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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Sherlock took the oaths, and speedily published, in justification
of his conduct, a pamphlet entitled The Case of Allegiance to
Sovereign Powers stated. The sensation produced by this work was
immense. Dryden's Hind and Panther had not raised so great an
uproar. Halifax's Letter to a Dissenter had not called forth so
many answers. The replies to the Doctor, the vindications of the
Doctor, the pasquinades on the Doctor, would fill a library. The
clamour redoubled when it was known that the convert had not only
been reappointed Master of the Temple, but had accepted the
Deanery of Saint Paul's, which had become vacant in consequence
of the deprivation of Sancroft and the promotion of Tillotson.
The rage of the nonjurors amounted almost to frenzy. Was it not
enough, they asked, to desert the true and pure Church, in this
her hour of sorrow and peril, without also slandering her? It was
easy to understand why a greedy, cowardly hypocrite should refuse
to take the oaths to the usurper as long as it seemed probable
that the rightful King would be restored, and should make haste
to swear after the battle of the Boyne. Such tergiversation in
times of civil discord was nothing new. What was new was that the
turncoat should try to throw his own guilt and shame on the
Church of England, and should proclaim that she had taught him to
turn against the weak who were in the right, and to cringe to the
powerful who were in the wrong. Had such indeed been her doctrine
or her practice in evil days? Had she abandoned her Royal Martyr
in the prison or on the scaffold? Had she enjoined her children
to pay obedience to the Rump or to the Protector? Yet was the
government of the Rump or of the Protector less entitled to be
called a settled government than the government of William and
Mary? Had not the battle of Worcester been as great a blow to the
hopes of the House of Stuart as the battle of the Boyne? Had not
the chances of a Restoration seemed as small in 1657 as they
could seem to any judicious man in 1691? In spite of invectives
and sarcasms, however, there was Overall's treatise; there were
the approving votes of the two Convocations; and it was much
easier to rail at Sherlock than to explain away either the
treatise or the votes. One writer maintained that by a thoroughly
settled government must have been meant a government of which the
title was uncontested. Thus, he said, the government of the
United Provinces became a settled government when it was
recognised by Spain, and, but for that recognition, would never
have been a settled government to the end of time. Another
casuist, somewhat less austere, pronounced that a government,
wrongful in its origin, might become a settled government after
the lapse of a century. On the thirteenth of February 1789,
therefore, and not a day earlier, Englishmen would be at liberty
to swear allegiance to a government sprung from the Revolution.
The history of the chosen people was ransacked for precedents.
Was Eglon's a settled government when Ehud stabbed him? Was
Joram's a settled government when Jehe shot him? But the leading
case was that of Athaliah. It was indeed a case which furnished
the malecontents with many happy and pungent allusions; a kingdom
treacherously seized by an usurper near in blood to the throne;
the rightful prince long dispossessed; a part of the sacerdotal
order true, through many disastrous years, to the Royal House; a
counterrevolution at length effected by the High Priest at the
head of the Levites. Who, it was asked, would dare to blame the
heroic pontiff who had restored the heir of David? Yet was not
the government of Athaliah as firmly settled as that of the
Prince of Orange?

