The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

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The History of England from the Accession of James the Second

Volume IV

(Chapters XVIII-XXII)

by Thomas Babington Macaulay

CHAPTER XVII

William's Voyage to Holland--William's Entrance into the Hague--
Congress at the Hague--William his own Minister for Foreign
Affairs--William obtains a Toleration for the Waldenses; Vices
inherent in the Nature of Coalitions--Siege and Fall of Mons--
William returns to England; Trials of Preston and Ashton--
Execution of Ashton--Preston's Irresolution and Confessions--
Lenity shown to the Conspirators--Dartmouth--Turner; Penn--Death
of George Fox; his Character--Interview between Penn and Sidney--
Preston pardoned--Joy of the Jacobites at the Fall of Mons--The
vacant Sees filled--Tillotson Archbishop of Canterbury--Conduct
of Sancroft--Difference between Sancroft and Ken--Hatred of
Sancroft to the Established Church; he provides for the episcopal
Succession among the Nonjurors--The new Bishops--Sherlock Dean of
Saint Paul's--Treachery of some of William's Servants--Russell--
Godolphin--Marlborough--William returns to the Continent--The
Campaign of 1691 in Flanders--The War in Ireland; State of the
English Part of Ireland--State of the Part of Ireland which was
subject to James--Dissensions among the Irish at Limerick--Return
of Tyrconnel to Ireland--Arrival of a French Fleet at Limerick;
Saint Ruth--The English take the Field--Fall of Ballymore; Siege
and Fall of Athlone--Retreat of the Irish Army--Saint Ruth
determines to fight--Battle of Aghrim--Fall of Galway--Death of
Tyrconnel--Second Siege of Limerick--The Irish desirous to
capitulate--Negotiations between the Irish Chiefs and the
Besiegers--The Capitulation of Limerick--The Irish Troops
required to make their Election between their Country and France-
-Most of the Irish Troops volunteer for France--Many of the Irish
who had volunteered for France desert--The last Division of the
Irish Army sails from Cork for France--State of Ireland after the
War

ON the eighteenth of January 1691, the King, having been detained
some days by adverse winds, went on board at Gravesend. Four
yachts had been fitted up for him and for his retinue. Among his
attendants were Norfolk, Ormond, Devonshire, Dorset, Portland,
Monmouth, Zulestein, and the Bishop of London. Two distinguished
admirals, Cloudesley Shovel and George Rooke, commanded the men
of war which formed the convoy. The passage was tedious and
disagreeable. During many hours the fleet was becalmed off the
Godwin Sands; and it was not till the fifth day that the
soundings proved the coast of Holland to be near. The sea fog was
so thick that no land could be seen; and it was not thought safe
for the ships to proceed further in the darkness. William, tired
out by the voyage, and impatient to be once more in his beloved
country, determined to land in an open boat. The noblemen who
were in his train tried to dissuade him from risking so valuable
a life; but, when they found that his mind was made up, they
insisted on sharing the danger. That danger proved more serious
than they had expected. It had been supposed that in an hour the
party would be on shore. But great masses of floating ice impeded
the progress of the skiff; the night came on; the fog grew
thicker; the waves broke over the King and the courtiers. Once
the keel struck on a sand bank, and was with great difficulty got
off. The hardiest mariners showed some signs of uneasiness. But
William, through the whole night, was as composed as if he had
been in the drawingroom at Kensington. "For shame," he said to
one of the dismayed sailors "are you afraid to die in my
company?" A bold Dutch seaman ventured to spring out, and, with
great difficulty, swam and scrambled through breakers, ice and
mud, to firm ground. Here he discharged a musket and lighted a
fire as a signal that he was safe. None of his fellow passengers,
however, thought it prudent to follow his example. They lay
tossing in sight of the flame which he had kindled, till the
first pale light of a January morning showed them that they were
close to the island of Goree. The King and his Lords, stiff with
cold and covered with icicles, gladly landed to warm and rest
themselves.1

