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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Such was the Court of James, as described by a Roman Catholic.
Yet, however disagreeable that Court may have been to a Roman
Catholic, it was infinitely more disagreeable to a Protestant.
For the Protestant had to endure, in addition to all the dulness
of which the Roman Catholic complained, a crowd of vexations from
which the Roman Catholic was free. In every competition between a
Protestant and a Roman Catholic the Roman Catholic was preferred.
In every quarrel between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic the
Roman Catholic was supposed to be in the right. While the
ambitious Protestant looked in vain for promotion, while the
dissipated Protestant looked in vain for amusement, the serious
Protestant looked in vain for spiritual instruction and
consolation. James might, no doubt, easily have obtained
permission for those members of the Church of England who had
sacrificed every thing in his cause to meet privately in some
modest oratory, and to receive the eucharistic bread and wine
from the hands of one of their own clergy; but he did not wish
his residence to be defiled by such impious rites. Doctor Dennis
Granville, who had quitted the richest deanery, the richest
archdeaconry and one of the richest livings in England, rather
than take the oaths, gave mortal offence by asking leave to read
prayers to the exiles of his own communion. His request was
refused; and he was so grossly insulted by his master's chaplains
and their retainers that he was forced to quit Saint Germains.
Lest some other Anglican doctor should be equally importunate,
James wrote to inform his agents in England that he wished no
Protestant divine to come out to him.422 Indeed the nonjuring
clergy were at least as much sneered at and as much railed at in
his palace as in his nephew's. If any man had a claim to be
mentioned with respect at Saint Germains, it was surely Sancroft.
Yet it was reported that the bigots who were assembled there
never spoke of him but with aversion and disgust. The sacrifice
of the first place in the Church, of the first place in the
peerage, of the mansion at Lambeth and the mansion at Croydon, of
immense patronage and of a revenue of more than five thousand a
year was thought but a poor atonement for the great crime of
having modestly remonstrated against the unconstitutional
Declaration of Indulgence. Sancroft was pronounced to be just
such a traitor and just such a penitent as Judas Iscariot. The
old hypocrite had, it was said, while affecting reverence and
love for his master, given the fatal signal to his master's
enemies. When the mischief had been done and could not be
repaired, the conscience of the sinner had begun to torture him.
He had, like his prototype, blamed himself and bemoaned himself.
He had, like his prototype, flung down his wealth at the feet of
those whose instrument he had been. The best thing that he could
now do was to make the parallel complete by hanging himself.423

James seems to have thought that the strongest proof of kindness
which he could give to heretics who had resigned wealth, country,
family, for his sake, was to suffer them to be beset, on their
dying beds, by his priests. If some sick man, helpless in body
and in mind, and deafened by the din of bad logic and bad
rhetoric, suffered a wafer to be thrust into his mouth, a great
work of grace was triumphantly announced to the Court; and the
neophyte was buried with all the pomp of religion. But if a
royalist, of the highest rank and most stainless character, died
professing firm attachment to the Church of England, a hole was
dug in the fields; and, at dead of night, he was flung into it
and covered up like a mass of carrion. Such were the obsequies of
the Earl of Dunfermline, who had served the House of Stuart with
the hazard of his life and to the utter ruin of his fortunes, who
had fought at Killiecrankie, and who had, after the victory,
lifted from the earth the still breathing remains of Dundee.
While living he had been treated with contumely. The Scottish
officers who had long served under him had in vain entreated
that, when they were formed into a company, he might still be
their commander. His religion had been thought a fatal
disqualification. A worthless adventurer, whose only
recommendation was that he was a Papist, was preferred.
Dunfermline continued, during a short time, to make his
appearance in the circle which surrounded the Prince whom he had
served too well; but it was to no purpose. The bigots who ruled
the Court refused to the ruined and expatriated Protestant Lord
the means of subsistence; he died of a broken heart; and they
refused him even a grave.424

