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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Thus far things had gone smoothly. But now came a crisis which
required the most skilful steering. The news that the Parliament
and the government were determined on a reform of the currency
produced an ignorant panic among the common people. Every man
wished to get rid of his clipped crowns and halfcrowns. No man
liked to take them. There were brawls approaching to riots in
half the streets of London. The Jacobites, always full of joy and
hope in a day of adversity and public danger, ran about with
eager looks and noisy tongues. The health of King James was
publicly drunk in taverns and on ale benches. Many members of
Parliament, who had hitherto supported the government, began to
waver; and, that nothing might be wanting to the difficulties of
the conjuncture, a dispute on a point of privilege arose between
the Houses. The Recoinage Bill, framed in conformity with
Montague's resolutions, had gone up to the Peers and had come
back with amendments, some of which, in the opinion of the
Commons, their Lordships had no right to make. The emergency was
too serious to admit of delay. Montague brought in a new bill;
which was in fact his former bill modified in some points to meet
the wishes of the Lords; the Lords, though not perfectly
contented with the new bill, passed it without any alteration;
and the royal assent was immediately given. The fourth of May, a
date long remembered over the whole kingdom and especially in the
capital, was fixed as the day on which the government would cease
to receive the clipped money in payment of taxes.648

The principles of the Recoinage Act are excellent. But some of
the details, both of that Act and of a supplementary Act which
was passed at a later period of the session, seem to prove that
Montague had not fully considered what legislation can, and what
it cannot, effect. For example, he persuaded the Parliament to
enact that it should be penal to give or take more than twenty-
two shillings for a guinea. It may be confidently affirmed that
this enactment was not suggested or approved by Locke. He well
knew that the high price of gold was not the evil which afflicted
the State, but merely a symptom of that evil, and that a fall in
the price of gold would inevitably follow, and could by no human
power or ingenuity be made to precede, the recoinage of the
silver. In fact, the penalty seems to have produced no effect
whatever, good or bad. Till the milled silver was in circulation,
the guinea continued, in spite of the law, to pass for thirty
shillings. When the milled silver became plentiful, the guinea
fell, not to twenty-two shillings, which was the highest price
allowed by the law, but to twenty-one shillings and sixpence.649

Early in February the panic which had been caused by the first
debates on the currency subsided; and, from that time till the
fourth of May, the want of money was not very severely felt. The
recoinage began. Ten furnaces were erected, in the garden behind
the Treasury; and every day huge heaps of pared and defaced
crowns and shillings were turned into massy ingots which were
instantly sent off to the mint in the Tower.650

With the fate of the law which restored the currency was closely
connected the fate of another law, which had been several years
under the consideration of Parliament, and had caused several
warm disputes between the hereditary and the elective branch of
the legislature. The session had scarcely commenced when the Bill
for regulating Trials in cases of High Treason was again laid on
the table of the Commons. Of the debates to which it gave
occasion nothing is known except one interesting circumstance
which has been preserved by tradition. Among those who supported
the bill appeared conspicuous a young Whig of high rank, of ample
fortune, and of great abilities which had been assiduously
improved by study. This was Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley,
eldest son of the second Earl of Shaftesbury, and grandson of
that renowned politician who had, in the days of Charles the
Second, been at one time the most unprincipled of ministers, and
at another the most unprincipled of demagogues. Ashley had just
been returned to Parliament for the borough of Poole, and was in
his twenty-fifth year. In the course of his speech he faltered,
stammered and seemed to lose the thread of his reasoning. The
House, then, as now, indulgent to novices, and then, as now, well
aware that, on a first appearance, the hesitation which is the
effect of modesty and sensibility is quite as promising a sign as
volubility of utterance and ease of manner, encouraged him to
proceed. "How can I, Sir," said the young orator, recovering
himself, "produce a stronger argument in favour of this bill than
my own failure? My fortune, my character, my life, are not at
stake. I am speaking to an audience whose kindness might well
inspire me with courage. And yet, from mere nervousness, from
mere want of practice in addressing large assemblies, I have lost
my recollection; I am unable to go on with my argument. How
helpless, then, must be a poor man who, never having opened his
lips in public, is called upon to reply, without a moment's
preparation, to the ablest and most experienced advocates in the
kingdom, and whose faculties are paralysed by the thought that,
if he fails to convince his hearers, he will in a few hours die
on a gallows, and leave beggary and infamy to those who are
dearest to him." It may reasonably be suspected that Ashley's
confusion and the ingenious use which he made of it had been
carefully premeditated. His speech, however, made a great
impression, and probably raised expectations which were not
fulfilled. His health was delicate; his taste was refined even to
fastidiousness; he soon left politics to men whose bodies and
minds were of coarser texture than his own, gave himself up to
mere intellectual luxury, lost himself in the mazes of the old
Academic philosophy, and aspired to the glory of reviving the old
Academic eloquence. His diction, affected and florid, but often
singularly beautiful and melodious, fascinated many young
enthusiasts. He had not merely disciples, but worshippers. His
life was short; but he lived long enough to become the founder of
a new sect of English freethinkers, diametrically opposed in
opinions and feelings to that sect of freethinkers of which
Hobbes was the oracle. During many years the Characteristics
continued to be the Gospel of romantic and sentimental
unbelievers, while the Gospel of coldblooded and hardheaded
unbelievers was the Leviathan.

