some leading Whigs; and Stillingfleet, | Barillon waited on the Treasurer, and, who was renowned as a consummate with much circumlocution, and many master of all the weapons of contro- expressions of friendly concern, broke versy, had given still deeper offence by the unpleasant truth. "Do you mean,” publishing an answer to the papers said Rochester, bewildered by the inwhich had been found in the strong volved and ceremonious phrases in box of Charles the Second. Rochester which the intimation was made, "that, took the two royal chaplains who hap- if I do not turn Catholic, the consepened to be in waiting. One of them quence will be that I shall lose my was Simon Patrick, whose commen- place?" "I say nothing about consetaries on the Bible still form a part of quences," answered the wary diplomatheological libraries: the other was tist. "I only come as a friend to Jane, a vehement Tory, who had as- express a hope that you will take care sisted in drawing up that decree by to keep your place." "But surely," which the University of Oxford had said Rochester, "the plain meaning of solemnly adopted the worst follies of all this is that I must turn Catholic or Filmer. The conference took place at go out." He put many questions for Whitehall on the thirtieth of Novem- the purpose of ascertaining whether ber. Rochester, who did not wish it to the communication was made by be known that he had even consented authority, but could extort only vague to hear the arguments of Popish priests, and mysterious replies. At last, stipulated for secrecy. No auditor was affecting a confidence which he was suffered to be present except the King, far from feeling, he declared that The subject discussed was the real Barillon must have been imposed presence. The Roman Catholic divines upon by idle or malicious reports. took on themselves the burden of the tell you," he said, “that the King will proof. Patrick and Jane said little; not dismiss me, and I will not resign. nor was it necessary that they should I know him: he knows me; and I fear say much; for the Earl himself under- nobody." The Frenchman answered took to defend the doctrine of his that he was charmed, that he was Church, and, as was his habit, soon ravished to hear it, and that his only warmed with conflict, lost his temper, motive for interfering was a sincere and asked with great vehemence whe- anxiety for the prosperity and dignity ther it was expected that he should of his excellent friend the Treasurer. change his religion on such frivolous And thus the two statesmen parted, grounds. Then he remembered how each flattering himself that he had much he was risking, began again to duped the other.* dissemble, complimented the disputants on their skill and learning, and asked time to consider what had been said.* Slow as James was, he could not but see that this was mere trifling. He told Barillon that Rochester's language was not that of a man honest-in at that mysterious door which led to ly desirous of arriving at the truth. Still the King did not like to propose directly to his brother in law the simple choice, apostasy or dismissal: but, three days after the conference, *Barillon, Dec. 1686; Burnet, i. 684.; Life of James the Second, ii. 100.; Dodd's Church History. I have tried to frame a fair narrative out of these conflicting materials. It seems clear to me, from Rochester's own papers, that he was on this occasion by no means so stubborn as he has been represented by Burnet and by the biographer of James. "I Meanwhile, in spite of all injunetions of secrecy, the news that the Lord Treasurer had consented to be instructed in the doctrines of Popery had spread fast through London. Patrick and Jane had been seen going Chiffinch's apartments. Some Roman Catholics about the court had, indiscreetly or artfully, told all, and more than all, that they knew. The Tory churchmen waited anxiously for fuller information. They were mortified to think that their leader should even have pretended to waver in his opinion; but they could not believe that he would stoop to be a renegade. The unfor * From Rochester's Minutes, dated Dec. 3. 1686. 'Oh, you must needs," exclaimed the King with an oath. For a single word of honest and manly sound, escaping in the midst of all this abject supplication, was sufficient to move his anger. "I hope, sir," said poor Rochester, "that I do not offend you. Surely Your Majesty could not think well of me if I did not say so." The King recollected himself, protested that he was not offended, and advised the Treasurer to disregard idle rumours, and to confer again with Jane and Giffard.