William the Third.
by H. D. Traill.
CHAPTER I
1650-1672
Birth, ancestry, and early years--State of Dutch parties-- William"s boyhood--His character and ambitions--Hostility of De Witt and his partisans--Visit to England--Outbreak of the War of 1672.
William Henry, Prince of Orange and Count of Na.s.sau, a ruler destined to play a greater part in shaping the destinies of modern England than any of her native sovereigns, was born at the Hague on the 4th of November 1650. By blood and ancestral tradition he was well fitted for the work to which he was to be called. The descendant of a line of statesmen and warriors, the scion of a house which more than a century before had been a.s.sociated with the most heroic struggle for national freedom that history records, he could hardly have added stronger hereditary to the great personal qualifications for the enterprises reserved for him. His family was one of the most ancient in Europe--reaching back, indeed, for its origin into the regions of fable. "I will not take upon me," says an English biographer, writing shortly after his hero"s death, "to extend the Antiquity of the House of Na.s.sau as far as the time of Julius Caesar, though that Emperor in his first book of Commentaries, _De Bello Gallico_, says that one Na.s.sau, with his brother Cimberius, led a body of Germans out of Suabia and settled upon the banks of the Rhine near Treves, which is the more observable by reason of the Affinity of the Words, which differ only in the Transposition of one Letter; but I doubt "tis rather Presumption than Truth for any one to affirm that there is an Estate upon that very Spot of Ground mentioned by Caesar which belongs to the Na.s.sovian Family to this Day." Without insisting on so very ancient and remote an origin as this, we may take it as certain that the House of Na.s.sau had been established in Europe for some thousand years at the birth of William. As early as in the thirteenth century it was honoured with the imperial dignity in the person of Adolph of Na.s.sau.
The t.i.tle and domains of Orange were added to the family in the sixteenth century by the marriage of Claude de Chalons, sister and heiress of the then Prince of Orange, with Henry of Na.s.sau, from whose son Rene the princ.i.p.ality pa.s.sed by testamentary bequest to the great Stadtholder of Holland, William, surnamed the Silent, the ill.u.s.trious liberator of the United Provinces from the yoke of Spain. The acquisition of this petty princ.i.p.ality--only twelve miles in length by nine in breadth--was by no means the matter of trivial importance which its territorial dimensions might imply. Its situation in the very heart of the dominions of France, the incidents attaching to that situation and the consequences flowing from it, contributed in their degree to that complex system of forces by which the course of history is determined. To William I. succeeded his son Maurice, the bearer of a name also memorable in the history of the States, a greater soldier and a statesman of scarcely less ability than his father, though of a far more chequered fame. Under Maurice the power of the Stadtholder or Governor was, in spite of the jealousy with which it was regarded by the burgher party, considerably advanced, and he was not without reason suspected of the design of making himself an absolute ruler. Dying without issue, he was succeeded by his brother Frederick Henry, another renowned captain, under whom the long struggle with Spain was at last brought to a close by the renunciation, in the Treaty of Westphalia, of the Spanish claim upon the United Provinces. William II., the son of Frederick Henry, was born in 1626, and succeeded his father at the age of twenty-one. Endowed with all the restless activity and ambition of his uncle, he attempted, in prosecution of the same monarchical designs as that prince, to seize the city of Amsterdam by a _coup de main_. The project, however, was defeated, and William, after a troubled reign of only four years, was fatally attacked by the smallpox, and died on the 27th of October 1650, leaving no issue. Eight days after his death, however, his widow, Mary, daughter of Charles I., gave premature birth to the son whose career it is in these pages proposed to trace.
Seldom has a new-born child been the object of such diverse emotions, the centre of so many conflicting hopes and fears among its countrymen as was this infant Prince. To the partisans of the House of Orange he appeared as the G.o.d-sent heir--an earlier _enfant du miracle_ vouchsafed by Providence to save the great race of William the Silent from extinction in the male line. To the party of the munic.i.p.al oligarchy he presented himself as the probable inheritor rather of the ambitions of his father and his father"s uncle, than of the virtues of his great-grandfather. The latter party, who for the moment had the upper hand, were fully resolved that the young Prince should never wield as much power as that which Prince Frederick Henry had sought during his four years" reign to abuse. The party of the infant Prince, on the other hand, a party headed by the Princess Dowager and her mother, made up as far as possible for the lack of direct and political power by incessant and indefatigable intrigue; and to their efforts it was that the Pensionary De Witt, the representative of the munic.i.p.al party, ascribed, and not without reason, the war which broke out between the States and the Rump Parliament in 1651. Its effect, however, was temporarily disastrous to their ambitions; for, the United Provinces being compelled to solicit peace from Cromwell, the Lord Protector, who was naturally opposed to the elevation of a family allied by marriage to the exiled Stuarts, compelled the States of Holland and West Friesland, as a condition of his ratifying the articles of peace, to pa.s.s a decree that "they would never elect the Prince or any of his lineage Stadtholder of their province, nor consent that he or any of his family should be Captain-General of the forces of the United Provinces."