Hundreds of pages written at this time about the rights of Joash
and the bold enterprise of Jehoiada are mouldering in the ancient
bookcases of Oxford and Cambridge. While Sherlock was thus
fiercely attacked by his old friends, he was not left unmolested
by his old enemies. Some vehement Whigs, among whom Julian
Johnson was conspicuous, declared that Jacobitism itself was
respectable when compared with the vile doctrine which had been
discovered in the Convocation Book. That passive obedience was
due to Kings was doubtless an absurd and pernicious notion. Yet
it was impossible not to respect the consistency and fortitude of
men who thought themselves bound to bear true allegiance, at all
hazards, to an unfortunate, a deposed, an exiled oppressor. But
the theory which Sherlock had learned from Overall was unmixed
baseness and wickedness. A cause was to be abandoned, not because
it was unjust, but because it was unprosperous. Whether James had
been a tyrant or had been the father of his people was quite
immaterial. If he had won the battle of the Boyne we should have
been bound as Christians to be his slaves. He had lost it; and
we were bound as Christians to be his foes. Other Whigs
congratulated the proselyte on having come, by whatever road, to
a right practical conclusion, but could not refrain from sneering
at the history which he gave of his conversion. He was, they
said, a man of eminent learning and abilities. He had studied the
question of allegiance long and deeply. He had written much about
it. Several months had been allowed him for reading, prayer and
reflection before he incurred suspension, several months more
before he incurred deprivation. He had formed an opinion for
which he had declared himself ready to suffer martyrdom; he had
taught that opinion to others; and he had then changed that
opinion solely because he had discovered that it had been, not
refuted, but dogmatically pronounced erroneous by the two
Convocations more than eighty years before. Surely, this was to
renounce all liberty of private judgment, and to ascribe to the
Synods of Canterbury and York an infallibility which the Church
of England had declared that even Oecumenical Councils could not
justly claim. If, it was sarcastically said, all our notions of
right and wrong, in matters of vital importance to the well being
of society, are to be suddenly altered by a few lines of
manuscript found in a corner of the library at Lambeth, it is
surely much to be wished, for the peace of mind of humble
Christians, that all the documents to which this sort of
authority belongs should be rummaged out and sent to the press as
soon as possible; for, unless this be done, we may all, like the
Doctor when he refused the oaths last year, be committing sins in
the full persuasion that we are discharging duties. In truth, it
is not easy to believe that the Convocation Book furnished
Sherlock with any thing more than a pretext for doing what he had
made up his mind to do. The united force of reason and interest
had doubtless convinced him that his passions and prejudices had
led him into a great error. That error he determined to recant;
and it cost him less to say that his opinion had been changed by
newly discovered evidence, than that he had formed a wrong
judgment with all the materials for the forming of a right
judgment before him. The popular belief was that his retractation
was the effect of the tears, expostulations and reproaches of his
wife. The lady's spirit was high; her authority in the family was
great; and she cared much more about her house and her carriage,
the plenty of her table and the prospects of her children, than
about the patriarchal origin of government or the meaning of the
word Abdication. She had, it was asserted, given her husband no
peace by day or by night till he had got over his scruples. In
letters, fables, songs, dialogues without number, her powers of
seduction and intimidation were malignantly extolled. She was
Xanthippe pouring water on the head of Socrates. She was Dalilah
shearing Samson. She was Eve forcing the forbidden fruit into
Adam's mouth. She was Job's wife, imploring her ruined lord, who
sate scraping himself among the ashes, not to curse and die, but
to swear and live. While the ballad makers celebrated the victory
of Mrs. Sherlock, another class of assailants fell on the
theological reputation of her spouse. Till he took the oaths, he
had always been considered as the most orthodox of divines. But
the captious and malignant criticism to which his writings were
now subjected would have found heresy in the Sermon on the Mount;
and he, unfortunately, was rash enough to publish, at the very
moment when the outcry against his political tergiversation was
loudest, his thoughts on the mystery of the Trinity. It is
probable that, at another time, his work would have been hailed
by good Churchmen as a triumphant answer to the Socinians and
Sabellians. But, unhappily, in his zeal against Socinians and
Sabellians, he used expressions which might be construed into
Tritheism. Candid judges would have remembered that the true path
was closely pressed on the right and on the left by error, and
that it was scarcely possible to keep far enough from danger on
one side without going very close to danger on the other. But
candid judges Sherlock was not likely to find among the
Jacobites. His old allies affirmed that he had incurred all the
fearful penalties denounced in the Athanasian Creed against those
who divide the substance. Bulky quartos were written to prove
that he held the existence of three distinct Deities; and some
facetious malecontents, who troubled themselves very little about
the Catholic verity, amused the town by lampoons in English and
Latin on his heterodoxy. "We," said one of these jesters, "plight
our faith to one King, and call one God to attest our promise. We
cannot think it strange that there should be more than one King
to whom the Doctor has sworn allegiance, when we consider that
the Doctor has more Gods than one to swear by."61