The insults daily offered at Saint Germains to the Protestant
religion produced a great effect in England. The Whigs
triumphantly asked whether it were not clear that the old tyrant
was utterly incorrigible; and many even of the nonjurors observed
his proceedings with shame, disgust and alarm.425 The Jacobite
party had, from the first, been divided into two sections, which,
three or four years after the Revolution, began to be known as
the Compounders and the Noncompounders. The Compounders were
those who wished for a restoration, but for a restoration
accompanied by a general amnesty, and by guarantees for the
security of the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the
realm. The Noncompounders thought it downright Whiggery,
downright rebellion; to take advantage of His Majesty's
unfortunate situation for the purpose of imposing on him any
condition. The plain duty of his subjects was to bring him back.
What traitors he would punish and what traitors he would spare,
what laws he would observe and with what laws he would dispense,
were questions to be decided by himself alone. If he decided them
wrongly, he must answer for his fault to heaven and not to his
people.

The great body of the English Jacobites were more or less
Compounders. The pure Noncompounders were chiefly to be found
among the Roman Catholics, who, very naturally, were not
solicitous to obtain any security for a religion which they
thought heretical, or for a polity from the benefits of which
they were excluded. There were also some Protestant nonjurors,
such as Kettlewell and Hickes, who resolutely followed the theory
of Filmer to all the extreme consequences to which it led. But,
though Kettlewell tried to convince his countrymen that
monarchical government had been ordained by God, not as a means
of making them happy here, but as a cross which it was their duty
to take up and bear in the hope of being recompensed for their
sufferings hereafter, and though Hickes assured them that there
was not a single Compounder in the whole Theban legion, very few
churchmen were inclined to run the risk of the gallows merely for
the purpose of reestablishing the High Commission and the
Dispensing Power.

The Compounders formed the main strength of the Jacobite party in
England; but the Noncompounders had hitherto had undivided sway
at Saint Germains. No Protestant, no moderate Roman Catholic, no
man who dared to hint that any law could bind the royal
prerogative, could hope for the smallest mark of favour from the
banished King. The priests and the apostate Melfort, the avowed
enemy of the Protestant religion and of civil liberty, of
Parliaments, of trial by jury and of the Habeas Corpus Act, were
in exclusive possession of the royal ear. Herbert was called
Chancellor, walked before the other officers of state, wore a
black robe embroidered with gold, and carried a seal; but he was
a member of the Church of England; and therefore he was not
suffered to sit at the Council Board.426

The truth is that the faults of James's head and heart were
incurable. In his view there could be between him and his
subjects no reciprocity of obligation. Their duty was to risk
property, liberty, life, in order to replace him on the throne,
and then to bear patiently whatever he chose to inflict upon
them. They could no more pretend to merit before him than before
God. When they had done all, they were still unprofitable
servants. The highest praise due to the royalist who shed his
blood on the field of battle or on the scaffold for hereditary
monarchy was simply that he was not a traitor. After all the
severe discipline which the deposed King had undergone, he was
still as much bent on plundering and abasing the Church of
England as on the day when he told the kneeling fellows of
Magdalene to get out of his sight, or on the day when he sent the
Bishops to the Tower. He was in the habit of declaring that he
would rather die without seeing England again than stoop to
capitulate with those whom he ought to command.427 In the
Declaration of April 1692 the whole man appears without disguise,
full of his own imaginary rights, unable to understand how any
body but himself can have any rights, dull, obstinate and cruel.
Another paper which he drew up about the same time shows, if
possible, still more clearly, how little he had profited by a
sharp experience. In that paper he set forth the plan according
to which he intended to govern when he should be restored. He
laid it down as a rule that one Commissioner of the Treasury, one
of the two Secretaries of State, the Secretary at War, the
majority of the Great Officers of the Household, the majority of
the Lords of the Bedchamber, the majority of the officers of the
army, should always be Roman Catholics.428

