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68

THE KING'S DUTCH FRIENDS.

[1689.

who had influence with the two great parties in the State, and with the subdivisions of the Whig and Tory factions. There was Halifax, who was known as the Trimmer,-one who was selected to tender the crown to William and Mary, but who had taken no part in the first steps which deprived James of the crown. There was Danby, who had been impeached under Charles II. for his arbitrary and corrupt practices, and who had only given a modified support to the present change of government. There was Nottingham, whose nomination to office was a propitiation to the High Church party. There was Shrewsbury, who had borne a distinguished part in the battle which had resulted in the great victory of the Whigs. But the Revolution was the triumph of Whig principles; and thus it was natural, in the hour of triumph, after some concessions to open adversaries or doubtful friends, that the Whigs should have the larger share of the spoils. The Great Seal was put in Commission. The great office of Lord High Treasurer was not filled up, but Commissioners of the Treasury were appointed. In the same way the duties of Lord High Admiral were entrusted to a Board. These arrangements for Commissions were considered as politic devices "to gratify the more." One signal benefit of the great change was manifested to the nation-there would be no attempt to suppress public opinion by the agency of corruption on the judgment seat: "Nothing gave a more general satisfaction than the naming of the judges. The king ordered every privy counsellor to bring a list of twelve; and out of these, twelve very learned and worthy judges were chosen." + Somers, to whose eloquence and sagacity the success of the Revolution was so much indebted, was named Solicitor-General.

In the spirit of that mean dislike of foreigners which characterises the vulgar Englishman, a writer of our own day thus records one of the complaints against the arrangements of 1689: "Three of the king's Dutch followers, Bentinck, Auverquerque, and Zuylistein, were placed by him about his person, with a disdain, not of the prejudices, but of the feelings of the nation, which might have recalled to mind his Norman predecessor." There were others about William's person, who were amongst the most true-hearted of Englishmen. The duke of Devonshire was Lord Steward; the earl of Dorset was Lord Chamberlain; Sidney, the brother of the republican Algernon, was a gentleman of the bed-chamber. Yet William is held to have outraged the national feeling because he gave one place, not of political importance, but of necessary companionship, to Bentinck, the friend of his youth-the man who had nursed him in sickness, who had stood by him in battle; because he gave another to Auverquerque, who had saved his life by personal intrepidity in the field of St. Dennis, in 1678; and another to Zuylistein, whose father had earned a debt of gratitude from the saviour of Holland, by perishing in his cause, when Luxemburg stormed his quarters in 1672. We doubt if the people-not the mere place-hunters-were so unreasonable as to expect that their deliverer, as they called him, should be isolated amongst strangers; should have wholly to make new friends; should cast aside all memories of old affections; should forget all the associations of that life of toil and danger which he had endured from his twenty-second

* Evelyn, "Diary," March 8.
Burnet, vol. iv. p. 7.
Continuation of Mackintosh's "History," by William Wallace, vol. viii. p. 300.

1689.]

THE CONVENTION DECLARED A PARLIAMENT.

69

year to this his thirty-ninth. They could not surely forget that William was Stadtholder of Holland, as well as King of England; that the interests of both countries were the same; that the first magistrate of each of the two free states of Europe was embarked in a contest against the absolute monarch who aimed at universal dominion; that for the proper conduct of this great enterprise, it were well that he should have some few faithful friends, to whom he could pour out his heart without dread of fickleness and faithlessness. Yet against such popular prejudices it is hard to contend. William must have felt that the mere circumstance of his being a foreigner was a serious impediment to his power of doing his duty efficiently; and thus, amidst undeserved suspicions, and causeless jealousies, he pined for that happier state from which he had been called; he felt the want of that admiration which surrounded him at the Hague; he intensely longed for the return of the tranquillity that he had thrown away when he quitted his quiet home at Loo.

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Arms of William III.