Sherlock would, perhaps, have doubted whether the government to
which he had submitted was entitled to be called a settled
government, if he had known all the dangers by which it was
threatened. Scarcely had Preston's plot been detected; when a new
plot of a very different kind was formed in the camp, in the
navy, in the treasury, in the very bedchamber of the King. This
mystery of iniquity has, through five generations, been gradually
unveiling, but is not yet entirely unveiled. Some parts which are
still obscure may possibly, by the discovery of letters or
diaries now reposing under the dust of a century and a half, be
made clear to our posterity. The materials, however, which are at
present accessible, are sufficient for the construction of a
narrative not to be read without shame and loathing.62

We have seen that, in the spring of 1690, Shrewsbury, irritated
by finding his counsels rejected, and those of his Tory rivals
followed, suffered himself, in a fatal hour, to be drawn into a
correspondence with the banished family. We have seen also by
what cruel sufferings of body and mind he expiated his fault.
Tortured by remorse, and by disease the effect of remorse, he had
quitted the Court; but he had left behind him men whose
principles were not less lax than his, and whose hearts were far
harder and colder.

Early in 1691, some of these men began to hold secret
communication with Saint Germains. Wicked and base as their
conduct was, there was in it nothing surprising. They did after
their kind. The times were troubled. A thick cloud was upon the
future. The most sagacious and experienced politician could not
see with any clearness three months before him. To a man of
virtue and honour, indeed, this mattered little. His uncertainty
as to what the morrow might bring forth might make him anxious,
but could not make him perfidious. Though left in utter darkness
as to what concerned his interests, he had the sure guidance of
his principles. But, unhappily, men of virtue and honour were not
numerous among the courtiers of that age. Whitehall had been,
during thirty years, a seminary of every public and private vice,
and swarmed with lowminded, doubledealing, selfseeking
politicians. These politicians now acted as it was natural that
men profoundly immoral should act at a crisis of which none could
predict the issue. Some of them might have a slight predilection
for William; others a slight predilection for James; but it was
not by any such predilection that the conduct of any of the breed
was guided. If it had seemed certain that William would stand,
they would all have been for William. If it had seemed certain
that James would be restored, they would all have been for James.
But what was to be done when the chances appeared to be almost
exactly balanced? There were honest men of one party who would
have answered, To stand by the true King and the true Church,
and, if necessary, to die for them like Laud. There were honest
men of the other party who would have answered, To stand by the
liberties of England and the Protestant religion, and, if
necessary, to die for them like Sidney. But such consistency was
unintelligible to many of the noble and the powerful. Their
object was to be safe in every event. They therefore openly took
the oath of allegiance to one King, and secretly plighted their
word to the other. They were indefatigable in obtaining
commissions, patents of peerage, pensions, grants of crown land,
under the great seal of William; and they had in their secret
drawers promises of pardon in the handwriting of James.

Among those who were guilty of this wickedness three men stand
preeminent, Russell, Godolphin and Marlborough. No three men
could be, in head and heart, more unlike to one another; and the
peculiar qualities of each gave a peculiar character to his
villany. The treason of Russell is to be attributed partly to
fractiousness; the treason of Godolphin is to be attributed
altogether to timidity; the treason of Marlborough was the
treason of a man of great genius and boundless ambition.

