The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 2

What chance was there that, in a new order of things, a man so deeply implicated in illegal and unpopular acts, a member of the High Commission, a renegade whom the multitude, in places of general resort, pursued with the cry of Popish dog, would be greater and richer? What chance that he would even be able to escape condign punishment?

He had undoubtedly been long in the habit of looking forward to the time when William and Mary might be, in the ordinary course of nature and law, at the head of the English government, and had probably attempted to make for himself an interest in their favour, by promises and services which, if discovered, would not have raised his credit at Whitehall. But it may with confidence be affirmed that he had no wish to see them raised to power by a revolution, and that he did not at all foresee such a revolution when, towards the close of June 1688, he solemnly joined the communion of the Church of Rome.

Scarcely however had he, by that inexpiable crime, made himself an object of hatred and contempt to the whole nation, when he learned that the civil and ecclesiastical polity of England would shortly be vindicated by foreign and domestic arms. From that moment all his plans seem to have undergone a change. Fear bowed down his whole soul, and was so written in his face that all who saw him could read. 461 It could hardly be doubted that, if there were a revolution, the evil counsellors who surrounded the throne would be called to a strict account: and among those counsellors he stood in the foremost rank. The loss of his places, his salaries, his pensions, was the least that he had to dread. His patrimonial mansion amid woods at Althorpe might be confiscated. He might lie many years in a prison. He might end his days in a foreign land a pensioner on the bounty of France. Even this was not the worst. Visions of an innumerable crowd covering Tower Hill and shouting with savage joy at the sight of the apostate, of a scaffold hung with black, of Burnet reading the prayer for the departing, and of Ketch leaning on the axe with which Russell and Monmouth had been mangled in so butcherly a fashion, began to haunt the unhappy statesman. There was yet one way in which he might escape, a way more terrible to a noble spirit than a prison or a scaffold. He might still, by a well timed and useful treason, earn his pardon from the foes of the government. It was in his power to render to them at this conjuncture services beyond all price: for he had the royal ear; he had great influence over the Jesuitical cabal; and he was blindly trusted by the French Ambassador. A channel of communication was not wanting, a channel worthy of the purpose which it was to serve. The Countess of Sunderland was an artful woman, who, under a show of devotion which imposed on some grave men, carried on, with great activity, both amorous and political intrigues. 462 The handsome and dissolute Henry Sidney had long been her favourite lover. Her husband was well pleased to see her thus connected with the court of the Hague. Whenever he wished to transmit a secret message to Holland, he spoke to his wife: she wrote to Sidney; and Sidney communicated her letter to William. One of her communications was intercepted and carried to James. She vehemently protested that it was a forgery. Her husband, with characteristic ingenuity, defended himself by representing that it was quite impossible for any man to be so base as to do what he was in the habit of doing. "Even if this is Lady Sunderland's hand," he said, "that is no affair of mine. Your Majesty knows my domestic misfortunes. The footing on which my wife and Mr. Sidney are is but too public. Who can believe that I would make a confidant of the man who has injured my honour in the tenderest point, of the man whom, of all others, I ought most to hate?" 463 This defence was thought satisfactory; and secret intelligence was still transmitted from the wittol to the adulteress, from the adulteress to the gallant, and from the gallant to the enemies of James.

It is highly probable that the first decisive assurances of Sunderland's support were conveyed orally by Sidney to William about the middle of August. It is certain that, from that time till the expedition was ready to sail, a most significant correspondence was kept up between the Countess and her lover. A few of her letters, partly written in cipher, are still extant. They contain professions of good will and promises of service mingled with earnest intreaties for protection. The writer intimates that her husband will do all that his friends at the Hague can wish: she supposes that it will be necessary for him to go into temporary exile: but she hopes that his banishment will not be perpetual, and that his patrimonial estate will be spared; and she earnestly begs to be informed in what place it will be best for him to take refuge till the first fury of the storm is over. 464

