66

*

rious of villas, was proposed as a con- The Protestants of Ireland were in venient retreat. When the Lords had extreme peril. There was only one come to this conclusion, they requested way to secure their estates and their the Prince to join them. Their opinion lives; and that was to keep His Majesty was then communicated to him by close prisoner. It might not be prudent Halifax. William listened and ap- to shut him up in an English castle. proved. A short message to the King But he might be sent across the sea was drawn up. "Whom," said William, and confined in the fortress of Breda "shall we send with it?" "Ought it till the affairs of the British Islands not," said Halifax, "to be conveyed by were settled. If the Prince were in one of Your Highness's officers ?" possession of such a hostage, Tyrconnel Nay, my Lord," answered the Prince; would probably lay down the sword of "by your favour, it is sent by the ad-state; and the English ascendency vice of your Lordships, and some of you would be restored in Ireland without a ought to carry it." Then, without blow. If, on the other hand, James pausing to give time for remonstrance, should escape to France and make his he appointed Halifax, Shrewsbury, and appearance at Dublin, accompanied by Delamere to be the messengers.* a foreign army, the consequences must The resolution of the Lords appeared be disastrous. William owned that to be unanimous. But there were in there was great weight in these reasons: the assembly those who by no means but it could not be. He knew his wife's approved of the decision in which they temper; and he knew that she never affected to concur, and who wished to would consent to such a step. Indeed see the King treated with a severity it would not be for his own honour to which they did not venture openly to treat his vanquished kinsman so unrecommend. It is a remarkable fact graciously. Nor was it quite clear that that the chief of this party was a peer generosity might not be the best policy. who had been a vehement Tory, and Who could say what effect such severity who afterwards died a Nonjuror, Cla-as Clarendon recommended might prorendon. The rapidity, with which, at this crisis, he went backward and forward from extreme to extreme, might seem incredible to people living in quiet times, but will not surprise those who have had an opportunity of watching the course of revolutions. He knew that the asperity, with which he had, in the royal presence, censured the whole system of government, had given mortal offence to his old master. On the other hand he might, as the uncle of the Princesses, hope to be great and rich in the new world which was about to commence. The English colony in Ireland regarded him as a friend and patron; and he felt that on the confidence and attachment of that great interest much of his importance depended. To such considerations as these the principles which he had, during his whole life, ostentatiously professed, now gave way. He repaired to the Prince's closet, and represented the danger of leaving the King at liberty. * Burnet, i. 800.; Clarendon's Diary, Dec. 17. 1688; Van Citters, Dec. 18. 1688.

duce on the public mind of England? Was it impossible that the loyal enthusiasm, which the King's misconduct had extinguished, might revive as soon as it was known that he was within the walls of a foreign fortress? On these grounds William determined not to subject his father in law to personal restraint; and there can be little doubt that the determination was wise.*

James, while his fate was under discussion, remained at Whitehall, fascinated, as it seemed, by the greatness and nearness of the danger, and unequal to the exertion of either struggling or flying. In the evening news came that the Dutch had occupied Chelsea and Kensington. The King, however, prepared to go to rest as usual. The Coldstream Guards were on duty at the palace. They were commanded by William Earl of Craven, an aged man

Burnet, i. 800.; Conduct of the Duchess

of Marlborough; Mulgrave's Account of the

Revolution. Clarendon says nothing of this under the proper date; but see his Diary, August 19. 1689.

In defiance of the weather a great Arrival of multitude assembled between William Albemarle House and Saint

at Saint James's.

While the King's barge was slowly | the public veneration was this, that working its way on rough waves down God had set it apart and consecrated it the river, brigade after brigade of the to the high office of defending truth Prince's troops marched into London and freedom against tyrants from genefrom the west. It had been wisely de- ration to generation. On the same day termined that the duty of the capital all the prelates who were in town, should be chiefly done by the British Sancroft excepted, waited on the Prince soldiers in the service of the States in a body. Then came the clergy of General. The three English regiments London, the foremost men of their prowere quartered in and round the Tower, fession in knowledge, eloquence, and the three Scotch regiments in South- influence, with their Bishop at their wark.* head. With them were mingled some eminent dissenting ministers, whom Compton, much to his honour, treated with marked courtesy. A few months earlier, or a few months later, such courtesy would have been considered by many Churchmen as treason to the Church. Even then it was but too plain to a discerning eye that the armistice to which the Protestant sects had been forced would not long outlast the danger from which it had sprung. About a hundred Nonconformist divines, resident in the capital, presented a separate address. They were introduced by Devonshire, and were received with every mark of respect and kindness. The lawyers paid their homage, headed by Maynard, who, at ninety years of age, was as alert and clearheaded as when he stood up in Westminster Hall to accuse Strafford. "Mr. Serjeant," said the Prince, "you must have survived all the lawyers of your standing." "Yes, sir," said the old man, "and, but for Your Highness, I should have survived the laws too."*

