suffer the justice which we refuse to do." He concluded by moving that, before any supply was granted, the House would take into consideration petitions against returns, and that no member whose right to sit was disputed should be allowed to vote. The Re Tenue voted. Proceed wished to see the Protestant dissenters tolerated, and the Roman Catholics alone persecuted. But the Whigs were a small and a disheartened minority. They therefore kept themselves as much as possible out of sight, dropped their party name, abstained from obtruding their peculiar opinions on a hostile audience, and steadily supported every proposition tending to disturb the harmony which as yet subsisted between the Parliament and the Court. Not a cheer was heard. Not a member ventured to second the motion. Indeed, Seymour had said much that no other man could have said with impunity. The proposition fell to the ground, and was not even entered on When the proceedings of the Comthe journals. But a mighty effect had mittee of Religion were known at been produced. Barillon informed his Whitehall, the King's anger was great. master that many who had not dared Nor can we justly blame him for to applaud that remarkable speech had resenting the conduct of the Tories. cordially approved of it, that it was If they were disposed to require the the universal subject of conversation rigorous execution of the penal code, throughout London, and that the im- they_clearly ought to have supported pression made on the public mind the Exclusion Bill. For to place a seemed likely to be durable.* Papist on the throne, and then to insist The Commons went into committee on his persecuting to the death the without delay, and voted to the teachers of that faith in which alone, King, for life, the whole reve- on his principles, salvation could be nue enjoyed by his brother.† found, was monstrous. In mitigating The zealous churchmen who formed by a lenient administration the severity the majority of the House of the bloody laws of Elizabeth, the ings of the seem to have been of opinion King violated no constitutional princiCommon that the promptitude with ple. He only exerted a power which which they had met the wish has always belonged to the crown. ligion. of James, touching the revenue, Nay, he only did what was afterwards entitled them to expect some concession done by a succession of sovereigns on his part. They said that much had zealous for Protestantism, by William, been done to gratify him, and that by Anne, and by the princes of the they must now do something to gratify House of Brunswick. Had he suffered the nation. The House, therefore, re- Roman Catholic priests, whose lives he solved itself into a Grand Committee could save without infringing any law, of Religion, in order to consider the to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, best means of providing for the security for discharging what he considered as of the ecclesiastical establishment. In their first duty, he would have drawn that Committee two resolutions were on himself the hatred and contempt unanimously adopted. The first ex- even of those to whose prejudices he pressed fervent attachment to the had made so shameful a concession; Church of England. The second called and, had he contented himself with on the King to put in execution the granting to the members of his own penal laws against all persons who were Church a practical toleration by a large not members of that Church.t exercise of his unquestioned prerogative of mercy, posterity would have unanimously applauded him. concern ing re The Whigs would doubtless have 1685; Barillon, June 4. 1685. The silence of the journals perplexed Mr. Fox: but it is explained by the circumstance that Sey mour's motion was not seconded. Journals, May 22. Stat. Jac. II. i. 1. The Commons probably felt on reflection that they had acted absurdly. They were also disturbed by learning that the King, to whom they looked up with superstitious reverence, was greatly provoked. They made haste, therefore, to atone for their offence. In the House, | His juries had never failed to find they unanimously reversed the decision verdicts of Guilty; and, on a day of which, in the Committee, they had judicial butchery, carts, loaded with the unanimously adopted, and passed a re- legs and arms of quartered Whigs, were, solution importing that they relied with to the great discomposure of his lady, entire confidence on His Majesty's driven to his fine house in Basinghall gracious promise to protect that religion Street for orders. His services had which was dearer to them than life been rewarded with the honour of itself.* knighthood, with an Alderman's gown, and with the office of Commissioner of the Customs. He had been brought into Parliament for Banbury, and, though a new member, was the person on whom the Lord Treasurer chiefly relied for the conduct of financial business in the Lower House.* Additional taxes voted. Three days later the King informed the House that his brother had left some debts, and that the stores of the navy and ordnance were nearly exhausted. It was promptly resolved that new taxes should be imSir Dudley posed. The person on whom North. devolved the task of devising ways and means was Sir Dudley North, younger brother of the Lord Keeper. Dudley North was one of the ablest men of his time. He had early in life been sent to the Levant, and had there been long engaged in mercantile pursuits. Most men would, in such a situation, have allowed their faculties to rust. For at Smyrna and Constantinople there were few books and few intelligent companions. But the young factor had one of those vigorous understandings which are independent of external aids. In his solitude he meditated deeply on the philosophy of trade, and thought out by degrees a complete and admirable theory, substantially the same with that which, a century later, was expounded by Adam Smith. After an exile of many years, Dudley North returned to England with a large fortune, and commenced business as a Turkey merchant in the City of London. His profound knowledge, both speculative and practical, of commercial matters, and the perspicuity and liveliness with which he explained his views, speedily introduced him to the notice of statesmen. The government found in him at once an enlightened adviser and an unscrupulous slave. For with his rare mental endowments were joined lax principles and an unfeeling heart. When the Tory reaction was in full progress, he had consented to be made Sheriff for the express purpose of assisting the vengeance of the Court. *Commons' Journals, May 27. 