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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Clarke delivered to the Lords in the Painted Chamber a paper
containing the reasons which had determined the Lower House not
to renew the Licensing Act. This paper completely vindicates the
resolution to which the Commons had come. But it proves at the
same time that they knew not what they were doing, what a
revolution they were making, what a power they were calling into
existence. They pointed out concisely, clearly, forcibly, and
sometimes with a grave irony which is not unbecoming, the
absurdities and iniquities of the statute which was about to
expire. But all their objections will be found to relate to
matters of detail. On the great question of principle, on the
question whether the liberty of unlicensed printing be, on the
whole, a blessing or a curse to society, not a word is said. The
Licensing Act is condemned, not as a thing essentially evil, but
on account of the petty grievances, the exactions, the jobs, the
commercial restrictions, the domiciliary visits which were
incidental to it. It is pronounced mischievous because it enables
the Company of Stationers to extort money from publishers,
because it empowers the agents of the government to search houses
under the authority of general warrants, because it confines the
foreign book trade to the port of London; because it detains
valuable packages of books at the Custom House till the pages are
mildewed. The Commons complain that the amount of the fee which
the licenser may demand is not fixed. They complain that it is
made penal in an officer of the Customs to open a box of books
from abroad, except in the presence of one of the censors of the
press. How, it is very sensibly asked, is the officer to know
that there are books in the box till he has opened it? Such were
the arguments which did what Milton's Areopagitica had failed to
do.

The Lords yielded without a contest. They probably expected that
some less objectionable bill for the regulation of the press
would soon be sent up to them; and in fact such a bill was
brought into the House of Commons, read twice, and referred to a
select committee. But the session closed before the committee had
reported; and English literature was emancipated, and emancipated
for ever, from the control of the government.563 This great event
passed almost unnoticed. Evelyn and Luttrell did not think it
worth mentioning in their diaries. The Dutch minister did not
think it worth mentioning in his despatches. No allusion to it is
to be found in the Monthly Mercuries. The public attention was
occupied by other and far more exciting subjects.

One of those subjects was the death of the most accomplished, the
most enlightened, and, in spite of great faults, the most
estimable of the statesmen who were formed in the corrupt and
licentious Whitehall of the Restoration. About a month after the
splendid obsequies of Mary, a funeral procession of almost
ostentatious simplicity passed round the shrine of Edward the
Confessor to the Chapel of Henry the Seventh. There, at the
distance of a few feet from her coffin, lies the coffin of George
Savile, Marquess of Halifax.

Halifax and Nottingham had long been friends; and Lord Eland, now
Halifax's only son, had been affianced to the Lady Mary Finch,
Nottingham's daughter. The day of the nuptials was fixed; a
joyous company assembled at Burley on the Hill, the mansion of
the bride's father, which, from one of the noblest terraces in
the island, looks down on magnificent woods of beech and oak, on
the rich valley of Catmos, and on the spire of Oakham. The father
of the bridegroom was detained to London by indisposition, which
was not supposed to be dangerous. On a sudden his malady took an
alarming form. He was told that he had but a few hours to live.
He received the intimation with tranquil fortitude. It was
proposed to send off an express to summon his son to town. But
Halifax, good natured to the last, would not disturb the felicity
of the wedding day. He gave strict orders that his interment
should be private, prepared himself for the great change by
devotions which astonished those who had called him an atheist,
and died with the serenity of a philosopher and of a Christian,
while his friends and kindred, not suspecting his danger, were
tasting the sack posset and drawing the curtain.564 His
legitimate male posterity and his titles soon became extinct. No
small portion, however, of his wit and eloquence descended to his
daughter's son, Philip Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield. But
it is perhaps not generally known that some adventurers, who,
without advantages of fortune or position, made themselves
conspicuous by the mere force of ability, inherited the blood of
Halifax. He left a natural son, Henry Carey, whose dramas once
drew crowded audiences to the theatres, and some of whose gay and
spirited verses still live in the memory of hundreds of
thousands. From Henry Carey descended that Edmund Kean, who, in
our time, transformed himself so marvellously into Shylock, Iago
and Othello.