Reared from his very cradle amid the animosities of contending factions, the young Prince learned early those four lessons of statecraft,--to conceal his designs, to watch his opportunities, to choose his instruments, and to bide his time. His education, other than that which he was receiving daily in the stern school of circ.u.mstances, he owed to his mother alone. Under her care he acquired a good knowledge of mathematics and military science, and learned to speak English, French, and German almost as fluently as his native tongue. The chiefs of the munic.i.p.al party, who became his official guardians, would have willingly stinted his instruction, if by so doing they might have checked his aspirations; but the ambition to emulate the fame of his great predecessors, and to secure the power which they had wielded, took root within him from his boyish years, and grew steadily with his growth.
Weak and ailing from his childhood, for he shared the too common lot of those infants who are brought into the world before the appointed months are run, he took no pleasure, as he possessed no skill, in the ordinary pastimes of the boy; and, with a mind thus turned inward upon itself, from an age at which other children have no care or thought but for the thousand novel interests and attractions of the world without them, he acquired habits of reserve and thoughtfulness beyond his years. The religious faith in which he was nurtured was a Calvinism of the strictest sort. His firm hold of the grim doctrine of predestination stood him in much the same stead as Napoleon"s belief in his destiny, and long before he arrived at man"s estate he had in all probability convinced himself that the inscrutable counsels of Providence had designed him for great things.
Humanly speaking, however, his prospects did not appear to brighten before him as years went on. At the age of ten he lost his mother, who had gone to England to visit her brother, just restored to the throne, and was there carried off by an attack of smallpox. In the same year he saw his princ.i.p.ality of Orange forcibly seized by Louis, who, after demolishing its fortifications, held possession of it for five years, surrendering it only in 1665. Then came the war of that year between England and the Dutch Provinces, a conflict which his party temporarily conceived the hope of turning to their own profit, but which left them ultimately in a worse plight than before; for no provisions in the Prince"s interests were insisted on by his uncle, Charles II., in the Treaty of Peace, and, under the instigation of De Witt, the States of Holland and West Friesland subsequently pa.s.sed a perpetual edict suppressing the office of Stadtholder. A faint effort was made by Charles II. through Sir William Temple to vindicate the rights of his nephew, but the efforts of the amba.s.sador were coldly received by the Pensionary, and the matter dropped. De Witt now pushed his hostility yet further, and the States resorted to the ign.o.ble and ungrateful measure of calling upon the young Prince to quit the house at the Hague which, though technically the property of the States, had been for many years the official residence of his family. To the Pensionary, who was charged with the communication of this order, William replied by a spirited refusal, directing his visitor to inform the States that he would not quit the house unless removed by force; upon which his persecutors, apprehensive no doubt of the odium which such a step would excite among the common people, who were many of them well affected to his historic family, allowed their demand to lapse. William, now eighteen years of age, determined to make a counter-move on his own part, and presenting himself before the a.s.sembly of the States of the province of Zealand, he proposed to them to elect him first n.o.ble of that province, a dignity which they had been wont to confer upon his ancestors at his then age. The Zealanders complied readily with the request, though they did not proceed, as had been expected, to elect him to the higher office of Stadtholder of the province; and except by ent.i.tling him to a seat in the States General as representative of the n.o.bility of Zealand, the minor honours procured him nothing but the increased jealousy and suspicions of the party of De Witt. Sir William Temple, then amba.s.sador at the Hague, with whom the Prince came into contact at this time, characteristically reports of him in his Letters as a "young Man of more Parts than ordinary and of the better Sort; that is, not lying in that kind of Wit which is neither of use to one"s self nor to anybody else, but in good plain Sense which showed Application if he had business that deserved it; and this with extreme good and agreeable Humour and Dispositions without any Vice; that he was asleep in bed always at Ten o"clock; loved Hunting as much as he hated Swearing, and preferred c.o.c.k-ale before any Wine." In the year 1670 he managed after some diplomatic difficulties to pay a visit to London, where he received the attentions of a civic banquet, and of an honorary degree at Oxford, and where too he acquired a very shrewd perception of the King"s leanings towards the religion of Rome.
But his day was now fast approaching. At the close of the year 1671 was concluded the ever-infamous Treaty of Dover. Charles transformed himself, with more than the celerity of the nimblest modern rat, from the champion of the Protestant faith in Europe into the ally of its deadliest enemy. Sir William Temple was recalled from the Hague, and the Triple League between England, the States, and Sweden, which that skilful envoy had taken so much pains to cement, was broken up. Early in 1672 war was declared by England against the Dutch, and the armies of Louis, pouring into the United Provinces, became masters of all their chief strongholds "in as little time," to quote the vigorous comparison of one of William"s biographers, "as travellers usually employ to view them." The Prince"s opportunity had come.
CHAPTER II
1672-1678
William elected Stadtholder of Holland--Murder of the De Witts --Campaign of 1672-3--Successes of the Prince--Declared hereditary Stadtholder--Progress of the French arms--Marriage with Mary--Negotiations of Nimeguen--Conclusion of the Peace --Battle of St. Denis.
