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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Just at this conjuncture Portland arrived from the Continent. He
had been sent by William with charge to obtain money, at whatever
cost and from whatever quarter. The King had strained his private
credit in Holland to procure bread for his army. But all was
insufficient. He wrote to his Ministers that, unless they could
send him a speedy supply, his troops would either rise in mutiny
or desert by thousands. He knew, he said, that it would be
hazardous to call Parliament together during his absence. But, if
no other resource could be devised, that hazard must be run.708
The Council of Regency, in extreme embarrassment, began to wish
that the terms, hard as they were, which had been offered by the
Commissioners at Mercers' Hall had been accepted. The negotiation
was renewed. Shrewsbury, Godolphin and Portland, as agents for
the King, had several conferences with Harley and Foley, who had
recently pretended that eight hundred thousand pounds were ready
to be subscribed to the Land Bank. The Ministers gave assurances,
that, if, at this conjuncture, even half that sum were advanced,
those who had done this service to the State should, in the next
session, be incorporated as a National Land Bank. Harley and
Foley at first promised, with an air of confidence, to raise what
was required. But they soon went back from their word; they
showed a great inclination to be punctilious and quarrelsome
about trifles; at length the eight hundred thousand pounds
dwindled to forty thousand; and even the forty thousand could be
had only on hard conditions.709 So ended the great delusion of
the Land Bank. The commission expired; and the offices were
closed.

And now the Council of Regency, almost in despair, had recourse
to the Bank of England. Two hundred thousand pounds was the very
smallest sum which would suffice to meet the King's most pressing
wants. Would the Bank of England advance that sum? The
capitalists who lead the chief sway in that corporation were in
bad humour, and not without reason. But fair words, earnest
entreaties and large promises were not spared; all the influence
of Montague, which was justly great, was exerted; the Directors
promised to do their best; but they apprehended that it would be
impossible for them to raise the money without making a second
call of twenty per cent. on their constituents. It was necessary
that the question should be submitted to a General Court; in such
a court more than six hundred persons were entitled to vote; and
the result might well be doubted. The proprietors were summoned
to meet on the fifteenth of August at Grocers' Hall. During the
painful interval of suspense, Shrewsbury wrote to his master in
language more tragic than is often found in official letters. "If
this should not succeed, God knows what can be done. Any thing
must be tried and ventured rather than lie down and die."710 On
the fifteenth of August, a great epoch in the history of the
Bank, the General Court was held. In the chair sate Sir John
Houblon, the Governor, who was also Lord Mayor of London, and,
what would in our time be thought strange, a Commissioner of the
Admiralty. Sir John, in a speech, every word of which had been
written and had been carefully considered by the Directors,
explained the case, and implored the assembly to stand by King
William. There was at first a little murmuring. "If our notes
would do," it was said, "we should be most willing to assist His
Majesty; but two hundred thousand pounds in hard money at a time
like this." The Governor announced explicitly that nothing but
gold or silver would supply the necessities of the army in
Flanders. At length the question was put to the vote; and every
hand in the Hall was held up for sending the money. The letters
from the Dutch Embassy informed the States General that the
events of that day had bound the Bank and the government together
in close alliance, and that several of the ministers had,
immediately after the meeting, purchased stock merely in order to
give a pledge of their attachment to the body which had rendered
so great a service to the State.711

