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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The plan was that twelve hundred thousand pounds should be
borrowed by the government on what was then considered as the
moderate interest of eight per cent. In order to induce
capitalists to advance the money promptly on terms so favourable
to the public, the subscribers were to be incorporated by the
name of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England. The
corporation was to have no exclusive privilege, and was to be
restricted from trading in any thing but bills of exchange,
bullion and forfeited pledges.

As soon as the plan became generally known, a paper war broke out
as furious as that between the swearers and the nonswearers, or
as that between the Old East India Company and the New East India
Company. The projectors who had failed to gain the ear of the
government fell like madmen on their more fortunate brother. All
the goldsmiths and pawnbrokers set up a howl of rage. Some
discontented Tories predicted ruin to the monarchy. It was
remarkable, they said, that Banks and Kings had never existed
together. Banks were republican institutions. There were
flourishing banks at Venice, at Genoa, at Amsterdam and at
Hamburg. But who had ever heard of a Bank of France or a Bank of
Spain?522 Some discontented Whigs, on the other hand, predicted
ruin to our liberties. Here, they said, is an instrument of
tyranny more formidable than the High Commission, than the Star
Chamber, than even the fifty thousand soldiers of Oliver. The
whole wealth of the nation will be in the hands of the Tonnage
Bank,--such was the nickname then in use;--and the Tonnage Bank
will be in the hands of the Sovereign. The power of the purse,
the one great security for all the rights of Englishmen, will be
transferred from the House of Commons to the Governor and
Directors of the new Company. This last consideration was really
of some weight, and was allowed to be so by the authors of the
bill. A clause was therefore most properly inserted which
inhibited the Bank from advancing money to the Crown without
authority from Parliament. Every infraction of this salutary rule
was to be punished by forfeiture of three times the sum advanced;
and it was provided that the King should not have power to remit
any part of the penalty.

The plan, thus amended, received the sanction of the Commons more
easily than might have been expected from the violence of the
adverse clamour. In truth, the Parliament was under duress. Money
must be had, and could in no other way be had so easily. What
took place when the House had resolved itself into a committee
cannot be discovered; but, while the Speaker was in the chair, no
division took place. The bill, however, was not safe when it had
reached the Upper House. Some Lords suspected that the plan of a
national bank had been devised for the purpose of exalting the
moneyed interest at the expense of the landed interest. Others
thought that this plan, whether good or bad, ought not to have
been submitted to them in such a form. Whether it would be safe
to call into existence a body which might one day rule the whole
commercial world, and how such a body should be constituted, were
questions which ought not to be decided by one branch of the
Legislature. The Peers ought to be at perfect liberty to examine
all the details of the proposed scheme, to suggest amendments, to
ask for conferences. It was therefore most unfair that the law
establishing the Bank should be sent up as part of a law granting
supplies to the Crown. The Jacobites entertained some hope that
the session would end with a quarrel between the Houses, that the
Tonnage Bill would be lost, and that William would enter on the
campaign without money. It was already May, according to the New
Style. The London season was over; and many noble families had
left Covent Garden and Soho Square for their woods and hayfields.
But summonses were sent out. There was a violent rush back to
town. The benches which had lately been deserted were crowded.
The sittings began at an hour unusually early, and were prolonged
to an hour unusually late. On the day on which the bill was
committed the contest lasted without intermission from nine in
the morning till six in the evening. Godolphin was in the chair.
Nottingham and Rochester proposed to strike out all the clauses
which related to the Bank. Something was said about the danger of
setting up a gigantic corporation which might soon give law to
the King and the three Estates of the Realm. But the Peers seemed
to be most moved by the appeal which was made to them as
landlords. The whole scheme, it was asserted, was intended to
enrich usurers at the expense of the nobility and gentry. Persons
who had laid by money would rather put it into the Bank than lend
it on mortgage at moderate interest. Caermarthen said little or
nothing in defence of what was, in truth, the work of his rivals
and enemies. He owned that there were grave objections to the
mode in which the Commons had provided for the public service of
the year. But would their Lordships amend a money bill? Would
they engage in a contest of which the end must be that they must
either yield, or incur the grave responsibility of leaving the
Channel without a fleet during the summer? This argument
prevailed; and, on a division, the amendment was rejected by
forty-three votes to thirty-one. A few hours later the bill
received the royal assent, and the Parliament was prorogued.523
In the City the success of Montague's plan was complete. It was
then at least as difficult to raise a million at eight per cent.
as it would now be to raise thirty millions at four per cent. It
had been supposed that contributions would drop in very slowly;
and a considerable time had therefore been allowed by the Act.
This indulgence was not needed. So popular was the new investment
that on the day on which the books were opened three hundred
thousand pounds were subscribed; three hundred thousand more were
subscribed during the next forty-eight hours; and, in ten days,
to the delight of all the friends of the government, it was
announced that the list was full. The whole sum which the
Corporation was bound to lend to the State was paid into the
Exchequer before the first instalment was due.524 Somers gladly
put the Great Seal to a charter framed in conformity with the
terms prescribed by Parliament; and the Bank of England commenced
its operations in the house of the Company of Grocers. There,
during many years, directors, secretaries and clerks might be
seen labouring in different parts of one spacious hall. The
persons employed by the bank were originally only fifty-four.
They are now nine hundred. The sum paid yearly in salaries
amounted at first to only four thousand three hundred and fifty
pounds. It now exceeds two hundred and ten thousand pounds. We
may therefore fairly infer that the incomes of commercial clerks
are, on an average, about three times as large in the reign of
Victoria as they were in the reign of William the Third.525

