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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Meanwhile the false accusers had been devising a new scheme.
Blackhead paid another visit to Bromley, and contrived to take
the forged Association out of the place in which he had hid it,
and to bring it back to Young. One of Young's two wives then
carried it to the Secretary's Office, and told a lie, invented by
her husband, to explain how a paper of such importance had come
into her hands. But it was not now so easy to frighten the
ministers as it had been a few days before. The battle of La
Hogue had put an end to all apprehensions of invasion.
Nottingham, therefore, instead of sending down a warrant to
Bromley, merely wrote to beg that Sprat would call on him at
Whitehall. The summons was promptly obeyed, and the accused
prelate was brought face to face with Blackhead before the
Council. Then the truth came out fast. The Bishop remembered the
villanous look and voice of the man who had knelt to ask the
episcopal blessing. The Bishop's secretary confirmed his master's
assertions. The false witness soon lost his presence of mind. His
cheeks, always sallow, grew frightfully livid. His voice,
generally loud and coarse, sank into a whisper. The Privy
Councillors saw his confusion, and crossexamined him sharply. For
a time he answered their questions by repeatedly stammering out
his original lie in the original words. At last he found that he
had no way of extricating himself but by owning his guilt. He
acknowledged that he had given an untrue account of his visit to
Bromley; and, after much prevarication, he related how he had
hidden the Association, and how he had removed it from its hiding
place, and confessed that he had been set on by Young.

The two accomplices were then confronted. Young, with unabashed
forehead, denied every thing. He knew nothing about the
flowerpots. "If so," cried Nottingham and Sidney together, "why
did you give such particular directions that the flowerpots at
Bromley should be searched?" "I never gave any directions about
the flowerpots," said Young. Then the whole board broke forth.
"How dare you say so? We all remember it." Still the knave stood
up erect, and exclaimed, with an impudence which Oates might have
envied, "This hiding is all a trick got up between the Bishop and
Blackhead. The Bishop has taken Blackhead off; and they are both
trying to stifle the plot." This was too much. There was a smile
and a lifting up of hands all round the board. "Man," cried
Caermarthen, "wouldst thou have us believe that the Bishop
contrived to have this paper put where it was ten to one that our
messengers had found it, and where, if they had found it, it
might have hanged him?"

The false accusers were removed in custody. The Bishop, after
warmly thanking the ministers for their fair and honourable
conduct, took his leave of them. In the antechamber he found a
crowd of people staring at Young, while Young sate, enduring the
stare with the serene fortitude of a man who had looked down on
far greater multitudes from half the pillories in England.
"Young," said Sprat, "your conscience must tell you that you have
cruelly wronged me. For your own sake I am sorry that you persist
in denying what your associate has confessed." "Confessed!" cried
Young; "no, all is not confessed yet; and that you shall find to
your sorrow. There is such a thing as impeachment, my Lord. When
Parliament sits you shall hear more of me." "God give you
repentance," answered the Bishop. "For, depend upon it, you are
in much more danger of being damned than I of being
impeached."281

Forty-eight hours after the detection of this execrable fraud,
Marlborough was admitted to bail. Young and Blackhead had done
him an inestimable service. That he was concerned in a plot quite
as criminal as that which they had falsely imputed to him, and
that the government was to possession of moral proofs of his
guilt, is now certain. But his contemporaries had not, as we
have, the evidence of his perfidy before them. They knew that he
had been accused of an offence of which he was innocent, that
perjury and forgery had been employed to ruin him, and that, in
consequence of these machinations, he had passed some weeks in
the Tower. There was in the public mind a very natural confusion
between his disgrace and his imprisonment. He had been imprisoned
without sufficient cause. Might it not, in the absence of all
information, be reasonably presumed that he had been disgraced
without sufficient cause? It was certain that a vile calumny,
destitute of all foundation, had caused him to be treated as a
criminal in May. Was it not probable, then, that calumny might
have deprived him of his master's favour in January?

