Reign on James II page 8

James, on the contrary, never was so triumphant. He believed that he had now struck effectual terror into the country, and might rule at will. He had increased the army, and openly declared the necessity of increasing it further. He had in many instances dispensed with the test act in giving many commissions in the army to catholics, and he resolved to abolish both that act and the habeas corpus act. His great design was to restore the Roman religion to full liberty in England; he believed that he was able now to accomplish that daring deed. Parliament was to meet in the beginning of November, and he announced to his cabinet his intention to have the test act repealed by it, or if it refused, to dispense with it by his own authority. This declaration produced the utmost consternation. Halifax, however, was the only member who dared to warn hint of the consequences, and avowed that he must be compelled to oppose the measure. James endeavoured to win him over to his views, but finding it vain, determined to dismiss him from office. His more prudent counsellors cautioned him against such an act on the eve of the meeting of parliament, on the ground that Halifax possessed great influence, and might head a dangerous opposition. But James was the last man to see danger ahead, and Halifax ceased to be president of the council. The news was received with astonishment in England, with exultation in Pans, and with discontent at the Hague.

The dismissal of Halifax produced a great sensation out of doors. The opposition gathered new courage. Danby and his party showed themselves early to coalesce with the adherents of Halifax. The whispered assurance that Halifax was dismissed for refusing to betray the test and habeas corpus acts, created general alarm, and even the leading officers of the army did not hesitate to express their disapprobation. Just at this crisis, only a week before parliament would assemble, came the news of the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. This edict had been issued under the ministry of Richelieu, and had closed the long and bloody war betwixt catholic France and, its protestant subjects. Under certain restrictions the Huguenots were tolerated, and were contented. But Louis, urged by the Jesuits, had long been infringing on the conditions of the treaty. He had dismissed all Huguenots from his service, had forbade them to be admitted to the profession of the law, and compelled protestant children to be educated by catholics. Now at length he abolished the edict altogether, by which the Huguenots were once more at the mercy of dragoons and ruffian informers and constables. Their ministers were banished, their children torn from them, and sent to be educated in convents. The unhappy people, seeing nothing but destruction before them, fled out of the kingdom on all sides. No less than fifty thousand families were said to have quitted France, some of them of high rank and name, the bulk of them Weavers in silk and stuffs, hatters, and artificers of various kinds. Many settled in London, where they introduced silk weaving, and where their descendants yet remain, still bearing their French names, in Bethnal Green and Spitalfields. Others carried their manufacturing industry to Saxony, and others emigrated to the Cape as vine growers. France, by this blind act of bigotry, lost a host of her best citizens, and had her arts carried to her rivals.

This was a terrible blow to the scheme of James for restoring Romanism to power in England. The public justly said, if a politic monarch like Louis could not refrain at such a serious cost from persecuting protestants, what was England to expect should Romanism gain the ascendancy here, under a bigoted and narrow-minded king like James? James himself saw the full extent of the, to him, inopportune occurrence, and professed to join heartily in the universal outcry of Europe, not excepting the very pope himself, and Spain, the land of Jesuits and inquisitions; for those parties who were suffering from the aggressions of Louis found it, like James, convenient to make an outcry. What more irritated James was an address which the French clergy in a body had presented to Louis, applauding the deed and declaring that the pious king of England was looking to Louis for his aid in reducing his heretical subjects. This address was read with astonishment and terror by the English people, and James hastened to condemn the revocation of the edict, and to promote and contribute to the relief of the refugees who had sought shelter here. We shall see that this affected sympathy did not last long.