The bill, so often brought in and so often lost, went through the
Commons without a division, and was carried up to the Lords. It
soon came back with the long disputed clause altering the
constitution of the Court of the Lord High Steward. A strong
party among the representatives of the people was still unwilling
to grant any new privilege to the nobility; but the moment was
critical. The misunderstanding which had arisen beween the Houses
touching the Recoinage Bill had produced inconveniences which
might well alarm even a bold politician. It was necessary to
purchase concession by concession. The Commons, by a hundred and
ninety-two votes to a hundred and fifty, agreed to the amendment
on which the Lords had, during four years, so obstinately
insisted; and the Lords in return immediately passed the
Recoinage Bill without any amendment.

There had been much contention as to the time at which the new
system of procedure in cases of high treason should come into
operation; and the bill had once been lost in consequence of a
dispute on this point. Many persons were of opinion that the
change ought not to take place till the close of the war. It was
notorious, they said, that the foreign enemy was abetted by too
many traitors at home; and, at such a time, the severity of the
laws which protected the commonwealth against the machinations of
bad citizens ought not to be relaxed. It was at last determined
that the new regulations should take effect on the twenty-fifth
of March, the first day, according to the old Calendar, of the
year 1696.

On the twenty-first of January the Recoinage Bill and the Bill
for regulating Trials in cases of High Treason received the royal
assent. On the following day the Commons repaired to Kensington
on an errand by no means agreeable either to themselves or to the
King. They were, as a body, fully resolved to support him, at
whatever cost and at whatever hazard, against every foreign and
domestic foe. But they were, as indeed every assembly of five
hundred and thirteen English gentlemen that could by any process
have been brought together must have been, jealous of the favour
which he showed to the friends of his youth. He had set his heart
on placing the house of Bentinck on a level in wealth and
splendour with the houses of Howard and Seymour, of Russell and
Cavendish.

Some of the fairest hereditary domains of the Crown had been
granted to Portland, not without murmuring on the part both of
Whigs and Tories. Nothing had been done, it is true, which was
not in conformity with the letter of the law and with a long
series of precedents. Every English sovereign had from time
immemorial considered the lands to which he had succeeded in
virtue of his office as his private property. Every family that
had been great in England, from the De Veres down to the Hydes,
had been enriched by royal deeds of gift. Charles the Second had
carved ducal estates for his bastards out of his hereditary
domain. Nor did the Bill of Rights contain a word which could be
construed to mean that the King was not at perfect liberty to
alienate any part of the estates of the Crown. At first,
therefore, William's liberality to his countrymen, though it
caused much discontent, called forth no remonstrance from the
Parliament. But he at length went too far. In 1695 he ordered the
Lords of the Treasury to make out a warrant granting to Portland
a magnificent estate in Denbighshire. This estate was said to be
worth more than a hundred thousand pounds. The annual income,
therefore, can hardly have been less than six thousand pounds;
and the annual rent which was reserved to the Crown was only six
and eightpence. This, however, was not the worst. With the
property were inseparably connected extensive royalties, which
the people of North Wales could not patiently see in the hands of
any subject. More than a century before Elizabeth had bestowed a
part of the same territory on her favourite Leicester. On that
occasion the population of Denbighshire had risen in arms; and,
after much tumult and several executions, Leicester had thought
it advisable to resign his mistress's gift back to her. The
opposition to Portland was less violent, but not less effective.
Some of the chief gentlemen of the principality made strong
representations to the ministers through whose offices the
warrant had to pass, and at length brought the subject under the
consideration of the Lower House. An address was unanimously
voted requesting the King to stop the grant; Portland begged that
he might not be the cause of a dispute between his master and the
Parliament; and the King, though much mortified, yielded to the
general wish of the nation.651