James's Palace to greet the Prince. Every hat, every cane, was adorned with an orange riband. The bells were ringing all over London. Candles for an illumination were disposed in the windows. Faggots for bonfires were heaped up in the streets. William, however, who had no taste for crowds and shouting, took the road through the Park. Before nightfall he arrived at Saint James's in a light carriage, accompanied by Schomberg. In a short time all the rooms and staircases in the palace were thronged by those who came to pay their court. Such was the press, that men of the highest rank were unable to elbow their way into the presence chamber. While Westminster was in this state of excitement, the Common Council was preparing at Guildhall an address of thanks and congratulation. The Lord Mayor was unable to preside. He had never held up his head since the Chancellor had been dragged into the justice room in the garb of a collier. But the Aldermen and the other officers of the corporation were in their places. On the following day the magistrates of the City went in state to pay their duty to their deliverer. Their gratitude was eloquently expressed by their Recorder, Sir George Treby. Some princes of the House of Nassau, he said, had been the chief officers of a great republic. Others had worn the imperial crown. But the peculiar title of that illustrious line to

* Van Citters, December 18. 1688.

+ Luttrell's Diary; Evelyn's Diary; Clarendon's Diary, Dec. 18. 1688; Revolution Politics.

But, though the addresses were numerous and full of eulogy, though the acclamations were loud, though the illuminations were splendid, though Saint James's Palace was too small for the crowd of courtiers, though the theatres were every night, from the pit to the ceiling, one blaze of orange ribands, William felt that the difficulties of his enterprise were but beginning. He had pulled a government down. The far harder task of reconstruction was now to be performed. From the moment of his landing till he

* Fourth Collection of Papers relating to the present juncture of affairs in England, 1688; Burnet, i. 802, 803.; Calamy's Life and Times of Baxter, chapter xiv.

He is advised to assume the crown

reached London, he had exercised the, though they could not, with a clear authority which, by the laws of war, conscience, choose a king for themacknowledged throughout the civilised selves, would accept, without hesitation, world, belongs to the commander of an a king given to them by the event of army in the field. It was now neces- war.* sary that he should exchange the cha- On the other side, however, there racter of a general for that of a magis- were reasons which greatly prepondetrate; and this was no easy task. A rated. The Prince could not claim the single false step might be fatal; and it crown as won by his sword without a was impossible to take any step without gross violation of faith. In his Manifesto offending prejudices and rousing angry he had declared that he had no design passions. of conquering England; that those who imputed to him such a design foully calumniated, not only himself, but the patriotic noblemen and gentlemen who had invited him over; that the force which he brought with him was evidently inadequate to an enterprise so arduous; and that it was his full resolution to refer all the public grievances, and all his own pretensions, to a free Parliament. For no earthly object could it be right or wise that he should forfeit his word so solemnly pledged in the face of all Europe. Nor was it certain that, by calling himself a conqueror, he would have removed the scruples which made rigid Churchmen unwilling to acknowledge him as king. For, call himself what he might, all the world knew that he was not really a

