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

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

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William seems to have been alarmed and provoked by this
intelligence to a degree very unusual with him. In general he was
indulgent, nay, wilfully blind to the baseness of the English
statesmen whom he employed. He suspected, indeed he knew, that
some of his servants were in correspondence with his competitor;
and yet he did not punish them, did not disgrace them, did not
even frown on them. He thought meanly, and he had but too good
reason for thinking meanly, of the whole of that breed of public
men which the Restoration had formed and had bequeathed to the
Revolution. He knew them too well to complain because he did not
find in them veracity, fidelity, consistency, disinterestedness.
The very utmost that he expected from them was that they would
serve him as far as they could serve him without serious danger
to themselves. If he learned that, while sitting in his council
and enriched by his bounty, they were trying to make for
themselves at Saint Germains an interest which might be of use to
them in the event of a counterrevolution he was more inclined to
bestow on them the contemptuous commendation which was bestowed
of old on the worldly wisdom of the unjust steward than to call
them to a severe account. But the crime of Marlborough was of a
very different kind. His treason was not that of a fainthearted
man desirous to keep a retreat open for himself in every event,
but that of a man of dauntless courage, profound policy and
measureless ambition. William was not prone to fear; but, if
there was anything on earth that he feared, it was Marlborough. To treat the
criminal as he
deserved was indeed impossible; for those by whom his designs had
been made known to the government would never have consented to
appear against him in the witness box. But to permit him to
retain high command in that army which he was then engaged in
seducing would have been madness.

Late in the evening of the ninth of January the Queen had a
painful explanation with the Princess Anne. Early the next
morning Marlborough was informed that their Majesties had no
further occasion for his services, and that he must not presume
to appear in the royal presence. He had been loaded with honours,
and with what he loved better, riches. All was at once taken
away.

The real history of these events was known to very few. Evelyn,
who had in general excellent sources of information, believed
that the corruption and extortion of which Marlborough was
notoriously guilty had roused the royal indignation. The Dutch
ministers could only tell the States General that six different
stories were spread abroad by Marlborough's enemies. Some said
that he had indiscreetly suffered an important military secret to
escape him; some that he had spoken disrespectfully of their
Majesties; some that he had done ill offices between the Queen
and the Princess; some that he had been forming cabals in the
army; some that he had carried on an unauthorised correspondence
with the Danish government about the general politics of Europe;
and some that he had been trafficking with the agents of the
Court of Saint Germains.187 His friends contradicted every one of
these stories, and affirmed that his only crime was his dislike
of the foreigners who were lording it over his countrymen, and
that he had fallen a victim to the machinations of Portland, whom
he was known to dislike, and whom he had not very politely
described as a wooden fellow. The mystery, which from the first
overhung the story of Marlborough's disgrace, was darkened, after
the lapse of fifty years, by the shameless mendacity of his
widow. The concise narrative of James dispels the mystery, and
makes it clear, not only why Marlborough was disgraced, but also
how several of the reports about the cause of his disgrace
originated.188

Though William assigned to the public no reason for exercising
his undoubted prerogative by dismissing his servant, Anne had
been informed of the truth; and it had been left to her to judge
whether an officer who had been guilty of a foul treason was a
fit inmate of the palace. Three weeks passed. Lady Marlborough
still retained her post and her apartments at Whitehall. Her
husband still resided with her; and still the King and Queen gave
no sign of displeasure. At length the haughty and vindictive
Countess, emboldened by their patience, determined to brave them
face to face, and accompanied her mistress one evening to the
drawingroom at Kensington. This was too much even for the gentle
Mary. She would indeed have expressed her indignation before the
crowd which surrounded the card tables, had she not remembered
that her sister was in a state which entitles women to peculiar
indulgence. Nothing was said that night; but on the following day
a letter from the Queen was delivered to the Princess. Mary
declared that she was unwilling to give pain to a sister whom she
loved, and in whom she could easily pass over any ordinary fault;
but this was a serious matter. Lady Marlborough must be
dismissed. While she lived at Whitehall her lord would live
there. Was it proper that a man in his situation should be
suffered to make the palace of his injured master his home? Yet
so unwilling was His Majesty to deal severely with the worst
offenders, that even this had been borne, and might have been
borne longer, had not Anne brought the Countess to defy the King
and Queen in their own presence chamber. "It was unkind," Mary
wrote, "in a sister; it would have been uncivil in an equal; and
I need not say that I have more to claim." The Princess, in her
answer, did not attempt to exculpate or excuse Marlborough, but
expressed a firm conviction that his wife was innocent, and
implored the Queen not to insist on so heartrending a separation.
"There is no misery," Anne wrote, "that I cannot resolve to
suffer rather than the thoughts of parting from her."