* Rochester. tunate minister, tortured at once by siderations." his fierce passions and his low desires, annoyed by the censures of the public, annoyed by the hints which he had received from Barillon, afraid of losing character, afraid of losing office, repaired to the royal closet. He was determined to keep his place, if it could be kept by any villany but one. He would pretend to be shaken in his religious opinions, and to be half a convert: he would promise to give strenuous support to that policy which he had hitherto opposed: but, if he were driven to extremity, he would After this conversation, a fortnight refuse to change his religion. He elapsed before the decisive Dismis. began, therefore, by telling the King blow fell. That fortnight sion of that the business in which His Majesty Rochester passed in intrigutook so much interest was not sleeping, ing and imploring. He attempted to that Jane and Giffard were engaged interest in his favour those Roman in consulting books on the points in Catholics who had the greatest infludispute between the Churches, and ence at court. He could not, he said, that, when these researches were over, renounce his own religion: but, with it would be desirable to have another that single reservation, he would do conference. Then he complained bit- all that they could desire. Indeed, if terly that all the town was apprised he might only keep his place, they of what ought to have been carefully should find that he could be more concealed, and that some persons, who, useful to them as a Protestant than from their station, might be supposed as one of their own communion. to be well informed, reported strange wife, who was on a sick bed, had things as to the royal intentions. "It already, it was said, solicited the is whispered," he said, "that, if I do honour of a visit from the much not do as Your Majesty would have injured Queen, and had attempted to me, I shall not be suffered to continue work on Her Majesty's feelings of in my present station." The King compassion. But the Hydes abased said, with some general expressions of themselves in vain. Petre regarded kindness, that it was difficult to pre- them with peculiar malevolence, and vent people from talking, and that was bent on their ruin.§ On the loose reports were not to be regarded. evening of the seventeenth of DecemThese vague phrases were not likely to ber the Earl was called into the royal quiet the perturbed mind of the minis- closet. James was unusually discomter. His agitation became violent, posed, and even shed tears. The and he began to plead for his place as occasion, indeed, could not but call up if he had been pleading for his life. some recollections which might well "Your Majesty sees that I do all in soften a hard heart. He expressed my power to obey you. Indeed I will his regret that his duty made it do all that I can to obey you in impossible for him to indulge his everything. I will serve you in your private partialities. It was absolutely own way. Nay," he cried, in an agony necessary, he said, that those who had of baseness, "I will do what I can to the chief direction of his affairs should believe as you would have me. But partake his opinions and feelings. He do not let me be told, while I am trying to bring my mind to this, that, if I find it impossible to comply, I must lose all. For I must needs tell Your Majesty that there are other con 20 His *From Rochester's Minutes, Dec. 4. 1686. 30 May 25, § Bonrepaux, June 4 1687. don. as owned that he had very great personal | profession. Yet he was extolled by obligations to Rochester, and that no the great body of Churchmen as if he fault could be found with the way in had been the bravest and purest of which the financial business had lately martyrs. The Old and New Testabeen done: but the office of Lord Trea- ments, the Martyrologies of Eusebius surer was of such high importance that, and of Fox, were ransacked to find in general, it ought not to be entrusted parallels for his heroic piety. He was to a single person, and could not safely Daniel in the den of lions, Shadrach be entrusted by a Roman Catholic King in the fiery furnace, Peter in the dunto a person zealous for the Church of geon of Herod, Paul at the bar of Nero, England. "Think better of it, my Lord," | Ignatius in the amphitheatre, Latimer he continued. "Read again the papers at the stake. Among the many facts from my brother's box. I will give which prove that the standard of hoyou a little more time for considera-nour and virtue among the public men tion, if you desire it." Rochester saw of that age was low, the admiration that all was over, and that the wisest excited by Rochester's constancy is, course left to him was to make his perhaps, the most decisive. retreat with as much money and as In his fall he dragged down Clarenmuch credit as possible. He succeeded don. On the seventh of Ja- Dismission in both objects. He obtained a pension nuary 1687, the Gazette an- of Clarenof four thousand pounds a year for nounced to the people of two lives on the post office. He had London that the Treasury was put into made great sums out of the estates of commission. On the eighth arrived at traitors, and carried with him in Dublin a despatch formally signifying particular Grey's bond for forty thou- that in a month Tyrconnel would sand pounds, and a grant of all the sume the government of Ire- Tyrconnel estate which the crown had in Grey's land. It was not without Lord Deextensive property.