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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Early in the session Howe complained, with his usual vehemence
and asperity, of the indignities to which innocent and honourable
men, highly descended and highly esteemed, had been subjected by
Aaron Smith and the wretches who were in his pay. The leading
Whigs, with great judgment, demanded an inquiry. Then the Tories
began to flinch. They well knew that an inquiry could not
strengthen their case, and might weaken it. The issue, they said,
had been tried; a jury had pronounced; the verdict was
definitive; and it would be monstrous to give the false witnesses
who had been stoned out of Manchester an opportunity of repeating
their lesson. To this argument the answer was obvious. The
verdict was definitive as respected the defendants, but not as
respected the prosecutors. The prosecutors were now in their turn
defendants, and were entitled to all the privileges of
defendants. It did not follow, because the Lancashire gentlemen
had been found, and very properly found, not guilty of treason,
that the Secretary of State or the Solicitor of the Treasury had
been guilty of unfairness or even of rashness. The House, by one
hundred and nineteen votes to one hundred and two resolved that
Aaron Smith and the witnesses on both sides should be ordered to
attend. Several days were passed in examination and
crossexamination; and sometimes the sittings extended far into
the night. It soon became clear that the prosecution had not been
lightly instituted, and that some of the persons who had been
acquitted had been concerned in treasonable schemes. The Tories
would now have been content with a drawn battle; but the Whigs
were not disposed to forego their advantage. It was moved that
there had been a sufficient ground for the proceedings before the
Special Commission; and this motion was carried without a
division. The opposition proposed to add some words implying that
the witnesses for the Crown had forsworn themselves; but these
words were rejected by one hundred and thirty-six votes to one
hundred and nine, and it was resolved by one hundred and thirty-
three votes to ninety-seven that there had been a dangerous
conspiracy. The Lords had meanwhile been deliberating on the same
subject, and had come to the same conclusion. They sent Taaffe to
prison for prevarication; and they passed resolutions acquitting
both the government and the judges of all blame. The public
however continued to think that the gentlemen who had been tried
at Manchester had been unjustifiably persecuted, till a Jacobite
plot of singular atrocity, brought home to the plotters by
decisive evidence, produced a violent revulsion of feeling.545

Meanwhile three bills, which had been repeatedly discussed in
preceding years, and two of which had been carried in vain to the
foot of the throne, had been again brought in; the Place Bill,
the Bill for the Regulation of Trials in cases of Treason, and
the Triennial Bill.

The Place Bill did not reach the Lords. It was thrice read in the
Lower House, but was not passed. At the very last moment it was
rejected by a hundred and seventy-five votes to a hundred and
forty-two. Howe and Barley were the tellers for the minority.546

The Bill for the Regulation of Trials in cases of Treason went up
again to the Peers. Their Lordships again added to it the clause
which had formerly been fatal to it. The Commons again refused to
grant any new privilege to the hereditary aristocracy.
Conferences were again held; reasons were again exchanged; both
Houses were again obstinate; and the bill was again lost.547

The Triennial Bill was more fortunate. It was brought in on the
first day of the session, and went easily and rapidly through
both Houses. The only question about which there was any serious
contention was, how long the existing Parliament should be
suffered to continue. After several sharp debates November in the
year 1696 was fixed as the extreme term. The Tonnage Bill and the
Triennial Bill proceeded almost side by side. Both were, on the
twenty-second of December, ready for the royal assent. William
came in state on that day to Westminster. The attendance of
members of both Houses was large. When the Clerk of the Crown
read the words, "A Bill for the frequent Calling and Meeting of
Parliaments," the anxiety was great. When the Clerk of the
Parliament made answer, "Le roy et la royne le veulent," a loud
and long hum of delight and exultation rose from the benches and
the bar.548 William had resolved many months before not to refuse
his assent a second time to so popular a law.549 There was some
however who thought that he would not have made so great a
concession if he had on that day been quite himself. It was plain
indeed that he was strangely agitated and unnerved. It had been
announced that he would dine in public at Whitehall. But he
disappointed the curiosity of the multitude which on such
occasions flocked to the Court, and hurried back to
Kensington.550