Meanwhile strenuous exertions were making to hasten the
recoinage. Since the Restoration the Mint had, like every other
public establishment in the kingdom, been a nest of idlers and
jobbers. The important office of Warden, worth between six and
seven hundred a year, had become a mere sinecure, and had been
filled by a succession of fine gentlemen, who were well known at
the hazard table of Whitehall, but who never condescended to come
near the Tower. This office had just become vacant, and Montague
had obtained it for Newton.712 The ability, the industry and the
strict uprightness of the great philosopher speedily produced a
complete revolution throughout the department which was under his
direction.713 He devoted himself to his task with an activity
which left him no time to spare for those pursuits in which he I
had surpassed Archimedes and Galileo. Till the great work was
completely done, he resisted firmly, and almost angrily, every
attempt that was made by men of science, here or on the
Continent, to draw him away from his official duties.714 The old
officers of the Mint had thought it a great feat to coin silver
to the amount of fifteen thousand pounds in a week. When Montague
talked of thirty or forty thousand, these men of form and
precedent pronounced the thing impracticable. But the energy of
the young Chancellor of the Exchequer and of his friend the
Warden accomplished far greater wonders. Soon nineteen mills were
going at once in the Tower. As fast as men could be trained to
the work in London, bands of them were sent off to other parts of
the kingdom. Mints were established at Bristol, York, Exeter,
Norwich and Chester. This arrangement was in the highest degree
popular. The machinery and the workmen were welcomed to the new
stations with the ringing of bells and the firing of guns. The
weekly issue increased to sixty thousand pounds, to eighty
thousand, to a hundred thousand, and at length to a hundred and
twenty thousand.715 Yet even this issue, though great, not only
beyond precedent, but beyond hope, was scanty when compared with
the demands of the nation. Nor did all the newly stamped silver
pass into circulation; for during the summer and autumn those
politicians who were for raising the denomination of the coin
were active and clamorous; and it was generally expected that, as
soon as the Parliament should reassemble, the standard would be
lowered. Of course no person who thought it probable that he
should, at a day not far distant, be able to pay a debt of a
pound with three crown pieces instead of four, was willing to
part with a crown piece, till that day arrived. Most of the
milled pieces were therefore hoarded.716 May, June and July
passed away without any perceptible increase in the quantity of
good money. It was not till August that the keenest observer
could discern the first faint signs of returning prosperity.717

The distress of the common people was severe, and was aggravated
by the follies of magistrates and by the arts of malecontents. A
squire who was one of the quorum would sometimes think it his
duty to administer to his neighbours, at this trying conjuncture,
what seemed to him to be equity; and as no two of these rural
praetors had exactly the same notion of what was equitable, their
edicts added confusion to confusion. In one parish people were,
in outrageous violation of the law, threatened with the stocks,
if they refused to take clipped shillings by tale. In the next
parish it was dangerous to pay such shillings except by
weight.718 The enemies of the government, at the same time,
laboured indefatigably in their vocation. They harangued in every
place of public resort, from the Chocolate House in Saint James's
Street to the sanded kitchen of the alehouse on the village
green. In verse and prose they incited the suffering multitude to
rise up in arms. Of the tracts which they published at this time,
the most remarkable was written by a deprived priest named
Grascombe, of whose ferocity and scurrility the most respectable
nonjurors had long been ashamed. He now did his best to persuade
the rabble to tear in pieces those members of Parliament who had
voted for the restoration of the currency.719 It would be too
much to say that the malignant industry of this man and of men
like him produced no effect on a population which was doubtless
severely tried. There were riots in several parts of the country,
but riots which were suppressed with little difficulty, and, as
far as can be discovered, without the shedding of a drop of
blood.720 In one place a crowd of poor ignorant creatures,
excited by some knavish agitator, besieged the house of a Whig
member of Parliament, and clamorously insisted on having their
short money changed. The gentleman consented, and desired to know
how much they had brought. After some delay they were able to
produce a single clipped halfcrown.721 Such tumults as this were
at a distance exaggerated into rebellions and massacres. At Paris
it was gravely asserted in print that, in an English town which
was not named, a soldier and a butcher had quarrelled about a
piece of money, that the soldier had killed the butcher, that the
butcher's man had snatched up a cleaver and killed the soldier,
that a great fight had followed, and that fifty dead bodies had
been left on the ground.722 The truth was, that the behaviour of
the great body of the people was beyond all praise. The judges
when, in September, they returned from their circuits, reported
that the temper of the nation was excellent.723 There was a
patience, a reasonableness, a good nature, a good faith, which
nobody had anticipated. Every body felt that nothing but mutual
help and mutual forbearance could prevent the dissolution of
society. A hard creditor, who sternly demanded payment to the day
in milled money, was pointed at in the streets, and was beset by
his own creditors with demands which soon brought him to reason.
Much uneasiness had been felt about the troops. It was scarcely
possible to pay them regularly; if they were not paid regularly,
it might well be apprehended that they would supply their wants
by rapine; and such rapine it was certain that the nation,
altogether unaccustomed to military exaction and oppression,
would not tamely endure. But, strange to say, there was, through
this trying year, a better understanding than had ever been known
between the soldiers and the rest of the community. The gentry,
the farmers, the shopkeepers supplied the redcoats with
necessaries in a manner so friendly and liberal that there was no
brawling and no marauding. "Severely as these difficulties have
been felt," L'Hermitage writes, "they have produced one happy
effect; they have shown how good the spirit of the country is. No
person, however favourable his opinion of the English may have
been, could have expected that a time of such suffering would
have been a time of such tranquillity.724

