take 
 the field in greater strength than he had mustered on 
 some previous years, and as Louis had now again put 
 himself, with the usual elaboration of gorgeous ceremony, 
 at the head of his army, William promised himself the 
 satisfaction of looking his lifelong enemy once more in 
 the face upon a battlefield. Louis, however, whether 
 from personal cowardice or from having really con- 
 tracted under the influence of perpetual adulation a sort 
 of religious reverence for his own life, had none of 
 William's military ardour. He liked directing sieges, 
 but had no taste for commanding in pitched battles. In 
 other words, he preferred those operations of war in 
 which the mosffadventurous of generals must necessarily 
 remain in the rear to those in which the most cautious 
 of generals may find himself imperatively called upon to go 
 to the front. He had hoped that the more agreeable form 
 of warfare would be provided for him, and that he 
 would have an opportunity of taking Liege or Brussels 
 as he had taken Ghent. When, however, he found 
 William posted in his path with a considerable if
 
 112 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 numerically inferior army, his martial ardour underwent 
 a rapid reduction of temperature, and he at once signified 
 his intention of returning to Versailles. The disappoint- 
 ment of Luxembourg, who had assured him of certain 
 victory over William, was aggravated by the fact that 
 the King insisted on detaching Boufflers with a portion 
 of the army of the Netherlands to reinforce the troops 
 in the Palatinate ; which movement having been effected, 
 he went home to Madame de Maintenon. 
 
 Luxembourg, however, though reduced in strength, 
 had still the advantage over William in point of numbers, 
 and he succeeded in further increasing the disparity by 
 a feint in the direction of Liege, which deceived William 
 into despatching more than twenty thousand men of his 
 army to protect that city from attack He was thus 
 left with only fifty thousand men to oppose a force 
 exceeding his own by more than half. His position, 
 however, on the bank of the Gette was a naturally 
 strong one, and by extraordinary efforts with the spade 
 he succeeded in adding most formidably to its strength. 
 On the morning of the 19th of July the men of Luxem- 
 bourg's army found themselves confronted by a powerful 
 line of earthworks manned by a brave and steady foe. 
 Relying, however, upon a numerical superiority which he 
 rightly regarded as more than counterbalancing William's 
 advantages of position, Luxembourg at an early hour of 
 the morning gave orders for the attack, and the two 
 armies closed in a struggle more bloody and obstinate 
 than that of Steinkirk. For eight hours the battle 
 raged fiercely along the whole line, but most fiercely 
 round the village of Neerwinden on the English right. 
 This, the position of most strategic importance on the
 
 x DEFEAT OF LANDEN 113 
 
 field, was disputed with extraordinary fury. Twice did 
 the French troops succeed in making themselves masters 
 of it, and twice were they driven out by the allies, 
 leaving their dead in heaps behind them. At last the 
 household troops, who had done such service at Stein- 
 kirk, were sent against this village ; it was captured a 
 third time, and this time it was held. William weakened 
 his centre and left in desperate attempts to retake it, 
 but in vain ; and at last, as the day was wearing towards 
 the evening, the line of the allies gave way. The French 
 troops poured into and over the entrenchments; the 
 position was captured ; nothing remained for the com- 
 mander of the beaten army but to arrest disorganisation 
 and save retreat from becoming flight. To the moral 
 appeal of the situation William's great nature might be 
 trusted to respond, and it seems to have equally stimu- 
 lated his strategic capacities. The praise of his famous 
 opponent is sufficient testimony to his skilful conduct of 
 the military operation ; the memory of his fiery valour 
 was perpetuated in the traditions of the English army. 
 No doubt it was from some old messmate of Roger 
 Sterne's that the future author of Tristram Shandy 
 gathered the materials of that vivid picture of the retreat 
 across the bridge of Neerspeeken which he has put into 
 the mouth of My Uncle Toby. "The King," Trim 
 reminds his master, " was pressed hard, as your honour 
 knows, on every side of him." " Gallant mortal," cried 
 my Uncle Toby, caught up with enthusiasm, "this 
 moment, now that all is lost, I see him galloping across 
 me, corporal, to the left, to bring up the remains of the 
 English horse along with him to support the right and 
 tear the laurel from Luxembourg's brows if yet 'tis 
 
 I
 
 114 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 possible. I see him with the knot of his scarf just shot 
 off, infusing fresh spirits into poor Galway's regiment, 
 riding along the line, then wheeling about and charging 
 Conti at the head of it. Brave ! brave ! by heaven ! He 
 deserves a crown ! " 
 
 With Galway's regiments, we learn from the same 
 tradition, were those of " Wyndham and Luinley." Tal- 
 mash " brought off the foot with great prudence ; but 
 the number of wounded was prodigious, and no one had 
 time to think of anything but his own safety." It is 
 indeed pretty evident that only William's cool heroism 
 saved his army from annihilation. Solmes, fhefaindant 
 of Steinkirk, was left dead on the field. Galway himself, 
 the refugee Kavigny, was taken prisoner; Sarsfield on the 
 other side received a mortal wound. It was by far the 
 deadliest battle of the whole war, and it is difficult to 
 understand why a blow so crushing should have been so 
 slackly followed up. One cannot help thinking what 
 a French army and a French general would have made 
 of such a defeat inflicted upon the troops of a continental 
 coalition on such a battlefield some hundred years 
 later. But the terrible rapidity of those movements 
 with which, as with hammerstrokes, Napoleon was wont 
 to drive home the nail of victory was then unknown to 
 warfare. Town upon town would probably have fallen 
 after Landen had the fruits of the victory been seized, 
 as they would have been at a later day. But, either 
 through the indolence of Luxembourg or the comparative 
 immobility of a seventeenth - century army, William 
 obtained a priceless respite. He was rejoined by the 
 troops whom the enemy had so fatally decoyed to 
 Liege; and three weeks after his defeat he was once
 
 x SESSION OF 1693-94 115 
 
 more at the head of an army stronger than he had 
 commanded at Landen. The danger to the allied cause 
 was past. Luxembourg besieged and took Charleroi for 
 sole trophy of his great victory, and the campaign closed 
 for the year. 
 
 On the 31st of October William landed in England, 
 and prepared for a meeting with his Parliament, to 
 which he could hardly have looked forward with much 
 pleasure. He had a bad account to give and receive. 
 Over the whole Continent, in Spain, Germany, and 
 Italy, as well as Flanders, the allies had met with 
 adverse fortune ; at sea the vast " Smyrna fleet " of 
 merchantmen, four hundred strong, had, through the 
 incapacity of our naval commanders, been surprised 
 in the Bay of Lagos by the combined Brest and 
 Toulouse fleets of France, and, its imprudently re- 
 duced convoy of twenty English and Dutch sail having 
 been easily mastered, nearly three-fourths of it suffered 
 capture or destruction. His Parliament, however, met 
 him as a matter of fact in a commendably patriotic 
 mood. William made no attempt to ignore the serious 
 losses which the nation had incurred by land and sea, 
 though of the former he said (not perhaps with perfect 
 impartiality towards his own tactical errors) that "they 
 were only occasioned by the great numbers of our 
 enemies, which exceeded ours in all places" ; while 
 the latter he described as "having brought great dis- 
 grace upon the nation." And, admitting that the 
 charges of the war had already been very great, " I 
 am yet persuaded," he added, "that the experience 
 of the summer is sufficient to convince us all that to 
 arrive at a good end of it there will be a necessity of
 
 116 WILLIAM III CHAP 
 
 increasing our forces both by sea and land." The reply 
 of the Commons was cordial, and manifested no hesitation 
 as to granting the increased supplies ; and their patriotic 
 spirit encouraged William to hold his ground on a ques- 
 tion in which the minds of the allies were just now 
 about to be exercised. Louis XIV., insatiable in war as 
 he had hitherto been, was beginning to feel that he, and 
 still more that France, had had enough of the struggle. 
 Five years of hostilities carried on in half a dozen 
 quarters of Europe, with a failure of the French harvest 
 and the vintage, had almost prostrated the country. 
 Distress was rife in the provinces; even that most 
 patient of people showed signs of disaffection. Louis 
 made private overtures to the States -General with the 
 intention, of course, of his proposals being brought to 
 the ear of William. Through the neutral King of 
 Denmark he signified his willingness to restore all the 
 conquests he had made during the present war, to 
 renounce his pretensions to the Low Countries, and 
 to agree that the Elector of Bavaria should have the 
 Spanish Netherlands in case of the death of the King 
 of Spain/ and that the commercial arrangements of 
 Europe should be put on their old footing. The great 
 crux of the negotiations, and of all negotiations with a 
 similar object, was, and was known to be, the question 
 of the recognition or non-recognition of the de facto King 
 and Queen of England. On this question, so far as we 
 can now judge, the mouth-pieces of Louis gave forth an 
 uncertair sound. The King of Denmark' told the allies 
 that he was making efforts to induce the King of France 
 to waive the demand for the restoration of James ; the 
 French Ambassador hinted at a compromise. This, it
 
 X OVERTURES OF PEACE 117 
 
 has been suggested, was that "James should waive his 
 rights, and that the Prince of Wales should be sent to 
 England, be bred a Protestant, and, being adopted by 
 William and Mary, be declared his heir." To such an 
 arrangement Macaulay thinks that William would prob- 
 ably have had no objection, but that he "neither 
 would nor could have made it a condition of peace 
 with France, since the question who should reign in 
 England was to be decided by England alone." Un- 
 doubtedly William "could" not have independently 
 assented to a condition which, to acquire the least 
 validity, would have necessitated the statutory revision 
 of the succession settlement, as effected by the Conven- 
 tion and ratified by the Convention Parliament; but 
 there does not seem to be much evidence that he would 
 have assented to the condition if he could. There is no 
 trace of any endeavour on his part to sound the chiefs 
 of his parliamentary parties on the subject, and I 
 cannot but think it far more likely that neither 
 in this nor in any other matter of foreign policy 
 was William at all disposed to share any of 
 his discretionary powers in his capacity of virtual 
 Foreign Minister with his Parliament, so long as he 
 could obtain what he wanted from that body without 
 admitting it any more fully to his confidence. His 
 rejection of Louis's overtures, including this offer of 
 compromise, if it was made, was probably not dictated 
 by any high constitutional considerations at all. He 
 thought, and rightly, that pacific advances made by so 
 haughty an enemy indicated greater exhaustion than 
 had been suspected, and reckoning justly that another 
 year or two of fighting would get him better terms still,
 
 118 WILLIAM III CIIAP.X 
 
 he decided that another year or two of fighting there 
 should be. The supplies had been cheerfully voted him, 
 and that was enough. That the Parliament which had 
 voted them had any paramount right to decide whether 
 they would go on voting money or accept Louis's terms 
 almost certainly never entered his mind. To suppose 
 that it did is to attribute to him a theory of the consti- 
 tution anachronistic by fully fifty years. That such a 
 theory is more or less designedly attributed to him 
 in the above-quoted passage from Macaulay appears 
 unquestionable; and the Whig historian's anticipation 
 of history in this respect is of a piece with his exaggera- 
 tion of the permanent significance of the constitutional 
 changes which fall to be treated of in the next chapter.
 
 CHAPTEE XI 
 
 1693-1694 
 
 Formation of the first party Ministry Reintroduction of the Triennial 
 Bill and its defeat Of the Place Bill and its veto Causes 
 of the disallowance Macaulay's account examined Campaign 
 of 1694 Death of Mary. 
 
 I AM now to speak of one of the most important, as 
 it is sometimes regarded, of all the steps made under 
 William's auspices in the development of our parliamen- 
 tary polity a step represented as even more influential in 
 fixing and determining that system of strict party govern- 
 ment under which the nation is thriving or declining at the 
 present era than even the Revolution itself the forma- 
 tion of the first Ministry of the modern type. "No writer," 
 says Macaulay in speaking of it, " has yet attempted to 
 trace the progress of this institution an institution indis- 
 pensable to the harmonious working of our other institu- 
 tions. The first Ministry was the work partly of chance and 
 partly of wisdom not however of that highest wisdom 
 that is conversant with great principles of political philo- 
 sophy, but of that lower wisdom which meets daily exigen- 
 cies by daily expedients. Neither William nor the most 
 enlightened of his advisers fully understood the nature 
 and importance of that -noiseless revolution for it was 
 no less which began about the close of 1693, and was
 
 120 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 completed about the close of 1696. But everybody could 
 perceiveTEal at the close oTl693 the chief offices in the 
 Government were distributed not unequally between the 
 two great parties, that the men who held these offices 
 were perpetually caballing against each other, haranguing 
 against each other, moving votes of censure on each 
 other, exhibiting articles of impeachment against each 
 other, and that the temper of the House of Commons 
 was wild, ungovernable and uncertain. Everybody could 
 perceive that at the close of 1696 all the principal 
 servants of the Crown were Whigs, closely bound together 
 by public and private ties, and prompt to defend one 
 another against every attack, and that the majority of the 
 House of Commons was arrayed in good order under 
 these leaders, and had learned to move like one man at 
 the word of command." 
 
 There are perhaps not many passages of the famous 
 history in which its author's love of dramatic antithesis 
 has displayed itself in a statement more likely to mislead 
 the student. Because the change which took place in 
 the relation of Ministers of the Crown between 1693 and 
 1696 was a striking one Macaulay cannot resist the 
 temptation of describing it as though it were a final one. 
 In 1693 Ministers in disagreement with each other, 
 in 1696 Ministers in accord with each other the 
 suggestion of course being that they " lived happily ever 
 afterwards." Certainly no one previously unacquainted 
 with the facts would suppose from this account of them 
 that the first politically homogeneous Ministry was a 
 purely experimental one, and that the experiment was 
 not repeated by William, and never even attempted by 
 his successor, under whom the old system prevailed,
 
 xi FIRST PARTY MINISTRY 121 
 
 though with gradual modification, throughout her reign ; 
 that on many later occasions in our history the men in 
 the chief offices of the Government were to be found 
 " caballing " and sometimes even " haranguing " against 
 each other; and, in short, that it was not- till far on in the 
 next century that the idea of Ministers being men of like 
 political opinions " bound together by public and private 
 ties," and supported by a majority " arrayed in good 
 order under them, and moving like one man at the 
 word of command," became uniformly and permanently 
 associated with the constitution. Yet this is in fact the 
 case. The "lower political wisdom meeting daily 
 exigencies by daily expedients" did not devise an arrange- 
 ment calculated to endure for all time ; and no one ought 
 fco have been more surprised than Macaulay if it had. 
 It met a particular exigency by a particular expedient, 
 and as that particular exigency did not uniformly recur, 
 the particular expedient naturally did not at once stereo- 
 type itself in our parliamentary polity. The pure Whig 
 Government of 1696 attained the object of its formation, 
 namely, to carry out his war policy, and passed away. 
 William's later ministries were of a mixed character; 
 the ministries of Anne were partly Whig and partly 
 Tory; and the political unity which prevailed in the 
 Walpole Administration was succeeded by a return to the 
 old practice under Pulteney. It was not, as has been 
 said, until well on in the century that it became an 
 admitted political axiom that Cabinets should be con- 
 structed upon some bases of political union agreed upon 
 by the members composing the same when they accept 
 office together. 
 
 But though it is delusive to represent a mere political
 
 i 
 
 122 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 experiment as the consummation of a great constitu- 
 tional change, yet an experiment by which such change 
 was foreshadowed cannot of course be otherwise than 
 deeply interesting. And such undoubtedly is the char- 
 acter of the ministerial reconstruction which took place 
 in 1693. The particular exigency which the expedient 
 was designed to meet is almost patent on the face of the 
 European situation, as it must have presented itself to a 
 statesman of William's views and with William's policy 
 at heart. The one fact that the Whigs were in favour of a 
 vigorous prosecution of the war with Louis on its conti- 
 nental theatre, while the Tories favoured the husbanding 
 of English military resources and the maintenance of a 
 defensive attitude behind our " silver streak," and under 
 the protection of our navy, would undoubtedly have 
 sufficed of itself to determine William's choice of the 
 former party. In all other respects he probably re- 
 garded both English parties at this as at all other times 
 of his life with equal indifference if indeed one should 
 not say with equal aversion. He could have no love 
 for men who, like the Whigs, regarded him as a king of 
 their own making, or who, like the Tories, considered 
 him no king, in the full sense of the word, at all. 
 Whichever of the two English parties were more willing 
 to assist his efforts for a country which he loved far 
 better than England was virtually assured of his favour ; 
 and though no doubt he believed honestly enough that 
 the interests not only of continental Europe, but of 
 insular England, were identified with those of the 
 United Provinces though no doubt he honestly regarded 
 Holland as only the vanguard of European and English 
 liberties, menaced by the insatiable ambition of Louis
 
 xi FIRST PARTY MINISTRY 123 
 
 yet it is impossible to credit him, or any other mortal 
 man in the same situation, with the capacity of impar- 
 tial judgment on any point at which the interests of 
 England and those of Holland might have diverged. 
 Nor is it, I think, unjust to add that even when the 
 balance of English advantage might have appeared to 
 William himself to incline somewhat against any con- 
 templated course of conduct, he would perhaps have 
 held himself justified in proceeding from contemplation 
 to action. He was in all probability firmly, and one 
 cannot say unreasonably, possessed with the idea that J 
 England was largely his debtor and the debtor of his J 
 country; and that she should, at least within reason, If 
 make sacrifices for the protection of that nation, who 
 and whose Prince had rendered such services to her. 
 Whichever English party showed most disposition, or 
 rather least reluctance, to make common cause with the 
 United Provinces in the defence of Dutch (and there- 
 fore of English and European) liberties, became thereby 
 the party of William's choice. No doubt his gradual 
 construction of a pure Whig Ministry was in part 
 dictated by a desire to secure greater stability of counsel 
 and unity of action in the House of Commons. No 
 doubt his laudable experiment of governing by means 
 of both parties had had results with which he could 
 hardly have been satisfied. But he had borne for five 
 years with the parliamentary factiousness which that 
 experiment had undoubtedly tended to aggravate, and 
 there is no visible reason, save that which I have indi- 
 cated, for his putting an end to the experiment at this 
 particular moment and in this particular way. He had 
 made shift to do without a homogeneous Ministry ever
 
 124 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 since his accession. If now he needed a Ministry 
 which should be not only homogeneous, but homogene- 
 ously Whig, we must look to the exigencies of his 
 continental policy for the cause. 
 