It soon appeared that Montague had, by skilfully availing himself
of the financial difficulties of the country, rendered an
inestimable service to his party. During several generations the
Bank of England was emphatically a Whig body. It was Whig, not
accidentally, but necessarily. It must have instantly stopped
payment if it had ceased to receive the interest on the sum which
it had advanced to the government; and of that interest James
would not have paid one farthing. Seventeen years after the
passing of the Tonnage Bill, Addison, in one of his most
ingenious and graceful little allegories, described the situation
of the great Company through which the immense wealth of London
was constantly circulating. He saw Public Credit on her throne in
Grocers' Hall, the Great Charter over her head, the Act of
Settlement full in her view. Her touch turned every thing to
gold. Behind her seat, bags filled with coin were piled up to the
ceiling. On her right and on her left the floor was hidden by
pyramids of guineas. On a sudden the door flies open. The
Pretender rushes in, a sponge in one hand, in the other a sword
which he shakes at the Act of Settlement. The beautiful Queen
sinks down fainting. The spell by which she has turned all things
around her into treasure is broken. The money bags shrink like
pricked bladders. The piles of gold pieces are turned into
bundles of rags or faggots of wooden tallies.526 The truth which
this parable was meant to convey was constantly present to the
minds of the rulers of the Bank. So closely was their interest
bound up with the interest of the government that the greater the
public danger the more ready were they to come to the rescue. In
old times, when the Treasury was empty, when the taxes came in
slowly, and when the pay of the soldiers and sailors was in
arrear, it had been necessary for the Chancellor of the Exchequer
to go, hat in hand, up and down Cheapside and Cornhill, attended
by the Lord Mayor and by the Aldermen, and to make up a sum by
borrowing a hundred pounds from this hosier, and two hundred
pounds from that ironmonger.527 Those times were over. The
government, instead of laboriously scooping up supplies from
numerous petty sources, could now draw whatever it required from
an immense reservoir, which all those petty sources kept
constantly replenished. It is hardly too much to say that, during
many years, the weight of the Bank, which was constantly in the
scale of the Whigs, almost counterbalanced the weight of the
Church, which was as constantly in the scale of the Tories.

A few minutes after the bill which established the Bank of
England had received the royal assent, the Parliament was
prorogued by the King with a speech in which he warmly thanked
the Commons for their liberality. Montague was immediately
rewarded for his services with the place of Chancellor of the
Exchequer.528

