Book: The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 2

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 2



E-Text created by Martin Adamson
martin@grassmarket.freeserve.co.uk

Transcriber's note: Footnotes are indicated in the main text by
numbers at the appropriate place. The footnotes themselves are
placed at the end of the text. They can be searched for in
the format FN 1, FN 2, FN 3 etc. Alternatively, if your
software allows it the reader can copy footnotes to a second
document window.





The History of England from the Accession of James the Second

Volume II

(Chapters VI-X)

by Thomas Babington Macaulay




CHAPTER VI

The Power of James at the Height--His Foreign Policy--His Plans
of Domestic Government; the Habeas Corpus Act--The Standing Army-
-Designs in favour of the Roman Catholic Religion--Violation of
the Test Act--Disgrace of Halifax; general Discontent--
Persecution of the French Huguenots--Effect of that Persecution
in England--Meeting of Parliament; Speech of the King; an
Opposition formed in the House of Commons--Sentiments of Foreign
Governments--Committee of the Commons on the King's Speech--
Defeat of the Government--Second Defeat of the Government; the
King reprimands the Commons--Coke committed by the Commons for
Disrespect to the King--Opposition to the Government in the
Lords; the Earl of Devonshire--The Bishop of London--Viscount
Mordaunt--Prorogation--Trials of Lord Gerard and of Hampden--
Trial of Delamere--Effect of his Acquittal--Parties in the Court;
Feeling of the Protestant Tories--Publication of Papers found in
the Strong Box of Charles II.--Feeling of the respectable Roman
Catholics--Cabal of violent Roman Catholics; Castlemaine--Jermyn;
White; Tyrconnel--Feeling of the Ministers of Foreign
Governments--The Pope and the Order of Jesus opposed to each
other--The Order of Jesus--Father Petre--The King's Temper and
Opinions--The King encouraged in his Errors by Sunderland--
Perfidy of Jeffreys--Godolphin; the Queen; Amours of the King--
Catharine Sedley--Intrigues of Rochester in favour of Catharine
Sedley--Decline of Rochester's Influence--Castelmaine sent to
Rome; the Huguenots illtreated by James--The Dispensing Power--
Dismission of Refractory Judges--Case of Sir Edward Hales--Roman
Catholics authorised to hold Ecclesiastical Benefices;--Sclater;
Walker--The Deanery of Christchurch given to a Roman Catholic--
Disposal of Bishoprics--Resolution of James to use his
Ecclesiastical Supremacy against the Church--His Difficulties--He
creates a new Court of High Commission--Proceedings against the
Bishop of London--Discontent excited by the Public Display of
Roman Catholic--Rites and Vestments--Riots--A Camp formed at
Hounslow--Samuel Johnson--Hugh Speke--Proceedings against
Johnson--Zeal of the Anglican Clergy against Popery--The Roman
Catholic Divines overmatched--State of Scotland--Queensberry--
Perth and Melfort--Favour shown to the Roman Catholic Religion in
Scotland--Riots at Edinburgh--Anger of the King; his Plans
concerning Scotland--Deputation of Scotch Privy Councillors sent
to London--Their Negotiations with the King --Meeting of the
Scotch Estates; they prove refractory--They are adjourned;
arbitrary System of Government in Scotland--Ireland--State of the
Law on the Subject of Religion--Hostility of Races--Aboriginal
Peasantry; aboriginal Aristocracy--State of the English Colony--
Course which James ought to have followed--His Errors--Clarendon
arrives in Ireland as Lord Lieutenant--His Mortifications; Panic
among the Colonists--Arrival of Tyrconnel at Dublin as General;
his Partiality and Violence--He is bent on the Repeal of the Act
of Settlement; he returns to England--The King displeased with
Clarendon--Rochester attacked by the Jesuitical Cabal--Attempts
of James to convert Rochester--Dismission of Rochester--
Dismission of Clarendon; Tyrconnel Lord Deputy--Dismay of the
English Colonists in Ireland--Effect of the Fall of the Hydes