Men who loved to trace, in the strangely complicated maze of
human affairs, the marks of more than human wisdom, were of
opinion that, but for the interference of a gracious Providence,
the plan so elaborately devised by great statesmen and great
philosophers would have failed completely and ignominiously.
Often, since the Revolution, the English had been sullen and
querulous, unreasonably jealous of the Dutch, and disposed to put
the worst construction on every act of the King. Had the fourth
of May found our ancestors in such a mood, it can scarcely be
doubted that sharp distress, irritating minds already irritable,
would have caused an outbreak which must have shaken and might
have subverted the throne of William. Happily, at the moment at
which the loyalty of the nation was put to the most severe test,
the King was more popular than he had ever been since the day on
which the Crown was tendered to him in the Banqueting House. The
plot which had been laid against his life had excited general
disgust and horror. His reserved manners, his foreign attachments
were forgotten. He had become an object of personal interest and
of personal affection to his people. They were every where coming
in crowds to sign the instrument which bound them to defend and
to avenge him. They were every where carrying about in their hats
the badges of their loyalty to him. They could hardly be
restrained from inflicting summary punishment on the few who
still dared openly to question his title. Jacobite was now a
synonyme for cutthroat. Noted Jacobite laymen had just planned a
foul murder. Noted Jacobite priests had, in the face of day, and
in the administration of a solemn ordinance of religion,
indicated their approbation of that murder. Many honest and pious
men, who thought that their allegiance was still due to James,
had indignantly relinquished all connection with zealots who
seemed to think that a righteous end justified the most
unrighteous means. Such was the state of public feeling during
the summer and autumn of 1696; and therefore it was that
hardships which, in any of the seven preceding years, would
certainly have produced a rebellion, and might perhaps have
produced a counterrevolution, did not produce a single tumult too
serious to be suppressed by the constable's staff.