Shrewsbury had a few weeks before consented to accept the seals.
He had held out resolutely from November to March. While he was
trying to find excuses which might satisfy his political friends,
Sir James Montgomery visited him. Montgomery was now the most
miserable of human beings. Having borne a great part in a great
Revolution, having been charged with the august office of
presenting the Crown of Scotland to the Sovereigns whom the
Estates had chosen, having domineered without a rival, during
several months, in the Parliament at Edinburgh, having seen
before him in near prospect the seals of Secretary, the coronet
of an Earl, ample wealth, supreme power, he had on a sudden sunk
into obscurity and abject penury. His fine parts still remained;
and he was therefore used by the Jacobites; but, though used, he
was despised, distrusted and starved. He passed his life in
wandering from England to France and from France back to England,
without finding a resting place in either country. Sometimes he
waited in the antechamber at Saint Germains, where the priests
scowled at him as a Calvinist, and where even the Protestant
Jacobites cautioned one another in whispers against the old
Republican. Sometimes he lay hid in the garrets of London,
imagining that every footstep which he heard on the stairs was
that of a bailiff with a writ, or that of a King's messenger with
a warrant. He now obtained access to Shrewsbury, and ventured to
talk as a Jacobite to a brother Jacobite. Shrewsbury, who was not
at all inclined to put his estate and his neck in the power of a
man whom he knew to be both rash and perfidious, returned very
guarded answers. Through some channel which is not known to us,
William obtained full intelligence of what had passed on this
occasion. He sent for Shrewsbury, and again spoke earnestly about
the secretaryship. Shrewsbury again excused himself. His health,
he said, was bad. "That," said William, "is not your only
reason." "No, Sir," said Shrewsbury, "it is not." And he began to
speak of public grievances, and alluded to the fate of the
Triennial Bill, which he had himself introduced. But William cut
him short. "There is another reason behind. When did you see
Montgomery last?" Shrewsbury was thunderstruck. The King
proceeded to repeat some things which Montgomery had said. By
this time Shrewsbury had recovered from his dismay, and had
recollected that, in the conversation which had been so
accurately reported to the government, he had fortunately uttered
no treason, though he had heard much. "Sir," said he, "since Your
Majesty has been so correctly informed, you must be aware that I
gave no encouragement to that man's attempts to seduce me from my
allegiance." William did not deny this, but intimated that such
secret dealings with noted Jacobites raised suspicions which
Shrewsbury could remove only by accepting the seals. "That," he
said, "will put me quite at ease. I know that you are a man of
honour, and that, if you undertake to serve me, you will serve me
faithfully." So pressed, Shrewsbury complied, to the great joy of
his whole party; and was immediately rewarded for his compliance
with a dukedom and a garter.529

Thus a Whig ministry was gradually forming. There were now two
Whig Secretaries of State, a Whig Keeper of the Great Seal, a
Whig First Lord of the Admiralty, a Whig Chancellor of the
Exchequer. The Lord Privy Seal, Pembroke, might also be called a
Whig; for his mind was one which readily took the impress of any
stronger mind with which it was brought into contact. Seymour,
having been long enough a Commissioner of the Treasury to lose
much of his influence with the Tory country gentlemen who had
once listened to him as to an oracle, was dismissed, and his
place was filled by John Smith, a zealous and able Whig, who had
taken an active part in the debates of the late session.530 The
only Tories who still held great offices in the executive
government were the Lord President, Caermarthen, who, though he
began to feel that power was slipping from his grasp, still
clutched it desperately, and the first Lord of the Treasury,
Godolphin, who meddled little out of his own department, and
performed the duties of that department with skill and assiduity.

William, however, still tried to divide his favours between the
two parties. Though the Whigs were fast drawing to themselves the
substance of power, the Tories obtained their share of honorary
distinctions. Mulgrave, who had, during the late session, exerted
his great parliamentary talents in favour of the King's policy,
was created Marquess of Normanby, and named a Cabinet Councillor,
but was never consulted. He obtained at the same time a pension
of three thousand pounds a year. Caermarthen, whom the late
changes had deeply mortified, was in some degree consoled by a
signal mark of royal approbation. He became Duke of Leeds. It had
taken him little more than twenty years to climb from the station
of a Yorkshire country gentleman to the highest rank in the
peerage. Two great Whig Earls were at the same time created
Dukes, Bedford and Devonshire. It ought to be mentioned that
Bedford had repeatedly refused the dignity which he now somewhat
reluctantly accepted. He declared that he preferred his Earldom
to a Dukedom, and gave a very sensible reason for the preference.
An Earl who had a numerous family might send one son to the
Temple and another to a counting house in the city. But the sons
of a Duke were all lords; and a lord could not make his bread
either at the bar or on Change. The old man's objections,
however, were overcome; and the two great houses of Russell and
Cavendish, which had long been closely connected by friendship
and by marriage, by common opinions, common sufferings and common
triumphs, received on the same day the greatest honour which it
is in the power of the Crown to confer.531

The Gazette which announced these creations announced also that
the King had set out for the Continent. He had, before his
departure, consulted with his ministers about the means of
counteracting a plan of naval operations which had been formed by
the French government. Hitherto the maritime war had been carried
on chiefly in the Channel and the Atlantic. But Lewis had now
determined to concentrate his maritime forces in the
Mediterranean. He hoped that, with their help, the army of
Marshal Noailles would be able to take Barcelona, to subdue the
whole of Catalonia, and to compel Spain to sue for peace.
Accordingly, Tourville's squadron, consisting of fifty three men
of war, set sail from Brest on the twenty-fifth of April and
passed the Straits of Gibraltar on the fourth of May.

