256 General features of the Revolution [1688-9 my son should be a rebel! The Lord in his mercy look upon me, and enable me to support myself under this most grievous calamity!" On November 30 he records calmly and without comment that he has himself decided to fly to the Prince of Orange. His change of front is bewilderingly sudden, but there is no reason to doubt his sincerity. In revolutions events move and men think with unwonted rapidity. The pressure of events had wrought strange conversions among the Tory landed gentry, but the impression made upon the people as a whole had similar and even more striking effects. The indifference of the people to a revolution is usually the cause of its failure; here it was the reason of its success. "The People," said Halifax, "can seldom agree to move together against a Government, but they can sit still to see it undone." Indeed, though at first cold towards William, the people refused to stir a finger for James, and their indifference most powerfully influenced the event. It rendered the Revolution, although aristocratic in appearance and execution, popular in principle and in its eventual result. Hence the religious motive, though not at first sight the most apparent, is still the deepest cause of the Revolution. In the Exclusion period the people had shown that, if the choice had to be made, they preferred a Protestant sovereign with very large powers to a Catholic with very limited ones. Of 1688 Guizot boldly asserts that "in no country and at no time has the faith of the masses exercised more control over the faith of their government." There can be little doubt that this view is correct, though the revolution was initiated by the great nobles, effected by the aid of a foreign ruler and a composite army, and consummated by a constitutional settlement made by country gentlemen in the House of Commons. Never, perhaps, have the goodwill of a people, the rebellion of an aristocracy, and the armed interference of a foreigner, had equally striking and beneficent results. 93. The character of William, though excellently suited to effect, was little calculated to sustain, a successful revolution. Bred a soldier from his boyhood, he had the excellences and defects of his training. He was swift to decide and to execute, calm in judgment, resolute in purpose, serene and immovable in the face of tumult or danger. But he was ready on occasion to sanction acts of ruthless cruelty, and he often showed considerable lack of scruple and some indifference to high principle. His cold, keen nature made him deficient in sympathy, and unable to consider or even to perceive, other views than his own. Able to overawe and to command, he was never able to awaken enthusiasm or inspire affection. Thus it came about that, with many of the qualities of a great general, he could never win victories over Condé or Luxembourg; and, though possessing almost all the essentials of a great diplomatist, he could never bind together a divided alliance with the graceful art of a Marlborough. Though he achieved his real aims, he never struck the popular imagination as forcibly as many a lesser man. He lives in history 1689-1702] Character and aims of William III 257 not as the idol of cheering mobs but as the champion of threatened liberties, not as the darling of one country but as the preserver of many. William was not qualified by previous training or character to understand the proud and jealous nation over which it was now his lot to rule. He had spent twenty years of his life in a vain attempt to understand the vagaries of the Council of Amsterdam, and he was too old and too impatient to humour or cajole a new representative assembly. His letters to Heinsius, Grand Pensionary of Holland, are full of complaints about the ruinous delays and the trivialities of Parliament, its strange prejudices and fatal blindness. The impossibility of forecasting the attitude of the Commons from day to day, the cabals which produce such astounding changes and turn people from black to white, the stupidity of individuals, the hateful spirit of party, the intrigues which will finish by destroying the country and himself—all these he confides to his sympathetic correspondent. "Les gens," wrote he, January 21, 1698,"ne s'occupent ici que d'une prétendue liberté, tandis qu'ils sont forcés de reconnaître qu'ils n'ont jamais étés si libres, et qu'ils n'ont même rien à redouter de mon part." His people were unable to discern his true character; and he bitterly, but not altogether justly, resented their failure to understand him. He had no ability for finance, and while possessing the energy, he had not the gifts of a great administrator. Though devoid of ostentation, his manners were harsh and repellent, and showed none of the graces to which England was accustomed in her kings. His wretched health seriously affected his temper and disposition. Calm and steady at great crises, he was often peevish and irascible on lesser occasions, chafing at small delays and slight irritations. His fondness for Dutchmen and favourites, though to some extent justified by the untrustworthiness of the most prominent Englishmen, cannot be