1685. Though the Commons were unanimous in their resolution to grant a further supply to the Crown, they were by no means agreed as to the sources from which that supply should be drawn. It was speedily determined that part of the sum which was required should be raised by laying an additional impost, for a term of eight years, on wine and vinegar: but something more than this was needed. Several absurd schemes were suggested. Many country gentlemen were disposed to put a heavy tax on all new buildings in the capital. Such a tax, it was hoped, would check the growth of a city which had long been regarded with jealousy and aversion by the rural aristocracy. Dudley North's plan was that additional duties should be imposed, for a term of eight years, on sugar and tobacco. A great clamour was raised. Colonial merchants, grocers, sugar bakers and tobacconists, petitioned the House and besieged the public offices. The people of Bristol, who were deeply interested in the trade with Virginia and Jamaica, sent up a deputation which was heard at the bar of the Commons. Rochester was for a moment staggered; but North's ready wit and perfect knowledge of trade prevailed, both in the Treasury and in the Parliament, against all opposition. The old members were amazed at seeing a man who had not been a fort night in the House, and whose life had been chiefly passed in foreign countries, *Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North; Life of Lord Guildford, 166.; Mr. M'Culloch's Literature of Political Economy. assume with confidence, and discharge of the Upper House. Danby again with ability, all the functions of a Chancellor of the Exchequer.* His plan was adopted; and thus the Crown was in possession of a clear income of about nineteen hundred thousand pounds, derived from England alone. Such an income was then more than sufficient for the support of the government in time of peace. Proceed The Lords had, in the meantime, discussed several important ings of the questions. The Tory party Lords. had always been strong among the peers. It included the whole bench of Bishops, and had been reinforced, during the four years which had elapsed since the last dissolution, by several fresh creations. Of the new nobles, the most conspicuous were the Lord Treasurer Rochester, the Lord Keeper Guildford, the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, the Lord Godolphin, and the Lord Churchill, who, after his return from Versailles, had been made a baron of England. took his seat among his peers, and became an active and powerful member of the Tory party.* The constitutional question on which the Lords thus, in the short space of six years, pronounced two diametrically opposite decisions, slept during more than a century, and was at length revived by the dissolution which took place during the long trial of Warren Hastings. It was then necessary to determine whether the rule laid down in 1679, or the opposite rule laid down in 1685, was to be accounted the law of the land. The point was long debated in both Houses; and the best legal and parliamentary abilities which an age preeminently fertile both in legal and in parliamentary ability could supply were employed in the discussion. The lawyers were not unequally divided. Thurlow, Kenyon, Scott, and Erskine maintained that the dissolution had put an end to the impeachment. The contrary doctrine was held by Mansfield, Camden, Loughborough, and Grant. But among those statesmen who grounded their arguments, not on precedents and technical analogies, but on deep and broad constitutional principles, there was little difference of opinion. Pitt and Grenville, as well as Burke and Fox, held that the impeachment was still pending. Both Houses by great majorities set aside the decision of 1685, and pronounced the decision of 1679 to be in conformity with the law of Parliament. Of the national crimes which had The peers early took into consideration the case of four members of their body who had been impeached in the late reign, but had never been brought to trial, and had, after a long confinement, been admitted to bail by the Court of King's Bench. Three of the noblemen who were thus under recognisances were Roman Catholics. The fourth was a Protestant of great note and influence, the Earl of Danby. Since he had fallen from power and had been accused of treason by the Commons, four Parliaments had been dissolved; but he had been neither been committed during the Bill for reacquitted nor condemned. In 1679 panic excited by the fictions of versing the the Lords had considered, with reference Oates, the most signal had been of Staf to his situation, the question whether the judicial murder of Staf- ford. an impeachment was or was not ter- ford. The sentence of that unhappy minated by a dissolution. They had nobleman was now regarded by all resolved, after long debate and full impartial persons as unjust. The prinexamination of precedents, that the cipal witness for the prosecution had impeachment was still pending. That been convicted of a series of foul resolution they now rescinded. A few perjuries. It was the duty of the Whig nobles protested against this step, but to little purpose. The Commons silently acquiesced in the decision *Life of Dudley North, 176.; Lonsdale's Memoirs; Van Citters, June 12. 1685. + Commons' Journals, March 1. 1689. attainder legislature, in such circumstances, to do justice to the memory of a guiltless sufferer, and to efface an unmerited stain from a name long illustrious in *Lords' Journals, March 18, 19. 1679, May 22. 1685, tice, and accounted themselves happy if they were permitted to live unmolested in obscurity and silence. At length, in the reign of King George the Fourth, more than a hundred and forty years after the day on which the blood of Stafford was shed on Tower Hill, the tardy expiation was accomplished. A law annulling the attainder and restoring the injured family to its ancient dignities was presented to Parliament by the ministers of the crown, was eagerly welcomed by public men of all parties, and was passed without one dissentient voice.