On the 9th of November James met his parliament. He congratulated them on the suppression of the rebellion in the west, but observed that it had shown how little dependence could be placed on the militia. It would be necessary to maintain a strong regular force, and that would, of course, require proportionate funds. He had, he observed, admitted some officers to commissions who had not taken the test, but they were such as he could rely on, and he was resolved to continue them there. On their return to their house the lords tamely voted him an address of thanks, but with the commons a demur on this head arose, and a delay of three days was voted before considering an address. This was ominous, and during the interval the ambassadors of Austria and the pope advised James not to quarrel with the parliament. Barillon, on the contrary, urged him towards the fatality, for which he required little stimulus. If he quarrelled with his parliament, he must become Louis's" slave, and leave Austria, Spain, and Italy at his mercy. When the parliament resumed the question, the members, both whigs and tories, who were alike opposed to James's projected aggressions, carefully avoided any irritating topic except that of the army. They took no notice of the atrocities committed in the west; they did not revert to the illegal practices by which members in the interest of government had been returned, but they skilfully proposed improvements in the militia, so as to supersede the necessity of a standing army. When the vote for supply was proposed, the house carried a motion for bringing a bill for rendering the militia more effective before it, and on this motion Seymour of Exeter, a tory, as well as Sir William Temple, Sir John Maynard, who had taken a leading part in the parliamentary struggle against Charles I., and was now upwards of eighty years of age, took part, and several officers of the army, including Charles Fox, paymaster of the forces, voted on the popular side of the question. Of course they were dismissed. But the house now having broken the ice, voted an address to the king on the subject of maintaining inviolate the test act. When they went into committee for the supply, the king demanded one million two hundred thousand pounds, the house proposed four hundred thousand pounds. They were afterwards willing to advance the sum to seven hundred thousand pounds, but ministers put the motion for the original sum to the vote, and were, defeated. The next day the commons went in procession to Whitehall, with their address regarding the test. James received them sullenly, and told them that whatever they pleased to do, he would abide by all his promises. This was saying that he would violate the test act as he had done. On returning to their house, John Coke of Derby said he hoped they were all Englishmen, and were not going to be frightened from their duty by a few high words. As the house had been careful to avoid any expressions disrespectful to the king, they resented this manly but incautious speech, and committed Coke to the Tower. The court took courage at this proceeding, but though the commons had not all at once recovered their independent tone, the discontent was strongly fermenting, and though Seymour had at first in vain called on them to examine the abuses of the franchise during the last election, they now took up the question, and Sir John Lowther of Cumberland, another tory member, headed this movement. The same spirit in the same day broke out in the lords. Though they had voted thanks for the address, Halifax now contended that that was merely formal, and the earl of Devonshire, William Cavendish, the bosom friend of the late lord Russell, and viscount Mordaunt, afterwards the celebrated earl of Peterborough, proposed to consider the king's speech, and vehemently denounced a standing army. What was still more significant was, that Compton, the bishop of London, a royalist, and the son of a royalist, that earl of, Northampton who had fought for Charles I., and who had, moreover, been the educator of the two princesses, not only spoke for himself, but for the whole bench and church, and declared that the constitution, civil and ecclesiastic, was in danger. Here was a quick end of the doctrine of non-resistance. Jeffreys endeavoured to reply to these ominous harangues, but the bully of- the bench, where he had it all his own way, here cut a very different figure. He was scarified in a style of refined ' sarcasm, against which his coarse Billingsgate was worse than harmless; it recoiled upon his own head, and this brutal monster, cowardly as he was insolent, sunk prostrate before the whole house, and even gave way to a dastardly flood of tears of shame. James, astonished änd enraged, but not warned by this first breath of the rising tempest, the next morning hurried to the house of lords and prorogued parliament till the 10th of February; but it never met again, being repeatedly prorogued, till the Rational spirit arose which drove him from the throne.

The prorogation of parliament was followed by the trial of thrße Whig leaders of eminence. These were Gerard, lord Brandon, the eldest son of the earl of Macclesfield, Hampden, the grandson of the patriot, and Henry Booth, lord Delamere. Hampden and Gerard were accused afresh of having been concerned in the Rye House plot, Delamere of having been ii} league with Monmouth. Grey, earl of Stamford, had been on the eve of being tried by the peers on a similar charge of concern in the Rye House plot, but the prorogation defeated that, and he was soon after liberated. These were the men against whom Grey had been induced to give information, and who, with Wade and Goodenough, were witnesses. Hampden and Gerard were tried at the Old Bailey and condemned. But Grey had stipulated that their lives should be safe, and they were redeemed by their relatives at a heavy price. Delamere, as a peer of the realm, was tried by a high court of peers, and as he was accused of having been engaged with Monmouth, his life was in danger. Jeffreys was appointed lord high steward, and he selected thirty peers as triers, all of whom were in politics opposed to Delamere,. and half of them ministers and members of the royal household. He did not stop there, but as he had a personal spite against Delamere for having complained of him to parliament when lord chief justice of Chester, and called him a drunken jackpudding, he did his best personally to condemn him. But spite of the murderous bias with which the villainous judge had contrived the prisoner's death, the lord triers unanimously acquitted him. This was a fact that equally electrified James and the country. Both saw that there was a spirit abroad that was no longer to be trifled with. The public openly rejoiced; the infatuated tyrant raged, but took no warning. The very tories who had carried the crown hitherto through every attempt, the established church which had preached non- resistance, saw the gulf, to the edge of which their principles had brought them. Their loyalty paused at the threshold of Romanism, and the destruction of the safeguards of the liberty of the subject. The deadly artifices which an abandoned judge and a lawless monarch had employed against the life of Delamere, might soon be practised against every one of them. The spell of despotism, therefore, was broken. The spirit of an unconquerable suspicion had reached the very cabinet and the household of the Romish king, and his power was at an end.