After reposing some hours in the hut of a peasant, William
proceeded to the Hague. He was impatiently expected there for,
though the fleet which brought him was not visible from the
shore, the royal salutes had been heard through the mist, and had
apprised the whole coast of his arrival. Thousands had assembled
at Honslaerdyk to welcome him with applause which came from their
hearts and which went to his heart. That was one of the few white
days of a life, beneficent indeed and glorious, but far from
happy. After more than two years passed in a strange land, the
exile had again set foot on his native soil. He heard again the
language of his nursery. He saw again the scenery and the
architecture which were inseparably associated in his mind with
the recollections of childhood and the sacred feeling of home;
the dreary mounds of sand, shells and weeds, on which the waves
of the German Ocean broke; the interminable meadows intersected
by trenches; the straight canals; the villas bright with paint
and adorned with quaint images and inscriptions. He had lived
during many weary months among a people who did not love him, who
did not understand him, who could never forget that he was a
foreigner. Those Englishmen who served him most faithfully served
him without enthusiasm, without personal attachment, and merely
from a sense of public duty. In their hearts they were sorry that
they had no choice but between an English tyrant and a Dutch
deliverer. All was now changed. William was among a population by
which he was adored, as Elizabeth had been adored when she rode
through her army at Tilbury, as Charles the Second had been
adored when he landed at Dover. It is true that the old enemies
of the House of Orange had not been inactive during the absence
of the Stadtholder. There had been, not indeed clamours, but
mutterings against him. He had, it was said, neglected his native
land for his new kingdom. Whenever the dignity of the English
flag, whenever the prosperity of the English trade was concerned,
he forgot that he was a Hollander. But, as soon as his well
remembered face was again seen, all jealousy, all coldness, was
at an end. There was not a boor, not a fisherman, not an artisan,
in the crowds which lined the road from Honslaerdyk to the Hague,
whose heart did not swell with pride at the thought that the
first minister of Holland had become a great King, had freed the
English, and had conquered the Irish. It would have been madness
in William to travel from Hampton Court to Westminster without a
guard; but in his own land he needed no swords or carbines to
defend him. "Do not keep the people off;" he cried: "let them
come close to me; they are all my good friends." He soon learned
that sumptuous preparations were making for his entrance into the
Hague. At first he murmured and objected. He detested, he said,
noise and display. The necessary cost of the war was quite heavy
enough. He hoped that his kind fellow townsmen would consider him
as a neighbour, born and bred among them, and would not pay him
so bad a compliment as to treat him ceremoniously. But all his
expostulations were vain. The Hollanders, simple and parsimonious
as their ordinary habits were, had set their hearts on giving
their illustrious countryman a reception suited to his dignity
and to his merit; and he found it necessary to yield. On the day
of his triumph the concourse was immense. All the wheeled
carriages and horses of the province were too few for the
multitude of those who flocked to the show. Many thousands came
sliding or skating along the frozen canals from Amsterdam,
Rotterdam, Leyden, Haarlem, Delft. At ten in the morning of the
twenty-sixth of January, the great bell of the Town House gave
the signal. Sixteen hundred substantial burghers, well armed, and
clad in the finest dresses which were to be found in the recesses
of their wardrobes, kept order in the crowded streets. Balconies
and scaffolds, embowered in evergreens and hung with tapestry,
hid the windows. The royal coach, escorted by an army of
halberdiers and running footmen, and followed by a long train of
splendid equipages, passed under numerous arches rich with
carving and painting, amidst incessant shouts of "Long live the
King our Stadtholder." The front of the Town House and the whole
circuit of the marketplace were in a blaze with brilliant
colours. Civic crowns, trophies, emblems of arts, of sciences, of
commerce and of agriculture, appeared every where. In one place
William saw portrayed the glorious actions of his ancestors.
There was the silent prince, the founder of the Batavian
commonwealth, passing the Meuse with his warriors. There was the
more impetuous Maurice leading the charge at Nieuport. A little
further on, the hero might retrace the eventful story of his own
life. He was a child at his widowed mother's knee. He was at the
altar with Diary's hand in his. He was landing at Torbay. He was
swimming through the Boyne. There, too, was a boat amidst the ice
and the breakers; and above it was most appropriately inscribed,
in the majestic language of Rome, the saying of the great Roman,
"What dost thou fear? Thou hast Caesar on board." The task of
furnishing the Latin mottoes had been intrusted to two men, who,
till Bentley appeared, held the highest place among the classical
scholars of that age. Spanheim, whose knowledge of the Roman
medals was unrivalled, imitated, not unsuccessfully, the noble
conciseness of those ancient legends which he had assiduously
studied; and he was assisted by Graevius, who then filled a chair
at Utrecht, and whose just reputation had drawn to that
University multitudes of students from every part of Protestant
Europe.2 When the night came, fireworks were exhibited on the
great tank which washes the walls of the Palace of the
Federation. That tank was now as hard as marble; and the Dutch
boasted that nothing had ever been seen, even on the terrace of
Versailles, more brilliant than the effect produced by the
innumerable cascades of flame which were reflected in the smooth
mirror of ice.3 The English Lords congratulated their master on
his immense popularity. "Yes," said he; "but I am not the
favourite. The shouting was nothing to what it would have been if
Mary had been with me."