Some of the Prince's advisers pressed him to assume the crown at once as his own by right of conquest, and then, as King, to by right of send out, under his Great Seal, conquest. writs calling a Parliament. This course was strongly recommended by some eminent lawyers. It was, they said, the shortest way to what could otherwise be attained only through innumerable difficulties and disputes. It was in strict conformity with the auspicious precedent set after the battle of Bosworth by Henry the Seventh. It would also quiet the scruples which many respectable people felt as to the lawfulness of transferring allegiance from one ruler to another. Neither the law of England nor the Church of England recognised any right in sub-conqueror. It was notoriously a mere jects to depose a sovereign. But no fiction to say that this great kingdom, jurist, no divine, had ever denied that with a mighty fleet on the sea, with a a nation, overcome in war, might, with- regular army of forty thousand men, out sin, submit to the decision of the and with a militia of a hundred and God of battles. Thus, after the Chaldean fifty thousand men, had been, without conquest, the most pious and patriotic one siege or battle, reduced to the state Jews did not think that they violated of a province by fifteen thousand intheir duty to their native King by vaders. Such a fiction was not likely serving_with_loyalty the new master to quiet consciences really sensitive: whom Providence had set over them. but it could scarcely fail to gall the The three confessors, who were marvel-national pride, already sore and irrilously preserved in the furnace, held table. The English soldiers were in a high office in the province of Babylon. temper which required the most delicate Daniel was minister successively of the management. They were conscious Assyrian who subjugated Judea, and of that, in the late campaign, their part the Persian who subjugated Assyria. had not been brilliant. Captains and Nay, Jesus himself, who was, according privates were alike impatient to prove to the flesh, a prince of the house of that they had not given way before an David, had, by commanding his coun-inferior force from want of courage. trymen to pay tribute to Cæsar, pro-Some Dutch officers had been indiscreet nounced that foreign conquest annuls enough to boast, at a tavern over their hereditary right and is a legitimate wine, that they had driven the King's title to dominion. It was therefore probable that great numbers of Tories,

* Burnet, i. 803.

army before them.

This insult had the respect due to a Parliament. One raised among the English troops a fer- Chamber might be formed of the nument which, but for the Prince's prompt merous Lords Spiritual and Temporal interference, would probably have ended who were then in London, and another in a terrible slaughter.* What, in such of old members of the House of Comcircumstances, was likely to be the mons and of the magistrates of the effect of a proclamation announcing City. The scheme was ingenious, and that the commander of the foreigners was promptly executed. The Peers considered the whole island as lawful prize of war?

were summoned to Saint James's on the twenty-first of December. About seventy attended. The Prince requested them to consider the state of the country, and to lay before him the result of their deliberations. Shortly after appeared a notice inviting all gentlemen who had sate in the House of Commons during the reign of Charles the Second to attend His Highness on the morning of the twenty-sixth. The Aldermen of London were also summoned; and the Common Council was requested to send a deputation.*

It was also to be remembered that, by putting forth such a proclamation, the Prince would at once abrogate all the rights of which he had declared himself the champion. For the authority of a foreign conqueror is not circumscribed by the customs and statutes of the conquered nation, but is, by its own nature, despotic. Either, therefore, it was not competent to William to declare himself King, or it was competent to him to declare the Great Charter and the Petition of Right It has often been asked, in a renullities, to abolish trial by jury, and proachful tone, why the invitation was to raise taxes without the consent of not extended to the members of the Parliament. He might, indeed, reestablish the ancient constitution of the realm. But, if he did so, he did so in the exercise of an arbitrary discretion. English liberty would thenceforth be held by a base tenure. It would be, not, as heretofore, an immemorial inheritance, but a recent gift which the generous master who had bestowed it might, if such had been his pleasure, have withheld. William therefore righteously and prudently determined to observe the promises contained in his Declaration, and to leave of the Par to the legislature the office of of Charles settling the government. So II. carefully did he avoid whatever looked like usurpation that he would not, without some semblance of parliamentary authority, take upon himself even to convoke the Estates of the Realm, or to direct the executive day was employed in settling the order administration during the elections. of proceeding. A clerk was appointed; Authority strictly parliamentary there and, as no confidence could be placed was none in the state: but it was pos- in any of the twelve Judges, some sersible to bring together, in a few hours, jeants and barristers of great note were an assembly which would be regarded requested to attend, for the purpose of by the nation with a large portion of

He calls together the Lords and the members

liaments

Parliament which had been dissolved in the preceding year. The answer is obvious. One of the chief grievances of which the nation complained was the manner in which that Parliament had been elected. The majority of the burgesses had been returned by constituent bodies remodelled in a manner which was generally regarded as illegal, and which the Prince had, in his Declaration, condemned. James himself had, just before his downfall, consented to restore the old municipal franchises. It would surely have been the height of inconsistency in William, after taking up arms for the purpose of vindicating the invaded charters of corporations, to recognise persons chosen in defiance of those charters as the legitimate representatives of the towns of England. On Saturday the twenty-second the Lords met in their own house.

That

*History of the Desertion; Clarendon's Diary, Dec. 21. 1688; Burnet, i. 803. and Onslow's note.