He had but too good reason to be uneasy. His wife had, during two
or three days, been poorly; and on the preceding evening grave
symptoms had appeared. Sir Thomas Millington, who was physician
in ordinary to the King, thought that she had the measles. But
Radcliffe, who, with coarse manners and little book learning, had
raised himself to the first practice in London chiefly by his
rare skill in diagnostics, uttered the more alarming words, small
pox. That disease, over which science has since achieved a
succession of glorious and beneficient victories, was then the
most terrible of all the ministers of death. The havoc of the
plague had been far more rapid; but the plague had visited our
shores only once or twice within living memory; and the small pox
was always present, filling the churchyards with corpses,
tormenting with constant fears all whom it had not yet stricken,
leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its
power, turning the babe into a changeling at which the mother
shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed maiden
objects of horror to the lover. Towards the end of the year 1694,
this pestilence was more than usually severe. At length the
infection spread to the palace, and reached the young and
blooming Queen. She received the intimation of her danger with
true greatness of soul. She gave orders that every lady of her
bedchamber, every maid of honour, nay, every menial servant, who
had not had the small pox, should instantly leave Kensington
House. She locked herself up during a short time in her closet,
burned some papers, arranged others, and then calmly awaited her
fate.

During two or three days there were many alternations of hope and
fear. The physicians contradicted each other and themselves in a
way which sufficiently indicates the state of medical science in
that age. The disease was measles; it was scarlet fever; it was
spotted fever; it was erysipelas. At one moment some symptoms,
which in truth showed that the case was almost hopeless, were
hailed as indications of returning health. At length all doubt was
over. Radcliffe's opinion proved to be right. It was plain that
the Queen was sinking under small pox of the most malignant type.

All this time William remained night and day near her bedside.
The little couch on which he slept when he was in camp was spread
for him in the antechamber; but he scarcely lay down on it. The
sight of his misery, the Dutch Envoy wrote, was enough to melt
the hardest heart. Nothing seemed to be left of the man whose
serene fortitude had been the wonder of old soldiers on the
disastrous day of Landen, and of old sailors on that fearful
night among the sheets of ice and banks of sand on the coast of
Goree. The very domestics saw the tears running unchecked down
that face, of which the stern composure had seldom been disturbed
by any triumph or by any defeat. Several of the prelates were in
attendance. The King drew Burnet aside, and gave way to an agony
of grief. "There is no hope," he cried. "I was the happiest man
on earth; and I am the most miserable. She had no fault; none;
you knew her well; but you could not know, nobody but myself
could know, her goodness." Tenison undertook to tell her that she
was dying. He was afraid that such a communication, abruptly
made, might agitate her violently, and began with much
management. But she soon caught his meaning, and, with that
gentle womanly courage which so often puts our bravery to shame,
submitted herself to the will of God. She called for a small
cabinet in which her most important papers were locked up, gave
orders that, as soon as she was no more, it should be delivered
to the King, and then dismissed worldly cares from her mind. She
received the Eucharist, and repeated her part of the office with
unimpaired memory and intelligence, though in a feeble voice. She
observed that Tenison had been long standing at her bedside, and,
with that sweet courtesy which was habitual to her, faltered out
her commands that he would sit down, and repeated them till he
obeyed. After she had received the sacrament she sank rapidly,
and uttered only a few broken words. Twice she tried to take a
last farewell of him whom she had loved so truly and entirely;
but she was unable to speak. He had a succession of fits so
alarming that his Privy Councillors, who were assembled in a
neighbouring room, were apprehensive for his reason and his life.
The Duke of Leeds, at the request of his colleagues, ventured to
assume the friendly guardianship of which minds deranged by
sorrow stand in need. A few minutes before the Queen expired,
William was removed, almost insensible, from the sick room.

Mary died in peace with Anne. Before the physicians had
pronounced the case hopeless, the Princess, who was then in very
delicate health, had sent a kind message; and Mary had returned a
kind answer. The Princess had then proposed to come herself; but
William had, in very gracious terms, declined the offer. The
excitement of an interview, he said, would be too much for both
sisters. If a favourable turn took place, Her Royal Highness
should be most welcome to Kensington. A few hours later all was
over.551