A few hours after the triumphal entry, the King attended a
sitting of the States General. His last appearance among them had
been on the day on which he embarked for England. He had then,
amidst the broken words and loud weeping of those grave Senators,
thanked them for the kindness with which they had watched over
his childhood, trained his young mind, and supported his
authority in his riper years; and he had solemnly commended his
beloved wife to their care. He now came back among them the King
of three kingdoms, the head of the greatest coalition that Europe
had seen during a hundred and eighty years; and nothing was heard
in the hall but applause and congratulations.4

But this time the streets of the Hague were overflowing with the
equipages and retinues of princes and ambassadors who came
flocking to the great Congress. First appeared the ambitious and
ostentatious Frederic, Elector of Brandenburg, who, a few years
later, took the title of King of Prussia. Then arrived the young
Elector of Bavaria, the Regent of Wirtemberg, the Landgraves of
Hesse Cassel and Hesse Darmstadt, and a long train of sovereign
princes, sprung from the illustrious houses of Brunswick, of
Saxony, of Holstein, and of Nassau. The Marquess of Gastanaga,
Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, repaired to the assembly
from the viceregal Court of Brussels. Extraordinary ministers had
been sent by the Emperor, by the Kings of Spain, Poland, Denmark,
and Sweden, and by the Duke of Savoy. There was scarcely room in
the town and the neighbourhood for the English Lords and
gentlemen and the German Counts and Barons whom curiosity or
official duty had brought to the place of meeting. The grave
capital of the most thrifty and industrious of nations was as gay
as Venice in the Carnival. The walks cut among those noble limes
and elms in which the villa of the Princes of Orange is embosomed
were gay with the plumes, the stars, the flowing wigs, the
embroidered coats and the gold hilted swords of gallants from
London, Berlin and Vienna. With the nobles were mingled sharpers
not less gorgeously attired than they. At night the hazard tables
were thronged; and the theatre was filled to the roof. Princely
banquets followed one another in rapid succession. The meats were
served in gold; and, according to that old Teutonic fashion with
which Shakspeare had made his countrymen familiar, as often as
any of the great princes proposed a health, the kettle drums and
trumpets sounded. Some English lords, particularly Devonshire,
gave entertainments which vied with those of Sovereigns. It was
remarked that the German potentates, though generally disposed to
be litigious and punctilious about etiquette, associated, on this
occasion, in an unceremonious manner, and seemed to have
forgotten their passion for genealogical and heraldic
controversy. The taste for wine, which was then characteristic of
their nation, they had not forgotten. At the table of the Elector
of Brandenburg much mirth was caused by the gravity of the
statesmen of Holland, who, sober themselves, confuted out of
Grotius and Puffendorf the nonsense stuttered by the tipsy nobles
of the Empire. One of those nobles swallowed so many bumpers that
he tumbled into the turf fire, and was not pulled out till his
fine velvet suit had been burned.5

