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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But the rage and mortification were confined to a very small
minority. Never, since the year of the Restoration, had there
been such signs of public gladness. In every part of the kingdom
where the peace was proclaimed, the general sentiment was
manifested by banquets, pageants, loyal healths, salutes, beating
of drums, blowing of trumpets, breaking up of hogsheads. At some
places the whole population, of its own accord, repaired to the
churches to give thanks. At others processions of girls, clad all
in white, and crowned with laurels, carried banners inscribed
with "God bless King William." At every county town a long
cavalcade of the principal gentlemen, from a circle of many
miles, escorted the mayor to the market cross. Nor was one
holiday enough for the expression of so much joy. On the fourth
of November, the anniversary of the King's birth, and on the
fifth, the anniversary of his landing at Torbay, the bellringing,
the shouting, and the illuminations were renewed both in London
and all over the country.822 On the day on which he returned to
his capital no work was done, no shop was opened, in the two
thousand streets of that immense mart. For that day the chiefs
streets had, mile after mile, been covered with gravel; all the
Companies had provided new banners; all the magistrates new
robes. Twelve thousand pounds had been expended in preparing
fireworks. Great multitudes of people from all the neighbouring
shires had come up to see the show. Never had the City been in a
more loyal or more joyous mood. The evil days were past. The
guinea had fallen to twenty-one shillings and sixpence. The bank
note had risen to par. The new crowns and halfcrowns, broad,
heavy and sharply milled, were ringing on all the counters. After
some days of impatient expectation it was known, on the
fourteenth of November, that His Majesty had landed at Margate.
Late on the fifteenth he reached Greenwich, and rested in the
stately building which, under his auspices, was turning from a
palace into a hospital. On the next morning, a bright and soft
morning, eighty coaches and six, filled with nobles, prelates,
privy councillors and judges, came to swell his train. In
Southwark he was met by the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen in all
the pomp of office. The way through the Borough to the bridge was
lined by the Surrey militia; the way from the bridge to Walbrook
by three regiments of the militia of the City. All along
Cheapside, on the right hand and on the left, the livery were
marshalled under the standards of their trades. At the east end
of Saint Paul's churchyard stood the boys of the school of Edward
the Sixth, wearing, as they still wear, the garb of the sixteenth
century. Round the Cathedral, down Ludgate Hill and along Fleet
Street, were drawn up three more regiments of Londoners. From
Temple Bar to Whitehall gate the trainbands of Middlesex and the
Foot Guards were under arms. The windows along the whole route
were gay with tapestry, ribands and flags. But the finest part of
the show was the innumerable crowd of spectators, all in their
Sunday clothing, and such clothing as only the upper classes of
other countries could afford to wear. "I never," William wrote
that evening to Heinsius, "I never saw such a multitude of
welldressed people." Nor was the King less struck by the
indications of joy and affection with which he was greeted from
the beginning to the end of his triumph. His coach, from the
moment when he entered it at Greenwich till he alighted from it
in the court of Whitehall, was accompanied by one long huzza.
Scarcely had he reached his palace when addresses of
congratulation, from all the great corporations of his kingdom,
were presented to him. It was remarked that the very foremost
among those corporations was the University of Oxford. The
eloquent composition in which that learned body extolled the
wisdom, the courage and the virtue of His Majesty, was read with
cruel vexation by the nonjurors, and with exultation by the
Whigs.823