The help of Sunderland was most welcome. For, as the time of striking the great blow drew near, the anxiety of William became intense. From common eyes his feelings were concealed by the icy tranquillity of his demeanour: but his whole heart was open to Bentinck. The preparations were not quite complete. The design was already suspected, and could not be long concealed. The King of France or the city of Amsterdam might still frustrate the whole plan. If Lewis were to send a great force into Brabant, if the faction which hated the Stadtholder were to raise its head, all was over. "My sufferings, my disquiet," the Prince wrote, "are dreadful. I hardly see my way. Never in my life did I so much feel the need of God's guidance." 465 Bentinck's wife was at this time dangerously ill; and both the friends were painfully anxious about her. "God support you," William wrote, "and enable you to bear your part in a work on which, as far as human beings can see, the welfare of his Church depends." 466

It was indeed impossible that a design so vast as that which had been formed against the King of England should remain during many weeks a secret. No art could prevent intelligent men from perceiving that William was making great military and naval preparations, and from suspecting the object with which those preparations were made. Early in August hints that some great event was approaching were whispered up and down London. The weak and corrupt Albeville was then on a visit to England, and was, or affected to be, certain that the Dutch government entertained no design unfriendly to James. But, during the absence of Albeville from his post, Avaux performed, with eminent skill, the duties both of French and English Ambassador to the States, and supplied Barillon as well as Lewis with ample intelligence. Avaux was satisfied that a descent on England was in contemplation, and succeeded in convincing his master of the truth. Every courier who arrived at Westminster, either from the Hague or from Versailles, brought earnest warnings. 467 But James was under a delusion which appears to have been artfully encouraged by Sunderland. The Prince of Orange, said the cunning minister, would never dare to engage in an expedition beyond sea, leaving Holland defenceless. The States, remembering what they had suffered and what they had been in danger of suffering during the great agony of 1672, would never incur the risk of again seeing an invading army encamped on the plain between Utrecht and Amsterdam. There was doubtless much discontent in England: but the interval was immense between discontent and rebellion. Men of rank and fortune were not disposed lightly to hazard their honours, their estates, and their lives. How many eminent Whigs had held high language when Monmouth was in the Netherlands! And yet, when he set up his standard, what eminent Whig had joined it? It was easy to understand why Lewis affected to give credit to these idle rumours. He doubtless hoped to frighten the King of England into taking the French side in the dispute about Cologne. By such reasoning James was easily lulled into stupid security. 468 The alarm and indignation of Lewis increased daily. The style of his letters became sharp and vehement. 469 He could not understand, he wrote, this lethargy on the eve of a terrible crisis. Was the King bewitched? Were his ministers blind? Was it possible that nobody at Whitehall was aware of what was passing in England and on the Continent? Such foolhardy security could scarcely be the effect of mere improvidence. There must be foul play. James was evidently in bad hands. Barillon was earnestly cautioned not to repose implicit confidence in the English ministers: but he was cautioned in vain. On him, as on James, Sunderland had cast a spell which no exhortation could break.

Lewis bestirred himself vigorously. Bonrepaux, who was far superior to Barillon in shrewdness, and who had always disliked and distrusted Sunderland, was despatched to London with an offer of naval assistance. Avaux was at the same time ordered to declare to the States General that France had taken James under her protection. A large body of troops was held in readiness to march towards the Dutch frontier. This bold attempt to save the infatuated tyrant in his own despite was made with the full concurrence of Skelton, who was now Envoy from England to the court of Versailles.

Avaux, in conformity with his instructions, demanded an audience of the States. It was readily granted. The assembly was unusually large. The general belief was that some overture respecting commerce was about to be made; and the President brought a written answer framed on that supposition. As soon as Avaux began to disclose his errand, signs of uneasiness were discernible. Those who were believed to enjoy the confidence of the Prince of Orange cast down their eyes. The agitation became great when the Envoy announced that his master was strictly bound by the ties of friendship and alliance to His Britannic Majesty, and that any attack on England would be considered as a declaration of war against France. The President, completely taken by surprise, stammered out a few evasive phrases; and the conference terminated. It was at the same time notified to the States that Lewis had taken under his protection Cardinal Furstemburg and the Chapter of Cologne. 470

The Deputies were in great agitation. Some recommended caution and delay. Others breathed nothing but war. Fagel spoke vehemently of the French insolence, and implored his brethren not to be daunted by threats. The proper answer to such a communication, he said, was to levy more soldiers, and to equip more ships. A courier was instantly despatched to recall William from Minden, where he was holding a consultation of high moment with the Elector of Brandenburg.