Louis XIV., like other military malefactors before and since, was himself the creator of the enemy by whom his power was to be shaken to its foundations. His invasion of the United Provinces, an enterprise commenced with that contempt of public right in which no other potentate has ever equalled him, and prosecuted with that barbarity in which only Oriental conquerors have ever surpa.s.sed him, was the means of raising to power the one European foe by whom he was destined to be successfully withstood. The munic.i.p.al party, unduly absorbed in the task of safeguarding the liberties of their country against the supposed ambitions of a single fellow-countryman, had wholly neglected the protection of its very existence against the known ambitions of a foreign aggressor. Most of their veteran troops had been disbanded; the greatest posts in their armies were in the hands of unskilled civilians; cities garrisoned with considerable forces of soldiery opened their gates and surrendered without firing a gun. Popular indignation rose high. Upon William, always a favourite among the commonalty, and the inheritor of a name enn.o.bled not only by civil wisdom but by military exploits, all eyes were turned. An insurrection in his favour took place at Dort, and the magistrates of that city, intimidated by the clamour of the people, pa.s.sed an ordinance repealing the perpetual edict, and made him Stadtholder. Other cities followed their example, and the States-General of the provinces confirmed their decrees. The two De Witts, John and his brother Cornelius, now the objects of popular suspicion and hatred, were a.s.sa.s.sinated in a street riot; and the people, as if inspired with new courage by the restoration of a Prince of Orange to a position from which princes of that name had so often led them to victory, turned fiercely upon their French invaders. Five thousand of Louis"s troops were repulsed before Ardenburg by the bravery of no more than two hundred burghers, a.s.sisted by the women and children of the town, and one hundred garrison soldiers. The citizens of Groningen, aided by the spirited students of its university, defended themselves with equal vigour and good fortune against the warlike Bishop of Munster, at the head of 30,000 soldiers, compelling him to raise the siege. It was evident that a Dutch conquest was going to be no mere military promenade, as had first appeared to promise, and Louis thought it advisable to negotiate. To the chief of a state so desperately bested as were the United Provinces at that moment, the terms offered to William by the French monarch,--no less than the sovereignty of his country under the protection of England and France,--might well have appeared tempting. William rejected them with scorn. He would never, he said, "betray the trust of his country that his ancestors had so long defended." Solicitations addressed to him in the same sense by England met with the same reply. To Buckingham, who had pressed them upon him, and warned him that "if he persisted in his present humour he must unavoidably see the final ruin of his cause," he made the Spartan answer that he "had one way still left not to see that ruin completed, which was to die in the last d.y.k.e."
The winter of 1672-3 had stopped the progress of the French for the time, but William was unwilling to allow it to arrest his own action. He laid siege to the town of Woerden, and, though forced by the Duke of Luxembourg to retreat from it, inflicted heavy losses upon the enemy.
Then, having invested Tongres, captured Walcheren, and demolished Binch, he himself retired reluctantly into winter quarters. In the following spring he besieged and took Naerden, and later on in the year achieved a still more important triumph in the capture of Bonn, which had been put into the hands of France at the beginning of the war. New honours now began to be contemplated by his grateful countrymen for their stout defender. The Stadtholdership of Holland and West Friesland was not only confirmed to him for life, but was settled upon his heirs male; and on the same day the like dignity was conferred on him by the States of Zealand--an example shortly afterwards followed by those of Utrecht. Nor were his successes without effect upon his enemies. Charles, with whose subjects the war had never been popular, concluded a peace with him after these two summers of fighting, and offered his mediation between the powers still at war, an offer which was accepted by France. Four years, however, were to elapse, and many souls of brave men to be sent to Hades, before this mediation took effect in a concluded peace. In the summer of 1674 was fought the fiercest engagement of the whole war--the b.l.o.o.d.y and indecisive battle of Seneff, in which William was pitted against the renowned Prince of Conde. The young Prince had too much to gain in reputation not to be eager to provoke a battle, and the old soldier too much to lose to be willing to accept one if it could be avoided; but William succeeded in his object. Conde was at first victorious in an encounter between a portion of the two armies, but he imprudently brought on a general battle, which, after raging furiously for a whole day, left both parties to claim the victory--"the allies because they were last upon the field, and the French on the strength of the great number of prisoners and standards they had carried off." "But whoever had the honour," adds Sir William Temple, "both had the loss."
It was on this occasion that Conde paid his famous compliment to the Prince by describing him as having acted like an old general throughout the action in every respect save that of having "exposed himself like a young recruit."