King William opened the Parliament on the 18th of February. He addressed the two Houses in a very brief speech, composed of the plainest words: "I have lately told you how sensible I am of your kindness, and how much I value the confidence you have reposed in me. And I am come hither to assure you, that I shall never do anything that may justly lessen your good opinion of me." The chief point of the speech was a recommendation" to consider of the most effectual ways of preventing the inconveniences which may arise by delays; and to judge what forms may be most proper, to bring those things to pass for the good of the nation, which I am confident are in all your minds, and which I, on my part, shall be always ready to promote." The possible delays to which the king alluded grew out of the agitation of the question, whether the Convention which had altered the Succession could continue to sit as a Parliament. The Lords immediately passed a Bill "for removing and preventing all questions and disputes touching the assembly and sitting of this present Parliament," in which it was declared that the Convention which assembled on the 22nd of January are the two Houses of Parliament, "as if they had been summoned according to the usual form." But in the Commons the question was debated with great violence, upon what were maintained as constitutional principles. There had been two months of excitement since James had quitted the kingdom; and the inevitable re-action of opinion made many eager to unsettle the Settlement. Old Serjeant Maynard maintained that this was not a time to stand upon forms. "There is a great danger in sending out writs at this time, if you consider what a ferment the nation is in. I think the Clergy are out of their wits." The outrages that James had attempted upon the national religion were by many forgotten. The dread of Popery was extinguished in the dread of Dissent. This was the first move of a powerful faction when they agitated the question whether the Convention were a Parliament; thus to postpone the formal adhesion of the Church and the Laity to the new sovereign, and to delay the grant of supplies, at a time of impending danger on every side. The state of the parliamentary

70

OATH OF ALLEGIANCE-NONJURORS.

(1639.

constituencies—a state that remained unaltered for nearly a century and ahalf-presented a wide field for intrigue and corruption. The real opinion of the people upon such a vital question as that of uncompromising fealty to a new dynasty could not be fairly arrived at, when Cornwall, with its twentyfive thousand householders, returned one-third more members than Yorkshire with its hundred thousand; and when Sussex, another great seat of decayed boroughs, returned nearly four times as many members as Middlesex and London. In this question of the legality of the Parliament, the constituencies were not however called upon to decide. The Bill was passed; and it was accompanied with a clause that no person should sit and vote in either House of Parliament without taking the prescribed oath to be faithful and bear true allegiance to king William and queen Mary, according to the form prescribed in the Declaration of Rights.* The 1st of March was the day after which no seat could be taken in Parliament unless allegiance had thus been previously sworn. The archbishop of Canterbury and seven other spiritual peers absented themselves, as well as various lay peers. In the Commons the absentees were not so proportionately numerous. The Jacobite party sustained a defeat; but the example of the prelates operated upon many of the inferior Clergy, when the time arrived in which they also were to declare in the most solemn manner their adherence to the new government. An oath, in place of the old oath of allegiance and supremacy, was to be taken by all lay persons holding offices, and by all in possession of any benefice or other ecclesiastical preferment. Those churchmen who did not take this oath on or before the 1st of August were to be suspended; and if at the end of six months they continued to refuse, were to be deprived.† About four hundred refused the oath, and, losing their benefices, were, during three reigns, a constant source of irritation and alarm, under the name, familiarised to us by our lighter as well as graver literature, of Nonjurors. Whatever opinions may be entertained of the wisdom of this resistance, we must, in this case, as in the previous cases of the Episcopalians ejected by the Long Parliament, and of the Puritans ejected after the Restoration, respect the selfdenial of those who suffered for conscience sake. Their devotion to the principle of hereditary right might be a weakness, but it was not a crime. The policy of their deprivation was very questionable. Those who took the oaths, and satisfied their principles by intriguing and preaching against the government de facto, were really more dangerous than the eminent divines, such as Ken, and Sherlock, and Leslie, who openly refused to support it by their declared allegiance. Violent and factious men might bring contempt on the name of Nonjurors; but many of the less distinguished among them set about getting their bread by the honest exercise of their talents and learning. If some became fawning domestic chaplains to plotting Jacobite lords, others kept themselves above want by literary labours, however humble. John Blackbourn, the ejected incumbent of two livings, earned his bread as corrector of the press for William Bowyer.‡

In this first Session of the first Parliament of the Revolution, amidst signal manifestations of a narrow and a factious spirit, we have abundant evidence

* 1 Gul. & Mar. c. 1.