Young's resources were not yet exhausted. As soon as he had been
carried back from Whitehall to Newgate, he set himself to
construct a new plot, and to find a new accomplice. He addressed
himself to a man named Holland, who was in the lowest state of
poverty. Never, said Young, was there such a golden opportunity.
A bold, shrewd, fellow might easily earn five hundred pounds. To
Holland five hundred pounds seemed fabulous wealth. What, he
asked, was he to do for it? Nothing, he was told, but to speak
the truth, that was to say, substantial truth, a little disguised
and coloured. There really was a plot; and this would have been
proved if Blackhead had not been bought off. His desertion had
made it necessary to call in the help of fiction. "You must swear
that you and I were in a back room upstairs at the Lobster in
Southwark. Some men came to meet us there. They gave a password
before they were admitted. They were all in white camlet cloaks.
They signed the Association in our presence. Then they paid each
his shilling and went away. And you must be ready to identify my
Lord Marlborough and the Bishop of Rochester as two of these
men." "How can I identify them?" said Holland, "I never saw
them." "You must contrive to see them," answered the tempter, "as
soon as you can. The Bishop will be at the Abbey. Anybody about
the Court will point out my Lord Marlborough." Holland
immediately went to Whitehall, and repeated this conversation to
Nottingham. The unlucky imitator of Oates was prosecuted, by
order of the government, for perjury, subornation of perjury, and
forgery. He was convicted and imprisoned, was again set in the
pillory, and underwent, in addition to the exposure, about which
he cared little, such a pelting as had seldom been known.282
After his punishment, he was, during some years, lost in the
crowd of pilferers, ringdroppers and sharpers who infested the
capital. At length, in the year 1700, he emerged from his
obscurity, and excited a momentary interest. The newspapers
announced that Robert Young, Clerk, once so famous, had been
taken up for coining, then that he had been found guilty, then
that the dead warrant had come down, and finally that the
reverend gentleman had been hanged at Tyburn, and had greatly
edified a large assembly of spectators by his penitence.283

CHAPTER XIX

Foreign Policy of William--The Northern Powers--The Pope--Conduct
of the Allies--The Emperor--Spain--William succeeds in preventing
the Dissolution of the Coalition--New Arrangements for the
Government of the Spanish Netherlands--Lewis takes the Field--
Siege of Namur--Lewis returns to Versailles--Luxemburg--Battle of
Steinkirk--Conspiracy of Grandval--Return of William to England--
Naval Maladministration--Earthquake at Port Royal--Distress in
England; Increase of Crime--Meeting of Parliament; State of
Parties--The King's Speech; Question of Privilege raised by the
Lords--Debates on the State of the Nation--Bill for the
Regulation of Trials in Cases of Treason--Case of Lord Mohun--
Debates on the India Trade--Supply--Ways and Means; Land Tax--
Origin of the National Debt--Parliamentary Reform--The Place
Bill--The Triennial Bill--The First Parliamentary Discussion on
the Liberty of the Press--State of Ireland--The King refuses to
pass the Triennial Bill--Ministerial Arrangements--The King goes
to Holland; a Session of Parliament in Scotland

WHILE England was agitated, first by the dread of an invasion,
and then by joy at the deliverance wrought for her by the valour
of her seamen, important events were taking place on the
Continent. On the sixth of March the King had arrived at the
Hague, and had proceeded to make his arrangements for the
approaching campaign.284

The prospect which lay before him was gloomy. The coalition of
which he was the author and the chief had, during some months,
been in constant danger of dissolution. By what strenuous
exertions, by what ingenious expedients, by what blandishments,
by what bribes, he succeeded in preventing his allies from
throwing themselves, one by one, at the feet of France, can be
but imperfectly known. The fullest and most authentic record of
the labours and sacrifices by which he kept together, during
eight years, a crowd of fainthearted and treacherous potentates,
negligent of the common interest and jealous of each other, is to
be found in his correspondence with Heinsius. In that
correspondence William is all himself. He had, in the course of
his eventful life, to sustain some high parts for which he was
not eminently qualified; and, in those parts, his success was
imperfect. As Sovereign of England, he showed abilities and
virtues which entitle him to honourable mention in history; but
his deficiencies were great. He was to the last a stranger
amongst us, cold, reserved, never in good spirits, never at his
ease. His kingdom was a place of exile. His finest palaces were
prisons. He was always counting the days which must elapse before
he should again see the land of his birth, the clipped trees, the
wings of the innumerable windmills, the nests of the storks on
the tall gables, and the long lines of painted villas reflected
in the sleeping canals. He took no pains to hide the preference
which he felt for his native soil and for his early friends; and
therefore, though he rendered great services to our country, he
did not reign in our hearts. As a general in the field, again, he
showed rare courage and capacity; but, from whatever cause, he
was, as a tactician, inferior to some of his contemporaries, who,
in general powers of mind, were far inferior to him. The business
for which he was preeminently fitted was diplomacy, in the
highest sense of the word. It may be doubted whether he has ever
had a superior in the art of conducting those great negotiations
on which the welfare of the commonwealth of nations depends. His
skill in this department of politics was never more severely
tasked or more signally proved than during the latter part of
1691 and the earlier part of 1692.