 The process, however, of replacing the Tories of the 
 Administration by Whigs was a very gradual one, and 
 it was not of course until it was complete that the Whig 
 party in the House of Commons could be trusted to 
 support the Administration, " right or wrong," as, with- 
 out much suspicion of satire, we may say to have now 
 become the accepted constitutional practice. Notting- 
 ham and thj3jTor J^aval administr^jtoja^wjerfl^he first 
 to go, their retirement having been in the one case 
 consequentially, and in the other directly necessitated 
 by the narrow escape of the latter from parliamentary 
 censure in respect of the late naval miscarriages. 
 Russell became _First Lord_of Jbhe Admiralty, and with 
 him iNbttingham, who, as Secretary of State, was then 
 responsible for the military service, was of course 
 unable to serve. His place, however, was not immedi- 
 ately filled up, nor was it till the end of the session 
 that any further ministerial changes were made. And 
 this session itself was one of peculiar constitutional 
 interest on other grounds. In the first place the Trien 
 nial Bill, vetoed by William in the previous session, 
 was reintroduced, and met with a most unexpected fate. 
 It was brought in this time in the House of Commons, 
 and passed through all its stages up to the final one 
 without a division. But the motion that "the Bill 
 do now pass " was rejected by a majority of ten. The 
 whole affair is involved in much obscurity, and the 
 cause or causes of the unlooked-for rejection of the
 
 xi TRIENNIAL BILL 125 
 
 measure must always remain matter of* conjecture. 
 Macaulay declares its defeat to have been brought about 
 by the instrumentality of the expert parliamentary 
 intriguer Seymour ; and as no House of Commons that 
 ever lived is Bfcely to have relished the idea of putting 
 a term to its own existence, it is not difficult to guess 
 the kind of sentiment to which Seymour might have 
 appealed. But one point not unworthy of notice in the 
 matter is that the numbers voting in the division, 146 
 Noes and 136 Ayes, did not together compose a very full 
 House. They fell short by thirty-two of the numbers who 
 voted in the division by which the second edition of 
 the Triennial Bill, introduced in, and passed through, 
 the House of Lords, and sent down to the House of 
 Commons, was rejected a fortnight afterwards. In this 
 case, of course, the adverse majority of 197 were able 
 to allege that they were not opposing the limitation of 
 Parliament, but merely resisting a usurpation of con- 
 stitutional jurisdiction on the part of the Peers. But 
 it should be observed that this argument does not appear 
 to have produced many defections from the party of 
 the Ayes. They number 127, or only nine short of their 
 original strength ; and assuming that these nine votes 
 were transferred to the Noes, it will still leave some 
 forty new votes to be accounted for. It looks rather 
 as if these were the votes of members who would have 
 divided against the Bill if they had dared (and as they 
 did so soon as they got a plausible pretext for doing so), 
 but not daring, consented to assist in compassing its 
 rejection by absenting themselves from the division. 
 
 The Place Bill, another abortive measure of this 
 session, had a quite different history. It was introduced
 
 126 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 in much the same shape as in the previous year, and 
 passed the Lower House substantially unchanged. In 
 the Lords, however, it underwent a material amendment. 
 As originally drawn it provided that no member of the 
 House of Commons elected after the 1st of January 1694 
 should accept any place of profit under the Crown on pain 
 of forfeiting his seat, and of being incapable of sitting again 
 in the same Parliament. The Lords, while maintaining 
 the provision for the forfeiture of the seat, introduced 
 words qualifying the acceptor of office to sit in the 
 same Parliament if again chosen as a representative. 
 This amendment the Commons adopted, and the Bill 
 thus modified, having passed both Houses, was, some- 
 what to the surprise of everybody and to the disgust 
 of many people, vetoed by the King. This exercise of 
 the prerogative was received with far less patience than 
 on the two former occasions, and for a few days a 
 serious conflict between the Legislature and the Crown 
 appeared to be imminent. An address of remonstrance 
 was presented to William, who replied in conciliatory 
 language, but without holding out any hopes that his 
 veto would be withdrawn. Another debate of a some- 
 what excited character followed, but calmer counsels 
 than had at first found favour with the House of Com- 
 mons ultimately prevailed. A motion to prepare a new 
 representation or remonstrance was rejected by a very 
 large majority, and the Place Bill dropped. The great 
 Whig historian's account of the matter is that the 
 amendment " deprived the Bill of all efficacy both for 
 good and evil"; but that the Commons "so little un- 
 derstood what they were about that, after framing a law, 
 in one view most mischievous " namely, in respect of
 
 xi PLACE BILL 127 
 
 its tending to keep the chief Ministers of the Crown 
 out of the House of Commons, " and in another view 
 most beneficial" namely, as tending to keep subordinate 
 officials out of the House of Commons, they were per- 
 fectly willing that it should be " transformed into a law 
 quite harmless and almost useless " ; and that William 
 went out of the way to veto this quite harmless and 
 almost useless law, because he " understood the question 
 as little as the Commons themselves." 
 
 This is not a very plausible theory; nor does one 
 well see why Macaulay should describe that proviso of 
 a right to re-election which was afterwards adopted, 
 and which is an essential feature of our still subsisting 
 Act of Anne as depriving the Bill of nine-tenths of its 
 power both for good and for evil. Surely both King 
 and Parliament might have been credited with knowing 
 their own business a little better than that. It seems 
 reasonable rather to ask ourselves whether the amend- 
 ment was such as to militate in any serious degree 
 against the legislative object of the Commons, or in any 
 similar degree to disarm the objections which William 
 entertained to the measure. If it did neither of these 
 things, there was nothing paradoxical either in the Com- 
 mons accepting or the King pronouncing his veto upon 
 the Place Bill ; and it seems to me to be clear that the 
 amendment did neither of these things in fact. No 
 doubt it was desirable, from the point of view of the 
 majority, that office-holders should cease to sit in Par- 
 liament and become incapacitated for re-election; and 
 this on the abstract and general ground that such per- 
 sons were not sufficiently independent to be able to dis- 
 charge the functions of legislators with advantage to the
 
 128 WILLIAM III CHAP, 
 
 country. So far, then, as the general principle relating 
 to office- holders was concerned, the amendment was 
 opposed to the real wishes of the Commons, and had no 
 reason therefore to provoke the hostility of the King. 
 But there was a specific ground on which the House 
 had cause to dislike office-holders, and a specific class of 
 appointments to which this ground applied ; and the 
 Bill, even as modified by the Lords' proviso, would have 
 limited the royal influence in respect of these appoint- 
 ments to an extent quite sufficient to account both for 
 the Commons adopting the amendment of the Upper 
 House, and for the King refusing his assent to the Bill 
 It would obviously have dealt a heavy, though not, of 
 course, a final, blow to the employment of the patronage 
 of the Crown for the purpose of "managing" the Legis- 
 lature. It would have made it a far more difficult thing 
 for the Court or the Government to maintain their ma- 
 jority in the House of Commons by what would now br 
 called a corrupt use of its patronage, but what was then 
 regarded, or getting to be regarded at any rate by the 
 party in power, as one of the legitimate arts of rule. 
 For whenever the Sovereign or his Ministers endeavoured 
 to convert a hostile into a friendly vote by the bestowal 
 of office upon its possessor, he or they would always have 
 to reckon with the possibility that the constituents of 
 the bought member might not care to have their in- 
 terests sold along with their parliamentary representa- 
 tive. They might, and on a question which strongly 
 moved them they very probably would, have expressed 
 their disapproval of his conduct by refusing to re-elect 
 him; in which case the Government would, of course, 
 have found themselves at the end of the transaction with
 
 xi MACAULAY'S ACCOUNT EXAMINED 129 
 
 one piece of patronage the less, but not with one vote 
 the more. In a word, the Place Bill, as amended by the 
 Lords, though it would have left untouched the power 
 of the Crown to bring office-holders into Parliament, 
 would materially have impaired its power of turning 
 members of Parliament into office-holders; and appar- 
 ently it was only because Macaulay viewed the Bill too 
 exclusively in its relation to the former power, and took 
 no account of its bearing on the latter, that he could 
 have regarded it as a measure in which William had no 
 real concern, and which he only vetoed through some 
 vague dislike of it as affecting his prerogative he hardly 
 knew how. So far from this, it seems to me that his 
 objection may well have been a very definite one, and 
 that he perfectly understood, and was not at all dis- 
 posed to undervalue, the particular exercise of his pre- 
 rogative which it threatened. For whatever may have 
 been his original or even his persistent repugnance to the 
 acts of parliamentary management by means of parlia- 
 mentary corruption, he had probably come by this time 
 to regard it as among the inevitable if disagreeable 
 necessities of royal and ministerial policy under the 
 English system of party government. 
 
 The close of this session witnessed the virtual com- 
 pletion of the work of ministerial reconstruction on a 
 purely Whig basis. Shrewsbury, who had been offered 
 the Secretaryship of State left vacant by the retirement 
 of Nottingham, after some months of hesitation ac- 
 cepted the office. Trenchard, the other Secretary of 
 State, was also a member of the Whig party. The 
 rising Whig financier, Charles Montague, who had 
 during this session devisecT and carried out the legis- 
 
 K
 
 130 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 lative measure for the establishment of the Bank of 
 England, was for this service elevated to the post of 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer. TheKeeper of the Seal 
 was the WBlg BomenT The Whig Eussell was First 
 Lord of the Admiralty. All the important offices of the 
 State were now in fact in the hands of the Whig party, 
 and William, now fairly embarked upon the experi- 
 ment recommended by Sunderland, made one last con- 
 cession to his old policy of balancing one party against 
 the other by a liberal distribution of honours among 
 the displaced Tories. 
 
 The military and naval operations of 1694 were 
 marked by none of these successes which catch the 
 public eye, but the year was really one of more moment 
 to the history of the struggle with Louis than at first 
 sight appears. Mismanagement and treachery brought 
 disaster on the expedition against Brest, and the disgrace 
 was certainly not redeemed by the subsequent bombard- 
 ment and destruction of Dieppe and Havre. But the 
 despatch of Eussell's fleet to the Mediterranean yielded 
 solid gains which more than compensated for our losses 
 in the Channel. Eussell relieved Barcelona, blockaded 
 Toulon, brought the hostile Italian States to reason, and 
 compelled them, for the first time, to acknowledge 
 William's titles, reanimated the Duke of Savoy, who 
 had begun to think of a separate peace with France, 
 and, indeed, practically brought the Mediterranean 
 under English maritime control As a consequence, 
 our commerce, which had been declining ever since the 
 Eevolution, began rapidly to revive. 
 
 The land campaign, though equally undistinguished 
 by any striking triumph, was no less fruitful in matter
 
 xr CAMPAIGN OF 1694 131 
 
 for solid satisfaction. An attempt of William to carry 
 the war into the enemy's country was foiled, it is true, 
 by the skill of Luxembourg, who repulsed the advance of 
 the Elector of Bavaria upon French Flanders, and this 
 check was, of course, more important on one side than 
 William's capture of the inconsiderable fortress of Huy 
 was on the other. But in Spain, where Russell's ap- 
 pearance before Barcelona had compelled De Noailles to 
 retreat ; on the Rhine, where the Prince of Baden drove 
 back Delorges, and established himself for the summer 
 in Alsace; and in Piedmont, where, in spite of the 
 vacillations of the Duke of Savoy, the French gained no 
 material advantage the course of events, particularly as 
 contrasted with those of the three previous years, gave 
 ample justification for the words with which William 
 met his Parliament on the 9th of November. "With 
 respect," he said, " to the war by land, I think I may 
 say that this year has put a stop to the progress of the 
 French arms." Loyal addresses were returned, and 
 supplies to the amount of five millions were readily 
 voted ; but, along with the Supply Bill, the Triennial 
 Bill was again introduced. It was probably intimated 
 to Parliament, through some of the private channels of 
 communication with the Court, that William was not 
 prepared to veto it a second time. The Bill was brought 
 in on the first day of the session, and, together with a ' 
 Bill settling the Customs on the Crown, received the I 
 royal assent on the 22d of December. November of ' 
 1696 was fixed as the limit of the life of the existing 
 Parliament. The Place Bill, vetoed by the King in the 
 previous session, was again introduced, and with exactly 
 the same results as had followed the second attempt to
 
 132 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 pass the Triennial Bill. This measure, it will be re- 
 membered, after failing to obtain the royal assent in 
 the session of 1692-3, was defeated in the Commons in 
 1693-4, and so also it happened with the Place Bill. 
 The inference which I think suggests itself in both 
 cases is that the exercise of the royal veto, though 
 unpopular with the country, was not by any means 
 equally so with the House of Commons ; that there 
 were many Tories who were not particularly keen 
 on purging Parliament of office-holders, and not a few 
 Whigs whose zeal for the limitation of its constitutional 
 life was somewhat lukewarm ; and that both Whigs and 
 Tories of this order were not sorry to be able to evade 
 their party obligations to vote for these measures by 
 pleading their unwillingness to force the King's hand, 
 and perhaps provoke a constitutional crisis. 
 
 The day on which William gave his assent to the 
 Triennial Bill was to him a day of grave anxiety ; and a 
 year fairly prosperous abroad and peaceful at home was 
 to bring him ere its close the heaviest calamity of his 
 life. The illness of the Queen, who had been for two or 
 three days confined to her bed, was on the evening of 
 the 21st of December recognised by her physician as 
 smallpox. A week afterwards, at one in the morning 
 of the 28th of December, she died. William's grief at 
 her loss was uncontrollable, and to all but those, and 
 they were few, who had penetrated the stoicism beneath 
 which he was accustomed to conceal deep feelings, it must 
 have been a strange and moving sight. He remained 
 for days at her bedside scarcely taking food or sleep. 
 He broke out in the presence of Burnet into passionate 
 outcries upon his agony at the thought of losing her, and
 
 xi DEATH OF MARY 133 
 
 into fervent praises of her love and virtues. " He cried 
 out," says the Bishop, " that there was no hope, and that 
 from being the happiest he was now going to be the 
 miserablest creature on earth. He said that during the 
 whole course of their marriage he had never known one 
 single fault in her ; there was a worth in her which no- 
 body knew besides himself. . . . The King's affection 
 was greater than those who knew him best thought his 
 temper capable of ; he went beyond all bounds in it ; 
 during her sickness he was in an agony that amazed us 
 all, fainting often and breaking out into most violent 
 lamentations; when she died his spirits sank so low 
 that there was great reason to apprehend that he was 
 following her ; for some weeks after he was so little 
 master of himself that he was not capable of minding 
 business or of seeing company." 
 
 The depth of this affection, moreover, was not dis- 
 proportioned, as is sometimes the case in examples of 
 conjugal devotion, to the worthiness of the object. Even 
 Evelyn, who was shocked as a Tory and legitimate king's- 
 jaan by the levity of Mary's behaviour (for which, how- 
 ever, an explanation has been suggested) on her arrival 
 at Whitehall after James's flight, affirms of her that " she 
 was such an admirable woman, abating for taking the 
 crown without a due apology, as does, if possible, outdo 
 the renowned Queen Elizabeth." The comparison, ex- 
 travagant as it may appear at first sight, is not without 
 some justification in the spirited behaviour of Mary on 
 the great national crisis which occurred during her hus- 
 band's absence in the Irish campaign. It would be 
 absurd of course to credit Mary with Elizabeth's gifts of 
 statecraft, or with her intellectual capacity in general,
 
 134 WILLIAM III CHAP, xi 
 
 but in courage and composure in the presence of danger 
 she was no unworthy successor of that great queen. In 
 William's passionate declarations of his debt to her there 
 was no extravagance at all. To him she had been the 
 most affectionate, dutiful, and forbearing of wives, and 
 if her influence over him fell short of retaining his 
 marital constancy, she endeared herself more closely to 
 him on the side of the purer emotions by her magnani- 
 mous forgiveness of his errors. It cannot but soften the 
 harsher outlines of our conception of William, and help 
 to supply that human and homely element which is too 
 much wanting in his character, to know that he was 
 capable both of inspiring and reciprocating so true an 
 affection as this.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 1695-1697 
 
 Oampaign of 1695 Capture of Namur by the allies Dissolution oi' 
 Parliament William's "progress" The elections New Parlia- 
 ment Grants to Portland The Assassination Plot Campaign of 
 1696 Fenwick's conspiracy Negotiations with France Peace of 
 Ryswick. 
 