The rejoicings were not yet over. At a council which was held a
few hours after the King's public entry, the second of December
was appointed to be the day of thanksgiving for the peace. The
Chapter of Saint Paul's resolved that, on that day, their noble
Cathedral, which had been long slowly rising on the ruins of a
succession of pagan and Christian temples, should be opened for
public worship. William announced his intention of being one of
the congregation. But it was represented to him that, if he
persisted in that intention, three hundred thousand people would
assemble to see him pass, and all the parish churches of London
would be left empty. He therefore attended the service in his own
chapel at Whitehall, and heard Burnet preach a sermon, somewhat
too eulogistic for the place.824 At Saint Paul's the magistrates
of the City appeared in all their state. Compton ascended, for
the first time, a throne rich with the sculpture of Gibbons, and
thence exhorted a numerous and splendid assembly. His discourse
has not been preserved; but its purport may be easily guessed;
for he preached on that noble Psalm: "I was glad when they said
unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord." He doubtless
reminded his hearers that, in addition to the debt which was
common to them with all Englishmen, they owed as Londoners a
peculiar debt of gratitude to the divine goodness, which had
permitted them to efface the last trace of the ravages of the
great fire, and to assemble once more, for prayer and praise,
after so many years, on that spot consecrated by the devotions of
thirty generations. Throughout London, and in every part of the
realm, even to the remotest parishes of Cumberland and Cornwall,
the churches were filled on the morning of that day; and the
evening was an evening of festivity.825

These was indeed reason for joy and thankfulness. England had
passed through severe trials, and had come forth renewed in
health and vigour. Ten years before, it had seemed that both her
liberty and her independence were no more. Her liberty she had
vindicated by a just and necessary revolution. Her independence
she had reconquered by a not less just and necessary war. She had
successfully defended the order of things established by the Bill
of Rights against the mighty monarchy of France, against the
aboriginal population of Ireland, against the avowed hostility of
the nonjurors, against the more dangerous hostility of traitors
who were ready to take any oath, and whom no oath could bind. Her
open enemies had been victorious on many fields of battle. Her
secret enemies had commanded her fleets and armies, had been in
charge of her arsenals, had ministered at her altars, had taught
at her Universities, had swarmed in her public offices, had sate
in her Parliament, had bowed and fawned in the bedchamber of her
King. More than once it had seemed impossible that any thing
could avert a restoration which would inevitably have been
followed, first by proscriptions and confiscations, by the
violation of fundamental laws, and the persecution of the
established religion, and then by a third rising up of the nation
against that House which two depositions and two banishments had
only made more obstinate in evil. To the dangers of war and the
dangers of treason had recently been added the dangers of a
terrible financial and commercial crisis. But all those dangers
were over. There was peace abroad and at home. The kingdom, after
many years of ignominious vassalage, had resumed its ancient
place in the first rank of European powers. Many signs justified
the hope that the Revolution of 1688 would be our last
Revolution. The ancient constitution was adapting itself, by a
natural, a gradual, a peaceful development, to the wants of a
modern society. Already freedom of conscience and freedom of
discussion existed to an extent unknown in any preceding age. The
currency had been restored. Public credit had been reestablished.
Trade had revived. The Exchequer was overflowing. There was a
sense of relief every where, from the Royal Exchange to the most
secluded hamlets among the mountains of Wales and the fens of
Lincolnshire. The ploughmen, the shepherds, the miners of the
Northumbrian coalpits, the artisans who toiled at the looms of
Norwich and the anvils of Birmingham, felt the change, without
understanding it; and the cheerful bustle in every seaport and
every market town indicated, not obscurely, the commencement of a
happier age.

FN 1 Relation de la Voyage de Sa Majeste Britannique en Hollande,
enrichie de planches tres curieuses, 1692; Wagenaar; London
Gazette, Jan. 29. 1693; Burnet, ii. 71

FN 2 The names of these two great scholars are associated in a
very interesting letter of Bentley to Graevius, dated April 29.
1698. "Sciunt omnes qui me norunt, et si vitam mihi Deus O.M.
prorogaverit, scient etiam posteri, ut te et ton panu Spanhemium,
geminos hujus aevi Dioscuros, lucida literarum sidera, semper
praedicaverim, semper veneratus sim."

FN 3 Relation de la Voyage de Sa Majeste Britannique en Hollande
1692; London Gazette, Feb. 2. 1691,; Le Triomphe Royal ou l'on
voit descrits les Arcs de Triomphe, Pyramides, Tableaux et
Devises an Nombre de 65, erigez a la Haye a l'hounneur de
Guillaume Trois, 1692; Le Carnaval de la Haye, 1691. This last
work is a savage pasquinade on William.