One of his chief difficulties was caused by the sullen and
menacing demeanour of the Northern powers. Denmark and Sweden had
at one time seemed disposed to join the coalition; but they had
early become cold, and were fast becoming hostile. From France
they flattered themselves that they had little to fear. It was
not very probable that her armies would cross the Elbe, or that
her fleets would force a passage through the Sound. But the naval
strength of England and Holland united might well excite
apprehension at Stockholm and Copenhagen. Soon arose vexatious
questions of maritime right, questions such as, in almost every
extensive war of modern times, have arisen between belligerents
and neutrals. The Scandinavian princes complained that the
legitimate trade between the Baltic and France was tyrannically
interrupted. Though they had not in general been on very friendly
terms with each other, they began to draw close together,
intrigued at every petty German court, and tried to form what
William called a Third Party in Europe. The King of Sweden, who,
as Duke of Pomerania, was bound to send three thousand men for
the defence of the Empire, sent, instead of them, his advice that
the allies would make peace on the best terms which they could
get.285 The King of Denmark seized a great number of Dutch
merchantships, and collected in Holstein an army which caused no
small uneasiness to his neighbours. "I fear," William wrote, in
an hour of deep dejection, to Heinsius, "I fear that the object
of this Third Party is a peace which will bring in its train the
slavery of Europe. The day will come when Sweden and her
confederates will know too late how great an error they have
committed. They are farther, no doubt, than we from the danger;
and therefore it is that they are thus bent on working our ruin
and their own. That France will now consent to reasonable terms
is not to be expected; and it were better to fall sword in hand
than to submit to whatever she may dictate."286

While the King was thus disquieted by the conduct of the Northern
powers, ominous signs began to appear in a very different
quarter. It had, from the first, been no easy matter to induce
sovereigns who hated, and who, in their own dominions,
persecuted, the Protestant religion, to countenance the
revolution which had saved that religion from a great peril. But
happily the example and the authority of the Vatican had overcome
their scruples. Innocent the Eleventh and Alexander the Eighth
had regarded William with ill concealed partiality. He was not
indeed their friend; but he was their enemy's enemy; and James
had been, and, if restored, must again be, their enemy's vassal.
To the heretic nephew therefore they gave their effective
support, to the orthodox uncle only compliments and benedictions.
But Alexander the Eighth had occupied the papal throne little
more than fifteen months. His successor, Antonio Pignatelli, who
took the name of Innocent the Twelfth, was impatient to be
reconciled to Lewis. Lewis was now sensible that he had committed
a great error when he had roused against himself at once the
spirit of Protestantism and the spirit of Popery. He permitted
the French Bishops to submit themselves to the Holy See. The
dispute, which had, at one time, seemed likely to end in a great
Gallican schism, was accommodated; and there was reason to
believe that the influence of the head of the Church would be
exerted for the purpose of severing the ties which bound so many
Catholic princes to the Calvinist who had usurped the British
throne.