But there was no cause for alarm. James was bent on ruining himself; and every attempt to stop him only made him rush more eagerly to his doom. When his throne was secure, when his people were submissive, when the most obsequious of Parliaments was eager to anticipate all his reasonable wishes, when foreign kingdoms and commonwealths paid emulous court to him, when it depended only on himself whether he would be the arbiter of Christendom, he had stooped to be the slave and the hireling of France. And now when, by a series of crimes and follies, he had succeeded in alienating his neighbours, his subjects, his soldiers, his sailors, his children, and had left himself no refuge but the protection of France, he was taken with a fit of pride, and determined to assert his independence. That help which, when he did not want it, he had accepted with ignominious tears, he now, when it was indispensable to him, threw contemptuously away. Having been abject when he might, with propriety, have been punctilious in maintaining his dignity, he became ungratefully haughty at a moment when haughtiness must bring on him at once derision and ruin. He resented the friendly intervention which might have saved him. Was ever King so used? Was he a child, or an idiot, that others must think for him? Was he a petty prince, a Cardinal Furstemburg, who must fall if not upheld by a powerful patron? Was he to be degraded in the estimation of all Europe, by an ostentatious patronage which he had never asked? Skelton was recalled to answer for his conduct, and, as soon as he arrived, was committed prisoner to the Tower. Citters was well received at Whitehall, and had a long audience. He could, with more truth than diplomatists on such occasions think at all necessary, disclaim, on the part of the States General, any hostile project. For the States General had, as yet, no official knowledge of the design of William; nor was it by any means impossible that they might, even now, refuse to sanction that design. James declared that he gave not the least credit to the rumours of a Dutch invasion, and that the conduct of the French government had surprised and annoyed him. Middleton was directed to assure all the foreign ministers that there existed no such alliance between France and England as the Court of Versailles had, for its own ends, pretended. To the Nuncio the King said that the designs of Lewis were palpable and should be frustrated. This officious protection was at once an insult and a snare. "My good brother," said James, "has excellent qualities; but flattery and vanity have turned his head." 471 Adda, who was much more anxious about Cologne than about England, encouraged this strange delusion. Albeville, who had now returned to his post, was commanded to give friendly assurances to the States General, and to add some high language, which might have been becoming in the mouth of Elizabeth or Oliver. "My master," he said, "is raised, alike by his power and by his spirit, above the position which France affects to assign to him. There is some difference between a King of England and an Archbishop of Cologne." The reception of Bonrepaux at Whitehall was cold. The naval succours which he offered were not absolutely declined; but he was forced to return without having settled anything; and the Envoys, both of the United Provinces and of the House of Austria, were informed that his mission had been disagreeable to the King and had produced no result. After the Revolution Sunderland boasted, and probably with truth, that he had induced his master to reject the proffered assistance of France. 472

The perverse folly of James naturally excited the indignation of his powerful neighbour. Lewis complained that, in return for the greatest service which he could render to the English government, that government had given him the lie in the face of all Christendom. He justly remarked that what Avaux had said, touching the alliance between France and Great Britain, was true according to the spirit, though perhaps not according to the letter. There was not indeed a treaty digested into articles, signed, sealed, and ratified: but assurances equivalent in the estimation of honourable men to such a treaty had, during some years, been constantly exchanged between the two Courts. Lewis added that, high as was his own place in Europe, he should never be so absurdly jealous of his dignity as to see an insult in any act prompted by friendship. But James was in a very different situation, and would soon learn the value of that aid which he had so ungraciously rejected. 473