This unfortunate affair, though it terminated without an open
quarrel, left much sore feeling. The King was angry with the
Commons, and still more angry with the Whig ministers who had not
ventured to defend his grant. The loyal affection which the
Parliament had testified to him during the first days of the
session had perceptibly cooled; and he was almost as unpopular as
he had ever been, when an event took place which suddenly brought
back to him the hearts of millions, and made him for a time as
much the idol of the nation as he had been at the end of 1688.652

The plan of assassination which had been formed in the preceding
spring had been given up in consequence of William's departure
for the Continent. The plan of insurrection which had been formed
in the summer had been given up for want of help from France. But
before the end of the autumn both plans were resumed. William had
returned to England; and the possibility of getting rid of him by
a lucky shot or stab was again seriously discussed. The French
troops had gone into winter quarters; and the force, which
Charnock had in vain demanded while war was raging round Namur,
might now be spared without inconvenience. Now, therefore, a plot
was laid, more formidable than any that had yet threatened the
throne and the life of William; or rather, as has more than once
happened in our history, two plots were laid, one within the
other. The object of the greater plot was an open insurrection,
an insurrection which was to be supported by a foreign army. In
this plot almost all the Jacobites of note were more or less
concerned. Some laid in arms; some bought horses; some made lists
of the servants and tenants in whom they could place firm
reliance. The less warlike members of the party could at least
take off bumpers to the King over the water, and intimate by
significant shrugs and whispers that he would not be over the
water long. It was universally remarked that the malecontents
looked wiser than usual when they were sober, and bragged more
loudly than usual when they were drunk.653 To the smaller plot,
of which the object was the murder of William, only a few select
traitors were privy.

Each of these plots was under the direction of a leader specially
sent from Saint Germains. The more honourable mission was
entrusted to Berwick. He was charged to communicate with the
Jacobite nobility and gentry, to ascertain what force they could
bring into the field, and to fix a time for the rising. He was
authorised to assure them that the French government was
collecting troops and transports at Calais, and that, as soon as
it was known there that a rebellion had broken out in England,
his father would embark with twelve thousand veteran soldiers,
and would be among them in a few hours.

A more hazardous part was assigned to an emissary of lower rank,
but of great address, activity and courage. This was Sir George
Barclay, a Scotch gentleman who had served with credit under
Dundee, and who, when the war in the Highlands had ended, had
retired to Saint Germains. Barclay was called into the royal
closet, and received his orders from the royal lips. He was
directed to steal across the Channel and to repair to London. He
was told that a few select officers and soldiers should speedily
follow him by twos and threes. That they might have no difficulty
in finding him, he was to walk, on Mondays and Thursdays, in the
Piazza of Covent Garden after nightfall, with a white
handkerchief hanging from his coat pocket. He was furnished with
a considerable sum of money, and with a commission which was not
only signed but written from beginning to end by James himself.
This commission authorised the bearer to do from time to time
such acts of hostility against the Prince of Orange and that
Prince's adherents as should most conduce to the service of the
King. What explanation of these very comprehensive words was
orally given by James we are not informed.

Lest Barclay's absence from Saint Germains should cause any
suspicion, it was given out that his loose way of life had made
it necessary for him to put himself under the care of a surgeon
at Paris.654 He set out with eight hundred pounds in his
portmanteau, hastened to the coast, and embarked on board of a
privateer which was employed by the Jacobites as a regular packet
boat between France and England. This vessel conveyed him to a
desolate spot in Romney Marsh. About half a mile from the landing
place a smuggler named Hunt lived on a dreary and unwholesome fen
where he had no neighbours but a few rude shepherds. His dwelling
was singularly well situated for a contraband traffic in French
wares. Cargoes of Lyons silk and Valenciennes lace sufficient to
load thirty packhorses had repeatedly been landed in that dismal
solitude without attracting notice. But, since the Revolution,
Hunt had discovered that of all cargoes a cargo of traitors paid
best. His lonely abode became the resort of men of high
consideration, Earls and Barons, Knights and Doctors of Divinity.
Some of them lodged many days under his roof while waiting for a
passage. A clandestine post was established between his house and
London. The couriers were constantly going and returning; they
performed their journeys up and down on foot; but they appeared
to be gentlemen, and it was whispered that one of them was the
son of a titled man. The letters from Saint Germains were few and
small. Those directed to Saint Germains were numerous and bulky;
they were made up like parcels of millinery, and were buried in
the morass till they were called for by the privateer.