For yet another four years, as has been said, this struggle continued to rage, and, as it raged, to store up in his heart that exhaustless fund of resentment against Louis which underwent hardly any depletion till the day of his death. Several times were attempts made to detach William from his Spanish allies and to induce him to conclude a separate peace, but he remained firm against all such solicitations of betrayal. In vain did Arlington, specially commissioned for that purpose, endeavour to tempt him to the desertion of his allies by the offer of an English matrimonial alliance. William simply replied that his fortunes were not in a condition for him to think of a wife. Louis, however, was extremely desirous of peace on any honourable terms, and William, to meet him half-way, put forward a counter-proposal of a marriage between the King of Spain and the eldest daughter of the Duke of Orleans, to whom France should give in dowry the late conquered places in Flanders. This ingenious proposal for reconciling the vindication of Spanish and Dutch interests on the Flemish frontier with the maintenance of French military honour, can scarcely have been made with any other purpose than that of putting France in the wrong. William knew probably that it would not square with Louis"s existing hopes and pretensions, and that whether Charles pressed it upon his cousin or not, it was pretty certain that no more would be heard of it. For the present, moreover, he was under no pressure to make a peace at all. The United Provinces had recovered their confidence and hopefulness, and were full of admiration for and attachment to their young leader. He had been actually offered the sovereignty of Guelderland, and though his politic moderation induced him to refuse it, opinion among the other provinces was divided as to the propriety of his rejecting the offer. Nothing, however, could have more strikingly ill.u.s.trated the commanding position which he had attained among his countrymen than the complete paralysis which overcame them in 1675, during the fortunately brief period of the Prince"s suffering from a dangerous attack of smallpox. From this disease, so fatal to his race, he recovered with apparent prompt.i.tude, but it is only too probable that it left deep traces behind it on his congenitally feeble frame.
After much dispute the scene of the peace negotiations had been fixed at Nimeguen, and the Congress met there in the month of July 1676. But the diplomatists there were still to deliberate for two years while armies were fighting; and if William could have prevented it, the peace would not have been made even as soon as it was. The next two years, however, were on the whole years of success for France and of defeat for the allies; and early in 1677 William, of his own accord, revived a project to which, when previously broached to him, he had refused to listen. The terms submitted to him during the deliberations at Nimeguen were intolerable, and yet, though he obstinately refused to accept them, town after town was falling before the French arms, and his country was at last beginning to weary of the struggle. If he must at last be forced to a.s.sent to distasteful conditions, why not, as the price of his a.s.sent, obtain for himself a matrimonial alliance which, besides bringing him a step nearer to the English throne, would immensely strengthen his position as a representative of the Protestant cause in Europe. A year before he had sounded Temple as to a proposal for the hand of his cousin Mary, the Duke of York"s eldest daughter; and had been encouraged by that amba.s.sador to hope for success in his suit. He now more formally pressed it, selecting the moment with considerable astuteness. Neither Charles nor James had any liking for the match, but the King was in the midst of a struggle with his Parliament; his subserviency to Louis was inflaming popular resentment against him, and a marriage of his niece to William, more especially if it could be made the means of bringing about a peace, appeared to promise the only means of extricating himself from his difficulties. Danby, his minister, moreover, was just at that moment trembling for his head, and was prepared to exert himself to the utmost to save it by the only means available--the detachment of his master from the French alliance. William was reluctantly invited to England, and it is clear, in the whole history of the affair, that he felt himself from the moment of his arrival to be _dominus contractus_. With respect to the question whether the business of the marriage should be arranged before that of the peace or _vice versa_, William insisted upon his own order of procedure, and procured its adoption. Charles consented to the marriage, and compelled the a.s.sent of his brother. The States-General, communicated with by express, immediately signified their approval; and William, who had fortunately found the person and manners of his cousin highly attractive to him, was married hurriedly and privately at eleven o"clock on the night of the 4th of November 1677, the anniversary of his birth. The King of England did his best to reconcile his brother of France to a match, the news of which, our amba.s.sador at the French Court told Danby, he received "as he would have done the loss of an army," by representing it as an important step towards a peace; but William returned home with his bride, pledged only to his uncle to accept a basis of peace which was to a large extent, if not entirely, of his own formulation, and far more liberal to the allies than anything which France had proposed. Louis, however, was to get his own way after all. The United Provinces were now heartily sick of the war, and were, moreover, not uninfluenced by a party hostile to William, who felt or feigned apprehension of his designs upon the liberties of the Republic. The States-General accepted the articles of France, and having by their const.i.tution the absolute power of peace and war, they were able, on the 11th of August, to conclude a treaty over William"s head. Three days after the Prince, unaware, officially at least, that the signatures had been actually affixed to the treaty, made a dash upon the army of Luxembourg, then besieging Mons, and after a desperate encounter secured one of the most brilliant successes of the war. The next morning, however, advices arrived from the Hague of the conclusion of the peace, and William had the mortification of feeling that the fruits of a victory which had opened a way for the allies into the country of their enemy were to remain ungathered.
CHAPTER III
1678-1688
An interval of repose--Revival of continental troubles--Death of Charles II.--Expedition of Monmouth--Mission of Dykvelt --James"s growing unpopularity--Invitation to William-- Attempted intervention by France--William"s declaration--He sets sail, and is driven back by storm--Second expedition and landing.
For the next six or seven years the life of the Prince of Orange was to be unmarked by any striking external incidents. He was occupied with all his wonted patience in the reparation of the mischiefs of the Treaty of Nimeguen, and in the laborious construction of that great European league by means of which he was afterwards destined to arrest the course of French aggression. In this undertaking, and in watching and retaliating upon the encroachments which Louis XIV., almost on the morrow of the treaty, began making upon its provisions, William was sufficiently employed. In 1684 these encroachments became intolerable.