excused in the cases of Keppel and Lady Orkney. These trivial excuses for the slight esteem in which the English held him, were strengthened by one far deeper and more fundamental, which caused his unpopularity to increase with the advance of years and with the unfolding of his policy. William's political ideas were large and grand- those of an international statesman genuinely labouring for the good of Europe as a whole. To his "great design" he really subordinated every particular interest, so far as in him lay. Thus, in 1689 he forced his own countrymen into a disadvantageous and humiliating convention with England, and treated their remonstrances with indifference. By looking for the same magnanimity in his new subjects, he showed how fundamentally he misread their temperament. He had declared to the English that he came to restore their Parliament and religion; it became increasingly evident that he had come to engage them in continental war. He did not remember that England had been comparatively free from continental warfare since the death of Elizabeth, and had retained a horror C. M. H. V. 17 258 Character and influence of Mary [1689-94 of standing armies since the death of Cromwell. Nor could he see that, after 1692, her interests were far less engaged in the struggle than those of the land Powers. When, on April 6, 1701, he wrote to Heinsius that he had to do with people" whom it is necessary to lead by indirect ways for their own good," he put into a single sentence both his own defence and the justification of his English subjects. The defects in William's character, which obscured its real elements of greatness, were in no small measure disguised by the influence of his wife. Mary was the most popular of women, and her gentle charm did much to counteract the unfavourable personal impression produced by her husband. Though William sometimes added harshness to the crime of infidelity, her devotion towards him never ceased. Her letters breathe a spirit of exquisite sincerity and gentleness, and evince a resigned and touching belief in Providence. Indeed, the whole-hearted religious fervour of Mary did much to incline the Church of England to acquiesce in the new order. The Calvinistic William was not unnaturally or unjustly suspected of lukewarmness towards the Establishment. But the influence of Mary, her unaffected piety and zeal for the Church, and the care with which she watched over the appointment of Bishops, disarmed the resentment of the Tories. Moreover, as Regent in 1690 and 1692 she showed some capacity in civil affairs, and a courage little short of heroic after the appalling news of Beachy Head (1690). William gradually became aware of her devotion and her services and softened towards her in later years. When her death occurred (December 28, 1694), he was so painfully affected that it seemed he would follow her to the grave. The nation mourned with him, and Prior, in touching verse, bade him forget that "grief which hinders Europe being freed." But the English could not continue to regard the foreign ruler in the same light as when he had been the husband of the warm-hearted English Queen. After her death his popularity, which had never been great, declined so rapidly, as not only to retard the continuance of the war, but even to endanger the throne. - The difficulties which beset William at the beginning of his reign were increased by the natural reaction after the Revolution. A resolute minority had effected a settlement substantially upon its own lines; it was certain that the more traditional and conservative forces, which had yielded to the shock of circumstance, would soon reassert their strength. William formed his first administration with the express view of lessening the effect of this recoil, by balancing between the different parties. He seems in this to have followed the counsel of the famous "Trimmer' Halifax, who himself became Privy Seal and who advised the appointment of the Whig Shrewsbury and the Tory Nottingham as Secretaries of State. In his contemporary account Burnet says, that the inclusion of Nottingham in the Ministry "first preserved the Church, and then the Crown." As Nottingham, though only a moderate Tory, was a 1689] William's first Parliament 259 notorious champion of the Church, as religious questions were now specially in the foreground, all devout Churchmen hailed his appointment and that of Caermarthen (Danby), who was made President of the Council, as an earnest of the good intentions of the Calvinistic King. The religious measures of William's reign are dealt with elsewhere. The Toleration Act passed in 1689 secured the loyalty of the Dissenters to the existing régime, though various signs hinted at future trouble between Dissent and Establishment. At the same time the imposition of a new oath of allegiance and supremacy produced the deposition of the Archbishop of Canterbury and six other bishops, and caused the famous schism of the Non-jurors within the Established Church itself. Meanwhile, the financial settlement was producing important results by making the King more dependent on Parliament. The Commons granted the King an annual revenue