The public sorrow was great and general. For Mary's blameless
life, her large charities and her winning manners had conquered
the hearts of her people. When the Commons next met they sate for
a time in profound silence. At length it was moved and resolved
that an Address of Condolence should be presented to the King;
and then the House broke up without proceeding to other business.
The Dutch envoy informed the States General that many of the
members had handkerchiefs at their eyes. The number of sad faces
in the street struck every observer. The mourning was more
general than even the mourning for Charles the Second had been.
On the Sunday which followed the Queen's death her virtues were
celebrated in almost every parish church of the Capital, and in
almost every great meeting of nonconformists.552

The most estimable Jacobites respected the sorrow of William and
the memory of Mary. But to the fiercer zealots of the party
neither the house of mourning nor the grave was sacred. At
Bristol the adherents of Sir John Knight rang the bells as if for
a victory.553 It has often been repeated, and is not at all
improbable, that a nonjuring divine, in the midst of the general
lamentation, preached on the text, "Go; see now this cursed woman
and bury her; for she is a King's daughter." It is certain that
some of the ejected priests pursued her to the grave with
invectives. Her death, they said, was evidently a judgment for
her crime. God had, from the top of Sinai, in thunder and
lightning, promised length of days to children who should honour
their parents; and in this promise was plainly implied a menace.
What father had ever been worse treated by his daughters than
James by Mary and Anne? Mary was gone, cut off in the prime of
life, in the glow of beauty, in the height of prosperity; and
Anne would do well to profit by the warning. Wagstaffe went
further, and dwelt much on certain wonderful coincidences of
time. James had been driven from his palace and country in
Christmas week. Mary had died in Christmas week. There could be
no doubt that, if the secrets of Providence were disclosed to us,
we should find that the turns of the daughter's complaint in
December 1694 bore an exact analogy to the turns of the father's
fortune in December 1688. It was at midnight that the father ran
away from Rochester; it was at midnight that the daughter
expired. Such was the profundity and such the ingenuity of a
writer whom the Jacobite schismatics justly regarded as one of
their ablest chiefs.554

The Whigs soon had an opportunity of retaliating. They
triumphantly related that a scrivener in the Borough, a stanch
friend of hereditary right, while exulting in the judgment which
had overtaken the Queen, had himself fallen down dead in a
fit.555

The funeral was long remembered as the saddest and most august
that Westminster had ever seen. While the Queen's remains lay in
state at Whitehall, the neighbouring streets were filled every
day, from sunrise to sunset, by crowds which made all traffic
impossible. The two Houses with their maces followed the hearse,
the Lords robed in scarlet and ermine, the Commons in long black
mantles. No preceding Sovereign had ever been attended to the
grave by a Parliament; for, till then, the Parliament had always
expired with the Sovereign. A paper had indeed been circulated,
in which the logic of a small sharp pettifogger was employed to
prove that writs, issued in the joint names of William and Mary,
ceased to be of force as soon as William reigned alone. But this
paltry cavil had completely failed. It had not even been
mentioned in the Lower House, and had been mentioned in the Upper
only to be contemptuously overruled. The whole Magistracy of the
City swelled the procession. The banners of England and France,
Scotland and Ireland, were carried by great nobles before the
corpse. The pall was borne by the chiefs of the illustrious
houses of Howard, Seymour, Grey, and Stanley. On the gorgeous
coffin of purple and gold were laid the crown and sceptre of the
realm. The day was well suited to such a ceremony. The sky was
dark and troubled; and a few ghastly flakes of snow fell on the
black plumes of the funeral car. Within the Abbey, nave, choir
and transept were in a blaze with innumerable waxlights. The body
was deposited under a magnificent canopy in the centre of the
church while the Primate preached. The earlier part of his
discourse was deformed by pedantic divisions and subdivisions;
but towards the close he told what he had himself seen and heard
with a simplicity and earnestness more affecting than the most
skilful rhetoric. Through the whole ceremony the distant booming
of cannon was heard every minute from the batteries of the Tower.
The gentle Queen sleeps among her illustrious kindred in the
southern aisle of the Chapel of Henry the Seventh.556