But the greater the danger the more recklessly the bigotry-blinded monarch rushed upon it. His father had been bent on destroying the constitution, but stood firm to the Anglican church; James was resolved to root out both church and constitution together; but to his narrow intellect it never occurred that if his father lost his head in attempting half this impossible enterprise, his danger was double in aiming at the whole. At the very beginning of the year 1686 he took a sudden stride in the direction of avowed Romanism, and during the whole year he marched forward with an insane hardihood that struck the boldest and most adventurous of his friends with consternation. The fact as to whether Charles n. had died a catholic or protestant was still a matter of dispute. A few knew the truth, more surmised, but the bulk of the people still believed him to have been a protestant. James determined to sweep away the remaining delusion. He therefore brought forth the two papers from Charles's strong box, and challenged the whole bench of bishops to refute them. He especially called on Sancroft, the archbishop of Canterbury, to do it; but as the primate from policy declined it, James took it for granted that they were secretly admitted to be unanswerable. He therefore had them printed in magnificent style, and appended to them his own signature, asserting that they were his late brother's own composition, and left in his own handwriting. He had this proof of Charles's Romanism distributed liberally to his courtiers, to the prelates and dignitaries of the church, and amongst the people, even delivering them out of his coach- window to the crowds as he drove about. He thus at once made known that his late brother had been secretly a ' Romanist, and that he was himself an open and uncompromising one.

His next step was to throw all the power of the government into the hands of the most unscrupulous catholics. His brother-in-law, Rochester, the lord treasurer, was nominally his prime minister, but Sunderland and a knot of catholics were the really ruling junto. Sunderland, one of the basest men that ever crawled in the dust of a court's corruption, was the head of this secret cabal. Sunderland, in the last reign, had been a violent exclusionist. He had intrigued with the duchess of Portsmouth, through her, if possible, to bring Charles to consent to this measure; but so soon as James was on the throne, he became his most servile tool, declaring that as he had nothing to hope but from the king's clemency and his own efforts to make compensation for the past, James could have no more efficient servant. James, who was a mean soul himself, did not spurn this meanness, but made use of it, and truly Sunderland earned his dirty bread. Avarice was his master vice, and he would have sold two souls for money if he had them. He retained the post of president of the council, and held with it his old one of secretary of state; whilst observing the course which James was taking, he did not despair to wrest from the stanch protestant Rochester his still more lucrative office of lord treasurer. He had not the foresight to perceive - what Mammon, always looking on the money bags, has - that the project which James entertained to restore Romanism must bring a speedy destruction on them all. This sordid minister was at the same time in the pay of Louis, at the rate of six thousand pounds a year, to betray all his master's most secret counsels to him. With Sunderland was associated in the secret Romish junto - Sunderland himself not being an avowed catholic, but a secret professor - some of those catholic lords who had been imprisoned on account of the popish plots - Arundel, Bellasis, and William Herbert, earl of Powis, To these were added Castlemaine, the man who for a title and revenue had sold his wife to Charles n. He had been imprisoned, too, on account of the popish plot and was ready to take vengeance by assisting to destroy his protestant enemies and their church together. With him were associated two of the most profligate and characterless men of that profligate age - Jermyn, celebrated for his duels and his licentious intrigues, and lately created by James lord Dover, and a man familiarly named Dick Talbot - whom James had also for these crimes, which were merits in James's eyes, made earl of Tyrconnel. These merits were, that Talbot was ready for any service of unmanly villainy that his master could desire. Like another prime favourite and associate of James, lord chancellor Jeffreys, Tyrconnel was notorious for his drinking, gambling, lying, swearing, bullying, and debauchery. He was equally ready to lie away a woman's character or to assassinate a better man than himself. In the last reign, when it was desired by the court to ruin the character of James's wife, Anne Hyde, that she might be got rid of, with colonel Berkeley he joined in the infamous assertion that they had had the most familiar intrigues with her. When they did not succeed with James, they as readily confessed that the whole was a lie. A man with the least spark of honour in him would have remembered this unpardonable villainy to his now deceased wife, and have banished the wretch from court. James * promoted him, and made him one of his most intimate companions. Tyrconnel offered to murder the duke of Ormond, and was rewarded for his readiness by being made commander of the forces in Ireland; but his services were chiefly at present demanded at court, where he occupied the same post as Chiffinch had discharged for Charles II. - that of royal pander.