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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While Barclay was making all his arrangements for the
assassination, Berwick was endeavouring to persuade the Jacobite
aristocracy to rise in arms. But this was no easy task. Several
consultations were held; and there was one great muster of the
party under the pretence of a masquerade, for which tickets were
distributed among the initiated at one guinea each.663 All ended
however in talking, singing and drinking. Many men of rank and
fortune indeed declared that they would draw their swords for
their rightful Sovereign as soon as their rightful Sovereign was
in the island with a French army; and Berwick had been empowered
to assure there that a French army should be sent as soon as they
had drawn the sword. But between what they asked and what he was
authorised to grant there was a difference which admitted of no
compromise. Lewis, situated as he was, would not risk ten or
twelve thousand excellent soldiers on the mere faith of promises.
Similar promises had been made in 1690; and yet, when the fleet
of Tourville had appeared on the coast of Devonshire, the western
counties had risen as one man in defence of the government, and
not a single malecontent had dared to utter a whisper in favour
of the invaders. Similar promises had been made in 1692; and to
the confidence which had been placed in those promises was to be
attributed the great disaster of La Hogue. The French King would
not be deceived a third time. He would gladly help the English
royalists; but he must first see them help themselves. There was
much reason in this; and there was reason also in what the
Jacobites urged on the other side. If, they said, they were to
rise, without a single disciplined regiment to back them, against
an usurper supported by a regular army, they should all be cut to
pieces before the news that they were up could reach Versailles.
As Berwick could hold out no hope that there would be an invasion
before there was an insurrection, and as his English friends were
immovable in their determination that there should be no
insurrection till there was an invasion, he had nothing more to
do here, and became impatient to depart.

He was the more impatient to depart because the fifteenth of
February drew near. For he was in constant communication with
Barclay, and was perfectly apprised of all the details of the
crime which was to be perpetrated on that day. He was generally
considered as a man of sturdy and even ungracious integrity. But
to such a degree had his sense of right and wrong been perverted
by his zeal for the interests of his family, and by his respect
for the lessons of his priests, that he did not, as he has
himself ingenuously confessed, think that he lay under any
obligation to dissuade the assassins from the execution of their
purpose. He had indeed only one objection to their design; and
that objection he kept to himself. It was simply this, that all
who were concerned were very likely to be hanged. That, however,
was their affair; and, if they chose to run such a risk in the
good cause, it was not his business to discourage them. His
mission was quite distinct from theirs; he was not to act with
them; and he had no inclination to suffer with then. He therefore
hastened down to Romney Marsh, and crossed to Calais.664

At Calais he found preparations making for a descent on Kent.
Troops filled the town; transports filled the port. Boufflers had
been ordered to repair thither from Flanders, and to take the
command. James himself was daily expected. In fact he had already
left Saint Germains. Berwick, however, would not wait. He took
the road to Paris, met his father at Clermont, and made a full
report of the state of things in England. His embassy had failed;
the Royalist nobility and gentry seemed resolved not to rise till
a French army was in the island; but there was still a hope; news
would probably come within a few days that the usurper was no
more; and such news would change the whole aspect of affairs.
James determined to go on to Calais, and there to await the event
of Barclay's plot. Berwick hastened to Versailles for the purpose
of giving explanations to Lewis. What the nature of the
explanations was we know from Berwick's own narrative. He
plainly told the French King that a small band of loyal men would
in a short time make an attempt on the life of the great enemy of
France. The next courier might bring tidings of an event which
would probably subvert the English government and dissolve the
European coalition. It might have been thought that a prince who
ostentatiously affected the character of a devout Christian and
of a courteous knight would instantly have taken measures for
conveying to his rival a caution which perhaps might still arrive
in time, and would have severely reprimanded the guests who had
so grossly abused his hospitality. Such, however, was not the
conduct of Lewis. Had he been asked to give his sanction to a
murder he would probably have refused with indignation. But he
was not moved to indignation by learning that, without his
sanction, a crime was likely to be committed which would be far
more beneficial to his interests than ten such victories as that
of Landen. He sent down orders to Calais that his fleet should be
in such readiness as might enable him to take advantage of the
great crisis which he anticipated. At Calais James waited with
still more impatience for the signal that his nephew was no more.
That signal was to be given by a fire, of which the fuel was
already prepared on the cliffs of Kent, and which would be
visible across the straits.665