The affection with which her husband cherished her memory was
soon attested by a monument the most superb that was ever erected
to any sovereign. No scheme had been so much her own, none had
been so near her heart, as that of converting the palace at
Greenwich into a retreat for seamen. It had occurred to her when
she had found it difficult to provide good shelter and good
attendance for the thousands of brave men who had come back to
England wounded after the battle of La Hogue. While she lived
scarcely any step was taken towards the accomplishing of her
favourite design. But it should seem that, as soon as her husband
had lost her, he began to reproach himself for having neglected
her wishes. No time was lost. A plan was furnished by Wren; and
soon an edifice, surpassing that asylum which the magnificent
Lewis had provided for his soldiers, rose on the margin of the
Thames. Whoever reads the inscription which runs round the frieze
of the hall will observe that William claims no part of the merit
of the design, and that the praise is ascribed to Mary alone. Had
the King's life been prolonged till the works were completed, a
statue of her who was the real foundress of the institution would
have had a conspicuous place in that court which presents two
lofty domes and two graceful colonnades to the multitudes who are
perpetually passing up and down the imperial river. But that part
of the plan was never carried into effect; and few of those who
now gaze on the noblest of European hospitals are aware that it
is a memorial of the virtues of the good Queen Mary, of the love
and sorrow of William, and of the great victory of La Hogue.

CHAPTER XXI

Effect of Mary's Death on the Continent--Death of Luxemburg--
Distress of William--Parliamentary Proceedings; Emancipation of
the Press--Death of Halifax--Parliamentary Inquiries into the
Corruption of the Public Offices--Vote of Censure on the Speaker-
-Foley elected Speaker; Inquiry into the Accounts of the East
India Company--Suspicious Dealings of Seymour--Bill against Sir
Thomas Cook--Inquiry by a joint Committee of Lords and Commons--
Impeachment of Leeds--Disgrace of Leeds--Lords Justices
appointed; Reconciliation between William and the Princess Anne--
Jacobite Plots against William's Person--Charnock; Porter--
Goodman; Parkyns--Fenwick--Session of the Scottish Parliament;
Inquiry into the Slaughter of Glencoe--War in the Netherlands;
Marshal Villeroy--The Duke of Maine--Jacobite Plots against the
Government during William's Absence--Siege of Namur--Surrender of
the Town of Namur--Surrender of the Castle of Namur--Arrest of
Boufflers--Effect of the Emancipation of the English Press--
Return of William to England; Dissolution of the Parliament--
William makes a Progress through the Country --The Elections--
Alarming State of the Currency--Meeting of the Parliament;
Loyalty of the House of Commons--Controversy touching the
Currency--Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Currency--
Passing of the Act regulating Trials in Cases of High Treason--
Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Grant of Crown Lands in
Wales to Portland--Two Jacobite Plots formed--Berwick's Plot; the
Assassination Plot; Sir George Barclay--Failure of Berwick's
Plot--Detection of the Assassination Plot--Parliamentary
Proceedings touching the Assassination Plot--State of Public
Feeling--Trial of Charnock, King and Keyes--Execution of
Charnock, King and Keyes--Trial of Friend--Trial of Parkyns--
Execution of Friend and Parkyns--Trials of Rookwood, Cranburne
and Lowick--The Association--Bill for the Regulation of
Elections--Act establishing a Land Bank

ON the Continent the news of Mary's death excited various
emotions. The Huguenots, in every part of Europe to which they
had wandered, bewailed the Elect Lady, who had retrenched from
her own royal state in order to furnish bread and shelter to the
persecuted people of God.557 In the United Provinces, where she
was well known and had always been popular, she was tenderly
lamented. Matthew Prior, whose parts and accomplishments had
obtained for him the patronage of the magnificent Dorset, and who
was now attached to the Embassy at the Hague, wrote that the
coldest and most passionless of nations was touched. The very
marble, he said, wept.558 The lamentations of Cambridge and
Oxford were echoed by Leyden and Utrecht. The States General put
on mourning. The bells of all the steeples of Holland tolled
dolefully day after day.559 James, meanwhile, strictly prohibited
all mourning at Saint Germains, and prevailed on Lewis to issue a
similar prohibition at Versailles. Some of the most illustrious
nobles of France, and among them the Dukes of Bouillon and of
Duras, were related to the House of Nassau, and had always, when
death visited that House, punctiliously observed the decent
ceremonial of sorrow. They were now forbidden to wear black; and
they submitted; but it was beyond the power of the great King to
prevent his highbred and sharpwitted courtiers from whispering to
each other that there was something pitiful in this revenge taken
by the living on the dead, by a parent on a child.560