 FOR some weeks after the death of Mary William's 
 grief for her loss disabled him from the discharge of 
 public duties. He desisted from the personal delivery of 
 his answers to addresses from the two Houses, and though 
 important domestic events such as the disgrace and 
 dismissal of Sir John Trevor, the Speaker of the House 
 of Commons, for corruption, and the proceedings pre- 
 liminary to the contemplated impeachment of Danby, now 
 Duke of Leeds, for the same offence took place~bef ore the 
 prorogation, the King does not appear to have actively 
 interested himself in them, either on one side or the 
 other. Leeds, though he escaped the impeachment with 
 which he was threatened, stood morally convicted of the 
 charges preferred against him ; but William still allowed 
 this useful and experienced, if unscrupulous public ser- 
 vant to remain at the head of the Council. The only 
 mark of royal displeasure with which he was visited 
 was his exclusion from the list of lords-justices appointed
 
 136 WILLIAM III CHAP, 
 
 according to custom to execute the royal authority dur- 
 ing the King's absence on the Continent. 
 
 On the 3d of May Parliament was prorogued, and 
 on the 12th of the same month William set out for 
 Flanders to take command of the allied army for what 
 was destined to be the most successful of his campaigns. 
 Luxembourg was dead, and the command of the 
 French army in the Netherlands had devolved on 
 a far inferior general in the person of Marshal Villeroy. 
 William was now matched against a general to whom he 
 was as much superior as Luxembourg had been to him, 
 and this reversal of conditions told speedily and signally 
 on the fortunes of the year's campaign. The prime 
 object of William's operations was the retrieval of the 
 disastrous loss which the allies had suffered in 1692 by 
 the fall of Namur. On the recapture of this important 
 fortress he now bent his whole energies. His first move- 
 ment, however, was an unsuccessful one. Athlone, who 
 had been detached with a large force to invest the city, 
 was unable to prevent Boufflers from throwing himself 
 into it with a strong reinforcement. The garrison now 
 numbered 14,000 or 15,000 men, and as its works had 
 been planned by Vauban, the greatest military engineer 
 of his age, its defenders reckoned it impregnable. Leav- 
 ing the main body of his army under the Prince of 
 Vaudemont, who, when pressed by Villeroy, succeeded 
 in skilfully retiring to Ghent, William, at the head of a 
 division, effected a junction with the forces of the 
 Elector of Bavaria and the Brandenburg contingent, 
 and marching to Namur proceeded rapidly to invest 
 it. Its siege was tfien vigorously prosecuted. Cohorn, 
 the pupil of Vauban, and next to him in scientific repu-
 
 xii CAMPAIGN OF 1695 137 
 
 tation, was the engineer of the allies, and, thus pitted 
 against his master, had every incitement to the exertion 
 of his utmost skill. The trenches were opened on the 
 2d of July, and on the 8th the outworks of one side of 
 the city were attacked and carried by an English force. 
 This was the occasion on which William is reported to 
 have exclaimed, laying his hand on the shoulder of the 
 Elector of Bavaria, "Look, look at my brave English !" 
 The soldier in him was far nearer to them than the 
 statesman, and amid the smoke and tumult of that 
 Flemish battlefield he was doubtless stirred by emo- 
 tions towards his subjects which at Kensington or West- 
 minster he had never known. On the 17th of the month, 
 after a fierce conflict in which the attacking forces were 
 thrice beaten back and thrice returned to the assault, 
 the first counterscarp of the town was Carried. On the 
 20th the Bavarians and Bfandenburgers captured another 
 portion of the outworks, and a few days later the English 
 and Dutch made themselves masters of the second line 
 of fortifications. Before, however, a general assault could 
 be ordered, Boufflers, who did not consider himself strong 
 enough to defend the town, surrendered it on terms of 
 being allowed to retire into the citadel, for the possession 
 of which, in its turn, an obstinate struggle began. 
 Villeroy, now before Brussels, endeavoured in vain by a 
 furious and destructive bombardment of that city to 
 compel the allies to raise the siege of the Namur citadel, 
 and Boufflers, in his last stronghold, soon found himself 
 exposed to so terrible a fire from one hundred and sixty 
 cannon and sixty mortars that, unless relief reached him, 
 he felt that capitulation could only be a question of 
 days. At this desperate juncture Villeroy advanced to
 
 138 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 his assistance, and on the 15th of August his army, 
 80,000 strong, was sighted by the defenders of Namur. 
 The siege of the citadel was not for a moment inter- 
 mitted ; the allies stood between the fortress they were 
 seeking to capture and the host which was marching to 
 relieve it, equally prepared to strike at both. For three 
 days the two armies confronted each other three days 
 of such anxiety as Europe had not known since the be- 
 ginning of the war. Everything seemed to portend a 
 conflict between the two great hosts as decisive and 
 even epoch-making a struggle as that which, after 
 the lapse of a century and a quarter, was to be fought 
 out on that now historic plain which the French general 
 had skirted on his way from Brussels. But the event 
 surprised every one and disappointed many. On the 
 night of the 18th Villeroy unaccountably withdrew his 
 army, and the fate of the fortress was sealed. Portland 
 was sent to demand its surrender, but Boufflers, op- 
 pressed by the tradition that no French marshal had 
 ever capitulated, refused to do so, and the next day, 
 after the bloodiest assault which the history of that 
 time records, the allies succeeded in capturing about a 
 mile of the prodigious outworks of the citadel. Boufflers 
 requested a truce of forty-eight hours to bury his dead, 
 which was allowed him ; and before the expiration of 
 the time he signified his willingness to capitulate within 
 ten days. He was informed by the Elector of Bavaria 
 on behalf of the allies that he must surrender immedi- 
 ately or prepare for an immediate renewal of the attack ; 
 and thus resolutely met he yielded. On the 26th of 
 August the garrison marched out with the honours of 
 war, and the greatest humiliation inflicted upon the
 
 KIT CAPTURE OF NAMUR 139 
 
 French king since the commencement of his career of 
 conquest was with much pomp and circumstance con- 
 summated. Villeroy and his useless army had already 
 retired to Mons. 
 
 The capture of Namur was the greatest event of the 
 year, and indeed of the campaign. It marked the turn 
 ef the tide in Louis's fortunes. From 1690 onwards it 
 had set steadily in its favour, and reached full flood on 
 the day of Landen, in 1693. The following year may 
 be fairly tak~en~as representing the half-hour of slack 
 water before the ebb begins ; but in 1695 it was plain to 
 every one that the tide was running out. No other vic- 
 tory was needed to demonstrate it after that of Namur, 
 and none in fact was won. In the autumn hostilities as 
 usual ceased, and on the 10th of October William, leaving 
 his army in winter quarters, returned to England to be 
 received with a too rare warmth of welcome by his 
 people. He seized the opportunity of this burst of 
 popular sunshine to dissolve Parliament, which had still 
 under the Triennial Act another year of life to run. It 
 has been suggested that he did so to put a stop to the 
 impeachment of Leeds, but though the proceeding 
 against the Minister to whom he owed not only his 
 marriage with Mary, but in a great measure his elevation 
 to the English throne, must doubtless have given him 
 uneasiness, he had reason enough apart from this for 
 determining the life of the Legislature. "The happy 
 state the nation was in," says Burnet, "put all men 
 except the merchants in a good temper ; none could be 
 sure we should be in so good a state next year ; so that 
 now probably elections would fall on men who were well 
 affected to the Government. A Parliament that saw itself
 
 140 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 in its last session might affect to be froward, the mem- 
 bers by such a behaviour hoping to recommend them- 
 selves at the next election." And though Burnet only 
 glances at the State prosecutions as one among the 
 causes which decided William's action, it was with no 
 special reference to the case of Leeds. " Besides," are 
 his words, " if the same Parliament had been continued 
 probably the inquiries into corruption would have been 
 carried on which might divert them from more pressing 
 affairs, and kindle greater heats, all which might be more 
 decently dropped by a new Parliament than suffered to 
 lie asleep by the old one." 
 
 A proclamation was accordingly issued dissolving the 
 existing Parliament, and summoning a new one for the 
 22d of November. The interval was employed by 
 William in an unwonted effort to conciliate the goodwill 
 of the electors. For the first and only time in his reign 
 he set out upon a royal progress through the eastern and 
 northern parts of his kingdom, visiting many great 
 houses, not only of Whig, but in some cases of Tory 
 magnates. At each of his stopping-places the rural 
 population of all degrees from squire to peasant 
 thronged to see him, and it seems evident that he made 
 almost pathetic efforts to please. "The King," says 
 Burnet, who is always an outspoken critic of his royal 
 master, " studied to constrain himself to a little more 
 openness and affability than was natural to him ; but his 
 cold and dry way had too deep a root not to return too 
 oft upon him." Neither at Cambridge in his journey 
 northward, nor at Oxford, which he took on his return, 
 was his visit a success. The chiefs of the younger 
 University invited him to no entertainment ; he declined
 
 ni NEW PARLIAMENT 141 
 
 that which was offered him by the authorities of the 
 elder. People murmured, too, at his visit to Althorp, and 
 some remarked, no doubt with less truth than ill-nature, 
 that the only place in which he really succeeded in mak- 
 ing himself agreeable was at the seat of the highly un- 
 popular Sunderland. Nevertheless, and however little 
 these conciliatory efforts may have contributed to the 
 result, the elections went generally in William's favour. 
 In many constituencies Tories lost their seats, and were 
 replaced by Whigs. The city of London, which had 
 returned four of the former party, now sent to Parliament 
 four of the latter. Members were in some places expressly 
 instructed by their constituents to support the King, and 
 to vote whatever supplies might be necessary for the 
 vigorous prosecution of the war. The new Parliament 
 contained about one hundred and sixty members, of whom 
 the greater number were known to be well disposed to- 
 wards the King. William had triumphantly performed 
 a feat which, as attempted by the advisers of the sover- 
 eign, has perhaps more often been attended with disaster 
 than with success". 
 
 On the 22d of November, the day appointed, the new 
 Parliament met. The Commons again chose Foley for 
 their Speaker, and the King made a long speech from the 
 throne. The demand for supplies was still very high, 
 but William said that as he had engaged in the present 
 war by the advice of his first Parliament, who thought it 
 necessary for the defence of the Protestant religion and 
 the preservation of the liberties of Europe, and as the 
 last Parliament had with great cheerfulness assisted him 
 to carry on the war, so he could not doubt but that the 
 present Parliament would be unanimously zealous in the
 
 142 WILLIAM III CHAP 
 
 prosecution of it, particularly since the advantages gained 
 that year afforded a reasonable hope of future success. 
 The Commons voted an address of thanks and con- 
 gratulation upon the success of his Majesty's arms abroad, 
 and pledged themselves to the prosecution of the war. 
 William returned a short but suitable answer, and the 
 business of the session began. The Legislature set to 
 work to effect a much-needed purification of the coinage, 
 and as the Lords had made a concession to the Commons 
 in respect of the measure which became necessary for this 
 purpose, the Lower House now assented to the often 
 rejected amendment introduced by the Upper House in 
 the Bill for regulating trials in cases of high treason, 
 which now at last became law. But the session was not 
 to proceed far without giving birth to an unfortunate 
 difference between Parliament and the King. William, 
 with that ill-judged profuseness of liberality towards his 
 Dutch adherents, by "which he compromised not only 
 contemporary popularity but posthumous reputation, 
 proposed to grant to Portland a magnificent estate con- 
 sisting of five very extensive manors in Denbighshire. 
 The people of the county forthwith set up the cry that 
 the King intended to make this foreigner Prince of 
 Wales, so far at least as he could do so by bestowing on 
 him all that the Crown had to give in the principality. 
 The local gentry petitioned against the grant, and an 
 address was voted requesting the King to stop it 
 "Portland," says Macaulay, "begged that he might not 
 be the cause of a dispute between his master and the 
 Parliament, and the King, though much mortified, yielded 
 to the general wish of the nation." It would have been 
 better, however, if the historian had in this place added
 
 xir GRANTS TO PORTLAND 143 
 
 that William forthwith made a fresh grant to the Earl 
 of Portland of the manors of Grantham, Dracklow, 
 Pevensey, and East Greenwich, in the counties of Lincoln, 
 Cheshire, Sussex, and Kent, together with the honour of 
 Penrith in the county of Cumberland, and other manors 
 in Norfolk, York, and the Duchy of Lancaster. As these 
 ancient crown-lands were far apart it could not now be 
 said that the King was creating a principality for the 
 favourite, but it removed no other of the serious 
 objections to the grant. 
 
 Again, however, and as before, at a moment when the 
 seldom very bright sky of William's popularity threat- 
 ened to become seriously overcast, the sympathies of his 
 people were revived by his enemies. The most formid- 
 able of the conspiracies against the King's' life, that 
 known par excellence as the Assassination Plot, was set on 
 foot, or rather revived, as the renewal of a project which 
 had been frustrated several months earlier by the 
 departure of William for the Continent in the autumn 
 of 1695 ; and by the spring of the following year was 
 ripe for execution. Its leading spirit was one Sir George 
 Barclay, a Scotchman, who came over from St. Germains 
 with a special commission from James, which if it did 
 not actually contemplate, or at least expressly sanction 
 assassination, was, to say the least, of a dangerously elastic 
 character. Among those whom he enlisted in the con- 
 spiracy were one Charnock, an ex-fellow of Magdalen 
 College, who had been a tool of James II. in his high- 
 handed violation of the statutes and liberties of that society, 
 Sir John Fenwick, a man of good family and connections 
 and a noted Jacobite agitator, and Sir William Parkyns, a 
 Tory. The plan of the conspirators was to lie in wait
 
 144 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 for William at a ferry on the Thames, which he was in 
 the habit of crossing every Saturday on his way from 
 Kensington to hunt in Richmond Park. To overpower 
 the royal guards it was necessary to raise the number of 
 the conspirators to forty, among whom it was tolerably 
 certain that there would be at least one traitor. As a 
 matter of fact there were three. The secret was 
 communicated by one of these to Portland ; the King, 
 at first disposed to make light of it, consented at last to 
 abandon his hunting expedition on the Saturday fixed 
 for the assassination, and again on the same day in the 
 following week ; and the principal conspirators were 
 arrested. Barclay escaped to France, and the Duke of 
 Berwick, who had at the same time been vainly attempting 
 to prepare' the way for a French invasion by a Jacobite 
 insurrection, also fled the country. William, in a speech 
 from the throne, made a formal announcement to the 
 two Houses of the detection of the conspiracy and his 
 providential escape; and shortly afterwards several of 
 the conspirators, including Charnock and Parkyns, were 
 tried and executed. 
 
 That the discovery of the Assassination Plot tended, 
 as Macaulay holds, to revive the popularity of William 
 may perhaps have been the case; it is at any rate 
 certain that on the occasion of the next difference be- 
 tween the King and the Legislature he proved to be 
 fully master of the situation. The growing jealousy 
 entertained by the landed interest towards the wealthy 
 traders, who were now in ever -increasing numbers dis- 
 puting the representation of the counties and provincial 
 boroughs with the squirearchy, gave birth during the 
 present session to a project of legislation of a highly
 
 xii ELECTIONS BILL 145 
 
 reactionary kind. A Bill was brought in for excluding 
 from the House of Commons every one not possessed of 
 a certain estate in land. For a county member this 
 property qualification was fixed at five hundred a year, 
 for a borough member at two hundred. Early in 
 February the Bill was read a second time, and referred 
 to a select committee, whose deliberations are rendered 
 memorable by the fact that an attempt was made in the 
 course of them to antedate an existing provision of an 
 electoral system by about a century and a quarter. It 
 was proposed to add a clause enacting that votes should 
 be_taken by ballot, but the proposition was rejected 
 without a division. Duly revised by the committee the 
 Bill was returned to the House, and it then became 
 apparent that the pretensions of the landed interest were 
 to meet with resistance from an unexpected quarter. 
 The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge raised their 
 voices against a restriction which struck at individual 
 ability no less than at personal property, and in deference 
 to their protest a motion was made to except the 
 Universities from the operation of the Bill. This, how- 
 ever, was rejected by 151 votes to 143, and a motion 
 subsequently made to except the city of London was not 
 pressed to a division. The Lords, from disinclination, 
 let us charitably hope, to embroil themselves with the 
 elective House on a matter of electoral legislation, passed 
 the Bill without any amendment, and it came up in due 
 course for the royal assent. It was perhaps the least 
 invidious of all the opportunities ever offered to William 
 for the exercise of the veto, and he very wisely resolved 
 to stop the Bill. In spite, however, of the obviously 
 disinterested character of the step the measure being 
 
 L
 
 146 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 one which touched no royal prerogative whatever, and 
 which he could have no reason for vetoing save that he 
 believed its provisions to he opposed to the true interests 
 of the country his action did not escape challenge. 
 An attempt was made by a section of the Tory party to 
 carry a vote of censure upon whatever Minister had ad- 
 vised him to refuse assent to the Bill. The proposal, 
 however, was not taken up by the more moderate 
 members of the Opposition, and was ultimately rejected 
 by the very large majority of 219 to 70 a sufficiently 
 emphatic affirmation of the legitimate character of at 
 least this exercise of the prerogative of disallowance. 
 It is of course not impossible, as has been already ad- 
 mitted, that the recent revulsion of goodwill towards the 
 King may have contributed to the completeness of this 
 victory, but it seems scarcely necessary to ascribe much 
 to the operation of any such sentiment. It is pretty 
 clear that the Bill for the Regulation of Elections was 
 very doubtfully regarded in many quarters of the House; 
 and it is indeed rather surprising that in a Parliament 
 such as that returned in 1695, with Whig influence in a 
 distinct ascendency, it should have been possible to 
 carry the Bill at all. It must, moreover, be remem- 
 bered that even if there had been a more pronounced 
 liking for it in Parliament itself, the measure was essen- 
 tially one of that character for which a shrewd mem- 
 ber will not venture to vote except with one eye on his 
 constituents. Natural as it was for a country gentle- 
 man of that day to object to a Londoner coming down 
 with a valise full of guineas to contest with him his 
 native county or his ancestral borough, it is not to be 
 supposed that his objection would be shared by the
 
 xii CAMPAIGN OF 1696 147 
 
 free and independent electors of either constituency. 
 To them it might appear by no means undesirable that 
 " local interest " should be stimulated to judicious liber- 
 ality by the competition of the open-handed outsider. 
 