In the midst of all this revelry, business was not neglected. A
formal meeting of the Congress was held at which William
presided. In a short and dignified speech, which was speedily
circulated throughout Europe, he set forth the necessity of firm
union and strenuous exertion. The profound respect with which he
was heard by that splendid assembly caused bitter mortification
to his enemies both in England and in France. The German
potentates were bitterly reviled for yielding precedence to an
upstart. Indeed the most illustrious among them paid to him such
marks of deference as they would scarcely have deigned to pay to
the Imperial Majesty, mingled with the crowd in his antechamber,
and at his table behaved as respectfully as any English lord in
waiting. In one caricature the allied princes were represented as
muzzled bears, some with crowns, some with caps of state. William
had them all in a chain, and was teaching them to dance. In
another caricature, he appeared taking his ease in an arm chair,
with his feet on a cushion, and his hat on his head, while the
Electors of Brandenburg and Bavaria, uncovered, occupied small
stools on the right and left; the crowd of Landgraves and
Sovereign dukes stood at humble distance; and Gastanaga, the
unworthy successor of Alva, awaited the orders of the heretic
tyrant on bended knee.6

It was soon announced by authority that, before the beginning of
summer, two hundred and twenty thousand men would be in the field
against France.7 The contingent which each of the allied powers
was to furnish was made known. Matters about which it would have
been inexpedient to put forth any declaration were privately
discussed by the King of England with his allies. On this
occasion, as on every other important occasion during his reign,
he was his own minister for foreign affairs. It was necessary for
the sake of form that he should be attended by a Secretary of
State; and Nottingham had therefore followed him to Holland. But
Nottingham, though, in matters concerning the internal government
of England, he enjoyed a large share of his master's confidence,
knew little more about the business of the Congress than what he
saw in the Gazettes.

This mode of transacting business would now be thought most
unconstitutional; and many writers, applying the standard of
their own age to the transactions of a former age, have severely
blamed William for acting without the advice of his ministers,
and his ministers for submitting to be kept in ignorance of
transactions which deeply concerned the honour of the Crown and
the welfare of the nation. Yet surely the presumption is that
what the most honest and honourable men of both parties,
Nottingham, for example, among the Tories, and Somers among the
Whigs, not only did, but avowed, cannot have been altogether
inexcusable; and a very sufficient excuse will without difficulty
be found.

The doctrine that the Sovereign is not responsible is doubtless
as old as any part of our constitution. The doctrine that his
ministers are responsible is also of immemorial antiquity. That
where there is no responsibility there can be no trustworthy
security against maladministration, is a doctrine which, in our
age and country, few people will be inclined to dispute. From
these three propositions it plainly follows that the
administration is likely to be best conducted when the Sovereign
performs no public act without the concurrence and
instrumentality of a minister. This argument is perfectly sound.
But we must remember that arguments are constructed in one way,
and governments in another. In logic, none but an idiot admits
the premises and denies the legitimate conclusion. But in
practice, we see that great and enlightened communities often
persist, generation after generation, in asserting principles,
and refusing to act upon those principles. It may be doubted
whether any real polity that ever existed has exactly
corresponded to the pure idea of that polity. According to the
pure idea of constitutional royalty, the prince reigns and does
not govern; and constitutional royalty, as it now exists in
England, comes nearer than in any other country to the pure idea.
Yet it would be a great error to imagine that our princes merely
reign and never govern. In the seventeenth century, both Whigs
and Tories thought it, not only the right, but the duty, of the
first magistrate to govern. All parties agreed in blaming Charles
the Second for not being his own Prime Minister; all parties
agreed in praising James for being his own Lord High Admiral; and
all parties thought it natural and reasonable that William should
be his own Foreign Secretary.

