The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 5

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 5

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Our ancestors therefore were not a little surprised to learn that
a young barbarian, who had, at seventeen years of age, become the
autocrat of the immense region stretching from the confines of
Sweden to those of China, and whose education had been inferior
to that of an English farmer or shopman, had planned gigantic
improvements, had learned enough of some languages of Western
Europe to enable him to communicate with civilised men, had begun
to surround himself with able adventurers from various parts of
the world, had sent many of his young subjects to study
languages, arts and sciences in foreign cities, and finally had
determined to travel as a private man, and to discover, by
personal observation, the secret of the immense prosperity and
power enjoyed by some communities whose whole territory was far
less than the hundredth part of his dominions.

It might have been expected that France would have been the first
object of his curiosity. For the grace and dignity of the French
King, the splendour of the French Court, the discipline of the
French armies, and the genius and learning of the French writers,
were then renowned all over the world. But the Czar's mind had
early taken a strange ply which it retained to the last. His
empire was of all empires the least capable of being made a great
naval power. The Swedish provinces lay between his States and the
Baltic. The Bosporus and the Dardanelles lay between his States
and the Mediterranean. He had access to the ocean only in a
latitude in which navigation is, during a great part of every
year, perilous and difficult. On the ocean he had only a single
port, Archangel; and the whole shipping of Archangel was foreign.
There did not exist a Russian vessel larger than a fishing-boat.
Yet, from some cause which cannot now be traced, he had a taste
for maritime pursuits which amounted to a passion, indeed almost
to a monomania. His imagination was full of sails, yardarms, and
rudders. That large mind, equal to the highest duties of the
general and the statesman, contracted itself to the most minute
details of naval architecture and naval discipline. The chief
ambition of the great conqueror and legislator was to be a good
boatswain and a good ship's carpenter. Holland and England
therefore had for him an attraction which was wanting to the
galleries and terraces of Versailles. He repaired to Amsterdam,
took a lodging in the dockyard, assumed the garb of a pilot, put
down his name on the list of workmen, wielded with his own hand
the caulking iron and the mallet, fixed the pumps, and twisted
the ropes. Ambassadors who came to pay their respects to him were
forced, much against their will, to clamber up the rigging of a
man of war, and found him enthroned on the cross trees.

Such was the prince whom the populace of London now crowded to
behold. His stately form, his intellectual forehead, his piercing
black eyes, his Tartar nose and mouth, his gracious smile, his
frown black with all the stormy rage and hate of a barbarian
tyrant, and above all a strange nervous convulsion which
sometimes transformed his countenance during a few moments, into
an object on which it was impossible to look without terror, the
immense quantities of meat which he devoured, the pints of brandy
which he swallowed, and which, it was said, he had carefully
distilled with his own hands, the fool who jabbered at his feet,
the monkey which grinned at the back of his chair, were, during
some weeks, popular topics of conversation. He meanwhile shunned
the public gaze with a haughty shyness which inflamed curiosity.
He went to a play; but, as soon as he perceived that pit, boxes
and galleries were staring, not at the stage, but at him, he
retired to a back bench where he was screened from observation by
his attendants. He was desirous to see a sitting of the House of
Lords; but, as he was determined not to be seen, he was forced to
climb up to the leads, and to peep through a small window. He
heard with great interest the royal assent given to a bill for
raising fifteen hundred thousand pounds by land tax, and learned
with amazement that this sum, though larger by one half than the
whole revenue which he could wring from the population of the
immense empire of which he was absolute master, was but a small
part of what the Commons of England voluntarily granted every
year to their constitutional King.

William judiciously humoured the whims of his illustrious guest,
and stole to Norfolk Street so quietly that nobody in the
neighbourhood recognised His Majesty in the thin gentleman who
got out of the modest looking coach at the Czar's lodgings. The
Czar returned the visit with the same precautions, and was
admitted into Kensington House by a back door. It was afterwards
known that he took no notice of the fine pictures with which the
palace was adorned. But over the chimney of the royal sitting
room was a plate which, by an ingenious machinery, indicated the
direction of the wind; and with this plate he was in raptures.

