XIII. WILLIAM AND MARY…

XIII. WILLIAM AND MARY

Proceedings in Parliament--Complaints against Admiral Russell--Treason in the Navy--Legislation against the Roman Catholics--The East India Company--Treasons Bill--The Poll Tax--Changes in the Ministry--Marlborough is deprived of his Offices--His Treachery--The Queen's Quarrel with the Princess Anne--William goes Abroad--Fall of Namur--Battle of Steinkirk--Results of the Campaign--The Massacre of Glencoe--Proposed Invasion of England--James's Declaration--Russell's Hesitation overcome by the Queen--Battle of La Hogue--Gallant Conduct of Rooke--Young's Sham Plot--Founding of Greenwich Hospital--Ill Success of the Fleet--Discontent of the People--Complaints in the Lords and Commons--The Land Tax--Origin of the National Debt--Liberty of the Press--The Continental Campaign--Battle of Landen--Loss of the Smyrna Fleet--Attack on the Navy--New Legislation--Banking Schemes of Chamberlayne and Paterson--The Bank of England Established--Ministerial Changes--Negotiations for Peace--Marlborough's Treason and the Death of Talmash--Illness and Death of Queen Mary.

On the 19th of October William arrived from Holland, and on the 22nd he opened Parliament. He congratulated it on the termination of the war in Ireland, and on the progress of the English arms both on land and sea. It was true that on the Continent there had been no very decisive action, but the Allies had compelled the French to retreat before them, and to confess their power by avoiding a general engagement with them. At sea, though not so much had been effected in some directions as might have been hoped, yet the French had been driven from the open into their own ports, and an English fleet had convoyed a large merchant fleet from the Mediterranean in safety. This was very different to previous years, when their cruisers had made great captures of our merchantmen. We had also sent a fleet up the Shannon, which prevented them from aiding the insurgents in Ireland, and were now in undisputed supremacy again on the ocean. Of course William had to demand heavy supplies to maintain the fleet in this position, and to pursue the war with vigour against Louis. All this the members of both Houses listened to with apparent satisfaction, and voted him cordial thanks.

On the 6th of November it was unanimously voted in the Commons that the supplies asked for by the Crown should be granted; and first they voted £1,575,898 for the service of the navy, including the building of three new docks at Portsmouth--one dry and two wet ones. On the 16th they resolved that the army, in compliance with William's recommendation, should be raised to 46,924 men; and on the 4th of January, 1692, they voted £2,100,000 for the maintenance of the army, of which Ireland was to pay £165,000.

But though a large majority in both Houses supported warmly the endeavour to curb the inordinate ambition of Louis XIV., these sums were not passed by the Commons without searching inquiries into the accounts and into the abuses which, notwithstanding William's vigilance, abounded in all departments of Government. No doubt the party in opposition, as is generally the case, did much of this work of reform more to gratify their private resentment, and to make their rivals' term of office anything but agreeable, than from genuine patriotism; but, at the same time, there was plenty of ground for their complaints. Serious charges were made against Admiral Russell for his lukewarm conduct at sea, and his mismanagement of the Admiralty. The fact was that Russell, as was strongly suspected, and as we now know from documents since come to light, was no less a traitor than Torrington, Dartmouth, and Marlborough. He was in active correspondence with James, and ready, if some turn in affairs should serve to make it advantageous, to go over to him with the fleet, or as much of it as would follow him, and others of the admirals; for Delaval, Killigrew, and other admirals and naval officers, were as deep in the treason.

There were loud complaints of the vileness of the commissariat still, and it was declared that far more of our men fell by disease from bad and adulterated food than in battle. The complaints against Russell, who was called to the bar of the House, he threw upon the Admiralty, and the Admiralty on the commissariat department. Russell complained also of the ministry, and particularly of the Earl of Nottingham; and thus, by this system of mutual recrimination, all parties contrived to escape. The Commons, however, were not so to be silenced. They charged on the officers of the army, on its commissariat, on the men in office, and on the Government officials almost universally, the same monstrous system of corruption, peculation, and negligence of every thing but making money for themselves. They insisted on a rigorous examination of all the accounts by their own members, and they voted that all salaries and profits arising from any place or places under the Crown should not amount to more than five hundred pounds for any one person, except in the cases of the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Commissioners of the Great Seal, the judges, ambassadors, and officers of the army and navy.

There were plenty of posts in which this restriction would have been most salutary, for men in some of the most trivial and useless of them were pocketing many thousands of pounds; but it was soon found that the whole nation could not furnish sufficient people patriotic enough to serve their country for five hundred pounds a year each; and, therefore, in a few weeks a fresh resolution was taken, which negatived this.

The business of the year 1691 closed by the passing of a Bill to exclude all Catholics, in pursuance of the Treaty of Limerick, from holding any office in Ireland, civil, military, or ecclesiastical, or from practising in any profession, or sitting in the Irish Parliament, before they had taken the Oath of Allegiance. The Commons attempted by this Bill to make it necessary for a Catholic to take also the Oath of Supremacy, and the Oath against Transubstantiation; but the Lords showed that this was contrary to the first article of the Treaty of Limerick, and this clause was struck out, and the Bill then passed. When the agitation for Catholic emancipation commenced, loud complaints were made that by this Bill the Treaty of Limerick had been violated. But this was a mistake; the violation of it took place some years afterwards by another Bill. The first article of the Treaty provided that on a Catholic taking the Oath of Allegiance, he should be admitted to all the privileges specified, according to the law in Charles II.'s time; and this law, whether always enforced or not, empowered the Crown to tender this Oath to all subjects.

The year 1692 was opened by Parliament bringing forward several important Bills, which were, however, too much contested to be carried this year. The first of these was a Bill for regulating the trade of the East India Company, increasing the number of shareholders, restricting the amount of stock in the hands of individuals, and incorporating a new Company which had sprung up with the old one. The East India Company had become a most flourishing concern. From the Restoration to this time, only thirty-three years, its annual imports had risen in value from eight thousand pounds to three hundred thousand pounds. Its capital amounted only to three hundred and seventy thousand pounds, but it yielded an annual profit of thirty per cent., besides having, up to 1676, doubled the value of the whole capital. The Company, however, instead of increasing in shareholders, was rapidly sinking into a monopoly of a few individuals. Amongst these Sir Josiah Child, whom we lately quoted in our review of the commerce of the period, stood chief, and was become, as it were, the king and despot of the whole concern. Five members were said to possess or hold one-sixth of all the votes, and amongst these Child had the predominant amount. His income from the Company was stated at twenty thousand pounds a year, and his word was law in it.

These enormous profits naturally called forth a rival company, and the contest between them grew from year to year till it came to occupy and divide the spirit of the whole mercantile world. The new Company insisted on the right of trading also to many parts of India, the old one stood on their charter as a charter of exclusion of all others. The favour of Government was purchased by the old Company by well-applied gifts of money to Government, and by sharing with Government the profitable patronage. The question was now brought before Parliament, and hotly debated; but the Bill was dropped for the present, and a proposition to William to grant a charter to the new Company was evaded, on the plea of requiring deep consideration.

The next important Bill was for regulating trials in cases of high treason. It was time that great reforms should take place on this head. During the Stuart times men had been most easily and conveniently put out of the way, by counsel being refused them under charge of high treason, and by refusal to allow them the perusal of the Bill of Indictment previous to the trial. Juries were packed by sheriffs, and State prisoners were thus murdered at will. The same gross injustice extended to prisoners charged with other offences; but the great strain towards injustice was in the case of those charged by the State with treason, and against whom it employed the ablest lawyers of the realm. By this machinery, all through the reigns of the Stuarts, as well as of their predecessors, whole throngs of men, many of them of extraordinary endowments and high rank, had been judicially destroyed. The proposed Bill, therefore, provided that every person charged with high treason should be allowed to have his own counsel, to have a copy of the indictment delivered to him ten days before the trial, along with a list of the freeholders from whom his jury were to be selected, that he might have opportunity to challenge any of them. The Bill was most desirable, but it was frustrated for the time by the Lords insisting on an extension of their own privileges regarding such trials. Instead of being tried by the court of the Lord High Steward--who could summon twelve or more peers at his discretion if the Parliament was not sitting--they demanded that, during the recess, as during the Session, every peer should be summoned to attend any such trial. The Commons somewhat unreasonably opposed this very proper reform, on the ground that the peers had too many privileges already, and the Bill dropped for the time.

Besides these the Commons sent up various other bills, which were nearly all rejected by the Lords. There was a Bill for reducing the rate of interest on money; a Bill investing in the king the forfeited estates in both England and Ireland as a fund for the war; a Bill to proportion the pay in the army to the real complement of men; for there was a practice, in which Marlborough was especially engaged, of returning regiments as complete which were far from being so, and of pocketing the pay of the men wanting. There was a Bill to continue the commissioners of public accounts, most unreasonably rejected by the Lords, whilst they allowed to pass a Bill which has always been regarded with hostility in England--a poll tax, levying on all persons, except servants, children, and paupers, a shilling a quarter; on every peer of Parliament, ten pounds a year; on every income of three hundred pounds a year, ten shillings per annum; and on all gentlemen of three hundred pounds a year income from real property, and on all clergymen or teachers with incomes of eighty pounds, one pound each a year.

On the 29th of February William prorogued Parliament, and made active preparations for his departure for the Continent. Before he took his leave, however, he made various changes in his Cabinet and Ministry, which showed that the Whigs were still losing ground with him, and the Tories, or the "Trimmers," who veered, according to circumstances, to one party or the other, acquiring favour. The Earl of Rochester, younger brother of Lord Clarendon, one of Mary's uncles; Lord Ranelagh, Lord Cornwallis, and Sir Edward Seymour, who had all along hitherto opposed the king, were made members of the Privy Council, and the Earl of Pembroke Privy Seal. Charles Montague was made a Commissioner of the Treasury, and Sidney Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. But the circumstance which occasioned the greatest sensation, and wonder, and mystery was the sudden dismissal of Lord Marlborough from all his offices under the king, both in the Court and the army. As Marlborough had been manifestly rising in William's estimation from the successful display of his military talents, this abrupt dismissal excited the keenest curiosity of both Court and country, which William took no means to gratify. But from what we now know of the causes of this striking expression of William's displeasure, we can well understand that there was more in it than William could, without implicating the Princess Anne, make known.

We have seen that Marlborough all along, whilst courting the favour of William, was endeavouring to recover that of James. He had been one of the very first to abandon that monarch when trusted by him, but he had written letters expressing the bitterest repentance and remorse for that treason, whilst he was thus prepared, if necessary, to perpetrate a new one. But Marlborough, as he had a genius capable of the very highest achievements, had one also capable of the most complicated treacheries in politics. It was not enough for him to be serving William and vowing secretly to James that he was only watching his opportunity to serve him, but he had a third and more alluring treason. He and his wife had the ductile and yet obstinate princess Anne completely in their hands. They lived with her at Whitehall, they drew largely from her income, they selected her friends, they moulded her likings and her antipathies; she was a complete puppet in their keeping. From his lucrative station as keeper of Anne's purse, person, and conscience, through his clever and unprincipled wife, Marlborough watched intently the temper of the nation. He saw that there was an intense jealousy of the Dutch, not only amongst the people on account of trade and national rivalry, but in the Parliament and aristocracy, on account of William's preference for his Dutch friends. Bentinck, Ginkell, Overkirk, and Zulestein were the only men in whom he reposed entire confidence. On them he heaped wealth, estates, and honours. Ginkell was just now elevated to an earldom, and a large grant of lands was contemplated for him in Ireland. On Portland rich grants had been bestowed, and more were anticipated. William's continual absences on the Continent, his cold reserve whilst in England, the large expenditure of men and money for the prosecution of the Continental war, though really for the liberties of Europe, were represented by the discontented as a wholesale draft upon the country for the aggrandisement of Holland.

These were the things Marlborough saw which gave vitality to the intrigues of the Jacobites; and the only causes which prevented the revulsion from becoming general in favour of James were his incurable despotism, his imbecility as a monarch, and the certain return of Popery in his train. But there was another person to whom none of these objections applied--the Princess Anne--the person already in his guidance or power. Anne was at once English and a Protestant. The former fact gave her a mighty advantage over William--the latter over James. Would it not, therefore, be possible to substitute Anne for her father? To do this it was only necessary to inflame the prejudice in Parliament and among the people against the Dutch influence, to inoculate the army with the same feeling, already well-disposed to it by jealousy of the Dutch troops, and to obviate the objections of those who repelled the idea of bringing back James by turning their attention on one nearer home. The absence of William on the Continent, and the disaffection of most of the admirals, would afford an opportunity of resisting his return to both army and navy. And with Anne queen, Marlborough would become the pillar of her throne, commander of her army, and dispenser of her patronage.

That this was no mere dream is clear enough now. It was, indeed, one of the various rumours of the time. Evelyn says that it was one of these that Marlborough "was endeavouring to breed division in the army, and to make himself the more necessary by making an ill correspondence betwixt the princess and the Court." But James himself as plainly asserts the fact of this charge against Marlborough. "It was the plan," he says, "of my friends to recall me through the Parliament. My Lord Churchill was to propose in Parliament to drive away all the foreigners from the councils and the army of the kingdom. If the Prince of Orange consented to this, he would have been in their hands. If he refused, Parliament would have declared against him, and Lord Churchill was, at the same time, to cause the army to declare for the Parliament, the fleet the same, and then to recall me. Already this plan was in agitation, and a large party was already gained over, when some faithful but indiscreet subjects, thinking to serve me, and imagining that Lord Churchill was not acting for me, but really for the Princess of Denmark, discovered all to Bentinck, and thus destroyed the whole scheme."

The proof that William was satisfied that Marlborough's grand plan was real, was that he at once dismissed him from all his employments. That Marlborough had long intrigued with James, William was quite aware, but on that account he never troubled him; this, however, was by far a more dangerous treachery, and he resented it accordingly. The Marlboroughs, notwithstanding, continued at Whitehall with Anne, and might probably never have been molested, had not the imperious Lady Marlborough in her anger determined to set the king and queen at defiance. She, therefore, had the assurance to accompany the princess to the Drawing-Room at Kensington Palace a few evenings after, and the next day brought an expostulatory letter from the queen to her sister, informing her that after such an outrage Lady Marlborough must quit Whitehall. Anne sent to entreat Mary to pass the matter over, declaring that there was no misery that she would not suffer rather than be deprived of Lady Marlborough. The only answer was an order from the Lord Chamberlain, commanding her ladyship to quit the palace. Anne, determined not to lose the society of her favourite, left Whitehall with the Marlboroughs, and betook herself to Sion House, which was lent to her by the Duke of Somerset, and soon after she removed to Berkeley House, standing on the present site of Devonshire House, in Piccadilly, which became her permanent residence. There all the Marlborough faction assembled, and there Anne vented her indignation without restraint or delicacy against William, calling him a "Dutch abortion," a "monster," a "Caliban." A fresh stimulus was given to the malice of that clique; every means was used to excite hatred of the Government of William, and to increase the partisans of James. With such a termagant spirit as Lady Marlborough, and such a plotting spirit as that of her husband, a strong feeling was excited against the queen, who was represented as totally without heart, as having usurped the throne of her father, and sought to strip her sister of her most valued friendships. Amidst such an atmosphere of malice and detraction William was compelled to leave the queen.

He embarked for Holland on the 5th of March. He left the country amid the rumours of false plots and real schemes of invasion. One Fuller, under the tuition of the notorious Titus Oates, had been accusing no less than fifty lords and gentlemen, including Halifax and some of the king's own ministers, of having pledged themselves to bring in James. However true it might be that many of these were at heart really ready for such a change, it was clearly shown that Fuller's story was got up merely to make money by it, and it was treated with contempt. The rumour of an invasion was, as we shall find, more real. Disbelieving it, or pressed by the necessity of giving a blow to Louis in Flanders, William made a speedy journey to the Hague. There the difficulties which he had to overcome were such as would have sunk the courage of any less firm-hearted man. But though William managed to just hold his stupid and selfish Allies together--too stupid and selfish to perceive their own real interests--he found it impossible to get them into the field. Whilst they were moving like tortoises, each afraid to be before his neighbour, each taking leave to delay because his neighbour delayed, Louis rushed into the arena with his wonted alertness. On the 20th of May he was in his camp at Flanders. He made a grand review of his troops in the neighbourhood of Mons. There a hundred and twenty thousand men were drawn up in a line eight miles long. Such a circumstance was well calculated to spread a deadening report amongst the Allies of the crushing vastness of his army. He was attended by a splendid retinue of nearly all the princes and rulers of France; there was the Duke de Chartres, in his fifteenth year only; the Dukes of Bourbon and Vendôme; the Prince of Conti; and whole troops of young nobles following them as volunteers. Louis appeared in the midst of them with all the splendour and luxury of an Eastern emperor.

From the imposing review Louis bore down directly on Namur. Namur stood strongly at the confluence of the Meuse and the Sambre. It was strong by nature on the sides next the rivers, and made so by art on the land side. The Baron de Cohorn, an engineer who rivalled Vauban, was always in William's army to advise and throw up fortifications. Cohorn had made it one of the most considerable fortresses on the Continent, and he now lay in the city with a garrison of nine thousand men, under the Prince de Brabazon. All the other fortresses--Mons, Valenciennes, Cambray, Antwerp, Ostend, Ypres, Lille, Tournay, Luxemburg, and others, had yielded to the Grand Monarque; Namur alone had resisted every attempt upon it. And now Louis invested it with his whole force. Louis himself laid siege to the place with forty thousand men, and posted Luxemburg with eighty thousand more on the road between Namur and Brussels. Brabazon calculated on the army of William effecting the relief of the place, and Louis resolved to make his approach impossible.

William, joined by the forces of Brandenburg and Liége, and with his army swelled to a hundred thousand men, advanced to the Mehaigne, within cannon-shot of Luxemburg's camp, but there he found himself stopped. Luxemburg's army lay on the other bank of the river, and was so strongly posted, and watched so vigilantly every movement of William, that he saw no means of forcing a way towards the beleaguered city. Whilst thus impeded by the river and the vast force of Luxemburg, Nature came to complete the chafing king's mortifications. Heavy rains set in on St. Medard's Day, the 8th of June, the French St. Swithin. The rivers burst their banks, and the whole country lay under water. If William had had the means to cross the river, the drenching torrents and the muddy soil would have rendered all military operations impossible. Louis with difficulty kept his men to their posts in the siege. Still the assault was pushed on. Cohorn, the engineer, was disabled by a severe wound whilst defending a fort on which he greatly prided himself; and from that hour the defence languished. Brabazon was a man of no spirit; Cohorn's fort was taken, and the town surrendered on the 20th of June.

The exultation of Louis and the French on the fall of Namur was unbounded. This triumph had been won in the very presence of William and the Allies at the head of a hundred thousand men. He ordered medals to be struck to commemorate this success, which his flatterers, and amongst them Boileau himself, declared was more glorious than the mastery of Troy by the Greeks. Te Deum was sung in Paris; the French nation was in ecstasies, and Louis returned to Versailles to enjoy the incense of his elated courtiers and mistresses. But he did not return without a sting to his triumph. The news of a signal defeat of his fleet at La Hogue reached him even as he lay before Namur, and the thunder of William's artillery at the great intelligence wounded his vanity though it could not reach his army.

Louis having quitted the Netherlands, Luxemburg strongly garrisoned Namur, despatched the Marquis of Boufflers to La Bassière, and himself encamped at Soignies. William posted himself at Genappe, sent detachments to Ghent and Liége, and determined to attack Luxemburg. This general shifted his ground to a position between Steinkirk and Enghien, and William then encamped at Lambeque. Here he discovered that all his movements had been previously betrayed to Luxemburg by the private secretary of the Elector of Bavaria, one Millevoix, a letter of whose to the French general had been picked up by a peasant, and brought to the camp. William seized on the circumstance to mislead Luxemburg. The detected spy was compelled to write a letter to the French general, informing him that the next day William was intending to send out a foraging party, and, to prevent it from being surprised, would draw out a large body of troops to protect it. The letter being despatched to the French camp, William took immediate measures for the engagement. His object was to surprise the camp of Luxemburg, and the story of the foraging party was to prevent his alarm on the approach of the troops. He sent his heavy baggage across the Seine, and by four in the morning his troops were on the march towards Luxemburg's position. The Duke of Würtemberg led the van with ten battalions of English, Dutch, and Danish infantry, supported by a large body of horse and foot under the command of General Mackay, and Count Solmes followed with the reserve.

William's forces reached the outposts of Luxemburg's army about two o'clock in the afternoon, and drove them in with a sudden and unlooked-for onset. A regiment from the Bourbonnais was put to instant flight, and William, who had been informed that he should have to march through a country of hedges, ditches, and narrow lanes, but that, on approaching Luxemburg's army, he would find it open plain, now calculated that he had nothing to do but to dash into the surprised camp and produce universal confusion. He had indeed had to pick his way through hedges and ditches, but now, instead of the open plain, there lay still a network of hedges and ditches between him and the enemy. This caused so much delay, that the enemy soon became aware of the real fact, that William was upon them with his whole army. There was an instant hurrying to standards, and William found himself face to face with a body sufficient to dispute the ground with him till the whole was in order.