Meanwhile the coalition, which the Third Party on one side and
the Pope on the other were trying to dissolve, was in no small
danger of falling to pieces from mere rottenness. Two of the
allied powers, and two only, were hearty in the common cause;
England, drawing after her the other British kingdoms; and
Holland, drawing after her the other Batavian commonwealths.
England and Holland were indeed torn by internal factions, and
were separated from each other by mutual jealousies and
antipathies; but both were fully resolved not to submit to French
domination; and both were ready to bear their share, and more
than their share, of the charges of the contest. Most of the
members of the confederacy were not nations, but men, an Emperor,
a King, Electors, Dukes; and of these men there was scarcely one
whose whole soul was in the struggle, scarcely one who did not
hang back, who did not find some excuse for omitting to fulfil
his engagements, who did not expect to be hired to defend his own
rights and interests against the common enemy. But the war was
the war of the people of England and of the people of Holland.
Had it not been so, the burdens which it made necessary would not
have been borne by either England or Holland during a single
year. When William said that he would rather die sword in hand
than humble himself before France, he expressed what was felt,
not by himself alone, but by two great communities of which he
was the first magistrate. With those two communities, unhappily,
other states had little sympathy. Indeed those two communities
were regarded by other states as rich, plaindealing, generous
dupes are regarded by needy sharpers. England and Holland were
wealthy; and they were zealous. Their wealth excited the cupidity
of the whole alliance; and to that wealth their zeal was the key.
They were persecuted with sordid importunity by all their
confederates, from Caesar, who, in the pride of his solitary
dignity, would not honour King William with the title of Majesty,
down to the smallest Margrave who could see his whole
principality from the cracked windows of the mean and ruinous old
house which he called his palace. It was not enough that England
and Holland furnished much more than their contingents to the war
by land, and bore unassisted the whole charge of the war by sea.
They were beset by a crowd of illustrious mendicants, some rude,
some obsequious, but all indefatigable and insatiable. One prince
came mumping to them annually with a lamentable story about his
distresses. A more sturdy beggar threatened to join the Third
Party, and to make a separate peace with France, if his demands
were not granted. Every Sovereign too had his ministers and
favourites; and these ministers and favourites were perpetually
hinting that France was willing to pay them for detaching their
masters from the coalition, and that it would be prudent in
England and Holland to outbid France.

Yet the embarrassment caused by the rapacity of the allied courts
was scarcely greater than the embarrassment caused by their
ambition and their pride. This prince had set his heart on some
childish distinction, a title or a cross, and would do nothing
for the common cause till his wishes were accomplished. That
prince chose to fancy that he had been slighted, and would not
stir till reparation had been made to him. The Duke of Brunswick
Lunenburg would not furnish a battalion for the defence of
Germany unless he was made an Elector.287 The Elector of
Brandenburg declared that he was as hostile as he had ever been
to France; but he had been ill used by the Spanish government;
and he therefore would not suffer his soldiers to be employed in
the defence of the Spanish Netherlands. He was willing to bear
his share of the war; but it must be in his own way; he must have
the command of a distinct army; and he must be stationed between
the Rhine and the Meuse.288 The Elector of Saxony complained that
bad winter quarters had been assigned to his troops; he therefore
recalled them just when they should have been preparing to take
the field, but very coolly offered to send them back if England
and Holland would give him four hundred thousand rixdollars.289

It might have been expected that at least the two chiefs of the
House of Austria would have put forth, at this conjuncture, all
their strength against the rival House of Bourbon. Unfortunately
they could not be induced to exert themselves vigorously even for
their own preservation. They were deeply interested in keeping
the French out of Italy. Yet they could with difficulty be
prevailed upon to lend the smallest assistance to the Duke of
Savoy. They seemed to think it the business of England and
Holland to defend the passes of the Alps, and to prevent the
armies of Lewis from overflowing Lombardy. To the Emperor indeed
the war against France was a secondary object. His first object
was the war against Turkey. He was dull and bigoted. His mind
misgave him that the war against France was, in some sense, a war
against the Catholic religion; and the war against Turkey was a
crusade. His recent campaign on the Danube had been successful.
He might easily have concluded an honourable peace with the
Porte, and have turned his arms westward. But he had conceived
the hope that he might extend his hereditary dominions at the
expense of the Infidels. Visions of a triumphant entry into
Constantinople and of a Te Deum in Saint Sophia's had risen in
his brain. He not only employed in the East a force more than
sufficient to have defended Piedmont and reconquered Loraine; but
he seemed to think that England and Holland were bound to reward
him largely for neglecting their interests and pursuing his
own.290