William, in order to cross the designs of the enemy, determined
to send Russell to the Mediterranean with the greater part of the
combined fleet of England and Holland. A squadron was to remain
in the British seas under the command of the Earl of Berkeley.
Talmash was to embark on board of this squadron with a large body
of troops, and was to attack Brest, which would, it was supposed,
in the absence of Tourville and his fifty-three vessels, be an
easy conquest.

That preparations were making at Portsmouth for an expedition, in
which the land forces were to bear a part, could not be kept a
secret. There was much speculation at the Rose and at Garraway's
touching the destination of the armament. Some talked of Rhe,
some of Oleron, some of Rochelle, some of Rochefort. Many, till
the fleet actually began to move westward, believed that it was
bound for Dunkirk. Many guessed that Brest would be the point of
attack; but they only guessed this; for the secret was much
better kept than most of the secrets of that age.532 Russell,
till he was ready to weigh anchor, persisted in assuring his
Jacobite friends that he knew nothing. His discretion was proof
even against all the arts of Marlborough. Marlborough, however,
had other sources of intelligence. To those sources he applied
himself; and he at length succeeded in discovering the whole plan
of the government. He instantly wrote to James. He had, he said,
but that moment ascertained that twelve regiments of infantry and
two regiments of marines were about to embark, under the command
of Talmash, for the purpose of destroying the harbour of Brest
and the shipping which lay there. "This," he added, "would be a
great advantage to England. But no consideration can, or ever
shall, hinder me from letting you know what I think may be for
your service." He then proceeded to caution James against
Russell. "I endeavoured to learn this some time ago from him; but
he always denied it to me, though I am very sure that he knew the
design for more than six weeks. This gives me a bad sign of this
man's intentions."

The intelligence sent by Marlborough to James was communicated by
James to the French government. That government took its measures
with characteristic promptitude. Promptitude was indeed
necessary; for, when Marlborough's letter was written, the
preparations at Portsmouth were all but complete; and, if the
wind had been favourable to the English, the objects of the
expedition might have been attained without a struggle. But
adverse gales detained our fleet in the Channel during another
month. Meanwhile a large body of troops was collected at Brest.
Vauban was charged with the duty of putting the defences in
order; and, under his skilful direction, batteries were planted
which commanded every spot where it seemed likely that an invader
would attempt to land. Eight large rafts, each carrying many
mortars, were moored in the harbour, and, some days before the
English arrived, all was ready for their reception.

On the sixth of June the whole allied fleet was on the Atlantic
about fifteen leagues west of Cape Finisterre. There Russell and
Berkeley parted company. Russell proceeded towards the
Mediterranean. Berkeley's squadron, with the troops on board,
steered for the coast of Brittany, and anchored just without
Camaret Bay, close to the mouth of the harbour of Brest. Talmash
proposed to land in Camaret Bay. It was therefore desirable to
ascertain with accuracy the state of the coast. The eldest son of
the Duke of Leeds, now called Marquess of Caermarthen, undertook
to enter the basin and to obtain the necessary information. The
passion of this brave and eccentric young man for maritime
adventure was unconquerable. He had solicited and obtained the
rank of Rear Admiral, and had accompanied the expedition in his
own yacht, the Peregrine, renowned as the masterpiece of
shipbuilding, and more than once already mentioned in this
history. Cutts, who had distinguished himself by his intrepidity
in the Irish war, and had been rewarded with an Irish peerage,
offered to accompany Caermarthen, Lord Mohun, who, desirous, it
may be hoped, to efface by honourable exploits the stain which a
shameful and disastrous brawl had left on his name, was serving
with the troops as a volunteer, insisted on being of the party.
The Peregrine went into the bay with its gallant crew, and came
out safe, but not without having run great risks. Caermarthen
reported that the defences, of which however he had seen only a
small part, were formidable. But Berkeley and Talmash suspected
that he overrated the danger. They were not aware that their
design had long been known at Versailles, that an army had been
collected to oppose them, and that the greatest engineer in the
world had been employed to fortify the coast against them. They
therefore did not doubt that their troops might easily be put on
shore under the protection of a fire from the ships. On the
following morning Caermarthen was ordered to enter the bay with
eight vessels and to batter the French works. Talmash was to
follow with about a hundred boats full of soldiers. It soon
appeared that the enterprise was even more perilous than it had
on the preceding day appeared to be. Batteries which had then
escaped notice opened on the ships a fire so murderous that
several decks were soon cleared. Great bodies of foot and horse
were discernible; and, by their uniforms, they appeared to be
regular troops. The young Rear Admiral sent an officer in all
haste to warn Talmash. But Talmash was so completely possessed by
the notion that the French were not prepared to repel an attack
that he disregarded all cautions and would not even trust his own
eyes. He felt sure that the force which he saw assembled on the
shore was a mere rabble of peasants, who had been brought
together in haste from the surrounding country. Confident that
these mock soldiers would run like sheep before real soldiers, he
ordered his men to pull for the beach. He was soon undeceived. A
terrible fire mowed down his troops faster than they could get on
shore. He had himself scarcely sprung on dry ground when he
received a wound in the thigh from a cannon ball, and was carried
back to his skiff. His men reembarked in confusion. Ships and
boats made haste to get out of the bay, but did not succeed till
four hundred seamen and seven hundred soldiers had fallen. During
many days the waves continued to throw up pierced and shattered
corpses on the beach of Brittany. The battery from which Talmash
received his wound is called, to this day, the Englishman's
Death.