Nevertheless, the effect of the commercial and financial crisis
in England was felt through all the fleets and armies of the
coalition. The great source of subsidies was dry. No important
military operation could any where be attempted. Meanwhile
overtures tending to peace had been made, and a negotiation had
been opened. Callieres, one of the ablest of the many able envoys
in the service of France, had been sent to the Netherlands, and
had held many conferences with Dykvelt. Those conferences might
perhaps have come to a speedy and satisfactory close, had not
France, at this time, won a great diplomatic victory in another
quarter. Lewis had, during seven years, been scheming and
labouring in vain to break the great array of potentates whom the
dread of his might and of his ambition had brought together and
kept together. But, during seven years, all his arts had been
baffled by the skill of William; and, when the eighth campaign
opened, the confederacy had not been weakened by a single
desertion. Soon however it began to be suspected that the Duke of
Savoy was secretly treating with the enemy. He solemnly assured
Galway, who represented England at the Court of Turin, that there
was not the slightest ground for such suspicions, and sent to
William letters filled with professions of zeal for the common
cause, and with earnest entreaties for more money. This
dissimulation continued till a French army, commanded by Catinat,
appeared in Piedmont. Then the Duke threw off his disguise,
concluded peace with France, joined his troops to those of
Catinat, marched into the Milanese, and informed the allies whom
he had just abandoned that, unless they wished to have him for an
enemy, they must declare Italy neutral ground. The Courts of
Vienna and Madrid, in great dismay, submitted to the terms which
he dictated. William expostulated and protested in vain. His
influence was no longer what it had been. The general opinion of
Europe was, that the riches and the credit of England were
completely exhausted; and both her confederates and her enemies
imagined that they might safely treat her with indignity. Spain,
true to her invariable maxim that every thing ought to be done
for her and nothing by her, had the effrontery to reproach the
Prince to whom she owed it that she had not lost the Netherlands
and Catalonia, because he had not sent troops and ships to defend
her possessions in Italy. The Imperial ministers formed and
executed resolutions gravely affecting the interests of the
coalition without consulting him who had been the author and the
soul of the coalition.725 Lewis had, after the failure of the
Assassination Plot, made up his mind to the disagreeable
necessity of recognising William, and had authorised Callieres to
make a declaration to that effect. But the defection of Savoy,
the neutrality of Italy, the disunion among the allies, and,
above all, the distresses of England, exaggerated as they were in
all the letters which the Jacobites of Saint Germains received
from the Jacobites of London, produced a change. The tone of
Callieres became high and arrogant; he went back from his word,
and refused to give any pledge that his master would acknowledge
the Prince of Orange as King of Great Britain. The joy was great
among the nonjurors. They had always, they said, been certain
that the Great Monarch would not be so unmindful of his own glory
and of the common interest of Sovereigns as to abandon the cause
of his unfortunate guests, and to call an usurper his brother.
They knew from the best authority that His Most Christian Majesty
had lately, at Fontainebleau, given satisfactory assurances on
this subject to King James. Indeed, there is reason to believe
that the project of an invasion of our island was again seriously
discussed at Versailles.726 Catinat's army was now at liberty.
France, relieved from all apprehension on the side of Savoy,
might spare twenty thousand men for a descent on England; and, if
the misery and discontent here were such as was generally
reported, the nation might be disposed to receive foreign
deliverers with open arms.

So gloomy was the prospect which lay before William, when, in the
autumn of 1696, he quitted his camp in the Netherlands for
England. His servants here meanwhile were looking forward to his
arrival with very strong and very various emotions. The whole
political world had been thrown into confusion by a cause which
did not at first appear commensurate to such an effect.

During his absence, the search for the Jacobites who had been
concerned in the plots of the preceding winter had not been
intermitted; and of these Jacobites none was in greater peril
than Sir John Fenwick. His birth, his connections, the high
situations which he had filled, the indefatigable activity with
which he had, during several years, laboured to subvert the
government, and the personal insolence with which he had treated
the deceased Queen, marked him out as a man fit to be made an
example. He succeeded, however, in concealing himself from the
officers of justice till the first heat of pursuit was over. In
his hiding place he thought of an ingenious device which might,
as he conceived, save him from the fate of his friends Charnock
and Parkyns. Two witnesses were necessary to convict him. It
appeared from what had passed on the trials of his accomplices,
that there were only two witnesses who could prove his guilt,
Porter and Goodman. His life was safe if either of these men
could be persuaded to abscond.

Fenwick was not the only person who had strong reason to wish
that Porter or Goodman, or both, might be induced to leave
England. Aylesbury had been arrested, and committed to the Tower;
and he well knew that, if these men appeared against him, his
head would be in serious danger. His friends and Fenwick's raised
what was thought a sufficient sum; and two Irishmen, or, in the
phrase of the newspapers of that day, bogtrotters, a barber named
Clancy, and a disbanded captain named Donelagh, undertook the
work of corruption.