It may be thought strange that Russell should have been out of
humour. He had just accepted the command of the united naval
forces of England and Holland with the rank of Admiral of the
Fleet. He was Treasurer of the Navy. He had a pension of three
thousand pounds a year. Crown property near Charing Cross, to the
value of eighteen thousand pounds, had been bestowed on him. His
indirect gains must have been immense. But he was still
dissatisfed. In truth, with undaunted courage, with considerable
talents both for war and for administration, and with a certain
public spirit, which showed itself by glimpses even in the very
worst parts of his life, he was emphatically a bad man, insolent,
malignant, greedy, faithless. He conceived that the great
services which he had performed at the time of the Revolution had
not been adequately rewarded. Every thing that was given to
others seemed to him to be pillaged from himself. A letter is
still extant which he wrote to William about this time. It is
made up of boasts, reproaches and sneers. The Admiral, with
ironical professions of humility and loyalty, begins by asking
permission to put his wrongs on paper, because his bashfulness
would not suffer him to explain himself by word of mouth. His
grievances were intolerable. Other people got grants of royal
domains; but he could get scarcely any thing. Other people could
provide for their dependants; but his recommendations were
uniformly disregarded. The income which he derived from the
royal favour might seem large; but he had poor relations; and the
government, instead of doing its duty by them, had most
unhandsomely left them to his care. He had a sister who ought to
have a pension; for, without one, she could not give portions to
her daughters. He had a brother who, for want of a place, had
been reduced to the melancholy necessity of marrying an old woman
for her money. Russell proceeded to complain bitterly that the
Whigs were neglected, that the Revolution had aggrandised and
enriched men who had made the greatest efforts to avert it. And
there is reason to believe that this complaint came from his
heart. For, next to his own interests, those of his party were
dear to him; and, even when he was most inclined to become a
Jacobite, he never had the smallest disposition to become a Tory.
In the temper which this letter indicates, he readily listened to
the suggestions of David Lloyd, one of the ablest and most active
emissaries who at this time were constantly plying between France
and England. Lloyd conveyed to James assurances that Russell
would, when a favourable opportunity should present itself, try
to effect by means of the fleet what Monk had effected in the
preceding generation by means of the army.63 To what extent these
assurances were sincere was a question about which men who knew
Russell well, and who were minutely informed as to his conduct,
were in doubt. It seems probable that, during many months, he did
not know his own mind. His interest was to stand well, as long as
possible, with both Kings. His irritable and imperious nature was
constantly impelling him to quarrel with both. His spleen was
excited one week by a dry answer from William, and the next week
by an absurd proclamation from James. Fortunately the most
important day of his life, the day from which all his subsequent
years took their colour, found him out of temper with the
banished King.

Godolphin had not, and did not pretend to have, any cause of
complaint against the government which he served. He was First
Commissioner of the Treasury. He had been protected, trusted,
caressed. Indeed the favour shown to him had excited many
murmurs. Was it fitting, the Whigs had indignantly asked, that a
man who had been high in office through the whole of the late
reign, who had promised to vote for the Indulgence, who had sate
in the Privy Council with a Jesuit, who had sate at the Board of
Treasury with two Papists, who had attended an idolatress to her
altar, should be among the chief ministers of a Prince whose
title to the throne was derived from the Declaration of Rights?
But on William this clamour had produced no effect; and none of
his English servants seems to have had at this time a larger
share of his confidence than Godolphin.

Nevertheless, the Jacobites did not despair. One of the most
zealous among them, a gentleman named Bulkeley, who had formerly
been on terms of intimacy with Godolphin, undertook to see what
could be done. He called at the Treasury, and tried to draw the
First Lord into political talk. This was no easy matter; for
Godolphin was not a man to put himself lightly into the power of
others. His reserve was proverbial; and he was especially
renowned for the dexterity with which he, through life, turned
conversation away from matters of state to a main of cocks or the
pedigree of a racehorse. The visit ended without his uttering a
word indicating that he remembered the existence of King James.

Bulkeley, however, was not to be so repulsed. He came again, and
introduced the subject which was nearest his heart. Godolphin
then asked after his old master and mistress in the mournful tone
of a man who despaired of ever being reconciled to them. Bulkeley
assured him that King James was ready to forgive all the past.
"May I tell His Majesty that you will try to deserve his favour?"
At this Godolphin rose, said something about the trammels of
office and his wish to be released from them, and put an end to
the interview.

Bulkeley soon made a third attempt. By this time Godolphin had
learned some things which shook his confidence in the stability
of the government which he served. He began to think, as he would
himself have expressed it, that he had betted too deep on the
Revolution, and that it was time to hedge. Evasions would no
longer serve his turn. It was necessary to speak out. He spoke
out, and declared himself a devoted servant of King James. "I
shall take an early opportunity of resigning my place. But, till
then, I am under a tie. I must not betray my trust." To enhance
the value of the sacrifice which he proposed to make, he produced
a most friendly and confidential letter which he had lately
received from William. "You see how entirely the Prince of Orange
trusts me. He tells me that he cannot do without me, and that
there is no Englishman for whom he has so great a kindness; but
all this weighs nothing with me in comparison of my duty to my
lawful King."

If the First Lord of the Treasury really had scruples about
betraying his trust, those scruples were soon so effectually
removed that he very complacently continued, during six years, to
eat the bread of one master, while secretly sending professions
of attachment and promises of service to another.