Louis having vainly demanded of the Spaniards certain towns in Flanders, on the pretext of their being rightful dependencies on places ceded to him by the Treaty of Nimeguen, seized Strasbourg and besieged Luxembourg in physical enforcement of his claim. Spain declared war, and William, though thwarted by the States (mainly through the instrumentality of the city of Amsterdam, which was always ill-disposed towards him), and denied the levy of 16,000 men which he had asked for, took the field notwithstanding in support of his Spanish ally. The united forces, however, were too weak to effect much. Luxembourg speedily surrendered, and as the result a twenty years" truce, on terms not very favourable for William, was concluded with France.
During this period, as always, affairs in England no doubt demanded general vigilance; but it was not till 1685 that they showed signs of becoming critical. The death of Charles, and the known designs of Monmouth, placed William in a very delicate position. During Charles"s life-time he had extended his protection to the exiled Duke, and had even insisted so punctiliously on proper respect being shown to him, that a difference had arisen between William and the English Court with reference to the Duke"s receiving salutes from the English troops, and was actually unadjusted at Charles"s death. Upon James"s accession, however, either to clear himself of all suspicion of abetting a pretender to the throne, or, as some have a.s.serted, to thwart the new king"s design of having his nephew seized and sent a prisoner to England, William procured his departure from Dutch territory. Monmouth retired to Brussels, but at the instance of James, who wrote a letter to the Governor of the Spanish Netherlands charging him with high treason, he was ordered by that functionary to quit the King of Spain"s dominions, and returned to Holland. Then followed his ill-fated enterprise, throughout the brief course of which William maintained an att.i.tude of strict loyalty towards his father-in-law. He not only despatched the six English and Scotch regiments in the Dutch service to a.s.sist in suppressing the insurrection, but he offered, if James wished, to take command of the royal troops in person. The offer was declined, very likely from motives of suspicion by the King, but it is impossible to suggest any plausible reason for questioning its _bona fides_. The idle story that it was prompted by William"s disgust at Monmouth"s proclaiming himself king, in breach of a promise to raise William himself to the throne, bears absurdity on its face. The Princess stood next in succession to the throne as it was; and if the Prince had conceived a project of antic.i.p.ating his wife"s inheritance, he certainly would not have entrusted the execution of that project to the feeble hands and flighty brain of Monmouth.
But two years had scarcely pa.s.sed before it really became necessary for him to look after the interests of her reversion. As early as the spring of 1687 it was beginning to be suspected by men of foresight, both in England and in Holland, that James II."s position was precarious. No one, indeed, who was capable of forming a correct estimate of his character and capacities could find in them any guarantees of prolonged rule. He was as obstinate and insincere as his father, as selfish and unscrupulous as his brother, while he was dest.i.tute alike of the former"s power of enlisting the devotion of individuals, and of the latter"s easy popularity with the common people. It would be unjust to him not to admit that many of his gravest difficulties were prepared for him in his brother"s time, if not by his brother"s means; but it cannot be denied that he had made astonishing haste to convert these grave difficulties into the most formidable dangers. In little more than two years from his accession in February 1685, his nephew found it expedient to send over an emissary to England for the purpose of sounding English political leaders, not as yet, indeed, with any definitely-formed design of intervening by force in English affairs, but rather probably that, in the event of the King rendering himself "impossible," the people might know where to look for a subst.i.tute, and might understand that the heiress-presumptive and her consort were not only the most natural, but, as a matter of fact, the most eligible choice for the people to make in the circ.u.mstances. Dykvelt, a judicious diplomatist, made the best use of his time, and while continuing to give no just ground of remonstrance to James, to whom he was of course nominally accredited, he managed to bring back information and a.s.surances of much value from many English politicians of eminence.
Meantime, and while James was still industriously undermining his throne, his relations with his destined successor were becoming more strained. A dispute arose between them with reference to the six English regiments lent to the States under treaty. The King made a demand that these regiments should be officered by Catholics--a claim put forward either with the object of insuring their fidelity to him in case of future rupture with Holland, or else merely to invite refusal and create a pretext for insisting on their recall. At any rate the refusal came, and on James"s demanding the return of the troops, the States refused this also, appealing to the terms of the treaty as only authorising the King of England to require rest.i.tution of these forces in the event of his being actually engaged in warfare with a foreign foe. An acrimonious correspondence ensued between the two governments; but James failed to move the States from their firm att.i.tude. Equally unsuccessful was he in an attempt to inveigle the Prince into an approval of that policy of pretended toleration by which he was seeking to further the interests of the Catholic at the expense of those of the Protestant religion in England. A Scots lawyer named Stuart, who had taken refuge in Holland from the religious persecution during the late reign, having made, or been bribed to make, his submission to the royal authority, was procured to open a correspondence with the Grand Pensionary f.a.gel, in which he pressed the latter to advise the Prince of Orange to support his uncle"s policy, declaring that James would not repeal the penal laws unless the tests were repealed also. f.a.gel for some time returned no answer, but at last, finding the rumour in circulation that the Prince had a.s.sociated himself with the King"s measures, he wrote a reply, which had no doubt been drafted by William, to the refugee"s request. In this remarkably politic doc.u.ment the Prince contrived to hold the balance equally between the English Protestants, with whom he was particularly anxious to stand well, and the Catholic continental sovereigns, whom in his struggle with France he could not afford to offend. While maintaining his former att.i.tude with regard to the tests, William declared that he would gladly see all other grievances on the part of the English Catholics removed. He would have no man subjected to punishment for his opinions, but--and on this point he instanced the practice of the States-General themselves with respect to Roman Catholics--he was not prepared to remove all official disabilities founded on religious opinion. This letter was forwarded by Stuart to the King, and was by him considered in council. Burnet declares that all the lay papists of England who were not engaged in the intrigues of the priests earnestly pressed him to accept the Prince"s terms as being what would render them safe and easy for the future; but the King as usual was obstinate, and no resolution was taken on the matter.