FN 4 London Gazette, Feb. 5. 1693; His Majesty's Speech to the
Assembly of the States General of the United Provinces at the
Hague the 7th of February N.S., together with the Answer of their
High and Mighty Lordships, as both are extracted out of the
Register of the Resolutions of the States General, 1691.

FN 5 Relation de la Voyage de Sa Majeste Britannique en Hollande;
Burnet, ii. 72.; London Gazette, Feb. 12. 19. 23. 1690/1;
Memoires du Comte de Dohna; William Fuller's Memoirs.

FN 6 Wagenaar, lxii.; Le Carnaval de la Haye, Mars 1691; Le
Tabouret des Electeurs, April 1691; Ceremonial de ce qui s'est
passe a la Haye entre le Roi Guillaume et les Electeurs de
Baviere et de Brandebourg. This last tract is a MS. presented to
the British Museum by George IV,

FN 7 London Gazette, Feb. 23. 1691.

FN 8 The secret article by which the Duke of Savoy bound himself
to grant toleration to the Waldenses is in Dumont's collection.
It was signed Feb. 8, 1691.

FN 9 London Gazette from March 26. to April 13. 1691; Monthly
Mercuries of March and April; William's Letters to Heinsius of
March 18. and 29., April 7. 9.; Dangeau's Memoirs; The Siege of
Mons, a tragi-comedy, 1691. In this drama the clergy, who are in
the interest of France, persuade the burghers to deliver up the
town. This treason calls forth an indignant exclamation

"Oh priestcraft, shopcraft, how do ye effeminate
The minds of men!"

FN 10 Trial of Preston in the Collection of State Trials. A
person who was present gives the following account of Somers's
opening speech: "In the opening the evidence, there was no
affected exaggeration of matters, nor ostentation of a putid
eloquence, one after another, as in former trials, like so many
geese cackling in a row. Here was nothing besides fair matter of
fact, or natural and just reflections from thence arising." The
pamphlet from which I quote these words is entitled, An Account
of the late horrid Conspiracy by a Person who was present at the
Trials, 1691.

FN 11 State Trials.

FN 12 Paper delivered by Mr. Ashton, at his execution, to Sir
Francis Child, Sheriff of London; Answer to the Paper delivered
by Mr. Ashton. The Answer was written by Dr. Edward Fowler,
afterwards Bishop of Gloucester. Burnet, ii. 70.; Letter from
Bishop Lloyd to Dodwell, in the second volume of Gutch's
Collectanea Curiosa.

FN 13 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 14 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Burnet, ii. 71.

FN 15 Letter of Collier and Cook to Sancroft among the Tanner
MSS.

FN 16 Caermarthen to William, February 3. 1690/1; Life of James,
ii. 443.

FN 17 That this account of what passed is true in substance is
sufficiently proved by the Life of James, ii. 443. I have taken
one or two slight circumstances from Dalrymple, who, I believe,
took them from papers, now irrecoverably lost, which he had seen
in the Scotch College at Paris.

FN 18 The success of William's "seeming clemency" is admitted by
the compiler of the Life of James. The Prince of Orange's method,
it is acknowledged, "succeeded so well that, whatever sentiments
those Lords which Mr. Penn had named night have had at that time,
they proved in effect most bitter enemies to His Majesty's cause
afterwards."-ii. 443.

FN 19 See his Diary; Evelyn's Diary, Mar. 25., April 22., July
11. 1691; Burnet, ii. 71.; Letters of Rochester to Burnet, March
21. and April 2. 1691.

FN 20 Life of James, ii. 443. 450.; Legge Papers in the
Mackintosh Collection.