More than one historian has been charged with partiality to
Halifax. The truth is that the memory of Halifax is entitled in
an especial manner to the protection of history. For what
distinguishes him from all other English statesmen is this, that,
through a long public life, and through frequent and violent
revolutions of public feeling, he almost invariably took that
view of the great questions of his time which history has finally
adopted. He was called inconstant, because the relative position
in which he stood to the contending factions was perpetually
varying. As well might the pole star be called inconstant because
it is sometimes to the east and sometimes to the west of the
pointers. To have defended the ancient and legal constitution of
the realm against a seditious populace at one conjuncture and
against a tyrannical government at another; to have been the
foremost defender of order in the turbulent Parliament of 1680
and the foremost defender of liberty in the servile Parliament of
1685; to have been just and merciful to Roman Catholics in the
days of the Popish plot and to Exclusionists in the days of the
Rye House Plot; to have done all in his power to save both the
head of Stafford and the head of Russell; this was a course which
contemporaries, heated by passion and deluded by names and
badges, might not unnaturally call fickle, but which deserves a
very different name from the late justice of posterity.

There is one and only one deep stain on the memory of this
eminent man. It is melancholy to think that he, who had acted so
great a part in the Convention, could have afterwards stooped to
hold communication with Saint Germains. The fact cannot be
disputed; yet for him there are excuses which cannot be pleaded
for others who were guilty of the same crime. He did not, like
Marlborough, Russell, Godolphin and Shrewsbury, betray a master
by whom he was trusted, and with whose benefits he was loaded. It
was by the ingratitude and malice of the Whigs that he was driven
to take shelter for a moment among the Jacobites. It may be added
that he soon repented of the error into which he had been hurried
by passion, that, though never reconciled to the Court, he
distinguished himself by his zeal for the vigorous prosecution of
the war, and that his last work was a tract in which he exhorted
his countrymen to remember that the public burdens, heavy as they
might seem, were light when compared with the yoke of France and
of Rome.565

About a fortnight after the death of Halifax, a fate far more
cruel than death befell his old rival and enemy, the Lord
President. That able, ambitious and daring statesman was again
hurled down from power. In his first fall, terrible as it was,
there had been something of dignity; and he had, by availing
himself with rare skill of an extraordinary crisis in public
affairs, risen once more to the most elevated position among
English subjects. The second ruin was indeed less violent than
the first; but it was ignominious and irretrievable.

The peculation and venality by which the official men of that age
were in the habit of enriching themselves had excited in the
public mind a feeling such as could not but vent itself, sooner
or later, in some formidable explosion. But the gains were
immediate; the day of retribution was uncertain; and the
plunderers of the public were as greedy and as audacious as ever,
when the vengeance, long threatened and long delayed, suddenly
overtook the proudest and most powerful among them.

The first mutterings of the coming storm did not at all indicate
the direction which it would take, or the fury with which it
would burst. An infantry regiment, which was quartered at
Royston, had levied contributions on the people of that town and
of the neighbourhood. The sum exacted was not large. In France or
Brabant the moderation of the demand would have been thought
wonderful. But to English shopkeepers and farmers military
extortion was happily quite new and quite insupportable. A
petition was sent up to the Commons. The Commons summoned the
accusers and the accused to the bar. It soon appeared that a
grave offence had been committed, but that the offenders were not
altogether without excuse. The public money which had been issued
from the Exchequer for their pay and subsistence had been
fraudulently detained by their colonel and by his agent. It was
not strange that men who had arms and who had not necessaries
should trouble themselves little about the Petition of Right and
the Declaration of Right. But it was monstrous that, while the
citizen was heavily taxed for the purpose of paying to the
soldier the largest military stipend known in Europe, the soldier
should be driven by absolute want to plunder the citizen. This
was strongly set forth in a representation which the Commons laid
before William. William, who had been long struggling against
abuses which grievously impaired the efficiency of his army, was
glad to have his hands thus strengthened. He promised ample
redress, cashiered the offending colonel, gave strict orders that
the troops should receive their due regularly, and established a
military board for the purpose of detecting and punishing such
malpractices as had taken place at Royston.566

But the whole administration was in such a state that it was
hardly possible to track one offender without discovering ten
others. In the course of the inquiry into the conduct of the
troops at Royston, it was discovered that a bribe of two hundred
guineas had been received by Henry Guy, member of Parliament for
Heydon and Secretary of the Treasury. Guy was instantly sent to
the Tower, not without much exultation on the part of the Whigs;
for he was one of those tools who had passed, together with the
buildings and furniture of the public offices, from James to
William; he affected the character of a High Churchman; and he
was known to be closely connected with some of the heads of the
Tory party, and especially with Trevor.567