Spain already was what she continued to be down to our own time.
Of the Spain which had domineered over the land and the ocean,
over the Old and the New World, of the Spain which had, in the
short space of twelve years, led captive a Pope and a King of
France, a Sovereign of Mexico and a Sovereign of Peru, of the
Spain which had sent an army to the walls of Paris and had
equipped a mighty fleet to invade England, nothing remained but
an arrogance which had once excited terror and hatred, but which
could now excite only derision. In extent, indeed, the dominions
of the Catholic King exceeded those of Rome when Rome was at the
zenith of power. But the huge mass lay torpid and helpless, and
could be insulted or despoiled with impunity. The whole
administration, military and naval, financial and colonial, was
utterly disorganized. Charles was a fit representative of his
kingdom, impotent physically, intellectually and morally, sunk in
ignorance, listlessness and superstition, yet swollen with a
notion of his own dignity, and quick to imagine and to resent
affronts. So wretched had his education been that, when he was
told of the fall of Mons, the most important fortress in his vast
empire, he asked whether Mons was in England.291 Among the
ministers who were raised up and pulled down by his sickly
caprice, was none capable of applying a remedy to the distempers
of the State. In truth to brace anew the nerves of that paralysed
body would have been a hard task even for Ximenes. No servant of
the Spanish Crown occupied a more important post, and none was
more unfit for an important post, than the Marquess of Gastanaga.
He was Governor of the Netherlands; and in the Netherlands it
seemed probable that the fate of Christendom would be decided. He
had discharged his trust as every public trust was then
discharged in every part of that vast monarchy on which it was
boastfully said that the sun never set. Fertile and rich as was
the country which he ruled, he threw on England and Holland the
whole charge of defending it. He expected that arms, ammunition,
waggons, provisions, every thing, would be furnished by the
heretics. It had never occurred to him that it was his business,
and not theirs, to put Mons in a condition to stand a siege. The
public voice loudly accused him of having sold that celebrated
stronghold to France. But it is probable that he was guilty of
nothing worse than the haughty apathy and sluggishness
characteristic of his nation.

Such was the state of the coalition of which William was the
head. There were moments when he felt himself overwhelmed, when
his spirits sank, when his patience was wearied out, and when his
constitutional irritability broke forth. "I cannot," he wrote,
"offer a suggestion without being met by a demand for a
subsidy."292 "I have refused point blank," he wrote on another
occasion, when he had been importuned for money, "it is impossible
that the States General and England can bear the charge of the
army on the Rhine, of the army in Piedmont, and of the whole
defence of Flanders, to say nothing of the immense cost of the
naval war. If our allies can do nothing for themselves, the
sooner the alliance goes to pieces the better."293 But, after
every short fit of despondency and ill humour, he called up all
the force of his mind, and put a strong curb on his temper. Weak,
mean, false, selfish, as too many of the confederates were, it
was only by their help that he could accomplish what he had from
his youth up considered as his mission. If they abandoned him,
France would be dominant without a rival in Europe. Well as they
deserved to be punished, he would not, to punish them, acquiesce
in the subjugation of the whole civilised world. He set himself
therefore to surmount some difficulties and to evade others. The
Scandinavian powers he conciliated by waiving, reluctantly
indeed, and not without a hard internal struggle, some of his
maritime rights.294 At Rome his influence, though indirectly
exercised, balanced that of the Pope himself. Lewis and James
found that they had not a friend at the Vatican except Innocent;
and Innocent, whose nature was gentle and irresolute, shrank from
taking a course directly opposed to the sentiments of all who
surrounded him. In private conversations with Jacobite agents he
declared himself devoted to the interests of the House of Stuart;
but in his public acts he observed a strict neutrality. He sent
twenty thousand crowns to Saint Germains; but he excused himself
to the enemies of France by protesting that this was not a
subsidy for any political purpose, but merely an alms to be
distributed among poor British Catholics. He permitted prayers
for the good cause to be read in the English College at Rome; but
he insisted that those prayers should be drawn up in general
terms, and that no name should be mentioned. It was in vain that
the ministers of the Houses of Stuart and Bourbon adjured him to
take a more decided course. "God knows," he exclaimed on one
occasion, "that I would gladly shed my blood to restore the King
of England. But what can I do? If I stir, I am told that I am
favouring the French, and helping them to set up an universal
monarchy. I am not like the old Popes. Kings will not listen to
me as they listened to my predecessors. There is no religion now,
nothing but wicked, worldly policy. The Prince of Orange is
master. He governs us all. He has got such a hold on the Emperor
and on the King of Spain that neither of them dares to displease
him. God help us! He alone can help us." And, as the old man
spoke, he beat the table with his hand in an agony of impotent
grief and indignation.295