Luxemburg had been deceived by the forced letter of Millevoix. He had relied on it as being as correct as usual; and, though scout after scout brought intelligence of the English approaching, he deemed it only the foraging party and their supporters, and sat coolly at cards till it was nearly too late. Then he mounted his horse, reconnoitred the enemy, threw forward the Swiss regiments and the far-famed Household Troops of Louis, and encouraged his men to fight with their usual bravery. The young princes put themselves at the head of the Household Troops, and displayed an enthusiasm which communicated itself to the whole line. They found as vigorous opponents in the Duke of Würtemberg and the gallant and pious Mackay. The conflict was maintained at the muzzles of the muskets, and Luxemburg afterwards declared that he never saw so fierce a struggle. The Duke of Würtemberg had already seized one of the enemy's batteries, and penetrated within their entrenchments, but the immense weight of troops that kept pouring on against them at length bore them back. Mackay sent messenger after messenger to bid Solmes hasten up his reserve, but, from cowardice or treachery, Solmes would not move. He said coolly, "Let us see what sport these English bulldogs will make." At length William sent an express order for him to move up; whereupon he trotted his horse forward a little, but never advanced his infantry. When, therefore, Mackay saw that his soldiers were being hewed down by hundreds, and no succour came, he said, "God's will be done," and fought on till he fell. The contest was not, however, decided till the detachment of Boufflers appeared upon the field. Luxemburg sent off an express to hasten him to his assistance; but Boufflers, unlike Solmes, had not waited for that--he had heard the firing, and was already on the way. Then William was compelled to order his troops to draw off; and this retreat he managed with his accustomed skill. He was, however, roused out of his usual stoicism by the infamous conduct of Solmes; and the whole army declared that they would not have been repulsed but for his base desertion of them. The French claimed the victory, though William retired to his camp in good order, and both armies continued to occupy their former position. The fame of William as a general in the field was greatly injured. He was acknowledged to be admirable at a retreat; but it was said that a first-rate general seldom practised that portion of the art of war. But his enemies, by their very joy at this rebuff, acknowledged their sense of his power.

After this nothing of consequence distinguished the campaign in the Netherlands. On the 26th of September William left the army under command of the Elector of Bavaria, and retired to his hunting seat at Loo. The camp was broken up, and the infantry marched to Marienkirke, and the horse to Caure. But hearing that Boufflers had invested Charleroi and Luxemburg, he sent troops under the Elector of Bavaria to raise the siege of those towns. Boufflers retired, and then the Elector distributed his troops into winter quarters; and Luxemburg on his side left the army under Boufflers, and went to Paris.

Besides this there had been an attempt on the part of England to besiege Dunkirk. The Duke of Leinster was sent over with troops, which were joined by others from William's camp; but they thought the attempt too hazardous, and returned, having done nothing. William quitted Holland, and on the 18th of October arrived in England. The result of this expensive campaign, where such unexampled preparations had been followed only by defeat and the loss of five thousand men, excited deep dissatisfaction; and the abortive attempt to recover Dunkirk increased it. The public complained that William had lain inactive at Grammont whilst Louis took Namur, and that if he could not cross the Scheldt in the face of the French army, he might have crossed it higher up, and taken Louis in the flank; that he might, instead of lying inert to witness his enemy's triumph, have boldly marched into France and laid waste Louis's own territories, which would have quickly drawn him away from Namur. Such, indeed, might have been the decisive movements of a great military genius, but there is no reason to think that William was such a genius. His most striking qualities were dogged perseverance and insensibility to defeat.

During William's absence, a variety of circumstances had taken place which threw a dark shade upon his fame, which threatened almost to shake his throne, and which gratified the naval pride of the country.

The horrible event which had occurred in Scotland, still properly styled the Massacre of Glencoe, had just become known to the English as William left for the Continental campaign, and threw no little odium upon him. The dissatisfaction which William felt at his Bill of Toleration for Scotland having been refused by the Scottish Parliament, induced him to remove Lord Melville, who had suffered the liberal views of the king to be swamped by the Presbyterians, as William thought, too easily. He therefore appointed Sir James Dalrymple, whom he had created Viscount Stair, Lord President of the Court of Session; and his son, Sir John--called then, according to the custom of Scotland, the Master of Stair--as Lord Advocate, took the lead in the management of Scottish affairs. One of the matters which came under his notice was that of the settling of the Highlands; and it was resolved by William's Cabinet, where Lord Stair and the Earl of Argyll were consulted as the great authorities on Scottish measures, that twelve thousand pounds should be distributed amongst the Highland chiefs, to secure their goodwill. Unfortunately, the agent that was chosen for the distribution of this money was one of the hated tribe of Campbell. It was the Earl of Breadalbane, who had deadly feuds with some of the clans; and, as they regarded him with aversion and suspicion, the most insurmountable obstacles arose to any reasonable arrangement. Besides that every chief wanted more money than Breadalbane thought he ought to have, the Earl of Argyll contended that these chiefs owed him large sums, and that their quotas should be paid over to him in liquidation of those debts. To this the chiefs would not consent, and when the money was not paid over, they loudly avowed their conviction that Breadalbane meant to appropriate it to himself.

Amongst the chiefs, Macdonald of Glencoe was especially obnoxious to Breadalbane. Glencoe is a peculiarly wild and gloomy glen in Argyllshire. The English meaning of the word is "the glen of weeping," a name singularly appropriate from its being frequently enveloped in dense mists and drizzling rains. It was too barren and rugged for agriculture, and, accordingly, its little section of the clan Donald were noted for their predatory habits, common, indeed, to all the Highlanders, and deemed as actually honourable. They had committed frequent raids on the lands of Breadalbane, and therefore, when the old chief presented himself amongst the other chiefs at the castle of Breadalbane, he was rudely insulted, and was called upon to make reparation for his damages done to the Campbells. Macdonald--or, as he was commonly styled, Mac Ian--was glad to get away in safety. Incensed at his treatment, he exerted all his arts and influence amongst the other chiefs to embarrass and frustrate the attempts of Breadalbane towards a settlement.

Whilst these things were in agitation, the English Government issued a proclamation, that every rebel who did not come in and take the oaths to William and Mary before the 1st of January, 1692, should be held to be a traitor, and treated accordingly. Notwithstanding considerable delay, all the chiefs took care to come in before the appointed day except Mac Ian. In his stubborn rage against Breadalbane he deferred his submission to the last moment. On the 31st of December, however, he presented himself at Fort William to take the oaths; but Colonel Hill, the Governor, refused to administer the oaths, on the plea that he was not a magistrate, and told Mac Ian that it was necessary that he should go to Inverary and swear before the sheriff. The old chief was confounded; this was the last day of grace, and it was impossible to reach Inverary in the depth of winter in time. Hill, however, gave him a letter to the sheriff expressing a hope that, as Mac Ian had presented himself in time to take the oaths, though under an error as to the authority, he would allow him to take them. Mac Ian did not reach Inverary till the 6th of January, and the sheriff, after much entreaty and many tears from the old chief, consented to administer the oaths, and dispatch information of the circumstances to the Council in Edinburgh.

The news did not reach Breadalbane and Argyll in Edinburgh, but in London, whither they had gone to represent the state of these affairs; and both they and the Master of Stair, who was there too, instead of being glad that all the chiefs had come in, were exceedingly rejoiced that Mac Ian had not submitted till after the prescribed time. They agreed to suppress the fact that Mac Ian had come in, though after the date, and only laid before William's Council the circumstance that he had not come in at the expiry of the limited time. A proposal was therefore made by them that this "nest of robbers," as they termed the people of Glencoe, should be utterly routed out, without which, they declared, there could be no peace in the Highlands. William therefore signed a warrant laid before him for that purpose, putting his signature both at top and bottom.

With this fatal instrument in their hands, these worthless men instantly took measures to wreak their vengeance on this little horde of people, and to root them completely out. An order was sent to Governor Hill to dispatch a sufficient force to Glencoe to kill every man, woman, and child in it. Whether Hill was deemed too humane or too dignified for the office of wholesale butcher, does not appear; but he was directed to send Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton on the errand. Hamilton, however, to make all sure by studying the place, sent, on the 1st of February, a Captain Campbell--better known as Glenlyon, from the place of his residence. Glenlyon took with him one hundred and twenty men, part of a regiment of Campbells, and marched to Glencoe; and then appeared the full diabolism of the scheme of Mr. Secretary Stair and his associates, Argyll and Breadalbane. He was not to fall on the Macdonalds and put them to the sword as open and proscribed enemies, but to secure the completion of the barbarous design by a plan of the most revolting treachery on record. He was to profess to come as a friend, only to seek temporary quarters on his wintry march, and especially to visit a niece of his married to one of the sons of Mac Ian. He was to feign friendship, to live with the poor people some time in familiarity till all suspicion was laid to rest, and then to murder them in cold blood.

Accordingly, when this band of soldiers was seen approaching, a son of the chief and some of the people went out to learn the cause of the visit. The reply was, "All in friendship, and only to seek quarters." The traitors were welcomed, and lodged amongst the different families. Glenlyon and some of his men were accommodated by a man called Inverriggen; Lindsay, the lieutenant, accepted the hospitality of old Mac Ian; and a sergeant named Barbour was received by a leading man called Auchintriater. For nearly a fortnight this air of friendship was kept up. Glenlyon professed much attachment to his niece and her husband. He and Lindsay played at cards with the chief and his sons, and all went gaily, as far as whisky, and French brandy, and blithe spirits on the part of the hosts, could make it so. But all this time Glenlyon was studying how the more completely to secure the destruction of every soul in the glen. He and his men noted carefully every outlet, and the result of the observations was sent to Hamilton. All being considered ready, Hamilton fixed the 13th of February for the slaughter, and appointed to be there before five o'clock in the morning, and to stop all the earths to which the "old fox and his cubs," as he termed Mac Ian and his sons, could flee. That night, as he was marching with four hundred men through the snows to do this butcherly deed, Glenlyon was spending the evening with Mac Ian, and engaged to dine the next day with "his murdered man."

But with all the Judas-like deceit with which he carried on his hellish design, that evening two men were heard lamenting they had something to do that they did not relish. A suspicion was awakened, and one of the sons of Mac Ian went at midnight to Glenlyon's lodgings to see if he could discover anything. In confirmation of his worst suspicions he found him and his men all up and armed. Yet he suffered himself to be persuaded by the villain that they were called to a sudden march to chastise some of the Glengarry clan for marauding; and the young man returned home and went to bed. Glenlyon had said, "Do you think I would do anything against my own niece and her husband?"

At five in the morning, though Hamilton had not arrived, the bloodthirsty Glenlyon commenced the massacre by murdering his host and all his family. Lindsay did the same by his host, old Mac Ian and his family; and Barbour shot down his host and family in the same manner. Then the soldiers at every hut imitated their example, and speedily there was a hewing and shooting down of victims flying from the huts to the defiles for escape. Men, women, children, pleading most piteously, were ruthlessly murdered. But, fortunately, the sound of the fire-arms aroused the whole glen at once, and the rush of the affrighted people was too simultaneous to allow of their being killed. The greater part of them escaped in the darkness to the hills, for Hamilton had not arrived to blockade the defiles. The sanguinary haste of Glenlyon had saved the majority. The two sons of Mac Ian were amongst the number who escaped. Above thirty people, however, were massacred, and an old man of seventy, unable to fly, was brutally stabbed. But those who had escaped the sword and musket only escaped to the snow-covered rocks to perish, many of them of cold and famine, for the wretches set fire to everything in the valley, and left it one black and hideous desert.

When the news of this terrible affair at length spread, the public could scarcely believe that so demoniacal a deed could have been done in a Christian country. The Jacobites did not fail to dilate on its infamy with emphasis. The whole frightful particulars were gleaned up industriously by the non-jurors from the soldiers of the regiment, which happened the next summer to be quartered in England. All the execration due to such a deed was liberally showered on the courtiers, on the actors of the brutal butchery, and on the king who had sanctioned it. Terror, if not conscience seized on the chief movers in it. Breadalbane sent his steward to Glencoe, to induce the miserable inhabitants who had returned to their burnt-up valley to sign a paper asserting that they did not charge him with any participation in the crime, promising in return to use his influence with the king to obtain a full pardon and immunity from forfeiture for them all. Glenlyon was shunned as a monster wherever he appeared; but Stair, so far from showing any shame or remorse, seemed to glory in the deed. As for William, there was a zealous attempt to make it appear that he did not know of what had been done; and when his warrant was produced, then that he was deceived as to the circumstances of the case. Unfortunately for William's reputation there was a searching inquiry into the facts of the affair, and when he did know these in all their atrocity, he failed to punish the perpetrators. Stair was for the time dismissed, but very soon restored to William's service; and after this all attempts would be futile to absolve him from gross want of feeling and of justice in the case. It is a black spot on his fame, and must remain so. Burnet, who is always anxious to defend William, says that, from the letters and documents produced which he himself read, so many persons were concerned in the business that "the king's gentleness prevailed to a fault," and so he did not proceed against them--a singular kind of gentleness! At the very least, the blood-guiltiness of Breadalbane, Stair, and Glenlyon, was so prominent, and they were so few, that they ought to have been made examples of; and such a mark of the sense of the atrocity of the crime would have wiped from William's reputation the clinging stain.

Scarcely had William left England in the spring, when the country was menaced by an invasion; and whilst he was contending with Luxemburg in Flanders, the queen and her ministers had been as actively contending with real and imaginary plots, and with the French fleet at La Hogue. The Papists of Lancashire had for some time been particularly active in encouraging in King James the idea that he would be welcomed again in England by his subjects. One Lant, a carpenter, had been despatched to St. Germains, and brought back assurances that his Majesty would, in the course of the spring, certainly land in England. He also sent over Colonel Parker, one of the parties engaged to assassinate William, to concert the necessary measures with the Catholics and Jacobites for the invasion. Parker assured them that James would embark at La Hogue with thirty thousand men. Johnson, a priest, was said to be associated with Parker to murder William before his departure if possible; but the king had gone already when they arrived.

The great minister of Louis, Louvois, was dead. He had always opposed these ideas of invasion of England as absurd and impracticable. His removal enabled James to persuade Louis to attempt the enterprise. It was determined to muster a fleet of eighty sail. The Count de Tourville commanded five-and-forty of them, and under him the Count D'Estrées thirty-five more. The most active preparations were making for the completion of all things necessary for the equipment of this fleet, and the army which it was to carry over. The ships under Tourville lay at Brest, those of D'Estrées at Toulon; they were to meet at Ushant, and take on board the army at La Hogue. James was in high spirits; he was puffed up by the invitations which the Catholic emissaries had brought him; he had, he believed, firmly won over the admirals of the fleet, Russell, Carter, Delaval, and Killigrew. Whilst in this elation of mind he sent over invitations to many Protestant ladies of quality to attend the expected accouchement of his queen. He said many base aspersions had been cast on the birth of his son, and he desired now to prevent a recurrence of such slanders; he therefore offered to all the distinguished persons invited safe conducts both for going and returning from the French monarch. No one accepted the invitation; and a daughter was born to James about whom no one in England was very much concerned.

But the preparations of James and Louis occasioned similar preparations in England. The militia was called out; London was strongly guarded by troops; the train-bands of the southern counties appeared in arms on the coasts; the beacons were all vigilantly watched, and the fleet was manned and equipped with all possible speed and strength.

The invitation of James to the birth of his daughter was speedily followed by a proclamation to his subjects in England. James had always done himself more harm by his Declarations than all the efforts of his friends and allies could do him good; and this was precisely of that character. He expressed no regret for any of his past actions or measures; he betrayed no suspicion, even, that he might have governed more wisely. On the contrary, he represented himself as having always been right, good, and gracious, and his subjects wrong, captious, and unreasonable. He had always meant and done well, but he had been shamefully maligned. He now promised to maintain the Church indeed; but people had had too recent a proof of how he had maintained it in Ireland. He meant to pardon many of his enemies; but, at the same time, added such a list of proscriptions as made it look more like a massacre than an amnesty. Amongst those excepted from all pardon were the Duke of Ormond, the Marquis of Winchester, the Earls of Sunderland, Danby, and Nottingham, the Lords Delamere, Wiltshire, Colchester, Cornbury, and Dunblane; the Bishop of St. Asaph; Drs. Tillotson and Burnet. He excepted even the poor fishermen who at Faversham had mistaken him for a Jesuit priest on his flight, and called him "hatchet-face." All judges, magistrates, sheriffs, jurymen, gaolers, turnkeys, constables, and every one who had acted under William in securing and condemning any Jacobite; all justices and other authorities who should not immediately on his landing abandon the Government and support him; and all gaolers who should not at once set at liberty all prisoners confined for any conspiracy in favour of James, or for any political deed on that side, all were alike condemned. In short, such was the Draconian rigour with which the Declaration was drawn that there was hardly a man who was not a downright Jacobite who did not tremble at the belief that it might include him.

The queen and her ministers no sooner read the Declaration than they saw the whole effect of it. They had it printed and circulated all over the kingdom, with a clever running commentary. Parliament was summoned for the 24th of May, and a number of persons, charged with being concerned in a plot for bringing in James, were arrested, and others absconded. Amongst those seized were Marlborough and Lord Huntingdon, who were sent to the Tower; Mr. Ridley, Mr. Knevitt, Mr. Hastings, and Mr. Ferguson, were sent to Newgate; the Bishop of Rochester was confined to his own house; the Lords Brudenel and Fanshawe, the Earls of Dunmore and Middleton, and Sir Andrew Forrester, were next secured. The Earls of Scarsdale, Lichfield, and Newborough, the Lords Griffin, Forbes, Sir John Fenwick, Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe, and others, escaped. The princess Anne expected arrest.

On the 11th of May, a week after Marlborough was sent to the Tower, Russell sailed from the Downs in quest of the French fleet. He was at the head of ninety-nine sail of the line, the greatest force which had ever descended the English Channel. Off Beachy Head he had met Carter and Delaval, who had been watching the French ports, and a fine fleet of Dutchmen were also in conjunction with him. There were between thirty and forty thousand sailors, Dutch and English, on board, and he was supported by the Admirals Delaval, Ashley, Cloudesley Shovel, Carter, and Rooke. Van Almonde was in command of the Dutch squadron, with Callemberg and Vandergoes. James meanwhile was at La Hogue with the army, anxiously awaiting the fleet of De Tourville to carry it over. James confidently calculated on the disaffection of the English admirals, Russell, Delaval, Carter, and others. He sent an emissary to remind Russell of his promises, and to promise him and the other admirals high rewards in return. But Lloyd, the emissary, had found Russell wonderfully changed. The fatal Declaration had produced the same effect on him as on others. He told the man that he was desirous to serve James, but that he must first grant a general pardon; and besides, if he met the French fleet, though James was aboard of it, he would never allow himself to be beaten by the French.

In London the terror of this known disaffection had been great. The queen and her ministers consulted deeply what should be done. Should they send and arrest the traitors? The effect, they foresaw, would be to scatter terror through the whole fleet. They adopted a far more politic plan. On the 15th of May, as the combined fleet lay off St. Helens, Russell called together the officers on board his own ship, and informed them that he had a letter from the queen to read them. In this she stated that she had heard rumours of disaffection amongst the officers, but would not believe it. She knew they would fight as became Englishmen for their country. The letter had an instant and wondrous effect. They immediately signed unanimously a declaration that they would live and die for the Crown, the Protestant religion, and the freedom of England. On the 18th the fleet sailed for the coast of France, and next day the fleet of Tourville was descried. Tourville had only forty-five ships of the line, and he had orders, if he met the English fleet, to engage. But Louis had since learned the junction of the Dutch with the English, and despatched messengers to warn him, but they were intercepted. Tourville, however, notwithstanding the preponderance of the enemy, determined to engage. He had been upbraided after the fight at Beachy Head as timid; his blood was roused, and, besides, he confidently believed that three-fourths of the English fleet were secretly for James, and would at the first brush come over to him. As he lay off Barfleur on the morning of the 19th he saw the long line of the enemy before him, and bore down upon them for battle.

At eleven o'clock the French admiral opened fire on part of the English fleet, the rest not being able to get up from the wind being contrary. The spirit with which the English received him at once dissipated Tourville's hopes of defection amongst them. The conflict continued with uncommon fury till one o'clock, when Russell was compelled to allow his flag-ship, the Rising Sun, carrying a hundred and four guns, to be towed out of the line from the damage she had received. But the fight continued furiously till three o'clock, when a fog parted the enemies. Soon after, however, a wind favourable to the English sprang up, and, at the same time, dispersed the fog. Fresh ships of the English came up, and the conflict continued to rage till eight in the evening. During this time Carter, who had been one of the most deeply pledged to James, but who had fought like a lion, fell mortally wounded, but as he was carried down to his cabin, he cried to his men to fight the ship as long as she could swim. Tourville, who was now contending hopelessly against numbers, drew off, but was closely pursued, and the most terrible carnage was made of the men on board his great ship, the Royal Sun, the pride of the French navy. He fought, however, stoutly so long as the light continued; and then the whole French fleet made all sail for the French ports.