Another name, which was afterwards but too widely celebrated,
first became known to the public at this time. James Craggs had
begun life as a barber. He had then been a footman of the Duchess
of Cleveland. His abilities, eminently vigorous though not
improved by education, had raised him in the world; and he was
now entering on a career which was destined to end, after a
quarter of a century of prosperity, in unutterable misery and
despair. He had become an army clothier. He was examined as to
his dealings with the colonels of regiments; and, as he
obstinately refused to produce his books, he was sent to keep Guy
company in the Tower.568

A few hours after Craggs had been thrown into prison, a
committee, which had been appointed to inquire into the truth of
a petition signed by some of the hackney coachmen of London, laid
on the table of the House a report which excited universal
disgust and indignation. It appeared that these poor hardworking
men had been cruelly wronged by the board under the authority of
which an Act of the preceding session had placed them. They had
been pillaged and insulted, not only by the commissioners, but by
one commissioner's lacquey and by another commissioner's harlot.
The Commons addressed the King; and the King turned the
delinquents out of their places.569

But by this time delinquents far higher in power and rank were
beginning to be uneasy. At every new detection, the excitement,
both within and without the walls of Parliament, became more
intense. The frightful prevalence of bribery, corruption and
extortion was every where the subject of conversation. A
contemporary pamphleteer compares the state of the political
world at this conjuncture to the state of a city in which the
plague has just been discovered, and in which the terrible words,
"Lord have mercy on us," are already seen on some doors.570
Whispers, which at another time would have speedily died away and
been forgotten, now swelled, first into murmurs, and then into
clamours. A rumour rose and spread that the funds of the two
wealthiest corporations in the kingdom, the City of London and
the East India Company, had been largely employed for the purpose
of corrupting great men; and the names of Trevor, Seymour and
Leeds were mentioned.

The mention of these names produced a stir in the Whig ranks.
Trevor, Seymour and Leeds were all three Tories, and had, in
different ways, greater influence than perhaps any other three
Tories in the kingdom. If they could all be driven at once from
public life with blasted characters, the Whigs would be
completely predominant both in the Parliament and in the Cabinet.

Wharton was not the man to let such an opportunity escape him. At
White's, no doubt, among those lads of quality who were his
pupils in politics and in debauchery, he would have laughed
heartily at the fury with which the nation had on a sudden begun
to persecute men for doing what every body had always done and
was always trying to do. But if people would be fools, it was the
business of a politician to make use of their folly. The cant of
political purity was not so familiar to the lips of Wharton as
blasphemy and ribaldry; but his abilities were so versatile, and
his impudence so consummate, that he ventured to appear before
the world as an austere patriot mourning over the venality and
perfidy of a degenerate age. While he, animated by that fierce
party spirit which in honest men would be thought a vice, but
which in him was almost a virtue, was eagerly stirring up his
friends to demand an inquiry into the truth of the evil reports
which were in circulation, the subject was suddenly and strangely
forced forward. It chanced that, while a bill of little interest
was under discussion in the Commons, the postman arrived with
numerous letters directed to members; and the distribution took
place at the bar with a buzz of conversation which drowned the
voices of the orators. Seymour, whose imperious temper always
prompted him to dictate and to chide, lectured the talkers on the
scandalous irregularity of their conduct, and called on the
Speaker to reprimand them. An angry discussion followed; and one
of the offenders was provoked into making an allusion to the
stories which were current about both Seymour and the Speaker.
"It is undoubtedly improper to talk while a bill is under
discussion; but it is much worse to take money for getting a bill
passed. If we are extreme to mark a slight breach of form, how
severely ought we to deal with that corruption which is eating
away the very substance of our institutions!" That was enough;
the spark had fallen; the train was ready; the explosion was
immediate and terrible. After a tumultuous debate in which the
cry of "the Tower" was repeatedly heard, Wharton managed to carry
his point. Before the House rose a committee was appointed to
examine the books of the City of London and of the East India
Company.571