+1 Gul. & Mar. c. 8. Nichols' "Literary Anecdotes," vol. iii. p. 252.

1689.]

SUPPLY-APPROPRIATION ESTABLISHED.

71

of statesmanlike sagacity. The king looked upon many unsettled questions with a wider range of view than his own Council, or the Grand Council of the Nation. He was confident in the justice and necessity of the objects for which he desired to have his hands strengthened. The Parliament refused its confidence. The king desired to carry out the fullest principles of religious liberty that were consistent with the public safety. The Parliament thought that there was a very strict limit even for toleration. And yet, out of these differences, resulted much practical good. The king wished to have ample means for maintaining the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland, for the pacification of Scotland, for giving efficiency to the confederacy against the ambition of the French. The Commons manifested a greater jealousy of entrusting the supplies to their deliverer than they had manifested towards their oppressor. There were immediate evil consequences. The Roman Catholic adherents of James devastated the Protestant settlements in Ireland; the standard of resistance was successfully reared in Scotland; Louis threatened England with invasion, and was marching a great army upon Holland. But the benefits of the jealousy of the Commons are felt by us to this day. Those Whigs who carried their confidence in the intentions of William to an extreme, were of opinion that the Revenue which had been settled upon king James for life should revert to the sovereign who had taken his place. Some Tories, who were adverse to the government, but were eager to secure power by a simulated confidence in the king, agreed in this view. The majority in Parliament successfully resisted it. William had proposed to his Council that the Hearth-money, or Chimney-tax, should be abolished. Sir Robert Howard told the house that the king said, "It was much in his thoughts." Sir Robert added, "I could wish the house had heard his discourse in all this business; and in all his discourse from Exeter hither, he expressed his inclination to do good to the people."* To abolish the Hearth-money, an especial tax upon the poor, was a duty to which William was called by the earnest solicitations of the crowds who followed his march from Torbay to London. But he frankly said to Parliament, "as in this his majesty doth consider the ease of the subject, so he doth not doubt but you will be careful of the support of the crown." The official biographer of James II. sneers at William's self-denial; "He wheedled them [the Commons] with a remission of chimney-money, when he was well assured he should be no loser by his generosity, and that it would be only like throwing water into a dry pump to make it suck better below, and cast it out with more abundance above."† This was not exactly the best mode of wheedling the rich country gentlemen, by removing a tax from the cottage to put it in some shape upon the mansion. Yet the Commons respected the motive of the king, and substituted less oppressive taxes. But they declined to grant the temporary revenue for the lives of the king and queen. The hereditary revenue they did not touch. Moreover they resolved that whatever sums they voted should be appropriated to particular services, according to estimates. This principle, partially adhered to in the time of Charles II., but wholly disregarded by the parliament of his successor, has from the time of the Revolution been the great security of the nation against the wanton and corrupt expenditure of the

* "Parliamentary History," vol. v. col. 153.

"Life of James II." vol. ii., p. 310.

72

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AND UNION DESIRED BY WILLIAM.

[1689. Crown. Parliament may make lavish votes; but there must be a distinct vote in every case for the service of a particular department. It is this which renders the legislative power so really supreme in England; it is this which renders it impossible that an executive can subsist except in concord with the representatives of the people. We therefore owe a debt of gratitude to the Parliament of the Revolution that they clung to a principle and established a practice which have never since been departed from. A temporary vote of credit is sometimes asked under extraordinary circumstances; but the constitutional right of appropriation, always secured in the express words of the grant of supply, is the general rule which no minister would dare to ask the representatives of the people to forego.

But if the Parliament of William and Mary is to be commended for their jealousy of the king in the matter of Revenue, we may doubt if they were equally wise in halting far short of his known wishes in the great questions of religious liberty, and religious union. If the king's abstract sense of what was due to the consciences of men could have been carried out, we might have been saved from a century and a quarter of bitter animosities; and the Church of England might have been more secure and more influential, than

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during the long period when the Test Act remained in force against Protestants, and Roman Catholics were not only ineligible to civil offices, but had to undergo what we now justly regard as persecution. But in this, as in all other cases, no reform can be permanent which is premature. William

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