The truth is that Godolphin was under the influence of a mind far
more powerful and far more depraved than his own. His
perplexities had been imparted to Marlborough, to whom he had
long been bound by such friendship as two very unprincipled men
are capable of feeling for each other, and to whom he was
afterwards bound by close domestic ties.

Marlborough was in a very different situation from that of
William's other servants. Lloyd might make overtures to Russell,
and Bulkeley to Godolphin. But all the agents of the banished
Court stood aloof from the traitor of Salisbury. That shameful
night seemed to have for ever separated the perjured deserter
from the Prince whom he had ruined. James had, even in the last
extremity, when his army was in full retreat, when his whole
kingdom had risen against him, declared that he would never
pardon Churchill, never, never. By all the Jacobites the name of
Churchill was held in peculiar abhorrence; and, in the prose and
verse which came forth daily from their secret presses, a
precedence in infamy, among all the many traitors of the age, was
assigned to him. In the order of things which had sprung from the
Revolution, he was one of the great men of England, high in the
state, high in the army. He had been created an Earl. He had a
large share in the military administration. The emoluments,
direct and indirect, of the places and commands which he held
under the Crown were believed at the Dutch Embassy to amount to
twelve thousand pounds a year. In the event of a
counterrevolution it seemed that he had nothing in prospect but a
garret in Holland, or a scaffold on Tower Hill. It might
therefore have been expected that he would serve his new master
with fidelity, not indeed with the fidelity of Nottingham, which
was the fidelity of conscientiousness, not with the fidelity of
Portland, which was the fidelity of affection, but with the not
less stubborn fidelity of despair.

Those who thought thus knew but little of Marlborough. Confident
in his own powers of deception, he resolved, since the Jacobite
agents would not seek him, to seek them. He therefore sent to beg
an interview with Colonel Edward Sackville.

Sackville was astonished and not much pleased by the message. He
was a sturdy Cavalier of the old school. He had been persecuted
in the days of the Popish plot for manfully saying what he
thought, and what every body now thinks, about Oates and
Bedloe.64 Since the Revolution he had put his neck in peril for
King James, had been chased by officers with warrants, and had
been designated as a traitor in a proclamation to which
Marlborough himself had been a party.65 It was not without
reluctance that the stanch royalist crossed the hated threshold
of the deserter. He was repaid for his effort by the edifying
spectacle of such an agony of repentance as he had never before
seen. "Will you," said Marlborough, "be my intercessor with the
King? Will you tell him what I suffer? My crimes now appear to me
in their true light; and I shrink with horror from the
contemplation. The thought of them is with me day and night. I
sit down to table; but I cannot eat. I throw myself on my bed;
but I cannot sleep. I am ready to sacrifice every thing, to brave
every thing, to bring utter ruin on my fortunes, if only I may be
free from the misery of a wounded spirit." If appearances could
be trusted, this great offender was as true a penitent as David
or as Peter. Sackville reported to his friends what had passed.
They could not but acknowledge that, if the arch traitor, who had
hitherto opposed to conscience and to public opinion the same
cool and placid hardihood which distinguished him on fields of
battle, had really begun to feel remorse, it would be absurd to
reject, on account of his unworthiness, the inestimable services
which it was in his power to render to the good cause. He sate in
the interior council; he held high command in the army; he had
been recently entrusted, and would doubtless again be entrusted,
with the direction of important military operations. It was true
that no man had incurred equal guilt; but it was true also that
no man had it in his power to make equal reparation. If he was
sincere, he might doubtless earn the pardon which he so much
desired. But was he sincere? Had he not been just as loud in
professions of loyalty on the very eve of his crime? It was
necessary to put him to the test. Several tests were applied by
Sackville and Lloyd. Marlborough was required to furnish full
information touching the strength and the distribution of all the
divisions of the English army; and he complied. He was required
to disclose the whole plan of the approaching campaign; and he
did so. The Jacobite leaders watched carefully for inaccuracies
in his reports, but could find none. It was thought a still
stronger proof of his fidelity that he gave valuable intelligence
about what was doing in the office of the Secretary of State. A
deposition had been sworn against one zealous royalist. A warrant
was preparing against another. These intimations saved several of
the malecontents from imprisonment, if not from the gallows; and
it was impossible for them not to feel some relenting towards the
awakened sinner to whom they owed so much.