But a peculiar fate has, in our country, always attended such
conspiracies as that of Barclay and Charnock. The English regard
assassination, and have during some ages regarded it, with a
loathing peculiar to themselves. So English indeed is this
sentiment that it cannot even now be called Irish, and till a
recent period, it was not Scotch. In Ireland to this day the
villain who shoots at his enemy from behind a hedge is too often
protected from justice by public sympathy. In Scotland plans of
assassination were often, during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, successfully executed, though known to great numbers
of persons. The murders of Beaton, of Rizzio, of Darnley, of
Murray, of Sharpe, are conspicuous instances. The royalists who
murdered Lisle in Switzerland were Irishmen; the royalists who
murdered Ascham at Madrid were Irishmen; the royalists who
murdered Dorislaus at the Hague were Scotchmen. In England, as
soon as such a design ceases to be a secret hidden in the
recesses of one gloomy and ulcerated heart, the risk of detection
and failure becomes extreme. Felton and Bellingham reposed trust
in no human being; and they were therefore able to accomplish
their evil purposes. But Babington's conspiracy against
Elizabeth, Fawkes's conspiracy against James, Gerard's conspiracy
against Cromwell, the Rye House conspiracy, the Cato Street
conspiracy, were all discovered, frustrated and punished. In
truth such a conspiracy is here exposed to equal danger from the
good and from the bad qualities of the conspirators. Scarcely
any Englishman, not utterly destitute of conscience and honour,
will engage in a plot for slaying an unsuspecting fellow
creature; and a wretch who has neither conscience nor honour is
likely to think much on the danger which he incurs by being true
to his associates, and on the rewards which he may obtain by
betraying them. There are, it is true, persons in whom religious
or political fanaticism has destroyed all moral sensibility on
one particular point, and yet has left that sensibility generally
unimpaired. Such a person was Digby. He had no scruple about
blowing King, Lords and Commons into the air. Yet to his
accomplices he was religiously and chivalrously faithful; nor
could even the fear of the rack extort from him one word to their
prejudice. But this union of depravity and heroism is very rare.
The vast majority of men are either not vicious enough or not
virtuous enough to be loyal and devoted members of treacherous
and cruel confederacies; and, if a single member should want
either the necessary vice or the necessary virtue, the whole
confederacy is in danger. To bring together in one body forty
Englishmen, all hardened cutthroats, and yet all so upright and
generous that neither the hope of opulence nor the dread of the
gallows can tempt any one of them to be false to the rest, has
hitherto been found, and will, it is to be hoped, always be found
impossible.

There were among Barclay's followers both men too bad and men too
good to be trusted with such a secret as his. The first whose
heart failed him was Fisher. Even before the time and place of
the crime had been fixed, he obtained an audience of Portland,
and told that lord that a design was forming against the King's
life. Some days later Fisher came again with more precise
intelligence. But his character was not such as entitled him to
much credit; and the knavery of Fuller, of Young, of Whitney and
of Taffe, had made men of sense slow to believe stories of
plots. Portland, therefore, though in general very easily alarmed
where the safety of his master and friend was concerned, seems
to have thought little about the matter. But, on the evening of
the fourteenth of February, he received a visit from a person
whose testimony he could not treat lightly. This was a Roman
Catholic gentleman of known courage and honour, named
Pendergrass. He had, on the preceding day, come up to town from
Hampshire, in consequence of a pressing summons from Porter, who,
dissolute and unprincipled as he was, had to Pendergrass been a
most kind friend, indeed almost a father. In a Jacobite
insurrection Pendergrass would probably have been one of the
foremost. But he learned with horror that he was expected to bear
a part in a wicked and shameful deed. He found himself in one of
those situations which most cruelly torture noble and sensitive
natures. What was he to do? Was he to commit a murder? Was he to
suffer a murder which he could prevent to be committed? Yet was
he to betray one who, however culpable, had loaded him with
benefits? Perhaps it might be possible to save William without
harming Porter? Pendergrass determined to make the attempt. "My
Lord," he said to Portland, "as you value King William's life, do
not let him hunt tomorrow. He is the enemy of my religion; yet my
religion constrains me to give him this caution. But the names of
the conspirators I am resolved to conceal; some of them are my
friends; one of them especially is my benefactor; and I will not
betray them."