FN 21 Burnet, ii. 71; Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 4. and 18. 1690,;
Letter from Turner to Sancroft, Jan. 19. 1690/1; Letter from
Sancroft to Lloyd of Norwich April 2. 1692. These two letters are
among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian, and are printed in the
Life of Ken by a Layman. Turner's escape to France is mentioned
in Narcissus Luttrell's Diary for February 1690. See also a
Dialogue between the Bishop of Ely and his Conscience, 16th
February 1690/1. The dialogue is interrupted by the sound of
trumpets. The Bishop hears himself proclaimed a traitor, and
cries out,

"Come, brother Pen, 'tis time we both were gone."

FN 22 For a specimen of his visions, see his Journal, page 13;
for his casting out of devils, page 26. I quote the folio edition
of 1765.

FN 23 Journal, page 4

FN 24 Ibid. page 7.

FN 25 What they know, they know naturally, who turn from the
command and err from the spirit, whose fruit withers, who saith
that Hebrew, Greek, and Latine is the original: before Babell
was, the earth was of one language; and Nimrod the cunning
hunter, before the Lord which came out of cursed Ham's stock, the
original and builder of Babell, whom God confounded with many
languages, and this they say is the original who erred from the
spirit and command; and Pilate had his original Hebrew, Greek and
Latine, which crucified Christ and set over him."--A message from
the Lord to the Parliament of England by G. Fox, 1654. The same
argument will be found in the journals, but has been put by the
editor into a little better English. "Dost thou think to make
ministers of Christ by these natural confused languages which
sprung from Babell, are admired in Babylon, and set atop of
Christ, the Life, by a persecutor?"-Page 64.

FN 26 His journal, before it was published, was revised by men of
more sense and knowledge than himself, and therefore, absurd as
it is, gives us no notion of his genuine style. The following is
a fair specimen. It is the exordium of one of his manifestoes.
"Them which the world who are without the fear of God calls
Quakers in scorn do deny all opinions, and they do deny all
conceivings, and they do deny all sects, and they do deny all
imaginations, and notions, and judgments which riseth out of the
will and the thoughts, and do deny witchcraft and all oaths, and
the world and the works of it, and their worships and their
customs with the light, and do deny false ways and false
worships, seducers and deceivers which are now seen to be in the
world with the light, and with it they are condemned, which light
leadeth to peace and life from death which now thousands do
witness the new teacher Christ, him by whom the world was made,
who raigns among the children of light, and with the spirit and
power of the living God, doth let them see and know the chaff
from the wheat, and doth see that which must be shaken with that
which cannot be shaken nor moved, what gives to see that which is
shaken and moved, such as live in the notions, opinions,
conceivings, and thoughts and fancies these be all shaken and
comes to be on heaps, which they who witness those things before
mentioned shaken and removed walks in peace not seen and
discerned by them who walks in those things unremoved and not
shaken."--A Warning to the World that are Groping in the Dark, by
G. Fox, 1655.

FN 27 See the piece entitled, Concerning Good morrow and Good
even, the World's Customs, but by the Light which into the World
is come by it made manifest to all who be in the Darkness, by G.
Fox, 1657.

FN 28 Journal, page 166.

FN 29 Epistle from Harlingen, 11th of 6th month, 1677.

FN 30 Of Bowings, by G. Fox, 1657.

FN 31 See, for example, the Journal, pages 24. 26. and 51.

FN 32 See, for example, the Epistle to Sawkey, a justice of the
peace, in the journal, page 86.; the Epistle to William Larnpitt,
a clergyman, which begins, "The word of the Lord to thee, oh
Lampitt," page 80.; and the Epistle to another clergyman whom he
calls Priest Tatham, page 92.

FN 33 Journal, page 55.

FN 34 Ibid. Page 300.

FN 35 Ibid. page 323.

FN 36 Ibid. page 48.