It was to no purpose that the most eminent Compounders sent from
London letter after letter filled with judicious counsel and
earnest supplication. It was to no purpose that they demonstrated
in the plainest manner the impossibility of establishing Popish
ascendancy in a country where at least forty-nine fiftieths of
the population and much more than forty-nine fiftieths of the
wealth and the intelligence were Protestant. It was to no purpose
that they informed their master that the Declaration of April
1692 had been read with exultation by his enemies and with deep
affliction by his friends, that it had been printed and
circulated by the usurpers, that it had done more than all the
libels of the Whigs to inflame the nation against him, and that
it had furnished those naval officers who had promised him
support with a plausible pretext for breaking faith with him, and
for destroying the fleet which was to have convoyed him back to
his kingdom. He continued to be deaf to the remonstrances of his
best friends in England till those remonstrances began to be
echoed at Versailles. All the information which Lewis and his
ministers were able to obtain touching the state of our island
satisfied them that James would never be restored unless he could
bring himself to make large concessions to his subjects. It was
therefore intimated to him, kindly and courteously, but
seriously, that he would do well to change his counsels and his
counsellors. France could not continue the war for the purpose of
forcing a Sovereign on an unwilling nation. She was crushed by
public burdens. Her trade and industry languished. Her harvest
and her vintage had failed. The peasantry were starving. The
faint murmurs of the provincial Estates began to be heard. There
was a limit to the amount of the sacrifices which the most
absolute prince could demand from those whom he ruled. However
desirous the Most Christian King might be to uphold the cause of
hereditary monarchy and of pure religion all over the world, his
first duty was to his own kingdom; and, unless a
counterrevolution speedily took place in England, his duty to his
own kingdom might impose on him the painful necessity of treating
with the Prince of Orange. It would therefore be wise in James to
do without delay whatever he could honourably and conscientiously
do to win back the hearts of his people.

Thus pressed, James unwillingly yielded. He consented to give a
share in the management of his affairs to one of the most
distinguished of the Compounders, Charles Earl of Middleton.

Middleton's family and his peerage were Scotch. But he was
closely connected with some of the noblest houses of England; he
had resided long in England; he had been appointed by Charles the
Second one of the English Secretaries of State, and had been
entrusted by James with the lead of the English House of Commons.
His abilities and acquirements were considerable; his temper was
easy and generous; his manners were popular; and his conduct had
generally been consistent and honourable. He had, when Popery was
in the ascendant, resolutely refused to purchase the royal favour
by apostasy. Roman Catholic ecclesiastics had been sent to
convert him; and the town had been much amused by the dexterity
with which the layman baffled the divines. A priest undertook to
demonstrate the doctrine of transubstantiation, and made the
approaches in the usual form. "Your Lordship believes in the
Trinity." "Who told you so?" said Middleton. "Not believe in the
Trinity!" cried the priest in amazement. "Nay," said Middleton;
"prove your religion to be true if you can; but do not catechize
me about mine." As it was plain that the Secretary was not a
disputant whom it was easy to take at an advantage, the
controversy ended almost as soon as it began.429 When fortune
changed, Middleton adhered to the cause of hereditary monarchy
with a stedfastness which was the more respectable because he
would have had no difficulty in making his peace with the new
government. His sentiments were so well known that, when the
kingdom was agitated by apprehensions of an invasion and an
insurrection, he was arrested and sent to the Tower; but no
evidence on which he could be convicted of treason was
discovered; and, when the dangerous crisis was past, he was set
at liberty. It should seem indeed that, during the three years
which followed the Revolution, he was by no means an active
plotter. He saw that a Restoration could be effected only with
the general assent of the nation, and that the nation would never
assent to a Restoration without securities against Popery and
arbitrary power. He therefore conceived that, while his banished
master obstinately refused to give such securities, it would be
worse than idle to conspire against the existing government.

Such was the man whom James, in consequence of strong
representations from Versailles, now invited to join him in
France. The great body of Compounders learned with delight that
they were at length to be represented in the Council at Saint
Germains by one of their favourite leaders. Some noblemen and
gentlemen, who, though they had not approved of the deposition of
James, had been so much disgusted by his perverse and absurd
conduct that they had long avoided all connection with him, now
began to hope that he had seen his error. They had refused to
have any thing to do with Melfort; but they communicated freely
with Middleton. The new minister conferred also with the four
traitors whose infamy has been made preeminently conspicuous by
their station, their abilities, and their great public services;
with Godolphin, the great object of whose life was to be in
favour with both the rival Kings at once, and to keep, through
all revolutions and counterrevolutions, his head, his estate and
a place at the Board of Treasury; with Shrewsbury, who, having
once in a fatal moment entangled himself in criminal and
dishonourable engagements, had not had the resolution to break
through them; with Marlborough, who continued to profess the
deepest repentance for the past and the best intentions for the
future; and with Russell, who declared that he was still what he
had been before the day of La Hogue, and renewed his promise to
do what Monk had done, on condition that a general pardon should
be granted to all political offenders, and that the royal power
should be placed under strong constitutional restraints.