* No person had great difficulty that this man ever quitted office on terms so advan- had surmounted the numerous impeditageous. To the applause of the sin- ments which stood in the way of his cere friends of the Established Church ambition. It was well known that the Rochester had, indeed, very slender extermination of the English colony claims. To save his place he had in Ireland was the object on which his sate in that tribunal which had been heart was set. He had, therefore, to illegally created for the purpose of overcome some scruples in the royal persecuting her. To save his place he mind. He had to surmount the oppohad given a dishonest vote for degrad-sition, not merely of all the Protestant ing one of her most eminent ministers, members of the government, not merely had affected to doubt her orthodoxy, had listened with the outward show of docility to teachers who called her schismatical and heretical, and had offered to cooperate strenuously with her deadliest enemies in their designs against her. The highest praise to which he was entitled was this, that he had shrunk from the exceeding wickedness and baseness of publicly abjuring, for lucre, the religion in says, "Never a Catholic or other English will which he had been brought up, which to make a step for your restauration, but he believed to be true, and of which leave you as you were hitherto, and leave he had long made an ostentatious your enemies over your heads: nor is there any Englishman, Catholic or other, of what *Rochester's Minutes, Dec. 19. 1686; Baril-quality or degree soever alive, that will stick puty. of the moderate and respectable heads of the Roman Catholic body, but even of several members of the Jesuitical cabal.* Sunderland shrank from the thought of an Irish revolution, religious, political, and social. To the Queen Tyrconnel was personally an object of aversion. Powis was therefore sug * Bishop Malony in a letter to Bishop Tyrrel ever think or make a step, nor suffer the King to sacrifice all Ireland for to save the least interest of his own in England, and would as willingly see all Ireland over inhabited by English of whatsoever religion as by the Irish." gested as the man best qualified for the viceroyalty. He was of illustrious birth: he was a sincere Roman Catholic; and yet he was generally allowed by candid Protestants to be an honest man and a good Englishman. All opposition, however, yielded to TyrConnel's energy and cunning. He fawned, bullied, and bribed indefatigably. Petre's help was secured by flattery. Sunderland was plied at once with promises and menaces. An immense price was offered for his support, no less than an annuity of five thousand pounds a year from Ireland, redeemable by payment of fifty thousand pounds down. If this proposal were rejected, Tyrconnel threatened to let the King know that the Lord President had, at the Friday dinners, described His Majesty as a fool who must be governed either by a woman or by a priest. Sunderland, pale and trembling, offered to procure for Tyrconnel supreme military command, enormous appointments, anything but the viceroyalty: but all compromise was rejected; and it was necessary to yield. Mary of Modena herself was not free from suspicion of corruption. There was in London a renowned chain of pearls which was valued at ten thousand pounds. It had belonged to Prince Rupert; and by him it had been left to Margaret Hughes, a courtesan who, towards the close of his life, had exercised a boundless empire over him. Tyrconnel loudly boasted that with this chain he had purchased the support of the Queen. There were those, however, who suspected that this story was one of Dick Talbot's truths, and that it had no more foundation than the calumnies which, twenty-six years before, he had invented to blacken the fame of Anne Hyde. To the Roman Catholic courtiers generally he spoke of the uncertain tenure by which they held offices, honours, and emoluments. The King might die to-morrow, and might leave them at the merey of a hostile government and a hostile rabble. But, if the old faith could be made dominant in Ireland, if the Protestant interest in that country could be destroyed, there would still be, in the VOL. I worst event, an asylum at hand to which they might retreat, and where they might either negotiate or defend themselves with advantage. A Popish priest was hired with the promise of the mitre of Waterford to preach at Saint James's against the Act of Settlement; and his sermon, though heard with deep disgust by the English part of the auditory, was not without its effect. The struggle which patriotism had for a time maintained against bigotry in the royal mind was at an end. There is work to be done in Ireland," said James, "which no Englishman will do."