He soon became weary of his residence. He found that he was too
far from the objects of his curiosity, and too near to the crowds
to which he was himself an object of curiosity. He accordingly
removed to Deptford, and was there lodged in the house of John
Evelyn, a house which had long been a favourite resort of men of
letters, men of taste and men of science. Here Peter gave himself
up to his favourite pursuits. He navigated a yacht every day up
and down the river. His apartment was crowded with models of
three deckers and two deckers, frigates, sloops and fireships.
The only Englishman of rank in whose society he seemed to take
much pleasure was the eccentric Caermarthen, whose passion for
the sea bore some resemblance to his own, and who was very
competent to give an opinion about every part of a ship from the
stem to the stern. Caermarthen, indeed, became so great a
favourite that he prevailed on the Czar to consent to the
admission of a limited quantity of tobacco into Russia. There was
reason to apprehend that the Russian clergy would cry out against
any relaxation of the ancient rule, and would strenuously
maintain that the practice of smoking was condemned by that text
which declares that man is defiled, not by those things which
enter in at the mouth, but by those which proceed out of it. This
apprehension was expressed by a deputation of merchants who were
admitted to an audience of the Czar; but they were reassured by
the air with which he told them that he knew how to keep priests
in order.

He was indeed so free from any bigoted attachment to the religion
in which he had been brought up that both Papists and Protestants
hoped at different times to make him a proselyte. Burnet,
commissioned by his brethren, and impelled, no doubt, by his own
restless curiosity and love of meddling, repaired to Deptford and
was honoured with several audiences. The Czar could not be
persuaded to exhibit himself at Saint Paul's; but he was induced
to visit Lambeth palace. There he saw the ceremony of ordination
performed, and expressed warm approbation of the Anglican ritual.
Nothing in England astonished him so much as the Archiepiscopal
library. It was the first good collection of books that he had
seen; and he declared that he had never imagined that there were
so many printed volumes in the world.

The impression which he made on Burnet was not favourable. The
good bishop could not understand that a mind which seemed to be
chiefly occupied with questions about the best place for a
capstan and the best way of rigging a jury mast might be capable,
not merely of ruling an empire, but of creating a nation. He
complained that he had gone to see a great prince, and had found
only an industrious shipwright. Nor does Evelyn seem to have
formed a much more favourable opinion of his august tenant. It
was, indeed, not in the character of tenant that the Czar was
likely to gain the good word of civilised men. With all the high
qualities which were peculiar to himself, he had all the filthy
habits which were then common among his countrymen. To the end of
his life, while disciplining armies, founding schools, framing
codes, organising tribunals, building cities in deserts, joining
distant seas by artificial rivers, he lived in his palace like a
hog in a sty; and, when he was entertained by other sovereigns,
never failed to leave on their tapestried walls and velvet state
beds unequivocal proof that a savage had been there. Evelyn's
house was left in such a state that the Treasury quieted his
complaints with a considerable sum of money.

Towards the close of March the Czar visited Portsmouth, saw a
sham seafight at Spithead, watched every movement of the
contending fleets with intense interest, and expressed in warm
terms his gratitude to the hospitable government which had
provided so delightful a spectacle for his amusement and
instruction. After passing more than three months in England, he
departed in high good humour.10

His visit, his singular character, and what was rumoured of his
great designs, excited much curiosity here, but nothing more than
curiosity. England had as yet nothing to hope or to fear from his
vast empire. All her serious apprehensions were directed towards
a different quarter. None could say how soon France, so lately an
enemy, might be an enemy again.

The new diplomatic relations between the two great western powers
were widely different from those which had existed before the
war. During the eighteen years which had elapsed between the
signing of the Treaty of Dover and the Revolution, all the envoys
who had been sent from Whitehall to Versailles had been mere
sycophants of the great King. In England the French ambassador
had been the object of a degrading worship. The chiefs of both
the great parties had been his pensioners and his tools. The
ministers of the Crown had paid him open homage. The leaders of
the opposition had stolen into his house by the back door. Kings
had stooped to implore his good offices, had persecuted him for
money with the importunity of street beggars; and, when they had
succeeded in obtaining from him a box of doubloons or a bill of
exchange, had embraced him with tears of gratitude and joy. But
those days were past. England would never again send a Preston or
a Skelton to bow down before the majesty of France. France would
never again send a Barillon to dictate to the cabinet of England.
Henceforth the intercourse between the two states would be on
terms of perfect equality.