* our annals. A bill for reversing the It is now necessary that I should trace the origin and progress of that rebellion by which the deliberations of the Houses were suddenly inter *Stat. 5 Geo. IV. c. 46. Whig refugees on CHAPTER V. TOWARDS the close of the reign of make life a burden to himself. The Charles the Second, some longer his expatriation the greater does this hallucination become. The lapse of time which cools the ardour of the friends whom he has left behind, inflames his. Every month his impatience to revisit his native land increases; and every month his native land remembers and misses him less. This delusion becomes almost a madness when many exiles who suffer in the same cause herd together in a foreign country. Their chief employment is to talk of what they once were, and of what they may yet be, to goad each other into animosity against the common enemy, to feed each other with extravagant hopes of victory and revenge. Thus they become ripe for enterprises which would at once be pronounced hopeless by any man whose passions had not deprived him of the power of calculating chances. the Whigs who had been deeply tinent. implicated in the plot so fatal to their party, and who knew themselves to be marked out for destruction, had sought an asylum in the Low Countries. These refugees were in general men of fiery temper and weak judgment. They were also under the influence of that peculiar illusion which seems to belong to their situation. A politician driven into banishment by a hostile faction generally sees the society which he has quitted through a false medium. Every object is distorted and discoloured by his regrets, his longings, and his resentments. Every little discontent appears to him to portend a revolution. Every riot is a rebellion. He cannot be convinced that his country does not pine for him as much as he pines for his country. He imagines that all his old associates, who still dwell at their homes and enjoy their estates, are tormented by the same feelings which In this mood were many of the outlaws who had assembled on Their corthe Continent. The corres- respondpondence which they kept up England ents in with England was, for the most part, I defence of their peculiar opinions, and such as tended to excite their feelings had drawn down on himself the severe and to mislead their judgment. Their censure of the most respectable Puritans information concerning the temper of by attempting to palliate the crimes of the public mind was chiefly derived Matthias and John of Leyden. It is from the worst members of the Whig probable that, had he possessed a little party, from men who were plotters and courage, he would have trodden in the libellers by profession, who were pur-footsteps of the wretches whom he sued by the officers of justice, who defended. He was, at this time, conwere forced to skulk in disguise through cealing himself from the officers of back streets, and who sometimes lay justice; for warrants were out against hid for weeks together in cocklofts and cellars. The statesmen who had formerly been the ornaments of the Country Party, the statesmen who afterwards guided the councils of the Convention, would have given advice very different from that which was given by such men as John Wildman and Henry Danvers. him on account of a grossly calumnious paper of which the government had discovered him to be the author.* of the It is easy to imagine what kind of intelligence and counsel men, Characters such as have been described, leading were likely to send to the out- refugees. laws in the Netherlands. Of the general character of those outlaws an estimate may be formed from a few samples. Ayloffe. Wildman had served forty years before in the parliamentary army, but had been more distinguished there as One of the most conspicuous among an agitator than as a soldier, and had them was John Ayloffe, a lawearly quitted the profession of arms yer connected by affinity with for pursuits better suited to his temper. the Hydes, and through the Hydes, His hatred of monarchy had induced with James. Ayloffe had early made him to engage in a long series of con- himself remarkable by offering a whimspiracies, first against the Protector, sical insult to the government. At a and then against the Stuarts. But time when the ascendency of the court with Wildman's fanaticism was joined of Versailles had excited general una tender care for his own safety. He easiness, he had contrived to put a had a wonderful skill in grazing the wooden shoe, the established type, edge of treason. No man understood among the English, of French tyranny, better how to instigate others to des- into the chair of the House of Comperate enterprises by words which, mons. He had subsequently been when repeated to a jury, might seem concerned in the Whig plot; but there innocent, or, at worst, ambiguous. Such is no reason to believe that he was a was his cunning that, though always party to the design of assassinating the plotting, though always known to be royal brothers. He was a man of parts plotting, and though long malignantly and courage; but his moral character watched by a vindictive government, did not stand high. The Puritan he eluded every danger, and died in his bed, after having seen two generations of his accomplices die on the gallows. Danvers was a man of the same class, hotheaded, but fainthearted, constantly urged to the brink of danger by enthusiasm, and constantly stopped on that brink by cowardice. He had considerable influence among a portion of the Baptists, had written largely in Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, book xiv.; Burnet's Own Times, i. 546. 625.; Wade's and Ireton's Narratives, Lansdowne MS. 1152.; West's information in the Appendix to Sprat's True Account. divines whispered that he was a careless Gallio or something worse, and that, whatever zeal he might profess for civil liberty, the Saints would do well to avoid all connection with him.† MS. in Eachard's History, iii. 764.; Grey's * London Gazette, Jan. 4. 168; Ferguson Narrative; Sprat's True Account; Danvers's Treatise on Baptism; Danvers's Innocency and Truth vindicated; Crosby's History of the English Baptists. † Sprat's True Account; Burnet, i. 634.; Wade's Confession, Harl. MS. 6845. Lord Howard of Escrick accused Ayloffe of proposing to assassinate the Duke of York; but Lord Howard was an abject liar; and this |