Before Middleton left England he had collected the sense of all
the leading Compounders. They were of opinion that there was one
expedient which would reconcile contending factions at home, and
lead to the speedy pacification of Europe. This expedient was
that James should resign the Crown in favour of the Prince of
Wales, and that the Prince of Wales should be bred a Protestant.
If, as was but too probable, His Majesty should refuse to listen
to this suggestion, he must at least consent to put forth a
Declaration which might do away the unfavourable impression made
by his Declaration of the preceding spring. A paper such as it
was thought expedient that he should publish was carefully drawn
up, and, after much discussion, approved.

Early in the year 1693, Middleton, having been put in full
possession of the views of the principal English Jacobites, stole
across the Channel, and made his appearance at the Court of
James. There was at that Court no want of slanderers and sneerers
whose malignity was only the more dangerous because it wore a
meek and sanctimonious air. Middleton found, on his arrival, that
numerous lies, fabricated by the priests who feared and hated
him, were already in circulation. Some Noncompounders too had
written from London that he was at heart a Presbyterian and a
republican. He was however very graciously received, and was
appointed Secretary of State conjointly with Melfort.430

It very soon appeared that James was fully resolved never to
resign the Crown, or to suffer the Prince of Wales to be bred a
heretic; and it long seemed doubtful whether any arguments or
entreaties would induce him to sign the Declaration which his
friends in England had prepared. It was indeed a document very
different from any that had yet appeared under his Great Seal. He
was made to promise that he would grant a free pardon to all his
subjects who should not oppose him after he should land in the
island; that, as soon as he was restored, he would call a
Parliament; that he would confirm all such laws, passed during
the usurpation, as the Houses should tender to him for
confirmation; that he would waive his right to the chimney money;
that he would protect and defend the Established Church in the
enjoyment of all her possessions and privileges; that he would
not again violate the Test Act; that he would leave it to the
legislature to define the extent of his dispensing power; and
that he would maintain the Act of Settlement in Ireland.

He struggled long and hard. He pleaded his conscience. Could a
son of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church bind himself
to protect and defend heresy, and to enforce a law which excluded
true believers from office? Some of the ecclesiastics who swarmed
in his household told him that he could not without sin give any
such pledge as his undutiful subjects demanded. On this point the
opinion of Middleton, who was a Protestant, could be of no
weight. But Middleton found an ally in one whom he regarded as a
rival and an enemy. Melfort, scared by the universal hatred of
which he knew himself to be the object, and afraid that he should
be held accountable, both in England and in France, for his
master's wrongheadedness, submitted the case to several eminent
Doctors of the Sorbonne. These learned casuists pronounced the
Declaration unobjectionable in a religious point of view. The
great Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, who was regarded by the Gallican
Church as a father scarcely inferior in authority to Cyprian or
Augustin, showed, by powerful arguments, both theological and
political, that the scruple which tormented James was precisely
of that sort against which a much wiser King had given a caution
in the words, "Be not righteous overmuch."431 The authority of
the French divines was supported by the authority of the French
government. The language held at Versailles was so strong that
James began to be alarmed. What if Lewis should take serious
offence, should think his hospitality ungratefully requited,
should conclude a peace with the usurpers, and should request his
unfortunate guests to seek another asylum? It was necessary to
submit. On the seventeenth of April 1693 the Declaration was
signed and sealed. The concluding sentence was a prayer. "We come
to vindicate our own right and to establish the liberties of our
people; and may God give us success in the prosecution of the one
as we sincerely intend the confirmation of the other!"432 The
prayer was heard. The success of James was strictly proportioned
to his sincerity. What his sincerity was we know on the best
evidence. Scarcely had he called on heaven to witness the truth
of his professions, when he directed
Melfort to send a copy of the Declaration to Rome with such
explanations as might satisfy the Pope. Melfort's letter ends
thus: "After all, the object of this Declaration is only to get
us back to England. We shall fight the battle of the Catholics
with much greater advantage at Whitehall than at Saint
Germains."433