FN 37 "Especially of late," says Leslie, the keenest of all the
enemies of the sect, "some of them have made nearer advances
towards Christianity than ever before; and among them the
ingenious Mr. Penn has of late refined some of their gross
notions, and brought them into some form, and has made them speak
sense and English, of both which George Fox, their first and
great apostle, was totally ignorant . . . . . They endeavour all
they can to make it appear that their doctrine was uniform from
the beginning, and that there has been no alteration; and
therefore they take upon them to defend all the writings of
George Fox, and others of the first Quakers, and turn and wind
them to make them (but it is impossible) agree with what they
teach now at this day." (The Snake in the Grass, 3rd ed. 1698.
Introduction.) Leslie was always more civil to his brother
Jacobite Penn than to any other Quaker. Penn himself says of his
master, "As abruptly and brokenly as sometimes his sentences
would fall from him about divine things; it is well known they
were often as texts to many fairer declarations." That is to say,
George Fox talked nonsense and some of his friends paraphrased it
into sense.

FN 38 In the Life of Penn which is prefixed to his works, we are
told that the warrants were issued on the 16th of January 1690,
in consequence of an accusation backed by the oath of William
Fuller, who is truly designated as a wretch, a cheat and. an
impostor; and this story is repeated by Mr. Clarkson. It is,
however, certainly false. Caermarthen, writing to William on the
3rd of February, says that there was then only one witness
against Penn, and that Preston was that one witness. It is
therefore evident that Fuller was not the informer on whose oath
the warrant against Penn was issued. In fact Fuller appears from
his Life of himself, to have been then at the Hague. When
Nottingham wrote to William on the 26th of June, another witness
had come forward.

FN 39 Sidney to William, Feb. 27. 1690,. The letter is in
Dalrymple's Appendix, Part II. book vi. Narcissus Luttrell in his
Diary for September 1691, mentions Penn's escape from Shoreham to
France. On the 5th of December 1693 Narcissus made the following
entry: "William Penn the Quaker, having for some time absconded,
and having compromised the matters against him, appears now in
public, and, on Friday last, held forth at the Bull and Month, in
Saint Martin's." On December 18/28. 1693 was drawn up at Saint
Germains, under Melfort's direction, a paper containing a passage
of which the following is a translation

"Mr. Penn says that Your Majesty has had several occasions, but
never any so favourable, as the present; and he hopes that Your
Majesty will be earnest with the most Christian King not to
neglect it: that a descent with thirty thousand men will not only
reestablish Your Majesty, but according to all appearance break
the league." This paper is among the Nairne MSS., and was
translated by Macpherson.

FN 40 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, April 11. 1691.

FN 41 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, August í691; Letter from Vernon
to Wharton, Oct. 17. 1691, in the Bodleian.

FN 42 The opinion of the Jacobites appears from a letter which is
among the archives of the French War Office. It was written in
London on the 25th of June 1691.

FN 43 Welwood's Mercurius Reformatus, April 11. 24. 1691;
Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, April 1691; L'Hermitage to the States
General, June 19/29 1696; Calamy's Life. The story of Fenwick's
rudeness to Mary is told in different ways. I have followed what
seems to me the most authentic, and what is certainly the last
disgraceful, version.

FN 44 Burnet, ii. 71.

FN 45 Lloyd to Sancroft, Jan. 24. 1691. The letter is among the
Tanner MSS., and is printed in the Life of Ken by a Layman.

FN 46 London Gazette, June 1. 1691; Birch's Life of Tillotson;
Congratulatory Poem to the Reverend Dr. Tillotson on his
Promotion, 1691; Vernon to Wharton, May 28. and 30. 1691. These
letters to Wharton are in the Bodleian Library, and form part of
a highly curious collection, which was kindly pointed out to me
by Dr. Bandinel.

FN 47 Birch's Life of Tillotson; Leslie's Charge of Socinianism
against Dr. Tillotson considered, by a True Son of the Church
1695; Hickes's Discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson,
1695; Catalogue of Books of the Newest Fashion to be Sold by
Auction at the Whigs Coffee House, evidently printed in 1693.
Afore than sixty years later Johnson described a sturdy Jacobite
as firmly convinced that Tillotson died an Atheist; Idler, No,
10.