The Princess sent for her uncle Rochester, and implored him to
carry her letter to Kensington, and to be her advocate there.
Rochester declined the office of messenger, and, though he tried
to restore harmony between his kinswomen, was by no means
disposed to plead the cause of the Churchills. He had indeed long
seen with extreme uneasiness the absolute dominion exercised over
his younger niece by that unprincipled pair. Anne's expostulation
was sent to the Queen by a servant. The only reply was a message
from the Lord Chamberlain, Dorset, commanding Lady Marlborough to
leave the palace. Mrs. Morley would not be separated from Mrs.
Freeman. As to Mr. Morley, all places where he could have his
three courses and his three bottles were alike to him. The
Princess and her whole family therefore retired to Sion House, a
villa belonging to the Duke of Somerset, and situated on the
margin of the Thames. In London she occupied Berkeley House,
which stood in Piccadilly, on the site now covered by Devonshire
House.189 Her income was secured by Act of Parliament; but no
punishment which it was in the power of the Crown to inflict on
her was spared. Her guard of honour was taken away. The foreign
ministers ceased to wait upon her. When she went to Bath the
Secretary of State wrote to request the Mayor of that city not to
receive her with the ceremonial with which royal visitors were
usually welcomed. When she attended divine service at Saint
James's Church she found that the rector had been forbidden to
show her the customary marks of respect, to bow to her from his
pulpit, and to send a copy of his text to be laid on her cushion.
Even the bellman of Piccadilly, it was said, perhaps falsely, was
ordered not to chaunt her praises in his doggrel verse under the
windows of Berkeley House.190

That Anne was in the wrong is clear; but it is not equally clear
that the King and Queen were in the right. They should have
either dissembled their displeasure, or openly declared the true
reasons for it. Unfortunately, they let every body see the
punishment, and they let scarcely any body know the provocation.
They should have remembered that, in the absence of information
about the cause of a quarrel, the public is naturally inclined to
side with the weaker party, and that this inclination is likely
to be peculiarly strong when a sister is, without any apparent
reason, harshly treated by a sister. They should have remembered,
too, that they were exposing to attack what was unfortunately the
one vulnerable part of Mary's character. A cruel fate had put
enmity between her and her father. Her detractors pronounced her
utterly destitute of natural affection; and even her eulogists,
when they spoke of the way in which she had discharged the duties
of the filial relation, were forced to speak in a subdued and
apologetic tone. Nothing therefore could be more unfortunate than
that she should a second time appear unmindful of the ties of
consanguinity. She was now at open war with both the two persons
who were nearest to her in blood. Many who thought that her
conduct towards her parent was justified by the extreme danger
which had threatened her country and her religion, were unable to
defend her conduct towards her sister. While Mary, who was really
guilty in this matter of nothing more than imprudence, was
regarded by the world as an oppressor, Anne, who was as culpable
as her small faculties enabled her to be, assumed the interesting
character of a meek, resigned sufferer. In those private letters,
indeed, to which the name of Morley was subscribed, the Princess
expressed the sentiments of a fury in the style of a fishwoman,
railed savagely at the whole Dutch nation, and called her brother
in law sometimes the abortion, sometimes the monster, sometimes
Caliban.191 But the nation heard nothing of her language and saw
nothing of her deportment but what was decorous and submissive.
The truth seems to have been that the rancorous and coarseminded
Countess gave the tone to Her Highness's confidential
correspondence, while the graceful, serene and politic Earl was
suffered to prescribe the course which was to be taken before the
public eye. During a short time the Queen was generally blamed.
But the charm of her temper and manners was irresistible; and in
a few months she regained the popularity which she had lost.192

It was a most fortunate circumstance for Marlborough that, just
at the very time when all London was talking about his disgrace,
and trying to guess at the cause of the King's sudden anger
against one who had always seemed to be a favourite, an
accusation of treason was brought by William Fuller against many
persons of high consideration, was strictly investigated, and was
proved to be false and malicious. The consequence was that the
public, which rarely discriminates nicely, could not, at that
moment, be easily brought to believe in the reality of any
Jacobite conspiracy.