Foley was placed in the chair of the committee. Within a week he
reported that the Speaker, Sir John Trevor, had in the preceding
session received from the City a thousand guineas for expediting
a local bill. This discovery gave great satisfaction to the
Whigs, who had always hated Trevor, and was not unpleasing to
many of the Tories. During six busy sessions his sordid rapacity
had made him an object of general aversion. The legitimate
emoluments of his post amounted to about four thousand a year;
but it was believed that he had made at least ten thousand a
year.572 His profligacy and insolence united had been too much
even for the angelic temper of Tillotson. It was said that the
gentle Archbishop had been heard to mutter something about a
knave as the Speaker passed by him.573 Yet, great as were the
offences of this bad man, his punishment was fully proportioned
to them. As soon as the report of the committee had been read, it
was moved that he had been guilty of a high crime and
misdemeanour. He had to stand up and to put the question. There
was a loud cry of Aye. He called on the Noes; and scarcely a
voice was heard. He was forced to declare that the Ayes had it. A
man of spirit would have given up the ghost with remorse and
shame; and the unutterable ignominy of that moment left its mark
even on the callous heart and brazen forehead of Trevor. Had he
returned to the House on the following day, he would have had to
put the question on a motion for his own expulsion. He therefore
pleaded illness, and shut himself up in his bedroom. Wharton soon
brought down a royal message authorising the Commons to elect
another Speaker.

The Whig chiefs wished to place Littleton in the chair; but they
were unable to accomplish their object. Foley was chosen,
presented and approved. Though he had of late generally voted
with the Tories, he still called himself a Whig, and was not
unacceptable to many of the Whigs. He had both the abilities and
the knowledge which were necessary to enable him to preside over
the debates with dignity; but what, in the peculiar circumstances
in which the House then found itself placed, was not unnaturally
considered as his principal recommendation, was that implacable
hatred of jobbery and corruption which he somewhat ostentatiously
professed, and doubtless sincerely felt. On the day after he
entered on his functions, his predecessor was expelled.574

The indiscretion of Trevor had been equal to his baseness; and
his guilt had been apparent on the first inspection of the
accounts of the City. The accounts of the East India Company were
more obscure. The committee reported that they had sate in
Leadenhall Street, had examined documents, had interrogated
directors and clerks, but had been unable to arrive at the bottom
of the mystery of iniquity. Some most suspicious entries had been
discovered, under the head of special service. The expenditure on
this account had, in the year 1693, exceeded eighty thousand
pounds. It was proved that, as to the outlay of this money, the
directors had placed implicit confidence in the governor, Sir
Thomas Cook. He had merely told them in general terms that he had
been at a charge of twenty-three thousand, of twenty-five
thousand, of thirty thousand pounds, in the matter of the
Charter; and the Court had, without calling on him for any
detailed explanation, thanked him for his care, and ordered
warrants for these great sums to be instantly made out. It
appeared that a few mutinous directors had murmured at this
immense outlay, and had called for a detailed statement. But the
only answer which they had been able to extract from Cook was
that there were some great persons whom it was necessary to
gratify.

The committee also reported that they had lighted on an agreement
by which the Company had covenanted to furnish a person named
Colston with two hundred tons of saltpetre. At the first glance,
this transaction seemed merchantlike and fair. But it was soon
discovered that Colston was merely an agent for Seymour.
Suspicion was excited. The complicated terms of the bargain were
severely examined, and were found to be framed in such a manner
that, in every possible event, Seymour must be a gainer and the
Company a loser to the extent of ten or twelve thousand pounds.
The opinion of all who understood the matter was that the compact
was merely a disguise intended to cover a bribe. But the disguise
was so skilfully managed that the country gentlemen were
perplexed, and that the lawyers doubted whether there were such
evidence of corruption as would be held sufficient by a court of
justice. Seymour escaped without even a vote of censure, and
still continued to take a leading part in the debates of the
Commons.575 But the authority which he had long exercised in the
House and in the western counties of England, though not
destroyed, was visibly diminished; and, to the end of his life,
his traffic in saltpetre was a favourite theme of Whig
pamphleteers and poets.576