JAMES was now at the height of power and prosperity. Both in
England and in Scotland he had vanquished his enemies, and had
punished them with a severity which had indeed excited their
bitterest hatred, but had, at the same time, effectually quelled
their courage. The Whig party seemed extinct. The name of Whig
was never used except as a term of reproach. The Parliament was
devoted to the King; and it was in his power to keep that
Parliament to the end of his reign. The Church was louder than
ever in professions of attachment to him, and had, during the
late insurrection, acted up to those professions. The Judges were
his tools; and if they ceased to be so, it was in his power to
remove them. The corporations were filled with his creatures. His
revenues far exceeded those of his predecessors. His pride rose
high. He was not the same man who, a few months before, in doubt
whether his throne might not be overturned in a hour, had
implored foreign help with unkingly supplications, and had
accepted it with tears of gratitude. Visions of dominion and
glory rose before him. He already saw himself, in imagination,
the umpire of Europe, the champion of many states oppressed by
one too powerful monarchy. So early as the month of June he had
assured the United Provinces that, as soon as the affairs of
England were settled, he would show the world how little he
feared France. In conformity with these assurances, he, within a
month after the battle of Sedgemoor, concluded with the States
General a defensive treaty, framed in the very spirit of the
Triple League. It was regarded, both at the Hague and at
Versailles, as a most significant circumstance that Halifax, who
was the constant and mortal enemy of French ascendency, and who
had scarcely ever before been consulted on any grave affair since
the beginning of the reign, took the lead on this occasion, and
seemed to have the royal ear. It was a circumstance not less
significant that no previous communication was made to Barillon.
Both he and his master were taken by surprise. Lewis was much
troubled, and expressed great, and not unreasonable, anxiety as
to the ulterior designs of the prince who had lately been his
pensioner and vassal. There were strong rumours that William of
Orange was busied in organizing a great confederacy, which was to
include both branches of the House of Austria, the United
Provinces, the kingdom of Sweden, and the electorate of
Brandenburg. It now seemed that this confederacy would have at
its head the King and Parliament of England.

In fact, negotiations tending to such a result were actually
opened. Spain proposed to form a close alliance with James; and
he listened to the proposition with favour, though it was evident
that such an alliance would be little less than a declaration of
war against France. But he postponed his final decision till
after the Parliament should have reassembled. The fate of
Christendom depended on the temper in which he might then find
the Commons. If they were disposed to acquiesce in his plans of
domestic government, there would be nothing to prevent him from
interfering with vigour and authority in the great dispute which
must soon be brought to an issue on the Continent. If they were
refractory, he must relinquish all thought of arbitrating between
contending nations, must again implore French assistance, must
again submit to French dictation, must sink into a potentate of
the third or fourth class, and must indemnify himself for the
contempt with which he would be regarded abroad by triumphs over
law and public opinion at home.1

It seemed, indeed, that it would not be easy for him to demand
more than the Commons were disposed to give. Already they had
abundantly proved that they were desirous to maintain his
prerogatives unimpaired, and that they were by no means extreme
to mark his encroachments on the rights of the people. Indeed,
eleven twelfths of the members were either dependents of the
court, or zealous Cavaliers from the country. There were few
things which such an assembly could pertinaciously refuse to the
Sovereign; and, happily for the nation, those few things were the
very things on which James had set his heart.

One of his objects was to obtain a repeal of the Habeas Corpus
Act, which he hated, as it was natural that a tyrant should hate
the most stringent curb that ever legislation imposed on tyranny.
This feeling remained deeply fixed in his mind to the last, and
appears in the instructions which he drew up, in exile, for the
guidance of his son.2 But the Habeas Corpus Act, though passed
during the ascendency of the Whigs, was not more dear to the
Whigs than to the Tories. It is indeed not wonderful that this
great law should be highly prized by all Englishmen without
distinction of party: for it is a law which, not by circuitous,
but by direct operation, adds to the security and happiness of
every inhabitant of the realm.3

James had yet another design, odious to the party which had set
him on the throne and which had upheld him there. He wished to
form a great standing army. He had taken advantage of the late
insurrection to make large additions to the military force which
his brother had left. The bodies now designated as the first six
regiments of dragoon guards, the third and fourth regiments of
dragoons, and the nine regiments of infantry of the line, from
the seventh to the fifteenth inclusive, had just been raised.4
The effect of these augmentations, and of the recall of the
garrison of Tangier, was that the number of regular troops in
England had, in a few months, been increased from six thousand to
near twenty thousand. No English King had ever, in time of peace,
had such a force at his command. Yet even with this force James
was not content. He often repeated that no confidence could be
placed in the fidelity of the train-bands, that they sympathized
with all the passions of the class to which they belonged, that,
at Sedgemoor, there had been more militia men in the rebel army
than in the royal encampment, and that, if the throne had been
defended only by the array of the counties, Monmouth would have
marched in triumph from Lyme to London.