The next morning the English gave chase, and Russell's vessel was retarded for some time by the falling of her topmast, but soon they were once more in full pursuit. About twenty of the French ships escaped through the perilous Race of Alderney, between that island and the coast of Cotentin, where the English dared not pursue them; and these vessels, by their desperate courage, escaped to St. Malo. Tourville had shifted his flag to the Ambitious, and the Royal Sun, battered and drenched in blood, made its way, and, with the Admiral and the Conquerant, managed to reach Cherbourg, whither Delaval pursued and burnt them, with several other vessels. Tourville himself and the rest of the fleet escaped into the harbour of La Hogue, where they drew themselves up in shallow water, close under the guns of the Forts De Lisset and St. Vaast.

Here they flattered themselves that they were in safety. The army destined to invade England lay close at hand, and James, his son the Duke of Berwick, the Marshal Bellefond, and other great officers, were in the forts. But Sir George Rooke, by the orders of Russell, embarked his men in all the light frigates and open boats that could be procured, and advanced boldly upon the French men-of-war as they lay drawn up upon the beach. Regardless of the fire from the forts and the ships, the English rushed to the attack with loud hurrahs, proud to beard the French under the eyes of the very army of French and renegade Irish which dared to dream of invading England. The daring of the deed struck such a panic into the French sailors, that they quickly abandoned the vessels which lay under Fort Lisset. The fort and batteries seemed paralysed by the same event, and the English set fire to the vessels. In vain Tourville manned his boats, and attempted to drive back the English sailors; his mariners jumped to land again. In vain the soldiers ashore hurried down and poured in a volley on the British seamen; they successfully burnt all the six vessels lying under Lisset, and returned to their ships without the loss of a man.

The next morning Rooke was again afloat with the tide, and leading his fleet of boats and his brave sailors against the vessels lying under the Fort St. Vaast. The fort did more execution than the other fort the day before; but all was in vain. The British sailors climbed up the vessels; the French fled precipitately out of them, and they were all burnt to the water's edge, except a few smaller ones, which were towed away to the English fleet. When James saw these surprising acts he is said to have involuntarily exclaimed, "See my brave English sailors." But guns of the exploding vessels going off killed some of the people standing near him, and he then, coming to a more sober reflection, said, "Heaven fights against me," and retired. There was an end of all hope of ever invading England, and he hastened back to St. Germains in deep dejection.

The news of this most brilliant and most important battle, which gave such a blow to the power and prestige of Louis, was received in London with transports of delight. England was once more safe; France was humbled; invasion at an end. Sixteen of the finest ships of France had been destroyed, and on the part of England only one fire-ship. The glory was England's, for, though the Dutch had fought well, it was the English who had borne the brunt and done the miracles of bravery at La Hogue. The tidings were borne to William's camp at Grammont, and set all the cannon roaring the exultation into the ears of Luxemburg and his army.

At home there was now time to inquire into the particulars of the plot for which Marlborough and others had been detained. Luckily for them there was found to have been a sham conspiracy got up by one Young, a debauched clergyman, who had been imprisoned for bigamy and for many other crimes. Like Oates and his compeers, and the more recent Fuller, he hoped to make money, and, therefore, had accused Marlborough, Sprat the Bishop of Rochester, and the rest, of being in it. On examination, the plot was found to be a mere barefaced forgery, got up by Young and another miscreant named Blackhead. They had written an engagement to bring in King James, and seize William, and forged to it the names of Marlborough, Cornbury, Sancroft the ex-Primate, and Sprat, Bishop of Rochester. This document they had contrived to hide in a flower-pot at the bishop's house at Bromley. The bishop was arrested, but denied all knowledge of the plot, and then Blackhead confessed. Young, however, feigned another plot, and endeavoured to inveigle into it a poor man of the name of Holland, who also informed the Earl of Nottingham. Young was imprisoned and pilloried, and ministers were glad to admit the accused to bail. For Marlborough and others this false plot was a genuine godsend. They were deep in real treason, and this sham treason screened their reputations just at the moment when the power of James was being annihilated, and that of William rising in fresh vigour.

But the Government was not satisfied with the success of the battle of La Hogue. It was too decisive to be left, they thought, in barren glory; it ought to be followed up by a more severe blow to France. Amid the public rejoicings, Sidney, Portland, and Rochester went down to Portsmouth to congratulate the fleet on its success. They distributed twenty-seven thousand pounds amongst the seamen, and gold medals were bestowed on the officers; and, to mark the sense of the king and queen of this great achievement of the sailors, it was announced that the wounded should be tended at the public charge in the hospitals of St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew; and, still more, that the palace of Greenwich, begun by Charles II., should be finished and appropriated for ever as the home of superannuated sailors. Thus originated this noble institution, this home for maimed and declining mariners.

But for this honour conferred on the fleet fresh exploits were demanded of it--that it should sail to St. Malo, bombard the town, and destroy the remainder of Tourville's fleet, which had taken shelter there. Accordingly, Rooke was dispatched to take soundings on the dangerous shores of Brittany, and Russell mustered his fleet, which, having taken on board transports of fourteen thousand troops under young Schomberg--now Duke of Leinster--accompanied by Ruvigny--now Earl of Galway--and his Huguenots, and the Earl of Argyll, with his regiment, part of which had committed the melancholy massacre of Glencoe, stood out to sea. Off Portland, however, a council of war was called, and it was contended, by a majority of both naval and military officers, that it was too late in the season--it was only the 28th of July--to attempt such an enterprise amid the dangerous rocks and under the guns of the forts and batteries of St. Malo. The fleet, therefore, returned to St. Helens, much to the astonishment and disgust of the whole nation. High words arose between the Earl of Nottingham, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Russell. The Minister accused the Admiral of cowardice and breach of duty in thus tamely giving up the enterprise against France.

Nottingham's hands were wonderfully strengthened by the deep discontent of the merchants, who complained that they were almost ruined by the so-much-vaunted victory of La Hogue; that before, we had a fleet in the Mediterranean and another out in the Channel protecting the traders; but that now the fleet had been concentrated to fight Tourville, and then, instead of taking up proper positions to check the French ships of war and privateers, had contemptibly returned to port; that the French, embittered by the defeat of La Hogue, had now sent out their men-of-war in every direction, and, finding our merchantmen defenceless, had committed the most awful havoc amongst them. Fifty vessels alone, belonging to London and Bristol, had been taken by them. More than a hundred of our trading vessels had been carried into St. Malo, which Russell, by destroying that port, could have prevented or avenged; while Bart, of Dunkirk, had scoured the Baltic and the northern coasts of Britain, and Trouin had actually ascended the Shannon, and committed frightful mischief in Clare.

Amid such expressions of discontent King William returned from Holland to England. He landed on the 18th of October. He had had little success in his campaign; La Hogue was the only bright spot of the year, and the scene which now met him on his return was lowering and depressing. There had been an earthquake in Jamaica, which, in three minutes, had converted Port Royal, the most flourishing city of the West Indies, into a heap of ruins, burying one thousand five hundred of the inhabitants, and extending the calamity to the merchants of London and Bristol. The distress in England itself was general and severe. A rainy season had ruined the harvest, and reduced the people to a state of extreme misery. Bread riots were frequent, and the complaints of the excessive burthen of taxation were loud and general. Burglaries and highway robberies were of the most audacious kind. William, however, was not a man to sit and brood over such things. He at once sent out parties of cavalry into the districts where the robberies were frequent, and, by bribing some of the thieves, got information of the rest, whom his police hunted out industriously. Their chief captain, one Whitney, was taken and hanged, and the highways and domestic hearths were soon as secure as ever.

He called together Parliament on the 4th of November, where there was every reason to expect no little faction and difficulties. Parliament was not merely divided into Ministerialists and Opposition, it was broken into sundry parties, all exasperated by one cause or another. The Whigs were sore with their loss of office to a great extent; the Lords were nettled at the Commons refusing their claims put forward in the Lord High Steward's Court Bill, and were urged to contention by Marlborough and the other lords who had been imprisoned, and who were loud in denouncing the proceeding as a breach of their privileges. There was a great jealousy of William's employment of so many Dutch in preference to Englishmen, and the Commons were discontented with the manner in which public business was conducted.

William was aware of the difficult part he had to play, and in his opening speech he took care to put La Hogue in the foreground, and to congratulate them on this glorious victory gained by Englishmen. He confessed that the success of the campaign on land had been but moderate, but he praised in the highest terms the valour of the British soldiers. He expatiated on the power and the designs of France, told them that the cause of Protestantism was the cause of England, that Louis must be humbled, and that for that purpose there must be still liberal supplies. He threw out a hint of carrying the war into France itself, and assured them that his own aims were identical with theirs, and that he would willingly sacrifice his life for the honour and welfare of the nation. To conciliate both Houses, he condescended to ask their advice and assistance in putting the national affairs into the best possible condition--a piece of candour of which he speedily found reason to repent. Both Houses voted him thanks for his gracious speech, and, immediately seizing on his request for advice, began to offer it in good earnest.

The Lords at once took up the case of Marlborough, Huntingdon, and Scarsdale. They complained that in ungratefully persecuting Marlborough the Court had gone the full length of treating the Princess of Denmark with severity and indignity. Her guards had been taken away; when she went to Bath, the magistrates had orders to omit the honours due to royalty, and the Church to omit her name in the prayers; and this simply because she had shown her attachment to the Countess of Marlborough. Marlborough, thus supported by the Lords, who had their own cause of pique about the Lord High Steward's Court Bill, and by the disrespect shown to the Princess, was loud in his complaints of the harshness with which he had been treated, and of being kept in prison with his friends in defiance of Habeas Corpus. The Earl of Shrewsbury, the Marquis of Halifax, the Earls of Mulgrave, Devonshire, Montague, Bradford, Stamford, Monmouth, and Warrington, supported him from various motives, many of them being Whigs; and the Jacobites fanned the flame, hoping for a rupture. Lord Lucas, Constable of the Tower, was ordered to produce the warrants of commitment, and the Clerk of the King's Bench to lay before them the affidavit of Aaron Smith, the Solicitor of the Treasury, on which they had been remanded; and Smith was sharply cross-examined. The judges were ordered to attend, and the Lords passed a resolution that the law had been violated in the case of the noble prisoners. They then consulted on the best mode of fully discharging them. The debate was so violent that the Ministers were alarmed, and proposed to the King to adjourn Parliament till the 17th of the month, and in the meanwhile to liberate the noblemen from their bail. Accordingly, on the reassembling of the Lords, they were informed that the King had discharged the recognisances of the accused nobles, and the Lords sullenly dropped the question.

But though disappointed here, the Lords immediately fastened on the king's request of advice. They moved that a committee of both Houses should be appointed for preparing this advice. The motion, however, was rejected by a majority of twelve. Nevertheless, they determined to give the king advice themselves. They agreed to an Address, praying his Majesty to appoint an Englishman commander of the forces, and that English officers should take precedence of all in the confederate army, except the officers of Crowned heads. This was meant to affect the Dutch, who were only the subjects of a Stadtholder. They also desired that the forces left in England should be all English, commanded by an English general; that such officers as pressed men for the fleet should be cashiered, and that no foreigner should sit at the Board of Ordnance. All those matters, aimed at the king's favoured countrymen, William received coldly, returning only short and dry answers.

The Lords next attacked Russell for his neglect to make the descent intended on the coast of France. They ordered books and papers concerning that matter to be laid before them. A committee was appointed, and the substance of the charge was communicated to the Commons as concerning a member of that House.

The Commons on their part took up the charge against Russell as a charge against themselves. They informed the Lords that they found that Russell had conducted himself at the head of the fleet with fidelity, courage, and ability. Russell made his defence, and accused Nottingham of being the cause of the non-descent. He declared that above twenty days had elapsed between his writing to Nottingham and receiving an answer; that therefore the expedition had become abortive from not receiving timely and necessary information and orders. Nottingham's friends in the Commons warmly took up his defence; the Lords demanded a conference; the Commons refused it, and, amid this noise and animosity, the important subject was left undecided.

The Commons then proceeded to give the King the advice and the assistance which he had so unluckily asked. They demanded that books and papers should be laid before them necessary to enable them to inquire into the management of the Government offices; but they soon came to a stand, for, inquiring into the abuses of the Admiralty, the merits or demerits of Nottingham and Russell came again into question. One or both of them had been guilty of gross mismanagement, but each House defended its own member, and the only result was a motion in the Commons, which, whilst it acquitted Russell, seemed to reflect on Nottingham. The Lords resenting, made severe reprisals on the character and conduct of Russell, and then the incident ended.

The Commons were more generally united in condemning the failure of the battle of Steinkirk and the conduct of Solmes. Some officers in the House, however, defended the behaviour of the Dutch officers on that occasion, and especially of Overkirk in bringing the remains of Mackay's troops out of the battle. But they said not a word in vindication of Solmes, and William, to his disgrace, still continued this insolent foreigner, who had wilfully sacrificed the lives of the brave English soldiers, in his command.

The Commons now went into the question of supplies. They were fully prepared to sustain the king in his exertions to check the arms of France, though they protested against a fact which they had discovered by examinations of the treaty between the Allies, that the English paid two-thirds of the expense of the war. After grumbling, however, they voted fifty-four thousand men for the army, twenty thousand of them to remain at home, and thirty-three thousand men for the navy. They voted two millions for the army, and two millions for the navy, besides seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds to supply the deficiency of the quarterly poll. Still there was likely to be a deficiency. Notwithstanding the large grants of the previous year, the expenditure had far exceeded them; it was, therefore, proposed to resort to a land tax--the first imposed since the Restoration, and the grand transfer of taxation from the aristocracy to the nation at large. The Peers made a violent opposition, not to the tax, but to their estates being valued and assessed by any but commissioners of their own body. But they finally gave way, and a land tax of four shillings in the pound was carried. When Louis heard of these unusual supplies, he could not restrain his amazement. "My little cousin, the Prince of Orange," he said, "seems to be firm in the saddle; but no matter, the last louis d'or must carry it."

Little did Louis know the condition of England when he said that. If the last piece of gold was to carry it, the chance lay much on the side of England. Whilst France was fast sinking in exhaustion from his enormous wars and lavish luxury, whilst his people were sunk in destitution, and trade and agriculture were languishing, England was fast rising in wealth from commerce, colonies, and internal industry, and was capable of maintaining the struggle for an indefinite period.

Yet it was at this moment that the National Debt assumed its determinate shape. It had existed, indeed, since the fraud of Charles I. on the London merchants by the shutting of the exchequer. It was now said to be suggested by Burnet that there were heaps of money hidden away in chests and behind wainscots for want of safe and convenient public security, and that, by Government giving that security at a fixed percentage, it might command any amount of money by incurring only a slight increase of annual taxation for the interest. The idea itself, however, was familiar to William, for the Dutch had long had a debt of five million pounds, which was regarded by the people as the very best security for their money. Accordingly, a Bill was passed on the 3rd of January, 1693, for raising a million by loan, and another million by annuities, which were to be paid by a new duty on beer and other liquors; and thus, with a formal establishment of the National Debt, closed the year 1692.

The opening of 1693 was distinguished by a warm debate on the liberty of the press. The licensing, which was about to expire, was proposed for renewal. The eloquent appeal of Milton, in his "Areopagitica," that all books which bore the names of the author or publisher should be exempt from the power of the licensers, had hitherto produced no effect; but now circumstances occurred which drew the subject into notice, and raised many other voices in favour of such exemption. In the Lords, Halifax, Mulgrave, and Shrewsbury warmly advocated the principles of Milton; but though the Bill passed, it was only by a slight majority, and with a protest against it, signed by eleven peers; nor was it to pass for more than two years. The circumstance which roused this strong feeling was, that Burnet had published a pastoral letter to the clergy of his diocese, recommending them to take the oaths to William and Mary, in which, amongst their claims to the throne, he had unfortunately mentioned that of conquest. This had escaped general attention till the Royal Licenser, Edmund Bohun, a high Tory, who had taken the oaths on this very plea that the king and queen had won the throne by conquest, fell into the trap of one Blount, whose works he had refused to license. This man wrote an anonymous pamphlet with the title, "King William and Queen Mary Conquerors." The unlucky censor fell into the trap, and licensed it. Then the storm of Whig indignation broke over his head. He was summoned before Parliament and committed to custody. The book was ordered to be burnt by the hangman, and the House unanimously passed a resolution praying his Majesty to dismiss him from his office. The unfortunate licenser was then discharged on his own petition, after having been reprimanded on his knees by the Speaker. Burnet's pastoral letter was likewise ordered to be burnt by the hangman, much to the bishop's shame and mortification. But the liberty of the press was achieved. When the Two Years Act maintaining the censorship expired, the Commons refused to renew it. William prorogued Parliament on the 14th of March, and prepared to set out for the Continental campaign.

William, on his part, had more than his usual difficulty in bringing his Allies into the field. Indeed, they were far more occupied in their petty feuds than thinking of presenting a sufficient front to the great enemy who, if successful, would tread them all down in their own territories as Buonaparte afterwards crushed their posterity. The Courts of Baden, of Saxony, of Austria, and of the lesser Powers, were all quarrelling amongst themselves. The Northern Powers were still trying to weaken the Allies, and so form a third party; and on the side of Italy, Savoy was menaced by numerous forces of France, and ill-supported by Austria. The Prince of Hesse had neglected to furnish his quota, and yet wanted a chief command. The Prince of Baden and the Elector of Saxony were at strife for the command of the army of the Rhine. When William had brought all these wretched and provoking Allies into some degree of order, he mustered seventy thousand men in the field, and Louis came against him with a hundred and twenty thousand.

Louis marched himself with his army with all the pomp and splendour that he could assume. He brought all his Court with him, as if his officers should be stimulated to the utmost by having to fight under the very eyes of their king and the courtiers and ladies, Madame de Maintenon amongst them. Louis's plan of action was precisely what it had been in the two previous campaigns. As he had suddenly invested Mons and Namur by overwhelming forces, before his enemy could approach, he now proposed to surprise and take Brussels or Liége, and so carry off the glory of the exploit both from the Allies and his own general, Luxemburg. This was a cheap and easy way of securing fame without danger; but this time William was too quick for him. Louis arrived at the commencement of June at Namur, where his ladies held a brilliant court. But William had taken up a strong position at Parke, near Louvain, and thrown reinforcements into Maestricht, Huy, and Charleroi. Louis perceived that he was checkmated, and his desire of acquiring still more martial honours suddenly evaporated. Nothing but hard fighting could make an impression on his stubborn antagonist, and for that Louis had no fancy. He determined, therefore, to return to Versailles with his ladies and his Court, and leave Luxemburg to fight it out. The alarm at this proposal in the camp was intense. Luxemburg represented to Louis that it would have the certain effect of damping the spirits of the soldiers, and raise those of the enemy. He reminded him that now he had nothing to do but to bear down upon the Allies with all his powers, and sweep them away by mere momentum, and put an end to the war. But all his entreaties were lost on the Grand Monarque, who had rather steal a victory than win one. He not only persisted in going, but he weakened the forces of Luxemburg by dispatching the division of Boufflers, amounting to twenty thousand men, which he had taken under his own especial command, under Boufflers and the Dauphin, to join Marshal de Lorges, who had orders again to ravage the Palatinate.

But, in reality, Luxemburg was better without the pompous and voluptuous king. He had no one now to come between himself and his real military genius, in which he infinitely excelled William; and he immediately brought his skill into play. Before attacking the Allies he resolved to divide them on the true Macchiavellian principle, "divide et impera." He therefore made a feint of marching upon Liége. Liége was one of the places that it was expected that the French would aim at securing this campaign, and the inhabitants had very cavalierly declined to take any measures for defending themselves, saying it was the business of the Allies. William, therefore, put his forces in motion to prevent this catastrophe. He had advanced as far as Neer-Hespen; there, however, he heard that Luxemburg had obtained possession of Huy, which had been defended by a body of troops from Liége and Count Tilly, but which, though supported by another division under the Duke of Würtemberg, had been compelled to return to Liége.

William now dispatched twenty thousand men to reinforce Liége, and thus accomplish the very thing at which Luxemburg was aiming. The moment he learnt that William had reduced his force by this detachment, he marched from Huy on the 28th of July, and passed the Jaar near its source with an army exceeding that of the Allies by thirty-five thousand men. William, now aware of Luxemburg's design, committed one of those blunders in strategy, which, except for his indomitable tenacity of purpose, would long ago have ruined him. He could have put the deep river Gerte between him and the enemy; it was just in the rear. His generals strongly urged him to do this, where he might have maintained his position till he had recalled his forces from Liége. But he would not listen to them. He was afraid of having to retreat before Luxemburg, and discouraging his men. He set about, therefore, instantly to strengthen his then position. It was naturally strong; on his right hand lay the village of Neer-Winden amongst a network of hedges, and deep lanes, with a small stream winding through it; on his right lay the village of Romsdorff, on a brook named the Landen, whence the battle took its name. William ordered an entrenchment to be thrown up from one village to the other, and mounted with a formidable rampart of stakes. Batteries were raised along this breastwork, and the two villages were made as strong as the time would allow.