Yet, notwithstanding the stupidity and ingratitude of James, it would have been wise in Lewis to persist in the resolution which had been notified to the States General. Avaux, whose sagacity and judgment made him an antagonist worthy of William, was decidedly of this opinion. The first object of the French government—so the skilful Envoy reasoned—ought to be to prevent the intended descent on England. The way to prevent that descent was to invade the Spanish Netherlands, and to menace the Batavian frontier. The Prince of Orange, indeed, was so bent on his darling enterprise that he would persist, even if the white flag were flying on the walls of Brussels. He had actually said that, if the Spaniards could only manage to keep Ostend, Mons, and Namur till the next spring, he would then return from England with a force which would soon recover all that had been lost. But, though such was the Prince's opinion, it was not the opinion of the States. They would not readily consent to send their Captain General and the flower of their army across the German Ocean, while a formidable enemy threatened their own territory. 474

Lewis admitted the force of these reasonings: but he had already resolved on a different line of action. Perhaps he had been provoked by the discourtesy and wrongheadedness of the English government, and indulged his temper at the expense of his interest. Perhaps he was misled by the counsels of his minister of war, Louvois, whose influence was great, and who regarded Avaux with no friendly feeling. It was determined to strike in a quarter remote from Holland a great and unexpected blow. Lewis suddenly withdrew his troops from Flanders, and poured them into Germany. One army, placed under the nominal command of the Dauphin, but really directed by the Duke of Duras and by Vauban, the father of the science of fortification, invested Philipsburg. Another, led by the Marquess of Boufflers, seized Worms, Mentz, and Treves. A third, commanded by the Marquess of Humieres, entered Bonn. All down the Rhine, from Carlsruhe to Cologne, the French arms were victorious. The news of the fall of Philipsburg reached Versailles on All Saints day, while the Court was listening to a sermon in the chapel. The King made a sign to the preacher to stop, announced the good news to the congregation, and, kneeling down, returned thanks to God for this great success. The audience wept for joy. 475 The tidings were eagerly welcomed by the sanguine and susceptible people of France. Poets celebrated the triumphs of their magnificent patron. Orators extolled from the pulpit the wisdom and magnanimity of the eldest son of the Church. The Te Deum was sung with unwonted pomp; and the solemn notes of the organ were mingled with the clash of the cymbal and the blast of the trumpet. But there was little cause for rejoicing. The great statesman who was at the head of the European coalition smiled inwardly at the misdirected energy of his foe. Lewis had indeed, by his promptitude, gained some advantages on the side of Germany: but those advantages would avail little if England, inactive and inglorious under four successive Kings, should suddenly resume her old rank in Europe. A few weeks would suffice for the enterprise on which the fate of the world depended; and for a few weeks the United Provinces were in security.

William now urged on his preparations with indefatigable activity and with less secrecy than he had hitherto thought necessary. Assurances of support came pouring in daily from foreign courts. Opposition had become extinct at the Hague. It was in vain that Avaux, even at this last moment, exerted all his skill to reanimate the faction which had contended against three generations of the House of Orange. The chiefs of that faction, indeed, still regarded the Stadtholder with no friendly feeling. They had reason to fear that, if he prospered in England, he would become absolute master of Holland. Nevertheless the errors of the court of Versailles, and the dexterity with which he had availed himself of those errors, made it impossible to continue the struggle against him. He saw that the time had come for demanding the sanction of the States. Amsterdam was the head quarters of the party hostile to his line, his office, and his person; and even from Amsterdam he had at this moment nothing to apprehend. Some of the chief functionaries of that city had been repeatedly closeted with him, with Dykvelt, and with Bentinck, and had been induced to promise that they would promote, or at least that they would not oppose, the great design: some were exasperated by the commercial edicts of Lewis: some were in deep distress for kinsmen and friends who were harassed by the French dragoons: some shrank from the responsibility of causing a schism which might be fatal to the Batavian federation; and some were afraid of the common people, who, stimulated by the exhortations of zealous preachers, were ready to execute summary justice on any traitor to the Protestant cause. The majority, therefore, of that town council which had long been devoted to France pronounced in favour of William's undertaking. Thenceforth all fear of opposition in any part of the United Provinces was at an end; and the full sanction of the federation to his enterprise was, in secret sittings, formally given. 476