Here Barclay landed in January 1696; and hence he took the road
to London. He was followed, a few days later, by a tall youth,
who concealed his name, but who produced credentials of the
highest authority. This youth too proceeded to London. Hunt
afterwards discovered that his humble roof had had the honour of
sheltering the Duke of Berwick.655

The part which Barclay had to perform was difficult and
hazardous; and he omitted no precaution. He had been little in
London; and his face was consequently unknown to the agents of
the government. Nevertheless he had several lodgings; he
disguised himself so well that his oldest friends would not have
known him by broad daylight; and yet he seldom ventured into the
streets except in the dark. His chief agent was a monk who, under
several names, heard confessions and said masses at the risk of
his neck. This man intimated to some of the zealots with whom he
consorted a special agent of the royal family was to be spoken
with in Covent Garden, on certain nights, at a certain hour, and
might be known by certain signs.656 In this way Barclay became
acquainted with several men fit for his purpose. The first
persons to whom he fully opened himself were Charnock and
Parkyns. He talked with them about the plot which they and some
of their friends had formed in the preceding spring against the
life of William. Both Charnock and Parkyns declared that the
scheme might easily be executed, that there was no want of
resolute hearts among the Royalists, and that all that was
wanting was some sign of His Majesty's approbation.

Then Barclay produced his commission. He showed his two
accomplices that James had expressly commanded all good
Englishmen, not only to rise in arms, not only to make war on the
usurping government, not only to seize forts and towns, but also
to do from time to time such other acts of hostility against the
Prince of Orange as might be for the royal service. These words,
Barclay said, plainly authorised an attack on the Prince's
person. Charnock and Parkyns were satisfied. How in truth was it
possible for them to doubt that James's confidential agent
correctly construed James's expressions? Nay, how was it possible
for them to understand the large words of the commission in any
sense but one, even if Barclay had not been there to act as
commentator? If indeed
the subject had never been brought under James's consideration,
it might well be thought that those words had dropped from his
pen without any definite meaning. But he had been repeatedly
apprised that some of his friends in England meditated a deed of
blood, and that they were waiting only for his approbation. They
had importuned him to speak one word, to give one sign. He had
long kept silence; and, now that he had broken silence, he
merely told them to do what ever might be beneficial to himself
and prejudicial to the usurper. They had his authority as plainly
given as they could reasonably expect to have it given in such a
case.657

All that remained was to find a sufficient number of courageous
and trustworthy assistants, to provide horses and weapons, and to
fix the hour and the place of the slaughter. Forty or fifty men,
it was thought, would be sufficient. Those troopers of James's
guard who had already followed Barclay across the Channel made up
nearly half that number. James had himself seen some of these men
before their departure from Saint Germains, had given them money
for their journey, had told them by what name each of them was to
pass in England, had commanded them to act as they should be
directed by Barclay, and had informed them where Barclay was to
be found and by what tokens he was to be known.658 They were
ordered to depart in small parties, and to assign different
reasons for going. Some were ill; some were weary of the service;
Cassels, one of the most noisy and profane among them, announced
that, since he could not get military promotion, he should enter
at the Scotch college and study for a learned profession. Under
such pretexts about twenty picked men left the palace of James,
made their way by Romney Marsh to London, and found their captain
walking in the dim lamplight of the Piazza with the handkerchief
hanging from his pocket. One of these men was Ambrose Rockwood,
who held the rank of Brigadier, and who had a high reputation for
courage and honour; another was Major John Bernardi, an
adventurer of Genoese extraction, whose name has derived a
melancholy celebrity from a punishment so strangely prolonged
that it at length shocked a generation which could not remember
his crime.659

It was in these adventurers from France that Barclay placed his
chief trust. In a moment of elation he once called them his
Janissaries, and expressed a hope that they would get him the
George and Garter. But twenty more assassins at least were
wanted. The conspirators probably expected valuable help from Sir
John Friend, who had received a Colonel's commission signed by
James, and had been most active in enlisting men and providing
arms against the day when the French should appear on the coast
of Kent. The design was imparted to him; but he thought it so
rash, and so likely to bring reproach and disaster on the good
cause, that he would lend no assistance to his friends, though he
kept their secret religiously.660 Charnock undertook to find
eight brave and trusty fellows. He communicated the design to
Porter, not with Barclay's entire approbation; for Barclay
appears to have thought that a tavern brawler, who had recently
been in prison for swaggering drunk about the streets and
huzzaing in honour of the Prince of Wales, was hardly to be
trusted with a secret of such fearful import. Porter entered into
the plot with enthusiasm, and promised to bring in others who
would be useful. Among those whose help he engaged was his
servant Thomas Keyes. Keyes was a far more formidable conspirator
than might have been expected from his station in life. The
household troops generally were devoted to William; but there was
a taint of disaffection among the Blues. The chief conspirators
had already been tampering with some Roman Catholics who were in
that regiment; and Keyes was excellently qualified to bear a part
in this work; for he had formerly been trumpeter of the corps,
and, though he had quitted the service, he still kept up an
acquaintaince with some of the old soldiers in whose company he
had lived at free quarter on the Somersetshire farmers after the
battle of Sedgemoor.