The Allies commenced immediately a cannonade with a hundred pieces of cannon on the ramparts, which did great execution; but the French soon returned the compliment, and about eight o'clock made a furious attack on the villages of Lare and Neer-Winden. These places were several times lost and regained. In one of the assaults the Duke of Berwick was taken prisoner. Perceiving himself surrounded by the English, he plucked off his white cockade, and endeavoured to pass himself off as an English officer. His English tongue might have served him, but he had fallen under the eye of his uncle, Brigadier Churchill, who received him affectionately, and conducted him to William, who addressed him with courtesy, but never saw him again, as he was immediately after the battle exchanged for the Duke of Ormond, who was wounded and taken prisoner in the action. Meanwhile the battle was raging fiercely all along the line. The French repeatedly rushed up to the breastworks, and were as often driven back by the slaughtering fire of the infantry. A fresh attack was made on Neer-Winden, supported by the division under the Duke of Bourbon, but which was repulsed with terrible carnage. Then Luxemburg called together his staff to consult, and it was resolved to try one more assault on Neer-Winden with the famous Household Troops, which had carried the day at Mons and Namur. William met them at the head of several English regiments, which charged the Household Troops with such impetuosity that, for the first time, they were forced to give way. But whilst William was exerting himself on the right, with a desperation and a risking of his person which astonished everyone, the centre had become much weakened, and a murderous fight was going on at Romsdorff, or Neer-Landen, on the left. There the Prince of Conti renewed the flagging contest by bringing up some of the finest regiments of the French infantry, whilst Villeroi there encountered the Bavarian cavalry, under Count D'Arco. In this mêlée the Duke of Chartres narrowly escaped being taken. Whilst the battle was thus obstinately disputed, the Marquis D'Harcourt brought up two-and-twenty fresh squadrons from Huy, which falling on the English, Dutch, and Hanoverians struggling against the united onslaught of Luxemburg, Marsin, and Marshal de Joyeuse, bore them down by actual numbers. The whole line gave way; and now was seen the folly of William leaving the river in his rear instead of having it in front. The confusion became terrible to escape over the bridge, and a frightful carnage must have followed had not William, with the regiments of Wyndham, Lumley, and Galway, borne the brunt of the pursuing host till the rest of his army got over the bridge of Neer-Hespen. As it was, the rout and disorder were dreadful; numbers flung themselves into the river, but found it too deep, and were drowned. The Duke of Ormond was here severely wounded. Here, too, Solmes, mortally wounded, was seized by the enemy. The "English bulldogs" did not mourn his loss. If William by his want of judgment had led his troops into this trap, he did his best to get them out of it. He repeatedly dismounted to encourage his men, inciting them by voice and example to stand up to the enemy. He had two led horses shot close behind him; one bullet passed through his hat, another through his sleeve, and a third carried away the knot of his sash. At length he got his army over the bridge, and encamped on the other bank of the river. The French did not attempt to pursue; they were worn out with their violent exertion, and passed the night on the field of battle amongst the heaps of slain and wounded. The next morning presented the most appalling scene of butchery, unequalled by any battle of that epoch, except that of Malplaquet. Twenty thousand men are said to have perished in this bloody struggle, about an equal number on each side. On the French side fell Count Montchevreuil and the Duke D'Uzes, the premier peer of France. Luxemburg, exhausted with this effort, remained fifteen days at Waren, reorganising his shattered forces; and William employed the time in a similar manner, recalling the troops from Liége and from other places; so that in a short time he was again ready for action, his headquarters being Louvain.

The battle of Landen was the great event of the campaign of 1693. When Luxemburg was rejoined by Boufflers from the Rhine, he invested Charleroi, and that with so much adroitness that William was not able to prevent him. Charleroi capitulated on the 11th of October, and Louis ordered a Te Deum and other rejoicings for this fresh triumph. But though he professed to triumph, he had little cause to do so. He had formerly overrun Holland, Flanders, or Franche-Comté in a single campaign, and sometimes without a battle; now he had beaten the Allies at Fleurus, Steinkirk, and Landen, and yet here they were as ready to fight him as ever. His country was sinking into the very depths of misery and destitution, the campaign had cost him ten thousand men, and though he had taken sixty cannon, nine mortars, and a great number of colours and standards, he could not advance twenty miles in the direction of the United Provinces without running the risk of a similar decimation of his troops. It was a humiliating position, after all. After the surrender of Charleroi both armies went into winter quarters.

If the affairs of England had been unsuccessful by land, they had been most disastrous by sea. Before leaving for Holland William ordered that Killigrew and Delaval should, with their whole fleet, amounting to nearly a hundred sail, get out to sea early, and blockade the French fleets in their ports, so as to allow our merchantmen to pursue their voyages with security. Our ports were crowded with trading vessels, which had long been waiting to sail to the Mediterranean and other seas with cargoes. About the middle of May the admirals united their squadrons at St. Helens, and, being joined by a considerable number of Dutch men-of-war, they took on board five regiments of soldiers, intending to make a descent on Brest. No less than four hundred merchantmen were ready to start, and on the 6th of June the united fleet put out from St. Helens to convoy them so far as to be out of danger of the French fleets, when Sir George Rooke was to take them forward to the Mediterranean under guard of twenty sail. But the French appear to have been perfectly informed of all the intentions of the English Government from the traitors about the Court, and the English to have been perfectly ignorant of the motions of the French. Instead of Tourville allowing himself to be blockaded in Brest, and D'Estrées in Toulon, they were already out and sailing down towards Gibraltar, where they meant to lie in wait for the English.

The united fleet of the Allies having, therefore, accompanied Rooke and the merchantmen about two hundred miles beyond Ushant, returned. Rooke did not think they were by any means certain of their enemies being behind them, and earnestly entreated the admirals to go on farther, but in vain. They not only turned back, but went home, without making the slightest attempt to carry out the attack on Brest. When they reached England it was well known that Tourville had recently quitted Brest, and was pursuing his course south to join D'Estrées. The consternation and indignation were beyond bounds. A swift vessel was despatched to overtake and recall Rooke and the merchant vessels if possible. But it is proverbial that a stern chase is a long chase. It was impossible to come up with Rooke; he had reached Cape St. Vincent, and there learnt that a French fleet was lying in the Bay of Lagos; but, imagining that it was only a detached squadron, he went on, till on the 16th of June he perceived before him the whole French fleet, amounting to eighty vessels.

As to engaging such an unequal force, that would have been a wilful sacrifice of himself and his charge. The Dutch Admiral Vandergoes agreed with him that the best thing was for the merchant vessels to run into the Spanish ports Faro, San Lucar, or Cadiz, as best served them, others were too far out at sea; these he stood out to protect as long as he could, and they made, some for Ireland, some for Corunna and Lisbon. He himself then made all sail for Madeira, which he reached in safety. Two of the Dutch ships, being overtaken by the French, ran in shore, and thus drawing the French after them, helped the others to get off. Captains Schrijver and Vander Poel fought stoutly as long as they could, and then surrendered. The French commander Coetlegon took seven of the Smyrna merchantmen, and sank four under the rocks of Gibraltar. The loss to the merchants was fearful. The news of this great calamity spread a gloom over the City of London, and many were loud in attributing disloyalty to Killigrew and Delaval, probably not without cause, for that they were in correspondence with St. Germains is only too certain.

Sir George Rooke returned from Madeira to Cork, which he reached on the 3rd of August, his ships of war and the traders which had followed him for safety numbering fifty vessels. Leaving the rest of his ships to convoy the merchantmen to Kinsale, he returned to the fleet, which was cruising in the Channel, and which now returned to St. Helens, where they had already landed the soldiers. About the same time a squadron, which had gone out to seize the island of Martinique, under Sir Francis Wheeler, after coasting Newfoundland and Canada, returned totally unsuccessful. The Dutch set sail for Holland on the 19th of September, and thus terminated this inglorious naval campaign.

On the 7th of November Parliament met. William had a poor story of his campaign to relate, but he attributed his defeat to the enormous exertions which Louis had made, and on that plea demanded still greater efforts from England. He asked that the army should be raised to a hundred and ten thousand men, and the navy proportionably augmented. He complained bitterly of the mismanagement of the fleet, and the Commons immediately proceeded to inquire into the cause of it. The Whigs made a vehement charge of treachery and neglect against Delaval and Killigrew; the Tories, to defend them, threw the blame on the Admiralty. Lord Falkland, who was Chief Commissioner, was proved by Rainsford, the Receiver of the Navy, to have embezzled a large sum, and it was moved that he be committed to the Tower. This, however, was overruled, but he was reprimanded in his place. The Lords then took up the same examination, and endeavoured to turn the blame from the Earl of Nottingham to Sir John Trenchard, the Whig secretary. Nottingham declared that early in June he received a list of the French fleet from Paris, and the time of their sailing, and handed it to Trenchard, whose duty it was to send the orders to the admirals. But Trenchard was in his turn screened by the Whigs. The matter was again taken up by the Commons, and Lord Falkland was declared guilty of a high misdemeanour and committed to the Tower, whence, however, in two days he was released on his own petition. Robert Harley--destined to make a great figure in the succeeding reign--Foley, and Harcourt, all of whom from being Whigs had become Tories, presented to the House a statement of the receipts and disbursements of the revenue, which displayed the grossest mismanagement. But the farther the inquiry went, the more flagrant became the discoveries of the corruption of both Ministers and members of Parliament, through bounties, grants, places, pensions, and secret-service money; so that it was clear that Parliament was so managed that Ministers could baffle any Bill, quash any grievance, and prepare any fictitious statement of account. The result was that William was compelled to dismiss Nottingham, and to place Russell at the head of the Admiralty. The seals which Nottingham resigned were offered to Shrewsbury, but were not at once accepted.

Having expressed their feelings on the mismanagement and treachery of the past year, the Commons proceeded to vote the supplies for the next, and in this they showed no want of confidence in the king. They did not, indeed, vote him his hundred and ten thousand troops, but they voted eighty-three thousand one hundred and twenty-one, but not till they had called for the treaties existing between William and his Allies, and the quota which every one was to furnish. To defray the charge, they voted five millions and a half, in nearly equal proportions between the army and the navy, including four hundred thousand pounds to pay the arrears of the Session; and this they ordered to be raised by a land tax of four shillings in the pound, and a further excise on beer, a duty on salt, and a lottery. This was a profusion which would have made the country stand aghast under the abhorrent rule of James, and the force was nearly double that with which Cromwell had made himself the dread of Europe.

These matters being settled, the Commons considered the popular questions of the Bill for Regulating the Trials for High Treason, the Triennial Bill, and the Place Bill. None of these Bills were made law. The Triennial Bill and the Bill for Regulating the Trials for High Treason were lost; the Place Bill was carried, but William refused to ratify it, under the idea that it was intended to abridge his prerogative. The excitement in the Commons was intense. It was resolved to address his Majesty, and such an address was drawn up and presented by the whole House. William received them very graciously, but conceded nothing, and Harley declared, on returning to the House, that the king's answer was no answer at all. Menaces of showing their power on the next occasion by stopping the supplies were thrown out, and it was proposed to go up to his Majesty again to demand a more explicit answer; but the Whigs represented the danger of thus encouraging the hopes of the Jacobites by the prospect of a breach between King and Parliament, and the matter dropped.

The question of the charter of the East India Company was again warmly debated. The feud between the old and the new Company had grown so violent that the old Company, fearing Government might be induced to grant a charter to the new Company, had put forth all its powers of bribery, and had succeeded. But the former had somehow neglected the payment of the tax on joint-stock companies, by which, according to the terms of the Act, their charter was forfeited. The new Company eagerly seized on this circumstance to prevent a renewal of the charter; but the old Company put nearly one hundred thousand pounds at the disposal of Sir Thomas Cook, one of their members, and also member of Parliament, and by a skilful distribution of this sum amongst the king's Ministers, Caermarthen and Seymour coming in for a large share, they succeeded in getting their charter renewed.

The new Company and the merchants of London were exasperated at this proceeding. They published an account of the whole transaction; they represented that the old Company was guilty of the grossest oppression and the most scandalous acts of violence and injustice in India and its seas; they asserted that two of their own ships had exported in one year more cloths than the old Company had exported in three years; and they offered to send more the next year of both cloths and other merchandise than the Company had sent in five; but the bribes prevailed, and the old Company obtained its charter--not very definite in its terms, however, as regarded its monopoly, and subject to such alterations and restrictions within a given time as the king should see fit. At this juncture the old Company were imprudent enough to obtain an order from the Admiralty to restrain a valuable ship called the Redbridge, lying in the Thames, from sailing. Her papers were made out for Alicante, but it was well known that she was bound for the Indies. The owners appealed to Parliament, and Parliament declared the detention of the vessel illegal, and, moreover, that all subjects of England had a right to trade to the Indies, unless prohibited by Act of Parliament. Encouraged by this decision, the new Company prayed the Commons to grant them a direct sanction to trade thither, and the old Company, on their part, prayed for a Parliamentary sanction to their charter; but no decision in either case was come to, and for some years scenes of strange contention continued to be enacted between the rival Companies and free traders in the seas and ports of those distant regions.

The last Act of this Parliamentary session proved the most important of all; it was the establishment of the Bank of England. Banking, now so universal, was but of very recent introduction to England. The Lombard Jews had a bank in Italy as early as 808; Venice had its bank in 1157; Geneva in 1345; Barcelona in 1401. In Genoa, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Rotterdam there had long been banks, but in England men had continued, till within a very short time previous to this period, to hoard and pay out their own money from their own strong boxes. The goldsmiths of Lombard Street had of late become bankers, and people began to pay by orders on them, and travellers to take orders from them on foreign banks. It was now beginning to be strongly agitated to establish joint-stock banks, and there were various speculative heads at work with plans for them. One Hugh Chamberlayne and his coadjutor, John Briscoe, published a scheme of a land bank, by which gentlemen were to give security for their notes on their land; on the principle that land was as real and substantial property as gold. But the extravagant and unsound views as to the actual value of land which they promulgated ruined their credit. Because an estate was worth twenty thousand pounds at twenty years' purchase, they argued that it was worth that every twenty years, and, therefore, could be immediately convertible at the same rate for any number of years--as if they could put a hundred years' purchase in the first twenty, and raise the hundred years' value, or one hundred thousand pounds, on it at once.

There was, however, a more sober and shrewd projector, William Paterson, a calculating Scotsman, who in 1691 had laid before Government a plan for a national bank on sound and feasible principles. His scheme had received little attention, but now, though a million of money was raised by the lottery, another million was needed, and Paterson secured the attention of Charles Montague, a rising statesman, to his scheme. Paterson represented that the Government might easily relieve itself of the difficulty of raising this money, and of all future similar difficulties, by establishing a national bank, at the same time that it conferred the most important advantages on the public at large. He had already firmly impressed Michael Godfrey, an eminent London merchant, and the brother of the unfortunate Sir Edmundsbury Godfrey, with the immense merits of his scheme. They now submitted these merits, and the particularly attractive one to a young politician of raising himself by a happy mode of serving the Government, and acquiring immediate distinction for practical sagacity. Montague was a young man of high family, but a younger brother's younger son--poor, clever, accomplished, and intensely ambitious. At Cambridge he had distinguished himself as a wit and a versifier; but he was now in the Commons, and had made a rapid reputation as an orator and statesman by his management of the Bill for Regulating the Trials for High Treason. This man--vain, ostentatious, not too nice in his means of climbing, but with talents equal to the most daring enterprise, and who afterwards became better known as the Earl of Halifax--saw the substantial character of Paterson's scheme, and took it up. Whilst he worked the affair in Parliament, Godfrey was to prepare the City for it.

Montague submitted the scheme to the Committee of Ways and Means, and as they were at their wits' end to raise the required million, they caught at it eagerly. The proposed plan was to grant a charter to a company of capitalists, under the name of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England. This company was to have authority to issue promissory notes, discount bills of Exchange, and to deal in bullion and foreign securities. Their first act was to be to lend the Government twelve hundred thousand pounds, at eight per cent., and to receive, as means of repayment, the proceeds of a new duty on tonnage, whence the bank at first received the name of the Tonnage Bank. The Bill for establishing this bank was introduced ostensibly to Parliament as a Bill for imposing this new duty on tonnage; the charter of the proposed bank being granted in consideration of its making an immediate advance on the tonnage duty. In the Commons it underwent many sallies of wit and sarcasm, as one of the thousand speculations of the time; but in the City, where its real character was at once perceived by the Lombard Street money-dealers, it was instantly assailed by a perfect storm of execration. It was declared to be a scheme for enabling the Government to raise money at any moment and to any extent, independently of Parliament, and thus to accomplish all that the Charleses and Jameses had ever aimed at. To silence this suspicion, Montague introduced a clause making it illegal, and amounting to forfeiture of its charter, for the bank to lend any money to Government without the consent of the Parliament. This, however, did not lay the tempest. It was now denounced as a Republican institution borrowed from Holland and Genoa, and meant to undermine the monarchy; it was a great fact, the objectors urged, that banks and kings had never existed together.

Notwithstanding all opposition, however, the Bill passed the Commons; and though it met with fresh and determined opposition in the Lords, where it was declared to be a scheme of the usurers to enrich themselves at the expense of the aristocracy, on Caermarthen coolly asking them, if they threw out this Bill, how they meant to pay the Channel fleet, they passed it; and such was its success in the City, that in less than ten days the whole sum required by Government was subscribed. Such was the origin of that wonderful institution, the Bank of England. One other measure of importance was carried by this Parliament, namely, the Triennial Act, limiting Parliament to three years.

Immediately that the Bank of England Bill had received the royal assent, William prorogued Parliament, and rewarded Montague for his introduction of the scheme of the bank, by making him Chancellor of the Exchequer. Shrewsbury was now induced to accept the Seals. William having shown him that he was aware of his being tampered with by the agents of James, demanded his acceptance of them as a pledge of his fidelity. To secure him effectually--for William knew well that nothing but interest would secure Whigs--he conferred on him the vacant Garter and a dukedom. Seymour was dismissed, and his place as a Lord of the Treasury was given to John Smith, a zealous Whig, so that excepting Caermarthen, Lord President, and Godolphin, First Lord of the Treasury, the Cabinet was purely Whig. The old plan of mixed Ministries was being rapidly abandoned.

William had closed the session of Parliament on the 25th of April, 1694, and in a few days he was sailing for Rotterdam. Before going, however, he had ventured to refuse offers of peace from Louis. This ambitious monarch, by his enormous efforts to vanquish the Allies, had greatly exhausted his kingdom. Scarcely ever had France, in the worst times of her history, been reduced so low, and a succession of bad seasons and consequent famine had completed the misery of his people. He therefore employed the King of Denmark to make advances for a peace. He offered to surrender all pretensions to the Netherlands, and to agree to the Duke of Bavaria succeeding to Flanders on the death of the King of Spain; but he made no offer of acknowledging William and Mary as rightful sovereigns of England. Many thought that William ought, on such conditions, to have made peace, and thus saved the money and men annually consumed in Flanders. But Parliament and the English people both knew Louis far too well to suppose that the moment that he had recruited his finances he would not break through all his engagements and renew the war with redoubled energy. His people were now reduced in many places to feed on nettles, and his enemies deemed it the surest policy to press him whilst in his extremity.

Finding that he did not succeed in obtaining peace, Louis resolved to act on the defensive in the coming campaign in every quarter except in Catalonia, where his whole fleet could co-operate with the Count de Noailles, the commander of his land forces. William, who had received intelligence of this plan of the campaign, before his departure, ordered the British fleet under Russell to prevent the union of the French squadrons from Brest and Toulon. Russell was then to proceed to the Mediterranean to drive the French from the coast of Catalonia, and co-operate with the Spaniards on land. Meanwhile, the Earl of Berkeley, with another detachment of the fleet, was to take on board a strong force under the command of General Talmash, and bombard Brest in the absence of Tourville. All this was ably planned, but the whole scheme was defeated by the treachery of his courtiers: by Godolphin, his own First Lord of the Treasury, and by Marlborough, against whom the most damning evidence exists. Macpherson and Dalrymple, in the State papers discovered by them at Versailles, have shown that the whole of William's plans on this occasion were communicated to James by Godolphin, Marlborough, and Colonel Sackville, and have given us the strongest reasons for believing that the preparations of the fleet were purposely delayed by Caermarthen, the new Duke of Leeds, Shrewsbury, Godolphin, and others, letters for that purpose being discovered addressed to them by James through the Countess of Shrewsbury.