 On the 27th of April the first session of the new 
 Parliament came to an end, and a fortnight after the pro- 
 rogation William landed in Holland, whence he immedi- 
 ately set out to resume the command of the allied forces 
 in Flanders. His presence, however, was needed rather 
 for purposes of counsel than command ; for, in truth, 
 the long and desperate struggle with Louis had now 
 reached a stage when even the most enterprising of 
 captains might well be of opinion that Q. Fabius was the 
 only general whose tactics were worth studying. At 
 one time it had almost become a question which of the 
 combatants would be the first to swoon from exhaustion; 
 but before William's arrival the skilful surprise arid 
 destruction by Athlone and Cohorn of a vast magazine 
 of ammunition and stores, collected by the French at 
 Groet, had virtually decided that question against France. 
 England, then in the throes of a monetary crisis, was 
 sufficiently hard put to it to support the continued strain 
 of the campaign ; but upon France, with three armies 
 afoot in three hostile countries at once, the demand was 
 far more terrible. She was virtually too weak to attack 
 in the Netherlands, and William probably saw no ad- 
 vantage to himself in forcing an engagement. The 
 summer passed away in marches and counter-marches, 
 and not a blow was exchanged between Villeroy and 
 the strategist who had plucked Namur out of his grasp 
 the year before. On the Ehine operations were equally 
 bloodless and indecisive. In Catalonia there had been
 
 148 WILLIAM III OHAP. 
 
 some hard fighting, and Vendome, who had succeeded 
 Noailles, won a dearly - bought victory over the 
 Spaniards. Throughout the year, indeed, the pen was 
 more busy than the sword, and the straits in which 
 Louis found himself may be measured by the energy 
 of his efforts to detach the allies from each other. The 
 wavering Duke of Savoy was at last definitively won 
 over, his seduction, it is said, being finally effected by 
 assurances secretly transmitted to Turin from the Court 
 of Versailles to the effect that James would inevitably 
 be restored to his throne in consequence of the extra- 
 ordinary measures then being concerted for that purpose. 
 The Duke, upon this, went on pretence of pilgrimage to 
 Loretto, and there signed a secret treaty with France. 
 Suspicion of his fidelity, however, soon gained ground, 
 and in the course of the summer he threw off the mask 
 and declared his intention, in accordance with a clause 
 in the secret treaty, of establishing a neutrality over 
 all Italy. To this, of course, the Emperor and the 
 Kings of Spain and England refused to assent ; but the 
 Duke compelled them to submission by an invasion of 
 Milan, and all Italian resistance to the French power 
 was brought to an end. Louis at the same time made 
 separate overtures of peace to the Dutch, and with such 
 success that the States-General formally resolved that 
 the concessions of France afforded good ground for a 
 treaty. The terms were communicated to the other 
 members of the confederacy, by some of the weaker of 
 whom they were accepted, although the Emperor and 
 the King of Spain united in rejecting them. 
 
 While matters were in this condition William re- 
 turned to England for the parliamentary session, and
 
 xii NEGOTIATIONS WITH FRANCE 149 
 
 in his speech on the 20th of October to the two Houses 
 he informed them that overtures of peace had been made 
 by the enemy. But the language in which he referred 
 to them left no doubt of his own views. "I am sure," 
 he said, " we shall agree in opinion that the only way of 
 treating with France is with our swords in our hands." 
 This is not a method of treating with foreign Powers 
 which finds equal favour in our own day ; but in 1696 
 there was no great difference among English parties as 
 to the proper mode of negotiating, at any rate with 
 Louis XIV. The House of Commons was as sternly 
 distrustful of the French king as was William himself. 
 Protracted and burdensome as had been the struggle, 
 they were in no more hurry to catch at Louis's over- 
 tures than he. In their address of reply the Commons 
 recalled the fact that this was the eighth year that they 
 had assisted his Majesty with large supplies for carry- 
 ing on a just and necessary war, and that this war had 
 cost the nation much blood as well as treasure; but 
 they added that the benefits procured to religion and 
 Liberty were not dearly purchased at this price, and 
 they pledged themselves to provide not only the neces- 
 sary supplies for continuing the war with vigour, but 
 also for the payment of the public debt, which had been 
 gradually accumulating in consequence of the deficiencies 
 of revenue. The close of this session was marked by 
 vehement debates in both Houses on the Bill for the 
 attainder of Sir John Fenwick. Fenwick, who had 
 been arrested in the previous summer, and was now 
 lying in the Tower, endeavoured to save his life by 
 making a confession incriminating Marlborough, Godol- 
 phin, Russell, Shrewsbury, and other Lords, whom he
 
 150 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 indicated as holding communications with the exiled 
 king. William, however, who had long been well 
 aware of the treason of most of these accused servants 
 of his, declined to notice the charges, and the accuser 
 only sealed his own doom by making them. A Bill of 
 Attainder was brought in against him by the Whigs, 
 and, the insufficient evidence in support of it having by 
 a straining of the law of treason been voted sufficient, 
 passed both Houses after a series of hot debates in which 
 neither political party showed to great advantage, and 
 Fenwick was executed. 
 
 Early in 1697 the long struggle between France and 
 the allies showed signs of drawing to a close. Louis 
 had expressed his willingness to surrender the conquests 
 made in the war, to restore Lorraine and Luxembourg to 
 their lawful owners, and to recognise William as King 
 of England. To these terms William and the States- 
 General were ready enough to assent ; Spain, however, 
 and the Emperor, raised objections; the latter, as is 
 suggested, on account of his desire to keep up the war 
 until the death of the ailing Spanish king, so that his 
 own pretensions to the crown of Spain might have the 
 support of the allied army against those of the French 
 rival in the succession. Difficulties were accordingly 
 raised to delay the meeting by a Congress. The Emperor 
 proposed Aix-la-Chapelle as its place of meeting, and 
 objected to the French alternative proposal of the 
 Hague. It was, however, finally agreed that the repre- 
 sentation of the allies should assemble at the Hague, 
 while those of France took up their quarters at Delft, a 
 few miles off; and that meetings between the two sets 
 of negotiators should take place at Eyswick, an inter-
 
 xii NEGOTIATIONS WITH FRANCE 151 
 
 mediate village, in a palace belonging to the Princes of 
 Orange. Here accordingly they met on the 9th of May 
 1697, England being represented by Pembroke and 
 Villiers, with the poet Matthew Prior as their secretary, 
 and France by Messieurs Harlay, Crecy, and Caillieres. 
 Kaunitz and De Quiros were the respective plenipoten- 
 tiaries of the Empire and Spain. A Swedish minister 
 acted as mediator. Like other famous Congresses before 
 and since, however, the Congress of Ryswick made little 
 progress ; and after it had been many weeks in session 
 with no visible result, William resolved to open negotia- 
 tions directly with Louis through one of his generals 
 commanding in the Netherlands. He selected Boufflers 
 as the most eligible for his purpose, and Portland 
 was directed to solicit a short interview. Leave to 
 comply with this request was immediately asked and 
 obtained from the French king, and several conferences 
 took place between the. two, resulting, in less time than 
 the Congress had taken to exchange powers and settle 
 formalities of precedence and procedure, in the settle- 
 ment of the basis of a treaty. Portland's commission 
 was couched in highly authoritative terms, and Marshal 
 Boufflers's report of them shows most strikingly how 
 commanding an influence William then exercised in 
 Europe, and what lofty language one of the least 
 assuming of men regarded it as entitling him to use. 
 In the French Marshal's account of his first interview 
 with Portland he recites an assurance conveyed to him 
 by the latter on the part of England, " that if satisfaction 
 be given him on points which concern him (the Prince 
 of Orange) personally, he will oblige the Emperor and 
 the Spaniards to make peace ; being satisfied for
 
 152 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 himself, as well as the States-General, with the offers 
 which your Majesty has made in the preliminaries, and 
 that if the Emperor and the Spaniards persist in refusing 
 to make peace, he will conclude it without them together 
 with the Dutch." 1 
 
 The required satisfaction, however, was not obtained 
 without some difficulty. On William's side two stipula- 
 tions were made, to which Louis hesitated to assent; 
 and neither these nor the two counter demands advanced 
 by th v e French king were ultimately assented to in 
 the form in which they were originally proposed. 
 William required first that in the peace which was to be 
 concluded, and by which Louis was to consent to 
 recognise him King of England, the French king should 
 "promise and engage not to favour, directly or in- 
 directly, King James against him." The French pleni- 
 potentiaries at the Hague had already assented to their 
 master engaging himself not -to favour directly or 
 indirectly " the enemies of the Prince of Orange, acknow- 
 ledged King of England." William, however, desired 
 that James should be designated by name. "It is 
 absolutely necessary," writes Boufflers, reporting Port- 
 land's words to Louis, " for the security of the Prince of 
 Orange, that your Majesty should engage expressly not 
 to favour directly or indirectly King James nominatim; 
 and " (this was the second point of contention) " that he 
 shall go and reside at Rome or elsewhere out of France, 
 provided he be not near enough to keep up any party 
 in England." Boufflers added that though the first 
 demand might be waived if Louis had any reluctance to 
 mention James by name, and that "other equivalent 
 1 Grimblot's Letters of William III., etc., i. 8.
 
 xii NEGOTIATIONS WITH FRANCE 15b 
 
 terms " might be found to give the Prince of Orange the 
 securities he desires, yet that it was indispensable in 
 order to remove all suspicion that the exiled king 
 should reside out of France. 
 
 To both of these stipulations Louis demurred. It was 
 inconsistent, he held, with his honour as a sovereign, and 
 with his duties as a host and kinsman, to name " the 
 King of England " in the treaty and to engage to cause 
 him to quit France ; but he offered to agree " not to 
 assist directly or indirectly the enemies of the Prince 
 of Orange without any exception"; and Boufflers was 
 directed to point out that the last three words would 
 exclude all suspicion of a restriction in favour of any 
 person whatsoever, and in fact amount to a virtual 
 designation of James. Upon this a further clause was 
 engrafted by William, engaging Louis " not to favour in 
 any manner whatsoever the cabals, secret intrigues, 
 factions, and rebellions which might occur in England, 
 nor any person or persons who should excite or foment 
 them," and to this Louis, after modifying the expression 
 "person or persons" which he regarded apparently as 
 the equivalent of " James or James's adherents," con- 
 sented. An attempt was made by William to obtain an 
 assurance that after peace was concluded James would 
 be " induced to resolve of his own accord " to live out 
 of France ; but Louis declined to yield even thus far, and 
 the point was waived. William perhaps believed that 
 he could the better afford to do so, as he proposed to 
 make his acceptance of one of Louis's two stipulations 
 dependent upon his obtaining practical satisfaction on 
 this head. To the demand for the pension of 50,000. 
 to which Mary of Modena was alleged to be entitled,
 
 154 WILLIAM III CRAP. 
 
 William had signified his willingness to allow her any 
 sum to which she could show lawful claim, but it seems 
 pretty clear that he had resolved to qualify this promise 
 by the condition that she and her husband should quit 
 St. Germains. The other demand of Louis too arrogant 
 to have been seriously urged, and in all probability only put 
 forward in formal fulfilment of a promise was that a 
 general amnesty should be granted to all those who had 
 followed the fortunes of James, and further, that they 
 should be restored to their forfeited estates. To this last 
 modest request William replied that it was not in his 
 power to grant it since the reversal of attainder was a 
 matter of statute and not of prerogative ; to the former 
 he replied with proper spirit that " as for the general 
 amnesty, besides that his honour and glory demand that 
 he shall not be forced to it by a treaty of peace, the 
 safety of his own person requires him not to recall 
 individuals to England whom he knows to be his personal 
 enemies ; but that as soon as he shall be acknowledged 
 King of England, and in undisturbed possession by the 
 treaty of peace, he will readily, of his own free will, 
 pardon those who seem to him disposed to return with 
 good faith and to live in quietness, behaving as good and 
 loyal subjects." The demand was of course immediately 
 waived, and the two Powers being now in accord, it now 
 only remained to bring the rest of the allies into the agree- 
 ment. This, however, was not to be done in a moment. 
 Both Austria and Spain held back, and while they were 
 hesitating new successes of the French arms brought 
 about an enhancement of the French terms. Barcelona 
 fell before one of Louis's armies, and the South American 
 Cartagena before a squadron of his fleet. Upon this his
 
 xi r PEACE OF RYSWICK 155 
 
 plenipotentiaries were instructed to announce that he 
 intended to keep Strasburg, and that unless his terms, 
 thus modified, were accepted by the 10th of Septem- 
 ber he should hold himself at liberty to modify them 
 yet further. The combined influence of the reverse and 
 the menace, assisted by the steady pressure of William's 
 determination, at length produced the desired effect. 
 At daybreak on the llth of September (1697), after a 
 night spent in debate as to the order of procedure, the 
 Treaty of Ryswick was at last signed as between France 
 and Spain, France and the United Provinces, and 
 France and England the Emperor being allowed till the 
 1st of November to signify his adhesion. Two days 
 later the news was known in England, and was there 
 received with universal rejoicings. William, however, re- 
 garded it with no unmixed satisfaction. " I received last 
 night," he writes to the Pensionary, Heinsius, "your 
 letter of the preceding day, and your letter of yesterday 
 has been delivered to me to-day by Lord Villiers. May 
 God be pleased to bless the peace which has just been 
 concluded, and long continue it by His grace. Yet I 
 confess that the manner in which it has been concluded 
 inspires me with some apprehensions for the future."
 
 1698-1699 
 
 Portland's embassy His life in Paris The question of the Spanish 
 Succession The First Partition Treaty General election and 
 meeting of the new Parliament Its temper Opposition to 
 William's military policy Reduction of the army. 
 
 ONE of William's first steps after the conclusion of the 
 peace was to appoint a strong ambassador to Versailles. 
 Portland was selected, partly, as it is said, in consequence 
 of his jealousy of the growing ascendency of his youthful 
 rival Keppel in the favour of William, but much more, 
 one may suppose, because of his force of character and 
 intimate acquaintance with European politics. The 
 Ambassador Extraordinary was intended, as he under- 
 stood his mission, to hold his head high at the Court of 
 Louis, and he undoubtedly did so. His retinue and 
 equipage was of remarkable splendour, and his bearing, 
 especially towards those who showed any sign of dis- 
 puting his just pretensions, was marked by an unflinching 
 dignity. 1 He protested bluntly against the presence of 
 
 1 It is with a mixture of amusement and admiration that one reads 
 in Grimblot (i. 220) the account he gives of one of his diplomatic 
 receptions : " The King had sent the Duke d'Aumont, his first gentle- 
 man of the bedchamber, to compliment me. After this the Duchess 
 of Burgundy sent the Marquis de Villacerf. They then began to make 
 new pretensions, requiring me to go and meet him half-way down the
 
 CHAP, xiii PORTLAND'S EMBASSY 157 
 
 the would-be assassins of William at a Court at which he 
 was William's representative. He pressed for the re- 
 moval of James and his adherents from St. Gennains ; 
 and on both these matters Louis, while firmly maintain- 
 ing the position which he had taken up at the Brabant 
 negotiation, showed, nevertheless, unmistakable anxiety 
 to conciliate the resolute ambassador. It was not, how- 
 ever, to deal with points of this kind that Portland had 
 been sent to Versailles. Another matter of the greatest 
 European moment was beginning to press, and it was to 
 endeavour to effect an adjustment of the various con- 
 flicting interests involved in it that William had 
 despatched his carefully-selected emissary to the French 
 Court. Charles II., King of Spain and the Indies, and 
 last of the male line of the Emperor Charles V", was 
 known to be near his end, and at his death the whole of 
 his vast empire in the two hemispheres would pass to one 
 or other of two powerful reigning Houses, to neither of 
 which its transfer would be regarded with indifference by 
 
 steps, as I had done the former nobleman, and I refused to receive him 
 except at the door of the antechamber, which is at the top of the 
 stairs. This gave rise to a lengthened dispute, during which he was 
 standing half-way up the steps, and I at the top, while messengers 
 passed backwards and forwards between us. At length I sent him 
 word that, if this did not content him, it would be best for each of us to 
 go our own way, without my having the honour of seeing him, for that 
 undoubtedly I should do no more, after which he came up." Upou 
 this grandee's leaving another difficulty arose. Portland, although he 
 conducted him back to his carriage, did not wait to " see him depart," 
 on which the " conductor of ambassadors " made great complaints. The 
 dispute as to the proper ceremony of reception was renewed by the 
 next arrival, when the conductor of ambassadors behaved impertinently 
 in public, " obliging me," says Portland, "to treat him as became a 
 person who has the honour to represent your Majesty," whereat the 
 conductor of ambassadors was " confounded and irritated."
 