Parkyns, who was old and gouty, could not himself take a share in
the work of death. But he employed himself in providing horses,
saddles and weapons for his younger and more active accomplices.
In this department of business he was assisted by Charles
Cranburne, a person who had long acted as a broker between
Jacobite plotters and people who dealt in cutlery and firearms.
Special orders were given by Barclay that the swords should be
made rather for stabbing than for slashing. Barclay himself
enlisted Edward Lowick, who had been a major in the Irish army,
and who had, since the capitulation of Limerick, been living
obscurely in London. The monk who had been Barclay's first
confidant recommended two busy Papists, Richard Fisher and
Christopher Knightley; and this recommendation was thought
sufficient. Knightley drew in Edward King, a Roman Catholic
gentleman of hot and restless temper; and King procured the
assistance of a French gambler and bully named De la Rue.661

Meanwhile the heads of the conspiracy held frequent meetings at
treason taverns, for the purpose of settling a plan of
operations. Several schemes were proposed, applauded, and, on
full consideration, abandoned. At one time it was thought that an
attack on Kensington House at dead of night might probably be
successful. The outer wall might easily be scaled. If once forty
armed men were in the garden, the palace would soon be stormed or
set on fire. Some were of opinion that it would be best to strike
the blow on a Sunday as
William went from Kensington to attend divine service at the
chapel of Saint James's Palace. The murderers might assemble near
the spot where Apsley House and Hamilton Place now stand. Just as
the royal coach passed out of Hyde Park, and was about to enter
what has since been called the Green Park, thirty of the
conspirators, well mounted, might fall on the guards. The guards
were ordinarily only five and twenty. They would be taken
completely by surprise; and probably half of them would be shot
or cut down before they could strike a blow. Meanwhile ten or
twelve resolute men on foot would stop the carriage by shooting
the horses, and would then without difficulty despatch the King.
At last the preference was given to a plan originally sketched by
Fisher and put into shape by Porter. William was in the habit of
going every Saturday from Kensington to hunt in Richmond Park.
There was then no bridge over the Thames between London and
Kingston. The King therefore went, in a coach escorted by some of
his body guards, through Turnham Green to the river. There he
took boat, crossed the water and found another coach and another
set of guards ready to receive him on the Surrey side. The first
coach and the first set of guards awaited his return on the
northern bank. The conspirators ascertained with great precision
the whole order of these journeys, and carefully examined the
ground on both sides of the Thames. They thought that they should
attack the King with more advantage on the Middlesex than on the
Surrey bank, and when he was returning than when he was going.
For, when he was going, he was often attended to the water side
by a great retinue of lords and gentlemen; but on his return he
had only his guards about him. The place and time were fixed.
The place was to be a narrow and winding lane leading from the
landingplace on the north of the rover to Turnham Green. The spot
may still be easily found. The ground has since been drained by
trenches. But in the seventeenth century it was a quagmire,
through which the royal coach was with difficulty tugged at a
foot's pace. The time was to be the afternoon of Saturday the
fifteenth of February. On that day the Forty were to assemble in
small parties at public houses near the Green. When the signal
was given that the coach was approaching they were to take horse
and repair to their posts. As the cavalcade came up this lane
Charnock was to attack the guards in the rear, Rockwood on one
flank, Porter on the other. Meanwhile Barclay, with eight trusty
men, was to stop the coach and to do the deed. That no movement
of the King might escape notice, two orderlies were appointed to
watch the palace. One of these men, a bold and active Fleming,
named Durant, was especially charged to keep Barclay well
informed. The other, whose business was to communicate with
Charnock, was a ruffian named Chambers, who had served in the
Irish army, had received a severe wound in the breast at the
Boyne, and, on account of that wound, bore a savage personal
hatred to William.662