But of all the infamous persons thus plotting against the sovereign they had sworn to serve, and from whom they had many of them just received the highest honours that the Government could bestow, none equalled in infamy the detestable Marlborough. This man, who was professing allegiance at the same time to both William and James, and who would have betrayed either of them for his own purposes, was indefatigable in hunting out the king's secrets, and dispatching them with all haste, enforcing the disgrace of his own country and the massacre of his own countrymen with all his eloquence--the sole object being his own aggrandisement. Talmash was the only general who could be compared with him in military talent. Talmash betrayed and disgraced, Marlborough, who was suspected and rejected by William for his treason, felt sure he himself must be employed. Accordingly, he importuned Russell for a knowledge of the destination of the fleet; but Russell, who probably by this time had found it his interest to be true to his sovereign, refused to enlighten him. But Marlborough was not to be thus defeated in his traitorous designs. He was on most intimate terms with Godolphin, and most likely obtained the real facts from him. Godolphin, indeed, had already warned the French through James of the intended blow, and Marlborough followed up the intelligence by a letter dated the 2nd of May, in which he informed James that twelve regiments of infantry and two regiments of marines were about to embark under command of Talmash, in order to destroy Brest.

This diabolical treason had its full effect. Tourville had already sailed. He left Brest on the 25th of April, and was at this moment in the Straits of Gibraltar, which he passed on the 4th of May. Brest was defenceless; but Louis, thus apprised of his danger, instantly sent the great engineer of the age, Vauban, to put the port into the best possible state of defence, and dispatched after him a powerful body of troops. The weather favoured the traitors and the French. The English fleet was detained by contrary winds; it did not quit St. Helens till the 29th of May. On the 5th of June the fleet was off Cape Finisterre, where a council of war was held, and the next day Russell sailed for the Mediterranean with the greater part of the fleet. Lord Berkeley with the remainder, having on board General Talmash and his six thousand troops, turned his prows towards Brest. But by this time the town was in full occupation by a great body of soldiers, and Vauban had planted batteries commanding the port in every direction, in addition to eight large rafts in the harbour well supplied with mortars. In fact, there were no less than ninety mortars and three hundred cannons; all the passages under the castle were made bomb-proof, and there were at least five thousand infantry and a regiment of dragoons in the place. The English had no friendly traitors amongst the French to act the Marlborough and apprise them of all these preparations; and they rushed blindly on the destruction which their own perfidious countrymen had organised for them. The greater part of the unhappy men were slaughtered, and Talmash was shot through the thigh, and borne off to the ships. Talmash died in a few days, exclaiming that he had been betrayed by his own countrymen. He was so, more absolutely than he or even most of his contemporaries were aware of. The object of Marlborough was accomplished more completely than he could have anticipated. His rival was not disgraced, but destroyed--taken out of his way; and the hypocritical monster went to Whitehall to condole with the queen over this national dishonour and calamity, and to offer what he truly called "his own unworthy sword." When the offer was forwarded to William in Holland, he bluntly rejected it; but Marlborough ultimately achieved his end, and we ought never to forget, when we remember Ramillies, Blenheim, and Malplaquet, that amongst the acts by which he rose to a dukedom was the massacre of Camaret Bay.

On the 9th of November William landed at Margate, where the queen met him, and their journey to the capital was like an ovation. On the 12th the king met his Parliament, and congratulated it on having decidedly given a check to the arms of the French. This was true, though it had not been done by any battle during the campaign. Russell by relieving Barcelona, which had been blockaded by two French fleets, had effaced the defeat of Camaret Bay, and in the Netherlands, if there had been no battle, there had been no repulse, as in every former campaign. He had now no Mons, no Fleurus, no Namur, no Landen to deplore; on the contrary, he had driven the French to their own frontiers without the loss of a man. But he still deemed it necessary to continue their exertions, and completely to reduce the French arrogance, and he called for supplies as liberal as in the preceding year. The Customs Act was about to expire, and he desired its renewal.

The Commons adjourned for a week, and before they met again Archbishop Tillotson was taken suddenly ill whilst performing service in the chapel at Whitehall, and died on the 22nd of November. With the exception of the most violent Jacobites, who could not forgive him taking the primacy whilst Sancroft was living, the archbishop was universally and justly beloved and venerated. In the City especially, where he had preached at St. Lawrence in the Jewry for nearly thirty years, and where, as we have seen, his friend Firmin took care to have his pulpit supplied with the most distinguished preachers during his absence at Canterbury, he was enthusiastically admired as a preacher and beloved as a man. The king and queen were greatly attached to him, and William pronounced him, at his death, the best friend he ever had, and the best man he ever knew.

Tillotson was succeeded by Dr. Tenison, Bishop of Lincoln. Mary was very earnest for Stillingfleet; but even Stillingfleet was too High Church for William. Could he, however, have foreseen that it was the last request that the queen would ever make, he would, no doubt, have complied with it. In a few weeks Mary herself was seized with illness. She had been worn down by the anxieties of governing amid the feuds of parties and the plottings of traitors during the King's absence, and had now not strength to combat with a strong disease. The disease was, moreover, the most fatal which then attacked the human frame--the small-pox. No means had yet been discovered to arrest its ravages, and in her case the physicians were for a time divided in opinion as to its real character. One thought it measles, one scarlet fever, another spotted fever, a fourth erysipelas. The famous Radcliffe at once pronounced it small-pox. It was soon perceived that it would prove fatal, and Dr. Tenison was selected to break the intelligence to her. She received the solemn announcement with great fortitude and composure. She instantly issued orders that no person, not even the ladies of her bedchamber, should approach her if they had not already had the complaint. She shut herself up for several hours in her closet, during which she was busy burning papers and arranging others. Her sister Anne, on being apprised of her danger, sent a message, offering to come and see her; but she thanked her, and replied that she thought she had better not. But Mary sent her a friendly message, expressing her forgiveness of whatever she might have thought unkindness in Anne.

In everything else the very enemies of Mary were compelled to praise her. She was tall, handsome, and dignified in person, yet of the most mild and amiable manners; strong in her judgment, quick in perceiving the right, anxious to do it, warm in her attachment to her friends, and most lenient towards her enemies. To her husband she was devotedly attached; had the most profound confidence in his abilities, and was more happy in regarding herself as his faithful wife than as joint sovereign of the realm. William, on his part, had not avoided giving her the mortification of seeing a mistress in his Court in the person of Mrs. Villiers, yet she had borne it with a quiet dignity which did her much credit; and now William showed that, cold as he was outwardly, he was passionately attached to her. His grief was so excessive that, when he knew that he must lose her, he fainted many times in succession, and his own life even began to be despaired of. He would not quit her bedside for a moment day or night till he was borne away in a sinking state a short time before she expired. After her death he shut himself up for some weeks, and scarcely saw any one, and attended to no business, till it was feared that he would lose his reason. During his illness he had called Burnet into his closet, and, bursting into a passion of tears, he said, "he had been the happiest, and now he was going to be the most miserable of men; that during the whole course of their marriage he had never known a single fault in her. There was a worth in her that no one knew beside himself."

Mary died on the 28th of December in the utmost peace after taking the Sacrament, and William, deprived of his unselfish wife's support, was left to carry on his great work alone. But apart from the loss of popularity entailed by the death of so able and beloved a consort, it cannot be said that William's position was altered by the death of his wife; so completely was he the master-spirit.

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XIV. REIGN OF WILLIAM III. (continued)

Rising Hopes of the Jacobites--Expulsion of Trevor for Venality--Examination of the Books of the East India Company--Impeachment of Leeds--The Glencoe Inquiry--The Darien Scheme--Marlborough's Reconciliation with William--Campaign of 1695--Surrender of Namur--William's Triumphant Return--General Election and Victory of the Whigs--New Parliament--Re-establishment of the Currency--Treasons Bill passed--A Double Jacobite Plot--Barclay's Preparations--Failure of Berwick's Insurrection Scheme--William Avoids the Snare--Warnings and Arrests--Sensation in the House of Commons--Trial and Execution of the Conspirators--The Association Bill becomes Law--Land Bank Established--Commercial Crisis--Failure of the Land Bank--The Bank of England supplies William with Money--Arrest of Sir John Fenwick--His Confession--William ignores it--Good Temper of the Commons--They take up Fenwick's Confession--His Silence--A Bill of Attainder passes both Houses--Execution of Fenwick--Ministerial Changes--Louis desires Peace--Opposition of the Allies--French Successes--Terms of Peace--Treaty of Ryswick--Enthusiasm in England.

The death of Queen Mary raised marvellously the hopes of the Jacobites and the Court of St. Germains. Though the Jacobites had charged Mary with ascending the throne contrary to the order of succession, they now asserted that William had no right thereto, and that Mary's claim, however weak, had been his only colourable plea for his usurpation. Mary it was whose amiability and courtesy had reconciled the public to the government of her husband. His gloomy and morose character and manners, and his attachment to nothing but Holland and Dutchmen, they said, had thoroughly disgusted the whole nation, and would now speedily bring his reign to an end. He spent a great part of the year on the Continent; Mary had managed affairs admirably in his absence, but who was to manage them now? They must soon go into confusion, and the people be glad to bring back their old monarch.

And truly the wholesale corruption of his Parliament and ministers served to give some force to their anticipations. Hardly ever was there a time when dishonesty and peculation, hideous as they have been in some periods of our Government were more gross, general, and unblushing than amongst the boasted Whigs who had brought about the Revolution. From the highest to the lowest they were insatiably greedy, unprincipled, and unpatriotic--if want of patriotism is evidenced by abusing the institutions and betraying the honour of the nation. One of the best of them died in April, 1695--George Saville, Marquis of Halifax. He bore the name of "the Trimmer," but rather because parties had changed than that he himself had changed. He had discouraged extreme measures, especially such as were bloody and vindictive. He had endeavoured to save the heads of both Stafford and Russell; he had opposed the virulence of the Whigs in the days of the Popish plot, and of the Tories in that of the Rye House Plot. But even he had not kept himself free from intriguing with St. Germains. Compared, however, with the unclean beasts that he left behind, he was a saint.

The tide of inquiry was now, however, flowing fast, and higher delinquents were reached by it every day. In 1695 there was a charge made against Sir John Trevor, Speaker of the House of Commons, for receiving a bribe of one thousand guineas to ensure the passing of the City Orphans Bill. This was a Bill to enable the Corporation of London to make a sort of funded debt of the money of the orphans of freemen which had been left in their charge, and which they had spent. To carry this Bill, and cover their criminality, bribes had been given, not only to Trevor, but to Hungerford, Chairman of the Grand Committee, and many others. Trevor--who had been one of Judge Jeffreys' creatures--was ejected from the Chair of the House, where he had long made a trade of selling his influence to the amount of at least six thousand pounds per annum, besides his salary of four thousand pounds. For his insolence and greed he had become universally hated, and there was great rejoicing over his exposure and expulsion from the House. Paul Foley, the Chairman of the Committee of Inquiry, was elected Speaker of the House in his stead; Hungerford was also expelled; Seymour came into question. His overbearing manners had created him plenty of enemies; and on his remarking on the irregular conduct of a member, the indignant individual replied that it was "certainly wrong to talk during a discussion, but it was far worse to take money for getting a Bill passed." The hint thrown out was quickly seized, and on examining the books of the East India Company, to which enormous bribery also was traced, it was found that Seymour had received a bribe of ten thousand pounds, but under the artful cover of selling him two hundred tons of saltpetre for much less than its value. It was, moreover, sold ostensibly to a man named Colston, but really to Seymour, so that the House could not expel him, but a public mark was stamped on his character.

But the examination of the books of the East India Company laid bare a series of bribes of Ministers and Parliament men, which made all the rest dwindle into insignificance. In previous years there were found items in the books of one thousand two hundred and eighty-four pounds and two thousand and ninety-six pounds; but in the past year, during the great contest with the new Company, Sir Thomas Cook, who had been empowered to bribe at his discretion, had expended on Ministers and Members no less a sum than one hundred and sixty-seven thousand pounds. Wharton, himself a most profligate man, pursued these inquiries on the part of the Commons with untiring avidity. In order to damp this inquiry, the guilty parties caused it to be whispered about that it was best not to press the matter too far, as a large part of the money might have been given to the King through Portland. But nothing could stop the inquest, and it turned out that large sums had been offered to the King but had been refused, and that fifty thousand pounds offered to Portland had also been refused. Nottingham, too, had refused ten thousand pounds, but others had not been so scrupulous. Cook declined at first to disclose the names of those who had received the money, but he was threatened with a Bill to compel him on terms which, had he persisted, would have ruined him. He then offered to disclose all on condition that a clause in the Bill should indemnify him against the consequences of his disclosures. This was done, and Sir Basil Firebrace was named as receiving a sum of forty thousand pounds. When pressed to explain what had become of this money, the worthy knight fell into great confusion and loss of memory; but he was obliged to account for the cash, and then it came out that he had, through a Mr. Bates, paid five thousand five hundred guineas to Caermarthen, now Duke of Leeds. The duke denied having had the money, and then Bates said he had left it with one Robarts, a foreign servant of the duke's, to count it out for him, and this with the duke's permission. Robarts, however, was so bad at counting coin, that he had taken half a year to do it in, and only brought it back on the very morning that the Committee of Inquiry was formed.

The duke did not deny that he had got all the money that he could through Bates from the Company for others; but this, according to the morals of that age, was considered quite pardonable. To take a bribe himself was criminal if found out, to assist others in selling their votes was venial. The Commons impeached the duke, but then his servant Robarts was missing, and as Leeds insisted on his presence as evidence for him, the impeachment remained uncarried out. In fact, William, who, though suffering perpetually from the gross corruption all around him, was always the first to screen great offenders, now hastened Parliament to a conclusion.

In the following week the Scottish Parliament commenced its session after an interval of two years. The Duke of Hamilton was dead, and John Hay, Marquis of Tweeddale, was appointed Lord High Commissioner, a man in years, and of fair character. The question which immediately seized the attention of the Estates was the massacre of Glencoe. That sanguinary affair had now come to the public knowledge in all its perfidy and barbarity, and there was a vehement demand for inquiry and for justice on the perpetrators. The facts which had reached the queen long ago regarding this dark transaction had greatly shocked her, and she had been earnest for a searching investigation; but William, who must now have been aware that the matter would not bear the light very well, had not been too desirous to urge it on. The Jacobites, however, never ceased to declaim on the fearful theme; and the Presbyterians, who hated the Master of Stair, who under James had been one of their worst persecutors, and was a man without any real religion, were not the less importunate for its unveiling. Seeing that the Parliament would now have it dragged to the light, William made haste to make the movement his own. He signed a Commission appointing Tweeddale its head, and sent it down with all haste to Edinburgh. The Parliament expressed great thanks to the king for this act of justice, but it deceived nobody, for it was felt at once that no Commission would have issued but for the public outcry, and it was now meant to take it out of the earnest hands of the Estates, and defeat it as far as possible; and this turned out to be the case. The report of the Commission was long in appearing, and had not the Estates been very firm, it might have been longer, and have been effectually emasculated, for the Lord High Commissioner was on the point of sending it to William, who was now in the Netherlands, and deeply immersed in the affairs of the campaign. The Estates insisted on its immediate production, and Tweeddale was compelled to obey. It then appeared that several of the Macdonalds had been admitted to give their evidence on the atrocities committed in their glen: and the conclusion was come to that it was a barbarous murder. The king's warrant, however, was declared to have authorised no such butchery, and the main blame was thrown on the Master of Stair and the Earl of Breadalbane. Undoubtedly Sir John Dalrymple, the Master of Stair, had urged on by his letter the massacre of the clan with unflinching cruelty; but William contented himself with merely dismissing him from his office.

To put the Scots Parliament into good humour, William promised them through the Marquis of Tweeddale, that if they would pass an Act establishing a colony in Africa, America, or any other part of the world where it was open to the English rightfully to plant a colony, he would grant them a charter with as full powers as he had done to the subjects of his other dominions. This was, no doubt, in consequence of a scheme agitated by Paterson, the originator of the Bank of England, for founding a colony on the Isthmus of Darien, for trading between the Atlantic and Pacific--forming, in fact, a link of commerce between China and India, as well as the Spanish States on the Pacific coasts and Europe. The Act, supposed to be drawn by Paterson himself, was passed, and preparations begun for carrying the scheme into effect, but the expedition did not sail till 1698. Parliament granted some indulgence to the Episcopalians, by which seventy of their clergy retained their livings, and voted a hundred and twenty thousand pounds for the services of the State.

At the moment that William was about to set out for the Continent, a plot for his assassination was discovered, but the conspirators were not brought to trial till the following year.

William embarked on the 12th of May for Holland. Before going he had appointed as Lords Justices to carry on the government in his absence--Archbishop Tenison; Somers, Keeper of the Great Seal; Pembroke, Keeper of the Privy Seal; Devonshire, the Lord Steward; Dorset, the Lord Chamberlain; Shrewsbury, the Secretary of State; and Godolphin, First Lord of the Treasury. There had also been a formal reconciliation between him and the Princess Anne. Marlborough and his wife were now all anxiety for this reconciliation. The queen being gone, and William, from his infirmities, not being expected to reach a long life, Marlborough saw Anne at once brought many degrees nearer the throne. Instead of James ever returning, the crafty Marlborough felt sure that, even if William did not succeed in retaining his popularity, any change would seat, not James, but Anne on the throne. It was his interest, therefore, to promote by all means Anne's chance of succession, because, once on the throne, he felt that he should be the ruling power. Anne was, therefore, induced by him and his countess to write a conciliatory letter to William, proposing to wait on him and endeavour to console him in his distress. This had not been done without some difficulty and delay, but, when once effected, William received the princess very cordially; gave her the greater part of the late queen's jewels, restored all her honours, her name was once more united in the prayers for the royal family, and the foreign ambassadors presented themselves at her house. In one thing, however, Marlborough was disappointed. William did not appoint Anne regent during his absence, as he had hoped, because he knew that that would be simply making Marlborough viceroy. The King still retained his dislike to the Marlboroughs, and though he permitted them to reside again under the same roof with the princess, he refused for some time to admit Marlborough to kiss his hand in the circle at Kensington, and offered him no renewal of his offices and command.

William entered on the campaign of 1695 under unusual advantages. Louis of France had reduced his country to such distress that he was now obliged to stand on the defensive. The people were loud in their complaints all over France of the merciless exactions for the continuance of the war. They were actually perishing of famine. Barbessieux, the minister, was not able to devise resources like the able Louvois, who was gone; and now Louis had lost by death the great Marshal Luxemburg, who had won for him almost all his martial renown. The forces in Flanders, deprived of their heroic and experienced head, were badly supplied with provisions, badly recruited, and to make all worse, Louis, as he had chosen his prime minister, now selected his general--not from the men of real military talent, but from a courtier and man of pleasure--Villeroi. He was a tall, handsome man, much admired by the ladies, and a reckless gambler, but totally unfit to cope with William in the field. Boufflers was still at the head of a division of the army, but under Villeroi.

Louis was apprehensive that the Allies would make a push at Dunkirk. He therefore ordered a new line to be drawn between the Lys and the Scheldt, and every means to be taken to cover Dunkirk, Ypres, Tournai, and Namur. William arrived in the camp of the Allies on the 5th of July, and immediately marched against Villeroi, who retired behind his lines between Ypres and Menin. He, however, detached ten thousand men to support Boufflers, who had advanced as far as Pont d'Espières. William then sent forward the Elector of Bavaria to confront Boufflers, who also retired behind his lines, and the Elector passed the Scheldt, and posted himself at Kirk. William, having thus driven the French to the frontiers of Flanders, then despatched the Baron von Heyden from the camp of the Elector of Bavaria, along with Ginkell, to invest Namur. At the same time, leaving Vaudemont to confront the army of Villeroi on the border of Flanders, William suddenly marched also for Namur, the Brandenburgers having orders to advance from another quarter. William's hope was, by this ably concerted plan, completely to invest Namur before any fresh troops could be poured into it; but Boufflers, perceiving his design, managed to throw himself into the city with seven regiments of dragoons, by which the garrison was raised to fifteen thousand men. Immediately on the heels of Boufflers arrived William and the Elector, and encamped on both sides of the Sambre and Meuse, thus investing the whole place.

They began to throw up their entrenchments on the 6th of July, under the direction of the celebrated engineer, Cohorn. The city had always been strong; it had been of late years made much stronger by Cohorn, and since then the French had added to its defences. Its castle was deemed impregnable; the town was full of provisions and of brave soldiers, and it was regarded as a somewhat rash act in William to attempt so formidable a fortress, with the chance of being taken in the rear by Villeroi at the head of eighty thousand men. The moment that Villeroi saw the object of William he began to put himself in motion to attack Vaudemont, and, having beaten him, to, advance on Namur. Vaudemont, however, began to fortify his camp, and Villeroi's vanguard appearing at Dentreghem, he entrenched himself on both sides. Villeroi made sure, nevertheless, of a complete victory over him, having such a superiority of force, and he sent word to Louis that he would speedily hear of a victory. But Vaudemont, perceiving another body of French advancing from the Scheldt so as to enclose him, very adroitly drew back, and made a retreat, much admired by military judges, to Ghent. This he was able to effect through the cowardice of Louis's natural son, the Duke of Maine. Villeroi accordingly advanced unopposed and brutally bombarded Brussels.