The unhappy general was laid on his couch; and a council of war
was held in his cabin. He was for going straight into the harbour
of Brest and bombarding the town. But this suggestion, which
indicated but too clearly that his judgment had been affected by
the irritation of a wounded body and a wounded mind, was wisely
rejected by the naval officers. The armament returned to
Portsmouth. There Talmash died, exclaiming with his last breath
that he had been lured into a snare by treachery. The public
grief and indignation were loudly expressed. The nation
remembered the services of the unfortunate general, forgave his
rashness, pitied his sufferings, and execrated the unknown
traitors whose machinations had been fatal to him. There were
many conjectures and many rumours. Some sturdy Englishmen, misled
by national prejudice, swore that none of our plans would ever be
kept a secret from the enemy while French refugees were in high
military command. Some zealous Whigs, misled by party sprit,
muttered that the Court of Saint Germains would never want good
intelligence while a single Tory remained in the Cabinet Council.
The real criminal was not named; nor, till the archives of the
House of Stuart were explored, was it known to the world that
Talmash had perished by the basest of all the hundred villanies
of Marlborough.533

Yet never had Marlborough been less a Jacobite than at the moment
when he rendered this wicked and shameful service to the Jacobite
cause. It may be confidently affirmed that to serve the banished
family was not his object, and that to ingratiate himself with
the banished family was only his secondary object. His primary
object was to force himself into the service of the existing
government, and to regain possession of those important and
lucrative places from which he had been dismissed more than two
years before. He knew that the country and the Parliament would
not patiently bear to see the English army commanded by foreign
generals. Two Englishmen only had shown themselves fit for high
military posts, himself and Talmash. If Talmash were defeated and
disgraced, William would scarcely have a choice. In fact, as soon
as it was known that the expedition had failed, and that Talmash
was no more, the general cry was that the King ought to receive
into his favour the accomplished Captain who had done such good
service at Walcourt, at Cork and at Kinsale. Nor can we blame the
multitude for raising this cry. For every body knew that
Marlborough was an eminently brave, skilful and successful
officer; but very few persons knew that he had, while commanding
William's troops, while sitting in William's council, while
waiting in William's bedchamber, formed a most artful and
dangerous plot for the subversion of William's throne; and still
fewer suspected the real author of the recent calamity, of the
slaughter in the Bay of Camaret, of the melancholy fate of
Talmash. The effect therefore of the foulest of all treasons was
to raise the traitor in public estimation. Nor was he wanting to
himself at this conjuncture. While the Royal Exchange was in
consternation at this disaster of which he was the cause, while
many families were clothing themselves in mourning for the brave
men of whom he was the murderer, he repaired to Whitehall; and
there, doubtless with all that grace, that nobleness, that
suavity, under which lay, hidden from all common observers, a
seared conscience and a remorseless heart, he professed himself
the most devoted, the most loyal, of all the subjects of William
and Mary, and expressed a hope that he might, in this emergency,
be permitted to offer his sword to their Majesties. Shrewsbury
was very desirous that the offer should be accepted; but a short
and dry answer from William, who was then in the Netherlands, put
an end for the present to all negotiation. About Talmash the King
expressed himself with generous tenderness. "The poor fellow's
fate," he wrote, "has affected me much. I do not indeed think
that he managed well; but it was his ardent desire to distinguish
himself that impelled him to attempt impossibilities."534