William thought it necessary that the minister who was to
represent him at the French Court should be a man of the first
consideration, and one on whom entire reliance could be reposed.
Portland was chosen for this important and delicate mission; and
the choice was eminently judicious. He had, in the negotiations
of the preceding year, shown more ability than was to be found in
the whole crowd of formalists who had been exchanging notes and
drawing up protocols at Ryswick. Things which had been kept
secret from the plenipotentiaries who had signed the treaty were
well known to him. The clue of the whole foreign policy of
England and Holland was in his possession. His fidelity and
diligence were beyond all praise. These were strong
recommendations. Yet it seemed strange to many that William
should have been willing to part, for a considerable time, from a
companion with whom he had during a quarter of a century lived on
terms of entire confidence and affection. The truth was that the
confidence was still what it had long been, but that the
affection, though it was not yet extinct, though it had not even
cooled, had become a cause of uneasiness to both parties. Till
very recently, the little knot of personal friends who had
followed William from his native land to his place of splendid
banishment had been firmly united. The aversion which the English
nation felt for them had given him much pain; but he had not been
annoyed by any quarrel among themselves. Zulestein and
Auverquerque had, without a murmur, yielded to Portland the first
place in the royal favour; nor had Portland grudged to Zulestein
and Auverquerque very solid and very signal proofs of their
master's kindness. But a younger rival had lately obtained an
influence which created much jealousy. Among the Dutch gentlemen
who had sailed with the Prince of Orange from Helvoetsluys to
Torbay was one named Arnold Van Keppel. Keppel had a sweet and
obliging temper, winning manners, and a quick, though not a
profound, understanding. Courage, loyalty and secresy were common
between him and Portland. In other points they differed widely.
Portland was naturally the very opposite of a flatterer, and,
having been the intimate friend of the Prince of Orange at a time
when the interval between the House of Orange and the House of
Bentinck was not so wide as it afterwards became, had acquired a
habit of plain speaking which he could not unlearn when the
comrade of his youth had become the sovereign of three kingdoms.
He was a most trusty, but not a very respectful, subject. There
was nothing which he was not ready to do or suffer for William.
But in his intercourse with William he was blunt and sometimes
surly. Keppel, on the other hand, had a great desire to please,
and looked up with unfeigned admiration to a master whom he had
been accustomed, ever since he could remember, to consider as the
first of living men. Arts, therefore, which were neglected by the
elder courtier were assiduously practised by the younger. So
early as the spring of 1691 shrewd observers were struck by the
manner in which Keppel watched every turn of the King's eye, and
anticipated the King's unuttered wishes. Gradually the new
servant rose into favour. He was at length made Earl of Albemarle
and Master of the Robes. But his elevation, though it furnished
the Jacobites with a fresh topic for calumny and ribaldry, was
not so offensive to the nation as the elevation of Portland had
been. Portland's manners were thought dry and haughty; but envy
was disarmed by the blandness of Albemarle's temper and by the
affability of his deportment.

Portland, though strictly honest, was covetous; Albemarle was
generous. Portland had been naturalised here only in name and
form; but Albemarle affected to have forgotten his own country,
and to have become an Englishman in feelings and manners. The
palace was soon disturbed by quarrels in which Portland seems to
have been always the aggressor, and in which he found little
support either among the English or among his own countrymen.
William, indeed, was not the man to discard an old friend for a
new one. He steadily gave, on all occasions, the preference to
the companion of his youthful days. Portland had the first place
in the bed-chamber. He held high command in the army. On all
great occasions he was trusted and consulted. He was far more
powerful in Scotland than the Lord High Commissioner, and far
deeper in the secret of foreign affairs than the Secretary of
State. He wore the Garter, which sovereign princes coveted. Lands
and money had been bestowed on him so liberally that he was one
of the richest subjects in Europe. Albemarle had as yet not even
a regiment; he had not been sworn of the Council; and the wealth
which he owed to the royal bounty was a pittance when compared
with the domains and the hoards of Portland. Yet Portland thought
himself aggrieved. He could not bear to see any other person near
him, though below him, in the royal favour. In his fits of
resentful sullenness, he hinted an intention of retiring from the
Court. William omitted nothing that a brother could have done to
soothe and conciliate a brother. Letters are still extant in
which he, with the utmost solemnity, calls God to witness that
his affection for Bentinck still is what it was in their early
days. At length a compromise was made. Portland, disgusted with
Kensington, was not sorry to go to France as ambassador; and
William with deep emotion consented to a separation longer than
had ever taken place during an intimacy of twenty-five years. A
day or two after the new plenipotentiary had set out on his
mission, he received a touching letter from his master. "The
loss of your society," the King wrote, "has affected me more than
you can imagine. I should be very glad if I could believe that
you felt as much pain at quitting me as I felt at seeing you
depart; for then I might hope that you had ceased to doubt the
truth of what I so solemnly declared to you on my oath. Assure
yourself that I never was more sincere. My feeling towards you is
one which nothing but death can alter." It should seem that the
answer returned to these affectionate assurances was not
perfectly gracious; for, when the King next wrote, he gently
complained of an expression which had wounded him severely.