The Prince had already fixed upon a general well qualified to be second in command. This was indeed no light matter. A random shot or the dagger of an assassin might in a moment leave the expedition without a head. It was necessary that a successor should be ready to fill the vacant place. Yet it was impossible to make choice of any Englishman without giving offence either to the Whigs or to the Tories; nor had any Englishman then living shown that he possessed the military skill necessary for the conduct of a campaign. On the other band it was not easy to assign preeminence to a foreigner without wounding the national sensibility of the haughty islanders. One man there was, and only one in Europe, to whom no objection could be found, Frederic, Count of Schomberg, a German, sprung from a noble house of the Palatinate. He was generally esteemed the greatest living master of the art of war. His rectitude and piety, tried by strong temptations and never found wanting, commanded general respect and confidence. Though a Protestant, he had been, during many years, in the service of Lewis, and had, in spite of the ill offices of the Jesuits, extorted from his employer, by a series of great actions, the staff of a Marshal of France. When persecution began to rage, the brave veteran steadfastly refused to purchase the royal favour by apostasy, resigned, without one murmur, all his honours and commands, quitted his adopted country for ever, and took refuge at the court of Berlin. He had passed his seventieth year; but both his mind and his body were still in full vigour. He had been in England, and was much loved and honoured there. He had indeed a recommendation of which very few foreigners could then boast; for he spoke our language, not only intelligibly, but with grace and purity. He was, with the consent of the Elector of Brandenburg, and with the warm approbation of the chiefs of all English parties, appointed William's lieutenant. 477

And now the Hague was crowded with British adventurers of all the various parties which the tyranny of James had united in a strange coalition, old royalists who had shed their blood for the throne, old agitators of the army of the Parliament, Tories who had been persecuted in the days of the Exclusion Bill, Whigs who had fled to the Continent for their share in the Rye House Plot.

Conspicuous in this great assemblage were Charles Gerard, Earl of Macclesfield, an ancient Cavalier who had fought for Charles the First and had shared the exile of Charles the Second; Archibald Campbell, who was the eldest son of the unfortunate Argyle, but had inherited nothing except an illustrious name and the inalienable affection of a numerous clan; Charles Paulet, Earl of Wiltshire, heir apparent of the Marquisate of Winchester; and Peregrine Osborne, Lord Dumblame, heir apparent of the Earldom of Danby. Mordaunt, exulting in the prospect of adventures irresistibly attractive to his fiery nature, was among the foremost volunteers. Fletcher of Saltoun had learned, while guarding the frontier of Christendom against the infidels, that there was once more a hope of deliverance for his country, and had hastened to offer the help of his sword. Sir Patrick Hume, who had, since his flight from Scotland, lived humbly at Utrecht, now emerged from his obscurity: but, fortunately, his eloquence could, on this occasion, do little mischief; for the Prince of Orange was by no means disposed to be the lieutenant of a debating society such as that which had ruined the enterprise of Argyle. The subtle and restless Wildman, who had some time before found England an unsafe residence, and had retired to Germany, now repaired from Germany to the Prince's court. There too was Carstairs, a presbyterian minister from Scotland, who in craft and courage had no superior among the politicians of his age. He had been entrusted some years before by Fagel with important secrets, and had resolutely kept them in spite of the most horrible torments which could be inflicted by boot and thumbscrew. His rare fortitude had earned for him as large a share of the Prince's confidence and esteem as was granted to any man except Bentinck. 478 Ferguson could not remain quiet when a revolution was preparing. He secured for himself a passage in the fleet, and made himself busy among his fellow emigrants: but he found himself generally distrusted and despised. He had been a great man in the knot of ignorant and hotheaded outlaws who had urged the feeble Monmouth to destruction: but there was no place for a lowminded agitator, half maniac and half knave, among the grave statesmen and generals who partook the cares of the resolute and sagacious William.