The hopes of James and of his companions in exile were now higher
than they had been since the day of La Hogue. Indeed the general
opinion of politicians, both here and on the Continent was that
William would find it impossible to sustain himself much longer
on the throne. He would not, it was said, have sustained himself
so long but for the help of his wife. Her affability had
conciliated many who had been repelled by his freezing looks and
short answers. Her English tones, sentiments and tastes had
charmed many who were disgusted by his Dutch accent and Dutch
habits. Though she did not belong to the High Church party, she
loved that ritual to which she had been accustomed from infancy,
and complied willingly and reverently with some ceremonies which
he considered, not indeed as sinful, but as childish, and in
which he could hardly bring himself to take part. While the war
lasted, it would be necessary that he should pass nearly half the
year out of England. Hitherto she had, when he was absent,
supplied his place, and had supplied it well. Who was to supply
it now? In what vicegerent could he place equal confidence? To
what vicegerent would the nation look up with equal respect? All
the statesmen of Europe therefore agreed in thinking that his
position, difficult and dangerous at best, had been made far more
difficult and more dangerous by the death of the Queen. But all
the statesmen of Europe were deceived; and, strange to say, his
reign was decidedly more prosperous and more tranquil after the
decease of Mary than during her life.

A few hours after he had lost the most tender and beloved of all
his friends, he was delivered from the most formidable of all his
enemies. Death had been busy at Paris as well as in London. While
Tenison was praying by the bed of Mary, Bourdaloue was
administering the last unction to Luxemburg. The great French
general had never been a favourite at the French Court; but when
it was known that his feeble frame, exhausted by war and
pleasure, was sinking under a dangerous disease, the value of his
services was, for the first time, fully appreciated; the royal
physicians were sent to prescribe for him; the sisters of Saint
Cyr were ordered to pray for him; but prayers and prescriptions
were vain. "How glad the Prince of Orange will be," said Lewis,
"when the news of our loss reaches him." He was mistaken. That
news found William unable to think of any loss but his own.561

During the month which followed the death of Mary the King was
incapable of exertion. Even to the addresses of the two Houses of
Parliament he replied only by a few inarticulate sounds. The
answers which appear in the journals were not uttered by him, but
were delivered in writing. Such business as could not be deferred
was transacted by the intervention of Portland, who was himself
oppressed with sorrow. During some weeks the important and
confidential correspondence between the King and Heinsius was
suspended. At length William forced himself to resume that
correspondence: but his first letter was the letter of a
heartbroken man. Even his martial ardour had been tamed by
misery. "I tell you in confidence," he wrote, "that I feel myself
to be no longer fit for military command. Yet I will try to do my
duty; and I hope that God will strengthen me." So despondingly
did he look forward to the most brilliant and successful of his
many campaigns.562

There was no interruption of parliamentary business. While the
Abbey was hanging with black for the funeral of the Queen, the
Commons came to a vote, which at the time attracted little
attention, which produced no excitement, which has been left
unnoticed by voluminous annalists, and of which the history can
be but imperfectly traced in the archives of Parliament, but
which has done more for liberty and for civilisation than the
Great Charter or the Bill of Rights. Early in the session a
select committee had been appointed to ascertain what temporary
statutes were about to expire, and to consider which of those
statutes it might be expedient to continue. The report was made;
and all the recommendations contained in that report were
adopted, with one exception. Among the laws which the committee
advised the House to renew was the law which subjected the press
to a censorship. The question was put, "that the House do agree
with the committee in the resolution that the Act entitled an Act
for preventing Abuses in printing seditious, treasonable and
unlicensed Pamphlets, and for regulating of Printing and Printing
Presses, be continued." The Speaker pronounced that the Noes had
it; and the Ayes did not think fit to divide.

A bill for continuing all the other temporary Acts, which, in the
opinion of the Committee, could not properly be suffered to
expire, was brought in, passed and sent to the Lords. In a short
time this bill came back with an important amendment. The Lords
had inserted in the list of Acts to be continued the Act which
placed the press under the control of licensers. The Commons
resolved not to agree to the amendment, demanded a conference,
and appointed a committee of managers. The leading manager was
Edward Clarke, a stanch Whig, who represented Taunton, the
stronghold, during fifty troubled years, of civil and religious
freedom.