The escape of Seymour only inflamed the ardour of Wharton and of
Wharton's confederates. They were determined to discover what had
been done with the eighty or ninety thousand pounds of secret
service money which had been entrusted to Cook by the East India
Company. Cook, who was member for Colchester, was questioned in
his place; he refused to answer; he was sent to the Tower; and a
bill was brought in providing that if, before a certain day, he
should not acknowledge the whole truth, he should be incapable of
ever holding any office, should refund to the Company the whole
of the immense sum which had been confided to him, and should pay
a fine of twenty thousand pounds to the Crown. Rich as he was,
these penalties would have reduced him to penury. The Commons
were in such a temper that they passed the bill without a single
division.577 Seymour, indeed, though his saltpetre contract was
the talk of the whole town, came forward with unabashed forehead
to plead for his accomplice; but his effrontery only injured the
cause which he defended.578 In the Upper House the bill was
condemned in the strongest terms by the Duke of Leeds. Pressing
his hand on his heart, he declared, on his faith, on his honour,
that he had no personal interest in the question, and that he was
actuated by no motive but a pure love of justice. His eloquence
was powerfully seconded by the tears and lamentations of Cook,
who, from the bar, implored the Peers not to subject him to a
species of torture unknown to the mild laws of England. "Instead
of this cruel bill," he said, "pass a bill of indemnity; and I
will tell you all." The Lords thought his request not altogether
unreasonable. After some communication with the Commons, it was
determined that a joint committee of the two Houses should be
appointed to inquire into the manner in which the secret service
money of the East India Company had been expended; and an Act was
rapidly passed providing that, if Cook would make to this
committee a true and full discovery, he should be indemnified for
the crimes which he might confess; and that, till he made such a
discovery, he should remain in the Tower. To this arrangement
Leeds gave in public all the opposition that he could with
decency give. In private those who were conscious of guilt
employed numerous artifices for the purpose of averting inquiry.
It was whispered that things might come out which every good
Englishman would wish to hide, and that the greater part of the
enormous sums which had passed through Cook's hands had been paid
to Portland for His Majesty's use. But the Parliament and the
nation were determined to know the truth, whoever might suffer by
the disclosure.579

As soon as the Bill of Indemnity had received the royal assent,
the joint committee, consisting of twelve lords and twenty-four
members of the House of Commons, met in the Exchequer Chamber.
Wharton was placed in the chair; and in a few hours great
discoveries were made.

The King and Portland came out of the inquiry with unblemished
honour. Not only had not the King taken any part of the secret
service money dispensed by Cook; but he had not, during some
years, received even the ordinary present which the Company had,
in former reigns, laid annually at the foot of the throne. It
appeared that not less than fifty thousand pounds had been
offered to Portland, and rejected. The money lay during a whole
year ready to be paid to him if he should change his mind. He at
length told those who pressed this immense bribe on him, that if
they persisted in insulting him by such an offer, they would make
him an enemy of their Company. Many people wondered at the
probity which he showed on this occasion, for he was generally
thought interested and grasping. The truth seems to be that he
loved money, but that he was a man of strict integrity and
honour. He took, without scruple, whatever he thought that he
could honestly take, but was incapable of stooping to an act of
baseness. Indeed, he resented as affronts the compliments which
were paid him on this occasion.580 The integrity of Nottingham
could excite no surprise. Ten thousand pounds had been offered to
him, and had been refused. The number of cases in which bribery
was fully made out was small. A large part of the sum which Cook
had drawn from the Company's treasury had probably been embezzled
by the brokers whom he had employed in the work of corruption;
and what had become of the rest it was not easy to learn from the
reluctant witnesses who were brought before the committee. One
glimpse of light however was caught; it was followed; and it led
to a discovery of the highest moment. A large sum was traced from
Cook to an agent named Firebrace, and from Firebrace to another
agent named Bates, who was well known to be closely connected
with the High Church party and especially with Leeds. Bates was
summoned, but absconded; messengers were sent in pursuit of him;
he was caught, brought into the Exchequer Chamber and sworn. The
story which he told showed that he was distracted between the
fear of losing his ears and the fear of injuring his patron. He
owned that he had undertaken to bribe Leeds, had been for that
purpose furnished with five thousand five hundred guineas, had
offered those guineas to His Grace, and had, by His Grace's
permission, left them at His Grace's house in the care of a Swiss
named Robart, who was His Grace's confidential man of business.
It should seem that these facts admitted of only one
interpretation. Bates however swore that the Duke had refused to
accept a farthing. "Why then," it was asked, "was the gold left,
by his consent, at his house and in the hands of his servant?"
"Because," answered Bates, "I am bad at telling coin. I therefore
begged His Grace to let me leave the pieces, in order that Robart
might count them for me; and His Grace was so good as to give
leave." It was evident that, if this strange story had been true,
the guineas would, in a few hours, have been taken-away. But
Bates was forced to confess that they had remained half a year
where he had left them. The money had indeed at last,--and this
was one of the most suspicious circumstances in the case,--been
paid back by Robart on the very morning on which the committee
first met in the Exchequer Chamber. Who could believe that, if
the transaction had been free from all taint of corruption, the
guineas would have been detained as long as Cook was able to
remain silent, and would have been refunded on the very first day
on which he was under the necessity of speaking out?581