CHAPTER X. NORTHUMBERLAND strictly obeyed the injunction which had been laid on him, and did not open the door of the royal apartment till it was broad day. The antechamber was filled with courtiers who came to make their morning bow, and with lords who had been summoned to council. The news of James's flight passed in an instant from the galleries to the streets; and the whole capital was in commotion. It was a terrible moment. The king was gone. The prince had not arrived. No regency had been appointed. The great seal, essential to the administration of ordinary justice, had disappeared. It was soon known that Feversham had, on the receipt of the royal order, instantly disbanded his forces. What respect for law or property was likely to be found among soldiers, armed and congregated, emancipated from the restraints of discipline, and destitute of the necessaries of life? other hand, the populace of London had, during some weeks, shown a strong disposition to turbulence and rapine. The urgency of the crisis united for a short time all who had any interest in the peace of society. Rochester had till that day adhered firmly to the royal cause. He now saw that there was only one way of averting general confusion. "Call your On the troop of guards together," he said to Northumberland, "and declare for the Prince of Orange." The advice was promptly followed. The principal officers of the army who were then in London held a meeting at Whitehall, and resolved that they would submit to William's authority, and would, till his pleasure should be known, keep their men together and assist the civil power to preserve order.* The peers repaired to Guildhall, and were received there with all honor by the magistracy of the city. In strictness of law they were no better entitled than any other set of persons to assume the executive administration. But it was necessary to the public safety that there should be a provisional government; and the eyes of men * History of the Desertion; Mulgrave's Account of the Revolution; Eachard's History of the Revolution, naturally turned to the hereditary magnates of the realm. The extremity of the danger drew Sancroft forth from his palace. He took the chair; and, under his presidency, the new Archbishop of York, five bishops, and twenty-two temporal lords, determined to draw up, subscribe, and publish a declaration. By this instrument they declared that they were firmly attached to the religion and constitution of their country, and that they had cherished the hope of seeing grievances redressed and tranquillity restored by the parliament which the king had lately summoned, but that this hope had been extinguished by his flight. They had therefore determined to join with the Prince of Orange, in order that the freedom of the nation might be vindicated, that the rights of the Church might be secured, that a just liberty of conscience might be given to Dissenters, and that the Protestant interest throughout the world might be strengthened. Till his highness should arrive, they were prepared to take on themselves the responsibility of giving such directions as might be necessary for the preservation of order. A deputation was instantly sent to lay this declaration before the prince, and to inform him that he was impatiently expected in London.* The Lords then proceded to deliberate on the course which it was necessary to take for the prevention of tumult. They sent for the two secretaries of state. Middleton refused to submit to what he regarded as a usurped authority; but Preston, astounded by his master's flight, and not knowing what to expect, or whither to turn, obeyed the summons. A message was sent to Skelton, who was lieutenant of the Tower, requesting his attendance at Guildhall. He came, and was told that his services were no longer wanted, and that he must instantly deliver up his keys. He was succeeded by Lord Lucas. At the same time the peers ordered a letter to be written to Dartmouth, enjoining him to refrain from all hostile operations against the Dutch fleet, and to displace all the Popish officers who held commands under him.t The part taken in these proceedings by Sancroft, and by some other persons who had, up to that day, been strictly faithful to the principle of passive obedience, deserves especial noTo usurp the command of the military and naval forces tice. * London Gazette, Dec. 13, 1688. + Clarke's Life of James, ii. 259; Mulgrave's Account of the Revolution; Legge Papers in the Mackintosh Collection. of the state, to remove the officers whom the king had set over his castles and his ships, and to prohibit his admiral from giving battle to his enemies, was surely nothing less than rebellion. Yet several honest and able Tories of the school of Filmer persuaded themselves that they could do all these things without incurring the guilt of resisting their sovereign. The distinction which they took was, at least, ingenious. Government, they said, is the ordinance of God. Hereditary monarchical government is eminently the ordinance of God. While the king commands what is lawful we must obey him actively. When he commands what is unlawful we must obey him passively. In no extremity are we justified in withstanding him by force. But, if he chooses to resign his office, his rights over us are at an end. While he governs us, though he may govern us ill, we are bound to submit; but, if he refuses to govern us at all, we are not bound to remain forever without a government. Anarchy is not the ordinance of God; nor will he impute it to us as a sin that, when a prince, whom, in spite of extreme provocations, we have never ceased to honor and obey, has departed we know not whither, leaving no vicegerent, we take the only course which can prevent the entire dissolution of society. Had our sovereign remained among us, we were ready, little as he deserved our love, to die at his feet. Had he, when he quitted us, appointed a regency to govern us with vicarious authority during his absence, to that regency alone should we have looked for direction. But he has disappeared, having