* All obstacles were at length removed; and in February 1687, Tyrconnel began to rule his native country with the power and appointments of Lord Lieutenant, but with the humbler title of Lord Deputy. lish colo Ireland. His arrival spread dismay through the whole English population. Dismay of Clarendon was accompanied, the Engor speedily followed, across nists in Saint George's Channel, by a large proportion of the most respectable inhabitants of Dublin, gentlemen, tradesmen, and artificers. It was said that fifteen hundred families emigrated in a few days. The panic was not unreasonable. The work of putting the colonists down under the feet of the natives went rapidly on. In a short time almost every Privy Councillor, Judge, Sheriff, Mayor, Alderman, and Justice of the Peace was a Celt and a Roman Catholic. It seemed that things would soon be ripe for a general election, and that a House of Commons bent on abrogating the Act of Settlement would easily be assembled.† Those who had lately been the lords of the island now cried out, in the bitterness of their souls, that they had become a prey and a laughingstock to their own serfs and menials; that houses were burnt and cattle stolen with impunity; that the new soldiers roamed the country, pillaging, insulting, * The best account of these transactions is in the Sheridan MS. Sheridan MS.; Oldmixon's Memoirs of Ireland; King's State of the Protestants of Ireland, particularly chapter iii.; Apology for the Protestants of Ireland, 1689. D D Effect of the Hydes. ravishing, maiming, tossing one Pro- The dismission of the two brothers testant in a blanket, tying up another is a great epoch in the reign by the hair and scourging him; that of James. From that time it the fall of to appeal to the law was vain; that was clear that what he really Irish Judges, Sheriffs, juries, and witnesses were all in a league to save Irish criminals; and that, even without an Act of Parliament, the whole soil would soon change hands, for that, in every action of ejectment tried under the administration of Tyrconnel, judgment had been given for the native against the Englishman.* wanted was not liberty of conscience for the members of his own church, but liberty to persecute the members of other churches. Pretending to abhor tests, he had himself imposed a test. He thought it hard, he thought it monstrous, that able and loyal men should be excluded from the public service solely for being Roman CathoWhile Clarendon was at Dublin the lics. Yet he had himself turned out Privy Seal had been in the hands of Com- of office a Treasurer, whom he admit missioners. His friends hoped that it ted to be both loyal and able, solely would, on his return to London, be again for being a Protestant. The cry was delivered to him. But the King and that a general proscription was at hand, the Jesuitical cabal had determined that and that every public functionary must the disgrace of the Hydes should be make up his mind to lose his soul or to complete. Lord Arundell of Wardour, lose his place.* Who indeed could a Roman Catholic, obtained the Privy hope to stand where the Hydes had Seal. Bellasyse, a Roman Catholic, fallen? They were the brothers in was made First Lord of the Treasury; law of the King, the uncles and na and Dover, another Roman Catholic, tural guardians of his children, his had a seat at the board. The appoint- friends from early youth, his steady ment of a ruined gambler to such a adherents in adversity and peril, his trust would alone have sufficed to dis-obsequious servants since he had been gust the public. The dissolute Ether- on the throne. Their sole crime was ege, who then resided at Ratisbon as their religion; and for this crime they English envoy, could not refrain from had been discarded. In great pertur expressing, with a sneer, his hope that bation men began to look round for his old boon companion, Dover, would help; and soon all eyes were fixed on keep the King's money better than his one whom a rare concurrence both of own. In order that the finances might personal qualities and of fortuitous not be ruined by incapable and inex-circumstances pointed out as the deperienced Papists, the obsequious. liverer. diligent and silent Godolphin was named a Commissioner of the Treasury. but continued to be Chamberlain to the Queen.* *Secret Consults of the Romish Party in Ireland, 1690. † London Gazette, Jan. 6. and March 14. 1689; Evelyn's Diary, March 10. Etherege's letter to Dover is in the British Museum. * "Pare che gli animi sono inaspriti della voce che corre per il popolo, d'esser cacciato il detto ministro per non essere Cattolico, percio tirarsi al esterminio de' Protestanti."-Adda, 1687. Dec. 31. Jan. 10. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. LONDON PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. NEW-STREET SQUARE |