Portland went instantly to the King; but the King received the
intelligence very coolly, and seemed determined not to be
frightened out of a good day's sport by such an idle story.
Portland argued and implored in vain. He was at last forced to
threaten that he would immediately make the whole matter public,
unless His Majesty would consent to remain within doors during
the next day; and this threat was successful.666

Saturday the fifteenth came. The Forty were all ready to mount,
when they received intelligence from the orderlies who watched
Kensington House that the King did not mean to hunt that morning.
"The fox," said Chambers, with vindictive bitterness, "keeps his
earth." Then he opened his shirt; showed the great scar in his
breast, and vowed revenge on William.

The first thought of the conspirators was that their design had
been detected. But they were soon reassured. It was given out
that the weather had kept the King at home; and indeed the day
was cold and stormy. There was no sign of agitation at the
palace. No extraordinary precaution was taken. No arrest was
made. No ominous whisper was heard at the coffeehouses. The delay
was vexatious; but Saturday the twenty-second would do as well.

But, before Saturday the twenty-second arrived, a third informer,
De la Rue, had presented himself at the palace. His way of life
did not entitle him to much respect; but his story agreed so
exactly with what had been said by Fisher and Pendergrass that
even William began to believe that there was real danger.

Very late in the evening of Friday the twenty-first, Pendergrass,
who had as yet disclosed much less than either of the other
informers, but whose single word was worth much more than their
joint oath, was sent for to the royal closet. The faithful
Portland and the gallant Cutts were the only persons who
witnessed the singular interview between the King and his
generous enemy. William, with courtesy and animation which he
rarely showed, but which he never showed without making a deep
impression, urged Pendergrass to speak out. "You are a man of
true probity and honour; I am deeply obliged to you; but you must
feel that the same considerations which have induced you to tell
us so much ought to induce you to tell us something more. The
cautions which you have as yet given can only make me suspect
every body that comes near me. They are sufficient to embitter my
life, but not sufficient to preserve it. You must let me know the
names of these men." During more than half an hour the King
continued to entreat and Pendergrass to refuse. At last
Pendergrass said that he would give the information which was
required, if he could be assured that it would be used only for
the prevention of the crime, and not for the destruction of the
criminals. "I give you my word of honour," said William, "that
your evidence shall not be used against any person without your
own free consent." It was long past midnight when Pendergrass
wrote down the names of the chief conspirators.

While these things were passing at Kensington, a large party of
the assassins were revelling at a Jacobite tavern in Maiden Lane.
Here they received their final orders for the morrow. "Tomorrow
or never," said King. "Tomorrow, boys," cried Cassels with a
curse, "we shall have the plunder of the field." The morrow came.
All was ready; the horses were saddled; the pistols were loaded;
the swords were sharpened; the orderlies were on the alert; they
early sent intelligence from the palace that the King was
certainly going a hunting; all the usual preparations had been
made; a party of guards had been sent round by Kingston Bridge to
Richmond; the royal coaches, each with six horses, had gone from
the stables at Charing Cross to Kensington. The chief murderers
assembled in high glee at Porter's lodgings. Pendergrass, who, by
the King's command, appeared among them, was greeted with
ferocious mirth. "Pendergrass," said Porter, "you are named one
of the eight who are to do his business. I have a musquetoon for
you that will carry eight balls." "Mr. Pendergrass," said King,
"pray do not be afraid of smashing the glass windows." From
Porter's lodgings the party adjourned to the Blue Posts in Spring
Gardens, where they meant to take some refreshment before they
started for Turnham Green. They were at table when a message came
from an orderly that the King had changed his mind and would not
hunt; and scarcely had they recovered from their first surprise
at this ominous news, when Keyes, who had been out scouting among
his old comrades, arrived with news more ominous still. "The
coaches have returned to Charing Cross. The guards that were sent
round to Richmond have just come back to Kensington at full
gallop, the flanks of the horses all white with foam. I have had
a word with one of the Blues. He told me that strange things are
muttered." Then the countenances of the assassins fell; and their
hearts died within them. Porter made a feeble attempt to disguise
his uneasiness. He took up an orange and squeezed it. "What
cannot be done one day may be done another. Come, gentlemen,
before we part let us have one glass to the squeezing of the
rotten orange." The squeezing of the rotten orange was drunk; and
the company dispersed.667