made no provision for the preservation of order or the administration of justice. With him, and with his great seal, has vanished the whole machinery by which a murderer can be punished, by which the right to an estate can be decided, by which the effects of a bankrupt can be distributed. His last act has been to free thousands of armed men from the restraints of military discipline, and to place them in such a situation that they must plunder or starve. Yet a few hours, and every man's hand will be against his neighbor. Life, property, female honor, will be at the mercy of every lawless spirit. We are at this moment actually in that state of nature about which theorists have written so much; and in that state we have been placed, not by our fault, but by the voluntary defection of him who ought to have been our protector. His defection may be justly called voluntary; for neither his life nor his liberty was in danger. His enemies had just consented to treat with him on a basis proposed by himself, and had offered immediately to suspend all hostile. operations, on conditions which he could not deny to be liberal. In such circumstances it is that he has abandoned his trust. We retract notl.ing. We are in nothing inconsistent. We still assert our old doctrines without qualification. We still hold that it is in all cases sinful to resist the magistrate; but we say that there is no longer any magistrate to resist. He who was the magistrate, after long abusing his powers, has at last abdicated them. The abuse did not give us a right to depose him; but the abdication gives us a right to consider how we may best supply his place. It was on these grounds that the prince's party was now swollen by many adherents who had previously stood aloof from it. Never, within the memory of man, had there been so near an approach to entire concord among all intelligent Englishmen as at this conjuncture; and never had concord been more needed. Legitimate authority there was none. All those evil passions which it is the office of government to restrain, and which the best governments restrain but imperfectly, were on a sudden emancipated from control; avarice, licentiousness, revenge, the hatred of sect to sect, the hatred of nation to nation. On such occasions it will ever be found that the human vermin which, neglected by ministers of state and ministers of religion, barbarous in the midst of civilization, heathen in the midst of Christianity, burrows among all physical and all moral pollution, in the cellars and garrets of great cities, will at once rise into a terrible importance. So it was now in London. When the night, the longest night, as it chanced, of the year, approached, forth came from every den of vice, from the bear garden at Hockley, and from the labyrinth of tippling houses and brothels in the Friars, thousands of housebreakers and highwaymen, cutpurses and ringdroppers. With these were mingled thousands of idle apprentices who wished merely for the excitement of a riot. Even men of peaceable and honest habits were impelled by religious animosity to join the lawless part of the population. For the cry of No Popery, a cry which has more than once endangered the existence of London, was the signal for outrage and rapine. First the rabble fell on the Roman Catholic places of worship. The buildings were demolished. Benches, pulpits, confessionals, breviaries were heaped up and set on fire. A great mountain of books and furniture blazed on the site of the convent at Clerkenwell. Another pile was kindled before the . ་ ruins of the Franciscan house in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The chapel in Lyme Street, the chapel in Bucklersbury, were pulled down. The pictures, images, and crucifixes were carried along the streets in triumph, amidst lighted tapers torn from the altars. The procession bristled thick with swords and staves, and on the point of every sword and of every staff was an orange. The king's printing house, whence had issued, during the preceding three years, innumerable tracts in defence of Papal supremacy, image worship, and monastic vows, was, to use a coarse metaphor which then, for the first time, came into use, completely gutted. The vast stock of paper, much of which was still unpolluted by types, furnished an immense bonfire. From monasteries, temples, and public offices, the fury of the multitude turned to private dwellings. Several houses were pillaged and destroyed; but the smallness of the booty disappointed the plunderers; and soon a rumor was spread that the most valuable effects of the Papists had been placed under the care of the foreign ambassadors. To the savage and ignorant populace the law of nations and the risk of bringing on their country the just vengeance of all Europe were as nothing. The houses of the ambassadors were besieged. A great crowd assembled before Barillon's door in St. James's Square. He, however, fared better than might have been expected. For, though the government which he represented was held in abhorrence, his liberal housekeeping and punctual payments had made him personally popular. Moreover he had taken the precaution of asking for a guard of soldiers⚫ and, as several men of rank, who lived near him, had done the same, a considerable force was collected in the square. The rioters, therefore, when they were assured that no arms or priests were concealed under his roof, left him unmolested The Venetian envoy was protected by a detachment of troops. but the mansions occupied by the ministers of the Elector Palatine and of the Grand Duke of Tuscany were destroyed One precious box the Tuscan minister was able to save from the marauders. It contained nine volumes of memoirs, written in the hand of James himself. These volumes reached France in safety, and, after the lapse of more than a century, perished there in the havoc of a revolution far more terrible than that from which they had escaped. But some fragments still remain, and, though grievously mutilated and embedded in grea masses of child'sh fiction, well deserve to be attentively studied |