During most of the remainder of this year the King was filling up the measure of his political offences. From March till October the dispute with Magdalen College had raged, and the breach between James and the once devoted Church of England proportionately widened. But at the end of the year 1687 a momentous announcement was made to the Court. The Queen was p.r.o.nounced to be pregnant, and in July of the following year she was delivered of a male child. That an infant brought into the world at so opportune a moment should have been loudly alleged to be supposit.i.tious by the inflamed political partisans of the time was naturally to be expected. A word or two more will be said on that point hereafter; it is here only necessary to remark that whether William shared the suspicions of his partisans or not his outward behaviour on the occasion was irreproachable. He congratulated his father-in-law on the auspicious event; and the infant prince was duly prayed for in his private chapel at the Hague, until the protest hereafter to be referred to was made against the ceremony by his English partisans. Meanwhile the events of the eventful year 1688 had been ripening fast to their destined issue. The end of April had witnessed the second promulgation of the Declaration of Indulgence, and the ferment occasioned by that new a.s.sertion of the dispensing power. In July, in almost exact coincidence of time with the Queen"s accouchement, came the memorable trial of the Seven Bishops, which gave the first demonstration of the full force of that popular animosity which James"s rule had provoked. Some months before,[1] however, Edward Russell, nephew of the Earl of Bedford and cousin of Algernon Sidney"s fellow-victim, had sought the Hague with proposals to William to make an armed descent upon England, as vindication of English liberties and the Protestant religion.[2] William had cautiously required a signed invitation from at least a few representative statesmen before committing himself to such an enterprise, and on the day of the acquittal of the Seven Bishops a paper, signed in cipher by Lords Shrewsbury, Devonshire, Danby, and Lumley, by Compton, Bishop of Northampton, by Edward Russell, and by Henry Sidney, brother of Algernon, was conveyed by Admiral Herbert to the Hague. William was now furnished with the required security for English a.s.sistance in the projected undertaking, but the task before him was still one of extreme difficulty. He had to allay the natural disquietudes of the Catholic supporters of his continental policy without alarming his Protestant friends in England; to win over the States-General, not by any means universally favourable either to his designs against James or to his att.i.tude towards Louis (Amsterdam, for instance, had sided with the former monarch in his dispute with William about the return of the English regiments); and, above all, he had to make his naval and military preparations for a descent upon England without exciting suspicions, or provoking an antic.i.p.atory attack. That he managed matters with much address is evident from the result, but it is no less clear that luck was on his side. A quarrel of the French king with the Pope, on a question of diplomatic extra-territorial rights in the papal city, and his arrogant interference in the election of the Elector of Cologne, had arrayed against Louis the spiritual and temporal forces of Catholicism, represented respectively by the Papacy and the Empire; his ill-timed persecutions of Protestants, and certain prohibitive measures adopted by him against Dutch trade, had the effect of alienating his partisans in the States-General. In the meanwhile the combined blindness and obstinacy of James permitted William to prosecute his military preparations unmolested, if not unsuspected. These preparations were very extensive and conspicuous, and seem to have had their commencement at an earlier date than is consistent with Burnet"s theory referred to in the note on a previous page. It was not, however, till the summer was beginning to give place to autumn that they began to excite any very distinct suspicions as to their object. The Cologne quarrel formed a plausible excuse enough for them; for if Louis, as events seemed to threaten, were to occupy the Rhine provinces with an army, it would be obviously necessary for Holland to stand on guard. By the middle of August the French king had become uneasy, and despatched a special envoy in the person of M. Bonrepos to awaken James to a sense of his danger. He had authority, according to Burnet (whom, however, Macaulay, who mostly follows him, on this point contradicts[3]), to offer James not only naval but military a.s.sistance to repel the invasion with which he believed him to be threatened. Bonrepos was directed by his master to promise the King of England that ten or fifteen thousand (others, according to Ralph, say thirty thousand) men should be landed at Portsmouth if required, and asked that that place should be put into his hands to keep the communication between the two kingdoms.