But, though Portland was an unreasonable and querulous friend, he
was a most faithful and zealous minister. His despatches show how
indefatigably he toiled for the interests, and how punctiliously
he guarded the dignity, of the prince by whom he imagined that he
had been unjustly and unkindly treated.

The embassy was the most magnificent that England had ever sent
to any foreign court. Twelve men of honourable birth and ample
fortune, some of whom afterwards filled high offices in the
State, attended the mission at their own charge. Each of them had
his own carriage, his own horses, and his own train of servants.
Two less wealthy persons, who, in different ways, attained great
note in literature, were of the company. Rapin, whose history of
England might have been found, a century ago, in every library,
was the preceptor of the ambassador's eldest son, Lord Woodstock.
Prior was Secretary of Legation. His quick parts, his industry,
his politeness, and his perfect knowledge of the French language,
marked him out as eminently fitted for diplomatic employment. He
had, however, found much difficulty in overcoming an odd
prejudice which his chief had conceived against him. Portland,
with good natural abilities and great expertness in business, was
no scholar. He had probably never read an English book; but he
had a general notion, unhappily but too well founded, that the
wits and poets who congregated at Will's were a most profane and
licentious set; and, being himself a man of orthodox opinions and
regular life, he was not disposed to give his confidence to one
whom he supposed to be a ribald scoffer. Prior, with much
address, and perhaps with the help of a little hypocrisy,
completely removed this unfavourable impression. He talked on
serious subjects seriously, quoted the New Testament appositely,
vindicated Hammond from the charge of popery, and, by way of a
decisive blow, gave the definition of a true Church from the
nineteenth Article. Portland stared at him. "I am glad, Mr.
Prior, to find you so good a Christian. I was afraid that you
were an atheist." "An atheist, my good lord!" cried Prior. "What
could lead your Lordship to entertain such a suspicion?" "Why,"
said Portland, "I knew that you were a poet; and I took it for
granted that you did not believe in God." "My lord," said the
wit, "you do us poets the greatest injustice. Of all people we
are the farthest from atheism. For the atheists do not even
worship the true God, whom the rest of mankind acknowledge; and
we are always invoking and hymning false gods whom everybody else
has renounced." This jest will be perfectly intelligible to all
who remember the eternally recurring allusions to Venus and
Minerva, Mars, Cupid and Apollo, which were meant to be the
ornaments, and are the blemishers, of Prior's compositions. But
Portland was much puzzled. However, he declared himself
satisfied; and the young diplomatist withdrew, laughing to think
with how little learning a man might shine in courts, lead
armies, negotiate treaties, obtain a coronet and a garter, and
leave a fortune of half a million.

The citizens of Paris and the courtiers of Versailles, though
more accustomed than the Londoners to magnificent pageantry,
allowed that no minister from any foreign state had ever made so
superb an appearance as Portland. His horses, his liveries, his
plate, were unrivalled. His state carriage, drawn by eight fine
Neapolitan greys decorated with orange ribands, was specially
admired. On the day of his public entry the streets, the
balconies, and the windows were crowded with spectators along a
line of three miles. As he passed over the bridge on which the
statue of Henry IV. stands, he was much amused by hearing one of
the crowd exclaim: "Was it not this gentleman's master that we
burned on this very bridge eight years ago?" The Ambassador's
hotel was constantly thronged from morning to night by visitors
in plumes and embroidery. Several tables were sumptuously spread
every day under his roof; and every English traveller of decent
station and character was welcome to dine there. The board at
which the master of the house presided in person, and at which he
entertained his most distinguished guests, was said to be more
luxurious than that of any prince of the House of Bourbon. For
there the most exquisite cookery of France was set off by a
certain neatness and comfort which then, as now, peculiarly
belonged to England. During the banquet the room was filled with
people of fashion, who went to see the grandees eat and drink.
The expense of all this splendour and hospitality was enormous,
and was exaggerated by report. The cost to the English government
really was fifty thousand pounds in five months. It is probable
that the opulent gentlemen who accompanied the mission as
volunteers laid out nearly as much more from their private
resources.