William was all this time--except for a few days when he was anxiously observing the French proceedings before Brussels--prosecuting the siege of Namur with a determined ardour which cost a terrible amount of human lives. The trenches had been first opened on the 11th of July, and the batteries on both sides commenced a furious fire. This continued for a week, and on the 18th a storming party, headed by Lord Cutts, consisting of five battalions of English, Scots, and Dutch, attacked the works on the right of the counterscarp, supported by six English battalions under General Fitzpatrick, whilst nine thousand pioneers advanced on the left under General Salisch. Twelve hundred of the Allies fell in this bloody action, whilst William, looking on in exultation, thought not of their destruction, but of the bulldog valour of the British soldiers, exclaiming to the Elector of Bavaria, "See my brave English! See my brave English!" They drove in the enemy, though at a terrible sacrifice.

On the 30th of July the Elector of Bavaria attacked Vauban's line that surrounded the defences of the castle, and broke through it, and reached even Cohorn's celebrated fort, under the eyes of Cohorn himself, but could not effect a lodgment in it. On the 2nd of August another party of grenadiers, headed by the dare-devil Lord Cutts, attacked and lodged themselves on the second counterscarp. The governor, Count Guiscard, now engaged to give up the town, time being allowed for the garrison to retire into the citadel. This being done, and the Allies having engaged to give up the one thousand five hundred wounded men left below, on the 13th the bombardment of the fort commenced with renewed fury. Both sides fought with the fanaticism of courage, and committed great havoc on each other. Boufflers at length attempted to cut his way through the besiegers in a headlong sally, but was repulsed, and shut up again.

At this crisis Villeroi's army had reached Fleurus, and fired ninety pieces of cannon to apprise the besieged of their vicinity. William immediately left the conduct of the siege to the Elector of Bavaria, and drew out a strong force to confront Villeroi, who was reinforced by a large body of troops from Germany. This was a most anxious moment to the people of both England and France. The armies of the two nations were drawn out against each other, and covered the plains of the Sambre and the Meuse. Boufflers was urging Villeroi to strike a decisive stroke for his deliverance and the rescue of Namur, and William had Boufflers in the rear if he was beaten by Villeroi.

At Versailles Louis was imploring heaven for victory, with all his Court on their knees, confessing and receiving the Eucharist; and in London the Jacobites, frantic with confident expectation that now William would be annihilated, filled the town with all sorts of horrible rumours and alarms. But after having faced each other for three days, Villeroi saw that the position and numbers of the Allies were too formidable, and he quietly decamped along the river Mehaigne to Boneffe. As Boufflers was now left without hope of succour, the Allies informed him of the retreat of Villeroi and summoned him to surrender without occasioning more slaughter. But there was a tradition in the French army that no marshal of France had ever capitulated, and he stood out until the English, at the cost of two thousand men, had effected a lodgment in the place.

Boufflers now demanded forty-eight hours to bury his dead, which was granted him; and, in truth, he had need of it, for his trenches were choked with the fallen, and his force was already reduced to about one-third its original strength. When he entered the town, the garrison mustered fifteen thousand men; now it was only about five thousand. When the dead were buried, Boufflers offered to surrender in ten days if he were not relieved before; but the Allies would not listen to anything but an immediate surrender, and he complied, on condition that the garrison should be allowed to march out with the honours of war, but leaving the artillery and stores to the conquerors. The Allies announced the surrender to Villeroi by the discharge of their artillery, and by a running fire of all their musketry three times repeated. He knew the meaning of it, and retreated towards Mons.

Accordingly, on the 26th of August, Boufflers marched forth with drums beating and flags flying, William, the Elector of Bavaria, and all the officers being assembled to witness this gratifying spectacle. Boufflers lowered his sword in token of submission to the Elector of Bavaria, and the troops marched on. Before Boufflers, however, passed out of the trenches, Dykvelt informed him that he was the prisoner of the King of England. Boufflers was highly enraged at what he regarded as an act of gross perfidy; but he was informed that he was detained in consequence of his sovereign having broken the cartel, and refused to deliver up the captured garrisons of Dixmude and Deynze, and that he was held as a hostage for the faithful discharge of the articles agreed upon. There was no denying the perfidy of his king, which had caused this incident, and Boufflers sent an express to inform Louis, who immediately returned a promise that the garrisons should be sent back, and Boufflers was forthwith released. On his return to Fontainebleau, he was received by Louis as if he were a conqueror, and created a duke, with a grant of money to enable him to support his new rank. The capture of Namur was the great event of the campaign, and spread exultation throughout all the countries of the Allies. It seemed to wipe out the successive defeats of Mons, Fleurus, Landen, and the former loss of Namur; it showed the Allies at length victorious, and Louis discomfited and on the wane.

William arrived in London from Holland on the 20th of October. He was received with acclamations, illuminations, and ringing of bells. His progress through London and to Kensington was like that of a conqueror. As if he were destined to take no rest, that very day the Council was assembled, and it was concluded to dissolve Parliament. William, however, had been enjoying relaxation at Loo, and no doubt this question of the dissolution of Parliament had been discussed and arranged prior to his arrival. It was deemed wiser to take the nation at this moment when it was in a good humour, than to defer the dissolution till the 25th of next March, when, by the Triennial Act, Parliament must expire, and the public mind might be different. Another motive was said to operate with William--the impeachment of Leeds. William was always very reluctant to bring great delinquents to justice; but in the case of Leeds there were causes for this reluctance which we must respect. It was to Leeds, when he was yet Lord Danby, that William owed his match with Mary, and Mary had ever had the greatest regard for Leeds, who, on his part, had served her assiduously during the king's absences. A new Parliament would not be likely to take up again his impeachment, and, accordingly, the old one was dissolved, and the new one called for the 22nd of November.

This announcement threw into full activity the newly acquired liberty of the press. Since the Revolution, despite the restrictions of the censorship, the press had been extremely busy, and when it was obliged to work in secret, it had been all the more venomous. The Jacobites had employed it to spread sedition and lies, but it now came forward in favour of the king and the Constitution. There were tracts on the election, and besides the old news-letters, there were regular newspapers which advocated their own views, but with a decency and moderation which surprised all parties. Amongst the pamphlets was one--the last literary effort of Halifax--called, "Some Cautions Offered to those who are to Choose Members," which gave some good advice, especially not to choose lawyers, because they were in the habit of pleading on both sides, and were sure to look after their own advancement more than that of the country; nor officers in the army, who, the writer thought, were out of place in Parliament, attempting to do what no man ever can do--serve two masters. He also warned them against pensioners and dependents on the Crown, who do not make good representatives of the people; and against those who, for reasons best known to themselves, had opposed the Triennial Bill. Finally, he bade them seek honest Englishmen, but warned them that they were not very easy to find. The constituencies followed his advice, and the Whig party were victorious. Some of the members of the late Parliament most opposed to Government were not returned--as Sir John Knight, for Bristol, who had been so furious against William's favourite Dutchmen, and Seymour, for Exeter. Neither could John Hampden, who had saved his neck in the Rye House Plot by the loss of character, and had since shown as much insolence in Parliament as he did meanness then, get returned, and in his mortification he committed suicide--to such degeneracy had fallen the grandson of the illustrious patriot.

When Parliament met on the 22nd, they chose Paul Foley as Speaker of the Commons. The king, in his speech, again demanded large supplies for the continuance of the war, and informed them that the funds granted last Session had fallen far short of the expenses. This was by no means agreeable news, and William well knew that there was a large party in the country which complained loudly of this system of foreign warfare, which, like a bottomless gulf, swallowed up all the resources of the country. But he took care to flatter the national vanity by praising the valour of the English soldiers, and by expressing his confidence that England would never consent to the French king making himself master of Europe, and that nothing but the power and bravery of England could prevent it. He complained that his Civil List was fixed so low that he could not live upon it; and, passing from his own affairs, he recommended to their consideration the deplorable state of the coinage.

When the address came to be considered, some strong speeches were delivered against the enormous demands made by the king for this continual war. Musgrave and Howe represented the nation as bleeding to death under this Dutch vampyrism; but William had touched the right chord in the national character, and an address of thanks and zealously promised support was carried. The Commons likewise voted again above five millions for the services of the year.

The first business which occupied the attention of the Commons was the state of the currency. The old silver coin had become so clipped and sweated that, on an average, it now possessed little more than half its proper weight. The consequence was, all transactions in the country were in a state of confusion, and the most oppressive frauds were practised, especially on the poor. They were paid in this nominal coin, but, when they offered it for the purchase of the articles of life, the vendors refused to receive it at more than its intrinsic worth, by which means the price of everything was nearly doubled. The old hammered money was easily imitated, and whilst the clippers went on diminishing the weight of the coin, the forgers were as busy producing spurious imitations of it. The most terrible examples were made of such coiners, till juries refused to send such numbers of them to be hanged. All money-dealers received the coin only at its value by weight, but paid it out by tale, and thus made enormous fortunes. The house of Duncombe, Earls of Feversham, is said to have thus raised itself from insignificance to a coronet.

The House of Lords, therefore, took up the subject of recoinage, and invited the Commons to unite with them in it; but the Commons, considering it a matter more properly belonging to them, went into a committee of the whole House on the subject. The debate continued for several days. There was a strong party opposed to recoinage, on the ground that, if the silver coin were called in, there would be no money to pay the soldiers abroad, nor for merchants to take up their bills of exchange with; that the consequence would be universal stagnation and misery. But at this rate the old coin must have stayed out so long that literally there would none of it be left. It was resolved to have a new coinage; but Lowndes, the Secretary of the Treasury, proposed that the standard should be lowered--in fact, that a nominal instead of a real value should be impressed upon it; that ninepence should be called a shilling--as if thereby any greater value could be given to it. This mode of raising the price of everything by lowering the value of the coinage, which would now be laughed at by the merest tyro in political economy, had then its partisans; but John Locke exploded the whole delusion in a little tract written at the desire of Somers, which showed all the inconveniences and injustice which would flow from a lowered standard. There were, however, other difficulties to be met, and these were, whether the Government or the public should bear the loss of the clipped coin, and by what means it could best be called in. If the Government bore the loss, and ordered all persons to bring in their clipped coin and receive full-weighted coin instead, that would be a direct premium on clipping, and all the coin would be clipped before it was paid in. Somers proposed as a remedy to proclaim that all the hammered coins should henceforth be taken by Government only by weight; but that, after having been weighed within three days, every one should take it back with a note authorising him to receive the difference between the deficiency of weight and the full weight at a future time. By this means Government would have suffered the loss.

Locke, on the contrary, proposed that Government should receive all clipped coin up to a day to be announced, at full value; after that day only at its value by weight; and something of this kind was carried by Montague after a debate in the House. It was ordered that, after a certain day, no clipped money should pass except in payment of taxes, or as loans to Government. After another fixed day, no clipped money should pass in any payment whatsoever; and that, on a third day, all persons should bring in all their clipped money to be recoined, making just what it would, and after that time clipped money should not be a legal tender at any value, or be received at the Mint.

By this plan the holders of clipped money suffered part of the loss where they could not be in time; but the public eventually bore the greatest part of it, for a Bill was brought in to indemnify Government for its share of the loss, by a duty on glass windows, which was calculated to raise twelve hundred thousand pounds. This was the origin of that window-tax which under William Pitt's Government grew to such a nuisance.

In order to meet the demand for milled and unclipped coin to be given in exchange for the clipped coin to be brought in, premiums were offered of five per cent. on good milled money, and of threepence per pound on all plate that should be brought in to be melted into the new coins. The 4th of May, 1696, was fixed as the last day for receiving the clipped money in payment of taxes; and early in February furnaces were at work melting down the old coin into ingots, which were sent to the Tower in readiness, and the coining began. Ten of these furnaces were erected in a garden behind the Treasury; yet, in spite of every endeavour to prevent inconvenience, the Jacobites managed to excite great alarm in the minds of the people. There was a widespread panic that there would be grave personal losses and wrongs, and that all receipts of money would be stopped, and that there would be general distress. The malcontents attacked Montague and the other ministers in the House; the merchants demanded indemnification for the rise which guineas had taken, namely, from twenty shillings and sixpence to thirty shillings, in consequence of the scarcity of the silver coinage; for a guinea now, instead of purchasing twenty shillings' worth of their goods, would purchase one-third more; so that their stocks were reduced one-third in value till the silver coinage was again plentiful. Parliament, to remove this cause of complaint, inserted a clause in the Bill, offering a premium on plate, fixing the price of a guinea at two-and-twenty shillings. Still, however, people imagined that guineas would be scarce, and so gold would rise, and hoarded them up, which made them scarce. But Government worked manfully at the recoining. Mints were set up at York, Bristol, Exeter, and Chester as well as in London, and in less than twelve months the coinage was produced with such success that the English currency, which had been the worst, was now the best in Europe.

The Bill for regulating the trials for high treason was again brought in, and, being still steadily refused by the Lords unless with their clause for granting them the privilege of trying any of their order by the whole House of Peers instead of by the Court of the Lord High Steward, the Commons now gave way, allowed the clause, and the Bill passed. It was ordered to come into force on the 25th of March next, 1696.

The year 1696 opened with a great Jacobite plot. James had tried the effect of declarations proposing to protect the liberties of the subject and the rights of the Established Church, and nobody believed him, and with good reason. Seeing, therefore, that empty pretences availed nothing, he thought seriously of invasion, and of something worse--of preparing his way by the assassination of William. During the winter of 1695-6 Louis fell into his schemes. In 1694 two emissaries, Crosley and Parker, had been sent over from St. Germains to London to excite the Jacobites to insurrection; but they had been discovered and imprisoned. Parker contrived to escape out of the Tower, but Crosley was examined; but, nothing being positively proved against him, he was liberated on bail. It was now resolved to send over fresh and more important agents--one of these no less a person than the Duke of Berwick, James's son, and Sir George Barclay, a Scottish refugee.

The fact was that there were two parts of the scheme. As in the conspiracy of Grey and Raleigh in the time of James I., there was "the main plot" and "the bye plot," so there was here a general scheme for an invasion, and a particular scheme for the assassination of the king. This assassination was to come off first, and an army and transports were to be ready on the French coast, to take advantage of the consternation occasioned by the murder. The management of the general plot was confided to Berwick, and of the murder plot to Barclay. Berwick must be supposed to have been well aware of the assassination scheme from the first, for both James and Louis were, and the whole movements of the army and navy were dependent on it. But if Berwick did not know of it at first, he was made acquainted with it in London, as we shall see; but it was the policy of both Louis, James, and Berwick, to avoid all appearance of a knowledge which would have covered them with infamy;--this was to fall on the lesser tools of their diabolical scheme, and they were to reap the benefit of it.

A mode of communication between the Court of St. Germains and the Jacobites in England had long been established through a man named Hunt, who was a noted smuggler. This man had a house about half a mile from the Sussex coast, on Romney Marsh. The whole country round was a boggy and dreary waste, and therefore, having scarcely an inhabitant, was admirably adapted to the smuggling in of French goods and French plots. There Barclay landed in January and proceeded to London. He was followed in a few days by the Duke of Berwick, and very soon by about twenty coadjutors, some of whom were troopers of James's guard, amongst them one named Cassels, another brigadier Ambrose Rookwood, one of a family which had been in almost every plot since the Gunpowder Plot, and a Major John Bernardi, a man of Italian origin.

James saw and instructed many of these men himself before they left St. Germains, and furnished them with funds. He had given Barclay eight hundred pounds to pay expenses and engage assistants, which Barclay complained of as a miserable and insufficient sum. These men were now informed that they must put themselves under the orders of Barclay, and they would easily discover him at evening walking in the piazza of Covent Garden, and might recognise him by his white handkerchief hanging from his pocket. Meanwhile, Barclay had begun to open communication with the most determined Jacobites. The first of these were Charnock--who had originally been a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, but had apostatised, become a violent papistical agitator, and finally an officer in James's army--and Sir William Parkyns, a lawyer and officer of the Court of Chancery, for whilst plotting against the king, he had sworn fidelity to him, and was receiving his pay. These men most gladly united with Barclay, for they had been engaged in the very same design for some time. They assured him that there was no chance of effecting an invasion without preceding it by dispatching William. But to do this they wanted first an authority from James, and to be assured that it would be followed up. Hereupon Barclay showed them his commission from James.

As Barclay's myrmidons arrived from France his hopes grew high; he called them his Janissaries, and said he trusted they would win a Star and Garter for him. He wanted forty for his purposes, and these men made up at once half the number. Fresh desperadoes rapidly joined the band, until it was evident that the number of conspirators was getting far too numerous, and far too indiscriminate in character for safety. It was necessary to use haste, and Barclay tells us he was constantly studying how and where best to accomplish their object. He set two of his gang to haunt the neighbourhood of the Palace, and to learn what they could of the king's movements. They went to Kensington and to every place which William frequented, to find out the most suitable spot and opportunity.

At last the conspirators fixed on Turnham Green as the best for their detestable purpose. They learned that when William returned from hunting he crossed the Thames there by the ferry-boat, not getting out of his carriage, and that he did not wait for his Guards, but drove on from the water side till they overtook him. It was a low, swampy place, hidden amongst bushes at the western end of the Green. The conspirators were now thirty-five, while the King had rarely more than twenty-five Guards with him. The day fixed was Saturday, the 15th of February, for it was on Saturdays that William made these hunting excursions. As soon as they knew that the king had started, the conspirators were to follow in different bodies, and from different directions, so as to avoid observation. They were to remain at small public-houses near the crossing-place, and as soon as their scouts gave them notice of the king's party approaching the Surrey side of the river, they were to put themselves in bylanes, to be ready to intercept him. They were to be divided into four sets, one headed by Porter, one by Charnock, a third by Rookwood, and the fourth by Barclay himself. Two parties were simultaneously to rush upon the coach as it passed a cross road, one from each side; Rookwood was to come from his hiding-place in the rear, and Barclay to appear in front, and to him the death of the King was assigned. Horses and arms were purchased by Barclay for the occasion, and the horses were kept in different stables, so as to excite no suspicion.

All was now in readiness. The Duke of Berwick had remained in London till matters were in this position. He had been equally busy in endeavouring to induce the Jacobite leaders to rise in arms. He told them that his father, with ten thousand soldiers, was lying at Calais ready to cross when this movement was made, but that the King of France would not consent to the army crossing till the English had given proof of their being in earnest to receive King James in arms. Nor could they think this unreasonable; he had twice sent expeditions to co-operate with them, once in 1690, when De Tourville landed in Devonshire, and again in 1692, when his fleet had come up to the very shore in expectation of being joined by the English fleet, but, on the contrary, had been attacked by that fleet, and the losses at La Hogue suffered in consequence. They could not expect Louis to venture his ships and troops again till he saw a real demonstration for James in England; then his army would cross at once. But these representations were all lost on the Jacobites; they continued to say, "Only let James land with an army, and we shall be ready to join him." Berwick returned to France, and hastened to inform James, whom he met on the way to Calais to join the invading army, that there was no chance of a rising in England till a French army landed, but that he had a confident hope that the conspirators would succeed in dispatching William, and then would be the time to cross over. James went on to Calais to the army which Boufflers was called from Flanders to command, and Berwick went on to Versailles to communicate to Louis the state of affairs, and all parties waited for the falling of the blow in England.

Such was now the position of these two monarchs and the Duke of Berwick, whom the Jacobite writers have so confidently endeavoured to clear of the crime of participating in this base scheme of assassination. True, Berwick, whilst in England, would have nothing to do with the conspiracy itself, because, he declared, it was--not criminal, no, that was not his objection--but it was too dangerous, and would probably cause all engaged in it to be hanged. On the safe side of the water, therefore, whilst the humbler ruffians were risking their necks for them, these three arch assassins waited for the signal that the deed was done--a fire which was to be lit on one of the Kentish hills.

Meanwhile the conspiracy was suffering, as might have been expected, from the admission of too many colleagues. As the time approached, Fisher, who had boasted that he would himself kill one of the king's coach-horses, went and informed Portland that there was a design of taking the king's life. Portland at first paid little attention to this information, but it was soon confirmed in a manner which left him no alternative but to apprise the king of it. On the evening of the 14th a Mr. Pendergrass, a Catholic gentleman of Hampshire, waited on Portland, and assured him that if the king went on the morrow to hunt he was certain to be assassinated. Pendergrass said the king was the enemy of his religion, but that his religion would not permit him to see such a thing done without giving him a warning, and he entreated Portland to induce the king not to go out on any account. When pressed to name his accomplices, he declined, saying they were his friends, and one of them his benefactor; he would not betray them. The fact was, that Porter had sent for Pendergrass up from the country to take part in the assassination; but, though he was under great obligations to Porter, he refused. He would have been ready to unite in an invasion, but not in a murder.

The king was with difficulty prevented by Portland from going, but he did stay, and when it was announced to the conspirators that the king had given up hunting for that day, they were a good deal startled; but, as the weather was assigned as the cause, they imagined they were still unbetrayed, and waited for the next Saturday; one of them, Chambers, a great ruffian, who had been severely wounded at the battle of the Boyne, and had a savage malice against William, vowing to have his life yet or lose his own.