 158 WILLIAM III CHAP 
 
 ' Europe at large. The rightful heir of Charles II., if blood 
 alone had had to be considered, was the Dauphin of 
 France, the son of Ms aster, who had married Louis 
 XfvT With the consent of her husband she had attne 
 
 time of her marriage renounced for herself and her pos- 
 terity all pretensions to the Spanisli crown, and her 
 renunciation was duly recorded in a European Treaty. 
 Failing this line it would be necessary to go back 
 another generation, and the Emperor Leopold, as the 
 son of Charles's aunt, stoofl next in succession. His 
 claim was barred by no renunciation ; but it was no 
 more likely that Louis would quietly allow him to 
 succeed than that he would submit to the succession of 
 a Bourbon. It was not to the interests of Europe that 
 either House should acquire such an enormous accession 
 of territory and power. To William it appeared at any 
 rate intolerable that the House of Bourbon should do so, 
 and in order to avert this calamity, as he regarded it, he 
 took one of the most keenly canvassed steps of his 
 political life in the negotiation and conclusion of the 
 famous Partition Treaty. There is no likelihood that 
 posterity will ever arrive at accord upon the policy of 
 this famous transaction, but before even attempting to 
 consider the unfavourable criticisms passed upon it, it is 
 absolutely necessary to note one cardinal characteristic 
 of its nature. To William it was avowedly and essen- 
 tially an expedient adopted, to use Aristotle's expression, 
 Kara rbv Sevrepov TT\OVV. It was never regarded or re- 
 presented by him as more than the " second-best " thing 
 to be done in a case where the actual best had been 
 rendered impracticable by circumstances beyond his own 
 control. He knew that Louis's moderation in the settle-
 
 xui FIRST PARTITION TREATY 159 
 
 ment of the terms of Ryswick had been merely politic ; 
 that its main object was to put an end to the war, and 
 so to break up the forces of a coalition which both he 
 and his rival knew that it would be a hard matter to get 
 together again ; and that the peace once concluded, 
 Louis would have it in his power to recruit his military 
 strength, and prepare to take advantage of the almost 
 daily expected death of Charles II. of Spain to carry out 
 his long cherished design upon that kingdom. There were 
 two ways of dealing with this situation, and two only. 
 Either England must be kept under arms, or the King of 
 England must " transact" with the King of France. The 
 former of these two courses was denied him by the 
 jealousy of his English subjects, and he was accordingly 
 forced upon the latter. In writing to the Pensionary 
 Heinsius he deplores the fact that he cannot "remain 
 armed," and declares that little reliance as could be 
 placed upon engagement with France, it was absolutely 
 necessary that such should be concluded; since other- 
 wise, he writes, " I do not see a possibility of preventing 
 France from putting herself in immediate possession of 
 the monarchy of Spain in case the King should happen 
 to die soon." Obviously, therefore, it would be unfair 
 to judge of the First Partition Treaty as though the 
 arrangement of it had been deliberately selected by 
 William from a variety of more or less eligible expe- 
 dients. The only mode in which it can be logically 
 or reasonably attacked is by contending either that 
 the object of the Treaty, the exclusion of the grand- 
 son of Louis from the throne of Spain, was not 
 a political end of such importance as to be worth 
 bargaining for at all, or else that the particular bar-
 
 160 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 gain to which William agreed was in itself an im- 
 provident one. 
 
 So much premised, let us proceed to examine the 
 provisions of this memorable instrument. Roughly 
 speaking they would have effected a division of the 
 heritage of the Spanish king between the Electoral 
 L'rince of Bavaria and the Dauphin of France. The 
 former was to have the kingdom of Spain, the Spanish 
 Netherlands, and the Spanish possessions in the New 
 World ; to the latter were to pass the two Sicilies 
 and Sardinia, certain places on and off the coast of 
 Tuscany, and the Cis-Pyrenaean portion of the Province 
 of Guipuzcoa. Milan was to go to the Archduke 
 Charles, the second son of the Emperor Leopold. Such 
 was the arrangement, and whether its terms were to be 
 deemed good or bad for England, it is at least certain 
 that they were only obtained from the French king 
 after long and obstinate diplomatic haggling, first be- 
 tween Portland, William's Ambassador-Extraordinary at 
 Versailles, and the French Ministers, and afterwards 
 between the Count de Tallard, Louis XIV. 's ambassador 
 to England, and William himself. The French king 
 was extremely anxious to secure the Spanish kingdom 
 for his grandson Philip, Duke of Anjou, and was ready 
 to undertake that the Dauphin and Philip's elder brother 
 should waive their rights, so as to guard against the 
 possibility of the French and Spanish monarchies being 
 united under one sceptre. As to the danger lest a 
 Bourbon, once established at Madrid, might hand over 
 the Spanish Netherlands to the head of the family, 
 Louis was willing to protect England and Holland 
 against that danger by consenting that those provinces
 
 xin FIRST PARTITION TREATY 161 
 
 should be ceded to the Elector of Bavaria. William 
 met this proposal, not by a direct negative, but by 
 raising his terms of assent to it. Not only, he insisted, 
 must the Spanish Netherlands pass to the Elector of 
 Bavaria, but Louis must give up some fortified towns 
 on his Flemish frontier, for the better self -protection 
 of the United Provinces, while England was "com- 
 pensated" on the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Mexico. 
 Louis protested on his own behalf against the former of 
 these proposals, and declared that the Spaniards would 
 never consent to the latter. At last, unable to obtain 
 his way with regard to the elevation of one of his 
 grandsons to the Spanish thronej he assented to the 
 only alternative arrangement which would prevent 
 Spain from passing to his rival the Emperor, and signified 
 his willingness to accept the Electoral Prince of Bavaria 
 as the heir to the Peninsula. The obstinacy with which 
 the points of this treaty were contested may be measured 
 by the fact that the first interview between Pomponne 
 and Portland, in which the matter of the Spanish 
 succession was broached, took place on the 15th of March, 
 and it was not till the 4th of September that the treaty was 
 signed. It cannot therefore be contended that William 
 spared pains to obtain what he considered the best terms 
 from Louis, and having regard to the fact that the King 
 of Spain was not expected to live out the year, it is 
 plain enough that on one assumption that, namely, of 
 the paramount necessity of preventing the accession of 
 a grandson of Louis to the Spanish throne the nego- 
 tiations could not with safety have been protracted 
 much longer. The latter, in short, of the two questions 
 which were propounded at the outset of the examination 
 
 M
 
 162 WILLIAM III CHAP 
 
 may be said to depend for its answer upon the former. 
 Supposing that the exclusion of the Duke of Anjou or 
 the Duke of Berry from the throne of Spain was a 
 political object worth bargaining for at all, William cannot, 
 I think, be charged with having paid an improvident price 
 for it. Nor does it appear to me reasonably arguable 
 that the object in question was not worth bargaining to 
 obtain. It has been urged by some critics of this 
 transaction that the apprehensions roused in those days 
 at the prospect of a Bourbon prince succeeding to the 
 throne of Charles were exaggerated; that experience 
 has shown the fallacy of supposing that ties of kindred 
 count for much in determining the policy of monarchs, 
 and that it would certainly have been better that the 
 Spanish throne should pass to the descendant of a French 
 king than that the two Sicilies and other points of van- 
 tage on the Mediterranean should pass to a future French 
 king himself. But those who so argue rely too much upon 
 general principles and pay too little attention to the facts 
 of the particular case. One might readily admit that 
 ties of kindred count for little in determining the 
 policy of monarchs, and at the same 'time retain the 
 full conviction that the subsistence of the relation of 
 grandfather and grandson between the then King of 
 France the man and the circumstances being what they 
 were and the King of Spain would have been fraught 
 with the most disastrous consequences for all Europe. 
 There could be no serious doubt that the Duke of Anjou 
 or the ' Duke of Berry would be a mere puppet with his 
 strings pulled from beyond the Pyrenees, and that the 
 whole resources of his kingdom would at once have 
 been drawn upon by Louis to enable him to resume the
 
 xin PARTITION TREATY 163 
 
 war. Had the French crown rested upon another head, 
 or even had there been any probability that the new 
 occupant of the Spanish throne would have time allowed 
 him to outgrow the regni novitas and strike out a 
 policy of his own, the case would have been different. 
 But we must judge of the situation by the light of the facts 
 as they were. It is beside the point to argiie that because 
 a grandson of Louis after ah 1 succeeded the Spanish king, 
 and after a desolating war for his dethronement continued 
 to reign over Spain, and his children after him, without 
 Europe being "a penny the worse" it is beside the 
 point, I say, to argue that an arrangement which operated 
 not amiss for Europe from 1712 onwards would have 
 been tolerable in 1698. Philip V. was well enough 
 as a king of Spain, after his grandfather's power 
 had been brought low by a dozen more years of 
 European war, but Philip of Anjou, the nominee and 
 instrument of Louis XIV., at the close of the previous 
 century, would have been a weapon pointed at the breast 
 of free and Protestant Europe. You cannot judge of 
 the strength or keenness of a dagger by merely estimating 
 its power in the grasp of a failing hand. 
 
 Doubtless, however, the complaints both contemporary 
 and subsequent of the provisions of the Partition Treaty 
 were to some extent stimulated by the circumstances of 
 its arrangement. It is well known that William, acting 
 as his own Foreign Minister, carried his official inde- 
 pendence so far as to conduct the whole of the negotiations 
 with Louis from beginning to end without any reference 
 to, or at least any effective consultation of, a single 
 English Minister. Somers, it is true, had been told before 
 the King's departure for Loo that Lord Portland had
 
 164 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 been sounded by Louis with reference to an agreement 
 with England concerning the Spanish succession ; but it 
 was not till the terms were actually arranged that William 
 wrote to Somers for his opinion upon them, " leaving it 
 to his judgment to whom else he might think it proper to 
 impart them," and adding " if it be fit that this negotiation 
 be carried on there is no time to be lost, and you will 
 send me the full powers under the Great Seal, with the 
 names in blank, to treat with Count Tallard." Portland 
 at the same time communicated directly with Vernon, 
 the then Secretary of State, whose consent was necessary 
 to the imprint of the Great Seal ; and Somers himself 
 confided the affair to several other Ministers. But it is 
 clear, not only from Somers's own reply to William, but 
 generally on the face of the whole transaction, that even 
 if the King's English Ministers had been competent to 
 revise the agreement, their suggestions would have come 
 too late. Somers's criticisms, though sensible in themselves, 
 were of the most tentative character ; he excuses himself 
 indeed that his thoughts were so ill put together, and 
 pleaded the known effect of the waters at Tunbridge 
 Wells, where he then was, in " discomposing and 
 disturbing the head so as almost totally to disable one 
 from writing " ; but in fact he writes with the extreme 
 diffidence natural to the "layman" conscious of his 
 incapacity to advise the expert. The commission of 
 plenipotentiaries was then drawn out by Secretary 
 Vernon with the names left in blank, and the Chancellor 
 requested the Secretary for his warrant before affixing 
 the Great Seal. This, however, Vernon refused to give, 
 and Somers thereupon sealed the powers with his own 
 hand, taking care, however, to keep the King's letter as a
 
 xiri PARTITION TREATY 165 
 
 justification or an excuse for the act. That the whole 
 proceeding was unconstitutional, according to the fully 
 developed theory of the constitution, is of course obvious, 
 and it is only a partial and not a complete defence of 
 William's share in it that the theory in question was 
 nothing like so fully developed or so firmly established 
 as it is at the present day. It is all very well to say 
 that " William was his own Foreign Minister," a state- 
 ment which is repeated by Whig writers, as though it 
 sufficed to explain any conceivable irregularity, but 
 the mere fact of his being unable to complete the legal 
 execution of a treaty without calling in the assistance of 
 a Minister (or rather, as it really should have been, if the 
 Chancellor had not taken upon him to dispense with the 
 Secretary's co-operation, of two Ministers), must have been 
 a sufficient indication to the King of the even then con- 
 stitutional limits of his prerogative. The form, in short, 
 was eloquent of the fact. It would have been plainly 
 irrational to suppose that the royal treaty-making 
 power would have been made exercisable only under the 
 authority of an instrument validated by an act which none 
 but a Minister or Ministers could perform, unless it were 
 intended that such Minister or Ministers should be as fully 
 responsible for the doings of the executive in foreign as 
 in domestic affairs. And assuredly it cannot be regarded 
 as more than a colourable recognition of this responsibility 
 to procure the merely mechanical assent of Ministers to 
 the results of an international agreement, in the 
 negotiations for which they have not been permitted to 
 take any part. It seems difficult therefore to contend 
 that William was not in this matter knowingly over-riding 
 constitutional restrictions, under the conviction probably
 
 166 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 that the pressing nature of the emergency, and the danger 
 of delaying the Spanish settlement by deliberations 
 with the English Ministers, sufficiently justified the 
 irregularity. 
 
 There was that, too, in Somers's letter which would 
 have confirmed him in the belief that he had done well 
 in agreeing betimes with his adversary. The Chancellor 
 spoke of the " deadriess and want of spirit " universally 
 prevailing in the nation. None, he said, were disposed 
 to the thought of entering on a new war ; but all seemed 
 to be tired out with taxes, to a degree beyond what was 
 discerned till it appeared upon the occasion of the late 
 elections. And, indeed, the lesson of these elections 
 was too significant to be missed. A great change had 
 passed over the mind of the country since the return of 
 the Parliament of 1695, and the overthrow of the Tory 
 ascendency by an electorate thoroughly roused to a sense 
 of the duty of prosecuting the war, and to that end sup- 
 porting the war party. In 1698, although the Tory 
 ranks were not very largely recruited, nor those of the 
 non-Ministerial Whigs materially reduced, it is certain 
 that many candidates on both sides had been compelled 
 to pledge themselves to a policy of peace and retrench- 
 ment. The new Parliament was opened by the King on 
 the 6th of December, and the temper of the House of 
 Commons was not long in declaring itself. The Minis- 
 terial party succeeded in carrying the election of their 
 Speaker, Sir Thomas Littleton, but they were utterly 
 powerless to sustain their master's military policy against 
 the mass of opposition which it had to encounter. A 
 resolution was adopted cutting down the army to 7000 
 men, "and these to consist of his Majesty's natural-
 
 xiii NEW PARLIAMENT 167 
 
 born subjects." To William, whose Ministers had held 
 out hopes to him that a force of at least 10,000 men 
 would be sanctioned by Parliament, and who personally 
 held that anything less than double that number would 
 be insufficient, a resolution which would not only have 
 inexcusably weakened, in his opinion, the defences of 
 England, but have deprived him even of the services of 
 those Dutch Guards who had fought with such signal 
 bravery for the liberties of that country, caused natural 
 and bitter chagrin. He gave the royal assent to the 
 Bill founded upon this resolution, but he gave it in a 
 speech through the dignified composure of which his 
 grave concern and disappointment perceptibly struggle. 
 A later attempt to save his Dutch Guards, almost pathetic 
 in its character, 1 proved unsuccessful ; and when, in 
 reply to this appeal, the Commons reminded him that 
 he had promised in 1688 to " send all foreign troops that 
 came over with him back again," so narrow and un- 
 generous an insistence on the strict letter of his pledge 
 must no doubt have added to his mortification. 
 
 The occasion of this second attempt was an event 
 to be shortly noticed, which might have been thought 
 likely to dispose the Parliament to a more liberal view 
 of military necessities ; and William has been censured 
 by his greatest admirer for not having applied to the 
 House for an increase of the English establishment 
 instead of striving to retain a force of his countrymen. 
 
 1 The message from the King runs thus : " His Majesty is pleased 
 to let the House know that the necessary preparations are made for 
 transporting the Guards who came with him into England, and that 
 he intends to send them away immediately, unless out of consideration 
 for him the House be disposed to find 'a way for continuing them 
 longer in his service, which his Majesty would take very kindly."
 
 168 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 It is not a matter for regret, however, that this mistake, 
 if mistake it was, should have been committed ; for it 
 enables us pretty accurately to measure the respective pro- 
 portions of reason and prejudice in the conduct of Parlia- 
 ment. So far as the motive of the House of Commons 
 in these military retrenchments was a purely economical 
 one so far even as it implied blindness to those Euro- 
 pean considerations which our insular position no more 
 absolved us from regarding in 1698 than it does to- 
 day this motive was, if mistaken, respectable. Even 
 that exaggerated dread of a standing army, which, no 
 doubt, had more to do with the decision of the parlia- 
 mentary majority than any theory, good, bad, or indif- 
 ferent, of the probable course of European affairs, would 
 not deserve to be severely judged. But it is difficult to 
 attribute the refusal of the House of Commons to sanc- 
 tion William's retention of his body-guard to any worthier 
 motive than mere jealousy of the foreigner. It was a 
 step as unwise from the political point of view, and in 
 its bearing on the relations of sovereign and subject, as 
 on the moral side it was ungracious. One can well 
 understand that the personal affront involved in it may 
 have been harder for the King to bear than even the 
 rejection of his general military demands. Anyhow 
 there seems no doubt that upon learning the decision 
 of the House in the matter of the army William did 
 seriously contemplate retirement to Holland, after abdi- 
 cating in favour of the Princess Anne, and that nothing 
 but the firmness of Somers prevented him from carrying 
 his resolution into effect. So at least Somers himself 
 believed ; and Somers's knowledge of the royal mind, 
 as well as of the royal character, was distinctly superior
 
 xiri WILLIAM'S MILITARY POLICY 169 
 
 to that of Burnet, who treated the threat of withdrawal 
 as not seriously meant. And when, having schooled 
 himself to submit with dignity and grace to this rebuff, 
 he found himself churlishly denied the slight personal 
 favour which he subsequently requested, his bitterness 
 of feeling was, we may well believe, extreme. 1 The 
 whole incident is one which no Englishman of the 
 present day, whatever his politics, can look back upon 
 without a sense of shame. 
 