A few hours elapsed before all the conspirators abandoned all
hope. Some of them derived comfort from a report that the King
had taken physic, and that this was his only reason for not going
to Richmond. If it were so, the blow might still be struck. Two
Saturdays had been unpropitious. But Sunday was at hand. One of
the plans which had formerly been discussed and abandoned might
be resumed. The usurper might be set upon at Hyde Park Corner on
his way to his chapel. Charnock was ready for any enterprise
however desperate. If the hunt was up, it was better to die
biting and scratching to the last than to be worried without
resistance or revenge. He assembled some of his accomplices at
one of the numerous houses at which he had lodgings, and plied
there hard with healths to the King, to the Queen, to the Prince,
and to the Grand Monarch, as they called Lewis. But the terror
and dejection of the gang were beyond the power of wine; and so
many had stolen away that those who were left could effect
nothing. In the course of the afternoon it was known that the
guards had been doubled at the palace; and soon after nightfall
messengers from the Secretary of State's office were hurrying to
and fro with torches through the streets, accompanied by files
and musketeers. Before the dawn of Sunday Charnock was in
custody. A little later, Rockwood and Bernardi were found in bed
at a Jacobite alehouse on Tower Hill. Seventeen more traitors
were seized before noon; and three of the Blues were put under
arrest. That morning a Council was held; and, as soon as it rose,
an express was sent off to call home some regiments from
Flanders; Dorset set out for Sussex, of which he was Lord
Lieutenant; Romney, who was Warden of the Cinque Ports, started
for the coast of Kent; and Russell hastened down the Thames to
take the command of the fleet. In the evening the Council sate
again. Some of the prisoners were examined and committed. The
Lord Mayor was in attendance, was informed of what had been
discovered, and was specially charged to look well to the peace
of the capital.668

On Monday morning all the trainbands of the City were under arms.
The King went in state to the House of Lords, sent for the
Commons, and from the throne told the Parliament that, but for
the protection of a gracious Providence, he should at that moment
have been a corpse, and the kingdom would have been invaded by a
French army. The danger of invasion, he added, was still great;
but he had already given such orders as would, he hoped, suffice
for the protection of the realm. Some traitors were in custody;
warrants were out against others; he should do his part in this
emergency; and he relied on the Houses to do theirs.669

The Houses instantly voted a joint address in which they
thankfully acknowledged the divine goodness which had preserved
him to his people, and implored him to take more than ordinary
care of his person. They concluded by exhorting him to seize and
secure all persons whom he regarded as dangerous.

On the same day two important bills were brought into the
Commons. By one the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. The other
provided that the Parliament should not be dissolved by the death
of William. Sir Rowland Gwyn, an honest country gentleman, made a
motion of which he did not at all foresee the important
consequences. He proposed that the members should enter into an
association for the defence of their Sovereign and their country.
Montague, who of all men was the quickest at taking and improving
a hint, saw how much such an association would strengthen the
government and the Whig party.670 An instrument was immediately
drawn tip, by which the representatives of the people, each for
himself, solemnly recognised William as rightful and lawful King,
and bound themselves to stand by him and by each other against
James and James's adherents. Lastly they vowed that, if His
Majesty's life should be shortened by violence, they would avenge
him signally on his murderers, and would, with one heart,
strenuously support the order of succession settled by the Bill
of Rights. It was ordered that the House should be called over
the next morning.671 The attendance was consequently great; the
Association, engrossed on parchment, was on the table; and the
members went up, county by county, to sign their names.672