The revenue, large as it was when compared with that of former
Kings, barely sufficed to meet this new charge. A great part of
the produce of the new taxes was absorbed by the naval
expenditure. At the close of the late reign the whole cost of the
army, the Tangier regiments included, had been under three
hundred thousand pounds a year. Six hundred thousand pounds a
year would not now suffice.5 If any further augmentation were
made, it would be necessary to demand a supply from Parliament;
and it was not likely that Parliament would be in a complying
mood. The very name of standing army was hateful to the whole
nation, and to no part of the nation more hateful than to the
Cavalier gentlemen who filled the Lower House. In their minds a
standing army was inseparably associated with the Rump, with the
Protector, with the spoliation of the Church, with the purgation
of the Universities, with the abolition of the peerage, with the
murder of the King, with the sullen reign of the Saints, with
cant and asceticism, with fines and sequestrations, with the
insults which Major Generals, sprung from the dregs of the
people, had offered to the oldest and most honourable families of
the kingdom. There was, moreover, scarcely a baronet or a squire
in the Parliament who did not owe part of his importance in his
own county to his rank in the militia. If that national force
were set aside, the gentry of England must lose much of their
dignity and influence. It was therefore probable that the King
would find it more difficult to obtain funds for the support of
his army than even to obtain the repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act.

But both the designs which have been mentioned were subordinate
to one great design on which the King's whole soul was bent, but
which was abhorred by those Tory gentlemen who were ready to shed
their blood for his rights, abhorred by that Church which had
never, during three generations of civil discord, wavered in
fidelity to his house, abhorred even by that army on which, in
the last extremity, he must rely.

His religion was still under proscription. Many rigorous laws
against Roman Catholics appeared on the Statute Book, and had,
within no long time, been rigorously executed. The Test Act
excluded from civil and military office all who dissented from
the Church of England; and, by a subsequent Act, passed when the
fictions of Oates had driven the nation wild, it had been
provided that no person should sit in either House of Parliament
without solemnly abjuring the doctrine of transubstantiation.
That the King should wish to obtain for the Church to which he
belonged a complete toleration was natural and right; nor is
there any reason to doubt that, by a little patience, prudence,
and justice, such a toleration might have been obtained.

The extreme antipathy and dread with which the English people
regarded his religion was not to be ascribed solely or chiefly to
theological animosity. That salvation might be found in the
Church of Rome, nay, that some members of that Church had been
among the brightest examples of Christian virtue, was admitted by
all divines of the Anglican communion and by the most illustrious
Nonconformists. It is notorious that the penal laws against
Popery were strenuously defended by many who thought Arianism,
Quakerism, and Judaism more dangerous, in a spiritual point of
view, than Popery, and who yet showed no disposition to enact
similar laws against Arians, Quakers, or Jews.

It is easy to explain why the Roman Catholic was treated with
less indulgence than was shown to men who renounced the doctrine
of the Nicene fathers, and even to men who had not been admitted
by baptism within the Christian pale. There was among the English
a strong conviction that the Roman Catholic, where the interests
of his religion were concerned, thought himself free from all the
ordinary rules of morality, nay, that he thought it meritorious
to violate those rules if, by so doing, he could avert injury or
reproach from the Church of which he was a member.

Nor was this opinion destitute of a show of reason. It was
impossible to deny that Roman Catholic casuists of great eminence
had written in defence of equivocation, of mental reservation, of
perjury, and even of assassination. Nor, it was said, had the
speculations of this odious school of sophists been barren of
results. The massacre of Saint Bartholomew, the murder of the
first William of Orange, the murder of Henry the Third of France,
the numerous conspiracies which had been formed against the life
of Elizabeth, and, above all, the gunpowder treason, were
constantly cited as instances of the close connection between
vicious theory and vicious practice. It was alleged that every
one of these crimes had been prompted or applauded by Roman
Catholic divines. The letters which Everard Digby wrote in lemon
juice from the Tower to his wife had recently been published, and
were often quoted. He was a scholar and a gentleman, upright in
all ordinary dealings, and strongly impressed with a sense of
duty to God. Yet he had been deeply concerned in the plot for
blowing up King, Lords, and Commons, and had, on the brink of
eternity, declared that it was incomprehensible to him how any
Roman Catholic should think such a design sinful. The inference
popularly drawn from these things was that, however fair the
general character of a Papist might be, there was no excess of
fraud or cruelty of which he was not capable when the safety and
honour of his Church were at stake.