Sunderland, acting perhaps _bona fide_, but more probably not, most earnestly counselled James to reject the offer, and it was rejected accordingly, the King"s characteristic imbecility of judgment being never more characteristically shown than in his unwillingness to offend the patriotic prejudices of his subjects by accepting an offer which, had he been aware of their true feelings towards him, he would have recognised as his last chance of saving his crown and kingdom. At this juncture Ronquillo, the Spanish amba.s.sador, went out of his way to a.s.sure James of what he probably knew to be false, and certainly had no reason to believe true--namely, that no descent upon England was in contemplation on the part of William. On an early day in September, however, Albeville was despatched to the Hague with instructions to present a memorandum of complaint on the subject of the Dutch preparations; and the day following d"Avaux delivered, on the part of Louis, a threatening note to the States, in which he warned them to desist from their designs upon a monarch to whom he was bound by "such ties of friendship and alliance" as would oblige him, if James were attacked, to come to his a.s.sistance. That Louis"s motive in taking this step was to commit his brother of England to the alliance which he pretended to exist it is almost impossible to doubt; but James, more and more bent upon repudiating the a.s.sistance of France the more necessary it became to him, did his utmost to a.s.sure the States that there was nothing in the nature of an alliance between himself and Louis. William, however, and his partisans in the States-General, asked nothing better than this excuse for continuing their preparations, and the Dutch armament was actively pushed forward. In October the final alienation of the Dutch friends of France was brought about by Louis"s despatching an army under the Dauphin to besiege Philipsburg, and simultaneously issuing manifestos against the Emperor and the Pope. Avignon had been seized by him the day before the siege of Philipsburg was opened; and the attack on the latter place was followed by the rapid seizure of most of the important towns of the Palatinate.
On the 10th of October, matters now being ripe for such a step, William, in conjunction with some of his English advisers, put forth his famous declaration. Starting with a preamble to the effect that the observance of laws is necessary to the happiness of states, the instrument proceeds to enumerate fifteen particulars in which the laws of England had been set at naught. The most important of these were--(1) the exercise of the dispensing power; (2) the corruption, coercion, and packing of the judicial bench; (3) the violation of the test laws by the appointment of papists to offices (particularly judicial and military offices, and the administration of Ireland), and generally the arbitrary and illegal measures resorted to by James for the propagation of the Catholic religion; (4) the establishment and action of the Court of High Commission; (5) the infringement of some munic.i.p.al charters, and the procuring of the surrender of others; (6) interference with elections by turning out of all employment such as refused to vote as they were required; and (7) the grave suspicion which had arisen that the Prince of Wales was not born of the Queen, which as yet nothing had been done to remove. Having set forth these grievances, the Prince"s manifesto went on to recite the close interest which he and his consort had in this matter as next in succession to the crown, and the earnest solicitations which had been made to him by many lords spiritual and temporal, and other English subjects of all ranks, to interpose, and concluded by affirming in a very distinct and solemn manner that the sole object of the expedition then preparing was to obtain the a.s.sembling of a free and lawful Parliament, to which the Prince pledged himself to refer all questions concerning the due execution of the laws, and the maintenance of the Protestant religion, and the conclusion of an agreement between the Church of England and the Dissenters, as also the inquiry into the birth of the "pretended Prince of Wales"; and that this object being attained, the Prince would, as soon as the state of the nation should permit of it, send home his foreign forces.
About a week after, on the 16th of October, all things being now in readiness, the Prince took solemn leave of the States-General, thanked them for their past kindness to him, called them to witness that the motives of his enterprise were solely those set forth in his declaration, namely, the vindication of the liberties of England, and the defence of the Protestant religion, and commended his wife to their care. The scene was an affecting one, and many among the a.s.sembly were melted to tears; only the Prince himself, says Burnet, "continued firm in his usual gravity and phlegm." Two days later the States came to a formal resolution to a.s.sist the Prince of Orange with ships and forces on his expedition to England, having heard his explanations thereof and found them satisfactory; and authorised their ministers at the various European Courts to make use of this resolution in whatever way they might find most convenient.
On the 19th William and his armament set sail from Helvoetsluys, but was met on the following day by a violent storm which forced him to put back on the 21st.[4] On the 1st of November the fleet put to sea a second time, and for the first twelve hours held its course towards the north-west. It was calculated that thus the scouting vessels sent out by Dartmouth would carry back word that the landing might be expected to take place on the Yorkshire coast; and, this ruse successfully effected, the fleet tacked and sailed southward for the Channel. William was naturally most desirous to avoid a conflict with the English fleet, and the heavy weather which prevented Dartmouth from leaving the Thames enabled him to attain his object. His fleet pa.s.sed the Straits of Dover at midday of the 3d of November, and made for Torbay, where it had been determined to land. In the haze, however, of the morning of the 5th of November the pilot overshot the mark, and took the fleet some miles to the west. Its situation became critical. Plymouth was the next port, and of Lord Bath, who there commanded the King"s forces, William was by no means sure. From the east the royal fleet under Dartmouth was believed to be approaching. Russell, who had told Burnet that "all was over," and that he might "go to prayers," was just upon taking boat for the Prince"s ship when the "Protestant wind," as the long prayed-for easterly gale had hitherto been called, having now by force of circ.u.mstances become a breeze of a distinctly Catholic tendency, was, as all good Protestants of that day believed, providentially lulled. A wind of the right direction and denomination sprang up shortly after, and in four hours" time, by noon of the 5th of November, the Prince"s fleet was wafted safely into Torbay.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In April or May. Macaulay (after Burnet) says May; and the point is of some importance, because if, as Ralph maintains and proves by reference to the date of the Elector of Brandenburg"s death (an event referred to by Burnet as still prospective at the date of the conference with Russell), this interview really took place in April, it does prove, as Ralph says, that "measures were forming in England against the King and embraced in Holland before the second Declaration of Indulgence was published, or the Order in Council which was founded thereon, or the Prosecution of the Bishops was thought of; which his lordship (Burnet) holds of such weight for the justification of those measures." Ralph i.