The King's speech, the joint address of both Houses, the
Association framed by the Commons, and a proclamation, containing
a list of the conspirators and offering a reward of a thousand
pounds for the apprehension of any one of them, were soon cried
in all the streets of the capital and carried out by all the
postbags. Wherever the news came it raised the whole country.
Those two hateful words, assassination and invasion, acted like a
spell. No impressment was necessary. The seamen came forth from
their hiding places by thousands to man the fleet. Only three
days after the King had appealed to the nation, Russell sailed
out of the Thames with one great squadron. Another was ready for
action at Spithead. The militia of all the maritime counties from
the Wash to the Land's End was under arms. For persons accused of
offences merely political there was generally much sympathy. But
Barclay's assassins were hunted like wolves by the whole
population. The abhorrence which the English have, through many
generations, felt for domiciliary visits, and for all those
impediments which the police of continental states throws in the
way of travellers, was for a time suspended. The gates of the
City of London were kept many hours closed while a strict search
was made within. The magistrates of almost every walled town in
the kingdom followed the example of the capital. On every highway
parties of armed men were posted with orders to stop passengers
of suspicious appearance. During a few days it was hardly
possible to perform a journey without a passport, or to procure
posthorses without the authority of a justice of the peace. Nor
was any voice raised against these precautions. The common people
indeed were, if possible, more eager than the public
functionaries to bring the traitors to justice. This eagerness
may perhaps be in part ascribed to the great rewards promised by
the royal proclamation. The hatred which every good Protestant
felt for Popish cutthroats was not a little strengthened by the
songs in which the street poets celebrated the lucky hackney
coachman who had caught his traitor, had received his thousand
pounds, and had set up as a gentleman.673 The zeal of the
populace could in some places hardly be kept within the limits of
the law. At the country seat of Parkyns in Warwickshire, arms and
accoutrements sufficient to equip a troop of cavalry were found.
As soon as this was known, a furious mob assembled, pulled down
the house and laid the gardens utterly waste.674 Parkyns himself
was tracked to a garret in the Temple. Porter and Keyes, who had
fled into Surrey, were pursued by the hue and cry, stopped by the
country people near Leatherhead, and, after some show of
resistance, secured and sent to prison. Friend was found hidden
in the house of a Quaker. Knightley was caught in the dress of a
fine lady, and recognised in spite of his patches and paint. In a
few days all the chief conspirators were in custody except
Barclay, who succeeded in making his escape to France.

At the same time some notorious malecontents were arrested, and
were detained for a time on suspicion. Old Roger Lestrange, now
in his eightieth year, was taken up. Ferguson was found hidden
under a bed in Gray's Inn Lane, and was, to the general joy,
locked up in Newgate.675 Meanwhile a special commission was
issued for the trial of the traitors. There was no want of
evidence. For, of the conspirators who had been seized, ten or
twelve were ready to save themselves by bearing witness against
their associates. None had been deeper in guilt, and none shrank
with more abject terror from death, than Porter. The government
consented to spare him, and thus obtained, not only his evidence,
but the much more respectable evidence of Pendergrass.
Pendergrass was in no danger; he had committed no offence; his
character was fair; and his testimony would have far greater
weight with a jury than the testimony of a crowd of approvers
swearing for their necks. But he had the royal word of honour
that he should not be a witness without his own consent; and he
was fully determined not to be a witness unless he were assured
of Porter's safety. Porter was now safe; and Pendergrass had no
longer any scruple about relating the whole truth.

Charnock, King and Keyes were set first to the bar. The Chiefs of
the three Courts of Common Law and several other judges were on
the bench; and among the audience were many members of both
Houses of Parliament.

It was the eleventh of March. The new Act which regulated the
procedure in cases of high treason was not to come into force
till the twenty-fifth. The culprits urged that, as the
Legislature had, by passing that Act, recognised the justice of
allowing them to see their indictment, and to avail themselves of
the assistance of an advocate, the tribunal ought either to grant
them what the highest authority had declared to be a reasonable
indulgence, or to defer the trial for a fortnight. The judges,
however, would consent to no delay. They have therefore been
accused by later writers of using the mere letter of the law in
order to destroy men who, if that law had been construed
according to its spirit, might have had some chance of escape.
This accusation is unjust. The judges undoubtedly carried the
real intention of the Legislature into effect; and, for whatever
injustice was committed, the Legislature, and not the judges,
ought to be held accountable. The words, "twenty-fifth of March,"
had not slipped into the Act by mere inadvertence. All parties in
Parliament had long been agreed as to the principle of the new
regulations. The only matter about which there was any dispute
was the time at which those regulations should take effect. After
debates extending through several sessions, after repeated
divisions with various results, a compromise had been made; and
it was surely not for the Courts to alter the terms of that
compromise. It may indeed be confidently affirmed that, if the
Houses had foreseen the Assassination Plot, they would have
fixed, not an earlier, but a later day for the commencement of
the new system. Undoubtedly the Parliament, and especially the
Whig party, deserved serious blame. For, if the old rules of
procedure gave no unfair advantage to the Crown, there was no
reason for altering them; and if, as was generally admitted, they
did give an unfair advantage to the Crown, and that against a
defendant on trial for his life, they ought not to have been
suffered to continue in force a single day. But no blame is due
to the tribunals for not acting in direct opposition both to the
letter and to the spirit of the law.