The extraordinary success of the fables of Oates is to be chiefly
ascribed to the prevalence of this opinion. It was to no purpose
that the accused Roman Catholic appealed to the integrity,
humanity, and loyalty which he had shown through the whole course
of his life. It was to no purpose that he called crowds of
respectable witnesses, of his own persuasion, to contradict
monstrous romances invented by the most infamous of mankind. It
was to no purpose that, with the halter round his neck, he
invoked on himself the whole vengeance of the God before whom, in
a few moments, he must appear, if he had been guilty of
meditating any ill to his prince or to his Protestant fellow
countrymen. The evidence which he produced in his favour proved
only how little Popish oaths were worth. His very virtues raised
a presumption of his guilt. That he had before him death and
judgment in immediate prospect only made it more likely that he
would deny what, without injury to the holiest of causes, he
could not confess. Among the unhappy men who were convicted of
the murder of Godfrey was one Protestant of no high character,
Henry Berry. It is a remarkable and well attested circumstance,
that Berry's last words did more to shake the credit of the plot
than the dying declarations of all the pious and honourable Roman
Catholics who underwent the same fate.6

It was not only by the ignorant populace, it was not only by
zealots in whom fanaticism had extinguished all reason and
charity, that the Roman Catholic was regarded as a man the very
tenderness of whose conscience might make him a false witness, an
incendiary, or a murderer, as a man who, where his Church was
concerned, shrank from no atrocity and could be bound by no oath.
If there were in that age two persons inclined by their judgment
and by their temper to toleration, those persons were Tillotson
and Locke. Yet Tillotson, whose indulgence for various kinds of
schismatics and heretics brought on him the reproach of
heterodoxy, told the House of Commons from the pulpit that it was
their duty to make effectual provision against the propagation of
a religion more mischievous than irreligion itself, of a religion
which demanded from its followers services directly opposed to
the first principles of morality. His temper, he truly said, was
prone to lenity; but his duty to he community forced him to be,
in this one instance, severe. He declared that, in his judgment,
Pagans who had never heard the name of Christ, and who were
guided only by the light of nature, were more trustworthy members
of civil society than men who had been formed in the schools of
the Popish casuists.7 Locke, in the celebrated treatise in which
he laboured to show that even the grossest forms of idolatry
ought not to be prohibited under penal sanctions, contended that
the Church which taught men not to keep faith with heretics had
no claim to toleration.8

It is evident that, in such circumstances, the greatest service
which an English Roman Catholic could render to his brethren in
the faith was to convince the public that, whatever some rash men
might, in times of violent excitement, have written or done, his
Church did not hold that any end could sanctify means
inconsistent with morality. And this great service it was in the
power of James to render. He was King. He was more powerful than
any English King had been within the memory of the oldest man. It
depended on him whether the reproach which lay on his religion
should be taken away or should be made permanent.

Had he conformed to the laws, had be fulfilled his promises, had
he abstained from employing any unrighteous methods for the
propagation of his own theological tenets, had he suspended the
operation of the penal statutes by a large exercise of his
unquestionable prerogative of mercy, but, at the same time,
carefully abstained from violating the civil or ecclesiastical
constitution of the realm, the feeling of his people must have
undergone a rapid change. So conspicuous an example of good faith
punctiliously observed by a Popish prince towards a Protestant
nation would have quieted the public apprehensions. Men who saw
that a Roman Catholic might safely be suffered to direct the
whole executive administration, to command the army and navy, to
convoke and dissolve the legislature, to appoint the Bishops and
Deans of the Church of England, would soon have ceased to fear
that any great evil would arise from allowing a Roman Catholic to
be captain of a company or alderman of a borough. It is probable
that, in a few years, the sect so long detested by the nation
would, with general applause, have been admitted to office and to
Parliament.