Between this day and the next Saturday, however, De la Rue had grown afraid, and went and gave a warning similar to Pendergrass's. On the Friday Pendergrass was sent for to the king's closet, where William was alone with Portland and Lord Cutts, who had fought so bravely at Namur. William was very courteous to Pendergrass, and thanked him for his information, complimented him as a man of honour, but desired him to name the conspirators. Pendergrass persisted in his refusal, except he had the king's assurance that his information should not cause the destruction of these men, but only be used to prevent the commission of the crime. This assurance being solemnly given, he named them. It does not, however, appear that this solemn assurance was kept, for undoubtedly Pendergrass's information was used for the arrest of the conspirators, and though he himself was not brought openly forward in court against them, they were condemned and executed through that means, so that not using his evidence openly was a mere quibble; and even this was laid aside as soon as, at Pendergrass's demand, they had engaged to use Porter's evidence on condition of his safety.

Ignorant of the mine ready charged under their feet, the conspirators anxiously awaited Saturday, the 22nd. This time all outwardly bade fair for success; the usual preparations were made at the palace for the hunting. There had been during the week no sign of any agitation or bustle, nor word dropped which could give the slightest suspicion that their design was known. The Guards were sent off to go round by Kingston Bridge to Richmond, as there was then no bridge nearer. The king's coach came out to take him away, and the conspirators were breakfasting at Porter's lodgings when word was hurriedly brought to them that the coach had been sent back to the stables, and the Guards had come galloping back, saying that a discovery of something terrible had been made. If the men had not been infatuated by their zeal for the assassination, as is very general in such cases, they would now have made the best of their way into some place of security. The return of the Guards in such hurry, and with such rash words, was not very skilful on the part of the Government if they meant to take the conspirators; and, as the arrests were delayed till night, there was ample time for them to have all got off. But they still flattered themselves that, though some whisper of the design had reached the Palace, the actual conspirators were unknown, and they were only the more bent on seizing some instant mode of accomplishing their object.

That night the king's officers were upon them, and Charnock, Rookwood, and Bernardi were taken in their beds. The next day seventeen more were arrested, and three of the Blues also. Barclay had had more cunning than the rest; he had absconded and got safe to France. The Lord Mayor was sent for to Whitehall, and desired to put the City into a perfect state of readiness for action. A council was held; it was agreed to send for some regiments from Flanders in consequence of the preparations at Calais; the Earl of Dorset was sent down to his lieutenancy of Sussex; Sidney, Lord Romney, Warden of the Cinque Ports, was also despatched for the guard of the coast of Kent; and Russell hastened to assume the command of the fleet. On Monday, the 24th, the king went to the House of Lords, sent for the Commons, and announced to the assembled Parliament the discovery of the plot, and the arrest of a number of the traitors. The sensation was intense. The two Houses united in an address of congratulation for the king's safety, with which they went in a body to Kensington, and the same day the Commons passed two Bills, one suspending the Habeas Corpus, and the other declaring that Parliament should not be dissolved by the king's death in case any such conspiracy should succeed. Sir Rowland Gwyn moved that the House should enrol itself as an Association for the defence of the king and country. The idea was instantly seized by Montague, who saw how immensely it would strengthen the Whigs, and the deed was immediately drawn, and ordered to be ready for signature the next morning. In this the House bound itself to defend the king with their own lives against James and his adherents, and to avenge him on his murderers in case of such an assassination, and to maintain the order of succession as fixed by the Bill of Rights.

The next morning the members hurried in to sign the form of Association; and, as some were not present, it was ordered that all who had not signed it within sixteen days should be called upon to do so or formally to refuse. They resolved that any one who declared the Association illegal should be held to be a promoter of the wicked designs of James, and an enemy to the laws and liberties of the country. They prayed the king to banish by proclamation all Papists to a distance of ten miles from the cities of London and Westminster, and to order the judges to put the laws in force throughout the country against Roman Catholics and non-jurors.

The forms of the Association and the address of the two Houses were immediately printed and published, along with a proclamation offering one thousand pounds reward for the discovery and apprehension of each of the conspirators, and one thousand pounds, with a free pardon, to each of the accomplices who should deliver himself up and reveal what he knew. One after another the miscreants were dragged from their hiding-places, or gave themselves up as king's evidence for the thousand pounds and free pardon.

On the 11th of March, Charnock and two others were placed at the bar of the Old Bailey before Lord Chief Justice Holt and other judges. The prisoners demanded that their trials should be postponed till after the 25th of the month, when the new Act for trials for treason came into force, and which allowed counsel to the accused; but the counsel for the Crown would not consent to it--a circumstance which does no honour to William and his ministers, for from them the order to proceed must now have been given. All the accused denied that James knew of or had done anything to sanction the attempt to assassinate the king; but this assertion neither agrees with the depositions made by the other conspirators admitted as evidence, nor with the facts of the case; and, indeed, Charnock left a paper, still in the Bodleian Library of Oxford, in which he declares that the attempt would not have been justifiable had it not been sanctioned by James; that his Majesty's commission did fully justify it, and that it was just as proper to attempt to kill the Prince of Orange at the head of his Guards, serving as they did the king whose throne he had usurped, and who was at war with him, as if he had been at the head of twenty thousand men. They had their king's commission for it, and their king being at declared war, it was quite legitimate to attack and kill William wherever they could meet with him. Despite this high assumption, Charnock, after conviction, offered, if they would pardon him, to reveal the whole particulars of the plot, and the names of every one concerned in it; but there was evidence enough; his offer was not accepted, and the three were executed at Tyburn on the 24th.

The Association into which the Commons had entered for the defence of the king had not yet been made law, but a Bill was now brought in for that purpose. Out of the five hundred and thirteen members of the Commons, four hundred had signed it; but on its reaching the Lords exception was made by the Tories to the words "rightful and lawful sovereign" as applied to William. Even Nottingham, who had so long and faithfully served William, declared that he could not accept them; that William was king de facto he admitted, but not king by rightful succession. He was supported by Rochester, Normanby, and others; but on the Duke of Leeds proposing that the words "rightful and lawful" should be altered to "having right by law," and no other person having such right, singularly enough the Tories acquiesced in the change, though it would not be easy for minds in general to perceive a distinction between being a rightful and lawful sovereign and a sovereign who had a full and, indeed, exclusive right by law. The Commons retained their own form and the Lords theirs. The Bill of the Commons was passed on the 4th of April. It provided that all such persons as refused the oaths to his Majesty should be liable to the forfeitures and penalties of Papist recusants; that all who questioned William's being "a lawful and rightful sovereign" should be subject to heavy penalties; that no person refusing to sign this Association should be capable of holding any office, civil or military, of sitting in Parliament, or being admitted into the service of the Prince or Princess of Denmark. All magistrates, of course, were included in the requirements, and some who refused to sign were dismissed. The Lords were to use their own form, and with this understanding it passed their House without delay. The bishops drew up a form for themselves, and, according to Burnet, not above a hundred clergymen all over England refused to sign. The people everywhere signed the bond with almost universal enthusiasm, even in the most Papist districts, as Lancashire and Cheshire.

Before this remarkable session closed, a Bill was brought in to check the corruption of elections. It had now become common for moneyed men to go down to country boroughs and buy their way into Parliament by liberal distribution of their gold. It was, therefore, proposed to introduce a property qualification for members of Parliament; that a member for a county should be required to possess five hundred pounds a year in land, and a member for a town three hundred pounds a year in land. It was even proposed to adopt the ballot, but that was rejected. The Bill itself was carried through both Houses, but William declined to ratify it. The towns abounded with Whigs, and had stood stoutly by him, and it appeared to be a sweeping infringement on their privileges to debar them from electing men in whom they had confidence because they were not landed proprietors, though they might otherwise be wealthy as well as duly qualified for such duties.

He ratified, however, another Bill intended for the benefit of the landed gentry. This was for the establishment of Hugh Chamberlayne's Land Bank. Unsound and delusive as the principles of this scheme were, it had the great attraction to the landowners of offering them extensive accommodation and a fancied accession of wealth, and to William the further advance of a large sum for his wars. The Bank of England had only furnished him with one million at eight per cent.; this Land Bank was to lend him two millions and a half at seven per cent. It was ratified by William, and the Parliament was prorogued the same day, April the 27th.

At home the confusion and distress were indescribable, and lasted all the year. In the spring and till autumn it was a complete national agony. The last day for the payment of the clipped coin into the Treasury was the 4th of May. As that day approached there was a violent rush to the Exchequer to pay in the old coin and get new. But there was very little new ready, and all old coin that was not clipped was compelled to be allowed to remain out some time longer. Notwithstanding this, the deficiency of circulating medium was so great that even men of large estate had to give promissory notes for paying old debts, and take credit for procuring the necessaries of life. The notes of the new Bank of England and of the Lombard Street money-changers gave also considerable relief; but the whole amount of notes and coin did not suffice to carry on the business of the nation. Numbers of work-people of all kinds were turned off because their employers had not money to pay them with. The shopkeepers could not afford to give credit to every one, and, as their trade stagnated in consequence, they were compelled to sacrifice their commodities to raise the necessary sums to satisfy their own creditors. There was a heavy demand on the poor rates, and the magistrates had orders to have sufficient force in readiness to keep down rioting. This distress was aggravated by those who had new milled money, hoarding it up lest they should get no more of it, or in expectation that its scarcity would raise its value enormously, and that they could pay their debts to a great advantage, or purchase what they wanted at still greater advantage.

The Jacobites were delighted with this state of things, and did all they could to inflame the people against the Government, which they said had thus needlessly plunged the nation in such extreme suffering. There were numbers of exciting tracts issued for this purpose, and especially by a depraved priest named Grascombe, who urged the people to kill the members of Parliament who had advocated the calling in of the silver coin. To make the calamity perfect, the Land Bank had proved as complete a bubble as Montague and other men of discernment had declared it would. The landed gentry wanted to borrow from it, not to invest in it; its shares remained untaken; and it found, when the Government demanded the two million six hundred thousand pounds which it had pledged itself to advance, that its coffers were empty; and it ceased to exist, or rather to pretend to have any life.

The bursting of the Land Bank bubble was severely trying to the new Bank of England. The failure of the one alarmed the public as to the stability of the other, and the Jacobites and the Lombard Street rival money-lenders lent their cordial aid to increase the panic. The Lombard Street bankers made a vigorous run upon the bank. They collected all its paper that they could lay hands on, and demanded instant payment in hard cash. Immediately after the 4th of May, when the Government had taken in the bulk of the money, and had issued out very little, they made a dead set against the bank. One goldsmith alone presented thirty thousand pounds in notes. The bank resolved to refuse the payment of the notes thus obviously presented in order to ruin it, and then the Lombard Street bankers exultingly announced everywhere that the boasted new institution was insolvent. But the bank, leaving the Lombard Street goldsmiths to seek a remedy at law, continued to give cash for all notes presented by the fair creditors, and the public steadily supported them in this system, and condemned the selfish money-dealers. Montague also contrived to relieve the tightness to a considerable extent by availing himself of a clause in the Act of the Land Bank, empowering Government to issue a new species of promissory notes, bearing interest on security of the annual taxes. These bills, called now and henceforward Exchequer Bills, were issued from a hundred pounds to five pounds, and were everywhere received with avidity. They also urged on the mints in the production of the new coinage, and to facilitate this they made Sir Isaac Newton Master of the Mint, who exerted himself in his important office with extraordinary zeal and patriotism.

In August, William sent Portland over from Flanders, where the campaign was almost wholly barren of events, to bring him money for the subsistence of his troops by some means. The failure of the Land Bank made his demand appear hopeless; but the Government applied to the Bank of England, and, notwithstanding it's own embarrassments, it advanced to the Government two hundred thousand pounds on the 15th of August, and that in hard cash, for it was plainly told that its paper was of no use in Flanders. Yet to such extremities was the bank reduced that at the same time it was obliged to pay its demands by three-fourths the value of its notes in cash, marking that amount as paid on the notes, and returning them into circulation reduced to one-fourth of their original value. As the bank, however, so bravely supported the Government, the Government determined as firmly to support the bank; and the public confidence, which had never entirely failed it, from this moment grew stronger and stronger. As the year drew towards a close, the rapidly increasing issue of the new coin began to reduce the intensity of the distress, and the forbearance of creditors of all kinds enabled the nation to bear up wonderfully, much to the chagrin of its enemies both at home and abroad, where the most ridiculous stories of English poverty and ruin were circulated.

But, except the trouble arising from the coinage, the great event during William's absence had been the capture of Sir John Fenwick, and his examination, with the view of tracing the further ramifications of the conspiracy in which he had been engaged. Fenwick, if not engaged in the assassination scheme, was charged by Porter and the other king's evidence with being fully privy to it, and deep in the plot for the invasion. He was a man of high birth, high connections, being married to a sister of the Earl of Carlisle, had held high office in the state, and was a most indefatigable and zealous traitor. During the king's absence, and when the Jacobites were in great spirits, hoping to drive out William, he had shown the most marked and unmanly disrespect to the queen. It was not, therefore, likely that he would escape the just punishment of his treason if he were caught. For a long time he managed to conceal himself, and during his concealment he and his friends were hard at work to remove the only witnesses that he dreaded. These were Porter and a person named Goodman. The Earl of Aylesbury, who was also in the Tower on a similar charge, was equally anxious to have these two men out of the way, and the friends of both plotters united to get rid of them by bribery. For this purpose, besides the active personal exertions of Lady Fenwick, they employed two Irishmen of their party--one Clancey, a barber, and Donelagh, a disbanded captain.

Clancey met Porter at a tavern, and offered him three hundred guineas down, three hundred more as soon as he landed in France, and an annuity of one hundred pounds a year. Porter was greatly tempted by the offer, and at length consented to accept it. A day was fixed for the payment of the first three hundred guineas at the tavern, but, on reflection in the interval, he did not like the prospect of having to face at St. Germains the king whose agents he had betrayed to death, and the friends and associates of those agents. He saw that nothing could obtain their forgiveness, or prevent them from taking mortal revenge on him. He therefore posted to the Secretary of State, and revealed the whole affair. The necessary measures were taken, and Porter attended punctually at the meeting with Clancey. He received the three hundred guineas, and then, giving a concerted signal, the officers of Government rushed in and secured Clancey, who was tried for subornation, convicted, and set in the pillory.

This discovery, through the double treachery of Porter, alarmed Fenwick for his personal safety. He no longer deemed himself secure in the kingdom, for he had taken such part in the attempt to win over Porter--writing a letter for him to take with him to St. Germains to secure his good reception there--that it was too obvious that he was not far off. Porter was indemnified for his loss of the promised annuity by a much better one from William's government--no less than two hundred and fifty pounds a year--and would undoubtedly, if possible, hunt out Fenwick. Sir John, therefore, made prompt arrangements for his own escape to France. There was no time to be lost; he was indicted at the next sessions in the City for treason. Porter and Goodman gave evidence before the grand jury, who returned a true bill. Sir John managed to escape to near Romney Marsh, where a vessel was to take him off, but, unfortunately, on the way he met an officer, who had been apprehending two smugglers. The man knew him, and offered the smugglers a pardon and reward to assist in seizing him. Sir John fled, and they pursued; and he is said to have been taken in the end near Slyfield Mill, between Stoke Dabernon and Bookham, in Surrey.

Sir John had contrived, after being taken, to write a letter to his wife, by one Webber who was with him, in which he declared that all was now over unless she could get her relatives, the Howards, to intercede for him. They might promise for him that he would spend his life abroad, and would pledge himself never to draw a sword against the present government. If that could not be done, the only chance left was to bribe a juryman to starve out the jury.

This letter was intercepted, and when Sir John was brought before the Lords Justices at Whitehall, and he appeared very high, and denied the charges against him indignantly, it was laid before him to his sudden terror and confusion. He saw how completely he had committed himself by his confession, and he turned pale, and seemed half inclined to admit his guilt. In the silence of his prison he revolved another scheme, and on the 10th of August, two months after his apprehension, he presented a memorial to the Duke of Devonshire, offering to disclose to the king all that he knew of the plots, with every one concerned in them, and throwing himself on the mercy of the king. Having so fully betrayed his own guilt, this seemed the only chance of obtaining a lenient judgment. Devonshire sent over the memorial to William in Holland, and was desired by him to receive Fenwick's confession.

This was in due time written down and delivered, and, had it been a real revelation of the plots and their agents, would have probably obtained considerable indulgence for him. But it disclosed nothing that was not already well known to William. Passing over all the other parties who were secretly engaged in labouring for the overthrow of William's government and the restoration of James--persons whose names and doings would have been of the utmost value to the Government--he merely accused Marlborough, Russell, Godolphin, and Shrewsbury. The intrigues of all these were far more familiar to William and his intimate friends than they were to Fenwick. William and Devonshire were disappointed. The whole thing had the air of a ruse to hide the still undiscovered delinquents, and make a merit of a stale and useless piece of information. Devonshire, on forwarding the list, observed that, whatever these noblemen had been, they were, to all appearance, very firm to the king now. William, on reading Fenwick's paper, was incensed. "I am astonished," he wrote to Shrewsbury, "at the fellow's effrontery. Observe this honest man's sincerity: he has nothing to say, except against my friends. Not a word about the plans of his brother Jacobites." He ordered the prisoner to be brought to trial without delay.

Fenwick, in fact, had only insured his own doom. He probably thought William was not aware of the double-dealing of his own ministers, and that he should be able to throw a bombshell into the Whig camp, while he screened his own fellow-seditionists; but he found he had to deal with a man much more sagacious than himself. William ordered the confession of Sir John to be laid before the Lords Justices, and himself acquainted some of the accused of what it contained, and expressed his contempt of it. Marlborough and Russell, if they had not before made up their minds to avoid any further tampering with St. Germains, seem from this moment to have done so. It was clear their secret was not only well known to William, but, pretty generally, to the agents of James. Marlborough, however, took it calmly; Russell made a great pretence of innocence, and demanded inquiry. Shrewsbury alone seemed dismayed and overcome by it. He wrote to William, admitting that Lord Middleton, James's secretary, had been over several times, and had visited him, but this he attributed to their nearness of kinship. He said--"One night at supper, when he was pretty well in drink, he told me he intended to go beyond seas, and asked me if I could command him no service. I then told him, by the course he was taking, it would never be in his power to do himself or his friends service; and if the time should come that he expected, I looked upon myself as an offender not to be forgiven." Shrewsbury added that perhaps these accusations "might render him incapable of serving William"--meaning that he might not think him fit to retain the Seals under such a suspicion by the public, but that, if he could not answer for the generality of the world, yet the noble and frank manner in which his Majesty had used him on that occasion would ever be acknowledged by him with all gratitude.

Fenwick, perceiving the fatal blunder that he had made, sent in a second confession; but this appeared rather to absolve James and his adherents from any knowledge of the baser plan of assassination, and from having sanctioned the scheme of seizing William's person, than to throw any new light on the real workers in the treason. Things were in this position when William returned on the 6th of October. The courtiers at once flocked to Kensington to pay their respects to his majesty, and amongst them the noblemen who had been so deeply accused by Fenwick, with the single exception of Shrewsbury. William received them all most graciously, and asked where Shrewsbury was. He was informed that he was ill, and the next day the duke himself wrote to say that he had had a fall from his horse, had received considerable injury, and was incapable of travelling. But the king and the other ministers well knew that the real cause was his extreme sensitiveness, which made him ashamed to face his sovereign after the discovery of his delinquency; and both they and William wrote to urge his appearance at Court as soon as possible. William said--"You are much wanted here. I am impatient to embrace you, and to assure you that my esteem for you is undiminished." Somers wrote to him that unless he appeared in his place at Court it would convince the public that he felt the justice of Fenwick's charge.

But Shrewsbury, whose mind so readily preyed on itself, could not bring himself to face the king, and sent to request leave to resign the Seals. With a magnanimity wonderfully different to that of Henry VIII., who would have had all these nobles' heads off in a few days, William would not hear of his resignation, telling the duke that it would bring the worst suspicions on him; and, more on Shrewsbury's account than his own, he insisted on his keeping the Seals. At length he consented, but still dared not go to town, but remained in the seclusion of his home amongst the wilds of Gloucestershire.

On the 20th of October William opened the session of Parliament with a speech in which he reviewed the troubles and difficulties of the past year. He admitted the distress which the endeavours to restore the coinage to a healthy state had occasioned; the pressure caused by the limited coinage being yet only partly relieved. He avowed that the liberal funds voted in the last session had fallen far short of the public needs, and that the Civil List could not be maintained without further aid; but, on the other hand, he contended that they had many causes of congratulation. Abroad the enemy had obtained no advantage, and at home the fortitude and temper with which the nation had struggled through the hardships attending the recoinage--increased as these had been by the fears or selfishness of those who had hoarded their money--were admirable. A little time must bear them through this, and he had to inform them that he had received overtures of peace from France. He should be prepared to accept proper terms, but the way to obtain them was to treat sword in hand. He therefore recommended them to be at once liberal and prompt in voting the supplies. He recommended to their sympathy the French Protestants, who were in a most miserable condition, and he trusted to their taking efficient measures for the maintenance of the public credit.