The first attempt was made on Porter. Clancy contrived to fall in
with him at a tavern, threw out significant hints, and, finding
that those hints were favourably received, opened a regular
negotiation. The terms offered were alluring; three hundred
guineas down, three hundred more as soon as the witness should be
beyond sea, a handsome annuity for life, a free pardon from King
James, and a secure retreat in France. Porter seemed inclined,
and perhaps was really inclined, to consent. He said that he
still was what he had been, that he was at heart attached to the
good cause, but that he had been tried beyond his strength. Life
was sweet. It was easy for men who had never been in danger to
say that none but a villain would save himself by hanging his
associates; but a few hours in Newgate, with the near prospect of
a journey on a sledge to Tyburn, would teach such boasters to be
more charitable. After repeatedly conferring with Clancy, Porter
was introduced to Fenwick's wife, Lady Mary, a sister of the Earl
of Carlisle. Every thing was soon settled. Donelagh made the
arrangements for the flight. A boat was in waiting. The letters
which were to secure to the fugitive the protection of King James
were prepared by Fenwick. The hour and place were fixed at which
Porter was to receive the first instalment of the promised
reward. But his heart misgave him. He had, in truth, gone such
lengths that it would have been madness in him to turn back. He
had sent Charnock, King, Keyes, Friend, Parkyns, Rookwood,
Cranburne, to the gallows. It was impossible that such a Judas
could ever be really forgiven. In France, among the friends and
comrades of those whom he had destroyed, his life would not be
worth one day's purchase. No pardon under the Great Seal would
avert the stroke of the avenger of blood. Nay, who could say that
the bribe now offered was not a bait intended to lure the victim
to the place where a terrible doom awaited him? Porter resolved
to be true to that government under which alone he could be safe;
he carried to Whitehall information of the whole intrigue; and he
received full instructions from the ministers. On the eve of the
day fixed for his departure he had a farewell meeting with Clancy
at a tavern. Three hundred guineas were counted out on the table.
Porter pocketed them, and gave a signal. Instantly several
messengers from the office of the Secretary of State rushed into
the room, and produced a warrant. The unlucky barber was carried
off to prison, tried for his offence, convicted and pilloried.727

This mishap made Fenwick's situation more perilous than ever. At
the next sessions for the City of London a bill of indictment
against him, for high treason, was laid before the grand jury.
Porter and Goodman appeared as witnesses for the Crown; and the
bill was found. Fenwick now thought that it was high time to
steal away to the Continent. Arrangements were made for his
passage. He quitted his hiding place, and repaired to Romney
Marsh. There he hoped to find shelter till the vessel which was
to convey him across the Channel should arrive. For, though
Hunt's establishment had been broken up, there were still in that
dreary region smugglers who carried on more than one lawless
trade. It chanced that two of these men had just been arrested on
a charge of harbouring traitors. The messenger who had taken them
into custody was returning to London with them, when, on the high
road, he met Fenwick face to face. Unfortunately for Fenwick, no
face in England was better known than his. "It is Sir John," said
the officer to the prisoners: "Stand by me, my good fellows, and,
I warrant you, you will have your pardons, and a bag of guineas
besides." The offer was too tempting to be refused; but Fenwick
was better mounted than his assailants; he dashed through them,
pistol in hand, and was soon out of sight. They pursued him; the
hue and cry was raised; the bells of all the parish churches of
the Marsh rang out the alarm; the whole country was up; every
path was guarded; every thicket was beaten; every hut was
searched; and at length the fugitive was found in bed. Just then
a bark, of very suspicious appearance, came in sight; she soon
approached the shore, and showed English colours; but to the
practised eyes of the Kentish fishermen she looked much like a
French privateer. It was not difficult to guess her errand. After
waiting a short time in vain for her passenger, she stood out to
sea.728

Fenwick, unluckily for himself, was able so far to elude the
vigilance of those who had charge of him as to scrawl with a lead
pencil a short letter to his wife. Every line contained evidence
of his guilt. All, he wrote, was over; he was a dead man, unless,
indeed, his friends could, by dint of solicitation, obtain a
pardon for him. Perhaps the united entreaties of all the Howards
might succeed. He would go abroad; he would solemnly promise
never again to set foot on English ground, and never to draw
sword against the government. Or would it be possible to bribe a
juryman or two to starve out the rest? "That," he wrote, "or
nothing can save me." This billet was intercepted in its way to
the post, and sent up to Whitehall. Fenwick was soon carried to
London and brought before the Lords Justices. At first he held
high language and bade defiance to his accusers. He was told that
he had not always been so confident; and his letter to his wife
was laid before him. He had not till then been aware that it had
fallen into hands for which it was not intended. His distress and
confusion became great. He felt that, if he were instantly sent
before a jury, a conviction was inevitable. One chance remained.
If he could delay his trial for a short time, the judges would
leave town for their circuits; a few weeks would be gained; and
in the course of a few weeks something might be done.