FN 48 Tillotson to Lady Russell, June 23. 1691.

FN 49 Birch's Life of Tillotson; Memorials of Tillotson by his
pupil John Beardmore; Sherlock's sermon preached in the Temple
Church on the death of Queen Mary, 1694/5.

FN 50 Wharton's Collectanea quoted in Birch's Life of Tillotson.

FN 51 Wharton's Collectanea quoted in D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft;
Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 52 The Lambeth MS. quoted in D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft;
Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Vernon to Wharton, June 9. 11. 1691.

FN 53 See a letter of R. Nelson, dated Feb. 21. 1709/10, in the
appendix to N. Marshall's Defence of our Constitution in Church
and State, 1717; Hawkins's Life of Ken; Life of Ken by a Layman.

FN 54 See a paper dictated by him on the 15th Nov. 1693, in
Wagstaffe's letter from Suffolk.

FN 55 Kettlewell's Life, iii. 59.

FN 56 See D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, Hallam's Constitutional
History, and Dr. Lathbury's History of the Nonjurors.

FN 57 See the autobiography of his descendant and namesake the
dramatist. See also Onslow's note on Burnet, ii. 76.

FN 58 A vindication of their Majesties' authority to fill the
sees of the deprived Bishops, May 20. 1691; London Gazette, April
27. and June 15. 1691; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, May 1691.
Among the Tanner MSS. are two letters from Jacobites to
Beveridge, one mild and decent, the other scurrilous even beyond
the ordinary scurrility of the nonjurors. The former will be
found in the Life of Ken by a Layman.

FN 59 It does not seem quite clear whether Sharp's scruple about
the deprived prelates was a scruple of conscience or merely a
scruple of delicacy. See his Life by his Son.

FN 60 See Overall's Convocation Book, chapter 28. Nothing can be
clearer or more to the purpose than his language

"When, having attained their ungodly desires, whether ambitious
kings by bringing any country into their subjection, or disloyal
subjects by rebellious rising against their natural sovereigns,
they have established any of the said degenerate governments
among their people, the authority either so unjustly established,
or wrung by force from the true and lawful possessor, being
always God's authority, and therefore receiving no impeachment by
the wickedness of those that have it, is ever, when such
alterations are thoroughly settled, to be reverenced and obeyed;
and the people of all sorts, as well of the clergy as of the
laity, are to be subject unto it, not only for fear, but likewise
for conscience sake."

Then follows the canon

"If any man shall affirm that, when any such new forms of
government, begun by rebellion, are after thoroughly settled, the
authority in them is not of God, or that any who live within the
territories of any such new governments are not bound to be
subject to God's authority which is there executed, but may rebel
against the same, he doth greatly err."

FN 61 A list of all the pieces which I have read relating to
Sherlock's apostasy would fatigue the reader. I will mention a
few of different kinds. Parkinson's Examination of Dr. Sherlock's
Case of Allegiance, 1691; Answer to Dr. Sherlock's Case of
Allegiance, by a London Apprentice, 1691; the Reasons of the New
Converts taking the Oaths to the present Government, 1691; Utrum
horum? or God's ways of disposing of Kingdoms and some
Clergymen's ways of disposing of them, 1691; Sherlock and
Xanthippe 1691; Saint Paul's Triumph in his Sufferings for
Christ, by Matthew Bryan, LL.D., dedicated Ecclesim sub cruce
gementi; A Word to a wavering Levite; The Trimming Court Divine;
Proteus Ecclesiasticus, or observations on Dr. Sh--'s late Case
of Allegiance; the Weasil Uncased; A Whip for the Weasil; the
Anti-Weasils. Numerous allusions to Sherlock and his wife will be
found in the ribald writings of Tom Brown, Tom Durfey, and Ned
Ward. See Life of James, ii. 318. Several curious letters about
Sherlock's apostasy are among the Tanner MSS. I will give two or
three specimens of the rhymes which the Case of Allegiance called
forth