Meanwhile the document from which so much was expected had been
despatched to London. There it was printed at a secret press in
the house of a Quaker; for there was among the Quakers a party,
small in number, but zealous and active, which had imbibed the
politics of William Penn.434 To circulate such a work was a
service of some danger; but agents were found. Several persons
were taken up while distributing copies in the streets of the
city. A hundred packets were stopped in one day at the Post
Office on their way to the fleet. But, after a short time, the
government wisely gave up the endeavour to suppress what could
not be suppressed, and published the Declaration at full length,
accompanied by a severe commentary.435

The commentary, however, was hardly needed. The Declaration
altogether failed to produce the effect which Middleton had
anticipated. The truth is that his advice had not been asked till
it mattered not what advice he gave. If James had put forth such
a manifesto in January 1689, the throne would probably not have
been declared vacant. If he had put forth such a manifesto when
he was on the coast of Normandy at the head of an army, he would
have conciliated a large part of the nation, and he might
possibly have been joined by a large part of the fleet. But both
in 1689 and in 1692 he had held the language of an implacable
tyrant; and it was now too late to affect tenderness of heart and
reverence for the constitution of the realm. The contrast between
the new Declaration and the preceding Declaration excited, not
without reason, general suspicion and contempt. What confidence
could be placed in the word of a Prince so unstable, of a Prince
who veered from extreme to extreme? In 1692 nothing would satisfy
him but the heads and quarters of hundreds of poor ploughmen and
boatmen who had, several years before, taken some rustic
liberties with him at which his grandfather Henry the Fourth
would have had a hearty laugh. In 1693 the foulest and most
ungrateful treasons were to be covered with oblivion. Caermarthen
expressed the general sentiment. "I do not," he said, "understand
all this. Last April I was to be hanged. This April I am to have
a free pardon. I cannot imagine what I have done during the past
year to deserve such goodness." The general opinion was that a
snare was hidden under this unwonted clemency, this unwonted
respect for law. The Declaration, it was said, was excellent; and
so was the Coronation oath. Every body knew how King James had
observed his Coronation oath; and every body might guess how he
would observe his Declaration. While grave men reasoned thus, the
Whig jesters were not sparing of their pasquinades. Some of the
Noncompounders, meantime, uttered indignant murmurs. The King was
in bad hands, in the hands of men who hated monarchy. His mercy
was cruelty of the worst sort. The general pardon which he had
granted to his enemies was in truth a general proscription of his
friends. Hitherto the judges appointed by the usurper had been
under a restraint, imperfect indeed, yet not absolutely nugatory.
They had known that a day of reckoning might come, and had
therefore in general dealt tenderly with the persecuted adherents
of the rightful King. That restraint His Majesty had now taken
away. He had told Holt and Treby that, till he should land in
England, they might hang royalists without the smallest fear of
being called to account.436

But by no class of people was the Declaration read with so much
disgust and indignation as by the native aristocracy of Ireland.
This then was the reward of their loyalty. This was the faith of
kings. When England had cast James out, when Scotland had
rejected him, the Irish had still been true to him; and he had,
in return, solemnly given his sanction to a law which restored to
them an immense domain of which they had been despoiled. Nothing
that had happened since that time had diminished their claim to
his favour. They had defended his cause to the last; they had
fought for him long after he had deserted them; many of them,
when unable to contend longer against superior force, had
followed him into banishment; and now it appeared that he was
desirous to make peace with his deadliest enemies at the expense
of his most faithful friends. There was much discontent in the
Irish regiments which were dispersed through the Netherlands and
along the frontiers of Germany and Italy. Even the Whigs allowed
that, for once, the O's and Macs were in the right, and asked
triumphantly whether a prince who had broken his word to his
devoted servants could be expected to keep it to his foes?437