That Fuller's plot is less celebrated than the Popish plot is
rather the fault of the historians than of Fuller, who did all
that man could do to secure an eminent place among villains.
Every person well read in history must have observed that
depravity has its temporary modes, which come in and go out like
modes of dress and upholstery. It may be doubted whether, in our
country, any man ever before the year 1678 invented and related
on oath a circumstantial history, altogether fictitious, of a
treasonable plot, for the purpose of making himself important by
destroying men who had given him no provocation. But in the year
1678 this execrable crime became the fashion, and continued to be
so during the twenty years which followed. Preachers designated
it as our peculiar national sin, and prophesied that it would
draw on us some awful national judgment. Legislators proposed new
punishments of terrible severity for this new atrocity.193 It was
not however found necessary to resort to those punishments. The
fashion changed; and during the last century and a half there has
perhaps not been a single instance of this particular kind of
wickedness.

The explanation is simple. Oates was the founder of a school. His
success proved that no romance is too wild to be received with
faith by understandings which fear and hatred have disordered.
His slanders were monstrous; but they were well timed; he spoke
to a people made credulous by their passions; and thus, by
impudent and cruel lying, he raised himself in a week from
beggary and obscurity to luxury, renown and power. He had once
eked out the small tithes of a miserable vicarage by stealing the
pigs and fowls of his parishioners.194 He was now lodged in a
palace; he was followed by admiring crowds; he had at his mercy
the estates and lives of Howards and Herberts. A crowd of
imitators instantly appeared. It seemed that much more might be
got, and that much less was risked, by testifying to an imaginary
conspiracy than by robbing on the highway or clipping the coin.
Accordingly the Bedloes, Dangerfields, Dugdales, Turberviles,
made haste to transfer their industry to an employment at once
more profitable and less perilous than any to which they were
accustomed. Till the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament Popish
plots were the chief manufacture. Then, during seven years, Whig
plots were the only plots which paid. After the Revolution
Jacobite plots came in; but the public had become cautious; and
though the new false witnesses were in no respect less artful
than their predecessors, they found much less encouragement. The
history of the first great check given to the practices of this
abandoned race of men well deserves to be circumstantially
related.

In 1689, and in the beginning of 1690, William Fuller had
rendered to the government service such as the best governments
sometimes require, and such as none but the worst men ever
perform. His useful treachery had been rewarded by his employers,
as was meet, with money and with contempt. Their liberality
enabled him to live during some months like a fine gentleman. He
called himself a Colonel, hired servants, clothed them in
gorgeous liveries, bought fine horses, lodged in Pall Mall, and
showed his brazen forehead, overtopped by a wig worth fifty
guineas, in the antechambers of the palace and in the stage box
at the theatre. He even gave himself the airs of a favourite of
royalty, and, as if he thought that William could not live
without him, followed His Majesty first to Ireland, and then to
the Congress of Princes at the Hague. Fuller afterwards boasted
that, at the Hague, he appeared with a retinue fit for an
ambassador, that he gave ten guineas a week for an apartment, and
that the worst waistcoat which he condescended to wear was of
silver stuff at forty shillings a yard. Such profusion, of
course, brought him to poverty. Soon after his return to England
he took refuge from the bailiffs in Axe Yard, a place lying
within the verge of Whitehall. His fortunes were desperate; he
owed great sums; on the government he had no claim; his past
services had been overpaid; no future service was to be expected
from him having appeared in the witness box as evidence for the
Crown, he could no longer be of any use as a spy on the
Jacobites; and by all men of virtue and honour, to whatever party
they might belong, he was abhorred and shunned.