It may be observed that the ablest and best informed of those who
have censured the manner in which the negotiations of that time
were conducted are scarcely consistent with themselves. For,
while they blame William for being his own Ambassador
Plenipotentiary at the Hague, they praise him for being his own
Commander in Chief in Ireland. Yet where is the distinction in
principle between the two cases? Surely every reason which can be
brought to prove that he violated the constitution, when, by his
own sole authority, he made compacts with the Emperor and the
Elector of Brandenburg, will equally prove that he violated the
constitution, when, by his own sole authority, he ordered one
column to plunge into the water at Oldbridge and another to cross
the bridge of Slane. If the constitution gave him the command of
the forces of the State, the constitution gave him also the
direction of the foreign relations of the State. On what
principle then can it be maintained that he was at liberty to
exercise the former power without consulting any body, but that
he was bound to exercise the latter power in conformity with the
advice of a minister? Will it be said that an error in diplomacy
is likely to be more injurious to the country than an error in
strategy? Surely not. It is hardly conceivable that any blunder
which William might have made at the Hague could have been more
injurious to the public interests than a defeat at the Boyne. Or
will it be said that there was greater reason for placing
confidence in his military than in his diplomatic skill? Surely
not. In war he showed some great moral and intellectual
qualities; but, as a tactician, he did not rank high; and of his
many campaigns only two were decidedly successful. In the talents
of a negotiator, on the other hand, he has never been surpassed.
Of the interests and the tempers of the continental courts he
knew more than all his Privy Council together. Some of his
ministers were doubtless men of great ability, excellent orators
in the House of Lords, and versed in our insular politics. But,
in the deliberations of the Congress,
Caermarthen and Nottingham would have been found as far inferior
to him as he would have been found inferior to them in a
parliamentary debate on a question purely English. The coalition
against France was his work. He alone had joined together the
parts of that great whole; and he alone could keep them together.
If he had trusted that vast and complicated machine in the hands
of any of his subjects, it would instantly have fallen to pieces.

Some things indeed were to be done which none of his subjects
would have ventured to do. Pope Alexander was really, though not
in name, one of the allies; it was of the highest importance to
have him for a friend; and yet such was the temper of the English
nation that an English minister might well shrink from having any
dealings, direct or indirect, with the Vatican. The Secretaries
of State were glad to leave a matter so delicate and so full of
risk to their master, and to be able to protest with truth that
not a line to which the most intolerant Protestant could object
had ever gone out of their offices.

It must not be supposed however that William ever forgot that his
especial, his hereditary, mission was to protect the Reformed
Faith. His influence with Roman Catholic princes was constantly
and strenuously exerted for the benefit of their Protestant
subjects. In the spring of 1691, the Waldensian shepherds, long
and cruelly persecuted, and weary of their lives, were surprised
by glad tidings. Those who had been in prison for heresy returned
to their homes. Children, who had been taken from their parents
to be educated by priests, were sent back. Congregations, which
had hitherto met only by stealth and with extreme peril, now
worshipped God without molestation in the face of day. Those
simple mountaineers probably never knew that their fate had been
a subject of discussion at the Hague, and that they owed the
happiness of their firesides, and the security of their humble
temples to the ascendency which William exercised over the Duke
of Savoy.8

No coalition of which history has preserved the memory has had an
abler chief than William. But even William often contended in
vain against those vices which are inherent in the nature of all
coalitions. No undertaking which requires the hearty and long
continued cooperation of many independent states is likely to
prosper. Jealousies inevitably spring up. Disputes engender
disputes. Every confederate is tempted to throw on others some
part of the burden which he ought himself to bear. Scarcely one
honestly furnishes the promised contingent. Scarcely one exactly
observes the appointed day. But perhaps no coalition that ever
existed was in such constant danger of dissolution as the
coalition which William had with infinite difficulty formed. The
long list of potentates, who met in person or by their
representatives at the Hague, looked well in the Gazettes. The
crowd of princely equipages, attended by manycoloured guards and
lacqueys, looked well among the lime trees of the Voorhout. But
the very circumstances which made the Congress more splendid than
other congresses made the league weaker than other leagues. The
more numerous the allies, the more numerous were the dangers
which threatened the alliance. It was impossible that twenty
governments, divided by quarrels about precedence, quarrels about
territory, quarrels about trade, quarrels about religion, could
long act together in perfect harmony. That they acted together
during several years in imperfect harmony is to be ascribed to
the wisdom, patience and firmness of William.

The situation of his great enemy was very different. The
resources of the French monarchy, though certainly not equal to
those of England, Holland, the House of Austria, and the Empire
of Germany united, were yet very formidable; they were all
collected in a central position; they were all under the absolute
direction of a single mind. Lewis could do with two words what
William could hardly bring about by two months of negotiation at
Berlin, Munich, Brussels, Turin and Vienna. Thus France was found
equal in effective strength to all the states which were combined
against her. For in the political, as in the natural world, there
may be an equality of momentum between unequal bodies, when the
body which is inferior in weight is superior in velocity.