The malecontents at the coffeehouses of London murmured at this
profusion, and accused William of ostentation. But, as this fault
was never, on any other occasion, imputed to him even by his
detractors, we may not unreasonably attribute to policy what to
superficial or malicious observers seemed to be vanity. He
probably thought it important, at the commencement of a new era
in the relations between the two great kingdoms of the West, to
hold high the dignity of the Crown which he wore. He well knew,
indeed, that the greatness of a prince does not depend on piles
of silver bowls and chargers, trains of gilded coaches, and
multitudes of running footmen in brocade, and led horses in
velvet housings. But he knew also that the subjects of Lewis had,
during the long reign of their magnificent sovereign, been
accustomed to see power constantly associated with pomp, and
would hardly believe that the substance existed unless they were
dazzled by the trappings.

If the object of William was to strike the imagination of the
French people, he completely succeeded. The stately and gorgeous
appearance which the English embassy made on public occasions
was, during some time, the general topic of conversation at
Paris. Portland enjoyed a popularity which contrasts strangely
with the extreme unpopularity which he had incurred in England.
The contrast will perhaps seem less strange when we consider what
immense sums he had accumulated at the expense of the English,
and what immense sums he was laying out for the benefit of the
French. It must also be remembered that he could not confer or
correspond with Englishmen in their own language, and that the
French tongue was at least as familiar to him, as that of his
native Holland. He, therefore, who here was called greedy,
niggardly, dull, brutal, whom one English nobleman had described
as a block of wood, and another as just capable of carrying a
message right, was in the brilliant circles of France considered
as a model of grace, of dignity and of munificence, as a
dexterous negotiator and a finished gentleman. He was the better
liked because he was a Dutchman. For, though fortune had favoured
William, though considerations of policy had induced the Court of
Versailles to acknowledge him, he was still, in the estimation of
that Court, an usurper; and his English councillors and captains
were perjured traitors who richly deserved axes and halters, and
might, perhaps, get what they deserved. But Bentinck was not to
be confounded with Leeds and Marlborough, Orford and Godolphin.
He had broken no oath, had violated no law. He owed no allegiance
to the House of Stuart; and the fidelity and zeal with which he
had discharged his duties to his own country and his own master
entitled him to respect. The noble and powerful vied with each
other in paying honour to the stranger.

The Ambassador was splendidly entertained by the Duke of Orleans
at St. Cloud, and by the Dauphin at Meudon. A Marshal of France
was charged to do the honours of Marli; and Lewis graciously
expressed his concern that the frosts of an ungenial spring
prevented the fountains and flower beds from appearing to
advantage. On one occasion Portland was distinguished, not only
by being selected to hold the waxlight in the royal bedroom, but
by being invited to go within the balustrade which surrounded the
couch, a magic circle which the most illustrious foreigners had
hitherto found impassable. The Secretary shared largely in the
attentions which were paid to his chief. The Prince of Conde took
pleasure in talking with him on literary subjects. The courtesy
of the aged Bossuet, the glory of the Church of Rome, was long
gratefully remembered by the young heretic. Boileau had the good
sense and good feeling to exchange a friendly greeting with the
aspiring novice who had administered to him a discipline as
severe as he had administered to Quinault. The great King himself
warmly praised Prior's manners and conversation, a circumstance
which will be thought remarkable when it is remembered that His
Majesty was an excellent model and an excellent judge of
gentlemanlike deportment, and that Prior had passed his boyhood
in drawing corks at a tavern, and his early manhood in the
seclusion of a college. The Secretary did not however carry his
politeness so far as to refrain from asserting, on proper
occasions, the dignity of his country and of his master. He
looked coldly on the twenty-one celebrated pictures in which Le
Brun had represented on the coifing of the gallery of Versailles
the exploits of Lewis. When he was sneeringly asked whether
Kensington Palace could boast of such decorations, he answered,
with spirit and propriety: "No, Sir. The memorials of the great
things which my master has done are to be seen in many places;
but not in his own house."

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