of about £800,000. But the duties. and customs, amounting to about four hundred thousand, which had been settled for life on James, were granted to William and Mary for only four years. The principle thus suggested, of creating conditions which enforced on the King the frequent summoning of Parliament, was further developed by the Mutiny Act. This Act, suggested by the mutiny of a regiment in William's service, passed the conventional condemnation on standing armies unsanctioned by Parliament. It expressly declared illegal the establishment of Courts-martial and military discipline, unless annually re-enacted by statute, though such powers had till now always been exercised by royal prerogative. So long as William possessed a standing army, which it was obvious he would always do his utmost to retain, an annual summoning of Parliament would be essential. In October, 1689, the new Parliament met, legalised the acts of the Convention Parliament, and passed the Bill of Rights. The Whigs, flushed with success and intoxicated by their recent triumph, resolved to make their opponents atone for the sins of the past. Everything was thus thrown into confusion, for it was possible, by reviving the memories of the Rye House Plot, to attack members of the existing Ministry. The Lords appointed a committee, popularly known as the "Murder Committee," to enquire who were answerable for the deaths of Russell, Sidney, and other Exclusionists. Though John Howe and John Hampden were implacable in the Commons, Shrewsbury managed to repress the most violent outbursts in the Lords, and the proceedings of the murder committee speedily collapsed. But the Whigs had another expedient for persecuting their opponents. They inserted clauses in the Corporation Bill, to render any man, who had been a party to the surrender of his town charter under Charles II, incapable of holding office in his borough for seven years. This clause, which would have resulted in a wholesale disfranchisement of Tories, was brought forward in the absence of many members. But the proposal was too violent; some of the moderate Whigs hesitated; the Tories hurried back to town. 260 Act of Grace [1689-90 The obnoxious clause was rejected (January, 1690), and the Tories, emboldened by their success, then tried to pass an Indemnity Bill, which provided for a general amnesty for the past. But here they met with a reverse; the moderate Whigs came back to their allegiance, and threw the Bill out in committee. The reunited Whigs were proceeding to engraft upon the original Bill a Bill of pains and penalties against various Tory offenders, when their progress was suddenly interrupted. The King, who had viewed these disputes with the utmost impatience, dissolved Parliament (February, 1690). William was so disgusted with the violence of the previous Parliament that, in the general election which followed, he for the first time resorted to an unsparing use of political corruption. The result was the triumph of the moderate Tory party. Even before the results of the election were known, William had decided to effect changes in the Ministry. The dismissal of Halifax forms a real landmark in ministerial history (February, 1690). Henceforth the King was without his most conciliatory and unprejudiced advisers, and the policy of "trimming" and of compromise was gradually abandoned. The wits said that the King had exchanged the "White Marquis " (Halifax) for the "Black' (Caermarthen), thus implying that, for the moment, Tory influence predominated. On the new Parliament William pressed a measure, which was largely due to his own personal initiative, and which has justly been claimed as one of his chief titles to renown namely, an Act of Grace (May 20, 1690), exempting only regicides and thirty others from pardon. After very little discussion the House, as if ashamed of its violence in the previous session, accepted the Bill. Past errors and criminals were thus buried in oblivion, and a fruitful cause of bitterness removed. Above all it at last became possible for real energy to be infused into the conduct of the war, and for William to take the field with a united nation at his back. The great campaigns of the period in which the Grand Alliance waged war in Italy and Flanders, in Ireland and Catalonia, on the Danube and the Rhine, in the Channel and in the Mediterranean, can only be noticed here in their more insular aspects. To the continental Powers the most imminent danger was from the land forces of Louis. Unlike them England had most to fear from the predominance of the sea-power of France. Throughout 1689 William seems not to have realised the immense peril threatening from Ireland, so long as the question of naval supremacy hung in the balance. The English in Ireland were confronted by a revolt of three-fourths of the population, and by the more formidable presence of veteran regiments from France. They might well be overmatched, if the French fleet could sweep the seas and blockade the coast of Ireland. Towards the end of 1689 William realised the danger; and henceforth he showed remarkable energy. In June, 1690, he sailed from England to assume command in Ireland, แต |