The Commons, on retiring to their House, at the instance of Montague, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, passed three resolutions, which demonstrated the confidence of the country in the Government, and constituted in themselves the most absolute defeat of all the grumblers and malcontents possible. Montague had advocated the Bank of England; that had succeeded. He had denounced the scheme of the Land Bank; that had proved, as he declared it to be, a delusion, and had brought ruin on its projectors. He had carried the plans of Government for the restoration of the coinage stoutly through the most unexampled crises. When the paper of the Bank of England was fluctuating in value, the enemies of Government casting suspicion on it, so that it would occasionally sink one-fourth of its value in the course of a single day; when both the Allies and the enemies of England fancied that her credit was gone and her resources exhausted, Montague knew better, and by his spirit and eloquence kept the machine of Government going, and now he reached a point of unquestionable triumph. The credit of the country was no longer falling, but rising; the coinage was fast assuming a position which it had never enjoyed for ages, and the confidence of Parliament displayed itself in its votes. The resolutions which confounded the adversaries of William's Government, and which have often been referred to as motives for encouragement in periods of Governmental distress, were these:--First, that the Commons would support the king against all foreign and domestic enemies; secondly, that the standard of gold and silver should not be altered; thirdly, that they would make good all Parliamentary funds established since the king's succession. An address was passed on the basis of these resolutions, which was followed by another from the Lords, and the Commons proceeded in the same spirit to vote six millions for the current expenses of the year.

The great topic of the remainder of the session was the inquiry into the guilt of Sir John Fenwick. In denouncing the noblemen named in his confession, he had made them and their adherents his mortal enemies. The Whigs were deeply incensed through the accusation of Russell and Shrewsbury, and the Whigs were now more influential than ever. Instead of damaging them and embarrassing William, Fenwick had fatally damaged himself. As for Godolphin, who was the only Tory in the Ministry, they contrived to get him to offer his resignation, which, unlike that of Shrewsbury, was accepted, so that the Whigs had now a ministry wholly of their party. Russell was loud in his demands of vengeance, and William, at the suggestion of the Whigs, sent for Fenwick, and insisted that he should supply further information as to the real conspirators, whom he had evidently purposely screened. Fenwick declined, and William gave him to understand that he had nothing more to expect from him.

The stubbornness of Fenwick soon received an explanation. His wife had managed to corrupt Goodman, the second witness against him. An annuity of five hundred pounds had been offered him to abscond, accompanied by the menace of assassination if he refused. He consented to flee, and was accompanied by an agent, named O'Brien, to St. Germains. Fenwick now believed himself safe, as no man could be condemned on a charge of high treason upon the evidence of one witness. But the vengeance of his enemies was not thus to be defeated. Sir John might have recollected how often the end in such cases had been secured by a Bill of Attainder. Fenwick himself had been a zealous advocate for such a Bill against Monmouth. When it became known that Goodman was spirited away, the exasperation of the Commons was extreme. On the 6th of November Russell vehemently demanded of the House that it should examine and decide whether the accused parties were guilty or not. Before proceeding to extremities the Commons, however, called Sir John before them, and offered to intercede with the king on his behalf if he made a full and immediate confession. But he would not consent to become the informer against his own party, and was remanded. It was then resolved, by a hundred and seventy-nine votes to sixty-one that a Bill of Attainder should be brought in. The two parties put forth all their strength, and the Bill was not carried till the 26th. For twenty days the eloquence and influence of the House were in violent agitation. The Tories were seen contending for the liberty of the subject, which they had so often overridden by such bills, and the Whigs as vehemently pressed on the measure as they had formerly denounced similar ones when directed against those of their own party.

During the debates the depositions of Goodman made before the Grand Jury, fully implicating Sir John in the conspiracy, were laid before the House in support of the evidence of Porter. Goodman's absence was proved, to the satisfaction of the House, to be owing to the inducements and exertions of Fenwick's friends; and two of the grand jurymen were examined, and detailed the evidence received by them from Goodman on his examination, fully agreeing with that sent in in writing. Some petty jurymen, also, who had decided the case of another conspirator, confirmed this evidence. The Commons had proof enough of his guilt, though it might want the legal formality of two direct witnesses.

In the Lords the Earl of Monmouth made an adroit movement in favour of Sir John. He defended him warmly, at the same time that he sent to him in prison, through the Duchess of Norfolk, his cousin, a scheme for defeating his enemies. He advised him to maintain the truth of his confession, to declare that he derived his information from high quarters, and to beg the king to demand of the Earls of Portland and Romney whether the information in their possession against the noblemen implicated did not correspond with his own; the king, moreover, should be urged to lay before Parliament the evidence on which he had suddenly dismissed Marlborough, and any letters intercepted on their way from St. Germains to these parties. This would have been a thunderbolt to the Government, and Monmouth awaited in exultation its effect. But Sir John disappointed him. He feared to exasperate further the king and his judges the Lords, to whom the accused belonged, and did not take the hint. Monmouth, incensed, then turned against him himself. Marlborough exerted himself with all his power to condemn him, even getting the Prince of Denmark to go and vote against him. The bishops remained, and voted, eight of them, against the passing of the Bill. Burnet and Tenison, however, both spoke and voted for it, with little regard to the practice that the prelates should take no part in advocating measures of blood. The Lords Godolphin and Bath, though both amongst those accused by Fenwick, voted in his favour, and Shrewsbury absented himself from the debate. The Duke of Devonshire, too, to whom he had carried his confession, voted against the Bill. Sir John offered to make a full disclosure on condition of receiving a full pardon, but this was not accorded him, and he refused further confession on any other terms. At length, on the 27th of December, the Bill was carried, but only by a majority of seven--sixty-eight votes to sixty-one. Forty-one lords, including eight bishops, entered a protest on the journal against the decision.

Unfortunately for Monmouth, the friends of Sir John were so incensed at his turning round against him, that the Earl of Carlisle, Lady Fenwick's brother, produced to the House the papers which he had sent to Sir John in prison, and stated the censures on the king with which he had accompanied them. A tempest suddenly burst over his head, of indescribable fury. The Whigs were exasperated at his endeavouring to sacrifice Russell and Shrewsbury to save Fenwick, and the Tories at his endeavouring to sacrifice Marlborough and Godolphin, and at his treacherously deserting Sir John for not following his advice. He was committed to the Tower, deprived of all his places, and his name erased from the list of privy councillors.

Parliament having passed this Act, adjourned for the Christmas holidays, and every exertion was made to obtain a pardon for Sir John. His wife threw herself at the feet of William, but he only replied that he must consult his ministers before he could give an answer. On the 11th of January, 1697, he put his signature to the Bill. When Parliament met again she presented a petition to the House of Lords, praying them to intercede with the king to commute the sentence to perpetual banishment, but without success. On the 28th of January Fenwick was conducted to execution on Tower Hill. On the scaffold he delivered to the sheriff a sealed paper, in which he complained of the irregularity of the proceeding against him, denied any participation in the plan of assassination, but confessed his attachment to James, and his belief in the right of the Prince of Wales after him.

After an abortive attempt to pass a Bill establishing a property qualification for the Commons, another to put the press again under the licensing system, and another to abolish those dens of protected crime, the Savoy and Whitefriars, Parliament was prorogued on the 16th of April.

Whilst this desperate conflict had been going on between Whig and Tory in England, in Scotland a most useful measure had passed the Scottish Parliament, namely, an Act establishing a school and schoolmaster in every parish, and to this admirable Act it is that Scotland owes the superior intelligence of its working classes. At the same time the rigid bigotry of the clergy perpetrated one of the most revolting acts in history. A youth of eighteen, named Thomas Aikenhead, had picked up some of the sceptical notions of Hobbes and Tindal, and was arrested, tried, and hanged for blasphemy between Leith and Edinburgh. It was in vain that he expressed the utmost repentance for his errors, the ministers were impatient for his death, and he died accordingly, to the disgrace of the Presbyterian Church and the whole country.

William embarked for Holland on the 26th of April, having before his departure made several promotions. To the disgust of many, Sunderland was appointed one of the Lords Justices and Lord Chamberlain. The Protestants wondered that a man who had apostatised when there was a Popish king, should find such favour with a Presbyterian one; and the honourable-minded that a man who had stooped to so many dirty acts and arts should be thus exalted by a prince of sober morals. But William's only excuse was that his ministers were so bad that there was little to choose in their principles, and that he employed them not for their virtues but their abilities. Russell was rewarded for running down Fenwick with the title of Earl of Orford; the Lord Keeper Somers was elevated to the full dignity of Lord Chancellor, and created Baron Somers of Evesham. Montague was made First Lord of the Treasury, in place of Godolphin; Lord Wharton, in addition to his post of Comptroller of the Household, was appointed Chief Justice in Eyre, south of the Trent; and his brother, Godwin Wharton, became a Lord of the Admiralty.

The campaign in Flanders was commenced by the French with an activity apparently intended to impress upon the Allies their ample ability to carry on the war, although, in fact, never had France more need of peace. Its finances were exhausted, its people were miserable; but far more than the sufferings of his subjects to Louis were the ambitious projects which he was now particularly cherishing. John Sobieski, the brave deliverer of Vienna from the Turks, the King of Poland, was dead, and Louis was anxious to place the Prince of Conti on the throne of that kingdom. He had, however, a still more weighty motive for peace. The King of Spain, the sickly and imbecile Charles II., was fast hastening to the tomb. He was childless; no provision was made by the Spanish Government for filling the throne, and Louis of France was watching for his death. Louis himself was married to the elder sister of the Spanish king, and the Dauphin was thus next in succession, but the marriage had been attended by a renunciation of rights. The question was one of great intricacy; and we will postpone for the present a discussion of the rights of the Dauphin and the rival claimants--the Archduke Charles and the Electoral Prince. But if the throne of Spain fell vacant during the alliance, the Allies, and William amongst them, would support the Emperor's claims. Accordingly, it was to the interest of the Emperor to prolong the war, and to the interest of Louis to end it.

Spain and Germany, therefore, were averse from peace. William and Louis were the only parties, each for his own purposes, really anxious for it. Louis, early in the spring, had made overtures to Dykvelt through Cailleres, which were really surprising. They were no less than to relinquish all the conquests made by him during the war, to restore Lorraine to its duke, Luxemburg to Spain, Strasburg to the Empire, and to acknowledge William's title to the crown of England without condition or reserve. Such terms the Allies never could have expected. They were a renunciation by the ambitious Louis of all that he had been fighting for during so many years--of all that he had drained his kingdom of its life and wealth to accomplish. That he contemplated maintaining the peace any longer than till he had secured Spain and Poland is not to be supposed. If he obtained peace now, these objects would become more feasible, and he knew that William, his most formidable enemy, would have disbanded his army, and would have to create a new one and a new alliance before he could take the field again to oppose him.

These undoubtedly were Louis's notions, and it was plausibly urged by Spain and Austria that it was better now to press him as he was sinking till he was perfectly prostrate, and then bind him effectually. But, on the other hand, William felt that England and Holland had to bear the brunt of the war; that it was all very well for Spain and Germany to cry "Keep on," but the fact was, they did little or nothing towards keeping on. The Germans had no union, and, therefore, no strength. They sent excuses instead of their contingents and instead of money to pay their share of the cost of the war. When they did rise, they were nearly always behind their time and divided in their counsels. As for Spain, it literally did nothing to defend its own territories. The whole of Flanders would have been lost but for William and his Dutch and English troops. Catalonia would have been lost but for Russell and his fleet. Moreover, without consulting the Allies, Spain had joined in a treaty with Savoy and France to save its Milanese territory, and to the extreme prejudice of the Allies, it had, by releasing the French armies from Italy, increased the force in Flanders. William was greatly incensed by the endeavours of these Powers to continue the war; and Louis, as the best spur to their backwardness, determined to seize Brussels, and conduct himself as if bent on active aggression.

Catinat, relieved from his command in Savoy, had now joined Villeroi and Boufflers in Flanders, and these generals determined to surprise Brussels. They first advanced on the little town of Ath, and William, who was but just recovering from an attack of illness, uniting his forces with those of the Elector of Bavaria, endeavoured to prevent them. He was, however, too late; but he marched hastily towards Brussels to defend it against Villeroi and Boufflers. He passed over the very ground on which the battle of Waterloo was long afterwards fought, and posted himself on the height whence Villeroi had bombarded the city two years before. Neither side, however, was anxious to engage and incur all the miseries of a great battle, with the prospect of a near peace. They therefore entrenched themselves and continued to lie there for the rest of the summer, awaiting the course of events. Louis, however, assailed the King of Spain in another quarter--Catalonia. There Vendôme attacked the viceroy and defeated him, and invested Barcelona, which, though bravely defended by the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, was obliged to capitulate. At the same time came the news of another blow. Louis had sent out a squadron under Admiral Pointes to attack the Spanish settlements in the West Indies, and he had sacked and plundered the town of Carthagena, and carried home an immense treasure. These disasters made Spain as eager for peace as she had before been averse, and the Emperor of Germany was obliged to cease talking of returning to the position of the Treaty of Westphalia--a state of things totally out of the power of the Allies to restore.

The Plenipotentiaries of the different Powers now at last were ordered to meet; the only question was, Where? The Emperor proposed Aix-la-Chapelle or Frankfort, but Louis objected to any German town, but was willing that the place should be the Hague. It was at length settled to be the Hague. The Ambassadors of the Allies were to occupy the Hague itself; and the French, Delft, about five miles distant. Midway between these towns lies the village of Ryswick, and close to it a palace belonging then to William, called Neubourg House. There it was determined that the Plenipotentiaries should meet for business. The palace was admirably adapted, by its different entrances and alleys, for the approach of the different bodies of diplomatists without any confusion, and there was a fine, large, central hall for their deliberations. There appeared for England the Earl of Pembroke, the Viscount Villiers, Sir Joseph Williamson, and Matthew Prior, the poet, as their secretary. For the Emperor, the gruff Kaunitz, the celebrated Imperial Minister, was at the head of the German referees. For France came Harlay, Crecy, and Cailleres. Don Quiros was the Minister of Spain, and there were whole throngs of the representatives of the lesser Powers. The Minister of Sweden, Count Lilienroth, was appointed mediator, and, after various arrangements regarding precedence, on the 9th of May the Plenipotentiaries met; but, it seemed, only to entangle themselves in a multitude of absurd difficulties regarding their respective ranks and titles. The Ambassadors of Spain and of the Emperor were the most ridiculous in their punctilios. Then came the news of the death of the King of Sweden (Charles XI.), and the waiting of the mediator for a renewal of his powers, and for putting himself into mourning, and it was the middle of June before any real business had been done. William grew out of patience, and determined to take a shorter cut to the object in view. He empowered Portland to arrange with Boufflers, with whom he had become acquainted at the time of the latter's arrest at Namur, the preliminaries of a peace between France, England, and Holland. Portland and Boufflers met at a country house near Hal, about ten miles from Brussels on the road to Mons, and within sight of the hostile armies. The questions to be settled between these two plain and straightforward negotiators were these:--William demanded that Louis should bind himself not to assist James, directly or indirectly, in any attempt on the throne of England, and that James should no longer be permitted to reside in France. These demands being sent by express to Paris, Louis at once agreed to the first requisition, that he should engage never to assist James in any attempt on England; but as to the second, he replied that he could not, from honour and hospitality, banish James from France, but he would undertake to induce him to remove to Avignon, if he did not voluntarily prefer going to Italy. William accepted this modified acquiescence. On the other hand, Louis demanded from William that he should give an amnesty to all the Jacobites, and should allow Mary of Modena her jointure of fifty thousand pounds a year.

William peremptorily refused to grant the amnesty--that was an interference with the prerogative of his crown which he could permit to no foreign Power. The jointure he was willing to pay, on condition that the money should not be employed in designs against his crown or life, and that James, his queen, and Court, should remove to Avignon and continue to reside there. Neither the residence of the exiled family nor the matter of the jointure was to be mentioned in the treaty, but William authorised his Plenipotentiaries at the Congress to say that Mary of Modena should have everything which on examination should be found to be lawfully her due. This, indeed, may be considered an ambiguous phrase, for Mary, as well as James, being deposed, all her legal rights connected with the Crown had lapsed. William was afterwards much blamed for the non-payment of this jointure; but those who charged him with breach of faith knew very well that the jointure was only conditionally offered, and that the conditions were altogether disregarded.

The ceremonious and do-nothing Plenipotentiaries were greatly startled by the news that Portland and Boufflers were continually meeting, and were supposed to be actually making a treaty without them. A thing so irregular, so undiplomatic, was unheard of; but William was a man of business, and, in spite of forms and ceremonies, pushed on the treaty and concluded it. Spain, which had arranged a separate treaty in Savoy, was especially scandalised. But still more was James alarmed and incensed. He addressed two memorials to the princes of the confederacy--one to the Catholic Princes, entreating them to unite with him against England for his rights, reminding them that his case was theirs, and that the English revolution was setting a fatal precedent for them; the other was to the princes at large, warning them against infringing his inalienable rights by entering into any agreement with the usurper to transfer his crown and dignity to him. These producing no effect, he issued a third, protesting against any engagements they might enter into to his prejudice, or the prejudice of his son; and declaring that he should himself never feel bound by any of them.

If Louis was not moved by his entreaties and remonstrances, it was not likely that the princes who had for eight years been fighting in alliance with his rival would. Perhaps, however, James felt it only his duty to put in his disclaimer. The negotiations went on. Besides the terms offered by France to William and his Allies being accepted by all except the Emperor, it was agreed that Commissioners should meet in London from France to settle the respective pretensions of France and England to the territories of Hudson's Bay. The Dutch made a separate treaty of commerce with France. France surrendered all conquests made since the Treaty of Nimeguen, and placed the chief fortresses in the Low Countries in the hands of Dutch garrisons; except eighty towns and villages, which the French claimed from longer possession, and the right to which was to be determined by commissioners, with a power of appeal to the States-General. A demand of toleration was made on behalf of the French Protestants, but was refused on the same ground as William refused the amnesty to the Jacobites--interference with the prerogative of Louis. On the 10th of July the representatives of the Emperor were asked by the French to sign, but, on declining, the 21st of August was fixed as the last day on which France would be bound by its offer. William and the rest of the Allies were greatly exasperated at this refusal of the Emperor. The 21st arrived, and, the Commissioners not signing, the representatives of France declared his most Christian Majesty had now withdrawn Strasburg from his offer, and would annex it for ever to his realm; and, moreover, if the treaty were not signed on or before the 10th of September, he should not hold himself bound by the rest of his engagements.

On the 10th the rest of the Allies signed the treaty, but the Emperor still held out, and a further time was allowed him, namely, till the 1st of November. On the 11th of September an event occurred which made the resistance of the Emperor the more obstinate for a time. Prince Eugene fought a great battle at Zenta against the Sultan in person, completely routed the Turks, and killed or caused to be drowned in the Theiss the Grand Vizier, the Aga of the Janissaries, and thirty thousand of the enemy. There were six thousand more wounded or taken prisoners, with their artillery, baggage, tents, ammunition, and provisions. The Grand Seignior himself escaped with difficulty, whilst the Imperialists lost only about one thousand men in the action. The Emperor hoped that such a brilliant victory would induce the Allies to prolong the war; but, as it produced no such effect, he was obliged to comply. The petty princes, who had done nothing during the war but create delays and embarrassments, stood out to the very last on the demand that the Lutheran religion should be restored in Louis's territories, where it had been put down; but they stood out in vain. The treaty was duly signed and ratified at the time fixed.

The new treaty produced very different sensations in France and England. In France there was much murmuring. For what, it was asked, had the king been fighting all these years? He had given up everything, and could only have done that under defeat. The Court of St. Germains and James's adherents were in despair. In England the most riotous joy broke forth. There were all the usual demonstrations of such occasions--bonfires, drinking, and firing of guns. The bells rang out from every steeple, and the Bank of England stocks, which were at twenty per cent. below par, rose to par. The Jacobites cursed Louis for a traitor to the cause of James, and fled to hide themselves. The rejoicings were equally enthusiastic all over the kingdom.

When William entered his capital it was a regular triumph. From Greenwich to Whitehall it was one dense crowd of hurrahing people; troops of militia and train-bands, the City authorities attending him in all their paraphernalia, the Foot Guards standing under arms at Whitehall, and the windows all the way crowded with handsome or excited faces. The 2nd of December was appointed as a day of public thanksgiving, and the new cathedral of St. Paul's was crowded by its first great assemblage on the occasion. There were deputations bringing zealous addresses to the foot of the Throne, and foremost and most loyal in language amongst them was that of the University of Oxford, which had so long distinguished itself by its Toryism and devotion to the Stuarts.

There was cause, indeed, for joy; for the country was for a time freed from the most exhausting war in which it had ever been engaged. It had passed through it with credit, though its armies and navies were in a great measure commanded by traitors. Its wealth and credit were higher than ever; and, above all, the tone and temper of the nation were sure guarantees that the return of James or his son was the most impossible of things. Still, had the Allies on the Continent been true to each other, and to the principles for which they professed to contend, they might have inflicted a far more complete punishment on the heartless ambition of Louis, and thus prevented the speedy recurrence of the horrors which they now hoped were for a long time at an end.

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