998.
[2] One of Russell"s arguments for immediate action was that James"s soldiers, "though _bad Englishmen_ and _worse Christians_, were as yet such _good Protestants_ that neither were they attached to His Majesty, nor could His Majesty depend upon them."--Burnet _ap._ Ralph, _Hist._ i.
997.
[3] It is difficult to see why. Sunderland, in his _Apology_, distinctly says, "I opposed to death the acceptance of them (the ships) as well as any a.s.sistance of men, and I can most truly say that I was the princ.i.p.al means of hindering both." Sunderland, no doubt, was not the most veracious of men; but one does not see his precise motive for lying on this matter.
[4] To make some capital out of the mischance the Haarlem and Amsterdam Gazettes were ordered (Ralph declares) "to set forth a lamentable relation of the losses occasioned by it," losses which, it seems, included "nine men of war, a thousand horses, and Dr. Burnet."
CHAPTER IV
1688
Advance to Exeter--Measures of James--Council of the Lords-- Their proposals--The King goes to Salisbury--Defection of Churchill--James returns to London--Negotiation--Attempted flight of James--His arrest--Advance of William--Entry of Dutch troops into London--Actual flight of James.
The spot was in one respect well, in another ill chosen for a descent.
Nowhere, indeed, was James"s tyranny more detested than in that quarter of England in which William now found himself, but nowhere also was it more feared. It was the country of the men who had risen for Monmouth and fought at Sedgemoor, but it was the country too of the men who had trembled before Jeffreys, and whose blood had given its name to his terrible a.s.size. The reception which William met with was in fact determined by a balance of these considerations. He was welcomed with abundance of popular sympathy, but with little overt popular support.
The gentry and peasantry rejoiced at the sight of his standard, but were slow in gathering to it. His march to Exeter was something like a triumph, but it seemed at first, and indeed for some days after he had fixed his quarters there, that he was to get nothing from the people but their good wishes. That this delay in supporting him gave much disappointment and even some anxiety to William is certain. He was too politic to make any public manifestation of feelings, the disclosure of which might only have served to aggravate their cause; but in private he complained indignantly of the slackness of his promised adherents, and even talked--though here we may permit ourselves to doubt his seriousness--of abandoning his enterprise and returning to Holland. At the end of a week, however, important partisans of his cause began to make their appearance. Lord Colchester, a friend of Monmouth"s, was the first to join him; Edward Russell, a son of the Earl of Bedford, followed; Lord Abingdon, a recruit from the other side of politics, was the next to give his adhesion to William; and almost at the same moment the cause of James sustained the most significant repudiation it had yet undergone in the desertion of Lord Cornbury, the eldest son of Lord Clarendon, who, after an unsuccessful attempt to bring over with him the three regiments of which he was the commander, deserted them with a few followers and made his way to William"s quarters.
In London, ever since the news of the Prince"s landing, considerable agitation had prevailed, and some actual rioting taken place. But the royal authority was still upheld, and it was evident that the action of the capital, reversing the order of revolutionary proceedings to which France has now accustomed us, would await the course of events in the provinces. As for the King, he was, characteristically enough, as much rea.s.sured by a week"s respite from bad news as he had been disturbed by the tidings of his nephew"s landing; but the intelligence of Cornbury"s defection threw him into a state of genuine alarm. Having convoked and addressed the princ.i.p.al officers then in London, from whom he received the most earnest professions of loyalty, he prepared to set out to meet the invader at Salisbury, when he was waited upon by a deputation of the Lords, praying him to call a Parliament and to open a negotiation with the Prince of Orange. James, however, to whom no measure ever presented itself as advisable at the proper moment for adopting it, rejected their advice. His reason was an excellent one--for any king in a totally different position from his. He said, and with much truth, that no Parliament could be freely chosen for a country with an invading army encamped on its soil; but the question which a clearer-sighted sovereign would have asked himself was not whether the parliamentary elector would be a free agent, but whether he himself was. It was eminently probable that the convocation of a Parliament would not save his throne, but it was quite certain that nothing else would. Nor had James the excuse of pride for rejecting the Peers" advice; he was to show in a very short time that no such account of his conduct could be sustained. Some monarchs might have preferred to lose a crown rather than be forced into political concession under coercion of an invading army. James was quite willing to pay that or any other price to save his crown, only he was impenetrable to the proof that it was necessary at that moment. He set out for his destined headquarters, and reached them on the 19th of November; but by the time he established himself at Salisbury the real royal court had collected itself at Exeter. William was haranguing the "friends and fellow Protestants" who had gathered to his banner, and continually receiving fresh adhesions, among which that of Lord Bath, the commander of the royal forces at Plymouth, was the most important.