 William, it may be imagined, was not sorry to put an 
 end to a parliamentary session so fraught with unpleas- 
 ant incidents. Nor, after the settlement of the military 
 question, was there much more business to be done. 
 Its despatch, however, was attended by one occurrence 
 which deserves notice here as having prepared the way 
 for one of the gravest political conflicts of the reign. 
 Defeated by the manoeuvre above referred to in their 
 attack upon the Crown grants, the country party brought 
 their forces to bear upon a position at once more limited 
 and more assailable. They demanded a commjgsi nn_nf 
 inquiry into the disposal of the Irish forfeitures, and to 
 insure the accomplishment of~tneif object tney resorted 
 to the questionable expedient of " tacking " to a money 
 Bill which they were sending to the TUpper~House a 
 clause authorising the appointment of seven commis- 
 sioners to carry out the proposed investigation. To this 
 virtual " ouster " of their jurisdiction over the question 
 
 1 He writes in a letter to Lord Galway, Jan. 27, 1699: "It is 
 not possible to be more sensibly touched than I am at my not being 
 able to do more for the poor refugee officers who have served me with 
 so much zeal and fidelity. I am afraid the good God will punish the 
 ingratitude of this nation. Assuredly on all sides my patience is put 
 to tlie trial. "
 
 170 WILLIAM III CHAP, xni 
 
 the Lords very naturally objected. They could not reject 
 the Land Tax Bill, the measure to which this clause 
 had been tacked, without creating national confusion ; 
 and rejection without amendment was their only consti- 
 tutional alternative to accepting it commissioners' clause, 
 and all. They demurred, but ultimately yielded, under 
 protest ; and William, not as it seems without fore- 
 boding of future trouble, assented to the Bill with its 
 irrelevant rider. 
 
 It was now the month of May, and the Houses, having 
 held uninterrupted session ever since the 1st of January, 
 had fairly earned their recess. On the 4th of the 
 month the King came down to Westminster and bade 
 his Parliament a cold adieu.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 1699-1700 
 
 Death of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria Renewed negotiations 
 Second Partition Treaty The Irish forfeitures The Resumption 
 Bill Will and death of the King of Spain. 
 
 THE political event on which William had founded 
 hopes of re-opening the army question has been in- 
 directly referred to in the last chapter. This event, 
 as has been said, was one which might reasonably have 
 been thought likely to dispose the English Parliament 
 to a more liberal view of the military necessities of the 
 country by bringing once more into prominence a 
 European danger which diplomacy had been hitherto 
 believed to have averted. In the early days of 1699 
 the Electoral Prince of Bavaria" the youthful Heir- 
 designate of the Spanish monarchy took his departure 
 from a troubled world whose confusions were to be for- 
 midably increased by his quitting it. The English 
 Parliament, as we have seen, refused to allow the 
 Prince's death to modify their policy. But William 
 could not afford to overlook it ; for it, of course, re- 
 opened at once the whole question which had been 
 closed by the First Partition Treaty, and rendered it 
 necessary to nominate a new successor to the Spanish
 
 172 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 kingdom and its possessions in the New World. Louis 
 XI v. was tEe tirel lo HWVti 111 I31U HBUJMf.'" He instructed 
 De Tallard to sound William as to a new Treaty, and, 
 after one or two candidates had been mentioned and 
 rejected, it was finally agreed between the French and 
 English sovereigns that the ^Archduke Charles, the son 
 of the Emperor Leopold, should be the future King of 
 Spain and the Indies, and that the Milanese, which had 
 been allotted to him under the First Treaty, should go 
 to Louis, by whom it was to be bartered for Lorraine. 
 The arrangement was complete in all respects except 
 that of having received the sanction of the Emperor by 
 the summer or early autumn of 1699 ; but the rumour 
 of it caused a violent outbreak of indignation in Spain. 
 The Marquis of Canales, Spanish Ambassador at the 
 English Court, was instructed to protest, which he did 
 in terms so insolently imperious that William, on being 
 informed at Loo of the language used by him, at once 
 directed that the Marquis's passports should be handed to 
 him, and at the same time recalled our own ambassador 
 at Madrid. By whose means the provisions of the new 
 Treaty were communicated to the Spanish Court and 
 people is not certainly known but considering that one 
 of the parties to whom it had been submitted rejected 
 it (for the Emperor at the eleventh hour refused to sign), 
 and, moreover, that another party the French king 
 had never, in all probability, sincerely assented to it, 
 there is no need for much speculation on this point. 
 Leopold had known and obvious motives for disclos- 
 ing it to the unhappy Charles, and Louis is more 
 than suspected of having private motives for doing 
 so. But whichever of the two was the medium of
 
 xiv RENEWED NEGOTIATIONS 173 
 
 communication, Louis was indisputably the gainer. The 
 news aroused a powerful anti-Austrian feeling in the 
 minds of the Spanish people, of which the French King, 
 who was far better served at the Court of Madrid than 
 the Emperor, was not slow to take advantage. From 
 the autumn of 1699 till the 1st of November 1700, when 
 the few and miserable days OF ULarlei 11. cameToTan 
 end, the agents of France worked persistently, and in 
 tEe end successfully, to overcome the Austrian leanings 
 of the dying monarch, and to convince him that on 
 grounds of patriotism, no less than of legal and moral 
 obligation, he was bound to devise his dominions to his 
 lawful French heir, and away from the Prince to whom 
 Louis had solemnly agreed with William that they 
 should pass. 
 
 The final consummation of these intrigues, however, 
 was still a year distant, and meanwhile an incident of 
 extreme interest, and at the time of exceeding gravity, 
 in English politics, has to be recorded. On the 19th of 
 November Parliament met again, and in a mood which 
 boded ill for the relations between the sovereign and the 
 third estate of his realm. The session began with one 
 of the numerous abortive attacks made upon Somers in 
 the course of his distinguished career, and an equally 
 unsuccessful attempt was made to procure the disgrace 
 of that perpetual bugbear of the Tories, Bishop Burnet. 
 But these were merely in the nature of preliminary 
 skirmishes ; it was not long before hostilities were 
 opened upon William and his Ministers in a more serious 
 way. It will be remembered that at the close of the last 
 session the Commons tacked to the Land Tax Bill a 
 clause appointing seven commissioners to inquire into
 
 174 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 the Irish forfeitures, and that the Lords, after some 
 demur to the manner in which the proposal was being 
 forced upon them, passed the measure. The report of 
 these commissioners, who had been pursuing their in- 
 quiries in Ireland during the recess, was now ready, and 
 early in the session it was presented to Parliament, 
 signed by four of the commissioners, the other three 
 dissenting. Disfigured by many exaggerations and 
 some wilful misstatements, this important document 
 contained, nevertheless, an amount of discreditable truth 
 sufficient not only to excite considerable popular feeling 
 against William at the time, but to inflict some perman- 
 ent injury on his historical reputation. 
 
 The four commissioners reported that all the lands 
 in the several counties in Ireland belonging to the for- 
 feited persons amounted, as far as they could reckon, to 
 1,060,762 acres, worth 211,623 per annum, and com- 
 puted therefrom to be of the capital value of 2,685,138. 
 That some of these lands had been restored to the old 
 proprietors by virtue of the Articles of Limerick and 
 Galway, or by his Majesty's favour through reversal of 
 outlawries, and royal pardons obtained chiefly by gratifi- 
 cations to such persons as had abused his Majesty's 
 royal bounty and compassion; and that besides these 
 restitutions, which they thought to be corruptly procured, 
 there were seventy-six grants and "custodians" under the 
 Great Seal of Ireland, of which they made a recital as, for 
 instance, to the Lord Eomney, three grants now in being, 
 containing 49,517 acres; to the Earl of Albemarle, in two 
 grants, 106,633 acres in possession and reversion; to 
 William Bentinck, Esq., Lord Woodstock (Portland's 
 eldest son), 135,820 acres of land; to the Earl of Athlone
 
 xiv IRISH FORFEITURES 175 
 
 in two grants, 26,480 acres; to the Earl of Galway one 
 grant of 36,148 acres, etc. That the estates so men- 
 tioned did not indeed yield so much to the grantees as 
 they were valued at, because as most of them had abused 
 his Majesty on the real value of their estates, so their 
 agents had imposed upon them, and had either sold or 
 let the greatest part of these lands at an undervalue ; 
 but that after all deductions and allowances there yet 
 remained 1,699,343 : 14s. which they laid before the 
 Commons as the gross value of the estates forfeited since 
 the 13th day of February 1689, and not restored. The 
 commissioners went on, in excess, as it should seem, of 
 their attributions, 1 to report that William had conferred 
 the forfeited Irish estates of the late King James, esti- 
 mated at 95,649 acres, worth 25,998 a year, on his 
 mistress, the Countess of Orkney. Excluding this item, 
 however, the value of the restorations and royal grants 
 against which the commissioners reported amounted, it 
 will be seen, to close upon a million sterling. 
 
 It is very probable, indeed it may be said to be certain, 
 that the total value of these forfeitures was grossly 
 exaggerated by the commissioners; it is possible that 
 it was to some extent wilfully exaggerated for party pur- 
 poses. The lands forfeited in Ireland during the Revolu- 
 tion may have been worth " nearer half a million sterling 
 than two millions and a half." It does not seem to me, 
 
 1 It was justly contended by the dissentient commissioners that 
 these lands had passed to William by his father-in-law's abdication in 
 1688, and did not therefore come properly within the purview of an 
 inquiry limited to forfeitures occurring since February 13, 1689. Thr 
 majority of the commission insisted, however, paradoxically enough, 
 that James's Irish estates were only forfeited on, and by, his invasion 
 of Ireland in March of the latter year.
 
 176 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 however, that this is a point of the importance which 
 Macaulay seems to attach to it. Even if it could be 
 shown that the proportion of the royal grants to the 
 total forfeitures was unduly magnified through an over- 
 estimate of the value of the former, I cannot see that it 
 would affect the merits of the case. The real gist of the 
 charge against William in respect of these grants 
 assuming, that is to say, that he was justified in making 
 them at all without the sanction of Parliament is to be 
 sought not in a comparison of the royal benefactions 
 with the amount of the property at his disposal, but 
 in an examination of their proportions inter se. Even 
 if it be shown that he distributed property of the 
 value not of a million sterling, but of only a fifth of that 
 sum, it remains equally true in either case, that more 
 than one-tenth of his bounty went to a single favourite 
 who had little or no public services to show for them, 
 and very nearly an eighth to a young man whose only 
 claim upon him was that of being an able and faithful 
 servant's eldest son. The grants to Albemarle and 
 Woodstock are impossible to defend, and the latter 
 almost impossible to explain. William had already 
 loaded Portland with benefits, and to the vast estates 
 he had bestowed upon him in England his eldest son 
 would, in the natural course of events, succeed. On 
 what ground, either of justice or even of sentiment, it 
 could have been thought well to enrich the expectant 
 heir of so much English landed property with 135,820 
 acres of forfeited Irish land is a mystery which 
 has never been satisfactorily explained. As to the 
 grant to Albemarle, it was of even worse example. 
 Woodstock was at least the son of a counsellor to whom
 
 xiv IRISH FORFEITURES 177 
 
 William owed much, and whom he might conceivably 
 have regarded himself as rewarding in the person of his 
 heir ; but what had Keppel, a mere favourite, a young 
 courtier with no other recommendations but his youth, 
 his good looks, and his complaisance, a personality too 
 closely recalling that of a " minion " of Henri Trois, and 
 which in the Jacobite libels, not wisely to be thus 
 supplied with colourable pretexts for their calumnies, 
 was openly so described what, one cannot but ask, 
 had Keppel done to deserve a grant of 106,633 acres of 
 the forfeited Irish land 1 Compare these two largesses, 
 Woodstock's and Albemarle's, with those bestowed on 
 Lord Romney, an ex-Secretary of State, and one of the 
 leaders of the movement which brought William to 
 England; on Lord Athlone, the stout Dutch soldier 
 who, as General Ginkel, had given and taken many a 
 hard knock in his master's service; on Lord Galway, 
 that gallant Marquis de Euvigny who had turned the 
 flank of the Irish on the bloody day of Aghrim. 
 Albemarle's, the smaller of the two, is more than twice 
 that of Romney, nearly thrice that of Galway, more 
 than four times that of Athlone. It was impossible for 
 William to contend in the face of this evidence that he 
 had simply been using the forfeited lands of Irish rebels 
 to reward those public servants who had done most by 
 valour in the field, or wisdom in the council-chamber, 
 to establish firmly on the throne of England, the 
 Prince chosen by the nation ; and that therefore he was 
 merely anticipating the national reward which would 
 have been conferred upon them, and virtually drawing 
 upon one national fund in relief of prospective charges 
 upon another. He could not even contend, as we have 
 
 N
 
 178 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 seen, that this was the main use to which he had put 
 the forfeitures; for though wisdom and valour had 
 come in for a share of the spoils, their share was 
 lamentably smaller than that which was won by mere 
 arts of courtiership. There is, in short, no denying the 
 fact that while William applied a part of this property 
 to strictly public objects, or, in other words, to objects 
 to which, but for such application of it, the public would 
 have to contribute in another shape, he devoted far too 
 large a portion of it to purposes of purely private 
 benefaction, for which he would otherwise have had to 
 resort to drafts upon his Civil List. 1 
 
 But even this does not exhaust all the disagreeable 
 elements in the transaction. Had the Irish forfeitures 
 been simply in the nature of property " within the 
 order and disposition " of the sovereign, and impressed 
 with only a constructive trust for the benefit of the 
 nation, the King's dealings with it would have been 
 open to grave reprehension. As a matter of fact, how- 
 
 1 The grants to Lady Orkney, of which so much was made by the 
 country party at the time, raised a totally different question on another 
 level, so to speak, of political morality. These grants were made out 
 of William's inheritance from his predecessor ; and though Macaulay 
 is no doubt abstractedly right in arguing that William should have 
 pensioned his mistress out of economies effected in his Civil List than 
 by alienating his hereditary revenue, the remark is from the practical 
 point of view somewhat of an anachronism. In our day, when the lands 
 of the Crown are formally vested in commissioners by the sovereign in 
 consideration of his Civil List at the commencement of each reign, the 
 quasi-national character of this property is fixed and emphasised. 
 But no sovereign before William's time had regarded it in this light, 
 or recognised any implied restraint upon alienation ; and William, 
 with Charles II. 's grants to his numerous mistresses before his eyes, 
 may well be excused for thinking his gift to Lady Orkney not only 
 justifiable but laudably moderate.
 
 xiv IRISH FORFEITURES 179 
 
 ever, the property in question was the subject not of a 
 mere constructive trust, but of an express recognition on 
 William's part of its fiduciary character, and of a distinct 
 promise that Parliament, as representing the cestui que 
 trust, should have an opportunity of deciding on the 
 proper mode of its application. On the 5th of January 
 1691 the King had closed the short autumn with 
 a speech, in which he assured the Houses that he would 
 not " make any grant of the forfeited lands in England 
 and Ireland till there be another opportunity of settling 
 that matter in Parliament, in such manner as shall be 
 thought most expedient." This undertaking had re- 
 ference to a Bill which had actually passed the Commons 
 for applying the Irish forfeitures, and which only failed 
 to become law because William, who was due at the 
 Congress then about to meet at the Hague, was com- 
 pelled to prorogue Parliament before the Lords had had 
 time to consider the measure. It is vain to contend 
 that this promise was fulfilled, because several " oppor- 
 tunities" were given to Parliament to deal with the 
 question in the sense that several sessions were allowed 
 to pass without Parliament moving in the matter 
 before William himself proceeded to grant away the 
 forfeited lands. William was not entitled, under the 
 circumstances, to infer any surrender of parliamentary 
 control over the forfeitures from mere parliamentary 
 inaction. Such an inference would in any case have 
 been a somewhat questionable one ; but this was a case 
 in which the wishes of one branch of the Legislature 
 had already been recorded in the form of a distinct 
 legislative project. The King knew, in short, that the 
 Commons desired to make Irish rebellion as far as
 
 180 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 possible pay for its own suppression ; he knew that they 
 looked to the value of the rebels' lands to afford partial 
 relief to the English tax-payer from the heavy imposts to 
 which he was being subjected ; and when, knowing this, 
 he proceeded to grant away large tracts of these lands, 
 thus affected to the national service, at his own will and 
 pleasure, and in many cases to persons whom the nation 
 would never have consented to endow so munificently 
 out of its own pocket, he was unquestionably dealing 
 with his Parliament and people after a fashion which, in 
 the case of a private individual standing in analogous 
 relation to other parties, would be severely condemned. 
 If he intended to ignore his promise of January 1691 
 altogether, his grants were mere high-handed usurpations 
 of right; if he relied upon the mere "allowance of 
 opportunities " in the manner above mentioned as being 
 a fulfilment of that promise, then he was guilty of some- 
 thing which can only be described in modern phrase- 
 ology as sharp practice. 
 