Just at this time, when he was in the frame of mind in which men
are open to the worst temptations, he fell in with the worst of
tempters, in truth, with the Devil in human shape. Oates had
obtained his liberty, his pardon, and a pension which made him a
much richer man than nineteen twentieths of the members of that
profession of which he was the disgrace. But he was still
unsatisfied. He complained that he had now less than three
hundred a year. In the golden days of the Plot he had been
allowed three times as much, had been sumptuously lodged in the
palace, had dined on plate and had been clothed in silk. He
clamoured for an increase of his stipend. Nay, he was even
impudent enough to aspire to ecclesiastical preferment, and
thought it hard that, while so many mitres were distributed, he
could not get a deanery, a prebend, or even a living. He missed
no opportunity of urging his pretensions. He haunted the public
offices and the lobbies of the Houses of Parliament. He might be
seen and heard every day, hurrying, as fast as his uneven legs
would carry him, between Charing Cross and Westminster Hall,
puffing with haste and self importance, chattering about what he
had done for the good cause, and reviling, in the style of the
boatmen on the river, all the statesmen and divines whom he
suspected of doing him ill offices at Court, and keeping him back
from a bishopric. When he found that there was no hope for him in
the Established Church, he turned to the Baptists. They, at
first, received him very coldly; but he gave such touching
accounts of the wonderful work of grace which had been wrought in
his soul, and vowed so solemnly, before Jehovah and the holy
angels, to be thenceforth a burning and shining light, that it
was difficult for simple and well meaning people to think him
altogether insincere. He mourned, he said, like a turtle. On one
Lord's day he thought he should have died of grief at being shut
out from fellowship with the saints. He was at length admitted to
communion; but before he had been a year among his new friends
they discovered his true character, and solemnly cast him out as
a hypocrite. Thenceforth he became the mortal enemy of the
leading Baptists, and persecuted them with the same treachery,
the same mendacity, the same effrontery, the same black malice
which had many years before wrought the destruction of more
celebrated victims. Those who had lately been edified by his
account of his blessed experiences stood aghast to hear him
crying out that he would be revenged, that revenge was God's own
sweet morsel, that the wretches who had excommunicated him should
be ruined, that they should be forced to fly their country, that
they should be stripped to the last shilling. His designs were at
length frustrated by a righteous decree of the Court of Chancery,
a decree which would have left a deep stain on the character of
an ordinary man, but which makes no perceptible addition to the
infamy of Titus Oates.195 Through all changes, however, he was
surrounded by a small knot of hotheaded and foulmouthed
agitators, who, abhorred and despised by every respectable Whig,
yet called themselves Whigs, and thought themselves injured
because they were not rewarded for scurrility and slander with
the best places under the Crown.

In 1691, Titus, in order to be near the focal point of political
intrigue and faction, had taken a house within the precinct of
Whitehall. To this house Fuller, who lived hard by, found
admission. The evil work which had been begun in him, when he was
still a child, by the memoirs of Dangerfield, was now completed
by the conversation of Oates. The Salamanca Doctor was, as a
witness, no longer formidable; but he was impelled, partly by the
savage malignity which he felt towards all whom he considered as
his enemies, and partly by mere monkeylike restlessness and love
of mischief, to do, through the instrumentality of others, what
he could no longer do in person. In Fuller he had found the
corrupt heart, the ready tongue and the unabashed front which are
the first qualifications for the office of a false accuser. A
friendship, if that word may be so used, sprang up between the
pair. Oates opened his house and even his purse to Fuller. The
veteran sinner, both directly and through the agency of his
dependents, intimated to the novice that nothing made a man so
important as the discovering of a plot, and that these were times
when a young fellow who would stick at nothing and fear nobody
might do wonders. The Revolution,--such was the language
constantly held by Titus and his parasites,--had produced little
good. The brisk boys of Shaftesbury had not been recompensed
according to their merits. Even the Doctor, such was the
ingratitude of men, was looked on coldly at the new Court. Tory
rogues sate at the council board, and were admitted to the royal
closet. It would be a noble feat to bring their necks to the
block. Above all, it would be delightful to see Nottingham's long
solemn face on Tower Hill. For the hatred with which these bad
men regarded Nottingham had no bounds, and was probably excited
less by his political opinions, in which there was doubtless much
to condemn, than by his moral character, in which the closest
scrutiny will detect little that is not deserving of approbation.
Oates, with the authority which experience and success entitle a
preceptor to assume, read his pupil a lecture on the art of
bearing false witness. "You ought," he said, with many oaths and
curses, "to have made more, much more, out of what you heard and
saw at Saint Germains. Never was there a finer foundation for a
plot. But you are a fool; you are a coxcomb; I could beat you; I
would not have done so. I used to go to Charles and tell him his
own. I called Lauderdale rogue to his face. I made King,
Ministers, Lords, Commons, afraid of me. But you young men have
no spirit." Fuller was greatly edified by these exhortations. It
was, however, hinted to him by some of his associates that, if he
meant to take up the trade of swearing away lives, he would do
well not to show himself so often at coffeehouses in the company
of Titus. "The Doctor," said one of the gang, "is an excellent
person, and has done great things in his time; but many people
are prejudiced against him; and, if you are really going to
discover a plot, the less you are seen with him the better."
Fuller accordingly ceased to frequent Oates's house, but still
continued to receive his great master's instructions in private.