If, on the other hand, James should attempt to promote the
interest of his Church by violating the fundamental laws of his
kingdom and the solemn promises which he had repeatedly made in
the face of the whole world, it could hardly be doubted that the
charges which it had been the fashion to bring against the Roman
Catholic religion would be considered by all Protestants as fully
established. For, if ever a Roman Catholic could be expected to
keep faith with heretics, James might have been expected to keep
faith with the Anglican clergy. To them he owed his crown. But
for their strenuous opposition to the Exclusion Bill he would
have been a banished man. He had repeatedly and emphatically
acknowledged his obligation to them, and had vowed to maintain
them in all their legal rights. If he could not be bound by ties
like these, it must be evident that, where his superstition was
concerned, no tie of gratitude or of honour could bind him. To
trust him would thenceforth be impossible; and, if his people
could not trust him, what member of his Church could they trust?
He was not supposed to be constitutionally or habitually
treacherous. To his blunt manner, and to his want of
consideration for the feelings of others, he owed a much higher
reputation for sincerity than he at all deserved. His eulogists
affected to call him James the Just. If then it should appear
that, in turning Papist, he had also turned dissembler and
promisebreaker, what conclusion was likely to be drawn by a
nation already disposed to believe that Popery had a pernicious
influence on the moral character?

On these grounds many of the most eminent Roman Catholics of that
age, and among them the Supreme Pontiff, were of opinion that the
interest of their Church in our island would be most effectually
promoted by a moderate and constitutional policy. But such
reasoning had no effect on the slow understanding and imperious
temper of James. In his eagerness to remove the disabilities
under which the professors of his religion lay, he took a course
which convinced the most enlightened and tolerant Protestants of
his time that those disabilities were essential to the safety of
the state. To his policy the English Roman Catholics owed three
years of lawless and insolent triumph, and a hundred and forty
years of subjection and degradation.

Many members of his Church held commissions in the newly raised
regiments. This breach of the law for a time passed uncensured:
for men were not disposed to note every irregularity which was
committed by a King suddenly called upon to defend his crown and
his life against rebels. But the danger was now over. The
insurgents had been vanquished and punished. Their unsuccessful
attempt had strengthened the government which they had hoped to
overthrow. Yet still James continued to grant commissions to
unqualified persons; and speedily it was announced that he was
determined to be no longer bound by the Test Act, that he hoped
to induce the Parliament to repeal that Act, but that, if the
Parliament proved refractory, he would not the less have his own
way.

As soon as this was known, a deep murmur, the forerunner of a
tempest, gave him warning that the spirit before which his
grandfather, his father, and his brother had been compelled to
recede, though dormant, was not extinct. Opposition appeared
first in the cabinet. Halifax did not attempt to conceal his
disgust and alarm. At the Council board he courageously gave
utterance to those feelings which, as it soon appeared, pervaded
the whole nation. None of his colleagues seconded him; and the
subject dropped. He was summoned to the royal closet, and had two
long conferences with his master. James tried the effect of
compliments and blandishments, but to no purpose. Halifax
positively refused to promise that he would give his vote in the
House of Lords for the repeal either of the Test Act or of the
Habeas Corpus Act.

Some of those who were about the King advised him not, on the eve
of the meeting of Parliament, to drive the most eloquent and
accomplished statesman of the age into opposition. They
represented that Halifax loved the dignity and emoluments of
office, that, while he continued to be Lord President, it would
be hardly possible for him to put forth his whole strength
against the government, and that to dismiss him from his high
post was to emancipate him from all restraint. The King was
peremptory. Halifax was informed that his services were no longer
needed; and his name was struck out of the Council-Book.9

His dismission produced a great sensation not only in England,
but also at Paris, at Vienna, and at the Hague: for it was well
known, that he had always laboured to counteract the influence
exercised by the court of Versailles on English affairs. Lewis
expressed great pleasure at the news. The ministers of the United
Provinces and of the House of Austria, on the other hand,
extolled the wisdom and virtue of the discarded statesman in a
manner which gave great offence at Whitehall. James was
particularly angry with the secretary of the imperial legation,
who did not scruple to say that the eminent service which Halifax
had performed in the debate on the Exclusion Bill had been
requited with gross ingratitude.10

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.