 Undoubtedly the House of Commons might have 
 proceeded with more moderation than they displayed, 
 but the majority in that House felt that they had a good, 
 and what was still better, a popular case against the King 
 and his advisers ; they knew that the country was sore 
 with the weight of taxation, and jealous of the amount 
 of royal favour bestowed upon foreigners ; and they felt 
 that they might rely upon the combined force of these 
 two sentiments to support them in extreme measures. 
 Having gained their first triumph in the committal to 
 the Tower of Sir Richard Levinge, one of the dissentient 
 commissioners who had charged his colleagues with speak- 
 ing disrespectfully of the sovereign in connection with
 
 xiv THE RESUMPTION BILL 181 
 
 these benefactions, they introduced the famous Resump- 
 tion Bill, a measure by which all the royal grants were 
 invalidated, and the whole of the alienated property 
 resumed to the use of the State. In the Bill sent up to 
 the Lords from the Lower House in 1690 it had been 
 proposed to reserve a third part of the forfeitures to the 
 King, and William was not without hopes that this re- 
 servation, which would just about have covered his grants 
 to Woodstock, Albemarle, and the three other peers whose 
 names have been mentioned above, would be renewed. 
 The imperious majority, however, refused to hear of any 
 such modification of their demands. They rejected a 
 clause moved by Ministers for reserving at least some 
 portion of the forfeitures to the King ; and they carried 
 resolutions to the effect that "the advising, procuring, and 
 passing of the grants in Ireland had been the occasion 
 of contracting great debts, and laying heavy burdens 
 upon the people ; that the said grants reflected highly 
 upon the King's honour; and that the officers and 
 instruments concerned in procuring and passing them 
 had highly failed in .the performance of their duty." 
 These resolutions were presented to William at Kensing- 
 ton by the Speaker and leaders of the Opposition. 
 William replied that he had thought himself bound to 
 reward out of the forfeited property those who had 
 served him well, and especially those who had borne a 
 principal part in the reduction of Ireland. The war, he 
 said, had undoubtedly left behind it a heavy debt, and he 
 should be glad to see that debt reduced by just and 
 effectual means. 
 
 The answer, though undoubtedly weak enough, 
 seems scarcely open to one of the criticisms which
 
 182 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 Macaulay pronounces upon it. 1 It would have been not 
 so much injudicious as absurd on William's part to 
 " hint " that the Irish forfeitures "could not justly be 
 applied to the discharge of the public debts." His 
 meaning could only have been that it would not be just 
 to the grantees to resume their property in order to 
 apply it to public uses. It would appear, however, that 
 the House of Commons understood his words in the 
 wider and less defensible sense. The Eesumption Bill 
 was pushed vigorously through the House of Commons, 
 and in order to paralyze the expected resistance of the 
 Lords, the expedient of tacking was again resorted to. 
 The Bill was tacked to a Land Tax Bill for raising two 
 shillings in the pound for the service of the next year, and 
 then sent to the Upper House. It passed its second read- 
 ing by a considerable majority, but in committee and on 
 the third reading several amendments were carried. It 
 is highly significant, however, that though William was 
 known to be very solicitous to obtain the confirmation 
 of at least some of his Irish grants, and though the 
 majority in the Lords in favour of the amendment may 
 be supposed desirous of doing all that they reasonably 
 could to gratify him, the Bill as regards his dealings with 
 
 1 The context of the passage, " The Commons murmured, etc., 'His 
 Majesty tells us,' they said, ' that the debts fall to us, and the 
 forfeitures to him' " (Hist. Eng. v. 271), appears clearly to show that 
 Macaulay supposed William to be speaking of the whole of the 
 forfeitures as not justly applicable to the public debt. His own 
 previous words will just admit (though not in strict grammar) of the 
 construction that the King was referring only to the "one-fifth part 
 of these estates " which had passed to deserving grantees ; but if this 
 is to be its construction, Macaulay's favourite boast that he had 
 written no sentence capable of being misunderstood would have to be 
 abandoned.
 
 xiv THE RESUMPTION BILL 183 
 
 the Irish forfeitures was left untouched. The majority 
 contented themselves with modifying certain arbitrary 
 and inequitable provisions whereby the Lower House 
 had sought to usurp jurisdiction over property which 
 had never come to the Crown by forfeiture at all, and to 
 grant estates and sums of money of their own authority, 
 and without the constitutional intermediation of the 
 Crown, to certain favoured individuals. Thus amended, 
 the Bill was sent back to the Lower House, where it 
 met of course with the very reception which the expedient 
 of tacking was designed, in the event of its coming back 
 with amendments, to secure for it. Parties had been 
 much divided as to the policy of tacking the Resumption 
 Bill to a money Bill ; but as to the duty of resisting 
 an attempt on the part of the Lords to amend a Bill 
 sent up to them in this fashion parties were united. 
 The amendments were rejected nemine dissentiente, and at 
 the conference which followed the Lords were informed 
 by the managers of the Commons that the point of 
 constitutional practice was too well settled to be arguable, 
 and that the Bill was left in their hands along with the 
 responsibility of all the serious consequences which 
 must follow its rejection. The Lords nevertheless for a 
 time stood firm ; they resolved by a majority of thirteen 
 to adhere to their amendments, and on the following day 
 the Bill was, on a second conference, returned once more 
 to the Commons, by whom it was once more sent back 
 to the Lords, with an intimation that the determination 
 of the Lower House was unalterable. This was on the 
 10th of May, and the whole of that day and night the 
 greatest public excitement prevailed. The deadlock 
 between the two Houses had reached such a point that
 
 184 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 if both refused to give way, and the supplies were 
 consequently lost, a complete dislocation of the 
 national business, accompanied in all probability by 
 dangerous popular disturbance, would have assuredly 
 followed. 
 
 From this peril the country was saved at the critical 
 moment by the good sense and magnanimity of William. 
 His behaviour was the more creditable to him because 
 not only was he eager, as has been said, for the rejection 
 of the Resumption Bill, but he had taken so active a 
 part in the attempt to bring about that result that sur- 
 render must necessarily subject him to additional humili- 
 ation. There can be no doubt from the account given 
 by Burnet, whose own painful perplexity between the 
 claims of courtiership and patriotism increases the value 
 of his testimony on the subject, that William had tried 
 hard to procure the defeat of the measure. " The King," 
 says the Bishop, " seemed resolved to venture on all the 
 ill consequences that might follow the losing this Bill, 
 though these would probably have been fatal. As far 
 as we can judge either another session of that Parliament 
 or a new one would have banished the favourites and 
 begun the Bill anew with the addition of obliging the 
 grantees to refund all the mesne profits. Many in the 
 Lords, that in all other things were very firm to the King, 
 were for passing the Bill, notwithstanding the King's 
 earnestness for it, since they apprehended the ill conse- 
 quences that were like to follow if it was lost." On the 
 5th of April he told Portland that if the Bill was not 
 stopped in the Upper House he should count all lost ; and 
 on the same day he declared that he was resolved not to 
 pass the Bill, and that the only question was whether he
 
 xiv THE RESUMPTION BILL 185 
 
 should prorogue the Parliament on that day or on the 
 following Monday. On or before the 10th of April he had 
 reflected more maturely on the situation, and with that 
 intuitive recognition of when to give way, which only 
 strong rulers ever seem to exhibit, and which the master- 
 ful Elizabeth had displayed before him, he saw that the 
 time had arrived to yield. He took steps to have it 
 conveyed to his adherents in the Upper House that he 
 desired the Bill to pass ; and on the sitting of the follow- 
 ing day, May 11, the Lords withdrew their amendments 
 and accepted the Bill in its original form. Thus passed 
 away a most perilous crisis, and William, by the fine tem- 
 per and moral courage with which he thus submitted to 
 perhaps the most galling rebuke ever inflicted upon a 
 monarch by a~Tegislative assembly, must be admitted to 
 have gone far to atone for the serious error of his previ- 
 ous action. He was, however, and not unnaturally, of 
 opinion that he had done enough in the cause of the 
 peace, and the next day, in order to prevent the presenta- 
 tion to him of an address from the Commons, praying 
 that no person not a native, except Prince George of 
 Denmark, should be admitted to his Majesty's Councils 
 in England or Ireland, he came down and prorogued / 
 Parliament without a speech. 
 
 The whole of the year 1700 was destined to abound 
 in fresh troubles for this sorely-tried and now fast wan- 
 ing life. No sooner had the English Parliament separ- 
 ated than the Scotch Parliament met ; and their first 
 business was to espouse the cause of their foolish and 
 unlucky countrymen who had taken part in the famous 
 " Darien expedition," and were now under detention by 
 the Spanish Government at Carthagena. The notable
 
 186 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 scheme in which these men had thus lost their liberty, and 
 so many thousands of other Scotchmen their property, was 
 originated by an adventurer of the name of Paterson, and 
 depended for its success on the double assumption that the 
 territorial owners of the country on which they proposed 
 to found a trading station for the avowed purpose of 
 diverting trade from these owners' hands into their own 
 would respect their occupancy, and that the burning 
 heat and malarious climate of an equatorial region would 
 spare their lives. Neither of these assumptions had been 
 realised. The sun and the swamps had thinned the 
 number of the settlers to a handful, and this remnant 
 had been besieged, forced to capitulate, and expelled 
 from the isthmus by the forces of Spain. William pro- 
 mised, in reply to an address from the Edinburgh legis- 
 lators, to demand the release of the Carthagena prisoners ; 
 but when the Scotch Parliament proceeded to pass a 
 resolution affirming that the colony in Darien was a legal 
 and rightful settlement, and that the Parliament would 
 maintain and support the same, the King thought it high 
 time to put a check on their proceedings. This he en- 
 deavoured to do through the royal commissioner by means 
 of repeated adjournments carried to such an extent as to 
 cause riots in Edinburgh, and at last, by dint of concilia- 
 tory replies to their resolutions, and possibly by gratifi- 
 cations of a more substantial kind, succeeded not only 
 in pacifying his northern subjects on this matter, but in 
 bringing them, before the close of the session at the end 
 of the year, into a state of such loyal complaisance that, 
 unlike their English brethren, the Scotch legislators 
 voted for keeping on foot the whole of the land forces 
 that existed in the kingdom when the session began.
 
 xiv DEATH OF THE KING OF SPAIN 187 
 
 The time was now fast approaching when William's 
 military policy was to be justified by events. Through- 
 out the whole of this year the struggle of rival Powers 
 over the fast decaying body of the unhappy Charles had 
 gone spiritedly forward at the Court of Madrid. The 
 combatants, however, were unequally matched. On the 
 side of France were enlisted the services of Cardinal 
 Portocarrero, who soon succeeded in removing the King's 
 confessor an Austrian instrument and substituting an- 
 other in the French interests. The terrors of religion 
 were then brought to bear upon the wretched sovereign 
 in a strength sufficient to overcome his natural leanings 
 in the matter of the disposition of his crown and 
 kingdom towards his own Austrian flesh and blood. 
 They persuaded the unhappy imbecile that he had been 
 bewitched through Austrian agency ; they persuaded 
 the populace of Madrid that the partisans of Austria had 
 brought about a famine. Having at last succeeded in 
 utterly discrediting the rival party, and working upon the 
 superstition of Charles until he believed that if he ousted 
 his Bourbon heir from the succession he would be inevit- 
 ably damned, the French faction finally induced him to 
 sign a will appointing Philip, Duke of Anjou, universaT 
 successor to the Spanish monarchy. A month after- 
 wards this miserable slave of the priest and the plotter 
 at last obtained his manumission. He died on the 1st 
 of November 1700, and William then learnt for the first 
 time that the months of laborious negotiations spent on 
 the successive framing of two carefully-drawn treaties 
 had been completely thrown away. For a brief space of 
 time, indeed, he remained in doubt whether Louis really 
 intended to play him false, but before the middle of the
 
 188 WILLIAM III OHAP. xiv 
 
 month of November all uncertainty was at an end. Louis 
 
 i, 
 
 threw over the Partition Treaty and^ adopted the will. 
 The Duke of Anjou was despatched into Spain with the 
 historic exclamation touching the effacement of the 
 Pyrenees mountains certainly not in this instance re- 
 moved by "faith," and William had the intolerable 
 chagrin of discovering not only that he had been be- 
 fooled, but that his English subjects had no sympathy 
 with him or animosity against the royal swindler who 
 had tricked him. " The blindness of the people here," 
 he writes sadly to the Pensionary Heinsius, "is in- 
 credible. For though the affair is not public, yet it was 
 no sooner said that the King of Spain's will was in 
 favour of the Duke of Anjou, than it was the general 
 opinion that it was better for England that France should 
 accept the will than fulfil the Treaty of Partition."
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 1701-1702 
 
 English indifference on the Spanish question Death of James II. and 
 Louis's recognition of the Pretender Reaction in England Dis- 
 solution of Parliament Support of William's policy by its suc- 
 cessor The Treaties Accident to William His illness and death 
 Character The Whig legend examined His great qualities as 
 man and ruler Our debt to him. 
 
 THE insensibility of Englishmen to a danger which 
 weighed heavily on the mind of William was exactly 
 matched by his own indifference to one which appeared 
 extremely serious to them. William dreaded the idea 
 of a Bourbon reigning at Madrid, but he saw no very 
 grave objection, as the two treaties showed, to Naples and 
 Sicily passing into French hands. With his English 
 subjects the exact converse was the case. They strongly 
 deprecated jthe assignment of the Mediterranean pos- 
 sessions of the Spaniard to the Dauphin ; but they were 
 undisturbed by the sight of the Duke of Anjou seating 
 himself on the Spanish throne. It has been said that 
 on their own principles they ought to have disliked the 
 will even more than the Partition Treaties, because the 
 former document, in devising all the possessions of Spain 
 to the Duke of Anjou, " gave precisely the same advan- 
 tages to France on the Mediterranean" as she would
 
 190 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 have obtained under the Treaties. But this argument 
 obviously begs the whole question against the English 
 view by assigning to the word "France" a meaning which 
 it was of the essence of that view to repudiate. The 
 very gist of the English case was that "France" and 
 "the second son of the French Dauphin barred from 
 the succession to the French Crown" were not con- 
 vertible terms. Had Englishmen in general so regarded 
 them, they would perhaps have been as jealous of the 
 Duke of Anjou's succession to the Spanish throne as was 
 William himself. They held, however, whether rightly 
 or wrongly, and I have already stated my reason for 
 thinking that at the time and in the circumstances they 
 were wrong that the elevation of Louis's grandson to 
 the Spanish throne did not mean the " solidarity " of 
 France and Spain. 1 But while the Duke of Anjou, con- 
 sidered as the owner of the two Sicilies, did not in their 
 opinion stand for "France," the Dauphin, who was to 
 have had them under the Partition Treaties, undeniably 
 did. The heir to the Crown of France of course is 
 France, not as a matter of opinion, but as a matter of 
 fact The English view therefore, however mistaken on 
 the point of policy, was unassailable on the ground of 
 logic ; and its inherent plausibility, in addition to the 
 national dissatisfaction with the manner in which the 
 Treaties had been negotiated, would, in all probability, 
 have made it impossible for William to carry the 
 country with him in a war policy directed against 
 France. 
 
 But just as, under a discharge from an electric battery, 
 
 1 That Louis intended it to mean this is pretty obvious from his 
 remark about the effacement of the Pyrenees.
 
 xv DEATH OF JAMES II 191 
 
 two repugnant chemical compounds will sometimes rush 
 into sudden combination, so at this juncture the King and 
 the nation were instantaneously united by the shock of a 
 gross affront. The hand that liberated the uniting fluid 
 was that of the Christian king. On the 16th of Septem- 
 ber 1701 James II. breathed his last at St. Uennaans, 
 and," obedient to one of those impulses, half-chivalrous, 
 half-arrogant, which so often determined his policy, Louis 
 XIV. declared his recognition of the Prince of Wales~as 
 dejure King of England. No more timely and effective 
 assistance to the policy of its de facto king could possibly 
 have been rendered. Its effect upon English public opinion 
 was instantaneous; and when William returned from 
 Holland on the 4th of November, he found the country 
 in the temper in which he could most have wished it to 
 be. Still he hesitated for a while as to whether or not 
 he should dissolve Parliament. Sunderland, for whose 
 astuteness and profound knowledge of English politics 
 William entertained a respect unqualified, as was usual 
 with that cool and cynical observer of men, by any repug- 
 nance he might have felt for the ex-Minister's political 
 profligacy, had been consulted by him on this point 
 through Somers both before and since the death of 
 James ; and this sagacious counsellor had urgently recom- 
 mended a dissolution, predicting that it would result in 
 a signal triumph of the Whigs. On the 7th of Novem- 
 ber William laid the question before his Privy Council, 
 who were divided in opinion, and, acting on his own 
 judgment, he then determined to dissolve. On the llth 
 of the month th<T royal proclamation to that effect was 
 issued, and the new Parliament summoned to meet on 
 the 31st of December. The result did not, indeed,
 
 
 192 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 completely bear out Sunderland's prediction, but it 
 proved that a marked change had taken place in the 
 opinion of the country; for, though the Tories managed 
 still to hold their own in the smaller boroughs, the 
 Whigs carried most of the counties and great towns. 
 Their opponents, however, were strong enough to re- 
 elect Harjfiy to the Speakership, his nomination being 
 seconded by his afterwards yet more famous political 
 ally, Henry St. John, Jblje, future LordBolingbroke. 
 William~a3dressed the Houses in a speech of unusual 
 length and earnestness, in which he recalled the "high 
 indignity" offered to himself and the nation by Louis's 
 recognition of the pretended Prince of Wales as King of 
 England, and the dangers with which England and 
 Europe were threatened by the elevation of his grand- 
 son to the Spanish throne. To obviate these dangers 
 he had, he told them, concluded several alliances, and 
 treaties for the conclusion of others were still pending. 
 He went on to remind them that the eyes of all Europe 
 were upon this Parliament, and "all matters at a stand- 
 still until their resolution was known. Therefore," 
 said he, "no time ought to be lost; you have an 
 opportunity, by God's blessing, to secure to you and 
 your posterity the quiet enjoyment of your religion and 
 liberties, if you are not wanting to yourselves, but will 
 exert the ancient vigour of the English nation ; but I 
 tell you plainly my opinion is, if you do not lay hold 
 on this occasion you have no reason to hope for 
 another." He concluded with an exhortation, almost 
 passionate for him, to lay aside "the unhappy fatal 
 animosities " which divided and weakened them. " Let 
 me conjure you to disappoint the only hopes of our
 
 
 xv KEACTION IN ENGLAND 193 
 
 enemies by your unanimity. I have shown, and will 
 always show, how desirous I am to be the common 
 father of my people ; do you in like manner lay aside 
 parties and divisions ; let there be no other distinction 
 heard of among us in future but of those who are for 
 the Protestant religion and the present Establishment, 
 and of those who mean a Popish prince and a French 
 Government. " 
 