To do Fuller justice, he seems not to have taken up the trade of
a false witness till he could no longer support himself by
begging or swindling. He lived for a time on the charity of the
Queen. He then levied contributions by pretending to be one of
the noble family of Sidney. He wheedled Tillotson out of some
money, and requited the good Archbishop's kindness by passing
himself off as His Grace's favourite nephew. But in the autumn of
1691 all these shifts were exhausted. After lying in several
spunging houses, Fuller was at length lodged in the King's Bench
prison, and he now thought it time to announce that he had
discovered a plot.196

He addressed himself first to Tillotson and Portland; but both
Tillotson and Portland soon perceived that he was lying. What he
said was, however, reported to the King, who, as might have been
expected, treated the information and the informant with cold
contempt. All that remained was to try whether a flame could be
raised in the Parliament.

Soon after the Houses met, Fuller petitioned the Commons to hear
what he had to say, and promised to make wonderful disclosures.
He was brought from his prison to the bar of the House; and he
there repeated a long romance. James, he said, had delegated the
regal authority to six commissioners, of whom Halifax was first.
More than fifty lords and gentlemen had signed an address to the
French King, imploring him to make a great effort for the
restoration of the House of Stuart. Fuller declared that he had
seen this address, and recounted many of the names appended to
it. Some members made severe remarks on the improbability of the
story and on the character of the witness. He was, they said, one
of the greatest rogues on the face of the earth; and he told such
things as could scarcely be credited if he were an angel from
heaven. Fuller audaciously pledged himself to bring proofs which
would satisfy the most incredulous. He was, he averred, in
communication with some agents of James. Those persons were ready
to make reparation to their country. Their testimony would be
decisive; for they were in possession of documentary evidence
which would confound the guilty. They held back only because they
saw some of the traitors high in office and near the royal
person, and were afraid of incurring the enmity of men so
powerful and so wicked. Fuller ended by asking for a sum of
money, and by assuring the Commons that he would lay it out to
good account.197 Had his impudent request been granted, he would
probably have paid his debts, obtained his liberty, and
absconded; but the House very wisely insisted on seeing his
witnesses first. He then began to shuffle. The gentlemen were on
the Continent, and could not come over without passports.
Passports were delivered to him; but he complained that they were
insufficient. At length the Commons, fully determined to get at
the truth, presented an address requesting the King to send
Fuller a blank safe conduct in the largest terms.198 The safe
conduct was sent. Six weeks passed, and nothing was heard of the
witnesses. The friends of the lords and gentlemen who had been
accused represented strongly that the House ought not to separate
for the summer without coming to some decision on charges so
grave. Fuller was ordered to attend. He pleaded sickness, and
asserted, not for the first time, that the Jacobites had poisoned
him. But all his plans were confounded by the laudable
promptitude and vigour with which the Commons acted. A Committee
was sent to his bedside, with orders to ascertain whether he
really had any witnesses, and where those witnesses resided. The
members who were deputed for this purpose went to the King's
Bench prison, and found him suffering under a disorder, produced,
in all probability, by some emetic which he had swallowed for the
purpose of deceiving them. In answer to their questions he said
that two of his witnesses, Delaval and Hayes, were in England,
and were lodged at the house of a Roman Catholic apothecary in
Holborn. The Commons, as soon as the Committee had reported, sent
some members to the house which he had indicated. That house and
all the neighbouring houses were searched. Delaval and Hayes were
not to be found, nor had any body in the vicinity ever seen such
men or heard of them. The House, therefore, on the last day of
the session, just before Black Rod knocked at the door,
unanimously resolved that William Fuller was a cheat and a false
accuser; that he had insulted the Government and the Parliament;
that he had calumniated honourable men, and that an address
should be carried up to the throne, requesting that he might be
prosecuted for his villany.199 He was consequently tried,
convicted, and sentenced to fine, imprisonment and the pillory.
The exposure, more terrible than death to a mind not lost to all
sense of shame, he underwent with a hardihood worthy of his two
favourite models, Dangerfield and Oates. He had the impudence to
persist, year after year, in affirming that he had fallen a
victim to the machinations of the late King, who had spent six
thousand pounds in order to ruin him. Delaval and Hayes--so this
fable ran--had been instructed by James in person. They had, in
obedience to his orders, induced Fuller to pledge his word for
their appearance, and had then absented themselves, and left him
exposed to the resentment of the House of Commons.200 The story
had the reception which it deserved, and Fuller sank into an
obscurity from which he twice or thrice, at long intervals, again
emerged for a moment into infamy.