 This stirring speech produced its due effect. Opposi- 
 tion in Parliament in the country it was already in- 
 audible was completely silenced. The two Houses 
 sent up addresses assuring the King of their firm resolve 
 to defend the succession against the pretended Prince of 
 Wales and all other pretenders whatsoever. The Com- 
 mons declared independently in those days addresses 
 from the two Houses were not as now identical in terms 
 that they would to the utmost of their power enable 
 his Majesty to make good all such alliances as he had 
 made an omission from the address of the Upper House 
 which their Lordships subsequently supplied. Nor did 
 the goodwill of Parliament expend itself in words. The 
 Commons accepted without a word of protest the four 
 treaties constituting the new Grand, Alliance, though 
 the inequality of some of their conditions as regarded 
 England, and the self-seeking motives which actuated 
 one at least of their continental signatories, were ap- 
 parent on the face of them. The votes of supply were 
 passed unanimously, and ere the Parliament had well 
 completed the first fortnight of its existence a Bill of 
 Attainder against the Prince of Wales in winch the 
 Lords endeavoured, but in vain, to include Mary of 
 Modena had passed both Houses. But the King's
 
 > 
 194 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 assent to this, as also to an Abjuration Bill directed to 
 the same object, had to be given by commission; for 
 William was now already sickening to his death. His 
 always feeble health had become feebler during the 
 winter; his constant asthma had told heavily upon 
 the condition of his lungs ; his legs had swollen to an 
 extent which led his doctors, though erroneously it 
 would seem, to suspect dropsy ; he had, in fact, arrived 
 at that state of body in which any accident might be 
 fatal. On Saturday, the 21st of February, he set out from 
 Kensington on horseback to hunt, according to his 
 weekly custom, at Hampton Court. On the road his 
 horse stumbled over a molehill, 1 and fell with his rider, 
 who fracTured his right collar-bone. William was taken 
 to Hampton Court, where the bone was set, and the 
 surgeon, finding him feverish, recommended bleeding. 
 This he declined, and, contrary to advice, insisted on 
 returning that evening to Kensington, where it ap- 
 peared that the setting of the bone had been displaced 
 by the motion of the carriage, and the operation had to 
 be repeated. William slept well, and for a few days no 
 signs of mischief appeared. But, as was afterwards 
 shown by the autopsy, the fall from his horse had 
 violently detached a diseased portion of his lungs from 
 its adhesion to the walls of the thoracic cavity, and this 
 had set up pulmonary inflammation. On the 28th of 
 February he found himself unable to attend Parliament 
 in person, and accordingly conveyed to the Houses by 
 way of message his last recommendation of a project 
 
 1 The nature of the impediment lives for history in the Jacobite 
 toast which so grimly reflects the brutal passions of the time " To 
 the little gentleman in black velvet that works underground."
 
 xv DEATH OF WILLIAM 195 
 
 which, ever since the beginning of his reign, he had had 
 much at heart that, namely, of effecting a legislative 
 union between EngJ^and and Scotland. On the next 
 day alarming symptoms Appeared. The assent to the 
 Prince of Wales's Attainder Bill was given by commis- 
 sion, and a week later, on the 7th of March, when it be- 
 came necessary to issue another commission for a similar 
 purpose, William was past the power of subscribing the 
 sign-manual, which had to be affixed by a stamp. " Je 
 tire vers ma Jin," he murmured to Albemarle, who had 
 arrived from Holland the same night ; and, as the per- 
 versity of fate had willed it, he who had from boyhood 
 sought death everywhere, had not for years perhaps 
 been so little prepared to meet it. " Sometimes he 
 would have been glad, he told Portland, to have 
 been delivered out of all his troubles, but he confessed 
 now he saw another scene, and could wish to live a little 
 longer." It was another scene indeed the whole web 
 of his Spanish policy unravelled, his great enemy once 
 more powerful for mischief, the whole work of his life to 
 do again ! 
 
 HeTived through the night, but that was all. Burnet 
 and Tillotson had gone to him that morning and did not 
 quit him till he died. The Archbishop prayed with him 
 some time, but he was then so weak that he could 
 scarcely articulate. "About five o'clock on Saturday 
 morning he desired the Sacrament, and went through 
 the office with great appearance of seriousness, but could 
 not express himself ; when this was done he called for 
 the Earl of Albemarle and gave him a charge to take 
 care of his papers. He thanked M. Auverquerque for 
 his long and faithful services. He took leave of the 
 2
 
 196 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 Duke of Ormond, and called for the Earl of Portland, 
 but before he came his voice quite failed ; so he took 
 him by the hand and carried it to his heart with great 
 tenderness. Between seven and eight o'clock the rattle 
 began ; the commendatory prayer was said for him, and 
 as it ended he died." 
 
 More than one hundred and eighty years have passed 
 since that morning ; but though the fierce political con- 
 troversies which raged around the person and character 
 of the dead man, leaving, perhaps, no quality but his 
 courage unassailed, have long since subsided, some into 
 utter silence, others into moderation, it is impossible to 
 say that their disturbing force is altogether spent. A 
 faint echo from those furious clamours may still be heard 
 mingling with the voice of History ; a ripple from those 
 distant billows still breaks the mirror of her judgment. 
 It could hardly be otherwise. The principles of which 
 William was in part the voluntary and in part the un- 
 choosing champion have triumphed so completely that 
 they find nowadays no avowed opponent, and scarcely 
 even any secret enemy ; but it was William's destiny to 
 have been identified in the promotion and defence of 
 them with an English political party whose many excel- 
 lent qualities as statesmen and citizens have been always 
 associated with a moral and intellectual temper which, 
 for a century and a half, has offered a standing provoca- 
 tion to men of every other political school. Fate made 
 William of Orange a Whig hero, and in arranging his pre- 
 liminary condition ordained also by inevitable sequence 
 his exposure to some measure of the polemical resent- 
 ments which his votaries have never failed to concentrate 
 upon themselves. That the Whigs of his own day should
 
 xv CHARACTER 197 
 
 have behaved as they did, on many occasions exceedingly 
 ill to him, is no more unnatural than that they should 
 have unduly exaggerated his virtues after his death. 
 Both their ill-treatment and their excessive eulogy of 
 him were, in different ways, the expression of the same 
 modest confidence in their own civil deserts. The 
 Whigs believed themselves entitled not only to an ex- 
 clusive interest in a living Whig-made king, but also 
 to as much capital as could be made out of his post- 
 humous renown. If they behaved ill to him at times 
 during his life, it was to assert the just claims of the 
 Whig party ; if they over-praised him when dead, it 
 was by way of just tribute to the Whig virtues. 
 
 Far be it from me to suggest that William of Orange 
 needs any such artificial additions to his legitimate 
 glory. They are mentioned merely to account for and 
 excuse the fact that an impartial review of his career 
 and character needs to be commenced with what might 
 otherwise seem words of captious disparagement. It is 
 absolutely necessary to strip off the draperies of parti- 
 sanship in order to see the real man beneath ; but that 
 truly heroic figure can well afford it. 
 
 William of Orange, I maintain then, is not to be 
 regarded as altogether that " patriot king," that " sove- 
 reign of the people," which it has pleased his Whig 
 devotees to discover in him, still less as that sort of 
 anticipatory and prophetic political philosopher for 
 which he passes in the legend of some Whig constitu- 
 tionalists. No doubt he had a distinct popular fibre in 
 his nature. The great-grandson of his great-grandfather 
 can hardly have been wanting in sympathy with popular 
 aspirations, or in belief in the might and virtue of
 
 198 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 popular forces. But such sentiments have been the 
 birthright of many a man whose instincts were the 
 very reverse of democratic ; and there is no reason to 
 think that William either foresaw or would have 
 relished that growth of the democratic element in 
 English government to which he inevitably contributed 
 so powerful a stimulus. He was not, it must be remem- 
 bered, a democrat even in his own country ; on the 
 contrary, his strongest impulses were essentially of aristo- 
 cratic origin. It was not his Protestant enthusiasm, 
 though this was ardent enough, nor his love of his 
 country and his hatred of foreign dictation, though 
 these passions were strong and sincere enough, which 
 were the dominant influences in moulding his youthful 
 character. It was pride of ancestry, the memory of 
 William the Silent, resentment at the fallen fortunes of 
 his house, and resolution "to restore them. These it was 
 which first inspired him with an ambition essentially 
 in its character, and it was not till this ambi- 
 tion had been gratified by his elevation to higher digni- 
 ties even than his forefathers, that the other impulses of 
 birth or training can be said to have begun to sway 
 him at all. And until that ambition was gratified he 
 was not only capable of all the virtues of the ambitious, 
 but an adept in their vices also. He was but sixteen 
 when he taught his mother the wisdom of disarming 
 the suspicion of the Pensionary De Witt by pretended 
 cordiality, and earned the criticism of the shrewd 
 French envoy d'Estrades that he was " a great dissem- 
 bler, and omitted nothing to gain his ends." So, too, 
 one can hardly doubt that it was ambition rather than 
 zeal for liberty and Protestantism that first inspired him
 
 xv CHARACTER 199 
 
 with that design of intervention in England, which 
 must have just taken shape in his mind shortly after 
 the return of Dykvelt from his mission of 1687. His 
 succession, or rather his wife's succession, was safe 
 enough if Mary of Modena bore no male issue to 
 James. But she might and did bear such issue, in a 
 child whose claims could only be set aside by a revolu- 
 tion ; and even had no heir apparent been born to the 
 throne, the position of William accepting the English 
 crown conjointly with his wife in his capacity as liber- 
 ator of the English people would be something very 
 different from that of a king-consort, which was all he 
 could otherwise have hoped to be. It is surely not 
 unjust to a man of William's antecedents to believe 
 that from the hour that he learned the strength of his 
 party in England, down to the hour when he was pre- 
 sented with the crown in the banqueting chamber at 
 Whitehall, he had eyes for little else than the great 
 European future which would open before him as King 
 of England ; and that any hesitations he may have 
 shown in accepting the sovereignty were as purely politic 
 as those of Csesar at the Lupercal. 
 
 As regards his attitude towards English political 
 institutions in general, and the voluntary element in 
 his share in developing them, the Whig legend appears 
 to me more purely mythical still. At no time in his 
 life did William show the slightest personal predilection 
 for or even faith in parliamentary institutions, still 
 less in party government. He looked upon the English 
 Parliament as a clumsy and irritating instrument, blunt 
 at one part, dangerously double-edged at another, which 
 he was nevertheless bound to work with and make the
 
 200 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 best of. That he was the first to try the system of 
 a party ministry and party government is, as I have 
 essayed to show, a fact of little significance. He tried 
 it as he tried other means of managing the apparently 
 otherwise unmanageable, as he had at first tried divid- 
 ing offices of State among the leading men of both 
 parties, and as he had tried and continued to try the 
 method of corruption for the rank and file. As to any 
 preference of one English party to another there is no 
 trace of such a feeling in his mind. From the moral 
 point of view, I imagine, he regarded most of the 
 leaders of both parties with an equal, and, it may be, 
 with an equally just, contempt ; but with his intellectual 
 appreciations he never allowed his moral judgment to 
 interfere. He used the unscrupulous Tory Marl- 
 borough and tKeTinscrupulous Whig Sunderland with 
 an impartial indifference to their political profligacy. 
 He made trial, in fact, of all English public men and of 
 all political expedients to serve his European ends, 
 which were sometimes but not always English ends 
 also ; and thus it was that though he experimentalised 
 with the strict party system in order to secure a Parlia- 
 ment which would support the war energetically in 
 1695, yet in the next Parliament, his immediate object 
 being gained, he showed no disposition to prosecute that 
 experiment on abstract political grounds. It is im- 
 possible to represent a ruler of this kind, however wise 
 and moderate, as consciously training our parliamentary 
 institutions upon the peculiar lines of growth which 
 they subsequently followed. 
 
 Yet after all these deductions there remains to 
 William, both as a European statesman and as a bene-
 
 XT HIS GREAT QUALITIES 201 
 
 factor to our country, an ample margin of renown. Of 
 his moral and mental stature as a man it is scarcely 
 necessary to speak." It must be patent to all but the 
 dullest prejudices of our day as it was to all but the 
 fiercest passions of his own. It is the highest praise of 
 his high qualities to say that our impression of them 
 easily survives the reaction from idolatry, and that after 
 we have thrown aside the magnifying-glass of Whiggism 
 the objects which it was used to exaggerate still fill the , 
 eye. If William had not all the virtues which belong to / 
 the patriot and philosopher, he had all that go to thei 
 making of the hero. Even Macaulay, who has over! 
 painted both his king-craft and his statesmanship, has notj 
 laid on the colours of his heroism with too bold a hand. 
 Sagacious as he undoubtedly was in counsel, dexterous 
 as he was in the management of men, keen as was his 
 outlook on European politics, and resourceful as lie was 
 in meeting its exigencies, it is possible to contend that 
 his ^Whig eulogist has credited him with far more than 
 the keenness and sagacity, the dexterity and resource, 
 which he possessed. But such eulogy does not, for it 
 could not, materially exaggerate his great features as a 
 man his patience of delay and disappointment, his for- 
 titude under disaster, his imperturbable composure in 
 moments of crisis, his lofty magnanimity, which from 
 its high place seemed literally to overlook rather than to 
 forgive injuries, his haughty courage, which thought it 
 equal shame to glance aside at the lurking assassin and 
 to turn away from the open foe. His character was stern, 
 forbidding, unamiable, contemptuously generous, as little 
 fitted to attract love as it was assured of commanding 
 respect ; but it bears in every lineament the unmistak-
 
 , 
 
 202 WILLIAM III CHAP. 
 
 able stamp of greatness. And his achievements were 
 as great as his character. Hisrecord as ajruler pure and 
 simple, as a mere expert in the art of governing, has 
 never been surpassed, perhaps never equalled, in history. 
 The showy administrative exploits of a Napoleon "with 
 vast armies at his back, and the pen of a despotism in 
 his hand, appear to me to sink into insignificance when 
 compared with those of this ruler of four nations a con- 
 stitutional sovereign in England and Scotland, the chief 
 of a republic in Holland, and a military autocrat, govern- 
 ing by the sword alone, in Ireland, who for eleven years 
 successfully directed the affairs of these alien and often 
 mutually hostile communities, and who throughout all 
 that time held in one hand the threads of a vast network 
 of European diplomacy, and in the other the sword which 
 kept the most formidable of European monarchs at bay. 
 Nor should we omit from the comparison that he did all 
 this under moral restraints and physical disadvantages 
 to which Napoleon was a total stranger, impeded by 
 obligations to law, municipal and international, which 
 Napoleon set cynically at defiance, and distressed 
 throughout his life by bodily ailments which never 
 troubled the Corsican's iron frame. 
 
 Nor in what has been written in criticism of the 
 Whig legend would I for a moment be suspected of under- 
 valuing the debt which Englishmen owe to William of 
 Orange. It is not necessary to exalt him into a divinely 
 inspired progenitor of the British Constitution in order 
 to recognise fully the greatness of the services which he 
 rendered to it. He was not " Father of the Constitu- 
 tion " in the sense in which the poet is the father of his 
 poem, or the philosopher of his theory ; but assuredly
 
 xv OUR DEBT TO HIM 203 
 
 he was so in the sense in which we say that a child 
 has found a "second father" in an upright guardian, 
 who, while not, it may be, comprehending his character, 
 or in sympathy with his spirit, or foreseeing his future, 
 has yet been his vigilant protector through the perils of 
 childhood, and has accounted for his patrimony to the 
 uttermost farthing. That William stood in this relation 
 to our modern English polity throughout his too short 
 reign, and that he loyally discharged its obligations, is 
 indisputable. The virtues which enabled him to do so 
 were mainly three, which are essential to all good and 
 faithful guardianship, whether of children or constitutions 
 the virtues of good sense, self-restraint, and honesty. 
 And the greatest of these three is honesty. William's 
 practical wisdom always told him the moment when to 
 yield in a struggle with his Parliament ; and when that 
 moment arrived his naturally passionate temper never 
 failed to answer to the rein. But even at those moments 
 there would often have been an evil alternative open to 
 him, from which the fundamental integrity of his nature 
 always turned aside. He scrupled not to use all the arts 
 of political " management " which were sanctioned by the 
 lax morality of his day; he exerted his prerogative 
 freely to gain his ends ; but he knew that the compact 
 between him and his people was that in the last resort 
 the will of the people should prevail, and this compact he 
 never attempted either to violate or to evade. Here 
 he was as emphatically a Rk Galantuomo, a " King Honest- 
 man," as was Victor Emmanuel himself. 
 
 "Hos ante effigies majorum pone tuorum, 
 Prsecedant ipsas illi, te consule, virgas. " 
 
 Rulers who have earned this name may justly rank it,
 
 204 WILLIAM III CHAP, xv 
 
 if only for its rarity, above every other title of honour 
 even though, themselves the creators or regenerators of 
 nations, they can look back upon the splendid achieve- 
 ments of the Counts of Nassau, or the long ancestral- 
 glories of the House of Savoy. 
 
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